XP and Fedora Core 6

Since I have to re-install XP and have recently installed Fedora Core 6. I thought it would be fun to compare. Back in ‘99 when I tried my first attempt of installing Linux it was a dismal failure. The biggest failure was due to Hardware recognition. Red Hat 7.0 then later Fedora core 3. Fedora Core 4 became my standard to use. The installs were not always easy, and updating the packages were difficult. The Red Hat rpm installer program was not very helpful and seemed to hang during the download phase a lot for me.

Fast forward to now with fedora core 6. It took about an hour to install off of the DVD install distro. Another 1.5 hours to upgrade 500MB of package updates. Painless, this was the least painful OS update that I’ve done. The only thing comparable is the old win 3.11 days. Then it took so long because of the slowness of the computers. My machines now are 100 times faster than my old 386sx. I’m also loading 1000 times more information than that old 3.11 install.

XP on the other hand…. I know it is SP1 so I will have to do more updates to bring current. It is going to take a lot of time just to get the OS back up to an acceptable level of patching. No jumping from point A to D. I’ll have to go through points B and C. Very painfull and time consuming. I hope I can get everything patched to a point where I can start to re-install everything. I won’t even bother installing all of my hardware back in until It’s patched back up.

So 2.5 hours to install Fedora core 6 and update all of the base packages that I installed. Your time may vary depending on your internet connection and what you have installed. Verses 2+ hours to patch up XP. My base install of fedora core 6 includes the open office suite. It will also take several hours to install and patch MS office 2000.