I recently installed Red Hat Linux 7.2 on my 512meg 800mhz server PC. Partly I wanted to try it out, Partly I wanted to try out some Apache + Java stuff. I haven’t had to setup/configure linux since about 1996. At that time I set it up terminal only and I setup sendmail and nntpd which took me about 3 weeks (vs Exchange which took about 45 minutes)
Since that time Linux has gotten a ton of press and you can go to Slashdot everyday and get a ear full (or eye full) of “Linux is the best thing ever!”, “Linux rules!”, “Linux is super stable!”, “Linux is no longer hard to setup!”, “The Interface is now great!” etc etc. Well, either all those people are either blinded by their hate of Microsoft or they are playing a sick joke on the rest of us.
It’s taken me about 4 days of about 4 to 6 hours a day to get this thing working.
It started out fine. I downloaded the 7.2 images, burnt CD-ROMS, popped them in, it installed and came up. Cool! Looks prettier than it use to etc.
Okay so I want to some how get samba up so I can grab some files from my Win Boxes. After an hour of digging through docs I find out how to do it. I go to my folder on my winbox with all my downloads in it through Nautilus. It’s takes 4 minutes to give me a folder listing!!!!! Rebooting the machine in Windows and viewing the same folder across the net takes 3 seconds!
Well, at least it’s running.
Up until now that machine has been running Win2K and ICS to share my ADSL line. Setting it up was a matter of installing the PPPoE software, typing in my username and password, clicking “auto-connect with Windows starts up”. To get it shared I click about 3 buttons, “Share this connection”, I select the net to share it on and I click OK. It works.
In Linux though it takes me about 10 hours to get it to work. Getting the PPPoE to dial-in, finding the docs etc since it’s not in the network configuration application takes me a couple hours of searching.
The killer is getting the line shared. Some people call it NAT, some people called it IP MASQUERADE, finding docs all over the net and none of them work. Even Red Hat’s own docs do not match the install. The docs say they are for version 7.2 the configuration program is cryptic as hell and it’s for ipchains, 7.2 uses iptables. Why the hell is that program even installed? As it’s not working I worry maybe it has something to do with firewall settings. The docs say to run lokkit or gnome-lokkit. I search my whole hard drive, there is no gnome-lokkit. I try lokkit but lokkit is also an ipchains program not and iptables program.
I find one sight that claims: start iptables (it’s already started), flush it, type one line, type this other thing to save the configuration and Red Hat will restore that config when you reboot. It seems to make sense. It seems like that’s how it’s designed to work. Except, It doesn’t work.
I finally found some script which got it to work by manually adding files here and there. That’s really friendly isn’t it 
I have no idea which new configuration tool will not be happy that there’s new stuff.
But I’m still not done. In order to reproduce my 3 click ICS I still have to setup dhcpd. Fine, dig out the docs. No one click here. Start it up. Oh joy, Red Hat didn’t install it. I get to learn about installing packages. Hopefully all this new fancy stuff will make it as easy as Windows? No way, GNOrpm? What a joke! Which fucking button to you push? How do you tell it to look on the CD? Time to read the manual again. Why is it I’ve never had to read a Windows manual?
Okay, get that installed. Now another 2 hours on the net trying to find docs that cover this case. Certainly somebody has wanted to do this before. But, all the docs I find are what dhcpd does and what all the options are. That’s all fine and dandy except I want to know what the correct ones are. The question is “how to I reproduce ICS?” If I figure them out by myself there’s a large chance I’ll get them wrong. Finally, after a couple of hours of digging I give up and make my own. I’ve setup dhcp on WinNT before so I know what it’s talking about. Okay that works, except for one thing. My DNS is supplied dyanimcally from my ISP’s dhcp server. I want to pass that on to my clients through this dhcpd. Another 3 hours of searching and no luck. I finally just hard code them in. Sure I could probaby write a script the generates the dhcp.config file and fills in the current dns but of course that’s more unknown stuff I’ll have to guess at. Now when my isp changes them (which they do) and my net connection no longer works it will be how many hours until I figure out I need to go fix my dhcpd.config file. I least I have Windows to fall back to.
Then of course there is that legendary stableness. Hmmm, well, my NT server has been running for a year without one problem. My Linux server? Several times one or both of Nautilus or Mozilla stop responding. No problem, I’ll just logout and login again, quick, painless, it seems to work except Mozilla won’t run. I click on the icon, nothing happens. Nautilus comes up but when I try to download something no response. The solution? Reboot!!!!! This has happened to me at least 5 times in the last 4 days. So much for stability and that’s out of the box. I didn’t have to start downloading and installing 237 programs like I would in Windows before it got unstable.
What’s left? How about how it takes 3 times longer to start than rebooting in Win2K? How about how anonying it is that you can’t resize a window from the top border, only the left, right and bottom. (I’m sure there is some setting that will turn that on if I dig through another 2 hours of docs). How about how the taskbar always seems to be hidden behind another window when I need it. (again that’s probably a setting somewhere). How about that launching any program seems to take twice as long as Windows on the same machine?
It’s also clearly slower. Mozilla is much slower than IE on the same machine. Nautilus is a joke. What where they thinking? The folder trees take so long to load they made them live meaning going to a big folder and they can take 30seconds or more to fill up. I guess they thought having the folders appear as they are read would make it more useful except that since the names are all getting shuffled around while it’s figuring them out there’s no way you can click on them. By the time you’ve got the name you wanted scrolled on the the screen and you’re about to click on it it jumps up or down 3 or 4 lines as a few more names finally get plopped in.
Next I want to get Apache installed and the Java SDK and the Java plugin. Apache installs no hitches except the docs are a separate install. Again wishing I was on Windows where the docs are an option in the same install instead of having to find them. They turn out to be on the other CD. The Java SDK installs but the plugin fails. I can only find docs installing the plugin in Navigator, not mozilla. Another 2 hours of searching. I decide I’ll get the newest version of Mozilla. I get the rpm but it says it needs another package, mozilla-nspr. I find the website for that. They only have a .gz file which I download. It just unpacks into a few files with no docs on where to put it or anything and I can find nothing on their site. I look around and find another .rpm on some other site. They guy claims to have compiled it on 5/7 so it’s new. That rpm though says it conflicts with the already installed mozilla-nspr. If it’s already installed why is the new mozilla complaining? Well I tell it to ignore the error and just install. Then I try to install mozilla. I get the same error, need mozilla-nspr. I’m fed up at this point so I pick ignore. It gives me a huge list of problems it’s either going to have or had, I’m not sure but regardless it doesn’t work and I give up in disgust. Have I ever had any problem remotely like this with Windows since 95? The answer NO!!!!!!
Linux is a turd. It’s so convoluted, so messy, it’s almost like it’s deliberate. Maybe that whole “give it away for free, pay for service” thing really is have an influence. The harder it is to setup the more likely you are to pay someone to help you. That’s all fine expect the right solution then is to pick something that’s not hard to setup.
If you want to run a server run FreeBSD. If you want desktop machine and you can’t stand Microsoft get a Mac with OS-X. But whatever you do, stay away from Linux unless you want your new hobby to be searching for docs relavent to your particular 1 of 6523 distros of linux and configuring your machine on a daily basis.
Regardless of what people may say about Microsoft, one thing is for sure, it’s well integrated and it works. I went from Unix to Microsoft and have since done everything from Exchange, IIS, to SQL on the Microsoft platform. Briefly I did exactly what you did, loaded a copy of Linux to check out Apache and PHP. Took me an entire week to get the dang thing going. Once up and running, I tried programming for the darn thing. Call me spoiled, but after programming with Visual Studio for years, the entire Linux development platform seems antiquated. I totally hate emacs. Yuck!
Well in response to the article, I’d like to say that Redhat 7.2, from my VERY recent experience, is not very well put together. Needless to say I didn’t leave it on my box for long (no FTP daemon by default kinda made me mad), so I put Slackware on it. I might be called a “UNIX hacker” or whatever; I know what I’m doing when I use linux. Basically, I hope you give some other linux distributions a try, as from what I have seen from Redhat has not impressed me. I recommend Slackware (although its not very good on the newbie), Debian (which I’ve never used, but I’ve heard rave reviews about). Good luck to you in your ventures with linux and computers in general.
Well I guess that was one great rant if I ever saw one. The only way I came across this site was from a Google search. You sound like more of a “cry baby” newby than any type of IS professional. I think I can help you out a lot by comparing Microsoft products to skiing and Linux products to snowboarding. Skiing is relatively easy to learn at least the basics that will get you down a slope. Snowboarding is a bitch right from the get go, it forces you to learn every aspect of it prior to getting down the slope, the first time. Once you got snowboarding down, you pretty much got it. Skiing will fool you. I been skiing for almost 30 years but only really perfected my style last year. You get out what you put into it. If your lazy and rather pay Bill instead of exert some effort, that’s your choice. Linux works if you know what you’re doing. Microsoft works if they know what they’re doing. With Linux you can see the source code, but in your case it would probably be like the monkeys around the monolith in 2001.
so, we have to listen to you whine because you couldn’t figure it out? gimme a break. Linux is not for everyone, so maybe you *should* go back to your security problem known as Windows.
Some people just like to go to a dealer and buy or lease a new car that can get them from point A to point B. There are also people that have a passion for cars and that want to know whats under the hood and cant wait to get there hands under there and tweak it until every ounce of HP is squeezed out.
The point is that if you want to get from point A to point B stay with your native OS. If you have passion about computers and technology you wont have a problem spending the time tweaking your new OS to perfection.
I also have to say that I agree with you on the “ton of press” linux gets and how many of its users like to build it up as the solution to end all other solutions to people who dont use it. Linux is a great OS that is almost endless in how dynamic it can be but there are also a long list cons and with out a doubt a big learning curve. No matter what people say about “how easy it is to setup” to this day I have not had a perfect install of any distro that I did not have to spend some time behind the command line, but when you build up windows like you do you have. You have just become just the same as the linux tribe at Slashdot.
Further I would like to say that FreeBSD might not be the best choice of a OS for people that cant get Linux up and running with out pulling out there hair and bashing there head into the keyboard. From my experience FreeBSD is a lot less newbie friendly and it is not as easy to find documentation on when things do go wrong as linux is, but when you do get past that learning curve is in my opinion the best free OS you can get for running a server. If you really want the benefit of *nix with some of the user friendly feel of a Microsoft OS I would reccomend getting a Sun Ultra Sparc or Sun Blade with Solaris, I have rarely had any problem intstalling and running Solaris on a Sun machine it has to closest to a out of box exprience you can get from a *nix machine and the documentation is both professional and complete. You can even run Windows side by side with Solaris if you get a SunPCi coprocessor card, but this all comes at price, well except for the OS
.
-namdekan
linux is
the car analogy works more like this:
Some people like to buy cars that just work. They buy Chevys, Fords, Toyotas, Hondas, BMWs, Mercedes, Ferraries, etc. This is the Windows, Mac OS crowd. I’ll let Mac and Windows fans argue about which is the Chevy and which is the BMW.
Other people like to buy $500 cars and fix them. They end up spending $100 to $500 a month putting in new tires, getting the car repaired because it doesn’t meet smog standards, rebuilding the engine, etc. This is the Linux crowd. It’s cheap but it always requires work/maintainance. It has to be your hobby or forget it. If it is your hobby great.
As for the other comments. I never said FreeBSD should be used if you can’t handle Linux. I said if you want a SERVER, use FreeBSD. It’s as hard to setup as Linux but it’s faster and more stable for SERVER use.
As for Sun being useful well, maybe as a SERVER OS but as anything else forget it. There are tons of apps I want to run that will never run on a Sun.
While it only me 5hrs to install redhat (9.0) linux, which I was want to try because it gets so much press (and i’m doing computer scinece at university) it just seems really cruddy. Of course it is only after I install it on my Asus D1 ‘portable desktop’ (aka laptop without battery) that it became clear that there is no way in hell that linux can deal with lucent AMR modems or it seems my SIS 650M video card (altho I haven’t looked too hard for the video card drivers). It has the feel of a students attempt at an os and works as well as you might imagine, that being the case. it is hard to imagine that it is ever going to succeed in this current open source thing it’s got going.
my hope would be that some comany develop an alternative to windows, there own kernal and all the rest, and one that works seemlessly like xp. That must be where the future lies because open source is simply too disorganised to keep pace with m$ and it shows. Wouldn’t the clever souls that work with/on linux serve themselves and us better by putting their time instead in a company that can generate even a simple, but entirely cohernet GUI (with browser, mail…and a different feel to windows) that works with modern technology and sell that, put the disc in voila you’re away. who apart from computer science graduates gives a rats what’s ‘under the hood’ so long as it works and makes a pleasing change in environment feel to windows. yeh so i’ll get flamed – but man this whole linux thing looks and feels like a dogs breakfast.
S.
I can see that the article I’m commenting was written almost 2 years ago. Either GNU/Linux systems have changed lots or i am a genius. Setting up linux took me
more like 30 minutes (different distros). Currently I’m using Mandrake 9.1 but I’ve also
tried diferent kinds of Red Hat and Debian (Woody). RH 9 has set up everything itself. Mandrake didn’t set up my cable modem itself but fixing this took me minutes. Sharing a connection, setting it up took me 5 minutes (there is a gui for this in Mandrake 9.1). Then I learned about Shorewall script which was used for firewalling and NAT. After 20 minutes of reading the documentation i was able to customize its config files so it worked exactly as i want it. What’s more, now i know what and how is done to provide firewalling and NAT.
About rpms, using them is as easy as typing “man rpm”. After five minutes of reading you have the knowledge you need to install, update, remove software.
GNU/Linux is not for everybody, but now it would run for most ppl. Modern distros have instalation programs that are way frendlier than those of M$ windows.
If it is so easy for me, and I’m no genious, I’m not stusying electronics, or comp science, just plain mechanical engineering. I started using linux after I bought a new comp 6 months ago. Windows really wasn’t doing well on it, system would hang, i had no idea what my comp was doing. I gave linux a try and it turned out way easier than i thought.
I understand your dismay over how long it took you to start all those things, but from what you write i can see you had absolutely NO knowledge on linux. It seems as if it was the first time you were administering a linux system (how come you didn’t know about rpm command?). If you were such a newbie to windows you maybe would have more things done quicker, but I’m sure you would have lots of problems with it. So saying linux is crap only because you’re used to other OS isn’t fair. Especially for you, because you’ve got a lot more knowledge on how computers run.
One thing that ppl writing and selling software might dislike about linux is that there is lots of programs that run on it that free software.
Well, I’m glad you had no problems. Maybe I should try Mandrake. Trying RH9.0 just a few months ago and I still ran into problems.
You mention reading docs for 5 to 20 minutes. I’ve never had to read docs in Windows for stuff like that.
Let’s try it right now. I’m running RH9.0 on my second machine at work. I’m going to try to install Mozilla 1.6 (1.21 is what comes with RH 9.0) I go to their site (http://mozilla.org) and click the Linux link. Does it ask me if I want to install it? Um, no, Windows would have. So now I have to know how to untar it. Fortunately I do but the average user would have no idea where to start.
Let’s see, on the menus there is “Add/Remove Applications”. I try that but no, that only installs packages on the RH9.0 CDs and nothing else.
Okay, well, I know how to untar although in windows, zip is supported directly by the OS. Just double click the file and it opens as though it was a folder. Instead, somehow in Linux I’m supposed to know I need to open a shell and type
tar xvfz mozilla-i686-pc-linux-gnu-1.6-installer.tar.gz
So I get the installer started. It asks me if I want to install to “/usr/local/mozilla”. I pick yes since how would I know where to install it?
Installed, it lauches itself except it’s failing because there is a proxy and unlike every single Windows browser appearently in Linux one browser can’t read the previous browsers’s configuration and figure out the proxy settings. Okay fine, I’ll go set them by hand since I know how to do that. It’s working.
Okay, now I quit. I go to the desktop. I click the browser icon. What? It’s still version 1.21!?! I click the hat and find Mozilla Internet Browser. That’s also 1.21. Hmm, I guess in order to run the browser I’m going to have to open a shell and type mozilla. I try that. That’s also verison 1.21.
Oh, I see, I have to manually change the shortcut to point to the new version. Oh way, the docs are wrong. they say “Right-click the icon for Mozilla on the Panel and enter the following command:” When I right-click on the icon I get a menu. There’s no place to enter a command. Oh, I get it, as usual with Linux the docs are wrong. I’m supposed to pick “Properties”. Oh, a-n-d I have to manually change the icon as well? WTF!
Boy, isn’t linux easy?
It didn’t even take me as much time to install _gentoo_ Linux, which is well-known for being tricky to install, and it was my first Linux distro. (Yes, I had some UNIX skills to begin with, but nothing exceptional.) It took a few days for me to get comfortable with the new enviroment and install all the software I wanted, but there were no major challenges after the inital install.
Oh, and blaming Linux on Mozilla being unstable demonstrates massive ignorance or a malicious desire to put the OS in a bad light in the eyes of readers who don’t know that a program crashing is different from the OS crashing. One could just as well claim that Windows XP is very unstable because of the fact that many Windows freeware programs are buggy and crash a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, Linux on the desktop has it’s problems, and Windows does (for the time being) win the ease-of-adminstration war for the non-expert IS person, but it is no joke.
I’ll write more later but (1) I tried gentoo. No luck, I don’t remember the problems but I deleted it within minutes of installing it. (2) I also tried FreeBSD, …. yea, right. That was nearly impossible. (3) I tired SUSE, it seems like they don’t want you to install unless you pay and they try to make it nearly impossible to install without paying being that getting through to their servers was near impossible. (4) I recently installed FC3. It didn’t like my machine, it required I update some stuff in the middle of the install (udev) before it would even boot, then X wouldn’t start because of another bug. After a few days I managed to find a work around and now it’s finally working and it’s nto so bad. Trying to install an emule client has been another annoying frustration, so far no luck after a 3-5 hr compile of gcc and related libraries (since the client said it was missing libstdc++ or something like that.) At least sendmail is now is to get working compared to 9 yrs ago…once you find some simple docs, that only took a few minutes
I’m running Vida linux as a desktop. Its a based on Gentoo. Easy to install, Update/add application through Porthole which handles the dependency issues. I’m still a Linux novice, but I like Vida as a desktop. Depending on the speed of your machine, it may take awhile to compile apps. It took my a day and half a night to dl and compile OpenOffice on a P3 733 Mhz box. But its sweet.
I sugest you trying Ubuntu — it’s the least frustrating to the newbies, and it’s packet system is really very good.
Do a sincere try at it, and you won’t regret it.
Jesus …
Installing an OS is 1/10 of the total effort to set up an environmet to help you to do your job. And the OS expenses are less than 1% of all software expenses.
I run MacOS X, Windows (all kinds) and linux in my network. I crash each of those systems with ease. The OS that feeds me (brings money in my pocket is windows). All the others I use just for a referrence.
To Install a windows environment I usually need about two days. And I am darn good
at it. Yes the OS installs itself for about 1 hour without any supervision but this is just the beginning. Then I have to install all the productivity software I really need to do my job.
System Configuration – 1 hour. It includes disabling all services I dont need and enabling all that I need. Going through all settings even If I am not changing them. (Notice that I usually use Windows 2003 advanced server configured as workstation)
MS Office Full – 3 hours (it includes full configuration).
Visual Studio.NET – 2 hours.
Borland Java Builder X – 1 hour.
Wise and Install Anywhere – 2 hours;
All Java runtiimes you need when you distribute something with java (JVM 1.8 (this is for Mac 9.x), 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0 ) – 3 hours.
Microsoft Project – 2 hours.
Enterprice Architect – 0.5 hours.
All Plugins for .NET 2003 I currently use – 1 hour
All other small productivity tools, such as dictionaries, resource and text editors, partition and file recovery tools and so on so forth – 3 hours.
Moving all your data and making sure all projects trees and info is intact. – 3 hours.
Backup the partition image in case you have to repeat all that – 2 hours.
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The total is 26 hours! and notice that everything installs without problems just by clicking a single button, and notice that I did it many times so there are no surprises at all.
If you need to install SQL server locally (depends of what you design) add another 2 hours.
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So this is for an Windows Box if you dont have preset partitions.
For Mac OS and Linux you just dont have those aplications.
What I need is huge development foundation + project/team management software + UML design software + a ton of other things.
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Linux (Suse 9.1.)
Self installation – 4 hours. ( I am installing all features, packages and docs) I takes about 7 gigs of space and installs about 4 hours almost without supervision.
Network configuration – 1 hour (for some reason it does not liike my 3com NICs) Notice that I am always runing state of the art hardware, in this example it is Double Opteron 244 with HDAMB motherboard and 2x SATA raptors and 2 GIGS of sretified RAM and 23″ apple cynema display.
YES I use Apple displays and keyboards with all my OSes because for me the Apple hardware is supperior so far.
And thats it. 5 hours Linux against 26 hours of Windows instalation.
The only difference is that after those 5 hours I have pretty much usless Linux system because I cant make money out of it!!!!
Half of the installed programs just do not run (I dont give a shit about the err messages, If the installed application does not start at the first click I just spit at it and never look back (unless of course this piece of shit is not making money for me))
Mac OS:
2 hours of flawless installation. The only addition is MS Office for MAC ($250) and there it is.
Best Sound player, Best personal movie & photo managers, Best non extensible personal system. My wife loves it. The only problem is that is usless for to make money!!!.
Cause the design and development here is slow and non rewarding. The financial tools (for tax and accounting) used from my wife to make living does not run there so she still need the evil Windows in order to make enough money to afford the nice apple toys.
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Conclusion (for myself)
I am equal oportunity user. So I will use everything that helps me to make money faster and easyer. End!
SuSE is now endorsed by Microsoft and Novell. I suggest you pay attention to what is happening. All OS’s will be pointless in the future, browsers are where things are moving to. So get something free and use your browser…Simple!
After trying Linux myself several times over the past 15 years I would have to agree with it 100%! Every so often I get an itch and put myself through the nightmare that is Linux. My most recent experience, and the one that drove me to the web to google “Linux is a Joke”, happened just 20 minutes ago. I downloaded the most recent version of Ubuntu, 8.10. I burned it onto a CD. I booted a spare computer I’m hoping to turn into a MythTV box. It boots, my monitor blinks a few times, then says “Frequency Out of Range”. Here we are in 2009 with the most recent version of Linux, on a Plug and Play monitor, and Ubuntu cannot properly configure the refresh rate on my ATI 3850 Video card. Something that other crappy OS has been doing since they help invent PNP.
Well enough of my ramblings. I suppose I should begin my 6 hour journey to figure out how to install Ubuntu without it screwing up my refresh rate. Linux is so easy!
Cheers!