switch to......

[billy_gates]

I agree 100% with lazy gamer.  With my past experience with RedHat and SuSE and Windows and OSX.  I think he is right on.

[Faust]

So if your new you can have difficulty installing an application on Linux, whats your point?  I've seen plenty of people try and fail to install on a Windows PC, and also on a Mac OSX PC. Yes, most people are unaware that rpms/debs/source can all be different for each distribution, but that problem also exists with people trying to run Windows .exe installers on a Mac OSX box.  (No, I'm not joking.)  It's a steep learning curve on most distributions, probably because some (eg Debian / Slackware) do not know how easy things have to be made for new users to get it.  Learning a new OS isn't going to be easy - no one said it would.  I defy you however to tell me that a competent computer user could have difficulty on red hat 9 - but wait, I'm not allowed to talk about a newbie distro like that am I?      

quote:and no, I'm not talking about Red Hat or Debian, Linux.

 (In case you haven't noticed guys Red Hat and Debian are actually Linux distributions.)
Oh and can I have an actual example of one of the "so called desktop distributions" errors?  In something other than a minor distro that no-one uses?

[ May 29, 2003: Message edited by: Faust ]

[Faust]

All OS's have good and bad points - the main "problem" with Linux is that it isn't as simplified as some people wan't it to be.

[Calum]

i can see what you guys are saying, and i agree with it, all except for those "linux isn't all it's cracked up to be" type remarks. that is simply garbage.

however onto the substance:

all that stuff you mentioned is the result of your vendor, the person who packaged the berkeley, gnu, linux, perl, and many other free types of software all together and attempted to give you an idiot proof method of installation.

Now you might say "microsoft does pretty well at that job, how come so many linux distributors are not so good" well, linux is about choice. some people's "good" is another people's "bad". with linux if you choose to get a distro that is shit, it is as much your fault as linux's. That said i know linux will get blamed for distributors' slackness and user stupidity more and more in future. that's why i was so worried about lindows, people will try it, hate it and never touch linux again.

As to the how many linux newbies can repartition their drive etc question, how many windows newbies can do all that stuff? i put it to you that newbies to windows (in fact so called "experienced" windows users) are just as clueless. A bad workperson always blames their tools, and there seem to be a lot of computer illiterate bad workpeople out there these days. If you can't do basic administration tasks, get a macintosh.

This said, i DO NOT wish to seem like i am an elitist who is trying to alienate newbies. i was there once, and in many ways i still am. I simply advocate intelligence and learning about stuff instead of what appears to be the de rigeur solution in the windows world, which is just bitching about it. With linux you DO NOT have that excuse. For one thing everything's infinitely more configurable so you are not pitting your wits against a black box OS when you do something and for another thing, there is a huge community out there willing to help you. Contrary to what you might have heard, people telling you to "try this" and "try that" is a LOT more helpful than the standard windows help advice of "reboot then reinstall".

[lazygamer]

Good response Calum.

Well I suppose the answer, until 2-4 years from now, is to present a "switch, but don't expect to just jump right in flawlessly" attitude. Or is that the wrong answer?  

Learning new shit is ok, I won't let it put me off no matter what, but I'm just thinking of those silly ass windoids.  

[HibbeeBoy]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
i can see what you guys are saying, and i agree with it, all except for those "linux isn't all it's cracked up to be" type remarks. that is simply garbage.

That remark is actually more applicable to Window$. If ever a product did not live up to it's billing, it would be Window$ XP, which is a f*****g liability.
Anybody that doesn't give Linux a fair crack is either stupid, hasn't looked into it properly or a non-trier.

Linux is the way forward, I'm betting my career on it !

[xyle_one]

the flash movies are def taking shots at linux & mac. i was hoping there would be a windows one, but there wasn't    

as for linux vs windows vs mac. the mac is unix + ease of use. windows is bloated, outdated, software, linux (the distros, not the kernel) is still a child, albeit a very powerful one. i still think linux has some hurdles to jump (wow, that was almost a pun i think, hurdles. im a dork sometimes    ). but i can see them becoming a very easy, very powerful solution in a few years. then again, linux is not that "hard" to use right now, its just different. OSX was hard the first time i used it because i came from a windows background. linux was challenging (still is somtimes    ) but what i was trying to learn was apache, samba, proftp, etc.. i wasnt just using the distro. i am now. so far, its painless. like my mac. my little analogy has failed me. i should probably go back and reword this post seeing as my view changed like 12 times in it.  

[Faust]

quote: If you can't do basic administration tasks, get a macintosh.

         
ooh there will be flames here soon large enough to make christians scream "armageddon."
and back to the topic, we have all seen the windows partition tool havent we?  I mean that thing is less user friendly than fdisk!  With red hat / mandrake (and a lot of other distros) you hit enter and *boom!* you have a GUI installer.  With windows you have to hit F6 to shove in any third party drivers you need...  then you partition, DOS style...  then you format (which takes god damn yonks)...  then you wait even frigging longer for the installer to copy necessary files to the disk...  then *finally* the newbie gets a GUI.  And red hat / mandrake are more difficult then this???  now that I have my partitions set up all I have to do to install Mandrake is hit the enter button about 15 times, and type in a few passwords when prompted by a big box which says "please enter your name and password", hardly rocket science!
I guess this is my way of saying that any criticism of Linux for being "difficult to install" is completely ridiculous.  Now system administration can be tricky for a new user...  If they are using a "power users" distribution or heavily customising things.  Honestly the Mandrake default install gives a normal desktop user everything they need.  Like Calum said Linux is about choice - sysadmins who remember PDP's don't want user friendliness, they just want a "hackers" system - so that's what they should get.  New users on the other hand don't want distributions aimed at a kernel hacker, they want user friendliness so they should get a distribution like Mandrake or Red Hat.  Which is not to say that Red Hat / Mandrake et al can't be power users distros either, whats to stop a Mandrake user bringing up xterm, installing gcc (not exactly hard, theres a big list of software in the mandrake control center where you click a few boxes, then you shove in a few CD's.)  In fact theres nothing to stop a Mandrake user
from writing their own custom X windows software and using it, or writing up their own Window Manager.  (sometimes I think the "old school / I hate user friendliness" guys just enjoy showing off     )
The point is Linux users should never need to do anything more difficult than they do in Windows or when using a Mac, and in the vast majority of cases they won't.

[xyle_one]

quote: If you can't do basic administration tasks, get a macintosh.

ha.

[Pissed_Macman]

[insert flame large enough to make christians scream "armageddon" here]

[choasforages]

hahaha, what little you know. slackware 9/kde happens to have all sorts of little gui tools. like the easy gui for messing with X. or countless others. the only downside to linux are things we call IP, or intellectual property.

[Calum]

that's not a downside because it is not an issue. linux has less intellectual property issues than any other OS that i know of. It's the only OS i have heard of for instance that has a TCP/IP stack NOT based on BSD's one. Why? because at the time Cox & others were developing the TCP/IP software for linux, BSDI was getting sued. Linux does not play fast and loose with intellectual property contrary to what you might have read.

as for those flames about macs being hassle free, are you guys telling me i was wrong? are you in fact telling me that if you get a macintosh you still have a lot of hassle to get it working right? I was under the impression that my comments were pro-macintosh from the perspective of the Mac-As-Toaster brigade. well, looks like you can't please some of the people any of the time.

finally, yes slack9/kde have tons of GUI stuff that definitely rivals macOS (not tried OSX but i reckon slack9/kde definitely is superior to WinXP as far as GUI tools goes) but so what? who mentioned slack?

[billy_gates]

here is may favorite one on ubergeek
http://www.ubergeek.tv/whatswrong/

Also, there are no GUI Admin tools better than OSX's.  Well actually there might be, I just have never seen any.

[ May 31, 2003: Message edited by: jeffberg: Mac Comrade Captain ]

[Pissed_Macman]

quote:Originally posted by jeffberg: Mac Comrade Captain:
here is may favorite one on ubergeek
http://www.ubergeek.tv/whatswrong/

Also, there are no GUI Admin tools better than OSX's.  Well actually there might be, I just have never seen any.

[ May 31, 2003: Message edited by: jeffberg: Mac Comrade Captain ]

funny stuff

[solo]

Code: [Select]

Calum. When I installed Redhat 9 I did absolutely *NO* "administrative tasks". And through a week using it on and off I have not done any "administrative tasks". That's another stereotype that I can't figure out. If Linux people know that nice distros like Redhat (dont know about others) dont need administration, why are they saying it does... hmm...

The flash is cool, I think they are trying to take people's stereotypes of Linux and turn it into humor, which can be good and bad of course. Besides, the site is ubergeek, usually your proud to be a geek to go to any site with 'geek' in it, Make conclusions for yourself   .