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Making the 'Best' Desktop Linux System
NorhLoudspeaker writes "Michael C. Barnes gives DesktopLinux.com readers an in-depth analysis of the technologies that make open source a great alternative to proprietary operating systems. Examining the various components that constitute a complete system, Barnes provides practical advice and instruction on how to improve your desktop experience and productivity with freely available software. He reviews desktop environments, communications using voice-over-IP, common applications, and more."
The integration is getting closer and closer.
Right now I have an unstable bleeding-edge version of Ximain Openoffice that looks exactly like any other GTK app on my desktop.
If you use Gentoo, it's the ximain-openoffice build.
One caveat: I get crazy lockups using it in combination with the fd.o xcompmgr. Not that suprising though, since xcompmgr is basically just a proof of concept.
Yeah, in my opinion the best is gentoo, although its been a pain in the ass getting certain things working correctly, it's great as a desktop OS for me and allows me to start with a minimal installation and pick and choose what I want for it.
When I started in the industry in the fall of '83 there were some "windowing" things out there, and then, soon after, the first Mac, the 128K "skinny mac" came out. I remember when the nice folks from Quarterdeck came out to demonstrate their windowing app that sat over DOS. It crashed throughout their attempt to demo it to us and it never worked that day. They finally gave up and left. My favorite memory of those times in my reselling days was when a startup company called Novell came to call on us asking if we would sell their stuff in the government. Our VP said that networking was a "fad" and nobody would ever have a need to connect pc's together. Shortly thereafer the owner overruled him so we did not entire miss that boat. Those were very interesting days...selling IBM XT's with a 5MB hard drive (megabyte, that's correct) for $9,995 and a three to six week waiting list to get one.
http://www.busyweather.com/
I don't want this to start a flame war of KDE vs GNOME however I'd like to point out that with the latest Gnome(2.8) when I plug in a card reader or anything standard it usually recognizes it and opens the folder for me. I could easily ask it to do something else like open Gphoto or something. When I plug in my camera though it doesn't know what to do because my camera cannot be mounted automatically.
The real problem is that you still cannot plug your digital camera in and have something intelligent happen.
Sure you can. It's just not as easy as it should be yet. You need some tools that aren't in a lot of distros yet (hal, d-bus and gnome-volume-manager). I have gnome-volume-manager set up so that it will automagically mount removable storage devices, and start gthumb to import photos when I plug my camera in.
I think KDE has something similar in the works, but I don't know how complete it is or how to set it up.
0 1 - just my two bits
Wow! I've been using Linux for 9 years now and I've only had a few driver issues (most of which I was able to work around). Of course, one of the main things that I recognized about Linux is that it is best suited for small servers (using modest, common hardware). Once you get to the uncommon, high end hardware you are going to have problems with most operating systems (as the hardware developers narrow their audience). This hardly makes Linux inferior. The developers of Linux can hardly be expected to write drivers for every piece of hardware ever designed. When you want to go high-end with Linux the key is: RESEARCH! The fact that Mac hardware works with Mac OS X should not be bragging rights. Thats the design audience (and it would be insane if it didn't work).
If you use Linux for small servers with modest, slightly older hardware, you will rarely have a problem.
If you use Linux for high-end servers and research before you install, you will rarely have a problem.
If you have uncommon high-end hardware and install Linux there very well may be a problem. But its not Linux's.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
This doesn't change the fact that Linux is not as easy to set up as a windows system, nor does it have the software library that windows has. It covers the basics but you'll never get anyone interested in creating graphics, using a digital camera, scanner, digital video recording (as in cameras, not DVR), playing games, etc. interested, because it simply doesn't support that. So, in other words, all the cool things that casual desktop users want to experiment with aren't available. It has e-mail, office, etc...but so does windows and it probably all came with the machine already. There is no Linux Killer App. There isn't a reason for a casual user to switch to Linux (aside from security, which is not a priority concern for casual users), because there isn't interesting software available, and there certainly isn't anything available to appeal to professionals (outside of secretaries) who deal with computers in non-programming professions (IE, design, print, etc)
Incidentally, I actually used Windows 1.0 on my 8086-compatible back in the 80s. It came on 360K 5.25" floppies; about 3 of them I think. It was neat, but you couldn't do much because while it came with a few small applications (descendants of which are still in Windows today), but there was no third-party software.
FYI: You should be aware that Microsoft does not provide such a thing either. (Not that you implied that they did, but readers may assume it). Windows XP SP2 out of the box needs to download a variety of Microsoft codecs, 3rd-party codecs, and 3rd-party players. DVD playback support is not included. Licensing issues play a big role here.
Now please tell me: Why does anyone want video in their browser? I go through lengths to eliminate this support where it exists. I don't want postage-stamp non-saveable non-resizable embedded video clips in a popup window. Yuck. I don't want sounds playing in my browser. I just want it to prompt me then launch in an external player.
SimplyMEPIS torrent for 2004.04
. is o.torrent
http://godfather.qtm.com.ar/SimplyMEPIS-2004.04
What do I use when I want to use something like Illustrator or Corel Draw or Canvas?
Sodipodi, Kivio, or Dia
What about some decent video software? Not something that has halfass functionality, but something like Adobe Premier, or Sony Vegas.
Kino or Cinelerra
What about audio software, like SoundForge or Cubase or anything like that?
Audacity, Snd, or ReZound
How am I going to get to use all of the directX plugins I am used to??
I can't use my Gimp Script FU scripts in Photoshop. That doesn't mean Photoshop isn't as good as The Gimp.
There's always going to be some effort involved in learning a new system. But the apps are there for most purposes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That and some better names. Linux is missing any sort of refined look and all the names are like "ymmv", "knrk", "ooo". Yeah, thats all great for us geeks and shit, but someone needs to take a few classes in psychology and marketing.
Firefox is growing in popularity not just because it's a solid browser, but because "Firefox" rolls off the tongue, they have a clean, concise, and very obviously laid out website, and they have a professionally created logo. Simple as that.
Packaging and catchy names sell. If you want to push your Linux to the masses, package and name it for the masses.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
My linux system interfaced rather well with my PalmOS PDA until it bit the dust. I doubt it will have any trouble with any new ones. Plucker should do what you want with documents, and there are also other Linux programs for generating Palm OS files that will work just fine. Can't realy help you on the word processor side of things since I don't use them.
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Yup, it's actually an open source library being used by a number of projects, the URL follows:
http://www.littlecms.com/
There are a few GIMP plugins which use this as well for e.g. dealing with CMYK images.
GPL: Free as in will
YES! Same here, so let's expand on this more; I think it's important to recognize exactly what it is that turns off people who actually make an effort to switch to Linux but get repelled.
On paper/in writing, Linux is great. People say lots of good things about it, it has ideological advantages, installation and hardware support have improved by leaps and bounds, etc. So what's the problem?
It's not easy for geeks to understand; it still isn't easy for me to understand, even though I was the one going through it. In the end, I did emerge triumphant from the guts of my computer, and said, "See? I did it! What's so hard about that?" Then I thought to myself, "Hey, waitaminnit, I just spent seven $#*$#ing days trying to install something that should only take 30 minutes. How can I say that it was easy?"
In fact, it was so hard for me to answer such a simple question that I started keeping a diary while I was installing. (It's in bits and pieces on various Linux forums; someday I'll post it in one big piece.) The answer is this:
When installation/use of Linux goes well, it goes very well. When something goes wrong, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
Example: I install a Linux distro; it autodetects my monitor hardware and sets the resolution. It's wrong. After installation, I boot up and the monitor is wonky --I can't see anything.
What I should have done: press Ctrl-Alt-Plus or Minus to step to the next monitor resolution to get the screen to appear, and then I can use the GUI to permanently set the resolution to the correct value. Or press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a text screen, and then manually set the XF86config file.
What the newbie would do: nothing. What can a newbie do? Call his friend over and get him to reinstall Windows. What else can you do when the screen is wonky?
But notice what I, as a geek but Linux newcomer, will do. I search the Internet from my other computer, find the solution, and correct it. I realize: "Ah! I clicked the wrong choice when I installed Linux --I thought they meant 'desired resolution' when they really meant 'maximum supported resolution'." If appropriate, I reinstall, this time clicking the correct option, and everything goes well.
And I discount the problem that I just encountered.
"It was my fault," I say to myself. "My mistake caused this installation problem with Linux. See, the second time I chose the correct option, and everything went well! Linux is so easy to install!" And besides, those people at Mandrake/ Fedora/ SuSE/ LibraNet/ MEPIS put so much work into making this a nice-looking distribution. "It would be a pity to just ignore the excellent interface and all that F/OSS on the desktop just because I couldn't install it properly! Let's mark it down: this is a nice distribution."
But you know what? If the newbie encounters a problem, it's a showstopper. If you can't see the monitor, who cares if Firefox has tabbed browsing or OpenOffice.org can export MS Word documents to PDF?
This, I think, accounts for the wide discrepancies between people's experience with Linux. Even in the comments for this very Slashdot article, we have people saying, "I had big problems with Linux!" "What are you talking about? I had zero problems!" It's because, when there *is* a problem everything comes to a grinding halt.
We Linux supporters have to work on this: make sure problems are not showstoppers for newbies. When there is an error message, tell the newbie where to go next. Make it work in degraded mode instead of not working at all. Make it easy to recover. Example: I can't write to my addressbook in KMail. The problem? "Can't write to addressbook" is the message. Like, thanks a lot, KDE! Can you be a little more obvious? Example: in Ogle, it can't identify the sound device
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I guess it depends on the laptop. I run Linux on a Dell Latitute C610 at work/home, and most everything worked exactly as I expected, in both Fedora and Gentoo. Granted, it helps to have a fully-documented driverset, especially when it comes to wireless (mine is orinoco_cs), and Fedora Core 2 had this weird issue where it tried to start the wireless before it started PCMCIA, but a simple fix involving changing a filename was found on Google. I even wrote an init script that detects whether or not my laptop is docked, and it adjusts my xorg.conf file and network config files for dock and standalone usage.
;-)
I'm not saying that putting Linux on a desktop/laptop isn't ever a royal pain in the ass, but it's rarely impossible, and once you're done, you feel like you've accomplished something. That and the feeling that you're in total control of your system are two things that draw me to spending time doing it
May the threads progress competently.
My company uses standard Dell product lines for laptops and desktops, and we discovered, for example, X driver issues with the stock video card. As another example, all of our laptops use the Centrino technology -- and until recently that was a driver problem as well. Those were examples that anyone might run into. Finally, in any industry there is going to be specialized hardware for certain applications - barcode readers in retail sales, check readers in banking, calibration or diagnostic devices in automotive repair, or CAD/CAM input devices in engineering, architecture, and design.
My point there was that it will require a shift in the thinking of the IHVs. They are building with only Windows in mind, and Linux drivers are often reverse engineered by a third party -- which often takes far too long.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
I've installed and used both Ubuntu and MEPIS and kept MEPIS.
The differences:
KDE versus GNOME. I just leave that one alone but people tend to have a real opinion about that. However you can install either DE on either distro if you want to.
Sudo vs. Root: In ubuntu, you run all your root commands through sudo. This really irritated me. Sudo is certainly fine for some applications but it got really old having to type sudo over and over and over when I would have much rather logged in as root and done my couple of things without having to enter my password repeatedly.
1 Guy in West Virginia vs. A South African astronaut + a bunch of debian & redhat develops:
Ubuntu should really have the leg up here since they have so much backing. MEPIS is created by an overworked software guru in West Virginia, who goes byt eh way of Warren. That being said I had a small problem with MEPIS and fired off and e-mail to them. I got a response from Warren himself a couple of hours later. Both distros have strong communities who can be quite helpful.
Functionality: The seemed to work about the same to me. I don't didn't notice any real differences other than those related to KDE vs. GNOME.