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by rubmop
I think it is no surprise that even you did not get a response from Symantec.
by wcallahan1
From my perspective Symantec has been disliked for years. What you've outlined in your article is nothing new, and just how Symantec has managed to keep going is a mystery to me. The only thing I can think of is that they make the Lion's share of their revenue from OEM sales. Most consumers are too uninformed about the product choices they have, so they just keep up their subscription and live with it.
by jlm3
If you dislike Symantec you will hate Mcafee. Just try to uninstall it. Both products leave you gasping for air. McAfee constantly had me verifying my subscription when my machine would start. Symantec would abort MsOutlook. So what now blame it on MS?
by wcallahan1
Insert comment text here
by ray.wilson
Have you ever tried to unistall McAfee? Short of formatting the hard drive and re-installing XP its impossible (for me anyway).
by kschwartz74
I think you are on to something here. With only one exception (the bug Microsoft introduced into their OS with a security patch), every time I have had problems with XP, it was right after I loaded some other product and I always wonder why XP isn't compatible with it but in reality give XP is the OS most commonly used, why would other companies not make their software and utilities totally compatible and TESTED with XP... Good points
by jhamblet
That's an interesting view. But you know, when I first install Windows XP on a new computer, it's stable. It's not until after I start installing applications that I start seeing problems--such as security suites, CD-DVD burning suites, that sort of stuff.
by dumphrey
I have used several AV products over the years. AT home I started with Norton AV, then moved to trend Micro, and now on to DOD32. In each case I bought ONLY the AV product, not a firewall/security suite. On my Athlon XP i use Avast!, a free scanner, at the time I set it up it was the only option other then a corporate product with 5 lisences. Overall, I can say I will never install Symantec AV on my HOME computer. It eats ram and cpu cycles, is unstable, crashes other programs, and generaly just blows (thats a technical term =\). BUT, we use Symantec Corporate 10 at work. I have no problems manageing it, the workstations, or the users. The corporate product is a completely different animal compared to the Home product. As to Macafeeb...my 60 year old father bought a new Dell. On the first boot up, Macafee security suite irritaed him beyond belief. He removed it, and installed AVG, which he had used at work. This is a man who only used MS Offiice for years. On a 1 to 10, his computer knowlede is a 3. But even he didnt consider Macafee an option, and Symantec wasn't even get considered.
As for MS windows, I like XP and server 2k3. Both have been very stable for me, and required very little in the way of repaire. But I am also very conservative in what and when I install software and updates. Windows may be be UNIX, but it has its place in the server market and the desktop.
As for MS windows, I like XP and server 2k3. Both have been very stable for me, and required very little in the way of repaire. But I am also very conservative in what and when I install software and updates. Windows may be be UNIX, but it has its place in the server market and the desktop.
by blackcurrant
Does MS take the blame? Quite often!
I have discovered that many preceived OS problems are due to people trying to run applications which require far more resources than are available on their PC. Also, many people have 101 startup items, most of which they do not need.
The main culprits here are the program writers. When the installer starts, it does not ask if you want the Adobe Speed Launcher to run every time Windows starts, it does not ask if you want the xyz monitor to launch every time Windows starts, it does not ask if you want the automatic update service to query the Internet every x minutes etc etc. The people who write these programs assume too much. If they empowered the end user by giving them enough information that they were aware there would be several TSR's installed, the user would think "do I need this? No..." and deselect it from the list of available options.
A lot of slow-performing PC's have been slow because the installers have automatically installed startup programs which were not required. Also, the number of times I have seen users complaining about their 'crappy' pc's because they could not run their games - then it turns out the graphics card is not up to scratch (or they are using on-board graphics), or they do not have enough RAM to run the game - sheesh!
by jzg1
Insert comment text here I HAVE REMOVED ALL SYMANTIC PRODUCTS FROM ONE COMPUTER AND REPLACED IT WITH FREE ALTERNATIVES AND FIND SPEED HAS INCREASED AND PROBLEMS HAVE DISAPPEARED. THIS OLDER COMPUTER IS NOW FASTER THAN THE NEWER ONE.
I HAVE ALSO FOUND SYMANTIC DOES NOT REPLY TO COMPLAINTS ABOUT THEIR PRODUCTS THAT REFUSE TO INSTALL PROPERLY OR BREAK DOWN AFTER INSTALLATION.
REMOVAL IS ALSO A PROBLEM AS IT REQUIRES MULTIPLE VISITS TO THEIR SITES TO GET REMOVAL TOOLS. AFTER YEARS OF USE I HAVE GIVEN UP ON THEM. THEY ARE LIKE A VIRUS CAUSING PROBLEMS FREQUENTLY.
I gave Symantec the royal boot, long ago. It gave me fits. Slowed my computer to a crawl. I have been using Trend Micro for quite some time, with no problems.
by smcgee
Well, I am not a tech administrator but rather a technology researcher so I have little knowlege of how to repair machines...
As a home user I would like to SHOOT Symantec for even selling their product let alone the analysts that put them in the top 5 products.
I had a home machine that was running Windows just fine... until I upgraded to Symantec's Internet Security to "protect" my machine. The software corrupted my machine and Symantec even had a nice article all about the problem and how to manually remove all the code. The only poblem is... it didn't remove all the code or fix the problem. After a few days on the phone with Symantec's customer service, they basicall said, "so sad... too bad").
So I attempted to get Microsoft to help me since they have Symanyec as a partner. After several weeks on the phone with Microsoft, even they could not fix what had been done by Symantec's product, they sent me a an XP disk and I rebuilt the whole machine. I installed Trend Micro's product and have a fast, secure system once again.
Many fo my associates and friends ask me about technology products... I would not recommend Symantec if my life depended on it!
Thanks,
Happy PC-cillian customer
by andrewtuline
Our purchaser has been trying for months to get Symantec to straighten out our Backup Exec licensing. Working with them is almost a non-starter.
Apparently Adobe is just as bad, if not worse.
by mindilator9
symantec, for the most part, just plain sucks. systemworks was an ok application. the subscription part, i'll agree with the others, can be misleading for the unintiated. users seem to have no idea that once it's gone, their virus protection is kaput. their programs are memory hogs. symantec internet security, in particular, makes me homicidal. every time someone calls me because their outlook complains about an incoming or outgoing email, i feel like forwarding that tech support call right on to symantec so they can explain to their customer why their software is making our lives hell. first thing i ask when i get that call is "do you have norton internet security installed?" if yes, i can almost always guarantee that is the problem. disabling that p.o.s. fixes a majority of users' problems using email clients and the internet. i mean, it's so secure that NOTHING gets in or out. good or bad. that's not good, despite what the most diehard security expert will retort. symantec may as well advocate internet abstinence. it seems to me that norton's products were much better back when they were actually norton's and not symantec's. i don't need a nazi av/firewall, just one that discriminates correctly. btw, mcafee is just as bad.
by jjkreps
While Windows XP, Microsfot Office, and other Microsoft products have their share of problems, poor design and attempts to "own" the system by many utilies appear to create addtional instablities. Just this weekend, I removed Norton System Works and PC Anywhere from a client's computer running Windows XP in an attempt to reduce the boot time below seven minutes. After running the uninstall, I checked the system registry and found over 2000 entries remaining related to Symantec products including calls to several drivers such as speed disk, unerase, etc. There were probably others that I didn't find due to the naming methods, but just eliminating these reduced the boot time to under two minutes. If you can write to the registry to add entries for your product, you should thoroughly remove these entries upon uninstall to restore the computer to a "clean" state.
by eelder1
I teach Comptia A+ and Net+ and advise my students agisnt using Symanthech AV products. Zone Alarm and Trend Micro products seems always rate higher and Symantech products require a download to remove. Symantech AV is very invasive. This product will corrupt a hard drive over time. I have used Panda and Trend Micro products for years without corrupting my hard drive.
by radams36
"Windows XP and Microsoft products in general have this reputation of being unstable and unreliable. I wonder how much of that is inherent in Microsoft software itself and how much is caused by ?utilities? like those from Symantec that are supposed to be fixing problems rather than causing them? Does Microsoft take the blame for other people?s shoddy work?"
This is absolutely true. Virtually every GPF or BSOD error I have ever seen could be plausibly, and often categorically, traced back to either a third-party application or a non-MS hardware driver. HP LaserJet IV drivers were very unstable and problematic, in my experience. I've seen many problems on computers cleared up by un-installing the very ill-behaved Norton Anti-Virus. Most of my experience in this respect goes back about 10 years to when I was doing Windows 95, then Windows 98 support. But it continues to be my experience that Windows is much more stable and reliable than its reputation if you do your best to avoid types of applications that can easily be predicted to have potential to destabilize the system (third-party screensavers being a prime example). I have several computers with different versions of Windows installed, and I almost never have any problems with Windows itself.
MS does have its flaws, and makes its missteps, but there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of support calls that I've taken over the years that were all about bashing how awful Windows was, and it was almost always something other than 'standard' Windows that was causing the problem.
by jack-m
Then there was three. I like and use Symantec's Norton System Works almost daily and I'm satisfied.
by rromig
I don't think you're alone I've had Norton System works on serveral PCs and have encounter problems with Live Update. Over the years I've shyed away from Symantec utilities because of their tendency to consume resources in a hostile takeover. I use both AVG and Avast! anti-virus at home and have found them to be very effective.
by billtomlin
Well as one of only network administrators on the planet that has been able to successfully use Symantec NAVCE, Symantec Security for Exchange, and LiveStateRecovery as a main Disaster Recovery solution I think I should weigh in again and say that an "almost universal dislike for Symantec" might be better stated as a universal failure to succeed where others have prevailed.
Promoting Group Think in an editor?s forum seems to be an amateurish approach to promoting open-ended debate and conversation. And now for Windows XP, and how many of you have failed here where others have succeeded, lets all commence in group misery again, for what purpose?
Really John how about growing up and networking like a man?
When frustration with imperfect products takes on a lynch mob mentality you need to step back and stop being so serious about all of this.
As I have often said of late in my new IT Manager job "perhaps you would prefer an abacus a pad of paper and a pencil."
by rndmacts
I can guarantee to those that say they are using Symantec and had no problems is that they are operating a zombie machine and that they have not had Internet security in quite awhile. In the last month, the company has had to patch two holes in their main engine which allowed anyone to disable it, and this was not only the current version but all previous versions as well. Symantec was not alone in this but McAfee had the same problem, but that is understandable being they were the same company for a while in the 90's,.
I worked on help desk for a tier one computer company, and every time MS released a new version of its OS, Win 95, 98, 98SE, Me, XP and NT, W2K, 2003, for the first 6 months the majority of calls were the same, the fix was always the same, dump the Norton and walk the user through a cleanup of all the registry entries. Real Internet security is about educating the user and explaining that the free software they thought they needed had also just installed as many as forty things they weren't aware. And yes email was great but just because an attachment came from a friend, didn't particularly mean it was safe.
As I noted a lot of the comments came from people using AVG, who then went on to say they had no problems, well Grisoft should behave well with MS as it is a MS company. MS bought the company two or three years ago, its software is part of the LiveCare product. AVG is also one of the few anti virus packages that plays nice with the new Vista.
It is also one of the main reasons that Symantec is upset with Vista and has been crapping on it lately by producing reports based on an early Beta 2, knowing full well that all the exploits they were commenting on had been closed. Vista in its current version makes it very hard for viruses to infiltrate mainly because most of the normal vectors have been removed, IE is secure because it operates in protected mode, any penetration is defeated by simply shutting down the current instance of the browser, trying to attack the kernel is almost impossible because of virtualization, you have to admit it is very hard to hit a moving target.
Peter Norton created great utilities for DOS and Win 3.1 but once Symantec bought out Norton and started adding their embellishments the package became crap. A product should do one thing, and do that very well, products that try to do everything usually end up doing none of them very well. That is why companies like (Grisoft) AVG, and ZoneAlarm are so successful, they concentrate mainly on one product and try to perfect it. That is why MS Office is so successful in that there are discrete products that can operate without the others, the competition has always relied on the suite approach, Lotus SAM, OpenOffice, and Corel though they are hanging in there because WordPerfect is a standalone applications with features unique to itself so it can compete one on one with Word. Given word processors, WordPerfect was always superior and easier to use than Word.
In truth, Windows was always dependable but it was always the crap added that broke the system, and the biggest culprit in breaking Windows was always the security suites which gave users a false sense of security, they figured the computer was protecting them, so they continued to do the stupid things that social networking relies on, I mean give me a break how many people that are rational are going to believe they are receiving email from complete strangers saying "I Love You". How long did it take Symantec and McAfee to come to the protection of these idiots. My grandfather always told me "if you leave the barn doors open don't be surprised if the animals decided they need an adventure".
by joedcook
I recently came across a copy of Microsoft Windows on 5 1/4 diskettes
and I am pretty sure that I had those installed on an IBM-XT at one
time. I am sure this was the definition of slow.. but it was pretty
reliable and stable. I used only IBM hardware in those days
1983-1987 and they were reliable though I never seriously ran Windows
until around 1991. So later when I began to use other brands of
systems and tried to defend Microsoft against the Apple users who made
fun of me, I pointed out that only Microsoft made software to run on
hundreds of different computers configured thousands of different ways.
So I justified giving a little (ok maybe more than a little) on
stability to gain in flexibility and lower cost. By choosing Microsoft
OS's we had much greater choice of hardware and software available so
that is what we did, but we all knew we were sacrificing stability and
reliability in making that choice. Microsoft made trade-offs in their
decisions on software design too. A lot of them. All of the trade-offs
had two big factors though.. a:Will this be easy for users? b:
Will this increase sales?.
It seems to me that the registry is a big part of the problem. Both its
size and structure and the fact that it is wide open to any software to
use any way that it sees fit. I remember one customer who had a
problem with Lotus WordPro keeping addresses for her mailing labels.
Come to find out Lotus was storing these addresses in the Windows
Registry. But it always seemed to me that it should be more
restricted or protected from casual access. I am also amazed at the
warnings of how dangerous it is to modify the registry (and it is) and
how often that is the only way to resolve a problem or condition. My
vote is that there was nothing wrong with a lot of smaller .ini files
to store configuration information. You could access and modify them
with any text editor and it was much less likely that botching one of
them would disable the whole system. It would also eliminate the
need for these third party registry cleaners that never seem to work...
well how could they. No one can tell what entries are legit and which
are bogus without some kind of database to check against known bad
entries.
So while it appears some unstable software, like a webserver or
anti-virus for instance, can introduce vulnerability and stability
issues into Windows the same possiblities exist for other operating
systems so you can't leave Microsoft blameless on that issue. In some
ways they are a victim of their own success. There is such a huge
amount of software already written, much of it for an environment very
different than that which we find today, that fixing the problems will
cause this software not to run properly. Backward compatiblity is
another trade off they were forced to make, again with an eye on how it
will affect users and sales.
Drivers are another problem for Windows and most vendors still don't
have drivers that are compatiblity tested for Windows XP. Almost
every installation instruction sheet says "if you get a security
warning that this driver has not passed compatability testing... just
hit INSTALL ANYWAY". This probably has to do with the cost of
compatibility testing and the drivers are probably ok.. but who could
tell.
Of course now I have seen Linux distributions install on more hardware
with less driver problems than I ever had with Windows and in less time
and it is more stable so I can't use the excuse for Microsoft that they
have a wider hardware footprint anymore. I am afraid that Vista will be
too different to suit users and not different enough to satisfy
stability and security problems. I think it will be at least the
next version before Microsoft can address many of these issues.. but
will they? If they sell a ton of Vista they won't. People vote
with their pocket books and for now we are saying it's good enough.
Same for Symantec.. I haven't seen their income statement but someone
must be sending them a lot of money.. apparently not your readers.
So no I don't believe that Microsoft is getting too much of the blame
for someone else's shoddy work. I am afaid in the world of commercial
software there is more than enough blame for everyone.
by meparks
Insert comment text here
by bdonahue
Amen to you my friend, I share the same horrors. Used to be a Symantec friend, but a recent purchase of Norton Anti-Virus 2006 has changed my feelings completly. I used to use AVG, even the purchased it and was happy. Seemd to work well, but as you mentioned, Symantec used to stand for the best, anyway here is something for you, after about a month of using the Anti-vrus software I started to receive a message saying that Symantec was unable to repair and that I needed to reinstall. And I thought to myslef, why would I get this message, I have made no changes to my system. Can we say BUG! Then to top it off, I had the misfortune of having my motherboard die. No worries I thought, simply replace it and be back in business; aside from the reactivate windows for changing too much hardware thing. But that wasn't all, Symantec decided to de-activate itself, I tried to register it, their servers said I had exceeded my limit for registration. I was quite upset, having bought a two year subscription I still had 640 days left. What a useless piece of software. Here is where it gets interesting, I live in Guam, a US territory, no different then any other terriroty of the United States, do you think I could call their toll free numbers? NO!!! Blocked on Symantec's side. I can dial any other 1-800 number no issues, but Symantec forget it. So I had to go to email support, and wait 48-72 hours for a response of sorry you have to buy the program again, and I will not be able to assist you further so this case will be closed. Talk about making me happy. So in the end, I am out 100 bucks but when it comes time to renew my company's anti-virus solution, Symantec will be out more.
by meparks
I must say it does not surprise me to read about such outrage with
Symantec's products. Of course "Symantec's Products" is a very
broad statement.
My experience with Symantec dates back to their very beginnings with
diagnostic software for DOS in the 80's. Back then it took
someone who knew a little about computers to use their product.
Giving it an educated guess. . .over the years as software engineering
/ technology has grown more complicated along with more complex virus's
I have noted that Symantec has had to up the ante to deal with these
complexities. Example, there are virus's which will specifically
disable Symantec's antivirus products. So I would figure that
Symantec has had to take appicable steps to curtail this.
On the daily application side, I have personally used and also
installed on all of my clients systems Symantec's products for the last
two decades plus. Since 99.9% of my clients do not have any
technology background I have set everything up for them, to allow them
to just do computing. There has been minimal problems, and what
there has been was user error in every instance.
Symantec products do have the capability of being a pain at times, but
once installed and setup correctly I find they are very solid and
reliable. I am more comfortable with Symantec than any other
product out there from long term proven capabilities. And until
someone can show me another product that will outdo Symantec's by a
long shot or Symantec's become so rediculous to use, I will stay with
Symantec.
by knowkatz
For six weeks I blamed Microsoft XP Media for many of the problems I was experiencing on my new system. Finally, I got tired of the assortment of problems and when I couldn't seem to convince the Symantec firewall to allow me access to my own printer (dropped the firewall and it would work) I uninstalled the entire suite and purchased the Zone Alarm suite. WHAT A MIRACLE!! My system was cured and it doesn't take 45 minutes to load! The thing that really ticks me off is the money I spent to get nothing but GIANT headaches. Guess I'll chalk that up to a lesson learned. Needless to say I won't be recommending Symantec to anyone!
by rdiiulio
I currently cannot agree with the comments about Symantec. Microsoft cannot be trusted. This weekend I had to help one of my relatives with not being able to connect to the internet. I found that the ethernet device was on the motherboard and he had automatic updates turned ON. Once he did a rollback of the driver, he was fine. At work, the sound device is on the motherboard and the similar thing happened, no sound. Downloaded the driver from the motherboard website and it was okay once again. I never let Microsoft have free rain over my PCs, either at work or home. I have used Symantec for years for both corporate and personal use.
Your last comment saying Windows may not have been unstable as one thought. I would have to disagree very stongly, Microsoft OS upgrades have been badly developed and supported. I waited at least a year before I upgraded to Windows XP Pro (Home version is useless). I do not plan to upgrade to Vista for at least two years. I will say that Windows XP and Windows 2000 Server are the most stable platforms for now.
Just to give you a little bit of my background. I am a Application programmer for both Unix and Windows platforms. I have supported a large WAN with several locations accessing the main office LAN running both Unix and Windows. I never fell prey to a virus.
by katybob5
Insert comment text here
symantec does great thing on our network.
by irhastings
well I think that this could be the very real part of the xp problem.
when you look at the way xp reacts with symantec then you will understand. I hate having any of their products on my computer, they are also hard to get rid of.
when you look at the way xp reacts with symantec then you will understand. I hate having any of their products on my computer, they are also hard to get rid of.
by d.belford
I stopped using Symantec mid last year - better alternatives everywhere
The PCs I manage have - interestingly enough - have suffered much less from all forms of Malware since we droped AV scanning in favour of user education (peer group pressure is a powerful thing and introduced AntiSpyware. Out - Macafee, symantec, in Sunbelt, Regsoft.
I think it is time to put regsoft out and bring in Trend Micro. Although I have my doubts whether the users will care for this, they will be affronted by the level of dialogue required. But this may be just a haxdoor thing. Hard to say yet.
I should add that all our workstations (several hundred) have 100Mb switched connections to the 'Internet' are XP Pro, auto update and rely on the built in firewall.
by peter hegler
Norton Utilities used to be one of the "great" programs to have on hand for a variety of system utilities which, by the way, was their forte. Speed disk was and probably STILL is one of the best. (Virus checking wasn't one of them as F-Prot, Thunderbyte and Dr. Solomon were far superior!). Windoctor and Diskdoctor were also very good and they saved my skin several times.
I had the ultimate disaster last March when my e-machine motherboard gave up and I had to install another M/B in the P4 2.8. When I tried the recovery disks, I was advised by the system that Norton Ghost had control of the files and I would not be able to recover files until Ghost was released. What an unpleasant surprise since I could not access windows without the recovery disks so Ghost controlled and locked the system and prevented the recovery of the windows files. Drat! (Little did I realize that emachines recovery wouldn't do the job either since the emachine M/B was replaced and I could not have loaded xp from the recovery disks anyway but Ghost prevented me from finding that out for several months.
Problem only solved by buying another P4 (not emachne for sure) and not loading Ghost!.
Its interesting to note that Ghost was not part of the new package (or I didn't load that part).
I wish Norton would have stayed with what they were good at!
Peter H.
I stopped using ALL Symantec software when I had installed their product for Network Switching (for changing I.P.'s and printers from my home network to my business network on a W98 laptop, I forget what the product was called.) and lost all networking. I called for support and when I finally got someone to help, the solution was to uninstall the product. That did not fix the problem, but the since the product was now uninstalled, Symantec said it wasn't their problem, case closed. I reinstalled the OS and DID NOT reinstall SystemWorks (which had been bringing my laptop to it's knees since W95), Norton AV, PCAnywhere or Procomm Plus. My life got SOOO much easier. These days, in my role as Network Administrator, I avoid Symantec at every possible turn. I do not consider this a loss.
by justin james
"I waited at least a year before I upgraded to Windows XP Pro (Home version is useless)."
This statement really discredits its author. They obviously have little knowledge of Windows XP as an OS, or they would not be saying this. 99% of the differences between XP Pro and XP Home are things that 99% of home users will never notice, like not being able to join an Active Directory domain. The only one that I ever saw as a pain point was that Windows Backup was not included in Home. The author of this statement may be an application developer, but that does not mean that they are an OS expert.
J.Ja
Insert comment text here
I use the Enterprise Version of Symantec and I have several layers built up. I have no real complaints. HOWEVER, I have mostly an XP house with some 2000 system mixed in. Here is an interesting trend I am noticing. As the XP systems age, I do notice that the Symantec program impacts the startup of XP. I have all my desktops set to update upon login or when ever there are new updates available on the servers.
I am not sure what that is all about, but I can clear the problem by reloading Symantec most of the time. However, if the MS ROT has progressed too far, I have to reload/rebuild XP. I don?t have these problems with the 2000 systems I still have. Of course, I try to do very little with the 2000 systems.
by bkoritko
I believe that most problems with the operating system evolve from someone elses software. Unfortunately Win XP runs great all by itself but is useless without all the other software that eventually leads to failures.
A couple if years ago I played a record (one of those vinyl things) to the son of a friend . As side one came to an end I instinctivly flipped the record over and started side two Liam's eyes popped out of his head - you can play BOTH sides! This child (now 15) had never seen a record player in use. Now about floppy discs...
by j sheesley
For some time now I?ve been using SuSe Professional 10.0 as
the basis for my experiments with Linux. I?ve dabbled with Fedora Core 5, and it?s been
ok, but just not that earth shattering. With so many versions of Linux around
and the new release of SuSe 10.1, I thought maybe I?d try a different
distribution for a while.
The key is trying to find the best one. Jay Garmon, the
Trivia Geek here at TechRepublic, favors
Ubuntu. Jack Wallen, self-described poster boy for the Linux Revolution, also
claims
Ubuntu as his favorite. I downloaded Ubuntu 6.06 yesterday but have yet
to install it.
I still lean towards SuSe from a long fondness for Novell.
Not to mention the fact that SuSe has worked much better for me than previous
experiments I ran with older versions of Red Hat. SuSe 10.0 has been a better
experience overall than Fedora Core 5 was too. Fedora Core 5?s only real
advantage I thought was Gnome 2.14, which you still can?t get on SuSe yet.
SuSe has just shipped 10.1. I don?t think there?s much
advantage to me upgrading at this point. Except for the base kernel version, I?ve
already installed KDE 3.5.3 on the 10.0 and made a bunch of other modifications,
so moving to 10.1 would be a step backwards in some respects. I?ll probably
just leave that machine on 10.0 until 10.2 or 10.3 comes out.
There are lots of other options for Linux: Xandros, Debian,
Mandrake, Vector, Knoppix, etc. There are probably more flavors of Linux than
ice cream in a Baskin-Robbins. So, if I were to try something other than SuSe,
what would be a good choice?
by jason
Also being new to Linux, I have been using Xandros for a few months and am now onto their 4.0 product. I have enjoyed it and found it to be user-friendly for the most part. There are a few quirks such as not being able to type on typeable PDF forms and editing them with acrobat, and from what I can see their error reporting features are either non-existent or I just don't know what I'm doing. But most windows programs that I use are generally compatible with their Crossover Office program, which is nice. I really like their KDE Kmail program as in integrates with other KDE programs to look very similar to MS Outlook. I like it better than Outlook. They bundled everything really well in my opinion. Installation is extremely smooth and easy, and was very quick. Very little user intervention was needed to install everything. My 2 favorite installation features: Partitioning the hard drive to keep your Windows--when the computer reboots it prompts you to either boot Xandros, Windows, Safe mode, or Configure (Expert); the other favorite is that when installing it asks which operating system style you are used to because it can emulate it (ie. Windows, Mac, Unix, Xandros, etc)
I'm going to build a server & install their Xandros Server product soon, so we'll see how it does.
by apotheon
The question "What is the best Linux distro?" is meaningless without qualifying it somehow. Better questions might be "What is the best Linux distro for easy install with weird hardware?" or "What is the best Linux distro for corporate support contracts?" or "What is the best Linux distro for stable operation and easy administration?"
On the other hand, Debian is the best all-around distribution. No, rilly! It's really easy to install and features the world's best software management system. At least, that's my take on it.
Now, if only it was BSD-licensed instead of GPLed. . . .
by lastchip
I had a really good experience with Xandros, having tried RedHat, Mandrake, (Mandriva), SuSE 9.0, Ubuntu and Debian. I still recommend Xandros to newbies, as it's so user friendly as a first Linux experience.
However, I recently built a new 64 bit machine and was looking for an alternative to load and tried SuSe 10.1-64 and I've got to say, it's absolutely great (for me), but inevitably, it will depend upon your requirements and perception of what you think a Linux system should be.
Slightly off topic, Vista 64 bit is on the same machine, and while accepting it's beta, there's no comparison. It's a sluggish (pretty) joke!
Frankly, I've found RedHat (Fedora) poor and nowhere near as good as SuSE. I haven't tried the latest release's of Mandriva, which may be an area you want to explore. Ubuntu, consistently had installation issues (for me) that made me give up with it (multi-boot machine).
One day, I'll try again with Debian, but I couldn't get to grips with a custom install and detest their Gnome interface (I prefer KDE), but would like to experiment with others. I need to find a good tutorial on how to use that customer installer.
But ultimately, they are all pretty similar in the applications they load and hence the overall package that you receive.
If you're happy with SuSE, my advice would be, stay with it!
However, I recently built a new 64 bit machine and was looking for an alternative to load and tried SuSe 10.1-64 and I've got to say, it's absolutely great (for me), but inevitably, it will depend upon your requirements and perception of what you think a Linux system should be.
Slightly off topic, Vista 64 bit is on the same machine, and while accepting it's beta, there's no comparison. It's a sluggish (pretty) joke!
Frankly, I've found RedHat (Fedora) poor and nowhere near as good as SuSE. I haven't tried the latest release's of Mandriva, which may be an area you want to explore. Ubuntu, consistently had installation issues (for me) that made me give up with it (multi-boot machine).
One day, I'll try again with Debian, but I couldn't get to grips with a custom install and detest their Gnome interface (I prefer KDE), but would like to experiment with others. I need to find a good tutorial on how to use that customer installer.
But ultimately, they are all pretty similar in the applications they load and hence the overall package that you receive.
If you're happy with SuSE, my advice would be, stay with it!
by sysadminii
I have run Fedora 3 and 4 as well as Suse 9.0, but my all time favorite Linux has to be Debian. Currently I have "Sarge" installed and the updating of packages seems to be far superior to any distro I have installed and the documentaiton is absolutely unlimited. I did purchase a book from bookpool.com called Debain 3.1 and it was loaded with the basics all the way to advanced techniques and found it as a great resource. I did install Ubuntu on a IBM laptop not along and found that rather easy to configure and install and the detection of hardware was seamless. Basically, if you know one flavor of Linux, then all the rest pretty much follow suit. It does appear that Debian does offer more applications then most flavors that I have installed and that seems to be a driving force behind their success.
by bookkeeper
I don't know which is the best distribution I guess it depends on what your needs are or what you plan in using it for, but I downloaded Ubuntu the other day and I was impressed that i could just boot up to a CD and it loaded on my computer quite nicely. Even most of the programs worked as i played with it for a few hours and the need feature i found was you could play with it and not actually installing it. Not sure how well it will install when i do but, it was a quite neet little feature.
by gregunit
We have been working with Debian for a number of years and have found it to be very reliable and stable as an SMB server. It is also about the last non-corporate linux distribution with any credibility. However, due to their lack of support for ooo v2.x (open office.org) I don?t see us using it as a desktop operating system.
Greg Allen ? Active-Technologies, LLC
by kdnoel
I go back to the days of CPM, TRSDOS, LDOS, XENIX and there after and just for kicks I bought a $75.00 server from my local junk store last week... to give Ubuntu a try out.
The ole Compaq 850R came with two 18gig scsi harddrives with hardware array, 1/2gig of ram, two Pentium 200mhz proceessors and no operating system so I download the both the "Live CD image" and the Ubuntu server image.
The Live cd booted and ran but only in the safe VGA mode but did allow me to partion and setup the mirrored drives but was of course a Dog! I spent the next couple of evenings installing the server version and with no more help than searching the Ubuntu forums I managed to get the ole girl up and running. I came in this weekend and put it on my office network, setup Samba and by Monday morning I have a shared drive for storage and backup purposes. I must say I am impressed!
Being an old Novell user I am going to experiment with their new SLED release but I might go with Ubuntu in the end since it is totally FREE on a trial workstation setup live in the office environment.
Linux does look like an option here and I would encourage all to give it shot!
Kevin
by realaustech
Having been using linux since the early 90's, I have used many distros including Slakware, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, and Debian being typical. Of all of them, I prefer SuSe 10 Professional, and am about to install 10.1. I found that SuSe is the easiest to install and configure.
www.distrowatch.org
Not only a great site for keeping up with what the various distributions are doing, but also has a nice top 100 list that lets you know what's catching peoples attention.
Personally I'm very impressed with PCLinuxOS. I have a relatively old and underpowered Fujitsu Siemens laptop and it pretty well discovered everything and works really well, even on wireless.
My biggest beef with Linux has always been hardware detection, but it's getting to the stage now where it's working out of the box on an awful lot of systems!
Simply Mepis is a great build as well.
Not only a great site for keeping up with what the various distributions are doing, but also has a nice top 100 list that lets you know what's catching peoples attention.
Personally I'm very impressed with PCLinuxOS. I have a relatively old and underpowered Fujitsu Siemens laptop and it pretty well discovered everything and works really well, even on wireless.
My biggest beef with Linux has always been hardware detection, but it's getting to the stage now where it's working out of the box on an awful lot of systems!
Simply Mepis is a great build as well.
by silkmaze
I am looking for a distro that will install my wireless card (Realtek RTL8180L) without me having to resort to Ndiswrapper. I am using Suse 10.1 at home, having upgraded from 9.0. I like Suse. It is easy to install, walks a user gently through the installation process and at the end makes it easy to make any changes necessary/wanted/needed.
I really like the huge amount of software I get with Suse. That not only rivals MS but MS doesn't even see Suse's dust they are so far behind.
I am not a gamer but I am a torrent user. Suse has a built in downloader. MS has a default setting in their TCPIP.SYS that limits the number of simultaneous downloads to 10, this can only be bypassed with a hack, which is reset everytime there is a security update. I have a 6000k download flat-rate at home, so 10 sim SL's is stupid. No problems there with Suse.
I have a little sideline as a procurer or finder. I find stuff for people and companies that they can't, be it because they don't have the time or the know-how. Being limited to IE and the security holes that MS seems to build into every version of their offerings is something I can live without. I feel and am safe with linux.
I switched my whole business over to linux (Suse) 18 months ago. Since then we have had no problems with viruses, worms or trojans; also no howls of pain, anger or fustration when a PC hangs or crashes. I was surprised how quickly my people warmed to Suse, somo of whom have started to use it at home.
And the amount of money I am saving just makes the whole switch over even sweeter for my business.
I have no problems advocating Linux as the main OS for commercial or private use, depending of-course on the extra SW that each business needs on a day-to-day basis.
Which distro is best - which everone makes you life easier. Isn't is nice to be able to chose what/which one YOU want!!!
I really like the huge amount of software I get with Suse. That not only rivals MS but MS doesn't even see Suse's dust they are so far behind.
I am not a gamer but I am a torrent user. Suse has a built in downloader. MS has a default setting in their TCPIP.SYS that limits the number of simultaneous downloads to 10, this can only be bypassed with a hack, which is reset everytime there is a security update. I have a 6000k download flat-rate at home, so 10 sim SL's is stupid. No problems there with Suse.
I have a little sideline as a procurer or finder. I find stuff for people and companies that they can't, be it because they don't have the time or the know-how. Being limited to IE and the security holes that MS seems to build into every version of their offerings is something I can live without. I feel and am safe with linux.
I switched my whole business over to linux (Suse) 18 months ago. Since then we have had no problems with viruses, worms or trojans; also no howls of pain, anger or fustration when a PC hangs or crashes. I was surprised how quickly my people warmed to Suse, somo of whom have started to use it at home.
And the amount of money I am saving just makes the whole switch over even sweeter for my business.
I have no problems advocating Linux as the main OS for commercial or private use, depending of-course on the extra SW that each business needs on a day-to-day basis.
Which distro is best - which everone makes you life easier. Isn't is nice to be able to chose what/which one YOU want!!!
by justacoder
Why go so big and bloated? Try some mini distros, of which Damn Small Linux is my favorite. Also use the [command-line] force Luke. Need to update the kernel? A full-scale OS install shows you've not mastered the modular nature of Linux and UNIX. So I might suggest (only), what you need is not a new Mega-Splat distro, rather a deeper knowledge of Linux that brings you closer to tuning and managing whatever distro you have more adeptly--or a really neat impromptu Linux like DSL that gives you wonderful linux in about 50 Megabytes.
jt
by tech.systems
Try Mepis. It is very well done single CD distro that offers most of what a person needs. I liked Mepis a little bit better before they changed to using the Ubuntu core, but it still is good and I hope the author maintains the distinct features of Mepis, such as better program groupings, nice selection of apps and easy configuration. There still could be improvements made, but I have tried quite a few distros and this is one of the best single CD distros. The other nice thing about it, is it also serves as a Live CD version. When you boot the disk it runs Mepis, not some install program. After you are in Mepis and play with it a while, there is an icon on the desktop to install it.
by bob.macadam
From what I have been reading (and using), it really depends upon what the user is after. For example, a general Windows user will probably find Freespire or Ubuntu closer to what they are familiar with. On the other hand, a power user would probably be more comfortable with Fedora or Suse. A hard-core user will probably be more interested in Slackware. IMO, that's probably the most interesting thing about Linux. There are several popular distros with large communitites that cater to your strengths and needs.
by bob.macadam
From what I have been reading (and using), it really depends upon what the user is after. For example, a general Windows user will probably find Freespire or Ubuntu closer to what they are familiar with. On the other hand, a power user would probably be more comfortable with Fedora or Suse. A hard-core user will probably be more interested in Slackware. IMO, that's probably the most interesting thing about Linux. There are several popular distros with large communitites that cater to your strengths and needs.
by minhajlk
Try Ubuntu its pretty neat...
by ajmateusg
Ubuntu (Debian based) for aplications updated in distribution and easy installation and use.
ajmateusg@esdebian.org
ajmateusg@esdebian.org
by wilko
Impossible to say which is the "best" distro - it's very much a question of what you actually want to do with Linux. My own experiences started with Libranet, moved to Xandros and I've been with Ubuntu virtually since the day it was first launched and personally can't recommend it highly enough.
There's also the question of what desktop GUI you prefer to run. I've tried pretty much all of them and personally prefer Gnome for it's clean, uncluttered, minimalistic approach and the ease with which I can configure and theme it to my own prefences. If you're already locked into to KDE as your desktop, I'd suggest you try Kubuntu which is Ubuntu's sister distro but with KDE.
by sonicbridge
I will not upgrade Symantec Enterprise (10) when licensing expires. After installing and patching the upgrade from version 9 I had a myriad of problems with clients freezing up. I had to roll back a half-dozen to version 9 after I discovered the problem was with Symantec and not another application I suspected. I will probably migrate to MicroTrend the next time around (in about 9 months).
by wkt37211
It has been my experience that Windows has never been as stable of a platform as we would all like. MS has improved their products but I feel that they really don't feel as if they need too because they have so much of the market share--a near monopoly. I feel like I am in somewhat of a unique position. I have had to install computer operated equipment and train customers that have had absolutely no previous experience with any type of pc's. The unique part is the customer can choose either a PC or a Mac. The company I work for is a Mac shop. When they designed the equipment they wrote Mac software for it (I suppose in a failed attempt to change the world). Customers, especially if their IT department got involved did not want that one odd machine in there! My company had to back step and rewrite the software for PC's. As a Senior Service Engineer I soon realized that I was in a position to see how the two systems, PC and Mac, worked from the ground up. With out question the people I trained on the Mac's learned more quickly and didn't have lock-ups or BSOD, etc. The installations went smoothly and I had a very minium of call backs. The Pc installs did not go as well and I received many call back that were completly software i.e. Windows related. The inexperienced person picked up on the Mac OS easily. Windows was just harded for the untrained to grasp. They felt overwhelmed. I am MS trained and Mac's were my second "language."
I know that what I have said above is not exactly what you were asking so bear with me. I have seen a lot of problems caused by add on software where the users just did not have the experience to safely use. The older versions of Symantecs' System Works were usually easier to recover from an error it caused. I have used Nortons from the time it came out on floppies and continued to use Symantec until about 2004 when my children started college. I frequently had late night phone calls when something didn't work correctly. Spyware software can be just as bad. In some cases not allowing access to some sites where a page just will not load and no message given. Also, lists of spyware found and little explaination is given and unexperienced operators know knowing how to deal with the "threat." Messages about a home page being changed or a search engine change and probably worst of all a BHO being added. Most people give up. Window updates--do I need this i.e. Hi Mat update, Media player update, yada, yada, yada. It is almost as if you should spend a few months training before you start your "Out of Box Experience." Mac's just don't have the magnitude of trouble "Out of the Box." I have 6 PC's in my family having built most of them to save money. Damn if I might just break down and spend the money on a Mac!
I know that what I have said above is not exactly what you were asking so bear with me. I have seen a lot of problems caused by add on software where the users just did not have the experience to safely use. The older versions of Symantecs' System Works were usually easier to recover from an error it caused. I have used Nortons from the time it came out on floppies and continued to use Symantec until about 2004 when my children started college. I frequently had late night phone calls when something didn't work correctly. Spyware software can be just as bad. In some cases not allowing access to some sites where a page just will not load and no message given. Also, lists of spyware found and little explaination is given and unexperienced operators know knowing how to deal with the "threat." Messages about a home page being changed or a search engine change and probably worst of all a BHO being added. Most people give up. Window updates--do I need this i.e. Hi Mat update, Media player update, yada, yada, yada. It is almost as if you should spend a few months training before you start your "Out of Box Experience." Mac's just don't have the magnitude of trouble "Out of the Box." I have 6 PC's in my family having built most of them to save money. Damn if I might just break down and spend the money on a Mac!
by bcasson
Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2006 rendered parts of my Visual Studio development unusable. After I installed NA 2006, I couldn't load Windows Form projects, Visual Studio just terminated (each and every time). I got no where with Symantec's support; it was a BIG waste of time and cost me several days of development time. I then went to Microsoft, the charge per call service, and had the problem resolved by the next day. Also, Microsoft turned around and refunded my payment. The problem was some type of corruption in my Windows XP profile; creating a new user allowed me to get back on track.
Occationally, I have a problem with their firewall saying that Visual Studio debugging web server is a worm and it blocks my access. More wasted time!
They won't be getting my business in the future!
Take this one off Microsoft and heap it on Symantec
by plumley9
Once there was Paul Mace Utitlities, and Central Point Software, and Peter Norton, and dozens of other companies in the 3rd party market (you remember all those not Microsoft and not Intel). In business applications the 'great scumsucker' was Wang and Computer Associates - buy up small companies, merge the cheapest solution into their product line, and KILL the competition. Symantec has become the CA of personal software. Rule one of BAD companies - extend by interference. If you run McAfee Anti-Virus the Symantec Firewall claims it is a virus and won't work with it. Give the product away with new equipment, but require four different steps for removal before a competing product can be installed. Advantage by interference is a way of buiness in the Wintel empire, but it still comes down to
GREED = Stupid! and 'Stupid is as Stupid does'.
by juanderful01
I am very new to the world of Linux. So new that I can count the number of times I have logged into Fedora with both hands. I thought my frustration with getting applications to work was only because I do not know the system. After reading some of your comments, it may be more than that.
Currently I am running a dual boot system: Windows Server 2003 and Fedora Core 5. I figured that best way to learn these systems are to actually use the OS's. Now in regards to setting up the dual boot. Once gentleman said he had a difficult time setting it up. The only complaint that I have would be the instructions that I received from the download site. The install was nothing like the instructions. Likely I fumbled my way through it and had positive results, except the whole password thing for the adminstrator. I was prompted to enter a password for the administrator then prompted to create another account that would not need admin rights. Basically a user account. After these two tasks, I was again prompted for another password. One for the root. The password that I made up for the admin account did not take. Now I am only listed as a user, but I have some root capability by means of entering the root password from my user account.
Now about playing video and sound on this OS. Everything I have tried to play is not supported. I have looked around for the "plugins" or codecs but most of what I have found does not make sense to me. I am going to try some of the links posted in the other comments. Perhaps all will work out in the end. I would rather not go back to using just Windows. So I need to continue with learning Linux, maybe trying out some other flavors.
Currently I am running a dual boot system: Windows Server 2003 and Fedora Core 5. I figured that best way to learn these systems are to actually use the OS's. Now in regards to setting up the dual boot. Once gentleman said he had a difficult time setting it up. The only complaint that I have would be the instructions that I received from the download site. The install was nothing like the instructions. Likely I fumbled my way through it and had positive results, except the whole password thing for the adminstrator. I was prompted to enter a password for the administrator then prompted to create another account that would not need admin rights. Basically a user account. After these two tasks, I was again prompted for another password. One for the root. The password that I made up for the admin account did not take. Now I am only listed as a user, but I have some root capability by means of entering the root password from my user account.
Now about playing video and sound on this OS. Everything I have tried to play is not supported. I have looked around for the "plugins" or codecs but most of what I have found does not make sense to me. I am going to try some of the links posted in the other comments. Perhaps all will work out in the end. I would rather not go back to using just Windows. So I need to continue with learning Linux, maybe trying out some other flavors.
by regular_joe
First, a confession. It's been a LONG time since I've logged into TechRepublic! While going through some old docs, I came across a collection of Artner's Laws and I wondered if there was a published collection. So, I googled "artner", and came back to TechRepublic. The news of Bob's passing was a shock, not that I ever met him but I always enjoyed his point of view, hence my collection of some of his Laws. Looking back on some of his comments (e.g. Law of Star Performers"), I'd forgotten how honest and lacking in the usual BS Bob's observations were. Bob was the little kid standing on the street watching the Emperor parade by in the nude! His passing is everyone's loss.
I've experienced the same problem wirh Symantec for a number of years now and would not recommend it to anyone.
Like yourself I loved the Norton Tools for DOS and when win95 came alomg I started to use their antivirus software until the first time I did an upgrade and the whole box went belly up. Not used their stuff since and won't try any of their new software incase I get the same end result a DOORSTOP as you so politely called it.
Mike
by j sheesley
Ok, admittedly that?s a bit of a silly title. The other day,
I wondered here if
I should give Ubuntu a try, and decided I might as well. So I installed
Ubuntu on my test machine, hoping to get an interesting article out of it. The problem
was, there wasn?t anything interesting or exciting about it really. The best
thing I could come up with was a title with all vowels.
Installing Ubuntu 6.06 was that simple. I just put it in the
machine, fired it up, answered a few small questions and the installer did the rest.
I?d already been impressed about the improvement that SuSe and Red Hat have
made to the Linux installation process. The Yast installer on SuSe was
particularly impressive, but even Fedora?s installer was a vast improvement over
older versions of Red Hat. So going into it, I expected Ubuntu?s installation
to be smooth, but not quite that uneventful.
A little bit of fun has come since installing the
distribution. Post-installation, I?ve noticed that Ubuntu refused to recognize
the touchpad on the laptop I used to test it on. An older HP Omnibook, this
laptop contains both a TrackPoint and a touchpad. The TrackPoint works
flawlessly, but the touchpad is completely dead. This isn?t a hardware problem
at all because when I swap the hard drives and put the SuSe drive back in the
machine, the touchpad works fine. So, it will take some fiddling to straighten
that out.
Otherwise, Ubuntu?s running just fine. It?s fast and
lightweight, not straining the old Omnibook at all. It defaults to Gnome 2.14.3
for its interface, and is lightning quick as well. It recognized all of the hardware
in the machine except for the touchpad.
So, I?m off on a little expedition using Ubuntu Linux for a
while. Chances are I?ll still stick to good old SuSe 10.0 in the long haul.
Even though some
may have are unconvinced about where Novell is going with Linux, I still like
it. And as someone commented before when I was asking about the best
distribution, they?re all essentially the same. It?s just the matter of picking
the one that?s best for you.
by joedcook
John I like SUSE the best and have used it as my everyday desktop for almost three years. I have even learned to like 10.1 although at first I thought "I can't believe they released this with a broken pakage management system". I have used Red Hat in the past and have installed Fedora for a few end users before opensuse. I have used Mandriva and Mepis based systems but I haven't tried Ubuntu. Mostly because I am satisfied with what I have and a lack of time to try a new one, but I want to install it on a system just for the experience if nothing else.
I really don't care if someone else likes another distribution better, in fact I am glad that they do. It proves that Linux is versatile enough to meet almost everyones needs and you are not stuck with what I like or what someone else likes. We all know what happens when you try to please everybody.
I like Novell too. While some may disagree with this direction or that.. there isn't any other company that has done as much with Linux in as short a time. I have been through darker times than this with them, when we didn't have as much to look forward too. I sure like 10.0 better than I liked 9.0. And I can't say that for all the software that I have used.
I really don't care if someone else likes another distribution better, in fact I am glad that they do. It proves that Linux is versatile enough to meet almost everyones needs and you are not stuck with what I like or what someone else likes. We all know what happens when you try to please everybody.
I like Novell too. While some may disagree with this direction or that.. there isn't any other company that has done as much with Linux in as short a time. I have been through darker times than this with them, when we didn't have as much to look forward too. I sure like 10.0 better than I liked 9.0. And I can't say that for all the software that I have used.
by gildawie
After a total meltdown of XP, I decided to try Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. It installed flawlessly and quickly on my Pavilion ze5385ca laptop, recognized all hardware including the touchpad and built-in 802.11b wireless (all I had to do to access wireless networks at home and at work was enter codes).
It's the best Linux distro I've tried out.
Second comes Xandros but it's not free.
I've since installed Ubuntu server on an ancient IBM Aptiva desktop (not enough RAM or HD space for the full install).
The only complaint I have is with getting the install on CD from Ubuntu - I've tried 3 times in the last year with no result. I finally broke down and downloaded the iso file over my slow but pretty reliable connection ~10 hours to d/l!
by wbagay
I have tried Ubuntu / Suse 10.1 and Fedora core 5. My goal is to get my AMD Compac Persario V2000 to work with the wifi. I am happy now FreeSire worked with no modifications from me.
Soo, my favourite will be FreeSpire.
Soo, my favourite will be FreeSpire.
by j sheesley
Several weeks ago, I commented here that I
was getting concerned with problems I?ve encountered on consulting projects
that occurred as a result of users running Symantec software. This created a
firestorm of comment not only on that post, but also on a follow up one that
pointed out the near-universal
dislike TechRepublic members seemed to have for Symantec products in
general.
Following those comments, I contacted Symantec to offer them an
opportunity to view first hand and comment on your reactions. I reached Amanda
Jones with Symantec?s PR agency, who in turn contacted Laura Garcia-Manrique, Sr. Director, Product Management for Symantec. I
summarized the comments around the following themes and requested her response:
- Norton Antivirus causes performance problems
- Norton Antivirus doesn?t catch or prevent
all infections - SystemWorks causes irreversible damage
- Systems fail after running LiveUpdate
- Norton Internet Security blocking Internet
access - Symantec's overall quality has been dropping
- Poor Tech Support
- Uninstallation routines don?t work
- Symantec seems more interested in selling
new product than fixing existing ones
I told Ms Garcia-Manrique that I would post her response unedited
to allow Symantec an open, unbiased forum. What follows is Symantec?s official
response to the issues raised in my blog and the TechRepublic member comments
that followed it:
Dear TechRepublic readers:
Let me thank you for taking the time to
write your opinions and feedback on our products. We here at Symantec take your
suggestions very seriously, and are working to incorporate them into our
in-market products as well as into our next generation of products. Let me
assure you that your voice is being heard, especially what you?ve said about
product performance, quality and installation.
Your security is our number one priority.
When we look at creating protection for new threats, we want to ensure that we
develop the most comprehensive protection for that threat; at times additional
security may come at a cost, and when a tradeoff needs to be made, we tend to
look at what is safest to do. Other products may choose less secure
implementations; we choose not to make compromises when the security of a
system could be at risk.
Turning to your comments, some of your
reports have to do with general installation and uninstallation of our
software, or running LiveUpdate. This is an area of focus for us. It is
standard for threats in the wild to block the installation of security software
so that they can persist on a system. In this area we have invested to
integrate pre-installation scanners to deal with infections on a system prior
to installation. But, there is more work to do. We diligently continue to
address the added complexity of more operating systems, service packs,
partially patched and updated operating environments and high numbers of
machines with file and system corruption as well as systems heavily infected
with spyware and adware. Another challenge comes from the general system
instability from older machines with limited system resources, and in some
cases, not even the bare minimum of resources needed to be running Windows or
basic applications. We have a formidable investment in engineering
resources dedicated to ensure product quality even in this increasingly more
complex environment.
Connectivity related issues reported with
Norton Internet Security have led to a number of fixes over the course of this
summer that have been LiveUpdated to our customer base. Make sure to run
LiveUpdate to get the latest patches if you have experienced a connectivity
problem. Also, our analysis of this general issue has made us reconsider the
fundamental approach in firewalls today: alert and ask for user action when an
application tries to connect to the Internet. Prompting users to choose whether
to allow or block an application to communicate to the Internet leads to user
error and connectivity problems. In many cases users choose to block access to
legitimate applications. To address this issue, we have developed a smarter
firewall that does not rely as heavily on user action and that will be part of
Norton Internet Security 2007.
Some of your concerns pointed at corrupted
registries with Norton SystemWorks. Although Norton SystemWorks might uncover
existing problems within a computer?s registry, the application itself does not
?have a tendency to corrupt registries? as was mentioned. In most cases when we
investigate a registry issue ?caused? by Norton SystemWorks, it turns out that
the system suffered from a pre-existing registry problem that Norton
SystemWorks simply discovered and revealed. If you do think that Norton
SystemWorks might have caused a registry problem, we want to talk to you to
troubleshoot your problem. (http://service.symantec.com)
Technical support is another key area of
focus for us. In the past, we did indeed experience a capacity problem, at
times exacerbated by large outbreaks or security threats. This situation
prompted a complete revamp of our support organization. Today, Symantec answers
90% of customer calls in less than 2 minutes time, and
we stand by our support team who work 24x7 to assist our millions of paid
subscribers every day.
We offer home and small office users three
free types of technical support and one fee-based support option. Users can
access our online technical support knowledgebase 24 hours a day, free of
charge. We offer several automated tools on our web site that help customers
find answers to their questions quickly and easily. The second free
option is to access real-time online chat 24 hours a day. The
third free option is technical support available via e-mail.
The fourth option is telephone
support. This service is free for all installation issues and known
bugs. A fee is charged for all other calls and this service
is provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In addition, we offer free customer service via the telephone. Customer service
agents are able to provide assistance on a variety of non-technical issues
including general product information, rebates, registration, purchasing
options, returns and replacements.
Looking to the future, we have been working
on ongoing product performance improvements that can deliver top level security
with minimum system resource utilization. Let me share with you some specific
things that we have been working on for our 2007 product release:
-We?re reducing the amount of system memory that our products require to
run.
-Our new products will have less running processes when they are not
actively scanning or remediating threats.
-We?re making detection and removal of threats even faster.
-We?re minimizing the amount of impact our products have on system
startup time.
-We?re minimizing the impact on system responsiveness and applications.
-We?re enhancing the adaptability of products to newer technologies.
-To minimize the impact from running full system scans with Norton
AntiVirus, we are building the ability to allow throttling between full system
scan and quick scans to run in the background with a reduced system impact when
performing other tasks on the computer.
And finally, we have changed our business
model so that we can keep your protection up to date, at all times. Some of
your comments speak to the need to buy newer versions of the software in order
to have fully up to date protection. Threats are constantly changing, and we
will continue to build new engines and new security products to keep you
protected. In order to minimize the burden of having to upgrade to newer
versions to have the most up to date protection, we have changed our model so
that customers with the 2006 and later versions of our software are entitled to
product updates and upgrades as they become available. This is now covered in
the cost of your subscription.
We?re grateful for this opportunity to take
your concerns and incorporate them into ours. We want you to know that your
satisfaction is very important to us ? and moreover, that we are as concerned
about our product quality as you are.
Thank you,
Laura Garcia-Manrique
Sr. Director, Product Management
Consumer Products and Solutions, Symantec
by rexworld
I'm glad to read that they're taking steps to improve the performance of their products, especially Norton A/V. It's just unfortunate that they let those products get this bad in the first place.
I'm willing to give them a second chance, but cautiously. I wll definitely not buy the next version of Norton A/V. Instead I'll wait out a couple upgrade cycles to see whether this commitment is real or just marketing-speak. I especially want to see what they do about minimizing the startup impact and the system responsiveness, and general resource hogging issues in Norton A/V. An anti-virus solution that brings your PC to a crawl is worse than no solution at all.
by jjkreps
While the changes related to memory use, number of process running, impact on startup time, and impact on system responsiveness sound good, other issues such as failure or incompleteness of the uninstallation routines appear to be missing from those addressed. After finding nearly 2000 Symantec related registry entries remaining after an uninstall, I have to question the effectivness of their routines. And that many entries leads to a lot of registry bloat which effects startup time and system response. I too will wait and let others be the guinea pigs even though it makes my job tougher. Let's see what the major pc suppliers like Dell and HP are shipping on their machines.
by macktoomer
I was recently on Symantec's website attempting to resolve an issue of having purchased an upgrade/renewal of Norton Internet Security and the existing product not recognizing the upgrade/new registration license. I could not find a simple solution anywhere. There is too much 'Knowledge Base' and 'click here', 'click there' confusion.
by funtoknow
Sounds as if they are addressing all relevant issues. I have been a consistent user of Norton / Symantec enterprise and consumer products for many years and while the past few years have strained my tolerance levels, I still believe given the complexity of the OS and Environment that these developers are forced to deal with, they do a relatively good job of keeping their product diverse enough to handle the majority of environemnts that exist.
by your mom 2.0
"Make sure to run LiveUpdate to get the latest patches if you have experienced a connectivity problem."
Isn't that like emailing your ISP to tell them your Internet connection isn't working?
What country is their tech support located in and what is the predominant language? If they do not speak fluent
English, I am afraid they fall into the category of many others that I
avoid at all costs. This not a matter of prejudice, it is a matter of
getting my job as a technician completed in a timely manner without
saying "could you repeat that?" over and over.
My use of Norton
goes back to DOS when Peter Norton was still in charge. There was
nothing better on the market then. It really is a shame to see this
product becoming so inferior. I will continue to use other products
(Less expensive) until I read from others that Norton is fixed.
M. Ray McCrary
Electronic Concepts
by beingme
I've just read this twice, and all I
seem to get out of it is a lot of marketing speak. I really did not
see anything of note that actually addressed concerns, except to
point out that it is likely the user's fault that their product does
not work properly.
Sorry to tell you Laura, I ensure that
the computer meets or exceeds all the specifications required for the
OS and other software I run, and typically am installing these
products immediately after installing the OS on a new computer, so
unless Microsoft is shipping virus and spyware/adware laden XP
CD-ROMS, I am quite confident that the system is clean.
Yet I still experienced problems, I
still experience HUGE performance losses, I am unable to un-install
it properly without formatting the drive and re-installing the OS, I
have run Live Update and ended up with an unusable system because of
a bad update that was pushed out by a company that seems to lack a
serious Quality Control Program. Frankly I was a big supporter of
Norton products for a while. No longer, I will never purchase from
Symantec again, nor will I recommend them to friends, family or
clients. This is not the forum to use vapid market speak to
try to cover the short comings of your product line. Generally the
people in this community are technically competent and are above
average in intelligence. You had a great opportunity here, but I
feel you blew it by trying to treat us like fools. I, for one, feel
insulted.
by massiej
I'm afraid I can't restrain myself after reading Ms Garcia-Manrique Sr.'s comment regarding NIS: "Make sure to run LiveUpdate to get the latest patches if you have experienced a connectivity problem."
Ms Garcia-Manrique Sr., if there IS a connectivity problem caused by NIS (or any other issue), it's going to be a little hard to run LiveUpdate, isn't it?
Someone should have reviewed your reply before posting it to catch this blunder. Likewise, Symantec will have to perform better quality testing and control if they want to win back disenfranchised users.
For the record, I've used virtually every Norton/Symantec product there is, and have universally found them all useful in protecting my computers. I run NIS now on my programming workstation without any problems at all. I've only had issues once with Norton SystemWorks -- serious enough to require a wipe and reinstall in that single instance.
massiej
Ohio University
by scooterb
I would disagree with most of her assumptions on how her company
operates and it's business model. I would also disagree with her
assumption that they are there to help there customer base. They are
there to make money; bottom line. It is a financially driven world and
they respond to the $$. I didn't post a comment on the original blog
entry. I was too bust trying to recover from the emotional trauma when
I discovered that I wasn't the only other individual who could only
attribute problems to Symantec. It was like reading a novel that you
just couldn't put down. The entire way through (I did read all of them)
I could only say to myself "Yep, yep, that's right,etc....". Symantec
will not change their methods and could care less if a bunch of techies
don't like their product. It will take someone like the OEM's to stop
installing it on the PC's going out the door before they will take
notice. Remember $$ folks. You can see from her reply that she just
doesn't get it because her answer was "make sure and do the
Liveupdates". That in itself was a major problem. Many times I have had
machines that wouldn't complete the update satisfactorily. So I
contacted their tech support and their trouble shooting failed to
identify the problem. So, in the spirit of Microsoft, their only final
resolution was to format and re-install Windows and of course Symantec.
"It obviously must be a corrupt registry caused by something else other
than our wonderful software" HAHHH! So, to complete my rant, since they
forever changed the software and made it something it shouldn't be,
they have lost my corporate support and I will not be recommending them
to anyone. One word if there are any "Symantech's" reading this; Just
because you can do something doesn't mean you should. The older
software that Noton used to produce worked great, but when you tried
going the way of "other" software companies and trying to be "all
things to all people" you lost your focus and your product became
worthless. If you really want to respond to your critics, don't
just give us the coporate marketing spin. If you really want to
be a good software company, listen to the little guy. And if you
really want to be admired, make your software open source.
I believe Symantec has always been better than the other competition. The only issues that I have ever encountered was on an Exchange server. After working with Tech support the issue was resolved quickly. I recommend to people all the time Norton AV and never one complaint. Other vendors I get calls all the time. We use the other vendor at my work and I had a scan causing issues. So I am not sure about all the complaints with Norton. I do think that all of AV products are finding it hard to keep up with the latest security threats. I have seen an issue with systemworks that caused a windows 2000 installation to fail after an update and that was two years ago. Symantec has taken on Veritas and they may be why they are failing in regards to support. I have a hard time searching their sight for Veritas issues. Other than that I will continue cleaning machines using a combination when one is not a enough.
by rockinrick
i have norton and i check for updates everyday and i don't see much relief for these problems . i use the free version of AVG on my other computers and have no problems..
by justin james
Bah. What a load of appeasement nonsense. Their products have been getting increasingly problematic as the years go by. The real problem is their business mindset. "Symantec" and "quality" go together now like "Microsoft" and "security." They can pay as much lip service as they want, until they have a provable track record of improvement and having reach a superior level and staying there for some time, I will not be using their products.
Despite Microsoft's overwhelming success in improving their track record, particularly with XP SP 2 and Windows 2003, people still hold grudges against them from Windows 95, 98, and ME. If it takes Microsoft 10 years to recover the reputation lost from those ancient products, how long will Symantec need to get their reputation back?
Unlike Microsoft, users have legitimate alternatives to Symantec. It isn't like Joe Six Pack can just move to Ubuntu Linux, but Joe Six Pack can quite easily install any of the FOSS or commercial alternatives to Symantec products. And I hope they do. Do I hold a resentment against Symantec? Probably. It may have something to do with the lost hours of productivity and time I have lost over my lifetime due to their lousy products. Not even Microsoft has wasted my time and caused me frustration like Symantec; indeed, Oracle is the only real competition out there for Symantec in my mental list of "companies and products that have frustrated me to no end."
J.Ja
by magpiper
Nice canned response from the PR department. Symantec has always followed "goofy logic" for the past 10 years and continuing to this day. I have been an avid user of Symantec Enterprise (Corporate Edition) Anti-Virus for Netware and M$ Windows for years. However due to increased resource consumption of the client and the inability to manage the client any longer (bug in Symantec Management Console). I have decided as a Symantec Partner/Reseller to not promote the SCE A/V any longer. LiveUpdate should be done away with as it is a rather poor delivery mechanisim. It breaks and is almost impossible to fix.
As a Symantec partner I can state that in the past Symantec has pushed thier security line of products to resellers. 24X7 monitoring and A/V, SPAM appliances etc. I would never use their security products because of the lack of faith in Symantec products. Several weeks ago Symantec announced that they were laying off a large portion of ther security appliance team and restructuring. This is due to lack of support from resellers in promoting that particular product line. Had I jumped on the band wagon and ran their security products up the flag pole say 2 years ago. Where would I be today and what would my customers think of me? Especially when I had to inform my customers that the $XXX.XX solution they purchased was eseentially being canned. Poor Symantec their marketing is worse than Novell or Sun, more along the lines of Borland or Parsons Technology.
My comments to Symantec: "Fire your VP's that make such poor decisions and quit buying companies and destroying their products."
As a Symantec partner I can state that in the past Symantec has pushed thier security line of products to resellers. 24X7 monitoring and A/V, SPAM appliances etc. I would never use their security products because of the lack of faith in Symantec products. Several weeks ago Symantec announced that they were laying off a large portion of ther security appliance team and restructuring. This is due to lack of support from resellers in promoting that particular product line. Had I jumped on the band wagon and ran their security products up the flag pole say 2 years ago. Where would I be today and what would my customers think of me? Especially when I had to inform my customers that the $XXX.XX solution they purchased was eseentially being canned. Poor Symantec their marketing is worse than Novell or Sun, more along the lines of Borland or Parsons Technology.
My comments to Symantec: "Fire your VP's that make such poor decisions and quit buying companies and destroying their products."
by developr398
It's encouraging to see Symantec plans to correct many deficiencies. But, after many instances of Norton ISS problems, I just converted a key client with 17 users from NISS to a competitor whose current solution provides most of what Symantec plans to offer. My client had become quite frustrated in the process. Good luck Symantec!
by slopez
Their software has gone downhill this past year!!
Even their enterprize SMSME, I had version 4 and tried to upgrade to version 5
I have not been able to upgrade or reinstall version 4 for the pass 7 months
Their Tech Support has not come up with a resolution.
Compared to McAfee they resolved the problem of installing on a 2003 Server in and hour over remote.
by dave
Sorry, I couldn't resist:
Connectivity related issues reported with Norton Internet Security have led to a number of fixes over the course of this summer that have been LiveUpdated to our customer base. Make sure to run LiveUpdate to get the latest patches if you have experienced a connectivity problem.
Umm..How do I update when I have no Internet Connection?
by rsmmac
I am a TechRepublic member and I like Symantec products. Unfortunately, people do not usually post / write / blog when they are happy; we usually write when we have a complaint, so a number of complaints (without many praises) seem like an overwhelming majority of unhappy people.
I have used a number of security products including Trend Micro's, Microsoft's, Symantec's and McAfee's. My personal opinion - in the past, Symantec won hands down. Today, all the security suites have compelling performance and strong points, and are a good call for the "standard" user. I'd have a hard time selling one as superior over another. I put Symantec Internet Security on every friend's / family's home PC I am asked to configure (up front) or rescue (once infected).
At work, I use Trend Micro & Webroot on the PC's / Servers / Exchange, and a Symantec Gateway Security appliance at the perimeter. All good products.
by jminshal
I was reading this article in an agreeable frame of mind until the PR person started blaming these issues on the users and their old resource constrained systems. Then they had the gall to state that buying MORE Symantec software would prevent a lot of these problems because the old software has known bugs in it!!! It is well known by techs that Symantec's SystemWorks is a system killer, and in the past I have recommended against using it to users, so it is possible that it is the users fault that their system died after going against my recommendations and using SystemWorks anyway :-). I used to be a Symantec fan, but the bloom has been off the rose for a couple of years now.
by pmshah9
After reading the Symantec official response I feel I must post a comment here. My nephew runs a large travel agency where he prints his own international air travel tickets online. Last week he installed the latest Norton AV on his machine that connects to the internet & the airline ticketing system. The first problem that came up was he could not connect to the internet & his IE would not start. He panicked & called me. I had to make a trip to his city & took me 2 days to clean out the machine, saving all his data & application without reinstalling the OS. It is not an idea I relish, working on a production machine & constantly being worried that something just might go wrong. Of course there was backup of the data & the application could have been reinstalled but in the situation it would have meant having the application provider's tech flown in & incurring a very heavy cost. The company will not furnish a CD to prevent misuse which can lead to all kinds of other problems costing millions.
One thing is certain, not my nephew nor any of his staff will ever allow Norton AV on any machine on which they have control.
One thing is certain, not my nephew nor any of his staff will ever allow Norton AV on any machine on which they have control.
by craigaaa5
The rest of y'all have done such a good job at responding to the PR Spin from Symantec that all I have to say is that those that refuse to use this screwed up bunch of products any longer have the right idea. Never in my 15 years in this business have I seen a package that so consistently could cause this much work to be done that should not have to be done. If anyone Iknow gets a new machine with any Symantec product on it, my first recommendationd it to TRY to uninstall and replace with one of the other products in that area of responsibility. Like one poster said I too used to use Norton products when they were the best around, too bad that is no longer true, as far as an Enterprise solution, I'm not sure I can remember anything so poorly documented and difficult to make work.
Just my 2 pennies
Just my 2 pennies
by mesmd
NORTON- SYMANTEC GARBAGE PROGRAMS, SUITES AND ALL THEIR POORLY QUALIFIED CONTROL PRODUCTSl THEY SHOULD MERGE WITH FRYS NEXT!!
There are just too many people for Symantec to justify all the complaints made regarding most of their over priced products with overall poor performance. This is, notwithstanding, the residual deleterious effects left on one's computer after their partial or incomplete uninstallation.
They know it and $$ is their main concern, not our security. The last time I ever Enjoyed using one of their products had to be back in the early nineties, way before Norton was taken over or merged with Symantec. I think, Peter Norton 3.0 Pro utilities for DOS!!! He should have continued alone. Once together with Symantec, All their products were over priced, flawed, caused computer problems while installed or uninstalled, and today we really need a malware detectorand deleter for any traces of Symantec-Norton residuals contaminating our machines. Their name is mud and their products are pure trash. They are irrepairable and dangerous to buy for the use in a computer. Tkey should be thought of in the same terms as malware, miscreants and spybots, utter hogwash and pure trash labor!!
M.E. Stone, M.D.
PS Please send my leyyer to: Laura Garcia-Manrique
Sr. Director, Product Management
Consumer Products and Solutions, Symantec
by yobtaf
It's too late for a long rambling excuse. If Peter Norton takes it back over, they may be able to regain some credibility.Bottom line: With better products on the market, who needs them?
In my opinion a good share, not 100% but 60-75%, as a pc repair person I come across more machine than not that have problems cause by Symantec software and ones with AOL the problems lay with this software and not the Microsoft OS. I personally am running machines with MS XP Pro, XP Home, XP Media, and XP 64 and have had no problem what so ever.
by j sheesley
Between SuSe 10.0 and Unbuntu 6.06, I?ve been spending a lot
of time playing with Linux on a couple of my test workstations. Although we
have Linux running as a server platform on several machines in the TechRepublic
Test Lab, I have been specifically configured a couple of desktop machines as well. At
home, I probably use SuSe 10.0 on my laptop more than the Windows XP hard drive
I have for it.
When I was talking about Linux with TechRepublic Vice
President Peter
Spande, he wondered what I was using it for ? work or just mostly Web
surfing, games, and stuff like that. I pointed out that I used it mostly for
Web surfing, and that I couldn?t do much actual work with it because I couldn?t
connect to our VPN with Linux and that limited what I could do. OpenOffice works just fine to write and edit
contributor submissions, but without direct access to files at work, there?s
little I can do work-wise. When it?s time to do most work, I just fire up XP.
At least going back since 1999, it seems like every year is
the ?Year Of Linux On The Desktop?. While Linux has gotten better as a desktop
OS, and even though Novell, Red Hat, Unbuntu, and others would love for people
to switch to running Linux on the desktop, so far it?s just not happening. Except for IT guys who want to learn Linux,
or hard core
Linux zealots, there?s just not a very large rush to Linux on the desktop.
You won?t see much movement on the desktop for Linux for
quite a while either. That?s for a couple of reasons. First, there won?t be a
mass migration in most businesses because of the training issues involved. It?s
hard enough to deal with users when they?re trying to understand the basics of
Windows. Can you imagine the mass confusion that would ensue if you suddenly
ripped out one OS and replaced with another? Oh sure, there are Linux
environments which emulate Windows, but there?s still a hurdle there.
There?s also the problem with centrally managing Linux on
the desktop. Although through ZenWorks and similar tools, there are ways to
centrally manage Linux users, it creates an added burden for network
administrators who currently use Group Policy to control Windows workstations.
A third hurdle that goes along with barring Linux making
inroads on the desktop goes to the issue of installation. Windows is
universally installed by every major OEM. Although Linux is touted as being a ?free?
OS, for all practical purposes, Windows is free as well. It?s built into the
price of almost every machine that?s purchased by business. If you check the
online stores for just about any major OEM, you can have any OS you want, as
long as it?s some flavor of Windows. Linux isn't even an option. Additionally, there?s the added fact that
even through installing images, there?s the cost of time installing the OS. The
OEM barrier was one of the key reasons why OS/2 never could challenge Windows
9x.
Can?t the same things be said about the challenges Microsoft
faces pushing Vista? There will be an equally large training issue with Vista.
Vista will present new central management issues. Vista however WILL have the
complete backing of OEMs and be available essentially for free for people who
have a volume license agreement.
So does that mean that Linux CAN?T succeed as a desktop OS?
No. Linux actually works fairly well as desktop, and has improved quite a lot
since the first year it was supposed to conquer the desktop. There are probably
plenty of individuals and organizations that may make a move to it. All I?m saying is
that it WON'T happen in general. There are even more reasons than I've mentioned here why it won't happen. Even after Vista ships, whenever that will be, Linux isn?t going to
conquer the desktop any more than the Mac is. It?s still going to be a Windows
World.
by pmshah9
I beg to differ on some of your contentions. Only reason Win98 succeeded over OS/2 was the ease of installation of OS which also bugs Linux to an extent. If you visit the California OS/2 users group site you might think differently. If IBM had managed to wean away a few of the M$ employees to inprove the installation routine the story would have been different.
With Mandriva 10.1 both installation as well as upgrades have become extremely easy & reliable. I would hazard a guess that 95% of home end users would not miss any feature in Linux as compared to Windows. Should the US government pass a law which would make so called "non disclosure agreements" open to scrutiny by courts of law the story might be very different. The amount of financial pressure & control M$ wields over developers of hardware & software precludes support for Linux to a very large extent. How else would you account for a large company like Compaq abandoning fully developed Linux on iPaq & switch to Windows CE?
Apple failed for alltogether different reasons. There is no way one could justify exhorbitantly high price of hardware for general usability & functionality required by an average user. M$ initially never bothered to curb piracy since they were assured of sufficiently large revenues from the corporate users. This ensured large scale penetration at the cost of other OSes. If Apple decides to make OS-X available for on x86 general purpose hardware you will certainly see a major change in penetration. This should not be difficult since it is based on BSD, available on x86 architecture.
Here in India companies like HP & Acer have managed to sell sizeable quantities of machines with Linux preinstalled. The price difference for the same machines with M$ OS installed ran upto 20%.
With Mandriva 10.1 both installation as well as upgrades have become extremely easy & reliable. I would hazard a guess that 95% of home end users would not miss any feature in Linux as compared to Windows. Should the US government pass a law which would make so called "non disclosure agreements" open to scrutiny by courts of law the story might be very different. The amount of financial pressure & control M$ wields over developers of hardware & software precludes support for Linux to a very large extent. How else would you account for a large company like Compaq abandoning fully developed Linux on iPaq & switch to Windows CE?
Apple failed for alltogether different reasons. There is no way one could justify exhorbitantly high price of hardware for general usability & functionality required by an average user. M$ initially never bothered to curb piracy since they were assured of sufficiently large revenues from the corporate users. This ensured large scale penetration at the cost of other OSes. If Apple decides to make OS-X available for on x86 general purpose hardware you will certainly see a major change in penetration. This should not be difficult since it is based on BSD, available on x86 architecture.
Here in India companies like HP & Acer have managed to sell sizeable quantities of machines with Linux preinstalled. The price difference for the same machines with M$ OS installed ran upto 20%.
by cam
Each has a place, but the drive to lower costs will prevent change from now on. The average user will hesitate many times before sticking with what they know. The cost to business of restructuring is enormous and the push from within will always have to beat entrenched high inetial reluctance. Microsoft has a cohesiveness that everyone appreciates - and that is what you are paying for. When Microsoft becomes unresponsive to user requests, then there is opportunity. But Microsoft have both an entrenchment and a pricing structure that enables it to be responsive and that is an edge against Open software. It is putting a single name and organizational structure in place to manage the "product". NAME: That is a public relations exercise which requires buckets of dollars. While Linux is seen in so many flavours, no-one wants the risk of incompatibility or inability to rapidly acquire the right tools. Microsoft products evolve to a unified vision, so while they may appear to move slowly, they actually just take major steps slowly - but they are in step with their past and their goals. This is a battle of all elements from ideas, development. co-existence with superceded product, common feature sets, communication across products, responsiveness to issues, marketing and brand awareness - Microsoft do it the best in all areas as a team of products. Yes they are large and suffer the inertia of large compnies...but it can enforce cohesiveness. So if you want to beat Microsoft, or match them, you have to examine why their model works and emulate it. Without a common head directing the evolution of products and technologies through enforced standards and API's and a requirement they can fit in with other MS products and extend capability by doing so, you can't get past first base. The lack of a "head" AND "enforcer" in the Open Software world is what prevents more than sporadic adoption here and there. All the most successful ventures in our history have been led by one person or company. Enteprises that have a clear goal usually get there. The focus is co-ordinated from above. Unco-ordinated enteprises have no way of enforcing across the board...except where people choose to be directed. Let ideas come from where they will - in the Open world...fine. It is a clever body of innovaters. But recognise that the sheer numbers of people that use MS product means that the MS community is a valid one. So accept it...work with Linux or MS Windows...whatever. But don't work with a mind to change the world - it is Microsoft's time. Put the energy into learning to work with and extend where you as an innovator see fit. Being able to work 100% within the MS environment with your Open Software innovation makes everyone richer. When two countries learn to trade with each other instead of invading, both countries benefit. Japan has gone a lot further joining the Western world than it ever did fighting it. Same for Linux.
by sdarsey
I do use Ubuntu about %25 of the time. I do connect to my office and our server locations via VPN. One using PPTP-Linux and the other using the Cisco linux VPN client.
Next time you're running Ubuntu, open Synaptics and search for PPTP. If it isn't installed, install it. Then Google for PPTPConfig. That is a GUI version that seems to work only if you are running a stock version of Ubuntu. I can't help you with Suse.
I agree that desktop linux is not likely for some time. Specifically since granma can buy an appliance that has windows for the OS. They don't care, they just want to see pictures of the granbabies. Come to think of it, I wonder how many Linspire boxes wally world has sold to the masses?
Steve
by dlragsdale
In contrast to what most "nerds" may think, there should always be a realistic way of thinking about things. Like it or not, we will be looking through "Windows" for a while.
Hello,
I have been using Linux for going on 9.5 years, and I love using it, Hey I still have my old Slackware (Infomagic) box acting as a file server in my home. While I love Linux in all of it flavors, I must admit that after all of this time Linux is not for Joe and Jane America, who just wants to browse the Internet and read E-mail. I think that the problem with most of the hardcore Linux users is that they are using themselves as examples of the average user, which they are not. The average user does not care what file system they are using, most don?t know or care about what a file system is. I remember one day a coworker of mine was using a UNIX system GUI and needed to find a line in a find, I said that I would help her GREP for the line, and she thought I was hitting on her, this really happened! Now, What I do believe is that if you totally encapsulate Linux in a GUI platform, which was intuitive enough that it would do all of the UNIX/Linux stuff behind the scenes while allowing the user to just point and click without worrying about dependencies, processes, or any of the numerous UNIX/Linux functionality issues you could put that out on the market as a desktop contender, in fact that is what Apple did with the Mac OS X. Now if someone would just make a true Linux based Mac (not just Linux running on a Mac), I think you?ll have a real winner, in other words never having to see a: James @Talkfest James% prompt unless The person wants to.
This is just my opinion.
Linux is ok for people who like and appreciate Linux and computers, but for the general public, the Mac running Mac OS? and the IBM based PC running Windows? , are the only games in town. For Now!!
I've had similar experiences to the author's. I've been looking for a Linux Desktop"Silver Bullet" for a long time and I haven't found it. There always seems to be something that you can't do (or that an average user couldn't do) that makes me sigh and go back to my XP desktop. As an example, when Novell introduced SLED10 a few weeks ago I thought "AHA! Maybe this will be the one." I downloaded it and installed it on my system alongside SUSE 10.1 and XP. I spent the first 4 or 5 days in it as much as I could. But mostly doing email, web browsing, and light Office work. Then "the Snag" appeared. I hit a web site from one of our vendors that required Flash to view. My version in Firefox was too old. It asked if I wanted to upgrade. No big deal, right? Windows users do this kind of stuff every day.
Well, it was an ordeal. It didn't upgrade on the spot. I was taken to Adobe's web site where I was presented with a selection to download. I did and the file was placed on the desktop. After I read the install instructions I got the file open and discovered Iwas installing through a terminal window through the command line. And to top it all off I needed to answer a series of questions which included a location to put the extracted files. That should have been fine except that at the command line you aren't given any default or a browse button to go find the correct location. Anyway, I got the program installed and loaded up Firefox again (I had to shut it down to do this) and found my way back to the website I had been trying to view. (It's been a half hour now since I started this.) And guess what? I still can't view the site because the version of Flash I just installed is still not right! Seems the Linux version is a rev behind the Windows version. So there I sat, 45 minutes virtually wasted.
Trust me, I really WANT a Linux desktop I can give my users. But until it can work as simply as Windows, it's NOT GONNA HAPPEN in my organization. When an average user can't do something as simple as upgrade their own browser Flash installation, it's not ready for primetime.
Keep trying, Linux developers. Maybe we can get there someday. In the meantime, I'll use Linux for play and Windows for work.
Lance Hankins
by dr5cook
What I've always wondered about, John, is why some OEM such as HP couldn't offer a dual booting PC or laptop as a marketing gimmick? Your new computer would be installed with Vista but if the customer would so desire they would install Linux (OEM's choice of flavor)for free! The manufacturer or better the software company would offer some sort of free support for a certain length of time. The customer would have the benefit that every piece of hardware on that computer would work with Linux. Question--is there some kind of licensing requirement (Microsoft)that would prevent this? If I was in the market for a new computer, guess which manufacturer I would be giving some serious thought about buying--one that only offers Vista or one that will add a 2nd operating system for free?
Daryl Cook
by roger davis
Unless Windows gets cheaper AND Microsoft becomes more friendly and
consumer oriented, Linux will slowly become the operating system of
choice for home users, then small businesses, then... you get the
picture. The only thing remaining to be defined is "slowly".
by abruzzo
I have had many problems with Systemsworks and when it goes bad it is hard to remove the complete application. Your solution of a clean install is the only answer. I use Systemsworks Pro which includes Ghost. Ghost has worked for me sometimes but has its problems. The worst thing is the lack of tech support. It never was great but since they went to off shore to India support it has no value. they are saving money and losing customers. So my question is what application(s) would you suggest to replace Systemworks Pro. Disk Imaging is my backup for all our workstations.
Joe Abruzzo (abruzzo@snet.net)
by j sheesley
A couple of weeks ago, I noted the the
25th anniversary of the venerable IBM PC. The IBM PC wasn?t the
only major piece of technology that debuted in 1981. 1981 was a pretty big year
for introducing technology that still impacts us today. Naturally the
introduction of the IBM PC also subjected us to PC-DOS and its generic cousin
MS-DOS. But there are other things that came from that year that are still us.
First of all, the Hayes Microcomputer Products company
introduced the Smartmodem that year. Although it wasn?t the first modem
invented, it was the first that was able to be used on a wide range of
microcomputers including the Apple II, TRS-80 and the shiny new IBM PC. It was
a blazing 300Bps. Because of the introduction of the Smartmodem, the AT command
set became popular encouraging standardization in the modem industry. This
ultimately led to the popularity of BBSes and finally the Internet. Without the
Smartmodem, we might not be where we are today at all.
Another key technological introduction from 1981 that
affects us today is the Xerox Star. Coming out of Xerox?s famed PARC (the Palo
Alto Research Center), the Star introduced the world to the concept of
graphical computing. Like many innovations to come out of PARC like Ethernet,
Xerox was never able to capitalize on the Star, but legend has it that after
seeing the Star, Steve Jobs was inspired to create the Lisa, which ultimately
led to the MacIntosh. And of course, it ultimately led to Windows.
The third and final technology from 1981 that I want to
mention right now is the Osbourne 1. This was the first commercially successful
portable computer. Although it?s a far cry from modern laptops and Pocket PCs,
this machine finally detached computers from a desk and made it easy for them
to be moved from place to place. It ran the CP/M operating system which was the
most popular operating system for computers prior to the introduction of
PC-DOS. It also ran the popular Z80 processor and could support up to 64Kb of
RAM. Of course the main drawback was that you still had to be connected to AC
power to use it, but the basic concept led to a whole new era in computing. The
form factor was also imitated by Compaq when it shipped its first PC, thereby
making the entire clone industry more reputable because IBM wasn?t doing a
portable at all.
As you can see, 1981 was a pretty big year for the computer
industry. Technologies introduced and popularized that year echo down to today.
I?m sure I?ve missed quite a few things. Can anyone else think of anything from
the first year of the Reagan Administration that still is with us today?
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