Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey

tim1980 writes "Derek Croxton has written a rather long editorial on how he sees the Linux and Open Source communities, and his personal experiences with Linux, the editorial is titled Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey and is over 3,500 words. Excerpt: 'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"

Comments

.so hell

[BoldAC]

I agree with this completely! Anybody have a solution? I know it is out there... somewhere... ...In Windows, this issue is known as ".dll hell." In Linux, you might call it ".so hell" ("so" being the extension for these "shared objects"). It has probably caused me more frustration and hair-pulling than all the other issues in Linux combined. In principle, the issue seems simple: you can't install a program if the shared objects that it depends on - its "dependencies" - are not on the system. Any attempt to install the program will generally inform you what dependencies are missing, and it usually isn't too much trouble to go find the needed files on line somewhere. The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can't simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can't just have separate copies of 3 and 4, since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this. Instead, you...well, frankly, I don't know what you do. I have yet to solve this problem, and it continues to bother me.

Re:.so hell

[Xner]

I simply use "apt" or "yum" and let them sort it out. The only times they failed me was with a Fedora test release, but I knew the risk I was taking.

Re:.so hell

[bs_testability]

If version 4 breaks version 3's apps, why would they give it the same filename? that doesn't sound like the nice thing to do.

Re:.so hell

[Ummagumma]

This is the major reason my second machine isn't running Linux. I have having to chase down dependency after dependency only to find out one of the dependencies have a dependancy. Drives me insane!

Re:.so hell

[BoldAC]

I agree that this is what I typically do; however, it's obviously not with the linux-spirit of doing things.

As drive space becomes cheaper and cheaper, it seems that you should just be able to keep copies of the needed components with the installed program.

AC

Re:.so hell

[Xner]

That's why it's usually not the way it's done. If you remember the switch between libc5 and glibc (libc6?), the two libraries co-existed on the same system with different filenames for quite a while.

Of course, not every single person maintaining a library is as careful as the glibc people, and screwups do happen. It is the distributor's task to maek sure all the programs that ship with a given distribution work with the libraries included in it.

Re:.so hell

[mikael]

The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can't simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break.

The most common solution seems to be to download the source-code and recompile everything. Even worse is when you have version 4 installed, and the new program you want to install is based on version 3. But of course, everything else in your desktop is based on version 4.

At least Linux tells you why your application won't install, rather than giving you a blue screen of death when you've spent an entire afternoon working on a project and decide to print/save/transfer your data.

Re:.so hell

[16384]

what are you talking about? I just do
apt-get install aplication_name

And things start to work at once... Maybe it's just because I'm using Debian :)
If not, and if it is open source just compile it yourself. (I had a .dll hell in Windows once, and it wasn't pretty...)

Re:.so hell

[wjwlsn]

I used to resolve this by having a directory that specifically contained old versions of library files. Try ldconfig... a snippet from the man page:

• ldconfig creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the run-time linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the directories specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib). ldconfig checks the header and file names of the libraries it encounters when determining which versions should have their links updated. ldconfig ignores symbolic links when scanning for libraries...

Re:.so hell

[ratboy666]

first, you can run programs with local libpath. second, multiple library versions can co-exist. third (under solaris) apis are versioned.

Re:.so hell

[Neil]

I don't recognise the description of the problem at all. Normal shared object handling in Linux and other Unixes seems to have this covered entirely. If you need versions 3 and 4 of shared library "libfoo" then you typically have something like: /usr/lib/libfoo.so (symlink to libfoo.so.4) /usr/lib/libfoo.so.3 /usr/lib/libfoo.so.4

When you run a binary which which was originally dynamically linked against version 3 or version 4 ldd loads either .so.3 or .so.4, as appropriate.

The libfoo.so symlink tells ld which version to default to using when compiling new binaries with a "-lfoo" on the link command line.

Re:.so hell

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course you also have the BSD ports system
and/or pkg_add -r *myprogram*

I think gentoo uses some sort of it

type, sit, wait and enjoy!

Re:.so hell

[moonbender]

I've spent the last ten years extensively using Windows and, lately, Linux machines, and I have never, not once, had a problem with this in either operating system. And I install and remove software all the time on both platforms. Of course, with Linux it helps to use Gentoo and Debian, which are basically the only distributions I've used. And with Windows, I don't know, the problem never came up. In both cases I'm not even really aware of the underlying dependencies, things just work.

Re:.so hell

[LnxAddct]

Who moderated the parent as a troll? Yum or Apt is what everyone I know uses. They just take care of the ".so hell" that once plagued us all. Does anyone seriously not use a package manager now a days? I do install from tar balls and source a bit, but the typicall user doesn't need to, and even when I do, I haven't experienced ".so hell" in years. I actually forgot about it until this artical. Somehow it magically disappeared for me. Anyone else care to comment?
Regards,
Steve

Re:.so hell

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason .so's have version numbers on them. A good system should link it directly against it's needed .so- and those can definitely co-exist.. header files, I can understand.

Re:.so hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the answer is simple: Stop using DSOs! It seems that when Unix finally got the ability to use DSO's developers went crazy for them. Every single little peice of code is shoved into a DSO. The problem is that it isn't necasary; many small libraries are only a few k in size and used by one or two applications. There is no real advantage in using a DSO here; it would have been much simplier to just use a static library.

Sadly Linux developers have become so enamored by DSO's that I don't think they even know how to do anything else. Static libraries are "old tech" and we can't possibly use them in our New! Shiny! Linux! can we? So instead we get DSO's scattered all over the system, ready to change their API and ABI at a moments notice and break stuff for you. Silly.

Re:.so hell

[pavon]

There are really two solutions to this.

First, the developers need to learn how to package their software. If you are making a package for a distro (and all rpms are specific to a single distro), you should statically link any libraries which are not included in the base install of that disto. You should avoid using development libraries and if you must use them, statically link them. You should learn how to make RPMs that don't demand a specific version of the library if your software will work with any of the minor releases of a major version. This is what it means to package your application, and you have to do it for each distro. Releasing rpms is saying that you want to make it simple for people to install you application. If you don't want to make it simple then you might as well just release tar balls of the source because a shitty package is just as hard to install.

But since no one in the devlopment community seems to care about that, then the only option that users have is to use debian. It solves the hassle by having a much nicer dependancy system and by only letting people who know how to build packages commit them.

So those are the options for a user: Use Debian and wait a little longer to get software while someone polishes it for you. Use Gentoo, and have bleeding edge software at the cost of long install times. Or use an RPM based distro and deal with DLL hell. Myself, I would rather compile everything myself from tarballs then go back to using rpm.

Re:.so hell

[Ummagumma]

I keep hearing that Debian is the way to go. I'll have to give it a shot. I've tried Mandrake and RH so far.

I don't want to compile things myself - my computer is a tool, and I just want the tool to work, with as little hassle as necessary. XP does that for me (so far), and linux has not.

I think I'll download Debian, and give that a go. Hopefully its the soloution to most of my problems.

Re:.so hell

[Lumpy]

Anybody have a solution? I know it is out there...

yes. There are two and I'll be flamed into the ground for even suggesting them but they absolutely work.

1 - DO NOT USE libraries that are not available on your target distro.

this means that when you write software you DO NOT in any instance use any libraries that are "bleeding edge" period. end of discussion. And I reccomend that you compile each of your binaries on a machine with the target distro. This solution works very well and I use this every day to make packages for the various members of the local LUG.

2 - Statically linked.

I can hear the flamethrowers being lit for even daring to say this ubt it's a fact. a Statically linked binary will work almost all the time. Loki games, UT2004, UT2003, UT, Quakes, RTCW and Open Office never gives me a "obscure.so not found please install that package"

statically linked works, and it makes your customers/users happier than the guy spending 6 hours downloading 30 different libraries and installing them jsut so they can try your app.

Either Use libraries that ship with clean distros, or statically link... everything else is simply indended to cause pain.

Re:.so hell

[flithm]

Someone has already mentioned Debian's apt-get, which is great, but there's also another really good solution from the Gentoo team: portage.

Everyone probably knows Gentoo compiles everything from source (which is what earns it so much of both praise, and mockery). What a lot of people miss is the immense power and similicity in portage.

It takes care of dependencies automatically, and does a very good job of it. In the two years that I've been running gentoo on both my workstation, AND server, I've never once had a dependency issue. I just 'emerge application' sit back for a few minutes while it compiles, and away I go.

Another thing to note is that it also automatically handles situations where multiple versions of a single program or library are needed.

And one of my favorite features is its wonderful 'emerge --unmerge.' I no longer fear installing applications that may have poorly written make files, and thus no uninstall. Portage can uninstall any application with ease.

Basically Gentoo takes care of all of the parent poster's problems, and does it in a wonderfully elegant way. It's true that Gentoo isn't for everyone, but neither is any distribution. Take your pick, but just be aware that if you're having a problem, there's probably a solution to it already. Do your research, instead of simply complaining, and maybe you'll come out a much more relaxed person.

Re:.so hell

[IamTheRealMike]

Of course, not every single person maintaining a library is as careful as the glibc people

The glibc people aren't careful at all. They are quite, quite happy to break software if they believe the users programs to be "broken". They've broken even high profile apps like Mozilla this way, because their interpretation of a spec was different to everybody elses. But no, Mozilla was "broken" and whoever wrote that function should be "punished" according to the maintainer.

The glibc group, along with many many other free software projects, usually believe they are maintaining backwards compatibility. In practice they are at most maintaining ABI compatibility which is not enough: the interface of an API is so much more than the layout of its structures and prototypes of its functions.

I've written a guide on how to write good shared libraries. It deals a lot with versioning and how to avoid breaking software.

I'm hoping it can be peer reviewed and published somewhere soonish, in the next few weeks. I'd post the draft here but the server hosting it seems to be down.

Re:.so hell

[IamTheRealMike]

It's not covered entirely, far from it.

Firstly the linker knows nothing about minor versions unless you apply symbol versioning, which almost nobody does. So it's all too easy to have a program accidentally linked against an older version than what it really needs. Because symbols are lazy linked, this means you can work for an hour, hit the save button and have the app abort with an undefined relocation.

Secondly, it requires shared library authors to actually understand and give a toss about backwards compatibility. Virtually none do - the best, most shining examples in our community maintain ABI compatibility but do not version headers nor preserve semantic compatibility, which can break apps in even more nasty ways than just crashes.

Thirdly, due to the ELF fixup rules, if you get two incompatible versions of the same library linked into the same process image (because the program uses .so.2 and some other library it uses in turn relies on .so.3) things go boom pretty messily. This has happened to at least libpng in the past and broke things like Opera who nowadays statically link it.

The libfoo.so symlink tells ld which version to default to using when compiling new binaries with a "-lfoo" on the link command line.

Which means it's really hard to compile software which needs one version, then immediately afterwards compile software that needs another version. Parallel installable libraries help with this, a bit.

Re:.so hell

[uchian]

Umm... so why do you have dependency hell on mandrake?

urpmi <application_name>

sorts it all out for you.

Re:.so hell

[N7DR]

Yes, and the answer is simple: Stop using DSOs!

Turns out that it's not so simple to stop using DSOs. I am responsible for a commercial product that runs under Linux. In order to "solve" this problem, I use the -static flag to gcc when I build the application. But it turns out that, at least if you use the gcc suite, there is a small set of functions that, even with the -static flag set, are invoked dynamically on the target system. I don't have a complete list handy, but I recall that the one that always bites me is gethostbyname(). The latest version of gcc now warns you when you are calling one of these functions, which is helpful, but I have yet to find a completely general solution for the problem.

Re:.so hell

[Lodragandraoidh]

Slackware has a package manager - but I usually don't bother because it uses plain tar balls; I download the tar balls from a Slackware mirror (the distro generally has everything I need) and extract what I need. Haven't run into any compatibility issues - ever.

I think if you stay inside of your distribution you won't have problems. The problem is when you download something outside of the distro and try to integrate it with your system. Then you get what you are asking for.

If you want to load a particular application - see if your distro has it on their package list first before downloading it from somewhere else. The distribution creators will have integrated it with your distro elimenating headaches for you.

If you must download something from outside of your distro - understand that you may have to do some integration work.

That being said, I have had very good luck loading some packages outside of what Slackware provides. I attribute it to the following:

1. Slackware conforms to the Linux filesystem standard.
2. The applications I have downloaded also conform to the Linux filesystem standard.
3. The applications I have downloaded did not use deprecated or experimental functions within the libraries they call (most libraries are good about staying backwards compatible for standard functions).

The most problems I have had doing integration was trying to get OSS applications to build under SUN Solaris. SUN packages change the default locations for various things (most notably, apps you would normally find under /usr/local/... end up in /opt/sfw/...) - and the apps I have to build by hand are looking elsewhere. I have also had environment problems - mostly missing path variables for libraries. Given that, the problem is not unique to Linux - but I would suggest it is less of a problem with Linux (provided you try to stay inside of your distribution - and only integrate outside apps when absolutely necessary) than with other operating systems, from my own experiences.

Re:.so hell

[deus42]

At the risk of being flammed, try the free version of xandros (http://www.xandros.com). It is a debian based system, so you can use apt-get, plus it is a breeze to get working. I use this distribution at work because a don't want to hassle with installing software. At home however, I prefere gentoo. The free version of xandros is at: http://www.xandros.com/products/home/desktopoc/dsk _oc_download.html

Re:.so hell

[malkavian]

I spent a fair old while doing enterprise automated software delivery design for British Telecom.
DLL hell was a MAJOR nightmare.
Especially the changes with VB written code.
Various DLLs did randomly break packages (depending on which you loaded first. Once the DLL was loaded, some packages compatible with that DLL worked fine, and others that used a different version didn't. Load them the other way round, and you could use a different bunch of apps).
Installing and removing software for 10 years and not meeting DLL hell says you haven't installed a wide range of software.
You'll never meet it installing and removing office for ten years.
You will working in a varied and highly flexible workplace.
And yes, it is an issue for both operating systems. And when you encounter it, it really does make you want to tear out your hair.

Re:.so hell

[Anonymous Coward]

That's interesting. I would certainly have expected -static to force the use of libc.a, and I'm sure you did too. I'm also not sure (And the manual doesn't give any hints) what the behavour of -static is if no static version is available; does it error or just use the DSO? Hmm.

Re:.so hell

[kundor]

Normally, the solution is that version 3 is named libfoo.so.3, version 4 is named libfoo.so.4, and libfoo.so is a symlink to the latest version. Anything that depends on a specific version is linked to that version. if an application is being really stupid about trying to link to the wrong version, changing the symlink can fix it.

Re:.so hell

[Chris Burke]

Ah, it seems you're mostly talking about compiling programs, not installing binaries with .so dependencies. And your points are very true, especially regarding headers. That's annoying. But for binaries, the library versioning works pretty well, notwithstanding libpng and other examples. I was pretty impressed with linux when the libc5/libc6 change took place, and all my old libc5 apps continued to work just fine.

Re:.so hell

[ViolentGreen]

Use Gentoo, and have bleeding edge software at the cost of long install times.

Not to be a zealot here, but you can emerge many applications as binaries by using "emerge -k." It's just that most people seem to view the performance increase as being worth the compile times.

Re:.so hell

[iabervon]

The issue isn't really anything to do with shared libraries, per se, which are designed correctly. The issue is that packaging systems don't always have a way to deal with having multiple versions of the same package installed.

The actual dynamic linker is perfectly happy to have versions 3 and 4 of a library both installed, because it actually looks for libfoo.so.3 or libfoo.so.4. Actually, the libraries contain the information of what to look for; so libfoo.so.3.0.4 specifies libfoo.so.3, and so libfoo.so.3.0.5 will be accepted as a replacement, and libfoo.so.4 will be ignored. Of course, there are potential problems when libqt.so.3.2.0 isn't actually a suitable replacement for libqt.so.3.0.0, but claims to be, but that's due to people misusing the system, not the system failing to be sufficient to the problem.

Re:.so hell

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, not really. The first 3 items can all break binaries but not source compiles ...

Re:.so hell

[Thomas Miconi]

I simply use "apt" or "yum" and let them sort it out

I quite don't get why people keep invoking apt, yum or urpmi here. The problem seems different to me.

The problem is when you have two versions of the same library (say lib.so.1 and lib.so.2), some old applications depend on lib v1.0 to run and were compiled against "lib.so", but now "lib.so" is symlinked to the newer (and incompatible) lib.so.2, which breaks older programs.

User frustration, swearing and Windows praising ensue (because the novice user has probably never been through DLL hell, which is admittedly much worse).

How does Linux address such a problem ?

Thomas

Re:.so hell

[jusdisgi]

Yep, I'd have to agree. I don't ever recall having the .dll problems in Windows (though I'm sure it's been problematic for some folks) and haven't had a meaningful dependency problem in Linux in years. Once upon a time it was bad (like, when I started with Linux, on Red Hat 5.2), but these days with any of the popular distros you just won't see it.

I did have a problem with a FreeBSD port last week complaining it needed a version of Perl which was actually already installed...quite surprising, as that was the first time I'd ever seen the ports collection mess up a dep. As it turned out though, there's a script you have to run to choose your "active" version of Perl or whatever, and that just fixed it. So I'm not sure that really counts either.

Anyway, I think it's pretty weird that the discussion on this article has been entirely focused on dependency issues, and bitching about Linux package management. Has anyone here RTFAed?

Re:.so hell

[m50d]

Install emerge. It supports having multiple versions of a library (I have 3 versions of freetype installed). And it works on most distributions (this is a slackware box)

Re:.so hell

[dave420]

And that's user-friendly to non-techy people how, exactly?

We all know everything's possible in linux, it's just that not everything is user-friendly. Some things in Windows aren't user friendly, but a great deal more is, than with linux. That's an issue that needs addressing, and to me is one of the most important things stopping linux reaching the desktop.

Re:.so hell

[robi2106]

I have to say, I was blown away by Windows XP last night. This is not a troll, obviously, just check my posting history to see.

Here is my situation...

I have my PC away from the switches in the living room for some UT2K4 LAN action with my roommate. His lets me use his USB wireless connection. He brings out his system, (an Nforce Athlon64 system but running the 32bit WinXP) and we plug a Cat5e between our eth ports for the LAN action.

Then I wonder how hard it woudl be to enable a connectio nsharing of my wireless connection for him. I remember trying this back in the WinMe days with two ethernet cards and it was nearly impossible.

This time I just double clicked the connection, choose tcp/ip and on the advanced tab I noticed there was an "Allow other users to connect through this connection" check box. I select it (it wants to change my ethernet card's IP to a hardcoded value, but that is OK). Then it works.

My roommate changes his LAN IP to match the subnet, and suddenly he can get through to the net.

Tell me it is that easy in Linux and I will be impressed. My roommate is a linux admin/system contractor to local business so he could do it, but not in the 30 seconds it took us.

When linux can do that, with such ease and speed, then you know it has arrived at the usability level of the users.

jason

Re:.so hell

[UberLame]

On linux, .so's common have version numbers in the file name. So for instance, I have libgmp.so.3.3.2, and libgmp.so.4.1.3. libgmp.so is a symbolic link to libgmp.so.4.1.3, but applications that need 3.3.2 can still use 3.3.2.

I've never had trouble keeping multiple versions of .so files around.

Now, for the applications themselves (which often rely directly on other applications, rather than just .so files), things are a bit trickier. I currently have about 10 versions of gcc installed on my work machine, and it is a bit of a pain in the butt.

The versions I built myself go into their own directory tree with version name (so rather than just sticking it in /usr/local, I would set it in /opt/gcc-3.4.2). For the different versions from the distro (I have redhat's bastard 2.96, redhat's compile or 3.2.1, and redhats compile of one of the 3.5 betas), they stick the files in the same places, but have different names (so, gcc296 for 2.96, gcc for 3.2.1, and gcc-ssa for the 3.5 beta). A different vendor supplied set of GCCs go into /opt/vendorname/gnutools.

I've always thought linux (and other unixs in general) were pretty good about letting me keep different versions around.

Now, if you want a real .so pain in the butt, look at irix. Not only do you need 2-3 different builds for ever library (old style 32bit, new style 32bit, and 64bit), but you will have some programs that require an SGI build, other programs that require a build from SGI freeware, and other programs that require entirely different builds. Argh. I think I have 9 or 10 copies of the exact same version of libjpeg installed. I know I have many more copies of libtiff installed because on top of that, I have applications that require specific versions. Sheesh.

Re:.so hell

[Fred_A]

It does happen in some very specific cases, mostly when you try to install some kind of pre-alpha tool you had to pull from CVS because it's the only one that corrects the bug that's been blocking you for the past two weeks and you realize that it's now being ported to KDE/GNOME experimental-technology-preview test edition which can only be built by hand (and pulled from CVS yet again) and then the fun begins.
Oh and you need a new alpha version of gcc too.

But I agree that most *normal* users shouldn't run into that kind of problem nowadays. Even seasoned users shouldn't ever see that kind of mess.
Only bleeding edge developers generally ever see that and even then if you keep your system up to date with the current prerelease 0.0.01-pre-alpha.01 testing versions as they come out, you should be ok (until it all falls to the floor and you have to build it all again of course).

I know that in at least 4 or 5 years I've only had the problem once when I hit a bug that blocked me and finding that it was corrected in the latest CVS version, which in turn required the latest testing GNOME version. I wasted an afternoon on this. Luckily a major upgrade of the distro came soon afterwards and I wiped the whole mess clean.

Re:.so hell

[Fred_A]

It's the old debate between simplicity and completeness.

The XP way is easy and opaque, the Linux ways is complex but you know what happens. The Linux crowd apparently prefers that option.

It is however trivial to stick a front end on top that does what that XP gadget does. Mandrake has such a tool in 10.0, I think it was there in 9.x too, and other distributions probably have it too.

However it is a delicate choice to make. Letting the user fiddle with network settings that have huge implications on the way the network function and the security is handled without really knowing is going on...

Re:.so hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure this isn't a troll? You're saying it's hard to connect to the net using another machine as a gateway using Linux? That's ridiculous. If you need a GUI then I think most distros have a GUI that sets up the gateway as a part of the card config. But you can do it in a terminal like this as well:

route add default gw 192.168.0.X

That's such a simple feature it seems quite odd you think it's amazing.

Re:.so hell

[Rich0]

The application should not be linked against lib.so.

It should be linked against lib.so.1, or lib.so.1.0.0.3, or whatever. Most likely it should be linked against the major version.

Usually when libraries make major changes that break compatibility packages are created of both versions.

Re:.so hell

[ratboy666]

Um...

Ok, I have a wireless connection on a computer (wlan0) via USB. The computer also has a PCI ethernet (eth0).

I want to "share" the wireless connection to my server (and then acess the 'net).

I run "parprouted wlan0 eth0", and it "just works". And if its two ethernet cards, standard bridging can be used "man brctl".

Big deal. But now I *am* curious. Can Windows share a wireless connection? Or just wired?

Ratboy.

Re:.so hell

[robi2106]

True. I bet that because this was XP Pro, the option was available with no stateful packet awareness. There was an advanced option to allow thee link to forward internal wired LAN) requests for specific services (http, https, ftp, etc). I bet this option is handeled differently on Win2K Server or another Win server OS.

There was no control list to configure what could be not be forwarded and from what internal hosts it was allowed..... so that is the simple vs complete conundrum.

jason

Re:.so hell

[Pig Bodine]

The most problems I have had doing integration was trying to get OSS applications to build under SUN Solaris. SUN packages change the default locations for various things (most notably, apps you would normally find under /usr/local/... end up in /opt/sfw/...) - and the apps I have to build by hand are looking elsewhere. I have also had environment problems - mostly missing path variables for libraries. Given that, the problem is not unique to Linux - but I would suggest it is less of a problem with Linux (provided you try to stay inside of your distribution - and only integrate outside apps when absolutely necessary) than with other operating systems, from my own experiences.

Amen. And once you get any path issues worked out there are often deeper problems. I just spent the morning compiling GNU common lisp under solaris so I could compile maxima to work out some rather tedious equations without making any arithmetic errors on the coefficients. After pulling out most of my hair I found that newer GCC versions on solaris have revealed a bug in gcl and I found a patch to gcl that solved the problem. (My undying gratitude goes to the GCL people for fixing this quickly.) This sort of thing almost always happens to me when compiling any large free software under Solaris.

It may not be fair blaming Sun. I know I bring some of this trouble on myself by having tools that are half GNU/half Solaris. But a lot of software requires the GNU tools to compile. And since Sun doesn't by default bundle a C compiler with Solaris there is no standard Sun platform for people to write free software for. Everyone has a mix of Sun and GNU and when compiling you always have to worry about which you are using. They may have made themselves some money selling compiler licenses, but by fragmenting the solaris "standard" for compilation they seriously undermined the viability of Solaris for scientific workstation use. Any Linux distribution is a pleasure to work with by comparison. Presumably Sun only cares about selling servers.

My all time most annoying experience was with a patch cluster installation script, downloaded from Sun's own website, that wouldn't run with Sun's own version of awk (not a bug exactly; a limit on the number of records in a line that was exceeded by the size of the patch cluster). Gawk, of course, worked just fine.

OK. Having ranted, I now feel better.

Re:.so hell

[robi2106]

I am talking from a user point of view.... Where is the option when viewing network connections in Linux (desktoop, or where ever) that even tells you that the option to do such an operation is available...

My experience with linux is antiquated, since I quit at RH6.2 when I ran out of spare time, got a full time job, and got carpal tunnel so that most if not all keyboard typing outside of work is unnecessary pain.

I will reword what I said as follows... I was amazed that it was this easy compared to my last experience with Linux.

Possibly an apples vs oranges comparison since I am comparing a new OS, to an old OS....

jason

Re:.so hell

[robi2106]

Yep.. the connection to the gateway was wireless USB () and the LAN port was PCI ethernet. The problem is, how would a user know to run parprouted wlan0 eth0? Was there a menu button on the config page for that connection device that displayed the option to forward the connection? That is what I am talking about.

If there is, then my guess regarding the "ease of config" (officially now a highly technical term) for Linux of its network devices is wrong. But I remember have issues back in RH6.x days trying to get it work forward, and to set up NAT etc (I know, a totally different issue than just connection sharing).

If you have to read a manual, or go looking for the answer to "can I" then the user doesn't know the ability exists.

I still have my RH6.2 system though it may actually be a RH7 box that I never did much with. I just turned it off about a year ago when I started using Cygwin /SSH for code development needs. I suppose I would use the linux system if I needed it, but right now a firmware router, SSH in to the CS dept's server (RedHat I believe), Cygwin, and Sun's java dev studio are all that I need.

jason

Re:.so hell

[default luser]

Bull.

1. It's not easy to configure urpmi with the proper repositories, and the one I've used (MDK 9.1) didn't come with ANY pre-configured, nor was good documentation on the process easy to find. If it wasn't on the install discs, it wasn't available.

2. I've had many times when RPM hell has surfaced using urpmi. Sometimes, it simply cannot resolve a dependency because it THINKS I don't have something installed that I actually do have. Other times, it has suggested outrageous things for pddly little installations.

For example, just the other day, my roomate wanted to introduce me to the joys of latex ("la-tek", not the polymer, you twisted fucks :). Anyway, just to install a small tool, urpmi wantyed me to INSTALL X. Yeah, that's right, the version that came on the install CD, the same version I already had installed.

I gave up. I'm about to start over and go debian with apt. I LOVE the extra tools and the easy setup of Mandrake, but RPM hell sucks, even when you package it in a fancy urpmi candy wrapper.

Re:.so hell

[rjstanford]

I don't know if its on there - maybe you checked, maybe you didn't - but you should always check out http://www.sunfreeware.com/ for stuff like this. Saved my ass when I had a Sparc to take care of in my copious spare time. Just an idea.

Re:.so hell

[rjstanford]

Its funny - I've been a UNIX user since '91, and a Linux user for about 10 years. Heck, I ran a FreeBSD based ISP back in 95/6 - modded all the software myself, etc. So I like to think that I'm at least slightly more informed than the average computer-user. I didn't know either of the commands parprouted or brctl off the top of my head. Yet I've shared a connection on my XP laptop before without even thinking about it - and by exploring, certainly without having explicitly gone to learn about it.

Re:.so hell

[rp]

1) ln -s libfoo.so.5 libfoo.so.6
2) pray
Thus far it's always appeared to work for me
but it isn't really *supposed* to, of course.

First thing to type at a command prompt....

[kidgenius]

Hello

:-)

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[Cat_Byte]

[root@linux]# man what do I do now?
No manual entry for what
No manual entry for do
No manual entry for I
No manual entry for do
No manual entry for now?
[root@linux]#wtf?
-bash: wtf?: command not found
[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]# computer, do something
-bash: computer,: command not found
[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]#

(ok lets get out of this...X for exit?)

[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]#X

ARGH!

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[blibloblu]

% "How poorly would you rate the UNIX (so-called) user interface?
Unmatched ".

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[vgaphil]

There's a 'wtf' command, it's used to decipher things like AYBABTU and AFAIK....

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[naelurec]

how about rf -rf ??

i know this is a joke, but honestly, stop using root! grr.. if your learning and using root, I really hope your computer doesn't have anything valuable on it.

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[eschwinge]

I think the point is that after an install you are dumped at root and it is not intuitively obvious how to create a user account. Fortunately Fedora/Mandrake/etc have slapped at GUI in place to direct the noob installer to not use root.

Re:First thing to type at a command prompt....

[Cat_Byte]

grin that was the point. its a noob so of course they would log in as root. Personally I use sudo with a regular account.

Not for novices

[Anonymous Coward]

'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised. ...

Lets just make some rules here:

Linux is for Professionals.
Windows is for secretaries that support the IT professionals.

The End.

Re:Not for novices

[Anonymous Coward]

...and here I am pulling $120 an hour writing J2EE code on a Windows box...

Linux: Not just for professionals
Windows: Not just for secretaries

Re:Not for novices

[dave420]

that's the attitude that's keeping linux firmly off the desktop.

Re:Not for novices

[Hatta]

Lets just make some rules here:

Linux is for Professionals.
Windows is for secretaries that support the IT professionals.

How about this:

CLI for professionals
Locked down GUI is for secretaries.

Re:Not for novices

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, people who actually have secretaries don't need much more than a notepad (a real, physical notepad, not "notepad.exe") and a calculator.

Re:Not for novices

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to agree more or less with grandparent, and I frankly don't give a shit if linux ever breaks more than 3.2% of the desktop market share. :-)

Re:Not for novices

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is getting Linux on the desktop so important? I don't think it makes that great of a workstation anyway. It's a great OS for servers...why try to make it something it's not? I'd rather see a new OS come out that was specially designed for the desktop.

OMG

[Donoho]

'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type;

It's as if he's looked into my very soul... or tapped into my webcam.

Re:OMG

[discogravy]

you run your webcam from the command line? How'd you manage that?

/.ed

[Fredrik Leijon]

did they host the site on a 2400bps modem ?

Re:From TFA

[kidgenius]

hyperlinks to homosexual lifestyle websites.

I think the author is just pissed because he got goatse'd a few times.

Please....

[Cocoronixx]

$command -h
$command --help
man $command
info $command
http://www.google.com/search?q=$command

use brain;

Re:Please....

[fajaboard]

The problem is that n00bs don't know what "command" to even look up.

$how do i read a file from my floppy? "mount?" who woulda thought.

The problem is knowing where to look sometimes. I am still learning useful commands.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

And we have found the attitude that will keep linux in the shadows forever.

Re:Please....

[TheRealMindChild]

You have got to be kidding me. Say Grandma Jones just bought a machine and her grandson installed WHATEVER version of linux on there. For whatever reason, she boots up, and there is a command prompt. How will she know what to type? I mean, christ, how on earth does she even know what COMMANDS are available, LET ALONE how to get help on them? Google seems the most likely candidate, but have you ever googled for a Unix/Linux command? More times then not, you get a bunch of crap that holds no relevance to what you are looking for.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember years ago sitting down in front of a VAX-11/780 terminal. At that time I had never seen one before and I really felt helpless. For no apparent reason I typed "help" and lo and behold I really did get help. The help command gave a list of the available commands I could use along with a good explanation when I typed "help ".

I could also get a list of parameters for the command and help on each of these.

Re:Please....

[pomakis]

command -h $command --help man $command info $command http://www.google.com/search?q=$command use brain;

Knowing these tricks assumes that you've already had some experience with command-line interfaces. I'm sorry, but none of the examples above are common sense to anyone without command-line experience (except maybe the Google search).

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

This would seem to replace any tech books, even the insanely popular O'Reilly series. Sometimes a book is just convenient.

Like when you're, y'know, offline for some reason? It's hard to know, reflexively, that e.g. hotplug (?) will map your usb drives to SCSI devices. It certainly didn't seem to make this clear in any of my man or info pages. I wound up trying a lot of funky stuff to recognize the usb drive and kept getting closer and closer. Little did I know that I could just "mount /dev/sda1"; because obviously it's a SCSI device. Just like my IDE cd recorder.

Re:Please....

[jellomizer]

Although I was an early adopter of Linux back in 1994 I still remembering having trouble when I first got it. And I had a strong DOS background.

1. ls except for dir well DIR did work but it kinda sucked.

2. now that I see the files and I found out that cd worked too. So now I can at least explore the file system. (Kinda it was hit and miss because I didn't know much about ls -l even when I did a man on these commands I wasn't use to taking in information in that method so the man commands were useless for a long time. So I never knew for a while what was a Directory, an executible file or a normal file. Unless ls was color coding the stuff.

3. Now after I masterd the file system then mounting floppies, CD. Was a foregn concept to me. Attacing a seporate piece of equiptment ontop of the file system seemed weird to me.

Now I was a person who had strong DOS background and understood some concepts of the command prompt and I still had to take some time to addapt. Now if you get a person who has always used a GUI now what are they going to try to type in. "HELP" if they were to take a guess. And guess way a lot of distros dont have a help command so I guess they are SOL. You should use your brain before posting a comment on how to get help for a command that the newbie doesn't even know is there.

Re:Please....

[Planesdragon]

The problem is that n00bs don't know what "command" to even look up.

And this should be solved at the prompt. There should be a "CLI helper" program, that looks for faulty and natural-language commands and suggests the proper one.

Typing "help" at a typical shell doesn't even give you an overview of useful commands. If you're lucky, you'll get a list (sans description) of the shell-specific commands.

The really, really sad part about this? Windows's command promt works extremely well. It doesn't do everything that Linux's does by far, but learning what it does do is amazingly easy.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Say Grandma Jones just bought a machine and her grandson installed WHATEVER version of linux on there. For whatever reason, she boots up, and there is a command prompt. How will she know what to type?

Anyway, isn't she a horse? Where will she find a keyboard that works with hooves?

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

it's been 10 years on Linux for me and i'm still learning new commandline args.. got all the utils down pat though.

Re:Please....

[_Sprocket_]

Say Grandma Jones just bought a machine and her grandson installed WHATEVER version of linux on there. For whatever reason, she boots up, and there is a command prompt.

Grandma Jones does not do system maintenance. If the machine does something other than provide her with the little icons for email, web, and solitare she will be calling her grandson to come fix it.

Re:Please....

[archen]

Actually, you bring up a good point. Why doesn't someone write a program called "help"? I know this is one of the first things I tried at the command line when I was new to computers, and I've seen many other people try the same thing. 'man' only helps you if you know what command you should be typing, and lets face it; most Linux commands are NOT intuitivly named.

It seems to me that it wouldn't kill someone to make a bunch of tutorials that speak to average people, and explain things like rm, and ls ... AND GIVE EXAMPLES. Organize it like a book, and write it like a book. Possibly make it modular so you can add other help modules for stuff like rsync, etc. which may not be a part of linux by default.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:
man -k keyword
and
man -k keyword1 | grep keyword2
when you don't know the command.

But haven't you noticed that most of the new-fangled crap in OSS land lacks proper manpages? It started with that absurd "info" stuff (we're too pretentious to be bothered to build a manpage automatically as part of our Makefile) and now has progressed to HTML files in /usr/doc (if you're lucky) or somewhere out on the web.

Re:Please....

[ricotest]

It would be more useful if Linux had
help $command
Or, while we're at it... just
help

I'd say distros should alias help to man, but that ball could keep rolling. What would be next? Aliasing 'umount' so it's spelt correctly?

Re:Please....

[magefile]

Yeah, and if you don't have any computer experience, you may think your mouse is a microphone or foot pedal, your CD drive is a drink holder, your "desktop" is the thing your monitor is on, your "CPU" or "hard drive" is the big boxy thing ...

At least with CLI, Grandma could call me up and I could say, "type 'startx', no spaces, then hit 'Enter'" more easily than I could say, "now, right-click on your desktop ... now what do you see? No, you were supposed to right-click ... ok, I'll drive down and fix it for you".

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

Yes, things like mounting are not the most intuitive, if you are used to the way that Windows does it. But, IME all of the common things that are not intuitive that people want to do are covered in the distributions getting started docs. Or at least they were when i was starting out.
maybe you should check out the apropos command

caffeine blef # apropos floppy
fd (4) - floppy disk device
fdformat (8) - Low-level formats a floppy disk
setfdprm (8) - sets user-provided floppy disk parameters

hrm fd looks interesting...

caffeine blef # man fd
FD(4) Linux Programmer's Manual FD(4)


NAME
fd - floppy disk device

*snip*

SEE ALSO
floppycontrol(1), mknod(1), chown(1), getfdprm(1), superformat(1), mount(8), setfdprm(8)

So, with this route, I am 3 commands away from what I want. I seem to recall some design essay about everything being at most 3 clicks. Looks good to me.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

While I understand your frustration, it's a really typical, really simple complaint with a very basic answer:

Imagine you boarded an alien ship with a computer system you'd never seen before, built only for the technicians on the alien ship. So, this is a specialized, purpose-built system. All the alien techs like the system, because it's easy for them to quickly get something done. You, however, have a huge problem with it, because it doesn't do "natural language" (whose language?) processing, or "know what you want" and it isn't a "good desktop."

What my point is, is your complaint is misplaced. It has a place against microsoft, because microsoft is designing its product -for- desktop and home use. As such, if it fails in some regard, you have a reason to complain, generally.

However, linux is a hobby project shared between a group of people who love it for some very real reasons. This is a very large group, but it's not dissociated, supporters share a common philosophical and technical interest in the project and its goals (like designing your software code with practical guidelines and considerations, for instance, having no artificial limits).

I use linux as my primary system. I have my fair share of problems with it, but I respect the fact that I am not the target of this project. I can share in the benefits of using the system, and someday I may be able to contribute to it, but right now, I just appreciate the fact that the system functions exactly as I've (maybe unwittingly) told it to, with no arbitrary limits.

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

Done:
http://www.tldp.o rg/

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

What, the attitude of "please, someone hold my hand?" come on dude, these are basic concepts, that exist in DOS as well as linux. $command /? in DOS dosen't work? If you are unwilling to look at the help screen/manpage of a command, then I am unwilling to do it for you.

Re:Please....

[Waffle Iron]

$how do i read a file from my floppy? "mount?" who woulda thought.

Actually, on the latest SuSE release, just browse into /media/floppy. It just works; no mounting required. To someone who has never used any computer, that would be even more intuitive than "A:\".

The same goes for USB thumb drives. The biggest problem I had with this new feature was letting go of my years of conditioning (including needing to "eject" a plug&play device in Windows) that I had to mount or unmount the device at all.

Re:Please....

[IamTheRealMike]

Quite a lot of manpages are awful. The man page for tar does not give you the "tar xzvf" magic invocation to extra .tar.gz files, despite this being the most common task newbies use it for. The man page for sudo attempts to teach you BNF notation instead of simply telling you how to allow a user to access root using their own password.

There are also some really great man pages. But it's hardly a consistently useful resource.

Re:Please....

[NewStarRising]

"tutorials that speak to average people, and explain things like rm, and ls ... AND GIVE EXAMPLES"
Best advice today. GIVE EXAMPLES. Preferably simple, common ones. e.g. for mount, give example of "mounting a floppy disk".

Re:Please....

[__aafutm5472]

The problem is that n00bs don't know what "command" to even look up.

apropos

It's a great command.

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

If you think it is common practice to give your grandma a computer with linux installed, that boots to a CLI, you sir are the one kidding.

And, as a couple posts down, You think that if it was Windows on that strange shiny new thing you gave to grandma, she'd be up and running as soon as she hits the power button? Any thing new requires a at least minimum effort to be able to use it.

I had to hold my fathers hand to do the most simple of tasks in Windows the first couple of times (Read E-Mail, search the web, make the text bold in Word.) Are you going to tell me that Windows is not ready for the desktop because he wasn't able to do whatever he wanted with nil in the way of training, or of seeking help?

Re:Please....

[Malor]

But what if you don't even know the commands?

Back in around 1993, the Internet came to the place I was living at the time, in Northern California. My roommate and I were big BBS users, so we were all over that, and signed up the instant that CRL offered service.

What they offered was a dial-in, UNIX command prompt. You were only allowed to run one command at a time, and they didn't offer PPP or SLIP for years, perhaps never. And they didn't ship a manual of any type. You got a dialup number and a login, and you were left with the prompt:

crl>

So what now? We had no bloody CLUE what to do. So my roommate started typing each letter, by itself, one at a time:

a
b
c

Like that. One of the commands hung; I think it might have been b or c: I'm thinking that it was some sort of early calculator program. Suddenly we didn't have anything. I had a thought, and suggested control-Z, which is the EOF character for DOS. This actually worked, although by pure luck. It WAS waiting on our input, so I had the right idea, but control-Z is not the EOF character for Unix. (control-D is). By luck, control-Z suspends a Unix process. So we got our prompt back without understanding why.

My roommate kept up with the letters of the alphabet, which was completely useless until we got to "w". Suddenly, we got a list of people who were logged in and, most importantly, what commands they were running. We started taking notes and were soon off to the races, at least in a very basic way.

This is NOT how to encourage a newbie to start. Had it been just me, I'd have gone out to buy a book; fortunately, my roommate was both smart and stubborn. And Unix remained intimidating to me for a very long time; I was a complete wizard with the PCs of the time, but Unix was utterly alien and extremely difficult to pick up without other people around.

The single best way to learn Unix is to expose yourself to other Unix people. It is an extraordinarily powerful and deep system, and getting truly great at it will take years. You can accelerate this process enormously by having experienced people around you, so that you don't waste time going down blind alleys. They can also help you unlearn your bad habits from the brain-damaged prompts in DOS and Windows.

I have said for many years that you can very nearly bring about world peace from the Unix command line; it's that powerful.

But ye gods, is it ever intimidating when you're first starting.

Re:Please....

[|<amikaze]

Of course, because that's blatantly obvious to a new user.

Re:Please....

[mikael_j]

I'll agree with this, this is one of these things I can still have problems with when using some new software or simply a built-in shell command I've never used before, all the examples of how to use it seem to be "somegnucommand -d 5 -frtvp -s 7 data infile outfile", which is slightly annoying when it turns out that in order to do what you wanted to do all you had to type was "somegnucommand data infile outfile" or even simpler yet...

/Mikael

Re:Please....

[Emil Brink]

Uh? On my local system, Gentoo Linux 2004.2 I believe, "man tar" contains this:

EXAMPLES
tar -xvvf foo.tar
extract foo.tar

tar -xvvzf foo.tar.gz
extract gzipped foo.tar.gz

tar -cvvf foo.tar foo/
tar contents of folder foo in foo.tar

That's the fourth headline, after Name, Synopsis and Description, and should appear on the first or second page for a reasonable terminal size... Perhaps you've been using an outdated man page? I don't seem to have sudo installed, so I couldn't check that one.

Re:Please....

[TheWingThing]

apropos?

Re:Please....

[IamTheRealMike]

OK, I admit the last time I checked was a long time ago. It's possible that Gentoo have forked it though, they modify software all the time in their ebuilds.

Re:Please....

[Cro Magnon]

If I were a *nix newbie, the first thing I'd try is "help". "bash err - help not found". Man? Why would I type THAT? Maybe I'd guess info, but maybe not. I suppose a google search for "unix commands" might give me something useful, but I'm too lazy to try.

Re:Please....

[pete-classic]

This was probably my biggest frustration when I was first trying to learn *NIX. I kept insisting to my guru that there had to be a command summary somewhere that I could use to jumpstart my learning. He finally said "Dude, just do 'ls /bin'."

Wherever you are Mike, you're the man.

-Peter

Re:Please....

[ViolentGreen]

So, with this route, I am 3 commands away from what I want. I seem to recall some design essay about everything being at most 3 clicks. Looks good to me.

Three clicks? How do you figure that?

There are 5 commands listed before the mount command. Even after you get to the mount command, you have to read the man page for it which contains a lot of stuff they won't need. Personally, I would have given up by then.

With Windows (and even in DOS,) explicit mounting is not necessary. All you have to do is stick the floppy in the drive then navigate to it through explorer.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

man is pretty helpful, except for one little flaw: NOWHERE is it documented how to exit out of man! I had this problem when I started using linux, and I've heard it time and time again. Users are told to use man to look up a command, but the non-obvious 'q' to exit man is nowhere to be found. Even "man man" does not supply this information.

Re:Please....

[littlem]

At the risk of stating the obvious...it just doesn't matter how productive a 'newbie' is in his first hour or even his first six months. He'll be using a computer all his life, so if he has to invest time to learn a shell or a text editor or whatever, which makes him more productive for the next n years then that will be time well spent. If he doesn't want to make the effort because he has illogical negative feelings about command lines, then why should anyone care? It's his loss.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be a "CLI helper" program

Could we call it clifairy? Like the pink puffy pokemon? Damn that thing is sexy. That would sure beat the hell out of clippy's ugly ass, especially if it gave useful advice.

Re:Please....

[FortranDragon]

I'd like to see a help system that worked like COMND JSYS.

The relevant paragraph is:

"Programs coded with the COMND JSYS had many virtues. They were friendly, helpful, and consistent. All programs written using COMND worked the same way: type "?" to find out what the commands or options are, type ESC to complete the current field (if possible) and receive a prompt for the next field. People could use the "?" and ESC features liberally to learn their way through a new program, and later, could type terse, abbreviated commands for speed. This approach, called "menu on demand," does not favor the novice over the expert (as menu-oriented systems do), nor the expert over the novice (as do the cryptic, terse command sets of APL or UNIX)."

Most all command line apps have a help switch, why not provide *interactive* help? You could even use '--ihelp' as the command line switch to preserve the existing help for those that like that style. Make the interactive help system a library similar to gettext or readline. That would allow people to add the functionality an app at a time.

We've all had to look up the man page for a command. Wouldn't it be nicer to _have the option_ to stay in the command instead of exiting it and loading the man page?

Note: I realize this doesn't help with the problem of figuring out just which command you should use or even if that command exists.

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

I figgure it by apropos->man fd->man mount.

Yes It could have taken me many more commands to get there, and i can use more than 3 clicks in windows to do even very simple things. IIRC the article i was refrencing didnt mean "If a user cant find it in 3 clicks, it sucks" it was "everything should be reachable by 3 clicks." So, 3 commands. deal.

Re:Please....

[dave420]

And Mrs I-Heard-About-Linux-And-Thought-I'd-Try-It knows how to do that how, exactly?

Linux isn't going to get very far onto the desktop if users have to go on courses or read books to know how to use it. It's that simple. We can all sit here stroking our egos (or whatever), secure in the knowledge we can get around a linux command-prompt. Unless we do something to make it easier for every user, old and new alike, linux is going to stay in universities, IT departments, and geeks' rooms. Saying "oh just use the help command!" is a cop-out, and only serves to hurt linux, not help it.

Re:Please....

[Cocoronixx]

'q' meaning quit is non obvious, but things like F1 meaning help are? You do have to make some assumptions about your target audience when writing technical documentation. I thing the general idea of 'q' meaning quit _is_ obvious.

And, next time you are in a manpage, you can try 'h' for help, but i guess that makes no sense either.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the pink puffy pokemon? Damn that thing is sexy.

You mean Jigglypuff? A helper who's a BBW? :)

Re:Please....

[Q2Serpent]

What's 'explorer'? I don't see a picture for it on my monitor. I don't see a picture of my disk, either.

See how confusing things can be when you are new to a system? New MacOS users didn't have this particular problem. (Note: I am not a mac zealot; don't even own one. Just comparing systems.)

FYI: Most 'current' desktops do provide an icon for drives (floppy, cdrom) and there is no explicit mounting needed.

Re:Please....

[seirui]

When the only command you know is 'dir', and that doesn't work, knowing 'man' won't do you any good. You need to know the question before you can ask it.

Re:Please....

[reclusivemonkey]

Hell, even typing the command on its own usually gives you some idea of what to do. My own personal favourite prompt is on workbone when you forget to turn num lock on...

Re:Please....

[Hatta]

I am still learning useful commands.

Isn't that great? In UNIX it does take a little longer to reach basic competency, compared to windows. But the learning curve doesn't stop there. There's always something new to learn, to give you more control over your machine, and make you more productive. A little time invested reading HOWTOs pays back immensely over time.

Re:Please....

[jbolden]

AC I agree 100%. At the very least there should be a man page indicating where to find the additional information.

Re:Please....

[Blakey Rat]

Welcome to the chicken and egg problem.

A) Users don't know what command to use to (say) copy stuff off their floppy.

B) There's an apropos (fucking stupid name, BTW, why not 'guide' or 'question' or 'help?') command that lets the user search for a command based on what task they want done.

But given A, how is the user supposed to know B? If B was named "help" or "?" instead of Apropos then you might have an argument here, but what you're saying is pure nonsense.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

So then, what you suggest is for there to be no help programs or help texts written, and everyones hand held instead?

Re:Please....

[Brandybuck]

While a "help" program might be interesting, your other points are completely off base.

First off, if you know man, then you know man -k (otherwise known as "apropos").

Second, those tutorials are a dime a dozen. I haven't used a commercial Linux in a very long time, but they all used to come with printed manuals that explained basic stuff like this. I use FreeBSD, and it has a section for newbies in the handbook. Many other beginning tutorials for Unix newbs are available online.

Third, you're not staring at a command prompt with most Linux distros, but desktop so chock full friendly advice for the newbie (like the big 'help' or 'start here' icon).

Re:Please....

[Brandybuck]

If you did a "man man", you would see that there's this '-k' option...

Seriously, when I first started using Unix twenty years ago the SECOND thing I learned was apropos. I don't remember how I learned it, but it wasn't from a manual. It might have been from a fellow student or hint on the professor's assignment sheet. But I learned it the very first day I used Unix.

Re:Please....

[__aafutm5472]

Exactly -- man and apropos are not intuitive. Niether is double-clicking an icon - not at first. And which mouse button to use -- left or right?

Things must be taught to a user before they can explore. Most people don't sit down at a system with no prior experience and no techie background without first being told a few simple commands.

Re:Please....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always the "apropos" command as a last resort. It helps once in a while. :)

Re:Please....

[TheRealMindChild]

Your father is a moron then. Plain and simple. I have whitnessed multitudes of people sit down at a windows machine, and with a little poking, in minutes, they were doing something apparently productive... at least moreso then when they started. This is probably due to refining the interface over a good 15-20 years. It is plain intuitive. And yes, you fire up a brand spaking new OEM Windows XP machine, and there is NO configuration needed. It just works.

DOS on the other hand was meant for people, back when computer skills were required to use a machine. You wouldnt dare sit down at a DOS prompt without reading something first. Even then, if you had a bit of intuition, you would type "help" and you would get something to get you started. Lets see what I get when I do this on my Linux webserver:

guest@MrWebserver:~$ help
-bash: help: command not found
guest@MrWebserver:~$

Who would have thought.

Re:Please....

[AnyoneEB]

I agree. DOS had such a program called "help" (which seems to be missing starting with Windows 95), which is how I learned the command line originally. When I first started using Linux, I had a lot of trouble since the only DOS command that's the same is "cd" (and "dir" is aliased in the default Debian Woody setup), I often had to ask what's the Linux version of [insert simple command]. At least the simple commands like mv, cp, and rm are just what they do minus vowels, so they're easy to guess, but I never would have guessed du or df by myself.

Re:Please....

[colinrichardday]

On SuSE 9.0, get into KDE (the default desktop), insert the floppy into the floppy drive, and click the floppy icon on the desktop. OOOH, feel the pain! Colin

Re:Please....

[True Grit]

It's his loss.

Depends on who you ask. The Linux fans that want world domination will (or should) tell you that its not "his" loss, its Linux's loss. Now I'm a Linux user and quite happy with it, but I don't really care whether Linux achieves world domination or not, and I have to be brutally honest and say Linux's lack of distribution coherency, useful documentation, user unfriendliness and newbie hostility pretty much dooms any chance it has on the home PC desktop machines. On servers and enterprise workstations, its got a good chance, but its lack of polish will keep it off of most grandmothers' computers out there.

Why? Well, one slim booklet from the distributor just doesn't cut it. There is so much complexity that Linux doesn't hide from the user, that a lot "ordinary folk" won't be able to handle. And the fragmentation and absence of coherency from one app to another as well as within the system itself (multiple desktops, multiple sound systems, multiple printing mechanisms, multiple documentation formats, documentation quality varying from excellent to nonexistent) is going to make it difficult for anyone expecting all apps to behave in much the same way and provide similar features, ie, standardization.

Now before I get flamed, I've already said that I don't care whether Linux "wins" or "loses", which means I don't care about standardization, I don't *want* standardization (in the way many here speak of it) to happen at all, if that means being forced for example to use GNOME instead of KDE (and if KDE ticks me off at some point, then XFCE). If the home desktop is the target, its going to require a significant level of compromise (that I at least am NOT willing to make) on the simplification/standardization issue, and it will require a substantial level of refactoring of existing apps, or replacing all apps in a single coherent mega-package like KDE (except KDE isn't well integrated with the underlying system, since, among other things, its designed to be portable), in order to get the kind of coherency and polish of the system that typical end users will expect/need/demand.

So for people like you and me, losing this guy back to the MS/Apple world doesn't make a difference, but it does to all those who see Linux as their heroic dragon-slayer of myth and legend that will lead them to glorious victory over Microsoft. :) People want to take Linux in different directions, so the result is that to make Linux succeed on the home desktop, you'll have to change it in ways that I (and others) will never accept. Because of this, I think talking about one distro called "Linux" is a waste of time because it'll never happen.

Re:Please....

[Planesdragon]

HELP is back in Windows XP and 2k. It isn't like the old DOS help (with pages and pages of the commands, including a list of EVERY DOS command), but it does list all/most of the commands and has a short description of them.

Re:Please....

[|<amikaze]

That's why new users should have to start on Macs. A mouse with a single button. Point at it and hit the big button :D

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why god created apt-get.

It's been years since I had to worry about dependancies.

2 reasons:

Apt-get from debian has been ported to Fedora/Redhat. I use Fedora. (laptop)

I use Debian. (desktop)

That's it.

What to patch?

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Wham bam thank you mam!

Want mplayer, but Fedora doesn't have the ability to play DVD's or Mp3's?

Head on down to Dag's RPM repositories, follow his directions and go:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install mplayer libdvdcss xmms

done and DONER!!!!

Apt-get IS the killer application for linux.

Update everything, patch everything. Not just core system like in Windows!

No MORE DEPENDANCY HELL.

It's realy quite nice. Install debian, upgrade to unstable. I've been running it for 2 years, no sweat and completely up to date.

Education.

[Raven42rac]

Any halfway decent teacher/guide will include an overview of the "man" command. So if you don't know the arguments/what a command does, just type "man command", that will teach you fairly quickly what a command does.

Re:Education.

[dcordeiro]

this is when you know what command to use. If you don't?

and even if you know the command: man man
man, version 1.5k

usage: man [-adfhktwW] [section] [-M path] [-P pager] [-S list]
[-m system] [-p string] name ...

uau... much better now

Admit it: cli is not for joe average that only needs to change its pc configuration once in a decade. Even if he learns something, he will forget everything in a couple of months

Re:Education.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. But it's when you don't know what command you need that the command line sucks. What man doesn't do is tell you what command you should be looking for to accomplish a desired task. Time in front of the prompt and a good book is what I found to be most benificial. When someone is looking over your shoulder, you don't nesessarily have copious amounts of time.

Re:Education.

[Mant]

just type "man command", that will teach you fairly quickly what a command does.

I've worked on UNIX systems for something like 10 years, and I can say that "man" is frequently my last resort. Usenet/Google Groups, normal Google searches, freindly UNIX admins, some bookmarked web pages and books are all things I try before using man.

Maybe man on Linux is much more useful than the AIX system we use, but frequently I find it far too cyptic to be of use. The sort of man pages I see are only going to scare a relative newbie, not help.

Re:Education.

[Ignignot]

It isn't more useful. The best place to go is google IMHO. The problem with man is that it doesn't give any sort of hands on examples usually, sort of like the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Man pages are obsoleted by current search technology and the irreplacable veteran user who helps other people.

Re:Education.

[Alkonaut]

Any user interface that requires you have a friend or a book to help you is clearly not user friendly or intuitive enough.

The whole catch-22 of the "man" command is that it assumes you know what the command is called in the first place. A good "man" would not only display a short description of commands, it would also:

- Be called "manual" or something even more intuitive, so that a first-time cli user would find it.

- Not assume that I know what command I want help about, but rather what I want to do.

Re:Education.

[TrailerTrash]

I have a hard time with man - yes, it's full-on documentation, but 19 times out of 20, I don't need the 15 highly obscure switches for a command, I just need the command in its simplest form.

What man is missing is an example section, e.g., "To find all files with mary in the title, use ls -R *mary*" or whatever; "to find all files modified in the last 10 days do..."

I will say right out that perhaps such a facility exists, but I am unaware. I am a GUI user of Linux (SuSE 9.1 X86_64) and my command line skills have rusted since I lived in VMS 20 years ago...

Re:Education.

[Anonymous Coward]

Man pages are great for details - IF you know what the command is in the first place. But where's the nice easy-reference guide that tells you what command you're looking for?

Re:Education.

[Anonymous Coward]

This assumes a person knows which command to man.

Re:Education.

[rusty0101]

Again with the frikin 'man' command garbage. Yes, 'man $command' will give you all sorts of wonderful information about a known command.

So, I see a 'README' file in the results of a 'ls' command. (how I got to the 'ls' command is beyond explanation, it is not intuitive.) so I decide to type out the file.

$type README|more
README is ./README

Hmm... that was useless. So what does 'type' actually do?

$man type
No manual entry for type

Ok, so not only does the 'type' command not do what I was expecting it to, I can't even find out what it does do.

Eventually I might figure out that I can use the 'more' command directly, but everyone I know who comes from the MS-Dos, or PC-Dos, or even DR-Dos worlds uses the 'more' command as a pipe, not as a direct command. (You can use it directly, and it will work pretty much just the way it works in Linux/Unix, but no one does.)

Now I decide that the document looks like something I might want to have hard copy of. So...

$print README
Warning: unknown mime-type for "README" -- using "application/*"
Error: no "print" mailcap rules found for type "application/*"

So, 'print' doesn't do what I thought it should either.

Yep, 'man print' refers to 'run-mailcap', with all sorts of other features, but it doesn't tell me how to send a copy of the document to my printer.

I personally am not an advocate of the 'do what I mean, not what I say' philosophy, but one of the things that should be made available for every user, in their local directory is a file that if the user types it's name, gets printed to a printer, or if none is available, opens a file browser to list the text contents of the file which gives the user a high level 'how-to' of simple command line functions the user may want to do. Something like:

To view the contents of a file:
~$ less filename
To print a file to the default printer:
~$ lpr filename

Since both type, and print apparently do have functionality given to them, it would not be a good idea to alias these commands to less, more cat, lpr, or other commands. At least in my opinion.

Yes, I personally am quite comfortable using the ls, lpr, less, etc. commands under Linux/Unix. I also run into issues where I end up using these commands under Windows, and get similar responses from Command.com and cmd.exe, in that I don't have executables in my path with these names, and they are not internal commands to the shells in question. Sure I can install Bash and cygwin, but I don't really need to.

-Rusty

Re:Education.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the idea is that you're supposed to have enough attention span to read past the first two lines of the document, past the blank separator line, past the line that says "DESCRIPTION" in bold caps, and on through the first couple of sentences that give a summary of what the program does.

Re:Education.

[__aafutm5472]

I've posted this above, but here it is again. Every n00b needs to know of the command 'ls' and 'apropos'.

Yeah, it'll give you lots of hits if you type 'apropos print', but it's a place to start.

Ideally, every n00b should be dropped into KDE or Gnome, and only graduate to the command line at a later date.

But, that's typically not how it works.

Re:Education.

[Kehvarl]

isn't that why we have man -k and man -K ? for when you know roughly what you want, but not what it's called. man -K has saved me from crawling through random forums and newsgroups on many an occasion.

Re:Education.

[dave420]

The fact you need a teacher/guide means linux isn't even close to being on the desktop. Yes, there are Windows guides, but most people can get around without even looking at one. F1 is the only manual they need.

Re:Education.

[drivers]

What man is missing is an example section

Most man pages do have an examples section. It's in all caps so just type "man command" and then /EXAMPLES to jump to the examples. Of course it depends on your Unix vendor, and who wrote the man pages. Here is the example section from "man ls" on hp-ux 11i, which happens to only have one example:

EXAMPLES
Print a long listing of all the files in the current working directory
(including the file sizes). List the most recently modified
(youngest) file first, followed by the next older file, and so forth,
to the oldest. Files whose names begin with a . are also printed.

ls -alst

The FSF man page for ls that comes with linux doesn't appear to have an example section. The hp-ux man page for find (quite possibly the most complex command line program) has 12 examples with a lot of text to explain them. The linux one I found online doesn't have any examples.

Not intended to bash one version of unix over the other. I didn't realize that linux would be the one with fewer examples.

Re:Education.

[almightyjustin]

Well that's great now that I know about it but I'd never heard of it before. What are the odds the aforementioned Mr. Average knows about it?

Re:Education.

[Brandybuck]

Most GNU man pages, such as you will find in Linux, are woefully bereft of examples. That's because GNU hates man pages and consider them obsolete. But if you go look at FreeBSD man pages (as one example of non-GNU man pages), you'll find them full of examples.

Here's one example from the FreeBSD find man page:

find / -newer ttt -user wnj -print
Print out a list of all the files owned by user ``wnj'' that are newer than the file ttt.

Re:Education.

[Spy der Mann]

I'm a die-hard MS-DOS veteran.

I know what "help" is. I read a couple tutorials.
Everytime I needed to know what a command did, i used help [command]; or in this case, command /?

want to know what else you can do with the DOS internal commands?

cd \DOS
dir

This still works somewhat in win32 (just type "HELP" and you're done).

So, what command do we use in linux to find files?
Where's my home?
where did linux install that program?
what are the basic survival commands?

Even worse, the Linux tree directory is extremely cryptic. (And that's WITHOUT counting the mazelike symlinks). I can't even see where my home is.

ls /usr

What do I get? Access denied (or something similar).

Really, really, there SHOULD be a "help" command, which tells me:

a) The basic linux commands.
b) Where my home directory is.
c) Where are the files that I (somehow) installed. i.e. if I installed a webserver, where's the conf files? And where's the doc root?

In windows, I use Apache and I *KNOW* that apache is installed in C:\Apache2\.
The htdocs are in C:\web (because I *TOLD* the apache *INSTALLER* where to put the htdocs. OK let's suppose you're the average joe slashdotter. In this case, it would be in c:\htdocs.

Now try that in Linux. Now let's go for the installations nightmare. Ever heard of Sablotron, the PHP xslt processor?

I asked my webadmin to install it... i thought, it should be easy.

He got angry at me for making him lose many hours of his job, not being able to install. I was lucky he used a test box instead of the *REAL* web server.

On windows,i just edit the php.ini and add "php_sablot.dll" (or however it's called) to the extensions list.

OK, let's try config.

Where's the config file? In DOS, it was c:\config.sys
and c:\autoexec.bat

that's all you gotta know. A simple text editor will do the job.

Don't like windows vulnerabilities? Well, look back. There's MS-DOS. Open your floppy disk, type "INSTALL", and it will do EVERYTHING for you.

Face it. Linux may have a helluva core security and network layer. But it's still for die-hard experts only.

So far the attempts to make it friendly are just a bunch of GUI frontends (wysiwyg html editors, anyone?) that make things look prettier on the outside while keeping things UGLY on the inside.

But overall, the greatest Linux mistake was not having a _UNIVERSAL_ native executable (or library) format.
Want to make sure your files are the same and haven't been tampered with? Apply some hash to the exes. No need for recompilation on every box.

Conclusion:

Universal EXE + library format = compile once, install ANYWHERE. This was present not only in windows, but in DOS. FROM THE BEGINNING.

OK, OK... maybe i got too far. Let me fix that.
Universal EXE + Library format (per CPU type/instruction set).

Result = Compile once (per CPU type/instruction set), install anywhere.

That's it.

Linux NEEDS TO CHANGE.

Re:Education.

[p3d0]

Check out "man patch". That's a pretty good man page...

PATCH(1)

NAME
patch - apply a diff file to an original

SYNOPSIS
patch [options] [originalfile [patchfile]]

but usually just

patch -pnum <patchfile

DESCRIPTION
...

Re:Education.

[qwijibo]

Those are some good examples of how DOS and Windows are just as bad as *nix when it comes to user interaction.

The problem with the one size fits all approach is that it has to be tailored to the lowest common denomenator.

Since you used Apache installation as an example, I will provide an example based on the most recent software installation I did under *nix. I just installed PostgreSQL 7.4.5 at work with the ./configure ; make; make install that is so familiar to Unix sysadmins and many users. ./configure told me that I wouldn't be able to do certain things because some things were missing on my server. I promptly ignored those because this is work, where those features were of no interest to me. Now, on my home machine I perform the same steps to install the same software. At work, I installed it on a Sun V480 running Solaris 8, at home it's a Celeron 300A running FreeBSD. Those warnings about what I couldn't do on the work server didn't come up, because the extra stuff is installed at home. In the end, I ended up with everything set up correctly for the environment it's in, with capabilities based on the system I was installing it on. It didn't need to install a bunch of stuff I didn't need at work and it doesn't lack functionality at home. To me, this is the pinnacle of technical-user-friendliness.

I'm not a rabid supporter of all things Linux, but I know from experience that I can do the same thing on Linux I can do on every other *nix platform with a reasonable expectation that it will work.

The problem you cite isn't one of the system, but one of familiarity with the system.

Re:Education.

[Kehvarl]

you may have a point. -K and -k are perhaps the most helpful arguments for man, and since I hadn't seen anyone else mention it, perhaps we need to make that one of the first things we tell people about.
However I learned about it by skimming the man --help output. I didn't read the entire argument list in depth (primarily because I'm too lazy to), but once I noticed that K did a search for a specific string in all pages, I did a man man to find more information on it. Why can't the Average User do this? how hard is it to add --help to a command to see if there are any helpful arguments? and if it's not an obvious first step when in doubt, then why don't we tell people to consider it an obvious first step?

Re:Education.

[MarkedMan]

Couldn't agree more about the lack of examples. I find the example-less man pages extremely frustrating as they seem to require a pretty detailed understanding of the inner workings of every command. They mix detailed, "wires and bolts" stuff with the basics. Perfect example is the "locate" command. I wanted to find a file and "locate" seemed like a dream come true. But doing a little research showed up all this abrupt language about databases. What databases? What are they for? Oh wait, maybe these switches do what I want... no, they are for the database? I still don't know what that is? My god, I just want to see if there is a file with "RS232" in the name, but not in the directory name. Why does this have to be so confusing?!

Re:Education.

[Evil Pete]

Spot on man. My one real gripe about Linux is the woeful lack of examples in the man pages. Everyone one of us is a newbie for some command and my time is precious I don't want to read about obscure shit when I only want to perform a simple task. Those of us here who are programmers, lets be honest would you rather wade through the obscure stuff or get the basic idea in 5 seconds from an example ?

Re:Education.

[Bilange]

man -K has saved me from crawling through random forums and newsgroups on many an occasion.

Actually, we should be thankful that some ignorant people ask questions without searching, even if its as obvious as Bill Gates is rich. The question/answer will be copied into google's cache, ready to serve the next (autodidact?) user trying to figure it out by himself.

Re:Education.

[Spy der Mann]

I just installed PostgreSQL 7.4.5 at work with the ./configure ; make; make install that is so familiar to Unix sysadmins and many users.

You still don't get the point. The point is that YOU NEED TO COMPILE. That's the whole problem with Linux. You said it yourself. "To me, this is the pinnacle of technical-user-friendliness." Linux needs to have common-user-friendliness. Why does a user need to compile a software on his x86 machine, just because his distro is not the one that all techy users have? That's plain nonsense.

You're just so accustomed to compiling and recompiling that you think it's "normal", or "ok". It is NOT. Give the average Joe-user a break.

Re:Education.

[labradore]

Linux doesn't need to have common-user-friendliness. It is what it is. If it's not friendly enough for you then don't use it. Lots of people would like it to be friendlier and they work to do make it friendlier, but no one is telling you that you have to believe that the command line is friendly. Linux is unix and it isn't intended to be easy to manage like a home PC. It's silly to advise the people who work on it to rip out its unix heart and replace it with what is needed to make it as friendly as DOS.

Re:Education.

[Spy der Mann]

Exactly. That's the problem with Linux. It's unable to replace the desktop market implanted by Windows. We need a good replacement as secure as Linux, and we need it FAST.

Re:Education.

[qwijibo]

And you've entirely missed the point as well. Linux comes from a long line of server operating systems. It wasn't intended to be the one size fits all desktop that some people would like to turn it into.

Then again, Windows only holds that role because people don't have a choice. Do you really think the average user thinks Windows is truly easy? It's easy for people who have understood the microsoft mentality in desktops over the last decade or two. New users still are confused by everything, regardless of the platform. If you're comfortable with the Windows way of doing things, that's based on your experience. Don't believe that everyone else has the same experiences you do.

You've focused so strongly on your compiling-is-bad-mkay tirade that you failed to recognize that it DOES NOT MATTER. If there is a common-user-friendly installation process, the common-user does not care if the software is delivered as an executable, is compiled, or what not. Ever seen documentation for Windows programs that require the end user to go in and edit the registry? Most programs do it for you, because the author of the program is better equipped to know what needs to be done than the end user. The ones that expect the user to do it also tend to have more serious fundamental problems, because the author Does Not Get It. Windows is not immune to the exact same criticisms people have with Linux. The common user just wants something that works. When the solution fails on this point, people will complain.

The valid criticism about so many Linux systems is that they don't have a user friendly enough installation process. This means a common approach to installing software, regardless of where it came from. That's the whole idea of having a common installer framework under windows. The problem that is faced on Linux is that it's used as a cutesy desktop environment by some people, and a serious server platform environment by others. Those two groups have very different goals and those with the technical expertise to help the desktop users are the ones with a vested interest in not losing the functionality they currently have by taking a one size fits all approach.

Re:Education.

[Spy der Mann]

OK, letme ask you a question.

The constant requirement of HAVING to compile something against the current kernel (or having to REcompile everything if you just recompiled one or two so's) makes an installation process EASIER, or HARDER?

How many things can go wrong when installing a precompiled software?
How many things can go wrong when installing something that has to be compiled?

I know Linux wasn't INTENDED to be a replacement for desktop operating systems, but a successor of common UNIX platforms.

But does it have to BE that way? My point is not what Linux WAS meant to be, but what Linux CAN BE. Some distributions (such as Xandros) are trying to make Linux a desktop OS, and with not much success.

But I guess Linuxers are as accustomed to their way of doing things just as windows users are. Try to change a bit of that, and you get an angry mob at you. Fear of change? You tell.

About user-friendliness. Perhaps you've forgot some thing called LEARNING CURVE.

The learning curve in Windows is pretty easy. Just open the program you want to learn (i.e. Word), click on a menu option and see what it does. Configuring the system is for advanced users. The common user doesn't have to worry about that. But just in case, there's something called control panel.

Now what's the learning curve in Linux? For instance, you have to choose a distro that fits you. OK what's wrong in that? Well that means you have to KNOW the particularities of ALL distro's. Does that make things easier or harder for the user?

Then you have to learn how to use the help, the package managers, the compilation process if you have to modify something...

Why does Linux have to be *nix? But I guess you're right. I'm trying to change the impossible.
The Joe average Windows user is standing on the wall between an insecure OS, and a perfectly difficult OS which doesn't make things EASIER for him.

Here's a challenge.

Try googling for "Problem with Windows"
and "Problem with Linux". "Problem with Windows" (quoted) gives you 25,400 results. "Problem with Linux" gives you 13,000. Statistically speaking, for a user base comparison of 10 to 1 of windows users comparing with linux users, Linux is about 5 times more problematic than windows.

The real thing with Linux is that it was intended to be "A better Minix than Minix", not "the next desktop OS".

But users need a secure desktop OS A.S.A.P.

And if you're not part of the solution (i.e. "RTFM", "stop whining and keep using your insecure windoze", "that's what Linux is period"), you're part of the problem.

Mirror anybody?

[RenHoek]

Site is dead within minutes.. mirrors anybody?

I remember those days....

[b12arr0]

After loading SLS linux way back when. Having a friend look over my shoulder, telling me "now type in 'ls', now type in 'vi'". For the couple of days I was happy being able to list files, check my disk space and read email with elm and pine. :) No KDE, No Gnome, but I had good ole olwm and 30 or so floppies if I messed it up.

I can't get to the link.....

Fear?

[amacedo]

'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.' Is it? I for once get all fuzzy inside when that happens. It's called being a geek.

Re:Fear?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/novice/non-thinking person/

Re:Fear?

[fermion]

For a true novice, sitting in front of any machine not knowing what to do is hell. The GUI is not a silver bullet. The GUI can merely provide a way to explore or for a graphic learner to remember.

I remember sitting in front of a DEC or UNIX machine when I was younger a not knowing at all what to do. I had teachers to help me, and books to learn, so I am not so afraid anymore. I remember sitting in front of the first mac confused. I looked stuff up, and used prior experience, and figured it out.

My mom OTHOH gets confused when the GUI rules change slightly. She has no basis on which to explore such machines. Frankly the complexity of Windows is just overwhenliming. It might be better to give her a list of command line instructions. The things done would be much less fancy, but at least she would get them done.

A lot got done with training in the linear-text-mode-driven world. I do think GUI let more poeple use computer, as well as justifing faster more expensive machines. I mostly work on a GUI. I do think, however, that one of the great fallacies of our time is that a GUI is all that is needed to get a user computerized. Just look at how much money is quoted for training when switching a user from one GUI to another, even if both are renditions of MS Windows.

poetic justice

[Anonymous Coward]

someone without a clue writes a crappy essay

someone else w/o a clue links it on slashdot

lemmings knock the site offline

Re:poetic justice

[rusty0101]

And some Anonymous Coward pans the article without suggesting a usable reference for Linux/Unix newbies.

Re:poetic justice

[Anonymous Coward]

and your inability to use google is our problem why?

really, if you can find the power switch there's no excuse for not being able to locate the apropriate "whatever for dummies" reference

but with no idea of what it means or how to alter

[REBloomfield]

($0 & $0 &)

Best newbie interface?

[savagedome]

Check out the old story.

The Command Line - Best Newbie Interface?

Huh?

[Paulrothrock]

what little documentation exists is laden with hyperlinks to homosexual lifestyle websites.

Does he mean goatse.cx? What documentation has he been looking at?!?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's saying the documetnatin is gay

Blank command prompt

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitting in front of a blank command prompt is not something to be frightened of, it's just a waste of time as there are so many better ways of getting the job done. Those of us with lives to get on with simply don't do it.

hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

This reminds me of a padawan linux user that joined a linux chat i visited frequently about a year ago ... he started asking n00b questions about removing all files from the /tmp directory ... well after not understanding the more advanced users' advice in the form of RTFM, someone got fed up of the dude and told him that the best way to do so was ... obviously ... rm -rf / ...

... and guess what? ... the moron did it ... we silently watched the moron send his entire system (and his mounted windows partition) straight to hell ...

I think that next time he RTFM ...

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[rjstanford]

... and guess what? ... the moron did it ... we silently watched the moron send his entire system (and his mounted windows partition) straight to hell ...

I think that next time he RTFM ...

No, he probably never installed Linux again, and influenced countless friends and business associates not to try it, because it was unstable and unsupported. Seriously.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

yeah, right ... and imagine a beowulf cluster of these morons :-P ...

no really ... he actually installed it again, because he really wanted to learn linux ... unfortuantelly he had to learn the hard way

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

So instead of actually helping the poor guy, you people were hostile towards him and in the end, caused him to lose all that he had worked on up to that point.

Why would he want to try Linux again after that?

The problem with making Linux mainstream, is that there WILL be new people. And you're going to have to play nice with them or they'll go right back to Windows.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[jellomizer]

think that next time he RTFM ...

Or he will just give up on Linux and stick to Windows. Because all Linux users are a bunch of Jirks anyways. I see RTFM. that is the most useless sort of help anyone can give. How about at least poining them to the correct spot in the manual. A lot of times the reason nubes have so much problems with the manual is that they don't have the proper understainging of the way things work so while their brains are trying to make sence of all these forgen commands "rm" "Redo Mount", "Revese memory", "release mount" "remove" then you mix a buch of forgen symboles to the mix \ / ? * . They never seen these things before. So the rm -rf / could logicaly mean to someone who has never seen the command "Restore Machiene" with options Remove Files and the / could mean something about temp files. Who knows if you didn't know that / is your root directory heck when I was a newbee when they told me go to my root directory I did a cd /root/.

If you were not able to help him redirect him to a better channel more targeted towards noobies. because doing crap like that only makes them more fustrated and dislike linux.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[jotok]

...and THIS post reminds me of why Linux is not catching on, nor will it, with the masses.

When Joe Sixpack purchases a new Dell, even if he doesn't have a clue how to use Windows, there is probably going to be some kind of animated dog or pencil sharpener or whatever that will, in the most friendly manner possible, explain how to use the system to get done what you want to get done (or at least, get you started). Sure, it's annoying to anyone who isn't a complete n00b, and if you extend that line of thinking, the more advanced of a user you are, the more willing you are to look things up and the less likely you are to be frustrated when you have to work a little harder to get results.

But Linux users also must understand--there is a bit of a gap between being the kind of intermediate user who is just "graduating" from the win32 world and the advanced user who doesn't mind decrypting man pages. Linux users, as a whole, seem all to ready to consign these types to the pit of stupidity--look at your language. "Moron." "Idiot." Right. Do you regularly treat all the n00bs like shit? Are you then suprised that your community isn't growing as fast as it should? You should not be--not when the user base has such an enormous and unearned superiority complex.

It is hypocritical for us to deride new users at one time, and then foolish to expect people to flock to the product "Because it's better."

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

maybe the way I had written the post appears like I approve of doing something like this ... I don't ... I was simply trying to be brief because I don't have enough time to get all philosophical about it

I only wanted to use the story to illustrate, how depressing and intimidating the console can be to a beginner

I mean ... we all did stupid things like that (well maybe not entirely like that) and it didn't stop us from learning linux...

'nuff said

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a tool.

I hope you lose everything you've ever stored on a machine so you can feel like he did.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[bobintetley]

Why would he want to try Linux again after that?

Why would anyone assume that a bunch of assholes in an online chat speak for and represent Linux-type operating systems as a whole?

More importantly, why do you care so much about the conversion of folks from other OSes? People who want to use Linux and *nix-type OSes will use it and learn.

Mainstreaming will involve big companies with big money offering support. Assholes in chat rooms will still be assholes in chat rooms.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

another one :-) ... read this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=121308&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&tid=166&mode=thread&pid=1021216 5#10212315

the story is without context of all events that happened that day ... so stop judging based on lack of information

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

Read my other posts in this thread ... then you'll understand better ...

Linux users don't treat n00bs like shit as it's (as you have so clearly and insightfully stated) contraproductive ...
The entire OSS movement is based on help and cooperation and without it, we're screwed ...

but this guy asked for it big time ... I won't go into any details but I assure you, that you would have reacted in the same way ...

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[khrtt]

Someone wrote on the blackboard in the PC lab at my school once (long time ago:-):

TO SAVE YOUR WORK, TYPE FORMAT C:

There were 15 computers in the lab. 7 got wiped. Who would've imagined: after all the thing asks for confirmation, you know:-) Of course, these days the moron's life has been made easier - all they have to do is click on a funny link in an e-mail.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Waffle Iron]

he started asking n00b questions about removing all files from the /tmp directory ... well after not understanding the more advanced users' advice in the form of RTFM, someone got fed up of the dude and told him that the best way to do so was ... obviously ... rm -rf /

There is one way to help prevent this kind of problem: The bash shell could be modified so that whenever the user attempts to cd into a system directory, the shell should throw up a page of ASCII art that shows a picture of a bunch of gears and cogs. It would prompt the user with a message like "The /tmp directory contains important system files blah blah. Continue (y/N)?" That would probably scare most of them off.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Cro Magnon]

No, I wouldn't have done that! Depending on how stupid he WAS, I might have called him an 1d10t to his face (I did that once to a Windows 1d10t), but I wouldn't have conned him into wiping his system.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[zefram cochrane]

This is a big problem that I have found with the linux community in general. New users go looking on the forums and in chats for good information from, you guessed it, experienced users as the documentation is not the greatest...and they are met with disgust and distain merely for being a new user that doesn't understand their geekspeak. I can say that Gentoo is probably my distro of choice these days for a few reasons. First, I have NEVER come across any posts in the Gentoo forums where someone told the newbie to go RTFM, instead giving detailed explanations. Secondly, the Portage system is just as good as the apt-get system, and worlds better than the evil RPM system, there is almost no such thing as a dependency problem in Portage. Lastly, the documentation provided by the Gentoo devs is by far the best I've seen in a long time.

Just my $0.02

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

and that's exactly why I use gentoo ... best forums on the net ...

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[drmancini]

boo :-P

... we're definitely offtopic now ... and being an asshole to n00bs wasn't the point of my post ... I'll learn from this by writing everything that's relevant next time ...

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Hatta]

/tmp shouldn't contain any important files. The fellows problem was that 'rm -rf' doesn't ask for confirmation. If he was using zsh, he'd get a confirmation message even with the -f (force) flag.

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone assume that a bunch of assholes in an online chat speak for and represent Linux-type operating systems as a whole?

Why does the rest of the world think an ignorant coke-head Texan speaks for and represents United States-type citizens?

Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now?

[Spetiam]

he started asking n00b questions about removing all files from the /tmp directory...rm -rf /...we silently watched the moron send his entire system (and his mounted windows partition) straight to hell

Aside from the fact that, as others have noted before me, this story is probably just a puerile plea for attention, are you and the people you chat with really so lame that they couldn't just tell him sudo rm -rf /tmp/* ?

Or are you just too "1337" to be bothered with patiently giving a "n00b" a little help?

Re:but with no idea of what it means or how to alt

[Anonymous Coward]

in the bash shell
:(){ :|:& };:

in perl
perl -e "fork while fork"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabbit

symphony OS

[lkcl]

takes care of the multi-.so problem... by installing each package AND ITS DEPENDENCIES in a per-package subdirectory.

mad as xxxx and staggeringly heavy on disk space but it takes the problem away.

Re:symphony OS

[grumbel]

A clever filesystem could even remove the diskspace problem by simply hardlinking the dependencies in, instead of copying them. So you only still have the dependency only once, but ever application sees its own pseudo-copy of it.

Re:symphony OS

[IamTheRealMike]

That's exactly the same thing as having all the shared libraries in the same place, isn't it?

The problems with shared libraries boil down to exactly two things:

• Most DSO authors don't understand how to avoid breaking software when they change the code. If they do, they assume the versioning mechanisms they have available give them a free license to break backwards compat whenever they feel like it.

• There is no such thing as the Linux platform, not yet. Linux is still making the transition away from "a random collection of software that happens to work together" (ie a distribution) towards a platform that 3rd parties can build upon.

The first means that if you do get a binary from somewhere, chances are it'll be missing a library it needs. Why? Because rather than add a foo_func2() function, the library author added a parameter to foo_func() and broke backwards compatibility. Because they modified the size of a struct that the app wasn't even using anyway. Because the library has a ludicrously fast release cycle and provides new versions every 5 minutes.

The second means there's no baseline which people can target. Instead people scout around, find a library which looks good and use it, only to discover that said library isn't actually packaged anywhere or breaks backwards compatibility every five minutes so the packages which do exist are always of a too new or too old version.

The problems are worsened considerably by the "not my problem" attitude which means free software authors typically say "I provide the source! It's your distributions job to make it easy to install!" which is a totally bogus attitude, and one that not having distributions MacOS and Windows don't suffer at all.

SymphonyOS doesn't have this problem because nobody uses it and it has only toy applications. There's no such thing as a distro there.

None of the above problems can be solved with fancy linker/package manager tricks I'm afraid. It requires a developer education push similar to the usability push GNOME started a few years ago. So there's no quick fix, sorry.

Re:symphony OS

[grumbel]

### That's exactly the same thing as having all the shared libraries in the same place, isn't it?

No, it would be all libraries in a different place so that they don't conflict with each other, every. The hardlinking would just be a way to keep the disk usage down, nothing more.

### The first means that if you do get a binary from somewhere, chances are it'll be missing a library it needs. Why?

One can answer this question far easier: Because it didn't statically link the library or because it didn't come with the dynamic libraries it needed. With todays amount of diskspace there is really very little reason to not statically link everything except glibc and some of the X11 libraries.

Re:symphony OS

[IamTheRealMike]

Static linking isn't just about disk space. It's also about net bandwidth and most crucially memory pressure. The whole point of using shared libraries is that it makes things like complex GUI environments possible in sensible amounts of RAM.

I can guarantee you that if every program on a standard Fedora/GNOME or SuSE/KDE desktop was statically link you would not be able to run it on any reasonable system without decending into swap hell within a few seconds (probably even before that). Not even if you have a gig of RAM.

No, it would be all libraries in a different place so that they don't conflict with each other, every. The hardlinking would just be a way to keep the disk usage down, nothing more.

That doesn't solve the problem of somebody who released a library upgrade thinking it didn't break stuff, but that actually did.

Re:symphony OS

[grumbel]

### The whole point of using shared libraries is that it makes things like complex GUI environments possible in sensible amounts of RAM.

The hard-linking solution would allow the same, while still keeping stuff seperate from each other.

Beside that I doubt that dynamic linking really helps, it was ment to help, but that doesn't mean it actually does. If I do a "apt-get upgrade" I always need to download a whole damn lot of stuff that due to dependencies need to be downloaded, it does neither contain new feature nor does it fix real bugs, it just happens that dependecies force it to be redownloaded.

Beside that dynamic linking is only an advantage if more than two programms using the same library at the same time, it doesn't help for single-use libraries, there it actually slows things down and consumes more drive space (static linking can throw unused symbols away, dynamic linking can't).

I agree that for Gnome and KDE it might be needed, but the majority of my libraries is not a core KDE or Gnome component but some random one where there is very little chance that I ever use two programms at the same time that will make use of it.

### That doesn't solve the problem of somebody who released a library upgrade thinking it didn't break stuff, but that actually did.

Sure it does, just make sure that libraries get a uniq name and that the packages that uses the library provides them and not a third party that might screw things up at any point.

Re:symphony OS

[iSwitched]

You are right, this IS the solution. The days of actually 'sharing' our 'shared libraries' should be over. They came about due to the constrained and expensive nature of disk storage. This is simply untrue today, I can obtain storage for under a dollar a gig. I can only assume that developers stubborn need to adhere to some 'elegance' ethic, or mad desire to conserve resources allows this to continue.

OS X (let the flaming begin) is another OS that solves the problem in the way you describe. Consider the typical OS X app:

• The OS provides a stable set of frameworks - they can be consumed by developers, but not touched or altered.
• If a developer needs functionality not in the frameworks, he is welcome to acquire and link to third party libs.
• The develper develops his own libs and executables as usual.
• At distribution time, the developer packages ALL libs, executables, docs, graphics, etc. into a directory structure.
• He now designates the root of this structure as a application bundle, gives it an icon, etc.
• The user obtains the application simply by copying the bundle (which appears as if a single file to him) to his local disk. He runs it by double-clicking it.

• Yes, it uses more disk, but again, I ask: "Who Cares?"

  Why, Oh why can't Linux (or friggin' Windows for that matter) adopt something like this!

Re:symphony OS

[Blakey Rat]

Just as a quick note, MacOS Classic accomplished the same goal simply but not having shared library functionality built-into the system. (Until System 8, I believe... maybe 7.) So this isn't a new thing in the MacOS world, it's just OS X's way of accomplishing the same goal.

Goto tldp.org

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux documentation project is great. Lots of howtos, but also great guides.

I always recommend for a newbie to read:
Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide
Bash Guide for Beginners
The Linux System Administrators' Guide (for "power users")
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide (for "power users")

And maybe the network administrator guide.

All these are cool because they are generally distro agnostic. Anybody can benifit from their knowledge.

AND remember GOOGLE!!!!

The command line IS your friend. It's another form of user interface, and combined with a gui like X makes Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems) have the most flexible and powerfull user interface aviable.

At times it may not be freindly to newbies, but once you have a decent idea what is going on, it's definately worth it.

Those guides will give you the nessicary tools to understand and become comfortable with your Linux installation. No more fighting thru layers of obsofacation and a deep bridge becuase the knowledge of MS insiders/advanced administrators vs Windows users. In linux users can be as knowlegable as the best programmer or developer.

But you don't have to any more due to people like Gnome/KDE/Fedora/Redhat/Suse/Mandrake etc etc. Now it's just a matter of what you want and what you feel most comfortable about.

everythin new has to be learned the hard way...

[Anonymous Coward]

jeeez what kinda moron he who wrote that article?

take maths. do you know shit with your maths algebra and analysis knowledge to sit down and solve some non-trivial shit in the science/maths/physics/bio/genetics/$stuff world?

anything and everything has to be learned when being new to the subject. what kinda moron is he, that he thinks its different in the it world, or even with linux?

newbies normally dont use commandline, and shouldnt.

elementary school: learn how to turn on/off puter
high school: learn how to click gui shit
college: learn how to use commandline
uni: learn the inside of your os, howto code
ph.d.: become active member of any community, get involved
god: reset, halt, powerdown

Re:everythin new has to be learned the hard way...

[Anonymous Coward]

newbies normally dont use commandline, and shouldnt.

from 1970's to the early 90's that is ALL you had was the command line.

newbies CAN easily deal with the command line. saw businesses run from it, I watched secretaries use it, and even the most inept, sucessfully use the command line.

anyone afraid of it or bitching about it knows not what they are talking about.

Mirrored

[paulproteus]

Here, all you freeloaders ;-). I'll take it down later today.

I just spoke with him on the phone, too; cool guy. I don't think he was expecting anyone to actually call him :-).

Re:Mirrored

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Much appreciated mate...

Re:Mirrored

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'll take it down later today."

Perhaps we'll be taking it down... oh, you meant the mirror, not the server... nevermind

Fear?

[UncleBiggims]

A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type...

This is true, a novice's greatest computer fear is sitting there not knowing what to do. This is why a novice:

does not use linux

calls me all the time to ask stupid questions

has a pc infected with spyware

and so on

To me, the attraction of linux is having a need and then discovering how to fill that need. Then finding out that my solution is cludgy and could be done a different and better way. This leads to other cooler and more elegant solutions. Thus a process of learning that is both satisfying and productive. That's why I love linux and it is why the "novice" is afraid.

Off topic: DLL Hell

[Davak]

If there are any windows-users actually in this thread... and they get trapped in a DLL situation. I would suggest trying these programs...

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp .shtml

It'll tell all the processes associated with a running program.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/listdll s.shtml will show all the loaded dlls.

Between these two programs, you can sort through most of the dll errors without killing yourself.

disclaimer: I don't know this guy... I just use his software. :)

Davak

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[numbski]

The ports tree in FreeBSD is also quite nice. If you want to build something from sources, update the ports tree from cvs (I have a stable-supfile I keep in /usr/src for this purpose), the cd /usr/ports

Everything is split into categories. cd into the directory you want, then do a make, then make install.

If make fails because of a dependancy as described above, quite often you can simply cd to that program and make install.

The trick is, of course if a version is already installed. Then you do make deinstall, then make reinstall. It's that simple.

Re:From TFA

[makomk]

| Linux is probably the worst in most respects, full of useless tools that do nothing to help a user accomplish anything. Its desktops are sloppy and amateurish, and what little documentation exists is laden with hyperlinks to homosexual lifestyle websites.

Screw this guy, right fellas!

+3, Interesting?! Scary...

man oh man

[192939495969798999]

Queue the obligatory "Orgazmo" theme song reference...

now you're a MAN!
a MAN, MAN, MAN!

If it's really that hard, Linux should come with a default command prompt that includes " for help, type man [command]. #"

Re:man oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

No manual entry for [command]

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, great idea! Now I just need root access to every computer I ever use.

All I learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello,

Recently I've been introduced to an operating system known as Linux.

Lured by its low cost, I replaced Windows 98 on my computer with Linux. Unfortunately the more I use it the more I fear that this "Linux" may be an insidious way for the Dark One to gain a stronger foothold here on Earth. I know this may be a shocking claim, but I have evidence to back it up!

To begin with, Linux is based off of an older, obsolete OS called "BSD Unix". The child-indoctrinatingly-cute cartoon mascot of this OS is a devil holding a pitchfork. This OS -- and its Linux offspring -- extensively use what are unsettingly called "daemons" (which is how Pagans write "demon" -- they are notoriously poor spellers: magick, vampyre, etc.) which is a program that hides in the background, doing things without the user's notice. If you are using a computer running Linux then you probably have these "demons" on your computer, hardly something a good Christian would want! Furthermore in order to start or stop these "demons" a user must execute a command called "finger". By "fingering" a "demon" one excercises an unholy power, much the same way that the Lord of Flies controls his black minions.

Linux contains another Satanic holdover from the "BSD Unix" OS mentioned above; to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?

Consider some of these other Linux commands: "sleep", "mount", "unzip", "strip" and "touch". All highly suggestive in a sexual nature. I know that our Lord cannot approve of these, and I urge them to be renamed to something appropriate to the Christian community. Interestingly "CONTROL-G" (the sixth key from the left of the keyboard) does an abort. To write files a "VI" editor is included. All these are to ensnare the unsuspecting christian who could get tempted by typing "VIVIVI" all day long.

Fourth, Linux uses a flavor of DOS known as Bash. Bash is an acronym for "Bourne Again Shell". On the surface this would appear to be supportive of the Lord. However, remember that even Satan can quote the bible for his own purposes! While I believe Linux may be born-again, its obvious by the misspelling of "born" that its not born-again in an Christian church. Will the lies ever cease?

Additionally, one of the main long-haired hippies involved with the GNU Free Software Foundation supports communism, contraception and abortion. He has consistently supported 60's counter-cultural "values", and his web site even advocates government support of contraception. He also wears fake halos, and has quips about his made-up church that relates to his free software. I find such blasphemy to be extremely unsettling.

One must also remember that the creator of Linux, a college student named Linux Torvaldis, comes from Finland. I'm sure all the followers of Christ are aware of the heritical nature of the Finnish: from necrophilia to human sacrifice, Finnish culture is awash in sin. I find little reason to believe anything good and holy could arise from this evil land.

Finally, let us remember that there is an alternative to using the Satan-powered Linux. I think history has shown us that Microsoft is quite holy. I'm told that its founder, William Gates is a strong supporter of our Lord and I encourage my fellow Christians to buy only his products to help keep the Devil at bay.

I wish I had more time to expound upon my findings. Unfortunately a family of Jews has moved in across the street and I must go speak to them of Jesus Christ before they are condemned to eternal hellfire.

Please investigate this as you see fit and I'm sure you'll reach the same conclusions that I have.

Re:All I learned

[schmoo.me]

not to mention this

Re:All I learned

[Eddy_D]

Indeed. You INVOKE a daemon by FORKing it into a seprate process whereby it may EXECUTE other processes via children, then on a whim, KILL it's child process.... insideous.

Re:All I learned

[theparanoidcynic]

Consider some of these other Linux commands: "sleep", "mount", "unzip", "strip" and "touch". All highly suggestive in a sexual nature.

The funny thing is that those commands are the closest 99.87% of Slashdotters get to playing real pelvic peaknuckle.

Re:All I learned

[PMuse]

"BSD Unix"

That would be a Bearded Satanic Devil and the castrati who serve him?

Re:All I learned

[chmod000]

You should be glad of that. It means they won't reproduce.

Re:From TFA

[fafaforza]

I'd agree with the documentation part. From experience, most help comes from stringing together incomprehensible usenet posts and articles found on google.

The documentation for the most part is poorly written, and poorly laid out. A lot of times I find docs diving straight into each command or option with its own set of triggers, etc, without first giving a broad overview. I do not have specific examples; just an overall feel from a few years of using Linux and FreeBSD.

Can't really lay blame on anyone, though. People developing software for open source systems would rather create it than write documentation aimed at the greenest of Linux users, or support the software on forums and newsgroups.

Lost in Linuxland

[rueger]

My experiences parallel the author's in one important way:

Yes, most user friendly distros will manage a forehead install, but invarably there will be at least one critical function that doesn't work. In my experience that has been Palm hotsync (always), printing over the Windows network (usually), and wireless networking (most recently).

I know from hard experience that trying to find a solution for any of these will involve hours if not days of trolling newsgroups, forums, and that special hell called man pages.

I'm not afraid of command prompts, or of learning new things, but I simply cannot afford to waste a whole day trying to print, or sync my calendar.

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[pedestrian crossing]

But once you're set up, you're set up for good. You can't afford to "waste a whole day", but it's not like you are going to have to "waste a whole day" every day, just once. It is called "learning".

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[magefile]

At least, if you keep documentation ... after I reformatted my hard drive (intentionally, but still), I made a vow to always take copious notes when setting stuff up. And it makes for good HOW-TOs, too!

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[grumbel]

Its not "learning" its wasting time for most part. Learning is something from which you can draw later on, however most Linux problems are solved by:

* blindly copy&pasting something from a HowTo or Newsgroup

* try&error

* something application or version specific that will be outdated and basically worthless in a few month

* some wrapper tool, which break all the time are incompatible with other wrapper tools and handedited files

Printing is really one example that is a major pain under Linux, it simply never worked for me any good. Sure I can get a piece of paper out of my printer, but half the time it will be misaligned, pure garbage that got stuck in the printers memory or stuff that got incorrectly converted by the 'magic' filters or look simply pretty shitty[1], far away from what the printer actually could do. At work where we have expensive postscript printers I can in general just ftp the files to the printer, bypass all of Linux filters and get a good result in no time.

[1] The last time I had that problem I solved it by converting the ps to pdf via ps2pdf, then loaded it in acroread and converted it back to ps, printing quality improved by like 500%. Have I learned anything by doing that? Well, yep, printing under linux still sucks, but nothing beside that.

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had problems printing using CUPS and the Gimp-print drivers. I'm not sure what you're using, you didn't say.

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[Anonymous Coward]

Using CUPS under Suse 9, printing is breeze. Maybe the problem lies somewhere else other than, as you described it, in "Linux"?

Re:Lost in Linuxland

[naelurec]

I'll agree with the other replies .. I think your trying too hard or something. :)

I've setup Knoppix, SuSE, FreeBSD, RedHat among other distros to print without problems. Local printers (parallel/usb), windows network printers, ipp printers, etc.. piece of cake.

Of course, depending on the distro will ultimately determine what to do, but more than likely, if you install CUPS (or get cups preinstalled) and run KDE, its cake .. just go into print manager and run through the wizard. printing in no time.

If you don't have KDE, use the localhost:631 page to configure your printers..

Re:From TFA

[UnderScan]

HEY MODS! PARENT IS A TROLL!
There is nothing in the article about being homo.

The real article.

Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey
Derek Croxton, 09 September 2004

Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux OdysseyTwo Years Before the Prompt:
A Linux Odyssey

A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised. Linux has never quite escaped its reputation as an OS for geeks who like those command prompts. I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.

What I want to report on here is some of the "gotchas" of being a new Linux user. I've tried at least half a dozen different distributions, and along the way I've been hit with just about every problem an inexperienced user could face. Partly this is because I push Linux to do so many things for me - web server, video player, email server, database backend, programming environment - including many that I had not previously tried on Windows. In spite of my title, however, I'm not going to try to make this article into a ripping yarn along the lines of Richard Henry Dana's book Two Years Before the Mast. I'm also not writing a critique of Linux distributions, although I hope some developers out there might read this and get some ideas. My main purpose is to prepare new users for likely sticking points, as well as to reassure them about things that will not be as hard as they had feared. I went into my Linux experience with very little idea of what I was getting into; that makes it an adventure, but it's probably not the best way to go about things. Sometimes it helps to read that such-and-such a process is difficult. At least then you can work your way through it slowly, without the persistent fear that there is some easy, one-command feature that you could be using if only you knew what it was.

All of the distributions I have used are of the more user-friendly type. The reason I have gone through so many is that I keep discovering different things in them. What works on one might not work on another, but hopefully I can learn enough from one distribution that I can tweak another to my satisfaction. It is, in fact, the very diversity of various distributions that makes using Linux such a challenge. Ask a friend and he may suggest a solution to your problem that doesn't exist on your distribution. Naturally, anything can be configured, but it may be more trouble to get it to that point than to find a different solution. Therefore, I will not go into the details of each distribution, but rather give my overall experience, highlighting where distributions differ.

Linux distributions have put a lot of effort into making the install process as easy as possible, and this is definitely a good thing - if you can't get it installed, you aren't going to use it. I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago and trying to get XWindows (X11R6, for purists) running so I could escape the command line. I went through a lengthy setup process, but when it started asking questions like the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of my monitor, I knew I was in trouble. Nowadays, installation is often as simple as you make it: if you accept all the defaults, your only decision will be a password for the root user. I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard, monitor, mouse, sound card, network card, and other essentials are usually automatically detected and configured without my having to do a thing. I did have one case of a disappearing monitor display and one of a non-functioning keyboard, and it

Re:for pity's sake.

[grumbel]

'apt-get' is part of the problem, not the solution. Try for example to keep a Gnome1.4 and a Gnome2.x together on a Debian, apt-get doesn't help you here, you would need to compile everything yourself. Same with basically every other programm, you can't keep to different version of it unless the maintainer as specefically prepared the packages to handle this, else you will got a conflict and one programm will get removed as soon as you try to install the other.

Typcial

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the arrogance I've come to expect from people like you.

http://reddun.blogspot.com/2004/09/typical-arrog an ce.html

--Tyler

Re:Typcial

[Cocoronixx]

Can't post that blog article here? I don't blame you the /. trolls would flame you to death in about 2 seconds.

IMO The people that need to grow up are the people that dont put any effort into finding something out for themselves, and get all pissy when someone explains to the how to get information for themselves, and yes, RTFM, STFW and etc are not valid pieces of advice.

There have been plenty of times that my questions were ignored, or answered back with snyde remarks. It is just par for the course. Go on the msdn forums sometimes, you'll find plenty of tools there too. ;)

unix' learning curve is vertical

[tezza]

For all thos saying man command as an answer, this can cause more confusion. try man tar. There are a bewildering array of options, some create, some mentioning /dev/td0 [but not /dev/tdr0 that rewinds the device after completion]. Untarring and ungzipping is a fundamental operation, but it takes something like 30 steps to understand.

Further some man pages say 'this has moved to info', this has a bastardised Emacs commandset with pagination and hyperlinking, and the novice friendly Emacs keybindings.

Don't get me wrong, I use linux/cygwin/solaris every day of my whole life, but Geez, it took a long time to learn.

Re:unix' learning curve is vertical

[Daniel Boisvert]

Untarring and ungzipping is a fundamental operation, but it takes something like 30 steps to understand.

Sure, but you can do pretty well by the RTFM method, and using "tar xvzf file.tar.gz" until you discover that you really want to learn what each of those letters means. By then you'll find yourself wanting to use the man pages, because it tells you about all kinds of other nifty stuff you never knew about.

I find all kinds of useful stuff in man pages all the time. Hell, they're oftentimes more useful than all the newbie-friendly documentation on the web. The difference is that each level of information is ideal for a different level of user. Start with web & HowTo docs, then move to less specific HowTo docs, then go to manpages. It's not that hard; it just takes time.

Re:unix' learning curve is vertical

[Brandybuck]

try man tar

Let's examine this shall we? Not examine it from the "unux sux" perspective, but from the "how does Windows do it" perspective.

How does Windows do it? It doesn't! The equivalent in Windows would be "help zip". But when I type that in I get a "this command is not supported" error. It turns out that Windows doesn't even have a command line zip program by default. You have to install one separately. After I installed one, I discover taht "help zip" still doesn't work! Neither does "zip ?". Finally I stumble upon "zip -h". Now I get a one page summary of commands. But this summary of command isn't much better than "man tar". I still have that "bewildering array of options".

You are right though in that the GNU man pages suck. GNU hates man pages and it seems to me they deliberately go out of their way to make them unusable. Move to a different system without GNU man pages and you'll find they're much less bewildering, chock full of examples, never tell you to look at the info page, and DO NOT threaten to stop maintaining the page if you complain.

But even the GNU man pages are easier to use then the non-existant alternative under Windows...

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

The only problem is that you've posted a solution to the problem of maintaining packages on Debian/Fedora, not on Linux in general. Not every distribution has the ability to use apt or yum or whatever or even a package system. Or it may have a package system, but no one has made a decent number of packages for the distribution because it's not as popular as Debian or Fedora.

Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:

1. apt is available,
2. A consistent filesystem hierarchy is followed from distribution to distribution, and
3. A large number of packages are available (and, more importantly, compatible) due to point 2.

Of course, every time I bring up the idea of standardizing important parts of Linux distributions the lynch mob comes after me, because consistency and distribution-neutral package installation goes against the spirit of Open Source or something ("stifles choice", I've heard).

I mean, wouldn't it be nice to tell someone "just use apt-get and do X, Y, and Z" instead of "[Install Debian] and use apt-get to do X, Y, and Z"?

Re:From TFA

[Quarters]

laden with hyperlinks to homosexual lifestyle websites.

Screw this guy, right fellas!

So you've been to those websites, hmmm?

isn't this...

[sanityimp]

Isn't this what printed manuals are for. if a use cant figure out how to use that then screw em.

And if theyre smart enough to download and install a distro they sure as hell are smart enough to look up some documentation ahead of time.

Re:isn't this...

[Chris Burke]

Exactly. That's why for my first Linux distribution I ponied up $40 to buy Red Hat, which came with a decent printed manual. Not exactly enough for someone completely unfamiliar with command lines and such, but then again Linux at the time wasn't even -trying- to be "everyman's OS".

Fear of fdisk

[firefarter]

> A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type
Well, my greatest fear back when I was a n00b in '94 was if I got everything in fdisk right when trying to do a dual-boot install.

It got worse when I realized I mucked up the first time around!

oh right

[macshit]

Actually, my greatest fear is Clippy.

...shudder...

Offtopic: Slashdot should Coralize popular links

[aprosumer.slashdot]

I know this is offtopic, however Slashdot should seriously consider Coralizing popular links by appending .nyud.net:8090 to the URL. At the very least the first page would be cached by the Coral servers.

While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted

[hey!]

Let me clue you in on the sly reference in the title.

It refers to Richard Henry's Dana's autobiographical Two Years Before the Mast, what is hands down not only among the best maritime adventures ever written, but is one of my favorite books of any kind.

Dana was a Harvard sophmore in the 1830s who came down with scarlet fever. As a result, his eyesight was suffering. The common prescription for this in those days was to take a sea voyage. Dana, despite being a young person of privilege, didn't take the normal route of travelling to Europe as a tourist. He signed on as a common seaman, a grueling, uncomfortable and by today's standards incredibly dangerous job. He joined a vessel that rounded the Horn in July (through the teeth of the Austral winter) bound for the wild and nearly uncharted region of California. The common seamen slept in the foc'sl, the part of the vessel at the bow; thus "Before the Mast". Two Years Before the Mast became historically important when gold was found at Sutter's Mill, setting of the great gold rush. At the time, it was practically the only book available that had any information about California.

His account is exciting and riveting, and probably unique. Many talented writers have written of the sea, and have gone on sea voyages, but I can't think of anyone else of Dana's literary powers who actually lived as common sailor, did their dangerous job, and slept and ate with them. Dana, who later became a lawyer and great advocate of seaman's rights, comes across as a ready lad, brave, good hearted and adventurous. A fine role model, I think, for people who buck the trend and go with Linux.

Re:While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted

[bigboard]

He joined a vessel that rounded the Horn in July (through the teeth of the Austral winter) bound for the wild and nearly uncharted region of California.

Personally, I round my horn with manual friction, but whatever floats your boat.

Re:While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Available from Gutenburg here.

Re:While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted

[thermopile]

Best line of the book:

"Oh? Did he bring his ship with him this time?"

--The captain of another boat, upon hearing that Dana's captain wished to visit with him. The previous day, Dana's ship had accidentally rammed into the (anchored) boat.

Re:While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted

[squarefish]

the book was much better then the movie

trust me on this...

ahh yes

[geeveees]

I still remember my first experience on a Redhat box. Being my usual 14 year old arrogant self I figured that I didn't have to read any manuals. Hey I figured out DOS by myself, right?

So I type in "X". "Hey wtf this stupid shit is broken, all I see is a grey background and some fucking weird cross? huh? linux sucks".

Oh boy :)

Solution: Look at the problem differently

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to address this problem, ask the newbie what he thinks he should do. I might think to type "help" at the prompt, but this only provides a cryptic list of commands for the bash shell. If a more useful response of paragraph length were prepended to that list, that would be a start in the right direction.

On a desktop, provide an icon named "Beginners Click Here" that takes them to an html page that provides useful newbie info (advanced users could just delete the icon).

In other words, look at the problem the way a newbie would and provide useful, straightforward, un-geeked information.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I agree with putting FreeBSD in that category. Chances are if you've downloaded FreeBSD you've also passed a page to the handbook, which details many of the tasks needed in FreeBSD. FreeBSD man pages are very helpful 90% of the time. Man pages also cover files. Don't know what rc.conf does? 'man rc.conf' don't know what 'newsyslog.conf' does, then look at the man pages.

I tend to find most Linux system documentation to be very fustrating, and often incomplete. Where Linux/BSD is hurting the most is at the GUI level. KDE has made strides by labeling things like xmms as a "media player" description right beside it, but many apps have either no help section/documentation, it's incomplete or outdated, or the help is broken so you can't see it.

If Linux really needs to take a hint from BSD when it comes to the FreeBSD Handbook. Not just cobbled together howto's, but an offical document. As for the other projects, well they just need to get off their ass and document things. Why not stick a Wiki on linux.org? Is there some politicle battle I'm unwaware of?

Got it

[Anonymous Coward]

Two Years Before the Prompt:
A Linux Odyssey

A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised. Linux has never quite escaped its reputation as an OS for geeks who like those command prompts. I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.

What I want to report on here is some of the "gotchas" of being a new Linux user. I've tried at least half a dozen different distributions, and along the way I've been hit with just about every problem an inexperienced user could face. Partly this is because I push Linux to do so many things for me - web server, video player, email server, database backend, programming environment - including many that I had not previously tried on Windows. In spite of my title, however, I'm not going to try to make this article into a ripping yarn along the lines of Richard Henry Dana's book Two Years Before the Mast. I'm also not writing a critique of Linux distributions, although I hope some developers out there might read this and get some ideas. My main purpose is to prepare new users for likely sticking points, as well as to reassure them about things that will not be as hard as they had feared. I went into my Linux experience with very little idea of what I was getting into; that makes it an adventure, but it's probably not the best way to go about things. Sometimes it helps to read that such-and-such a process is difficult. At least then you can work your way through it slowly, without the persistent fear that there is some easy, one-command feature that you could be using if only you knew what it was.

All of the distributions I have used are of the more user-friendly type. The reason I have gone through so many is that I keep discovering different things in them. What works on one might not work on another, but hopefully I can learn enough from one distribution that I can tweak another to my satisfaction. It is, in fact, the very diversity of various distributions that makes using Linux such a challenge. Ask a friend and he may suggest a solution to your problem that doesn't exist on your distribution. Naturally, anything can be configured, but it may be more trouble to get it to that point than to find a different solution. Therefore, I will not go into the details of each distribution, but rather give my overall experience, highlighting where distributions differ.

Linux distributions have put a lot of effort into making the install process as easy as possible, and this is definitely a good thing - if you can't get it installed, you aren't going to use it. I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago and trying to get XWindows (X11R6, for purists) running so I could escape the command line. I went through a lengthy setup process, but when it started asking questions like the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of my monitor, I knew I was in trouble. Nowadays, installation is often as simple as you make it: if you accept all the defaults, your only decision will be a password for the root user. I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard, monitor, mouse, sound card, network card, and other essentials are usually automatically detected and configured without my having to do a thing. I did have one case of a disappearing monitor display and one of a non-functioning keyboard, and it is only fair to warn new users that these issues do crop up sometimes. To be fair, however, most people never have to install Windows, so they never have to deal with the issue of hardware compatibility and settings. Also, both of my installation problems came from

Re:From TFA

[Kokuyo]

This doesn't only apply to open source... Writing code is cool. It's like building a car engine. Or like putting together a PC. It's just fun and it is achallenge... but explaining it afterwards in a way that even a monkey is supposed tu understand it is just boring. The big difference between paid programmers and oss coder is that some of them get paid while others usually don't. So I don't blame them. I mean they do us a favor. So nobody can expect to be treated like a well paying customer. I rather like this "search for message board posts on the topic" kind of documentation. Because even when there is a great documentation it's always the error they didn't think of that you're having. So you'll be left to search the web once again anyway. What I am asking myself: How in the seven hells did I get along without the net?

apropos

[ChristTrekker]

True. But if anybody introduced you to the concept of "man $commandname" or "info $commandname" you should also have heard of "apropos $whatyoureallywanttodo". Helpful Linux geeks that aren't telling the newbies about apropos/man/info are doing the community a disservice.

Re:apropos

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I've been poking around slackware for 6 years, this is the first time i've heard of "apropos".

I'll keep it in mind.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's far not enough to just have good program. The well written documentations are even more important.

Where has this guy been?

[krunk7]

Linux isn't perfect, there are still plenty of valid critiques, but "dependency hell" just isn't one of them. I can honestly say I haven't had a single dependency problem for at least 2 years (probably more, but I'm too lazy and it's too early to think too hard about it). Every major distribution has dependency checking today.

Now, perhaps the author has inadvertantly drawn attention to the heart of Linux's adoption woes: documentation. Why doesn't this author know about apt-get? Why doesn't he know about urpmi? Why isn't he aware of the vast amount of documentation normally available in /usr/share/docs/ ?

The common answers people receive for this are:

• google idiot!
• Sheahhh! Everyone just knows all the docs are in /usr/share/docs!
• RTFM!!

But to even adept computer users (not uber geeks, just adept) the location of "the manual" isn't obvious, they don't know about */docs and, lets face it, man pages are written FGBG (for geeks, by geeks).

In comparison to it's top two competitors, linux is the only OS to date where a user is expected to magically know the location of appropriate documentation, by default have a degree in the documentation jargon of advanced coders, and to be willing to read a small novel on the intricacies of his particular distro's package and system management methods to even use the os to any degree of efficiency.

This is what people mean when they say Linux isn't ready *yet* and to tie it back to the article, these are exactly the sort of apparently groundless complaints that surface as a result of this gaping hole in useability.

Re:Where has this guy been?

[IamTheRealMike]

a) You probably use Debian. Most newbies don't

b) Go read LinuxQuestions.org (or any newbie forum) for a while. Installing software is still one of the top 3 problems people consistently have. Even on distros that have "dependency checking" like Debian, Fedora etc.

c) Worse is the newbies who trusting in their packagers encounter problems then immediately blame the software, when they have in fact got broken packages.

Re:Where has this guy been?

[cortana]

> Now, perhaps the author has inadvertantly drawn attention to the heart of
> Linux's adoption woes: documentation. Why doesn't this author know about
> apt-get? Why doesn't he know about urpmi? Why isn't he aware of the vast
> amount of documentation normally available in /usr/share/docs/ ?

Perhaps the author did not RTFM? The following is addressed to all computer novices everywhere:

I don't expect you to magically know about the 'man' command. I don't expect you to randomly chance upon /usr/share/doc/ by spazzing out at the keyboard.

The 'M' that I expect you to be capable of reading is your DISTRIBUTION'S MANUAL.

Let's say you installed Debian. Why the hell aren't you looking at http://www.debian.org/doc/? This is the place where you _learn_ about man, info, /usr/share/doc/, etc.

Redhat? http://www.redhat.com/docs/.
Mandrake? http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/fdoc.php3

FreeBSD? http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html

And so on. You managed to find an ISO for a Linux distribution, how can it be so difficult to follow the links on the web site to the distro's documentation?

What's that you say, you bought it in a box at a shop? What's that strange thing, why yes, it looks like a... book, with the words MANUAL or DOCUMENTATION printed on it?

I wouldn't expect you to be able to configure a network on Windows or the Mac OS without consulting the documentation. Why do you expect to be able to do the same on Linux?

Re:Where has this guy been?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "I don't have this problem" isn't necessarly such a strong argument. I'm using apt-get and as long as i stick to the usual packages it's mostly fine (mostly just because i'm using testing).

Unfortunatly if you work enough with the system you will have to install sometimes software for which no debian package does exist. Just read the article and you'll find an example (mozilla-plugins!). He's programming so he probably will also install often development libs.

So yes - apt-get is great (with synaptic ... hit me), comfortable and probably one of the best ways to install software. But nevertheless, people who f*cked up theire system installing new software is one of the most common type of problems you'll read about in forums and chats. Even for Debian!

Installation can be confusing (what is happening here?), timeconsuming and very frustrating. I liked the article quite much, because he really wrote about a problem i've also had way to often.

Re:Where has this guy been?

[Minna Kirai]

linux is the only OS to date where a user is expected to magically know the location of appropriate documentation,

And how about MacOS X, where the user must magically not need documentation, because it doesn't exist?

Re:Where has this guy been?

[RogerWilco]

I learned most of what I know about linux from my SuSE 6.1 paper manual.
It's a good book. Linux is not yet ready for everyone becuase you still need a manual.
(wtf? mount? , I just want to read the floppy/usb key/ etc. was one of my first newbie problems)

Re:Where has this guy been?

[krunk7]

Actually, no you don't have to go to www.microsoft.com/docs or www.apple.com/docs to find out how to install either one or to set up your network. The installs are for the most part self explanatory, and the network can be set up by typing "help" or running an idiot proof wizard. When they do go to the site and search for documentation what they find is often not useful to or tailored for someone new to linux or geek speak.

A common response to the above:

• They must be an idiot.

No, that simply isn't true. I've helped incredibly intelligent biomedical and mechanical engineering students through 101 CS assignments. They just don't get it. Just because someone isn't a natural at understanding the jargon doesn't make them an idiot. Case in point: www.debian.org/doc/. Ok, um, "User Manuals", that looks promising: here we go, "Debian Installation Manual". Ok, ummm, released version? I guess thats it, lets see:

• * Installation Manual for Alpha
• * Installation Manual for ARM
• * Installation Manual for HP PA-RISC
• * Installation Manual for Intel x86
• * Installation Manual for Intel IA-64
• * Installation Manual for Motorola 680x0
• * Installation Manual for MIPS
• * Installation Manual for MIPS (DEC)
• * Installation Manual for PowerPC
• * Installation Manual for IBM S/390
• * Installation Manual for SPARC

WTF? ok, wait I have an Intel...alright *click* Holly Shit!@#$! This thing is like 12 chapters long! Well, *sigh* I've got this far, I'll give it a shot.

Now all this before they even get started or know what 'rm' is or 'ifconfig' or any other unix specific command. For most people who've just "heard linux is cool" they've already shown a high degree of commitment to give linux a try. Than they run into problems and if they're lucky and know about IRC can check #freenode and be introduced to some 15 yr/old 1337 kid that bruskly tells them to RTFM (which they tried to) before finding someone that knows how to help and is willing, but if not they end up googling around or giving up.

Really take a step back from "I love to read technical documents!" geek world (of which I'm a member) and admit that Linux documentation is a truly dismal resource to a new user. Even Mandrake,safe haven for newbie users everywhere has some pretty intimidating documentation if you truly attempt to look at it with unbiased eyes: Mandrake Install Especially when it isn't even required for any main strream OS.

Re:Where has this guy been?

[MarkedMan]

Oh come on. Let's say you want to do something incredibly complicated (sarcasm) like run a backup tape at night. Unix/Linux is great in that you can do anything with any weird hardware that has ever existed. But for crying out loud, by the time you work through the twenty different suggestions on what is the "really really easy way" to do this, then realize that if if fails overnight, there is no warning when you log on, so you find out about logs, then find out there is a standard log location (usuallly), then realize they don't turn on automatically, then figure out they have different levels of reporting (which is called verbosity, which is funny but not intuitive) then realize that the error doesn't really tell you anything (it turned out to mean "too many files to fit on the tape", I mean for chrissake, how about that as a frickin error message instead of the deep level crap that I got!), so let me look that up in the documentation, which is where, oh I'll browse for it, I'll just click on the directory browser icon oh an by the way I upgraded something and it didn't upgrade the old one, but simply created a new one, so I'll just change my KDE icons to point at the new one so it will call up the directory browser, but hey, where do I do that,it should be obivious, but no, not there, or there, or there, oh let me look that up in the manual or on the web or on the wait where is that manual or let me call up the directory browser manually to find the manual manually, oh shit it is in icon view how can I change that permanantly why do I have to keep changing it at least that should be simple to change it permanantly, it should be obvious, where is it must be here, no maybe here, how about here, oh well I'll ask on usenet, and get my answer... RTFM!!!! WARNING WILL ROBINSON SYSTEM OVERLOAD!!!

Re:Where has this guy been?

[colinrichardday]

Your sig is a bit scary, as I'm that all by myself.

Colin Richard Day

Re:Where has this guy been?

[True Grit]

Your basic point is understood, but it seems to me the larger problem is that the documentation, no matter how you get at it, varies wildly in quality, and also lacks coherency across different but related apps (in some cases). Knowing the 'man' command won't help you if all you get is a hastily written page that barely helps you understand what the command is for, much less how to use it effectively.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[magefile]

1.) Apt works not just for debian packages, but for rpms, and can be installed on Fedora.

2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.

3.) I can't remember the last time I couldn't find an RPM. Or just built one myself using developer-supplied Specs files. Debian's system has everything (or so I've heard). And you can always compile a program, or roll your own binary package very easily.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[BJH]

No, you don't. I've bootstrapped an entire environment (from gcc to emacs, vim and fluxbox) on a Solaris box using the Sun development tools (Sun's cc, make, etc.), without root.

On a Linux box it would be even easier, as almost everything would compile out of the box.

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't really lay blame on anyone, though. People developing software for open source systems would rather create it than write documentation aimed at the greenest of Linux users, or support the software on forums and newsgroups.

Shh, this is where the real money in open source is support. We give away all the software fine and the code that only the most expert programmers can understand great. But if you want any support... That's where we stick it to 'em. You have to pay that $x00 yearly service fee for basic support, $x,000 for yearly expert support, and my favorite $xx,000 for corporate it can't ever die or we'd lose that amount per hour support. Remember software isn't really worth anything, it is the data, which is the clients and then the support you provide.

Re:From TFA

[Fnkmaster]

What the hell are you talking about? I just read through a mirror of the article and I see nothing like this this quote whatsoever. Why have two separate people independently posted this? Are you all just trolling?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat.

I understand exactly what your talking about.

But the Linux situation is closely converging.

You see each distro starts out with it's own ideas and it's own focus. Each distro has a lot of good ideas and lots of bad one. With it being open source, and people being generally good natured the bad traits are slowly being weeding out and the good traits are being borrowed back and forth between distros. Apt-get is just one of them.

Other examples of this convergiance are things like Desktop.org and X.org and the adoption of linux filing system standards. Distros are letting Gnome and KDE-type projects do their thing.

Evertually out of this chaos will emerge a more or less standard out of which all distros can be based off of. A sort of best of the breed, a evolution of features... The best survive the weak ones die off.

I am hoping within a few years you'd be able to install and cross reference and fuffill dependancies with Redhat's RPM files on Debian, and use Debian files in Redhat with minimal hassle.

Package maintenance

[ReelOddeeo]

Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:

1. apt is available,
2. A consistent filesystem hierarchy is followed from distribution to distribution, and
3. A large number of packages are available (and, more importantly, compatible) due to point 2.

Yeah, wouldn't it be nice. And if anyone creates (or has created, i.e. Knoppix, etc.) such a system, then it would be referred to as....

A Debian-based distribution.

So then we still wouldn't have solved the problem you mention of a general solution for Linux, vs. a distribution-specific solution.

I think that any attempt at a general solution automatically becomes a distribution specific solution. Either for an existing distribution, or a new one that you would be trying to promote.

Re:Package maintenance

[Cereal Box]

I think that any attempt at a general solution automatically becomes a distribution specific solution.

No, not necessarily. I'm talking about distribution authors coming to a consensus on things like the filesystem hierarchy, naming conventions, /etc structure, choice of package format, choice of desktop environment, etc. If distributions come together on key points such as those (and of course, I'm sure there's more I missed), then that will go a long way towards making packages distribution-neutral (and solving a whole slew of other problems).

Re:Package maintenance

[wjwlsn]

There is a general solution. I've used it on Slackware, Mandrake, and others. Look at the manpage for ldconfig. Put old library files in a directory under /usr/lib, edit /etc/ld.so.conf, and run ldconfig.

Re:Package maintenance

[jusdisgi]

I'm talking about distribution authors coming to a consensus...

Dude, are you that dense? Anyone on earth can go start a distro tomorrow. It's downright silly to suggest that everyone could be coerced into doing exactly the same thing. Worse yet, where do you stop this enforced sameness? Only once all Linux distros are identical? That destroys the flexibility and specialization of distributions that is one of the primary attractions to Linux in the first place.

Re:Package maintenance

[IamTheRealMike]

Actually the main problem with making distro neutral packages is the lack of platform stability. In fact there isn't really a platform to speak of. The library your program needs will often not be there, or will be there but not in the right version. Dependency resolution gets you some way but doesn't solve the underlying problem, namely that popular libraries break backwards compatibility all the time.

The second biggest problem is that of binary portability.

Where files and such are put isn't actually that big a problem. I know that's what it looks like at first, I thought the same thing. But in practice, it's really not a problem.

How do I know these things? Because for the last two years I've been working on a distribution neutral packaging format, that installs anywhere and is easy to use. Go check out the screenshots! There are demo packages you can use as well, like the Inkscape CVS nightly builds. Be warned, I think the Zile package isn't working quite right yet.

Autopackage really needs more people working on it. Right now all the 3 main developers are in a time crunch and it's slowed right down to a crawl. If you want to see easy 1 click installs on Linux (easier than apt-get even for newbies ...) why not come on over and help out?

Re:Package maintenance

[Nothinman]

If distributions come together on key points such as those (and of course, I'm sure there's more I missed), then that will go a long way towards making packages distribution-neutral (and solving a whole slew of other problems).

It would also go a long way towards making every distribution the same, thus making all but one obsolete.

Re:Package maintenance

[Cereal Box]

No one has to be "forced" to follow distribution standards, but it should would be nice of them to do. You Slashdotters LOVE open standards, so why shrug off a distribution standard? It would only help interoperability.

Worse yet, where do you stop this enforced sameness? Only once all Linux distros are identical? That destroys the flexibility and specialization of distributions that is one of the primary attractions to Linux in the first place.

OK, all I'm proposing is that certain guidelines be followed in the spirit of mutual compatibility and platform-neutrality. That IN NO WAY hinders you, jusdisgi, from altering your distribution to do whatever wacky crap you feel necessary. It's all "open" and "free as in freedom", remember?

There's a lot of "standards" in Linux that you take for granted. For instance, bash, ls, cd, grep, etc. are all "standard" on Linux distributions. You take them for granted, right? Now imagine if you couldn't be sure that such basic tools were available on any Linux system you happen to sit down at.

Now, back to the topic at hand, imagine if your buddy has some fringe Linux distro and needs help. You know the solution to the problem -- install some piece of software that has a million dependencies. No problem with apt-get, right? Well, his distro has apt-get, but the package repository is very small due to the relative unpopularity of this distribution. Hey, no big deal, just point to the Redhat repository, right? Woops, that package isn't compatible with this distribution. Guess you're stuck compiling a million packages by hand.

See where a little standardization in this area might be a GOOD thing?

Re:Package maintenance

[Minna Kirai]

That IN NO WAY hinders you, jusdisgi, from altering your distribution to do whatever wacky crap you feel necessary.

Do you even know what "distribution" means? We call them "distributions" because the whole focus of their work is "distributing" files; aka "packaging".

The argument to have a "standard package format" is exactly the same as asking for there to be only one distribution.

Distributions don't DO anything except handle packaging. That's their whole job.

Re:Package maintenance

[Anonymous Coward]

If distros simply decide on one simple standardized place to put 1) binaries 2) libs 3) configs.

We don't have to standardize on WHAT goes into a distro, only where it goes.

For example:
Fedora/RedHat might apache binaries in /usr/bin
SuSe may put 'em in /usr/local/apache

what's wrong with saying "ok, all package managers, put the apache files in /usr/local/apache" ??

That way incase there is something I have to install that doesn't come in package form, but may rely on apache, I don't have to change my compile options from distro to distro

Re:Package maintenance

[jusdisgi]

OK, all I'm proposing is that certain guidelines be followed in the spirit of mutual compatibility and platform-neutrality. That IN NO WAY hinders you, jusdisgi, from altering your distribution to do whatever wacky crap you feel necessary.

What if my "whacky crap" includes wanting all my software to be compiled from source with the options I choose? That will certainly not be OK for folks who desire quick and resource-friendly installation. Woops, suddenly we just broke package compatibility. What if I want to run the latest kernel and glibc, but other, more conservative, distro maintainers want to keep 2.4 and an older glibc? Whoa...that glibc part is going to break a whole shitload of compatibility.

It just is not feasible at all to make all distributions binary-compatible. It just isn't. That's why we have distributions in the first place, and that's why they occupy different niches. And frankly, that's what makes the whole family of systems so powerful.

It's also interesting that you start to make the right point, that about the availability of certain tools, like cd and grep. I wish you hadn't chosen bash, because I have a few servers that only have tcsh installed, but whatever. The point is the right one, you just don't see it.....standards are great for giving things base-level functionality. They ensure that I can scp a file from any of my halfway-*nix-esque systems to any of them. They ensure that my Windows-using clients can pull email from my FreeBSD mailserver. They do lots of great shit. BUT THEY DON'T GOVERN EVERY PART OF ANY SYSTEM, AND THEY SHOULDN'T!!!! To make every part of every system conform to standards would be to force the existence of only one system....and no one OS is going to make everybody happy, ever.

what I really REALLY hate...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am getting so sick of people saying "linux isn't ready for the desktop" or "it's too hard to use"...

GOOD!

I don't want everybody hoping on linux systems. I don't want everybody asking me about "how do I do this" or "how do I do that" like they do with Windows systems. I say, let Linux be difficult, that way only people who KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING can use the system!!

Ok ok, I know what you are all thinking, let me present the argument in a different way.

Windows, it's easy to use, it's simple. I see lots and lots of people use the system for common desktop stuff, and that's great. The problem is that because it's such an easy system to use then all the sudden you've got total morons doing system administration. I can't tell you how many times I've come across somebody who's only job is to adminsiter SQL Server databases and they don't even know how to build a SQL statement! (I'm a consultant). Stupid people are running stupid systems. Don't try to make linux easy to use, but make it a solid OS (it already is). Hopefully with time we'll see corporations move from Windows based systems to linux based systems, but more importantly we'll see the sysadmins become smarter !! Or we'll see the stupid ones lose their jobs and the smart ones get hired... hey, darwin, right? We all know it's not the OS, it's the person who admins it. If we start making linux "easy to use" we'll still have retards doing the system administration.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Wow, great idea! Now I just need root access to every computer I ever use.

Right. Or at least the ones on which you will be responsible for installing and maintaining the system and software. Similarly, you will need Administrator access to all the Windows computers for which you are responsible.

Somehow, that seemed incredibly obvious.

Man, How I Hate Thee, Let me Count the Ways

[__aamkky7574]

Just as an illustration, try "man find". It took me years to figure out that "find . -name {file_name}" would find all files matching {file_name} below the current directory - which I imagine is the usage of 99% of users.

Check out the description of the tool:

"find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence (see section OPERATORS), until the outcome is known (the left hand side is false for and operations, true for or), at which point find moves on to the next file name."

Do you imagine that most users would know what on earth that meant? Why not at least prepend it with "This tool enables you to find files"? Then give one or two examples of common usage? _Then_ by all means bombard them with the myriad of possible parameters.

P.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! so how does Apt-get work when the computer does NOT have an internet connection.

this instant assumption that all users are internet connected and usually assumed they have broadband is silly.

apt-get is great, but it only fixes things for a small subset of the population.

Re:for pity's sake.

[Wudbaer]

Yes, and failing to create a working result, apt-get sometimes offers you to remove half of the system's packages trying to fulfill some low-level dependency, as I got some time back when trying to install a package some GNOME program wanted and that conflicted with some KDE dependencies. apt's solution ? Let's remove all of KDE's packages. Uhm... no.

Re:From TFA

[l3v1]

From experience, most help comes from stringing together incomprehensible usenet posts and articles found on google

That's sad, and very if I may add.

When I started on linux (slack, then redhat at that time, it took me a few years to land and stick to debian) so when started most of help came from friends who begun earlier and they gave me lots of help and guidence which convinced me even further that linux didn't just come with a style that I loved from the first day, but also with a bunch'a helping fellas and a great community.

And this (fortunately) followed me since then. At times when I had to discover stuff by myself were challenging, but I always enjoyed every bit of it from making hardware work to scripting exotics and on.

I guess not all you out there were so lucky :) (I don't know if this smiley is appropriate at this point though).

But linux wasn't started to be a lame-proof clicking gui for solitaire playing illiterates. That's a fact. Since then very very very many people got computers and many of them think they are gurus, which they aren't, but at least they complain all the way about things they find hard to be accustomed to.

Like command line interfaces. Which in linux is a gift from god. Hell it _is_ linux. What "they" wish to click upon all the time are just a covering cloth, which many of out there like too, but know that it wasn't what made linux strong (using past tense because nowadays that is changing to a very good direction). It can bring more users (as it does), but hopefully they will seee the great benefits also which lay behind the eyecandy and which is the real and main advantage of linux and co.

There's one thing I always tell and I feel I can't repeat it enough times: don't like it, don't use it, choose something else, because you can (!) which is a very good thing.

That's all folks, keep linux :)

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[IamTheRealMike]

No MORE DEPENDANCY HELL.

The problem with the apt-get approach is that it's like living in a town with only one supermarket. OK, so it's a really big supermarket but still:

- If you can't find the food you want in there, you're stuck

- If you can but it's stale, damaged or out of stock, you're stuck

- You are totally dependent on the people running the supermarket

- The larger a supermarket is, the harder it becomes to find things in it. Just imagine taking your grandma to a supermarket where the aisles stretched as far as the eye could see!

To stretch the analogy a bit further than it can really go, just imagine if getting tired of this one supermarket you travelled to the next town and bought a lampshade from a shop there. Bring it all the way back, put it in your house and suddenly your TV explodes.

What happened? "Oh, you mixed different repositories". All centralised systems suffer this but Fedora worse than most - you're fine as long as you stick to the core repositories but if you add others (and you do need to do that, if you want a big enough collection to be useful) things will randomly break due to "conflicts". Just imagine trying to explain that to grandma!

Oh yeah. There are a bunch of other problems as well. I've seen a lot of 3rd party packages of software that are totally broken. Often the users don't connect the problems they are seeing with the packages. This happens a lot with complex software like Wine, Mono etc ... I've seen quite a few packages of Wine that won't even start! It's pretty clear that many 3rd party packagers hardly test what they produce at all, especially in the case of "new release, I'll just bump the number in the spec and rebuild". I'd estimate that about 40-50% of the tech support problems I deal with in Wine are due to incorrectly built packages. It's not even hard! Just configure, make, make install but people still cock it up mightily - using badly done wrapper scripts and moving files around from where they're supposed to be are the most common, but bad builds happen too.

Apt-get has other problems. You have to duplicate this huge effort over and over again for each distro. This doesn't happen so you get vendor lockin - the very thing we're trying to all get away from, no? I've met more than one person in my life whos number 1 reason for using Debian was "I can apt get lots of software". It was not due to the merits of the distribution itself, it was not due to have a nice installer, slick default desktop, solid PAM setup etc etc. It was because installing software was not a pain in the ass.

Apt-get works great as long as you are willing to throw infinite manpower at the problem. We don't have infinite manpower, duh. So centralised packaging cannot be a scalable, sustainable way forward for our community outside of certain use cases like servers (where it works well).

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

1.) Apt works not just for debian packages, but for rpms, and can be installed on Fedora.

How about Slackware? SuSE? Yellowdog? Gentoo? Redhat 6?

See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.

2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.

Care to list them? And would it be too bold an assumption on my part to expect that these files all exist in the same location and have the same format? If not, these "config file edits" will only be valid for a small subset of distributions.

But that's beside the point. Why should I have to edit config files to do install packages? Looks like this "simple guide to installing packages" is quickly spiraling out of control.

3.) I can't remember the last time I couldn't find an RPM.

Do you mean an RPM for your (I presume popular) distribution? Or did you mean an RPM that could work on pretty much any distribution?

Re:for pity's sake.

[magefile]

Why not use yum/Gyum to organize RPMs? Or apt-get, since you like it so much? What is so pathetic about RPM?

Yeah, yeah, IHBT, IHL, HAND.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[grumbel]

apt-get isn't a killer app, its a distribution specfic workaround for a problem that should be fixed upstream. Beside that even apt-get is FAR from perfect, since there are the following problems:

* stable is way behind everybody else, if some piece of software doesn't support your hardware, say XFree86, you are in deep throuble, hardly any newbie will stand this much longer then a few days

* unstable on the other side while being more current can do havoc at any point, beside 'apt-get upgrade' isn't all that fun for modem users, hell even 'apt-get update' is already a serious problem for modem users. testing is still more a game of luck, sometimes it work sometimes it doesn't, nothing that I would give in the hands of a newbie.

* apt-get doesn't fix dependency hell, it just works around it so that dependencies get automatically detected, apt-get however DOES NOT resolve conflicts in a user expected way, if library foo and library bar are incompatible, apt-get will remove everything that depends on the other when I want to install one of them.

* apt-get can't install different versions of -dev packages in most cases since the includes conflict

* apt-get is a one-way thing, it doesn't provide a roll-back. Simple example would be Gnome2, once it got released I took a look at it and it sucked, lots of features removed and stuff didn't work, was there a way to get Gnome1.4 back? No, I was stuck with Gnome2 thanks to apt-get. Sure, I could manually track each and every dependecy and install it in a seperate prefix, but thats nothing that a newbie wants to do.

* apt-get depends extremly on the quality of the repository from which it grabs stuff, unofficial packages often cause throuble and if the maintainers of the repo to something ugly like removing a programm that you depend on, bad luck for you, there is no easy workaround, then to not use apt-get and do everything manually.

A solution to the dependcy hell would be one that is not distrospecific and allows me to download and install any Linux stuff I want from the net, not just the one that some Debian maintainers thought would be worth packaging. It should also allow to install any number of different versions of the same programm without relying on extra work of the maintainer to handle the situation.

Sadly many of the problems are caused by the FHS layout, which is now standardized and thus basically unfixable for a long long time.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Not every distribution has the ability to use apt or yum or whatever or even a package system.

Perhaps not....but some do. If you value such a system, use a distribution that has it. That really seems pretty basic. And there are a ton of choices; Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, Lindows, Lycoris, you forgot my favorite distro, you insensitive clod!, etc...just about every distro these days has good management that keeps you from worrying about dependency problems. The only real exceptions to this are things like Slack and LFS...and if you're using those, it's probably because you didn't want stuff like this.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[bwalling]

Apt-get IS the killer application for linux.

It's cool but it's not killer.

apt-get install mplayer libdvdcss xmms How did you know what to type? You had to know what you were supposed to be looking for. That's not so cool for most users. What if I just want to be able to play some a DVD? Am I supposed to magically know that I need "libdvdcss" and "mplayer"?

Bull

[SlashDread]

I was raised with the zx81/spectrum and Commodores.

If there was ONE THING that fascinated me, then it was the blinking prompt, inviting me to just try -anything-

I LOVED it, when I found out about a new command, such as PEEK/POKE.

People are like, born CURIOUS. If it fears you, you have more issues than a GUI can solve.

Dread.

Re:Bull

[Anonymous Coward]

"If there was ONE THING that fascinated me, then it was the blinking prompt, inviting me to just try -anything-"

Fucking word brotha.

Re:Bull

[iSwitched]

Sure, I wrote my first program on a Commodore -- that makes us old by slashdot standards - and noone here of any age is going to disagree with your comment because, well, its kind of our job and our passion to be curious about computers...

But...

I feel compelled to remind you that to most people, the computer is a tool to get some other job done. A writer wants to write, an artist wants to draw, an architect wants to design buildings, etc. These people are just as curious as you and I, it is just that their curiosity is aimed in a different direction.

Consider the hammer and nail. If you need to connect two pieces of wood, do you really need a manual? Must you be a carpenter to do this thing? No, the nail is flat on one end and sharp on the other. The hammer fits easily into your hand, there is a heavy, flat surface at one end that seems destined to impact the flat end of the nail.

Anyone who designs and builds tools for a living (or as a passion) should want their tools to work as naturally and effortlessly as this.

No OS that I know of has reached this point, though some are closer than others (cough, Mac OS X, cough). Why shouldn't we have high expectations for Linux (on the desktop)?

Oh, please!

[Anonymous Coward]

These are, without any doubt, the worst emoticons I've ever seen.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Walles]

It reads the repository from a CD.

-1 Bullshit

[cbreaker]

If I could mod your post as -1 Bullshit I would.

Your little anecdote is almost as original as saying "Dude I gave my friend pop rocks and pepsi and he EXPLODED! True story!"

Re:-1 Bullshit

[drmancini]

except this is a true story ... but unfortunately i should have taken more time (context) and care (fewer morons and n00bs) to write it ...

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=121308&thres hold=1&commentsort=0&tid=166&mode=thread&pid=10212 165#10212315

hi newbie Linux users

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: "'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; "

Midnight Commander = mc is the best friend a Linux user running in CLI has, learn it and you will love it, (simple and elegant)

Ohh come on people, this guy is a dufas.

[cbreaker]

Did you guys actually read his nonsense? He makes so many generalizations about "Linux" that it's basically all bullshit.

He says "On Linux, you single click to run a program." "On Linux, when you double click the title bar, the window shades instead of min/maximize." WTF?! What does he mean "On Linux"? On Mandrake, SuSE, and any other machine with KDE, these options aren't default. Did he write this in 1994?

Bah, with a whole article filled with this crap, I don't know how anyone could take him seriously.

Re:Ohh come on people, this guy is a dufas.

[DaEMoN128]

I am running SuSE 9.0 Professional, they are default on suse still. Single click, double click to shade, middle button paste, are all still the default.

To answer any person out there that has said rtfm or type man "command"....what is the command that the person is to magically know in order to find out how to do what they dont know how to do? If someone gave my a live cd with Suse, or Knoppix or any other distro, and I had never used linux. Would it automount all of my removable media or would I have to find out about mount some how??? The manuals are there.....but if you dont know there is a command that even does what you are looking for, the manual is useless.

Maybe we as a community need to stop saying RTFM and start saying ... here is a good linux noob site with a lot of commonly used commands and explinations of what they do......we might be able to sway some of the neophites that say linux is too hard becuase it doesnt work. It does work, we just have to help them find out how to make it work.

Re:Ohh come on people, this guy is a dufas.

[dave420]

Well, people on here make generalisations about linux all the time, and no-one gets pissy. "linux is ready for the desktop" or "linux runs this game fine" or whatever. It seems linux is an acceptable term when discussing something good, yet negative when discussing something bad (as in "my OS rules" and "don't say that about my distro").

Double standards? slashdot? I refuse to believe it.

Re:Ohh come on people, this guy is a dufas.

[adam mcmaster]

Did he write this in 1994?

Maybe he did; from the article:

I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.

Was it even bootable in 1993? Or was that a typo?

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw this guy, right fellas!

Is this a homosexual lifestyle reference? The irony...

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[rjstanford]

To stretch the analogy a bit further than it can really go, just imagine if getting tired of this one supermarket you travelled to the next town and bought a lampshade from a shop there. Bring it all the way back, put it in your house and suddenly your TV explodes.

I agree with your points, and know that you're just kidding around as well, but I have to say that I loved this example. Very cool.

And you didn't even get into buying something from the small stall labeled "Oracle" set up across from the huge supermarket. Hmm. Is it just me or have regular vendors and some OSS vendors just switched sides (in this one case)? Now they're the smaller, unsupported bunch being ignored by the larger zealot group? Werid, but true.

It suits you though

[Anonymous Coward]

See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.

Well if you insist on a linux installation without these solutions, don't them complain that your linux system doesn't have these solutions.

Everyone is free to create a distribution without these solutions, don't get angry that we don't form a posse to stop them just to please you.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Look, if you're ranting in this vein, it's because you haven't yet become comfortable with Linux in general (to subvert your term) to the point where you understand the bigger picture. I could whine all day about the various and sundry differences between Windows versions too...but most folks would find it silly, because we've all got a decade or more of Windows in general experience, so the fact that "Dialup Networking" might be found in 3 different places over the years seems quite trivial. And it is. But what you don't recognize is that to someone who has a good working understanding of and familiarity with Linux in general the differences between the Mandrake package manager and the Fedora one are pretty much that same level of trivial. And if you aren't scared of the command line, apt-get, emerge, yum, and urpmi all end up seeming roughly equivalent, and it isn't much trouble to use any one of them. To someone who has been running Linux for a few years, picking up a new distro isn't any real challenge. (Well, unless it's Linux from Scratch or something ;-)

My point is that once again, people are viewing Linux through Windows-trained eyes. Computer systems have differences, even within families that are similar. Since pretty much anyone who works with computers at all has years of Windows experience these days, people know how to work around the annoyances, and compensate for the differences. When someone gets thrown into the world of Linux, they tend to try out 6 different distros in 6 months...is it really a surprise that minor differences would seem much more serious when you have so little experience with the family of systems in general?

Re:From TFA

[_Sprocket_]

...what little documentation exists is laden with hyperlinks to homosexual lifestyle websites.

Screw this guy, right fellas!

Errr. You do realize that this isn't the proper forum to get a date, right? I mean... not that I judge your lifestyle or anything...

Re: parent didn't consider...

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Why would slashdot want to trust some noname caching site nobody has ever heard of to handle the crushing load of a full on slashdotting, all day, every day? and 2) what happens if that site gets hacked and starts redirecting all (or worse: only some) of the links to goatse or something equally offensive?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.

Considering that the only way a sane person would use Linux is to install a distribution and a distribution is a collection of packages to run on the linux kernel it would make sense to leave package management at the distribution level.

But that's beside the point. Why should I have to edit config files to do install packages? Looks like this "simple guide to installing packages" is quickly spiraling out of control.

Because everything isn't available in ever repository for various reasons. And if you really want to avoid editing files run RedCarpet and use the pretty GUI. If all of this seems like spiraling out of control, perhaps you should shut the computer down and go do something slower.

Do you mean an RPM for your (I presume popular) distribution? Or did you mean an RPM that could work on pretty much any distribution?

If you don't like trying to determine which RPM goes where, install Debian and be done with it, in sid there's over 13K packages.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[uchian]

In the unix fashion, applications are dedicated to what they need to do.

deb/rpm (is it called deb? Long time since I used debian) are package installers, and do not handle dependency checking.

On top of that sits urpmi (Mandrake), apt(debian) and I believe redhat have their own. These apps handle dependencies, but are still command line based.

On top of that sit a number of gui's that will call the underlying apt/urpmi to install packages with dependencies, these gui's have nicely sorted lists of applications under headings such as "games", "office" and "internet". Mandrake has this (check out therpm installer in the control panel), debian has this (dselect has been around for ages, there are other improved interfaces now). Hell, lindow's has it's one-click web interface thingy.

So why do people continue to say that apt/urpmi are crap because you have to remember the command options and/or the names of the apps you want to install??? If apt/urpmi are lower level than you want to go, USE ONE OF THE GUI'S, THAT'S WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR!!!!

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Mark Hood]

Want mplayer, but Fedora doesn't have the ability to play DVD's or Mp3's?
Head on down to Dag's RPM repositories, follow his directions and go:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install mplayer libdvdcss xmms

Yeah, 'cos that's obvious.

The average Windows user (and isn't that who he's talking about targetting?) does a web search for 'play dvds' and installs the first application he sees. Either that or he asks a friend 'what do you use to watch movies' and installs what he's told. Either way, he goes to a web page, downloads the .exe or .zip file and runs it - reboots if necessary and gets on with the job he wanted to.

What if I don't want mplayer? I ought to be able to do a google search for 'dvd player linux' and download a program to install it. As things stand, I can't. At the very least, give me an 'add software' button on the desktop, which I can click and chose 'DVD player' from, and it does that for me...

I use Mac OS X, because I can download a disk image, drag the application to any folder I like and run it, and it works. If it needs 'dependencies', it's a package I double-click on, and it works out where to put things. When Linux works like that, it'll be ready for prime time on the desktop.

The author admits he used to want to write a GUI tool to edit .conf files for users, so he'd not have to play with the .conf files any more, but by the time he knew enough to do it, he no longer felt he needed to. As long as all software development in Free/Open Source software is 'itch-scratching' the average (non-geek) user is going to struggle to get started, because by the time he knows how to solve the basic problems, he has no incentive to solve them for the people coming up behind him. In extreme cases, he'll even say things like 'I had to figure out vi, so everyone should' (and I've seen a lot of those comments below).

Linux on the desktop? I think we need a large organisation to decide they want it, and either develop something themselves (c.f. what Apple did with FreeBSD, taking the good open source core and adding some spit and polish) or throw a load of cash at a rag-tag group of developers and hope for the best (as I think IBM are doing, hoping they get the stuff they want out of it, didn't they support Apache to make it better?)

In my opinion, until that happens, this guys complaints are perfectly valid. Hell, the Mac doesn't have the problems he's describing, and people STILL aren't switching from Windows in droves - why would they go to Linux? Comments like 'another loser with no clue, why do we care?' are the reason no-one takes Linux on the desktop seriously - if you want Linux to remain the preserve of the few, feel free to dismiss people who just want to get work done as 'clueless dweebs'...

Mark

PS And I'm not a clueless dweeb, I got Linux working back in the days of monitor refresh rates and hand-tooling lilo.conf... I support systems more complex than most hardcore geek's home networks for a living :) That means I appreciate the problems, not that I can't solve them!

PPS It's realy quite nice. Install debian, upgrade to unstable. I've been running it for 2 years, no sweat and completely up to date. Bully for you. Tell Joe Average to 'upgrade to unstable' and he'll look at you as if you're crazy. The only reason he was given to switch to Linux was 'it's more stable' :)

Sounds like a scorcher.

[Rotten168]

A book about a guy using an OS. Wow.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[sydb]

1st two points (stable/testing/unstable) - how do you *suggest* it should work? testing is in no way as hit-or-miss as you suggest, I run a mix of testing and unstable on my desktop and laptop and never have stability issues or upgrade problems.

3rd point (dependency hell) - again, tell me the alternative? One of the big advantages of open source is that people build on other people's work - so you end up with dependencies. If we didn't have dependencies we would have duplicate effort and you'd be whinging about the slow pace of progress.

4th point (different versions of -dev packages) - if the includes conflict its for a reason. If you're doing complex dev work just get the frigging tarball.

5th point - (apt-get is one way) - sorry, it's not. apt-get install packagename/stable will take me back from a testing or unstable version.

6th point - (repository quality) - well, how the hell is that a problem with apt-get? It's a problem with your choice of repository!

Basically you're a trolling whinger, please STFU.

static libraries and bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

And remember when the zlib bugs came up, all those statically linked packages needed updating - did you know which they were?

Dynamically linked zlib packages just used the new version when it was dropped on top.

Re:static libraries and bug fixes

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't matter. NOBODY get's one version of an app and let's it sit there forever. Even though the app still does it's job perfectly, people think that "upgrading" gives them something and they got to do it. I can do everything you do with a 6 year old linux distro and apps.

so yes it will get fixed at the next app upgrade that all lemmings feel they must do.

me? I still have a single linux machine running on an old 386 running a 1.x kernel it is 100% secure cince it is not connected in any way's that the flaws can be exploited and it's in a location that takes days on foot to get to... in fact it no longer operates through the night, it shot's down about twilight as it's batteries are near toast and it can only run on it's solar panels.. so it shut's down gracefully when the voltage levels get low enough and comes back up in the morning.

do I want to upgrade it because of that zlib bug? nope. I dont care about the zlib bug in that instance. It's doing it's job and has done so perfectly for over 5 years now. The client still get's the telemetry data from it, and no hacker on this planet can break into it (without lots of gear and a very large set of bolt cutters as well as it's physical location.)

It's root password is even blank.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

All I'm saying is that, barring applications for which there are known compatibility issues between Windows versions, you can basically download any application installer and it will work on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, etc. (and don't shrug off this fact, there is a LOT of software compatible "out of the box" on all these systems). My question is why can't Linux do this? Why can't I get a Redhat RPM and install it on, let's say, a Slackware machine without any additional work?

Installing software in a consistent manner _is_ a big deal. Why are there twenty different ways to install the same piece of software depending on what distribution of Linux you're using? Why can't someone say "if you're using Linux, this is how you install software"? You don't think this would be a tremendous help to Linux?

Speaking of Dana

[joelgrimes]

Dana Point, CA, in Orange County was named after Richard Henry Dana. You can visit a reproduction of the ship, the Pilgrim, in Dana Point Harbor about 50 miles south of Los Angeles.

His book is truly an excellent read.

Re:Speaking of Dana

[God_Retired]

Being from the area, I read his book many years ago. Now every time I find myself in Dana Point I find myself grinning at his total dislike of what is now called Dana Point. Where he risked his life on the cliffs for Cow hides stuck in the bushes. Anyway, it's just a little ironic.... Kind of like John Wayne Airport, seeing how he really didn't want the airport to be there. Sorry for the tangent.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[drsquare]

Yeah, using command line programs, editing config files, building RPMs and compiling programs from source is just what those users want who are intimidated by the command line. You've just solved the problem of getting Linux on the desktop!

Dont be afraid of the command line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Way back, like around version 0.99, on a slackware distrib, I was in that very situation, I knew some commands like "ls", "cd" and "cp" but little else, but I dind't feel fear, on the contrary, I was feeling great joy, wow, a whole new world to explore, I began examining /usr/bin, trying each command, (no fear, I had been exploring docs and was able to install by scratch if something went wrong), I discovered "man", I discovered "apropos" and the possibilities was endless, I was like Columbus, exploring unknown lands, and new wonders just kept coming.
After a while I got pretty skilled, I could use this for something productive, first running a http server at home, on my 2 node-network, as I stumbled across problems, I read docs. I got knowledge on how networks really works, I began exploring the mysterious "c" compiler, knowing some tiny bit of code from before, began programming in my spare time, all by reading the suplementary code and docs, I got a job as a computer technichian, I applied my skills to the job, evolving the company into a tiny ISP, got several "big" customers after a while, contributing into the community, told them that there is something called "the internet" (this is around 1992), got myself a picture into the local paper, then, after a while, the spare-time programming payed off, a game-company called, offering my a job, (god knows why they knew who I was and what I could do). Then, it just accelerates, (before the dot com), job offers everywhere, fame, glory, ...

To make a long story short... skipping 7 years ahead, and a couple of workplaces, I'm now doing full time programming on java, c++, c, python, etc... etc... I got myself a house, a car, a girlfriend, a child, and I'm being able to support all this economically, becayse of my job, my profession, which is what it is because I wasn't afraid of the command prompt, or because I could acquire knowledge only from the docs and code supplied by the slackware distro initially.

So, don't be afraid of the prompt!

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

* apt-get depends extremly on the quality of the repository from which it grabs stuff, unofficial packages often cause throuble and if the maintainers of the repo to something ugly like removing a programm that you depend on, bad luck for you, there is no easy workaround, then to not use apt-get and do everything manually

How is that different than installing things manually? If the maintainer of a web site hosting the RPMs you were using decides to take them down you're just as screwed.

A solution to the dependcy hell would be one that is not distrospecific and allows me to download and install any Linux stuff I want from the net, not just the one that some Debian maintainers thought would be worth packaging. It should also allow to install any number of different versions of the same programm without relying on extra work of the maintainer to handle the situation.

So basically you want packages that create and manage themselves?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really only Redhat and Debian that have large sets of packages, right?

Ok, I'm going to correct you, because you're wrong. Gentoo, Mandrake, SuSE, Lindows, Xandros, and probably lots more distros have truly massive package collections. I use Gentoo primarily, and there are thousands of ebuilds out there; the only things I've installed without using emerge were little obscure scripts and such which aren't typically packaged at all beyond source.

Also, if you want the ultimate Linux in general installation procedure, here it is:

tar -xvzf foo.tar.gz
cd foo
./configure
make
make install

Source tarballs aren't as scary as people make them out to be...and they typically work across distributions.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

How did you know what to type? You had to know what you were supposed to be looking for. That's not so cool for most users. What if I just want to be able to play some a DVD? Am I supposed to magically know that I need "libdvdcss" and "mplayer"?

There's nothing magical about it, you type 'apt-cache search dvd' and in the list is mplayer, you type 'apt-get install mplayer' and it grabs all of mplayer's dependencies including libdvdcss.

some important Unix commands...

[Anonymous Coward]

vi (it's a puzzle, yes? how to get out?)
irc (learn all about bots and channel takovers. oh and warez)
lynx (to look for all those exploits)
gcc (to compile those exploits)
ssh/telnet/nc (to login on the server after you exploit it)
ping (when you want to find out if your exploit crashed the server by mistake)
perl (so you can automate all your exploits, and automate pr0n-getting downloads)
talk/slrn/mutt (to communicate with other elite motherfuckers like you, who don't use AIM and that junk)
wipe/shred (to defeat narq's, and so your mom don't see the pr0n)
zgv/mplayer (pr0n viewers)

Re:some important Unix commands...

[woah]

Why use lynx to look for exploits?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

Considering that the only way a sane person would use Linux is to install a distribution and a distribution is a collection of packages to run on the linux kernel it would make sense to leave package management at the distribution level.

... But if the majority of distribution authors agreed on standards regarding libraries, filesystem hierarchies, and package formats, then you'd basically have the "distribution-neutral" packages I'm looking for, wouldn't you? And to think, package management would STILL be left at the distribution level...

If all of this seems like spiraling out of control, perhaps you should shut the computer down and go do something slower.

Ooh, elitism. You're winning converts over to Linux as we speak.

People who value their time over "it's free" like living in the 21st century, where you double click an installer and be done with the program installation. People who value "it's free" over their time don't care about editing arcane configuration files just to install a text editor.

If you don't like trying to determine which RPM goes where, install Debian and be done with it, in sid there's over 13K packages.

But see, if there were such a thing as distribution-neutral packages, you wouldn't have to take a step as radical as dumping the distribution you're comfortable with just to install a text editor via packaging.

levels

[jbolden]

Why do you think this should be done at the OS/kernel level (i.e. Linux in general) rather than at the distribution level (entire user experience). Given the very wide range in distributions (many embedded ones need to operate without a user interface at all for example) how the kernel level is the right level.

Re:levels

[Cereal Box]

Re-read what I said. I never implied that this would occur at the kernel level. If distributions followed certain guidelines, it would increase the likliehood of packages being compatible across distributions.

Re:levels

[jbolden]

What is common across distributions but not across Unix family OSes is the kernel. I didn't mean kernel level in the sense of staticly linked directly to the kernel. Rather what I meant was in terms of OS levels:

Hardware
Drivers
Kernel
API
User applications...

If Linux distributions had commone library structures (and maintained these acrosss time), common configuration structures .... we would have binary compatability, and conversely that's what we would have to do to maintain binary compatability.

What I'm trying to figure out is why is what is the point of "packages being compatible across distributions". Why not just get packages at the distribution level? In other words simply setup a paradigm where naive debian users get software from Debian and naive Mandrake users get software from Mandrake. For the naive user why shouldn't "Linux software" be an abstraction like in the same way "the sims" (which runs on game systems, PC, Mac....) is an abstraction?

Re:levels

[Cereal Box]

In other words simply setup a paradigm where naive debian users get software from Debian and naive Mandrake users get software from Mandrake.

Because that doesn't help me if I happen to be running some other distribution that isn't fortunate enough to have a large user base (and subsequently, large package base)?

With a model like that, you're effectively reducing the set of distributions capable of "easy software installation" dramatically.

Re:levels

[jbolden]

With a model like that, you're effectively reducing the set of distributions capable of "easy software installation" dramatically.

I'd also say there could be distributions like Knoppix (or Mandrake in the early days when they were still essentially redhat) which maintain library compatibility with the big distributions. I'm hard pressed to see why a mainstream distribution can't keep to library compatibility with a big distribution. Xandros ~ Debian, lycros ~ Debian, Fedora ~ RedHat, Suse (maintains own archive), turbo (own archive), Morphix ~ Debian, Gentoo (own archive) .....

Now in the case of highly non standard distributions they still might be OK. Lets take a (IMHO) good example ForEyes which is a (KDE based distribution with right to left alphabet support for Arabic and Hebrew). Obviously for things like openoffice you need to use their version and not something you just pull off the net. OTOH most programs are going to only have a small number of language options (so you would probably use english) and then there is no reason they couldn't maintain binary compatibility with Debian for their non specialized packages.

For things like embedded distributions or specialized I don't see why easy installation is desirable.

RTFM?

[figgypower]

This article is classic of how most people treat Linux. It doesn't seem like he's kept up with any of the advances or tries too hard. A lot of articles, especially the ones that get the most media coverage, are just like this. "Linux is hard," "I'm fine with Windows," "I don't want to read," Laziness and lack of brain usage...

As a new systems administrator over at a law firm and a real estate firm, I get some of the dumbest questions. For example, I recently asked one of the users what version of Windows they use and the response I got was "Microsoft Windows Office XP". So would you guess Windows XP? You'd be wrong; it was Windows 2000 with a copy of Office XP. I mean jeez... that information is available when the computer starts up... And Microsoft's glorious "integration" and "innovation" seems to effectively confuse people.

Maybe if people read the manual... oh wait... no one does! No one will! Any idiot can start to sort-of use Windows within minutes and that's exactly why they do! When it comes to computers a lot people are just dumb, lazy or both! We're talking successful lawyers here...

Granted, some of the smarter lawyers can pick up Linux without a problem. Some of the smarter college peers (ya, I'm a college kid) can pick up Linux quickly. For example, my girlfriend (complete non-techie) used Linux on my laptop just fine when I got rid of Windows (got it back for some games). Yet, Linux requires half a brain and some effort to use, but that's its problems. Most people try to use computers as a cludgeon. Some distro of Linux has to cater to the mass idiots, and I've yet to find one. I maybe fine with Debian, but most sure as hell aren't. I honestly believe that even an "idiot-fied" Linux would be better then Windows. That or change people's way of dealing with computers, which I imagine will be much harder. Hopefully, the new realease of SimplyMEPIS or Yoper will offer me some hope.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have everything.

Your arguement has declined to the point of whining. If you don't have to deal with dependances, you don't. That's the point.

If you don't want to deal with config files, then don't.

The reason why your not going to get a "universal" RPM install is because there is no such thing as a "universal" distro. Each person chooses to do things a little bit different.

If everybody did the same thing, then you wouldn't have any distros to choose from! It'd just be "linux OS 10.2" or something like that.

But we already have something like that... It's FreeBSD, if you like text stuff and X windows or OS X if you don't like test stuff and X windows.

So stop whining.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

... But if the majority of distribution authors agreed on standards regarding libraries, filesystem hierarchies, and package formats, then you'd basically have the "distribution-neutral" packages I'm looking for, wouldn't you? And to think, package management would STILL be left at the distribution level...

And to make you happy everything would have to be exactly the same so you'd have the same distribution with different names, what is the point of that?

Ooh, elitism. You're winning converts over to Linux as we speak.

A) I'm not trying to convert anyone
B) If you start using Linux you accept the fact that you might have to actually do a little work to get something working. The same is true of Windows the only difference is in what aspects need the extra work.

People who value their time over "it's free" like living in the 21st century, where you double click an installer and be done with the program installation. People who value "it's free" over their time don't care about editing arcane configuration files just to install a text editor.

I use Linux because I value my time and sanity, installing things via apt and editing config files is simple and quick.

But see, if there were such a thing as distribution-neutral packages, you wouldn't have to take a step as radical as dumping the distribution you're comfortable with just to install a text editor via packaging.

If you're comfortable with the distribution what's the problem? You've already figured out the quirks related to installing and configuring things otherwise you wouldn't be comfortable with it, right?

Wasn't there a /. article about this?

[Chris Burke]

I seem to remember someone, an instructor at a community college or some such, who decided to teach his class to use the Linux command line. To do it, he created a bunch of scripts and docs and such aimed at helping the beginner, including a basic 'help' that gave some basic commands and pointed them at man pages. The article made it sound like it worked very well, and they really took to the command line when given a chance to understand it. I remember the class learning about running jobs in the background, and debating whether the shell should tell you immediately that it was done or wait until you hit return. Anyone else remember this? It sounds like it could be a great starting place for designing a "novice's shell" that would help people learn the power of the command line without being overwhelmed.

Re:From TFA

[TheWingThing]

I have found this approach work more than once, but it always took me a few hours to days to find some obscure usenet post and another and another to find out how to make something work. I'm not exaggerating, when I say it takes more than a few days, and you eventually give up hope after reading other users wtih same problems and there are no fixes. For example, I have been trying to make my JSP code read my resourcebundle files, on Linux/Tomcat and it just won't work. (I'm not providing details here, because I'm not asking for tech support, just wanted to give an example for one of these frustrating problems I've encountered.) I've read through the Apache, Sun and numerous other websites and usegroups but I never found something that worked and I actually found other people with the same problem, who tried the posted suggestions, but still didn't work. I'm doing my PhD dissertation entirely during open-source tools, in spite of my school being ready to provide me the commercial software, as a matter of principle, but it has been leaving me totally stumped once in a while. I dont want to deal with software bugs, when I should be concentrating on my research. Oh well, you need to be a little masochistic when you are a big fan of something.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Lodragandraoidh]

2. A consistent filesystem hierarchy is followed from distribution to distribution...

Actually all distributions should be following the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

If yours isn't, then you need to get them to follow it, or find another distribution that does.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

You just can't get over wanting it to be just like Windows. That's your own problem, not Linux's. In particular, you're stuck to the software model where you go "get an installer and run it." That's really not the model most Linux distributions use at all, and in my opinion and that of a lot of people who use Linux, it's an inferior model to boot. Instead, most Linux distributions manage your software for you. You don't go download a Fedora RPM on Gentoo, because that would be silly. It doesn't matter that it wouldn't work (and by the way, lots of packages would work fine)....why would you ever want to do that when you could just use one command and have Gentoo use the Gentoo package? It just doesn't matter whether a package works from one distribution to the next...just use the package manager that came with your distro, and you'll be just fine.

The point is that we just don't install software the way Windows people do. But our way is extremely powerful, and once you're comfortable with it, it's actually easier than downloading and installing stuff in Windows. And that's true across a very large subset of distributions...pretty much every one that's not unabashedly experts-only.

So just come off it. You clearly don't have the familiarity needed to make these judgements; in fact, your completely uninformed assumption that Fedora and Debian were the only distros with a decent package collection makes me wonder whether you have even used Linux at all...certainly I suspect you haven't used enough distributions for any appreciable length of time to warrant all your whining about how different they all are. You just sound to me like somebody who has a set idea of a problem, and want to come on /. and bitch up a storm about it without even bothering to find out whether it's fixable, or even a real problem.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[deus42]

Hasn't distributions like Lindows and Xandros addressed these problems?

All you have to do is fire up there package management system and look under "multimedia".

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[swillden]

You've just solved the problem of getting Linux on the desktop!

Who says there's a problem?

binary compatibility

[jbolden]

I'm going to go against the OSNews crowd and stick with Linus, RMS, etc... and say that binary compatibability is a minus. Because our system is "open source" recompilation of applications can be done at a central location. As a result its far more convienent to handle binaries at the distribution level than at the software developer level. Windows OS development costs are massive relative to Linux for even the simplist things since applications need to be supported at the binary level.

Why would you develop an OS infastructure based on source code apps and then push for binary compatability?

Re:binary compatibility

[IamTheRealMike]

Linus and RMS have never said "binary compatibility is a minus". RMS is a-ok with binaries, in fact IIRC he uses Debian or some derivative thereof. Linus takes pains to maintain the userland syscall interface.

Binaries are just a lot more convenient than source, and they're a lot more convenient when not done centrally as they actually tend to exist, be usable etc.

Re:binary compatibility

[jbolden]

Linus maintains the interface so that you can recompile to it. Also so that kernel versions and C versions are independent. That's far short of binary compatability across time.

BTW I'm not advocating source I'm advocating distributions being responsible for maintaining software repositories for their distributions. There is no question that for the naive user source is generally too difficult.

Re:binary compatibility

[Minna Kirai]

That's far short of binary compatability across time.

Wrong. Linux upholds binary compatibility for userspace applications across time. (Watch what he does when someone proposes to remove obselete syscalls... those things stick around FOREVER, in the name of "Don't break userspace")

What Linus doesn't support is compatibility for binary kernel modules.

Umm, what's he trying to do?

[Eddy_D]

I mean, when you sit down in front of a computer with that blinking cursor, you intend to do something with it right? The only reasons I know of why someone would want to use a tty session is to manipulate/crunch data or control processes. Use X for office activities, eg word processing.

Using Linux
-----------

Step #1, everything behind that screen is a file, and can be treated like a file, hell you can even edit a directory. Also, there is ALWAYS more than one way to do a task, usually more than two.

Step #2, learn man, cd, ls, mkdir, (some editor eg. vi/emacs)

Step #3, pipe is your friend. stdin, stdout (stderr later on).

Step #4, commands don't always have to accept data from you, most will accept data from other commands AKA using Step#3.

Step #5, shell scripting. so you don't have to keeping retyping everything over again.

Step #6 job control fj, bj, jobs. So you don't have to open another tty session.

Step #7 process control. ps, pgrep, kill, pkill, ctrl-c, ctrl-z. So you have some way of stopping a runaway program.

Step #8 Rudimentary data processing. grep, sed, awk, tail, more, less & of course cat. ...

Step #n, writing your own tools. C, Perl, Python etc.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

OK, if I have to be this literal with you... substitute "double click an installer" with "double click a PACKAGE" or something equivalent. Happy now? Why can't software installations on Linux be that easy without limiting yourself to a narrow set of distributions?

You clearly don't have the familiarity needed to make these judgements

Sorry, you're wrong. I ran Linux exclusively on my home machine for two to three years during a period ending around '99 and I currently use FreeBSD on two of my machines now (I've been using it ever since). In addition, I manage multiple Linux machines at work which use recent Linux distributions (Redhat AS 3.0 and SuSE 9.1). I am very familiar with this and many other aspects of Linux and open source software.

How I've longed to not have to deal with various quirks between the different distributions I work with. How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE. Yes, it WOULD make my life a lot easier. It IS a real problem when you have twenty different ways to install the same piece of software.

never fear

[JeanBaptiste]

now they have a linux distro with clippy

yay.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Robert The Coward]

You are getting 2 Issue mixed up.

1) Most of the filesystems under the bulk of linux distro already are lsb 2.x or really close to be that. Witch is why ".so hell" is for the most part gone. That standard say were file are and how they are laid out.

2) Unless it has changed proper setup of a library at least under redhat & debian they are in the basic format.

libwrap.so.0 -> libwrap.so.0.7.6
libwrap.so.0.7.6

so if you have something that is depend on libwrap.so.0.7.6 and something that need libwrap.so.0.7.7 the you can have both installed and just point libwrap.so.0 to .0.7.7 and link the app to the old version.

Problem is most software / disto don't link direct to .0.7.6 but to .0 or just to libwrap.so. However the is a the abilty to override the library location in linux using an enviroment varible and a few other way to deal with it.

I haven't had ".so hell" since I tried to upgrade redhat 5.1 to 5.2 by installing just the RPM's

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

You don't go download a Fedora RPM on Gentoo, because that would be silly.

Why? If I'm not using Fedora and I can't find that particular package for my distribution, it WOULD be nice to use that Fedora package, wouldn't it?

It doesn't matter that it wouldn't work

With a little bit of standardization, it would come damn close to working consistently.

why would you ever want to do that when you could just use one command and have Gentoo use the Gentoo package?

You're assuming I'm using Gentoo or that my distribution has an equivalent package. That's what I've been saying all along.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[madfgurtbn]

My point is that once again, people are viewing Linux through Windows-trained eyes.

If the goal is to have an OS/distro that will compete with Windows and OSX, then the OS/distro will have to accommodate the millions (or Billions, even) who will view Linux through Windows-trained eyes.

I spent months following wickedly obscure and time consuming instructions for compiling apps for Mandrake before I discovered the magic of the MCC gui for URPMI, then another couple months finding reliable mirrors.

Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when the same app releases an update for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times. I have seriously broken my Mandrake install trying to install software via means other than URPMI, so I have pretty much quit trying.

Don't tell me to RTFM either, because I have R'd several FM's but they don't help much because of the two dozen different ways the authors and the distros deal with installing software. Although I'm a clueless newbie among the slashdot Gnu/Linux elite, the rest of the world thinks I'm some sort of computer genius. I've been fiddling and reading and making and breaking Linux installs for almost four years now and I still get frustrated with the process.

Meanwhile, my main reason for becoming interested in Linux has evaporated--Windows no longer sucks. In fact, WindowsXP is a pretty darned good OS--better than I could have imagined when suffering with the infernal abomination of WindowsME.

I guess I just get tired of the slashdot mindset that appears every time there is a thread that suggests that maybe just maybe there could be some improvements in the area of user-friendliness of Linux distros. It usually starts with, "Just open a terminal window and..."

The more Unix-y and less Windows-ish or Macintoshy the solution, the longer it will be before any distro makes serious inroads among average users.

I'm willing to spend my hobby time fiddling with and learning about my OS because I have enjoy it, but most people are afraid to click anything they haven't been approved to click.

Re:Education. How about apropos

[baggins2002]

Everybody keeps telling noobies about man. The only problem with this is that if they don't know the command it is very difficult to get any useful information out of man.

We should also be teaching them about apropos.
man didn't do me a hell of a lot of good until I found out about apropos.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Bostik]

How did you know what to type?

That is the problem with every operating system out there. If the application for something specific is not linked visible by a pretty icon from the default desktop, you WILL need to find an app that does what you want.

For w32, you'll google or browse some of the several application index sites. For any given Linux distro, you use the provided front-end(s) to search through packages. APT simply eliminates a big part of the dependency tracking, for which you would need to otherwise search, download and install separate blobs manually.

Yes, APT provides a damn neat way to install/uninstall applications and upgrade them. But it still works on top of an operating system, which, by definition, still requires the end-user to actually do something for him or herself. If you want a magical device that does some prespecified things practically by itself, you are not after any kind of general-use operating system. You want a set-top box.

Installation of Debian

[dastrike]

I strongly recommend installing straight to testing ('sarge') using the new Debian-Installer installer.

The current stable ('woody') release (3.0) is way too outdated (over two years old now) for being able to provide an enjoyable desktop/workstation usage experience.

The current testing on the other hand contains up to date versions of software and works very well. It will "soon" become the new stable release (3.1)

Re:Installation of Debian

[Ummagumma]

Thanks for the tip. I just finished downloading Woody, so I'll go grab Sarge now.

Thanks again.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[IamTheRealMike]

No, he wants it to work the same way it works on Windows and MacOS, where the developers of the software provide binary packages that work on all Linuxes. It's certainly possible to do.

This is uninformed nonsense.

[Arker]

This 'problem' was solved in *nix decades ago. Contrary to the parent post, you CAN keep multiple libraries, it's very easy. Whatstitlib3.4.2.so and Whatstitlib4.8.2.so and dozens of other versions can be installed simultaneously, this is no problem whatsoever.

Oh, oh, there you are! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you the Debian Zealot that recently asked slashdot for excuses to replace working systems with Debian for no real reason whatsoever and then with hands to ears, singing loudly, refused to listen to any of the many great arguments that you shouldn't?

Yeah, I'd take your advice any day.

Btw, going back to stable is a pretty rigid choice. In portage, you can go to any *exact* version you want by just asking for it. Or to stable, that is also a choice, of course.

Re:Oh, oh, there you are! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I am. So many idiots like you made groundless assumptions - like 'replace working systems' - that I despaired. Yeah you're right, don't go to Slashdot for advice!

Actually there were a handful of helpful, sensible answers - and personal contacts - which made the unhelpful, presumptuous, condescending answers ignorable.

Re:Oh, oh, there you are! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there were a handful of helpful, sensible answers - and personal contacts

Which, I presume, by no chance could be called answers from like-minded zealots...

When you have made up your mind so strongly to use a certain tool, say a hammer, the world just overflows with shiney nails, doncha think?

Re:Oh, oh, there you are! :D

[sydb]

Yes, based on my knowledge of the circumstances I had made up my mind that Debian was the best tool for the job.

I asked for people's experiences. I mostly got people questioning my decision, which, given they didn't know the circumstances, was presumtious.

Got that?

Re:Oh, oh, there you are! :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't you give them the circumstances then? And if so sure, why do you need to ask? Duh.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[grumbel]

### So basically you want packages that create and manage themselves?

No, I want a way to install packages so that they don't need to be managed at all. As long as stuff gets installed scattered all across a single directory tree it MUST be managed to allow install/uninstall without excidently overwriting stuff, if you however install everything in a seperate directory that problem basically fades away completly (install with tar, uninstall with rm). Sure will have some other stuff now with library paths and such, but most of them could be workarounded already by extremly simple workarounds like wildcards in the paths definition:

LIBRARY_PATH=/Software/*/lib/

or the like.

OK, trying it now...

[djeca]

ed@capella ~ $ ($0 & $0 &)
-bash: -bash: command not found
-bash: -bash: command not found
ed@capella ~ $

Your point is?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

And to make you happy everything would have to be exactly the same so you'd have the same distribution with different names, what is the point of that?

That's not true at all. I listed an example of a distribution-wide "standard" in another post: the availability of basic command line tools like cd, ls, grep, cat, more, etc. You take these for granted, right? Now imagine how much fun it would be if sitting down in front of a new Linux machine might mean that such basic tools either aren't available in total or have weird, distribution-specific names, like ffls, catx, more_21, etc. It would be a compatibility and sanity nightmare.

However, it's not like that. Basically any distribution big or small includes the same subset of basic commandline tools, and they're all named the same. This helps compatibility and interoperability, doesn't it? Does the informal "standard" hinder distribution X's ability to be "unique"? No. Likewise, would a standard regarding filesystem hierarchies make distribution Y any less able to be the "newbie-friendly distribution" or distribution Z the "hacker's distribution"? No. These are just basic, low-level issues that SHOULD be addressed so distributions can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.

Punish your RPM DB

[Venotar]

rpm -e $VERSION3 --nodeps
rpm -Uvh $VERSION4

Re:Punish your RPM DB

[Venotar]

Or:

rpm -Uvh $VERSION4 --force
ln -s /lib/$VERSION4.so /lib/$VERSION3.so

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[opkool]

You can use apt-get on: Debian (which is its official package installer/mantainer/system updater), Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora and SuSE.

OR

You can use YUM on: Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora (which is the official package installer/mantainer/system updater), CentOS (which is the official package installer/mantainer/system updater) and SuSE.

OR

You can use urpmi on: Mandrake, which is the official package installer/mantainer/system updater

OR

You can use YAST on: SuSE, which is the official package installer/mantainer/system updater

OR

You can use up2date on: Red Hat, which is the official package installer/mantainer/system updater

All the above solutions compute dependencies and install required packages.

And all of them have both pretty GUIs and nice command-line interfeces.

If you have "dependency hell" in 2004 is because you are not using the tools available since, at least, 3 years ago.

Peace!

.so hell ???

[muyuubyou]

I'm not sure if what he needs is just a simple "man ln" ???!?. In linux, you keep both files (for instance mysuperlib.so.2.3 and mysuperlib.so.2.4) and make a symbolic link (with ln -s) called the same but without the versioning (mysuperlib.so).

Then, you install the program to use the particular version it has to use (it will most probably do itself by the standard distro procedure, or ./configure, make, make install).

Easy as pie.

There are worse things than the command line

[Animats]

There are worse things than the command line. There are programs with many hotkeys, and hotkeys that do different things in different states. With some of those programs, it's not obvious what state you're in. Some of the state switching hotkeys may be toggles, for extra confusion. Many of the hotkey functions have no corresponding menu entry. And they may not have a good "undo" capability.

Now that's fear. One wrong move and you're dead.

See Blender, the open source animation system. In the manual, the "Hotkeys Reference" extends from page 480 to page 505. There are so many hotkeys that they use combinations like SHIFT-PAGEDOWN and ALT-CTRL-T.

Now we'll hear complaints from Blender fans. OK, Blender fans, you're in mesh edit mode. What does ALT-CTL-RIGHTMOUSEBUTTON do? No looking at the manual. Only if you can answer that do you get to comment.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[opkool]

"double click a PACKAGE" or something equivalent. Happy now? Why can't software installations on Linux be that easy without limiting yourself to a narrow set of distributions?


Mmmmm

At least in Mandrake, a desktop-oriented distribution, you can just do this:

* open the GUI file browser and double-click an RPM, and you get a dialog to insert root's password to proceed to the installation of such package.

That is the expected behaviour in a desktop Linux distribution, and this is what you get.

Peace.

Let's all keep...

[t35t0r]

the masses using windows to do daily emailing, mp3'ing, and playing games. Those who are smart enough to save time in the long run and be more productive will come to linux on their own.

The majority of applications (in the past) which in one way or another have helped the progress of science and technology in industry and professional fields have been written in some form of mainframe unix. These applications/algorithms were then modified, upgraded, and enhanced into today's PC systems, the majority of which are running windows.

Most of the bleeding edge development in technology and in scientific discoveries will continue to occur with the use of unix/posix based systems.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[magefile]

Really? I can install games from my 9x/Me/2000 box onto my XP box, and vice versa? What planet are you from?

"if you're using Linux, this is how you install software"

Look on the developer's website to make sure you have all the requirements, then download it and "tar zxf foo && cd foo && make && make install".

Why can't I get a Redhat RPM and install it on, let's say, a Slackware machine without any additional work?

Same reason I can't install all of my Win 9x/Me/2000 on XP (some stuff works; some doesn't), or my Mac stuff on my Win boxes.

Besides, Linux is different. Number one, there's one company doing Windows - there's tons doing Linux. Two, 99% of all Windows software is for-profit. Most Linux software isn't.

Finally, you're assuming I *care* if the rest of the world installs Linux.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

Bravo. Now is this true for any other random distribution? No? My point exactly...

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

1)Your experience with Linux 5 years ago is probably not too relevant. Considering my experiences during that period, I would say "probably" may not be a strong enough word.

2)Your FreeBSD experience doesn't really count either, as it's not Linux...but on the other hand, is there really anything that ports isn't giving you?

3)Are you actually claiming that Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE 9.1 lack packages for things you need? Or that you have actually experienced serious dependency problems on them? Because I'm not buying that.

It still sounds like you are waging a personal war against package management. If you are out there refusing to use the tools the distros gave you, installing RPMs from a bunch of sources and source tarballs for stuff that you could be installing with a single command, it's not surprising that you run into problems.

All I'm saying is if you actually do run Linux, and you are having these kind of problems, you are really doing something bad wrong. I take care of a bunch of machines on several distributions, I know lots of people who do the same, and neither dependencies nor distribution incompatibilities are live problems. We just don't see them.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Venotar]

> How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE.

Dude. Source RPMS. I move rpms back and fourth between multiple versions of SuSE and RedHat all day long.

The nice thing about it is that you can make it work even when the rpm equivalent of "just double clicking" doesn't just work (a rarity in and of itself). With something like InstallSheild, if it doesn't work the first time, you're probably SOL.

unix' learning curve is ... HORIZONTAL

[Anonymous Coward]

If the learning curve implies an x-y axis, and x is either time
or total effort, and y is ability or understanding, then unix learning curves are
horizontal, not vertical. Why am I the only one that is bugged by this.

Do you view them some different way in your head?

Mini Icons Around Another Icon; other stuff...

[davidsyes]

"One feature of Gnome that I like is the ability to add "mini-icons" around the sides of an icon to indicate that a file is important, belongs to a certain category, or just that it's cool. After you've tried Gnome and KDE, you can learn that there is an entirely different layer underneath them, the "window manager," which you can also change."

This I find VERY KEWL. I've noticed it I guess since Mdk 10, and maybe I saw it in Mdk 9.x. I really am starting to like this feature because it minimizes the time spent digging around or into folders.

I hope this is a first, or that there is prior art. We cannot let the hegemon from the northwest hijack this.

In fact, we should have ALL contributors go back and research their own contributions, trace the time, and show prior art and get it listed on a web site. Since the USPTO is either overworked or blatantly corrupt, there needs to be an authoritative ALTERNATIVE, one that the UN, and any othe nation so interested, can turn to and bypass the USPTO when the USPTO is too slow or too beholden to Corporation XYZ. This new authoritative source, OF, BY, and FOR the people should carry enough rights, weight, and clout that even a half-brained judge or respectable lawyer could override, ignore, expose, or refute bogus patents 'awarded' to ever-growing number of greedy or omnivorous corporations.

Oh, I digressed...

What might be useful is if a popup shows a list of ALL the types of file extensions or metadata that are in the folder. The default time to popup should be user-set.

There is out there some developer who created a pie-like metaphor for file structure contents and where files are scattered all over the disk. Something a cross between that and the file structure recently-used apps (like in win xp, from that company called microsoft (lower-casing/deprecation intentional/perpetual, with me...), but which has changing colors or changing dot-shapes/other shapes could assist the visually-impaired when color is a poor choice of indicator.

Something I think which would be useful is a change in the typical shape of LCD or other displays. We need to (or it would be nice to) have more paper-size-proportioned displays that show text at better resolutions. I would love to have an LCD that nicely shows side-by-side pages, not just what the word processing app itself renders, but one that removes from exclusivity the rotate type of LCDs. They're nice, but pricey.

Anyway, those were my few cents' worth...

David Syes

Cool!

[Mr2cents]

'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"

Try this one as root: rm -rf /etc

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[menkhaura]

The ports tools (portupgrade & the like) will do the trick for you; no need to manually chase dependencies. Want to upgrade all your applications? cd /usr/ports; make update; portupgrade -a (with an occasional pkgdb -F if you use an unstable ports tree).
Go take a coffee, and your system is upgraded from sources. Additional customizations (such as alternative dependencies, compile flags per-application etc.) can be made by editing /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf. You can't go much better than this.

Next time?

[vwjeff]

I think that next time he RTFM

You are probally just trolling. If what you said was true, you are an asshat. There is a small number of Linux users that for some reason do not want to help anyone. They are 133t and want to keep this status. They fear Linux will catch on and the average computer user will use it someday.

I have used Linux for two years now along with Windows. I had problems starting out. I used a lot of message boards for help and for the most part advanced Linux users were happy to help. I do remember one time someone was not so helpful. I was having problems with X Windows. I wanted to know how to change my refresh rate, resolution, etc. What appeared to be a helpful user told me to edit a configuration file and change a 5 to a 3. He then said to reboot your computer. To my surprise the computer came up with a command prompt. What did I do wrong?

I went to my Windows machine and looked at the forum again. I then realized this jackass was not here to help me. He had posted things like look at what I told this stupid noob to do. Sure I learned an important lesson but at what cost? I could have given up on Linux then but I didn't. I understood that most people were willing to help noobs. If you are scared that helping people makes you less 133t then don't pretend to help people. I wish I had mod points. I hope your karma goes to hell.

Re:Next time?

[drmancini]

oh just drop it ... i never said i was the one to do it or that i approve of it ...

and FYI my karma went to hell :-)

Re: frameworks gets you out of .so hell

[johnrpenner]

there's a solution to the DLL and .so hell -- mac OSX uses frameworks to bundle and manage versions of shared libraries so that the particular shared library you use doesn't end up containing an incompatible version of the functions you need. We've all seen this happen, for example, when an impolite installer overwrites an existing shared library with an older (or newer!) version of that library that breaks applications that used the previously installed version.

Frameworks enjoy the same "single item" install/remove process as Application Packages. Contrast this with, say, the traditional Unix shared library installation which puts the library file(s) in one place (/lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, etc.), the header files in another (/include, /usr/include, /usr/local/include, etc.), and the documentation in yet another location (/usr/man/man3, /usr/man/man3c++, etc.)--hardly a system that facilitates ease of maintenance!

regards,
j.

A distro is a package management system.

[telem]

The solution to maintaining packages on Linux in general is the distribution. Put yet another way, when you speak of Linux in general (kernel + GNU utilities + *sh + / + stdlibs + user_programs) you can only practically mean the various distros. Now, with that in mind, allow me to restate your question: is the distribution solution creating documentation/ease-of-use hell? Probably.
Try to think of the various distros as competing package management systems (like KDE/Gnome are competing desktop environments). The Linux community only receives de facto standards; that is, standards the community itself decides on. That lynch mob swarming you are not those concerned about stifling choice. They are the n% of the community who's 'standard' you didn't choose.

i was under the impression that symlinks and versioning (e.g. libxml2.so && libxml2.so.2 -> libxml2.so.2.6.12 coexisting in /usr/lib) had mitigated (if not eliminated) .so hell. Are people still having this trouble?

I don't see a problem here...

[Ironsides]

A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type

It's called "help" or "-?" or one of a myriad of things.

You certainly CAN have multiple library versions!

[dwheeler]

This article is completely incorrect on a key point: You CAN have multiple versions of the same library, indeed, that's been true for a very long time. See the Program Library HOWTO for details.

The opposite

[jbolden]

Actually the opposite is happening. The early Llinux distrubtions all felt like 80s-90s style workstation OSes. Today we have distributions which are:

-- Designed solely around servers
-- Mid security server OSes (I'd consider standard Linux to be a low security OS) with the introduction of features like capability rather than permissions based access
-- Embedded systems
-- End user desktop solutions
-- Developer/power user desktop solutions
-- Cluster based distributions
-- Simgle purpose distributions (firewall, router, etc...)
-- Rescue disks
-- CD&USB key Bootable end user distributions

etc...

The distributions are much more diverse than they were 10 years ago.

A reply from the author

[dcroxton]

Yikes! I had no idea my review would stir up so much controversy. I don't want to add to the antagonism, but I would like to make a couple of points: (a) it is precisely when using a package management system that one runs into problems with different library versions. I've had a number of managed installations fail because the required library conflicts with an existing one. If there is an easy solution, wonderful! I would like nothing better than to know what it is. (b) while apt is wonderful, not everything is in apt. If you've never wanted to install a program that wasn't available in your distro's dockyard, you're lucky. (Or maybe I'm just too demanding.) (c) I'm not bashing Linux! I love Linux and I have invested many hours reading books, man pages, web sites, and experimenting with it. I would *much* prefer that my effort pay off with being able to switch 100% to Linux and ditch Windows altogether, than having simply to say, "Oh well, it was a nice idea, now back to Windows." I just wanted to point out that some things have been very difficult for me, in spite of the fact that I'm not an idiot (some of you will disagree with that judgment, I realize). I would like to push more friends and relatives into Linux, but I'm afraid to because I know they will run into some of the same problems, and I won't be able to help them. Sincerely, Derek

Debian's apt-get is obscure

[KWTm]

Does your suggestion of using apt-get really solve the grandparent poster's problem?

The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can't simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can't just have separate copies of 3 and 4 , since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this.

My impression was that separate versions of libraries (*.so) couldn't coexist. If this is simply due to my package installer (urpmi on Mandrake) rather than the Linux library itself, then I am mistaken.

Prior to settling on Mandrake, I tried to use Debian. I really did, honest. I even tried LibraNet. I could not, for the life of me, wrap my mind around dselect, the front-end to apt-get, much less apt-get itself. It kept telling me that I had unresolved dependencies, and could I please resolve them? And after (I thought) I had done so, it would tell me that I still had (other?) unresolved dependencies. Every time I tried to download something, apt-get would spend half an hour pulling packages off the net, stash it somewhere obscure on my hard drive, install, and then tell me that something was still unresolved. When I tried to twiddle it, it would then spend another half hour pulling the same packages off the net. I didn't know where the packages were stored; I didn't know how to tell dselect to use the packages that it had already ****ing downloaded rather than go on the net again.

Documentation was next to non-existent, except for that one big HTML site on TLDP that assumed you already knew all the Debian terms. One example told me to add a certain line to the "apt.conf" file (not sure if that was the exact filename). I couldn't find this file, for the life of me. Later I discovered that I was supposed to create this file if it didn't exist. Hello!! Newbie here!! Shouldn't you SAY this in your instructions!?

Every time I asked for help, people would talk above my head (not deliberately, I'm sure, but it seems that the gurus had lost touch with what it was like to be a newbie). One guy kept using the word "source" in a weird way, and it took me forever to realize that the word had multiple meanings (1. the origin of the Debian packages; 2. source code; 3. the name of the back-end that pulls packages off the net); when I pointed it out, he acted as if I were born yesterday, as if it should be not only obvious that there were multiple meanings, but obvious which meaning was intended when. All further requests for documentation pointed me back to that one TLDP site.

I tried Mandrake, looked at http://mandrakeuser.cjb.net/ (Step-by-Step Guide to Mandrake), and haven't looked back since.

Now, if you say that apt-get can install multiple versions of libraries where urpmi can't, then I'll dig into apt-get for RPM's. But, boy, slogging through Debian was a great drain on time.

Don't take this as an attack on Debian; take it instead as a newbie's perspective. This was over a year ago, and I hope Debian's improved since then, but honestly, I really tried. (Btw, yes, I now know that Debian caches its packages in /var/cache/apt or something.)

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[discogravy]

apt isn't debian-specific, so your comments about stable/unstable/testing don't really apply. The roll-back thing would be nice to have; and installing different versions of -dev packages might be possible with apt-pinning. I've never been interested in it so I can't say for certain.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you want has been done by large commercial applications already and works fine on the server side. IBM DB2 for example always ships with its own libraries and dumps them in /usr/IBMdb2/vX.Y/lib ; IBM WebSphere similarly dumps its libraries in $WEBSPHERE_DIR/lib. However, this isn't feasible for standard desktop systems. You end up with multiple applications needing the same libraries but not actually capable of sharing them, hence memory can quickly be exhausted after a small number of large applications are loaded.

In Windows, the "solution" is for Microsoft to provide a HUGE underlying set of libraries that applications can expect to be present on every Windows desktop. For Unix-like systems, it is a common expectation to be able to selectively limit the functionality of a system. So rather than dump every library every application might need into /usr/lib automatically, distros have taken the added step of providing a layer to manage the dependencies so that you don't start with everything-including-the-kitchen-sink. I think that Microsoft took the EASY way out, while *nix systems took the RIGHT way out.

For me, I have never really experienced dependency problems. I started with Slackware 1.0 in 1994 where every application is installed via 'make install'; nowadays I use apt or urpmi and dependent libraries are pulled automatically by the distro.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jbolden]

All centralised systems suffer this but Fedora worse than most - you're fine as long as you stick to the core repositories but if you add others (and you do need to do that, if you want a big enough collection to be useful) things will randomly break due to "conflicts". Just imagine trying to explain that to grandma!

Grandma shouldn't be mixing repositories. Nor does she have needs outside say the 5000 standard packages. You are really trying to address is people with diverse sofware needs. But they aren't "grandma".

Oh and BTW grandma was alive when people fixed their own cars. She's well aware that an engine for a Ford Taurus and a Oldsmobile Alero are not interchangeable even though they do the same thing. She needs to get the right kind of engine for the right kind of car. She could of course take an engine and force it to fit (compile from source) but she should expect difficulties.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[wobblie]

You are a fucking IDIOT. thanks for not understanding even one of the issues you bring up.

Thanks.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

2)Your FreeBSD experience doesn't really count either, as it's not Linux...but on the other hand, is there really anything that ports isn't giving you?

Ports is wonderful. What's even better is the fact that there's "one" FreeBSD, meaning package installation and system administration tasks can be done in generally a single, consistent manner. Linux doesn't give me that. It's always something like "well, if you want to do that, in Redhat you can do X, in Gentoo do Y, in Debian do Z. Any other distribution and it's up to you to figure out how to do it." I don't like that.

3)Are you actually claiming that Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE 9.1 lack packages for things you need? Or that you have actually experienced serious dependency problems on them? Because I'm not buying that.

No, I'm claiming that they aren't compatible with one another on a package level. If I can find a package for one but not the other, I'm supposed to do what exactly? That's right, fall back to compiling millions of dependencies by hand. Now on the other hand, IF we had what I want, which is package compatibility, finding a "Redhat" package would be good enough for the "SuSE" machine. THAT is what I want.

What I want is distribution-neutrality with regards to packages. I would love to be able to have ONE set of packages, for the the software I need (in addition to the base system) sitting somewhere and NO MATTER WHAT Linux I install, I can install those packages without resorting to distribution-specific packages. That way I'd know that all my machines are running the same exact versions of the software I want them to run. Additionally, I wouldn't have to worry about using a distribution that doesn't have a massive repository.

All I'm saying is if you actually do run Linux, and you are having these kind of problems, you are really doing something bad wrong. I take care of a bunch of machines on several distributions, I know lots of people who do the same, and neither dependencies nor distribution incompatibilities are live problems. We just don't see them.

Because you're always using "well-supported" distributions.

Re: frameworks gets you out of .so hell

[Minna Kirai]

there's a solution to the DLL and .so hell -- mac OSX uses frameworks

That's no solution at all. You may as well just link the application statically, if you're going to have it use specific DLLs in a non-global place.

The advantages of dynamic linking are: (1) less disk space, (2) common upgrades.

Both static linking and "frameworks" lose those advantages, in exchange for (often) more reliable maintennance.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jbolden]

What you are describing is how software installs work at the distribution level. Mandrake, Debian, Redhat have exactly the sort of functionality based menus you are asking for. If he does a websearch and finds "mplayer" they he checks with his distribution for mplayer. For the naive user "Linux software" should be an abstraction the way the understand that "the sims" is an abstraction for Sims for mac, sims for PC, sims for Linux, sims for playstation....

People have done work on what people want in their desktops. In the US home market basically the main area of dissatisfaction with Windows is TCO:

so what they need to ship are reasonable easy to use distributions loaded with family software at which run on very inexpensive systems. And guess what Linux had been moving in this direction for years now.

On the corporate desktop side software installation is a non issue since the IS department (which has no problem with apt) can do it. But what they need are standard library sets so that virtical app makers can support these desktops are reasonable cost. That is the app makers want to sell software not consulting. But the whole philosophy behind Linux is free software with the money being made from consulting. I don't know how this conflict resolves but since IBM runs the biggest computer consulting firm in the world they obviously like the Linux model.

Yay for Command Prompts

[Nurgled]

I don't really remember my learning experience on my Commodore 64 and my Amiga because I was too young, but I remember as a teen encountering my first "IBM Compatible PC" (a Compaq 286 system). I spent the next week poking around in DOS learning to do things, with only my previous experience of AmigaDOS to guide me. dir lead to a directory of other things and eventually I encountered the fullscreen apps like MS-DOS Help, MS-DOS Editor and eventually QBasic. Finding QBasic started it all off again!

I had a similar experience the first time I used a linux box. That box is actually still sitting on top of the cupboard to the side of me as I type this, still with an old version of Red Hat Linux installed on it. It was given to me by a friend already installed. This was an old system and X wasn't installed, so it was command line all the way.

Poking around command line systems is so much more fun than poking around GUIs. A friend of mine bought an iBook and I had got bored of tinkering with OS X within a few minutes. (the command line didn't offer much since these days UNIX-like systems are old hat.) I don't really remember learning Windows, which indicates to me that it must have been a pretty boring experience.

Re:Offtopic: Slashdot should Coralize popular link

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, except for sites that try to detect language or country. I assume google is one such site, as when I tried to get to:

http://www.google.com.nyud.net:8090/

It redirected me to:

http://www.google.be.nyud.net:8090/

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[brotherscrim]

I spent months following wickedly obscure and time consuming instructions for compiling apps for Mandrake before I discovered the magic of the MCC gui for URPMI, then another couple months finding reliable mirrors.

Me too, except that I discovered the magic of spending 5 minutes looking for answers on Google about Mandrake's package-management and thusly set-up urpmi, got all the programs I wanted, and so on in a matter of hours.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what some people here are trying to say is, sure, there are package managers for all sorts of distros and if there isn't one can prbly be installed.
I think the problem is the underlying filesystems heirarchy that the distros use. For example RedHat may install apache binaries under /usr/bin whereas Suse might install them under /usr/local/apache or they might throw the lib files in slightly different places (** prbly NOT accurate, but just as an example). Now, as long as you use that package manager for EVERYTHING you should be good, but if you need to compile something or specialize it in a certain way, it can be a pain taking that from one distro to the next because the package managers may do slightly different things with lib or binary files.

Why can't the package managers just standardize and say something like "binaries go here, under this standardized heirarchy structure, libs go over here, blah blah blah".... different distros could still do their own specializations, but common files would be standardized. What is wrong with that?

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice?

[khasim]

"The only problem is that you've posted a solution to the problem of maintaining packages on Debian/Fedora, not on Linux in general."

Nonsense. The technology is there. The technology is proven. The technology is Open Source.

Unless by "Linux in general" you meant Linus' work on the KERNEL. In which case, this does NOT belong there.

"Not every distribution has the ability to use apt or yum or whatever or even a package system."

So? The people who would choose that kind of distribution KNOW what they are getting and they've chosen it for a REASON.

"Or it may have a package system, but no one has made a decent number of packages for the distribution because it's not as popular as Debian or Fedora."

Again, the people who have chosen that distribution have chosen it for a REASON and they know what they're getting in to.

Seriously, name one non-niche distribution that would not be able to run apt.

"Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:"

It's called a "defacto standard". The LSB has tried to force rules such as that onto everyone and they've failed miserably.

"Of course, every time I bring up the idea of standardizing important parts of Linux distributions the lynch mob comes after me, because consistency and distribution-neutral package installation goes against the spirit of Open Source or something ("stifles choice", I've heard)."

Dude, when someone CORRECTS your MISCONCEPTIONS it is NOT the same as "coming after" you.

"I mean, wouldn't it be nice to tell someone "just use apt-get and do X, Y, and Z" instead of "[Install Debian] and use apt-get to do X, Y, and Z"?"

The problem is that YOU have not looked at ALL the requirements to achieve this.

#1. Centralized naming authority.
Otherwise, different distributions can have different package names. This would include the version numbering schemes and actual file names.

#2. Centralized package content authority.
Once the package and files have been named and versioned correctly, everyone must know what files are in each package. That way, package foo depends upon lib-bar and knows that it is in package bar-utils.

#3. Centralized file hierarchy authority.
What files go where. For all files. Under every circumstance.

Easily done for the MAJORITY of the MOST COMMONLY used apps / libraries / packages / etc.

But that's already working TODAY. As long as you stay with a particular distribution.

What happens when Red Hat includes kernel patches that cause some app to break?

But Debian does not include those kernel patches. So the app works with Debian, but not with Red Hat.

Well, then. That's easy, we have a Central Kernel Authority to rule on what patches are mandated and what patches are illegal.

Great, so we have the unified Linux system.

But then we have lots of development happening in the forks. Illegal kernel patches are loaded and tested and advanced development happens. But the people who want to load the latest stuff will find that it doesn't work because the development stuff is NOT in the scheme of the Central Authority.

So you're back to the original problem. People cannot use apt-get to install really-cool-app-v.0.0.5 because it depends upon a file that isn't available for the distribution they're using.

Just get over it and stick with a distribution.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice?

[Cereal Box]

So? The people who would choose that kind of distribution KNOW what they are getting and they've chosen it for a REASON.

Unless of course you're a grandma or a friend of some Linux guy who foisted his preferred distribution upon you because he knows what's best for your computer...

Seriously, name one non-niche distribution that would not be able to run apt.

Oh, I'm sure apt is portable enough to run on anything. You're just forgetting that a repository is also necessary, which only exists for the major distributions.

It's called a "defacto standard". The LSB has tried to force rules such as that onto everyone and they've failed miserably.

Because Linux zealots seem to believe that a little bit of distribution consistency is the worst possible thing that could happen...

But that's already working TODAY. As long as you stay with a particular distribution.

So in other words, your standard works as long as you confine yourself to a single platform? Some standard.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

That's exactly what I've been saying... try following my thread.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

You take these for granted, right? Now imagine how much fun it would be if sitting down in front of a new Linux machine might mean that such basic tools either aren't available in total or have weird, distribution-specific names, like ffls, catx, more_21, etc. It would be a compatibility and sanity nightmare.

Which is how commercial unix is right now and for better or worse it works and people deal with it.

However, it's not like that. Basically any distribution big or small includes the same subset of basic commandline tools, and they're all named the same. This helps compatibility and interoperability, doesn't it?

Only to an extent, there are many distribution specific tools, for instance on a Debian box type update- and see what shows up and then do the same thing on a RedHat box. Also configuration files are different, like the RedHat /etc/sysconfig thing which has no corresponding directory structure on Debian.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

It's possible but not terribly likely unless every starts shipping static binaries or includes all of the dependencies in their packages which will make the situation worse than it already is.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

And if you install with tar and remove with rm you either have to supply all the dependencies in the tar ball which will cause a lot of duplication and waste of disk space or you still need some method to check for the existance of dependencies.

If you think it's so simple why don't you implement it? If it works well people will adopt it.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

can basically download any application installer and it will work on Windows

False. Photoshop will NOT install on Windows CE. There are DIFFERENT versions of Windows that are TOTALLY, 100% incompatible with each other.

"Linux in general" refers to a range of systems that can be even more different from each other than than WinXP is from WinCE. Asking them both to work with the same packages is STUPID.

Installing programs, and the mess that it makes

[3D Lover]

Back in the Windows 95 era, there were a bunch of programs like CleanSweep that would monitor the install of a program (program files, dll's, registry entries, etc) and would build a log of what happened. When you wanted to un-install it, you could get rid of everything.

In the linux/*nix world, aptget and rpm can remove an installed program, but sometimes I have to install a program that's either not available in a package, or the version in the package has to many dependencies. So I resort to the ./configure; make; make install;

What I want most of all, is a way to monitor what happens during the make install. I want it to keep copies of old versions before they are over written, I want a full log of every file installed, and I want a quick way to un-install it. I would be one of the last people on this earth to know how this might be programed, but one thought would be to make a version of bash that can monitor the activities of the programs it spawns.

Maybe this exists? Anyone want to start a SourceForge project?

Re:Installing programs, and the mess that it makes

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out checkinstall.
http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/chec kinstall/

It will monitor the make install, build a redhat, debian, or slackware package, and install the package.

Re:Installing programs, and the mess that it makes

[Bisqwit]

Often programs that support ./configure support also "make uninstall", provided that you haven't touched the building environment after you installed the program.

Re:Installing programs, and the mess that it makes

[J053]

Take a look at checkinstall This cool package replaces the "make install" step of app installation, and can create a Slackware, RPM or Debian package and install it for you.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Coryoth]

Grandma shouldn't be mixing repositories. Nor does she have needs outside say the 5000 standard packages. You are really trying to address is people with diverse sofware needs. But they aren't "grandma".


Because that lovely GNOME genealogy package (GRAMPS I think it's called) is never going to be needed by Grandma is it? Or some other obscure (to geeks) but useful package? Not everyone needs the same thing. Sure Grandma doesn't need all of those 5000 packages, but there will be a couple that she would really like that isn't included in the standard 1000 package repository.

I don't want to be told what the "standard" packages that I am allowed to install are, and neither does grandma. we all have our own peculiar needs. Packaging systems, and apt repositories are fantastic for organising and maintaining a large set of base packages - believe me, I wouldn't have it any other way - but it doesn't address the issue obscure, or special interest software any any way shape or form... and that IS an issue that needs to be addressed. Roll on autopackage.

Jedidiah.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted this on a different branch of this thread as well.

I've been using linux for about 6 years now, I've tried all softs of distros, ranging from Mandrake to Gentoo (current).
---------
I think what some people here are trying to say is, sure, there are package managers for all sorts of distros and if there isn't one can prbly be installed.
I think the problem is the underlying filesystems heirarchy that the distros use. For example RedHat may install apache binaries under /usr/bin whereas Suse might install them under /usr/local/apache or they might throw the lib files in slightly different places (** prbly NOT accurate, but just as an example). Now, as long as you use that package manager for EVERYTHING you should be good, but if you need to compile something or specialize it in a certain way, it can be a pain taking that from one distro to the next because the package managers may do slightly different things with lib or binary files.

Why can't the package managers just standardize and say something like "binaries go here, under this standardized heirarchy structure, libs go over here, blah blah blah".... different distros could still do their own specializations, but common files would be standardized. What is wrong with that?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

That's not true at all. I listed an example of a distribution-wide "standard" in another post: the availability of basic command line tools like cd, ls, grep, cat, more, etc. You take these for granted, right?

False. There are plenty of Linux systems without those tools, and even without command lines at all.

You keep asking for "Linux" to have features needed only on interactive desktops ("workstations"). That's not what Linux is- it's not limited in the way (you think) Microsoft's Windows line is.

These are just basic, low-level issues that SHOULD be addressed so distributions can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique

Sorry, you don't even know what "LOW level" means.

All tyres should be 41 cm radius. That's just a basic, low-level issue that SHOULD be addressed so vehicles can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.

actually

[codepunk]

We currently running about 150 linux desktops here at work. I can safely say that nearly 80% of these users had never ever used a computer when we installed these desktops. These are all manufacturing employees with little to absolutely no computer training. We spend less than two minutes training them how to log in and click a icon on the desktop to launch their program. The enivronment is a entirely controlled thin client environment.

Hell a monkey can use linux in a properly managed environment.

TCO don't even get me started our desktops are up five nines and we spend at most a few minutes a week adding new accounts, or adding icons to somebodies desktop.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[opkool]

Just tried with SuSE and it worked as expected.

My guess is that this behaviour will work in any desktop-oriented distribution.

If Gentoo/Slackware/Debian/(insert a hacker/server-oriented-distribution here) does not work like this is, well, because they are not DESKTOP-ORIENTED.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

In the unix fashion, applications are dedicated to what they need to do.

Technically, none of what you're talking about are "applications". They are "utilities". An application is something that does real work- that you might actually buy a new computer just to run.

Utilities are things that help applications work.

It's insane (and sad) to call apt-get a "killer application".

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

Hasn't distributions like Lindows and Xandros addressed these problems?

Yes they have, but they've got a small marketshare amoung Linux distribs. The reason Linspire & Xandros can solve these things easily is they're commercial, so they're not afraid of a few patent-license fees.

Distribs like Red Hat Fedora, on the other hand, intentionally remove standard multimedia apps from their normal package list, because of potential intellectual-property violations. Can't double-click to play an MP3 in Red Hat!

The underlying reason that it's (slightly) hard to install a DVD player on Linux is because of the DMCA. If DVD players weren't legally dubious, then all standard Linux distros would install them by default.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Mr. Slippery]

Why can't I get a Redhat RPM and install it on, let's say, a Slackware machine without any additional work?

For the same reason you can't get a Toyota Tercel engine and expect to put it in a Toyota Celica, or even follow the exact same procedures to change the oil. "But they're both Toyotas!"

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[grumbel]

### And if you install with tar and remove with rm you either have to supply all the dependencies in the tar ball which will cause a lot of duplication and waste of disk space

Diskspace problem could be solved by hard-links. Download would get a bit larger, but not really all that much, especially since with todays system you have to redownload all stuff that depends on a library if it breaks ABI. That said, yes, you might need more than plain tar, but not much more, a pretty thin wrapper could handle everything. And anyway, harddisk are huge, bandwidth gets more and more every day, people however are still the same as last year or the year before, so better waste resources that grow over time and are cheap, instead of wasting valuable human time.

### If you think it's so simple why don't you implement it? If it works well people will adopt it.

It would just end up as yet-another-system, such stuff would need to be happening at LSB level and not as yet another 'package manager'.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Blakey Rat]

Why is shipping static binaries so bad?

That simple change would make ALL of these problems disappear. Look at MacOS for example. MacOS has always been lauded as easy to use, and has always had extrodinarily easy "drag into application folder, click to run" software installs. Why? Because MacOS didn't even HAVE shared libraries for a very long time, and after that their use was discouraged. Shared libraries cause NOTHING but problems. If you get rid of the shared libraries and staticly link programs, you've solved about 80% of the software installation gripes about Linux.

Exactly!!

[Spy der Mann]

Why didn't linux have ONE AND ONLY ONE standard executable and module (read: binary) format?

In windows, it's called .EXE (or .DLL for that matter. Still you can copy a system's exe and dll's to another machine, and it WILL WORK!)

Want to install a new program? Insert the CD, double-click on "setup", and you're done. Ta-da!

But on linux, let's see what's this? RPM? make install? error? WTF!?!? *reads manual*
*gets frustrated*
"It doesn't work dammit!!!"

And this is what keeps me as another slave in the Microsoft Borg.

There's no "outside", outside there's nothing. Just chaos.

If Linux can replace that chaos with some order, and ONE ONLY EXECUTABLE FILE FORMAT... you'll make Bill Gates wet his pants as he sees his entire empire crumble down.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Mr. Slippery]

What if I just want to be able to play some a DVD? Am I supposed to magically know that I need "libdvdcss" and "mplayer"?

Um, Google? "Linux dvd player software".

And how is this any different for other platforms? "What if I just want to able to make spreadsheets? Am I supposed to magically know that I need to go buy "Microsoft Excel"?

man pages are not for novices

[Spoing]

Man pages answer the 'how' question. They do not answer the 'what' or 'why' questions.

Because of that, if you don't know what you need -- let alone what command likely does the job -- the man pages will not help one bit.

When in doubt, I first search online to see what other people use and how they do it. After that point, I consult the man pages to see what the syntax means so that I don't nuke or dammage anything. I doubt that I'm alone in this practice (from novices through to true gurus (you know, the modest ones)).

Tip: Use the info command instead of man. I've found it is a good bridge between man and Google and often is all I need.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Cereal Box]

False. There are plenty of Linux systems without those tools, and even without command lines at all.

Learn to read. "Standard" was in quotes, implying that it's not hard and fast, but you're more likely to encounter this standard than not.

You keep asking for "Linux" to have features needed only on interactive desktops

Like a consistent set of tools and binary compatibility? How could I have thought that might be useful...

Sorry, you don't even know what "LOW level" means.

All tyres should be 41 cm radius. That's just a basic, low-level issue that SHOULD be addressed so vehicles can be compatible on a LOW level. They would still be free to be unique.

No, my example is more like "all tire rims should use the same type of nuts to secure them to the axle so tire rims can work on any vehicle." The rims could still have unique appearances and the tires surrounding them could be unique as well.

So what would YOU prefer? A completely different standard for securing tires to your car that varies from model to model or something a little standardized?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

but you're more likely to encounter this standard than not.

And that's not true. Most Linux systems don't have them. Maybe within the realm of what YOU encounter, it's true. But that's your limitation, then.

Like a consistent set of tools and binary compatibility?

Desktop Windows runs on only one CPU system, as opposed to 7 (or more?) CPUs compatible with Linux.

But within a CPU family, binary compatibility can happen today, without any "consistent set of tools". Application developers can release statically linked, zero-dependency packages if they wish.

A completely different standard for securing tires to your car that varies from model to model or something a little standardized?

Considering that I said "vehicle" and not car, and that airplanes have drastically different tyre needs than an automobile, I'd prefer the solution that allows air-travel to remain safe. That means non-standardized.

Completely agree

[Mr Guy]

Only just recently I managed to completely hose my Mandrake installation to the point where even the failsafe wouldn't boot while trying to follow a guide to update the kernel. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I'm definitely the guy my friends come to for problem solving. I'm pretty good with this stuff, I understand large chunks of it and configure most stuff of it from the command line. Here's the real kicker, I'm a computer programmer. I've got years of experience in C. I understand a good deal about Makefiles, dependencies, and OS concepts. I still managed to hose myself to the point I couldn't understand why. Anyone who has seen me on lists knows I can do some dumb things, but my point is that they are usually dumb things that SOMETHING should have pointed out. I've been convinced for a while that some distributions, Mandrake in particular, ARE ready for the new user. They are also good for expert users. Linux is NOT ready for the intermediate user. I often have plenty of rope to hang myself, and plenty of ledges to fall off.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Minna Kirai]

Or at least the ones on which you will be responsible for installing and maintaining the system and software.

No, it's not obvious. If a person has a user account on a Linux computer, and is able to place files there, mark them as executable, and run them, then he SHOULD be able to install packages as well.

The user can do the workaround of manually extracting the package with an archiver tool and then moving around the contents to appropriate positions- but there is no good reason to disallow someone from running rpm or dpkg to install programs to ~/bin.

Article Rebuttal

[LibrePensador]

This whole article is ridiculous. It appears, as it often happens, that no one here read it.

Here's why in no specific order.

0) He claims to have been running Linux since 1993, but does not know that Macromedia offers easy rpms to install its software and the instructions on how to run the script are also dead easy.

1) He rubishes Linux by claiming that it's just gueswork to know whether what works in one distribution will work in the next one. Nonsense, the four big distributions generally provide identical hardware support. (Suse, MDK, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian).

2) Check out the screenshot on that review. It is of Arklinux, which never had the horrible unattractive KDE 2.0 look, because it didn't ship until much later. This guy is out to make look Linux as bad as possible.

3) The whole thing is his opinion at best. Yet every other sentence has the word fact in it, when the review is far from being factual.

4) "Several distributions have had no trouble recognizing the touchpad on my laptop, but I haven't found anywhere to configured its advanced functions - things like being able to tap directly on the pad rather than using a button..."

Why doesn't he tell us which laptop and which distributions? Because I can use my touchpad fully on MDK, Suse, Red hat and Debian.

He then goes on to claim that powermanagement isn't compiled into the kernel by default. What planet is this guy on? All current distributions will display a nice icon with your battery status and most allow you to suspend to disk and resume without any issues. There are some issues, both because Linux is still maturing in this area and because many bioses have a buggy ACPI implementation, but for the most part, it just works. Of course, if you choose to run Gentoo or LFS, it is up to you to make it work.

5) "If I had been able to buy the laptop with Linux pre-configured on it, no doubt everything would be fine."

But you have been able to do so for the past 4 years.

http://www.emperorlinux.com/

http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

IBM's laptops were sold with Linux for a while, are known to work with linux and are internally tested to do so. Wait for announcements by year's end.

And as of late:

http://www.hp.com -> See the nx5000

6)Since this is an article directed at new users, can someone tell me how speaking about something that you don't understand helps new users? I quote:

"If the difference between widget style, window behavior, desktop environment, and window manager is still unclear to you - well, that's probably because it's unclear to me, too. I have certain notions of what they each mean, but I could not begin to give a good definition of each."

Well, don't bring it up, damn it. Just say to the user that you will be clicking on things to open programs and that your experience in this sense will be fairly similar to what you now do in Windows.

He continues to do this throughout the article to make Linux seem messy and difficult. There is too much choice in window managers, too many in text editors, too much choice everywhere, and you will be confused. The truth is that most distributions that you would put on a desktop, particularly the one on the screenshot, Arklinux, now default to one desktop, install sane defaults and choose best of breed programs.

7) "Since I am considerably more comfortable with computers than the average Windows user, I think I should prepare you for .conf files now: get used to them. Although things are getting better, [...] the fact is that most Linux programs still operate this way."

Nonsense. Utter nonsense. This is an article about desktop usage. My wife has never ever had to touch a configuration file. Everything that she needed to do whether it was in evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Juk, Bookcase or whatever was always readily available through a GUI menu option.

8) "You see, when I right-click o

Re:Article Rebuttal

[dcroxton]

Sorry, the 1993 was a typo. It was supposed to be 2003. What's wrong with the desktop screenshot?? I like my desktop. Are you saying it isn't really Ark? It is. I use 1.0-alpha 10 on that computer. I would upgrade, but there is no way to upgrade at the moment -- I would have to do a fresh install, which I don't want to do. Sincerely, Derek

Re:Article Rebuttal

[LibrePensador]

Look, Derek, I didn't mean to come down on you so hard, but there's a huge difference between 1993 and 2003. I think you will agree that the tone of my comments makes a lot more sense when applied to a user that had been using Linux for over a decade.

I figured that if you had stuck to Linux for over a decade and dealt with the poor device support and lack of software availability in 1993, there was no way that you could complain about Linux today.

Here's my advice. Wait for MDK 10.2 and install it. Google for easy urpmi and learn how easy it it is to install software with urpmi.

And you may also want to read a generic guide to starting up with Linux:

http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/

http://www.glug.org.za/modules.php?op=modload&na me =News&file=article&sid=277

Having said this, your article is poorly written, full of generalizations and would help no one at all.

Re:Article Rebuttal

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

So what? I've been using Solaris since 1997, and trying to use Linux since 2001, and I didn't even know that macromedia has packages like that.

I've installed linux on both PPC and x86 architectures, but sure installing is fine. All there is to that is partitioning the drive and getting a kernel on there.

Getting stuff to work beyond the kernel start is the main problem.

Let's see......Here we go:
Zoran zr36120 drivers. Where was I supposed to find out (aside from finally grepping the kernal source directory in entirety) that the driver is broken past 2.4?

X11R6 worked fine on my Powerbook 2400c. However since the Linux PPC distro disappeared, no more packages were built and even the isos are hard to find now. So I try Debian. Okay, X doesn't start and no amount of tweaking with XF86Config helps. Yellowdog? They list my Powerbook as supported. Except the installer crashes. But I know X should work since they managed to start it to get me into the graphical installer......which is somehow backed by python and dies. SUSE? Can't find CDs on their site (keep in mind that this is 2 years ago) Vine Linux? Looks almost like LinuxPPC and also supports my specific model laptop, except all of the GUI is in japanese. Oh so close.....

How about PCMCIA? 2 distros I tried installed the kernal modules for a different kernal than the one it set my system to boot with. I started blindly copying files around and trying to force start modules before reinstalling. Same thing again. Eventually, I found that there was another kernal on the install CD and stuff seemed to work to boot that. You know, since nobody explained to me that modules were kernal dependent, I spent 9 weeks, about a day a week working on that. And it was only recently with gentoo, that I found out that modules were built along with the kernal. This is 5 years later. No documentation ever had that written down where a "n00b" would find it until Gentoo.

More PCMCIA. So while trying Debian, every card I insert would kernal panic the machine. Yay. Googling didn't turn much until months later where some obscure memory range change seemed to fix stuff.

Let's try Fedora. To make a mythtv box. On a EPIA board. With a M179 mpeg2 decoder. Let's use the HOWTO. ..... Where's my ethernet? People said that Fedora supported everything on my specific target platform. All the hardware. the only thing not listed was the power supply but that's not a problem. So where's my ethernet? Apparently an obscure problem with the via-rhine driver requires that I go in there and comment out a check. Great, I'm good at hardware interface stuff and can read code pretty well. So I figure out the line. And I comment it out. And then I type make. Which doesn't make my module. If I have a compiled kernal and want to rebuild via-rhine.c what to do I type? Beats the hell out of me. After roughly a day, I copy over the .config file that came with the distro, rebuild the kernal and modules in entirety and copy out the module.....to find that the module identifies itself to another kernal or rather another kernal name since the Makefile at /usr/src/linux happens to have the wrong name in a variable. (don't ask how I figured that one.)..... anyhow, couldn't get MPEG hardware decoder to run, nor the encoder to be reliable so my friend who I was helping out, returned both and we restarted with a VIA KT266/Sempron2200 and a WinTV PVR-250. 1 month later, we finally started last night, a test run of the mythtv box to see if it crashes. With all the problems we've had, I'm betting it'll die at the half hour recording mark.

How about a PowerMac 6500? listed as supported. 225 mhz. 80 mb ram I think. And interrupt errors when I boot without a SCSI drive mounted. WTF? So I can boot when I have the SCSI cdrom to boot from. I can boot if I stick in a 40 mb harddrive on SCSI and run BootX from that. but if all I have is my 4 gb IDE, I'm fux0red.

Oh.... and ethernet. I don't have a clue as to how I

Usability Research

[glassware]

I have read dozens of angry replies where people complain that the author should have learned "man", or "google", or read documentation, or known about "apt-get", or so on. I've read very few replies that advocate taking anything the author says seriously.

If this were a usability research study, the user's behavior - no matter how unusual - would be reviewed. Even if the user flails about helplessly, the goal of the study would be to identify ways to steer the user back onto the right track.

I certainly hope someone, somewhere, is reading this user's article (I certainly can't get to it) and wondering, "How can we tune our software so that it helps to steer users towards things such as man, google, and apt-get?"

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jbolden]

OK lets work with your genealogy example. I go to debian and on their main repository they have:

Package geneweb: Genealogy Software with Web Interface

Package lifelines: Text-based genealogy software
Package lifelines-doc : Documentation for lifelines, a genealogy software system
Package lifelines-reports: Reports for lifelines, a genealogy software system

Package gramps: Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Program (Ed note: Windowed app with easy to use GUI)

I also did a google search and it appears that the overwhelming recommondation is either gramps (supported) or genes (which is alpha). So for the Debian user they would choose gramps. Similarly redhat and mandrake support gramps and I find .rpms with no problem.

How is this any worse

For Linux n00bs

[zoloto]

For the linux n00b, and general community we should create the following piece of software:

linux.exe ;)

It would scan your hardware. Completely. Then leave a text file on your desktop explaining what sound, video, chipset, usb, firewire, cd(rw)/dvd(rw), monitor, network, modem and any other hardware you have in your computer system (which is trivial b/c a lot of people just buy pre-packaged systems etc.) and tell you what you'll need in the way of modules you'll need. Possibly even tell you what distro your system is best suited for.

you know, a simple exe with an online database. It will give exact hardware information along with information as to what is it. for example:

Audio Intel 810 (AC '97 - or whatever), where to get drivers.
NEtwork Linksys 10/100 PCI (firmware, or other model info), where to get drivers
Video nVidia GeForce 5800 256MB, chipset info, where to get drivers.

What do you guys think?
Worthwhile for the non geek in the world (meaning 99% of the world)?

-zoloto

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Yakko]

I'm going to flat-out say that your idea of "one package to rule all Linux variants" is never going to happen. Ever.

I cite differences in libraries as a major hurdle.

This problem is sorted anyway, for the most part. If one's using a lesser-known distribuition, they'll most likely know what they're doing, and not care about having to make packages by hand.

The only time a given package becomes a problem is when it's a commercial package. It's then that you'll have to screw around with alien to get it working on Debian, or bang on it in some other way to get it to go on gentoo, and Dog help you if the package is for a specific kernel. . . This problem isn't unique to Linux. It's the same for EVERY OS.

Yeah, right, whatever.

[khasim]

"Unless of course you're a grandma or a friend of some Linux guy who foisted his preferred distribution upon you because he knows what's best for your computer..."

Those filthy Linux guys. Always corrupting our grandmothers! I hate them. All of them!

"Oh, I'm sure apt is portable enough to run on anything. You're just forgetting that a repository is also necessary, which only exists for the major distributions."

No, I'm not forgetting it.

I'm asking you for SPECIFICS and you keep coming back with hypothetical cases.

Again, someone who CHOOSES that distribution already KNOWS the limitations and has CHOSEN it for some reason.

Even in a world with a Central Authority controlling the naming of files, the naming of packages, the placement of files and the actions of the installer, that would STILL be a problem.

Simply put, why should the additional functionality of your hypothetical distribution be REQUIRED of all distributions in the perfect world you claim needs to exist?

If it is NOT required, then you are right back to where you are today. Conflicts and all.

"Because Linux zealots seem to believe that a little bit of distribution consistency is the worst possible thing that could happen..."

I guess that's your problem.

You are NOT advocating for "a little bit of distribution consistency".

If you can't see that, you're an idiot. That was why I pointed out all the things needed to achieve your fantasy. The Central Authority for naming all files, all versions, all packages, all the contents of packages, and all the behaviours of the installer.

Not to mention the limitations on what kernel patches are required to be applied (and which are forbidden).

"So in other words, your standard works as long as you confine yourself to a single platform? Some standard."

It's called a "defacto standard".

It works. The process works. Linux advances. Users have options.

Under your solution, MANY of those options would be TAKEN AWAY so that some idiot would be sure that every possible package he could find would run on his machine.

Re:Yeah, right, whatever.

[Cereal Box]

Again, someone who CHOOSES that distribution already KNOWS the limitations and has CHOSEN it for some reason.

And what about the people who DON'T choose their distribution for any particular reason? Let's say they bought one of those Wal-Mart PCs? Did they know about the limitations? Let's say I want to try Linux, so I download some random distribution, get used to it, and prefer it over wasting time getting adjusted to another one? Down the road I find that the package choices are somewhat limited -- let's call this distribution, oh, I don't know, Slackware: a major distribution with limited package choices compared to other major distributions. So tell me again, what's my choice? Blow everything out so I can enjoy simple package installations or live with it and compile everything from source? Some choice.

Those are two SPECIFIC, highly possibly cases. They are not negligible.

Simply put, why should the additional functionality of your hypothetical distribution be REQUIRED of all distributions in the perfect world you claim needs to exist?

Because it would give Linux a little bit of consistency and make installing software easier? Look, I'm not saying that EVERY SINGLE piece of software must run on EVERY SINGLE distribution, but with enough standard behavior between distributions, Linux as a whole should at least be able to achieve the same level of binary compatibility that the various Windows operating systems have today.

I don't get how Open Source zealots can on the one hand demand the world adhere to standards and on the other hand demand that distributions each have their own incompatible standards. It boggles the mind.

If you can't see that, you're an idiot. That was why I pointed out all the things needed to achieve your fantasy. The Central Authority for naming all files, all versions, all packages, all the contents of packages, and all the behaviours of the installer.

We already have multiple repositories, correct? All I think is necessary is that the packages use the same package format and that the packages install files in a location that is consistent across the majority of distributions (this would be achieved through a standard filesystem hierarchy). There's no need for ONE central repository, just pick packages off of any repository serving compatible packages -- this could be Debian's repository, Redhat's, Mandrake's, etc. Sure, the kernel-level stuff might be an issue, but a large amount of software isn't going to be affected by that.

I'm not saying that every distribution should use the exact same packages but that any particular package should be able to install a piece of software and have it run, for the most part, on any compatible distribution. There's a big difference there.

What's so improbable about all that? I think you're trying to make the situation sound utterly impossible just to defend the hopelessly fragmented nature of Linux.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

Diskspace problem could be solved by hard-links.

Then you can't just use a tarball, you need an intelligent installer.

especially since with todays system you have to redownload all stuff that depends on a library if it breaks ABI.

Rarely do I ever have to redownload a lot of things because of an ABI change, probably the last big update I had on my machine was Gnome 2.

And anyway, harddisk are huge, bandwidth gets more and more every day, people however are still the same as last year or the year before, so better waste resources that grow over time and are cheap, instead of wasting valuable human time.

If everyone followed that logic we'd end up where Microsoft is now, requiring like 5G for a basic OS install. I have machines with small drives, I'd rather not have the space wasted when there are solutions out there that do the job just fine and don't waste disk space.

It would just end up as yet-another-system, such stuff would need to be happening at LSB level and not as yet another 'package manager'.

Right. It's not like Gentoo hasn't become popular or anything. If you don't want to take the time to fix it, stop bitching about it.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Nothinman]

Why is shipping static binaries so bad?

They're huge and any time a bug is fixed in one of those libraries every static binary needs to be upgraded instead of just the shared libarary.

Look at MacOS for example. MacOS has always been lauded as easy to use, and has always had extrodinarily easy "drag into application folder, click to run" software installs.

IMO the tradeoffs aren't worth it and it would seem that most other people agree.

If you get rid of the shared libraries and staticly link programs, you've solved about 80% of the software installation gripes about Linux.

All that does is fix the symptom not the problem and in doing that you create more problems.

Clever Title!

[Tired and Emotional]

Dana, I wish I had thought of that.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Rosonowski]

Windows CE is only Windows by name. It's a completely different codebase, running on completely different processors.

Mandrake

[Xner]

You ought to try Mandrake. It has great GUI tools to manage packages (rpmdrake) and LAN/internet connections (incl NAT and PPPoE).

Personally I prefer the commandline out of habit, but these utilities are certainly not any worse than what you woul dget with windows. A bit less polished perhaps, but full-featured and easy to handle.

Re:Mandrake

[robi2106]

I don't doubt that new releases of these OSes will have the features... my whole reason to write the first post was because the ability to do so was so apparent and easy. With linux I have found nothing lacking in the "ablity to do it" department. The problem has been in the "do I know about it" department.

I should check out some new dists so I can get the taste of previous OS'es out of my mouth. IT would be like refusing to touch Windows again because of experiences with WinMe. (incidentally, I never had too many problems with WinMe, but then again... I used imaging SW so that once my apps and drivers were installed from base, I could juust wipe the OS if it got screwed, and rewind to a known state).

jason

Depends on your point of view...

[rnturn]

``A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.''

Just how is the above is different than the following:

``A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless dialog box prompt with no idea what to click; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a menu option that he discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it does or how to undo it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.''

Just call me curious. Computers are complex machines. Expect to be befuddled once in a while. It's not a cash register that makes change for you when you press the button marked "hamburger".

upload a virus!

[rogueroo]

Imagine you boarded an alien ship with a computer system you'd never seen before, built only for the technicians on the alien ship

Quite obviously you would upload a virus to destroy their entire ship!

Re:upload a virus!

[Bilange]

Yes, with a Mac-to-Alien interface :) (or was it PC?)

(Dont get it? Go see Independance Day)

You still aren't listening.

[khasim]

"And what about the people who DON'T choose their distribution for any particular reason?"

Everyone chooses a distribution for some reason. You may not agree with the reason, but that's how it is.

"Let's say they bought one of those Wal-Mart PCs? Did they know about the limitations?"

That would be Linspire now (Lindows at one time). Strange, I don't know that Linspire has any of the flaws you were claiming. Your hypothetical constructs break down when you try to apply real-world facts to them.

"Let's say I want to try Linux, so I download some random distribution, get used to it, and prefer it over wasting time getting adjusted to another one?"

Again with they hypothetical situations.
#1. You found a rare distribution of Linux with the problems you are complaining about.
#2. You downloaded it.
#3. You managed to get it installed on your machine.
#4. It is so good that you don't want to move to any of the more main-stream distributions.

"Down the road I find that the package choices are somewhat limited -- let's call this distribution, oh, I don't know, Slackware: a major distribution with limited package choices compared to other major distributions."

Slackware has thousands of apps. Slackware is what I started on.

"Those are two SPECIFIC, highly possibly cases. They are not negligible."

No, those are HYPOTHETICAL cases. A SPECIFIC example would be WHAT package that Slackware didn't have and WHAT feature of Slackware you needed that caused you to choose Slackware over a distribution that did have that package.

"Look, I'm not saying that EVERY SINGLE piece of software must run on EVERY SINGLE distribution, but with enough standard behavior between distributions, Linux as a whole should at least be able to achieve the same level of binary compatibility that the various Windows operating systems have today."

Yes, you are saying that. Otherwise, what about the people who want to run those packages that you're excluding?

"I don't get how Open Source zealots can on the one hand demand the world adhere to standards and on the other hand demand that distributions each have their own incompatible standards. It boggles the mind."

What "incompatible standards"? As others have pointed out, apt runs on Red Hat and others.

"We already have multiple repositories, correct?"

I didn't use the word "repository". You don't know the difference between naming a package and a repository.

"There's no need for ONE central repository, just pick packages off of any repository serving compatible packages -- this could be Debian's repository, Redhat's, Mandrake's, etc."

Sounds a lot like the situation today. You remember, the situation you were crying about?

"All I think is necessary is that the packages use the same package format and that the packages install files in a location that is consistent across the majority of distributions (this would be achieved through a standard filesystem hierarchy)."

That still wouldn't mean the packages would work. It's easy enough to accomplish that with alien right now.

"Sure, the kernel-level stuff might be an issue, but a large amount of software isn't going to be affected by that."

So, the solution to your "problem" introduces NEW PROBLEMS that you don't think need to be solved. Nice. Real nice.

"I'm not saying that every distribution should use the exact same packages but that any particular package should be able to install a piece of software and have it run, for the most part, on any compatible distribution."

That is the situation today. "compatible distribution" being "Red Hat" or "Debian" or "SuSE". You just have to stay within your distribution.

"What's so improbable about all that?"

The way you keep changing what you consider the "problem" to be.

Initially, it was about being able to install any software on any machine.

When the problems with that were made clear to you, you de

Nerd's greatest fear

[syousef]

Excerpt: 'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"

Um no. That's only a nerd's greatest fear. Most of us are more afraid of significant things that can cause death or harm those we care about (eg being stared down by a bear, or being in a plane/car accident). Fears that can be cured with a little research or a call to the help desk (or unofficial helpdesk of your friendly computer nut) are a little less signifcant.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when the same app releases an update for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times. I have seriously broken my Mandrake install trying to install software via means other than URPMI, so I have pretty much quit trying.

Oh, I've broken windows apps & dll's just by downloading stuff. I've enjoyed the most obscure of errors and taunting blue screens. Those are the things that made me toss the OS in the first place. I booted linux one day and swore not to go online with "the other OS" anymore. The fun thing about linux was that it came with all the manuals that I needed to do the stuff I wanted to do. Sure, I broke my linux distro a couple of times, resulting in backup up my homedir and starting all over again. But my total of linux installs because of systems that broke is still smaller than the amount of windows installs.

Although I'm a clueless newbie among the slashdot Gnu/Linux elite, the rest of the world thinks I'm some sort of computer genius. I've been fiddling and reading and making and breaking Linux installs for almost four years now and I still get frustrated with the process.

Slashdot GNU/Linux elite... There are more people here who are still struggling over ./configure; make; make install than there are people who hack the IPv6 stack. Don't sell yourself short, but keep trying. I've been working with linux for 8 years (3 years professionally) and I still find the occasional moment that I'm baffled (Rusty's brain broke is a nice kernel printk()). A bookstore that I occasionally visit carries a book "Teach yourself linux in 24 hours". The title should've been "Teach yourself linux in 24 years".

Meanwhile, my main reason for becoming interested in Linux has evaporated--Windows no longer sucks. In fact, WindowsXP is a pretty darned good OS--better than I could have imagined when suffering with the infernal abomination of WindowsME.

I can't really argue with that. As a desktop OS, windows has become a good OS again, and I've recently installed my first windows-only desktop again in several years. But as a server OS, windows still plainly sucks, and just for one reason: SECURITY.

I guess I just get tired of the slashdot mindset that appears every time there is a thread that suggests that maybe just maybe there could be some improvements in the area of user-friendliness of Linux distros. It usually starts with, "Just open a terminal window and..."

It's not really as much a mindset as it is a habit. On my workstation in the office, I have about 30 terminals open on average. Several for coding, some for the admin work I'm doing on remote machines. Xterm is still my most used application. The reason for that is because I had very bad experiences with GUIs in linux when I started out, and I regularly have to do stuff that doesn't even have a decent GUI yet. I'd love to see a GUI tool that does advanced routing for me, or that creates a perfect set of firewall rules, but the truth is that most of the times all of the tools are inadequate. So I just open a terminal, and do it myself.

As for why I don't contribute to the good OSS projects that are building these tools... I simply don't have the time.

I'm willing to spend my hobby time fiddling with and learning about my OS because I have enjoy it, but most people are afraid to click anything they haven't been approved to click.

Ah, yes... People are afraid of experimenting. After all, that nasty admin who flamed them for downloading a virus might come back and be disgruntled even more. The home PC might have to go to the expensive computer store again, and that repair guy will sigh again. As a geek, you have risen above the fear of experimenting and have learned from your wrong-doings. That's what sets us apart.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Lodragandraoidh]

Why are there twenty different ways to install the same piece of software depending on what distribution of Linux you're using?

Because, as some folks misunderstand, Linux is just the kernel. All the other stuff that surrounds it (GNU applications, Redhat package manager, The Gimp, Gnome, KDE, and on and on...) are individual applications that have to be integrated together - either by you if you build your own distribution, or the developers of the distribution you are using. If you pick a distribution, then you are bound by what they determine is the best way to deliver software. In many cases, you can actually have a voice in this process by joining the distribution's development team. In some cases the distribution development is created by a proprietary company - so your choices are limited to what they want you to have (no different than Windows) - unless you want to roll up your sleeves and do your own integration work (which you can do without having to drink the grape koolaid).

This is actually a good thing, since it allows the most flexibility; I can pick a distribution that satisfies how I like to install software, with most if not all the software packages I need. Unlike Windows, this takes some research - and in my case years of loading and administering many different distributions (Slackware, Redhat, Turbolinux, Suse, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, ...). Until someone writes a book (maybe I will) on the subject, that is the only way I can see to get the wisdom.

My quick and dirty picks: pick Fedora (Redhat) if you want a more GUI oriented admin interface, or Debian if you don't mind getting your hands dirty in the CLI - and you generally can't go wrong. These distributions probably have the largest selection of software available as packages. If you are more willing to dig into the nitty gritty, and prefer a more BSD-ish layout of the startup files as well as systemV compatibility, I would suggest Slackware - my distribution of choice.

The key to avoiding these problems is, as I see it, when you see a piece of software you want to load - look at your distribution first, to see if it is available, or maybe even already loaded on your system. In most cases I have been able to download and install my distribution's version without a hiccup. In those rare cases when I do have to go outside of the distribution, I have had few problems due to the adherence of most major distributions to the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy standard and the Linux Standard Base.

One 'Linux' install standard imposed (how?) from above is not the solution.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[einhverfr]

If the goal is to have an OS/distro that will compete with Windows and OSX, then the OS/distro will have to accommodate the millions (or Billions, even) who will view Linux through Windows-trained eyes.

To some extent you are right, but I think that the issue is that Windows and Linux are different enough in approach that this will be neither desirable nor even possible. Does this mean we can't compete with Windows? Not at all. But we target complete computer newbies, not the advanced Windows users who have more Windows experience.

Meanwhile, my main reason for becoming interested in Linux has evaporated--Windows no longer sucks. In fact, WindowsXP is a pretty darned good OS--better than I could have imagined when suffering with the infernal abomination of WindowsME.

Microsoft writes pretty darn good software for a closed source vendor, when you compare to other closed source alternatives. However, even as of Red Hat 6.1, I found Linux to be more intuitive than Windows. Error messages have always been more helpful for core applications with the exception of XFree86....

And I am not the only one. My parents (not very computer-savvy) have used Linux since Red Hat 6.1. They too have found it more intuitive and easier to learn than Windows and would not think of going back to Windows!

Don't tell me to RTFM either, because I have R'd several FM's but they don't help much because of the two dozen different ways the authors and the distros deal with installing software. Although I'm a clueless newbie among the slashdot Gnu/Linux elite, the rest of the world thinks I'm some sort of computer genius. I've been fiddling and reading and making and breaking Linux installs for almost four years now and I still get frustrated with the process.

I always start with ./configure --help if automake is used. Then I read the Readme, etc. Sometimes installing new super program X can be a pain because of missing dependencies. Many prefer apt-get or yum (try these, you will like them), but I bite the bullet and install from source because I have more control over the process.

Yeah, it can be frustrating at times, but troubleshooting Windows Installer errors is *far* worse. I had a customer who's HP PSC 2500 wouldn't install and I had very few errors to go on. That was frustrating, and involved Windows XP!

don't know what to type?

[planckscale]

Try $ mplayer big_boobs_adventure.mpeg

How clever of you to notice...

[Roadkills-R-Us]

The problem is that most installers don't seem to be able to handle this properly. Sure, if you know what you're doing, it's a piece of cake when you run "make install". But if you're using rpm or whatever, it's typically either not there or not intuitive. Especially in the GUI world.

Where do most novices coming in from the Windows world live/ GUI land. Imagine that.

Few remarks...

[RWerp]

knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet

Like rm -rf *?

I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.

He was very naive, then. I wouldn't say that one can get around without the command prompt at all or with minimal exposure to it even now (except if you have , say nothing about 1993.

I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard

I always bitch at X11 for forcing me to count keys on my keyboard: do I 104, 105 or 106 keys? Isn't there a way for the X server to figure it out for himself?

To be fair, however, most people never have to install Windows, so they never have to deal with the issue of hardware compatibility and settings.

Sure. I remember installing sound card drivers for CMI 8380 in Windows 95. It seemed that the order in which I installed them and other drivers mattered, whether the damn thing worked or not.

power management. Apparently this is not compiled into the Linux kernel by default, which means you have to recompile it yourself

Don't know what distributions he used, but mine has it compiled in default kernel.

By default, Linux usually opens programs with a single click

The usual confusion: KDE does it (as a default), not Linux. GNOME uses double click by default (in nautilus).

You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it.

Some strange case of "ark" misconfiguration. I can uncompress files with a mouse click. But still prefer to do it in the console... I guess it just depends on the personal habits.

Re:Mandrake Support Site

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this excellent site whilst Googling for help. Excellent resource for the Linux newbie who is curious.

http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

If I can find a package for one but not the other...

Damn it! I asked if your distro's lacked packages you need. You said no. And then you went right back to saying this bullshit in italics. For fuck's sake, you yourself just said you don't have that problem (i.e. that both distros have what you need). So shut the fuck up about it already.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

What's even better is the fact that there's "one" FreeBSD...

Uh...surely you jest. After all, there's only "one" Gentoo. But, like there are different Linux distributions, there are different BSD distributions also. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc. They don't all work the same way any more than Linux distributions do, and the fact that there are simply fewer of them doesn't really make much of a difference. Well, except of course that it means there's a whole hell of a lot less developer talent pushing BSD forward.

Aren't you about done with this pointless bitching? Or at least done having me whip all your alleged arguments?

(btw to anyone who cares...I really dig FreeBSD too; not quite the way I love Gentoo, but not far off)

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

There is that level of standardization; it's called LSB (Linux Standards Base). Furthermore, this is a fictional problem...the minor differences in where distro's put things don't cause upheaval when other things are installed, because they are designed to be configurable and find things in different spots. Typically the installer script (or makefile, or configure script, or whatever is being used) just takes care of that for you. Not only that, but it's not even different from Windows, where installers ask you where you want to install things. I could choose differently than you....but things will still work. Same here; I don't think I have ever had an installation fail because the installing package had its dependency in the "wrong place." Perhaps if you have actually had that problem you could be more specific about it?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[RustyTaco]

If the goal is to have an OS/distro that will compete with Windows and OSX, then the OS/distro will have to accommodate the millions (or Billions, even) who will view Linux through Windows-trained eyes.

That isn't the goal, didn't you get the memo?

Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when the same app releases an update for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times.

So the author of your favorite app likes doing busy-work packaging for Windows more than your distribution of choice. I can understand that, nobody expects much from a Windows "package" other than hopefully not to nuke your system. Packaging apps for most Linux distributions is harder because there are rules, and standards that have to be followed before the package tools will tollerate it, let alone FTP masters filtering utter crap from users.

Windows no longer sucks.

An obviously contestable quote on a number of fronts but especially when it comes to software management. The shear amount of man-hours required to keep Windows systems updated with various software is mindboggling. Damn every app needs personal attention on every system if only to be an intentional PITA with registration keys. Almost every app has to be installed in a slightly different way, sure, it all starts with "Double-click on setup.exe" but that's about where the similarity ends.

The more Unix-y and less Windows-ish or Macintoshy the solution, the longer it will be before any distro makes serious inroads among average users.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. You seem to beleive that only through half-assed plagerism can anything good be attained.

- RustyTaco

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Windows CE is only Windows by name. It's a completely different codebase, running on completely different processors.

Well, I've never seen the CE or XP codebase....but do you really think they are that much more different than, say, a uCLinux distribution and RedHat Advanced Server?

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

...you can't get a Toyota Tercel engine and expect to put it in a Toyota Celica...

Perhaps not...but you can put a porsche 911 engine in a VW Beetle!

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

If the goal is to have an OS/distro that will compete with Windows and OSX, then the OS/distro will have to accommodate the millions (or Billions, even) who will view Linux through Windows-trained eyes.

Agreed. However, since this isn't the goal, your point is moot.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Dude, you got horribly ripped off. This might have been the best post in the whole thread Cereal started, and no mods were looking. Well, except for me, and I can't spend them after I've posted.

Sucks, man.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when the same app releases an update for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times.

Come now. Do you honestly not see how silly that reads? I'm just going to do a quick phrase substitution:

Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when someone makes a package for me for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times.

Seriously! It's the same thing! Either way, somebody is making a package for you!

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

...then another couple months finding reliable mirrors.

If there are still any Mandrake users that haven't found this, go here.

Filesystem Hierarchy

[praedictus]

I find even the standard not to be clear in certain cases:
For example is it correct to build mplayer in /opt/mplayer or in /usr/local/mplayer.
Put the executable in /usr/bin or usr/local/bin?
Where is the correct spot to save miscellaneous tarballs?
It's hard to follow standards when they're not complete.

Re:Filesystem Hierarchy

[Lodragandraoidh]

To quote the filesystem hierarchy verbatum:

Chapter 4. The /usr Hierarchy

Purpose /usr is the second major section of the filesystem. /usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is stored elsewhere.

Large software packages must not use a direct subdirectory under the /usr hierarchy.
Requirements

The following directories, or symbolic links to directories, are required in /usr.

Directory Description
bin Most user commands
include Header files included by C programs
lib Libraries
local Local hierarchy (empty after main installation) [my emphasis]
sbin Non-vital system binaries
share Architecture-independent data

...

/usr/local : Local hierarchy

Purpose

The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator when installing software locally. It needs to be safe from being overwritten when the system software is updated. It may be used for programs and data that are shareable amongst a group of hosts, but not found in /usr.

Locally installed software must be placed within /usr/local rather than /usr unless it is being installed to replace or upgrade software in /usr.

So, /usr/bin would be where the distribution deposits user commands, or a package updates said commands, whereas /usr/local/bin is left for the administrator(you) to put additional software added after installation that is not part of the regular distribution.

As for /opt:

/opt : Add-on application software packages

Purpose /opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages.

A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a separate /opt/ or /opt/ directory tree, where is a name that describes the software package and is the provider's LANANA registered name.

So, /opt is used for add-on packages whereas /user/local would be the target for the output of such packages - if not part of a regular distribution; as mentioned above, if the package updates an existing part of the distribution in /usr, then it can put it in the normal location (instead of /usr/local). This is why you have to be careful to grab the package from the same distribution - because, by definition, certain assumptions are being made by the distributors that may be different from that of another. This is also good - because it allows wiggle room for a distribution to extend the directory structure.

As a matter of policy, I install all non-distribution packages/builds into /usr/local. This avoids any conflicts, and makes backing up and restoring my stuff easy (tar -cvf usrlocal.tar /usr/local) - not to mention, I know where to look when there is a problem with an app. System upgrading and restoration is as easy as sftp'ing that tarball to another machine, then loading the new OS, and restoring the tarball.

Finally, the Linux Standard Base is an attempt to close the doors on areas of paticular contention. The LSB states, among other things:

An LSB conforming implementation shall provide the mandatory portions of the filesystem hierarchy specified in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) 2.3 (FHS), together with any additional requirements made in this specification.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

Error messages have always been more helpful for core applications with the exception of XFree86...

BWahaha! Yeah, those fuckers. I can picture them, sitting there writing the error logging routines, going, "Dude, make that error more general. We want them to sweat some here. Do you want them to appreciate what we're doing here, or not?"

And I'm sitting there, looking at "Module failed to load." Fuck you guys!

(In reality, I have something of a love-hate relationship with X. For some reason, I get off on fixing it when it gives me shit. But I'll be the first to admit it can be a serious bitch.)

Attitudes towards n00bs

[MacGod]

Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Linux is that the very nature of its origins lead to non-intuitive thinking. Hear me out please, before you mod me down as the troll that I'm not.

Think about it, and read some of the other comments here. People talk about finding documentation is /usr/share/docs, or using urpmi, apt-get or various web sites. They lament how it is that people don't just use the "man" command. This highlights two problems:

- Linux names tend to be more counter-intuitive. What, exactly does apt-get or urpmi mean? I can't tell by looking at it. "About this Macintosh" or "Windows Read Me" on the other hand are extremely descriptive,m as is the omnipresent "help" menu. /usr/share/docs vs "Read Me Folder", which is clearer? This is made even worse on Linux due to its case sensitivity (ie to a new computer user "Help"=="help"=="HELP")

- Secondly, there seems to be a prevailing attitude that Linux is by the hardcore, for the hardcore. Too often I've seen simple questions shot down because those responding essentially felt that "every should know this, how can you not?" This attitude is quickly off-putting for new computer users. This is extended to books; there are scores of (arguably) decent intro-to-Windows (or Mac) books on the shelves at Chapters, but very few Linux books of the same type (no, a new computer user doesn't want to read "Hardening Linux for IP-based security hacks" they want to read "Linux for Dummies", sad but true)

Dismiss the new computer users all you want, but understand that the concerns are valid. I have 15+ years of computer experience, almost exclusively on Mac and Windows. But when I use the Linux boxes in my Eng or CIS labs, I barely know the basic commands. Furthering this problem is that in three different labs each uses a different method for something as simple as mounting a floppy.

Yes, there are some dumb computer users out there; but there are also some experienced users who just need to get their foot in the door, and there are several road blcosk to Linux which make that harder.

Problem with your example

[shadow_slicer]

The problem with your example is it assumes the shell will expand the wildcard '*'. This is not a function of the program, but the way in which it is called.
If I saw in a man page that "ls -R *mary*" would list all files with 'mary' in the title, I would assume that the program itself was doing the expansion. If I happened to be a programmer and wanted to execute that program and read from it's output, I would be convinced that [a functional equivalent to]
execv("ls","-R","*mary*",0);
would provide me with the data I need.

What you're looking for should be in a commandline tutorial, not in the man pages. How would you like it if you had to go through pages of examples just to look up which flags causes find to use case insensitive filename matching and dereference symlinks. Man pages are for reference, not instruction.

Anyway, the most useful stuff as far as man pages go, would be found under the man page for the shell you're using. Apropos can also help.

Anyway, I would probably use "find -iname \*mary\*" to find a file with mary in the title -- find is much better at finding files than ls (and in fact, I don't think your example would actually work since the shell will only expand the current directory, so you wouldn't get the *mary* files in subdirectories). I would probably also use "find" to find all files modified in the last 10 days, but I'd have to review the man page to find the appropriate syntax.

Interesting

[zogger]

yes it would. With hard drive space being so cheap now, there's little need for dependencies and the confusion of what goes where with all the distros. Stick the libraries with the app, the app can go wherever. Joe user can see a web page with a decent "linux" app, go "yep, jiss what I need", download it to directory of choice, install it. No going "hmm, it's an RPM but izzit a mandrake or an ochre chapeau or a ... and which version of one of them izzit.. hmm... " Putting it all together from the gitgo makes sense in 2004. In 1994, nope, shared libraries were necessary, not today though, it's inertia that keeps that action going more than anything else, because it's from "back in the day" and stuck in the gurus minds that's how it should always be.. nuts! Makes sense to me to move forward. Seems like a decent project, hope he can find some gratis hosting space someplace.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[Rosonowski]

Different kernels, I would imagine, so, yes.

Someone might prove me wrong, but I think I'm correct.

I Hate Package Managers

[reallocate]

Package managers lock you into the material available for your packaging system. If you need something that's only available in souce, then, in my experience, you run a greater risk by installing it than you would by installing it on a system that didn't use a package manager.

Typically, most people equate package managers with dependcy resolvers. Of course, they are not the same. Slackware has a package manager, for example, but no dependency resolver.

As a long-time Slackware user, I tend to install most new software from source. So, in effect, I become my own dependency resolver. This is seldom a problem. I know what's on my machine and I don't install code out of simple curiosity.

Everytime I've given a system that uses a dependency resolver, I've eventually run into a problem whose resolution requires me to learn more about the system's package manager/dependency resolver that I want to learn. So, they are nice for a while, but they add extra layers of complexity and they always break.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[reallocate]

How is apt-get supposed to be a solution to te shared library problem?

Apt-get isn't AI or magic. It's people who determine the dependencies and it's people who break programs by linking with specific outdated and/or conflicting libraries.

If Programs A and B both depend on mutually conflicting libraries, no dependency resolver will help.

You're Right; They're Wrong

[reallocate]

You're gonna be plastered by people chanting "choice" and who, as a matter of warped principal, will never concede that anything at all about Windows might actually be worthy of emulation.

There is absolutely no reason why sofware installation should not be standardized in Linux. Software installation is an occasional, mundane, and necessary task. The current abundance of package and dependency resolution schemes offers a false choice that, in reality, limits and confines the user by locking him into that particular system.

Software installation is not what we buy computers for, regardless of how we use them or what OS they run. The continuing focus on it within the Linux community testifies to the immaturity of at least elements in that community and their inability to cooperatively resolve a problem that should be invisible to users.

The goal should be the ability of users to install software from any repository on any distribution.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[0racle]

Because of the packaging. Go and install a fresh Windows 95, now go and download an MSI file. 95 has no clue what to do with it. The app probably will run just fine on Red Hat, Debian, slack, or what have you, you just have a package in a foreign format. Had the app been distributed in a common format, say a tarball, then all you'd have to do is use tar and extract it.

There are differences between distros because thats how they choose to do things, welcome to community driven software, not everyone thinks exactly the same way. If you don't like how one does it, go somewhere else and use theirs.

Linux and a Linux Distribution are not the same things, Linux is a kernel, a Distribution takes that kernel, adds what else is needed to make it usable. In that process they made some decisions as to how to install software, and what to install. That is why there are different ways of doing things, because there are different people driving why a distro exists, that is why when you ask how do I install x in Linux the first question is 'What distro.' It matters because you don't install anything on Linux, its just a kernel, you install something to fit with the system as a whole.

Linux != WM

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems Derek has no clue what Linux is and isn't... he seems confused as to much his his Linux developers did x-y-z has nothing to do with Linux but more with developers of different window managers or apps. You could almost change all instances of Linux to NetBSD or some other BSD and you get the same story...

Nor does he seem to understand distro's don't make Linux... after all Linux is just the kernel... everything else is well distro fluff filler.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[IamTheRealMike]

No,you can do it with dep resolution as well. Look at autopackage. What's really needed is a unified base set/platform though.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[rjstanford]

I also did a google search and it appears that the overwhelming recommondation is either gramps (supported) or genes (which is alpha). So for the Debian user they would choose gramps. Similarly redhat and mandrake support gramps and I find .rpms with no problem.

How is this any worse

Of course, you realize that by the same logic Windows users should never install any web browser but IE (hey, it comes in their distribution and can be automatically updated). Same with any media player that's not WMP. After all, who cares what software you want to run - if a similar package is available in the distribution, that's what you should use, right?

Sheesh.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jbolden]

I said naive users, not general users. Naive windows users don't use Winamp or Mozilla.

Further Microsoft, unlike Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, etc... has never claimed to offer a full suite of every type of application you could need (though they have drifted much closer in the last 15 years due to acquisitions). More importantly they certainly don't package a full suite as part of Windows.

Now if they offered a package with:

Windows Professional
Microsoft Office Professional
Visio
VS .net
a selection of games
A new collection of multimedia editing tools
etc....
Then you could argue that the situation is generallly similar and your analogy holds.

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[jusdisgi]

uCLinux and Linux proper are different kernels. They share some code, obviously, but it's more than likely that so do the CE and XP kernels, and it will be somewhat tricky to show that one way or the other....

rpm handles multiple libraries painlessly

[dwheeler]

RPM handles multiple libraries painlessly. Use "-i" if you want to install a new library (while keeping the old), and use "-U" if you want to update a library (in other words, remove the old and add the new).

Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME!

[mgcarley]

I would say that the reason you can't install programs across platform is because although say, Redhat and Slackware are under the Linux umbrella, they are still effectively different operating systems.