30 Days With Ubuntu Linux

jkwdoc writes "Vexed by Vista's hardware requirements and product activation issues, many have claimed on various boards that they plan to 'switch to Linux.' [H] Consumer spent 30 days using nothing but Ubuntu Linux to find out if this is truly a viable alternative for the consumer. Linux has indeed become much more than the 'Programmer's OS.'"

Comments

My quest to "switch"

[fed0up]

I have been meaning to try out Linux for years, but never ventured. Thanks to reading /. (can't remember how long; should be 3+ years) I finally decided to take the plunge two weeks ago.

I chose openSUSE, simply because it got some Press(Read: Novell).

I have XP on Toshiba Laptop and wanted to have a dual boot on it.

I used GParted for partition, though openSUSE came with partition manager. GParted was very easy and "Windows like"

The installation went smooth and openSUSE recognized all hardware. I chose GNome as the desktop, simply because Firefox came with it.

I played around and customized to my liking. Opened the Terminal and played with the vi editor. It seems like vi skills are etched in memory(I used to program in C years ago).

I hit the road block with wireless network. The installer recognized Intel 3945 wireless card, but would not connect.

Doing a Google search(are you happy now Google lawyers?), I found I am not alone. I tried ALL solutions offered on various forums.

1. Using Intel's Linux driver - This required a kernel version of 2.6.8 or greater. openSUSE 10.2's kernel is 2.6.16 or something. It is only sensible to use the native driver right? I hit the wall again and again.

2. ndiswrapper - Grudgingly I tried this as a last resort. Same result.

Time spent: Few weekday evenings and a weekend (to the dismay of spouse)

I absolutely love the shiny OS. Unfortunately I can not use it without an wireless internet connection.

So it sits there unused.(I changed the default OS to Windows in GRUB).

Re:On the other hand...

[Teresita]

Yeah, I never understood the appeal of Ubuntu and am diehard Fedora. The sudo business was very odd to me. You can run a command as root by using "sudo", but you enter your *own password? What gives?

Sudo gives you root access for the purpose immediately at hand, and then takes you back to your account. It lets you get in, get out, and not have your fanny hanging out there on the net in admin mode for someone to burn you.

Re:Obligatory karma hit

[Just Some Guy]

4) Commands to diagnose the problem won't run.

Oh, and:

5) If you act like a spoiled jerk on a community-driven forum, stamp your little feet, and absolutely refuse to try any of their troubleshooting ideas or provide them with the information they repeatedly ask for, then they probably won't help you.

Yeah, I read the thread where you "tried" to get help. Your take on the episode doesn't have a lot to do with what you actually posted at the time.

Moderators, before you mark me down, actually read the Slashdot thread he linked to. I'm not the one who initially pointed out his tantrums and complete refusal to help fix his own problem. I can't believe that he uses that thread as supporting evidence of why Ubuntu is broken.

Re:On the other hand...

[mackyrae]

It also means that if you're an admin and there are many users, you can avoid giving out the root password. You can set it so only specific people can use sudo, and you can monitor everything they do while in sudo mode. So, if something goes wrong, you know which person did it rather than a general "someone with the root password did it" and every guy's pointing to the guy next to him going "he did it!"

Re:Get the mono

[denis-The-menace]

(Not the caulking...)

http://www.mono-project.com/

Re:ya but

[Anonymous Coward]

Sim City 3000 (happy penguin pay)
Tremulous: http://tremulous.net/ (Repositories free)
Legends: http://legendsthegame.net/ (download free)
Uplink: http://www.uplink.co.uk/
Darwinia: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/
Defcon: http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/

Don't assume they're all rubbish till you've actually played them. Preferably on Linux. (Except Sim City. Thats rubbish.)

Re:ya but

[__aaqvdr516]

actually you can get quite a few newer games to work. Unreal has had Linux distros for a while. Wow can be made to work under WINE. The problem with most of these games is the setup time required to get it to run. Why spend an hour or two attempting to get WoW set up under linux when you can spend 5 minutes installing it under windows?

It's a catch 22. More people would use Linux if the games were there. But the games aren't there because not enough people use linux.

For the record (before I get poo pood) I've had ubuntu and mandrake on 2 seperate comps. My laptop (3-4 years old) runs everything just fine. My desktop (2 years old) did not have driver support for what I have in it, and most likely will not receive driver support (Soundblaster X-fi sound card). Not to mention the config editing I had to do to get the Nvidia 6800 to work.

As a hobby Linux is fine. You won't get the gaming freaks to switch over any time soon.

Re:Misguided or simply lazy

[nofx911]

Below is a PC for $332 - including Microsoft Vista. The price would probably be around $280 if I used multiple companies for the component parts. All of this is, is from NewEgg.

  Qty. Product Description Unit Price Savings Total Price
1 Rosewill R103A Black SGCC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply - Retail
Model #: R103A
Item #: N82E16811147010

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock
        $30.99 -$5.00 Instant $25.99
1 Foxconn K8S755A-6ELRS Socket 754 SiS 755 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
Model #: K8S755A-6ELRS
Item #: N82E16813186068

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock
        $36.99 $36.99
1 MSI MX4000-T64 DDR AGP 2X/4X Low Profile Video Card - Retail
Model #: MX4000-T64
Item #: N82E16814127128

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock
        $23.99 $23.99
1 AMD Sempron 64 2800+ Palermo 1.6GHz Socket 754 Processor Model SDA2800AIO3BX - OEM
Model #: SDA2800AIO3BX
Item #: N82E16819104244

Return Policy: Processors (CPUs) Return Policy

In Stock
        $27.00 $27.00
1 WINTEC AMPO 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory Model 35145588-P - Retail
Model #: 35145588-P
Item #: N82E16820161615

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock
        $33.99 $33.99
1 Western Digital Caviar WD800BB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM
Model #: WD800BB
Item #: N82E16822144102

Return Policy: Limited 30-Day Return Policy

In Stock
        $40.99 $40.99
1 LITE-ON Combo Black IDE Model LH-52C1P-187 - Retail
Model #: LH-52C1P-187
Item #: N82E16827106058

Return Policy: Standard Return Policy

In Stock
        $23.99 $23.99
1 Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM
Model #: 66I-00715
Item #: N82E16832116202

Return Policy: Software Return Policy

In Stock
        $119.99 $119.99
Subtotal: $332.93

Re:Obligatory karma hit

[BJH]

OK, let's see how you acted on the Ubuntu free support forums:

Before you make this even more frustrating for me:

Nice way to ask for help. Sure makes me feel like giving you a hand (or maybe a boot up the ass). Mm-hmm.

I should never have believed all that crap about "providing access to all".

Useful information? Missing. Needless slagging off of OS you're purportedly trying to convert to? Check.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide in helping undo the damage Ubuntu has done.

I guess there wasn't quite enough needless slagging off yet.

I thought -- probably because of all the liberation/openness rhetoric of Ubuntu -- I wouldn't need Microsoft software to get Ubuntu to work.

And I guess he thought you were actually interested in recovering your PC instead of trolling the forums.

So in other words, you didn't read my first post, in which I said that the disc is fine and I've tried reinstalling multiple times. This just makes my day.

If this is how you act towards people you've never met who are trying to help you, I'd hate to work with you.

Don't see what difference that makes, given as I can't even get into Windows, and the problem is obviously due to GRUB. Seems like a fishing expedition there.

How about just giving him the fucking information he asked for? Too much to ask for some people, I guess...

Just yesterday I thought I knew what chutzpah was.
"Starting on the right foot" would include "not getting locked out of my computer because I installed a OS billed as 'Linux for Human Beings' ". "Starting on the right foot" would include finding instructions that answer the frequently asked question of "how do I set up a new partition and install to that partition?". "Starting on the right foot" would include an Ubuntu forum that doesn't take me a week of trying to access from different computers and connections before it consistently loads.
Stop making excuses. So I wouldn't answer what Windows version it is. Can anyone think of any reason why one version of Windows over another would cause GRUB error 25? No? Okay then.
The problem is not the devices, or the Windows version, or getting the latest install CD, or scratches on the install CD. The problem is the boot loader. The problem has already been diagnosed. You just want to chase all these wild geese because you don't want to admit that maybe this "access for all" OS has a serious problem.
Would somebody just tell me how to edit, modify, fix, whatever, the boot loader? That's all. It should be really simple, given the rigorous testing that they would put a software capable of locking you out of your computer through.

Sheesh. You actually expected that to make people want to help you more than they were already?

Re:Misguided or simply lazy

[MBGMorden]

I'll bite. Below is the cheapest system I can find on Dell's site, with all options at their lowest levels:
AMD Sempron(TM) 3400+
Genuine Windows Vista(TM) Home Basic
512MB Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz - 1DIMM
80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache(TM)
16X DVD-ROM Drive
No Monitor
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE Integrated Graphics GPU
Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Cost: $389 ($359 plus $30 shipping)

Below is a quicker perusal of Newegg. Note that I could slightly downgrade some of these specs (such as going with a Sempron 3000 instead of 3400 to save money, an option which isn't available from Dell), and I could also shop around and likely come out cheaper than Newegg, but it's a good place to through lots of stuff together:

AMD Sempron 64 3400+ Manila 1.8GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model SDA3400CNBOX - Retail $69.99
Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Basic for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM $94.99
Patriot 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Desktop Memory Model PSD251253381H $33.99
Western Digital Caviar WD800BB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM $40.99
LG Beige E-IDE/ATAPI DVD-ROM Drive Model 8164BI - Retail $17.99
PC CHIPS A33G V1.0 Socket AM2 SiS 761 GX Micro ATX AMD Motherboard (w/ integrated video/network/sound) - Retail $46.99
POWMAX CP808PL-1 Beige Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply - Retail $20.99
DCT Factory KBJ-006UB Black USB Standard Keyboard - Retail $3.99
Rosewill RM800P Black 3 Buttons 1 x Wheel PS/2 Wired Optical Mouse - OEM $3.49

Total: $362 ($334 plus $32 shipping)

Savings over $27 on building yourself. Not huge, but it is a savings, and at these costs that's darned close to 10%.

Re:Too many choices?

[Bacon Bits]

I've not seen any *nix distro use anything but /home for years, with the exception of the superuser wich always uses /root. The last time I did was about the time Microsoft changed from %windir%\profiles (the Windows NT 4 directory) to Documents and Settings.

Additionally, you can use the '~' shortcut. '~' is current user's home directory. It's equivalent to %userprofile% in Windows. '~fred' is user fred's home directory. Also, 'cd' with no directory always changes you back to your home directory (it's the same as 'cd ~').

Linux's unified directory structure is very confusing especially compared to the Windows system (everything is a file, logical to physical mapping is not obvious), but home directories are one of the easiest things possible. The most complicated thing for me was figuring out the difference between /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin (and then /sbin and it's contemporaries). It boils down to needing to learn the FHS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy _Standard), and then learning the history of the directories. For example, /opt and /srv are still rather new, so a lot of systems still use /var.

If you think about it though, Windows's directories are also rather complex. Windows doesn't install in C:\Windows. It's really in C:\Windows\System32. Program Files is supposed to be read only, and it's one of the reasons so many apps only work when you're an admin. Documents and Settings, while an accurate name, is filled with hidden directories where the OS is trying to keep the user from breaking it, but you still need to get into them from time to time. pagefile.sys is the system pagefile, hiberfil.sys is for hibernation. NTLDR is the bootstrap, and the bootloader is kept in the volume MBR and is completely hidden since all it does is find NTLDR and run it. Most systems have an \i386 directory copied from the CD since Windows wants it from time to time. There's also \RECYCLER which is the recycle bin, and \System Volume Information which contains information Windows itself uses as well as where it store the Restore Points. %userprofile%\NTUSER.DAT is the user's registry hive, while the other registry hives all live in C:\WINDOWS\system32\config. %windir%\system32\config\systemprofile and %documentsandsettings%\.Default user also exists on most systems, containing information on the default profiles. %windir%\system32\drivers is filled with kernel-mode code (real mode, mostly drivers) and %windir%\system32\dllcache contains protected-mode code (user-mode apps). Then there's 5 or 6 different temp directories, and storage locations for Group Policy, security objects, system logs, etc.

IMX, none of that is half as well documented as the Linux stuff.