[aphex944]

I've been toying with the idea of installing Linux again on my system after 4 or 5 years of running Windows. A few days ago, it was time for a Windows reinstall, so I figured I'd dual boot Linux as well. With all the talk nowadays of how easy it is to install with graphical interfaces, and even Dell including it pre-installed on some systems, I figured it'd be a breeze.

I got my Windows installation up and running without a single problem. Got all my programs setup, and proceeded onto Linux.

As a bit of background, I used to run Slackware for over a year. I've had SuSE installed for around 6 months. Not only that, but I've setup Gentoo on several machines. It's been awhile since I've used it, but I figured I could remember enough to fix any small issues if I did encounter any.

I chose Ubuntu as I just wanted a quick install, no problems/issues, and no fuss. After booting the CD, it booted into X, and.... graphical corruption. Okay, no biggie. Rebooted, started in safe graphics mode. It worked fine, and I proceeded with the install. Partitioning worked fine, and it kept my other NTFS partitions tucked away and untouched. Installation was quick, so I rebooted, and was greeted with my freshly installed system.

It was running in a lower resolution, so I figured I'd fix that issue first. It detected my video card as an NVIDIA Geforce FX series. Good, selected that driver, and also selected my monitor profile. I hit test, and.. graphic corruption is back! I figured I'd wait awhile since I figured "test" would have some sort of timeout. I was wrong! I had to hard reboot, and had to try it again. So this time, I just selected my monitor. It worked, but wait, now it's in 2048x1536. Ouch, way too big. I scaled it back down to 1280x1024, and the corruption returned. Geez.

After some fiddling in X11.conf, I still didn't get it right. I was very displeased at this point, and after some digging around found out that my particular video card(NV 6600) does not work with Ubuntu out of the box. Great.

I figured I'd download Mandriva, as Ubuntu was really letting me down, and I've never tried it. Burned the iso, booted off the CD, and... hard lock. Hard lock in Linux? Doesn't happen often, or so I thought. I rebooted, and selected the verbose mode so I could see exactly where it was screwing up. After loading eth0, it would hard lock. That was pretty much useless. Next!

Lightning struck twice, but THREE times? I got openSUSE burned to a DVD, and proceeded. Wow, it actually set my resolution right! This is looking good. The partitioning was a bit more complicated, but was still easy to understand. I proceeded with the install, and a dialog popped up. It couldn't find a module. Wait a second, this is a freshly burned DVD, this is supposed to work. I chose ignore, and it hard locked. AGAIN?! Rebooted, went through the process, and got further this time. Then, "glibc-module" cannot be located. Glibc? That's fairly important. Ugh, screw it.

Rebooted, and now my GRUB loader is broken. "Error 17." That's almost as cryptic as a Windows BSOD. I figured I'd "fixmbr" in the XP recovery console, but the XP CD would just hang(typical if the MBR is really messed up). I tried to install Kubuntu again, since it was the ONLY one that would install right, but even THAT failed. I was so frustrated at this point I got a bootable utility I have called Partition Table Doctor. The partition table was completely trashed, and had to be rebuilt. Luckily, it booted right into XP after repair, and all is well.

I really did think Linux was progressing in compatibility and ease of use. This has been an absolute disaster. I have a fairly simple hardware setup, NOTHING fancy, and all of it is working properly. I never thought I'd be going through Linux distributions this quickly, just to find one that WORKED. Ready for mainstream desktop usage? Yeah right.

 

[Jon118]

My time using linux wasn't that bad, it was just largely useless to me. I couldn't really do much but use the internet, and even that was a chore if there was any multimedia content. The volume control never did work right, plus when the new version of Ubuntu came out and I upgraded to it, it no longer recognized my wireless card so I had to do a fresh reinstall of the old version of Ubuntu. Now there is a system that works well

. That could just be me though, plenty of people seem to like linux, it just wasn't something that was useful to me.

 

[bangraman]

I have a dedicated machine to Ubuntu to keep myself up to date with Linux which changes from time to time, but it's always what I consider a fairly standard machine. The current one is a Core 2 Duo 2Ghz laptop with a GMA950. Always a few problems though. My next one will probably be bought from Dell.


The bigger issue is that there are no true killer apps, and those which exist are second-best. All the oft-mentioned Linux apps are actually catch-ups at best to the leading examples available for Windows (and to a much lesser extent, OS X) and their sole merit IMO is that they cost nothing. I don't really care about wibbly windows, cubed desktops, etc as long as it actually is a productivity enhancer (like Apple's Expose for example) or a few thousand spent on software - especially business software - and in comparing like for like I've found absolutely no compelling reasons to move to Linux apart from a direct cost, which is obviously a lot lower. In terms of indirect cost however if you consider your own time valuable, I'd say Windows still has the edge.


I think it's a lot like Foobar myself... a lot of people use it for the sake of tweakability and for the sake of open source. I'm still interested to see how things progress though.

 

[siegmund123]

I read somewhere once that Linux is only free if your time is worthless.

If some people like using it, more power to them but I've tried it a couple of times and I found that even the simplest of tasks took 5 times longer than it does in Windows. At some point I just had to face the fact that it was substantially reducing my productivity and ditched it.

And even if I succeeded in getting everything working, no real applications existed for me to use anyway, so all that time and effort setting it up was sort of wasted. Plus the lack of games is the final nail in the coffin for me.

 

[Bizzel]

I'd like to tell you a happier story, about one man's journey to Linux nirvana. It all started long, long ago (in computer terms), back in the days of Red Hat 9. Red Hat was my introduction to Linux and, like many people, I had several problems. For example, my USB modem would randomly disconnect, there was no mp3 support out of the box, and media codecs were hell to find and install.

Fast forward to mid-2005, I'm running Windows XP and, aside from it's odd quirks, I'm quite happy with it. But one night my laptop fan starts going crazy...MAXIMUM, off, MAX, off, ad infinitum. Well my antivirus hadn't complained but to be sure I fired up task manager to find two processes chewing up CPU time - my laptop had become a mass-mailing zombie!

That was the final straw, I couldn't believe that I'd got a virus. I'm very computer-savvy (I may soon be a sysadmin at my former school) and I didn't remember installing anything odd, I'm behind a hardware firewall too. It was time for something bulletproof. Enter Ubuntu.

Edit: Here's a screenshot if you want to see how different (or not) things are from XP:

I'm now on 7.04 and happier than ever. Gnome is so much easier to use than XP ever was and I can sleep easy in the knowledge that my laptop isn't sending out viagra spam. Even with Beryl, my whole pc feels much faster, especially when multiasking, even when compared with a fresh Windows install. I've had very little trouble with codecs and media, save for a some Xorg configuration to enable accelerated video decoding. Linux definitely isn't for everyone (I miss Windows media centre, I miss some games) but for the average internet-browsing, music-loving desktop user, it trumps XP in every way imaginable.

By the way, with regard to killer apps: Pidgin (Gaim) and Banshee are both awesome linux apps that I can't live without.

 

[003]

Bizzel where can I get that desktop image?

btw, opensuse is the best imo, just looks like you got a corrupted burn or something. I still use xp myself

 

[ls20]

I made the transition on my home computer a few weeks ago and it was easy breezy.

I mean really, really easy. TRUE - there are some issues about Nvidia drivers and support on Linux (when i used ATI card it was perfect), but after one full evening of digging and researching I got that worked out

Next day I had instant messaging clients up, connected my digital camera to it, edit Office docs , got Flash, Shockwave, Divx players, mp3 players, even Soulseek share-program, and it even connected with my Windows Network and Shared Folders out of the box! basically 99% of my applications on Windows

 

[Illah]

Yeah I find Linux to be worthless unless you get off on complicating and subsequently fixing your life. Some people like that kind of thing...I used to be one of them. I'm over it now

--Illah

 

[Bizzel]

003: http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details.php?id=1108

Illah: What kind of problems did you have to fix?

 

[Hi-Finthen]

Well, I have one of Dells Ubuntu 7.4 preinstalled on order, 30 day backlog... Should be just the ticket for internet browsing / posting and as a music server... Time will tell...

 

[Bizzel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hi-Finthen /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, I have one of Dells Ubuntu 7.4 preinstalled on order, 30 day backlog... Should be just the ticket for internet browsing / posting and as a music server... Time will tell...

I plan to get one of the Ubuntu Dells as soon as they're available across the pond.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

My Linux experiences have been very similar to what was described by the OP. Until Linux runs (and installs) as easily and seamlessly as Windows, it will not be ready for real mainstream use.

 

[Honken]

Never had any of the problems described by the OP, especially not with the "mainstream" distros.

I use Arch with *box (when I use Linux) myself, I like it for its simplicity.

 

[heatmizer]

Fedora Core 7 with the KDE Desktop Is my current favorite.

 

[goldenratiophi]

Ubuntu graphics support = total suck. I don't know why I can get my monitor to display at normal 1440x900 resolution out of the box on every Linux distro EXCEPT Ubuntu.

You just gotta find a distro that works for you. I don't like Ubuntu or Mandriva, but Debian and Gentoo both work great for me.