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Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses?
desmondhaynes writes "Is Linux ready for the masses? Is Linux really being targeted towards the 'casual computer user'? Computerworld thinks we're getting there, talking of Linux 'going mainstream 'with Ubuntu. 'If there is a single complaint that is laid at the feet of Linux time and time again, it's that the operating system is too complicated and arcane for casual computer users to tolerate. You can't ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel, naysayers argue. Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days, but Ubuntu, the user-friendly distribution sponsored by Mark Shuttleworth's Canonical Ltd., has made a mission out of dispelling such complaints entirely.'"
That's easy, and we've known it for a long time: Yes, and yes.
Convincing the masses to actually install it, now, that's the trick.
It's getting better all the time.
/etc/networking/interfaces file to make it work).
But, unfortunately, it's far from perfect. Ubuntu is and has been good enough for my completely non-computer-literate roommate to use when the system is up and running. But there's no way he could have gotten the wireless working on his own (even in the 8.04 beta, I still had to download and install drivers, then muck around with
Still, the progress is outstanding.
The enemies of Democracy are
year of the linux desktop?
I would say it's quite possible, but until Ubuntu got something like widespread availability as a pre-installed on computers for purchase, then it won't matter how ready it is because few people in the masses will have any experience.
Right now, with a few exceptions, it's the geeks advertising it to others. There's not enough of us really to make an impact (and not all of us are evangelists). Ubuntu or an equally-suitable disto NEEDS to be pre-installed on a larger number of machines than we currently have. Simple.
Also regular linux users that do not have time for tinkering.
:-)
I run a Gentoo workstation for work, where I set up things exactly the way I want them, but this is quite time consuming.
I also have a "media center" type box with ubuntu that the family uses to get and display multimedia content. This box is almost maintenance free, no virus, no problems. A Windows machine would have given me a lot more work and it would have turned me into a pirate
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
This year's the Year... I can feel it!
(Not like all those other years -- those were totally different.)
2008 is the... ah, the... year of... um...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Normal people don't install operating systems, they buy a machine in a box at the computer shop. While I agree that Ubuntu is the distribution that is closest to being ready for mainstream desktops, it has to get pre-installed on those machines in order to really break into the mainstream market. So far, it hasn't. Dell went with Ubuntu, but they aren't exactly pushing their Linux offerings. Asus chose Xandros for their Linux machine. HP have chosen Suse (Novell). Their machines are or will be on sale at the local computer shop. I don't think it's any coincidence that both those companies signed patent agreements with Microsoft. I imagine Microsoft's legal team can be pretty scary if 99% of your business is based on selling hardware to run their software.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I think that in order for linux to be really ready, someone has to suck it up, and include mp3 and dvd playing out of the box.
Stop playing it safe and force Fraunhofer's hand. Make them come out as bad guys and demand you remove mp3 support.
I understand there are scary legal reasons for not having mp3/dvd support.. but as a user, I don't care what they are.
I'm pretty sure that we've heard this before. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/17/055201 Fiesty is what I actually cut my linux teeth/popped my linux cherry.
Don't take this the wrong way, I think the guys are doing a great job getting Linux to the folks (maybe not masses, yet). I'm still surprised when a live cd managed to find my hardware faster and get it working.
I am impressed depsite not getting compiz on my dual screen/x-server with nvidia driver running.
The community is doing a great job and I think they'll keep sharpening their edge as they move onward. It'll get more folks, were like me, are on the opposite side of the linux divide to try it.
import system.cool.Sig;
As much as i hate games, and hate to admit it, until you can go down the street to your local big box store, buy a game and it 'just work', its not ready for "the masses". "the masses" want to surf porn, buy stuff from ebay and play their stilly computer games.
For actual useful work, in a company with an IT staff, Linux and BSD have been ready for a while now.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
2008: The year of the linux desktop... SERIOUSLY THIS TIME!
Linux - Get The Facts
In-depth 3rd Party Analysis Linux & Windows
www.microsoft.ie/getthefacts
Here is the instruction video on best ways of installing and using.
okay okay, this has been said a few times over the years. I really thought Gutsy was a solid release - and it has been getting better since then! The only problem ... is that I still can't get it to recognize my pci-e wireless card.
Linux won't be ready until it has the compatibility that MS has with XP. (lets not talk about vista)
The main problem for linux adoption is that people have to spend time to install and learn a new interface. Obviously this will never go away. However, if manufacturers started offering Linux as a preinstalled OS (and cheaper than windows) Many would buy it, simply because its cheaper. At that point, the money they would have spent on windows is spent on learning the new interface, and hopefully sticking with it. Designing a really easy to learn interface is possible, and that, in combination with preinstallation, is going to be the key to adoption.
I don't know if this has been fixed or not, but my father refuses to use ubuntu because it constantly annoys him to update it, and hes never sure if he has to. Ubuntu needs to do periodic patches for non-critical problems (IE: non-security) so that they don't annoy users so much. I'd go so fa as to compare this update model to vista's UAM system, and truly hope its fixed for this release.
-kp
Granted, he's a retired rocket scientist, but he's nigh on 80 years old.
He's been on the previous release of Ubuntu LTS for years now and he hasn't a clue how the machine works, which is exactly how he likes it.
All I had to do was hook up his FIOS and tell him to always accept the patches when the OS asked him for permission to install them.
I was able to get Fiesty Fawn on my HP laptop, but it wasn't exactly easy. First was the wireless chipset debacle, but I eventually found instructions and was able to get it up and running. Then there was the codecs wierdness, getting music and movies to play. Again, doable but not straightforward. And finally there's the issue of mounting items like CDs and USB or Firewire drives. I had to reboot to get something loaded...AND I kept getting errors that I had to be ROOT to do something. To change a .list file, I had to open it, edit it, save it to my desktop and then in a terminal run 'sudo cp ...' because at least that was easier than trying to figure out how to load a text editor as ROOT. Still requiring the command line for what should be basic tasks (that, granted, like the Mac should require a confirmation dialog but I wasn't offered a credentials dialog. I was just given an error) for most people. So, they're close, but I don't know. Since I blew up my partitions and have to start over anyway, I'm eagerly awaiting Heron so I can do it again.
How sad is the attitude towards computing when "installing device drivers" is deemed to be an unsurmountable task for a human being of normal intelligence? Why is it that everything that has anything to do with computers is considered to be orders of magnitude harder than anything to do with, say, driving a car or cooking dinner?
Quite frankly, I don't want to use the same operating system as someone who refuses to edit any configuration file.
Marketing Linux to the average desktop is a bad idea. Leave Linux to the power users and the server market.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
It depends on which masses you refer to. Linux covers about 90% of the Windows world, and it's definitely the most importnat 90%. People can and do switch desktops to Linux. Maybe not as often as you'd like, but they do it.
The problem is that the other 10% is crap like Clippy and Activex that no one on Linux wants to have or implement, but makes a certain number of computer users more comfortable. Windows does so much hand-holding by default, and that's one of the things Linux users hate about it. But it's necessary for a number of people who can never remember the difference between business and friendly letters or for people who are to afraid to even click Settings... let alone dick around with it a bit.
It doesn't help that Linux is mostly marketed by the community as being "Almost-Windows" or "Free Windows", instead of as a product that stands on its own.
People have said as a joke that OpenOffice.org or similar programs will take over once they have their own clippy, but may a true word is said in jest.
Linux is probably adequate for quite a number of computer users (when installed on compatible hardware) who only browse the web, e-mail, do basic word processing, spreadsheets, etc.
The problem is with the users who want(/need) to play the latest games or run a specific application for which there is no Linux port or alternative.
I'm using Ubuntu here and love it, but I have to keep Windows on my work desktop because I run acoustics simulation software. There's no mass market for this software and the cost to the developer of porting it just doesn't make sense. Maybe Wine will be able to run it in the future, I don't know.
The same is true for some hardware vendors. They typically won't invest in guaranteeing Linux compatibility until there is sufficient demand (economic forces) and that demand is restricted by the lack of hardware/application support...
"Is Linux ready for the masses?"
/. every few months is some sort of indicator.
I think that the fact that this question keeps coming up on
the terrible state of WPA in wireless support is a huge problem for Ubuntu. I've tried really hard to get WPA on USB wireless to work and it just doesn't. WEP works fine - WPA does not. This needs to be fixed for Ubuntu to able to be used in any properly secured wireless networks.
Will it play MP3s as a fresh install? Yes or no.
If no, then it isn't ready for the masses. Period.
Hey man, you should try out this latest version of Linux!
Oh ya I heard about that Linux thing, there are so many versions of it though, it confuses me - what is this one?
It's Ubuntu! The latest release, hairy hardon[1]! I mean.. oh.. bleh, nevermind.. *retreats*
[1] does this mean it's the 'porn browsing' edition?
which is totally what she said
Ubuntu gets better with each release. When I first put Dapper on my Toshiba laptop, I had to fiddle around with the boot menu to get it to work correctly, and I had to remember to do this everytime a new kernel was installed, otherwise the laptop would stuff up on its next reboot. Subsequent releases didn't require this switch though.
The BIGGEST fix they've provided (and I'm sure everyone agrees with me on this) is the failsafe mode if X screws up. Who remembers about a year ago when XServer was updated and it killed the desktop? They quickly remedied the situation but for a lot of people I imagine that it either made them reinstall or switch back to Windows. Luckily I managed to downgrade my version because I hadn't cleaned out my archives in a while.
It's taken a while, but Ubuntu's getting there.
Summation 2
First of all, a modern OS is centered around the internet. If you don't have a connection of some sort by now, you probably don't use your PC for much.
Ubuntu doesn't need to take any risks, as its a click to install mp3 if you need it. Just play a song, push a button on the dialog that pops up, and you're done.
This really is the best way to make both people who want proprietary stuff like mp3 codecs and people who value freedom happy.
When I was moving from a windows server 2003 server to a Ubuntu server I realized the main reason people refuse to switch to linux. I noticed that even though it will install everything I need right off the bat and there are nice guides on The Perfect Ubuntu Server it was still more work then I was willing to do. I had been hosting 3 of my private owned domain names on my "server"(old P4 desktop) and in order to set up the Virtual Hosts I had to make configuration files and use command prompt. Until they make it so you don't need to read an entire manual on how to setup a simple configuration of the linux software then it will not be the year of the linux desktop.
I'm sure some Linux experts will say I'm just stupid, but I tried to install Hardy Heron on a fairly stock, high-end Dell desktop earlier today.
Results?
1) It was unable to use my RAID controller to install onto the existing RAID-1 array. It insisted on being installed on a single drive. To get it to boot at all, I had to completely break the RAID volume.
2) It was unable to use my wireless card. It didn't see it at all, so it wasn't in the "connections" menu.
3) It failed to notice that I have a dual-head video card with two screens attached. The second screen was a mirror of the first during boot, but after boot it turned into a fantastic mosaic of random-colored 80x25 random-ASCII.
As far as I can tell, none of these problems were addressable via the provided system configuration tools.
If there were solutions, they were too hard to find to even consider it being "ready for the masses".
Unix for the masses is here, and it's called OS X. Hardy Heron is difficult to use, poorly documented junk.
While I tend to agree that Ubuntu (and many other distros!) have come a long way in terms of casual desktop user friendliness, its not going to push Linux into the mainstream. I may use it, many of my friends may use it, but until it becomes commercially mass-marketed Linux isnt going to be able to really gain traction in the sense that windows and even osx have. Offerings like Dell's definitely help, even the exposure Linux-based OS's such as the one on the eeePC will help to bring greater awareness, but as I'm sure many of you are aware, a great product great technology does not necessarily make.
To make an OS available to the 'casual user' you have to make some decisions for them.
Linus hates this and has sworn off Gnome because he feels Gnome makes too many decisions for the user. He feels that the Gnome project is taking the stance that the users are stupid but unfortunately this may be just the thing to get Linux desktops into the public mainstream and is part of why Ubuntu is so successful.
Users need a machine that just works out of the box and since Vista doesn't this is a great opportunity for Linux.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
What we do see, however, is that devices like EEE PC are making people aware that there is a choice and that Linux is real. Here in New Zealand we can buy laptops preinstalled with Ubuntu in regular retail shops http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/48067b6603694d34273fc0a87f3b067e/Product/View/XC5822. These have been quite popular. They are still quirky: for example setting up wireless is a bit messy (not as slick as windows) and the power management sucks a bit.
I run HH on one of these laptop that came installed with GG. For the most part, I don't think that HH vs GG is much of an issue for adoption. What is important is that distros like Ubuntu are very easy to use/update and that devices like Eee PC are exposing more people to the option. Soon people will be asking for Linux preinstalled on higher spec laptops and we'll see more choice.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Then I went back to good ol Windows, which I've never had such trouble with.
I'm pretty sure there's nothing more "casual" a computer user than my dear mother, nevertheless, she's been using Ubuntu for more than a year now at home (Installed by my younger brother following my advice on the phone, because he had no clue what Ubuntu was at the time...).
So why the hell do people still wonder if linux is ready for the casual user... IT CLEARLY IS and has been for a while now, mostly thanks to Ubuntu (I'm a Fedora user myself, so no fanboyism here...).
It's not ready for gamers however, but neither is the hardware config most "casual" "mass" people buy.
Are you suggesting that 2008 is the year of Linux on Desktop?
"Unix for the masses is here, and it's called OS X. Hardy Heron is difficult to use, poorly documented junk."
So did that detect your RAID array and Wireless card when you installed it on your machine?
Let see, at about 3 releases a year, currently at letter H, hopefully 5-6 years from now, before Ubuntu runs out of the alphabet, or before half of us compute on the clouds via a browser in a handheld, we won't have to talk about adoption of Linux on the common desktop anymore. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath, having waited so many years. Maybe what Linux needs is not an 'available for all hardware' attitude but a special hardware built for Linux that everybody likes. Let's see how well the UMPC trend fares for Linux.
Ready for the masses? Unfortunately not. Not until those who manufacture hardware provide Linux drivers of the same quality and functionality for their stuff as for Windows (and sometimes OSX). And not until the Linux guys do everything to support hardware manufacturers to create such drivers, if they wish, in the form of closed source software.
Yes, things have become much much better. There are more drivers available than ever, through reverse engineering, through silent help from manufacturers and a few companies even do provide drivers.
But the differences are still huge. In many cases the available features are much limited under Linux: for example even mainboard features like fan RPM sensorsm, CPU temperature sensors etc. are sometimes missing or only partly available.
Office combos: the majority does not work at all or only very limited.
Many mobile phones only work in a very limited way, no software for email/adress sync available, sometimes not even drivers to access the data somehow.
My Garmin tracking GPS only works under Windows, software only available for Windows.
External USB devices like record players, tv, radios, and many more exotic devices are completely unusable under Linux.
GDI printers are still a problem.
And there is one more issue: anything related to protected media content is a problem. Most players and encoders for DVDs and MP3s are currently still illegal or in a grey area under Linux. Player for HD-DVD will be even more of a problem. DRM media are a problem.
Personally I live with those limitations: I use a postscript B/W printer, I use a different (Windows) computer to get maps into my Garmin and I essentiall ignore other limitations. But for many users, these limitations are more important. For a significant number, they are unacceptable.
If Linux wants to become a real competitor to Windows, it will have to give up some of its ideological "pureness". That means: welcome closed source under Linux. Welcome closed source drivers. Make it so that they wont mess up the system, but welcome any attempt of third parties (hardware and software companies) to actually make money with desktop Linux.
Currently, hardly any company sees the potential of making money with desktop Linux users. This is the ONLY real problem. Ubuntu Hardy won't change that.
Fix that.
Will it run AutoCad?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
The Linux OS (and basic productivity tools like mail, media, browsing) are ready, but where the heck are the apps? As a sound designer and web developer, I have yet to find a polished pro-level application in Linux. Where is the ftp program to compete with Transmit, Flow or Cyberduck? Where is the web animation program to complete with Flash? Where is the audio production software to compete with SONAR or Logic? While valiant efforts are under way, they pale in comparison to the apps available for OSX and Windows.
sorry but that's no and no.
./ so by definition we're GEEKS and already technicaly minded... the rest of the world doesn't think like us!
Want to use your favourite software (photoshop, dreamweaver, GTA 4 etc: nope, that's for windows and/or mac only.
Want to buy new hardware... well you can if you scour the internet for days finding out if it's compatible; you can't just pop down pcworld one saturday afternoon and pick something up and know it'll work.
Want to use Ubuntu without broadband... nah it's not really designed that way, you'll be waiting days to install anything..
Want to install some software... sure... if you broadband no problem... oh, but it might install the software anywhere on your system... good luck learning to grep it. Fat chance if your friend has just given you a cdrom with software on it!
want to play games.... err... well... no.. not really, but hey we've got solitaire!!!
What about installing applications from magazine's cover disc (like what you can do with windows and osx)... err no, you probably can't do that either... as you'll have to compile something or other and you probably haven't got all the right library headers or something.
want to do anything other than surf the web and run openoffice... get used to using the terminal (still)
KDE and Gnome have come on in leaps and bounds, linux itself has come on enormously in recent years.. but it's still so so far away from being a user friendly OS for regular joes. (just looka the filesystem, it's still a throwback to the 1970s and is virtually unintelligible to non linux folk
WE might all think linux it's the dog's bollocks but we read
You may enjoy three hours of tedium trying to get Xorg to display properly on a new monitor, or god forbid, two monitors. Most people don't.
Lets look at why an OS wouldn't get adopted: Peripherials really need to be plug and play, so users can buy any vendor's gear and know it will work with their PC (and vendors then become your friends instead of brushing off linux as geek-os) Backwards compatible, lots of people buy lots of new gear, but forcing people to buy new printers is not a great adoption strategy (though Brother would love that, aka Vista) What are still the top 3 uses for a PC by most mainstream people? Surfing, watching/listening to media (mp3, dvd, whatever) and basic office like applications. But then tack on the 3 top add-ons? Wireless network, keyboard/mouse/monitor/printer, and drives (USB, firewire, DVD burners, whatever). Until a linux build can auto detect these, self-configure, and not a single text file needs to be opened or edited for it to work, we're a long way from mainstream - no matter how much i love linux running in my home office...
Indeed. Does Herdy already have a GUI for configuring all the buttons of a multi-button mouse? And a GUI for configuring all the features supported by Synaptic touchpad drivers (that already are in kernel)?
If not, users still need to edit xorg.conf, and there is still work to be done.
And does it have a GUI for configuring xrandr defaults on X startup, so that users (with compatible drivers,of course) can easily set multi-monitor setups (that have full 3D acceleration support, unlike with Xinerama)?
If not, users still need to edit xorg.conf, and there is still work to be done.
And there are perhaps other severe GUI shortcomings as well, but these two have made myself feel pissed enough that I always remember them.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Mod the original poster up to 5!
Average users don't buy or install OS's ! In fact they can't keep straight disk size versus DRAM size.
In fact - if normal folks did install OS's we would already be using Linux because 95% of the time a modern Linux distro will load all the typical drivers for you. XP is so fucking brain-dead you have to go to the computers manufacturers web site to get the damn drivers and install them manually.
The masses will adopt a Linux based platform when it is spoon-fed to them and mass marketed by Dell - HP etc.
It is crucial that the Linux community / developers keep moving the OS and desktop forward showing leadership to both MS and Apple.
I stopped believing a long time ago in some "magic conversion" point for Linux to go commercial.
Its not the years, its the mileage
The masses will accept nearly anything put in front of them which is intuitive enough, and familiar enough, for them to comprehend. Eventually, Linux will take over. When it takes over is up to the hardware manufacturers.
This has two components. When the OEMs gather up enough courage to escape Microsoft's shackles, and when the device makers decide that developing open drivers is worth their time, Linux will flourish. Until then, every year will continue to be the "year of the Linux desktop". How many of these are we up to, 12?
The two main culprits right now are Dell and Nvidia. Dell needs to release the sales numbers of their Linux desktop systems, and Nvidia needs to abandon their binary-only driver approach.
My question is shorter: Is Hardy Heron ready? It seems major core packages (like xorg) are updated EVERY DAY! I would expect nothing but minor tweaks in the days before a release. What I am seeing is last-minute scrambling to get changes in. That's disconcerting.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Yes?
I have a HP Pavilion laptop...fairly standard setup. Duo core, Geforce Go, broadcom wireless nic... On the latest version of Ubuntu, I couldn't even load into X because for whatever reason, Ubuntu didn't like my video card. I couldn't even get to the command prompt to download drivers, because whenever I would try it would freeze. I have never, not once, even with 10 hours or so of tinkering, been able to boot clean into ubuntu without video problems. The only Distro I HAVE been able to load into was OpenSuse 10.3. However, After hours with ndiswrapper, and pulling my hair out, I couldn't get the wireless drivers to work, and on top of that, I couldn't hook my laptop to an external monitor. Until Linux can run on laptops with minimal fuss, It won't catch on. There is no way.
1. - "Why install Ubuntu when I can just use Windows for free?"
Note that by "free," I'm referring to the presumption that it was free with the purchase of a PC, not infringing copies.
This is why IE won the browser wars. Before the integration of IE4, Web browsers either had to be installed manually or were provided by the OEM. The OEMs usually bundled Netscape. Microsoft integrated IE into Windows and changed the OEM licensing so that Netscape-bundling OEMs were punished. You could still download Netscape manually, but why would you want to? Most non-nerds don't care about the browser but rather whether or not it is there at all. It is nothing short of a miracle that Firefox campaigns have been succeeding in getting ordinary folk to install and use Firefox over IE, especially after IE7 came out.
2. - "Windows is just fine. Why bother switching?"
This one is all too familiar to Mac evangelists as well as free OS advocates. This, along with ridiculous prices, is what keeps Apple in the minority. My statement about browsers applies equally to operating systems: people just don't care. They will most likely choose whatever runs what they need at the cheapest price. Ubuntu and other distributions have gone a long way in fixing this, but in order to "convert" someone you would not only need to get them to install Ubuntu but also get them to use Firefox instead of IE, OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office, GIMP instead of Photoshop, Thunderbird instead of Outlook, etc. Yes, you can run most of this stuff in WINE, but the experience is so much smoother with native apps, and users will notice this quickly. Additionally, if everything they run is just run in WINE, there isn't really much of a point, from their perspective, of running Ubuntu over Windows. Windows gives them better compatibility than WINE and is already bundled by almost all OEMs. Might as well stay with Windows.
It just displays how out-of-touch Linux is with the average user.
Anyway, the average user never installs Linux. He/she may have a sysadmin boyfriend/son to do so, but otherwise, he/she will use either Windows or OS X.
There is no reason for the average user to install Linux. Seriously. None. A well-maintained Windows XP-based Firefox system running Office 2003 (or 2007 if you really need it, or Office 2000 if your requirements are minimal) - and by well-maintained, I mean knowing how to use Microsoft Update and installing Kaspersky - should run smoothly for years. I think Linux users underestimate just how stable and fast XP runs on modern hardware; we are talking about a 7-year-old OS.
Of course, once MS forces everyone to Vista, I'll maybe begin considering recommending Linux - i.e. after 2012. Until then, it's XP all the way.
I know this an entirely "Linux 4 Life" user base, so I welcome the flames, but I must say Linux is not ready for mainstream. When I say Linux, I of course mean one of the many distributions+window managers available to the general public.
A little background on me: I'm not a kernel hacker by any means, but I have a strong background with C++, RH, FC and networking(my profession). I started using Linux rather late in its life, late 90's to early 2k's and it was a great tinker toy! I was able to learn a lot about compiling software from scratch, patching kernels, fixing makefiles tinkering with services. Hell, after enough time, I turned it into a great replacement for the crappy M$ excuses for operating systems at the time. It was faster, more stable and offered all of the applications I needed at comparable speeds (good show Linux community!)
Then Win2k came out... Why should I continue to run an OS where my hardware (specifically my TV card) was not supported? Sure I tried to make it work. Browsed forums, used that new Google thing compiled code and drivers time after time. Why bother if I could just DL the Win2k drivers. I ditched Linux on the desktop and packaged it away to be a nice box to ssh into, use perl/wget/dsniff and other fun college tools. In fact, that box still lives today giving me unprecedented flexibility for scripting/networking/backup/etc.
2K7 rolls around....and my spiffy new Core2Duo arrives. Purchased to be an exclusive Linux box for a few niche applications I use, I wanted to stretch its legs and try some new things. On a whim, I installed a corporate copy of Vista for evaluation...just to try it out. It installed beautifully out of the box. Supported all my (rather basic) hardware. It played my MP3's, played my divx movies with a quick DL, printed, browsed the web, burned CDs...all normal user-y type things. First Impression: Cool OS. Don't have time to dig into this Vista thing though since I bought this bad boy for LINUX! Lets get Ubuntu and load up!
Formated the box.
Install Ubuntu. Oh wait..I can't have my install partition be larger than 200Gig..and my HD is 300 gig. Damn. Oh well...thanks ubuntu.
Damn this background is all dreary brown. Lets fix that. Looking looking...got it.
First, I need my dual line task bar. I have wayyy too many apps open at one time for a single line. Oh wait. Can't do that. Research research research google google google....still can't do it. *sigh*
Hmm wait. I can't play MP3's. Google that... Oh..its some silly license thing. Oh ok. "yum -get something something". Hey it works!
Time to play some Divx....lets make it work with totem. Research research...google goole... oh man. I'll just use my win box. I don't have time for this.
Hmm. I can't print. Lets make cups work.... ugg. Apathy sets in.
Upgraded my memory to 4GB. Uh oh. Ubuntu won't boot now. Google google google... oh... my MB has some hardware that *may* require some module to be blacklisted. wtf. *pulled the memory*
Remember now, I'm quite technically savy and *still* its taking me hours to do these most basic of tasks that Vista gave me in under 30 minutes. I ended up scrapping it as a desktop and use it now, primarily, as a headless box.
Microsoft set the bar for out-of-box usability. Can a bunch of incredibly tech savy linux programmers get there?
Provided he installed it on a mac, most definitely :)
I pretty much had the same experience with Hardy. Wireless wasn't working out of the box on my laptop, so after digging my way through 100+ forum posts and websites, it seemed the best solution was to use ndiswrapper with a Win98 driver. I managed to get through all of that and get to the point where I could see local wireless networks, but wasn't able to connect to them after 3-4 hours of changing settings, flashing my router, and trying different encryption options. Standby didn't work correctly either. Honestly your average user would have given up long before I did. Even finding the non-working solution involved playing with different search terms on Google.
For duelling anecdotes: My printer and scanner install on Hardy automatically. The printer won't install on Leopard without the driver disk, and the scanner won't install on Leopard at all (provided drivers only for WinXP and Mac OS9).
I'm speaking mostly of the inevitable endgame for most power users - when Xorg refuses to launch, most users are completely stuck.
Windowing environments are a requirement for 99% of all computer users, and until someone gets Xorg or another windowing environment to operate -- correctly! -- and 100% of the time in failsafe mode, Linux will never be acceptable to the average user.
....still not there.
I'd say I'm an intermediate to expert Win user, but I found Ubuntu a challenge.
I installed Gutsy Gibbon so that I could hopefully run stepmania on a fairly old system.
Installing a program - if it's not on "the list" of stuff you can download for "your" flavor of Linux - and figuring out its dependencies is NOT for anyone less than intimately savvy with Linux.
Ubuntu: great to use when it's running, but changing anything, or troubleshooting? Ick.
Also, I have to say - I know it's a Windows-operation meme but for some reason Ubuntu wouldn't just RUN an executable on the desktop when it was double-clicked. Simply RUNNING a program that wasn't on the executable menu was a ridiculous headache.
-Styopa
Now is this the fault of the developers or of the hardware manufacturers? It's the Hardware guys, IMHO, because there is a huge lack of decent drivers for the important hardware. I'm looking at you, ATI. Not to mention, all the 'no name' (or 'cheap') hardware out there (That comes bundled in low-end machines) rarely has Linux drivers. Its either the manufacture does not have enough resources to pump out a Linux driver or they see the Linux community as too small and insignificant to even bother.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
> Unix for the masses is here, and it's called OS
> X. Hardy Heron is difficult to use, poorly
> documented junk.
Right. And an install of OSX suddenly detects and works with wireless every single time? I don't think so.
Try plugging a random monitor into a Mac laptop. I'll bet 9 out of 10 of them show similar symptoms to your Ubuntu experience, just because 9 out of 10 monitors aren't made by Apple.
As for RAID, we're not talking OSX server here, wihtout that you're not doing RAID of any kind on OSX.
I'm guessing not so well since OS X isn't here for the masses either; it's here for the purchasers of Apple hardware.
And I'm not about to call OS X "junk" for that reason or any other. Why resort to such derogatory terms toward Ubuntu because your system happens to be something of a corner case?
Hardy's still beta, BTW. And once it's released, it's LTS. So maybe give Ubuntu support a chance to get you running before labeling it "junk".
[Disclaimer: I'm a happy Feisty user.]
I tried the previous version of ubuntu and it lacked support for the chipsets wifi and ati x1200 graphics.
I knew I should have got an intel machine.
http://saveie6.com/
No. Leave *SOME* Linux distributions to power users and the server market. But Windows users have the right to an alternative.
The point isn't that a user refuses to edit any configuration file. The point is that the user SHOULDN'T HAVE to edit any configuration file in the first place! Not to mention recompiling packages, building your own rpm's, solve dependency problems, have to complain about drivers not working out of the box...
Since I moved to Linux half a year ago, I've had to do a lot of stuff that the ordinary user shouldn't have to. I would love to just click here and there, and WHILE STILL having options, not have to worry about messing around with the configuration.
Tell me, why the heck are you afraid of ordinary users? Musicians, artists, graphic designers, hardcore gamers... they want something that just works. What do you have against that, and what are you afraid of? If you don't want dumbed-down distributions, don't use them and keep your own distro! Linux uses the GPL license for a reason.
I don't mind using the same operating system than an elitist zealot uses - just not the same computer.
No, linux will never be ready for the desktop. I use it since pre-1.0 time on servers, and, sometimes install the desktop environment, when I feel I can loose a few hours for a good laught.
It is getting better, but is in no way ready, and the gap is widening, due to the general dumbing down of users (no offense, but users in 2008 want more than users in 1998, and are much less tech savy).
For instance, I istalled the latest ubuntu, which is pretty cool. I just tried to act as a "normal user", wanting to manage my "digital life", the way I would do with a mac.
I browsed the web with Firefox, found a cool image, right-clicked on it, it presented me the windows-like "set as background..." option, I clicked on it, choose the way it should be displayed, clicked Ok, and, in a very unix-like way, nothing happened.
Also, I copied digital camera pictures in ~/Pictures and lauched F-Spot. The photos did not appear. I had to change the preferences (F-Spot wanted to use ~/Photos, but ubuntu proposed ~/Pictures), was greated by an error message that I dismissed, and set Photo directory to ~/Pictures.
I quited, but F-Spot refused to quit, and crashed. I relauched it, was greated by a message saying that it crashed last time, that I dismissed, and my pictures were still not there. I chose to import the picture, and then, F-Spot copied those from the ~Picture directry to the ~Picture directory, which is probably not a very hot idea. But, at the end, my picture were displayed.
Contrary to iPhoto, the pictures are stored with the last picture first (if you read the end of that sentence slowly, you may have already guessed the issue).
F-Spot have a "set size slider", like iPhoto, moving it resizes the photo, but in a very strange way (ie: pictures get smaller before getting bigger), cause hideous flicker.
Double-clicking on a picture make it bigger, which is cool. You can then navigate between pictures, with two caveats:
1) The screen resolution was 1152 x 750, and in this standard resolution, there is not enough space to display the "right" arrow, which is placed at the rightmost screen position (that arrow is quite small, but have a big empty space around, which can't fit). So, F-Spot displays a vertical arrow, to show that there are other options, which contains a single right arrow.
2) When you want to go to the next image, you have to press the LEFT key. Having such behavior by default is inadmissible.
Of course, if one configures all the apps he will be able to get exactly what he wants, but the behavior I saw is not acceptable for broad acceptance. It just looks like a 1.0 version from microsoft. Unfortunately, while MS will polish its offering with each iteration, linux feature creep actually prevent polish to be done.
I could go on and rant for hours, but there is no way linux can be ready for the desktop. Open source is not good at giving a good user experience. For another typical example, Firfox, supposedly the best for usability, is unable to print correctly multiple pages (and that is a bug that stayed open for several years and is NOT fixed in 2.x)
SO true. No if we could only have an OS that didn't have registries, plists or conf files that you occasionally have to edit/delete/view, we'd have it made!
Penny arcade has a comic for you.
And just how many of the masses are running RAID 1 arrays? None.
As for the wireless card, did you enable the restricted drivers for it?
...perhaps. I found it quite pleasant to install last time I tried it, I think they've made it a lot easier to work with than some other distros I've tried (SUSE, I'm looking at you). I've been on and off Linux for several years (started running red-hat on a win-95 era laptop) and I've definitely noticed since about 2005 things have really rapidly improved - so maybe we really are nearly ready.
Still, I must say that personally I have some issues with ubuntu that would stop me recommending it to my friends who I felt were slightly better than n00b standard at computers already (or could easily become so). For me the terminal is so incredibly powerful that learning how to use it really can increase productivity massively; you can still do that on ubuntu but it has been designed with the idea of cutting it out (I know... different markets, right?). The other issue I have with Ubuntu is more serious and is about security. Last time I checked running "sudo su - " gave you root access without a password, which is at least a little concern. Also, I really can't see why all distros don't know come with SELinux running as default. I've never had a problem with it on fedora and to me it seems to really be worth its salt, as it were.
Anyway, good news though
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Does Windows have a GUI for configuring all the buttons of a multi-button mouse, or a GUI for configuring touchpads? AFAIK you'd need 3rd party software to do those things.
which is totally what she said
Nope, no configuration file edits necessary. You can if you want to, though.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
As far as I know, "the masses" do not use dual-head cards or RAID controllers, which are considered by many people to be "advanced" hardware.
Your complaints are akin to saying "Ubuntu is crap because it did not automagically configure my networked coffeepot!!1"
*cough*OSX?*cough*
which is totally what she said
Yes. Last time I re-installed OS X on my Mac Pro it detected both flawlessly.
By dirty I mean it will have to include a lot of non-open source code and apps.
..... however the tasty fully functional (and supported ) Hybrid-OS would not be free. You would pay $25 - $50 for this
Average folks don't give 3 shits about the "purity of a code base" or open-source in general. They want to buy a computer (really a computing appliance) and have it play their iTunes - MP3's - video files - games - do their email - and taxes. Thats it !!!
I see in the future something like Ubuntu releasing 2 versions:
- Open source clean and free to the public
- An altered version to OEMs or "OS Providers" who use internal modules / code hooks to load all the non-open source goodies. I would also see players like Nvidia providing a full blown driver for their latest card(s)
Time will tell but I believe Linux will have to adapt to what average users want and expect in an OS - versus some philosophical "free as in beer" point of view
Its not the years, its the mileage
I keep OS X to my Macs, so I can't comment on that.
As for XP, yes it basically worked out of the box on that machine.
...when all their familiar applications, which they have learned through osmosis over the past decade, are either preinstalled or can be installed by inserting the CD or clicking the file named "setup" with the friendly setup icon. For those not familiar with such programs, I suggest you ponder the common list:
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Outlook [Express]
AOL (whatever it is they send out these days)
The Print Shop (with a billion clip arts included!)
iTunes
Epson/HP/Brother print drivers and their utilities
Photoshop [Elements]
All that shit that comes with Kodak cameras
Yes, yes, yes...of course there are Linux flavored alternatives that are just as good (and better!), but that's not the point. The point is that most people can't figure out how to use a program from a howto, and they've spend years and years learning what each icon does. They have scads of old files which are in the proprietary formats of the above mentioned programs. The Christmas missive merge file somebody helped them set up 7 years ago probably won't work in the F/OSS package and there will be hell to pay when it's December 23rd and the envelopes won't print. That list isn't exhaustive, either...I just can't remember all the stuff on my parent's computer desk at the moment.
For the record, I like Ubuntu. Granted, it was easier to buy a new wireless card for my 4 year old laptop than figure out how to get the drivers for the one I had, but it was still cheaper than a copy of Vista Basic OEM. Of course, I'm not running it anymore. Why? The game I bought for my 5 year old is windows only, and there is no Linux equivalent (or at least none that I've found). What's that? Wine? See the requirements above: Put in disc, play software. No, that doesn't always work in Windows either, but it never works in Linux. Yet.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
RAID 1 isn't rare on desktop boxes. It's a checkbox on the order for Apple, Dell and HP.
As for the restricted drivers, I eventually did, but nothing made it clear that it was the right way to go. Even so, they didn't work.
Another dueling anecdote: about a year ago, I bought a Kodak Camera from Best Buy.
Windows:
Tired of this, I just plugged the same camera into my Linux box (then SUSE 10.0), more out of curiosity then actually *expecting* it to work:
Linux now manages my rapidly growing photo collection
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Been using Ubuntu for a couple years now. It is my main desktop. I have come to enjoy and rely on it for everything I do. It has proven itself capable, flexible, customizable, and more over more competent and secure than anything Windows has offered, ever.
That aside, I have to warn against the herring. This is not a hardy product. It has lots of failures most particularly during the set up. It is a step backwards on many laptops. Functionality that once was no longer is.
Even if Canonical mistepped they could always recover, but on many laptop models (not all, but many of the most popular of the past 2-3 years) the product has gone down hill. Laptop owners asked for wifi, for compiz, for solid sound, etc. What we got with Hardy is failed wifi, compiz that once worked but no longer does in this release, and sound that is just as messed up as it was 2 years ago. One could pass this off as a misstep and move forward looking to the time when these issues would be addressed. Unfortunately, as I said, some 2 years ago the sound issues were reported but there's been no resolution. Sound on some of these 2-3 year old laptops works inconsistently if at all. The once working compiz in 7.10 was wonderful, only today it doesn't work at all. Wifi has never worked properly and when it did it only took some random update for ubuntu to make it cease working. On top of that having some of the restricted drivers installed caused it to screw up the sound and networking (wired).
My point here is that it is going down hill on laptops, not up hill. It isn't improving. One of the most oft requested focus items at the brainstorm.ubuntu.com is to have sound and wifi working. No luck here. The forums are replete with repetitive misinformation that leads users down the wrong street and wastes tons of their hours. When it is determined to be a Canonical screw up there's never a word from them about it.
One example of the sound issue is this. On some of these laptops if you use the alsa driver and then you log in you may get sound (if you entered the username and password yourself). If you change the login to be auto login then you may hear the start up sound but you hear nothing else after that. If you attempt to play some sound the cpu will go into 100% utilization, even if you kill the app that was playing the sound. If you switch it back from auto login to manual log in the problem disappears, except there are still issues with alsa messing up. If you switch to OSS you have other issues. Pulse Audio is totally out of the question.
With the share of laptops vs. desktops growing at a fast pace, how does stepping backwards on functionality for laptops make anyone happy?
The set up essentially killed one of my installs. After doing an upgrade the sound didn't work, the mouse didn't work, compiz didn't work. Nearly nothing worked on a previously working system. I wiped and reinstalled only to find that wifi still didn't work, compiz which did work worked no longer, and sound was totally haphazard.
These are important pieces of functionality especially when addressing the needs of the average Joe adjusting to Linux from Windows. You can't toss this back into the face of the users and tell them to fix it themselves or for them to rely on the community of people that tend to toss up FAQs instead of investigating the issue for exceptions to the FAQ that result in the same issues. I can only imagine the sheer number of frustrated people and the lost hours of people following a FAQ instead of getting real help for their issue. All of this goes into destroying the reputation of the OS and the distro implementation. People don't want to struggle/to fight with these problems. They want to use the computer for its intended purpose--the programs, their data, and their communication.
I'm saying only that Ubuntu 8.04 is in many ways a step backwards and since it is going to be a LTS that much of this should have been addressed long before the release. We're going to have to live with every company that relies on LTS status to just live with it the way it is until the next LTS comes out.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Quite frankly, I don't want to use the same operating system as someone who refuses to edit any configuration file.
Marketing Linux to the average desktop is a bad idea. Leave Linux to the power users and the server market.
Just because I'm not afraid of editing a config file doesn't mean I want to. I like that in a modern Ubuntu distro I can get everything working with a minimal amount of fuss, and don't like the parts that don't work automagically so I have to go mucking about with config files.
You know what the best part about it is, though? The "it works automagically don't worry" part and the "oops didn't work but don't worry you can fix it with text-editor-fu" part live in perfect harmony. Linux is getting better in the usability department, without sacrificing its "power user" roots. I can't see anything to complain about.
If you want to be an elitist about it, go use Slackware, or any *BSD. You can still consider yourself superior to the poor slobs whose Linux distros don't require config file editing, for whatever that's worth.
Oh, and I may be a power user, but I'm also a gamer, and I want games that run natively on Linux. Besides a tiny subset of games, that's not happening until Linux is the average desktop.
The enemies of Democracy are
Is Ubuntu the closest we have to a "ready for the masses" Linux? Yes. I totally agree. I've been using Linux since 1996 and I love it as a server platform. But not until I tried Ubuntu a few months back as a desktop OS was I pleased with it at all as a desktop OS. The only things keeping me from using it on my laptop are that I have some games I have that are best run natively due to the nature of the games (they require EXTREMELY PRECISE TIMING and therefore I'd prefer to run it under optimal conditions to prevent ANY system lag which I have seen under Windows natively), the fact that I still do VB6 development for a paycheck and that I have some hardware that I do wish to keep that doesn't quite work yet.
HOWEVER I still do not believe Linux is ready for masses. For atleast one big reason: Legal licensing of technology. Until users can LEGALLY play a DVD or MP3 files or other media with various codecs WITHOUT (and this is the big key!) needing to do anything more than launch the player from a fresh install, Linux is not ready for the masses. That is _a_ reason. What if a program you want doesn't come with an option but has the capability for it to be put in if one recompiled the package? Will the user understand this concept? There may be things WE as folks who know more about Linux may be able to do with no problem. But next time you try and say it's ready for the masses, think about that one time you had to take an extra step or two to get a program to work. Or think about the last time you had to manually change something.
Mark this down if you wish to as flamebait or troll material. But if you do, you'll only be asserting your position that seems to be true: Hardcore Linux users will often blindly promote the operating system without thinking about what they're really saying and put the blame on the end user if it's something they don't agree with.
Again, do not get me wrong. Linux has some a LONG LONG ways since 10 years ago. Kernel 2.6 is WAY nothing like the 1.2 kernerls I started off with. And same thing with the distributions. But until Linux can do EVERYTHING your average user asks without needing to jump through an extra hoop that will sound confusing or be legally sketchy, it's not ready.
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
Heretic! Purge the Blasphemer!
Uh, yeah, not installing onto RAID and not using your multimonitor setup mean it's definitely not ready for the masses.
I'm encouraged by the maturity of hardy hedon. However, there is still one MAJOR issue plaguing the distro. ACPI support. When a laptop user such as myself wishes to suspend their session, the OS never returns, instead yielding a black screen of death. Infoworld recently hammered on Ubuntu for not shaking out the ACPI bug in the available hardy hedon beta distro now available. While I realize there are some convoluted work-arounds, its these convoluted work-arounds that prevent simpletons from adopting linux / Ubuntu in the first place.
Apparently Asus, HP, Dell and millions of happy users all agree...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I know I'm not the first one to say it, but I've had problems getting wireless to work.
Wireless cards have their own firmware. Linux guys borrow the firmware embedded in the windows drivers to make native Linux drivers. Unfortunately the licensing provisions in the windows driver doesn't provide for redistributing the firmware piece, so tools have been created to strip those out.
NDISwrapper is another solution, which also requires borrowing from windows, but instead it uses the whole windows driver and just puts a wrapper around it. I use this because it was the only way I could get wpa working.
Every solutions for wireless on Ubuntu I've seen requires running commands from a command line. Often it requires trial and error and knowledge of Linux. Many Wireless card manufacturers don't care enough about Linux to make it easy for Ubuntu.
Once Linux acquires enough of a market share and enough people complain to the hardware guys then I think we'll start seeing wireless card manufacturers actually release and support Linux drivers.
The only other problems I've had are Flash and Java are not natively supported with the 64-bit FireFox. Theres a work around for flash.
I've noticed though that it's all the closed source pieces that have been causing me problems. In general Ubuntu is very easy to use.
>Hardy Heron Making Linux Ready for the Masses?
Yes, but no more so than Mandriva 2008.1. I installed it this past weekend and it is about as slick as I have seen any Linux installation thus far. Everything just "works", and works well. It is gorgeous, fast, easy to use, seamlessly knit together, simple to update, loaded with helpful admin tools, and full of packages.
It is nice to know there are many decent choices for a high quality Linux desktop experience!
RAID-1 arrays and dual-head cards with two screens is hardly the masses.
What about when you installed OS X on your "stock" Dell desktop? (And when did dual head video cards become the sort of stock desktop that the unwashed masses are using? I'm missing out, obviously.)
At least you may now have a choice what to get with your OS X.
Wow, last time I had problems was a few years ago, back in my XP days, I installed XP sp2 from the CD. It didn't know what my SATA card was. It was a re-install, and I had thrown away the old Mobo disks. When I finaly found the correct drivers (on my laptop) I could not procede until I inserted the floppy with the correct drivers. I don't have a floppy in my desktop, or laptop. That took a good day to go scrounge up an old 3.5inch floppy, to install an OS. Also, I tried pluging a generic webcam (bought off ebay for 5 bucks) into an XP machine. It couldn't find any drivers, and the camera had no identifying information on it, so I couldn't find any. Ubuntu didn't care, and it just works..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
No. What did you have to edit the registry for? I'd wager it wasn't joining a windows domain so you can log in with active directory accounts?
One of the biggest barriers to Linux growing in the desktop space is that it doesn't interoperate with Windows as well as....Windows!
Dammit. Should have posted anonymous...
Not only do you have to go to the mfg website to get the drivers but FIRST you have to have a second computer to download the damn network drivers on. Then you have to figure out some way to sneaker net the things onto XP. That was of course, after you opened up your machine to figure out what NIC you have and what brand and model your mother board is. XP is a brain dead POS at installing drivers automagicaly.
No, wait a minute -- if we let all those Windows folks start using our Linux distros, they'll probably bring their trojans, botnets, etc. with them. Let's leave Linux for us GEEKs.
Linux is headed for a bloody conflict with the commercial gaming industry and probably the U.S. Government. The computer gaming industry will not cooperate with Linux due to IP concerns and will fight tooth and nail to preserve the Windows monopoly. I foresee a future where Linux has sizable market share where MS is in a panic and really wishes they hadn't cooperated with Hollywood and the DRM makers, and Linux gains share such that the gaming industry shrieks of blood. With the steady gain in Linux users, the game industry will entrench in Windows. both MS and other content providers will go to congress and probably try and get Linux outlawed because it may jeopardize the "Information Economy" the US holds so dear. I think that even if we had a 50% Linux 50% Windows split right now, games would still be released only for Linux. Because they don't want to go back to the Dos days where games were easy as pie to copy.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
I want to, hardon her? A Band do, hard of hearing? Seriously, Marketing 101. Product name are supposed to be memorable, not drift aside into something else.
Yes.
Masses? The masses are not running dual screens or RAID.
I partially agree. OS X is dead simple to install. I've installed it on several macs and it always went without the slightest hitch. But then, Apple made the computer! Anything less would be unacceptable. I've installed windows a few times....it's not really difficult but it's a bit of a pain. I didn't find it any more difficult really than installing Ubuntu except for having to reboot multiple times during patch install. Having said that though....it's not something casual computer users could do. I've had to help many friends with a windows install...they always seem to get confused somewhere.
Ok. Let's see: Wireless drivers are provided by clicking "install proprietary drivers" the moment you boot, not sure if this qualifies. I believe booting two screens gives me a clone, but, i can just go to the same nice and easy GUI configurator and play with my secondary screen. Hardy Heron is almost as close as OSX actually, meaning, as long as you have the correct hardware, it works very neatly. Personally, I'm a whiner, and I've never been as happy with my OS as I have been the last few weeks with Hardy Heron, and I switched from OSX.
Before you take on the elitist attitude, you may notice that I put "plists" in the original text. I've seen these corrupt hundreds of times, with the leading cause being the same as many other problems - improper shutdowns.
In addition, this can happen in a variety of other situations, and a quick perusal of apple's docs confirms as much. Indeed, a search for "terminal" also reveals many cases where one has to drop to a shell in OSX.
While we're on the subject, I should also note that second only to windows, Apple updates are capable of breaking things in wildly spectacular ways - moreso than I've ever experienced with ubuntu.
Look everyone, it is the exact same article that has come out every other month since 1997. 'Now that Linux is even better than before - is it ready for desktop masses? Yes it is!' Only, they say it is....but it never really is.
Too bad it's bundled with a $2000 computer.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
I just don't get it. What's all the love for Ubuntu? I've never had it work right. I've never had an install that didn't take several days of playing with ndiswrapper, a couple more messing with various other drivers. Mandriva is ready for the masses though. Especially with the recent release of 2008.1 - it took under 5 minutes for me to go from a fresh install to working wifi. Took another 10 to get my dual monitors working, because I downloaded the completely free software version, and it didn't have the nvidia driver preinstalled. Anyways, point is, most people I know who try Linux try Ubuntu. Then they give up on Linux. After much effort, I manage to get them to try Mandriva. As far as I know, nobody I've recommended it to has ever removed it.
Plowing through this thread, once again I see the ongoing and mind-bogglingly informed discussion about this aspect of computer science vs. that problem/challenge/preference of computer science.
You could argue I don't belong here because of my computer science illiteracy -- but I like Linux. It does me good.
If anybody RTFA (I didn't), all that really matters here is the touting of the latest version of the user-friendly distro Ubuntu. Now...I am not a technophile, i.e., qualified geek -- I'm just a writer. But I have been using Ubuntu exclusively for the past 4 years for the salient reason that it is simpler to use than Windows -- especially Vista. Simpler and certainly cheaper.
Yes, in the early days sometimes I had to consult forums on how to get the drivers to work just right. These days it's all plug and play for my hardware. The only extra step I need to take is activating proprietary codecs, etc. Which most advanced distros today make very easy to do (shame on me, I know). I get more applications that do what I need them to do without having to pay for them or their binding and wallet-sapping upgrades. And I have the pleasure and relief of being totally unencumbered by viruses, spyware, adware and bad vibes.
With Ubuntu, I don't *need* to totally understand Linux to use it. From experience, I have found it just works better for me than Windows. Period.
Just 2 cents from an appreciative but non-geek user...
Hardy Heron is nice, but it is not ready for everyone. I see coders using it and old people. Why old people? Because most old people just want to surf the web and check e-mail. I believe Linux is perfect for that. As for me, I've had no problem with Ubuntu on my desktop. But I've had a terrible time with Ubuntu on my notebook. I've been running the Hardy Heron beta and I still can't open video files from a network share and have the subtitle files be loaded. (Yes, I've tried using fuseSMB, but it makes my hard drive emit more sounds than on Windows) Every ATI driver I've ever used prevents my videos from looking normal. They end up all pixelated. (I know most of this is ATI's fault for not open sourcing the drivers) I'm in no way a hater. In fact, I like Ubuntu and it is installed on my girlfriend's Toshiba laptop and works great. But for my needs, Ubuntu Hardy Heron on my notebook is not easy to use to do what I take for granted in Windows.
No, no, no. Did OS X work perfectly on this random Dell that you tried to install Hardy on?
Seriously. When you first started using OS X, you bought a new machine that was specifically built to run that OS. Comparing that experience to trying to install Ubuntu on random hardware is absurd. If you want to compare your OS X experience to anything, compare it to a Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Does it require you to edit values in the registry in any situation?
Right.
WinXP is getting better, but it's not ready.
(Though I do mostly agree with you; Linux, including Ubuntu, is not quite ready for the masses. Just for different reasons.)
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
I was just working in Ubuntu today and yes, it is getting close, but there are some big issues. One huge thing is getting a average person to understand the permissions thing. I'm a computer guy and still struggle with Unix permissions. One thing that happened today is I went to make a change in the Firefox settings and it wouldn't bring up the preferences. Come to find out I had to run it as sudo user from the command line, do you really see grandma doing that? Do you see grandma figuring that out? Do you see grandma figuring it out and fixing it so it doesn't happen again. Now I am writing this comment from a new mac and it could be argued that this is a variant of linux/unix. They seemed to have solved most of the average user issues with OS X, so I think perhaps Ubuntu might want to look at what apple has done and take some pointers from them. Just a thought...
I believe that was covered by the parent's mention of plists. And yes, sometimes they do need editing.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
No, there still legitimately are wireless chipsets that don't work under Ubuntu. Most commonly, Dell brand wireless cards fall into this category.
If you try to install Ubuntu on a machine with such a wireless card, the card won't work. This is a commonly known problem, and if you run into it it's your own damn fault. Wireless cards that work are commonly available, and not having one is no more interesting than complaining that Windows won't run on your PS3.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
So now the masses are all booting from RAID arrays and using dual-head setups? DAMN I must be behind the times.
And did they fix the ACPI bugs, leaving at least Dell notebook users with without suspend?
Oh, and WiFi support for mainstream cards, without screwing around? No, wait, that's not fair, 'cause the haredware manufacturers are such &$*hats as to want be paid for their SDKs...
And it's ready to do battle with Windows for the hearts and minds of desktop users, just leave the notebooks out of it...
Mine too. I'm too busy to test Heron. Lemme know when they fix these notebook issues, k?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Actually, the market is ready for cheap or free operating systems. The Microsoft tax is starting to become a major factor in the overal PC cost with hardware prices dropping all the time.
My cousin asked me to help her out a while ago as hew Windows XP PC with a pirated copy of windows and no License code or CD/DVD packed up. I just can not be bothered with that but since she had and old PC and no money I decided to get her one of those run off the CD kinds of linux desktop distributions.
I am not a Linux user at all and am as blind as a bat when in the console mode. To make a long story short, Various distributions failed to work on that PC among which Ubuntu en a few exotically named others. So I gave up in the end and told her to pay the microsoft tax and get it over with.
So, NO Linux is not ready for the masses at all. Of the 5 PC's in my house hold only one got as far as the desktop and even then failed to connect to the network. Even when a friend and keen Linux user started messing about in the arcane console mode he failed to get any results at all.
Yet, I can grab a windows CD, pop it in the drive, boot and those installs never fail. You get what you pay for be it that we pay way too much for Windows.
Mass means mostly 3 groups:
1) Gamers: 99.9% video games run on Windows.
2) Business and Productivity (non-geek environment): Office suite and professional software (ie. AutoCAD) are just so mature on Windows platform, most decision makers don't want to risk the stable productivity for an new environment.
3) Casual Computer Users, who browse the web and read email 80% of the time. Yes, these are the best user group of linux should target, but too bad most of them are parents of type 1)Gamers.
The problem with Linux is the GPL. It's unfortunate to say this but the GPL is a big roadblock in terms of Personal Computers and businesses. If a company wants to sell a PC with linux, that's fine. Now if the company wants to bundle proprietary hardware with proprietary driver from company B with their linux PC... well they can't because of the GPL.
Sure, the GPL was written to purposely prevent such a case, a case where a company could protect the source to their software while taking advantage of open source software. But most normal PC consumers don't give a shit about open source software politics. They want to play their dvd, they want to play their mp3s, they want to go to the store and not "think" about buying a product and have everything work with the fewest hassles. And people will line up and pay good money for such an experience. So until the ideals of linux, free software, and the GPL match up with consumers (hint: free is not the most important criteria) then linux will not be ready for the desktop.
Linux won't be "ready for the masses" until it either sneaks onto peoples systems without them noticing and runs all their old programs. Or is sold as the first choice OS with a lot of grey boxes.
Ordinary people do not care about the OS. Ordinary people don't even know what an OS is. Ordinary people do not install their OS.
As far as I am concerned Linux has been "ready for the masses" for about the past five years (at least Mandrake Linux was). That was the time it got automagic systems the equivalent of Windows, and the only thing stopping it being as good as Windows was poor driver support. Poor driver support won't be solved until Linux starts to be seriously adopted by the masses.
If you seriously want to increase Linux adoption rates then look to business. They are the only ones who really pay for MS software.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
You would think X would have a GUI configuration editor? I've never looked for one though, editing the configuration file 'just works'.
Hear, hear! I mean, I really don't have anything against people who are tired of Windows, and want a reasonable alternative (like, you know, something exactly like it except free of cost). I just wish they wouldn't shit in my pond.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
I was so sick of Whorey Hedgehog or whatever it was.
Now Horney Hardon, that sounds much more respectable.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
People who like broken stuff just so they can fix it should get a vintage car.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I can't use dual screen on my laptop with it. Why can't both screen have different resolutions? OS X can. XP can. Vista can. Ubuntu can't.
Does Windows support mice? How about sound? I heard that Windows 98 doesn't even support USB storage devices - normal users use USB fobs all the time, so Windows definitely isn't ready for the desktop. I hear that Nvidia still hasn't released signed drivers for Vista.
Once Hardy comes out, I suggest you give it a spin. Then at least you can be up to date on your complaints.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Here's the funny thing though...
My hardware came with that third-party app!
Yes, this version seems to have a fairly snazzy xrandr gui (which, for the first time, I've been using instead of editing the xorg.conf file... and haven't needed to touch the xorg.conf yet). I don't know about the synaptic and mouse stuff, but the configuration software is really getting much more polished pretty quickly.
Yeah. Apple even tells you how it's done. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106594 And wireless obviously works everytime.
In no way do I want to disparage the efforts of all people working on various Linux distributions - especially not Ubuntu, who have probably put in more than anyone in recent times - but it seems to me that the mob that has done the most to bring Linux to the masses is Asus with their eeePC laptop.
1) They've put it on a desirable, useful, practical, cheap ultra-portable laptop that people want for its size and neat-ness (and low cost)
2) They've made it simple to use and focused on the core applications and best parts of Linux
3) They've made it open source (well, maybe not by choice) and accessible for developers
4) They've solid millions of them, in a single stroke bringing Linux-to-the-desktop to more users than (I would guess?) ever before.
5) Probably most importantly, they've scared the living SHIT out of Microsoft who are now scurrying around trying to get a lightweight version of XP together to match it, which is almost 100% the opposite of what they're trying to do everywhere else (ie, make people buy Vista).
I'd say its high time people grow out of being computer users, and start becoming computer operators.
I switched to Linux a few weeks ago. Frankly, installing binaries is not exactly rocket science.. If you have a brain, you can learn it, or at least follow a walk through.
Linux has to be something more than a "just as good" replacement for Windows before it's widely adopted. It needs to deliver capabilities that customers want that are not available from Microsoft or Apples.
The chances of Linux being widely available on OEM hardware is essentially nil. For users to take the risk of installing Linux, it must enable them to accomplish something that Microsoft and Apple haven't.
When that happens, and only when that happens, people will start going out of their way to acquire Linux.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
On the other hand, I run all XP boxes and I never, ever deal with viruses or spyware.
I run avast and firefox, thats all. Whats the problem again?
Gone!
They will bring malware, but also games, and better hardware support...
I'll kill anyone trying to get norton on linux, but I would kill to have more games natives for linux.
The good, the bad... Damn!
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
"I'm sure some Linux experts will say I'm just stupid, but I tried to install Hardy Heron on a fairly stock, high-end Dell desktop earlier today."
Does the word 'beta' mean anything to you? Release date for Hardy Heron is April 24th.
If you go on the ubuntu site to download it, it tells you:
"Note: This is still a beta release. Do not install it on production machines. The final stable version will be released in April 2008."
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I'm sorry you had to fight it, but really, what percentage of the masses have desktops like yours? RAID array, wireless card, dual-head video card with two screens? I would say it's less than 3%.
Does Windows have a GUI for configuring all the buttons of a multi-button mouse, or a GUI for configuring touchpads?
Uh, yes. Well, it can only handle up to three button mice and it's not very powerful, but that's still better than what you can do in Linux by default.
That's also ignoring the fact that third-party applications are available in Windows. Please show me where I can get any GUI application for Linux that will let me customize the action of every button on my 10-button Bluetooth Logitech mouse. I'd be willing to pay for a good one, even. At least the mouse more or less works with Windows out of the box; to set it up under Linux, I have to drop to the command line to use hcitool to pair it with the computer, then spend hours hacking xorg.conf to get it to load the proper driver and to make it recognize all of the buttons, then spend a few more hours tweaking KDE's autostart scripts to use xmodmap/xev/etc to actually make all of the buttons do something. And I have to restart X every time I want to change something. And that's after the days of research it took me to figure out how to do it all in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it both at work and at home, but the state of mouse and multiple display support and configuration is still several years behind Windows.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I can't imagine someone who insists on using a RAID array would have a hard time installing Ubuntu.
Sigs are for suckers.
So to summarize your comment, Wireless, RAID, and dual-head failed.
Yeah, those are the type of problems I've seen with Ubuntu as well (though I've never done RAID myself). Dual head was a complete pain in the ass on my 7.10 box, it required a hand-crafted xorg.conf to make it work. Wireless has worked out of the box on some systems, and been a fairly big issue on others...it's about on par with Windows in this regard though.
At the end of the day, you still have to make your hardware selections toward supported hardware with Linux. This is definitely a problem, and it needs to be resolved. The fact that it does not support your specific hardware does not make the operating system "junk". I agree that OS X is a very nice operating system (I use it about 25% of the time on my Macbook), but I still far prefer the Ubuntu Gnome UI.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
"Of course, many of those criticisms date back to the bad old days"
This is a very telling remark, mostly because it's been around for a decade.
When Linux kernel 2.0 came out, it was "ready for primetime," and the only people who said otherwise were trotting out complaints that were fixed in the bad old days.
2.2 kernel, same thing. 2.4, again. People who might be half-interested in trying Linux are more than a little leery partly because the community has been saying "it's finally ready for you now--we've fixed all of those bad things you've heard" for half a generation!
Is Ubuntu ready for the consumer? Yep, I'd say so--I installed it for a friend, and he loves it. That doesn't change the fact that people are suspicious of apologies about "previous" problems.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Installing Kubuntu 7.10 I was REALLY INCREDIBLY ANNOYED THAT THERE WAS NO FRIGGIN WPA-PSK SUPPORT!!.. .....I mean I'm sure there is.. if you _download it_ which is SO easy when you cant go online..
Then install it on Ubuntu. If it won't run, complain to the vendor.
Since when do "stock" Dell desktops come with a RAID-1 array and two monitors?
Haha wow way to admit being a complete and utter retard. Do us all a favor and don't reproduce, k?
The trick here is that the underlying Operating System does not need to be marketed. What needs to be marketed is ease of use, and cost.
The average user could care less about the operating system underneath. The average user wants to browse the Web, write a few letters, keep their resume up to date and play a little solitaire. In fact if you look at the forums for gOS most of the users don't even realize that it is Ubuntu that powers it.
My point is do not market Linux. Market it as a $200 machine that does the above. Make the interface pretty with big buttons. People will eat it up.
I agree completely. There's a good reason we have a bunch of different distros, because different users have different needs and tastes. The more non-power-users we have, the better, because that creates more mindshare. If Linux were only confined to servers, then even us power users would be forced to use Windows on our desktop machines because of compatibility. The way it is now, with so much open-source effort dedicated to desktop applications (like web browsing, CD/DVD burning, media viewing, etc.), there's really little reason to stick with Windows, and more and more people are taking the plunge with Linux. Why would we want to reverse this? I think some people are just elitists.
Personally, I've never cared that some people used Linspire, for instance, even though I personally would never use that distro. It doesn't hurt me that they use it, and Linspire's newbie-focus isn't reflected in other distros, so why should I be bothered? With so many people using OpenOffice instead of MS Office, it's only a good thing for me.
Since I'm trying to put myself in a more regular user position (partly to eventually move in-laws when their XP installation get broken), I got my own list of things that need work in order to be really competitive:
Configuration: Yes, usually autodetection and GUI config work. Sometimes doesn't. The worst part is the case of X. Some Distros like Ubuntu trash X.org autodetection in order to use their own, inferior solution (then Debian doesn't include xorgcfg). That's stupid. Enhance the GUI, but keep the working functionality! There are no excuses for misconfigured monitor these days!
Software installation: Again apt/yum/etc is great, but still imperfect. Distros make me feel like different houses with different power outlets each. Yes, all use the same voltage, but I need to get the appliances from the house builder, or mess getting original plug-less appliance and attach it a plug myself. The case is, there is no distribution including all the software all the people will ever use, and downloading and compiling tarballs (sometimes including tricky "./configure" parameters and/or iterating over several dependencies) is of course out of the question. I think the community should embrace things like ZeroInstall (or Autopackage), and either becoming the standard for packaging and installing anything besides the base system, and developers providing those packages instead of just source and waiting for some packagers picking it and integrating it into distros' repos.
Translations. AFAIK, just the development version of libapt is getting i18n support, that tells a lot about how important the end user is, and there are a lot out there that doesn't understand English. And I won't start talking about lack of quality of translations in general.
Got Pike?
"Oh, and I may be a power user, but I'm also a gamer, and I want games that run natively on Linux. Besides a tiny subset of games, that's not happening until Linux is the average desktop."
Oh great, when that happens I'll truly never get any work done. Hopefully that day is soon followed by an Ubuntu variant that disables any access to games in the repos.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I hope you enjoy using GNU Hurd.
Don't get your undergarments in a tangle just because another product has accomplished something your favorite project hasn't.
Me too! And I'd argue that it's 10 times easier to install something on Linux than Windows. Even if you have to compile it yourself, it's "easier" (less steps), although probably a little more terrifying for Joe User (aargh, command line!).
Your complaints are akin to saying "Ubuntu is crap because it did not automagically configure my networked coffeepot!!1" Dual-head graphics cards are definitely not advanced. Nearly any new card you buy (with the exception of the sub-$50 bargain cards in a bin at Fry's) has dual-head support. Nearly all laptops have built-in dual-head as well! How can this be advanced?
RAID should no longer be considered "advanced". Drive space is cheap and it's just sensible to install a RAID mirror in even consumer products as a "just in case" factor.
The problem is IE has the majority market share, and windows doesn't come with AV, so many people never install it. You are not the average computer user.
Dicking around with NDISwrapper takes far less time than installing windows, hunting down all the drivers, and updating the OS, then installing antivirus, a firewall and a decent web browser.
Maybe that's why it's not the product name, it's the codename.
Oh great, when that happens I'll truly never get any work done. Hopefully that day is soon followed by an Ubuntu variant that disables any access to games in the repos.
;)
You seem to fear the day where your last remaining productivity vanishes.
I, however, look forward to it.
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't forget that the developing world is catching on to the world of computing and a free OS is going to mean a lot more to many of them than one that requires a total hardware upgrade to use. Add to this Linux's penchant for having more languages than Windows and you have several billion more users.
BTW, I don't run a server and I'm not a programmer. I use Ubuntu for my home PC. I used to have a Windows partition but after the last update I finally deleted it (this may change when Spore comes out!).
Things don't just magically work; You have to test hardware and software configurations and make sure the software works correctly. When it doesn't work you need to have programmers fix the bugs that will happen. In the meantime you pay systems administrators to work around the problems.
Software typically works very well on the computer of the programmer that made an application (or OS, or hardware driver, etc.). The trick to making things "just work" is to either convince everyone in the world to use one hardware and software platform, or to bundle preconfigured software with tested hardware.
If you want the latter, get a Mac (or get a company to sell you a Linux box and all the hardware you'll use it with, with an HP printer/scanner in the mix). If you want the flexibility of using whatever software and hardware you want and the ability to change whatever code as you see fit (or pay a programmer to do so for you) use Linux.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I have a choice between less work and more work to arrive at an identical, good outcome, I will always choose the one which requires less work.
Now consider: what's better, automatic configuration and easy-to-use GUIs and wizards, or configuration files which require a steep learning curve to use?
Obviously, they're not mutually exclusive. I'm a strong supporter of ease-of-use back-ended by configuration files.
Normal people buy from their favorite big box retailer. Best Buy. Office Max. The aren't thinking "computer store," they are thinking "office supplies and home appliances."
That is why Dell is shifting focus to in-store sales through outlets like Walmart.
I really like Hardy; I've had it installed on my HP TC4200 tablet pc for the past 2 weeks or so. The work that has been done is tremendous; it is the first time that I really thought I could finally ditch windows for Linux.
But, I just ran into a problem just an hour ago that's annoying me; when I plug in my headphones, the speaker isn't muted so the sound comes out of the speaker and the headphones. I quick Google search shows that this has been a problem since at least 2005! And it's still a problem. Shouldn't it have been fixed by now? I still haven't figured out how to fix it...
MS Windows is the primary desktop OS.
Combine this with the fact that Vista has received NUMEROUS complaints and is still being forced onto PC's by forcing XP off of preinstalls from OEM's, and you have a situation that "Ordinary User Linux" can help immensely.
The more competition Vista gets the better. I wouldn't mind using vista myself so much if it didn't outright SUCK.
Linux is a good OS and restricting it to power users and server gurus is just plain snobbish. Desktop PC is a viable market that is being force fed slop that makes Big Brother's version taste like cherry pie. Having a desktop version of linux would resolve that.
Every distro that comes out has the same tag line. *NEW* Linux! Easy to use, just like Windows, for all ages, etc. What it boils down to is the fact that the stuff people want by default is rarely included or impossible to include: iTunes, DVD playback, ATI/nVidia drivers, etc.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
I give up with Linux. All of the distros seem to be going backwards. Mandriva is now a real headache to connect to Windows shares when Mandrake 8 was a breeze and Ubuntu breaks my wifi if I update from 7.10 to 8.04 because the new kernel doesn't like Broadcoms.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
i dont see why everyone is so obsessed with making linux mainstream. its great for the people who already use it. who cares if it isnt ubiquitous like windows.. thats part of its appeal anyway.
Hey, I just said less frequently, I never said never.
As that article mentioned, that updated was fixed in _minutes_. Need I find you complaints from apple's users who's updates months ago broke something critical to them that _still_ are not fixed?
Obviously, they're not mutually exclusive. I'm a strong supporter of ease-of-use back-ended by configuration files.
Hell yeah.
The enemies of Democracy are
> 1) It was unable to use my RAID controller to install onto the existing RAID-1 array. It insisted on being installed on a single drive. To get it to boot at all, I had to completely break the RAID volume.
Raid on a desktop is for the masses? You should be backing up your data, not ensuring that your computer will have better uptime. Also can the masses rebuild a raid array once it fails?
> 2) It was unable to use my wireless card. It didn't see it at all, so it wasn't in the "connections" menu.
That sucks. You should contact your hardware vendor and let them know that you wanted to use Linux but since they're hiding the specs for the card (in all likelihood) Linux hackers need to spend their time reverse engineering them and not actually making productive software.
>3) It failed to notice that I have a dual-head video card with two screens attached. The second screen was a mirror of the first during boot, but after boot it turned into a fantastic mosaic of random-colored 80x25 random-ASCII.
Please see my above counterpoint. However, Nvidia and ATI are finally starting to open up the specs for their cards. If things keep going this way in the near term open source drivers should be more featureful and stable than the crappy closed source drivers that ATI and Nvidia make available.
To resolve the above two points, however, you likely just need to get a decent sysadmin to spend a couple minutes on your box. Working around these kinds of problems is difficult due to the fact that they are arcane, not because they take a long time to fix.
Average users don't buy or install OS's ! In fact they can't keep straight disk size versus DRAM size. In fact - if normal folks did install OS's we would already be using Linux because 95% of the time a modern Linux distro will load all the typical drivers for you. XP is so fucking brain-dead you have to go to the computers manufacturers web site to get the damn drivers and install them manually.
Wait, wait, wait!
First, I completely agree that the average user (assuming that means grandma, or those that use their computers for little more than basic games and internet surfing) doesn't know the difference disk space and DRAM size. But I do have issue with the initial statement, and the earlier poster's assessment:
Normal people don't install operating systems, they buy a machine in a box at the computer shop.
While its true that most people who buy computers get an OS in the box as it were, it raises the question: who is Microsoft selling boxed copies of its software to? Medium to large businesses are better off with volume licenses, and computer manufactuers and distributors are better off going OEM. So the boxed stuff must be targeted at someone (along with the prime time ads that Microsoft runs to market them.)
Of course, I'm running with a little conjecture here because a) I'm assuming Microsoft has made decent money off of retail versions of their OS and b) it's difficult to find actual sales figures or number of units sold (if anyone can cite a source, I'd be interested to know.)
I also think there's a reason that Windows is easy to install. If it was all OEM's and power users, I'd think the install process might be a little friendlier toward them.
All that said, I prefer Linux. I just have a three main gripes, and if I had the time to become a better programmer I could probably better contribute to fixing those gripes. The first is games, which is getting better, but not quite up to where the "average user" can just "install", click and go (and I'm talking about most of the more popular MMOs, shooters, sims and strategy games here -- I know what available in the repositories...and kudos to Eve Online for building a Linux client.) The second is drivers. I'm pretty impressed with Ubuntu, as it does manage to find and deal with most of my hardware effectively. If the hardware manufacturers would get on the ball and keep up, that would go a long way to solving those ills.
I can probably forgive those first two (as there are some pretty fun Linux games, and the driver issue isn't really Linux's fault, nor limited to Linux...Vista's recent video card issues, for example), but the final one is the reason I don't use Linux as my dominant OS right now. I'm an audio guy, and I need solid, reliable audio software (and for the hardware to work with it) without me having to tweak things or learn the intricacies of "JACK"...I'd also like my audio software to not crash periodically at inopportune times (Ardour, I'm talking to you.) Many professionals can insert there own type of software for "audio software" above, and I think we find one of the problems Linux is facing. Let's face it. For grandma, once it's set up and someone's shown her how to use it, it's no different than doing the same thing with Windows. E-mail, photos, genealogical research, maybe a game of yahtzee, chess or solitaire. Most of us, however, use their computers for more and more nowadays, and in a rapidly evolving economy, our professional work really comes to the forefront. Audio work, video work, image manipulation, financial tools...
I'm not saying there isn't software out there that can do these things, but I am saying that working professionals find that for one reason or another (stability and usability in my case...and believe me, I learn to use new audio software all the time, so it's not unwillingness to learn new things) these products don't compete with many of the Windows or Mac offerings. And that's a shame. Cuz
Do You Experiment?
Hey, you by chance wouldn't be looking for a way to recharge your DeLorean flux capacitor would you?
RAID-1 is rare on desktop boxes. Having a checkbox on the order form doesn't make it commonly used by the masses. Here's how it goes:
Salesman - We can put in a second hard drive for RAID if you want.
Customer - How much more room will that give me?
Salesman - None. It's like an automatic backup device.
Customer - Screw that.
You're an idiot. See subject.
Configuring a ten button mouse is a seriously edge case scenario. If you are using these sort of issue to differentiate what a "mainstream OS" is and isn't then you are shooting way over the target. By definition a mainstream OS is one that hits solidly in the middle of the user base's needs. To that end you'll find that out of the box Ubuntu support for 98% of pointing devices is not only there and quite capable, but actually exceeds what is offered out of the box on windows. For instance touchpad devices are automatically detected and are configurable for both horiz/vert scroll edge actions, dwell events, and tap clicks. All 3 of these features on windows require 3rd party software even though those features are clearly within the 98% of mainstream users wants/needs/expectations. Furthermore if one were to click on the add/remove program item in the application menu and type touchpad into the search box you would find that you can easily, with a single click, add reconfigurability for many other types of touchpad events; while on windows not only would you not have a simple "add/remove program" interface but you'd also not have any easy indicator as to where you'd go to find the appropriate software to configure these features. Don't believe me? type "touchpad software" into google and let your Grandma choose between the 2.3 million results that you get; or heck ask her what a "synaptics touchpad" is.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
But the point is that Your Mom doesn't know how to get that .exe in the first place. All she knows is that her sound isn't working. You or I know to haul over to dell.com and click through the endless menus to identify our specific machines to get the specific exe, but Your Mom has no idea how to do that.
:)
Drivers in Linux are a bit more touchy, I guess, but to Your Mom it's all black magic voodoo anyway, regardless of the platform. And in my experience, Ubuntu handles hardware out of the box much, much better than XP does. Against Vista it could go either way -- but I still think it's sad that a statement like that has to be made. With market dominance and the resources and money at Microsoft's disposal, by all rights Vista should be stomping Ubuntu. The fact that it's a close race says a hell of a lot for Linux, or maybe a lot derogatory about Microsoft.
And on a side note, I am also amused at the fact that out of the box, Ubuntu these days has all the pretty transparency and fancy animations of Vista, at about a tenth of the performance hit and system requirements.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
In hardy, there is a new "Screen Resolution" option in System -> Preferences that is absolutely amazing. I use a laptop with intel graphics and in all of my test cases things just worked. That means adding/removing displays on the fly, using different resolutions for each display, cloning, side by side, dragging displays in a gui applet to the exact positions that I want, disabling one display. This is all working with compiz running (flawlessly might I add) and without needing to log in/out ever, without even requiring administrator privileges.
Now, I do use an intel card, which has pretty much the best support for xrandr at the moment. However, I would hope that as NVidia and ATI release new drivers they will work well with the new screen gui.
I have some experience with Ubuntu. I have made two quad core computers in the last 2 months. Both of them refuse to install Ubuntu. They both get to the point where the desktop should show and than give a error message about the video being shut down. I even tried to install Debian linux but only made it to the point where it tried to find my hard drive. It could not find my sada hard drive and ask me to supply a driver for it. Windows xp installed fine on both computers but they had to have a cd with drivers before the lan card would work and get usb to work and get proper video. Ubuntu needs to be supported by the hardware companies. They should not assume the end user is going to install windows.
lol. Whoosh.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Good question! I don't really know, because when I booted into the live CD of HH beta, the synaptic touchpad seemed to support features like scrolling without configuring, which impressed me.
Then when I tried waking it up from sleep, sound drivers were conked and the damn thing needed a reboot. So, no dual boot for that nice new vista machine yet (and turning it into a hackintosh not an option either, yet).
Not like Vista worked perfectly out of the box, either. 2.5 hours from unpacking it to first boot to desktop; yay toshiba-microsoft, thanks for convincing my users that macs are better.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Sorry, I'm not sure why this got posted as AC. I guess ./ logged me out while I was reading?
That's not what those cute PC v Mac commercials teach me to think. Where's my pitchfork....
it was literally ironed out a week ago
So now we know what the the problem was: wrinkly chips.
Ruffles?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I did the ubuntu installs first, and everything went great. The OS saw the RAID5 arrays as a single physical disk, and I had each one up and running within an hour (including configuration, etc). The OS installs themselves only took ~15 minutes and all hardware was detected and configured properly without any intervention from myself.
Windows didn't even detect the drives at all. "Oh yeah," I thought, "Windows needs a floppy with RAID drivers on it during the install". Wait, these servers don't have floppy drives, though! Luckily, a co-worker of mine had a USB floppy drive, so after 30 minutes of searching through the boxes and Dell's site, I found the proper drivers (why didn't these come with the damn driver cds?) and put them on a floppy. BZZT, doesn't detect the USB flopy drive during install.
After googling around a bit, I found a link in on a forum leading to dell's website with a utility for formatting a USB thumb drive to look like a floppy to the installer. In order to use this program, I had to manually copy driver files around another system, edit some configuration files, and completely wipe one of my thumb drives. This time, it worked, and 45 minutes later the installation was finished.
Of course, now the ethernet and video drivers didnt work! Luckily, they both came with the cds in the box, but it just went to further illustrate the point that these kind of issues are not OS-specific.
See my other post in this thread about how "edge cases" are not what makes a mainstream OS. (hint: search for "10 button mouse")
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Does windows let you stretch (or shrink) an image and put it on your wallpaper without messing up the aspect ratio? No, well, until it does, it's not ready for the masses. We can probably all name a hundred things that are wrong with either Windows, Linux, or Mac. The question is whether or not most users are affected by it, and if they can cope with the problems they are experiencing. You may not be able to run Linux on every hardware configuration out there, but you really can't do that with Windows either. If you bought a computer specifically configured to work with Linux, and already preconfigured like you would with a Windows machine, you would have not problems getting everything to work properly.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
and Ubuntu breaks my wifi if I update from 7.10 to 8.04 because the new kernel doesn't like Broadcoms.
Why are you (and several others in previous posts) complaining about 8.04 breaking things when it hasn't even been released yet? If you want to check out new features and don't mind some things being broken, fair enough. But if you want stuff to actually work, wouldn't it be a good idea to wait for a couple of months *after* the OS is actually released before installing it?
Looking at kernel source makes me break out into a cold sweat.
Then it's a good thing Windows source code isn't open. I hear from people who've worked with it that reading it causes the release of several warmer bodily fluids.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You know, I remember a time when casual computer users used to make special boot floppies with special memory configurations just to play games. End-users can cope just fine with complexity. Linux hasn't been too complicated for at least a decade.
Now you can argue that Linux is more complicated than the competition, and that users prefer the least complicated options, but that's not the same thing as saying that Linux is too complicated. "Too complicated" means that end-users would be unable to use Linux even if it were the only option. That hasn't been true for a very long time.
And come on, average end-users don't have to recompile the kernel anyway. That's a stupid stereotype that brainless pundits say reflexively. Installing device drivers? Last time I checked, other systems need users to install drivers too.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
They only say it's "advanced" because Ubuntu doesn't configure any of this stuff yet in any sort of easy, time-efficient way. By the same logic, multi-button mice, touchpads, WPA wireless, and so forth are also "advanced", things "the masses" will never ever touch.
Don't forget Mac OS X being unready. I have to do a ton of terminal-based maintenance on Macs (to the point where I've put Terminal in the Docks of many of my clients so I can get to it faster when I need to use it).
I'm no expert, but....
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
... you can always use a windows boot disk or cd and either use fdisk with the /mbr switch, or the recovery console to fix the master bot record.
Master bot record? I thought they only had those on the cluster servers in a bot nets. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Right. And an install of OSX suddenly detects and works with wireless every single time? I don't think so.
Well, you're wrong. It just works.
Try plugging a random monitor into a Mac laptop. I'll bet 9 out of 10 of them show similar symptoms to your Ubuntu experience, just because 9 out of 10 monitors aren't made by Apple.
Again, you're wrong. It just works. I've never had to install a driver for a monitor to any Mac I've had, but have plugged in many, many monitors over the years. Hell, even my 1080p TV works fine.
First time, every time.
Why are your expectations so low?
As for RAID, we're not talking OSX server here, wihtout that you're not doing RAID of any kind on OSX.
Well, that's a real point although you can buy the tower which has hardware RAID built in. OS X installs without blinking at the RAID set-up, and since there's only one user-level version of OS X, that means that all OS X installs are 'RAID ready'. I've also plugged in a RAID NAS box as my backup/home server, but since that serves up to the Mac I wouldn't have expected to have to install anything anyway.
OS X isn't perfect by any means, but you're not hitting any of your marks with those criticisms. In fact, it does all those things very well indeed.
There's other ways to get viruses then through the browser.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I've been trying the Hardy Heron 8.04 version of Ubuntu, and I'm finding it to be about 20-30% slower and sluggish compared to the previous release... I think it has to do with the new kernel scheduler. Either way, the previous version 7.10 seems to be alot faster on the exact same hardware.
The problem is that OS X is absolutely horrible to use even when it's installed and everything is working.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
This basically sums up where I'm at. I have Fiesty on a partition on my Tecra which I primarily use XP on. I don't boot into my Kubuntu partition because for the life of me I can't get wireless working on it. Wired works just fine, but I don't like to work wired. I've tried all combinations of settings in the UI, edited config files, run all sorts of networking shell commands recommended on howtoforge and other places, but it just doesn't want to work. I've talked to many others who just say "well wifi works just fine for me so it must be you". Well, maybe it is, I don't know, nor care. Wireless (and other things the parent posted) are little things that should come STOCK these days and people should not have to fiddle with. I don't care that my manufacturer isn't opening up the driver source, I really don't give a crap if I'm running proprietary drivers, I just want it to work. I never opened up my windows drivers' .c files and make sure they're written well and work up to somebody else's standards, but even still they work just fine out of the box. That's the 'easy' that Ubuntu needs to be at. They can have dozens of game clones and paint programs and whatnot, but until they get the basics ironed out (the "what my mom calls basic", not "what my kids with lots of free time and ambition call basic"), the base of users who go about installing the OS themselves is going to stay geeky and in a niche.
"Simple, human" to users has gone past not having to compile kernels and install device drivers. The masses demand much more than that work out of the box now.
"The "it works automagically don't worry" part and the "oops didn't work but don't worry you can fix it with text-editor-fu" part live in perfect harmony."
I'm not sure if anyone uses SPSS but its a statistical package. What's pertinent to this discussion is within it you can do things via the MENU or via a COMMAND LINE programming box.
Even nicer though, and something that Linux doesn't seem to have, is if you do something via the MENU you can see the command text it generates, and use it instead of you want to automate doing processes, or just do faster without the menu.
You know, the year I'm able to listen to my MP3s or AACs "out
of the box", no plugin installation required, and without
having to endure the aggravation of being lectured about the
evils of proprietary formats. Ditto for all forms of video
that are not Theora.
Or the year the linux community understands what a Bad Thing
(TM) it is to break support for, oh I don't know, webcams
that have hybrid open-source drivers with hooks to "closed-
source modules distributed in object format independently of
the Linux kernel in order to provide decompression services
for proprietary codecs that are used for higher-resolution
modes", to use a description I have heard before.
Or the year of "linTunes", a functional, mature application
with full iPod support. No, supporting OpenPods and SanDisks
and even *gasp* Zunes will not do the trick. Neither will
old shuffles, only last-generation iPods/iPhones. Ditto for
Sony Readers, or Kindles, or any other DRM-encumbered gadget
*I* choose to use because it gives me more value than your
perceived loose of "freedom".
Yes, we all know TANSTAAFL. But sometimes "the first is
always free" is good enough, sometimes money really is the
easiest *and fairest* way to gain access to a number of
products and services. More importantly, *I* want to make
that decision on a case-by-case basis
we left Windows, because the OS and their authors wanted
to make all the decisions for us??
i've seen it countless times. the nightmare when it comes to reinstall xp on a laptop. vista is even worse. there is this "oem backup cd" and there is the "driver cd". mind you, both cds are made exactly for your hardware. and in most cases, there's another cd flying around with some strange versions of some drivers you need in order to get bluetooth or other fancy stuff working. i've been recently through this with a vaio from a coworker. and it still is a nightmare, because the drivers are out of date by now, xp update installs some driver which is incompatible with some other one on the third cd and so on.
and linux has to compete against this with a universal installer image. no made-for-your-hardware driver discs. and it does well. i've seen ppl often asking for one of those live-cds just to be able to download a driver for their fancy networking card because they need networking in order to download other xp drivers. if there were premade ubuntu-based installer cds made by pc vendors that perfectly mirror your hardware, windows would be history (except for the games department).
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
We all know Linux makes an excellent desktop or laptop system, what with Asus selling millions of little Eee PCs and all that.
To me the question is when Windows will ever catch up? Microsoft's share price keeps going side ways, they keep promising that the next version of Windows will actually work properly and will not be a pig and slow as molasses, but when are they ever going to deliver what they promised?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Why the HELL would you guys name your operating system Happy Harry Hardon? It just doesn't make sense, especially coming off the "Gutsy Gibbon" thing, which itself sounded like slang for some really F'd up S, like a "Hot Carl", "Filthy Sanchez", or "Donkey Punch".
Seriously, how are you going to gain new users when people are embarrassed to even tell people what OS they are using? If I asked my neighbor if she wanted a Gutsy Gibbon, she'd slap me and probably call the cops. And that's just if she knew I was talking about Teh Lunix.
Also, shortly before I gave up on Windows, much was being made on the various windows discussion boards about the fact that SVC.host was not legitimate and svc.host was. As I recall, the defining factor turned out to be not the typeface as much as what directory it was in: if it was C:\WINDOWS it was good and if it was in C:\WINDOWS32, it was bad -- or maybe it was the other way around.
Windows users have the right to an alternative.
Yep. I was totally sick of Windows and all its hassles, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to use a desktop OS with the strength and configurability of UNIX with a slick modern GUI.
So I got a Mac.
j0hn@cipher:~$ sudo su - [sudo] password for j0hn: root@cipher:~# cd /home
root@cipher:/home# mkdir bla
root@cipher:/home# ls
bla j0hn lost+found
root@cipher:/home#
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
I upgraded to Hardy from Gutsy on my laptop. I have to say I do like the seemless wifi support on my Lenovo T60. On Gutsy, I'd have issues with WPA networks and have to use another application beside the applet on the gnome toolbar, which isn't going to attract mainstream users. Also, my laptop will suspend on Hardy unlike on Gutsy where it fails due to a kernel problem. However, when I bring the system out of suspend none of the network interfaces come back to life. I'm procrastinating on bug reporting it, which is something I think a mainstream user may be less likely to appreciate doing. The interface is a little warmer than Gusty, which people seem to like nowadays. I remember typing in DOS commands and meticulously editing files in linux with ed, so I'm happy with functional point and click.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
j0hn@cipher:~$ sudo su - /home
[sudo] password for j0hn:
root@cipher:~# cd
root@cipher:/home# mkdir bla
root@cipher:/home# ls
bla j0hn lost+found
root@cipher:/home#
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
Yeah, me too!! I'm wicked all over win.ini, way easier than editing the DOS environment. The only thing I don't like is that it's all in one place and doesn't have a cryptic name.
Actually I can use The GIMP to resize, though... if the aspect ratio isn't the same, you have to crop...
And The GIMP might run UNDER Windows. So it can be done. Just not in one stroke.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Just what we need. Another "Linux viable on the desktop real soon now" articles. Wake me up when you can copy and paste more than text between applications that aren't part of the same suite (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice, etc.) and when you can easily install 3rd party applications with a few mouse clicks (and no using apt-get or a similar tool doesn't cut it as not all applications one may wish to install are included in an on-line repository).
I don't mean to sound like a dick, but these are real problems. A serious desktop OS has to have a decent clipboard that allows you to copy and paste more than text reliably between applications written by different entities. Windows and OS X aren't perfect at it, but they are leaps and bounds better than Linux. Further, you can't expect somebody to compile a 3rd party app from source in order to install and run it. Programs like apt-get are awesome for popular programs but they are limiting in that you're not going to find everything you might want to install over the lifetime of the box.
What about my nVidia 9600GT? Oh, that's right. I have to wait until they actually write drivers for it before they distribute it through their proprietary drivers tool. Do you think consumers are going to want to deal with 3-6 month lag times in hardware support? I doubt it
Yes, you can do this in a photo editing program. The point is you shouldn't have to open a photo editing program to put an image on your desktop, and not have it be all messed up.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Then I guess I'm not, either. Nor is my mother.
Yes, I'm in the tech industry. But since most people run Windows, a lot of people have information to help out. Just go out and ask people in your workplace if they have a computer, and if so, what OS do they run. If they don't know, they run Windows. The rest will answer Windows 90%+ of the time.
I've educated my mother to only run Firefox and use Agnitum Outpost.
Agreed that IE has the market share, and that is probably the biggest issue.
I agree with most of your points, but I can also identify with your parent post. I worry that the linux desktop will become less and less configurable, the internals less documented. I want to be able to understand what is happening on my operating system, and to play with things and tinker. I hope that the two scenarios can live in harmony as you say.
As a power user, I would love for Linux to be mainstream. The more mainstream it gets, the more likely my video drivers are to work, and the more likely I am to have some decent games to play.
As a server administrator, I would love it if all of our developers ran Linux on their desktops. It's still possible to run into surprises deploying from Windows on their workstations (read: laptops) to Linux on the server.
Here's the cool part: It's not up to you.
The thing is, Linux -- or, more generally, all open source software -- is for everything and everyone. If there's anyone who can't use it, or anything it can't yet do, that's just another problem to be fixed by anyone who has the time.
And no one can stop it. You can't make it into your 31337 high-school h4x0r club anymore. It's much bigger than that, now.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Dell sells fairly stock, high-end desktops with Ubuntu preloaded. When buying a new computer, at least, you can let Dell go through all the pain of installing and getting it to work with your hardware -- and when it doesn't, you get a support contract.
Which is, by the way, exactly what you get from Dell when you buy Windows.
Linux does support software RAID, and many RAID controllers. But realize that by using hardware RAID, you are well beyond "the masses", and should be prepared to look this stuff up yourself.
Also, the server and alternate install CDs are much more likely to work with RAID and similar things, just as the desktop install CDs are much more likely to setup X correctly. If you know what you're doing, though, you can simply install from the server CD and pull in the missing components from the desktop.
What brand is it?
This is a place where support is spotty lately. That's not an excuse, and not a way of saying it's "ready", but if you are interested, it should be pretty simple to find a list of supported hardware, including which wireless cards work the best. Anything Intel is probably going to work out of the box, with open drivers.
And for the slightly less wealthy masses, it's called the EEE PC.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You are breathing through your mouth.
Stop that.
What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
Last I checked, Mandriva was proprietary. It may have a free version, but it depends on proprietary software. Right?
Ubuntu, by default, comes with entirely free software. The proprietary stuff is easy to install, but it's nice to know that most of the core stuff is free, and will always be free.
Is there anything Mandriva has over Ubuntu?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
WTF? You call a machine with a RAID array, desktop wireless, and dual-head FAIRLY STOCK?? Sure, only like 2.2% of people have a stock machine that looks like that.
I'm typing this on an ASUS EEE PC and loving it. All my linux-centric frustrations seems to be unable to happen on this tiny machine. Guess it doesn't support it. :)
Want my suggestion? Go for more generic names in the apps. In Windows, it's "add/remove programs". In Linux, the closest thing I can think of is the oddly-named "synaptic". If you tell grandma to run "synaptic" to install something, it just creates more confusion.
Stop prefixing things with "K" just because it's for KDE or whatever. Stop with the ultra-shortened names for full-blown applications, with 3-4 decimal points for versions.
Don't tread into copyright infringement with exact names for things, but moreso something a bit more streamlined. "GIMP" is guilty of over-acronymizing(with a recursive acronym in the acronym), and just sounds goofy. Perhaps a tiny bit of marketing at least on the app names will help things a bit.
> And did they fix the ACPI bugs, leaving at least Dell notebook users with without suspend?
Hi. Suspend and Hibernate both work on my dell d820 in Hardy and Gutsy. No fiddling required.
> Oh, and WiFi support for mainstream cards, without screwing around? No, wait, that's not fair,
> 'cause the haredware manufacturers are such &$*hats as to want be paid for their SDKs...
On my dell d820 with a broadcom wireless nic, I plugged in my ethernet cable, clicked "restricted drivers" on the taskbar, checked the box next to "Broadcom wireless nic" and clicked apply. The comparable process in windows is to download the ethernet driver and wireless drivers on another box, burn them to a cd, and install them on the laptop. This worked in Gutsy too.
>And it's ready to do battle with Windows for the hearts and minds of desktop users, just leave the notebooks out of it...
> Mine too. I'm too busy to test Heron. Lemme know when they fix these notebook issues, k?
You've just been told they are fixed. Please wait until the final Heron release before upgrading though, it's unfair to get a beta product and then gripe about it.. betas are to give the developers a chance to fix those annoyances before the masses start finding them.
Ubuntu has had, and will continue to have, issues on some hardware. Windows has had, and will continue to have, issues on some hardware. Being completely honest though, getting a Ubuntu box "ready to go" is several hours faster than a windows box. That has been the case for over a year now.
Boot from CD -> Install Windows -> find and enter 25 digit key -> Install video, sound, chipset, wireless, LAN, and printer drivers -> Activate Windows -> Install Office -> Find and enter 25 digit key -> Activate office -> Install Antivirus, Anti-spyware, and firewall -> windows updates -> Install Adobe Reader -> Install flash -> Install Firefox -> Install adblock plus.
Boot from CD -> Install Ubuntu -> Enable restricted drivers -> Install ubuntu-restricted-extras and flash-nonfree -> Install Adblock Plus in Firefox.
The argument is not "is linux ready?" IMHO, the argument is "how do we tell the people the emperor has no clothes?"
-ellie
Exactly.
Once 3rd parties actually write fully functional drivers for linux, then and only then will it truely be ready to replace windows.
Well, that and applications with intuitive GUI's.
When you first started using OS X, you bought a new machine that was specifically built to run that OS. Comparing that experience to trying to install Ubuntu on random hardware is absurd.
By this logic, Windows (which runs on the most random hardware) is almost awesome!right...
but joe sixpack is more likely to stick with the integrated graphics card and has trouble burning an audio CD
dual head this and RAID that are nice for geeks but for the fox news crowd, not so much
Ever tried to install XP *after* installing a linux distro, try this little experiment. On a bare machine with no disk partitions, make a small linux partition and then try to boot the XP install disk, you will be greeted by nothing, remove the linux partition the try booting XP again, viola it works.
Now I could be missing (like checking it with other partition types) something but it looks like M$ XP install checks if linux is installed first then refuses to play if it is - can anyone else confirm this behaviour (and it's not just me going crazy)?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well there are nine million posts on this so no doubt I'll get buried. But that is quite ok. I have tried off and on since 2000 [sic] to get Linux going. We actually first ran RedHat in the lab in 2000 thanks to someone - an undergrad - a lot smarter than me. Since then we've put up a cluster under RedHat and currently under CentOs. Again thanks to some brilliant undergrads. My own experience has not been that great until lately. About the only thing I could get going was Xandros. It actually worked pretty well. But Ubuntu is the cat's meow. At 7.10 they finally have it, and I am pretty sure that Hardy will do the trick. I have 7.10 running on three pieces of hardware, two of them flawlessly. The laggard is a Dell laptop that has problems, but is still quite useful. Congrats to Ubuntu. May then live long and prosper. May they make old hardware new again. May they save school system gazillions of dollars. One happy old chemist.
Thanks for the clarification :) Stupidly (and being primarily a windows user, I'll still admit that there are plenty of stupid things about windows!) the task manager doesn't show you where a given task is being executed from. There are other tools - such as proccessExplorer from the sysinternals suite - that give more detailed information about this. Where a file is is of course a helpful indicator, but then again just because something's in C:\windows, doesn't mean it's legit, but you already knew that. Also, it would be trivial to rename SVCHOST.exe to svchost.exe in order to avoid detection, however, both could not exist in the same directory since both are technically the same file name. And yes, the task manager uses arial (as does /. argh!!) which makes | I l hard to tell apart and rn m and I / and more. It's possible to change, but not an obvious thing to do. Arial is a lame font :P
My random hardware is a... Playstation 3. My random hardware is a... Sega Dreamcast. My random hardware is a... Linksys wireless router. Looks like Windows (Vista or XP) is 0 for 3. My random hardware is an... iPod. My random hardware is a... SparcStation.
Windows only seems to work on a lot of hardware when you constrain yourself to hardware that was basically intended to work as/with a Windows PC.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
You would think X would have a GUI configuration editor? I've never looked for one though, editing the configuration file 'just works'.
/dev/input/mice as a default)
Why edit the configuration file? If you have a modern monitor that doesn't lie about its capabilities (According to my intel chipset, my dell monitor claims that it does something ludicrous like 127000x1 interlaced. I had to pull down a beta of the i810 driver that could be configured to ignore the DDC data) and a supported video card, "X -configure" will produce a correct configuration file and instructions on what you'll need to do to test it and install it. Really, distributions need to pick up on this. Setup should consist of "We will now test your video settings, if your computer crashed at this point last time, press enter to skip the automatic test and try a manual test. 5..4..3..2..1.." and then the screen flashes black a couple of times, and then X comes up with a dialog saying "if the display appears correct, press here to accept the settings, otherwise wait 10 seconds". If they press OK, the temporary config file is installed, and thats it. It would need a slight bit of work (X really should be patched to use
who is "they"?
By the authority vested in me by virtue of being an Ubuntu user and member of the community, I hereby apologize to you on behalf of the entire Ubuntu community. We are sorry that Ubuntu broke your computer.
That being said, we believe that that specific problem, along with many others have been fixed.
Will you please give Ubuntu another try?
If Shuttleworth really wants to test Hardy Heron properly, I suggest he send me up to the space station with the Ubuntu CD, and my laptop.
I shall then let him know if them mad wifi wrappers finally work!
The feisty ones dont. But I will continue to use FF (With FF of course) when I'm bored with Vista..
A deal, Mark?
My outrageous proposal is at
BLASTOFF WITH HARDY-HERON!
So far, that cheapskate Branson is ducking me- he hasn't bit.
Maybe I'll have better luck with the more progressive Shuttleworth.
.
- aqk
F U
"You can't ask newbies to install device drivers or recompile the kernel," Does anyone update the drivers when you get a new machine? Re-install windows? Get a new game? Or even install a new toy? Newbies will be doing it regardless of which OS you're using. Shove the BS somewhere else.
Since the configuration GUIs are either pre-installed or come on the disc with the hardware, you are only partially correct.
So you want a GUI for configuring all buttons on a one-button mouse?
Please god someone tag this with 'Hairy Hardon'
Check it out. You can use a 100% free version of Mandriva Distro, or you can Download a Live CD version, wich containts all drivers and common plugins for free. So, you want 100% free software ? Go ahead with Mandriva. Do you need drivers for your hardware distributed by commercial license ? Go ahead, buy a mandriva's commercial pack
Yeah, because win.ini holds all relevant configuration information in modern versions of Windows. Seriously, have you ever mucked around in regedit? A whole file system-esque tree of (often) arcanely labelled keys with text, binary, hexadecimal values, etc. *nix conf files can be scattered to odd places and arcane to work with too, but the Windows registry is *at least* equally cumbersome to work with.
If you screw up the registry badly enough, your Windows install is toast. Borking enough *nix conf files will ruin your day too, but it's a lot easier to pop in a LiveCD and working with the plain text conf files than playing with the Windows repair console or third party tools, imho.
How does that lame apology mean anything? You're screaming about how you said sorry, but at the same time you're acting in the same "I'm terribly hurt, I need restitution" asshole manner that you did originally. Like a bug from 2006 is something for which an accounting must be made. You still act like you were fucking lied to because it turned out Ubuntu wasn't perfect and bug free, and that the community wasn't willing to bust their ass to help you when you were treating them like that. If you haven't so much as changed your tone when describing the problem, how could that apology possibly be sincere?
You hold onto this for years. YEARS. What happened that was so bad? Is this an ongoing problem for you? I take it you aren't using Ubuntu any more, and regardless the bug has been fixed. So what's worth holding onto? Do you remember the jerk who cut you off five years back? Still waiting for your apology? Do you keep a list? Or do you just register a forum account for each wrong done against you?
Is there a GeicoDidntSaveMeMoney forum troll out there? Does he still actively post about his problems with the company from 2003? Does he have have a journal where he apologizes for specific phrases he used, but not actually the sentiment behind them?
Let. It. Go.
Your handle itself is a pathetic whine that you were "duped" by the community.
You want to save your precious karma? Try shutting the fuck up about it, like you actually get it. There's nothing useful you have to contribute, the bug was fixed, and no the volunteer community is never going to treat pricks like you with exceptional amounts of accommodation. It was years ago, it's over. Deal with it. And please, for the love of all that is holy, shut the fuck up.
The enemies of Democracy are
BTNX
Using a Logitech MX Revolution (the one with the funky flywheel and the sub-par batteries) on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy right now ... and have been without any problems for 6 months or so. It worked out of the box (2 buttons and the flywheel). The rest of the myriad of buttons were set using BTNX
oh"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Hmmmm, the next time OSX tells you to restart your machine in 7 different languages; remember that you paid 2000$ for the laptop in the pretty white box that IS running linux.
Like OS X and Freebsd are documented that good? Give me a call when they figure out what all the sysctls do and have a complete list that anyone can find and read. I won't get into up to date. example, look at ports/lang/gcc43 "kern.maxdsiz" sysctl doesn't exist. I've found others as well. And will they please either fix ports systems' "make fetch" where it skips makefiles with errors or pre-conditions or ban them from the makefiles themselves! It'd be nice to keep distfiles locally since the space is cheap.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I use most of the gui tools on ubuntu to do configurations. Sometimes I jump into a terminal to do some config, but usually it's just to back up menu.lst or xorg.conf so I can replace it the next time an automatic update hoses them.
It's true that I prefer clicking a checkbox to typing "vi somethingjjjjjjjjjjllcwSomeSetting=thisnewvalue:wq" but I wonder, does preferring a simple graphical method of setting something over a complicated set of operations make me stupid? Or is it the person who insists that everything should only be done the hard way who is a little stupid?
I don't really know the answer, but I do know that after years of using a terminal to set everything up, having a simple graphical environment is very refreshing. If you really believe everything should be done the hard way, ditch your mouse and keyboard while the rest of us evolve.
Now that linux is going mainstream, you might have to switch to freedos.
Bye
I don't therefore I'm not.
One of the things that somewhat ticks me off is that when a possible deficiency of desktop linux comes up, the whole rant of "can windows do that" pops up.
Is the only goal of desktop linux to be as good as windows (in various arenas), or to replace windows? Why can't it just improve upon itself because, well, there are things that can be improved.
Yes, there are a lot of things a fresh windows install can't do. These days you are still more likely to get a machine having a preconfigured windows install than a linux one. Therefore, linux must have a certain ease-of-use level for those that want to try it out on a pre-existing machine, without needing to hire a local 'nix expert.
Windows is a good point of competition for linux, creating usability benchmarks and goals, but there is no reason for us to stop short once we reach them, because the end goals should be to keep improving wherever possible.
My grandparents use linux (because I set them up with that). Before that it was win2k. They're not power users, and had usability issues on both. Anything that can be done to reduce/eliminate these issues is a good thing, even if we're already at par with windows on that particular aspect.
I still can't quite understand why I am more willing to apologize here, when it was my computer that got hosed for following the standard instructions...
Dude, you used a free operating system that says NO WARRANTY everywhere. If you needed hand-holding you should have purchased a support contract.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You're actually completely wrong about every single one of your points. It's nearly as funny as it is sad.
These noob level articles (meaning I understand them with basic unix/linux, SAS & java experience) are really annoying. People bitching about using the term 'bricking'... dude, he obviously means that in a noob-level sense, i.e. can't get to his OS. Bitching about how even one's boss's kid can get it up and running. Truth is: if you can't plug in a new wireless card with a cd full of drivers & get it working, its not good enough for the masses. Even the almighty OSX would be a black hole if JQP were expected to run it on a random set of hardware. 'We' (in quotes cause I dont know what the fuck DC++ is without wikipedia... though that makes me sad, since I was known as NapsterBoy in high school..........) may be able to fix a wireless driver problem in linux through minor code changes, but is your grandma gonna??
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Now compare that to being able to edit a simple text file, that can be done will the system is running and often the service that ties to that configuration file can stopped and restarted with out rebooting the system.
Would you care to guess how many, 'known faults', in the windows (P)OS require you to edit the registry, tens of thousands of 'known faults'.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You made our collective day [in the best of ways;] thankee San.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I prefer scooping up the cream and letting microsoft make money off the scum from the bottom of the vat. Hey, that's all M$ deserve isn't it? I think linux is just about right at the moment; easy enough that anybody with a brain that isn't too lazy to use it can drive it but just hard enough that the lazy and the stupid are scared away. The usage is growing enough as it is - full steam ahead, carry on and avoid the idiots on the icebergs.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
I believe that 2008 will be the year which will tip the scales in Linux's favor. Windows Vista is already suffering from a bad rap with users, rumors of Windows 7 coming next year are making some people hold a wait and see attitude rather than upgrade to Vista. Even a year after its release the latest Windows OS still has poor driver support. XP had superb drivers support after only six months of its release. What is the problem here? Things are coming to a head, whether some Microsoft fans want to admit it or not, and when the situations explodes Linux will be there to help pick up the pieces. Mark my words, by the end of 2008 Linux will be Mainstream!
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Does Hardy have a way to turn off my bloody touchpad when I plug a USB mouse in?
I am *sorry* for rudeness toward the forum.
No you're not, or you'd be shutting the fuck up about how badly you got helped, which you are STILL whining about in this very thread. You got way better help than you deserved. Admit that, shut the fuck up about how nobody helped you, or your words mean nothing.
Your very name is offensive towards the Ubuntu community, and you say you're sorry? That's fucking ridiculous! This is almost literally you saying "I'm sorry for calling you fuckface, fuckface."
My *technical* criticisms were still valid, and have mostly gone uncorrected.
No, your only valid technical criticisms are gone: The bug itself, and the lack of having a LiveCD by default. Both the problem you had, and your lack of tools necessary to solve it, are gone. They have been gone for years. You still keep harping on it, even though there is zero relevance left.
Except for the part about how being a douche doesn't help your problems go away, in fact all they do is make them linger long past their practical end. That is a valuable lesson to all, and one that you unwittingly demonstrate with every post.
Yes, Mr. Clue-Impaired, it has been an ongoing problem!
When I said ongoing problem, I wasn't referring to your ongoing sociopathy. Ubuntu neither caused nor can fix that.
You getting modded down is not a technical problem, and the only reason you still get jumped on about it is because you won't shut the fuck up about it. If you shut the fuck up, people might even begin to forget that your fucking name is slander against the community you claim you feel sorry about slandering.
You thinking Ubuntu should listen to your addel-pated suggestions about where to put the boot loader is delusional.
You fucking up your drive using a Windows partition tool just makes me wonder when FdiskFedMe is going to start posting to the Windows forums declaring how you were lied to by the Windows community.
There is no "problem" remaining that isn't of your own creation.
You'd call him a fuckin' hero , and you know it.
Not after I found out the real story was he had one bill that was $20 higher because of a glitch, and it got fixed, but in the meantime he spent endless hours being as big a prick to the customer service rep as possible (who, in this hypothetical situation, is a fucking volunteer for a non-profit insurance company). No, I might be sympathetic at first, but after two fucking years any sympathy for this incessantly whiny bitch would be completely lost.
Hell, I had sympathy for you up until you made the stupid decision to link to the thread you were so hurt by, thereby proving what a giant douche you were and remain to this day... still whining.
That's the way it works in real life. Nobody gives you any pity when you heap pity on yourself a thousand times more than your situation actually deserves.
Yeah, that's it: I provide a genuine case study of someone attempting to convert but was unable;
Long since solved, and the good suggestions you've made long ago incorporated without need of your input thank you. Your case has no relevance any more, it serves no practical use. You're just bitching because you can't let go. You still think you're owed something.
Like attention.
And *I'm* the one who doesn't "get it".
No, you don't get it. You don't get that whatever happened to you happened years ago, it's no longer relevant, nobody cares, you shouldn't care if you weren't obsessed.
That's not going to happen though. As your very name proves, you're so stuck on the past, you can't let go, you can't move on, you can't realize it isn't relevant to anyone any more, even yourself.
Or, more like, you know that if you stop harping on the past, you won't be relevant in the present.
We both know it'll be 2025 and as long as Slashdot is still arou
The enemies of Democracy are
You'll know when it's ready for the masses...posts like this won't exist.
In fairness, I had to do a little configuration scripting for my PCMCIA card on my laptop in Linux...but XP still had no idea what to do with it (Hawking Wireless card or something like that.)
I'm not saying there aren't problems installing some drivers in Linux sometimes...on some machines, there certainly are...but I have to say that though XP probably has a more stable track record on that front, it is far from flawless.
Do You Experiment?
The "Black Screen of Death" I get on my nVidia GTX8800 says "no" - it's not ready for the masses nor is bullet-proof Xorg config functioning properly.
Oh man, not these tired old arguments again. I have mod points and I was going mod this down, but I'm in a charitable mood and feel like feeding some trolls today.
Want to use your favourite software (photoshop, dreamweaver, GTA 4 etc: nope, that's for windows and/or mac only.
The Linux software ecosystem is rife with applications that perform the same task as their popular proprietary counterparts. Some of them aren't quite up to par (Gimp), some are roughly equivalent (OpenOffice), and some are leagues better (Firefox). There are more and more proprietary applications being ported to Linux all the time.
If your argument is that there are specific software packages that can't run on Linux, well, the same is true for both Windows and Mac. There are many Mac applications that you simply can't buy for Windows and we all well know that the reverse is true.
Neither Mac or Windows come with a system where you can browse from a catalog of over 10,000 applications and install any one of them instantly, for free, with the click of a mouse button.
Want to buy new hardware... well you can if you scour the internet for days finding out if it's compatible; you can't just pop down pcworld one saturday afternoon and pick something up and know it'll work.
This hardware myth really needs to be put to rest. Linux supports a wider variety of hardware than any other operating system on the planet. True, there can be a delay between the time that a new device is released and the time that a common Linux distribution supports it. It's also true that some hardware vendors refuse to release their hardware specifications or even cooperate in any way with open source developers but these are very much the exception these days rather than the rule. If you think Windows supports hardware any better than Linux then you have either not used Vista yet or have somehow managed to be the only person on the planet who has never fought with Windows over printer, video, or wifi driver issues at some point.
Want to install some software... sure... if you broadband no problem...
Ubuntu and many of its derivatives will ship you a copy of their OS on CD at no charge. No media fees, no shipping and handling. Free. Most of the software that you can install afterward is not at all too large to pull down via a dialup modem. Windows and OS X cost hundreds of dollars each. I would say that I put my money where my mouth is, except that I don't have to spend any of it on Linux at all.
oh, but it might install the software anywhere on your system... good luck learning to grep it.
Not sure what you mean here. On KDE- and GNOME-based distributions, a shortcut to every installed application gets put into the applications menu. Which, by the way, is sorted by the software's function so everything is easy to find. Contrast with Windows where each application goes into its own folder or a folder named after the company that distributed it. Install enough applications and the Start menu becomes large and unusable. Contrast also with Mac, where you have to dig down into a special (and also unsorted) Applications folder to find newly-installed apps.
Fat chance if your friend has just given you a cdrom with software on it!
Why, you don't have any friends?
Okay, unprofessional personal attack aside, Linux-using friends are more likely to give you a URL than a CD-ROM. If someone's giving you a CD-ROM with Windows or Mac software on it, there's a good chance it's warez anyway unless they're in the habit of giving away their legitimate software.
want to play games.... err... well... no.. not really, but hey we've got solitaire!!!
There is, admittedly, a noted lack of high-profile games natively available for Linux. However, there are some good ones available. Recent versions of Quake and Unreal Tournament run fine natively.
That's a pretty silly set of examples, for one thing since when didn't you have to install drivers in Windows? Also since when have you ever had to recompile the kernel to use Linux?
Generally speaking Linux distros do tend to be slightly more technical than their Windows/OSX, but using the above examples just makes the "naysayers'" arguments seem ridiculously stupid.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Your mother didn't take it upon herself to install AV and switch to Firefox. She took the advice of an atypical computer user. Not everyone has a techie relative. You do realize AOL is a multi-billion dollar company, right?
you mean you want a gui even for settings you will probably only make once? that explains why windows is so horribly bloated and slow.
Funny/related anecdote:
I have FreeNX server running on my home desktop, which runs Hardy Heron beta. I have a copy of a bunch of tools, including an NX client and PuTTY on my iPod that I use at school when I'm bored to administer the system, check my Gmail, retrieve homework assignments or whatever. (Don't tell the admins! Admins in my school district are cranky and probably don't like me already.)
Sometimes, right before I ride my bike home (I live just a couple of miles from the school) I'll walk into the library and fire up a shell and update and upgrade the system.
When I get back home after the brief bike ride, I'll walk over to my computer and glance at the kicker's tray, where I get that little triangular warning sign indicating I have some, often more than ten, packages available for updating.
It doesn't matter how 'ready for the masses' any product is if it's not being marketed to the masses.
Linux is and will remain an enthusiast/power user OS until someone, somewhere makes an active effort to market it to the masses (and no, word of mouth simply isn't going to cut it). The only active marketing I've ever seen is at a server level to businesses.
Or do we expect the masses to automagically know about linux?
I mean, you get a GUI that gives you a blank text field and a somewhat ambiguous label for it (that is, providing that whichever GUI you're using supports the option you're looking for...), and you're telling me that is less confusing than a plain text file? If you want to tick off Joe User, give him 800 pages of documentation that will enumerate his options, with examples of how to write it out as a single line of text, and then give him a GUI that doesn't quite match up.
Doesn't it make you angry when (caution: car analogy ahead) when you pull your car's manual from the glove box so that you can change the time on your radio and they give you a freaking picture of how to change it with a different model or kind of radio? Take a look at the windows registry - now, that, my friend is elitist. You're not even expected to understand how it work (which is obvious since my roaming profile never carries my personal changes because the developers of every application fail to think I'd like my settings in my user hive, not my machine hive! You're supposed to have machine settings in the machine hive, and user settings in the user hive, let's get it right for once, devs!)
Given the choice between having a system that's limping along and editing a text file, or having my registry blow up and repair it in safe mode, I'll take a plain text file any day of the week, man. Before I change something, I put a little comment on the line above it with the date, my intentions, and my initials, and leave the original setting commented out; If the system worked yesterday and it didn't boot this morning, go find the change I made yesterday, uncomment the original setting, comment out the one I set, add your initials and send me an email to let me know.
Please don't get the tone of this wrong, I'm not angry, I just wish that being of the opinion that simple system break less and complex systems break more often, in very complex ways, wasn't looked upon as snobbery. I'm sure I could get a handful of people here to give completely rational reasons that they'd prefer a registry hive over text files. More power to them, if it works for them and they can fix it when it breaks, I'm satisfied. Doesn't mean I agree with them, but, so what?
All that being said, if you want a GUI in slackware, when you login type 'init 5' or 'startx' or 'kdeinit', from KDE I assume you can use the control panel to make the boot default to GUI mode. It's your distro, it's completely vanilla, set it up as you wish. No one is stopping you but yourself. If you don't like the BSD style inits, the template for sysV are in place and there's a script that will take care of any scripts put in there at runlevel changes. I'll be back in a few hours to apologize for being a jerk.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Not really the fault of Linux but of the company supplying your wireless driver that refuses to give out specs so people can actually make your wireless work automatically.
Jesus Christ on a stick! 10 points for trolling. I can't believe anyone would give you modpoints for that.
Gnome: A never ending quest to make unix friendly to people who don't want unix and excruciating for those that do.
Yep. I was totally sick of Windows and all its hassles, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to use a desktop OS with the strength and configurability of UNIX with a slick modern GUI.
So I got a Mac.
For all it's "power of UNIX" allure, OSX 10.5 is gawdawfully unstable. My Mac mini would run for weeks just fine with Tiger, but Leopard is lucky to last more than 24 hours or so. I mean, I hate to say it, but Leopard, for all its sex appeal, is LESS STABLE THAN WINDOWS 95 was for me.
Do I love the Mac? Sure! Is it as stable as my Linux PCs? Not a chance. Sorry.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
At least I'm very happy using Ubuntu and even 64 bit version. I used to use Windows for years. And when I noticed that most of programs I'm using are Open Source it was very logical next step to start using OS, OS! And that's it. I'm using Ubuntu and I'm very happy with it. I agree that some of the configuration stuff could have been quite kinky for new guys that doesn't understand about scriptin, configuration files, command prompts etc. So there is a lot of stuff to do. But if I think regular user. Would I recommend Ubuntu for my Mom? Yes. Why not. If there is any technical hazzle. I'll take care of it. And using it is just like Windows for her. But system is just safer and there arent constant problems with malware.
Why would you need WiFi on the space station?
Have you heard about Elektra? The developer recently posted to the FD.o mailing list.
Put identity in the browser.
* Open terminal button (which starts gnome-term) may on a dual screen setup sometimes re-use the process of a gnome-term on the other screen, causing the DISPLAY variable to be wrong.
* During shutdown, "laptop-mode stop" is called, which results in disks spinning up even if they are not mounted
It'll never been a full implementation because Micrsoft brings out new versions of DirectX and their OS Kernel.
If gaming companies used OpenGL in the first place they wouldn't be having the problems they're having post production on other operating systems and gaming consoles. For example, if Half-Life 2 was openGL then they wouldn't be whining about how difficult programming for the PS3 is and then have to ship the port over to EA because they're too stupid to do it themselves.
I've been a windows user for 16 years, and after a few experiences with Vista, I decided it was time to switch. I am not entirely unfamiliar with linux, So I have a bit more of an advantage than an average user. But even still, for the most part the switch has been painless. If I can't figure out something, searching the Ubuntu forums is really helpful.
It really feels like an OS that really works the way an OS should.
I wouldn't say that it is ready for the masses, but I think that most fairly computer savvy people who want an alternative to windows (or mac) should be able to make the switch.
"how do we tell the people the emperor has no clothes?"
Easy: you show them how to play MP3s, DVDs/MP4s, connect their iPods and their Kindles, etc. on that shiny fresh Ubuntu installation.
Can't do that? Oops, I guess the plebeian is still more naked than the Emperor!
Ok, this next bit happened at least 6 times: I installed the drivers according to instructions, and X booted up extremely garbled, unusable. Then I had to manually restore my xorg.conf file to get back to gnome.
There. Somewhere during or after those times i had to reinstall Ubuntu 2 times because I just didn't know what to do anymore and wanted a clean start. Yes, I tried installing them from scratch, with instructions on a clean install. Did not work. After a unspecified amount of time and despair I simply gave up. I called a friend who knew enough to get them working but not after extreme pain. And the card never worked perfectly. For example I could never get Metacity working properly, just complaints about the drivers.
So no, Ubuntu or any Linux for that matter, is NOT ready for the masses.
"If you have customized your menu.lst you will also have problems the next time a kernel update happens as the update will wipe out your customization, so if you have modified the menu.lst file to make change the order in which the menu displays your choices and which os is the default, that will be wiped out and you could loose access to one or more of your partitions (hence OSes)."
Have you considered putting our modifications somewhere other than in the section that says:
"# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST
### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below
"?
For people at home, Linux can't run games or popular apps.
For the enterprise, Linux has no Active Directory equivalent making large-scale networks difficult to manage as effectively.
Apart from that, it's totally ready.
Please provide evidence to the contrary if you have any.
throw new NoSignatureException();
displayconfig-gtk, nivdia-settings ... yeah I can tell you never looked.
You missed the joke, you're an idiot.
It's been quite a while since I haven't been able to get drivers for stuff, most of them were already there and required no hunting around at all. In fact I've had to hunt around the internet for drivers for xp installations for equipment where my linux installs just worked far more frequently. And then there's Vista - it won't play most avi's unless you hunt up something like vlc so it's no worse than having to find out how to install codecs on linux. If you are using ubuntu you don't even have to do that. And, well, lets face it, vista is the worst thing M$ have produced since dos4 and they want me to empty my bank account for the drm ridden pos when I can run debian for free???
You raise me a pc mag application, I'll up you the ante with thousands of apps in the repos that install with a single click, and they didn't even cost the price of a magazine. I need broadband? I do ok on an isdn connection but you have to fill your tank and drive to the shops (again, with wallet in hand) or hand out your credit card details over the net and still have to download some bloatware or wait for the postman.
It isn't linux that isn't ready for the desktop, it's windows.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
Not really, they're talking about what is part of the OS. Windows doesn't have multibutton support either. Using the argument that "well, how come Windows has a 3rd party driver?" is pretty immature, because it's obvious that more obscure functionality (who the heck would even want a 10 button mouse? My current mouse has 5 or 6 buttons but I still only use 2 and the scroll wheel.. sometimes click the massive 'back' button by mistake too) isn't always going to be available on Linux right out of the box, and that the manufacturers probably won't be making their own Linux drivers. Someone has already pointed out that there is some free software that can configure multi-button bluetooth mice, called BTNX. And so the free hippy software vs evil commercial software balance is restored (for this case at least)
which is totally what she said
if your time has no value then linux is free, lordy this hasn't changed, who are you people that constantly want to replace windows on the desktop, to replace something you have to become it, this is not topology, there's nothing intuitive about it,
"Some Distros like Ubuntu trash X.org autodetection in order to use their own, inferior solution"
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Hardy Heron (and really, this has been mostly true for the past couple of releases, with caveats here and there) ships without an xorg.conf for most users, only adding one for "Bulletproof-X"; a backup VESA Xserver configuration which allows you to go in and configure it in the case which autoconfigure either doesn't work or you have specific needs (such as a dual monitor setup that isn't well supported by your graphics card and Xrandr).
You'd think people would actually try the software before making baseless accusations.
My Mini (Leopard) runs 24/7 and I've rebooted it, um... twice this year? for patch updates. My Macbook (also Leopard) *has* crashed a few times, usually when I've been doing something processor-intensive and put the Macbook to sleep in the middle of it.
The second-hand G4 (Tiger) I bought on Ebay for $40 is solid as a rock.
Also, I hasten to point out that I use these as DESKTOP machines. My servers all run various Linuxes. But the point of this discussion is that as far as desktop UNIX goes, OS X is the daddy.
There's wine. And yes, nowadays, it will run most software by just double-clicking it. The hardware problem is not really linux's fault, but rather the manufacturers. Some hardware doesn't work out of the box on windows, yet people don't bitch that windows is a pile of crap, because it doesn't support it. Ubuntu can run fine without broadband. Most applications are small, and it will take minutes to download, even on a modem. Leave the computer overnight, and you will have downloaded most of the repository. Almost all software comes with desktop files, which makes it visible in the GUI menu of choice. There's also some proprietary games, native to linux (like ETQW for instance, or Savage 2). A lot of games can be run on wine. And most people use game consoles to play games. You can do almost everything without opening a terminal these days. The only reason we use a terminal (leaving the impression that it is a necessity), is because we get shit done faster.
Well.. I know what a conf file and a registry is.. all together I've probably edited files like that several thousand times - but I've never even heard of a plist ;) Admittedly I haven't done too much on OSX apart from web browsing, watching movies, listening to music, installing control panel extensions, a little bit of C development, installing the GIMP and a trial of parallels just because I could, plugging into a HDTV.. well none of them would require editing conf files apart from the HDTV probably. Oh and in Windows/Linux I'd probably need to install codecs to watch certain types of movie file..
which is totally what she said
So I'm typing this on a very nice Dell XPS M1330 running Ubuntu 7.10 (not the Dell distribution) and it's excellent: everything works except the fingerprint reader, and I am otherwise battling with a T-Mobile web n' walk USB stick that almost, but not quite works (there is documentation for it, but it's in French and Finnish: my French is schoolboy, my Finnish non-existent, and that's another problem). I have been using Linux for getting on for 15 years, and yes, it is closer to being usable and more importantly supportable on the desktop than it has ever been, but when it comes to sorting out those esoteric problems, particularly with Ubuntu, I am finding few answers, just the same problems, or, worse still, workarounds that are being accepted as solutions that really wouldn't be acceptable to the casual user.
Here's an example: I am attached to my office network by a cheap wireless access point. My wireless card occasionally loses connection with it, but wpa_supplicant fails to reattach, and basically chews up the IP stack, resulting in needing to restart the machine, which won't close properly, and which leads to an fsck on reboot, which could potentially lose data. I would regard this as a fairly severe bug, but when I search on the Ubuntu forums I find someone with the same problems who believes that the response is to unload the wireless drivers from the kernel, kill wpa_supplicant and reload the drivers. This is an answer, but not a solution. The result is that issues still go unreported or unresolved, and they are issues that John Q Public can encounter, only to be faced with something utterly incomprehensible to them.
The Asus Eee, OLPC and other appliance devices are probably the best hope that Linux on the desktop has: like Apple, build for a known hardware configuration, make it work and support it. By all means Linux should run on all hardware, that is an important aim, but while there are still problems that can't be resolved from the GUI, it isn't going to get the sort of takeup that it deserves.
I'm not an elitist, it's just that I've used all 3 OSes, and I'm pretty sure I've never had to edit any configuration files in any version of Mac OS I've ever used (started using a Classic when I was about 8, and I'm now 24 with OS X). Well, apart from the preferences for Quake but I don't think that counts :P I didn't think I'd even heard of plists before, though it is starting to ring a bell. I learned to shutdown properly when I was 8 though as I said (though I remember having to use that funky hard reset button a few times on my pre-OS X Macs), so I've never dealth with pfiles. I have used the terminal, but that was just for C development and playing MUDs :P
which is totally what she said
I don't mind - I have a job.
:P But I'd buy a MacBook Pro with my own hard earned (well.. earned) cash anyday.
The fact that I just ordered the computer as my primary work computer, then installed XP on it, helps too
which is totally what she said
Thanks for the link! I hadn't noticed that article.. too busy working or something :)
which is totally what she said
I'm not surprised that Linux has a larger hardware compatibility list - it still has drivers for a lot of hardware from the 386 era, something you often can't find for XP and above. For an average desktop PC today, though, these doesn't matter. And for modern software, you still have higher chances of having trouble with Linux than XP/Vista, if only because most prebuilt PCs are designed to work with XP (and now Vista). As one example, my Thinkpad R51e has Vista drivers for all hardware, and it actually works fine, whereas no Linux distro I've tried - latest versions of Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, Fedora - could handle WiFi (it's Atheros chipset which is declared as supported by madwifi) out of the box (I did manage to make it running in Debian, after all, after several hours of googling and tweaking config files and kernel module parameters).
Now, Vista SP1 actually managed to have even more troubles with hardware... but that's another story.
That will stop mass uptake of Linux at home, in my opinion. Your problem is that it will never be good enough for you because you just keep coming back with more and more ridiculous complaints. Your problem is that you can't take genuine criticism of your favourite toy and choose to respond with flames instead of proper dialogue. There's plenty of areas where Linux far excels Windows, but being a gaming platform isn't one of them.
throw new NoSignatureException();
but I can tell you: kids will laugh at you when you come with this list. Kids want to play the games all other kids play. Kids want to use the software and features all others use. If that software isn't available for Linux, Windows is the choice.
And once you got raised with Windows, why ever make the switch to Linux?
My credo is: as soon as software for young people will be available for Linux, *then* it will be a real alternative and it *will* become ready for the masses. (and then hardware vendors will probably finally provide Linux drivers for their stuff).
there are a few publishers missing from that list
when activision, thq, sierra, valve, id, ubisoft, 2k, bethesda, codemasters, eidos, and EA start publishing for Linux, then it will be ready for the mainstream.
otherwise, no new age repackaging of a hippie ideal is going to make Linux ready for the mainstream.
only a mainstream push by a mainstream publisher like novell will make Linux ready for the mainstream.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'm using Kubuntu for more than a year now. I'm a web developer (PHP/MySQL) and Linux makes me feel at home. But certainly not since day one.
It took me ages to get my head around the overall different ways of managing files, drivers, devices and the OS (and I'm still learning). But this was hard for me because I'm behind a Windows machine since 1995, which is 13 years of Windows experience and habits.
The vast majority of regular Windows users tend to forget that they have very often spent hours trying to install a new PCI/ISA/Device/Software on their Windows machine and had to learn everything from scratch on Windows (drivers, software settings, registry, install location, reboot, test again, etc). Those same people now say that 'Windows is easier to use than Linux' simply because they have a better experience with it and know how to do stuff and they tend to forget that, they just feel 'comfortable' using Windows and now that they have reached that point, all the hassle and frustration they've been through is only a bad memory that is fainting rapidly.
When you migrate to another OS, you're lost. For ages, I was looking for something similar than the Windows Explorer on KDE. I was using Konqueror --profile filemanagement for that and I thought at the start that the Windows Explorer was better (because I was used to the view, the shortcuts, the overall usage of Windows Explorer). It's only after using Konqueror on an everyday basis and spending a bit of time to discover Konqueror's features that I realised that Konqueror is miles ahead of Windows Explorer on any front. Me having difficulties to use something else than Windows Explorer has to do with my previous habit, not with Linux (or KDE).
Habits are hard to break, it is a big part of our Human nature.
A friend of mine puts computer together (old and new) and sells them to his clients with Windows XP on it. 90% of those clients aren't computer litterate and they come back to him for:
This is, to me, ridiculously simple to do on a Windows machine, but it's not the case for 90% of the population. For a total newcomer who isn't computer-litterate at all, learning Linux from scratch and learning Windows from scratch represents the same challenge. It is completely different for people who have already aquired knowledge of a given system.
Here are the three major problems with migrating to Linux:
None of them has anything to do with Linux or any distribution what so ever. Those issues are related to hardware developers, game developers and software developers (or to a certain extend, schools and colleges as they seem to be more encline to teach the Microsoft way of using a computer than the Open Source way, although this is starting to change).
The simple fact is that you can quite easily choose to play games on Linux only..
What do you think a person with a 360 does when they want to play a game on the PS3? They go "oh well, that sucks" and play something else, it's not a big deal.
Elitist much? You can hack away at config files all you want still. Having nice GUI configuration options for people who want them is a good thing. Get your head out of the 90's maybe and look around before you go spouting off such elitist drivel.
I've been using Linux since LONG before it was fashionable. I like hacking around on the system. I also like the fact that there are distros out that make it easier for the causal user to configure their system.
I'd say that distributions like Ubuntu is exactly as user-friendly as OS X.
If you use supported hardware and don't want to customize the OS in non-supported ways, everything just works.
Trying to use OS X on badly supported hardware? Needs system-file tinkering and thorough knowledge of how the system works.
Trying to use Ubuntu on badly supported hardware? Needs system-file tinkering and thorough knowledge of how the system works.
The biggest difference is that Ubuntu usually isn't bundled together with 100% compatible hardware like OS X and, most of the time, Windows are.
To get a "apple to apple" comparison between operating systems you'd have to compare how easy they are to install and run on hardware that is 100% supported by the OS out of the box.
Or the other way around, compare them on hardware that isn't supported out of the box. =)
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
I never get complaints from my father (KDE), and my sister is also very happy with her Linux system (GNOME). I use Debian, however, because for some reason the systems I try to run Ubuntu on have always some blocking problem in the install (and always something different).
Why can't I do that? because it is "illegal"? Do I have to stop doing that?
It's hard to develop closed source software for Linux. Some may view that as a feature, but it's also making it that much harder for games to get here.
Its not ready for the masses until my dual monitors work out of the box. It doesn't matter who's "fault" it is regarding drivers or various compatibility issues. It doesn't matter that it can be "made to work" with several hours of troubleshooting. I'm a full-time linux sysadmin and sometimes even I want to just install windows on my desktop rather than try to get a new graphics card working under linux.
I understand all the issues surrounding poor manufacturer support, particularly in regards to graphics drivers. I'm just saying it doesn't matter who is to blame. Joe user doesn't care.
I accidentally left the live CD in my wife's laptop (thinkpad T30) after burnign it. Wife comes along, windows crashes, she reboots and, an she uses the computer. She can't find Picassa, which upsets her, but that's okay. She's not sure why the colors are funny, but that's okay. 2 days later, I get home and she asks me "where's the 'e'? I need it to check hotmail." ... If my wife, who couldn't tell that it was a different OS on the computer, can use it for days without an anger management problem, then Linux is ready for prime time. Oh, and "the 'e'?" ... that would be Internet Explorer.
John
What font do you recommend? I find it easy to read, even your examples of where it supposedly doesn't work, but if you can suggest a better font I'm up for improving readability.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
I don't think anyone is afraid of normal users, but I think normal users are too terrified of their PC to do any real maintenance regardless what the OS is - you argue that normal users shouldn't have to edit config files - I ask why not. To use your example of a musician, most of them never get to the point that they replace the pads on their saxophone themselves, they take it to someone else, there are exceptions, but not many. Would you say that a musician who doesn't break out the valves on his sax isn't a real musician? I want my sax to 'just work', I bought it last week and it sounds like crap, why should I have to learn anything to improve that? Lessons? Learn something? No! It should 'just work'!
...or learn the intricacies of "JACK"
I've found jack to be dead easy with the gui 'qjackctl'. Configure and start jack with a few clicks, then your various hardware/software audio devices/applications appear in a connection diagram and you can make any connections you want with no trouble. I have no previous PC music experience and I managed to get jack working with timidity, rosegarden and vkeybd (virtual midi keyboard) without much hassle.
There's three editions of Mandriva: Free, One and Powerpack.
Free contains 100% free / open source software and doesn't cost anything. It's actually 'freer' than Ubuntu, as Ubuntu uses a fairly slack definition which allows them to include non-free firmware (they argue that Ubuntu contains no non-free software, but it _does_ contain non-free firmware; they draw a distinction between the two). Mandriva Free does not contain any non-free firmware.
One is a free-of-charge live CD, and it contains non-free hardware drivers and browser plugins - NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers, non-free firmware for wireless, stuff like that. All non-free software that can legally be redistributed to the general public is free of charge in Mandriva, it's available in One and in the public /non-free repository.
Powerpack has all that non-free stuff and also a few pieces of exclusive *commercial* software that we can't legally redistribute to the general public, only people who pay. Cedega, Fluendo codecs, stuff like that.
You don't need to buy a commercial edition of Mandriva to get full hardware support, as there are no hardware drivers that are not either free / open source software, or publicly re-distributable non-free. You only need to buy Powerpack if you want the commercial software it includes, or the printed manual and installation support, or just to support Mandriva.
I come from the Amiga age, where I did code a subtitle program myself before I ever had any programming course, then gone on Solaris at my university...
..I shoot him...
Still....Windows since 98 never been has complicated as Ubuntu. Or any linux distribution.
It is not habit, it is a total freaky way of thinking.
Unix is not user oriented, it is computer oriented.
Everything is set up to be easily understood by the hardware, not the end user.
When I need to install Linux, it won't propose me the name of my device but the name of the chipset...(and a generic one even)
You know what pisses me off the most: one distrib has a driver I need, but not the other, and vice versa.
If I want BOTH devices to work I have no clue how to install the driver I miss, even though I KNOW it exists....just because drivers are embedded in the kernel in such a stupid way you can not as a simple user just browse a directory of them and just point to it.
Hell even when video works it will not give me the option to go higher than 1600*1200 at 60hz in the graphical manager while video card and monitor gives me 2048*1536*85hz in windows.
Second:packaging: I like some software as they are...and i don't want them to update automatically you know; this behaviour pisses me off.
I still use acdSee 3.1 (from windows 98 to xp sp2)...and I LIKE it and never want it to be upgraded...
So this whole 'dist upgrade' I dont give a shit about.
Last time I did it, it killed my system like sp2 can kill another system, so linux fails at aht too.
(reason was probably beagle activated by defaut.....harddrive would spin endlessly and I gave up after 15min cause the system was so unresponsive I could not even lanch the service manager to stop it...even lauching an xterm was hard...and anyway...what process did I need to kill no idea...
third:People always says 'there are same software'...
it is just wrong.
For a long time there was no software for im that would do voice and video and smileyrs etc...just cause some people dont like 'bloat' software...
Know what ? my wife LIKES it, her cousin do as well, and these person dont give a shit about your opinion about what a software SHOULD to....they are your end user, not your slaves.
I use Zmud...no tintin is NOT equivalent.
I use newsbin...no Linux equivalent...(WINE is NOT a solution either)
I use Zoomplayer...no Linux equivalent (in ease of configuration)
all tree software I PAID for...cause they worth ten times the time i would lose in linux for the same result. (and a lot of others)
My wife use a Genealogy that simply has no equivalent in the open source world : Geneatique.
a lot of end user niche software are non existant in the Linux world. And end user dont give a shit about uptime or ease of clusterization....(they do have a concern linux cant suspend and resume most of the time on a laptop though....)
Another funny example: I want to create an wifi access point for a while...Linux gives me a headache, there is simply no fucking gui to configure it all.
In Windows I could set up one in 3 clicks...problem is it only use WEP....
So I turn to linux....WPA is NOT EVEN SUPORTED BY DEFAULT.....
A so called secure system...
Zeroshell is not an answer either since i want a general purpose system....
Solution:I am stuck with adhock configuration..at least it works without giving me an headache.
Linux has possibilities....but that is all about it...unexploited possibilities.
Because the single point of failure that will never change:
you cannot ever charge money for software on linux for the end user......because of GPL....
services business model only worth it for business...and business dont care of end user niche markets. (end user that buy their computer at wall mart....majority of them)
They put everything on the server and either rent it to you or flood you with adverts.
Well enough rant...
no wait....If I ever hear someone say it is the year of the linux desktop ever again
Some of them aren't quite up to par (Gimp), some are roughly equivalent (OpenOffice), and some are leagues better (Firefox). There are more and more proprietary applications being ported to Linux all the time.
:)
Haha, hahaah...
The GIMP is quite up to par with what?, I *really* hope you did not meant Photoshop. Firefox is leagues better than what? I use Firefox in Windows everytime I log on.
OTOH, I needed to open an Adobe Illustrator AI image and all of the options available in Linux I tried could not handle the file correctly. And then, Installing Illustrator in Wine is a complete disaster.
Even though I am using Linux just right now, the fact is that for a *lot* of jobs, Linux just does not cut it. Either because the "Free as in happy hippy" applications are just mediocre or because there just aren't applications.
Right now I am writing this on Ubuntu 7.10 (I like to use Kile for LaTex). I had the previous version installed, and after spending a complete weekend I made 3D acceleration work for my "supported by the open source drivers" ATI card (which IS supposedly supported [both 3D and 2D] by x.org drivers). Everything worked nice until I "upgraded" to 7.10 and now I can only log in into the "failsafe" mode. The bulleproof and Ubuntu forums where complete a waste of time the weekend I decided to spend "fixing" that shit.
After that I returned to my Windows XP partition, being happy with XP + andLinux since then. I am using the broken Ubuntu now because I needed sshfs + kile + some other things.
But really, you made me laugh
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The reason why it doesn't work well is manifold and almost none of it due to Linux.
1) ACPI is written for the broken Windows implementation of the driver. Manufacturers need to either give away the information on what they did or write a Linux driver to control the ACPI that they implemented in hardware.
2) ACPI is badly specced, which leads manufacturers to do #1. Spec needs to be fixed.
3) Windows implements its own version of ACPI (see #2) and is closed source and MS WILL NOT tell anyone what they send to the motherboard, so we can't replicate their non-standard ACPI call ABI/wire standard. MS needs to tell everyone what they are doing.
As for wireless cards, that's the manufacturers fault again. Their stated reason for keeping the interface closed is because a free driver allows breaking of FCC rules. Well, installing the Japanese firmware breaks FCC rules too. But they aren't being held for it. The reason is more likely that they have the same cheap version and expensive version but the difference is what the driver lets in (and this is the same reason for NVidia keeping their stuff closed, or at least the only one that makes sense).
Making it worse is that you don't see anything about what chipset a wireless card uses. Netgear used to use a chipset that was fully supported under Linux. But they changed to the longbow (or crossbow?) version which wasn't supported BUT had exactly the same part number. Nothing on the packaging tells you whether this is the supported card.
Again, not Linux's fault.
what about PDAs?
/etc/modules
user: jpilot doesn't work with my PDA
me: no big deal, just run modprobe visor
me: oh yeah, you'll need to sudo that
me: and add it to
me: and yeah, you need to sudo that too
me: and it should all be good - how did you go?
me: hello?
me: hello?
me: where's he gone?
me: did he want help or what?
>Last I checked, Mandriva was proprietary. It may have a free version, but it depends on proprietary software. Right?
:)
It doesn't depend on anything proprietary. There are specifically released "ONE" versions that have no binary anything if that is what you want. Of course, most people just don't care. They would rather everything work well
I have been using Ubuntu for 2 years. It is a great OS. I even switched my parents over to it after repeated tech support phone calls for problems directly caused by windows (not user error, because my parents only surf the web and read e-mail). Since installing Ubuntu on their machine, I have had not one phone call for help. The machine has been running fine for over a year without the slightest hint of a problem! Thanks Ubuntu for saving me from explaining to my mother that when you have windows, the BSOD is just a part of life.
Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
www.m1
I don't mind using the same operating system than an elitist zealot uses - just not the same computer.
I totally agree. I can't stand using a Fanboi's Apple gear either..... OOOOOH you meant Linux, my appologies.
1) Upgraded to Vista, not supported or new exchange system not supported
2) This isn't true for Linux any more (for years). Windows has similar problems because dual monitor support is part of the driver given by the manufacturer, so windows is SOL quite often
3) Explain to them why the one application they NEED isn't working under Vista. Or only works under Vista. Or only works under XP (for W2k).
4) Explain why they need XP to play the latest game, rather than stick with the OS that technically allows it (right DX version and all).
5) Why doesn't your GeForce8800 not work under Vista? Oh, they haven't got a driver yet.
7) How far above average do you go???? pptp? NEVER NEEDED.
I'm not really convinced on the application availability thing...
Some of them aren't quite up to par (Gimp)
Indeed.
some are roughly equivalent (OpenOffice)
Now this is the problematic part. When OOo can connect to Bloomberg to get real time prices, process them with a pluggable analytics system like Quic, and display the results as a chart that will be editable within a document or presentation, then it will be worth considering trying to make it 'roughly equivalent' to Office.
and some are leagues better (Firefox).
Widely used on Windows.
The problem is with the Unix architecture; relying on the X clipboard or ASCII pipes makes it very hard for any app running on a Unix to do what Excel can do.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm going to wait for the Understanding UbuntuDupe release. Anything else must be geared toward killing users machines in the community. I don't want to be a victim, or spend years whining about something like this, so I'll wait until -everyone- in the world likes it.
I use Slackware, you insensitive clod!
Dungeon Tactics : Free Open Source SRPG
I am a dyed in the wool FOSS advocate, junkie, news whore, fan, fanboy, and daily user. I literally follow a dozen FOSS projects and read their news sites almost daily.
.deb for some files. Then people say don't use .deb files, only use the validated repos. Then some software only comes in an rpm, or as code I have to compile from source, and guess what, I need a specific compiler and a whole set of libraries that don't download automagically, and that I can't pronounce or remember from the error screen that doesn't stay open long enough for me to write it down so I can actually make it all work.
I have switched every person that I work with, every family member, and every girlfriend and even casual acquaintance over to Firefox.
I have installed the GIMP for tons of people, who now are used to it and don't know why they are not used to photoshop on somebody else's machine.
Teens love Pidgin. They love MySpace IM, MSN, yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and IRC in one chat window.
I wantonly champion the virtues both real and philosophical behind open source, and the open source idea.
That being said, let me give you my take on Linux, on Ubuntu, and on Hardy Heron in particular.
It sucks. It's slow, it lacks the conventions that everyone is comfortable with from Windows. It can't rip mp3s out of the box. It can't play DVDs out of the box. It can't play divx or xvid out of the box. There is no torrent client comparable to utorrent 1.5. There is no replacement that is as fast and clean and good as Winamp 2.81. Project M sucks compared to Milkdrop from 5 years ago. There is no Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. The zealots who populate the IRC and forums are frequently rude, demeaning, and argue with the logic of what 95% of the world wants: A FOSS Windows replacement. xvncviewer is not as good and easy to use as UltraVNC. Skype works, but many webcams do not. No Joost. Why the hell can't I just manage my partitions like an adult? Why can't I select one partition and only format that and install Linux THERE? Why must I either choose to reformat a whole drive, resize a drive, etc.?
I am somebody who WANTS to love Linux, and Ubuntu in particular. I'm somebody who LOVES compiz, open office, and other Linux specific advantages.
But I'm on Windows. And I'm not leaving until Linux can fix the majority of those problems I've listed.
Linux fans keep trumpeting about diversity, but that's really a pain in everyone's ass. I can't find a
I WANT LINUX TO WIN. STOP TORTURING ME WITH YOUR OBSCURE POLITICAL STANCES AND PAINFUL LACK OF MP3 SUPPORT.
I'm waiting for ReactOS to mature. THAT is what people want. Something they know how to use that is simple and follows the conventions that 99% of us are used to and know. Until then, all this Linux is just more pissing in the wind, and I don't care that it's in 8 million incompatible flavors. It's 8 million flavors of useless piss.
Oh yeah, and I keep trying every new distro I can, and as for the latest Hardy Heron beta, well, it puts my rather generic ViewSonic screen to out of range, and I have to reboot back into (you guessed it) Windows. The other recent distros I've tried were gOS (simple, and lacking), SymphonyOS (couldn't get it without paying a dollar, which I won't do. I only do free software period, other than windows because no Linux can displace it (yet!?!)), Vixta.org (interesting, but still suffers from lacks mentioned above), and gutsy has been completely unstable.....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
wow, you really are half a loaf of stupid.
so you expect 20 million people world-wide to say, "Well I'm going to use Linux anyway even though I can't play my games on it, I'll just play battle of wesnoth, it's not a big deal"
wow, dumb, just dumb.
They're using their grammar skills there.
*claps*
Bravo. That was beautiful.
--saint
I'm a slackware@home user and kubuntu@work user.
Today, even Slackware is easy to install/configure. I had problems only with tv card bt7xx drivers, even in microshit windows I had problems with that (no more sound/video drivers problems since slack 10)
Regards.
Just asking. 'Cos last time I looked they didn't seem to. Maybe that's changed.
I think that if you want people to switch to Linux, people have to be told in advance, honestly, which things are going to work and which aren't. Linux advocates aren't always a good source for this sort of information, they tend to stress all the wonderful things Linux does while forgetting to mention the things that a user might expect to be able to do that aren't properly supported.
OpenOffice is great for Linux in that people can try it on windows first, and gain an expectation of what they're likely to be able to do on Linux in this respect, without having to take some Linux enthusiast's word for it.
Likewise the ASUS EEE. Okay, so it's a limited machine, but the limitations are explicit. If ASUS is saying: "This machine won't to everything, but for the things you'd expect it to do, linux is absolutely fine", then that's good enough for a heck of a lot of buyers.
A lot of people are absolutely fine with the idea that a system doesn't do certain things, as long as it's absolutely clear from the outset what those things are, and that (I'd suggest) is where the Linux community has some credibility problems.
Eric Baird
Conf files may become deprecated in the not-too-distant future as daemons like HAL that communicate over DBus become more popular. I know the typical line about "those who fail to learn from Unix", but honestly DBus manages to achieve some amazing things with startling simplicity that would be quite difficult for flat files (like "push" signals, and brief one-shot messages).
One of the big upsides of this is things like, for example, an X server that configures itself on startup, adding all your available input devices and screens to the current session, and simple tools that can alter that dynamically in the middle of a session (like xrandr does for monitors).
Linux has always been ready for the desktop for me (well, since 2000 or so), but this is a change of such enormous breadth, there's just nothing comparable on the Windows or OSX world. If anything was needed for a last push, this will be it.
Because the Russian Cosmonaut is at the other end of the space-station, and (in my spare time of course) I would like to view the Pr0n on HIS laptop!
Do you really expect me to lay Cat5 all over the station?
.
- aqk
F U
Configuration: Yes, usually autodetection and GUI config work. Sometimes doesn't.
I haven't had problems with this personally in a while, but then my daily, desktop Linux lives in a VM. One thing to note is this problem falls into the category of being an issue for Linux, but not OS X or Windows, not for technical reasons with the OS, but because of the current OS ecosystem. Apple makes sure their hardware is supported. Everyone else makes sure the hardware they make is auto-detected by Windows (usually successfully).
I don't think this will be a problem for the average novice Linux user, because most of them will not be doing their own installs. If Linux ever gains significant market share, it will be because either hardware vendors are selling machines with it pre-installed (and presumably will take care of making sure it works) or because a professional installs the system for the user (generally IT in a large organization). Those are the real opportunities for Linux to gain install base at this time, and I think make for a reasonable target for development.
Software installation: Again apt/yum/etc is great, but still imperfect.
Amen!
The case is, there is no distribution including all the software all the people will ever use...
This is true, but in this respect Linux is ahead of other players. Windows and OS X don't ship with a real package manager for general purpose software. As far as using a package manager to discover and install end user software, Linux is way ahead.
...and downloading and compiling tarballs (sometimes including tricky "./configure" parameters and/or iterating over several dependencies) is of course out of the question.
And therein lies the rub. For software that is not in the default repository, Linux is much, much worse than Windows or OS X. Without package managers OS X has developed a very useful way to install software and the Windows development community has become good at creating usable installers, such that the average person can use them. If you want to install software from a DVD/CD, flash drive, Web site, Bittorrent, or another computer, Linux can be a huge pain in the ass. And realistically, normal users generally do want to do this at some point.
I think the community should embrace things like ZeroInstall (or Autopackage), and either becoming the standard for packaging and installing anything besides the base system, and developers providing those packages instead of just source and waiting for some packagers picking it and integrating it into distros' repos.
ZeroInstall partially addresses the issue of installing from a Web site and is an incremental improvement, except that it introduces a second package manager for users to have to understand. It also makes dependencies visible to the end user, which is less than ideal for novice users.
Autopackage basically "pulls a Windows" and gives up on package management and goes back to running arbitrary binary installers to get software installed. It also is more problematic than Windows because it also introduces a second workflow for installing software, so users have to juggle two different ways, unlike just one way on Windows.
Basically, while I wholly agree package management on Linux is not taking care of the needed use cases, I disagree that we should introduce, multiple competing workflows or step backwards to the "windows way" of doing things.
In my utopian fantasy all the major Linux distros, Apple, and Sun all sit down in a room and create a compatible solution that combines the benefits of OS X's application bundles for some use cases and at the same time leverages all the advantages of modern package managers and accounts for all use cases. Here's how I see those advantages.
OS X/OpenStep/GnuStep application bundles:
You should really look into backing up and doing a fresh install or looking for hardware issues. Sometimes one version of an OS is less able to deal with a recurring hardware problem than a different version. For comparison, the uptime on my OS X laptop (MacBook) is pretty much however long since the last update that required a reboot. Seriously. I've had this particular machine running Leopard for 8 months or so and I've never, ever had a crash. The same was not true with the first MacBook I had, but eventually I tracked it down to a problem with the motherboard and got Apple to replace it. 10.5 has been the most stable OS I've ever run to date, including my Solaris and NetBSD servers, each of which have crashed at least once.
Do I love the Mac? Sure! Is it as stable as my Linux PCs? Not a chance. Sorry.Let me repeat my suggestion. Really look for hardware issues. Look at the RAM, hard drive, and power supply. I've found Linux in general is more tolerant of flakey hardware, but on good hardware, OS X certainly has been as stable or more so than my Linux install, even on the same hardware.
Run PlanetSide, Half-Life 2 and still allow me to interact with the rest of the world, then maybe we have a deal. At the moment Best Buy doesn't have a Linux games section or a Linux hardware section. i won't switch to Linux until those sections are AT LEAST as big as the Mac section. Until that happens, Linux is a toy for computer nerds, not a windows replacement. OO.o isn't ready to replace MSO. Also, which Linux? There are dozens of flavors of the month. The ubiquity of Windows allows me to be competent with 90+% of the machines i'll ever encounter in the world. The Linux community needs to dump the flavors and focus their efforts on ONE distro. i don't want to have to relearn how to use a computer when i go from one machine to the next. i desperately want to switch to some Linux, but it just is not ready. Stop saying it is.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
*sigh*
... that's all on you guys.
My suggestions were not incorporated, *some* of the bugs were fixed (but the problem was never about the bugs, but about what the instructions say to do), apologizing for rudeness is different from saying that any of the advice I received before or after rudeness was good, and believe it or not, I really can't change my Slashdot name for this account, so pointing to that as evidence of "continuing whining" just serves to make you look stupid. (If you had given any hint that the alternative you were expecting was to post under a different name, the rationalization you're about to give in response would be more reasonable.)
And those were some of the wiser things you said. I could go on, but it's more important to note your post as an excellent study in the depths people will go to rationalize and engage in groupthink over their sacred cows.
I'm sorry for lashing out at forum members. Really, I am.
But: failing to have a human centered design while expecting humans to adopt en masse, rationalizing away unpleasant truths, speaking out of complete ignorance, and punishing those who tell you what you need to know
I'm a windows system admin, although I run Ubuntu at home personally (only 6.10). I agree it's getting there, but there's still a few dark and nasty corners which we just shouldn't talk about.
I have yet to install Ubuntu on a majority of laptops where there wasn't a fairly significant amount of rigamoral involved in getting something *basic* running, such as wireless with WPA. It was never really hard to get it running, but it usually involved no less than 7 or 8 CLI entries, downloading a few custom packages, etc. Yes, I know Wireless drivers aren't always installed by Windows, but at least there I can point a family member to the Manufacturer's website, where most now are pretty easy to navigate, look up model, download EXE, run, next, next, next, reboot. But even then, that's a rarity as the drivers will alwats come pre-loaded, or if I'm custom building them a machine, I do it as part of the build anyhow.
Getting a second external display running is also usually a pain.
I think Ubuntu is getting there, but there's still a little polishing to be had. I recommend Ubuntu to family and friends often, as it's the first Linux distro I can actually say with confidence (without smirking or laughing) they can install themselves. It's still a bit of a hard sell in most cases, because XP does the job pretty well for mundane browsing, email, word-pro, etc. Even, gasp, Vista isn't that bad if you're running it on a new PC.
I do quite a bit of terminal based configuration on my Macs, and I used to do the same for some Macs I helped support in my old department. That said, while as a veteran CLI user I find the bash shell the easiest, fastest way to do things, I don't know of any cases where it is the only way to make a change. Between the built in VNC and automator tools, and the XML config editing application, I don't know of any tasks I have to do from the CLI.
My question for you is, what are these tasks you have to do from the CLI? My second question for you is, do you think there is a difference between administrating networks of machines (being an IT guy) and being a normal user. Most people I know using OS X in the home and administering it themselves never resort to the terminal to perform a task. Most Linux users I know (even ones who really try) end up using the CLI in Linux to perform some task as a user (be it install software or get some hardware working). That includes myself.
I have no problem recommending either OS X or Ubuntu to the novice user who plans to use a Web browser, check e-mail, use a word processor, and that is about it. For users that actually need a general purpose computer and who plan to add hardware (a Webcam or something) or want to install software to do something in particular (play specific games or do audio editing/mixing or ray-trace graphics) I'm a lot more comfortable suggesting OS X and being fairly certain I won't have to help them eventually.
I've plugged lots of monitors into my Macs without issue.
Hell, I've taken DVI->HDMI cables and plugged random TVs into my Macs and that has always worked as well.
Xubuntu on the eee has a graphical thing for the touch pad sensitivity, and the scrollbar thing down the side, if thats what you mean by configuration. Works fine.
"If you try to install Ubuntu on a machine with such a wireless card, the card won't work. This is a commonly known problem, and if you run into it it's your own damn fault."
/. likes to explain them, are not people ready to take responsibility for every nook and cranny of their hardware.
I think this neatly explains why it's not ready for the masses. The masses, as
There needs to be a common definition of 'the masses'. They are either expected to do research and know what hardware to purchase, or they are expected to know nothing and be able to install a 'Unix Desktop' without any problems. Under the definition of the former, sure, it's ready. Under the definition of the latter, it's obviously not.
Hardy does not have a GUI for configuring multi-button mice, however, the left, right, and scroll wheel all worked by default just fine, which is all that most normal users need. As for the trackpad, no there is not a GUI for configuring all the functions, but again it did work as expected by default and did have a GUI for configuring some common options.
In short, while the GUI is not as full featured as OS X or Windows in this regard, it is just fine and functional for novice users.
If not, users still need to edit xorg.conf, and there is still work to be done.I don't think many reasonable people deny that there is lot of work that could improve Linux. It does, however seem to be ready for novice users and their basic tasks. It falls down for users that need more power and options, but are not so advanced that they are comfortable learning to use a CLI.
And does it have a GUI for configuring xrandr defaults on X startup, so that users (with compatible drivers,of course) can easily set multi-monitor setups (that have full 3D acceleration support, unlike with Xinerama)?Multi-monitor support, especially driving multiple monitors with 3D features and handling sleep and suspend states that may change (close laptop, unplug monitor, take it home, plug in a different monitor, open laptop, no disaster ensues) is pretty iffy on both Linux and Windows and is sporadic at best. The only OS that seems to get this right is OS X, and only with the latest (10.5). Since this is an unusual task still (because most users don't expect it to work) I don't see this as a big problem for usability for normal Linux users.
There is a lot of work to be done on all OS's. Some things on Linux just work, or are configurable and usable via the GUI, that Windows and OS X both fail on. The main difference is users coming from another OS have expectations as to which things will work and which won't and so get upset when Linux fails at something Windows can't do, but are sometimes ecstatic when they stumble across something Linux can do easily, but that they've never even tried on Windows. With Windows being so dominant, however, it is easy to see where people view this fairly one sided.
It is only 7 days left before releasing 8.04, and it still crashes more and more often with each update. xrandr does not restore 1024x768 correctly after switching to 800x600 (needed for TV-Out). Xorg crashes unpredictably when playing a movie with mplayer (ATI is for miserable loosers only, right?). Evince... it does read and show PDF! Yee-haa! But... why does it need 1G memory for a decent 3M pdf?!
I would say that in its current state 8.04 is more like a M$ secret weapon rather than a linux for masses.
It's about not having haemorrhage money through royalties. Fraunhofer can and DO go after companies that don't licence their codec. They won't go after you as a an end user but if you are a commercial Linux vendor with some money and wide distribution...
I think the best that can be done (for those distros that want to bundle binary only stuff) would be to incorporate the Fluendo MP3 codec which has been licensed. As for creating MP3 files and DVDs, well that's another kettle of fish.
My suggestions were not incorporated,
All the actual good ones were. Just because you make a suggestion doesn't mean it's actually a good idea to incorporate it. Your assumption that it is, and that by not doing everything you said Ubuntu has somehow failed, is stupid and wrong and narcissistic.
(If you had given any hint that the alternative you were expecting was to post under a different name, the rationalization you're about to give in response would be more reasonable.)
Hint? Your name itself is an insult. I assumed you had the two brain cells to rub together to figure out the solution without me "hinting". My bad!
I could go on, but it's more important to note your post as an excellent study in the depths people will go to rationalize and engage in groupthink over their sacred cows.
No, it's an excellent study in how people get sick of whiny douches who TWO YEARS ago had a couple decent points even though they were complete cock gobblers that completely eliminated any sympathy they may have deserved, no longer has anything relevant to add to the discussion, but continues to be a whiny douche TWO YEARS later long after any sane individual would have long ago moved on with their life.
You just really, really don't get it.
I'm sorry for lashing out at forum members. Really, I am.
No you're not, because you are still doing it. Quick life lesson: Nobody gives a shit about an apology unless you change your behavior. But you still rant about how little help you got from the forums, you've done it right here in this thread, so kindly shut the fuck up about how sorry you are when the words are so hollow.
By the way, I'm really, really sorry I called you a whiny sociopathic douche, you whiny sociopathic douche.
But: failing to have a human centered design
Please shut the fuck up. It is a human centered design, it's just not perfect. But that particular imperfection at least has been fixed. Maybe if you had continued to use Ubuntu, adding additional criticism as the problems came and went only without the douchebagery that defines you, you would have something relevant to talk about today. But you're still so hung up on an issue that has been fixed for years, you are completely useless and nothing but a whiny trolling douchebag with a persecution complex.
It's over.
Let. It. Go.
The enemies of Democracy are
It must be the year of the Linux Desktop!
Bloomberg gives out dual-monitor dells with raid standard, as their bottom of the line terminal. Most people then tag on a few more monitors.
You can buy an equivalent spec box from Dell today for $1162, excluding the monitors.
Maybe there are some people whose boxes are crappier than mine, but it's hard to claim my setup is rare.
I disagree. First let me say, I use both systems on the desktop daily (and have both in front of me right now). I also have formal education in and have worked in the field of user interface design and usability testing for disparate systems over several years.
I agree that not having the hardware vendor polish an install for their system is a huge source of usability issues. Most users never install an OS, and if you give someone a pre-configured system with OS X or Linux, you've solved a lot of their problems already.
That being the case, however, Linux still has some significant usability issues for many many, workflows and tasks. Linux is outstandingly usable for super-power users who need/want to create highly customized and specialized workflows and are not afraid of learning new interfaces. Linux is fairly usable for a very novice user who has a very limited number of tasks and workflows (Web, e-mail, word processing, playing CDs). It still has some interface issues, but it also has a few usability wins in this regard (such as at the task of keeping this core software up to date). They obviously have not, however, done the extensive usability testing Apple does, but they've hit most of the low hanging fruit for very novice users.
Linux has a lot of usability and interface issues when it comes to in between users. People who want to add new hardware (webcam, fancy trackball, stylus, braille board, or whatever) are more likely to have usability problems and not just because of lack of drivers. People who want to install and run software for specific more advanced uses such as: video editing, audio recording/mixing, 3D and vector graphics, publishing, or most commercial software like big games and other payware, still have significant usability problems. People still have significant problems trying to perform some common, but advanced tasks: creating a restricted user account for guests, migrating an installed system to new hardware, or sending a friend some software you have installed (but which is not in the repository), or enabling more advanced user interface features.
In short I understand and agree with your point about hardware, but I disagree in general about Linux being as usable as OS X for the gamut of end user tasks. I don't think any Linux on the desktop developer invests significantly in usability testing (based upon their resulting products) and I don't think they will catch the last 20% or so of problems until they do. I don't think they've even done enough work to address some of the fairly obvious problems that you can find and correct without such testing.
It was in stock when he bought it. I don't understand how someone purchasing new gets these kinds of excuses from the Linux community when a brand new OS won't run on brand new hardware.
It makes me think Linux is just for cheap, old hardware.
It's pointless to install a raid 1 system on the average joe 6pack computer 'just in case' because most of them aren't going to know what to do with it when 'case' happens. 95% of the time people are going to delete a file they need, not have a HD crash. For them, using that 2nd HD to run an incrimental backup is much more useful than mirroring the drive.
How many people do you know that actually use 2 monitors? I had a system running with 4 - just because I could - it was more anoying to figure out which screen to look at than to change desktops in Linux. I work with 2 people who use a double setup, and I know about 6 GAs who use the double monitor. I don't know anyone who is an average home user who runs 2 monitors. So, I would say yes, multi monitor setups are advanced because they are definitely not the norm.
The first category is called a "hobbyist", and has no trouble installing Linux. The second category (that knows nothing and yet can install an OS) is largely a myth.
As for "the masses", they buy computers with the OS pre-installed.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
No, but I'm 99% sure that his smug detector exploded.
He who controls the bootloader determines which systems is used by the general population. Ubuntu is already easier to install and maintain that WIndows, as are most linux distros. The barrier is that they have to be installed, for the most part. That's being beaten by pre-installed Linux. But notice that there are no dual boot machines on the market that also boot to Xp. There are dual boot like the PS3, but no dual boot with Windows. Afraid someone will compare the systems, or what?
Abnormal people :) Well, atypical computer users anyway. It's not that nobody upgrades their OS or build their own machines, just that those people are a minority. Geeks, small businesses and power users spring to mind as the kinds of people who buy an OS in a box.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I lixen this new way of speaxen.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Actually, Inkscape is an awesome alternative to Illustrator. I find it's interface better, and it's performance superior.
The fact that you can't open a proprietary format from Adobe should really not come as a surprise.
You're thinking of "borken."
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Oh man, not these tired old arguments again. I have mod points and I was going mod this down, but I'm in a charitable mood and feel like feeding some trolls today.
I'm a desktop Linux user, but man, some of your arguments are pretty weak or disingenuous and I have to call you on them. Calling people trolls for expressing some very common opinions is also rude.
The Linux software ecosystem is rife with applications that perform the same task as their popular proprietary counterparts. Some of them aren't quite up to par (Gimp), some are roughly equivalent (OpenOffice), and some are leagues better (Firefox). There are more and more proprietary applications being ported to Linux all the time.
There are lots of Applications for Linux, but there sure aren't equivalents for everything. The overlap of applications however, tends to favor a lot of the free/OSS stuff being ported to Windows, whereas a lot of the Windows payware, freeware, and shareware never gets ported to Linux. We're talking stuff a significant number of people need to do their job or their favorite hobby. If you want to browse the Web, well Linux has plenty of good choices. If you want to layout a magazine every month, and it is not formulaic, you really are going to want Windows or OS X.
Neither Mac or Windows come with a system where you can browse from a catalog of over 10,000 applications and install any one of them instantly, for free, with the click of a mouse button.
True, package managers are a big win, in some cases. That doesn't dispel the point. It is harder to find and install much software if you're using Linux and like a normal person doing your research on the Web or in a retail store. If you happen to already know what package you want and it is in the repository, package managers are a win. They're also a win for automated updates and several other tasks. They're still not comparable to Windows, however, if you want to do something so you look through Web pages or go to the store and ask a clerk.
This hardware myth really needs to be put to rest. Linux supports a wider variety of hardware [lwn.net] than any other operating system on the planet.
That's great and all. The thing is, if you're looking to buy hardware, you're going to have a harder time finding given hardware will work with Windows and if you're a normal person who does not install their own OS, you're going to have a harder time finding a store that will sell you a system with Linux pre-installed and all the hardware/software interactions polished.
Ubuntu and many of its derivatives will ship you a copy of their OS on CD at no charge. No media fees, no shipping and handling. Free. Most of the software that you can install afterward is not at all too large to pull down via a dialup modem. Windows and OS X cost hundreds of dollars each.
Yup, this is really nice, but most people buy hardware and it comes with an OS already installed. Asking them to order a DVD from some place, wait for it to arrive and then install it and hope it works with their hardware is worse than the average user's experience with Windows.
Not sure what you mean here. On KDE- and GNOME-based distributions, a shortcut to every installed application gets put into the applications menu.
For default apps, I agree. Never had a problem with most of the stuff in the repository.
Contrast with Windows where each application goes into its own folder or a folder named after the company that distributed it. Install enough applications and the Start menu becomes large and unusable. Contrast also with Mac, where you have to dig down into a special (and also unsorted) Applications folder to find newly-installed apps.
To be fair, a lot of Linux software is installed in odd menus, is CLI only, or installs into a directory named after the company that made it too, only free/OSS softwa
...who read the Subject line as "Hardly Heroin"?
No flames, I've replaced Windows with Fedora at home. But...
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Marketing Linux to the average desktop is a bad idea. Leave Linux to the power users and the server market. Hi. Welcome to open source/linux. Over here you will find Easy To Use (TM) distros such as Ubuntu and Mandrivia now coming with no config file editing. Now over here you will find Hardcore things such as Slax, Gentoo, and nightly kernel builds. I hope you can find everything you need.
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Agreed, but once installed, there are still significant issues with usability on Ubuntu. It has a few wins too, but a significant number of losses.
If you want to compare your OS X experience to anything, compare it to a Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed.I run Ubuntu in VM on top of OS X on a Mac. The VM was nicely customized for Ubuntu and all the hardware works flawlessly, including add on hardware I just plug into the system. I'd argue this is a better hardware compatibility experience than even using a Dell with it pre-installed, for many use cases.
That said, there is a reason OS X is running as the base OS right now and Ubuntu is running in the VM and it is not hardware compatibility. It is quite simply that Ubuntu is still behind on a number of significant features. It has some wins, but most all of them work from within the VM. It has some significant losses that would make it a drawback for a base OS.
For example, VMs generally work fast enough for all my uses, but have limited performance for 3D graphics. Application availability on the two OS's mean some of the applications I need to have fast 3D graphics are available for OS X, but not Ubuntu (not Ubuntu's fault, but a reality of the market today). Every so often I buy new hardware. With OS X running as the base OS, I can simply plug a firewire cable from the old machine to the new click a check box, and everything is flawlessly copied onto the new system (including the Ubuntu VM). With Ubuntu running as the base OS, I have to install the same OS on the new hardware, recreate my global configurations and user accounts, copy my home directories over, reinstall all my software, copy my data over, try to find all my certificates and preferences and then spend the next month tweaking configurations and discovering applications I forgot and reinstalling them, sometimes hunting down activation codes an the like. The latter consumes significant time and is dull and tedious work that occasionally results in some shareware or payware going away because I lost the license or can't get it to re-accept it.
Wins for Ubuntu are things like easier installation and upgrading of OSS packages, which also tend to run better on Linux. That works just as well in a VM as out of one though, so does not motivate me one way or another. All in all, Ubuntu still has a lot of rough edges and I hesitate to recommend it to people who are not very basic users (Web, e-mail, word processing) or high power users not afraid of learning the CLI and how to edit config files.
A short anecdote about the hardware myth:
I went out and bought myself a motherboard with 5.1 sound (a gigabyte g33m), and it took nothing to get it working on linux. My nvidia 8500 video card was also running properly with minimal fuss.
Offensive? Offensive? Is software allegiance an ethnic group, complete with identity politics and racial epithets? Jesus Christ. Relax.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
You know what the best part about it is, though? The "it works automagically don't worry" part and the "oops didn't work but don't worry you can fix it with text-editor-fu" part live in perfect harmony.
Yesterday I installed the beta of Kubuntu 8.04, and I had the usual xorg setup goofs. No big deal, right? sudo dpkg-configure xserver-xorg, right? WRONG. All the video conf has been moved out of xorg to god knows where. Now, I've got no problem with "Just Works," but if that's what you're going to move toward as a distribution, then it fucking better Just Work.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
That's also not a stock mouse. Why would anyone expect it to just work and be easy-to-configure without the manufacturer's drivers or additional software?
I seem to recall that I had to install the software for my Microsoft Trackball Optical to get the the extra buttons to work under Windows 2000, and possibly under XP as well. All four of its buttons and the scroll wheel and the wheel button were recognized immediately and functioned correctly under Kubuntu without me needing to do anything (and once recognized, I was able to map all four buttons and the wheel button in games and such). I find that a bit ironic, just saying.
you can reinstall all applications with three cli commands and a created text file.
/etc/* /home/* and /var/* problem solved.
as for data, no hunting, move over
My Babylon
I think a lot of the discussion centering around what end-users should have to deal with is tantamount to arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I've been an onsite technician for years, both freelance and working for major manufacturers. A good number of my jobs were in the homes of Joe and Mary Sixpack, and I usually fixed exactly the same things for them in Windows which I find myself doing for myself in Linux. And more, since Windows isn't really a stable operating system in that it gets wobbly and slow over time if not maintained well or if it has too much junk software installed.
I made thousands of dollars removing spyware and malware from Windows and otherwise "making the internet faster". Most users don't use their computers for gaming. They don't have exotic computers, or exotic hardware connected to their computers. They surf the web, use email, and use word processors. Most can't even make a distinction between AOL and "the internet".
I think it'll be the end of the world if crapplications like Weatherbug is ever ported over to Linux. That's when Linux will lose its primary advantage over Windows as far as being largely free of crapplications that impair the clueless users' computing experience to the degree it necessitates a housecall from the local geek to get rid of the junk. Until then, Linux stands to save end users both money and grief.
Hi! Following this procedure Boot from CD -> Install Ubuntu -> Enable restricted drivers -> Install ubuntu-restricted-extras and flash-nonfree -> Install Adblock Plus in Firefox. An Ipod works under Rhythmbox, and they can play dvd's with menus, mp4's, and mp3's. Lest we forget, Windows doesn't support mp4s, ipods, or dvds out of the box either. The kindle (RUNS LINUX) and doesn't require a pc to run. If you plug it into a linux system, it should mount up like any other removable media device. What was your complaint with it? -Ellie
Create a blank RAID-1 (or 0 or 5 or 1+0, doesn't matter) array. Insert Windows XP installation disk (not the third party raid drivers, remember, we're using the built-in tools of the operating system here. Boot to XP installation disk. Attempt to install. This will not work with the vast majority of RAID controllers. Similar circumstances with my other points; no-go without software and tools that are (are you ready?) NOT PART OF THE WINDOWS OPERATING SYSTEM. I'm simply going to assume you have never tried to install Windows XP on a relatively modern computer without having the driver disks or internet access (remember, the "Via RAID Disk" is not part of Windows itself, thus not meeting the criteria). If that assumption is incorrect, than you are simply being dishonest.
I think you all miss the point entirely.
I haven't used a microsoft product for 11 years, preferring to use only LINUX, which I've advocated since 1993, so I'm not bashing it.
Here's the rub: NOBODY USES WINDOWS - they use the applications that run on top of windows. The LINUX installation process is recognized as superior to windows already, so that's easy. The availability of "joe public"'s favorite applications will make or break LINUX on the desktop.
What made LINUX a presence in the Server Room and Data Center was the huge boost it got from Oracle, DB2, Sybase, Apache, Tomcat and other technologies. The 'OS' didn't suddenly take off - it was propelled by those core applications being made available for LINUX. Until that happens in the desktop realm we can whine all we want - its not going to happen.
Lobby for Adobe, Quicken, Mobile Phone Sync tools that are pretty, PDA tools. Yeah, I hear all you whiners naming gphoto, KitchenSync, jPilot etc., but grow up. If you could choose to date a gorgeous movie star or some skank, you'd choose the movie star. There are way more applications for windows that "just work" out of the box, and are pretty and sexy, than there are for LINUX.
ITAS! (It's the applications, stupid).
What the hell is wrong with having multiple desktops? i use ubuntu my only complaint is that we need more games, but thats only a minor complaint since i only play freeciv, dwarf fortress, nethack, and various emulators
my mom however needs OSX and my wife uses windows
You are being a shitting dick nipple.
Stop that.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Open a terminal on your Mac and type "locate plist". There are loads of them. Having to edit plist files on a Mac is surely rarer than needing to edit the registry on a Windows box or a conf file on a Linux box, but it happens, sometimes.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Lack of vendor support doesn't mean Linux isn't ready for the masses. It just means the vendors are not ready for Linux. Unfortunately it is the great catch-22. People don't use Linux due to lack of support by manufacturers. Manufacturers do not support Linux because too few people use it. Until the manufacturers are convinced they can make money supporting Linux, they won't support it.
Vendor support has come a long way lately. AMD is producing native drivers for their video cards with regular releases. Many companies like Logitech are not on board yet, but the more Linux gets used on the desktop, the more manufacturers will start producing drivers. It just takes a few before the "me-too" syndrome sets in and then everybody will build drivers for Linux in fear of being left behind.
Please excuse me for sneaking in this OT question: While we're talking about GRUB and MBR, I wanted to check if I understood how GRUB really worked.
Apparently GRUB writes itself to the MBR, and then everything else is configurable without any further change to the MBR.
This means that changes to the boot config have to be stored somewhere else, not on the MBR. Where is it stored?
I *think* it's stored on one of the (logical) drives, but wouldn't this be a major design flaw? Suppose I have a hard drive, with its MBR, and I have Ubuntu in partition 1, and Red Hat in partition 2. I install dual-boot with GRUB, running the command from Ubuntu. After a while, I find myself always using Red Hat and never Ubuntu. After a year or two, I decide to clean out the Ubuntu drive to make room for a data drive, or I install some other OS, or I expand the Red Hat drive and obliterate the Ubuntu drive.
So, suddenly, I can't boot, right? Even though I've been using Red Hat every time, the boot process requires that the Ubuntu partition be present or else GRUB has no idea how to boot up the computer.
Is that correct? Or is there some other secret partition where GRUB stashes its data? Or is it not in a partition at all?
Any insight and explanation would be much appreciated. Thank you.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
They aren't too hard to tell apart when you're specifically looking at it, but casually surfing the web, a link to http://google.com/ looks awfully like http://googIe.com. /.'s link-disclosure system alerts you here, but most sites don't have anything like that implemented.
The windows vista fonts are possibly the only good part of vista; they're very readable and they look good, too. Even if you're using 2000 or XP (as in my case), you can get them from MS for free. Other options are anything with serifs - that usually helps. Of course, this is all just personal preference, some might find Arial to be the best font ever.
If it can be stored there. Most partition managers put this in even though the original reasons for this space are long gone. Back in the days of addressing disks in CHS (Cylinder, Head, Sector) mode, DOS couldn't span a cylinder boundary, so padding was added after the end of the partition table to make the first partition start on one.
:)
/boot directory on it, and you don't have another partition with a /boot directory, you are kind of hosed even though stage 1.5 is in a hidden partition.
:) It's been years since I had dozens of Linux distributions on my computers. Now I just use VMware or Xen when I want to try out something new.
It goes MBR, partition table, stage 1.5, partition 1. Your intuition that stage 1.5 goes in a 'secret partition' is correct.
GRUB stores the sector number of the beginning of stage 1.5 in the MBR, loads it and jumps to it. Stage 1.5 knows specifics of how to access (some) filesystems. It loads stage 2, which is what actually loads the menu.1st file and displays it.
So if you blow away the partition with the
What I think you can do, if fuzzy memory serves, is boot into the original OS, mount the new OS partition somewhere, chroot into it, and run grub-install with the correct arguments. This will reinstall stage 1.5 pointing to the new stage 2. I think.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"For example, I have a quite regular mouse IMO with side buttons. Do they work as expected out of the box?"
Mine do... on a logitech MX400.
One of my customers had a laptop which wouldn't behave well with Windows XP... crashed at 30%.
My coworkers thought I was nuts suggesting Linux...
When I installed Ubuntu it took about 5 minutes to get through the install options and took only a short while to install.
Right after installing the wireless card, sound, etc worked perfectly... my coworkers were astonished... That was easier than installing Windows! It already has office? wow!
Yeah, its somewhat like OS X... That seems to be the common reaction to Ubuntu.
One prob with the big U. the installer erased directories when installing. /apache went bye-bye.
now looking for new + improved gpart.
now THAT's a feature that should be on the menu.
this will KILL newbies, doncha think? I haven't gone anywhere NEAR mandrake since an install wiped a drive for me. (years ago)
currently lecturing newbies on swap placement (first for speed, dif partition for usr, /home/root. etc.
and how to avoid installer.
packrat
Exactly, mod all parents up. :P
Linux can and should be modular enough that it can be anything it needs to be, it's one of it's huge strengths. Leave the compilation environment, command line tools, and configuration files there for the power users who want to tinker with things beyond what the current GUIs can or may provide, and leave the GUI there for those who want to stick to it (by leave it there I mean at the very least make it easily available for installation).
Linux should be powerful, robust, modular, easy to use, friendly, and intelligent in the way it was laid out, adapting to new ideas and programs while keeping standardized and flexible ABIs/APIs so that installing drivers and any programs, whether "third-party" or not, can be a snap. The key word is "can". That's called a feature, while still allowing you to do what you want. That's what features are supposed to be. If you don't understand this concept, my guess is you probably need more sunlight.
As for the parent's game comment, THANK YOU. Linux will never get lots of games for it if it stays a complicated hacking tool and nothing else, which thankfully isn't true anymore. One has to wonder just how long it'll be before stores crack under the pressure and start telling MS to shove it, and start selling Linux alongside the TRUE price of Windows, since they won't be getting the "special" discount anymore. That is, IF they are even permitted to keep selling it, if the law isn't retarded about that too. Of course if they do that, MS will then have to backpedal and lower it's prices of retail boxes if it wants to keep generating any kind of small revenues after that point.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
It obviously isnt ready for the masses; ubuntu.com is down! "Service Temporarily Unavailable" - This on the day of the release of their new OS. Im guessing its down due to high-demand. :( I would like to download it.
He who walks the shadows.
I have to agree with dbcad7's sentiment.
You had no reason to expect that hardware to work unless you had verified its compatibility or shopped for Ubuntu-compatible hardware beforehand.
The OS X advantage (which I admit is real and makes the Mac more user friendly) is that most of the compatibility are made for you when you take the system out of the box.
OTOH anyone could have Googled around for "Ubuntu and dual head" to see if Ubuntu could handle it (no, it can't). Same RE: RAID controller. Where Ubuntu (and Linux in general) is poorly documented is on the OEM peripheral/component packaging, where Linux is often ignored whether its considered compatible with the product or not.
I suggest you put pressure on the Linux Foundation to publish a hardware compatibility guide, instead of throwing Linux distros at unknown/untested hardware and getting frustrated. Since their handles the driver/hardware compatibility layer in any Linux distro, the Linux Foundation is responsible more than anyone else for providing this documentation.
No RAID - normal behaviour. "Chip Not Supported Yet"
No WiFi - "Use some random crappy hack that involves binary Windows drivers and" and it craps on you evey time.
No support for dual-screen without editing Xorg.conf, normal behaviour.
Yes and yes. Linux is handy as an emergency boot disk, or on Big Iron, where it is supported. By the companies that fund it.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.