Linux for All

[blueznl]

Well, I fixed the first thing: VNC. I couldn't get TightVNC to work (installing it from a repository worked fine, I could start it, even login on it, but I ended up looking at a gray screen with a simple X. Close but no cigar.

There's an on-board sharing service (Vino) called Desktop Sharing which works fine, but I had to manually launch the service. Fortunately I could also start it from Session and Startup, so that one's solved. I'll get back to TightVNC when I have some more mileage under my belt.

My next challenge is nVidia legacy drivers. I have an older MX4000 card, but the on-board Nouveau driver has some troubles with it, and drops icons and tickboxes etc. left and right. When running only the Via chipset things are fine.

I just can't get the nVidia legacy drivers to install. Haven't got a clue. I came halfway, but then the system showers errors. User friendly would have been: download something, double click on it, done. No such luck

Edit 1: looks like the nVidia legacy drivers might have some problems with newest Mint, I might try an older release perhaps...

Edit 2: well, Linux Mint 13 worked 'out of the box', though I can see it can do better, so I'm still going to give the legacy nVidia driver a shot, even though I couldn't get it to work under Mint 15. In Mint 13 there's an option 'Additional Drivers' and it seems to suggest the 96.xxxx driver, so who cares, let's try it...

[Thorium]

It's far easier and more intuitive than Windows, and you don't even have to know anything about Linux internals. That's why I bet my company and dumped Windows in favour of Linux. And that's why I have no patience with people who say that Linux is flakey, difficult to learn, and user unfriendly.

Well you do need to know something about the internals. There are a lot of cases the package manager fails especialy with drivers. I tried for 2 days to install a ATI driver on a Mint Linux. It was a very frustrating experience. There is a GUI for driver installing but it just failed to install it, even worse it left some garbage after the installation failed. So the driver was not installed and the ATI installer script said driver allready installed. The uninstall script failed to uninstall it. The GUI told me no driver installed. Searching the web for the problem i found out it's common to get problems with ATI drivers but i didnt found a working solution. Many tipps needing to work with the console, none worked.

2 days wasted, i installed Windows 7, end of story.

People these days have forgotten what realy intuitive and userfriendly means. Remember old MacOS? You just dropped a system extension in the system folder and it was installed.
You just dropped a app into a folder and it was installed.
No installer, no software manager.It was all hidden internals that just worked all the time.

[heartbone]

> I am not convinced Linux is ready 'for the masses' unless pre-installed.

I'm also a Linux "dummy" but found installing Ubuntu itself to be easy.

> It's just not user friendly.

I totally agree with this aspect. Once Ubuntu was installed, I found that
I couldn't watch MPG videos or do other basic computer stuff, which was
shocking. I tried installing an MPG codec, but it was so complicated that
I swore off Linux forever. There certainly wasn't some Software Manager
that made installing the codec easy. Also, the fact that people have to
even explain about a Software Manager is proof that it's too complicated.
Software should work intuitively; you shouldn't be needing some old guy
on a forum somewhere telling you, step-by-step, how to install stuff.

In my example, I should've been able to do a Google search for an MPG
codec for Linux, download it, double-click it, and it's installed. Just like
on Windows. Until that day comes, Linux will never become mainstream.

That was also my experience... back in 2008.

My current experience was just the opposite.
Everything but my HP S2031 LCD monitor installed fine without any typing.
The monitor was stuck in 1024x768 until I figured out the problem
( http://askubuntu.com/questions/334688/w ... 901#334901
an UBUNTU oversight that hopefully will be fixed next month)
a solution that an average joe user would not have the experience to figure out.
But that was the ONLY installation hangup that I had, and it was not a show stopper,
just an annoyance that I could not get to the 1600 x 900 native resolution.
I repeat the only typing during successful installations that I have had to do, was to enter a user name.
UBUNTU Linux s indeed ready for prime time.
I am looking forward to the next release in a few weeks.

UBUNTU Linux is not overly complicated, just different.
In fact an operating system, release 12.10 and above works much better than any Windows version through Vista.

If you are installing to a 64 bit system, then I have to admit a few rough edges do remain,
but again no showstoppers and there is more and more help for those needing it.

@blueznl

Just to show that I'm not completely heartless, here's a clue.

In your Mint menu is an icon for the Software Manager. Click the said icon, enter your system password, and select preferences. If the "search while typing" entry has a check mark, remove it.

In the upper right corner of the Software Manager screen is a search field. Type "tightvnc" then press enter. You will get about 4 results. The most popular one is listed first. Double-click it. You might want to check the other entries too.

Software Manager entries have product information, reviews, and a link to the product website.

If you want to install a package, click "Install". The package and all it's dependencies are installed. Later, if you wish to uninstall the package and its dependencies, click "Uninstall".

The Software Manager is your friend -- just like Android. Learn its ways.

Boris, I wholeheartedly agree with everything that you've posted in this thread

> Anyone with no prior experience of Windows, Mac, or an electric alarm clock, would be just as baffled.

Yes, but that's not the usual case with Linux. People are usually trying Linux from another
OS, so it stands to reason that Linux should be as easy to use as where they came from.

Look at netmaestro's post above... it proves my point. He also has to post online to find
an answer to his problem. Where's the user-friendliness and ease from Linux for him?
I certainly wouldn't class netmaestro as clueless, either. What hope does the general
public have when trying to give Linux a go, if even the experts have to ask for help?

IMO that is a bad conclusion based on stale data.
If netmaestro had chosen UBUNTU, then most likely that problem would not occurred.

It's far easier and more intuitive than Windows, and you don't even have to know anything about Linux internals. That's why I bet my company and dumped Windows in favour of Linux. And that's why I have no patience with people who say that Linux is flakey, difficult to learn, and user unfriendly.

Well you do need to know something about the internals. There are a lot of cases the package manager fails especialy with drivers. I tried for 2 days to install a ATI driver on a Mint Linux. It was a very frustrating experience. There is a GUI for driver installing but it just failed to install it, even worse it left some garbage after the installation failed. So the driver was not installed and the ATI installer script said driver allready installed. The uninstall script failed to uninstall it. The GUI told me no driver installed. Searching the web for the problem i found out it's common to get problems with ATI drivers but i didnt found a working solution. Many tipps needing to work with the console, none worked.

2 days wasted, i installed Windows 7, end of story.

People these days have forgotten what realy intuitive and userfriendly means. Remember old MacOS? You just dropped a system extension in the system folder and it was installed.
You just dropped a app into a folder and it was installed.
No installer, no software manager.It was all hidden internals that just worked all the time.

You know I'm sensing a theme here.

IMHO
Mint is Linux for power users.
UBUNTU is Linux for (Windows users and other) dummies.

[BorisTheOld]

..... it proves my point. He also has to post online to find an answer to his problem. Where's the user-friendliness and ease from Linux for him?

Substitute PureBasic for Linux. It must be a really bad product, given all the people on these forums who ask questions.

And remember, there are probably a few million people on this planet who think we are all totally insane to be using PB, and that the differences between the Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems are the least of our troubles.

[tj1010]

It's hard to argue with someone saying the usability of Linux sucks. It's mostly terminal based programs. Even the UI based software has a heavily verbose error handling with programmers in mind..

Learning Linux is mostly memorization of the suite of terminal utilities which isn't productive. I think even senior management in Linux complain that this is causing Linux user markets outside of the server world..

[blueznl]

Oh well. Linux sucks. So does Windows. Now let's fix things

[ts-soft]

Linux is very user-friendly, but linux selects itself his friends.

[the.weavster]

If I want to install five programs on Windows I'd likely have to go to five different web sites, download five separate installers and then run them one after the other. With every Linux distro I've used I simply open Synaptic, tick five check boxes and click 'Apply'. I don't know how the heck anyone could consider Windows easier, having got used to Linux I find the Windows way a right royal pain in the butt. It seems to me the Linux repositories have served as the model all the app stores have tried to emulate.

As for proprietary codecs the Ubuntu installer asks you if you want them installed right upfront.

Some Broadcom wifi adapters can be an (usually minor) issue. I seem to remember reading Broadcom can't open source them due to a licensing agreement with the US military (some of the same source is used for an alternative application) and quite a few Linux distros will not include something which doesn't come with the source code because they can't verify it's not doing something devious so they only offer the binaries as an after the event option from unofficial repositories, either that or you can use open source community developed drivers that have resulted from reverse engineering which means they're likely to be less efficient.

Canonical do have a large online database of hardware certified to work with Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

With components Intel is always a pretty safe bet, at the other end of the spectrum NVidia is often tricky. As yet I haven't found anything I couldn't get going but sometimes it does take a little Googling.

[Baldrick]

Just a suggestion: most of you should have machines that can be set to boot from external usb, etc drives. Get a good quality usb drive with decent read / write speed specs & install Ubuntu 12.04LTS onto it.
I did this as an experiment several years ago & am still using linux this way as it has worked so well.
Do stick with the 12.04 LTS as it has excellent driver, software, etc support & i have had very few problems with it. ( Again, stick with the Long Term Support version in order not to get trapped into systems where things break unexpectedly...)
I was like Bluzenl years ago & in fact still find linux systems like mint still seem a little clunky. My ubuntu 12.04 after a little time getting used to it has made me dislike having to boot up into Win7 these days, it is that good!
I have it running on 3 different machines. 1 I s a Lenevo notebook running Win7 & I boot to linux from a Sandisk cruiser 16GB thumb drive which I have been using for several years now without any major problems at all. Next is an older desktop machine running 3Ghz hyperthreaded cpu with WinXp which I also use a 16GB Sandisk Cruiser drive for linux & again it runs flawlessly. 3rd I have an old Acer notebook with a 1.7Ghz cpu which I have installed Ubuntu 12.04LTS alongside WinXp on the HDD. This also runs very nicely. All I have running with the flashy eye candy Compiz 3D cube desktop. For software installation I use a mix of both the software manager & synaptic manager which pretty much depends on my mood at the time of installing / removing software.
For things such as Mp3's, video files, etc I run VLC, which you can simply install from the software manager. ( Just accept the restricted codecs, etc when installing & you will find you will be able to play more formats than you will get from windows installations.) E.g. install youtube-dl which is a simple command line program to download said name videos. All these videos play without alteration in VLC.
That said, I also use Thunderbird for my email, Firefox for web browsing, as well as skype, etc & these days Linux gets around 95% of my useage.
Most of my Windows usage these days comes down to the need for internet Explorer with it's '.ocx' support for surveillance systems I install for a living. - FireFox still does not support h264 codecs very well which forces the need to run systems with Mjpeg which is just simply too network hungry & simply does not work as well as H264 stuff that most Ip cameras run these days.

Fwiw, I have in the last few years used various flavours of Linux for 1 reason or another including Mint, Debian & Centos. None feel as easy for me to use as Ubuntu.

[the.weavster]

Fwiw, I have in the last few years used various flavours of Linux for 1 reason or another including Mint, Debian & Centos. None feel as easy for me to use as Ubuntu.

I recently stumbled upon an officially supported derivative called 'Ubuntu Studio', I think it's great. I have now swapped all my PCs over to it.

Ubuntu One is an excellent service too, it's very handy to be able to use Deja Dup to do incremental back-ups of your important folders to free cloud storage.

I'm also eagerly awaiting Ubuntu Touch smartphones, although I'm dithering over whether I'd prefer that to a Jolla or Tizen device.

[blueznl]

Well, as I said, Windows as well as Linux (whatever flavour) both have their problems

The issue is more about how to solve them

So, I've found a solution for the non-compatible video card (just run Mint 13 instead of 15). I managed to get a VNC server running (x11vnc). Currently I'm investigating how to do a proper multiboot (trying to understand Grub, Grub 2, Windows XP and Windows 7 boot procedures). Obvioiusly, trying to get things to work in VirtualBox, makes snapshots easier, so I can go back a step if I get stuck.

I'll post my results on my homepage, and eventually drop some questions in here. Still working on it.

As this is a PureBasic forum, you probably figured out that a. my final goal is to get PureBasic running on it (probably not that difficult) and b. I'm not content with simply running PureBasic, I want to get a better understanding of Linux in general.

(Hey, the imminent death of Windows XP is yet another reason, and the horrible interface of Windows 8 is the third.)

So, besides the multiboot challenge I have another question for the more experienced PureBasic Lunix users: does it make much difference on which (Linux) platform you (start) programming? Which flavour of Linux would cause the least troubles for a PureBasic programmer?

[Kuron]

... an officially supported derivative called 'Ubuntu Studio', I think it's great...

I agree. It is an excellent product and I use it for work-related needs.

[tj1010]

If I want to install five programs on Windows I'd likely have to go to five different web sites, download five separate installers and then run them one after the other. With every Linux distro I've used I simply open Synaptic, tick five check boxes and click 'Apply'. I don't know how the heck anyone could consider Windows easier, having got used to Linux I find the Windows way a right royal pain in the butt. It seems to me the Linux repositories have served as the model all the app stores have tried to emulate.

As for proprietary codecs the Ubuntu installer asks you if you want them installed right upfront.

Some Broadcom wifi adapters can be an (usually minor) issue. I seem to remember reading Broadcom can't open source them due to a licensing agreement with the US military (some of the same source is used for an alternative application) and quite a few Linux distros will not include something which doesn't come with the source code because they can't verify it's not doing something devious so they only offer the binaries as an after the event option from unofficial repositories, either that or you can use open source community developed drivers that have resulted from reverse engineering which means they're likely to be less efficient.

Canonical do have a large online database of hardware certified to work with Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

With components Intel is always a pretty safe bet, at the other end of the spectrum NVidia is often tricky. As yet I haven't found anything I couldn't get going but sometimes it does take a little Googling.

Yeah package managers are nice till you need a driver or there is a dependency problem, which are common, and in the case of the driver requires building a kernel which in turn usually breaks things. Over half the OS is terminal programs with enough switches each to fill a book. Bug handling and user errors are mostly in the form of heavily verbose data intended for developers..

You really want to see why, just ask a company who has to have a short turn-around on training and workflow and can't afford to have specialists on every one of their network segments. Or even better, just listen to interviews with Linus Torvalds where he says what I just did and all his developer friends shrug it off because money is evil and end users should just be grateful and not complain. MS is a big evil successful corporation who were evil and listened to end users and thus run all the markets except mobile and server and have since the beginning..

Remember: Business and profit are evil..

[Kuron]

MS is a big evil successful corporation who were evil and listened to end users and thus run all the markets except mobile and server and have since the beginning..

If MS actually listened to their end users, they would not be in the shape they are in today. Due to their continual screw ups, the only market they still have the majority in, is the enterprise market.

[the.weavster]

Yeah package managers are nice till you need a driver or there is a dependency problem, which are common, and in the case of the driver requires building a kernel which in turn usually breaks things.

Over the last few years I've installed Linux on dozens of different computers and never experienced that once so it can't be that common. I've never known installing a driver to require rebuilding the kernel either, in my experience drivers that are not already built in to the kernel are usually separate modules that get loaded/unloaded by modprobe.

Over half the OS is terminal programs with enough switches each to fill a book.

They may be terminal programs under the hood but for most you get an applet that allows you to configure them using a GUI. Even with third party terminal programs I've invariably found a GUI in the repository which covers the majority of the most common settings.

Bug handling and user errors are mostly in the form of heavily verbose data intended for developers..

Heaven forbid we should get verbose error messages, 'general protection fault' is all one really needs.

You really want to see why, just ask a company who has to have a short turn-around on training and workflow and can't afford to have specialists on every one of their network segments.

My company had no trouble migrating to a Linux server. It's shocking to think back to all the downtime we suffered through the incessant crashing of the Windows server we had previously. The rock solid stability of our Linux server has undoubtedly saved us more money than escaping the Windows licensing fees did.

We've also swapped to LibreOffice rather than pay for upgrades to our ageing versions of Microsoft Office. We're evaluating alternatives to one legacy program so we can migrate our desktops to Ubuntu too.

MS is a big evil successful corporation who were evil and listened to end users and thus run all the markets except mobile and server and have since the beginning..

Too bad for Microsoft mobile + server is the future then.