What the heck has happened to Linux?

[sordna]

Ubuntu is fine, as long as you use a lighter derivative such as Xubuntu / Lubuntu. I've been using it and upgrading it for years, love it! Haven't reinstalled my main computer OS from scratch in at least 4 years now.

[Findecanor]

I think the founder of Cobol lives next door.

You live at Arlington cemetery?

Or is her ghost still teaching people mathematics and handing out nanoseconds?

[quickcrx702]

You're right that age has something to do with it.  Spending days installing LFS was easy when I had summers off.    I can still taste the ecstasy of having the wireless NIC on my laptop "just work" after installing dapper on it.

+1 LOL.  Minimal distributions are a lot of fun, you get your system customized EXACTLY how you like it, and you get to learn a whole lot.  Unfortunately, you end up spending more time configuring and tinkering with your system, than you do actually using it!!!  Then, by the time you get everything the way you like it, you do something stupid like "emerge world" on Gentoo, then you have to spend even MORE time fixing stuff that got broken during the upgrade.  Great for when you are single and in college, not so great when you are married with kids and a busy work schedule.  Unless you build a minimal FreeBSD system, you don't have to worry about stuff getting broken in upgrades, since the packages are all way out of date and don't get updated very often compared to most Linux distros anyway.  That's one of the reasons why it is so stable, except for Flash on FreeBSD... don't get me started on that, ROFL.

[J-P]

Or you could all go and install Haiku :first:

[necr0mancer]

Yeah, I never really understood why people complain so much about Unity and GNOME3. Anyone who cares enough to nit-pick through it like that can certainly figure out how to install a different Desktop Environment.
I find it funny that for so long people criticized the Linux community and developers for not innovating, and once they do the same people are there to criticize it still.

None of it really matters anyway, nothing will ever be as good as Openbox.

[rknize]

The people (journalists, I assume) that were complaining about innovating (can you cite a source, BTW?) are not the same people complaining about the change.  But you are right, most of those people have moved away from GNOME.  It was nice having a turn-key like Ubuntu that worked the way I wanted, but that is no longer the case.  Linus Torvalds used Ubuntu, until recently.

Change always produces upset.  GNOME2 had a similar effect (though there was no, massive paradigm shift).  Luckily, there is a lot of choice.

[rknize]

Anything Apple consumes the Tech blogs for a month.  The only Apple product I have is a MacBook Pro and I started regretting it pretty quick.  Luckily, work paid for that.  :roll:

[Chobopants]

It's funny, I actually do the opposite emulation that people here talk about. My home PC runs Win7 and when I want to do some srsbsnss I load up virtual box Ubuntu and get my vim on.

I ran Slackware with blackbox wm throughout college (tried mandrake and some others too) and loved all the tinkering. These days I'm ssh'd into a screen on a redhat dev server all day from OS X and do most of my work locally in MacVim and rsync it up.

As a commenter said above, I work full time and want to relax when I get home, not fight my OS to do what I want. Linux was going in a great direction and Ubuntu was the kick in the ass it needed to be more consumer friendly but the splintering and in fighting of the community convinced me that it'll never get where it needs to go to be considered as a serious option for non technical users.

[Grimey]

None of it really matters anyway, nothing will ever be as good as Openbox.

Quoted for accuracy.  Getting a good Openbox config made for every system I use is the one of the best segments of time I have spent.  I understand some people don't want to tinker with computers at home, which is why my wife runs her Win7 box for gaming when a Linux distro would handle it just fine.

[bastones]

I don't see journalists writing much about Linux anymore.  It's iPad this and iPad that.

I would think Apple are more known to the average consumer than Linux, or a Linux distribution.

It's nice to talk about things like this, but the bottom line is Canonical and other vested organisations aren't going to change their stance on what they do think is a good step forward; with Unity 2.0 and GNOME 3.x. And Canonical are making some improvements to the customisability of Unity in Ubuntu 12.04.

I think the next several years are going to be very interesting for not only Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, but also other operating systems such as Windows and OS X - but especially Windows, since Windows 8 introduces the new Metro user interface. Microsoft obviously thinks the future is touch-enabled devices - not just tablets, but other new comfortable form factors. It'll be very interesting to see how the future is for Windows, OS X and Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. I think in time many of the concerns will be sorted. For example, some people's complaints about Unity being uncustomisable is being answered with Ubuntu 12.04, which makes Unity much more customisable out of the box.

I do like Unity on Ubuntu, it works well although it does need readjustment and some refinements, some of which are seen in Ubuntu 12.04.

[godly_music]

There's no easy way to tell percentages. I would think it's a couple of times more than that, but it's not used often for a reason. Hardware capabilities for graphics and sound are usually badly supported and if you don't build your Linux it from the ground up, you get breakage that you have no clue how to fix. Still, the number of great free software that is being made shouldn't be ignored either. Chances are most people have at least one GTK or QT native app running on their Windows. I have a bunch of them.

Openbox+++

[godly_music]

Your numbers are wrong.

[rknize]

You probably meant this:

[sordna]

For a technical user, Linux is fantastic. I've been using it pretty much exclusively for both my business and personal computer needs for over a decade now. If would give up computers and change careers if I was forced to use windows!
Of course most computer users are not technical / savvy enough.

By analogy, manual transmissions are way better than auto/torque converter. But in this country, most drivers aren't savvy enough to drive them. In the rest of the world, most soccer moms drive a stick. Here in the US, guys buy automatic crap thinking they are "sports cars" because of fake hood scoops or fancy stripes, and have no idea how to drive a stick. Disgusting.

[necr0mancer]

The people (journalists, I assume) that were complaining about innovating (can you cite a source, BTW?) are not the same people complaining about the change.

No I don't have any specific citations, sorry. I mainly just meant people I've talked to and interacted with.

Quoted for accuracy.  Getting a good Openbox config made for every system I use is the one of the best segments of time I have spent.

[sordna]

Linux shines on the PC. Let's be pragmatic here, while some people put Linux on tablets, it doesn't mean it's a good idea. I'm a Linux fan and wouldn't tolerate another OS on my main computer without throwing it out the window, but for phones and tablets, iOS / android are the better choice.

[sordna]

I think even Microsoft used SCO Unix for its websites / mailservers even at the time they already had NT. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft makes use of some Linux machines in their datacenters today.

[Malphas]

I drive a Honda Odyssey and stick is not an option but the huge nav screen and backup camera with IR sensors please me greatly.

I'd rather get the bus than drive that soccer-mom travesty of a vehicle.

Also, it's always seemed to me that the main drawback of Linux isn't the UI, or the fact it's a bit of a mess in general, but the lack of software. Usually when you say this you get a rush of 'nix fanboys lecturing you on how this assertion is wrong, but really unless you're into text editors and scripting tools (nothing wrong with that) what else is there?  There's no Adobe CS, Microsoft Office, Media Composer, Quicken/Sage/Turbotax, etc., just a bunch of broken GNU clones with recursive acronym names like "gimp" or "assrape" or whatever.

[sordna]

Also, it's always seemed to me that the main drawback of Linux isn't the UI, or the fact it's a bit of a mess in general, but the lack of software. Usually when you say this you get a rush of 'nix fanboys lecturing you on how this assertion is wrong, but really unless you're into text editors and scripting tools (nothing wrong with that) what else is there?  There's no Adobe CS, Microsoft Office, Media Composer, Quicken/Sage/Turbotax, etc., just a bunch of broken GNU clones with recursive acronym names like "gimp" or "assrape" or whatever.

Um, you have no idea what you're talking about. Linux has TONS of excellent software. I use it for work and play, and could not possibly go back to windows without seriously destroying my productivity. I really do mean TONS of software. Like software where I could record over USB from my guitar processor. Software that converts/fixes my photos in batch mode. Software that allowed me to view x-ray and CT-Scan datafiles. Who needs microsoft office when you have LibreOffice? As for turbotax, I use Linux to do my taxes using the web version of turbotax. Not to mention the tons of software for networking, teensy/arduino programming, and other geeky/technical stuff.

You mentioned a handful of paid apps, all the apps I am referring to above are free. Here's some of the things I have done with gimp, another excellent and FREE program The first photo has the diodes/wires at the top "shopped", I copied them from another PCB's photo! The others are self-explanatory.
[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 44600[/ATTACH] [ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 44601[/ATTACH] [ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 44602[/ATTACH] [ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ] 44603[/ATTACH]

[Malphas]

Like I said,

Usually when you say this you get a rush of 'nix fanboys lecturing you on how this assertion is wrong

and

broken GNU clones

I appreciate that software might work well for you, but personally I find the quality of the likes of LibreOffice and GIMP to be completely unacceptable.  I don't care that they're free (as in beer or otherwise).

Admittedly Linux has a huge range of small, specific programs for niche purposes, but it completely fails when compared against commercial Windows software that fulfils more mainstream and common requirements (office work, accounting, payroll, graphic design, video editing, etc.).

[Findecanor]

There's no Adobe CS, Microsoft Office, Media Composer, Quicken/Sage/Turbotax, etc., just a bunch of broken GNU clones with recursive acronym names like "gimp" or "assrape" or whatever.

The Gimp is not that bad. OpenOffice.org is good enough for most people, and there are lots of Windows users that also use it.

[fossala]

Like I said,



and



I appreciate that software might work well for you, but personally I find the quality of the likes of LibreOffice and GIMP to be completely unacceptable.  I don't care that they're free (as in beer or otherwise).

Admittedly Linux has a huge range of small, specific programs for niche purposes, but it completely fails when compared against commercial Windows software that fulfils more mainstream and common requirements (office work, accounting, payroll, graphic design, video editing, etc.).

Fine, carry on using your spyware programs (windows 7). Where you don't have the right hardware it shuts you out of your system.

[Malphas]

Alright, I will.  What do you even mean by that anyway? Are you talking about WPA?  Y'know as annoying as that is in theory, in reality it's not something you ever notice or care about.  Certainly less of a hassle than using Linux and substandard software every day.

[quickcrx702]

Um, you have no idea what you're talking about. Linux has TONS of excellent software. I use it for work and play, and could not possibly go back to windows without seriously destroying my productivity. I really do mean TONS of software. Like software where I could record over USB from my guitar processor. Software that converts/fixes my photos in batch mode. Software that allowed me to view x-ray and CT-Scan datafiles. Who needs microsoft office when you have LibreOffice? As for turbotax, I use Linux to do my taxes using the web version of turbotax. Not to mention the tons of software for networking, teensy/arduino programming, and other geeky/technical stuff.

You mentioned a handful of paid apps, all the apps I am referring to above are free. Here's some of the things I have done with gimp, another excellent and FREE program The first photo has the diodes/wires at the top "shopped", I copied them from another PCB's photo! The others are self-explanatory.
(Attachment Link) 44600[/ATTACH] (Attachment Link) 44601[/ATTACH] (Attachment Link) 44602[/ATTACH] (Attachment Link) 44603[/ATTACH]

Linux does have tons of great software, and there are a lot of good Linux alternatives to Windows software.  However, you need to recognize that not every Windows software has a Linux alternative, nor can you run them on Wine(they barely run on Windows because they were written so crappily LOL).  The only way certain software will run on Linux is with a Windows VM, in which case, you might as well just run Windows.  For a while I was running Windows via Virtualbox and seemless mode, and although if feels more native, if you think about it you are still just fakin' the funk.  Some examples are poorly written proprietary software to manage PBX systems that have no web interface or a severely handicapped one, tools to manage Windows domains, and various other IT administration tools that only run on Windows.  I would run Linux exclusively in a heartbeat if there weren't so many stupid industry specific Windows only applications that I needed, but that isn't the case.  And no, RDP'ing to a bunch of servers is not an option because it is highly inefficient compared to running native tools on your desktop and pushing them out with Domain Admin credentials.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a linux fanboy at heart and a user since the 90s, but it in no way can be a complete replacement for Windows for all people even for the tech savvy.

[sordna]

Sure, not every Windows software has a linux replacement. But also, not every Linux software has a windows replacement. I would go as far as saying that Linux has more pieces of software that Windows lacks. So the argument goes both ways. Sure, I have an XP partition that I boot once in a year or so, to update firmware in a harddrive or some other proprietary thing, but that's far far less frequent than my need for the tons of everyday stuff that Linux does best.
Why would I have Windows as my main OS when 99% of the stuff I need are on Linux, and better? I would be miserable if my main OS only only had 1% usefulness and was 99% crap.
Again, this argument goes both ways. Therefore, each individual must decide which OS fulfils most things they need (no OS will fulfil ALL your needs). In my case, Linux is by a huge margin better for my needs than anything else.

[alaricljs]

Alright, I will.  What do you even mean by that anyway? Are you talking about WPA?  Y'know as annoying as that is in theory, in reality it's not something you ever notice or care about.  Certainly less of a hassle than using Linux and substandard software every day.

See the funny thing is, I run Windows 7 every single day and have a fair number of applications installed.  Aside from the games and Steam they're all Windows ports/builds of Linux software.  Of course I also use Linux 5 out of 7 days and aside from the games prefer that environment over Windows 99% of the time.  There are a couple nice things I like about Win7 tho.

[quickcrx702]

Sure, not every Windows software has a linux replacement. But also, not every Linux software has a windows replacement. I would go as far as saying that Linux has more pieces of software that Windows lacks. So the argument goes both ways. Sure, I have an XP partition that I boot once in a year or so, to update firmware in a harddrive or some other proprietary thing, but that's far far less frequent than my need for the tons of everyday stuff that Linux does best.
Why would I have Windows as my main OS when 99% of the stuff I need are on Linux, and better? I would be miserable if my main OS only only had 1% usefulness and was 99% crap.
Again, this argument goes both ways. Therefore, each individual must decide which OS fulfils most things they need (no OS will fulfil ALL your needs). In my case, Linux is by a huge margin better for my needs than anything else.

I agree, just stating why I gave up on Linux for my desktop after more than a decade.  I got tired of fighting with the rest of the world.  Same reason I gave up Dvorak, even though it is superior, I got forced to use qwerty all the time either at other peoples desks doing customer support, or when the keys don't get mapped correctly through remote sessions using various remote solutions.  LOL, to support your argument I always laugh when people try to run linux native stuff on windows via cygwin or some other bs hack.  Although I don't use it as a desktop, I have plenty of servers that I take care of that run Linux because running LAMP on windows(WAMP) is just hackish and dumb in my opinion.  Kind of like Micros, which is a POS solution that the hospitality industry uses.  It uses cygwin, and always crashes at the most annoying times.  I really wish it were 100% linux native, rather than linux software ported to run on Windows via some crappy emulation layer because it needs to also interact with various windows only applications and services.

[rknize]

Hehe...I'm the opposite.  I've been running Linux on my desktop at work since the late 90s.  I'm so much more efficient when I can keep many workspaces open and have the window manager remember what I was doing in each.  Windows never got workspaces right, and I tried many aftermarket tools, too.

It was a big pain, though, and there were periods where I had to use Windows for parts of my workflow.  I did that by booting my native NT image from VMWare.  At one point, IT was sniffing ports and shutting down my access to the switch.  Had to make my machine vanish from their sniffers with iptables.  Now the old IT empire is gone and they actually prefer it if we run Linux.

[sordna]

I agree, just stating why I gave up on Linux for my desktop after more than a decade.  I got tired of fighting with the rest of the world.  Same reason I gave up Dvorak, even though it is superior, I got forced to use qwerty all the time either at other peoples desks doing customer support

Did it cross your mind to maintain both dvorak and qwerty skills? That's what I do, and it's serving me very well. I do up to 100WPM on dvorak and up to 80WPM on qwerty... no way I'm going to give up my favorite layout and favorite OS because of other people!

I gave up Linux, Dvorak, Colemak, ALPS and Bad Women and STILL Sordna wants me to try ergonomic keyboards.

Haha, I gave up on bad keyboards, you should try it sometime!

[godly_music]

I was stuck on the old Arch Linux lappy for the last couple of days and it was only halfway configured. That **** is painful and not fun.

It got better, though.

[HapticBovinator]

Here's my $0.02:

Ubuntu is a distribution that uses upstream tools (i.e., Debian stuff) to package and distribute software. (They have some of their own, but the toolset is mostly Debian.) Think of the packages on your computer as a tree. Every time you install a package, e.g. dwm, you are adding a new "leaf" to the tree. However, dwm can't work by itself; it needs libraries and so on. So everything that dwm needs to work needs to be installed also; those are like intermediate branches that connect to the tree trunk.

You can install a "desktop environment" or you can simply pick the components you want to install, starting from e.g. a "server" install. This will require research and coca-cola, possibly even Japanese motorcycle pants, rollerblades, multicolored floppy disks, and a young Angelina Jolie.

If you don't want to take the "red pill" approach, I would suggest sticking with the same family of distributions until you are sure your best fortunes lie elsewhere. Others have suggested you try Debian. Ubuntu's philosophy can be understood by considering their bug # 1 is that "Microsoft has a majority market share." That is the space for which they are contending. Debian, in contrast, being a meritocracy and completely community-controlled, acknowledges that OSes will always suck, and so it sucks equally for everybody. Thus their desktop-style installs may be more up your alley, i.e. not catering to the latest touchy-touchy fad.

Whatever you do, don't switch distributions to "learn Linux". Compiling things akimbo Gentoo-style will only burn up your time, and maybe burn down your house if your CPU has insufficient cooling. The best you can do is read. Read manuals. Read source code. Get the source for the kernel on your system. Change it and see if it still works. It is amazing how many constants you can change in the sources before you get a crash

Each distribution comes with a set of defaults--installed software, and default configurations. The only way to ensure you are happy long term is to become familiar with choosing, installing, removing, and configuring software on your system. Each distribution (and other UNIX variants as well) comes with documentation on these tasks, often comprehensive documentation. Learning how to administer your system will take work. Once you have these basic skills (e.g. for a Debian-based system) you can use any system which uses the tools with minimal mental effort.

Finally, ask yourself what you are really getting out of it. Are you using bash, perl, sed, awk, python, etc. to solve problems? Does the system as you use it give you the tools to do your daily work? Or are you just using it to spite Micro$oft and Apple fan boys? If the system as you use it daily isn't giving you anything you can't get from windows, I would suggest you either force yourself to learn what the system offers and relearn how to do the daily tasks you do on your computer, or switch back to windows. If you're not happy don't stay that way.

[sordna]

I just upgraded my ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) to 12.04 (Specific) development branch without much incident. I just love being able to perpetually upgrade my OS so easily, without losing my stuff.

[zzspectrez]

I have never been a fan of ubuntu. They install all the crap they think you want to start with. Usually this is a just that a bunch of crap. I'm only suprised it took this long for them to think that you needed something like unity that just radicaly changes things and install it by default and have users finaly realize: What the hell!

I have been a long time debian user. I have always liked to start from a base install and only add this stuff I want. I have usually stuck with either openbox or xfce to stay away from the bloat. My only issue with debian is stable is too crufty and testing the last few years might as well be the unstable branch. Because of this I have started looking for a new distro.

I have recently switched to archlinux and have to say I am quite impressed. The distro is not very far behind upstream but I have only hit a few bumps mainly because I upgraded before checking the web page and there was some manual intervention needed prior to upgrade. Only bad thing about arch is I do not feel the security has been taken serious enough compared to other distros but they have recently addressed this by finaly adding package signing.

For headless boxes though, I think freebsd blows linux out of the water. I have gone through a couple versions of basicly big 20 drive file servers for samba shares for all my multimedia etc. First with geom based raid5 now migrated over to ZFS. Every other softraid I have tried, linux and windows eventually ends up in significant data lose after refusing to rebuild when replacing a failed terabyte drive. Freebsd as far as storage server I think just plain rocks. If you havent used it before you should try it. Very stable. If only they had the number of developers linux does maybe they would be a viable desktop system as well. Just dreaming....

[sordna]

Ubuntu is fine so long as you use a derivative like Lubuntu or Xubuntu, instead of the "flagship" product that gets these extreme UI refreshes, ie Unity. I'm using Xubuntu + compiz which works awesome for several years now.
Yeah, ZFS is amazing, too bad for that stupid Sun license being incompatible with GNU GPL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Linux

Hopefully Oracle will fix that...

[alaricljs]

I expect no motion on the ZFS license at all, and for btrfs to be the Linux focus from Oracle.

[rknize]

I've never had a issue with SoftRAID on Linux.  Sorry to hear about yours.

[sordna]

Better to use linux kernel raid (mdadm) and NOT fake-raid (dmraid) ...
more info here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

[rknize]

Well, I hope he wasn't trying to use FakeRAID.  That's like the soft modem thing in the 90s.  Trying to find an internal modem with an actual UART was a bit of a trick.

[sordna]

Multitech modems always worked with Linux, and still do, even their latest USB ones.

[rknize]

LOL!  Either you weren't using Linux in the early 90s or you have a bad memory.  "WinModems" most certainly did NOT work with Linux because they required proprietary firmware and drivers.  They lacked anything resembling a UART because everything was emulated in software.

[sordna]

I know! I always hunted for modems with rockwell UART, that's why I said Multitech is a brand whose modems always worked with Linux. It's an exceptional brand, they never made winmodems. Apart form their old ISA modems, even their PCI and later PCI-E and now USB modems work with Linux. Small but awesome company for modems and VOIP devices.

[rknize]

Ah, sorry.  I misread your post.  I used a specific (and expensive) USR modem PCI modem at the time.  Thankfully, those days are long over.  

[sordna]

Ok, you are forgiven and are on a clean slate again: AT&F
I'll reply to you promptly if you have any further comments: ATS0=1
Make sure I won't forget: AT&W

ATZ :-)

[alaricljs]

I want to see sordna type out the handshake...

[Surly73]

Ubuntu is fine so long as you use a derivative like Lubuntu or Xubuntu

...or the "alternate" install method.  I've been running ubuntu on no-graphics systems for a while and like it just fine (esp. the 5 year upgrades for LTS versions).

[BigDov]

Some of Ubuntu / Debian spin-off's are okay, crunchbang was one I especially liked. Fedora is fun to mess with and so is Sabayon - there are tons of choices out there that's for sure.

[GLaDOS]

If someone hasn't said this... apt-get install cinnamon

[Daniel Beaver]

I really wish Ubuntu would offer a "desktop-agnostic" install DVD, sort of like how Fedora and SUSE do. All that stuff is in the repositories anyway.

[sordna]

You can always install ubuntu server, then cherry pick whatever UI packages you may want.

[insilica]

On my main box (sig) Gentoo, with awesomeWM everything is compiled and is exactly as I want it.

On personal laptop Arch with awesomeWM

At work it's Debian with LXDE.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Linux