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Trivial Barriers to Personal Linux Use?
saintp asks: "I'm currently multitasking: building a computer for my girlfriend, and also trying to convince her to put Linux on it, so I've been thinking a lot lately about the barriers to adoption of Linux by Normal Everyday People. One that seems to be a major problem is that Windows users are addicted to downloading every piece of crapware that comes down the tubes -- hence the popularity of Gator and subsequent popularity of Ad-Aware. While geeks the world over sigh at this behavior, it makes a lot of people really happy, and they are very chagrined to discover that they can't do this on Linux without some command line mucking about, compilation, etc. What other minor, apparently trivial barriers exist to personal Linux use? Is anything being done to address these, or do many of the major vendors seem to be focusing exclusively on the business market, possibly to the detriment of Linux in the long run?"
It's a pain to install software on Linux compared to Windows.
apt-get install foo
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
Still not happy? Hmm... Don't know if you'd go for Synaptic, but...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
What I'd like to see is a way to, by simply double-clicking on the RPM, install it to the directory of my choice (e.g. have it bring up an installer similar to the ones commonly used in Windows). Also, the directory structure in Linux is relatively confusing to work with. How about a single, unified folder for my programs, like Windows' Program Files folder?
/bin, /usr, /var, etc; along with a /Applications, /Library, etc.
:w
Well, Mac OS X does a pretty good job of this. It maintains all the Unix-y stuff in the typical Unix-y places, and has a whole secondary structure for GUI-crap. For instance, there's a
I don't get you problem. Windows doesn't have any text mode editors, and no one bitches about. It comes with cheesy notepad.exe and people think it's awesome.
So what's your problem? Use kwrite, gedit, or whatever is in your desktop menu. Both blow the pants off of notepad. I can somewhat understand the intimidation factor of having to choose something during install time. Is this worse than Windows that doesn't let you choose between ANYTHING?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Perhaps you really should read this article. It's actually an entry from Lindows.com's FAQ. Apparently, and I can vouch for this having setup multipe LindowsOS computers for friends and family, you can setup users during setup and don't have to run "EVERY DAMN THING as root."
Turns out that this little bit of FUD took "root" (pun intended).
Change to latest versions of KDE ... it has the option to "log in as a different user", basically "startx -display :+1" ... starts a new X-session on the next virtual terminal (alt-f7,f8,f9, etc) without losing currently running programs and allowing people to switch users.
:^)
This is on debian unstable, it's a really nice feature. And maybe it isn't x-screensaver but k-screensaver, but whatever it is, it works pretty good.
Good luck, glad to hear a success story.
--Robert
Getting 2.6 to work with Gentoo is pretty easy. Just read the ewarn when you emerge it (it's got a few notes about what to make sure you enable in your kernel). The ebuild will autograb the new init-mod-utils also.
It needs to be enabled by the administrator, but right-click on a folder, go to Properties, and there's a Local Net Sharing tab there (KDE 3.2, dunno about previous versions as I don't use that feature).
Nobody seems to have thought far enough that user installed software is dangerous. You have two solutions here.
a) Use standard installers like yum, apt-get, urpmi, whatever, which only install software as root from trusted repositories.
b) Give the user the possibility to install software, but only in their own directories as themselves, and make sure through the installer that none of this software is installed setuid root.
The alternative, to make it possible for them to install whatever software as root is probably the biggest gaping hole waiting to get exploited on Linux, if it becomes mainstream desktop software.
LILO on a floppy.
floppy in, boots to linux; floppy out, boots to XP. XP never even knows LILO or Linux is there. keep a couple extra copies of the magical LILO boot floppy just in case, and keep 'em all write protected of course. not really any slower on bootup, since all that's on the floppy is LILO itself; kernel, initrd and so on get loaded from the root fs just like in a normal install.
learned this when my wife got an XP box (a HP OEM machine, as it happens, they're not much less FUBAR than what you're describing as it turns out) and i didn't dare mess with her MBR lest i bring down the wrath of you-broke-my-brand-new-windows-you-brute on my head. has worked fine ever since - that floppy is constantly in the drive, just ejected if she wants to go to XP. she never uses the floppy drive for anything else anyway, so this way at least it's good for something.
'course, i've been too lazy to make any spare copies of the disk (though i know i should). so if the floppy ever dies on me, i'll boot from the mandrake CD and use its rescue mode to LILO another one.
I've been in the same boat....
.)
:) I've got a pile of those, and I find that they never last very long. Its worth your time/energy to upgrade to an HP OfficeJet or an HP PSC All-in-one printer. I've got the oldest OfficeJet LX, and two fairly modern PSC 750s, a PSC 2210, and a PSC 1110....... (the last four are USB). All work right out of the box on SuSE.
Except, I now have SuSE 9.0....
And everything works, just about, right out of the box. On one system, with a Geforce FX, everything just works. Installed the NVIDIA drivers using YaST2 update (SuSE's installer). Configured NVIDIA drivers using SaX2 (SuSE's X setup). Everything else worked without setup, and far faster than a Windows install would take.
Minor problems: My nforce system needed the nforce rpms from Nvidia's site. My ATI Radeon 9800 Pro needed the rpms from ATI site.
Both of which installed without a problem----
The only text-based setup I had to do was the graphics card, because for some reason SaX2 can't handle the fglrx driver (you can use the DRI for ATI without using ATI's drivers, but ATI's drivers are 200% faster than the XFree86 opensource module).
My USB printer? Check. My Palm? Check. My home network? Check.
Samba? Check. Printing and file sharing? Check.
Plus, buy the boxed set. $70, but the 500 pages of manuals you get are AWESOME, are usable by a non-geek (like, for example, my parents), and go through the usage of many of the more important apps you get with the distro (CD-burning? How to use K3B----- Wordprocessing? OpenOffice, etc. .
It's really a great product, and its finally the linux distro I've needed to not dual boot (well, most of my systems---I've got one gaming rig that dual boots XP for the stubborn titles that simply won't run under WineX))
Cheers,
WhiteWolf
P.S. If you are having serious problems with printing, its probably because your printer is a discount one
Dump Mandrake, it's been way too buggy since 8.2 (9.2 was a nightmare for me).
All the stuff you expect to work in SuSE, does work (Flash, Java, RealPlayer), and if you get the WineRack, you have a great deal of windows compatability too (Crossover Office, Crossover Plugin, Transgaming WineX).
Great Product! Can't endorse it enough! It really is what got me using linux on a daily basis without dual booting!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell