If nothing else, I’m getting more efficient.
by schwim on Jun.02, 2009, under Software
I saw it all go down.
Well, I tried linux Mint over the last few days. Argueably the most easy to use and feature-rich distro currently available. How could I go wrong?
Well, let me just say this. I’m getting much quicker at reaching critical failure, which in and of itself is very useful. I used to waste weeks in the hope that someone could help me end up with an install that I could use at work before I gave up and became productive again on my Windows box. I’ve now been able to reach the same conclusion in the span of days. Add to this the fact that I now know not to install it on the box that I make a living on, and you’ve got yourself what may be the first stress-free linux install ever. I simply threw my old work box on the test bench, installed, found it to be lacking, waited 3 days for useful assistance and retired the attempt.
I got so excited when I saw the clean fonts and snappy response of linux. It made me realize how much I missed it. Then I began working on dualhead and network printing, which made me remember how much I loathed it.
The biggest warm-fuzzy generator I saw is that Samba worked with my networked folders out of the box. I was able to retrieve and save files with no issue during my limited use of the machine, which is amazing when you take into account that I fought with the issue during my previous 5 years as a linux user.
The most asinine thing I saw during my use is a 3 year old(at the minimum) Ubuntu bug where the machine shuts down the network before attempting to unmount the networked drives. I found threads dating back to 2006 where users were creating dirty workarounds to try to stop the 60 second pause during shutdown.
In the end, I realized that linux still wasn’t able to meet my needs which is unfortunate, as my needs are quite simple. As well, the linux community is still a hit-or-miss affair in regards to assistance. I’ve got threads 3 days old that were never responded to. In the real world, that can get quite expensive, depending on the issue at hand. Depending on my mood, I can argue that the same can be said of non-paid Windows support. The only difference is that I don’t need support for the same features in Windows. I plugged in two monitors for dualhead support and I did a network search for the printer I needed. It just worked.
There used to be a time when I would doggedly and systematically begin scouring the web to squash the various problems I encountered with any given distro. I realize now that although I could, I have no desire to. I don’t want to become the most knowledgeable person in regards to X11. I just want it to fucking work. To add to the skill required, let’s muddy the waters by having to filter our searches to issues that only apply to your chosen DE. “Ooh, I found a guy with the same problem! Oh shit, he’s running XFCE and the resolution doesn’t work with Gnome.”
Those fonts sure are pretty, though.
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:03 pm
OTOH, I spent over 5 hours yesterday setting up a friend’s brand new Dell lappy with Vista. Since Roadrunner was not able to bring her a wireless modem for another 10 days, I suggested just plugging it in to her working wired modem. Simple, right? Works with every linux distro out there…but not Vista. Internet not found for over an hour until Roadrunner had to intervene and reboot the modem. Then, the balance of the time was spent updating first 15 Windows critical updates (failed) and then after reboot ….20 critical updates. Naturally, I had to set up a better AV program than Dell provided and install two different anti-spyware programs.
But, to be honest, it did recognize her Cannon camera and HP printer and, after spending 15 minutes getting the necessary software online, it did set those two up.
Mint’s install was…what…30 minutes total? Well, if it doesn’t do what you need, then you’re stuck with that second-rate OS. Sorry ’bout that.
June 2nd, 2009 on 9:42 pm
Oh, I can’t defend Vista. I’m still running XP on my work machine.
No need to be sorry. It still works better than any linux install I’ve tried. I’m a strong proponent of using what works best for you.
What we need is another flavor. “Dualhead with Brother MFC multi-function workstation(over network)-buntu”. The chances are great that that it’s already in the works.
June 4th, 2009 on 7:55 pm
Come on, Schwin. Admit it. You’re an idiot. We all know it. Nobody tries to help you because we all know how useless it would be. I gave the Mint CD to my daughter and she had it up and running on dualies before kindergarten! Did life start getting difficult for you when mom gave you the blocks with letters and numbers on them? Jeeezzzz!
Seriously, I gave Mint a spin as a live CD and it looked pretty good. I never installed but I beat it around as much as could and it worked great. Wi-fi and networking came right up cleanly. It probably is worth a little time to get familiar with the workings of X. If you’ve got a good handle on Quantum Theory you should be able to get up to speed with it pretty quickly.
Meanwhile we await the F-word distro release. It must be the artwork that’s holding them up – functional bugs never seem to delay release.
June 4th, 2009 on 8:02 pm
I know it’s me and not them.
I tried PCLos tonight. It was fantastic. I downlaoded the live CD and dropped it in the box.
It boots and at the splash screen, it asks me for a login. There was no mention of a login/pass on the site. I found the info on linuxforums and continued on with the install.
During install, it never asked me for user info, however on reboot, it asked me for a login. guest/guest and root/root no longer worked.
Go to the docs? Sure, here they are.
I’m not fucking joking. I know that I make an inept nerd, but even when I try to dumb it down to my level, they manage to go even further down the dumb scale.
June 5th, 2009 on 12:11 pm
Well, as an update, your daughter didn’t successfully get twin x sessions running in current Ubuntu as it’s a known bug for Jaunty Jackelope. Thanks to the helpful folks over at the Ubuntu forums, They pointed me towards their list of current bugs, and there it sat waiting in line patiently to be fixed.
I sure do wish I had found the bug report prior to my second, third, fourth and fifth install attempt
Regardless, I’m sure it’s me and not them.
June 5th, 2009 on 2:30 pm
Okay. Perhaps there was a tad of hyperbole with the daughter thing.
You’ve hit squarely on the reason I don’t use the U-word. It seems that their thing is to get the release out and clean it up later, if at all. It’s Linux so I kinda understand but the 8.04 Kubuntu release last summer with KDE4 did it for me – it was a disaster. Just like you I figured it was me so I hung with it for about a month before wiping it. I haven’t seriously considered U since and, frankly, any U-based distros. Indeed, it bugs me a little that as the mainstream begins to recognize Linux as a viable alternative to Windows, the only Linux they seem to be aware of is Ubuntu. I appreciate Canonical’s marketing prowess in becoming synonymous with Linux; I just think maybe there are better distros to carry the flag.
I think you ought to consider Debian. The latest (Lenny 5.0) is ultra-stable — they just don’t turn stuff loose unless it’s stable and very clean (like McCartney’s dad). I’ll be glad to help but be advised that one idiot plus one idiot only equals two idiots.
June 5th, 2009 on 2:45 pm
You know, as many times as I’ve tried it, I’ve never successfully installed Ubuntu where everything worked. It’s never been on one of my computers for longer than a week or so.
I’m downloading the Debian netinst image right now and will try installing it immediately after. I’ve never used Debian before so will have to read up on installation of packages, etc. but it’s worth a shot. It’s ironic that now that I no longer with to tinker with the OS, but just want one to use, I spend my time hopping from one to another.
And depressing.
Hey, we could get “idiot 1″ and “idiot 2″ shirts!
June 5th, 2009 on 3:22 pm
Cool!
You’re now entering the domain of the FOSS purists so beware — it’s their party and they don’t give a flying fuck if you participate or not.
Couple of thoughts:
1. Spend some time with the Debian website. It’s pretty “plain jane” but very powerful. Since they don’t slam out releases like popcorn their docs and wiki stay current and helpful. Note especially the “packages” section — very helpful.
2. Don’t mention GUI stuff like “synaptic”. These are CLI guys who work with apt and aptitude. Use of a GUI tool for the management of software is blasphemy.
3. IRC site “#debian” on freenode is a decent place to hang out.
It’s all good.
Can I have the “idiot 2″ shirt? (less pressure)
June 5th, 2009 on 3:29 pm
Oh yeah….. if the netinst is problematic you can install easily with the first CD of the set. You need no others.
June 5th, 2009 on 3:46 pm
Wow, man. It’s like being thrust back into the days of manually editing my ppp settings so I could dial out to the local BBS!
I’ve tried all four methods of installing the graphics drivers (so easy, a caveman could do it!) and have failed at all four methods.
I may have hit a new low in regards to my self-esteem.
June 5th, 2009 on 4:13 pm
“Do it the Debian way” is an important idea to remember; especially with such things as graphics drivers.
For example for Nvidia: “apt-get install nvidia-glx” is the Debian way and should take care of it (kernal and all). At least, if you do that the help forums will be more receptive to you.
I assume you’ve modified your repo sources to include “contrib” and “non-free”?
Idiot 2 – over…..
June 5th, 2009 on 4:22 pm
umm, yeah… contrib and non-free…. yeah… I did that… what do you think I am, an idiot? Just for the others that may be reading this, you should link to the instructions for adding the repos.
I never made it to that, as I failed on the earlier portion(Mostly in part, I’m sure because I didn’t enable the proper repos.)
I see that it’s not going to be a quick transition for me, if it works at all, so I put the box back over on the bench and replaced my work machine so I can have some time to work on it. I’m not averse to the cli as long as it’s for setup, which I don’t have to do repeatedly. It will be interesting to see how I do.
June 5th, 2009 on 5:22 pm
Debian comes to you pure as the driven FOSS snow. To make (ahem) “other stuff” available you need to modify /etc/apt/sources.list. The easiest way to do it is simply to open the file with Vim in CLI as root.
Dad:~# vim /etc/apt/sources.list
Then edit to add contrib and non-free. If you’re not familiar with Vim try this little cheat sheet: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/vimcheat.html
Each source is a line item; probably ending in “main”. Text edit to add contrib and non-free to each source. Vim is handy and worth a few minutes to get the drift — then it becomes dirt-simple (even for Neanderthals).
There are, of course, exhaustive dissertations in the docs and wiki for which some noble community member got his FOSS PhD but what I’ve told you above will take care of it.
For the record….
Debian is not CLI intensive at all. I use it for a few specific tasks and that’s all. I could probably avoid using it at all but I prefer to keep myself somewhat familiar with it. Trust me: I’m no threat to Leigh123 over at FF.
June 5th, 2009 on 6:07 pm
Any thoughts on DreamLinux, Rick? At first glance, it seems to be a distro that has pre-dirtified, just like Mint, but looking into it further, I wonder if they went to far with bleeding edge apps(Firefox 3.1.x, unless it’s a typo).
June 5th, 2009 on 7:42 pm
I ran rhe DL LiveCD for giggles. It sure looks nice and I like the Mac-like interface. It seemed buggy to me but that was right when it released. I’ve got a buddy down the road who’s been running it for a couple of weeks with Enlightenment (I think). I’ll check with him.
Yes: I thought it was a bit on the bleeding edge.
I was tired of doing the distro-hop; ready to settle down and make baby tuxes. I wanted a prominent distro that would last and has US origin or affiliation. That got my list down to Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian. I don’t like U. I’d love to run Fedora but it has historically been a PITA and lately I’ve felt that Red Hat just isn’t giving it the resources it needs to be a free-standing desktop distro. That left Debian.
Mint has always been a favorite but it ain’t US based and, though Clem is a wiz a cool looks and cool tools to make things easier, I still ran into glitches after I ran for two months (on two machines) and got behind the glossy exterior.
PCLinuxOS was a prime candidate too. In my view 07 was a hall-of-famer in its time (mid 2007) but others have caught up and the just-released 09 is very good but not great. Plus: the development team supernova’ed due to internal BS right around release and many of us fans are wondering if the distro wil hold together.
So. Again. I’m left with Debian. I’m very curious about Slackware, though, and intend to give the next release a spin (due anytime).
By the way: What is your hardware?
June 5th, 2009 on 9:18 pm
It’s much tougher than one would think to find a suitable US based distro that’s stable and suits your needs.In my case, impossible, it seems
PCLOS was without a doubt the most infuriating install attempt I’ve ever had. 50% chance of it refusing to boot at all for install and in the end, I never got it actually installed. It never asked for user/root info, stated that the install was finished and on reboot, asked for user credentials.(guest and root no longer worked). I’m sure I could have pushed to resolve the issue, but why run an OS that fucks up so early in the game?
This machine is an AMD(64) 3400+ with a gig of ram, 6800GT and soundblaster 16 card. I’ve only had PCLinuxOS fail to install on it. It’s about as vanilla as you can get. I never run the 64 architecture, so everything is available to me.
I’ve got DL installed and am trying it out. I’ll let you know what explodes. I can tell you right now that the snazzy mac-ish bar at the bottom is going out the window. As I type, my eye keeps going down there… kind of creepy, like it’s watching me or something.
June 5th, 2009 on 11:54 pm
Interesting.
One of my boxes is a Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 mobo running an AMD64 (2000+) overclocked to 2.4 Gh, 1 Gig DDR, and 7900GS. No soundcard. The mobo uses Nvidia chipsets which probably makes it more palatable to Linux hardware detection.
That box has run many different distros over the past 2-1/2 years, mostly 32-bit ones, but 64-bit ones lately since I need all the horsepower to push a 1080i HDTV. I started Linux with FC6 trying to get it going on that HDTV running dual with a little CRT while I figured it out. It took a while and I had to learn a lot about X. There was just no way to get it going without writing a custom xorg.conf file.
(Tip: If you ever get the box running video the way you want it, save xorg.conf elsewhere and just copy it into any other distros you run on that box. Distros change but X is X. An xorg.conf created on PCLinux will run just fine on Mint. An xorg.conf created for FC6 two years ago will almost surely run on U9.10 today. Do this AFTER you install the Nvidia driver but BEFORE you install or activate any OpenGL stuff.)
The most recent install was 64-bit Debian KDE and it went fine. Installing the Nvidia driver “the Debian way” (nvidia-glx) went okay. Note too that ndiswrapper for wireless (doesn’t work on 64-bit) is less of an issue as more and more wireless drivers get hardwired into the kernels. Also, there’s now a 64-bit Adobe Flash available (directly from Adobe site). It’s still beta but works flawlessly for me.
Your problem with PCLinux surprises me. In my opinion their hardware detection system is one of the best out there. I do recall the installer being a little funky with partitioning but it worked itself out. (I hate it when an install fails a couple of times then somehow works fine on the third or fourth try. Kinda makes me lose faith in the Digital Revolution. I have trouble correlating Chaos Theory with digital machinations. Are there “about” 0′s and “pretty-much” 1′s?)
PCLinux09 ran beautifully in my 32-bit and 64-bit boxes for the couple of weeks that I had it in.
If you’re having install problems with a verified good CD I’d be looking for mobo issues. A search might reveal something goofy with it. Also check bios Some bios (? bioses? biosi?) have a switch for selecting OS type. Some have a switch for enabling/disabling cpu detection.
Oh man — you don’t like the mac bar? I thought that was cool. Pointless and distracting — but cool.
June 6th, 2009 on 11:18 am
I’ve not tackled a media box yet. I’ve got IPTV now and I purchased a decent capture card, but haven’t tried to do anything yet. I’ve got 8 computers running in the house and I’m beginning to feel guilty about my increasingly large carbon footprint
I’ve still got DL running and it’s currently in the work box position. I’m having problems finding resources on making it nasty-dirty, but will continue looking. Dualhead worked out of the box with just pasting over my xorg.conf. Networked drives are unmounted prior to the network shutdown(Ubuntu could learn something from Deb, it seems) and so far, I haven’t found anything that required extra attention.
I thought that PCLOS was going to be my savior. It’s the distro you go to when you finally admit that although you don’t like Windows, you need something close to it so you can handle turning it on and finding the start button. I picture us incompetents as big kids trying to put square blocks through the round holes on our discovery toys. That’s why it hurt me so bad when I realized that I couldn’t even install it. I was so amazed at it’s neglect at asking for credentials on the install but asking on first boot that I installed again, figuring I clicked next one too many times. I actually had to attempt to install about 4 or 5 more times though because it would either not go into graphical boot mode or would otherwise glitch.
As for that bar, when just the desktop is in view, it’s a sight to behold, shifting and reflecting fake light. When an app is maximized, it just makes you look at the two blank spots on either side of it. As well, the bar expands under the app and not over, making it look like they handled it’s application incorrectly.
I turned off Vista’s bar on my game machine as well, but at least with that one, it would auto-hide and would push out over the application windows.
June 6th, 2009 on 11:36 am
The novelty wears off fairly quickly with those fancy task bar thingys – I played around with Avant Window Navigator for a while but, in the end, I just found it distracting plus it was a bit buggy in my setup.
Although most of my machines are Linux boxes, my HTPC (which drives a big plasma screen with weird video modes) is still WinXP. I haven’t found a Linux distro (even including Mythbuntu) that quite does what I need there … yet.
Don’t give up on Linux – don’t give Steve (Barmy) Ballmer the satisfaction.:)
June 6th, 2009 on 12:55 pm
Heya Bert
The bars always look whiz-bang to me, but always irritate me in their application. I know it probably says more about me than the apps(get off my lawn!), but I find the menu dropdowns to be the most trouble-free.
I tried all the media distros when I was playing with the idea of installing a box in the living room, and researching it, found that many felt the same way as you. The Win machines seem to often win out in terms of usability and applications of the guide apps, etc.
As for my use of linux on the DE. My God, I try so hard. I feel like I’m fighting against evolution though. It’s as if I’m just not cut out for it and am cutting my nose off to spite my face. You have to have a certain modicum of common sense and intelligence to use it and I am quite sure that I house less than the minimum amount required of both. In spite of this, I’ve fought for years to use it. I’m like a flightless bird(hehe, a penguin, if you will) that keeps jumping off of cliffs in an attempt to soar.
That being said, so far I’ve had good results with DreamLinux. I don’t have any qualms(obviously) with using dirty bits and in fact require them for some aspects of what I do, so I appreciate the distros that make those aspects more available. While I appreciate the clean distros, it just makes more work for me. Mint was an obvious choice for me because of their tenants, but for previously posted reasons, it wouldn’t work for me. DL seems to be aspiring to do the same on a Debian base.
My daughter’s currently running flash through it’s paces on it playing the dress-up games and club penguin. I’ve still got to get networked printing working on it and find a few more tuts on installing various dirty things, but so far, have not hit a speedbump, so have incredibly high hopes of this working. I’m even willing to take a hit in hardware specs to do it(I CAN NOT install linux on the Windows work box because of the mainboard; view any one of the support threads at linuxforums, fedora, ubuntu, mint, etc.). That’s saying a lot
If I can get everything installed, I will celebrate by putting a proper post up
June 6th, 2009 on 10:06 pm
Been away today with two high school graduations — a son and a cousin. Long day. Drove 100 miles to the first one then back for the second, all with my mother (76 and in Hospice with O2 bottles and pills by the handful to prove it.)
Sounds like things are going well, Schwim Satisfaction is, I’m sure, just over the horizon just like the end of the rainbow. (Uh. I’m tired. I’ll rethink that simile later.)
As for you, Bert. Don’t get your hopes up — you’re clearly too intelligent to join the Idiot Squad.
Just to clear up the point….
I don’t run HDTV as a Mythbox or Media Center. It’s a desktop setup with wireless KB & mouse from about 12 ft. away. (I don’t even like TV. I would only capture it if I thought I could then kill it and eat it!) It worked pretty well though an interlaced projection TV isn’t the ideal display. The cool part was having picture-in-picture.
Enough for today. I’m depressed after watching nearly 600 teenagers gleefully and expectantly receive their diplomas amidst such grandiose pomp and circumstance. If only they knew….
June 6th, 2009 on 10:30 pm
I knew even at that age. It’s why I didn’t participate in my graduation.
I’m lacking only a very few aspects before I reach maximum OS bliss. I’m going to wait patiently as I try to find my answers for fear that I’ll mess something up, have to install the OS again and never be able to duplicate the magic that has transpired on the platters of my hard drive.
June 7th, 2009 on 2:16 am
> “for fear that I’ll mess something up, have to install the OS again and never be able to duplicate the magic that has transpired on the platters of my hard drive”
I write up copious, detailed notes for every successful install and copy every config file. That’s so I know I will be able to do it again, if needed!
June 7th, 2009 on 2:24 am
I’ve begun saving my modded config files as well. It saved my bacon on the samba issue, as I couldn’t remember the flags I used that got it working so well. I would have cried like a little girl if I had lost that after finally having it
June 8th, 2009 on 8:19 pm
THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!!!
June 9th, 2009 on 2:59 pm
Well, I was really hoping to wait until I could post additional accolades and happy news, but alas, just happy news will have to suffice.
DL is running on my work machine, with absolutely everything I need(printing, network, dualhead, etc). It’s fantastic and I don’t regret moving back to the lower end machine.
I was hoping to also be able to spread the news of linux on my laptop, but that will have to wait a bit it seems, as I’m two days into shrinking my drive partition
I’ve got to keep Windows on it, as my wife needs some Windows applications for work during travel and the laptop’s driveis not playing nice with any partition managers.
That aside, I’m reveling in my return to linux as my desktop environment. It makes me happy in my pants.
June 9th, 2009 on 3:15 pm
What superb timing as I was just winging thru your site!
Congrats on your sublime satisfaction. See there — even a caveman CAN do it. Glad DL is working out; I’ll have to give that another look.
I’ve been kicking around in PuppyLinux world for a few days and I’ll admit, it’s intoxicating. Running as root all the time sure makes thing easy! It’s quick, it’s slick. And the community have the loyalty that a Hells Angel’s gang would be proud of. But, alas, it just didn’t ring the bell for me. I think I’ve got those itchy distro-hoppin’ feet again..
Currently torrenting down F11 (Gnome and KDE) for a spin. No doubt FF will be fun to watch for a few days as the newbies hit the wire and the regulars’ nerves get frayed. I’m expecting casualties.
All part of the Linux carnival…..
June 9th, 2009 on 3:34 pm
I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting FF since Bee spammed all the members for his competing site. It seemed everything was operating as intended. If nothing else, we can assure ourselves that the wave of problems will never dry up.
As for DL, I’d suggest you play with it again. I’ve donated and would buy the t-shirt if they had one available.
I’m not just the spokesperson. I’m a client.
June 9th, 2009 on 7:14 pm
Just checking in from F11/Gnome/LiveCD.
Shit. It isn’t bad. And there ain’t enough money on the planet to get me to say that. (Hyperbole again. There certainly IS enough money but that’s not what’s happening here.)
Nice clean boot. Had to fiddle with the display due to the onboard SiS graphics in this box but that’s normal and F11 handled it better than some. Wireless came right up after I gave it an essid. Pretty smooth.
Thought this was gonna be the .28 kernel but it’s the .29. I could be interested. Gotta try the KDE version….
June 9th, 2009 on 9:01 pm
I’m gonna try F11 soon, though it’ll probably be next month by the time the Aussie mirrors finally sync (they’re all run a bunch of lazy sods). DL sounds alright – thanks for the tip – so I might try that out, too. F10 has been working pretty well for me and after 11 goes at this (RH9 -> F10) I think I’ve finally got it set up the way I like.
Glad to hear you’re back on Linux. That’s one less computer caught in the clutches of the Dark One (a.k.a. Steve Ballmer).
June 9th, 2009 on 9:08 pm
Umm, if I had time I’d give Debian a shot, but there’s just not enough of it available in between buying, pouring and drinking beers….
Just noticed F1 was actually released. I downloaded the ISOs but realised I don’t have any blank media and nowhere to get any (cheap disks) around here so it looks like a special trip up to town. I also popped into FF and noticed the same old (new) idiot newbies who haven”t learned to read or search the forum or Google to find out how to install MP3 support, etc
Mint is running great on my main machine, only problem is there is no PAE kernel so it only sees 3.2Gb of my 4Gb memory
June 9th, 2009 on 9:10 pm
Someone stole one of my ones!!! That should be F11!!!
June 9th, 2009 on 9:16 pm
As an aside, I have found that my ECS G31T-M mainboard is fully supported by boot-132. Maybe something else to try…..
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.5#ECS
June 10th, 2009 on 10:10 am
Finally got F11/KDE/LiveCD burned last night after several attempts. I suspect my old CD-RW’s have been RW’d a few too many times.
Booted okay. Video and wireless tweaked in fine. Here ends the good news.
LiveCD is almost pure KDE4.2.2 (No Firefox or OO). That’s probably not a real bad thing but I have a mental block against KDE4 since my Kubuntu debacle. It’s cool, I suppose, and state-of-the-art. I just don’t know if I need that art. What surprizes me is that an entire 700mb disc could be occupied by just F11 and KDE4. Tried a bunch of apps no problemo. Tried to change the theme and it bombed. Done for now.
Having the same burn problems with DL. Arrgghh….
June 10th, 2009 on 6:45 pm
As a self-appointed disciple of the DL religion, I invite you to find a working RW disk sir. Prepare to have your happy bone tickled.