Re: OT: who said on this group "try Linux" a while back?

On Thursday 09 Aug 2007 22:24 Fat Freddy's Cat licked a pencil and jotted:

well I did...

took an old 120gig drive and put latest release of Ubuntu on it.
installation was easy.
Boot up - hey this looks clean.
apps were fast to load etc.

then after I had a quick wizz around all the preinstalled stuff I decided
to do some complex stuff like change the screen resolution and format an
external drive...
sheesh...
linux will *never* be anything other than a tech nerd curiosity.

These 2 seemingly simple tasks actually involved coding and manually
editing configuration files. Its a fucking mystery to me how anyone would
use linux to do anything. These 2 tasks took literally hours trolling
forums and help files. With windows you can do these things with a couple
of intuitive clicks.

I am bloody good with PC's and have an intuition with software that
usually never lets me down - FFS linux is one big fogbank of smoke and
mirrors. 'Beginners' forums... well they contain beginners questions but
answers that seem to be complex for even the simplest task. I've been
using OS's since DOS so syntax and command lines are not alien to me, but
hey, I can hardly remember the last time I had to manually adjust a
setting in windows that I couldnt do with a few mouse clicks. Linux, well
*everything* is manual coding and editing and I mean *everything*.

I'll keep it on the drive but is there *really* anything thats gonna make
it worth persevering? Somebody tell me there is a pot of gold at the end
of the Ubuntu rainbow. Its a fucking steep learning curve to find it thats
for sure.

To sum up, my experience of Ubuntu so far has actually reinforced a
rerspect for MSWindows that I didnt know was there before.

g.

Might have been me, possibly.

I started using (K)Ubuntu as a dual-boot in March. It was the first time I
had ever had anything to do with Linux ever. Everything was a complete
mystery and seemed full of arcane commands. Now a few months down the line
I have not booted into XP since the second week when I needed to do
something in a hurry on some software I was familiar with.

Fair enough, a steep learning curve. At first I thought "not better, not
worse: different, very different"

I was surprised at just how instinctive everything was. Everything "just
worked" including my scanner that took lots of fiddling to install on XP.
Turned it on, opened the pre-installed scanner app and it was there, ready
to use.

Had a less trouble getting it to work on my Windows 2003 domain than
Windows98.

I would suggest that you change your statement "I am bloody good with PCs"
to "I am bloody good with Windows PCs". Most people that have the most
trouble with Linux are those that only think in terms of the MS way of
doing things.

I raised a similar point to you about asking for help in forums and getting
lots of weird commands to type in. I was given a very good reason for it:
because Linux is SO highly customiseable - all the different distros and
further desktop environments on top of them you have to get back to basics
when in a text based forum, otherwise the helper will be waiting ages for
answers as to what the helpee's setup is.

There is an exceptionally high probability that anything you need to do can
be done with a few mouse clicks (once you are familiar with the DIFFERENT
environment) but someone offering help might not know which distro you are
using, which desktop etc etc - so it is much easier to say "open a
terminal, paste in this command, job done" doesn't matter which DE you are
using then.

External drives?

I plug in my thumbrives, mounted and ready to use just like XP (even get a
box asking what I want to do depending on the content). Ditto my MP3
player.

I plug in my Mobile phone to get the photos off, the same happens -
instantly (UNlike XP where I have to wait about 15-20 minutes after finding
the CD, then reboot).

I plug in my daughters old Digital Camera (not recognised as a Mass Storage
Device under windows - requires proprietary software) - Up pops
an "explorer" window.

Security - Windows is completely broken and insecure by default (60,000
viruses in the wild or something?) Security an afterthought, bolted on
extras to shut the stable door. Linux is secure by design (0 viruses in the
wild, and extremely unlikely to ever be any - and should there ever be any
little chance of killing a system.) Firewalls? Linux IS a firewall.

Reliability:
ubuntu:~$ uptime
18:53:37 up 47 days, 19:02, 1 user, load average: 0.02, 0.16, 0.16

This is on an old Athlon2000 with 512mb ram, it is as responsive as it was
47 days ago when it restarted after a power cut.


I could go on. Yes Windows has it's place - it is a marvel of marketing.
Everyone uses it everywhere, they learn on it at school, college and Uni,
they work with it at work - it is familiar and "safe".

If you gave a ready installed Kubuntu PC and a Vista PC of equal spec to the
average email/internet/MSN/Word Processor Joe (who remember usually buy
their PCs pre-installed) who had never used ANY OS before they would have
no more trouble learning Kubuntu (or many other flavours) than they would
Vista. And it would be a damned sight faster too.

I went into my experiment determined to last for a month without XP and give
it a fair trial. Most people that do similar and are open minded decide
that they like it. By the way, I haven't had to use the command line to
configure anything for weeks and weeks and weeks, messing around with right
clicking taught me most of what I needed to know, how geeky is that?

David
--
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we
can find information upon it. (Samuel Johnson)
Only the mediocre are always at their best. (Jean Giraudoux)
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