Linux Sucks - Page 2

Exactly why it does just work Take out unknown variables it gets MUCH easier Seablade

thats almost cheating though. hell, give me 500 identical Dells and a gentoo install disk....build the distro based on the knowns...make the kernel some uber-small 10 megs

I have never encountered a windows install that just works. Theres always some kind of driver issue and I end up cussing out windows because M$ has locked us out of higher OS functions that could fix the problem easily. One of the worst is the sound on my old computer for instance. It runs on linux with zero problem. But on Windows its complete hell. See, I lost the driver disk for that motherboard. Without it, the sound on that board is a lost cause. I've downloaded a driver for it from the motherboards manufacturer, the chipset manufacturer, RealTec, and even some 3rd party hacked driver. Nothing has made it work again, except the drivers on that CD. Very true. I've found that with most people, that if they have to open more than 2 windows or touch the keyboard for more than 10 seconds to fix something its not worth fixing and they call the local computer geek or the system admin. As a final project in my linux class at college last semester I started dual booting computers in one of the labs. Debian and Windows. That lab is now the most popular one on campus. Everyone loves how stable and fast Debian is and they flock to that lab. Probably 95% of them dont know what Debian is, or Linux for that matter, they just know that the computers there just work and they use them. I love how you can make linux whatever you need it to be and then optimize it for that. ABF and Seablade both have their points about OSX, and I agree with both sides of it. I agree with everyone about your mistake. You ignored the warnings and undertook a possibly dangerous task. While it is bad to have lost your data, its your fault and yours alone. Not linux's.

Exactly my point, in fact I even mentioned that in my previous post

If you want something that Just Works, you limit the unknown variables, and it becomes MUCH easier to achieve. Apple has taken this route and it works for them, and for people that truly want something that 'just works' that is probably the best bet

I can do the exact same thing with a given set of hardware that is extremely limited and Linux. Thing is distributions of Linux aimed at the desktop have thus far been trying to cover a wide variety of machines and the unknowns, thus why they don't always 'just work'

Unfortunately it most likely won't work so well for a newcomer coming into the market to follow a similar strategy as Apple, but using Linux. Several reasons...

One without keeping part of the code closed and using theings like TPM to control what hardware it gets installed on, people will attempt to install it on hardware it was not intended for, and then say it sucks because it won't run on my hardware for which it was not packaged for.

Two, because MS practically gives away OEM copies to hardware manufacturers, so any difference in price would be considerably lessened as a result compared to a Windows machine. So there is little incentive for people to try something new, see the various attempts to sell low cost Linux machines at places like Walmart. IN the grand scheme of things they haven't done much at all.

So there would have to be something to seperate the machines, to give people a reason to buy the linux machines, and right now no good solution has been presented. That being said, I think before long it will be the AV cabinet that Linux may be able to break into if someone capitalizes on it and provides a GOOD AV setup. Meaning not only it works well and out of the box with no problems, but also that it has the necessary visual elements(Looks good), and marketing to back it up as something new. But they may also miss the boat on that if they wait to much longer, and there are only so many companies with the finances to pull it off. Infrant for example seems to be giving it a shot with their repertoire, assuming it ever gets released, but it is still to expensive for the common user.

Seablade

Ahha the repertoire IS released, its just the only place I can find it is on Infrant's store, which I didn't even realise existed

Seablade

Good. Much better plan than just giving up. Hope the second shot works well. Looks like you'll find lots of help right here if you need it.

Rolling out Linux to employee desktops is one thing, but an intelligent just-under-the-CTO-guy will just do it for the company's servers if he or she believes that Linux is right for the job.

I've heard of companies switching Linux for Windows in the middle of the night and no one noticing the difference, other than decreased downtime and network maintenance.

On the employee desktop end of things: A friend told me of his father's successful attempt at this. His father's IT guys sold him on Linux when he was advised that most of the computers needed replaced (all old P3s). If they bought machines without Windows on it, it was going to save them about $200 per machine (cost of Windows plus some other software that wasn't free for Windows). If they went for boxen without Windows and installed Linux (Ubuntu specifically), they'd save all that money, but have to put in a few more hours of work to get things ready.

With the route decided, the IT guys spent the weekend at the office preparing everything. They set Ubuntu up like the Windows boxen had been set up--most used programs had desktop icons, lesser used ones where in the menu. I can't remember the network storage system they used, but something tells me it was WebDAV, so that had an icon on the desktop (the GNOME server functionality--you know what I mean if you've used it). The IT guys had moved everyone's documents to their new machines or network storage.

Monday morning, people came in and saw the new machines and were impressed. They were told that things were slightly different with the new machines, and if they had any problems, they should call IT.

Two people called.

One, I can't remember what the problem was, but it seems to me it was a bug in something and a simple apt-get update fixed it a few days later.

The second complained about everything looking different. My friend's father, CEO/president/boss, walked up to her and said, "What do you need to do your job?" She replied, "Word and Excel." He responded, "No, you need a word processor program and a spreadsheet program." She balked, "But I don't have Word or Excel!" He sternly said, "You have Writer and Calc," and pointed them out. She fired them up and explored around them, saying, "But it's different." He questioned her: "Can you still do your job?" She gave in: "Yeah..."

Their profits are up, by the way, and, IIRC, the friend's father gave the IT guys a nice Christmas bonus--something like splitting half the money saved, which was well over $2000/person.

Now, not every Linux deployment goes as smoothly. This is just one case where it went incredibly well and seamless.

Its been a while, but I believe that GNOME can have desktop icons for a variety including SMB and NFS, sdo the desktop Icon likely wouldn't have been a deciding factor. Seablade

I like how you blame Linux for your mistakes.

You're a day late joining the party and your comment serves no purpose.

pwned!

In late 2006, Ubuntu did not run properly on my Vaio vgn-a60, despite lots of tweaking (no sound, etc). OTOH, XP also cannot run anything on this lappy unless you download customized drivers for most of the hardware from Sony. Needless to say, Sony does not supply drivers for Linux on their machines. Boo to them.

Mark you'll have to forgive my utter lack of knowledge on Sony, but are they that different from everyone else? The beauty of Linux distros is that they support a wide array of hardware on a very generic level. After that I usually have to get to the ODM of a device for additional drivers, like Atheros for a OEM wireless NIC etc.

Can't speak for everyone, but I've tried several distro on this lappy (SUSE, Mandrake, Ubuntu) and none have recognized all the hardware, despite me trying everything I could. But as I said, XP itself, after a clean install from a retail version (non-OEM), was not running several components properly, and only the Sony drivers fixed that.

IMO this is one more reason not to buy lappies. They tend to be non-generic enough to make switching to Linux a pain.

That's really not the case anymore. Sony just happens to be particuarly bad about making their products 'open'. I just loaded my parents Compaq Presario Turion laptop with xubuntu and absolutely everything worked perfectly. Even their multi scan/print/copy machine from Brother worked (who I might add has exceptional linux support).

I think any modern clevo, HP, IBM and Compaq laptops should work fine sans the webcam.

Good news. But even having the webcam not work is a deal breaker for me, since I use it daily to talk to relatives around the world.

I can't argue that, one of the guys I work with has been trying to write his won web cam driver for Suse for the last few months with no joy.

It seems that in many cases some of the more user friendly distros offer more out of the box usability for machines designed for Win XP than Win XP itself, in particular i am speaking of Ubuntu Desktop 6.06 on my XPS gen 2, all hardware except the gfx card was installed and ready to go right out of the box,(Ubuntu so far has been the hardest distro i have tried to install nvidia drivers on and still have not figured it out , however the wireless card surprisingly had out of the box functionality) Win XP requires installation of sound, gfx and wifi drivers. As for superiority, I belive that just has to do with what you use it for, just like the OS X vs XP debate... all depends on what you use it for.

The easiest way to get those drivers installed is through Automatix2 (www.getautomatix.com). Automatix will install the restricted modules for you and make the xorg.conf changes. You should stay away from installing the drivers manually simply because kernel updates may break X- the drivers automatix installs are updated during kernel updates. On the other hand, if you need the beta nvidia drivers for AIGLX then you'll have to install them manually. Actually, I think there are some repos with them, but they still may break during kernel updates.