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?"

Comments

Not all Windows user download that much software..

[pilot1]

Your girlfriend might download alot of software just to try it out, but everyone I know is too scared to.

I know back in the day before I had migrated to Linux, I would install various programs just to play around with them. However, I never installed crapware like Gator, it was usually just stuff from sourceforge that sounded useful.

Maybe you could try giving her a distro that uses RPM, then show her freshmeat and sourceforge, and teach her how to install any programs she might want. That should satisfy her urge to try out new things.

Software installation

[Tyrdium]

It's a pain to install software on Linux compared to Windows. What I'd like to see is a nice, standardized binary distribution method, with good OS integration. RPM is good, but requires opening it in a program. 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? I've heard of a distribution that uses a directory structure similar to Windows', but it's definitely not one of the larger ones.

Re:Software installation

[More Trouble]

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?

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 /bin, /usr, /var, etc; along with a /Applications, /Library, etc.

:w

Re:Software installation

[splattertrousers]

I think you've proved the OP's point.

Who, other than geeks, is going to remember those commands?

It's so much easier to do it the Mac way: download it and drag it into the Applications folder. Even easier would be a program that lists all the available applications instead of forcing the user to find them on the web.

Re:Software installation

[spitzak]

I don't know about OS/X. The automatic update has worked great, but anything I have downloaded has arrived in a "box icon" program, and sometimes that is imbedded in a "disk image" program. I have to double-click these and then double-click the result, and it is very confusing and unclear if I can throw these things away after I have installed the program. Those virtual disks especially are confusing.

Whether it is safe to throw away the RPM's is also unclear to me. For some reason Windows installers do seem to make it clear that you can throw away the install program after using it.

Incidentally all the Linux desktops I have ever seen let you double-click RPM's and they *try* to install them. The problem is not that you can't do this, but that all too often it does not work, and you are forced to go to the shell to try again with the "--force" switch or whatever. I suppose you could make an argument that if a Windows installer does not work you are completely hosed, while it is physically possible to fix an RPM, but in reality Windows installers tend to always work (only counter example I have seen was an ATI driver for an old OpenGL card that crashed and the driver did not appear until I rebooted the machine).

I am still baffled why Windows has so brainwashed people that they think they need to "install" anything. Really I should be able to grab the file from the web page, drop it on the desktop, double-click it, and RUN the program, not "install" it. If I want it on the start menu I should then drag it there. And to "uninstall" I should be able to drag it and drop it in the trash.

Programs that need to mess with .rc files or whatever should run a demo mode and pop up a dialog that says "if this seems to be doing what you want, click here to make changes to your system so it really works..."

Re:Software installation

[captaineo]

On Windows the majority of well-written installers are single self-extracting .exe's or .msi's.

With OSX you get a .dmg if you are lucky (and a .dmg.gz, .sit, or .dmg.sit if you are not). You double-click the .dmg and it mounts a virtual disk. You run the program inside. You try to unmount the virtual disk but it won't let you because it is in use. Then you close the program and unmount the disk. You still have to throw away the original .dmg and the archive (if it came in one).

It kind of sucks to have your OSX desktop cluttered with foo.dmg.sit, foo.dmg, and Foo, just for one program.

Re:Software installation

[torpor]

The best part about the way OSX does this is that it is a completely 'UNIX'-y solution. OSX Apps are unix apps wrapped in a fancy, -standardized- directory structure, with their own text files for config descriptions, binary payload directory layouts, etc.

"OSX Apps", the pretty ones with icons that bounce, live in a subdirectory with a ".app" at the end of it. Finder (and not much else) knows that any time a user clicks on a file with ".app" in it, this whole subdirectory contains the full suite of resources needed to run that app ...

So, you can easily make a cmd-line, unix-style app, no sweat. Good old POSIX! Put it in its own .app dir, bone up on a few XML'ish files that need to be included (hey, its a text file for config, thats UNIX right?!), and there's your package. gzip it and deliver.

Okay, so your wonder-app needs access to 'standard libs', and has 'dependencies' ... no sweat. Either -include everything you need- (really, there's no problems with doing this) in the .app dir, which means all the libs you think the user isn't going to have on their OSX box, or just put symbolic links (as in the file kind) in your .app's Library folder to wherever you've found the libs you need on their system...

End of story. No 'registry key' to be configured (well, okay, maybe ldconfig is 'registry'-ish these days, eh?), no 'special program to edit registry entries' (just text editor), etc.

And since its all in a single .app package, theres no need for App vendors to -usually- touch any of the /System tree stuff ...

Re:Software installation

[spitzak]

Exactly. This is what I have seen using OS/X as well. I have no idea why this is this way, and it sure does not look user-friendly to me.

I think installation on Linux is better, if it worked as the package creator intended. The problem on Linux is that the packages often don't work. Windows would be as bad if 60% of the windows installers crashed or failed with errors when you double-clicked them.

I think in the ideal system, what you get is a file that you double-click and it RUNS the program (it it is not and "installer" and not a directory containing either the program or an installer). Only if the program needs daemons or other system setup, it can then detect if it has not been installed correctly and offer to do that, or just let you run to test it. For 99% of the programs "installation" should consist of dragging that file to the correct directory so users other than yourself can see it. "uninstallation" should consist of throwing the same file in the trash, and any symbolic links or init or daemons that it "installed" should have enough smarts to delete or kill themselves when the program disappears.

Nobody (not Windows or Linux or the Mac) seem anywhere near this. Some of it seems to be complete brainwashing by the installers on Windows. We have discovered that people don't believe the installer works if it does not present them with a big scrolling box of text with an "I agree" button!

Sun Java Desktop

[stonebeat.org]

Check out Sun Java Desktop System. It is a OS based on a Linux kernel and Suse Linux.
Though you won't be able click and install applications, like one would do on a Window box, but Java Desktop System is a very close to it.
I think Sun Java desktop introduced a happy medium. Making it too easy to install software, increase chances of getting infected by a virus, worm etc.

Here are some more presentations on Sun Java Desktop

Newbie detector

[pontifier]

When I first tried linux and the bsds it took me a while to figure out how to get arround in the terminal.

perhaps "dir" should start a linux tutorial as i'm sure i'm not the only person who's first instinct was to type "dir" when given a command prompt.

Re:Newbie detector

[Brandybuck]

Maybe Windows should have a tutorial pop up each time I type "ls" in the command shell.

Re:Newbie detector

[bcrowell]

Actually we really need an animated paperclip to pop up and say, "It looks like you're trying to do an ls. Do you want the ls wizard to help you through the process?"

Re:Newbie detector

[Anonymous Coward]

$ ls -a
Are you sure you want to do an ls -a? That will
show hidden files, and files are hidden for a reason.
>y
Okay, are you absolutely sure you meant to say yes to that last question?
>y

Sharing limitation

[PinkX]

One thing that I've been thinking of lately that is really a limitation for end users to adopt linux in the desktop is the (un)ability to easily share resources in a LAN environment.

I might be wrong at this, but I haven't seen in either GNOME or KDE something like 'right button click' -> 'share this folder' option, to get a list of the known users and automatically add it to the samba/nfs shares/exports list. If someone knows about some work being done in that direction, that would be a Godsend.

Regards,

Re:Sharing limitation

[JimDabell]

I haven't seen in either GNOME or KDE something like 'right button click' -> 'share this folder' option

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).

Lindows

[alienw]

Lindows is trying to solve the very problem you are looking at. Sure, people bitch about them (mainly due to the elitism of many Linux users), but I heard it's a nice solid distro, and things like click-and-run make it very easy to install software.

Re:Lindows

[DAldredge]

Or people could bitch about the fact that Lindows runs EVERY DAMN THING as root.

Re:Lindows

[aster_ken]

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).

My personal list of barriers

[Evil Attraction]

I use Linux most of the time. The only reason I sometimes (too often) boot to Windows, is when I want to either play a game or do some genealogy. There aren't many games for Linux - not very popular, at least - and there are certainly no genealogy software which can compete with the genealogy software developed for Windows. I guess I can live with that.

What concerns me most is the situation for the rest of the family; We are Norwegians, and my father does some accounting for a few locale companies. I've yet to see a decent accounting application for Linux which works according to Norwegian rules. We're actually talking about one application which separates my father from using Linux instead of Windows.

My brother took over my father's farm a year ago. He needs Windows for some special software related to running a farm. Once again - it's only one piece of software.

My other brother doesn't have this problem, but he's not so good in English. I would have loved to install Linux on his laptop so that I didn't have to help him out every time Windows f*cked up. But most of the Linux software lacks in the localization field. Not many applications are being translated to Norwegian.

Conclusion: Some special software which still looks a few years from now, and the lack of localizing the most popular software. I guess both of these problems will be solved over time, but I would've given my lef...right foot for having it solved now. :)

I've got one.

[dporowski]

I have to keep screwing with it.

Seriously. I mean, I like messing about with computers, OS flavors, etc, etc. I've currently got a couple different flavors of linux, looking for a third, and am thinking about a BSD. It's just lack of space for hardware that keeps me from having more toys. It's nice to use, it's powerful, it's flexible..

However, I'm not always in the mood to sit down and figure out why something doesn't work right. For instance, why Mandrake currently has told me three times in a row that my glibc is out of date. And upgraded it to the newest version each time. (Yes, using "mandrake update".) Oh, and doing so BROKE Mandrake Update. My OS update feature broke itself. I'm sure this is fixable, but why should I have to screw with it just to make the admin tools work again?

My mouse. It's got 5 buttons. Why the HELL would I want to install a program, tweak multiple files, and chant ominously just to get the side buttons working? I know how, sure. It's just I have better things to do.

I don't WANT to make my game work. I want my game to WORK. I don't want to have to make X program load properly, or hand-twiddle a configuration file. I want to open a damn document, view it, edit it, and save it with formatting. No, I don't want to learn TeX to do it. I know I CAN, but why do I have to?

Seriously. I'm a damn hobbyist, and I do these things for fun, and it still pisses me off that I have to spend more time playing with it to make it work than it does working. Updates shouldn't break things. Upgrades shouldn't cause triple-layered dependency hell. THere shouldn't be dependency hell at all. We hate "dll hell", why is fucking about trying to find just the right version of a given module acceptable? I mean, there's girls and liquor and music out there for me, why should I spend all my time fixing something that can just work? (I know it can. Apple did it. It's been done once, thus can be done again. It's just not BEING done.)

Choice? Screw choice! I want function! Would you drive a car if you had to put the damn wheels on every time you parked it? Would you put up with having to buy the correct grade of gas from JUST th right pump style, from the exact proper petrol chain, just to start the car in the morning?

For fuck's sake, the 2.6 upgrade, which I look forward to installing on GENTOO for the love of god, isn't covered by the documentation, requires a full replacement of the main module utilities, and Still might not work right. I CAN'T RTFM, since this shit isn't IN the FM to R.

I think you get the idea.

I love doing this stuff, and it STILL pisses me off and drives me to drink. What do you think your granny's going to do?

Go back to windows, or Mac, or something that does what she wants, when she wants it, and doesn't have to be babysat.

And enough with the goddamn text editors, people. I understand you like them, but I don't need 50 of them. Spend the time you used to put those on my distro app disk to make sure the distro doesn't randomly shit itself.

(Not bitter or anything, me...)

Re:I've got one.

[yarbo]

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.

Re:I've got one.

[Alioth]

Choice? Screw choice! I want function! Would you drive a car if you had to put the damn wheels on every time you parked it?

You've obviously never had to drive a British Leyland product, or anything with Lucas prince of Darkness electrics :-)

But back on topic - you don't have to do that with Linux. I run RH8.0 at home, play games (such as RTCW:ET) that come for Linux, and spend no more time 'screwing around with it' than I ever do with Windows. My printer just works. The only bit of hardware at home I did have to fiddle around with was my ancient parport scanner, but you have to screw around a great deal to make the same scanner work under Windows XP, too.

I've got my Dad using Linux. I know he'd get infected by social engineering worms such as MyDoom if he was on Windows because every so often he moans that he can't download $SPYWARE from an email and I tell him "That's why you have Linux because it STOPS you downloading $SPYWARE and it means I don't spend an hour a week de-crapifying your computer!" After seeing the havok wreaked on friends by worms and spyware, he's stopped moaning about not having Windows. (And he'd only moan if I put Windows XP on his system because I'd lock it down so he couldn't infect the machine with malware).

Re:I've got one.

[dporowski]

I'm honestly not sure of the point you're trying to make. Yes, I do cheerfully put up with it. I fix my own car when I can, pay when I can't do it or--and here's the key--when someone can fix it better and faster. I have better things to do than spend 16 hours replacing my clutch when someone else can do it faster. Sure, they charge, but how much is 16 hours of my time worth, again? What matters is that I have the choice to fix it or pay, as I like. Yes, I realise that I could pay someone to fix my computer when it breaks. But it shouldn't break in the ways I describe. When you use a hammer, it shouldn't shatter; when you use a wrench it shouldn't bend; when you use the tools a software company gives you, they shouldn't do the electronic equivalent of self-immolation.

Someone new to computers will not use something they have to constantly fix. They will not use something that requires a level of artistry to manage. They want a toaster, something that just GOES, and to hell with "but its free and open! Its cool!"

We're geeks. Huge ones. We like these things. But we wouldn't find it acceptable to have to reassemble our toasters to fit white instead of whole wheat, or get knife v2.13.02-rev3 to cut bagels instead of muffins. Linux is in a situation where its getting wonderfully better, constantly. Portage, apt, etc etc all make things simpler. But we're still rewiring our toaster for white, and there's those of us who feel that it's better that way, and if someone can't do that they should just eat cold bread and like it.

This does not have to be hard. It does not have to require fiddling. Yes, WE like the fiddly bits, but few others do. Yes, we lose bragging rights if granny can make her machine do whatever with 2 clicks. We're no longer l33t. Normal people might be able to--gasp! Shock!--use something complex without the pain we go through and the hoops we jump through with a grin.

Call me a waaaaahmbulance.

Clicky means anyone can use it. "Just working" means they won't have to fix it or tweak it to keep it running. MS and Apple figured it out and proceeded to pwn everyone else, since despite the hideous, obvious flaws, it works like a damn toaster when you want, how you want, without chicken slaying.

We need to make it so you don't need to fuck with it, but have the freedom to do so if you want.

Its not "free as in speech" if we make people use it a certain way because we think its better, now is it? MS does that, we howl to the skies how they force "their way" down everyones throats, horror horror gibber froth.

I say we should try not to be that guy. Its happening, slowly, and I love it. But it needs more. GUIs are not evil. "Easy" is not bad, y'know?

Re:MacOS Technique

[Bastian]

Why not create an installer packaging program like the ones used on Windows and MacOS? This seems like something that would be good for KDE and Gnome to work on together. This packaging system would be great for beginning and desktop users, while not necessarily attempting to replace the myriad packaging systems already out there. I think that this is an important caveat - a lot of the packaging systems that linux distros use have a lot of features that are great for unix manglers, but from a desktop OS standpoint they qualify as creeping featurism and add excessive complication to the whole installation process. Also, using an InstallShield type system means that different packages can have slightly different install processes, depending on what needs to be done to get the package working.

The directory structure is also something that doesn't necessarily need to be scrapped - I personally think it's a Very Good layout from a server/workstation administration standpoint, although I agree that it's terrible for a desktop computer. Again, I think OS X has hit on a very good solution - keep two separate file structures. One would be aimed at a desktop user and would be visible through the desktop environment. Applications that a desktop user needs can be placed here. Keep the old file tree, but make it invisible to the desktop environment (by default, anyway).

This system isn't without its faults, but I've found it to be an excellent comrpomise on OS X.

Ease of installation

[rueger]

Every few months for several years I have downloaded a couple of Linux distros with the express purpose of trying install it on my PC. Sometimes I tried clean installs, sometimes dual boot.

As much as I would love to use Linux and OSS, I have an even greater need of a working system that handles my basic needs. Right off the top my system has to handle a USB and parallel port printer, HP scanner, Palm sync, Internet connection, access to the Windows boxes on our small network, and allow the Windows boxes to use the printers and see my files.

If all of those work, I can spare the time to wade though the great morass of information that Linux calls "documentation" and learn the obscure tricks that are needed to manage a Linux system.

What I can't afford is to have a system that does only some of the things above. Thus far installing Linux has always left me with at least two of my needed functions absent. I already know that trying to find out how to fix them will consume days if not weeks.

With Windows 2K (and driver discs) everything above "just works" out of the box.

Just for the record: Mandrake (a few times) RedHat (3 times), Suse, Caldera (long time ago), Knoppix, and at least two others.

Re:Ease of installation

[WhiteWolf666]

I've been in the same boat....

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 :) 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.

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!

My first barrier,

[dtfinch]

once I finally got it installed and working with my hardware, was the selection of text editors found in the Linux distributions I've tried. The graphical ones are getting better, but vi and emacs are very difficult for most newcomers to learn. mcedit is a bit more familiar, and comes with many distributions, but it wasn't until years later that I noticed it was there.

Re:My first barrier,

[Brandybuck]

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?

might not be that big a deal..

[mehu]

My mom's computer was popping up ads every couple minutes under windows, so last summer I set it up as a dual-boot Debian box. Installed mozilla, gaim, openoffice, & the usual basics (my mom had to have solitaire & mahjohngg), and showed them how to switch back & forth w/ the lilo menu. I also set up gdm w/ the face browser, & set it so they don't have to type in a password (although my 16-yr-old sister opted to have one anyway, 'cause "it's cool!").

Next time I went home, they had me switch the default to Linux so they didn't have to sit there when it booted up. My mom, sister, and stepdad (who can't even figure out how to use the DVD player) have been using it quite happily since then, and aside from having to install flash for my sister (which I was able to do remotely via ssh, another plus), they haven't complained at all about not being able to install shit. They're just damn happy they can read their email (they use mozilla), chat, & web surf w/o being bombarded by popups all the time. They're also quite impressed that they can each have their own web bookmarks and desktop pictures (first thing my sister did was put up a Pirates of the Caribbean background). I don't think they've booted into Windows much at all since then.

Only real problem they've had is that there's currently no way I know of for them to switch users when my sister has xscreensaver locked, short of killing X.

Re:might not be that big a deal..

[Ramses0]

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

Re:might not be that big a deal..

[MarkusQ]

Why not post the code here? Sounds like a nifty method.

Here it is, in bite-sized chunks. First, the command to launch X on the current tty:

startx -- :`tty | tail -c 2` vt`tty | tail -c 2`

Note the back-ticks. If you call this "win", make it executable, and put it in the happy place of your choice, you can do an number of interesting tricks with it.

1. You can set the system to come up in mode 3 (see the top of /etc/inittab) and then call it from the end of each user's .bash_profile (though depending on which terminal program they use, it may cause trouble if they try to launch an xterm, which you could guard against with a check for $TERM == "xterm" or whatever).
2. Same deal but make it their default shell in /etc/passwd
3. If you don't even want to have them log in, you could do something like "su - -c win [username]" as in etc/inittab like so:

   1:2345:respawn:/sbin/su - -c win alice
   2:2345:respawn:/sbin/su - -c win bob
   3:2345:respawn:/sbin/su - -c win carol

There will be a little fussing needed to get it working the way you want in your environment of course. The only two real gotcha's I've seen: 1) make sure they can't have processor intensive screen savers running, or it will be dog slow, and 2) either educate your users or remove the easy "reboot" options so they don't nuke each other (examples, gnome & KDE bye-bye dialogs, Ctrl-Alt-Del (also in intitab), etc.).

-- MarkusQ

Love of Crapware

[daviddennis]

I think this is one of the most interesting problems. Many users love their Hotbar and ever-changing desktops, even when I explain that it's what's making their computers run at the speed of a drugged slug.

I have one particular user, a cute girl, who just loves her Hotbar. "It's pretty!" she gushes. And of course her desktop picture is filled with Pink, her favourite colour.

I have been quite surprised how much people get attached to these things. As someone who doesn't even switch away from the default MacOS X desktop theme (it's tasteful!), I find them absolutely bewildering

But since they love their Hotbars, I leave them alone, because above all, I want my users to be happy. Happy users are productive users. And so on.

But why are people addicted to things as silly as ever-changing resource-killing screensavers, and Hotbar?

I'd love to know.

D

Printer Support

[rizzo]

Setting up CUPS is easy, but the drives available for my Canon BJC-3000 printer all SUCK. Normal printing is all faded, and even the "high quality" printing (which takes FOREVER to print) still has crappy colors.

My wife wants to print things like cards or color signs and labels. Until someone writes a much better BJC-3000 driver, (I'm using the gimp-print-4.2.5 driver) I'll have to keep that windows partition around.

Re:Printer Support

[BillyBlaze]

Please remember to tell Cannon how you feel.

It's difficult to reverse-engineer hardware, and even Microsoft doesn't write it's own print drivers. It's no surprise that Cannon's drivers are better, they did write the hardware after all.

But no company will write CUPS drivers if they think the demand for them isn't significant. And they don't know unless people tell them. So it really does make a difference to ask for driver support.

Mainly

[falsification]

What other minor, apparently trivial barriers exist to personal Linux use?

Frankly, I don't feel like pluging into the user forums and mailing lists only to get flamed because I didn't read the entire 400 pp manual accessible only with less.

I don't feel like getting flamed on IRC or Usenet or Slashdot for asking what to me is a really hard question and to you what is really easy.

I don't feel like it because right now I've got what I need on Windows. If some day I can switch to Linux with a little online support that will not result in a bunch of elitist geeks calling me whiny or annoying or stupid just because I asked a question or tried to answer a question that f********* calls for people to be whiny in the damn first place, then maybe I'll switch.

If you want people to join your &#&$##@ club, don't bitch them out when they walk in for the first time. It's just basic.

Try BSD.

[FFFish]

Over the past decade or so I've tried Linux on and off a half-dozen times. Every time, I've gone back to Windows, which blows goats but at least lets me get my g.d. work done instead of having to continually f*** with obscure configuration files.

But I've installed FreeBSD a week ago, and it's going along pretty well. There's still a fair bit of f***ing with configs, but less so: it's secure from the start.

FreeBSD feels, to me, like it was designed. Linux always feels like it just accumulated by accident.

Re:Try BSD.

[nathanh]

Over the past decade or so I've tried Linux on and off a half-dozen times. Every time, I've gone back to Windows, which blows goats but at least lets me get my g.d. work done instead of having to continually f*** with obscure configuration files.

Whenever I use Windows I find it a frustrating experience, having to deal with obscure registry settings and drivers and service packs.

FreeBSD feels, to me, like it was designed. Linux always feels like it just accumulated by accident.

Comparing FreeBSD to Linux is like comparing a Toyota Corolla to a V8 engine. Try comparing FreeBSD to a distribution like Suse, Red Hat or Mandrake.

My experience is that FreeBSD is no better or worse than any of the community driven distros like Gentoo or Debian. Seeing as the majority of userspace is the same (XFree86, OpenOffice and GNOME) that's really no surprise. It's strange to claim FreeBSD is "designed" whereas Linux is not, because most of the software in FreeBSD is accumulated in exactly the same way that it is accumulated in every Linux distribution.

A few of my issues

[jeoin]

1. no uniform installer w. no uniform uninstaller 3. permissions... :) 4. a billion configuration files 5. how do i talk to all my windows stuff 6. drivers, see #1 and #2 And lastly Why does every one have to have their own distro, with their own package manager. Linux is supposed to be this great free software movement, Lets get it together and find A path. I want to help. let me know what i can do...

People, Places, Things

[imag0]

I guess the subject ties all I really have to say in together nicely enough.

I migrated my wife to Linux a few months ago, after some skips and jumps migrating her IE Favorites over (had to write my own script to migate them over. Ask for the source if you want it) I had to move her mail client from Kmail to Evolution.

What a nightmare.

Just coverting between maildir to MBOX formats were a pain, getting her people in her addressbook was another fight, and in the end I decided, there must be a better way.

Anyone remember good old BeOS? In Be you had People... Every mail client used People as a master address book. It was clean, intelligent, and you didn't have to code up your own converter every time you wanted to switch mail clients. The same goes for Mail... The system saved mail on the hard drive in a specific place and format (Maildir, I think it really ended up being). All mail clients used it, and they all behaved well with it.
And finally, the browser favorites were located in one place, installed a third party browser? No problem! They all read the favorites from the same place. Coolest part, if you had to backup, just a few folders to drag from the users directory and all the important stuff was backed up to cd.

Here lately i've started working on a framework to unify People (address books) Places (Favorites) and Things (Mail) so that users can use any mail client they wish, with any browser, and everything stays (and, more importantly, keeps) updated, no matter what client one uses.

Oh, well. Someone get in touch if you want to bring back some of the cooler aspacts of BeOS to the world of Linux. It's not going to get any easier until we make it so.

It's called Xandros.

[Reality_X]

Just go to distrowatch.com and read the rave reviews.

It looks good, it detected all my hardware on multiple machines and set everything up properly, and it's extremely user friendly.

IMHO, the best desktop Linux distribution on the market today. And I've been using Linux since '95 and have never seen it as well put together as Xandros.

Oh, and it has shiny graphical interfaces for software installation and what not.

Try it. :)

Give her a Mac.

[torpor]

She'll love you for introducing her to OSX.

(Put Konfabulator on there first, and set up a few nice widgets for her ...)

Brain dead options

[jazman]

There definitely need to be brain-dead options. Click - done. At the moment doing anything with Linux is an uphill struggle even for someone like me with decades of experience with computers of various different types. I even gave up on a new Linux box simply because copy/paste between applications was so bizarrely different (and I'm already used to switching between C-c/C-v/C-y/C-k on my Windoze box, and remembering that yank has opposite meanings in my two favourite editors, so that's not the issue.)

Installing software is a joke. Where? Which RPMs do I need? Which RPMs need updating? What other apps fall over because their dependent RPMs have been updated without their knowledge? The number of times I'm like "oh for fuck's sake" and back to the old Windows box.

Click - done. This should be available. Of course, this doesn't mean that all the fannying around options should be removed for people who do want to use their brain, but not everyone wants to read gigabytes of bad-attitude HOWTOs for the slightest little thing.

I even gave up installing BitTorrent on my Windows box last night. What the fuck is a tracker? Where do I get one?

Ok, you can whine at me for being thick but that's rather missing the point. I'm /not/ thick, I just have better things to do with my time. At the moment, even though I want to use Linux, I know every time I turn to it that the least thing is going to be an uphill struggle of poor docs, thousands of dependencies, other software falling over, yadda yadda yadda.

User installed software is dangerous!

[chthon]

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.

4DOS

[BinLadenMyHero]

Back in the day I used DOS, 4DOS (a COMMAND.COM shell replacement) was the number one must-have software.
Simple, small, clean, fast, and with all the features a power user want, even more that you could dream of.
I even prefer its TAB completion over bash.
It was incredibly productive.

Re:Currently Migrating My Girlfriend...

[random_static]

[...] f*cked up OEM version of WinXP that gets shipped with Compaq boxen these days. What it means is that after installing Linux, any time you opt to boot into Windows (to export contacts from Exchange ready for Evolution fer instance) it spots that the MBR has been altered by the bootloader and initiates the 'Recovery for Morons' mode [...]

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.

general commentary

[phloydphreak]

In response to commentary about 'how to make linux better'

Windows has its place. It is for people who do not WANT to learn how to use a computer. It is for my grandma, so she can play freecell and online bingo. It is for businessmen who are being payed to conduct business, not learn a computer.

It is NOT something which should be emulated by a real operating system. It is NOT something linux should be competing against for marketshare.

WHY?

-FreeBSD, (one of?) the finest OS on the market has no emulation of windows; its users understand their role in the computing industry: the role of the elite. Those who have learned all they could from linux and continued to grow in the technical field.

-Linux will always have a marketshare: those who understand and want to understand computers. Those who are tired of being limited by windows (and its damn in-kernel processing of display... worst idea EVER!).

MOST IMPORTANTLY:
-Everything in linux is designed as it is FOR A REASON... comments like "linux needs a unified folder system, because linux is too hard to figure out" are responded to with Nietzschen rage and whifflebats.
--corrolary: it is 1000X easier to find [system components, program files, server configuration files, you NAME it] in Linux than it is in windows... go to its particular root directory subfolder... if you dont know which one that is, check online. not that hard: IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO LEARN.
--corrolary: i have a whiffleball bat. not afraid to use it.
--corrolary: Linux is well designed. Windows is not. for this reason alone, windows will fall in the OS war... to my whiffleball bat...

whoa, its my old friend the flamebait bot. w00t!