The Linux geek thread - The Bear and Badger

hunk

No summary, just a rant on stuff in linuxland that annoys.

Ed_Flanders

Things that annoy me:
- Lack of device drivers for certain hardware
- How hard it is to update drivers, video drivers especially
I think the first issue is due to manufacturers and the second is connected to how the kernel is designed. I may be wrong, though.

hunk

Yes, lack of drivers is shit although situation has improved drastically as of last year (apparently).

Stuff I hate about Ubuntu:
The brightness on my screen resets to the default value after waking from sleep. Why not just use the last known value? Grrrr.
Over reliance on Terminal even for mundane tasks e.g. setting a printer not recognised by setup). Especially annoying when starting out at first as a Linux N00b.
Trackpad support is kindof shit with jumpy pointers all over the place due to hypersensitive settings. Only way to solve it, you guessed it.....Terminal.

General annoyances:
Why are there so many linux distro's?
I get that everyone wants to do their own thing but most distro's are using the same ppa's with their own custom GUI.
Why not follow Android's example and focus on one standardised kickass build (Vanilla) instead of wasting resources on 99 versions of Linux which use the the same internals 98% of the time anyway? Stuff would be standardised much quicker with more hw being supported making devs lifes easier.

cockbeard

You could build a slider for these settings fro share it with the rest of the community

hunk

I'm not really a programmer cocko. I'd do it if I had the time, but that's beside the point.
If Linux wants to compete with the likes of MS and Apple, stuff like this needs to be ironed out.
As is, the User experience is waaaaay too techy for the average pc user.

When I compare Ubuntu to a OSX,Windows or even an Android user experience, Linux has got a long way to go.

cockbeard

I'm not either, I was being a touch facetious in truth. I suppose the fact remains the unix wasn't designed for the end user. There are linux flavours that are very easy to use and install and have massive support communities (Ubuntu springs rapidly to mind) but really it wasn't built for us, it was built for people who want to understand programming at it's lowest levels

As stupid as it sounds it was never meant to rival Apple or MS, and I don't think anybody thinks it will anytime soon. I mean strides are being made, my housemate told me the other day that Football Manager will run straight on his Ubuntu media machine, then spent an hour asking me for help with making it work as his gwaffix were buggered (as you say drivers)

But then if we get kids using this all the time maybe the average user will rise up rather than having to dumb the average user interface down, surely that was the point of raspberry pi etc. I'm evangelising a little here, sorry

hunk

Not sure about Unix based OS's not being for the masses. Apple seems to be doing fine with OSX (also unix based) and I very rarely if ever have to use Terminal when in there.

Thing is, Linux is so close at getting there yet the devs seem absolutely clueless on how to deliver a polished user friendly experience rivalling OSX and windows.
It's quite frankly baffling. It's probably because all the distro's are mostly geared to a tech skilled userbase anyways who don't even notice there's a problem in the UI in the first place. Therefore shit never gets addressed and things stay the same as they were indefinitely.
SteamOS might change things but that's still a year off. We'll see how that works out.

cockbeard

Sorry what I mean is Unix isn't designed for the end user. Chrome OS and OSX are, they are built on that same kernel but they have hidden all the moving parts. Ubuntu is an ongoing project, I last really used it back in the Dodgy Dog or Dappy Duck days, and I see it's moved on massively, but yes some tinkering will always be required. I guess I'm also a tinkerer so I like getting into command line and terminal and playing with the guts. Also I really need to get a computer at some point and get back into all this messing around. Working for google everything's chromeos which is ok, but feels very basic and a little alien

hunk

If you mean command line, aye I know what you mean.
If you don't mind a bit of Terminal, Linux is fine.

However, if you're only used to GUI (Windows/Mac) Linux might be quite a shock.

acemuzzy

We use Linux at work. With no graphical interface at all. Straight to a command prompt.

I think 90% of Unix installs are like that, all through industry. And they're the people driving where Linux heads. And they don't care about your gwaffix I'm afraid :-(

hunk

My point exactly.
Linux needs a streamlined standardized GUI to straighten out the kinks in user experience.
Ubuntu is very close, but not quite there yet.

dynamiteReady

hunk wrote:

My point exactly. Linux needs a streamlined standardized GUI to straighten out the kinks in user experience. Ubuntu is very close, but not quite there yet.

Pfft!

Buy a Mac...

hunk

I own a Macbook air 2009
Not the highest of hi end but it gets the job done.

Yossarian

I'm writing in italics.

hunk

I am ranting in Italics

[Deleted User]

hunk wrote:

I am ranting in Italics

I am rhyming in italics
But I'm not very good at it!

hunk wrote:

I own a Macbook air 2009

Pfft! Up until a year ago, Mac Mini 2006, bitch!

hunk

I actually googled that.
Nifty piece of kit and just about the same specs as my humble macbook air.

Also, don't be an idiot and go and install Linux on old (unsupported) apple hardware!
You'll make far, far more money selling it in it's original state on ebay.
Just sayin'....

Ed_Flanders

I think Linux Mint is much better for new users. It's Ubuntu but with most of the kinks ironed out. As long as your machine has Intel graphics, there's not much that can go (seriously) wrong.

hunk

Linux Mint looks great. If I ever het bored with ubuntu, mint will probably be the distro I migrate to.

AJ

I like what I've seen of Fedora. Ubuntu pissed me off by providing an ISO that can't be burnt by Macs.

Blue Swirl

hunk wrote:

Why are there so many linux distro's? I get that everyone wants to do their own thing but most distro's are using the same ppa's with their own custom GUI.

As you say, most of them are just other distros with tweaked interfaces. As such, something like elementaryOS, Linux Mint, the Ubuntu family, and Debian will all probably be cross compatible 99% of the time.

Secondly, as most of the Linux based OSs are (by the kernel's GPL nature) open source anyway, no effort is "wasted" in creating new distributions. If Team X creates something awesome, Team Y can use it, too.

hunk wrote:

Not sure about Unix based OS's not being for the masses. Apple seems to be doing fine with OSX (also unix based) and I very rarely if ever have to use Terminal when in there.

Yeah, I agree here. I like having the Terminal on my Mac for when I do need to do some tinkering, but my Mum uses OS X every day and has no idea what Unix is. When I showed my work mates my Ubuntu install on my old netbook, the first reaction was "Oh, it's just like Windows!". Odds on someone familiar with XP and 7, but not very confident with tech, would find Ubuntu (etc.) easier to use than Windows 8.

However, [pedantry]Linux operating systems are not Unix based, they're "Unix-like".[/pedantry]

Childintime wrote:

Pfft! Up until a year ago, Mac Mini 2006, bitch!

Very nice. I'm still trying to get a computer to be my main machine for ten years. Current record holder is my old G3 iBook which ran solidly for 7 years before giving up the ghost. Fingers crossed for my current Mac mini.

AJ wrote:

Ubuntu pissed me off by providing an ISO that can't be burnt by Macs.

Wait, what? How can it not be burnt by Macs?

Escape

Easiest way to use Linux? VM Fed?

AJ

Blue Swirl wrote:

AJ wrote:

Ubuntu pissed me off by providing an ISO that can't be burnt by Macs.

Wait, what? How can it not be burnt by Macs?

Well, not so much that it can't as it takes a whole load of fucking about. I believe it's 'cause the image is combination USB/CD. Would it have been so fucking hard to make two separate images available, Ubuntu devs?

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx

Also, if you're being pedantic, you should insist people say "GNU/Linux". Then you can use it to emphasise the point about it not being Unix, too.

dynamiteReady

Escape wrote:

Easiest way to use Linux? VM Fed?

Install Ubuntu... It's not too hard to do.
Or you can run it off a USB stick at boot. It's quite easy to change the BIOS setting to boot from a secondary disk.

hunk

I think you van run linux in a vm as well.
lifehacker.com/5714966/five-best-virtual-machine-applications

beano

Get virtualbox if you haven't already.

VMs good, but don't expect decent GFX rendering.

AJ

Not really used Virtualbox, but VMware Player lets you point it at an ISO and it sets everything up for you.

Blue Swirl

AJ wrote:

Well, not so much that it can't as it takes a whole load of fucking about. I believe it's 'cause the image is combination USB/CD.

Jesus, that's a giant cluster fuck. As annoying as the discontinuation of WUBI support.

AJ wrote:

Also, if you're being pedantic, you should insist people say "GNU/Linux". Then you can use it to emphasise the point about it not being Unix, too.

Kinda. While GNU does help clarify the "Not Unix" part, not all Linux-based operating systems use the rest of the GNU ecosystem, just as not all Debian systems use the Linux kernel. For example, I think calling Linux Mint a GNU/Linux system would be as much of a stretch as calling Mac OS X "Apple BSD". If you see what I mean.

Actually, I'm not even sure what I mean.

Sod it. GNU/Linux FTW.

AJ

Oh? I always I thought GNU provides some important parts of the POSIX interface. Guess there's some pretty basic stuff I should know that I don't. What else do people use instead?

Blue Swirl

AJ wrote:

Oh? I always I thought GNU provides some important parts of the POSIX interface. Guess there's some pretty basic stuff I should know that I don't. What else do people use instead?

No no, I think you're right. I talked myself into a corner for the sake of conversation. GNU/Linux is definitely the right term, probably even with the more proprietary distros like Linux Mint.

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