I’m a Linux user also (Fedora 9). One thing that people seem to forget is that Windows isn’t any easier or harder, your just used to it.
My daughter’s internet friend recently got a very nasty virus/ trojan. After a bit of googleing, I figured his best bet was to just reload. He got it reloaded ok, but then I had the fun of trying to “talk” him through reloading his network and video drivers. (via IM over his PSP, no less).
Eventually, the guy that built the computer for him had to reload the network drivers, then go out and download the video drivers.
Sure, when your computer comes with all the software preloaded and configured it’s easier. No kidding.
When things on Linux don’t work, it can be very frustrating sure. But when they don’t work on Windows, the same can be said.
I recently gave Ubuntu (7.whatever) a shot on an old PC I have sitting around. A 1.4 Gig Athlon. It loaded right up, found all my hardware, no tweaking necessary. I do have an nVidia video card though, and only run 1 monitor.
BULLSHIT!!!
That’s the very fucking reason why I started this thread. This is a bullshit argument that I’m so sick of fucking hearing. Would I honestly be unable to use Linux as a desktop environment after trying it every year? Did you not read my tale of trying to get two monitors working? It CAN’T BE DONE. Also explain how to fucking get WiFi going because after a week of trying I couldn’t get ndiswrapper to go. Sure things work differently in Linux: If by work differently you mean, you decide you don’t need the functionality.
You can blame ATI if you want. Blame them for not wanting to support a constantly-moving target that is 1 to 3 percent of the desktop market that is shattered into at least 5 different major distros each with a KDE and Gnome implementation. Sure Apple is around 5 percent too, but at least it’s a hell of a lot easier to develop for.
That’s what pisses me off about Linux fanatics. It’s the inability to understand what the average user expects out of a computer. When Ubuntu works well, yes… it is just a different way of doing things. If only it were that different. I sure as fuck wouldn’t be ragging on the OS if it were simply a matter of having to look in a different menu to find the right tool.
Do you think I’d fucking waste a week’s worth of my time if I didn’t want that shit to finally fucking work? I know more about aticonfig and xorg.conf than anyone will ever need to know in their life. I STILL didn’t get it to work properly. Why? Because X doesn’t have native support for an extended desktop. Simple as that.
The number of distros and desktop environments are meaningless. It’s all the same on that end. The moving target thing is a fair criticism, but:
a) If they’d commit a driver into the tree, the porting effort for each release of the kernel would be done for them
b) If they’d just release the hardware documentation, someone would write the driver for them. Little-to-no effort required on ATI’s part whatsoever.
If you want to know “Why doesn’t X piece of hardware work under Linux”, the answer is almost always because the manufacturer isn’t willing to do anything to help it work.
This is exactly right. Both of the OP’s main issues come down to poor Linux driver support by the manufacturer. Manufacturers can get away with skimping on Linux drivers, but they won’t sell a card if it doesn’t work with Windows. Yet that’s not because of Linux, per se – if Windows had the same market share Linux currently has, it would die in five minutes, because nothing would work and people would ditch it.
If enough people started using Linux, this would change, but right now hit or miss driver support comes with the territory. I’d advise anyone thinking of venturing into Linux to keep that in mind from the start, so they don’t end up all pissed off.
I’m tired of fucking excuses. The proof is in the pudding. Linux’s problems are chiefly caused by it’s inability to have a coherent anything. Let’s just imagine for a second. What if you wanted to use Windows but you had 7 different versions to chose from? That’s a big difference. This is why there are no serious apps on Linux. Why would Photoshop spend all of that time developing a version for Linux when it could be broken in an instant by someone making a decision that he wanted to tweak some crucial system component? It’s just like the guy at linuxhaters says. Would you rather have the freedom to be able to change one tiny think that almost nobody will use, or would you rather have a stable platform (Oh Noes! I’m not free to change it!) and some serious consideration of moving apps over from the big guys?
Linux’s problems are caused by their inability to lure developers. Developers won’t touch it because there’s absolutely no guarantee that their efforts aren’t going to be totally hosed with the next version of Ubuntu. How can this lack of stability not be a bad thing? It’s a big amorphous blob of uncertainty. Shit breaks on Linux all the time.
Linux reminds me of the saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth” It is also because of this that they can’t have a stable and up-to-date system. X windows was designed before they even knew people would be using 3D accelerated 2D graphics systems. Secondly, nobody wants to work on the hard and boring stuff. People are only interested in adding features that hardly work.
Don’t know what to say, just checked and mine works. I didn’t do anything special. I’m running Firefox 3 with Flash from the Yum repository.
I’m not saying everything works in Linux flawlessly. Especially a few years back. Stuff didn’t work, so I just tinkered with it. Now? Everything I want works, that’s why I use it. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t use it.
It’s not an excuse. If the hardware manufacturer releases the source code, within days there will be a driver for it. If they don’t, then they have to write their own driver. If neither happens, then it has to be reversed engineered, with mixed results. You can rant at Linux all you want, but it’s not the fault of the folks who program for Linux.
I’m no expert, for sure. But from what I understand the drivers are in the kernel which is pretty much the same across most (all?) distros. Once the driver is stable, it’s incorporated into the kernel. That’s why all my hardware works “out of the box”.
I hope yours keeps working, because the official line from the Ubuntu developers is that it was sheer luck that it worked in earlier versions and they’re not going to try making it work in future versions. So enjoy it until it breaks!
As to why I can’t use the Yum version itself? The yum installer depends on a python lib that is older than what Flash itself needs. If I install the lib that Flash needs, I break Yum. If I install what Yum needs, Flash can’t install. Sweet. I do have to say the Ubuntu screensavers are fucking awesome though.
Oops, my bad. I’m talking about my primary computer running Fedora. My other computer has Ubuntu on it, and I haven’t even turned it on in 2 weeks. It was just for playing around with/ learning.
Vendors aren’t always able to release the source code for their drivers because they don’t always own all of the code. I’m sure that ATI probably has licensed a lot of code from other folks. ATI has no inherent reason to mistreat linux any more than they do OSX, yet the fickle nature of Linux is what prevents them from making a real effort. You have a very interesting observation. You use it because it does everything you want. I don’t because it doesn’t for me. Let’s see how much fun you have when your Flash breaks.
I am not a geek like most of you. I’m the average American user. I can surf the net like a mofo but I don’t know that much about the actual computer. You may remember me from such threads as “Why Do I Need Ubuntu?” and “How Do I Get My Vista Back?” Thanks, teenage son, for the Mother’s Day “present” of a whole new strange unknown-to-me operating system! And just when I was getting used to Vista, finally.
Using Ubuntu 7. xx something now. Separate computer from my windows box. Works good. It is like an airplane. Make it do what you want it to do but never ask it to do what it was not designed to do.
Stay off the tip of the arrow…
Never fly the “A” model of anything.
I just switched to XP-Pro from 98-se a few months ago. I use IE, Firefox, Opera, which ever works best for what I’m doing. No such thing as the best at everything machine or OS.
I can’t see a reason to have two different resolution on monitors, but you must need that. If it is because you can’t afford two of the same monitors or have space for them, then IMO you are working at the wrong end of the problem.
But to each his own…
Best tool for the job. All in one tools are never the best for the job…
YMMV
edit cause I did not spell check… or even look as Firefox was trying to tell me but would I listen… Nooooooooooo… sheesh … :smack:
Merkwurdigliebe, how many computers have you installed OSX on? How many that were not Apple machines? How about Windows XP or Vista on a PowerPC Mac?
Distributions of Linux are far more alike than they are different. Nvidia seems to have no problem releasing drivers for linux, and I think that most of the differences are taken care of by distrobution developers. Same thing happens with Intel’s drivers, and with Adobe’s stuff (Adobe did fuck up Flash for Linux pretty bad, lucky for me the good folks at Opera Software fixed it for themselves). Matlab makes it work by having the user pick up the slack if they’re using a non-standard distribution. Last I heard AMD and ATI were open-sourcing their drivers, so I’m a bit surprised that they’re not working better.
As I understand it, OSX is a fully UNIX-compatible system, so I don’t know why you’re complaining about the file names in Linux. I’m sure you have all sorts of whatever.conf files /etc in a Mac. You may even have a .bashrc in you home directory. And while we’re on the subject, wtf do you expect Linux to do that won’t also be done by a FreeBSD-based system? I know quite a few academic types who use a Mac because (a) they don’t want to install an OS, and (b) it works well with the Linux machines used for doing serious scientific computation. Apple computers have all of the basic command-line applications that Linux has, and a good amount of GPL software is ported to OSX (and Windows). You can probably compile even more.
Wireless works fine for me, using a fairly common Intel card. Right now it’s Windows that’s giving me shit, refusing to connect to any wireless network.
Wireless doesn’t work for a lot of people, including me (until I spent a week fiddling with it).
I have a new laptop with an inbuilt wireless card (HP Pavillion). Ubuntu 8.04 wouldn’t recognize it. After fiddling with ndiswrapper for three days, I went down to PC world and bought a new Netgear USB wireless dongle. Same problem, another two days wasted. I eventually bought a USB wireless dongle from linuxemporium.co.uk. Ubuntu recognized that, but kept disconnecting me every thirty seconds. More fiddling, and eventually I changed some setting (I still don’t know what) that allows me to stay connected to the Internet.
How many times do you actually have to fiddle with all those files in Windows or OSX? Setting an environment variable in Linux requires you open .bashrc, edit the path using some arcane syntax, then source the new file. Windows lets you do the same thing with a single dialog box.
Thirded on the wifi - am currently struggling to stop the provided driver from freezing my 8.04 install, which has involved compiling shit from scratch, editing Makefiles, editing fucking C files because the new kernel has new data structures, and then fighting with iwconfig, iwpriv and iwfuckyouupassoonaslookatit, all to no effect. I can see the network, but can I connect to it? Can I, fuck.
To be fair, however, I did also have to go through three wifi adapters in Windows before finding one whose drivers didn’t fuck up that, so my experience is more that Wifi still generally sucks for non-laptops, regardless of what OS you’ve got.
Right now, I am running Ubuntu 8.04 on 3 machines at home:
Laptop: Wi-Fi. Works with both the built-in and PCMCIA wireless adapters.
Wife Desktop/Media PC: Wi-Fi. Dual Monitors (VGA and HDMI) on ATI card.
Main Desktop: Three monitors on two nvidia cards. 64-bit OS.
I just wanted to put that out there because the thread is making it sound like dual monitors and wi-fi are an impossibility in Ubuntu or something.