I have been using linux since 1999 on my celeron 400 machine with 64 MB(Recently upgraded to 96 MB) and a 4 MB SiS 6326 Video card. I’ve had my share of problems coz at that time there were very few people who appreciated the idea of Linux on Home PC(It was considered difficult and actually, it was), nor were any decent books available on the subject in our small city and with demonic internet charges you had a recipe of nightmare. But me and my Friend Stuck in and found solutions to every problem we faced from non functioning X-Server on RH 6(Red-Hat 6.O), the 1024 cylinder boot limit, accessing windows drives, starting linux from NT Boot Menu etc. So what’s the point? you might be thinking. The point is when today I tell anybody, who comes for my help in installing linux, about our problems and the pains we went through in trying to find the solution the standard reply that we get is’Was it that difficult?’ and the last thing we get is appreciation, something we were used to a couple of years ago. So what has changed? Read On
To make the piece more readable I will format it in a FAQ(Frequently asked questions) format
*Q: Why should we bother about using Linux?
A:** How many of you have a Licensed copy of Windows 98, 2000, XP-MS Office 97, 2000 or XP whichever you are using? And if you have how much did you shelled out for it(for OEM users, how many of you have officially upgraded or are thinking of doing it?)
For those of the above who don’t mind paying for the software, do you mind Saving a few bucks?
for the uninitiated the lowest cost(and the most obsolete) combination of Win98+Offie 97 will cost you Rs 10-15, 000 where as latest Mandrake 9.0 Boxed version(which among other office packages includes OpenOffice.Org office suite which is a good as Office XP or 2000, if not better) will cost you Rs. 3, 500-7, 000. If you mind shelling out even this amount don’t worry they are freely available for downloads on their respective site free of cost. But as most of us in India cannot download 2 GB of data in One-Lifetime? Don’t worry there are people in various big cities who download these and sell it for Rs. 150-300. They are mostly Cyber-Cafes who use it for some extra bucks. If you don’t know one ask the Cyber-Cafe you know to start doing it(Its perfectly legal). If you mind spending even that amount look around for ur friend in the various Engineering Colleges especially IIT’s. These IITians are linux junkies and they make the latest linux edition available on their Intra-Net for free downloads. You have to only pay for the CD’s i.e at Rs 12/CD Mandrake 9.0 for Rs. 36, that’s the cost of one litre of petrol. Anyway you can periodically get Major RH linux versions from PC-Quest magazine(the flag-bearer of Linux users in India) which costs Rs. 100 per month. You can get old cd’s for Rs. 20-30 at second hand shops, Thela’s or ur apna kabadiwala.
For those who don’t care about paying are u sure u are not missing something?
Well if it’s not piece of mind, the probably it is technical support. In Windows as its source code is not freely available, freelance troubleshooters take time to fix problems and mostly not permanently. So for reliable support you have only one company, one support system. Linux being an open source, has many quality trouble shooting web-sites and more so by registering to various packagers web-site you get free technical support from that company for their distribution. So you get reliable official & unofficial Tech help free of cost.
*Q: It’s Soo. Difficult to install, isn’t it?
A:**I wished it was at least for a couple more years but nowadays this is superficial question. With Vendors like Compaq bundling Linux with their new PC’s at below Rs. 40, 000 with 3 year of tech support, you won’t have to worry about installation. Even if you have to, the installation of the three leading Linux distributions Mandrake 9.0, RH 8.0 & SuSe 8.0 are a cakewalk even for a novice except the partitioning. But you don’t have to worry about that if you use Linux as single OS environment just like most of you are doing with Win 98.
But for most windows users to have smooth transition both of them can be accommodated by partitioning, and its not as difficult as you think. If you have new hard disk you can use FDisk to make One partition for windows, 1 for linux(it can be of 1-6 GB, 1-for basic & 6-for everything) and one small one(Double the size of RAM) for Linux Swap. Even on a working system software like Partition magic are very easy to use and can do the same job without data Loss. If you are scared by all that mumbo-jumbo ask ur vendor to partition it. With huge Hard Disk’s being a norm nowadays vendors do that on a regular basis.
Now you only have to mark the partition as Linux Native(or root represented by’/’) and other as Linux swap. With a very friendly Graphical interface showing your hard-disk structure this take 30 seconds.
*Q: It’s not user Friendly when it comes to day to day running, besides what about good software?
A:**You bet it is. Gone are the days when you had to know command line to run linux efficiently. For home users a comfortable GUI and do it yourself programs like Linuxconf, Mandrake Control center etc match windows control panel in user friendliness. As for software leading Linux distribution match windows file by file. You have OpenOffice.Org which is so good that within two years of its launch they are thinking of rolling out a windows version. It is fully compatible with office files. If thats not enough you also have a choice in KOffice, GnomeOffice & Sun’s StarOffice. Almost every windows accessory is available plus many more. For playing MP3 you have XMMS, Noatun etc. which are as eazy to use as Winamp and support winamp skins. For Movie Watching you have Xine, Xmovie and the numerous in built games. You have at least 8 inbuilt graphic viewers. You Have GimP software which gave Photoshop and Corel a run for their money and is such a big hit that is now being ported to windows. For compression you have Gzip which supports zip format. Even big software vendors like Sun & Oracle have come out with a linux versions of their software.
The other complaint is that it is difficult to install new programs. Well nowadays with.rpm(red-hat package management) installation files it is as easy as in windows. But even previously it only took four simple steps to install a program. *Most free software for Linux/Unix comes in the form of a’tarball’, a entire directory tree of source files that is compressed into a single file. You uncompress this file just after you download it, exploding it once more into a directory tree. Then you typically do just three things. You first run the simple command’configure’, which checks out the versions and locations of your compiler and libraries, and creates a machine-specific blueprint to build the application, - a make file. Next, you type the single command’make’, and the entire source code is compiled into an executable version. Finally, you type’make install’, and all the executables and libraries that were created are copied into appropriate directories in your’path’. That’s it. You’re ready to run the application without even a reboot. Even though this is a command-line procedure, it is as simple as the Windows’setup’ mechanism because it involves just these four steps. Almost any piece of free software that you download will involve an identical procedure. All of them will have an INSTALL file in the top-level directory with detailed instructions, if you need them.
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