[Col. Fishguts]

Originally posted by mikhael

Besides. We have the Daemon.

[SadisticSid]

It's personal preference of course, but Linux doesn't have a GUI that approaches Windows. I've never liked Gnome or KDE; it seems they just took some elements of Explorer but just plastered it all over the text messages that the system outputs.

If Linux is to succeed in the mainstream then there has to be at least some facility of transition from Windows. As Sandwich rightly said, people don't start using Linux without first knowing how to use Windows. It could be a mammoth task, but a distribution that actively aided you in altering your user practices from one to the other would go a long way in furthering the open source cause.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by SadisticSid
It's personal preference of course, but Linux doesn't have a GUI that approaches Windows. I've never liked Gnome or KDE; it seems they just took some elements of Explorer but just plastered it all over the text messages that the system outputs.

If Linux is to succeed in the mainstream then there has to be at least some facility of transition from Windows. As Sandwich rightly said, people don't start using Linux without first knowing how to use Windows. It could be a mammoth task, but a distribution that actively aided you in altering your user practices from one to the other would go a long way in furthering the open source cause.

[color=66ff00]I think the big push has always been to install KDE with as many desktop distro's as is possible given its similarity to the windows GUI.

For my part I consider linux to have a far superior GUI but that's down to my ability to tweak and adjust it to suit.
[/color]

[Descenterace]

Originally posted by Sandwich

Now I realize that the comparison between a mere browser and the software that runs your entire system is a bit unfair, but the point still stands. Firefox succeded because it's simple, a no-brainer.

Web browsers are simple, though. It's simply an interface using a protocol. All the configuration is handled by the OS and the protocol is a standard. There is nothing to be done. The environment in which the browser runs is abstracted away from all the little differences that the OS has to deal with.

So the comparison isn't unfair; it's totally invalid.

An OS needs to know about the hardware it runs on. It can't get all that information from the hardware itself. It needs user assistance. Even Windows requires you to tell it what hardware you have if it can't find a match in its database (and the drivers it comes with usually take up half the CD).


Finally, the reason Linux sometimes needs help to get as far as the GUI is that it, like UNIX, was originally a shell-mode OS. The GUI was stuck on afterwards and is just another program. After Windows 3.11, the GUI pretty much became the Windows OS.

Yes, I know Win2K and WinXP operate in a similar way to UNIX and X, with client and server GUI components, but the philosophy is still the same: the GUI is a central part of the Windows OS.
Not so for Linux. It is still fundamentally a shell OS. X relies on a lot of drivers being operational before it can even load, and because of the structure of the OS's abstraction layer autoconfiguration is difficult.
That abstraction layer is geared towards a shell OS and always has been.

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by Sandwich
I hate to tell you guys, but all you "Check out this distro!" peeps are just reinforcing my point, as BD hinted at:

My point, once again, is this: I (and this "I" stands for many, many people who would like to switch) don't want to choose. I don't want to decide between the vast number of distros, researching each one's featureset, compatability, etc etc.

So, what exactly do you propose us Linux users do about this? We don't actually care if you like choosing a distro or not; it works fine for us. A "magical" merge of all distros is not only impossible, but undesirable.

The people using Linux like choice. Just on this forum we've got people using Ubuntu (WMC, Joey21), Debian (me), Gentoo (Maeg), Fedora (Kazan), etc. It's not just about preference either. A monoculture of OSs and even distros is not healthy for security or stability. All distros have varying degrees of stability. For example, Debian's stable branch is rock stable. It's also using outdated software by some standards. That's why people are using its testing branch or even move to Ubuntu. Same goes for security. Debian's security team makes the stable branch very secure, but not so much for the unstable branch. The difference is even greater in distros. Gentoo typically has the newest packages in quickly, but generally they are not as stable as Debian's packages.

You mentioned one or two distros getting in the lead. How do you expect this to happen? What, all distros aside from, say, Red Hat and Mandriva just call it quits? Or maybe you propose we drop the successful open source model and suddenly license Red Hat specific software under a proprietary license? Because as long as Red Hat packages GPL software or writes software using GPL libraries, the community will have the source code and will be able to use it in their own packages.

There's also no possibility of a "Linux" distribution either. Linux is trademarked and will be enforced by Linus to be used only for the kernel. So no distro can be the official Linux. The kernel is distro neutral and the kernel devs, at least, will never approve an official Linux distro using that name.

So your complaining won't get you anywhere. If it's really so big an issue that you can't ever touch Linux, that's too bad. It's obviously not the right OS for you.

Now, why's that so? Both are open-source, both have masses of computer geeks adding, tweaking, and ootimizing things... why is Firefox such a big success, while Linux is - for most people, people like me - an utter failure?

I'll tell you why. When I install Firefox on some non-computer person's computer, it just works. There's no choice involved... that only comes if the person chooses to do so.

I'm not quite sure what your point is here. There are plenty of alternative browsers for any platform that are choices. On Windows there is Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, K-meleon and others. On Linux there is Galeon, Epiphany, Konquerer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. That's quite a few options and I would hesitate to say "There's no choice involved".

It's true that there is only one Mozilla Firefox, but that's like saying there's only one Debian.

Oh, and by the way... you can expect Linux to "just work" 100% of the time when all computers run the same hardware. Or perhaps when all hardware companies release the specifications for their product. Did you know ATI's own drivers don't support all the ATI card features on Linux? Go ***** at them if you need someone to ***** at.

As a final note I'll add an anecdote: When I installed Debian 3.1a in late July (over Gentoo), the installer autodetected all of my hardware. My DVD/CD drives were all set up, my SCSI controller was detected, my SCSI HD and CDRW drive were detected, my sound card was correctly set up, etc. It definitely "just worked" for me. *shrug*

My setup is like this:
PIII 800mhz
Intel 815 based Dell motherboard
C-media 8738 sound card
3Com 905C-TX ethernet card
Adaptec AHA-7850 SCSI controller
ATI Radeon R200 QM (9100) <-- Though I didn't do an automatic install for X11 because I'd rather set it up by hand.

[BlackDove]

Originally posted by Shrike
I lubs you too.  It's not like I have anything to add to this conversation; I use Win2k because it works for me and it runs all the programs I want it to.  Inertia.  I have no need to get some other OS.

Oh thank god, I thought you were about to release the images of doom, such as the FireFox koneko-chan.

Actually, I was hoping for it.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Sandwich
My point, once again, is this: I (and this "I" stands for many, many people who would like to switch) don't want to choose. I don't want to decide between the vast number of distros, researching each one's featureset, compatability, etc etc.

I must confess myself confused. If you dont' want to make a choice, why CHOOSE to switch to an OS that's about CHOICE?

You're telling me that you want to switch from your bicycle to a car, but you just want the car to go. You don't want to look into maybe a coupe vs. a roudster vs. a sedan. So uh, you've already got what you need. It just works. Why switch?

From my point of view, if you're CHOOSING to switch, you accept the responsibility to make a CHOICE of what you switch to.

Now, this last point is going to sound arrogant and elitist and I apologize in advance. I'm sorry I can't say this in a better way.

If you can't be bothered to become informed about the distros, about why one would pick any of them, I just can't get believe for a moment that you're the sort of person we (that's the collective of all sysadmins everywhere) want someone like you running Linux, BSD, or whatever. You're immediately falling into the sort of thinking that makes Windows one of the worst things ever attached to the collective internetwork of systems we call the Internet.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]I was thinking that expecting a bunch of volunteers to hammer out something that suits you, for nothing, is a wee bit blind.

If you really are expecting a custom built linux distro then you'd better be willing to pay for it.
[/color]

[Bobboau]

what the Linux comunity realy needs to do is work on it's recruitment techniques, what they need to do is as a group try to decide wich distro is currently the best all around example of what Linux is capable of, the best generalist distro, and then they need to focus on that one distro for just a little while then they need to use that distro as the 'newb' distro focusing all there basic tutorials on it and makeing it the default starters dist, and the linux comunity needs to agree upon this. then once someone has a firm grasp upon the basics of linux they can start to make some choices, but if you have no idea what your doing, it's very hard to make desisions on something you are totaly inexperienced upon, it's like sending my grandma out to buy a new pc, or a three year old out to buy a new car, if you don't have any experience you can't compare and contrast the diferent opptions.

[mikhael]

Exactly, that's why you research--precisely what Sandwich doesn't want to do.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by mikhael
Exactly, that's why you research--precisely what Sandwich doesn't want to do.

I believe Bobboau's point is that the Linux community needs to write up and organize information to help people get started with Linux. How many times are there posts on here about people who have no clue about how to go about installing fs2_open? With Linux, it's like that except more confusing.

Sandwich: Go ahead and try Ubuntu. It only takes a single CD to install, and while it's not perfect, the stuff at http://www.ubuntuguide.org will help you get the more popular apps working that aren't installed by default. (There's also an AMD64 guide, as some software still doesn't support 64-bit computing...however it's possible to set up a 32-bit environment to run such programs. That's how I run Flash.)
Updates are also very easy. A little icon will pop up in the upper right (Well, for me) and usually I just have to type in my password, and tell it to install the upgrades. One reboot later and they're all working.

I used to like Yoper (Specifically, version 2.1). It's minimalist and the install was extremely streamlined. However the 2.2 beta really put me off, as 2.1 didn't have drivers for my GF6600GT, none of the workarounds worked, and 2.2 seemed to be going in the direction of more and more complexity.

[mikhael]

So people like Sandwich shouldn't use Linux then. Let them use Windows or BSD. As I already pointed out, BSD is remarkably like windows: the basic system is the same across all the distributions, with only changes made for various tasks--JUST LIKE WINDOWS.

[WMCoolmon]

It took me something like three or four stabs at Linux over the space of five years or more before I got a system working well enough for me to do most of what I wanted. Even now, I can't do a number of things with Ubuntu - the #1 distro on distrowatch.com - that I could've done with Windows 2000.

God knows how many hours or even days I've spent simply looking stuff up or asking questions because it wasn't documented in an easy-to-see location. Hell, when I tried Gentoo, I was stalled for hours with a seemingly unsolvable problem during install, until I found a thread on the Gentoo forums with a somewhat similar problem. What annoyed me to no end was that the people talked about it as if it was something that was common knowledge. Yet no one had thought to put it in the install guide.

I have stopped recommending Linux as an alternative OS, except as a last resort, because so many things are poorly documented or extremely difficult to simply get working. 99% of the people I know IRL don't want to spend as much time as I'm willing to to simply get things working.

Like Sandwich, I'd like to totally switch over to Linux because I support the idea of OSS, and I dislike XP/Vista and know that 2000 won't be supported by programs and hardware manufacturers forever. But if I hadn't had so much time to spend 'researching' to install new software or copy files or get my sound card working, I could never have gotten Linux working to even the not-quite-functional point that it's at now.

That's the problem with Linux, not that people need to research more.

[mikhael]

I have never recommended Linux as an altOS. Its insane. I recommend FreeBSD because... well there's the GUIDE. Then there's FreshPorts. And there's the GUIDE. And then there's FreeBSD Diary. And the GUIDE. And the crazy thing: most of the things the average user wants to do? Its in the guide.

Of course, you have to be willing to learn to switch over. If you're just doing it because you want to show support or whatever, well, whatever. There's college lesbians too. Most of them are straight back home, and will be after they get out of college.

Me, I recommend staying with Windows unless you've got a damned good reason to switch to *nix.

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
God knows how many hours or even days I've spent simply looking stuff up or asking questions because it wasn't documented in an easy-to-see location. Hell, when I tried Gentoo, I was stalled for hours with a seemingly unsolvable problem during install, until I found a thread on the Gentoo forums with a somewhat similar problem. What annoyed me to no end was that the people talked about it as if it was something that was common knowledge. Yet no one had thought to put it in the install guide.

Worse anecdote ever.

Gentoo is one of the most infamous distros for being hard to set up and use. It should be glaringly obvious that it's not meant for a newbie. How did the part in the install book about mandatory kernel compilation not tip you off? A tiny bit of research should have made you avoid Gentoo.

From what I can tell, the only distro you have tried that was touted as "user-friendly" has been Ubuntu. You could have tried something like SUSE or Mandriva. Both are listed in the top 5 on Distrowatch. It's puzzling why you chose the distros you did if you want something simple.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Kamikaze
So, what exactly do you propose us Linux users do about this? We don't actually care if you like choosing a distro or not; it works fine for us. A "magical" merge of all distros is not only impossible, but undesirable.

The people using Linux like choice. Just on this forum we've got people using Ubuntu (WMC, Joey21), Debian (me), Gentoo (Maeg), Fedora (Kazan), etc. It's not just about preference either. A monoculture of OSs and even distros is not healthy for security or stability. All distros have varying degrees of stability. For example, Debian's stable branch is rock stable. It's also using outdated software by some standards. That's why people are using its testing branch or even move to Ubuntu. Same goes for security. Debian's security team makes the stable branch very secure, but not so much for the unstable branch. The difference is even greater in distros. Gentoo typically has the newest packages in quickly, but generally they are not as stable as Debian's packages.

You mentioned one or two distros getting in the lead. How do you expect this to happen? What, all distros aside from, say, Red Hat and Mandriva just call it quits? Or maybe you propose we drop the successful open source model and suddenly license Red Hat specific software under a proprietary license? Because as long as Red Hat packages GPL software or writes software using GPL libraries, the community will have the source code and will be able to use it in their own packages.

There's also no possibility of a "Linux" distribution either. Linux is trademarked and will be enforced by Linus to be used only for the kernel. So no distro can be the official Linux. The kernel is distro neutral and the kernel devs, at least, will never approve an official Linux distro using that name.

So your complaining won't get you anywhere. If it's really so big an issue that you can't ever touch Linux, that's too bad. It's obviously not the right OS for you.

You still manage to utterly miss my point. I am not talking from the position of someone who wants to "tinker". If I wanted to tinker, I'd have downloaded various Linux distros ages ago (as a side note, I have Red Hat, Mandrake, Knoppix, and I think one other distro downloaded, ISO's burnt and ready to install - I just never could take the leap). Linux is PERFECT for people like who I USED to be - someone with time to spend tinkering, learning a new OS, etc. I'd be interested to see the ages at which people try out Linux for the first time. I'd bet it's 80% people who are in school/college.

Anyway, the point - and PLEASE read it this time - is that if people ever want Linux to achieve widespread acceptance, to be installed on every other Tom, Dick, and Harry's computers, then there needs to be a central focus. For those of you who already use Linux, it's obviously great (or good enough). You're not the point. Mr. Joe Schmo IS the point.

If you want Linux to remain a strictly "geek" OS, with virtually no adoption among the widespread computer user base, then by all means, go right ahead the way you've been going. Distro yourselves out.

Originally posted by Kamikaze
I'm not quite sure what your point is here. There are plenty of alternative browsers for any platform that are choices. On Windows there is Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, K-meleon and others. On Linux there is Galeon, Epiphany, Konquerer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. That's quite a few options and I would hesitate to say "There's no choice involved".

It's true that there is only one Mozilla Firefox, but that's like saying there's only one Debian.

Oh please. K-Meleon for Windows? Next to nobody's ever heard of that - I haven't. It's not a choice anymore than buying the olive oil from the little old Bedoiun lady who comes by our house every 3 weeks to sell us stuff and clean the house is a "choice" for you. On Windows, there are 3 choices, period. IE, Gecko browsers, and Opera. Linux may very well be quite another story, but people using LInux like such things.

Originally posted by Bobboau
what the Linux comunity realy needs to do is work on it's recruitment techniques, what they need to do is as a group try to decide wich distro is currently the best all around example of what Linux is capable of, the best generalist distro, and then they need to focus on that one distro for just a little while then they need to use that distro as the 'newb' distro focusing all there basic tutorials on it and makeing it the default starters dist, and the linux comunity needs to agree upon this. then once someone has a firm grasp upon the basics of linux they can start to make some choices, but if you have no idea what your doing, it's very hard to make desisions on something you are totaly inexperienced upon, it's like sending my grandma out to buy a new pc, or a three year old out to buy a new car, if you don't have any experience you can't compare and contrast the diferent opptions.

You know, that'd work wonders. I'd bet that if something like that was done, the adaption rate of Linux would climb noticably, and Linux users would realize why having a central focus for newbs is a good thing.

Originally posted by mikhael
Exactly, that's why you research--precisely what Sandwich doesn't want to do.

I don't have time. Neither do most of today's workforce. And it's THOSE people I am posting on behalf of. Not the people who DO have time to do a ton of reasearch, but those who don't - i.e. the majority of computer users above the age of, say, 21? 25? Whatever age people generally finish college and get a steady job is.

Originally posted by mikhael
I have never recommended Linux as an altOS. Its insane. I recommend FreeBSD because... well there's the GUIDE. Then there's FreshPorts. And there's the GUIDE. And then there's FreeBSD Diary. And the GUIDE. And the crazy thing: most of the things the average user wants to do? Its in the guide.

Of course, you have to be willing to learn to switch over. If you're just doing it because you want to show support or whatever, well, whatever. There's college lesbians too. Most of them are straight back home, and will be after they get out of college.

Me, I recommend staying with Windows unless you've got a damned good reason to switch to *nix.

The only OSes one heards about in the media is Wondows, OSX, and Linux. There's reports of the Massechutes (sp's all blown to hell, whatev) governmental ofices switching en masse to Linux. Not to Red Hat, not to Gentoo, not to Madrake (Mandriva? ), but to LINUX. THAT's what people like me would like to be able to do - switch to LINUX. Obviously is this case they're switching to a certain distro, but it doesn't sound like that from the reports.

ANYway, I think part of my problem with switching is that I'd be expected at some point to have tech help-esque knowledge about it, which I simply don't have the time for. Ironic.

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by Sandwich

Anyway, the point - and PLEASE read it this time - is that if people ever want Linux to achieve widespread acceptance, to be installed on every other Tom, Dick, and Harry's computers, then there needs to be a central focus. For those of you who already use Linux, it's obviously great (or good enough). You're not the point. Mr. Joe Schmo IS the point.

If you want Linux to remain a strictly "geek" OS, with virtually no adoption among the widespread computer user base, then by all means, go right ahead the way you've been going. Distro yourselves out.

Well, see, that's the problem. Clearly people making Linux distros don't care if Joe Schmo is confused by the mass of distros. Even if they did, what could they do about it? Nothing.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't affect me what OS you use. Especially now that Free software is available for Windows that will avoid format lockin (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) it's not a big concern for me.

My problem is that you don't actually have a solution for this problem you're complaining about. You don't have the "so what?" part of your argument. What am I supposed to do about this?

The only OSes one heards about in the media is Wondows, OSX, and Linux. There's reports of the Massechutes (sp's all blown to hell, whatev) governmental ofices switching en masse to Linux. Not to Red Hat, not to Gentoo, not to Madrake (Mandriva? ), but to LINUX. THAT's what people like me would like to be able to do - switch to LINUX. Obviously is this case they're switching to a certain distro, but it doesn't sound like that from the reports.

Government offices and home users have nothing alike. Their offices get professional IT staff to come by and smoothly go from Windows to Linux. The workers are expected to adapt, whether they like it or not, because they work there. Plus they don't do any configuring or administering themselves, they have IT staff.

If your Joe Schmo's want to hire an IT staff I'm sure they could switch to LINUX too.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Kamikaze


Worse anecdote ever.

Gentoo is one of the most infamous distros for being hard to set up and use. It should be glaringly obvious that it's not meant for a newbie. How did the part in the install book about mandatory kernel compilation not tip you off? A tiny bit of research should have made you avoid Gentoo.

From what I can tell, the only distro you have tried that was touted as "user-friendly" has been Ubuntu. You could have tried something like SUSE or Mandriva. Both are listed in the top 5 on Distrowatch. It's puzzling why you chose the distros you did if you want something simple.

What appealed to me was the whole customizability thing. And I'd already recompiled myself a kernel - under Yoper - several times, so that didn't scare me off.

The problem was a USE flags conflict that wasn't listed in the documentation. I very carefully went through and figured out the USE flags I wanted to use. But in the end, I was forced to use double the number due to dependencies and spent a lot of time tracking down the errant USE flag dependency that wasn't listed.

In the end, after a lot of tweaking, I got it to boot up helluva fast, but the unwieldyness of the config files and, actually, the encouragement to use external programs to do things rather than simply doing it manually drove me off.

A Linux distro where I could choose exactly what I wanted would be excellent, but the closest I've seen is LFS.

I actually thought Yoper 2.1 was a very user-friendly, minimalist distro, even when you poked a little deeper to look at the startup config files. The hardest thing to do was partitioning in the installer, and after that you had pretty much everything you'd want already installed (Or in the case of OpenOffice, easily configured)

[Descenterace]

My personal favourite distro is Debian, but that's probably because it's the first one I used as a tool rather than a toy.

The first Linux I installed was Red Hat. NEVER. AGAIN. It seems to use scripts for configuring everything, right down to the startup sequence.
Debian simply has a set of directories with symlinks in them. Far easier to modify programmatically.

Thing is, Debian isn't particularly happy with Via Velocity onboard LAN adapters. Nor is the 2.4.x kernel, which is what the network installer uses. So my main system has a Slackware partition and Debian remains my server OS.

One of these days (after the upcoming upgrade) I'll have another shot at getting Debian working on this machine. Hopefully nForce 4 has better Linux support.

[Kamikaze]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon

In the end, after a lot of tweaking, I got it to boot up helluva fast, but the unwieldyness of the config files and, actually, the encouragement to use external programs to do things rather than simply doing it manually drove me off.

A Linux distro where I could choose exactly what I wanted would be excellent, but the closest I've seen is LFS.
 

You know, you might want to try Debian some time. I don't know if it's much different from Ubuntu, but it has an easy installation and you still have a lot of flexbility for configuration. You've probably already seen how useful apt-get is in Ubuntu, but the really nice part of it is how you can add more repositories to your source list to install any software missing in the main Debian respositories. On this box I have a mix of testing and unstable branch packages, as well as a bunch of experimental audio packages (I needed APE support). I suppose you can do all that with Ubuntu too, though I don't know how well its packages play with other repositories.

You could also try Slackware. That's about as minimalistic and flexible as it gets.