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Last post Author Topic: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux  (Read 40652 times)

f0dder

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #25 on: October 20, 2008, 01:56 AM »
I wouldn't say that gentoo is based on BSD, since it's a linux distro - but it's pretty evident where it got the "portage" idea from, though. Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options. With other distros, I've found that oftentimes I get a lot of features I don't need from standard packages (including dragging in a crapload of dependencies), but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all. That's the cool thing about gentoo and it's use-masks, I don't run into the situation.

Dependency-hunting isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. And for some software, you get into the iffy situation where very specific versions are needed. Installing redmine, for instance, was pretty fun :)
- carpe noctem

urlwolf

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #26 on: October 20, 2008, 10:44 AM »
My main 3 problems with linux:
1 - you better invest some of your time learning sysadmin stuff. With values of 'some' that may range out of reach for most people, if you have a real job :)

2 - Quite a lot of software, for any category, is worse on linux. Music player? check. Amarok is not really up to pair, and it's a hell of a wonder compared to other linux software. Office suite? Check. Many little tools that make your life easier (ahk, etc)? check

3 - Buying hardware is a real adventure. You better scourge the web before paying for something that linux will not even see.

Even in the unlikely case that an up-to-pair software exists that repleaces your favorite windows one, you'll need to find it and play with it till you get it to suit your needs. And development may stop at any time, as soon as the main dev. gets bored.


40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #27 on: October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM »
I wouldn't say that gentoo is based on BSD, since it's a linux distro - but it's pretty evident where it got the "portage" idea from...

You don't need to say it. Gentoo did: ;D

What is Gentoo?

Gentoo is a free operating system based on either Linux or FreeBSD that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme configurability, performance and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience.

http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options.

Agree. But to what point? If you're looking to improve performance, it becomes somewhat pointless to spend dozens of hours researching what compilation flags to set in order to squeeze a 5% improvement in efficiency on a specific platform. You could just invest in more RAM or a faster processor.

Now I agree that it might be worth it if you were doing a Gentoo Stage-3 install as a learning experience Or if you wanted to do it for pure technical aesthetics. That's one advantage of being a student, a hobbyist, or a tech person. You get to do things like that.

I fit into the third group, so I made it a point to do a few "Stage-3's" just to find out what Gentoo was all about. And when I was finished, I considered it a good investment of my time. But that's because I'm a "computer guy" in the tech business. I can easily justify wallowing in levels of detail the average person would consider silly because it's my job to do that.

But if you're only looking for performance (and you value your time at more than $6/hour  :mrgreen: ) it doesn't make economic sense to do a Stage-3 installation. Especially when you realize could get a part-time job that pays better than that, and then use the money you earn to buy a more capable computer.

Where Gentoo really would (and does) shine is when you use it as the basis for an application appliance. But again, that is a specialized situation where there are pragmatic reasons for wringing every last ounce of performance out of your product - because if you don't, the competition in the marketplace will kill you. And there are two other good reasons. First, once you create a fully optimized Gentoo "gold master" you can just keep cloning it until you change your hardware configuration. And second, because you're going to be responsible for support, it also makes sense to get everything "just right" before you ship out 5000 boxed products.

Gentoo is an amazing version of Linux. But it is a niche product. And I still maintain that most of its benefits apply, in practice (as opposed to in theory) to only a very small subset of the Linux community. From the level of knowledge you've displayed in many of your forum posts, I suspect you (i.e f0dder) are part of that small cadre of people that has specific goals combined with the necessary technical background to pull them off. For folks like you, Gentoo makes sense.

"There's some Linux experiences money can't buy. For everything else there's Ubuntu." 8)

With other distros, I've found that oftentimes I get a lot of features I don't need from standard packages (including dragging in a crapload of dependencies),

True. But to go back to an earlier observation I made about custom and minimalist installations, those very same dependencies you don't want installed by default may later be needed for when you want to do a source install of something else. You can't have it both ways. If you want lean - you get lean.

but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all.

I don't know of any supported 'feature' for a distro that isn't found in its repositories and installable via the preferred package manager. If you're doing source compiles for a core function, I suspect you're either hacking the kernal, or getting into something that hasn't been fully tested and approved for distribution. Nothing wrong with doing that (I'm guilty of it myself) but once again you can't have it both ways. If you want beta - you get beta.

Dependency-hunting isn't hard, it's just a waste of time. And for some software, you get into the iffy situation where very specific versions are needed. Installing redmine, for instance, was pretty fun smiley

It is a waste of time. No argument there.

But redmine isn't a good argument for that point. Let's get some background on that story:

Redmine's hassles were the result of a change to the SQlite-3 database table_info pragma that was made by the SQLite development team. The change was made  in response to what they thought was a request from the RubyCore team. Such was not the case, and the change that got made broke all Ruby on Rails apps that were using SQLite-3. What makes this story really tragic is the fact that the problem didn't come about through an arbitrary program change, but rather by SQLite's genuine effort to be accommodating and responsive to a request it thought was from the Ruby community.

Unfortunately, both versions of SQLite's binaries are now found in many repositories, and most Linux package managers will default to the most current version of a binary for installation purposes. This can be overridden on a package by package basis by the person doing the install as long as they know about the problem. In the case of Redmine, an older version of the binary is needed. Unfortunately, most of the people involved with Redmine didn't know about the problem until after they broke their installation.

Now from my perspective, this problem has nothing to do with any Linux distro, it's repositories, or the system of package management. It has everything to do with communications issues between the developers of Ruby and SQLite.

On a side note, I would also like to point out that Redmine is not found in most Linux repositories. Furthermore, if you go over to the Redmine website and read the installation instructions, you will see that the developers have left their userbase a lot of manual setup actions that should have been scripted instead. This is probably because Redmine is still under heavy development and not quite out (ver. 0.7.3) of beta. If the installation routine had been scripted, it would have been a simple matter to check for the correct version of SQLite prior to installation. And that would have avoided the whole problem in the first place.

On a related note, Redmine is a web-based project management application. If you go over to SourceForge you will find there are something like 1700 packages that are tagged  "project management." A cursory look at a few dozen will show several that duplicate, and in some cases exceed, the functionality of Redmine. Many are also out of beta.

From what I can see, there doesn't appear to much that is unique about Redmine, other than the fact that it is being implemented in Ruby on Rails. Now while I have the greatest respect for the Ruby community, and I admire the work of the folks that came up with Ruby on Rails, I can't help thinking "so what?" when I look at Redmine. Especially when there are equivalent applications I can install directly from my distro's repositories that will give me the same functionality without the hassles of doing a source compilation or a pile of manual configurations.

It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?

* That wouldn't normally be considered a reason - but this is Linux we're talking about, right?

 8)

P.S. - Sorry for writing a freekin' book. Somebody else talk, please?
« Last Edit: October 20, 2008, 01:57 PM by 40hz »

Edvard

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #28 on: October 20, 2008, 01:09 PM »
I've already said more than once that I'm http://taking my GNU and going home.

I love Linux and I don't have half the problems anybody else has, but I've suffered through my fair share in the beginning.
(Slackware 8 and Mandrake 9, blaargh!!)

f0dder

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #29 on: October 20, 2008, 02:44 PM »
Btw, gentoo isn't made superfluous by advances in hardware, it's just as much about having configurability options.
-f0dder

Agree. But to what point? If you're looking to improve performance, it becomes somewhat pointless to spend dozens of hours researching what compilation flags to set in order to squeeze a 5% improvement in efficiency on a specific platform. You could just invest in more RAM or a faster processor.
I said configurability (as in --without-package or --with-feature), I didn't mean tweaking the compiler flags. For most applications, you don't really get any kind of performance increase from doing that. Heck, you could end up with slightly slower performance in some cases.

Where Gentoo really would (and does) shine is when you use it as the basis for an application appliance. But again, that is a specialized situation where there are pragmatic reasons for wringing every last ounce of performance out of your product - because if you don't, the competition in the marketplace will kill you. And there are two other good reasons. First, once you create a fully optimized Gentoo "gold master" you can just keep cloning it until you change your hardware configuration. And second, because you're going to be responsible for support, it also makes sense to get everything "just right" before you ship out 5000 boxed products.
If I was to do an appliance, and especially something that'd run on a system with limited performance and storage, I'd probably go linux-from-scratch instead of using a distro - even something that can be as minimal as gentoo.

but a feature I need isn't enabled - and I end up having to do those messy from-source installs after all.
-f0dder
I don't know of any supported 'feature' for a distro that isn't found in its repositories and installable via the preferred package manager. If you're doing source compiles for a core function, I suspect you're either hacking the kernal, or getting into something that hasn't been fully tested and approved for distribution.
I'm thinking enabling/disabling individual features from individual programs. But sure, I do tend to do custom kernel builds as well.

Redmine's hassles were the result of a change to the SQlite-3 database table_info pragma that was made by the SQLite development team. The change was made  in response to what they thought was a request from the RubyCore team. Such was not the case, and the change that got made broke all Ruby on Rails apps that were using SQLite-3. What makes this story really tragic is the fact that the problem didn't come about through an arbitrary program change, but rather by SQLite's genuine effort to be accommodating and responsive to a request it thought was from the Ruby community.
I opted for MySQL instead of SQLite for exactly that reason. But that was only part of it - you also had to make sure you got the right ruby verson, the right rails version, et cetera. Lots of manual configuration. Pretty sucky and not up-to-date documentation, etc.

OK, fair enough, redmine is relatively bleeding-edge, and it's certainly more fun focusing on core development rather than documentation and proper setups. I just tend to bump into that kind of mentality too often with linux.

On a related note, Redmine is a web-based project management application. If you go over to SourceForge you will find there are something like 1700 packages that are tagged  "project management." A cursory look at a few dozen will show several that duplicate, and in some cases exceed, the functionality of Redmine. Many are also out of beta.
Haven't found any other that I like, though. Looks, usability, etc.

It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?
For me, it's about getting the features I want, but also not getting the features I don't want. For instance, my server doesn't run X11 and I don't print from it. I want to have as few services running as possible, since there's then less things to worry about wrt. updates, following security issues, et cetera. There's also less dependencies that can break when a stoned developer checks in a patch that messes up other things.

And the nice thing about gentoo is that you get most of the benefits from source installs, but still with the benefits of package management (uninstalls, dependency resolution, etc).
- carpe noctem

40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #30 on: October 20, 2008, 03:57 PM »
If I was to do an appliance, and especially something that'd run on a system with limited performance and storage, I'd probably go linux-from-scratch instead of using a distro - even something that can be as minimal as gentoo.

You could. But there are plenty of micro-distros that would serve equally well.  Still, I wouldn't automatically limit my definition of an appliance to some minimal hardware configuration. I think of appliances as any purpose-built system that basically runs right out of the box and gets administrated via a web-type interface. I'd lump full bore security gateways, mail servers, CMS servers, etc. into the 'appliance' designation. At least those are the 'appliances' I've built.


It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?

For me, it's about getting the features I want, but also not getting the features I don't want. For instance, my server doesn't run X11 and I don't print from it. I want to have as few services running as possible, since there's then less things to worry about wrt. updates, following security issues, et cetera. There's also less dependencies that can break when a stoned developer checks in a patch that messes up other things.

And the nice thing about gentoo is that you get most of the benefits from source installs, but still with the benefits of package management (uninstalls, dependency resolution, etc).

To which I'd have to repeat an earlier statement I made:
From the level of knowledge you've displayed in many of your forum posts, I suspect you (i.e f0dder) are part of that small cadre of people that has specific goals combined with the necessary technical background to pull them off. For folks like you, Gentoo makes sense.

And it's good that there are people like you around to knowledgeably challenge the occasional fits of groupthink and rampant boosterism that sometimes gets the Linux community into so much trouble. :Thmbsup:



Paul Keith

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #31 on: October 21, 2008, 07:24 AM »
Keep educating us idiots, f0dder and 40hz.  :up:


40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #32 on: October 21, 2008, 11:25 AM »
Keep educating us idiots, f0dder and 40hz.  :up:



If I ever get the time to set up that bloody Linux info website I've been plotting and designing for the last two years, I'm going to sure to invite f0dder to be it's Official Contra-Pundit. ;D


zridling

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #33 on: October 21, 2008, 01:57 PM »
Once again, thanks 40hz for the feedback, which is far more than I know. However, for those with the patience, here's a longer, very simplistic explanation of dependency management

[40hz]: I didn't forget the dependency issue. From my experience, the whole "hunting-down-the-dependency-hell" thing is vastly exaggerated and somewhat outdated.

Dependency management can get fiendishly complicated at times. But no worries. Like a good butler, the Linux software subsystem hides all that from you. This is one argument people use if they object to package management systems, such as that used by Ubuntu (or any other Distro). However, the counterargument is a good one: it never breaks -- unless the user does something stupid, that is.

synaptic01s.jpg
Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux


How software installation and removal is handled under Linux is radically different compared to Windows or OS X, but it isn’t hard to understand. As we all know, to install a program, a Windows user will double-click an installation .exe. Linux is different because software installation is automated -- even including the download. You literally just choose what you want to install and sit back while Linux (actually, your distro) takes care of it.

Virtually all Linux software is open source and therefore available for anybody to create their own versions of. So, the Linux developers take the source code for thousands of software projects and compile it themselves, tweaking it to ensure it works correctly on Fedora (or Ubuntu or Gentoo or Mandriva, etc.), and put it into large publicly accessible repositories (known as repos for short). In nearly all cases when you install software, it’ll come from these repositories. Manually downloading and installing software is rare, although not unheard of -- I do it to test software and when I'm at the dev's website.

The second key difference between Linux and other operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X is that Linux lets you install and remove just about everything, including system components that are otherwise invisible but make everything work. The bits of software that are installed and removed are referred to as packages. Packages are nothing more than program and/or system files bundled together in one file, complete with scripts (chains of commands) that configure things so that the software works with everything else on the system.

Typically, to install a particular piece of software, it’s necessary to install not only the program itself, which is usually provided as a single package, but several other packages containing the background system software it needs to work. You might say that such software installation is modular. The software you want to install is said to depend on these other packages that provide the system files. As you might be coming to expect, your distro's software install/removal tools automatically take care of installing these dependencies, and because of this, you will often hear people talk of dependency management when discussing Linux’s software management system as if it's a scary thing.

synaptic02.jpg

It isn’t just about managing dependencies when software is installed, of course. If you remove some software, you’ll be told whether that software is depended upon by any other software. If it is, you might see a suggestion that you remove the other software too. The other software might have its own set of dependencies. But again, the counterargument is a good one: it never breaks -- unless the user does something stupid.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2008, 02:49 AM by zridling »

40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #34 on: October 21, 2008, 03:41 PM »
[/b] for the feedback, which is far more than I know. However, for those with the patience, here's a longer, very simplistic explanation of dependency management

Go zridling! :Thmbsup:
Very nice summation.

f0dder

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #35 on: October 21, 2008, 04:17 PM »
Dependency management can get fiendishly complicated at times. But no worries. Like a good butler, the Linux software subsystem hides all that from you. This is one argument people use if they object to package management systems, such as that used by Ubuntu (or any other Distro). However, the counterargument is a good one: it never breaks -- unless the user does something stupid, that is.
Except when bad stuff happens. Like an install that updates a dependency that somehow for unexplainable reasons break another piece of software. Or when two pieces of software are incompatible because of library conflicts. Or when package maintainers forget some dependencies.

Funny enough I've never seen the "DLL hell" some people talk about on Windows... but I've had my fair share of library conflicts on linux :)
- carpe noctem

Edvard

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #36 on: October 21, 2008, 06:03 PM »
That is the one thing that still bugs me about Linux. I've never been burned by library conflicts but I always wondered why I had to download ONE... MORE... LIB... UNTIL... IT... RAN... :wallbash:

This has been mostly alleviated by Ubuntu's (actually Debian's...) magical apt-get dependency resolution, but I hit that wall every damn time on Slackware.

Actually it still happens if I install something from source or off-repository, but at least with apt I don't have to go Googling for onemorefreekinglib_i386_1.2.6.so.tar.gz and manually linking every stinking time...  :'(
« Last Edit: October 21, 2008, 06:05 PM by Edvard »

f0dder

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #37 on: October 21, 2008, 06:05 PM »
Oh yeah, I had plenty of fun with that kind of thing when I used slackware. And then you forget to use --prefix when doing ./configure , and you end up with software scattered all over. Yum yum.
- carpe noctem

40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #38 on: October 21, 2008, 06:47 PM »
Oh yeah, I had plenty of fun with that kind of thing when I used slackware. And then you forget to use --prefix when doing ./configure , and you end up with software scattered all over. Yum yum.

Got that right.

Then there's also the fun you sometimes have trying to figure out in which directory the executable (or script) actually got installed in...

Since I'm always one of the people praising Linux, I'll now level it a criticism:

That &$#! file structure has got to be simplified and rationalized.

It looks like somebody came up with in an outliner app after dropping six tabs of LSD. What in the name of all that is holy were they thinking of?
 >:(
There is one distribution that is trying to address this problem: GoboLinux ( www.gobolinux.org:-*

GoboLinux at a glance
What is GoboLinux?


GoboLinux is a modular Linux distribution: it organizes the programs in your system in a new, logical way. Instead of having parts of a program thrown at /usr/bin, other parts at /etc and yet more parts thrown at /usr/share/something/or/another, each program gets its own directory tree, keeping them all neatly separated and allowing you to see everything that's installed in the system and which files belong to which programs in a simple and obvious way.

This is what you see in the root of a GoboLinux system:

~] cd /
/] ls
Programs
Users
System
Files
Mount
Depot


/Programs is where all programs reside. No exceptions. You can explore what is installed in the system by looking inside it:

There is a great page up on the website that has several interesting essays about the design and implementation of the Gobo file system. Well worth reading if you're interested in how an OS could be better designed.

Link: http://www.gobolinux...p?page=documentation

From the paper: I am not clueless-or-Myths and misconceptions about the design of GoboLinux

"There is a reason why things are the way they are''

This is something I hear constantly, often followed by an explanation about the difference between /, /usr and /usr/local, and/or /bin and /sbin. I do understand the difference1. If I did away with this three-level distinction, is because I believe there are other ways to approach the problems this distinction tries to solve. In a GoboLinux system, the argument for having separate /usr and /usr/local trees in order to separate programs shipped by the distribution and compiled by the user clearly does not hold. Each program is naturally separated, and this was the prime intention of creating GoboLinux in the first place.

The historical reason why Unix systems have some of its tree directly at the root partition (/bin, /lib, /sbin) as opposed to having it under /usr, is because this way you can boot in a bare-bones single-user rescue mode using those files only, in order to fix problems in the /usr tree. This is arcane. When I need to rescue my system, I can use a fully-featured live CD that runs a complete Linux distribution with a graphical desktop, that allows me to browse the web and search for the solution to my problem, and use all of the features of a regular system to fix it. I understand the rationale for having a bare-bones rescue mode decades ago, but we have a better solution in our hands now.

The distinction between bin and sbin makes no sense, in the present context. Historical evolution led to crazy arbitrary distinctions, like ping and traceroute lying in different directories (I fail to see how can they be of distinct ``program classes'', by any measure). Unix systems have a permissions system. If one wants only the superuser to be able to run a command, then chmod 700 it. I suspect the separation could have been conceived to reduce the number of programs in the $PATH of regular users. In today's Linux systems, having 400 or 500 programs in your $PATH, does not make any difference.

Not only did GoboLinux create a workable alternate file system, but it was made compatible with the rest of the Linux world:

GoboHide: surviving aside the legacy tree
As you might have already seen, GoboLinux adopts an alternative directory tree. As you might also be wondering, without the legacy tree a lot of common applications wouldn't work in GoboLinux. This document explains how this problem is solved by the distribution and how it's solved by other operating systems which must address the same problem. If you simply don't want to read the entire story,  click here  to get directly into the download section.

A long time ago, in a mailing list far, far away.... There was a discussion about how we could get rid of the legacy tree, without actually removing it. We needed to keep it, but we just didn't want to know it existed.

At last - some sanity. Let's hope this concept gets eventually wider adoption in the Linux community. :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

Mr. Shuttleworth? You fancy yourself a maverick.  Are you listening?



« Last Edit: October 21, 2008, 06:59 PM by 40hz »

wreckedcarzz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #39 on: October 21, 2008, 08:27 PM »
The Wubi install was a bust - not only did I misunderstand that you have to boot it separately from Windows, but when i figured that out, GRUB nor the Windows Boot Manager appeared on boot. Uninstalled.

Ubuntu 8.10 is on my new (old) IDE drive (I'm running it now) - it took a truckload of updates and an insane amount of bandwith, but I am running on all the latest versions of everything.

Changes that I've noticed (negative items):
  • Nautilus's tabs are a PITA. I'm not used to tabs (Windows Explorer is my only file manager in Win32 world).
  • Glitches with the tray icons - I had Pidgin telling me my AC adapter had been unplugged (and the laptop hadn't been connected in almost 4 hours? :huh:).
  • The private folder thing has to be installed (??? WHY ???) via the Terminal (again, WHY?!?!?!?!) - and it sits openly on your desktop (do I need to repeat myself again?). Seriously. Waste of resources and disk space.
  • The network manager works ... most of the time. My Dynex WGPUSB wifi card worked out of the box on the first boot, now it asks me all the time for my key, and when I show the characters that it has in the box when it opens up asking, it is something like "89gfbh9g87hg945hgj". What does that have to do with anything?? Its not even encryption! Something has to be SAVED to be encrypted. Thats just idiotic corruption.
  • The "Allow Panel To Be Moved" option is nice, if it would change when you clicked on the thing. You have to click it, drag it (like the Windows taskbar), then let go and THEN the menu item changes. Click the item again to lock the panel in place. Ugh.
  • The new desktop SUCKS. It just sucks. I seriously thought I messed up my laptops LCD when it first came up. The circular desktop was better. This is just sad.
  • Upon installing a panel plugin update (a specific one), it gives you instructions to click the button in the information window to complete the action. Except the action needs a panel applet to be open, and it isn't open by default, giving an odd error. Again, WHY?!?!!?
  • Uhh... where the h*** did my trash go? Oh, I see it, that 16x16 thing in the right of the bottom panel... EVERYONE looks there. Put it on the desktop. Jeez. (This can be done in the Configuration Manager, but for newbies, that is UNACCEPTABLE!)
  • My mute button on my laptop doesn't work. Why? Who knows - 8.04 it worked, Windows it works, but NOOO - that would be convenient and user friendly. *Slap* - WE WANT TO BE MORE LIKE MICROSOFT!
  • Too many menu items are hidden by default, and it gets annoying. Show all the items. Jeez.
  • There needs to be a TUTORIAL with VIDEO and AUDIO and IMAGES like the one in XP (from 2001.. hint hint hint...) and even 95 (yea, if you had the CD, there was an instructional application). Can you say BEHIND SCHEDULE? ("Ubuntu, thats how!")
  • "I can has Vista nao?" Yea, thats Vista without SP1 - Ubuntu 8.10 programs lock up and then respond again ALL THE TIME. It's so freaking annoying. If I'm on my laptop and a program becomes unresponsive, the program dims - and I run 99% of my programs maximized. So I have to check and make sure the power cable has moved (fallen out, or I pushed it in), and if it hasn't, I increase the LCD brightness - then when the program responds and un-dims, I get blinded. This problem is just sad.
  • (See counterpoint on themes below, in good section) - Human2 theme dies with update, has to be reset. Once again, Ubuntu is looking more like Windows every day! :o
  • Lack of preinstalled AND 3D games. I installed about 10 new ones from Synaptic, but still.
  • Sometimes the Trash will freak out and take like 15 minutes to empty 1 file. Jeez. Windows again!
  • MORE security prompts. Windows... again... ugh...
  • DRIVER ISSUES! I don't want to compile my drivers in a C compiler or get tarballs or source code. Windows Vista (pre SP1).....again.....
  • EDIT: And where did the freaking autorun programs list go? I want Pidgin to run at startup, but the manager isn't here anymore. WTH??EDIT 2: I was able to find it after some more searching (took me 15 minutes!). Still should be its own menu item.

OK, on to the positives! (Yes, there are good things about 8.10!!! ... sort of...)
  • Compiz has been updated! But there is still no settings for it that are built in. You have to download and install a separate freaking application to edit the options. I can't even be bothered to type "WHY?!?!?!" anymore. It's just implied.
  • The new logout button is nice, but it lowers system security and is kind of... to put it plainly... retarded. You go to click it, and the menu pops up - OK, cool. But with multiple users on the system (not logged on, just other users), they APPEAR IN THE MENU. OK, that just made the whole "Type your username" prompt at startup POINTLESS. If you know the username, your half way there. And it doesn't log in, it just takes you to the log in screen. (Implied "WHY?!!?!?!?" goes here)
  • Installation of programs is easier, and more programs come preinstalled. Nothing negative here... well, yet.
  • The new themes are cool... uhh... that does sooo much for functionality... </sarcasm>
  • My laptop's LCD works if I close the lid while booting Ubuntu (8.04 wouldn't do this)

Seriously, it is nice, but... freaking annoying as can be to get past the bugs. Wait till November 10th-ish (right after my birthday!) to update or give it a shot. If you try it now... well... see the above. I'm not leaving it, but I spent time on it and I can mind the bugs ... for now.

-Brandon
« Last Edit: October 21, 2008, 08:38 PM by wreckedcarzz »

Paul Keith

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #40 on: February 05, 2009, 02:04 PM »
Unfortunately GoboMint...not so easy or popular.  :(

http://linuxmint.com...lit=gobolinux#p72869

http://linuxmint.com...ilit=gobolinux#p7707

Suddenly the niche for another distro just got a wider. I wonderf if there would be a subsection of bored ReactOS reverse-engineers considering taking a gander at Windows Linux. (Now with new and improved file system!)

P.S. Sorry for resurrecting a thread. I just recently read the latest post here and I got excited about Gobo despite not having any technical know how and Mint often seems to be the trailblazer in Linux Distro features so I was too disappointed to not not post a reply here.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2009, 02:06 PM by Paul Keith »

40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #41 on: February 05, 2009, 03:16 PM »
P.S. Sorry for resurrecting a thread.

I'm not complaining. Some of my best postings can be found here... ;D

Josh

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #42 on: February 05, 2009, 03:18 PM »
P.S. Sorry for resurrecting a thread.

I'm not complaining. Some of my best postings can be found here... ;D
You have good postings? ;-)

iphigenie

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #43 on: February 05, 2009, 03:39 PM »
You could also switch away from windows without going to Linux, for example OpenSolaris or PC-BSD are nice packages. PC-BSD is an amazing install (It's the first OS I install on that machine that puts all other OSes into its boot menu automatically, how refreshing!)

As for Linux, the distributions I tend to use - and have for years - are Slackware (or the "vector" variant when i want a slackware desktop easily), SUSE (I used to use a distro called DLD which was bought by suse in 96 or so), Debian, or Arch (hard core, compile from source). All old distributions that aren't "sexy" but neither have the mess that comes with being popular.

I have a new subnotebook running Suse, but I also have a machine running non linux open source OSes - both openSolaris and PC-BSD

PS I just bought an HP mininote 2133 cheap, with SUSE, so am catching up on linux games and gnome apps :D

Paul Keith

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #44 on: February 05, 2009, 05:26 PM »
Lol 40hz.

I've been meaning to switch to PC-BSD (although not Solaris, using this PC purely for desktop) but nothing I've read makes me think it's much more ready for the desktop than Linux is and unless I'm mistaken, it still has the same filesystem hierarchy as most Linux distros doesn't it?


40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #45 on: February 05, 2009, 06:01 PM »
Lol 40hz.

I've been meaning to switch to PC-BSD (although not Solaris, using this PC purely for desktop) but nothing I've read makes me think it's much more ready for the desktop than Linux is and unless I'm mistaken, it still has the same filesystem hierarchy as most Linux distros doesn't it?

Very similar hierarchy, and much more consistently utilized by installed applications.

I think you're really going to like using PC-BSD. Out of all the Unix-like variants, BSD is still my favorite. PC-BSD takes a good thing and makes it even better for desktop deployment. Enjoy!

-----------

P.S. Sorry for resurrecting a thread.

I'm not complaining. Some of my best postings can be found here... ;D
You have good postings? ;-)

Yup.

And my Mom thinks I'm pretty too! :P



Lutz_

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux - Tip 11
« Reply #46 on: February 06, 2009, 08:14 PM »

Tip 11:

- Do not expect most things to work by drag-and-drop. They won't.

Linux is still far away from the UI consistency of the commercial OS'ses.  But you have the choice among twenty different "variations on a theme".

e712

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One reason for Windows users to use Linux
« Reply #47 on: February 18, 2009, 03:54 PM »
You need an app that doesn't run well under cygwin or virtual box. 

40hz

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #48 on: February 18, 2009, 08:25 PM »
You need an app that doesn't run well under cygwin or virtual box. 

That is an excellent reason - it was precisely this that got me into using Linux in the first place. :Thmbsup:

(In my case it was a project management app.)


PC Gamer

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Re: Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
« Reply #49 on: May 29, 2009, 06:01 AM »
I found a useful (summary) information about Linux and Windows:

Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris, etc. ).

Windows has two main lines. The older flavors are referred to as "Win9x" and consist of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me. The newer flavors are referred to as "NT class" and consist of Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP and Vista. Going back in time, Windows 3.x preceded Windows 95 by a few years. And before that, there were earlier versons of Windows, but they were not popular. Microsoft no longer supports Windows NT3, NT4, all the 9x versions and of course anything older. Support for Windows 2000 is partial (as of April 2007).

The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros"). All the Linux distributions released around the same time frame will use the same kernel (the guts of the Operating System). They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions.

There may be too many distributions of Linux, it's possible that this is hurting Linux in the marketplace. It could be that the lack of a Linux distro from a major computer company is also hurting it in the marketplace. IBM is a big Linux backer but does not have their own branded distribution. Currently there seem to be many nice things said about the Ubuntu distribution.

Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. For one, the user interface, while similar in concept, varies in detail from distribution to distribution. For example, the task bar may default to being on the top or the bottom. Also, there are many special purpose versions of Linux above and beyond the full blown distributions described above. For example, NASLite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk (since revised to also boot from a CD) and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server.
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