I LOVE LINUX!

[Dev]

You can get one CPU x86 Solaris for free just by asking Sun. They even send you the DVD or CD for free (at least in the US) if you send them a polite email asking for it. Solaris for x86 is terrible though. Very unstable and only good for learning Sun stuff.

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My new years resolution is 1280 x 1024

 

[poorboy]

I dunno... I got Solaris x86 8 a while back, and it was rock solid once you get it installed (and get the DMA disk access going). It was pretty slow compared to Linux, IMO, but I didn't have even one lockup or crash or anything. Thought hard about putting it on the server, but the support costs and easy updates available for Linux made that decision for me.

<i>Knock Knock, Neo</i>

 

[StarScre4m]

I played some cs in my day. We were third best in NH. But anyway, what os do most cs servers run on? and mind you the fastest one. What is it? Huh? LINUX. It is a wonderful operating system, it just takes some time
to learn how to do it, and the people who can are not fags, they are just people who know hot to use software that you are in the dark about.

 

[TKS]

Heh...the linux users are definately NOT f@gs...but I still say the CS players are.

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<b>It is always brave to say what everyone thinks. </b> <i>Georges Duhamel</i>

TKS

 

[Dev]

The reason Solaris is dreadfully slow is because it's written as a 64-bit RISC OS, and the port to x86 is very poorly done. Solaris is great on SPARC but Linux or *BSD is faster and more stable than Solaris.

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My new years resolution is 1280 x 1024

 

[jimbo99]

Linux has tons of problems centered mostly on what I believe is the philosophy of the OS. That philosophy is pretty simple: design a difficult to manage and maintain OS that encourages others to pay, not for the OS, but for your service time maintaining and managing it. In other words, give it away for free and then make your profits off the service you provide. The only flaw is that people don't want to continue to pay service fees and they want to be able to do it themselves and the developers/distros want to make money off the services--sort of a conflict.

Linux lacks some significant ease of use features. Even though, for some, using apt-get "install", etc seems easy, 99% of the desktop users don't want to execute a command line program. And, if they don't want to they shouldn't have to even if they choose Linux as their OS.

Either way, Linux is a good OS if you are willing to take the time to get to know it. It has some fantastic features. It seems much more stable than when I first started with it. There are still some very confusing areas.

Drivers are a key factor that kills its acceptance (particularly with sound and video). Because sound and video is so hard to get working correctly there's little motivation for gaming companies to port their games over to it. Sure the generic drivers work but alot of the time they are so crappy as to be useless, especially to someone that wants to play games.

I recently went though a series of problems with video on one of my *many* Linux boxes, and now am having to deal with the sound problems--centered mostly around sound system technology conflicts with various products. The sound problems are pretty bad, although, it is workable it is still problemmatic.

I find that I like Linux mostly due to the fact that it is free and that I get to learn again. Windows is getting sort of dull and stagnant, with it's own confusing avenues for various technologies.

The worst part of Linux is: installation of programs, and drivers. Once the program and drivers are installed you can pretty much do anything with it (if you can find a complete and competent program that meets the specific need).

Linux is not for the hacker only type. Not even close. I've had many older and less computer literate people sit down at it and surf the web, do e-mail, etc without any help, but I doubt any of these people would ever be able to install programs considering the current state of affairs. If the Linux community would/could get this one part corrected Linux would come into its own, and begin to even own Microsoft's market. But the mentality that tries to make Linux a product profitable through services will hinder this factor. It is the one thing that needs fixing but is the most rejected because it is the one area where linux enthusiasts can make money.

BTW, the quote about 640k RAM was never uttered by Bill Gates. It is something that was attributed to him but he never uttered any statement close to that.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Jimbo99 on 05/18/04 01:57 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[gobeavers]

Yes, installation is one of my biggest gripes. For me (a newbie), installing RTCW: Enemy Territory was difficult, which it shouldn't be... Interesting note about the quote, didn't know that

"This means that you can play over a network, just not with each other."-PC GAMER review

 

[poorboy]

I have to disagree with that. I don't believe it's a Linux philosphy to design a hard to use OS. It's just that until recently, there's not been a need to make it really easy. To be blunt, there's nothing hard about editing a text file - once you know what you have to change or add - so that's how it worked for many years. Now more point-and-click folks are getting into it, so the user base has changed and application developers would be wise to adapt (and they are). Most of the software people get hold of was free, and they don't like to pay for help, so it's actually in the developers interests to make it easier - less people bugging the guy that wrote it that way. And hey, at least there IS help available from the guys involved in the software - I've *never* had a response from MicroSoft from the few querys I've sent them.

I dare say the popular distros are a lot easier than some other Unix OS, such as Irix or Solaris... but it's subjective I guess. Much comes down to perception too - eg, you can apt-get if you like, but I'll just double-click an RPM in the GUI thanks.

Part of the problem is vendor support. We work with what we have, but most of the vendors don't give a toss about Linux yet. So it pays to do your homework before buying gear. For example, I hear of people having trouble with cheapo generic sound cards, but when I ran an M-Audio Revolution it worked and sounded great. I bought it based on many reviews and notes about it on Linux. I've found Alsa to be stable, although I'll admit the plethora of sound services (esd and similar) and things is confusing. I just skip it all and use Alsa directly...

Same with video, my Nvidia cards have ben flawless for years using Nvidia factory drivers, yet some people have major problems with either performance or installing their various cards. Why? I don't know... I just read the ReadMe.txt and things usually work. Maybe they need to include soem visual docs, which show how things interact, or need to work more closely with distro vendors.

But after all that, props to Apple for making a Unix system easy for the masses. However fear not, one of the core focuses these days is making Linux desktops easier to work with.

<i>Knock Knock, Neo</i>

 

[iccaros]

>>>BTW, the quote about 640k RAM was never uttered by Bill Gates. It is something that was attributed to him but he never uttered any statement close to that.<<<
in fact Bill did say those words.. well he said people should be able to get along well with just 640K ... but not that context. its was a sarcastic response when asked how much memory a system should have from IBM. his comment was on the 640K limit imposed by the CPU and chip sets. he was putting in IBM's face the bad decisions made by Intel and IBM on the design of the 8086 platform. He was right to do so but its was taken way out of context and as anything said by the disliked spread, now to my problem with what you said.


>>>Linux has tons of problems centered mostly on what I believe is the philosophy of the OS. That philosophy is pretty simple: design a difficult to manage and maintain OS that encourages others to pay, not for the OS, but for your service time maintaining and managing it. In other words, give it away for free and then make your profits off the service you provide. The only flaw is that people don't want to continue to pay service fees and they want to be able to do it themselves and the developers/distros want to make money off the services--sort of a conflict.<<<

incorrect. Linux is a Kernel given away free. no money involves and no servers offered by Linus and crew. you take it and use it how you want.
now companies like Red Hat and Mandrake to name some have taken this Kernel and Mixed it with GNU software to make an operating system most people call "Linux" .
they are in the market to make money but under the GNU they can sell/giveaway what they add to the whole operating system and if not put under the GPL or if put under they can sell it. but most people know they can get it for free or create their own. bu most bushiness what support for everything they buy. so Red Hat makes money.
now Gentoo and Debian are not offering services or anything more than on line support and they give everything away.
the philosophy of the OS is not to make you pay for support but to let you do anything you want with it. the things that are hard to install is because the makers of the software make it hard to install. try WineX . with Point2play you have a GUI you install the entire program with and set it up. Crossover office nice GUI interface for setting up WINE. so if you don't like how something installs or works join a group or form a group or give money to a group to fix it. its in your hands to do what you want.

>>99% of the desktop users don't want to execute a command line program. And, if they don't want to they shouldn't have to even if they choose Linux as their OS.<<

oh my god the command line issue. You don't have to use the command line to do anything in SuSE but the GUI also limits what you can do but for the average user of computers what would they do. But lets look at windows.... how do you check your ip address in windows 2000 and winXP unless you go to the command prompt. How do you install exchange with out going to the command line (you can't as you have to set up active directory links before you start the install.) so going to the command line to set up more complex items is common for power users and administrators.

And you must remember Linux is not a free windows.. it never will be.

>>>Drivers are a key factor that kills its acceptance (particularly with sound and video). Because sound and video is so hard to get working correctly there's little motivation for gaming companies to port their games over to it. Sure the generic drivers work but alot of the time they are so crappy as to be useless, especially to someone that wants to play games.<<

yes and no. there is hardware for everything that the manufacture ahas invested time to make Linux drivers. Its not the OS fault manufactures will not make drivers but you have lots of people willing to give up time in there day to make it for you .. I say if a manufacture refuses to make drivers don't buy from them. In time they will see enough people going to Linux that their bottom line will make them make drivers.

Sound easy if you know what you have took me 5 minuets in Gentoo to get my sound blaster live card working with 3d surround. Video took all of 2 minuets in Gentoo to work also. I play WarcraftIII and Unreal tournament 2004 with no problems. When more manufactures make games for Linux I will buy them to show support.. did you Buy unreal....?? the lack of drivers don't make manufactures not make games. Its the investment in MS propitiatory DirectX development software that make it hard for them. Write them and tell them OpenGL is a better solution and it will be easer to port.

>>Irecently went though a series of problems with video on one of my *many* Linux boxes, and now am having to deal with the sound problems--centered mostly around sound system technology conflicts with various products. The sound problems are pretty bad, although, it is workable it is still problemmatic.<<

whats the problem maybe we can help. ... for free of course.



>>The worst part of Linux is: installation of programs, and drivers<<\

yes.. but what will the average person need to install. Look at it this way, the average American (world use could be added) gets a computer with windows. They then go buy a word processor and maybe the lower class of office suites. Then they get an anti-virus. Then the computer slows down and they go buy disk defragers and other helper software. They do there taxes and they keep the bank account up to date. So they have to install all this software. They never install operating systems and they never worry about partitions. As for drivers, In windows it seams like much more of a crap shoot. Drivers interfere with other software, It took me a week on a neighbors system to install a Nvidia FX 5200 in XP because the driver interfered with a USB nic they had. Linux took me 2 minuets. Mac has everyone beet in this area because they enforce a standard to all their drivers and hardware listed as Mac compatible , but thats what you get when the OS maker is in charge of the Hardware making also.

This is what we want to happen as the Linux community. They go to Wal-Mart and pick up a computer that has Linux installed (now it does not matter how hard it is to install) its set up with open office (no reason to install that now) it has a Cd burning software built in, Internet, K money or GNUCASH to do the bank account and updates are set up with a GUI interface like Up2date (free with fedora). The only thing remaining is games and a defrag. .oh wait a min... no reason for a defray in Linux. So games... this is the Week point. Kids what to play games. So the only thing left is to get game manufactures to male games and to make an installer the average non command line person can use. But until you and me and every Linux user who whats to play games shows they are willing to buy a game they will not be made.

I found that Gentoo has the best install. To get the Nvidia drivers I type emerge Nvidia-kernel. Done.

Making things easy for the masses also make thing insecure for the masses, its not to make money to make you become root to install things. It protects the OS from the use. MS says they have system file protection ... ya right.. you can delete every thing in the os except 9 files. Where is the protection? Your system is gone but you have these nine files.. big woop. How about the user can erase a single system file. They can mess up there home folder but not the system. That is what corporations wants. It lowers IT cost. No call saying I can't install such and such software...... we don't what corporations users to install anything.. leave that to the admins. Its hard to get a virus if you can't install , still lowering the cost of IT support. Red Hat and all there charges are still cheaper that MS with its every three years update your license and keep 10 guys on as IT staff to take care off all the patching and testing of patches. Linux set up a CVS and write a script. Up date all computers at one time.

Too me its seams like you wanted a free windows. But I'm glad you re willing to roll up your sleeves and learn something not windows. Remember Windows is easy because that is what you were using for so long and you know it. If you never used windows before it would not seam so easy. My grandmother who started work with AT&T as a programmer in fortran received a Windows XP home box last year. Her first windows computer. Now this is a programmer who has not touched computers since leaving her job in the mid to late 80's. She is lost in windows and goes to the Command line to do as much as she can. She writes bat files and copy cons text files to make notes. She is at home with the command prompt because it has less. Not 1000 buttons to click on.. just enter a command and the system does it. She uses the GUI to check email and go on the Internet. The point, if windows is so intuitive why is she having problems. She is not computer stupid or stupid. Its just new and overwhelming ..like Linux to a Windows user.


Willaim S. Huskey
Network Engineer
SAIC
"there are 10 types of people in this world. They who understand binary and they who do not"

 

[oab2]

Something is missing from this discussion. I kept hearing how I need to use linux from the linux comm. and it said how it was so much better than windozze. However there were a few things that were not in the promotional spills.

To get your monitor refresh rate correct you have to edit files (and they are different for each distro so good luck getting help that actually helps.) This is stupid! A simple thing like this takes 2 sec on win but 3 hours of guess & check with Fedora! Why didn't they say that when linux was being pushed?

Next is the fun feature of mounting hard drives. "here try Knoppix -- it will give you a good idea of what Linux is like." ya right. I am a web designer, gamer, pc builder -- I don't want to spend time searching for hardrives and then giving them mountpoints. win or dos has NO problem having them. Evan dos has them already mounted. How hard is it to release a distro that has it set up so I don't have to spend hours on the net looking for how to mount a drive? Unnecessary!

"Let's confuse the new linux user with multible desktop software." This really makes sense. Gnome, Kde and others all are sposed to do the samething -- let you run your linux program gui style. Why are they all so different? Gnome lets you do things that are almost impossible in KDE (or maybe I need to spend another 10 hrs on the net finding that answer.)

What are the pluses? Awsome bundled software package (gimp, IM, office). Too bad Fedora striped their iso's of mp3 abilities. Back to the web for a few more hours trying to get that fixed.

It is almost as if Linux has no desire to overtake the market from the OS that they dispise so much. I don't like Micro$oft that much either but at least when I install it (and activate it grr!!) I am able to get something done, I don't have to spend 3 hours trying to get my monitor right.

You might be saying - "this guy is to lazy." That is not the case! I would love to be free of windozze but linux isn't doing much to make that too easy. I don't want a linux that is a clone of ms but I at least want something that I don't have to spend hours on getting it so it will work correctly.

One last thing -- one of the big push points that the linux comm uses to get people to try linux is that it is FREE. This is true. However, as soon as a distro actually starts to work decantly - wham stamp a price tag on it. So what's free? An OS that needs a lot of work.

Linux community please stop refusing to budge on "tradition" and start making releases that I don't have to become a "ix" pro just to figure out! It's not that people are too lazy they just would rather channel thier energy into the programs that actually produce an end product than configure thier OS.

Yes I am trying to learn how my Fedora works - I've not given up hope yet!

 

[ImpPatience]

I think it's great that you are getting Fedora to work for you. I hope that as learn more, Linux will be less frustrating. Although I think Mandrake might have been a better choice for you. From what I understand Mandrake is very good at automatically configuring the OS to your machine.

I personally have been messing on and off with Linux (Slackware linux specifically) for the past six months. Yes it has taken a bit of tweaking to get things running just the way I want it to. I'm glad I had my Windows partition to fall back on. But come to think of it I probably spend as much time tweaking my version of Linux as I would searching for drivers and getting updates for Windows. Not to mention the time it takes installing games or programs and then getting the latest patches so that they would work right. Really, I think after I installed Slackware Linux it worked better right out of the box than any windows installation I have ever done or seen.

I think the next time Slackware comes out with their new version, I will buy it rather than download it for free. Mostly I want to buy it because I appreciate what Slackware has created. If by me buying their product then allows them to continue to provide such a great OS, then I will gladly pay the $40 US dollars. Last time I checked, I didn't see a decent version of Windows for anywhere near that price.

Maybe I just got lucky. I did some research on the internet before I decided on my version of Linux, and I had heard that Slackware could be hard for a beginner. I actually think I was kind of jittery about installing it for the first time. I think I screwed up the first time I installed it, but when I tried it again with the defaults it worked just fine.

I guess what I am trying to say amidst all my babbling is Linux works for the masses if only the masses would attempt to think .1% more than what they are used to. If Linux came pre-installed like on a Dell or Gateway, I don't think the masses would even have to do that.

<font color=blue><b>virtue is its' own punishment<b></font color=blue>

 

[oab2]

Good points. I agree with what you have to say about linux coming preinstalled for the masses. I also have to agree about the time to tweat windoze. I'm a tweaker so I have spent some time on the back side of xp. However, I didn't expect to have to fight a battle for a simple feature like monitor refresh rate.

I am hoping to figure out wine and see if I can get away from win for the most part.

--------------------------------
AMD 1200 - OC 1450 (time for an upgrade)
Thermalright SP-97 (this puppy rocks)
Multiboot - Win98se, Xp pro, Fedora

 

[iccaros]

monitor refresh rate.. /etc/X11/XF86config
one file on all distrobutions. run xf86config as root and it will set up you monitor for you.
Fedora set that up for you during install if you pick your monitor form the list. I'ver had windows not detect thing ethier.

as for free.. I never spent a Dime on Gentoo and run all same programs people pay fro with lindows. but not software will be free. I'm sure when quicken is released for Linux it will cost money. But it cost money in windows so you must pay for 2 programs to get it running the OS and the Program.
also the way Linux does displays is totally diffrent. Linux uses an X server. its networked based. you do not need to install any fancy programs to share desktops accross your network with X just an X server. you can use ssh and so ssh -l<username> -X <ipaddress) and there you go you have X. or you can have GDM or KDM or XDM choose which X server to login to. this make life great. you can use a lot of 486 computers that just log in and pass X back to them. or have headless servers and pass back a desktop for them. with windows you use there citrix light software. its getting better but you still need a full windows install. I can do it on linux in 50 megs. the diffrence is its your choice on how to get there with linux. for the comman user they woudl get linux pre-installed on a computer. this I know has been mentioned but its the only way a coman man can use linux. its the only way they can use windows. can you imagian if the masses had to install windows.. they would be stuck on partitioning. there is no GUI for that part.. but there is in Fedora.
for your refresh rates (FC2 uses Xorg.config) try to boot a knoppix cd and copy its XF86config-4 file over . it will have the discovered refresh rates. Debian has much better hardware detection than fedora.


Willaim S. Huskey
Network Engineer
SAIC
"there are 10 types of people in this world. They who understand binary and they who do not"

 

[silverpig]

I think he's referring to the XP refresh rate thing. I hate it. I still don't have it working properly. All my shiz works in linux though.

s signature has been formatted to fit your scr

 

[oab2]

actually fedora core 2 doesn't have XF86conf. A change they made so your on your own trying to figure out what they have different.

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AMD 1200 - OC 1450 (time for an upgrade)
Thermalright SP-97 (this puppy rocks)
Multiboot - Win98se, Xp pro, Fedora

 

[HolyGrenade]

There are two branches of "free" X now. The original XFree86 (now less free) uses the well known "xf86config" file and the new GPLed branch called X.org (freedesktop.org) stores the configurations in a file called "xorg.conf".

These are the two files no other ones afaik. If a distibution uses XFree86 as most have in the past, you'll need to edit xf86config. If it uses X.org as most new distros will, you'll be editing xorg.conf.



<b><font color=red>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."</font color=red><font color=blue> - Benjamin Franklin</font color=blue></b>

 

[iccaros]

also to add to this . xorg will use the XF86Config file if it does not find a xorg.conf file. its not leaving you up to your own as stated above (I forget who?). its a standard on the package you use. know what you install and you'll be ok.

Willaim S. Huskey
Network Engineer
SAIC
"there are 10 types of people in this world. They who understand binary and they who do not"

 

[silverpig]

I think I might install x.org on my gentoo box... I really don't want to break it though.

s signature has been formatted to fit your scr