APPLEVISION Monitor

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue May 7 00:20:44 2002

I agree it's a pain to babysit the Windows installation if you have to. An
installation on a bare drive is just one keystroke and a 40-minute wait,
during which you can go out to lunch. It's simply going to assume the
defaults when you do that but at least you get to eat lunch.

What's really awful is when you upgrade, say, from 95B to 95OSR2, having
installed MSOffice97 with all the service packs. Now, the thing asks you
whether it should replace the newer files it got form MSOffice97 with those on
the OSR2 CD. If you do that, Office will need to be reinstalled since OSR2
predates it, so you sit there hitting <enter> ad nauseum. You can tell it to
wreck your system with a single click, but you have to sit there and
repeatedly tell it not to do that.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner" <spc_at_conman.org>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: APPLEVISION Monitor


> It was thus said that the Great Richard Erlacher once stated:
> >
> > I don't see how that could be any less easy than putting the Windows CD in
the
> > drive and then hitting <enter>.
>
> For RedHat Linux 5.x (and 6.x) if the PC can boot from CD, then you just
> drop in the CD and boot from there. You will then be asked some questions
> (keyboard type, mouse type, video card (although it's been pretty good about
> finding the right type and all I'm doing is just confirming its guess) and
> network setup) and then it starts installing. Depending upon the speed of
> the system (CD-ROM, CPU, etc) you may have anywhere from 15 minutes to two
> hours to do something else.
>
> When you come back, you reboot the machine and now you can use it.
>
I did the CD install of RedHat v4, and a couple of more commercial versions of
what appeared at its heart to be more or less the same thing (open Linux,
etc). When it was done it seemed to run fine but the features I was after,
e.g. MARS NWE, though they'd been installed ( the questions answered according
to the doc's) and were proclaimed when it booted, the thing didn't show any
signs of life.
>
> I could only wish that Windows would ask for all the questions up front
> and then go ahead but no, in my experience you have to babysit a Windows
> installation as it will ask a question, copy files, ask another question,
> copy more files, reboot, ask a question, copy files, ask a question, reboot,
> ask another question, copy more files ...
>
> I've found RedHat Linux, Debian Linux and FreeBSD to be very easy to
> install (in that order).
>
> The IRIX installations I've done were just as easy---bring the machine up
> to the system monitor, type ``install'' or ``upgrade'' and feed in the
> tapes (if I had a CD-ROM, then I could leave the machine unattended). Then
> reboot.
>
> I recall Solaris being somewhere between Linux and Windows for ease of
> use/annoyance factor. SCO is a total nightmare, if only for keeping track
> of all the licenses you need to have a slightly usable system (but it still
> doesn't have the number of reboots that a Windows install has).
>
> And of course, MS-DOS has been pretty much the easiest to install:
>
> FORMAT drive /S
>
> -spc (Oh, but that's a command and some people may feel
> intimidated ... )
>
>
>
>
Received on Tue May 07 2002 - 00:20:44 BST