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Automatix Kicks Ubuntu into Gear
With the growing amount of talk on the usability of Linux for beginners, there have been quite a few people who have mentioned a script called "Automatix" for Ubuntu as a means of easing the average joe into a life of Linux. Linux.com's (a Slashdot sister site) Tina Gasperson takes a closer look at Automatix and how it could help soften the blow of a Linux switch, at least in the short term. From the article: "Automatix lives up to its reputation. It's worth any time and small frustration it might take to get through the script. And it's even worth that 'over-the-shoulder' time you might spend with a new Linux user to walk them through it. I don't see any reason why a beginner would not be delighted with Ubuntu after a magic touch from Automatix."
select "recovery mode" from the grub menu, it will boot into single user mode and you are root.
Though I'm sure there's another way, the easiest way to prevent this is to set a grub password.
Not trying to flame, I love Ubuntu.
Me too. Just poking fun.
I love the instructions for installing Automatix:Yes, it's simple enough, and yes, it seems like that's the most complicated part of the entire process, but again I had to chuckle at the image of asking a newbie to open a terminal and type that in.
The script itself sounds great though... I wouldn't mind having something like that for Windows.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
1. Insert CD.
2. Click OK.
3. Done.
I'm sure that's pretty obvious, so the question is: how close are Linux distros to being to that level, and if the answer is 'not close' then what are the obstacles to getting there and how are they being addressed?
A-Bomb
Pretty much what Automatix does is route around the usability problems in the GUI apt systems. Automatix is good for two reasons: firstly, it hides the apt-get frontend. It handles adding unofficial repos, installing, and configuring the packages. Secondly, it takes the massive array of software ubuntu inherits from the Debian infrastructure and selects some useful stuff they think people might not know about but likely want or need.
This stuff is useful, but things could be better if a lot of effort was put into synaptic and the default repos. Some of this stuff should make its way into upsteam, in this case, base-config and ubuntu-desktop. NumlockX enabled on startup is simply a good idea and a cheap and trivial fix. Ubuntu should be working on getting permissions to distribute the official JVM as part of Ubuntu, and gftp is pretty useful so I don't see why it shouldn't be thrown in. Obviously some of the stuff Automatix does is dangerous or illegal (installing mp3 support) and thus won't ever make it as part of Ubuntu proper, but I'd like to see them cherry pick some of the better ones. The benefit is that everybody gets these improvements rather than just those who've heard of automatix.
The second part of what Automatix does is a very important and thus far unaddressed problem in the Debian model. The ubuntu-desktop virtual package mildly alleviates this problem by selecting a few of the most basic applications you'd want. Plenty of packages are provided, but there's no way for users to know what's useful to them. If you think of synaptic as a software sales tool every bit as a package manager, it's doing a horrible job on the sales front. From a beginner usability standpoint, if Synaptic presented a a list of say the 10 most popular packages you don't have installed, that would improve things a lot. Debian / Ubuntu have a lot of great things packaged, but they have a hard time promoting the use of any particular software they actually distribute. The good news is that a lot of the tools to accomplish this already exist: popcon is a system for reporting software installs back to the central server. One of the most popular installs is the acrobat reader and plugin. On the one hand, reporting this information may be dangerous and also requires an mailer service. On the other hand, raw package downloads don't tell us information like "people who've installed acro-reader also have acro-reader-plugin" or "people who have blah installed usually don't have blah." Much of this will be obvious, but sometimes these sorts of Bayesian inferrences are important. It allows you to say things like, 'hey we noticed you have acroreader-plugin installed, would you like to try out the firefox plugin to mplayer?'
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Open Source Sysadmin
Now, that could mean ONE of two things:
1. It doesn't support the 64-bit AMD64 distribution of Ubuntu Linux.
or
2. It doesn't support the 32-bit i386 distribution of Ubuntu Linux if it happens to be running on an AMD64 chip (i.e. in i386 compatibility mode).
I'd bet money that it's #1, not #2, because I have yet to encounter an app that cares that I'm running an AMD64 chip under my regular 32-bit Ubuntu. It's running the standard i386 instruction set, maybe with some accelerated functions, and that's that.
They really need to be a hell of lot clearer on that, because it's a big source of confusion. Word choice matters.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Disclaimer: I've been using Linux and Unix in general for many many years.
That being out of the way...
I don't find Ubuntu all that revolutionary in user friendlyness. It's never detected a piece of hardware most others couldn't (for me). The installer isn't anything special (ncurses based). It doesn't play patent encombered media types. It uses a dickload of ram. On top of all that, they didn't even put any good eye candy.
I mean its not bad, just not revolutionary like everyone would have you believe. I find Fedora and Suse to really be of equal quality (I generally use Debian anyway).
I know I'll get flamed as a troll, but please enlighten me how Ubuntu is light years ahead of any other distro in user friendlyness. I'd like to believe it's some great leap forward (and I run it on a couple of machines myself), but I just don't see it.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
The point is for newbies to Linux, like myself, they are able to get everything installed with a single script that would take hours and headaches to get setup. I'm sure I could have gotten all of the codecs installed manually by taking the time to research and install everything by hand. However, with Automatix, I was able to get all of my codecs, firefox plugins, MS TTF, Java, and DMA done in one easy move. If I were try to just get those items installed and setup with my limited knowledge, I would have really struggled, and probably reverted back to Windows, as Ubuntu would still have been crippled in my mind. But, because of Automatix, I'm now running Ubuntu full time, and not missing anything I would have had to do without if I couldn't have got it setup by myself.
I dunno, I trust him more than the guys at Microsoft for some reason....:P
I though Automatix is open source - can't you just open it up and see what it does?
I had to chuckle at the image of asking a newbie to open a terminal and type that in.
The point you seem to be missing with terminal commands is this:
Nobody has to type them in. You paste them in.
I do a lot of support, and the first thing I explain to the people I work with is
1. how to open a terminal (or "Command prompt" etc.)
2. how to paste a command into it (presumably from an email I sent them)
3. how to copy the (text) screen to send it to me if needed.
It's so much easier than this endless hunting around the GUI to find the application, listen to a full explanation of what is on screen, having the user find the correct menu/tab/whatever to continue, listen to what is on the screen, etc. etc.
The GUI changes all the time, and when you have to deal with it in different languages (I have users with German, French and English systems), it is a nightmare over a phone, it takes ages, and the user gets frustrated.
With a cut/paste of CLI commands, it is simpler and faster, and user appreciate it.
Admins also constantly paste commands from web pages into the shell, because it's the easiest. Why would they suggest to users to use the hard way instead.
Ok, good idea, kudos to the author. However, Ubuntu need to sharpen up a bit if they want to get into the corporate market and play for the bigtime, which they say they do. Using a third-party script, however useful, comes over as a bit amateur. (Some might say the strange new tangerine theme in the Dapper Drake edition comes over in the same way, but that's another story.)
Automatix sounds a good half-way house that will become better as it gets refined and polished. But the real question is why this stuff should have to be downloaded separately in the first place. I know it is not Ubuntu's fault and is common to Linux generally, but until desktop distros knock this missing multimedia and non-free apps issue completely on the head to the point where it is just history, there will still be hassles for new users. The write-up for Automatix mentions the dread word "terminal" which is enough to make plenty of new users feel queasy.
Perhaps Ubuntu should step back, stop trying to reinvent so many wheels and come up with something really new and worthwhile such as an improved apt which offers more granular choices and clearer explanations of what programs do what. If I am new to Linux and I want a suite of best of breed apps, I will still be Googling next month before I work my way through all the mysterious items thrown up by Synaptic. For example, Ubuntu installs Evolution by default. But what would I get (or lose) if I opted subsequently for Thunderbird or Sylpheed-Claws? All good programs, but it shouldn't be too hard to build some kind of "guidance" into apt to help me make some better-informed choices from a smaller list of options. The same is true of, say, Xine, MPlayer or VideoLan and many other things.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
1) Like Debian, has apt, there is so no dependency hell when you install new packages or upgrade
2) Unlike Debian, has regular releases (every 6mo or so), so you can regularly get quality-tested new software. Plus the Ubuntu unstable is usually usable three months into development.
3) Newb-friendly community; people will go out of their way to help newbs, not flame them. Yes, even if they did not RTFM. They believe that you deserve help even if you don't RTFM. Can you imagine that?
4) Plus, the forums provide an environment that newbs are comfortable in. Check out the other distro's forums and you'll see the difference. Admittedly this is tied to their considerable financial resources.
4) Most people (including myself) report superior hardware detection to Fedora/Suse. On my laptop it detected everything perfectly. I am not sure how it compares to Debian.
5) They will mail you a free CD. Anywhere you are in the world. And the whole distro fits on a single CD. It truly aims to be a universal distribution, for everyone. The whole community treats itself/Linux as gospel to be spread, especially to Win users, which I think is a good thing but you may not.
And when Automatix is concerned, EasyUbuntu has the advantage of being able to install ATI drivers (or at least they claim so) and it works for Edubuntu and Kubuntu too (though unsupported).
But you to get it to work on Kubuntu, you need some Gnome packages, so you might want to take a look at Easy Kubuntu
And lastly, some explanation about all these install-apps by (one of) the maker(s) of Easy Ubuntu:
Firehed - Unfortunately, thanks to medical breakthroughs, common sense is not as common as it once was.
...that is what I really think about Ubuntu as well, and I have both Debian (my machine) and Ubuntu (girlfriends machine) here in our flat. The packaga manager is just different than Debians, the installer is the same, and well, the preselection of apps was a little more thorough than in sid. But I also had to install a lot of extras (what is now done by Automatix), so I also do not see what the real fuzz is, especially compared to recent SuSE offerings for example (running on machine of my girlfriends mum).
I still don't understand what makes apt-get years ahead of something like urpmi. Both seem to just work, and do about the same sort of thing. I don't have problems with either.
.deb is so superior to .rpm haven't tried anything like urpmi, and are stuck with the impressions of RPM hell from many years back.
I have a feeling that most of the people who keep mouthing off about how
At one time apt-get was revolutionary. Now everyone has either copied its ideas (yum, urpmi, etc) or ported it to their system (or sometimes both). Some RPM based distros have used apt-get for package management for a number of years.
I imagine Ubuntu may have other benefits though, so I do intend to try it out at some point.
The second she mentioned command-line was when Automatix died as an easy to use tool for the average. My sister can't even configure networking in Windows or update her virus scan, yet she is suppose to bring up the command-line. Ok, I have been reading slashdot for years and Linux has been over-optimistically touted as the alternative to Windows year after year. Yet, we are in 2006 and Linux is still just a hacker OS. What is the hold up? Ease of use by itself won't bring users but Linux has to claim that before it even tries. Oh well, better luck next time
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
First things first. Automatix is aggressively marketed and I'd be careful of the hype. But, in fairness, the person who does it is also very accessible and is quick to work out bugs, so he deserves credit on those fronts. Ubuntu Guide at EasyLinux I prefer the new Ubuntu Guide at http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu. It is a simple command-line driven guide that *anyone* can contribute to and which gives you all the same options, if you want to do the apt-get work yourself. Instructions are easy to follow and by the end of it, you know what you've installed, how you did it and, if you'e a newbie, will feel they've learned a lot without much effort. EASYUBUNTU If you prefer the "Just Works" approach and don't care about learning a little about Linux, Apt and the command line (nothing wrong with that, so ignore the Linux snobs that say criticize you) I'd suggest trying EasyUbuntu instead of Automatix at http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/. UBUNTU IS NOT THE MOST USER-FRIENDLY SYSTEM OR THE MOST REFINED LOOKING I use Ubuntu. I love Ubuntu. But, Ubuntu is no easier to install than Fedora or SuSE. In fact, I'd argue they are easier to install and more complete in their installation options. As well, they are slicker and more professional at the intallation level and on the desktop... by a longshot. They are far more refined. Anyone who disputes this is probably caught up in the Ubuntu hype a bit too much. It's the trendy distro of the moment. Don't underestimate how that clouds people's perception of it. But, I prefer Debian-based systems, so have gravitated to Ubuntu and left Fedora and SuSE, although both were better a recognizing and setting up my monitor and printer. And I say the above as someone who loves Ubuntu.
This is an excellent point.
I installed Ubuntu this week for the first time (I've tried LiveCDs before but I had a spare PC that needed an OS and Ubuntu was the frontrunner in the absence of Windows licenses). I was disappointed to see that, out of the box, I couldn't play any media (even MPEGs!) but then I remembered that these generally include patented algorithms.
After some Googling, I found a resource on the Ubuntu site that explained how to get it all working. What impressed me though was the fact that it actually pointed out that it might be illegal in my country to use these various software packages and that they're NOT officially supported by Ubuntu for this very reason.
So, Automatix basically sounds like its just a bunch of stuff that, if you install it, puts you at risk of infringing copyright and patents and all sorts of other stuff. If you live in countries that respect patent laws, anyway.
(This is something that people often seem to get confused about - open source does NOT always mean its legal)
"I still don't understand what makes apt-get years ahead of something like urpmi. Both seem to just work, and do about the same sort of thing. I don't have problems with either."
I don't think "apt-get" was ever that revolutionary in a technical sense. Coming from an HP-UX background, I was using Software Distributor, that did a lot of the things that "apt" did years ago, including clearing out superseeded packages from repositories, and such like. Okay it wasn't as "web ready", but then the web wasn't so important then.
The thing that distinguished Debian is both the quality of the packages (in terms of how well packaged, not the software contained), the variety of packages (in official archives with set standards of quality and support), and that they have long been used with reliance on the dependencies, and their automatic resolution. So when you type "apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2" you do get the right set of packages underneath to make it "just work".
Sure the tools to do this in the RPM world have been catching up, but I doubt if you take a vanilla system minimal install with most of these distros, and type a selection of similar commands to the above, that you'll get them all to "just work" as slickly as Debian Sarge will. But that is nothing to do with the tool itself, just the data it has to work with. Although some of the RPM tools can be painfully slow (don't mention yum).
"I still don't understand what makes apt-get years ahead of something like urpmi."
Well, the package lists take too long to load in urpmi unless you remember to download the compressed version, which is an extra non-obvious step for a newbie. Then you don't get much info on each package. A better solution would be to download more detailed package info for an individual if and when you click for it rather than all n-thousand of them at once.
Also the Mandrake mirrors aren't stable. The paths on the mirrors keep playing musical chairs and the next time you use Urpmi it can't find the repositories. That means another trip to that "easy urpmi" site to try and fix it. All this nonsense should be transparent to the user. Urpmi should get a repository mirror list from _one_ place and choose the repository based on load and locality automatically. No one has to choose repositories and have them break all the time using Windows Update (although they have other problems!).
I disagree,
His distractors are just as bad as he is. I mean "LordHunter317:Obviously, that statement is contradictory with reality so your claim is invalid." Yeesh, classic post based high handed snobery. He offers a "patch" that he never provides, then gripes about how Automatix isn't right - which his patch would fix. If LordHunter317 has a better plan - then produce it - bitching about how someone else does it is not only disingenuous but anti-productive. In short, yeah Arnie types like a l33t hacker, but the supercilious attacks of LordHunter are no better.
Sera
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