[DEBATE: ILUG-GOA] Confessions of a NT Fanatic!

[Frederick Noronha <fred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear friends, Our ILUG at Goa, despite being small, has been seeing some
interesting activity these days. Our mailing list is up too, and we have about
40+ members on it.
Recently, one of our friends, who is resettled in Canada, sent us this mail,
which raises some questions about Linux. Since it is very thought-provoking,
would anyone care to respond?
Prof Gurunandan "Guru" Bhat, head of Goa University's computers department who
is one of the foremost members of ILUG-Goa has also sent in a very nice,
pleasant and humour-filled response that had me laugh even while it made its
point! Looking forward to some more cross-pollination of ideas between our
small ILUG and those elsewhere. Let us know if any of you'll are planning a
visit to Goa... our meetings are on the fourth Saturday of each month, 4 pm.
-Frederick Noronha, Goa.

----------  *** HERE'S SOMETHING YOU MIGHT FIND INTERESTING ***  ----------
Subject: [ilug-goa] Confessions of a NT Fanatic!
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 19:15:31 -0400
From: "Joseph Viegas" <boogie@xxxxxxxx>
Dear All,
As a died in wool NT fanatic,   a few months back I decided to take on Unix
and Linux. Let me first make it clear that it has not been easy. I decided to
go along in the most 'logical' way. I enrolled for Unix classes (which I'm
attending) where I receive enormous amounts of info on the myriad of Unix
commands, anecdotes of how the commands came to be and practice on an archaic
editor called Vi. I understand I need all this to get to the good stuff! I
bought an old P100 computer (48MB RAM, 650MB HDD) Downloaded a "stable"
release of FreeBSD (4.1.1) And tried to put it all together. Two months later,
I'm still trying. The FreeBSD installation would complete in a jiffy saying
"installation complete with some errors" The computer would not boot after
that. I noticed during the install it kept complaining of a buggy controller
on this Digital Venturis box. So I then I bought a controller card, disabled
the onboard one, got a new HDD (maybe the 650MB drive that came with the
computer was not enough) and tried again. After about a dozen attempts I
finally got a logon screen. I could not get the two network cards to get going
and was basically lost. Most documentation I find assumes that you are already
a Unix guru. Even help on the net still does not make sense to me. For example
Lawrie's instruction to Fred on getting the tutorial to work: to get dos
working install the following program. xdosemu 0.99.13-6 dosemu-freedos
0.99.13-6 dosemu 0.99.13.6 (Fred, did you understand this? Hats off if you
did, you'll be a Linux 'guru' yet;-) Also, Lawrie, the site
http://www.linuxlearning.co.uk  cannot be accessed even from Canada, no VSNL
conspiracy here, Fred!) So, I was told, but do you know what is really in your
box? Always make a checklist before starting. Fine, how do I find out what is
in the box. Best way I'm told is to load Windows 95/98. I find this rather
ridiculous but any I do this. Windows loads in the first attempt, buggy
controller and all. I find out what my box contains. I try again. Get no
further. So I decide I should load Linux. Maybe an easier route to follow. I
get hold of RedHat 6.1 and start again. The first time it goes thru the
install, I'm asked to remove the boot floppy and restart. I do so and get a L
followed by endless "80"s Looks like I did something wrong. I had dnloaded and
printed out the over 500 page Redhat getting started guide. No help there. I
search the net, nothing. I had loaded the server install which was fairly
automatic and did not ask for any inputs. So I tried again, same. I removed
the partitioning on the drive, same. I then tried a custom install and
amazingly it went thru. I manage to get Gnome going. Wow! But it is so slow
that I'm thinking something is still wrong. My desktop icons are huge. I
search everywhere how to set-up a display resolution. Cannot find it. Resign
myself to large icons. Make a custom kernel I'm told. A what! And on and on
and on.... I notice we have a lot of discussion on the best part of Linux here
--- "that it is free" Maybe time is free for some, but it certainly is not for
me.  Two months of struggle has proved costly. Fred is lucky to have Arvind
spend over two days trying to get his machine going. I do not think all of us
are so fortunate. If that is what the schools are going to go thru to get it
going, I pity them. In spite of all this, I'm determined that Unix or Linux
has not got me licked. I will continue hammering away!!! I want to get either
FreeBSD or Linux going on the box as a server connected to my DSL connection
and run a web, ftp and mail server on it. In the process if I can get database
support for something like MySql, great. Any help will be gratefully
acknowledged. Bye for now Boogie

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