[ale] GO Windows!!! ;-)

Greg Freemyer greg.freemyer at gmail.com
Mon Jun 21 14:20:12 EDT 2010


Asher,

I wonder if you've worked with Windows as much as implied.  I find the
windows drivers issue far worse than linux driver issues.

In particular with windows, It's no walk in the park when it goes
south.  I've had the ethernet on the MB go out before with a windows
box.

With Linux, install any old PCI-based NIC you have laying around and
continue on.  Almost trivial because lots of drivers are in the base
install.

With Windows alternative drivers are never part of the base install
and I've always lost the driver CD that came with the card years ago
(or the drivers don't work with Win7 anyway).

So how do you get them for the alternative NIC.  Go to another
machine, spend 20 minutes finding them on the web, download them to a
thumbdrive.  Copy them to the machine via sneakernet, etc.

What a pain.

Greg

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Asher Vilensky <ashervilensky at gmail.com> wrote:
> Continue....
>
> My personal "fun" aside, as much as I like Linux, I feel that it's not yet
> ready for "the rest of us".  Don't get me wrong:  first of all, I'm working
> on Linux myself.  It pays the bills.  But there's a diff between RHELor
> SLES  on servers and running Ubuntu-like distros on laptops.  It's the later
> one I'm claiming "is not there yet".  If you have to google a solution (from
> another computer, since the one you just installed cannot connect) to
> manually solve it (in the best case) or just live with it (worst case) when
> it comes to wireless and audio/video and printing, this is a tough selling
> point.
>
> The problem is not you and I.  The problem is that you can't "sell" Linux
> (pick any flavor and version) to the mass until these things work out of the
> box.  I want to convert those around me - basically so I don't have to keep
> install virus protection etc.  But I'm hesitant in doing so.  I don't want
> to either have to educate people too much or stand there embarrassed when
> things don't work.   I hate Windows like the rest of this group, but I also
> recognize that Linux is not a viable substitute for most users.  Not yet.  I
> would recommend Mac (to somebody like my in-laws) before I suggest Linux.
>
> My 2 cents.
>
>
> -- Asher
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Asher Vilensky <ashervilensky at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> In the past I installed Mint/Ubuntu 9.04 (I believe) on a Dell laptop, but
>> had trouble with the Broadcom wireless card.  Nothing I googled helped.  The
>> only advice was to wait for 10.04.
>> Well, yesterday I installed a MiniInspiron with Remix 10.04.  Again, the
>> b-com did not work out of the box.  They lied.  However, a simple and quick
>> apt-get and then install <whatever> from a terminal window fixed the
>> problem.  Nice!!!
>>
>> (What __wasn't__ nice was that in order to install Remix in the first
>> place, I had to create an live-USB from ISO drive.  After struggling with
>> the creation on both Ubuntu (8.04) and Mac, I raised a white flag and went
>> to Windows.  Yes, I know.  It was too easy creating it on Windows.  Maybe
>> had I used a later version of Ubuntu it would have been easier.  Oh well.  I
>> guess there are a few things Windows is good for...sigh)
>>
>> Learned a good lesson on both assignments.
>>
>> -- Asher
>
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-- 
Greg Freemyer
Head of EDD Tape Extraction and Processing team
Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer
CNN/TruTV Aired Forensic Imaging Demo -
   http://insession.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/23/how-computer-evidence-gets-retrieved/

The Norcross Group
The Intersection of Evidence & Technology
http://www.norcrossgroup.com



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