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New Failsafe Graphics Mode For Ubuntu
ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."
Linux gets Safe Mode!
I guess that's an advance.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This is great, but should have been done a long time ago! I have heard several people say they "tried ubuntu but it wouldn't work"... I determined the graphics failure to be an issue 100% of the time.
Get a web developer
Install on reboot?
(\(\
(=_=) Bani!
(")")
Although I personally do not care about that feature, I view it as a positive step towards mass adoption of Linux. I have to admit it scares me a bit although. Once mass adopted, we won't have the satisfaction to know we are running a better OS anymore ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
As silly as it sounds, I've come across so many new Linux users who have messed up their display settings in some way, been unable to use the command line to fix it and have just resorted to giving up or reinstalling, neither is really an ideal option.
Whilst to the average Slashdotter this may sound silly, I'd bet it's one of the biggest things that puts your average Joe off Linux through the years. Being able to easier recover from broken Linux installs will, imo go a long way to keeping people using Linux rather than the current situation where quite a few try, but many give up. Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows. This is however why I'd say Ubuntu has been making such headway in attracting new users to Linux because they do seem to understand what problems exactly that up until now have been putting many new users off Linux.
This is very good, I'm sure a lot of users would like to have the choice of selecting these in a graphical mode, which with they may be more familiar. Many users familiar with Windows/OSX will automatically be more familiar with Ubuntu because of this feature. It's important to have as many options available on CLI and GUI at the same time.
I remember that back in the day YaST (SuSE's Yet Another Setup Tool) used to be incredibly handy because the CLI and GUI for the tool, which controlled almost all configurable options of the Linux distro, would behave almost exactly the same. The CLI used curses for display, and I believe the GUI was QT-based. They functioned pretty much identically. Personally, I have no problem just editing a text file. But, if you are a linux newbie and you poke around in the GUI and mess something up, then suddenly you can't start X, you feel a little bit safer knowing that there's a tool you can use to revert your settings that works exactly the same on the CLI as it does in the GUI, so you can access the program in almost any situation, even from a remote terminal.
Twinstiq, game news
the x foundation died a long time ago, dont expect an X12 for a long long time.
Being able to get a console and edit xorg.conf will probably always be with us, but it should never be the primary means of configuration for a desktop machine. I see this as a major step forward for Ubuntu in reaching it's target audience. I use many distros, but I generally choose Ubuntu for desktop systems because I really don't have the motivation to do all that by hand just for a lousy desktop. It's also for people like my dad: he can follow instructions and install an OS, but he's not touching a config file.
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
Linux has always had "safe mode". You boot single user from the command line.
..... I guess you could consider it "safe mode" for X.org. But not for "Linux".
This is more "easy GUI re-configuration of X.org when X.org blows up".
Well
Although I've haven't had *nix installed on any of my home computers yet, I'm very happy indeed that Windows XP looks to be the last MS OS I will ever use.
Changing to Linux is now something I'm thinking about on at least a weekly basis, and the upcoming version Ubuntu seems very likely to make me leave Windows. (Except for a small gaming partition).
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
Xandros and other distros have had this for years.
This has been a problem I've run into a lot as a Linux novice, and newly converted user to Ubuntu 7.04. I really wish that someone would make dual/multi display configuration much more intuitive. In Windows even the n00best of n00bs can easily configure a dual monitor setup. In the various Linux flavors I've tried it is not that simple. Seems like the system display configuration utility and the video drivers I install for nVidia/ATI cards just want to fight each other over who gets to control that second monitor, instead of just working like it does in Windows. Like I said, total novice here so I don't know if its an issue with the distro's themselves, or the third party drivers by nVidia/ATI, all I know is it is annoying, and one of the major caveats preventing me from totally embracing the penguin.
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
An error screen that appears in a crash, maybe a nice calming blue one... ;-)
Welcome to Windows 95!
Well, I've never built a live CD or even actually use X locally on my linux machines anymore, but from what I remember, X would try and start with the graphic driver you have specified... if it didn't work for whatever reason, it would just exit. Then you had to manually tweak settings. If you got frustrated enough, there was always VESA. That should always work... but it doesn't. Then the last chance would be VGA mode. Technically, all of this can be wrapped into startx... I just don't think anyone has approached it. Both because of the "RTFM n00b" mentality of the linux community when someone complains, and the fact that WHO really wants to run X in VGA mode?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
Personally, I find it far, Far, FAR, FAR easier to recover a damaged Linux box than a damaged Windows box. But that is primarily because the damaged Windows boxes that I get have major Registry issues.
As long as you can get an Ubuntu box to boot to the command line, it is "easy" to fix. "Easy" is in quotes because it takes a little bit of knowledge. But not much. I'm running Gutsy Gibbon at home and even with 2 problems (it is still alpha) I've been able to recover my system without rebooting in less than 5 minutes.
The magic is in APT and the repositories. As long as I can connect to the repositories and run APT, I can remove the problem or re-install over it.
As more people become familiar with Ubuntu (and Debian and Debian-based distributions) the "fear" of Linux will vanish. It's just so much EASIER than Windows. (unless your hardware isn't supported but that's a different issue)
I remember Jeff Waugh (Gnome guy, also worked at Canonical) had mentioned at last year's Ohio Linux Fest there had been talk about this for years but everyone was always busy working on other stuff. Glad to see they finally are getting it out.
X11 brought a standard means of controlled extensions to the X protocol. So called "X extensions". So the need for a new protocol revision number for anything other than marketing purposes would be quite miniscule, though these days much of the drawing on your desktop is happening through an extension (e.g. X composite, render, glx ...) rather than core X.
The only thing that would merit it would be a fundamental change to the rendering model necessitating a core protocol change, and really, X's rendering model is quite reasonable (though individual implementations are sometimes lacking in implementation terms in some areas - X.org (and XFree86 before it) have shockingly slow nested subwindow support, for no good reason- in the end, people like Trolltech (Qt) have made a decision, and moved away from subwindows, because it's faster for them to emulate them than use native subwindows. Which is pretty dumb, since X had subwindows specifically to make toolkit implementors lives mh easier (then again, MacOSX native GUI doesn't support native subwindows, and Qt being crossplatform they had to implement an emulation anyway). But you don't need to change the protocol to improve that, just fix X.org to Not Suck).
<blockquote>Being able to get a console and edit xorg.conf will probably always be with us, but it should never be the primary means of configuration for a desktop machine.</blockquote>
.inf file for their monitor. That makes it even easier for them.
Unless you're in an office environment where you have many machines that are identical. Then you can just push out the default configuration and allow the user to change from there (<Ctrl><Alt><+> & <Ctrl><Alt><->).
Having the GUI is great for home users who will have every possible video card + monitor combination. Not to mention that they will be able to import the Windows
Well, KDE and GNOME do have such panels. In GNOME, System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution In KDE, the program krandr does the same thing. For safe mode, we have the command prompt. Far more functional then windows safe mode.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
This is clearly a great example of the agile developers of the OSS community. Only months after Microsoft announces similar features in the upcoming Windows version customized for the home user, the OSS movement has once again beat them to it, and implemented features only mentioned with vague release dates by the huge Seattle-based software company. Way to go, guys!
The prosecution presents Exhibit Q, which clearly indicates that it is a failure of attitude that keeps Linux from the hands of the common user.
Ok, I'm sure others have too, but I filed a bug report on this problem a LOOOONG time ago. It's taken them quite a long time to get around to fixing this, a rather significant usability problem.
At my job I build high end linux boxes for tech shows and demo's, now all of my experience has been for red hat only... but nvidia has some great drivers for running multiheaded displays, however running an nvidia and ati card with their prospective drivers has been a disaster for me, you are correct, there is module contention when loading the drivers, then each one has their own configuration tool. I have managed to become quite good at editting the xorg.conf file and can get the two to come up and display correctly, however it takes alot of patience, and alot of looking on the internet to achieve...
You might not have heard, but these days the X.Org Foundation is the one running the show and making the reference implementation (latest being X11R7.2 as of now). If you've used a desktop-oriented distribution of Linux within the last five years, chances are that it came equipped with it as the default choice.
In any case, I'm not exactly sure about what cause would be served by changing the base protocol.
And how long did he think he could get away with it?
Just kidding. Bryce is a fine fellow, and is also the excellent boss of the Inkscape project.
Didn't Microsoft do this with windows in like 95? ;)
The one thing that always drives me nuts when installing Ubuntu is that the fonts really blow. And even if you install nice Windows fonts, you STILL have to screw around with your font configuration files to make them look nice. Especially in Firefox. Kubuntu is *slightly* better, but it still sucks.
I sometimes wonder if the Ubuntu team should *really* focus on fixing all the problems with GNOME/KDE. Put all their energy into making the GUI as good as it can possibly be. All the other pieces of a Linux distro are handled well-enough by other people, but the *important* GUI work seems to be handled by a too-small group of developers for the GNOME/KDE project.
I hope that they make sure that the dialogs you'd need to fix graphics issues are sized to work in whatever graphics resolution they use in "safe mode".
I say this because I know that many of the current GTK dialogs are too large for 640x480, and because there are Windows dialogs that are annoyingly unusable in Windows "safe mode".
The cake is a pie
Again
I will be more careful next time
Again
I will be more careful next time
Again
I will be more careful next time
ok I got it... again sorry dude. :)
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Couldn't TrollTech have just fixed X.org (or XFree86) instead? That's what open source is all about, isn't it?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
You obviously don't get it. You can't go to "System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution" if you can't see anything 'cause your graphics are messed up! And the whole point is to make it easier for people who don't like using the command line.
Until every task the average user needs to do can be done with a GUI, Linux will not be ready for prime time.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
AFAIK, this sort of thing was present in Windows going all the way back to Windows 95. Granted, of course, its gotten *better* since then (and maybe the Ubuntu feature will be quite solid), but I honestly don't see why Linux distros wouldn't have included this as a feature a long time ago. Is this something that's new specifically to Ubuntu, or do most Linux distros force you to command line if the graphics card fails to initialize its drivers properly?
SuSE has been using something similar for at least 4 years, it's tied into YaST a bit heavily, but surely it would have been easier to port SaX then to write a new application from scratch. A little bit of NIH syndrome, maybe?
'In any case, I'm not exactly sure about what cause would be served by changing the base protocol.'
This has been a glaring hole in Linux desktop systems until... now? It is a feature that should always be present. Manual X configuration is a painful touch and go process even if you know how.
So basically, it makes sense to add this to the base release because it is a capability that is needed for virtually every X installation (for modularity you should be able to remove it of course, embedded applications and such) and definitely for every X desktop installation.
'and the fact that WHO really wants to run X in VGA mode'
Nobody, but there are graphical tools that will fairly reliably detect and configure your X for you. Or you can look up the settings for your card/monitor. What X really needs to do is detect your monitor and video card dynamically on every boot.
A Windows user boots Ubuntu on a new laptop, say, and gets a low-res 'safe mode' telling them that there's no specific support for their video hardware ("Ubuntu failed to start the windowing system because it was unable to properly configure your hardware").
Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does. It also supports the use of generic drivers for standards compliant cards, such as VESA.
They can't download a driver package and update.
Of course they can. ATI and nVidia, the two biggest graphics card vendors provide Linux driver packages you can download. In fact, Ubuntu has a utility that will do this automatically for you.
They can't use a driver off a CD that came with the machine, because there aren't any.
Generally it's the same with Windows. My last computer, a Compaq, didn't come with any CD. The only option was to create a "restore" CD/DVD which amounted to little more than a disk image. Say I want to install a different version of Windows than what the machine was imaged with, where are the drivers?
None of your arguments against X hold water, and of course if you actually put some thought into it, you'd be able to come up with some simple reasons why failsafe mode is useful. What if your X has the right drivers, but the auto detect failed or something you did borked the configuration? With failsafe mode you can revert back to a correct driver setting and recover your desktop rather quickly and painlessly.
You cite Windows as "the superior way," but don't you even realize that Windows has a graphics safe mode for exactly the same reason as Ubuntu has now? If anything Ubuntu is mimicking something Windows has done for over a decade. If the feature were as useless as you claim, why hasn't Microsoft removed that feature by now, and why do I have so much first hand experience utilizing it at home and work?
The gui is called synaptic. It's so awesome compared to anything on the MSwindows side of things, it's hard to describe to someone who just uses MSWindows. But I'll give it a try:
Synaptic contains a list of repositories. Each repository is a website that has a group of applications for the OS. Synaptic comes with some default repositories and has an easy way for the user to add new ones using a GUI interface (or a text interface).
You run synaptic and it will give you a list of all possible programs to install on the OS. Everything. You click on a program to install. If it requires other applications to be installed, it will warn you that it will also install the other applications.
The magic comes when a new version of any application (ie: Firefox) comes out that you already have installed. The OS knows that there is a new version because the repositories will have a version number higher than the version installed on your system. The OS will put a little star in the corner of the screen. Click on it will bring up synaptic with the option to install the newer version.
Think of it as a Windows Update that does not send information about your system to any website, and which can update any program installed on your system (including OS files and files not distributed by Microsoft), regardless of who makes it. (repositories are available for proprietary products such as Opera and Google Earth).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Yes there is Synaptic which is a (power-user) GUI front-end to APT, and there is 'Add and remove programs' in the 'start menu' menu where you can browse and search thousands of officially supported, community supported, and 3rd party applications, which can then be installed with two clicks. Dependency management is handled automatically avoiding 'RPM hell' and 'DLL hell'. (Yes I know RPM has Yum, it's a reference to the old usage of 'RPM hell').
Far, far, better than what Windows or OSX offers IMHO.
X is not flawless.
It will not detect your video card, monitor, etc. right the first time in every case. Especially if you're using weird and old hardware.
This gives an easy way for a user to try to fix it themselves, without having to use the command line.
Done already. In fact, Linux has many of them: apt-get, yum, emerge, and more! It's a veritable cornucopia of unified program installation methods.
Loose lips lose spit.
I want to re-iterate some of what's been said here. Just to be clear, I'm no *nix n00b. I learned on VMS and IBM VM/CMS then moved to a mixed VMS, Ultrix, HP-UX and SunOS/Solaris environment in 1991. I started using redhat in 1995, switched to Suse in 2002, and to Ubuntu in 2007. I work as an engineer and do some software development. At home I have a Windows box which gets used for work and acts as a file and print server (since it's the more powerful machine). Beside it is a linux box that likewise gets used for dev work and cross compiling code. I am capable of dealing with problems that may arise on either the Windows or *nix platform.
In my kitchen is a laptop. It's running Ubuntu. It's the machine my non-techy wife uses. She has been using linux since 2002 and I would guess she represents a "typical" user. Present her with a GUI, dialog boxes, a clear and user friendly interface and she's fine; put her in front of a shell prompt and she's lost.
Features like this "Failsafe Graphics Mode" are critical if we expect more widespread adoption of linux. This is where Microsoft and Apple have done a very good job of making it easy for a typical person with limited or no technical background to configure and use the machines. A previous poster suggested that linux has always had a failsafe mode; but, booting into single user mode and dumping someone at a shell prompt is not good enough. At that point most people would give up. We have to work to make the platform as user friendly as possible if we expect it to be adopted. linux needs more of these user friendly interfaces for diagnosing problems and configuring hardware. That laptop my wife uses, in order to get the wifi interface to work I had to drop back to a command prompt to troubleshoot the problem, then edit a couple of configuration files to make it work. (and for the record, it's a Ralink 2500 based card made by Asus, which is supposed to be well supported) That's just unacceptable to most users. Let's try to keep the typical end user in mind when we design these projects. I think the folks working on Ubuntu are setting a fine example.
You know, that's one of Mac's strong points. I'm not a fanboy by any means; but I have never had a problem with hardware not working during or after upgrading OS's on a Mac.
My experience with Linux has been to throw darts at a wall as to whether my devices would work or not during/after installation. I suppose that's a factor of my dumb ass not doing research into what kernels support which hardware and are available in which distro.But who wants to go through all that fuss? Isn't the beginning of user-friendliness how everything should work right out of the box?
The game.
You're right: your point is invalid. Why did you think making a completely uninformed statement about a feature you thought Linux lacked (on Slashdot, of all places) was a good idea? Actually, I think I just answered my own question.
But in case you're not a troll, nearly all Linux distributions have come with package management systems for some time, and most of those have GUI front-ends for them. Admittedly some of those GUIs are difficult to use, but your comment is still quite ironic given that neither Windows nor Mac OS has such a feature. (Windows has a unified uninstall feature and a semi-standard installation tool, but that's a joke compared to what you get with a real package manager.)
You mean something like .. i dunno .. like this?
.. special systems, like this.
Oooor... like this?
Or maybe like this?
Note that all three have their use cases.
First is programs from repositories (default shipped with ubuntu contains a lot of programs, but you can add your own), and all software installed from this will be automatically updated.
The second is for single programs packaged for ubuntu, which contains a compressed file with all the software (similar to windows, except the package manager keeps VERY good control over the files the program adds, and is much more painless to remove).
And the last one, if you target multiple distros with one installer.
There's also the traditional source code packages, and some more
All in all, there is no reason why an ubuntu user should not find it just as easy or even easier to install/manage programs than a windows user.
And we all know the standard windows installer. Trust us, we know what we're doing! Really!
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
System->Administration->Synaptic, click search, type package name, select, hit apply. It's graphical. Once installed, the update manager syncs in the background and informs of updates, which, once confirmed, are downloaded and applied. Updates are found for all packages, not just core system stuff, as in Windows Update. If you want to try it out, download ubuntu livecd and boot from it. The pre-install environment is a full featured runtime without touching your disks. Linux has always been good at working well when it works, and now it's getting better to get it working and fix it when it is not... and Ubuntu seems to be the best of the distros. There are times when a Windows box is nice, and dual booting is easy enough to setup for an adventurous novice. Adventure enough and one is soon no longer a novice.
Sorry to point this out so rudely but people like YOU are just one of the many reasons that Linux doesn't get traction faster.
You mean when can _Windows_ expect a unified program installation method. Linux has had package managers for decades, even GUI ones for simpletons.You want Linux to get used more, then stop insulting people who's ONLY use for a computer is to do work that they need to do, such as writing letters, working on spreadsheets, creating presentations etc. etc.
They NEVER want to see the command prompt. They want to turn it on and just have it work.
By deriding people who don't care about the gory technical details, you alienate them and DO HARM to the wider acceptance of Linux.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
No, my post wasn't a troll. First of all, I wanted to point out to the AC that a command-line tool doesn't really suffice, but I also was curious to know if there was a GUI to accomplish the same thing. Apparently there is, and that's great. I'm sorry if I struck you as a troll, that's not really my thing.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
FBSD has defaulted to a VESA mode for some time now i thought. Not that its 100% but it covers 99% of what is still running ( and that you would want to try running X on ).
Sure its nice, but doesnt seem 'earth shaking'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think you may be a bit confused here. Easy configuration and automatic failsafe operation is a server implementation detail. The protocol itself is the definition of how the server has to communicate with client programs. The former is something which clients in general don't have to know or care about, while changes to the protocol will most certainly break a lot of things, and I think in the current situation it would be a solution in search of a problem.
I'm all thumbs up for making X server configuration less intimidating, it's something I've heard people complain about for as long as I've been a Linux user.
Another cool thing about using synaptic and repositories: When Ubuntu came out with version 7.04, users of version 6.10 got a notice via synaptic, stating that a new version of the OS was available. If the user chose to upgrade to the new version, the only thing that was changed was the version of the OS listed in the list of repositories in synaptic. Then synaptic just did it's usual business and downloaded all the new files. A single reboot later, and the entire OS and all applications were upgraded. All at once.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
'but nvidia has some great drivers for running multiheaded displays'
I am all ears for your wisdom. I run a system with both a monitor and TV out and I haven't been able to find a graphical tool that can actually configure the nvidia drivers (neither the nvidia tool nor any of the tools I've found in the ubuntu repositories actually function properly). The only way I am have been able to make it work is by editing the conf manually (a PITA) and even with it enabled I haven't been able to achieve the same resolutions and functionality I get just by selecting 'clone' and setting the secondary display (aka the TV) as the fullscreen video device under windows.
What is the secret to 30 second multiple display/tv out setup with the nvidia linux drivers?
Newer versions of X.org have a decent autodetect setup, if the hardware support is available. Try "X -configure"
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,free flow of information is the only safeguard against...
So you're saying the comparison is Apples to oranges?
The game.
unfortunately for some Graphic Cards, newer ATIs, Xorg is UNABLE to Boot even using failsafe drivers like vesa.
I've had three goes at (k)ubuntu now, and fuckups with xorg have driven me back to Windows every time - I've posted about this a few times, the simple inability of ubuntu to find my native resolution, and the need to manually edit configuration files is a killer for beginners. This is great news, now I will be bothered to re-use the dead 30GB partition that currently boots to a blank screen, which it's done ever since I added 1440x900 to the display modes in kubuntu.
Once the unwashed masses use Linux, we'll have to move on The Hurd, then we can have all the old problems all over again...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
'I think you may be a bit confused here. Easy configuration and automatic failsafe operation is a server implementation detail.'
You may be right. I still don't understand why you keep referring to changing the protocol in the first place. The easy configuration and failsafe operation should be included in the standard x.org distribution (along with the extra magic step of dynamically detecting hardware changes). I am by no means an x guru but my understanding is that loading an entirely different server with standard lowest common denominator settings is how a failsafe would function in the first place. I don't understand why you think this would require a protocol change (since nobody else has mentioned the protocol) and my response was written to address why it should be included with the standard package that all the distributions pass on.
Essentially, what I am saying is that this is functionality that is fundemental to a graphical desktop system and you shouldn't need to hope your distribution added the capability or included a third party utility/modification. If it's included in the x.org distribution then it will be included in EVERY distribution.
'I'm all thumbs up for making X server configuration less intimidating, it's something I've heard people complain about for as long as I've been a Linux user.'
I agree. X configuration is not just intimidating, it is a PITA. Even using the new auto-configuration it is a PITA. I am all for additional options where they add flexibility but there is absolutely no advantage to the cumbersome process of configuring X for a new display and video card compared to the MS windows method. I could set up a single monitor keyboard and mouse and call it a workbench. Take in computers that need repair, fix them using my bench and give the tower back to the customer knowing their system would automatically adjust itself to their display and input devices when they went home from win95b on. The fact that I STILL can't do that with Linux/X today is just pathetic.
As for backward compatibility, it is something one should strive to maintain while moving forward, but the moment there is a conflict between backward compatibility and the ability to move forward backward compatibility should lose.
'Newer versions of X.org have a decent autodetect setup, if the hardware support is available. Try "X -configure"'
Yeah, that worked for me once. I'd much rather not have to lean forward though. Changing computers and monitors is something I do ALOT.
When can we expect a unified program installation method? Sometime after peak oil?
:)
Given that we're already there, yes.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
From that description, it sounds like I never have to manually configure my settings -- unless of course, it couldn't detect my settings and fell back to a crappy generic driver and resolution. "I see stuff on the screen" does not mean the same thing as "It works."
I suspect sometime after peak oil but before hell freezes over. Seriously, after learning the rpm and apt-get package systems. I lost interest in fiddling with others. If distributions want to lock themselves out of the market, just keep fragmenting -it's allowed. Hopefully Xorg can incorporate a generalized default graphics routine so every freakin distribution doesn't re-invent the wheel. I can't count the number of times a noob has returned a live cd to me because "it doesn't work" How would my grandmother know she should have just selected the VESA line?
Nope. It's both. How difficult is typing "apt-get install --reinstall foo"? The only difficult part is finding that information when you're an average user who doesn't have access to a GUI web browser. But once you have it, it's simple.
Why? That just limits the range of options.
Why? It's a fact. Linux is NOT Windows.
Nope. Bad analogy. While the majority of USER INTERACTIONS are the same between models of cars (and Ubuntu and Windows), they are NOT all the same.
Imagine the fun of a user refusing to change the way he puts fuel in a car. He learned that the fuel tank is on the driver's side and he'll be damned if he's going to put fuel in on any other side.
Would you consider that person an idiot? Yes, you would.
Cruise control belongs on the stick, not the steering wheel. I don't care if I crash into things.
And manual vs automatic?
Linux is NOT Windows. Don't treat it like it is.
Welcome to the 1990's and the VESA support in just about every graphics card in existance that never got used until around 2000, and only now at the mid-to-end of the decade we get a VESA safe mode.
Probably because the original GP post proposed moving from X11 to X12 to fix usability problems, but the '11' actually refers to the version of the low level client-server communications protocol, which has little to do with usability.
there is a unified program installation method on ubuntu - it's called synaptic.
Windows has one. It's called the Windows Installer. It's kind of like any of the various Linux package system. Or really any package system.
With the exception that it's created using a proprietary binary format, installers are ridiculously hard to create using it, a lot of developers just opt not to bother with it, and, since most Windows software is closed source, Microsoft can't just create them for developers that don't.
Check out the Windows Installer XML Toolset (WiX) and keep in mind that it's the easy way to create Windows Installer packages without forking out money for a tool like InstallShield.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
You know, that's one of Mac's strong points. I'm not a fanboy by any means; but I have never had a problem with hardware not working during or after upgrading OS's on a Mac.
Place overtly willful limits on hardware compatibility and things get substantially easier. Apple's OS tends to not have problems with hardware because Apple maintains a tremendous degree of control over the hardware platform in question. This is the thing that people should find *least* impressive about the Mac, because it's one of the most simple by design. Save your gape-mouthed expression for skillfully-designed user interfaces, purty enclosures, and practically seamless use of Unix under the hood.
Actually, that's coming too.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DisplayConfigGTK
I would say I'm above the average computer user. I've configured FreeBSD to act as a back-end spam filtering and anti-virus filtering system. It works great, I can set up a box in about an hour or two, depending on how fast it compiles SpamAssassin and ClamAV. My laptop's Windows XP installation bombed out about a month ago. I said to myself, this is your chance to install Linux, use it as your browsing platform, and get really familiar with it in your spare time. I tried 5 (count them 5!) different distro's. I wanted to get one of them to load simply onto my laptop, give me an x-windows environment where I could check on web crap, and learn the rest of it at my own pace. I tried Fedora Core first. Graphics issue. Tried Ubuntu. Graphics issue. Tried Debian, graphics issue (granted, this one was the best of all of them - I could actually get a graphics display, it was just a double image - totally unusable). Tried FreeBSD. Graphics issue. Tried Slack. Graphics issue. None of these so-called mainstream distro's would allow me to pop in a disk, and get my laptop working without serious headaches. I finally (after two days of downloading ISO's, burning them, trying them) gave up, and installed XP again. 1 hour later and 8-10 mouse clicks, and my system was working without any sort of real input from me other than my name, company, and cd key. I like Linux for it's ability to be tailored exactly to your use. I like that I can configure it to do SPAM filtering, and only SPAM filtering. I don't like that I have to jump through 8 burning hoops to get a simple desktop with a browser. Maybe this will give me the tools I need to finally be able to have a linux system that I can actually use daily, and then figure out the guts of when I'm not trying to put out fires at work. I can only imagine how intimidating it would be to someone who has a hard time using Windows.
I still don't understand why you keep referring to changing the protocol in the first place.
Because the protocol version number is "11", and the name "X11" includes the protocol version number. The X Window System (or just "X" for short) has been stable on version 11 of the protocol for a long time now.
The name "X12" implies a change in the protocol that is so serious that no existing X software will know how to talk to it (because all existing X software is X11 software).
They keep on changing the release revision; we are up to 7.2 now, as in "X11R7.2".
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Take in computers that need repair, fix them using my bench and give the tower back to the customer knowing their system would automatically adjust itself to their display and input devices when they went home from win95b on. The fact that I STILL can't do that with Linux/X today is just pathetic.
The X.org guys are in fact working on that. The fact that we can't do it today is just legacy fallout from the poor way that the Xfree86 guys used to run things.
A short (and not polite) summary of the history of X:
-- X invented at a university. Runs quickly through version numbers but stabilises at 11.
-- X not generally available for free for years.
-- Some guys make a free version of X for the 386, and call it "Xfree86".
-- Xfree86 becomes the standard X for free OSes.
-- Xfree86 project management becomes an obvious problem.
-- Talented X developer Keith Packard starts talking to people about ways to improve Xfree86 project management.
-- Xfree86 lead developers accuse Keith Packard of trying to "subvert" Xfree86 management, and kick Keith Packard out of Xfree86. Keith Packard goes to X.org.
-- Xfree86 lead developers go completely insane, and change the licence for X to include onerous new "advertising" requirements.
-- The whole Free Software world, more or less simultaneously, abandons Xfree86, and X.org becomes the new standard X.
-- Xfree86 is now completely irrelevant.
-- X.org guys (including Keith Packard) revamp X to make it easier to work on, revamp dev protocols to make it easier to get things done, and start making cool stuff happen.
Feel free to look up X11, Xfree86, etc. on Wikipedia if you want to know more.
yes.
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
It might help to read at least the parent post of the one you're responding to. X11 is the current protocol, and the OP seemed to call for "a little modernization" in the form of a new revision. This has nothing to do with me opposing some feature or other in the server's software distribution.
Place overtly willful limits on hardware compatibility and things get substantially easier.
You're so right. After all, Apple's use of non-standard interfaces like PCI, USB, FireWire, AGP and others means that Apple can easily account for anything you've plugged into your Mac. There's only a couple of possible options for PCI slots, surely?
Apple use almost completely standard components across the board. They limit the possibilities in the initial purchase, but the towers can have pretty much anything in them and somehow still have very few hardware problems after OS upgrades. Note that I said 'few' and not 'none' - read sites like xlr8yourmac.com for many examples (still 'few' compared to volume) of upgrades causing hardware failures.
I also have had issues with hardware failing after upgrading from MacOS 8 to MacOS 9, but nothing in OS X.
I do it all the time. I never even noticed, since the binary drivers and their kernel modules get upgraded along with the kernel itself with the upgrade manager.
Oh unless you are talking about compiling your own kernel, then you will have to recompile the nvidia kernel module... Of course, if you want to compile your own kernel, then you can surely live with the consequences. For everyone else, there's no issue, since the update manager updates the kernel and the only thing the user needs to do it reboot afterwards
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
You can't even burn an ISO properly in Windows with its default burning interface. (Not that getting the necessary freeware is so hard, but every extra step stops some people.)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I'm not aware of any such drivers on Ubuntu. Are you talking about the non .deb NVidia provided driver package? You shouldn't be using that. Ubuntu includes drivers.
That's what I always used to call Ubuntu. Being a die-hard linux user/sysadmin for going on 10 years now, and a rabid Debian and Slackware fan - I always scoffed at Ubuntu. I felt like it was "dumbed down".
Seeing the positive effect Ubuntu has had in spreading more mainstream use of linux, I've changed my ways. This is just another step further in helping more people to step away from Windows and discover something better. I agree that X11 problems account for the majority of failed end-user attempts at trying linux out.
Since Feisty came out, I've been able to quickly install a GNU/Linux distro on several machines (family members, friends) and have them up and running, and the users happily working on a friendly OS. All of them have stayed with Ubuntu. No Ubuntu/XP dual booting, just straight up scrapping Windows and going full ahead with Ubuntu. Most of them (my wife included) have said "I will never go back to Windows again".
Every time a user says "I will never go back to Windows again", an angel gets its wings.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Nothing is wrong with it.
The problem is with the people claiming that a GUI is NECESSARY.
Years ago we had DOS. And we ran WordPerfect. And we ran Lotus 123. A GUI is not necessary. It is nice. But it is not necessary.
No one is saying that it would hurt Linux adoption. Just that the argument that a GUI is necessary is incorrect.
No one is forcing them. No one is saying that they should not have that option. Just that the argument that a GUI is necessary is incorrect.
And by "trying Linux out" you mean "complaining that it isn't exactly like Windows. Linux is NOT Windows and anyone who is honestly "trying Linux out" will try to learn the differences.
Of course I can. Since I went through the learning experience I am better suited to know what the differences are and what the minimum skills required are. Again, Linux is NOT Windows. People spent time learning Windows. Why do you expect a completely different system to exactly the same?
Ever drive a manual transmission? It's different from an automatic. It requires a different skill set.
Which is why I get so many calls to fix broken Windows boxes.
What happens when the "click here to fix all the problems" GUI does not launch?
With Windows, you bring it to me.
With Ubuntu, you don't have to. You type "apt-get install --reinstall foo" and it works again.
Now, what is the problem with having a few basic commands written down on a 3x5 card and taped to the side of the box? When the GUI fails, a little thought and some very simple commands will bring your box back WITHOUT having to bring it to me.
X configuration is by far my biggest time waster on linux. If they manage to make the gtk based configurator half decent, they will finally make x as usable as mac was back in... 1984.
Seriously though, I'm happy *someone* is finally trying to fix one of the big problems in X, of which there are legion.
nVidia's configuration tool for their restricted drivers doesn't properly generate a xorg.conf in all cases. The tool isn't put in the menus automatically, I forget what the command line for it is. nvidia-settings or nvidia-configure or something? Anyways, if your monitor model name has a " in it, it won't be escaped when it's enclosed in quotes, and xorg.conf will get confused and won't start next time you boot. Oops.
Fortunately nvidia-settings (or whatever) makes a backup so it was easy to restore and reboot. Then I examined the file it outputs and rather quickly noticed nVidia's mistake.
'X11 is the current protocol, and the OP seemed to call for "a little modernization" in the form of a new revision.'
Actually my confusion was about the version/labeling. I was not aware (I suspect like the parent you are referring to) that the 11 refers only to the core protocol and not the major version of the actual software.
configure && make && make install
Come back to me with a real question, like a universal uninstall.
Dude, we're talking about monitors here. OS X will work flawlessly with any monitor that has anything even resembling a VGA or DVI port. I've never seen Mac OS (X or Classic) mis-detect a monitor and set it to too low a resolution, nor have I ever seen Mac OS ever put a monitor out-of-range.
Comment of the year
Except that anyone can create a repository that you can add to Synaptic (or via the commandline) to let you install anything you want. Some of these could enable and disable optional features that the official repos don't, though in general we in the Linux world generally select and deselect optional features via the program itself.
You're thinking the Windows way. Stop it.
This is a sig. Deal with it.
Perhaps just as important as the safe mode is the multi-monitor support; configuring multiple monitors is still a pain in Feisty Fawn.
The graphical installers ALWAYS try to use an ergonomic refresh rate
that drive my old Genuine IBM VGA monitors bananas.
The installer should be written for 640x480, 60 Hz, PERIOD.
And authors of said installers should test them at 640x480.
There's nothing that makes me want to microwave an Ubuntu CD faster
than a dialog box with the buttons off the bottom of the screen.
--Gene
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Over the years, I have wanted to try Linux, and ended up stopping First time I tried Linux, I could find no drivers for my DSL modem, and no internet meant no OS Second time, I played around just fine, but I lose the GUI once, and could never wander through the help to get it back (I found out about 'startx' later) Third time, I had network drivers (even managed to get WiFi set up on my laptop), I could get back into X if I ever got stuck out to a command prompt, but when I started messing around with video drivers, my xorg.conf got messed up, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it to work again. Maybe Fourth time will be a charm
You're totally right. Canonical should do like Apple and only allow users to run Ubuntu on hardware they sell to you. That way you'll always know your Canonical PC will be fully compatible with Ubuntu.
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
And the problem with your perception is that you think that the linux command line mentality is better for the average joe user. I don't disagree that if you know what you're doing, it is much easier to fix a broken Linux than it is to fix a broken Windows. But the key here is that most people don't know what they're doing. Parts of the design of Windows are aimed at users that don't know what they're doing so that their PC will at least be somewhat functional for them with all of the familiar interfaces even if something bad happens.
You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with. If you can't expect failure in your software and implement necessary messages and functionality to recover to a close but not quite mode expected by the user, it doesn't mean a damn thing because they will end up calling the nearest geek to fix it. And when they do that, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to fix or even if you can't fix it. They've already lost time waiting for your service and your service is only seen as a backup effort. If geeks were not available, they probably would have considered their computer broken and the only way to fix it would be to purchase a new one.
The people at Ubuntu are doing more for linux and open source software adoption than anyone else has. Take a hint and learn something about understanding other (non-techy) user's viewpoints. If all open source developers could actually understand those users, then linux might eventually be ready for the desktop.
... like that other OS's "Safe Mode" - VGA resolution with network support disabled. Not a bad idea, though the other GUI-based "user friendly" distros should have thought of it a long time ago.
Of course these days, VGA resolution is mostly unnecessary. I think 1024x768 with 256 colors should work on almost everything out there.
Personally I'm a big fan of slackpkg.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
. . . . Is this the new '50 Cent' game?
Strange that they would bundle it with Ubuntu.
Being as you're so misinformed about how Linux, OSX AND Windows all work in practice, I assume you stopped upgrading systems after the last Amiga was shipped?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Companies want to deliver a product, often in time, if they would have gone the "Open Source Way", it would have taken months or even years till their Xorg fix made it out to each and every distro and of course getting all the user to install such a fix would take an eternity again. Not very practical if you want to sell a product.
If you mean replacing/combining .deb and .rpm, I doubt that will ever happen. Fortunately that doesn't really matter to common users, because most programs you'll use are packaged by the distro, and provided via their installation tools -- yum, apt, portage, pacman, etc. -- which removes the uggliness of deb, rpm, and dependancies from sight.
If you want a cross-distro system, check out klick: http://klik.atekon.de/
Come Klick2, it should be a sleek 1-app:1-file system which works on most distros.
IBM "Genuine VGA" monitors? You're USING them!?!?
Dude, if they still work, save them in your cellar! They will soon be collectors items and you can make a fortune!
But if you are trying to work with them, it's obvious that the only reason you don't microwave your install CD is that you are so cheap you make Scrooge look lavish. I can spend $5-$10 at the local thrift store to get SVGA, 1280x1024 monitors, 15 inch. If you're still using IBM VGA monitors and you expect everything else to work on them, you are [unrealistic/indescribable/retarded/virgin].
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You're so right. After all, Apple's use of non-standard interfaces like PCI, USB, FireWire, AGP and others means that Apple can easily account for anything you've plugged into your Mac. There's only a couple of possible options for PCI slots, surely?
Well, I'm not really talking about hardware interfaces in and of themselves, but I'll skip your bitterly sarcastic tone and respond just the same: In terms of what's made to be Mac compatible? Yes, absolutely. You're *not* going to find people trying to make hardware without well-crafted and extensively tested drivers for the platform in question plug random pieces in and expect them to work flawlessly when it comes to the Mac. You *are* going to find people doing such with hardware they already have and/or works under some other OS doing such with the free *nix-style OSes. Couple this with the fact that the majority of Macs sold these days are *not* easy-to-upgrade towers, but compact all-in-ones, and the chances of some piece of hardware not getting properly detected on installation or post-software-upgrade becomes slim indeed.but we have to put up with you and your kind, who has never run a protein gel, read a DNA sequence, or solved a single biological problem of even the remotest significance for the good of humanity in the slightest inconsequential way; preaching the Gospel of how your Body works by your definitions spawned from everything you could glean from the National Enquirer and the Maury Povich show and the view out of the window of your single-wide mobile home, and delivered as if you were James Fucking Watson.
Speaking for 99.99999999 of humanity, go conduct a poll to back up those numbers and then get back to us, junior!
"Laziness is an optimisation protocol"
General purpose computers are complicated. It's what makes them so powerful. Hiding this fact is deluding the user, restraining flexibility and limiting the ability to learn, not to mention being diametrically opposite to the Unix philosophy (Linux Is Not UniX, yes, I know).
Matt Fuller (who is not me, I hasten to add) dissects the arguments here. For my own part, whenever I hear of such-and-such being made "easier," I wonder just what is being compromised to get there. Sure, make things easier if you must, but leave my CLI alone. I do not want to spend twenty minutes clicking pretty boxes in GUIs to do what takes me thirty seconds as su root, which is one reason I chose BSD.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Is there equivalent functionality for Xubuntu? (or the other *ubuntu?)
This is a great advance for my own usages! I'm not nearly advanced enough to fix mistakes that I make on a Ubuntu box. I had attempted to install Nvidia drivers on my box once and for some reason, it fried X, and I was left with only a command line to work with. I was able to ftp the log with my limited knowledge, but it didn't help me fix the issue in the end. I ended up just wiping the drive and starting over. I would have loved a fail-safe GUI to work with.
very simple...they burn the .iso image as a file instead of an image...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
...how scared todays linux users are of the command line
Make SELinux enforcing again!
It does what Windows has been doing for the last 5 years?
Glad to see computing is advancing.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
You see, the difference here is that nobody in their right mind attempts the job of a biologist without any qualifications. EVERYONE thinks they know about computers in a way which has understandably pissed off the OP. Maybe he has a point.
Go use synaptic, I've often found Windows installation (and especially uninstallation) to be far more complicated. There are no gory details, search, click package, click apply. Installation happens, program appears in the Gnome Menu / K Menu / Whatever. There are 18 different installer 'tools' for Windows, each with its own quirks, especially with uninstalls. YOU'RE denying the gory details. Now please, go get a computer with Norton pre-installed and try to remove it, without using google.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
While I can't remember the last time I actually needed to do this, yes, it works. Often for distros like Ubuntu software that has to be distributed like this is distributed as a .deb package. You download this to your desktop and double-click it. It works like a one-step installer (open it and click 'install') usually. I think it is also possible to do some configuration with those. Like I said, programs that are distributed like this are rare.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
What is supposed to happen is the display manager xdm (or descendants like gdm, kdm, entrance) is set to fall back into failsafe mode anyway when things get strange like a very different monitor. Unfortunately if it has been told to try to use the wrong graphics driver it's stuck - so these new config options in ubuntu are useful. It could be done from the command line for at least a decade but having it as the default when things go wrong is useful now that a lot of people rely on GUI tools to set up their GUI.
Fedora does this and it's actually a bit annoying when you are setting things up with slightly unusual settings because it will rename your Xorg.conf file and set up a new one if you plug in a different monitor. A pain when you are setting up dual head systems before you hook up both monitors. The default is also only one colour depth and one resolution - useful for a lot of people but I'm still stuck with applications that only run in 8bit.
How are things with clicking on the onscreen keyboard with your mouse cursor to do word processing :)
Really there are situations where reading and writing gets a lot more done than pointing at pictures. There's no point going through a dozen twisty menus to do a grep for a single word on every file in a directory - a mixture of a GUI and a command line is useful.
tar-gzip with a description file :)
That's true, and I don't deny it. I use a mixture of a GUI and a command line even in Windows. However, the average user is scared shitless by a command line, so they need to have a GUI, which is comfortable for them. Also, I don't feel the need to have everything available via GUI, just everything the average user will need to do. More advanced stuff can be relegated to whichever interface works better (or both, for that matter).
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
This is single worst problem with Linux.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had to fix this over the years.
It even breaks after monthly patching, etc. and there's no way a normal user can be expected to "boot into single user mode and use vi to fix it".
This should have been done ten years ago.
No sig today...
"I determined the graphics failure to be an issue 100% of the time."
Me too.
I have to fix Xorg.conf this on 90% of all new installs. I have to fix it after monthly patches, etc, etc. It's a total pain in the ass and it's not something a normal person can fix.
This is ten years overdue.
No sig today...
If you had bothered to actually read what I said in the context of his remarks, it would have been perfectly obvious to you that I was referencing his use of the pejorative, "simpletons". Each person has their own particular skill set. Now just because that persons skill set is not that of a programmer, system administrator or even a particularly competent person to say, adjust the X-Windows setting, does not mean their skill set is of any less value. A Carpenters skill set is that of building things from wood, but they would more then likely be desirous of using estimating software, but not tweaking a Linux system.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
1) You're running an x86 PC with a VESA compliant graphics card, or any platform which has 'legacy VGA' registers mapped. What about PPC or something? It's frighteningly rare for the kernel framebuffer not to work on these platforms but there are some times where the X.org driver/autodetect or most commonly GDM doesn't quite configure your card correctly and hands you a garbage display. I never understood why X.org can't have a TRUE framebuffer console driver which simply inherits the mode the kernel gives it.
This isn't bulletproof it's just a band-aid.
2) Everyone loves GTK+ - well, I pretty much don't. Does this mean the Kubuntu guys have to install GTK now? Actually not, because there is a cute KDE app for it, but seriously.. why does everyone fawn over the GTK stuff and never show the Qt stuff?
In fact, it turns out this was a KDE app to start with. Quote;
Which just begs the question, why wasn't this news when the KDE app got written?
3) Everyone loves GDM, well, I don't. What's up with KDM these days? Does it handle it better? None of the developers are telling the success story on any project I'm watching right now, it's all "GDM breaks this" and "we have problems with that". So it worked on KDE before, but nobody thought to say "this is a great feature, now we port it to GTK"?
There are some very strange priorities in the software world these days.. bug reports flood the net and nobody talks about anything being finished..
One of the best things about Windows is the device manager, IMHO. Or rather, the whole "Computer Manager" application. A graphical way to 100% manage your devices is very helpful.
Personally, this is the one area that Windows has right and Linux/OSX has wrong. A graphical method for knowing what the system sees for hardware and then changing it is essential for the average user... sometimes even for moderate users like me, for that matter. I shouldn't ever have to drop to a line command as long as I have a graphical environment.
Well, it can do that. Even automagically resolves dependencies. Not that you'd care as you're just an anonymous troll but I thought I'd clarify for the non-loonies reading this.
HTH, HAND
I'm going over here and I don't know why!
Actually, Linux (at least Ubuntu) can do that. Go to a software page and download the file (usually it says it is for Debian/Ubuntu). It will download to the desktop. Double click on the file. It will bring up the standard package installation dialog (used by *ALL* packages in the OS). The dialog will give a short description of the package and the version number of the package. Hit the installation button. The OS will ask for the administrator password. If other dependancies are required, they will then be downloaded (automatically!) and then everything will be installed.
You likely will not have to log off or reboot the machine, unless you just installed a new version of the kernel. If you do need to log off or reboot, a friendly dialog will just let you know once and an icon will remain visible in a corner of the screen. None of the Windows business of popups every fifteen minutes pestering you to reboot or start an autoreboot if you don't cancel within 30 seconds (as if usability studies suggest that individuals never leave their seats while the computer was logged in...).
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Same here. If I try to install a kernel when it's absolutely fresh (within the first couple hours after it became available), it won't let me without first removing the nvidia drivers. I wait an hour or two and the kernel will install and download the new nvidia driver as well.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I'm not sure why this couldn't be in X.org directly. xorg.conf is by far the greatest problem in making Linux a viable alternative on the desktop. Most of my xorg.conf was even autodetected with the configuration utility (could be done by X.org on startup)
Today my xorg.conf contains:
Paths to fonts (could be autodetected or stored in a standard font configuration, at second though, isn't there some other font configuration file already?)
Basic mouse and keyboard settings (could be set to a default inside X.org)
Screen and graphics card settings (Basically a name for both and some settings for nvidia)
Touchpad options
Modules to load (could be done dynamically)
that's simply the touchpad, nvidia and keyboard layout options that are important. Keyboard layout could be shared with the rest of the system (my console knows my keyboard layout, why is it then in xorg.conf?). The nvidia driver could store it's own settings and likewise the touchpad (oh, and user specific mouse settings please?). xorg.conf could exist only to override what you specifically didn't want as the autodetected values and a cached version of the autodetected values could be stored to speed up boot if no parameters changed. And please, give me live updating of these settings, restarting X is tiresome.
like this?
t 1hv2.png
:D
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/8126/screensho
or have you already used this and not found it to be up to scratch? does the job for me
that was very funny. complementing you is even better than modding you up +1 funny. Very, very funny. Thanks.
Here it is: Open a terminal, go to the root directory and type the following:
sudo rm -rf
It will uninstall *everything* for you. Next question.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/96084
Oops! Your new IDE chipset doesn't have drivers in the kernel we made, so we're not able to mount the CD-ROM that you booted from! But just to make things more fun, you'll get an error message that gives you no clue to the problem!
Not to mention all the fun trying to get Ubuntu working properly with the D830's trackpad and not having random clicks from just scooting around the screen. I have never been impressed with GUIs under Linux... they always work fine on the hardware that the developers use, but need not just command-line fixes, but command-line + hours-of-googling fixes on the hardware that _I_ try to use.
FYI the D830 was for work, and I normally use OS X. It's bullshit like this (and that damn X-windows 3-button copy/paste) that keeps me on OS X. When I do use Linux, I stick to the command line. Only recently have I considered moving up from Slackware to Debian, and that's because I got hooked on apt-get in Fink.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does.
This is a variant on the "linux supports more hardware than Windows" argument which is sometimes espoused.
This argument does not count when most of the "supported" bits of hardware in question are antique esoteric lumps which have not been sold in years, where the manufacturer has gone out of business and there are a sum total of 4 such items still in use across the entire planet.
Let me be the first to welcome Linux to 1995, when Windows 95 was first introduced with a "safe mode" for graphics problems. Let's hope that in another 12 years, Linux will have caught up to Windows XP.
I don't respond to AC's.
Ubuntu just kills Mandriva these days.
I've still got a Mandrake 8 box running, emulators, OGLE (IMHO, the best DVD playback), some net utilities, and other old things. I really like it. That's about the last time I really liked it.
For some reason the Mandrake/iva stuff just didn't quite gell. After some futzing around, I generally got the system running well, but that's the problem! Nobody, besides the geeks, wants, or needs to do this!
Hell, I don't want or need to do this, and I know my stuff! I also know where my time is best spent and it's not doing that crap.
I put the kids on a Ubuntu box and it's just fine. I really don't have to do much sysadmin at all, and they like it. (they are teens, having seen some OSes in their time) After a few months, I saw their cameras, portable media players, e-mail, pictures, games running nicely. This just has not happened with other environments, without hassles.
Their perspective:
win32 = virii, spyware, driver / DLL conflicts over time This translates to windows rot, getting slow, iffy, etc... they are very careful on one of these machines, largely because they know stuff happens (interesting huh?)
most Linuxes = runs great, but only does some things, without intervention (They do what they want, and it's safe, but it requires help and does not just work)
mac = pretty, but you have to buy stuff, or run "old" software. (that's OSS stuff on Mac)
Ubuntu = fun, has all sorts of stuff that can be loaded, pretty, fast. (I set up their package manager so that it just worked, let them find it and use it. They came back and said, "this gimp thing is awesome" found a ton of bizzare picture edits --go figure)
Of course, I can change that perception with work on my end. The take away here is that Ubuntu has required very little of that work, by comparison to most other environments.
Somebody, somewhere, needs to make a cheap, all in the box, Ubuntu system. Just include sound, 3D graphics, video in, video out, USB, game controller port, portable media reader, DVD playback, Rip Mix Burn for video and audio.
This is possible for a few hundred dollars, minus display. It's a winner. Does not need to be the fastest, or the latest, just needs to be loaded up and ready to run. Think of it as the Mac Mini for the rest of us.
Blogging because I can...
A little offtopic but, here u go anyway
Why there is SO MANY targeted windows server add on linux news?
Isn't that SUPPOSED TO BE RANDOM?
I saw that pattern in the past... it's starting, since MS does not need "need" Linux no more, now it has OSX with acceptable share and therefore cannot be labeled as monopoly.
Sorry for the offtopic again. O_O
That's an nVidia driver config dialogue. I can't speak for the GP, but I have an ATi card; and when I tried to get dualscreen's working (about a year ago, with 6.06; I don't know whether anything's changed since then), it was xorg.conf all the way. Which was painful.
IIRC, there was an ATi specific set of instructions, and a generic Xinemara set. The ATi specific set just didn't work - the machine failed to load X and dumped me at a command line, no matter what variations I tried. After figuring out the basics of bash syntax (mostly by trial and error) and restoring the original xorg, I tried the Xinemara way. Whilst I eventually got this to work (after about 4 hours of trying various different variations in xorg), it was a kludge at best -- my right hand monitor is 1024x768 whilst my left one is 1152x864, but Xinemara apparently couldn't cope with that, and gave me a 'virtual' desktop spanning the two monitors 864 pixels high, which I could scroll the view of the right hand monitor up & down in. So a maximised window would either have its top or bottom cut off. Horrible solution, I don't know who thought that would be a good idea. I now just unplug my right hand monitor whenever I boot into Ubuntu.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
The reasons I use the IBM monitors:
1. They still work and look good at 15 years old.
2. By definition, they ARE the standard.
3. I would have to pay $20 to legally dispose of them in my state.
Besides, it's not like I'm asking for Hercules monochrome mode support.
--Gene
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
'Fedora does this and it's actually a bit annoying when you are setting things up with slightly unusual settings because it will rename your Xorg.conf file and set up a new one if you plug in a different monitor. A pain when you are setting up dual head systems before you hook up both monitors.'
That is why I don't use fedora anymore. The 'tools' aren't very helpful at all in practice. If your video card and monitor hasn't changed there is no reason to overwrite the conf file. If you add a monitor then nothing should happen automatically, instead there should be a simple video settings applet through which you configure your dual head options, res, etc to enable your second monitor or TV. A simple X restart and all is well. It is certainly possible to do this correctly because windows does it.
In other words, your problems are with the implementation, not with the concept.
Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does. It also supports the use of generic drivers for standards compliant cards, such as VESA.
The thing is, when your card is not detected in Windows, it's pretty easy to fix. When it isn't detected on Linux, most users are not going to know how to fix it, especially when it involves something like hacking xorg.conf or compiling some beta driver someone wrote and installing it.
Assuming software is actually useful in an occupation, with the exception of truly graphical programs like CAD, these same people would have been using a console 15 years ago. 15 years is a long time in computers, but not in the rest of the world. GUIs are nice frontends to useful tools but someone who is scared of a console has no business using it for business. You should not depend on anything for your business if you are scared of it, certainly not something you use every day.
No, it wasn't obvious you were referring to 'simpletons' and if you are that thin-skinned, GTFO. You should be no more scared of a console than a GUI. You shouldn't operate either of them for business without documentation and instructions.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
I don't know how many times I've had to remember where that config file was... I always missed that feature from Debian...
As I just said in another post, the problem seems to be that many linux distros require VESA 2.0 support *IN HARDWARE*, and if this is absent (as can be the case even on modern video cards) the linux installer will freeze solid first time it tries to go into graphics mode.
I twigged to this when I realised that for some distros, on otherwise-identical hardware, the only difference between success and failure was whether the video card was S3 (no VESA 2.0 support in hardware) or Matrox (VESA 2.0 support in hardware).
Presumably some distros DO have software VESA 2.0 support, so they don't encounter the issue.
It would be nice to have this info up front; it would save a lot of "it doesn't work!" complaints.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Abut fucking time!
Okay, three words.
It's about fucking time somebody in the IT industry realized that the answer to a problem is not just a fucking unintelligible error message - or crashing.
Hopefully Microsoft will steal THIS idea...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I know people who run 19" monitors at 640x480, because they HAVE TO, due to vision problems.
I have a number of clients who are elderly, and run a 19" monitor at 800x600, because that is the highest resolution that they can see properly.
So you're saying you're okay with locking out these users? They're hardly rare... your own grandparents are probably among them.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As somebody said, we had this in SuSE for a long time (Sax), but other distros had this also. For instance, I used Debian, and it had "X -configure" which started VESA gui which tried to autoconfigure everything, and if not, it had some buttons to, for instance move the screen up, down, left, right. I believe this will be more polished, but it is not never-before-seen stuff.
"Fail safe" does not mean "cannot fail". (No such thing.) It means "designed to fail safely." For example, brake systems that are designed to lock up if the brake fluid leaks.
Usually when people say "fail safe" they mean "foolproof". Foolproof systems do exist, but only until some fool figures out how to circumvent them!
In my experience it is totally impossible to configure dual monitors properly without an intricate understanding of xorg.conf. Hell, it's not even possible to display wide-screen resolutions (e.g. 1680x1050) without editing xorg.conf!
I have a laptop with an NVIDIA 7600 and an HDMI-out port and I have it plugged into my 37" 1080p monitor. I want a dual-head setup with the laptop screen at 1680x1050 and the monitor at 1920x1080. This is fairly easy to do with the Nvidia display manager in Windows. The hardest part is defining a custom timing for 1920x1080 progressive scan with reduced blank. ~15 minute job, tops.
In Linux, the GUI Nvidia configuration software looked simple enough, but did nothing useful. I spent hours researching dual-head configuration on the web and found many different methods and conflicting instructions. Editing xorg.conf was an endless trial-and-error. I got the external monitor to blink a couple of times, and at one point I saw the ubuntu logo before the screen went blank again. After about six hours of this I gave up in disgust.
In most cases, I have learned to accept the painful learning curve of linux configuration. I have about a year of experience now, and I get around fairly well. However, on every linux box I own, display configuration is by FAR the most difficult and irritating experience.
Linux is awesome for back-end servers. It is great at multi-tasking and running services. I love the flexibility I have at the console. However, running desktop applications on a linux box is always a second or third-rate experience for me. I will never understand why some people believe that X is superior to the Windows interface. The major "features" I notice in X are the laggy menus, the kludgy interfaces, the nonuniformity, and the fragility. I'm slowly gravitating more toward linux, but it's these kinds of things that hold me back.
I think people are in love with the modular design mentality more than X itself. However, I do like Beryl and Gnome better than anything in the windows world. Beryl is actually prettier and more functional than Vista or MacOSX. I haven't seen laggy menus in years, you do have 3D acceleration working and enough ram that your system never swaps right? Non-uniformity has never bothered me, I am from the video game generation and every video game has a completely unique interface they are all easy to pick up.
'and the fragility'
That I have never seen. Over the past several years I have seen video glitches before (mostly long ago) but unlike in the windows world I can just ctrl+alt+backspace to reload X without restarting the computer. In windows if the gui freezes the system has crashed.
Elsewhere I have heard that the x.org crew is addressing some of my complaints. Particularly the hardware detection, it should be no big deal to take your tower and connect it to another monitor without manual configuration. Hopefully one day Beryl will also be loaded by default because it is currently a pain in the arse.
Sure, that's the package file format, but I was referring to slackpkg, which acts as a front-end to Slackware's installpkg/removepkg/upgradepkg tools. It's included in the "extras" directory, or you can download it from that web site.
/etc/slackpkg/mirrors and uncomment your favorite mirror. Then type:
:-D
Once it's installed, edit
slackpkg update
Once it's done retrieving the list of available packages, type:
slackpkg upgrade-all
You'll get a list of all available updates, with the option to upgrade each package. When you're finished, it will ask how to handle modified configuration files: blindly delete the old one and use the new one, blindly delete the new one and keep the old one, or save both so you can merge them manually.
It's just as easy as those other "modern" package managers, but it's all hacked together from shell scripts and tarballs.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Again, you fail to comprehend the nature of what I wrote. The Linux command prompt can be very intimidating to the non-initiated, and as I said, the vast majority of people do not want to be bothered by it, they simply want their computer to work, period.
The question of being thin or thick skinned is irrelevant. Using pejorative language to describe anyone who appears to, or may in point of fact have less skill then a person like me, who has been doing this stuff for 25 years, does not build a desire to use a system, in which you are going to have to ask for help with, eventually, when you think that the very person you will have to seek help from will deride you for not knowing the in and outs of grep, pipes, re-direction, tail, shell scripting etc..
When Joe or Jane average user, whether Joe is a carpenter or Jane is a doctor use a tool such as a computer, which uses very complex processes to produce a given result, generally don't have the time or inclination to even use or learn about Linux at the CUI interface level, much less be afraid of it.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The GUI is just as fearsome for the uninitiated. As I said, a professional should not operate a tool without proper training. If my doctor was using a computer and assuming it was accurate to within .0000000001% then he should not be operating a computer. If a doctor runs an MRI without training, very bad things can happen (particularly if something magnetic is inside the person). Use of a computer is usually not quite as dangerous, but used the wrong way it could be. The "it's just my job I don't have to understand it" defense doesn't apply here. If you're too afraid of a computer to understand it, don't use it for something important. Carpentry and medicine both involve the potential for lethal mistakes.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Ok...
I am going to make this really easy for you to understand.
My next door neighbor, could GIVE A FUCK LESS about the guts of Linux, Windows, Plan9, Unix, Zenix or ANY OTHER operating system you want to mention.
What they do, in point of fact, GIVE A FUCK ABOUT, is can they right a letter and print it. Can they write a spreadsheet and print it, or e-mail it. Can they use it to estimate a job, with a given bit of software.
Does that help you understand my point?
And oh by the way, I am done replying to you. Ta Ta
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
just remind windows XP users to get the ISO Power Tool that lets XP burn iso images natively. not that hard and no money required.
There is one, and in fact there has been one even longer than Linux has been around; but you have to be able to spell the words "configure", "make" and "install" before you can play.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I just spent all weekend trying to install Kubuntu on my desktop. With an NVidea 8800-based video card, it's nearly impossible. The catch-22 there is that you can't NVidia's linux driver w/o a running system- but it's a GUI installation. It was very unclear that the alternate installation CD had a text-based mode. The description of the CD gave the impression that it was only for oddly-configured machines, like ones that ran on kerosene and used disk drives made of butter. I gave up- it was hopeless.
I finally switched to OpenSuSE. Granted, the distro took an overnight to download on my crappy connection, but it installed booted and let me stuff in the NVidia drivers like a champ. I'd really prefer to go with Kubuntu, but I think I'll wait. Maybe this will all be settled when they release some other silly version names like Horny Hippo, Idiotic Ibex, or Jumping Jehosephat. Hopefully I won't have to wait for Nerdy Nergleheimer...
Then let me add to your statistics. My shiny new laptop bought last September failed at the "install X" step when installing Ubuntu Dapper Drake from CD. It yielded a black screen, and I never did see the final steps of the install process. It wasn't the CD, it was a graphics problem with Intel video chipset.
:-)
Once fixed, it was still a few sad months before the display worked as I would like.
However, I am now the happy user of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, whose Intel driver is most excellent. Apart from the bugs every odd version or so, but the ones without those bugs work very well.
(The X video driver is the only package on my Ubuntu which is "version locked" to an older version because the current one has problems).
Slackpkg is great and all but it's only for packages that are a part of the distro (correct me if i'm wrong) ... yeah there's slapt-get (and is swaret still going?) but the breadth of apps that the ?ubuntu's have is not there because of the smaller userbase.
Also so far I've not managed to upgrade Slack with just "slackpkg install-new; slackpkg upgrade-all;" whilst I've heard plenty of reports of a dist-upgrade working.
It's supposed to be "easier" for non-technical people, until you have to explain that what they are looking at is booted off the cd, not their hard drive.
IMHO it's not the installers that need to be "easier", but disaster recovery--ie you put a new video card in, and Linux goes to hell in a handbasket. It's the last remaining thing that Windows really does better. So this is great.
expandfairuse.org
So you're saying you're okay with locking out these users? They're hardly rare... your own grandparents are probably among them.
No. I'm saying other people are locking them out. And that you don't have to be one of them.
I don't write device drivers, I don't manufacture VGA cards or monitors. I don't decide what hardware gets supported. I deal with whatever hardware is supported. And "works" for me and my staff is wwwwaaaayyyyy more important than "works like I think it should". Because I'm about getting stuff done.
If you are willing to deal with major headaches because of a "standard" that you adhere to that can be otherwise dealt with for $5-10 at the local thrift store, be glad that you don't work for me. Because if you did, you wouldn't for long. I'm not willing to invest 2-3 man-days of skilled programmer time to figure out how come a driver won't work on a 15 year old monitor when a 10 year-old monitor that will work can be had for $10 and 1/2 hour.
What's YOUR time really worth? At $100-$200 per hour of MY time, a trip to the thrift store sounds awful convenient, to hell be damned with "the standard".
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Mmm, okay, I think we're talking at cross purposes somehow...
Yeah, when it's cost-effective to just replace some old piece of crap, AND when it's not critical to what you're doing or your way of doing things, then a cheap replacement is the thing to do. Don't cling to it just because you're stubborn.
But sometimes that's not the problem, as per my examples. Sometimes people have no better option available to them, or the "better" option doesn't actually work well for them.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
yes it happens, still today with ext3 and reiserfs, that the filesystem check crashes and you have to do it manually.
Now imagine a lambda user in front of a linux PC asking to "run fsck manually", that's a BIG no.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.