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Is Linux just a hobby?
dantheman:
It's not really fair to use a certain operating system your whole life (Windows) and then try out a different one that functions on different paradigms (Debian/Ubuntu) for a few hours and then say this new one is stupid/useless/whatever simply because you can't figure it out.
-Deozaan (May 21, 2012, 06:11 PM)
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I hope you didn't interpret what i said to mean a plain and simple put down of Linux Mint.
On the contrary, i have great respect for Clem and those who lend him a hand.
Believe me, it's not the first time i try out LM.
When you spend hours trying to figure things out and the result is short of satisfactory,
then the temptation to lose your cool is there. Frustration, you know!
What you are experiencing is probably what your mom/grandma feels like any time she uses her computer! Spend time with it. Learn how to do the things you want to do with it, in the way it is done on that OS. Then, once it's not your personal knowledge/skill with the OS that is holding you back, but actually the OS itself, you can make a more qualified judgement on whether or not the OS is stupid/useless/whatever.
I recently read a "blog entry" by an Apple user who tried out Windows 7 and thought it was the most useless OS ever, simply because he couldn't figure things out, and his go-to Windows expert apparently wasn't expert enough to know about setting Environment Variables. It's really painful to read knowing that the guy is condemning the entire OS based on some very fundamental, beginner's mistakes. And he's a pretty smart guy. He just has been using a different paradigm (Apple OSes) for years and years and years and doesn't know how to do things the Microsoft way.
If you're interested, you can read it here: My Adventures with Windows 7.
-Deozaan (May 21, 2012, 06:11 PM)
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This i understand. The fact that i spend most of my time with Windows doesn't help does it.
Do appreciate your post and hope to read up on your article as well as all the other things posted here.
It's starting to be quite a book! :)
barney:
...drivers are often only "proprietary blobs".
-TaoPhoenix (May 21, 2012, 06:44 PM)
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Granted. But we need stuff to run whatever hardware we have. I can appreciate the purity issue, even endorse it. But at the end of the day (actually by mid-morning) we need a functional system. And that system involves both hardware and software. Without the software, e.g., drivers, the system is a paperweight. End of story.
Documentation? Bleh! Cake!
-TaoPhoenix (May 21, 2012, 06:44 PM)
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If so, it needs more time in the oven :P. What little documentation I've seen assumes perfection. But that's not a *nix problem, per se, so much as an industry-wide trend. How often do you see software installation instructions, regardless the OS, that assume a perfect install and make no allowance for an install that fails in process? Oh, and about that three (3) days thing. I'm installing/using now, I need the documentation now. Three (3) day wait? I'll go elsewhere.
... *commission* it!
-TaoPhoenix (May 21, 2012, 06:44 PM)
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More than once, that have I done. The problem, of course, is finding someone capable of performing the job. And settling on amount can be, as you've mentioned/implied, a difficult issue.
It's not really fair to use a certain operating system your whole life (Windows) and then try out a different one that functions on different paradigms (Debian/Ubuntu) for a few hours and then say this new one is stupid/useless/whatever simply because you can't figure it out.
-Deozaan (May 21, 2012, 06:11 PM)
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Hm-m-m ... I started out with Big Iron Unix, several different flavours, dependent upon the vendor. On a personal level, I started with calculator scripts, then Tandy DOS, then MS DOS/IBM DOS. There were forays into CP/M (anyone remember that one :)?), OS-9, PICS (beautiful database capability, you just had to rebuild it every weekend :tellme:), a few others that have long since passed by the wayside.
I've gathered from conversations here that a number of folk my age have had similar experience. So be careful when you make that, "... your whole life ...," accusation :P :P.
When I gave my then-retired father a laptop, he didn't care what made it run, he just wanted it to run. He wanted email because he'd been told he needed it. He wanted to browse the Web to find things and just because he wanted to do so. He didn't want a financial program, he didn't want a document processor. One (1) thing he did want, though, was not to be bothered with daily, plebeian maintenance tasks. He wanted the TV/movie computer - you turn it on and it works. At that time, Linux didn't have a desktop interface (c'mon, x-windows?), so Windows was about the only option. He wanted something that just worked, and Windows did. (Apple did, but it was just too damned expensive - a habit they've maintained over the years.)
OK, I wasn't trying to turn this into an OS conflagration. I just wanted to mention the problems I'd had with various flavours of Linux, and pretty much support what I assumed was the intent of the original post.
But I stand by my statements in regard to documentation and drivers. They are the two (2) biggest failings/drawbacks in regard to Linux' adoption on a wider scale.
zridling:
I'll give this topic a crack. Thank you, dantheman, for the opportunity.
____________________________________________
I've spent some considerable time over the last week trying to get into Linux, especially with LinuxMint which seems to be the second best after Ubuntu.-dantheman (May 21, 2012, 08:00 AM)
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First, Mint is the fattest and heaviest of all the Linux distros. Bring lots of hardware and GPU power if you're going to run it. By "second best" I assume you mean second most popular. Linux popularity of any given Linux distro ebbs and flows. While Debian is quite fine, I contend that Ubuntu is about the worst introduction someone can have to Linux, especially if they think all of Ubuntu's problems are shared among other distros. I really like openSUSE and Fedora, but tend to use openSUSE at home simply because it's good, boring, and quite productive.
This is also why I suggest you take your time with Linux. Immersion is best, but install it on a second machine if you have one and do similar tasks that you perform on your Windows system. If you're looking to switch full time to Linux, then fine. If you're merely dabbling for the fun of it, then you're always going to think Linux comes up short. Back in '05-'06, I spent almost a year playing with a few Linux distros because of my dissatisfaction with Vista and then the prospect of having to buy yet another Microsoft OS in Win7 that I didn't want. I knew what I wanted from my computer and what I could live without.
Turns out, though, that I have a lot more software available right away with Linux than I ever did with Windows. From calculators to text editors to image editors and viewers to HTML editors, vast set of programming tools at hand, choice of file systems for my HDs, superior file management, stupid-easy installation and upgrades (online, network, DVD, CD, LiveCD), games - yes!, renamers, disc burning, and on and on -- all free. openSUSE not only gives me a help file built into the distro, but access to their community forums to get any question I have answered.
In the end, using Linux is about choice. You get to choose:
-- Your distro based on your personal preferences, your hardware, or any other need, productive or otherwise.
-- Which desktop environment you like, even if you want it to perfectly mimic Win7 or OSX!
-- Which software you use and how you'll use it, not a corporation designed to bleed your wallet.
-- When and whether you upgrade your system.
-- What to do with all the money you save on anti-virus software scams, extra hardware requirements, etc.
If you do switch, go all-in. If not, enjoy Windows. Most of your time is likely spent in the browser anyway; how you get there is your choice. :)
Josh:
...and then the prospect of having to buy yet another Microsoft OS in Win7 that I didn't want.-zridling (May 22, 2012, 02:02 AM)
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Why did you HAVE to? This is much the same mindset many see when a new distribution of Linux comes out. You feel you "must" upgrade, out of some intrinsic "need" to upgrade. No one makes you upgrade the Windows OS you have. Heck, XP has been supported for HOW LONG? Even if Windows 8 goes RTM this year, Windows 7 will be supported for how much longer?
Don't take my comments the wrong way, I am not pro-any program/OS/software. But, I believe in quashing what I find to be FUD. No one forces a user to upgrade their Windows installation but the user. Now, if this is a business environment, that is a different story and likely going to occur regardless of what OS you run. That is simply called the life-cycle process.
Turns out, though, that I have a lot more software available right away with Linux than I ever did with Windows. From calculators to text editors to image editors and viewers to HTML editors, vast set of programming tools at hand, choice of file systems for my HDs, superior file management, stupid-easy installation and upgrades (online, network, DVD, CD, LiveCD), games - yes!, renamers, disc burning, and on and on -- all free. openSUSE not only gives me a help file built into the distro, but access to their community forums to get any question I have answered.-zridling (May 22, 2012, 02:02 AM)
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And on this, MS simply cannot include many of these tools. Many of the tools in any Linux distribution are not made by the distro maintainer, but instead brought on and developed by the community. MS has had their hands slapped too many times and must be careful not to be anti-competitive when they include a new tool. Heck, I expect backlash with the inclusion of A/V products in Windows 8. Not that I support the backlash, but I see it coming from major vendors like Mcafee and Symantec.
I like Linux, I use it. Backtrack, yes it is a pen-test distro, is my distro of choice for daily use. I've customized it and I prefer the apt package management system over yum or rpm. OpenSUSE is nice but I am used to apt and that is the sole thing that really ties me to the debian-based distros.
mahesh2k:
LM Debian is supposed to be the future.
Guess the future isn't here yet...
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You're going with tagline bashing for the brands because you can make windows work for you but you don't want linux to work on it's own but it should be your way or high way. Trust me, been there, bashed linux, cursed linux and now switched to linux. Hell some of my bashing answers on linux are still archived on this forum. As for brand tagline bashing "for the future type"...if i got that route then i can even digg some of the known brands in apple and windows industry for their useless stuff. But...I digress.
The installation process automatically assigns the amount for swap.
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This is where you have to fix things. Installation process can't decide the right amount of the Swap for you. That is for you to decide because you know the configutation better than the installer. Installers only check for minimum required disk space and RAM. Always assign swap space more than what installer tells you to do.
As for the linux drivers excuse, it is getting older and tiresome. Other than few soundcard, graphics and few non-USB hardwares, linux supports USB based devices out of the box. So new mobiles, camera, scanners, printers with USB plug are supported out of the box. You don't need to have model specific drivers for them if they have USB built in.
Documentation - Ubuntu and the debian based distros carry a lot of documentation for minute things. Not only that but "manual" aka man command is always there for the support of the documentation for smallest library out there on linux.
No one makes you upgrade the Windows OS you have.
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Application developers do. There are people who live by some of the applications from brands like corel, adobe, cisco and others. If these brands stop supporting some products and only allow the product for future versions of windows, people are forced to upgrade. In case of linux there is no such case like that. I can go on with the list like.. VS upgrades and the .NET developers forcing people to upgrade because they can't allow .NET 4 on windows 2000. Some lifecycles are necessary to push innovation, some are forced. In case of windows it is always forced. In case of linux, it is dependent on distro because it is upto them to support packages for community. You can have updated package on your older linux box as long as you feed it the new dependency libs.
At the end, it is all dependent on how much you're willing to go ahead to use new system. You didn't learned to use tablets out of the box. Even it has learning curve of it's own for each tablet manufacturer with its own stuff regardless of the underlying operating systems. I bashed linux for development limitations, lack of eye candy, HUD and what not and now happily converted to it because I got tired of walled-garden systems like windows and the limit it offers me. HUD and many new improvements in linux are worth experiencing compared to windows crappy metro. I don't believe in conversion, so point in shouting for linux. It is upto people to see if it is good for them or not. Some people feel good in cages, some do good in playground. So If this is pure bash thread, I don't think anyone can help you with that, hell even apple is useless for windows users if we nitpick things like OP did.
Anyway, good luck with metro. :P
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