Any non-Windows users around?

with plain and simple I wasn’t actually meaning “user friendly”

What I meant was that don’t overthrow me with 100 help-wizards program to help you do this and that… and don’t clutter my system with files and programs I wont use (cough KDE, GNOME :wink: )

And about text editors, learn Vi(m). It’s a standard on every unix system so you will always have it available. Tough at first but when you get better it’s a dream :content:

I use vim more often than gedit… heh.

I hope there aren’t any emacs fans around? hides

The license plate on my truck says ‘EMACS’ :tongue:

I used to use redhat 5.0 but it confused the hell out of me so I quit… now I am taking Redhat academy at school and learning how todo all this stuff…

I would prefer linux over windows because you get more control over what you are doing. And it doesnt run all that junk in the background like windows does :wink:

I’m probably asking for abuse by saying this, but in my experience, and for my purposes, Linux is simply not a viable alternative to Windows for a PC’s primary operating system. Plain and simple. But don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the concept of Linux. I think it’s great that a dedicated community has put so much time and effort into developing a FREE operating system which aims to give everyone’s favourite multi billion dollar corporation a run for their money. But as promising as the last ten years’ worth of progress have been, Linux still has a long way to go before I’d consider switching over.

One of the main points is hardware compatibility. Most recent distributions of Linux have a pretty decent range of drivers available for most integrated/peripheral hardware devices, but it’s far from comprehensive. Of course, this isn’t necessarily the distributor’s fault, as the device manufacturers themselves often neglect (or delay) providing Linux-compatible drivers for their hardware (prioritising the larger MS-based market instead, as they should). Now, having to download some of your drivers isn’t really a problem – or at least it wouldn’t be, if installing them afterwards was as straight-forward as it ought to be. It took me the better part of two full days to configure Linux on my computer at home, and while that may be in part due to my lack of understanding of the Unix environment, I still have to credit Windows here for simplicity of installation, and recognisability of modern hardware devices. I wasn’t particularly impressed when Mandrake 9 asked me what kind of mouse I had, and my only option that included a scroll-wheel was “Logitech 3-button”. On a side note, I gave up trying to get my mouse wheel to work in Linux (or more specifically, the X display system). It just lacks any sense of intuition, which made the experience frustrating to say the least.

Next, I quickly discovered what a nightmare it is to install new software under most distributions of Linux. The process is relatively simple in theory, but it almost never works first time. You download a tarball containing the application source, extract it into a folder somewhere, and follow the instructions to compile it on your system. Or so the theory goes – but it never works! “Error, can’t find package: xxx”. (Where “xxx” is a cryptic combination of seemingly random letters, numbers and dots). Ah, dependencies. Possibly the largest of all the daggers in the back of the inexperienced Linux user. Don’t even think about installing anything unless you have the time to gallop around the internet searching for various dependencies that, as a user, you should never be made aware of in the first place.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Shared system libraries are an evil, evil thing. Every program should come with every single resource that it requires to run. Sure, downloads will be a little larger, but that’s a small price to pay. The internet is getting faster, and hard drives are getting larger. I’m fully aware that it was Microsoft who first developed the idea of shared and dynamically linked libraries (and subsequently, the global headache commonly referred to as “DLL Hell”), but I don’t see why Linux had to stumble blindly into the very same pit. I’m also aware that certain distributions of Linux (namely Debian) provide useful tools designed to take the pain out of installing new applications by searching for and downloading all required dependencies behind the scenes automatically, but the exception doesn’t change the rule. As soon as the majority of software vendors decide to start distributing pre-compiled binaries which include current versions of all required dependencies (in a single package), I’ll give it another shot.

The X-Windows system itself, I’ve found, is less stable, and less functional than the current version of MS Windows. The latest version of KDE sure looks impressive, and boasts a huge number of amazing features, but it still feels a little unresponsive to use. Often I’d attempt to run a program, and for a moment it wouldn’t give me any indication that something was happening. Finally the taskbar icon would appear, or the mouse cursor would change, but by that stage I’d already tried to run it again, just in case I missed the button or double-clicked too slowly. It just seems a little clumsy. But this is probably the least of all my concerns. I really do like the X interface, and I think it has a lot of advantages over Windows, but it’s just too damn hard to setup in the first place. Having to run a command-line utility and answer a bunch of questions about your computer isn’t something the average PC user wants to do when they install a new OS. And as Windows demonstrates, it’s not something they need to do. I guess Linux just needs to get with the times, and make a few more assumptions about the user. It needs to stop pretending that anyone might have a CPU that isn’t x86, and it needs to stop pretending anyone owns a monitor that can’t display standard SVGA.

Anyway, the final (and most significant) problem I have with Linux is software compatibility. Unfortunately it’s not something the Linux community can really do anything about, because it’s up to the developers themselves which platform they design their software for. Any commercial business knows that about 80% of the PC market run Windows, so it’s financially beneficial to target your application for that environment. It doesn’t really matter how much we (commercial developers) hate MS as a company, the fact is, we have to eat, and your product simply won’t sell as effectively if you don’t build it for the majority of users.

I won’t go into detail with the various other problems I encountered while configuring a popular distribution of Linux on what I’d consider to be a very standard computer in terms of hardware, but some of the “highlights” were as follows: No sound, despite my “Live!” card being reportedly found and configured without error. Major dramas involving internet connectivity. For such a simplified and efficient setup dialog, it’s amazing how difficult it can be to tell the system, “Look, I have a router at this IP, please use it!” Again, there’s way too much info here that the common PC user doesn’t want/need to see. When I select “LAN” as my internet connection, I want to only see three things: A list of network adapters in my machine, a list of IPs that have been assigned to said network adapters, and a little box labelled “Gateway”. Everything else, which absolutely nobody needs to see, should be hidden away under an “advanced” section somewhere. I hate to say it so bluntly, but I guess what I’m getting at is that Linux should (in a lot of ways) be more like Windows.

There’s a lot I don’t like about Windows, but my adventures with Linux make me appreciate just how great it is to use a system that actually works without a great deal of manual configuration. Fancy features like built-in links to dictionary.com and little eyes that follow the mouse around the screen don’t make up for a lack of functionality, or many wasted hours of painful setting up.

That’s just the impression I got from my experience, though. Each time I feel confident about going back and giving it another shot, I walk away disappointed. Maybe in another few months I’ll try again.

I agree with you Atheist, to most people Linux isn’t a viable alternative. But there are a few things in your posts I’d just like to point out…

In most distributions there are package systems that should solve most of the installation problems. And the package databases are probably covering most of your needs. But yes, installing new programs can be a difficult task for beginners…

The X Window System (a picky linux user would probably kick you for saying X Windows :wink: ) itself is very stable. It depends on what Window Manager or desktop environment you choose to use. As I’ve said before KDE is kind of bloated and not very fast.

I was going to say something more here but i forgot and I have to eat breakfast now :smile:

(paragraphs match in this post)

I wouldn’t think of shouting abuse. That only… doesn’t help. :smile:

Hardware compatability is indeed a problem (although personally my TWAIN scanner stopped working at XP, and would likely work on Linux) and it’s sadly the manufacterer’s fault. Also, I’m surprised Mandrake didn’t list a “Generic 3-button mouse”.

Gentoo has improved on this a lot, although 1) it takes aeons to install large things as it compiles from source, and 2) it only has a text install, which I imagine you wouldn’t appreciate. (You can keep using your computer with a [KG]noppix boot disk, but that’s irrelevant.) I’ve installed masses of software on it, often without even browsing the web. Besides: Debian is not the exception. Debian and Gentoo have free systems and Redhat and Mandrake have (I think) subscription systems. Lindows… let’s not talk about Lindows. :wink:

Come with everything they need? A little larger? A typical graphical program, for example, will require Qt or Gtk+ (widgets), XFree or XOrg (graphics), ALSA or OSS (sound), OpenGL (more graphics), and perhaps more. Also, some of these are interchangable, such as being able to use XFree or XOrg, which both use the X11 protocol.

X11 is “less functional”? What are you talking about? Almost every window manager (draws window borders, etc) allows you to have multiple workspaces and use Always On Top for every window. These are just two insanely useful features (lesser ones include “Shade”-ing a window so that only the titlebar shows up). People do have monitors which aren’t SVGA (although they wouldn’t use X11 with them…) and people do have CPUs which are not x86, for example new 64-bit CPUs, PowerPCs (Macs), and quite possibly other special computers, such as graphical calculators and mainframes. I’m not saying it’s important for the Linux kernel to support them, just that it’s nice that it does. (It supports by far the most architectures).

Your sound problem may have been solved somewhat by now, with ALSA and the 2.6 kernel used in most distributions. I don’t know about internet connectivity, since here we simply have a router which even provides DHCP. On the few programs which have “Advanced” buttons or tabs, I always examine them. Somebody else’s “advanced” function may become my timesaver or an essential option.

The eyes have probably been removed by now. Whatever. :razz:

Iuse Linux. :content:

great post Atheist!! I could not agree with you more! … except:

2 days?? You must be a linux guru!! I agree it seems to take a full day to have a bootable linux machine, but it takes me weeks! to configure my video resolution, soundcard(if I’m lucky), install IM programs and preferred Internet Browswers, etc. etc. I spend my first week just installing and configuring everyday programs. Maybe after a full week I might actually get to sit down and actually do something with my linux computer … other than configuring and modifying it to do things it should.

With Windows, I can have it fully installed and bootable in under an hour. A few more hours later I have all my programs installed, and my system is actually ready to enjoy … rather than work on.

:lol: the eyes, haha. … hmm, why does that seem to be in most installs by default? :bored:
Linux is fun to play around with, and I alway trying the newest distro after a few months. I’m keeping my “eyes” on it because it surely has some potential. … to save us from the evil M$. :devil: :wink:

A week? Was that, perhaps, your first time?

It’s dead simple. Install KDE and you have Konquerer browser, Kopete IM, etc, etc. Install Gnome and you have Epiphany browser (if you need more stuff go for Galeon or Firefox), and you need to install gaim seperately for IM. Why did it take so long? :razz:

Configuration really is a problem with KDE. There are always so many options, and getting in exactly as you like it takes aeons. Gnome is fine for me and I rarely find fault in its programs.

Video resolution takes really very little time. You know that X11 can now change resolution without a restart?

PS this page shows the eye thing is still in Gnome… I can only hope it’s taken out of KDE. :wink:

LOL Atheist, well said! I was quite frustrated when I installed Mandrake and noticed I couldn’t connect to the internet because Mandrake didn’t support my ADSL modem (which was one of the most popular modems in Belgium and France, and Mandrake is made in France isn’t it?). The only way to find a fix was to search on the internet, but connecting to the internet didn’t work in the first place! :tongue: Luckily I had installed Mandrake on a second partition, so I still had Windows installed. I booted Windows, and after long searching I found “unofficial” drivers for linux. It was a pain to install but after many hours I could finally connect to the internet. Installing new programs was also a painful experience (packages missing grrr). I eventually gave up. I’m still hopeful for the future, but at this moment for most desktop users linux is not a viable alternative.

I agree on the software installation problem… This problems are caused by all the different distros out there, and they all seem to use their own way of doing things, like mandrake has some libs in a certain path, while another distro puts them in another path.
I really wish Linux distros were more standarized…

This little new project seems to be the answer to some of our problems: https://autopackage.org/
Is a new package manager that is supposed to work on pretty much all major distros.

Dead simple is not how I would describe linux. Over the years I’ve successfully installed and used FreeBSD(not linux, but unix based and one of the easiest IMO) Debain, Slackware, Mandrake, Redhat, muLinux, and others. I have the new Knoppix on CD waiting for me to give it a spin … but I know by now that this requires “free time.”

Why does it take long? because I’m a Windows users! :tongue: I like my OS features and configurations to be spoon fed to me … I don’t like to perform a google a search just to learn how to check simple things like disk space! :razz:

It’s not so easy as you claim, and with limited download abilities it’s not possible to quickly fetch dependencies for each new program I want to try. "ooh cool, a 200k Solitare game! … darn, it requires a 50MB dependency!! :grrr: "
Also, the fastest computer I have yet to install linux on is a 200mhz Pentium 1 with 96MB ram. Not a fun machine to compile on, but at least my Windows machine is still free to use Google when needed. :smile:
I have installed linux on countless 486’s, and even on my thinkpad 350 485/20mhz with 20mb ram 300MB HD. No reason but for fun and a hobby. I use my oldest computers because I know I’ll need a reliable Windows machine to google my questions.

I have more programs I use than IM and browsers, those were examples of everyday programs I require for normal computer use. I have a hard time believing anyone spends less than a week getting linux setup to actually enjoy. When I’m on the computer, I’d rather spend my time using it than fixing or configuring it … and this is what linux lacks in comparison to Windows. No doubt about that.

Possibly the System Tools in Gnome 2.8. But I see your point, although I like the everything-as-files-or-directories approach.

It’s as easy as I claim… to me!

Gnome, KDE, and probably other graphical stuff will/probably has run dog slow on that hardware. Ah well.

This is no harder than on windows, it is just different so that you will have to relearn. Both KDE and GNOME includes gui utils that let you show for example diskspace and so on.

Sorry - X Window. :smile:

I guess stability isn’t much of an issue here. As far as I’m concerned, most operating systems are pretty stable by themselves (before you load any third-party software onto them). My Windows box crashes probably once every four to six weeks, and when it does, it’s usually apparent that the problem was caused by an application separate from Windows itself. My experience with Linux was much the same. It was fine after I (eventually) got it all set up, and before I loaded it up with potentially unstable third-party software.

Oh, it did. But the only option I had which included a scroll wheel was listed under “Logitech”. What if I had a Microsoft scroll mouse? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter whether or not your mouse matches the brand of the drivers you select, but it seems a bit messy/clumsy to me. Windows seems to have no trouble auto-detecting just about every component of your machine, and I guess that convenience has spoiled me.

I’d consider everything you listed there to be a fairly major API. I have no problem going out of my way to download the latest GTK, ALSA or OpenGL - but it’s the hundreds of smaller dependencies that drove me two-thirds of the way insane. As an example, one of the first things I did when I got Fedora up and running was try to install X-Chat. I go to the X-Chat website, and download the latest stable version for my architecture. I extracted it into its own folder, and went to build it. Immediately I get the first error, and the process stops because I apparently don’t have something called “libcrypto.so.0.9.7”. Fair enough, I switch back to my browser, and do a search for the libcrypto library. It doesn’t take long to find it, so I download and install the library. Then I try to compile X-Chat again, only to get a little bit further before the next message appears. “libfontconfig.so.1 is needed by X-Chat”. Ok, better go find that one too. Again it’s not so much of a problem (particularly when you have useful sites like RPMFind). But it doesn’t stop there. “Can’t find libssl.so.0.9.7, then libXft.so.2, then libXrandr.so.2, then libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3)” At that point I’m as close to suicide as an operating system has ever pushed me. Long story short, I stuck with ksirc. It was just WAY too much trouble. And that was only one example. I had similar problems with countless other applications, and it made me wonder what you’d have to do if you didn’t have access to the internet.

Sure, those features are useful, but what about the simple things? Why can’t I click on a drive or partition in the “Home” window and see how much disk space it has left? Why can’t I create archives just by right-clicking on the desired files and selecting “Make Tarball”? How do I find files that contain a certain string without having to bring up a console window and type a convoluted set of commands and parameters into that? Some of this might not be such a problem anymore, but just remember that Windows XP is nearing its forth birthday (and W2k its fifth), and it has the ability to do all that stuff. Besides, it didn’t take me long to find a program for Windows that lets me have multiple desktops, and set any window to Always on Top. Those are just gimmicks.

I have no problem with the fact that it supports them. My gripe is with Linux’s inability to detect that stuff for itself. Most hardware is perfectly capable of telling the system what it is if you just probe it - but the Linux philosophy seems to be that the user should be responsible for telling the OS what kind of system it’s running on. Again, it’s just convenient when the user doesn’t need to supply all that information (or even know all that information). If my sister can’t install the OS, then it’s not intuitive enough for 90% of people. I look forward to the day when operating systems rarely need to ask the user to supply any information about a particular device, and it seems Microsoft are well on the way to making this a reality.

Again, I’m not trying to say Windows is a perfect system (I could write a book about all the stuff that’s wrong with it) - I’m just saying that it’s very clear to me why Windows is the preferred system at the time of writing this. It’s easy to use, and easy to set up. Sure, it hides a huge amount of information away from the user (a horrible, horrible design flaw), but at least it doesn’t assume you’re a certified technician who knows everything about the inside of your computer.

Haha, I hear that. When I say “configured” in two days, I basically mean it’s up and running. In other words, connects to the internet, sound works, hardware graphics libraries ready to go, and of course, working IRC client. :wink:

But usually there’s one or two little things that stay broken for a few days while I build-up the confidence (and sanity) to go back and fix them. Last time I installed Fedora (Red Hat 10, basically), I got it to the point where everything was working except the wheel on my mouse. In an attempt to fix it (which involved editing a config file) I ended up breaking plenty of other things. First the mouse didn’t work at all, because I guessed wrong about which line I had to change. Then my keyboard stopped working because I managed to screw up the USB drivers in a different config file (all while trying to get the mouse to work again). So, yeah, to get this “house of cards” fully set up and running, we’re looking at the best part of a week at least.

Really? Wow, I’ve underestimated Gnome! I mean, you couldn’t do that in Windows ten years ago or anything… :razz:

That’s pretty silly. For most people, it seems to be essential to have another computer connected to the internet while you’re setting up a new Linux box. Again, it makes me wonder what would happen if you didn’t have the 'net at all.

That’s my attitude as well. I mean, I’m very happy to see how far Linux has come, and it’s great to see just how much time people have invested in supporting it - but it’s not quite ready just yet. Give it a couple more years, and we might see some real competition between Linux and whatever features the new version of Windows will introduce.

Thanks for the link, that looks very promising indeed. Installing new programs remains one of the biggest dilemmas with existing versions of Linux, so if they can just work on conforming to some kind of standard for distributing and installing packages, life will surely become much simpler.

“This application requires the following dependancies, would you like me to automatically download and install them now?”

That’s what I’m waiting for. :smile:

Anyway, as for availability of essential programs, I have no problem with the default “workstation” installation of most major Linux distributions. It comes with pretty much everything you need to get started right away. Open Office rivals MS Office in almost every way (I’ve only found a couple of features that it doesn’t support), the inbuilt browsers aren’t too bad, and Firefox is surprisingly easy to install if you don’t like the default ones. There’s an FTP client, an IRC client, an instant messaging program, and a huge variety of other “essential” applications (calculators, graphical editing software (The Gimp rocks :wink:), sound recording programs, CD burning programs, addicting games, etc). So, no complaints there. For a free package, that’s a very impressive range of powerful office tools.

I wouldn’t really call linux a “hobbyist OS” but I’m having hard times learning all commands, installing all neccessary programs and add-ons to get a satisfying system. My main concern is the overall system speed. KDE is just sooo slow…Xfce4 is faster but it’s file manager is SHIT.

I’m currently trying to get fluxbox to a decent level because it’s just as fast as Windows. Bu I’m having trouble to find rpms fpr my old shitty Suse distribution…So i might switch to something better in the near future…I’m sticking to Windows until then…

I just wanted to shoot you an update. I found something better than Suse. It’s called ubuntu linux and works great I’ve had no problems installing the whole thing and running it is nearly as easy as running Windows. Now I use Linux almost exclusively.

I found something really interesting, I bet most of you have heard of it. It’s called Knoppix. It is a “Live CD”. This means that it makes absolutely no writes to your hard drive, what so ever. It uses just your memory (creates a ramdrive). The company that developed it used transparent decompression to put 2 GB of info. on the CD. I don’t know too much about it as I am not that knowledgeable in Linux, but it is Debian, uses KDE, and it works great. It autodetects almost all of your hardware devices. I used my Windows XP drivers for my LAN card in Knoppix (using Ndiswrapper), configured my card, turned on wireless DHCP broadcast…lalala…conected to the internet using FireFox(included on CD), and AIM (GAIM is also included). The CD contains over 2000 executable progs., too many features to list. This OS is meant to be one that you can just walk up to any computer, stick the CD in, and reboot into Knoppix. This may not be very practical for most users, being that it does not write to the hard disk, but it works great. Also, you can save your knoppix settings to the hard drive (it just doesn’t write to the hard drive by default, but you can just like Windows ie. copying files to hard drive, saving, etc.) Theoretically, you can install Knoppix on to your hard drive instead of CD, but I haven’t tried. Also, it uses the FAT file system, so if you ever use it to write to your hard drive, it doesn’t mess anything up. However, make sure that you shut down your computer properly from Windows before running Knoppix else there could be errors on your hard drive which would cause Knoppix to write-protect it. Knoppix is available from many download sites, just Google it. It’s worthy at least checking out. It is a 600 MB download, or you can order it on CD. The utilities and software are amazing!!

Live Cds are great for trying out Linux Distributions. But it’s not very usable because it cannot utilize your hd to write and copy files.

Mini-Linux distributions like feather linux or damnsmall linux might interest you, because you can run the whole system off a USB stick! This gives you the ability to WRITE files (on the stick) You could take your whole customized system with you…with all your email, browser bookmarks, important documents…

All you need is a stick with at least 256 MB size and a machine that can boot from USB

featherlinux.berlios.de/