Broadband is important to run Windows and Linux now!
It seems that my Ubuntu box needs more update than
Windows. Perhaps I installed too many non-essentail
packages. However I prefer to install more than less.

Another thing is that for new users, I think it is
better to use latest Linux distribution. My linux
experimentation restarted this year with Ubuntu 5.04.
It is quite a nice distribution. I suggest you install 
Debian Sarge or Ubuntu. Perhaps your Debian is really
old. For experienced Linux user or server user, maybe
it is okay or better to use older system.

I installed Fedora Core 3 installed on my notebook and I
was having the same situation as you (600M of updates).
I then switched to Fedora Core 4 and things is much better.
Still I have not boot into FC4 enough times to make a
judgement. I do not like RPMs in general. However I 
find Debian package to be more and more like RPMs. I
no longer know how to build my kernel on Ubuntu becauee of
so many customized patches and special build instructions.
Last time I was trying CDC demo on PICDEM FS USB and I have to 
update to a new kernel (from 2.6.10 to 2.6.12) and I chose
to use a test kernel from Ubuntu Breezy, I found out I
need so many dependency packages in order to update. That
is really making life difficult. I started with Slackware 3.6
(1998) and it seems that people had better control of the system
on Slackware. It is said that Gentoo is good now. However 
I am not so good at Linux to use it.

Still no pain no gain. It is always frustrating initially.
After the painful process (okay I do not have painful process
with Ubuntu initially but I do have painful initial process
with Redhat 9 some years ago and stopped my Linux experimentation), 
things become better.

For me two things make Linux new user's life much more difficult
than it should be.
 
1) lack of hardware support: it is much better now than
some years ago. Be careful to choose the components which 
support Linux. MPLAB ICD2 is a pain when PIC development comes 
to mind. It is simply not working under Linux even though
there are efforts like LPLAB/PIClab.

2) lack of standard package: RPMs/DEBs from different vendors
are not really compatible. RPMS/DEBs from different versions
are not really compatible even from the same vendors. This is
the biggest problem. Some of the dependencies are really 
strange to say the least.

Dual boot (Linux and Windows) is always better for news users.
There are thing easier in Linux (eg: connecting to Unix
servers running X). There are things easier in Windows.
To have more choice is always good. Linux is now so much
better than 3 years ago. Windows XP SP2 is now so much better
than Windows 98/Me.


Regards,
Xiaofan

-----Original Message-----
From: William "Chops" Westfield [mailto:westfw@mac.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 4:08 PM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [EE] Technology Adoption Lag (now: linux flames!)


On Sep 3, 2005, at 11:08 PM, digitaladdictions wrote:

> I really do think modern Linux distro's are easier to use than windows
> and involve less tinkering. I realize people are scared to type but
> with a single command you can download and install a program, without
> worrying about finding it or any of its dependencies on the web the
> package manager takes care of all of it for you.

Heh.  I just turned on my debian linux system, after about a year of
not using it.  I wanted to install gputils and such, figuring that
would go somewhat more smoothly than it did on my mac...

So, after six hours or so of recovering from a forgotten root password
(wasn't it nice of it to configure itself so that booting in singleuser
mode wasn't sufficient to fix such things.  Anyone know how to turn
that "feature" off?), I fired of deselect, eventually figured out how
to get it pointed at a site that knew about gputils, and had it ready
to update and install that, along with some assorted systems updates
it thought I should install.

Hmm.  600+ Megabytes of assorted systems updates.  Including who knows
how many megabytes of KDE "games" that were "required" by a mysterious
chain of dependancies, plus "edutainment" packages with useful stuff 
like
a russian language tutor.  I *think* I weeded most of that out, and
got down to a more reasonable 400+ Mbytes of download.  I let that
go overnight, fiddled with the instal and configure errors today.  And
now, only 24 hours after I decided to download gputils, it looks like
it's working!  "Package managers make things easy" - HAH!

Sigh.
BillW
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