DescentBB

I've spent a week on the ubuntu forums and reading manuals... Now I wish I installed linux back in the 80s to learn the command line... I'd at least have a fighting chance. Don't get me wrong. For an OS that's not running correctly it's doing great! In fact it's just third party big name developers that are ticking me off.

Anyway. Ubuntu is easy, as stated in so many places, but windows was defiantly easier for me.

That's hte thing with Linux. For all the progress they've made over the last decade or so in making it at least somewhat usable when it works, you're still mostly screwed if you don't have a CS degree when it doesn't. Which happens far more often than the developers up their in their ivory towers want to believe...

that is the nature of linux.

It'll be the year of the Linux on the Desktop when everyone concerned actually wants it to happen.

x2, Isaac and LSD.

That's why I went back to Windows.

Did you use the Standard 9.04 Ubuntu and then add in the \"Ubuntu Studio Meta Packages\" or did you just install \"Ubuntu Studio ISO\" doing the latter usually leads to troubles

i386 or x64

I have a triple boot laptop with Ubuntu (2 hard drives)

Ubuntu 9.04 x64, Windows MCE & Windows 7 Ultimate X64

Try Arch Linux sometime...now that's a pain in the *** to set up. But the payoff is good (very bleeding edge software).

Quote: \"In fact it's just third party big name developers that are ticking me off.\"
Which ones?

what is it with you guys and ubuntu? =P

BUBBALOU wrote:Did you use the Standard 9.04 Ubuntu and then add in the "Ubuntu Studio Meta Packages" or did you just install "Ubuntu Studio ISO"
i386 or x64

Standard 32bit and neither unless it came standard.

Skyalmian wrote:Try Arch Linux sometime...now that's a pain in the *** to set up. But the payoff is good (very bleeding edge software).

Haha.. Maybe. But I'll need to learn the linux comand line first.

Skyalmian wrote: Quote: "In fact it's just third party big name developers that are ticking me off."
Which ones?

Nvidia...

Neo wrote:what is it with you guys and ubuntu? =P

Eye candy, stabilty, security, easier than regular linux, faster than regular windows, and free to download.

fliptw wrote:that is the nature of linux.

It'll be the year of the Linux on the Desktop when everyone concerned actually wants it to happen.

Yup.

You want eyecandy and free?

Try Sabayon

slick little distro.

I don't understand. My ubuntu box is running fine with Nvidia drivers.

Also, you need to just start trying on the command line stuff. I first tried Linux back in '01 when hardware support was really bad. I (pretty much) fully changed over ~2 years ago, and now I don't even have windows installed. I have a few little complaints, but overall it's been a fun project.

Duper wrote:You want eyecandy and free?

Try Sabayon

slick little distro.

That looks good.

snoopy wrote:I don't understand. My ubuntu box is running fine with Nvidia drivers.

Yours and everyone else...

snoopy wrote: Also, you need to just start trying on the command line stuff.

I completely agree with you on this.

if he goes into synaptic package manager(under system/administration) and he types in \"ubuntustudio\" in the quick search

he can install the studio meta packages without the hassle of loading another full o/s which is geared more to \"3d and graphic applications\" for the user (leave out the audio package for now)

snoopy wrote:I have a few little complaints, but overall it's been a fun project.

The fact that it was a constant 'project' is the primary reason I dropped Ubuntu to go back to Windows. I handle projects and configs and such all day at the office; when I go home, I want my OS to just work.

Foil wrote:The fact that it was a constant 'project' is the primary reason I dropped Ubuntu to go back to Windows. I handle projects and configs and such all day at the office; when I go home, I want my OS to just work.

Linux is definitely aimed at the "tweakers", those with the time to customize.

It's not just tweaks--Linux also exposes a lot of computer science, which I don't think can be said of Windows. If you've ever written a regular expression when using something like grep, then you have unwittingly designed a finite-state automaton. If you've learned about /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, then you have unwittingly learned about password salts and type 1 vs. type 2 dictionary attacks. On the other hand, I can't easily think of any time that learning to use Windows has taught me something about computer science. Windows is, by design, a black box, and my understanding of it amounts to a collection of out of date gui shortcuts, registry hacks, third party programs, and unintuitive workarounds.

Of course, I can also understand the mentality to just wanting it to work more than anything else. If someone tried to sell me a car on the basis that it would be good for learning auto mechanics, I would say \"Hell no! I just want it to go when I press the gas!\"

Foil wrote:

snoopy wrote:I have a few little complaints, but overall it's been a fun project.

The fact that it was a constant 'project' is the primary reason I dropped Ubuntu to go back to Windows. I handle projects and configs and such all day at the office; when I go home, I want my OS to just work.

Yeah... I'm an engineer with a nerdy CS streak. I work on Mechanical designs all day, and go home to play with tweaking the computer. If I was tweaking computers all day (or code) I'd probably feel the same as you.

I've made it this time, because the things I've wanted to do (some of which would require the purchase of extra 3rd party software in windows) have not been such large projects that I haven't gotten past them. Also, it's generally worked for the things I "need" to do (Browse the web, video games) and the projects are just getting it to do the extra geeky stuff that I mentioned above, requiring 3rd party software in Windows, too.

I've recently been finding that Windows can do some stuff one might never have thought it could if you know where to look or who to ask... but in general practice, no, it probably doesn't teach you CS just by using it. Which is pretty much by design, as the result of such a thing is people not being able to use it.

And I'll say one more thing. Logitech and skype aren't exactly Linux friendly either. I spent two hours \"bash\"ing commands in until they worked... sort of worked.

The notion that you need a CS degree to get Linux working when it doesn't "out of the box" is a bunch of hogwash. Generally there is a large community of people surrounding the various distros, the only exception being some of the more obscure ones. For example Ubuntu\\Kubuntu\\Edubuntu, etc. have a large community that supports them. There isn't a single problem that I've had that I wasn't able to solve by searching their forums, or wiki, or asking in the help IRC channel. Perhaps some don't like the idea of having to search on the internet for a solution and would rather have everything set up "black box"-like where all you're allowed are certain inputs\\outputs, and don't really know what's going on.

Skyalmian wrote:Linux is definitely aimed at the "tweakers", those with the time to customize.

If by "tweakers" you mean people who actually want the right to change what the operating system does on the hardware they paid for, then I agree. The whole point of Linux is to have an operating system that is in many many cased open sourced (read: You can change anything you want, not just what the source organization will let you), and it allows much better control of file access.

That last bit of file access will prolly set some people off on a tirade about "I hate that I have to enter a password to do simple things" But I'm reasonably certain that on most major distributions you can change it so the password is automagically entered, or there is no such password, only one to log into your account.

I'm not trying to say that Linux is for every last person on the planet. I'm just trying to dissolve these myths that seem to've cropped up.

The CS degree thing is just an exaggeration, but it does hint at a pretty valid point. There was someone ... Topher I think, actually, though maybe Lothar - who found a blog article about the hassles someone had to go through to get printing set up IIRC.

It's a good thing that there are no blog posts about people having hassles getting printers to work with any Windows OS's.

Nope none.

I see it like this…

If your computer is…

A hobby…Linux
A toy….Mac
For work…Windows

There probably are for Windows, but they wouldn't make such good reading. This guy had something like a perfect storm of issues - it was interesting to see how he worked his way through it.

Spidey wrote:I see it like this…

If your computer is…

A hobby…Linux
A toy….Mac
For work…Windows

Ha! It would have been great if you linked youtube examples to each computer. You'd find people opening firefox from command line when they have an icon, a cat attacking a Mac screen saver, and thousands of video tutorials on how to use 3dsmax for cad, videos, or game engines.

Alt-F2

[win]+E
and
[win]+N
have been my two fav shortcuts.

Something to help you on your venture....

lol. I think the linux kid is based on this one:

I installed Ubuntu as a dual boot option on my parents PC. My parents are NOT Computer Scientists. They boot into windows most of the time, because that is what they are used to. BUT, when the DVD drive started giving them problems in windows, my dad booted into ubuntu and accessed the DVD drive there without any problems.

Ubuntu isn't perfect yet, but it runs very reliably for me, and with a LOT less security problems and more flexibility. With the last few releases, my graphics, audio, and even printer have all worked out-of-the-box with no necessity to tweak anything (other than installing the Extras package, which is EASY)

considering how many problems my wife/parents/friends/self have with things not working under windows, I'm sticking with Ubuntu.

That's good to hear Kilarin. My little brother just installed it yesturday. And he sounded very excited over the phone as I told him to try different things.
He was even excited about Linux, after I told him about the command man: "an interface to the on-line reference manuals".
It's great! In the terminal you can type man -k usb to run a seach on "usb" related terminal commands. Like:

man -k usb wrote:lsusb (1) - list USB devices

And to find out what all lsusb does and how it works you can type man lsusb. If it's not enough info lsusb, lsusb -h, or lsusb --h could give you more info on the command.

So far it's been a fun way to learn basic Linux stuff.

Does \"man bash\" work?

Sadly I can't think of any other (currently existant!) commands that make really funny combinations with that...

ha.. yeah

edit
I found this:

Frank Mash wrote: % cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% Unmatched ".
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?^
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \\(-
(-: Command not found.

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink matter
matter: cannot create

I tried a few in ubuntu but didn't get the same results.

Ha!! I love answers like this from ubuntu's "man" command.

man xorg.conf wrote: ....
VIDEOADAPTOR SECTION
Nobody wants to say how this works. Maybe nobody knows ...
....

OK, that was a good laugh, thanks.

that was great Isaac, thanks!

Isaac wrote:I tried a few in ubuntu but didn't get the same results.

The hint is in that the author put a percent (%) in front of most of the joke commands. By convention, C shell (csh, tcsh) prompts end with a percent, so the author is saying that if you want to ensure that it will work for you like it did for him, download csh or tcsh and try those jokes with that shell. By convention, Bourne shell (sh, bash) prompts end with a dollar ($), bash being the shell that most Linux distros, including Ubuntu, default to, so this is why they didn't all work correctly for you, but the jokes that started with a dollar should. Both C shell and Bourne shell prompts conventionally end in a hash (#) when you are root. This is just to remind you to think twice before doing something stupid.

Ubuntu is a pretty slick little OS for being free. I installed a copy awhile back on an ancient IBM laptop we had laying around at work. Ran great and all devices on the system worked. Was great for surfing the web and listening to music.

My wife upgraded her printer and gave me her old printer.

I hooked it up while I was booted into Ubuntu, and it worked INSTANTLY. No fuss, no muss, Ubuntu detected that an HP 3310 was attached and added it to my printer list. Works great.

One of the few reasons I boot into Windows anymore is to use my Libronix Bible study software. It is heavily IE dependent and just won't work under wine. I was working on a lesson Friday and needed some Libronix resources, so I held my nose and booted into Windows XP. When I was done, I tried to print. Windows XP detected that there was a new printer, but it wasn't certain what to do with it. I let it go searching the net for the needed drivers, and it tried, but after 10 minutes I was certain it was locked up. Probably got tangled up with the firewall somewhere. I got tired of messing with it, and just booted back into Ubuntu and printed from there.

Ubuntu isn't perfect, but it HAS improved by leaps and bounds, and overall, gives me LESS trouble than Windows XP.

Yeah, Windows XP is a little old by now and doesn't always handle new hardware.