LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Adam Hawes <adam_hawes@dingoblue.net.au>
  To  : Linux SA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 17:33:23 +1030

Re: Operating systems.

> Probably 12 months ago I tried RH 6.0 and it took me a few goes to
> get everything set up but it worked and I enjoyed the experience. For
> whatever reason I lost access to the Linux partition so went back to
> Windows. Under RH6 I couldn't get printer access.

Strangely, this is a stumbling point for many users.  The "new" printer
subsystem of Linux compared to Windows is difficult to use and
understand, as many programs need to fork lpr (or whatever derivation
you are using) to print.  The printer drivers are not nearly as readily
available as for Winblows, and Win-Printers are just not supported at
all (isn't there a project to allow using Windows drivers as a part of
the Linux system; I know there is one for multimedia codecs).

> I did find the file structure intriguing but concede that it offers a
> definite cure to the "teenage bedroom" syndrome offered by windows.
> It really is a mess.

I like that the /usr tree on Linux (Unix in general) contains all the
installed programs apart from the system stuff that is in /bin, /sbin,
etc.  I like that /etc will contain the system configuration in
person-readable text files. It's also easier to mount new partitions and
removable disks exactly where you want them to be (and hidden from other
users if required) using the Unix way. Winbites just whacks in a drive
letter somewhere (and usually reassigns all your other letters so that
the system will barely even boot 'cos some DLL needed for your video
card was on the D: drive before you put in a disk with one primary
partition on the slave side of the first hard disk port.

BTW, do you know why M$ chose drive letters and the '\' over the
traditional Unix / method?? I was once told that it was because they
wanted to be exactly different from the existing systems of the day when
they were developing the first versions of DOS; they called it
"innovation" and said it was for "ease of use". (only what I have been
told).

> 
> Recently I came across the pocket book with RH and MD so fired up
> Partition magic and installed MD7.2 with no drama. Everything went
> very smoothly, the only thing missing is my UMAX 1220s scii card.

SCSI not working under Linux?  I don't think I've heard of a case where
a SCSI card hasn't been supported yet (unless it is VERY VERY new). 
There are SCSI problems on all systems though so if you're having
problems configuring it (rather than the fact that there is no driver
for it) just keep beating away at it and it will conceede defeat some
time.

>
> This is my dilemma : The GUI of KDE or Gnome is great, excellent to
> work with, the preinstalled programmes are very good but to download
> off the net is a nightmare. I have a folder full of downloaded
> programmes [rpm's, tars etc] and with few exceptions none of them
> work because something is always missing.

If you want ease of installing a GUI, try Helix Gnome
(http://www.helixcode.com).  That comes with an installer that
automagically fetches packages for your system based on the requirements
of the package you are trying to install.  I never had any trouble when
I was using it.  I've also found that while RPM/Debian/other is nice,
you never get the _LATEST_ package.  I've been trying to install Licq
under Debian and the only package available was 0.7.6 when the latest
stable release is 1.0.6 (or something like that) and has been around for
at least 6 weeks now.  I couldn't compile the source, because Debian
doesn't install QT2.2 as default (2.0 is default) and there were no
stable packages for QT2.2 under Debian.  I tried installing the
"unstable" packages (probably stable but in the unstable devel ver of
Debian) and it insisted in installing about 30 other pakages from the
unstable release (and they were all base system stuff; init, XFree,
libc5 and 6, gcc, etc) and when it was completed my system was knackered
=> enter the reinstall!

In short, package management is a farce to make it "simple" for less
experienced users.  I think I'm going to move back to the days of
.tar.gz and compiling from source. Things were much simpler then, and
you didn't have to install the compiled program until after you'd tested
it from the compile directory and made sure it worked right.

> 
> if Linux is to be more than a hobby system it has to address the
> problem of people like me that have reasonable computer skills but
> are not interested in peeling back every layer of the Linux onion to
> reach the core.  Linux does have an excellent graphic interface and
> it is simple to use BUT there are not enough dialog boxes to tell you
> what is happening, where it is happening and when it is finished.
> Take GNORPM a fairly straightforward programme to use but doesn't
> tell me it has completed its task. It does tell me it has failed to
> install because of dependency issues. The frustration in downloading
> files only to have them fail is enough to drive people away from the
> OS. I have looked at Connectiva 6.0 with its APT get function and
> that may offer some help.

The problem is that general users can generally use Linux without doing
anything special.  Most new Windows users are incapable of installing
their own software and call technical support when they want to add a
program to their system.  I have seen this when I was working with
computers years ago, and still see it now when parents buy their young
kids a computer for school, and can't work out how to install this new
$700 M$ office package so the kids can do their homework.  People don't
like their computer asking them questions... it confuses them.  While
Debian can be configured to the level of questions to ask, it is not the
be-all and end-all of solutions.  See my rant in the last paragraph.

The beauty of the GUI that is standard on Linux is that you can change
it to suit your needs.  If you don't like XFree, install another.  If
you don't like your window manager install another.  If you don't like
the GUI at all, piss it off.  You really want to try and use the command
line for system administration.  The command line tools can offer much
more useful information than the GUI tools and are in most cases simpler
to use than the GUI counterparts if you take the few minutes to read
"tool --help" to find out what options are available.  As for dialog
boxes try /var/log/messages for system-wide stuff.

> It seems to me that Linux needs some uniformity when it comes to
> basic libraries concerned with compressed programmes off the net.

There is uniformity the standard C libraries will implement at least a
minimum guaranteed set of functions.  Power users (the very foundation
of Linux users) will not download binaries off the net.  That is the
beauty of Linux; you can download source code and compile it for YOUR
computer (i386, i486, Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC, C=64 <g>, Amiga, etc) and
it will run because Linux is generally POSIX compliant.  The advantage
of this is that Linux programs tend to be distributed as smaller
packages, while Windows programs come as files that now range between 20
and 100M just for a simple paint package.  This is because Windows
programmers feel the need to put the libraries they used in because the
user can't recompile against their own version of the libraries.

Unlike Winbites, which is only designed to run on i386-based PCs, and
has drivers for ALL the hardware in the system hidden under a layer of
goo that presents a common interface to the programmer for all devices
(and slows things down) Linux is (now) designed to run on the widest
variety of hardware imaginable from old 386 PCs with 8M of RAM to the
latest Alpha and Sparc servers with gigabytes of RAM.  There is no way
we can "standardise" versions in such a largely differnt set of
libraries for different hardware. The best we can do is offer a minimum
guaranteed set of functions in each library (see above).  The crux of
the matter is that if you want to get things working (mostly) first
time, download and build source packages (RPM and Debian allow you to do
this with SRPMS and source.DEBs).  You'll still need the libraries
present to build the package but the version becomes largely irrelevant
as long as it is reasonably current.

> 
> I realise I cannot use Linux for my business at present because of a
> lack of a suitable equivalent programme to Quickbooks but everything
> else I need is there and maybe soon Linux will have the small
> business issues handled. If Quickbooks 7.4 was available tomorrow for
> Linux I would move to a Linux only box but as it stands it can't
> offer me real life computing solutions for my business, and the
> little I know of it shows me its superiority over Windows in many
> respects.

It can't offer real-life solutions becuase there are so many people who
whinge about "real-life" and then switch back to Winbites. 
Unfortunately, software houses won't start taking Linux seriously unless
we show them that people _WILL_ use Linux versions of their software if
it is provided.  The problem with business is that Linux represents a
very very high risk factor.  It is a free system, and so how can it make
money, right?  There are so many different "deviations" of it that how
can we make software that will run on all of them?  The only answer to
the second question is to release source code, and big $oftware houses
don't want to do that because they fear that they will lose money.

Corel offered Word Perfect 8 for Linux (free download and a "premium"
edition for $$$).  They have sinced stopped with that (AFIK) and I don't
think they are planning another release yet.  The problem there comes
down to people still wanting M$ Office compatibility.  Nobody switched
to Corel WP8 because Linux users already had their favoured solutions
and Windows users used M$ Office and whinged about people who use
incompatible formats.  The only way to win the market is offer some
product that is totally new and innovative, easy to use, and does
everything except scrub your back in the shower (it should be able to
make coffee; http://www.linuxdoc.org and see the coffee HOWTO).

> In conclusion: I don't want to be a command line computer user but if
> all else fails I will dig deep if I have to.

The command-line is where it is at.  I can't use Winblows properly
anymore because I _need_ the command line to get things done
efficiently.  I can view files, edit files, telnet, ftp, move around the
filesystem, find files, write source code, compile source code, secure
my system, etc, etc, etc all without moving away from the keyboard.

I apologise about my long rant to people.  I have been (unfortunatley)
working with a particular M$ lover person for the last 12 months and he
hindered all progress on the project because of his ranting about
compatibility with the rest of the world.  Hmm now that I have vented my
anger at Windows users I will just crawl back under my rock and
hibernate for another year until Linus rises up with his closet army and
assimilates the world powers and forces everyone to use linux.

Cheers,
Adam

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