Making Ubuntu a Feasible Reality

[bkingx]

Great posts, guys!! I really enjoy reading your opinions and suggestions for the future!

Keep them coming, they are being seen and I'm sure are making an impression!

[FLPCGuy]

It is surprising that someone hasn't implemented a way to easily roll-back to the last known good configuration. Part of the problem is that there are so many configuration files scattered all over rather than a central repository. There isn't even a single install point for applications and their libraries [not even in Windows] since they can be installed for one user or shared by all. Linux is far less disciplined about where things are stored, as Windows was pre-registry. Since Win2k, driver rollback has been implemented for Windows. Linux has nothing comparable that I know about.

It would take a rather lengthy process to update an archive of all key configurations, libraries, and apps on shutdown. If the system crashed, the last good version would still be in the archive and could be restored from the GRUB boot menu. Ideally, you would make a small separate daily differential backup so you could rollback incrementally as needed to the last full backup. I'm not even sure you can back up the kernel [for driver rollback] and all files while the system is running.

This process would also constitute your automatic backup except for the home directory which you probably wouldn't want to rollback unless you overwrote a vital document. Of course, WINE or other software that installs in your home area complicates matters considerably.

I remain convinced that installations and backups should always separate user data from system data since it is rare that you would want to restore both. More likely you would restore just your data, typically to a different system, or want to restore a system without affecting your data.

While it is good to have all the feature sets and convenience of Windows, I wouldn't want to make Linux into a copy of Windows or eliminate the terminal as some seem to suggest.

[Zuph]

It is surprising that someone hasn't implemented a way to easily roll-back to the last known good configuration. Part of the problem is that there are so many configuration files scattered all over rather than a central repository. There isn't even a single install point for applications and their libraries [not even in Windows] since they can be installed for one user or shared by all. Linux is far less disciplined about where things are stored, as Windows was pre-registry. Since Win2k, driver rollback has been implemented for Windows. Linux has nothing comparable that I know about.

In the very near future there's going to be an extremely easy to way to implement this. Processors in the very near future, as well as video cards, etc. are going to have virtualization layers built in, so they're optimized to run on a virtual machine. With processors becoming faster and faster, the 1 or 2% performance hit on these virtualized machines will become negligible. Once you have your machine running in a virtual sandbox, you can do all sorts of cool stuff with it. In a virtual machine, it would be trivial to write a new "snapshot" image to the hard drive on ever clean shutdown. This way, you could easily recover to the last good snapshot. Hell, it could even store snapshots, and you could go back in time. This will also allow the hypervisor to more intelligently manage threads and processes on modern multi-core chips. Additionally, because the machines are virtualized, you can run multiple OSes on one computer. You have Alt-tab between windows and linux, for very little performance hit.

[Condoulo]

Personally, I would not want to remove the command line. I use it all the time, and find it pretty handy at times, such as when using ndiswrapper to install my DWL-G122. Plus, if I know the commands I need, why change it? Plus, it is possible to copy and past commands into the command line, so it shouldn't be a problem unless you are wanting to go directory using the cd command.

[comfurtn]

Personally, I would not want to remove the command line. I use it all the time, and find it pretty handy at times, such as when using ndiswrapper to install my DWL-G122. Plus, if I know the commands I need, why change it? Plus, it is possible to copy and past commands into the command line, so it shouldn't be a problem unless you are wanting to go directory using the cd command.

We're not saying that the command line should be removed, it should simply not be such a necessity for the average user. New users that know little or nothing about linux should not have to resort to copying and pasting commands to get things to work. For example, installing drivers with ndiswrapper should not require use of the command line, but at the present it does. Until newbies can get by without the command-line, we have an issue.

[Zuph]

Personally, I would not want to remove the command line. I use it all the time, and find it pretty handy at times, such as when using ndiswrapper to install my DWL-G122. Plus, if I know the commands I need, why change it? Plus, it is possible to copy and past commands into the command line, so it shouldn't be a problem unless you are wanting to go directory using the cd command.

I agree completely with what Comfurtn says.

Your average computer user is an idiot. The current surge in Linux on the desktop is a combination of people getting smarted about computers, vista ******* people off, and Linux actually getting better. The latter is probably the least important factor, actually. Unfortunately, after the people that have already converted, you have a large group of people that can use a computer because of the help files and the fact that things are named intuitively. "Install driver" is simple, and something you can understand. "Using ndiswrapper to install DWL-WIREMAJIG NUMBER 38848B" Is not. Until Linux gets to that point, it is doomed to slow growth and no major penetration.

[pirothezero]

I've recently made the move to linux final. Converted all my drives off of ntfs and haven't looked back. I tried many times (5+) to make the move over the last two years and when I was doing it I just didn't have the time at the time to look stuff up on google or searching these forums for the solution to various problems it'd get. Documentation in my opinion is the biggest area in all linux regardless of distro that needs help. There are very few terms you can type into google that will give you a one stop resource on everything linux.

One of the daunting things about linux when you first come to it is that programs are so flexible their control paths can result in really weird and hard to track down problems, and that is a nightmare when you want to fix it. Problem is its impossible to have documentation on every possible errors when you have so many variables with depencies and the way systems are setup from the base install to have a collected guide somewhere that can help everyone.

Getting help on irc and the forums is one thing, but thats for the generation that knows how to do that. My parents 54 wouldn't get help from a forum, she wouldn't know how to. As you decrease in age you the pool increases with people that would until you hit the sub 20s where everyone is at least a member of some forum. Support just can't happen that way though. Esp with so many guides on here where one isn't sure if the guide works 100% or it will only if you have done step A, B but not C (but oh no you did step C in some other guide and now what do you do).

So general documentation with open ended questions that narrows a broad field down is key. These forums have increased on that from what I remember 2 years ago with key terms at the top of each thread etc. A lot of people have posted so many helpful and (most working) guides/solutions on here that they should be categorized into one system, that doesn't depend on searches since sometimes your solution is middle of the way down 13 pages into the original thread.

That's always been my main problem. Oh and normal people who use a computer should never have to open a console to do something that needs to change too, it was mentioned though.

[etank]

There has been some talk on this thread about the console so I thought that I would post this http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/03...ps-still-rock/. I just found it on digg a few minutes ago.