Bad linux experience

[Cynicist]

@ hurts, I'm thinking you are just special. I mean you can even get ubuntu shipped to you for FREE (here)

Btw as the above user already stated you just burn the cd like any other cd, as long as you have the right files it will work...

Oh yeah and Ubuntu is 1 install disc afaik.


Whats with all this talk about linux not being user friendly? I mean sure, gentoo would be impossible to install for an average windows newbie but ubuntu is just as easy (I've had people I know do it before) as windows, and it seems even easier due to the fact that most of the programs you'd want to download are catalogued in a very noob-friendly system.

I mean the only time I can see one actually having any trouble in the OS is trying to compile programs themselves. (which often isnt necessary) Linux has changed, though many people choose not to recognize it. (oh yeah and ubuntu isnt the only good distro either)

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: hurtstotalktoyou
Linux is a freaking joke. You know, I even had a hell of a time downloading it! I ended up choosing a distro based on the fact it was the only one I could access online. Fedora, if I remember correctly. A couple years ago I had brief access to Mandrake Linux, and I couldn't even install the drivers. With Fedora, not only was I unable to install my audio or LAN drivers, I couldn't even move files from place to place. Shouldn't that be as simple as drag-and-drop?

Installation is pretty weak, too. Jesus, how many discs do you need for an OS? And they have to be burned a certain way, by special software. I wasted ~15 or so CDRs trying to get it right. I ended up having to use Alcohol 120% and my slowest of two burners.

Linux may be stable. It's also the most impractical computer environment I've ever seen.

Once I had to work on a Laptop running Windows 95 with a 486SL-25 and 20MB RAM and no CD-ROM. I couldn't do much with it, but at least I could browse around the net and manage my files. With a Linux box, every last little thing is a day-long hassle--literally--and in the end I couldn't get it to function at all.

Special software? I just burned the ubuntu install cd (a single one) using nero. Simple as pie. I've got a couple of gentoo livecds kicking around too which I downloaded at about 700 kB/s.

mv /path/to/file/<filename> /new/path/to/file/<newfilename>

Your LAN wasn't detected? What card do you have. Most every LAN card you can get right now has drivers built into the kernel...

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: The Linuxator

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
After reading this thread I realize why Linux is never going to really compete with Windows for an average user.

As sad as this is for me to say, I am afraid it will take years and years for it to become / may never become user friendly, as long as this anti-user friendliness exists in the linux community ppl wil never switch from the monopolistic company's products and they will still suffer from bad performance , false promises ,viruses ,spam&spyware

User community my ass.

The community is the sole reason that Linux exists in the first place and everybody has their own opinion. Some people care about the average person on the desktop, most people don't care beyond their own needs or wants.



If you want a easy to use 'grandma' like experiance for Linux.

Go buy Linux pre-installed from a computer manufacturer and pay them to support you. When something goes wrong, send them your computer and pay them to fix it.

Seriously. That's what everybody and their mom does with Windows, why should Linux be any different?

If your going to do it yourself, if your going to install Linux yourself there are 2 major things you have to do:

1. Buy hardware that supports Linux.
2. Learn how your choosen Linux distro works.

That's all.

There are definately problems with Linux distros. There are problems with Gnome. There are problems with KDE. It's a problem with getting wifi cards to work, there are problems getting printers to work, there are problems with dealing with propriatory drivers in a agressively non-propriatory kernel.

To say that your going to use Linux and not run into problems, then that's bullsh1t.

I run into problems all the time.

It's just that the problems that I run into are generally not a big deal and they are fixable. In Windows they generally aren't fixable.

Linux still sucks, but it is just successfull at sucking less, IMO.


If you hate the command line. If you want to have a GUI for everything and you don't want to realy learn all that much.. then give http://www.linspire.com/ a try.

Seriously.

You pay them, they setup a database of programs to install from. They deal with propriatory drivers in a sane way, they have licenses for playing Windows Media files and lots of other crap like that.

They aim, specificly, to be the AOL of Linux distros.

Paid support, no command line for average user, pay-to-use applications, pre-installed on your computer... Everything that makes Windows wonderfull.

For the price of your retail Windows XP license you can have a entire crappy PC (keyboard mouse and sound!) with the AOL of Linux. Just do me a big favor and learn how to keep it up to date and setup a regular user for you to use.

The default user is root, which is worse then how Microsoft has everybody defaulting to 'administrator' on every XP home install in existance.

If linspire doesn't generate any love for you.. you can find plenty of people selling Desktops and workstations with Redhat or Suse Linux installed.

Just google around for them, you'll find them. Just make sure that their websites are up to date and you actually talk to a representative and such.

For example.. if you want a 'real computer'..
http://www.laclinux.com/en/Start


Personally I just build my desktops myself.

Standard formula. ATI 7000 to 9200 video card, Via or AMD motherboard. AMD proccessor. Creative sound blaster sound (or Audigy 1/2 whatever, just not Audigy LS). Optionally a nvidia, but you have to deal with propriatory drivers.

Will work for most any other system also. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and probably Solaris.

Don't bother with 'onboard RAID 1/0 units'. All of those are utter crap and Linux software raid is much faster.

For laptops easiest is going to be 'Intel Sonoma/Centrino' platform.

Intel cpu, Intel video, and Intel wifi.

No ATI video, no Broadcom Wifi.

The only major gotchas is going to be that you may have to use a 'resolution915' program to work around BIOS limitations on certain laptops. Also you'd probably have to download Intel's firmware image and install it yourself for the wifi.

Easier then, lets say, successfully installing SP2 for Windows XP.

If you don't like Linux, that's fine. Just use Windows.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: The Linuxator

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
After reading this thread I realize why Linux is never going to really compete with Windows for an average user.

As sad as this is for me to say, I am afraid it will take years and years for it to become / may never become user friendly, as long as this anti-user friendliness exists in the linux community ppl wil never switch from the monopolistic company's products and they will still suffer from bad performance , false promises ,viruses ,spam&spyware

User community my ass.

The community is the sole reason that Linux exists in the first place and everybody has their own opinion. Some people care about the average person on the desktop, most people don't care beyond their own needs or wants.



If you want a easy to use 'grandma' like experiance for Linux.

Go buy Linux pre-installed from a computer manufacturer and pay them to support you. When something goes wrong, send them your computer and pay them to fix it.

Seriously. That's what everybody and their mom does with Windows, why should Linux be any different?

If your going to do it yourself, if your going to install Linux yourself there are 2 major things you have to do:

1. Buy hardware that supports Linux.
2. Learn how your choosen Linux distro works.

That's all.

There are definately problems with Linux distros. There are problems with Gnome. There are problems with KDE. It's a problem with getting wifi cards to work, there are problems getting printers to work, there are problems with dealing with propriatory drivers in a agressively non-propriatory kernel.

To say that your going to use Linux and not run into problems, then that's bullsh1t.

I run into problems all the time.

It's just that the problems that I run into are generally not a big deal and they are fixable. In Windows they generally aren't fixable.

Linux still sucks, but it is just successfull at sucking less, IMO.


If you hate the command line. If you want to have a GUI for everything and you don't want to realy learn all that much.. then give http://www.linspire.com/ a try.

Seriously.

You pay them, they setup a database of programs to install from. They deal with propriatory drivers in a sane way, they have licenses for playing Windows Media files and lots of other crap like that.

They aim, specificly, to be the AOL of Linux distros.

Paid support, no command line for average user, pay-to-use applications, pre-installed on your computer... Everything that makes Windows wonderfull.

For the price of your retail Windows XP license you can have a entire crappy PC (keyboard mouse and sound!) with the AOL of Linux. Just do me a big favor and learn how to keep it up to date and setup a regular user for you to use.

The default user is root, which is worse then how Microsoft has everybody defaulting to 'administrator' on every XP home install in existance.

If linspire doesn't generate any love for you.. you can find plenty of people selling Desktops and workstations with Redhat or Suse Linux installed.

Just google around for them, you'll find them. Just make sure that their websites are up to date and you actually talk to a representative and such.

For example.. if you want a 'real computer'..
http://www.laclinux.com/en/Start


Personally I just build my desktops myself.

Standard formula. ATI 7000 to 9200 video card, Via or AMD motherboard. AMD proccessor. Creative sound blaster sound (or Audigy 1/2 whatever, just not Audigy LS). Optionally a nvidia, but you have to deal with propriatory drivers.

Will work for most any other system also. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and probably Solaris.

Don't bother with 'onboard RAID 1/0 units'. All of those are utter crap and Linux software raid is much faster.

For laptops easiest is going to be 'Intel Sonoma/Centrino' platform.

Intel cpu, Intel video, and Intel wifi.

No ATI video, no Broadcom Wifi.

The only major gotchas is going to be that you may have to use a 'resolution915' program to work around BIOS limitations on certain laptops. Also you'd probably have to download Intel's firmware image and install it yourself for the wifi.

Easier then, lets say, successfully installing SP2 for Windows XP.

If you don't like Linux, that's fine. Just use Windows.

Wow, couldn't have said it better myself. :thumbsup:

 

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

"Works for me".

Great. It didn't for me.

There are plenty of distributions with only 1 disc

I looked at Ubuntu, but I'd never heard of it, so I declined to use it.

and they're not in any special format, ISO9660 is the same filesystem used on pretty much every CD in the world.

I downloaded the images, and burned them to CDR using Nero 6 & a 40x Mitsumi CD-RW pulled from an HP Pavilion 734n. CDRs were Taiyo Yuden. When I loaded the installation wizard, it asked me to verify the data on the CDRs. The first disc passed, but every other failed. I re-burned one using Nero & the Mitsumi again, and it still failed. So I thought maybe I should re-download the images. It still failed. Then I thought, maybe I should try Alcohol 120%. Failed. Okay, maybe a differnent drive? Success! But was it the hardware? I was curious, and used Nero again. Failed. So it turns out I needed to use special software and hardware, both.

Now, what would you have done differently?

If you don't like it, that's fine. But don't run around saying it doesn't work just because you couldn't figure it out.

I never said it didn't work. I said I couldn't get it to work because it is needlessly impractical.

I'm sure I could have eventually installed everything, but I didn't feel like wasting several weeks.

 

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Special software? I just burned the ubuntu install cd (a single one) using nero. Simple as pie.

Great. I copied Mandrake a few years ago using Nero 5 and some generic CD-RW. But for some reason, the Fedora images I downloaded wouldn't work with Nero, and even using Alcohol 120% wouldn't work with my Mitsumi CD-RW. Sorry if you don't believe me.

I've got a couple of gentoo livecds kicking around too which I downloaded at about 700 kB/s.

A few months ago, when I last tried Linux, the only distros I could download were Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu. I had to choose between the three, and since I'd heard good things about Fedora I went with that. The links to Redhat, Mandrake and even FreeBSD all failed me.

mv /path/to/file/<filename> /new/path/to/file/<newfilename>

Your LAN wasn't detected? What card do you have. Most every LAN card you can get right now has drivers built into the kernel...

Epox EP-8KDA3J integrated gigabit LAN is what I have. It wasn't recognized. I used a dual-boot Windows partition to surf Google for a solution, with no luck.

 

[hurtstotalktoyou]

...
..

 

[nweaver]

I said it in another thread....
brand new Dell laptop, Windows XP and Ubuntu

Windows XP (slipstreamed SP2 disk) installed, no NIC, WLAN, video, audio...

find nic drivers on Dells site, download, install, reboot, download windows updates, reboot, few more updates, reboot, install rest of drivers, reboot, install ATI drivers and Intel WLAN utility, reboot, working Windows box

Ubuntu, install, all drivers detected, WLAN working out of box, NIC, 2D video, audio, extra buttons, all working. quick opening of Synaptic, click, click click, no reboot, up to date. I did spend about an hour getting the craptastic ATI drivers to load for better 3d support (go go ppracer)

All said and done MUCH MUCH MUCH easier with Ubuntu then XP, not to mention, i was more secure, quicker, and easier w/ubuntu. The worst was the ATI driver, which is ATI's fault, not Ubuntu's.

I spent almost half the time on Linux as I did on windows, and it was usable right after install, as opposed to windows, wher eI had to have another box with internet to get my NIC driver so I could get on the internet to get updates.

 

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Originally posted by: nweaver
I said it in another thread....
brand new Dell laptop, Windows XP and Ubuntu

Windows XP (slipstreamed SP2 disk) installed, no NIC, WLAN, video, audio...

find nic drivers on Dells site, download, install, reboot, download windows updates, reboot, few more updates, reboot, install rest of drivers, reboot, install ATI drivers and Intel WLAN utility, reboot, working Windows box

Ubuntu, install, all drivers detected, WLAN working out of box, NIC, 2D video, audio, extra buttons, all working. quick opening of Synaptic, click, click click, no reboot, up to date. I did spend about an hour getting the craptastic ATI drivers to load for better 3d support (go go ppracer)

All said and done MUCH MUCH MUCH easier with Ubuntu then XP, not to mention, i was more secure, quicker, and easier w/ubuntu. The worst was the ATI driver, which is ATI's fault, not Ubuntu's.

I spent almost half the time on Linux as I did on windows, and it was usable right after install, as opposed to windows, wher eI had to have another box with internet to get my NIC driver so I could get on the internet to get updates.

Maybe I'll try Ubuntu in a few weeks. Is that the most user-friendly distro?

 

[SleepWalkerX]

From the distros I've used, Mepis is the most user friendly although Ubuntu comes near it.

I've heard Xandros and PCLinuxOS are very user friendly too.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: hurtstotalktoyou
I downloaded the images, and burned them to CDR using Nero 6 & a 40x Mitsumi CD-RW pulled from an HP Pavilion 734n. CDRs were Taiyo Yuden. When I loaded the installation wizard, it asked me to verify the data on the CDRs. The first disc passed, but every other failed. I re-burned one using Nero & the Mitsumi again, and it still failed. So I thought maybe I should re-download the images. It still failed. Then I thought, maybe I should try a different burner, an NEC DVD drive. Failed. Alcohol 120%? I tried that with my Mitsumi again, since it can burn much faster than the NEC. Failed.

I thought maybe the verification was failing because of the wizard, so I tried installing through the errors. Nope. In a last ditch effort, I tried the NEC with Alcohol 120%. At long last, after wasting God knows how many CDRs, it worked--that is, until I tried installing drivers.

Now, what would you have done differently?

Burning cdroms has always been a huge problem for me in Windows XP.

I don't know what Window XP's problem is, but it sucks.

The only program that I've tried that I actually have any success with in Windows is the 'Nero burning rom demo' or something like that. Very weird, can't use it after a month or so since they want you to buy the retail version.

In Linux I just use cdrecord command line utility.

What you need to do is double check your hardware. CDroms are very easily misburned and often look correct, but are not.

If your burner and harddrive are on the same IDE channel, then that is a problem. For best results your Harddrive should be a master on one IDE channel and your DVD should be the master on the other IDE channel.. or maybe one be SATA or whatever. It doesn't matter as long as both your harddrive and burner are not on the same channel.

Also make sure that cooling is adequate for your burner. They can get hot after prolonged use.

Make sure that you have DMA access activated for both drives. In Linux this can be checked with hdparm command line program, read the man file. With Windows it's hidden in your hardware control panel in preferences or advanced settings somewere. I forget were. Windows will sometimes spontaniously turn off DMA access when certain problems arise. So often you get a nasty performance hit after a crash or data check or something like that. Which is a good thing to protect your data.

You may have to install updated drivers for your motherboard...


To check the integrety of your cd images a nice thing that you use is called 'md5sums'. Md5sum for Linux, and Md5sum.exe program for Windows (both command line) can be run on programs to check large binary files. It runs a formula on the file and outputs a number were you can use to compare files. If one bit is off then the entire number will be different.

Usually on the same server were you download the ISO images there will be a 'md5' file or md5sum file that contains the hashes of the iso images. You use that to double check and make sure that the file was downloaded correctly.

I think that maybe Fedora uses sha instead of md5, but the concept is the same.

On Linux you can run md5sum on the actual cdrom and check to make sure that the image was burned correctly:
md5sum /dev/cdrom

Doesn't always work with DVDs, I think. There is possibly some technical weirdness with dvd images that I don't understand.

But I know of no way to do a similar thing with Windows. Maybe nero would include a feature like that. I don't know.


edit:
If you can't get your burner to work then Ubuntu has a offer on their webpage to mail you installation media at no cost to yourself (either with the cdrom or postage). They'll even mail you many copies to give out if you want to do that after you give a try.

 

[Nothinman]

I looked at Ubuntu, but I'd never heard of it, so I declined to use it.

That's your perogative, but you shouldn't condemn everything related to Linux because you had 1 bad experience.

I downloaded the images, and burned them to CDR using Nero 6 & a 40x Mitsumi CD-RW pulled from an HP Pavilion 734n. CDRs were Taiyo Yuden. When I loaded the installation wizard, it asked me to verify the data on the CDRs. The first disc passed, but every other failed. I re-burned one using Nero & the Mitsumi again, and it still failed. So I thought maybe I should re-download the images. It still failed. Then I thought, maybe I should try Alcohol 120%. Failed. Okay, maybe a differnent drive? Success! But was it the hardware? I was curious, and used Nero again. Failed. So it turns out I needed to use special software and hardware, both.

Now, what would you have done differently?

I don't know, I haven't used Windows burning software in so long. All I can say is that the few times I did use Nero, I've never seen it fail to burn an ISO to any disc I gave it.

I never said it didn't work. I said I couldn't get it to work because it is needlessly impractical.

As has already been mentioned, most Linux distributions these days work better out of the box than Windows, you have to provide them less drivers and there's more apps included on the discs so there's overall less work to do. And the few things that you might need to do are usually documented pretty well because everyone has to do them. Sure if you had oddball hardware or hardware manufactured by companies that actively try to make their hardware not work in anything but Linux you might have more problems than your average Linux user, but even in those cases there are usually workarounds.

I'm sure I could have eventually installed everything, but I didn't feel like wasting several weeks.

Even if it takes you several weeks the overall time saved can be much more. The Debian install I'm typing this on is ~6 years old. All of the routine stuff I do is automated, all of my apps and tools are setup the way I like them and I don't have to worry about buying new licenses or reactivating current ones if I upgrade anything.

 

[Atheus]

3D graphics and sound are sometimes hard to get working in linux because linux is not _for_ 3D graphics and sound, it's for actually doing some work.

Try linux if you want to do software development, or you want a firewall or router, or a media server or game server, or if you just want word processing and spreadsheets to work on a low spec machine. Linux does lots of things windows does poorly.

 

[Nothinman]

3D graphics and sound are sometimes hard to get working in linux because linux is not _for_ 3D graphics and sound, it's for actually doing some work.

All 4 of my machines have perfectly working sound drivers and of them the 2 with 3D cards have 3D acceleration. Sadly it requires the closed source nVidia driver, but it does work.

 

[zbalat]

I dual boot SUSE 10.0 with XP. It took me hours upon hours to get SUSE to do the things that I like to do (burn and watch DVDs, rip and burn cds, stream audio and video from the internet) but I did it.

I still use Windows 90% of the time because it is so much easier for me. If you want Linux to be just like Windows, use Windows instead and save yourself the headache.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Atheus
3D graphics and sound are sometimes hard to get working in linux because linux is not _for_ 3D graphics and sound, it's for actually doing some work.

It realy depends. In Linux 3d stuff and sound stuff takes more technical know how to accomplish then, say OS X. But it's certainly possible and results can be good.

There is a strong Linux audio community. Lots of experimentors and tinkerers. You end up with stuff like Ardour or Audicity for applications and all sorts of odd things to make unique sounds.

It's starting to creep into more 'professional' arenas for sound production, but it's a slow proccess. Stuff like efficient disk I/O and such things were it makes Linux good for servers can also make it good for sound recordings.

If your on a budget and are willing to learn I don't think you can find much that approaches a Free-software based DAW on very fast hardware for the money. With being very software-centric and the aviability of very high speed cpus for relatively inexpensive prices makes it interesting solution, IMO.

Lots of programs work well with Jackd audio deamon which makes connecting midi stuff and sound stuff through multiple programs and software synths is a fun thing to mess around with.

Recent improvements in latency and realtime-style proccessing has made things like the 'Korg Oasys keyboard' possible.
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/pub/a/o...1/09/inside-the-korg-oasys.html?page=1

Basicly a Pentium 4 PC running Linux inside of a keyboard-shaped housing. Propriatory software synth stuff and ui stuff for the little touch screen controller though.

I like to play around with a little M-audio USB midi controller keyboard (recent versions work great with Linux..). I use qjackctl GUI to manage the I/O and sound card latency stuff like that. Command line sucks for things like that.

There are several distros that are specificly designed as Linux audio workstations.. Dyne:bolic is a 'rasta'-style distro that runs completely off of a live cdrom (no install neccisary). It's designed for low-resource computers.

There is the Agnula project which makes a Demudi, a Debian-based audio distros.
http://www.agnula.org/

For redhat/fedora stuff there is http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/

Personally I just use Debian.


As far as 3d stuff goes...

Lets just say that they didn't use Windows to make Lord of the Rings movies.

Of course the software they used isn't realy aviable to you or me. At least not on my budget.

There is Blender3d and such that works well and is good place to start. Very complex and weird compared to the average commercial 3d package, but it is very useful non-the-less. Also works fine on Windows or OS X. Buy the book. It's very usefull and relevent introduction to blender. It includes a Blender install on the book cdrom, but the one aviable from your distro or the web is better, usually.
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro


Then there is Wings3d and a few commercial applications like Maya.

For video you have things like Cinelerra and Kino. Mainactor is a rather inexpensive Linux version, Shake is aviable for Linux and some high end stuff like Smoke. Google around.

Edit: for video Mythtv and other things are fun to mess around with and you can get good results.. see: http://highend2d.com/news/software/55.html
http://www.mythtv.org/

3d production is Linux's strong suite in the commercial world. It's widely used in hollywood-style productions, much more then Windows or even OS X is. It's clustering abilities make it very attractive also.

For games you have quite a few native games. Some commercial, about a billion smaller and indie games. For Windows only stuff there is Cedega and Wine, which will work for 60-70% of the stuff out there. nothing magical though. Windows is still much better for gaming-only stuff, but Linux is fine if you have other reasons for using it.

 

[Atheus]

Wow, what a massive response to a one-liner great post though, this sort of thing should be in a linux sticky - along with a guide to different distros for newbies.

I wasn't really talking about things like maya on matrox cards when i said "not for 3d", i meant games and drivers for radeons and such. Not that i've tried very hard to get my radeon working, all my linux boxes are text only.

 

[drag]

matrox cards kinda suck nowadays I think.

ATI cards of 9200 series and earlier (around 7000 is what most people look at) have high quality free software drivers. Newer ATI require propriatory drivers that are a PITA to deal with.

Onboard Intel video with the 915 and 945 motherboard chipsets have free software drivers. There are some resolution issues with some laptops due to bios limitations, but that's easily worked around. The fastest desktop versions for the 945 chipset have claims of being around ATI 9800 speeds, but I think that is a bit overstating them. But they are worlds better then Intel's previous 'extreme blaster' crapola.

But none of those are realy suitable for 3d gaming.. For that you'd want a Nvidia video card.

they have propriatory drivers, which kinda suck. But it's what you have to use at this point.

 

[sourceninja]

My latest linux setup.

I ordered the parts
Put it together (amd64, nforce4, nvidia 6600)
installed gentoo (gentoo install process sucks, but we like gentoo around here)
gentoo is installed, install nvidia driver (to do this, open a console as root and type emerge nvidia-glx, once that is done you change xorg.conf from nv to nvidia for video driver and restart X or reboot).
Install alsa for sound (emerge alsa-driver and copy the config file from the alsa website for my video card)
Finally use alsamixer to turn up the volume.
Thats it, then I put in a cron job to check for updates and notify the user via email if there are updates to be installed.

Then I gave the computer to my friend. So far not a single problem. He has sense put quake 4 on it and is loving it.

The best part? All of that can be done with the gentoo documentation by just doing exactly what it says. I'm not saying a noob should use gentoo, but I am saying that any idiot who can type in what is found on the gentoo website can have a stable linux distro. I would still recomend ubuntu for noobs.

I am willing to bet 90% of the people with problems on linux are the same people who still have problems they have no idea how to fix on windows. These are the same people who post questions about things and for some reason the answers given never seen to fix their windows problems. This is because they think they know more then they do and they do stupid things. I know these kinds of people. I have seem them in our unix class, I've seen the pc's they bring into our office to get fixed. 90% of windows 'power users' have no clue what they are doing, then they expect to change OS's and still know what they are doing.

The simple fact is that linux is differnt. Its a different philosphy. All the complaints I have seen are either 1) too hard. 2) I'm too stupid or 3) I dont agree with the philosophy. With number 1 usually just really number 2 or 3. If you dont like the driver model, dont use linux cause it is never going to change. it is part of the philosphy. If you can't edit text files, again, dont ever use linux. Too stupid to use google? Dont use linux or *GASP* buy a copy of linux and get paid support. This its too hard argument doesn't cut it. My wife has never had a problem. I knew she couldn't set it up, so I did it for her. The same with at least 3 of my friends (I belive 2 out of the 5 I setup didn't like it and I switched them back). Hell until my grandma just got her new PC she was using linux on a p2 450. I had her setup and used ssh to admin her box from about 150 miles away. She had no problems using her pc for what she wants to do (digital camera stuff, and email)

Linux is not hard, you are just ill informed or you dont agree with the way we want things. And I dont care if the average user can install linux. I care that once it is setup it is usable. And that is 100% always the case.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: sourceninja
My latest linux setup.

I ordered the parts
Put it together (amd64, nforce4, nvidia 6600)
installed gentoo (gentoo install process sucks, but we like gentoo around here)
gentoo is installed, install nvidia driver (to do this, open a console as root and type emerge nvidia-glx, once that is done you change xorg.conf from nv to nvidia for video driver and restart X or reboot).
Install alsa for sound (emerge alsa-driver and copy the config file from the alsa website for my video card)
Finally use alsamixer to turn up the volume.
Thats it, then I put in a cron job to check for updates and notify the user via email if there are updates to be installed.

Then I gave the computer to my friend. So far not a single problem. He has sense put quake 4 on it and is loving it.

The best part? All of that can be done with the gentoo documentation by just doing exactly what it says. I'm not saying a noob should use gentoo, but I am saying that any idiot who can type in what is found on the gentoo website can have a stable linux distro. I would still recomend ubuntu for noobs.

I am willing to bet 90% of the people with problems on linux are the same people who still have problems they have no idea how to fix on windows. These are the same people who post questions about things and for some reason the answers given never seen to fix their windows problems. This is because they think they know more then they do and they do stupid things. I know these kinds of people. I have seem them in our unix class, I've seen the pc's they bring into our office to get fixed. 90% of windows 'power users' have no clue what they are doing, then they expect to change OS's and still know what they are doing.

The simple fact is that linux is differnt. Its a different philosphy. All the complaints I have seen are either 1) too hard. 2) I'm too stupid or 3) I dont agree with the philosophy. With number 1 usually just really number 2 or 3. If you dont like the driver model, dont use linux cause it is never going to change. it is part of the philosphy. If you can't edit text files, again, dont ever use linux. Too stupid to use google? Dont use linux or *GASP* buy a copy of linux and get paid support. This its too hard argument doesn't cut it. My wife has never had a problem. I knew she couldn't set it up, so I did it for her. The same with at least 3 of my friends (I belive 2 out of the 5 I setup didn't like it and I switched them back). Hell until my grandma just got her new PC she was using linux on a p2 450. I had her setup and used ssh to admin her box from about 150 miles away. She had no problems using her pc for what she wants to do (digital camera stuff, and email)

Linux is not hard, you are just ill informed or you dont agree with the way we want things. And I dont care if the average user can install linux. I care that once it is setup it is usable. And that is 100% always the case.

/thread!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Don't cross post.

I can't read the original thread.

 

[Markbnj]

Linux is not hard, you are just ill informed or you dont agree with the way we want things. And I dont care if the average user can install linux. I care that once it is setup it is usable. And that is 100% always the case.

That's fine. I 100% agree with you. And on this basis I hope never to see another thread about linux overtaking Windows on the desktop. It's an operating system for people who think anyone who can't make it work isn't smart enough, and they like it that way.

There's your /thread .

 

[sourceninja]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Linux is not hard, you are just ill informed or you dont agree with the way we want things. And I dont care if the average user can install linux. I care that once it is setup it is usable. And that is 100% always the case.

That's fine. I 100% agree with you. And on this basis I hope never to see another thread about linux overtaking Windows on the desktop. It's an operating system for people who think anyone who can't make it work isn't smart enough, and they like it that way.

There's your /thread .

i hope it does overtake the windows desktop. That would mean people actually got smarter and we wont have so many idiots using computers out there.

 

[Markbnj]

i hope it does overtake the windows desktop. That would mean people actually got smarter and we wont have so many idiots using computers out there.

Yes, if only we could go back to those halcyon days when computers were solely for the use of the educated and inititiated, all our problems would be solved.

 

[sourceninja]

actually I was thinking of a world where everyone was educated and didn't just throw their hands up and cry when things didn't just work. You know like VCR clocks, computers, toasters, cars. Taking the time to understand what you are using should actually be important.