Linux Desktop Readiness Thread [Archive] - Page 9

prizrak

April 25th, 2006, 02:22 AM

swpalmer,
How in the hell did Linux community do it to themselves? Torvalds created the first version in 91-92 at which point both MS and Apple were dominating the market with their systems. By the time Linux got good enough to compete with at least MS the market was devided up. If you care to read about history you will know that MS had (quite possibly still has) very restrictive OEM contracts that preclude the OEM's from preinstalling anything other than DOS/Windows.
Linux has been working for me with minimal issues since RH 7.2 actually and I've installed it on quite a few systems in my time and none gave me an issue. Ergo your experience is meaningless as is mine, neither of us have a meaningful statistic on user experience. Java gave me no issue to install, I downloaded the .bin and ran the built in installer, that was it.
Sure things like driver availability and the like matters not to the end-user. However as aysiu pointed out already THEY USE WHAT IS INSTALLED, they go to their local retailer and just get a PC. It matters very little to them what it's running, in fact if it didn't say "Windows" on the box itself they wouldn't know what it is. Hell some of them don't either way, my cousin asked me some time ago whether a Windows 2000 computer was better than Windows 98. I tried to explain the concept of an OS to him for years, he finally getting it now.

Linux developers need to realize this. Instead they try to clone the Windows (Mac) UI with Gnome but forget that a UI is more than pretty pictures.. the usability and out-of-the-box experience still has a long way to go.

And do you have any concrete proof of that? Are you at Canonical watching the devs? Considering how long I been using the OS I would have to disagree on the experience. If you think set up is a PITA use Automatix, it gets your entire system loaded with goodies that users tend to miss and it's easier than anything I ever seen in Windows.
You need to realize that Linux does not have a universal user experience because of all the distributions. There are standardization efforts in place such as LSB and such and major distros are gonna be getting in on it. To reiterate again if something doesn't work for you submit a DETAILED bug report that WILL get noticed by the developers, I submitted one before and got a very timely reply and actually had quite a lively e-mail exchange with the person handling it (turned out to not be an Ubuntu problem at all btw).
You want drivers that are easy to install? BOTHER THE MANUFACTURER, if 1000 people call/e-mail/write talking about how they want a Linux driver and that if they have one it sux, they might notice and provide you one. No one (but the hardcore RMS type ppl) reject proprietary drivers for their hardware but we don't get many.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 02:31 AM

swpalmer

April 25th, 2006, 02:58 AM

OMG. You are such a troll,

Okay, calm down, I'm not trolling... I'm giving you the facts. One user's account of the "Linux experience".. If you want to pretend it didn't happen fine... hopefully others can think about it and how the situation might be improved.

Package management is an unfortuate result of the choice that Linux offers (ie the number of distros). But it has it's advantages too. And with a regular release cycle, the wait isn't too bad.

Yes it does have it's benefits. I don't deny them at all. I was pointing out a drawback, nothing more.

Jave is a proprietary. If you don't want "GNU crud" why are you using an open-source OS???

This is just sad and shows how misinformed you are about the situation. Java is practically open source these days - but that's not the point. Sun Java was installed on the system after installing Ubuntu, albeit a version that was fairly old, only one rev behind, but that rev has been out for many months now. So you see they DID install "real" Java.. but in the inifite wisdom of whomever sets the default configuration... they set the broken GNU distribution to be the default. The rest of my complaint was about getting the current Sun Java installed.

I want working software over some sort of "free" software. Java is free to download and run... you can even get the source, it's just a more restrictive license that doesn't allow you to distribute modified versions. Heck the "freedom" of the GNU stuff means nothing to me in this context. I have no intention of changing the source code to Java... I have no time to be a developer of all the tools I use and I don't have the time to go debugging someone else's code should the need arise.

I used the term "GNU crud" in the reference to the Java install only. It is not up to par with the Sun distribution by a long shot and therefore it makes very little sense for it to be the default Java on the system. I'm thankful for all the decent tools that the GNU folks have given to the community - but with Java they are wasting their time, Sun's Java was already there.

If you can't take the time to set up proprietary stuff, then go back to a proprietary OS.

I think you miss part of my point. I did take the time. It was the process that I found tedious and irritating compared to the process of "setting up proprietary stuff" elsewhere. I'm simply saying that it makes sense to address the issue of how painful it can be to install anything that hasn't already been blessed by the distro. It's a general Linux problem, part of the downside of the package system and the complexity of sofftware installs on Linux in general (the stuff that makes you need the package system in the first place). It is perhaps caused by the fractured OS that is all "Linux" but each one different enough to screw over the user. Who is benefiting form all these different distributions that can't share programs (let alone drivers) easily? Think of what you would do to install a program on Windows.. you download the setup progarm and run it. You don't have to think to yourself "where do i find the Dell version of this program?" or "Do I get the Windows NT version or the Windows Xp version?".. you don't even worry about "dependencies"... there are VERY FEW programs for Windows that require you to install some other program first... and most of the ones that do are ports of things that run on unix. The Mac of course has mnore control of hardware as well... and the software installation experience on Mac is that much better. But that is my point... a Mac is running unix... and they have software installs down to a simple drag and drop. You don't have to wait for Apple to package the software for you. Any Joe Programmer can zip up a Application Bundle and you can drag it to pretty much any Mac and you are done.

It is frustrating for me to have to deal with the Linux way, and I'm a developer. Imagine what it is like for the average user?

Anyway... the original post was about the out-of-the-box experience not meeting expectations, and I only chimed in to provide additional examples that I experienced, which I thought might lead to constructive conversation.. I realize I came on a bit too strong... so I'm sorry for that.

DAPPER IS BETA SOFTWARE. If you need a stable system, use Breezy until Dapper is properly released.

Understood... I installed Dapper because the Breezy SMP kernel was broken so I thought I would try something newer. I'm not scared of beta software and I know what to expect.

I still thought it a bit lame that a basic thing like the mouse pointer broke in a Dapper update that is of course supposed to be getting more stable.

swpalmer

April 25th, 2006, 03:28 AM

swpalmer,
How in the hell did Linux community do it to themselves?

I was refering to how they allowed the Linux distibutions to all go their own way and create the mess we have now. RedHat packages, Debian packages... Directory structures that are all different in every distro so that software installs are painful and you can't just download a single "Linux x86" build of software that fits in easily to all Linux distributions. I was referring to how the different kernels made the driver situation even worse.

I was not referring to the situation regarding general hardware support and not getting information from hardware vendors and all that stuff.

Linux has been working for me with minimal issues since RH 7.2 actually and I've installed it on quite a few systems in my time and none gave me an issue. Ergo your experience is meaningless as is mine, neither of us have a meaningful statistic on user experience.

I guess so. I started playing with Linux back in '96 or '97.. before that I had only seen a friend try to compile it while in University. In the first years while trying it hardware support was more of an issue.. but surprizingly some distros supported older hardware better than say, Windows 95.

I can only say what I've already said, every Linux install has given me trouble, more trouble than Windows.. with the exception of that one case years ago when an old network card worked on Linux but not Win95.

Back then there were issues like: Linux would run fine for 24 hours, then lock up solid.

More recently it was SAMBA that was hell to get working at all and would often ask for a password for every single file that was in a directory that you accessed with the desktop. (e.g. double click folder icon... type in your login info a few hundred times if the directory contained a few hundred files)

I tried SuSE but was sick of all the really lame stuff that it installed that I didn't want, and configuring the graphics was a bit irritating. I came to Ubuntu because someone recommend that it wasn't full of every open source project know to man, whether it was any good or not. Overall I like Ubuntu.. I think the Debian package management is much better than the Red Hat stuff that SuSE used. But I say I like it "as far as Linux goes".. it still has a lot of usability issues that need to be worked out.

Java gave me no issue to install, I downloaded the .bin and ran the built in installer, that was it.

I was under the impression that doing so would break the existing Java package by mucking things up outside of the package manager. Or at the very least result in some sort of bastardized install. I know that I could "get it to work" that way.. but I wanted to do things right so that it stayed working across updates.
Was I mistaken?

And do you have any concrete proof of that?

??? It was a simple observation... the UI of Gnome and KDE is mostly a clone of Win95, itself very much based on the Mac UI... and yet the core issues of usability remain. Double-click and drag-and-drop installs don't exist for example... at least not in the same sense as they do on Windows or Mac. Things that users shouldn't need to do at all are often tedious and unintuitive. That has been my experience. I don't mean to suggest that Windows or Mac are perfect in this regard either... not at all... I just think that Linux is in dire need to catch up at least, and it would really be sweet if it could surpass Windows or Mac in some of these areas.

You need to realize that Linux does not have a universal user experience because of all the distributions.

Bingo! And I can see from what you've written below it has at least been recognised as a problem. Good.

There are standardization efforts in place such as LSB and such and major distros are gonna be getting in on it. To reiterate again if something doesn't work for you submit a DETAILED bug report that WILL get noticed by the developers, I submitted one before and got a very timely reply and actually had quite a lively e-mail exchange with the person handling it (turned out to not be an Ubuntu problem at all btw).

I am usually one that alway submits bug reports... but it can get tiring. I'll take a look at the Ubuntu bug reporting system and I will make an effort to submit some bugs. It's difficult though to gather information when you can't use the primary pointing device on the OS you are testing.

Stormy Eyes

April 25th, 2006, 04:05 AM

Why should an end user have to put up with something because a bunch of techies say so? They won't. They'll walk.

Let them walk -- right off a cliff.

aysiu

April 25th, 2006, 06:44 AM

I don't really see what the point of whining is. I linked to a thread that tells you how to make a difference, and this thread isn't improving Ubuntu any.

Please, tell me dpowers or swpalmer how your "suggestions" are in any way improving Ubuntu.

There are only these ways you can help:

1. Contribute code
2. File bug reports
3. Donate money
4. Write or revise documentation
5. Help new users on these forums

There's no #6: whine in general about how unusable Ubuntu is.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 10:18 AM

aysiu,

Most of these points do not deal with the issues I have raised. It's not just about bugs or documentation. It's about the philosophy behind the OS, which, in my opinion needs to be altered so that future releases will have a better out of the box experience. May not happen overnight, but with a little pressure it may happen sooner.
1. There are ways I can contribute. Code isnt one of them.
2. A bad user experience isnt really a bug
3. I would donate money if I believed this would change
4. Fair point, but still doesnt address my issue.
5. I am a new user, and even helping new users will not help to change the philiosophy of the OS

I read your thread, but I find it meaningless and it's tone is quite defensive. You could rename it "why we dont listen to our users suggestions". People have to start somewhere, and I started here. It's generated a lot of discussion. This discussion helps to raise and define issues and can even help people to discover ways to contribute or push for change. Calling it whining is a little like putting your fingers in your ears and going 'nah nah nah nah'.

Ultimately you seem to disagree with the way we're 'whining' rather than the issues themsleves. Do you feel we have raised any valid points?

I'd like to make a difference. Others seem to feel as strongly as I do. If there are enough of us who feel the same way maybe we could get together and our voices will be heard by those who drive the direction of the OS. With this in mind here's how you can help..

1) Are there any pressure groups asking manufacturers to develop drivers? if there are I'll gladly join up and add my voice.
2) Are there any forums where usability is discussed and decisions taken?
3) If enough people feel the same way as we do, who DO we tell? How do we rally support? If not via this board...

Thanks,

D

Stormy, thanks for your contribution.

swpalmer

April 25th, 2006, 12:54 PM

Stormy Eyes

April 25th, 2006, 01:02 PM

You can sit there and call it whining, or you can realize that people are trying to offer comments about the problems they encounter so that those that are in a better position to address them get an idea of the issues.

As has been stated time and time again: the developers do not read these forums! If you have a problem, file a bug report. Complaining here gets you nowhere.

Linux should not be reserved only for the "do it yourself" crowd.

No, it's reserved for the "I'm willing to make an effort" crowd. It's a gom jabbar that separates real human beings from sheeple.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 01:41 PM

Stormy,

The question is, how much effort can a user be expected to expend? People will gladly assemble an IKEA flatpack because of the cost benefits vs. personal time, but asking them to assemble a washing machine might be a little bit much.

I mean let's face it, the purpose of an OS is productivity. It's to make life easier and help people use their time efficiently. I think some parts of the Linux community have forgotten this.

D

Stormy Eyes

April 25th, 2006, 03:01 PM

The question is, how much effort can a user be expected to expend?

How much effort does one have to expend in order to understand that complaining on a users' forum that the developers do not normally read is not only a waste of time, but a good way to get flamed?

How much effort does one have to expend in order to understand that posting a thread entitled "Ubuntu Sucks..." isn't going to get you any help or sympathy? If you have a problem, say, "I'm trying to make foo work on Ubuntu Breezy." If somebody knows how to help you and has the time -- and if you haven't been being a **** -- then you'll get help.

Ask as many questions as you like, but don't complain. There will be no sympathy for those who complain, but plenty for those who ask for help. If you're not a paying customer, then you have no right to complain.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 03:52 PM

If you read my previous two posts I have asked folks how I can best communicate my thoughts or actions, and why I believe the post was justified. Have to start somewhere. I'm not just posting and running away.

Again, it is not a specific problem- it's a criticism of the underlying philosophy of Ubuntu/Linux. This is how change comes about. I feel the core principal- Linux for humans- is a worthy goal.

The post was designed to provoke thought and discussion. Do you agree or disagree with the principal of what I am saying? basically, it needs to be easier and the design should be more user-centric. I'm passionate about user-centric design.

You seem to spend more time complaining about complainers than getting into actual thoughtful debate. Prove me wrong, don't just hide behind a few snyde comments and run away from the issues.

More than that- relax. That last post was bordering on personal.

Kind Regards,

D

Stormy Eyes

April 25th, 2006, 04:06 PM

The post was designed to provoke thought and discussion. Do you agree or disagree with the principal of what I am saying? basically, it needs to be easier and the design should be more user-centric. I'm passionate about user-centric design.

I do not care about user-centric design. IMHO, an application should perform its function in the most efficient manner possible, even if that efficiency comes at the price of requiring that the user read a manual in order to use the app properly.

aysiu

April 25th, 2006, 04:19 PM

Again, it is not a specific problem- it's a criticism of the underlying philosophy of Ubuntu/Linux. This is how change comes about. I feel the core principal- Linux for humans- is a worthy goal. No, it really isn't. Change comes from money, bug reports, and development, not threads entitled "Ubuntu sucks."

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 04:30 PM

Well at least you are honest. Crazy as hell, but honest. IMO The price appears to be read an encyclopedia. Maybe I can change your mind.

User-centric design IS about efficiency- not just how pretty it looks. For example, how easy is it to use for long periods of time? How accessible is it for disabled users? It's easier to learn something that is intuitive.
For example- the instruments in your car dashboard are generally a red colour- because it doesnt affect your nightvision, making driving safer.

These principles are universal. it is not just about the efficiency of the system, but also the user. Like it or not, until we have a direct brain-computer link humans have physical dimensions and emotional states that affect their efficiency. Again- what is the purpose of an OS?? it is the means to an end- not the end itself. Less time on the OS means more time doing productive things. What does Ubuntu want to be? A Linux system for humans? Sign me up- but don't lose track of why this distribution was created in the first place. Back to first principles.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 04:58 PM

No, it really isn't. Change comes from money, bug reports, and development, not threads entitled "Ubuntu sucks."

What you are talking about is the evolutionary process, and yes, it's true. But core concepts and first principles need to revisited and challenged time and time again. These two elements result in a truly iterative and user-centric approach.

Many software design techniques stem from Industrial Design, which has been around a lot longer. (read "How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet(software design)" or "Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work") so spare me the stock answers. Where do these decisions take place? Who can I contact? You guys have been around here a lot longer than I have. You want to support a NooB and NooB's in the future? help me get my point across so you are less likely to see posts like this.

So you disagree with my method of sending my message, but surely you agree with some of what I have said?- it's common sense. In return I'll contribute what I can.

D

prizrak

April 25th, 2006, 05:34 PM

I was under the impression that doing so would break the existing Java package by mucking things up outside of the package manager. Or at the very least result in some sort of bastardized install. I know that I could "get it to work" that way.. but I wanted to do things right so that it stayed working across updates.
Was I mistaken?

It seemed to be pretty install and forget type of thing actually. The only thing is NetBeans didn't work with the "stock" Java that came with the distro so I installed the bundle together. Everything is working fine though (been a while since the install) so I don't think there is any real issue.

dpower,
Linux for human beings doesn't mean that it's as easy as masturbation, it means that the software is free and libre. What you have to realize is that the end user experience is highly dependant on hardware recognition, all of my machines were always a 100% supported by Linux (accidentally) and I been on Linux since RH 7.2 (or was it 6? Win 2K was out already) so went through quite a few computers and a bunch of distro's. I could just be real lucky with hardware but I think that Linux hardware support is pretty good. Having said that, it still doesn't support anything and everything out there especially newer hardware such as wi-fi. If your hardware is supported then Ubuntu, especially coupled with Automatix is extremely easy. If your hardware is not supported however, you will have to jump through hoops, it sux but it is the way for now.

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 06:01 PM

tgoose

April 25th, 2006, 06:02 PM

A windows installation is a walk in the park by comparison. Just reinstalled 2000- no prob, no command line. I tried installing Windows XP a couple of weeks ago. Compared to installing Ubuntu (put in the CD, answer the questions, and voila! {nearly, see later} ) it was an absolute nightmare. I had to hunt for the USB 2.0 drivers, wireless driver, audio driver and video driver. The only one of those that I had to do the same for with Ubuntu with the wireless driver, which was certainly more fiddly because of ndiswrapper. Everything else was perfect straight away: USB, audio and video.

It's all very well if one's using a suitable OEM CD for Windows OR Ubuntu, but if you don't have one either or both could run into huge problems. I assume most of your hardware has "designed for Windows XP" written on it, and you're surprised that more of it works than in Ubuntu? If they had "designed for Linux" on them, they'd be just as simple on Ubuntu. And if you bought a PC with Ubuntu preinstalled, then they almost certainly would be (suitable that is, rather than designed...)

edit: also, Dapper is what, one month away or thereabouts? Should have much improved hardware support built in :)

dpower

April 25th, 2006, 06:14 PM

Hi tgoose,

Can't disagree with a thing you've said, but ubuntu does have it's problems, which I'm trying to address here. I believe some of these problems stem from an attitude that complex is acceptable. It's really about first principles. What is the objective of this operating system? it doesnt seem to have a clear goal. Many here believe that I'm plain wrong about the guiding principle that 'Ubuntu is Linux for humans' really means it's a free distro- I feel the guiding principles have gotten a little lost along the way.

prizrak

April 25th, 2006, 06:41 PM

Hi prizak,

A common sense reply. Thanks for that. It's not really the hardware support that bothers me, more the way existing hardware is supported. The driver installation method really bothers me- it's just too comlex. I realise there are measures being taken to simplify things, but the 'linux attitude' still seems to be firmly rooted within the community- that this level of complexity is not only tolerated but almost encouraged. Usability seems to be a bit of an afterthought for some folks here.

As for the Linux for humans issue, I have read aysiu's article on the subject but still cant shrug off the feeling that this sounds like an excuse for wavering off course.

"Ubuntu will include the very best in translations and accessibility infrastructure that the Free Software community has to offer, to make Ubuntu usable by as many people as possible" Now I can see how a lot of people think this just means translation, but the words accessibility and usable cover a lot more than language alone. As many people as possible. Sounds like a good guiding principal to me.
I was unclear in my post it seems, when I said hardware support I meant out of the box. Driver installation is not trivial on Linux, this is something that has been taken up with Torvalds many times. He doesn't like the idea of binary driver installs for some reason (I'm sure he has a good one, just not sure what it is), there is a push in the kernel dev community towards userspace drivers (as opposed to kernel space where it's now), which COULD make it much easier to just plug the drivers in when needed. Ndiswrapper is difficult and will never really be easy as it's basically a temporary hack along the lines of wine till we can get native support.
As far as the goal, I don't think Canonical lost sight of it, I used Ubuntu since the first release and it's gotten easier since. You should wait till Dapper gets released and see what it has to offer so far the feedback is pretty good. (Aside from one of the posters mouse being broken somehow)

nutrapi

April 25th, 2006, 07:51 PM

the only problem I see with linux not becoming more user-friendly is the lack of commercial support we will be getting ourselves into. Windows and Mac will see new versions of flash, will we? How about proper .net support? Or shockwave (flash being more important)? Or more native wifi drivers? The list goes on.
I DO hope ubuntu becomes a linux standard so that most of the community is using this distro, then we'll have bigger numbers that companies like logitech or netgear or adobe or microsoft can't ignore.

When I first jumped into linux (mandrake 6.0) some years ago I found it completely frustrating at the amount of configuration neccessary to have basic computing available. Now that most of that is done for you, I would love to see the linux community rewarded or at least embraced by some of these companies with proper linux versions of their clients/drivers/software. A simple hug to ubuntu with a "you did it, you've made a usable OS with little user configuration and a fast install. Now then, here, we'd love to have you using our software."
Instead projects like gnash, lomoco (logitech gaming mouse program. sets your optical resolution to what it should be since most distros don't recognize it yet), and DOTgnu have had to pick up the slack - building completely from scratch in most cases. while these are all great, it's just a lot of time developers could've been spending elsewhere since better versions of these exist for other operating systems already.
eh.

while I would hate to see the army of idiots microsoft has produced with windows or apple with mac os...they have native versions of new commercial software.
I love my ubuntu and I hope more realize its greatness. I've showed three people the light. Hopefully everyone can do the same. :KS

tgoose

April 25th, 2006, 08:33 PM

dpower

That's fair enough, and it's worth pointing out that I quite probably won't be using Ubuntu again when my replacement hard drive arrives - while the support at these forums has been absolutely excellent and helpful, I don't feel that it's any more the distribution for me. This is mainly because I was treble booting with Fedora Core, it and Windows because I wanted to use Planet CCRMA on FC (I originally got rid of FC because I didn't really understand; I now feel as if I'm knowlegable enough about Linux to get it working) and because of course there are times when I just need that certain Windows program.

My belief is that for most desktop users, Dapper will address most of the issues you have. I do doubt that the command line will go away, however, and I think that's an unfortunate side-effect of being user-friendly in a certain way. If you have generic hardware (or buy a pre-installed machine, of course, but when I was buying a laptop I didn't see any advertised..!) and only want to install the precise programs sanctioned by the Ubuntu team, then you can quite possibly escape from CLI entirely. However, because in the name of user-friendliness it's made rather difficult to go against the grain and choose to use proprietary software (for me Skype (although it must be said the Linux port of this is horrible!) and Opera as the most-used) it's neccesary to use ugly workarounds.

It's also so far as I can see impossible to remove lots of software (including any part of OpenOffice) without removing ubuntu-desktop, which from the description seems to be neccessary to make some new software is added at the right time. I entirely understand why this is: it's user-friendly for a certain user, who is happy to use what's included with the distro, and for advanced users it's still possible to use other software. What it doesn't cater for, really, is the in-between users, especially those who, if they've used CLI at all, it's been DOS-based.

PS
I believe that a centrally based software installation system like Synaptic has the potential to be much more user-friendly than having to go to an individual website, if only it could be set up to also work on packages found elsewhere on the Internet. I find it much easier to have everything in one place, after all! Especially when it's combined with system updates, as it is :)

minisori

April 25th, 2006, 08:42 PM

LOL:) :) LOL:) :) :) LOL:) .. I am sorry, but you seem to be one of those human beings like I know. You prefer to reinstall windows every 2 months than to learn to use something new... Good luck:mrgreen: Mr. gates will tank you.. or are you using a pirated windows version?? .. be careful with your updates](*,)

Sorry i have to disagree, my windows 2000 installation has been running for longer than any linux i had. And never reinstalled or anything else. It's up for 3 years now and working like the first day. If you are careful and you know what you do all can work fine, here in linux and there in windows.

And an OS should not be something you have to learn that way or been always looking in forums and spending several hours to make anything to work.

There is people who doesnt even know how to do stuff in windows you pretend them to compile by themselves or do anything else in linux?

prizrak

April 25th, 2006, 09:15 PM

Sorry i have to disagree, my windows 2000 installation has been running for longer than any linux i had. And never reinstalled or anything else. It's up for 3 years now and working like the first day. If you are careful and you know what you do all can work fine, here in linux and there in windows.

And an OS should not be something you have to learn that way or been always looking in forums and spending several hours to make anything to work.

There is people who doesnt even know how to do stuff in windows you pretend them to compile by themselves or do anything else in linux?
Well for starters Win2K is a very good OS. However you said it yourself you know how to take care of it. If you are gonna be talking about the people who know nothing in Windows they don't know how to keep it running as well as me or you.
Now compare that to Ubuntu. You will take some time to set it up initially, afterwards though, what do you have to do to keep it running? The answer is: nothing, you will get occasional updates that you get auto notified about, the fsck runs every 30 mounts for you, there is an option to automatically clean your /tmp directory on shutdown. That's all there is to it, all of those things aren't even necessary but even then they are automated.
I don't mean to knock Windows, but Linux is far more stable and has much less issues than Windows.

Stormy Eyes

April 25th, 2006, 09:30 PM

And an OS should not be something you have to learn that way

Ever read H.G. Wells' The Time Machine? In the future Wells depicted in that novel, there were two kinds of people, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi were the pretty people, and lived a idyllic existence in which they had no need to work or think or learn. The Morlocks lived underground, kept things working so that the Eloi wouldn't have to work or think, and would sometimes eat some of the Eloi.

I got news for you: when you installed Linux, you crossed into Morlock territory. Either become a Morlock, or become dinner. Your choice, Eloi.

minisori

April 25th, 2006, 09:43 PM

Well for starters Win2K is a very good OS. However you said it yourself you know how to take care of it. If you are gonna be talking about the people who know nothing in Windows they don't know how to keep it running as well as me or you.
Now compare that to Ubuntu. You will take some time to set it up initially, afterwards though, what do you have to do to keep it running? The answer is: nothing, you will get occasional updates that you get auto notified about, the fsck runs every 30 mounts for you, there is an option to automatically clean your /tmp directory on shutdown. That's all there is to it, all of those things aren't even necessary but even then they are automated.
I don't mean to knock Windows, but Linux is far more stable and has much less issues than Windows.

Yes linux is more stable never said windows was. But linux itself not most of the gui programs.

Just mean that the way linux is today it not ready for most of the end users they can screw things easy.

prizrak

April 25th, 2006, 10:03 PM

Yes linux is more stable never said windows was. But linux itself not most of the gui programs.

Just mean that the way linux is today it not ready for most of the end users they can screw things easy.
End users can screw things easy either way ;) That is a very weak argument, I think that Linux doesn't make a good desktop OS replacement for most people because not enough stuff is made for it by the 3rd parties nothing else. Even if Linux is preinstalled on a machine you buy your $20 Lexmark might not work with it at all, and the driver is a pain to install.
I also haven't encountered huge app instability on Linux the only thing that is crash prone for me is Firefox and that's normally a problem with the wonder that is IE centric websites.

Adrenal

April 26th, 2006, 01:03 AM

Just out of the blue, how long had you been using ubuntu for before making this post?

minisori

April 26th, 2006, 02:10 AM

End users can screw things easy either way ;) That is a very weak argument, I think that Linux doesn't make a good desktop OS replacement for most people because not enough stuff is made for it by the 3rd parties nothing else. Even if Linux is preinstalled on a machine you buy your $20 Lexmark might not work with it at all, and the driver is a pain to install.
I also haven't encountered huge app instability on Linux the only thing that is crash prone for me is Firefox and that's normally a problem with the wonder that is IE centric websites.

I have noticed crashes on X while running games, crashes on rhythmbox while scaning on the hd for a big list and others programs. But i can live with that i dont even mind.

What i mean was that GUI's were made to make things easier and so on more people could use a computer. Its ok the terminal can be faster and all that (i was one of those who only use the console to do everything, i only had window maker long time ago to put a wallpaper :p ).. but we cant spect than anyone who never touched a computer to try compile stuff by themselves or edit configs files to change anything to work or some stuff like that Not to talk about someones who come from windows and didnt even know they had a console there.

To be clear i didnt say ubuntu sux, it's the operating system i use now and the one wich made me come back after long time of not using linux at all, cause i was tired of switch operating systems just to play.

I only say linux need more "click and go" stuff, it's on the right way but still need a long walk.

Just out of the blue, how long had you been using ubuntu for before making this post?

Ubuntu not much, since for casuality i saw a cd in the faculty last year.. but linux enought time to know what im talking about. :p

Cope57

April 26th, 2006, 02:32 AM

Ubuntu does suck, but it is better than Windows in many ways.
If it does not play your favorite Microsoft program correctly it must suck.
If it does not work with the hardware that you failed to mention, or which version of Ubuntu you are trying to install, you are not going to get any good feedback about how to solve your issues. From a post that says "Ubuntu Sucks" and have not displayed your PC specs, no OS version don't expect anybody to help you. Your post was unprofessional and was the perfect post a TROLL would post.
If you were expecting some positive feedback you went about it the wrong way from the title of this topic. It does not explain your situation, you are just going to get flamed.
Many here are willing to help eachother out in any way possible. Most here will point you in the right direction when you are having difficulties with your hardware/software problems. But please be more specific so that the feedback you are looking for can be more positive and not what a TROLL would be seeking.

prizrak

April 26th, 2006, 02:48 AM

I have noticed crashes on X while running games, crashes on rhythmbox while scaning on the hd for a big list and others programs. But i can live with that i dont even mind.

What i mean was that GUI's were made to make things easier and so on more people could use a computer. Its ok the terminal can be faster and all that (i was one of those who only use the console to do everything, i only had window maker long time ago to put a wallpaper :p ).. but we cant spect than anyone who never touched a computer to try compile stuff by themselves or edit configs files to change anything to work or some stuff like that Not to talk about someones who come from windows and didnt even know they had a console there.

To be clear i didnt say ubuntu sux, it's the operating system i use now and the one wich made me come back after long time of not using linux at all, cause i was tired of switch operating systems just to play.

I only say linux need more "click and go" stuff, it's on the right way but still need a long walk.

Ubuntu not much, since for casuality i saw a cd in the faculty last year.. but linux enought time to know what im talking about. :p
I been with Ubuntu for a bit and Linux for even longer, didn't compile much, couple of things I have were: a driver (quite a bit of time ago), a program that is in alpha stage (compile from CVS). Don't think ever had to do anything else, other than that Synaptic and alien/dpkg work well.

dpower

April 26th, 2006, 12:42 PM

...Your post was unprofessional and was the perfect post a TROLL would post.
But please be more specific so that the feedback you are looking for can be more positive and not what a TROLL would be seeking.

From Wikipedia: "Often, a person will post a sincere message about which he is emotionally sensitive. Skillful trolls know that an easy way to upset him is to disingenuously claim that he is a "troll.""

I have no interest in flaming. If you had taken the time to read through the thread you would see I am not talking about any one specific example and that the discussion so far has been polite and thoughtful. Nothing you have said is either useful or hasnt been said already.

Read through the thread, form some thoughts and get back to us. I'm sure you can muster a better argument rather resorting to name calling.

Regards,

dpower

Bradley17

April 26th, 2006, 02:11 PM

Rofl... im a noob to linux and it works fine, i dual boot both xp and ubuntu, for the learning curve... i have completly set up apache2,php5,mysql, phpmyadmin, mysqladmin, proftpd, ssh server, (yes a bit excessive for one box but its only spare laptop i got).

Ive not once had to go into any source code or ****about with anything, i wanted to use ubuntu to give me a better understand of the terminal. ~

Tbh, the terminal is a much quicker way of doing things, and i prefer it to the gui anyway. Ubuntu does state that its not made for people who jus want a point and click enviroment. In one of its "read first" And tbh i jus came on here and i have the understanding now to use the terminal to setup all these packages in ubuntu terminal.... Im glad i turned to linux tbh

Cope57

April 26th, 2006, 02:23 PM

Read through the thread, form some thoughts and get back to us. I'm sure you can muster a better argument rather resorting to name calling.

Regards,

dpower
I have read through the thread, but the first post you did not state any purpose to what issues you were having with any particular hardware or software you were using. It was stating that you do not like Ubuntu and it sucks. That is fine if you do not like it, you do not need to use it, and you no longer need support from this forum.
You NEVER mentioned any hardware or software you were using, so the issues you were having were basically "fishing" for answers nobody can answer. Details to your hardware specs and what distribution you were working with can give us a better understanding of how to solve those problems you are having.

dpower

April 26th, 2006, 02:55 PM

Cope,

I've taken the time to read the 'Linux is not Windows' article at the bottom of your post. Here's your answer. For those of you dont know what this is an answer to, read this first....
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

and the rebuttal...

Linux is not Windows- A rebuttal.

Firstly, I'd like to thank the author for attempting to shed some light and taking the time to explain his viewpoint. Discsussion can only lead to understanding. However, I feel that some of the authors key points and assertions are fundamentally flawed, and here's why:

What is Linux for?

"The Linux community is not trying to provide the average Windows user with a replacement OS. The goal of Linux is not "Linux on every desktop".
"Linux is an alternative to Windows, but not a replacement. It will never be a replacement, because it has incompatible goals. Microsoft's goal is to get their software onto as many PCs as possible, as their priority is profit. Linux has no such goal, because Linux is free. It has a different priority."

This would seem to make the assumption that the goal of Windows is to put Windows on every desktop. That is the goal of Microsoft's Marketing department. The goal of any OS should be to increase productivity. This includes Linux. Productivity means less time using the Operating System and more time using the Applications to get stuff done. How do we increase productivity? Task Analysis. We ask and observe the user how they perform a certain task and try to make it easier for them. We try to instruct the user as little as possible so they can spend their time doing something else. An Operating System is a means to an end, not the end in itself. If this isn't the priority of Linux then what is?

"This article is aimed at explaining to those newbies exactly why their ideas tend to get flamed rather than embraced."

This is one of my major bugbears of the Linux community. Judging by this statement the author is aware of the sheer amount of new users who field this criticism. Yet the Linux community continues to ignore and dismiss their concerns. Yes, Linux may be different, but different doesn't mean it has to be difficult to use. Ignoring a new users experience is a fatal mistake, yet little has been done to really make an effort to address their concerns. On most forums they are simply told to start learning. People expect Linux to work like Windows, not because they have just spent so much time on front of a Windows machine, but because Windows is intuitive.

"Too many people think that migrating from Windows to Linux is like switching from a BMW to a Mercedes. They think that the controls should be the same, their experience should transfer directly, and all differences should be largely cosmetic"

And even if you disagree with my previous argument, from a usability standpoint 90% of OS users are using Windows, 4% using Mac(http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/05/technology/apple_windows/index.htm). So people are familiar with the way certain OS's operates (mainly GUI based), so why try to re-educate an educated user base? In the real world it amounts to designing all products for left handed people- the statistics just don't bare up.

"Before you insist that a more Windows-like UI would make the software better, bear this fact in mind: The creator of this software, a coder who, by definition, knows far more than you do about this piece of software, doesn't agree with you. He might be wrong, but the odds are against it"

Are the UI's really so different? Most Linux distributions are just like windows. There are intuitive icons, you click on them, you open and close windows, open applications etc. etc. I don't think any new users have difficulty with this part- it's really just the installation and configuration.

"Only if you are willing to invest the time in learning Linux will you find it easy"

Configuration is only performed once or intermittently. To perform these tasks the user is required to learn a disproportionate amount of knowledge- 90% of the knowledge required to run Linux is only useful for setting up and configuring the OS. You simply don't need this knowledge for daily tasks such as turning it on, browsing files and running applications. It seems a shame that the only barrier to having a truly universal, stable, usable operating system is the installation and configuration. To many this will be interpretted as removing functionality and dumbing things down- but that is an assumption. This does not require the Linux community to replace the CLI method- why can't we have both?

"User-friendly" and "raw functionality" are exclusive. All the little buttons and drop-down menus that are vital to make a piece of software simple to use are just obstacles that get in the way of the experienced user."

This shows a profound lack of understanding of usability. The logic is sound, but it is as flawed as the human beings who use the software.
Unfortunately humans are physical creatures, with physical and emotional dimensions that affect their abilities and productivity levels. Programmers tend to forget that they are on the frontline. It's a dirty job- a vocation. They work out the bugs and sift through thousands of lines of code- basically so the rest of us dont have to. That is your function in society, that is your chosen hobby- the rest of us perform other functions and have different hobbies. So it it unreasonable for you to assume that because you have experience of coding that everyone else should learn how to do it too. To continue your automotive analogy, Imagine if automobile engineers only designed cars that could be used by other engineers? What if they expected everyone to learn mechanical engineering so they could operate a car? it's difficult enough without understanding gear ratios and manifolds.

"Linux wants users who want Linux. And that doesn't mean just the name. It means everything: The free, open-source software; the ability to tinker with your software; the position of being in the driver's seat, in total control."

Linux is forgetting why Linux exists. Cars exist to get from A to B. Not to tinker with the engine.

A free, usable, universal, stable OS for everyone. Isn't this a better goal? Think of the potential Linux has to make contribution to humanity. Don't leave it in the garage.

Thanks,
dpower

Maybe now you understand where I'm coming from Cope. Yes the title of my post was designed to get some attention, but it's a point I feel worth making. I emailed the author of that article too.

jigantor

April 26th, 2006, 03:17 PM

I'd like to weigh in here with a couple of comments:

I started using Ubuntu 4-5 months ago after using Windows all my life, and some limited experience as a kid with DOS and fun arcane projects like QBASIC. While I'm certainly no techie (sadly), I'm prepared to admit that I probably have a greater degree of confidence and patience with computers than most people. I know far too many people who get frustrated with them, in my opinion, insanely quickly.

I love Ubuntu. I love the fact that it's free, you can make it look nicer, it's not crawling with malware, you have as-good or better programs for everything except gaming (and an Endnote-style referencing program, for some reason) when compared with Windows, and best of all you have what in my experience is a knowledgeable, generous and friendly community who will help you even with stupid questions that have been asked hundreds of times before.

That said, I think that some of the issues raised here have merit. While it's true that installing an OS is never an easy task, for the average user Ubuntu is probably just slightly harder than it needs to be. Unfortunately it's true: although the terminal is almost always a better way of getting things done, it scares most people. Most people don't want to have to type in arcane commands in order to get their computer working properly. And when I was installing there was a lack of a unified guide to getting your computer doing the things you want (playing mp3s, dvds etc. etc.).

Automatix is a brilliant idea. It's not promoted nearly enough - I didn't realise it existed until I'd already sorted out almost all of my issues myself. Assuming it works properly (as I take it it does), it would go a long way to answering most of the reasonable criticisms directed at Ubuntu.

Once Ubuntu is working, it's great. Despite having a dual-boot machine I haven't touched XP for at least a month and a half, maybe more. The only reason I would ever need to is to use the bloody Lexmark thing downstairs...

Sure, this isn't the best place to have a direct impact, but that doesn't mean there should be no discussion of these (kinda important) issues. My first response to anything entitled 'Ubuntu sucks' is very defensive, like many here, but from the subsequent posts I think it's clear the 'whingers' here are actually making some valid points. I just hope they'll accept the invitation to do something about them.

halfvolle melk

April 26th, 2006, 03:47 PM

People expect Linux to work like Windows, not because they have just spent so much time on front of a Windows machine, but because Windows is intuitive.
No it really isn't. Once people have to get out of their way to get something done, llots of thm get lost in unknown territory. This is because they only do what they know. Windows (in general) is not intuitive. For instance th consistancy throughout its applications menus is weak at best. Mac does a far better job at that IMHO.

Configuration is only performed once or intermittently. To perform these tasks the user is required to learn a disproportionate amount of knowledge- 90% of the knowledge required to run Linux is only useful for setting up and configuring the OS.
I beg to differ. Much of the knowledge needed to set up your system can be used for other tasks as well.

You simply don't need this knowledge for daily tasks such as turning it on, browsing files and running applications.
This is not intended as flaming, just my experience: insert Ubuntu CD -> reboot from CD -> press enter a few times -> remove the CD and reboot -> log in -> Applications -> Accessories -> File Browser -> browse files. Unless your hardware isn't supported I really fail to see what can hard about it.

Linux is forgetting why Linux exists. Cars exist to get from A to B. Not to tinker with the engine.
I thought the below link and the Vi example brought the opposite point home.
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/map.png

atoponce

April 26th, 2006, 03:56 PM

Last time it just died for no reason- I had not changed anything, and bam. If you are a GUI designer, as you claim, and I believe you, then you of all people should know that an operating system, especially Linux, doesn't crash for "no reason". This is very similar to the excuse "my software doesn't work, and I don't know why. I didn't do anything!". Please.

At any rate, I am sorry you think Ubuntu sucks. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of users seem to think otherwise.

Cheers.

dpower

April 26th, 2006, 04:30 PM

Hi atoponce.

I genuinely hadnt done anything, but of course there is a reason for it. It was a new install, I'm sure it's a compatibility issue. I have nothing to gain by inventing problems.

Again, if you read through the thread (yes I know it's long) you'll find this thread isnt really about specific issues.

Thanks,

D

dpower

April 26th, 2006, 04:52 PM

No it really isn't. Once people have to get out of their way to get something done, llots of thm get lost in unknown territory. This is because they only do what they know. Windows (in general) is not intuitive. For instance th consistancy throughout its applications menus is weak at best. Mac does a far better job at that IMHO.

I beg to differ. Much of the knowledge needed to set up your system can be used for other tasks as well.

This is not intended as flaming, just my experience: insert Ubuntu CD -> reboot from CD -> press enter a few times -> remove the CD and reboot -> log in -> Applications -> Accessories -> File Browser -> browse files. Unless your hardware isn't supported I really fail to see what can hard about it.

I thought the below link and the Vi example brought the opposite point home.
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/map.png

Not Flaming at all halfvolle,

Sure Windows isnt the best example of intuitive design, but it's not bad and does work for lots of people. If you prefer the Mac model as an example so be it. The installation is not bad, and if you want to start, well you press the Start button. You want programs, go to programs and so on. People do find their way around pretty well. Yes it also contains some bad examples of UI design, but this isnt a Windows forum. On the whole, XP is pretty usable.

The example he cites is a 'hero model' - a perfect world scenario. In the real world things dont happen this way for a number of reasons. If I'm trying to fix something in Windows there's a good chance I can follow the infomation scent Start-> Control Panel device-I-want-to-fix. A CLI has no information scent. you either know it or you don't. That is not intuitive design. Yes I am aware you can do most things through the GUI, but looking at the help on these forums it's mainly CLI instructions. The user dosnt really discover how to do it themselves, which breeds familiarity.

People like buttons and menus and prompts to do things. We are physical creatures and we like a tactile feel. A nicely designed OS feels more comfortable to work with, and if you are comfortable you are more productive. They like things simple, even if it is only a perception of simple. If something looks easier, they are farmore willing to try it. The Vulcan approach doesn't work for humans.

D

prizrak

April 26th, 2006, 05:57 PM

dpower,
I agree that there are problems and you did point some out. Here is a problem though, not all of them are solveable by the distro developers. Driver installation is a breeze on Windows no one will argue with that (though clicking next tends to get annoying) but MS is not making the drivers the hardware OEM's do. In the Linux world 3rd party support is pretty limited. I already mentioned that driver installation should get better with userspace drivers but that is yet to be implemented and is something the kernel devs CAN and SHOULD do. Drivers themselves however come either from reverse engineering (much harder than it sounds) or from the OEM's (and they tend to provide them for one or two major distros, or in tar.gz file).
Regular people do not install OS's, nor do they configure them. How many Windows users are aware that they cannot play DVD's out of the box, or webpage embedded video. Hell I STILL can't get embedded video to work in Firefox on my friend's computer and I know quite a bit about Windows. Reason for that is preinstalled OS's, when you get your HP, Dell, Sony, Toshiba(gotta be high to buy that), Lenovo, etc... they will put the OS on for you, configure all the hardware, put all the codecs and players on it, and even give you a restore disk that will restore your system in minutes. Hell you can even get "professional" installation at home if you pay extra. As you pointed out yourself Ubuntu is difficult to install (if it doesn't detect your hardware out of the box) but not to use, which means that anyone who wants to try it, should either look for a preinstalled system or make sure that what he/she is getting will be Ubuntu compatible. It's not that difficult to do research generally a google search for Ubuntu + Model# reveals some info, I ran across reports from actual users of the hardware and possible issues (more info than the main hardware page might have they can't test everything).
This is the thing with Linux, it forces you to think and pay attention. You can take the plunge and just install it on w/e you have at the moment or you can do some research, find out what is supported and what is not, look for a preinstalled system possibly.
Windows is hardly intuitive, it is simply what everyone uses, few people nowadays haven't used Windows if not at home then in school or at work. OS X is supposed to be the most intuitive one and I had quite a bit of problem using it since I couldn't find where the damn programs are, had to search through the HDD for the executables to start anything. Also setting up is NEVER intuitive you need to know what things are, for instance if I told you to change your virtual memory size you wouldn't know where it is or WHAT it is, I'll have to give you (not a particular you) directions to where it is. In Windows you need to do that with screenshots in Ubuntu it can be done with a copy & paste. This is the most common misconception about Ubuntu, everything that you are told to do in terminal CAN be done in GUI but it is quite a bit more difficult for US to give directions that way. Alot of our desktops aren't even remotely default looking, you should check out the desktops thread to see how it is. Terminal is universal to all of us tho :)
Moreover you need to realize that while it might take a litlle bit of knowledge to set up Ubuntu (and the amount of knowledge needed is inverseley proportional to your hardware support) but it requires no knowledge at all to keep running. While Windows might not require too much knowledge to be setup (as it is preinstalled normally) it requires loads and loads of it to keep it running.

dpower

April 26th, 2006, 06:30 PM

Prizrak,

I still have a problem with the copy and paste system- a user doesnt learn what they are doing, rather they learn to copy and paste, but besides that I agree with just about everything else you've said.

It would also appear that some of the earlier commenters on this thread (you trolls- do your research!!) were plain wrong about Ubuntus goals and ambitions. After taking a look at the marketing threads and the drivers (the people who create Ubuntu philosophy- not the hardware kind) seem to pretty much share my enthusiasm for a universal operating system and making things 'just work'. They are not particularly interested in the CLI or pandering to elite Linux users. The Linux purists on this thread dont appear to share the views of the Ubuntu founders.

So in conclusion, I've been wrong about some things, and the things I'm right about seem to be underway. Result? I'm downloading Dapper Drake right now.

Ubuntu is not quite there yet as far as I am concerned, but it's well on the way. As far as I can see it's the only distro that's really interested in making it usable.

I do think the Ubuntu home page is a little weak on their driving philosophy, so I'm off to bug the marketing people....

D :-)

troyDoogle7

April 26th, 2006, 06:58 PM

I think that as soon as we have graphical user interfaces for all terminal commands and config files, we will have a perfect os...

Leave terminal to only those who want it, everything should be gui based.

prizrak

April 26th, 2006, 07:20 PM

Ubuntu is not quite there yet as far as I am concerned, but it's well on the way. As far as I can see it's the only distro that's really interested in making it usable.

I do think the Ubuntu home page is a little weak on their driving philosophy, so I'm off to bug the marketing people....

I agree :)

halfvolle melk

April 26th, 2006, 10:38 PM

Hi dpower,

While Ubuntu may not have everything down yet, due to issues rehashed over and over again in this topic and a hundred if not a thousand other threads (I'm a n00b and even this n00b thinks it's getting old), it sure is ready for my desktop.

If easy GUI configuration is a standard to needed be met for being ready for the desktop, 90+% of the OS users have the deck stacked against them. Many people do not know/learn their way around the GUI because "it worked before!" when they were just browsing and reading mail ... until it broke. I know so because I provide Win tech support 20 hours a week to get through college. Wireless Zero Config? Lots of people don't even know about it let alone find and configure('Zero Config' is quite inappropriate) it. If Ubuntu sucks, so does the wide spread alternative to Ubuntu, only harder(I'd give you a list, but it would exceed the character limit for a post).

Also, (and this is some more personal experience) using the CLI will, in time, give you a much better insight of what you're actually trying to do than mucking about in a GUI that hides the gears from you. As for information scent, there's a world of it in the man pages. Don't exactly know what you're looking for? 'apropos' is a winner.

Ubuntu doesn't suck, there's room for improvement. And ther are some nice folks trying to do just that, for us, without anyone having to ask.

Ps: On a childish note (again, no flaming intended), what do you press when you want to end? ;)

CummingGABoy

April 26th, 2006, 11:33 PM

For all those saying Linux is not a windows clone... Why then are there so many distros trying to mimic windows? Why is there a LinSpire (umm I mean Lindows)? I've used them all: UX, Linux, Windows, Mac, Vax, VMS, NonStop, BE, etc.

Have we forgotten how Windows grew to be the dominant OS? Give it away for free. Let everyone get hooked. Then charge for it. I see Linux headed down the same path. Hasn't rh already done this?

No matter how much of a GURU you think you are; the average customer wants graphical, easy-to-use, point and click. And most of the time they will substitute security and stability to get it. It is the nature of people. If this principle were not true then hookers would be out of work. They are easy, but not secure. (No offense to anyone.)

No doubt about it... Ubuntu rocks! In my opinion it is the closest to Windows we have seen. In agreement with others, as soon as we can eliminate command line (terminal) reliance, confusion as to which driver/package to install (ex. rpm, deb?), and write HELP sections that the average person can understand without pointing them to terminal then Ubuntu will have made a noticeable dent into the Windows mainstream.

I agree with the original post. Thanks for being brave enough to start this healthy debate.

htinn

April 27th, 2006, 08:59 AM

I don't recall Microsoft ever giving away Windows. If Windows were ever free, they would go out of business. Of course, if Windows were ever unhackable, Microsoft would go out of business.

Windows isn't mainstream. Windows is monopoly-ware. They couldn't care less about what the consumer wants.

The average user of Windows doesn't need to be a guru because retailers are forced to do all that stuff for them. You don't think they do terminal commands? Try working in tech support for a while.

What are the top three things most users complain about? Samba? Multi-booting? Windows codecs? What do those things have to do with GNU/Linux or Ubuntu?

Clearly, the problem is users who aren't willing to ditch Microsoft and go GNU/Linux all the way. I say, rip it off in one go, like a band-aid.

cjm5229

April 27th, 2006, 11:45 PM

Thanks Ginger.

I'm not too worried about finding an OS that imitates Windows- and I am willing to learn. I just find it frustrating that what should be simple tasks just arent. I'm pretty tech savvie- used to write tech docs for Lucent and currently design websites and Flash apps- I've used just about every mac and windows OS as well as Solaris. Was very excited trying out new OS. It just plain bothers me that simple tasks can get complex very quickly.

I guess it's a little about the philosophy behind it. I mean it seems to have turned into another by techies, for techies flavour of Linux. I feel this should have been nipped in the bud earlier. I realise it's a complex issue- but to a certain extent it could have been overcome by implementing some standards and packaging them nicely and by adhering to the original mission statement which I feel was very strong and worthy. Maybe if the voices were a little louder- I mean it has to start somewhere. This OS has great potential to reach a much wider audience. Different is OK, but difficult is not. Maybe we're just too early in the evolution of this product.

Regards,
Dave

Has anyone else noticed that it's the people that are so called "experts" are the ones that whine the loudest? I guess a "Techie" truck driver like me should just give up and go back to windows:rolleyes: Wait, I just did a Windows reinstall on my other partition, (have to keep because the rest of the family has windows on their computers yet)](*,) had to install Java, Anti-virus, etc. and I only use it when I have to. 15 min. at a time is about all I can stand. Windows Updates refused to work, no dist-upgrade! No synaptic, or CLI, so I had to do a Google search for each program I needed to install. then go to a website, which sent me to another website, which sent me to another website, where I had to download a program, then go to My Computer, find the download, click on it, go through the yes, next, I agree to allow virii installed, next, yes, OK, Finish. for each program I needed. Oh, then I had to install the drivers for my video card. That made my video playback look like a negative, had to search for new driver, found it, installed it, it didn't work either, finally found one that worked.
This is easier than apt-get install whatever, How? Guess I'll go back to driving my truck now.

whoa_551

April 27th, 2006, 11:56 PM

I third that. Please read the entire thread and try to understand my goal here amigo.:)

No offense, mate, but I don't really care what your goal is. This is an open forum, I'll say what I like. If you want direct answers to a specific question, post in another forum...

erikpiper

April 28th, 2006, 12:08 AM

Why do I use linux? It is fun, and has more GOOD FREE software.. IMO

jeller

April 28th, 2006, 12:23 AM

I gave up(had a problem with acidrip)but Im back useing ubuntu,the reason microsoft,there has to be competition,why else can microsoft charge £200 for an os?because there is no competition,if sony came out with a os that sold for £100 had all your dvd,wmv,java,quicktime,real media and god knows what else everybody would fall over them selves buying it,and microsoft would have to lower there prices,Im not saying that when vista is released that I will buy it if it were £100 because you would be walking straight back into microsoft's trap,microsoft are scared of linux biteing into the desktop market they dont want a stable os that work's,all they want is to keep the gravy train going and keep computer manufacturers under there thumbs with threats of well if you do that we will revoke your licensing and the manufacturers have to back down,if there was an alternative then microsoft would lose there iron grip,that's why I came back,along with the other reason that xp does not work:mrgreen:

3rdalbum

April 28th, 2006, 05:52 AM

When people say that Ubuntu is "too difficult" for the average Joe, I shake my head in amazement. Are Western computer users really more stupid than Indian computer users?

In India, when people learn how to use computers, most of the time they're using Linux! That's because Windows costs the same as the average monthly wage or some ridiculous thing like that. If all these Indians can grasp how to do things in Mandrake, without any prior computer experience, why can't Westerners grasp how to do things in Ubuntu when they've been using computers for 5 years or more?

ncappel1

April 28th, 2006, 06:04 AM

Don't have the patience to read these threads too much anymore, and ive been a linux user for just a very short time.

this is all I need to know for myself, something that some people will never understand:

Linux is not windows: http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

penywise

April 28th, 2006, 07:51 AM

Hi dude -> don't you dare give it up ;)
I have Ubuntu for like 3 days, and I managed to reinstall the whole system already, and last night I seem to f*ck the whole thing up again!

You are asking for STEP-BY-STEP ways...
http://www.ubuntuguide.org/

That is what I am using. My Ubuntu is 5.04, and if I have to upgrade it to 5.10 through internet it would take like days of just downloading the info (I mean days non-stop downloading...). That is how it is here. As the dude from Greece said - it's really not east to get support in Greece.
I am from Bulgaria - it's the same s*it here. 3-9 kb/sec international speed - sounds cool aye? People are having 2 Mbps connections... Just the downloading of 50 Mb codecs took me ~20 minutes...

The "normal" thing is to run Linux for... years without even reboot it.
And for 2 days "work" on it, following ONLY that STEP-BY-STEP guide (for Ubuntu 5.04!) -> I am almost on the second time to reinstall the whole system.
The good part of course is that my Partition Magic 8.0 running under my Windows couldn't even open, as it "Coulnd't recognize some of the partitions"...
I'm not getting back to Windows for the f*ck sake!

So, I wrote down the problems in a thread here ("General Questions", posted by me)... Actually now I am unable to use EVEN "
sudo apt-get..."

But there is no way of giving it all up. The begging is never easy.

One day you will be glad you didn't give it up at the moment it "got difficult"...

And - either I am the "noob leader" around here, or Linux has bugs as well!

I reinstalled BECAUSE -> I downloaded the first of the codecs shown on that guide site, I created a new username for my system - hey, nothing wrong with it - just "sudo adduser the_name", then gave it a password, I did a "sudo apt-get update", "sudo apt-get upgrade"...
When the downloading of the codecs was ready it asked me to install them. I did of course...
While installing suddenly a window popped up - "Gnome-volume-manager has stopped unexpectedly..." and sth like this...

Installations were done, I rebooted (damn Windows habit!)... and happy end -> "X graphical system couldn't start..."

And that it - I coulnd't do anything even with my keyboard...
yeah - I was like - WTF man!!!

Now I have a new problem after reinstalling the whole system...
The "sudo apt-get" command doesn't work for s*it!!!

I will kill the damn... well, I will surely get it working one way or another... It's more pleasant that just say - "Ah, f*ck it..."

nojjy

April 28th, 2006, 09:18 AM

I have heard this and that about how Dapper Drake is supposed to be great, fast and stable, and I noticed the recent metapost from Mark Shuttleworth about the direction that this little Linux project is about to turn towards, all based on the assumption that Dapper is such a grand accomplishment towards stability and foundation building. Well after about a week and a half using Dapper, I can say NO to all of those points I mentioned, and additionally can say that my partition with an OS that is now over four years OLD (guess which one?) is faster, more stable, and generally easier to work with than Dapper Drake. Let me just list a few things that I have (UNwillingly) had to do to get Dapper running and up to speed:

(Disclaimer: I am a professional in computer graphics and effects, and have had my share of on-the-job experience with Unix-type environments, scripting and hardware debugging / profiling) Additonally, I have had my hard knocks of linux and unix education via Slackware, and two previous versions of Ubuntu, Hoary and Breezy, and STILL it wasn't enough for my new upgrade:

- Wireless Networking: I had to learn all about wireless networking and troubleshooting after installing a new wireless network at home. First the USB netgear dongle wouldn't run, I had to do a ton of research on NDISwrapper, and finally got it up and running. Well guess what? After deciding to switch to a WEP network (opposed to unprotected), it no longer connects to the internet... WHY? I just haven't had the time to find out... two hours a night, for a week, of debugging and research to get the unsecured NDISwrapper to work is just too much time already. And network access is EXTREMELY important.

- Wacom tablet: was listed in xorg.conf by default as /dev/wacom. I did some research earlier about how to set it up, going to the command line and running "cat /dev/input/eventX", finding out which one worked by moving my pen around, and changing the xorg.conf entry to the one that worked, which did work for Breezy, but in Dapper, would break every time I restarted the computer. Fortunately, by chance, after much searching I ran into a posting that mentioned changing the entry to "/dev/input/wacom" because of the udev scripts that the wacom-tools package includes, which worked, but as you can see this wasn't an automatic process AT ALL.

- Suspend /hibernate: both lock up the system when I turn it back on. Bottom line, they should Just Work, and they Just Don't.

- Random hard system freezes: ???? I don't know why, I get no error or log messages that might help me find out, but all I can suspect is that since they are kind of recent (and ONLY happen in Dapper), it might be the NDISwrapper that is controlling my wireless USB dongle. But that is only a guess, since nothing has told me anything!

Now these issues are not trivial, and what's more, none of them were issues AT ALL in (that other OS). I do understand that because of the fact that linux is less popular, and thus recieves less official, paid support of hardware / software, that things are bound to be bumpier. Nevertheless, developers of this OS should be spending MORE time in getting it up to par with the mainstream OS's, and proving that it really is superior and easier to bang into a working condition. For all of the horrible headaches that it has caused me, there are so many things about it that I like and prefer over other OS/environments that I think it's worth the effort, in the end. And Ubuntu, on top of Debian, to me is the premier example of a Linux environment that works for ordinary(relatively!) computer professionals. So before you go off and get the really cool stuff like XGL and beagle working, please do what is promised with all of this hotplug / network manager/ synaptic styled stuff that is supposed to make hardware / software automatic and MAKE IT WORK. Otherwise, there is no way in hell I can take the (Other OS partition) off of my hard drive, because using linux, I would probably be out of a job due to random lockups and bad hardware configurations!

PS: yes, even with all of this, I am excited about the progress that has been made with this release... some of the problems I mentioned above were completely unsolvable in previous versions of Ubuntu and other linux distros I tried.

frodon

April 28th, 2006, 09:27 AM

1- dapper is not released yet !

2- You shouldn't blame any linux distribution if you don't take the time before buying a computer to see if your hardware is compatible. Each person who takes 1 or 2h of search before buying a new hardware will never have problems.
So if you didn't spend this time don't blame anybody if your hardware need some tweaks to work.

Pablo El Vagabundo

April 28th, 2006, 09:39 AM

U need to submit bugs for these issues. After all it is not released yet and there will be a big push to fix them.

I just installed it last night and everything went smooth, but i have run of the mill hardware and requirements...

Pablo

l00k

April 28th, 2006, 09:41 AM

That initial post doesnt really enter into the spirit of things.

I don't think its ever been claimed that the dapper release is perfect and I remember seeing a large disclaimer that it shouldnt be used as a main OS yet.

Take a chill pill. If you don't like a little challenge getting some things to work the way you want then get a console or something ;)

yopnono

April 28th, 2006, 09:42 AM

@frodon
True, but the hardware/driver support could be much better on the linux dist side, or not?

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 09:50 AM

@frodon
True, but the hardware/driver support could be much better on the linux dist side, or not?

I think he might have a point. Dapper has very serious issues like printing or folder sharing, and having them in a system that is supposed to last three whole years is unsettling to me.

joshrobinson

April 28th, 2006, 09:57 AM

no problems whatsoever here.. runs 100x better then windows does, starts up a hell of alot quicker.. windows seems to take forever to load everything in the system tray.. even with a 3.0ghz and 2gigs of ram

printing was a bit of a bummer to get going, but i finally figured it out (not an ubuntu problem, just something ive never done before) wireless works fine also, using wpa security by wpa_supplicant

no crashes, no lock ups, no nothing.. workin good on my end for being a non finished product

also, what folder sharing problems have you had? mine works great

kaamos

April 28th, 2006, 09:59 AM

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 10:00 AM

printing was a bit of a bummer to get going, but i finally figured it out (not an ubuntu problem, just something ive never done before)

I meant simple tasks like double-side or multipage printing, or printing several documents at a time. Which Windows offers.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 10:03 AM

I meant simple tasks like double-side or multipage printing, or printing several documents at a time. Which Windows offers.
And Linux does too.
You can do all this if you use kprint, or if you are using Gnome you can do this by simply using gtklp.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 10:06 AM

And Linux does too.
You can do all this if you use kprint, or if you are using Gnome you can do this by simply using gtklp.

I know. You shouldn't even have to do that. I can look for a program which does what I need -even if it's a basic task-, people working at an office won't.

That stuff should be ready out of the box, it's so basic it's ridiculous.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 10:11 AM

I know.

If you know, then don't make false claims please.

You shouldn't even have to do that. I can look for a program which does what I need -even if it's a basic task-, people working at an office won't.

That stuff should be ready out of the box, it's so basic it's ridiculous.
I don't think there's anyone who disagrees that the gnome print dialogue needs improvement and guess what, it' currently worked on.
However, your office example isn't really valid as those computers are normally managed by an admin, not normal users and the admin should certainly know what the hell he's doing.

Pablo El Vagabundo

April 28th, 2006, 10:25 AM

Some of my printer experiences with dapper

- I have been able to print using my espon D88
- It was auto detected when i went to add a printer.
-It has decent config options in the gnome print dialog. I have been able to print high quality 5x7 photos on 5x7 glossy photo paper and it looks fab.

No problems yet. It has been a simple "just works" for me. I do not think that dapper will be a "just works" for everyone. There are issues with printers and there are wireless issues.

However further down the line the "portland" project and the new wireless project (cannot remember the name) will make this issues mostly disapear.

But for 50%+ of the cases dapper may just work. Another 20% might need fiddling and the rest just wont work. But ubuntu is the first dist I have used that the rate of change is constant and inevitable. And does not suffer from the two steps forward one step back.

Pablo

Amon_Re

April 28th, 2006, 10:53 AM

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 10:56 AM

If you know, then don't make false claims please.

helpme, I didn't say Linux didn't do that: I said it HAS SERIOUS ISSUES with it, and I don't think there's anything false with it.

I don't think there's anyone who disagrees that the gnome print dialogue needs improvement and guess what, it' currently worked on.
However, your office example isn't really valid as those computers are normally managed by an admin, not normal users and the admin should certainly know what the hell he's doing.

But workers are the ones who are going to print documents, and the ones who will find out that Linux "doesn't do" what they need it to do. They shouldn't even have to call the IT guy, neither have to remember what gtklp is. It should just work and it should be done before going to town with "edgy" stuff.

That's my opinion, of course. Not an absolute truth.

frodon

April 28th, 2006, 11:05 AM

The simple fact is that, untill manufacturers open up their docs and actively start working on drivers themselves, we'll be boned :(True, but when you're looking for compatible hardwares you must perform your search for the distribution you want to use some hardwares can work for a distribution and not for an other. So really if you spend 1h searching in this forum and in the links below you will never have to perform some tweaks to get your hardware working.
http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/HCL
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport

So you have all the needed infos to make your choice, i built 3 computers for friends searching in this forum, the wiki and the UDSF and they never needed to tweak anything to get their hardware working.
That don't mean drivers development should stop but you have all the infos in the hand to prevent you any kind of hardware problems.

tormod

April 28th, 2006, 11:08 AM

Let me just list a few things that I have (UNwillingly) had to do to get Dapper running and up to speed:
Thanks for testing this all out! Please file bugs for each issue, or see if there are existing bug reports on this where you can provide additional information.

The advantage of the other OS is that the hardware manufacturers themselves make drivers etc and test them on that OS. For Linux and Ubuntu, this testing has to be done by the relative few developers and people like you and me in the community, actually having access to this hardware.

The Ubuntu developers are doing what they can to make Dapper stable and working-out-of-the-box. But, they have limited time and resources. We have to help out. Also be assured that, in contrast to all the eye-candy posters "spamming" this forum, the Ubuntu developers are not spending much time on Xgl and beagle.

(Disclaimer: I am a professional in computer graphics and effects, and have had my share of on-the-job experience with Unix-type environments, scripting and hardware debugging / profiling) Additonally, I have had my hard knocks of linux and unix education via Slackware, and two previous versions of Ubuntu, Hoary and Breezy
You can be a really valuable asset to the Linux/Ubuntu community! Please help us!

- Wireless Networking
Please buy wireless equipment from a manufacturer that contributes to opensource development. FSF recommends Ralink 2500/RT2400 and Realtek RTL8180 chipset based cards.

- Wacom tablet
A typical easy-to-fix bug, once the developers get the right information through your bug reports.

- Suspend /hibernate
This needs massive testing by the community. The developers do not have every laptop model in the world in their hands. And unfortunately the hardware often does not follow standards or has bugs, so each model has to be tested.

- Random hard system freezes
This could be the "evil" binary driver, yes. If so, it's very difficult to debug properly or fix without the source code.

So before you go off and get the really cool stuff like XGL and beagle working, please do what is promised with all of this hotplug / network manager/ synaptic styled stuff that is supposed to make hardware / software automatic and MAKE IT WORK.

Agree. And they try. However, they should also listen to the crowd who really think eye-candy is so important that they would choose OS/distribution on basis of this, and see what they can do in this direction at the same time. Eye-candy and new desktop tools are also competitive advantages, once the rest is working 99% perfectly. We wouldn't want to use twm on Woody nowadays (I know some people do) :)

PS: yes, even with all of this, I am excited about the progress that has been made with this release... some of the problems I mentioned above were completely unsolvable in previous versions of Ubuntu and other linux distros I tried.
Yes, it's only going one way - towards perfection and total world domination of free software ;)

frying_fish

April 28th, 2006, 11:14 AM

You just have to make sure that a) you have chosen hardware that does have the support and b) that you configure it correctly.

To do with the wacom tablet, I have one myself, didn't have to do any manual editing, it picked it up perfectly, just plugged it in and it works, can't get any better than that for "just works" can you.

Wireless, well if you had done some proper research and found yourself a decent wireless kit that was properly supported, note that ndiswrapper is just an API to implement windows drivers under *nix, so what can you expect, its not going to work as you would expect.

Also, the release isn't even out yet, its barely into beta testing, so would you really expect everything to be running perfectly, if so, compare to windows vista beta, I don't see a full set of all hardware working perfectly in that, or a full set of drivers for everything written in it, I installed it with a friend on his machine a couple days ago, it won't even play mp3's because there aren't proper sound drivers and such for vista yet, so stop whinging.

garba

April 28th, 2006, 11:55 AM

2- You shouldn't blame any linux distribution if you don't take the time before buying a computer to see if your hardware is compatible. Each person who takes 1 or 2h of search before buying a new hardware will never have problems.
So if you didn't spend this time don't blame anybody if your hardware need some tweaks to work.

I wish I could post this somewhere written in big glowing neon letters so that ppl will finally understand this. Once upon a time there were these wonderful things which went by the name of INDUSTRIAL STANDARDS. As of now, it seems it's no longer the case, at least when it comes to consumer electronics: hardware manufacturers invest time and energy to come up with crappy proprietary variants to the abovementioned standards as to tie their customers to their line of products. So what's the open source community to do, in order to provide its users with hardware support for this crap? Yep, you guessed it: reverse engineering all the way! Think of libgphoto for example: a tremendous reverse engineering effort to provide an interface for all those demented photo cameras out there which use proprietary transfer protocols rather than a plain, simple, standard-compliant interface. Last year I bought a canon camera, but now that i've found out the way they behave in this respect (they NEVER released the specs for their trashy protocol) I'm not gonna buy one of their products ever again. Plain and simple.

pauljwells

April 28th, 2006, 11:56 AM

Well! I was just about to start a new thread with my experiences, but it looks like this is a better place for it.

I've gone from hoary, through breezy to dapper. The breezy upgrade worked fine, the dapper upgrade didn't go so smoothly and the updates xorg a couple of days ago made it so unstable I decided to do a clean install.

AND I'm very glad that I did! Now it is completely stable, for me everything did 'Just Work' (tm). HP printer setup was almost instant, samba filesharing likewise (no need to hack around in the configs). Wireless networking setup with just a few lines added to /etc/networks/interfaces.

The biggest surprise, the ati fglrx config produced a dual head 3d accelerated xorg.conf first time of trying, no need to hack anything.

For anyone experiencing any kind of wierd instabilities I would recommend a clean install, especially if (like me) you had a few little 'hacks' in breezy... It was so easy I could have talked my Mum through it.

I regularly use a variety of OSs for one reason or another, (Solaris, Red Hat, XP, W2K, OS X, even Symbian) and for my purposes and tastes, dapper is just a short head behind OS X and eveything else is miles behind.

I guess I'm preaching to the converted here, but if dapper had the kind of third party hardware support that the commercial OSs get it would address all of nojjy's problems. As it is, I'm running some heavyweight CFD (taking 90%+ CPU) but my other apps are just as snappy and responsive as ever - try doing that on windows!!

Since dapper has been out I've not fired up XP at all (it's only used when I've no alternative), but more tellingly, I've only used OS X about 10% of the time.

Dapper is very definitely ready for my needs and if edgy keeps up the same rate of progress then it will be amazing.

tseliot

April 28th, 2006, 12:27 PM

- Random hard system freezes: ???? I don't know why, I get no error or log messages that might help me find out, but all I can suspect is that since they are kind of recent (and ONLY happen in Dapper), it might be the NDISwrapper that is controlling my wireless USB dongle. But that is only a guess, since nothing has told me anything!
1) I suspect a motherboard incompatibility with the kernel. If that's the problem you can't blame Ubuntu for it.

BTW What's the model of your motherboard?

2) And did you check the RAM? (in case you've got a faulty memory stick)

3) Keep in mind that Mark Shuttleworth isn't God (at least not yet) and he cannot grant the compatibility with every piece of hardware which is designed for Windows.

localzuk

April 28th, 2006, 12:51 PM

I meant simple tasks like double-side or multipage printing, or printing several documents at a time. Which Windows offers.

Well, as a person that prints thousands of leaflets double sided, booklet style etc... each month, I can say that I have had no problems.

It comes down to drivers again - which printer are you using? What driver? etc...

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 01:10 PM

Well, as a person that prints thousands of leaflets double sided, booklet style etc... each month, I can say that I have had no problems.

It comes down to drivers again - which printer are you using? What driver? etc...

I have to say I'm surprised to hear that. There's no way to print double-side unless you've got a duplex printer, the printing dialog doesn't even offer you the option. Same with printing several documents at a time (from Nautilus, that is).

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Stormy Eyes

April 28th, 2006, 01:49 PM

This is easier than apt-get install whatever, How? Guess I'll go back to driving my truck now.

Does your truck run Linux too? :) Ignore the people who were Windows "power users"; they've spent so much time becoming power users on Windows that they have an emotional investment in being able to use their skills no matter what OS they're running.

Seer

April 28th, 2006, 02:08 PM

I'm in 90% agreement with the OP, but it doesnt just apply to Ubuntu.

Hardware support for all linux distros is still a long, long way behind Windows. The gap has closed a little over the years but is nowhere near close enough.

The main two arguments a typical user will hear for switching to a *nix distro is that it's free, and can do anything windows can do.

False on both counts in my experience. It's free as long as you remove the cost of a new wireless network card, swapping that ATI for an Nvidia, the new TV card, that motherboard can be swapped for one where ACPI won't kill everything, that PCI>PCMIA cage is changed, the list goes on..... and you can't do everything you can do on windows when double side printing, using your tablet, having network connectivity are issues waaaaay beyond the abilities of the average home user.

As a rough estimate, to make my second PC linux-able with 75% of the functionality it has in Windows has cost me close to £300 over the last 12 months. Thats not including the wireless network I used for all machines and the media box downstairs all had to be ripped out and go back to being wired because one box on my network (guess which one) was impossible to manage even with supposedly supported WLAN nic's. I don't buy cheap brands, I go for household names such as Netgear, Belkin, Asus, Hauppauge, etc and yet you can guarantee that once that fresh new distro is up and running there are 1001 issues to get the hardware working, some of it just won't work (thus need to go and buy a replacement), and you will spend hours per day reading some newsgroup post on page 39 of a google search to see how to fix the fix that you found on page 26.

And this is coming from someone that loves a challenge, loves to solve problems, I am a Technical Architect designing CMS in mixed Unix/Solaris/Win environments for the largest pharma companies in the world, and yet I find *nix an incredibly frustrating environment in which to work.

Well I say work... but we have a joke at our company along the lines of choose linux to be challenged, choose windows to get something done.

Back to the point in hand, I think we all would live MS to be challenged properly by *nix. For that to happen there has to be a lot of users who migrate, users that generally speaking are nowhere near as technical as the people on these forums. Users that couldnt tell you what hardware they have inside the case, people who haven't the knowledge to choose (or even the choice!) of what hardware they get (Dell, etc), People who expect things to just work, people who would probably not even find these forums. People who are going to baulk at forking out £300 on new hardware when they could have just spent £90 on a vista license.

Hardware support is the SINGLE most important requirement for any OS to succeed, and I guess the reason for the amount of people (average users) who come to me for a linux disk, only to return within a week or two and ask me to reinstall windows (I'm guessing its about 95% of them who have returned) for them is hardware and hardware alone!

What frustrates me the most I guess is the fact that so much time, resource and expense goes on the 35th 'media player' to be released this week, on XGL, on other more trivial and frivoulous matters... I'm sure if that was pooled the hardware support could catch up with Windows in a year.

I know companies like ATI don't open their doors to Linux devs, I know people give up time for free, I know people like me and the OP come along and moan when we don't offer and programming skills to help, I know about all the great people invloved....BUT at the end of the day whether it's SUSE9, Dapper Alpha, Gentoo 2006.0... its a hardware lottery and it's the biggest thing standing in the way of nix adoption.

Yes I know you have heard it all before, but at the end of the day it's true and I don't see enormous improvements anywhere on the horizon even from Ubuntu which is the best in terms of hardware support I have experienced.

KrazyPenguin

April 28th, 2006, 02:46 PM

1. Dapper isn't released yet!!!
2. File bug reports.
3. God forbid you actually had to learn something!!!
4. Linux is amazing at detecting hardware. Everything on my computer works off of the live CD. I tried reinstalling XP on my computer a couple of weeks ago, and can you believe my sound driver and printer drivers were not found. Both of these were found using Dapper Live, infact everything was found correctly. I had to actually go searching through my house for my printer cd and my motherboard cd to set them up properly.
5. Hopefully one day Windose hardware support will catch up to Linux.
6. This is one of the most rock solid (if not THE most) beta releases I have ever tried.
7. Trolling these forums is not appreciated. (Thanks for the really nice title)
:twisted:

brentoboy

April 28th, 2006, 03:12 PM

nojjy & bou are right

2 years ago, I tried about 236 differnt linux versions on my laptop. Only three of them could use my wireless card: Mepis, Vector, and Ubuntu. In vector, I didnt like package managment, in mepis, I didnt like the fact that it was a one man show, ubuntu was a perfect fit.

in hoarty, everything just worked.
I thought breezy was a step in the wrong direction (I had more issues with breezy on the same PC than what I had with hoary) and dapper is even worse.

of course, dapper is beta, but when the same PC worked in hoarty and breezy (for bou) and now he has hardware problems... what to do?

Dapper needs to get several basic things right before we move on to do the 'cool' stuff. Dapper claims to compete with vista, and quite frankly, it is not even competing with xp. using wireless in ubuntu is a lot like using it in windows 2000 or 98--you have to find strange settings and tweek them in order to get anyhting more than very basic things to work.

Wireless encryption, reconnecting to dropped wireless networks, all these things need to work out of the box. (I know there are tools you can get to help with these issues, but that isnt out of the box--in xp, comlicated wireless options work out of the box)

printing used to work, now it has issues--printing is deathly critical. It is the bread and butter of most business environments. No business will stick with ubuntu if they have to call their IT guy every time they want to print a doublesided document.

these arent bugs and glitches, they are design problems. Bugs are things that break or dont work in the current version. These arent even in there. It isnt that wsa encryption crashes when you try to use it... it isnt in there at all. fixing lots of bugs before release time, yeah, that's possible. but Beta means that you are done adding features, and now you are just fixing bugs.

this feature set is not good enough to compete with xp. You might be able to compete with 2000, but I still put you in competition with 98. of course, other than secuirty, 98 wasnt such a bad thing to work with.

I love linux. Yesterday, I calculated the cost of the windows 2003 r2 server running terminal services (with TS licenses) and 2 coppies of XP, 3 copies of MS office Pro, 2 Adobe Photoshops/Illustrators, one Visiual Studio 6, one Visual Studio 2005 .... and all the other software I would have to purchase, that I get for free, with free suport from ubuntu. I save about $5000 (not counting the cost of ugprading in 2 or 3 years)

Its hard to knock something as wonderful as ubuntu, but nojjy & bou make a good point. Just becuase it is great, doesnt mean it is painless. Ubuntu should focus on basic features first--like a samba config file wizard that just works, and a smb-user manager gui, before they try to make wobbleing windows standard (I love my xgl install as much as the rest of them, but it is something I dont mind having to work for--wireless and touchpads on the other hand...).

--there's my two cents on the issue

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 03:14 PM

what to do?

File bugs because ffs, it's a freaking beta.

KrazyPenguin

April 28th, 2006, 03:26 PM

of course, dapper is beta, but when the same PC worked in hoarty and breezy (for bou) and now he has hardware problems... what to do?

--there's my two cents on the issue

What to do??

When Win ME came out what did people do??? Was that a step in the right direction???
People continued to use Win 98 and when XP came out I know a lot of people that kept using win 98.

If you feel Hoary or Breezy is better than Dapper, and as long as it works for you, then use it!!!

Don't go around bad mouthing Dapper. Compared to many other versions of Linux this Dapper is one of the best.

And for many people, it is a step in the "Right Direction" and this includes me.

;-)

vexorian

April 28th, 2006, 03:45 PM

I personally think that hard ware compatibility are the fault of the companies that make the hard ware. Simply put they should not just think about windows and should include drivers for most of the OS available. It is stupid to only care about windows when making hardware

localzuk

April 28th, 2006, 04:10 PM

What do you mean 'There's no way to print double-side unless you've got a duplex printer'? This seems obvious to me? Why would you need a driver to help you do it if you wish to do it by hand?

I own duplex printers - so use the duplexers. If i didn't use duplex printers, I would print one side, reinsert the pages into the printer and print the other side?

varunus

April 28th, 2006, 04:16 PM

He's referring to the fact that:

A. The current GNOME print dialog won't let you print just odd or just even pages, so duplexing is a pain.
B. The current GNOME print dialog won't let you print multiple pages per sheet; it ignores the setting.
C. The current GNOME print dialog doesn't do anything aside from send the document to the printer; and all of the bugs associated with this are ignored because a new print dialog is done. But it won't be released for 6 more months.

I can see why he's peeved...I am too.

stoffe

April 28th, 2006, 05:12 PM

I wish that so many people wouldn't knee-jerk to pledge their allegiance so quickly, and in some cases so vehemently. You're the ones hindering adoption, not the ones pointing out flaws.

The OP and other have valid claims, for instance the Wacom one which I also have, and filed a bug for (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/wacom-tools/+bug/40473). Someone said it worked for them, which sound really odd, because it just can't - unless it's a serial tablet.

Telling someone with complaints that it is a beta, and show how to file bugs is ok. Coming with practical tips is too, but then you should also acknowledge that it is a problem that needs solving better. This is someone who have found problems and want to help having them fixed, and gives his honest opinion on things. So what if he doesn't know the proper arcane protocol to adress the issues. Help him do that, then.

Comparing to other OS:s gets you nowhere. Nobody should care what Windows can't do, be concerned what Ubuntu can't - and help fix it.

Calling him a troll and other names, calling him stupid and all the other things in this thread is not "Humanity towards others", and frankly makes you look like any insecure teenager that just have to belong to the herd. Or slashdotters.

You should be ashamed of yourself. That is no way to build great communities, nor great software.

aamukahvi

April 28th, 2006, 06:01 PM

WiLLiE

April 28th, 2006, 06:12 PM

For me, Dapper works wonderfully. With compiz and all.

The only real problem I've had is that my Sony DVD-burner isn't able to burn dvd's anymore. Bugreport filed ofcourse.
But I suspect it's kernel related so I really can't blame Dapper for that.

Wireless on my laptop worked out-of-the-box.
Suspend on closed-lid works so-so. (After manual tweak)
I had to tweak the touchpad because it was extremly slow,
and the scrolling on the side wasn't activated.

I can't wait for Edgy Edge. Bring it on :)

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 06:19 PM

I own duplex printers - so use the duplexers. If i didn't use duplex printers, I would print one side, reinsert the pages into the printer and print the other side?

No you wouldn't. The printing interface doesn't give you the option to do that - unless, of course, you want to get the page order all messed up.

I never said it was a matter of drivers, it is a matter of a ridiculously lacky interface and I still can't believe they want to keep it for three years.

P.S. Well said Stoffe.

kscelt

April 28th, 2006, 06:26 PM

It's true that flaming is unwarranted, zealotry is no substitute for good development and problem solving. I feel the poster did confuse beta vs. final release expectations. I think current dapper is doing quite well for it's pre-release status.

He does have a good point, however, in the pan linux problems that exist with printing and numerous other hardware related issues that plague us. For Linux in general to become truly competitive as an alternative operating system for the general computer user - and that should be and is the goal - things should "just work".

A consortium effort is underway between major linux distributions and hardware companies regarding printing, and hopefully it will bear fruit. But there continues to be companies like ATI that are indifferent to linux users. Until that changes, users will struggle if they own those products. I personally have decided to not purchase hardware from such companies in the future, and that is unfortunate, but I just cannot justify spending money on hobbled products like a video card whose hardware mpeg decoding cannot be used.

As for Mr. Shuttleworth's statements about Edgy, I feel the poster's frustration bled over to a failure to understand or appreciate it's content. He was laying out the future path - his vision - of where Ubuntu development will go. That is totally unrelated to current beta or final release issues for Dapper.

I appreciated hearing his priorities and approaches for post-Dapper bleeding edge work. I thought it was quite exciting to hear that developers would have a high degree of freedom to explore newer technologies. I also felt that it was probably intended as a morale booster for the development team, as they slog through bug squashing on Dapper toward final release, an exhaustive grind. He was, I thought, letting them know that there will be room for their creativity and interests to be expressed after the hard work in a "freeze" environment to get Dapper done.

Thats good management and leadership. It took an unusual man with vision and moxy to start and underwrite Ubuntu, and he continues to exhibit those qualities.

cleentrax

April 28th, 2006, 06:32 PM

I too have experienced freezes, spontaneous reboots, and a non-working suspend and hibernate.

But we're still six weeks from launch, and hopefully some of these issues will be fixed.

On the bright side, nearly everything worked out of the box on Dapper beta, including video, sound, printing (without installing a driver!), wireless networking (with security enabled), and most of my special function keys.

Jefim

April 28th, 2006, 06:34 PM

OK, I want to talk too :p
1. I use Ubuntu mainly for working purposes (and, yes, I'm using Dapper just because I couldn't wait till the final release :D). To say the truth, I was shocked how much improvements there are in Dapper. Awesome work of awesome people.
2. Ubuntu detected and installed all my hardware except my wireless (Broadcom) card. But that's ok, since I got that working with ndiswrapper. Wireless is still a pain (for me) in Ubuntu, and overall wireless support is not good, but time will heal that, I think.
3. No out-of-the-box codecs is quite unpleasant (I mean w32). I know what the problem is and I know, that I can manually install most of them (I can't get latest wmv working, but that's nothing). I know that there is ogg, but it is not enough - mp3s rule the music world. Noone can deny that.
4. And I want better driver support! Not for me, - for all! I know, that it's not up to Ubuntu team to solve this, but this is a real problem of the linux world.
5. Ubuntu IS ready for Edgy everything. Why not? Improving overall stability and adding XGL can be done at the same time by different teams.

kaamos

April 28th, 2006, 06:47 PM

B. The current GNOME print dialog won't let you print multiple pages per sheet; it ignores the setting.
Case: I had to boot to VMware windows to print some huge pdfs decause I wanted to include 4 pages in one. That sucked. So there is still areas that desperately need developement, but nevertheless I'm very much looking forward to dapper/edgy/topaz/kde4/whatever-as-long-as-it-is-foss. 8)

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 07:04 PM

I wish that so many people wouldn't knee-jerk to pledge their allegiance so quickly, and in some cases so vehemently.

And I wish people wouldn't constantly start knee-jerk troll threads proclaiming that their problems mean something isn't ready.

You're the ones hindering adoption, not the ones pointing out flaws.

Yes, people posting in some troll thread in some linux forum are of course hindering adoption. Jesus...

The OP and other have valid claims, for instance the Wacom one which I also have, and filed a bug for (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/wacom-tools/+bug/40473).

That's a bug. Who said anything against posting bugs, especially as we are talking about a beta here?

Someone said it worked for them, which sound really odd, because it just can't - unless it's a serial tablet.
So maybe it is, or do you generally hold the opinion that people with different experiences must be lying?

Telling someone with complaints that it is a beta, and show how to file bugs is ok. Coming with practical tips is too, but then you should also acknowledge that it is a problem that needs solving better.

Nobody said it's not ok to point out bugs, however, turning this into a flamefest from the very beginning is not.

This is someone who have found problems and want to help having them fixed, and gives his honest opinion on things. So what if he doesn't know the proper arcane protocol to adress the issues. Help him do that, then.

Why? Shouldn't he know how to behave himself?

Comparing to other OS:s gets you nowhere. Nobody should care what Windows can't do, be concerned what Ubuntu can't - and help fix it.

The only ones who constantly compare are people who start threads like the ones at hand. And like it or not, if they are wrong, I'll point that out.

Calling him a troll and other names, calling him stupid and all the other things in this thread is not "Humanity towards others",

Personally I think that anyone who invoces the "Humanity towards others" argument to bolster his point has already lost the discussion. This is so meaningless, it's beyond descriptions.

and frankly makes you look like any insecure teenager that just have to belong to the herd. Or slashdotters.

Ah, I see. So if you do then name calling and insults are "Humanity towards others".

You should be ashamed of yourself. That is no way to build great communities, nor great software.
Blah. Yes, as we all know, the guys actually building the great software are always very polite and humane in their online conversations...

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 07:17 PM

I wish that so many people wouldn't knee-jerk to pledge their allegiance so quickly, and in some cases so vehemently. You're the ones hindering adoption, not the ones pointing out flaws. The only people hindering adoption are those who post useless threads about Ubuntu's apparent deficiencies and do not file bug reports, donate money, or contribute code.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 07:21 PM

And I wish people wouldn't constantly start knee-jerk troll threads proclaiming that their problems mean something isn't ready.

I don't want to flame, but would you say this is ready for regular use? Is that what you mean?

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/504/pantallazoimprimir6vw.png

We have an OS with a few VERY BASIC flaws. These flaws will be solved for Ubuntu's next release... which is supposed to be buggy, to the point that the devs recommend using dapper for everyday use.

So, if we want stability we're stuck with these stupid bugs until 2, 3 releases from now... do you know what I mean?

Please answer to myquestion, do you think that dialog IS ready for anything?

aamukahvi

April 28th, 2006, 07:26 PM

I don't want to flame, but would you say this is ready for regular use? Is that what you mean?
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/504/pantallazoimprimir6vw.png
Please answer to myquestion, do you think that dialog IS ready for anything?
It's a GNOME print dialog, man. No need to confuse the user with double-sided printing and whatnot. :D

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 07:26 PM

I don't want to flame, but would you say this is ready for regular use? Is that what you mean? Forgive my ignorance--because maybe my needs aren't as sophisticated as yours--but what's wrong with that dialogue? It's in Spanish, but it appears perfectly fine to me. Do you not like the colors?

GameGod

April 28th, 2006, 07:29 PM

It's a GNOME print dialog, man. No need to confuse the user with double-sided printing and whatnot. :D

aamukahvi, you're my hero. :D

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 07:31 PM

Forgive my ignorance--because maybe my needs aren't as sophisticated as yours--but what's wrong with that dialogue? It's in Spanish, but it appears perfectly fine to me. Do you not like the colors?

I don't like not having the option to print odd or even pages only (you know, so that I can use both sides of the sheets) and not having the option to print several pages on a single one. This is making me waste loads of paper.

Not being able to choose whether I want a document printed in color or b/w makes me waste color ink as well. Do you think these are sofisticated needs? elitist maybe?

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 07:38 PM

Do you think these are sofisticated needs? elitist maybe? Sophisticated? Sure. Elitist? No.

Maybe you'd prefer KDE, then. One of the frequent criticisms of KDE is that it sacrifices simplicity for functionality and ease of customization. The flip side of that, though, is that Gnome sacrifices functionality and ease of customization for simplicity.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 07:39 PM

I don't want to flame, but would you say this is ready for regular use? Is that what you mean?

I already said on page 2 of this thread that you won't find anyone who disagrees with you about the the Gnome print dialog needing major improvments. And I even pointed out also on page 2 that the devs are currently working on this very issue.

We have an OS with a few VERY BASIC flaws.

No, we have a Gnome print dialog that isn't very good. This isn't an issue for OpenOffice for example, which uses it's own print dialog and there's an easy workaround, you simply need to install a third party app that's readily available.

These flaws will be solved for Ubuntu's next release... which is supposed to be buggy, to the point that the devs recommend using dapper for everyday use.

Only that's not what the devs have been saying. Stop to misquote them only to bolster your whining.

So, if we want stability we're stuck with these stupid bugs until 2, 3 releases from now... do you know what I mean?

See above. Not true.

Please answer to myquestion, do you think that dialog IS ready for anything?
I already answered that on page 2 of this thread.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 07:40 PM

not having the option to print several pages on a single one. This is making me waste loads of paper.

You know what's funny. This very option is right there in the freaking dialog you have been complaining about for hours now.

valnar

April 28th, 2006, 07:47 PM

As someone who uses Windows primarily too, because all my apps run under Windows (duh), I absolutely have to agree with the replies that say picking the right hardware is paramount. You just can't expect Linux to work with all the hardware out there unless the manufacturer is providing Linux support themselves. This is even true of Windows and Microsoft.

Go find some ancient sound card from a company that is no longer around and try to get it working under Windows 2003. You can't. There is no driver for it. What if you had an older motherboard with ISA slots and needed to get an old ISA modem, video card or sound card working under it in Win2003 or XP? Welp, if there are no drivers, it won't work.

The analogy is a little backwards, but is generally true for Linux. You can't expect everything to work, old or new. Pick the right hardware for both Windows and Linux, and you'll be fine. Stay away from Windows driver "wrappers" if at all possible.

On the other hand, if you can get my ATI Radeon X1900 to work under Windows 3.1, I'd be forever grateful. ;)

-Robert

Robert

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 07:55 PM

I can't believe what I'm reading.

You know what's funny. This very option is right there in the freaking dialog you have been complaining about for hours now.

Yes, except it doesn't work. Prove me wrong.

Sophisticated? Sure. Elitist? No.

You're seriously saying that using both sides to print is sophisticated???

Maybe you'd prefer KDE, then. One of the frequent criticisms of KDE is that it sacrifices simplicity for functionality and ease of customization. The flip side of that, though, is that Gnome sacrifices functionality and ease of customization for simplicity.

I won't do that. I LOVE gnome. But it has nothing to do with ease of customization, heck I don't want to customize anything. I'm just asking to fill that giant blank empty space with a goddamn option to print on both sides. You already said that was too sophisticated, are you going to say that it would make the dialog too complicated too???

I already said on page 2 of this thread that you won't find anyone who disagrees with you about the the Gnome print dialog needing major improvments. And I even pointed out also on page 2 that the devs are currently working on this very issue.

That's entirely my point. They're working on it but it won't be finished for Dapper, will it.

Only that's not what the devs have been saying. Stop to misquote them only to bolster your whining.

First, ponting out flaws that just are there is not whining, at least I don't think so. Second, I'm going to run over what the devs said again and if that's not what they said I'll come back here and accept I was wrong, and know what? I'll be happy with it.

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 08:02 PM

You're seriously saying that using both sides to print is sophisticated??? Yes. I never print on both sides. Seriously. I'll photocopy on both sides... at work. But neither at work nor at home do I ever feel the need to print on both sides.

I won't do that. I LOVE gnome. But it has nothing to do with ease of customization, heck I don't want to customize anything. I'm just asking to fill that giant blank empty space with a goddamn option to print on both sides. You already said that was too sophisticated, are you going to say that it would make the dialog too complicated too??? Your choice, then. If you "love" Gnome, use it. If you "love" being able to print odd and even pages, use KDE.

First, ponting out flaws that just are there is not whining, at least I don't think so. It is when it's a thread entitled "Ubuntu is NOT READY for Edgy anything!" instead of a thread entitled "Some problems I've noticed--should I file bug reports on these?"

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 08:02 PM

I can't believe what I'm reading.

Hey, we are two then.

Yes, except it doesn't work. Prove me wrong.

You're right. Filed a bug yet?

You're seriously saying that using both sides to print is sophisticated???

Yes, he's seriously saying this. Obviously it's an option he never needed, as he wasn't even aware of the problem.

I won't do that. I LOVE gnome. But it has nothing to do with ease of customization, heck I don't want to customize anything. I'm just asking to fill that giant blank empty space with a goddamn option to print on both sides. You already said that was too sophisticated, are you going to say that it would make the dialog too complicated too???

FFS, stop trolling. This is not about customizing, this is about the kde print dialog having all the option you are looking for readily available and then some more you probably didn't even know existed.

That's entirely my point. They're working on it but it won't be finished for Dapper, will it.

No, it won't. You know, coding takes time. So what is your freaking point?

First, ponting out flaws that just are there is not whining, at least I don't think so.

And I never said it was. I said what you are doing is whining.

Second, I'm going to run over what the devs said again and if that's not what they said I'll come back here and accept I was wrong, and know what? I'll be happy with it.
Fine.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 08:07 PM

I'm going to run over what the devs said again and if that's not what they said I'll come back here and accept I was wrong, and know what? I'll be happy with it.

We can afford to take some risks with Dapper+1, because Dapper has turned out so well. We have a great answer for people who need super-solid
and super-predictable results: Dapper is still fresh, will continue to work on modern hardware for some time, and has plenty of legs in its support cycle left to run.

(...) The tradeoff, of course, will be that some of these new ideas will not
land perfectly first time. So there may be shakiness, or outright
bumpiness, in Edgy. We will for the first time possibly have to say
to new users "Edgy gets security updates etc for 18 months but seriously
consider Dapper if you need the most polished platform". I think that's
a worthwhile tradeoff, because I think a clean-the-pipes type release
like Edgy is a good way for us to re-energise the team and the distro.
Risk is good, when you give it a place and a time. And Dapper+1 is
the right time for us to take a few risks.

(...) We'll start of with a release that has a lot of edge and new tech (remember Warty?) and polish that up till we see the timing is right for a really polished enterprise "long term support" release, like Dapper. We've no concrete plans for the next Dapper, only
that we'll know a release or two in advance when the time is right.

(...) it will be a great opportunity to rock-'n-roll up our sleeves, play with new
ideas, kick some new tyres and of course dig some new foundations. We may
strike gold, we will likely uncover some dirt, but it should be fun and it
should be funky.

I don't think I misquoted anything, really.

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 08:09 PM

I don't think I misquoted anything, really. Did you notice how many times the word will (as in the future--June 1, 2006) occurs in the text you quoted? I see at least three times it appears in reference to Dapper.

Nowhere in that quoted text does it say, "This is no longer beta software. Everyone should be using Dapper before June 1."

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 08:13 PM

I don't think I misquoted anything, really.
Oh, you did.
You translated "We have a great answer for people who need super-solid
and super-predictable results: Dapper is still fresh." and ""Edgy gets security updates etc for 18 months but seriously consider Dapper if you need the most polished platform" into: The next release "is supposed to be buggy, to the point that the devs recommend using dapper for everyday use."

Seriously, you don't want to tell me that's not misquoting, do you?

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 08:32 PM

I'd appreciate not being called a troll. I'm not trying to bash Dapper, but point out that it has -to my point of view, like I said on my very first post- really basic flaws which I FIND are not acceptable on a "long term support release", and I'm quoting the dev now.

That is entirely my point. Double-side printing is essential to me, I'm glad it's not to you but I don't use a wireless connection on my desktop and I wouldn't go calling a guy who says he can't use his wi-fi connection a whiner just because I don't use that feature and I don't like what he says.

I'm feeling insulted here, so please cut it out.

Did you notice how many times the word will (as in the future--June 1, 2006) occurs in the text you quoted? I see at least three times it appears in reference to Dapper.

Nowhere in that quoted text does it say, "This is no longer beta software. Everyone should be using Dapper before June 1."

This is NOT going to be fixed before final, and that makes like four or five times I've told you. The devs, not me, described Dapper as a "long term support release" and that kind of release can't suffer from this kind of stuff -TO MY POINT OF VIEW-. I should be able to double print, I should be able to print on b/w, I should be able to share my folders with my other computer without thinking about it. You're telling me this can't be ready for Dapper? That's's no f'ing problem, just make the next release the "long term support release", make it solve that basic stuff and then you can go to town. That's what "not being ready for Edgy" means. It means that things still have to be polished.

It is when it's a thread entitled "Ubuntu is NOT READY for Edgy anything!" instead of a thread entitled "Some problems I've noticed--should I file bug reports on these?"

You're right. Filed a bug yet?

I filed bugs, and I got "wontfix". I told you, they're writing a whole new dialog so they're not touching this one. Did I say Dapper will have the old one?

So, helpme, you finally see what's wrong with the dialog? Should an option that doesn't work even be there?

P.S. And yeah, I might have exaggerated the dev's word, I'll give you that.

Toxicity999

April 28th, 2006, 08:37 PM

Edit: now that I have read your first post I get to the actual topic before my Edgy rant. They're doing what they can they took a few leaps of faith and are tuning up the splatter now. They delayed for good reason :)

Personally... and don't take this badly I didnt read all of your post, skimmed it anyway. My take on Edgy... well I forsee another version of ubuntu... once geared mroe towards the flash (not that kde isn't but you know, whatever.) From what I've gathered about Edgy is it will all about risks (Edgy... Risky... I get it! wooo heh.) I assume that will mean Compiz... by then compiz will be 'stable' even though I think it's pretty good now and I have in the past had it even running on older hardware... See the way it's going theyre trying to hold on to one cd installing for as long as possible for simplicity... Which is good in that respect but when you want to start loading all these things into it default theres only so much you can hack and slash out... that's why I believe eventuall we'll have ubuntu classic and ubuntu new so to speak (completely NOT a reference to the Coke fiasco ;) ) One focused more on content, and the new age, and one running the current course of supporting the late greats. It makes the most sense... realistically... the only other option is to simply develop 'New Ubuntu' and add all the shnazz to it and that's it... all of us are stuck with dapper or breezy... which isn't bad but we all like the feeling of running the latest software.. I'd die without knowing I was testing dapper... honestly... Or another option, which is more reasonable... develop Ubuntu+ so to speak, a debian repository cd we plop in to automate all the cool installation, compiz and all that and plop that into development seperately... that way we reduce the complex relations of a split or splinter and just go with what the fans are crying for, an addon CD... The devs are gods, automating installation of Drivers, XGL, Compiz, and so on would be reasonable... and allow us to avoid becoming a bleeding edge whoring community. Don't get me wrong I LOVE the eye candy for sure. But we need to keep Ubuntu simple as long as possible. The realistic solution is some type (types?) of addon CDs then 700mb is a cakewalk to add for the user. This would do everything speculated they plan to do with Edgy without being well... so edgy! All that I know ebout EE is purely speculation baswed on that already famous email fro mthe list. anywho... sorry for the boring rant... I felt like one. heh.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 08:46 PM

I'd appreciate not being called a troll.

Then don't act like one. Seriously, the Gnome print dialog is far from optimal, everybody agrees on that and it's being worked on and on top of it there's a third party app that has all the options available you are looking for.
Now, is this ideal? Certainly not, everybody agrees.
Can this be easily fixed? No, it's an upstream issue and requires time.
Does this warrent your reaction and constantly talking about Dapper being an OS with SERIOUS FLAWS (in caps, no less)? Certainly not, that in my book is just trolling.

That is entirely my point. Double-side printing is essential to me,

And that it's lacking from the dialog is a very valid complaint, everybody agrees on that. However, again, this does not warrent your kind of reaction and on top of that you seem to be misunderstanding (on purpose?) people who point out that it is an advanced feature. Believe it or not, for many people, probably for the maturity double sited printing is an absolute non-issue.

I'm glad it's not to you but I don't use a wireless connection on my desktop and I wouldn't go calling a guy who says he can't use his wi-fi connection a whiner just because I don't use that feature and I don't like what he says.

And nobody did such a thing.
It's not that you complain about this option missing, it's that you try to turn this issue into a major problem, write pages after pages about it, take it to be serious enough to call Dapper not ready, whatever that's supposed to mean, feel entitled to challenge me, though I already agreed with you that the dialog needs improvement, feel entitled to misquote the devs, just to make this great injustice of the missing options even worse that made me call what you are doing whining.

Did I say Dapper will have the old one?

Yes, as the new one isn't ready, that's obviously the only solution.

So, helpme, you finally see what's wrong with the dialog? Should an option that doesn't work even be there?

No, of course not. As I said, it's a bug.

Amon_Re

April 28th, 2006, 08:50 PM

I don't like not having the option to print odd or even pages only (you know, so that I can use both sides of the sheets) and not having the option to print several pages on a single one. This is making me waste loads of paper.

Not being able to choose whether I want a document printed in color or b/w makes me waste color ink as well. Do you think these are sofisticated needs? elitist maybe?

You know, i've been using ubuntu & gnome for some time now, and i never noticed that untill now :oops:

Amon_Re

April 28th, 2006, 08:53 PM

On the other hand, if you can get my ATI Radeon X1900 to work under Windows 3.1, I'd be forever grateful. ;)

Isn't there a third party driver package for Win31? they also have linux drivers... Snapp or something like that?

| MM |

April 28th, 2006, 08:59 PM

With regards to hardware support, and how distro's have varying degree's of support.

If this is true, then doesn't the question need to be asked: Why isnt there a centralised effort for Linux driver support? If the likes of Novell are willing to open up things like xgl/compiz, which are quite possibly killer apps for the desktop, would they not contribute to driver support as well?? I know it must be a product differrentiator (having better driver support) ... but it would be a huge plus for Linux in general??

Have one ungodly huge list of products, and akin to launchpad, have tickets for each regarding development status or support quality. Any distro could use the drivers ... You could even have a detection scheme during install, that just selects drivers you require and downloads them from such a database (given that the driver status was of a high quality).

Seer

April 28th, 2006, 09:07 PM

Go find some ancient sound card from a company that is no longer around and try to get it working under Windows 2003. You can't. There is no driver for it. What if you had an older motherboard with ISA slots and needed to get an old ISA modem, video card or sound card working under it in Win2003 or XP? Welp, if there are no drivers, it won't work.

So is that what linux is to remain? The OS of obsolete hardware?

I am sure there are people here who are like me, we have to have the new and spangly (why else would we be using dapper? :) ).

By the time any new hardware is supported in Linux there is 1 or even 2 generations better running happily on Windows with a 3 click installation.

Point in case my wireless network... humming along @ 108mbps on windows for over 18 months before and yet there still is no support for it in Linux and even 54mbps is limited to a few chipsets (unless perhaps you fancy giving your bandwidth to the neighbours) and thats why I had to get rid and go back to wired.

DVB support even with the good work of linuxtv, v4l etc is extremely limited especially if you want hardware DVBT as most people who come to me do.

Right there 2 hugely popular hardware technologies that normal non-techy people want and are unable to choose Linux because it aint possible on their current hardware and impossible for the average computer user to achieve without the expense of replacing perfectly working hardware or taking a degree in computer science.

I think the point is ... my general opinion is priorities are all horribly wrong in Linux. What gets the geeks like us (yes I include me or I wouldnt be here) excited is oooo ipv6....ahhhhhh XGL.... yay version 0.5367 of this beta media player, wow I only need 2 scripts and a hack to get this working... is a huge waste of resources and effort when the basics for the mass adoption to take place are as far away as they were 18 -24 months ago

Seer

April 28th, 2006, 09:08 PM

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 09:18 PM

Then don't act like one.

Sorry to take this personal, but I only wrote three posts about this issue -one stating the problem, the other two explaining to localzuk that a) it was not a driver problem, and b) you can't print on one side, then on the other.

Obviously the guy hadn't faced the problem -not because he didn't have exquisite printing tastes like me, but because he owned a duplex printing- so I just explained what exactly was going on to him. Is that trolling?

Then came you with your post about knee-jerking trolls who proclaim that their problems mean something isn't ready". And I just say, the printing options in Dapper are not ready for a three-year long term support release. I'm saying that these basic stuff should be solved before thinking about an "edgy" release.

And I explained that to you on my last message, yet you insist on your "whatever that means" rant.

It's not that you complain about this option missing, it's that you try to turn this issue into a major problem,

I never said it was a major problem nor a "great injustice", and I didn't write more posts about the issue than you did. Who's the one misquoting here?

You know what, I'm tired of this. You're right, Dapper is perfect and anyone who dares mess with it is a whiner and a bitch. I can misquote the other guy to finish an argument, too.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 09:20 PM

So is that what linux is to remain? The OS of obsolete hardware?

That's not what the poster you quoted said, not even remotely.

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 09:23 PM

I never said it was a major problem

You think it means dapper shouldn't be released, so yes, I'd say you seem to think it's a major problem.

You know what, I'm tired of this. You're right, Dapper is perfect and anyone who dares mess with it is a whiner and a bitch. I can misquote the other guy to finish an argument, too.
You already misquoted me more than enough, thank you very much.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 09:33 PM

You think it means dapper shouldn't be released, so yes, I'd say you seem to think it's a major problem.

WTF? I never said anything like that! Do I have to quote myself?

You're telling me this can't be ready for Dapper? That's's no f'ing problem, just make the next release the "long term support release", make it solve that basic stuff and then you can go to town. That's what "not being ready for Edgy" means.

I said Dapper, great as it is, shouldn't be a long term release while it has that kind of silly problems -and if I'm not mistaken I didn't say there were SERIOUS flaws, please quote me if I'm wrong-

Dapper +1 should be a bit less risky, solve the very few stuff that Dapper is still lacking and be the long term release. That's all I said.

Dapper mustn't be released? FFS, my English must be really rotten if I made you understand that.

BoyOfDestiny

April 28th, 2006, 09:35 PM

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 09:42 PM

WTF? I never said anything like that! Do I have to quote myself?

You said you thought the flaws were so serious that dapper, as in the way it is currently planned as a release with long term support, should not be released.

I said Dapper, great as it is, shouldn't be a long term release while it has that kind of silly problems -and if I'm not mistaken I didn't say there were SERIOUS flaws, please quote me if I'm wrong-

Dapper has very serious issues like printing or folder sharing

We have an OS with a few VERY BASIC flaws.

wagerrard

April 28th, 2006, 09:48 PM

helpme, I didn't say Linux didn't do that: I said it HAS SERIOUS ISSUES with it, and I don't think there's anything false with it.

But workers are the ones who are going to print documents, and the ones who will find out that Linux "doesn't do" what they need it to do. They shouldn't even have to call the IT guy, neither have to remember what gtklp is. It should just work and it should be done before going to town with "edgy" stuff.

That's my opinion, of course. Not an absolute truth.

Absolutely. If they can do it with Windows but need to chase down some guy from IT to make it work in Linux, why should they be happy about using Linux?

In addition to the simple inanity of excusing half-baked software by claiming "that's only for the admin to know", it isn't like admin's drop what they're doing and come running to help users. Needing to call an admin to get software to work is always taken as an indication of flaky software. And, rightly so.

awakatanka

April 28th, 2006, 09:51 PM

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 09:52 PM

In addition to the simple inanity of excusing half-baked software by claiming "that's only for the admin to know", it isn't like admin's drop what they're doing and come running to help users. Needing to call an admin to get software to work is always taken as an indication of flaky software. And, rightly so.
Whoa there, I never said "that's only for the admin to know". Thanks very much for making a great effort of misquoting me.

I also didn't say they'd have to get the admin everytime, my point was that there was an admin available to set the needed software up.

So please, the next time around attack what I actually said, not some silly strawman you build to have a better target.
Thanks in advance.

psylence

April 28th, 2006, 09:57 PM

Well let all people with hardware troubles buy new stuff to make it work with a linux distro, Thats totaly crap, everyone screams murder because vista has high system spec's and you probably need to buy new hardware. And you say buy linux hardware.

He doesn't have very exotic hardware. IF they get the candy in then more users will come with the same our other hardware troubles and they will go away again because some hardware doesn't work our takes hours of research doesn't work our a poster say buy linux hardware.](*,)

You buy hardware to run a specific OS on. If you are coming from a DOS/Windows background, you may find that foreign. It's horrible that it's true, but its the manufacturers fault, you have any number of eager developers ready to implement drivers if they're open their specs up. If you don't have drivers for the hardware, no amount of bitching on a forum will fix it, but getting supported hardware most certainly will.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 10:03 PM

You said you thought the flaws were so serious that dapper, as in the way it is currently planned as a release with long term support, should not be released.

I said dapper shouldn't be a long term support release, period. No way that's the same as saying it shouldn't be released.

The kind of flaws I'm talking about would be easily fixed six months from now, hence calling them "basic". And yeah I used "serious" (you were right on that one, I ran over my own messages and didn't see it) because they seriously affect my needs as a user. Not necessarily yours.

I'd like Ubuntu to reach as wide a range of people of possible, and in order to do that i think we must get rid of any flaw so stupid that we'd be ashamed to show a Windows user, at least if it's a release that's supposed to last three years. And I don't think Dapper is the right release to do that. You can agree or not, but please don't insult me. You were calling people trolls and whiners before I even came in, and the only thing I said was the printing dialog on the screenshot wasn't ready to last three years.

I wouldn't even be having this discussion if people hadn't jumped yelling "there's nothing wrong with it", "go to KDE if you don't like it" and "that's very sophisticated".

I don't think it's that hard to understand.

Amon_Re

April 28th, 2006, 10:05 PM

You buy hardware to run a specific OS on. If you are coming from a DOS/Windows background, you may find that foreign. It's horrible that it's true, but its the manufacturers fault, you have any number of eager developers ready to implement drivers if they're open their specs up. If you don't have drivers for the hardware, no amount of bitching on a forum will fix it, but getting supported hardware most certainly will.

Hell, even buying supported hardware can be a problem, if you have the unfortunate luck that you need a function no-one tested prior, and said function doesn't work, you're still boned.

Or if the driver breaks because the hardware is a newer revision you're still boned.

Bottom line is, stay away from bleeding edge if possible, try before you buy if possible (ask the sales figure if you can boot the machine with a live cd eg) and always make sure you have plenty of coffee.

Sofar i've only had one kit of hardware not working on linux, an Asus motherboard, all the rest of my hardware works, and i have alot of hardware ^^

Even my webcam is getting driver support lately (beta drivers tho) and it seems it's mostly VGA cards & wifi cards that are a problem these days...

aysiu

April 28th, 2006, 10:05 PM

Well let all people with hardware troubles buy new stuff to make it work with a linux distro, Thats totaly crap, everyone screams murder because vista has high system spec's and you probably need to buy new hardware. And you say buy linux hardware. The difference being that Vista makes you upgrade even if you already bought that hardware specifically for Windows. You have to change up hardware for Linux only if you bought it for Windows. Dapper isn't demanding you buy new hardware that already worked on Breezy.

Amon_Re

April 28th, 2006, 10:14 PM

The kind of flaws I'm talking about would be easily fixed six months from now, hence calling them "basic". And yeah I used "serious" (you were right on that one, I ran over my own messages and didn't see it) because they seriously affect my needs as a user. Not necessarily yours.

I think the proper terminology would be missing features rather then flaws (yea, it's semantics but hey)

There's alot of missing features in linux that still need resolving, your printing problem is one of them, wifi support is another Pandora's box.

I can't call these issue's flaws tho, because you *can* use printers & wireless cards, you just lack some features (like duplex printing, or the ability to easilly configure your wifi network)

Heck, i just noticed that Dapper doesn't do dhcp here, i have to start dhclient manually for some strange reason.

When choosing an OS you pretty much gotta take the good bits with the bad bits.
Atleast on linux you can ask (or even create) any features you might be missing.

I wouldn't even be having this discussion if people hadn't jumped yelling "there's nothing wrong with it", "go to KDE if you don't like it" and "that's very sophisticated".

From an implementational view, some of the things *ARE* sophisticated.
One of the many little things that annoy me is for instance the inconsistant printdialogue's in between applications (compare Gimp, scribus, OO.org & Dia's printing dialogue's eg) but i make do with what's available.

The suggestion of switching to KDE was a valid one, as it has the features you apperently need, i think you (and helpme) are overreacting.

Chill out, have a beer or two, it's weekend 8)

awakatanka

April 28th, 2006, 10:19 PM

The difference being that Vista makes you upgrade even if you already bought that hardware specifically for Windows. You have to change up hardware for Linux only if you bought it for Windows. Dapper isn't demanding you buy new hardware that already worked on Breezy.
He had hardware that worked on breezy, and he gets a answer buy hardware that works with linux.

Wireless sucks i have native rt2500 wireless card but still have to edit /etc/network/interfaces to get it to work. wep does work but after a restart its gone again and have to edit it again, wpa doesn't work at all.

And amon re is right its beer time ;)

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 10:38 PM

I said dapper shouldn't be a long term support release, period. No way that's the same as saying it shouldn't be released.

That's what I meant by saying dapper. Dapper as it is planed now.

You were calling people trolls and whiners before I even came in, and the only thing I said was the printing dialog on the screenshot wasn't ready to last three years.

No, actually you asked me if I thought it was ready for regular use, though I had already stated that everyone agrees that it needs improvements and that people are already working on these improvements.

I wouldn't even be having this discussion if people hadn't jumped yelling "there's nothing wrong with it", "go to KDE if you don't like it" and "that's very sophisticated".
See and that's why I call it trolling.
Nobody said there's nothing wrong with it.

In fact in my first post I told you of a third party app that will let you do what you want to do (sorry for trying to give support) and in my second I readily acknowledged that it needs improvement.

Also, nobody said you should go to KDE, some only dared to point out that what you are looking for is readily available in KDE and asked if you might not want to give it a try.

Finally, nobody said that's so very sophisticated, all people said was that this was a more advanced option. How they got this opionion? Because they weren't even aware of the issue as they never needed the functionality. That's a basic observation, not some lame excuse, no matter how hard you try to spin it.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 11:00 PM

That's what I meant by saying dapper. Dapper as it is planed now.

Then please make yourself clear next time.

I no longer care who said what, really, it's weekend as the fellow said. Please let's focus on what we mean: I agree that Dapper is GREAT and has lots of efforts behind. But I also agree that it still has some flaws, which can be minor for some or major for those who really need them; which could be easily solved before Ubuntu's next release -all that printing stuff certainly will- and which are regarded as basic by users of other OS, meaning they can't even imagine not having them right under their noses.

I believe that these flaws -or lack of features, as someone pointed- can be mended by 10/06. That if Dapper is rock-solid, the next release should be über-rock and correct these few flaws that Dapper still has. And when that's done, they can go for the bling.

Is there anything in what I said above that you don't agree with?

And, do you think the printing dialog on the screenshot is ready to last three years or not?

helpme

April 28th, 2006, 11:10 PM

Then please make yourself clear next time.

I'm sorry. I thought it was pretty clear in the context of the discussion. Turns out it was wrong.

I no longer care who said what, really,

On one hand I agree.
On the other, I really, really get upset when people try to constantly misrepresent what others said.

Please let's focus on what we mean: I agree that Dapper is GREAT and has lots of efforts behind. But I also agree that it still has some flaws, which can be minor for some or major for those who really need them; which could be easily solved before Ubuntu's next release -all that printing stuff certainly will- and which are regarded as basic by users of other OS, meaning they can't even imagine not having them right under their noses.

And in 6 months there will be other users pointing out other features they are missing and so on and so on.

I believe that these flaws -or lack of features, as someone pointed- can be mended by 10/06. That if Dapper is rock-solid, the next release should be über-rock and correct these few flaws that Dapper still has. And when that's done, they can go for the bling.

I think you are making a very common mistake here. The old "fix my pet peeve first, then go for the other stuff." However, that's not how things work, as going for the bling does not mean the other stuff won't get fixed. I'm pretty sure those working on the printing stuff in linux and designing printing dialogs are other people than the ones implementing inderect rendering in X.

And, do you think the printing dialog on the screenshot is ready to last three years or not?
Yes. Especially as the missing options are easily available to those who need them and as the app where those options are probably most needed, that is openoffice, already has them.

sublime

April 28th, 2006, 11:21 PM

you people are arguing over free software. i didnt read anything in this thread but i can already tell that its just people saying that one FREE os is better then another. its just about the most retarded thing ive ever heard. if you dont like it, tough. no one is forcing you to use it.

Bou

April 28th, 2006, 11:52 PM

On one hand I agree.
On the other, I really, really get upset when people try to constantly misrepresent what others said.

I feel the same about your part on this argument, but i'm not trying to misrepresent anything or to irritate you and I'm sure you're not either. So there's no need to fight over this.

And in 6 months there will be other users pointing out other features they are missing and so on and so on.

Then the devs should take easier and wait until dapper +2 to go to the wild side. I'm not talking about cutting-edge new features here, I'm talking about stuff everyone who comes from XP will expect to find on Ubuntu, things as obvious as being able to choose if you want to use color or black ink.

We've got a very solid and stable system right now. Why not keep it that way, polish it little by little and add the bling at a steady pace? Why do we have to rush things and enter an unstability cycle again?

I think you are making a very common mistake here. The old "fix my pet peeve first, then go for the other stuff." However, that's not how things work, as going for the bling does not mean the other stuff won't get fixed. I'm pretty sure those working on the printing stuff in linux and designing printing dialogs are other people than the ones implementing inderect rendering in X.

Not fix my pet's peeve. This is not about MY needs. The printing dialog is not an unworkable problem for me anymore, it's about Ubuntu keeping its face when a new user finds he can't do basic things with it. These issues will get fixed on a system that -we've been warned- might act "shaky and bumpy". I don't want that.

Yes. Especially as the missing options are easily available to those who need them and as the app where those options are probably most needed, that is openoffice, already has them.

I doubt you really believe it's ready to last three years, otherwise you wouldn't have insisted that it was being worked on. I frankly believe you're just trying to have the upper hand, but it's fine with me. I think I've made myself clear, and if I haven't I can only excuse myself. I'm not arguing over this anymore, this is retarded as sublime said.

Good night everyone, i'm off to sleep.

nojjy

April 29th, 2006, 12:42 AM

Apologies for appearing to start a flame war and run... I had actually forgotten that I posted this for most of the day. I'll sum up a couple of thoughts:

- bug reports. I definitely don't file enough of them, that's true.

- Hardware support. Thanks Frodon for pointing out the HardwareSupport page. I admittedly have to wean myself of the assumption that most hardware I buy in a store will work (thanks to the thousands and thousands of microsoft employees... are there even that many ubuntu USERS?). I did recently buy a nvidia graphics card knowing that it generally has the best linux support.

- beta software. I agree with brento boy's comments on this matter. Beta means the design phase is over, and it's just bug fixes and security updates from there... which means the underlying problems with the way some things work will just have to wait six more months to be addressed.

-jon

Seer

April 29th, 2006, 12:56 AM

brentoboy

April 29th, 2006, 01:21 AM

you know...hardware support is not ubuntu's problem.
Ubutnu outshines every linux distro, and windows. The only thing with superior hardware support is mac, and the software and hardware are from the same company.

when I installed my new computer, for windowsxp, I had to find a driver disk just to recognize my hard drive. The ubuntu installer--no issues whatsoever.

after the installer was done, ubuntu just worked. but for windows, I had to find drivers for every single piece of hardware--what a mess.

sure there are hardware issues, but our friends at ubuntu are getting together with dell, gateway, ... etc. and they are making incredible improvements. Ubuntu ships with better hardware support--out of the box than any other os bar none. and, as dapper closes in on its release date, it will only get better.
--
but there are things that have existed in warty that people complained about that still havent been adresssed by the "just works" philosophy. Gnome printing, wifi with wsa, switching wireless networks automatically when one drops, etc.

all the original post said was that these sorts of "essentials" are more important than wobble windows. (Im not knocking wobble windows, I wouldnt trade mine in for anything, I like xgl as much as the best of them) but it doesnt speak to the buisiness world, print dialogs do.

this isnt a flame topic, it is an opinion topic from a guy who wants to see the cake bake a little longer before it gets frosting.
--
helpme, had you ever noticed that the people you are so activly disagreeing with have been here a lot longer than you, we have all loved ubuntu a lot longer than you. And we have been helping people with thier ubuntu struggles for a while now. Cut us some slack for not calling it perfect just becuase it is excelent.

it isnt about whether or not ubuntu is the best option, it is about how it could be better. some people iron out problems by talking about them openly rather than ignoring them.

halitech

April 29th, 2006, 03:32 AM

I don't remember exactly when I started playing with Ubuntu but I know it hasn't been long. I started out like most here, long time winblows user who finally got fed up with the reboots, virii, malware and junk. I had tried playing around with various version of linux (mandrake 7, freebsd, xandros) but could never get things figured out. A month or so ago I heard about Ubuntu and figured "okay self, lets give it another try" so I did. only thing I didn't have working with a few hours was my printer (cursed lexmark) I orginally decided to dual boot and after a week, I decided to shrink my windows partition to give myself more room for Ubuntu (10 gig just wasn't cutting it) and I farked up royally. I decided at that point that windows was not going back on this system. Luckily I have another system that my girlfriend uses and it is staying with win2000 where the Lexmark 3in1 works fine. Now when I need to buy another printer, I'll be doing more research and asking the folks on this forum for input because every problem I've come across, someone else has already had it and asked in here so a big thank you to everyone who was braver then me years ago and struck out in this brave new world of linux so I could learn from your mistakes and problems :)

localzuk

April 29th, 2006, 10:10 AM

I still don't understand? If I have a 4 page document that I want to print double sided, I would select print and tell it that I want to print pages 1 and 3. Then once I had printed them I would turn them over and print pages 2 and 4 on the back.

How does the interface come into it. If you are printing a large document duplexed by hand then you are not being very sensible about it - you should use the right equipment for the right job. A simplex printer should not really be printing duplex at all.

What option are you saying is missing? The 'print odd pages/even pages' option? Or the bit in, for example an epson driver, that allows you to select 'manual duplex' which prints one side and prompts you to turn it over and then prints the other side. In both of these cases, I think it is unneeded. Both of these options are pointless - you should be using a printer that is capable of duplex rather than messing around with fake duplex.

Bou

April 29th, 2006, 10:33 AM

I still don't understand? If I have a 4 page document that I want to print double sided, I would select print and tell it that I want to print pages 1 and 3. Then once I had printed them I would turn them over and print pages 2 and 4 on the back.

No. You can't do that either. You can't set which individual pages you want printed, you can only specify a range - you can print pages 1 to 3, but you can't print pages 1 AND 3.

You can, of course, print page 1, then turn it around and print page 2, then take another sheet and print page 3 and turn it around... try doing that with a 50-page document while you're supposed to be working on something else.

How does the interface come into it. If you are printing a large document duplexed by hand then you are not being very sensible about it - you should use the right equipment for the right job. A simplex printer should not really be printing duplex at all.

Another solution would be having a guy who prints all my documents, you know, a guy to print every page and then turn them while I'm doing actual work. Unfortunately I can't afford paying a guy for doing that, and I can't afford buying another printer to do something that should be dead simple with the one I already have.

That "you should use the right equipment for the right job" sounds to me like "if you don't have a duplex printer you shouldn't be printing double-side". Guess I must have misquoted you too, haven't I.

What option are you saying is missing? The 'print odd pages/even pages' option? Or the bit in, for example an epson driver, that allows you to select 'manual duplex' which prints one side and prompts you to turn it over and then prints the other side. In both of these cases, I think it is unneeded. Both of these options are pointless - you should be using a printer that is capable of duplex rather than messing around with fake duplex.

Well that second option would be finebut I hadn't even taken it into mind. I was talking about the first one, but it doesn't really matter since none of them really make any sense to you. All right, I'll scrap my printer and go buy a new one.

Talk about free software. Jesus.

duality

April 29th, 2006, 02:03 PM

ive tried dapper on various pc's, with different sorts of hardware , got everything working on each one.
so stop expecting a "windows experience" and take some time to actually learn linux, and plz stop complaining about the little things, theres always workarounds. kthnxbye

helpme

April 29th, 2006, 02:14 PM

How does the interface come into it. If you are printing a large document duplexed by hand then you are not being very sensible about it - you should use the right equipment for the right job. A simplex printer should not really be printing duplex at all.

I think you missed some things here:
1. There is absolutely no reason why the funcionality that is readily available form Cups shouldn't be accessible to the user. This isn't good and as the devs are working on a better solution, they seem to agree here.
2. I don't think the buy the right equipment argument holds any water. You might be right when it comes to people who need this stuff 3 times a day, but what about people who only need this very rarely and whos printing needs are otherwise met by a simple, cheap printer?

Really, I think I made it very clear that I feel Bou is overracting, that however doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement, to put it mildly.

localzuk

April 29th, 2006, 02:58 PM

No. You can't do that either. You can't set which individual pages you want printed, you can only specify a range - you can print pages 1 to 3, but you can't print pages 1 AND 3.

I'll give an example. I have a 3 page document in Open Office Writer. I have a laserjet 5 printer using the HP drivers (default). I go to print and in the 'Pages' box I type 1,3 to print pages 1 and 3.

This works fine.

That "you should use the right equipment for the right job" sounds to me like "if you don't have a duplex printer you shouldn't be printing double-side". Guess I must have misquoted you too, haven't I.

I think it comes to this: Don't buy a wrench and expect it to work as a hammer. You can do some basic hammering with a wrench but nothing proper. So doing the occasional 3 page document is fine - when you start doing more than that then you shouldn't complain when it doesn't work properly, or slows you down. Buy a duplexer, many HP inkjets have them as add ons (quite cheap too), as do nearly all their laser printers (not so cheap).

All right, I'll scrap my printer and go buy a new one.

I think you are over-reacting. I used to use a Brother home laser (simplex only) and do duplex printing with it. I only ever did a few pages though as it was too annoying to do too many (input tray was too small, jammed too often, I put the paper in the wrong way round too often etc...). I then decided to sell that printer, put that money and a bit more into a different one. Why is this so difficult? I can understand that money is not always available but this is no reason to take it out on this distro - it does what it is supposed to do just fine.

localzuk

April 29th, 2006, 03:03 PM

I think you missed some things here:
1. There is absolutely no reason why the funcionality that is readily available form Cups shouldn't be accessible to the user. This isn't good and as the devs are working on a better solution, they seem to agree here.

What functionality is missing? I cannot find any. I can select which pages I wish to print just fine.

2. I don't think the buy the right equipment argument holds any water. You might be right when it comes to people who need this stuff 3 times a day, but what about people who only need this very rarely and whos printing needs are otherwise met by a simple, cheap printer?

Because those needs are not met by that printer. See my reply to Bou regarding buying a wrench and using it as a hammer. If you buy cheap equipment you should expect it to have issues. You should choose the equipment for a job depending on what you want it to do, not by price and then expect it to what you want even though it isn't designed to do that.

Really, I think I made it very clear that I feel Bou is overracting, that however doesn't mean that there isn't room for improvement, to put it mildly.

There is always room for improvement. I would love to have the 'booklet printing' option available as with some HP printers (auto scales your document and arranges the pages in the correct pattern and duplexes them). This would save having to do it via PDF's. But then I don't expect this to be available, as it is a feature of the high end printers themselves, not the software.

Bou

April 29th, 2006, 03:55 PM

I'll give an example. I have a 3 page document in Open Office Writer. I have a laserjet 5 printer using the HP drivers (default). I go to print and in the 'Pages' box I type 1,3 to print pages 1 and 3.

This works fine.

There are plenty of formats that can't or shouldn't be printed with Oo, mind you. Take PDF or ODT files created with Abiword. I have 20 PDF documents right here waiting to be printed, 15 pages each. Can you explain to me how to do what you're saying?

I think it comes to this: Don't buy a wrench and expect it to work as a hammer.

So I guess that explains why I can't choose to print a document on black ink, I should have bought a b/w printer. For God's sake, stop saying my printer is not ready for double-side printing, then saying you can do it with Oo. I'm not trying to use the printer to paint the goddamn wall of my house, I'm trying to print documents on both sides. I could do that on W95 without thinking about it.

Bou

April 29th, 2006, 03:55 PM

Sorry, duplicate post.

aysiu

April 29th, 2006, 04:01 PM

There are plenty of formats that can't or shouldn't be printed with Oo, mind you. Take PDF or ODT files created with Abiword. I have 20 PDF documents right here waiting to be printed, 15 pages each. Can you explain to me how to do what you're saying? I don't know if it's just because I'm using KDE, but in my Adobe Acrobat Reader print dialogue, I can print odd and even pages.

Bou

April 29th, 2006, 04:26 PM

I don't know if it's just because I'm using KDE, but in my Adobe Acrobat Reader print dialogue, I can print odd and even pages.

I don't know if it's because of KDE or Acrobat reader, I've never used it since Evince is Ubuntu's default PDF reader and works so well.

That is a good print dialog. This one, it's lacky for me and it's the one most applications use right now:

http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/504/pantallazoimprimir6vw.png

Several people have told me that I'm overreacting - it might be because of the language barrier that I could be sounding more vehement that I mean to, but certainly hearing people say that my printer is not the right tool for double-printing, when they say that they can do it just fine on Oo on the next paragraph makes me a bit nervous.

It's not even about printing, I don't even care about that - it's about having very obvious issues just under your nose and pretending that you don't see them.

aysiu

April 29th, 2006, 04:33 PM

It's not even about printing, I don't even care about that - it's about having very obvious issues just under your nose and pretending that you don't see them. I can't speak for anyone else in this thread, but I'm not pretending anything. I think you have very specific needs and you're genuinely frustrated that they're not being met.

I, however, have never had issue with the print dialogues; I've never felt the need to print double-sided; and, I appear to be able to print double-sided, and it may be because I use Adobe Acrobat Reader and KDE.

Ensnared

April 29th, 2006, 05:38 PM

aamukahvi

April 29th, 2006, 06:11 PM

I, however, have never had issue with the print dialogues; I've never felt the need to print double-sided; and, I appear to be able to print double-sided, and it may be because I use Adobe Acrobat Reader and KDE.
It's not KDE. I have the same under GNOME.

localzuk

April 29th, 2006, 08:13 PM

There are plenty of formats that can't or shouldn't be printed with Oo, mind you. Take PDF or ODT files created with Abiword. I have 20 PDF documents right here waiting to be printed, 15 pages each. Can you explain to me how to do what you're saying?

I would say that your issue lies with 2 specific programs - Evince and Abiword. Evince is a part of ubuntu but is still a young program (yes, I admit this is an excuse and is not a valid reason - but then I don't use evince. I use xpdf, kpdf or adobe acrobat) - this should be improved, abiword is not a integral part of ubuntu, so I would suggest reporting it direct to the abiword dev's. I would say that both these issues should be reported as bugs/requested features and would very easily be added in future releases (as the code already exists in other gnome-centric applications).

So I guess that explains why I can't choose to print a document on black ink, I should have bought a b/w printer. For God's sake, stop saying my printer is not ready for double-side printing, then saying you can do it with Oo. I'm not trying to use the printer to paint the goddamn wall of my house, I'm trying to print documents on both sides. I could do that on W95 without thinking about it.

No, I would say that if you print the occasional small document in pure black, a colour inkjet is fine. If you do it more regularly, you should have a laser printer - designed for the job, therefore reducing any costs with consumables you have.

Please don't swear! This site is for everyone to enjoy and learn - not for anyone to get annoyed on.

localzuk

April 29th, 2006, 08:22 PM

I think Bou is reacting as any frustrated user would when not being able to do something as basic as this. It's a no-brainer to tell that the lack of these options in the Gnome printing-dialogue makes it vastly inferior to the one found in Windows and most other places.

I would disagree strongly on this point - having a print dialogue that changes depending on the driver (as in windows) is extremely off putting. (HP driver printer dialogues are vastly different to Epson ones).

There is no option to print specific pages, and there is no option to print even and odd pages. This is just stupid - it's pretty much like not having a volume-control on a mediaplayer - sure, you'll still be able to use the mixer to adjust the volume, but that isn't the point. It's basic functionality in the interface, and not having it is just stupid. But to be honest, I've seen too much of these things in Gnome to be very surprised - it's looking shinier and prettier with every release, and it's getting a lot of new functionality, but still simple things like this remain missing.

I admit, this is an issue in the specific applications mentioned - but it is not specific to gnome in general. This needs to be sorted out in those apps, not gnome.

Requiring a duplex printer to do two-sided printing is also quite daft. Moreso since the duplex functionality of most printers is controlled through the driver UI, so it may not even work at all. Maybe one needs a specific duplex-printer where the two-sided options aren't controlled through the driver. It's not about using a wrench to drive in a nail (which, as I can personally testify, is quite possible to do), but more about requiring a different type of hammer to drive in a different type of nail.

I still disagree - if you want to do a task you must use the tools designed for the job. If you use tools that aren't designed for that job, I believe that you don't have any grounds to complain.

Printing two-sided with a simplex printer is a cakewalk in Windows (and MacOS, and KDE, and OpenOffice, etc). But this obviously isn't the case with Gnome, which obviously and understandably causes frustration for Gnome-users wanting to do this sort of printing. I for one don't even see how the lack of such an option ties into the design philosophy of Gnome, but that's me, and after 5+ years using Gnome, I recently switched to KDE mostly because of that design philosophy.

I agree. KDE is much better than Gnome. However, I still disagree that this is the fault of gnome. More the fault of the applications in particular. Gnome strives for a different market than KDE. Gnome aims for simplicity, whereas KDE aims for control and GUI capabilities. If you want to be able to mess then use KDE.

Bou, I honestly think you would feel more at home in KDE (e.g. Kubuntu) than in Gnome, as such options are readily available there, and the various configurable settings in the interface aren't hidden away in some obscure Windows registry-clone. But it's really just a matter of preference.

Again, I agree. The kde printing dialogues are much more advanced - complete with filters and other wonderous things (that I must admit I have never used).

Anyway, I don't agree that things like this is any reason not to experiment more with Edgy - this issue (and those like it) is something that has to be worked on by the Gnome developers, and it isn't really an Ubuntu issue as much as a Gnome issue (all distros will lack this option when using Gnome). For a normal user it may be difficult to see the difference, and quite frankly, a normal user shouldn't be required to.

Agree, it is specific to the apps. Ubuntu should experiment more. The bugs with printing should be fixed by the evince team and the abiword team.

aysiu

April 29th, 2006, 08:37 PM

Gnome strives for a different market than KDE. Gnome aims for simplicity, whereas KDE aims for control and GUI capabilities. If you want to be able to mess then use KDE. I tried to make this point earlier in the thread, and all I got from Bou was that she/he "loves Gnome."

I think people need to use what works for them. If Gnome isn't working, use KDE. If nothing Linux is working for you, maybe you need Windows. I don't need Windows, but that's just me. It seems Bou has some choices to make.

Ensnared

April 29th, 2006, 08:45 PM

I would disagree strongly on this point - having a print dialogue that changes depending on the driver (as in windows) is extremely off putting. (HP driver printer dialogues are vastly different to Epson ones).While the driver settings are different, the actual print dialogue (where you can click "settings" and configure the driver for the current printjob before printing) is pretty much the same for all printers in Windows, just like it is if you're using only Gnome-apps, or only KDE-apps.

I admit, this is an issue in the specific applications mentioned - but it is not specific to gnome in general. This needs to be sorted out in those apps, not gnome.No. This is the Gnome print-dialogue - it's the same in Gedit/Evince/Galeon/Evolution/Whathaveyou (ok, some of these may be Gtk-apps, not Gnome-apps - can't say for sure. If they're only Gtk-apps, the print-dialogue may be different). Basically, if you want to print from a Gnome-application, this is the dialogue you'll be using.

I still disagree - if you want to do a task you must use the tools designed for the job. If you use tools that aren't designed for that job, I believe that you don't have any grounds to complain.The job is to print. He's using a printer. His printer is capable of printing two-sided in every other OS, and several places in Linux. You can't say the printer is the problem. Using the "odd pages" and "even pages" selection is how these printers are designed to get this sort of job done. Don't believe me? Check just about any user manual for a regular non-duplex printer - you'll find it described there.

I agree. KDE is much better than Gnome. However, I still disagree that this is the fault of gnome. More the fault of the applications in particular.No. See my point above about the Gnome print-dialogue. This isn't application-specific for Gnome applications.

Again, I agree. The kde printing dialogues are much more advanced - complete with filters and other wonderous things (that I must admit I have never used).Exactly :) And the beauty of it is, if you don't want to use it you don't have to worry about it. That's a lot better than not having the option if you do want to use it, atleast in my opinion.

megamanXplosion

April 29th, 2006, 09:08 PM

I agree with the original poster concerning printing tasks. The user should have the option to print on both sides of the paper being used. This option will not complicate the interface. After reading through this discussion one would think some of these users would have hernias if an operating system were actually designed to operate.

Fedup

April 29th, 2006, 09:40 PM

After reading through this discussion one would think some of these users would have hernias if an operating system were actually designed to operate.

That's Linux users for you:

We can't use the Windows key for anything! That's a WINDOWS key and we don't do anything like that in Linux!!
You want to be able to actually PLAY RealVideo and QuickTime files??
You want video files to play INSIDE a webpage??
You want JAVA to actually WORK on a webpage??
You want CD's to be automounted when you insert them and to be able to press the EJECT button to get the damn thing out again??
You actually want to be able to edit audio|video|swf files??
You don't know what you doing and you expect US to actually help you?
You haven't spent the last week trolling through the FAQ's and HowTo's on and hundreds of Google pages and want a SIMPLE answer to your question??
You actually WANT to be able to USE Linux rather than just sit and look at the screen and wait for the next batch of updates to arrive??

](*,)
We've all seen it, and it gets boring after a while.

| MM |

April 29th, 2006, 10:29 PM

As for driver support, you can only hope for so much, its not realistic to assume 100% compatibility with all incarnations of pc hardware. No doubt there are oversights, where popular devices don't function as intended, and these do need instant attention in Dapper. But it comes to a point where the onus should be shifted to the manufacturers. Who knows when thats going to happen?? When Linux gets %10 of the desktop market??

As for printer support, i agree it needs attention. Furthermore, I cant fathom arguments against Print dialouge developments in GNOME. I think this kinda functionality HAS TO EXIST. In my mind all you would need would be a tab for the basics, and a tab for advanced functionality. Then all would be catered for without the user being confronted with too many options.

Anyway this thread is probably dead now.

shuttleworthwannabe

April 29th, 2006, 10:38 PM

I have a few words t ospare on this topic: mission critical work should not be performed on Linux systems, and even more so on develeopment releases. There is always be something not working the way you want it to work the time you wan tit to work. It may just work, if you spend time figuring it out (spend hours on forums like these, and google a bit). But tell me who has the time, when the world is talking productivity and the linux world is still hacking away problems. A simple thing like a bibliography (yes, before you say anything, I know about bibus, and I also know that things are not that easy to work there as well, at leats not for everyone), needs a mindset of genius. I must be able to just start writing and inserting the references and format them the way I am expected to produce professional quality publications. Why does it have to be so hard?

Have you also tried printing from Adobe reader? There are no customization options at all (duplex printing, multipage, etc).

The simplicity of windows is what we want to see in linux. I see we are going in that direction: gdebi is an excellent example, and so is automatix, easyUbuntu, etc. Get the system runnin gin no time so that you get to do your business on time and efficiently. Just plug the damn thin in it and it should jsut work. Why do we have to sit there and try and figure out whta the hell went wrong. and if it did go wrong, at least one should know where to look for a solution.

Granted hardware vendors do not "care" for linux OS, and thus we have to be aware as consumers that not all hardware is linux complaint. But even when the hardware is linux complaint there are issues.

Before investiging in XGL and other eye candy (just because vista is doing it and we have to keep up with the jones's) stuff, lets get our act togethr and make an OS that will just work.

I feel Ubuntu is moving in the right direction (SUSE is the other). They are listening to the USERS like us and are making an OS that WILL just work someday.

What we need is a robust and reliable system: mission critical work to be done efficiently, and no matter what people say about windows, it allows users to do things reliably and efficiently.

Linux is great for some, but not for all; not yet. I despise windows with a passion (especially how it ruins verything with its idisynchratic registry entries) but for what I need to use it it just works. I am very careful (like all users should be on nay system) about security issues, so I will not use that as an issue against windows (a system as secure as its user wants it to be). Linux is more secure (also because not many people are using it). I prefer linux over windows anytime, because I enjoy novelty and fun: windows does not let me have fun: but it does make me work (and earn my bread and butter).

Until we have a system that will just work, we will just have to do with what we have- dapper is a step in the right direction.

Thanks,
Sh

manicka

April 29th, 2006, 11:05 PM

While there has been some constructive discussion here, there has also been some comments that break our forum guidelines.

Please keep on track and try not to let your emotions become involved.

aysiu

April 29th, 2006, 11:12 PM

Linux is great for some, but not for all; not yet. Same could be said for any operating system.

gingermark

April 30th, 2006, 12:23 AM

My gut feeling is that the final release of Dapper will, for my system and my needs, be a rock solid distro, that might however need some tweaking to get working perfectly. In that situation, I would be happy for Dapper+1 to be Edgy,

Of course, if Dapper has problems that are important to a user then that user doesn't want to have to wait 10 months for such a problem to be fixed. I can understand that.

Yet a distrubution will never be perfect for everyone's hardware and everyone's needs. If Dapper+1 was to be Elegant instead of Edgy it might still have problems. And we might then be having this discussion about Dapper +2.

Warty was happily used by many people, and I honestly can't believe Edgy would be worse than Warty. I just think if we're going to have a bleeding edge release then, for most of us, October will be as good a time as any.

localzuk

April 30th, 2006, 09:33 AM

The job is to print. He's using a printer. His printer is capable of printing two-sided in every other OS, and several places in Linux. You can't say the printer is the problem. Using the "odd pages" and "even pages" selection is how these printers are designed to get this sort of job done. Don't believe me? Check just about any user manual for a regular non-duplex printer - you'll find it described there.

No, I don't believe you sorry. I have an epson colour printer here - it has no mention of duplexing in its manual. It isn't advertised as being able to do duplex printing (manually or not). However, the driver in windows and mac do allow me to select 'manual duplex' where it prompts me to turn pages over. I do not use this. It is as simple as this - it doesn't automatically duplex, therefore it is not a duplex printer. You can force it to do duplex but it is not designed, built or marketted for that purpose.

So, the morals of this story are:

1. Use KDE :D
2. Use a duplex printer if you wish to duplex print.
3. Report bugs rather than start flame wars.

helpme

April 30th, 2006, 12:24 PM

What functionality is missing? I cannot find any. I can select which pages I wish to print just fine.

Stop being silly. What's missing has been pointed out again and again and again. How about being able only to print odd pages?

Because those needs are not met by that printer.

No, they are met perfectly fine by the printer and by cups. The only problem is that the print dialog doesn't expose the options needed.

There is always room for improvement. I would love to have the 'booklet printing' option available as with some HP printers (auto scales your document and arranges the pages in the correct pattern and duplexes them). This would save having to do it via PDF's. But then I don't expect this to be available, as it is a feature of the high end printers themselves, not the software.
Why? Where's the law saying this can't be done with software. Anyway, we are talking about funcionality that is there, but simply not accessible.

However, I still disagree that this is the fault of gnome. More the fault of the applications in particular.
No, it's the Gnome print dialog, so it's a Gnome problem.

Gnome strives for a different market than KDE. Gnome aims for simplicity, whereas KDE aims for control and GUI capabilities. If you want to be able to mess then use KDE.
Please tell this to the Gnome/GTK devs currently putting a lot of work into a better print dialog that will let people access the options that cups offers. I think they'd be very interested to hear that what they are doing is against what Gnome is all about...

.t.

April 30th, 2006, 01:38 PM

I haven't bothered to read all 19 pages, but I've the first post. Remember I'm using Dapper, and that these are my opinions on the OP's points.

1. The Debian package management system is perfect, like a circle, and I love it. There's no where-do-you-want-to-install-this, wrong-DirectX-versions, BSODs, or typical-or-custom-installation. Of the 18000 or so packages in the Ubuntu repos, you can just install by five/six clicks: 1) Open Synaptic; 2) Click Search; 3) Search for your package; 4) Press OK, or, even, press Enter; 5) click apply; 6) Click OK. This is better than double-click setup.exe; click English; click OK; click Next; click I agree; click Next; click Next; click Next; click Finish; click OK. That's ten clicks. If a software package isn't in the repos, compile it yourself, or add another repo by clicking Synaptic->Settings->Repositories->Add. Done. If you don't wanna add a repo, download the .deb. Double-click it and install using (I think it's called) GDebi. C'est parfait.

2. In the upcoming Windows Vista, the privilege system is the same as in Ubuntu. If you require a root action, you type your password, (or just) click OK. Get used to it. If you were a virus, and you didn't need a password for a root action, you could just simulate the OK-click yourself. The password method is just safer. @clehel, you're just conservative; change your ways - XP isn't Ubuntu, and it's (and I quote myself) "full of crap".

3. When I put a CD in XP, it pops up asking what I wanna do. The same happens in Dapper. I put the CD in. If it has music and other files on it, I get a choice: play the music, open the directory where the CD is mounted, or do nothing. If I plug in a USB storage medium, again, the same. The end-user, unless they wish, doesn't have to touch the console.

4. The whole point of switching completely to Ubuntu, in my opinion, is to support FOSS. Next importantly, it's to stop viruses. Finally, it's for a change. If you can't switch permanently, keep a Windows partition on your system and dual-boot. I use Wine for a couple of Games, and it works just fine, thank you. Again, it's better, as it's FOSS.

5. If you don't like the console, don't use it. Ubuntu has the best hardware detection I have ever seen, and it has magically installed all the hardware I've thrown at it. If you can get internet access, do you know what the largest human-readable documentation resource is? Google. And, of couse, the Ubuntu Forums.

6. If you want to destroy the Microsoft monopoly, then do you know what I suggest? Do what I do, and advocate the use of Ubuntu. The more people that use it, the larger the demand for it to improve, and improvement is evolution, without which we wouldn't be here. Order 30 CDs from ShipIt when Dapper comes out, and give them out.

Ensnared

April 30th, 2006, 04:59 PM

No, I don't believe you sorry. I have an epson colour printer here - it has no mention of duplexing in its manual. It isn't advertised as being able to do duplex printing (manually or not). However, the driver in windows and mac do allow me to select 'manual duplex' where it prompts me to turn pages over. I do not use this. It is as simple as this - it doesn't automatically duplex, therefore it is not a duplex printer. You can force it to do duplex but it is not designed, built or marketted for that purpose.
Fine. Your printer doesn't say anything in the manual. Maybe it doesn't even say anything about it in the printer specs. Maybe it can't even do it, which only means you have a very shoddy printer, and that the manufacturers actually took steps to prevent this sort of thing from being done, seeing as it's controlled by the OS printing-system (e.g. software) and not through hardware. But this is why I didn't claim it applied to all printers. The person stating he missed this feature probably has a printer that can handle it, since it did work in Windows, and it does work from several non-Gnome applications in Linux - maybe he even has an HP Deskjet with "manual duplex printing" among the printer specifications.

Even so, that's not the issue - the issue is the lack of this option in the Gnome printing dialogue, and similar things. It's about basic functionality supported by the underlying system (e.g. CUPS in this case), but not made available through the interface options. I'd really like to know how you feel this is a good thing (and I'd also like to know the Gnome-developers reasoning for not having implemented it), and what makes it worth arguing (imho worthless) semantics over. Nobody is saying it's a "duplex printer", but as long as the driver supports manual duplex printing through CUPS, which is the case for all printers as far as I'm aware, then what possible benefit can it have to not have the option in the pretty window that lets you use CUPS? Is it out of fear that it may confuse the poor users, as too many options seem to do according to Gnome? Isn't it more confusing that simple basic functions that they are used to having available from which ever OS or interface they used before, suddenly isn't available after they switched to Gnome? I think it is.

dpower

April 30th, 2006, 05:27 PM

Yaaaaaaaaawn....

prizrak

April 30th, 2006, 07:55 PM

Well I dunno bout you, but when installed Breezy the only thing I had to tweak was making my touchpad not supersensitive and getting scroll on it to work. Other than that even wireless was running just fine.

dpower

April 30th, 2006, 11:07 PM

God knows I feel your frustration when something is not working right, it's a pain in the ***. I totally believe that an OS is about productivity, but I'm just not sure what Ubuntu is for.

I have an old laptop and Ubuntu works just fine on it- wireless and all. Fine if I want to browse the web, check the email, maybe write a document, but besides that I couldn't find a use for it. (I should point out that I'm perfectly happy with the way it performs these tasks)

To a certain extend I feel that peoples expectations of Ubuntu are mismanaged, i.e.- who is it for?

So my question to the users on this forum is:
What is Ubuntu for?

graigsmith

May 1st, 2006, 03:42 AM

On games, sigh, lets just get this out of the way. I have a good library of games I enjoy on a weekly basis, my most intense addiction being EvE Online. On Windows all games I like, work all the time, period. On Linux, I try both Cedega and Wine. Some games work perfectly, some kinda, and some not at all. Its a blindfolded dart throw on this one. For the foreseeable future, I'm keeping a dual boot at least for games.

i say stick with windows if you arent willing to stop playing your games. cedega/wine in not worth messing with imo. and dual boot is annoying. who wants to have all your data on one partition, and all your games on another.

wait till you get bored of the windows games, and then get that new nintendo system or that ps3 when it comes out.

Pimpity Snicket

May 1st, 2006, 08:58 AM

Another section 8...

Linux isn't impossible but it can seem like it. It's definitly not for everyone. I first tried using linux in jr high waaaaaay back before Ubuntu and before 'user-friendliness' really existed with Linux (that was around 1997 or so). I was persistant and was successfull w/ linux a few years later but it was a long time before I was really even comfortable using linux. I've gone from using linux every day back to Windows for a year or 2 all because of hardware issues. If your hardware doesn't work linux can seem impossible. If you're persistant, just getting the basics working can change your linux experience dramaticly. Linux may not be taking over as the #1 desktop anytime in the near future but as time goes on, distros like Ubuntu get better and better and Windows seems like less and less of a requirement in our lives.

Even in Windows, open-source is starting to show it's superiority and it's all happening so fast. Most Windows users havn't the slightest idea of how far linux has progressed over the years or even the improvements it makes on a monthly basis. I love using linux because with each new version of each program comes new features and improvements. With Windows you need to wait years and as a dual booter it's very easy to be disappointed when you wait that long a new OS and nothing really relavent has changed. I'm not a mac enthusiest but they do have the benefit of faster release cycles w/ mac os x, each time getting new features that look really cool to them.

Prasad007

May 1st, 2006, 01:04 PM

is there no executable for linux like .exe ?
why do u have to always use the console?
why wont they add it like that like in windows... ?

Maagus

May 1st, 2006, 01:35 PM

I just installed Dapper beta 2 on my laptop. Even though its is beta, everything is working out of the box, including onboard sound, which was pain to get work in FC 5, as well as intel BG2200 wifi card. Even the Fn keys are working, which was not possible in OpenSuse and FC5.
Based on these facts, I expect the final version of Dapper to be very solid distro on any desktop.

thenewone

May 1st, 2006, 01:37 PM

Hes right about the "not for the normal household family" but not just this distro but every distro and even if it gets easy to use not much ppl would use it cause its free i know it sounds nuts but ppl like to belive that old saying "you get what you pay for"](*,)

mvaniersel

May 1st, 2006, 02:05 PM

"you get what you pay for"](*,)
If you want you can buy Ubuntu from me for $1000!

duality

May 1st, 2006, 02:40 PM

Heres an also verry VERRY easy guide:
http://easylinux.info/wiki/Ubuntu

Automatix is probably easier, i havent tried it, but have a look at that link if you want to learn how to do stuff in ubuntu.

GL

P.S
Remember, your always one "apt-get install" away from getting quality software.

duality

May 1st, 2006, 02:55 PM

is there no executable for linux like .exe ?
why do u have to always use the console?
why wont they add it like that like in windows... ?

Heres my linux:
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6725/desktop4pt.png

why cant your windows look like this =)

Liolikas

May 1st, 2006, 04:01 PM

I read this tread and for sumup it looks like linux is very good for chalange or to make somehow all things working.

In windows you instal OS insert cd with mp3 and u are lisenig mp3 and some users have fun, because they are lisening to music.
/
In linux you try to instal OS, usucesfully...then you go to FAQ read few hours..then you redownload and reburn OS CD. Then u sucessfully instal OS and you can say YEESSSSSS!!! AAAA UHUUUU III YESSS!!! So you are having fun. Then u insert mp3 cd and...some cd icon on desktop double-click ..you see song names...doble click...ERROR. then you go to forums, read fow hours...then instal some codecks - smodeks. And mp3 starts and you can say
YEESSSSSS!!! AAAA UHUUUU III YESSS!!! So you are having fun again. But you are not lisening to music because it is midnight and you are going to sleep.

So people can make their choice: some people like music and they prefer first choise some people also like music, but they want 3*fun so they use linux.
:)

Ensnared

May 1st, 2006, 04:03 PM

To a certain extend I feel that peoples expectations of Ubuntu are mismanaged, i.e.- who is it for?
I'd have to say "human beings", as that's the official tagline for Ubuntu. I guess people can interpret that any way they like, but my impression of the intended meaning is that Ubuntu is meant for regular people - not just geeks and techies (or people aspiring to become geeks or techies).

Since you asked the question I'd like to know: Who do you think it's for?

sophtpaw

May 1st, 2006, 04:07 PM

You know I thought when I first started to use a computer with windows xp , I thought this is going to be difficult , Well after trying ,trying , I finally got really good with this OS , Now with this Linux OS , All I can say is WOW , There no way in the world will this OS ever get publicize in the normal household family , Its not for the average novice user . Something that should be VERY VERY easy to do , installing java is impossible with this OS , Everyone so far , and I thankful for your time to assist but so far I have seen everyone has different ways to install java , there no one simple way to do this , with step by step instruction , From the begiining to the end ,Everyone seem to just add the methods as to how its done but there no one person yet and I have try to serach for this but none yet that provides from the beginning to the end as to what should be done one at a time like you would find in Windows , So with that being said , Its time for me to pass this OS off and hit back to something that is really simple to use ( Windows xp )

PS: Thanks everyone that try to help !! But its going to be a very long time before it gets recognize as a choice to choose OS :-?

I'm confused, have you given up or not? was your whinge just a way of getting attention?

Seems you have discovered automatix and how easy it actually is. Someone also suggested Synaptic, which is the way i installed java. Exactly 2 'clicks' and done!
Just because there is more than one easy way of doing it doesn' t mean it is hard.
So, have you given up yet? or are you staying with Ubuntu now? if so please aplogize

--
sophtpaw

gummylindz

May 1st, 2006, 04:46 PM

oh my golly, just because a guy who's new to ubuntu says he gets up, this becomes the most popular thread in the forum!!! i just popped over to have a look....

well im a newbie too, but i'm all up for it and i see it as an adventure :D (i've only been using ubuntu for about a month so maybe you've had more time to get pissed off at it.... and i don't want to offend any happy ubuntu users by saying that)

by the way, as this is such a popular thread, could anybody check out my two questions i've posted??? cus nobody's replying.... :( one's about sounds on amsn and another one about using labtec webcams on linux

i wish what-his-name (the person who gave up on linux) good luck, but especially courage! and it's shameful you gave up. but i respect your decision, as a newbie :)

batty505

May 1st, 2006, 04:53 PM

Hey folks

I am still a linux /ubuntu NOOB as well. I agree that just because I couldnt do it dosent mean it cant be done.

When I first rolled out ubuntu, I thought it was a breeze, actually worried that it was way too easy. I got everything configured pretty fast. All I had left was to update some apps and <firefox> and configure some peripherals; printers, wireless card, and devices.

the hardest stuff was the app updates and the wifi. It took the longest time and me rereading the instructions and googling. But eventually it did work!. I did get automatix to install, and configured the wifi card! You just have to persevere.

I agree that linux may not be for everyone. Some people are comfortable doing things a specific way. My opinions are, if I have options, I plan to use them.

for those people who are frustrated that their ubuntu/linux distro isnt working the way they expect, my suggestion is check out other distros. I believe that if you are familiar with the hardware components of your pc, the install should be fairly painless. Also, having a 'beater box' 1 that you dont do production work on is quite helpful.

I am currently evaluating Solaris10, kubuntu and fedora simultaneously.
I know there will be some 'tweaking' on my part to get it to work properly, but
I am in no rush, actually I think the more I rush the more mistakes I make.
I like that kde is available on those distros as well. Ive had great luck with Gnome and thought I would try something different.

For many newer noobs, please remember, linux does not require you to have the coolest baddest newest pc. Many of the distros will work just fine on legacy equipment. Actually I think linux prefers it that way, much more established and supported.

I understand that .exe's are a no brainer in windows, and its a whole new ball game with linux, but in ubuntu, use apt get or the synaptic? installer works just fine. there are times when the cmdline is much easier then
doing it through the gui... I think the biggest hurdle was getting apt get and automatix to work. after that, it was easy as eating pancakes! <g>

and finally, I know I dont know everything about linux or ubuntu, but cussing and screaming wont help. Work the problem and not the emotion... People here are pretty cool, and usually help when they can. Besides, Linux is Free.
maintained and supported by people like us. No OEM's no COA's no licensing issues...

just my .02 cents

mike

sailor2001

May 1st, 2006, 04:58 PM

Stormy Eyes

May 1st, 2006, 05:22 PM

So my question to the users on this forum is:
What is Ubuntu for?

It's for me, my wife, and my cat. Whether it's for you is a question you have to answer on your own.

clarkth

May 1st, 2006, 05:47 PM

I just read this whole thread, and it's very interesting to why people have switched, what they are looking for in an OS, etc.

I'm very new to Linux, but have been interested for a long time. I just installed Ubuntu a couple of months ago on an old computer (PII 300 Mhz), and it's working fine. Slow, but I expected that with the hardware I'm running. I spend about 45min - 1 hr each night learning how things work, researching on the forum and web, etc. I'm not a real technical guy, but I've installed the OS, put up Apache as a web server, got VNC, Totem and VLC, some ftp clients, etc to work just fine.

It just takes some time and logical thinking to figure out what to do to make what you want work.

ade234uk

May 1st, 2006, 05:58 PM

People just dont take the time to understand what Linux is do they. They have no appreciation. They dont understand the underlying technology and where Unix comes from. They think ms invented the GUI, they think ms invented the internet and they just expect Fu&**ing miracles to happen its so ](*,) annoying.

What the hell do they expect when companies are so far up Bills ****. Give it another 2 years and the whole Linux landscape would have changed. More companies and people will be on board and then we wont get these people crying.

matthew

May 1st, 2006, 06:06 PM

I'm pushing 80 and I can't remember when I've had more fun...no I'm not a computer guru, getting my 1st computer just a few years ago.. But I DO LOVE A CHALENGE and ubutntu is that........what a great experience! Stick with it and enjoy the discoveries you will make........better than ice cream...I think I have a new hero to add to my list of respected people...

May I be as willing to take on new intellectual challenges throughout my whole life like you are!

RKCole

May 1st, 2006, 06:58 PM

Hello, jchutcheson, and everyone else reading.

It's been awhile since I've been to the forums (I'll be here a LOT after awhile...both to help and to be helped), so I hope you all do not mind me putting in my ramblings.

For those of you who remember me (from last year or so...maybe a little in the beginning of this year), I ma a partially blind user. I've grown up with Windows (started off with Windows Me...Regretfully), and it has been something I have grown used to. Being blind it took me ages to learn how to use Windows, and now I feel that I have enough experience in Windows to support Windows users' problems. The thing is...I do not feel that Windows is for me anymore.

I use a screen magnifier for Windows called ZoomText...without it I wouldn't be able to do what I do here at home...I use the built in Magnifier (Microsoft's attempt to, in my opinion, look good for everyone) for my classes at school.

I became very interested in Linux back in 2002 or so, right around the time I graduated from high school and started college. I read and read...and I thought...wow, this looks complicated. I was afraid of the OS to be honest...but it is always frightening...and sometimes very angering to learn something new...and I'll admit that at times I'm not the most patient person...but who is?

(Before I go further, I hope and pray that no one takes any offense whatsoever to anything I say...I mean no offense at all...I just wanted to give some insight that may be unique to some extent...)

The ZoomText program which I use at home is a Windows-only program. The company which develops it knows that it will be necessary for blind users who wish to use computers...thus the price for this application is somewhere around $600...even more than the price for Windows itself...and it costs practically more than my monthly income to be honest...

I am required to take Linux classes in order to get a degree from the college I attend. I decided, this quarter, that I would take them because I truly do want to learn...My wife probably will not EVER convert to Linux (but who knows...maybe I can teach her things that will help her)...but I want away from Windows. Everyone has a preference in what they are comfortable with...in what helps them.

I posted on the forums quite awhile ago about accessibility for Linux. Since then I've become used to working with Gnopernicus magnifier...and I must say that I am so grateful for it. There is no price for it...and it works wonderfully. As for my choosing Ubuntu, my choice still stands. I don't know if anyone here works for the company, but I must give thanks. Your standards and mission are inspiring.

jchutcheson, it may be complicated at first (believe me it was for me...VERY complicated), but after all I have seen now...I am just glad Linux and its supporting communities are here.

I am going to keep up my education with this operating system, and I hope to eventually be a regular here. I would also like to eventually create tutorials and things to help others. I also hope (once I gain more programming experience) to be a helping developer for assistive technologies for Linux.

I greatly apologize for my rambling. I tend to write too much at times...but I just wanted to put my thoughts here as well.

Thanks everyone.

jchutcheson, please don't get too discouraged. If I can ever been any help, I will do what I can for you and anyone else. I am definitely not a Linux guru, but I'm striving for the position one day. I was unaware of this until a few months ago (I believe before the release date), but there is a book which may be helpful. You can see it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590596277/sr=8-1/qid=1146505739/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5841537-2694560?%5Fencoding=UTF8

I hope that I can be of some help, but regardless good luck with whatever you decide.
Take care.

Once again, I greatly apologize for posting so long a message...and I sincerely apologize if I have offended anyone whatsoever.

Rhapsody

May 2nd, 2006, 05:57 AM

I'm using Kubuntu right now, and it sure as hell hasn't been easy. In the month since I've installed this, I've had several late nights trying to get everything working (I'm still not done either, bring on the coffee!).

But I do have the advantages that I'm determined to get this working, I like the OS overall, and I have these forums to help me with problems (which they have).

I will say that it's certainly not for everyone. I consider myself an intermediate user, and while I've had few real problems with Windows (Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows XP Home) but I've struggled to get Linux up and running to the same standard. Someone with less skill than me (or the same skill but less determination) would've given up by now.

But, from what I've gathered, Ubuntu is more usuable than previous distros, and that's a good sign for Linux. I can see myself using it for much time to come.

504harry

May 2nd, 2006, 10:45 AM

General Adverse Comment, sorry guys, not meant to offend, but some may take umbridge: here goes:-
..........I've been through a hard learning experience with a local LUG and two Ubuntu versions installed on a separate HDD. Sadly I have reverted to using Win98SE for the following reasons.....
1) it cost nothing- a previous purchase and at Fairs it's only £10 legal.
2)I could not follow the twisted route to install Java in Firefox.
3)I could not follow the twisted route to install PDF in Firefox.
4)I cannot use my lexmark printer to produce pictures from my digital camera.
Just about everything else works as it should and apart from double the time to fire-up the pc - Ubuntu, is OK - it is different and I'm not convinced the differnce is in the unitiatiated's favour.....change is rarely "good" IMHO, unless it is ground-breaking......For Example: for years Photoshop has had a terrible interface, only marginally better than PaintShopPro (which is worse) so Gimp had the opportunity to rewrite the interface - and they copied Photoshop......was it easier to make it the same? Certainly not for anyone new to the program, but my argument about "change" probably was the reason and Gimp goes baqck a long way I understand... such a pity....which makes Gimp worse than PSP.....interface-wise.....the operation of the filters etc is no better/worse and as a free prog it's pretty handsome value.....but I didn't move to Linux to work harder - so until Printing and Plug-ins are sorted out, I can continue to use my PC under the usual problems asc with Win....
When I can go to my local supermarket and choose a printer/multifunction on its specification and not worry that I can't run it with Gimp, then Linux/Ubuntu will replace my Win OS......my old Lexmark printer produces quite stunning A4 prints from digital (through PSP) and my local store has replacement cartridges......that's the life, easy.
I know all about printer mfrs not writing software drivers and only HP works reliably; but it's not clear enough and why should I be restricted by make?
It's up to Linux to sort out the drivers for what is already on the Market - [[When Pulman introduced his carriages, was he forced to make them run on existing rails? I think so ]].....and Linux experts can do very little to promote their alternative until these issues are addressed.

A poster complained about Flash plug-in - I thought this was available....
Another about "mounting" drives - yes 100% confusion for the average user.

Perhaps instead of extra games Ubuntu could have a Word-specific help file? As the user becomes more proficient then the answers can be more-detailed. Anyone into "history" of Computers should try to get a Sinclair ZX80 (C.1980 =UK made), this had a program feature that checked the syntax of each line and SHOWED you where the error was (except Go-To's) - yet even now 20years on such assistance is unheard of and the ZX80 had 1k of memory - yes ONE K.

((I understand there is a Linux-wide project to address printing))
So, Linux? -Maybe in a year, or two?

PS this is the third time I've tried to Post, each time I log-in it "welcomes " me then after composing this gibberish....it says I'm not logged-in......some error there I think. This time I didn't use the Login at the top-right.....why are there two ways (on the same page) to log-in anyway?

dpower

May 2nd, 2006, 01:33 PM

Well for me it's pretty much for redeeming an old laptop- simple functions like browsing the web, email, maybe writing the odd document.

I don't use it for work purposes- simply because I am used to the apps I have and most are not available on Linux and have enough stability issues themselves without trying to run them on another OS.

Once it's up and running it's pretty damn stable and secure- perfect for people who are happy just to browse the web, write a few word docs- which is about 80% of folks out there I reckon- certainly home users. Although it's not really suitable for gamers without some techie ability I guess.

Would be a good choice for voluntary operations, or people with very little techie skill.

Of course the power users can find all sorts of uses for it, but in the long run I dont really thing that's what Ubuntu is for.

timbp

May 2nd, 2006, 01:54 PM

don't bother reading or replying to this -- I'm most unlikely to read your response, and I've only inflicted my post on you as you're the forum related to the last Linux distribution I tried. Most of what I'm writing is about about how useless Linux us generally, not specifically about ubuntu (I can't comment on ubuntu as it would not install).

Every year or two for the past 10 years (approximately) I've "tried" Linux. "Tried" means I've installed it, maybe played with it a bit, but never delved into details of config etc.

About 18 months ago I was given a spare computer, and I decided it would be good to use it as my own mail server. After a bit of googling, I decided to run Debian and after about 40 hours work (over one weekend) I had a working secure mail server with imap and webmail access and virus and spam filtering. After setting it up I've hardly looked at it.

So I know I'm capable of working out how to get a computer to do what I want when I need to. And I know Linux is stable (18 months continuous running with me doing nothing).

but a desktop system has to beat Windows. and I like Windows XP; it works. I can go to a store, buy a computer item ,bring it hoem and plug it in. and it works.

This time, in choosing to try Linux as a desktop system, I was thinking ahead 24 months when Microsoft stop supporting XP. Maybe I will have bought a new computer with Vista installed. But if not, I will have this computer, with an abandoned windows xp or any whatever OS I can get to work.

I tried various Linux distributions.

As I'd heard so much about SuSE, I tried it first.
SuSE 10.0 would not install -- froze at detecting USB devices.
SuSE 9.3 would not install -- froze at detecting USB devices.

So I tried Mandrake.

Mandriva 10.0 installed, but my keyboard and mouse (both USB wireless) did not work so I could not use it.

I read some more reviews, and tried SuSE 9.2. It installed with no problems, and my keyboard and mouse worked.
During installation I set my external USB drive (ntfs) to mount on /windows/E and the drive was there when I installed. But the music player could not read the wma files. Local help had nothing on wma, so I tried google. And was unable to connect. Both google.com and google.com.au were unavailable.
I booted to windows; google worked with no problem and search results indicated amarok can play wma by default.
Boot back to SuSE 9.2 -- amarok does not even see wma files, and I can't get to google to find help.
(I also tried my printer and could not get it to work, even though log files imply the system has recognised the printer.)
[[The same day, I read the google were upset Microsoft were excluding them from search. Given that I have never had any trouble searching google from windows, but 2 different linux installations could not reach google, I think they would be better off suing Linux]]

Next I tried Fedora Core 5. It installed, and my keyboard and mouse worked.
But I couldn't get the printer to work, nor the external (ntfs) drive. And I couldn't find the configuration utilitiy I'd come to expect from SuSE 9.2 (the only Linux system that had previously worked).

Then I had to go to work. In some spare time, I searched google for "fedora ntfs" and found a post that said (paraphrased): 'it's easy. Just type "yum [incomprehensible gibberish]"'

Well, incomprehensible gibberish is not easy for me. I can decipher it if necessary, but when I use Windows XP such gibberish is not necessary.

And so at last we come to ubuntu. It was clear to me (from my previous experience) that 'yum' must be something like 'apt' which I was acquainted with from setting up my mail server.

So I figured if desktop linux system still needed primitive commands to set it up, I was better with a debian-based system (as I'd already set up a debian system), rather than learning something new.

So I tried to install Ubuntu 5.10.
It wouldn't boot. I didnt' record where the problem was. It was something like ...hotplug/usb.rc (I dont' know what was before "hotplug", or if "usb.rc" is correct).
I believe this is the same error (under a different name) that caused SuSE to freeze when detecting USB devices.

But whether the same or not, the conclusion is obvious -- Linux is not yet a desktop operating system. I spent 40 hours in 48 hours setting up a mail server running under linux. And I've never had to look at that system in 18 months continuous running.
But a desktop system is different. I don't print often, but I need to know that when I choose to print, my document will print. I scan every bill and other important document I receive (using a Canon scanner, and no Canon scanners work with Linux) -- and using Paperport (notorious for lack of Linux support). I depend on Microsoft Word as my primary tool for my income. OpenOffice.org is good, but its deficiencies are in exactly the areas I depend on.
I had hoped to have a stable Linux system and use WINE and/or VMWare for the windows programs I depend on.The only Linux distribution that works is SuSE 9.2. I'll investigate it further, but my general opinion is Linux is still not a desktop OS.
Consider the retail prices Microsoft charges for its operating system. Then rate your own time at your maximum charge out rate. I still feel Windows is cheaper for me as a desktop OS than trying to get Linux to work. On time, I've spent about $2000 in the past few days -- what does a Windows licence cost?

I like the concept of open source software. That is why I keep trying Linux every year or two, even though it proves unusable every time. In its place Linux is fantastic -- my debian mail server has run continuously with no problems since I set it up. But for everyday desktop use, why would anyone choose Linux?

Horizon

May 2nd, 2006, 03:06 PM

I can see where you're coming from. But from my experiences the very things that make it such a powerful server OS also make it a powerful desktop OS. The command line, you usually don't expect it when you're first forced to use the command line but it's actually much better than a gui. If i didn't want to surf the net or look at pictures/videos etc. there really wouldn't be a reason to ever leave it. Also the totally alien feeling that what's on my computer was soley my responsibility...like it was "mine". You could compare it to babysitting. I'd rather have a child of my own, smelly diapers, bills and all than simply babysit with limited responsibilities but limited control as well. There's lots more such as it's modular nature heck just the fact that it feels like it was designed well right from the start and all developers seem to be on the same page.

It all comes down to what your needs are. It doesn't sound like linux won't meet your needs and you have shown a willingness it just seems like you're unlucky with hardware that's all. I'm sure you've heard this all before so i'm not going to go on and on but the only problem here seems to be your hardware. I think it's better to think of it like this...Those who do get linux to work on their Microsoft Windows computers are lucky. If you really want to have the "full linux experience" i would suggest waiting until you're ready to buy a new computer and then buy/build one for linux or that's hardware is known to work well with linux. This way linux will surely work, probably easier than windows to setup, and you know windows will work on it without much trouble because "if it doesn't work on windows then it must be faulty" ;)

PS: I'm getting tired of all these threads about linux not being a desktop OS. Atleast this guy was intelligable. If they were all like this i would probably want to encourage these kinds of threads. I nearly ignored this one too but then the guy sounded like he had a clue (which he definitely does).

Sef

May 2nd, 2006, 03:22 PM

First, if you don't read my reply that's not my problem. :rolleyes:

Second: Not all hardware will work with Linux; Not all hardware will work with Microsoft.

Third: You didn't try a slackware distribution. I say this because there is an old computer at work that only Vector Linux will install and run on.

Fourth: You did not try and use the forums to fix the problems that you experienced. No one knows not can do everything.

Fifth: Gnu/Linux is based on co-operation between people. I have learned a lot more from asking questions and reading the forums than I would have by myself. As John Donne wrote, "No man is an island."

Sixth: To use or not to use Gnu/Linux. That is the question I ask to you. The choice is yours.

Mr Green

May 2nd, 2006, 03:51 PM

But for everyday desktop use, why would anyone choose Linux?

It's fun and my girlfriend can't find my porn ;)

confused57

May 2nd, 2006, 05:24 PM

Hardware compatibility can be a problem with any OS, especially with Linux.
Did a search and didn't see any posts by timbp asking for help, I have the misguided impression that's what this forum is for...

Guess he'll post again in a year or two, can't wait...

futz

May 3rd, 2006, 04:08 AM

As I'd heard so much about SuSE, I tried it first.
SuSE 10.0 would not install -- froze at detecting USB devices.
SuSE 9.3 would not install -- froze at detecting USB devices.
Dapper Flight 6 did that to me. Flight 5 installed fine on same machine. Once I finally realized what was happening (the error was hidden - the install just appeared to crash - I finally deleted the -silent option to see what happened) the fix was easy. I just disabled the USB's in the BIOS and installed. Once installation was complete I turned the USB's back on and it all worked fine.

Peacepunk

May 3rd, 2006, 04:55 PM

Hey mates,

all this stuff is only half working, we all know it. The history of Linux Development makes it command-line based, and for the most specialized people.

I don't know who came first with the idea of a General Audience Linux OS, but, dear fellow Free-this & that, it may as well be a private company trying to make money out of you.

Please, cut the crap 'bout Free Not As A Beer: this General Audience, what do you think they care for? Costs. Not the future of GPL2.

I run SuSE, and Ubuntu, and Kubuntu (fresh install, no external HDD that was defined in the Partitions setup available, un-deletable link to usb device unreachable on the desktop... Cheer Class...). XP is still available, you guessed it.

I bough a HUGE external HDD to protect my data from inconsistencies of these OS - because, yes, I run linux for "Political" reasons, at a cost. A cost that's mostly my working time, but this HDD didn't came for free.

It looks like a hobby from the outside, or a pose. I believe it is, actually.

- It is not a better system: read the answers from the Gurus to newbies complaining, they all say "This is not *******, you have to suffer to become one of us"

- It is not a safer system, as incompetent, inexperienced users fool around with dark procedures, the risk is there, they loose data.

- It is not a cheaper system, as demonstrated above, especially if you have to buy special hardware & spend a lot of time on it.

- It is a Sport, an Entertainment for the Aliens with HexaBrains living among us. Eventually, they get paid to do that so at the end they can say they "Work with Linux For Real" - Yeah, sure, they all in the Computer Business anyway...

- It's a hobby, for most of us here. Big Toys for Big Boys. Better this than America's Army...

- It is a Pose, for the leftist I am, not to display Commercial Software, especially as I work in the NGO/Non-profit sector.

Let's work together, let's improve the thing... that's not for the vast majority of us: The only way to make your linux working is to be a linux guru. Care to spare the time to become one?

I know I don't have the brains for that, anyway. I better spare my time.

Tested so far, both Laptops & Desktop: Gentoo - Slackware - SuSE 9.3 - SuSE 10.0 - Breezy Badger Gnome & KDE - Dapper Flight 6.
Currently on: Desktop SuSE 9.3 KDE (work, usb & print issues, no sync with Palm Pilot, no DVD reading), Kubuntu 5.10 (experimental, as stated above, just fired it up 5 minutes ago. Smells bad)
Currently on Laptop1: Breezy /gnome (work, issues in Hibernate, special buttons, lid closing events, DVD playing poorly, usb handling, no Synchro on Palm Pilot, poor battery time, no modem, no VGA replicator)
Currently on Laptop2: same, for testing purposes only, so I can try before destroying the "workable" laptop. All the above issues hasn't been solved.

Engnome

May 3rd, 2006, 06:28 PM

He got some long answer even though he didnt even request them:D This sure is a great community.

aysiu

May 3rd, 2006, 06:50 PM

He got some long answer even though he didnt even request them:D This sure is a great community. No, what happens is... trolls who say they want to offer "constructive criticism" (without filing bug reports, of course--just whining on the forums, as if that makes a difference) get 150+ responses within an hour.

If you say you don't want a response, you get seven or eight responses within a day.

NickInTheNorth

May 4th, 2006, 03:08 PM

well all I can say as a complete newbie to linux in general is that having taken the decision to ditch XP for the simble reason that I do not want to make Bill Gates any richer it took me 10 minutes to get a workable install of Ubuntu on my old XP hardware.

I'm using a USB mouse - no problems.
Open Office is doing everything I need or can imagine needing in a word processor.
Gimp is doing real good with my graphics
BlueFish is a pretty nifty GUI web editor
Gaim allows me to chat to who I want to chat to
I've just downloaded Kubuntu to have a look at that distro

I guess that so far I am believeing that Ubuntu makes a pretty good Desktop OS

EricaJoy

May 5th, 2006, 03:40 PM

You got tht right mate, a getlinux.com website would really be an asset to our community.

Is that the kind of idea we could put up a bounty for?

- Trib'Hiya folks. I found this post by Googling for getlinux.com. I recently inquired about buying the domain from its owner (Andrew Busey (http://www.pluck.com/company/team.html)) who isn't doing much with it. He is open to selling it but apparently hasn't had any reasonable offers. No word yet on what he calls reasonable. Just thought I'd share that information with y'all. :)

elamericano

May 6th, 2006, 11:23 AM

I have to agree in general with this thread, sadly. Breezy runs perfectly for me, but Dapper had problems with basic hardware configuration. I read an early response saying that it's your own fault if you don't by compatible hardware... but it was working!

Anyway, yeah it's Beta, but I will eat my hat if it works by the release date. I'll probably have to wait a few extra months for it to work right on my T42.

garba

May 6th, 2006, 12:41 PM

I gotta go along with Bou on all of this. Dapper is one month away from being released and it's still plagued by some serious flaws which are unlikely to get sorted out in such a narrow timeframe. And just as he pointed out, what I find most irritating is the print dialog (not to mention the dread gnome-cups-manager) which doesn't even allow to print odd or even pages and being told it's our printers which are not the "right tools for the job": that feature has got nothing to do with hardware support, period. That is retarded. If the devs want to go for some serious polish, then they shouldn't set a deadline, instead, they should put forth an extra effort to get rid of all the cruft which is affecting dapper. Take a loot at the bug reports on launchpad and you'll realize there's still a lot left to do. Dapper needs more time IMO.

garba

May 6th, 2006, 12:44 PM

It's a GNOME print dialog, man. No need to confuse the user with double-sided printing and whatnot. :D

agreed! :p

rabidphage

May 6th, 2006, 07:15 PM

Stormy Eyes

May 6th, 2006, 09:34 PM

Workspace management is far from satisfactory. my 15 inch wxga monitor feels like 10 inch...

I don't get it. Can't you tweak your font settings to your liking? Also, GNOME has virtual desktops. Have you tried using them?

The release cycle is too optimistic and dapper will suck for sure.

If you think Dapper sucks, give me your snail mail address. I'll send you a copy of Slackware 8, so you can see a Linux distro that really sucks. (Not that Slack 8 was bad at the time, but it was released 5 years ago.)

garba

May 7th, 2006, 04:33 AM

Ubuntu(linux) wireless networking is brain dead. It may work in the lab. But it's not fit for the jungle out there. [-X. Workspace management is far from satisfactory. my 15 inch wxga monitor feels like 10 inch...
The release cycle is too optimistic and dapper will suck for sure.

You can say there are a few things about dapper that suck, but you can't say dapper at whole does, because that would be a blatant lie. The question is: would spending a few extra months on this release, keeping a steady feature freeze in place, lead to a tangible improvement? I am not a developer hence i can't answer this question, from an user's perspective though i can say that what could be a GREAT computing experience is atm hindered by some flaws which, in my humble opinion, I believe should be taken care of to make dapper a very polished release, but are unlikely to be sorted out in such a narrow timeframe. I think that setting a deadline for a "1.0" release is just plain silly. On the other hand though, i believe this team, and the great community which is supporting it, has got some serious balls to deliver the best linux distro ever. It won't happen with dapper though.

elamericano

May 7th, 2006, 09:16 AM

Looks like wireless is finally moving in the right direction. Trouble is, we have to wait for kernel support, followed upgrades to our tools of choice. Well, that's wirless for the masses. Until then it'll be hit and miss.

http://lwn.net/Articles/182079/

visvak

May 11th, 2006, 02:12 PM

i havent read the whole thread. so i might be off the current topic here but i've been on Ubuntu for a week now and its been simple enough to use (and i aint no hardcore linux maniac) i was born and bred on windows here in India and when i found a free distro in a computer magazine i installed it. guess what i got - salvation. i was reinstalling windows XP every few weeks becoz of malware and viruses (and i did use every security program out there) ubuntu gave me exactly what i want - a trouble free OS with almost zero security issues and easy to use interface. just one problem i had with the whole thing was Automatix - yeah i found it, but what about all the thousnds who install ubuntu everyday and remove it because they dont know how to get basic software. the devlopers need to make the existence of Automatix, Easy Ubuntu and these forums in general a little more obvious. well that was my contibution. namaste

richbarna

May 11th, 2006, 03:35 PM

open console.
type sudo apt-get install "whataver".
works for me :)

OBnascar

May 11th, 2006, 11:24 PM

what about all the thousnds who install ubuntu everyday and remove it because they dont know how to get basic software. the devlopers need to make the existence of Automatix, Easy Ubuntu and these forums in general a little more obvious. well that was my contibution. namaste

I have never used Automatix, to me, it doesn't get any easier than installing software using "Apt-Get" in a terminal or using the Synaptic Package Manager. There are good "How-To's" for these also.

visvak, do you have anything in mind that would make it easier for newbie's to find the "How-To's", I am sure that any suggestions would be more then welcome. I remember when I was a newbie using Ubuntu I struggled also to locate them. You are not alone. This could be improved, but how !

Welcome to the Ubuntu forums visvak..........

(We may be border line of getting off topic)

Paloseco

May 12th, 2006, 10:58 AM

I think he might have a point. Dapper has very serious issues like printing or folder sharing, and having them in a system that is supposed to last three whole years is unsettling to me.
You have not tried kde printing system didn´t you? If you buy an Epson there is 99% chances to get it working.

shrimphead

May 16th, 2006, 06:45 PM

don't know if this has been posted already but

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

reading this should be made law if you plan on switching from windows

sabredog

May 17th, 2006, 03:31 AM

I had been curious about Linux for quite a while before taking the plunge and actually installing the software.

First was to get a PC capable of running a modern distro well. With that solved I then "shopped around" and settled on Ubuntu Breezy. While playing with the live CD I discovered the Ubuntu forums and Automatix. This automated most of what I wanted to do and solved one of my goals; Getting a desktop environment fully working so the other PC users in my family could run with it immediately!

I have worked with PC's since MSDOS 2.1 days, well before Windows was even a twinkle in Billy's eye. This helps as the CLI was not frightening for me. The new syntax was daunting and to help me along I set goals such as burning a disk, getting Samba working, making sure the network printer was working, changing the grub screen background etc... Armed with howto's from the Forum's I was able to tackle these with only a little pain.

Installing Breezy as a dual boot with XP was easy and quick. Automatix iced the cake and suddenly everyone in the house wanted to play with the new kid on the block. My 14 year old was so keen, he dual booted as well!

That PC now runs Breezy virutally full time and I am beginning to itch about installing Dapper (when released in it's final version) as a dual boot on my brand spanking new P4...Bring it on!

rubengs

May 17th, 2006, 05:44 AM

I said the same a lot of times, I came to linux in 2004 and leave it until warty came out, initially I was only using it like a toy, a curiosity, I tended to belive that linux will never be replacing my xp. I used a lot of distros, and finally in last december I made the switch, mainly because I fell free with linux, more secure and with more control over my specific hardware configuration, linux make some things better than xp, and the rest is almost the same or the same.

When you start is difficult, but dapper is a milestone in linux developement and a lot of things have changed since breezy, now it's really easy to install java (JRE and SDK) an lot of other things. The last thing I have achieved was harcoding subtitles into a mpg file, easily done with avidemux, but took me a while to learn how to do it, it's easier than doing it with xp.

Iandefor

May 17th, 2006, 06:32 AM

Well, have fun wherever else you go.

By the way, I really appreciate the fact you're actually participating in the thread you started.
A lot of threads like this are post-n-runs.

eternal

May 17th, 2006, 09:49 AM

2 reasons , one to make money from it and the second , because its free , though its not easy to use ....
Mattew I thank you and I am not trying to offend anyone , I am just saying its not for the average Joe

i ABSOLUTELY agree, computers aren't for the average joe. i feel that owning a PC is very similar to owning a car. in a manner of speaking both take you places; (and in the next 2 comparisons they are similar to guns as well) both can cause damage (cars/guns cause physical damage, hackers and Windows viruses can cause data damage), and some people can operate them better than others - personally i would love people having to get an operator's license to use a PC on a network. owning a PC, or using a given OS shouldn't be a matter of "keepin' up with the Jones's" or "monkey see, monkey do". the reason linux is free is because you have to RTFM; there isn't a team of tech support people waiting by a bank of phones to walk you thru steps on your PC that it may be questionable as to if you even need to be doing whatever it is in the first place.

shrimphead

May 17th, 2006, 10:27 AM

I wish I could post this somewhere written in big glowing neon letters so that ppl will finally understand this. Once upon a time there were these wonderful things which went by the name of INDUSTRIAL STANDARDS. As of now, it seems it's no longer the case, at least when it comes to consumer electronics: hardware manufacturers invest time and energy to come up with crappy proprietary variants to the abovementioned standards as to tie their customers to their line of products.

quoted for truth ;)

esscea

May 18th, 2006, 05:33 PM

Well, just to compare, I have used and installed everything from Windows 95 to XP. Maybe it is only me, but there is nothing as peaceful as looking on the Windows 98 setup screen, with the "tips" scrolling by and a bar telling that the installation will be complete in 8 minutes.

Of course, I managed once to wipe up a hard disk completely (backups present), but since then I learned to never have multiple hard disks of the same manufacturer in one computer. Just to be sure you can tell the difference.

The Dapper Live CD install is quite confusing. After the partition step, you have to guess which partition to mount with only the sizes to guide you. To make things worse, a 7,8 GB partition shows like a 8 GB. If there are two partitions of the same size on a disk, chances are big destroying something.

To sum up, I would say that Windows is more easy to install than Dapper. But Ubuntu still features the easiest installer in the Linux world (I have tried a few). So choose Ubuntu.

MiniJames

May 19th, 2006, 10:11 AM

Well, I just did a Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aubuntuforums.org+every+windows+program+ha s+a+linux+equivalent&btnG=Google+Search) that leaves me resting easy that it was probably no one in these forums who said every Windows program has a Linux equivalent.

The problem is quite clear here:

http://tryoutlinux.com/

Welcome!

Linux is...

Virus & Spyware Free! Ultra Affordable! Super Stable!

There is a growing interest in using Linux on the desktop computer, and these days it's easier than ever to try. Some people want to get more power from their desktop computer. Some are fed up with viruses, spyware, and slow, crash-prone Microsoft Windows, and some simply wish to avoid the high cost of Microsoft Windows licensing and the pain of "activation codes." If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps it's time for you to consider trying Linux!

Whatever your reason, in just a few minutes it's possible to actually be trying Linux on your desktop computer, and this site will show you how, even on a machine running Microsoft Windows if you don't want to erase MS Windows from your computer. (Click here to find out how if you just can't wait!)

- oh dear :/

3rdalbum

May 19th, 2006, 01:27 PM

I don't blame people for saying "Ubuntu is difficult to use". When I bought my first Windows computer a couple of weeks ago, I found Windows XP to be terribly difficult.

But here's the thing: I was used to doing things in OS 9 and Ubuntu. Windows does things differently and you do things differently in Windows. That's the only thing that made it difficult (well... apart from the huge number of buttons and dialogs in the control panels and being asked to enter a phone number when setting up broadband)! I'm sure Windows is easy-to-use in its own way.

I've never accidentally wiped my hard disk with the Ubuntu partitioner (take care out there, people) and configuring the system was a breeze. And I did it "by hand" - I've never used Automatix and friends. But if you want to use them, you have the option of doing that. And after all, that's what computing should be about: choice.

3z3k3l

May 19th, 2006, 09:42 PM

:mrgreen: I knew that would get you in here.
Now for my Generic Linux Question.

Is thier such a tool?

What would it take to make it?

Excerpt from my other post (http://www.ubuntupeople.com/file/forums/viewtopic.php?t=114):
[QUOTE]"This feature would be geared toward anyone with Windows Already Installed:
I have been thinking. If you have I.E and install Firefox, Firefox asks if you want to import your cookies, history, booksmarks etc and does it with ease.
Is thier a way to take this same concept and include it with Ubuntu?

I mean on a much more highlevel and complex way.
This would be targeted to Basic Users of a Computer, not Web devs, coders etc.. I mean the bottom of the barrel chimps that just use it for Web, Docs, Music, Pictures and Email

So basically somehow have Ubuntu CD installed over windows and somehow grab data off windows store it somewhere (like USB drive) then import it back ?

I would think there are a few main areas that this would need to cover but to oversimplify here is what it would do:
Look in MY Docs for My Music, Videos, Pictures, Documents folders etc...
Look at all installed applications like Email, Photoshop, Music, Doc manager, Any number of Apps and then offer alternatives at the install process...(obviously it would prompt them to move all thier files they want into the My Docs section etc..)

Follow me here, I have no idea if something like this is possible but say it imported all your doc from My Documents, then looked at all the applications you have on your computer, then compares them to a list of known simliars?

So after it installed Ubuntu on the PC a window Pops up

>>>>>>Importing Documents from Windows............My Docs...,My Pics....Done
>>>>>>Lookup up application list finding alternativies:
>Musicmatch>>>Would you like to install Soundjuice ****80 user rated
[soundjuice would be clickable to read more about its features and function]
>Microsoft Office>> Would you like to install OpenOffice?
>Internet Explore>> Would you like to install
Firefox 1.5 ***10,000 user rated
Mozilla 2.0 * 10 user rated

Something like that?

The whole reason why Windows became so popular is because they took the "DOS" Command Line interface out and put icon's instead to do everything.
IMHO Linux needs to do the same to gain the support of the millions of Windows users reluctant to switch and so far Ubuntu leads the pack in clean, stable and easy to use Software... The name is hard to remember, spell and say but we can work that later. (Bad for marketing)
[\QUOTE]

Anyways, if its not possible with the linux install or by using linux. Could this be a utility written for Windows before the install of Ubuntu? Like a seperate app on the same install CD? So it runs first, does its thing, then when it is done it loads up Ubuntu?

Did I miss something? Is this already availble and I am just reinventing the wheel here?

Thanks
Rick

mostwanted

May 19th, 2006, 09:45 PM

I think it's not done (or not succesfully pulled off) because Linux is many things, and because Linuc is a moving target.

aysiu

May 19th, 2006, 09:54 PM

The whole reason why Windows became so popular is because they took the "DOS" Command Line interface out and put icon's instead to do everything. It's not because it comes preinstalled on computers that almost every major hardware manufacturer sells? That's news to me, then.

I don't know anyone in person who chose Windows because it had icons and who shunned Linux because it did not. Linux distros do, in fact, have icons, in case you haven't noticed. Ubuntu is almost entirely point-and-click for everyday (and even some obscure) tasks. Most people I know don't know Linux because they fear the unfamiliar and they've never heard of Linux and they've already built their lifestyle around Windows and Windows-friendly hardware and Windows-only applications.

Does Windows have a migrate-from-Linux feature that imports everything from the /home directory and magically puts the documents in My Documents, the pictures in My Pictures, and the music in My Music and converts .ogg files to .mp3?

Does Windows' boot loader automatically detect non-Windows operating systems and add them to the boot menu?

If you answered no to the last two questions, I'd say you have a bit of a double standard there.

At this point, anyone who wants to migrate to Linux has to

A) be computer-savvy enough to install it herself
B) research a company that will sell a Linux-preinstalled computer
C) find a friend who will install it for her.

She herself, that company, or her friend can easily move over documents and such. There are even companies that will sell you a dual-boot preinstalled.

If you honestly believe the mythical "Joe Sixpack" who has never installed Windows in his life is going to install and configure a new operating system and that the major thing holding him back is his settings and files not magically transferring over... you're living in a dream world.

I've seen a lot of complaints from new users (my wireless card doesn't work, why can't I use Adobe Photoshop, there aren't enough games, etc.), but I've never seen a new user say, "Damn it. Everything in Ubuntu's almost perfect, but all my documents didn't magically copy over to my Ubuntu partition. It's too much work for me to copy those over myself. I'm going back to Windows!"

Lord Illidan

May 19th, 2006, 10:02 PM

It's been done : http://versora.com/products/progression_desktop_linux.php

3z3k3l

May 19th, 2006, 10:19 PM

It's not because it comes preinstalled on computers that almost every major hardware manufacturer sells? That's news to me, then.

I don't know anyone in person who chose Windows because it had icons and who shunned Linux because it did not.
Obviously you either unwilling or incapable of understanding how Windows became the dominate OS for computers....

Linux distros do, in fact, have icons, in case you haven't noticed. Ubuntu is almost entirely point-and-click for everyday (and even some obscure) tasks. Most people I know don't know Linux because they fear the unfamiliar and they've never heard of Linux and they've already built their lifestyle around Windows and Windows-friendly hardware and Windows-only applications.
Again, I am not talking about building a Linux for your world. I am talking about the obsticles of mainstreaming Linux.

Does Windows have a migrate-from-Linux feature that imports everything from the /home directory and magically puts the documents in My Documents, the pictures in My Pictures, and the music in My Music and converts .ogg files to .mp3?.

BassAckwards thinking really doesn't have anything to do with what Linux can offer. Windows doesn't have to, because it has the market share, Linux is the underdog here. Why has Firefox been so succesful? It doesn't come bundled with Microsoft, Up until recently I.E didn't have a import for Firefox...?? It really doesn't matter because Firefox is rapidly gaining momentum faster then Mozilla and Opera ever had. Microsoft had nothing to prove because everyone uses it, Firefox does and is proving it well.

Does Windows' boot loader automatically detect non-Windows operating systems and add them to the boot menu?
If you answered no to the last two questions, I'd say you have a bit of a double standard there.
Again I think your thinking is flawed, Would you rather not have people use Linux? Either figure it out or get the F out? I mean come on. That leaves most of regular PC user to get out.

At this point, anyone who wants to migrate to Linux has to
A) be computer-savvy enough to install it herself
B) research a company that will sell a Linux-preinstalled computer
C) find a friend who will install it for her. .

Well I am hoping Ubuntu can change that. After installing it on a blank harddrive I found how easy it was and how little talent you really need to get it working. I mean really, what is harder then plopping in a CD rebooting then hitting enter a bunch of time?
Yes thier are still a lot of driver/hardware issues but they are working themselves out. Also thier are people working everyday to address these issues.

She herself, that company, or her friend can easily move over documents and such. There are even companies that will sell you a dual-boot preinstalled.

What I have proposed has nothing to do with pre-installation, It has everything to do with "exsiting user base" with Windows already installed.

If you honestly believe the mythical "Joe Sixpack" who has never installed Windows in his life is going to install and configure a new operating system and that the major thing holding him back is his settings and files not magically transferring over... you're living in a dream world..

If we are handing out free CD's with the OS on it then the answer to that is yes. Why not? People are more computer savy now then ever. Also the installation process is much more simplified, and with the advent of a utility that moves everything over just makes it that much more easy to install and use.

I've seen a lot of complaints from new users (my wireless card doesn't work, why can't I use Adobe Photoshop, there aren't enough games, etc.), but I've never seen a new user say, "Damn it. Everything in Ubuntu's almost perfect, but all my documents didn't magically copy over to my Ubuntu partition. It's too much work for me to copy those over myself. I'm going back to Windows!"

I know many people who found RH Linux 7,8,9 too confusing to use and did go back to Windows. Before the masses of other Linux's have popped up, I found lots of IT people I have worked with, consulted, and trained have had very similiar stories of why Linux was not for them.

The bottom line is make it dummy proof and they will come.

If you don't want them that is another story. But I am looking to promote it to everyone not just people who are literate in command line interface. I am also a proponent of less command line and more GUI but then again that is just me a old windows user.

aysiu

May 19th, 2006, 10:26 PM

Most intelligent discussion stems from multiple parties having the same basic assumptions, background knowledge, and goals in common.

Usually, they have a common goal and common assumptions/background, but they disagree about the method of how to get there.

While you and I share a common goal--getting more people off Windows and on to Ubuntu, we don't have assumptions/background in common, so there's no point in talking about what methods there are for achieving our common goal.

There's really no point in arguing back in forth, especially since you believe Microsoft came to dominate the desktop marketplace because it had icons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Popularity

catlett

May 19th, 2006, 11:47 PM

Would you rather not have people use Linux? Either figure it out or get the F out?
Would someone please ban this person!! If I had the power I would.
This is a forum for people to learn Ubuntu. Not a Linux marketing forum.
The purpose of Linux is to imitate Unix not windows.
Dos became popular because Microsoft wrote evrything for IBM. IBM was computers and Gates was there guy for an OS. His OS went on there computers. When IBM thought mainframes and not PCs was the way to go Gates had to go into other boxes. Companies wanted to jump into the market IBM started. Obviously they went with Gates' OS. Ever since all IBM clones came with Microsoft OSs. Aysiu is rioght. You did not choose to have windows on your computer it CAME WITH IT. NOW LEAVE. YOU DISRESPECTFULL LITTLE PUNK. YOUR LUCKY I'M ONLY NEXT TO YOU IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD. IF I EVER SAW YOU DISRESPECT AYSIU IN PERSON I'D BEAT YOU UNTIL THE COPS CAME!!!!!

richbarna

May 20th, 2006, 12:18 AM

I've seen a lot of complaints from new users (my wireless card doesn't work, why can't I use Adobe Photoshop, there aren't enough games, etc.), but I've never seen a new user say, "Damn it. Everything in Ubuntu's almost perfect, but all my documents didn't magically copy over to my Ubuntu partition. It's too much work for me to copy those over myself. I'm going back to Windows!"

That made me giggle, nice one !
I don't know if it was intended sarcasm/humour, but it really got a chuckle out of me.
Of course aysiu is right, also why is this forum full of windows users whinging about not enough being done for THEM, so that they can easily come over to Linux. And also this attitude that the Linux community is losing out because not enough is done to make the oh so needed windows users come over to the OTHER side.
It's comical. I would dearly love to see everybody on the planet suddenly dump windows and slip an Ubuntu cd in the drive, but they want everything free AND easy. Jeez ! it's like you can't do enough for some people !
I love it when a newbie comes on the forum and posts 50 basic questions, I will help every time, because the poor guy is new to all this, but he's got the balls to make an effort.
I just can't stand whingers that want EVERYTHING done for them.
Do you really think that there are people that are so dumb, they can't backup their My documents contents ? That they need a program to find it for them.
Unbelievable :)

harisund

May 20th, 2006, 01:33 AM

3z3k3l Bill, is it you?

confused57

May 20th, 2006, 03:27 AM

Why can't Windows have this feature when you have to reinstall Windows?

Maybe this can be brought up in a Windows forum...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=58017

arsenic23

May 20th, 2006, 03:45 AM

Do you really think that there are people that are so dumb, they can't backup their My documents contents ? That they need a program to find it for them.
Unbelievable :)

Not that I disagree with anything that you just said, but..... Well, I charge $84.80 to back up someone's My Documents and move it to another PC, or format their currant setup and put it back into a fresh install. I live in a small town and I get paid to do this ALOT. But these people are never going to be using Linux, nor should anyone try to persuade them. If you really want this kinda person to go non-M$, get them a Mac.

Cyril

May 20th, 2006, 03:56 AM

"NOW LEAVE. YOU DISRESPECTFULL LITTLE PUNK. YOUR LUCKY I'M ONLY NEXT TO YOU IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD. IF I EVER SAW YOU DISRESPECT AYSIU IN PERSON I'D BEAT YOU UNTIL THE COPS CAME!!!!!"

So you think you are the kind of people this forum wants? I'd choose the guy with the misconception over you anyday.

3z3k3l

May 20th, 2006, 04:18 AM

(*edit aysiu I see you edited your previous message, I tend to agree with it more now then the way it was before about common goals and such)

You guys really perplex me ...

Ubuntu has a whole site set up to "spread Ubuntu" but from what I am gathering the only people you are targeting are people who want to have an OS that works more like Unix then Windows? "The purpose of Linux is to imitate Unix not window" ?
And I am the dumb noobie? I have seen this attitude on similiar nix forums. "We are not trying to be like Windows, its suppose to be more like Unix..." "If you want Windows go get Microsoft" -That make ME giggle. I didn't realize Unix was so GUI filed with so many Windows and easy to install applications...? :-k

"Do you really think that there are people that are so dumb, they can't backup their My documents contents ? That they need a program to find it for them."

Obviously you have never worked in Tech Support thus my point and my position.

And Catlett it is very noble for you to stand up for aysiu but I think he did a good job with his response. I don't feel the need to respond to your childish online threats. I do agree with Aysiu on one thing and that is our Goals were not the same. I believe his "assumptions" were flawed in that arena especially given the nature of an open forum entitled "Absolute Beginner Talk". I don't know why you assume I have your beliefs, or intelligence about Linux. I can honestly say I don't.

As for leaving, I kindly decline unless made, I don't believe I did anything wrong, I responded to his sarcastic remarks with my own. I don't believe I was out to be a jerk, but I seemed to have met at least one that likes to make threats.

But you know what that is ok. I won't hold it against ya.

I believe Ubuntu should be marketed for Windows Users, I see it as a excellent replacement. I also believe the software can be improved upon to make the change easier so more people will use/like Ubuntu. (isn't that why updates are released?Its not just to fix problems but also the very fact it has problems makes it the opposite of easy) So you can have more people populate this forum with silly questions and ideas that may not agree with your own. And yes, they may be previous Windows users.
Thanks for reading.

I apologize if I offended you or anyone. It was wrong of me to overreact to what I percieved as sarcasm.
Sincerely,
Not Bill

3z3k3l

May 20th, 2006, 04:24 AM

.... If you really want this kinda person to go non-M$, get them a Mac.
I have only played with a Mac a little bit but do you think it is easier then Ubuntu? I found U to be quite intutive, try getting use to that MAC mouse where you have to push the whole thing down instead of just using your finger on a button. :D

MAC's look sweet but you can now get MAc's with Windows on them... ](*,) If they are going to have to learn something new might as well Push them this way right or do you find Mac's are easier to learn then Linux?

ProjectGod

May 20th, 2006, 05:23 AM

Windows XP to Linux Migration Utility *Now Available*

haha! nice real nice! =D>

arsenic23

May 20th, 2006, 03:03 PM

I've found that older, less computer savvy people, seem to pick up Macs (OS9 OSX) much faster then they pick up Ubuntu or other alternative OS setups. I think a big part of this is visuals. OSX or similar hides allot of whats going on from the user. There is relatively little going on and everything is bubbly, bouncy, and happy looking. I've yet to see any other OS that does this quite as well as OS9/OSX.

It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but try putting your 84 year old Grandmother in from of two machines. One running Ubuntu and the other OSX. Then ask here which one she thinks look easier to learn. I'll bet you anything that she chooses the Mac ( unless she has substantially more computer exp. then your average 84 year old granny ). And people really do have an easier time learning something new if they can convince themselves it's going to be easy.

Also, if you can find some older Mac users, ask them why they have purchased a new Mac. I'd wager you'll find that allot of them had used a Mac for work or in another environment in a limited basis back in the day when AppleIIs and SE30s and what-not reigned. These people more then likely used a Windows PC for a fair amount of time until something made them remember that cute little Mac they had used so many years ago.

If you really want to sell Linux at these kinds of people what you should do is develop a 'cute and bubbly' distro. I'd never use it, but I'd wager it'd attract a lot of people who'd never thought of going GNU-Linux.

--My old SE30 still sits on my desk, my most adorable paperweight : )--

Edit:: I'm sure someone will come along and say that so-and-so a distro is 'cute and bubbly'. So I apologize in advance for not being aware of it.

solstice

May 20th, 2006, 04:27 PM

This point may have already been brought up, and I'm no expert by any means...

This is my nth attempt at getting linux to work for me. 3rd time with ubuntu. The previous times I always had issues that prevented me from using it, such as Java's applet launcher not accepting keybard input...or mysql not restoring my databases. I haven't tried to get the java envrionment set up again yet, but i'm hoping it works now! I did get WoW running last night so I'm quite proud :D

Anyway, I think a lot of people first making the switch to linux don't know much about open source, and I don't either yet. But what I am getting at is, they don't understand why video drivers and such arn't built into the system. To them, drivers are "free" because typically they can go to the website of the manufacturer and download them any time.

Unfortunately, its the little things like this that make linux so hard for the beginner. Video drivers, sound card drivers, video codecs etc...

Sorry if i'm rehashing another reply.

aysiu

May 20th, 2006, 07:31 PM

Gosh, arsenic23, how could Mac possibly be easy to migrate to? After all, it doesn't have a tool to magically transfer over your Windows settings and documents...

mostwanted

May 20th, 2006, 08:33 PM

Gosh, arsenic23, how could Mac possibly be easy to migrate to? After all, it doesn't have a tool to magically transfer over your Windows settings and documents...

It does actually :) I think it's called move2mac.

aysiu

May 21st, 2006, 01:33 AM

It does actually :) I think it's called move2mac. I'm sure if anyone migrating to Linux pays a Linux user $60, the Linux user will be more than happy to copy over the files to the new installation. Not moving emails is kind of a total bummer. Files are easy to copy. Emails can be trickier.
Move2Mac
One-Trick Pony Helps Windows-to-Mac Switchers

By David Pogue
Summary

Pros: Whittles hours of work down to a few mouse clicks.

Cons: Doesn't transfer e-mail; overly aggressive copy protection.

OS Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.2; Windows 98 or later

Price as rated: $60

Company: Detto Technologies, 866/338-8663 www.detto.com

It's all very well for Apple's "Switch" ads to woo Windows refugees. But once that good-looking Mac is on the desk, switchers face the chore of transferring files and settings from an old PC to the new Mac -- a job that entails moving or copying hundreds or thousands of files into specific new locations. Detto's Move2Mac is a satisfying, efficient tool that can save you from that weekend of fiddling -- but it doesn't bring over everything.
Speedier File Transfers

The box contains two key components: a hybrid Mac-Windows CD and a proprietary USB cable. The process begins on the PC: specify exactly which files, folders, and settings you want brought over to Mac OS X (version 10.2 or later required), and then run the Mac version of the program, connecting the cable when prompted. Stand back as your stuff is copied into the correct places on the Mac. The speed isn't bad; one gigabyte of data takes about 15 or 20 minutes to copy.

Some of what Move2Mac does is pretty obvious -- it copies the contents of your PC's My Pictures, My Documents, and My Music folders into your Home folder's Pictures, Documents, and Music folders, respectively. You don't need a $60 kit to do this -- especially if you have a network, which allows you to use OS X 10.2's built-in Windows file-sharing feature. But the kit also moves files and settings that would be tedious to move by hand, including Internet Explorer Favorites, e-mail account settings, dial-up Internet settings, e-mail address books (from Outlook Express for Windows only), and even desktop pictures.

E-mail Stays Put

The one disappointment is that Move2Mac doesn't move your actual e-mail messages to the Mac. This is a grisly task, considering the notorious mailbox-format incompatibility of various Mac and PC e-mail programs. However, Move2Mac does come with detailed instructions for performing this migration yourself if you use Outlook or Outlook Express for Windows. (You use Netscape 7, included on the CD, to import e-mail folders and attachments from Outlook or Outlook Express. You then open them in Netscape for Macintosh. From there, you export them to OS X's Mail program -- or, with the help of an AppleScript, Microsoft Entourage.)

Another inconvenience is that selecting the Bring Over Everything option creates a folder on your Mac called Migrated PC Files, which contains thousands of PC files that won't mean much on the Mac (Windows Theme Files, Microsoft Access Add-ins, and so on).

Remember, too, that Move2Mac will not convert files from PC to Mac format; however, most documents don't require conversion. For programs such as Quicken, you'll have to export your data from the PC and then import the resulting QIF intermediary file into Quicken for the Mac.

Finally, Detto's piracy paranoia is a bit excessive. In addition to requiring the use of a proprietary cable, the company makes you type a long serial number and activate the software over the Internet.

Macworld's Buying Advice

Move2Mac is an unusual program because it's meant to be used only once. Even so, it is a persuasive dollars-for-time proposition. You could do its work manually, but you'd need to have a network, expert knowledge of where files go in each operating system, and hours for copying files and retyping settings. For most people, $60 is a small price to pay for the assistance of this automated computer consultant.