Information may not be economically scarce, but the right to exclude others from it can be, and that's exactly what people who want IP rights are claiming.
Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.
Do you agree that there's a difference between privately admitting something to friends, and publicly proclaiming it to everyone?
I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists....
It doesn't have to be televangelists. I would just as much expect Sean Hannity -- as much as I might otherwise disagree with him -- to cleverly mock their claim to being Christian.
Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers?
No, because they didn't make their Christianity a defining part of their justification for violence. Now, I'd agree there's some asymmetry in the use of "radical Christian" vs. "radical Muslim", but that wasn't my point. My point was that Christians would be more vocal about getting across the idea that those people aren't following Christianity if it were widely believed otherwise.
What *if* all UK schools dropped the Holocaust for this reason? What would you do about it? Where do you draw the line in accomodating people's "sensitivity" and why?
Well, I think what uspets people is that they don't hear condemnation of this kind of thing *from Muslims*. If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.
Okay, so show me the Windows guide put out by Microsoft that lists that as a precaution...
We've been over this:
a) When you're installing Windows legally, you have necessarily already paid for support to take you through tough spots. b) MS doesn't *need* your business in order to build up inertia; it already has it. Linux distros do not.
Seems like you're lucky to get the information you did get and the help you did get and maybe you should have exercised a little more common sense.
Yes, common sense such as a) not trusting instructions, and b) not heeding the OEM's HIGH RECOMMENDATION.
But just like every other SUV driving, super sized moron,
WOW! You somehow know both my car class, and my weight. Well, maybe half right. Compact car, and 38'' waist (and was 50 lb heavier at time of failed install).
you take what should be a lesson learned and turn it into an example in your mind of how the world owes you something.
The world does not owe me anything, but neither does it owe the Linux community a chance. When I deign to try a Linux distro, and thereby increase the chance of developers taking you seriously, *I* am doing *you* a favor, not the other way around. Remember that.
and when you're using software with no warranty that you got for free, you shouldn't bitch for 17 months that it didn't work.
I'm not complaining that it didn't work. I'm complaining about the farce of Linux users griping that no one wants to adopt, while their software has fundamental flaws that could have been corrected with just a bit less cluelessness.
I'm being perfectly consistent. I wasn't aware you were talking about Breezy (thus the admission that I wasn't looking at the dates on the old posts).
You made that comment AFTER you were aware.
You still (albeit waiting a few days to get it) could have requested a LiveCD to be mailed to you.
No, because you're STILL making the claim that the Live CD was the CD I *by necessity* already had, simply by virtue of having installed with it.
"How many of them installed it without your assistance?"
All of them.
Really? You gave them/told them to download the install CD, and the next time they talked to you, they had the distro up and running? Please, try to make your lies believable.
Your tone in this very conversation is exactly the reason why only a dedicated few would help you.
Right, because I treat self-righteous idiots spouting obvious falsities the exact same way I treat people making a serious attempt to help me follow their own suggestions.
As far as being "someone who actually has a clue about computers", if you need spelled out instructions to keep install media for an OS that you MAY want to revert back to if this doesn't work around
No, I mistook Ubuntu for a reliable OS, but like the people in the thread suggested, if it really has to work, just go with Windows.
Not just in computers, but life in general, a good rule is "always have a backup plan". [...]
Please. I already explained to your short attention span the precautions I took: the distro was on a completely separate HD from Windows. I borrowed a separate laptop so I could still get help. I had a family member who could fix everything, ready to go. I reserved a block of time when I wouldn't rely on the computer for anything. (If you hadn't noticed, that's a lot more fault tolerance than they design into Ubuntu.) And in fact, that would have succeeded in keeping me from being locked out of my box -- just as planned -- if I hadn't followed *the OEM's HIGH RECOMMENDATION* to install GRUB, in which case my ability to access Windows (and a CD burner!) would have been unaffected.
When a newb hedges against failure better than the OS designers, you know something's wrong.
Depending on what version of what OS you're coming from those would vary.
No, in all cases the troubleshooting tool I was supposed to have the Live CD. This was not listed as being necessary, when, in reality, it was.
One logical thing to have ready is the install media of the OS you're coming from to restore you system to its state before you started.
Then it must have been logical to list it as a precaution.
OS vendors are not responsible for telling you how to troubleshoot your system under another OS.
Never said so. They are, however, responsible for looking like they're attempting to maintain a pretense of acting like they're imitating someone who has considered his product from the standpoint of the end user.
Ahh, so now we see the lovely attitude that got you so far in the Ubuntu help forums.
It didn't get me very far in terms of getting people to actually read my posts and follow up when giving worthless advice, no. But look how many people revealed themselves to be complete idiots. Isn't that an accomplishment? Isn't that valuable insight as to why Ubuntu isn't more widely adopted?
I was referring to getting a CD mailed to you after you were locked out of your box and couldn't burn a CD.
But then, wouldn't that be the same install CD I already used? Oh wait, I'm expecting you to be consistent here.
No, they gave you, on a CD that you could download for free, the collective work of thousands of developers for you to use however you see fit.
No. When I followed the literal instructions for that software, I was locked out of my own computer and forced to beg for help from people who don't read posts and can't handle basic predicate logic. (burned CD on computer before !==> can burn CD on it when locked out) That's more freedom than MS has ever taken from me.
Sorry if you don't like it. Sorry something went wrong.
No, you're not.
If you'd like to bring up a problem that actually exists, please add something new to the conversation.
I did bring up a problem that still actually exists: miserable design procedures. Several other posters already admitted that was a relevant point.
And I can easily recommend Ubuntu with a straight face. Ask my parents (who use Ubuntu). Ask my fiance, who uses Ubuntu. Ask friends of mine from work (who are thinking about it).
How many of them installed it without your assistance?
I recommend it to anyone who is sick of rebuilding their Windows computer (or buying a new one) every time it gets another virus, or piece of spyware, or adware, or any of the 8 million other things that junk up Microsoft's products on a daily basis.
Oh, I agree Windows sucks. That's why I went through the immense effort and spent all the time to try to switch. How bad do you have to screw up to turn me -- someone who actually has a clue about computers -- away?
...nothing to click? So what are all these screenshots?.
Okay, I haven't seen an OS install interface that allowed a mouse before.
What you've said is that you tried to do something non-standard,
You've got to be kidding me. Do you have any clue what the install interface was like on Ubuntu as of January '06? Breezy Badger? I followed the regular install instructions. Nothing "non-standard" except of course, for having the audacity to have more than one hard drive -- which I'm sure is completely unanticipated and uncommon for Linux users, right?
didn't take adequate precautions to be able to repair it,
Sure I did: set aside large block of time, have partition on separate hard drive (oops!), do everything that was HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, borrow laptop so I have working computer, use distro a family member is familiar with. What I did not do, were the precautions that are NOT listed in the install instructions on the website (as of Jan '06!). You know, the ones I was supposed to telepathically know to use.
Do you change BOOT.INI options in Windows willy-nilly?
"Oh, look honey, it's another commenter falsely blaming your install failure on something wildly implausible that would require you to be a complete idiot and probably already mentioned you didn't do."
"That's nice, dear."
I fail to see how it's Ubuntu's fault that it didn't keep you from breaking your computer by doing something stupid.
"Oh, look honey, it's another commenter referring to following the instructions as written, as being 'stupid'."
Yeah, exactly. Imagine for a minute all the highly mechanized third-world sweatshops that pay pennies per hour. It can't cost more than a dollar to make a shirt, and what does it retail in America for? $35.
Yep, considering all the time and effort I set aside, all the precautions I took to make sure things would go okay... but it was my "dicking around" with the OS in the effort to get superperformance that must have caused GRUB error 25.
(Btw, there's nothing to click when installing an OS.)
Oh, I anticipated the new OS not installing. What I did not anticipate was the new OS avoidably locking me out of my computer entirely, all without telling me in advance the proper troubleshooting tools to have ready.
I hadn't been paying attention to dates on the old thread stuff.
Yeah, I know, pesky "facts".
That's one thing about Linux, when you get hosed up, there are others that get to the same spot who know more about it,
Yeah, unless your box is hosed and unusable as a result of following their advice.
and can bug the devs to change something.
Yeah, like, "go through the install process once on a computer other than yours".
And another option would have been to pay $5 to have a CD mailed to you. Not the most convenient
Huh? That would be less convenient than just burning a CD. (Which, by the way, went perfectly.) You're like that guy who said that it was a better idea to HIGHLY RECOMMEND a flaky bootloader because "most people" would rather risk full computer lockout than have to "finagle" with complicated processes like "hitting F8 at startup".
So complain and bring it up all you want, but copping the type of attitude you did, to people who aren't working for Canonical (who gave you and OS for free), you're lucky that they tried to help you at all, much less that they told you exactly how to fix your problem.
They "gave me" the immense inconvenience of being locked out of my own box for a week -- making me far worse off than if I had never heard of Linux at all. Their "solutions" were things that you now claim are meaningless -- to download a Live CD I theoretically must have already used to install. Or they gave me instructions and then gave up when I actually followed them. Or they told me to use things (like my WINDOWS disc) that the website didn't say to have ready, because I'm supposed to read minds and know which advice to completely ignore. Yeah, I'm *so* grateful for all of that.
Sorry that it didn't work out for you Dupe.
No, you're not. Your glad that there's one less user to help mainstream Linux, because you obviously don't want it to have significant market share.
Now there's a much better installer as its been the focus of their interface designers and dev team for a few releases worth of development.
GREAT! In a "few releases of development", they finally got around to changes that I, a complete newb, could have recommended after one install attempt. That means you can start recommending normal people to use Linux with a straight face by 2010 and beat out MS by 2015, right?
Since this post supercedes most of the questions in your sibling post, I'll start with it:
Here's what your research should have turned up (from Ubuntu's website download page) [...]
No, it shouldn't have. I did this in January '06, and the site I saw differs from that description. It listed an install CD and a Live CD. The Live CD's description resembled that of the "Desktop CD" you mentioned, but was characterized as being something you'd use to "try it out" to see what it's like. I didn't want to "try it out"; I wanted to install, and it very much wasn't listed as being necessary or, in all the care I was taking, I would have downloaded it. Nothing was called "Alternate". Notice none of the forum members using this terminology ("Alternate" and "Desktop" CDs).
Why is this everyone's fault but yours?
Because I did precisely what the install instructions said to do (and even went above and beyond), and was criticized for following them. I have always accepted responsibility for being stupid enough to trust Ubuntu's instructions, but before you "use that" against me, try to think about what that actually implies.
No, the idiotic crowd I argue with, gets this wrong time and time and time again. Let's go through it again:
-In the sense that I could boot and use the command line, yes, it was a live CD. -It was not a Live CD in the sense of the pretty GUI that operates as if you've already installed it. -To the extent that I could use the command line, I did follow the forum members' instructions, all of which utterly failed, and which I described in great detail, and were never followed up because, duh, "you can just go burn a live CD which will allow you to magically fix it in a way that you can't now. Why not just do that?"
You've got some great points, but I believe all those problems have been fixed.
Yes, see the second paragraph from the end in my previous post. My point was not, "Ubuntu has flaw X, and that's bad." My point was, "How the **** could flaw X get through if you had even one UIDer looking at it for one test-install?"
Give Ubuntu 7.04 a try! Just to let you know, if you install it along with Windows, it will automagically shrink the Windows partition, install Ubuntu in the free space it made, and offer Windows as an option in Grub when you boot. It works very well.
The problem I had was that GRUB did not give me the option of anything... even entering a command. It just froze entirely (stage 1.5, error 25). So, if that happened again, the fact that GRUB permits Windows to load (which it probably did before when successful) wouldn't be helpful. But it can handle 250 GB HD's now, right?
Remember, people recommended Ubuntu to me with exactly your current level of confidence. There's a reason I'm an Ubuntu dupe -- because I believed it.
Undeservedly. My non-geek wife gets by on Linux just fine without much help from me at all.
Sure. If someone had gone through all the work of setting up Ubuntu for me, I'd probably be a happy user right now. Unfortunately, I didn't have that luxury. While someone else will be along shortly to link you to my story, here's the car analogy of what happened.
And before you say, "but if people had to install Windows...": well, they don't. You, the geek who doesn't understand why people won't switch to Software Freedom, are asking them to switch FROM Windows TO a Linux distro. So it is entirely understandable to expect that the switchover process be easy, even if the current dominant market participant doesn't make it easy to switch to them.
[interface designers] On the kernel? No. Kernels need human interface designers like Alaskan Eskimos need air conditioners. On GNOME and KDE? Yes, there are several professional human interface designers working on GNOME and KDE.
Unfortunately, there is more to the interface than the OS GUI, and on that, the GP was entirely correct: there is ZERO thought on interface design. On my Ubuntu install, if I -- someone with no professional training in user interfaced design (UID) -- had tested the install process once before release, I would have been able to recommend significant changes. When I tried to install Ubuntu, my first bootup led to a GRUB error that locked me out of all OSes. I know you're going to try to blame that on GRUB, but it was completely avoidable.
First, a UIDer should have thought for ten seconds and said, "wait, if GRUB errors can lock someone out of the OS, how can we mitigate this failure mode?" Since it (based on my experience in the Ubuntu forums) suddenly made the Live CD absolutely necessary, then the website should have been changed to classify the Live CD as being a "necessary download", since you NEED it for troubleshooting if anything goes wrong. Second, a UIDer should have noted that GRUB is not the only way to go, and some users would be okay with loading Ubuntu simply by telling the computer to boot from a CD so at least they can still load Windows. Users should be informed of this at the bootloader setup stage rather than being told, outright, that GRUB is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Third, since my problem (it later turned out) stemmed from using too large a harddrive, and Ubuntu had to know the size of my goddamn harddrive, there should have been some kind of flag -- either tell the user not to install, or use a bootloader that can handle that size. All of those things are under control of the Ubuntu interface designers, so no, you can't just pin this on GRUB.
Remember, being locked out of all OSes is REALLY SERIOUS. It means that the user can't then access the "massive Linux community" or burn new CDs without going far out of his way. The design process reveals an utter failure to recognize failure modes and adequately mitigate them.
And, based on experience, some wiseass is going to pointout how now, finally, they do require Live CD download with the install CD. But the point is that the design process at some point was such that it let such an abysmal failure through. A failure that kept me, a reasonably computer savvy user from switching. Remember, I did my due diligence: I read the download site. I set aside a large block of time for the install. I checked that the CD was burned properly. I evaluated alternate distros. I even bought a third hard drive so the Linux partition could be isolated. And STILL I got ****ed by piss-poor design.
So I tell Linux fans: a) You can put serious effort into making Linux accessible to newbies, and complain when they don't switch, or b) You can resign Linux to being a geek's OS but understand why its market share sucks for home users. But you can't have it both ways
Wow, I think your bizarre economic theory is what kept you from making "UbuntuDupe friend". (I know, a tragedy, right?)
Employment vs inflation is a constant concern since the Great Depression, when basically suddenly supply outstripped aggregate demand. (Yes, Say's Law does still apply, but "supply creates its own demand" only by lowering prices, and in the Great Depression suddenly the only point where you could actually sell all that stuff was below the production costs.)
What? Businesses, even today, often sell at a loss when demand doesn't turn out to be what they expected. Ever seen a "clearance" shelf? "But then what about for the next round of production?" Well, at the next round of production, the lower demand for outputs has chewed its way back to the original factors, forcing their money costs down so that production costs no longer exceed final output prices.
You seem to have this view that businesses knowingly make products, again and again, that they can't sell profitably, and then when they predictably can't sell them, they successfully lobby the government to make people buy them, which somehow saves the economy from instability. Have you ever actually run a business? Would part of your business plan involve making a product at a loss and hoping the government will force its price up in time?
Moreover, this wouldn't explain all the other modern capitalist economies that don't have governments that suck up output "to keep people employed".
And,
So nowadays governments actually get to see that employment stays roughly where they want it, and create some extra aggregate demand. (Deficit spending, pork barrel, social security, etc.) It works too, since we no longer have the economic crisis cycles that plagued most of the 19'th century and the first part of the 20'th century.
Slashdot Mirror
Information may not be economically scarce, but the right to exclude others from it can be, and that's exactly what people who want IP rights are claiming.
Oh, I thought it was just a really crude way to keep people from stuffing it into a purse or something.
Not true. You're very very wrong. My authentic, divinely-inspired German version uses the term "jungfrau".
I don't know any Muslims in position to have their attention,
CAIR? Louis Farrakhan? Muhammad Ali? Cat Stephens?
Do most people in the US talk to muslims? I hear condemnation of suicide bombings from muslims all the time.
...
Do you agree that there's a difference between privately admitting something to friends, and publicly proclaiming it to everyone?
I think your argument is for more muslim televangelists.
It doesn't have to be televangelists. I would just as much expect Sean Hannity -- as much as I might otherwise disagree with him -- to cleverly mock their claim to being Christian.
Did you hear anyone call the unibomber a "christian radical bomber?" What about the oklahoma bombers?
No, because they didn't make their Christianity a defining part of their justification for violence. Now, I'd agree there's some asymmetry in the use of "radical Christian" vs. "radical Muslim", but that wasn't my point. My point was that Christians would be more vocal about getting across the idea that those people aren't following Christianity if it were widely believed otherwise.
The point I'm getting out of all of this is:
What *if* all UK schools dropped the Holocaust for this reason? What would you do about it? Where do you draw the line in accomodating people's "sensitivity" and why?
Well, I think what uspets people is that they don't hear condemnation of this kind of thing *from Muslims*. If next month Christian suicide bombers in ten separate incidents killed a lot of non-Christians, I can 100% guarantee you Jerry Falwell would be denouncing them.
Here, I'm going to post some:
... good luck finding the rest of the information you need to use them.
4245 8611 9994 1245
8847 1210 5566 0625
Now
Nah, it actually stemmed from my feeling of being a "dupe" for trying out Ubuntu. Lame on some level, yeah, but bold on another.
:-/
You're not gonna defriend me, are you?
Okay, so show me the Windows guide put out by Microsoft that lists that as a precaution ...
We've been over this:
a) When you're installing Windows legally, you have necessarily already paid for support to take you through tough spots.
b) MS doesn't *need* your business in order to build up inertia; it already has it. Linux distros do not.
Seems like you're lucky to get the information you did get and the help you did get and maybe you should have exercised a little more common sense.
Yes, common sense such as a) not trusting instructions, and b) not heeding the OEM's HIGH RECOMMENDATION.
But just like every other SUV driving, super sized moron,
WOW! You somehow know both my car class, and my weight. Well, maybe half right. Compact car, and 38'' waist (and was 50 lb heavier at time of failed install).
you take what should be a lesson learned and turn it into an example in your mind of how the world owes you something.
The world does not owe me anything, but neither does it owe the Linux community a chance. When I deign to try a Linux distro, and thereby increase the chance of developers taking you seriously, *I* am doing *you* a favor, not the other way around. Remember that.
and when you're using software with no warranty that you got for free, you shouldn't bitch for 17 months that it didn't work.
I'm not complaining that it didn't work. I'm complaining about the farce of Linux users griping that no one wants to adopt, while their software has fundamental flaws that could have been corrected with just a bit less cluelessness.
I'm being perfectly consistent. I wasn't aware you were talking about Breezy (thus the admission that I wasn't looking at the dates on the old posts).
You made that comment AFTER you were aware.
You still (albeit waiting a few days to get it) could have requested a LiveCD to be mailed to you.
No, because you're STILL making the claim that the Live CD was the CD I *by necessity* already had, simply by virtue of having installed with it.
"How many of them installed it without your assistance?"
All of them.
Really? You gave them/told them to download the install CD, and the next time they talked to you, they had the distro up and running? Please, try to make your lies believable.
Your tone in this very conversation is exactly the reason why only a dedicated few would help you.
Right, because I treat self-righteous idiots spouting obvious falsities the exact same way I treat people making a serious attempt to help me follow their own suggestions.
As far as being "someone who actually has a clue about computers", if you need spelled out instructions to keep install media for an OS that you MAY want to revert back to if this doesn't work around
No, I mistook Ubuntu for a reliable OS, but like the people in the thread suggested, if it really has to work, just go with Windows.
Not just in computers, but life in general, a good rule is "always have a backup plan". [...]
Please. I already explained to your short attention span the precautions I took: the distro was on a completely separate HD from Windows. I borrowed a separate laptop so I could still get help. I had a family member who could fix everything, ready to go. I reserved a block of time when I wouldn't rely on the computer for anything. (If you hadn't noticed, that's a lot more fault tolerance than they design into Ubuntu.) And in fact, that would have succeeded in keeping me from being locked out of my box -- just as planned -- if I hadn't followed *the OEM's HIGH RECOMMENDATION* to install GRUB, in which case my ability to access Windows (and a CD burner!) would have been unaffected.
When a newb hedges against failure better than the OS designers, you know something's wrong.
If you read the licensing comments: [...]
Relevance?
Depending on what version of what OS you're coming from those would vary.
No, in all cases the troubleshooting tool I was supposed to have the Live CD. This was not listed as being necessary, when, in reality, it was.
One logical thing to have ready is the install media of the OS you're coming from to restore you system to its state before you started.
Then it must have been logical to list it as a precaution.
OS vendors are not responsible for telling you how to troubleshoot your system under another OS.
Never said so. They are, however, responsible for looking like they're attempting to maintain a pretense of acting like they're imitating someone who has considered his product from the standpoint of the end user.
Ahh, so now we see the lovely attitude that got you so far in the Ubuntu help forums.
It didn't get me very far in terms of getting people to actually read my posts and follow up when giving worthless advice, no. But look how many people revealed themselves to be complete idiots. Isn't that an accomplishment? Isn't that valuable insight as to why Ubuntu isn't more widely adopted?
I was referring to getting a CD mailed to you after you were locked out of your box and couldn't burn a CD.
But then, wouldn't that be the same install CD I already used? Oh wait, I'm expecting you to be consistent here.
No, they gave you, on a CD that you could download for free, the collective work of thousands of developers for you to use however you see fit.
No. When I followed the literal instructions for that software, I was locked out of my own computer and forced to beg for help from people who don't read posts and can't handle basic predicate logic. (burned CD on computer before !==> can burn CD on it when locked out) That's more freedom than MS has ever taken from me.
Sorry if you don't like it. Sorry something went wrong.
No, you're not.
If you'd like to bring up a problem that actually exists, please add something new to the conversation.
I did bring up a problem that still actually exists: miserable design procedures. Several other posters already admitted that was a relevant point.
And I can easily recommend Ubuntu with a straight face. Ask my parents (who use Ubuntu). Ask my fiance, who uses Ubuntu. Ask friends of mine from work (who are thinking about it).
How many of them installed it without your assistance?
I recommend it to anyone who is sick of rebuilding their Windows computer (or buying a new one) every time it gets another virus, or piece of spyware, or adware, or any of the 8 million other things that junk up Microsoft's products on a daily basis.
Oh, I agree Windows sucks. That's why I went through the immense effort and spent all the time to try to switch. How bad do you have to screw up to turn me -- someone who actually has a clue about computers -- away?
...nothing to click? So what are all these screenshots?.
Okay, I haven't seen an OS install interface that allowed a mouse before.
What you've said is that you tried to do something non-standard,
You've got to be kidding me. Do you have any clue what the install interface was like on Ubuntu as of January '06? Breezy Badger? I followed the regular install instructions. Nothing "non-standard" except of course, for having the audacity to have more than one hard drive -- which I'm sure is completely unanticipated and uncommon for Linux users, right?
didn't take adequate precautions to be able to repair it,
Sure I did: set aside large block of time, have partition on separate hard drive (oops!), do everything that was HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, borrow laptop so I have working computer, use distro a family member is familiar with. What I did not do, were the precautions that are NOT listed in the install instructions on the website (as of Jan '06!). You know, the ones I was supposed to telepathically know to use.
Do you change BOOT.INI options in Windows willy-nilly?
"Oh, look honey, it's another commenter falsely blaming your install failure on something wildly implausible that would require you to be a complete idiot and probably already mentioned you didn't do."
"That's nice, dear."
I fail to see how it's Ubuntu's fault that it didn't keep you from breaking your computer by doing something stupid.
"Oh, look honey, it's another commenter referring to following the instructions as written, as being 'stupid'."
"That's nice, dear."
Yeah, exactly. Imagine for a minute all the highly mechanized third-world sweatshops that pay pennies per hour. It can't cost more than a dollar to make a shirt, and what does it retail in America for? $35.
100% markup doesn't seem bad by comparison.
Yep, considering all the time and effort I set aside, all the precautions I took to make sure things would go okay ... but it was my "dicking around" with the OS in the effort to get superperformance that must have caused GRUB error 25.
(Btw, there's nothing to click when installing an OS.)
Oh, I anticipated the new OS not installing. What I did not anticipate was the new OS avoidably locking me out of my computer entirely, all without telling me in advance the proper troubleshooting tools to have ready.
I hadn't been paying attention to dates on the old thread stuff.
Yeah, I know, pesky "facts".
That's one thing about Linux, when you get hosed up, there are others that get to the same spot who know more about it,
Yeah, unless your box is hosed and unusable as a result of following their advice.
and can bug the devs to change something.
Yeah, like, "go through the install process once on a computer other than yours".
And another option would have been to pay $5 to have a CD mailed to you. Not the most convenient
Huh? That would be less convenient than just burning a CD. (Which, by the way, went perfectly.) You're like that guy who said that it was a better idea to HIGHLY RECOMMEND a flaky bootloader because "most people" would rather risk full computer lockout than have to "finagle" with complicated processes like "hitting F8 at startup".
So complain and bring it up all you want, but copping the type of attitude you did, to people who aren't working for Canonical (who gave you and OS for free), you're lucky that they tried to help you at all, much less that they told you exactly how to fix your problem.
They "gave me" the immense inconvenience of being locked out of my own box for a week -- making me far worse off than if I had never heard of Linux at all. Their "solutions" were things that you now claim are meaningless -- to download a Live CD I theoretically must have already used to install. Or they gave me instructions and then gave up when I actually followed them. Or they told me to use things (like my WINDOWS disc) that the website didn't say to have ready, because I'm supposed to read minds and know which advice to completely ignore. Yeah, I'm *so* grateful for all of that.
Sorry that it didn't work out for you Dupe.
No, you're not. Your glad that there's one less user to help mainstream Linux, because you obviously don't want it to have significant market share.
Now there's a much better installer as its been the focus of their interface designers and dev team for a few releases worth of development.
GREAT! In a "few releases of development", they finally got around to changes that I, a complete newb, could have recommended after one install attempt. That means you can start recommending normal people to use Linux with a straight face by 2010 and beat out MS by 2015, right?
Since this post supercedes most of the questions in your sibling post, I'll start with it:
Here's what your research should have turned up (from Ubuntu's website download page) [...]
No, it shouldn't have. I did this in January '06, and the site I saw differs from that description. It listed an install CD and a Live CD. The Live CD's description resembled that of the "Desktop CD" you mentioned, but was characterized as being something you'd use to "try it out" to see what it's like. I didn't want to "try it out"; I wanted to install, and it very much wasn't listed as being necessary or, in all the care I was taking, I would have downloaded it. Nothing was called "Alternate". Notice none of the forum members using this terminology ("Alternate" and "Desktop" CDs).
Why is this everyone's fault but yours?
Because I did precisely what the install instructions said to do (and even went above and beyond), and was criticized for following them. I have always accepted responsibility for being stupid enough to trust Ubuntu's instructions, but before you "use that" against me, try to think about what that actually implies.
No, the idiotic crowd I argue with, gets this wrong time and time and time again. Let's go through it again:
-In the sense that I could boot and use the command line, yes, it was a live CD.
-It was not a Live CD in the sense of the pretty GUI that operates as if you've already installed it.
-To the extent that I could use the command line, I did follow the forum members' instructions, all of which utterly failed, and which I described in great detail, and were never followed up because, duh, "you can just go burn a live CD which will allow you to magically fix it in a way that you can't now. Why not just do that?"
YOU tell me who doesn't have a clue.
You've got some great points, but I believe all those problems have been fixed.
... even entering a command. It just froze entirely (stage 1.5, error 25). So, if that happened again, the fact that GRUB permits Windows to load (which it probably did before when successful) wouldn't be helpful. But it can handle 250 GB HD's now, right?
Yes, see the second paragraph from the end in my previous post. My point was not, "Ubuntu has flaw X, and that's bad." My point was, "How the **** could flaw X get through if you had even one UIDer looking at it for one test-install?"
Give Ubuntu 7.04 a try! Just to let you know, if you install it along with Windows, it will automagically shrink the Windows partition, install Ubuntu in the free space it made, and offer Windows as an option in Grub when you boot. It works very well.
The problem I had was that GRUB did not give me the option of anything
Remember, people recommended Ubuntu to me with exactly your current level of confidence. There's a reason I'm an Ubuntu dupe -- because I believed it.
Finally, a story where the "sharks" tag is actually relevant. Of course ... now people are going to tag it with "lasers".
Undeservedly. My non-geek wife gets by on Linux just fine without much help from me at all.
...": well, they don't. You, the geek who doesn't understand why people won't switch to Software Freedom, are asking them to switch FROM Windows TO a Linux distro. So it is entirely understandable to expect that the switchover process be easy, even if the current dominant market participant doesn't make it easy to switch to them.
Sure. If someone had gone through all the work of setting up Ubuntu for me, I'd probably be a happy user right now. Unfortunately, I didn't have that luxury. While someone else will be along shortly to link you to my story, here's the car analogy of what happened.
And before you say, "but if people had to install Windows
[interface designers] On the kernel? No. Kernels need human interface designers like Alaskan Eskimos need air conditioners. On GNOME and KDE? Yes, there are several professional human interface designers working on GNOME and KDE.
Unfortunately, there is more to the interface than the OS GUI, and on that, the GP was entirely correct: there is ZERO thought on interface design. On my Ubuntu install, if I -- someone with no professional training in user interfaced design (UID) -- had tested the install process once before release, I would have been able to recommend significant changes. When I tried to install Ubuntu, my first bootup led to a GRUB error that locked me out of all OSes. I know you're going to try to blame that on GRUB, but it was completely avoidable.
First, a UIDer should have thought for ten seconds and said, "wait, if GRUB errors can lock someone out of the OS, how can we mitigate this failure mode?" Since it (based on my experience in the Ubuntu forums) suddenly made the Live CD absolutely necessary, then the website should have been changed to classify the Live CD as being a "necessary download", since you NEED it for troubleshooting if anything goes wrong. Second, a UIDer should have noted that GRUB is not the only way to go, and some users would be okay with loading Ubuntu simply by telling the computer to boot from a CD so at least they can still load Windows. Users should be informed of this at the bootloader setup stage rather than being told, outright, that GRUB is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Third, since my problem (it later turned out) stemmed from using too large a harddrive, and Ubuntu had to know the size of my goddamn harddrive, there should have been some kind of flag -- either tell the user not to install, or use a bootloader that can handle that size. All of those things are under control of the Ubuntu interface designers, so no, you can't just pin this on GRUB.
Remember, being locked out of all OSes is REALLY SERIOUS. It means that the user can't then access the "massive Linux community" or burn new CDs without going far out of his way. The design process reveals an utter failure to recognize failure modes and adequately mitigate them.
And, based on experience, some wiseass is going to pointout how now, finally, they do require Live CD download with the install CD. But the point is that the design process at some point was such that it let such an abysmal failure through. A failure that kept me, a reasonably computer savvy user from switching. Remember, I did my due diligence: I read the download site. I set aside a large block of time for the install. I checked that the CD was burned properly. I evaluated alternate distros. I even bought a third hard drive so the Linux partition could be isolated. And STILL I got ****ed by piss-poor design.
So I tell Linux fans: a) You can put serious effort into making Linux accessible to newbies, and complain when they don't switch, or b) You can resign Linux to being a geek's OS but understand why its market share sucks for home users. But you can't have it both ways
So there's a setting I can change to fix this?
Like, some menu that's like:
(X) Crappy color
( ) NCC (non-crappy color)
Wow, I think your bizarre economic theory is what kept you from making "UbuntuDupe friend". (I know, a tragedy, right?)
Employment vs inflation is a constant concern since the Great Depression, when basically suddenly supply outstripped aggregate demand. (Yes, Say's Law does still apply, but "supply creates its own demand" only by lowering prices, and in the Great Depression suddenly the only point where you could actually sell all that stuff was below the production costs.)
What? Businesses, even today, often sell at a loss when demand doesn't turn out to be what they expected. Ever seen a "clearance" shelf? "But then what about for the next round of production?" Well, at the next round of production, the lower demand for outputs has chewed its way back to the original factors, forcing their money costs down so that production costs no longer exceed final output prices.
You seem to have this view that businesses knowingly make products, again and again, that they can't sell profitably, and then when they predictably can't sell them, they successfully lobby the government to make people buy them, which somehow saves the economy from instability. Have you ever actually run a business? Would part of your business plan involve making a product at a loss and hoping the government will force its price up in time?
Moreover, this wouldn't explain all the other modern capitalist economies that don't have governments that suck up output "to keep people employed".
And,
So nowadays governments actually get to see that employment stays roughly where they want it, and create some extra aggregate demand. (Deficit spending, pork barrel, social security, etc.) It works too, since we no longer have the economic crisis cycles that plagued most of the 19'th century and the first part of the 20'th century.
Nice use of post-hoc reasoning there.