What would be your "dream" computer store?

[Altivec]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

Yup, most present day distros have loaders that will make it a walk in the park. At the isp I used to manage, we used freebsd (ok ok, it's not linux), suse, and debian. Debian was a biatch to set up...but very secure.

[Bard]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

Yeah, Debian was definitely one that's made to install and upgrade indefinitely. It's pretty rough to install but amazingly simple to upgrade, even to completely new releases. Ubuntu inherits that goodness and makes it even easier.

SLS was basically a pre-Slackware distro. It shipped with the 0.99.x kernel You had a bunch of disk sets, which were typically on floppies, and it just untarred each one onto the HD... there ya go! Installed! Now get to hand-writing your X config (Forget about upgrades or anything...)

Sometimes I'm real glad "the good old days" are gone.

[Bard]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

It's pretty rough to install but amazingly simple to upgrade, even to completely new releases. Ubuntu inherits that goodness and makes it even easier.

And right as I say that... Doh!

[Cameron]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

Thats a result of everyones ubuntu jump on the bandwagon mentality. For quite a few of the ubuntu users out there this is their first distro, not to mention their first distro upgrade. I think Canonicals only fault in this failure was that they didn't properly warn their users of the risks that are present when doing any major upgrade like this. Plus anyone who was using ubuntu for a serious work machine should have stuck with 6.06 as it is the long term support release with a 6 year support guarantee where as Edgy is short term with only 18 months before they hit their next version and drop support.

It's stuff like this that's creating a stigma with ubuntu users within the Linux community. They're so eager to promote the distribution, and quick to praise it and jump on the bandwagon, yet when it comes to understanding and applying what their promoting they know very little. Which is probably why the same stigma exists with mac users.

That being said ubuntu is not a bad distro. In fact it's one of the best. As long as you choose the right release. It has a long term support release for a reason, if you want a stable system stay with lts release. If you want to be on the edge (hence the name edgy), and like tinkering then get the latest.

As for you not being able to get them to stick Craig, your distro choice was your first and probably only mistake. Knoppix in all it's live cd glory was never meant to be installed. Granted it is possible that is not what it was made for there for it's not going to be simple. As for Linspire i do know that they have both live cd and install cd versions. Which you were I don't know but in my experience (which comes from linspires predecessor lindows so things may have changed) Linspire Is more gimmicky than useful.

As for future choices if you ever get the desire to try again I recommend the following Distros
Ubuntu- Great distro, great support, but lacks out of the box support for things such as mp3 & dvd playback due to copyright issues. Once the distro's installed it's not hard to add it though with automatic setup tools like automatix and easyubuntu. As for the user side it's really easy to use and even hard for the average user to screw up.

Suse 10 Enterprise - Great distro everything an average user would ever need right out of the box, that includes multimedia and proprietary display drivers. Comes with a years support, the downside is that it costs 50$'s. They do have a free version which is equally good but lacks out of the box proprietary software and corporate support.

Fedora - old distro, very stable, large user base, and corporate backing(redhat, the OG's of corporate linux). Unfortunately because of licensing issues not dvd, mp3 out of the box. However again really easy to set up.

As for this thread, my dream computer store would also sell barebones and no-os systems because it makes no sense to buy a computer with an os you'll never use, and be charged extra for that os.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

So Ubuntu is fairly easy to install? What are the exact steps. I think I'd better get on the Linux bandwagon soon as I think Microsoft will eventually get to the point where a Linux OS will be more desirable because of what it represents and what MS doesn't.

I just don't know enough to be able to work with it.

And from a builder's perspective, I loved CompUSA simply because I knew what I needed and where to find it. Sometimes you just can't wait three days for NewEgg to ship to you...you want it NOW, Tonight, This instant.

That's why living out here on the Big Island in Keaau, I keep a small inventory of parts like power supplies, RAM, and other things that break down. I try to keep a couple of mobos and processors as well but it's hard to justify keeping two or three P4 CPU's and mobos if you're not in the business. I build systems for people for the cost of the parts and shipping. One is on it's way to Honolulu and should arrive by 4pm Monday afternoon and another is on it's way to Kauai. Both are 3Ghz Pentium machines. I have a waiting list of four more to build before the end of next month.

FedEx has been making almost daily runs to my home over the last two months already and over two years by now, to the point where I know the guy by first name already.

And a recent price check (including shipping) shows Zipzoomfly.com can send me Windows XP Home OEM for $11 cheaper than NewEgg.com. NewEgg recently raised their handling costs so the cost of a basic computer went up another $50.

You know you're deep into computer building is when you can rummage thru boxes of parts and put together a P4 system on any given day/night/morning or when a computer crashing is just an inconvenience. No bother, I got a spare 80-gig hard drive somewhere and a couple sticks of 512mb DDR400 ram in one of my FedEx boxes in my storage room.

If there was one online computer store I'd like to see in a brick and mortar fashion that would be http://www.geeks.com/ where I always check out their specials. You can pick up an 802.11g wireless PCI adapter for $14.95 with shipping it comes out to around $25.

[Altivec]

Re: What would be your "dream" computer store?

Wow Craig, you just described my closet...full of connectors, mobo's, screws, cords, power supplies, ram, vid cards...and other stuff. It used to be worse at the studio I used to live at, every where you go...you would find a piece here, a piece there. Maybe I should piece together my old P4 2.0 Ghz machine, buy a new LCD monitor and give that to my mom (so I can have my 3.4Ghz 17 inch wide laptop back).