Re: [tlug] Suse blues

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 07:58:56PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>want to be a Linux guru.  That's cheaper in the short run, but a girl
>with a computer habit can become expensive _really_ fast ("I'm sorry
>dear, but anything less than a 4-CPU Itanium box just won't do, I'm

Ask me whether I'd rather spend the money on a big diamond or a big
computer.  I'll have a different answer than my wife will ;-)

>Yeah, buy a Mac.  :-)

I find myself saying that more and more these days, in serious.  There
are people who want an alternative to Windows but don't really want
to become computer experts.  If they're looking at Linux I tell them
Linux may meet their needs on that score someday, but today is not yet
the day.  Apple is ready right now with a solution that will meet their
need to have a system that works and doesn't require them to be a
computer expert, and will probably meet that pair of needs better than 
Linux ever will.

>Seriously: SuSE is an excellent distribution, they produce high

Ditto that.  That's why I told me dad that if he wasn't going to 
make the leap to Debian, then run SuSE.

>system, you will find it very painful to have to reboot every so
>often, and reinstall the whole OS every so often.  Not to mention that

Just so.  My current uptime is a mere 61 days, and it's only so short
because of a power outage longer than the capacity of my UPS.  Some
might say "Big deal.  I can get 60+ days out of Win2K, no problem.
Of course, I would respond that I'm running Debian Unstable and do
apt-get -f dist-upgrade every day.  This is more or less equivalent
to running a beta version of Windows[1] and doing Windows Update every
day and installing the update for everything on your system.  How many
days of uptime do you think you'd get out of Win2K/XP/2K3 under those
circumstances? :-)

>not be a trace of Linux left.  What is hard to do is to _share_ a
>machine with Windows; Windows first tries to make Linux unbootable,
>and then if that doesn't work, throws a tantrum, crashes, and refuses
>to boot ever again.

Just make sure you install Windows first and Linux last and then never
install Windows again and you'll be fine :-)

[1] Except that unlike a beta version of Windows, Debian Unstable is actually
quite stable.  I don't know if I'd want to run a server on it (a LAN server
maybe), but like I said, I've got 61 days of uptime and do an upgrade 
every day.  Try that on any version of Windows :-)  It works great on
my Thinkpad, too.  That, of course, gets shut off every day, so no uptime
records.

Jonathan
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