The downsides of Linux

[jakesvdm]

I've read a couple of those messages. I'm a newbie to linux and I find a lot of those comments interesting.

I must admit that I'm a MS fan. But eh, I've been using their products for more that 9 years now. I think the way they do. And I like it.

Linux is a new thing to me. I first tried it out in 1997. Could not get it to install. Eventually someone helped me. At first glance I was not interested. Since then I've tried Corel linux 1 and 2. Still, try to install something or get support. It's a nightmare. Especially when you're a newbie like myself. Since everyone mention RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake on their help pages, I've decided to go for RadHat 7.3. The installation went smooth. Even my webcam works !! (very scheap one. it only works on win98 - and now Linux). Since then I've had a lot of fun. I download about ten packages and try to install them, but I must admit I have a 30 % sucess rate - guess I'm still a newbie ?. RPM packages on the other hand helps a lot.

What I'm getting at is that I look at a product and ask myself what it can do for me. Is it flexible (MS not always, Linux YES), is it userfrienly (MS YES, Linux ?), can I customise it (MS to a certain extend, Linux - the sky's your limit), howmuch will the solution cost me (take in account the cost of support). I have to hand it to MS, they have a website which lists almost everything you need. I support MS products for a living and use their website alot. In the same way you get help for Linux. As a newbie I would suggest to stick to a known distro eg RegHat. Otherwise you'd end up like me crapping all over Linux 'cause this won't work ant that won't work. I got a lot of help pages on Linux. I cant get stuff to work (I'm still new). But with RH (ans SuSE, etc) you het support. They have a standard and they can help you !!

MR XP lover here has a problem with life. MS is not that wonderfull. They do force stuff on you like MSN, etc. But hey, I like that. With Linux on the other hand, you have that flexibility that you need in a network environment. You can tweak it and make it work for you. Example : When a user connects to a MS server and deletes a file, it's in HIS recycle bin. No one knows what happened to it. On Novell you can track it and it doesn't get deleted at all. Novell moves it to either deleted.sav or purged documents (p.s. I hate Novell). You can't tweak windows to do this, but one programmer told me it's possible on data. How's that for protecting data ?

XP lover sounds lika a school boy who plays Quake after school.

[choasmaster]

yeah, at first, the ms way is the way you are used too. but if you mess with linux enough you start to like it, then windows really pisses you off. i have to mess with windows machines,/*im not paid alot though, i don't have a job yet, come on, im only 15 and 9 months*/. stuff like the window shading. i double click the title bar and it goes full screen. that one gets me everytime. also all the rebooting.

[choasmaster]

o, and didn't you mean counter-strike instead of quake. quake is multiplatform and a favorite of linux zealots all around. as for xpissdrinker, beware, the world is full of idiots

[para_fms]

well, this is the THIRD time i have tried to like linux, and the third time i'm dissapointed. first it was mandrake, then redhat and now suse. the former two were installed around a year ago and my hardware was not supported very well at all, so i wrote that off as compatibility issues. well now it looks like there's more to it than that...

my hardware has changed and is now pretty typical stuff: P3@797mHz on an intel D815EEA board, 512 MB PC133 SDRAM, visiontek GF3 card, SB Live!, intel pro 100+, yada yada. all supported stuff here, nothing unusual at all. 2 HD's, dissabled printer and dissabled scanner (just to make things easier), no SCSI, RAID, cameras, USB devices (other than a joystick which i left plugged in) or anything else.

here's what happened as a result of a very typical, default install...

installer would not install on the same drive as XP. period. even though i pre-formatted a primary partition for it. had to install it on a different drive. something about an unrecognized MBR or some such shit -- no big deal, though it sure as hell would be a big fat deal if someone new to linux, like me, didn't have another drive. off to tech support i would've had to go to get help on the install. sheesh.

encountered 2 errors during install, though i was able to continue. don't ask, because i don't remember.

after install, boot manager (lilo?) couldn't boot windows -- had to do a little manual editing of a config, but this should NOT have been necessary. anyone less expierenced may have been formating their drive over this, shall i be gental and call it an "oversight".

bugs, bugs, bugs: finally got her up and running. first things first; let's have some fun! started clicking through a bunch of the games. most ran fine, others did not run at all. no indication of anything wrong, just plain nothing happened. games that are installed, by default, would NOT run? c'mon!

let's customize that desktop and get rid of some of those unecessary graphics: for the hell of it, lets dump the clock applet........ *CRASH*. task bar dissapears then reapears and everything is cool again. put the clock back, no problem.

what's the menu bar for the desktop option do? ah! now we have a file/edit/favorites/etc. menu bar at the top of the desktop. cool, but i don't want it. uncheck that > click apply ....... hmmm... still there. refresh desktop...... still there. log off/on. ok, now it's fixed.

wonder what the internet look like throught the eyes of konquar or whatever it is? it sucks, that' how it looks. sloppy, blurry fonts, missing pieces of larger fonts. looks like any TT font is gonna look the same as well. no big huge deal i guess, just would've been nice if it didn't seem as if i was looking through saran-wrap.

the same went for the appearence of everything else in general. just wasn't clean and crisp looking, though my video card (visiontek GF3) and monitor (envsion EN770) were both detected without a hitch.

ok, let's fire up that word processing package. open office is it? the one installed by default. well, that looks pretty good! nothing like office XP, but it'll do. now lets make a litle more room here and make those menu bars a bit smaller........ *FREEZE* 3 fingered salute, with the "Esc" varation, and we're back to square 1.

well, wintendo has an auto-phone hom... i mean "update" feature. linux? yup! found that just fine! /rubs hands together in anticipation. waddya mean UNABLE TO GET THE UPDATES! try another server. nope. same thing with ALL the servers! christ-all-mighty! THAT doesn't even fucking work! back to the knowledge base and it looks like some god damned file may have not been installed. i quit.

---------------

anyone who has read some of my other posts otta know dam well that i detest MS and their phone home, spyware, "let's clutter your fucking disk up with useless crap and then hide it from you in case the cops need it" bullshit. however, after 3 tries with linux, it appears that the 3 distro's i tried (thee most popular ones, to my knowledge) are not a viable alternitive for a fairly expierenced windows user. the OS may be stable, but the apps sure ain't. it also didn't look very pretty comming through a voodoo 5 5500 at 800x600 a year ago, and it don't look much better riding on a GF3 at 1024x768 now.

i don't know that i'll give up without a fight just yet, though i feel it would certinly be justified if i did, and i can surely see why many others do. am i not ready for linux? or is linux not ready for me? although win95 was a beautiful piece of total shit, 98 on up NEVER greeted me that way. spyed on me maybe, but at least it worked -- well, most of the time   :rolleyes:

[Refalm]

I use Webmin on my virtual server (Apache on Red Hat), and I must say I can really recommend it!

[TheQuirk]

Composer? Hehehehehe... Go to google and type in:

"WYSIWYG editor"+"linux" and click on the first link. It has a few other WYSIWYG HTML editors for linux that are much better.

Edit: You can run Dreamweaver in wine

[ July 03, 2002: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]

[voidmain]

SuSe includes OpenOffice?

[para_fms]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
SuSe includes OpenOffice?

don't quote me on that. i forget what it is. open office, star office, koffice, the office that freezes when you customize the menu bar... something along those lines. too dissgusted right now to even bother finding out which one it is. i need some cool-down time.

[voidmain]

Probably Koffice. I don't know of any distro that includes OpenOffice (which is the best Office suite by the way).  Does your version of SuSe include KDE 3.x?  If so you can turn on TT fonts and antialiasing which will make konqueror look a lot better.  And if you want all of your Windows fonts you can install them.  Copy them from your C:\WINDOWS\FONTS directory (or C:\WINNT\FONTS) and use the font installer in the KDE control panel.

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by TheQuirk:
Composer? Hehehehehe... Go to google and type in:

"WYSIWYG editor"+"linux" and click on the first link. It has a few other WYSIWYG HTML editors for linux that are much better.

Edit: You can run Dreamweaver in wine

[ July 03, 2002: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]

WYSIWYG?? Vi is the best HTML editor    
thats all i have used for The Bob Hub and the FuckMicrosoft Chatroom

[LorKorub]

The latest vesion of IcePack Linux includes OpenOffice with its distro.  I have yet to install it though.

[lazygamer]

Has anyone ever thought that maybe Windows is not so user friendly and simple? What if it's only user friendly because we are so incredibly used to it and brainwashed with it?

What if others systems offer their own style of simplicity and user friendlyness, but do it in a diffrent style then Windows? So if this holds true for some Linux distros, then perhaps persistence is the only thing that can shatter the Wind0ze illusion.

[TheQuirk]

Yes. But I know, for a fact, my mom, dad and sister would prefer to point and click for ten minutes instead of writing out commands in five. Windows still beats linux in this area -- user friendliness and simplicity. But then comes an important question -- "why not get a Mac?" For a simple reason. People are stupid. And that's all it is. I don't care about microsoft brainwashing people, because I, after using the first versions on Windows and Dos, for a pretty long while, was able to break away. And the stupid people didn't even think about leaving their precious Windows XP with their oh so great Counter Strike and their "super duper killer dark over lord shadow dragon murder nazi knights" clan.

[ July 04, 2002: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]

[markdcc]

I have just recently installed both win2k and suse 8.0, and these are the reason why (I think) Linux rocks, and windows sucks:

The suse install is great, I boot off the CD, answer a few questions and it installs.  One reboot.  Win2k takes 3-4 reboots just to install it. Plus I haven't yet had a 2k CD that would boot.  (I use the M$DN CD from work).  This takes about 10 minutes using M$'s horribly slow method of reading each file off the floppy.  Installing linux from a boot floppy is much faster than 2k as it loads the disk image into memory, then does the file system manipulation.

Windows hardware compatibilty sucks.  They tend to not support anything that isn't a big player in the hardware market.  I have a semi-old video card configuration (Voodoo 2 and Permedia 2 cards), but they have decent enough performance for me.  Neither are supported fully in  Win2k or XP and both are supported fully under linux.  I can't play any OpenGL based games under Win2k because the Permedia driver doesn't support GL(even though the voodoo 2 does) I don't think I should have to drop a few hundred buck on a new video card just to play a game under windows.  So now I have a  third boot just for 98. (another hour long install, and 10 more reboots....)

Software:  Suse comes with everything I need, Web, OpenOffice, KOffice, KDevelop(I'm a software developer), database servers, an NT Server emulator (because M$ products don't support open standards), broadcast 2000 (professional video editor) and a ton of stuff I will probably never use.  And I have the choice of not installing what I don't need.

This equals tens of thousands of dollars of M$ crap, all for the price of an $80 dollar set of CD's and a few trips to ftp.suse.com to get the packages that aren't included in the personal version.

I am very comfortable on a command line, I grew up with DOS, and grew into Linux, so although I don't use the GUI configuration tools, it seems that Suse has a Yast applet for just about everything that you could need to configure.  

It took everyone some time to learn how to get around windows, and if you give it a shot, most people will be suprised at how easy it is to use Linux coming from windows.

As for the M$ kiddies in here, a word of advice: If you want to work in an IT field when you grow up, only having Windows skills will hurt you, badly.  M$ does not control the server OS market, and linux is taking a huge position here.  Knowing how to get around your stupid XP box will get you nowhere, but if you can get around a linux box, you can administrate nearly any Unix based server out there.

Just venting my M$ frustrations, and hopefully giving a little insight into this topic.

[lazygamer]

I thought I should add that this is still a MS dominated world. So all of you Anti-microsoft dudes must still master Wind0ze boxes if you want to be a computer technician.

Just look at Wind0ze as giving you LOTS of business, while you secretly chuckle at being part of the l33t Linux underground organization as you remove the cover of some n00b's wind0ze box.  

Oh and XP didn't have 3D support for my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI drivers, luckily I could get some "custom made" drivers off the internet. Amergamlin something like that.