Linux Memory Lane

[StephanG]

As someone that's been using Linux since 2006, I've been around for quite a few changes. Especially as someone that did a fesh install with every new Ubuntu release. So, I took a look through some of my old posts, and it's strange to think about some of the things that I used to struggle with. In fact, many problems, I never found a solution for. They just went away in succeeding releases.

So, I wanted to ask some of the others here. What bugs/problems did you have that now seems nothing more than a distant memory?

As for me, I recall struggling with:
1. Before Jockey, I had to google everytime to find out exactly what packages I need to install to get proprietary graphics drivers.
2. In Kubuntu, there was this weird little phase where you had to log out, and log back in to change the screen resolution. Which was particularly annoying if you played a game in Wine that changed the resolution.
3. I had to install Compiz from a third party. I was still new to Linux, and found the whole ordeal rather scary. Especially the whole "emerald --replace" command, that just seemed to be asking for trouble. Then, when it was included in Ubuntu by default, I was like: "Heh?" I just couldn't seem to wrap my brain around the idea that something that awesome, was just going to BE in my distro without having to do any work.

Of course, I later found out that it wouldn't find it's way into Kubuntu, but that was shortly before the KDE 4.0 release, so I thought we were getting something better. Needless to say, it wasn't quite what I expected... But, at the same time, I couldn't go back to KDE 3.5, it just felt like patched quilt. Little bits and pieces all stuck together. You had to INSTALL a package called super-karamba just to get widgets, and they were horribly expensive on resources. Plus, I instantly loved the folderview idea. So, I suffered my way through the 4.0, releases.

Somehow, I felt personally attacked by all the hate that the .0 release received. I felt like KDE was one of those people on a TV show, who was working up towards making an excellent point, but kept getting interrupted by the host/audience just as they were about to make the deliver the punchline.

4. Another bug that just seemed to vanish on its own, was the whole Samba thing. The first time I used Kubuntu, it seemed to work just find automatically. (All I wanted was to see the other shared folders, not share anything from my Kubuntu PC.) And then, the dark years started, with fiddling and faffing, and then one day, it just worked again.

5. The most annoying bug (according to me) was how hard it was to install packages from a windows PC, carry them by USB stick to my Linux box and install them there. Actually that problem only got solved VERY recently in Kubuntu. It's a feature of Muon.
But for me, the problem vanished much earlier when we got uncapped internet... Hehe.
I always felt that all the Ubuntu releases were being incredible pains-in-the-asses. I download a 700 MB CD, from a PC which has the internet to easily download any size I need it. Hell the University had it's own up to date ftp with all the latest releases on it. Then, I install it on my own PC that didn't have Internet, and it didn't have everything it needed on the CD! I thought that I wouldn't have ANY problems, if they just made the release 1.2 GB, and included the drivers and other software that I needed. But instead, they gave me a CD, that forced me to take my PC home for the weekend just to install yakuake. (Which is like 512 kB).

Sorry, I still get a little worked up about that last one. I still feel, I'll gladly download Ubuntu for a friend, install it for him, and everything. But, HE DOESN'T HAVE INTERNET, how am I supposed to install VLC on his computer!?

Like I said, I still get a bit worked up remembering all the trouble that a distro that is free and ideal for poor public schools, is rendered effectively useless if you don't have internet. But, now that I and everyone I know finally has uncapped internet, it doesn't seem to be as big of a problem as it used to. In a weird way, now that I have uncapped internet, I guess I can understand how they could overlook it. It does seem to be easy to assume that everyone has internet if you have it yourself.


Anyway, LOOONG post short, I want to know: What problems did you have in the early releases of Linux, that now seems so far away and stupid?

[ScionicSpectre]

I only go back to 2008, but I do remember needing to manually install the evtouch driver for my HP Tablet PC. However, since Jockey was around, installing the NVIDIA driver was easy as pie, and I had no complaints about that, since it was far easier than in Windows (I went on for years still hearing that even jockey was too hard- made me want to puke considering what a vast improvement it was for me). Also, back then, it was still somewhat common to modify your xorg.conf to get optimal performance, or to turn on special settings. All of that is handled quite easily now.

Hardware support is a lot better now- back then, it was good, and you could get Linux to work on just about anything, but now it's just normal to expect things to work. I think this is largely due to the work from the kernel team and the Gallium drivers. The quality of our support is just plain better.

But yeah, honestly, I'm surprised at how much I used to use WINE, and how much I used to focus on Linux as a Windows alternative back in those days. I guess some people really never leave that mindset behind- it's why you see so many complaints about certain apps they were using before not being on Linux. Personally, I wouldn't let something like that get in the way of enjoying all Linux has to offer to my digital life. I'm a gamer, but some things are more important that playing every last stupid MMO on the planet. Get a PS3- it's pretty cheap, now. Otherwise, dual-boot. The last thing you should do is complain about it to people who are doing their absolute best as volunteers. For stuff that doesn't work in WINE, or if you just don't like the look/integration of WINE, you have VirtualBox, and if you're computer's too slow for that, you've got dual-booting. Worst case scenario, you get to keep your applications AND you get to use an awesome platform on the side. Linux deserves better than to be compared to OS X and Windows all the time.

I think I hit the sweet spot, honestly. If I'd tried Hardy Heron first, I'd probably have left Ubuntu behind a while back. If you compare Hardy to Natty, you can see just how foolish a decision that would have been.

[Gone fishing]

My first use of Linux was Corel Linux in about 1999, installed it nothing worked gave up. I then needed a server and got someone to set up Suse 7 for me - it worked and was great much better than an NT server.

I used Xandros for a bit - but I've used Ubuntu since Warty and Ubuntu soon replaced Windows as my main OS. The first server I setup was Suse 9 and since then I've used Opensuse, Ubuntu and FreeBSD on servers - I think my favored combination is Ubuntu on the desktop and FreeBSD as a sever.

Edit

I think these forums have changed Linux for the better before Ubuntuforums all you got was RTFM advice.

[grahammechanical]

As you say it is free and you could even get it on a CD that was free. And that is the reason for your frustrations. Buy it for a few hundreds of pounds/dollars/whatever and you get it in a box of 3 or 4 CDs or even DVDs and you do not need an internet connection.

There has been a deliberate policy that is still in place of making Ubuntu fit onto a single CD. Some things have to be left out. I remember when computer magazines gave away programs on a floppy disc. Now they give away DVD discs. This was how I installed Ubuntu 7.04 (from a computer magazine supplied DVD) and continued to update Ubuntu until I got a broadband connection a couple of years ago.

I am thankful that Ubuntu is loosing the technical language that it had and is moving to simplified utilities. It is living up to the declaration of Ubuntu for humans.

Regards.

[weasel fierce]

Fighting all day to get video card and wireless card working. Now it all just works automatically.

[IWantFroyo]

My first post on this forum (from what I remember) was:
"Why doesn't 'su' give me superuser permissions?"
Ah... Good memories.

My second problem was me forgetting to connect to my network in 10.04. My wireless card was one of those sneaky unrecognized B4312s, so all I saw was something confusing about network managers. I was a newbie, and thought my computer would still be connected after the install. Stupid me. Nevertheless, I was rather surprised when everything worked but Firefox and the Software Center.

After I figured out my problem, I kept the computer on long enough to see it crash for some reason. It took me about a month before I decided to look at the motherboard manual and the BIOS. Turned out I didn't have my chipset voltage up high enough.

I remember I had a rather annoying problem with 10.10 not detecting my microphone. Went on for about a month, then just went away (an update?).

I also had a problem with the Meerkat not wanting to mount my flash drive. This randomly went away, too.

With the beta version of 11.04, my Internet connection would suddenly stop working, and say it still was. Fixed when Natty was released.

11.10 wouldn't let me see the launcher unless there was nothing on my desktop. No matter how hard I pushed against the side with the cursor, it wouldn't show up.

[ShodanjoDM]

- Tweaking xorg.conf settings just to get proper display resolution and mouse buttons/scroll wheel to work correctly.
- Compiling drivers/kernel modules for touchpad, webcam, and so on.
- Unable to read/write to NTFS partitions. Atleast I didn't know how and ntfs-3g was still in its infancy IIRC.
- Editing fstab to get other partitions recognized and mountable.
- Trying to remain patient when the system performed fsck since it could take hours to check large ext2/3 partitions.
- etc.

Ubuntu 6.10 was my first distro. Now, I've actually forgotten most of the annoying things that I've experienced during my 5 years of using Linux as my desktop/laptop OS.

[occams_beard]

My very first distro was Red Hat 6.0 back in 1999 or so. Came on the back of a book Red Hat Linux Unleashed.

I remember always having to really work to get sound working back in those days... People complain about Pulse Audio now. HA! I always had to compile in some kind of hacked kernel module to get sound working. It took some work but eventually I'd get the "Hellooo this is leenus torvalds and I pronounce leenux as leenux" sound file to play.. LOL good times :D

Also configuting XFree86 back then was a major PITA... you'd get a scary warning about how you could destroy your monitor if you picked the wrong settings... Nowadays everything just works, and I haven't touched xorg.conf for a long long time.

There was another debian based distro I used back in the day called "stormix" which was actually quite good for the time. No one seems to remember it tho. It never seemed to catch on, Anyone remember that one?

Eventually I moved to mandrake, and back then you could actually buy a boxed version of it at walmart. I stayed with mandrake for a long time, then to Fedora... Then finally Ubuntu/Mint.

It has been an interesting and rewarding journey.

[MG&TL]

I'm a relative newbie, but I still remember trying to edit xorg.conf to get the video working. The latest releases have phased my problem out.

[KiwiNZ]

I have been using Linux since the early 90's. I have seen a lot of changes especially in the DE and useability area.
However some of what made Linux a pain in the 90's is still an issue, driver and Hardware compatibility, and install of Apps and third party software.

This of course on the desktop, Linux on the Server is a different beast and is superior to many of it's competitors.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Fighting all day to get video card and wireless card working. Now it all just works automatically.

Those were the fun days of being challenged. I kind of miss them. :) I woke up the next day; after staying up way to late, with the feeling I had accomplished something.

[PaulW2U]

Also configuting XFree86 back then was a major PITA... you'd get a scary warning about how you could destroy your monitor if you picked the wrong settings...

I managed to do some serious damage to my monitor but as it was under warranty I easily persuaded my supplier to replace it with a brand new one. As far as he was concerned I was running Windows 95 or 98. :)

Editing config files and finding so much not working put me off Linux for 10 years. :(

[Homicide]

This is probably my 12th or so post since registering back in late '06.

I just know how to google.

[Thewhistlingwind]

I managed to do some serious damage to my monitor but as it was under warranty I easily persuaded my supplier to replace it with a brand new one. As far as he was concerned I was running Windows 95 or 98. :)

Editing config files and finding so much not working put me off Linux for 10 years. :(

Eheheh.

Graphics, for wizards only. :P

Lusers need not apply.

(More seriously, that sounds horrible.)

[FuturePilot]

As someone else who started in 2006, all you new whippersnappers have no idea how good you have it now.

[jjex22]

This is going to sound hilarious but I actually switched to Ubuntu from Gentoo because I saw on a netbook forum that I could get 'Samsung tools' for my netbook on Ubuntu via voria's PPA; no more "xbacklight -set 40" for me!

Gentoo had never made it onto any of my mobile devices due to the days spent arguing with wireless settings and the manual, and even Fedora that my laptop ran had absolutely no function key support and bluetooth couldn't be turned off - it'd just tell me that it had (my phone could still detect) I remember asking about Fedora and the function keys on linux forums, to be told in no uncertain terms by the community pretty much as a whole that function keys were out of the quetion - a fact of life for linux.

Three releases later and my function keys just worked out of the box - I never did more than test natty, but when I installed Oneriec and found out I could just push Fn+Down to dim the screen I new we had made it!

[BrokenKingpin]

I have been using Linux since Red Hat 9 (2003). For the most part Linux has worked far better for me than Windows, but I have had a few issues here and there of course.

The major ones I can think of:

- Broadcom wireless card on my laptop when I first got it (ages ago). It took a year or so to get a reliable driver that was easy to install.

- When I first got a high end quad core desktop I would get total system hangs. A month later when a new kernel was released in the Ubuntu repos everything was fine (and I still use this desktop as my main rig).

- Touch pad issue on my netbook for the last few ubuntu releases. Luckily there was a patch that someone created that fixed it finally.

- Sound issues when the switch was made to PulseAudio. I still have an issue with the card on my media server mobo, but I have found a workaround.

- Gnome 2's death... I really didn't know where to go from there. I did find a nice home with Xfce though.

I only use Linux operating systems at home, and could not happier for the most part.

[ezsit]

Let's see,

Around 1997 I tried installing Slackware 3 point something and getting to a command prompt and not knowing what to do next to get the XFree server running and install a desktop environment.

Around 1998 I tried my hand at SuSE 5 point something that I purchased through www.CDROM.com and eventhough I selected English as the language to use for installation, the entire XFree server setup routine was in German. It took me three or four attempts to pay enough attention to the German prompts to get a successful XFree installation, and at least another install to remember to change the keyboard layout from German to English. Once I finally had a working system, I had no idea how to use dialup, how to enable SCSI emulation to use the cdrecord programs, and how to set up a parallel port scanner. I never got past these hurdles and gave up.

I used OS/2 for the longest time and went back to Linux when Red Hat 7.3 came out and that was my first fully successful Linux install where all my peripherals worked and I stuck with that until Mandriva 2005LE. I stayed with Mandriva through 2005 and into 2006 since that system worked perfectly with my hardware and it was a pleasure to use.

2006 saw my discovery of Ubuntu and it took a year of playing with 5.10 before I finally switched to Ubuntu when 6.10 came out. By the time Ubuntu came along, I had enough experience with Linux to know how to get simple problems fixed and I finally dropped Windows around 2008.

[cariboo]

I bought a boxed copy of RedHat 5.2 desktop in 1998, the part that saved me was the excellent printed manual that came in the box. It took me about 3 tries to get X configured to the resolution I wanted.

I remember that on the graphics card setup screen, there was a large notice saying you could destroy your monitor if you didn't set things up right.

[mustang]

Great thread, thanks for starting it.

Started with linux back in the summer of 2005. I remember I wanted to be a tough macho man so I went for gentoo first. I remember printing out the 20+ page advanced installation guide and making it to page...3 before giving up.

Decided I should ease up a little bit and went for Fedora instead. Had strange resolution and blurriness problems. Decided to try Ubuntu next and haven't looked back (although this Unity stuff is offputting...)

Started off with 5.04 on my desktop PC. Everything was moreorless smooth. Getting the mp3 and certain video codecs was a pain in that time. Needed wine for flashfxp.

I got my first laptop---a macbook--around 2007. I remember the nightlong battles trying to get suspend-to-ram work. It was such an art back then that I hope people are greatful for what Ubuntu (and linux in general) are today on laptops. I remember trying to recompile the kernel or using other people's kernels. It was a nightmare in everyway. Power management was awful; OSX lasted about 4 hours to Ubuntu's 2 hours.

But I stuck with linux over the years. Went to that macbook to a cheap acer to now a Lenovo Thinkpad T410 with 10.10 running. Things are just so much easier these days---both on the hardware and software side. Kudos to the Ubuntu devs and this community for everything.

[lisati]

I considered installing Red Hat on one machine, can't remember which version, a year or two before discovering Ubuntu, but was put off by what I'd need to learn. A few years later, after using Ubuntu for a while, I got the library book out again and installed it. The network card I'd installed in the machine didn't work out of the box, and I think I would have found it too much with my level of knowledge at the time. Even now, I think I'd be giving Google a workout! :D

My first "proper" install was on another machine was of Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) and here we are, four years later!

[odiseo77]

I remember doing magic to make a winmodem work when I started using linux, about 7 years ago (if I still depended on it to connect I'd still probably have to do magic, since winmodems are a PITA under linux). I also remember going to a vc and executing "init 3" in order to install the nVidia graphics driver (and crossing my fingers hoping it worked).