Re: SEUL: What's so hard...

[Demian Rootring <rootring@xs4all.nl>]

Jay Bloodworth wrote:
> 
> There have been a lot of solutions proposed to make installing Linux
> easier.  Let's spend a few minutes looking at the problem:
> 
> What's so hard about installing Linux?  I installed Red Hat for the first
> time a couple months ago, and I really don't remember it being terribly
> complex at all.  Now, admittedly, I have better than three years
> experience with Linux (Slackware)  and I am certainly a geek, but still,
> it was pretty straightforward.  I had to designate a drive, fdisk it and
> format it, put in a couple of parameters, then just watch a status bar and
> listen to the driver churn.  Not much to it.  I guess having to select
> from a jillion different packages was overwhelming, but that's really a
> matter apart from installing the OS (ie You don't have that problem with
> Win95 because with Win95 you get squat).

Just the Fdisk part is something most users find complex, and how does
someone who doesn't know *anything* of computers knows what parameters
to change?

> Now I'm not really trying to convince you that installing Linux is easy.
> As comfortable as I am with it, it stills seems riskier and more complex
> than installing Win95.  But when you look at it objectively both installs
> should be making about the same demand in terms of user expertise and
> involvement.  My question, then, is what is it exactly about your average
> Linux install procedure that makes it seem daunting?  What demands are
> made of the users than are actually difficult?  What scary-sounding-but-
> actually-innocuous questions do the installs ask that send people
> screaming from the room?  What install steps are presented in a confusing
> or illogical order?

Win95 is also hard to install on some machines but this is caused by
Plug&Play (which is also a headache for Linux). Forthermore most users
don't even know how big their Hdd is, or what brand their video
accelerator is, if they have a modem, how fast their CD-Rom is, they've
never ever heard of something called Fdisk and probably they've never
formatted a disk... A friend of mine who used his computer 2 years now,
has never formatted a diskette in these 2 years!

> In short, what's so hard about installing Linux?
> 
> Jay

Demian Rootring
rootring@xs4all.nl
The Netherlands

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