The Stealth Desktop Part III

uninet writes "In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series about Slackware Linux, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware using KDE."

Comments

Command line examples would be useful

[Viol8]

To be fair , slackware isn't really the first choice as a desktop system but it is among the first choices for a backend server (I use it for such myself). With that in mind I'm not sure how to configure printers via a GUI is all that much use for most slackware users. I personally would be far more interested to see how to do it via the command line so you can configure the things via a dial up at 3 in the morning when things have gone pear shaped at work. Anyway , no doubt other people will have other opinions :)

Re:Command line examples would be useful

[polecat_redux]

I may be completely wrong, but from what I can tell, Slackware doesn't have all of the bells and whistles that other distro's do. The installation process for most other distro's for example, exhibit a lot more hand-holding than Slackware, and AFAIK, they also include various utilities that make system configuration much easier. I'm sure there are more differences, but I always got the feeling that Slackware lends itself more towards the plain old vanilla, command-line incarnation of Linux.

Re:Command line examples would be useful

[anonymous cowherd (m]

I don't see how you can characterize a distro that has KDE, etc as "server oriented" vs "desktop oriented," as some of the other posts imply. The key distinction a lot of people seem to be missing, though, is "How friendly is the install procedure?"

In terms of usability, for someone coming from a Windows background, I think KDE is alright. Maybe not perfect, but definitely not terrible.

Take a look at the other distros that seem to be mentioned as "desktop oriented" or "user friendly": Mandrake, SuSe, RedHat. What do they all have in common? A nice, pretty installer.

Now, look at the so-called "server-oriented" distros: Debian, Slack, hmm, I can't really think of any others. I am not 100% certain about Slack these days, but back when I used it aeons ago, the install wasn't very user-friendly to the average computer user. I was comfortable with it as a hobbyist, but the average Joe probably would not be. (It's too bad TFA is slashdotted, otherwise I might be able to check my facts on slack 10. :( )

Gentoo, OTOH, is in a class by itself. I run it, I love it, but my mom would not touch it. Installing and setting up a decent environment is a serious commitment. I suppose as a server, it could work, as long as the PHBs are kept away from it, but one would need linux sysadmins that actually know what they're doing, rather than clicking through a pretty install program on Redhat Enterprise Edition.

I'm glad someone wrote about Slackware

[mind21_98]

Slackware was my first and still favorite Linux distro (back from the a.out days). At one point I uninstalled both Redhat and Debian in favor of Slackware. Eduardo should be commended on making Slackware more accessable to those who want to try Linux.

Re:I'm glad someone wrote about Slackware

[polecat_redux]

If you ever feel especially masochistic, check out Linux From Scratch. It's essentially a walkthrough that takes you step-by-step through the process of compiling a fresh toolchain which you then use to compile all of the necessary applications needed to construct a basic Linux system. Once you're done, you will likely find the process rather fulfilling (in addition to all that new knowledge rattling around in your head).

Printers are a horror !!

[Gopal.V]

Printers in Linux have been a horrible experience for me (winmodems win for being the MOST horrible). Especially if it's a remote printer , one of those which runs SMB printing services (as in office).

This CUPS Horror fairly describes why a Gooey interface to printers are not enough.

Looks like the article was slashdotted ... it stopped half way without images.

Re:Printers are a horror !!

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, it can be a pain, but to be fair Windows shares part of the blame for this as well. Last time I tried to use a Windows shared printer, it wouldn't appear in the Fedora "select your printer" dialog ... a bit of poking around revealed that it didn't appear in another Windows machine as well despite being shared and there being apparently nothing wrong. Windows file and printer sharing has always been awful, I've wasted many hours trying to get Windows 98 machines to talk to XP and vice-versa - given that it doesn't even work reliably between Windows machines it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that Linux has issues as well.

The good news is that ZeroConf is being integrated into Linux quite rapidly now that Apples sucky code has been abandoned and Howl became available. Apparently quite a few modern printers support it natively so now maybe Windows printer sharing can be at least partially bypassed in some larger networks.

What to compare?

[pedestrian crossing]

I think the main issues of feature comparison between distributions, in the context of widespread desktop adoption, are (in order of importance):

1. Ability to easily add and remove peripherals.
2. Ability to easily add/remove/update software.
3. Ability to easily install and consistantly get a good working state.

What is needed

[AaronGTurner]

To actually convince people to swap to Linux on the desktop it needs to be easy enough to use. Basically this means familiar enough - i.e. uses similar enough paradigms to Windows for users to get the hang of general use instantly. Whilst things like some management is going to be different, it should take only one article, if that, to get end users up and running with desktop Linux doing basic things such as surfing the web, using email, word processing. If it takes more, then Linux isn't there yet.

Having been using Unix for 15 years it is hard for me to tell if Linux is there yet as I am not a naieve user, but the likes of Lindows and Lycoris seem to be very usable, as do distributions with slightly less of a naieve user focus such as SuSe and Mandrake (and RedHat was going in that direction to before the Enterprise/Fedora split). So things are going in the right direction at least.

What would be interesting is to see a proper survey of users of a variety of levels who have never previously used Linux and see how they react to the latest distros on the desktop.

Try Ubuntu, GNOME 2.8 powered plug and play Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It has recently been released and it has caused quite a stir for its ease of use despite being based on Debian. For me its the first GNOME since 1.4 that is better than KDE. I suggest you try it and you will see why Slackware is a minority and why thousands of user are switching to Ubuntu!

Ubuntu Linux
Wikipedia article.

Desktop OS?

[Outsider_99]

I used to use Redhat/mandrake on the desktop. But then I discovered Slackware and started running it on my desktop. Its very good... but you need to know a bit about the internals before you can start using it. I like it because it doesnt try do everything for you and installing other things is easy. I think its also a good distro to start learning linux.

Re:Desktop OS?

[WhiteDeath]

Agreed...

Nice easy dialogs and next buttons are good if you've never used something, and for the average user (web, email, desktop publishing etc) they are perfect - ie they don't want to know about doing wierd things that no-one else thought of, and the less choices they have about how the OS works, the better.

On the other hand, I choose Slackware because there is NO big magic button that you press to make it all work like someone else wanted, and hose all your tweaked scripts back to default, or worse completely dead, at the same time :-)
(yes, there are the standard KDE/Gnome config tools, but they are designed to be reasonably distro-neutral)

That said, once the system is configured, there is basically zero difference between distros - they all run the same window managers, and the same linux apps, and the same kernels (just different versions of each, mostly depending on release date).

Re:Call This A troll. I Don't Care.

[Lumpy]

Um ... no.

slackware is nither simple or clean, although it does put things in the filesystem where they belong unlike debian,redhat,mandrake and suse.. so reading that man file on apache makes sense. but simple?? no it forces you you actually learn how to config a linux system.

It's most desireable trait is that it is ungodly faster than all the above Distros. A simple install no a underpowered Duron 1.4ghz processor and only 512 meg of ram a Slackware install is snappy feeling and Java + games run on it nicely.

EXACT same machine running mandrake, fedora,suse or debian is over 2 times slower to the point that popcap java games are all herky-jerky, you no longer can play DVD's and there is no way in hell you can play Unreal Tournament on it (yet it plays wunderfully in slackware on the same machine.

Slackware is raw speed, and many members of the LUG turn to it when they want to use gnome or KDE on an older machine.

Slackware and X

[trezor]

Oh, cmon! Be a little fair will, you?

The way I learned how Linux works, as in for real, was by using Slackware. I'll admit SuSe and Debian are way ahead in the ease-of-use department, but trying to tweak those distro's is something I find truly painfull. And it hides the inner workings so well, that moving to another distro means learning everything all over.

But to your piont, if you've read the configuration manual for slackware (yes, if you're truly clueless at something, you can resort to manuals), it's right there.

So even if the installer doesn't tell you, it's not like it's a big mysterious secret how to config X. And if you know it's called X and you want to run it... You probably know about XFree86Config?