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Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

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Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#71

Post by mgkimsal »

hollerith wrote: post #64
mgkimsal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you started in 2009 - I'm assuming you started with linux a bit earlier than that. I started using linux on the desktop in 1999 part time, and moved 'full time' by ... 2003 I think. I gave up around 2008. Gave up trying to migrate friends/family; gave up being an evangelist. The number of things that wouldn't work on someone's hardware was always greater than my ability to help/google/patch/whatever. And I go…

>I miss the FISH protocol in Konqueror something mad. The feature I miss most is how selecting text with the pointing device on Linux copied it into the "clipboard" without my needing to type Command-C or Control-C. Like you, the beach ball (i.e., general lack of responsiveness) is at the top of my list of OS X's disadvantages relative to Linux. Unlike you, I do not experience any crashes of OS X. It hung and needed…

I've had about 6 in the past 3 years over multiple macbooks. It's certainly not an every day occurrence. Also, probably once every 6-8 weeks something beach balls so hard that it's faster to hard reboot.

This was also my experience using Windows and Linux across a variety of hardware from the mid 90s through mid 2000s. I don't know if it's just because I expect too much from my hardware - being able to run "too many" things at the same time, or what, but I always run in to situations where I need to hard reboot (not every day, but more than 1 time every 6000 hours).

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#72

Post by Elhana »

How come researching hardware first is bad thing - you are not going to a shop and buy first thing you see.

Also windows is not perfect either, my old scanner doesn't have windows 7 drivers and will never have it seems. It works just fine in XP and Linux.

Sometimes things break, they even break in software that cost shitloads of money too. Six month old Oracle EBS SR with localization(!) problem - not critical, but surely half a year is enough to swap two strings. Sometimes it doesn't work well with some server vendor too (I don't know all details about this one).

Don't blame canonical for all the software in the distro, all they really do is adding eye candy and try to make it nicer, but they can't fix everything.

I find it silly when people try to force other people to migrate to Linux - show them around, tell about ups and downs and let them decide if they want to try it.

I use linux not because it open source, but because it does most of the stuff I need better. My parents use windows PC, because they can just install that thing which came with new printer and it works without calling me, despite I could probably make it work in linux just as easy since I know how to.

And for God's sake, don't install linux if you play games most of the time, but you read linux is better on the interwebz. Stop hammering nails with a microscope already!

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#73

Post by jiggy2011 »

hippich wrote: post #69
jiggy2011 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you are getting actual BSOD under a recent version of Windows it is almost always the result of a hardware problem. Make a note of the error message at the top of the BSOD and google for it. If you want to do some tests , download something called "Ultimate boot CD" which is a boot disk with a combination of DOS and Linux based hardware test programs. I've used it to find faulty memory on many a misbehaving s…

I am pretty sure it is not hardware problem since I am using it for development and do all kinds of crazy stuff for last half a year. :) The thing about windows - you get more support from hardware manufacturer, but you get screwed by the fact it is all proprietary and often stuff from one manufacturer is not working with software from different one. And due to closed source approach there is no way to peek into it t…

To be fair, most of those things you mentioned sound like issues individual drivers rather than the OS. You are likely to have closed source drivers under Linux too, a variety of GPUs and Wireless cards do not offer open source drivers (or at least with full features).

You might not need 600MB of drivers for your video card, it's that the manufacturer packages it with 600MB of software. On a modern HDD 600MB isn't so much anymore.

BSOD really does overwhelmingly indicate some hardware failure, it is not uncommon for a PC (especially one that is highly used) to develop failures later in it's life. I would suspect common culprits to be your power supply, memory or HDD.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#74

Post by w1ntermute »

slasaus wrote: post #59
w1ntermute wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents have been running Ubuntu since 2008, when I finally got tired of uninstalling spyware. It's been running like a charm ever since. Once Unity came out, I moved them to Xubuntu and never looked back. I do a clean install every year or two of the latest version. The trick is to use compatible hardware. I gave them my old ThinkPads.

Maybe a full reinstall gives less regressions than upgrading, but I didn't have the time to do full reinstalls.

Oh, that's the most likely cause of your problems then. There are all kinds of issues with upgrading Ubuntu installs. I always do a clean install for that reason, never an upgrade.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#75

Post by lake99 »

klibertp wrote: post #68
lake99 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users? What do you suppose will happen to machines of users who rely on just the default software for "simple things like red eye removal"? Of course, I'm not partial to Linux in this case. BSD and Mac users don't have the virus and trojan troubles that most Windows users are plagued with.

> What do you suppose will happen to machines of users who rely on just the default software for "simple things like red eye removal"? Um, they won't get infected with viruses or trojans? But what do you count as default? Random, preinstalled crapware from HP, Dell and others or Windows components? If the former, then I saw similarly bloated and useless versions of these for Linux, too. I'm a FreeBSD user and I love…

I don't use *ubuntu myself, but this is what I install on friends' PCs (Ubuntu earlier, Xubuntu now). By "simple things like red eye removal", I was referring to something the original author wrote. I then teach them how to add/remove software themselves, and to click on the occasional software update notifications. Life becomes a lot easier for me after that.

I have seen disk space problems on Macs though.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#76

Post by lake99 »

klibertp wrote: post #65
lake99 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most absurd things seem "obvious" to you. What is obvious is that you have not had to support friends who keep getting viruses, keep running out of free space on their massive disks, keep complaining about slower and slower performance.

I had the pleasure of supporting such people - believe it or not, they used different OSes, from old Windows versions to shiny new Mac OS (which, I admit, I couldn't help with) and they all had the issues you talk about - running out of free space and worsening over time performance and more. It makes no difference which OS do you use if you have fifteen copies of the same 10Mb bmp image in different places. It also…

When I wrote about disk space problems, I did not refer to user content. I agree that there is no easy fix for people keeping fifteen copies of bmps, etc. Instead, I was talking about disks getting filled by OS components, and by other software made by Microsoft, Apple and other large companies. This is something I have not seen on the Linux distros that I have come across.

As for "sufficiently non-tech-inclined user WILL kill his OS rather sooner than later", well... some OSes and distros are more resilient to abuse than others. Ubuntu seems to be one of the best ones around. I'm an Arch-er myself, but that's because I'd rather give up some resilience to stay on the cutting edge.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#77

Post by lake99 »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #56
neya wrote: post #49

I'm so glad that someone is writing about this issue. It is important to understand that 12.04 and 12.10 both SUCK. Here's why: Previously I was on 10.04, the best thing that happened to me ever. Boot speed was amazing and shutdown speed was the fastest among the three OS'es I had then (Windows Vista, OSX, Ubuntu 10.04). Then something happened. I purchased the Windows 8 Upgrade edition and I had to partition my driv…

It saddens me that people who liked earlier Ubuntu releases jump straight to Windows or OS X, without trying Debian or Linux Mint first. They both offer the good parts of Ubuntu, without the junk and without the poor experience.

I hate everything about Unity too.

Mint is good. But if one is already on Ubuntu, it doesn't even take a re-install to convert the machine to Kubuntu or Xubuntu.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#78

Post by FireBeyond »

neya wrote: post #61
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It saddens me that people who liked earlier Ubuntu releases jump straight to Windows or OS X, without trying Debian or Linux Mint first. They both offer the good parts of Ubuntu, without the junk and without the poor experience.

http://linuxmint.com/ If this is the official website of the distribution you're talking about, then the site doesn't inspire confidence as much as the original Ubuntu site does. Anyway, I'll give it a shot, thanks :)

It's not the best website, certainly, and it's not the "perfect OS".

But Linux Mint, to me, has always been my favorite derivative of Ubuntu (as someone who is not particularly keen on Ubuntu natively, and definitely dislikes Unity).

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#79

Post by lazyjones »

3amOpsGuy wrote: post #62
lazyjones wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your aggression. He chose to pay $100 - or whatever Windows 7 costs now - so that is the investment he needed to make to fix his problems. Fixing it in Ubuntu might be a lot more expensive to him (or impossible due to limited technical skills). What is the evil he has done now? He made a sane decision and I understand him well.

>> I don't understand your aggression. It's easy, someone shares with you a product of their hard work, for free, and if you then choose not to use it that's entirely fine. If however you choose to snipe at hard work, you deservedly attract criticism in the strongest terms. A much more constructive response which would attract high praise could be any of: A) learn how to and then fix it yourself, share this improveme…

> If however you choose to snipe at hard work, you deservedly attract criticism in the strongest terms.

That's a strange attitude. A user does not thrive on your hard work, he uses your product. He cannot judge (nor should he) whether hard work or sloppy, unmotivated fumbling was involved in creating it. If the product does not work properly, criticizing it in a civil manner is a perfectly fine thing to do, while snapping back at him in a "fix it yourself or STFU" manner is a display of bad manners.

Re: Bye Bye Ubuntu, a sad Christmas

#80

Post by FireBeyond »

w1ntermute wrote: post #15

A lot of people doing this will quickly learn that Windows is not perfect either. On my Windows box, Chrome regularly crashes, the NVIDIA driver control software has a memory leak that causes it to balloon to using 3+ GB of memory, and DirectX 10 didn't work at all (games crashed) until a recent update. There are also intermittent problems with the screen going blank, requiring me to Remote Desktop in and reboot the…

So, on Linux, how would you have dealt with:

- a Chrome crash - memory leaks in your video driver software

for two of your examples?

"no way ... to communicate with the developers": http://connect.microsoft.com/

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