[Bug 1] Re: Microsoft has a majority market share

[Tom]

Windows is easy to install and Linux is 'too techie'?

A common misnomer - quite the reverse of reality.

Installing things is never going to be as easy as having everything pre-
installed and packaged nicely - which is why Linux must be easy for a
total noob to install.  Being fast, informative and attractive is also
crucial as it will often be the persons first experience of Linux.


I have installed Ubuntu and Windows quite a lot of times now and have to say that Ubuntu totally beats Windows in terms of time taken to get a working desktop and in how useful that desktop is.  With Windows there are no office packages built-in and it tends to destroy any existing data.  


My latest story...

Windows has taken weeks to install and get working properly on my dad's
boat.   'Luckily' we had the original legal discs which most stores are
reluctant to let you have.  After installing Windows we then had to
install MS Office and the Windows Service-Packs, again i was 'lucky' to
have them on disc.  We also had to upgrade the web-browser in order to
be able to update other things and install the Windows installer package
(?!). Then there was all the flash player, dotNet and other stuff -
luckily i had some of these on discs too.  We then needed to defragment
of course.

Only after doing all that did we reach the point that most Linux distros
start from and were able to start updating from the internet.

In Ubuntu and many other distros you can just click on the 'Mark All
Updates' type button and then 'Apply'.  All the updates told us what
they were for and linux was happy to let us deselect any or all of them.
Sometimes it's also worth looking in the System Administration menu for
Hardware Drivers but it's unlikely to find anything that isn't updated
by the standard package-manager.

In Windows almost all the updates are just called 'Security Update' and
are compulsory, many force the computer to have to restart (or suffer a
recurring pop-up-box that is difficult to work-around) and many couldn't
be downloaded at the same time as other ones (at least it sorted that
out though by deselecting everything i'd just selected, requiring me to
select them again later).  Then we updated all the drivers for the
hardware and for some of Window's own creations - just right click on
'My Computer' (a childish name - sounds like a stroppy brat) go down to
Properties then in the pop-up-box choose the hardware tab and click on
the 'Device Manager' button, in the new pop-up-box expand a category by
clicking on the cross then right-click on an item and choose 'Update
Driver'.  Not updating the drivers isn't always necessary unless you
want your computer to work well.  Not installing the updates/upgrades
means a balloon keeps alerting you that you need to update.

Many of the Windows updates seem to be for Microsoft's security rather
than being beneficial to the user, the ones that are useful often seem
due to threats against a flawed design?

There's still some data that we still need to copy off the old drive but
from obscure locations such as Application Data - Outlook - hunt the psi
file (pst?), or boot the old drive and export everything from all those
packages that may not have been used in ages and may not have an obvious
way of exporting such things as address-books or bookmarks.


Linux really needs to install well and mostly succeeds in being so radically far ahead of Windows that to consider installing Windows rather than linux is quickly shown to be absurd.  


In summary
Ubuntu would have only taken a couple of hours in total but Windows still isn't quite there after weeks of hassle.

-- 
Microsoft has a majority market share
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mozilla
Bugs, which is a direct subscriber.