so much for linux

Mac Cool wrote:

Linux IS easier to install than Windows

I agree with you, it is, and I understand why Linux advocates push this
one aspect of Linux so strongly because for many years Linux was so
difficult to install and developed such a bad reputation. The real
issues with Linux have nothing to do with installation, they are all
post installation.

Yes, and distros haven gotten better at that, but there is still some work
to be done. SuSE's SaX2 is probably the best app out ther to setup your
video, but even it's still crude in some respects, but, yet, it's powerful
in other respects. However, most distros require you to use gtf to get
modelines and hack the XF86Config file. There's still work to be done...

It has been a couple of years since I stopped messing with Linux (except
for Knoppix). I tried Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Thin Linux and
several other distros just for the hell of it. I wanted to like it, I
tried hard to like Linux. As recently as a few years ago, Linux still
would not work properly with a USB mouse (don't start); Linux still
didn't support Firewire, it didn't support most games, basically if you
didn't own an Nvidia video card you were screwed. Open Office is not a
replacement for MS Office; it is not 100% compatible with MS files which
99% of the business world uses. The biggest complaint is the lack of
support. Yes, there are hundreds of forums, websites, newsgroups and the
manpages; but it's next to impossible to get a straight answer to even
the simplest question and for every useful reply you receive about five
RTFM replies regardless of whether the manpages answer the question.

Yes, you're right about OpenOffice, but honestly, I don't need Office for
anything and either KWrite or OpenOffice does anything I need them to do
well enough. I can userstand if you need interoperability between the 2
suites, but I've never seen competing products open the other's files with
100% compatibility. There are almost always glitches of some kind.

As far as support, I agree with you about the newsgroup forums and the RTFM
statements. There are some real jerks out there. BUT, there are some really
helpful people as well. However, there are even more, bigger jerks lurking
in the Windows forums. I don't think Windows help files are a big help,
either. And their error reporting always blames everything on some mystery
3rd party driver. The manpages are cryptic, and don't help much. You almost
have to know Linux pretty well before you bother with them. They are
getting better, though.

I've been using USB mice in Linux for about 2 years now without much hassle.
I even use a USB keyboard. It would be nice to use the extra buttons
without all the hassle of hacking the XF86Config file. The media buttons on
my MS Natural Keyboard Pro can be programmed under Gnome, but not KDE.
Again, there's still work to be done.

OTOH, Knoppix seems to be very full proof. So far I have not had any
issues with USB and it even supports my external Firewire drive. I own
an Nvidia card now so I can only say it works with Nvidia and Intel's
onboard video. Unfortunately I have no use for it except as an
occasional troubleshooting device and demo for folks who are Linux-
curious.

Knoppix is a fine distro. I was amazed when I first ran it. Out of all the
LiveCD types of distros, Knoppix still remains king. No other distro
installs and runs so effortlessly. However, rebooting is not something I
want to go through to get it up and running. I've elected to have
individual computers for the different OS's.

come ONNNNNNNN what OS has drivers native, for hardware that came out
AFTER its release....you're so predictable.....lets see who has
drivers that WORK first for 925's.

GA-8IRXP let me guess,,,it couldn't install sound drivers?
CREATIVE, so this is a surprise?




"Ruel Smith" wrote in message
...
Bill Turner wrote:

Tried that, Knoppix wouldn't recognize my modem or sound card no
matter
how much tweaking I did.

And I bet neither did Windows without using a 3rd party driver
disk...

__________________________________________________ _______

You would lose that bet. WinXP has a ton of built-in drivers that
handle everything I've thrown at it, with one exception, below.
The
only purpose for the disk is to add bells and whistles if you want
them.

Here's the exception. When XP first came out, I had a PCI card
which
added two serial ports. At first, I had to install drivers from
the CD
that came with it. A couple of years later, I gave that computer
to my
mom and built another one for myself, moving that card to the new
one.
To my surprise, XP now recognized the card and installed the
drivers
without using the CD. That's the only exception. Everything else
XP
handled all by itself.

True geeks will be unimpressed by this, but Joe User loves it.

Funny... I have an older Gigabyte GA-8IRXP board and XP can't
install
drivers for most of the stuff on that board, let alone a newer board
base
on a 925X chipset or something. What are you running? A Pentium 3
system?

So your stuck... Call that 24hr help......o wait you can't well
then get your money back...o wait..... complain to the better
business bureau hmmmm.. bitch to the distro producer, while the '
tinker's box sits.

X-inux can be a great thing....its the chaotic small minded thinking
that gets it nowhere.


"Ruel Smith" wrote in message
...
Matt wrote:

I'm writing from that very computer, running Mandrake Linux 10.1.
My only
problem is with hardware accelerated 3D. Distros don't matter, as
the
problem is present in Fedora, SuSE, and Mandrake. I think the Via
KT600
chipset's AGP bus isn't directly supported by either nVidia or
ATi, and
therefore hardware accelerated 3D doesn't properly work. I can
get my
nVidia card to work with open source drivers in 2D, and the ATi
card
works in 2D only with ATi's drivers. I think I'll change to an
nForce
board to remedy the situation.


I'm writing this on a KT600 Dragon Ultra Platinum Edition with an
MSI
FX5200 card and Fedora Core 3. Tuxracer works---no problem. I've
also
run this with FC2 and if IIRC FC1. My mobo seems to be the
successor to
yours, but seemingly has the same chipset. I could be wrong, but
really
I think you can get the 3D to work. When you try, at what point
do you
think it goes wrong? Are you able to install the nvidia driver?

The nVidia drivers give me absolutely nothing. I can't even get an X
session
going. I can use the 'nv' drivers and get 2D. nVidia's website says
that
the KT600 chipsets AGP bus is not supported, and use AGPART instead
of
NVAGP. Tried that, still the same results.

I switched to an ATi 9600 card and used the ATi drivers. Everything
says it
works okay. glxinfo reports that everything is correctly working. I
can
even run glxgears and get framerates measured. However, if a GL
screesaver
kicks in, or I start Tuxracer, it freezes. Checking the logs shows
AGP
errors, but I can't remember what they are exactly.

Now, my board is a low-end model and I assume an early revision. It
actually
came as a barebones kit. I don't know. I just know I've racked my
brains
trying to get it to work. I'm ready to buy an nForce chipset board
just to
stop the madness. I'm trying to learn Kpovmodeler but can't render
anything.

Bill Turner wrote:

You don't seem to understand that most of the stuff that makes up the
Linux OS is part of Unix and was around before Linux was ever conceived.

__________________________________________________ _______

I don't understand? Well, I was using Unix to do email back in 1989
(remember PINE?) before Microsoft even thought about it. Like I said,
I'm not a programmer but I am a well-experienced user and for me,
Windows beats Unix and it's quasi-clones hands down. I've installed so
many Linux variants I've lost count. Mandrake, Debian, SUSE, Knoppix,
even Xandros which set me back $50 and is just an elegant piece of crap.
None of them - not one - ever worked half as well as Windows. Most of
them had something that wouldn't work at all, usually hardware related.

Then you should have known that Linux is only the kernel, and it's strictly
controlled by Linus Torvalds. It's not some clusterf*ck development
project.

Microsoft has focused since day one on making its products
user-friendly, especially for the non-geek.

Let's not forget all the back door vulnerabilities they've thrown in for
good measure. Is it user friendly when you create a user account and he
can't launch certain applications without having to set it up to be run as
administrator, which is not only frustrating to the "non-geek" because it
doesn't work like the user assumed it would, but also a security problem
after it has been setup to be run as administrator? Some user
friendliness... Linux is a true multi-user operating system and has no such
"features", as Bill calls them.

I've been using Linux for about 6 years, and it's gotten just as easy to use
as Windows, if you're willing to forget what you think you know about
computers and learn a new operating system in the same manner you'd have to
do to become a Mac user. The only problem Linux really has, IMO, is that
too many users try it out with preconceptions that it'll be a lot like
Windows.

Of course, true geeks are
appalled at the results, but users ultimately vote with their wallets.
Guess who won? The look and feel of Windows, especially XP, is smooth
as silk and people like it.

Microsoft won because Mac's were too expensive and you had to go out of your
way to find one to buy. PC's were available everywhere and were cheap.
Linux wasn't even around then. Unix was expensive and wasn't even a
consumer product.

Need to update or patch? Connect to Windows Update website and it's
practically automatic. By comparison the acronym "RPM" sends people
screaming in frustration. Does the word "dependencies" make you blanch?

And so is Mandrake Update and SuSE's YaST Online Update (YOU). They update
automatically. Linux patches and updates happen in almost realtime. A
vulnerability is caught and a patch is usually released in 48 hours or
less. Microslop took over 2 years to fix the url spoofing vulnerability in
IE, and from what I read, mysteriously it reappeared after another, more
recent update patch was installed. Man...they're doing an excellent job...

Dependencies? Doesn't exist in Mandrake. URPMI has been a part of Mandrake
for a long time and does away with dependencies completely. Apt is
available to install in just about any distro, and equally gets rid of
dependencies. There's also Ximian Red Carpet Express.

Your knowledge of Linux seems to be very limited and dated...

Been there, done all that. Mr. Gates, though having the black heart of
a monopolist, focuses on his customers. The average Linux programmer
focuses on his pet projects. If the masses like his work, fine, if not,
that's fine too.

I'll pass.

Keep on passing. No one has advocated that YOU switch to Linux. Just don't
flame those that decide to.

BTW, most operating system applications like GNU software, KDE, and the
Linux kernel are developed by paid programmers working for IBM, Sun, Red
Hat, Novell, Mandrake, and others. Very few are volunteers working on their
"pet projects".

Matt wrote:

I just type "yum update", and it is easier than Windows--I don't have to
reboot.

I just recently re-installed Windows because I upgraded my 2 HDD's in my
RAID 0 setup and had to reboot soooo many times installing all of the
REQUIRED 3rd party drivers for my GA-8IRXP board and all of my add-ons and
3rd party software. It was just rediculous and made me appreciate Linux so
much more.

Lordy wrote:

Bill Turner wrote in
:

Need to update or patch? Connect to Windows Update website and it's
practically automatic. By comparison the acronym "RPM" sends people
screaming in frustration. Does the word "dependencies" make you blanch?

Some of your information is out of date.

What do you mean _some_? _ALL_ of his information is out of date.

I've been using Linux for about 6 years, and some of his claims held up as
recent as 3 years ago. However, it's drastically changed as of recent. I
use Linux everyday, right beside my Windows XP Professional based computer
and I can see the differences right before my eyes. He hasn't the foggiest
clue as to the current experience of using Linux.

Matt wrote:

It isn't uncommon for that kind of hand to do the right thing,
especially when the main intention is to build something useful. But
besides that, the creative individuals that built Unix had to do
considerable sneaking around in order to get the ball rolling.

Wasn't Unix originally built upon the requirements of "5 - nines" of
dependability that Bell required?

JAD wrote:

So your stuck... Call that 24hr help......o wait you can't****well
then get your money back...o wait.....***complain*to*the*better
business bureau**hmmmm..*bitch*to*the*distro*producer,**whi le*the*'
tinker's**box*sits.

Call Microslops 24hr help... That's exactly how long you'll be on hold
before anyone gets around to actually taking your call.

X-inux can be a great thing....its the chaotic small minded thinking
that gets it nowhere.

It's honestly the first problem of this magnitude I've ever experienced with
Linux.

JAD wrote:

come ONNNNNNNN what OS has drivers native, for hardware that came out
AFTER its release....you're so predictable.....lets see who has
drivers that WORK first for 925's.

You said it installed everything out of the box without a problem on you
machine. I said it can't do it on mine. I've installed SuSE's LiveCD and
Knoppix on their and it handled everything fine - right out of the box.

GA-8IRXP let me guess,,,it couldn't install sound drivers?
CREATIVE, so this is a surprise?

No Creative sound onboard at all, except that it does have a Soundblaster
Audigy Platinum installed in a PCI slot. Recently, I reinstalled XP and I
was surprised that it detected my GeForce Ti4600 card and installed the
nVidia driver via Windows Update for me. However, it never did that in the
past.

Windows XP is already long in the tooth and Longhorn won't be out for
another year or so.

"JAD" wrote in :

I have an s540, what distro
are you using that needs no third party disk?

Mandrake 10
Mandrakelinux for X86-64


[PWP-10164] 119.00-EUR ?

No the free download 32 bit edition.

--
Lordy