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Fedora, SuSE And Mandrake Compared
gmuslera writes "This weekend 2 comparisions were made between latest Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake Linux distributions. The first one was done by FlexBeta and in general goes deep, done by people that seem to know Linux, and good around its 9 pages. The later one was done by The Washington Post (yahoo news link) and shows another view of those 3 distributions, from someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know enough about it. In what of those extremes are the average new user experience with those distributions?" Update: 07/06 01:01 GMT by T : Note that long-time Washington Post tech writer Rob Pegaroro doesn't seem to dislike Linux -- far from it; he's just writing what he sees as truth.
Where was this last week when I was looking for this exact comparison?
The only Linux based distro I've tried recently was Suse... and it blew me away. Previously, Linux Distros in general, weren't too friendly and you had to spend a lot of time configuring things yourself. When I installed Suse, EVERYTHING was detected on my text box... which is no small feat considering I had some rather obscure hardware in there. It literally blew me away... I don't think I've seen anything better than YAST at this point, even in my best case senario with Windows installations. Unfortunately, I can't say much about Mandrake or Fedora... but Suse was enough to convince me (and some other very leary friends) to make the switch. Mainly because of Yast itself.
It would seem to me that new users would know nothing, if not less than the Washington Post guy, at any rate. Plus, unless they had some friends that ran Linux, they'd probably dislike it as well.
Hello,
I recently read your FastForward article on the Washingtonpost about how Linux is still an awkward alternative. Towards the end you mentioned:
"That brings up Linux's biggest embarrassment: software installation. Outside of core system updates (ably handled by each distribution's auto-update software), my attempts to add new programs were routinely stymied by the chancy availability of prepackaged downloads and "dependency" issues, in which the installation failed because the computer lacked needed library files."
Are you getting these packages from the servers of the distribution you are using? You should only download rpms which are specifically built for the linux system you are using. For example, if you are using Mandrake linux 10.0 Official Edition, you should only download packages which are built for Mandrake linux 10.0 Official Edition.
But really, on Redhat/Mandrake based systems, you should use urpmi or the graphical installation managers that come with the distributions; they all manage dependency issues for you, if you have your mirrors set up properly.
I primarily use Mandrake linux, and I can almost always find packages I am looking for in the main or contrib sections on the online mirrors.
There is a great site for managing mirrors on Mandrake systems, it's http://www.urpmi.org/easyurpmi
This allows you to easily add main, contrib and external mirrors. You can use these in the Mandrake Control Center, which is a GUI interface that makes installing much easier than the command line.
Also, much of what makes linux what it is, is the community that surrounds it. There are many support channels on irc.freenode.net where you can get support for any issues you may have. Using a chat application such as X-Chat, you can connect to FreeNode and type
Where distributionname is the name of the distribution you're using; e.g.
or
etc.
Linux certainly isn't as friendly to new users as other operating systems such as MacOS or Windows, but in order to honestly evaluate the distributions, it's important to take into account the communities that surround them. Linux is definitely a different breed of operating system, and should be treated as such.
The main reason why distributions don't tout the communities is because the communities are not officially affiliated with the distributions. It is entirely a volunteer based system, and you can get any number of different types of people in those channels, ranging from experts who have worked for years in the field, to new users like yourself.
I know you're probably not looking to use linux as an operating system, since it doesn't seem from your article that you are seriously considering it, but it might be nice in the future to mention some of the things I have, to get a more complete picture.
Thanks!
I've been using Linux (almost exclusively) for probably 8 or 9 years now. I set out to install Mandrake 10 on my new network last week (old thinkpad laptop and new shuttle MB). It took me several days and lots of "ifup" hacking to get my Netgear WG511 wireles card finally working. (It still causes a 60s pause during bootup, but I'm happy that it works)
I still can't get xdmcp to work right. What the hell are all those MIT_MAGIC_COOKIE-1 errors that I'm getting from my Xserver?!?
Linux is great and all, but it requires more persistance than most people have. I think that Washington Post fellow struck the correct tone. Linux still isn't for everyone. Maybe when more hardware vendors get on board and release open drivers....
I, for one, link Linux.
Logic, macros, and more
several of the gripes the reviewer mentioned about fedora can be solved by the following:
/etc/sysconfig/init
/usr/share/pixmaps/splash/gnome-splash.png
/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser -s true
# get rid of the graphical boot in fedora
edit the
GRAPHICAL=no
# change your gnome splash screen
replace
# reset nautilus to default browsing
gconftool-2 -t bool
Am I the only one who is getting tired of these "One Distribution _MUST_ be better than the others" articles? They never comment on that fact that open source means you can mix and match features for the perfect distribution. We need some sort of "Festivix: A Linux for the Rest of Us" that will capitalize on that fact, instead of leading readers to think that the Linux market is fragmented and dying.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hello--I used Mandrake exclusively for a couple of years on a Dell Laptop. It was the easiest system to install & use.
However, I wanted to learn Linux more, so I'm trying Gentoo & Debian. I like Gentoo's "from scratch" installation & that I can choose each item. However, emerging sucks--if I need to get something done but need new software, it's a pain in the ass to compile every freakin' program & dependency. I don't have time to sit around & wait for the process to complete.
Debian on the other hand didn't let me choose my kernals or bootloader. Thus, I was stuck with 2.4.x + Grub as the default. What's more, without a working network connection, Sarge's installer froze at the point where the installer tries to download security updates. How crappy!
I want Gentoo's choices with Debian's precompiled packages (Portage apparently gives you the choice to use precompiled packages but I cannot access them without a network card.)
Mandrake was by far the easiest to use but I didn't learn anything in the process.
OS X is great but makes me feel guilty because I love KDE & IMHO, OS X is not all that compared to KDE/Linux. Konqueror by itself makes KDE absolutely amazing. But OS X works & is really really awesome if you're not comfortable with Linux or are used to Windows. It can do some amazing things.
He's probably one of those people who used to make fun of Mac users because we didn't have a command line, which meant our computers were inferior.
Unfortunately, to install any of these versions without wiping out most Windows installations, you'll need to buy a third-party program to partition your hard drive.
Do any of the Linux Distros come with some sort of "Magic Partition" style software that can be run on install? If not, this might be a very nice addition. I know Live CD allows you to try out Linux without risk to your windows install, but a partition manager that creates a linux or windows boot up automatically would be very cool. And of course, the windows partition could be mouted under linux and directories like "My Documents" could be linked into the GUI on Lunx.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
For the Windows user, one might tend to gravitate toward Mandrake for preconfiguration. Some say it's too dumbed down.
For the tinkerer, one might tend to gravitate toward Fedora for ease of use and configurability. Some say it's buggy.
For the admin, one might find that Suse fills their need for control and power. I can't comment too much on Suse, I only know one person who runs it.
These 3 distros don't even scratch the surface of what's out there. I'll elaborate on a few other distros.
Gentoo, Slackware & Debian: For those who wish to learn by doing. These distros do very little to automate your installation and configuration.
Be prepared to read man pages, how-to's, and write config files.
Slax, Knoppix and a number of other Live CD distributions: For those who want it running NOW.
These distros are running from boot with little configuration thanks to hardware detection and automatic module loading.
LFS (Linux From Scratch): For those who want intimate knowledge of the inner workings of their system.
This distro takes much time to get running....and...it's not really a distro as much as a set of basic instructions.
As I stated in the subject, there are a number of distributions to suit your level of expertise and style of system administration. When choosing a distro, be aware of the available support options and understand that Linux is (for the most part) a 'help yourself' kind of Operating System. In some cases you can pay a support team to assist you, but in most cases you should expect little direct (one on one) assistance.
My suggestion.....if you've got a buddy who's a Gentoo guru, you should run Gentoo because you've got a support system and someone to mentor you.
"Lame" - Galaxar
The first one was done by FlexBeta and in general goes deep, done by people that seem to know Linux, and good around its 9 pages.
So it goes deep and good around its 9 pages? That makes absolutely no sense.
The later one was done by The Washington Post (yahoo news link) and shows another view of those 3 distributions, from someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know a enough about it.
No comma needed. What am I pausing for?
In what of those extremes are the average new user experience with those distributions?"
Huh?
WTF I hate the stupid Washington Post. Could they perhaps actually talk to a computer user or techie about their story before they just post this crap for the world to see?
Depends on what you're doing. SuSe seems ok at leading newbies by the hand from what I remember, a task out of reach for Fedora. However, for an advanced user the newbie-friendliness can be a pain.
Personally, from these 3 I'd choose Mandrake, too - mostly because can fit more bills easy enough. The official release, if set up properly, is actually quite usable by newbies; and for tweaks, Cooker is the bleeding edge. Not to mention the boon that is PLF ^_^
One interesting thing about the washington post's review is that they found the interface of Mandrake and SUSE to be very cluttered, while they found fedora's interface to be far cleaner. GNOME vs KDE ? Many always assume (including me) that KDE would be better liked be windows users.
Also while the washington post's article says linux is an awkward alternative, the experience was that some hardware support was better and easier than windows XP and that it was far cheaper. Since I have to disagree with the statements about it being harder to install software (look at apt-get, urpmi, yum, emerge -- the problem is that there is a LOT of outdated information on the web, this will eventually change), it _definately_ makes linux a contender. Its simply amazing to me that someone who isn't a linux head is doing an article on yahoo/washington post. Slowly but _surely_ I say.
From the Post:
Unfortunately, to install any of these versions without wiping out most Windows installations, you'll need to buy a third-party program to partition your hard drive.
Which is, of course, wrong. Using parted and a graphical frontend like QTparted, you can easily resize partitions. The last SUSE install I helped out with had a partition resizer during the install. Did they take this feature out?
Its the fairest review of the three I've seen _ I'm a Fedora fan, yet I can understand what they liked about Suse and Mandrake.
One thing the reviewer missed about KDE in Fedora - Konqueror is right in the root of the KDE menu. Just click 'Home dir'.
To be fair, the article on Yahoo DID point out some of the frustrations in Linux that many clusers face when using Linux.
* Not all hardware is detected and/or supported (and when it gets supported, it's at least a year after Windows had the driver)
* Installing stuff (while automated over the internet) requires something called a command line... which scares the living hell out of Grandma. Not to mention binary &'%+$*%& only modules!
* Fedora STILL doesn't want to give us MP3 and NTFS
* Then there's that "lack of software" issue (which while considerable on Linux, still gets dwarfed by that of Windows).
* Hard disk partitioning... actually I think Mandrake does well here, but trying to get a cluser to learn what a hard disk is and what a partition is is on par with pulling teeth.
Also, that writer made an ignorant mistake saying that you needed expensive partitioning software to dual boot on a Windows system. That's just plain garbage (fdisk/cfdisk/parted on floppy-based Linux or Knoppix do the job)
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I like the quote "SuSE didn't recognize the sound cards on two of three PCs until after a reboot". God forbid we can't listen to music in the installer, of course even if the sound did work he would have probaby had to use the evil-linux-command-line-of-death to mount a partition and listen to music.
One thing that doesn't seem to be discussed in these reviews is updates. If you want a truly free distro, then (Fedora, Debian, Slackware) are what you want. Mandrake and Suse charge extra for update services and/or disc iso images. Fedora is the only one of the three that offers free system updates (via up2date). The up2date utility was broken on Core 1, but it seems to be working on Core 2.
I installed Mandrake 10.0 Official on one of my systems, only to discover that system updates cost extra. Also, the free downloadable iso images for Mandrake only contain 3 of the 4 discs. I was really annoyed when I found out that xdvi was on the 4th disc! I think Mandrake is a very nice distro if you are willing to pay extra for the update service and the 4th disc.
Let me begin this with the disclaimer that I am fairly new to Linux. I can do all of the basic stuff fairly well, but when it comes to having to hack out wierd stuff that doesn't work right off the bat, I'm...well, deficient.
/dev/sda1 to /mnt/jump and I'm all set. But for some reason Mandrake doesn't set up an sda1 and I'm too newbed to know how to fix that myself.
Anyway, my first choice for Linux is definitely Mandrake. The interface is beautiful, fast and easy and it runs stable (I've had some stability problems with Fedora) all of the time. So why don't I used it? Well, first of all, Mandrake HATES my trackball mice. I have two of them, one from Logitech and one from some other company I can't remember. Anyway, both the mandrake install and mandrake itself refuse to recognize these mice. That wasn't too too bad, I can handle using the regular kind of mouse. But then came the USB problem. No distribution of Mandrake that I have tried up to and including 10.0 liked my USB flash drive. On Fedora I just mount
The final thing I have against Mandrake is its configuration tools. Fedora comes with a nice set of tools to configure all of the stuff I want to use / customize and it always works. Mandrake's on the other hand, have a bad habit of reverting to the settings it liked without even trying my new ones.
I'm running Fedora 2 right now and it works fairly well and does all of the stuff I need it too (it's much better than Fedora 1 for reliability IMHO), but as soon as Mandrake gets to liking my trackballs and jumpdrives I will have no hesitation in switching over.
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Yes command line is bad for a beginner.
Command line lets the user input commands providing he already knows beforehand what commands he has at his disposal.
A graphical interface displays the commands, and lets him chose. This requires, obviously, much less knowledge beforehand.
When i learnt abt Linux, I dont know for some reason i chose Redhat .Looking back , Its the marketing for Redhat that pushes into the lead whne the compettition is tight.Easiness of use , good looks , robustness , help and support were the features that i relished.I never compared Redhat with other flavors as i was busy customizing my linux to defeat the co existence of windows .
And i never looked back for other Flavors.
Moral is : First impression is the Best impression.
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
Cheers,
Mike
I like the idea of forcing people to the shell (or "command line") a little now and then.
It's like owning a car; sooner or later you HAVE to pop the hood and have a look, maybe refill the oil or something.
Forcing users to the shell will, eventually, teach them how the OS works. Or at least, give them a brief idea on what's going on "under the hood".
I remember back in the good ol' days when you bought the C64. You were handed the computer and a manual. You had to tune the TV yourself, and hell, you even had to type in BASIC programs by hand. This way, many users learned BASIC and became software developers -- like myself.
From the Post:
The better solution is the smart package-installer Fedora employs; its "yum" utility fetches a program from an online archive, resolves dependency issues and sets it up with one command. It's a clever system. Except -- duh -- there's no graphical front-end to it, forcing users to use a text-only, command-line interface.
Cobind has a GUI
This is a grapical partition editor that is shipped with several distros.
It allows you to resize/move/delete/create/etc, as one would expect.
I dont have a list, but i know that it comes with Mepis, and a couple of 'rescue-distros'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
One thing that may work wonders is to just change some of the syntax to something perhaps easier to understand. For instance, instead of "mounting hda0", change it to "browse (disk label name)". Refer to a "window management system" not as a graphical interface but as the desktop or icons. Most people know what you mean when you say desktop or icons, but if you get into the KDE vs GNOME argument here then people will just get confused and leave.
As far as the Washington Post article reads I can relate to it. I tried using Linux before knowing how to code - that's rough. After learning a bit of c and c++ (enough to do some basics) I found it much easier to comprehend why things act the way they do. Perhaps Linux could stand to have an average Windows user hanging out by a programmer's desk saying "Why does that do this?" and "Can't you make this happen?". For example, my mom, who happens to be a nurse, has been attending a developer's conference in Oklahoma lately because the hospital is purchasing some new software being developed exclusively for them. Rather than just work off of the hospital's "to-do" list the developing agency asked for 15-20 end users to come down, play with the software, find any points of contention, and the developers would take care of it. I velieve this went on for 3 times at 2 weeks a pop, and the end result is a piece of software that cost a bit more to develop but was created with the end user, not the programmer, in mind.
I do believe that Linux's time is coming soon. I think the major sticking point might be some fragile egos and the "Well, EVERYBODY SHOULD know how to compile from source, download dependencies, and run command line syntax that looks like a keyboard went under a hammer." (I saw a comment in an earlier thread suggesting that ANY end user ought to be able to run complex command line code. Alas, this is not going to fly in the face of Windows or Macs, where command line is secondary to the GUI, whereas in Linux is is the exact opposite). I'm not asking for dancing paperclips or those damn pop-up balloons that won't go away...just an easy way to accomplish what can be done at the command line.
"This food is problematic."
This will instantly be modded as flamebait, I know -- but he's right. For all the open-source community is waiting for that eleventh hour of deliverance when an intern in a cheap Penguin suit exclaims publicly that "the era of the Linux desktop is here" -- it's not happening for a while.
Why? Because every post thus far has been about why the gripes he has about various distributions can be simply, oh-so-easily changed by typing a few lines into a prompt, or replacing this file with that file -- or "God no, not the command line, sarcastically".
A few days ago I was teaching my friend how to use a few command line programs (like 'ls' and 'cd') in FreeBSD. This ended up turning into a two hour circus regarding where the spaces go.
Yes, the command line is that bad for normal people. And even a dancing paperclip?
YES, YOU IDIOT!! THE PAPERCLIP TOO!
Especially the paperclip. I don't care if it's a dancing penguin that takes up your entire screen, if it ends up being annoying as opposed to just plain hard for the normal user, that's a step up.
All the different distributions hurts non techy users. Linux is just a kernel so therefore you have incompatibility like installing software across distros. There needs to be another attempt at forming a standard so apps work on all the distros.
I think linux is almost there.
To get more public usage and software devel. some government intervention is needed to stop OEM bundling of microsoft would help , or counterbalanced by including it on all new computers.
Now if I could find a distro to use acceleration on my 9600xt...
First I had Windows 98. I deleted that because it was too unstable.
Then I had Windows 2000. It ran well, but I deleted it because it was a pirated copy.
I deleted Debian six months ago because I didn't like being told everything on my system was unstable.
I deleted Gentoo one month ago because it took two weeks to install on my 650mhz computer. And two days to do big updates.
I'm using Mandrake 10 now, but I don't like it either. KDE is too busy for my tastes, and though I'm going to switch it to Gnome eventually, I really just want Irix.
Eventually, I'm just switching to one of those linuxes that boot straight to a PVR interface when they support my ATI AIW.
Did have a winmodem ?
Suse never got mine to work.
This article submission was written by someone that seems to dislike English and doesn't know enough about it.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
you can get the same behaviour with bash. just press tab.
1)Login as root
2) Download: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/freetype/freety pe-2.1.9.tar.bz2?...
3)Unbzip and untar the file.
4) Uncomment line 439 in freetype-2.1.9/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h
5) Go back to the freetype-2.1.9 directory
6) ./configure --prefix=/usr
7) make
8) rm -rf /usr/lib/*freetype* (be careful here!)
9) make install
10) Grab Microsoft's core fonts and stick them in /usr/share/fonts
11) Start up KDE, go to the font preferences panel, and turn *off* anti-aliasing. Make sure to select the MS fonts as your UI fonts
My CAD 0.02
- granted, one of the reviews was published by the Washington Post, or as it is more affectionately termed by the clueful here inside the Belchway, "The Washington Fishwrap," due to its many mindless liberal-biased headlines and stories... - however, Pegoraro has regularly covered Linux/OSS issues in the Fishwrap's Tech section (hidden inside an embarrassingly small Business section for a major daily), such as Red Hat's distros and OpenOffice.org... he has done so with an objectivity not found on other tech sites (hint, hint: OSNews??) - it's frustrating to read about 'Joe Six-pack' views of Linux-based operating systems... - but frankly, while Pegoraro's views have not always been 'spot-on Linux knowledgable,' they have been objective... - my point? give the guy a break, send a *nice* email (you do know how to do that, right?), and be helpful! - i suspect, and IIRC, he is a Mac OS X user...
While I don't advocate the command line is removed as it offers a great level of flexibility, things shouldn't stay more difficult just because they can. It's this kind of mentality that stops a more widespread adoption of linux on the desktop. Distros are thankfully making the user experience more enjoyable and not targetting them solely at geeks.
;) and I don't think the conclusions are all that differ. Each offer their advantages, Suse seems to be the most polished. I'd been a mandrake user previously, might be worth taking a look at suse next time.
That being said, I've read both articles (and no I'm not new here
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
Geez, some of the partition foolery that I've gotten up lately to would frighten the pants off of the old Windows-using me of the past. QParted and GParted are my new favourite software tools.
Can't you see the fundamental wrongness of the bias presented here?
I mean, the write-up clearly soft-peddles the advocate review and downplays the consumer-oriented review. I think it is because the first review panders to the satisfaction unix-monkeys get in knowing the arcane and counter-intuitive technologia extremis of Linux, and condemn the consumer oriented approach for its simple, direct perspective of coming at Linux with no pre-conceived notions. The things they mention in the Washington Post article are quite accurate, if you are new to the Unix system layout paradigms.
The thing that bothers me is that there is an undercurrent of hysterical hatred for anyone speaking frankly about Linux and her Unix derived cousins. It's as if the question of OS somehow meant something deeper than what you have installed on your computer. All sorts of strident idealism and contempt for different opinions grip this community, and the community welcomes it!
This same undercurrent pops up from time to time through history, and it is quite dangerous! Consider all the book burning, witch hunting and other such miserable episodes in our collective past, and realize that what drove (and drives today) those awful episodes is the same contempt for difference that lies at the heart of the slashdot bias.
Now, I certainly don't want to conflate the relatively benign Linux over-advocacy problem and the tragedy of those horrible times in the past, but you people should realize that if you start allowing yourself to act like this here and now, indulging in what amounts to simple-minded bigotry, what is to stop you from carrying through with that thinking in realms more directly related to personal liberties, civic safety and common decency?
It's high time some of you stepped up to the plate and decry such flagrant ill manners along with me. It's not a matter of MSFT or APPL vs. Linux, it's a matter of being a decent human being. This sort of indulgent wankery is not decent at all.
Check reviews on google, it's not too difficult. Please be more self sufficient. Not for yourself, but for all the people who you probably keep asking for help. "Is rpm revolutions per minute?" "I hope Linux has a Windows Update." ect
I however, am currently (yes, this second) installing BeOS on my laptop (or craptop, as I call it). You just have to ask yourself what you want to do with your computer, and pick and choose the OS, software from there. For me, aim, simple web browsing, and word fuctionality are sufficient for my craptop: Thus, Abiword, BeAIM, and Mozilla are all I'll be using on this P166MMX w/40MB, 2gigs.
yeah. Command line is bad. Sometimes (Don't flame me, I'm a unix admin). If i'm sitting on my bed with a wireless mouse, and want to toss on some mp3s, I want at least the option ot just double click on a playlist. If a friend who has never sat at my computer before wants to load up a movie, I'd rather have them be able to click on an icon rather than try to figure out whatever cryptic command-line method there would be to do the same thing.
The fact is, for a lot of things, GUI is better. And a desktop, in most cases, is one of these things. I really love a GUI, but at the same time, i really Need to be able to slip under the GUI into a command line mode when i feel the urge.
+5 insightful? more like "-1, cleverly disguised flamebait" I'm sure you already understand the use of a good GUI. Meanwhile, chances are that you're composing this from windows XP.
He's probably spoiled. Windows provides a consistent, logical and easy to understand control panel which makes it especially easy to install and configure new hardware. That, and the fact that a pink elephant ate my grandma, makes me prefer Windows XP.
I love C++
Actually, the article talks about "the Dell's Centrino WiFi circuitry". My emphasis on 'the', a definite pronoun, shows that you have no idea what you're talking about.
(Incidentally, open source drivers for Centrino wireless are available at ipw2100.)
Yeah, read the WP article earlier off of Google news. What really got me about it though was this fellow's supposed to be a tech writer. I have no problem with someone making a reasoned critique of Linux distros and such. However, I got the impression this article was rather thrown together, I mean really, using LiveCD SUSE as a test example? Come on, a tech writer who gets thrown in a whack because one of the DEs, KDE, uses single click instead of double? And who complains about having (he doesn't seem to be aware of niceties like synaptic mind you) to actually use commands to install something? Like others have mentioned, what the heck was this guy using in the 80s anyway? (LOAD "*", 8, 1 and we liked it!)
Context makes him sound reasonably informed. You sir, are either trolling, or functionally illiterate.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I mean. In this day and age. I really love the way he tries to get all "pally, pally" with Linux users right at the start. Probably best to leave things like this to professionals. Its like reading a carpenter's review of metalworking and how its so difficult to lathe sheet steel.
It's a clever system. Except -- duh -- there's no graphical front-end to it, forcing users to use a text-only, command-line interface.
It's a clever system. Except -- duh -- I only read the pictures.
I have read both articles before this ./ article. First one, (non-NYT one) is crap. I hate those reviews where they speak about KDE look and similar stuff. I was unable to read a normal review about SuSE 9.1, although it is one an half month old distro.
Here is the list of some real problems:
I used to run RH8. It's PITAs: write something on rewritable CD (problems, probably due to my CD drive), MP3 does not work until you replace XMMS, but no such quick solution for KDE's native player. RH9 PITAs: Konqie works worse than in RH9 (I even upgraded KDE to latest version from KDE's site). Gnome's tool for CDs does not work, just like it did not in RH8. Connexant modem does not work, driver went closed source. But even that closed driver does not help me, since I have AC97 sound card (and they fight, for some reason). Fedora Core 1: unable to install nvidia 3d drivers, because kernel is not compiled with gcc that's in distro. Complete kernel compilation fails, their config files do not work. [So I moved to Suse, but i have changed the job meanwhile, so I use Linux now only for fun, and even that rarely, so I can't speak about my problems any more.]
Why I am pointing this list: I need some deep article, where someone who has real experience can say - look, i see/don't see improvement. He does not need to say "your Matsushita DVD-CDRW combo works now ok", I would be quite satisfied if he can find any real problem and to spend some time to speak about it. Single click on folders could be set up easily in KDE ages now. It is not a problem. SuSE has ugly mouse pointer, but that is not the problem, too. Say something about ssh version, apache version, whatever, but say something that may matter to someone (it does not have to be me)! Then I could be able to see if this particular distro is right way to go.
And NYT article is simple crap, full of prejudicies and full of incorrect information.
No sig today.
More accurately, 'the' is a definite article.
My apology: it was not NYT, as I said in parent, it was Washington Post.
No sig today.
From someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know a enough about it.
Translation: "From somebody who is obviously biased against linux and spreading M$ FUD about linux being hard to use, and who is a stupid 1u53r who doesn't want to learn anything how his computer works, who wants everything all pretty GUI and clickity-click-like, who has been brainwashed into proprietary-style thinking that the command line is evil, and whose so-called 'usability problems' are nothing more than him being used to Windows."
I don't think the Washington Post article said very much about the state of desktop linux, but I think that the reaction to it speaks volumes.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Nope, that kid wasn't born yet - he sure won't know DOS.
Oh well, what the hell...
Fedora is an RPM based distro. Fedora's default desktop is GNOME. Fedora's GNOME does not have a default file association for *.rpm files. DUMB
When you do have a program associated with RPM, you can double-click the RPM, only to spend a few minutes realizing that each of the packages you downloaded need each other installed first. Sure, you can do an "rpm -ivh blah-*.rpm" from the command line (or whatever the switches are - I don't use RPM distros anymore), but is it so freaking hard to have the graphical RPM tools "see" the other RPMs sitting right there in the same folder, and handle them intelligently? DUMB
Way, way, way, way too many packages that aren't available through the distro's repositories themselves. There's only about a dozen RPM repositories for Fedora Core to chase various packages down from. This is the one biggest thing that makes me dump SuSE every time and head back to Gentoo. Instead of Pacman and usr-local-bin and etc. etc. etc., would it really be so hard to have a "contributed" repository maintained by SuSE (and "known" to YaST at install time), where these places (and god knows what others) just submit their packages to? Virtually everything I can imagine, I could get through Portage in Gentoo. Why can't the "big" distros have their prebuilt package repositories be similarly comprehensive? It was such a task for one of my buddies to get/install divx4linux - all the guy wanted to do was watch a little pr0n on his fresh Linux install! Even though it's not that hard, nobody should *have* to fall back on tarballs and ./configure / make / make install. DUMB
There's a lot of little things that keep pissing off potential Linux users, and sending them back to Windows. It's the "little things" that the Mac platform usually does so well. It's those same "little things" that Linux distros, desktop environments, etc, need to pay attention to.
All of them are about the same.
What I recommend is Fedora, this is because of the widespread support of Yum and the abundance of online sources of RPM repositories.
Dag, FreshRPMS, and a couple others offer much of the software that Fedora lacks by default.
Yum makes it easy to update your OS, install new programs etc etc.
In fact I beleive that tools like Yum and Apt are the killer application for Linux.
Hundreds of programs at your fingertips, just type apt-get install progrname, or yum install progname, and you have your program.
No messing with dependance, chasing down RPMs on obscure home sites. All that dependancy hell solved for ever and ever and ever.
Plus you guess what?!
YOU KEEP YOUR OS UP TO DATE.
By installing programs you keep your OS up to date.
yum update
yum install software
Apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install software
Then you have GUIS like synaptic for Apt and you'll have nice ones for Yum shortly.
No security patches go unpatched. If you want nice new games or programs you keep you OS up to date by default.
Good stuff, easy to use, modiretly easy to setup.
Something that Mandrake's urpmi and Suse's Yast tools aren't even close to as good as Yum for Redhat/Fedora and Apt for Debian.
NO MORE DEPENDANCIES TO DEAL WITH. Wasy, and third parties fill in the blanks for things like libdvdcss and other programs.
He had has a lot of other "facts" wrong. He indicates that fedora core2 costs $199 at one point, and also implies that to install Linux on a Windows partition reqauires buying some partitioning software, which is wrong, since at least Mandrake and SuSE will repartion a disk no-destructively. As a journalist goes, his ability looks limted.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Now that there is decent VM software for both Windows and Linux, I will never set up a dual-boot system again. That is the very worst way to get two OSes, particularly competing OSes, on one box. There goes any "need" for a third-party partition program to support two OSes, or competition over a boot sector.
Agreed with one addition: a fast net connection (something other than dial up) is a very big plus. When I setup my latest Gentoo box I must of downloaded a few hundred megs. If you can bring your box someplace with a fast connection you can always:
emerge -f bigOldPackage
-f will fetch the packages for compiling later. Grabbing the "Package CD" helps too.
I left RH after they killed off their $80 per year RHN and started running Gentoo. Haven't looked back. Installing mplayer in one shot ("emerge mplayer") is a very cool thing.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
I just bought an iBook this weekend. On first bootup, it asked me to setup the wireless network and enter the WEP password. I tried so many times to enter it and it would say incorrect password. It was only deep in a manual somewhere that I found out I had to prefix the password with a dollar sign if entered in hex. Nowhere during the install did it say that. And here I thought Macs were the easiest to use!
IMHO the place that these distro's keep missing the target is when they try to do too much for too many.
Linux is massively customizable by its very nature regardless of how it's packaged. So let the people that want to customize every little aspect of their system figure it out for themselves.
A desktop disto should be a windows workalike or work-better. Like Mozilla's Thunderbird or Firefox. That's how you steal market share... work better.
The desktop distro should be able to do (and do well) everything that a windows box can do from a default install. Workalike interface, SMB networking, browsing, mail, music and video, brainless hardware detection and configuration, printing, and IM. Out of the box, default install.
Anyone who has an answer to the question "KDE or Gnome?" does not need this sort of distro, But the rest of the world does.
If you want to see unix working better than windows on the desktop then you need look no further than OS X. OS X has it's problems too (like being handcuffed to Apple hardware), but it can do all of this out of the box, it's *nix and my grandma can (and does) use it.
Over the last 8 weeks I have installed 2.6 based kernel systems: Mandrake 10, Fedora C2, Knoppix 3.4 and Suse 9.1.
I used 3 platforms:
a. An old AMD K2 350 b. VM Ware c. A 2.6Ghz P4
Personal assessment:
1. Sound - alsa is better than 2.4 OSS
2. All distros were easier to install and manage than there previous kernel 2.4 offerings
3. I liked Suse9.1 the best (mainly because of YaST and ease of mangement)
4. I liked KDE better than Gnome (don't flame - it just my preference)
I had used RHL 8 in the past - this was an eval on my part - I'm now a Suse fan.
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
Excpet Eugenia is a woman
"Oh God NO!!!! Anything but the command line. I need pretty pictures and maybe a dancing paper clip thingy. It's too much to remember a few commands."
When other OS's don't require it, then yes, it is too much to ask. It's annoying to go have to look up commands when it's dirt simple to create an interface that asks appropriate questions.
Whoop-de-de, you can use a CLI, you're so elite.
"Derp de derp."
Well if you actually bought the distro, SUSE used to come with a pretty nice book that had all of the commands you could ever want in it. There are also sections of Debian's website and the Gentoo website that document it. While we're at it, I can also mention the O'reilly Running Linux book. I could also go on about this search engine called google.
Frankly, the sections in the book that come with the distro and the man pages can get someone started and good use of a search engine or IRC or mailing list can help you figure out those other problems.
The Post article was moronic and I wrote to tell them so. I wish I could have added "AND CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION" but I haven't read the Post regularly for years (with good reason).
The review went something like this:
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I have a FORD but I'm considering three alternatives:
(a) The Chevy is nice, but I don't like the available color schemes.
(b) The Honda drove well, but I would like something larger.
(c) Cadillacs are too expensive.
Well, since all the alternatives to FORD are ugly, too small and too expensive I think I'll just keep driving a FORD.
---
All such people should be told the same thing when they complain about security exposures decade release cycles and bloat: "Well why don't you get off your FAT ASS and do something about it? And don't call me at home with your stupid questions!"
He dinged Linux for not having an easy enough dynamic disk partitioner. I mean can't the Washington Post afford a fresh machine for him to install Linux on? Last time I checked, Windows didn't have a dynamic disk partitioner at all, and installing it blows away anything that is already there (boot wise).
Anyway, I know people at the Post, which I think is still a mainframe shop, at least to some extent. I haven't compared notes with them in a long time, but it seems to me the best thing they could do would be to adopt open standards, life-cycle methodology (to avoid the convert everything at once red-herring) and ultimately allow them to plug-and-play various kinds of clients into a logical infrastructure.
Based on this article, they don't seem to have a clue.
For Mandrake:
search Google for "easy urpmi". Follow instructions. Then use built-in GUI tools to find, pull down, install, upgrade whatever software you want.
For Fedora 2:
Search Google for apt-get rpm. Install it. do apt-get install synaptic. Use Synaptic GUI to find, pull down, install, upgrade whatever software you want.
It is really quite easy and powerful (tons of free stuff).
Some distributions, which were not reviewed, already address these issues. ( however, few of them are 'free' )
You put the disk in, answer a couple of simple questions ( if any at all ) then *poof* you have something that vaguely looks like what you had when you ran windows. Only that now its 'better'.
The distributions he chose to 'review' inadvertently tainted the results, I believe.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The point of the official versions for any Linux vendor is to be stable, not up-to-date (except for patches, that is). That's why you mostly get the major component upgrades with the distro upgrade - it costs them time (thus money) to test, track config changes and everything from various states of upgrade: do you upgrade to kde-3.2.3 from 3.2.2, 3.2.1, 3.1 and so on.
Anyway, don't give up yet - if you want to stay up to date with packages, at the cost of some stability, you still have choices: Fedora, even SuSe for some stuff (most notably kde), Debian (yeah, sounds amazing), Gentoo.
The key, as always, is to figure out what you really need when forced to choose between two less-than-compatible options (up-to-date and stable/tested). Then stick to your answer.
"The first one was done by FlexBeta and in general goes deep, done by people that seem to know Linux, and good around its 9 pages." Even if we overlook the switch from past to present tense (and back again), "...was done by...in general goes deep, [was] done by ...", this sentence is still atrocious. The coup de grace is "[the first one was] good around its 9 pages."
But our suffering is not over, as we soon find out "...from someone that seems to dislike Linux and don't know a enough about it." I would sure like to meet this someone, this someone who 'don't know' a thing. Finally, I'll leave you with a question: "In what of those extremes are the average new user experience with those distributions?" In what of those extremes indeed! Bravo slashdot staff, bravo!
Oh God NO!!!! Anything but the command line. I need pretty pictures and maybe a dancing paper clip thingy. It's too much to remember a few commands.
It's not so much a need as a preference. Can new users *really* be bothered to learn how to use the command line? No. Should all users have to drop to command line? I don't buy it. Does lack of command-line use make an Operating System inferior?
No, look at how Apple do it. Most 'new users' WANT their bright shiny GUI interface and won't want to dig under the hood to get things working. I'd say the need to drop to command line a lot is the main reason a lot of people don't switch to Linux (probably second after it's inability to run games without the likes of Wine or WineX). The command line looks daunting to new users. Big shiny buttons that tell you exactly what they do look easy. First appearances count for a lot, as does ease of use. command-line does not look easy-to-use. Be it an installer, a program or the whole OS, if it looks easy to use, if it is easy to use, a lot of people will use it. A lot of people dont care about the technical details and 'getting to know their computer', they just want a quick and easy way to get everything done so they can do their work (or play). Just ask the guys at Apple.
Oh, and leave Clippy alone, Clippy is your fr... OK, I concede that one, Clippy is a bastard.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
things shouldn't stay more difficult just because they can
Who is keeping stuff more difficult? The opposite is happening. We're keeping the command line as it is, and adding a desktop the system. It's the bleacher pundits who are the ones advocating removing a complete command interface just to spite the intermediate and expert users.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Here is the answer to the question you almost asked:
http://rpm.pbone.net/
it's dirt simple to create an interface that asks appropriate questions
If it's so simple, why haven't you done it already?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I actually thought the mainstream media account was pretty well-balanced. I've used multiple distributions, including Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, and most recently, Gentoo.
Many of the experiences I've had match what the author experienced. I have yet to have a distribution where everything worked 100% out of the box. I've run into numerous occasions where I've had to play musical chairs with RPMs to get things to install.
I generally have had pretty good luck sorting out these problems out since I'm a pretty advanced computer user, but I have also had problems that were very perplexing. I could see how the experience for a user who does not have the experience or the inclination to spend hours configuring their computer would still find the experience daunting.
While the author brings up all of these issues, he also notes that some of these problems are due to poor manufacturer support. He also expresses faith that the user interface problems with yum will quickly be solved. The fact that a mainstream news outlet would note Linux's strong security record and mention it as a strong possibility for replacing Windows is encouraging since it will raise the visibility of Linux for the mainstream.
I've seen great improvements since starting to use Linux. I enjoy the fact that my scanner now will only work on Linux, while the drivers for Windows 2000 are fairly worthless. Gentoo has been pretty satisfactory on my 64-bit Opteron, while Microsoft is still not shipping 64-bit Windows XP.
Let's acknowledge that works needs to be done and keep improving. I'm looking forward to trying new versions and seeing this platform mature.
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
This assumes:
1 That the distro has a manual written for someone new to Linux.
2 That a newcomer can be good at extracting useful onformation from Google. Not a trivial skill in itself.
3 That he knows what IRC is and how to use it effectively or how to find an appropriate mailing list for a beginner.
Let me start this post by saying I have been an exclusive Linux user since 1996, back in the old 1.3 days, with Slackware. I have more or less only been a "RedHat Man". It works on my workstations at work, it works at home. Now recently I got a new Athlon 64 and so of course wanted to run 64 bit Linux on it, right? We ran into so many problems with (or so we attributed) Fedora 1 x86_64 that we decided to install Fedora x86 instead. Well, guess what, same problems. Finally we got everything working, but it took a while, and this is by someone who generally knows what he's doing with Linux.
Now, just a few days ago, I was looking to upgrade my RedHat 9 box to Fedora. I decided to try Fedora 2 (it's got to be good, right). Wrong! It took 4 solid hours to get a clean install. It crapped out numerous times when installing specific rpm's (openoffice for one), and then a mesage would come up and say something to the effect of "OpenOffice won't install, so aborting entire installation." So, off you go from scratch again, only to have another problem pop up. No kidding, 4 hours installing Fedora 2 from scratch.
Don't try a custom installation it will crap out. Don't try a typical Home installation, it will crap out. Don't try a typical server installation, it will crap out. And never at the same point.
I am still a diehard Linux user and appreciate all the effort the Fedora community has put into their distro, but man guys, test it out first! It's seriously put me off Fedora 3 in the future.
Meanwhile, chances are that you're composing this from windows XP. What's that all about????
B - It has a GUI on each and every user's desktop
C - There is no C.
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
At the risk of being somewhat off topic, where do people suggest asking Linux-related questions and getting a minimum amount of condescending attitude back?
I'm an experienced computer user, but I'm definitely going to need some help getting things set up. Plus I have some questions about direction before I even start (and pick a distro).
Package management is the reason I switched from from Redhat to Debian. Redhat was a great way to learn Linux. However trying to install down loaded RPM's often ended in dependency hell. The last Redhat version I used was 7.0, so the situation may be better now.
I have never had any major problems with Debian. I am currently running unstable and upgrade once or twice a week. The Debian packages seem to be "finer grained" as well, which keeps some of the stuff I don't want off of my system.
Slightly older manual for Mandrake. Definately written for some one converting from MS Windows with things like "Where is my Start Menu?".
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
"If it's so simple, why haven't you done it already?"
Because the problem is already solved for me?
"Derp de derp."
The gentoo forums will literally save you're life at times. Probably one of the best linux-centric knowladge portals out there. And they're noob friendly.
Well just reading your answer, the email you sent him, prove the Washington Post guy points. Reread yourself, it's awfull the stuff you consider normal and easy, and by the way, "almost" is not enough.
going on chats to install stuff or find it is totally counter-intuitive, even more when you need info. Hell, IRC is counter-intuitive! I never have done IRC more than 20 min. in a row, too much commands, specifications, preferences, abreviation, assholes... if you have to go trough this "simple" step to understand how to install a software, you're doomed. And I'm not a noob or something I just consider knowing the equivalent of a dictionnary to use a software stupid, I'm the type of geek that prefers productivity, simplicity and getting the work done, not marveling in front of my supa skillz mastering the chat commands and understanding every acronyms in existenz!
man -k requires that the apropos database is already built. How do I find out about that? Info is a word easier to guess, but learning the navigation takes effort. The user really needs to be able to type "help" and get enough information to at least tell him how to find things.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Regarding the "Linux, Still an Awkward Alternative". article:
He should point out that Mandrake is free, if you want to download it. I have distributed literally thousands of copies. The article seems to imply that you have to buy it and compares the cost to MS-Windows.
Mandrake Move is the same concept as SuSe live, and you can download that for free, also.
I have installed Mandrake 10 on perhaps 10 different types of machines so far. Not once did it fail to "graphical system configure a graphical interface automatically".
He said " Unfortunately, to install any of these versions without wiping out most Windows installations, you'll need to buy a third-party program to partition your hard drive." That is just completely false. Mandrake will non-destructively repartition any MS-Windows partition.
He should clarify on "None supported the laptops' modems" to the readers that none of the modern laptops include real modems, only "win" modems which are proprietary and designed to work only with MS-Windows. Even so, 80% of them can be made to work under Linux, but it is not a super-easy task.
He also said this: " That brings up Linux's biggest embarrassment: software installation. Outside of core system updates (ably handled by each distribution's auto-update software), my attempts to add new programs were routinely stymied by the chancy availability of prepackaged downloads and "dependency" issues, in which the installation failed because the computer lacked needed library files." Dependency problems do not occur with any of the many thousands of software packages included in Mandrake 10.... only when you download generic packages off the web.
And this: "The better solution is the smart package-installer Fedora employs; its "yum" utility fetches a program from an online archive, resolves dependency issues and sets it up with one command." Both SuSe and Mandrake can do the exact same thing. Mandrake, for example, uses urpmi. If you set up a software mirror, you will be presented with a graphical point-and-click interface. Installing any package is just a click.
He is wrong to say that installation must be done from the command line. In SuSe, when clicking on an rpm file using Konqueror, a page with a description of the RPM wil come up and there will be a button saying "Install with Yast2". Click on the button, and the package is installed if there are no dependency issues. If there are dependecy or package conflict issues, Yast2 wil point it out. I am a laptop user, and have installed SuSe on several laptops. As far as the hardware, SuSe has picked up all my hardware, so long as it is a new distro and the hardware has been out for six months. I've yet to have the same exprience using MS Windows. With MS Windows, you have to hunt down for the drivers on the web. In the end, though, it is the responsibility of the hardware vendors to provide the drivers. You cannot possibly expect a distribution to write drivers for every single piece of hardware out there. It is neither fair not logistically possible.
" Unfortunately, to install any of these versions without wiping out most Windows installations, you'll need to buy a third-party program to partition your hard drive."
Nobody told me that! I've installed Mandrake 8.0, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2 and 10.0 on computers with pre-existing Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2K and XP. Not once have I ever required anything but the Mandrake and Windows CD's.
So now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess all those computers are going to burst into flame or something because I didn't purchase a third party program?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I need to mention that one of my cow-orkers once asked me about Linux, and his main objection was the command line. Now, he was certainly technical enough to figure out the CLI - he just didn't want to. His attitude was, "I work with the damn things all day! When I get home, I want something that just works".
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
* Font size: how about the fact that running a gtk+ app on kde would have different font sizes when running the same app under native gnome? or vice versa: running a kde app would have different font size in kde and gnome - to me that's annoying. for whatever reason the tool bar font config is greyed out (disabled) under gnome and you'll have to adjust that in kde's control center.
* As for install divx codecs, in debian you only need add (for debian unstable) - but should work in apt-get in redhat/fedora...
* linux video drivers: DRI anyone? Not really linux's fault, but companies like ATI... *sigh* anyway...
* filemanager: I use the command line for all file operations, but the new user might prefer a file manager that's fast and responsive. Konqueror's too slow on my PIII 450HMz (384MB ram), but I found nautilus to be surprisingly fast, but that's only the case when I'm running gnome - because it gets preload.
* X being responsive: let's try dragging a window and wiggle it around your screen. just look at all the after-images...
my blog
I should have known from my overflowing inbox that my story had gotten posted on Slashdot...
Well, after reading all 118 e-mails to date and re-reading the column itself, I'd like to address the questions that have come up about it. I'll start by addressing the contention that I am some sort of shill for Microsoft: Please read a few of my recent columns and tell me if you think I'm doing any favors to the good people in Redmond.
Second, the "why didn't you cover distribution X, Y and Z?" question. Since there are only so many hours in the day, I decided I'd only look at distros using the 2.6 kernel; I'd also only look at the distributions readers might already recognize--either by seeing them for sale in computer stores, or by seeing books about them in bookstores.
Third, my comment about NTFS disk partitioning. Throw all the rotten tomatoes at me that you want, because I got this wrong; SuSE and Mandrake can resize NTFS partitions, although Fedora and many other distros cannot. (Granted, there are apparently a few bugs in their implentation of this, but still...)
Fourth, the "what's so hard about using the command line?" gripe. Command-line interfaces have gone out of style in consumer operating systems for Very Sound Reasons. They're not remotely "discoverable"--unlike a row of menus or toolbar icons, a blank command-line prompt has no way of telling you what you *can* do. They're unforgiving--one typo in the command and it won't work.
Fifth, my complaints about the problems of installing software in Linux: The results I reported came from my attempts to install software as most Windows refugees might: by downloading fairly well-known applications (for instance, Firefox and AbiWord) and double-clicking them once they had landed on my desktop.
I went on to note that there are automated package-installers, then focused on Fedora's in particular (I did give Cobind's YumGUI a whirl too, but since that's a) in beta and b) not included with Fedora, I can't consider that the answer). I could have discussed Mandrake's rpmDrake instead, in which case I would have criticized the way it's buried four menus deep (will any new user even think to look under the "Packaging" sub-menu?). I also could have used SuSE's YAST2 as an example, in which case I would have had to note how this was smart enough to alert me of dependency issues while installing downloaded SuSE RPMs, but not smart enough to fix them automatically.
If anybody's actually read this far, I'd add that my goal in this column was to try to assess these three releases not as a Linux expert might find them, but as somebody moving from Windows might find them. I.e., the vast bulk of the potential user base.
I personally found all three of these distributions quite usable once set up properly--certainly much more so than the versions of SuSE, Mandrake and Lycoris that I reviewed two years ago, or the Red Hat release I tried out in late 2002--but that doesn't mean that, say, my brother or my mom would put up with the initial setup work. And I'd be lying to readers if I didn't tell them that.
Thanks man, I almost literally spit pop all over my keyboard.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I downloaded Mandrake and Fedora and SuSE, just as it happens. Mandrake and Fedora both failed to enable my Soundblaster Live card or automatically configure my LAN/ADSL connection. I _think_ SuSE got my LAN/ADSL okay, but for some reason it never put a real image up on my monitor display...I got an Sync Out OF Range box floating around on the screen.
HOWEVER....The latest Knoppix automatically connected me to the net and got my SoundBlaster card working fine, without additional input from me.
I'd like to work with Linux, but until I can set up an initial install that just plain _works_, as well as oh, say, Windows XP right out of the box, I'm not going to bother to do much with it.
Yes. Fedora, SuSE and Mandrake approach Linux differently. So what? So does Gentoo and thirty other distros at least one person on earth "swears by".
Let's lay to rest the distribution game and start working together for one common goal: Linux that works well enough to replace a desktop OS in business, one that a COO has confidence in.
This distro squabbling is what's holding Linux back. After all, isn't Open Source for us all and not for specific distros?
This is my $0.02.
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IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
No don't get me wrong, I think the "linux community" as a whole have made tremendous steps towards making things easier, I was just responding to the sarcasm in the parent post.
Mandrake, Suse, the Fedora guys and all the kids at KDE and Gnome should keep up the great work. (and maybe consolidate the truly great ideas?)
Glenn
The Smrt way to trade CFDs on the ASX
This really kills one of the big advantages of linux -- all the available software, mostly free. I've been trying to get my computer to do midi for several months. It looks like Rosegarden ought to be able to do about the same as Band-in-a-Box does under Windows. But I've had _ZERO_ success. Debian is billed as rock-solid-stable, but it doesn't support new hardware, and installing anything not from debian fails because of dependencies or some such. Remudi and Demudi don't work. CCRMA doesn't work. Mandrake doesn't do very well at sound. Fedora Core 1 may not like my soundcard. Etc, etc.
The problem is that it's a big world. Lots of distros with lots of versions, lots of application software with lots of versions, lots of different user-machine configurations. The chance of a linux beginner finding a helpful soul who can explain how to get correct all the interconnections of a particular combination is just about zero.
OTOH, if you just want to do what the typical typical user does -- word-processing, email, spreadsheets, web-surfing, photo-album stuff, linux looks to be a wonderful improvement over Windows.
I've tried to get answers to my beginner's problems setting up linux for sound on comp.os.linux.setup or such, and no help there.
Where's "AnimeFu Linux" with all the blue-haired girls? =)
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
Some argue that the CLI is the best newbie interface. I don't know if I would be this extreme, but I would say you underestimate beginners and the tools on a CLI. Most people who have the courage to install the OS have the courage to tolerate the command line A LITTLE.
I know that in some distributions, I've seen at least a program I've never heard of. The natural inclination is to open up the darn program to figure out what it is & if it can be used to do what I want. This is a waste of time.
A friend was using gnome and wanted to open an IDE. How should he that this program with the funny name "anjuta" was what he wants? If you can grok the way the GUI desktop is organized and the way developers have named programs, you are fine. But if not?
On the CLI, this is solved with a simple "apropos integrated development." Tab completion and aliasing in most shells means you have to remember only the first few characters of most commands in order to use them. I doubt this is any harder than remembering where in the maze of menus you have to choose the program from.
If you insist on a menu of commands, this can also be implemented on the CLI. I remember (in the days of DOS) programming batch menus for floppy disks I distributed. There are now utilities to do this fo you in linux.
The GUI does provide some amount of comfort--there are sometimes icons tied to programs which will graphically jog your memory as to what you might want to run. Graphics in general are usually more soothing than text. But that doesn't mean the command line is bad.
A graphical interface displays the commands, and lets him chose
# "TAB" "TAB"
Sure, you can roll your own, but most people don't want to. Let me restate that: Sure YOU can roll your own, but most people CAN'T. Just because it can be done doesn't mean the general public is capable. If you can't deal with that reality don't read reviews intended for the general public.
Um, yes, I would say the lack of a powerful command line does make an OS inferior. There are dozens of tasks I perform that are so much easier when I have tools like find/grep/awk/etc at my disposal. That's why many of us use stuff like Cygwin when we have to use Windows. You just can't duplicate certain tools in a GUI.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I'd love to. No support for my modem under Linux. I have to reboot to Windows, download the missing RPMs, and reboot to Linux, try again. And again. And again.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The gui is called up2date and it is launched by the Red Hat Network Alert Icon lives that lives in your system tray.
It's just another example of a clueless reviewer who doesn't realise that anything that can be made to use a command line interface by design can have a python gui slapped onto it to make it pretty if you just complain to the right people enough.
The reverse is not true of things that come designed for GUI.
"Mandrake will non-destructively repartition any MS-Windows partition."
Oh ho. Not if you are using say NTFS.
" none of the modern laptops include real modems, only "win" modems which are proprietary and designed to work only with MS-Windows"
A meaningless technical quibble to the audience of that article. Their laptop has got a modem that configures and works automatically under Windows, but won't work without some hair pulling under Linux. If you don't see that as an issue, fine. I agree with the author, it is a show stopper for non geeks.
I downloaded Mandrake yesterday, installed it today, booted up, ran Mozilla and went straight to /., where I found this story.
Note that all those pseudo-gui screens in the slackware (10.0) installer have 2 choices: 'OK' and 'Cancel.' 'Cancel' kills the install and throws you out to the command line. No 'Help' buttons to explain any of this mumbo-jumbo. No 'Back' button if you see that you got where you don't want to be. This is a sub-par intro for anyone coming from an OS that pretends that somebody gives a turd.
By repartitioning he probably meant, "and leave you with an undamaged fully functional Windows insallation afterwards".
Even a 10% failure rate would be too high. I see no sign that NTFS repartitioning has achieved that level of reliability.
I started using RedHat back at 4.2 or so. I used Mandrake from 6.2 till 8.1. As a desktop, it blew. I switched to SuSE when it was at 8.1 I believe and loved it immediately. So, from a long term Linux user, I apprecaite the professional feel of SuSE. Mandrake always felt like it was tossed together by a bunch of script kiddies and never worked right as a desktop OS for me. However, to be fair, I still have one Mandrake 7.2 server running around here someplace. It has been nothing short of reliable as a server. It's always up, does Samba, POP, IMAP, SMTP, DHCP, and at one point DNS as well for me.
I haven't tried out Fedora yet. Truth is I'm too busy to play with new distros any more and I'm happy with SuSE. If I had the time though, I'd certainly give it a shot. I like the idea that it's RedHat the OS without having RedHat the company manipulating it. RedHat started scaring me a few years back with MS like tactics. That was the original reason why I didn't stick with RedHat after 6.2 or so.
On the CLI, this is solved with a simple "apropos integrated development."
Nly n Unx wld ll th vwls b sqzd t nd thn wld ppl b skd t spll "apropos" crrctly. Tht's Pgrro's pnt xctly.
See this.
Is it reliable?
Yes, it is reliable. Since July of 2002, when ntfsresize became publicly available, there were countless success reports for both enlarging and shrinking Windows XP/2000/NT4, Windows Server 2003 and Longhorn NTFS filesystems on both workstation and server versions (Home, Professional, Server, Advanced Server). No destroyed filesystem was reported who followed the instructions correctly.
Exactly! User friendly!
OK, that seems authoritative, I'll give it another go.
Mind you, as Mandy Rice Davies said, "they would say that, wouldn't they?"
When Linux gets software of the same or better calibre in the area of graphic design and video editing, I'm there. Solid, stable, feature filled packages is what I'm after, not Rube Goldbergian systems of programs. Real equivalents to existing Windows and Macintosh software.
Everything else seems to work OK, just need those specialized apps and not running on Wine, either.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Oh yes RedHat the Company is still manipulating Fedora. Community support has started to work a little bit, but RedHat is still to offer CVS access to its packages to people outside.
On the positive side, RedHat has pushed a very aggressive timeline to get a 2.6 distribution out that mostly works. It's not all bad.
Tell him to get a toster.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
You may want to try this cool thing called Google some time there are 2,950,000 Hits on Linux Howto you might be able to be able to find the FM there. It all comes down to how you define documentation I guess......
I stopped thinking I was unique when I found out everyone else was to. So does that make me the average user???
I agree with you totally. I was actually being sarcastic in my original post. My apologies if it came off completely different. I guess it's true that sarcasm doesn't work on the net.
The part of my post in italics was a quote from the person who had originally posted the story. I've seen zillions upon zillions of people like that in the FOSS community who accuse users with legitimate grievances with linux usability who've had problems doing stuff of anti-linux bias *while* simultaneously calling those very same users idiots, questioning their intelligence, and trying to force arcane unix dogma upon them. Often, these people (who I call Kernigheze, because there's no pre-existing word to describe people like that) thinly vail this opinion because, well, it just doesn't make them look very good to claim Linux is just as easy to use as Windows/OS X and then call Joe six-pack a moron. However, there are certain catch phrases you can pick up on that alert you to the presence of a Kernigheze. "Doesn't like Linux" is a euphemism for "Is biased and spreads M$ FUD about linux being hard to use". "Doesn't know any thing about linux" is a euphemism for "is an idiot who doesn't want to learn anything about unix and wants everything spoon to him in a condescending, dumbed-down GUI". Not everyone on Slashdot has had enough experience with the FOSS community to be able to read between the lines and look behind the veil, so I took it upon myself to perform a public service for the community and do this.
My rant is not one of a Linux zealot. My rant is of someone who despises Linux zealots and who thinks the disciples of Thompson and Ritchie just are as evil, corrupt, and abusive towards end users as Microsoft; they just screw end-users for fun and the principle of it, whereas Microsoft screws end-users for money. IMHO, Open Souce would be a lot better and successful for non-technical users if the Kernigheze left. Whether they are going to leave voluntarily or whether they will have to be forced to leave, that's really up to them.
In regards to the CLI, I'm actually for getting rid of the CLI totally, because CLI's are like silicone breast implants: their proponents keep telling us the nasty stuff is hidden inside many layers of protection and no one will ever have to see it or deal with it, yet despite what they say, it inevitably leaks through and people get hurt. I believe that the work of the artist carries with it the imprint of the tool--if you make a piece of GUI software using a CLI-genre tool (bash, vi, emacs, etc), somehow or other that CLI will leak through into the UI. That's why we need public licenses stipulating that anyone who wants to ship or modify the software can't ship a terminal program with it. Force 'em to use GUI's; the ones who get upset and leave are the ones who never had good intentions and are the ones we need to be getting rid of--it's about time we took out the Text-Trash!
I can only hope that people working on Linux development have more sense than the average slashdot poster.
Sadly, the developers typically have even less sense than the posters on Slashdot.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I've been using Xandros Linux for 18 months. It allows Windows partions to be dynamically resized when it's installed. Very easy. Very painless. It does a very good job of easily networking with Windows as well, and autodetects and configures a *LOT* of hardware. It's a good Windows refugee distro for those who don't need the latest and greatest, and are more concerned with using their computer. It's not too good for people who want to play with Linux at the fundamental level. If you like Gentoo, you probably won't like Xandros. It's based on Debian.
Xandros 3.0 should be out 4Q04. Then I'll see how good the installer is at obliterating a WinXP partition. I haven't used XP once in the last 18 months. I only kept it to preserve my HP hardware warranty, if you can believe that. Anybody want an OEM XP Home certificate of authenticity sticker and product key?
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
It took J Random Backpacker (Dave "FreeSounds2000", in case you happen to know him) about half an hour, and most of that was because his Yahoo account had expired and he couldn't be bothered reading the login screen. Kopete rocks! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Pegaroro is right: the installation of software is a pain in the @$$ on Linux. It was the biggest one of my few gripes with my newest experiment with Linux (Mandrake 10.0). They are improving on it, too, but Joe User must get his/her easy Redmond-style installation before you can call the process even remotely easy. Remember, Joe and Jane User usually find even the Windows installation process to be rocket science.
Here are some points:
-No command lines, absolutely NO command lines. They scare the bejesus out of people. And they are difficult, really. Remember, I'm brainwashed by Windows and GUIs.
-You need to make getting those needed libraries easy. The easiest way is to make the installer download and install those needed.
-Some kind of standard for installation packages in style of the installer exe in Windows.
I see most of your points, but they're all still arguable. In particular, I want to see how many levels deep you have to go to find Microsoft's package manager.
In my case, if I keep digging for Microsoft's package manager I come out somewhere near the Bermudas. How many menus deep is that?
The closest Microsoft come is that some software - including some of their own - registers itself enough that you can de-install it. Dependencies? We don' need no steenkin' dependencies, we 0wn3rZ the desktop, dude!
The vast majority of the problems you raised have to do with un-learning and presumption inherited from MS-Windows land. They are not shortcomings in Linux, and I sincerely hope that Mandrake et al don't turn to emulating MS-Windows so slavishly that you're happy with the result.
Many of your criticisms would be as appropriate to the Mac, which is indeed a shiny, user-friendly gem of an OS in comparison. That alone should be a wake-up call.
Having said all of that, the original article is indeed a lot less Linux-hostile than some of the complete drivel I've seen posted as a review by others in the last year or so. If you can just be more aware of your MS-Windows "provincialism", your future reviews should be just fine.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
it's really getting on my nerves !!! ANY modern distribution has an automated dependency checking and HUGE online repositories with up to date software and makes software installation as easy as it can be. But there are still comparisons between suse, fedora and "real" distributions, ignoring the web forums are FULL of suse and fedora users whining because of dependency issues. DROP that stupid suse and fedora and get to a modern distro in the year 2004! Mandrake has an equal system to debian and also huge online stable and testing repositories. Software installation is super easy. Last time i was sitting aside a suse user and told him he had to install cups, he went to "www.cups.org" and stared at me. Any more Questions about "fedora and suse -users" ?
One thing that should be present on EVERY Linux distro. Some kind of GUI app for setting up X.
I don't know. XGUISetup, which tries to work out what card you have, and tests it out. XF86Config setting up is silly and painful.
Get your own free personal location tracker
That is total BS. I installed SuSE 8.1 on a pc with Windows XP installed on a single NTFS partition. SuSE installer resized the NTFS partition and setup a GRUB dualboot for me. All I had to do was choose 1 of the 3 options it gave me. I must admit that the 1st option was to wipe the XP install and replace with SuSE. Very clever. The 2nd or 3rd was a dual boot with magic resize. As SuSE is now up to 9.x, I'd say this is a non-issue.
I actually bought the distro (SuSE 9.1). The userguides are a nice brief introduction to what you get, but they're not industrial strength man pages. Stuck in the middle of nowhere with a new distro and a non-functioning wireless card ("hey! what did they do with the prism driver?") you want to be able to do "man orinoco" and check out the available ioctls. no such luck. And if you can't get connected you can't use the search engines. Fortunately with the kernel source loaded you can UTSL where there's no FM to R.
"man undocumented" on SuSE 9.1 returns pretty much the same stuff as it did a few years back. This tends not to happen on say, Solaris, where documentation is a defined part of the product,
Obviously you can't always expect people who aren't paid for the coding they do to regard their work as a "product" in the commercial sense and put "commercial" effort into rounding things off with decent documentation.
But SuSE et. al *are* charging good money for somthing they obviously regard as a commercial product. Look again at "man undocumented". See all those NIS (yp_*) routines listed? Given the maintainer of GNU/Linux NIS is (or was last time I looked) on SuSE's payroll, I would have thought this could have been addressed. This is just one example and no disrespect intended to Herr Kukuk's otherwise highly useful stuff.
Note that documentation is no better in this respect in SuSE Enterprise Linux or RedHat Enterprise Linux. If these vendors expect businesses to replace their AIX/HP-UX/Solaris systems with their GNU/Linux distros with attached "Enterprise" support costs, why is it so hard to see people may expect *full* documentation?
sorry...rant mode off...
SuSE pared down the complexity but suffered from initially puzzling settings (icons on its desktop respond to single clicks instead of double clicks).
Actually double-click is patented, don't you know that!?
Ye gods, single-click SHOULD be the default for anyone that doesn't want a carpal tunnel syndrom in a couple of mouse kilometers. Thanks Billy to force us to use it. Amen.
42.
I have installed mandrake 7.1 to 9.1. I have never had any real problems. In fact often I have found it easier to install than windows.
Basically what the guy is saying is that Mandrake had problems configuring some hardware and partioning his NTFS partition. Well scuse me for stating the obvious but thats basically because most PC hardware is designed to work with windows and nothing else! Its amazing that linux works with anything considering the amount of support that is given.
The first rule of a successful installation is that your hardware needs to linux friendly. This is not always easy, and sometimes a pain, but you cannot just buy hardware and expect it to work until manufacturers start recognising there is a linux market out there.
As for NTFS partitions, well its a closed source format, so of course you would have problems. I would suggest the following.
1. Change the partition to FAT32
2. or delete windows all together and just install linux. Problem solved
Also I would like to see him do it the other way round. Try and install to dual boot windows on a linux machine and see how far he gets.
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
I've often wondered why a similar manual isn't written for windows with answers to questions like "where is my shell terminal?"
I've been looking after Solaris and FreeBSD boxes for a few years, and recently decided to take the plunge and drop Windows. First thing I tried was FreeBSD 5.1, it was a breeze to setup - was running in an hour, sound was simple to get running even though I run an old Aureal Vortex2 card, X was up as quick as i could compile it and the nvidia drivers were simple to install. However, i'm a gamer so went shopping for a linux distro.
Previous experiences with Linux colored my opinion somewhat, so I wanted a pared down, sensibly organised distro, and came across an article about portage so picked up Gentoo.
It took a few goes to get it installed right, following the handbook at www.gentoo.org. The first go, I did a "stage 2" install, and realised that for my needs the only thing it gave me was an extra few hours compilation time. I'd picked 2.6.7 kernel on this install and once it was up and running I did an "emerge nvidia-kernel" and the drivers wouldn't start. I went off and got the latest ones from nvidia and those wouldn't work so I hrmmed and not really knowing linux reinstalled from stage 3 using the earlier 2.4.31 kernel. Bingo, nvidia drivers worked.
Now I wanted to get sound going and followed the guide in the handbook and nothing. After much faffing about, I enabled the CMI sound on my motherboard and switched to that and finally got it working with ALSA.
I really wanted to run the later kernel, as it had ALSA builtin and supposedly performed better, after digging around discovered there was a compile option in the kernel that nvidia needed to be at a different setting (the newer drivers fix this), so I upgraded to 2.6.7 again and compiled ALSA + CMI + Aureal + NVidia tweak and this time around the graphics were accelerated but boom, no sound.
More digging around, and I found out that Alsa was a bit broken in the kernel so recompiled again without Alsa builtin, ran through the Alsa install a few more times with reboots until the sound started working again.
All in all it took a few days to get a machine that did sound and accelerated graphics up and running. Really expected things to be a lot easier, perhaps it would have been with Redhat or Suse.
As to Gentoo itself, I like it - it's clean and fairly logical, portage is decent. The runcontrol scripts are taking a bit of getting used too, I do prefer the Solaris way of doing things but will adapt no doubt.
Still have a few annoyances though. I can't get audio cd's to play with sound (they are recognised, can rip em etc). I'd like to get my gamepad working too, but thats not really a priority.
Oh yeah, during initial boot the cd didn't detect my network card. Needed to do a modprobe 3c59x then net-config to get up and running.
Yum...there's no graphical front-end to it, forcing users to use a text-only, command-line interface.
To judge from comments I've read in online forums, I'm not the only person bugged by that. That, in turn, means that a friendlier interface can't be long in coming.
Hahahaha!! HAHAHA!!! HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!
It'll be a cld day in hell before yum gets a decent GUI. And an even colder one when software installation in Linux become truely point and click.
The cabal will not allow it.
May the Maths Be with you!
The difference between a winmodem and a real modem is $50-100 and the performance to go with it.
Cross OS compatiblity comes next on the list, but doesn't even begin to be the reason to desire a real modem.
Modems are mostly a thing of the past anyway, nobody really seems to spend time working on the issue and they shouldn't, it's a waste of time.
You really don't see modems much anymore, it's called broadband, those who live in the civilized world already have it... those who do not, chose not to have functional non-obsolete technology and chose not to have conviences when they chose to live outside the civilized world.
I agree, sort of. This is one thing I think windows does a much better job on. X should figure out the card AND MONITOR on the fly, and if unable to then load up in generic vga mode. At that point a graphical util comes into play to correct what it picked up on or to tell it what you have.
Either way, since almost all monitors support a fairly small subset of standard modes nowdays there is no excuse for X not being able to handle me plugging in a different monitor every hour in a fashion which is 99% transparent to me... what it does now is fail to load the gui if I plug in a different monitor.
Gentoo isn't exactly a distro which could be either setup or used by a new user even if the documentation was there.
What documentation there is however, I have no trouble saying is the best I've ever seen (across all software).
No it's the idiots arguing against hardware detection and graphical installers being added (not to replace text mode installers or the ability to change the modules loaded).
It's the people who argue against graphical install wizards that sit above the package management system. It's the people who are against adding graphical configuration utils that modify the text conf files.
Those are the people who want to keep things more difficult where it gains nothing.
You know I used to use DOS. Never had a problem with it. I, for the first time, installed linux a few weeks back. It was fedora and the install was hassle free until I wanted to add more stuff. Then I had go to console and and start figuring things out.
Funnily enough, the commands needed were not genetically encoded in my brain! Okay, so lets google for it. Oh wait I'm in console and my other machine was being used by the girlfriend who was not about to let me interrupt her game of NWN to do a google search. My brief experience of UNIX from about 5 years back, some of the commands being similar to dos and others just being good abbreviations of english allowed me to slowly figure some stuff out. But I'm still far from knowing how to do most things in the console. Remember back in the days of DOS we had a HELL OF A LOT LESS TO DO with the machine. I never had to figure out how to mount the usb thumb drive or set the graphics card to use the TV out when I was learning dos.
Now you go on about how people complain about having to use the console??? I consider myself fairly computer literate, I work on the damn things for a living (windows boxes), and yes I will figure out how to use the linux console in time, but to assume that everyone must learn to use the console is just wrong. You may as well have just said, "sorry we don't want new users using linux".
East Coast Brewers
He says in his piece you have to buy a third-party partition manager to install any of these distros in a dual-boot configuration.
This may have been true five years ago - it's not now. Mandrake at least can resize even NTFS partitions during the install.
Which means his article is about as accurate as Bush's next statement about "WMDs".
He also drags up the notion that installing Linux is a nightmare of unsupported hardware - which is also no longer true (in most cases).
It's just more bullshit FUD.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I installed SuSE 9.1 professional 64bit yesterday on my AMD64. It worked like a charm...
It detected my SATA controller and HDD in the blink of an eye. (WD on a Promise controller of my Asus K8V mobo)
Konqueror has a flash plugin installed out of the box. This is supposed to be a big issue on 64bit distro's, but SuSE manages this just fine.
I installed the nVidia driver update through Yast and reconfigured X (also trough Yast - SaX) with 3d acceleration without a problem. Tried out UT2004 (bought the SE DVD) and this runs very smooth.
Though I have not tried any other 64bit distro, I strongly doubt they'll be as easy to set up as SuSE 9.1 is.
Now if i could just get my eMagic MT4 USB MIDI Hub to work i could finally get rid of my Win XP installation... but i won't see this happening very soon.
Anyway; Nice Work SuSE!
You forgot Assumptions -1 and 0 in the above:
-1 That the user already knows about man in order to try it.
0 That the user has another machine on which to use google to find out how to use the fort one
Pretty big Ass-U-Me's there.
Can you really claim that if Linux were substituted for DOS at the very beginning (accepting it might not have been a Monopoly position and therefore unable to attain global dominance) that it wouldn't be ruler?
The nit picking usability at a fine level doesn't matter to the majority of users. They don't tinker even with the little things. They just install software or plug in hardware. (And maybe tinker with their wallpaper or screen saver).
Your point about dowloading software for specific distributions is totally correct.
LINUX is a kernel NOT an OS.
RedHat is an OS
SuSE is an OS
FreeBSD is an OS
MacOS is an OS
The point being is that packages built for one OS are not nessessarily compatible with other OS's (even other LINUX based OS's).
I agree it's actually an honest review from his standpoint. Amazingly there's one journalist that isn't a complete moron, which has obviously become a requirement so they don't mind writing to the median IQ.
Kudos on the Opteron + Gentoo. Is the -O2 optimization making any appreciable difference in execution, or will programs need to be written to abuse the phat address?
Quick heads up on an easy install: Libranet 2.8.1 is offering that download free for a while. 'Found correct wireless logitech kbd + wheel mouse through linksys kvm, all drivers for via mini-itx, correctly identified/setup old sony trinitron multiscan e100 monitor, and an HP Desk Jet 600C. No other distro has come close, and I've installed 13 of 'em now (DamnSmallLinux came close, but you'd expect that from a Knoppix knock off).
I have a winmodem. SuSE 9.1 detected mine and was able to get a dial tone...but couldn't actually dial or hang up the modem. I might have configured something incorrectly and I haven't messed with it a lot, so it still might work. I don't know. Has anyone had any luck getting winmodems to work with SuSE 9.1?
Actually, it is the total resitance to do anything from CLI. It is extremely simple to tell someone that to install program foo you type
rpm -i foo.1.rpm
in an xterm.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Are you trying to tell us that newbies nowadays don't even know how to run makewhatis ? shocking :)
Most distributions seem to stick it in a cron job by default, so it shouldn't be much of an issue. They might have to wait a bit for the first run though. Or if they go as far as figuring out the "-k" switch to man, they might as well run it once themselves.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Okay I tried Fedora 2 as soon as it got released and all I can say about it is that I was disappointed. The kernel upgrade via rpm permanently out-of-synced my clock, and in general the distribution was very sluggish even on my P4-1.6 GHz 768 MB laptop. The default GNOME 2.6 included with Fedora 2 still needs lots of refinement and even basic menu editing is made inaccessible to the users by fedora 2 folks apparently due to some bug with GNOME menu. So right now KDE seems to be the only way to go, and that is having first cleaned up the horrile customization done to it Fedora 2 people. There is XFCE 4.0.5 lightweight desktop environment included in the installation disks but not in the anaconda installer. How could they have forgotten to include this? XFCE is a very good alternative over GNOME and KDE especially on old hardware. I haven't tried Suse or Mandrake because I am myself a Slackware fan and very satisfied with it. The recently released Slackware 10 is excellent and after a bit of compilation, installation (kernel, mplayer, kermit, openoffice, etc...), and customization it stands out to be a pretty solid linux distro.
Its a sad day in this world when google is concidered the manual. And yes I'm too lazy to spellcheck.
I haven't gotten a feel for how good the performance truly is on the Opteron/Gentoo front since I'm mostly learning how to administrate Gentoo properly (had to re-install after I let etc-update clobber one to many conf files :-/).
Initial impressions are that it is pretty quick. I had a weird problem where using a USB mouse seemed to slow the system to a crawl, but I switched to using a PS/2 adapter and the problem went away. After that pretty sweet.... I did an emerge world that built X and KDE among other things and it was pretty much done overnight.
My big disappointment right now is that I can't use the win32codecs package. The NVidia drivers now support 32-bit alongside 64-bit OpenGL drivers, so I may actually have a chance of trying the Transgaming Wine impl... Really, games and May a learning edition are the only reason I keep Win 2000 around.
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
He could have installed everything on a clean drive and then didn't see have the option come up and assumed it wasn't there.
SUSE does a great job repartioning; so easy I almost missed it being done.
The jModule
had to re-install after I let etc-update clobber one to many conf files :-/
.conf's (after initial configurations), and weekly, rinse, repeat... and I can pretty much recover from any silly distractioon udating pukes up.
That's a tough one I've experienced too. I just started backing up all the
As for the codecs, it would definitely be an optimal setup. Good luck!
Actually, my experience has been that the number one reason people resist a switch to Linux is the inability to run application 'X'. Whether that application is HL, Yahoo video messaging, some bullshit VB application, or Nero. For the most part, people honestly don't give a crap about the OS or desktop, but they care a whole lot about their applications.
As a side note to that, getting people to understand that they can't just download 'Y' from the web and run it is hard. There's a fundamental lack of understanding that programs are OS specific (Java excluded) and that most of the share/warez out there is Windows only.
The second biggest reason (and it's a pretty distant second) is that hardware support, although mostly complete, can still have soft spots, especially if you're converting an existing setup. Stuff like specialty video cards (ie. PVR cards), scanners, and MP3 players. Knowledgeable users can get most hardware running pretty quick but if the distro doesn't set it up for them, most noobs will be left scratching their heads.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I have to say that the last time I installed Windows XP on my home built AthlonXP machine, it was no cake walk either. Ok, getting windows up in its most basic functionality is simply a matter of following the prompts. However, after the install completes, there is still the matter of installing specific drivers for every piece of hardware. I'm not just talking about the video, sound, ethernet, and modem cards). But also a handfull of main board specific drivers.
This problem is not just limited to my homebuilt machine either. I have a Gateway laptop, and after reinstalling Windows XP, I had to go through a lengthy driver installation procedure that hung in the middle on the first try.
On the other hand, I've been very impressed with SuSE linux. I was a big Red Hat user before they changed their business model. My machine at work is still running RH 7.3. But my home desktop and notebook both have SuSE 9 (notebook 9.1). Installation was very simple. No complicated installation of countless drivers. Even the driver for my NVIDIA video card was available automatically through Yast.
In the Wash. Post article the author states incorrectly that none of the linux distros can automatically repartition your windows drive to setup a dual boot. This is incorrect. SuSE does include whatever the latest version of the partition shrinker software is (I used FIPS for this long ago, but don't know what it is called now). The resizing happens automatically, if you accept the default partitioning scheme. Granted, you still have to be smart enough to defrag your windows partition first and have enough free space at the end of the drive. But even my mom could understand that.
Or how do I do sloppy pointer focus? Or how do I run programs off 4 different app servers all displayed at my workstation, concurently. How about how do I remotely run programs on MY workstation from across the internet? There are lots of windows questions I'd like awnsered.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Hmm, do a google search for linux, the first thing to come up is www.linux.org, Linus's website, which under documentation has links with the magic word howto in them, and directly to the LDP. Next are a string of distros, and news sites. All of the distros have links to the howtos. So even if they don't search for howto or linux howto they can find them.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Gentoo > all.
You've got full conrtol.
You get optimized binaries compiled to meet your needs and demands. It's great.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Ok, so SuSE is great for new linux users, but you can't install new software... Why?
So SuSe uses RPM, if it's so bad, why do they use it? Isn't YaST supposed to be easy to use? How do you get it to install any random program you see on a website that you want?
So RPM's are bad - what is yum? apt? Can these work on SuSE? How would one use these in YaST? Or do they have something the same? Does this break YaST/SuSe install entirely? Can they import the YaST database or whatever it has that you are supposed to protect? Can it work vice versa? Will yum or apt get the official updates from SuSE to work?
I am just trying to get to use SuSE 9.1 Pro - which I bought, to be more than a linux exhibit. I still can't use it day to day cause I can't install new software. Granted, I've only been using it for 5 days now, but I remember my first Windows box - Win95, and I had new games installed (that I bought at EB) about 10 minutes after turning it on.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
So NewYork state is not the civilized world? Cause I live there, around Ithaca actually, and there is NO broadband - only dial-up. (Well satallite, but $100 a month 2x what I'd be willing to pay). Modems are not a thing of the past, more than half the people I know that are online use modems, cause that's the only way to get online.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
i dunno about most distros but in mandrake starting from 8.2 (if i remeber right) you can set you monitor to a generic 800x600 mode instead of a vendor specific mode and do exactly what you are trying to do. as long as the monitor is the same dimentional size..ie. 17" or so. I have several machine i use to take onsite and check for network problems. i just grab a monitor closest to were i place my box and it works just fine for me. almost every time they are different types of monitors except thay are usually all 17 inch.
Close I guess, a generic mode should really only come into play if X fails to detect your specific monitor.
If X checked to see if the monitor had changed and tried to setup the new monitor automatically upon loading then we could have the best of both worlds. The display benefits of having the exact details of the monitor in use and the convience of generic modes when that fails.
There are a couple reasons this an issue. Unlike other hardware details, I don't know anyone who keeps the information that comes with the monitor and VERY FEW monitors have the refresh printed on them. Most monitor manufacturers also don't publish those details on their website.
Coming from a windows world, you NEVER need those details about your monitor and most don't have the slightest clue where to find it.
In a tech shop environment it's completely unworkable, because customer brings in the tower only. You plug it into the monitor on your workbench, X doesn't load, you run X setup. Now in the midst of the 8 repairs your working on, you have to remember to restore their old settings. It doesn't work for the same reason you turn away a power cord if the customer brings one in.
Windows install are never easier MS marketing just makes false claims and pours large amounts of marketing dollars in attempt to convince people it is easy (and that they are just a dumb users). Most windows boxes I have come across are poorly configured and are running generic drivers.
As for installs, when I first started playing with Linux (redhat,mandrake and suse), breaking/fixing it etc., if I really mucked it up (don't use yast-KDE configure-terminal in su, at the same time strange things can happen), it was quicker and easier to wipe it out and re-install. I would never consider doing that on a windows box because it just takes to long with a lot of annoying reboots (and really strange random events can and do happen depending upon which order you install the correct drivers).
Talking about drivers, why is that, windrones blame hardware manufacturers for bad windows drivers and then turn around and blame the Linux community for bad Linux drivers (sounds like the latest round of MS-BS marketing to me).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
yes it would be nice if X was able to detect plug and play monitors and automatically default to a generic support if the screen fails or something.
Although This has been an issue in the windows world in the past. It may not be much of an issue any more but i remeber having to go into safe mode in windows 3.1 all the way upto windows ME and change the resolution refresh in order to not have the monitor shrink the image to a thin blure about 2 inches in thickness, set into the middle of the monitor with nothing readable. I have also had customers that bought new monitors because thier "rocket scientist neibor" told them the monitor was shot and it was a refresh value set incorectly. This problem would work in both directions too. Sometimes comming into the shop and soemtimes going back home after windows detected a different monitor at the shop. older packard bell system and compaq or hp office systems with "better quality" monitors seamed to be most suspectable of the problems. I guess one could claim it is an advantage for the operating system to dummp you into a commandline so you can fix it without having to reboot into a safe mode or asume the monitor was bad, But in reality is is frustratingly anoying.
I agree it is frustrating and work needs to/could be done with it. Comming from a windows world, It might not bother you that much because you already have an idea of how to go about it. I look at the frustratuion in using linux to be much like those of a new computer user in general. The levels of frustration increases when less is know about the platform and people feel somewhat helpless.
I had irate customers that made the switch from windows 98 to winXP and had the same problems with everythign being different and feeling helpless. This made them MAD and verry iritated when trying to acomplish a simple task that they were acustomed to doing in the previous operating systems. Most will admit they love XP now but couldn't stand it at first and most of thier problems were the same as in the linux world, everythign was too complicated at first. I have NO questions about comparing someones ability to switch from windows 98 to XP and being able to make the switch to linux. If they can make the change and hunt down the differences in one, then they should be able to in the other.
I don't know howto program so i guess the best i can do is hope someone would figure out a way to solve this issue and maybe make it work better for us. Of course this is assuming that people consider it as an issue and discusion like this might just bring it to thier attention.
That's funny, considering that the last time I tried to install Mandrake (v9), I went through the partition configuration during install like I did on my Win9x machine, but on my WinXP machine, partitioned with NTFS, Mandrake's install wiped out everything. It was the last time indeed.
That's because those whose filesystems were destroyed couldn't get online to report it! They probably then decided "to hell with computers" and bought log cabins in the Ozarks.
Actually, Mandrake 9 did destroy my Windows XP Pro install by writing over the boot sector. (I had no trouble installing Mandrake on my Win9x machine.) Suffice it to say, my XP machine is still solely an XP machine (a new install).