F*ing *nix...

[Shawn Stanford]

So, my wife comes home with a Ubuntu 10 CD and says, "My professor gave me this. It sounds like something you might like." I had an old lappy laying around with a dead hard drive, so I scavenged the 7Gb drive out of a another deceased lappy (a ThinkPad 600E) and set it up.

I don't know if you've ever seen Ubuntu, but the interface is attractive and, after tuning through a setup menu, reasonably snappy on this older machine.

So far, so good...

Then I try to get some action out of an old Linksys wifi card (this machine doesn't have built-in wifi). I don't have the driver disc for the card and I suspect that loading drivers for Ubunti will be a slightly different process than loading them for Windows, so I search for instructions.

I quickly find a forum where someone posts asking for help loading drivers for my exact wifi card. And someone answers him a couple posts later, saying, "I had the same problem and I just did thus-and-so". I have no idea what he means, so I keep reading and someone asks him to post step-by-step instructions.

So, he does, saying, "This was easy. Just follow these instructions:" and then he posts a process with a dozen f*ing steps! Among the steps are cryptic things like "4. Unstrap the wizzywig using chicken bones and voodoo magic." and "7. Make sure you set the configuration files to the square root of your mother's dog's birthday." What the f*ing f*?!

I've realized that I get too much sex on too regular a basis to put up with *nix. F* *nix. I don't want to have to **** around with my OS, I just want it to work. I'm going to grab a copy of 2000 (or maybe even NT) and just make a computer I can use.

Anyone want a lightly used Ubuntu disc? Cheap!

[Shawn Stanford]

And lest you think I'm exagerating, here are the actual instructions I'm talking about:

In summary,

1. Use Synaptic to get ndiswrapper-tools
2. Get the windows drivers, and copy the .sys and .inf to somewhere (say /home//Linksys/)
3. Open terminal, and enter the following commands:
3a. cd Linksys
3b. sudo ndiswrapper -i .inf (mine was lsb something, but I just renamed it to linksys.inf as it makes it easier). The screen should show something about Forcing parameter RadioState|0 to RadioState|1... mine had 4 lines.
3c. cd /etc/ndiswrapper/
3d. Edit all the .conf files, look for the line RadioState|1 and change it to RadioState|0 (to do this, I had to type sudo gedit and open the files from the GUI... gedit didn't quite like opening files with \: from the command line, not sure why) I'm not sure if just changing one or two files will work, but I just changed all 4.
3e. sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
3f. (optional) sudo echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules
3g. sudo iwlist wlan0 scan (look for your access point in the list)
3h. sudo iwconfig wlan0 channel essid mode Managed (the X and ESSID should come from the iwlist)
3i. sudo ifup wlan0

[itlnstln]

That's one reason I didn't continue on with Linux and also why Linux will never take off in the desktop arena.  If I can't double-click an .exe file and move on with my life, it's too much work.  I can just see Suzie Homemaker trying this **** with her new scanner.

I realize this is a special case, but it happens far too often to be something to "deal with."

[Soarer]

I've realized that I get too much sex on too regular a basis to put up with *nix. F* *nix.

Christmas, birthday AND anniversary? You lucky boy!

[itlnstln]

Damn, I missed that quote.  That's epic.

[vyshane]

Not all *nix are made equal. *cough* OS X.

On a more serious note, you were unlucky that your hardware was not supported out of the box. I have a couple of laptops lying around at home that work 100% out of the box with Ubuntu whereas with Windows I need to go through seven or eight driver installations and seven or eight restarts. Mileage varies.

[ch_123]

When you're dealing with old hardware, it's complete pot luck - not only with Linux, but with modern versions of Windows, given that MS likes to change around their driver model every few years, and that hardware manufacturers just don't support this stuff. Now, granted, even with current Wifi hardware, Linux doesn't always support it properly out of the box, but this tends to be limited to the cheap and obscure stuff - i.e. the same stuff that will break when you upgrade to the latest version of Windows or Mac OS X, so it's a good idea to avoid that stuff anyway.

[CodeChef]

And lest you think I'm exagerating, here are the actual instructions I'm talking about:

Um... so? I'm not even that experienced in *nix systems and even I got that... really those instructions are quite straightforward.

[Zen]

F*cking *Nix DOES work ..
It also requires that you at least have a vague idea of what the F*ck you are doing .

"4. Unstrap the wizzywig using chicken bones and voodoo magic." and "7. Make sure you set the configuration files to the square root of your mother's dog's birthday."

I seriously doubt that any *nix-guy said that .
Some things take more than just clicking once on a pretty picture,
all windoze-users should know what I mean !
You try and describe in writing  how to shut down a XP-machine ...
How many steps was that ??

[keyboardlover]

You try and describe in writing  how to shut down a XP-machine ...
How many steps was that ??

To shut down XP:
1. Hit Windows button
2. Select 'Turn Off' menu and 'Turn off' icon in the 'Turn off' dialog
3. Profit.

[a_fluffy_kitten]

I seriously doubt that any *nix-guy said that .

Right.  Because he totally wasn't making a joke.

Grab a napkin sir, you have a little froth dribbling out the side of your mouth.

I'd have to agree that OS X is a pretty decent Unix shell.  :high5:

[itlnstln]

You try and describe in writing  how to shut down a XP-machine ...
How many steps was that ??

1. Briefly press power switch.


One.  Exactly one.  Here's a more complicated way:

1. Briefly press power switch.
2. Walk away.

You know, for those masochists that like to make things hard.

[ch_123]

In the case of the XP machines in my college -

1. Select Shutdown
2. Wait for the thing to crash or spew up random errors
3. Exclaim "Ah for ****'s sake"
4. Yank the kettle lead out of the back
5. Walk away with a feeling of accomplishment

[7bit]

So, my wife comes home with a Ubuntu 10 CD and says, "My professor gave me this. It sounds like something you might like." I had an old lappy laying around with a dead hard drive, so I scavenged the 7Gb drive out of a another deceased lappy (a ThinkPad 600E) and set it up.
...
So far, so good...

Then I try to get some action out of an old Linksys wifi card (this machine doesn't have built-in wifi)

....

So, he does, saying, "This was easy. Just follow these instructions:" and then he posts a process with a dozen f*ing steps! Among the steps are cryptic things like "4. Unstrap the wizzywig using chicken bones and voodoo magic." and "7. Make sure you set the configuration files to the square root of your mother's dog's birthday." What the f*ing f*?!
...

Could you please post a link to these instructions?

For myself, I always found a solution on the web. There is always some trouble when installing GNU/Linux, but once everything is running as it should, I'm out of any trouble with the system.

Anyone want a lightly used Ubuntu disc? Cheap!

Are they re-recordable? If not, they will make a good Christmas decoration. (or just put them on the stack of AOL-CDs)

[bigpook]

Yeah, there is a dark side to using linux. No doubt. I have had to do the same to get some wireless adaptors to work in linux. Thankfully, I haven't had to do that in awhile. The hardware that I am using now just works out of the box.

Keep in mind that wireless adaptors are notorious for not being supported by linux. You just need to understand that it really isn't the fault of linux, it is more so the manufacturer that does not support linux.

Food for thought. If there wasn't a driver available for windows than you are simply dead in the water. It will not work, ever.
At least in linux, while you may have to sweat a bit to get it to work, chances are you can. There are lots of people out there that make it their mission in life to make stuff work. God bless them : )

And yes, linux is not an operating system for the average person. Not yet anyway.
But for those that know ( and that 'knowing' can come at  a high cost in time and effort)
linux is pretty sweet.

Using Ubuntu 10.10 and some straight Debian. Life is good for me.

[keyboardlover]

I'm very surprised. Usually Thinkpads of all laptops play pretty nice in Linux. It must have been that particular wireless card, or the fact that it's pretty old. Also, it sounds like the directions you got were fairly b0rked

[jpc]

Shawn,

Linux supports some wireless adapters out of the box -- zero configuration on Ubuntu. I have had good experience with Atheros and Realtek chipsets in USB wifi adapters. Info here...

Many wireless adapters are not supported at all unfortunately, if the manufacturer doesn't release the specs to the open source community.

Some adapters are supported by a kludge called "Ndiswrapper" which is a Rube Goldbergian widget that uses duct tape and voodoo to make a Windows driver work under Linux. I tried this once. Bad experience. Do not attempt.

Those ridiculous instructions are for Ndiswrapper.

Lots of Linux software is high quality, but there are Ndiswrappers out there too. It's the nature of an open source software bazaar...

[Shawn Stanford]

Could you please post a link to these instructions?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=5645
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186538

F*cking *Nix DOES work .. It also requires that you at least have a vague idea of what the F*ck you are doing .

And yes, linux is not an operating system for the average person. Not yet anyway.

I've been doing this computer stuff for a long time. Like, 30 years. I was hand building boxes from random collections of parts in the 80s. I've punched chips into memory cards, rearranged driver load orders in CONFIG.SYS, used Borland Sidekick V1.2 and spent hours messing with CEMM 386 in order to squeeze a couple extra K of RAM into DOS so that "X-Wing vs. TIE" would run properly.

But, I'm not that young or patient any more and computers are a means to an end, not the end itself. I just want **** to work.

Now, I am using an older wifi card in an older laptop, so I might have more success if I spend a few ducats on something newer. I know I can pull down USB wifi adapter for cheap. But I also know that if I install any version of Win on this machine, I'll be able to find and install drivers for it in a few minutes with a couple clicks of a mouse.

[itlnstln]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=5645
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186538






I've been doing this computer stuff for a long time. Like, 30 years. I was hand building boxes from random collections of parts in the 80s. I've punched chips into memory cards, rearranged driver load orders in CONFIG.SYS, used Borland Sidekick V1.2 and spent hours messing with CEMM 386 in order to squeeze a couple extra K of RAM into DOS so that "X-Wing vs. TIE" would run properly.

But, I'm not that young or patient any more and computers are a means to an end, not the end itself. I just want **** to work.

Now, I am using an older wifi card in an older laptop, so I might have more success if I spend a few ducats on something newer. I know I can pull down USB wifi adapter for cheap. But I also know that if I install any version of Win on this machine, I'll be able to find and install drivers for it in a few minutes with a couple clicks of a mouse.

This.  I played around with stuff as a kid, but I like girls and have a real job, so I just want **** to work when I need it.  Spending hours tweaking **** that should work out of the box is no longer fun to me.

[Shawn Stanford]

Some adapters are supported by a kludge called "Ndiswrapper" which is a Rube Goldbergian widget that uses duct tape and voodoo to make a Windows driver work under Linux. I tried this once. Bad experience. Do not attempt. Those ridiculous instructions are for Ndiswrapper.

Hmm...

All right, I'll try going with a new wifi card. Now I just have to figure out which cards contain the recommended chipsets.

[Zen]

NIC's with Atheros-chipsets usually work without problems ..

I've heard people cry about *nix before due to issues with unsupported hardware,
especially wireless NIC's, and frankly I object to it because it's not fair to blame a OS for your own failure to check the hardware-compatibility list .

Also, the instructions you received aren't really that long or complicated if you
are familiar with a command-line and the OS .
If I had to describe the steps required to perform a similar administrative task under windows it would be something like :
1. Click on startmenu
2. Click on controlpanel
3. Click on ..
4. Click on the ....-tab
5. Click on 'Advanced'
6. select 'options'
7. select 'update driver'
8. in the dialogbox, select '...have disk'
9. navigate to .............
10. in the warning-screen, select 'install unsigned driver'
11 . say 'Yes' to ' Are you sure' ....
12. Wait for your AntiVirus to deny access to important system-DIR's ......
13. Disable AV and repeat the above steps after removing the leftovers of the failed installation ..

[jpc]

This.  I played around with stuff as a kid, but I like girls and have a real job, so I just want **** to work when I need it.  Spending hours tweaking **** that should work out of the box is no longer fun to me.

I've spent enough time reinstalling Windows for one lifetime. Linux is what works when I need it. For the family, MacOS works when they need it.

[jpc]

5. Click on 'Advanced'

All the useful settings on any MSFT product are 'Advanced'.

[iMav]

Note that if a driver isn't installed "automagically" in Ubuntu...more likely then not, it is because the vendor never provided a driver for linux (or one was not reverse-engineered).  The fact that you can STILL use this unsupported (by the vendor) hardware with the Windows driver, using the ndiswrapper [1] software is amazing IMHO.  I have always been impressed by that project.

For the most part, modern Linux distros support an amazing array of hardware.  Most require ZERO driver installation and "just work".  


[1] I wanted to make sure you understand and appreciate what those instructions represent.  This is a method of "wrapping" windows drivers so that they can be utilized by Linux.

[godly_music]

When it gets rough, you always end up on the command line. Distributions like Ubuntu put a pretty cake on top of it and most of the time, the cake does work very well. But this doesn't do a very good job of preparing you for when stuff breaks. If you just want everything to work, some of the desktop Linuxes can (almost) get you there. It's not on par with a Win XP with hardware from the XP era, or a Win 7 with modern hardware still, but I consider mucking around the Registry to be not any less obscure than copypasting a few lines into the console or into a text file. Familiarity plays into this too, I feel. If maintaining an OS and tweaking it is fun to you, then Linux will be fun to you. If it just has to work, you're better off with Windows.

[Lanx]

Linus Torvalds now lives in the US.

Cold winters and Linux are best suited for college students with lots of free time and a weird view of lulz.

and he's not illegal either, just became a citizen.

[jpc]

Note that if a driver isn't installed "automagically" in Ubuntu...more likely then not, it is because the vendor never provided a driver for linux (or one was not reverse-engineered).  The fact that you can STILL use this unsupported (by the vendor) hardware with the Windows driver, using the ndiswrapper [1] software is amazing IMHO.  I have always been impressed by that project.

Granted, the fact that it sometimes works is amazing.

My experience was an ndiswrapper setup that appeared to be working at first, but which would flake out periodically. I don't remember the details but it was clear at the time from the system log that ndiswrapper was choking.

It was 95% of the way there...

[Keymonger]

When it gets rough, you always end up on the command line. Distributions like Ubuntu put a pretty cake on top of it and most of the time, the cake does work very well. But this doesn't do a very good job of preparing you for when stuff breaks. If you just want everything to work, some of the desktop Linuxes can (almost) get you there. It's not on par with a Win XP with hardware from the XP era, or a Win 7 with modern hardware still, but I consider mucking around the Registry to be not any less obscure than copypasting a few lines into the console or into a text file. Familiarity plays into this too, I feel.

Yup... that's why I stick to Arch Linux. Ubuntu isn't gonna get as good as Windows if at least hardware vendors don't support Linux.

If maintaining an OS and tweaking it is fun to you, then Linux will be fun to you. If it just has to work, you're better off with Windows.

I disagree completely. Both are good, but it depends on your needs. If you need a system that you can control completely, and I don't mean that in an obsessive, nerd-only kind of way, then an open-source Unix OS like Linux is your only option. If it just has to work, Linux is good too. You just need to know what you're doing. It's not true at all that you have to keep on tinkering.

OP's trouble isn't really that bad. If you're already familiar with tools like iwlist, ifconfig, iwconfig, ndiswrapper, et cetera, the steps that need to be taken aren't so bad. A Unix operating system will assume you know the tools though, so if you don't, it invites frustration. In this case all of this would have been avoided if there was a Linux driver for OP's wireless hardware.

[bigpook]

It's not true at all that you have to keep on tinkering.

.

I have heard that line so many times that I have to laugh. I get the impression some people think that a linux OS never works right and needs constant care to keep running.
If that was true I would have abandoned it a long time ago.

[TexasFlood]

All of my network cards worked with Ubuntu out of the box.

Having said that though I did get a PCMCIA 802.11n card for an older Thinkpad laptop which was only supported as a 802.11g device.  I poked around and, at the time, I was unable to find a native replacement driver supporting 802.11n for the card.

I didn't particularly want to use ndiswrapper.  I found the source for a driver with some seemingly solid fairly idiot proof instructions for compiling it.  So I decided to compile it and have been using it since and am using it now.

Now you can look at this two ways.  You can say Linux sucks because I had to compile a driver to get the 802.11n support.  Or you can say Linux is great that I had the option to do so and wasn't just S.O.L..  I have been in the situation with Windows where I could not find a driver for a specific network card on a specific version of Windows and was S.O.L..  So it's a glass half full or half empty kinda thing.

[TexasFlood]

I have heard that line so many times that I have to laugh. I get the impression some people think that a linux OS never works right and needs constant care to keep running.
If that was true I would have abandoned it a long time ago.

Yes, there are certainly times when something goes wrong with Linux systems, and sometimes the best, or only, way to resolve the issue is to go to a command prompt and do some Unix type stuff.

In my experience, most, certainly not all, Windows folks are uncomfortable using a command line and it only takes one visit there to sour the experience for them.  Unix commands are very powerful but not everyone appreciates that enough to tolerate and learn what to them is a foreign environment.  My opinion anyway based on personal experience and folks I know.

[bigpook]

Yes, there are certainly times when something goes wrong with Linux systems, and sometimes the best, or only, way to resolve the issue is to go to a command prompt and do some Unix type stuff.

In my experience, most, certainly not all, Windows folks are uncomfortable using a command line and it only takes one visit there to sour the experience for them.  Unix commands are very powerful but not everyone appreciates that enough to tolerate and learn what to them is a foreign environment.  My opinion anyway based on personal experience and folks I know.

Right, but normal day to day activity doesn't require much. Outside of using apt-get or synaptic to upgrade the packages, there isn't much of reason for a regular user to have to play 'mechanic'.

It does get interesting when something goes wrong, but that wouldn't be something that is OS specific.

Not everyone can repair the car that they drive. But they know how to drive it though.

[TexasFlood]

Right, but normal day to day activity doesn't require much. Outside of using apt-get or synaptic to upgrade the packages, there isn't much of reason for a regular user to have to play 'mechanic'.

It does get interesting when something goes wrong, but that wouldn't be something that is OS specific.

Not everyone can repair the car that they drive. But they know how to drive it though.

Sure.  I haven't been at the command line for a long time on my Ubuntu system.  The only significant I had which had to be addressed from a command prompt was:
1) the aforementioned driver compile and
2) I applied some updates which went wrong, probably because I ignored warnings that drive space was getting low, and the only want I found to resolve it was to "fall forward" with an Ubuntu version upgrade.  I had to do this from a command prompt as the GUI was not working.
However this was no worse that my sons Vista system that blew up twice, once when applying patches, once when applying SP1.  Resolving the Vista SP1 issue actually took longer, even with free Microsoft support (since so many had the same issue) and resulting in data loss (my sons home directory was blown away) which Microsoft had not warned me of.

[Brian8bit]

Broadcom support for Linux devices is ****. Has been for years. Hence the need to use ndiswrapper. If you're going to get wireless devices you want to work without hassle, you need something with an Atheros chipset.

[Brian8bit]

For instance. I have a DWA-547 from DLINK in my box downstairs. Uses Atheros. Works out of the box with nearly every Linux distro I've tried so far. On the box I built for my brother I have a Netgear W311v3. I got that card because I heard it was supported well under Linux. Turns out the previous versions did. As they used Atheros on those. v3, Broadcom. The drivers for the Netgear W311v3 are **** on Windows to. The default driver that Windows loads allows connecting to wireless points using WEP. But if you want to connect to WPA2 it hangs. So I had to download and install the drivers manually for that on Windows.

[mike]

It does get interesting when something goes wrong, but that wouldn't be something that is OS specific.

Not everyone can repair the car that they drive. But they know how to drive it though.

The irritating thing about Linux is there isn't a big "revert to the previous" button (I'm being deliberately vague). Take upgrades for example. It would be relatively easy *IF* the people putting together distributions insisted on using LVM when installing to be able to quickly revert to a snapshot (lvm snapshots), so you can try an upgrade and revert if it goes wrong. Basically you preserve a pre-upgrade boot environment (to borrow a term from Solaris) that you can switch back to.

Back when I was still using a Sun Ultra40 as my main workstation, I was doing something approximating to this through several upgrades. Of course it was a very hackish solution, but I'm happy at the command-line.

[bigpook]

F*ing Broadcom.

You have no idea how much grief they can cause.

[TexasFlood]

The irritating thing about Linux is there isn't a big "revert to the previous" button (I'm being deliberately vague). Take upgrades for example. It would be relatively easy *IF* the people putting together distributions insisted on using LVM when installing to be able to quickly revert to a snapshot (lvm snapshots), so you can try an upgrade and revert if it goes wrong. Basically you preserve a pre-upgrade boot environment (to borrow a term from Solaris) that you can switch back to.

Back when I was still using a Sun Ultra40 as my main workstation, I was doing something approximating to this through several upgrades. Of course it was a very hackish solution, but I'm happy at the command-line.

Windows has restore points of course which primarily works on the registry which Linux doesn't have.

If you use a decent package manager in Linux then you should be able to roll back most changes through that.  There are other step you can take, like installing additional packages such as the etckeeper or changetrack packages.  If you're really boned then you might need some sort of recovery.  On Ubuntu with grub 2, I can hold the shift key when booting and get access to a recovery console.  Failing that then I'd look at booting a live cd and recover from there.

[TexasFlood]

The irritating thing about Linux is there isn't a big "revert to the previous" button (I'm being deliberately vague). Take upgrades for example. It would be relatively easy *IF* the people putting together distributions insisted on using LVM when installing to be able to quickly revert to a snapshot (lvm snapshots), so you can try an upgrade and revert if it goes wrong. Basically you preserve a pre-upgrade boot environment (to borrow a term from Solaris) that you can switch back to.

Back when I was still using a Sun Ultra40 as my main workstation, I was doing something approximating to this through several upgrades. Of course it was a very hackish solution, but I'm happy at the command-line.

Windows has restore points of course which primarily works on the registry which Linux doesn't have.

If you use a decent package manager in Linux then you should be able to roll back most changes through that.

There are other steps you can take, like installing additional packages such as etckeeper or changetrack.

If you're really boned then you might need some sort of recovery.  On Ubuntu with grub 2, I can hold the shift key when booting and get access to a recovery console.  Failing that then I'd look at booting a live cd and recover from there.

[ch_123]

Windows Restore has the funny habit of rolling back previous problems, there's been a small handful of times where Windows Restore has fixed a problem for me, but in most cases it has no effect.

That said, updates killing Linux are far more common than updates killing Windows due to the abundant use of shared libraries in Linux. Ironically, I find this problem is best avoided by using distros like Arch that keep everything up to date, as opposed to using something like Debian or Ubuntu which has lots of out of date software which breaks if you need to have the latest version of something or other...

[Brian8bit]

rolling release > *

[Keymonger]

In my experience, most, certainly not all, Windows folks are uncomfortable using a command line and it only takes one visit there to sour the experience for them.  Unix commands are very powerful but not everyone appreciates that enough to tolerate and learn what to them is a foreign environment.  My opinion anyway based on personal experience and folks I know.

I used to be the same, but I've learned to love it now. I used to hate it 'cause I just didn't know many of the tools. That's slowly changing and now I pretty much never want to leave the command-line. It gives you far more control.

[kps]

Acquitted for being like everybody other CEO in Silicon Valley.  Orgies and Drugs.

I like Engadget's better.

[TexasFlood]

Windows Restore has the funny habit of rolling back previous problems, there's been a small handful of times where Windows Restore has fixed a problem for me, but in most cases it has no effect.

I would agree with this based on my experience, although a couple of times it really came through on systems belonging to others who I was trying to fix for them.

That said, updates killing Linux are far more common than updates killing Windows due to the abundant use of shared libraries in Linux. Ironically, I find this problem is best avoided by using distros like Arch that keep everything up to date, as opposed to using something like Debian or Ubuntu which has lots of out of date software which breaks if you need to have the latest version of something or other...

My experience with Ubuntu differs.  So far the only issue I had was when I ran out of disk space during an update which was my fault as Ubuntu had warned me of this impending doom MANY times.  Other than that, I apply updates recommended by update manager at least every 3 days, often every day, for well over a year now, with no issues other than the corruption due to running out of disk space.

[TexasFlood]

Windows Restore has the funny habit of rolling back previous problems, there's been a small handful of times where Windows Restore has fixed a problem for me, but in most cases it has no effect.

I would agree with this based on my experience, although a couple of times it really came through on systems belonging to others who I was trying to fix for them.

That said, updates killing Linux are far more common than updates killing Windows due to the abundant use of shared libraries in Linux. Ironically, I find this problem is best avoided by using distros like Arch that keep everything up to date, as opposed to using something like Debian or Ubuntu which has lots of out of date software which breaks if you need to have the latest version of something or other...

My experience with Ubuntu differs.  So far the only issue I had was when I ran out of disk space during an update which was my fault as Ubuntu had warned me of this impending doom MANY times and I unwisely chose to ignore the warnings.  Other than that, I apply updates recommended by update manager at least every 3 days, often every day, for well over a year now, with no issues other than the corruption due to running out of disk space.

[ch_123]

Ubuntu is pretty stable in that regards if you stick to what they offer through their official repos. It's when you start playing with your food, so to speak, that you get problems.

This isn't a huge problem for Ubuntu as it's targeted at novice to intermediate Linux users, but you see the whole system fail miserably with Debian if you're running a server, a user needs the latest version of a new package, and you can't install that new package without breaking the rest of the system.

Admittedly, this is more a problem with the philosophy behind Debian than it is with Linux as an operating system platform.

[TexasFlood]

Windows Restore has the funny habit of rolling back previous problems, there's been a small handful of times where Windows Restore has fixed a problem for me, but in most cases it has no effect.

I would agree with this based on my experience, although a couple of times it really came through on systems belonging to others which I was trying to fix for them.  I actually used other tools to recover the restore points, didn't do it through Windows itself, but nevertheless it did really come through for me a couple times.

That said, updates killing Linux are far more common than updates killing Windows due to the abundant use of shared libraries in Linux. Ironically, I find this problem is best avoided by using distros like Arch that keep everything up to date, as opposed to using something like Debian or Ubuntu which has lots of out of date software which breaks if you need to have the latest version of something or other...

My experience with Ubuntu differs.  So far the only issue I had was when I ran out of disk space during an update which was my fault as Ubuntu had warned me of this impending doom MANY times and I unwisely chose to ignore the warnings.  Other than that, I apply updates recommended by update manager at least every 3 days, often every day, for well over a year now, with no issues other than the corruption due to running out of disk space.

[ch_123]

Ubuntu gets away from these problems by targeting itself as a desktop OS for novice to intermediate skilled Linux users. If you stick to the 'rails' and only use software in the official repos, and generally don't poke around with it, you should be safe (at least in most cases anyway)

With Debian on the other hand, I've seen too many Debian servers fail when someone needs the latest version of some software installed and the installation/upgrade kills the system. I think the problem here however is that you have a system that in some ways is so badly designed and obsolete that it encourages its target market to break it in order to make it work.

That's before we get onto the other problems with Debians, including the fact that it's run by freetard imbeciles. But that's a rant for another night.

[TexasFlood]

Ubuntu gets away from these problems by targeting itself as a desktop OS for novice to intermediate skilled Linux users. If you stick to the 'rails' and only use software in the official repos, and general don't poke around with it, you should be safe (at least in most cases anyway)

With Debian on the other hand, I've seen too many Debian servers fail when someone needs the latest version of some software installed and the installation/upgrade kills the system. I think the problem here however is that you have a system that in some ways is so badly designed and obsolete that it encourages its target market to break it in order to make it work.

That's before we get onto the other problems with Debians, including the fact that it's run by freetard imbeciles. But that's a rant for another night.

I do try to install from the official repos to try & avoid problems.

I have installed a few items not in these repos but only a few.  In most cases I had no issues.  once time the latest greatest version installed from a non-repository source didn't work & had no clue how to make it work so I got rid of it and went back to the older version from the Ubuntu repository.

For a while there I set up nightly beta release repositories which was kinda cool for a while until I had the first big problem, :wink:, so don't do that any more.  Hmm, was that for Ubuntu or just Firefox, maybe just firefox, it's been a while now.

[TexasFlood]

I do try to install from the official repos to try & avoid problems.

I have installed a few items not in these repos but only a few.  In most cases I had no issues.  once time the latest greatest version installed from a non-repository source didn't work & had no clue how to make it work so I got rid of it and went back to the older version from the Ubuntu repository.

For a while there I set up nightly beta release repositories which was kinda cool for a while until I had the first big problem, :wink:, so don't do that any more.  Hmm, was that for Ubuntu or just Firefox, maybe just firefox, it's been a while now.