Linux Sucks

and thats why you should have backups...

Linux works, if not that many people wouldnt try it/use it.
Better luck next time.

gparted just doesn't like noobs. resizing partitions is extremely dangerous and when you do so it gives you warnings, multiple times telling you that its an experimental feature and that you should do a backup. so in a way you failed by not backing up your stuff.

SLED...you're right. nothing special, so leave it alone.

I have a hard time believing ubuntu wouldn't recognize your SLED since Suse uses ext3 as their default file system. Ubuntu has ext3 support, it was probably just a simple task of reconfiguring your /etc/fstab

also if you notice Linux always comes along with these lines: "There is no express or implied warranty. THis is experimental software, install at your own risk" .... so its not the developers fault...you just screwed up.

And I take offense with the "windows haters" comment, not every linux user dislikes windows, we just happen to prefer linux due to its flexibility, security, and a host of other features, not to mention free speech and free beer.

So the majority of your problems stemmed from Suse creating a partition scheme you were not familiar with. When you say did not recognize them, what I suspect you mean is it didn't recognize the root partition as /, or the Home partition as /home? Is this correct? If it is it is a cakewalk to just open up one text file on your HD, using a live cd if you need to to boot your computer, and change the partitions to the appropriate locations. If you are saying it didn't recognize the partitions as in did not see them though, that is very odd. As ABF said they use the exact same FS as Ubuntu, not sure if they might use LVM which may screw with things some, especially if it is an enterprise edition, but that is possible I suppose. Companies offering cross platform products often have their demo machines in Windows. Why? Because often they are trying to sell their products to Windows users at other conventions, and it is cheaper and easier for them to just have a Windows box for their demo machines. Sad but true. In as far as Windows 'Just Working' I will just say this. I have had repeated problems in Windows, not as many as in linux, but fixing those problems in Windows required MUCH more work than it does in linux. Then DON'T. It is not nessecary for everyone to use linux. People need to use what works for them and makes them happy. If Windows worked fine for you, then use it by all means. If it ain't broke don't fix it. For many people though Linux does either work better for what they do(Cross Platform Development for example, or for me Realtime Audio Recording and mixing, and of course the security/stability problems many people have drive some to linux) but for some people Windows is just a better match. THis is especially true of people that are afriad to go a bit deeper into the work they do on their OS, that is why IT departments get paid Ok not really, but the point is they have someone else install a new drive or driver, or do basic things on their computer because they don't want to deal with it, or learn how. For those people Linux may not be the best choice, it depends. In general though, for a lot of people not happy with dealing with their computer on a deeper level, I find Mac OS X to be a good middle ground with advantages over windows in as far as Stability and Security, but in general few people go beyond the GUI to deal with other things and Mac does a decent job with arranging your ability to control most things from the GUI. At any rate, it seems you are still making the number one mistake I despise about comparisons of Windows and Linux. Linux does not suck, you may dislike those DISTRIBUTIONS of linux you tried because they did not do what you wanted, but Linux itself is not limited to what those distributions do by default. Please understand the difference as it is important. Linux is much more flexible than those distributions will be. They aim for a specific purpose, Linux as an OS aims for flexibility and ability to be tailored for multiple purposes. Seablade Quite happy user of linux who believe it most certainly does NOT suck.

Actually, the way most say it is:

Linux sucks, it just sucks less.



My own experience is that both Windows and Linux actually require somebody around with some knowledge. Linux users tend to hunt for help and fight for fixing their issues. Windows users usually just end up reinstalling or buying a whole new computer (fortunately, leaving last year's models to the neighborhood Linux guru!!).

My daughter dual boots and then one day, her Windows just stopped working. Fortunately she had Linux so she wasn't dead in the water. Attempts at recovering the Windows area didn't work. To this day, we don't know what happened.... and thanks to Microsoft, we'll probably never know. In her case, she got a new laptop for Christmas ... and oddly enough, I haven't had the time to put Linux on it just yet... though she wants it.

I've been a professional unix geek for 15 years, so linux is easy for me, but start adding the cost of commercial software up and the time taken to learn linux or OSS apps can save you many thousands of dollars. Even on my windows game box I run mostly OSS software apps because they are FREE.

Software I use:

MySQL (saves several hundred for SQLserver, SQL express is useless)
OpenOffice ($595 saved on MS Office)
Gimp ($795 for Photoshop)
Wireshark (commercial ethernet sniffers cost big bucks)
Snort (commercial security tools cost big bucks)
Nessus (ditto)
SSH/Putty (SecureCRT $179)
Latex/PDF (Acrobat deluxe $295)
GCC, Ruby, Python, Subversion ($795 Visual Studio)
CDBurnerPro Win32 ($79 Nero)
Scribus ($795 Quark Express)
Linux ($279 Windows XP Pro, even more for Vista Ultimate)

Well yes and no. MySQL is still a commercial company, and they do sell a service if I remember right along with some products on top of MySQL. They have also done a few things that have OSS people on edge, particularly webmasters about them with regards to their source, though there is a lot of FUD flying about them closing the source that isn't true that I am aware of, they did make it somewhat more difficult for newcomers to find it Completely worth it for home use. It does nearly everything a home user needs. Business use though there is room for debate particularly in the Spreadsheet, Presentation, and Base sections of it, but it is coming along nicely. In another year or two it may be decent in those areas as well. That being said I still use it for my business use as well anyways For things remaining in the digital domain this is completely true. So for webmasters and site admins, web designers, etc(Which it seems you may fall into that category) this is perfect. For people doing print though, until GIMP at least gets a good CMYK system in, it is still lacking. Yea I don't think security analysis tools can be touched on linux Anyways yea the list goes on. Seablade

Linux, in fact (which is just my opinion), does not suck. Sure it has some kinks to work out before it can topple Windows over, but it still has great features for some of the users that try it. Personally, I stopped using Linux, only becuase it didn't do anything special for me. I think it's better than Windows, but I play games on my PC, and Linux just isn't going to cut it. Plus, Logitech doesn't make drivers for their mice, and my mx510 is a pain in the ass to configure in the xorg.conf file.

Overall, I think Linux does suck, but it just sucks less (as someone mentioned before).

going to try not to repeat what seablade said....

actually now that i think about, seablade is totally right. Annaconda and Yast installers for some reason love LVM, since the default option (which you went with most likely) includes LVM structure which might have screwed up your partitioning. there is always a manual mode (often called Expert..don't worry, not that hard really) so you can fine-tune the config to your needs. Ubuntu doesn't live LVM very much but still has support built in..so i wonder why it didn't work.

if it works for you, great. i personally live easier knowing i don't need any of that junk. don't get me wrong though, i have a Win2k config for my gaming needs which i have NOD32 + Spybot set up on.

this bothers me... left alone that i dislike novell's products, the best support for linux has traditionally been on IRC channels and message boards. after all, google is your friend. ubuntuforums and suseforums are both great communities for their respective distros.
again, hate to disagree here, but i have to. i started using linux when i was around 14...didn't actually USE IT (daily if possible) till 2 years later. just a kid in highschool, and highly a professional high-level hacker. there is a learning curve (which took me oh about 2 years of on and off use to complete) but once you're past that...you're good.
Agreed. Textar has put in a hell lotta work and I am very happy with his product. Why not keep using it then?

speaking of which...@ BIGGEE... PCLinuxOS was the only distro that configured my 4th and 5th (forward/back) mouse buttons automatically, as well as configure all the scrolling (left/right up/down @ circular). so youo might wanna look into the livecd

Wait because you weren't smart enough or tried hard enough to use Linux it therefore sucks?

Right *ignore further comments from op*

I think it's kinda funny how hostile this thread started off... I understand that loosing your data is immensely frustrating and potentially devestating (I once lost gigs of irreplacable personal music recordings that I made simply because I didn't have reliable backups). But nfc26, you made some serious judgement errors, not just one but several. You should be upset with yourself, not creating flamewar generating threads.

The first huge issue is that it doesn't look like you made proper backups if you lost projects. The second huge issue is that it looks like you jumped into this with reckless abandon. When I first started working with linux I did all of my learning and experimentation on either another machine or a separate harddrive. In fact, I was so nervous about installing linux on a dual boot machine that I completely removed the windows drive, installed suse linux on another drive then researched how to manually edit grub so that the two drives could coexist. It took me many months to get comfortable, and my entire journey is documented in these forums. Guys like Seablade, ABF and many others here always help out when I ask. I actually think my Gentoo thread is the largest linux forum thread here by quite a bit.

My point is that you can't expect instant gratification when you are learning a very complex new system. I had to build about 3 gentoo servers before I was really comfortable with linux. I've now been running the same 64bit Ubuntu Breezy install since a month prior to the official release. I have several development environments running and the system has been rock solid stable. This has been much more fullfilling than my experience with windows has ever been. Like most things, it takes a while to get good at what you do. I'm self sufficient at the moment, but I still have tons of room to improve my abilities with linux administration.

Good post. I like the way you made your point and tried to douse the flames at the same time.

Not sure what a "corperate license" is... just know it can't be the same as a corporate license. Hope nobody believes they can get Windows for these prices except by illegal means.

Perhaps the units were not in USD? Is there a currency with a 1/40 ratio to the USD?

Well that is a possibility, however considering the amount of DISTRIBUTIONS of linux that are focused on being user-friendly, I am not so certain that is correct. In fact for the average user many are decent. The problem comes in when you get unsupported hardware, which has much less to do with making it user friendly and much more to do with manufacturers not interested in supporting linux at all, or not interested in possibly releasing any information to write drivers from. Why or why not to do this is an entirely different discussion. Again however you are discussing DISTRIBUTIONS of linux, not linux itself, which is an entirely different beast. Actually I believe that to be very false in fact. The best use for linux from my standpoint and opinion at the moment is for dedicated purposes. Embedded projects fall udner this and do use linux quite a lot, in fact there is probably more instances of linux installed on various embedded applications than on servers or desktop, probably combined. Servers do see their fair share, especially with the LAMP stack. You also find BSD on servers quite often as well as embedded. Actually for things "just working" I think Mac OS has both Windows and Linux Distributions beat, as unlike either it is custom tailored to a small set of hardware it will be used on. Do that with Linux? Certainly, in fact some distributions do do that, XBox Linux for example. In doing so it is very easy to get it right compared to attempting to cover a large variety of hardware including a lot you will never know of. Aside from that however, a large factor of the apparent, just working, nature of MS is the fact that a lot of hardware manufacturers write drivers for windows, but don't for linux. So you have to be careful about what hardware you use on Linux, plain and simple. Most drivers on linux are written by the community. Means if there isn't one either complain to the manufacturer till they write one, or write one yourself. Linux is a very don't expect other's to do it for you OS to be honest. But until you have a driver for it, don't expect it to work. Personally I haven't had a problem with a linux install in some time. Heck even when I am not setting up Gentoo, both Ubuntu and ELive right now I use on occasion in computer labs that I work in at times, and haven't had a single problem with a default install, everything just worked. This was all on fairly standard machines(Dell, coporate America). Didn't have to change a single setting or value. Get cheap noname equipment and don't expect it tow rok as many shortcuts get taken and drivers don't get written(See the first severeal years when Winmodems became popular, and those were about as cheap a shortcut as you could get). Get expensive high end equipment and you are stupid if you don't make sure it works with your machine no matter WHAT OS you have. Example would be MOTU interfaces for audio. Known to have problems with certain firewire chipsets. You ALWAYS do research before buying high-end equipment to make sure it works. It is the same way with Linux, you do your research beforehand to make sure it is supported. Then if you know it is supported you go ahead. Will this garuntee you will never have to touch a config file? Not at all, but it is a much better bet. Seablade

I personally think the only OS that "Just Works" is linux. Mac OS doesn't "Just Work" on custom hardware. You have to buy Apple's designer hardware. Windows doesn't "Just Work" as an embeded OS (you have to buy windowsCE which is not windows). Linux kernel has been ported to anything and everything. That's the definition of just working.

I think people that say they want a computer that "Just Works" really means that they want to perform a task with minimal cranial exertion. In other words they are lazy.

i think the crux of what BT and nfc are both saying is "freedom" (as in speech) vs "just working" as defined by BT of people "being lazy".

what seablade was getting at: linux just works because its extremely flexible and can be adopted to many uses. the most popular happens to be dedicated servers, however other uses such as embedded devices (iRiver PMP series for example), and even as a desktop os (which most distributions listed on distrowatch are designed for) are there. windows on the other hand fails to be anything but a desktop os and perhaps a server (if you go for the Server 2003 or something), but the ability to use it in cell phones, pdas, and other devices is nothing short of crap (since WinCE and Win Mobile are not windows...they have no resemblance to XP beyond the name and maybe graphical art).

meanwhile BT is saying: linux "just works" because it is free (as in free speech). sorta branches of from what seablade was saying but more directed towards desktop use i assume since thats the topic in question. you can install ubuntu, or gentoo or any other distro you desire and then shape and mold it to better fit you. not only can you change how it looks, you can also dig deep into the guts and change the way it acts. to do all this digging you should be familiar with what you're doing however since it can be quite an easy task to just trash everything in the process. OSX and XP shortcomings are from the fact that they hide behind pretty interfaces which simplify things so much, effectively destroying all the flexibility linux is capable of, to to the user the limited number of options "just work" but it can't be fine tuned.

nfc defines "just works" in a different way: to him "just works" is the very thing BT is against. nfc likes the ultra-restrictive options that allow for only the most BASIC changes. this makes it so from what the user is able to do, they can do with a click or 2 of the mouse....all the more "hardcore" things are simply hidden from view as to not scare the user into thinking the OS is complicated.