[Sussex] Microsoft Windows minimum system's

[Steven Dobson]

Hi

On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 03:55 -0600, linux at oneandoneis2.org wrote:
> Quoting Alan Pope <alan at popey.com>:
> 
> > On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 01:50:56AM -0600, linux at oneandoneis2.org wrote:
> >> Plus it took an hour to install. . .
> >>
> >
> > About the same time it takes to install Ubuntu, end to end, isn't it?
> 
> End-to-end is different: Vista took a lot longer than one hour to get  
> fully set-up.
> 
> To go from a blank hard drive to one with the OS installed from the  
> disk, it took an hour for Vista and less than half that for Ubuntu.  
> But neither was a fully-functional OS in terms of a typical desktop  
> user's needs.
> 
> Ubuntu needed a download for MP3, but Vista had no Ogg support. Ubuntu  
> support all my hardware without any further installing, Vista required  
> a lot of additional drivers - and it's a good thing I had them on  
> disk, because a driver it didn't have was the Ethernet one!
> 
> Both needed an Nvidia graphics driver, Ubuntu needed DVD, etc etc. And  
> neither has a particularly good wallpaper by default either :o)
> 
> > Although with Ubuntu (read: Linux) you generally get a load more
> > applications than you do with a base windows install.
> 
> Yeah - there's no MS Paint in Vista, I had to download Gimp before I  
> could start taking screenshots. Mutter mutter. And ironically, Ubuntu  
> supports MS Office formats out of the box and Vista doesn't :o)

I only use Debian, and it doesn't take me very long to install a system.
From powering on a machine (lower spec machine ~500MHz) to getting a
base install of Debian takes around 20 minutes.  That's a network
install from my local mirror.  This system has no graphic's capabilities
yet as Xorg/XFree86 would not be installed at this point.

Of course I wouldn't say that a base install Debian box was useful
(except as a mail handler) as I haven't installed the application
software that I want to use yet.  But that doesn't take 40 more minutes
- that's for sure.

Of course this only applies to systems where you say start from a base
installation and then add applications that you need.  Systems that
install everything just in case you _may_ needed are going to take
longer.

However, from what you said, installing Vista is somewhere between a
base install and a full install.  You get the Kernel, some utilities and
those applications that Microsoft are giving away for free.  But to turn
the system into a really useful system requires the installation of yet
more software (Office, IIS, ...).

For a fair comparision I would like to know how long it took from
power-on until the software on the CD was installed.  Sure the system
wasn't useable yet (esp if it had no network), but I think that would be
a fair comparision to a base Debian install.

Steve
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