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."

Comments

Not just for newbies

[rabeldable]

I contest this is a very handy tool for anyone that wants to setup multi-media, web browsing, plugins and more.

I setup most of my system without it and when I finally found it I was trying to setup Java plugin for firefox.... needless to say I kicked myself a few times, realizing that I could have saved myself days of configuring.

Uhh...

[jb.hl.com]

I could share files using a Gnutella client or a BitTorrent client; Kino imported my digital video files directly through Firewire; and as a bonus, Automatix even installed OpenOffice.org and Thunderbird.

Ubuntu comes with a BitTorrent client, and OpenOffice.org, and Thunderbird. No script needed.

I don't see the point personally.

Have you really looked at what it does?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't trust the guy that wrote it, I've read some of his how-tos on the ubuntu forums, and some of them offer very bad advice. Also note: "If u type liek this i think ur more liek jeffk and u want to hax me!"... and well...thats pretty much how he types.

User beware, Just because it's free or opensource, doesn't mean it's safe.

Re:Don't Use Automatix!!!

[chgros]

From your link:
To start a root shell (i.e. a command window where you can run root commands) use:
sudo -i
How is that more secure than enabling the root account?

Dominatix

[dotslashdot]

In other news, Automatix was so successful in making Ubuntu the dominant Linux distribution, she changed her name to Dominatix, making every Linux user LILO under her bootp. Sorry!

Then/Than correction

[SeanDuggan]

Corrected:
All slashdot folks substitute than for then and then for than.

Hehe

[Z0mb1eman]

I had to chuckle at the irony of a script to ease a newbie into Linux... script and newbie don't tend to go together in my mind :p

I love the instructions for installing Automatix:

wget http://beerorkid.com/automatix/automatix_5.6-2_i38 6.deb
sudo dpkg -i automatix_5.6-2_i386.deb

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.

Not Troll, I Swear

[Bombula]

As a non-computer-person hoping to shortly shift to Linux, here is what I and my fellow newbie dummies want/need:

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?

Re:Not Troll, I Swear

[twbecker]

What do you currently use? Because installing Windows isn't this easy. Both Ubuntu and Fedora are pretty easy to install, with Fedora asking a few more questions but also having a friendly GUI installer. (K)ubuntu's is text only, but still very easy.

Re:Not Troll, I Swear

[Jerf]

Many distros are at this level, if you don't mind blowing away anything that's on the hard drive. Not quite literally, because one-click installation, while theoretically possible, is not feasible. While the cost/benefit curve of a given installation question slopes off sharply as the number of questions increases, there are some things that sometimes need to be asked. One of them, for instance, is "can I blow the contents of this hard drive away?" It really doesn't matter if a user doesn't understand what that means; there is no practical default that results both in a Linux system being installed and no grave data loss. Saving a windows installation takes more work because there are inherently decisions involved.

Still, there are many distros that are much easier than Windows if have common hardware, and you end up with a lot more after the installation is done. (Don't overestimate Window's hardware support, too.)

Be sure you try to install XP from scratch sometime for a fair comparision, too. I just did one a few weeks ago, and along with a number of questions the installer asks, you also have (IIRC) a minimum of three "Update, Install, Reboot" sequences before you're fully up to date. (Fortunately, they've done a bit of work to keep that down. I believe there was one time period when the minimum was four, late in the Service Pack 1 time frame.) And when you're done, all you have is Windows XP, and about all it can do on its own is browse the web. Wordpad's your document editor, Paint your graphics editor, and Solitaire your game.

Re:Not Troll, I Swear

[daikokatana]

Yeah. May I suggest, though, that you try some of the recent warez distributions of Windows XP available over Bittorrent. They're starting to resemble Linux distributions in that they bundle lots of commonly used apps right into the installer. One I've tried gives you a set of checkboxes for applications...

So true. In fact, the last warez edition of Windows XP I tried didn't even require me to check all those checkboxes - it installed Bonzi Buddy, Flyswat, Hotbar, Webhancer, Comet Cursor, Doubleclick and Gator all in one go, without needing a single click from little old me :)

Re:Not Troll, I Swear

[RedBear]

As a non-computer-person hoping to shortly shift to Linux, here is what I and my fellow newbie dummies want/need:

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?

The sad thing here is that both of us need to preface our remarks with "this is not a troll, I swear".

Sorry to disappoint, but you will not find a single Linux distribution like that, despite what many people here will tell you. I've used Linux full-time as a desktop off and on for years, from straight Debian (hard) to Mandrake/Mandriva (fairly easy). I even tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu, the most recent release. Everyone who ever says Linux is easy really has no clue what easy means to non-technical people. I mean, come on, you have to find and run a special script just to get support for playing DVDs and configure other simple things that are essential for a typical desktop user. If you're not lucky enough to have heard of this special script you get to spend hours on the web learning about obscure and difficult to find packages like libdvdcss, blah blah blah. Your typical geek will wade through it all with infinite patience, not having a clue how difficult this stuff is for non-geeks. Then they proceed to tell everyone how easy it is to use Linux for anything and everything.

If you (a non-computer-person) are serious about switching away from Windows you need to get yourself a Mac, because "desktop Linux" has a loooong way to go in terms of polish. I'll keep checking it out myself every year or so, but so far I have not been impressed with the progress and I'm sure a person like you won't be either. Of course, it's a free country, so feel free to download a couple dozen distros and find out for yourself just how ludicrous it is to say that Linux is ready for the mainstream desktop.

Re:Don't Use Automatix!!!

[futuresheep]

Just like the root account, accounts with full system privaleges via sudo are only as secure as the number of people that have that accounts password. Don't get me wrong, I love sudo, it keeps me from having to su to install software, edit files, or update the system, so it's very convenient. But saying that enabling root access by adding a password enables a 'huge security hole' is just a bad case of hyperbole.

DONT USE AUTOMATIX!

[FunnyLookinHat]

Has anyone here been to the #ubuntu channel on irc.freenode.net? YOu will find that Automatix is regarded as THE WORST option for ubuntu users. It has huge security holes, overwrites configs, and uses very risky command line options. Instead you should use easyubuntu. http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/

Re:DONT USE AUTOMATIX!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

From what I saw on the ubuntu forums, the guy who wrote this has no idea how apt is supposed to work. He's using things like --force-yes in his script....you should NEVER have to do this. It's basically telling apt to shove it and install anyway.....never do that on ANY Debian box unless you know what your doing. As he's asking new users to use this, it should NEVER do things that may break the system. It's not like it's really hard to write the script to do it right even. The biggest reason he used those flags was to avoid having to load the GPG keys in the apt keyring.....apt has this for a REASON! I can understand if it had a pop up and ask you to approve it if there was a BADSIG issue in the repository (there was one this weekend in the Debian sid repository....). Just ignoring it to begin with is VERY bad form.

Not the best solution

[xenocide2]

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?'

Satire?

[Lord Bitman]

This is satire, right? It certainly seems to be a huge "stay the hell away from linux!" warning message.

What it does...short version

[Benanov]

This script installs Free implementations of patented algorithms, proprietary codecs, Sun's Java, P2P file sharing programs, non-free programs like Adobe Acrobate, MS true type fonts (unsure about Tahoma; you need a Windows license to use that one), non-free-illegal-in-US codecs, non-free Nvidia binary blobs, and makes some GUI behaviors mimic a W32 environment.

In short, it takes away the Freedom portion of a GNU/Linux system and makes it Yet Another Windows Competitor.

About the only thing I like from that list is disabling CD-ROM drive locking, turning DMA on, and the ESD sleep fix. I'm not sure about the locking, either. Ctrl-Alt-Del bringing up the task manager seems kinda nice, but I would rather just discover keybinding on my own.

Then again, I'm not this script's target audience.

Re:I had none of the problems mentioned

[ZephyrXero]

Easy Ubuntu's pretty nice as well....

For anyone who doesn't know, since the Slashdot article doesn't even explain what these two programs do, they setup all the restricted/proprietary stuff for the user that Ubuntu can not legally distribute by default like 3d video drivers, mp3 playback and such.

Why I, the AVERAGE POWERUSER switched to Linux

[Yo Grark]

One word. Ubuntu.

For those who read Slashdot regularly, the subject may sound familiar. I was the window user who commented on why the average user DOESN'T switch.

I'm full time Ubuntu at home now.

I have everything working that I had on my windows box. I may have a learning curve when it comes to using new apps, but the point is, I switched almost painlessly.

Hardawre worked out of box? Check
Re-installed all needed software? Check
Printer installed? Check
Kick ass support system in #ubuntu-support? Check
kick ass add/remove program clone? Check
Plays Movies? Check
P2p? Check
Finance software? Check
Remote administration? Check
Virtual Machine Capable? Check
Free Free Free? Check

Best of all is the performance. I've heard that Gnome is slow overall, but man o man, my xp box always BOGGED down after about a year of use to the point I have to reinstall. Hope that doesn't happen with Ubuntu, but in Xp, I was getting "buffer" errors with windows due to too many tcp/ip calls. I had 8 apps that used the internet open. I had mysterious IDE errors with no resolution...I had explorer and svchost issues, Now, I have NO problems and my speeds are incredible.

While it's STILL not ready for primetime for mom and dad (cept for simply browsing...can you believe my wife found firefox, surfed and printed without even knowing I had switched the pc?), I would recommend it for anyone who remembers how to use limited command line options, can follow instructions and who is interested in change.

Sure I had to Sudo apt-get this, and tar xvf that (still don't REALLY know what I'm doing when I use these options, but I'm sure there's a HOWTO when I get a moment) but like I said, I'm HAPPY with ubuntu, the first distro I've found to satisfy my curiosity of Linux and delight me with it's power and ease of use.

This script just makes it LEAPS and BOUNDS simplier than it already is.

Kudo's!

Yo Grark

P.S. Completely separate topic, I'm looking to hire a website developer/programmer to implement a backend to a new e-business, any idea on where to start looking?

Ubuntu craze

[porkThreeWays]

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.

Re:Ubuntu craze

[dreemernj]

I am a n00b when it comes to Linux.

I've installed Ubuntu a ton of times on relatively ancient computers (p2 233s come to mind) and its always very easy to do, and very easy to get help with from Ubuntu's user forums.

I've more recently tried out Fedora on a couple of higher end comps (I have no $$ for computers so higher end might mean P3 700 )to act as servers to small groups of the Ubuntu comps and really enjoyed that as well.

I think there is a nice feeling to Ubuntu, its labeled, packaged, and branded very well. But, at the same time, I'm a complete Linux newb and I set up Fedora (plus suse just to try it out) and had no more problems with any of them, well actually I didn't have any problems with any of them. After I got used to it a bit more, I prefered working in Fedora to the others.

I think its image more then anything. People don't feel as threatened by Ubuntu. Linux can seem daunting sometimes and Ubuntu has built an image and community to get people past that painlessly. I never got the same impression from the other distros I've tried (not saying there aren't others out there that do this, just not ones I've tried).

In the end I think it comes down to Ubuntu defining their target audience differently then most other distros, and the audience they are (successfully) appealling to is a pretty large one.

Re:FUD, not informative

[rcmiv]

It's not Automatix' use of a root acount that is most troubling. Automatix also replaces your /etc/apt/sources.list (without backing up or asking), and use -force yes during installs which is generally a nyet.

That being said, Automatix rocks, and I have used it on all of my ubuntu installs with no problem (other than repositories at freecontrib being down occasionally).

Easyubuntu is good too, and safer, but is not available for Dapper yet. Of course, replacing all instances of "breezy" with "dapper" in a detect.py isn't all that difficult either, now is it.

I'd recommend Easyubuntu.

-rcmiv

HA! HA! I have the cube!

You don't get it: CLI commands are easier than GUI

[rduke15]

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.

Re:Automatix

[idonthack]

Easy Ubuntu supports PPC, and is safer to use than Automatix.

Ubuntu user-friendliness

[CarpetShark]

Why is Ubuntu user-friendly? Because it's Debian, and Debian has the best package installation/management system on ANY platform. It's years ahead of the rest. Problem is, most people tried Debian years ago, didn't know it was easy to install now, and also didn't know it was easy to upgrade to the latest software. So debian + an ubuntu splashscreen + the latest software makes what the rest of us know and love available to them.

Re:Don't Use Automatix!!!

[DeadMeat (TM)]

How is that more secure than enabling the root account?

Aside from making dictionary attacks a little harder to pull off, it isn't really inherently more secure. But Ubuntu is often recommended for new converts from Windows, where people are used to doing everything as root. Ubuntu disables the root account out-of-the-box to strongly discourage people from logging in as root for daily work, where they can unintentionally do a lot of damage.

Here are five ways it is better

[Pausanias]

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.

Not just for the beginners

[krazikamikaze]

I downloaded Automatix and used it to install a few things, but I didn't use their GUI. I just went through the script and manually executed the commands that installed the components I wanted. I heard a lot of things about how Automatix can screw up your system, but this way I knew exactly what it was doing, and it really didn't take that much more effort than the GUI.

I think the best part of Automatix is it's basically an aggregation of procedures to install the most popular non-standard components. Instead of making a google search and spending 15 minutes copying commands from a howto, I can just copy a whole block from the Automatix script. I highly recommend it even if you're experienced with linux. Just give the script a once-over to make sure you're ok with what it's executing.

Why modded funny? Basically true...

[cyxxon]

...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).

Better Options for Ubuntu Than Automatix

[Geekrob]

There are a couple of other options that have worked for me, I had some issues with Automatix.

If you are using Breezy try out Easy Ubuntu http://www.ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=86/ . Installed on about 5 machines with almost no problems.

If you are using Dapper try out BUMPS http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=13888 9&highlight=bumps/. I have a lot of success with this. The author (Ian Alexander) is always soliciting suggestions and has nade quite a few updates in just the last couple of weeks.

Re:Better Options for Ubuntu Than Automatix

[nuzak]

It's also worth noting that the authors of these respective applications have far and away more maturity, professionalism, and just plain clue than the author of Automatix.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=122797

See for yourself.

Re:MOD PARENT UP (more)

[Blain]

Sounds like they did you a favor to delete your more ranty stuff before the thread got slashdotted. You'd look like even more of a jerk.

I don't use Ubuntu -- I used debian-via-knoppix for about 18 months, and have recently switched to Xandros OCE and I'm reasonably happy with it.

From reading over the thread, it looks as though you had the expectation that the people who gave you the software for free were obliged to provide you with the answers to all of your demands for support sight unseen. This is the place where the problems in the thread came from.

Mind you, I know what it's like to ask a simple-sounding question and get a brief and obscure answer -- or a very ugly answer (like "back up your homedirs, format your hd, and do a fresh install with stable or testing" that I got on irc last month). It's frustrating. Part of where it comes from is not yet knowing enough to be able to ask the question which, when answered, will give you the information you need to fix the problem you've got. That's you, and that's me. I'm learning pieces as we go, and the learning curve isn't a lot of fun, but the nice thing about *nix stuff is that the things that you learn stay true (if not, always, relevant), as opposed to proprietary stuff, where the paradigms can change much more drastically and things you once knew have to be unlearned with annoying frequency.

However, when you're asking for free help, you need to remember that there isn't anybody there that has a stake in you fixing your problem. Not everybody who could answer your question chooses to hang around in those forums, and not everybody who does is going to give you the answer you want in the form you want to hear it. If you're not paying for their time, it is unreasonable to expect them to show a good customer service attitude. You're not a customer.

Now, some things you might have learned from this situation:

1) It's a smart idea to know where your Windows install CD is, especially when you're going to try something major with your system.

2) It's a smart idea to have a Knoppix CD on hand when you try something major with your system.

3) Having more than one physical HD in a system makes it a little non-standard, and standard answers might need a little tweaking to work right. The person who wrote the manual may not have taken the details of your situation into account, so this is something to research prior to trying to set things up on it.

4) The Thumper Principle works really, really well when asking for free help from strangers who have no reason to like you or do anything nice for you: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. That's hard to do when you're really frustrated. In the words of Eric to Corey, "Life's hard, little brother. Get a helmet." Or, if you prefer "Life is pain, princess. Anybody who says otherwise is selling something." That which doesn't kill you will make you stronger, and you're not dead yet. Being nice to people is just generally a better idea when you have nothing to offer them that they need in return.

Not sure which, if any, of those lessons you have or will learned, but those jump out to me. I hope you've worked through the problem somehow by now.