Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Hey there,

For each given system, I would say that installing most software most of
the time just works, provided that you learn what you need to do. Even a
fairly novice user can learn to build SlackBuilds, and they only have to
do that when a prebuilt package does not already exist. It's not much more
work than anything else. Dragging and Dropping in Mac, Installer Wizards
on Windows, and Package Managers on Linux machines are all fairly easy.
When things work the way they are supposed to, it's fairly
straightforward on any system. Removing software can be more hairy on
some than others, but most users don't care about that as much.

The problem isn't in the perfect situation, but rather the case where
things break. They will, especially when installing software. Debian
faithful can argue all day long that this shouldn't happen on the stable
platform, but the truth is: the normal desktop user isn't going to be
running Debian stable, and certainly isn't going to be content with the
normal software installed in a Debian repository (it's either too out of
date, or they want something they saw somewhere else). Even if they can
manage to stay within the repositories, bugs are bound to happen when
running the unstable versions, and when that happens, no matter what OS
you are using, it takes more than the novice user to figure out what to
do. Many people end up learning a thing or two about their OS and learn
how to fix them, but as soon as you move to a new OS, you have to
relearn this stuff.

I don't know of any way to fix this so that everyone is happy. The
Windows solution is usually to provide a few different installers, so
one of them will likely succeed. The Mac solution is to go into the
package contents of an App file and figure out what's going wrong,
assuming that you don't already get some support from your application
provider. The Debian Package manager solution is to hopefully limit this
problem by having huge, well tested repositories, so that they don't
every "get out of the safe zone." The Slackware solution is to make the
package process as simple as possible so it is easy to fix. The solution
with RPMs is usually to find a new RPM from some other place. :-)

None of these solutions is going to work for everyone. I don't know if
there is a solution that works for everyone.

--On Monday, November 16, 2009 05:53:03 PM -0500 Mark Warner
<markwarner1954@att.net> wrote:

> As my experience is limited to mostly apt/Synaptic distros, I'd venture
> to say that installing software is far *easier* for a Linux user than a
> Windows user... as long as you can break them of the habit of trying to
> download an installer and running it from the desktop. :-)

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 04:54:58PM GMT, Mark Krenz [mark@slugbug.org] said the following:
>
> But there are still some things that you have to do from the
> terminal in OS X. Unless someone knows how to mount a samba filesystem
> through the GUI (without installing some 3rd party app).
>

And I solved it myself simply by searching the web for Mac OS X samba
and found out that there is a simple way to do is from the finder.
Go -> Connect to Server and insert smb://server/share into the server
field.

Under Gnome, its Places -> Connect to server, then select Windows
Share in service type and then insert the information in the fields
provided.

Pretty easy on both systems.

--
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Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Aaron W. Hsu wrote:
> Mark Warner wrote:
>>
>> That presumes, of course, that you *are* able to install on the hardware
>> at hand, but does *not* presume that the user is the one doing the
>> installing. I dare say the people I/we are referring to wouldn't be able
>> to install Windows cleanly either, especially in a situation where
>> drivers weren't available natively in the Win OS.
>
> Indeed, Slackware is amazingly user-friendly if you let the user begin
> his experience at the same point where most people begin their
> experiences: at a pre-installed, ready to run box with the system
> already installed. The only slightly tricky part is installing software,
> which is still tricky no matter what OS you use.

As my experience is limited to mostly apt/Synaptic distros, I'd venture
to say that installing software is far *easier* for a Linux user than a
Windows user... as long as you can break them of the habit of trying to
download an installer and running it from the desktop. :-)

--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Barry Schatz wrote:
> Mark Warner wrote:
>> Mark Krenz wrote:
>>>
>>> Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking
>>> "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks"
>>> and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)
>>
>> I envy you Gnomies in that regard. I'm not looking forward to making the
>> leap to KDE 4.
>
> By the time you make the switch, KDE4 will be ready for you.

That's what I'm counting on. Warren Woodford is nothing if not anal
about stability and "solidity". He's been working on his deployment of
KDE 4.x for some time, and from what I understand is only now beginning
to get it nailed down. As has always been the case with his releases
(with one notable exception that I won't bother going into detail
about), I fully expect it to be "ready" when he pulls the trigger.

Whether *I* am ready is another question altogether.

--
Mark Warner
MEPIS Linux
Registered Linux User #415318

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Warner wrote:
> Mark Krenz wrote:
>
>>
>> Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking
>> "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks"
>> and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)
>>
>
> I envy you Gnomies in that regard. I'm not looking forward to making the
> leap to KDE 4.
>
>
By the time you make the switch, KDE4 will be ready for you. They made a
nasty mistake with 4.0.0, but they codenamed it "will eat your children"
for a reason. I have nothing but praise for the 4.3.x series, and 4.4
will have even more to love.
> Then again, if I was using Windows, it would be W2K.
>
At work, I dual book WinXP and Win7. I have both themed to look like
Win2K. By avoiding the fancy bling and empty features I have avoided the
Microsoft tithe (when you have to reinstall the OS because it's slow or
infected) for 2 years and counting.

-Barry
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Aaron W. Hsu wrote:
> Mark Warner wrote:
>>
>> I'm not looking forward to making the
>> leap to KDE 4.
>
> The leap to KDE 4 may be great, but KDE 4 is actually a pretty good
> Desktop Environment, IMO.

So I'm told. It's been a while since I last took a look at it. Between
my aversion to anything totally new and different and where KDE was at
the time, I wasn't impressed. I'm hoping that by the time my distro of
choice leaves v3.5 behind, I and it (KDE) will be ready.

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 03:06:23PM -0500, Mark Warner wrote:
> Mark Krenz wrote:
> > Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking
> > "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks"
> > and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)
>
> I envy you Gnomies in that regard. I'm not looking forward to making the
> leap to KDE 4.

I'm looking forward to KDE 4 settling down. By "settling down" I mean
being that all applications are at feature-parity with their KDE 3.5
equivalents plus being as stable as the 3.5 line.

Though, as I've said before, I really like Phonon. It works in an easy
to understand, easy to use way *and* (more importantly) the way it works
is how I want it to work.

The SVG support in KDE4 is really nice, particularly for the games.
Note, though, that SVG support is old hat for GNOME. It was missing
functionality in KDE 3.5.

> Then again, if I was using Windows, it would be W2K.

New or unfamiliar users like big flashy changes. These appear to be
clear reasons why X is better (or frequently just different) than Y.
Experienced users on the other hand, tend to be far less fond of big
radical changes -- particularly when the big changes do not clearly make
things better for the way they want to use the system.

--
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Steven Black

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

The leap to KDE 4 may be great, but KDE 4 is actually a pretty good
Desktop Environment, IMO.

Aaron W. Hsu

--On Monday, November 16, 2009 03:06:23 PM -0500 Mark Warner
<markwarner1954@att.net> wrote:

> I'm not looking forward to making the
> leap to KDE 4.

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Krenz wrote:
>
> Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking
> "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks"
> and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)

I envy you Gnomies in that regard. I'm not looking forward to making the
leap to KDE 4.

Then again, if I was using Windows, it would be W2K.

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Krenz wrote:

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 07:02:29PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:   

 My real gripe here is the regression.     

   Regression happens in software.  Linux and Ubuntu didn't invent the word regression. That word was used in medicine and probably even applied to computers long before Linus was even born.    Again, all OSes and Applications are victims of this.  Some more than others. Sometimes a development process is flawed and you get regression every other version.  For instance, I remember the original version of RedHat we would see a bug come up every other version and our theory at Kiva on it was that they had two development teams at Redhat working on two different major versions.    And there have been several instances of OSes that were major mistakes.    Windows Vista   Windows ME   RedHat 8   Maybe Ubuntu 9.10 falls into this category.   I know there are more but can't think of them right now.    It happens.  Its unfortunate when people jump into an operating system at one of these points and get the wrong impression of it. Its equally unfortunate when someone gets an OS that turns out to be great (Windows 7), but don't know what hell they are in for in the next version    

It definitely happens, but it's simultaneously frustrating when the issues are this major and fundamental and not something obscure that would only affect a small population of users.

It is satisfying feeling a sense of progress and improvement being made when one upgrades from one OS to a newer version of that OS. It is deflating when one feels that they have actually made their system worse by the upgrade.

I guess my experience is unique though because I've never suffered through any of the OS upgrades you have listed above :)  This is uncharted territory for me!

On a completely personal note, as much as I have a serious love/hate relationship with Apple, I've come to realize that I'd much rather spend my time working on my servers or programming than messing around with my desktop. I truly appreciate Apple for delivering a desktop environment I can be productive on as per this criteria.

Not with these sorts of problems, no. Grandma and Grandpa might be able to use KDE or Gnome if everything was setup for them already and working beautifully and they learned things by rote, but troubleshooting these sorts of problems? No chance in hell...They'll probably have to live with some minor annoyances as well. Understanding the GUI? It depends on what they do with their computers, I guess.     

  I often here this argument about learning things by rote and its funny because things have been more consistent on open source desktops and have lasted longer than on Windows. Almost every version of Windows looks different and puts icons in different places.    Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking "Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks" and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)    

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org

Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 07:02:29PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:
> My real gripe here is the regression.

Regression happens in software. Linux and Ubuntu didn't invent the
word regression. That word was used in medicine and probably even
applied to computers long before Linus was even born.

Again, all OSes and Applications are victims of this. Some more than
others. Sometimes a development process is flawed and you get regression
every other version. For instance, I remember the original version of
RedHat we would see a bug come up every other version and our theory at
Kiva on it was that they had two development teams at Redhat working on
two different major versions.

And there have been several instances of OSes that were major
mistakes.

Windows Vista
Windows ME
RedHat 8
Maybe Ubuntu 9.10 falls into this category.
I know there are more but can't think of them right now.

It happens. Its unfortunate when people jump into an operating system
at one of these points and get the wrong impression of it. Its
equally unfortunate when someone gets an OS that turns out to be great
(Windows 7), but don't know what hell they are in for in the next
version

> Not with these sorts of problems, no. Grandma and Grandpa might be able
> to use KDE or Gnome if everything was setup for them already and working
> beautifully and they learned things by rote, but troubleshooting these
> sorts of problems? No chance in hell...They'll probably have to live
> with some minor annoyances as well. Understanding the GUI? It depends on
> what they do with their computers, I guess.

I often here this argument about learning things by rote and its funny
because things have been more consistent on open source desktops and
have lasted longer than on Windows. Almost every version of Windows
looks different and puts icons in different places.

Sometimes after I upgrade to a new version of Gnome, I login thinking
"Wow, this is gonna be cool, I can't wait to see how different it looks"
and then I login and think, hmmmm, it looks about the same. ;-)

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Krenz wrote:

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:12:57PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:   

Yes, but you are an uber geek :)     

   Thank you, but no.  I'm only a geek in the respect that I do a lot of computer stuff.  I'm not a "kernel developer" level geek that eats and breathes binary.  I enjoy assembling a computer, but I don't really care about writing drivers and delving into the deep level modules, drivers and heavy stuff.  My goal is to do stuff with my computer, not do stuff for it.    I think some people think that I do something special when I setup my computer to get it working, but not really.  Seriously, my installation of Ubuntu or whatever other distribution is pretty standard and I haven't done anything special to get sound, video or networking working. It just works.    There is one thing that I do do[1] though and that's make sure that I buy hardware that is compatible with Linux.  Mac has the same issue where people think they can just go out and buy any piece of hardware they want and it should work, but it doesn't because.  Mac is a bit better because some stores have Mac specific sections for hardware.     

Which is what makes my problems particularly disappointing, as we're talking about my ethernet controller built into my motherboard and USB audio, both of which were working flawlessly in Jaunty. My real gripe here is the regression.

ourselves, but for the masses. Linux is very far away from being consumable by the masses, at least using Ubuntu as a metric... See monitor management, getting sound to work, video, etc.. Then, you have the whole category of usability which is a little hit and miss, in my opinion.     

  In the long term, Ubuntu has been a big step forward in getting hardware working.  I have had much better luck on Ubuntu than on any other distribution.  Although it could just be a coincidence and some hardware that I had suddenly had kernel drivers. Nevertheless, prior to Ubuntu, I had these hardware problems that had to be resolved by doing something special.    o HP laserjet printers and some printers in general didn't work.   o Nvidia and ATI cards both required doing a lot of extra stuff on the      command line to get the commercial driver installed.   o Wireless configuration on a laptop was much more difficult.    o Installing Flash and Java installed and working with your browser   o Better GUI tools for system management.   At least this is the way I saw things happen.    

I'm in the same boat in terms of my Nvidia driver, and I obtained an Nvidia video card because I knew it would work better in Linux than an ATI one. I can't complain about problems in this category over the last few releases of Ubuntu though.

Consider yourself lucky. I'm struggling with kernel errors such as "NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (via-rhine): transmit queue 0 timed out" that render my ethernet useless, and "Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -285503362 ns)", neither of which Grandma has a fighting chance of figuring out.  Both of these are new to Ubuntu 9.10 for me, so I don't necessarily fault Linux as a whole for this     

   All OSes usually have problems when a new version is released, sometimes they are major. I almost never upgrade right away. This is the first time I've seen this specific problem, but its most likely a problem with the via-rhine driver.    

There are threads about this problem in 2007. It seems either this is a brand new problem that is generating the same error message, or a regression of the old one. Either way, it's not a good sign of Ubuntu QA these days. I'm far from the only one who has had problems with 9.10, there was a whole Slashdot article about the bumpy upgrade. Like I said, I've never *ever* seen this problem until 9.10, and I'm not the only one getting it now. The clocksource stuff seems to come and go between releases, there are a gazillion threads about that. It seems to lead to crashing. There are several people whose shared printing stopped working with this release too. There are a whole host of issues with 9.10. It would seem that 9.10 has been the least impressive release to date, at least based on my perceptions and personal experiences.

I'm not bitching too aggressively looking for sympathy because I could have held off upgrading, but on the other hand, it looks to me like 9.10 was not release worthy. This step forward/step back approach to improvements is very frustrating.

 And I think you don't give Grandma and Grandpa enough credit. They defeated Hitler and the Communists and they can't use KDE or Gnome? Come on, give me a break. People have become too lazy.    

Not with these sorts of problems, no. Grandma and Grandpa might be able to use KDE or Gnome if everything was setup for them already and working beautifully and they learned things by rote, but troubleshooting these sorts of problems? No chance in hell...They'll probably have to live with some minor annoyances as well. Understanding the GUI? It depends on what they do with their computers, I guess.


Just my two cents...

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org

Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Hello,

--On Monday, November 16, 2009 01:40:09 PM -0500 Mark Warner
<markwarner1954@att.net> wrote:

> That presumes, of course, that you *are* able to install on the hardware
> at hand, but does *not* presume that the user is the one doing the
> installing. I dare say the people I/we are referring to wouldn't be able
> to install Windows cleanly either, especially in a situation where
> drivers weren't available natively in the Win OS.

Indeed, Slackware is amazingly user-friendly if you let the user begin
his experience at the same point where most people begin their
experiences: at a pre-installed, ready to run box with the system
already installed. The only slightly tricky part is installing software,
which is still tricky no matter what OS you use.

Aaron W. hsu

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Hello,

--On Monday, November 16, 2009 01:12:57 PM -0500 Joe Auty
<joe@netmusician.org> wrote:

> if Ubuntu is supposed to be the most user friendly of the bunch, this
> does not bode well.

>From my personal experience with other Linux users, the most popular
distributions are hardly the most user-friendly and stable. Ubuntu gets
a lot of attention, but I'm not sure it is because of some innate
improvement that it makes to the community in terms of technical
stability or Windows -> Linux User Friendliness.

Ubuntu managed to get a big community with good marketing, and it isn't
a shabby system. However, it's not the most stable by a long shot,
because a thriving active community often moves forward in the name of
progress at rapid rates if stability is not one of their primary goals
above new features.

Fedora Core is another example of a very popular Linux distribution that
is very unstable. Why is it popular? Well, it just is, and the community
surrounding it causes some of that, I would guess.

I am just trying to point out that the most popular system in Linux land
are usually not the most stable.

As for user-fiendliness, until the attitude and metric of
user-fiendliness switches from "deos it work like Windows" to something
else, there will always be this issue. This is changing, I think.

We can argue for things "Just Working" all day long, but the truth
is,many users will give that up in exchange for other things, and many
times there are technical walls from hardware vendors that create these
problems.

Aaron W. Hsu

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:12:57PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:
> >
> Yes, but you are an uber geek :)

Thank you, but no. I'm only a geek in the respect that I do a lot of
computer stuff. I'm not a "kernel developer" level geek that eats and
breathes binary. I enjoy assembling a computer, but I don't really care
about writing drivers and delving into the deep level modules, drivers
and heavy stuff. My goal is to do stuff with my computer, not do stuff
for it.

I think some people think that I do something special when I setup my
computer to get it working, but not really. Seriously, my installation
of Ubuntu or whatever other distribution is pretty standard and I
haven't done anything special to get sound, video or networking working.
It just works.

There is one thing that I do do[1] though and that's make sure that I
buy hardware that is compatible with Linux. Mac has the same issue
where people think they can just go out and buy any piece of hardware
they want and it should work, but it doesn't because. Mac is a bit
better because some stores have Mac specific sections for hardware.

> ourselves, but for the masses. Linux is very far away from being
> consumable by the masses, at least using Ubuntu as a metric... See
> monitor management, getting sound to work, video, etc.. Then, you have
> the whole category of usability which is a little hit and miss, in my
> opinion.

In the long term, Ubuntu has been a big step forward in getting
hardware working. I have had much better luck on Ubuntu than on any
other distribution. Although it could just be a coincidence and some
hardware that I had suddenly had kernel drivers. Nevertheless, prior to
Ubuntu, I had these hardware problems that had to be resolved by doing
something special.

o HP laserjet printers and some printers in general didn't work.
o Nvidia and ATI cards both required doing a lot of extra stuff on the
command line to get the commercial driver installed.
o Wireless configuration on a laptop was much more difficult.
o Installing Flash and Java installed and working with your browser
o Better GUI tools for system management.

At least this is the way I saw things happen.

> Consider yourself lucky. I'm struggling with kernel errors such as
> "NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (via-rhine): transmit queue 0 timed out" that
> render my ethernet useless, and "Clocksource tsc unstable (delta =
> -285503362 ns)", neither of which Grandma has a fighting chance of
> figuring out.
>
> Both of these are new to Ubuntu 9.10 for me, so I don't necessarily
> fault Linux as a whole for this

All OSes usually have problems when a new version is released,
sometimes they are major. I almost never upgrade right away. This is
the first time I've seen this specific problem, but its most likely a
problem with the via-rhine driver.

And I think you don't give Grandma and Grandpa enough credit. They
defeated Hitler and the Communists and they can't use KDE or Gnome? Come
on, give me a break. People have become too lazy.

[1] - Why do I keep ending up with sentences with two of the same word
next to one another? Like do do and that that.

--
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Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Joe Auty wrote:
>
> The whole "year of the Desktop" proposition has always implied (to me)
> that it would be the year of the Desktop not only for geeks like
> ourselves, but for the masses. Linux is very far away from being
> consumable by the masses, at least using Ubuntu as a metric... See
> monitor management, getting sound to work, video, etc.. Then, you have
> the whole category of usability which is a little hit and miss, in my
> opinion.

I can only speak from my own limited experience, installing and setting
up desktop Linux (PCLinuxOS and SimplyMEPIS, specifically, as I feel KDE
3.5.10 is the most "intuitive" DTE for Joe User) distros for a handful
of folks: once installed, set up, and configured, I've yet to have an
unsophisticated home user have any problem using Linux just as they
would Windows. My 14-year-old niece is the latest example.

That presumes, of course, that you *are* able to install on the hardware
at hand, but does *not* presume that the user is the one doing the
installing. I dare say the people I/we are referring to wouldn't be able
to install Windows cleanly either, especially in a situation where
drivers weren't available natively in the Win OS.

--
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Presenting the grub prompt is a good indication that there is no grub
config file present. 0.97 is the first version of Grub, so most of
the documentation should be talking about that version unless they
explicitly mention the version as being "1.x", "grub2", or references to
an experimental "pupa" version.

Here's the history: The first version of GRUB was version 0.x. It was
rewritten from scratch and the earlier stages of that process was called
"pupa". This rewrite is what became the official 1.x line. As it was the
second major release of GRUB, the Debian packages are called "grub2".
Other folks and documentation probably also call it "grub2". Note,
however, that Debian has a habit of going with names which are contrary
to officially sanctioned names due to convention. (In particular, they
call Apache HTTPd 2.x "apache2", even though this is like calling the
Microsoft Office 2002 product Microsoft 2002. Apache is a group name,
not a product name.)

With the correct commands you can boot your target partition directly
from the grub prompt. With a boot disk you may be able to resolve
the issue simply by booting to CD, mounting your /boot partition and
creating a "/boot/grub/menu.lst" file.

Please note, though, that the exact location of the grub menu.lst file
varies by distribution. I know RedHat has used other locations (or was
that other file names -- like /boot/grub.conf) instead, but I do not
know what location your version of CentOS uses.

Cheers and good luck,
Steven Black

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 04:06:41PM -0500, Kelly McEvilly wrote:
> I've got a knoppix disk I boot bad windows machines with. Suppose I'll give that a try.
>
> The box actually reads:
>
> GNU GRUB version 0.97
>
> so I suppose I'll start my googling there. I'm guessing the GRUB thing
> is coming up because it can't figure out what to boot to.
>

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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

Mark Krenz wrote:

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 07:58:50PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:   

I like Ubuntu, and I like Linux (especially on the server end of things), but we are so incredibly far away from the "year of Linux on the Desktop" it's sort of laughable.      

   That is funny.  I laugh everytime someone says year of Linux on the desktop because I've actually been using Linux as my sole desktop on all my computers for something like 8 years now. The last 5 years of which have been really great with no major issues and all the applications I need. And Virtualbox ensures that I'll always have a solution for running Windows easily if anything special comes up (not often).    

Yes, but you are an uber geek :)

The whole "year of the Desktop" proposition has always implied (to me) that it would be the year of the Desktop not only for geeks like ourselves, but for the masses. Linux is very far away from being consumable by the masses, at least using Ubuntu as a metric... See monitor management, getting sound to work, video, etc.. Then, you have the whole category of usability which is a little hit and miss, in my opinion.

  Does that sound familiar to anyone?  I hear those exact complaints about Linux and people think its Linux, but its not, its simply lack of familiarity. For me, Linux works in a predictable way. And when it breaks, it usually breaks in a way I understand and can easily fix.  If it doesn't, I can easily get at the internals to fix it and often searching for an error message on Google reveals the solution. And the solution usually works.  I usually have my workstation running for 30-60 days before I have to reboot.  Usually I end up breaking things because I try to do too much, like foolishly trying to run some huge scene in Blender that requires several GB of RAM.    

Consider yourself lucky. I'm struggling with kernel errors such as "NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0 (via-rhine): transmit queue 0 timed out" that render my ethernet useless, and "Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -285503362 ns)", neither of which Grandma has a fighting chance of figuring out.

Both of these are new to Ubuntu 9.10 for me, so I don't necessarily fault Linux as a whole for this, but if Ubuntu is supposed to be the most user friendly of the bunch, this does not bode well. These are not obscure problems that are triggered doing obscure things, I'm not running anything unusual, and both are pretty random and unpredictable.

  As for Mac, I can't say anything about the Mac Mini I have because it hasn't really broken on me yet.  Its actually pretty nice and I respect Apple for making something better for the consumer. But there are still some things that you have to do from the terminal in OS X. Unless someone knows how to mount a samba filesystem through the GUI (without installing some 3rd party app).  OS X will be my mistress OS.    

I'm not a Mac fanboy, but let me reiterate my original plea: Ubuntu needs some Macifying in terms of getting things to "just work".

--
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org

Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 08:21:36PM GMT, Barry Schatz [sorbetninja@gmail.com] said the following:
> >
> Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and
> nobody wants to do maintenance. -- Kurt Vonnegut
>

Fortunately not all developers are like this. There are a good number
of open source developers who are good at fixing bugs and being
responsible for their code.

Someone may think that being paid for development makes all the
difference, but in reality, there are enough longstanding bugs that
exist in commercial operating systems and applications to cast doubt on
that theory.

I think for a lot of serious programmers, their application is like
their baby. While they may like to see it grow into some big superstar,
they still want to take care of it, repair it when it has a boo boo and
make sure it can keep up with the other kids so it doesn't get picked
on. Of course take that with a grain of salt because I'm writing this
almost 5 years to the day since I last released a version of num-utils.

But there are people out there that do some things that defy all the
expectations that open source programmers aren't interested in doing the
hard business-important stuff. I think they don't get nearly as much
limelight as they should. For instance, the WINE developers. Here are
some people who spent almost 15 years trying to make Linux do what
seems impossible. For many years they slaved away writing code with
little reward until they have finally made something that still knocks
my socks off everytime I see it run something because I know what crazy
stuff its trying to do. Its miraculous!

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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Re: [BLUG] My Ubuntu/Linux bitch

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 07:58:50PM GMT, Joe Auty [joe@netmusician.org] said the following:
>
> I like Ubuntu, and I like Linux (especially on the server end of
> things), but we are so incredibly far away from the "year of Linux on
> the Desktop" it's sort of laughable.
>

That is funny. I laugh everytime someone says year of Linux on the
desktop because I've actually been using Linux as my sole desktop on all
my computers for something like 8 years now. The last 5 years of which
have been really great with no major issues and all the applications I
need. And Virtualbox ensures that I'll always have a solution for
running Windows easily if anything special comes up (not often).

The only issue I do have are ones that can't really be helped easily like
Flash crashing frequently in 32-bit firefox on a 64-bit machine. But I
usually get around that by running Galeon for flash stuff and keeping
Firefox for non-flash stuff.

Most people critize what they don't understand. I do it too. For
instance, recently I've been going back to Windows sometimes to learn
new things there and I sit in front of it and wonder how I'm going to go
about running a program or configuring Windows to do something or fix
something that is wrong. The same thing happens when I sit in front of
a Mac. I know what I want to do and I have a general idea of how to do
it, but I don't know how to get started.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? I hear those exact complaints
about Linux and people think its Linux, but its not, its simply lack of
familiarity. For me, Linux works in a predictable way. And when it
breaks, it usually breaks in a way I understand and can easily fix. If
it doesn't, I can easily get at the internals to fix it and often
searching for an error message on Google reveals the solution. And the
solution usually works. I usually have my workstation running for
30-60 days before I have to reboot. Usually I end up breaking
things because I try to do too much, like foolishly trying to run some
huge scene in Blender that requires several GB of RAM.

On Windows, I can't tell you how many times I became frustrated with
Windows because it gave me some obscure error message or situation that
offered me no way to fix, get at the internals, and few people online
talked about the same issue. As Tim Bradshaw once said:

"Sure it's `easier' but this is in the same way that Windows is easier
than Unix: it's faster to learn, but eventually you just get so
frustrated you have to take an angle-grinder to the computer, and it
really takes ages to get all the little bits of computer out of the
carpet."

This is why I don't like Windows, it doesn't break in realiable ways.
Its like having a crazy girlfriend. Its really annoying and hard to
break things off with. If they've somehow fixed that in the past 8 years
by giving it a prozac, then I'm sorry but its too late, I've already
found my soul mate of an operating system and until it becomes old and
decrepit I ain't leaving. But probably by that time I will be old and
decrepit too so it will work out ok.

As for Mac, I can't say anything about the Mac Mini I have because it
hasn't really broken on me yet. Its actually pretty nice and I respect
Apple for making something better for the consumer. But there are still
some things that you have to do from the terminal in OS X. Unless
someone knows how to mount a samba filesystem through the GUI (without
installing some 3rd party app). OS X will be my mistress OS.

--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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