Problems Continued:

2. Installation Woes: Surprisingly, we find that installing the Linux that we want is not that extremely difficult. In fact, with a little reading, and some trial and error, installation goes off well enough. Friends who have tried some of the easier installing distributions, like Xandros, agree with us on this. Except for the disk partitioning part, which still scares many people, Linux installs are easier than ever.

3. Post Install Blues: So the shiny new Linux boots up, and starts blinking…and then gives us some error saying X could not start, and shows a login prompt. Well, alright, we remember login prompts from the days of dial-up connections, and shell access. We login, but now what? What do we do? How can we fix it? This is our only machine, so we can't look up the Internet on it. We wish that these downloadable distributions came with a printable manual so we could at least have a clue about what it is we should do. Or else, we get some absurdly low resolution like 640x480 on the nice big 17" monitor. We try right-clicking and going to properties, but there is no guarantee that this will work. We have an NVIDIA graphics card, and in every free distribution we have tried, despite downloading and installing the drivers, which in itself is a mammoth task, (telinit 3, anyone? for a novice?), we have had to edit the X config file by hand. Why is this necessary? Why can't the installer do this?

4. Laptop Support: Ah, another perennial favorite. Some laptops will work, some will not, some will seem to work, but actually will not, and so on. Suspend, hibernate and power management, which are extremely important for a laptop may or may not work. In case it does, count yourself amongst the lucky few. If it doesn't, well, too bad. Start the "Googleing" process. And if you can find some instructions, good luck trying to implement them. Most people we know who have tried this have thrown up their hands and gone back to shutting down and starting up the entire operating system every time. How 90s? This is the one area in which Linux really needs to get its act together. If in 2005 it's still not possible to install a big name distribution onto a laptop and not have problems, then a large proportion of potential Linux users will not make the switch.

5. Games, Games, Games: Yes, we know this seems silly. But it is a fact that non-computer users are fascinated by computer games, and some may even want to learn about computers merely for this reason. Our associate, an avid golfer saw us playing Links LS some years ago, and sat down and figured out the game. He was having fun by the end of the evening, and he had never played any game before this. Another associate used to like playing Need for Speed 2. While games like these are available for Linux, installing them and setting them still remains out of the reach of most users, especially new users.

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