well linux still sucks LOL

I use Linux and I’m very happy with it.

I recently installed Ubuntu after a few years using SuSe Linux. And its not that hard.

In Ubuntu you do have to use the command line alot more than in SuSe but it keeps things simple for me :smiley:

If your really a GUI lover and cant bare not to have it keep Windows. If you want to try out Linux for the first time but dont want the itty bitty details of what you can do and just want a GUI then try SuSe Linux.

Linux support for hardware is pretty good. To be honest Winodws support is bloody crap. What would happen if you got your self a new printer, lost the cd drivers and your internet wasnt working you’s be screwed. With Linux you got a chance it might work.

I dont see why your moaning that Linux is crap. To me your trying to make it more like Winodws and that isnt going to happen!

edit: I use Kubuntu

I evaluated SuSE a couple of years ago for Blender workstation / headless render box. It does the jobs perfectly if you have the right hardware. The problem with Linux is that to get it to work at an everyday desktop level is a lot of work. I have Macs for that, Photoshop, email , Web, backup etc.

Macs are reliable and don’t require much admin, Linux boxes are cheap.

I think of Linux as a workstation OS. I’m looking at getting Autocad working under Wine where I work so we can cut out all the malware and other distractions associated with windows. I don’t expect to be popular.

BB

They can also be very expensive and high end. Between Gentoo on my work systems and Debian on my laptop, I have only had to boot to Windows maybe once every few months. I even have IE, Word, Excel, and Outlook on there for when I need to throw together a howto with screenshots for the office, or test some CSS on IE.

Of course I know what hardware is good and what to avoid. But with all the systems I have worked with Linux on, the only problems I’ve ran into has been with certain newer wireless networking cards. And even then you can get many working with ndiswrappers

Ah, networking… that’s my problem. I hate dinking around with networks, databases, and hardware. I don’t mind the command prompt, but you have to know how to use it, and a little bit of everything, to live in linuxland. So I empathize quite a bit with Alltaken.

I think what Burritoboy meant was in terms of what it costs software-wise. Basic linux services are rock-solid, they’ve been available for years, and most of them don’t cost anything to obtain or maintain. Windows systems, on the other hand, cost you significantly to own, upgrade, repair, and maintain.

I wish I knew more about hardware. I tried SuSe on a new box my Dad got and it failed spectacularly. I wonder what kind of assumptions were built into the system that collided with the hardware?

That was until the release of the newer Mac Mini’s with 512MB of Ram. One should be able to run most applications comfortably on that for USD 500.

I was one of the mass hordes of people that during the whole “switch” campaign did…but the thing is most of the people that switched to Macs when OS 10.1/2 was release switched from Linux to Mac, not windows to mac. Every single web developer I know that deploys on a *iux enviroment uses a Mac. I think the idea of being able to boot once, program anything in Apache/MySQL/PHP AND be able to run Dreameaver and Photoshop is a big plus.

Macintosh. Because I just pissed you all off.

Edit:…I just realized that some other punk beat me to it…

had to butt in.

Look, you aren’t going to get any satisfaction out of linux if you just want to run a couple of apps. It just doesn’t work that way. I never tell people who know nothing about computers to “try linux”. That is just asking for people to make the kinds of comments that I see here.

If all you know how to do is click a couple of buttons and press ‘install’ then linux is not for you. That being said, if you do know the in’s and outs of the the hardware you are using and want to take advantage of it, then there is nothing in the world like having source code to screw with.

Microsoft created their software for the masses. Nothing wrong with that. Linux was created by programmers. If you want a button to click, so that you can hope what you are trying to do will work, and don’t understand that the defaults given you are not all that is available, don’t use linux.

If you are willing to work with linux you will learn. Things are not in the same place, they don’t work the same way. That doesn’t mean they don’t work. 5.1 surround does work on my machine, but then I built it with linux in mind. Dual core AMD_64 and I can kick the living crap out of any Window’s box for render time. Oh, and BTW I paid less than a thousand bucks for the whole setup… 4G ram… so stick that in your pipe and smoke it…

doesn’t bother me. at least macs “work” without any blood sweat and tears.

i personally veiw macs and Windows very equally in terms of performance (i.e. human interface, overall ease of use/ quality).

Alltaken

On a side note regarding drivers a colleague of mine handed me a nice midi controller keyboard last week. Creative Labs BlasterKeys or something. Full size, pressure sensitive.
Turns out that it is not supported under windows anymore and you can’t get drivers for it for love nor money.
Popped it into my gameport running ubuntu and it was picked up straight away and works perfectly. Admittedly it is older hardware but I was surprised that something as simple as a controller keyboard would require a bespoke driver under windows.

Chimp

I think the only way Linux could be recognised as a serious consumer OS is with proper vendor support, which ironically will likely only be achieved when Linux is recognised as a consumer OS. Typical catch-22 situation. The trouble is that there’s too much of a legacy which suggests that software for the platform should be free. This puts a lot of commercial people off because they are just trying to make money.

Windows and Mac both support open source software and commercial software so they appeal to both groups and with commercial vendor support, consumers don’t have half the headache. Plus, they can call their support line if something goes wrong instead of trying to find internet forums to help. If you can’t boot your machine, how do you visit an internet forum?

I think the more that commercial OSs take on the unix philosophy, the less people will use Linux. As someone mentioned, a lot of unix people ditched Linux when OS X came out. I know a lot of professors at the university I went to did.

Maybe if we lived in a world where people had a better spirit of sharing then Linux would have more success but we don’t. We live in a world of people ruled by the profit margin.

When OS X is released for X86 machines, I’m sure this will have quite an impact on things because all the OSs can compete on a level playing field. OK, you still might not be able to buy generic hardware but it should still be nearly as cheap. If a G4 Mini costs £330, an Intel Mini will likely compete and sources suggest they will carry the new Intel Yonah processor, which has dual-core capability and has clocks in the range 1.6GHz-2.16GHz. You should be able to run OS X on any x86 hardware anyway, it’s been hacked to do so even to the latest version. Apple keep releasing versions with stronger TPM or whatever, which basically means the OS looks for specific hardware. Lol, instead of trying to convince the OS that it is actually running on the hardware, they’ve now just hacked the system to convince it that it doesn’t need to look for it.

If Apple can’t solve the issue, I can see a day when they just release a generic version that can be bundled with PCs as an alternative to Windows. It’s the smart thing to do IMO. When file sharing started out, people decided they wanted a way to share music but vendors didn’t offer a solution so they did it illegally. Lots of people are deciding they want an alternative to Windows so they are illegally hacking OS X86 to run on their PCs so they don’t have to buy a new machine. It just needs Apple to stop being a hardware supported company.

Having said that, I can see a day when selling an opertaing system will become unprofitable. Apple developed OS X so quickly that by the time Tiger has come out, people are starting to question whether upgrading the OS is necessary. People only upgrade if you have a crappy system to begin with. I can see XP users upgrading to Longhorn but beyond that, I’m not sure. It seems they are reaching a plateau. This is similar to 3D software. Sure there are innovations that make the job easier but are they enough to make a sale when you can do the job with what you have?

Just because the O/S is open source doesnt mean hardware vendors have to make it open source. Like nVidia they have great driver support for Linux but the drivers arent open source.

What the problem is that most people run Windows and because that is the biggest market share thier is no point in creating drivers for a smaller market share.

People do want openes and dont want to be restricted to certian software. When you want a Word processor for Windows what do you think of? Generally M$ Word. When it comes to Linux you got a vast choice and your not forced to just have the one becuase you need it to have a specific file format and the cost.

If your in it for a profit you can make a profit. But you dont notice this because Microsoft is running a damn monopoly on the market!!

I just got done setting up a MythTV box (minus the DVR functions, I don’t have a capture card)

Setting it (a knoppix deriviative knoppmyth) up was, to put it simply, awful.

It took about 6 hours of fixing errors, tweaking video settings, recreating the databases, recompiling mplayer, finding really obscure incantations on the webtarnet, understanding autofs and implementing USB automounting , (which is basic functionality! why wasn’t this automatic?) having myth corrupt my database, fixing the corrupt database…

All the while my roomate was laughing at me and wondering out loud how long it would be till I reinstalled XP.

AND this is on 100% supported hardware! This is without attempting to get TV capture working! DVD playing is still busted. Thank god the sound and X-server worked out of box, or I would have reformatted immediately. Seriously.

Whenever someone asks me about Mac vs PC vs whatever anymore I always respond that it doesn’t matter, so long as you can run the programs you want to run and are comfortable using the system interface.

Things can be made to appear less hairy in Windows than in Linux because there are tighter constraints on how things can be done… but if you’re trying to do something odd or unsupported you’ll have to wave just as many chickens around to make Windows stuff work as Linux stuff.

Windows people hate Macs (and vice versa) because of the interface. It behaves differently. Same for Linux. I, for one, don’t want to learn anything I don’t absolutely have to to play with my computer. I still can’t get my Windows network working… there are people who can simply touch it and make it work fine. (I’m not one of them.)

So I guess what I’m saying is that while I agree with kit89, it will also take more than just that to encourage people to use Linux. Even programmers nowdays have no interest in dinking with their system beyond plugging it in to make it work…

I didn’t read the thread through, but I want to say that it’s not Linux’s fault it doesn’t have so much drivers. Actually it’s incredible how much drivers Linux has because all Linux drivers are made by Linux developers, but Windows drivers are made by the developers of the hardware. The hardware developers know how their hardware works, but Linux programmers don’t! They just have to guess it.

People how can’t change the settings of their hardware just don’t know how to do that. Linux isn’t Windows and ofcourse it’s different.

And I don’t know why Windows people use Blender. You know Blender is opensource and GPL-ed, that’s exactly what Windows isn’t.

if i could i would run linux, but i just can’t productivity wise.

on my windows install i run all Open source software, such as Open Office, Gimp, blender, firefox… (or free software like winamp)

i have just never had a good experience with linux, i have tried, i want it to be good, i want to be able to use it. but its not there yet.

your OS doesn’t define if you like corperations or not, it mearly defines what is your priority in life, and mine is not trying to make my computer work :stuck_out_tongue:

if OSX were for PC’s i would have it, but its not. and i’m not wanting Mac hardware for the priviledge of running OSX.

i am a massive supporter of GPL and open source stuff. i am happy to donate to communities, but i am not happy to buy software (unless i will earn from it)

Alltaken

Beh, I run linux on a machine whose components went on sale less than 8 months ago at the most, and all bar one item works with Linux. In the case of the processor, it works much better on Linux, as XP Pro is crap at handling dual processor.

The only component that doesn’t work yet is not vital, has an extremely active project moving towards making it work, and would already work if I didn’t need SMP for the processor.

Gentoo, first time of installation from stage 1, took a day to install, three to get all the relevent programs set up and as I want, and minor unnecessary updating because I wanted to.

XP takes less time than this, but requires more maintenance time with the requirement of regular virus and spyware scans.

Both are rock stable, XP hibernating boots faster, but Linux is set up EXACTLY how I want, no need to spend hours trying to get XP to work in a usable way, no annoyance at the lack of such a simple and useful feature as multiple desktops (taskbars suck). Linux streamlines my work and leisure usage, and that is extremely valuable to me.

Personally I think the large distros like SuSe, Ubuntu, Red Hat defeat the point of Linux, and that is to have a computer environment set up for you. I wouldn’t use them.

Alex

I use ubuntu, and not only it’s rock stable, but it’s rock usable. It took time to get used, but now if i go back to windows, i feel it completely unusable.

on linux i can do something that i was never able to with windows:

  • use my programs without having to care about the problems of other programs or the OS.

Now i understand that if you have driver problems with linux, you can only blame yourself for buying hardware from compagnies that doesn’t care enough to linux to even release hardware specifications.

So if you want a great experience with linux :
buy HP or other compagnies that do support linux.

You can see a similar scenario playing out with ATI cards and Blender. These kinds of things should not be an excuse to avoid a great piece of software or operating system.

Or build a box for the very purpose you will use it. A little homework done in the linux community can go a long way to help create a computer that will get the job done easily and allow for maximum functionality with linux. The beauty of linux is that it is so customizable - even for a non geek like myself. I have gotten so much help and rarely get the RTFM response from the forums and lists I am on. The knowledge base for searches is growing exponentially and often the answer (or several) are already there somehwere.

Hey, Alltaken, I know you can do this man. The learning curve isn’t that steep for someone of your skills. Once you catch on I know you’ll be a fireball with wings. FREEDOM!

You’re saying that you should only be able to run open source software if you use an open source OS? That’s a pretty elitist attitude, which is incidentally what I consider to be one of the biggest faults with the open source community in general.

I mean if they like opensource they should definetly like Linux and use it madly.