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[MamaLiberty]

I'll send you one if you want.  Note, though, just like Windows, you should have a high speed inet connection to get your updates.  Just like Windows (no way you want to pull XP SP3 down via dialup).

I don't have any options except dial-up in this area right now. They are talking about bringing in fiber optics fairly soon, but given the economy and so forth, I'm not going to hold my breath. I quit downloading "updates" for XP some time ago. They kept screwing things up or were strictly cosmetic and I decided I didn't need the hassle. I have a friend who has Kubuntu. Every month or so she goes through contortions of the damned trying to update and then get everything to work again! And she's got more understanding of things electronic than I ever will.

Fair enough.  For my purposes, I can do everything I need to do with a default Ubuntu install, plus a few other apps that I get by checking off some boxes in the software package manager.  The only exceptions are Peachtree and access to the exchange server at work., For both I have a Windows box at work.

Ah HAH!! So Linux doesn't even do everything YOU want it to.  I actually have a second computer (also XP), but I wouldn't know how to prepare it for the new OS install. I'd like to network them so I could use both... but I just don't know how to do it.

You do not have to buy it.

Why not? If it is a viable market product, it is worth something and I'm happy to pay for it.

You see, I bought a shareware "Puppy Linux" program several years ago, just to try. It came on two CDs in an envelope - without a word of documentation and not even bare bones instructions on the disk. I had no idea what to do with it or even how to read the disk to see if there was documentation or instructions on that. Linux friends directed me to various "support" fora, but my few explorations there turned up total geek language and I couldn't have understood the answers even if I had the years necessary to search for them. When I asked again they hemmed and hawed... and eventually the answer was that I shouldn't expect such documentation from freeware or shareware... Ok, I don't now. I've been burned.

I'm happy to pay for it when it is commercially available, reputation reliable, and user friendly. I expect things to be worth what I pay for them.

So, if you or anyone else sent me a disk, I'd still need technical assistance to figure out how to use it. And an operating system - it would seem to me - can't just be loaded onto the hard drive like a word processor program. I've been told that XP can't be partitioned, and I wouldn't know how to do that if it was possible.

This is not like trying on shoes, my friend.

Part of it is personal frustration on my part.  I've been fixing other people's stuff for money since (counts on fingers) since 1991.  That's Windows 3.0 territory.  Most of what I see is people's busted stuff. 

So, we are back where we started. You are a "geek" of some sort. You know how to do these things. Your lady has you to help if problems develop.  I do not and have no time or patience to become a geek to overcome that. I want to drive the car, not build one from scratch. Linux and its cousins may well be a wonderful product on the market some day, but right now it most certainly is not.

[slidemansailor]

Aha, MamaL, you are in a good position to try Linux.  You have a spare computer.

Computer #1 runs our old friend Windoze, stays perfectly static without updates to hardware, operating system or application software.  No compatibility problems thrust upon you by software upgrades and changes happening in the bigger, connected world.. and no viruses because you connect it to nobody, nohow.

Computer #2 gets set up to run Linux and connect to the Internet.  Linux has proven almost impervious to the evil some people send to MS and Apple opsys. Since you have expressed a willingness to pay for value received, you hire or barter with a Linux geek to set you up with the basics you want for talking and surfing the web. You can probably even have a mini-network enabling you to pass files from one to the other.

Your geek bartering buddy gets you going with the Linux opsys and, after a short while, you know your way around well enough to want and make your own tweaks to it.  You may or may not someday abandon Windoze, but it will be at time of your choosing, if at all.

[MamaLiberty]

you hire or barter with a Linux geek to set you up

If I had enough money, I'm sure I could. Tough in the wilds of Wyoming, however. I don't know what the going rate is, actually. Or do you know one who will travel to rural Wyoming and work for home made bread and antelope steak? We could go shooting and I'd spring for the ammo. By the time he got it all set up and I understood the care and feeding of the thing, he'd be part of the family. Oh... he'd better like dogs too.

   I'm just pulling your leg a bit here.

You are missing the point too I'm afraid.

When I can go into a store (physical or online) and buy what I need, when I need it, take it home and plug it in... and use it... with minimal tech support, available IN ENGLISH, at the agreed on rate or on a contract - then I will be glad to buy it. Linux (or whatever they call it by that time) will then have viable commercial products like toasters and televisions - or MS, Mac or Apple computers, actually. Not before then.

Do you see the vast difference between what you suggest and this? You are still suggesting that I build a car or have one custom made. I want to walk into the showroom and BUY a car, then drive it away.

I appreciate the idea of open source. I applaud all that the folks are doing to make something new and good. It's just not ready to market to ordinary people as far as I can see. I hope they overcome that and actually produce things people want to buy... and soon.

[Anduril]

you hire or barter with a Linux geek to set you up

If I had enough money, I'm sure I could. Tough in the wilds of Wyoming, however. I don't know what the going rate is, actually. Or do you know one who will travel to rural Wyoming and work for home made bread and antelope steak? We could go shooting and I'd spring for the ammo. By the time he got it all set up and I understood the care and feeding of the thing, he'd be part of the family. Oh... he'd better like dogs too.

   I'm just pulling your leg a bit here.

You are missing the point too I'm afraid.

When I can go into a store (physical or online) and buy what I need, when I need it, take it home and plug it in... and use it... with minimal tech support, available IN ENGLISH, at the agreed on rate or on a contract - then I will be glad to buy it. Linux (or whatever they call it by that time) will then have viable commercial products like toasters and televisions - or MS, Mac or Apple computers, actually. Not before then.

Do you see the vast difference between what you suggest and this? You are still suggesting that I build a car or have one custom made. I want to walk into the showroom and BUY a car, then drive it away.

I appreciate the idea of open source. I applaud all that the folks are doing to make something new and good. It's just not ready to market to ordinary people as far as I can see. I hope they overcome that and actually produce things people want to buy... and soon.

        MamaLiberty:

        You seem to be 'hung up' on the fact that Linux is free, whereas Windoze follk refer to the money they extract from you as "The Tarriff", a Mafia term for extortion money.

         You seem not to understand the economic concept of "sunk cost" -- the fact that the money and effort you have sunk into Windoze is irretreivably gone; and the only question is whether you want to sink even more money into Vista or not.

           An Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD inserts into your CD slot, and loads under Windoze to put you straight into Ubuntu Linux, with Firefox and all the other facilities ready for you to practice with. 

          All without altering a smidgen of your precious Windoze stuff.

          I've already told you about spread-spectrum modems, to give you a decent line speed.

          If this isn't good enough, you're stuck with Windoze for the rest of your days.

          Good luck with that.  The past or the future:  your choice.

          Cordially,

          Anduril

[Bill St. Clair]

Dell sells systems with Ubuntu 8.04 preinstalled. I priced an Inspiron 1525N laptop, with 2 gigs of RAM and an integrated webcam added to the base price. $624.

[lee n. field]

I don't have any options except dial-up in this area right now.

Nobody's doing wireless, or cell phone internet?

I've been told that XP can't be partitioned, and I wouldn't know how to do that if it was possible.

Category error.  XP is not something that partitioning applies to.

Ah HAH!! So Linux doesn't even do everything YOU want it to.

HA HA.  Strictly speaking it does everything I want it to do.  I don't want to use Peachtree and Outhouse.   .  They are proprietary apps, that require a proprietary platform.  I could, I guess, use them on the terminal server at work, using a remote desktop client that comes with the default install of Ubuntu.  I don't have any great objection to other people running Windows.  I just have better things to do with my time than fix my own computer.

f I had enough money, I'm sure I could. Tough in the wilds of Wyoming, however. I don't know what the going rate is, actually. Or do you know one who will travel to rural Wyoming and work for home made bread and antelope steak? We could go shooting and I'd spring for the ammo. By the time he got it all set up and I understood the care and feeding of the thing, he'd be part of the family. Oh... he'd better like dogs too. Smiley

US Rt. 20, which is within a mile of my house, peters out (best I could tell, following it on a map), somewhere in Wyoming.  Hmmm.

When I can go into a store (physical or online) and buy what I need, when I need it, take it home and plug it in... and use it... with minimal tech support, available IN ENGLISH, at the agreed on rate or on a contract - then I will be glad to buy it. Linux (or whatever they call it by that time) will then have viable commercial products like toasters and televisions - or MS, Mac or Apple computers, actually. Not before then.

 
Where is such technical support available, for Windows apps?  These days it ranges from tolerable, to traumatically wretched. 

You are missing the point too I'm afraid.

Actually, with kind intent, I think you're missing the point. 

[MamaLiberty]

Where is such technical support available, for Windows apps?  These days it ranges from tolerable, to traumatically wretched.

I wouldn't know - and I wouldn't know how to ask for it anyway. The only tech support I've had  in many long years is when I prod the ISP to fix a connection problem on their end. My needs are simple. I run Firefox and a silly freeware word processor (Jarte) that doesn't do much. The Dreamweaver is the only program I MUST have, or something to equal it. I've run it trouble free since about 2000. I'd love to talk to someone about PDF (won't let me install the newest download) and a few other things, but I manage.

Actually, with kind intent, I think you're missing the point.

LOL !!! The entire point of my posting this article was to say that - quite contrary to the claims made - Linux is not yet ready for the open market, at least not under any circumstances acceptable to the general public. 

I WANT them to get there! I hope they will SOON. I'm willing to support that and encourage it! I just don't know how to do that right now.

And Lee, if you'd like a little techy vacation in beautiful Wyoming, I'd love to have you!!! 



Who said there were no trees in Wyoming?

[Myrkul]

I would love a little geek-holiday in Wyoming. The payment sounds pretty sweet, too.

Frankly, I'm at the point where I've "gulched" without actually moving into a valley somewhere. I'm not offering my services to anyone who doesn't appreciate them. That obviously means that pretty much anyone on this board can ask any tech question they want, and pay anything they like in return, though obviously information is best paid for with information, and since I'm getting plenty of info from you all, I consider tech support to be already paid for.

Tech support for Widows apps: Non-existent anymore. Ever since they sent my job to India, it's just gone downhill from there.

Prime-time readiness of Linux: It's as ready as Windows is... which is why Linux geeks all say, "It's Soooooo close!" Your average computer user, who just knows "you click the E to go online" would probably be lost in Linux. Just as lost as they would be in Mac OS X, though. If you know enough to be using Firefox, however, You'll do better than average.

My suggestions to ease transition into Linux: Keep using Firefox. It's pre-installed into Ubuntu 8.04. For wordprocessing, I suggest OpenOffice (also pre-installed). Has much the same features as Jarte, and will open all MS Office files (and save to them, as well). KompoZer is your best bet for Web editing. ALL of these have Windows executables, so you can get used to them before trying to use them in Linux. Breaking the learning curve into small segments makes the climb much easier.

I will edit the post later, once I boot into Linux (right now I have only one good reason to boot into windows: I can't find a good podcatcher...which I may have remedied this morning, I'll have to check.), to reflect whether or not KompoZer is available on the repository (think: windows update meets the add/remove software wizard)


Edit: KompoZer is indeed available in the repository, though the website may have more updated versions which have more features. Having never used Dreamweaver, I will not venture to guess on the ease of transition.

[MamaLiberty]

Myrkul, you are welcome to visit any time! Just let me know when you want to come. Hint: it's still green now, but will start to get snowy in a month or so. <G>  But we can still shoot in the snow! 

[Roy J. Tellason]

Heh,  last time I was in those parts the northern gate to Yellowstone was _closed_ because of snow...

A couple of points here:

You wanna try stuff out?  Easy.  There are bunches of different versions of stuff with what they call "live CDs" -- all you have to do is boot one,  and you can play with it to your heart's content,  without it having to be installed or in any way touching your hard drive,  if that's important.  It won't run quite as well or as fast as the installed stuff will (HDs are faster than CDs,  basically).  When I first got this laptop I tried out a whole bunch of different distros,  thanks to the kindness of The Linux Fairy (search on this forum :-) who sent me a bunch of 'em back then.  The only techy detail you might need to fiddle with is getting the machine to boot from the CD rather than the hard drive.

Another recommendation is that you hook up with a linux user group.  They typically have "installfests" where the gory details are handled by folks that know,  a bunch of different choices of distros to look at,  lots of helpful folks if you get stuck somewhere along the line,  etc.  They're also pretty easy to find.  I have a couple of different mailing lists flowing for those,  one to a group in this area and one to a group out your way,  though a bit south,  centered around Denver I think.  Send an email here and just put the word help in the body of the message and an email message will be sent to you with instructions.  That one I found through this forum,  BTW,  originally posted by "rockchucker".  :-)

I can't speak to your web design app -- I use a text editor to write raw HTML here.  But I'm sure that there are others who can...

Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

[lee n. field]

here are bunches of different versions of stuff with what they call "live CDs" -- all you have to do is boot one,

How well that would work would depend on ML's hardware specs.  Low memory or slow CPU would make for a piss-poor Linux experience.

Another recommendation is that you hook up with a linux user group.  They typically have "installfests" where the gory details are handled by folks that know,

I've only personally seen or heard of one, a bunch of years ago when a bud of mine and I went in towards Mordor-by-the-lake for a computer show.

[MamaLiberty]

Thanks Roy, but I really don't have time to do the geeky game thing and any sort of support like that (even if available) requires that I understand geek language, which I don't. I can't even get the ISP tech support to use plain language, though I'm sure the kids try hard. This machine tries to "read" from the A drive, or small floppy first (tells you how old it is), but nobody even makes those anymore I guess. The newer machine has only a dual CD/DVD.   

If I wanted to go through all that, I'm sure I could. But this suggestion simply cements the point that Linux is not yet a market ready product. (Which was the whole purpose of posting the thread.) 

If it were I could go to the store, buy a box with all of it loaded (or choose from a menu of programs I wanted installed). I'd go home, plug it in and start to work. If the OS and the programs were truly integrated and user ready it might take me a few minutes to figure out some new features, though that hasn't happened to me in years. I know a lot of people require much more help than that, but I suspect their numbers are shrinking fast. And the better the documentation, the easier it would be. That would be a huge selling point to me besides.

I'm not saying it can't be done any other way, but that's the only way it will be a truly marketable product to reach mass distribution.

[Bill St. Clair]

I'm not saying it can't be done any other way, but that's the only way it will be a truly marketable product to reach mass distribution.

I neglected to include a link in my last post. Guess I need to do so.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

1 desktop and four laptops that you can order today from Dell, pre-configured with Ubuntu Linux 8.04 installed.

[MamaLiberty]

That's great, Bill! We'll see how successful they are in selling them. I'm glad to hear this.

I'll take a look and see what programs they offer.

[Claire]

Here's a free WYSIWYG HTML editor for Linux:

http://kompozer.net/

I've used it. It's dandy if you like Dreamweaver-type programs.

I sympathize, MamaLiberty, with your belief that Linux still isn't quite ready for prime time. Yet I've been using it successfully for lo these many years, and I'm not a computer geek. I'm just a tiny bit more bold and knowledgeable than the average Windows user, and I'm blessed to have the chivalrous Open Source Tech Geeks of TMM to help get me out of jams.

While Linux still does have some drawbacks as far as user-unfriendliness goes, it also has huge advantages -- like its apps being free or very cheap and like not being Gatesware. If you're looking for a Windows-like experience, no you won't get it with Linux and probably never will, since the whole philosophy behind the two products is so different. On Windows, you want a WYSIWYG HTML editor, you go pay $400 for Dreamweaver, but you get something that comes with EZ install and beaucoup documentation. On Linux, you want a WYSIWYG HTML editor, it's likely to be free, but you have to do research up the wahzoo to sort out which of the dozens of amateur projects suit you best, and you're likely to get unhelpful docs and lots of geek talk.

But isn't that just two different forms of user friendliness, or unfriendliness? Me, I consider highpriced apps to be pretty darned unfriendly when freeware or shareware can do the same job. Just a matter of perspective and taste.

Still, I do laugh when Linux geeks tell us non-technoids, "All you have to do is ..." then go on to list an incomprehensible set of things that people like us would never want to do in our entire lives. Yeah, Linux is for tinkerers. But I'm living proof that a non-tinkerer can adapt to it -- with a little help from friends.

Claire