20060120

 

Installing Windows 98 is very annoying.

Well the other night I had to install Windows 98 for someone - makes me remember one reason why I don't like Windows.

After completing the base install, I rebooted to find a VGA screen at 640x480, 4-bit colour. Then I decided to find the driver for the video card. That involved using the motherboard driver CD to install the network card drivers, then rebooting and setting up the network, then going to Windows Update and downloading it, and rebooting again, only to find that the video driver had crazy default settings, so changing that, then rebooting again, then downloading Internet Exploder 6, then rebooting, then applying the security patches, rebooting, etc...

In all, setting up Windoze 98, with IE6, Fx 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.1, then defragging it took four hours and at least fifteen reboots. Setting up a Debian system could be done in less than an hour, and it would be much less annoying.

Comments:
Re: Alpha

1. In fairness, I could use an 8yr old Debian - the biggest advantage being upgradability using apt-get for free.

2. Realistically, Win98 is still in widespread use, where as Debian users tend to use a much newer version. So really, I can compare Debian 3.1 to Win98.

andrew
 
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