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The Clueless Newbie's Linux Odyssey
overshoot writes "Just what we've always (said we) wanted: people who are fed up with Microsoft and are willing, even eager, to give Linux a real try. Well, she did. And did. And did some more. Not only that, she's a technical writer and she took notes. Not fun reading, but worth reading anyway."
After finding herself stuck behind the times using Windows 95 in 2002, the author took it upon herself to convert to Linux. After trying Mandrake, Lycoris, SuSE, RedHat, and Knoppix, she found them all seriously lacking and has since switched back to using Windows 95,
If a computer literate technical writer can't even get Linux working properly, how can we expect it to be widely adopted by the masses? Linux is not ready for the desktop.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
At least Linux is reliable and after you get used to working with it, is powerful and useful. And also I don't seem to have so many damn device driver problems as in Windows...with those clueless vendors writing garbage drivers (I'm thinking Creative and ATI at the moment, grumble)
Well, you shrieking geeks
that's a nice way to endear yourself to the readers. I'd like to read some of her technical writings...
Now configure sendmail; you know where the sendmail.cf file is, you twit!
I have had similar frustrations trying to get my printer at home to work. I've never been able to do it properly. Its an HP USB inkjet and it works just find from Windows 98. I really wish I had a postscript laser printer, since those are so easy to set up from Linux. (Never mind that Windows makes it harder than it should be to install one.)
As far as the CD burner goes, she had problems getting it to work on Redhat. I've found that whatever version comes with RedHat is pretty bad. Upgrading to the newest version of XCDRoast solved all my problems. They even have RPMs that are a breeze to install in RedHat. Yes you have to run it as root, but only once. You can give anybody permission to run it from its graphical interface.
Sounds like one of those people who love to complain and are just looking for an audience.
It is so not!! the sophistication with which she is able to pinpoint the names of recent features and *cough* *features* *cough* of some operating systems says that this is obviously a much more sophisticated user, taking on the mantle of an imaginary "typical n00b" and then proceeding to post a wish list of one-touch solutions.
this is not to say that the advice is bad
Rather it is to say that if you cracked into the author's box, you'd find it didn't run Win95. The problem with an imagined "typical user" is that if any of the assumptions used to create this mental image are wrong, we might waste development effort on features that "nobody wants and can't delete" (without recompiling that is, and what typical n00b wants to do that?)
so as far as I can see her complaints about usability etc are pretty valid, but just take it with a pinch of salt...
better yet, hand out distros to ALL your friends (techie and non-techie) with their birthday cards. watch reaction, rinse and repeat.
Let's see 12 distro's tested. Of those 8 are red hat / mandrake and 2 were suse. To give linux / alternative operating systems a try there should be more choices. She never said that linux was her only choice she just thought it best met her requirements. Seems to be that FreeBSD or any other BSD would be a good choice to try at as they meet all the requirements. Or if your hell bent on linux at least use a bunch of different distros just not red hat and mandrake. Doesn't seem like she gave enough alternitaves a try. I'm personally a fan of using what works best, be it windows, unix, linux, bsd, mac, beos, or whatever. It varies from person to person and from situation to situation and from computer to computer. There is no end all perfect for all, hardware, situations, and uses operating system and until there is one, we'll be stuck dual booting or using windows in some situations or whatever. Anyways thats just my two pennies.
Check out my life
First: This article makes some very good points, ones that people who push Free and otherwise Open Source software on others to the point of being annoying (like me) often have to skirt around. This kind of criticism is really important!
... for what Windows users use it for?
;)). However, that's because Linux distros know they exist in a MS-dominant environment. Microsoft seems to offer tips on removing Linux, but how difficult would it be to go about creating a dual-boot system the other way?
Second: The author talks about the need (in her case) of a dual-boot system, and that's surely a common situation. However: What about Windows? If someone has a mostly happy, generally successfull Linux installation on a machine with a few tens of gigs of hard drive space, can Windows be nicely (non-destructively) installed as a novelty or
I have installed Mandrake Linux (versions 7.1 and 8.0) on Laptops which arrived with different versions of Windows, and contrary to the upshot of this article, those installs (dual-booting with Windows) went pretty automagically (though I regret that I ended up with a big never-used partition on each of those hard-drives
(This question is out of ignorance, and is not rhetorical.)
timothy
p.s. A very similar, just-as-damning article could be written about the various interface flaws that infest Microsoft Windows; a few recent visits to my dad, trying to help him set up wireless networking under Windows led me to show him how if I popped in a Knoppix CD, everything Just Worked, but we never did get Windows XP happy with his network.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I can do internet browsing, e-mail, OpenOffice (MSOFFICE functionality), DB with MySQL, programming with Kylix/BCB but what about video games? BattleField 1942 etc. Games are the only thing holding me back from going 100% Linux.
During WWII, Charles Lindburg went over to germany, looked at their massive numbers of factories and aircraft, and concluded that the USA could never win the war. I suppose also, that in 1950's USSR, many people saw their huge building projects, factories, and the space program and concluded that the USA would never beat out the Soviets which at the time seemed more elloquent and "sophisticated" in their approach. But if you believed that people had inaliable rights as dignified human biengs, and believed that freedom was an end in itself - then there was only one way to go.
Well the same is true with Linux. Some Microsoft features may seem more "sophisticated", others may see Microsoft's huge amount of cash and never believe that they could loose to Linux. But if you believe that copying things is not a sin, but a human nature; and you believe that property rights derive from physical truths and not from artifical monopolies imposed by the government - like copyrights. Then there is only one way to go, and that way will free and benefit the people who believe in it over the long run, and destroy the people who don't.
you know americans put saddamn in power right? and sold him weapons?
1. It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
/'s for directory structure. What's up with that? It's almost as if they said, we need to create a new shell that looks like UNIX but is different, so lets randomly change a bunch of stuff.
No, you probably just aren't familiar with the shell. Many very good typists get very frustrated with UNIX because of the need to understand the shell.
BTW - Is anyone else totally baffled by the choices Mr. Gates and co used when developing MSDOS many years ago? The MSDOS "shell" has commands that are totally crazy. Some, like "dir" (and its output) are a little more intuitive than the default "ls". Others, like md are (arguably) less intuitive than mkdir. Still others are inexplicable, like using \'s instead of
-Sean
I see some problems with this. Last I checked, Windows did not have very good tech support, online or offline. The "help button" in most Windows apps is usually pretty useless. And, the author needs to RTFM.... there are plenty of good resources to use for Linux help, www.justlinux.com being one I frequently used when I needed help. The writer falls into the trap that most do, assuming Windows is THE perfect operating system. And, it's not, there are just as many faults in installation as there are in Linux. I've seen many failed driver installs, no/bad video, etc. I think linux support is better in some aspects, actually. And the use of non-standard parts for the writer's test PC's (video card in first computer, SCSI card??) would not be 100% in Win95 to begin with. I just wish writers would view things a bit better before going off complaining about how tough Linux is. If Windows was held to the same standard, the same complaints could be made as well.
take off every sig for great justice
...is a MAN to help her out. HAR HAR HAR.
.. it ain't OS X, that's for sure.
.. I'm surprised this writer didn't note any of the warts of Win95. I remember trying to install Win95 for friend once, and I actually had the stupid idea to CUSTOMIZE the install and remove some cruft. BAD MOVE! I removed something that was needed to uncompress the install files, and it wouldn't install, and I looked really stupid... the installer didn't even so much as give a warning. So WHY did offer me the choice?
.. mumble mumble .. Mac OS X .. mumble mumble. Unfortunately OS X has its warts too, but they are like ONE TENTH the warts of the other two.
No seriously she's exactly right about most of that stuff. Linux usability STINKS. That's right, STINKS. I use it every day (and have since using TWM under 0.99) and I still think it STINKS.
Buttons don't do what they suggest. Documentation doesn't correctly describe
the buttons. Little-used options are usually buggy. Customization is encouraged but if you do it in a way the author didn't test, BOOM! Every programmer has their own idea (read EGO) about what needs to be done and how an interface should be laid out. This is bad because good design is EGOLESS.
Menus are way too deep. Distro authors need to be MINIMAL and not try and shove every goddamn program in the menues.
I'm STILL trying to figure out why you need a plethora of buttons like "Ok", "Cancel", "Save", and "Apply" buttons in config dialogs! What happens if I click "Ok" without "Apply"? And how do I know the author really tested all paths out of the dialog? Many times, "Apply", "Save", and "Ok" all do the same thing anyway.
And KDE uses that ugly "K" WAY TOO MUCH!
On the other hand, I've never had too much trouble at install time. In fact I recently built a new PC and installed RH7.3 and was pleasantly surprised that it basically installed itself and discovered everything. Of course maybe I subconciously knew what options were most likely to NOT work because of years of experience dealing with free software.
Of course once I logged in I started noting bugs by the handful, and reported a lot of them, and even FIXED a few and sent in patches.. but
Interestingly enough, I've had similar problems with Windows, *especially* Win95
Though with Linux I don't mind so much because I get the source code and could at least TRY and fix the problems.
Anyway, in conclusion YES Linux usability and GUI design needs some serious help. What it needs is an ALL-POWERFUL DICTATOR to come in and carve up the system and create a new one with the best and most usable pieces. Let's NOT try and please the egos of every software author out there. In fact I don't even think Red Hat should offer both Gnome and KDE. They should just pick ONE and develop it.
And this writer should stick with Win95.. she said it "worked well enough for her needs". It seems she still has a little "Windows-centric" view of computers to begin with, since all her requirements seem to be "do this and
this exactly like windows". So stick with Windows! I have an old 486 that I use regularly, because it STILL WORKS FINE!
And of course
How to install a USB printer on WinXP (which, being two years old now, you might want to get):
1) Plug it in.
2) Click "Yes" a few times, if necessary.
I haven't run into a step 3 on a properly installed OS.
I have to add that this was my experience too.
Let me preface this by saying that I run a web design company, I maintained our servers for the first few years, I put in my time on PETs and TRS-80s, and APPLE IIs and Windows 3.0 and 95 and NT and 2000 and Linux. Take my word for it, I'm a seriously fucking technical guy. I offer as further evidence the fact that I'm posting to Slashdot on the Linux holy war at 9pm on a Saturday night.
I made an honest go of making my home main OS Linux, but I quit in frustration. The main problem is that it's not that Linux isn't *capable* of doing everything I need, but the tiny things that are slightly greater hassles in Linux end up being a death by a thousand cuts.
If there's one main way I can think of to characterize my regular use of my main OS, it's "freewheeling." I need it to be a transparent conduit in my productivity, whether it be hitting the Net, writing documents, personal finance, etc. Linux was *always* functional, but *never* transparent. I constantly had to tweak little things to make it work, find new libraries, etc. That's fun when I'm using hobby time, but not fun at all when I have shit to do on a deadline.
Honestly, I don't know how you're going to fix this aspect of the OS without doing what Microsoft has done - compromise fundamental stability and security in favor of useability. Personally I hope the debate stops, and we stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Let MS spend their money catering to the masses, let's keep Linux stable and robust for hard core needs.
I think we'd be doing the world a lot more good putting Microsoft's server products out of business than their desktop products. I'd feel a much greater sense of accomplishment knowing that I helped get the world's credit cards onto a Linux server than the world's Mom's on a Linux desktop.
-----
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
Americans live in this cute little fantasy world don't spoil it for the poor guy. He doesn't have healthcare or decent schools so let him have the fantasies at least!
Tsu Dho Nimh my ass...John C. Dvorak, is that you?
Problem: "I think a computer is a tool rather than a hobby.
Solution: Get a Macintosh biznitch.
I find it interesting that Mandrake, one of the distros most often said to be targetting the desktop and new users, scored as one of the worst here. Note also that Mandrake currently seems to be teetering on the verge of financial collapse. Looks like Darwin and economics at work.
#2 Existing hardware must remain usable. At a minimum, the printer, modem, and CD player/writer must work, and the new operating system must make them work without my having to tweak configuration files. If it can't get that far, it's not ready to inflict on the general public as a migration route, and I certainly will not recommend it to my friends.
#3 Existing software must remain usable unless the new operating system has equivalent features to the ones I use, there is no loss of data and data-transfer is easy.
Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.
At least we know she hasn't bought into Redmond's bullshit about XP's features.
Maybe they should have started with this manual.
The author starts off with saying that Windows XP is not an option because it will break his modem, printer and CDR, and that it will not run Windows 95 software. Further complains that newer versions of Microsoft Office won't correctly open documents from older versions of Microsoft Office. Unless the author has a penchant for DOS software (unlikely since he refuses to use a command line) he is trying to pull one over on us.
One might assume that if the author hates Windows, he will be predisposed towards Linux. Read the rest of the article to discover that that isn't the case either.
I agree with the parent. This article is a troll written by someone who enjoys complaining and has little concern for spreading facts.
If you French guys ever stop making the best clarinet reeds, we're going to fucking smear your juice all over the face of Europe, you know....
If version X of a release is difficult to use, why try Version Y? And if Version Y is also not working for you, what kind of a moron do you have to be to say "Hmmmm, Version Z, that's gonna be the one to solve MY hyper-specific and unique problems!"
I was told the definition of insanity was doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Now I've had some bad linux installs (*Cough* linuxppc *cough*) but I take that as an indicator that I have to move on. This woman is crazy!
And do you think it would be so hard to bribe that geek to install it for her?! Just show him a little ankle flesh and I'm SURE he'd do whatever you wanted!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The expectation that Linux will fulfill the hardware driver installation off the distribution CD, when you admit that you may have to replace the entire hardware for XP, is inherently unfair and beyond what can be reasonably expected in any operating system. XP is not without it's major problems when it comes to older hardware ( especially scanners ) support and driver conflict problems.
The lack of any relative comparison in your article to the Microsoft alternative, paints Linux in a far worse light than is the reality. Compare your article to the recent articles by Joe Barr, comparing Linux installation with XP and Windows 2000.
Also, given the rapid improvement of Linux distributions, 18 months is in my opinion, too long ago to represent the current state of Linux on the desktop. See Michael C. Barnes updates look at leading desktop operating system options on the market.As with Joe Barr's article, it benchmarks Linux against Microsoft's offerings.
There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing out faults, in fact any *constructive* criticism over current releases of Linux is both welcome and necessary to the Kazan like rapid improvement of Linux. However, just repeating war-stories without acknowledging either that the issue has been fixed in the lastest release of that distribution, or similar problem also exists with Win2k and XP, does nothing but provide fodder for Microsoft's trolls. I am surprised that this article in it's current form, made it past the editors at Linuxworld.
Not all linux distributions are targeted for the non-technical deployer. For example: Lycoris, Xandros and ELX are more likely to have SMB functionality preconfigured on install.
However, does not someone also re-configure windows for your colleagues? When they log in, is the SMB shares,printers and defaults always pre-installed for them? If not, who ever provides techsuppport for you is not doing their job properly.
Deployment, day to day management and just using a computer, require a different level of technical knowledge, no matter what operating system you are using.
Although many non-technical people to install and with windows often reinstall the operating system, that does not mean that they do a good job of it. I have been too often called in to repair a screwed up home based 98 to XP systems to personally attest to that.
That some Linux distributions, for example RedHat 8, do require a lot more knowleadge to deploy, once properly deployed and configured, they are a hell of a lot easier to remotely manage on a day to day basis, even using GUIs. ( hint - ssh -X root@TARGET-IP ). The quality of the technical knowledge from Linux user groups and distributions forums, especially in comparison to phone support from Microsoft, can more than make up for the difference in relative difficulty. That Tsu Dho Nimh set up a a pre-requisite that no external support was aceptable, is unrealistic even for windows XP.
Dispite the absolute terror of the Microsoft advocates, Linux is NOW a more than adequate as a desktop for the enterprise, a replacement for XP and an upgrade from window98 and NT4.
At work , we have upgraded 80% of our ghosted win98se desktop from Microsoft Office 98 to StarOffice6 and Mozilla
She should try a mac. It's the *nix for the rest of them.
Doesn't the side of a Linux Box state the Minimum IQ requirements alongside the CPU and memory requirements?
All kidding aside, she essentially tried installing it on some crap hardware without having an either net access to search the newsgroups for solutions or having the geek that gave her the distros on hand.
Another thing I would note is that the best technical writers are essentilly retarded monkeys. Nothing personal, but the best tech writers and testers are retarded monkeys.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Spare me your "how much more enlightened, knowledgeable and confident I will be if I know the intimate details of my computer if the installation is treacherous!" speech. ... Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.
Fine, give the Office Super Geek $50 to put Red Hat 7.x or 8.x and Open or Star Office on the "bonepile" motherboard. It will dual boot, print, write her CDs, modem and all that jazz. If he/she/psuedo-name was in Baton Rouge, I'd do it for them.
-Hugh Whenn Ivan. (say that out lound until you get it)
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Lesse, I'm having some memory problems... /* $Id: dma.c,v 1.7 1994/12/28 03:35:33 root Exp root $ /proc/dma. /proc/dma patches. -- Hennus]
/* A note on resource allocation: /*
Oh, I've got the manual! Right here!
2 * linux/kernel/dma.c: A DMA channel allocator. Inspired by linux/kernel/irq.c.
3 *
4 * Written by Hennus Bergman, 1992.
5 *
6 * 1994/12/26: Changes by Alex Nash to fix a minor bug in
7 * In the previous version the reported device could end up being wrong,
8 * if a device requested a DMA channel that was already in use.
9 * [It also happened to remove the sizeof(char *) == sizeof(int)
10 * assumption introduced because of those
11 */
21
22
23 *
24 * All drivers needing DMA channels, should allocate and release them
25 * through the public routines `request_dma()' and `free_dma()'.
26 *
27 * In order to avoid problems, all processes should allocate resources in
28 * the same sequence and release them in the reverse order.
29 *
30 * So, when allocating DMAs and IRQs, first allocate the IRQ, then the DMA.
31 * When releasing them, first release the DMA, then release the IRQ.
32 * If you don't, you may cause allocation requests to fail unnecessarily.
33 * This doesn't really matter now, but it will once we get real semaphores
34 * in the kernel.
35 */
36
37
38 spinlock_t dma_spin_lock = SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED;
39
40
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Well, I tried Mandrake, and it honestly didn't seem to have any real benefit over WindowsXP other than the dozens of cool freeware games that came with it. For normal work, WindowsXP gets the job done fast enough and is perfectly stable. Plus, even though it's "bloatware" it's a lot faster than emulating windows apps from Linux. When both OSes are free (heh heh heh) I don't see any compelling reasons to use Linux instead of WindowsXP.
Repeal the DMCA!
I'm someone who tinkers with computers for fun, it's not part of my line of work at all (though it used to be, a while ago). I was a helluva newbie when I installed Mandrake 9.0 as a dual-boot on my XP Home system, having first tried Red Hat 8.0 & ditched it after it refused to recognize my sound card. Bottom line being, Mandrake works like a dream. Yes, it took me a whie to get some of the minor details fixed, but everything I needed worked right away, & a lot of what went wrong was due to my own stupidity/ignorance/not having bothered with TFM. Not being much of a gamer, I hardly use XP at all now. Anyone, newbie or not, who goes for an ~entirely new OS~ without at least some basic background research is bound to get bitten a few times. Would you buy a new car without reading up on it first? A new house? Yes, as has been pointed out, Tsu Dho Nimh is obviously someone trying very hard to act dumb, & like a man in drag trying to come off as a woman, is just trying too damn hard.
Because of what we did yeaaaars ago, that makes it OK for France, Russia, Yugoslavia, Germany, and China to be arming Saddam as of last month.
Chump.
Being one of the lucky open source developers who gets paid to work on Linux for a living, I love reading constructive feedback about how to improve Linux. I did not like this article because:
1) It was degrading. I'd rather not be condescendingly referred to as a "shreiking geek".
2) She says she has problems that are absolutely absurd. For instance, "Root gets locked out of files". If this is occuring, then Linux has some serious security problems...
I hear so much complaining about how Linux developers aren't helpful to new users and such. Well, I'm sick of new users who aren't helpful to Linux developers and just sit around complaining about how things don't work like they should and then fail to explain how they should work or make general statements like "all my old legacy applications should just work".
End-users of Open Source software have as much, if not more, of an obligation to be helpful to developers as developers have to be helpful to end-users.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Except that I have it on very good authority (tOSG from the story) that she indeed runs Win95 at home, although at the office she runs whatever IT sets up. Right now IIRC that's Win2K and Solaris, but these things change.
Don't confuse knowing the language with having skills.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Bite the bullet and move to CUPS. I did and while it has its own pains and problems I just can't consider moving back to LPD/LPRNG.
Its not perfect. I would say it has about 80% of the functionality it claims, but that is still about %200 more than I had before. Just imagine, Never having create a printcap again. localhost:631 is your friend.
I've been a faithful Windows user for almost a decade now. Mostly because it's getting expensive to buy software every time I want to do something new, and mass piracy is turning my stomach, I've been looking into this whole 'free software' thing. Also, my current co-op work term required me to learn Linux and Solaris.
:). Once they're installed, I poke around a bit, look for the GUI configuration tools in the 'start' menu, and bang, I can change almost anything I want. Hmm. Just like Windows, where every new version means you have to hunt and peck (mouse wise) for where they've moved everything, and for all the new features you're unfamiliar with.
Ok, so at work we have about a dozen test machines. At home, I have a couple of spare machines. Broad range of hardware, from cutting edge XP1800's and 128mb video cards, to barely usable p100's with 64mb ram and 1mb video. ISA, PCI, AGP, sound, network, scsi you name it, it's here.
So freeweed decides to try installing linux. Ooo, I've heard good things about this Red Hat. Download the isos, burn, start the install. Wow, looks as good as, if not better than, the current batch of Windows installers. Very slick and intuitive (as long as you understand drive partitioning, something required even in the Microsoft world). A short while later and I'm in Gnome thinking "huh. except for a really odd filesystem, it's like Windows with nicer graphics". So, I carry on. Mandrake. Debian. Slackware (ok, that was a bit of a bitch and I needed to ask for help
So, I'm pretty used to installing linux at this point, and with all these different configurations, the worst I had to deal with was looking up how to get an old ISA network card to work. Huh. Just like Windows. Now, it's time to try using some of this software. Holy shit! There's an office suite installed, free! Mp3 player, ftp client, multiple browsers, packet sniffers, IRC clients, you name it. I have almost everything I need, without the 18 reboots and hunting down cd after cd after cd trying to install everything I use. Ok, let's see how hard it is to get something not on this system. Hmm.. download a package, double click it in nautilus, it's installed! No easy desktop shortcut or start menu entry, so let's try just typing its name on the command line (just as I've done for years in Windows). No pathing errors, this is pretty damn cool!
Summary: I've been a Windows kid since the early 90s. Installing linux was at least as easy as Windows (it even told me that 'root' was the linux word for 'administrator'). I can do everything I want, for FREE. So far it's been pretty easy, and I'm hooked.
This writer who's coming from Windows 95 obviously hasn't tried installing 2000 or XP, they're at least as involved as a Red Hat install. (Oh, and for the record, anyone with an older machine that finds Gnome/KDE a tad slow, try windowmaker. Nope, it doesn't look like Windows, but boy, is it fast!).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The U.S. has sold Iraq about 4% of their weapons since the 70's. France sold them about 20% and Russia over 50%. France also sold him a nuclear reactor knowing that he'd use it to make weapons.
But hey, if being a morally bankrupt hypocrite who points fingers is working out for you, keep it up.
Not fun reading? Is this perhaps the first time that you've ever been informed that Linux is, for the average user, hard to install and configure as well as lacking in number and quality of applications?
Not trying to flame here, just somewhat peeved at the tone of the comment, which seems to be whining because *gasp* somebody doesn't LOVE LINUX!!!1!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
My experiences mirror this author's.
Having administered Linux web servers for several years, I decided to set up a dedicated Linux print server at home. My printer is an HP Color Laserjet 4500 which installs easily with pretty much any Windows version; I decided to forego buying the JetDirect ethernet card for the printer and use Linux as a print server instead.
I asked my friends what to use on my AMD K6-2 300 that had been commandeered for the purpose of running Linux (no dual-boot attempts here.) They said "Debian." I shouldn't have listened.
dselect is the most nightmarish application I have ever seen. I spent a good 15 minutes reading the help files, most of which were of no use to me. I then somehow managed to exit out of dselect by hitting some keystroke. BAM! I was dropped into a console prompt with absolutely no packages installed.
Aha! I thought. Apt-get to my rescue! After all, that was the saving grace of Debian. I tried "apt-get install kde." Not the right package name. Okay.... "apt-get install gnome." No? I just need to apt-get some sort of GUI!
With tedious Google searching, I finally figured out the sequence of commands to install KDE, and I was off and running. (I think I ended up installing some calculator program that required the KDE libraries, and it went ahead and installed KDE for me.)
I rebooted and was dropped into KDE.... exxcept that Debian wouldn't detect my USB mouse. I ended up having to go into #debian on freenode and get the instructions on how to edit some mouse configuration file just to make Debian understand that my mouse was on a USB port. After my mouse worked, I started using Debian, except that I got this weird C error dialog whenever I ran any application. I gave up and tried Red Hat 7.3 (then the latest) instead.
Red Hat was much easier for me to use. It detected my mouse during the install program, which was nice. However, it didn't detect my printer. I finally got the printer installed under the "control panel" sort of thing that KDE had, only to find out that most of the computer's applications didn't recognize that I was using CUPS! I went back to IRC and asked what the deal was. "Oh, that's normal," was the response. "If you set up the printer under KDE, only KDE applications will recognize it! Then you have to go in and tell all your other applications that the printer is now defined under CUPS instead of LPR. A window manager doesn't control your entire system! You should learn the difference between a window manager and the underlying OS."
By this time, I was miffed. If I set up a printer in Windows or Mac OS under the Control Panel, all the applications realize that that printer is now my default printer. Why in the world couldn't Mozilla (to use one example) do this? As far as I was concerned, the GUI control panel was the system control panel. To force users to learn the difference between window managers and the underlying OS and to force users to understand that changes they make in the window manager won't apply to the entire OS is a usability gaffe of such proportions that it hasn't been committed since Windows 95 took DOS out of the picture 8 years ago.
It took me several more hours to set up Samba to share my printer out to my Windows XP box, most notably because of a bug in Samba that prevented sharing printers to Windows XP. I then had the printer working with over 7 hours of work. It was a very long day for me.
I used the print server successfully for a few weeks. I then went away for Christmas and turned the computer off. When I came home and turned it on, there was no print server (and yes, I'd made sure that all the correct services were set to run on startup, which was yet another annoyance I had to consider in the 7-hour setup process.) Instead of being frustrated, I remembered that I had an old Pentium 75 in the garage that ran Windows 95. 15 minutes later, I had downloaded the Windows 95 drivers from HP's website, clicked the "enable printer sharing" button,
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
...I seem to be able to install almost any form of *nix on practically any machine, and it usually works. Kinda spooky if you ask me. I will admit that not every component works, but I generally have a usable system. I have walked up to a machine that someone else had a failed install and it works for me. I started with Mandrake 7.2 on an Inspiron 3800. Over the past few years I have tried, Red Hat, Lycoris and Debian (Gentoo and Slackware don't seem that forboding now). I was even happy with getting FreeBSD 4.5 running, even without network access. I will admit I generally stick with the defaults on install, and it seems to work. I just installed Mandrake 9.1 on the laptop, and let it repartition WinME. And whaddya know, it worked!
In Soviet Russia, Nigel makes plans for you!
First of all, I suspect that some of the more "user-friendly" distributions already support most of those features. What I'd like to have is a nice front-end to know what packages do what and to be able to easily install them. This means having a utility in X to automatically download and install packages.
.TXT files, or .PDF files. This means a book. While the author of the article doesn't seem to consider it important, it can be invaluable.
Second of all, I'd like to suggest Lindows or Xpde. Neither is perfect, but they tend to do a reasonably good job of simulating the Windows interface once installed. I know next ot nothing about either, otherwise, though, except from what I've read in various accounts on this site and others.
As for the part about setting up a dual boot, even Slackware 7.0 will attempt to configure LILO. It's not that hard to do. It'll even attempt to set it up automatically for you. What I would like to see is some utility such as GNU Parted included in the setup program for resizing existing FAT partitions. I don't know if it does NTFs. It's useful for people who already have Windows on their computers and don't really want to mess with installing it again from scratch to also install Linux.
Also, to be easily installed by the average user, consise, easy to read, and clear documentation is needed. This means a short user's manual needs to come packaged with any Linux distribution intended for the passes. It needs to be printed. This doesn't mean README files,
Lastly, Microsoft provides technical support over the phone. If a Linux distribution is to be used by the masses, it should provide this as well.
It's not just in the quality of the installation program, it's the overall experience and what's offered that makes a new operating system friendly to users. A little effort in these areas will do wonders for getting Linux on the desktop.
Saddam has the same right to possess nuclear weapons as the US has. As far as I'm concerned, the US president is as evil as Saddam. He just doesn't have the balls to admit it.
And who's bancrupt, Mr. $300 billion deficit?
I'll add my thoughts into the matter. As someone who has used computers for the past 22 years I finally gave Linux a second shot about a month or two ago. I had tried RedHat version 5something a looong time ago, and while I tried to get it working, every time I tried to search around Usenet or even BBS's, all I ever seemed to get was RTFM. To which my only response was IWIIHAFM (I Would If I Had... since I had purchased a CDRom.com cd with RedHat on it, and nothing else.) Needless to say it lasted about a week because so little of my hardware was supported. I then went back to repairing mine, and seemingly every other Windows system I came near. But like I said, this past January I decided to give Linux a second shot. I installed Mandrake and had it up and running easily within an hour or so, but just felt like too much had been done for me. I didn't understand the guts. I didn't know how to use the shell. I didn't know how to install any new applications. I felt like I was running on one of those webTV boxes. But instead of physically being unable to install any new apps or make any changes to the system, I lacked the knowledge to do it. Fearing more RTFM's when I once again didn't have a FM I didn't bother with checking the boards, and just dumped Mandrake alltogether because of the claustraphobic feeling of not being in control of my system. The system sat empty for a couple of days while I tried to decide between installing another distro or just going back to Windows, and then after more searching on the web and comparing distros I came across Gentoo. To their credit the Gentoo devs have no reservations about telling newbies to use another distro, because of the complexities involved in setting it up. And with good reason too. Man did I feel overwhelmed starting out with it, but there was just something about it. I literally spent 2 months trying to install Gentoo on my system. Each time I'd get a little further in the install, and learn a bit more. I learned the command line. I learned how to compile the kernel. I learned shell scripting. I learned the importance of Root, how to compile from sources, and install my own software. I learned just how many amazing programs there are out there for linux, and the level of customization one can do to their system with it. I've tinkered with so many programs and the support on the Gentoo boards has been outstanding helping me learn what I didn't figure out for myself by trial and error. This is in no way intended to start a distro conversation, just to point out my experiences learning linux. I've since installed Gentoo on 2 other machines in my house, and have set up several other Linux systems for other people using different distros per thier request. Yes I had a very hard time installing and learning to use Linux. But I'm greatful for the way I did it. Not only do I have a working system, I have the power to use it effectively.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
In other words, Linux installation has to be twice as good as Microsoft's in order to be perceived as half as good. Fortunately, that's not a very high bar.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Really, who thought Linux was ready to be used as an end-users desktop? Maybe the people at Lindows, but not serious people. I'll never own a monitor I don't know the refresh rate on, much less an OS that won't let me see my extensions or system files! The day linux is an endusers desktop is the day after M$ releases thier source for free, and even then I still won't use it.
Yeah, if all us techs in the US are getting laid off at least now one CEO is getting the shaft too!
Morally bankrupt. You just proved it again. Bush as evil as Saddam. Jesus, you are a tool.
Saddam does not have the right to have nuclear weapons. He lost that right as a term of his surender after the 1991 war.
But I suppose in your world, someone who steps on a bug is just as evil as someone who puts living people into plastic shreaders. Stick to the computers and stay out of human relations, you aren't fit for them.
Really? You are? Well, I didn't know that a pasty white nerd posting on /. as an AC was the new commander in chief.
Please stop jerking off while wearing your 4-star air force general's uniform and get a fucking life.
Regular users should be discouraged from doing anything else: PC hardware is just too complex and messy to allow installation on arbitrary configurations. And that's as true of Windows as it is of Linux.
My goodness... is this so hard to understand? If the US makes money off Saddam, why shouldn't everyone else?
And stop telling the plastic shredders shit. It's really getting boring. I bet the CIA did things equally evil, so shut up.
well done.
I remember my first experience with Linux, bored with windows and wanting to learn more I drove myself down to the local computer shop and purchased a book about linux with a Slackware distro included on CD. I took it home and started to RTFM which took a few reads at spots to absorb and get ready for the big step. The actual installation was pretty much painless. Some my hardest obstacles were that I was using a Packard Bell 486x66 with a pine upgrade chip to run at 100MHz with virtually no documentation of the information I needed to configure X, and the dreaded PPP setup. Mind you this was 1996ish with the 2.0.36 kernel being current at that time, and none of these fancy package tools you youngins got now.
In short and less sleep inducing of then the article: Get at least _ONE_ Linux book to use as a reference preferably one of the huge Walnut Creek jobs with several HOW-TOs and Mini-HOW-TOs to provide plenty of FM for you. Tinker, play, and keep trying as it becomes more familiar it becomes more comfortable. Join a local Linux group, get some support and give some support while making some geek friends. Have a POS computer to use as your lab rat, if it breaks oh well! If you get it up and working good then start on networking it and setting up a DHCP server or mail server or ftp server or Apache server or or...
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
If you read the review of Knoppix, she complains that it doesn't save her printer settings. I don't think that she realizes that the entire distro is on a cd, so there really isn't a good place to save the settings to.
Unless of course you have a floppy or USB drive, then AFAIK you can save your settings.
My blog
I would have said the same thing, except you already did it. ;)
World needs more linux users like you.
Wouldn't want to spoil your fantasy world either. You know the one, where you're better than Americans? The Americans, the ones without "decent schools," that are kicking the rest of the world's ass? The ones that are able to spend more in defense than every other country combined, and still have it barely dent the economy? The rest of the world's freedom is protected by the United States.
No offense to Mr. Barr, but people complained about his Windows 2000 test (and with good reason), and reading through his Windows XP test, I'm starting to notice more than just a subtle bias in the reporting, along with a misunderstanding of some things. (And I haven't even finished reading the Windows part yet!)
Now, before you start yelling and screaming, bear in mind that I run more *nix installs than any other operating systems (5 Linux & 1 OpenBSD, compared to 2 Windows and since we're counting, one MacOS) I just don't think anyone's done a truly objective study.
Trust me, I think this current study has issues too, mainly in that she limited herself a bit too much in what she was willing to look at.
Is Linux ready for the desktop? Well, maybe if Joe Newbie has someone else set up and configure his computer so that there's very little he'll ever need to configure on it, but it's not exactly ready for the first time user to step up and install it himself. I know many people who come to me when they need software installed in Windows (insert CD, click the install button on the window that pops up, read the dialogs, not hard) I'd hate to have to explain to them how to do things in Linux, let alone how to set it up to begin with.
Everyone else has made money off Saddam. Countries like France, Russia and Germany have made a lot more money off of Saddam that the U.S.
The difference is that the U.S. didn't let profits keep them from doing the right thing. The right thing for everyone is to get rid of Saddam. The U.S. was able to see this despite the loss of profits that it would mean. France, Russia and Germany could not. They were so blinded by their above-and-below the table deals with Saddam that they were willing to let him do anything, kill anyone, and collect weapons that would make 9/11 look small.
The U.S. took the high path, despite a loss of money. The whoreish French, Germans and Russians were blinded by greed and anti-humanism, and were willing to let millions of Iraqis die and stunt generations of Iraqi civilization under the Ba'athist regime. All for oil and weapons contracts.
But they are your heros. It is very sad.
Saddam has the same right to possess nuclear weapons as the US has. As far as I'm concerned, the US president is as evil as Saddam. He just doesn't have the balls to admit it.
We invented them. Saddam bought them. Big difference.
The only reason Saddam needed a nuclear reactor was so he could make bombs. A country with that much oil does not need nuclear power. If Saddam is such a bad guy, as the world acknowledges, why would France do that? Why would France be so opposed to another country removing him from power and freeing his people? Oh, that's right: Money.
All the people who oppose this on the grounds that the United States is doing this for money or oil (which it's not, Saddam's offered us oil not to go to war with him before), need to consider the reason other countries oppose this war. It isn't about poor civilians getting killed. In fact, if it were, they'd want Saddam out, as he's killed more civillians than anyone in that country.
I have also tried all the recent distros on the desktop. Unless you want to spend a LOT of time making an endless series of fixes, don't bother with Linux on the desktop.
I've just installed a second Gentoo system. It took me awhile but I stopped being a wah-wah baby poking through Linux distros and complaining they weren't good enough and I just built what I wanted. It's like anything. Don't like the meals and service out? Go to a grocery store and pick the freshest and best ingredients.
In a few days I had a complete system with Moz, OO.org, Ogle, Gaim, Xmms, Gnome 2.2.1 etc. Why days? It wasn't days of my effort. It was days of the system compiling while I was doing something else. And once I had Xfree and Gnome done, it compiled in the background while I used the system for other things.
Is Linux bad because all these people try it then cry about how it's not working perfectly? No. Linux is actually GOOD because all these noobs are actually thinking of trying it! Would a few scripts and example tutorials help? Maybe. And by tutorials I don't mean howto's, I mean the openoffice document I created as I went through my Gentoo installs on two machines and recorded all the little things about fonts, mounting zip drives etc. that could easily be part of one document vs spread in a bunch of different docs.
Hardware has a lot to do with problems. A lot of BSODs are caused by sucky drivers, overheating (crappy cases, bad heatsink fans) and cheap RAM. My mother started having a lot of BSODs on her windows box. Guess what happened? My father had seriously upgraded the insulation in the house and routed a new heat vent into her room. A few bencmarks of motherboard and ambient temps showed it was more than enough to push the system over the edge. Was it a windows problem? No. It was a cold Candian winter + old folks who like warm rooms + handyman upgrades his insulation problem.
Linux can struggle with all those things, too. I discovered my RAM was overrated on speed (memtest86 failures in tests 5 and 8) and had to crank it down to get through long compiles without segfaults. I really should get some decent RAM.
The other thing about Gentoo which is interesting (and has nothing to do with intrinsic value) is that as it forced me to assemble my system and pay attention to doing it, I was far more likely to poke around to resolve any issues that popped up and to stick with Gentoo in the long term.
Maybe downloading all these iso's makes it too easy to try it, decide you don't like it, then bitch about it over the Internet like you're someone who matters.
Take my word for it, I'm a seriously fucking technical guy. I offer as further evidence the fact that I'm posting to Slashdot on the Linux holy war at 9pm on a Saturday night.
fucking classic.
A lot of her complaints are of course valid but I also belive she has had phenominally bad luck. I have never seen anyone have that much trouble installing linux, be they experienced with computers or newbies.
Of course you have to realize it goes both ways, I have two pieces of hardware that work beautifully under linux and were a b*tch to set up in windows. One is a network card (3Com Etherlink III, certainly not exotic), windows refuses to recognize it and I had manually download the drivers from another computer.
Windows gave me the helpful message "Would you like to connect to the internet to download drivers for this device?". Well no shit if I could connect to the internet my ethernet card would be working now wouldnt it??.
Same goes for my sound card, a Diamond Monster (also quite common) which worked without a hitch in linux but required a long and painful driver search (the company doesn't exist anymore) under windows.
The highly civilized french also let dogs shit all over thier cities. Their Arab slums have crime rates that make the Bronx look like disneyland. And their Arabs are the only ones having babies. Their whole society is going to be old french pensioners and young unemployed arabs in about 10 years, with a socialist economy. It is a huge disaster about to happen.
If you think American's are giving up profits you obviously haven't seen the mega contracts the companies owned by Bushes cronies are fighting over. Billions are at stake here. Sure it will cost the taxpyer, yes. But for the firms owned by Bushes advisers it will be extremely profitable.
One thing that catches my eye in this article is the mention of the UI in some applications not being usable at higher reslutions.
.0003 (or what ever *nix app you're using at the time) isn't responding would be nice. My experience with Linux has been major freeze ups for several seconds/minutes while you're sitting there wondering WTF? --Sorta' like my sitting here checking my bank accounts/Slashdot on Saturday night ??? :/
I use OS X, and I love the big shit. Make dialog boxes and buttons BIG (with the option, of course, to make them any fucking size I want). I hate that the dock cannot grow larger than what it's current largest setting when I run the cursor over it.
Oh, and an indicator to tell the user when kGNUUptzip495
Onward now, I think your post is of the "It worked for me so obviously this person is a complete moron/didn't try it hard enough/is lying/is part of a large conspiracy to destroy Linux" sort. I really don't understand why people cannot just see the reality in front of and all around them... hell withIN them. You can not honestly tell me that due to your own lack of problems that you therefore believe that all, most or even the majority of others in the world should not have problems! How many times must people be reminded of analogies like disease control and the court of law (or even better, the scientific method) until they accept that an overly vocal minority does not actually alter reality. Sure some may have differing perceptions of reality and the wise among them will attest to that.
Even if removing your own personal bias you have to then look at who the audience is for Linux. The fact remains that the VAST majority of Linux users are tweak fools that enjoy the details of various systems and really do want to jump into the pasture and wrestle that bull to the ground and rub some sticks together for a cooking fire rather than order a burger and Wendy's (speaking strictly from a technological standpoint). Someone who is not a complete technical primative but yet is not a geek about OS and software details writes this little paper giving her experiences. In fact, she wrote what her requirements were in the beginning. I think key here falls among the "incompatable hardware" issue. Yes, the zealots will miss the entire point (like they miss most logical assessments) and argue that "M$ has some problems with older and even some newer hardware sometimes." Thank you, we are not here to bash Linux in favor of MS but give an assessment. If MS is used as the comparitive factor then so be it. If the probability of failure on the Windows based system (hehe, at least on initial install and setup) is remarkably lower than that of what it is compared to... that is a point to be observed not made excuses for.
I am glad you had no problems with your Linux experience. I certainly hope you never die in a car accident because the percentage of fatal and spontaneous explosions in that model were ignored because of blatant coverups or just a bunch of zealots. I doubt you will die from a bad Linux installation however. (I am sure it CAN happen though, who knows?)
I have used Debian and then Gentoo myself and those have a history of being a little rough sometimes. I have breezed through parts that made many sys admins shiver with fear and trepidation at first... I guess I can thus qualify those parts as being problem free and anyone who has problems must not be up to the task.
I am glad you are finding Linux to be better than Windows in the many MANY ways it is. However, if your contribution to the Linux "movement" is nothing but trash talk and mindless zealotry then please unplug your internet connection. Alienating users and potential users does not do anyone any good except for the choice destroying force from Redmond.
The real funny thing is that when I talk to my family often they have to have me stop and translate (or my Wife does that, she is getting very good). Looking at your post, even I can see many things that make a large alarm go off that says, "Danger! Techno speak reaching critical mass for non geeks and techno-freaks." It really is hard to see that often and I imagine you don't even realize it.
CP/M
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
My experiences in installing Linux have been totally different. The last time I went through Linux hell was back around the libc5/glibc fiasco. After I ditched RPM-based distros, it's been smooth sailing ever since. Over the winter, I managed to hose my installation of Gentoo on my laptop (that's what running every 0-day cvs ebuild in sight will get you :). I wasn't going to have a broadband connection for about a month, so Gentoo was out of the question. So before I left on vacation, I grabbed a set of RedHat 8.0 CDs.
Installation was dead simple. I'm hardly a newbie, but the installer didn't really give me the chance to do all that much. I let it autopartition, autoselect the filesystems, picked my package sets (GNOME workstation, etc) and sat by while it installed. I occasionally had to swap discs. The bootmanager configuration would probably be a little confusing. There is no reason to really have it in the "braindead-newbie installation mode" because installed OSs can probably be auto-detected. Then, it rebooted do a nice GNOME desktop. The GeForce4Go in my Inspiron 8200 was autodetected. My USB mouse was autodetected. My network card was autodetected. I had to install the NVIDIA drivers seperately, which required me to drop into the command line. This would be the first hitch for a newbie user (who wants 3D anyway). In all, there was one text file to edit (a one-liner). No recompiles. Overall, it was easier than the average WinXP installation. The WinXP does partitioning and filesystem formatting through a curses-like interface. Two of it's options panels (date-time settings, network configuration) are a good deal more complex than the very direct RedHat panels. Getting good 3D performance in XP also requires an trip to NVIDIA's websites for it's drivers. Further, after the install, about an hour of additional software installation is necessary to get the system to a usable state. Once the RedHat install is done, it's done.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Which just goes to show - open source operating systems may be more stable than proprietary ones, but they sure as hell aren't as easy to use.
Lot's of people say Linux is going to overtake Windows on the desktop. Well, ladies and gents, not as long as users like this one have to install 10 different versions in order to find one that's even close to okay, especially if none of them make things easy.
A computer is a tool used to work more efficiently. If you have to go through a million little arcane steps to do anything, I would say that efficiency has gone right out the window.
It's hard to hear, but THIS needs to be the main focus for the next couple years in the Linux community. We have stability, now let's focus on usability...
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Yes, and Saddam bought a french veto in the UNSC with a 60 Billion Euro contract with TotalFinElf.
So the best you can do is "boo hoo, you guys beat us at the money game"? And you ignore the obvious good of removing Saddam from power? Is that really the best you can do?
That probably is a pen name and not the author's real name, but it's not unheard of for columnists to do this.
The author might not be able to whip up a brand new operating system in assembly overnight, but it's obvious from reading the entire article that he or she knows a lot more about computers than the average user and is no stranger to installing software.
We need to get Taco to set up one of those best 10 question interviews with him/her.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Face it: The "right thing" doesn't exist. It's all a matter of your viewpoint. People claiming that this war is being fought because it is the "right thing" (in the moral sense) are either knowingly bullshitting and manipulating other people or just outright stupid. NO ONE (repeat, NO ONE) is throwing money out of the window just because it is the "right thing". If the "righteous cause" is your only justification of the war, then you just don't know all the facts.
You can't prove that anyone made more money off Saddam than the US anyway. That's because it's BS. Just like the lots of WMD Saddam supposedly has. Where are they? Why doesn't he use them? Because he's afraid of the consquences? He's already dead! What the hell should he be afraid of?
FreeBSD, at least as of 4.5, does not have a GUI installer. That means it's right out.
Or are you implying that GNOME applications in FreeBSD magically have context-sensitive help?
You Americans are really bizarre people.
You keep proving my point. You are an amoral tool. "There is no right thing". LOL! You'll be real fun as a parent. Hopefully the mother will have some common sense or your kid will end up being a 10 year-old serial killer.
You're just jealous because you didn't get the contract. As if you care about the people of Iraq.
One fundamental mistake is assuming that Windows is the OS to judge others by. If the author is more familiar with Windows, then she looks at the features that *work* on Windows and compares them to Linux. The features that don't work on Windows, she doesn't use, isn't aware of the problems, etc, so she fails to see the benefit of Linux.
If she started our being more familiar with Linux, she would find several significant usability problems with Windows and might ignore those on Linux. The answer is they are both severely flawed.
Did this user even bother with the Hardware Compatiblility List? I've loaded Red Hat and Mandrake on several machine and never had problems.
I don't give a shit about morals. I'm amoral. And so are you. The difference between us is: I admit it and you try to make up excuses for your actions. How can anyone be so naive to believe the world is run according to some set of morals? You're just degrading yourself to a mindless tool by believing that. START TO THINK, DAMNIT!
And by the way... I don't plan on having kids. They're nothing but a fucking waste of money.
but what about video games?
Virtually any classic Nintendo game can run in FCE Ultra (NES), Snes9x (Super NES), or VisualBoyAdvance (GB, GBC, GBA), all of which are ported to Linux. MAME runs thousands of coin-op games. You can even dance the night away with Linux and pyDDR.
BattleField 1942 etc
The game '1942' can run in MAME or in FCE Ultra.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hey, it's worked for us so far!
Maybe you Europeans should try it, after all the last hundred years haven't really worked out so well for you or the tens of millions of other europeans that you've killed in your moral, highly civilized countries.
I use Linux (Debian) nearly exclusively, but I can definitely see where she's coming from. If I want to do pretty much anything I need to read a bunch of documentation and edit config files. Now this isn't too difficult if you know what you're doing and have spare time, but I can see how most people would find it unacceptable. In Windows and Mac OS, if you want to do something like, say, burn a CD, you just install the necessary software and it Just Works. In Linux you have to find a cd burning HOWTO and figure out how to change permissions so the cd drive is writable by your user (or set the suid bit on your cdwriting software).
My biggest pet peeve though? There don't appear to be any good GUI ftp clients for Linux. There's gftp, which is lacking lots of features and is crashy, and there's something-or-other from the KDE people that's not so good either. Nothing approaching Windows' BulletProof FTP or SmartFTP. So I use ncftp, which is a CLI interface. Works for me, but I doubt it would for most casual computer users.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, really. Do a "/?" on any text-based command and you'll get a help text that's useful and explains the switches. Plus you could do a "help [command]" to get more info. In Linux it might be "-?" or "-h" or "--h" or "--help" - you never know until you try all of them.
/Q - Quiet. Don't print output, don't ask for input.
/P - Pause (equivalent of piping output to more)
/Y - Assume 'yes' to critical questions
On top of that the "shallow" documentation in Linux is attrocious. By this I mean commands that tell you what the switches are when you do a "-h" - BUT IT DOESN'T TELL YOU WHAT THEY DO. Wahey. Thanks. A 1-line description would have saved me searching through the man page (that is in itself almost useless because it's cuttered, overcomplicated and gives no examples).
For example, some of the more common consistent switches in DOS are:
/S - Act on subdirectories.
For my needs (desktop/homePC) linux is much better than windows. Here are the main distinctions: Better support for my dsl, Sound drivers exist (no drivers for XP), cooler looking gui's, no explorer.exe, can burn a CD (XP prefers the coaster industry), Faster for native games, faster for video playing (actually full speed divx et al.), Better for programming c++, and no stalling and freezing. But by far the most important is that XP sucks with my ISP, and my jury rigged sound driver in XP sounds are heavilly distorted and stuttery. Linux otoh has perfect dsl and audio :)
Burn away karma! I have blashphemed against msft's desktop supremacy, against the holy one itself winXP.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
If someone has a mostly happy, generally successfull Linux installation on a machine with a few tens of gigs of hard drive space, can Windows be nicely (non-destructively) installed as a novelty or ... for what Windows users use it for?
Here we go:
Will I retire or break 10K?
so I bought the linux ppc cd's (figure I'd do my part to support the community!)-
and after partioning my drives the install itself took place over 4-6 attempts- I don't know if it was my cd rom drive (doubt it) or the cd's (doubt it) but for some reason a package MAY OR MAY NOT install... very wierd.
So it finally goes through and installs all the packages I want (and I wanted a lot)- so I go to log in and once X comes up, it starts recursing- it totally freaks out! and renders my system un-useable. My brilliant solution (which I posted to their website) was to set the system to only come up to run level 3- then run kdm. So KDM is hysterical, because it plays a sound on start-up and it was so choppy and crappy that my wife laughed EVERYTIME it came up. There was no way to silence the internal speaker- not even if you had the headphones plugged in!
I had it up, and i had it useable. I never got PPP to work, but afte a few weeks I got a cable modem anyway- so who cares.
But the straw that broke the camels back- I had no INETD. WTF?!?!?!? It was no where to be found. I dl'd the source code and if I tried I prolly could have gotten it to work- but at what cost? I mean, I do stuff like that at work, because they pay me. This is not my idea of fun.
I have a yellow dog iso, but once bitten twice shy. I'm thinking of just running Mac Os 8.6 on my 7600!!
oh yeah- MKLinux was a clean install, but ran stupid-slow on my 7600.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I don't get this guy. I'm living in a nice house, driving a nice car, running Linux on a nice computer, and he says it didn't work out for me.
Can someone explain?
wake me when it's an ass kissing CTO.
I will say, from the progress I've seen over the last few years with Linux desktops, they are improving at a fast rate. The distros just keep getting better and better, and I think we will one day soon see a truly usable Linux desktop.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
No.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
This question is rhetorical. You probably use it every day for the same reason I use it every day--that being, although it sucks, everything else sucks more.
But different people have different needs. I'm one of the biggest Linux fans in the world. However, I happen to think after reading the article that the writer would be better off using Windows.
This is not because of l33tness, or because I want to be an asshole. The simple fact is that Linux is not yet ready right now for what our writer needs. The most distressing part of the article to me is that it took the writer 18 months to figure this out.
The reason why no one has tried to make a *good* distribution is that the set of people capable of making distributions (call this set A) is not a representative sample of the population of people who need a *good* distribution. Members of set A tend to be just fine with using command lines and writing printer magicfilters.
People often lose track of the following two points:
- This problem is *hard* to solve. It is a classic chicken and egg. You can't create a distribution until you enter set A, but by the time you've entered set A what's good for you is no longer what's good for average joe.
- There's no rush to solve this problem. People often fall into the trap of thinking that Linux has to grow in order to survive. But Linux is not like other commerical platforms. Linux is the most successful user-developed platform in history. Because Linux development is so open and accessible, Linux does not need popular success in order to thrive.
While I certainly agree that Linux should suck less, I also don't think that Linux can be all things to all people. Some users really are better off not using Linux. In time this problem may be solved, but that hasn't happened yet.I agree that there are many arrogant users out there that essentially expect everything to go perfect for them and to wipe their arse. You seem to be the equivelent but on the developer side. By creating this hostile environment all that is really accomplished is that you prove that Linux developers shun average users and are a bunch of arrogant pricks. As for you bitching about improper feedback I am seeing that you too fell prey to a complete lack of real content and understanding of the problem at hand. (hint: Linux itself was not the issue as much as the reaction of its zealots) That is often referred to as "hypocrisy."
BTW, it has been said by people much smarter than you are I that the majority of even regular software testers do not understand what a good defect report really consists of. How can they when it is known that any quest for assistance is very likely to be met by arrogant shithead responses?!
Please just code and don't interact with users my friend as you will find that you are doing more harm than you could possibly make up for in component improvement and integration.
I agree that it is a mutual relationship that due to the nature of its "business model" relies on more trust and real cooperation. However your angst and tude do nothing to really add to that relationship. I tell you what, if you walk into a room of users with an attitude like that can you really tell me that you would NOT expect a negative response? This user seems to have had such responses previously and you do nothing but reinforce that idea. Shame.BTW, I don't know you so I am using you as an "attack" on the methodology and mentality you display here. Don't take it personal since by definition it CAN NOT be personal. Anonymity is at least good for that much.
In all seriousness, I think the author has broken hardware. The fact that Knoppix, on a read-only CD, behaved differently on different boots, points at hardware flakiness. Anyway...
RedHat: Installs like a dream, but once you try using it you realize how broken it is. Most of the problem is RPM, and the rest is the people who decide it's a good idea to do things like putting a broken binary in an unrelated source RPM. (The jar command, in case you're wondering.)
Debian: An absolute bitch to install, but once you get it installed it's pretty good. Yes, dselect is awful, use aptitude, which is basically dselect with keyboard bindings that actually make some sort of sense. The fact that the Debian team require that all programs have some sort of man page gives them major points over RedHat in my book.
Knoppix: Boots fine on every machine I've tried it with. Someone needs to put an "Install Debian on my hard disk" button on the Knoppix desktop.
Xandros: This would be my distribution of choice for the totally clueless. Imagine Debian with hardware detection and an installer that didn't look like it was hacked together in shell script. Of course, it costs money.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If I wanted to install Windows on a box with Linux already on it, would it recognize and then resize an ext3 partition? No. Linux is able to do a damn good job at that with even the quite sophisticated, closed source NTFS filesystem.
The simple fact is that Linux has a great disadvantage when dealing with the huge volume of hardware that is out there. The blame for that disadvantage is squarely on the shoulders of hardware manufacturers though.
Is there really any doubt that the free (both ways) Linux operating system would not be making greater strides than it already is if the playing field was level?
and obviously by being here I have had no problems... and also as obvious is that Russian Roulette is not dangerous. Anyone who has had problems with it first hand, raise your hand! (note that I cannot see your hand, plus dead people cannot hear or respond... this is much like the system of being stuck in your "insiders" club and not trying to understand what it is like on the outside yet bitching about it). I love Linux and all the crazy tools out there for it that make my life so much easier. I certainly hope I never catch this "selfish, pretentous asshole bug" that goes around so easily in the Linux community.
funny, but since i made the post about americans selling weapons, and im an american, with a really good friend in iraq right now, so eat my dick you spineless faggots.
No, Dvorak can't write that long an article, and there is no spittle.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
I don't see why everyone has their shirts all in a knot over having "Linux for the masses". Why does everyone need to use Linux all of a sudden? Don't get me wrong, it's all I use. But that dosen't mean everyone should be using it. It makes much more sense to have "Linux for the developers" than "Linux for the masses". More developers means more contribution. The masses give almost nothing to the community. So why insist everyone should use it?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Aw, shit. Yeah, use Windows.
Linux takes a commitment. It takes an interest in computers. Maybe someday it won't; right now it does.
I've given up recommending linux; I've given up helping people install it, in fact. If they ask for help, I just tell 'em to do it themselves; because I've noticed that when I install it for them, they inevitably revert.
Everyone I know who uses linux did it themselves; they learned themselves. I know I tried several times to learn linux, with plenty of help, and ended up back in Windows every time. Then, I did it again, but I did it alone, and seriously, and I've never looked back.
Someday, somebody is going to make a good, coherent, complete, user-friendly distro. I don't see why such a distro couldn't go head-to-head with Windows; but for now, Linux is for harcore only. You don't wanna take the time to learn? Stop whining, just pay the $500, or whatever it is, and use Windows.
>Only Win2Kers are cool enough to join my OS!". Asshole. Shut the fuck up.
Why isn't this guy modded down as a troll?
Anyway, these people complaining about her Win95 machine have a point regardless. She's (or whoever, the name is an obviously a pseudonym, say it out loud, and probably a clever troll) has an old machine and most of her problems are driver/hardware problems.
Linux for the masses means the same thing Windows for the maasses means: preinstalled OS. An equivalant review would be someone taking an old Linux PC and trying to put windows on it only to find that she's missing the proper drivers. Now add the industy's lack of Linux support and she has no one to hand her drivers.
Linux on the desktop != supported hardware. It would be nice if there were drivers for everything, but that just isn't the case.
I'm curious. When she bought that PC from dell, or whomever, did they just ship a box with a bunch of drivers on a bunch of floppies with a sticker saying, "Good luck!" Yeah, I don't think so either.
No, she, like 99.999% of PC buyers got a PC with a working OS installed and working components because the manufacturer had to provide a working machine. Whether they installed drivers after the OS install or just got them to MS on time, is besides the point.
All this review is telling us is that installation is especially hard with her hardware. Fine, but that isn't saying much. We all know Linux's driver support is limited.
this is not news or something that matters.
this is just another noob that just got pissed because they couldn't figure it out right away.
i wonder if the writer took the time to read any of the docs. my guess would be 'no'.
I have good healthcare and went to good schools. I have a good apartment and a good car. I travel regularly, all over the U.S., Europe and Asia. I have a good computer, eat good food and take afternoon walks in a nice local park.
America isn't so bad.
Her printer problems are because her printer doesn't have enough ram to print a full page at 600dpi. I had similar problems on my Okidata 400e at 300dpi
Here are here points of bitching and my replies...
...and make sure that the table of contents of a specific software's help file opens when I click the corresponding help button. Context-sensitive help is over a decade old -- I have written a lot of it for Windows -- but doesn't appear to have taken hold in Linux.
>> Root versus Users: Don't show me things I can't use. If I don't have permission to mess with something, don't show me the menus and dialog boxes used to mess with it unless you also give me a way to log in as the user with correct permissions.
Ok, please try to do many things with just "user" rights on a Windows box. Oh yeah I forgot everybody just runs as administrators. Even XP when it installs makes the default users as administrators. Why? Because that is security and when implementing it often it gets in the way of trying to get things done. Just like you cannot run into an FBI building without getting searched. A pain, but there are reasons for that.
>> Feedback to user lacking: A "busy" indicator is needed for all software. It's often too hard to tell whether it's working or dead.
On Windows I have a busy indicator, but no idea if it is doing anything either because the busy indicator does not move. The application window blanks.... How do I know anything is happening? I look on Windows and Linux on the process window and see if the XPU is doing anything.
>> Menu systems: Eliminate duplicate occurrences of package listings.
Fair enough...
>> Eliminate redundant branches (Games/Amusements/Toys; Text Editors/Word Processors/Office Applications), because it makes finding software harder than it should be.
Depends on the distro
>> Why are menu systems six (or more) layers deep in some installations? I often fill the screen with pop-outs before I get to what I'm looking for.
Ever tried to find something on a Windows XP or W2K box? Especially with X zillion apps installed? There is very little difference for me on either machine. And that auto hide features annoys the f**k out of me.
>> System defaults: How about one spot per user to set the defaults for all software (sound, fonts, etc.)?
Yeah I would love that too. When I pull up Word I have define the fonts I use by default. Then moving to Visual Studio.NET I need to define the fonts and printers, etc...
>> Adding and deleting software: Why do I have to have the installation CD to delete software? Why can't I delete part of a "Game Pack" when only a few are worth playing? Why does the deleted stuff hang around on the menus? Is it waiting for a reboot? Why doesn't the installation routine tell me where it hid the program?
That is an install issue that happens on Windows as well. How many times did I have to throw in an Office CD to add, remove or update a couple of features?
>> Before you say RTFM, make sure there is AFM to R:
Fair enough, but that is something you got used to. Why do you expect it to work like that on Linux? How about getting used to the way that Linux does things?
>> Make sure the components needed to search TFMs for help are installed along with TFman pages and TFHTML help files. I tried to search for "permissions," only to be told that SuSE is missing a critical part of the help-file system: "The full text search engine makes use of the ht:/dig HTML search engine. You can get ht:/dig at the ht:/dig_homepage." Thanks, SuSE. That was a lot of help.
Fair enough
>> Applications should not point exclusively to a Web page for help or troubleshooting. What happens if I'm offline in the middle of a 12-hour flight to Tokyo and desperately need help?
OK here a synchronization feature would be nice.
>> Less cute commentary, more helpful text in help files, please. Any programmer who has "please hire me" as the sole contents of the help file for his program is proclaiming his unempl
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
A 1-line description would have saved me searching through the man page
Most GNU programs do have such 1-line descriptions. I just tried ls --help and got this:
For example, some of the more common consistent switches in GNU are:
Will I retire or break 10K?
where do you live?
And, the author needs to RTFM.... there are plenty of good resources to use for Linux help, www.justlinux.com being one I frequently used when I needed help.
Having the URL for a web site helps zero when you can't get your computer to boot, let alone to access the Internet.
Will I retire or break 10K?
oh and btw there are women over there too, who are probably more of a "MAN" than your nerdy ass will ever be.
oh and btw since i made the original comment, i want to know how i sounded upset about 'firing' him? you nerds just need some bait to have something to pointlessly argue about until the next microsoft story gets posted.
Yeah, but your schools are full of Chinese, Indian and Arab students. Meanwhile, Johnny USA is beating his wife and watching the football game waiting for the welfare check to arrive in his trailer-home. Of course, he'll have to kick the dog to get to the mailbox and hopefully not spill his rum-and-coke on the way there. Naturally, he'll be driving his SUV (covered in WWE Hulk Hogan stickers) to the mailbox, and take the chance to shoot a few black people with the M16 he has a 'right' to own.
People in universities != americans.
Just like in Canada, the universities are full of rich foreign kids taking advantage of the system. Don't forget, with 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indian, they outnumber North Americans 6 to 1.
They are ready to live packed like sardines in a one bedroom apartement, work twelve jobs and bike to school just to kick your asses later in the job market.
Good luck. Better start learning Chinese or Indian right away, so your new Masters can give you your orders quicker.
I'm having a _big_ problem with this "just works(tm)" bullcrap. "a computer should JustWork(tm)". Ask yourself this: what does a computer do?
now ask yourself this: what does a toaster do? a TV? a car?
These all have well defined purposes, but a computer is GENERAL PURPOSE! A computer does whatever it wants to do. How can anyone expect it to "just work" when the expected action is not well defined? it's not a mind reader, just a computer.
interestingly enough, what did you say for "car"? is it supposed to get you from one place to another? why is it then that when you get into a car you don't just think of where you want to go and end up there? You have a ton of things to worry about: gears, speeds, direction. what for? a car should "just work"!
OK, I'm sorta clouding the issue here, but I think one should appreciate the complexity of the PC in relation to other things, and stop the dogma that inevitably surrounds the phrase "just works".
With a PC, you have to cater to a large variety of uses for a particular piece of software. In many distros, a lot of work goes into ensuring that the software works(and properly) on a whole range of hardware for a whole range of uses. The concept of "just works" breaks down when the same software must behave differently depending on the intentions of the user.
The GUI install, for example, does not work when I'm trying to do a network install, or installing a server with a text-only monitor. Windows doesn't worry about this issue, because it won't run in those environments.
Linux has to work on a gargantuan set of hardware, especially when compared with windows, more so when compared to macOS and BeOS. A lot of mac users complain that windows doesn't "just work", just like windows users complain that Linux doesn't "just work". The dogma of "just works" leads to special purpose machines that aren't as versatile as the ones we use today. Don't follow it.
-- f00!
I may be completely spoiled from too many years of using my Macintosh as a front end to numerous headless unix machines, but I don't understand the comment about incompatible monitors. Obviously, video cards have to have drivers. But how can a monitor be incompatible?
How childish this group is... "Johnny stuck his finger in my eye... Johnny stuck his toe in my belly button... Johnny stuck his... hehehehe, nevermind Mrs. Crabapple"
In response to your wonder about why there would be a hundred ways of doing something in Linux:
- It's made by developers for developers
What's this mean? It means that it's made by people who care that they can be as productive as humanly possibly with the least effort humanly possible.
So, why not one good interface?
People work in different ways. If you're writing code, you want to use every niftty feature you usually do, and you want to do it the way you have always done so. That's why there's VIM and EMACS (May God smite all who use that ghastly creation) and KATE and CoolEdit and cat+touch and every other thing you can imagine.
However, that doesn't excuse distributions. As far as I can tell, Distros add things that lots of people use. What they need to notice is that they can pitch all of the stuff that is only used by total Linux geeks. Why? Total Linux geeks know damn well how to './configure && make && make install' so they have every program out there at their fingertips.
The main reason that Designers don't do work for Linux is Linux doesn't want them to, not money. In a lot of design environments you have this:
Employee Type Coder gets instructions from Employee Type Designer and does them.
If Employee Type Coder is confused or disagrees, it asks Employee Type Designer for clarification because it doesn't get to tell the designer what to do.
In Linux you have this:
Random Person Coder sees a design suggestion and says 'Great, so why don't you implement it?'
Random Person Designer shrugs and walks off because he can't code that and he knows it.
- or -
Random Person Coder sees a design is, a bit confused, and has Random Person Designer try to explain it to him over e-mail and without any direct contact because they aren't physically co-located.
I'm good at design, and can code a bit, but I can't code a quality program and I know it. But if I put a post on a mailing list, it'll get ignored if I don't contribute something else, especially if it disagrees with what is the current trend in the group and, guess what that group is a group of coders who doesn't know shit about design.
God said 'Let there be' and there was.
Man wrote fifteen thousand lines of code and got a seg-fault because he missed a paren.
We've got a ways to go as far as programming languages are concerned.
Paris. Until when can you be here? I can pick you up at the airport.
Americans are brought up to define themselves by comparison to icons. A threat to the idea that the "American icon is best" is a threat to their illusion of definition of the self through superimposition, and hence a threat to the American self.
Your life did not work out because you can never achieve the American icon that he strives for. I would not fret; you must sacrifice your empathy for this achievement.
is still entirely oriented towards Windows computers. Everything is specifically designed (by the companies) to work...for windows. Not for linux. The fact that linux can get itself to work with so many different configurations without a lot of vendor support is frankly astonishing. Imagine windows, without the hardware market to support it. It'd be dead in the water. If linux got proper support from vendors (i.e. hardware support *cough* HP Scanjet anyone? *Cough*) it would be a much cleaner experience for a newbie. Mandrake 9.1 improved the install a LOT, and the nice fonts are definately an improvement over 9.0. So, of course, take her review with a grain of salt...She's using old distros, when linux is something constantly evolving. Windows has a completely different product design than linux does, with it's pros and cons.
I say, it works easier if you unplug the power and use vasoline.
Oh yeah, about free software. It's far more transparent than something that I can't tweek. Ease of use is comming and it won't disturb stablity at all. An excellent example of that is the program "abcde". Linux on the desktop rocks. Once you get it configured or, gasp, pay someone to do it for you.
The one thing all your problems have in common is you.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
this weekend - it won't recognize my modem, even after I surfed all day Saturday to find the RPM for the chipset used in the modem. The books on the shelf don't even have index entries for "modem dialing" - I can get the GUI (Gnome? i guess) to work, and I can read from the CD, and I know a little about the file structures. I like OpenOffice OK, but...that isn't the whole world, folks.
Come on, folks, I've used VAXs, Amdahls, IBM mainframes with multiple OSs (MVS, VM/CMS, etc.), DOS, Windows 3, 3.1 95, 98, 2000, Novell, PDP-8s and PDP-11s back in the 1970s, I got my degree (BSCS) back in 1984 and RedHat has got me beat!
I'm going back to work, and I'll be using Oracle 8i and 9i, Pl.SQL, XML, Powerbuilder, C, Java, WebSphere, Eclipse and NOT Linux. If I can't get it installed and running over a single weekend, it isn't worth wasting the CD blanks downloading it, much less the connect time!
Let me know when it works, guys, and I'll try it again. But don't call me until you're sure it works! And her article is right ON!
JR
As for the AC post I think that was covered as well but perhaps you are one of those who decides that when you can't argue with facts or insight you must then resort to "you mispelled 'their' you dumbass" and go about your merry weigh. (get that? good)
Now, with that said... I just want to say that I understand your frustration completely. However I am just saying that if you really look at it you are giving the wrong impression of Linux and its developers to the end users out there. You don't owe them anything more than they owe you. Mutual respect and cooperation raise the bar so that you both "owe" each other. Catch them flies with honey and all that
Take my word for it, I'm a seriously fucking technical guy. I offer as further evidence the fact that I'm posting to Slashdot on the Linux holy war at 9pm on a Saturday night.
By your own admition: Saturday night, posting to Slashdot.
You may be a technical guy, but c'mon, you aren't seriously fucking. Anything.
I too have had trouble installing Linux though I haven't tried installing lots of different distribution and versions.
... this installation problem is fixable.
I too have had trouble installing windows...
It crosses my mind that perhaps most of my frustration in windows is in using the software.
Perhaps I just haven't used Linux enough to find this frustration in use.
At any rate, windows is a closed system and that means most all people can't do much about fixing things. Linux on the other hand is an open system and that means it's fixable....
That is
What is needed is a methodology, an approach, a consistant and agreed upon way to do things like install and upgrade/add/delete packages.
What is Linux but a kernel and software packages..... running on and controlling various hardware elements. Perhaps having to handle more than one user and their individual settings...
Rather than different distributions doing things differently there should be an effort to add differences to something like a database that is accessed for such installations, etc..
consistancy counts lots towards user ease of use and upgrading ability.
It'd be wonderful to be able to upgrade or crossgrade to another distro/version without concern of messing things up royal.
yea our poor people even live better than most of the world... still doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement...
If this is a real users and not some set-up by a journalist then I really gotta wonder what she expects from life in general! I can't imagine that she calls tech support (at work, for a product she bought, whatever) and starts off the conversation with "Hey, Shreiking Geek! Fix my computer!". Does she roll into the service station with a flat tire and say "Hey, Grease Monkey! Change my tire... and be quick about it!! Frankly, if my momma knew I talked to support staff that way, she'd (rightfully) smack me silly!
I'm new to Linux, but the only time I had trouble with installs is with old hardware (a Dell 4100CX) and distros (Slackware and Debian) that, after thirty seconds of research on the distro's website, I found the warnings that it was for advanced Linux users. The fact that these distros even give me the option to install Linux on an old laptop with no CD drive is a testament to the developers. Do ya think I could install XP on that laptop, or OS X on a Mac II?
Every other version of Linux... which I'll admit has only been YDL 2.3 on a Lombard PB and a 9600 and Red Hat 8.0 (and now 9.0) on my home built AMD PCs... has been trouble free. Red Hat 8.0 and 9.0 have to be the most user friendly OS installs (behind OS X) that I have ever seen (and I've had my share of Winblows installs (3.11 through ME). No! Printing didn't work right out of the install, but it doesn't with OS X either! And ya know, sometimes you may actually have to open the Prefs panel and select a modem script or a screen resolution!!! Yeah, I've complained on /. before about some of the odd interfaces with Linux desktops and the multiple installs of GUIs (KDE and Gnome) and software (KOffice, Open Office, Kate, AbiWord) for newbies , but ya can't beat "free" (as in the cost of the 3 CD-Rs to burn the ISOs!) with all that Linux gives you!
Here's some advice: buy a newer used computer! What the heck do they pay "technical writers" anyway!?! Heck, I see Dell desktops with 7 - 900 mhz PIIIs for 300 bucks!
Asking any OS to install on old outdated hardware is asking for the impossible
-A
The "work out" was an assesment of European "civilization" as a collective, just as the original post criticized the collective ability of Americans to go to school and get medical treatment.
As a collective, European "civilization" has been a trainwreck, especially in the last 100 years. You had ethnic cleansing there just 5 years ago. Just 15 years ago you had electric fences keeping people trapped inside police states. This is the collective failure that I'm talking about.
However, you and your overabundance of "empathy" would find this hard to understand.
we better all get on this and make free alternatives to MS better and faster before... uhh... before... before we get bored and make the robots do it for us.
;)
seriously -- why do we have to hurry? it'll be nice to sleeze up all slow and then wake up one day and the world is ours.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
The fact that it can be freely copied isn't going to 'save' Linux. Looking on the title page to my copy of 'J.V. Stalin- Works Volume 7, 1925' I don't see a copyright there either. Just 'Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954'. No copyright.
It doesn't matter that there isn't a copyright notice. The requirement of copyright notice is specific to USA before 1980 or something. If the work comes from another country their rules apply to you because of international conventions.
Except if Soviet Union had the same unusual condition for copyright protection, which I don't know.
Personally, I'm not a Linux fan at all but the person who wrote that has to be a complete moron!
I'm not a Linux fan cause I don't 'hate' windows or anything non-linux and mainly because I like *BSD's development model better, the less restrictive open soruce license and cleanlyness.
I used to use Linux back in the days of slackware 3.x... or was it 2.x? - until I discovered FreeBSD and then OpenBSD.
Most Linux users find OpenBSD to be too hard but the more intelligent ones actually see that it's 100 times better in all respects! For someone not to be able to install some of the many hundred over fragmented non-standard linux distros now'a days has to be a complete idiot!
Oh, and that person is still using Win95! WTF if up with that? I'd be surprised if her computer has bootable CDROM support in BIOS and even more than 8M RAM. 8M no enough for Linux now'a days,
but good for cleaner OS's such as *BSD.
Just my $0.02.
- Linux, for those who hate Windows or pretend to hate windows and still use it.
- *BSD for those love UNIX.
The installations you discuss where things work for end users are done by professionals with in-house technical support.
Assuming reasonably current (let's say P2-400 or later) machines, only MS seriously disputes that an enterprise-wide install of Linux of an ordinary office productivity environment onto locked-down machines can't be made to work and work very well.
Just about anyone can install Windows 98SE by simply loading the CD and going with defaults, and chances are, just about everything will work.
In the Linux environment, "It Just Works" is an empty promise. I've been working with my dual boot setup for months and it still can't find the parallel port printer or scanner, the printer is connected through a Startech parallel port card that features Red Hat 7.3 Linux compatility. I'm running Red Hat 8.0 and it does NOT run despite serious attempts by tech support to assist.
While I think these problems will be solved, I think this will only happen because IBM and HP, etc. will spend the money needed to pay professional programmers to write the improved installation software. Since their other choice is being 0wn3d by MS, the billions will be spent.
From the "blame the victim" crap I see here, the Open Source community has neither the interest or I suspect, the technical ability to make a Linux install work on the average as well as a install of a pre-XP Windows OS. All I'm asking is... something that can be installed by a reasonably knowledgable user (I could use a Linux command line before I started, and I'm using nano instead of vi just like always) install, more or less usual environment, no assistance.
Tech Public Policy stuff
a technical writer who is STILL using Win95?
please troll, go away
Hate to break it to you, but a Renault is not a nice car. Neither is a Citroen. Hauh Hauh Hauh!
Seems to me that she's overstating her tech-savviness. I sympatise with her problems - it wasn't that easy for me to get Linux up and running back in the mid '90s, since I had a machine that was assembled solely with Windows in mind. That said, I managed it without having to load and discard 6 or more distributions to do so. If all she wants is a basic point-and-shoot system for simple WP, there's not much point in abandoning win95 if it does what she needs.
So you stand around all day at a milling machine punching numbers into mastercam to figure out angles dimensions for threads? Sounds pretty easy to me.
My personal experience with Linux is vastly contradictory to the negative narratives offerred by many people on the web. I suppose that myself and those that I talked into using Linux were just remarkably lucky. Or maybe we just had common sense and knew how to RTFM.
Besides, this kind of story is lost on most Slashdot readers. Alot of us have been on the helpdesk and/or been LAN techs. We know that the average user doesn't learn how to use an OS, they learn howto use applications. I was a tech on a network that had Mac, Unix, Linux, and Windows users. All of them complained in equal amounts and had their share of problems. What else is new?
"(Never mind that Windows makes it harder than it should be to install one.) "
How so? I have a Lexmark Optra E312L. I plug it in, Windows XP recognizes it. Pretty nice $299 laser printer, even takes EDO SIMMs for memory upgrade.
If I want more advanced control I go out to Lexmark's website and download the latest drivers. The E312L handles Postscript, and if I install Print Services for Unix I can print to it from my Sparcstation.
Really not that difficult, I don't understand what your problem is.
I had an experience similar to hers.
/", as root of course. This was on Slackware 2.0. I was taking the advice of some people on IRC, in #linux on EFnet, and supposedly that command was "the one" to run. What a mistake that was.
The first command I ever ran on my Linux box was "rm -rf
That was my first, and last Linux installation. Don't get me wrong, I've tried to install other flavors of Linux since then, multiple times. Never been successful though. Mandrake installer would always freeze, or something wouldn't go right with the distro of choice at the time. Funny how FreeBSD has installed every time with no problems, and is remarkably stable.
In the end, I bought a Mac. I'm suprised that hasn't been mentioned more, as many comments are discussing Windows vs Linux. Try a Mac running OS X. Awesome GUI, very powerful, and stable. What more would you want?
when I saw she was testing SuSE 7.1.
I mean, how freaking old is that already? I'll bet Debian stable is more current! (Not that I'm going to check.)
I pretty much stopped reading shortly after hitting the following, as the author lost all credibility at this point:
Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to pander to the anti-Microsoft crowd. Karma whoring, if you will.
Every one of the systems described is better than the minimum requirements for Windows XP Professional.
The author is whacked if they think it is going to be easier to get working drivers for their crappy hardware under Linux than Windows-anything, even XP.
I'm no lover of Microsoft or their products, but whipping out unfounded bashing in a supposedly technical article doesn't help anyone's cause.
And I'm guessing that's not the author's real name...
Tsu Dho Nimh?
Sounds an awful lot like "pseudonym" when you say it, eh?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those...er...oh...oh yeah. Nevermind.
I was reading the article right up to this:
And then I switched off. I really couldn't care less whether she uses Linux or not. She's not the sort of person who is worth fighting for. How can anybody act so ungraciously when a community gives her a free gift of software, a free gift of their time, and a free gift of their knowledge, all with the goal of HELPING her? She can go pay for new hardware and Windows XP and avoid having to deal with all those "shrieking geeks".
If this lady is the sort of person that will be attracted to Linux if Linux is made easier to use then I think the current situation is fine. Keep Linux hard to use because that will keep these ungrateful brats away from Linux. Any valid improvements she might suggest are irrelevant if those improvements result in more users like her. She obviously considers herself to be a better person than the "geeks". I think the situation is exactly the opposite. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Step1: download the linux iso's and don't pay for support step2: whine and complain when theres no support to help you Step3: get your half assed biased article posted on OS NEws step4: Profit!! If she seriously put an effort into trying like she claims, she should have PURCHASED support, all of those problems were easily solved with just a phone call.
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
She is technically inept. Her claims are false on both levels - her writing is also poor. I'm betting she is on work experience.
Nice troll article though, just enough nuances to get posted, but a troll none the less.
After a few paragraphs of whining that she couldn't play CDs she finally reveals that it was because the volume was set to zero. I know, this is a newbie and we aren't supposed to flame her and everything, but really, I have to ask if a person who doesn't think of increasing the volume if she can't hear sound should be using any kind of computer at all.
I've yet to try a Mandrake and find it truly goo.d It's very consistently almost good, but that just doesn't cut the mustard. It's Config tools look neat, but aren't that easy to use or reliable. I often needed to edit config files by hand (which I'm fine with, but shouldn't need to do).
I'd think the better question to the original poster is, have you ever tried running Office2k under CrossOver Office? It loads and runs faster under Linux than it does under windows (No, seriously, I've tried it a lot of times on my system). For that matter, Explorer also runs faster, as do most things which Do Run. The biggest problem is Never speed, it is usually just the existence of the application, and most Microsoft Apps run fine.
The only reason I don't use Linux exclusively is because I can't get Streamline / Illustrator / Photoshop / Dreamweaver / Premier / Flash / Freehand / Font-o-Grapher running under Linux, nor is there an alternative for any of them (Well, Dreamweaver can be replaced by Quanta or VIM, but don't you dare say The GIMP deserves to be recognized as even beginning to start entering competition with Photoshop)
The expectation that Linux will fulfill the hardware driver installation off the distribution CD, when you admit that you may have to replace the entire hardware for XP, is inherently unfair and beyond what can be reasonably expected in any operating system. XP is not without it's major problems when it comes to older hardware ( especially scanners ) support and driver conflict problems.
Personally, I think you've got the right idea, but I'd put it a bit differently.
This writer left out one important thing: How long did it take to set up all that hardware on Windows 95? She seems to expect Linux to have the ease of install of a Windows XP, and when it Linux doesn't install that well on her hardware, she blames Linux. Yet it's not clear than any OS could install that easily. XP is one thing, but how much effort did it take to get multiple SCSI scaners and multiple parallel-port devices working on Win95? Did it take some work?
For a proper comparison, this review should have thoroughly discusses Linux vs. Win95, and probably vs. XP as well. Here's what we got instead:
* WinXP supposedly wouldn't work, though it wasn't tested.
* Linux (various distros) was a major pain.
* Win95 works, but we don't know if it was a pain or not.
Unfortunately, that's not a very informative comparison. It's comparing seven years of experience tweaking Win95 to maybe 4-6 hours per distro with Linux to 0 hours with XP or another modern MS operating system.
Mandrake 9.1
Existing hardware must remain usable.
Existing software must remain usable
Exactly what can one expect to meet those two requirements except the ever so obvious Existing OS? This really sounds like an unrealistic setup from the very first page.
My summary would be: I want to use magic pixie dust. Linux isn't it, so I'll complain.
Even if the complaints have merit, they are framed in such a way as to destroy any credibility or value they might have had.
This article left out a very important test -- never once was any version of Windows tested. Did the author just assume that Windows installations always go smoothly (they don't.)? I would guess that if the author had problems installing Mandrake 9.0 (a distro I have installed on all 3 of my computers just by clicking 'next' 'next' 'next' 'yes' etc...) there would also be problems installing Windows.
I'd like to see Windows install a dual-boot bootloader for you. I'd like to see Windows refrain from overwriting your linux partition during installation. By far one of the most time-consuming parts as my former job as a Windows network administrator was assisting end-users with configuration issues.
Enlightening read, but frankly I don't see the author as some one who should be running Linux. It'd be like putting a 60 year old man on Slackware - not a smooth move. There are some people who just don't belong on a Linux box.
Also, shes just plain wrong in some cases. I'm runnin RH 7.3, installed it my self in a weekend with only a few problems and all of them caused by my n33wb status, and moreover I love it.
I don't understand that authors griping about things not working, personaly, beucase I had no issues whatsoever. Samba autodected my DSL modem and network router, my HP 932c works flawlessly, cordless optical mouse, keyboard, digi-cam, all fine. Still fine after I had to reinstall (screwed something up in root) too, so its not a fluke.
Linux isn't ment for the home user so much as a network, but this home user is totaly sated. Granted it takes an agile mind some evenings to figure out why somethings not working and one becomes very cozy with one's terminal window and referance books, but it beats anything else out there to date by a mile.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
I read the whole article and didnt see a single benchmark score! Where were all the charts showing the different FPS achieved on Quake III?
.ini files. The BS about linux being hard to install is imho due to the fact that none of these folks have tried to install Windows lately. Windows NT installation? Hahaha, man that will make you weep.
Seriously though, I'm a bit bored with the linux on the desktop discussion. My grandmother doesn't even have a computer. But I do, and I do things just fine on my Red Hat 8 box. Transgaming's WineX lets me run Warcraft III, Counter Strike, and Diablo II just as well as they run in windows, and I get all my development done without much trouble. I can understand how a non-technical user could run into snags, but saying your not interested in seeking help because your busy or griping about having to type is just lame.
How many of us remember the days of getting DOS to play nicely with a soundcard, lan card, and a modem? I certainly remember the textfile editing I had to do to get QEMM to eek out enough memory to get all those TSR's and drivers loaded. And I remember dealing with Windows
Enough bitching about having to type in a root password. I want some 3dMark scores, damnit!!
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
I think what she wants is a BSD varient. With a nice GUI. Probably by a company named after a piece of fruit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...when and only when a couple appropriate neurons spark inside the skull of an appropriate entrepreneurial computer manufacturer and he/it/they start producing a "ready to go Linux system" which comes with all the software people will likely need and markets the heck out of it.
As long as people have to choose to wipe 'Doze of their box and fiddle with Linux CDs, and getting everything to work right, there won't be much incentive for it to happen. But when a consumer-savvy manufacturer steps in, makes it all just work, provides decent hardware and decent tech support, and sells it all for less than an equivelant 'Doze system, we'll be getting somewhere!
I have written up a Proposal for such a system. Come on computer manufacturers, listen up!
The real problem is the stranglehold Microsoft has on PC manufacturers. The author claims that the user should be able to put the CD in, click a button, and everything should work. Hell, even Microsoft doesn't work like that. Installing Windows isn't always easy - it doesn't always recognize hardware, etc. The problem is, though, that most people don't know that! They've never had to install Windows from scratch, it's preinstalled.
Until Linux is preinstalled on people's machines, this is unlikely to change.
Brilliant, well thought-out and insightful rebuttal to the authors 2-minute experience with and 2 line flame of Linux. After absorbing the deep insight that you provided, I realize that the question "When will Linux be ready for the masses" is purely rhetorical. Stunted adolescents like you will make sure that it remains in a state of stunted adolescence. You should be very proud of yourself.
"Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete." :)
A non geek who recognises XP is not an option
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
I've got to commiserate with her experience. I've just installed Mandrake 9.1 on my main desktop; it installed everything I wanted in about an hour, then I spent another hour tracking down why my sound card didn't work (Soundblaster Live driver installed in the wrong directory...), about 10-20 minutes downloading the NVidia driver and getting it built and going, another 20 minutes working out why Samba didn't want to print any more, and there's probably a few other surprises waiting for me still.
...
My Dad, who's very technically knowledgeable but not especially expert with computers, went through hell upgrading from Win 98 to XP a couple of months ago. It took him maybe 15-20 hours total sitting in front of the computer, tracking down and re-installing all his apps from the CDs, downloading security patches galore from MS over a 56k modem, rebooting, downloading more patches, rebooting again, finding some apps don't work on XP and having to upgrade to new versions,
Then, Mum wanted a computer of her own because she couldn't get Dad away from his... Solution: I spent about 3 hours building a Lycoris box for her, removing every menu option that she wouldn't use, adding a few extra bits and pieces and locking up the box like a drum. She can do everything she wants to do, and has virtually no way of screwing up the OS or apps because I've locked them down tight. Barring something like a hard disc failure, her system isn't going to need any maintenance.
Meanwhile, Dad has found some of the new functionality in XP pretty weird, and is now getting close to having to reinstall again because he's stuffed a few things up. I'm going over there today to try to get everything working again, but I kind of suspect he's facing another reinstall.
*That's* where Linux has it over Windows. Once you set it up how you want it, it can be locked down so inexperienced users can't break it. Using a Linux Terminal Server model, a reasonably competent admin can easily and reasonably quickly set up a locked down office or school environment, roll it out to many users, and it'll stay locked down.
Windows, on the other hand, makes this much more difficult. You *can* lock down the user environment, but it'll cost significant extra dollars in licence costs to do this (a Win2k Server running as a domain controller, for starters). Even then, it's still difficult to totally lock down a Windows box, as is evidenced by the number of user box rebuilds that have to be performed by the IT departments of large companies.
I'd say both Windows and Linux are still too difficult to set up, but Linux needs much less fixing over time. You can't consider the install cost/difficulty in isolation, and ignore the cost/difficulty of ongoing maintenance of the platform.
Of the many OS's I've installed I found FreeBSD to be much easier than both Gentoo and Debian. The FreeBSD sysinstall (although soon deprecated) detected all of my hardware and had good default settings and package sets to make a usable desktop machine. Of course, I'm not sure about a lot of the problems she was having since I don't care about printing, sound, or cdburning (like most people, part of the problem) but I think the BSDs are not much behind linux and are simply at the disadvantage of not being pushed by big companies like Red Hat and IBM.
Back in 1993/4 I installed Redhat on my 386sx. I tried SUSE first but if wouldn't install at all. I had tried OS/2 first of all but it wouldn't recognise my Lexmark printer. Redhat worked fine, ran the printer under some simulation mode but there was almost no software for Linux back then. Win 3.0 came out, I saw CorelDraw 2.0 and I leaped onto the Windows wagon.
That version of Redhat was the last version of Linux that ever worked properly for me.
Everytime I upgrade my computer now I use my old computer to try out various Linux distros, generally Redhat because of that initial success although Redhat is one that fails more spectacularly than most nowadays.
I take a clean system with older hardware and single install Linux (several dual boot installs that gutted the partition tables convinced me of the error of that path). I then play around trying to get a clean working install of any version of Linux that I can lay my hands on, Turbolinux, Debian, Suse, Redhat, Mandrake.
I have never succeeded yet. Mostly I get video problems and never now boot directly into GUI mode. I feel more at home with a CLI anyway (I know, I'm showing my age). I never had a proper modem lying aroung to play with so I never tried to use a modem with Linux.
Many of my problems were video related. The install would often recognise the video card (generally Matrox - I know, but 2D is more important to me than games and Matrox does 2D better than anyone) and fall down on the monitor (either Sony, NEC or an ancient 20" Apple - actually a Sony 20sf I think).
Other funny problems include printing PS code to a non PS printer (the only time I got a printer to work in any form with Linux). Also installing Linux without telling me what my password was because it had chosen one for me (really! this happened to me at least six times because I kept at it until I worked out that it wasn't my fault). I'd start an install, step through the initial stages and then going away to cook dinner for my wife and then when I returned to find it had installed but with who knows what password? Being unable to access anything at all is a bad start to a new OS's useful life.
Another consistent problem was being unable to make any kind of boot disk because I don't use FDDs, I use ls-120 drives which are quite useable within Linux generally except for those wretched manual mounts and unmounts which plague FDDs and CDs as well. That sends me spare! That a pentium II doesn't have the spare cycles necessary to mean that I don't have to tell it that I have removed a floppy or a CD? Puhleeze!
On the rare occasions that I have had a GUI working the fonts have been universally inferior (ie: less attractive and less readable) to those that MS Windows provides although the XP fonts don't do it for me any more than the Mac fonts do (my wife uses Mac - don't hold it against me).
I had the "no cursor" problem too a couple of times. That is frustrating, so close but totally out of reach.
I missed testing the newer Linux distros very extensively on my last upgrade because I upgraded specifically to play NWN and a six hour session of NWN blew up my Athlon in a plume of foul smelling smoke taking out the ATI video card as well.
What little testing I did do told me that the Celeron 533 and ABIT mobo that I am currently writing on because I returned to the old hardware will not install any version of Linux nor Win XP because everytime the hard drives are accessed after the install is done then the whole OS dies (I checked the logs and it happens within very tight parameters but not quite at exactly the same point). It is now running Win 2000 so who knows?
There are several Linux programs that I want to run, specifically those with produce Java bytecode from languages other than Java and I am looking at Cygwin at the moment but haven't actually done anything yet.
Anyway, I had a good laugh at the article because it reflects my own experience very closely. I never had anything on the line when I pl
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
The problem I see with linux distros today is all are either attempting to please computer newbies or linux pros. In order to increase linux's market penetration, they need to try to appeal to the user who not only knows about linux but also is willing to try linux (which excludes almost every general Windows user out there). It's pointless to try to appeal to a guy who's only moderately acquainted with Windows or computers in general; that person will either not know about Linux or will not be ready for another, more complex, OS.
Drop the cheesy explanations of what a "window" and "cursor" are, and make a Linux distro for the "pro" Windows users who might actually give Linux a chance.
Linux is not meant for users, like her. It is meant for nerds who need to feel superior to the proles. It is their compensation for being picked on in high school: they get to pick on 'noobs' who are more 'clumsy' than they are with computers.
The real question is whether Linux' problems are systemic like MS and security bugs. I don't really think so, and I think a lot of people are trying to make a difference here. Your right about the complexity of the problem, and it isn't helped that most current Linux users are more interested in getting the latest and greatest variety of tools and are willing and able to do a little investigation to make something work or select the best of several options. This actually makes things progress faster to the point that mortals can run it on their own.
To everybody who says "I never have problems installing linux", let me point out that this doesn't mean that nobody has problems. I don't have problems either (most of the time) but obviously some people do. Rather than acting all defensive and saying "Microsoft sucks too" why not see if anything can be done to improve things?
Also it doesn't make sense to say "what do you expect for free". If I pay RedHat or SuSE for a distribution I expect a certain level of quality. I wouldn't blame the authors of the individual GPL'ed packages, but I would blame the distribution people who let packages get on their CD without adequate QA.
To the distributors that the author specifically mentions, I hope you are taking advantage of this free QA. Either she is lying about the problems she had (what would be the point of that) or these problems really happened. If they did they should be fixed. Bugs are bugs.
The conclusion of the article is that Linux isn't ready for the mass market. If you disagree, fine, but don't claim it's perfect or more stable than Windows and therefore the whole article is BS.
A Renault Clio Sport is. drool.
Another recomendation. If you are going to have one or more printers, that you would like two or more computers in your house to use, get a network print server for your printer.
I have used multi-port print servers, and printer network cards, and have found both to be acceptable for most tasks. I have even seen them built into wi-fi APs so you may be able to use a single device to provide both services. (If you do I recomend that you do not use that same device as a broadband router, unless the documentation gives you a nice easy way to prevent or restrict remote users from printing to you printer.)
I am currently using a print server with one parallel and two usb ports, with a usb-parallel adapter to support two parallel port printers. (already had the usb-parallel adapter.) I went this route because it was less expensive (even if I were to buy two usb-parallel adapters to go with it) than the three parallel port print servers. It's small, sits in the office with the printers, is low power (meaning that I am not leaving a computer powered up to make these printers available) and is a workable target for every operating system I am using as an lpd and iss print server. It even supports AppleTalk if I have the printer drivers for my Macs.
Why do I bring this up? Once you install a printer on the network, (other than possibly some win-printers) you pretty much never have to worry about what printer port mode (std, ecp, epp) the printer supports or allows.
Caveat, while you are welcome to test this on the Lexmark Zx1 and Zx2 printer lines, I would recomend making sure that you can return the print server, or the printer at your option. These are WinPrinters and while they may work with Linux on a parallel port, I have not had good luck with them on print servers of any type. Fourtunately the low end of these are generally disposable as the replacement ink cartridge for them is more expensive than the printer itself is. (Z11, Z12, Z32 as examples, the Z5x set start to get a bit more expensive.)
Then again, all this is just my opinion. Make your own choices based uopn your own opinions and observations.
-Rusty
You never know...
MS offers support? Maybe to businesses. As someone with two completely legitimate running copies of WinXP--one laptop, one desktop--I can say that I've looked, and there's no way to get actual real live support from Microsoft for them. I have to go to the vendor. What do the vendors say? "System restore. If that doesn't work, reformat."
The up side is that WinXP *does* recognize all manner of hardware without so much as blinking at it, and so on. Which is largely why I still use it, at the moment.
But, actually, as far as taking a relatively standard system and using it for non-gaming everday things? Linux does pretty well. It's not hard to browse the web, get email, write papers, IM people, that sort of thing. Which is good progress.
No, you can't game, do major graphic design and desktop publishing, whatever, as well as on WinXP. But there was a long time when people said you couldn't really do those things on Windows, either. (Less so in the games department, but I do recall Sierra having a lot more Mac-emphasis, and they used to be huge.)
So I wouldn't install Linux on my grandparents' computer right now, no. But by this time next year? This time two years from now?
Everybody always acts like these things are fixed in stone, and they aren't. Everything changes. Maybe Joe User depends on the status quo, maybe Joe User just uses whatever's most likely to land in his lap, but the future isn't really determined by Joe User. The future is determined by the people who actually want things, and the people who're willing to do something about them.
My younger brother knows almost nothing about computers. He was really interested in using linux after I told him the fonts stopped sucking. He really liked all the KDE games and free stuff that were on my machine back when I was living at home.
So he decided to install linux a couple months ago and partitioned his drive with an old partition magic that was lying around. He then started trying to find a distribution.
I said mandrake was pretty good the last time I used it (8.something). So he goes to their ftp site and there are a ton of CD images to choose from but what they do is poorly documented. There were release candidates and stable versions and old versions and versions for different architectures and whatever. He didn't want to do an ftp install so I told him to forget it and go with redhat 8.0.
RedHat's ftp site was even worse. The website was almost completely useless because they just wanted to sell redhat stuff. [Something that's strange is that most newbies think they go and buy linux in a box at the store and then they take it home and install it but then they end up with something that's several versions old.] My brother didn't want to buy something that was free so he tried downloading linux again. There was the same problem with a bunch of architectures and images and he eventually just started downloading something. He called me and told me the filename and it sounded like a snapshot. I told him I wouldn't be able to help him with that so he on his way to get a different set of images until he noticed that the 8.0 distribution was 5 CDs. I told him that you 'only' need 3 CDs, the other two were just source code.
At that point he gave up. A major problem with linux is that it's retardedly inaccessable if you don't know about CD images and architectures and release candidates. Even ftp was a new challenge for my brother. This problem could easily be solved if distributions would have a 'click here to download' link right on the front page that took them to an ftp site. This business with mirrors is silly, don't we have perl and php and whatever else to do that sort of thing for us? A windows or bootable cd installer for over the internet and some really good walkthrus would also help.
I remember what its like to be a newb installing Debian 2.0 for the first time (ya I know that was a bad decision). I didn't know that by server, the X-server name meant it showed video on your screen. And so I was stuck in the console for a few days figuring that out. After using linux for a long time, I think we become accustomed to the silly terminology that makes windows users cry. Getting used to bash is hard, especially when the text editors are crazy complicated compared to DOS edit. A chart in the initial documentation that starts with "This is what you need to install linux" and then has "This is the linux equivalent to program X" would be helpful.
I still have hope for linux though, last week I was doing a comp sci project on my machine and my partner saw me load up gFTP. "Did you register that?" he asked. And I replied mightily "Almost everything in linux is free!" and he was impressed. Free software that doesn't crash or run lots of stuff in the background for no reason or just suck in general still has a huge potential market, the people making just have to get their act together. It doesn't have to be really simple or look like a Fisher Price playset, we just need some decent documentation, explanation and support.
Let me put my cards on the table. I am a technical person by profession, although I am also a Registered Nurse. I work in Health Care IT. I have been using micro's since the Heathkit system that an EE (elec engineer) friend of mine assembled and shared access with me back in the early 80's. I was on terminals for various big iron before that. I bought an XT clone for $1000 in 1989, I have bought at least a machine a year since then, including a Osbourne luggable, a Classic Mac, and a TR-80.
Windows' charm is that it boots up in a bewildering array of hardware combinations. This is good for selling windows licenses, but it comes at a huge sacrifice to stability, customability, and overall performance. Users have a tendency to blame system failures on themselves, since they figure a big successful company like Microsoft must sell a product that works. This has created a environment for business success that is entirely out of line with the overall quality of their code in terms of the long term use of the hardware. It's not stable, not even XP. Toss around all the FUD you want, my Linux boxen stay up, my windows boxen don't.
I began trying to install RedHat 5.2 early one spring, I don't remember the exact day, or year even, but I do remember the exhilaration 14 MONTHS LATER when X finally came up with a cursor I could use. Did I work on a RH 5.2 installation 14 straight months? Of course not, I tried it, gave up, went back, gave up, went back, etc, etc.
Why did I have this sudden flush of success? I tried it on a friend's machine (different video card). Hmm, at that point I began to buy hardware based on what was known to work well with xfree86 and the latest stable kernel. My friends who prefer windows think I am putting the cart before the horse, but I don't.
I now have two machines in my home, one is Red Hat the other is XP. The RH machine I use for Internet traffic, the XP box serves as an entertainment and video editing station. I don't connect the XP box to the Internet (the MAC address is filtered at the router) except to visit windows (and antivirus) update sites about once a month.
If you were to turn on a TV, and it failed to come on, or it stoped working after it had been on for a while, you take that piece of crap back to the store and demand a refund or replacement. It's an appliance, it is supposed to come on.
Computers, on the other hand, because of the component options aren't seen as appliances but as complex interdependant systems configurable to the user's requirements. Consider what life might be like if you bought the components of your TV, assembled them, and then wanted to load another vendor's software on it to turn it on and change channels. It might not surprise you if it didn't work perfectly all of the time.
Linux will seriously catch on as a mainstream desktop option when a distro decides to sell it's own hardware as an appliance, with every bit and screw optimized for the OS and the applications the machine is designed for (without trying be Windows otherwise, or sounding like "windows"). In short, when buying a Red Hat becomes like buying a Mac, then there will be another player with staying power like Apple.
Microsoft's business model is not like GE's. They aren't seeking to build reliable appliances, they seek to sell Licenses, it's always going to be that, it's like a cat in heat, there's nothing you can do about it.
What is the chief bit of instant gratification one gets from buying an OS license? You get to immediately use your pretty new hardware with it. Microsoft exceeds at this task.
What else is wrong with Linux? I can't go and buy Quicken for it. I don't meant to trivilaize the problem, but Microsoft's strategy has worked for their business, it has just miserably failed to advance the potential of technology. That's not a moral issue, it's the hallmark of the emergence of something truly new and the clumsy adjustment of the our economy to it.
The writer in this piece i
The best way to do is to be.
Not fun reading, but worth reading anyway.
an internal server error isn't my kind of reading either.
You get super powers just by rubing that stuff in? You'd a thought you would have to freebase it
But Worth reading anyway....
500 Internal Server Error
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.
Please contact the server administrator,
webmaster@devworld.com and inform them of the time the error occurred,
and anything you might have done that may have
caused the error.
More information about this error may be available
in the server error log.
I gotta agree and disagree - not fun reading at all. But is it really worth reading
I am quite certainly a linux newbie, I run Mandrake(9.1) on my laptop and I have been incredibly impressed with how well it handles everything. I didn't have to configure a single thing upon install and ever since then the Mandrake Control Center install software function has proved to be more than helpful in letting me know which dependicies I needed to install. To say linux isn't ready for the desktop is a lie. It very much so is. I joined the Mandrake Club and have since gotten a great deal of help in configuring my system to be what I need it to be. Perhaps the only true thing keeping Linux from widespread use is a unified distrobution, though I do not know the details of open-source politics I do know I had a hell of a time choosing a distrobution. If everyone worked together, there could be something great. But like I said I am a newbie so maybe I am missing the big picture?
This article is either a troll, or the author greatly overstates her technical abilities.
/boot partition on the first hard disk, and put the / , /home, and /usr partitions on the second drive (at least, that was what the old RH 6.0 installation manual said; since my partition setup has basically remained unchanged since RH 6.0, I've not read any of RH's install docs since then).
/dev/hd[your Windows drive & partition]" or if the partition isn't in /etc/fstab, then do "mount /dev/hd[windows drive & partition] /mnt/windows" (assuming that you've already at some point done "mkdir /mnt/windows"). I'm pretty sure that there's a GUI for this, but I've never needed to find it: since my Windows partitions have entries in /etc/fstab (don't remember if I put them there, or if some config program did it), they've got icons on the KDE desktop, and all I have to do is right click on the one I want and pick "mount" or "unmount". Not exactly rocket science.
She claims that RedHat 7.3 can't be installed on a "Windows machine", that it can't be dual-booted, etc. Which is really fucking funny to me, as I've had a dual-boot RedHat 7.3 system until very recently (when I upgraded it to a RedHat 8.0 dual-boot system).
I don't think that the writer read ANY of the documentation, nor did she use common sense: if you install an OS on the second hard drive, of COURSE the BIOS isn't going to find it, because the BIOS doesn't expect the OS to be on drive #2. The solution is to either change your BIOS settings so that it loads the OS from the hard disk #2 (though this would be a PITA), or use RedHat's solution as listed in the installation manual: create a
She claims that RedHat 8.0 can't access non-Linux drives, which I know to be 100% bullshit. For the CLI types, there's either "mount
She bitches about the "mixer" overriding the volume of the CD player. Guess what, honey, Windows95 does that too! I don't think it takes a genious to say, "Hmm, maybe I should check the volume level." when you can't hear the CD you're playing. The volume slider in KsCD is (rightly so) limited by the main volume, and the "?" button she mentions is actually, "?>" (which was enough for me to go, "Maybe this isn't the help button."), and the tooltip for it says "Shuffle Play". I'm getting some nagging suspicions about this author.
"After installation, I tried to add additional software by installing GIMP."
I'll ignore the possible interpretation that she thought GIMP was some kind of software installer. But saying "GIMP doesn't install!" is unfair to the distro. And, knowing Gimp, the installation probably went fine. It lists some directories in your home directory that it needs to make, and some files that it needs to put in them, and has an "Ok" or a "Go" button at the bottom (don't remember which; I haven't had to install Gimp in a while); once you click this button it makes those directories and copies those files for you , and there is no ambiguity about this. I installed Gimp on the very first day I started using Linux, and I knew what it was doing.
She also claims that some software doesn't show up in the menu after installation, but that's understandable if she had actually thought about it, because there isn't a standard way for programs to do this (they'd have to know what desktop environment you're using, how you had your menus laid out (which every distro has differently), etc.). It'd be nice if GNOME and KDE had a standard, non-GUI way that other programs could use to insert themselves into the menu, and that this method was the same between both desktops so that programs wouldn't have to know or care which one the user was running. This tiny little complaint, aside from some hardware incompatibilities (which her great and wonderful Windows95 had in spades; there's a reason PnP used to be jokingly called "Plug 'n
you mean kNOW(the way)
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
Actually, Microsoft offers the average user just about zero
support. The support comes from people helping other people, for free, and Microsoft benefits from it.
Change that momentum from microsoft to linux, and Microsoft has lost its edge. Most people want to be able to ask the people around them how to do something. Most people around them are more likely to know windows then linux. Ironically, Microsoft benefits from the same community help that linux is founded on.
I installed Linux Mandrake and found it to be almost as easy as Windows to install.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
The average Computer user doesn't want to be bothered after all thats why Steve Case is a Billionaire. My cousin is a senior Editor and he thinks AOL is the Internet
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
To start off, I am a developer/consultant with a CS background, so I do have the tech cred. But I've always used MS because I've worked for MS shops. My box at home is MS, too, not because I care what I use, but it lets me do my work there, too, and I want the friendliest machine I can get for my non-tech wife (we won't mention Apple). I've installed Red Hat a few times in the past - in '98 with 5.2, and again in '00. I thought the install was OK except for getting X to run, which I failed to do. I want to keep up my tech skills, and I kept hearing good things about Linux's progress and wanted to check it out again. I was really looking forward to using a state-of-the-art OS.
So I downloaded the latest Debian ISO today - a network install. I wanted to install Lilo on the drive's MBR and use my BIOS to pick a drive to boot up. It took me half a dozen tries to install it before I got a bootable install. I was asked a whole lot of questions - my favorites were where there was no information to explain the various choices available to help me make a choice. I made four different attempts to get Lilo to boot, each time choosing different options, and all failing. My fifth time, the installation wrote over my Win2000 MBR on another drive (which I had to repair later), so I opened up my case and pulled out my XP drive and 2K drive to prevent any more disasters (should have done this to start with). One final time running the installation got me a bootable system!
Well, it booted to a prompt, so I had to rummage around and find X, but X wouldn't run. So I rebooted the machine, and this time it tried to run X automatically, failed, and told me my configurations were bad and it was going to give me a chance to repair them. So it started X up, but my PS/2 mouse wouldn't work, so I had the unpleasant experience of trying to run X without a mouse (I hate to say it, but even Win3.1 had much better no-mouse support than what I saw today). I futzed with the popup menus, but then the whole GUI locked up and I had to turn the power off and reboot. Same thing happened again - I got to futzing with the menus in X, and this time I spent a little while exploring the various options, but couldn't find out how to get my mouse to work or the problem X had when booting up. Again my machine locked up solid, so I turned it off.
When the power was off, I decided to put my XP and 2K drives back into my case. When I started it back up, I pointed the BIOS to the Linux drive to boot up. I think this confused my kernel, because although the BIOS started up Lilo and Lilo started up Linux, I got a kernel panic error. I rebooted, and again I got the kernel panic error. I'll bet if I again took out the two Windows drives, Linux would boot, but I just threw my hands up in disgust. Forget it. I'm downloading Mandrake ISOs and hoping for much better luck. I'm not afraid at all of technical challenges, but installing a freaking OS should not be this much work. What I saw today is just not ready for prime time.
First, if you read the article and look at the chart, Mandrake 9.0 install was flawless. The only thing that didn't work immediately was the CDR. Yet she persists in her theme... Linux is hard to install.
She (if it really is a she) has an older computer and decides to first try Linux with Mandrake 8.0, when 9.0 is available to her... um...what is wrong in this picture? Of course, had she immediately tried Mandrake 9.0, she would have had no article, or only one saying Migrating to Linux Is Easy, so by using a number of outdated distros, she writes that It is Hard to Install Linux with Old Distros but It Is Easy When You Finally Use An Up-To-Date One.
Has this person actually tried to install Windows ever? The drivers all need to be done individually, one by one...and it's often a battle to make Windows accept your Some-Other-Company's driver, because it soooo wants to only do Windows drivers and the Wizard, as they laughingly call it, tries to shove your driver aside, even if you've told it exactly where to find it, and install its own instead. More significantly, has she tried anything but Windows 95 ever? If she's been with one computer, one operating system since Windows 95, might her personality be a factor in this story? After all these years with one system, she's so familiar with what it can do that anything new that she tries will be hard.
I reinstall Windows periodically, because I am anal about breakins and viruses and so I can certainly say that Windows Is Harder To Install Than Mandrake 9.0. And as for Knoppix...anybody who can't get *that* to work had better stay with Windows 95 forever and ever.
She writes: "Root versus Users: Don't show me things I can't use. If I don't have permission to mess with something, don't show me the menus and dialog boxes used to mess with it unless you also give me a way to log in as the user with correct permissions."
Translation: "I don't belong in GNU/Linux. I need to live my life with Windows and die with Windows, because I don't understand what GNU/Linux actually is all about. Not that this stops me from having and expressing my uninformed opinions at length."
Not to be mean, but really, some people should just stay with Windows. And she or he is one of them. Let them pay and pay and pay for licenses that let them use but not own or touch, if they actually like that better.
I am a relatively newbie, but installing Mandrake was so perfectly easy compared to Windows that I know this article is ridiculous. The only thing that could explain writing such an article is a strong desire to find fault. I am not a zealot, and I even still use Windows on one box, but this article doesn't pass the smell test with anyone who actually has installed Linux lately.
One final word to the author, in case she or he is seriously trying to migrate: if you buy Mandrake or RedHat, you get installation help... Duh. Not that I needed it personally, but if you do, that's all you needed to do. Somebody will walk you through the install by phone.
And also if root can't do something in Mandrake, check your security setting. Mandrake at highest security does not let root do certain things in certain settings. And remember that measuring GNU/Linux by its hardware support is a bit stacking the deck: it's really up to proprietary hardware manufacturers, not the free programmers, as to whether it will work. I had to go out and get a different modem, because the one I had only worked with Windows, a "Winmodem" no less, and the manufacturer refused to allow drivers for GNU/Linux or any solution at all. I could write a review saying Linux is Hard To Migrate To Because Not All Modems Work with It. Or I could recognize the root of the problem is the hardware manufacturer.
So, here's my suggestion: you got Mandrake 9.0 to work, so why not buy 9.1 and get support? Get everything up and running. Then write another article, if you have the integrity to do so.
One useful suggestion from the article:
Interface comments:
Root versus Users: Don't show me things I can't use. If I don't have permission to mess with something, don't show me the menus and dialog boxes used to mess with it unless you also give me a way to log in as the user with correct permissions.
while i have installed linux many, many times, this article misses the whole point. installation of an os should never be an issue for users. installs should be an admin/tinkerer thing. if you get a pre-install/pre-config on linux, it'll blow your mind. windows advantage is simply because it comes preinstalled. period.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
- Windows vs Linux isn't a fair comparision (utility gets confused with OSS and more, cathedral and bazaar)
... I'm not sure many programmers want thier babies to be 2nd best.
/needs/ but that probably amount to a hill of beans - I feel I know what linux needs; if it was a company I'd improve the Server-Desktop setup for a start (so that Novell Distributed packages look laughable rather than better than linux for example). But linux /isn't/ a company, thus don't use linux if you expect company like stuff, certainly if you're not paying a company like RedHat.
- yes, linux isn't even good at quite a few things. no, I don't care - there's Macs and Windows.
- well, i suppose I would like linux to be better but my personal perference is fragmentation over intergration right now, since I use it in liberal setting.
"though Windows migration isn't like-for-like I agree, for example: in terms of doing permissions a migration from Novell to linux is really hard work - not in terms of deep level usability but common sense shallowness; not just clickability but consistancy.
Big problem facing OpenSource: Consistancy. It could be said that OSS will always be an eclectic mish mash, that this makes it great. True but fightable - it's just a tendancy. You can definately improve the situation by agreeing on standards and blah blah blah. But for this you need compromise and to accept 2nd best
I could blow on for ages about what linux
If the author had paid the price of Windows on RedHat support then I'd consider that fair. At the moment it's just comparing cross-purposes.
Dang i love OSS, even people not using it are inspired to thought.
"
A blog I run for the wealth
Honestly, I don't know how you're going to fix this aspect of the OS without doing what Microsoft has done - compromise fundamental stability and security in favor of useability.
Stability and Security are not really what need to be sacrificed to make Linux more transparent to typical end users, it's diversity and choice that would have to be sacrificed.
What Microsoft has that Linux doesn't have is *control* of the entire structure of the operating system and all its basic components (e.g., printing, fonts, display, etc., etc.). Because of this control, Windows can appear much more consistent at all levels to both software developers and users. This consistencey helps lead to transparency by encouraging most sofware developers to basically do things the same way so that users always (or at least most of the time) know what to expect.
A "Linux OS", on the other hand, consists of a Linux kernel (with each distro putting different features in their kernel) and hundreds of other components and layers that most people normally think of as part of the operating system that come from hundreds of different sources. Some basic things, like good font management across screen, printing, and applications, are either completely missing or only just beginning to get implemented, and they are getting implemented in different ways by different groups of people.
So far, it's been the distro makers' job to try to provide the vertical and horizontal integration that makes all these separate components interoperate smoothly and transparently. The problem is that the components can be so different that getting them to interoperate as smoothly as in Windows (where one company controls everything) is nearly impossible.
Most Linux-oriented people feel that the balance should go in favor of choice and diversity rather than consistency, even if it means less in the way of transparency and clean integration. I tend to agree with this, but I also hope that over time, the projects that produce the myriad of components that make up a Linux system will cooperate at increasingly deeper levels with each other so that we can ultimately have the best of both worlds - choice, diversity, *and* transparency and consistency.
lets face it guys, linux is a piece of shit. Every one of you geeks out there knows it. They defent it tooth and nail, but one thing remains... it sucks DICK. No matter how pissed a MS user is, they aren't going to be happy with linux because they can't do half as much as a consumer wants to do with a computer. No. compiling libraries and editing dependancies just doesn't cut it. It's BS.
you know americans put saddamn in power right?
Wrong.
and sold him weapons?
For all practical purposes, wrong.
Care to explain this?
Note that Saddam has tons of 20 year old Soviet and French weapons, but almost no U.S. ones. Odd for someone we supposedly "put in power" and "sold weapons", don't you think?
Of course, that's exactly your problem. You don't think.
When I swiched to Linux from Windows 98 I didn't find it any harder to use.
But thats just me, as a student I can't afford expensive software (ok, any non-free software) so I ran practicaly all open source software on Windows, some because it was free, in the some cases when I could get Microsoft software for free I actually prefered the open source alternative, I think Mozilla is alot better than IE, tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking and Gaim is alot better than MSN messenger, no advertising on it and it dosnt try and make me use other MSN services.
I swiched to Linux cause I was interested in trying something new and I was already half way there.
The lasest Gnome and KDE GUIs are no harder than the Windows GUI and other than that I used all the same software, so for me, Linux is just as easy to use as Windows.
Prediction: Bush will be tried as a war criminal and executed.
u r a troll
The only time I have ever had a file become immutable that wasn't because of a command I personally issued to satisfy my curiosity, was because of drive failure causing filesystem corruption.
I wonder if that 7 year old version of windows had been installed on a drive that was 7 years old...
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Based on the author's description of the Knoppix install, I'd be willing to guess that the target system was borken. It appears that the CD drive was busted, not an uncommon occurence in older systems. Oddly, Knoppix is a bit, er, demanding of CD drives :-).
Before dismissing this as a flame, understand the following:
Linux is so complicated that Joe Sixpack cannot install, let alone configure and operate it properly, without resorting to a bloated package (eg Lindows, Lycoris, et al).
Linux is so complicated that even a "ground up" install performed by someone experienced in the computing field can be befuddled.
Linux, in order for Joe Sixpack to use with as little chance for confusion as possible, has to be run on a dedicated system. Unfortunately, Joe Sixpack can only afford one computer, and therefore goes for the OS that is easiest to install, configure (eventually) and operate. Install, boot, and run, without being overwhelmed with an OS that relies primarily (still) on a CLI. CLIs are the reason so many DOS users moved on to Macs, and later on to Windows.
Those are the facts, love 'em or leave 'em. If you remain entrenched within the community of the 1337, you give Microsoft the very monopoly you despise them for. You have to make a compromise somewhere, but compromising the basis for using Linux in the first place shouldn't be it.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
all the people who can read will be called geeks because, why read when a computer can fuckn do it?
if someone can read they can install linux, but reading takes so long these days...
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
"So most open source stuff is produced by those of us who prefers things the other way. If you like the Microsoft Windows way, you're very welcome to use that instead."
You hit the nail on the head. To quote a saying "A happy marriage isn't a wandering marriage". You'd think that all these "I looked at Linux and..." articles wouldn't even exist if all the pluses that Win-advocates were true, or at the least, aren't as important as they would have you believe. Second also ask yourself why we don't see more "I looked at a Mac and..." articles? Macs even have some of the apps (IE, Word, etc) that Win-advocates say are so necessary before they will even think about moving anywere[1]. The only main argument ususally raised is the cost. So does that mean that things aren't as bad in Windowsland (cost will fall before the feet of desperation) , and that all these fence sitting articles will disappear?
[1] Use the criteria that they use to smack the alternatives around, and you'll notice Mac's solve a lot of them already. So why the hesitation?
If you look past the picky details, her message is clear: "The typical Linux distro isn't ready for Joe User straight out of the box."
I'd have to agree. I'd even argue that the typical Linux distro isn't even ready for "Joe Windows Admin" right out of the box.
I only hope that the Linux community at large understands how big a problem this really presents for the growth of Linux. There is always a percentage of people willing to work hard for something they believe in; but most users would never even dream of spending over a year and a half to try to make their PC do all the stuff that Win95 did (passably) 7 or 8 years ago.
I've been hoping to migrate the company I support from a fairly simple Win2K environment to a Linux environment for about 2 years. The tools keep getting closer, but there is no way I could be anywhere near as effective with Linux (for our specific needs) as I can with Win2K. Mod me down if you must, but from where I'm sitting that is the view.
One: drivers for Linux wouldn't be a problem if the knuckleheads hardware manufacturers also made drivers for Linux.
:)
Two: The article's author must think that a computer is just like a tv-set or a blender
Hey!! watch out!! If you tell'er to burn some CDs she might put'em in the toaster
Well Maybe after the iraq war and all the tax cuts (US will be broke) your government won't have any other chance than to start an other war, just to get rid of their debts.
Besides that after patriot act I & II and some other new patriotic laws you will be happy if you still have access to the internet and talk to french, because you wont be living in a democracy any more.
And do you know what the sadest thing about all that is?
Its that you dont even know!!! you still belive that you live in a free country and that you have all the rights, but you are not free , and it is getting worse!!!
I am very much so a linux newbie, but I have installed linux a few times. I may not have used as many distributions, but I have shopped around, and I don't see how it was so overwhelmingly difficult (even from a non-technical standpoint). Sure there are some more advanced options, but there was always an obvious "default" button or option when I didn't understand something, and it never blew anything up.
I've installed all flavors of windows more times than I could begin to count. The windows installer is far from perfect and I've had it fail on me a number of times, most times with unexplainable errors or some error code that Microsoft's website gives me a link, only to click on it and say "Whoops! dbase article not found..."
Someone made a great point earlier when they mentioned that the author is even installing linux, when Joe Computer User wants his OS and software working on delivery.
OS installation isn't perfect no matter who you are, and it eventually screws up on you if you do it enough times. Having a "newbie" installing an OS seems more like giving someone "enough power not to know what they're doing, but enough to screw it up." I don't want that to sound elitist, I just want to point out that I've working in technical support for years and dealt with said "Joe Computer User" and the thought of him installing an OS himself is asking for a tech support nightmare. It's great if they want to learn, but if not, they more than likely just want it to work and not turn it into a hobby.
All OS's, like vietnamese hookers suck, Linux just sucks less.
I do in fact use ncftp. I do also, however, think it would be helpful to have a good GUI ftp client for Linux.
ncftp lacks a few features of modern Windows ftp clients as well (besides being CLI). In particular, it has extremely poor queue management. You either have to download a single file (with get) or directory (with get -R), or you have to send them to a background process (with bgget or bgget -R). The background process works somewhat like a queue, but not entirely; if the server is busy, for example, it'll try connecting for each file on the queue. If you have 50 files queued from one server, it'll basically hammer the server, which will often get you banned. The proper behavior, which Windows clients use, is to try once every x seconds (usually 45 or 60) per server, not per file, and not try more than one connection to a server at a time.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
FreeBSD? Are you kidding? She's not a troll!
(Posted as AC out of fear for the FreeBSD trolls.)
Wanna bet he had a major crush on her by the time all this was over? :)
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Usability is a huge concern. I've been using Linux systems since 1997, and they're improved a great deal since then, but there should be a joint usability services group that evaluates the current situation and how it can be improved. Input such as this should be welcomed, and paid heed to.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
you are right. the US didn't give them weapons. Just the money to buy said weapons.
Knoppix giving random segmentation faults at boot-ups etc... It seems to me her hardware is broken. Win 95 may well work with it, but the newest operating systems likely won't.
I'm sure this has been posted further down, but I think I should mention it. I found it strange that someone who is a technical writer claims to be a lousy typist.
Apart from that the write up was instructional. It does show one big problem with Linux from a Windows GUI users perspective: The GUI, either a wm under GNOME or KDE, isn't consistent. I have this same problem under WinXP, though whenever I use software from Win2k or earlier days. A concerted effort on Linux GUI designers part to organise some GUI guidelines would definitely be of help to all concerned.
What would have helped the writer would have been to have tested the Distros on other hardware. One can have similar or worse problems with Windows versions on some hardware, especially when it's older. I have had to test a HP 2500 colour printer with WindowsXP and, while WinXP does have driver, the driver's quality is terrible, and HP stopped supplying drivers for later than WinNT Windows versions.
Gnome 2.2.1 is only marginally worse memory-wise and speed-wise but I haven't used it extensively enough to recommend it.
The good news is that there are people who help with advices and opinions. Microsoft would need to pay for beta testers.
I doesn't seem imposible to create a distribution for the round of the mill user. May be the main problem being hardware support. I want to be able to buy things with the "works with linux" tag. Also a manual for Linux installation. And these goes with the typical autodetect hardware problem.
Linux is good, but could e really great with a better interface.
GNU/Linux is user-friendly, it just choses its friends very carefully :)
(don't know here I read it, but I'm not the one who shall have the credit for that nice sentence)
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
I say, "not very".
Additionally, she says:
Well, you shrieking geeks, I don't have a shelf full of Linux reference books, and I don't plan to buy them.
And neither do I. I've been using linux since '97 and have been administering an office network since around early '99. I've never run into any real problems and - guess what - I've never bought a book. I don't plan to buy any in the near future, either.
As I mentioned, I think a computer is a tool rather than a hobby.
I would like to start by stating that she isn't a terribly good tech writer if computers are not a hobby for her. It's evident that she's quite unskilled in her field. 'Computer' are nearly synonymous with 'technology' and has been for years. If this woman's employer is reading this, please let it be known that I am seeking employment as a technical writer. (Seriously.)
Furthermore, a tool is something that you use to perform a task. It's not an item that you wistfully expect to do the job for you. If you're the 'qualified individual' that is supposed to be able to operate a tool, you have to know how it operates. Computers should "just work" in the sense that they do what they're supposed to do. They do not, and never will, "just work" in the sense that they work flawlessly (as to the users' expectations). The world we live in has things like entropy and imperfection, after all. (This is yet another earmark of this woman's incompetence.)
If software is distributed in mass-market retail outlets, I expect it to work straight out of the box.
Likewise, I suspect you've never read the manual for your VCR, microwave, cell phone, or other 'tool' that you use to perform various tasks. (Maybe you haven't, who knows - some people never seem to grasp this 'technology' thing.) Nothing ever works "out of the box". This woman's entire arguement is a collection of faux pas statements that simply attribute themselves to various FUD techniques. They're not even genuine criticisms but gross generalizations that the general public would nominally agree with unless walked through the logic behind them.
I didn't even make it to the 3rd page of the 'review'. It was that bad.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The Linux community can debate software drivers and validity of this articles usefulness, but I would beg that it paid attention to her interface comments. I run Win 2000 on my workstations, XP pro on a Gamming Box and SuSE 8 on a Server. Linux interfaces can be lacking at best. As a graphics professional it is annoying to see poorly designed interfaces and as a self taught admin. the lack of help files is a bother. When I speak of GUI, I do not meant the pretty OS X or XP eye candy, but rather a clean effective GUI that gets thing done. (Granted this is developing quickly in Linux.) Maybe it helps no one but the best interface I have seen is Lightwave 7.5. It is clean and it does a lot in not too much real-estate.
Cheers,
Archidork
She is not technically inept. She is a technical genius compared to many of the people I know. To many of them, running sndconfig is so far out of their league it isn't even funny. The very concepts of dual booting or partitioning a hard drive for different OS's is as foreign to them as the idea of performing a transplant.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Why? Because Microsoft has a stiffling grip on the OEM hardware market. There's a shitload of hardware on the market which was designed to be a win2k/winXP only gadget. That would mainly be certain USB devices, winmodems, winprinters, scanners, soundcards and graphics cards.
Robert
So this took her 18 months, and she still hasn't got any linux distribution running that satisfies her? That's one and a half year! In that kind of timespan, I could get any distro running on my hampster, using IP over pigeon for networking, a monkey and a blackboard for video output, and a dozen of budgies for sound output.
Sjeesh.
this sig has intentionally been left blank
- Out-of-date distributions,
- On older hardware that was running 95
- Without asking for help from more clued-in Linux help
- Requiring a dual boot, difficult under most OSes.
There were a number of things she could have done differently, such as: search out a Linux User Group for some friendly free advice and perhaps an installfest, bought a new machine with Linux installed, or sought out a friend with more experience. She probably would not have had a more pleasant experience trying to install Windows XP Home on the machine, either.Just never spent the time to say it in so many words. Linux will never be ready for me (a NetAdmin AND Technical Writer) until it's compatible with the rest of the world (the Windows using world).
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Well I had major fucking "Deja Vu" while reading, and I am amazed of all the Denail Bullshit some of you uys dish out !.
Linux is not even close to being ready for the main market, and your shitty "is the rest of the world th4ts l4m3 Mom !" attitude is pretty old and tired.
And to those of you "who never had any problems", you are either completly full of shit or members of the 1,54 % "Linux worked 1'st time good for you! club".
On my old Pentium II 400, Matrox etc... (all dev's appears in compatability list's), the last working distro I was able to work moderatly fine, was RH 6,2.. Since then no luck, same box, runs FreeBSD 4,2 just fine (but not any of the realeases since then btw).
My never P4 1,6 (full of state of the art dev's), works just fine through the _entire_ RH 8 install, but when I boot ? no mouse !! (which btw worked just fine during install).
Like load of people already said, you want Bill's head on a stick ?, Well GET BUSY ! cause you are _way_ behind girls !!! (trust me).
All in al over the last 12 months I spent approx. 4 full weeks trying to pry a Linux (or BSD) on 3 of my boxes, I finally got my laptop to run Linux (on a dual boot - only after some 20-25 runs)..But I recently gave up on EVER getting VMWare to work again, succed one's in 200 I think ?).
Drop your crap attitudes, and start delivering what you preach (ever heard of the whole KISS mantra ??)
Oh, and the next guy that tells me to read the man page is a DEAD man/woman ! (95,9 % are completely useless)
The fundamental problem (as highlighted by the author) is the disparity in desires between 'techies' (I'm guessing people will prefer this over shrieking geeks), and users. To make it clear in this post, techies are people who use computers because they enjoy it; surfing the web, reading email and news, IRC, maybe some development, or just general messing around. Users use the computer because they have to; they work 9 till 5 in an office, bashing out documents. For them, a computer isn't a toy to
She managed to install all of those distributions, double-click an icon, then reboot just as well as you were. Did you try setting up a printer? One of those bubblejet pieces of crap, not the laser printers that all the linux developers seem to all own (lucky me at least). How about a CD Burner? Using it afterward? Probably not.
'Taint easy. Certainly not automatic. Did you even read the article? The author showed some tidbits of knowledge that seem to point to the possibility she did spend more than 20 minutes working with each distro.
Confused? That is how it is for anyone using something that is complex and new to them. LUG indeed, and how in the nine hells is the average Joe User supposed to know about these. The majority (not all thankfully) of websites around are organized upon the basis that newcomers really already know exactly how to navigate that site and know already of the majority of sites to visit to clue them in.
My mom would not know of a LUG unless I told her. She certainly would not know to ask and thus not know what to look for. Notice how MS does at least have a standard front page that then serves as a switch board for other sections and (well they used to) having on just about every page a link to "support" or "education"? Linux sites should have that. There should not be a need to search the page for it. There should be in use the defacto standard of web interface of major sections across the top and subsections across the side(s) and common functionality of Search, Contact, Help, About, etc should be located up top where it is easy to be seen and not be drowned out by crap. The methodology that employs this is what is important here. This is what many Linux sites need. That way you do not have to dumb down existing information forums and the like, but you simply provide an optional and easily accessable "cheat sheet" for those who so desire it.
Oh and on the subject of XP Home, I am wishing that people would never even consider that but the same issue exists there as well. Use pro or 2000 and skip the home crap. Hell, 98 is better than home
Well it also true that part of Windows' success in terms of number of software titles is due to (1) MS makes app programming info available by the DVD-full (MSDN), and (2) quick & dirty tools like VB, Delphi etc are widely available and widely documented.
;-). I'll use shell scripts if they're easier. I work equally on NT/2000, Linux and occasionally on SCO. I *do* think VB encourages bad programming - even to the extreme of ...well I'll leave that word picture out of this.
I'm an unreconstructed C & C++ prgrammer (*I* think Boost Template library is just the most wicked thing
Point is, on Linux/*BSD/UNIX, documentation is usually thin and often non-existant. Just because you build a better mousetrap doesn't mean the world will beat a path to your door - you have to document and evangelise the mousetrap... can we say Microsoft?
And really, Linux isn't a better mousetrap. It is just a quite well made standard mousetrap that is also free. Better mousetraps might be things like Plan9 or some of the newer distributed OS's. But reimplementing UNIX in opensource just creates a new UNIX, not a new./better OS.
The "average user" (the kind of person who uses a computer as a tool to achieve an end rather than a person who believes a computer is an end in itself) is ignorant to the workings of a computer; they don't care how it works, and they don't want to know how to fix it (which is why so many /.'ers work in tech support...one man's ignorance is another man's meal ticket).
...well, I know which platform I'm sticking with...
Example: recently, while doing a field sound recording job, a bloke who thought he was fairly cluey asked which version of Windows I had running on my Macintosh (who here can spot the problem with that?). It took 10 minutes, including force-quitting the Finder and starting Windows in VirtualPC in 15 seconds to convince him that it was a completely different OS. Of course, the same guy insisted there was a difference between the Pentium and the P1 processor, and that WindowsME was far more stable than 98...
Ask yourselves: is this the kind of person you want trying to use Linux for the desktop? Are you ready to try to help this person with tech support? Will you be prepared to sit down and explain the esoteric text commands, all the TLAs, and the obtuse jargon?
Perhaps this article is a bat for all those who think they have a clue: Linux is NOT ready for the desktop, and speculation on the matter should cease as it is becoming boring. I siggest if you favour Linux personally, you should not recommend it to anyone whose technical abilities you consider LESS THAN your own, because they will probably have a frustrating experience.
Several things to remember:
1- a sysadmin has a completely different idea of what is easy to a newbie (extreme examples, but whatever makes the point, and this seems to be the nub of the article);
2- For hackers, computers are "fun". For most people, computers mean "work", which is a thing to be avoided;
3- many businesses (and individuals) have a lot of time and effort invested in the files on their systems, and are not in a position to rework their partition systems, file formats, etc on a whim (I DON'T use OSX for precisely this reason; pretty as it is, it renders many $ks of software almost useless). If you all you have is DIVX, MP3, and pr0n, the decision to experiment is much easier, because you don't have anything of real value to lose (I know some smartass is going to say "what about backups", but time taken restoring backups is time wasted).
Look, I think OSS is great (in principle), Linux should be the business OS of choice (in theory), and Redmond should burn (inflammable), but the reality is that Linux currently has too many quirks to be adopted the defacto standard operating system.
Slashdot debate on Linux:
Reader 1: Everybody should use Linux
Reader 2: Linux can't do ***
Reader 1: Yes it can, you just need to [insert incomprehensible jargon which is completely different to the incomprehensible jargon you're at least vaguely familiar with]
Reader 3: RTFM
Reader 4: Stop whining and write the software yourself
Reader 5: MICROSOFT SHILL!!
Reader 2:
Linux is like a glorious, complex, idiosyncratic power tool to which a million attachments can be connected. Because it's so flexible and has a million billion parts, you can use it to build a house, polish a gemstone, bake bread or paint masterpieces on canvas, and all for free! The only caveat is that you have to know 1) which attachments do what, 2) which attachments you need for your type of work and 3) how to attach them to the main body of the tool in order to use them.
Windows is like a power saw. It's preconfigured. In fact, you can't really change very much about it. It's very good at cutting wood, which is something many, many tool enthusiasts want to do. It's relatively pricey, but works well and is pretty reliable. It's not that flexible, but hey, most people want to cut wood, right? Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The point of my analogy: the UNIX philosophy precludes "pull it out of the box and it 'just works'-ism" as a fundamental design goal. Because for the server folks, "just works" means that it doesn't even install a GUI. For the thin client folks, "just works" means minimal X, querying XDMCP sessions. For the desktop folks, "just works" means a full-blown, heavyweight API with interface guidelines and 3D support.
Who are you going to make life harder for? Right now, the balance is pretty good. But there's a growing camp in the Linux/UNIX world who basically want to build a power saw... remove all of the flexibility, or at least hide it so deeply that you need an entirely separate set of tools and several hours to tear it apart if you want to make any modifications. The desktop should be tightly integrated into the operating system. The applications should be limited by strict user interface guidelines. There should be draconian compatibility and backward-compatibility rules and components which don't follow them should be eliminated.
But hide or eliminate the joyous melee of nuts and bolts and you loose the best benefit of Linux and UNIX... the million billion little attachments to do everything from make cheese to cut sheet metal, provided of course that you know what you're doing (see items 1, 2 and 3 in first paragraph). Master Linux and you never need another tool. Master Windows and you'll never need another tool unless you want to do something other than saw wood.
If you're gonna use a pro's operating system, you're going to have to do your homework, get some training, and understand the tools you need to do the job. They're all there in Linux. You just have to attach, mix and match.
But if all you ever want to do is saw some wood in the first place, for God's sake just get a power saw and stop complaining!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It seems the general consensus here is one of "Linux can be a bitch to install and get working right". I couldn't agree more.
I went out and bought a copy of SuSE 8.0 when it was hot off the presses. I then spent some time learning this new and (to me) completely arcane system. After a while, I got pretty good at dealing with it. Then I moved to Slackware 8.1. Pain in the ass to get working, but I managed. Now I'm completely down with the whole Linux thing. One of my friends wanted to learn. He's not a bright guy. I installed and completely configured Slackware 9.0 for him. Impressed is an understatement. He could never have gotten it working on his own, but now that it is, he's using it for everything he used to use windows for and learning how to configure and deal with his new OS. The moral? A pain in the ass to get going, but a smooth ride after.
A fanboy is NOT someone who simply likes something and supports it. A fanboy is NOT someone who defends that something from unsubstantiated attacks.
A fanboy is a mindless zealot who loves their toy not because of its merits but because of some earlier internal emotional switch being flipped in their head. A fanboy does not appreciate critical thought unless the points made by those thoughts result in unabashed praise for their toy. A fanboy will take even the best written, anti-inflammitory message about what they wanted, expected (from descriptions of the product) and actually received (got) and then flame it down to the point that eventually some real trolls do respond and attack the fanboy and then said fanboy club responds by saying, "See, all these posts are just trolls." A fanboy does not understand that a good developer actually needs feedback in order to improve the product and that fanboys are seen often as just as much a problem as the anti-[product] zealot trolls out there, if not even more of a problem. A fanboy will refuse to offer assistance to problems that someone has by ignoring the post or just saying RTFM (whether it is there or not, but will certainly not link to it). However, a fanboy WILL fall prey to the situation where an ignored post augmented with a light flaming comment that is for attention getting (like the old fashioned High School report opener: "Sex! Now that I've got your attention...") and then hypocritically flame it to ashes. A fanboy will certainly group up with fellow fanboys and form a zealots only club that then will pick the oldest zealot club member join date as the calculation of who is defined as a NOOB and thus not allowed to post anything negative.
My favorite posts on game sites have been when someone asks if they did something wrong resulting in a corrupt install even including the steps they took to install and update as well as their HW and SW environment. The RTFM category of response is usually spewed especially, "Thats already been asked a bunch, why don't you read the FAQ and use the handy search feature for the forum?" Yet the FAQ reveals no answer and searches return similar posts that were ignored or flamed but never with a usable bit of information passing as an answer. The forum rats get tired of hearing the same question yet do not have the intelligence to solve the situation and update the FAQ and/or provide the sticky tag for the question WITH AN ANSWER.
And any developer who sets the default volume to 0 on his installed sound package should not be allowed to write any kind of software at all.
In response to this posting, countless Linux geeks will spend countless hours talking about how this stuff needs to be fixed. But absolutely no one will do anything to fix it. Ever.
Most Linux geeks are mostly talk. And the ones who aren't focus primarily on internal stuff that the user never sees.
Right on. Those 6e printers are a royal PITA! I had plenty of problems with it under doze too. It went in the bin, where it should have gone from day 1.
hahaha
What can you try when the available instructive information
around the varied web links haven't worked when
you're trying to set up gnus mail ?...
There's Robin Socha's gnus dotfile generator at
http://my.gnus.org/GDG/
GDG is something in the right direction but it didn't work !
Something more automatic is needed.
Mail in gnus would be the best way to get through messages!
Those linux sites want you to pay for getting a free copy. OpenBSD even forces you to buy the CD if you want one, the only reason I don't use it.
If you go to Debian.org, FreeBSD.org, or another "free" distribution there'll be a huge "how to get distro." Go to redhat.com and you'll get an "add to shopping cart" button.
1. She complained about Knopix not retaining her settings. Well, duh. She didn't say so, so I'll assume she didn't run the save settings script.
2. Why did she try Gentoo?!?!?!?
I'm not going to say much about this article, but I found the following quote very odd indeed: "I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system..."
She's a "lousy typist"? How in the world can she hold down a job as a technical writer, if she's s lousy typist? Wouldn't that be like a pro football player claiming to be a lousy athlete?
--It's Pimptastic!--
Tsu Dho Nimh has been posting to Usenet for a loooong time. Several posters to bot news.admin.net-abuse.email and comp.os.linux.advocacy have met her in person [1], and "tOSG" of the article is a known poster who works with her.
Just in case it matters to anyone.
[1] Under another handle, I'm one of them.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I've been using Mac OS X for almost two years now (since Public Beta). I thought all the time I spent dillying around in the terminal with the GNU tools would be good preparation for a Linux system so I finally got a throwaway P1 133 and installed Debian on it via floppies/network install. I don't know whether I'm just a lucky bastard or what, but all my hardware was recognized and working and I was browsing with Mozilla in X11 with my favorite window manager (WindowMaker) within an hour of installing everything I needed via apt (a lot of experience with fink, the OS X package manager, helped when using apt-get and dselect because its the same program ;])
It looks like some folks are just lucky and some aren't. The hardest thing to do was get X11 to recognize this shite Mitsumi mouse the computer came with but a little bit of searching around the newsgroups and reading some man-pages sorted that out and I soon had GPM configured right. Mind you, I am NO UNIX geek, I just know how to RTFM. Yes, I had to edit a conf file for one second, to remove a section which a very clear error message told me was redundant. Is it SO HARD to use Pico? Yeesh.
In a lot of ways, I think these distros with the ultra-advanced installers and their own configuration systems are responsible for half of this writer's troubles. I think maybe she should have given Debian a shot, everything is just so.... logical... and you never have to do anything twice (and I have yet to see a better package system).
Of course, I ended up wiping the Linux box and installing OpenBSD so I can do some NAT and firewalling (assuming its not ILLEGAL soon... .grrr... ). Now figuring out how to set THAT up will be a PITA, as I have three NICs installed and it only recognizes two, but I wouldn't expect something that complicated to be easy.
In terms of the article, I think folks are needlessly flaming the writer. I don't think the article came off as dissing Linux persay, but reasserting that in its current form, it is not ready for "the desktop". It may be ready for the "workstation desktop", where you are expected to be a power-user and perhaps have someone configure it for you, but the configuration is a bit too advanced to expect of Joe Sixpack and thanks to the Microsoft tax, no one's buying a system with Linux preinstalled except for Lindows (and Lindows is utter CACK). What can be done to make this better? I think the writer gave some damn good suggestions and instead of hating you might give them a quick listen.
Linux was easy enough for ME but that's cuz yo soy überg33kteh 31337 |_|54r. ('cept... no)
OMG OMG LUNIX OMG
..but linux simply isn't a Honda Accord. It's a highspeed rocket car that needs the loving hands of a motorsports fanatic to get it to work. For them, it's fun. For everyone else... well, let it suffice to say some people are better of driving easy to handle cars.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Although the author may not have made a completely fair evaluation, he or she did make some really valid suggestions.
I've been using linux for years, and it is my primary desktop, I have also installed several linux servers... but I still have not found a linux distribution that I'm comfortable installing one some of my Windows client's computers desktops... the people I do work for need a better experience before I can convert their desktops to linux.
Although, the situation is improving, and Knoppix and Knoppix based distributions appear to have the most promise (and is what I distribute to my friends)
Linux itself as an operating system is ready (imho) but the installation and configuration issues need to be addressed. Some of the points are things I have had complaints with, it is not a problem with linux itself, but with the applications. For example, Adobe Acrobat Reader for linux displays a license screen when you first load it that runs off of the screen even at 1024x768 and is not resizable... so that you can't click on the ok button. Granted, this is Adobe's problem... but this needs to be addressed.
What I think we as a linux community need is a usability task force... i.e. a group of people who look for thinks like this (bad dialog boxes, inconsitant help files, non-existant help, visual inconsitancy, etc. and either fix the problems or apply enough pressure so that the problem is fixed (for example, put enough heat on adobe so that fixing their license dialog in Acrobat Reader becomes a priority (something that should only take them an hour or two)) and create a usability and testing check list for software authors to use in their testing. Perhaps even have a usability certification process...
I for one would be willing to participate in usability testing... I would also like to be able to hand all of my friends a linux cd and say, here install this, and now have to worry about getting endless phone calls for support.
Why? If she was going to go the M$ route like "joe sixpacks" she'd have marched her box over to CompUSA and gotten raped $250 or so. Surely, normal people seek advice when they run into problems? What's clean about not taking advantage of the resources you have? A technical writer should know that no manual, however good, is a stubstitute for a knowledgeable person.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
or window if you like. I can't recount the times I have been introduced to the local "Windoes Expert" only to find they are educated within a very narrow/shallow box. They have either been taught in one of those expensive useless classes were the trainer shows a presentation that matches the handout page for page ( gee, just mail me the ^&$% class dude). Or they are self taught (yaaaa) but only as much as they need for the enviroment they are in and no more. This enviromental need is through out the business they are involved in and is usually shielded from the big iron in the glass room. It is simply what the masses around them need. So can you be suprised to find that they can't think or have not learned anything past this point.
:-)
They don't need to and in fact anything outside their expertise is a direct threat to it.
I for one enjoy computers and the challenge of NEW THINGS at really it is the only reason I put up with 98se, XP, 2000 adn Linux. They all over a challenge at some level. Today the biggest challenge is Linux like Gentoo and similiar distro because I need to try a bit harder to get them doing what I want. The big point for me is capatability with apps like Peachtree and a real good CRM app like Goldmine get that and windows is gone!!
That all being said, I got Linux running 4-5 years ago, dual booting on a toshiba laptop with Mandrake and Redhat. Did have to do a bit of READING though
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
- Pogo
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Just some 'food for thought':
If Open-Source/Free Software is inferior to commericial software, have you considered the situation if Open-Source/Free Software didn't exist at all?
Would everyone be satisfied because GNU/Linux, *BSD etc. are not there to bother them with lack of support?
Would everyone be happy because you will only be able to talk to a sweet-talking paid employee, and not have to deal with 'screaming geeks'?
Thank you.
GrimReality
2003-04-06 19:03:02 UTC (2003-04-06 15:03:02 EDT)
As for your points about burning CDs, I agree. The new XCDRoast and cdrtools work very well and the author of XCDRoast complains that RH is lagging and he gets the complaints. Personally, this seems to be about right. RH is definitely making more problems by distributing some old releases.
"I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system."
-- Umm, a Lousy Typist who dislikes writing text to the computer, works as a Technical Writer?
Theres something fishy about this whole thing!
She's a technical writer and on the first page states "I'm not a very good typist"
Maybe it's tome for some serious career reconsideration?
The claims that "root was getting locked out of files" were also somewhat false since AFAIK unless you've got that NSA-secure Linux or something, this is not possible (you can -r the file perms, but this doesn't happen by accident or automatically in my experience).
I don't claim that Linux is right for anyone and everyone--even if it is right for me. Unfortunately, she didn't give it a fair chance. Consider the following points:
1. She was attempting a dual boot--not something that it's usually reccomended for newbies to attempt, especially if you're mixing win/lin partitions on a given drive at any point. To really compare it, installabilitywise, it should be installed much as you'd install windows--on a new computer, or one about to be wiped. The defaults can't deal with dual and single boot since everyone has such different views as to how to do it. To be fair to the "click and go" nature of the installers, this should be attempted on a system that doesn't have a rpeexisting OS.
2) She's using old hardware--If you put Windows XP on old hardware, it falls flat on its face...so why should she expect 1 year old copies of Linux to do much better (in general they do, from my experience, but still, it's not a fair comparison).
3) Some hardware is not supported through no fault of a Linux distribution--modem/video/sound problems are often the result of closed spec. She should compare to how well a windows box works only using drivers with the "microsoft" vendor tag, not how well a computer that has been vendor-drivered up works.
4) The hardware she was using sounds flakey--especially if she had to keep switching things to make it work. It was a poor testbed.
The comparison she made wasn't fair to the Linux distros at all--it was merely anecdotal, and she formatted it like a scientific review. This is poor journalism and from a technical writer I'd expect at least a small bit of sense.
Brian
From the Story:
"Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete."
Clearly, the author is on crack, as I'm currently running Windows XP on a machine past it's prime, and am having no problems whatsoever; additionally, I can run Office 2000 without incident. If she's still using Office 97, then she really needs to come into the modern world just a wee bit.
Her statement on using only the available documentation (no man pages, no newsgroups, no other websites, etc.) is right on--you shouldn't have to rely on third-party information that is most likely out of date or configured completely incorrectly for your needs.
One common problem she was having was that she couldn't burn a CD with non-Root privelage. That "problem"--actually a security feature--exists on Windows XP as well. It's that way for a reason, yo.
Mandrake 8.1 (Linux for Windows): "Silly me! I expected that if the box says "Linux for Windows" and the CD says "Linux for Windows," they would contain an installation specifically and solely of Linux for Windows. I expected it would install from the CD-ROM like other Windows programs. I was quite mistaken."
You mean you didn't expect false information? What are you stupid? Damn near every manual you read has some wrong information or FUD in it of some type or other--it doesn't matter what manual it is, there are lies there. It's how it is.
Lycoris: "I inserted the CD with Windows active and discovered that it requires an installation of MSIE 4.0 or higher for the autorun installation to work. Although MSIE was installed on the system, Lycoris didn't find it and closed out with a fatal error."
That's a failure for sure...wonder why the Lycoris people never found that one--more testing for them I bet.
Oh, and the burn CD as root only thing is mentioned above, so I won't repeat myself.
Mandrake 8.0: "With the new graphics card, Mandrake installed more easily. To my surprise, the CD player worked as expected. I haven't a clue why a different graphics card would affect the CD player's access rights, but it did."
Conflict? Programming stupidity? Lack of proper driver? Dependencies?... FIIK (Fucked if I know).
SuSE 7.1 Professional = SoSO: Many problems she had = German shitware.
Mandrake 8.2 Beta 1 and 2: Apparently the Freanch make shitware as well (goes great with the German one! LOL)
"This brings out another frustrating aspect of Linux distributions: whom should I report the bug to? If you think the "it's the hardware, no, it's the software" tap-dance in the Windows world is annoying, wait until you see the "don't blame us we're only the distributor, you gotta talk to the dev team, no you gotta talk to the hardware maker, no it's the driver writers" boogie."
HA! Hahahahahahahahaha! What have I been preaching for the last 2 years? This! I could rub this in some more, but I wont.
Mandrake 9.0, Red Hat 8.0, & Knoppix: Getting warmer, but still shitty... Love those useless errors, don't we? Man Page? Lucky you didn't lose your sanity!
And finally..."As a whole, Linux is much closer to being an acceptable operating system than it was at the start, but it's still not perfect. Printing is still not a sure thing, sound-card support is degenerating instead of improving, and I have yet to successfully burn a CD. At the moment, I have Mandrake 9 installed but don't use it."
Yup, that's what I expected would happen. I must say she took hold of this and continued way beyond where most would have stopped. Medal of Valor type continuing above and beyond. Pity you never "won" this fight.
I am computer literate - and am very well versed with computers (DOS / Windows 3.1 onwards)
I treied to install slackware about 9 years ago (can't recall exact version) on a great (at that time) 486 DX2 66 with 16 MB ram.
Windows 3.11 (later windows 95) runned without a problem - I had problems with slackware running.
When on to Windows 98, then NT (due to some stuff I had to do).
After that Win2k and tried Redhat 7.1 (It was 7.x series - not sure which exactly) at the same time (was running an AMD 1.1 Ghz chip - Abit KT133 - RAID - 512 MB RAM).
Sort of worked, but oops, my USB DSL modem not detected... ok, back to windows I go.
Downloaded latest Mandrake (9.1 right) on my current system - Abit NF7-S - 2200 XP - 512 MB Ram.
I had primary OS (Windows XP) on my IDE channel.
My 2nd HDD was on SATA.
Installed Mandrake on the SATA drive - hummm, installs well, SEEMS to detect everything (I suspect not detect the built in NIC), reboot, - not work (forgot error message - something about losing iterrupt to the HDD or somehting every few secs during boot up).
Now downloading Redhat 9 - thru bit torrent (seems very very slow on my DSl - only about 5kbps - I will wait).
Will try the same thing I did with Mandrake - if it works, XP has a chance to go bye bye - if not, well..........
Best part is, I have developed software for various test cases for a 2 letter computer company (starts with H ends with P) and have experience running various server stuff. I don't mind the CLI etc.
I am even now co-admining a Linux server on the web - but I don't do much, my buddy does most.
But damn, installing Linux on the home system sure is not easy.
Lets see what happens with Redhat......
...God forbid someone asks a stupid tech support question in the linux community, though. I see this all the time. Someguy: "Hey, can anyone tell me why my soundcard doesn't work in linux?" Uberprick: "Whut sndcard & distro" SG: "Who's distro?" Uberprick: "Whut kernel?" SG: "huh?" UP: "Fsck'n n00b." Everyone: "YEAH!! I HATE THAT CRAP!!! RTFM ASSHOLE!!" SG: - Cries himself to sleep -
I'm living in a nice house, driving a nice car, running Linux on a nice computer, and he says it didn't work out for me.
Can someone explain?
Sure, you have to run Linux, thats a sure a sign as any that you've failed.
I admit that some GUI is nice, but I never run X without a console and at least one term open, and my most-commonly used application in Windows is cmd.exe... If anyone ever trys to take my CLI away, I will be thoroughly pissed...
Open source works by putting the user in a position to fix his/her problems with the software no matter if "the user" is a ten thousand people coorporation a 20 people company or a single individual.
The downside is that problems that only bother a small part of the userbase are not being fixed.
It seems that the user experience for people using Linux as a desktop office or entertainment system is such a problem that has in the past bothered too few end users.
Progress towards a better end user experience for desktop office and home use for Linux will come from a sufficiently large number of such endusers starting to work on improving Linux towards a better user experience. Companies or government organisations with thousands of desktop computers in their offices are the end users most likely to be willing and able to make a difference here, but of course the little guy - end individual home user or small business user can make contributuins as well.
Are there anything keeping companies with an interest in replacing macs and windozz machines with Linux in their offices from contributing to a better user experience for such users?
Well I can't even read this thing because at every page IE tells me that there's an error on page and wants to know if I want to debug. So I decide yes and can never find the missing paren that IE thinks is so disastrous.
On Win98 I had to enter the hardware list and to select reinstall on Epson USB something to get an Epson USB printer working, so much for easy.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
we have a clueless person, or at the least one who has been out of the loop for a while.
This person has been using the same tools for a long time. The expectation that a different set of tools is just going to work is unrealistic.
So the article correctly documented their trouble working through that new toolset.
Does this mean Linux is not ready for a desktop?
No.
The software this person needs is there for the downloading, or a modest purchase cost.
Should things just work for that price? Did they under Win 95?
The setup for this machine would have taken 2 hours tops. Compare that to the cost of WinXP / 2000 + Office.
Linux is a lot closer than we think.
I agree with the idea the autoconfiguration needs more polish, but that is not the show stopper it once was.
Would be nice to see the same person write another article, only this time they budget $200 for upgrade and configuration services.
I believe they would be very happy with the result.
Just think, if every win32 user had to actually pay for the regular thrashing they get friends to do, the perception of Linux would be different wouldn't it?
Personally, I now charge for such services and people get pretty frustrated. They are also a lot more careful with their machine.
So if you are going to perform a free technology refresh for someone, do it with Linux for free, or charge for the service under win32.
Make them show the license while you are at it.
Don't have one? Great, looks like it is either pay what you should pay, or I can do Linux right now.
$200 Install and configure
Assuming they can't show licenses
Retail WinXP license
Retail Office.
So lets say $600 total?
Given that you can get a nice machine for that, or fix your car or pay rent, that seems to be a strong incentive to give Linux a shot.
So users are now faced with a choice. They can pay Bill and keep paying, or they can pay for some services and invest a little time learning and pay very little going into the future.
For many users, Linux will do what they need. They just don't see the value because they are getting services for free...
Blogging because I can...
Not a perfect analogy. With an organ transplant, you can expect that the person you're explaining it to will have some idea what your heart, lungs, and kidneys are. So all you need to do is tell them, "We're taking out the old heart, and swapping in the new one." With quite a few computer users, they understand screen, keyboard, mouse, and "magic box".
"I'm just going to repartition your hard drive."
"Repermission my what?"
"It's a little disk in your computer that stores all your files. I'm just going to divide it into two sections so that you can install two separate operating systems."
"Couldn't we just use a second disk? I have a blank one in my desk drawer."
"No, that's a different type of disk. You can't fit an operating system on one, except maybe tomsrtbt..."
"Okay, I'll try that one."
"I'll call you when I'm done."
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Hi All,
yea, these seem that normal user will face to when come to use Linux. They normally know nothing other than mouse click (keyboard for them may be hard to use anyway, command line program??? never heard about that, they may think is that 1980s? DOS type of OS???)
Anyway, as long as these people is around, they will need expert to do the work for them, now our job is safe... hehee
I think that many of the problems people experience with Linux can be traced down to the fact that the desktop environments have a somewhat narrow focus.
KDE and GNOME have come a long way towards addressing issues such as consistancy and ease-of-use in user interfaces. They may still lag slightly behind Windows but overall they're clean, elegant and friendly.
The problem is that the desktop environments really aren't particularly aware of the lower levels of the computer. They know how to display graphics using X and how to produce sound but that's pretty much it. If the desktop environments could be extended to cover other vital aspects of the system, such as hardware installation / configuration, then I think Linux would be ready for anyone's desktop.
The problem, of course, is that this is rather hard to do as the various flavours of GNU/Linux (and other *nix and *BSD systems) do things rather differently. Still, I think it could be done using some kind of extensible system with modules to handle distribution specific things.
I _hate_ to add to what has been said but, you know,
... no wonder M$ marketeers laugh!
MS dosn't expect newbies to be able to configure and
install Windows either. In general they can't. The vendor pre-installs it and they get a 'rescue CD'.
600+ posts, flagilatory crap, FUD
screw it, we need a posix like commitee to decide on a standard distribution with standard software installed,,,,not 500 duplicate applications.
Well, here goes my possitive Karma, but I couldn't agree more with you. If I had some modpoints, I'd use them on you.
-H
Really, off is the safe setting. You don't know what kind of sound system is going to be plugged into the card. Better to adjust the volume yourself than blow out your speakers.
Yep, she's clueless. Consider:
It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
I just installed Slackware 9.0 this afternoon. It has a text mode installer. It did not require any typing of any words beyond entering a root password. The only other keys uses were up-arrow, down-arrow, space and return. It doesn't friggin matter how lousy a typist she is, she doesn't need to know how to type!
I hear this complaint/request all the time, and it never ceases to amaze me that it's even a concern. Is she expecting to manually write partition geometries or something? Manually having to type in obtuse package names? Nothing of the sort!
p.s. I'm not claiming Slackware is appropriate for the clueless, or that manually typing in commands is never needed. But rejecting an installer out of hand because it uses a 80x25 text window instead of a 640x480 pixel window is silly.
p.p.s. I wonder how she writes her technical documents if she can't type. ViaVoice?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Whew. Talk about bad career choices.
Basically this lady wanted a Linux distribution that installed cleanly, completely and simply in a moderately complex environment and she found none that fitted the bill.
It has been said elsewhere that Linux will not be ready for the desktop until something like that happens for the majority of people even vaguely interested in Linux.
My opinion is that this goal is not only elusive and very hard to get to (even Microsoft is not able to do it all that well), it's also where we do not want to be. Personally I don't really care how hard the installation is as long as I can get there somehow, and that afterwards the system actually works. The opposite (easy installation but flakey system) holds no interest for me.
Also I have the somewhat elitist view that if people don't want to be bothered with installation and interface problems they are welcome to pay the Microsoft (or Apple) tax. Sure Linux will never take over Microsoft as long as this is the case but is this desirable?
Finally even if Linux were uniformly better than Microsoft in every aspect (not so far off) even useability, most PC users would still not use it, not by choice but by ignorance, lack of pre-installation deals, poor OEM support, lack of misleading and overwhelming marketing support, etc.
In other words what is limiting Linux on the desktop today are not the technical aspects but all the rest, and no amount of programming will change that.
cli: lftp
gui: isn't that what mozilla is?
The problem with all you folks crying about how 'hard' Linux is to install ...is that you need to get a clue. ALL OPERATING SYSTEMS REQUIRE MORE THAN A MODICUM OF KNOWLEDGE TO INSTALL AND CONFIGURE PROPERLY. Always have and always will. Get over it. RTFM. Then read it again.
I respect that our loosely-knit community supports the efforts of newbies, but personally (as a developer), I have nothing to say to the author of this article. I develop as a hobby. I write programs that I could use. If you can use my code, it makes me happy. But if my code for any reason does not meet your requirements, I request that you move along.
I do not get paid for my work. And I have no obligation to meet your needs, or to even share my code.
Been something of a linux newbie (I tend to dabble when its not annoying me)
/var/log/* didn't help at all, as it only gave the same message, So I tried IRC (debian.org #linuxhelp)
:) Or the modems, or my machine? Yet it works flawlessly under windows?
;) But it does need work.. and you have to ask, will it EVER be ready for the desktop user?
;) Its 11am and I've had no coffee)
I do seem to have a lot of bad luck with some distros, but I did manage (with help and advice from a good friend or two) to install Debian.
I think linux needs to be more friendly (Or leave the option for those who want it) as it baffles me how doing something seemly harmless as.. mounting a CD-Rom with mount managed to convert a 40gb NTFS partion to FAT32 totally fubaring all the data on it)
What I find very interesting here is, People always go if you need help, contact the Newsgroups or IRC ect.. Or even worse RTFM..
Now, in practice, this never seems to work for example, I believe it was on.. Mandrake 8 (Memory sucks at the best of times) I could not get it to dial out to the internet) So I read through the man pages (guessing the titles that would help)
Only to get a rather unhelpful message telling me that the ppp Daemon died with a unexpected error.. Checking
And all I can say is.. wow, a string of RTFM!! and messages going how it wasn't linux's fault, It was mine
(It turned out in the end to be a bug in the ppp daemon/software.. something, Cant remember exactly) And the fix was, laughably, connect to the internet and download a file..
I seem to have gone off on a bit of a rant here so I will get back on point..
Yes Linux CAN be good that's one of the reasons I keep going back to try again after it kicks you
IMO, I think there is room for both, and we should just let the user decide, is that not the point of Linux and other GNU programs? So the user has choice?
(hopfully that makes sence
Judging from the style of arguments, Slashdot is getting more heavily hit by astroturfers and trolls.
A common strategy for astroturfers and trolls is to first steer a discussion of facts to a discussion of opinions. Then they can discredit the facts by either giving them equal valence to opinions or by pulling people's chain until they start to bark...
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Holy shit. You can't even install Linux? Check yourself in to a group home for mental defectives or kill yourself. Windows users are retards; that's why we don't do things the same way a Windows user does.
Less cute commentary, more helpful text in help files, please. Any programmer who has "please hire me" as the sole contents of the help file for his program is proclaiming his unemployability; who needs a programmer that can't explain what the software does?
Probably the same people who need a technical writer who can't install software.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
She wants to do everything as root, without switching to root. This is the basic problem that has allowed various varuses to sweep through Windows world. Linux should never bow to this kind of "ease of use". This is where user education will need to replace user wants.
If i could remember my password, I am skycracker.
Best reason to be using linux is that so many people keep moaning"never will be ready for the masses". Neither was MS Windows 1.0 back in last millenium. People keep believing that talented programmers will only produce code for those willing to pay them money - B dot ds. Talented will produce good code for whomever or whatever suits them. Some money, some a bright spot on the facade of grand code.
The current crop of linux distros all have failings and plusses. It was for this reason I was drawn to linux - to apply time and effort to making some great applications that users found easy to use, whether they were advanced or newbie. Yeah, doing this does not pay my bills, but it makes good use of my mind, and I enjoy working in software much as folks who enjoy doing crossword puzzles.
Go linux. I would rather have my quantum of making a good thing better than selling off my sweat for slavery.
As a Linux newbie who just installed RH 8.0 last month and is still working out the kinks, I appreciate the advice. I am using an old P166 that still runs Win95 on a partition. I am looking for something a little faster than my experience with Gnome/KDE. It's as slow as molasses currently. I was looking for a way to change some sort of configuration to make it faster, but I think I'll just try something else. One of the daughter posts refers to a 90MB RAM load running a "fast" newer version of Gnome, but I have only 64 MB RAM! (and am too cheap to upgrade the old beast) Now if only I could get my USB working with my Sony Microvault...
A few things....
- Lilo doesn't know how to write/read to an NTFS formatted drive.
- X Windows isn't configured out of the box. It is usually setup after the first reboot/login (I'm not sure how debian does it).
but then the whole GUI locked up and I had to turn the power off and reboot
- Ctrl+Alt+Backspace shuts down X. Run XF86Setup brefore restarting.
- You might want to snoop around
http://www.linuxquestions.org/
for some basic understanding and knowledge before your next install.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I'd love to see sales stats of those Walmart Lindows PCs. (i.e. a preinstalled version of Linux)
Most of these reviews seem to forget that Windows installations can be equally nightmarish to install Hell, it took me *two years* before I figured out how to get Win98 to run on an old system of mine. (I ran 95 until then. It turned out in the end that 98 needed a motherboard driver update to work with my SCSI controller, until then the system would hang on bootup.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Let's make a fair comparision. Install Several versions of Windows and several versions of Linux on the same hardware, with no XP logo certs or Linux certs and see how frustrated the same user gets with both Windows and Linux. Until comparision writers are willing to put Windows through the same test, I have little faith in their objectivity. There are a few places you can buy PC's with Linux pre-installed. If you want to make that comparision to your Dell or Gateway box, then go right ahead. Otherwise you're comparing apples to orange marmalade.
Dean G.
"If you are a hairy-chested Linux administrator or programmer, you will undoubtedly find yourself screaming as you read the following. Save your breath." ... ok, and if you're incompetent hack claiming to be a "technical writer", this OS may not be for you. Save *your* breath.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I know most people find using/installing windows
easier than linux. I find it the other way
round. I have been using linux at home now
for about seven years and have worked with linux for about five years.I recently tried to install windows on a PC for my father-in-law.
It took 5 attempts to install and patch windows
and about 6 attempts to get office installed
I eventually gave up trying to patch it, at least
I did get it finished.
Linux on the otherhand I can install and fully patch and customise within about 1hr (not including download speeds)
It shows that it all depends what you are used to.....
...so much for the idea that linux is ideal for older hardware.
I just got done trying out Knoppix for the first time tonight, and I just had to say, Beautiful! Bravo to the Knoppix and KDE people, and whoever had a hand in developing this stuff! I knew that there were good, user-friendly versions of Linux out there; I had just not stumbled across any before. I am very impressed :) No nightmares, no configuration whatsoever - it just works. This has got to be the most user-friendly installation I've ever seen. Kudos.
In defense of the other distros, I have had very little Linux exposure; if yours is user-friendly, I haven't seen it yet.
I was begining to read the article and one doubt just popped out: why did she need a dual boot? If she didnt use that much of computer power-like a CAD tool or maya- and her basic needs were suplied, she didnt need a dual boot. I think that maybe her experience would be a lot simpler and happier if she realized why and what she was doing. Franciso
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
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