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Linux SUCKS and should never be used by human beings.
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wwswimming
Banned
some people like (are more productive with) command lines. i used to work with a physics consultant who billed out at $100 an hour (in 1988). he was a command-line kind of guy.
some people like compiling.
- - -
i think there's a lot to be said for keeping track of how much time you dedicate to a task.
one approach is to give the task a 1/2 hour of your valuable time, and see how much progress you make.
i had a similar experience with a Windows 95 computer, about 10 years ago. ended up trying 64 different combinations of configuration, jumper settings etc. on a sunny day; the beach was about 3 miles away.
question for the Linux folks - what version of Linux is good for a person who is not UNIX-literate, and wants to set up an FTP server on non-Macintosh hardware ?
I've been playing around with the Ubuntu boot CD, booting from it on my Pentium-M laptop. I've actaully liked using it, but I've never actually tried to install any programs or do anything besides playing a few games and web browsing and email.
I'm downloading the latest release and will actually attempt to install it for the first time on an older computer I have. I'm a professional programer but still work mainly in Visual Basic, VB.Net and Delphi. I'm actually STILL doing a lot of work in Visual Basic, as my company can't afford the time or expense to switch. Are there any visual driven programming IDEs for Linux? I know Delphi had Kylix, but I think its discontinued.
I agree with a lot of what the OP says, though, and I expect a pretty steep learning curve trying to do anything in Linux besides web browsing and email.
Edit: I'm downloading (bia torrent) the Kubuntu DVD instead, with 3.9 GB of stuff on it.
I'm downloading the latest release and will actually attempt to install it for the first time on an older computer I have. I'm a professional programer but still work mainly in Visual Basic, VB.Net and Delphi. I'm actually STILL doing a lot of work in Visual Basic, as my company can't afford the time or expense to switch. Are there any visual driven programming IDEs for Linux? I know Delphi had Kylix, but I think its discontinued.
I agree with a lot of what the OP says, though, and I expect a pretty steep learning curve trying to do anything in Linux besides web browsing and email.
Edit: I'm downloading (bia torrent) the Kubuntu DVD instead, with 3.9 GB of stuff on it.
Doom Machine
Senior member
bs there, for one kids have entirely different and vigorous learning abilities which slows much as you age past 6. it has nothing to do with the ease of the OS and is not a scientific experiment to prove anything, as when i was around that age maybe tad older i apparantly did very well with apple 2 and commandlines, most of my early memories of computers was booting to a blinking cursor awaiting commands, kids pick up on anything quickly, clicking icons is that much more easier nowadays, try being a kid with the patience to load floppies and type commands.
you almost got the point i made which is why people like windows...if linux is so great then why would there be windows "emulation" not really emu but..on such a miraculous os? people want thier cake and to eat it too? no they want something easy, an all in one solution...people pay for convenience...just look at the 711's and other small pantry stores. there is no convenience with linux
yet the response to this wont mention relevance to what i just said but rather dabble in some biased 1 sided view from the perspective of an enthusiast with the single outer view that everyone else is just lazy or afraid of change, more to it than that im afraid
there is no 1 os that beats em all no more than there is 1 console or dvd player that beats em all...and there are free dvd players out there even
I remember as a kid mucking around with DOS. I remember learning about extended memory and using pretty complex command lines to manage memory and setting up a floppy disk so that I could allocate enough extra memory to play X-wing vs Tie Fighter. One of the major reasons I was interested in Linux was the neglect that Microsoft had for the command line.
Command line isn't nearly as horrific as people like to paint it to be. Having to type strings of commands to a computer to have them executed is actually a very natural way to interact with a computer. If a person is trained to understand what is actually going on with a computer rather then 'going through the motions' method of computer training, which is what most people focus on, then a large number of people don't have problems with it.
A lot of this sort of CLI-is-to-hard actually stems a lot from the utter comtempt that a lot technical people have for 'normal people'. They assume that everybody is to stupid or to lazy to bother learning anything new, so they don't try and dumb everything down.
Like everything else there are always going to be people that "just don't get it", this is natural and such and is something you have to deal with with anything.
And I'd like to point out that if you go into any community school out there you'll find massive numbers of people struggling to learn how to use 'computers', which is realy introductions to Windows and Office. I have a freind were she had to drop out of classes because everybody else had training at work and since she didn't she couldn't keep up.. Yet only with a little bit of help she uses Linux on a daily basis.
That's not to say that the Unix shell in Linux is anything wonderfull. It's notoriously been very difficult and has lots of cryptic commands. A modern Linux bash environment isn't as bad as it used to be, but there is still a hell of a lot work to do. There are people working on this like 'Fish' shell that intergrates tightly into the desktop and other things like that will make it easier, but it still has work to do.
Hyperblaze
Lifer
I was actually referring to the poster above you. But you agreeing didn't help much.
We are all different. We all have different preferences. Generalizing human behavior is not logical. Just because one human being likes something a certain way does not mean they ALL like that particular something a certain way. Get my drift?
Linux is not for everyone. Windows is not for everyone. They all have their target market. Linux is different then Windows (Thank God), and shouldn't be expected to act the same way.
The learning curve behind Windows is different then the learning curve behind Linux (note, I did not say easier or harder, just different). IMHO Linux is vastly superior then Windows. But this is mostly because Windows does not fit my needs as well as Linux.
That crap all being said. It all comes down to user/client requirements of what they want their operating system to act like.
Nothinman
Elite Member
Of course it's an issue, there's no way to automatically defend against brute force attacks without opening yourself up to DoS attacks. Imagine that after a few tries I notice that I'm not getting any return traffic, once I realize that my brute force isn't going I'll setup my client to spoof it's source address with each attempt and eventually your system won't be allowing logins from any system and will be essentially worthless either way.
But the fact remains that you wanted an exploit that affected virtually all distros and and I gave you one.
And you've polled how many OS EX users?
Only for the same reasons that OS X probably has one, because no one cares. Slackware is virtually irrelevant today and 9 times out of 10 when an exploit affects software include in both Slackware and RH it affects both distros equally, claiming otherwise is retarded. Pat doesn't include any special patches that make him special in any way.
IMO Spam on both systems is the same, both require you jump through several hoops to have your identity stolen and claiming otherwise is an outright lie. Hell if I use Thunderbird on both OSes the affect Spam would have on both OSes is exactly the same so your argument dies right there.
And you completely ignored my comment about Solaris 10, are you afraid to admit that you might have been wrong about something?
Because people like you cry that they can't run their Win32 apps/games on Linux. All of the BSDs also have a Linux binary personality so they can run native Linux binaries but do people complain about that? Of course not.
That is 100% wrong, I find Linux many orders of magnitude more convenient than Windows.
Not when that spam is embedded with hyperlinks that are specifically targeted towards Windows Operating system exploits. Those are COMPLETLY harmless to a Linux user on a Linux box.
A very good quote comes to mind here - that was made in the documentary "Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson":
"The real art of boxing is to get the opponent to be an assistant in his own @55 whoppin'"
Windows Operating Systems "out of the box" are BY FAR better equipped to do that (assist the user in his own @55 whoopin') than any Linux OS ever will be "out of the box" In fact many Linux users couldn't go out of their way to create that level of exploitability on their own computers. As far as Windows users go - the majority of them wouldn't know where to begin to close those exploits - they just "point and click".
Doom Machine
Senior member
heres a perfect example of why linux sucks for many people
a simple installation of nvidia drivers, in windows you click icon
http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html
and here? holy crap look at all the work you have to do, seconds turns into minutes...and some of you think the average person would care to learn this much less do all that? and that was just a small example of why so many use windows, not because its handed or forced on them but because it makes doing what you like to do simple or "dummified" if you will which is the religion of lazy people everywhere
a simple installation of nvidia drivers, in windows you click icon
http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html
and here? holy crap look at all the work you have to do, seconds turns into minutes...and some of you think the average person would care to learn this much less do all that? and that was just a small example of why so many use windows, not because its handed or forced on them but because it makes doing what you like to do simple or "dummified" if you will which is the religion of lazy people everywhere
That doesn't seem to be like a typical linux driver installation. Last time I installed nVidia drivers on this machine (Xubuntu) I just typed 'sudo apt-get install nvidia legacy gfx' and 20 seconds later I had them. Sure beats browsing through a website, finding the driver among many, downloading it, uninstalling the old one, installing the new one, rebooting.
To translate those steps in that article:
1) Unload the Windows system and the driver module
2) Set the pparameters for the YAST software to update the driver
3) Download and install the packages using YAST
4) Update X-Org.
5) Re-start X-org (no need to reboot).
How difficult is that - especially when they SPOON FEED you with the instructions?
To similarly update on a Windows platform:
1) Uninstall previous drivers - the source of MAJOR headaches when people fail to do this step - especially when they use Beta drivers.
2) Find the updated driver on the Internet and download it
3) Run the install program
4) Reboot the computer
Nieither one of those are difficult - except the Linux version requires the use of the command console (something which frightens the living bejesus out of many Windows users).
I guarantee that the process takes less time than it does in Windows - and I'm talking about both systems starting out from scratch having to download the drivers - all the way until the system is fully updated and usable again post-install of the drivers. Whilke the Windows user is staring at that Logo screen in the middle of rebooting - the Linux user is already back into his GUI and being productive.
Nothinman
Elite Member
The problem is that the exploits aren't targetting Windows so much as they're targetting Outlook (Express) so it's not Windows that's at fault. If an exploit targetted Thunderbird it could be just as harmful to Linux and OS X users, if they use that MUA.
I'm not so sure about that, for example by default Ubuntu sets up the user created at installation time with rights to run any command with root priviledges via sudo and to save the user from typing their password 200 times in a row it caches that result for a few minutes when you enter it. All an exploit has to do is run some commands via gksudo and chances are good that the user will type their password without even thinking about what's happening or even better the user will have done something else recently that used gksudo and the commands will execute without any prompts at all.
You do realize that page has instructions for 22 different versions of SuSE and each one is only like 4 steps, right? And even if you consider 4 steps to be too much work, the next release of Ubuntu will include and enable the non-free nVidia and ATI drivers by default so it'll require 0 steps, that's something Windows can never do.
Thunderbird doesn't have access to system exploits like Outlook or IE - because Thunderbird CANNOT cross into the local zone - no matter what exploit someone tried to write for Thuinderbird.
Thunderbird - and any other MUA for that matter do not have the exclusive access that Microsoft applications do - and since when does Thunderbird use ActiveX anyway?
Thunderbird - and any other MUA for that matter do not have the exclusive access that Microsoft applications do - and since when does Thunderbird use ActiveX anyway?
Nothinman
Elite Member
Those zones don't apply to Thunderbird at all, they're an IE-only thing, it can do whatever that user is capable of doing and 9/10 times that's local admin access.
There is nothing exclusive about MS applications, if anything their access is more limited because of the extents MS has gone do mitigate past problems. Things like the zones in IE and now the unpriviledged operation IE does in Vista have no equivalents in Opera, Firefox or any other browser that I'm aware of.
I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I prefer Linux for doing real work, for gaming I use Windows for convenience.
Most people want to turn on their computer, login with the same old username/password(if they even have one) and click on the same icons they always have.
Heck, even forcing users to change passwords in a corporate environment annoys the crap out of most users, let alone changing applications or even the OS.
I'm not talking about technical users who can make an educated choice based on their needs, I'm talking about your average user, be it your parents or that pretty but completely computer illiterate secretary.
They just don't care, as long as they can continue doing what they've always done and get the expected results, they're happy.
It's not that Ubuntu would be a bad choice for them, it would work wonderfully for most users, but it's different, and someone used to XP, MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc, would look at it as an unneeded change.
Hyperblaze
Lifer
I agree a lot of people want something that just "works". What they don't mention is that they also want something they are "familiar" with. Many people don't care about what they use, as long as it does the job they need it to do.
Did you have to mention Ubuntu? 😉 Don' t like that distro myself. I prefer Fedora Core for my stuff. See, choice? Something which is unheard of in the Microsoft world. (I like full control and power over what I do).
And here's a sad fact. Folks say they don't need to change to a different operating system, yet they don't mind the bullsh!t that comes along with the Windows Operating Systems (viruses, security vulnerabilties which take forever to get fixed, and IE *cringe*).
Another Microsoft lock-in. Games. When I mention Linux as a possible solution, they are all excited when they hear about all it can do for them. Then the subject of games comes up. They cannot live without their games. "I'd just to linux in a heartbeat but I'd miss my games". Hell, some folks thinks that Linux is not desktop ready till games will be fully support in linux. Can you believe that some blame linux for not being enough compadible to windows to run their beloved games?
The Ms OFFICE argument is pretty stale by now. I know most folks use MS Office but hey, you can use MS Office in Linux now. No big deal. Really? Yes, really. Oh cool. I'll have to check it out. (some time later, oh...sorry, didn't have time to check it out, too busy (or lack of interest?)).
I actually had a conversation with my dad the other day. He usually just uses IE for his web surfing. Why? Because it came with the laptop. I told him that I despised IE because it's not, in my opinion, a real web browser. Until it is w3c compliant it can go to hell. Will he switch? No. Why not? Too much effort. Too used to IE. Downloading firefox is too much trouble for him. A 2 minute operation is too much of his time wasted?
We live in a sad sad world.
That's normal.
Take anything you want, any facit of human existance. It's truth that the majority of the time only a tiny minority of people actually realy care about anything at any time.
Religion, Sports, health and fitness, environment, colors of the sky, bicycles, revolutions in third world nations, DRM, chevy vs ford, etc etc.
Anything. The vast majority of the time your only going to get a tiny percentage of people to care.
Imagine your in a movie theater full of a random selection of people. How many people there are going to care about art and history vs shoes?
AND on the flip side is that EVERYBODY cares. Everybody cares about _something_. Just probably not what your talking about at that moment. It's a very dull and pointless individual that doesn't care about anything. Some people just care about caring.
Now the _sad_ part, this dissapointing part. Is that the more trivial and pointless something is the more people care. This may be a reaction to our media controlled culture. Media tends to emphisis things that are 'safe'. It doesn't pay to piss off your audiance so you pick something that appeals to the largest number of people while avoiding strong negative emotional reactions.
Well, to most people "familiar with" and "just works" are pretty much synonymous.
People don't know or care about the why's, they just know that there's a Start thingy in the lower left corner, and from there they can click "That icon", which in turn starts "That program".
Change "That icon", change the start button into something else, change pretty much anything and they'll be unfamiliar with it, and all of a sudden it doesn't "just work" anymore, no matter how trivial the change would seem to us.
Change is good(within reasonable limits that is 😉 ), choice is good, but that's just my opinion, and lots of people would disagree 🙂
Agreed, for many reasons.
Doom Machine
Senior member
couldnt agree more and what ive been saying all along...i'm even an enthusiast and i still prefer tojust click an icon and have it work...theres nothing wrong with anything dummified, its less crap to try to learn and its easy
kinda like how driving a new 2007 honda is easier than driving a 1964 chevelle malibu ss
i have a couple distros on a computer downsttairs for financial reasons and they do nothing but frustrate or take longer to achieve the exact same goal.
Hyperblaze
Lifer
if you like things dummified down and easy to use because it's easy to learn, that's one thing, I call that a user (in my opinion, an individual who has no real interests in computers). They generally don't care to learn more then they have to. However, calling yourself a enthusiast contradicts your attitude towards computers.
NamelessMC
Senior member
You know what the sad thing is?
This thread has actually fed and peaked my interest for learning and using Linux. Hearing about using Apt-get, Wine and being able to customize your GUI on the fly only makes me want to use Linux even more.
This thread has actually fed and peaked my interest for learning and using Linux. Hearing about using Apt-get, Wine and being able to customize your GUI on the fly only makes me want to use Linux even more.
Hyperblaze
Lifer
wow, to think this thread actually had a positive influence on someone....
i'm impressed!
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