[mythtv-users] Recomended distro???

Dewey Smolka dsmolka at gmail.com
Thu Jan 18 03:40:32 UTC 2007


> And at the risk of offending someone, I've never had to do a Windows re-install immediately after installing it on a clean machine.  More familiar territory with fewer decisions to make.  Sure I've had to wipe many a screwed up machine and install again.
>

Just to offer a balance. A first time install of any OS is likely to
present you with options or questions that you may not know the answer
to.

When I started with Linux (largely because of MythTV) I also didn't
really know what I was doing and went through several clean installs
before I got things up and running. I first tried Knoppmyth and
settled on Fedora.

But I kept reinstalling because when I had made a bunch of
unsuccessful tweaks to try to get the system running, it seemed easier
and less risky to me to start over from scratch than having to check
and double check everything I had changed in a effort to track down
problems.

Now I know how to diagnose and solve problems on Linux much more
easily, and so have never had to install more than once on any system.

In other words, installing and setting up a Linux system gets much
easier over time, both as your skills improve and as hardware support
and general Linux usability improve.

MS Windows, on the other hand, gets to be more of a hassle every time
you have to reinstall. Last time I had to do a clean install of XP
(from OEM recovery discs), it took over three hours and something like
14 reboots.

This involved installing the OS (reboot), doing the first batch of MS
upgrades (reboot), more security upgrades (reboot), SP1 (reboot), more
OS and security updates (reboot), still more updates (reboot), SP2
(reboot), yet another round or two of updates (reboot), and I hadn't
even got around to installing any applications yet. First came MS
Office XP (reboot), upgrade to Office 2003 (reboot), various Office
and Office-related security updates (reboot), and then another round
of OS and security updates since Office was now part of the system
(reboot). Printer driver (reboot). Wireless driver (reboot). Graphics
card driver (reboot). Etc. etc.

I can now get a new Linux system with applications installed and
updated in under an hour and shrinking. A MS Windows XP system takes
far longer and growing.

Maybe with VIsta this will change, but I have no intention of buying
Vista, and have not recomended anyone I advise to do so.


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