[S-99]

My ex called me up today out of the blue. I just needed somewhere that had hot water so i could finish my shower. I made it over to her place, and her desktop and laptop are both ****ed up to use.

Suffering from a continual and unexplainable bsod in normal mode and safe mode with xp media center edition on her desktop. I popped in linux, backed up her data, and asked where her xp install disc was. She doesn't have one. So i said ok, you've used my computer, you're getting linux. She wasn't even alarmed, she already knows from talking to me a whole lot that openoffice and firefox are linux apps too. So i installed mandriva for her because the control panel in there is more friendly than other distro's control panels. I configged the system for her. She didn't really need to learn anything new with the kde desktop.

She's a real trooper, right off the bat she knows how to use the root password for installing games and the importance of the root password. She really liked the added security in keeping herself from ****ing up the computer or other people ****ing it up for her. She also loves that she doesn't need antivirus (i did configure a firewall for her). Her watching movies, downloading music, firefox usage, and openoffice days resume with no interruption. She just wants her desktop to work flawlessly. She doesn't use it for anything beyond surfing the net, movies, music, and openoffice like when she had windows. She loves how easy it is to lock people out of her computer too.

She even likes the other applications like amarok, kaffeine, and amsn. Amarok is too self explanatory for her, kaffeine reminds her too much of media player classic, and amsn was much too obvious for how it works. The start menu for mandriva was pretty self explanatory for her too.

Prime candidate for moving over to linux, mainly because a good deal of the time she only used openoffice and firefox on windows. She's very happy with what she has now, she's considering moving her laptop over to mandriva also (to replace vista entirely). Anyway, using her desktop became a much more simplified operation for her. She doesn't have to worry about drivers, malware, and screwing up the system as much as with when she had windows. I also didn't need to hunt down driver after driver for every piece of hardware in windows (if she had an xp install disc). Her computer now has no fuss It was cool.

[Mars]

Linux is great... it's faster to install software, the software itself is often modular, it's fairly stable.

until it breaks, what would be a 10 minute repair in Windows often takes hours in Linux. Right now I can't view flash videos in Linux, and its not scheduled to be fixed for a few more weeks. Drivers for AMD graphics cards are beyond painful to deal with.

Hopefully Linux as a whole starts to work out these kinks, because they're all potential show stoppers to normal people.

[Scuddie]

Linux as a whole will NEVER start to work out those kinks, due to the fact that Linux will NEVER operate as a whole.

[S-99]

Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati. My ex has like the miracle machine, it came with a geforce 8400gt.
In all honesty, i make much more money off of windows than i ever do off of linux. On average, what i'm fixing in windows is a heck of a lot more than 10 minute repairs. The inefficiencies of windows makes me money. Microsoft update makes me a lot of money.

Sounds like you need a better choice in linux to mess around with. Not switch totally from windows and use it souly, but to mess around with. Mandriva like i said is a good choice, upon installation your proprietary nvidia or amd drivers are installed, all of the codecs you could ever imagine have already been installed (you can even play windows media right out of the box with mandriva), and there is flash already working. If your distro isn't working for you, try another

Anyway, be very careful with the admin privileges in linux. On average someone with admin privileges in linux is just like someone with admin privileges in windows...if that person don't know what they're doing, they can ream the system.

Anyway, this is my ex were talking about here, she's not going to screw up the computer, she only uses openoffice and firefox and much better that she uses them in linux than windows. This is a scenario where installing linux is perfect for someone else.

Linux as a whole will NEVER start to work out those kinks, due to the fact that Linux will NEVER operate as a whole.

This is something both of you guys said. Linux does operate as a whole actually. Scuddie is straying from the topic anyhow.
Yes, there's hundreds of distros out there, yeah they all seem kind of separate, but they do actually help each other out. Ubuntu puts out packages and bugfixes for debian, debian does the same back for ubuntu, some debian devs help out over with redhat, and redhat helps out all over with ubuntu. Basically distro developers help other each out a lot. Past people helping each other out, distros are getting more and more synced for released. Meaning that many distro's get released at the same time. When this happens, it means that the distros that were released at the same time are all  made out of the same stuff. Mandriva 2008.1 has the same versions of software as ubuntu 8.04. Syncing releases makes it easier for developers to make their software available to other distros. Also, we can't forget about the LSB (linux standard base foundation). Linux does quite operate as a whole. And this operation does help work out kinks in the long run especially.

 

[castor]

What is "Linux as a whole"? I think Linux as a whole can never be stable, integrated or anything like that. How could it? It is constantly molding itself to become something new. There are no releases or roadmaps that would comprise the whole.

I think its the responsibility of each distribution to take care of the parts it is shipping, trying to ensure maximum level of integration within those parts. From thereof of its the job of each individual user to make sensible choices, regarding 3rd party software etc. things to use. It can be done well enough, but it will never be perfect (nothing is).

[S-99]

I guess nobody wants to understand linux as a whole. The best way i understand it is a lot of cooperation between all of the distros. Trying to imagine linux as a whole like windows or osx....those are completely different things. Perhas linux would be more whole if it had one project in mind, but it doesn't. The hundreds of distros out there proves it, as well as the many desktop environments, and the numbers of ways to get things done.

However each distro of linux as a whole of itself is it must be understood. There is no central distro that all linuxes are based off of, and that's why. Each distro is it's own whole. And with each distro comes different philosophies and ways of gettings things done. In debian there's deb packaging, in mandriva there's rpm packaging...each packaging format has a different piece of software to facilitate installation. Debian with the deb packaging and it's installer was more geared for easy and fast updating and software installation on servers, whereas mandriva with it's rpm format and its installer is geared at easy individual program installation and updating not really facilitated by the user. Each distro not only has it's own ways of getting stuff done, but also supplies just about everything you could need. Mandriva is a much more whole experience than ubuntu is (the way mandriva gets things done is awesome).

I think linux is particularly stable. Centos, redhat, suse, debian stable, arch linux, are all very stable. Ubuntu on the other hand is stable a good deal of the time, that's because ubuntu is a reworked snapshot of whatever was in the debian unstable repositories from a short time ago, and reworked by the ubuntu devs to be stable. Many distros do stuff like this. Mandriva is just as stable as opensuse, and pclinuxos is very stable. Pclinuxos is a rolling release, but the updates put out for it, are put very slowly, and only if they are stable updates.

It really depends on which linux you use for stability and an awesome exerience.

[Fury]

Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.

What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.

I'd tell people to get computers with ATI cards if possible, just because ATI has been releasing their cards specifications to the open, unlike Nvidia. ATI open source drivers are progressing fast and I doubt it will take long to have full hardware accelerated (and working) 2D and 3D rendering on all ATI cards. Much of needed hardware accelerated features are already working. Of course licensed proprietary tech like UVD will be out of reach. There is open source nvidia drivers called Nouveau in the works, but because nvidia doesn't release hardware specifications, development is much slower than on ATI open source drivers.

The days when nvidia was the choice of card for linux users is past. Until they do what ATI did and release the specs.


But anyways, good work getting your ex converted to linux.

[Mars]

I don't know about the theoretical situation, but I'll tell you, it's a ***** to install the FGLRX drivers in ubuntu.

[Fury]

I haven't had any problems installing fglrx on Ubuntu for a long time. The restricted driver manager makes it quite straightforward. On the Intrepid Ibex beta however, fglrx can't be installed because it doesn't support the latest XServer or X.Org. But neither does nvidia's proprietary drivers.

In any case, I rather wouldn't install proprietary binary drivers on linux. ATI open source drivers is coming leaps and bounds thanks to the released specs. It is just a guess but within next six to twelve months I don't think you'd need proprietary ATI drivers for anything unless you want to use some proprietary tech like UVD. Can't really say the same about open source nvidia driver project.

In fact, the open source ATI driver does support almost all ATI cards now if not all. So for basic desktop usage its all you need.

[Ghostavo]

Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.

What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.

I'd ask you the same thing.

While X11 remains Linux's "only", or should I say most popular, window system, graphics will always be subpar compared to other OS's.

[Flaser]

Yeah, nvidia really does have much better drivers than amd/ati.

What year you're living in? They're both more or less on even ground today, both suck just as much. Neither still haven't released XServer 1.5/X.Org 7.4 compatible proprietary drivers.

I'd ask you the same thing.

While X11 remains Linux's "only", or should I say most popular, window system, graphics will always be subpar compared to other OS's.

What are you smoking? I want some.

[Ghostavo]

Could you expand on what you disagree?

[S-99]

You've got to admire X11 for it's principles though

[castor]

  damn people, this thread is getting seriously tough to follow.

[Scuddie]

Linux deliberately contains no specification as to user interface or most inter-application communication.

Fixed.

Linux will never be a complete, unified operating system.

[S-99]

It's always nice to not include all of what was said for your scuddie agenda Scuddie, you're horrible. There's a reason why X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface.

X deliberately contains no specification as to application user interface, such as buttons, menus, window title bars and so on. Instead, user software – such as window managers, GUI widget toolkits and desktop environments, or application-specific graphical user interfaces – provide/define all such details. As such, it isn't possible to point to a "typical" X interface as at most times several interfaces have been popular among users.

A window manager controls the placement and appearance of application windows. This may have an interface akin to that of Microsoft Windows or of the Macintosh (examples include Metacity in GNOME, KWin in KDE or Xfwm in Xfce) or have radically different controls (such as a tiling window manager, like wmii or Ratpoison). The window manager may be bare-bones (e.g. twm, the basic window manager supplied with X, or evilwm, an extremely light window manager) or offer functionality verging on that of a full desktop environment (e.g. Enlightenment).

Many users use X with a full desktop environment, which includes a window manager, various applications and a consistent interface. GNOME, KDE and Xfce are the most popular desktop environments.

Basically it's saying that X is a windowing system that implements the X display protocol and provides windowing on bitmap displays and leaves the gui to the people who develop gui's. Particularly the devs who handle desktop environments like kde or gnome.

Another way to interpret this:
I'm not stuck with one lame ass desktop environment forever predetermined to me by my display protocol.

Benefits of this:
There's so many DE's out there to suit different needs that it's great. They're all in high demand. I can switch between them all, i have this power.

The next lame thing that people will say is, "well beginner users aren't going to need to do this, they aren't going to need this power." The quite simple thing to think about next is that beginning users don't care that they have this power, and that they're not going to use this power.

[Ghostavo]

While that's all nice to say, it doesn't excuse the fact that it's horribly implemented. Then again, that's to be expected of a program which has been around for a quarter of a century, hacked and patched, trying to keep with the pace of current technology. The fact that I'm forced to use a program whose current version (maybe iteration is the better word) is older than I am scares me.

[S-99]

I don't think it's horribly implemented at all. To me it seems that it's built exactly to do what it's supposed to do and does it well. As far as that goes, i wish the devs working on new versions of it would be a little speedier. Been waiting on the new version of x for a while.

Patching and hacking yes, this happens with most software, including windows and macosx. Idk, old software = bad software? Where are you coming from? Do you know how old dos was when it was in use with win 95/98/ME (1980 ring a bell)? NT seems to have been around for the least time since way back in 93. I think age of the software is irrelevant. If it's been in use for that long, it's also been changing for that long, then it's probably that good. Otherwise everyone would not be using unix based oses (unix, solaris, bsd, macosx, linux) for desktop or server use anymore and there would have been a mass influx for a better platform a while ago.

Anyway, dont surf the net ghostavo, the number of linux and unix servers out there. It'll scare you. Like saying hi to a 40 year old grandpa (unix since 69).

[Ghostavo]

I don't think it's horribly implemented at all. To me it seems that it's built exactly to do what it's supposed to do and does it well. As far as that goes, i wish the devs working on new versions of it would be a little speedier. Been waiting on the new version of x for a while.

Patching and hacking yes, this happens with most software, including windows and macosx. Idk, old software = bad software? Where are you coming from? Do you know how old dos was when it was in use with win 95/98/ME (1980 ring a bell)? NT seems to have been around for the least time since way back in 93. I think age of the software is irrelevant. If it's been in use for that long, it's also been changing for that long, then it's probably that good. Otherwise everyone would not be using unix based oses (unix, solaris, bsd, macosx, linux) for desktop or server use anymore and there would have been a mass influx for a better platform a while ago.

Anyway, dont surf the net ghostavo, the number of linux and unix servers out there. It'll scare you. Like saying hi to a 40 year old grandpa (unix since 69).

Except I'm older than Linux (and if you take account it's latest iteration I'm way older) and Unix servers are probably rarer than even Windows servers. I'm not saying that old software is bad, but when you take into account just how far we have progress in 20 years (or even 10 or 5) it's not adequate to our needs and should honestly be put down and start from scratch. Even the holy grail of the open source world, the linux kernel is showing signs of bloat nowadays and if in another 5/10 years there doesn't seem to be any movement to replace it, I'll be surely dissapointed.

X11 IS horribly implemented. It consumes far too much to do far too little and if you don't believe me, check xclock which consumes over half a megabyte of RAM just to tell you what time it is. It was never designed in the first place to do what it does today and it shows. Imagine if suddently you had to change Microsoft Paint into a browser and you get the same idea.

P.S.
I wonder how much flak I'll get for the kernel one.

[S-99]

Unix and linux servers are rarer than windows servers? Where are you coming from? Unix and linux are actually modular compared to windows server class products first off. Secondly for net servers and a bunch of companies, many already have had, or are getting more linux or unix based servers. Especially since linux and bsd unix can gotten for free.

The other thing is why would you want to slap down a lot of smackies just to have a server powered by windows server 2003? Going the route of debian stable or centos for a server is much better and much more capable.