The view from 2003: Migrating to Linux not easy for Windows users

The marketing blather promises easy upgrades, but that's not what one newbie found

By Tsu Dho Nimh, LinuxWorld.com, 05/16/07

Welcome Slashdot readers. We're re-running this 2003 story from an earlier incarnation of the LinuxWorld site, to help you see what's changed in Linux installs and what might have stayed the same. -- Ed.

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Windows 95 works well enough for my needs, but I'm eight years behind the technology curve. While I realize there are still many who rely on Apple IIs and Tandy 100s for their daily computing chores, it's time for me to start planning a migration route.

I was mulling the possibilities when the OfficeSuperGeek (tOSG) talked me into a CPU upgrade, gave me a suitable motherboard from his bonepile, dumped some Linux distributions on my desk and said, "Here... try these." What follows is an 18-month tour of recent and now not-so-recent Linux distributions. Before we proceed, let me set your expectations about this overview. It isn't scientific. It's based on my impressions as a technical writer, Linux neophyte and curmudgeon. It's an appropriate and fair look from my humble newbie perspective. If you are a hairy-chested Linux administrator or programmer, you will undoubtedly find yourself screaming as you read the following. Save your breath.

Here's what I want: The migration destination My non-negotiable requirements for a new operating system center on simplicity for me. Spare me your "how much more enlightened, knowledgeable and confident I will be if I know the intimate details of my computer if the installation is treacherous!" speech; I want an operating system that works like a Honda Accord and not a kit-car project.

It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
Existing hardware must remain usable. At a minimum, the printer, modem, and CD player/writer must work, and the new operating system must make them work without my having to tweak configuration files. If it can't get that far, it's not ready to inflict on the general public as a migration route, and I certainly will not recommend it to my friends.
Existing software must remain usable unless the new operating system has equivalent features to the ones I use, there is no loss of data and data-transfer is easy. Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.
A bit of incompatibility with legacy Microsoft Office documents is OK, but using an old Microsoft Office file with Linux should be no more of a pain in the neck than using an old Office file with a new version of Office.
I must have the ability to edit documents created by clients with Windows systems and return them to the client in their preferred format. Requirements 4 and 5 can be handled by OpenOffice.org's 1.01 release. It doesn't have perfect compatibility with MS Office files, but it's as compatible as any version of MS Office is with any other version. It looks like the solution is a dual-boot system with Win95 and Linux.
Because a dual-boot system is the best solution for me, the Linux distribution must make it easy to create a dual-boot system. It has to recognize and preserve the existing operating system and its data, give me access to the data on the Windows drives and be reasonably unlikely to wipe out my system.

Expectations & foreshadowing. It was supposed to "just work"

I assumed that I would partition drives to make room for Linux, set the BIOS to boot from a CD-ROM drive, reboot with an installation CD in the drive, make some on-screen selections, let the distribution know what hardware to use, twiddle my thumbs for a while as it loaded software and then have a working system. I expected the installation routine to configure whatever needed configuring after it detected the hardware or I told it what I had. That's what tOSG expected, too. My installation approach I have installed various Linux distributions on four variations of my PC over several months. If a system is not mentioned for a distribution, it's probably because the hardware was no longer available at that time. I did not test all my requirements on all the systems. If a distribution flunked a major requirement, it was pointless to continue.