Ubuntu: Something for Everyone

[Santa-san]

And that's why they use windows.

Why did you buy a laptop with Ubuntu when you had no understanding of it?

I had no idea mate, it was second hand

 

[Rob Williams]

As to devices on the system, i am surprised, i have a hardware manager on my system System->Admin->something highly intiutive (fairly sure i didnt go into synaptic and install it) but perhaps it has come from an older version.

Do you happen to have the name of that tool? I swore that I used such a tool in Ubuntu before, but I can't find it anywhere in my 9.04 installation. It is a fresh install, though, and not an upgrade, so it's very possible that if you still have it, then it did indeed carry through the upgrade.

The issues with linux start when you need something special, eg: canon dont make drivers for *nix (more of an indication of crapness of canon than linux) so you need to compile and add drivers which will probably break when you do major updates since the system doesnt know about them...

A lot of that comes down to the model. If you have a more popular one, then setting it up isn't too difficult. I didn't realize this until last month, when I was installing Ubuntu on my friend's PC. I was surprised when a dialog box came up telling us the model of the printer and also that we'd have to go search out a manual driver for it. Her printer wasn't supported, but I looked through the list, and couldn't believe how vast it was.

8 days later we couldn't get the video resolution above 1024x768 and the NVidia drivers were impossible to install, crashing the thing every time we tried. Fine... I --a programmer, electronics engineer and system builder-- actually PAID someone to come and fix the problem... We even paid extra to have him instruct us in how to deal with this in future.

Eight days, when there are literally hundreds of articles around the web that tackle this issue? The process shouldn't have been quite so complicated, especially if you are using recent hardware.

I personally don't like how Ubuntu prefers you to install the NVIDIA driver through the package manager... installing it straight from the NVIDIA driver off the official website is the best, and easiest way to do it. I will side on you for one thing... as far as I know, you can't simply go to the command line (without a window system) to install the NVIDIA driver manually. From what I recall, I always had to manually kill the X environment so I could get to the command-line, and I'd take care of it there.

For what it's worth, Kubuntu is nowhere near as polished as the regular Ubuntu or any other popular distro for that matter. It's an official sub-distro of Ubuntu, but you can tell that nowhere near the amount of effort goes into the forks.

So now we had a fully functional system... next problem, video and music players for multimedia files. First discovery... file associations. What file associations? Yes there is a mechanism to recognize certain files are to be opened with certain programs, but adding new files meant having to identify those files to the program launcher --on a file by file basis... not a good plan with some of today's music and video collections.

I have to admit, I'm really not sure what you are referring to here... because it seems like you are talking about three different things. Overall, and trust me when I say this, Linux is far smarter when it comes to file extensions than Windows.

Generally, most executables in Windows end in .exe. In Linux, there will often be no extension at all. If you are unsure if a file is executable or not, you can simply click it and see what happens. Almost all of the time, a README file will be included with the program you download, and it will tell you how to launch the application.

If you download an application manually and extract it, that's on par for both Linux and Windows... it's the same process. If you install via an installer, or through the distro's package manager, it will create an entry in the applications menu for you to access, so there's no confusion. I always recommend that if anyone needs a specific application, look in the package manager first to see if it's there. Not only are applications easier to install that way, but you can upgrade them easily when a new version becomes available.

If you are talking about associating files with certain applications, that's also not too difficult. The more difficult of the two is to go into the File Associations section under the control center, but as it's just about as difficult to use as the one in Windows, I'm not sure "difficult" is the proper word to use. Both are near-identical in how they work. If you have a file and want to associate it with a new application, all you do is right-click it, go to "Open With" and then "Other", find the app and then click "Remember application association". From that point forward, clicking the file will launch whatever application you set it to.

Now we hit the BIG problem... Whatever was going on with KUbuntu videos that played at the click of a mouse in Windows were bogging, tearing and hesitating like crazy. Music sounded like that "Winchester Cathedral" song from the 70s... Nothing was working even remotely like we'd been lead to believe.

This is not typical, and it's clear there was a real issue somewhere. Are you sure the proper codecs were installed? Because a lot of these codecs aren't "free", you have to install a separate package that enables proper support for everything (this is primarily important for Windows Media files).

We gave up... Put in XP and had the whole thing up and playing music an hour later.

It could have been 15 minutes if your Linux install went according to plan. I tested out Kubuntu this past January on a notebook, and I was able to play music without issue soon after the install. When I tried to play such a file, Ubuntu popped-up with a box telling me that I needed to install some codecs. So, I entered my password, and 10 seconds later I could play my FLAC files.

The reason Linux in general usually doesn't support everything out of the box is because not all of the formats are free, such as MP3. When you buy Windows, part of what you pay covers the license. So in Linux, you have to download it manually.

To test out things as a "new user", I installed Ubuntu while writing this response. Once at the desktop, I tried to play an MP3, and it told me I didn't have the codec. So, I went to Google, typed in "playing music in Ubuntu" and found myself on the restricted formats page. I then clicked the "Click here to install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package" link. After waiting about ten minutes, all types of audio and video were supported, in addition to Java, Flash and other proprietary things. Rather than go out and download the installers for all these manually, I simply clicked a few buttons, waited, and it was all prepared for me when it was done.

How does someone who *does not* know find out what command is needed in any given situation?

Help files, distro documentation, search engines, et cetera.

Example: I needed to manually configure a video driver (something Windows can't do) so I had the question: "How do I?" ... with no clue what files needed changing, what setup programs to run or what commands needed to be issued... AND even with extensive searching on the internet I was totally unable to find any "How To" that didn't assume I already knew enough to not need the "How To"...

What do you mean by "configure" a video driver? Once the driver is installed, the ATI or NVIDIA control panel is found under the system menu, just like it would be found in the control panel under Windows. To install a video driver, especially in Ubuntu, it's usually easy. After booting up, it will tell you that a GPU has been found, and then it asks you if you want to install the restricted driver (it's restricted, because it's not open-source). I've used this feature many times on my various test installs and it was fine.

I can't honestly say if Kubuntu works just as well or not, because as I've said, that distro seems nowhere near as polished.

Bottom line... Linux documentation is mostly written by people who know linux... for people who know linux... They fail, miserably, at explaining anything to anyone who does not come to the game with prior knowledge.

If one how-to is complicated, there are thousand's more.

This is because of the extensive visual focus in Windows with context menus, concentrated setup panels, dialogs and wizards for almost everything...

Linux isn't Windows, so of course there are differences. There are many help documents out there if you are stumped... tons. Most people will not have to open up the command-line to do anything... that's a power user's tool. You seem to run into problems that don't effect everyone, and I can understand why you've reached the conclusions you have.

As I said earlier, Linux has improved a LOT over time... and each time a new distro comes out, it's even easier to install than the last. Ubuntu, for example, will detect and install all the hardware it can, and in the case of a graphics driver, it will prompt you to enable it, since it's not an open-source driver. If you pick up a notebook or build a new PC today, I under no circumstance can see you booting up with the latest Ubuntu and not having it work. The only time I have a distro not boot is if there's a problem with the graphics hardware. On my HP dv2, for example, even though the notebook is rather new, the graphics card is not, so it's not supported to a great degree by newer distros (I believe this is ATI's fault, not Linux's).

I've watched 10 year olds sit down at a Windows machine for the first time and in 15 minutes they're running paint programs, looking at file lists and playing music with the best of them.

The same could be said for Linux. On Windows, people have to go to the Start Menu, and then Programs > Applications > Paint. In Linux, it's K (Or GNOME) Menu > Graphics > GIMP Image Editor. I don't understand how one is so much more complicated than the other. Where music and things are concerned, like I said earlier, it's easy to add support if you do some simple searching.

*Especially* when things Windows does effortlessly --like playing videos and music-- fall flat on their faces in Linux...

I disagree. It's no more difficult to play music and watch videos in Linux. Even in Windows, you have to install special players and codecs in order to watch a lot of video or play a lot of music. It's just more specific codecs you need to install an extra package for, and a simple search engine search could help you figure out how to get it done.

35 years in Electronics, 25 years in computers, 10+ programming in Pascal and C, building hundreds of computers... and I had to call for help... What's that tell you about Linux?

You could also argue that there are technically inept grandmothers out there who can use Linux...

You've had bad luck with Linux, that's all I can say. It's that, or an overall lack of patience and / or a deep-down desire to not like Linux. You've run into a lot of issues, and I can't understand half of them, since I can boot up with a recent distro on any recent PC and be fine.

I really don't think that's so awful. Those of us so familiar with Windows skip past it, but has anyone thought of the fact that EVERY WINDOWS since Win95 has come with a little "Basic Walkthrough" video? Same with Mac since the first release of OS-X.

Hmm, seriously? I don't ever recall something like that.

I agree, though... that kind of thing should be included. But let's face it... we're not talking about simple operations here, but what the "man" command and other things do. It's highly unlikely that any video tutorial is going to tackle things like this.

Linux works especially well for those willing to roll their sleeves up.

Whoa, it's been a while since you've been here. You should drop by more often ;-)

I can agree with that point for the most part, but again, I don't think it takes an incredible amount of effort to understand the basics of Linux. If you read through the beginner's guide or other documents, you are going to learn fast. Heck, just poke around and find things out on your own... that's the best way to learn how to do things.

I didn't get into Linux by bringing the habits I developed in Windows. I saw it as a completely different OS. It took me 6 months to break all sorts of habits and understand the basics of the command-line interface. (My last CLI experience was MS-DOS 6.22, so CLI didn't scare me in any way)...In fact, I like CLI because its the most direct way to interact with a system.

The thing with the command-line in Linux, is that after using it for a while, you begin to hate the absolute lack of a proper command-line interface in Windows. Windows 7 ships with PowerShell, so that's a step in the right direction, but you still lack a lot of the power that a Linux CLI offers you.

For example: In Arch Linux (a rolling release distro), I upgrade my whole system by typing.
=> pacman -Syu

It's even easier in distros like Ubuntu, which will tell you when a new version is available and allow you to simply click "Upgrade" and wait for it to finish. It could not be easier.

As for the OP's topic: I don't agree with the Editorial's perspective that a performance hit is acceptable in software because modern day hardware is powerful. The main reason is because it causes software developers to assume that bloat is acceptable.

I'm with you there. I was talking to Brett about this, and how my "lsmod" output is a small list (since I have a DIY distro) and when you install Ubuntu, it's about twice the size. Even now that I'm running a very robust desktop environment (KDE 4) with very cool OpenGL effects, I still feel like my machine is as fit as can be.

Linux by itself isn't too bloated though in general. I just re-installed Gentoo, and after installing all of KDE 4 and every-single one of my applications I use, I am using 22GB hard drive space (that excludes my 2GB swap partition).

 

[2Tired2Tango]

Eight days, when there are literally hundreds of articles around the web that tackle this issue? The process shouldn't have been quite so complicated, especially if you are using recent hardware.

Brand new, right out of the boxes...

It took all of a day to figure out that we had to turn off APIC support to get the installer to run... From there it all went down hill very quickly.

I personally don't like how Ubuntu prefers you to install the NVIDIA driver through the package manager... installing it straight from the NVIDIA driver off the official website is the best, and easiest way to do it.

The first installed a "third party" driver that clunked and bumped along like it was dragging a ball and chain behind itself. The second never did install correctly... BUT, when we finally gave up and called in an "expert" he managed it in about half an hour, plus he fixed a couple of things we didn't even know we had wrong... I tore the web apart looking for step by step directions to do what turned out to be a simple thing... Simple for someone who's done it before...that is.

I will side on you for one thing... as far as I know, you can't simply go to the command line (without a window system) to install the NVIDIA driver manually. From what I recall, I always had to manually kill the X environment so I could get to the command-line, and I'd take care of it there.

Yep, that's what NVIDIA told us too... our immediate question was ... And how, exactly do we do that?

Again... Linux seems to attract people who assume that just because they know something, we must already know it too...

For what it's worth, Kubuntu is nowhere near as polished as the regular Ubuntu or any other popular distro for that matter. It's an official sub-distro of Ubuntu, but you can tell that nowhere near the amount of effort goes into the forks.

I've tried regular Ubuntu as well... I'd say there about equal but slightly different in style.

I have to admit, I'm really not sure what you are referring to here... because it seems like you are talking about three different things. Overall, and trust me when I say this, Linux is far smarter when it comes to file extensions than Windows.

No, Rob, it isn't. Linux is useless for file associations.

I can run a Windows machine, day in and day out, simply by opening Explorer and clicking on my data files... I *never* launch programs directly unless I'm creating a whole new file. I let the "launch by association" mechanism, which is based on file extensions and the very thing that makes windows so convenient, do the work for me.

Generally, most executables in Windows end in .exe. In Linux, there will often be no extension at all. If you are unsure if a file is executable or not, you can simply click it and see what happens. Almost all of the time, a README file will be included with the program you download, and it will tell you how to launch the application.

No you don't get it Rob... In Windows an executable has to have an extension of either EXE, COM or BAT or Windows simply won't run the program. This is where the Linux method falls flat on it's face. It's extensions are arbitrary, in fact just part of the filename. In Windows, extensions have meaning. When you associate an extension with a program you are creating a class of files that will all be opened in a similar manner based on that extension. In Linux it's a database where each individual file has to be connected to a program individually... Any idea what a massive pain in the ass that would be to someone with, lets say... 5600 MP3s, 320 Avis, 2800 MIDs... In Windows I can set up launch by association for those files simply by right clicking on them and selecting "Open With" .... from then on all files with that extension are opened by the program I choose... even new ones added after the fact.

If you have a file and want to associate it with a new application, all you do is right-click it, go to "Open With" and then "Other", find the app and then click "Remember application association". From that point forward, clicking the file will launch whatever application you set it to.

Ok, now try that with literally tens of thousands of files... it ceases to be "nearly equivalent" as you put it in a real big hurry.

You've had bad luck with Linux, that's all I can say. It's that, or an overall lack of patience and / or a deep-down desire to not like Linux. You've run into a lot of issues, and I can't understand half of them, since I can boot up with a recent distro on any recent PC and be fine.

Oh my... no I don't have a deep down desire to not like Linux... I keep trying to like it over and over because I would dealy love a FREE alternative OS to give my customers. I would like nothing better than to send Microsoft packing off my own network. But until Linux in it's many, many forms settles down to some standards and becomes as straight forward to use as Windows, there's no point in any of it because the people I deal with would never accept it.

Linux by itself isn't too bloated though in general. I just re-installed Gentoo, and after installing all of KDE 4 and every-single one of my applications I use, I am using 22GB hard drive space (that excludes my 2GB swap partition).

By way of contrast... not judgement... I have 4 machines here, networked, each running XP, Office, and a mess of shareware stuff in a 6 gig partition.

 

[Rob Williams]

It took all of a day to figure out that we had to turn off APIC support to get the installer to run... From there it all went down hill very quickly.

This is an unfortunate problem. I had it happen to me a few years ago when I tried to install Gentoo on a then-new AMD 939 machine. I haven't had it happen since, though, so it sucks to hear the issue still exists on certain machines.

Yep, that's what NVIDIA told us too... our immediate question was ... And how, exactly do we do that?

You shouldn't have to, and I consider it to be a major fault that Ubuntu (and others) don't make it easier than they do. In my KDE installation, for example, I can easily select an option to login via the command line instead, which kills the X server and allows me to install the driver. Ubuntu, on the other hand, starts up a terminal but keeps X running (you can't install the driver manually while X is running). Stupid.

One thing I'll add that's semi-related, is that if you know how to execute the process quickly, you can install an NVIDIA driver within a minute, and not even reboot the computer. The process for me includes logging out of KDE and into the command line, running the installer, and then restarting KDM (the KDE login manager) and then logging in. You'll never install an NVIDIA driver that fast Windows, ever (don't quote me).

No, Rob, it isn't. Linux is useless for file associations.

I can run a Windows machine, day in and day out, simply by opening Explorer and clicking on my data files... I *never* launch programs directly unless I'm creating a whole new file.

Your comment suggests that it's not possible to click on a file type of some sort and have a related application launch, and that couldn't be further from the truth. If any operating system lacked such basic functionality, it would fail, and fail fast. If I click on an image, my image viewer launches, and the same can be said for documents, video, audio, PDFs and whatever else. Even the earliest variants of Linux had this ability.

Even if you don't have an application installed that's required to view certain types of files, chances are good that the desktop environment (KDE, GNOME, others) still know what they are thanks to the fact that it keeps a list of the most common file types out there so that if you view such a file in a folder, it will know what kind of icon to apply to it. It's hard for me to figure out an example since Ubuntu supports so much out of the box, but take for example an MP4 file. Even if you don't have an application that can use it, its icon will still be that of a film strip (or something similar).

If you do have a program that supports that file type installed, then that will become the default. So, if you install VLC, all video files will automatically launch with it (as long as there wasn't a default video player before it). If you have more than one such application installed, and you want to change whatever one is default, you can do that through the File Associations menu. You simply search for the extension, and re-prioritize the programs it's associated with. This is <em>no</em> different from how Windows handles things.



Earlier when I installed Ubuntu to test things out, the first thing I did was copy an MP3 file to the desktop. It took on the icon of an audio file, and when clicked, it launched the pre-installed audio player (Dragon Player). That's a <em>fresh</em> install... feel free to test it yourself. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, you'll need to install support for MP3's (or take care of it all at once with restricted-extensions) for it to work, but there's nothing wrong with the file association scheme itself.

No you don't get it Rob... In Windows an executable has to have an extension of either EXE, COM or BAT or Windows simply won't run the program. This is where the Linux method falls flat on it's face. It's extensions are arbitrary, in fact just part of the filename.

As I mentioned earlier, while Windows' executable files are normally .exe or .com, most under Linux don't have an extension at all. If every other file in the operating system didn't have file extensions, then sure, it'd be a major problem, but that's not the case. Please take this Firefox for Linux as an example:



If there's a script in the program's folder that matches the name of the application, then that's going to be the file required to launch it. In this case, there's a "firefox" file, and it happens to be a script (you know it's a script when the OS sees it as a text file, because that's what it is). All of the other files without extensions are either used by the application itself (such as "crashreporter" in the event of a crash), or they are libraries or various configuration files. Notice that none of the non-executable files are extension-less.

This is just an example, though. Most people would just install Firefox through their package manager, which is far faster. But in the case where you want to handle your own software, you could simply download and install it yourself quite easily. Sure, this requires a bit more of an understanding, but it's certainly not as complicated as you make it out to be.

Some exceptions to the extension-less rule are .sh and .bin files. These are a little more rare, but to open them you can usually just click on them, or if not, you'd open with the command "sh". Just to prevent any confusion that a command-line would be required in this instance, that's not the case. You'd simply right-click the file, go to "Open With", type in "sh" and hit enter.

It's extensions are arbitrary, in fact just part of the filename.

You're going to have to elaborate on what you mean by this, because I haven't a clue. If I create a word document with OpenOffice, it saves as "Document.ods" or "Document.doc" depending on which I choose. That's not part of the file name.

In Linux it's a database where each individual file has to be connected to a program individually... Any idea what a massive pain in the ass that would be to someone with, lets say... 5600 MP3s, 320 Avis, 2800 MIDs...

Ok, now try that with literally tens of thousands of files... it ceases to be "nearly equivalent" as you put it in a real big hurry.

Just to make sure my point from above is ultra-clear... this is <strong><em>not</em></strong> how it is at all. Linux works exactly the same as Windows in this regard. If you right-click Movie.avi and tell it to set VLC as default, then <em>all</em> AVI's are going to open up in VLC from that point forward.



Notice the "Remember application association for this <strong>type</strong> of file".

Oh my... no I don't have a deep down desire to not like Linux... I keep trying to like it over and over because I would dealy love a FREE alternative OS to give my customers. I would like nothing better than to send Microsoft packing off my own network. But until Linux in it's many, many forms settles down to some standards and becomes as straight forward to use as Windows, there's no point in any of it because the people I deal with would never accept it.

You've clearly had many problems with Linux, and I can't even begin to understand why. That's all I can say, really.

As for standards, I agree, and I've been saying that for a while. I don't see it happening, though, sadly. If anything, I'd want to see a universal package manager, and universal method of installing files. I'm of a firm belief that Linux isn't more difficult to use than Windows, but when it comes to manually installing an application, it is. It needs to be fixed, and it bugs me that there hasn't been some form of standards developed by now. It all falls back to the open-source mentality, where everyone think's they can build a better solution than everyone else. It's frustrating.

By way of contrast... not judgement... I have 4 machines here, networked, each running XP, Office, and a mess of shareware stuff in a 6 gig partition.

This comment will contradict my hate for bloat, but when I installed KDE, I installed the <em>entire</em> thing (it's called a 'meta' package). That means it installed lots of what I don't need, such as various games, educational tools, development tools and other things. I chose this route just to make things easy... I didn't want to dedicate more time than I had to, to the install.

Aside from the Linux/KDE install, 14GB of the (now) 23GB is related to my home folder, which includes a rather large (1GB) game, a 7GB Thunderbird profile (I rarely delete e-mails) and other rather large folders, such as Amarok (it uses a database to store all my relative information), and the KDE indexer among other things. So if you subtract my personal folder from the equation, it becomes a 9GB install. Considering how great it looks and how nice it is to use, I have no complaints about the size of the install.

 

[Unregistered]

Bla Bla Bla

Honestly, I hate Ubuntu.
It is sluggish and bloated.
But it is only compared to My Gentoo, which is tailored to My needs and My hardware.
It is, only because I spent some of My time and My effort to read manuals, howtos, forums etc. When i started with Linux (~8 years ago), i couldn't start installation disk by myself (it required some "weird" parameters passed to kernel in order to boot).
It took less time to understand it to the point i needed than windows.
It takes less effort to maintain it.
Probably some of my configs survived from my first desktop install (the real first, was laptop). And they did it all the way from P4 with RDRAM to the water cooled C2Q and SSD.
Not only they survived hardware challenges, but the jumping from Debian to Suse, back to Debian, to Gentoo, again Debian, Ubuntu, Ubuntu 64 and Immediately to Gentoo.
Can you do it with windows? Don't think so.
I have Windows as TOY since i do like to play games.
Back to my Hate.
My parents, cousins, some friends switched to use Linux (Ubuntu). some of them due to the luck of choice (My time has better use than keeping their Windows computers running or recovering them). Others choose it for the same reason (time).
It is almost perfect for newbies.
Want to read something ? "System-->About Ubuntu" will show you very useful documents of how to use your computer. Exactly TWO clicks. F1 will do it with single click.
Different does not mean better or worth. Just different.
A lot of times i fill handicapped on Windows, not because i don't know how to do what i want, but because it can be done faster, simpler in Linux.
My favorite example is copy and paste with mouse. It takes two clicks in Gnome and FIVE clicks in Windows. I want compare Linux to XP as it is almost 10 years old with some face lifts. But even comparing it to 7 will be in favor of Linux.
If you need "special" programs that run only on Windows, then You have a problem, not Linux.

 

[Psi*]

Is anyone doing/have information about benchmarks in Windoze versus any linux? I interested in number crunchers. The Spec site seems to have somewhat different systems for the Windows & linux boxes.

I used Sparc Unix /w X Windows for quite a while. Personally, I didn't see a huge difference.

To respectfully disagree, it took/takes me 2 mouse clicks to drag/drop/paste sections of text or files in either environment. And, I did a couple of Unix installs, added 3rd party RAM, used a variety of apps in both environments in the day.

Regular expressions for ever!! Why they [(a-z)+!(0-9)!*.?] are called regular expressions I cannot imagine as there is nothing regular about them. Editors for both linux & MS Windows with regular expressions exist in both & also behave mostly the same.

In X Windows, it was pretty funny sending a ... eh um ... adult picture *directly* to the screen of one of my co-workers in the next office. Ahhh, those were the days.

My number crunching software is available for Linux. So I wonder if with the leaner (supposedly) overhead, if any app runs faster to validate that notion?

 

[Rob Williams]

My parents, cousins, some friends switched to use Linux (Ubuntu). some of them due to the luck of choice (My time has better use than keeping their Windows computers running or recovering them).

Hah, it's impressive that so many people you know use Linux. That's awesome

My favorite example is copy and paste with mouse. It takes two clicks in Gnome and FIVE clicks in Windows.

I am really not sure what you mean by this. It takes me five clicks of the mouse to copy / paste anything in Linux. One to highlight the text, another to right-click, another to hit "Copy", another to right-click again and finally, one more time to paste. How do you manage to get by with only two clicks?

Is anyone doing/have information about benchmarks in Windoze versus any linux?

This is hard since a lot of it depends on the hardware and the optimizations done on the machine. Where SPEC is concerned, I find that a lot of manufacturers do use Linux for some reason, so maybe that's a sign. Specifically, I see a lot of OpenSUSE in their record's list, which I find pretty interesting. To test this out, you'd want a program that runs on both Windows and Linux, and while that's easy, I think it's a little more difficult to find one that wasn't simply designed for one and then hacked to run on the other.

I'd be willing to guess that your software would run faster on Linux, especially if you wanted to install a distro like Gentoo and build the OS around your specific components. You can't do that in Windows, so there might be a performance edge there. Still, the differences should be rather low, so it'd be best to consider this from a standpoint of what's mission critical. If you care that your application runs 1% - 5% faster, then it might be worth the effort, but it won't be for most people.

Of course, the difference could be larger than that, but it would depend on a lot of factors. If you already have a Linux client, you might just want to install a distro like Ubuntu and run some quick tests. If it's faster right out of the box, then with some optimization, it'd only improve even more.

 

[Psi*]

Rob Williams asked ....How do you manage to get by with only two clicks?


I {click left button} highlighted those words. Then {click left button} on the highlighted words & dragged & dropped them in the Reply to Thread window.

I believe the identical operation works quite similarly in most linux GUIs.

 

[Rob Williams]

I {click left button} highlighted those words. Then {click left button} on the highlighted words & dragged & dropped them in the Reply to Thread window.

That doesn't come off to me as being a copy and paste, to be honest. Either way, you can do that in any current OS as far as I'm aware. It works best in Linux though... I'll vouch for that. There have been many times in Windows when I've tried to drag and drop text and it just wouldn't work (it's application-dependent... in Linux, it's not).

 

[Unregistered - n0nsense]

Fast copy

Hah, it's impressive that so many people you know use Linux. That's awesome



I am really not sure what you mean by this. It takes me five clicks of the mouse to copy / paste anything in Linux. One to highlight the text, another to right-click, another to hit "Copy", another to right-click again and finally, one more time to paste. How do you manage to get by with only two clicks?


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One left click to select the text, one middle click to paste selection

From my testing with PTS (Phoronix Test Suite), i know that Gentoo is 5-30% faster than Ubuntu. With windows it's very limited comparison. I know for sure that WoW (yes, the game) will run with higher fps in WINE, than on XP. (tested)

 

[Psi*]

That doesn't come off to me as being a copy and paste, to be honest. Either way, you can do that in any current OS as far as I'm aware. It works best in Linux though... I'll vouch for that. There have been many times in Windows when I've tried to drag and drop text and it just wouldn't work (it's application-dependent... in Linux, it's not).

Ok, I drag & drop and both windows must be visible. The question was 2 clicks. I suspect it is mostly about compliance with the environment with the GUI. "Compliance" is meeting all the standards of the GUI ... and OS (MS or linux); compatible is just not crashing.

My higher end Windows programs that are "compliant" all have OLE capability so the CAD works with Excel works with PADS works with VBA works with the GUI of the electromagnetic field solver works with MathCAD ... yadda yadda yadda. This lacking uniform feature has been a deterrent for linux development for these programs. On the other hand, the mouse works differently in those same programs. And, almost every fool has written software for Windows and ignored MS guidlines so Windows software is far more luck in being compliant.

Yes, there are ways to accomplish similar functionality in linux via redirection, pipes & the like. In a word, "archaic". Perl, awk ... OMG This is still commonly done in universities, but no one I know in the real world.

Ahhh, I forgot about 3 (& more) button mice. Of course! And I quite vaguely remember the buttons were all configurable in the environment even back in my Sparc days. Certain Windows apps that I have now are configurable (SolidWorks), but it is def app dependent & confusing so I don't use it.

However some of these programs have the ability to throw off the number crunching to a server & the server can be either Windows OR linux & Gentoo is sounds very interesting. Thanks!!

There are very fun reasons for keeping on top of linux. If for no other reason than other new debates http://www.bgfax.com/xbox/home.html. And, linux xbox clusters ... yes, the commercial number crunch software support what is called MPI which would use clusters ... kind of a poor man's super computer. Once again the hardware is much less expensive than the software tho.

This is all VERY tempting. However, the installation of the different linux's on different hardware (I have difficulty calling a xbox a computer) is still a bit mystical to me. Is something like Gentoo available to just throw onto a xbox????

 

[Rob Williams]

Ok, I drag & drop and both windows must be visible. The question was 2 clicks. I suspect it is mostly about compliance with the environment with the GUI. "Compliance" is meeting all the standards of the GUI ... and OS (MS or linux); compatible is just not crashing.

I think it just comes down to how Linux handles the various elements of the desktop UI. In Windows Vista, for example, I can't highlight and drag a block of text out of Notepad, but there's no application I've had issues like that with under Linux.

Yes, there are ways to accomplish similar functionality in linux via redirection, pipes & the like. In a word, "archaic". Perl, awk ... OMG

Yes there are always ways to do pretty much anything under Linux that would be made difficult under Windows, especially when using commands like awk and sed. Of course, they are rather complex when you have something specific to accomplish, but it's no different under Windows. If anyone wanted to know of a command under Linux that almost looks like a programming language, it'd probably be awk

I can see installing Linux on an Xbox for fun... but given the console's slow processor, I don't see the point. I don't even see the point on the PlayStation 3, and it's far, far more powerful than that Xbox.

One thing I will say about Gentoo, is basically a warning. It is not an easy Linux distro, and it's not meant to be. You don't install it with a GUI of any sort. Rather, it's completely done by hand, using the command-line. If you really want to learn the deep parts of Linux and how it all works, then Gentoo is absolutely fantastic, but you can't dive into it expecting to have it up and running in a couple of hours.

That said, once you do have it up and running, it's very rewarding. Plus, you'll have an extremely customized distro, tuned just for you, and you can't beat that. If you do give Gentoo a go and run into problems, let me know and I can help you along.

 

[Psi*]

"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity."
Dennis Ritchie.

 

[Rob Williams]

"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity."
Dennis Ritchie.

Heh, that's true to an extent, but I think the same could go for all operating systems.

 

[Unregistered]

Linux for beginners.

Ubuntu is a great distro, but you must install different mediacodecs for see a DVD movie for example. read the Ubuntu forums to see what you need.
But for a beginner I can recommend the Turkish Pardus. All mediacodecs are pre-installed in it from start.
So it works out of the box.
The international version are in English to:
http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/