ubuntu snobbery

[steff]

oh and who came up with libreoffice ? built to work with the open odf format. err I thought that odf was the openoffice format that works across platforms, or is that the problem, is that why ubuntu does not come preloaded with openoffice but libreoffice ? just to make sure it distinguishes itself from windows...... and further complicates the transition

The OpenOffice/LibreOffice thing is a result of Oracle taking over Sun (who developed OOffice) and being their usual charming selves with the developer community. The inevitable result (for OpenOffice and a few other projects, in fact) was a fork of the codebase under a new name. Not Ubuntu's fault, to be fair to them. More Oracle being constitutionally hostile to the way Open Source software is developed.

[Simon]

oh and who came up with libreoffice ? built to work with the open odf format. err I thought that odf was the openoffice format that works across platforms, or is that the problem, is that why ubuntu does not come preloaded with openoffice but libreoffice ? just to make sure it distinguishes itself from windows...... and further complicates the transition

The OpenOffice/LibreOffice thing is a result of Oracle taking over Sun (who developed OOffice) and being their usual charming selves with the developer community. The inevitable result (for OpenOffice and a few other projects, in fact) was a fork of the codebase under a new name. Not Ubuntu's fault, to be fair to them. More Oracle being constitutionally hostile to the way Open Source software is developed.

well I stand corrected on that one then, if it's available for windows I'll give it a go,

[kaptain_zero]

Simon,

One of the great new things about linux is that many of the distributions are available as a Live-CD or Live-DVD. This way you can take them for a spin and see how they work and if you can get the software you need etc.

I have been using PClinuxOS for a good number of years now and am quite satisfied with it. The forum is pretty good, minimal snobbery etc. and if you take the time to do some searching before asking basic questions, you can generally get help pretty quick.

Texstar of former Mandriva (Mandrake) fame created the PClos fork from Mandrake/Mandriva and forges ahead with a very solid distro. It is available in 32bit with 64bit only as a development release. I have no hesitations of recommending the 32 bit version... much more software is available and runs on the 32 bit version. There is a PAE kernel by default in the last version so if you have more than 4gigs of ram, it's still recognized and used by the system. I'm running both versions here.... the 64 bit is pretty solid but it's not final and I would suggest sticking with the 32 bit until 64 bit final is released and only if the programs you need are available in 64 bit versions and I know some packages are not behaving when Tex compiles them for 64 bit so 32 is the safe bet.  PClos is a rolling release as are some other distros, which simply means that as long as you keep the software up to date, there is no need to install a new version when it is made available as you have it already through the updates. On a rare occasion such as when KDE made a major shift from KDE 3.x to 4.x, it was necessary to re-install PClos as the configuration files were not compatible at all. However, it was not much of a chore to copy ones personal files over to the new install and so even then it's not a major pain like it is with Windows.

I go on a regular jaunt looking for new distros..... a couple of rewritable disks make it easy and cheap to test new distros, an old smaller hard disk on my computer allows me to install it on it's own disk, far and away from my mission critical installs so that if something does go wrong, I don't bung up my real OS's. I run an old copy of XP in a Virtualbox session for those rare occasions when I might need a windows only program.... in 32 bit PClos I can also use many of them under wine but wine is not yet available for 64 bit so I use Vbox instead.

On the pclinuxos homepage you'll find links to various flavors of the distro with different desktops, including KDE (I suggest this one), LXDE, XFCE, Openbox and the Fullmonty version.....  Gnome (as used in Ubuntu) is not playing well..... but the same occured when KDE 4.x came out.... I would expect Gnome to flesh out as time goes by and become better but there is a certain attitude amongst the developers that seems to irk people... I've never like Gnome myself so I've not really bothered with it... either old version or new. KDE 4 is a bit heavy but works well on my middle of road machine... LXDE is a bit lighter as is XFCE but I'm comfortable with KDE and tend to stick with it.

Honestly, take advantage of the LiveCD's out there... take different flavors for a spin and pick one where everything on your computer works (one of the things that drew me to PClos... no fixing things, just to get something to work right) and where it seems you can figure out how to tweak things to your liking without too much fuss.  Once you are familiar with it, the others will make more or less sense to you....

Distrowatch always has the latest news on releases and the links for finding them.

Phoronix has lots of general news.... though they seem to like ubuntu for some strange reason.

Good luck in your search.

Regards

Christian

[steff]

if your going to put all the programs in a folder call it something logical so that you know what it is, I can crawl my way all over windows not because I was taguht but guess what ? the windows files are in a foldercalled surprise surprise: windows, and the programs are put in this really obscure folder called "programs", and they even kept 32 and 64 bit programs seperate so I can actually identify them without having to look more information up.

Of course, you could go ever further and separate things into system binaries, statically-linked system binaries, user binaries, statically linked user binaries, libraries in 32- and 64-bit and so on. Which is exactly what the UNIX filesystem does. It's actually a rather finer-grained and more logical setup than Windows, but obviously you're coming to it from the perspective of someone who knows the Windows setup and hasn't got used to the UNIX one. That said, it should be possible to use an Ubuntu box without really knowing what's going on under the hood at all. Both my parents do, because I got fed up with fixing their Windows machines.

FWIW, on an Ubuntu box you should practically never have to compile anything unless you're installing software you've written yourself (and lo, there's a /usr/local filesystem hierarchy typically used for things like that). Have a look at Synaptic or better still get comfortable with apt-get and apt-cache. Not only will these give you access to a vast array of software, but they handle keeping everything up to date and in matching versions so new packages don't break old ones.

One thing I suspect you have run into is a problem more or less specific to Ubuntu, which is that the forums are full of people who are very very pleased with themselves for running what they perceive as a "leet" operating system and who know a lot less than they like to imagine they do. You may find that looking for documentation on Debian (which is what Ubuntu underlyingly is) will get you things written by actual grown-ups.

[steff]

On the pclinuxos homepage you'll find links to various flavors of the distro with different desktops, including KDE (I suggest this one)

Ooh, KDE's a good point. I always forget about it because it (and GNOME) are too heavyweight and all-pervading for my tastes, but it might well be a good call for a more Windows-like experience. There's a "Kubuntu" flavour of Ubuntu.

Also worth noting that you can install whole new desktop environments on an existing Ubuntu install without reinstalling the whole OS. I believe "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" followed by logging out and selecting the Kubuntu session on the login screen will get everything, kubuntu-desktop being a meta-package that depends on the the whole KDE stack.

[Lightages]

My experience with trying to move to Linux was the same as you. I tried on the more bleeding edge Fedora. The paradigm shift in thinking wasn't that hard. What was hard for me was the scattered approach to many things. I was able to get some of what I wanted working and then the next software package might install could bring the whole pile of cards crashing down when it broke some dependency.

Guess it's called bleeding edge for a reason...

And the reason I used it is because I need the latest things supported, not 1 or 2 generation old.

So I was always left with a system that would not do what I wanted unless I was willing to write and compile my own software and spend hours chasing down dependencies. In the end I came to the conclusion that I was spending more time trying to get my computer to do what I wanted than I was actually doing things with my computer.

In my experience these issues are rare as long as you install software from the stock repositories. Once you start adding third-party repositories or install software from other sources, dependency issues can crop up. The number of available packages in Fedora is significantly lower than Debian and its derivatives (eg. Ubuntu. Mint), so finding software that's not available in the repositories is somewhat more likely.

Hmmmm, use what is available only in one repository and no options to use anything not provided..... If I did that with Microsoft I would be rather limited too. The things I wanted to use my computer for were not all in one tidy repository. Sure if they were it would have been fine.

So after using and trying to make my computer only a Linux machine, I had to give up. It would not do what I wanted and I was spending more time learning how to do this and that to make different programs run on the same distro than actually doing work with Linux. Sure I could have mult-booted different installations and different OSes to get everything working, but that would have been crazy to manage too.

My conclusion: Mac-"there's and app for that", Linux-"theres a distro for that". I use Windows and although it has problems (MANY!) I can do everything I want with ONE installation. I can also buy an app and it will probably work but even if it doesn't work correctly the chances of it disabling another program or five is very very slim.

Linux has its place as does everything else. I will try it again since the last time I used it (or tried) exclusively for a year was 2007. I know, "it is different now" but I have heard this every two years and each time I tried it was too much work to try and get things working for me.

The funny thing is that Ubuntu was making great inroads IMHO to becoming a one distro fits all easy to use common Linux. Somewhere their vision fell apart and it is just another fragmented also ran distro.

Just my personal opinions and experiences here, nothing else.

[firewalker]

I "should" also point out that many things that we take for graded in Windows, is another story under GNU/Linux. E.g. movies and music. In some distros (mainly U.S. based ones) you can't just install it and play a movie right away. It's somehow illegal for the distro to include libraries that will decode H264 or mp3. Users must find an install those packets later. A trivial usually operation.

Alexander.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Linux is a cancer.



Regards,

Steve.

[kaptain_zero]

I "should" also point out that many things that we take for graded in Windows, is another story under GNU/Linux. E.g. movies and music. In some distros (mainly U.S. based ones) you can't just install it and play a movie right away. It's somehow illegal for the distro to include libraries that will decode H264 or mp3. Users must find an install those packets later. A trivial usually operation.

Alexander.

Exactly why I suggest using a live-cd to take things for a spin first. I don't know that US based distros are any different from EU or wherever, it's more the philosophy of the distribution. PClinuxOS, which is very much US based, includes ALL the goodies in the basic package including all the common codecs and closed source device drivers such as Nvidia's drivers etc. Other distributions only include "open source" drivers, codecs and leave it to the user to decide if they wish to use closed source software....  That is why I liked PClinux, I just installed it and everything worked! Sure... there will be those moments when you do have to go look for something.... but not very often.  I only have one repository with mirrors all over the world and if I find something useful that I would like to have included and don't know how to make up the package myself, I can always put in a request on the forum and if it's something that more people want... there's a good chance it will be added.

As for compiling oddball stuff, I do on occasion.... and yes, it can be a pain to source all the dependencies, but if I'm capable of compiling something, I'm capable of dealing with the dependencies as well.  At least in Linux, the compilers and whatnot are readily available, if not already installed. 

I don't miss dealing with viruses, trojans, registry files I can't read or understand.... linux configuration files are in text, just open it up and read it... make your tweaks and Bob's your uncle. System is locked down so other users can't bung up your stuff if you share your computer with others and the list goes on. I don't even have to run a defrag program, unless I absolutely want to. I have run it once on my EXT4 file system.... it made zero detectable difference and I don't bother anymore.

Some make the point of Linux being free....  I pay money yearly to offset the cost of internet access for the PClinux servers, but it is by choice, and I'm not bound to do so. I just want to support something that I see value in for me.

Regards

Christian

[amspire]

oh and who came up with libreoffice ? built to work with the open odf format. err I thought that odf was the openoffice format that works across platforms, or is that the problem, is that why ubuntu does not come preloaded with openoffice but libreoffice ? just to make sure it distinguishes itself from windows...... and further complicates the transition

Wow. Simon, you seem to have found lots of issues with Linux, but you have to remember that a distro maker has little control on how all the component apps work - they are all separately managed open source projects.

With regards to OpenOffice/LibreOffice, you can set then to default to DOC/XLS/PPT formats, but of course they initially default to the open document formats, and the Microsoft formats are just not open.

Once you stop wanting Linux to behave just like Windows, you can actually see what it does do well.

As a server, it is just incredible.  I have used Linux for a number of servers, and they usually just keep working for years with hardly any maintenance.  With Windows servers, there are always issues, and you have to regularly reboot. Linux has no 10 connection limit (like windows Workgroups), no licensing issues or management. I often set up a simple Linux server and then run several specific servers (including Windows) as virtual machines.  The reason is that if the hardware dies, I can put the virtual machine on another PC and have it running exactly as before with zero setup.  I have just found that virtual machines are extremely robust under Linux, and if you try and do the same thing under Windows, there are problems.

At the moment, I have a server running from home that is Ubuntu 10.04 (no windowing GUI) fileserver running three virtual machines - a Windows XP used as a license server for several programs including Maya. A second virtual machine running the totally brilliant Redmine web based project management system (love it) , an OpenVP server, and a SVN server; and a third server used as a Wordpress development server. The server was set up 3 years ago, and I don't do anything to it (except for occasional updates) - it just runs.  The main Ubuntu fileserver uses Windows NTFS formatted volumes for storing files, so that I can read the same drives in any Windows PC. I use Sata drives in a removable caddy for backup, and I can plug and unplug then while the server is running. Try doing that on Windows with standard Sata (not esata - just ordinary Sata) drives.

If you don't like the sluggishness of Gnome or KDE on slowish hardware, there are distro's with lightweight GUI alternatives that are extremely  fast.

As a workstation, picking the right distro is the key. There are several designed to look like Windows, there are some like Centos designed for stability, there are some optimized for Multimedia. Take your pick.

You have a choice of using the application build versions that come with the distro which has the advantage of easy updates, but the application version can easily be out of date.

Alternately, you can compile the latest version of an app on your Linux system. A bit more techy, but usually not that hard. It is then up to you to download and recompile when you need to update.

i use Windows 99% of the time, and I have not been tempted to move to a Linux workstation for general use, but when I need to do something that Linux just does way better then Windows or OS/X, I use it.

The best way to get started is to use the Wubi installer to install one of the many Ubuntu versions into a single large file (a virtual disk file) on your Windows PC, and give you a dual boot option.  It is a dead simple install, and when it runs, you have access to your Windows files.

So it is nothing to do with snobbery - it is just that for some things, Linux is light years ahead of anything else. Especially for price and freedom from licensing issues. Windows and OS/X are better at many things, but is that a surprise? We are are comparing free software to the products of two of the biggest and richest companies in the world.

Richard

[firewalker]

I think the best distro from this scope is ArchLinux. In very rare cases I couldn't find something in the AUR. ABS+pacman make things easy after you locate your pactet in the AUR.

Alexander.

As for compiling oddball stuff, I do on occasion.... and yes, it can be a pain to source all the dependencies, but if I'm capable of compiling something, I'm capable of dealing with the dependencies as well.  At least in Linux, the compilers and whatnot are readily available, if not already installed. 

[Simon]

well I've just booted up mint, it seems to work better, my screen has come back to life (it is not the best of screens infact this particular laptop model's one known downfall) as under ubuntu I could hardly read the damn thing, have no idea what it was doing.

And, and, mint actually tells me what my graphics is and I beleive runs a driver for it and there are more icons in the control panel, I'm just installing it now, see how it goes, my laptop is partitioned anyhow now and i certainly don't want to keep ubuntu on it so might as well keep putting linux systems on it till I'm happy with one and then can think of adding linux to my PC. As i said I can only evaluate the system properly if it's running on real hardware

[firewalker]

Could you post the output of the commands lspci, lsusb, cat /proc/cpuinfo. Just, curious.

Alexander.

[Simon]

this is as far as i got:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1900101

the thread was locked and split, not sure what they did with the original one, I think it may have been removed just to prevent hurting peoples ego

[djsb]

I've just installed Mint 12 this morning. Had to do an install from a Live CD as I could not upgrade my Mint 10 installation from within. As usual there was a problem with Mint 12 not being able to see my existing XP partition first time around.It only gave me the option of wiping the whole disk and installing itself. So I had to use Partition commander (separate partitioning software) to remove the Mint 10 partition and reformat it into a FAT32 partition. The Mint installer then saw that I had XP already on my machine and everything went OK from there. This is one of the roadblocks to wider takeup-having to mess around with disc partitioning. It's a bit scary if you don't know what your doing. Anyway I'm off to fine tune the installation and later upgrade it to the full DVD version online.

David.

P.S Just spent the afternoon compiling KiCAD from source following the instructions here

http://www.wayneandlayne.com/blog/2010/12/03/how-to-build-kicad-on-ubuntu/

Please read my comments (when they finally appear-Currently being moderated) about how I managed it.

I will post this information in the KiCAD sub-forum for other later on. 

[Dagon]

well I've just booted up mint, it seems to work better, my screen has come back to life (it is not the best of screens infact this particular laptop model's one known downfall) as under ubuntu I could hardly read the damn thing, have no idea what it was doing.

And, and, mint actually tells me what my graphics is and I beleive runs a driver for it and there are more icons in the control panel, I'm just installing it now, see how it goes, my laptop is partitioned anyhow now and i certainly don't want to keep ubuntu on it so might as well keep putting linux systems on it till I'm happy with one and then can think of adding linux to my PC. As i said I can only evaluate the system properly if it's running on real hardware

This is one of the reasons I run Mint. First time I installed it everything just worked. No messing around with drivers, trying to get components running or anything else. In years of using various distros that never happened before. There were a few more hiccups with mint 12 but that was more to do with the move to gnome 3 then anything else.

[shebu18]

I am using ubuntu 10.04 and 9.04 for a time now and  can not complain about much. I don't like the close/minimize/maximize buttons on the left side but that is changed fast. The system is stable, i can use the programs with no problem and the customization is ok after installing compiz.

With the new versions i had only problems. No installing, no booting after installing and so on.

The good part of ubuntu is the debian roots. Many programs are found easier for debian than the other distros.

[wkb]

and still unnecessary complication of the user interface along with deliberate snobby differences to windows (like putting the close, minimize and maximize buttons on the opposite side even though earlier they were on the right like windows and not the left along with the loss of a proper program menu list)

So copying Windows is correct but copying Mac OS is snobbery? If you want a Windows clone, just use Windows.

How many people switch from mac to linux ? I thought later versions of mac were based on linux so no surprise there, as I said I am sure previous versions of ubuntu had the close, mi and max buttons to the right !

MacOSX is not based on Linux.  The underlying kernel is based on Mach, most of the user-land is based on FreeBSD.  The GUI etc is Apple's design.

[ee851]

I use and recommend a debian-linux distribution called SimplyMEPIS.     It too is available as a live CD.   So if you have access to a CD burner and have a high-throughput internet connection, you can download a copy, burn it to CDR, and try it before you install it.    This is important to make sure that it will work with all your computer's peripheral devices before you install it.

KiCAD is available in the debian linux world as an APT package.   Haven't tried it yet, though.

[xygor]

This is interesting.

http://spins.fedoraproject.org/fel/

I run it in virtualbox.

(fel = Fedora Electronic Lab; apps for ee's preinstalled)

[amspire]

That fel project does look interesting. I will have to try it.

I probably should try virtualbox too, but I am just used to VMWare.

Richard