[KLUG Advocacy] From the Seattle Times...

[Adam Williams]

>...comes another beginner's introduction to Linux and a comparison with
>XP. A very interesting, and, I think, informative article. Linux
>actually comes out rather well, all things considered, while at the same
>time he points out several issues where it could still stand to improve.
>Worth a read...
>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134617744_ptlinux180.html

"Configuring my Hewlett-Packard printer went smoothly. Red Hat offered a
list of printers that included my model. On the XP machine, printer
installation was a bit trickier. XP recognized the machine through
plug-n-play but could not seem to find the right driver. Even after I
installed the driver off HP's CD-ROM, I had to reboot the system three
times to get the driver to "take." Whereas printer installation on Linux
took a few moments, I wrestled with XP for more than 15 minutes. "

It is nice to finally see a Linux-Newbie article make this point. 
Printers under 2000/XP are a disaster and the system can frequently not
locate all the file for drivers included with windows itself.  I can't
count the number of times I've done multiple file searches in order to
locate all the files a Win32 print driver wants.

"I also encountered no problems moving photo (JPEG) and music (MP3)
files over to Linux. Red Hat offers several utilities for viewing and
listening. Inserting a music CD-ROM produced a rudimentary player that
did fine for my purposes."

This rather shocked me, as there is no MP3 support in RH8.  ?

"Windows Media Player and Apple Quicktime are far more powerful programs
than I found for Linux. Ironically, though, while I was testing Linux, I
had rotten luck with PC media players: Windows Media Player refused to
load programs off a CD, and RealPlayer for Windows crashed several
times, locking up my PC and forcing reboots. The world of media players
on personal computers is fraught with peril, no matter what platform. "

Certainly true, media players for Linux currently suck.  We'll see if
GNOME2 nautilus + gstreamer can provide something function installed by
default.

"Linux undoubtedly will continue to get better. The question is whether
Red Hat or other vendors will improve it to death. As features and
compatibilities get added, the danger becomes burdening Linux with the
kind of legacy overhead that plagues Windows today. "

I see this type of comment alot.  But I haven't the foggiest idea what
their talking about.  Where in GNOME, or the 2.4.x kernel, is anything
that could be called "legacy overhead"?

"It's also a tough call to recommend switching to anyone. It may depend
on how adventurous you are, how frustrating your Windows experience is
and whether it hurts enough to motivate you to explore alternatives."

I wish the author of this article was clearer about what he was looking
for.  And that is generally true of this type of article.