15 replies to this topic

[arfink]

So some of you may have seen my prayer intention thread. I didn't get into details there because I didn't want people to TL;DR and then not actually say a couple aves or whatever. So in this thread I will get into details, in case someone cares.

I am upgrading my OS to Ubuntu 12.04, which is known as an LTS version. That means my revision (once I finish upgrading) will be supported for several years before I have to upgrade again. It will be very stable and suitable for doing important computery work where uptime is critical and loss of functionality would be disastrous.

Unfortunately for me, I need to migrate EVERYTHING from my old version of Ubuntu to the new one. Also, I managed to actually screw up the new installation pretty badly. My original plan was as follows:

1- Make a complete backup of my entire original installation by imaging the main hard drive onto a second hard drive which I installed in my computer for this purpose.
2- Install the new 12.04 version onto the original hard drive.
3- Re-install my applications.
4- Transport my data back over to the new system.

Unfortunately, #2 got screwed up. The new installer for 12.04 selected my backup drive as the location for installation. This ruined my backup, which had taken almost 2.5 hours to make in the first place. It also (somehow) made my first drive unbootable. croutons. I initially thought I had lost everything and just about had a heart attack.

Thankfully the data was still intact on the main drive, and right now I am making another backup to an entirely different third hard drive, which I am going to physically remove from the computer before I reinstall 12.04 to prevent it from overwriting my precious data.

After that I'll have to start fixing some of the glaring problems that 12.04 will have for me, first of which is the new Unity interface breaking everything. I could seriously kill something right now.

[AnneLine]

Sounds very terrifying. Praying for you as you back up and restart....

[mysisterisalittlesister]

O.o

[Innocent]

Prayers for you. Nothing else is as time consuming and exasperating as system administration, to my knowledge.

After fiddling with Gnome3 for a long while, I finally switched to LXDE for most of my work.

Perhaps I'll switch back to Gnome3.4 once I upgrade to Fedora17.

Is it absolutely essential for you to use Unity?

[arfink]

Prayers for you. Nothing else is as time consuming and exasperating as system administration, to my knowledge.

After fiddling with Gnome3 for a long while, I finally switched to LXDE for most of my work.

Perhaps I'll switch back to Gnome3.4 once I upgrade to Fedora17.

Is it absolutely essential for you to use Unity?

It is not, but I do like it. I found out what the root of my issues has been:

Nvidia's lack of support for XRandR, which is the new standard for integrating with Linux desktop environments. It's very very broken. I have found a workaround, which involves me not using both of my monitors. Which is a bummer, but it can't be helped unless I go back to a distro that's so old it doesn't support XRandR.

This has been a known problem since early 2010 in all Linux distros that don't use realtime kernels. Nvidia has only gotten around to adding XRandR support as of their newest beta version last week, which obviously hasn't made it down through the pipe for LTS users like me. I'll have to wait.

[arfink]

As for Unity, when they first introduced it I didn't like it at all, it was a real mess as far as usability was concerned. They have really improved the UI to the point that it's very usable and not to clumsy. Unity does run on top of Comiz, which isn't the lightest, but it's very usable for what I do and actually looks as if it will improve my workflow.

[AnneLine]

I get about 1 word in 10, but doesn't sound good, yet you sound on top of it. Go, GM, go!!!!

[Ice_nine]

this is like another language to me.

good luck bro. sounds terrifying.

[MIkolbe]

Ctrl-Atl-Del

[Innocent]

Nvidia's lack of support for XRandR,

I suppose you get those

[drm:intel_dsm_platform_mux_info] *ERROR* MUX INFO call failed.

messages at startup too?



Tough luck. Just wait it out.

[fides' Jack]

This is why I use windows.

[Innocent]

This is why I use windows.

Perhaps in some ways one does have less hassles with a Windows-only PC, but one misses out on the agonies and the ecstasies of Linux system administration.

Anyway, many people (those who aren't Free Software purists) multi-boot their PCs with non-free non-Linux OSes such as Windows alongside their GNU/Linux. Best of both worlds.

[cmariadiaz]

Ctrl-Atl-Del

That's in the Windoze world. I don't remember if that's set up to reboot the machine in Linux. Although I'm sure it could be (but who wants to simply reboot a Linux machine. Ya don't do that, you shut it down first!)

[fides' Jack]

Perhaps in some ways one does have less hassles with a Windows-only PC, but one misses out on the agonies and the ecstasies of Linux system administration.

Anyway, many people (those who aren't Free Software purists) multi-boot their PCs with non-free non-Linux OSes such as Windows alongside their GNU/Linux. Best of both worlds.

I did that for a while, but found that I never used Linux anyway. Because, simply put, there's really nothing that Linux does that Windows doesn't. Sure, it has a fancier interface (depending on gui), but that was the only plus I found.

Well, that, and the fact that you might argue that it's safer because there aren't as many attacks on linux, but that's not inherent to the os - that's a problem that you'll have whenever you have ports open - or aren't smart when surfing the web.

[Innocent]

Because, simply put, there's really nothing that Linux does that Windows doesn't.

As far as I'm concerned it's not about Linux being better than Windows at anything.

Is simply about Linux being Linux.

By which I mean that it's an OS that will let you learn as much as you want about how it works, since it is Free Software.

I'm not a great programmer, but I like delving into the OS and understanding more and more about how it works, when I have the time.



I like being a part of the Free Software user community phenomenon.

I relish the experience of sharing knowledge and the joy of helping others who also wish to use Linux.

Like the famous "Linux != Windows" article states, it's about the thrill you get in getting your hands dirty.

Subproblem #3b: New vs. Old

Linux pretty much started out life as a hacker's hobby. It grew as it attracted more hobbyist hackers. It was quite some time before anybody but a geek stood a chance of getting a useable Linux installation working easily. Linux started out "By geeks, for geeks." And even today, the majority of established Linux users are self-confessed geeks.

And that's a pretty good thing: If you've got a problem with hardware or software, having a large number of geeks available to work on the solution is a definite plus.

But Linux has grown up quite a bit since its early days. There are distros that almost anybody can install, even distros that live on CDs and detect all your hardware for you without any intervention. It's become attractive to non-hobbyist users who are just interested in it because it's virus-free and cheap to upgrade. It's not uncommon for there to be friction between the two camps. It's important to bear in mind, however, that there's no real malice on either side: It's lack of understanding that causes the problems.
Firstly, you get the hard-core geeks who still assume that everybody using Linux is a fellow geek. This means they expect a high level of knowledge, and often leads to accusations of arrogance, elitism, and rudeness. And in truth, sometimes that's what it is. But quite often, it's not: It's elitist to say "Everybody ought to know this". It's not elitist to say "Everybody knows this" - quite the opposite.
Secondly, you get the new users who're trying to make the switch after a lifetime of using commercial OSes. These users are used to software that anybody can sit down & use, out-of-the-box.

The issues arise because group 1 is made up of people who enjoy being able to tear their OS apart and rebuild it the way they like it, while group 2 tends to be indifferent to the way the OS works, so long as it does work.

A parallel situation that can emphasize the problems is Lego. Picture the following:

New: I wanted a new toy car, and everybody's raving about how great Lego cars can be. So I bought some Lego, but when I got home, I just had a load of bricks and cogs and stuff in the box. Where's my car??
Old: You have to build the car out of the bricks. That's the whole point of Lego.
New: What?? I don't know how to build a car. I'm not a mechanic. How am I supposed to know how to put it all together??
Old: There's a leaflet that came in the box. It tells you exactly how to put the bricks together to get a toy car. You don't need to know how, you just need to follow the instructions.
New: Okay, I found the instructions. It's going to take me hours! Why can't they just sell it as a toy car, instead of making you have to build it??
Old: Because not everybody wants to make a toy car with Lego. It can be made into anything we like. That's the whole point.
New: I still don't see why they can't supply it as a car so people who want a car have got one, and other people can take it apart if they want to. Anyway, I finally got it put together, but some bits come off occasionally. What do I do about this? Can I glue it?
Old: It's Lego. It's designed to come apart. That's the whole point.
New: But I don't want it to come apart. I just want a toy car!
Old: Then why on Earth did you buy a box of Lego??

It's clear to just about anybody that Lego is not really aimed at people who just want a toy car. You don't get conversations like the above in real life. The whole point of Lego is that you have fun building it and you can make anything you like with it. If you've no interest in building anything, Lego's not for you. This is quite obvious.

As far as the long-time Linux user is concerned, the same holds true for Linux: It's an open-source, fully-customizeable set of software. That's the whole point. If you don't want to hack the components a bit, why bother to use it?

But there's been a lot of effort lately to make Linux more suitable for the non-hackers, a situation that's not a million miles away from selling pre-assembled Lego kits, in order to make it appeal to a wider audience. Hence you get conversations that aren't far away from the ones above: Newcomers complain about the existence of what the established users consider to be fundamental features, and resent having the read a manual to get something working. But complaining that there are too many distros; or that software has too many configuration options; or that it doesn't work perfectly out-of-the-box; is like complaining that Lego can be made into too many models, and not liking the fact that it can be broken down into bricks and built into many other things.

So, to avoid problem #3b: Just remember that what Linux seems to be now is not what Linux was in the past. The largest and most necessary part of the Linux community, the hackers and the developers, like Linux because they can fit it together the way they like; they don't like it in spite of having to do all the assembly before they can use it.
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Problem #7: That FOSS thing.

FOSS has many parallels with the Internet itself: You don't pay the writer of a webpage/the software to download and read/install it. Ubiquitous broadband/User-friendly interfaces are of no great interest to somebody who already has broadband/knows how to use the software. Bloggers/developers don't need to have lots of readers/users to justify blogging/coding. There are lots of people making lots of money off it, but it's not by the old-fashioned "I own this and you have to pay me if you want some of it" method that most businesses are so enamoured of; it's by providing services like tech-support/e-commerce.

Linux is not interested in market share. Linux does not have customers. Linux does not have shareholders, or a responsibility to the bottom line. Linux was not created to make money. Linux does not have the goal of being the most popular and widespread OS on the planet.

All the Linux community wants is to create a really good, fully-featured, free operating system. If that results in Linux becoming a hugely popular OS, then that's great. If that results in Linux having the most intuitive, user-friendly interface ever created, then that's great. If that results in Linux becoming the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry, then that's great.

It's great, but it's not the point. The point is to make Linux the best OS that the community is capable of making. Not for other people: For itself. The oh-so-common threats of "Linux will never take over the desktop unless it does such-and-such" are simply irrelevant: The Linux community isn't trying to take over the desktop. They really don't care if it gets good enough to make it onto your desktop, so long as it stays good enough to remain on theirs. The highly-vocal MS-haters, pro-Linux zealots, and money-making FOSS purveyors might be loud, but they're still minorities.

[arfink]

Wow, wall of text.

There is only a couple of things I can think of that Linux can do that Windows can't do:

- Uptime. Linux can knock Windows flat for uptime.
- Security: it's native to the OS, not a hacky addon
- Transcoding and DRM evasion built into the OS
- Free as in Beer, Free as in Freedom

EDIT:

Oh, and aside from my outside-the-norm backup scare, Linux is vastly easier to get set up nowadays. Barring backup freakouts like mine, it usually takes me 20 minutes to get a Linux machine completely up and running and configured.

Windows takes, at minimum, 3 hours.

Edited by arfink, 11 May 2012 - 08:08 PM.