On 10/01/2011 03:53 PM, David wrote:
> Curious. Is/was her Windows a recent purchase on a recent computer? And
> what 'did not work'.

She'd been running Win2K on that box for several years. It required the
same almost constant maintenance (Scandisk, defrag, anti-virus and so
on) that all Windows boxes needed. Then, she tried an Ubuntu LiveCD and
decided to try it as dual boot after only five minutes. It's been years
since she booted Windows, as she has a laptop with XP for the few times
she needs it. For the most part, Ubuntu Just Works.
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On 10/1/2011 7:09 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 10/01/2011 03:53 PM, David wrote:
>> Curious. Is/was her Windows a recent purchase on a recent computer? And
>> what 'did not work'.
>
> She'd been running Win2K on that box for several years. It required the
> same almost constant maintenance (Scandisk, defrag, anti-virus and so
> on) that all Windows boxes needed. Then, she tried an Ubuntu LiveCD and
> decided to try it as dual boot after only five minutes. It's been years
> since she booted Windows, as she has a laptop with XP for the few times
> she needs it. For the most part, Ubuntu Just Works.


That is good hear.

Win2k was never meant to be a user OS anyway.

But I would hope that you keep her Ubuntu more up-to-date than you do
your Fedora. The Fedora, F-10, that you are using and the TBird that you
are using, 2.0.0.24, were both EOL years ago. I would suggest that you
should update to take advantage of the many, many bug fixes since then.
But even more import than that would be the security patches that you
have missed out on in both Fedora and TBird. And pretty much everything
else.

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David
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On 10/1/2011 7:07 PM, Craig White wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 17:58 -0400, David wrote:
>> On 10/1/2011 5:39 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 06:12, Marko Vojinovic<vvmarko@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> As a natural consequence, Linux is a priori not designed for
>>>> noobs and newbies who do not want to learn.
>>>
>>> I think this is a problem.
>>>
>>> When I started using Linux back in 1999 (Caldera OpenLinux before the
>>> SCO fiasco, fwiw(, I expected the user-friendliness to eventually
>>> improve. It did not. But my expectations were not related to myself,
>>> but thinking about friends and family I wanted to convert to Linux.
>>>
>>> Back in the OS/2 Warp days, IBM also thought "SYS 3175" was an OK
>>> error message and that end users didn' t need more human-friendly
>>> error messages.
>>>
>>> FC
>>>
>>> PS: Just including aliases for common Windows commands the users are
>>> expected to find would have helped a lot of newcomers, but actually
>>> the general concensus seems to be "this is Linux, it's not designed to
>>> please Windows users, windows users should learn Linux and how it
>>> works, instead".
>>
>> This is not meant as a Flame War starter. But...
>>
>> I agree with you. Grandma and grandpa, mom and dad. Billy and Bobbie can
>> go to a store and actually buy a computer, in boxes, come home and
>> connect the pieces and *it just works*. *Everything just works*. Then
>> along comes a Linux Guru friend and he replaces their OS. And suddenly
>> things get complicated. And things stop working. Unless they get some
>> strange file from some man that lives in a cellar in some country with a
>> really odd name. Or perhaps things work but not quite as well.
>>
>> As much as *I* like Linux it will never become a common desktop until
>> that happens. Until it *just works*. IMO of course.
> ----
> I wholeheartedly disagree.
>
> Apple has never tried to make a Macintosh emulate or substitute for
> Windows. Yes, they do implement methods to accommodate a Windows based
> network schema and data interchange but so does Linux (in fact, I think
> Linux does a better job of it).
>
> A computer and its underlying OS stands on its own... based on its own
> usability and merits.
>
> Specifically, I worked at a company that had bought 2 batches of
> different computers from the same manufacturer (memory says it was Acer
> but it may have been Asus). Anyway, one of them only had support (ie,
> driver downloads) for Windows XP and the other for Vista+ (Vista or
> Windows 7). We wanted to swap hard drives from type of box to the
> other... that wasn't going to work. A single image... forgetaboutit. Of
> course Linux would have been able to run on either one without breaking
> a sweat.
>
> Then there's the absurd notions that seems to permeate some people's
> thinking is that it is useful, important, necessary or even possible to
> supplant Windows with Linux. That isn't the point of Linux, not the
> mission of Fedora and thus the thinking would by all indications seem
> out of bounds except to those who wish it were so.
>
> A few years ago, I switched a non-profit corp over to Fedora (starting
> w/ FC6) and they made the transition fairly easily and I would suggest
> for the most part, they were casual computer users and the more
> knowledgeable users transitioned rather quickly. For the most part, it
> only required a little guidance on where there files were stored and
> what the applications were named and where to find them.
>
> Adults didn't intrinsically know how to use Windows - they bought books
> or watched someone or spent time playing around and thus whatever
> knowledge of Windows that they possess is leveraged already when moving
> to Macintosh or Linux.
>
> Fedora out of the box just works as well as Windows would work except no
> one really has that opportunity since all of those computers out of the
> box boot Windows so to actually get an out of the box experience for
> Linux requires an initial hurdle (actually I think Dell sells some
> rather pricey workstations with Ubuntu pre-installed but I don't know
> anyone that has purchased them).


Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I don't use laptops
and they seem to be a major source of problem(s). From what I read on
various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
desk) because I see many with problems.

Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when Linux will
really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
real game BTW. :-)


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Searching google, here is what Dell has to say:
http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/3TB+drives%3A+OS+Behavior+Matrix

I need a drive that I can partition at least to
15 partitions as I use many different OSes
(windows, mac, linux) and it appears to me
that I cannot use the MSDOS partition tables
for drives larger than 2GB. Currently, I have
been using 2x2GB Hitachi DeskStar drives and
they work wonderfully with MSDOS partitions.

So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
multiboot operations.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I
did not do my homework before I bought a
3TB drive... drat!
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On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 20:32, Daniel B. Thurman <dant@cdkkt.com> wrote:
> So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
> drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
> that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
> multiboot operations.

Surely you meant 2TB.

FC
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On 10/01/2011 04:35 PM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 20:32, Daniel B. Thurman <dant@cdkkt.com> wrote:
>> So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
>> drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
>> that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
>> multiboot operations.
> Surely you meant 2TB.
>
> FC
Oh geez/terra! Thanks for correcting me!

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On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 19:32 -0400, David wrote:

> Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I don't use laptops
> and they seem to be a major source of problem(s).
----
laptops often have short run, proprietary hardware that if no one
provides ample feedback to developers, may very well have some
unintended features (nice way of saying bugs).
----
> From what I read on
> various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
> desk) because I see many with problems.
----
I don't have a problem with Dell but everyone is free to choose to buy
whatever suits them. Dell & HP have been strong supporters of Dell and
for a few years, Dell's point man on Linux was a member of the Fedora
board.
----
> Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when Linux will
> really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
> might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
> real game BTW. :-)
----
I'm sort of out of touch on games myself but I think what you are
specifically referring to are the games which drive high end hardware
sales (overclock motherboards, high end video cards, etc.) and the open
source platform isn't especially well suited for that environment at
this point. I'm not sure that I would suggest that this type of user is
actually the 'average person' as you describe it but certainly a
significant percentage of the user base.

I think that if you really wanted to examine market segmentation in a
reasonably meaningful way, you would be looking at business use and not
just home use. You would consider that many large corporations do indeed
use Linux as it clearly drives down the CTO for each desktop unit
represented whereas the Macintosh is clearly the worst in this category.
Perhaps the most available market segment is the small business category
and that segment has been dominated by 'must have' software such as
Quickbooks but as more software moves to the cloud and becomes SAAS,
then the desktop OS becomes less significant - at least in terms of
having specific needs drive specific choices. The home user market is
clearly segmenting at this point with the tablets stealing much of the
home laptop and desktop sales.

Craig



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On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 16:32 -0700, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> Searching google, here is what Dell has to say:
> http://www.delltechcenter.com/page/3TB+drives%3A+OS+Behavior+Matrix
>
> I need a drive that I can partition at least to
> 15 partitions as I use many different OSes
> (windows, mac, linux) and it appears to me
> that I cannot use the MSDOS partition tables
> for drives larger than 2GB. Currently, I have
> been using 2x2GB Hitachi DeskStar drives and
> they work wonderfully with MSDOS partitions.
>
> So, It looks to me, I will have to return the 3GB
> drive back to the store and get a 2GB drive so
> that I can have 15 partitions, of mixed OS for
> multiboot operations.
>
> Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I
> did not do my homework before I bought a
> 3TB drive... drat!
----
you can use GPT and make partitions, virtual disks, LVM, etc. as you see fit.

Craig



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On 10/01/2011 04:26 PM, David wrote:
> But I would hope that you keep her Ubuntu more up-to-date than you do
> your Fedora. The Fedora, F-10, that you are using and the TBird that you
> are using, 2.0.0.24, were both EOL years ago.

What are you talking about? I skipped F 10, going from F 9 to F 11, and
am now using F 14 with the latest version of Thunderbird that Fedora
provides. In fact, I use yumex every morning to keep it up to date. I
don't know who you're thinking of, but it's certainly not me.
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On 10/1/2011 7:55 PM, Craig White wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-10-01 at 19:32 -0400, David wrote:
>
>> Fedora 'out of the box' works for me too. But then I don't use laptops
>> and they seem to be a major source of problem(s).
> ----
> laptops often have short run, proprietary hardware that if no one
> provides ample feedback to developers, may very well have some
> unintended features (nice way of saying bugs).

Agree.


> ----
>> From what I read on
>> various lists. And I avoid Dell like a contagious infection (ducks under
>> desk) because I see many with problems.
> ----
> I don't have a problem with Dell but everyone is free to choose to buy
> whatever suits them. Dell& HP have been strong supporters of Dell and
> for a few years, Dell's point man on Linux was a member of the Fedora
> board.


I have never owned a Dell. I do know two people that have them. On came
with, and still uses Vista. The other came with and still uses Win 7.
Both work just fine.


> ----
>> Those were the 'users' I was referring to above. Now when Linux will
>> really, really do stuff, like Windows games for example, then we just
>> might get the 'average person' to switch to Linux. Tux Racer is *not* a
>> real game BTW. :-)
> ----
> I'm sort of out of touch on games myself but I think what you are
> specifically referring to are the games which drive high end hardware
> sales (overclock motherboards, high end video cards, etc.) and the open
> source platform isn't especially well suited for that environment at
> this point. I'm not sure that I would suggest that this type of user is
> actually the 'average person' as you describe it but certainly a
> significant percentage of the user base.


The games that I am thinking of are the games that young people and
children play. And some of us olde guys like too. :-) The Call of Duty
series. The Elder Scrolls series. The Half-Life series. The Fallout
series. There are too many to name.


> I think that if you really wanted to examine market segmentation in a
> reasonably meaningful way, you would be looking at business use and not
> just home use. You would consider that many large corporations do indeed
> use Linux as it clearly drives down the CTO for each desktop unit
> represented whereas the Macintosh is clearly the worst in this category.
> Perhaps the most available market segment is the small business category
> and that segment has been dominated by 'must have' software such as
> Quickbooks but as more software moves to the cloud and becomes SAAS,
> then the desktop OS becomes less significant - at least in terms of
> having specific needs drive specific choices. The home user market is
> clearly segmenting at this point with the tablets stealing much of the
> home laptop and desktop sales.


The company that I work for has it's own server and the software that I
use every day, provided by them, runs on Windows. None of it has a Linux
clone and I seriously doubt that any of it ever will. And none of it
will run on WINE (why would anyone actually try to do that?) or in any
emulator (again why even try?) so I use what works.

If you have clients that can run a Linux system and their needs are
taken care of by Linux software good for them and good for you.

But I live in the real world. More people use Mac computers and software
than use Linux and I only actually know one person that uses a Mac. And
it is a new one and he runs Windows on it. And, unfortunately perhaps,
Linux is still not really ready for that world. The real one.
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