F*ing *nix...

[godly_music]

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.

"Just has to work" and "need to know what you're doing" are the key points here. If you know what you're doing, you can deal with something breaking and it working flawlessly is not a necessity. Linux newbs are the ones that want it to just work, and they're also the ones being implanted with the "Linux for the desktop, it just works, fancy GUI for everything" suggestion and then they google and find a solution that involves cryptic terminal commands.

I tried a lot of distros, but none of them for a very long time. This maybe plays into my experience that Linux needs constant tinkering with, because I never got over the hump with a distro until I got to know Arch. Where everything was transparent from the start. No one writes any config files for you and then doesn't tell you about them.

This may sound controversial, but pre-cooked desktop Linuxes strike me as noob unfriendly and counterproductive to learning the right approach to this brand of OSes. If you've had an occurence of "everything just works", then huzzah for you, but I never had it. You're definitely better off with older hardware than with newer. Ancient SiS chips are supported beautifully, but stuff like X-Fi used to not work at all until pretty recently.

[bigpook]

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.

Dude! Thats harsh!

[ch_123]

Dude! Thats harsh!

Last year I salvaged part of an SGI Altix 350, a supercomputing cluster that uses IA64 CPUs. Debian is arguably the most sane OS that could support the relatively esoteric hardware that the Altix uses (choices were Debian, an outdated version of CentOS, or *shudders* Gentoo). So, I pop in the Debian IA64 CD, boot up, and it's going smoothly till I get a message -

"Your system contains hardware that requires non-free firmware"

In reference to the system's Qlogic hard drive controller. Now, the Debian repos actually have a package containing the firmware for the system, but they do not include this as part of the installation environment because it isn't kosher to some fat guy with Asperger's syndrome. But hey, what dip**** would want to do something as stupid as access a computer's hard drive during OS installation when they can have fully GPL compliant software?

So, they do provide a way around this - by inserting the firmware binary onto a floppy disk or appropriately formatted floppy disk or USB stick. Problem - I'm using a chunk of a supercomputer, not a desktop PC. This thing doesn't have any USB ports, and it certainly doesn't have any floppy drives. Now, in theory, I could have opened the thing up and inserted a PCI USB card into it, but the thing was all racked and wired up, and I wasn't in the mood for undoing this and removing a load of fiddly screws to install something that may or may not have worked, so I investigated the possibility of including the firmware on the CD.

Many wasted CD-Rs and clumps of ripped our hair later, I Google around, and find a (relatively recent) thread on the Debian mailing list that went something like this -

Unsuspecting user: Is it possible to include firmware on a Debian installer disk?
Debian devs: Hurr hurr hurr why would you ever want to do that lol?!?!?!?111

I tried escaping to a shell on the installer disk, wget'ing the binary from the internet and copying it into all the system firmware folders. But no, the Debian installer doesn't work that way, so that achieved nothing.

I eventually had to install CentOS on the machine and use it to bootstrap Debian. That worked, but nonetheless, the story illustrates an important problem with the open source software community - so many of the shots are called by people who see functionality and user friendly operation as secondary to lofty ideals about open source software. Now, I like open source as much as the next guy who knows half a thing about computers, but I like working computers even more, and I disapprove when people deliberately break things to make some bull**** point that 99% of the computer using population couldn't give a flying **** about.

/rant

[TexasFlood]

Apple OSX:  designed by normal people for normal people.
Windows Windows:   designed by  SW engineers for SW engineers.
Linux:  Designed by freetard imbeciles for.........

I thought that the core of OSX (BSD/Mach) was designed at University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University by exactly the same sort of folks who designed Linux.

[ch_123]

I wouldn't say that they were the same type of people. The BSD crowd were/are more than happy for their code to be commercialized. Certainly not quite as insane as Stallman and his chums *

BSD Unix originated in the late 70s when one of the research departments in Berkley rewrote Version 7 Unix so that they would be free from AT&T licensing restrictions on 'official' Unix.

[size=-2]*Linus Torvalds is meant to be a pretty sensible guy, and has always maintained that his use of the GPL license for the Linux kernel was for practical reasons, not philosophical[/size]

[kps]

Apple OSX:  designed by normal people for normal people.
Windows Windows:   designed by  SW engineers for SW engineers.
Linux:  Designed by freetard imbeciles for.........

OS X: designed by software engineers, for Steve Jobs.
Windows: designed by Microsoft marketing, for maximum customer lock-in.
Linux: designed by Bell Labs researches 40 years ago, for themselves – then continually re-designed by guys in their basements who don't realize their problems were solved before they were born, for themselves.

[ch_123]

Linux: designed by Bell Labs researches 40 years ago

Interestingly, Linus Torvalds was born the year development on Unix started... Linux is only 18 years old.

[bigpook]

Last year I salvaged part of an SGI Altix 350, a supercomputing cluster that uses IA64 CPUs. Debian is arguably the most sane OS that could support the relatively esoteric hardware that the Altix uses (choices were Debian, an outdated version of CentOS, or *shudders* Gentoo). So, I pop in the Debian IA64 CD, boot up, and it's going smoothly till I get a message -

"Your system contains hardware that requires non-free firmware"

In reference to the system's Qlogic hard drive controller. Now, the Debian repos actually have a package containing the firmware for the system, but they do not include this as part of the installation environment because it isn't kosher to some fat guy with Asperger's syndrome. But hey, what dip**** would want to do something as stupid as access a computer's hard drive during OS installation when they can have fully GPL compliant software?

So, they do provide a way around this - by inserting the firmware binary onto a floppy disk or appropriately formatted floppy disk or USB stick. Problem - I'm using a chunk of a supercomputer, not a desktop PC. This thing doesn't have any USB ports, and it certainly doesn't have any floppy drives. Now, in theory, I could have opened the thing up and inserted a PCI USB card into it, but the thing was all racked and wired up, and I wasn't in the mood for undoing this and removing a load of fiddly screws to install something that may or may not have worked, so I investigated the possibility of including the firmware on the CD.

Many wasted CD-Rs and clumps of ripped our hair later, I Google around, and find a (relatively recent) thread on the Debian mailing list that went something like this -

Unsuspecting user: Is it possible to include firmware on a Debian installer disk?
Debian devs: Hurr hurr hurr why would you ever want to do that lol?!?!?!?111

I tried escaping to a shell on the installer disk, wget'ing the binary from the internet and copying it into all the system firmware folders. But no, the Debian installer doesn't work that way, so that achieved nothing.

I eventually had to install CentOS on the machine and use it to bootstrap Debian. That worked, but nonetheless, the story illustrates an important problem with the open source software community - so many of the shots are called by people who see functionality and user friendly operation as secondary to lofty ideals about open source software. Now, I like open source as much as the next guy who knows half a thing about computers, but I like working computers even more, and I disapprove when people deliberately break things to make some bull**** point that 99% of the computer using population couldn't give a flying **** about.

/rant

When a philosophy comes before practicality mission completion is endangered.

Not sure if Debian is really at fault here. You may not like their politics or philosophy but that doesn't put them in the wrong. The people that write/control the OS pretty much dictate how it will be used.
Thankfully, it IS linux. Something about scratching your own itch. I don't argue what you are saying though, your story is pretty horrible.

[quadibloc]

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

That is pretty bad. Yes, Linux can be a pain. If you happen to be lucky, and you have a machine whose hardware is fully supported, though, you won't have this particular pain - which is one of the worst ones with Linux.

Also, Ubuntu is kind of a special case. It was a special kind of Linux that was designed to be as easy to use as Windows. That is, if everything goes right. So the stuff you need to fix things when it goes wrong has been turned off - and you need to go in and turn it on before you can even start fixing it. That doesn't seem to have made any difference in your specific example, though. Although having to use sudo four times maybe is related to that - generally speaking, sudo is such a dangerous program, you don't even want a copy on a Unix box; at least so I've been told.

[ch_123]

Not sure if Debian is really at fault here. You may not like their politics or philosophy but that doesn't put them in the wrong.

Usually the solution here would be to just not use Debian, but as I said, this wasn't really possible in this situation.

I'm perfectly happy for people to run around chasing the Free Software(TM) dream, just as long as I dont have to have them interfere with how I use my computer. I just think that it's a problem with the image and direction of Linux software developers that they don't focus on making software that works. Ultimately I would consider this the main point of software development - making something that works. Breaking things because you don't like something that people really need is as counterproductive to this as you can get.

[TexasFlood]

I wouldn't say that they were the same type of people. The BSD crowd were/are more than happy for their code to be commercialized. Certainly not quite as insane as Stallman and his chums *

BSD Unix originated in the late 70s when one of the research departments in Berkley rewrote System 7 Unix so that they would be free from AT&T licensing restrictions on 'official' Unix.

[size=-2]*Linus Torvalds is meant to be a pretty sensible guy, and has always maintained that his use of the GPL license for the Linux kernel was for practical reasons, not philosophical[/size]

Stallman might be a bit of an activist but I got one of my very first Internet accounts through him, back when they weren't so easy to get.  So while not sure I'll spring to his defense in general, I feel like I owe him a bit.

The Linux product we use 99% of the time is Red Hat Enterprise Linux which is commercial and has been for years.  Linux also runs commercially on mainframes, IBM pSeries Unix boxes great and small, virtualization software (VMware, Oracle VM, etc), every router I've bought in the last 8 years, network attached storage devices, mobile phones, PDAs, media players, DVRs, GPS devices like my TomTom, medical instruments and many other embedded devices.

I thought originally BSD essentially -was- AT&T Unix although was enhanced over time, only being rewritten once AT&T started to really bone everyone with high license fees.  Lawsuits still spring up now and again from whoever currently owns the original AT&T rights trying to take over the Unix world, :wink:.

[HaaTa]

Really it boils down to how much time you have allocated to spend learning about how the software on your computer(s) work to how much control you really have over your system.

With Linux (and many *nix systems) you have full control (provided you have the knowledge). For example, if you don't like the process scheduler, you can write (or get the source for another one).

With Windows, sure it'll probably just work most (if not all) of the time. But if some Microsoft code is doing something you'd rather it didn't, typically you're **** of out luck (you code write some program to cover up this *defect*, but really you're just covering it up rather than fixing the problem at hand). For a fun example, let's say I want Freecell to only choose games that I cannot win. Sure I could write a little hack script that preselected the game number, but that just shy's away from the task at hand in actually *fixing* the source code.
Now this was just a really small example, let's say you wanted to do a very major change to how Exchange works that would take a lot of CPU processing time. Your option would be to write this wrapper program to do the alternate functionality + the current functionality of Exchange, a needless waste of CPU/memory time, isn't it?
There is the option of just rewriting Exchange (stupid expensive, and difficult/expensive to support) or beg Microsoft to add your feature (unlikely, unless you have deep pockets).

(Mac OS follows a similar vein as Windows)

But at the end of the day, it's what you're willing to sacrifice in order to get your computing done.


Sure Windows/Mac OSX costs money, but the time required to get familiar with the system is quite a bit lower. Unfortunately your "control" of what is actually going on is not very high (apart from choosing which desktop app to run).

Linux (in general), takes a lot more time to master. But you really have full control of what is going on in your system (if you so choose to exercise).


There's also the sharing of knowledge argument for the GPL license and such (you don't have to keep reinventing things, but can rather just improve upon concepts). But I digress.


As for me, a software dev, whenever I see a "paid for" product crash. I get very angry (I've ). I paid for the friggin thing, it should just work! Unfortunately, this is not how the industry works. At least with an app I have the source for I can fix the damn thing, rather than wait for a patch that may never come.
Let's not use software as an example, how about a leaky faucet? If it leaks, and you have the tools, know-how, and time to fix it, will you still call a plumber at $40/hour to fix it?


(Damn, went on for longer than I intended)

[TexasFlood]

Really it boils down to how much time you have allocated to spend learning about how the software on your computer(s) work to how much control you really have over your system.

With Linux (and many *nix systems) you have full control (provided you have the knowledge). For example, if you don't like the process scheduler, you can write (or get the source for another one).

With Windows, sure it'll probably just work most (if not all) of the time. But if some Microsoft code is doing something you'd rather it didn't, typically you're **** of out luck (you code write some program to cover up this *defect*, but really you're just covering it up rather than fixing the problem at hand). ...

(Mac OS follows a similar vein as Windows)

But at the end of the day, it's what you're willing to sacrifice in order to get your computing done.

Sure Windows/Mac OSX costs money, but the time required to get familiar with the system is quite a bit lower. Unfortunately your "control" of what is actually going on is not very high (apart from choosing which desktop app to run).

Linux (in general), takes a lot more time to master. But you really have full control of what is going on in your system (if you so choose to exercise). ...

- In General - , but there are some very user friendly versions out there like Ubuntu, Mint, Mandriva.  I don't think you HAVE to take time to master these, just stay in the GUI if you don't want to dig below the covers.  You might want to get your hands dirty to do something that can't be done through the GUI.  But that's an optional bonus not a requirement, :wink:.

[Brian8bit]

Remember, you ain't **** unless you have a terminal window with 80% transparency and running scrot.

[microsoft windows]

I'd recommend using Windows 2000 or XP. You don't have to type confusing commands into configuration files in order to install your wireless drivers.

[Brian8bit]

I'd recommend OS X. It just works.

[bigpook]

I'd recommend Ubuntu. It mostly just works.

[TexasFlood]

I'd recommend using Windows 2000 or XP. You don't have to type confusing commands into configuration files in order to install your wireless drivers.

I like 2000 and XP a lot.

I still use XP myself and although I kinda have the urge to go to Windows 7, I haven't given in yet.

I also use Ubuntu.  All of my wireless cards have worked on Ubuntu just by plugging them in, I had to do absolutely nothing.  Linux driver support does lag behind Windows in many areas.  In my case I did have to type some commands to get 802.11n support working on my latest card although 802.11g speeds worked out of the box.  The vendor only supplied source code not a binary so I had to compile it.  But I've have had worse experiences trying to find drivers for wireless cards in the past on Windows.

[keyboardlover]

Windows 7 Professional. FTW!

[RoboKrikit]

I'm perfectly happy for people to run around chasing the Free Software(TM) dream, just as long as I dont have to have them interfere with how I use my computer.

I get your frustration but it's kinda funny that the only OS you could find to do what you needed was put together by a bunch of "insane" hackers. You are talking about the entire philosophy behind Debian. They put together software for you for free based on their own principles and you complain about how they've done it.

Did you check out NetBSD?

[RoboKrikit]

Except that your aunt gave the entire world a shirt, and it is made of standard bits of fabric that dozens of other aunts are using to make their own shirts with different design philosophies of their own, some of which probably align more with yours.  Also the fabric is free and you can have as much of it as you want as long as you're willing to make your own shirt.

In the case of Debian it is kind of like complaining to the Pope that he is so darn set in his religious ways; why doesn't he just loosen up and do an abortion or two?

[CodeChef]

I'd recommend OS X. It just works.

[ch_123]

I get your frustration but it's kinda funny that the only OS you could find to do what you needed was put together by a bunch of "insane" hackers. You are talking about the entire philosophy behind Debian. They put together software for you for free based on their own principles and you complain about how they've done it.

Did you check out NetBSD?

The problem was that the hardware only really works with the Linux kernel because SGI intended Linux to run on it, and thus they put a lot of code into the Linux kernel to support it. So the reason it runs is not because of the free software crowd, but the companies who use it. (In fact, a lot of the development of the Linux kernel and the related OS components has come from corporate users)

I really wanted to run some flavor of BSD on it, but AFAIK, nothing supports the NUMA architecture that is used to link the two nodes of the system that I have together.

And then, because it uses the ill-fated IA64 architecture, there are very few serious Linux distributions that support it that are usable. When I got Debian running on it in the end, I ran into problems with stupid defaults in the kernel configuration (a new kernel gave wifi and bluetooth support on an architecture that you'd never use such things, but took away support for the XFS file system, which I was using on one of the machines' disks) and things breaking when certain new software needed to be put on it. That, and the IA64 port of Debian isn't up to the same standards as the x86 one (a pretty common problem across most open source OS projects admittedly) I'm actually considering running Gentoo on it - it will take ages to get set up, but at least I don't have to administrate in a straight jacket.

[Shawn Stanford]

I also use Ubuntu.  All of my wireless cards have worked on Ubuntu just by plugging them in, I had to do absolutely nothing.  

Which cards?

[Brian8bit]

Which cards?

Probably ones with Atheros chipsets.

[TexasFlood]

Which cards?

Probably ones with Atheros chipsets.

All PCMCIA. One Netgear 802.11g, which I broke.  A replacement Belkin 802.11g, and a Belkin 802.11n.  And yes, I believe they all were Atheros based.

[RoboKrikit]

The problem was that the hardware only really works with the Linux kernel because SGI intended Linux to run on it, and thus they put a lot of code into the Linux kernel to support it. So the reason it runs is not because of the free software crowd, but the companies who use it. (In fact, a lot of the development of the Linux kernel and the related OS components has come from corporate users)

I really wanted to run some flavor of BSD on it, but AFAIK, nothing supports the NUMA architecture that is used to link the two nodes of the system that I have together.

And then, because it uses the ill-fated IA64 architecture, there are very few serious Linux distributions that support it that are usable. When I got Debian running on it in the end, I ran into problems with stupid defaults in the kernel configuration (a new kernel gave wifi and bluetooth support on an architecture that you'd never use such things, but took away support for the XFS file system, which I was using on one of the machines' disks) and things breaking when certain new software needed to be put on it. That, and the IA64 port of Debian isn't up to the same standards as the x86 one (a pretty common problem across most open source OS projects admittedly) I'm actually considering running Gentoo on it - it will take ages to get set up, but at least I don't have to administrate in a straight jacket.

Ah, OK, I gotcha.  Tough situation.



I always had kind of a love/hate thing with Debian; somehow the package management always became a problem instead of a convenience.  It's been a long time since I've used it though.

[ThinkRob]

Here were the complete steps needed to install Ubuntu 10.04 and get all the hardware working for a ThinkPad T500 that I recently sold:

1) Boot from CD.

2) Run through the installer.

3) Reboot.

F*cking *nix man.  (Kidding aside, it's not always that easy -- but it's usually not as hard as the original post either.)

Also, AFAIK, the  Linksys WPC54G no longer requires you to use the Windows drivers (that ndis-wrapper process you referred to.)  It should be as simple as installing b43-fwcutter and extracting the firmware by following the on-screen instructions.  (That step wouldn't be necessary if not for Broadcom's rather hostile stance towards third party driver authors...)

[TexasFlood]

Which cards?

Probably ones with Atheros chipsets.

All PCMCIA. One Netgear 802.11g, which I broke.  A replacement Belkin 802.11g, and a Belkin 802.11n.  And yes, I believe they all were Atheros based.

I realize that I didn't list the exact card part numbers.  But I can find that info and list it if it would help anyone, well except for the broken card I tossed.

[microsoft windows]

I'd recommend OS X. It just works.

Yeah, it just works. Only catch is it "just works" on 5% of computers.

[RoboKrikit]

Windows Advantage #2: It still runs on beige.

[keyboardlover]

It works flawlessly on that 5% while windows runs flawlessly on none.

Windows 7 runs flawlessly on the 3 machines I run it on.

[microsoft windows]

With all those different styles over the years, Mac's can get quite dated while PC's have always looked the same. As long as there are supermarket checkouts, my dirty beige boxes will never go out of style.

[microsoft windows]

Windows 7 runs flawlessly on the 3 machines I run it on.

And Windows 3.1, 95, 2000, XP and 7 run flawlessly as well on all 10 of my PC's. My Macs run OK too, but not as fast.

[D-EJ915]

Last year I salvaged part of an SGI Altix 350, a supercomputing cluster that uses IA64 CPUs. Debian is arguably the most sane OS that could support the relatively esoteric hardware that the Altix uses (choices were Debian, an outdated version of CentOS, or *shudders* Gentoo). So, I pop in the Debian IA64 CD, boot up, and it's going smoothly till I get a message -

"Your system contains hardware that requires non-free firmware"

In reference to the system's Qlogic hard drive controller. Now, the Debian repos actually have a package containing the firmware for the system, but they do not include this as part of the installation environment because it isn't kosher to some fat guy with Asperger's syndrome. But hey, what dip**** would want to do something as stupid as access a computer's hard drive during OS installation when they can have fully GPL compliant software?

granted it might work well ... but in a windows install you would have to do the same thing lol, windows seems to absolutely hate loading drivers during the install.  Considering how proprietary, esoteric and braindead most SGI designs are you should be glad you got anything that's not their own custom bull**** to run on it.

[ch_123]

But the issue here is that Debian fully supports the hardware, it just decided that it needed to save my soul for me by preventing me from using their own driver packages. I can live with tinkering with obscure hardware, but I just don't like them telling me that I shouldn't use essential system drivers that they provide packages for, and then providing me no simple way to use them anyway.

[woody]

I sense flawed definitions of "flawless". Go with the flaw!

[InSanCen]

Funny that... I just put in my wireless adaptor, and hey presto! On both Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Just don't try something like Gentoo, as installing wrappers, and probing the PCI bus is par for the course. Anything using the Realtek 8187b or RA-Link RT73 chipset's will *just work* and are common as anything to actually walk into a shop and buy.

If you use older hardware, it'll cause you a headache. Same can be said for windows too to a point.

[Shawn Stanford]

Sell it to me...

[nmd]

If I wasn't playing SC2 atm, I'd be running Linux.

I used Linux for a while but once I got my ATI card I started having enough issues to make me scream, "**** it." Mostly overheating, that got fixed however once I bought a 120mm/heatsink and replaced the default ones, tying the 120mm on with zip ties.

Other than the ATI issue - never had any problems with Linux not just working once Ubuntu started getting popular. Before that, the hardest part was compiling my own kernel which if you know what you need isn't that bad.

edit: I take that back, for like 6 months I blamed a problem on Linux wrongfully. I had a AMD K7 which had a defective floating point blah blah something in the chip that after a couple hours of use, depending on what I was doing, it would kernel panic. It never happened in Windows though oddly enough.

[woody]

I had a AMD K7 which had a defective floating point blah blah something in the chip that after a couple hours of use, depending on what I was doing, it would kernel panic. It never happened in Windows though oddly enough.

That is very unlikely. Bet on faulty RAM.

[HaaTa]

That is very unlikely. Bet on faulty RAM.

Yeah, I'd say that as well. Linux has the habit of making use of all of your ram (disk cache and such). Whereas Windows has only been doing that recently (I believe).

[microsoft windows]

Only Windows Vista hoggs up all your RAM.

[itlnstln]

Hoggs?

[microsoft windows]

First off, I never paid for any RAM. I pick it out of the trash at work. If anything, I get paid to take their RAM.

Second, what's wrong with having extra RAM? If your operating system hogs up all the RAM, what's there left for other programs to use?

And third, do you use Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 and think they're good programs even though they're not?

[microsoft windows]

Windows Vista is a terrible product. It hogs up too much system resources. And what meaningful things does it do that Windows 2000 and XP can't (besides make your computer slow)?

[microsoft windows]

I understand it perfectly well. Windows Vista takes up more system resources than it should. I haven't ever used a single fast computer running Vista.

[microsoft windows]

Well, then, prove to me that Vista doesn't take up excess system resources then.

[Soarer]

[nmd]

That is very unlikely. Bet on faulty RAM.

It's what the issue was. This was like 99 or 00, it was a bad batch of K7's that was released and I just so happened to be one of the few that got one. It may have been a K6-2 too, don't remember exactly. I remember specifically trying many different sticks of ram before I found out what the issue actually was(hence why it took so long.)