Several days ago I wrote a rather scathing article about my utter dismay and disappoint with Mandrake 9.1 and by association, Linux as a whole. Since then I have had many many flames and equally as many agreeing emails (is there a simple opposite word for flame?) Since then I have been trying, really really trying to get my system working fully. But time and again I'm coming up against the same brick wall of (un)usability, computer esotericism and down right idiocy. 
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Maybe we can "invent" one:
hose - as in hose that carries water and can put out a flame
;-)
5 minutes to watch DVDs :
1. got to http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon
2. choose the closest contrib and PLF mirrors and copy the urpmi.addmedia generated lines
3. type 'urpmi libdvdcss2 xine-dvdnav'
4. open your DVD player, insert a DVD, open xine, click on "DVD", the DVD menu appears. Enjoy !
No need to boot back to windows, no need to fight with rpms, urpmi solves all your dependenies, downloads all rpms that are needed and install them.
You would have asked on the mandrakeclub forum (no need to be a member) or on the mailing list, you would have had your answer.
And really, if you want to have DVD out of the box, don't blame Linux. Just blame the DMCA.
I wrote a guide to setup urpmi and install any software here (flightgear, gocr, which is included in Mandrake packages, anything) :
http://rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33668481
why cant you lsmod as a regular user?
rick@alpharhix:~$ whereis lsmod
lsmod: /sbin/lsmod /usr/share/man/man8/lsmod.8.gz
rick@alpharhix:~$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
As you can see... /sbin/ isnt in a regular user's $PATH, as it should be. If you do want to execute it as a normal user you could do "/sbin/lsmod".
flame <> deflame
I have read the article and looked at some screenshots. I find the article good on it self but the whole problem with the author is that his background is not Unix and he is trying to find to much "windowz". Linux/Unix is not Windows and you should not expect eveything to work or be configured just like in Windows. Try reading a book and/or Internet pages there are a lot of howto pages on the net (google it if you want..). Almost all the problems he encounterd are fixed very easy...
Mandrake 9.1 is a great desktop distro it is aiming at the new linux user but i think its not quite ready for that.
Xandros Lindows and Shaolin Linux are better for new Linux users.
The future is bright the future is Linux!
Why the heck do you put yourself through all the hell to install Linux...
Face it, you can't install and run Linux; Get over it.
Go do something productive instead of writing some meanless article about how you can't install Linux. Write an article telling us the glory of Windows please.
Please don't install Linux, it makes you look like a moron.
Please no more penis envy.
I've been trying all sorts of distros for years, always failed to install a usable version of GNU/Linux. I've been through the hell of rpm dependencies, Mandrake's inconsistency, Debian's obscurity, Lycoris' lameness. But I kept trying, because I hate failure.
Now I use Linux From Scratch on my laptop along with Fluxbox, Mozilla, XMMS, MPlayer, the GIMP, GQview, vim, among others, and connect to the Internet in WiFi. I wouldn't want to use anything else, besides maybe MacOS X (when I get rich). My system is totally tweaked and fits my needs.
The problem with GNU/Linux as it is today, IMHO, is that you have to be obstinate to make it usable. That's why LFS became my only viable choice.
"Linux doesn't do$thing!" "My hardware doesn't work!" "$thing is/isn't/should be $other_thing!!!!"
Join the club, buddy. I could bitch up a storm about it finally taking a debian PPC install to realize I have a hosed SCA drive. I could whine, bitch and scream about how I had to fucking debug X11 MYSELF because the only two xconfigs I could find for similar hardware were using video cards and not mobo video, but hey, guess what? I know I'm playing with an erector set, not a Porsche. I know what I'm getting into, and it's patently obvious that you don't.
You want all your gear to Just Work? Want to not have to compile applications? Want your video card to run? With all the features? Then run Windows or MacOS.
Linux is still a work in progress in a vast variety of areas. This kind of whining doesn't do anything to help it along- this article, in fact, is about as bad as my coworker trying to transition from NT4 to debian. The temper tantrums were fierce, I tell you.
If you want Linux to Just Work Damnit, then you can Just Wait Another Five Years. Until then, the kernel and all the goodies on top are still very much the province of those of us that actually want to play around- those of us who don't bitch and piss and moan when something blows up or doesn't work properly.
(yet) another article about "Linux" (un)usability on the desktop. What a surprise - there seems to be a crop emerging every week these days.
Could I ask for a moritorium on these articles for a while? I think I would rather read about the XFree86 debate than come across someone else ranting about their (lack of) success using Linux on the desktop.
This poor man seems to have had a truly bad experience with Linux. I sympathise with him greatly, but in addition I'd like to make a few points as well:
1. DeCSS - this is a legal issue, not a Linux issue per se. Unfortunately companies are (rightly) scared of being sued off the face of the earth if they include DeCSS - or Mplayer with encrypted DVD support - at the moment. The long-term fix for this is to write to your democratic representitives and/or the music industry to campaign for a more open acceptance of this sort of software.
2. Drivers - I agree entirely. ISDN is a real problem in Linux for starters, and overall driver support is pretty terrible at the moment. We need a standardized virtualization layer between the kernel & XFree86 and the driver subsystem to allow for "Linux" drivers to be written - as opposed to "Mandrake" or "Red Hat" or "SuSE" drivers. Linux's open APIs and kernel code should be an advantage, but at the moment it's not.
3. Commercial offerings - A lot of long-time Linux users assume that your average new Linux user will know - or be able to find out - that to get the functionality they need, they can just download X and Y file from the Internet. Fact is, a lot of users either (a) believe that an application will actually work out of the box and/or (b) don't have the experience to do so. Let me tell you -- it's really easy to stick with what you know, so when something goes wrong, people are much, much more likely to go back to the familiar "old faithful" than brave a new world. You may not like it - but it's true. To break through the scare-factor and the inertia of the familiar, Linux has the be better than Windows at setting itself up for the user. Not set up properly after a few hours of downloading (and not everyone has broadband), but out of the box! At present, as has been illustrated time and time again, it's not.
4. Articles critical of Linux - I agree with a lot of points raised by these sort of articles (although they can be a bit "over the top" ;-)), and I applaud OSNews.com for publishing them. Keep up the good work!
Is it just me or are other people getting tired of seeing these articles from both sides? Every day it's "My 20 page article on why Linux is ready for the desktop/enterprise", "My 50 page article on gripes and why linux isn't ready", "My grandma used linux for an hour after I installed and configured everything for her, so anyone can use Linux!" Please make it stop! Maybe try spacing the articles out every 3-4 days.
Actually, I really do think a lot of what this fellow has to say is pretty legitimate. I went through a lot of these kinds of issues myself with Mandrake 8.0 and I still have problems today that drive me nuts enough to have to go for a brisk walk to cool down.
I don't want this to be perceived as a "mandrake sux, use gentoo" post, because I started with Mandrake myself and it is what got me interested enough in Linux to stick with it. But a lot of what the author mentions, such as not knowing where to find configuration files, are problems I went through. The problem with Mandrake is that, if it works well for what you need, you'll probably like it, especially if you don't like digging around in your OS too much.
If it doesn't, however, it's a sort of complicated black box if you're not already a Linux geek. You're basically trying to unravel layers, top down, to figure out where things are. It's like trying to figure out how a car engine works with a fully assembled car, and no diagrams. You can pick around and figure things out but it's not the best way to learn.
As for dealing with plugins and dependencies and RPMs, I doubt anyone who has used an alternate system like apt-get in Debian or portage in Gentoo hasn't been irritated as hell about these things. I know I have. I still have machines at work that run Red Hat, and I have to deal with these problems from time to time (not too often though; they're servers).
See, my first distro was Mandrake, and after about 8 months of being irritated by problems similar to the author's (though not *specifically* multimedia; I don't care much about DVDs and the like), I decided to ignore all of the puffery about Debian and Gentoo, and pick one, and just see if there were any advantages. I decided to dive in as deep as possible and went for Gentoo.
Now Gentoo is like building a car engine, ground up. Here's a piston, here's a spark plug, this is how they work together and what they do. Rather than digging down to find things, I build from the ground up, so that, when the install was done, I knew where everything was and what things relied on. I *am* a Gentoo cheerleader; I admit this, though it's hardly a religious matter for me. For my style of learning, I found that the time investment in installing Gentoo - which takes some time, and is manual, is far less than the time investment it took me to unravel Mandrake from the top down. (Note that now that I have been using Gentoo for this long, I probably could work just fine with Mandrake, just because I know how things work a lot better).
I have since installed Debian-Unstable as well, which has many of the same benefits as Gentoo, and is quick and easy to install (the installer isn't as "pretty", but it's as simple as any other Linux distro's installer, as far as I'm concerned).
Neither of these distros will be appropriate for everyone, but I would suggest that, like me, the initial time investment in something like Gentoo is probably far less than the *total time expenditure* for figuring out what the hell distros like Mandrake are doing. That's *my* opinion, and these distributions are far more structured toward the way I like to learn things than Mandrake.
I would suggest that there are a *lot* of Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat users who would probably be incredibly surprised by Gentoo (and Debian, of course). Someone mentioned in an article here on OSNews some time ago (maybe it was just linked from here) that a lot of Gentoo users are ex-Mandrake users. I'm one, and there are many others.
I don't know if Debian or Gentoo will make your experiences with ISDN hardware or DVDs easier. But I will say that you will be exposed to most possible places that you would configure these devices directly, as you install and compile your system (and your kernel), and will probably encounter configuration areas you didn't know even existed.
Plus, chances are (esp. with Debian which has a huge software collection, though Gentoo isn't a slich) you simply won't have to deal with dependency issues at all. I never do. Sometimes ebuilds fail because of a human error or whatever, but I haven't yet run into "this can't install because this library isn't installed yet" even once, in about 9 months of using Gentoo. Ditto with Debian. I got a full desktop up and running with the latest KDE in about an hour with Debian, on a P2-400. Mandrake's software manager/internet updater (forget what it's called) simply can't compete - yet - in terms of reliability.
Also in closing I would say that Linux never will be Windows, and I'm kind of bored with the constant chorus that it should be like Windows. Linux should be as easy as it can be without sacrificing versatility and customizability, and if it never is as easy as Windows - a very closed environment, I just don't care. I don't use it for that reason. If it can be as easy and still have that versatility, great, but there's just a whole population out there for whom Linux is just never going to be worth it. And for whom, I might add, all of the things we Linux users hate about Linux *simply aren't issues* (such as a cruddy CLI).
It may well be that Mandrake's folly is that it does try too hard to be a plug-and-play, configure-it-all-for-you OS, just like Windows. For some people, that desktop is appropriate. Some people even love it. Very cool. It's just not for me, and I don't agree that Mandrake is always the best choice for a beginner. It isn't. It's the best choice for certain kinds of beginners (like me, just to see what Linux was before deciding to really get into it), but Gentoo and Debian seem best for people who know they want to take a plunge. For seasoned Linux users, almost any distro will do, you can pull apart and modify your system to look like most others.
But if Mandrake is causing the author this much frustration, it seems like it might be a great idea to try another distro. After all, most of them are free anyway!
Mandrake was a great first distro for me, and if I had to use it for some reason now, I could, probably without a problem (of course I'd have no issues with recompiling a kernel now or things like that). But Gentoo just seems to be all aces for me, and I don't think I'll be moving to another distro anytime soon (Probably if I'd tried Debian before Gentoo, I would have stuck with that, too. I like both a lot).
Their reputations for being time-consuming and complicated are highly overstated and misrepresented (in most cases). I recommend the author give one or both a try, and to not be too turned off by people taunting him for "not being able to get Linux working right". That's just unfair, and a cruddy attitude. The point here is that the author *is being incredibly tenacious* in light of this frustration, and maybe a little compassion, understanding, and most of all, encouragement -- rather than derision -- is in order. I've been where he is. I've been angry and about to kick my monitor in. Generally I find out it's some stupid little configuration setting that's not right or something, but remember, most people are coming from Windows and don't *think* Linux yet. That may seem backward to old-time sysadmins who have been using UNIX since the 70s, but that's how it is, that's where I come from, and it is surmountable, but it can be maddening. Rarely a week goes by where I'm not cursing wildly about something. But eventually I get through it, and in the end, for me, it's more than worth it.
Isn't it the first thing one does before one puchases an operation system to check the software vendor's HCL (hardware compatability list) before one purchases a new operating system. For example logic would say I couldn't run Win XP on a 386, but maybe that is takeing the example to the extreme. So ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS check the HCL b4 you buy an OS, where it be BeoS, Unix, BSD, Linux, Windows.
Good point, but there's a snag. A good deal of hardware that's considered 'compatable' with Linux requires a lot of work to get it to work. And with the big desktop distros it becomes less an issue of weather Linux supports it, but weather that distro can detect it accurately and set it up for you. Admittedly, I haven't looked too hard, but there ought to be a site that documents 'how supported' (for lack of a better term) something is, in other words, how easily it's set up... weather there's a simple binary install, simple compile, or you have to go so far as reconfiguring your kernel and/or editing a dozen elusive configuration files, and how stable/extensive the support is.
To all you Linux Experts. Why don't you do something constructive. If you have got a peticular platform installed, with all of the applications working, lets say on laptop brand xyz model 666. Why don't you make a recovery cd and send it to sourceforge so us f-ing idiots can get past go. (partimage or makerecovercd)
I believe that until linux software is easier to install, that platform specific distro's are the answer. For example, why don't one of you genius's build a home entertainment pc (HTPC) using a via m9000 motherboard which has nearly everything onboard, get everything working just right, make a disk image, then send it to the mirrors for us to download and use.
It will prove that you really do know what your doing and not just a box of farts that's just as bald headed as the rest of us from pulling your f-ing hair out. Who knows, maybe VIA will notice and make you a buncha $$$$$
(p.s. Install the DVD css but disable it in a way that people in countries who can, can enable it easily. ie. add a missing file.)
if a friend decided he wanted a semi-pro audio workstation and insisted on using a sblive value edition to run audio software that required well written asio compliant drivers...i'd call him names.
you want a pleasant 3d experience with linux? at minimum get a supported radeon card.
want an really great 3d/opengl experience with linux? get an nvidia card. let's see...nvidia stole, i mean hired a boatload of ex-sgi engineers, yes that's SGI, the guys who made opengl what it is.
what on god's green earth are you dinking around with a matrox card for in linux?
you enjoy futile, stupid pursuits or what?
(i'm sure many have made it work...but you aren't many, you are a frustrated newbie, so get smart)
next: usb modem.
my bonafide hardware ethernet adapter, and external full blown hardware modem (plugs into a serial port), work just fine for me. i spent like all of 10 seconds on configuring both.
which has allowed me to learn other things about linux.
but go ahead, if that's your thing.
it's not the job of linux to use every conceivable hardware combination.
i would not, and have not ever used a usb modem/usb-cablemodem or matrox card on any of my machines...linux or xp.
but go ahead.
p.s. ISDN sucks....i'd rather use an analog modem a dog shit on.
Why is the failure of Linux (either kernel or all distributions as a whole) if your single distribution doesn't make a choice and installs such many things by default?
This is just one of these "there is a 100 $ bill on the street and I could pick it up and use it but, boy, is there some dirt on it or what, better leave it there" kind of opinions.
If you have more than enough money, buy something commercial. Linux is not commercial. It is free. If you get your job done with it, it's a big benefit. I myself do get all my work done with is, so savings for me!
If you do not get your work done with Linux, then invest on something more expensive, more polished and more commercial. Remember that in this case the money is away from you and you have to get it back from your customers.
I originally tried Mandrake and just gave up because of it's constant issues.
I now use Gentoo and, after some teething problems, am having a wonderful time with it. It doesn't pretend to be friendly like Mandrake, but it's so easy to maintain and stay up to date.
To be honest, what annoys me more than anything with Mandrake, Red Hat, et al, is their versioning.
9.1? 0.91 more like. At least 0.91 would reflect the quality of their product.
The story is like a story about a guy who was waiting for a buss. The buss never came. A very sad but totally uninteresting story.
If you want something out of the box on some specific hardware then pay for it.
I think Osnews should rather accept storys bye people who are willing and able to write about how they managed to make things work using this or that linux distribution on this or that hardware.(if they had problems)
Those of you who install those distroes write a story about it telling readers about the steps you had to take in order to make it work.
Installing Mandrake9.0 on a Thoshiba Tecra 8000 with a Belking PCMCIA card (ADSL) I had to add 2 lines to a file.
(All the information on the Belking CD)
Also I had to adjust the screen to 1024*768 and to 65000 colours 16 bit where the 16 bit was the important point.
Well using the Mandrake Control Center (Resolution).
Did I loose my nerv beecause of that. No.
If think Mandrake simply is a great distro moving in the right direction.
I have installed and used various distributions since 95.
A great journy seeing how fast it all improves also for the destop.
Mandrake is sabotaged deliberatly,so you will buy the new book of theirs.The Money Grubbers at Mandrakesoft are a sly bunch of Carnival folks,who will do anything to make money [Mandrake Club],for instance.
Mandrake is _far_ from polished. Try Red Hat 9, it's a much more usable Linux desktop system. I have converted to Red Hat 9 from being a diehard Windows 2000 and XP user.
look. if you cannot install Mandrake - you should by a pre-installed Mac and forget linux. at least you will not have the "too much choice headache" any more. and no need to read manuals. and not need to understand how to install packages. and not need to understand anything at all :-)
Even Microsoft XP does not function "perfectly" ...
Plenty of Freezes ...
http://groups.google.com/groups?scoring=d&num=100&q=Freeze+group:mi...
http://www.google.com/search?q=XP+Freeze
Plenty of Crashes ...
http://groups.google.com/groups?scoring=d&num=100&q=Crash+group:mic...
http://www.google.com/search?q=XP+Crash
And in many cases there are no Drivers for XP
http://groups.google.com/groups?num=100&scoring=d&q=%22no+drive...
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22No+drivers+for+XP~*~@...
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22NO+support+for+XP~*~@...
So by Iain Alexander's, and a few other Troll-like-articles,line of thinking. Microsoft XP must be totally unsuitable for the Desktop, and it is wrong for Microsoft to market XP as a suitable desktop.
In fact, the issues Iain, and others have brought up in recent OSNEWS "articles", are minor niggles in comparison to the endemic failure of Microsoft toward the security of it's own products and services and products
Microsoft was notified of the Issues, concerning only Microsoft implementation of the JVM, on September 2nd 2002 and after SEVEN MONTHS on April 9th 2003, Microsoft have issued an update to fix the problem.
Such a delay with such a serious vulnerability is so abysmal that it borders on the absurd.
Quality and security are measures which only mean something when compared relatively to another.
There is no absolutely secure, therefore you must expect, that once a vulnerability is made known to the vendor, the vendor should do their utmost to close the Window of Exposure ( http://www.counterpane.com/window.html ) as soon as possible.
For example, with the lastest SAMBA vulnerability, once notified, the SAMBA developer owned up to the mistake and the SAMBA project released a patch within 48 hours.Redhat has already backported the patch into their distributions RPMs. Similarly any major security issues in Mozilla and Netscape browser are also fixed and updateable within a couple of days
Meanwhile, there are currently 13 KNOWN unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer ( http://www.pivx.com/larholm/unpatched/ ).
Some DANGEROUSLY EXPLOITABLE have not been fixed in over a year ( http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm002-ie/ ). That Microsoft has not rewritten the scripting system embedded with IE so that it is sandboxed by default is bad enough, but to have such major unpatched vulnerabilities exposed for months is abysmal.
Other inherent vulnerabilities, such as the Shatter attack ( http://security.tombom.co.uk/moreshatter.html ), Microsoft has known about since 1994!
Even if the API/call flaw is inherently unfixable, that is plenty of time for Microsoft to implement a safer methord/systemcall/API, adapt it's own applications to use the safer methord and depreciate the unsafe API.
It also appears that Microsoft 's own implementation of SMB is vulnerable and Microsoft has known about it for over eight years ( http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=59960&cid=5681769 ), but Microsoft either choose not to, or cannot fix the problem themselves.
Microsoft is clearly not closing the vulnerabilities they are aware that exist in their products and services.
A year after after Bill Gate's Email promoting securtiy over functionality, Microsoft by choice, remains neither secure or trustworthy.
Microsoft's attitude towards the security of it's products, service and customers is abysmal.
From Jason Coombs' A response to Bruce Schneier on MS patch management and Sapphire ( http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/315158 )
QUOTE
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) and Microsoft's version of HFNetChk both failed to detect the presence of the well-known vulnerability in SQL Server exploited by Sapphire, which is one of the reasons so many admins (both inside and outside MS) had failed to install the necessary hotfix. MBSA and HFNetChk are Microsoft's official patch status verification tools meant to be used by all owners of Windows server boxes ...
....In addition to designing MBSA to avoid scanning for SQL Server vulnerabilities, failing to update mssecure.xml reliably and in a timely manner, deprecating HFNetChk by pushing the MBSA GUI as its preferred replacement, and hiding the details of the technical limitations and internal security assumptions made by design in Microsoft's security analysis tools, Microsoft pushes Windows Update (windowsupdate.com) as a safe and reliable way to keep Windows boxes up-to-date. Unfortunately, Windows Update isn't designed to supply or verify the presence of SQL Server hotfixes, either.
None of Microsoft's own hotfix/patch status scanning tools designed to prove "baseline security" were able to help administrators avoid Sapphire. This entire scenario, this comedy of errors, illustrates the security risk created by any organization that pushes security around from department to department, passing the buck and hoping that somebody else will know how to deal with the problem. The result is a system so flawed that it borders on the absurd.
UNQUOTE
Because of this continued inherent attatude to security, Microsoft's products and services should be considered UNSECURE by default.
Not only that, but by Microsoft own declaration, it's going to be another FOUR OR FIVE YEARS before Microsoft's security issues are addressed, with the release of the now renamed Palladium (NGSCB - which sounds like an old soviet "security" agancy to me ). Microsoft appears to be targeting it's "trusted platform" efforts toward the security of Microsoft's own profits and maintaining it's own monopoly..
http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=...
Knowing this, are you and many of the more intelligent persuasion, going to limit yourself to the Microsoft desktop platform?
In comparison, the current issues with Linux are a lot more fixable, if not with your current distribution then with another targeted towards the beginner.
Like a lot of earlier comments I am getting fed up with the "Linux installed on my palm in ten minutes" or "I have tried twice and can't get my pc to work with Linux so it must be crap" articles.
The fact is that todays operating systems and hardware are getting more and more complicated and the speed that hardware is developed is very fast. We need to get back to the "right tools for the right job" mentality and stop this constant whinging. I personally have been using Linux for about ten years and had minimal problems (I had a problem with my modem in 1997), but that isn't to say that I recommend it to my mother! A friend has had no success installing Linux, but had some success with XP; another only had success with windows because the manufacturer supplied them with the right drivers; another had no success with either operating systems..... the list goes on.
For those people who constantly say how hard it is to install Linux on their machines - please come to my house and install windows (any version, but especially NT). Now that is enough to make a grown man cry!
Just for the record I have the following on my machine
Windows 2000
Windows NT
BSD 4.7
Linux Mandrake 9.1 (x2)
Linux SuSE 7.1
I know that I still get slow downs doing big compiles on Windows 2000 while trying to do other things like put in my timesheet through that IE only monster my company at the same time as I am editing file and such.
I know that my friend has had a hell of time getting his Ethernet card to work with XP even with vaunted vendor support.
I know that I have gotten application crashes and stuff that is only supposed to relegated to less unstable versions of Windows.
I know that XP is better. But still, it seems like crap shoot some of our XP and 2000 boxes run just fine like champs and others give us nothing but grief.
Flashback. Summer of 2002. My motherboard is destroyed in a freak accident, with processor and RAM intact. I think *gasp!* I don't have any money! So I go to my techie friend, who says, "Hey, I've got an Emachines mobo you can have if you install Linux on your computer afterwards." No choice; so I back up my HD to cd-r's and get to work.
Step 1: Lycoris. Okay, it's all purdy, but install freezes at 98%. Try again. Fail. Try again. Fail. *sigh* and I break out the backup distro he gave me--Libranet.
I install that, run it, it detects everything! Cable modem, bastardized mobo, trashed Mitsumi CD-ROM drive! Now, I don't mean to spread Libranet propaganda; in fact, I have grown to hate it with all my heart. Thankfully, I've been replacing Libranet piece-by-piece with Debian. I don't understand the fuss about installing software. Apt-get it, or if it isn't in Debian, download the relevant lib*-dev packages and compile it. No problem. If you don't like it, apt-get remove will do the trick. Also, Win users: Note how Linux programs are so much smaller than Windows?
So really, I'm the "newbie meets Debian". My friend didn't help me much, mostly because I was too proud to ask. And now, I wouldn't use a shitty GTK+ pseudo-configure utility for the world--Libranet comes with a bunch of Perl scripts (that are not too difficult to read) launched from an app called "Xadminmenu". I've been replacing these with more flexible alternatives.
By the way, I've probably learned more about computers in the last eight months than in my entire life. Windows is a parasite. I wouldn't have thought of learning C or any sort of programming in my Win98 days, and yet here I am, slaving away at it.
Thank you, Linus Torvalds, for creating something that restored my faith in computers acting in logical ways.
So, Linux is WAAAAAY ready for the desktop. IceWM at least....
If you're building a computer just to run Linux then obviously you can chose hardware that's known to work well in it. But if you want to buy a ready built system or you have an existing computer, hardware support can be real problem. Linux hardware support also limits your choice, you can't always chose the best value solution.
I bought a Radeon 9500 pro rather than an Nvidia card, as at the time they gave better performance for the cost. Unfortunately ATI's drivers for Linux are garbage, I've had stability problems and AFAIK there's nothing like Nvidia's TwinView available. If I wanted to use Linux as my main OS I'd hard to replace that quite expensive card, which would wipe out most of the money saved by using free software.
Almost all broadband ISPs where I live provide free USB modems when you sign up with them, they're the only ones I've ever seen in highstreet shops. Having to buy a non-usb solution would add quite a lot to the cost and wouldn't be supported by the ISP. I spent several days reading FAQs and HOWTOs, editing config files and compiling kernel modules to get the provided modem working in Linux. In Windows it worked with a few clicks of the mouse and was online in minutes.
My point is that it isn't just unusual or low quality hardware that isn't well supported in Linux. That may not be the fault of Linux, but I think it will keep a lot of people from switching even if they like using Linux.
Here we go. This is a real valid criticism of Linux.
Hardware support.
Honestly, this is probably the toughest issue to face. Enterprise level support of hardware commonly used on servers is there for linux. However, even when the support is there. It does not mean that the drivers are any good.
BTW, I heard the very latest ATI drivers were a ton better. I saw some noise about this on a few lists maybe last week.
Even when the hardware is supported getting it setup can be a pain.
Sure, printers are easy with almost every major distro giving a nice gui and a list and using CUPS and all that jazz.
However, getting USB devices and Firewire devices working can be an exercise in pain. Until the folks making the hardware make the tools to not only access the device (ie drivers) but setup tools I do not seeing the situation getting a lot better. Better support for these devices through hardware detection (ie Kudzu,Yast2 and others) and setup are needed.
I helped a friend get his Firewire HD working but it took a good hour or two of tweaking about and this with both of us having together over a decade of unix experience and me having nearly 7 years of linux experience alone.
//1. got to http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon //
Well, duh! How stupid of him not to know about that website!
It's nearly as popular as google, right?
And, naturally, Mandrake alerted him to the existence of that site.
What? Sarcasm?
Of course.
Here is my experience working with XP, Mandrake and Debian.
Case #1:
I get a DivX version of Shrek, try to copy it on Toshiba sattelite laptop with XP installed on it (I do not own the laptop). The copying process goes until 60% and then quits resulting with a Cyclic Redundancy Check Error. I try the same thing on my Desktop with XP loaded (there are also Mandrake 8.2 and Debian 3.0r0) and the same thing happens. So, it is up to the CD media! I do not watch DivXs on my desktop since it is 300 MHz, bla, bla, ... Then, I watch the movie on the laptop directly from the CD. Everything goes OK until the same place where the CD is "destroyed" and XP freezes. Reset! Here comes the interesting part. I fire up Debian and copy the contents of the CD with no and absolutely no problems at all!!! I started ProFTP daemon, copied the movie on the laptop, watched the movie and went to bed 
)
Case #2:
I am sure you know about the CDs that come with the magazines and have web interface for accessing the contents of the CD. There is index.html file in the CD's root, you click it (double-click), the browser fires up and you start reading. Not so easy with XP if that file is corrupted. Windows Explorer freezes and you can not even read the contents of the CD. No other idea but to fire up Debian and copy the CD contents except that index.html file of course ))
Case #3:
I do not know if any of you know that you can have problems with the floppy disks when you use them on different floppy drives. It does not happen too often but it can happen. Even more, you can not format them under XP. There is an error which I can not remember what was it about. The solution is to start Debian (or any Linux) and format the floppy using kfloppy. This happened to me 5-6 times.
I dived into Linux world using Mandrake. Now I am using Debian. No problems, no nothing.
"My first computer experience was my next door neighbors Atari VCS (can't remember the model version, but pre 2600, the one with the wood effect paneling), from then on I was hooked."
*lol* !
The author doesn't seam to know what's a videogame and what's a computer. Atari VCS is a videogame and because the author has played on one of those machines, we could atleast expect him to know the difference betwen a videogame and computer!
How the hell can OSNEWS publish articles written by people who tries Linux, but don't manage to use it 2 times in the same week from an author who thinks that Nintendo Gamecube is a computer?
I will remove OSNEWS from my bookmarks and then forget about it.
//s. So, it is up to the CD media! I do not watch DivXs on my desktop since it is 300 MHz, bla, bla, ... Then, I watch the movie on the laptop directly from the CD. Everything goes OK until the same place where the CD is "destroyed" and XP freezes. Reset! Here comes the interesting part. I fire up Debian and copy the contents of the CD with no and absolutely no problems at all!!! I started ProFTP daemon, copied the movie on the laptop, watched the movie and went to bed ) //
Boy, your system must be frustrating! All that work to watch a video. I can watch DivXs through my 32" TV in about 15 seconds. Lounge on the couch, eat some popcorn, fall asleep. It's great!
http://www.knoppix.net/
Just enjoy! And forget about the hell of windoops.
His problems with hardware configuration point out the need for a "Device Manager" type interface in Linux
If you have problem using linux, there is a simple solution for that. Just don't use it. Spend a lot of your money for windows or mac os. But please don't complain about something which was entirely free for you.
Noone forces you to use linux.
Me personaly. i have extreme difficulties in using windows. For god sake, I am not able to change the boot-process and is there anyway to change the gui?
So I don't like Windows, you don't like Linux. Who cares?
Lots of people need a "guru", it takes tenacity to learn the ropes. I'm still waiting for audio apps(multitracking) to fall out of the sky, myself. Maybe bleeding-edge hardware is poorly supported, but that's not very important for people on a budget. Especially people who don't want to pay rediculous amounts for common software. There's more good apps written by those who like to code than you'd ever expect, and the companies who rely on obscene cash flow for their business model are going to fade away. I've been using Linux more often than not for the past three years, and it's close enough to completion(in terms of apps for every purpose) that I'm dumping Windows forever. While I still keep a windows partition, I haven't booted into it for over a month. Still worry about web pages that won't load properly unless viewed with IE, but seems to be less & less of a problem. Either the Linux browsers are getting better, or MS gave up trying to own the internet. Hell, I guess the Linux browsers are getting better, because MS certainly hasn't given up their efforts to control the world by controlling the internet!!
I see that linux hasn't changed much in the last few years. I remember this exact same type of disastrous nightmare 4 or 5 years ago when I decided to give it a try. I'm sure it supports a lot more snazzy and sparkly stuff now -- but all in all it still seems like the same disorganised mess it was before. I have a couple friends who had the same sort of problems with Redhat a few months ago.
Fortunately I found the BSDs. Not quite as well suited for the desktop yet (takes a bit of patience) but the overall system is a lot more organised. Ironically whenever I have problems it's usually when installing/using linux software.
I might try debian again eventually -- as I recall they seemed to have their act together.
Boy, your system must be frustrating! All that work to watch a video. I can watch DivXs through my 32" TV in about 15 seconds. Lounge on the couch, eat some popcorn, fall asleep. It's great!
What's that got to do with copying the CD contents using Linux and not using Windows XP?
I might try debian again eventually -- as I recall they seemed to have their act together.
Try it and you'll wonder how can it possibly be that some one has problems installing software on Linux )
You commented on using urpmi. But then you also mentioned th urpmi downloads everything for you.
If his ISDN adapter doesn't work under linux, how would he use urpmi to download everything he needs to get it to work?
Or is urpmi Win32 based?
"Go do something productive instead of writing some meanless article about how you can't install Linux. Write an article telling us the glory of Windows please."
I agree 100% with the above quote. The first article might have seemed helpful or given the *volunteer developers of Linux* something to think about (in their spare time, of course--I shouldn't even be doing *this* right now because I'm not being paid to...). But when I see something like this going on, I can't continue to give credibility to the writer (beyond suspicion that we're talking about either a griper or a MS shill.)
How much effort has the author made to bring these problems to the attention of the developers? I don't have time to bother them, nor time to *contribute* so I put up with what I get. It still improves and improves, anyway, because the people who *do* have time to work on these things *care* about what they're doing.
Anyway, this is basically a blanket dismissial; if I see any more pointers to these kinds of articles, I plan to ignore them. I'll be much more interested in positive contributions from now on (e.g., "I found a great site that talks about how to IMPROVE the xxx distro...")
Isn't it ironic how the zealots work?
some_guy: windows crashed on me again
zealot: use LINUX, it RULEZ
*insert some article about how great linux is and how close it is to beating microsoft on the desktop*
some_guy: maybe I'll try
some_guy: nope, it's not working, and I don't understand what all these strange cryptic errors mean. I think they're in arabic or something. And what about... etc, etc...
zealot: you fool. why are you using linux if you cannot do something so simple as recallibrating the discombobulation array! go back to windows you whiny baby.
The worst of these articles are not the articles themselves, but that they raise so many arrogant, snob, macuser-like screams of people pretending they are so special because they have a working linux. Like they had it working in 30 minutes, cmon.
Look around, you will barely find that in other oses forums, besides mac's, that is.
Maybe I missed this in the article, but just for how long have you been using linux? I noticed you were able to install two software utilities, which is apparently more than you were able to accomplish with other distros. Have you EVER used linux before? Chances are pretty decent that a lot of things did "just work" but you had no idea how to "work" them. Most of the problems you encountered here can be easily fixed by someone with just a few weeks of linux experience. You need to know what you're doing. Not just in linux, but with everything else as well. Example? Raise someone on Linux exclusively. This person knows how to play DVDs, install software, and activate their Bluetooth module. Now get them on WinXP. Chances are pretty decent that they'll have NO idea how to do ANYTHING. "How do you install software? Damn thing doesn't even have a 'tar' utility." "How do you play .avi files? WHAT??? NO support out-of-the-box for .avi files? What kind of crap is this??" See what I mean? You know what you're used to and use it as comparison point for the unfamiliar. If linux doesn't do things like windows, then GOOD. It's not supposed to! If you don't know how to use the tool you've been given, then that's a different problem entirely. To install linux and think it's going to be windows all over again is just deeply stupid.
"Go do something productive instead of writing some meanless article about how you can't install Linux. Write an article telling us the glory of Windows please."
I disagree 100% with the above quote. Way to go idiot. If new users don't get scared off by linux itself they're sure to get scared off by your lame attitude.
The author of the article had a lot of legitimate concerns. I've experienced a lot of the same problems with linux before and I know how overwhelmed new users must feel. Even those with a fair amount of *nix background (such as myself) get annoyed with silly things that don't work. It's not that it's hard to get around these problems -- it's bloody annoying. It doesn't take brains, often it takes patience and endurance -- NOT everybody has time for this nonsense. When you know how something should work and how easy it should be you get quite frustrated when you can't seem to get it to work right.
Which is why I no longer use linux
quote: It doesn't take brains, often it takes patience and endurance -- NOT everybody has time for this nonsense.
Amen.
No, it takes me about two hours to get a box up and running on linux with minor tweaking and such for my personal environment because I am picky that I would go through on any machine no matter what OS.
The deal is that the installation of linux for me has been the easy part. It is the postinstallation that is a pain.
Go through the online update process for your distro and get the latest updates first. Just in case they did a kernel update before you get the third-part drivers and such.
Download and install Nvidia or ATI or ltmodem drivers (got to have these ahead of time of course or you are not going anywhere in modem dial-up land).
Install the msttfcorefonts.
For the my distro already has plugins and multimedia support crowd, you still need to update your plugins to the latest and greatest or there are flash sites that will kick you to the curb.
Mplayer and xine comes with your distro but even if you find the win32 codecs and put them on your box will your version of mplayer or xine that came with your distro use them? What libdvd stuff? Nope. It is a painful outside install for RH but at least once it is on it works.
Then if you want quickstart of OpenOffice you have to find that shell script that keeps that going if you want to give up the extra memory that sucks down. I don't mind as long as OpenOffice starts quicker.
Want something faster than Mozilla you have to go out and grab phoenix.
Got RH9 and want to be able to edit the menus in Gnome? That is an extra step for god's sake.
Thought about scripting this stuff and publishing it but what to script is dependant a lot on stuff you have agree first to licenses to get or even worse I do not have the range of hardware to test all the 3rdparty stuff.
Get the picture. I have been using linux for years. Up and going in 30 minutes? Nope not if you want a system that actually does something.
Linux is my preferred desktop. I am a unix professional though, a geek and a tinkerer. Is it for everyone. Hell no. Pick the best tool for what you want and let the snobs yell and scream all they want.
The interesting thing with this and similar articles is that more people are trying to do useful and productive things with Linux.
These users expect Linux to just work. In the past Linux users had the attitude that a lot of things would probably not work with or would take a good bit of figuring out in order to get them working.
I agree that most Linux distributions today have too many options and that systems should concentrate on a few good applications. I don't need 4 editors, 5 chat programs, or 6 web browsers.
Most linux documentation is quite poor. What I think people need are decent instructions on how to accomplish a certain task on their Linux system. It appears that most linux distributions release new versions without doing tests with users to see if they can accomplish desired basic tasks.
OK. For the record I run Mac OS X. So if you don't like that, think people who do don't know anything, or whatever about the Mac OS X makes you violently ill don't bother reading any more.
Flashback. Winter 2001.
AMD 1.33GHz 512MB DDR system I have, hard drive gets bad sectors, tanks my Windows 98 installation, does all sorts of evil things like deletes all my email in my inbox (corrupted directory where the files were).
Sitting there thinking, you know, I never really bought Win98 for this machine now that I think about it. I need to be legal, what are my options?
RedHat 7.2 to the rescue. I install it, with Gnome as my desktop (don't ask me why, I just like it's interface more). I start to get things going.
What didn't work?
My Zip drive (it actually died, figured that out later)
My current library of games (ho hum, bought a PS2 and a GameCube instead)
Other than that, my network card, Video card (GeForce2 based) worked ok, later found out about nVidia's drivers.
Somewhere along the line, I stumbled onto Ximian, and started using them as my update/desktop providor. I think it was because Evolution was coming out/betaing whatever you call it at the time. I really really liked Evolution. It was easy to use, did what I needed, and had a similar interface to what i was used to (Outlook Express).
For about eight months I ran ximian desktop and Red Hat 7.2/7.3 as my primary workstation. i could surf the net, read my email, do what I needed to do short of games. I bought a few from Loki (Quake III, Heritic II, Alpha Centauri) to get my fix. However I could never get Quake or Heritic to run. I actually couldn't find where the heck they installed! Alpha Centauri worked great.
Some things I never figured out:
How to add an icon for a program to my desktop
How to get most plugins to work with Mozilla (Until Safari came out, i still used Mozilla on the Mac platform)
How to get any IM client to work (I still had my work computer, which ran Windows 2000 in a VM ontop of Linux. the reason I stopped using Linux on my work machine was an internal application/VPN dialer and my winmodem didn't get along, worked fine over the ethernet though)
I finally dumped Linux for a used Powerbook G4 after I got my wife an iMac that following July. She was my 'experiment' to see if Mac OS X was any good. I moved off to my iMac, formatted my AMD with RH 7.3 again and a new, larger drive (I was using a 10GB to replace my failed 75GB drive, had to buy a new one because of an un-related shipping issue with mailing my drive back to IBM, didn't use a static bag, my stupid mistake)
Why did I do it? Surfing the web was inconsistant for me on Linux. I could never get flash to work right, or realplayer. And unfortunately Quicktime didn't work either (I did go back and try cross over after I found out about that, it actually worked well)
So now, I'm on Mac OS X on a new Powerbook 12" G4 that I really enjoy. It has Unix underpinnings, I can play with Apache, Tomcat, whatever I want, but the Internet surfing environment is better.
It's not perfect mind you, still have a few tiny things that don't work, but they're MS Specific so what would you expect?
>Actually, I really do think a lot of what this fellow has to say is pretty legitimate.
I agree. I've been through many many Linux distros and have had pretty much the same experience with most of them.
Redhat came closest for me and I ran it for a while, SuSe, Mandrake, Knoppix, and others had killer problems of one sort or another so I ended up ditching them and trying something else.
I finally took a chance on Xandros and couldn't be happier. It works with all my hardware, gives me easy access to the windows network and is simple and fast to setup. It even allows me to print to my hp printer connected to a windows machine on the network, something I've never been able to do with Linux. And being Debian, software installation is generally trivial.
of the people that cant install Linux or seem to think Linux is the messiah that will make my PC run like hell and produce grape juice out of a USB port. I mean WTH is wrong with this, we get a "i can do" and a "i cant do it" article every day. Is it just to get more comments on articles? And what is it with these people that have new hardware and it doesnt work in Linux? At the bottom is my system configuration and it worked out of the box with RedHat 9 (and RedHat 8) everything, i mean every device I had. So You people expect that every obscure USB modem will work? "well it works in XP", well keep XP then, you want choice, be prepared to learn some things and actually DO something, you dont want choice but the crashes etc with XP or 2K or (god forbid) Win9X then stay MS. This is getting so annoying and boring to read about people that a) have no clue but expect everything to go peachy (what you just bought a cheap a** PC for xmas?) b) Have some clue but are not prepared to invest any time into LEARNING something new. Screw the windows ways, forget what you knew. start reading!! (yes i know its a drag, but you really just got your drivers license without learning, right?) and c) people that if something doesnt work are too lazy to search google, but if something doesnt work in XP they are happy to search the net for hours to get the newest drivers and try it with that.
Ok, I run Linux 100% at home and so is my Wife, she's happy, she is stillg etting used to it and still has doubts and questions but after all, it was HER choice to run it (i really had nothing to do with it) and its HER choice to learn how to use things. Hell , she found out some key combination that i didnt know. So, please no more of these "Linux is not ready /is ready for the desktop " bullshit stories. I really think people take this Linux-thing too far. Anyway, just my 2 Cents.
My Sysconfig:
*Asus P4Pe Motherboard with Firewire and USB2 support (both recognized and working out of the box)
*onboard sound, works but i disabled it and use a sblive
*onboard LAN, works but disabled for my trusty 3com card
*P4 2,8Ghz
*SBLIVE (as mentioned
*3Com 905C
*Ati Radeon 9500 Pro
*1GB DDR Ram
*WinTV Radio Card, works like a charm however i havent tried the radio , yet since i dont listen to radio
*48X CDRW Works
*19" Hitachi 752ET Monitor, works flawlessly
*16X DVD Drive
*2X 80 GB HDD (UDMA 133)
Now, this is not the newest machine on the planet , however its ok i would say and it works well. Installed without hitches and i booted into X without a problem after reboot.
I had to install no drivers (the ati driver in RH 9 works fine and gives me 1600x1200 resolution, although bad 3D but i am no gamer) and i had no reboot as of yet. So IF you are thinking of buying a device and you ARE thinking that eventually you might wanna try something else, spend a few euros (dollars) more and get brand name or check online .
Some things i have forgotten what took me about the same amount of time to install as it would on windows: My digital Camera (mounted as a SCSI device on /dev/sda1) and my Creative Nomad (downloading gnomad and installing it was a matter of minutes. Thats it.
Anyway too much ranting, i think i said enuff.
//Vic
Michael C. Barnes takes an in-depth look at desktop operating system options available on the market today
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT9485255756.html
Largo loves Linux more than ever
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/12/04/2346215.shtml
Success with Linux on the Home Desktop
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=3270
No complaints here: Linux gaming is gaining steam
The buzz around Linux gaming has never been louder
http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0409.barr.html
David N. Trask, technology director at Vassalboro Community School, calls it a quiet revolution and one that already is saving his school about $5,000 a year.
http://www.centralmaine.com/news/stories/030409linux_on.shtml
This Linux learning proccess would be alot easier if once we get Linux up and running, we could make a disk image. Then if we screw somthing up while trying to get the rest of the stuff running, we don't have to start at square one. I've been making ghost images with windows at various points during the install of all the different software,for years. It's a real time saver, and you can be a bit more bold about the stuff you are willing to try. I've been trying to install a cd recovery app after install, but I get an error about needing (init?) compiled into the kernel. I really appreciate articles like this because even though they are a bit whiney, they point out things that are hard for newer users that are probably second nature to the people who code Linux apps. Plus I get a laugh out of some of it.
thanks! O.S. News
That's a good idea. When I first started playing with Linux I screwed it up quite badly when trying to get things working and had no idea how to fix it. A recovery CD would take a lot of the risk out of trying different things with the OS.
I've always had problems getting Redhat and Mandrake to work on my hardware, yet good old boring "it doesn't have a GUI installer" Slackware has ALWAYS worked properly from the start. Same with FreeBSD.
I remember the first time I installed Vector Linux. It took me a whole week to get X up and running. I didn't realize that xfree86config started a fresh file each time you ran it. "Hide the sledge hammers" but I got it going finally. I sure wanted to put that partition on a disk image!
Xine needs dvd-nav to play dvds. dvd-nav is not, and will not be merged with the xine tree. In other words, Xine is not a dvd player. There is a plug in that makes it one, but expecting it to be one out of the box is ridiculous. Those windows dvd players you love cost $$$. It costs to get rights to CSS decryption (which you couldn't open source), it costs to get dvd menu protocols. People giving you software for free should not have to pay to do it.
By the way, ogle does an excellent job with dvds. You may wish to try it sometime.
Can people please stop complaining about how Linux doesn't do everything for you...like windows or MAC OSX. Windows and MAC OSX are designed for people who have minimal computer knowledge. Face it, it requires no real understanding of computers and/or software to put a system together or to install windows or MAC OSX -- to my point, I put my first computer (a 286) together when I was 12.
Unix administration requires solid understanding of computer hardware/software. I can't remember ever hearing a CS major complain about configuration problems in linux or BSD. On the other side, non-CS people bitch and moan about having to edit any configuration files because they don't know where they are or what the stuff in them means. Well...buy a book on Linux, read the man pages, read some how-to's, read documentation provided by the developer(s).
And the funny thing is...windows processes and programs are just as tough to configure, if not tougher. Ever run into problem that the basic configuration options of a program or process don't solve (it's happening less and less these days but it still happens..take for instance you sound card and graphics card want the same IRQ and don't play nicely together and don't). Ever heard of the windows registry? If you know what to look for, you can fix some of these problems in the registry. However, try hunting through that to see what the setting are for a process or program and then have fun changing them if you even know what to change and to what...microsoft won't help you and neither will tech support for the program. Your screwed!
Well, in unix your not.
As it currently stands, Linux development is currently focusing on performance enhancements and expanding operational capability. (BTW--there is support for USB ISDN modems, just ask for some help) The linux development community is not as capable and as coordinated as apple and/or microsoft. By that I mean that while linux has an incredibly talented poole of developers working on the kernel, X, kde, gnome, etc., most of the developers do not work on linux dev. full time -AND- the community programming managerial structure that is present in many of the development groups doesn't lend itself well to streamlining progress. In some cases, XFree86 for example, the project heads in a direction that is actually retarded and has to be corrected by a fork or someother major fall-out (unix programmers have the highest concentration of arrogance of any professional group I can think of..and rightly so some extent but it can really hurt progress when one or more blowhards railroad a project down an obsolete path).
Usability of features contained within linux is important...but most users of linux will concede that features within linux are usable, not always easy to use, but usable. As the feature set of linux improves and matures...developer focus will shift to the usability of features.
But honestly, people need to stop wasting time writing these articles.
For the RedHat set, use the freshrpms.net xine, ogle and mplayer rpm files and yes, use apt so it figures out everything you need for you.
To get all those quicktime videos on the net going you just download these files
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/win32codecs.tar.bz2
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/qt6dlls.tar.bz2
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/qtextras.tar.bz2
Extract these and copy the files (not the subdirs or anything) into the /usr/lib/win32 directory.
Install the mplayer plugin after you install mplayer.
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mplayerplug-in/mplayerplug-in-0....
If you do this and get the rpms from freshrpm you literally have to do NOTHING else to get Quicktime videos used on the apple.com/quicktime for example to work.
Watching the newest X2 trailer right now in another window.
>Can people please stop complaining about how Linux doesn't do everything for you
"everything for you" as in actually working?
He isn't making the case that linux doesn't do everything for him. In a lot of cases it simply doesn't work at all.
I sympathize with you. Here's a fact:: a first time Linux user, with no Unix experience, always needs help from an experienced Linux user for a first-time installation. I have been testing Linux distros for years and it is not always a piece of cake, even for me. Certain hardware is still considered "exotic" for many Linux distros..., but drivers are often (not always) available. Finding all this out has more to do with one's research abilities than with Linux know-how. I can verify any hardware combination in about an hour's time to see if a particular distro will fly with the equipment. The method I usually use is to pop the toast into the CD or DVD reader to see what happens. If I can't get the distro up, I do some research, find drivers if necessary, then try again. Very rarely.... I'll say it again.... very rarely can a newbie install a Linux distro via download/cd-burning....etc. You have to remember that much hardware is Windows-specific, not because of market demand, but because of illegal pressure from Microsoft to make sure there is a marked demand that excludes Linux as much as possible. Winmodems are not in existence because they are cheaper. That is a lie. They are there because Microsoft wants them there. This applies to other hardware components that use Windows-specific drivers. The companies that make the devices are pressured (illegally) to NOT make Linux drivers, under penalty of losing Windows support. Normally this is not in the contract, but it sometimes is.
So the next time you want to install Linux, buy the CD's, then get help from a Linux geek. A few months later, you will be one of those geeks lending a helping hand to someone else.
i have built several computers over the years and each
and everyone of them has worked right out of the box.
heres my latest system, duplicate this and u wont have
any problems.
epox 8rda motherboard
512 megs ocz pc 3700 memory
i am using 2 ibm z15 scsi drives
i am using logitec controller
amd 2700+ processor overclocked to 2.73 gigs
i also use watercooling but that is neither
here nor there. if u are not an overlclocker
then regular cooling will work for u
i have one dvd reader. i place it first on the
first ide bus. i have 2 cd burners. i place one
of them behind the dvd reader and the other
as the master on the second ide port.
i have 2 floppies,
in bios turn off plug and play. i turn off acpi
also in bios i set my system to boot from floppy,
then cd rom , then scsi
when i want to install Mandrake i just stick the
first cd in the dvd rom drive and reboot.
its about that simple.
and also i am using a cable modem. in 9.1 it gets picked
up automatically and installed. it is a motorola sur board.
4100, the 4200 series also work too.
i have a network card i bought at frys for about 10 dollars
connecting my modem. i do not recommend usb modems for
linux just yet.
if u duplicate my system, u dont have to use scsi drives,
u can use ide drives instead but then u just wont have
the speed of scsi.
i want to mention that i purchased the ibm scsi drives
because it seems is getting out of the drive business.
u can purchase them for about 150 on the internet.
be sure and use lsi scsi controllers. they are very
inexpensive and work like a dream.
also want to mention i am using an old hitachi superscan
elite 802 for monitor, it works and its big.
shop like wise owls instead of cuckkoo birds
good luck
Uhh, isn't this site called osNEWS? Where is the news? Another one not ready for GNU/Linux. OK by me.
And BTW, i always use a screwdriver to put nails into the wall...
All you have to do is write an article, we'll do the rest for you.
Come on, I can read this stuff on IRC all day if I want to.
You sir, are an idiot. RTFM. Did you learn Windows in a fucking hour? No. And you wont learn linux in an hour either. For someone that claims to have all this background in tinkering, you sure dont seem like you want to.
Im gonna let you in on a little secret, its called WWW.GOOGLE.COM . Use it, learn, almost every god damn thing you whine about you could plug in there and BAM, answers.
Yes one thing I agree with is that ISDN support sucks ass. But ISDN also sucks ass, and you and the other 50 people in the universe still using that crap can go to hell.
And DOWNLOAD ALL 3 CDS NEXT TIME YOU INSTALL! Idiot. Try installing 1/3 of Windows XP and see what happens....
first, I am glad the author tried Linux and took the time
and trouble to write about it.As a new user his concerns should be taken note of.
However, many of these articles go like this:
Window user finds that the often guru assisted learning
curve ( the existence of which they have either forgotten or are in denial about) does not 100% tranfer over to Linux. They write an article about how tough Linux is
and how it is not ready. Then ( for some mysterious reason - aahh the lure of Linux) they persist and come to
realize that the learning curve although it exists, is
not really that steep. That there may be the odd pothole
thanks to the DMCA and hardware manufacturers, but with
a little effort ( rememeber that from your first Windows
days ? sure you do)
So they mollify their stand a little.
Then comes another windows users dipping their toe in,
screaming "It's so cold!!!" Not noticing that the guy
who said the same thing last month is doing laps."
Repeat cycle of yet another windows noob frst reaction to Linux,endlessly .
Having said that here are some points:
Windows is not _that_ easy. It is more it is what people are used to.
They require