So I figured out how to fix my master drive partition table and reinstall XP from backup. 3 hours. I reinstalled SuSE – several times because each time it didn’t install correctly, each time for a different reason. I kept thinking about that old saying about the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, each time expecting different results. I kept doing the same thing over and over, expecting the same results, and each time it was different. (This is not a Linux slam, as Windows will do the same thing.) I finally blew away those partitions, reformatted them — thank goodness for Partition Magic 8 — and reinstalled. Total time to install SuSE: 3 hours.
I had Mandrake CDs lying around also, so I thought I’d give Mandrake a try. A friend told me that it would probably be an easier install than SuSE, and definitely easier than Fedora. I booted to the install CD, and it complained that it didn’t understand my master drive partition table, but it would be happy to destroy all partitions on that drive and start over. I shut the computer off and unhooked the master drive (I can be taught). Then I tried again. This time it said that it didn’t understand the partition table on my slave drive, but it would be happy to blow that drive away and reformat it. Did I want it to do that? I shut the machine off, hooked the master drive back up, and threw the Mandrake CDs into my “software I’m not playing with anymore” drawer.
So I booted up into SuSE. I figured out how to change my screen resolution and refresh rate to something usable. Not bad so far. Popped an audio CD in the drive…
Neither my CD burner nor my DVD burner are hooked to either the mobo or the sound card with analog audio cables. They aren’t necessary. It’s a simple task to check the “enable digital audio” box in the device manager applet to tell XP to send the sound digitally via the IDE bus. Even Win98 would do that. The end result in SuSE: An audio CD plays a whole lot of silence. Nor can I figure out how to tell it that the sound should be digital. And, given the amount of stuff already crammed in my case, I just don’t feel like messing with analog cables. So, no music.
SuSE came with a TV app, which gave me great hope that I could get my TV card working. It recognized my TV card. It will scan the cable channels. And I get a B&W picture (no color at all) and no sound. The sound from the TV card runs via cable directly back to the sound card, and it claims to know this, so there shouldn’t be an excuse for this at all. I know I have some sound, because every now and then SuSE makes a sound to let me know I’ve done something that was a no-no. So it’s not the sound card. Or maybe it is. I can’t tell.
It also claimed to recognize my USB printer. But damned if I can get it to print anything. When I try to print, the printer suddenly disappears. It appears to my noobie eyes that, although it recognizes my printer (a Canon S830D), it doesn’t have drivers for it. I bought movie tickets off Fandango while in SuZE. I wanted to print the invoice. I finally had to resort to “printing” it to a file on the FAT32 partition, and then rebooting to Windows to actually print it on the printer.
My video card — an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro XT — is apparently not supported by any Linux distro. I downloaded the drivers from ATI, but installing them has so far defeated me. I don’t know why. There is no clue in the user manual. Info found on the net is cryptic (to me) and assumes a level of expertise I do not possess.
After a very frustrating 3 or 4 hours, I went back to XP to watch a little TV, listen to some CDs, print some documents, and generally get some work done.
I want to like Linux, because I don’t necessary love Mr. Gates, but so far Linux is not making it easy.
It’s important to me that my web sites are hosted on Linux servers. I know how to work with that. My host provides a graphical control panel that makes it easy. I understand the file structure. I know how to do the simple things I need to do on them like set permissions and schedule a cron job. I like Apache servers because of their robustness and their security.
But when I sit down at my desktop to work, I want stuff to work. I realize that Linux is very different from Windows, and I expected a certain learning curve. I’m a pretty techie sort, and I figured I could handle it. I’ve used multiple operating systems and user interfaces in the past — some text based and some pretty darn cryptic. I’ve picked them all up pretty rapidly. What I wasn’t prepared for was hardware that is recognized by the OS but still doesn’t work, installers that destroy everything in their path even when told not to (more of a MS trick, eh?) and relatively non-leading-edge features like digital audio not being available. I was expecting tasks like installing new software to be accomplished in some sort of logical fashion (after all this is software). But nothing seemed logical to me at all.
I was expecting that when something didn’t function, I would be given some kind of indication why. Instead SuSE pretended that everything was hunky-dory, leaving me no clue as to where to begin to look for solutions. Even if I could have gotten some kind of cryptic message like, “25324k frumpjik missing swrifty floryt,” I could have looked those words up somewhere and began to piece together what was happening. (I still remember how to debug, dammit!) But, no such luck.
I’ve worked in IT for a long time. Early on I learned that to believe that the end-user is stupid and always wrong because they have no interest in becoming an uber-geek is a misguided attitude, to say the least. End-users understand the business. Without them, IT would become rapidly unnecessary. IT is there to support the business experts with tools that streamline their processes and help to solve business problems. TOOLS And tools must be useful, or IT has missed the boat.
Ahh… but the open source community creates software pretty much just for itself. Yeah… that makes a difference, I guess.
Windows rules the desktops of the world not only because of Microsoft’s admittedly draconian marketing practices — which I in no way agree with — but because the guy off the street can for a few bucks by a CD, stick it in a drive, install a new program, and do some useful work, all with very little training. And can bring home an external drive and plug it into a USB port and have it magically work. And can bring home a new printer, plug it in, and print a picture of his kids without having to understand a bunch of cryptic command-line gobbledygook. Microsoft plays to that because it has learned the lesson of the end user: Make it simple enough for anyone to use, and everyone will want to use it — and they’ll bring their friends along to the party. And, yeah, that makes XP a bunch less uber-geek techie than Linux, and therefore less sexy to have on your desktop. But it also makes it more useful to the typical person-on-the-street. Those who denigrate Windows for it’s eye candy, etc., should remember that M$ is crying all the way to the bank.
When the open source community stops its circle-jerk and starts creating software with the end-user in mind instead of what gives it a collective hard-on, then Linux will give Windows a run for its money. But not until then.
Yesterday I went to a movie with #1 Son and one of his friends. #1 Son is currently wearing his hair “charged,” (i.e. sticking straight out all over his head, a la finger-in-light socket). On the way out of the theater, a woman started gushing (there is no other word), “Oh! How do you get your hair to do that? Oh! That’s so cool!” She went on and on and on. #1 Son just kept walking, and with a perfectly straight face said, “It’s magic.” I laughed all the way home.
I’ll keep dinking around with Linux when I have time, because I’m stubborn and I want to learn more about it, and yadda yadda yadda. But, darn it, when I sit down to do useful work, I don’t want to have to drag out the blow drier and the straightening iron and the hairspray. I want it to just be magic. I promise not to gush about it.
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