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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.'"
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.
'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.
Michalangelo Progr
I think the author is just pissed because he got goatse'd a few times.
$command -h
$command --help
man $command
info $command
http://www.google.com/search?q=$command
use brain;
"Obscenity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker." - cloak42
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.
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.
I hate sigs.
'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.
www.enterweb.pt
someone without a clue writes a crappy essay
someone else w/o a clue links it on slashdot
lemmings knock the site offline
Check out the old story.
The Command Line - Best Newbie Interface?
Free XBox, PS2
[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!
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
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.
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.
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
|/usr/games/fortune
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.
If there are any windows-users actually in this thread... and they get trapped in a DLL situation. I would suggest trying these programs...
p .shtml
l s.shtml will show all the loaded dlls.
:)
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procex
It'll tell all the processes associated with a running program.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/listdl
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
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]. #"
stuff |
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.
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.
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.
Three Squirrels
... 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.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
There is nothing in the article about being homo.
The real article.
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.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
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:
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"?
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.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
> 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!
We live, as we dream -- alone....
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.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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 :)
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
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:
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.
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.
think that next time he RTFM ...
/root/.
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
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
From experience, most help comes from stringing together incomprehensible usenet posts and articles found on google
:) (I don't know if this smiley is appropriate at this point though).
:)
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
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
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
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?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
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...
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?
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?
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
./configure
cd foo
make
make install
Source tarballs aren't as scary as people make them out to be...and they typically work across distributions.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
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.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
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?
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.
- I stole your sig.
You are getting 2 Issue mixed up.
.0.7.7 and link the app to the old version.
.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.
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
Problem is most software / disto don't link direct to
I haven't had ".so hell" since I tried to upgrade redhat 5.1 to 5.2 by installing just the RPM's
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.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
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)
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
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.
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.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
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). /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf. You can't go much better than this.
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
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
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
Sincerely, Derek
A curious little blog
"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.
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.
./configure; make; make install;
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
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?
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.
This whole article is ridiculous. It appears, as it often happens, that no one here read it.
.conf files now: get used to them. Although things are getting better, [...] the fact is that most Linux programs still operate this way."
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
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
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
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
"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.
Just how is the above is different than the following:
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".
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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.
/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:
/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")
Think about it, and read some of the other comments here. People talk about finding documentation is
- 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.
- 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.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein