Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.
Until I get everything up and running though, Linux still blows. 
Una [sub](nice to see you Anth, LTNS)[/sub] are you serious? It was hogging resources like that? I was under the assumption it would be a lot leaner as well.
Could one of the people who claim Linux is great explain how to get my Alcatel Speedtouch 330 working WITHOUT assuming I know about Linux in a great deal? I’m ready to learn, but having to reboot to Windows every time I need to find out something off the net doesn’t help. (SuSE 8.2)
IMHO, ‘Linux for desktop’ is at the stage of Windows 3.1. Yet the manuals sold with (as?) the distros pretend it’s a ready-to-go system.
Trust me, I desperatly want to escape Windows, apart from the one or two pieces of software which I have to use. I just wish I could work out how.,
I guess you heard about Apple advert for the ‘fastest, most powerful’ computer being banned because it’s untrue?
I’m a bit in a hurry, but here are a few Googled links.
http://linux-usb.sourceforge.net/SpeedTouch/
http://members.aon.at/gweb/gweb/linux/speedtouch.html (in German).
From the looks of the first link, it seems that you will have to change the kernel. I know, that is not easy if you are not too familiar with Linux. Hopefully someone else will be able to help you further, if necessary.
In fairness, I had no opportunity to optimize it or tune it at all, as I could hardly read the screen. What pissed me off is that the video card setup kept showing that the resolution/option was available, kept saying that it “set itself correctly” and that all I needed to do was restart the desktop, and yet…it didn’t work. Not with 2-3 days of trying. And I used to install OS/2 on machines; I know something about fiddling with drivers to get them to work. Nada.
I love the whole concept of Linux, and some of the free tools that it comes with are really sweet. But reinstalling it will have to wait until I get another computer that has a video card it likes.
Get down off your high horse. What about the people who can barely afford to put together a bottom-of-the-barrel machine, much less pay over $100 for Windows. Shouldn’t they have an easy-to-use, free alternative? I mean, there are many, many distros of Linux. You’ll always have your Slackware. Why shouldn’t others benefit from free software as well? Wouldn’t you want a larger user base? Wouldn’t that mean more companies writing software for Linux and a greater willingness to develop Linux drivers from hardware manufacturers? For example, Philips doesn’t provide Linux drivers for my sound card and won’t even release the information that the Linux community needs to write their own drivers.
And I think you know that coding isn’t the only way to contribute to the OSS community. Creating good documentation (such as user guides for beginners) and providing help in forums are ways to contribute without writing a single line of code.
I have a CCNA and an AS in Networking, so I’d say I’m a bit more knowledgeable than the average user, but I still struggle with Linux. I’ve tried multiple versions of about a half-dozen distros over the last few years. There is a veneer of simplicity in the initial install of most of them, but when they’re actually up and running, but with a few significant problems (which seem to be inevitable), that’s when things start to really suck - at least in my experience.
Due to the huge amount of Windows users, almost any problem can be solved online because somebody else (or likely several people) has had it before and a workaround or fix is available.
With Linux, you have a comparatively tiny base of users scattered among multiple distros. It’s less likely that the specific problem you’re having will already have been posted someplace and answered and accessible via a Google search. Even if it is, it’s often answered in a newbie-unfriendly manner, leading to even more questions and confusion.
I still haven’t completely given up on Linux, as it’s a good job skill in my field, but it’s (and I speak of all distros here) a very easy OS to get frustrated with and give up on. Perhaps if it was easier to get started with, there would be more people that would keep going with it, and maybe even go on to contribute to the OSS community in some way.
Is there something I’m missing here? As the name would imply, OpenOffice.org is OSS, thus completely free. I’m not sure why you would want to pay money for it, but if there’s a good reason, I’m interested. Granted, at 74.7MB Linux (63.5MB Windows), it’s a bit of a steep download for a dialup user, but nothing compared to those ISOs. In fact, I can’t even find a place on their site where you’d buy a CD from them.
I recently downloaded OOo 1.1 for Windows and was very pleasantly surprised. I only tried the word processor, but it was very intuitive and didn’t have that ugly or slapped-together look that a lot of Linux programs and Windows ports of them seem to have.
Una: Every OS will be slow if you’re running a lot of software under it. Run top from the command line and see what’s at the top of the list of processes. If you notice you’re running stuff you don’t want to be running (apache, maybe?), you can stop that software.
Here’s why Linux is commonly cited to be more lightweight than Windows: It’s more transparent about what’s running, and you can shut down programs without worrying that you’ll kill the OS itself. In Windows, you are always running Explorer and a set of other programs that Windows will complain mightily about if they’re shut off. Or maybe not, but you need some undocumented knowledge to know what you can shut off and what you need to leave running. It isn’t obvious, as it is in Linux.
Here’s why I use Linux: It just works. Windows does not. Windows cannot even run for more than a few hours at a time without becoming unstable. If I actually try to use it, I might as well shoot myself in the foot directly and cut out the middle man.
I have a simple `first cut’ for software: It must work as advertised more often than not. If it doesn’t, sorry, but it simply isn’t fit for serious usage. Since Windows fails that first cut, it isn’t fit for serious usage. Microsoft should begin to take software development seriously.
If you’re a cluebie, you should buy a distro in a box instead of downloading it. It’s still a lot cheaper than Windows XP.
I bought SuSE for work and got two inch-thick manuals, tech support (which I haven’t used), and the option to install from 7 CDs or 1 DVD. The retail version also includes some software that you can’t get for free, due to licensing issues.
It’s not quite as easy to install as Windows, but it’s close - if you have the right hardware.
First, I installed it from the DVD onto a 1.8 GHz eMachine, and everything went smoothly, but the video wouldn’t go any higher than 640x480x16. Turns out XFree86 didn’t support the el-cheapo onboard video (although it does now), so I went out and bought a Radeon. No problems since then.
Second, I installed it on a 233 MHz Cyrix system that was built by a local store. Installation wouldn’t work from the first CD, but the second CD has an alternate installation that worked.
Third, I installed it on the 2.4 GHz P4 system I built recently. Ouch! The DVD installation didn’t work at all - it didn’t recognize any of the software from the disc. The CD installation worked, but then Linux would only boot in “safe mode”. I suspect there was a problem with HyperThreading, because one of the things “safe mode” does is disable SMP, but it was too much hassle and I just stuck with Windows 2000.
I don’t think is a fair statement to make anymore. My Windows 2000 machines are utterly stable, as good as Linux. XP is supposed to be even better. The only thing that hurts their uptime is having to reboot for OS patches, which Linux avoids somehow.
(Just informing, not trying to get you to switch. I really don’t care what you run on your computer, as long as I don’t have to do your tech-support.)
I said I had to get rid of it, so I can’t do that. And the whole “can’t read the screen” issue made it a moot point anyhow. I know it needs optimization and reduction of services/programs. I’ve been doing that for longer than some posters on this Board have been alive. 
Well, the UnaServer is NT 4.0, and has run 24/7 for 32 months without crashing. If that’s not an example of stability, I don’t know what is. Meaning, of course, that depending on your applications you can make something unstable or stable quite easily. I use only well-established open-source software on my server (Apache, MySQL, PHP) and thus have no problems.
I acknowledge the utility and coolness of Linux from a conceptual standpoint, otherwise I would not have bothered to even try it. And I will try it again. Too bad that it’s so notoriously unfriendly with device drivers.
Hey Una:
Let me start by saying that,. when I first installed Linux on my previous computer, I had the exact same problem (except for the LCD screen thing). I didn’t know what to do about it, and I couldn’t find a good answer as to how to fix it, and it frustrated the fuck out of me, to the point where I nearly gave up on installing Linux. In other words, I know where you’re coming from.
Nowadays, I don’t use anything else. The difference is that I had to teach myself what was broken and how to fix it. I agree, however, that most people don’t like being presented with problems to solve as a part of their user experience. This is definitely an area where Linux needs to improve if it wishes to be used more broadly.
(technical dissection of your problem follows):
The big problem with X configuration, specifically, is that most auto-configuration tools (which 99% of even very technical people use, because manual configuration is about as much fun as choking on glass slivers) assume that the display should default to the lowest supported resolution. Since you say you can change resolutions, whatever tool Red Hat uses for configuration most likely behaves in exactly this way. What you want to do is manually change a few lines in one file, after which your problem should go away.
The main X configuration file, XF86Config, might be located in one of several places, but on a modern system it’s probably under /etc/X11 . use any text editor to find the following string:
Section "Screen"
That’s a single space between the two words, with quotes included.
What you will see beneath this text are (probably) several “Display” subsections with a bunch of resolutions listed underneath them. When X starts up, it tries these resolutions in the order listed; if they are listed in ascending order, X will always start in the lowest supported resolution which isn’t what you (or any other person) wants.
Simply edit every instance of these resolution lines to try supported resolutions in descending order (being sure to back the file up first , just in case), and your problem should go away. To test it, you don’t have to reboot, or even shut X down - just type the following from an xterm to reset the server:
su -c "kill -HUP $(pidof X)"
This will require the root password to operate, but will not leave you running as root.
(Yes, I deliberately used on of those inscrutable command lines. This is to prove a point - if you like the flexibility implied by something like that, you’ll like Linux. If you find it painful to behold, you probaly will feel likewise about Linux.)
I’ve been running Linux since 0.99pl12 in 1993. I use it as my primary desktop OS, using RH9.0, Gnome, and the like. My only complaint is that my iPod has seemed to make it unstable, and I like Debian better than RedHat but the RedHat Gnome looks really spiffy and they have more RPMs than .debs out there.
One has to acquire a working knowledge of the /etc directories, a nominal amount of knowledge about how configuration files are set up, know about the system log files in /var/log, understand how to use man pages, learn to implement suggestions using a text-mode editor like vi, wade through quite a bit of computer hardware and networking jargon, and maybe pick up a bit of bash scripting in order to make a Linux environment tolerable. If you do these things, a Linux box runs better (IMHO) and more stably than just about anything out there. And it will do anything that any other OS can do and so much more. I use fully accelerated NVIDIA drivers, I change files on my iPod, I remotely mount my Mac’s hard drive (and it remotely mounts my Linux drives), I run a SMB share so that it shows up on my Windows box Network Neighborhood, I have a PII Linux box in a closet that has my entire CD collection digitzed, runs a web- and telnet-based jukebox program, and outputs digital audio to my home entertainment system. For the grand total price of $0 in software.
You don’t need a degree to do this. Just some curiosity and patience and stubborn persistence. I’m a biologist, I’ve taken one CS course in my life. Everything else is self-taught.
BUT. I must say. If you want the Unix experience Lite, with a beautful GUI, resource conscious stable OS, and the mixed blessings of Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, then the way to go is Mac OS X. I can do all of the same stuff on it as I can at home, plus send my boss correctly formatted MS Word documents. If they ever stand up to Microsoft and release an Intel compatible version, I hope it gets gobbled up. Get yourself a used 400 MHz G3 iMac (it is sufficient, believe me), put in 512 MB of RAM, and spring $100 for the OS. It is totally worth it. It will work right out of the box, it will see the network, it will display all graphics correctly, and you can run X Windows, perl, sed, Apache, all the GNU crap you could ever want. It is IMHO the perfect compromise.
To the OP, why do you want to use linux? Tinkering and learning, ideology, active dissatisfaction with current OS (as opposed to minor inconveniences), to run apps only available on *nix?
You might very well say: some or all of the above. But I suspect, probably one of them stands out as the driving reason.
If ideology] is the case, I think you should skip linux. Wrong reason, IMHO
If you want an app exclusive to linux, then stick to Mandrake or Suse. Suse has network install, but it’s not a big problem. I installed it last summer on someone else’s computer and within a couple of hours, it was all good. You’ll need a decent broadband pipe. But, you might prefer Mandrake’s direct install.
If you suffer from the WinBlows epidemic, then this is a tricky one. You don’t want to use Windows, rather than wanting to use linux. Then I don’t know which distribution to recommend. They all require some active effort and intermediate diagnostic skills on your part.
And finally, if you intend to learn and tinker, then go with Gentoo. I installed this on my previous comp last March. It gets technical, it gets dirty, but once the system was up & running, I found it an excellent distribution. If you survive the Gentoo install process, linux as a whole will get greatly demystified. You should dedicate 4-5 hours on a leisurely afternoon for this. Once you have it up, installing, modifying, removing, upgrading software is a cinch.
Only by the very strict requirements used in British advertising law, which requires every quantifiable statement to be indisputable (“Yes, it’s our ‘biggest sale ever’, we’ve got 50 square meters more than last year’s!”).
Just because some Windows magazine “proved” the G5 wasn’t the fastest in every possible situation doesn’t mean we’re talking about a 300 MHz Celeron here – after all, Virgina Tech managed to build the world’s third-fastest supercomputer using nothing but Macs…
I can try those when I re-install and have the same problem.
I have no problem with CLIs. I’m one of those rare old women who started on a VAX, loved DOS, and drug my feet on Windows for some time. And in OS/2 I spent a lot of time at the CL. Years, in fact…wow, hard to imagine it’s gone now. So much useless expertise - I feel like an Ada programmer!
You can do that with the Windows XP recovery console (boot to it from the XP CD and look around the help interface for the proper command).
“An” is used before a vogal.
Hehe I’ve gone through the same process. The learning curve is steep coming from windows. I tried learning it just by experience and some internet research but that didn’t work so well so I’m thinking about buying an introductory book.
If they want free beer (which free software isn’t about), they can at least learn to use it properly without demanding it be changed to fit their lower-class needs.
Nope.
That is not desirable. Commercial companies’ drivers are usually not free. Reverse-engineering our own drivers has served the Linux company well for ten years now. No need to change that.
Documentation isn’t necessary. The only reason there is an outcry for “good documentation” is because of these computer-illiterates coming to Linux. Before they came, man or info pages more than sufficed. And there’s always taking a quick look at the source.
UnuMondo
UnuMondo, you are one of the people keeping Linux in the ghetto. The idea that Linux is all for the geeks is not helpful to anyone, especially the geeks: Without anyone but techies using it, it will never be seen as a serious product and Open-Source Software will never be able to challenge the blatantly immoral excesses of the proprietary software mindset and practice.
Now more than ever, the second part of that equation is becoming essential. The CBDTPA (formerly the SSSCA) would require all new software to have government-approved spyware built in. Any software that cannot be `certified’ would presumably be banned. Unless Linux users, among other currently ghettoized computer folk, can do something about this, we’ll all be up a shitty creek and completely unable to procure paddles. Linux needs acceptance because Linux is the most successful aspect of the Open-Source Software philosophy.*
*(BSD is good. BSD is just as capable of doing what Linux does, if not more in some areas. But BSD didn’t get the essential mindshare in the early 1990s, when Linux exploded into the world, and so BSD is currently in no position to fight these battles. It was politics, personalities, and dumb luck, but that’s where things stand.)
Fortunately, I think Linux is becoming a serious threat to the proprietary software world. Closed-source Unix is dying: More and more companies are upgrading to Linux in the process of upgrading hardware, and there are very few good reasons to stay with old proprietary Unices now that Linux is respectable and well-supported. Even IBM has let AIX die the death and is now hyping Linux. Microsoft is running scared: It feels it’s necessary for it to denigrate Linux at every turn, calling the GPL `viral’ (a blatant lie) and associating Linux users with drug users (which makes me wonder what kind of bud is blooming in Redmond). FUD is MS’s stock in trade, but this is over-the-top even for Gates, Ballmer, and Crew.
Hopefully, UnuMondo, your ideas will soon be as outdated as TSRs.
My reasons for using Linux include all of the above, but ideology is one of them. I think that’s a very good reason. My opinion, of course.
I’m using Gentoo now, and I like it a lot. But if you’ve never installed Linux before, I’m not sure it’s the best choice. With any distribution you can learn and tinker to your hearts content. There is something to be said for getting it up and working and then learning to tinker with it.
No, good documentation has always been recognized as an important part of good software. The problem has always been that people who write the software often don’t want to write the documentation, but this has been seen as a problem.
The info pages usually are very good documentation. A lot of the info pages are well written books that are available on the computer.