I'm sorry but mainstream Linux distro's (Mandrake Red Hat and so on) are becoming more and more useless by each release.

[IamDavid]

I am not claiming to be a Linux Guru but I do know the basics and can get around in th Linux world. I have tried just about every flavor of Linux since RH 3. I always have at least one PC running it and I used to like learning everything about it. But recently I just don't get it. Mandrake, RH and the other "big" names are just becoming wanna be windows. And every new release seems less and less stable. None of the GUI's are anywhere close to the straight forward easiness of windows, the drivers are no where close to Windows, and as I stated earlier, stability is no longer superior to windows.
I sure hope someone or some company changes the trend but I doubt it. Innovation seems o be a thing of the past in the Linux world.

And BTW, this has nothing to do with Debian.

 

the GUI is not what linux is about...the power of linux always comes from the command line. You should know this. Of course its going to be less stable with a GUI, it will also be less stable in configured improperly. Same with windows in terms of configurations. An OS is only as stable as you want to make it.

 

[Sunner]

RedHat is for people who want something easy to setup, or for companies who want commercial support.

If that's not what you want, why are you using it?

 

[IamDavid]

Ya, I know but it seems it takes more and more "configuring" to get it where I need it. They will never get more of the market the way its going. I'm not talking just desktop either, Windows Server is apparently where everything is gonna be at in the future.. Mr. Gates must be proud.

 

[IamDavid]

Originally posted by: Sunner
RedHat is for people who want something easy to setup, or for companies who want commercial support.

If that's not what you want, why are you using it?

So I need to be a company to use Linux? OK, I see.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: IamDavid

Originally posted by: Sunner
RedHat is for people who want something easy to setup, or for companies who want commercial support.

If that's not what you want, why are you using it?

So I need to be a company to use Linux? OK, I see.

Look at the bolded text.

RedHat != Linux.

 

[Haden]

I think gui frontends just don't give you full power they pretend to have. Atleast yet.
But, you already know that, so why you are using such distros?

 

[IamDavid]

Originally posted by: Haden
I think gui frontends just don't give you full power they pretend to have. Atleast yet.
But, you already know that, so why you are using such distros?

Because I'm not a Linux Guru... Yet.

Can you tell me why anyone who grew up in a windows world would even want to bother learning Linux? Before it was because Win9X stability sucked and MS was so overpriced. Now stability is basically the same. I just don't want to see Linux end up going the way of BeOS which I loved. lol

 

[IamDavid]

I know that's a dumb statement about Linux going the way of BeOs..

 

[drag]

Windows is easy to use, depending on what you want to use it for. It's not realy a big deal which operating system you use... but since your so skillfull at baiting I'll tell you why I use linux.

Now if you are paying attention to what happens when people want to use Windows 2003 as a desktop OS, people use it and then complain that stuff they like to do doesn't work. Well of course it's a server OS and you shouldn't expect anything more out of it, but here in Linux-land I can have the best of both worlds. I can use my desktop as a powerfull server and network monitoring tool, at the same time as using it to play games or surf the internet. If something doesn't work or look or feel right I can change it. For instance I don't paticularly like having clunking menus and taskbars in the way, so I don't use them. I have a simple menu that pops up when I right-click anywere on background. If I want to watch television or a movie, I just make it full screen and watch it, if I got work I want to do or play games thru the tedious parts or commercials I can either force the images to the background and open a xterm over it to do work, or I just turn on my other monitor and work from there. Now I can do this thru windows, but it gets tedious realy quick, wear as in Linux I just configure it to do it in a quick manner.

It's just freedom in how I use it. Of course this comes with a price. The more configurations, the more changes I feel like making the more I have to learn on how it works to get it to work, or so to speak. This doesn't bother me, I like fooling around with technology, that's why I have a computer in the first place. Then on top of that I can use a OS that doesn't have built in restrictions. Microsoft wants you to use XP and W2k pro for a desktop, they intentionally hobble it so you can't use it for a very good server with things like restricted number of clients and such. For that you have to go out and get the server versions and then they are to expensive to make good desktops. I know you can do work-arounds and things, but its a continual fight, and eventually with enough changes or just general entropy you de-stabilise the system and then you got to start over. Linux is easy to screw up, and I do that quite a bit, but the difference is that it is fixable.

I want multimedia, I want a programmable toy, I want a server, I want a game box so I got a PC. And I got Linux so I can play with it without restrictions. But like I said before it's not a realy big deal, and if everytime you use Linux you think about how horrible it is at being Windows compared to Windows XP, you'd be stupid not to switch. Windows offers much functionality with the minimal of effort.

But it could be that you have just outgrown the more user-friendly based versions of linux and just need something a bit simplier, back to basics, or simply more advanced experiance then what you can get from Redhat or Mandrake. Try fooling around with Debian, or if you like something a bit weird and have a fast computer try Gentoo (just follow the install instructions very closely). If you like simplicity and functionality you can try Slackware. Their are also some smaller, but more focused versions of Linux like "Evil Entity" Linux which is designed for a multimedia desktop type of thing.

 

[Haden]

I can give you reasons I'm staying with Linux on my desktop:
The best media playing software ever (mplayer) (for example, I don't know any player on windows which could play mpeg4 video file while I'm still downloading it without any problems)
Drivers, I like when I choose what to load and when (and yes, it gives no-auto-detect stuff, but I can switch GF2 to GF4 and skip whole We-found-new-hw stuff).
Lirc, I'm not sure how good alternatives on windows now, but was pretty bad several months ago.
Console + tools, scripts etc. (I just hate VB and default windows stuff is too weak to bother).
MC (thought I love FAR too)
Network: I can do anything I want, and I don't need expensive software or stuff.
Maybe it's me, but windows have troubles with multiple desktops (slow on change, seems like they just force apps to minimize/restore).
Price is good too, but who really cares ...

 

[Haden]

Originally posted by: IamDavid
I know that's a dumb statement about Linux going the way of BeOs..

Funny thing: I've been watching BeOS Zeta for several months now.
I was ready to give away 39$ for basic version to get "real" OS for multimedia and other simple stuff.
But I'm not so sure now, linux is getting better everytime I do apt-get upgrade and Zeta doesn't come out...

 

[IamDavid]

Drag, I would have agreed with everything you said a couple years ago. Until Win2K, NOT XP. Maybe I have "out grown" Mandrake, Slackware, Red Hat and so on but I just can't see the point of learning everything I need to know to get Debian running correctly and efficiently. Debian does seem to be the only true future alternative to windows but its just so non user friendly. Maybe everyone working on Linux problems should band together and work on Debian.

 

[chsh1ca]

IamDavid, let me get this straight. You are complaining that linux is too complex for you, but is unstable?

Let me clue you in about system stability. 90% of it comes from the hardware you are running. The stablest OS in the world will still crash a LOT if you are using a buggy chipset, or just generally poor hardware. I have Win98SE installed on my machine at home, and apart from certain poorly designed games, I experience maybe three crashes in a week of gaming solidly, and I play a variety of games. I have never had linux crash. Oh, I've had X crap out on me, Mozilla lock up all keyboard/mouse input (which I still got around by SSHing into my box from a spare machine and killing Mozilla), and I've had services die for stupid reasons. None of that caused me to HAVE to reboot.

I have rebooted it thinking that that was the only way to do something, but that was when I really didn't know a lot about linux. I've installed the wrong libraries, ignored warnings on dependencies when using RPM, and then wondered why software crashed on me. Is that stupid? Maybe. I know better now because of those things though, and oddly enough, my Slackware install works 100% fine, without a hitch. A simple driver addition from nVidia and I've got my accelerated XWindows running KDE 3 without any problems. Why?

The secret's in the hardware. I have used only ASUS motherboards in the last three years, and I now swear by them because of their stability. I use quality parts, and that's basically it. If you are experiencing crashes with good quality parts in your systems, then begin looking at what you're doing, and what your complaints really are.

From looking at what you posted originally, I think you're expecting Linux to BE Windows. You complain about the 'straightforward' easiness of Windows, and yet, what can be considered straightforward is subjective. You are used to Windows because its been around for either all or a lot of your computing life (true for everyone, I'd venture), so you consider Windows' functionality to be straightforward. KDE can be configured to behave almost identically to Windows. The same is roughly true when it comes to mouse input with Windows I have middlemouse bound to Paste, for example.

As for driver support, I have no idea what you're talking about, please elaborate on that statement.

On the stability front, as I said before, that's 90% hardware driven, and I can guarantee that the 10% software side of things works very well on my particular system.

How you then go from discussing stability/ease of use/etc to bashing its ability to innovate is beyond me. Linux is innovative in a lot of ways, and yet, you don't have to be 100% innovative to have a good product. Look at Microsoft, they haven't innovated anything other than DirectX, and Windows XP Pro is pretty good.

Very simply put, Linux is not Windows, nor should it be. Windows is about bundling everything they think they can into the OS, creating an all-in-one kind of solution. Linux is about having an OS tailored to your needs.

 

[drag]

That's how it goes sometimes. To each there own. (of course after a while with windows, I think that you may not feel the same way.)

Hey if you want something that you can flex your unix knowledge on, but still have a nice interface that you don't have to struggle with to much you may want to look into getting a Mac for your next computer. It's a bit more expensive, but it's worth it IMO.

 

[Soybomb]

Debian does seem to be the only true future alternative to windows but its just so non user friendly.

And to your left you'll see our wide array of BSD's, each with a pleasing array of features and functionality. They all smack debian right into its place in my eyes Seriously though non user friendly for who? Yes if you grew up with windows its going to be different, but if you grew up with it, its going to seem natural. Personally I like open source and the review and security that comes with it. I like not having to deal with heavy handed licensing issues. I like being able to login from a command line on a low bandwidth connection. I like being able to do anything through a script. I like the array of free tools and utilities. Theres actually quite a bit I like. Its tradeoffs in either case, go with which one you feel is the best for your needs. Personally I don't see windows as fitting my needs for a server os half as much as freebsd does.

As far as drivers, you have no one to blame but yourself and manufacturers. Don't buy hardware from people who won't release drivers or documentation so they can be written.

Linux is about choice, if you want a nice gui, don't look at redhat and complain its too windows looking. Change it to something that you'd rather have. Which is part of the reason why many don't care of linux takes a larger hold of the market or not. I use what works for me, if MS works fine for you, I'm thrilled, use it, thats your choice. World domination of the OS market isn't a goal for most linux users I don't think.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

It's insanely difficult to make a gui that is both powerful and straightforward to use. No one really does a great job of this, not apple, not MS, not kde or gnome. Kde and gnome are basically trying to make something windows users can be familiar with when they jump over from windows, while providing flexibility for more "advanced" people to customize them to be somewhat less like windows. IMO they suck. Redhat sucks, mandrake sucks, kde sucks, gnome sucks. Linux is supposed to be a unix, so use it like a unix. Redhat and mandrake are not linux, they are commercial entities trying to gain market share from MS, and gee, guess how they go about doing that? Copying. Same way windows copied Mac OS. Notice that the copying is always half-ass, but that doesn't seem to be what matters. We shall see what happens with redhat, mandrake, et al, but they are not "linux", if by "linux", you mean "a unix-like operating system". Install debian, gentoo, or slackware, fight with it for a while and LEARN something, and then you will be using unix, and then you will actually know something. Clicking on a house icon to wait 10 seconds for a convoluted finder/explorer rip-off to pop up is NOT using linux or unix.

 

[IamDavid]

chsh1ca, I'm sorry if I got ya riled up. I know allot of what I say is contradictory but its because, like I said, I am not a linux guru. I've waded thru Linux the past few years thinking it would someday have a point or a use. Unfortunately its the opposite for me.
I know "stability" comes from hardware and the software. Hardware wise I have never had any problems running 2K on one of my now linux machine. Its a MSI K7Pro Athlon system which I ran as my server for a very long time with a single problem. I had it up for weeks without ever rebooting. I try installing Mandrake and Red Hat on it and get nothing but problems. Constant network disconnects and freezing up when I try to fix it. I haven't tried Slack on it yet but I doubt if I'll bother. And software wise what is the point of an OS if the software doesn't run on it. I know its not the OS's fault but ya can't have just an OS.

I know I probably don't make a lot of sense to you because you apparently know much more about Linux then the rest of us. And of course I'm gonna complain about the ease of use not being anywhere close to windows. Why shouldn't they "try" to improve it? It makes no sense when Linux gurus tell me "thats not the point of Linux". WTF does that mean? You want a difficult, non user friendly OS? Why? To make sure nobody ever wants to bother with it?

And no innovation is key to what I am saying. Or trying to. If there is nothing new then why bother? I know MS hasn't innovated much over the years but they don't have to, they apparently already have what 99% of the people want.

 

[IamDavid]

BingBongWongFooey, I think you just cleared everything up for me. I'm serious. All the different flavors of linux are just trying to imitate Windows which drives me nuts. I never wanted a Windows replacement, just a nice alternative. Learning something new has never been a problem for me as long as there is a point to it which I can't find with the versions of Linux I have tried. I guess Debian and BSD are the only ways to go now. I will now change my title to reflect what I guess I was trying to say all along..

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: IamDavid

Originally posted by: Haden
I think gui frontends just don't give you full power they pretend to have. Atleast yet.
But, you already know that, so why you are using such distros?

Because I'm not a Linux Guru... Yet.

I switched from redhat to debian after like a month or two. You don't need to be a guru.

Can you tell me why anyone who grew up in a windows world would even want to bother learning Linux?

Heh, not that I honestly care, but you asked for reasons, so basically, I would say, freedom, flexibility, and power.

Before it was because Win9X stability sucked and MS was so overpriced. Now stability is basically the same. I just don't want to see Linux end up going the way of BeOS which I loved. lol

Heh, yeah, that was a dumb statement. Linux adoption is increasing at an impressive rate, things are getting better and better, and even if these things weren't happening - linux is open source and cannot just "die".

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: IamDavid
BingBongWongFooey, I think you just cleared everything up for me. I'm serious. All the different flavors of linux are just trying to imitate Windows which drives me nuts. I never wanted a Windows replacement, just a nice alternative. Learning something new has never been a problem for me as long as there is a point to it which I can't find with the versions of Linux I have tried. I guess Debian and BSD are the only ways to go now. I will now change my title to reflect what I guess I was trying to say all along..

Ok, cool. All I have to say is that you have to find your own reasons to use whatever it is you want to use, no one can spoon feed you reasons to use it. Spoon-fed reason might get you STARTED, but that's about it. If you can't find any reasons to use linux, then don't, that would be foolish. But give it a chance at least. Unix is awesome, as long as you are willing to learn, and get some enjoyment out of creating and tinkering with things, then you should be at home - eventually.

Some interesting pages I found one day:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/5735/1/love_of_unix.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/5735/1/unix_cult.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/5735/1/typing.html

This is a book which I own and have read, and I highly recommend, "In The Beginning Was The Command Line"
http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/CommandLine

BTW, I agree with the new title

 

[drag]

Yep, trying to imitate windows to entice new users is a bit silly at best. It's like a photocopy, the best you could probably hope for is having something as good as the original and you aren't going to get that unless everyting is ideal, but when you have something different and create something new then you can have something much better. (or worse) It's a trade off, making a enviroment that makes it easy to educated users is the best. Like maybe having something labled the c: drive on your desktop like Lindows, but when people click on it to open the file manager it'll have something like "c: (/dev/hda1)" on it so they can look at it and be "what the hell does that mean?". Then after a few days down the road when they have to do something to the partitions it will all click in their heads. Or also when you use gui configuration tools to manipulate the OS it would display the actual command that is being executed in the backround in a small box at the bottom of the window. Like when you format a floppy disk in linux format using a GUI tool, it will dislplay "/sbin/mke2fs -c /dev/fd0" at the on a the bottom of the dialog box when you hover the mouse over a action button,(like on a internet browser and links and images), so that after a few time doing it then you'll eventually be able to recognise the command enough to muddle thru it on the command line.

I guess developers sometimes confuse making it simple for users with making it usable by stupid users. And that is a big difference. One instance you make powerfull tools at the disposal of users for the minimal of effort and offer convenent and built-in ways to educate them in their proper use, and the other instance you make the interface complicated and full of useless eye-candy to keep them distracted from the the important stuff you keep hidden in out of the way corners and in wizards so that you can minimize the damage the idiot can inflict on his OS. (things like making regedit.exe a hidden file in c:/windows and not making any mention of it anywere in the OS spring to mind, but Redhat and freinds are guilty of that too). That's what the root account and sudo and su are for, minimalising the effect of accidents. (like accidently making it possible to execute complicated installation programs for random trojans, worms and viruses by double clicking on a file you think is labled seemyboobs.jpg in a e-mail attatchment, but is realy labled seemyboobs.jpg.exe, but you can't tell that from the natural way the OS hides file attributes and ruining a entire operating system)

Oh, well

 

[Spyro]

Bah, this is all old news to me. Red hat and madrake started going down hill ever since they first started transforming into *desktop OSs*. There is a certain balance that has to kept between security, flexibility, and usability. Some distros (debian, BSDs, slackware, etc) have achieved that balance, while others like mandrake and red hat are still stumbling after the goal of creating a *windows-like* experience for the home user, while still trying to be viable for other enviroments. I pretty much agree with everyhing thats been said in this thread. Linux is a different animal from windows. Most attempts to make one more like the other just don't work right. Eventually, though, mandrake and redhat will finally get it right. Until that time there are plenty of other distros to play with

 

[Nothinman]

They're trying to create an environment that's similar to what most people are already acquainted with, can you blame them? But in reality it in no way hinders their usefullness and any instability would be them keeping close tags on software that's developing and changing very quickly which has it's ups and downs. People cry "unstable!" when RH ships software from CVS checkouts even if it's for the right reasons but then everyone cries "it's too old!" when Debian ships software that's a few months old, but you can't have both. Debian is conservative with most things and as such has older software that tends to have less problems (they back port security patches to the Debian shipped version) and RedHat stays extremely current to attract the people who are impressed with the shiny icons in the latest Gnome release.

The thing is the people who know Linux already aren't impressed with shiny icons any more, we know how to setup Enlightenment or KDE 3 to make the Windows guys oooh and awww if we want to and we also know how to uninstall all those extra RPMs that RedHat thinks you need by default so they're not really catering to the people who know Linux, we already know if we want to run RedHat or not. They're aiming to attract the people using Windows that are looking to get untied from MS and save some money and, in the long run, maintenance costs and time.

I personally think RedHat's bluecurve theme for Gnome and KDE was a great idea, too many people bitch about no two apps in Linux looking the same and this, for the most part, removed that argument. We already have destkop standards and I expect we'll have themes that work with both KDE and Gnome and it'll probably get to the point that you'll be hard pressed to tell KDE from Gnome if they both have the same themes installed. You're probably asking "well then, what's the point of having both of them?" at this point and I'm with you on that, the only thing I can think of is the underlying differences of KDE/QT/C++ and Gnome/GTK+/C which is what started them in the first place, Gnome was to be a 100% Free (QT wasn't really Free then) alternative to KDE done in C, now QT, and as such KDE, is 100% Free. Is there a way to write KDE/QT apps with straight C? If not then Gnome and GTK will probably be around for quite some time because Gnome has both C and C++ bindings and there's a ton of developers that don't work in C++.

I mainly don't like how running 1 KDE app starts up like 8 extra daemons for all the KDE support, Gnome apps start like 2 which is stsill annoying but tolerable. Hell. I don't even have the KDE or QT libs installed right now because I have everything I need in console or GTK apps. I just wish someone would do a Gnome2 port of Evolution already.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Spyro
Bah, this is all old news to me. Red hat and madrake started going down hill ever since they first started transforming into *desktop OSs*. There is a certain balance that has to kept between security, flexibility, and usability. Some distros (debian, BSDs, slackware, etc) have achieved that balance, while others like mandrake and red hat are still stumbling after the goal of creating a *windows-like* experience for the home user, while still trying to be viable for other enviroments. I pretty much agree with everyhing thats been said in this thread. Linux is a different animal from windows. Most attempts to make one more like the other just don't work right. Eventually, though, mandrake and redhat will finally get it right. Until that time there are plenty of other distros to play with

The BSDs are not distros. They are operating systems.