[Coco] Re: Where's everybody goin'?

[David]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 11:07:55PM -0500, KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 3/20/04 9:07:40 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> wdg3rd at comcast.net writes:
> 
> > On a given machine, I can generally have Linux installed on bare
> > metal and running in about a quarter of the time it takes to do the
> > same with Windoze.
> 
> My one and only scratch installation of Linux was an old Slackware
> distro on a 486.  It went smoothly, but could hardly be described as
> quick and easy.  I had to make a boot and kernel floppy from the CD.
> All I had to do was follow the printed instructions (! ! !) that came
> with the CDs (duplicated in a ReadMe file, IIRC).

> However -- it needs to be pointed out that some Linux distros refuse
> to install on some hardware.  I couldn't install RH 7.0 on my main PC
> here -- the early phase of the process just hangs and quits, with no
> explanation.

I've seen the generalization (on several occasions) that Linux installs
pretty well on everything except extremely old hardware, which has been
abandoned, so to speak, and extremely new hardware - that for which
drivers have not yet been developed.  My particular PC is something on
the order of 10 years old, and I've installed both Mandrake and Debian
and it's gone pretty well.  I had to tweak a few things, but AFAIK, it's
workable.

> I've been told by several that this is because "Linux really uses your
> hardware, pushes it to the limit."

I believe that's true.  I began with 32 Meg of memory.  Windows 98
seemed to work fairly well with this, but under Linux, it sometimes went
so deeply into swap that there was practically no keyboard response at
all, and it would hang for ages before coming back.

> There's even been some pride in
> these statements, that the OS is so good that it takes really solid
> hardware to run it.

I'd think that this attitude would come from overzealous religionists, I
guess you'd call them.  Most of the claims I see on the lists are that
Linux will run on less optimal hardware.