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Linux is Not Windows

linux.oneandoneis2.org

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Re: Linux is Not Windows

#51

Post by ugh »

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…

Tough luck. Life isn’t fair.

Linux has to solve this problem, excuses be damned (and it has become quite good at solving this problem – most hardware just works).

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#52

Post by cschwarm »

num1 wrote: post #49
Mithrandir wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people (meaning the 'general population', 'mainstream users', and 'average Tom, Dick, or Harry') who aren't GNU/Linux users have either: a) Never heard of G/L b) Don't know how to install it; don't care; 'Windows/Mac is good enough for me' c) Have had compatibility problems with it when they tried Of course, the idea of general population depends on who you interact with the most, but let's assume general means…

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.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#53

Post by pistacchio »

beloch wrote: post #18

The biggest problems preventing Linux from gaining mainstream market share have nothing do with the actual software. 1. MS and Apple are both fantastic marketers (although Apple has been doing better than MS as of late) and throw massive amounts of cash at promoting their OS's. Nobody is doing this for Linux. 2. The average customer is more inclined to trust something they saw plastic people hawking on TV than someth…

no, the biggest problem is that i never got the extra keys (eject, volume mute...) of my dell to work under linux, nor the second earplug output, and it pissed me off because i actually paid for them. also, the day i was like "you know what? i want to compose some music again, maybe i'll regain the interest" i was not able to find a semi-decent audio program for linux. this stands true for the day i was like "the new wacom bamboo tablet is so cool! i want it, who knows what i can do with that and photoshop".

i installed windows back and in a day i had all my extra keys, the second plug, photoshop, cubase and my wacom working.

i'm on a mac now, and they make the software for the hardware and the hardware for the software and i'm on the rich side of the market so adobe and wacom make software for my os of choice.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#54

Post by Symmetry »

xentronium wrote: post #43
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #10

The problem that I continue to see is, people have this image of Linux and the "Linux Desktop". That image, that tons of "hacker" types that love OS X seem to have, hasn't changed in years and is extremely out of date. I hear people talk about problems or applications that haven't been standard linux fair for years now, but they haven't tried it and by-golly they're unbelievably attached to those memories they have o…

> My phone works as a modem out of the box in Ubuntu. I can do internet connection sharing to my Xbox in less than 5 clicks (it required registry editing and manual editting of UNIX files in use in OS X), and I've yet to get my phone working as a modem in OS X, period. And you still can't watch video without tearing on multiple displays setup :( (You have to disable one of the displays in driver settings) You can't h…

Arguably, GNOME / KDE / XFCE are all worse than Windows Explorer or OS X default window manager.

Really? I've always thought of good window managers as one of the big selling points of the Linux experience. Moving and resizing windows just seems so much more cumbersome to me when I'm using either. Perhaps you meant to talk about the file manager?

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#56

Post by mdaniel »

akdubya wrote: post #42
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…

"On my minimal Debian box, you point your web browser at http://localhost:631 and click shit and then the printer works." I just learned something.

Yes, you just learned the very thing that is under debate here: that unless your mom trolls though HN discussions, she would never guess that opening a web browser and navigating to that cryptic URL is the mechanism for installing a printer.

Oh, sorry, I left out the "click shit" part. Do some of that, too.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#57

Post by idonthack »

xentronium wrote: post #43
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #10

The problem that I continue to see is, people have this image of Linux and the "Linux Desktop". That image, that tons of "hacker" types that love OS X seem to have, hasn't changed in years and is extremely out of date. I hear people talk about problems or applications that haven't been standard linux fair for years now, but they haven't tried it and by-golly they're unbelievably attached to those memories they have o…

> My phone works as a modem out of the box in Ubuntu. I can do internet connection sharing to my Xbox in less than 5 clicks (it required registry editing and manual editting of UNIX files in use in OS X), and I've yet to get my phone working as a modem in OS X, period. And you still can't watch video without tearing on multiple displays setup :( (You have to disable one of the displays in driver settings) You can't h…

>Arguably, font rendering is still awful, and so are default fonts in all the distros.

In comparison to what? Cleartype on windows is absolute shit, and OSX just looks blurry. In Linux I can tweak the aliasing and hinting options to be the way I like them.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#58

Post by idonthack »

mdaniel wrote: post #56
akdubya wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On my minimal Debian box, you point your web browser at http://localhost:631 and click shit and then the printer works." I just learned something.

Yes, you just learned the very thing that is under debate here: that unless your mom trolls though HN discussions, she would never guess that opening a web browser and navigating to that cryptic URL is the mechanism for installing a printer. Oh, sorry, I left out the "click shit" part. Do some of that, too.

That's the configuration mechanism in a minimal system where just about everything is disabled. In any kind of system that a novice would be using, it shows up in all the expected places.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#59

Post by gmartres »

mdaniel wrote: post #56
akdubya wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On my minimal Debian box, you point your web browser at http://localhost:631 and click shit and then the printer works." I just learned something.

Yes, you just learned the very thing that is under debate here: that unless your mom trolls though HN discussions, she would never guess that opening a web browser and navigating to that cryptic URL is the mechanism for installing a printer. Oh, sorry, I left out the "click shit" part. Do some of that, too.

More importantly, you left out the "minimal Debian box" part. With modern desktop environments, you can just plug your printer, wait a few seconds for it to tell you it's installed, and your done. Way easier than on any other OS.

Re: Linux is Not Windows

#60

Post by deadcyclo »

It's really interesting how the article reads as a reply to (most of) the comments here on hackernews and not the other way around. I have a feeling that a lot of people commenting here simply read the title and nothing more. Otherwise, why would you put forth an "argument" which is exactly one of the arguments discussed in the article as false? I'm probably going to get heat for posting this, but I feel it's kind of ironic. Normally HN gives me a good extension to the article in question: Other ideas, other points of view and expands on the article. Not so here...
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