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10 things to do after installing Linux
f0dder:
All those different layers you were talking about (audio and such) need to be consolidated & the best taken from each to form one cohesive standard layer for each area. I love to tweak my computer as much as the next guy (some would say even more), but even I draw the line at spending an afternoon experimenting & figuring out in which order to install my audio & video layers.-Innuendo (November 08, 2009, 09:54 AM)
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But users WANT choice! And *holds breath* are you claiming the überegosdevelopers should cooperate? *gasp*!
Paul Keith:
I don't think it's a matter of cooperation IMO.
It's more of a matter of standardization and this is where the freedom to choose excels even if I don't know about technology.
That's why IMO iphigenie should create his own distro.
I mean look at what Clem of Linux Mint and TexStar of PCLinuxOS did.
Those distroes had no demand from the Linux community and if anything the Ubuntunites made sure they were not going to lift off (to the newbies) but they persevered and now they are tops in DistroWatch along with Ubuntu.
Choice is not the problem. Knowledgeable people truly passionate about turning Linux into a great desktop is the issue.
@Innuendo
On Windows you can run any program alongside any other & 99% of the time there will be no conflicts.
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Not true. If you're using buggy software or Java application, the fact that it's less possible to make Windows consume less like Linux makes those applications annoying to stand side by side.
The same holds true for buggy codec packs, crapware installed on Windows, insecure applications open to viruses and the lot.
Distroes like Mint come better pre-packaged than a Windows OS (until you hit a problem which 99% you will and because Linux is not popular, good luck with support.)
None/Few of it (I don't really know what I'm talking about) is in any inherent infrastructure though. In fact, you'll find that for most newbies, they don't have to tweak anything that works.
(If you install Mint for example, right off the bat if everything works, you have more applications pre-installed for you including your printer and internet auto-configured for you.)
To quote a recent post I quoted:
http://woofertime.com/woof/78834
I think it’s more like this – I’m guessing though -
As it is right now, let’s say you drove a Chevy all your life. For 6 or 7 years. You learned this Chevy, you tested in the Chevy, you kept driving it. When it came to “upgrade” you decided to stick with same Chevy model, anyway. Your friends all have them, all your accessories, like the steering wheel cover, the floor mats, the (I’m stretching here) [insert Chevy-specific mod/addon here]. Needless to say, you only ever used one manufacturer’s implementation of the automobile.
So you walk into a rent-a-car shop when you’re on vacation. They have several models on display. All Chevy. There’s a small section to the side with small glossy white Hondas, but no Toyotas to be found. You haven’t even heard of Toyota at this point. So the rent-a-car guy asks you what model you want to drive.
“Chevy [Whatever]” you say.
Would you like to use one of these glossy white roadsters over here? It’s better performance, but only slightly pricier.
“No thanks, I’ll stick with what I know.”
Here’s the kicker – He doesn’t even tell you he’ll give you the Toyota model, which runs better than your Chevy, for less money than the Chevy.
Let’s say you’ve heard of this Toyota, though, through a friend. You ask about it. “Oh, we don’t have those in the store, though, but you can step right across the street, they probably have them.”
Oh, no thanks, I’ll stick with the Chevy.
Let’s say that somehow you actually got to the point where you’re sitting down in the Honda or the Toyota. You take a glance around and suppose you do spot the cruise, and A/C, and everything. You could spend only a few seconds learning how it works, and you could even ask the salesman a question… he’s right there.
But you have the option of the Chevy, still, and it is what you know and it is easily accessible. Even if it’s in your complete ability to learn how to drive this very similar car, the motivation to do so is very very low. Also, maybe you notice you can’t fit your cute fluffy headrest (I’m stretching here again) around the headrest of said new car. The salesman will give you a free alternative, but it won’t be the same, for some reason, even when it feels almost exactly the same. And why go through the trouble of using something else, when you still have what you know, right there?
Humans are lazy. They are also stubborn.
So, you walk into a Best Buy and you see a slew of Windows PCs running Windows Vista, or soon, 7. You know XP, so you know the start button, you know the context menus, you know the taskbar.
You see the Mac section. The BB employee says those are a bit pricier, but it’s got better performance. You have never heard of Linux, and the BB employee doesn’t say anything about it, despite it being free. If you ask about it, maybe he does know you can go over to a Linux distro site and download/burn a Live CD. If you actually get to a Linux or Mac desktop, sure, you might be able to figure out the GNOME desktop or Mac Dock, et al, on your own in a few short minutes. You might even have a friend, an employee, or Google to aid you as well. However, right next to you in Best Buy (or on your computer’s current partition if you’re testing a LiveCD) is what you know. What you have always known. You can’t even run some random Microsoft software that you always used. Sure, you could find an alternative, but what you already know is right here, available to you. You have no motivation to try this new system. You’re too stubborn and lazy to alter the status quo. Windows has crashed before, but you can always reboot it. You know how long it’ll take to get back online with what you know, but you fear the unknown of the desktop.
Now, this covers why someone wouldn’t switch gears from Windows to Linux or OS X as their main system.
As for, say, my dad borrowing my Ubuntu PC for only a minute to check his checking account, and having to stop and ask “How do I do this?” without looking for the Firefox icon he knows, right on my Panel, right where his own Firefox would be in Windows’ quicklaunch bar? He has me right there to tell him, I guess. Why spend 2 seconds scanning for a familiar icon, when he can just ask me to “open a browser”?
Stubbornness? Laziness?
Perhaps for him, “open a browser” means [Super], [F,I,R], [ENTER]; or perhaps it means [SUPER]+[R], [I,E], [DOWN], [ENTER]; or even [SUPER],[DOWN],[DOWN],[ENTER]. And on my machine, it’s simply *click* or [ALT]+[F2],[F,I,R,F],[ENTER].
For him, even on Windows, if you took away his run command or deleted his pinned start menu item, he might have to scroll painfully through his All Programs menu until he found it again.
If it wasn’t for start search on Vista, I know a few friend who would be pained to find anything on their PC.
My sister still doesn’t know how to use Start Search, and I have a friend with a Mac who doesn’t know how to use Spotlight.
Rather than find a new better way of doing things (like if I told her to just hit [SUPER] and then type what she wanted) she’d still go back to old habits, have trouble remembering the simplest things, and in his laziness or stubbornness stick with the slow inefficient method because it is what she knows.
tl;dr – Humans are lazy and stubborn. Not all of us, I use Linux and test alternatives. I don’t consider myself to be lazy and I’m human, so therefore I cannot hold all humans to be lazy and stubborn.
However I would guess a lot are, especially the “smart” ones. ;P
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Sorry for posting it here: http://rereply.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/re-on-windows-you-can-run-any-program-alongside-any-other-99-of-the-time-there-will-be-no-conflicts/
Innuendo:
Not true. If you're using buggy software or Java application, the fact that it's less possible to make Windows consume less like Linux makes those applications annoying to stand side by side.
The same holds true for buggy codec packs, crapware installed on Windows, insecure applications open to viruses and the lot.
-Paul Keith (November 08, 2009, 12:55 PM)
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Okay, sorry...95% then...because no more than 5% of the software available on the Windows platform is Java-based or codec packs. :)
Paul Keith:
True but due to Windows security almost 70% of your software is compromised unless you're a power user. :p
Seriously speaking though, on most "for newbie" distroes, 95% is also a close estimate of how many software work together.
The problem is that the 5% remain huge because of lack of support and different/advanced ways to fix things. (Example even most Windows Power Users can live without messing with the registry but in Linux, most of the fixes can require knowledge of the Linux infrastructure.)
Everything else just feels more than that because of the lack of software alternatives and software maturity.
Josh:
True but due to Windows security almost 70% of your software is compromised unless you're a power user. :p-Paul Keith (November 08, 2009, 09:43 PM)
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Please tell me this is sarcasm.
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