This thread is a veritable smorgasbord of things to correct and argue with! /me digs in
Originally posted by: Elemental007
The instant messaging clients are slow and cumbersome, too. AIM with the $5 deadAIM mod works beautifully and does everything any other Linux client could do without messing up the user interface.
Bitlbee runs awesome on all unices and even windows. I heart bitlbee
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Not very good at arguing, eh?
Originally posted by: MegaloManiaK
I do 100% agree with you about linux for sale, it started out as a fee for the support and the manuals but has taken off into a rippoff.
It's half (or less) the price of windows, 2/3 the cost of OSX, and a fraction of the cost of Solaris or any other high-end unix. How is it a rip-off?
Originally posted by: Staples
It isn't exactly a bash Linux thread as it is mostly a bash Linux geeks threads. Of course that was part of the rant (not really depedent on the thead subject), the qestion was do you feel the need and goodwill to pay for on OS that is supposed to be free?
That's a misunderstanding on your part. Linux and bundled GPL apps are free as in speech, not free as in beer. The GPL was designed to allow companies to turn a profit, and they are. Does anyone realize that without the commercial linux vendors' support, linux and other free software would not be where it is today? (My guess is no - considering how many flat out wrong assumptions are contained in this thread)
Originally posted by: Elemental007
Sure, someone else will tell me to use another Window manager besides KDE and Gnome but then I give up a whole lot of power and customization for something that is faster but a lot less stable.
KDE and gnome are desktop environments, the window manager is a fairly small piece of them. And where do you get the idea that standalone window managers are unstable?
Second, the way everything is laid out is not very intuitive. Wherever I go I am considered to be a computer guy and when I have a hard time finding things in Linux I know something isn't right. Learning programming languages is easier than learn to use Linux.
The gui is not intuitive -- I agree. The standard gui you get on mandrake/redhat/et al sucks ass. Linux is just a unix implementation -- and the gui is generally not a part of the unix concept. The command line is where all the action is. Even your gui apps do countless things with the command line behind the scenes. You REALLY have to understand that linux is not supposed to be a windows replacement. If you don't accept that, you'll always think it's a hunk of junk, because of course it does a crappy job of emulating windows, just like windows does a crappy job of emulating mac os at times.
Third, I don't understand why Linux geeks swear by text editors.
Because you use them for everything. You use them for configuring things, you use them for programming, and those are big parts of the unix "experience." An important concept in unix is that everything is a file. There is no magical registry in the sky, there's just plain text files, on the file system. For that reason, text processing is a HUGE part of unix. Editors often have something to do with that.
I don't give a sh!t if its EMacs or Vi or Pico, I don't want to have to memorize 15 million key combinations to get something done.
Great, then use pico or nano, they are extremely easy to figure out. As for vi and emacs -- they are designed for people who use text editors a lot. If you use a text editor 10 times a month, and for short periods of time, on small files, sure, pico is fine. Pico is great, even. Perfect tool for the job. The problem comes in when you're a developer, system administrator, or some other type of person who is working on text files day in and day out. Would you expect such a person to be satisfied with a crippled editor? Doesn't it make sense that they would want something with lots of power and convenience? Of course. It might take some time to learn, but that's ok. The time taken to learn it is miniscule compared to the time they'll spend using it. Learning vi was VERY worth it to me, I despise being stuck editing text without vi (like in the browser I'm typing in now..). Try spitting out thousands of lines of code in notepad.
The same goes with the command line. I shouldn't have to go to a command prompt to do ANYTHING that I shouldn't be able to do graphically. I don't want to have to memorize command-line switches for 150 different commands that I use every day, nor do I want to have to deal with the command line any more than I have to.
Again, the command line is meant to be flexible and comprehensive. It is. If your gui does a crappy job of replicating its functionality, I'm not surprised. If you think your gui is sub-par, why don't you try to contribute? That's what open source is all about; nothing gets done by complaining. Code speaks louder than words. If you paid for your distro, then complain to the company you paid, and tell them that you think they should work on whatever it is you find crappy. Other than that, that's about all you can do. Remember - linux is just unix, and unix was NEVER EVER meant for friendly fuzzy desktop usage.
You may say I am not 'l33t' enough to use Linux but I am an EE and have made As in every single one of my programming classes and I work in IT when I'm not in school.
You have to not only be l33t, but dedicated, and have plenty of time to learn the stuff. L33t is a start though
I'm sorry, that kind of command-line memorization/shortcut-key knowledge was antiquated after WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS with my 286 that came with a little shortcut menu that you placed on top of your keyboard.
It was never antiquated. If you use something all day, it's no problem to memorize such things. Guess who programs this stuff? People who use it all day!
An important unix concept is to not punish the advanced users for the sake of sparing the newbies. This creates a beatiful learning curve; at first it's hard as hell, then it gets easier, and easier, until you get to the point where you have all of this overlapping knowledge and you start applying things you learned in program A to what you're doing in program B, etc. Your learning accelerates, and there's no end to it, either. Everyone learns new stuff all the time, even the brainiac old fogies. Again, this creates the problem of making it a bit hard at first, but it's better than making it easy at first, but then no more useful when you become a pro.
I don't understand the point in using software because it is 'free' or 'open source' when it is clearly inferior in so many ways to the alternatives. I'm done ranting for now I guess.
I don't really understand it either, but then again, I don't use software that I feel is inferior. That would be silly.
Originally posted by: notfred
Even little things, like the command line FTP client for mac OS X has a progress bar for uplaods and downloads. It also does filename completion. The one that comes with redhat doesn't do either of those things. Sure, I could probably find a replacement for the redhat client, but if I'm goign to pay for an OS, I'll take the one that already works how I want over the one that doesn't.
Redhat comes with ncftp, try it out.
I agree about the gimp's UI sucking, but it does the job ok, and I'd rather deal with it, than pay $600 for photoshop (plus the fact that I don't have any mac or windows machines)
The shifter comment was great
Originally posted by: Staples
Linux probably runs 15% longer but that doesn't excuse it for having FreeBSD run three times as long before it has to be rebooted.
Don't quote stupid numbers without having something to back it up.
Stability is no longer really an issue. The windows 9x nightmares are over, the mac os <10 nightmares are over, every modern OS is pretty damn stable. Stable really is not much of a selling point these days.
*whew*
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