I am not from the computer world (I am an economist and the last tyime I programmed at the University was abt 28years ago : FORTRAN IV G !!!! But forgot everything). Linux is just a matter of adaptation, reading the book, yes, but first of all, trying, reading the suse.com online support or the KDE help included in the soft. When, 9 years ago I bought my first 386 with DOS5.0/windows 3.1 on board, it costed me more adaptation time, than now Linux. I feel Your error is trying to get everything working with Linux at once. Why don't You enjoy, like somebody else suggested, the LILO facilities at first, have the choice for running whether w98,2000,... either Linux upon boot ? When You'll be more familiar with it, Yu'll configure Your networkm then, samba, aso,... Don't be into a hurry,... step by step, ... In french, man says :"Qui va lentement, va sûrement !". Dave Barton wrote:
Hi Jerry,
I see that you are a software developer, Dave, working with the Kodak SDK. You got me :-0 Excellent, you must REALLY be on the ball to cross-reference me like that.
With such a technical background, how is it that you are having so much trouble? Yes, I have been coding since before IBM turned the micro-computer into a PC. My trouble is that I was looking for an alternative OS which didn't require the user to have a degree in computer science to make the smallest change in the system. Not that windoze is easy, but it doesn't constantly require the user to enter mystical, cryptic strings through a command line to get the simplest things done. I have spent years getting my head around the obscurities of several programming languages, but I don't want an OS that I have to use as if I were writing code all the time. IMHO Linux is (and will be for the foreseeable future) work in progress for the mainstream user and I hope to still be around when that work is complete.
SInce SuSE 7.3 Pro is only $70 I am curious how you could spend "hundreds" of dollars getting it to work? I spent AU$177 to get the Suse distro and several hundred more AU$ on VMware, plus buying additional licences for the Linux versions of other software I use.
Did you buy a bunch of hardware? No
(And if you did, how is that different from having to upgrade hardware to run each new upgrade of WinXX?) The point you are making was exactly my motivation in trying to switch to Linux.
Were you trying to 'dual boot' and put both Linux and Windows partitions on your HD? No, I installed Linux on a totally separate box.
In my experience SuSE 7.3 was a total joy to install. My clean install was by far the most hands-free I've ever experienced with either Linux or Windows. I am in total agreement with you there. The problems start after installation when anything needs to be configured. Linux may possibly be the greatest networking OS in the universe, but it is an absolute bitch to set up it's networking configuration.
BTW, Boot your floppy and run "fdisk /mbr" to restore the Master Boot Record on the HD. Thanks, I had a total memory blackout on that one.
What 'cryptic keyboard incantations' were you trying to make, and why? To answer that question would take forever and I think this list is probably getting bored with this thread by now. Suffice it to say that, while I would love to go with Linux, I don't have the time to learn all the intricacies necessary to make it work for me. Neither do I think that this list would have the patience to answer all my questions.
Didn't you use YaST2? If not, why not? Yes, but while YaST2 is a big improvement, it cannot do everything.
Many thanks for your response.
Regards Dave
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