After flirting with tech from 1989 onwards, Sam Varghese began to experiment with Linux in 1998. A couple of years later, he began using the Debian distribution as a single-boot system for his personal use. From that point onwards his interest grew and he has since written widely about free and open source software, with a great deal of his writings based on his own experiences, rather than anecdotal evidence. Open Sauce will focus on a genre of software that is present everywhere but rarely acknowledged; a genre that has little eye-candy but does most of the heavy lifting; a genre that is designed and written by people whose accomplishments are only occasionally recognised. Above all this blog will follow the KISS principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Crossing the Windows pain threshold

by Sam Varghese

Friday, 05 October 2007

Page 1 of 2 When does one reach the tipping point, the point at which one will not rest until one changes operating systems? Or, to put it another way, what kind of pain threshold are Windows users willing to tolerate before they cry out to be rescued? Featured Whitepaper 5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support It's a question that I've been pondering even as I set up a dual-boot system for a young friend of mine who has reached the limit of his patience with Windows. Indeed, the dual-boot bit is due to my still advising him to enter the world of Linux cautiously; when I went over to see him because his PC had mysteriously stopped booting, he was quite willing to give up everything to do with Windows in exchange for a little peace of mind and to avoid having to nag me to come over and fix things. This kid is a typical teenager and has all the usual habits which computer users of his age do - listening to music, watching movies and playing games. For each of these activities, the PC is the first port of call. Hence when said PC stops working - and more so when it happens during the holidays - fixing it becomes a matter of urgency. But in this endeavour, he is handicapped to some extent - because he has to approach me through his parents. Three years ago, his father, a close friend of mine, brought over the existing family PC, a Pentium 4 with a fairly decent amount of memory, which was running at the speed that ants manage when drowning in treacle. It took a fair bit of doing to get things back to what passes for normal on a Windows XP box - there was enough spyware and adware on that box to consume four hours of my time. Mind you, at that time all they had at home was a dial-up internet connection. The man and his family had put up with that level of performance for some time as they did not wish to bother me. And while they were aware that something was probably wrong, their pain threshold was fairly high - they thought computers were meant to behave that way. I don't really blame them. A lot of Windows users have very low expectations of fairly high-end hardware. After applying the triple R antigen - for the uninitiated, that's reboot, reformat and reinstall - the box went back and was used for a year and a half. But thereafter, my friend realised that computers could work somewhat more efficiently than his spyware-infested box. And he started entertaining thoughts of getting a new box and also improving the internet connectivity at home. He asked me to build him a new box in August last year and I obliged. Both father and son often used to glance curiously at my own workstation whenever they visited so I was able to tell them a bit about the operating system which I use. I never asked them to even consider using Linux. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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