Linux Desktop Readiness Thread

[ubuntu UsER]

Decided to install over my existing win98, but found that LINUX hates fat32

Or, maybe Windows hates Linux?

But now no driver for my wifi card. Got the card to be recognized, but no connection to the network. no idea yet what to do.

Does your wifi card work without drivers in Windows? I doubt it.

ubuntu is not ready for enduser simplicity. winxp does much better at this. so does win98. still ubuntu is pretty close.

I can't agree with you. Your card doesn't work and you say that OS is bad. I don't want to start another "trolling discussion", becuase there are so many on this forum Try to say something more about your wifi, and maybe we all could help you, but please don't start another battle saying that Ubuntu is bad OS.

[ktjensen]

I am using a netgear wg511 card. I dumped UBUNTU and tried MEPIS. MEPIS works much better, the first time (with the LIVE CD). The audio and video files work. My netgear card connects, and I have internet. Everything seems to function well.

Now I just need to get a boot loader to work. GRUB (MEPIS standard version) does not recognize my winxp, and my other bootloader does not startup MEPIS. I will get this all workjing soon.

Just a suggestion for the UBUNTU live CD. Make sure it can work with the majority of the WIFI cards. I guess it works well with the EITHERNET cards, but that is not what I have.

Everyone has there different favorite. I am sure that UBUNTU has its fans, and its best hardware.

[Jad]

Oooh what a sad story.
Never had problem with Ubuntu, all of my trouble-shooting was, How to do X & Y, because I'm new to debian based distro's

Yesterday, I found this post it was nice and a plus to ubuntu
http://telltec.ch/index.php?p=8

Ubuntu has been have been until now, friendly with all hardware I have (I got 2 box's at home) more than enough, I think they should stop making it auto detect everything, at least to keep some fun in the OS while trying to figure out How to do it.
I was using Novell Linux Desktop 9.2 and my scanner Epson perfection 610 and I was not able to get it working on NLD

While i just had to plug the scanner USB cable and the power plugin into electricity cable.
reboot
it was working
and thats fun!

In simple
Long Live Ubuntu

[nocturn]

Where is this myth coming from that *any* OS today is ready for Joe Sixpack?

The truth is this, Win98 is a very old and *unsupported* system, if you plug it to the Internet, you are begging to get hacked.

WinXP is easie to install then Linux yes, but a default install will have your running with admin privileges (root). The ease of use for Windows is that it targets the lowest common denominator. Yeah, a monkey can run an IIS based webserver by clicking 'next' and 'OK', but he will have installed with *defaults*, even for passwords.

BTW, Linux can use FAT32, but it is not recommended to install on. Can your WindowsXP read ext3 and reiser? Can you install on this.

Installing a Linux workstation or server with a moderate to good level of security is actually *much* easier then doing the same on windows.

Please do not spread FUD.

[friez]

umm if you get the right softwre windows can read both ext2/3 (Explore2fs http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm ) and reiserfs(RFSTOOL http://p-nand-q.com/download/rfstool.html ) ...fud

[nocturn]

umm if you get the right softwre windows can read both ext2/3 (Explore2fs http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm ) and reiserfs(RFSTOOL http://p-nand-q.com/download/rfstool.html ) ...fud

I never said there were no third party tools that could (as there is Hummingbird NFS to make Windows use NFS shares).
But these are analog to the mtools in Linux, not the kernel level support for both Fat32 and NTFS.

A 'vanilla' Windows install cannot read your ext2/3 partitions, and as I said, it is not possible to *install* windows on such a partition (which is what the original poster was trying to do with Linux on Fat32).

[mips]

Running Hoary AMD64.

Linux does not seem to be the ideal multi-media platform in my book. You have to battle your a$$ off to get anything to play, if its not a codec issue the applications crash, sound & video are out of synch.

My references above are towards amaroK, kaffeine, xmms, mplayer. Something as simple as playing a .mp3 seems to be a major problem.

If Linux/Ubuntu ever wants to be considered a mainstream desktop OS and be taken seriously by people & business then it has to shape up. I know it has improved a lot but it is not ready for the desktop in my opinion, not for average joe out there anyway.

Dont get me wrong, Ubuntu really looks good & feels good to use but it is very hard to get things to work. Most people just want to use a computer to get their work done, it is a tool. Not everybody aspires to be a Linux hacker in order to use the computer as a tool, they want something that 'just works'.

Delving into xorg, fstab etc. config files is NOT for the average computer user out there. DONT tell me but this is the way it is and people must start using the cli to get things going. With an attitude like that you will alienate the masses out there that you are trying to attract to Linux. A lot more has to be done to make this OS more user friendly and by user friendly I mean the installation/configuration part. The actual user interface/desktop(gnome) is pretty nifty and much better ******* imho., i actually love it, down to the earthy colours i at first hated

Am I throwing in the towel ? Hell no! I will persevere and try my best to get the better of all these problems. I'm just thinking about average joe out there...and my gripe is more with the apps than the os.

Can anybody recommend a very good Linux/Debian paper based book (I cannot read books from a monitor). I want to learn how this whole OS works, nuts & bolts. Is the Linux cook book 2nd Ed any good, it was available as a download but I no longer see it on the net ???

What are the chances of asking the Ubuntu developers to develop a universal media player ?? I would be happy with one rock solid one than 5 that dont work that well.

cheers
mips

[DJ_Max]

Posts like yours have been seen thousands of times. But it won't change the fact that most media codecs you are probably referring to (WMV, MPEG, etc..) Are cloesd source. Same with most video card drivers(ATI, nVidia), which is very important.

There is actually a reputable company producing open source video cards & drivers.

[mike998]

I second DJ Max's sentiments as far as the multimedia stuff is concerned.

As bad as it sounds, I am getting frustrated with people who complain about multimedia in linux and don't realise the underlying issues related to licensing.

I commend you, however, for persevering. You are probably in much the same position as I was a little while back. I can really reccomend the O'Reilly books (I believe my first was linux in a nutshell or something like that). I understand your difficulty with electronic books, but for much of the materials that you will study, it's best to actually be working on a system while you read so that you can try things out. (Trust me, I'm a technical instructor!)

[mips]

As bad as it sounds, I am getting frustrated with people who complain about multimedia in linux and don't realise the underlying issues related to licensing.

It is also frustrating for users. I understand the licensing restraints, they suck. Thats why I'm a big supporter of open standards. file & media formats should not be locked by a vendor as they prevent inter ooperability.

Thanks for the book suggestion. I'm actually thinking of starting a poll on recommended books.

There is actually a reputable company producing open source video cards & drivers.

Is there a list of these companies ? If not we need webpage somewhere recognising these companies & support them. I'm currently in the market for a small laser printer and from the looks of www.linuxprinting.org it looks like I should support Epson.