[Gllug] Microsoft was distributing Ubuntu

[Christopher Hunter]

On Sun, 2007-07-01 at 11:22 +0100, Russell Howe wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 01, 2007 at 02:23:29AM +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:
> > Since the new hard drive in the box was much bigger than the old one, I
> > suggested that he might like to try a dual-boot.  I had an Ubuntu disk
> > with me, and installed and configured it for him.  All the hardware was
> > handled straight away without intervention, and it was the work of a few
> > moments to add the other users and their passwords.  The whole, fully
> > working Ubuntu install took just under half an hour!  
> 
> You're comparing apples & oranges somewhat... XP was released when?
> 2002? 

The install disk we used was "Service Pack 2 included" and was dated
2006.  It failed to identify much of his (standard, 3 years old)
hardware, required much intervention, and simply failed to work
"straight out of the box".  Vista would be worse - the driver support is
a joke, which is why many OEMs are offering XP instead of Vista for the
time being.

> 5 years ago, I would have expected to spend quite some time
> fiddling around with a Linux install too.

Perhaps if you were using something difficult like Slackware or Debian,
but 5 years ago, Suse had a simple installer that worked reliably with
every machine I tried, Mandrake and Red Hat were both easy to install,
and Knoppix had just arrived with the amazing hardware discovery
routines.

> There would have been no SATA support, probably no to little wifi, poor
> gigE support, a lack of decent auto hardware detection (no hotplug/udev,
> etc).

I installed Suse on to an early SATA-equipped machine in 2002 without
issue.  All the other hardware detection was flawless too.  Granted,
wi-fi was not an issue at the time.

I would argue that it IS a valid comparison.  Windows XP is still
considered current, and is only marginally related to the version that
was originally released.  Current Linux distros are many years ahead of
XP - the evolution of Linux distros has far surpassed that of the MS
products, despite the inordinate amount of man-hours and money thrown at
the Windows problem!

Chris


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