Re: Why I dumped Linux and Went Back to Windows.

From: Harvey Van Sickle (harvey.news_at_ntlworld.com)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 23:15:12 GMT

On 26 Feb 2005, ian wrote

-snip of the ?troll? stuff-
 
> You must have had a bad copy of 9.2 mine is installed(out of the
> box) on an old IBM laptop a server and my desktop machine the only
> thing that wont work is the win-modem on the motherboard of the
> desktop machine.
>
> The desktop is an xp dual boot and offices load at about the same
> speed the only problem I have is my Epsom printer c66 wont work in
> windows works great with Suse out of the box, well dvd actually.

I'm a hopeful newbie at this, also trying SuSE 9.2. (Reasons: I'm
running Win98SE; certainly don't want to "upgrade" to XP when 98 stops
being usable; have long used non-standard apps -- news, email,
browsers are all non-MS; and want to educate myself with an
alternative for future-proofing and just-plain-orneriness reasons. The
usual, probably....)

FWIW -- this may be boring, but I've started so I'll finish -- some
impressions after a couple of days playing around with it:

Plus stuff:

1. Out of the box, it's impressive -- found everything and runs it,
except for my printer and scanner. (Not very old -- a couple of years
-- but are Canon models, and AFAICT from googling, no linux drivers.
Not a humongous problem, and one which will solve itself the next time
I need to buy a printer.)

2. The main apps -- graphics, word processor, browser -- are fine.
(Didn't like Konqueror doubling up as a browser, so I installed
Firefox, which I'm familiar with; that's great.)

3. YaST is user-friendly for those of us who are migrating; seems to
work well for installing stuff. (I really, seriously don't want to be
forced to go back to command-line --- I did a lot of that years ago ---
and undoubtedly could pick it up again -- but point-and-click is just
simpler. Getting old, I guess....)

4. I like the extra sense of security (but see point 4, below).

5. I'm not afraid at all of configuring files, and can quite enjoy
tinkering under the hood with various config-type files.

Minus and/or Level Stuff

1. It takes a long time to load -- from choice of system to operating
desktop takes noticeably longer than 98SE. (Running an Athlon XP+2000,
with 512 MB ram).

2. Also takes a long time to shut down; maybe there's a "quick kill"
somewhere, but I've not found it yet.

3. The main apps -- while very competent -- aren't noticeably superior
to the similar Windows apps. (That is, so far I've not seen anything
that makes me go "geez: that is *so*neat* that I'll seriously look at
changing my default OS".)

4. Although the security is nice, I run a single-user PC and have had
only one -- count it -- virus on my Windows set-up (a Word macro, about
6 years ago, in a document from a known source). Being watchful;
using non-MS clients for mail, browsing and news, and doing cache-
clearing and the occasional scan -- I never find anything -- seems to
work OK for me, so the increased security stuff is "nice but not a
killer attraction".

5. Although I enjoy tinkering about, I use my PC for work as well as
pleasure and I simply can't afford to be *forced* to delve to the
depths to get a program do something that I need done *right*now*.

So -- so far, lots of plus marks to SuSE and the general user-
friendliness of the system. But aside from the philosophical stuff --
which isn't a big thing with me (my OS is not my religion) -- I've not
encountered any killer practical stuff which would make me ache to make
the switch. (At least, not yet.)

For the time being, it'll probably remain a hobby OS for me, not a
default/working one. 

-- 
Cheers,
Harvey

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