30 days with Linux @ [H] Consumer

[Brian Boyko]

Some comments sent to my email:

Might I make a suggestion? Before you re-partition, as you mention at the end of your article, maybe you might want to give virtualization a try? I'd certainly be interested in seeing how that works out for you…

I've just recently started playing around with VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/), and I am impressed with it so far. There is an article on installing it with Ubuntu that might be worth checking out: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/create-and-manage-virtual-machines-using-virtualbox.html

For my part, I installed the libs recommended on the download page at the virtualbox.org site, as well as my current kernel source package "just in case." I then installed the .deb file, modified my group membership and it "just worked."

I don't game on my PC anymore - I've moved that to the consoles. However, I'd be interested to see if this would work for you or not (probably not - give the horsepower needs for gaming). It might be a viable solution for Photoshop at least. Definitely more convenient than dual-booting.

thanks for the article,
-GS

P.S. Two notes… I have a different HP printer than you (sorry, forget the model) and it has worked flawlessly after a pain-free installation. Also, I'm not sure what problem you were running into, but I've had three different Mozilla-based browsers running at once. You might want to experiment more here…

Yep - using VirtualBox and while I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to move files from host to VM and vice versa, and how to connect through the VM to the Internet, I'm already using it for Photoshop.

Hi Brian,

first i need to applaud to you for that article. Nice work.

But there is one thing in your article that bugged me tho.
You say there that there is no loop based audio editor for Linux.
Have you checked out Rosegarden (www.rosegardenmusic.com) or Muse
(www.muse-sequencer.org) ? These are both available in the ubuntu
repository and i think they qualify for the loop based audio editor
category. And there's Ardour as well (www.ardour.org).

Another thing (thats why i'm writing this as email) is that to comment
your article, i'd have to register in your forums, which (i'm sorry *g*,
but) i can't be bothered to do. Maybe you should think about allowing
anonymous comments in the article discussion parts of the forum.

kind regards,

Dominik del Bondio

Dominik:

I'll make a note of this in the forums (and likely download Rosegarden & Ardor to try!)

Thanks for pointing them out to me! One less thing that I have to go into the VM for!

I'll take a look.

I don't know if you've run into this yet, but when you go to install XP
back you will most likely have a problem getting back into Ubuntu.
Windows installs completely re-write the MBR, so previous linux OS's are
inaccessible. The only good way I have gotten dual-boot systems to work
is install Windows, then linux. GRUB has always added Windows into it's
list for me. Also, I don't know if you've tried it, but Ubuntu Dapper
Drake and Edgy Eft (I don't remember having success in Hoary Hedgehog)
are able to write back to NTFS without error.

Just wanted to put in two cents. Again, excellent article. I hope
people read it and experiment for themselves.

Hey - yeah, I've run into it a couple of times, but I usually just plug in the LiveCD and use that to repair GRUB on the MBR. Ubuntu has no trouble -reading- NTFS out of the box - it's writing that presents the problem. Luckily NTFS-3G is out of beta and that what I plan to use.

 

[Polarhound]

From the article:

I plug in my 10GB iPod - an older 3rd generation model with a battery replacement last year - and it is immediately detected by Rhythmbox. I decide to update it with some Rammstein. Drag, drop, done. When I disconnect the iPod off the computer, the audio is just as clear as if I had done it in Windows or a Mac.

.... And just what exactly was expected that would possibly make an already existing MP3 sound any worse or better on the same player depending on what OS it was loaded from?

This one statement reminds me of when people used to claim that one brand of Minidisc or cd could play digital data "clearer" than another brand ....

 

[BigBadBiologist]

Absolutely great article. It's very interesting because I get the same exact feeling from predominantly using OS X for the last 3 months. Once you get over the little hump, productivity is just as good (if not better), but gaming is lacking.

 

[Stryder]

that was a nice article Brian, it's always interesting to have a newbie's point of view on a system. Seems like in 30 days you caught the spirit of ubuntu and was ready to use it as a second OS.

I have been using Ubuntu for a year now and it has become my only OS now. Having a dual boot wasn't necessary since I wasn't using XP anymore. Ubuntu fits my needs for everything and this include gaming and such.
As you continue using Ubuntu you will discover the possibilities of it , you can learn new things everyday if you want to.

There are a few points that i would like commenting .
First , gaming isn't as bad as it appears to be in your article, i have been playing Prey in Cedega and it runs just fine, Valve's Source games also run fine in wine (so you don't have to pay for a Cedega subscription) and there are many other games that are well supported (Warcraft 3, WoW, Diablo 2, Farcry, NFS Most Wanted and the list goes on ...)
Oblivion is almost working perfectly in the latest wine versions, there are still some sound glitches and a few bugs but what doesn't work in wine works in Cedega so it's a matter of weeks before Oblivion runs flawlessly on Linux.
Emulators are also fully playable, i use xmame for arcade games and ePsxe for playstation emulation, there's joypad support, fullscreen and every feature that i could wish for. One game I miss and isn't supported is Fear. I really hope that new gen Shaders and HDR get linux support in the next months.

Photoshop also seems to be supported in wine , the version 7 and CS have been working for a long time but the latest versions allow CS2 to run as long as you install it on windows and then copy the files in linux. I also point out that Macromedia Studio 8 runs just fine.

Hardware recognition may vary depending on the user's configuration, for example your screen didn't get it's native resolution but with my 20" TFT i was able to get 1680x1050 right after the install.

There's one thing that disappointed me a bit when you said that you liked Amarok but decided to stick with Ubuntu's default player : Rhythmbox. I'm not a KDE user but I couldn't live without Amarok , it's so much better than any player that i've seen before !
And I know you've installed it , you showed it in your video

Anyway, this was a cool article and it's funny to see that with Vista's release there's a lot of bad publicity around city and people start talking about Linux (especially Ubuntu more and more everyday). The more users come to linux , the more constructors will offer their support and the more editors will port their games on Linux.

 

[Rock&Roll]

Very good article. I enjoyed every bit of it.

I may be stating the obvious, but Linux will never be mainstream so long as terminal command line entries must be made in order to get what you want from the OS.

That said, I did just get done playing around with Ubuntu 6.10. I did have some problems, most notable was the default networking software disliking my wireless card. (It was not a drivers issue). So I had to download an alternative networking manager on a another computer, and then install it via a bunch of command line entries. Ugh.

Also Upon getting a network connection, I received the notification saying that I needed to do some software updates. It was like 300mb worth of updates. So I said, "OK" and went to do some other things while it downloaded. Upon updating to the latest kernel, it borked the whole OS. Upon rebooting, I would get a hard lock, no matter what method I chose to boot from........

Other clumsiness that exists in linux is the special keystrokes that can wind you up looking at a full screen command prompt, with no obvious way to get back to the GUI. I remember a application locked on me once, and I was looking for the WindowsXP equivalent for the task manager. So I was hitting a bunch of CTRL-ALT keystrokes. Upon CTRL-ALT-F4, I was greeted with a command line. So, I just did something like a kill all to reboot the machine.

The good news is that, on my trial with Linux, I could see a nice amount of improvements made, just over Ubuntu 5. Linux has made a great deal of progress in its years. It gives me hope that Linux will one day be a viable OS for more people. I would love to see something that wholly competes with Windows.

 

[Buggy]

The most unbiased linux review I have ever read. My first experience was with Mandrake 10.1, back when I only had a winmodem. It installed just fine, but of course the lucent modem wasn't recognized, and KDE (or at least what Mandrake did to it) made a bad impression with endless menus (worse than Windows). When I installed Ubuntu breezy badger, everything was perfect. I am not a pc gamer, so that wasn't a problem. People should really judge linux based on how well it works for them, and for me it has been outstanding. I especially love the fact that every little problem that I have run into has been fixed (except for my printer working just fine with test prints, but not anything else), as opposed to windows where the little problems usually have no solution. Codec support is better too (I used easyubuntu). I remember downloading some shady divx codec on windows that started a program whenever I played a divx file. Anyway with live cds, and better hardware support every day, everyone should give it a try (though like previously said, DON'T if you only have dial up). Of course every experience is different.

 

[Stryder]

OMG sometimes it's funny to read about new users coming to linux.
Of course there's no way to let you know that a ctrl-alt-F[1...6] it going to put you in console mode and there's also nothing to tell you that pressing dtrl+alt+F7 is going to put you back in gnome. This is not clumsyness , it's just Linux way of working. Take it away and every single old school user will get mad as hell !

There should really be a minimal guide for surviving in a linux desktop ! Linux is not windows and things work differently.
A few examples :
- Copy Pastes works great with ctrl C and ctrl V but you can also do it with only the mouse by selecting to copy and pressing the middle button to paste, quite a powerful feature.
- Ctrl + alt + backspace kills your desktop and puts you back on the login screen , if your system is unresponsive just press this shortcut , it will save you lots of reboots.
- There are no viruses on linux for a good reason : no harm can be done to the system without the root password. So choose it wisely , and always be careful when you do stuff with sudo.

 

[SmokeRngs]

As for gaming - WINE might be a solution. I'm going to try this and see if I can get some of the titles to work - maybe some of the Unreal Tournament family. Quake 3 and 4 work out of the box, so... well, it's not emulation.

I mainly have one game I play on a somewhat regular basis and I haven't been able to get it to run correctly under Wine. Well, it runs just fine but I can't get any sound. Otherwise it would be no problem. I figured it would work since it's an old game, Wolfenstein: ET.

I was also having trouble with my mic under Linux which means there was trouble with Teamspeak. Basically, I need the mic boost and I couldn't find an option for that. However, I nudged my headset the other day and the mic wasn't muted so I heard it loud and clear through the speakers. I guess I might mess with that tomorrow to see if a subsequent update may have done something. And this isn't necessarily a Linux problem as it's probably more of a driver problem or an option that has been left out.

 

[Stryder]

I don't understand why you would want to run Wolfenstein : ET in Wine as there is a native Linux version ...
There is however a bug with the sound (and this is *because* it's an old game) so to get sound in ET type in a terminal :

sudo -s
<type your password>
echo 'et.x86 0 0 direct' >> /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss
exit

 

[Karafias]

Great article! I would love to use ubuntu, but unfortunately, it doesn't like most of my hardware... oh well.

 

[Brian Boyko]

From the article:



.... And just what exactly was expected that would possibly make an already existing MP3 sound any worse or better on the same player depending on what OS it was loaded from?

This one statement reminds me of when people used to claim that one brand of Minidisc or cd could play digital data "clearer" than another brand ....

I was trying to short-circuit a misconception before I got started. There's "iPod for Linux" and running an iPod on Linux. If you install an embedded version of Linux on your iPod, supposedly you can do amazing things with it but the quality of the sound drops. I basically wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the iPod works just as well hooked up to a Linux system as it does on a Windows or Mac, and that nothing will change on Linux.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

"LIE-NUX" eh...

What caught my eye was setting Firefox's pipelining for 64 connects though. Talk about raping an HTTP server to death, then again in the morgue, and again in the casket before it's buried, my lord. That's just freakin' greedy by any meaning of the word, period, and I consider it to be a huge negative in the article overall.

As for the comment about needing .NET under Windows to install ATI drivers - that's totally inaccurate. The .NET framework is needed to install the Catalyst Control Center, not the drivers themselves. I know this could be a sticky point here and people will think I'm just flaming but I'm not: what is said in the article is incorrect, period.

And he went so far as to bring up DRM in Vista as a "selling point" for using Linux, which I find almost reprehensible.

The conclusions were "ok" in my opinion.

As I've constantly stated as of lately, for someone like Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, Linux isn't a viable alternative. It requires too much time, too much effort, and most of the stuff that people want to do doesn't work out of the box - which can be said about Windows XP for the most part as well, but for Joe to find what he needs for Windows is a lot easier than finding what Joe needs for Linux.

Wanna play an mp3? Under Windows, open the file and it plays in Windows Media Player. Or you can install WinAMP. Or foobar2k, any Media Monkey, or any number of media players - but the OS can do it natively without hassles. Linux? Takes some effort on the part of the user, and Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, simply isn't going to go there.

Wanna play a retail DVD from a major movie studio, like "Casino Royale" coming out Tuesday? Under Linux? Get ready to do some typing, Joe, and agreeing to disclaimers that are designed to protect others since if you're in the US what you're about to do under Linux is considered illegal here. Under Windows, well... that's where it gets interesting.

In the past 2 years, I've seen more consumers running Media Center Edition 2005 than XP Home, actually (meaning on OEM machines, not self-built enthusiast boxes). XP MCE is a superset of XP Pro as most of us know, so the DVD playback issue isn't even in doubt on OEM hardware since that's a default capability.

I'm not bashing Linux, just pointing out a few things that most people don't want pointed out. Linux is a fine OS for enthusiasts and people that love to get really into it and get their hands dirty, as the saying goes.

But it's not for Joe Average.

Linux has a long long way to go to get anywhere compared to Windows in general. It's fine where it is, as an enthusiast OS. As for it becoming "the Windows killer" or a true desktop OS for Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, well, that's simply never going to happen.

 

[Brian Boyko]

There's one thing that disappointed me a bit when you said that you liked Amarok but decided to stick with Ubuntu's default player : Rhythmbox. I'm not a KDE user but I couldn't live without Amarok , it's so much better than any player that i've seen before !
And I know you've installed it , you showed it in your video

Okay, caught me! There were a couple of programs that I did switch to because I ended up personally liking the KDE version better - Amarok was one of them, Kwifi another - but as the Gnome versions worked equally well, I figured I wouldn't spend time on what was already a massive paper talking about personal preference - I was more interested in what worked and what didn't and what I could do with the system, not so much the various number of ways that I could do it.

 

[nigerian_businessman]

I liked this article. You managed to write a very fair piece from a viewpoint that is often overlooked in most "Is it ready for the desktop?" articles, that of the semi-power user. Most articles are either geared for those familiar with Linux or they examine the viewpoint of a complete newb. Not very helpful to someone who knows Windows like the back of their hand and isn't afraid to get their hands dirty, but is completely unfamiliar with Linux. It's also refreshing to see the [H] tackle something that doesn't revolve around gaming or video cards. I would certainly welcome more articles about Linux on the [H] and more coverage of what's going on in the world of open source.

My only criticism is that you chose to install from the x86_64 distro instead of 32 bit. 64-bit Linux isn't close to ready for prime-time yet and a majority of the issues you encountered were only problems because you chose to run 64-bit. However, you did manage to bring it together at the end and not let these issues sour your whole experience, which is good. Let this article stand as fair warning to others: If you do want to install Linux, unless you need 64-bit addressing, just stick to 32-bit!

Anyway, thanks for the good read.

 

[nigerian_businessman]

Okay, caught me! There were a couple of programs that I did switch to because I ended up personally liking the KDE version better - Amarok was one of them, Kwifi another - but as the Gnome versions worked equally well, I figured I wouldn't spend time on what was already a massive paper talking about personal preference - I was more interested in what worked and what didn't and what I could do with the system, not so much the various number of ways that I could do it.

There is a nice near-equivalent of Amarok for gnome called Exaile, which I believe can be installed from the Add-Remove programs panel in Ubuntu. If not, it's in Synaptic. I'm sure you know but I thought I'd throw that out there for people who have or are thinking of installing.

Nothing against Rhythmbox but... okay, something against it. It pales in comparison to Amarok. Exaile isn't 100% yet but it will get you pretty damn close without loading QT libs.

 

[nigerian_businessman]

"LIE-NUX" eh...

What caught my eye was setting Firefox's pipelining for 64 connects though. Talk about raping an HTTP server to death, then again in the morgue, and again in the casket before it's buried, my lord. That's just freakin' greedy by any meaning of the word, period, and I consider it to be a huge negative in the article overall.

As for the comment about needing .NET under Windows to install ATI drivers - that's totally inaccurate. The .NET framework is needed to install the Catalyst Control Center, not the drivers themselves. I know this could be a sticky point here and people will think I'm just flaming but I'm not: what is said in the article is incorrect, period.

And he went so far as to bring up DRM in Vista as a "selling point" for using Linux, which I find almost reprehensible.

Well, we all know you find any criticism of Vista, valid or otherwise, reprehensible. Some things don't need to be said... over.. and over.. and over again.. in every thread that mentions Vista.

The conclusions were "ok" in my opinion.

As I've constantly stated as of lately, for someone like Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, Linux isn't a viable alternative. It requires too much time, too much effort, and most of the stuff that people want to do doesn't work out of the box - which can be said about Windows XP for the most part as well, but for Joe to find what he needs for Windows is a lot easier than finding what Joe needs for Linux.

Maybe true. But if you know how to use Google, you can set up Linux. You can hit up the installation wiki and copy-paste your way to a completely functional desktop.

Wanna play an mp3? Under Windows, open the file and it plays in Windows Media Player. Or you can install WinAMP. Or foobar2k, any Media Monkey, or any number of media players - but the OS can do it natively without hassles. Linux? Takes some effort on the part of the user, and Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, simply isn't going to go there.

Well, really, I think this whole idea that Linux -should- be for these people is a bit misguided. However, that doesn't mean that it's not a viable alternative to Windows XP for others.

What you're forgetting is that you're -paying- for that out of the box functionality. You are giving Microsoft money to license those codecs and include them with the OS. Linux is 100% free of charge. What you're talking about is akin to going to a party with free beer and bitching because the fridge is stocked with Miller Lite instead of Heineken.

Wanna play a retail DVD from a major movie studio, like "Casino Royale" coming out Tuesday? Under Linux? Get ready to do some typing, Joe, and agreeing to disclaimers that are designed to protect others since if you're in the US what you're about to do under Linux is considered illegal here. Under Windows, well... that's where it gets interesting.

That's a little misleading. You can install the codecs without typing a thing. Copy and paste the repository into your sources list in Synaptec, it prompts you to update the list of packages available. The only thing you have to type is the name of the package, and that's merely to save time, if you're hell bent on using the mouse you could find it in the list.

In the past 2 years, I've seen more consumers running Media Center Edition 2005 than XP Home, actually (meaning on OEM machines, not self-built enthusiast boxes). XP MCE is a superset of XP Pro as most of us know, so the DVD playback issue isn't even in doubt on OEM hardware since that's a default capability.

Again, Windows costs money. It forces unnecessary restrictions upon you. It treats you like a child, asking "are you sure" every time you try to do something. If it makes you happy, good for you. Windows does 'just work' most of the time, at least XP does. Vista isn't there yet but it will be soon enough. However, when you try to compare the two you need to keep in mind that there are costs involved in running Windows that are not there when you run Linux.

I'm not bashing Linux, just pointing out a few things that most people don't want pointed out. Linux is a fine OS for enthusiasts and people that love to get really into it and get their hands dirty, as the saying goes.

But it's not for Joe Average.

Linux has a long long way to go to get anywhere compared to Windows in general. It's fine where it is, as an enthusiast OS. As for it becoming "the Windows killer" or a true desktop OS for Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, well, that's simply never going to happen.

I wouldn't say 'never'. All it takes is a company with enough resources to decide to take on MS on the desktop with a distro and Linux could take off. Like Google, for instance.

Linux lacks standards, but it's only been getting better. Microsoft on the other hand is becoming complacent and innovating less and less. Despite all the hub-bub about how much of an improvement Vista is over Windows XP, in comparison to Linux or Mac OS, it's nothing special. Compare Vista to XP, then compare Linux distros today to distros from 5 years ago and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Saist]

Impressive...

There are some other problems that were not mentioned in the article that may affect those looking to switch:

First, Gnome isn't that friendly to users learned in Windows. I must admit that I am impressed that you would stick with Gnome. Anyways, for those who want something a little closer to home, using the KDE desktop will provide a more familiar environment.

Second, ATi card users are going to be in pickles.

Radeon 8500 cards haven't been officially supported since driver version 8.29. The Ubuntu Dapper Drake fglrx driver is version 8.25, in which OpenGL support for Radeon 8500 cards is broken.

Radeon 9500 - Radeon x1900 series users will find that the Fglrx drivers do support their cards and Avivo. However, AIGLX is NOT supported by the official ATi drivers. That means that if you want to run Compiz / Beryl on an x1x00 series card, you would need a distribution using Novell/Suse XGL.

AIGLX is supported through the X.org Radeon Driver which also supports Direct Rendering / OpenGL on R100, RV200, R200, R300, and R400 cards. So you can get Beryl and Compiz on X.org. However, the performance is anywhere from 100-450% lower than the official Radeon driver... and no Avivo supporteither.

***

Not that Nvidia users have it any better. Installing the Nvidia driver invariably requires dropping to RunLevel 3 and running dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg.


***

Personally though, I'd recommend HardOCP readers interested in switching to Linux, or trying it, download both Ubuntu and Mepis.

Reason being is that while Ubuntu uses Gnome, Mepis uses KDE.

Between the two, Ubuntu and Mepis share about 75% of the source software, which makes it easier to keep track of the background software.

For those who do take a look to Mepis, keep in mind that there multiple support sites available:

http://www.mepislovers.org

http://www.mepisguides.com

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Main_Page

 

[Mercury_Merlin]

Excellent article, and wonderful to see how your experience went, we really are getting somewhere if Linux can deliver the goods like this. I've been using Linux for a couple of years now, and have been using X|K|Ubuntu since Dapper (6.06) was released last year. Not that I'm a "power" user, one of the reasons for me is that I can carry on using my Duron 800/256MB machine without having to replace or upgrade it, and without the overhead of anti-virus/anti-malware software etc.

You certainly gave it a good go; there are a few things where maybe you went the "difficult" way, and a few alternative options, but you don't know those unless someone tells you, and it seems like one way or another you got everything you needed done.

You also weren't afraid to spend a little money here and there; it does amaze me when I see people say that they'll try Linux, for various reasons, then run into one piece of hardware that won't work, and either spend days fighting with it and following weird instructions, or just give up and go back to Windows, when it might have been as simple and as cheap as your example to go and buy a supported network card for $10, problem solved. Admittedly I'm fairly careful now when I buy hardware to research, for example if I want a printer (I recently bought an Epson RX-520 multifunction, which works sweetly - setting it up as printer was a snap, getting scanning working was slightly more awkward but works sweetly now it's set up).

Some thoughts on your experience:
=> Personally I'm sticking with 32-bit everything, at least for now. Even if I upgrade to a 64-bit computer, for now I would run 32-bit on it, I think especially some of the proprietary/non-free stuff you still can't quite do without is just too much hassle on 64-bit, you can always upgrade in future when it's better.

=> APT-GET and Synaptic is awesome, to my mind it is an absolute "killer app" for Linux, the only complaint I have is that it's so awesome and so alien to the Windows approach of finding a website to download an executable installer that I don't know how to explain it to people who haven't seen it - they just don't believe it until they've seen it working.

Also, even for stuff that isn't in the base repos, if I can find a reliable third-party/unofficial repo then I prefer to add that and install the applications that way, presently unofficial repos I have enabled are for Wine and for Medibuntu (this is where EasyUbuntu get their stuff, I believe), and vendors (e.g. Skype) also sometimes provide repositories.

You need to be careful to pick repositories designed to work with your system and version, and of course you need a helpful Ubuntu geek to tell you this stuff, else you don't know, but once set up you just Synaptic in the apps as normal for all the stuff like libdvdcss, Skype, Realplayer, GoogleEarth, etc, and the great thing is that it will ALL auto-update just like everything else when new versions become available.

=> Video player - I notice you seemed determined to use Totem, for some reason so many Linux distributions seem to push you at using either Totem or Kaffeine, yet in my experience they always seem like more hassle than they are worth. Personally I either just use plain Xine (with Xine-ui) which is simple, clean, easy, and just works, or VLC which is just as good as it is with Windows, and don't have half the trouble the fancier front-ends seem to suffer.

=> The "Desktop" packages
I see it that uninstalling certain programs forced uninstalling "Ubuntu-desktop" which worried you (and I can understand why!) but in fact it's a red herring. There are three "*buntu-desktop" packages, which contain no actual programs, they are simply meta-packages containing a long list of dependencies, so that you can simply request:
Ubuntu-desktop => and get a full Gnome desktop with all usual apps
Kubuntu-desktop => and get a full KDE desktop with all usual apps
Xubuntu-desktop => and get a full Xfce desktop with all usual apps
the actual *buntu-desktop meta-package can safely be uninstalled afterwards (and the dependency that makes the above magic work means that if you uninstall a "usual app" it will *require* you to uninstall the relevant *buntu-desktop meta-package.

So yeah - I know, it's misleading, and I'm not sure how we explain it better. The beauty about it, however, is that if you install any of the family (Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu), it can be trivially turned into any of the others by installing the relevant *buntu-desktop package, and if you have more than one installed you can choose which you want to use for a session when you log in.

=> Printer support
It's a lot better than it used to be, but still can be hit and miss, takes a bit of research, and some that can be made to work are more hassle than it's worth. Really I do say to people who want to use Linux, if their printer just won't work then e-bay it (or give it to a family member still using Windows), and research/buy one that is properly supported, it will be a lot less effort. Not ideal, but if you *do* want to use Linux I recommend being prepared for that possibility. Same with WiFi cards, webcams are diabolical as a rule, and one or two other things, though digital cameras, MP3 players, and any other mass storage device are generally sweet and well-behaved these days.

=> Gaming
If you want gaming, then I say don't run Linux. Or at least, either keep a dual-boot Windows partition for your games (or switch to console gaming), but if games is your main thing then Linux will frustrate you at present. I have run a few Windows games under Wine/Cedega, and there are a few nice Linux games that run natively, so it's OK if games is a secondary thing for you and you can live with it, but if you want all the latest and greatest and it's why you have a PC then Linux will not suit you.

=> Resource management and recovering control of an unresponsive system
One thing you do have with Linux (and alien to Windows) is the option to drop to command-line entry, and deal with things without trying to make the GUI work if it's not playing. Especially: Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to a command-line terminal, log in from there, and use the commands "top" and "kill" (use "man top, man kill" for details) to regain control. Exit and press Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to the GUI. Also handy is that you have more than one such session available, if my wife is using our system and I don't want to interrupt her programs, or vice versa, then you can just Start new session, leave the old logged-in one running uninterrupted, and log in as another user to do whatever you want. Then you can switch between each GUI session with Ctrl-Alt-F7, Ctrl-Alt-F8, etc - very handy.

=> Conclusion
Great to see how you got on, and great article - nothing's ever perfect, and it is different, still very happy to see just how good it was for you, and hopefully as Linux becomes more mainstream, device manufacturers and others will be forced to sit up and take notice, and some of these things should continue to get easier.

cheers
--
Mercury Merlin

 

[Axion22]

Excellent article that represents my experiences of about 6 months ago with Ubuntu Dapper. A few minor bugs here and there, correcting the nVidia driver was the most difficult, but as this seemed to be a common problem, it was easily corrected by asking someone in the multitude of available IRC linux help channels. Again, minor difficulty with multimedia appz, but again, IRC helpers to the rescue.

Synaptic knocked my socks off and I still long for it's comfort and ease of use.

Sadly, after about two weeks navigating the various resources on installing CS:S and Steam on Linux, I gave up.
Eventually, I kept booting into Linux less and less, and removed it when I ran out of hard drive space in Windows, lots of movies and such. Plus, teaching a new OS to my girlfriend while I learned it myself was a chore I wasn't prepared for. I think my biggest mistake was telling her how to boot back into Windows. I should have just left her in the Linux sandbox.
The gaming is the only thing holding me back from a complete switchover.
I still use GAIM and GIMP on Windows now, and, after buying a large enough hard drive, I plan on trying it again. I have simply decided against going with Vista at all.

 

[bbz_Ghost]

This whole "tear a post apart in sections" stuff is new to me, but I can game.

Well, we all know you find any criticism of Vista, valid or otherwise, reprehensible. Some things don't need to be said... over.. and over.. and over again.. in every thread that mentions Vista.

What I find reprehensible are inaccurate non-factual statements that tend to be biased (kinda like the one I just quoted), it has zero to do with Vista which wasn't mentioned in the particular paragraph quoted. He made such an error in the article about the need for the .NET framework for the ATI drivers, and that's that.

Maybe true. But if you know how to use Google, you can set up Linux. You can hit up the installation wiki and copy-paste your way to a completely functional desktop.

And learn jack shit in the process, or why a particular command is being used to do a specific task. Even so, that's a helluva lot of copying and pasting using the mouse and if you use the keyboard, oh boy. Even that doesn't work the same way Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer running Windows, is used to. In Windows it's Control+C to copy, Control+V to paste. In Linux, add the Shift key to each command to get the functional equivalent. More complicated than is truly necessary, but just another "nail" in some respects towards Linux's acceptance as a desktop OS for Joe Average, consumer that owns a computer that happens to be running Windows.

Well, really, I think this whole idea that Linux -should- be for these people is a bit misguided. However, that doesn't mean that it's not a viable alternative to Windows XP for others.

What you're forgetting is that you're -paying- for that out of the box functionality. You are giving Microsoft money to license those codecs and include them with the OS. Linux is 100% free of charge. What you're talking about is akin to going to a party with free beer and bitching because the fridge is stocked with Miller Lite instead of Heineken.

But that's PRECISELY who Linux needs to target to get anywhere.

And I'm not forgetting anything, I made my point, and you just backed it up. And you, like so many others, need to get off the money issue. If you think Linux is free just because there's no cash out of pocket dollar expense involved - inaccurate since someone has to pay for the computer it's running on, the electricity to power the computer, the cost of the Internet connection to download it, the cost of the blank CDR to burn the ISO on, etc etc - you're just sadly mistaken. There's a cost of effort, a cost of time, a cost of frustration at learning something new; all of that factors into my statement. Just because it ain't about dollars, doesn't mean it ain't about sense - and yes, that's correct.

That's a little misleading. You can install the codecs without typing a thing. Copy and paste the repository into your sources list in Synaptec, it prompts you to update the list of packages available. The only thing you have to type is the name of the package, and that's merely to save time, if you're hell bent on using the mouse you could find it in the list.

Now you're playing semantics, as I just did with the "cost breakdown" above. The issue here, and I commend the author of the article for pointing it out, that regardless of his - or your - personal opinions about how Windows handles issues with DVD playback (i.e. DeCSS or decryption issues) and mp3 playback (i.e. licensing and legality issues), the fact remains that in some parts of the world, playing back encrypted DVDs under Linux is against the law, period.

Just because you can click a few times instead of typing - no, maybe the user will just Google and copy and paste with Control+Shift+C and Control+Shift+V as noted above - and acquiring the ability to play back encrypted content doesn't mean it's legitimate. You and so many others keep missing that point, and again, your personal opinions and thoughts on the matter don't change the fact that it's illegal to watch an encrypted DVD on Linux in a lot of places around the world, most notably the US.

Again, Windows costs money. It forces unnecessary restrictions upon you. It treats you like a child, asking "are you sure" every time you try to do something. If it makes you happy, good for you. Windows does 'just work' most of the time, at least XP does. Vista isn't there yet but it will be soon enough. However, when you try to compare the two you need to keep in mind that there are costs involved in running Windows that are not there when you run Linux.

That's simply the stupidest thing I've ever heard. As is so often said around here, "no one is forcing you to run it." No one is forcing you to buy it, and if it comes on a machine preinstalled, nothing is stopping you or anyone else from formatting it and installing any other OS they want on it, give or take a few that would be illegal to install - but wait, people can do that too. OSx86 is a hacked version of Mac OS X and can run on generic PCs, sooo... taking that line of thinking to extremes:

If you're willing and able to install software on your machine that will let you break the law and watch encrypted DVDs and listen to mp3 files, why not just scrap that whole concept and install an entire OS that you're not legally entitled -according to the laws of your country, that is, and whether or not you actually care to live by them, of course - and watch the DVDs on that OS because it legally does let you watch encrypted DVDs? And then play mp3 files in iTunes legally too?

See how silly this becomes?

Oh, and Windows (meaning XP) doesn't ask for permission to do every time you try to do something, and neither does Vista. You're sounding like someone that works for Apple with those statements. Besides, it doesn't say "Allow or Deny" either. It says "Continue" or "Cancel." Semantics indeed...

And there you go with the cost issues again. See the actual real-world costs above.

I wouldn't say 'never'. All it takes is a company with enough resources to decide to take on MS on the desktop with a distro and Linux could take off. Like Google, for instance.

There is no such company, and not even Google could make that kind of dent or long-lasting impression on people.

Linux lacks standards, but it's only been getting better. Microsoft on the other hand is becoming complacent and innovating less and less. Despite all the hub-bub about how much of an improvement Vista is over Windows XP, in comparison to Linux or Mac OS, it's nothing special. Compare Vista to XP, then compare Linux distros today to distros from 5 years ago and you'll see what I mean.

Nice to know you understand the problem, as you stated right there in that first sentence. Now, if you can just find the solution to it, you'll be a very wealthy person from a low-cost alternative OS to Windows.

Windows is the standard, and that's backed up by the ~95% market share. That's a lot of 'puters, yanno, and in all my years of working on these damned machines, I've still never been to a customer's home - and I've worked on close to 100K machines over the years - and found a Linux box, ever. A few Macs, and so few even that ~4% amount I'm suspect of would be more like .04% in my own experience, but nothing to write home about.

Linux has changed so much because of the sheer number of distros out there - it flies right back to your comment about "Linux lacks standards." That is the Achille's Heel of the Linux community, and until "One distro to rule them all" appears and some company puts their entire bankroll on the line for it and says, "We're behind Linux, do or die, we're all in" then it's never going to get anywhere within striking range of the King of the Hill: Windows.

Ubuntu could make a helluva lot more waves than it's making, but then again, it's a nearly free OS, right? Not much marketing going on except word of mouth. Maybe Dell should get behind Ubuntu and push it, hard. Maybe Google. Goobuntu, anyone? Or, perhaps a Super Bowl commercial would help.

Look what one commercial aired one single time did for Macs 23 years ago.

It's a fine article overall, I'll admit that. But it seems to cater to the lowest commmon denominator, and it leaves out things I was looking for in an article about running Linux for a month that's written by someone I know to be a better writer than that article shows, and it was "ok" to me as I said earlier.

The biggest problem with the article? Neither Brian or Jason are Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer.

My apologies if people think this is a threadjack; that's not my intention, and this will be my last posting, I just felt it necessary to at least rebut a little.

 

[SSmith]

Just because you can click a few times instead of typing - no, maybe the user will just Google and copy and paste with Control+Shift+C and Control+Shift+V as noted above - and acquiring the ability to play back encrypted content doesn't mean it's legitimate. You and so many others keep missing that point, and again, your personal opinions and thoughts on the matter don't change the fact that it's illegal to watch an encrypted DVD on Linux in a lot of places around the world, most notably the US.

I'm not taking a cheap shot at the U.S. here, but if the States has lost its concept of fair use rights for the consumer, then that is not Linux's problem. Some of us don't live in the States, in countries where it is perfectly legal to watch a movie you have purchased wherever you like, and some of those people don't take very kindly to having to pay a tax on DVD software just so we can watch those movies which we have ALREADY purchased.

You put down the "free as in beer" aspect of Linux, but I have never heard anyone able to put down the "free as in freedom" side. In the words of Mel Gibson (before we found out he hated the Jews). "FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!"

 

[dawp]

Thanks for the article guys. We (especially us Linux noobs) really appreciate you giving Ubuntu a whirl. I tried Kubuntu myself, but it didn't speak to me like Open SuSE 10.2 does, so im'a stick wif the iguana.

As for gaming - WINE might be a solution. I'm going to try this and see if I can get some of the titles to work - maybe some of the Unreal Tournament family. Quake 3 and 4 work out of the box, so... well, it's not emulation.

I really like GIMP a lot... it has everything most people need for photo editing, and you can't beat the price. It even works in Windows 2K and XP. Wonder what Vista thinks, though?

Potential threat, maybe?



Also, I have to confirm the observation others make here on vid cards. nVidia has their poo together on Linux drivers, and ATI needs some serious help.

unreal has a native linux client that works well,atleast on UT2004.

I prefer OpenSuse 10.2 to ubuntu,can select either gnome or kde on istall(I like kde),wine and WoW have no trouble.

 

[astifter]

Hi,

first of all: to have to wait half a day to post to this forum is quite the opposite of what I expect from any forum, would be really nice to change that.

Back to the article: great read, thanks for your work. Really enjoyed it!

A few comments on some controversial points:
command line: to have a properly working and useful command line is one of the biggest issues windows lacks from my perspective. its simply often just faster and easier to use for certain tasks.
troubleshooting: i have worked on various windows oses (nt, 2000, xp) for about 5 years and on linux and mac os for about 4 years. i run in numerous configuration issues under windows that i simply was not able to solve, there is just not much community support and troubleshooting effort. there were i think 1 or 2 problems on linux that i could not solve in the same period. and yes, sometimes you have to use the command line, but in windows you just don't have the possibilities to fix a problem. (i had a wlan card that i never got to configure on windows xp, but it works on linux fine now for 2 years...)
free vs. commercial: its true that windows works a little better out of the box than linux, less configuration and hastle, thats what you pay for. linux is free, may be a bit time consuming at first (configuration, troubleshooting) but once you get the hang of it its so much faster and more convenient to work with than windows that the initial effort pays of quite fast. so if one calculates the money for windows against the time for linux the rewards are much higher with linux because you _learn_ something on the way.
gaming: i would recommend a dual boot system with xp for gaming (if one want's) and linux for doing serious stuff.

besides that i use mac os now because its the most perfect os for me (and as i said, i have experienced windows, linux and mac os fully....)

just to add another opinion,

greetings astifter

 

[Mercury_Merlin]

I'm not taking a cheap shot at the U.S. here, but if the States has lost its concept of fair use rights for the consumer, then that is not Linux's problem. Some of us don't live in the States, in countries where it is perfectly legal to watch a movie you have purchased wherever you like, and some of those people don't take very kindly to having to pay a tax on DVD software just so we can watch those movies which we have ALREADY purchased.

And just to double up on this point; it may be illegal to redistribute a program like libdvdcss in some countries, such as the States, however I do not live in the US and it's not necessarily illegal in my country for me to use DeCss to watch my legally purchased physical DVD that I own on hardware that I also legally purchased and own.

And I fully intend to do so, and to tell others how to do the same (and no, it's not necessarily illegal to provide that information, either, and if a law was passed making it illegal to do *that* then it would be unsurprising to find that it brought the law into disrespect as a result - and that's not a healthy thing in any society).

So bbz Ghost can make whatever rules that he likes, and quote those that apply in his country, but should not be surprised to find that other people in other places take a different view, and have different laws, and aren't going to play the game that way.

--
Mercury Merlin

 

[defuseme2k]

Just because you can click a few times instead of typing - no, maybe the user will just Google and copy and paste with Control+Shift+C and Control+Shift+V as noted above

WTF, I don't remember having to use control+shift+c to copy. It was ctrl+c and ctrl+v just like it is in windows, since obviously windows is only good way to do it. When we're talking about Joe user, I find it hard to believe he uses keyboard shortcuts anyway.

I agree with most of what you say, but I am not surprised at all to see you in a pro non-windows thread with negativity. I use vista daily, and like it quite a lot. Nothing touches beryl though, hands down, beta or not. There are a lot of things that are not Vista's fault that you, and > I < rant about in Vista's defense. Such as drivers and so on and so forth, but you point things out that aren't Linux fault either, and seem hypocritic somewhat. I 100&#37; feel like I'm going to have my post torn apart with how wrong I am, you're perfect etc, however I doubt I'm the only one with this opinion. I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't the majority of people's opinion familiar with your comments. You're a smart guy, but be balanced or its hard to give you credibility I feel you deserve.

 

[KoFFiE]

Very very nice article, my old account expired or was removed it seems (long time since I came here). I use linux since '95/96, so I'm a bit a 'hardcore' user, but many of the points you make are valid, and I've been saying them for a while. In my opinion, linux is not ready for 'mass-market' desktop. My mom at home uses Kubuntu, but only because my sister (she has a master ict) maintains it. It works without a problem for her - it does everything it needs to.

The Firefox problems I am familiar with, and I personally don't like FF at all (on windows I even prefer IE7 over it, but I mainly stick to Opera). I also mostly use Opera in linux, and KDE's Konqueror is also a very good lean&mean browser (on which Apple's Safari browser is based), they both are a lot more responsive. FF is mainly optimized for windows usage, the linux performance lags behind a lot, which is a bit sad.

As mentioned before, TV is one of the easiest things in linux. In windows I always had problems with getting it to work decently. Then I plugged it into my linux desktop and it simply worked (this is 4 years ago). As tv-player software I would recommend tvtime if it works with your card, it has all the great video filters from dscaler in windows. The interface is a bit spartan (all OSD), but once you get used to it, it's a wonderfull piece of software.

I've seen someone mentioning Cinerella for movie-editing, which is a great piece of software if you have a good machine, don't be fooled with the 'minimum 500mhz and at least 256mb RAM' it says in the doc It says recommended a dual cpu or better and at least 1gig of ram, but those specs dated from a time that a 500mhz machine with 256mb ram was still 'common'. Recommended is still a few gb ram and a dual or even quad-core system.

For audio editing, I would like to say - also take a look at audacity - a very good opensource multitrack audio editor (also available for windows).

For simple image editing I would recommend looking into KOffice, which has the Krita application. It's not nearly as powerfull as Gimp or Photoshop, but it is more a bit like a simple Paintshop Pro or Paint.NET on windows. Karbon then again is a vector drawing program a'la Coreldraw.

For DVD playback, Cyberlink released a 'legal' DVD-player for linux a long time ago (2001 I think), but it is discontinued due to a lack of interest for a closed program, and the fact that you can actually play DVD's for free (sometimes illegal). If you find this player and get it to work, you could legally play DVD's in linux...

The 64bit problems you encountered are very application specific. Most desktop applications in linux are not 64bit ready. If you look at server applications, 64bit on linux works flawlessly, since 64bit linux has been there since mid-90's for the DEC-Alpha. Also when Intel released it's 64bit Itanium, Linux was the only OS that ran on it. Basicly it's the same thing as installing Vista 64bit - you run into a lot of problems due to application and driver incompatabilities.

...
Perhaps this article will help to put pressure on adobe to make a 64 bit version of flash available. I mean... cmon... all you have to do is compile it. It's not like 64 bit processors are even REMOTELY new... IBM/Motorola and SUN have had 64 bit processors for AGES. ...

Well, simply recompiling doesn't work for Flash I'm afraid. Flash has a full-blown VM, bytecode interpreter and optimizer which was originally written with 32bit-only in mind. For these kind of applications, simply recompiling it when you need a 64bit version will NOT work unless you were prepared for this switch when you started writing the software. Here is more about this. If you want to know more on flash on linux, look here on the official linux/flash blog, they're clearly working on a 64bit version (for Windows and OSX too, where there also is no 64bit-version available).

And learn jack shit in the process, or why a particular command is being used to do a specific task. Even so, that's a helluva lot of copying and pasting using the mouse and if you use the keyboard, oh boy. Even that doesn't work the same way Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer running Windows, is used to. In Windows it's Control+C to copy, Control+V to paste. In Linux, add the Shift key to each command to get the functional equivalent. More complicated than is truly necessary, but just another "nail" in some respects towards Linux's acceptance as a desktop OS for Joe Average, consumer that owns a computer that happens to be running Windows.

Now who has to get his facts straight? I would recommend you to hold your mouth unless you have actual experience with linux, but you clearly don't. Copy-paste works EXACTLY like it works in linux. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. On top of that, simply selecting text also copies text, and clicking with the middle mouse-button pastes. Can it be easier? And there are a lot more shortcuts available than in windows, and they're all configurable. You want control+alt+shift+win+Q to be copy and control+alt+shift+win+? to be paste? Go ahead - you can

Now you're playing semantics, as I just did with the "cost breakdown" above. The issue here, and I commend the author of the article for pointing it out, that regardless of his - or your - personal opinions about how Windows handles issues with DVD playback (i.e. DeCSS or decryption issues) and mp3 playback (i.e. licensing and legality issues), the fact remains that in some parts of the world, playing back encrypted DVDs under Linux is against the law, period.

Just because you can click a few times instead of typing - no, maybe the user will just Google and copy and paste with Control+Shift+C and Control+Shift+V as noted above - and acquiring the ability to play back encrypted content doesn't mean it's legitimate. You and so many others keep missing that point, and again, your personal opinions and thoughts on the matter don't change the fact that it's illegal to watch an encrypted DVD on Linux in a lot of places around the world, most notably the US.

Again - get your facts straight - find PowerDVD for linux and you can legally play DVD's on Linux. It's not linux that makes it illegal, it's the lack of a supported/continued 'closed' program that pays licence fees to the DVD-consortium that makes it illegal IN THE US. I am currently not aware of any other country having a DMCA-alike law which rapes the customer's rights so badly... If you want legally play DVD's in windows - you also have to buy such a closed program, and in the media center edition, this is built-in.

You're sounding like someone that works for Apple with those statements.

The only-one looking like someone working for a 'certain company' are you I'm afraid...

There is no such company, and not even Google could make that kind of dent or long-lasting impression on people.

Hmmm *looks at previous sentence again*... You live in Redmond - right? Google has become a VERB. "I'm gonna google smth" is a very common expression, and I don't think that this gonna dissapear any time soon, long time impressions anyone? On top of that - Google is financially about 1/3rd of the size of Microsoft and has a huge cash reserve, with only one actual product. They can do about anything, and at Microsoft they know Google is a threat.

The biggest problem with the article? Neither Brian or Jason are Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer.

I thought that when reading the article, it was very clear that it wasn't targetted at "Joe average", but more at 'windows power users', who are not afraid of opening regedit to mess around. If copy/pasting some text from google is too hard for you, then what is typing in the licence-key during the windows installation for you? The end of the world?

You can hardly call me a fan-boy - I used about any os that I could run on x86 cpu's since I had my first XT with dos on it: Windows 2.0 to XP, OS/2 2.11, 3 and 4, BeOS, Solaris, Free and OpenBSD, Linux (slackware, redhat, suse, mandrake, debian, kubuntu and gentoo). I also played around on Mac's with OS8,9 and X and Vista on other ppl's PC's.

In the end and my opinion - both for a 'user' and 'power-user' desktop, once fully working: OS X > Linux (KDE) > WinXP > Win Vista > Linux (Gnome). I do not even own a Mac, at home, I currently run one WinXP for games, and one Linux (Gentoo), for all 'critical' desktop usage (mail/surfing/programming/...) and at work, I use windows 2000, Redhat and Slackware, so don't go 'you work for apple' on me.

I consider myself a power user in both Windows and Linux, and a power-user loves 'tricks' and shortcuts. Now that's one of the major selling points of Linux (and OS X) - the amount of tricks is massive. Once you know that in most desktop environments, you can simply hold the ALT-key, then you can drag a window with the left mouse-button, from anywhere in it. Same thing for resizing a window, but use the right mousebutton, and this is the tip of the iceberg. Most UI's are configurable far beyond what's possible in windows if you really want to, and once you get into commandline tricks (remember - as a power-user), a whole new world of possibilities opens itself. I do agree however, that for basic usage and configuring the system, no commandline should ever come into play if you want an end-user desktop system, but for a power-user, I hardly see any problem in doing that.

 

[digital_exhaust]

Well, wow.

Just wanted to throw my two cents out there... but, well....

Brian, Jason... I really enjoyed the article, I thought it was very well written and I actually learned a few things I didn't know.. I've been playing around with Ubuntu for quite a while, and still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with it, but it's fun.

Anyhow, just wanted to say thanks, and again I enjoyed reading the article and look forward to your next "30 days with" paper... Good job.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

The article generated a lot of mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I was impressed--the install process, LiveCD, apt-get, these were all light-years ahead of what I saw the last time I attempted to give Linux a try, just 5 or 6 years ago. I expected to see the ease-of-use red flags pop up from the get-go, and that just didn't happen. Linux has come a long way--if it can keep moving forward, the world may change after all.

On the other hand, the problems that did crop up kept piling and piling. The author was posing the question, "Would a veteran Windows user with no Linux experience be happy doing this?" As things went on, it became clear that the author was experienced enough with Linux to see the problems as disappointments and obstacles, but not as fatal issues. The conclusion was softened by that perspective, I think. For anyone with no Linux experience, the growing laundry list of show-stoppers and obscure text commands screams a giant "NO!" in answer to the basic question.

In that context, it's ironic to mention the Amiga. The reason I finally gave up on using an Amiga as my primary computing platform is that I just wanted to do whatever a computer was supposed to allow me to do, without having to stop and ask, "Is there any way MY platform can be tricked/cajoled/hacked into letting me do that?" I was tired of haunting computer junk shops run by creepy basement-dwellers in order to find that one little gizmo I had read about 5 years earlier that would make my experience a tiny bit better. Of course the use of "standard" hardware makes Linux a different story, but it has its virtual-reality version of the junk shop with the basement dweller when you need to go online for help.

Still, for vanilla everyday use, it sounds like Ubuntu is pretty sweet. The earth seems to tilt a little on its axis at the idea of the whole add-remove system, made possible because it's all FREE! Take whatever you want! Install it all at once! DAY-UM!!!

As a final aside, I have 5 Amigas tucked away in the room where I'm typing this, and I have the complete DVD collection of Babylon 5. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it propbably isn't good...

 

[eloj]

I have a problem with the statement that Ogg Vorbis req. more CPU to decode and encode. This can technically be true, but only in a world where you do CBR encodes of mp3s, and who does that? No one who knows what they're doing, that's who. Vorbis is inherently VBR, and then mp3 encoding isn't at all favourable any more. In fact, I don't know of any high quality mp3 encoder that can match the speed demon that is oggenc archer (it's also multithreaded unlike LAME [versions that don't suck], though sadly there are no linux binaries available.)

On the decoding side, the difference would require special timing tools to see on a modern CPU.

 

[Brian Boyko]

And he went so far as to bring up DRM in Vista as a "selling point" for using Linux, which I find almost reprehensible.

I really don't want to get into a long, protracted discussion here, but I don't know why you'd find this reprehensible.

Most people are not going to have problems with Windows DRM. Some will. Because of the nature of Linux, it is unlikely that there will ever be DRM in it; because there are many different Linux distributions, the competition keeps people honest.

Don't get me wrong, there isn't a single end-user out there from Joe Average to Gary Guru out there that wants more DRM on their system, or wants to be prevented from doing something on their computer. So if DRM begins to get in the way of the end-user doing what he wants, of course a DRM-free OS will seem like a tempting choice.

Not only is the freedom to do what you'd like with your system a selling point for Linux, but in totality, the freedom to do what you'd like with your system is -the- selling point for Linux, and has been since it started attaching GNU to it's official name of GNU/Linux.

Wanna play an mp3? Under Windows, open the file and it plays in Windows Media Player. Or you can install WinAMP. Or foobar2k, any Media Monkey, or any number of media players - but the OS can do it natively without hassles. Linux? Takes some effort on the part of the user, and Joe Average, consumer that happens to own a computer, simply isn't going to go there.

Yes, in Linux, you have to install a program to play an MP3 file. You do not have to install a program to play an OGG file. This is reversed under Windows; and the only reason that Windows has native MP3 support is because they're willing to risk using the proprietary codec instead of the free one (and I believe they're currently being sued for it.) However, playing MP3s was not a problem, and it didn't even require downloading a program manually. I was able to play MP3s in that massive download through Apt-Get. If anything, Windows requires you to download many more programs, separately, in order to get your files to work.

Wanna play a retail DVD from a major movie studio, like "Casino Royale" coming out Tuesday? Under Linux? Get ready to do some typing, Joe, and agreeing to disclaimers that are designed to protect others since if you're in the US what you're about to do under Linux is considered illegal here. Under Windows, well... that's where it gets interesting.

I cannot either admit to, nor tell you how to play DVDs in Linux. However, I can tell you that in a hypothetical situation where I would have chosen to break the law to play, say, Mel Brooks' History Of The World Part I on DVD, I'm pretty sure that I would have had to do no typing. Furthermore, on Windows XP SP2, there is no DVD support natively. Linux natively supports DVDs, like the independent film "Everything is Everything," it just doesn't natively support the CSS decryption. The only free player for Windows that plays DVDs is VLC, and I'm not 100&#37; sure of the legality of that in the U.S., either.

Keep in mind that Media Center Edition 2005 is only offered via OEM; the end-user has to buy a new computer to get it legally.

 

[Mohonri]

And I'm not forgetting anything, I made my point, and you just backed it up. And you, like so many others, need to get off the money issue. If you think Linux is free just because there's no cash out of pocket dollar expense involved - inaccurate since someone has to pay for the computer it's running on, the electricity to power the computer, the cost of the Internet connection to download it, the cost of the blank CDR to burn the ISO on, etc etc - you're just sadly mistaken. There's a cost of effort, a cost of time, a cost of frustration at learning something new; all of that factors into my statement. Just because it ain't about dollars, doesn't mean it ain't about sense - and yes, that's correct.

Um, I'll take issue with this. The point is moot, since those costs also apply when using Windows. The cost of the OS goes on top of the hardware cost. Oh, and don't forget the cost of all the other software, too!

I also disagree with your characterization of installing a program to watch DVDs in Linux as comparable to pirating OSx86 or Windows or whatever. There's an enormous difference. If you download DeCSS to watch DVDs, you're not getting "something for nothing" or robbing anyone of anything. You bought the DVD, so you ought to be able to watch it. Pirating Windows or OSX is another matter entirely.

Lastly, I'd like to echo the "freedom" bit. How many people have actually read the Windows XP license agreement? Parts of it are horrendous! Here are a few choice tidbits:
--You have to activate. If you change hardware, you may have to activate again.
--You're not allowed to have more than 5 (10 in XPPro) computers connect for file sharing/printer sharing and other network services. Oh, and you can't use XP for commercial hosting--they want you to shell out more $$ for a "real" server OS.
--DRM. Enough said.
--"You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software"
--You allow Microsoft to gather information about you and your computer for their use and their partners' use.
None of these is present in Linux. Oh, and did I mention that you have to pay for these?

 

[Brian Boyko]

Hello Brian,

I have a system almost entirely identical to Pugetina and I run
dual-boot XP+Ubuntu Edgy Eft. Ethernet works perfectly on the P5B-E.
It's an almost tragic realization, but the linux drivers come on the CD
included with the motherboard in the LinuxDrivers directory and are
provided by Attansic themselves. I was very amazed to hear of your
experience in this. If you can get the word out, maybe Googlers can find it?

I found it sad when you said "Sadly, newer hardware, like the P5B-E's
onboard network card, often takes a bit of time before it's usable in
Linux because the manufacturer typically doesn't give Linux
compatibility a second thought." because in this case the manufacturer
did actually provide directly not only a driver, but one that is open
source. I don't know why, but it has not been integrated into the
mainline kernel (for various reasons, maybe political or code quality,
or not enough time from upstream maintainers).

I apologize for not making a post in the forum but it seems registration
is not instant so I decided to send an e-mail. I did not see anyone
mention this in the forum, so I wanted to get this information out.

I need at least three non-quoted letters to post. This sentence should suffice.

 

[Brian Boyko]

Brian,

I wanted to write in and thank you for your article entitled "30 Days with
Linux". Your methodology was rigorous, and your target audience is one
which I think will benefit greatly from Linux information which speaks to
them.

I think you let us off a bit too easily on a few points, where you were able
to surmount obstacles due to having previous Linux experience, but overall,
you struck a good balance between accurately describing a novice experience
and providing insight into the complete picture. This is especially true
where sensitive issues such as free software philosophy, licensing and
patent issues are concerned. Thanks for taking the time to explain the
reasons for the various messes involved.

I'd like to comment on a few of the specific technical issues you raised, in
appreciation for the fact that you not only took the time to solve most of
them yourself, but described them in sufficient technical detail that I (and
thus the Ubuntu development team) can identify the causes. That's all too
rare in Linux reviews.

Regarding msttcorefonts, there are occasionally problems with the
third-party mirrors where these fonts are stored, for example
https://launchpad.net/bugs/38029. I'm unable to find confirmation of your
problem with the SourceForge mirror, though, and the installer is supposed
to fall back to others if the mirror it tries is not available. You
mentioned later in the article that you had another SourceForge-related
problem; did this turn out to be their problem rather than Ubuntu's
directly?

We're aware of the need for simpler, more comprehensive video mode selection
in the desktop. Some notes from me and others on this issue are recorded at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SimpleXModeSelection. We did some proof-of-concept
work on this for the 7.04 release, but in the end, we were dissuaded by
information from X.org upstream which indicated that we would have much
better options available for implementing it with the X11R7.3 release, due
in May. Therefore, we deferred that feature to a later date.

We make Realplayer available directly from the Ubuntu repositories in
Add/Remove Programs through an agreement with RealNetworks. Unfortunately,
we only have it available for 6.06 so far, not for 6.10 or later. I raised
this issue with the folks who manage that relationship a couple of months
ago, and hope to see that change soon.

You mentioned that you had to enter a cryptic gstreamer pipeline in order to
get MP3 encoding working. I was surprised to read this, as generally it
just works after installing the plugins (which was your first impulse). Can
you provide any additional information about the problem? You might also be
interested to know that for the 7.04 release, we've automated the process of
installing these plugins the first time the user attempts to open an MP3
file (the technical specification is at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EasyCodecInstallation).

With regard to DVD support, you've probably heard about the Click-And-Run
initiative we've undertaken with Linspire. Linspire's reputation in the
community notwithstanding, our community was very supportive of this effort,
and one of the things it will offer is a way to purchase official, legal DVD
support on Ubuntu in a relatively straightforward way.

In a few instances, you were inconvenienced by the rigidity of the default
metapackages, such as ubuntu-desktop. This is a very old issue
(https://launchpad.net/bugs/11381) for whose solution we've laid the
groundwork in 6.10 and 7.04. Our goal is that in 7.10, it will be easy to
remove packages which are part of the default installation without
disturbing the metapackages or losing the important feature of installing
new default packages as they become necessary.

The IPv6 issue is also an old one, which fortunately only affects some
users, and is at its heart a problem with networking equipment which does
not adhere to standards. Your article helped to remind me that for those
affected, this is a significant hurdle, and that Ubuntu should attempt to
handle this situation more gracefully. I'll ask someone to look into it.

Your problem with the LaserJet 1020 is also known, and in fact we have a fix
already prepared for 6.10 which is currently going through QA:
https://launchpad.net/bugs/65618. It's also fixed for 7.04, of course.

Your WiFi issue sounds a bit like a driver bug, especially since it didn't
happen with the 32-bit edition, and we'd appreciate a full report with
details of your hardware. If you send that information to me, I'll pass it
on to our kernel team.

Thanks,

--
Matt Zimmerman
Chairman, Ubuntu Technical Board

 

[Brian Boyko]

Hi I just read your conclusion and I noticed that you are slightly
wrong about a sentence in the Bad section about your Ubuntu conclusion

"But the problem is that people aren't making games for Linux, and
there's a very limited native library."

There is actually a very good native which runs on Windows, Linux and
Mac. Its called libSDL (http://www.libsdl.org/) and it is pretty much
an open source equivalent of Microsoft's DirectX api.

Many Linux/Mac ported Windows games are ported to libSDL and it has
been remarked that it is much easier to work with then the DirectX.
There was recently a FLOSS interview with a well know Linux game
porter Ryan Gordon ( http://www.twit.tv/floss8 ) about this very
subject.

Most if not all games will actually run linux for example any game
made with the unreal engine 2/3 will work on Linux and Mac (I think
mac). All that it requires is taking out the directX and putting in
the libSDL/openGL (tedious but doable).

Games which won't work is anything done by valves Half-life 2 engine.
Not because it is impossible but because they did not want to port it.
Anyway listen to the podcast and it will inform you better then I can
on the subject.

Regards,
Andrew
(Game programming student)

This is a well thought out point.

That said, the use of the word "library" meant, in this context, that
there weren't many native linux games on the shelves of stores - or in
other words, that there weren't a lot of "books in the library."

I was not referring to a "software library."

 

[Brian Boyko]

I read your article about using Ubuntu for 30 days, and I must say it
was interesting. Good work.

Unfortunately, it seems like you've made a common mistake when implying
that Cedega is just a derivative of the Wine project. Transgaming likes
to brand Cedega this way to discourage potential customers from just
using Wine. The idea is that if you can convince people that "Cedega is
for gaming" they're less likely to hear "Wine is for everything,
including games."

The truth is that the projects are really different, and Wine frequently
outperforms Cedega in functionality and speed - even on games. There's
only a handful of chunks of Wine that Cedega can legally reuse for
themselves while still keeping Cedega closed source.


I went ahead and looked up the games you tested in Cedega in the Wine
application database, and it looks like people have had some real
success running them with Wine:

Oblivion:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=5777&iTestingId=9479

Battlefield 2:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=3438&iTestingId=9286

Keep in mind, new versions of Wine are released every other week. The
testing results that I could find above were for slightly earlier
versions - the version of Wine that came out (literally) this Friday has
fixed some bugs and provided speed improvements to these two games as
well.

Since Wine is still in rapid development, it's a good idea to use a
newer version of Wine rather than using the old and frozen version
included with Edgy. We've set up our own separate APT repository to
make upgrades smooth and easy:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb


Anyway, I encourage you to actually try testing Wine from WineHQ on your
applications. Most Ubuntu users run Wine this way, and most will want
to try doing so before purchasing a Cedega subscription - especially
when they learn that Wine can often run the program better.


Thanks,
Scott Ritchie


Also, as to why there's no 64-bit package of Wine: I literally don't
have a 64-bit computer to play with, and I can't get vmware working to
mess around on someone else's. The workaround for 64-bit users linked
to on the page above should work, however.

Scott Ritchie is the maintainer of the Ubuntu binary and source .debs of the Wine project for Ubuntu Edgy, Dapper, and Breezy.

 

[Commander Suzdal]

Thanks,

--
Matt Zimmerman
Chairman, Ubuntu Technical Board

Wow! The earth's axis tilts even farther for me... that's just cool...

 

[Brian Boyko]

The article generated a lot of mixed feelings for me. On the one hand, I was impressed--the install process, LiveCD, apt-get, these were all light-years ahead of what I saw the last time I attempted to give Linux a try, just 5 or 6 years ago. I expected to see the ease-of-use red flags pop up from the get-go, and that just didn't happen. Linux has come a long way--if it can keep moving forward, the world may change after all.

On the other hand, the problems that did crop up kept piling and piling. The author was posing the question, "Would a veteran Windows user with no Linux experience be happy doing this?" As things went on, it became clear that the author was experienced enough with Linux to see the problems as disappointments and obstacles, but not as fatal issues. The conclusion was softened by that perspective, I think. For anyone with no Linux experience, the growing laundry list of show-stoppers and obscure text commands screams a giant "NO!" in answer to the basic question.

In that context, it's ironic to mention the Amiga. The reason I finally gave up on using an Amiga as my primary computing platform is that I just wanted to do whatever a computer was supposed to allow me to do, without having to stop and ask, "Is there any way MY platform can be tricked/cajoled/hacked into letting me do that?" I was tired of haunting computer junk shops run by creepy basement-dwellers in order to find that one little gizmo I had read about 5 years earlier that would make my experience a tiny bit better. Of course the use of "standard" hardware makes Linux a different story, but it has its virtual-reality version of the junk shop with the basement dweller when you need to go online for help.

Still, for vanilla everyday use, it sounds like Ubuntu is pretty sweet. The earth seems to tilt a little on its axis at the idea of the whole add-remove system, made possible because it's all FREE! Take whatever you want! Install it all at once! DAY-UM!!!

As a final aside, I have 5 Amigas tucked away in the room where I'm typing this, and I have the complete DVD collection of Babylon 5. I'm not sure what that says about me, but it propbably isn't good...

My old boss has a picture of himself with Jerry Doyle on-set. You would not be the biggest B5 geek I know.

 

[Tweakin]

Impressive responses to an impressive article. I only wish KDE would have been selected over Gnome (and that the author would have properly pronounced Linux in his video).



I enjoyed the read.

 

[ftcsm]

I think bbz_Ghost has a valid line of thinking but wrong assumptions. From his post I can derive some things, not intending to attack him but to just using his ideas to explain my point of view:

1 - Lots of people think Linux is for programmers/geeks/whatever marketing stereotype throws on it. Really not the case. Not 100% ready for a gamer machine is something I can accept to describe Linux today but to generalize that is a factual error. Even Microsoft gets big money from corporate contracts and that's where the best possible cash flow incomes is cause they tend to renew contracts and do not need too much marketing for that. After the lock-in it becomes easier to sell a new contract. For Linux, a corporate desktop is not only feasible but there are a lot of cases out there to prove (in Brazil, Germany, Spain, China, South Africa, you name it). Only US tends to get pissed with it to protect Microsoft and they are somewhat right, protect money income flux is something any of us would do if we were governing the country. And even NSA, NASA, DHS and other government bodies uses Linux.

2 - He uses a problematic logic statement that is based on a true thing to prove something not directly related to it. What is the problem with the entire article just because it did not fully explain that .Net dependency of the Ati driver was confined to Ati Control Center? Who cares about it? Will Average Joe be prepared to know it and exclude Control Center at installation time (that they are NOT doing, they will buy preconfigured machines)? Will Dell do it for them just because it's possible or maybe they'll just duplicate a standard prepared installation in a "one size fits all" style? I know the answer ...

3 - There will ALWAYS be more than one distribution. People will do it even just because they can or because they need. And they CAN do it because of full access, the interesting part of the "free" we are talking about, nothing to do with price. Linux flexibility is that it can be adapted to work from an iPod or cell phone just up to supercomputers. Yes, even a desktop is possible if you can live with some restrictions (gaming and some forced licensing of proprietary programs/codecs). That's why probably we will see one or two major distributions in the desktop market but some others in server market, some others in mobile market and so on. Which points us to the next topic.

4 - One size fits all is not the answer, open standards are. There is no problem in running the same program on Ubuntu, RedHat or whatever distribution you feel right to use. Just use the distribution prepared package and all goes well (generally). Package is not available for that specific distribution/variant? None of similar distributions have one? Then create one, find a package that someone did or just compile it yourself. Not that difficult in 99% of the cases even in command line. Why fear command line just because it's not a shining graphical interface? Don't we all type something in form fields on a browser? How different is to type on a prompt?.

Try that on a package that only works on the Server variant of Windows when you just want to test it on your Professional variant even when it's just an artificial restriction (remember Russinovich proving NT Server and NT Workstation were almost identical except for some registry entries?). And Windows is often mentioned as the "one distribution only" model to be followed. No Thanks.

5 - Just explaining the 1st point better, Linux does not need to achieve ubiquity on Joe Average desktop market to be considered successful. It already is. And all the new inroads in corporate/government space means more and more acceptance and, probably, more manufacturer and software publishers' demand wich will probably lead to better Average Joe support. Also, how can you be sure 95% figure is correct if Linux can be downloaded for free or bought in 1 and then duplicated in thousands? That Windows is majority no one questions but the 95% numbers means almost nothing. And who cares if Linux it's not the dominant OS?

6 - I may be wrong but some days ago I swear I've seen a commercial Linux software DVD player for sell. Wants to be legal in US? Buy it. I live outside the former "Land of Freedom" now know as "Land of Fear". God, even americans are considered guilty before trial if the matter is related to copyrights/patents. They have to swallow DRM over DRM just for fear of music/video industry that they could eventually made the ultimate aberration of using a music from a legally bought CD on their MP3 player. What happened to this country? What is more fearsome is that they want to impose that on the rest of the world, sometimes in sneaky ways. No Thanks again. Even US is now figuring that those crazy copyright laws and that broke patent system is hurting innovation that much that US is losing round after round of the knowledge race. Since I don't live there, I hope they lose bad even if just to remember that lesson for years to come. (sorry for the rant)

7 - Are you sure it is really stupid to say that windows is forcing restrictions on you? Have you tried to buy a machine without it pre-installed? It is changing but it's almost impossible to convince Dell to sell you that new shining notebook without paying the Vista Tax. Sure (after you bought it) you can uninstall it and swallow the tax but I just don't want to pay it, I want nothing with Vista. Don't take me wrong, I use XP and it is more than enough to me when I want to do something in Windows. Vista has nothing that interests me. I can live without Windows today, why do I have to pay Microsoft tax? I can happily pay for someone to pre-install Linux (or whatever I choose to use) on that machine or just pay nothing and do my own homework or even pay for the support contract and do my own installation just for the sake of knowing what is going on. Talking about restrictions, can you make your XP accept more than 10 connections to your installed IIS? Why not? On Linux I can do what *I* want not what someone think I would want or, worst, what they want. Artificial limitations like that are common in proprietary world, not just MS.

7 - Linux (and other free software) does not need to be free (in cost). You may pay for it, be it a box price (SuSE Enterprise, for example) or a support contract (a lot of examples). Or you can have it free in cost. It doesn't matter, the important thing is free as in *freedom*, I can do whatever *I* feel like to do with it. If I want to completely strip the functionalities I don't need, I can. I can add functionality to it. I can even share it with others.

Just to follow your argument, the same costs you said applies to Windows as well. If you never used Windows, it would be new and frustrating and so on. Yes, do not take for granted that everyone on the planet uses and knows Windows. My parents knows basically how to use a browser and only after long battles of teaching from my part. And they use XP. It's damn hard to make them understand the directory analogy, it's not that easy cause a file is not just one document in the real world but one or more. A directory is not the equivalent of a drawer cause a drawer can contain lots of files which themselves can contain lots of documents or even other files with documents inside. When we use Windows or any other filesystem based OS (including Linux) we are learning a new thing, it's a new paradigm that does not finds direct relation to the real world. Yet we can get used to it after a while. And who said Control-C and Control-V is even somewhat intuitive? Man, things in real world just doesn't get "copied" at will. You need intervention in form of machines or processes. If Windows uses Control-C and the "insert a name here" system uses ALT-C and the other "insert other name here" uses Control-D (of duplicate, why copy is the correct, copy is wrong is US law ), what difference does it make for someone that never used a computer before? I don't know if you all remember but there was a time when Windows did not exist. This time was not that much ago, the first reasonably usable Windows (98) came less than 10 years ago. For those that don't know/remember, X windows existed for even more time than windows and in the end, who copied form who? Even X copied from Xerox Parc experiments, even Apple copied it. I can remember the Apple fans using bottoms saying "Windows 95 = Mac 89". Funny times back then.

8 - Do you feel frustrated to learn something new? I love to learn something new everyday, not only about computers but in every other area. What a pleasure is when I read an interesting literature book. How nice was when I did my first Sudoku. When I learn nothing in a day I become sad, it's like losing a day.

I could come all day long with this arguments. Everyone can have his/her own point of view but prejudgment always leads to bad things. Bias is always present and almost inevitable but prejudgments blinds us. This comes to all the groups: Linux is not perfect; Windows is not garbage; Free software is not the only way; Proprietary software does have a place in real world; and so on.

That said, more articles in that line can really benefit the discussion. Keep doing the always good work Hardocp is famous for doing.

 

[notanatheist]

As a longtime desktop linux user I felt the need to drop in with a few comments.

For CD ripping I would personally recommend Grip w/ LAME. My entire CD collection is ripped to VBR -q 0 which ensures audio quality to on par with the original source. I don't use my computer for playback though. All that is handled through Slimserver and my Squeezeboxes. Another note on audio, you will find that onboard sound often 'works fine' but won't be the quality you have on that other OS. Stick any Creative card from an Audigy on down in and you'll enjoy better audio. Nearly every Creative Sound Blaster is supported under linux (no X-Fi yet) and even Creative has an open source portion to their site. The onboard on my 975XBX wasn't cutting it for UT2004 so my old Audigy got dropped in for audio bliss.

For audio editing you should look into Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) for something "simple". There are actually a number of apps for doing audio editing on linux.

As for games, well you are quite misinformed!! UT2003 works with linux and the installer is on the last disc. UT2004 has the installer on the DVD. Descent 3 runs fine. Serious Sam TSE is playable. Scorched3D, Armagetron, bzflag, all work like a charm and are cross platform. Enemy Territory and all the mods (Red Orchestra and such) for both ET and UT work on linux. Quake 3 and 4 of course. IIRC Doom III had a playable demo for linux. Postal 2 runs. None of the above are with WINE either. Poke through icculus.org and you'll find a ton of games. Take the time to try some commercial games and let the developers and those associated know you appreciate the linux ports. I know a bunch of people who only use Window because of their games but would switch in a heartbeat if it meant no more BSOD, malware, viruses, etc..

Lastly, I'll give you what I run for my main box as an example of what linux does run very well on.

Fortron Source 500W BlueStorm, Intel 975XBX2, E6400 oc'd to 2.66, 2GB DDR2-800, XFX 7900GT, DVDRW (oh yeah, NeroLinux too), 250GB SATA for OS (Gentoo) and general apps, 150GB WD Raptor mounted at /usr/local/games to reduce lag in map loading, and a refurbished 80GB for those rare times when I need that other OS to try something for someone