Why Top Linux Distros Are For Different Users

Lucas123 writes "Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu Linux desktops may look alike, but they've got some important distinctions, like the fact that Fedora and Ubuntu use GNOME 2.28 (the latest version) for their default desktop, while openSUSE uses KDE 4.3.1. And, Fedora's designers have assumed that its users are wiser than the general run of users. 'For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password. As of this version, however, local users will need to enter the root password before they can install software (as they do on almost all other Linux distributions).'"

Comments

What a load of crap

[nacturation]

And, Fedora's designers have assumed that its users are wiser than the general run of users. 'For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password.

So according to this "logic", Microsoft assumes that its users are wiser than the general run of users too? Nice way to spin Fedora finally addressing this security issue, dude.

Re:What a load of crap

[HarrySquatter]

Except you need admin access to install software in Program Files in Windows or to modify something like system32. It's just that not a lot of people properly use a less priviledged account in Windows like they should (even though there has been support for this since Win2k).

Re:What a load of crap

[Zarel]

It doesn't even make sense. Changing your app install behavior to work the same way as other distros is assuming your users are wiser than average?

And, Fedora's designers have assumed that its users are wiser than the general run of users. 'For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password. As of this version, however, local users will need to enter the root password before they can install software (as they do on almost all other Linux distributions).'"

(Emphasis mine.)

Re:What a load of crap

[NeoSkandranon]

Considering the LFS user is most likely to have an attitude like yours, I'd prefer not to hear a single condescending word from him.

Re:What a load of crap

[HarrySquatter]

Especially since their expertise is most likely just being able to copy and paste commands from the LFS manual.

Re:What a load of crap

[TheCycoONE]

Agreed. He tried to sell Fedora (and GNOME?) as being good for power users who aren't afraid of the command line.

I used Fedora for a couple months between Gentoo and Arch. In Gentoo and Arch I have the terminal open all the time, and feel in control of my packages. With Fedora/GNOME there were things I "couldn't" configure with the command line because the tools were only meant to be used with a GUI; and there were often out of date packages that I couldn't upgrade.

Power users that want the cutting edge are better off with something that lets them do what they want to do and install what they want to install without getting in the way of terminal users, like LFS, Gentoo, or Arch.

They also want the window manager/desktop of their choice, not the cookie cutter Gnome + Compvis / KDE 4.3 choices that Ubuntu/Fedora/openSuse etc. give you.

Re:What a load of crap

[davester666]

It's not just users. Applications still aren't being written to work properly with non-administrator accounts. I just installed SimplyAccounting 2010 on Windows XP and started getting weird errors poking around in it using a Limited Account, but switching to an Administrator account, no more errors.

Re:What a load of crap

[armanox]

Which is why I have AfterStep on my Fedora setup.

Re:What a load of crap

[HarrySquatter]

No user should ever be more skilled than any other users, and all distributions should cater to the newbie crowd.

Except the GP made no such point at all. He was saying he didn't want to have some condescending ass try to come and fix his system.

When all computing grinds to a halt because no one knows how to fix or maintain them anymore, at least you'll have the comfort of knowing that no advanced users are going to make a tongue-in-cheek post on Slashdot that stimulates your inferiority complex.

There are plenty of people who have skills that people could go to to fix their computers that don't act like condescending and pompous assholes like you and the rest of the "1337 h4x0r" LSF crowd.

Re:What a load of crap

[hierofalcon]

There was a brief (read days) interval very recently when the Fedora development group was thinking about allowing installation of packages without root access. They decided against it. On F11, which I am running now, an attempt to install a package from the repository responds with "You need to be root to perform this command." To my recollection, it has always been thus.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

and feel in control of my package

You should always feel in control of your package. ;-)

Re:What a load of crap

[Improv]

It's not like mainstream distros put you in handcuffs. There are plenty of us who customise our chosen distro quite extensively (for example, I've used Redhat/Fedora ever since I switched from Slackware ages ago, and I use WindowMaker instead of GNOME, disable SELinux, reclaim /media for storing my media files, tweak the categories of things the package manager will install from an rpm, replace a subset of the software with things I compile myself, etc). I have multiple terminals open all the time too, and as I said above, I *have* the WM of my choice - I have as much control over my system as you do yours and can change my defaults.

Not everyone really wants to be on the cutting edge, and I like being at least a bit closer to Fedora/CentOS because i use them a lot at work (Debian and CentOS/RHEL are among the best Linuces for servers, while Gentoo is completely inappropriate (although this almost never comes up because Gentoo fans are also completely inappropriate as sysadmins)).

Re:What a load of crap

[devjoe]

There was a brief (read days) interval very recently when the Fedora development group was thinking about allowing installation of packages without root access. They decided against it. On F11, which I am running now, an attempt to install a package from the repository responds with "You need to be root to perform this command." To my recollection, it has always been thus.

It went a bit further than just thinking about it. Less than a month ago it was reported here on Slashdot that Fedora 12 allowed local users to install software without root privileges. The uproar this caused led to a very quick update to revert back to the usual policy. The article for today's story is rather confused about this, though, unless you consider earlier patchlevels of the current release to be "earlier versions." As far as I know, the change never affected Fedora 11.

Re:What a load of crap

[Chris Burke]

What I find funny is that I've been using Debian-based distros for many years, and I basically never enter the "root password" to install software or perform other maintenance tasks... I enter my own user password. Not that there's much difference between "access to the root password" and "being allowed to run anything in the sudoers file". Installing software is still a privileged operation.

I take it they must mean without entering any password at all, as in unprivileged?

Seems kinda dumb.

Re:What a load of crap

[The Snowman]

It's not just users. Applications still aren't being written to work properly with non-administrator accounts. I just installed SimplyAccounting 2010 on Windows XP and started getting weird errors poking around in it using a Limited Account, but switching to an Administrator account, no more errors.

I agree, the problem with Windows is not so much the OS itself but poorly written applications.

One of the largest examples is World of Warcraft. After five years, it still insists on storing all of its data in its program directory. I actually had to install it outside of Program Files to get it to work on Vista, even with UAC turned off and logged in as Administrator (the account, not an account in that group).

I think more software developers need to look at Firefox, a good example. Data, including plugins, are kept in the user's home. Different users can have different plugins and data, and everything just works even on a properly-secured system.

Blizzard can even download the source code to figure out basic stuff like "where to put files" because after all these years of writing Windows games, they still lack that basic knowledge.

Re:What a load of crap

[sorak]

And, Fedora's designers have assumed that its users are wiser than the general run of users. 'For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password.

So according to this "logic", Microsoft assumes that its users are wiser than the general run of users too? Nice way to spin Fedora finally addressing this security issue, dude.

In a manner of speaking, yes. If they assumed that 50% of their users are below average, and that a significant enough percentage of them will click anything you stick in front of them, then they probably would have designed windows to be much more secure. Sure, they would have solved the problem in some cutesy way, like changing the "administrator" to "grown up", and popping up error messages saying things like "You need a grown up to install this application", but they would have fixed it.

Microsoft's downfall, if you can call it that, is the perception that end-users are godlike in their ability to perform regular maintenance and avoid stupid flash ads.

Re:What a load of crap

[HarrySquatter]

Go back to wanking over your LSF system thinking your 1337 because you copy and pasted a bunch of commands from the manual. Sooo hardcore.

Re:What a load of crap

[TheCycoONE]

I'd mention that MySpace uses a distributed file system running on Gentoo; but I think that might just prove your point.

Re:What a load of crap

[xouumalperxe]

So according to this "logic", Microsoft assumes that its users are wiser than the general run of users too?

While I don't know whether Microsoft actually designed their operating systems with that rationale in mind, C is a clear case of it: most bugs in C programs come from the language being designed expecting people to really know what they're doing. and therefore allowing all sorts of strange stuff.

Re:What a load of crap

[amorsen]

Installing pre-approved software without root access would be a great step forward both for usability and security. Imagine if we can get to the point where a normal user can use a laptop computer for a year without running with sufficient privileges to install untrusted software.

Sure, there are challenges, first and foremost how to revoke approval of a particular package. That doesn't mean we have to stick with the old trusted root paradigm forever. For the vast majority of Linux laptops/desktops, the user IS the administrator, and we can't expect to educate all computer users to be competent Unix administrators.

Re:What a load of crap

[causality]

Not everyone really wants to be on the cutting edge, and I like being at least a bit closer to Fedora/CentOS because i use them a lot at work (Debian and CentOS/RHEL are among the best Linuces for servers, while Gentoo is completely inappropriate (although this almost never comes up because Gentoo fans are also completely inappropriate as sysadmins)).

Many Gentoo users only use Gentoo for their personal computers. Those same users would recommend distributions like Debian to anyone who approached them and said "hey, I'm new to this Linux thing and I want to run a server, what would you suggest?" Gentoo is for users who a) know their way around Linux and b) love to tinker. It doesn't pretend to be for anyone else. I use Gentoo and very much enjoy it, but I would not recommend it to someone who's new to Linux and switching away from Windows. It's about what you like and believe to be appropriate for the job. It's not a religious cause.

Actually one of the reasons I got into Gentoo in the first place is that I wanted to know more about how a distribution is put together. As a learning tool its manual installation is one of the best. As a "I just want it to work, ASAP" tool it's one of the worst. Again it doesn't pretend to be otherwise. If Gentoo claimed to be the be-all and end-all, the Ultimate Linux Distribution, superior in every way to all others, then maybe I'd understand why it's so trendy to slam Gentoo whenever it comes up in a discussion. Or if I frequently visited the Gentoo Forums and saw the users talking about how lame binary distributions are, maybe then I'd understand it too, but they don't do this.

Since that isn't the case, this looks to me like another religious issue. Like when you have one sect of Christianity going to war against another sect of Christianity because they disagree on whether to drink wine or grape juice for Communion. Naturally the grape-juice drinkers think they have irreconcilable differences with the wine-drinkers and vice-versa. Each side thinks the other is composed of total idiots and assholes. Neither appreciates that what they're arguing over is a trivial matter of taste. Don't like a distro? Good, use something else. That should be the end of it, but it isn't, because it's not good enough that you use what you like, the other guy must also use what you like, right?

Re:What a load of crap

[sa666_666]

Actually, some of us use Ubuntu and the 'easier;' distros because (a) we're tied of screwing around getting things to work like we did 6-7 years ago, and (b) to target the version of Linux that most people seem to be using.

When it comes to fixing inane issues in Linux, just because you *can* do something doesn't mean you constantly *want* to. Many people (myself included) have cut their teeth with Linux since the very beginning, and would like to use something that 'just works' most of the time, rather than performing constant low-level maintenance that is only necessary to elevate ones epeen rating.

Don't knock ease of use, or the influx of new users that will make Linux a force in the industry. It's called progress; maybe you should check it out sometime.

Re:What a load of crap

[silentsteel]

A bit beside the point of this argument, but I happen to use Ubuntu as my primary system because I support several people who I have migrated to it. These users are only concerned with a web browser and an email client. Using Ubuntu makes it easier for phone support, at least in my opinion. I usually open a shell when I am working on their systems directly. I run Slackware and Cent on a couple of "servers", but I, obviously, am most familiar with Debian-based Linux at this point.

Re:What a load of crap

[man_of_mr_e]

Yeah, unfortunately, Vista/7's folder virtualization has made it so apps can continue to be stupid and not fail, so many developers developing on those systems don't notice when they do this. It's only on XP or 2000 when this beocomes noticable because they don't have folder virtualization.

Re:What a load of crap

[Nixoloco]

And, Fedora's designers have assumed that its users are wiser than the general run of users. 'For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password.

Isn't this a little misleading? Fedora 12 (the very latest release) had this capability enabled initially. People complained and the developers changed the policy back. It wasn't enabled in any earlier versions that I'm aware of and only in the current version for what.. a few weeks?

I agree that I don't think it was a good policy to enable by default, but they responded to concerns and tightened the policy. The summary uses a bad example and is misleading.

Re:What a load of crap

[sa666_666]

In my experience, it's just the mindset of Windows developers and in some cases Windows users. They've been brought up on a system that was inherently single-user, and apps are still being written that way.

In fact, in several of my multi-platform projects, I had to add specific functionality for Windows users to save into the app folder. I tried to do the same thing on all ports of the program (save settings in home directory, so the program can run from a read-only installation), but received all kinds of feedback and complaints about that being a strange way of doing things. In the end, I added the ability to override the defaults, but it does show that some people still can't see any other way of saving their personal data.

Re:What a load of crap

[suso]

Linux From Scratch and Gentoo users > Ubuntu and Fedora users. When something breaks on your Linux system and you don't know how to fix it, guess which one you'd rather hear from? A LFS user, or someone who uses Ubuntu because he's scared of the command line? Yeah, that's what I thought. Pwnd.

I disagree. A LFS user or other advanced user may not fix things "the proper way". Just because you know a lot about Linux, doesn't mean that you've read what the distributions way is for doing something like setting up wireless. Sure, you may get it setup by tinkering directly iwconfig and some config files, but if you're not doing it the way the distribution expects, your changes may get clobbered pretty quickly.

I myself have been caught by this trap, where I moved to a different distribution and tried to do things the way I knew how, but then somebody told me on some forum later that I wasn't doing it the right way.

Re:What a load of crap

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Nice way to spin Fedora finally addressing this security issue, dude.

How is it a security flaw for the owner of a single-user system to be able to install signed packages maintained by the distribution, without having to jump through extra hoops?

Re:What a load of crap

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Let me put it a better way - requiring a password to install software is no more useful than windows UAC on a single-user system.

Re:What a load of crap

[Zan Lynx]

It would even be fine for a program like World of Warcraft to install data files in its Program Files directory if the installer would only set up a permissions group (Heard of those Blizzard? Network operating systems have only had them for 30 years!) to edit those data files and add all the game users to that group.

I used to do permission groups manually for lots of software and it was good. But now with UAC programs don't even bother checking permissions, the program just pops a UAC prompt without even checking! This is crap. Now I need to edit the exe files to remove the UAC prompting bit.

Re:What a load of crap

[causality]

Linux From Scratch and Gentoo users > Ubuntu and Fedora users. When something breaks on your Linux system and you don't know how to fix it, guess which one you'd rather hear from? A LFS user, or someone who uses Ubuntu because he's scared of the command line? Yeah, that's what I thought. Pwnd.

I disagree. A LFS user or other advanced user may not fix things "the proper way". Just because you know a lot about Linux, doesn't mean that you've read what the distributions way is for doing something like setting up wireless. Sure, you may get it setup by tinkering directly iwconfig and some config files, but if you're not doing it the way the distribution expects, your changes may get clobbered pretty quickly.

I myself have been caught by this trap, where I moved to a different distribution and tried to do things the way I knew how, but then somebody told me on some forum later that I wasn't doing it the right way.

I've definitely had to spend extra time learning a distro's particular way of doing things for just that reason. I use Gentoo on my own computer and one of my friends uses OpenSUSE. When I help him to i.e. set up a new server, I am more used to just directly editing a configuration file. I start doing that only to find that the config file is auto-generated by a GUI utility, and will get clobbered if I directly edit it. Ah well, at least they usually tell you that up-front by commenting the config file.

Still, it can be a bit annoying. You may not always have a GUI utility (or even a GUI) available. It also seems possible in my mind that you can have a GUI utility for modifying a configuration file without also throwing out hand-edited settings. But regardless of my opinions on it, you're right that this is a reality that needs to be accounted for. It's just about knowing the distribution you're working with.

Re:What a load of crap

[idontgno]

Let me put it a better way - requiring a password to install software is no more useful than windows UAC on a single-user system.

True. But on a non-single-server system, it can be a fatal flaw. Not every user is trusted. And not every environment is prosperous enough to give each user a personal machine. So the trusted/non-trusted user distinction has to be maintained, and requiring trusted-user-authentication is a pretty good way to do it.

Fedora 12 initially screwed up, period.

Re:What a load of crap

[obarthelemy]

I actually like WoW's way of doing things: want to backup/restore WoW, or put it on antoher PC ? just copy WoW's dir. No dependencies. No DLL Hell. No registry hacks. Want to wipe it ? Delete the directory.

I wish all programs worked that way and were that easy to manage.

BTW, Data and program files are segregated in separate subdirs. User data, too.

Re:What a load of crap

[tepples]

Imagine if we can get to the point where a normal user can use a laptop computer for a year without running with sufficient privileges to install untrusted software.

Video game consoles have had such a lockout for over two decades. But this raises another question: How would developers get their software trusted for use by home users? A peer-review model like Xbox Live Indie Games? A centralized approval model like Apple's App Store? Or a sandbox model like OLPC Bitfrost?

Re:What a load of crap

[rdavidson3]

Sadly, my girlfriend is control of my package and when I get to use it. :(

Re:What a load of crap

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I agree, but why not differentiate? It's a pointless waste of time for me to have to provide a password on my laptop every time I want to try out new software.

I'm not saying that it's got no place -- clearly if you have a multiple user system, then you only want to right people installing software. But when you don't... it's just one more hurdle on the road to usability.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, the Ubuntu forums have been pretty helpful when I've had problems with Gentoo.

Re:What a load of crap

[amorsen]

Probably the same way they already get their software trusted, by distributor-of-choice signing their packages.

Re:What a load of crap

[calc]

Linux From Scratch and Gentoo users > Ubuntu and Fedora users. When something breaks on your Linux system and you don't know how to fix it, guess which one you'd rather hear from? A LFS user, or someone who uses Ubuntu because he's scared of the command line? Yeah, that's what I thought. Pwnd.

This site does a good job describing the typical Gentoo user... ;-D

http://funroll-loops.info/

Re:What a load of crap

[AvitarX]

They allowed signed packages to be installed without entering the password.

This was bad for multi-user, as it allowed someone to re-install a package, and alter settings (my understanding of the problem).

It really I think has more to do with:
1) FC people wanted to show off new security framework
2) FC people not thinking multi-user.

But I don't really know. I personally don't see a problem with allowing anyone that can sudo to install something, install the trusted packages without it.

Re:What a load of crap

[calc]

Agreed, also when many of us started using Linux, for myself that was 15 years ago, there was no 'easier' distro, though I suppose Debian could be considered to always have been relatively easy at least compared to its contemporary distros. I have used Ubuntu for the last 5 of those 15 years.

Re:What a load of crap

[negRo_slim]

LFS

But can it run Crysis?

Re:What a load of crap

[element-o.p.]

As someone who uses both Gentoo and Ubuntu, I have to say that your reply makes for a great 30-second sound bite, but has little to do with the real world. While to some degree, Linux is Linux is Linux, there are differences between distributions that aren't always immediately obvious -- even to experienced users. I'm still learning some of the ways of getting things done in Ubuntu after 3+ years of Gentoo (and ~8 years of Slackware). For example, if I'm trying to figure out which Ubuntu package contains some program I want to install, I *don't* want to hear from an LFS or Gentoo user; I want to hear from someone who actually knows the distribution I am asking about. As the saying goes, it's not what you don't know that will bite you in the butt; it's what you *think* you know that just ain't so...and from the tone of your post, I'm guessing that's probably quite a bit.

Furthermore, before you go bashing on Fedora and Ubuntu users too much, you might want to check which distro Torvalds says he prefers.

Re:What a load of crap

[element-o.p.]

I think you've just proven Harry Squatter's point for him. Congrats!

Re:What a load of crap

[element-o.p.]

Debian and CentOS/RHEL are among the best Linuces for servers, while Gentoo is completely inappropriate (although this almost never comes up because Gentoo fans are also completely inappropriate as sysadmins)

Care to back that up with any citations, stats or even anecdotes? Although we are currently migrating to Ubuntu server to make our new corporate overlords happy -- you can at least get paid support from Canonical if I and the other admin get hit by a bus one day -- we have been a Gentoo shop for many, many years, and it seems to have been a good choice for us. I won't pretend that Gentoo is *the* server distro to use (if something breaks during an update/upgrade, it usually breaks Big Time), but I have found it to be a very reliable, very stable platform as long as you use good judgment to maintain it. For example, update on a test machine, or at least an expendable machine before running emerge --update world on the entire server farm, and always, always, always make sure you run emerge --pretend --update world first.

Re:What a load of crap

[Bert64]

That's because firefox is a cross platform application... On unix systems you have to store data in the user's homedir.. you will find that most cross platform applications behave in this way, and it is pretty much just windows-only applications that have problems in a multiuser environment because they weren't forced to deal with it before.

Re:What a load of crap

[element-o.p.]

I myself have been caught by this trap, where I moved to a different distribution and tried to do things the way I knew how, but then somebody told me on some forum later that I wasn't doing it the right way.

lol, you and me both. First time I tried to use Gentoo, I tried to add a new init script like I had always done in Slack, until my coworker explained to me the Gentoo start-up system. I thought it was horribly over-complicated at first, but as I started using it with the tools Gentoo provides, I began to appreciate how elegant and well-designed the Gentoo init scripts really were ;)

Re:What a load of crap

[Bert64]

What if multiple people want to play on the same system? Will it clobber each other's settings?

Re:What a load of crap

[pnutjam]

actually, one of the beauties of openSUSE is the config utility, YAST, is avaliable as a gui, or from the console. Both are identical.

Re:What a load of crap

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

SUPER CRAP!

Slashdot is now posting articles by people who don't know about the wheel group?

My Ubuntu's would be hosed, if I were to need a root password to install software! There IS NO root password.

Now, I must enter MY password - and that's deceptively different.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

a) we're tied of screwing around getting things to work like we did 6-7 years ago, and (b) to target the version of Linux that most people seem to be using.

I agree whole heartedly. I have been using Linux for more years than I can count, started out with Red Hat when it became available, and eventually after working through most of the major distros I was using Debian and thought I would try this Ubuntu thing. Wasn't too happy with it at first, but after they got some of the kinks worked out, found it to be a major time saver for setup, hunting down and fixing issues. I'll admit, I can be lazy, but there is something to be said about not having to track down major issues to get things to play together nicely.

Re:What a load of crap

[jedidiah]

Of course they don't know about wheel you silly person. They are Linux users.

Re:What a load of crap

[FictionPimp]

What about the gentoo user who uses ubuntu because he just wants to Do work on his computer and not work on his computer? I used Gentoo for years. Now I use ubuntu and I can do what i want to do with my computer without spending a lot of time getting my computer ready to do what I want to do.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't this folder virtualization functionality make it possible to hide things like a rootkit?

Re:What a load of crap

[jedidiah]

...the same goes the other way too.

Both Ubuntu and Gentoo forums appear to be useful in general.

Re:What a load of crap

[h4rr4r]

perhaps through a repository like we debian users have done forever?

Re:What a load of crap

[FictionPimp]

except for one being a GUI....

Re:What a load of crap

[idontgno]

So, Single User, no one ever touches your system besides you?* Locally or remotely?

Even a system with only one interactive user ID is potentially multi-user. And then your machine is trojaned (running a server you never wanted installed, and running it for purposes you never would have approved of).

*And even if this is true for you personally, it won't be true for at least one other single-user system user out there. So, yeah, maybe make it configurable, but then your laziness degrades the quality and safety of the entire Internet.

It's one teensy tiny password. How damn lazy can you get?

Re:What a load of crap

[norminator]

The real point was that the config utility, whether it be GUI or CLI based, will clobber hand-modifications, not whether or not a GUI utility will clobber them. I know he talked about GUI utilities, but he was referring to automated utilities in general.

Re:What a load of crap

[h4rr4r]

No for a single user machine they did the right thing, just without enough configuration. It would make it clear to the user that unapproved software is not something to be installing lightly. This would really lead to an OS that had far less to fear from malware installed via foolish users.

If they had a nice interface where a user who was in sudoers could select the preapproved packages it would have been a leap forward in usability. Even more so if they had sane defaults of turning it off and making it an installer option.

Re:What a load of crap

[idontgno]

I'd argue that YaST in a console is pretty close to a GUI. I haven't tried it, but I think it even works with GPM-based console mouse modes.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather get the Ubuntu user. Ever spoke to some of the people on #gentoo @ irc.gamesurge.net ? R is just a major asshole.

Re:What a load of crap

[drinkypoo]

Linux doesn't have 'the wheel'. Ubuntu, at least, has a group called admin. Some linux distributions have a wheel group but I've never seen it actually used for anything by default, I think it was just there so that programs expecting it would not choke.

Re:What a load of crap

[man_of_mr_e]

No, make them slightly more obscure perhaps, but not "hide" them. The folders exist and are visible in your user profile.

Re:What a load of crap

[digitalhermit]

Don't knock ease of use, or the influx of new users that will make Linux a force in the industry. It's called progress; maybe you should check it out sometime.

I dunno. I enjoy the fact that many people are using Linux.. It helps for many things. But sometimes it's like a good fishing hole. If you have a great spot you might tell one person (or better yet, blindfold them as you drive them there). But once you start inviting people in, pretty soon you have a major interstate and boat ramps and a Don's Tackle Shop and a Starbucks right alongside your nice fishing hole. And instead of people asking you about the merits of hand tied fishing lures or whether hand-made aluminum can shiners are better than factory you start getting people bragging about their RV and powerboats and complaining about having to bait their own hooks.

All said, it's better that there are more people using Linux, but I guess I'm nostalgic for those times when a 5 node compute cluster was something pretty cool.

   

Re:What a load of crap

[drinkypoo]

I use Ubuntu because of PPAs. Nine times out of ten, something I want that isn't in an official repository is in a PPA.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he made that point in response to what was obviously a tongue-in-cheek joke and not an expression of true condescension.
It's funny to see an AC backpedal so hard when he gets called out.

Re:What a load of crap

[StayFrosty]

By default, Gentoo requires users to be a member of the wheel group to use su.

Re:What a load of crap

[mister_playboy]

Since that isn't the case, this looks to me like another religious issue. Like when you have one sect of Christianity going to war against another sect of Christianity because they disagree on whether to drink wine or grape juice for Communion. Naturally the grape-juice drinkers think they have irreconcilable differences with the wine-drinkers and vice-versa. Each side thinks the other is composed of total idiots and assholes. Neither appreciates that what they're arguing over is a trivial matter of taste.

To be fair, the problem is that such groups think these are life and death matters and not trivial ones. You have be more spiritually matured to see that the matter is trivial.

Re:What a load of crap

[iperkins]

With Vista and probably Win7, WoW wants to install to the users\public\games\ folder, not in Program Files. I ran WoW on a laptop that had been upgraded from XP to Vista and on either a patch or the Wrath install (sorry, don't remember now, it's been a while), the install routine prompted to be allowed to move the installation from program files to users\public\games\. User info was stored by account under the wonderfully named WTF subfolder, prior to the Battle.net migration. Now, patch information, at least, is stored under the user's documents folder. I haven't poked around enough to see if any user specific stuff is stored there.

Re:What a load of crap

[tixxit]

Yep. Ubuntu gets out of the way and lets me do my work. With LFS I absolutely dreaded upgrades (since the process took a while and had to be babysat) and so I just really didn't do them. It was a fun learning experience, but I get far more enjoyment out of coding my own projects then I do compiling other people's.

Re:What a load of crap

[tixxit]

I dunno. I rather liked the fact that I could copy the entire WoW directly to my external HD and play it anywhere. The game is pretty much completely contained in 1 directory and doesn't rely on any registry settings to be able to run correctly.

Re:What a load of crap

[techno-vampire]

For example, if I'm trying to figure out which Ubuntu package contains some program I want to install, I *don't* want to hear from an LFS or Gentoo user;

Exactly. I use Fedora and my sister uses Ubuntu. If I need help with my system, I go to the Fedora Forums; if my sister asks a question I can't answer, I go to Ubuntu for distro-specific answers. (Once in a while, the answer will be more Gnome-specific than distro, and help both of us.)

Re:What a load of crap

[LWATCDR]

There are some benefits to this but not much more than if they stored the userdata and setting in the correct place.
By separating the data you make backing up easier. You just back up the users documents folder and get all their data.
It also makes security easier because you can not allow writing to the execuatables without specific permission.
There are of course better ways IMHO to do security than that method but it is pretty easy to use.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Citing MySpace as evidence in favor of anything is rarely a winning strategy.

Re:What a load of crap

[MobyDisk]

just copy WoW's dir.

After you've modified the permissions to allow the app to save data there, switched to administrator mode to run it, and disabled the UAC. And modified your backup program to backup files in the Program Files directory, which most modern software will not backup. (I know, I worked for a backup software company, and we had to constantly update the rules engine for every little app that did this. It was a pain. Fortunately, there are fewer and fewer apps like that now than there were 10 years ago.)

And this doesn't even include the heck that it causes if there are multiple users playing WOW on the same machine.

If WOW put their files under the user's data directory like they are supposed to, the user would not need to do anything. They would simply run the backup software and those files would be automatically included.

There is a reason that all modern operating systems forbid this type of behavior. The separation of user data outside of program files is the tried and true way to make backups easy and have good security.

Re:What a load of crap

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

wheel, admin, whatever. The function of the group is independent of it's name. What we are talking about is the way sudo and gksu work.

This Vaughan-Nichols guy gets published as a Linux expert in every rag printed - but mis-explains sudo in such a way that exposes his radical ignorance of the sensitivity of root accounts and their passwords.

In the same article he later waxes on about SuSe being the first distro from which he can now upgrade entire versions over the Internet!

I did it with RH 5.x in antiquity. Also upgraded my old Debian, around 2000, by swapping tags in sources.list and apt getting away. Ubuntu now makes this a triviality.

Well, I guess he's paid for dissing Microsoft - which he manages with the requisite contempt.

Re:What a load of crap

[MobyDisk]

The problem with Firefox is that it also puts the user's cache folder there. It is supposed to go in the user's temporary folder, not their profile folder. So backup software will backup gigabytes of cache files. Many modern backup programs have custom rules lists to try and exclude this stuff, but Firefox is especially bad because the user's profile directory is named from a hash or something like that, making it especially tough to filter out. It also copies your cache with your roaming profile if you are on a corporate network, which slows Firefox and wastes disk space.

Re:What a load of crap

[Sir_Lewk]

Fedora finally addressing this security issue

You do realize it was resolved less than a week after being discovered right?

Not that it wasn't a big deal, as a Fedora user I can honestly say I was livid...

Re:What a load of crap

[MobyDisk]

Trusted by who? Just because Microsoft or Dell trusts them doesn't mean I do. Odds are that the people doing the "pre-approval" would be in the top 5 of my untrusted list.

Re:What a load of crap

[obarthelemy]

nope, each account has its own subdir, and then each realm, and then each character.

Re:What a load of crap

[ehrichweiss]

My question is, how much older are they talking about? I've been a Fedora user since FC4 and it's always required the root password as far as I've ever been aware. Maybe they meant to say "For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could NOT install software on Fedora without access to the root password"???

Re:What a load of crap

[multisync]

On my Mandriva Spring 2006 system my user accounted needed to be a member of the wheel group in order to use sudo.

Re:What a load of crap

[JWSmythe]

    Ya, just wait til you get married, and she takes it and makes a purse out of it. "We got married, so he didn't need that any more." And no, you don't get it back when you get divorced. :)

Re:What a load of crap

[amorsen]

That's why it's important to have a free market with lots of choices for who does the approval. Luckily we're spoilt for choice in Linux distributions, and there's quite a bit of non-Linux choice too. Even within the distributions you can add other "approval providers".

On Windows you'd have to trust Microsoft of course, but most Windows users already (perhaps unknowingly) use the Malicious Software Removal Tool as well as several different ways to run pre-approved software.

Re:What a load of crap

[rdavidson3]

Ah crap... I just got engaged :/

Re:What a load of crap

[JWSmythe]

    Consider what your choices were then. In 1994, Windows 3.1 wasn't the warm fuzzy "just works" environment either. Maybe OS/2 Warp, but I barely remember using it, so I can't say how it compared for ease of installation and modification.

    I won't say Linux was great back then either. Right around then, I was using Slackware 2.0. Redhat wasn't even really a distro, being the 0.9 "Halloween" release. SuSE 1.0 was just a German version of Slackware. Debian was a 0.9. SLS 1.05 was just released. and ... well .. lets just say there were a lot of options that came and went. Maybe DEC OSF/1. Maybe Novell UnixWare 1.1. Maybe SCO Unix 3.2v4.1 ODT 3.0. There were options, but the casual user wasn't going to do much more than run what was on there. There was no "Oh, go to this web site, and click the link". There was no downloading drivers from the manufacturer site (but you may have been able to dial up to their BBS)

Re:What a load of crap

[Tiger4]

Don't like a distro? Good, use something else. That should be the end of it, but it isn't, because it's not good enough that you use what you like, the other guy must also use what you like, right?

It is not enough that I be in the right. It must also be proven that all the rest of you are wrong. Only then can I savor my triumph.

I thought everyone knew that.

Re:What a load of crap

[shutdown -p now]

As a learning tool its manual installation is one of the best.

How so? How does a distro centered around a package manager that automagically compiles source code when installing a new package any better as a learning tool compared to another distro that just unpacks the prebuilt binaries? If you mean tinkering with configs, then clearly a source-based distro isn't required for this - Debian also requires this, for example, and so does Slackware. So, what makes Gentoo special, and what makes source-based worth it, then?

Or do you believe that watching the scrolling "gcc -c" lines interleaved with compiler warnings somehow make one learn something useful?

Re:What a load of crap

[crafty.munchkin]

then you still have time... ;)

Re:What a load of crap

[Blakey Rat]

Or what if I want to install a particular Add-On, but another user of the computer does not? Impossible with the current implementation of WOW, AFAIK.

Re:What a load of crap

[aix tom]

Yep. I use what I like, everybody else can use what everybody else likes.

My base home system is Gentoo, the current "install" is from around 2002, and has migrated over 4 or five different systems by now without having done a single complete re-install. Whenever I get a new system I just copy over the entire portage tree and sync/re-emerge everything after I have booted from the install disc and adjustments in the make/portage configuration. Sure, it might take a few hours or even days of chugging away in the background, but after that I have a system that is pretty much identical in setup to the original system, just with up to date software versions.

That's basically the one main point why I like it, that the distro itself is versionless. No "Oh, new Distro version out, should I try it?, should I not?", I just have a look every few month which ebuilds have been updated, and update the ones where I like to try the new version. Security and System updates regularly, things like OpenOffice or stuff I don't use much not so regularly.

And in the last couple of years the build - in documentation of what what problems you might have to be aware of in certain package versions is quite good. I personally would never swap this slow "growing" with the "version jumps" of other distros or Windows any more. It might take a little longer to initially set up, but once it is set up you can pretty much have it running forever with regular updates without having to think about re-installs.

OTOH when I needed some "I need a quick OS on this boxes here to keep some people browsing for a few weeks" I obviously installed (X)Ubuntu.

Re:What a load of crap

[obarthelemy]

wrong on so many levels.. have you even tried it ?

I put WoW in its own directory in the root of my Apps drive -which is much easier to do than for apps that require being in the /Program Files dir and have outside dependencies. I don't have to neither switch to admin mode nor disable the UAC to run it. I actually never had to install WoW when I upgraded from XP to 7... I just left it where it was on my Apps drive, upgraded to 7 on my System drive, created a shortcut, that's it.

I did indeed have to add WoW's directory to my backup list, but guess what, if I ever have to restore it, it will work, as opposed to pretty much all other windows apps. I get to make a usable backup of both my data and my program files, which is a huge time saver for a restore.

WoW does have a separate data subdirectory for each account (=user) and for its own data, so I don't get your last point at all. Anyway, the data without the program is fairly useless, as is the program without all its and my data. Makes sense to have both together, and you can fine-tune rights per dir/subdir if you want to.

Re:What a load of crap

[shutdown -p now]

It's not just users. Applications still aren't being written to work properly with non-administrator accounts. I just installed SimplyAccounting 2010 on Windows XP and started getting weird errors poking around in it using a Limited Account, but switching to an Administrator account, no more errors.

Here's a hint.

Have you ever seen those "Certified for XP/Vista/7" labels on software boxes (or websites selling software)? Ever wondered if they actually mean anything?

Well, they do. One thing that software labeled as "Certified for Vista" (or higher) cannot do is assume administrative privileges during normal operation, with very few exceptions (e.g. disk partitioning software, or anti-virus). It is explicitly forbidden for any certified software to store any configuration settings or other volatile data under Program Files, or any other place where the normal user running it may not have access.

So, if you buy any kind of software, look out for that logo. If you free stuff, then it's likely that they didn't shell out money for certification (it isn't free), so then you're on your own.

Also note that there is a separate label "Works with Windows Vista". The requirements for that are much less stringent than for "Certified" one, and in particular such software may require elevation for day-to-day work - basically, if it can properly launch and function on Vista, it will get the "Works" logo.

I find it unfortunate that there is some confusion created between those two, but I also understand why a separate "Works" logo was needed for the XP->Vista transition period - its whole point was to get existing XP software being marked as Vista-compatible, and make a pressure on ISVs to officially support their existing apps on Vista. Gladly, this was a Vista-only thing, and it's gone in 7 - now there's a single label, "Compatible with Windows 7", which has the more stringent requirements.

Here are the requirements for various logos:

Certified for Windows Vista [doc]
Works with Windows Vista [doc]
Compatible with Windows 7 [pdf]

Specifically (from "Certified for Windows Vista"):

To meet this requirement, every executable file (with a .EXE extension) included with an application must have an embedded manifest that defines its execution level:

If only a small number of features in an application will require administrative privileges (For example, an application needs to configure a firewall), the main process of the application must still be run as a standard user. The administrative features must be moved into a separate process that runs with administrative privileges.

Applications that run their main process with elevated privileges (requireAdministrator or highestAvailable) must receive a waiver from Microsoft to obtain certification. Only system tools should apply for this waiver. Games, office productivity applications, messaging clients, etc. will not be considered.

Applications that need to drive input to the UI of another window may set uiAccess=true, but will also need to apply for a waiver. Only accessibility applications will be considered for this waiver.

Re:What a load of crap

[RichardJenkins]

Folder virtualization sounds interesting, is it the MS name for symlinks?

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

shame it now installs into the shared users folder and has done since halfway through TBC's life

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah... I deal with several programs at work that store data in their own directories, and it is a real pain when I need to move a user to a new computer or I have to reinstall a computer's OS. If all the data is stored in the user profile you just back that up, copy it to the new windows install, and you are home free. With these bass akward apps that store data with the applications, I have to be careful to only copy over the data files, or to make sure they have the exact same versions of the software, or to copy the program and do an upgrade. It also makes backing up user data much more complicated than it has to be.Dependencies, DLL Hell, and Registry hacks are a completely separate issue.

Re:What a load of crap

[NotBorg]

I agree, the problem with Windows is not so much the OS itself but poorly written applications.

You can call a virus a poorly written 3rd party application all you want. I'll still insist that the OS shouldn't let viruses walk all over the system even when ran as an underprivileged user.

How is it still possible to write past the end of a buffer and over the top of executable code? These poorly written applications should crash because the OS tells them no. The NX bit is going on what now? 10 years?

I'm sorry but if your application shits all over the place and the OS doesn't stop it then it is a poorly written application running on a poorly written OS. Also applications would have a tenancy to applications fix themselves at development time if the operating environment expected more of them.

For those who think that these additional checks by the OS would show things down, is it any worse than what Norton does? Maybe AV scanning wouldn't be such a hog if there were fewer viruses because they were harder to develop. If that hole in the networking stack wasn't there 5+ years ago we wouldn't still be scanning for the malware years after the the hole was plugged. Yep, AVs will still scan for viruses the system is now immune to. An ounce of prevention goes a long way.

I know MS has gotten a lot better in recent history and that's great. Still, it will be awhile before they'll earn my trust back especially since we're still suffering from the negligence of the past.

/optopic rant.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

PC-BSD works that way. It's awesome, and the next iteration (8.0) brings ZFS too.

Re:What a load of crap

[steveha]

Oh good grief. You think it is too much to ask, to get authorization before permanently changing the state of your system?

Remember, if it is possible for you to install software without being prompted for a password, you run the risk that some sneaky malware can install itself without you being prompted for a password.

And it's not necessarily one password for each thing you install. Suppose you install something, then you right away decide to install something else. You don't get prompted the second time; the password system keeps track of how often it asks you for a password, so you can do a bunch of sysadmin work at one time and only have to type the password once. And you can of course customize how long it will let you go before you need to re-enter that password.

Linux distributions have worked out a nice, practical balance between security and ease of use. Try it sometime.

steveha

Re:What a load of crap

[idontgno]

I believe "installed" doesn't matter if it's not activated on the "Addons" page for that particular character.

Re:What a load of crap

[Delkster]

They could place all actual program files (everything that was put there during installation) in a single system-wide folder in Program Files and all user-specific things (preferences, caches, whatever needs to be modified when running the game) in a single folder inside the user's personal folder.

That would allow for an easy backup or transfer of the entire installation (including personal preferences etc.) since there would still be only two folders to back up (assuming one user who plays the game), and it would also allow the game to be run as a non-admin user.

That's approximately how it would be done on unix anyway...

Re:What a load of crap

[Blakey Rat]

Last time I played WOW, the "activate Add-Ons" screen came up *before* you logged-in with your account. It's been awhile, so maybe my memory is fuzzy.

Either way, I'd much prefer WOW being compatible with the system as it's designed to be used. Their work-around to a non-issue is stupid.

Re:What a load of crap

[AnthonyA7]

Your condescension is annoying. Have you actually read the Gentoo handbook?

I decided to install Gentoo two years ago, after using Fedora for quite some time and Ubuntu before that. (I have had no formal Linux/sysadmin training, and my degree is in aero engineering- not comp sci.) In the course of that first Gentoo install, so much about how a modern Linux system functions made sense to me that didn't before. Of course there's nothing stopping me from learning all that with another distro- but the Gentoo install showed me how it all (grub, parted, lvm, filesystems, kernel config, manual network config, syslog, X, kde, mysql, iptables, apache, etc, etc) fits together to achieve the goal of a usable system.

Once I was introduced to that framework, I could begin to make that crucial step when I stopped searching forums for the right commands to paste into xterm, and instead sought an understanding by reading official documentation and manpages.

To more directly answer your questions: yes, of course I could never go beyond `emerge some_package` and not reap any of the benefits of using a source-based distro (aside from walls of gcc output text that you think I wear as a badge of pride). But since the above framework was cemented in my head, the door to tinkering was placed within easy reach; this is true whether it be as simple as manually configuring some sysadmin-type function like apcupsd, or as complicated as editing kde 3.5 source code in a local overlay to achieve some crazy idea of usability that popped in my head.

Basically, don't knock it till you try it. Learning about what makes Linux tick from a textbook or some presentation is far inferior IMO to struggling with it on your own.

And definitely please don't berate those of us who are simply enthusiastic about teaching ourselves about random Linux nonsense and don't care about your distro wars or whatever.

Re:What a load of crap

[shutdown -p now]

Basically, don't knock it till you try it.

My "condescension" stems from my experience. Gentoo was my second Linux distro, and my first "real" Linux distro (before that I've used Mandrake, but I didn't really do much with it). I used it for almost two years exclusively (of any other Linux distro) as a primary desktop OS, and genuinely held the same opinions that you did - that it's somehow "closer to the metal" than all alternatives, and "teaches me more about Linux".

It was much to my surprise when I found, later on, that Debian requires essentially the same degree of mucking with configs and such (and consequent exposure of those things) from me than what I was used to in Gentoo. Combined with semi-permanent Portage breakage, multi-hour compile times for many large packages on every minor update (KDE, OO.org etc), and the fact that much-touted USE flags can (and do) easily break package dependencies, I've had enough aggregated annoyances to switch to Debian as a primary system for some time, and after the experiment proved to be immensely successful, I've never looked back since.

Re:What a load of crap

[AnthonyA7]

Fair enough. I'll file that away in case I find myself looking for a new distro.

I still hold that I would still be a novice if I hadn't made that step and installed a source-based distro, as I have no professional requirements in the understanding-Linux department, and my fortran work doesn't require much knowledge of anything other than arcane syntax. :)

About portage: except for recent kde-3.5 fiascos, portage has been pretty damn stable since I installed in early 08. I've also found it to be rare that I have to compile those obnoxious packages (no oo.org on my machine though)- the worst is probably xulrunner + mozilla-firefox for those minor version bumps.

Re:What a load of crap

[JWSmythe]

    Having been married twice, and having to fight to get my package back both times, let me give you one friendly word of advice. DON'T DO IT!

    Love is about love. It's not about getting married. If you two love each other, show each other that you do in better ways. You can live together forever, and be very happy about it. Does she want a wedding party? Throw a wild party with all your friends. Call it your anti-wedding. :) If your friends are real friends, they'll treat you just as if you went through the traumatic experience of getting hitched.

    Marriage is a legally binding agreement, which you'll always get fucked on if/when it ends (the odds are in favor of it ending for the last few decades). If you do split, you're obliged to bend over and get fucked for the rest of your life, and you will lose in court. If you don't get married, and you end up with joint property (like, a house), you can agree on your own terms how it can be divided, or go through mediation to get it done. A friend of mine did that recently, after being together for 10 years. It was ugly, but there's no alimony. They split their joint property, and went their separate ways.

    There's no obligation to get married. Most states will respect a mutual arrangement for cohabitation (called something different in every state), so you can both enjoy work benefits like health insurance.

    And, you'll save a fortune on rings, wedding preparations, etc, etc.. Trust me, it's better for both of you.

    If you do manage to stay together forever, more power to you. It's love, not the legally binding contract, that kept you together.

Re:What a load of crap

[shutdown -p now]

About portage: except for recent kde-3.5 fiascos, portage has been pretty damn stable since I installed in early 08.

Admittedly, it may well be that things have changed significantly. My Gentoo experience was in 2004-06 - I've seen the 2.4->2.6 kernel transition, the adoption of udev and hal, and other similar "let's break it and make it anew, with blackjack and hookers" kind of fun (though that affected all distros back then). It also seems to depend on the selection of one's ports, naturally - though judging by what you say, KDE at least hasn't changed in that regard ;)

Re:What a load of crap

[rdavidson3]

The fiancé just read this over my shoulder, and confirmed that my package is getting fitted for purse material.

I'll miss my package :,(

Re:What a load of crap

[Halborr]

Then let's hope to God that Linux never grows beyond its niche.

Re:What a load of crap

[BrokenHalo]

Linux doesn't have 'the wheel'.

Slackware, Arch and Gentoo all have and use it. I don't know about current versions of Fedora, but RedHat from 5.2 through 7.0 had it. If you're basing your claims on a passing knowkedge of Ubuntu, then I would suggest you actually learn something about the other distributions. Ubuntu is non-standard in many ways, for instance the absence of a root user, and the absence of /etc/inittab to give just two examples off the top of my head.

Re:What a load of crap

[AleBaba]

As far as I know, what "they do on almost all other Linux distributions" is to ask for the user's password, because that's what sudo normally does if you don't add "Defaults rootpw" to it's config file. They must have meant that.

Re:What a load of crap

[obarthelemy]

your memory is wrong.

Addons are managed after account login, at the character selection screen. So each user can choose their addons. for each character, too.

Why do people who have no clue of what we're talking about keep popping in on that discussion and talk out of their ass ?

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

He said 'paradigm'. I hope he'll friend me.

Re:What a load of crap

[uninformedLuddite]

No user should ever be more skilled than any other users, and all distributions should cater to the newbie crowd.

There is a prize for the highest prime so I had better check to see if there is one for the very Lowest Common Denominator.

Grammar Nazi's -->: There are 14 serious errors in the above sentence. See if you can find them all! Win the approval of your friends on Facebook.

Re:What a load of crap

[hitmark]

more that they still need to support the solitary computer idea that got started in the 80's.

remember dos, win 3.x, win9x? That legacy is still in there to some degree...

Re:What a load of crap

[drinkypoo]

Ubuntu systems do have a root user, you're just expected to never be him. And why would I need to learn more specifics about other distributions? When I'm there, I can easily see what groups are on the systems. I started with Slackware 2.0, but since then my needs have grown to include things like actual package management.

Re:What a load of crap

[MobyDisk]

I put WoW in its own directory in the root of my Apps drive

That's not what we are talking about. The discussion is about why applications should not store data C:\Program Files, on the system drive. What you have done is totally customized, and solves the problem that WOW introduces. I would probably do the same thing you are doing.

Re:What a load of crap

[BrokenHalo]

And why would I need to learn more specifics about other distributions? When I'm there, I can easily see what groups are on the systems.

Sure you can, but you made a blanket statement about Linux (in general) that was patently inaccurate. You surely can't expect nobody to call you on that.

As for your aversion to Slackware, that's just fine. If you don't like the way Slack handles packages, I'm not going to insist that you should. I don't happen to care for rpm or deb packaging, though I recognise their advantages to those who appreciate such things. My own preference (FWIW) is Arch's pacman, which offers a nice compromise between Slackware's "brute-force" system and the more flexible apt-get.

Re:What a load of crap

[man_of_mr_e]

No. Folder virtualization allows an app to write to a "protected" folder, like \Windows\System32 and have the file redirected to a folder in their user profile instead. This allows apps that misbehave to still work. It's a compatibility crutch, one which I don't like.

Re:What a load of crap

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

So, Single User, no one ever touches your system besides you?* Locally or remotely?

Yes, and for this system it's only locally. For my server it's remotely and by several people - which is why I have no objections to this restriction on the server.

That's what I'm getting at -- this is not a feature, it's a restriction. It may be a restriction for valid reasons - but those reasons are not valid in every circumstance; and for a large number of desktop users, it's not valid in most circumstances.

So, yeah, maybe make it configurable, but then your laziness degrades the quality and safety of the entire Internet.

How so? How is my installing a signed package, or changing my hardware settings without first putting in an extra password a risk to anyone or anything?

I'm not, in this case, talking about running my desktop as root (another discussion for another time), but the ability to change the configuration of my own computer without jumping through even one small hoop.

It's one teensy tiny password. How damn lazy can you get?

That's my call to make, isn't it? We say linux is all about choice... but we mean it's all about choice as long as that choice doesn't conflict with our idea of how computing "should be" done.

Re:What a load of crap

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I think I addressed most of your points here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1480728&cid=30481126

As far as sneaky malware installing software - yes and no. By always requiring a password, you're only training the user to enter the password whenever they're prompted. That means when the theoretical malware goes to install something, the user is *still* going to install it. The password is not a prevention -- the only possible way to prevent it from occurring is via education, not training the user to ignore one more thing. It's the old "dancing bunnies" problem.

Re:What a load of crap

[causality]

In the course of that first Gentoo install, so much about how a modern Linux system functions made sense to me that didn't before. Of course there's nothing stopping me from learning all that with another distro- but the Gentoo install showed me how it all (grub, parted, lvm, filesystems, kernel config, manual network config, syslog, X, kde, mysql, iptables, apache, etc, etc) fits together to achieve the goal of a usable system.

Once I was introduced to that framework, I could begin to make that crucial step when I stopped searching forums for the right commands to paste into xterm, and instead sought an understanding by reading official documentation and manpages.

There are two friends of mine whom I introduced to Linux. What I really want for both of them is just as you describe there. I strongly believe in that saying about giving a man a fish and feeding him for one day, versus teaching him how to fish so he can always feed himself.

It really enriches the whole experience when you have an understanding of how the system works and why it works that way. That's especially true for an open, transparent system like Linux, where you can look under the hood and see for yourself how it is put together. I have emphasized to both of my friends that a large volume of memorized knowledge is not nearly so important as holistic understanding, good problem-solving skills, and the ability to quickly and accurately find information whenever it is needed.

I started both of them with Gentoo. I believe that for both of them, it was their first experience with anything other than Windows. While Gentoo now has an automated installer, we always used the manual installation. From the very beginning, at each step in the process, I did my best to carefully explain to them what they were doing, why they were doing it, what effects and implications it will have, and which options were available. I offered suggestions but tried not to influence their decisions too much.

I also went over basic Unix design principles, how and why they differed from Windows, and general things like filesystem layouts and how Unix-like systems handle networking. We then moved on to distribution-specific topics like "emerge" and package management in general, what USE flags are and how they work, source compilation and CFLAGS, the INIT system, that sort of thing. My approach was always to focus on the principles and concepts, for a foundation of understanding solidly based on those gives one the ability to quickly reference any details that are needed. I like to explain things first in abstract, and then follow-up with concrete examples to demonstrate how those abstract ideas have real effects on the system.

Gentoo was a great choice for this, quite possibly the best I could have made. This is the case because I am willing to be actively involved, to take the time to share the knowledge that has brought me a great deal of enjoyment. It's my way of trying to give something back, by sharing with others what has benefitted me. This made it easy for me to communicate a real appreciation for the solid design and overall elegance (even beauty) of the system as a whole. It's as simple as possible, but no simpler, and any complexity comes from various permutations of those simple designs.

It would have been quite a mistake to just hand them a Gentoo installation CD and say "ok, I'm done now, have fun." Doing that with Gentoo may have turned them off to Linux entirely. For that kind of instant-gratification usage, Kubuntu would have been a much better choice. But had I done that, I would have missed out on all the enjoyment of teaching and sharing something I truly appreciate. I mean, think about it, we have large communities of dedicated volunteers around the world who put together and maintain some really high-quality systems and generally ask for nothing in return. Passing on the benefits I have received from that is not a duty or an obligation; it's quite a privilege.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed Arch on my Acer Aspire One. I followed the arch wiki through the whole process and had the system setup with kde just as fast as the Ubuntu installs i have done. Pacman works just as well as apt-get if not better. I am not an IT tech, so what makes Ubuntu easier?

Re:What a load of crap

[LaneLester]

I'm in the same boat as you. I paid my dues with the more primitive distros, but now I mostly just want to get things done. I have a bunch of partitions and frequently load another distro for fun (Sabayon is the latest), but at some point I come back to Ubuntu because that's where everything works. It's also where the binary versions of programs are usually available first.

Re:What a load of crap

[Murdoch5]

If you program in C you should know what your doing, it's not C#, you need to know how memory works.

Re:What a load of crap

[marafa]

some troll s trying to rewrite history by saying that an error in PackageKit was the default behaviour for years

Re:What a load of crap

[True Grit]

My "condescension" stems from my experience.

From at least 3 years ago by your own admission. In 'Gentoo Years', thats a lifetime... :)

Combined with semi-permanent Portage breakage,

I use paludis, so I wouldn't know.

multi-hour compile times for many large packages on every minor update (KDE, OO.org etc),

Actually, those 2 you mentioned, plus likely GNOME, are the *only* multi-hour compiles really left anymore, at least on modern desktops, and in any event, you can still use your computer to do almost anything else now too, thanks to that same modern hardware & a low-latency 2.6.xx kernel. Compiles on Gentoo are not nearly the big deal they were 6-8 years ago.

Finally, you don't even have to update just for minor version ticks, I sometimes mask the minor ones on big packages if I don't want to be bothered...

And if a compile fails, there is no rule that says you have to do *anything*. Just ignore it. Your current system still works, so give it a few days, or a week, or a *month*, and then see if the devs have fixed the problem in the new version. I've never really understood this particular complaint...

and the fact that much-touted USE flags can (and do) easily break package dependencies,

Portage has 'revdep-rebuild', and paludis has 'reconcilio' for this. Just run the tool after a major update to make sure nothing is broken (I automatically run reconcilio after a world update). Doesn't seem to actually occur much anymore for me, but when it does, its automatically fixed.

I've had enough aggregated annoyances to switch to Debian as a primary system for some time

Aggregated annoyances are an inevitable consequence of size and complexity.

Ironically, it was Debian that I switched from, all those many moons ago, because of accumulated annoyances involving broken dependencies (I'm sure things are better now though).

The one nice thing about a source-based distro is that its harder for something to have broken, hard dependencies, because generally if you can build it, then you know it found all its deps (otherwise it wouldn't have built).

Not completely foolproof, of course, won't catch some optional deps that are only conditionally dlopened (however the tools mentioned above will find all of these), but then again, the last time I ever had a seriously hosed system due to broken deps was on Debian, not Gentoo...

I've never looked back since.

Same here...

Re:What a load of crap

[skeeto]

or someone who uses Ubuntu because he's scared of the command line

Heh, well put!

Re:What a load of crap

[robinstar1574]

I am supprised. A person who says microsoft thinks its users are smart. I know one thing. They are stupider then mac users. Mac's are so hard to use that they are called user friendly. Friendly in the sense that they don't allow the users to do anything easily.

Re:What a load of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Ubuntus might be hosed if you were to need the root password, but it's hardly an insurmountable problem, someone who knows what they are doing would know how to fix it.

Re:What a load of crap

[__aawbkb6799]

About portage: except for recent kde-3.5 fiascos, portage has been pretty damn stable since I installed in early 08.

Admittedly, it may well be that things have changed significantly. My Gentoo experience was in 2004-06 - I've seen the 2.4->2.6 kernel transition, the adoption of udev and hal, and other similar "let's break it and make it anew, with blackjack and hookers" kind of fun

this. my experience with gentoo ran from 2003 -> 2005 or 2k6 and while it was good fun, making the transition to fedora was the greatest improvement to my productivity using linux. I think that being 'closer to the hardware' to learn was significant in my early linux days, I prefer being a little 'further from the hardware' now that i have 'real' work to do.

Re:What a load of crap

[bruceslog]

It's not just users. Applications still aren't being written to work properly with non-administrator accounts. I just installed SimplyAccounting 2010 on Windows XP and started getting weird errors poking around in it using a Limited Account, but switching to an Administrator account, no more errors.

I agree, the problem with Windows is not so much the OS itself but poorly written applications.

One of the largest examples is World of Warcraft. After five years, it still insists on storing all of its data in its program directory. I actually had to install it outside of Program Files to get it to work on Vista, even with UAC turned off and logged in as Administrator (the account, not an account in that group).

I think more software developers need to look at Firefox, a good example. Data, including plugins, are kept in the user's home. Different users can have different plugins and data, and everything just works even on a properly-secured system.

Blizzard can even download the source code to figure out basic stuff like "where to put files" because after all these years of writing Windows games, they still lack that basic knowledge.

Actually, in Windows 7, WoW installs itself all over ones hard drive. In Win7, WoW primarily installs into the Users-Public folders by default, apparently to avoid UAC issues, especially while updating. ( Users-Public-Games-World of WarCraft ). But it now also installs files into several other folders throughout the hierarchy. Like the update and cache info in the Users-[your user name ]- AppData-Local-Blizzard Entertainment folder. And a log file in ProgramData-Blizzard, as well as dll files and Uninstall info in Program Files-Common Files- Blizzard Entertainment-World of Warcraft. There may be other locations now as well, but the point is Blizzard must have heard your wish, because now WoW is 'installed' into so many different places in my hard drive that I'd have trouble backing this one particular application up easily on a regular basis. I don't like the way it installs now in Windows 7. I'd rather it all be in one place, so I don't have to hunt all over my hard drive in order to back this program up. Or to remove it.

Wiser? WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

How is allowing root privileges to random users an indication of wisdom in random users?

Re:Wiser? WTF

[sexconker]

How is allowing root privileges to random users an indication of wisdom in random users?

It's not.
It's an indication that you believe your users are wiser than the average users, or at least that you expect them to become so.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[Cro Magnon]

It's an indication that you believe your users are wiser than the average users, or at least that you expect them to become so.

And THAT is an indication that the Fedora developers are NOT particularly wise.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[amorsen]

Actually the Fedora assumption was the exact opposite: That we can't expect to pop up a dialog asking the user for the root password to approve the installation of software, and have the user make the right decision every time. It is better to make a list of safe software which can't compromise an installation, and allow the user to install that without prompts.

This is not without problems, but once it is done right, the system will be less dependent on users making the right choices.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[jedidiah]

Simply put: you can't be certain that they sysadmin is the only person using the box.

Even with a "simple Windows desktop" install you can't assume that sort of thing. After 20+
years, the use patterns of mundane desktop users have caught up to a server OS like Unix. One
would think that this would not be the time that Fedora would decide to backslide and start
revisting old Microsoft mistakes that even they seem to be trying to get away from.

The old Unix security design principles still hold. If anything they are MORE true than when
Unix was first created.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[Drantin]

[...] It is better to make a list of safe software which can't compromise an installation [...]

Except that you can't guarantee that the list of software is really safe, just that there are no currently known vulnerabilities.

If at some time in the future a vulnerability is found and a malicious user can just install the application and exploit it to get real root access and do whatever they feel like.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[amorsen]

Yes, one of the challenges is that a revocation list is necessary. That doesn't invalidate the idea.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[mikael_j]

Every since desktop Linux distros started pulling the whole "regular users can use sudo to do anything they want" thing I've felt a lot less secure using them, the root password is so that only root can install stuff, in that sense security is actually heightened compared to the "sudo for everyone and everything" distros. Of course, if the owner of a computer hands out the root password to anyone who asks for it then there is just as little security as with the sudo bunch.

/Mikael

Re:Wiser? WTF

[element-o.p.]

What do you recommend, then?

In a corporate environment, I would assume that the sys admins are (or at least should be) knowledgeable enough to modify the sudoers file to provide more appropriate permissions. Problem solved.

The home user environment is more complicated, however. If you are building a PC for home use, where the end-user will also be the sys admin (and probably won't have a clue), I only see two choices. You can just prevent all home users from doing anything (like installing new software) that requires root access, but that won't work -- the machine will have to be updated eventually, and either the distro will be horribly bloated or will end up lacking some programs that at least some people will want. You have already raised concerns about giving regular users sudo permissions, so apparently that's not a good choice either. Unfortunately, I see no third option.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[jedidiah]

"regular users" cannot use sudo to do anything they want.

Admin users can. If you don't give admin privs to the user, they won't be able to use sudo.

That's rather the whole point of sudo to begin with. This is why sudo has
been used in serious server Unix deployments since anyone got the idea to
use it in Linux.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[h4rr4r]

This is as close as you can get. You can also force auto-updates via anacron to avoid the latter situation.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[Rockoon]

Except that you can't guarantee that the list of software is really safe, just that there are no currently known vulnerabilities.

I would care about this point if you could guarantee that the OS itself is safe.

Since we cannot guarantee that the OS is safe, its definitely hyper-prophylactic to shun a "safe software" list.

After all, the reverse is already common. Lots of software comes with a list of approved OS's and wont install without warning on non-approved OS's.

Re:Wiser? WTF

[mikael_j]

I'm not complaining about sudo, I'm just saying that these days it seems the default for a lot of desktop distros is that all users have the right to use sudo (or rather, the GUI-fied versions used by desktop distros) so it's little more than clicking "Yes, I do wish to install malware" when it comes to actual security.

/Mikael

Re:Wiser? WTF

[Cro Magnon]

Is it ALL users? I know Ubuntu sets up a default user with sudo privileges, but I had ASSumed that additional users were "normal".

Fedora

[hey]

I use Fedora because you always get the latest stuff. I've never had a major problem -- used all 12 releases.

Re:Fedora

[gbarules2999]

I use whatever works on my machine. Fedora is usually good enough, though I have swapped to Ubuntu at times.

The way that I use my computer makes it so that the OS rarely matters anyway. I jsut use Linux because it doesn't annoy me, and Fedora works, so here I stay. There's no real reason past that.

Re:Fedora

[benjamindees]

That's the one thing users should realize about Fedora. You always get the latest stuff, whether you want it or not. If your usage is more slanted towards having the same setup for years at a time, it's a distro that requires some maintenance. If you can handle a more rapid pace of change, however, security updates and new features are forthcoming.

Re:Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not disagreeing with fedora is the easiest way to stay current and i didn't run into any problems because of it either, however with other distros you can add on the latest software from OBS/PPAs and keep a stable base while running more current software on top of it (or visa versa if you prefer to keep track of underlying software).

For me Fedora was nice but i couldn't be arsed to fight with selinux anymore, yum was slow and installing closed software was too difficult (it wasn't that hard, but when opensuse/debian/ubuntu offer zypper/apt based installation and fedora doesn't core because their distro is aimed at "advanced users", I wonder if there is less elitism in debian?)

Re:Fedora

[neophytepwner]

Does anyone knowledgeable about Linux distros know which one provides the best video driver support (for mobile platforms)? I use Ubuntu and have had many issues with trying to run anything in 3D or Flash plugins.

Re:Fedora

[FedeTXF]

When I installed Fedora 4, I always had a hard freeze when accessing the US robotics modem (full V.90 modem in an 8 bit ISA card). And ever since Fedora 2 the serial port mouse never worked out of the box. Other distros did not have those issues.

Re:Fedora

[joe_frisch]

I like Fedora, but it treats fonts in a strange way the prevents some applications (EPICS) we have at my lab from running. I found a work-around in fedora8 and 9, but after 10 haven't figured out how to make it work.

Re:Fedora

[idontgno]

Very true. I ran Fedora on the household server for a few years, but the in-place upgrade to Fedora 9 blew everything up. Not quite bleeding edge, but at least bruising.

I realized then that (A) it's not my day-to-day desktop box, so I don't need to keep up with the distro Joneses, and (B) I can keep the RedHat heritage (and admin knowledge) without the Fedora treadmill by switching to CentOS. And I've been happy with that for a couple of years now.

Re:Fedora

[h4rr4r]

What problems specifically?
Video driver support is not really distro based, just based on kernel version and if you are installing a binary driver or not.

Re:Fedora

[Culture20]

I was working on a VPN project with various distros when suddenly l2tpd disappeared on my Fedora VM. Took me a bit to notice that it was replaced with xl2tpd. Not even a symlink pointing to the new binary. That was kind of annoying, but I did start compiling xl2tpd on on the other distros since it worked better. I don't know how many other things they replace this way, but if you can't trust command names to remain static after an ordinary yum -y update, then I'd not even trust it for a stable desktop distro.

Re:Fedora

[neophytepwner]

Well I am using 2.6.31-16-generic. My problem is that the flash plugin for firefox tends to cause flickering video. I have updated plugins. Because my graphics card is close to junk I can't really do too much; however, I used to be able to render like 60fps in the Steam engine (source) when I had windows installed, but windows had some serious security issues so I swapped to linux.

Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh?

It doesn't matter at all

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Does the distro work with your printer without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro work with your audio hardware without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro switch between all the resolutions supported by your video hardware?
Does the distro have a reasonably good package installation mechanism?
Does the distro support your applications without special package installation requirements?

If the answer is affirmative to all of the above, then you've got yourself a winner. It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features. Otherwise, the distros are just flavored differently. It's all the same under the hood.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[bertoelcon]

And these are the reasons Windows still has marketshare. The last 2 are not covered by Windows but because its already got the marketshare then the apps are easy to find. Not trying to troll but that is why it does "just work", even with bugs and holes aplenty.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "Does the distro work with your network card?" This should be the top focus of any distribution. I have an old wireless cheap PnP card that isn't supported by default in most distros.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Monkeedude1212]

Does the distro work with your printer without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro work with your audio hardware without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro switch between all the resolutions supported by your video hardware?
Does the distro have a reasonably good package installation mechanism?
Does the distro support your applications without special package installation requirements?

Don't have/need a printer
Don't need audio
Only need 1 decent resolution
A Live CD!
The applications I need are -practically- built into the distro

Hooray for using Linux Distros as Servers, Routers, and other @ home network enhancements!

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[onefriedrice]

It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.

I would just point out that everything in your list was available before Ubuntu in distributions such as Mandrake. I'm not going to say you're wrong, though, since Ubuntu did bring something important to the table which apparently did provide a boost: a rich guy who wanted to spend a lot of it.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Z1NG]

I would add to that list:

Does the distro work with your wireless card without any complicated installation procedures.

At least that was a pain for me (as I am an uber n006). After a lot of googleing the solution was relatively pain free in ubuntu. I agree with your points though, the best distribution is the one that works for you and Ubuntu seems to do a pretty good job all around (for a general user). I've been meaning to try out Lubuntu and just haven't gotten around to it. Anyone have positive experience with it on an older, low-mem system?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

And these are the reasons Windows still has marketshare.

The only reason is because it comes pre-installed when you buy the machine, and most people don't give a shit about the OS. Try looking at what OS is used in most consumer electronic devices, from phones to HDTVs. Clue: it ain't windows.

As for devices working with windows out of the box, that's a myth. You have to hope you have a driver disk around for what you have in your machines, and have network access to hunt them down online.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Cro Magnon]

My experience with Mandrake, pre-Ubuntu is that it was buggy as hell. For whatever reason, I would say that Ubuntu has raided the bar for Linux distros.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[armanox]

Funny how all that always worked for me in Red Hat Linux (I started on RH6.1), years before Ubuntu (ok, I didn't have the last 2).

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[RanCossack]

And these are the reasons Windows still has marketshare. The last 2 are not covered by Windows but because its already got the marketshare then the apps are easy to find. Not trying to troll but that is why it does "just work", even with bugs and holes aplenty.

I don't want to troll, either, but this really isn't the case; I tried to reinstall Windows on one of my machines for dual-boot (fresh setup on a new drive) using a generic, non-customized XP disk, and it is amazing how much work it was -- hunting drivers down, having to download extra drivers to a USB key so I could get online, and so on.

You could say Microsoft does a lot of work with its partners to ship customized Windows distros, but out of the box, Windows is pretty bad; we all just either don't have to deal with it or take it for granted.

(Or don't deal with it at all.)

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I would say that Ubuntu has raided the bar for Linux distros.

but they never should have switched the 's' and 'd' keys...

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[pydev]

The last 2 are not covered by Windows but because its already got the marketshare then the apps are easy to find. Not trying to troll but that is why it does "just work", even with bugs and holes aplenty.

That's not my experience. I just spent hours reinstalling my laptop, and very little "just worked". And screen resolution, wireless networks and audio settings in particular remain a game of chance: sometimes they work, sometimes they fail mysteriously, both because of bad drivers and because of pathetically bad user interfaces.

On drivers, screen, audio, and hardware, Windows is at best equal to Ubuntu. On installation, maintenance, and user interface it is already clearly worse. The only reason Windows still is going strong is inertia and installed base. If Windows were a new product, people would just laugh at it.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[pmontra]

Mod parent up!

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[onefriedrice]

My experience with Mandrake, pre-Ubuntu is that it was buggy as hell. For whatever reason, I would say that Ubuntu has raided the bar for Linux distros.

Maybe. I have no experience with Mandrake or "Mandriva" for that matter; I have only heard several times that Mandrake excelled at the types of things the OP listed. However, I do personally know of at least one pre-Ubuntu distro with all the "necessities" listed: YDL. Though Ubuntu is not my every-day distro, I have nothing at all against it; as distros go it is definitely a good choice for all kinds of users (not just "n00bs" as is often assumed). A lot of people I know think of Ubuntu as Linux itself, but again, that's a testament of the Canonical marketing power and hype than any actual raising of any bar. We had many choices of quality distros before Ubuntu, just as we do today, and the biggest thing lacking back in the day was marketing. Certainly I mean no disrespect by pointing out that marketing was Ubuntu's biggest contribution.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this one of these "choose two" things?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Interoperable]

It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.

The "works out of the box" mindset has been around for a while in many distros before Ubuntu. What Ubuntu has done, is gotten itself packaged with netbooks, thus gaining sufficient market share to convince hardware makers to support Linux more rigorously. Furthermore, Ubuntu sacrifices out-of-the-box usability for open-source idealism (not that I have any complaint with that) so people should take that into consideration; although non-free software is easily installable from repositories.

The one thing that Ubuntu really contributed, is a huge collection of simple how-to guides for relatively complex tasks in the Linux environment. An Arch forum topic usually goes: "Help!," "Ok, did you RTFM?," "Yes," "Ok, did you download the API documentation and try to write a kernel module?," "A what?," "Go install Ubuntu." On the other hand, Ubuntu help topics will explain how to find the GUI settings menu if need be. I don't think one approach is better than the other, but I do think there is a need for distros that have communities who are willing to do some hand-holding.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[HockeyPuck]

Does the distro work with your printer without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro work with your audio hardware without any complicated installation procedures?
Does the distro switch between all the resolutions supported by your video hardware?
Does the distro have a reasonably good package installation mechanism?
Does the distro support your applications without special package installation requirements?

It's questions like this that scare Joe Sixpack away from Linux. If all the major distributions were sold at BestBuy and Joe Sixpack walked in and wanted to buy Linux, he'd have no idea which one to get. KDE vs GNOME? If he wants to buy a Logitech Keyboard and mouse, I doubt he'll see SuSE/Ubuntu/Fedora on the back of the box for the Logitech Compact Keyboard Pro, which btw is a pretty generic $29 USB keyboard. It might work, but atleast Joe Sixpack that it'll work with winXP/Vista/7 because it'll say it on the box.

It's a shame that while all the different distros are good for Linux as a whole, the fact that there are so many distros makes it tough for the avg user to get into it. I consider myself pretty linux savy and the above list of questions makes me start to get nervous. Linux and hardware, it should just work.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with the last statement.
I worked at a big box store and know how much work goes into a computer to make it 'ready'.

I also know that the overwhelming majority of users can not do simple tasks like install an AV program (and pay us 50-100$ to do it).
A lot of geeks think the world has their computer knowledge. Ask anyone who works in tech support in a large company... there are stories galore.

I tech support for family and none of my relatives knew how to install and uninstall programs or do any of the basic maintenance.
They dont know any more now that I installed Mandriva-KDE4.3 for them but my support time has been cut by 90% now.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

And these are the reasons Windows still has marketshare.

Nah. Main reason is most of the driver and install issues are figured out by the vendors at the factory. Once it comes out of the box the users are willing to take lots of punishment when it comes to Windows. Things dont work. Crapware installed by vendor keeps nagging them to upgrade and get the "new and exciting features". Security holes. Forced to buy anti virus products. Vendor lock. Upgrade treadmill....

Through it all the people suffer stoically. But when you suggest switching to Linux they balk. The first thing that does not work, they bitch to high heaven and run back to their captors. One would think the typical PC user is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

There are many reasons why Windows has its market share. "It just works" is not one of them.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[maxume]

Vista and 7 probably have some additional hardware support in the box...

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[gbarules2999]

Windows 7 is a little better, and this is coming from a Linux user. So they are trying.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Synchis]

I was going to reply with pretty much the same thing, but you about covered it.

I switched to Ubuntu about 3 years ago, and haven't used windows on my desktop system since.

If I were to install Windows XP on my system now, I would spend hours trying to track down the right drivers for my system.
If I were to install Windows Vista on my system now, It would be unstable and slow, and I would have to track down drivers for my hardware.
I tried to install Windows 7 on my system to try it out. I never did get the sound to work, and the wireless networking barely worked through a cludged generic driver.

If I install Ubuntu, everything works, and its done in like 20-30 mins, a complete usable system. Even my printer works.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jedidiah]

Ubuntu also brought something else to the table: The Debian package manager.

RPM was clearly inferior. Debian despite of it's other tradeoffs always had
a packager that was just the bees knees. I even defected from Mandrake to
Debian myself over this.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Hatta]

If all the major distributions were sold at BestBuy and Joe Sixpack walked in and wanted to buy Linux, he'd have no idea which one to get.

If I walk into Best Buy and want to buy Windows 7, I'd have no idea which one to get.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[psithurism]

As for devices working with windows out of the box, that's a myth

I don't need cutting edge hardware, so I have used windows intentionally (I do give a shit about the OS) to discover the hardware I need, sometimes just to copy the settings from the windows device manager into Linux configuration files.

But I would agree with you if you had said software; I recently got a machine with Vista running on it and I now constantly hunt down tutorials on getting my old XP software up and running. I bet windows 7 is even worse.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Short of a SNAFU*, 1/2/3 are going to be the same across these three because they mostly will be running the same CUPS/ALSA+kernel/xserver, in my experience unless something goes horribly wrong in a distro, switching to another distro isn't going to magically fix your problems and you'll need probably have to do something crazy either way, but this is just my experience YMMV

*no suse i haven't installed flgrx, you should fucking know I'm using your package manager!

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

A few more:

Does the distro recognize and auto-configure multiple monitors correctly (including 3d and compositing), even if the monitors are of different sizes and resolutions?
Does the distro work well with KVM switchers?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

I think you will have precisely the same problems with an 8 year old Linux distro as well. SATA won't be supported, newer NIC that don't have an emulation mode won't be supported. Newer video cards won't be supported by X, etc... Now, granted, once you get the basics working you should be able to update but you will still have most of those same issues.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Voyager529]

I agree with you to a certain point. A standard XP disc does require lots of maintenance to get up to speed, I won't argue that. Sometimes I wonder which source the OS gets more data from - the disc or Windows Update, 'cuz it feels like I'm downloading half an operating system after the initial installation.

At the same time, there are two other points that make it an unfair comparison. First off, XP is nearly a decade old. Comparing a vintage-2001 version of Windows to a vintage-2009 distro of Linux (any distro) is an unfair comparison. Comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu 9.04 would be a bit more fair; both of them worked OOTB with similar hardware and most of the undetected stuff was consistent (nVidia chipset and Sigmatel Audio both worked, Logitech LCD and M-Audio Connectiv box didn't work on either). Conversely, I don't have versions of Linux from vintage-2001 to test on the same hardware, but I'm guessing my SLI'd GeForce 8700M's wouldn't get much further than a generic SVGA driver from most distros of that era, any more than XP provides out of the box. Second, while Windows does tend to require visits to various third party manufacturers to get drivers, most of them tend to be Installshield next->agree->next->finish->reboot affairs, whether downloaded or coming from the CDs that ship with hardware. Sure it's a bit time consuming to gather them, but in most cases that can be done in less than an hour over DSL or cable. No matter whose fault it is, ultimately I've found that in the vast majority of cases that if $HARDWARE doesn't work out of the box with a given distro, then getting it to work can easily become a rather time-consuming process of forum searching, terminal commands, and dependency downloads, the scope of which depends on which piece of hardware needs to be supported.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

It aint Linux either. Yes, it's used on *some* consumer electronic devices, but nowhere near "most". "most" would be an embedded OS, like VXWorks or even just a microcontroller OS.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[radish]

Well it is my experience. I just put Win 7 on all my machines at home, including the couple which were running Ubuntu Desktop. The UI is better (no really, it is), the install was easier (again, really) and laptop battery life was better in at least one case. I still have Ubuntu on my server because the very idea of a Windows server makes me feel a little ill, but for the desktop Win 7 does everything I need easily and cleanly. Of course I'm not everyone, and I'm glad there are options.

Out of interest, which version of Windows were you trying to install, and how old is the laptop? The only problems I had with 7 were on an older laptop which Intel mysteriously refuse to release drivers for. I got it working reasonably easily with a generic driver but Aero doesn't work.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Just working (90+ percent of the time) is more than good enough. You other points are still valid, but it does work. I've re-installed any and all Windows that came already installed. I've also installed numerous flavors of Linux. Most recently Ubuntu. Personally the installation of the OS is not what I would say is the limiting feature. Installing/uninstalling applications is still much different and more confusing in Linux. I'm not saying it's hard for those who know, but for those who do not, it is a bit of a learning curve. So, the fact that 99% of Windows users can find an application, install it, uninstall it and have it work most of the time exactly the same, without using command line interface; well, that is a huge usability win. Linux has made great strides in this arena, but it isn't where Windows is, and that may or may not be a bad thing.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jedidiah]

...except that 8 year old version of Linux is not an actively supported payware commercial product.

Windows is not gratis and it doesn't have a 6 month release cycle that includes ALL DRIVERS.

Installing a copy of XP is not like installing a copy of Linux that has been in a time capsule for 8 years.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[onefriedrice]

Ubuntu also brought something else to the table: The Debian package manager.

So the most notable contribution of Ubuntu for you is a package manager which existed before Ubuntu... Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is actually in support of the point I made.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Just Some Guy]

And these are the reasons Windows still has marketshare.

What is this? Proof by counterexample? Let's try those criteria against my wife's HP laptop:

Does the distro work with your printer without any complicated installation procedures?

"Where'd I put the driver CD for the HP printer that Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X supports out of the box?"

Does the distro work with your audio hardware without any complicated installation procedures?

Ask a Creative owner.

Does the distro switch between all the resolutions supported by your video hardware?

"Oh look! 640x400 until I find the right driver on nvidia.com, except that now it's telling me to use the special drivers packaged by my laptop vendor and not the "generic" ones directly from Nvidia."

Does the distro have a reasonably good package installation mechanism?

On Windows? LOL. Even billg agrees that "Add/Remove Programs" is a stupid name for an app that doesn't actually add programs.

Does the distro support your applications without special package installation requirements?

Windows supports precious few of the Linux apps I need to do my job. Mac users would have similar complaints.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[EvanED]

I don't want to troll, either, but this really isn't the case; I tried to reinstall Windows on one of my machines for dual-boot (fresh setup on a new drive) using a generic, non-customized XP disk...

How old was this machine? Keep in mind that XP is over 8 years old now. Even SP3 is a year and a half. If your computer is more than 2 years old at the newest it's completely unreasonable to not expect some driver issues, and 2 years is even being quite generous (that's assuming that when they started pressing CDs with SP3 on it they also updated their drivers).

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[NeoSkandranon]

The real, honest answer for either OS is: It depends entirely on your hardware.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an extremely good point. Why windows doesn't just have a handful of "good enough" network drivers is beyond me. It's the only thing you need to get everything else on the machine so if you're going to be lazy at least do that!

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Evanisincontrol]

Don't need audio

I would argue that you are not a typical desktop user, which is clearly what the GP was getting at.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal evidence is worthless. This is the problem with modern news/politics. I for example ...

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

depending if your hardware is new or old, use Windows XP for old, use Win 7 for new.

Also, if you're using non-customized Win XP disk... wtf, use Windows XP SP3 slipstreamed, not that it really makes any difference for drivers, but for securitys sake.

simple, really.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Just Some Guy]

Flamebait, huh? Guess I gored someone's pet ox.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Monkeedude1212]

I was just pointing out that I don't even use Linux as a Desktop. I use it for everything else.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Try looking at what OS is used in most consumer electronic devices, from phones to HDTVs.

Clue: The goals of Windows are separate from goals of Linux. Also, Linux is free.

As for devices working with windows out of the box, that's a myth. You have to hope you have a driver disk around for what you have in your machines, and have network access to hunt them down online.

Um, you said windows comes pre-installed. A sane person would know that it comes with the drivers installed. Also re-installing the OS is (in most cases) done via the vendor's OS recovery CD/DVD which contains pre-baked drivers thus not requiring any "hunting" for drivers to get stuff working out of the box. MS doesn't sell computers. They don't have a responsibility for windows to work out of the box.

Try to think before vomiting your brains contents. Or you can just admit to being a F/OSS cheerleader, that would explain quite a bit.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jim_v2000]

Try Windows 7, it's much better. I installed it on my desktop (which is about three clicks), ran Windows Update, and it pulled down all of my drivers. Same thing on my desktop...except the video driver, which I had to get from Sony (special Nvidia driver that controls the brightness buttons too).

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jim_v2000]

"It just works" for most people means that they can get to the Facebooks.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[tepples]

As for devices working with windows out of the box, that's a myth. You have to hope you have a driver disk around for what you have in your machines

On Windows, at least you get a driver CD when you buy the hardware new in box. On Linux, you don't because the driver on the CD is Windows-only: either it's kernel-mode or it (usually) doesn't work in Wine. So you have to cross-reference what's available in the store near you against a distribution's hardware compatibility list to be sure that you don't buy a paperweight.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

Installing a copy of XP is *EXACTLY* like installing a copy of Linux that has been in a time capsule for 8 years. Pay has nothing to do with it.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[tepples]

Why windows doesn't just have a handful of "good enough" network drivers is beyond me.

Windows won't have a network driver for any NIC made after Windows was first published. However, it does have a driver for USB mass storage.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[tepples]

On drivers, screen, audio, and hardware, Windows is at best equal to Ubuntu.

At a big-box store, I can buy printers that list Windows system requirements and possibly Mac OS X system requirements. They do not list Linux system requirements. So how am I to know, while I am still in the store, whether or not a CUPS/Linux driver for a given inkjet printer is available, or whether or not a SANE driver for a given flatbed scanner is available?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[poopdeville]

And let's not forget that people still actively maintain and back port to the 2.4 kernel line. That's got to be at least 8 years old now, right? So even an "eight year old" distro could potentially support up-to-date hardware via rolling updates.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your distro easily supports multiple displays without frustrating results?
Does your distro handles easy and fast access to wireless networks?

Linux (Ubuntu, etc) is doing well, but they are still missing some important features for non-tech-savvy users. I recently attempted to install Xubuntu in a machine with dual monitors (one analog, one digital), and the system refuses to use the analog, and uses the maximum resolution of the analog in the digital. Thus, unless you properly tweak xorg.conf (which is not a default file now), you end up with an unused analog monitor and a sub-utilized digital one.

The wireless on the other hand, takes a fairly good amount of time to connect.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

And I would say Cro-Magnon raided the bar before typing.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[element-o.p.]

I would add just one thing to your list above: Does the distro support your *wireless* network hardware without complicated (and reoccurring) setup procedures?.

This is the #1 reason why I have switched to Ubuntu from Gentoo on my laptop -- IME, Ubuntu detects wireless hardware, detects nearby access points, tells you what kind of encryption (if any) they are using, and prompts you to enter a password whenever necessary. Wireless on Debian (Sid) was a PITA, but ultimately worked (although I have to figure all of this out on my own, then update a sym-link in /etc/network/ to change between networks). Wireless on Gentoo would usually work, but every time I ran an emerge --update world, I would have to reinstall the Intel drivers and tools and spend a week or two tweaking all the settings before I could get wireless working again. On some networks, I *never* got it working. I've actually had better luck connecting Ubuntu to wireless networks than my wife or my daughter's Windows laptops.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[element-o.p.]

To each their own, but I always liked Gentoo's emerge. I'm still new to Debian based distros (Debian Sid courtesy of a Knoppix HD install -- long story -- and Ubuntu on two work laptops), so maybe I just haven't learned the technique. What bugs me about apt-get or dpkg is that I haven't found a way to search for a package, if I don't know what it's called in the repository except by going to Google. On Gentoo, for example, I run emerge --search CGI and I get a listing of all the packages that contain "CGI" in the package name (mod_cgi, fastcgi, etc.) I haven't figured out a similar feature for apt-get or dpkg, despite reading the man pages. As for RPM...I haven't spent much time with RH-based distros, so I don't feel qualified to answer.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jedidiah]

IOW: you have to know what you are buying.

It's like the burden of having to know what resolution that scanner supports
or what the shutter speed of that camera is or whether or not that printer
is an inkjet or laser or whether or not it prints in color or duplex.

We've elevated consumer ignorance to the point where we don't
expect people to know what they're buying any more.

OTOH, I have forgotten to be properly paranoid about Linux support with
a couple of devices lately and suffered no ill effects for it.

That bogeyman is not as ugly as it used to be.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[h4rr4r]

Linux embedded has a far bigger market then VXWorks.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jedidiah]

Not at all. It is (or rather was) a "supported" product.

Lemmings like to whine about "support". If what you claim is really true than "support" is COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS.

Software is "current" up to the date it becomes unsupported. It's release date is just fodder for weak excuses.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Ironchew]

The Linux community (as well as BSD, etc.) have found themselves on the short end of a consumerist hardware industry. I'm not pretending that Linux doesn't have its own faults, but 9 times out of 10, the problem is hardware support, which is entirely the device manufacturer's fault. Similarly, 9 times out of 10, a BSOD in Windows is a crappy third-party device driver implemented in kernel space that nobody except the proprietor is able to fix. If anybody could read up on how a device works, the community would be in charge of making a quality driver. Software runs on hardware; as long as device manufacturers refuse to open up documentation, free software will be at a disadvantage by default.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

Not really. Linux has more share than any single other vendor, but they still have less than 50% of the market. I misspoke earlier when I said "an embedded OS" i meant other embedded OS's account for more share, and that doesn't even include the devices that don't use a general purpose OS.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[colinrichardday]

That depends on what one means by "Windows support". It is true that Windows supports LaTeX in the sense that there are LaTeX implementations for Windows. However, I don't know of a Windows version that includes LaTeX, or Python, or a C/C++ compiler.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[colinrichardday]

Of course, paying $15 for a Linux magazine that has Ubuntu 9.10 on it is so hard.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

...Otherwise, the distros are just flavored differently. It's all the same under the hood.

Well, there is at least another difference in the distros and that is the patch/build of the kernel and applications. Each distro adds their own secret sauce to the mix.

For example, you could look at Fedora and see that the developers have added a patch to the media players (Totem, in particular) that explicitly disables the volume control if you use anything but Pulseaudio. They actually went out of their way to break the media players if you don't use Pulseaudio. No real reason to spend time designing and programming the patch (other distros work fine without pulseaudio) but Fedora has an agenda to push Pulseaudio and so they did.

I think the distros *are* very much alike but it's the differences that you need to consider.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[gabba_gabba_hey]

apt-cache search CGI

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Plekto]

If the answer is affirmative to all of the above, then you've got yourself a winner. It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features. Otherwise, the distros are just flavored differently. It's all the same under the hood.

Which is a good thing, really. This trend finally seems to be accelerating, which is great. But some are clearly better than others.

My favorite right now is Ubuntu+ (also known as Mint), because it does that extra bit of A/V and connectivity hand-holding for those who just want a solution and not the "fun" of manually tweaking everything. I can. I just don't want to any more. But you're right - work like this is forcing all of them to finally start making Linux and BSD work as actual modern operating systems and not as some hobbyist's toy.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I think the point he was making was that Mandrake was buggy. I also would like to add it had some financial shenanigans that placed a cloud over it.

I also use Mandrake during its heyday. It had some neat features that tried to make Linux easier, but it was mostly a Red Hat distribution that used KDE instead of Gnome.

So I think you're both right. Meaning, Ubuntu was created by someone with sound financial resources, and they based their distribution on a package manager that didn't suck.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[adamofgreyskull]

For a second I couldn't remember the last time I had to look at a hardware compatibility list, but then it hit me...when I was shopping for a new video card. I went with a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500TV by the way. Oh and the time before that it was when shopping for a new modem. I went with a Diamond Supra 56k...

Maybe I've been lucky, or the hardware I buy just isn't esoteric enough, but everything just works for me, and has done for ~8 years running Slackware, of all things. New DVD burner, new nvidia graphics card, dual wide-screen monitors, digital camera, Razer gaming mouse, USB SD/Compact Flash/etc. card reader all worked with so little pain I was actually shocked, because even though it hasn't been my experience, this FUD about hardware compatibility seeps in at the edges.

Now, *software* compatibility is another matter, but even now I find myself buying games without checking Wine's appdb first. The only game I have that I can't run in Linux is a copy of Supreme Commander that a friend gave me. Left 4 dead runs a little choppily, but that's not helped by my now aging video card...time to go shopping :)

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Tubal-Cain]

True, but I'm not going to install the 8-year-old distro when the 2-months-old distro doesn't cost anything. With Windows, on the other hand, I probably wouldn't have upgraded yet.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[ImprovOmega]

Honestly most of the driver problems with Windows are fixed if you install a copy that has SP3 slipstreamed in it. Installing an RTM copy of Windows XP is a PITA on modern hardware, SP3 slipstream? Not that bad at all. Of course, as with any OS, if you're using some incredibly esoteric hardware you *will* have to track down the driver for it. That just goes with the territory.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is Windows is as user friendly as Linux was 8 years ago?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Culture20]

Windows 7 doesn't automagically install drivers for all slightly old hardware either. There's only so much space on that... DVD?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[geminidomino]

Paying $15 for a magazine should be a sterilization offense...

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[ajlisows]

The cheapest one, of course....which should do everything a home user wants to do. You could buy the most expensive one too, which will also do everything a home user wants to do.

This is assuming that the home user isn't setting up a domain, at which point I would say he isn't Joe Sixpack and should know the difference.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but why would I use an 8 year old Linux distro on new hardware when I can get a fresh current copy for free? The reason people still use XP is because (a) Vista is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to suck, and (b) both it and now Windows 7 costs serious $$

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[colinrichardday]

Except that you're paying for the DVD.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently had the "pleasure" of installing Windows 7 onto a laptop (Thinkpad T400).

11 driver downloads and 5 reboots.

Yes, they're certainly trying, I'll give you that.

I have *never* had any Linux

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[shutdown -p now]

Windows 7 doesn't automagically install drivers for all slightly old hardware either. There's only so much space on that... DVD?

It only needs to get network/WiFi drivers right (in my experience, it did that correctly in all PCs I've tried so far; so did Vista, by the way). After that, it will automagically download drivers for the rest of your hardware from Windows Update, and keep them updated in the same way.

Oh, and don't underestimate the amount of drivers on Vista/7 DVDs. Keep in mind that, unlike a typical Linux distro, where you get tons of software packages on the install disc, some of them fairly large - e.g. OpenOffice - Windows is really just Windows. So there's a lot of space for the drivers there, and it is used accordingly.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[shutdown -p now]

What's inferior in RPM compared to dpkg?

Or did you mean to compare yum to apt (which would be a more, ahem, apt comparison)? If so, what's inferior about yum?

Actually, I can name one thing: aptitude. Yeah, it's TUI, but it's so much more flexible than any "proper GUI" package manager that I've seen, and that alone is a big part of why I still stick to Debian-based distros. But that is still a power user tool. From casual user pespective, what difference does .deb vs .rpm have?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently equal problems with Slashcode, too!

That last half-sentence was deleted prior to preview (and wasn't there on preview, no really)

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[rantingkitten]

Ubuntu fits on a single CD and gets all my hardware going, on first install, almost every single time. Fully accelerated video at the correct resolution, audio, wireless, ethernet, everything. I've plugged random printers into various Ubuntu machines and had them come up and work without issue. In addition to all of this, it comes with practically everything an average user would need to get their day-to-day stuff done -- a full-fledged office suite, image editor, email, IM client, a useful browser, a useful media player, CD burner, CD ripper, and so on. Oh, and the base install is like three gigs.

Windows requires an entire DVD and clocks in at somelike like nine gigs for a base install. For all of that bloat, it comes with absolutely nothing except the useless Internet Explorer and the equally useless Windows Media Player. And with all that bloat it STILL doesn't have any drivers -- you have to have a seperate disc for that. What the hell?

Installing Windows is a ridiculous game -- install the OS, then hunt down drivers online (if you can even get online) and install them one by one, manually. Or use the OEM driver disc and spend hours removing all the crapware and party favors it leaves behind.

No, for years now I have been MUCH more confident in installing Ubuntu and knowing that I will have few, if any, hardware or driver problems. I dread every Windows install I have to do. Windows is great at turning your machine into a paperweight without some serious investment of time and effort.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[jittles]

Forced to buy anti virus products.

Current Federal Government Information Assurance requirements also mandate virus software on Linux as well.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[wiredlogic]

It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed...

To be fair and give credit where credit is due, the creation of a sane packaging system was all Debian's doing.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget apt-get, use aptitude. It can search packages in more ways than you can think of. If you need to know how, read the manual: http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[westlake]

Forced to buy anti virus products. Vendor lock. Upgrade treadmill....

I haven't been "forced" to buy anti virus products and other home security products for home use for a decade.

MSE is free for small business.

All that "vendor lock" really means to most users is that they have settled on a platform and set of applications with which they are comfortable.

It doesn't hurt if you have thirty years experience designing and marketing products for sale to the non-technical end user.

It doesn't hurt that there is probably a Win 7, XP Pro, or DosBox solution for every MSDOS and Windows program you could ever want to run.

Something like 95% of home users upgrade hardware and software when the OEM system bundle looks right.

It's scarcely a treadmill when you make the leap from a P4 CPU to quad core, the tetra byte hard drive, 8 to !2 GB RAM and DX 11 graphics in one jump.

 

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[mightyteegar]

I haven't figured out a similar feature for apt-get or dpkg, despite reading the man pages. As for RPM...I haven't spent much time with RH-based distros, so I don't feel qualified to answer.

apt-cache --names-only search cgi

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[mightyteegar]

Clarification: I didn't intend that to be snarky, just helpful. I also admit it's not exactly intuitive to use apt-cache for repo/package info mining.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will have precisely the same problems with an 8 year old Linux distro as well.

Very confusing argument. Yes, windows sucks, partly because it was stuck at XP for a decade. This is not a redeeming feature. Are you a MS apologist or what?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.

And how did they "force" every other distro to do that? It isn't like Ubuntu is known for submitting patches upstream like other distros. Ubuntu may have been influential in some respects, but I'd hardly call them the force of development.

Hardware support improved in Linux distribution because patches were submitted upstream. Not because Ubuntu used some patches down stream.

As for package management, it's been my observation that for every 20 Ubuntu user spouting off about how much more superior .deb is to .rpm, one Ubuntu user might be able to actually enumerate the differences between the package management systems available. When I ask about it, I generally get the impression that the whole argument is "I'm unfamiliar with RPM tools because I've only really used Debian tools."

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[tepples]

Ubuntu fits on a single CD and gets all my hardware going, on first install, almost every single time.

So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install? I'm talking about, for example, a SANE-incompatible flatbed scanner. Or by "my hardware" did you mean the hardware that you had already hand-picked for compatibility?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

RPM was clearly inferior.

Really ?!? With no reasons to back up such a ridiculous statement?
Someone is certainly being defensive about their package....manager. ;)

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Windows does it, it's okay for us to do it as well?

Yeah, I guess I just invented the part where people were saying that Linux was *better*. But you're right, I guess Windows and Linux are largely equivalent, except Windows runs all of the applications I have now, making Windows better.

Seriously, once Linux proponents get over this idea that, "if Microsoft does it, it's okay for us to do it too," Linux will actually work. Because this software war we're fighting is about being the best we can be, and only because we are the best are we better than everybody else (Windows included), not because we have the same flaws as Windows.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[rantingkitten]

So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?

I deal with it. I was careful to state that I would have "few if any" problems, not that "this will work 100% of the time". I don't expect anything to work all the time without a hitch.

However, I took detailed notes about installing Ubuntu versus Windows. Read them here if you care.

Never in my six-plus years of using Linux (Debian and Ubuntu) have I "hand picked" the hardware. I use whatever the hell I have around or whatever got issued to me by my employer. That's it, that's all she wrote, no exceptions.

In every case, Windows installs have been an endless cycle of hunting down drivers and rebooting and updating and finding more drivers and installing each one by one and more rebooting. In each case, Ubuntu has installed without any major issues. The biggest problem I've ever faced was Broadcom wireless cards which stopped being a problem after 6.06.

Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is not perfect, so stop acting like I ever said it was. But the driver problems it has at this point are so few and far between as to be beneath mention. Windows, on the other hand, will completely fail, guaranteed, unless you have the drivers handy on a disc or an extra computer with which you can go hunt them down and put them on a CD or USB key. It's pathetic.

The Brother printers we have at work? I was able to plug them into my Ubuntu laptop, and connect to it over the network. Both times, it just worked. In Windows I had to hunt down drivers and spend fun time with "Add Printers" and screwing around with ports or TCP settings for it to even see the printer, nevermind operate.

I bought an M-audio midi controller. I plug it into my Ubuntu machine and it works right away. In Windows I had to break out the driver CD, which didn't work, then hunt down drivers online, and half an hour later I got it to work.

I could go on and on. Examples exist on both sides of the fence. But don't act like Windows is some paragon of compatibility. Windows itself is compatible with nothing, because Microsoft depends on the vendors to provide all the drivers and if you don't have them, well, screw you.

I know that I can install Ubuntu on any random hardware -- any random hardware -- and most of it, maybe all if it, will work. I also know that if I install Windows on any machine, it will not work without an additional five hours of finding drivers and installing them one by one and cleaning up the party favors they leave behind.

And one more thing. In Ubuntu, those drivers and modules will update, along with every other aspect of my system, in one fell swoop. In Windows, every single vendor has their own little updater and I have to tend to each of them one at a time. That's assuming they even have an updater -- sometimes I just have to remember to check the vendor website and see if there are any updates available.


In conclusion:

So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?

I don't know, smartass. What do you do when you install Windows and nothing whatsoever works that worked with your Ubuntu install?

Hmm?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?

So what do you do when you get a new PC and find that the new version of Windows that comes with it doesn't support your (perfectly functional) existing scanner?
My Cannoscan N650U has no drivers for Vista or above and the XP drivers don't work on Vista (tried them). However, it's perfectly supported by Ubuntu/Xsane and will probably still be supported in 5-10 years time. My scanning requirements are basic and infrequent and it will still be OK for what I want. If my main OS was Windows I'd have to buy a new scanner. So we have:
a) Linux - might have to do a bit of research but once it's working, it will probably carry on working until the device fails or you replace it for other reasons.
b) Windows - will work initially with no research in current version of Windows but may not work work with next version of windows, almost certainly won't work with next+1. Will probably be unusable in Windows while it is still working perfectly from a hardware point of view.

I know which I prefer.

 

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows people don't believe in heaven cause they have suffered so much. Teh linux guys are dark rangers who have seen out of the pits of grief and know that the sunshine of heaven is achieveable, and work hard for that.

Us gods just use macs.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[thinkloop]

apt-cache search cgi

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[man_of_mr_e]

Or do what everyone else does who installs XP frequently, create your own slipstreamed copy with the latest service pack and drivers. Takes about 30 minutes and there are plenty of tutorials on the web that show you in pretty brain dead detail how to do it.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[element-o.p.]

Not snarky at all, and thanks!

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

"Where'd I put the driver CD for the HP printer that Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X supports out of the box?"

A. install Hplip from the ubuntu repos. HP one of the best supporters of Linux

"Does the distro work with your audio hardware without any complicated installation procedures?

Ask a Creative owner."

I am a Creative owner and i have no problems right now with my Audigy 2

"Oh look! 640x400 until I find the right driver on nvidia.com, except that now it's telling me to use the special drivers packaged by my laptop vendor and not the "generic" ones directly from Nvidia."

A. restricted hardware manager it even pops up in the tray on Ubuntu on first boot.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally at last there is someone out there the reason why most newbie's leave Linux.
What you said is correct.
If a newbie finds it difficult or not simple to do they will leave.

point and click with a mouse is easy, no command lines.

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Just Some Guy]

Missed the part where I was talking about Windows?

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found win7 to be very helpful w/ drivers...I built a new desktop to test it out on (core i7, 3G tripple channel ram...good computer) but it is way slower than my old ubuntu 9.10 laptop (and it just pauses every once in a while (pauses, then waits a few seconds, then goes back to normal (mostly when I open a window...most windows))..I had to stop using it...about to install ubuntu on it...

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[AlongForTheRide]

Mod parent up!!!
(I'm all out of points...)

Re:It doesn't matter at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, well that was also XP, its a 8 year old operating system, imagine using linux of 8 years ago?? Try running a windows 7 install, all drivers for most computers are included

openSuse

[abigor]

Nice to see good results for openSuse. The reviewer didn't fall for the immature "Novell is evil!" absurdity.

Re:openSuse

[Interoperable]

Although, it would be worthwhile to point out that openSuSE doesn't favor KDE over Gnome. It has fully integrated the SuSE environment into both. As I understand it, the decision to set the default selection to KDE is quite arbitrary at this point.

I'll add that it's a fantastic distro for reasonably modern computers. Yast is a great tool, but the whole thing is a bit too heavyweight for netbooks or old PCs.

Re:openSuse

[houghi]

He failed to mention that openSUSE only has KDE as the standard on the DVD. The DVD allows you to easily select GNOME and with one more click XFCE (and some more options). There are both a KDE and a GNOME Live CD available on http://software.opensuse.org/

Re:openSuse

[Just Some Guy]

The reviewer didn't fall for the immature "Novell is evil!" absurdity.

In fairness, the only people of that opinion are Gnome users who don't work for Microsoft. KDE users and Microsoft employees don't seem to care.

Re:openSuse

[abigor]

And Fedora doesn't favour Gnome over KDE (at least, last time I checked, you had the choice at install time). I think he just meant that it's the default desktop.

why?

[garynuman]

you must be new here, people on a site with a heavy slant slant towards open source issues' are pretty well aware of the very basics of the top three linux distros

Root password statement is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

That quip about not needing the root password is misleading; with the release of F12 they *tried* to allow this to happen (local logged in user w/o root password installs) and the community handed them a new ***hole for it.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-November/msg00926.html
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2009-November/msg00012.html
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-November/msg01445.html

I can't think of one actual Fedora user in the real world who ever wanted a local user to be able to install packages without asking for a root password.

Re:Root password statement is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of one actual Fedora user in the real world who ever wanted a local user to be able to install packages without asking for a root password.

Quite a few people who have actually thought about it consider that the right (or at least better) direction. The response from Fedora community was so strong because they weren't informed -- it's hard to tell what it would have been otherwise.

Installing signed packages from a vendor repository is not particularly insecure, yet it happens relatively often... The root password dialog should raise all kinds of alarms for people and currently it doesn't because it comes up for everything.

Security models for a typical home notebook vs server vs corporate laptop are different, I can see this being a useful feature in several situations.

Of course

[Monkeedude1212]

If Linux Distro's were targetted for the same users, there wouldn't be anything to distinguish them amongst each other, ultimately defeating the point of having a seperate distro.

I should write an article about "Why People like different foods" and see if it makes the front page Foodnetwork.com

In all seriousness though, its a decent breakdown of the Distro's, but I've always kind of been on the impression that anyone who has seriously considered using Linux already knows what distro they expect to be using.

Re:Of course

[benjamindees]

I've always kind of been on the impression that anyone who has seriously considered using Linux already knows what distro they expect to be using.

I disagree with this. There are real philosophical differences between distros that are not immediately apparent and that can make a huge difference down the line depending on which one you choose. The average user doesn't really consider the OS at all. The average new Linux user is usually taking a leap just to consider any alternative to Windows or Apple. You could say that a new Linux user is probably installing a distro that has been recommended by a friend, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be the best choice for them.

Re:Of course

[Monkeedude1212]

The only problem with that is that I've never encountered someone jumping to Linux without having prior usage of it.

I know only 1 other Linux user in my group of socialites, and we both used it for the first time in post secondary. After learning the ins and outs of it, we were able to branch out and look at other distros to see what works best for us.

Thats just my personal experience though, and its an incredibly small sample group, so I'm not saying thats what happens all the time, its just what I've come to believe.

I haven't, nor have I seen anyone, recommend a Linux distro to a non Linux user, generally because of that leap.

Re:Of course

[blakedev]

I envy you. I've had to do installs for people who literally told me, "I don't know what Linux is I just know that I want it." and thought that "going into the code" meant editing a configuration file in their home directory. I'll let you assume what distro I installed for them.

Re:Of course

[Monkeedude1212]

"I don't know what Linux is I just know that I want it."

Good God. That sounds terrible.

Was it FreeBSD?

Re:Of course

[benjamindees]

I'll let you assume what distro I installed for them.

So which was it? I can name a hundred different variables (besides user competence) that would affect this decision, and even though Ubuntu probably stands out as the most obvious choice, the prospect of responding to that user's bug reports might make you consider a bit more mature distro.

Re:Of course

[flabordec]

I've always kind of been on the impression that anyone who has seriously considered using Linux already knows what distro they expect to be using.

I've actually been using Linux for years and years, I started using SuSE 8 and then updated to SuSE 9, which was not compatible with some of my hardware and so I switched to Ubuntu and have stuck with it ever since. Does this mean I prefer it to Fedora? I don't really know, I have never installed Fedora. Do I really know the advantages and disadvantages of Ubuntu over Fedora for my specific case? Not really, to be completely honest, I actually think they are pretty similar, but that might be because I have never used Fedora.

These articles always make me want to install and try a new distro and learn to use it, so maybe the whole point is getting people interested in other distros besides the one they currently use.

Re:Of course

[element-o.p.]

The only problem with that is that I've never encountered someone jumping to Linux without having prior usage of it.

Hi! Allow me to introduce myself.

In ~2001, I needed a database server because (I shudder to admit it) I was learning Visual Basic and wanted to write VB apps that queried a database backend. I couldn't afford a Windows server, so I bought (yes, bought) Slackware 7.1 disks from Amazon and built my first Linux machine. I had never used Linux or Unix before then, but quickly found myself loving Linux. Over the next two years, I found myself using Windows less and less until finally, I removed the Windows partition from my home computer, and have never looked back since ;)

Two things are important in the end

[Anonymous Coward]

Package management and an active online support/BBS/community. With those things you can do whatever you want with a little patience and research.

Different users

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course different distros are aimed at/preferred by different kinds of users. If every user wanted the same thing, there would only be one distro.

Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.... This is news?

might hop distro again

[__aardcx5948]

I've jumped from Archlinux (love it, but in the end... it's too much manual work) to Ubuntu 9.10 recently. I was thinking of jumping to Fedora 12 since it's close to RHEL (which we use at work) in some aspects, but OpenSUSE looks really nice, I hear it's the best KDE distribution at the moment. Problem is my NVIDIA card - no matter what tweaks you use, performance is subpar in KDE compared to an integrated Intel card in all aspects (except gaming).

Open source drivers aren't an option since you can simply not play games with them. So I guess I'm stuck with Ubuntu for now. My next laptop will most likely have ATI or Intel in it, unless NVIDIA releases a magic KDE driver of some sort.

Re:might hop distro again

[Tikkun]

I've jumped from Archlinux (love it, but in the end... it's too much manual work) to Ubuntu 9.10 recently.

Funny, I stopped using Ubuntu on my notebook over a year ago and installed Arch Linux on it for the same reason :D

Re:might hop distro again

[Vairon]

I use openSUSE 11.2 with an Nvidia graphics card (Geforce 285) without problem. What card do you have and what problem did you have?

Re:might hop distro again

[__aardcx5948]

Do you use the NVIDIA binary blob? I've a 8600M GT (mobile), the problem is poor performance in KDE compositing (moving a window isn't smooth, resizing a window results in less than 10 fps etc).

I'm not the only one with these problems, check out http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916 for example. I might give openSUSE 11.2 a try later, hopefully things have improved since last time I tried it.

How is openSUSE with drivers? 190.53 was released today for example - is there a way to install it in SUSE with the package manager?

In Ubuntu you have PPA:s, which often contain the latest software of things. (I always need the latest software - hence liking rolling release distros...)

Re:might hop distro again

[couchslug]

"I was thinking of jumping"

Just load it into a VM and see how you like it. Between live CDs and VMs, sampling many distros is dead easy.

Re:might hop distro again

[Vairon]

Yes, I'm using binary blobs. I generally use the openSUSE provided NVIDIA repository with its nvidia driver RPMs unless I discover a bug that doesn't work for them.

http://en.opensuse.org/Nvidia contains a 1-click way to install the drivers.

If those fail me, I use the latest drivers from www.nvidia.com

If those fail me, I go to http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606
and download the latest beta driver.

Who cares....

[salva84]

Who cares? I've been using Linux around 10 years ago, I'm a computer engineer, and after all, I beeing using Ubuntu until today. I've tried a lot of distros, but I've never found a better distro for me, despite I'm a programmer too.

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you're trying to impress us by being an engineer and a programmer? Most of us are, and have been a lot longer than you.

Re:Who cares....

[greenguy]

I have to agree. I get annoyed when I hear people describe Ubuntu as distro that's appropriate for Linux newbies. It's not that that's untrue, it's that it sells Ubuntu short. It makes it sound like it's dumbed down somehow, and that after using it for a while, you'd want want to move on to something more advanced. That's simply not the case. All the advanced features are there, waiting for you, as soon as you're interested in them.

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing. I'm a computer engineer architect programmer.

Re:Who cares....

[mweather]

I solder my own logic gates.

Re:Who cares....

[tubeguy]

I'm Morgan Freeman.

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with both greenguy and badanalogy guy -- and I predate microprocessors as far as computer use and programming go -- I have used and programmed it all.

Ubuntu really pushed things ahead, it just works for either beginners or advanced, is easy to maintain and build fancy stuff on top of, and did I say, it just works? My only complaint with it just now is that some things are getting harder to find for advanced users (things like xorg.config don't fly the same) and so forth, but I'm sure a little googling will fix that for me when I actually need that level of control on something, rather than just playing around.

Re:Who cares....

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Agreed, wholeheartedly so. I hopped from the sinking Windows ship after XP and started using Ubuntu on release 8.04. I must admit that I am not nearly as proficient on Ubuntu or Linux as I would like to be, but I am learning quickly. Where the first few months of my Ubuntu experience had me clicking through GUI's and resetting defaults regularly, after a few months of posting on the Ubuntu forums and getting a feel for how problems can be typically trouble-shooted, I started gediting config files and browsing through /etc on a regular basis. I started downloading some programs that could not be found in my repositories (with more confidence) and even started editing my sources list. Eventually I switched my default editor over to vim and began spitting out shell and perl scripts right and left to keep things simple for me and give me some peace of mind security wise. I've been using Ubuntu for just over a year now and, already, I am now posting advice on the Ubuntu forums more frequently than asking for it.

The point isn't that I learned quickly, its that, since I wanted to learn some of the more hardcore and advanced features of linux, it was easy for me to go out and do so once I got comfortable. The nicest thing about Ubuntu is that it doesn't scare the crap out of you the first time you use it. As a social experiment, I often take my non tech literate friends and sit them down at my central living room computer (hooked to my TV) which is running 9.04 and tell them to put on some music to listen to. None of these folk have ever used anything but Windows. None of them take more than 20 minutes and maybe 1 or 2 questions to figure it out.

Once someone gets comfortable with Ubuntu, if they want to start developing more advanced skills, they have a friendly place to ask which is easy to find (almost always google search result #1 with the word Ubuntu in it), the Ubuntu forums. When they do start asking about advanced topics, they are never dismissed as newbs or told something condescending. They are never attacked or outright flamed. Instead, if what they are asking about really is something of concern, they are told, in a rational and mature manner, about the risks they may or may not be taking. I couldn't be happier with the Ubuntu experience so far. I may decide to distro jump sometime in the future out of boredom or curiosity, but in terms of need, I really can't see a good reason to find something else.

Re:Who cares....

[armanox]

I'm Gordan Freeman.

Re:Who cares....

[selven]

And that is how a good operating system, or a good anything in fact, should be designed. Easy to use, but lets you ease in to the more complicated but powerful features at your own pace.

Re:Who cares....

[Das Auge]

My story is exactly like yours!

There's a guy on YouTube that has made many, many good videos on how to do a wide range of useful stuff on Ubuntu. His username is gotbletu. Give it a try.

Re:Who cares....

[gregthebunny]

Ditto. Except I had a couple years of Linux "tinkering" under my belt before jumping ship from Windows altogether. Once I locked onto Ubuntu 8.04, there was no turning back. And now the shoe is on the other foot. I recently started "tinkering" with Windows 7, since I've been so far removed from the game.

Re:Who cares....

[Rennt]

Ubuntu is not a toy - but it is a "desktop" distro, which means it does get in your way if you are used to managing a system the Unix way.

Which is fine - for a "desktop" user. But if you are actually interested in how the system works, you probably *will* want to move to Debian or Slackware eventually.

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

The default xorg.conf disappeared in Karmic, but so did my need to tweak the default settings. I couldn't believe how fast everything was when I popped in the live CD. Even with all the silly eye candy and bouncy windows enabled...

I think the xorg.conf file still works if you create it in the usual place.

Re:Who cares....

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Will do, it's on a post it and in my backpack for when I get home. Thanks for the info. =)

Re:Who cares....

[Blakey Rat]

Only Linux users, from my experience, still hold the illusion that "friendly to newbies" is somehow mutually-exclusive with "powerful". Also, that "increasing usability" is somehow the same thing as "making software look pretty."

You won't find that attitude in Windows users or OS X users.

Re:Who cares....

[gbarules2999]

Hey, Gordon, it's me, Barney, from Black Mesa!

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

Using any distribution other than Ubuntu as a Desktop is just not worth your time. If you are interested in how the system works you can run a KVM machine.

There you will learn that Linux(The ecosystem) internals are messy and undocumented.

I shudder to think that I would have to remember command line flags for a thousand utilities with overlapping functionality.

In OpenBSD a 5yo child could connect to a WAP-encrypted wireless connection working in two minutes from the command line because the interface is simple, clean and documented.

A command-line Linux doesn't even have working sound support until you install a thousand packages and configure undocumented settings.

Re:Who cares....

[rrohbeck]

I used to do that in high school.
Still I run Ubuntu these days, after Slackware and Redhat/Fedora in the past. I'm Windows free now so I actually run some systems as productivity tools. No more tinkering for the heck of it on those machines.

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one problem with Ubuntu and programming that I've found...which is that packages are way too split up and the default installation doesn't have things necessary for programming.

Every time I build software on a fresh Ubuntu installation, it starts out with having to search for various -dev packages and compilers, which I'm used to being part of a default installation (being a long-time FreeBSD user).

Even basic commands such as patch need to be installed separately, and this particular example was even missing from the package list until it was installed (apt-cache search patch listed all kinds of stuff but not patch itself, but apt-get install patch worked).

Re:Who cares....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have discoverd that I am not a "typical" Ubuntu user. From time to time I keep trying out Ubuntu but return to Debian because some package or another is not available from the Ubuntu repositories. Having said that, I agree that the Ubuntu help is top notch and friendly. In fact more often than not, I find the solution to my Debian problem in an Ubuntu forum. I understand why Ubuntu doesn't just use the Debian repositories directly (too stable and hence too out of date is the primary reason), but I wish I could have the best of both worlds.

Need root to install software?

[wiredog]

Why can't you just install to /usr/$username/bin? They disallow that these days?

Re:Need root to install software?

[onefriedrice]

Why can't you just install to /usr/$username/bin? They disallow that these days?

Maybe you mean /home/$USER/bin ... At least I've personally never used any *nix system where installing to user-specific directories in /usr was common; installing to your home directory is, however, very common in every UNIX flavor I've come across.

Re:Need root to install software?

[benjamindees]

/usr is not world-writable on any distro I've used.

Re:Need root to install software?

[Hatta]

I've got to say, this is a huge feature that most package managers are missing. If I can download an archive, unpack it, and run it from ~, I should be able to install a package under ~ as well.

Re:Need root to install software?

[EvanED]

Because it's a pain in the ass. Almost no package manager supports it, which means you have to do manual dependency resolution. (Package managers are, IMO, what makes the Linux way of not packaging almost all dependencies with your program, the way Windows programs typically do, remotely usable.)

Re:Need root to install software?

[ciggieposeur]

IRIX: /usr/people/$USER

Re:Need root to install software?

[ciggieposeur]

What about shared libraries? Should those be duplicated everywhere?

What about differing versions of the same package? Should user X have the old version and user Y have the new version?

What if the user installs it and the admin installs it? Should the user's package have higher precedence (PATH, MANPATH, etc.) or the system-wide package?

Re:Need root to install software?

[Hatta]

What about shared libraries? Should those be duplicated everywhere?

The user installed package should use the system library if available, otherwise install a copy under ~.

What about differing versions of the same package? Should user X have the old version and user Y have the new version?

Each user should use whatever version they want.

What if the user installs it and the admin installs it? Should the user's package have higher precedence (PATH, MANPATH, etc.) or the system-wide package?

It's up to the user to set up the PATH the way they want it.

These aren't particularly hard questions.

Re:Need root to install software?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got to say, this is a huge feature that most package managers are missing. If I can download an archive, unpack it, and run it from ~, I should be able to install a package under ~ as well.

You fail to consider that some packages/daemons are tightly integrated with the system and inherently require root access to install, access or maintain.

You can theoretically download any kind of archive, unpack it and run it from anywhere where your permissions allow.

Whether you can compile and install it however is another matter entirely.

Re:Need root to install software?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can for (AFAIK) anything that's compiled with automake. ./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

Also look into checkinstall - it helps make self-compiled programs able to be removed by the package manager.

Re:Need root to install software?

[ciggieposeur]

The user installed package should use the system library if available, otherwise install a copy under ~.

If the admin installs the library system-wide after the user(s) installed their copy, should it remove the user(s) copy?

If a system-wide library conflicts with a user-installed library, how is that resolved?

Each user should use whatever version they want.
It's up to the user to set up the PATH the way they want it.

How will that not lead right back to a Windows-like "DLL hell" situation that the package managers were specifically designed to avoid?

These aren't particularly hard questions.

You haven't thought about them enough.

Meh

[rapu]

I think that by far the most substantial difference between Ubuntu and the other distros is the semi-automatic installation of proprietary multimedia libs and hardware drivers. I used to run Fedora from FC2 to FC6 as well as Suse 9.x, and had to deal with ATI's installer and custom repos a lot. These are the primary reasons why I use Ubuntu nowadays, as all other differences these popular distros seem quite trivial. It doesn't seem very important which DE each distro ships with, as you can always install whichever you like afterwards. Same thing with default apps like IM clients, though it may take a bit of reconfiguring to integrate them with others apps. Basically, the review just seemed to compare the distros out-of-the-box, without assuming they'll ever be configured, which is kind of boring, and perhaps only of interest to inexperienced users. Speaking of which, how were they able to "manage each of them from other PCs with the OpenSSH remote control program"? I thought Ubuntu has never included sshd by default.

Re:Meh

[burnin1965]

semi-automatic installation of proprietary multimedia libs and hardware drivers

While these are not included in the Fedora package repositories there is the rpmfusion repository which is easy to setup. And once the rpmfusion repositories are setup I can tell you from experience that totem will automatically search the repository for the necessary packages to play any media file you open, you will be asked to enter the root password to install the packages, and once installed totem will start to play the media.

Re:Meh

[mrsurb]

Speaking of which, how were they able to "manage each of them from other PCs with the OpenSSH remote control program"? I thought Ubuntu has never included sshd by default.

I assume they configured it rather than just trying to manage it out-of-the-box.

no root password?

[burnin1965]

in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password

huh?

I've used every version of Fedora linux and before that I've used Red Hat Linux from version 4.2 until Fedora Core 1. I don't recall ever having the ability to install software without providing the root password. In fact, when this type of insecure feature was implemented in Fedora 12 it caused a huge uproar and the insecure feature was removed in an update.

Re:no root password?

[benjamindees]

I was thinking the same thing. That "feature" never existed. In fact, people griped about it pretty much from day one.

Re:no root password?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had exactly the same thought. Used RH 5 through 9 then switched to the Fedora camp (at Fedora 11 right now) and I can't recall *ever* having had the ability to install system-wide software (rpm, etc...) without root priviledges. WTF? Am I missing something? Is this a Gnome "feature" I am unaware of (KDE user here)?

Re:no root password?

[burnin1965]

Am I missing something? Is this a Gnome "feature" I am unaware of (KDE user here)?

Nope, I've pretty much used Gnome since about RHL6.2 with a few forays into KDE and this was never a "feature".

Senior Citizen Linux

[NukeDoggie]

Someone should make a version of Ubuntu or openSuse or Fedora or whatever that is designed for Seniors. Large Fonts, easy to use, very little duplication of apps, no problems... I bet it would spread far and wide. We have the kids checking it out, time to take the seniors... Also, why does all the netbook distros never fit the dialogs on the screen? 800x480 is not much to work with granted...

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[__aardcx5948]

I am not a senior, but I would like this too. Sometimes it feels like there's too many choices of applications - granted, each distribution comes with its own default programs for (almost) everything (IM, browser etc), but it takes time to try out all the different apps, just to discover that the feature you liked in app x doesn't exist in app y, or it's too slow, or too ugly (the most common one).

Almost sounds like a netbook distro (very simple menu interface, just the most common apps easily accessible, yet still full blown Linux underneath) would suit me... Moblin perhaps?

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Done!

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Z1NG]

You could try puppy linux.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Joey Vegetables]

That shouldn't be necessary, because if good UI design principles were followed, you could set your font sizes and screen resolution any way you wanted, and dialogs would both respect your choices and try to reformat themselves intelligently to fit them. From what I've seen, both major desktop environments (Gnome and KDE) have made significant improvements but also still have quite a ways to go. You can file UI bug reports with either team, and I'd highly recommend it.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Monkeedude1212]

In a couple of decades Shuttleworth, Torvalds, and Stallman will all be old enough to take on this project themselves.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[bheer]

Someone should make a version of Ubuntu or openSuse or Fedora or whatever that is designed for Seniors. Large Fonts, easy to use, very little duplication of apps, no problems.

The Eldy project does something like that; it's a shell over Linux (or Windows). The BBC had a story about it some time back about Eldy-based PCs being sold to the elderly.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[FlyingBishop]

After a decade of squinting at smartphones and netbooks, we'll all be taking on the project together.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should make a version of Ubuntu or openSuse or Fedora or whatever that is designed for Seniors. Large Fonts, easy to use, very little duplication of apps, no problems... I bet it would spread far and wide. We have the kids checking it out, time to take the seniors.....

Someone does.

There is a German, Swedish living, elderly gentleman who has started to tinker with something he calls Gubbuntu-Remix ("gubbe" == "old man" in Swedish). It is based on Ubuntu with Hildon. His homepage is in broken Swedish and he's very active in a lot of Swedish (and propably German language) Ubuntu related forums on the 'net. Here is his about-page where he mentions Gubbuntu-Remix. If you want more information you will have to hunt it down on a lot of different Swedish forums or perhaps contact him.

Re:Senior Citizen Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Puppy is a horrible idea for a newbie: All users run as root.
Fedora 12's idea was bad enough; Puppy is even worse.

Eldy has been mentioned in this subthread.
A former Blue Peter personality is selling boxes with that preinstalled:
http://google.com/search?q=Linux+%22+Valerie.Singleton

gewg_

root password??

[pydev]

As of this version, however, local users will need to enter the root password before they can install software (as they do on almost all other Linux distributions).'"

You don't need to enter the root password on Ubuntu or Debian; you enter your own password. And that works if you have administrator privileges, which is a choice while setting up accounts.

Re:root password??

[shutdown -p now]

Actually, you do have to enter the root password on Debian with default configuration. Ubuntu has sudo set up out of the box, and the default user account (created during installation), such that you only need to enter your own password, and disables logging as root directly, as you describe. For Debian (and any other distro), you can get that as well, but you have to do so manually.

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of kinds of gay out there, and it is downright homophobic to assume it's all of the flamboyant Richard Simmons variety.

Stop the hype BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very cool how Ubuntu has essentially forced every other distro to get up to speed on these seemingly basic features.

Please stop saying inane things.

Nothing ubuntu has done the past 3 years is any better than lets say mandriva has done.

i tried Kubuntu 7.04 to install on friends computers and found taht PCLinuxOS which was #1 then was a much better 'just works out of box' experience.

Im typing this from Kubnutu9.10 and its no different than any other KDE distro. Actually, THAT is the thing my non Linuxy friends always say... its the same thing.
Your choice of distro for a first timer is a quesstion of taste when it comes to the big distros. The REAL decision is the desktop.
Since everyone comes over has used Windows, it makes sense to use a DE that is familiar to them.

But having used every Buntu since v7, I think your statement is nothing more than fanboi driven hype.

Re:Stop the hype BS.

[jedidiah]

> Nothing ubuntu has done the past 3 years is any better than lets say mandriva has done.

          The superiority of Ubuntu has more to do with building off of a better base than
what it has done since then. Although things like the PPAs, the proprietary driver
installers and work on things like LIRC have been very handy.

          Mostly it's about not being built off such a craptastic packaging system.

          That's what allows the whole "totem-goes-and-gets-its-own-codec" thing to work out
so well.

Look alike???

[Anonymous Coward]

He lost me at the first sentence when he said they look alike on the surface. Since when did KDE look like Gnome?

Re:Look alike???

[B1oodAnge1]

since they were both graphical window managers...

it's not really an in depth article after all ;-)

What nonsense!

[FranTaylor]

Huh?

All of the things you are talking about are "solved problems" in just about every modern Linux distribution.

Your rant sounds like it was written circa 2002.

Perhaps you are talking about Fedora? Fedora is the "home distribution" for many of the projects that you mention.

Maybe you forget that Ubuntu cribbed almost all of that stuff from RedHat/Fedora?

Video resolution? Huh? Really who runs their monitor at less than the max? I'm running at 1920x1200 and there is NO reason to use anything else.

"without special package installation requirements" What does this mean? Does that mean that the distribution is bloated out with extra stuff that only a few users need? Why is this an advantage?

"It's all the same under the hood" - that is just not correct. There are some pretty MAJOR differences between the distributions regarding kernel versions, supported kernel features, versions of libraries, etc. These can be real show-stoppers when it comes time to install third-party applications.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

Video resolution? Huh? Really who runs their monitor at less than the max? I'm running at 1920x1200 and there is NO reason to use anything else.

Ever tried using a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution? The text is impossible to read. Most people run these at much lower resolutions than the hardware is capable of running at. The same is true of people with poor eyesight.

You're a classic example of why Linux has problems, claiming there is "NO reason" for something shows a lack of foresight or even imagination. Too many Linux developers feel the same. Because they don't have a problem with something, they firmly believe nobody should have a problem with something, and refuses to support it.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

"without special package installation requirements" What does this mean? Does that mean that the distribution is bloated out with extra stuff that only a few users need? Why is this an advantage?

It means "doesn't need version blah.x.01.pre-something-or-other" with "foobar support compiled in" while another app requires the same version without foobar support compiled in.

It's a common myth that Linux doesn't have shared-library hell, and 99% of the time Linux handles multiple versions of the same library just fine, but there are times when two apps need the same version of a shared library configured in different ways and won't work with the others configuration.

Re:What nonsense!

[idontgno]

You're a classic example of why Linux has problems, claiming there is "NO reason" for something shows a lack of foresight or even imagination. Too many Linux developers feel the same. Because they don't have a problem with something, they firmly believe nobody should have a problem with something, and refuses to support it.

+1 Right On

There's a lot of "If I don't need it, no one needs it" arrogance in the OS community. Part of it comes from "it works for me, I don't care about you" (which is just fundamental human nature); part of it is the longstanding "RTFM" tradition (i.e., the root geek community that Free Software sprung from put a high premium on self-help. The extreme manifestation, and also the practical reason for full source code disclosure in FOSS, is "Read the Fucking Source" as the rejoinder for someone asking for help.)

It's a cultural weakness now that FOSS has spread into the general public. Unless you're paying for support, no one is obligated to help you, so if you're not technically savvy and have enough time and effort to chase it down, you're stuck.

Re:What nonsense!

[Neil Hodges]

Ever tried using a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution? The text is impossible to read. Most people run these at much lower resolutions than the hardware is capable of running at. The same is true of people with poor eyesight.

It's called increasing the font DPI. I do that on my 15" laptop which has a screen resolution of 1920x1200, and my eyesight is terrible. If you aren't using bitmap fonts, it should work just fine.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

Then you get into problems where some apps override the default settings, using pixel measurements instead of twips or tweens or points or whatever measurement is hip this week.

Re:What nonsense!

[Sloppy]

Ever tried using a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution? The text is impossible to read

If your text is too small to read, it's because your text is too small. You don't need fewer pixels per screen; you need more pixels per character. Fix your fonts, and it'll be easier to read than switching to a lower res.

I'm not arguing people shouldn't be able to change resolutions, but damn that's a dumb example.

Re:What nonsense!

[jedidiah]

Why would a 15" laptop try to drive itself at 1600x1200?

The original point stands.

If you drive the given panel to it's native resolution you will satisfy 99.9% of the users.

Your attempt to bring up an absurd example is really quite irrelevant.

A display does not have to be "big and blocky" in order to accomodate the near blind. Infact it would probably be better to NOT do that.

Re:What nonsense!

[jedidiah]

Ask the average WinDOS user how they change the resolution on their machine.

Chances are that they can't tell you because they have never done it in their life.

Most Windows users have never bothered and most Linux users have never bothered. So both groups of users would likely not be able to tell you off the top of their heads what the shiny happy easy tool is in their respective operating systems for doing this.

That doesn't mean that it isn't there.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

It's not a dumb example because you can't control the fonts of many applications. That means you end up with some apps with big fonts, and some with tiny ones, not to mention who wants to configure the fonts every time they install a new app.

Re:What nonsense!

[FranTaylor]

"Ever tried using a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution? The text is impossible to read"

Make the text bigger. If you can't then there is a problem with the software.

Re:What nonsense!

[FranTaylor]

"You're a classic example of why Linux has problems,"

Bullshit. You can't find a single problem in Linux that can be blamed on me, cuz I didn't write any of it.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

Wow. It's hard to imagine someone intelligent can have such reading comprehension problems.

I didn't say you did write any of it. Read what I wrote, not what you want me to have written.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

Why would a 15" laptop try to drive itself at 1600x1200?

Uhh.. because that's its native resolution? You know, like these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-ThinkPad-T42P-1-8GHz-1GB-15-1-UXGA-DVDRW-WIFI-XP_W0QQitemZ230407956950QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLaptops_Nov05

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

I agree, that doesn't change the fact that people want to USE that software and be able to read the text it displays.

The "use different software" argument just doesn't work for most people.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

What does that have to do with anything that I said?

I said nothing about easy to use tools, or whether they exist or not. I'm talking about default font sizes in apps

Re:What nonsense!

[htdrifter]

Ubuntu cribbed almost all of that stuff from RedHat/Fedora?

Ubuntu is based on Debian not RedHat.

Video resolution can be changed dynamically with CTRL/ALT plus or minus.
Most distros have a gui app to change the default resolution, fonts, font size. etc.

without special package installation requirements

Probably means dependencies. Debian/Ubuntu handle that well.

Re:What nonsense!

[shutdown -p now]

Ever tried using a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution? The text is impossible to read.

For the record, I wear eyeglasses, and I use a 15" laptop with 1920x1200 (Thinkpad T61p). The text is just fine to read, thank you very much - even at default settings it's readable, but I just raise DPI up to 120% for added convenience. Though that is in Windows...

Re:What nonsense!

[Kidbro]

There's a lot of "If I don't need it, no one needs it" arrogance in the OS community.

That's pretty amazing. Precisely that attitude is one of the major reasons why I abandoned the proprietary world. I found that within OS, I could generally find at least someone that actually had somewhere near the problems I had, and had started trying to solve them.

I'm not saying you're wrong... but my experience is pretty much the diametrical opposite of what you're describing. Perhaps it's related to the exact problem set, rather than a general attitude, hmm?

Re:What nonsense!

[idontgno]

Well, I contend that FOSS is like a natural disaster: it can bring out the best in people, and the worst. I've been on all 4 sides of the issue (giving and receiving the snarky "RTFM", giving and receiving useful help). Yes, I have been both good and evil. Like I said, human nature.

Perhaps it's related to the exact problem set, rather than a general attitude, hmm?

Not in my experience, other than perhaps certain classes of problems attract FOSS contributors with a more intense "nerd focus" (for lack of a better phrase) which seems to work against empathy and helpfulness. (Theo De Raadt, I'm looking at you...)

Yes, that latter bit was a joke.

A variable we haven't explored is the attitude of the petitioner. But that's kind of open-ended, and sometimes counter-intuitive. I've observed that some communities perversely respond worse to polite and non-assertive participants. Rare, but I think not unheard-of. Makes me think of a hierarchical animal group picking on the weak and meek.

Re:What nonsense!

[Larryish]

There's a lot of "If I don't need it, no one needs it" arrogance in the OS community.

You said it, brother.

I used to be stuck in 800x600-land, and the worst thing about graphical Linux was programs that were made to run only in a 1024x768 window. Pressing TAB a few times and then hitting the spacebar, then TAB a few more times and hit the spacebar, hope it does something constructive, rinse, repeat.

Oy vay.

Re:What nonsense!

[writermike]

There's a lot of "If I don't need it, no one needs it" arrogance in the OS community. Part of it comes from "it works for me, I don't care about you" (which is just fundamental human nature); part of it is the longstanding "RTFM" tradition (i.e., the root geek community that Free Software sprung from put a high premium on self-help.

Well, there is another possibility. I am not a programmer nor pretend to be one. However, from what I know, it's not a particularly easy endeavor. If I were a programmer and I had spent my volunteered time to do something really hard at the end of which someone came to me and said, "Hey that's great, but I need it this way," I'd probably be resistant. That's not to say I shouldn't make the change, I'd just be resistant. I'd want to try to make them see why MY way is a better way. That could degrade into arrogance quite easily, but, honestly, I might just be tired and thought the project done!

Anyway, that's another possibility.

Re:What nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no reason that dpi is tied to the resolution other than poor coding, this is a solved problem.

Re:What nonsense!

[MPolo]

There is admittedly a lot of this attitude. That said, I generally can find an answer for a difficult Linux problem much more readily than for a difficult Windows problem, where the solution is very often "Have you tried doing a full backup and re-installing?" Obviously, I am much better at using search engines to find what I want than much of the general Internet population (as are most users of Slashdot), but there are reliable sources of help out there. The sources for help in Windows, except for Windows' own knowledge base, which has often worked for me, seem to be more spotty to me.

Re:What nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

While the ability to choose what resolution you're running is a good thing (and is supported by Linux, although I'm not sure how easy various distros make it), your example is horrible.

Until resolution-independent UIs make a return (Apple, Microsoft and Xorg are all working towards something like that, but progressing rather slowly), a 15" laptop with 1600x1200 resolution is arguably broken by design.

Running an LCD screen at anything but the native resolution (or an integral fraction thereof, but 800x600 is way too low for any modern GUI) looks horrible and smudgy and is not a good idea for most uses. Show me one person who is deliberately willing to pay more for something that looks considerably worse.

Re:What nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be stuck in 800x600-land, and the worst thing about graphical Linux was programs that were made to run only in a 1024x768 window. Pressing TAB a few times and then hitting the spacebar, then TAB a few more times and hit the spacebar, hope it does something constructive, rinse, repeat.

Or learn to use the ALT&arrow keys to move the hidden parts of the windows into view.
Very useful on e.g. 1024x600 netbooks.

Re:What nonsense!

[man_of_mr_e]

I don't think you've seen a high resolution flat panel in the last 10 years. Nowadays, they have scaling technology built in that makes them look good at virtually any resolution. It's simply no longer the case lower resolutions than native look terrible.

Tried Ubuntu, switched back to Fedora

[Stone316]

I installed Ubuntu 8 on my kids computer and they loved it... I played about with it as well and liked it enough that once it came time to rebuild my linux box I decided to install 9.04... I have to say, i'm not impressed with 9.0.4... I have had issues with using the software manager to install new applications.. I miss the popular column and thought that was great. Switching to a static IP address wasn't straight forward... It seems that if you are the type of user that will just download it, install defaults and use it, then its fine. But as soon as you want to make changes, it started to get painful.

So for now i'm switching back to Fedora.. Something i'm familiar with and just seems to work.

Re:Tried Ubuntu, switched back to Fedora

[slmdmd]

I was a slackware guy in 1997/8 then Redhat and now Fedora. I am a sysadmin and some one requested me to troubleshoot nfs service on Ubuntu and I figured that it was a dhcp issue and fixed it by restrating the network service and thus nfs. But still have no clue where it stores the ip info. I was busy so gave up after about 15 mins of googling. Nfs service was also way different than on Fedora. Ubuntu service organization kind of looked old school 1997's Slackware type. I may be wrong but one thing is for sure I too don't want to try Ubuntu. I am a command line guy, so I judge distros on how well their files are organized, so I would say Fedora's file system organization is the best.

Re:Tried Ubuntu, switched back to Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't make sense, you switch to a static IP in Fedora the same way you do in ubuntu, you right click on the network icon in the panel, edit connections, click on the wired interface, edit, and then set the static IP in there like you do on every OS.

Re:Tried Ubuntu, switched back to Fedora

[Dan Ost]

That pretty much sums up my experience with Ubuntu and Debian...except that I went back to Gentoo.

Re:Tried Ubuntu, switched back to Fedora

[Anonymous Coward]

I was running Ubuntu 8 and used the upgrade feature in the update manager to go to 9 and wound up killing my system with Video and sound problems. 9 was also not a snappy as 8 so I am back at 8 with adjustable screen resolutions and working sound and happy.

What has happened to Slashdot?

[bibekpaudel]

C'mon how is this some "stuffs for nerds, news that matter?" I think next post on ./ will read, "Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu Linux desktops may look alike, but they've got some important distinctions, like the fact that Fedora is a Redhat derivative and Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, while openSUSE is a Suse derivative from Novell. Not only that, Fedora and Ubuntu use GNOME, which is a desktop environment. Opensuse uses KDE, which is yet another Desktop environment, short for K Desktop Environment. On the other hand, though Debian also uses GNOME, the version it ships is rather older than that in Ubuntu or Fedora. The designers of Debian have assumed that its users are less caring of latest softwares, and might even be older than general run of users."

Good article

[Anonymous Coward]

great points

Slackware

[spaceyhackerlady]

If you can't do it with Slackware, it doesn't need doing.

:-)

...laura

Re:Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

God, I wish I had mod points.

Re:Slackware

[ojintoad]

That's what I keep telling my mom when she yells at me to clean the basement.

Re:Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Arch is the new Slack

Re:Slackware

[4pins]

I am sure that you can do things with Slackware that I cannot.

Re:Slackware

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I had a question about Slackware. I haven't done a lot of distro research, but I have an old Dell laptop (Pentium IV style), that I have been meaning to refurbish into an internet access/perl development system. The system resources are limited enough that I don't think running Ubuntu (my current distro) would be a good idea on it. Basically, I am curious if slackware is the right distro for a job like that. I've heard it referenced on slashdot a lot now as a lightweight distribution so I really should just do some more research, however, since you seem to be a fan of it yourself (unless that was sarcasm, I hope not), maybe you could give me your take on it?

Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

Re:Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

You Slacker you! Okay I'm one too, it was and still is my distro of choice for production servers. Currently my mail, file and web servers are all Slackware systems. I do try other distros on my "Test" server, if nothing else then to keep up to date on what they may offer.

Re:Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading your previous post about how much you like Ubuntu, I can definitely recommend Xubuntu for that type of system.

In fact, on trying Xubuntu, I realized there were a lot of things I liked better about Xfce than GNOME. I haven't switched to Xubuntu on my main system yet, but it's fairly likely whenever I reinstall.

Re:Slackware

[Maestro485]

I'm running Slackware on a laptop with a 1.8 GHz AMD processor and 512 MB of RAM and it works fine. Granted, Slackware recently made the upgrade to the latest KDE 4.x and the eye candy doesn't work without a video card, but it's not that big of a deal.

One thing to keep in mind though, you need to have a pretty good grasp of the command line to get Slackware up and running. By default it only creates a root account during the installation and boots straight to a command line, so you'll have to get everything running manually. You'll also probably need to use command line tools to get your wireless connected too.

Slackware is great on old hardware if you know what you're doing, and it's a great learning experience if you're a novice who wants to figure out how Linux really works.

Re:Slackware

[element-o.p.]

I would say yes, it probably is. I am running a very old version of Slack (9.something?) on a machine at home with a Celeron 700MHz with maybe 512M of RAM, and it works reasonably well. There are probably a lot of security problems with that machine since the OS is so old, but it's off more than it's on anymore, so I'm not really worried about it. Anyway, I run blackbox for a window manager, and it's fairly snappy, even on such old hardware. I don't know how well a newer version of Slack would run (been running Gentoo lately), but I imagine you could trim it down to do what you need, especially if all you need is the CLI.

Re:Slackware

[spaceyhackerlady]

Slackware does a number of things differently than other distros. It doesn't hide the fact that it's a clone of Unix (among other things, you configure it by editing text files), and it allows you to install as much or as little of the distro as you want. If all you want is a box that boots to a command prompt, you can do that easily with Slackware. I view it as a construction set for building Linux boxes, rather than a pre-assembled system that you pour out of a can.

Slackware is well-behaved, and makes very few assumptions about the system it's running on. The distro CD will boot on anything, and the text-based installer will run on anything. GNU/SourceForge/etc. applications generally compile and run without modification. This includes kernels. Some people think I'm a little extreme (or just plain nuts... :-), but I view the distro kernel as solely for bootstrapping the system, after which you build a custom kernel to match your hardware and operating requirements.

...laura

Re:Slackware

[geekgirlandrea]

Pffft. You mean Linux From Scratch, right?

Re:Slackware

[Dan Ost]

Can you compare and contrast Arch with Gentoo?

Do the scratch the same itches or do they target subtly different audiences?

Re:Slackware

[gbarules2999]

Try out Absolute Linux as a desktop for a little bit to get used to Slackware's differences. It's a good, lightweight system that's mostly Slackware.

Re:Slackware

[evilviper]

If you can't do it with Slackware, it doesn't need doing.

Actually, I'd say: If you can't do it with a given Linux distro, try it on Slackware before deciding Linux can't do it.

A store list of things I hate about EVERY LINUX DISTRO OTHER THAN SLACKWARE:

Devel packages. Why the hell aren't the 2KBs of headers included in the main RPM, and instead included in a 20MB package? Yes, sooner or later, I, and everyone else on the planet, is going to want to compile at least one program from source, and having the configure script squawk about missing 50 packages the user has installed, and then requiring a huge search and install-fest of dev packages, is a huge nightmare, and so utterly unnecessary, it's beyond ridiculous.

Customized pakcages. Quit changing the layout of every application out there. Dropping your bookmarks into Firefox is one thing, but why do you need to move all the damn panel buttons around, change color schemes, etc.? It's as if each Linux distro believes they are a world unto themselves, don't trust upstream know what they are doing, or bother to send their recomended changes to upstream in the first place.

Buggy crap programs... If you can't be bothered to test them, don't release them. Leave it alone.

Weird reconfiguration. Quit screwing with defaults, and changing configurable options to something insane. I don't want rm to prompt me FOR EVERY DAMN FILE UNDER THE TREE, and NO, it's NOT okay to require me to abuse the --force option, which has a necessary job as it is. I don't want whois to print a massive banner, and then return only the expiration date on the domain. Nobody else's whois tool is so fucked up, fix the damn thing.

Dependencies. I understand the desire to track dependencies, but you damn well better prompt the user before you install 2GBs worth of crap to support a single app, and make it easy to use yum/apt for a single package WITHOUT dependencies. Once again, somewhere along the lines, users will find a need to compile a package from source, and I don't mean SRPM.

And on the same note, dependency creep needs to be headed off... Stop taking the defaults of configure, just letting it link to every other app on the planet for each trivial feature. If an image viewer wants to install all of GNOME/KDE to provide slightly prettier window borders, that shit should just be shut the hell off by any package maker not completely comatose. Wake up! I don't give a rats ass that GNOME/KDE is your default desktop, and if EVERY PACKAGE is linked against them, you're just forcing those with slightly different preferences to not use your distro AT ALL. There's no damn reason for it.

that's enough for today. Time for my meds.

Re:Slackware

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Awesome! Thanks for the advice guys. I definitely will scope out more info on Slackware, Xubuntu, and Absolute Linux. This should be a fun hobby for the New Year coming up =)

Re:Slackware

[kokoko1]

Ah you remind me that great distro, I used it for almost 3 years exclusively on my home/work desktop. Later due to time limitation to play with Linux I switched to Fedora, (I am typing this from Fedora 12). Ah that was a nice good old days, compiling a kernel (slacware 9.x---11.x) comes with default 2.4.x kernel), for getting 2.6.x one have to do the old school thing of compiling kernel from source. 1. wget the kernel source from kernel.org 2. untar it, ..If i remember correctly make config, make and make install 3. copy the modules and kernel to proper place 4. adjust the lilo.conf 5. finally reboot into new kernel, if you did everything right then your system will boot into new kernel otherwise chances of 'kernel panic' :) See I still remember how to do the kernel stuff, coz i learn it while on Slackware. Now here I am using Fedora on my both work/home laptops, love it coz its work, like it coz its Linux and it recongnize everything out of the box, its Linux and viri spyware free. I must admit I learn Linux on slackware and still I love slackware and Pat, Pat doing a great job of maintaining such a nice distro wish him long live :) Slackware never failed for me not a single time, Hey wife is calling no more Linux its time to go to bed. see ya ;)

Ubuntu sucks for development

[NoYob]

Their support of development tools stinks compared to fedora and on Ubuntu (9.10), the Qt environment has compatibility issues with the Ubuntu "supported" packages. I had issues getting headers files and assorted build environments to work.

I went back to fedora because it was easier and much quicker than fixing Ubuntu's mistakes.

Why?

[sbeckstead]

Who actually cares? I would have thought that it was obvious and didn't need stating!

Ummm. Yeah.

[wiredog]

I've been on a Mac for a couple years. Been a while since I've done "make configure, make, make install"

For different users?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well take a look at the completely different set of purposes they have:
Fedora: Desktop, aimed at the non-expert user
OpenSuse: Desktop, at the non-expert user
Ubuntu: Desktop, at the non-expert user

So you're saying their different based on what? Preferred default DM?

Re:For different users?

[jedidiah]

Considering that Fedora and OpenSuse are variants of payware distributions
aimed at corporate sysadmins, both of those probably still retain some of
that character. Each is probably a bit more like RHEL or SLES than anything
else.

Also, since both predated GNOME and KDE they each had their own approach to
ease of use systems management tools. Each has a long history of doing it's
own sort of thing in this regard.

Re:For different users?

[flak89]

I must agree. I haven't used Linux in a while. I was using it as a desktop on a box and as a firewall on another. I was using Slackware (~7.0) and well, as far as I was able to tell, I could do anything with it. Switch desktop manager, disable everything, just do FTP serv, burn CD... etc.. I am wondering why one would fit better to a non-expert user than another. It is not all the same ?

Sign of the Times

[psbrogna]

I think the most significant thing about the article is that it was written; assuming it was written because there's whole new categories of users (both tech & non-tech) abandoning the USS MS who'd read such a distro-overview. I call that a good thing. I don't think this is too big an assumption either- judging by the average level of knowledge of new users showing up in Linux forums the last 6 months (ie. uninformed but eager). As much as it grates on me to see the most fundamental questions being asked (and in ways that make it obvious that not only has the poster not read any manuals but lacks a basic understanding of OS & networking theory), I am encouraged to see this shift and try to put out the welcome mat.

Linux sucks. Closed source FTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Windows 7 or OS X.

A certain lack of iron uniformity.

[Zombie Ryushu]

I'm not trying to say that user choice and the variance of Linux distributions are bad, but I see some problems that make my life a headache. Especially on the RPM side of things.

For example.

The Four major Desktop distributions out there are:

Fedora
OpenSUSE
Mandriva
Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is Debian based, and not like the other three. So, I will set it aside just momentarily. I'd like to focus on the RPM based systems for the moment because that is what I have the most experience with.

The three RPM based systems have a whole lot of needless Dissimilarities. Even in the RPM system itself. has strange separations in the way it handle packaging. There really is no reason for these differences to exist. Other than making it more difficult to install and manage software, there is no reason for these differences to exist. They just confuse people.

Another thing that drives me berserk is how the RPM distributors tend to "tinker" with the default KDE and Gnome Installs configuration. For example, replacing the Kicker logo with their own Mandriva/Suse/Fedora logo. This really confuses people. It doesn't add to the user experience at all to change how applications are ordered at random, or change the Icon for the K and Gnome Menus. It just confuses people more.

You don't see this in the Debian world. They leave should leave the default configurations of KDE, Gnome, and the other Window managers. Also, a memorandum of understanding or treaty should be formed that says that they will have uniform RPM Macros, and Uniform Application categories.

I do alot of packaging for Mandriva.

Re:A certain lack of iron uniformity.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't see this in the Debian world. They leave should leave the default configurations of KDE, Gnome, and the other Window managers. Also, a memorandum of understanding or treaty should be formed that says that they will have uniform RPM Macros, and Uniform Application categories.

That sure is a strange looking GNOME foot on my Ubuntu install.

Re:A certain lack of iron uniformity.

[rrohbeck]

RPM sucks. Or it's just the way the repos are managed, I don't know.
Each time you download and try to install an oldish RPM (say from Redhat 4 days) you'll start hunting down glibc-something-or-other or glibc-compat-someversion. Try to install the generic VNC package from realvnc on RHEL 5 for example.
This has never happened to me with Debian/Ubuntu. If it's available the package manager finds all dependencies as long as you have all repos enabled, period.

Re:Ummm. Yeah.

[mweather]

So how do you normally compile programs, and where are they installed?

Mega updates

[DrYak]

One of the largest examples is World of Warcraft. After five years, it still insists on storing all of its data in its program directory. {...} Data, including plugins, are kept in the user's home. Different users can have different plugins and data, and everything just works even on a properly-secured system.

Well, the big problem is that WoW's data is rather huge, from what I've heard. According to my WoW-playing friends, massive multi-mega-byte update are often torrented when the client is started, in order to keep the game up to date.
In the data organisation that you are proposing, every single user account will have it's own local copy of all the updates.

For Firefox' plugin tha's acceptable : the plug-in are small. It's not a problem if each user download a new different set of them, and they don't take up that much place on the harddisk.
For WoW, that's a different matter : updates might be on the scale of several hundreds of megabytes. If every use had to pull its own set of updates, that would be terribly inefficient. If every user's home directory had to hold its local copy of the updates, that would be a terrible waste of space.
Therefor the game *needs* to write some data into its install directory. Now, of course, all depends on *how* this is done.
- A software could be designed to ask for install privileges only when updating the main files in the install directory, and run with limited privileges on the home directory the rest of the time (that's how Firefox manage major updates, by the way : Plug-ins are installed into home dir, but new versions call an installer which work on install dir). (this is also how Quake3 did function under Linux : small patches (like specific maps) were downloaded from game servers into home dir, but point-release and other big updates where done using installers which gave the user a choice where to install : user profile vs. system wide).
- A badly done software would need to constantly run at high-privileged level. And according to your complain, I might presume that this is how WoW is designed.

Re:Mega updates

[weicco]

In the data organisation that you are proposing, every single user account will have it's own local copy of all the updates.

Why not store shared data under the %ALLUSERSPROFILE% folder and user's data under the %LOCALAPPDATA% folder?

Re:Mega updates

[Gabrill]

Nobody was asking for binary updates to be independently stored on each user account. Cache, Addons (Interface), and .User files (WTF), however all fit under traditional Linux home directory classifications. In fact all these files and their directories are recommended to be completely deleted at the first sign of unstable performance to isolate the actual Wow binaries from addons and cache corruption. Something I personally wish for is for downloaded update blobs to be deleted after the program runs successfully on the new binary version. There is definitely some hard drive bloat in that area. Screen shots are also kept in a subdirectory under the Program Files tree, definitely user data that has no business being outside the user's home directory.

In my own mature installation, I have 194Mb of downloaders and updates. Yes, there's a separate downloader program for each update. The Cache, WTF, and Interface folders together comprise 62Mb across 2 accounts and upwards of 20 toons.

Re:Mega updates

[Bert64]

Firefox has the option of installing the plugins locally or globally, obviously a global install is only possible if you have a privileged account.
It should not be up to individual users to update the program, the admin should do that. There's no reason a schedule task couldn't run to perform necessary updates periodically, and ideally all packages would be updated by a single update system instead of having loads of junk running.

I may try Arch

[Anonymous Coward]

I know when I was using Gentoo I would sweat when I wanted to update my system or even a single package in fear it was just hose something. Gentoo is an awesome OS but needs work, or did. I havent used it in about 2 years. That was about my only complaint and I know others shared it as well.

Re:I may try Arch

[SwedishPenguin]

Arch works quite well. It has a lightning fast binary package manager and there's a community repository (AUR) of build scripts for various less popular software. And I love the rolling releases. I've got it on both my laptop and desktop. It will take a bit longer to set up than Ubuntu and its ilk obviously but the reward is a very quick, light and responsive system with the latest packages always available. And the KDE packages rock.

Re:I may try Arch

[heson]

It is neat. It is very light weight and does not start any services you do not configure to start. But it is not very polished in the QA departement. My install and then upgrade to latest everything required fixing from rescuecd three times. But when fixing is needed it is easy to do. To rollback a broken packet just untar a working version and thats it, etc. It does need a little bit more maintenance than just running "yum -y upgrade" or "apt-get upgrade" once in a while but you get alot for that price if you are willing to pay it.

Please, more information more NEWS and explain

[Noitatsidem]

This isn't news, this is a random fact, with one source cited-- in other words a claim. You pretty much shortened the linked article down by a tiny bit, and posted this...

popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been a while since we've had a good old-fashioned distrowar!

*grabs*popcorn*

Re:popcorn

[Larryish]

I actually am eating popcorn right now, which I popped in order to eat it as I read this discussion.

And it has a packet of macaroni cheese poweder shaken into it.

MMMmmm cheesy.

Gentoo

[jittles]

So does that mean Gentoo is designed for users that have more free time?

Re:Gentoo

[Noitatsidem]

Yeah, and ubuntu 9.10 doesn't have any(ubuntu specific) audio issues with the ioquake3 engine... Y'know like it just suddenly breaking out, and stopping on multiple hardware setups, making the user check the forums, and tweak their system so it works they way it should... Yeah Gentoo saves time, Debian Stable is rushed software, Fedora is easy enough for grandma, and opensuse is perfect for home users who are afraid of "do it yourself" work, and simply mepis, will confuse even the most nerdy linux-guru with its bleeding edge Debian stable package base, across a completely out-dated kernel.

Re:Gentoo

[wastedlife]

Actually, Gentoo is a fabulous habit to get yourself to walk away from your computer for a while and do something else.

"Well, OpenOffice is compiling, time to shower, shave, get a job, get married, and have a few kids. Hopefully it will be done by the time I get back."

Note to any offended by this or the parent post: Fucking relax for a minute and stop taking your favorite distribution so seriously. Throwing a hissy-fit over it won't help improve its perception.

Re:Gentoo

[rrohbeck]

That depends entirely on how big your iron is.
Dual quad core i7 with SSDs FTW. make -j20, but only at work. No, I'm not getting one of those at home, I even threw out the dual P4 Xeon system because I had to run the AC around the clock or my office got too hot.

Re:Gentoo

[True Grit]

Actually, Gentoo is a fabulous habit to get yourself to walk away from your computer for a while and do something else.

I haven't needed to do that in years.

Hell, I can still listen to music (amarok - no stuttering) & browse the web (firefox), read email/newsgroups, work on something in an IDE, or even play some game (don't have any heavy OpenGL ones though), even while recompiling *KDE* fer heaven's sake.

This particular Gentoo joke annoys me much, because it was rendered obsolete by modern hardware & the modern Linux 2.6.xx kernel (outstanding low latency), oh, 5-8 years ago, at least for desktops.

Note to any offended by this or the parent post: Fucking relax

I'll relax when idiotic posts like the GP are modded down or just ignored instead of modded funny/insightful. How many jokes about other distros *routinely* get the same kind of insightful/funny treatment?

Gentoo jokes on /. is an obsessive-compulsive meme, where most of the people who make these posts and/or think they are funny/insightful haven't actually run Gentoo in years, if ever.

Now get the hell off my lawn...

Re:Gentoo

[wastedlife]

This particular Gentoo joke annoys me much, because it was rendered obsolete by modern hardware & the modern Linux 2.6.xx kernel (outstanding low latency), oh, 5-8 years ago, at least for desktops.

I'll admit, the last time I used Gentoo was about 2 years ago and the hardware was not top-of-line by any standards. But OpenOffice still would take at least 6 hours to compile. And of course everything else is still usable while compiling. Its not like windows where an update will at the least require a reboot, if not the disabling of some processes while running.

I'll relax when idiotic posts like the GP are modded down or just ignored instead of modded funny/insightful. How many jokes about other distros *routinely* get the same kind of insightful/funny treatment?

Its not just Gentoo. A big +Funny repeat joke is "Ubuntu: An African word meaning 'Can't configure Debian'." Jokes about the Debian OpenSSL cockup are rampant, along with jokes about how out-of-date the stable repositories are. Can't think of any common SUSE, Fedora, or Red Hat jokes off the top of my head, though. So grow some thicker skin for when people make a prod at your favorite OS or distro, it isn't the end of the world.

Re:Gentoo

[True Grit]

But OpenOffice still would take at least 6 hours to compile.

Ok, I'll admit that I've never tried to compile OO.o (when I did try it I just used the prebuilt *-bin version, but ended up just using KOffice since my needs in that area are really minimal), so its still probably the best example of an extremely long compile time for a single package/app. However, its now on a very short list.

A big +Funny repeat joke is "Ubuntu: An African word meaning 'Can't configure Debian'."

Except Debian, and especially Ubuntu, have enough fans around here to usually mod those jokes below my threshold.

Jokes about the Debian OpenSSL cockup are rampant

Jokes about specific problems are routine, but tend to fade eventually, once the original problem has long gone away. The Gentoo jokes have been around since the beginning though, and are still with us, even though some of them are no longer applicable.

So grow some thicker skin for when people make a prod at your favorite OS or distro, it isn't the end of the world.

Oh I know, the Gentoo jokes meme is the longest running one here, so I'm used to it.

I think it was mainly your comment tacked on at the end that got me to respond in the first place. After all, you were, in effect, demanding that I ignore a 'joke' that simply no longer matches the reality that a typical Gentoo user sees now.

Sure, we still have long compiles for some things, or when upgrading a lot at the same time, but the computer-is-useless-while-updating part of the meme *really* doesn't make any sense anymore, at least not on modern hardware.

But I'll try to thicken my skin some more anyway, as it looks like this meme is just too popular for it to go away anytime soon... :)

Fedora has always required the root password

[fluxdvd]

To my knowledge (I've been using Fedora since its inception), Fedora has always required root credentials, or the user be in the sudoers list to install software packages. Only in Fedora 12 was that not the default behavior, and there was a BIG uproar over that change (see the VERY lengthy discussion on this issue on the RedHat Bugzilla report - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=534047), which has since change the default behavior BACK to requiring root credentials to install software.

Installation to removable media

[tepples]

I had to add specific functionality for Windows users to save into the app folder. [...] some people still can't see any other way of saving their personal data.

I'd bet that a lot of these "some people" use multiple desktop computers and carry their apps and data with them on a USB mass storage device. There's even a name for apps that support this use case: portable apps (not to be confused with multi-platform or mobile apps). The solution I used for one of my own apps was as follows:

1. If a file named "installed.ini" in the program's folder is present, write settings to a .ini file in a folder inside %APPDATA%.
2. Otherwise, write settings to a .ini file in the program's folder.

Installation inside the Program Files folder writes "installed.ini"; installation to removable media does not.

Re:Installation to removable media

[sa666_666]

That's essentially what I did, but I reversed the logic: by default save in %APPDATA%, otherwise save to the path specified in a file named 'basedir.txt'. I agree that portable apps are one use case where this makes sense. But based on the feedback I received, users wanted to save in the app folder because, and I quote, they "didn't want their data spread all over the place". Of course, that really comes back to bite you when reformatting your system. My point being, a lot of people want to do it that way because it's always been done that way. And reversing that trend in Windows will be very hard.

Re:Installation to removable media

[tepples]

by default save in %APPDATA%, otherwise save to the path specified in a file named 'basedir.txt'.

Where does it look for basedir.txt, and is the path allowed to be relative? If it looks for basedir.txt in the program's folder, and it can specify a path relative to the program's folder, that's fine, much like a Windows shortcut that specifies a program's working directory. Otherwise, the program breaks when the drive letter (under Windows) or the path in /media (under Linux) changes, which can happen when moving an app from one PC to another or even based on the insertion order of USB drives.

Re:Installation to removable media

[sa666_666]

The file itself must be placed in the same folder as the app. In that case, a relative path is relative to the application installation folder (ie, you can use '.', in which case it works exactly like other windows programs which save to the app folder).

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%

[tepples]

Therefor the game *needs* to write some data into its install directory.

That works for installation to removable media. But for installation to the drive containing %ProgramFiles%, the program could write downloaded updates to a folder inside %ALLUSERSPROFILE% (currently C:\Documents and Settings\All Users on the XP machine I'm on), and the installer could make the folder writable by all users in the World of Warcraft Players group. The program would need to ask for install privileges only when a new user needs to be added to the World of Warcraft Players group.

The issue is NetworkManager

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a mis-statement: the Fedora 12 toolkit called 'NetworkManager' provided hooks to allow someone logged in at the *console* to install software with the "yum" command, if the package had registered GPG signature, as configured in "yum". Now, this is a stupid idea because it allows desktop users to install servers, even servers that are out of date and have zero day exploits, on the machine in front of them, without any root access.

Now, the 'NetworkManager' toolkit is fundamentally stupid. It's yet another layer of "management" dross, trying to do far too much. It was designed to keep network connections alive, particularly for laptop setups. It has *no business* touching package management, and should be ripped out by its quivering spleen from any server class and most desktop environments.

Trolling is a way of life

[Yvanhoe]

Otherwise, the distros are just flavored differently. It's all the same under the hood.

Yep : all are debians

Take with a grain of salt.

[Tubal-Cain]

Speaking of easy, openSUSE is also the first of the major Linux distros that makes it simple to upgrade the system over the Internet. With most distros, you need to download an ISO image of the new release and then boot from it to upgrade your Linux distribution. However, I was able to do an in-place upgrade of openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2 on my ThinkPad over a Wi-Fi connection. This arrangement makes upgrading the entire operating system as simple as installing one really big program.

That's been a part of Ubuntu's Update Manager for...how many years now? And in Debian using stable rather than lenny in your /etc/apt/sources.list will achieve the same effect. Or you could just use testing and enjoy more-up-to-date-but-still-stable software that has rolling updates.

Re:Take with a grain of salt.

[mathfeel]

Speaking of easy, openSUSE is also the first of the major Linux distros that makes it simple to upgrade the system over the Internet. With most distros, you need to download an ISO image of the new release and then boot from it to upgrade your Linux distribution. However, I was able to do an in-place upgrade of openSUSE 11.1 to 11.2 on my ThinkPad over a Wi-Fi connection. This arrangement makes upgrading the entire operating system as simple as installing one really big program.

You can dispute the definition of "popular" or "major", but Gentoo user has been doing this since day one. In fact, there is no such thing as major version upgrade. You just emerge --update incrementally. I do it about twice a month. Everything is over the internet.

wow

[nomadic]

Most generic slashdot story ever.

All Linux apps, or just those not in the repo?

[tepples]

Installing/uninstalling applications is still much different and more confusing in Linux.

Are you talking about applications in general or only those that aren't in the distribution's repository? Synaptic makes it fairly easy to install and uninstall software on Ubuntu; it puts the Add back in Add/Remove Programs.

Re:All Linux apps, or just those not in the repo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say simply knowing there is a difference between all Linux apps and apps in the distributions repository is distinction enough for the users I was thinking about.
Agreed though that the Synaptic Package solution is pretty usable and easy, that is the it's simply different causes problems, not a technical inferiority issue.Installing from source is way over most users heads, even windows really unless they are a developer, so perhaps that is a moot point as well.

Re:All Linux apps, or just those not in the repo?

[tepples]

But even if something isn't in a repo, how is installing a .deb (Debian/Ubuntu package) any different from installing a .msi (Windows package)?

[OT] Sig question (Was: Re:What a load of crap)

[Derleth]

The enemies of Democracy [blackboxvoting.org] are

... what? Is this signature broken for everyone, or just for me?

I’m running Firefox 3.5 on Linux, for the record.

Re:[OT] Sig question (Was: Re:What a load of crap)

[Chris Burke]

No, it's just plain broken. I tried to fix it, but they now enforce the character limit even including html, and I'm too lazy to actually come up with a different one. Oh wells.

Re:Ummm. Yeah.

[wiredog]

I use Xcode, and drop them in home/me/localapps on a Mac. On win I use Visual Studio and install them in C:\Users\me\Documents\myapps

Why run a monitor at less than max res

[tepples]

Really who runs their monitor at less than the max?

People with poor eyesight who use (poorly coded) apps and (poorly coded) web pages that make everything a fixed pixel size instead of reading the system DPI setting. Also people who value frame rate over detail.

Does the distro support your applications without special package installation requirements?

What does this mean?

It means Wine, for one thing.

You are correct

[br00tus]

I saw that as well. I have been "upgrading over the Internet" with Debian (as well as Ubuntu) for years. I have upgraded Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems over the Internet for years as well. This is not some new, unique, innovative thing that only OpenSUSE has achieved.

Some apps break at high DPI

[tepples]

It's called increasing the font DPI.

Then you have to deal with

• poorly-tested yet necessary apps whose layout breaks at high DPI,
• apps that don't resize all elements including icons and other graphics,
• apps that use ugly nearest-neighbor resampling for graphics, and
• apps whose response time slows down proportionally to the number of pixels in the window.

Re:Some apps break at high DPI

[Neil Hodges]

And if you lower the screen resolution, you have to deal with blurriness on LCDs (non-native resolutions) that may make it even harder to look at.

I know I get headaches if I'm using anything more than a VGA console at a non-native resolution on LCDs.

Re:Some apps break at high DPI

[tepples]

And if you lower the screen resolution, you have to deal with blurriness on LCDs

It's no different from the blur you get when zooming in on bitmap images like JPEG or PNG images in web pages. (Photos are not SVG, nor are images displayed in web sites compatible with IE.)

I know I get headaches if I'm using anything more than a VGA console at a non-native resolution on LCDs.

Then explain how anyone can stand to look at 720p LCD TVs, most of which rescale 720p signal to 768p.

Re:Some apps break at high DPI

[Kludge]

Or you may have
- poor apps whose layout breaks at low DPI
- poor apps that don't resize icons for lower resolutions
- apps that down-sample resolution poorly
etc.
And so people should run their screens at high resolution. Not.

The point is that you shouldn't have to change your resolution or worry about resolution or its affect on your apps. The OS should put the resolution at an optimal value for the monitor that you are using. That's what Fedora does for me.
A GUI or app that assumes a fixed resolution or font size is a poor app. If you don't use or buy them they will go away.

Re:Some apps break at high DPI

[tepples]

poor apps whose layout breaks at low DPI

Windows apps and web pages are tested on machines set to 96 dpi. This is low by laptop standards, especially compared to things like 9" netbooks at 130 dpi or the iPhone at 160 dpi.

A GUI or app that assumes a fixed resolution or font size is a poor app. If you don't use or buy them they will go away.

If an app has a near-monopoly in its field, or I have otherwise sunk a significant investment into the app, what will I use instead?

Re:Some apps break at high DPI

[dara]

Although this thread has nothing to do with this topic and I doubt many will read this, I just want to chime in with a pitch for high DPI displays that are meant for viewing close (phones, laptops). I use a 15.4" WUXGA (147 DPI) laptop and an iPhone (165 DPI) now. But I'd happily upgrade to an 11 cm (4.34") diag 1280x720 phone display (339 DPI) which at near 10" in viewing distance is sharp enough (i.e. the pixels aren't wasted if your eyes can focus as close as 10" or so). For a laptop, I'd like 14.1" (I'd prefer this size now, but no one makes a 14.1" WUXGA that I know of), and I'll take as much DPI as I can have up to 300+ just like the phone (e.g., 3840x2160 is 312 DPI). I realize the laptop size is tough, but given some very high DPI 854x480 phone screens (the Droid is 265 DPI), I think we will see a phone display like this in a few years.

It's true some software doesn't handle this well and I don't have much Linux experience on anything but 19" 1600x1200 screens (my laptop is XP which is good enough more or less at 165 DPI with the DPI set in the display properties). But the bottom line is we have to move away from this software to easily scalable GUIs NOW. The fact that Android isn't as far as I know sucks. I thought some of the GUIs for Linux weren't that bad, but again I don't really know.

But just think of what you can do with such high resolution displays. How much easier is it when you don't have to zoom way in to a map to read features and then pan around when if it were as good as paper, you could get quite close to the display and zoom out and still see what is going on. This helps for street maps and topo maps. Then there is the ability to be the best photo display possible (and perhaps reducing the need to make as many prints). And there is the appeal of a portable HD video display (on the phone size).

That's my take at least,

Dara

Re:Linux sucks. Closed source FTW.

[selven]

Nah, you can get all the closed-source goodness on Linux here

Windows 7: Only two editions matter

[tepples]

If I walk into Best Buy and want to buy Windows 7, I'd have no idea which one to get.

Windows Vista Business was missing a few features that were in Home Premium, such as Aero and media center support. So there was a four-way choice among Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. Home editions before Mojave (SP1) even had EULA restrictions against running them in a virtual machine.

Windows 7 cleared this up, where each edition is a strict superset of the ones below it. This means Professional has everything in Home Premium, which has everything in Starter. So the decision tree is more like that for Windows XP: either you get Pro or you get Home.

I was talking about policy

[tepples]

Probably the same way they already get their software trusted, by distributor-of-choice signing their packages.

You speak of mechanism; I speak of policy. Allow me to rephrase the question using your suggested mechanism:

Video game consoles have had such signature requirements for over two decades, since Atari 7800. But this raises another question: How would developers get their software signed by the distributor for use by home users? A peer-review model like Xbox Live Indie Games? A centralized approval model like Apple's App Store? Or a sandbox model like OLPC Bitfrost?

Re:I was talking about policy

[amorsen]

I still don't understand your question. Linux distributions are already signing software. So how do the developers get their software signed? They submit it to the distribution or wait for someone else to do it for them. Once it passes whatever kind of review that particular distribution favours, the software is signed and available in the repositories.

Re:I was talking about policy

[tepples]

Linux distributions are already signing software. So how do the developers get their software signed? They submit it to the distribution or wait for someone else to do it for them. Once it passes whatever kind of review that particular distribution favours

One problem with the distribution repository model is that a lot of particular distributions favor, if not require, free software and free content. This sort of licensing is incompatible with standard practices in many genres of application, such as games.

Re:I was talking about policy

[amorsen]

That's ok, a 90% solution is still a good start. Anyway, the game developers can just band together and make a joint signing authority or even a repository. For Windows, that's known as Steam.

Re:Linux sucks. Closed source FTW.

[blakedev]

I miss the good ol' days when a post like that wouldn't be considered "insightful" on slashdot. Actually I miss when an article like this wouldn't really have been posted.

What's your desktop?

[tepples]

I don't even use Linux as a Desktop.

As I understand it, the article is about the desktop. It mentions GNOME, KDE, and "local users". So what operating system do you recommend for desktop use?

Getting non-free apps into a repo?

[tepples]

perhaps through a repository like we debian users have done forever?

The question remains the same: How would developers get their software into the repository, especially if it's in a genre of software that isn't very conducive to distribution as free software?

Re:Getting non-free apps into a repo?

[ffreeloader]

perhaps through a repository like we debian users have done forever?

The question remains the same: How would developers get their software into the repository, especially if it's in a genre of software that isn't very conducive to distribution as free software?

I'm a Debian user and if you're not writing free(GPL) software there's only a very remote chance that I would even be interested in using your software. In the last 5 years I've used only 2 proprietary software packages, and that's because I needed 1 to work with the RAW files my DSLR creates, and the other so I could have some way of color calibrating my monitor.

I'm not a rarity as far as Debian users go either. Proprietary software just doesn't show up on our radar very often. If I wasn't into photography I wouldn't be using any proprietary software.

The point is, why would you want to put proprietary software in a Debian repository? Not only would there be very few people interested in it, you would have to be giving it away as there is no way to purchase anything using the APT system.

If its not KDE 3.5.10 and Debian based forget it!

[rec9140]

Where I start on distros, personally -

1) Debian Based - YES, continue... NO - FAILURE/END

2) KDE as the DEFAULT or ONLY WM, YES, continue... NO - FAILURE/END

3) KDE 4.x, NO, continue... YES - FAILURE/END

4) Does not include - miguel msshillnboi de izaga diseases ie: mono etc..YES, continue... NO - FAILURE/END

Currrent fav: KMint aka Linux Mint CE Elyssa

Up and coming fav: KUbuntu Karmic KDE 3.5.10+ Edition

For work: I have standardized on CentOS 5.4, while I dislike RPM based systems the vast majority of servers and hosting centers etc.. are based on this so it makes it easier just to go with the flow on this in the server area. None use X so its not a big deal.

I don't get it...

[beetlejuice321]

I don't get this article. Comparing Linux distributions is a old game and debate not worth even having anymore. With LSB and as others have mentioned all programs run exactly the same on all distributions. What's the difference between installing Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu or Susu, and customizing it by installing your own dekstop etc? Nothing! All linux distributions are the exact same Linux.

The only difference is the package manager. Thats it. On a server side it makes since to care if you pay for vendor support, but for a dekstop it makes no difference. It boils down to do you like RPM or Debian (or portage in Gentoos case) packages better. Thats all.

The reason the author complains about Ubuntu is because they are driving an improved graphics performance in the desktop. Pioneering new features (enabling desktop effects etc). This is something that people want and is needed if you want to attract people from Mac OS and Windows (Vista/7). If the author had installed the same features on Suse or Fedora, he would have noticed his Intel drivers had problems with those distro's as well...because its Linux, not Ubuntu with the Intel driver problem.

I have used just about every major Linux distribution out there, and a couple years ago I switched to Ubuntu. Ubuntu just works, but mostly its the community. Ubuntu has such an incredible amount of support from a world wide community, it makes it a breeze to accomplish just about any task you may find yourself needing help with.

I wish Linux users would stop worrying about who has the biggest #$@@, and start comparing themselves to something really competitive, like doing things better and faster then Windows or Mac! I am tired of games not running, online streaming content (audio/video) partial working, and the lack of developed software such as beta versions of everthing from Skype to other apps. If you want Linux taken seriously by software developers, why not start unifying efforts to make "Linux" better. Instead of complaining about why some distro isn't as good as another.

Re:I don't get it...

[Murdoch5]

Linux is a kernel not an OS, GNU is the OS. How can you say there the exact same, there package installation methods become different, there symlinks become different even there code becomes SLIGHTLY different. For instance code can be hardened, built with debugging info or speed and more. I might agree it's not worth comparing them stat for stat because a Linux user picks what they like but you can't say there exactly the same.

Don't agree

[warrax_666]

I agree, the problem with Windows is not so much the OS itself but poorly written applications.

Why are applications even installing their own files? Any modern Unixish system provides a package system which is in charge of installing files and if these supposedly 'unfriendly' system can, Windows certainly could.

With such a system in place users might even have a chance of keeping their systems up to date without having to check every single program individually...

What is printed on the box

[tepples]

It's like the burden of having to know what resolution that scanner supports or what the shutter speed of that camera is or whether or not that printer is an inkjet or laser or whether or not it prints in color or duplex.

The difference is that resolution, shutter speed, printer technology, and the like are listed as features on the box. Linux support is not. I go into Walmart* or Best Buy, and pretty much no printer or scanner boxes say anything about Linux. It's hard to blame end users for not knowing what they're buying when the package doesn't even state what they're buying. How do I find the right printer so that I can print the HCL so that I can find the right printer?

USB 1.0, that is.

[Anonymous Coward]

USB 1.0, that is. Wow. Great. Fantastic.
And you know what happens when you put your mouse into a different USB slot? It hangs. "Detected new Device." "USB Mouse Detected" "Installing Drivers" "New hardware now available".

Until you've put each USB device into every USB slot (remember the USB bub in your keyboard!), you'll get that every time you use a new slot.

Linux?

Plug it in. Works.

Re:USB 1.0, that is.

[tepples]

USB 1.0, that is. Wow. Great. Fantastic.

NIC drivers shouldn't take more than a couple seconds to copy from a flash drive, even at USB 1.x speeds. Then you can Windows Update and get all the WHQL drivers.

What's that?

[Jim Hall]

For example, in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password. As of this version, however, local users will need to enter the root password before they can install software (as they do on almost all other Linux distributions).

What the f*ck is this guy talking about? Non-root users in Fedora could install software without the root password? What's that?

I call B.S., the person who wrote that is smoking dope. I've used Fedora since FC1, and Red Hat Linux since RH303. Red Hat / Fedora never worked like this. General users could install software, only by providing the root password.

Let's not forget the huge outcry we saw when Fedora 12 [desktop edition only] let users install signed packages without root. Thankfully, that policy was reversed very quickly.

Linux, for the use.

[colinrichardday]

I doubt either Windows 7 or OSX could run on my computer (768 M of RAM). Ubuntu 9.10, no problem. Just toss in the Live version and get on the Net

If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[tepples]

there is no way to purchase anything using the APT system.

And this is the core problem with the distribution repository model: it is incompatible with the commercial proprietary software business model. If you object to this business model in the first place, then what is the Free (or even free) alternative to a video game like Modern Warfare 2 or Super Smash Bros. Brawl?

Re:If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[ffreeloader]

there is no way to purchase anything using the APT system.

And this is the core problem with the distribution repository model: it is incompatible with the commercial proprietary software business model. If you object to this business model in the first place, then what is the Free (or even free) alternative to a video game like Modern Warfare 2 or Super Smash Bros. Brawl?

You miss the point.... Why do you want to try to sell your applications where there is no market for them? Would you try to sell a FPS in a craft store specializing in quilting supplies? Just how many quilters do you think would buy one?

The principle is the same with the repositories. Nobody, no Debian users anyway, goes to a Debian repository looking to buy proprietary software. You want to sell proprietary software to Debian users? Good luck with that. The vast majority of Debian users run Debian because it's free software, and by that I mean non-proprietary software.

As to your question about the games, I have no idea. The only game I currently play is Sudoku.

Re:If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[tepples]

Why do you want to try to sell your applications where there is no market for them? Would you try to sell a FPS in a craft store specializing in quilting supplies?

Then where is the market for a FPS on a platform other than (a) Windows and (b) consoles that use a lockout chip?

Re:If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[ffreeloader]

Why ask someone who isn't even a gamer where the gaming market is? I just know that looking to Debian as a market for proprietary software would seem to be like looking for water in the desert. There might be some market, but it's going to be small and widely scattered.

In relation to your previous comments on the "failure" of the repositories to accommodate commercial software, how is it a failure? The absence of a way to sell commercial software is a feature. The APT system was designed to be that way. It wasn't designed to be a way for proprietary developers to market their software. Read the Debian Social Contract and the DFSG.

http://www.debian.org/social_contract

You want to put a FPS in the Debian repositories? Write a FPS that is compatible with the DFSG and don't expect to get paid for it because that capability just isn't there.

You might take a look at what Ubuntu is doing in this area as it seems they are/may be going to do something similar to what Linspire did with their CNR system. Linspire failed though as the vast majority of the Linux user base didn't like what they were doing.

Re:If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[tepples]

Why ask someone who isn't even a gamer where the gaming market is?

Because gamers don't reply to me, except to tell me to quit whining about console makers' entry barriers and just accept them.

You want to put a FPS in the Debian repositories? Write a FPS that is compatible with the DFSG and don't expect to get paid for it because that capability just isn't there.

How do I make money from free software if it's in a genre that historically doesn't need the sort of support on which companies like Red Hat build their business?

Re:If you veto all non-free apps, then what?

[ffreeloader]

You want to put a FPS in the Debian repositories? Write a FPS that is compatible with the DFSG and don't expect to get paid for it because that capability just isn't there.

How do I make money from free software if it's in a genre that historically doesn't need the sort of support on which companies like Red Hat build their business?

Good question. I guess that's for you to research and figure out. It's not something I care about....

I answered your original post because you seemed to have a major misunderstanding about how and why the repository system works the way it does, and because you seemed to think that a system designed to distribute free software only is a failure because it doesn't support closed software. The only reason I even mentioned a FPS was to give an example of how far you were missing your target market--people who will pay for proprietary software--when you're wanting to use the Debian repositories as your distribution channel. You might as well be marketing your proprietary FPS games to little old ladies. You'll get about the same response.

Most of those are device classes

[tepples]

New DVD burner, [...] dual wide-screen monitors, digital camera, Razer gaming mouse, USB SD/Compact Flash/etc. card reader

These are all standard device classes (ATAPI, DDC, USB mass storage, USB HID, and USB mass storage respectively) that need only the class driver that comes with the operating system. Of what you listed, only video cards and internal modems need specific drivers. I'd add scanners, sound cards, and printers to the list. I bought a Microtek ScanMaker 4850 USB flatbed scanner back when I used only Windows, and SANE's web site acknowledges that it's a paperweight under Linux. And even though dial-up is almost dead, Wi-Fi cards have driver issues much like internal modems did *cough*Broadcom*cough*.

Why? (Re:It doesn't matter at all)

[EXTomar]

I've been wondering about this for years, ever since Debian and Red Hat created this technology to solve that problem, why do people think the way Debian does package management is better than RPM? I've never gotten a straight answer where it seems to be that most believe Red Hat distros are in some dark age handling packages piecewise which isn't true at all. I've looked at both and they match each other feature for feature. I've also done a bit of tinker with their respective "front end" apt-get and yum and find they match each other in features and functionality.

So why do people still say this Debian is so much better than RPM? Did I miss some brand new advancement or missed an old esoteric feature or what? Both pieces of technology do the same thing with minimal fuss as far as I can tell.

Re:Why? (Re:It doesn't matter at all)

[Culture20]

So why do people still say this Debian is so much better than RPM?

Because apt-hell isn't the popular term. Even when I'm in apt-hell on a weird Ubuntu variant, I call it rpm-hell because that's what people understand. It's like Kleenex or Coke, a package management problem Brand so popular that it's a generic term for all package management problems. Even gentoo users don't say portage-hell, they call it portage.

Print version (one-page version)

[jetxee]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9142148/Review_3_top_Linux_distros_go_for_different_users

LOL

[mister_playboy]

Thanks for the link (and the car analogy)!

Mandriva? Why?

[hduff]

Mandriva offers an RPM-based distro, excellent admin tools (GUI and CLI), good hardware support and a wide range of packages. It's one of the major distros yet it always seems to be ignored in these comparisons. Why?

Re:Ummm. Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do you normally compile programs, and where are they installed?

What makes you think he needs to actually compile programs?

Works the same in WINE

[imtheguru]

I actually like WoW's way of doing things: want to backup/restore WoW, or put it on antoher PC ? just copy WoW's dir. No dependencies. No DLL Hell. No registry hacks. Want to wipe it ? Delete the directory.

I wish all programs worked that way and were that easy to manage.

BTW, Data and program files are segregated in separate subdirs. User data, too.

By the same token, one only has to launch the WoW executable to run it in Linux using WINE.

Re: Why Top Linux Distros Are For Different Users

[legionzero]

Different GNU/Linux distros are indeed born with a specific target audience in mind, not to mention the existence of specialized spin-offs that are intended not only for a specific audience but are also intended for very specific tasks. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that not all distros are made with the same philosophy behind them, some are Free Software and some are Open Source Software and some are something entirely different. A distro that caters to a noob would indeed be a good thing, in fact it would be great if there could be a distro that changed along with the learning of the user, just imagine: it starts out as a noobie playground, then in a few months it becomes a tool for a user, then a few more months later it becomes a power user's tool-kit and finally evolves to a sysadmin's power-tool The best part of different distros for different users is the fact that we can pick and choose, we have the freedom to do so. At home I use 3 different distros that I like for very different reasons: I use Debian as an all purpose desktop because it is rich and robust, I use FreeBSD as a production server because it is lite, stable and secure & I use gNewSense because I like the smell of freedom.

Obligatory

[JohnnyBGod]

http://funroll-loops.info/

A different take

[jonaskoelker]

Actually, some of us use Ubuntu and the 'easier;' distros because (a) we're tied of screwing around getting things to work like we did 6-7 years ago

FWIW:

Five years ago I started using Debian. There was some screwing around, but I got a system that worked the way I want it to.

Today, with Ubuntu, getting my system set up the way I want is a struggle; there's less screwing around (hacking config files), but a lot more pawing around on the 'net for the documentation that isn't there.

Network configuration, for one; I only recently found a good guide for setting up wpa_supplicant such that I don't have to do anything to connect to the access points I frequently "visit" (and I can even make my box run a vpn client on the appropriate networks). Making NetworkManager do the right thing? Automatically? Good luck.

And setting all the fun options for your input devices (EmulateWheel, etc.)? I found this nice comment in my xorg.conf: "Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings here are ignored." (my bold.) Great. Some of the things I write in xorg.conf won't work. Which ones? Where do I find out? Okay, so you make HAL do the work; fine. Why don't you make HAL import my configuration from xorg.conf, such that the man pages I read don't lie to me? Or at least fix the man pages?

And PulseAudio? You mean all my sound dies just because I restart X? No thanks, I don't want that. (Luckily you can just uninstall it.)

Ubuntu does some things right, let me be the first to say that. But I think some of the choices are making the distro less usable for me.

re: "all distributions should cater to the newbie"

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL distributions SHOULD cater to the newbie? WHY?????!!!!!

I suppose ALL books SHOULD cater to infants who are just learning to read? ALL training programmes SHOULD be accessible to inexperienced beginners? I suspect the flaw in that kind of reasoning would become obvious when the product of your "newbie friendly" medical school took to your innards with a scalpel.

Some distributions cater to experienced GNU/Linux users who want all that irritating newbie-pleasing automation and complication out of our faces. Don't tell us that we SHOULD be using whatever groaning heap of GUI you happen to prefer.

This kind of "everything should be like Ubuntu" nonsense is one reason I don't recommend it to Windows users any more, despite its newbie-friendly polish. The UNIX philosophy used to be a big part of the advantage of GNU/Linux over Windows. Now that distributions like Ubuntu have almost made themselves into free Windows clones in order to win over Windows users, it seems that more and more people are arguing that a superior OS "should" model itself on an inferior one, so that Windows users can maintain whatever habits it profited Microsoft to instill in them, rather than (shock, horror) having to learn something new. GNOME is discussing breaking away from the GNU project entirely: of all the distributions' user communities, you can bet it will be the newbie-heavy crowds of button-clicking Windows converts in communities like Ubuntu that will evaluate that kind of thing in terms of the questions like "hey, will that mean more pretty stuff on my screen?!" that make the likes of Microsoft so happy.

Newbies who want to learn are cool. Newbies who expect the world to adapt to their ignorance are not. Personally, I don't particularly like distributions that favor the latter group over the former.

Different Distros For Different People

[Murdoch5]

Linux users end up picking the distro that's right for them. Some people like Ubuntu style distro's and others like Source distro's. Personally I like Gentoo or Arch but thats just me.