334 replies to this topic 2 votes

[Detection]

Majesticmerc, on 21 December 2012 - 17:25, said:

I assume you mean Graphics card vendor support? Yeah ATI and Nvidia suck at Linux drivers, I'm still running an outdated version of X because ATI won't update their Catalyst drivers until Canonical do for Ubuntu.

Yea that's another thing, running Linux as my main OS would feel like I just poured £200 down the drain when I bought my GPU

[Tyler R.]

Majesticmerc, on 21 December 2012 - 17:15, said:

Out of curiousity (any answer is valid, I'm not looking for a reason to flame), what is it about Linux you find too complicated?

Nothing in particular, just the more advanced distros. I tried Fedora, installed drivers with akmod, rebooted, black screen--no joy. Debian--booted it up one day garbled text--could not get it up. I installed Kubuntu--works perfectly. Sometimes it gives me an ugly boot screen tho and random graphical GUI glitches that are fixed with a simple reboot.

Windows 7 on the other hand, no problems no glitches what so ever. Only problems I've had were hardware related (SSD died, bad graphics card, etc.)

[Aergan]

Actually, VIA and Intel give me the most ****. "Openchrome" with anything based on the VIA Eden and Intel deciding that a framebuffer is a Unicorn as far as Linux goes. VIA and Intel are the preferred choice of crap for devices in use by my employer so everytime I require gparted I tend to end up having to locate a VGA cable because DVI/HDMI out support Houdini's on me.
Regarding Nvidia, I have optimus so I chose my own special level of hell regarding Linux.
ATI works well until they drop you like their support down a crevasse.

Don't get me wrong though, I do like penguin and all the low-level tools that make my computing life easier and more interesting. Former Mandrake and long term Slackware user.

[Axel]

I suppose the key to it becoming a genuinely competitive desktop platform would be when most/all software becomes made for all three major platforms (Windows/OSX/Linux). I'm talking thing like Adobe's Creative Suite and even Microsoft Office. I know there are alternatives but they're not as good. I don't ever see that happening though.

[bman]

Love Linux (Ubuntu mainly) but there has been two main problems for me to switch fulltime.

1. Gaming, no games. Looks like it's going to change very soon with Steam.

2. The simplest thing takes way too many steps to figure out, most of the time I have to search to find those steps. A program on windows with a one click install, won't be the same on Linux.

Of course it is going in the direction of easier and all that, just a matter of time now.

[Tyler R.]

Detection, on 21 December 2012 - 17:34, said:

Yea that's another thing, running Linux as my main OS would feel like I just poured £200 down the drain when I bought my GPU

Yeah that's another thing. X was written in the 80's by Bell Labs for UNIX V5 (If I remember right). It's only purpose was to have multiple terminal windows open, run a clock, etc. It was not designed to have icons, wobbly windows, and all the other pretty stuff we expect out of a modern 2012 computer. All of that was shoe horned in at later dates. I'm really hoping X's replacement, Wayland will fix a lot of those issues. It's written from the ground up to do all those things. If you get the chance, look up the demos on youtube. It's still in it's infancy, but it's still quite interesting and has potential.

Edit: Here ya are.

https://www.youtube....h?v=Cs9Ly5ldR9A

[Aergan]

Tyler R., on 21 December 2012 - 17:50, said:

Yeah that's another thing. X was written in the 80's by Bell Labs for UNIX V5 (If I remember right). It's only purpose was to have multiple terminal windows open, run a clock, etc. It was not designed to have icons, wobbly windows, and all the other pretty stuff we expect out of a modern 2012 computer. All of that was shoe horned in at later dates. I'm really hoping X's replacement, Wayland will fix a lot of those issues. It's written from the ground up to do all those things. If you get the chance, look up the demos on youtube. It's still in it's infancy, but it's still quite interesting and has potential.

Edit: Here ya are.

https://www.youtube....h?v=Cs9Ly5ldR9A

Thanks for sharing that. The sooner that arrives, the better.

[Detection]

Tyler R., on 21 December 2012 - 17:50, said:

Yeah that's another thing. X was written in the 80's by Bell Labs for UNIX V5 (If I remember right). It's only purpose was to have multiple terminal windows open, run a clock, etc. It was not designed to have icons, wobbly windows, and all the other pretty stuff we expect out of a modern 2012 computer. All of that was shoe horned in at later dates. I'm really hoping X's replacement, Wayland will fix a lot of those issues. It's written from the ground up to do all those things. If you get the chance, look up the demos on youtube. It's still in it's infancy, but it's still quite interesting and has potential.

Edit: Here ya are.

https://www.youtube....h?v=Cs9Ly5ldR9A

Looks like it has potential, quite a way to go but pretty cool

[xorangekiller]

bman, on 21 December 2012 - 17:40, said:

Love Linux (Ubuntu mainly) but there has been two main problems for me to switch fulltime.

1. Gaming, no games. Looks like it's going to change very soon with Steam.

2. The simplest thing takes way too many steps to figure out, most of the time I have to search to find those steps. A program on windows with a one click install, won't be the same on Linux.

Of course it is going in the direction of easier and all that, just a matter of time now.

I can't argue much with your first point. Most PC games on the market today are written for Windows alone. If you play a lot of games, at least at the moment, you need a native Windows install.

As for your second point, however, I disagree. In fact, I would argue that it is actually simpler to find and install software in most Linux distributions. The Ubuntu Software Center, for example, lets you easily search for and install both commercial and free software. You can also use Synaptic in Ubuntu to install individual software packages graphically or Aptitude to install any package in the repository with one command. When I setup a new system, I routinely install dozens of unrelated programs by issuing a single command; that's much more difficult to do with Windows. Its not that software is more difficult to install in most Linux distributions than it is in Windows, its just a different way of thinking about it. (It is a point that Windows users often get hung up on, however. I certainly had this problem when I first started using Ubuntu.)

[Nothing Here]

Tyler R., on 21 December 2012 - 17:37, said:

no joy--could not get it up. Sometimes it gives me an ugly tho and random glitches that are fixed with a simple boot.

Wow Tyler. That sounds like something you need to see a doctor about. (Sorry, these are the words my eyes picked out first. So I ran with it,couldn't resist.)

[Max Norris]

Depends on your needs I guess. Love it as a server platform, a few of mine run the traditional LAMP stack, Tomcat, Rails, etc. I can do that stuff with a Windows server, but some of the software's never really been properly optimized for anything besides *nix (Looking at you, Ruby), never mind it's nice not having to worry so much about available resources.

Not so much for the desktop though, I don't like fiddling as much as I used to when I was younger versus the "everything is available and just works" factor with Windows, never mind dealing with compatibility issues/layers and such. Gaming is a small consideration for me although it does factor in a bit.. Steam certainly won't make me change my mind, don't like it anyway. Not a fan of where the various desktop environments are heading either. Lots of potential, but it's got a long way to go.

As far as the drivers go, overall reasonably happy with my nVidia based systems.. don't get me started on ATI though, a couple machines here with ATI boards are stuck in either "don't upgrade the OS or downgrade X" mode due to being shelved, thank you very little ATI, pass.

[xorangekiller]

Tyler R., on 21 December 2012 - 17:50, said:

Yeah that's another thing. X was written in the 80's by Bell Labs for UNIX V5 (If I remember right). It's only purpose was to have multiple terminal windows open, run a clock, etc. It was not designed to have icons, wobbly windows, and all the other pretty stuff we expect out of a modern 2012 computer. All of that was shoe horned in at later dates. I'm really hoping X's replacement, Wayland will fix a lot of those issues. It's written from the ground up to do all those things. If you get the chance, look up the demos on youtube. It's still in it's infancy, but it's still quite interesting and has potential.

Edit: Here ya are.

https://www.youtube....h?v=Cs9Ly5ldR9A

Admittedly, X is a pain to work with. It was a great idea when System V was king in the early days of computing, but has slowly evolved into a nightmare. That's why toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt were created: to make development of GUI applications on top of X11 less painful. Wayland certainly has potential, and is backed by many of the current X11 developers. The video you linked to is quite old, however, and doesn't represent the current state of the project. Take a look at Wayland releases page for a more up-to-date feature set. In particular, read the release announcements for each release.

[redvamp128]

xorangekiller, on 21 December 2012 - 18:10, said:

I can't argue much with your first point. Most PC games on the market today are written for Windows alone. If you play a lot of games, at least at the moment, you need a native Windows install.

As for your second point, however, I disagree. In fact, I would argue that it is actually simpler to find and install software in most Linux distributions. The Ubuntu Software Center, for example, lets you easily search for and install both commercial and free software. You can also use Synaptic in Ubuntu to install individual software packages graphically or Aptitude to install any package in the repository with one command. When I setup a new system, I routinely install dozens of unrelated programs by issuing a single command; that's much more difficult to do with Windows. Its not that software is more difficult to install in most Linux distributions than it is in Windows, its just a different way of thinking about it. (It is a point that Windows users often get hung up on, however. I certainly had this problem when I first started using Ubuntu.)

Actually you forget two things

OOOH linux you have to know command line - (even though people don't realize instead of talking them through the 15 clicks to get something done- they can copy and paste a command to fix it) versus Windows where you have to download a patch , wait for microsoft to fix it, or edit the registry yourself.

the second is an image stigmata (yes I said it why not call it like it is- when people think linux this is who they think runs it... Sorry if you are the guy but a prime example)




not realizing for example- This user -- Nixie PixieL who maintains a blog about Linux ....
http://www.nixiepixel.com/

[Nothing Here]

redvamp128, on 21 December 2012 - 18:36, said:

not realizing for example- This user -- Nixie Pixie who maintains a blog about Linux ....

Nixie Pixel. LOL!

[Joshie]

Mindovermaster, on 21 December 2012 - 16:10, said:

Hey guys, it's very odd to me. I've been 100% on Ubuntu (12.10 x64) for 2 months straight and never looked back to Windows 7. Well, except to help my Mom on her computer.

Everything just... works. While I had a few problems along the way, I broke through them. Help is there, all you need to do is look for it.

Oddly enough, my Dad was intrigued by it as well. I put it on his laptop a few months ago, and he loves it. He wants it on his desktop, too.

Yeah, you get the people who say, "Why switch?", "Linux isn't compatible", "It looks ugly". With a little know how, you can do anything in Linux, in some cases more, than you can do in Windows.

Linux, as a whole, has grown 10 folds since I started venturing it in ~2005. More support, drivers, open source software, and more power to the kernel.

I have to say, I learned more in the last 2 months than I learned the last ~7 years. This proves that even the noobish, with help, can overcome anything.

Anyone who is iffy about using Linux, and wants the full experience, not just in a VM, put it on a flash drive. You can install it straight off there, and not have to wait for the Live-CD to boot up. That's how I started.

The problem with preaching Linux is that, for--what, 15+ years?--a long ass time, it's been the exact same mantra. For 15+ years, Linux, "with some work", could "do anything Windows can, and more". And for 15+ years, the claim has meant nothing to 99% of the ears its fallen on.

The same story that failed a thousand times isn't going to suddenly work. There's a reason why Linux is only interesting when people don't know it's there (Android).

It's cool that you're having a good time, but, you know, FYI, your attitude will never go further than preaching to the choir.