Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Abhijit Menon-Sen a...@toroid.org wrote: At 2010-03-03 16:14:51 +0100, che...@gmail.com wrote: I was pretty much happy with Linux usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP machine that ostensibly supports Linux. Well, that's depressing. I'm wrestling with making wireless (Atheros Tell me about it - the most common suggestion in official Linux documentation was to give up and stick in a USB sound card. ... WTFF? When give up and surrender is the official answer to difficult problems I am not impressed. No, but then I'm always looking for an answer that is fast, cheap, and understandable, so this sort of solution works for me. My laptop has a PCMCIA wireless card because all of the geeks in the local Linux group advised me it was a better approach than hacking my way into the onboard wireless. I am very familiar with the way FLOSS works, the evils of software licensing, the shoddy practices of Realtek and cheap Chinese manufacturing in general yada yada yada True. If only that helped! I think I should move back to Debian where the community has some clue since newbies rarely stumble upon it. That's been my approach. I have an odd assortment of generally older units, and want to run the same OS on all of them. Despite trying everything my local geek squad recommended, only Debian would load and run in everything I have. I also am quite fond of the way Debian Stable is well back from the bleeding edge. I'm no gamer or programmer, I just want to use the stupid machines to get some work done. Last year's tech is actually better at that than the new stuff. Now, if we could just get OpenOffice fixed, I'd be a happy man. Regards, Bruce
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Fri, Mar 05, 2010 at 07:18:15AM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: In my opinion, what will bury Windows is not Linux (at least, not directly) but trojans and botnets [1]. If this could happen, this would have happened a long while ago. And come on, how else is Skynet supposed to bootstrap quickly, other than annexing machines on the global network? At least one of two things will have to happen, for the above scenario to come to pass: 1. Microsoft (or anyone else, for that matter) will have to be forced to accept some legal liability for the porousness of their software; That is a very big conditional. It would be much easier to make people who deploy insecure system (any insecure system, not necessarily out of Redmond, though it is the most egregious example) personally culpable. 2. The _public perception_ of the software maker's role in putting _the public's_ personal information at risk needs to change. The trend is still the other way. Especially the younger generation (the fools) seems to think that it's safe to be transparent. It will take a world war or a totalitarian state to teach them their errors by way of school of hard knocks, I guess. Udhay [1] Too rushed for time to dig up the link that claims some two-thirds of all Windows PCs are not under their owners' control, but I'm sure Suresh will have it handy. :) The numbers are somewhat between one quarter and one half, IIRC. Of course it depends, your local environment could be much better, or much worse. Just get snort for your local firewall, get an oinkcode and the free rule subscriptions (or the 30 USD/year subscription) and look at the alerts. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
Eugen Leitl [05/03/10 14:06 +0100]: [1] Too rushed for time to dig up the link that claims some two-thirds of all Windows PCs are not under their owners' control, but I'm sure Suresh will have it handy. :) The numbers are somewhat between one quarter and one half, IIRC. Of course it depends, your local environment could be much better, or much worse. The number varies, per network. Just for bots that send spam - By domain (ISP) - http://cbl.abuseat.org/domain.html [bsnl and airtel 1st and 3rd] By country - http://cbl.abuseat.org/country.html India shining Total flow statistics - awesomely high. And 7 to 8 million botted IPs at any time in the CBL http://cbl.abuseat.org/totalflow.html
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Kiran Jonnalagadda j...@pobox.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.comwrote: Not that I don't have one lying around, and my favorite HK retailer dealextreme.com even sells one for $2 (incl. free shipping), I just lost several hours and $10 on a trial order at that site. Wow! Haha, successfully infected :-) Your experience isn't unusual by any means, I believe that any honest to goodness geek should not be without easy access to cheap Chinese manufacturing :-) Cheeni
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.com wrote: Aside: I don't know about user-friendly, but Ubuntu is certainly becoming more like Windows—half the time, the solution to weird problems is to reboot. PEBKAC - the same clueless user = same idiotic approach I disagree. 5-10 years ago, I had a pretty good idea of all the moving parts behind my desktop. When something broke (which was often) a bit of deduction would point me at the solution. Nowadays, there are a whole bunch of things working under the covers to produce the just works effect. There are too many to keep in my head and keeping track of all the possible permutations of problems is downright impossible. Frequently, a reboot is the quickest way to return to a known good state. -- b
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: As the one who got into that mammoth linux on the desktop fight with atul chitnis a decade back .. linux is getting there and I am glad to see it. It is still not there as much as I would like in some critical business productivity areas - office suites and such. That is of course linux on the desktop, its still in a class of its own as a server OS The last few years have seen one trend - the hardware manufacturers viz. OEMs and the OEMs who also do peripherals taking enough care to see that bits that enable their hardware to work on Linux are pushed in the appropriate places. Having made that grossly generalized statement I'd also admit that there exist regions of problems in cases of, say, PCMCIA cards, USB Modems and so forth. However, the earlier annoyances of printer drivers, scanner drivers etc have been mostly attended to. There are desktop areas like Bluetooth, tethering, synchronization etc which have chinks. However, the actual desktop as a metaphor for computing workspace might be up for a revision. The main worry could be whether the diverse number of projects that make up the whole Linux thing can catch up or, keep pace. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On 04-Mar-10, at 1:47 PM, Biju Chacko wrote: [snip] I disagree. 5-10 years ago, I had a pretty good idea of all the moving parts behind my desktop. When something broke (which was often) a bit of deduction would point me at the solution. Nowadays, there are a whole bunch of things working under the covers to produce the just works effect. There are too many to keep in my head and keeping track of all the possible permutations of problems is downright impossible. I agree with this. Ever since DCOP/DBUS became the backbone of the deskop infrastructure, the number of inter-component interactions has blossomed geometrically, and the documentation for the interfaces is basically non-existent across the board. It is becoming impossible for a single person to get their head around all the bits that are working together to provide a given bit of desktop functionality. Coupled with the upheaval going on in graphics and audio stacks right now, it's hard for even relatively experienced users to troubleshoot regressions unless they closely follow development lists and release changelogs for each major component of the software stack. -Taj.
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Thursday 04 March 2010 06:53 PM, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: On 04-Mar-10, at 1:47 PM, Biju Chacko wrote: [snip] I disagree. 5-10 years ago, I had a pretty good idea of all the moving parts behind my desktop. When something broke (which was often) a bit of deduction would point me at the solution. Nowadays, there are a whole bunch of things working under the covers to produce the just works effect. There are too many to keep in my head and keeping track of all the possible permutations of problems is downright impossible. I agree with this. Ever since DCOP/DBUS became the backbone of the deskop infrastructure, the number of inter-component interactions has blossomed geometrically, and the documentation for the interfaces is basically non-existent across the board. It is becoming impossible for a single person to get their head around all the bits that are working together to provide a given bit of desktop functionality. Coupled with the upheaval going on in graphics and audio stacks right now, it's hard for even relatively experienced users to troubleshoot regressions unless they closely follow development lists and release changelogs for each major component of the software stack. I don't really see any disagreement, really. The idea of something being easier to use cannot exist without the category of persons for whom it is so. D-Bus *does* make it easier for many programmers by allowing them to worry less about inter-operation (as you note). For other programmers, it hides the interactions. For non-techie users, the geometric blossoming of inter-component interaction might be a boon. And with greater complexity (which cannot be easy to measure, but perhaps the number of lines of code could be a proxy?), it may be inevitable that a single person, howsoever technically adept, may not be able to get an intuitive grasp of things. As a non-techie, I find that it is often easier to solve problems with FOSS software than with non-FOSS software. And, it doesn't seem as though the left hand of Windows 7 knew/knows what the right hand was/is doing either.[1] Could it be that that is a good thing? [1] http://tr.im/QBAx And, after all, when did we see the last Renaissance man? (And whatever happened to the Renaissance women?) signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On 4 March 2010 20:06, Pranesh Prakash the.solips...@gmail.com wrote: (And whatever happened to the Renaissance women?) Don't know about the Renaissance, but if it's Baroque women you're looking for, try an image search for BBW. Wouldn't recommend it, though. Ram
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
Thank you all. :) I am intrigued (sometimes confused) by the debate on this subject. I trust that there will be more. But, in the meantime, fwiw let me define a few perspectives as I see them. Some of the technical language is obscure for me. But the basic fact, from my angle, is that I am looking at this from the point of view of the end user. Who isn't, and shouldn't be, interested in the depth of the technologies behind the manageability of what he or she wants to do. Most people around the world believe that everything is microsoft. They don't know what system they are using. What they have is it. They are not aware of any other system and they don't care. Much to their own trouble and disadvantage. (Some are with apple-mac and they are not interested in any alternatives - if they are deeply into graphics, or other special applications, maybe they are right). Operating systems (especially some applications, such as word processors and office suites) are *not* mutually compatible (or not as much as they should). Basic Unix systems have been around for forty years. Specifically Debian - it's no coincidence that comparatively recent Linux releases, such as Ubuntu, are Debian-based. Good Linux releases have been relatively easy to *use* for several years. But very difficult (for anyone not good at Unix, like most technical services today) to upgrade, install, manage software etc. There *has* been a major change in 2009. More needs to be done, but it's a big step in the right direction. If a specific machine doesn't support a good opensource release, the blame is on the machine and its nearsighted manufacturer. It's less expensive to replace it than to bear the cost of a proprietary os and it's messy upgrades. With windows getting worse all the time, good linux releases are *easier* (as well as better) than the crap that 90 % of users worldwide are uncomfortably living with. Are there new operating systems that may be even better? Maybe, we shall see. As long as they are opensource (and compatible) the more the merrier - though we don't really need too many confusing options, especially those that are still in a beta-testing stage. (Google is getting into almost everything - e.g. the Chrome browser is working nicely, though I am not ready to give up Firefox - but I am not sure that we need a new bicycle or toothbrush generated by a diversification orgy). I am not particularly interested in the appearance of the desktop. Unfortunately I am in the habit, like most people - and occasionally I have a bit of fun messing around with icons etc. But sometimes I dream of going back to the command line - and damn the mouse. That is unrealistic (for some uses the mouse actually works better) but I am really doing my best to re-learn how to use the keyboard more often. As I see it, metaphoric guis are not the issue. Well working operating systems with easily manageable interfaces are what matters. Has the time come, at last, to bury windows, the microsoft monopoly and the whole idea of proprietary systems? As far as I can see, the answer is yes. But very few people around the world are aware of this opportunity. Where am I wrong? Cheers Giancarlo P.S. That the solution is often to reboot has been true, as far as I can tell, for a long time and with all sorts of machines. Now that a variety of appliances have become computers (including telephones, mobile or otherwise, and television sets) it happens that the way of correcting a misfunction is to turn off the electricity for a few minutes.
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On 04-Mar-10, at 8:06 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote: [snip] I don't really see any disagreement, really. The idea of something being easier to use cannot exist without the category of persons for whom it is so. D-Bus *does* make it easier for many programmers by allowing them to worry less about inter-operation (as you note). For other programmers, it hides the interactions. For non-techie users, the geometric blossoming of inter-component interaction might be a boon. Don't get me wrong, I've been a big fan of these desktop IPC systems from the start. It's just that developers, particularly new ones, don't have a good set of best practices to which to refer when they start designing IPC interfaces for their applications. What ends up happening far too often is a hodgepodge of volatile system state, volatile UI state, persistent UI preferences and the persistent meat of the app's domain model (basically, the data that the user actually cares about) being exposed through far-too-coupled interfaces. I'd give specific examples but I'll just end up in trouble. And, after all, when did we see the last Renaissance man? (And whatever happened to the Renaissance women?) I can't speak for other projects due to lack of exposure, but KDE at least is held together by the patient guidance of a handful of such unsung Renaissance persons. If you want to harm KDE, pay off David Faure (to name one of my personal KDE heroes who never makes the news sites) to stop working on it.* -Taj. * Please don't
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 05:32:45PM +0100, Giancarlo Livraghi wrote: Some of the technical language is obscure for me. But the basic fact, from my angle, is that I am looking at this from the point of view of the end user. Who isn't, and shouldn't be, interested in the depth of the technologies behind the manageability of what he or she wants to do. How I wish Linux was less popular. The mainstream crapification forces me into looking into *BSD and other roads even less taken while having less time or inclination to do so. The evangelism is for the birds. If they want cake, they know where to find it.
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
And, after all, when did we see the last Renaissance man? (And whatever happened to the Renaissance women?) They are alive an kicking. Though invisible in the overwhelming flow of commonplace idiocy. One called me by phone, out of the blue, a few minutes ago. She read some things in my website (as well as my book on the power of stupidity) and wanted my support to her views - which I gave her wholeheartedly. She is Romanian and working in a small company in Vicenza (Italy). Ganging up with a younger colleague (also a woman - with a different cultural background) to try to inject some good sense into their management about how to develop a website. I wish them both the best of luck. Not everybody is stupid - or careless. Cheers Giancarlo
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
Giancarlo Livraghi wrote, [on 3/4/2010 10:02 PM]: Has the time come, at last, to bury windows, the microsoft monopoly and the whole idea of proprietary systems? As far as I can see, the answer is yes. But very few people around the world are aware of this opportunity. In my opinion, what will bury Windows is not Linux (at least, not directly) but trojans and botnets [1]. At least one of two things will have to happen, for the above scenario to come to pass: 1. Microsoft (or anyone else, for that matter) will have to be forced to accept some legal liability for the porousness of their software; 2. The _public perception_ of the software maker's role in putting _the public's_ personal information at risk needs to change. Udhay [1] Too rushed for time to dig up the link that claims some two-thirds of all Windows PCs are not under their owners' control, but I'm sure Suresh will have it handy. :) -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.com wrote: Not that I don't have one lying around, and my favorite HK retailer dealextreme.com even sells one for $2 (incl. free shipping), I just lost several hours and $10 on a trial order at that site. Wow!
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Kiran Jonnalagadda j...@pobox.com wrote: I just lost several hours and $10 on a trial order at that site. Wow! No kidding! Everything is exactly in the eh-who-cares-its-so-cheap sweet spot. -- Balaji
[silk] a big step for linux?
I have deliberately waited some months before raising this subject because I wanted to be reasonably sure to know what I am talking about. But I am more and more convinced that something quite relevant has happened. I have been using linux for only five years (currently ubuntu 9.10). Quite happy with it, except for the difficulties in managing the software for people (like me) who are not familiar enough with unix codes. (And a few bugs in openoffice that aren't yet completely solved). I leave it to technology experts to decide if the big change was in April 2009 with Ubuntu release 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope or in October with 9.10 Karmic Koala (we shall see what will happen with 10.04 Lucid Lynx in April 2010). And how much of this is due to specific releases or a more general improvement of linux (or broadly opensource) as a whole. The fact, as I understand it, is that unix has existed for forty years, linux for twenty, but they were for the experts. Now it's easy for everybody. And that is a *big* change. Strangely enough, nobody (including penguin advocates) seems to have noticed how important this can be. Any comments? (Irony is well accepted, and of course I stand to be corrected. But no flames, please). Cheers Giancarlo
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 7:41 PM, Giancarlo Livraghi g...@gandalf.it wrote: [snip] I leave it to technology experts to decide if the big change was in April 2009 with Ubuntu release 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope or in October with 9.10 Karmic Koala (we shall see what will happen with 10.04 Lucid Lynx in April 2010). And how much of this is due to specific releases or a more general improvement of linux (or broadly opensource) as a whole. There has been a significant improvement upstream in terms of Linux plumbing viz. Hal, udev, Xorg, PulseAudio, Cairo/Harfbuzz, NetworkManager being a few examples which has ensured that the desktop experience keeps getting better. If you start looking at distributions which have had releases starting late 2008 packaging more or less the latest builds available upstream for the components, you would see a remarkable difference in terms of ease of use. There still remains the question of whether the Linux desktop is going to be around for long as a practice or, even a metaphor. Both GNOME and KDE are going ahead with changing what was and, experimenting with what might be. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 03:11:39PM +0100, Giancarlo Livraghi wrote: The fact, as I understand it, is that unix has existed for forty years, linux for twenty, but they were for the experts. Now it's easy for everybody. And that is a *big* change. Strangely enough, nobody (including penguin advocates) seems to have noticed how important this can be. I must admit I missed the big discontinuity in FLOSS usability. If anything interesting has happened recently it's the critical mass (could be a flash in the pan, though) achieved in open fabrication, particularly self-assistive rapid prototyping fabbing. People have been waiting for this for decades, but now we could see it starting to really happening.
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 6:11 AM, Giancarlo Livraghi g...@gandalf.it wrote: The fact, as I understand it, is that unix has existed for forty years, linux for twenty, but they were for the experts. Now it's easy for everybody. And that is a *big* change. Strangely enough, nobody (including penguin advocates) seems to have noticed how important this can be. IMO, it has been a Long March to Userfriendliness. In the late 90's every year was the year Linux was going to make it big in the desktop. A decade later it has still not happened and probably not going to happen in the way people expect it to happen. There are many reasons why Linux has become much more userfriendly. Device manufacturers wisening up and working actively to have drivers for Linux, the move away from ISA to PCI (and USB and UPnP), the rock-solid stability that Debian brings to the distribution space, the nicer uniform UI that GNOME and KDE have, etc. The money Shuttleworth invested in making Ubuntu is just one of the final steps (agreed, it is a pretty big step). Thaths -- Marge, you being a cop makes you the man! Which makes me the woman... and I have no interest in that, besides wearing the occasional underwear, which as we discussed is strictly a comfort thing. -- Homer J. Simpson Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 19:41, Giancarlo Livraghi g...@gandalf.it wrote: The fact, as I understand it, is that unix has existed for forty years, linux for twenty, but they were for the experts. Now it's easy for everybody. And that is a *big* change. Strangely enough, nobody (including penguin advocates) seems to have noticed how important this can be. I believe that the change happened when a bunch of folks decided to focus explicitly on Linux for human beings, and to focus not only on user interface guidelines, but on real-world usability: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/09/canonical-to-fund-upstream-linux-usability-improvements.ars My parents use Ubuntu (except when using Google voice chat), and have no hassles whatsoever. In fact, some things that used to bother them (such as the repeated notifications from the firewall and the antivirus) are now gone. But I still feel Ubuntu (and Linux desktop environments in general) have quite a way to go before they are easy to use. Do note that such pronouncements about Linux shedding its for the experts tag were being made in 2003 itself: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/83708/Study_Linux_nears_Windows_XP_usability
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
sankarshan [03/03/10 20:10 +0530]: There has been a significant improvement upstream in terms of Linux plumbing viz. Hal, udev, Xorg, PulseAudio, Cairo/Harfbuzz, NetworkManager being a few examples which has ensured that the desktop experience keeps getting better. If you start looking at distributions As the one who got into that mammoth linux on the desktop fight with atul chitnis a decade back .. linux is getting there and I am glad to see it. It is still not there as much as I would like in some critical business productivity areas - office suites and such. That is of course linux on the desktop, its still in a class of its own as a server OS
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote: People have been waiting for this for decades, but now we could see it starting to really happening. I don't deny the advances made, I was pretty much happy with Linux usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP machine that ostensibly supports Linux. 2 whole days - on a machine that is supposed to support Linux from a major hardware manufacturer. Looking closer at HP's documentation - it supports Novell Linux only, not any ol' Linux. Ubuntu / ALSA documentation was pitifully poor for debugging - every effort seems to have been made to make ALSA the one true solution, but if ALSA doesn't work for you then you are dead in the water. I ended up hacking the device driver to get it working - no better than 1997. Cheeni Unhappy with the state of the world since 1978
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 03, 2010 at 04:14:51PM +0100, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: I don't deny the advances made, I was pretty much happy with Linux I wasn't talking about FLOSS, but the equivalent process happening to the atoms, not just bits. usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP I try to studiously avoid anything Realtek. Audio and NICs particularly. I ended up hacking the device driver to get it working - no better than 1997. After 1.0 (when it got X) Linux was perfectly useful as a desktop. i486/ET4000 was a quite performant system, at the time. -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a http://leitl.org __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
At 2010-03-03 16:14:51 +0100, che...@gmail.com wrote: I was pretty much happy with Linux usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP machine that ostensibly supports Linux. Well, that's depressing. I'm wrestling with making wireless (Atheros AR928X) and sound (RealTek 272) work together on an Acer Aspire 5532. The older kernel breaks wireless and half-breaks sound; the newer one breaks sound altogether but wireless works fine. Aside: I don't know about user-friendly, but Ubuntu is certainly becoming more like Windows—half the time, the solution to weird problems is to reboot. -- ams
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wednesday 03 March 2010 08:44 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: I don't deny the advances made, I was pretty much happy with Linux usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP machine that ostensibly supports Linux. Well, a new Lenovo laptop my organization bought came with Windows 7 pre-installed from an authorized distributor. Soundcard didn't work. Distributor's technician was called. Sound driver for Windows 7 are not yet available, he pronounced before proceeding to install Vista. Drivers are very hit-and-miss, I feel. In many things (video + sound cards, scanners, wireless) there is a lot of catching up to do. Other things (printers) work superbly. Adding a network printer in Ubuntu is a hundred times easier than doing so in XP or Vista (haven't tried 7). Cheeni Unhappy with the state of the world since 1978 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Abhijit Menon-Sen a...@toroid.org wrote: At 2010-03-03 16:14:51 +0100, che...@gmail.com wrote: I was pretty much happy with Linux usability too until last month when I had to spend 2 whole days getting sound to work on a realtek chipset that shipped on a HP machine that ostensibly supports Linux. Well, that's depressing. I'm wrestling with making wireless (Atheros Tell me about it - the most common suggestion in official Linux documentation was to give up and stick in a USB sound card. Not that I don't have one lying around, and my favorite HK retailer dealextreme.com even sells one for $2 (incl. free shipping), but WTFF? Seriously? When give up and surrender is the official answer to difficult problems I am not impressed. AR928X) and sound (RealTek 272) work together on an Acer Aspire 5532. The older kernel breaks wireless and half-breaks sound; the newer one breaks sound altogether but wireless works fine. I am very familiar with the way FLOSS works, the evils of software licensing, the shoddy practices of Realtek and cheap Chinese manufacturing in general yada yada yada, but when I wanted to shake a fist at someone in apoplectic rage for wasting my time I swear Linux even for me was the most convenient target. Aside: I don't know about user-friendly, but Ubuntu is certainly becoming more like Windows—half the time, the solution to weird problems is to reboot. PEBKAC - the same clueless user = same idiotic approach I think I should move back to Debian where the community has some clue since newbies rarely stumble upon it. Cheeni
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wednesday 03 Mar 2010 7:41:39 pm Giancarlo Livraghi wrote: Any comments? I have used Linux for a decade now and I am about as far from being a techie as anyone can be. It was Udhay who infected me. Linux has been easy to use for the non techie but informed user for about 6-7 years now. I always have a dual boot set up because I do a lot of video recording and editing and I am currently too accustomed to the Windows set up for that work - but that is set to change as analog video sources die out. I use Linux 95% of the time. It never crashes (well rarely) and my financial transactionn (online banking and share trading) are carefree and trouble free. shiv
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
On Wednesday 03 March 2010 10:03 PM, ss wrote: I have used Linux for a decade now and I am about as far from being a techie as anyone can be. It was Udhay who infected me. Linux has been easy to use for the non techie but informed user for about 6-7 years now. While I can guess that you use KDE (from your MUA header), I'm curious which distro you use. - Pranesh signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [silk] a big step for linux?
At 6:46 AM -0800 3/3/10, Thaths wrote: On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 6:11 AM, Giancarlo Livraghi g...@gandalf.it wrote: The fact, as I understand it, is that unix has existed for forty years, linux for twenty, but they were for the experts. I've been using Unix for 34 years, and it's always been easy to *use*. If you don't mind working in the shell, that is. Installing and configuring it, however, has always been a royal pain. I bought my first Mac because OSX is built on top of BSD, and I was tired of Microsoft hiding things from me on my own computer. OSX works great out of the box, and you can tinker with the Unix under the hood pretty easily as well. Software packages downloaded from the network mostly just work. So, Unix has been for the masses for at least 10 years, OSX being pretty much plain vanilla BSD Unix plus a really fancy desktop. It is hands-down the easiest and most reliable operating system I've ever used, particularly Snow Leopard. Linux is definitely getting there, too. My daughter has spent the past 5 years or so installing Linuces on various hardware configurations (it's her hobby). She's tried pretty much every Linux distro on old sparcs and x86 boxes and Macintoshes. She used to have to give up certain configurations (we never got anything to work on the Sun 3, for example) and write certain distros off on certain combinations of hardware. Recently, however, her emphasis has changed from Which distro can I get to run acceptably on this hardware? to Which distro do I prefer on this hardware? I bought an eeepc a few months ago and put the netbook respin of Ubuntu on it. It was enchanting watching it install and configure itself and then *work* without the need to slog through configuration files trying to figure out why the keyboard or touch pad or speakers or network were apparently hooked up to a coke machine somewhere in Kansas. I spent the first few weeks waiting for something major to break so I could fix it, and watching with amazement while it connected to wireless networks as if by magic everywhere I went. I am easily amused by things like this, because I used computers back when hardly anything worked well, let alone out of the box. Now it's easy for everybody. And that is a *big* change. Strangely enough, nobody (including penguin advocates) seems to have noticed how important this can be. We're still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Seriously, though, I've always found Unix easier to use than Windows. It just wasn't as pretty and the documentation wasn't as friendly. The truly awful frustrating system problems I've had have always been on Windows, and I'm still annoyed at how difficult Microsoft makes networking configuration. Networking is easier on the eeepc under Ubuntu and GNOME than it was under Windows 7. And, with a netbook, wireless networking is something you want to do a lot. It's the whole point of the machine. There are many reasons why Linux has become much more userfriendly. Device manufacturers wisening up and working actively to have drivers for Linux, the move away from ISA to PCI (and USB and UPnP), the rock-solid stability that Debian brings to the distribution space, the nicer uniform UI that GNOME and KDE have, etc. The money Shuttleworth invested in making Ubuntu is just one of the final steps (agreed, it is a pretty big step). It seems like the step that's pulling all the bits and pieces together into the seamless whole that naive users find so reassuring. I have to admit that it's purely luxurious to work with either GNOME or KDE as they are now. They work nicely, they're pretty intuitive, and you can still pop up a shell if anything goes wrong that you need to fix. A few years ago, I wouldn't have recommended Linux to anyone who didn't have a decent technical background. Now, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu to anyone. Microsoft seems to be crumbling slowly, and Apple has always (since the release of the original Macintosh in 1984, anyway) been way too fond of vertical monopoly for my tastes. -- Heather Madrone (heat...@madrone.com) http://www.madrone.com http://www.sunsplinter.blogspot.com I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me access to the source code.
