Switching to Linux, you're doing it wrong

http://joshtronic.com/2011/04/switching-to-linux-youre-doing-it-wrong

by joshtronic • 15 years ago

15 25 15 years ago

bobbyfive2• 15 years ago

After years of being away from Linux, I decided to give it another go with the latest Kubuntu a few days ago.

After a painless install I ended up being at the computer all day and up until 2am, obsessively tweaking and trying new stuff. I can't believe how much I miss it.

Btw, I was into redhat (circa 5.2) and Slackware, reconfiguring and recompiling the kernel over and over. Making the OS wicked-fast. The experience is even better now. Awesome!

joshtronic5• 15 years ago

I feel ya on the experience, I ran Slackware for years and years (Dropline Gnome!) and around Ubuntu 5.x or so I was introduced to it and have been on it since. I had a short stint on Gentoo... glad those days are over

bobbyfive2• 15 years ago

Heh. Gentoo required too much hackery and configuring for my tastes.

Redhat and fedora were always my faves. Love the rpm packaging system. But it seems Ubuntu and it's ilk are the most "user friendly".

Great write up btw Josh!

darkxanthos3• 15 years ago

So do sound and wifi work out of the box yet? I come back every couple of years with that in mind and it's always been problematic.

Device driver issues are really the only reason I haven't become a convert.

joshtronic5• 15 years ago

For the most part, my most recent Dell laptop (Purchased 11/2010) wifi and sound worked great out of the box... actually my last 3 computers that's worked fine (speaking in the realm of Ubuntu)

Suspend / Hibernate still pretty flakey IMO :(

2muchcoffeeman• 15 years ago

I used to do the same thing. I was always disappointed. And then I got mad because I just wasted several hours of my life.

MatthewPhillips4• 15 years ago

Depends on what you mean by "out of the box". If you buy a Ubuntu computer (from, say, System76) then yes, it works out of the box (in the literal sense) as that is their business.

No device drivers just magically work. Someone has to test and ensure that the work; when you buy a computer they do that for you. When you install an operating system on a pre-owned computer your chances get smaller. Most manufacturers upgrade their drivers to ensure they work with the latest version of Windows (and Apple does the same for its computers).

No OS has complete hardware compatibility "out of the box". That's an insane request, of course. So if you want to compare apples to Apple, you have to compare a preinstalled linux box, not some computer you pulled out of your base with 2 inches of dust on top.

darkxanthos3• 15 years ago

Look I get the technical reasons why, but as a computer user I don't care. I want someone else to have already done that work for me. Why would I make such an insane request?

Because there are other solutions available where that laziness is allowed.

bryanlarsen• 15 years ago

All major wifi chips now have open source drivers, so wifi will work out of the box for everybody as of 2.6.39: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-comment-Perseve...

Current versions of Linux (Ubuntu 11.04 etc) use 2.6.37, though.

All integrated sound solutions have open source drivers.

The only problem spot is graphics drivers.

You're more likely to run into device driver problems upgrading to Vista/7 than you are upgrading to Linux. (although there the problems are older printers and other peripherals that significantly predate Vista).

darkxanthos3• 15 years ago

ok good to know. I'll give it another shot then sometime soon.

aashworth• 15 years ago

- I just can't tear myself away from Windows as my primary system until Wine becomes less of a pain to use. While Linux has alternatives for most of the software I use, the 10% it doesn't keeps me rooted to keeping Windows on my primary partition.

-With VMWare performance getting better and better with SSDs and multicore processors, I hardly notice a delay when I'm developing in a virtual machine.

-I hate dual-booting just so I can spend 10 minutes playing Angry Birds on my break. So I just stay in Windows.

ebiester• 15 years ago

You already use VMs, why not just open up a VM when you want to play angry birds?

MatthewPhillips4• 15 years ago

So the opposite is not true? There isn't anything that Linux offers you that Windows does not? Are you a coder? Try installing Node.js under cygwin. Good luck. Same for most linux-oriented programming environments. Windows works fine for the more mature languages (PHP, Ruby, Python, Java) which have direct ports and in many cases a compiler for the CLR.

ggchappell• 15 years ago

> So I downloaded some source and can't figure out how to install it

I don't think he's being fair here. Go to the website for a software package that has a version that runs under Linux. You want to install it. What does the website tell you?

Chances are, it says, "Download this tarball ...". Failing that, it generally gives you a list of command-line stuff to type. A big chunk of these are available via the standard GUI under Ubuntu. Why don't the websites mention this? I have no idea.

As a semi-recent (4 years ago) returnee to Linux, it took me some time to learn this: that, when installing software, I almost certainly want to ignore what the package website tells me and just use the Ubuntu GUI.

I can't imagine why anyone expects new Linux users to understand that.

joshtronic5• 15 years ago

I can agree, I'm rarely fair ;) You nailed it about the Ubuntu GUI, I don't really expect newbies to know that though, that's why I wrote the post.

MatthewPhillips4• 15 years ago

Yep, good point. I think it's a consumer expectation problem. We are used to installing desktop software by first downloading a package from the author's website. Linux distros break this expectation.

In mobile we have the opposite expectation. We expect to go to the platform's store and get the application.

Perhaps the introduction of the Mac App Store, Chrome Web Store, and (soon) Windows store will change the expectation a bit, and the Ubuntu way (which has existed as long as it has) won't seem foreign to people.

joshtronic5• 15 years ago

Good point about mobile! The expectation will surely change in the coming years because of the desktop software app stores. Linux, always ahead of the curve ;)

koeselitz• 15 years ago

This is a small point, but regarding Ableton Live not having an analog on Linux: anyone who wants to do pro audio editing on Linux needs to try Ardour. It's a fantastic project that represents the best of the open-source tradition, and it is in constant and active development. Right now it's better than it's ever been. It's not always simple to get it running on Ubuntu, but it is well worth it; while Ableton Live might have some performance perks that few other DAWs have, in terms of strict potential for pro audio engineering Ardour matches it on every point.

joshtronic5• 15 years ago

Very true, Ardour is fantasic for a ProTools-like application. For me, Ableton Live has a great workflow for demoing songs quickly. Just to not act like I'm better than what I wrote on my blog - I'm also set in my ways and unable to adapt / unwilling to make it work ;)

tzs2• 15 years ago

   What you probably meant to say is "I'm so old and decrepit
   that I can't learn new things so I can't acclimate to an
   environment without some shitty Adobe or Microsoft application".
   Don't get me wrong, there are some pieces of software that just
   don't have an equivalent for Linux (*cough* Ableton Live *cough*)

The primary examples of "shitty Adobe or Microsoft application"s that keep people from Linux are Photoshop and Office, respectively, both of which are far superior to the closest Linux equivalents.

mnnttl• 15 years ago

Photoshop is superior in comparison to Gimp, agreed. But don't get started with Microsoft Office. If you want to beautiful typesetting, a simple LaTeX environment would suffice and plenty are available on Linux.

jdludlow• 15 years ago

Beautiful typesetting isn't what people are looking for when they use Office. They are looking for a program that will read that god-awful .doc file that their coworker created.

OpenOffice is great, but it fails way too often at this task.

Switching to Linux, you're doing it wrong

Related Stories