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Linux is Not Windows

linux.oneandoneis2.org

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Re: Linux is Not Windows

#61

Post by justincormack »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
jrockway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a nightmare for a engineer like myself to fix problems, even though I've been using Linux since the mid-90s. An unsophisticated user would be finished. I hear this a lot, but nobody ever actually describes the problem they have. You mentioned priting. On my minimal Debian box, you point your web browser at http://localhost:631 and click shit and then the printer works. (If you want to improve print quality…

> Nope, shitty hardware never works. Linux just hides that from you less than Windows. And that's the thing that Windows actually gets right. A typical user doesn't know nor care about OS-hardware compatibility. He/she buys a printer and wants it to work. It is up to OS to make this happen.

It is not the OS that makes this happen. The device ships with a windows driver disk. The manufacturer made it happen. Out of the box Linux probably ships with more drivers than Windows, but the process is much more centralised.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#62

Post by adolfojp »

Dunbar wrote: post #22
radioact1ve wrote: post #15

I think we can all agree Linux != Windows, but shit it's 2011. Somethings should just work.

Who writes the drivers for this software that 'Just Works'? Over and over again I see commercial OS vendors implicitly credited for writing drivers that were actually supplied by the hardware manufacturers themselves. The vast majority of the general population find that their Windows and OS X machines 'Just Work' because they come preconfigured with all of the manufacturer's drivers already installed. Linux can't 'J…

That is true but also irrelevant. It places blame and provides an explanation but it doesn't change the result.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#63

Post by rjbond3rd »

eropple wrote: post #33
djd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason Linux seems to be un friendly is because windows takes care you as a baby,most of the time you are not in control and there is nothing much to worry. So if kids where exposed to Linux first this problem would not arise IMHO

Alternatively, Windows takes care of things that a normal person has no need to, but Linux forces you to do. It's like being forced to think about breathing.

I disagree. Windows is always interrupting me with things. Updates, virus scans, warnings, malware etc. whereas Linux stays in the background (for me).

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#64

Post by click170 »

cschwarm wrote: post #52
num1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to know what happened to Ubuntu being supported by Dell a while ago. http://www.dell.com/ubuntu only lists one machine that you can buy with Ubuntu pre-installed. If this had kept up, and more suppliers had joined the bandwagon, it would have been exactly the major support you are talking about. Why did things move backwards?

Indeed. Also netbooks or whatever they were called. Almost exclusively Linux in the beginning, but then almost every supplier started to use Windows.

I think this problem was one of perception. I think too many salespeople were pushing Netbooks as "cheaper smaller computers that can do anything a desktop can except gaming", which to most people translated to "cheap and small windows install that can do simple games". But then they took it home and turned it on and saw something that wasn't windows and they got scared.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#65

Post by Goladus »

huge_dong_420 wrote: post #11
Goladus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like orthogonal, compose-able features. I like self-documenting configuration. I like grep. I like multiple desktops. I like managing my configuration using revision control (though the move towards using databases is making this a bit more difficult). I like the thorough and reliable documentation in man pages. I like transparency and the ability to read the source of most any aspect of the system. I like my distr…

Strangely, my grandmother isn't terribly concerned by these issues. Why are you listing open sourceness and man pages as a reason that Joe Average User should use Linux? Perhaps you need to reacquaint yourself with Joe.

Open-sourceness isn't an unfriendly feature by any measure, and the features I list are useful whether on a server or a desktop, that's the point. Man pages might be the only thing in that list that can genuinely be considered unfriendly, and that's still highly subjective. In contrast, license keys and online software registration are inherently unfriendly features. No subjectivity is required.

I didn't make that point explicit only because I didn't want to seem too confrontational, as j_baker's comment was clearly well-intentioned.

> Perhaps you need to reacquaint yourself with Joe.

I know lots of Windows users. They're each very different, but not stupid and frequently surprise condescending nerds with their capacity to figure things out. The most technophobic person I know, someone who uses their home computer ONLY to browse the web and check email (who probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between windows XP and gnome) once ranted to me for several months about various productivity hits caused by their office's migration from a terminal-based mainframe system to windows NT workstations. Most windows and mac users I know are particularly proficient with several applications. Whether it's Photoshop or Excel or Matlab or Finale or Final Cut Pro or Revit or ProTools or LaTeX, using the software effectively typically requires a lot more technical knowledge than "Joe Average User" requires to browse the web and check his email.

The original linked article covers this issue effectively in section #5, The myth of "user-friendly"

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#66

Post by bane »

Yes yes, Windows users just don't get "it". With "it" apparently a vast blackhole of time suck spent searching endless forums for conflicting advice for why basic hardware on random machine doesn't work right, or why xyz package failed to install or abc driver doesn't work right.

No thanks, I still haven't figured out how to get the 3 days of my life back trying to share some files over my home network last year when I installed ubuntu on my old (but perfectly serviceable) computer in my latest attempt at using Linux.

What didn't work out of the box?

- Mouse (stock Dell USB mouse), never did fix that, tried 3 different mice, dug up an old PS/2 mouse and made do with that, probably some obscure usb issue, but the usb hard drives and keyboard I had connected worked from the beginning

- NIC drivers (dunnah, some regular old built in 10/100 part on the mobo), took an entire day of my life to resolve, and it kept dropping connection requiring a reboot every 4-5 hours

- Video drivers (nvidia something or other), never did work right

- file sharing (I eventually got it to kinda work after hand editing a bunch of files and installing some older version of samba, really, what's the gui there for anyways?)

- Stopped seeing one of the hard drives on the second day, a reinstall of ubuntu (and all the other crap I had to do) fixed that

- X died for no apparent reason, reinstall again

- it refused to sync properly with my perfectly cromulent monitor so I was doing all this at 640x480, which works brilliantly when half of the gui controls are off the screen, I was prepared not to care if I could just get the NIC working and remote in

- after getting everything working (kinda, with gum and duct tape), ubuntu did some sort of update that blitzed the whole thing and I just gave up, I hadn't even really gotten to what I wanted to do with it.

As much as I really tried to get it to work, and I try one of these about once every year or so since 1996 with whatever is the hot distro of the moment, and I had no illusions that it would be as straight forward as Windows or OS X, I did expect things like actually being able to use the computer enough to fire up a browser and search for solutions to minor configuration issues. Every issue I had was literally a major configuration issue. I spent those 3 days with my MBP sitting next to me so I could look up help in various forums.

By comparison, I wiped the drive, installed Windows XP, most of it was spent waiting for the files to copy, I had a thumb drive with 4 drivers on it. After install I clicked setup.exe for each driver, rebooted a handful of times. Clicked each drive I wanted to share and set it to "share" and that system is still up and running...I think I've rebooted it 3 times since then. Total time spent? 90 minutes.

So if "it" is wasting a bunch of my time for absolutely nothing in return? I can't think of any other area in my life where I would allow that kind of user experience.

Imagine this was a car, and I had to rebuild the engine or the shifter nob or pedals or windshield or whatever just to drive it off the lot, and then I'd find out it wasn't compatible with every road I wanted to go on, unless I patched it with a different windshield, but when I did that the a/c stopped working. And the brake pedal would stop activating the brake system every 6 hours unless I turned the car off and restarted the engine. Bringing in my car for an oil change might make the doors or wheels stop working.

I have pretty low expectations of technology. I don't expect things to "just work", but I do expect to have a couple pretty clear lines to resolve any issues, even if I have to get my hands dirty and change the spark plugs myself.

So if this is "it", no thanks.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#67

Post by wazoox »

bane wrote: post #66

Yes yes, Windows users just don't get "it". With "it" apparently a vast blackhole of time suck spent searching endless forums for conflicting advice for why basic hardware on random machine doesn't work right, or why xyz package failed to install or abc driver doesn't work right. No thanks, I still haven't figured out how to get the 3 days of my life back trying to share some files over my home network last year when…

> Mouse (stock Dell USB mouse), never did fix that, tried 3 different mice, dug up an old PS/2 mouse and made do with that, probably some obscure usb issue, but the usb hard drives and keyboard I had connected worked from the beginning

Strangely I never had any mouse problem under linux for ages, but the only windows computer -alas- under my management lost the ability to use any USB devices a long time ago. USB still works when the machine's running Linux, so the hardware is fine; the USB hardware is still listed in the "hardware manager", but for some reason, USB keys, mice, etc simply aren't anywhere to be seen.

Generally speaking, I almost never have any problem under Linux that I can't solve in a couple of minutes -- except a major hard drive crash maybe. Windows remain, OTOH, a complete mystery most of the time. So it definitely is a familiarity problem. Sometimes, I may fall down to the mantra that "windows is total, utter shite". But I'm reasonable enough to understand that it's just me who just got completely unfamiliar and uneasy with it.

> Every issue I had was literally a major configuration issue.

That's quite surprising, since I hardly met any machine since 2003 where one of the common live-CDs wouldn't boot to a workable state out of the box.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#68

Post by wazoox »

j_baker wrote: post #2

You know, to a certain extent, unfriendliness is what I like about Linux. I like "friendly" systems for browsing the web, email, and watching video. But for hacking, Linux simply can't be beat. I really don't see why Linux needs to be an OS for Joe Internet User. What's wrong with Linux being a server/development OS?

As the saying goes, "Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with." (Rob Pike IIRC). Yes, there is some elite, snob, warm fuzzing feeling about all this, and you know what? I'm elitist, and I think it's all right.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#69

Post by wazoox »

microtonal wrote: post #41
jrockway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's why the average Joe should use Linux instead of Windows: it's $200 cheaper. If all you are going to do is connect to Wifi and run Chrome... guess what, you don't need a Windows license. After that, it's all details. Windows has spyware. Linux has apt-get. But users don't care.

Here's why the average Joe should use Linux instead of Windows: it's $200 cheaper. Except that it's not true. We had Windows Vista Home Premium (IIRC) + Works refunded once from Dell, because Ubuntu was used. The refund was 80 Euro. In fact, they say it inflates the price of PCs barely, because the relatively small OEM Windows fee is compensated by installing tons of adware, browser bars, etc. from 3rd party vendors.

> the relatively small OEM Windows fee is compensated by installing tons of adware, browser bars, etc. from 3rd party vendors.

Now that is user-friendly; you must spend the best part of a day removing nagwares and spywares from a brand new computer.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#70

Post by vault_ »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #34
anonymoushn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Awesome. http://awesome.naquadah.org/

The thing is, the composited window managers? They're actually smoother than without due to the graphics cards. Even with minimal features (for more stability, since ahem, shipping versions of compiz aren't always crazy stable, despite how much I admire where compiz is going). Take the time to try a composited window manager. While you're at it, install vlc, and make sure you manually tell it to "Use Hardware Acceler…

Awesome is composited (well, has support for compositing). You just have to use an external compositor. xcompmgr and cairo-compmgr are two that I know of.
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