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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
(Unverified)Mar 21st 2008 4:21PM
And this is exactly way Linux, unless it changes its ways, will never, EVER be taken seriously as an operating system. As technology grows and evolves, it's supposed to become simpler and easier to use, while becoming more powerful. 80 years ago, to listen to radio, you needed to buy a crystal set, attach an antenna, attach a ground wire, calibrate the tuner, and attach an earpiece. Today, you flip a switch.
I have experimented with several different flavors of Linux, including Knoppix, Mandrake, Red Hat, and the dreaded Ubuntu. NONE of them were even as stable as Windows 95, or as useful as MacOS6.
Despite how this article tries to simplify the process, it usually goes like this:
I want to install [feature]. The website for [feature] has a download but no install info. So I look around on the forums. Someone says "Here's all you have to do:"
sudo command1 bin/lib/etc/file.ext thing2 bin/lib/etc/file.ext
sudo command2 home/usr/bin/file.ext thing1 home/usr/ -wtf
command3 -- omg
command4
"And that's all there is to it."
Fair enough. So I cut and paste:
sudo command1 bin/lib/etc/file.ext thing2 bin/lib/etc/file.ext
OK
command1 failed. Code 1337
Of course, command2 is dependent on command1 succeeding. So I look around online for more help. Since it worked perfectly on the first try for the guy who left the comment, he has no help. So I look some more. Someone else will suggest a completely different idea that had absolutely nothing to do with the first idea, except that it has about as many steps. So I try that. I get an error on step 1. Maybe I'll get all the way to step three so I can have some hope that maybe just this once, Linux will do what I tell it to.
Nope.
But I'll keep trying, because I read comments from people online that Linux is so great. While I suppose it's great to have a hippie OS to go with one's hippie philosophy, I need to get some work done, and I have never found a version of Linux that I could get to the point where I could do real, honest-to-goodness WORK on it.
(Unverified)Mar 21st 2008 5:33PM
I just finished tie-dying my alpaca hair wood pellet tote bag, so I thought I'd respond.
All kidding aside... I have had my fair share of Linux headaches. I also really like figuring this stuff out. And yes, I have had situations arise where someone's solution online... or several people's solutions, haven't fixed the problem I'm having (usually due to some far off distant dependency).
Of course, I've had problems in Windows that I've not really figured out with less frustration. Heck, I've had problems installing freakin' CODECS in WMP that were a lot more frustrating to wrap my head around than the same codecs in Linux.
However... In the case of codecs and DVD playback... There really ISN'T a whole lot open source software can do to make it much easier. Okay, well... They could change their licensing structure some, and charge a fee or two... Like Xandros does... and see if people go for that. From what I know about Xandros, not too many are.
And maybe it is blaming "the man." That's not really the point, though.
As far as getting work done, also a legitimate complaint. If you need to run Groupwise, or Access, or Photoshop or some other vital bit of proprietary code to perform your job duties, then, yeah, there *are* real issues with using Linux. Although a lot more people get actual honest-to-god work done when Flash and libdvdcss2 aren't installed. ;)
(Unverified)Mar 23rd 2008 3:30AM
Perhaps a reality check would do with your problem with finding software to do what you want.
Any well supported distro, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS (to a lesser degree) will usually have what you're looking for in their software repositories already compiled for your system.
That's the first place to look even if you have found your first reference on a web site somewhere.
What can be annoying, though is that package names can be different than the simple name of the software so be sure to look both for the name and some description of what's in the package.
Unlike, even as recently as 4 years ago, I rarely compile from scratch anymore because my distro, Mandriva, has it in 99.99% of cases.
ttfn
John