This is my Linux story.

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

I just spent two days trying to get Ubuntu working. I downloaded the latest, got it onto a DVD and set myself up for some serious dual-boot love.

First was the partitions. It needed at least 2, one for the swap and one for the… “/”. Whatever that is. First off, I already had 4 partitions on my 2nd hard drive, and you can’t have 5, so I had to do some seriosu shuffling with extended drives and such. Most of this shuffling I did in Windows because it was easier. After shuffling in Ubuntu, their install program didn’t recognize the changes and I was re-booting constantly - not to mention that the partitioner always partitioned slightly less than what I told it to, 512mb for a swap got me a 502mb partition etc. It also told me I needed at least 2 gigs for the “/”, so I gave it 2.5 only to find myself getting low disk space warnings, so I went back in and made it 4.

K, so I got it and we’re there now and install is DONE! WOOT! Very smooth install. I play around a bit and notice there’s no sound. No problem right? Just go into the device manager, see what device is just sitting there doing nothing and fix it. Well, no… Ubuntu’s device manager really doesn’t tell you what’s what, there are no yellow exclamations or even decent descriptions of what’s what, so I kinda just took a blank stare break and fired up firefox.

On the forums, there were about 20 posts about people having problems getting Ubuntu to recognize any kind of sound device, and those posts had either ‘me too’ responses or no responses at all.

So FORGET SOUND!! Right? I mean it’s highly overrated anyways, video is everything. My video card is chugging along like it’s begging for a driver upgrade, so back to the forums I go. An Italian guy, very cool, has a script that update’s your drivers for you! I follow his instructions to the letter and it dont’ work, always a failure opening the Nvidia file it downloaded. So I go to the Nvidia site and see instructions to do it by hand. It tells me first that I need to “log on as boot”. So an hour later I find out what that means and 30 mins later I find the way to do it in Ubuntu - apparently logging in as boot is dangerous and the soccer moms hid the way to do it.

So I get there and it tells me I have to kill x server. Add 20 mins to find out how to do that, (cntrl+shift+backspace whatever did NOT work, it is bugged), then it tells me I have to be on… ummm… like the 3rd logon thing. I figure that out by search, only to find that I can’t have both - log on to 3rd logon thingy or have no x server - either or, never both. It tells me to kill X server, I do that, then it tells me about the 3rd thing so I do that, then it tells me about X server… rinse repeat.

So I give up on video too. I fire up Blender, (thank god it came with the installation), and notice that it chugs… as in just rotating a view is like a slide show. And, of course, having Blender run like a champ was my only motivation for linux in the first place.

There are at least 4 other minor nightmares I encountered, but I won’t bore you further.

So no more Linux for this kid. It is my humble opinion that Blender would be far better than Maya at this point if the Dev’s didn’t spend the fist few years of their lives crying over linux as I’m sure they must have. Imagine the days of work lost when they decide to upgrade hardware. It’s like Bit torrent. Geeks LOVE their bit torrent, even though they fill forums up with tracker problems and spend an entire day downloading something that they could have gotten in less than 10 minutes from a straight up FTP.

This “half the fun is getting it to work” mentality has got to stop. It’s killing the momentum of the rebellion. Now I see other Linux packages selling for more than a copy of WinXP and It’s sad. It’s stunning to me that Linux is still this far from user-friendly when it’s the vanguard of the open source movement. It leaves a very bad taste in mouth.

/rant

2

This “half the fun is getting it to work” mentality has got to stop. It’s killing the momentum of the rebellion. Now I see other Linux packages selling for more than a copy of WinXP and It’s sad. It’s stunning to me that Linux is still this far from user-friendly when it’s the vanguard of the open source movement. It leaves a very bad taste in mouth.

So, who are you nominating to make Linux more user friendly? It’s open source, that means that rather than having Microsoft sitting on it in a dark room struggling and crying about it not working and delaying its release for years on end, you get to see it, warts and all, right up front.

But you are answering your own question here, when you say that you can also get expensive Linux packages, which basically have all the user friendly whistles and bells that you are asking for. You can have free, or you can have easy, and you have the flexibility to choose. Hard to satisfy some folks.

It is my humble opinion that Blender would be far better than Maya at this point if the Dev’s didn’t spend the fist few years of their lives crying over linux as I’m sure they must have.

If Linux was actually holding up the development of Blender, then I figure the developers would be developing on Windows or OSX, which is also perfectly possible to do. I don’t follow your reasoning on this at all.

Geeks LOVE their bit torrent, even though they fill forums up with tracker problems and spend an entire day downloading something that they could have gotten in less than 10 minutes from a straight up FTP.

I was just about to ask you which proprietary alternative to Bit Torrent you were advocating, when it turns out you’re actually comparing it to straight up FTP. Which really is impossible to comment on without sounding rude. Suffice it to say that Bit Torrent is quite different from FTP.

<edit>

Sorry to come off sounding unsympathetic. I think everybody who has ever worked with Linux has been in your shoes. There’s a great saying “Linux is only free if your time is worthless” and there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s a bitch of a learning curve to get it running properly, but I think that will always be one of the realities of open source software, that everybody has to deal with a share of the hassle that proprietary software usually can manage to keep more or less hidden behind closed doors.

3

Wow… I can see why you dislike linux. Its very different when you see it from someone else’s point of view. I would hate linux if i had been in the same situation as you, however I have seen the same frustration as well.

I have this friend in college who tried to get me interested in linux and kinda held my hand through the learning curve. The command to kill the xserver was simply given to me and I never had to dig for it. The first time i was told to “RTFM” i was like “huh?” and i had to dig through forums and manuals to figure out how to get my video card working. It sucked and was very time consuming, but i got a sense of accomplishment after i was able to get it working properly. I guess its more of a hobby for me, but then again im a very visual person and i like all the little widgets and GUI addons.

Check out this screenshot:
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d63/Ven0mSeven/Screenshot2.jpg

That’s me beating level 2 on try2hack. (a pretty cool hacking game)

My experience was much different though and after getting the basics out of the way, i found linux to be pretty cool. Hopefully you’ll give it another shot with a different distro. There’s many different flavors out there, you just gotta find the right one for you = )

4

2 days to get Ubuntu working…yikes:confused:

I just updated to the latest edition, over the net in 45 min:D

smooth as silk, not even a hiccup

blender is fast and stable

I guess I would say that linux is an aquired taste, its like a fine wine, you have to take it slowly (at first) , and after a time you will come to enjoy the robust flavours;)

on the other hand windose is more like a slurpeeee :stuck_out_tongue: (sorry couldn’t resist)

5

i also have ubuntu it took me about 2 days to get all the partitions to work right and the dual boot screen to show up (i still cant figure out how to make windows the default) but after i did it was easy to install and startup

i also got my soundcard working in about 2 hours of playing with it (Creative audigy2zs gamer edition) and agter about 3 days of trying i got xmms to work for mp3’s cause it said it was like winamp

but i still havnt got blender to run at alll no anything i think i got the right one

and i cant get my modem to work and from what i’ve read in all the damn manuals and websites i dont think it’s supported (us Robotics 56K fax winmodem)

but i’m still trying (which is totally hard cause i caht use the package management thing to get stuff so i gave to write down what packages it
's missing buut to windows go to the package repository and download it then boot back to linux and see vwhat packages are needed for that to work)

so i’m about to give up cause it’s just too hard

6

The smaller space is normal, if I am correct the partitioner works in kilobytes. If you ask for 512 MB it translates that to 512000 KB. And if you would calculate that back to MB you will get less than 512. (512000/1024=500). Windows does this as wel, ever wondered why you always get a smaller harddrive than you thought you bought?

7

You should try installing OSS instead of ALSA, worked for me.

8

Enzoblue, linux is very user friendly if you know your way around.

9

you should just post your problems here in one of the subforums - Im pretty confident I could solve all your problems in a few posts - linuxgeeks are pretty friendly about helping noobs (to a certain degree) but it’s perfectly fine if you’ve given up on linux, you should just ask yourself why you want to install it. Is it because your curious, want to save yourself from the impending Vista-doom or something third?

10

I agree completely with Enzoblue. I decided to try installing Ubuntu 6.06 on my laptop to try it out last night. Started off pretty impressed, you get access to the desktop without having to install anything at all and can launch applications, albeit as slow as heck. Comparte to XP’s crappy text-mode based installer with minimal hard drive management.

The install itself went fairly painlessly, I even had sound and decent graphics performance and the special laptop function keys for brightness and volume etc worked. I was starting to think that maybe Linux had finally matured to the point where it might actually be a viable alternative to Windows.

I tried playing a DVD to see how that went. The player refused to play it. I tried looking at the online help to discover why only to discover that my wireless card hasn’t installed.

I spent the rest of the day trying to discover what drivers I needed and attempting to locate them. Fortunately the wired LAN on the laptop did install properly otherwise I would have been unable to get new drivers onto the laptop at all. At one point it looked like I’d have to get my hands on Windows drivers and use a piece of software to act as a wrapper that allowed them to run in Linux… UGH! What kind of a solution is that?

Luckily it turned out that for the latest version of Ubuntu there actually were drivers now for my wireless card, they just weren’t installed by default (for crying out loud, why?). After reading some more online I eventually discovered I needed to install drivers for bcm_43xx by invoking an esoteric command in the terminal I really didn’t understand (the fact that the documentation kept calling the terminal “the console” didn’t help).

Success! The green light comes on and I can see my wireless router in the connections list… but no, it still doesn’t work. Okay, I just have to enter my WPA key and other details and I’m away, right? Wrong… turns out tha Ubuntu doesn’t support WPA without a third party piece of software that isn’t installed by default, only I can’t find anything out at all about this third party tool, other than reams of config files you’re supposed to edit manually to get it to work.

I turned the machine off in disgust. Is this really user friendly Linux? The great hope for open source on the desktop? I wasn’t expecting it to work perfectly out the box, I was expecting some glitches and stuff I’d have to fix to get to work right, but for it to be impossible to connect to a wireless router with any meaningful security without all this rigmarole is simply unforgiveable.

11

There are basic things you should know about linux, such as the terminal called console (in KDE the terminal is called konsole…). I had no problems with my wireless but it’s a common problem. Linux can’t really help it, the manufacturer of you wireless card just hasn’t made a driver.

For the DVD, you might want to follow the restricted formats wiki on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=restricted&titlesearch=Titles
(in many languages)

And once you finished the installation you’ll see the benefits. Unless you are blinded by the installation and mis them.

12

Hi again guys. Thanks so much for your atempts at luring into the pit of despair again, hehe. I’m actually tempted to try just because I get so obsessed at things that kick my butt. I’m doing some work for Redhat next month though, so maybe we’ll see after I talk with those guys.

Just one response that kind of wraps things up:

[quote]It is my humble opinion that Blender would be far better than Maya at this point if the Dev’s didn’t spend the fist few years of their lives crying over linux as I’m sure they must have.

If Linux was actually holding up the development of Blender, then I figure the developers would be developing on Windows or OSX, which is also perfectly possible to do. I don’t follow your reasoning on this at all.[/quote]

My reasoning is that the shell is a tool. Idealistically there should be zero thought involved. I understand this is impossible, but the ratio of thought required vs work done with is far too heavy with Linux.

Imagine, if you will, an artist who has an incredible scene in his head he wants to paint. Then imagine other artists telling him it’s much cooler if he makes his own pallete of colors and gives him some empty paint tubes and a small - written by artists and not writers - manual.

Then imagine the artist spending a few days learning basic chemistry and botony to get the materials and mixes right and maybe ruining a kitchen table and ceiling because he started a fire, hehe.

That’s Linux to me. I don’t pretend to think that there would’nt be more satisfaction when he gets done, but I do imagine what his painting would have been like if he just bought the tubes of paint and started on day one. After all, he’s a painter first and foremost yes?

The dig at Blender dev’s wasting time with linux was kind a serious joke though. I doubt they lost more than a day or two- maybe a week tops. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

You’re just not used to Linux. I use linux for a few years now. And when I have to do something on windows, I get lost!

“No aptget or yum? I really have to FIND the things I want to install? How unfriendly is that!”

I want to transfer something to another computer on the internet. In linux I just write “scp what towhere”. DONE. Doing small things in command line is so much faster and easier than having to open a windows (no MS but that has a window).

Here where I study, most students here at the university never used linux and they think it is hard. After the first year or somethin like, if we go to a laboratory (all computers have Windows and Linux) 95% os the students go directly to Linux. I think that this is enought to prove that Linux is not this horrible unfriendly monster.

14

“/” is the boot drive in unix. Swap is where the OS puts it’s virtual memory caches.

That could be to do with what someone said about the measuring of bytes but drives tend to have smaller space due to formatting too. I’ve formatted a disk image in UFS (unix), HFS+ (Mac) and FAT32 (Windows) and they come up with different amounts of free space. They differ by a few MB.

That’s pretty standard. Macs need a minimum size for the boot partition too. I think it’s about 2 GB also.

I think it would have been log in as root. It does get this hype of being dangerous - Mac users discourage you from even enabling it let alone logging in as it. It’s just an account that lets you modify anything in the system. Kind of like the default installation of Windows.

Maya is available on Linux too.

It depends on what you do with it. It is probably easier with ftp for a one to one transfer but for downloading say Elephants Dream, I got it in 5 minutes while the http was dead. Ftp would have been the same.

Linux is fun if you want to learn about how the system works and fix it if it goes wrong. For me, I don’t really care much about that and if something drastic did go wrong I can reinstall the system I use (OS X) in 45mins.

I know people don’t like to buy lower end Mac hardware because they like to upgrade but for all the trouble it saves, I’m quite happy with it. Plus if you need Windows, you can dual boot on the new ones although you still have the Windows installation procedure to go through.

The OS X installation goes like this (although it’s preinstalled so kind of moot):

  1. boot from the DVD holding the c-key
  2. double-click installer
  3. entertain yourself for 45 mins
  4. wait until it reboots and reaches the account setup
  5. setup account.

No command line required (some people I work beside who use OS X had never seen the command line but have been using OS X for years), no manual driver setup and it all works. Since it’s unix based, it works just as well as Linux but easier to use and has much more commercial software available when you need it. No viruses, no spyware, best set of free apps you get with an OS.

It’s easier than Windows when you need it to be and it has all the power of unix when you need it. If you want to join the rebellion, Mac’s where it’s at.

15

Oh, wow, there is a bit of truth in your story, but it as well shows, that you missed the basics. So here we go.

There is no limitation to 4 Partitions at all. There is a limitation to 4 primary partitions, however each of those may be turned into an extended partition table, allowing you to build about 8 more partitions on it, if I remember this right. Those partitions are not bootable by Windows, but Linux and useable with both systems for storage. This is very useful for Linux, since a proper paranoid installation normally has a separated partition for /boot, /usr, /, /usr/local, /var and /home (maybe /dev, /etc and /lib too). This is useful for mounting several parts read only, once the system is installed and for separating parts, that may be flooded on an attack. As well, you may prcisely decide, what is overwritten on a reinstall, so you may for example keep your whole config and user data while reinstalling the packages.

About the 4GB disk space, you should give it 8GB without /home (this one may lay on a fat32 partition for example, so you may use it from Windows too), if you don’t want to install it again sometimes. This sounds much, compared to Windows, but keep in mind, that what you install is not only the basic operating system, but many apps too, where one consues about 100MB to 1 or 2GB on Windows.

The swap partition is, what is called virtual memory in Windows, it is a RAM extention on the hard disk, that is used, when no more RAM is available and may be sized between 1x (normal) and 5x (f.e. low RAM or remastering a Knoppix CD with a basic size of 3GB in RAM) the size of your RAM. There is no need for a separated partition, this may be loop mounted from file too, however a partition is faster, so its highly recommended. By the way, this is described in the installation process, you should try to read things carefully on trying something new.

K, so I got it and we’re there now and install is DONE! WOOT! Very smooth install. I play around a bit and notice there’s no sound. No problem right? Just go into the device manager, see what device is just sitting there doing nothing and fix it. Well, no… Ubuntu’s device manager really doesn’t tell you what’s what, there are no yellow exclamations or even decent descriptions of what’s what, so I kinda just took a blank stare break and fired up firefox.

Sound may be a problem, indeed. There are several unclean hardware implementations of pseudo standardized sound devices, that won’t run with the included device drivers. This may however be solved by searching the web for the information, you get by typing “lspci” as root in a terminal. Can’t tell you much about what to do here, because I don’t know your hardware

So FORGET SOUND!! Right? I mean it’s highly overrated anyways, video is everything. My video card is chugging along like it’s begging for a driver upgrade, so back to the forums I go. An Italian guy, very cool, has a script that update’s your drivers for you! I follow his instructions to the letter and it dont’ work, always a failure opening the Nvidia file it downloaded. So I go to the Nvidia site and see instructions to do it by hand. It tells me first that I need to “log on as boot”. So an hour later I find out what that means and 30 mins later I find the way to do it in Ubuntu - apparently logging in as boot is dangerous and the soccer moms hid the way to do it.

So I get there and it tells me I have to kill x server. Add 20 mins to find out how to do that, (cntrl+shift+backspace whatever did NOT work, it is bugged), then it tells me I have to be on… ummm… like the 3rd logon thing. I figure that out by search, only to find that I can’t have both - log on to 3rd logon thingy or have no x server - either or, never both. It tells me to kill X server, I do that, then it tells me about the 3rd thing so I do that, then it tells me about X server… rinse repeat.

The account, you need to use is named “root”, as the root of the system, the admin user in Windows. It, in fact, is dangerous, because root is the user, that has write permission to each file in the system and changes may be more or less fatal. There is no problem to get root permissions, simply use “sudo su” in a terminal and you’ll have them. For installing the NVIDIA stuff, you will however want to shut down the X Server from a TTY terminal, try to hit CTRL + ALT + F1 (to F6, since there are 6 TTY’s available on base installation). Log in with your user name and password and do the sudo su,… done, you are root. To shut down the X Server, you need to do a “/etc/init.d/gdm stop”, because this is the program, that keeps spawning a new X Server, if you kill one. Than “cd </where your NV file is>” to the directory, where you downloaded the NVIDIA-…bin to, maybe give it some execute rights by using “chmod ugo+rx NVIDIA*” and execute it with “./NVIDIA<press tab for autocompletion>”. Follow the instructions on the screen and when finished, do a “/etc/init.d/gdm start”,… done.

So I give up on video too. I fire up Blender, (thank god it came with the installation), and notice that it chugs… as in just rotating a view is like a slide show. And, of course, having Blender run like a champ was my only motivation for linux in the first place.

Blender is creapy, if there is no hardware acceleration. However, what you’ve seen there is a software OpenGL implementation, that I personally find really cool, because one does not need a big graphics card to do 3D stuff. Unsuitable for blender, for sure.

So no more Linux for this kid. It is my humble opinion that Blender would be far better than Maya at this point if the Dev’s didn’t spend the fist few years of their lives crying over linux as I’m sure they must have. Imagine the days of work lost when they decide to upgrade hardware. It’s like Bit torrent. Geeks LOVE their bit torrent, even though they fill forums up with tracker problems and spend an entire day downloading something that they could have gotten in less than 10 minutes from a straight up FTP.

I think, you are wrong about this. I personally started using Linux in 1996, shortly after I got pissed of Windows 95. At this time, installing Linux was not as straight forward as is now, but we got not that much problems with hardware. Sound? uh, do I have to choose the SB 16 or SB 32? Graphics? Lucky me, I got a Vesa 2 card, so no problem here either. Later I got a Voodoo 1 card and it was great, when the first glide drivers were released for linux. Today, there is a better support for drivers on Linux, for sure, but there is a much biger variety of hardware. Each mainboard vendor does the AC/97 thing a bit different, so there is the problem, for example. The thing, we may do about this is, figuring out the right driver and kernel config, thats it.

Well, finally: If you ever want to install linux again, write me a PM and I’ll see, how I may help you. I can’t do everything, but maybe I may help you with yours.

16

Wow Avlex, thanks very much to be sure. Just the fact that your post is so complete shows you’re serious about Linux. Kudos!

However after reading your post and the pre-headaches I feel coming on already, this conjours in my imagination a very bad date. Like picture me saying, “Sure sure, that sounds great but umm… let me go to the restroom real quick.”, then I head for the exit…

:slight_smile:

I will try again maybe after the radioactive dustcloud settles and keep you in mind.

Thanks Osxrules too, but I am really comfortable with windows. I’m sure osx does rule but the reason I wanted to switch to Linux was for more processing power to put towards rendering and more options with Gimp and stuff like that.

17

DISCLAIMERI’m sick at the moment, so I could even more easily be getting stuff wrong**/DISCLAIMER**

For the installation of the graphics drivers, it can be preferable to use RPMs or .debs (from repositories, use something like apt or yum to install them). To get rid of the X server, wouldn’t it be better to do something like:

switch to the CLI (command line interface) -as mentioned earlier- login, gain root privilages, type “init 5” (or is it a different number?), press enter. I think that basicly restarts everything, and stuff.

I think the partition layout with the best complexity/function ratio for an average user is probably three: swap (think ‘page file’, if you’re coming from win XP), / (where the OS and programs get installed, amoungst other stuff), /home/ (where the users’ files go, kinda like the ‘my documents’ in windows, except done far better). That way, if you need to re-install (or decide to install a different distro), you only need to erase / and can leave all the user files alone and safe (though it is good practice to back stuff up anyway).

I think that’s all. I’d better go to bed soon (23:02, 11:02PM).

18

About the partition setup for a workstation, you are right, I only used the whole palette of partitions, that may make sense, to illustrate the case.

However, for the moment, it is better to install the NVIDIA drivers from the original package provided on their website, since they are up to date and there are several problems concerning the X-Free86 to X-Org transition.

However, I don’t know if init level 5 is the right one, shouldn’t be in a proper setup (normally 2:no X no network, 3: no X but network, 4: X but no network, 5: X and network ). Even doing this will stop more services than needed, the “/etc/init.d/gdm stop” stops the problem child (in this case) gdm and nothing more, so it is quiet suitable, I think.

19

Meh, I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

When I first installed Fedora 5, I was having trouble getting the NVIDIA drivers working, it was unable to compile a kernel interface ro something. Turned out that all I needed to do was install it via yum (might have been able to get RPMs manually, but why bother?). I think somehting said something about a file that RH put special stuff in and the NVIDIA issue installer would overwrite it, despite not needing to (?).

I’d better wash now.

20

This “special file” is supposed to be the XFree86.conf or x.org.conf in /etc/X11 and it is needed, that the installer overwrites it, because there are settings, that have to be changed. Nothing to bother about, as long, as you enter all the values correctly or are comfortable with doing the configuration by hand. It’s not that hard to do, by the way and the file even enables you to run several X servers a time with completely different setups.

What you needed to install may be the kernel source tree, fitting to your kernel config, so the header and configuration files, the modules build against, are available.

Good night :wink:

Btw.: This loosy bit torrent saves my day again… I’ve decided to give Ubuntu 6.06 a try on a test maschine, only to see, if there are that much problems at all (got a friend, complaining about that she is not able to burn the iso). Got about 60kB/s from the ftp, now I’m on 110-115kB/s on using the torrent. On downloading the ED project files, torrent even was the only real sollution to get them. The only people, that complain about it, are people, that want to download illegale files from a tracker, that isn’t online any more.