Give Desktop Linux a try? No thank you!
I gave a try to Linux, as a Desktop replacemnt on my XP box. The distros Ubuntu 6.06 and SuSE 10.0 was selected because of the update/installation/uninstallation methods they provide. The result was fully dissapointed!
- On UBUNTU the initial "recognized" resolution for my system was 640×480. There was no way to do an installation, because the resolution was too small to fit the installation window. It took me about an hour to solve the problem
- My ATI 9800pro was denied to give me a descent resolution, other than 1024×768@60Hz on my SONY HSD95 and NEC LCD 1701 monitors, with the fglrx ATI 3D drivers. No problem with the built in drivers, but…
- The dual head has never worked.
- My 1st TV tuner card (Hauppauge PRV 150 PCI) and my 2nd TV card (Kword PVR 2000 USB) never worked. The 2nd was never recognized by the kernel. The 1st is recognized but the v4l denied to decode because of incompatibility with MPEG-2 hardware decoded.
- The SMB shares from my Windows XP machines never worked as they had to. The language was Greek. With encoding/charset compatible with Greek, I had to write access. Without them I had read/write but I could not read my Greek named files!! Situation occured on a mountpoint, with smfs and/or cifs. Amarock denied to read the 75% of the tags from my SMB located MP3 files according "it's taste of selection" while there was no problem with Banshee and/or Xmms!!
- My Scanner Visioneer 7600 USB was never recognized.
It took my 2 days to try/install/uninstall/read documentation anything you can imagine. I didn’t want to spend more time. I don’t have to much time available to spend around just to have an alternate desktop, so I had to go back on my XP installation in order to “work as a human”. The whole thing sucks on drivers existance/support. I don’t care who is responsible for this. The hardware companies or the linux distrib communities. The fact is that after a couple of days I didn’t had a working desktop system.
I don’t dissagree that Linux is a brilliant operating system if you plan to use it as server, but noway as a Desktop replacement, unless the usage is a simple Office/Graphics/(maybe) Multimedia PC. I have already setup and running a nice CENTOS 4.3 as a server Linux and a brilliant BSD based Firewall/VPN router (pfSense), so you can understand that my Linux experience is above average. In fact it took me just a couple of hours to setup Apache, PHP, Firebird, Postgresql, FTP daemon and SMB shares on a console based system (no graphics drivers, no scanners, no TV tuners) and the system is running for months “as a bullet”.
But as a Desktop??? It’s better to forget it, because as they said in my country, you’re trying to “take the egg for a haircut”!!! unless you wanna spend days to find out what’s going on with the hardware’s drivers.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:27 am
I have an iq of 74 and use Xandros and sometimes Win98. Xandros is Linux-for-Windows users - installs itself, runs itself -but needs a geek for anything ‘unusual’; and of course printer and scanner choice is limited.
- for those of us who just want an appliance.
If I had the money up front then I’d go with a new Mac and run XP or linux or….. Macs are especially suited to the geekly challenged
July 14th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
You have a really low IQ, djstelios.
1. You had to install drivers, like you have to install drivers in windows.
2. You had to read more.
3. Had to read some more.
4. That’s not linux’s fault, it’s the driver providers problem.
5. Linux is more unicode compatible than windows, stop bullshitting. And read some more. There’s no built-in write support for NTFS partitions (Windows XP uses NTFS if you didn’t get it). You need to install something to get write support working.
6. Drivers, again. Don’t blame it on linux, because you’re a selfish windows user who wants it all on windows.
If you call linux a server operating system one more time I’ll fucking kill you.
If you are going to move to linux, at least some more on linux, linux is not windows, what do you expect? Why would you move to linux if it’s not windows?
I agree, linux has its problems, I have a really big issue (Yeah, I don’t like it) with the sound server standardization. The sound servers are aweful:
OSS = Only one application at a time.
ALSA = Needs too much work to get it right.
I’m still staying with linux, because it’s just plain awesome! And when the time comes, you’ll realize that.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
djstelios cry me a river, nobody cares if your experience or rather lack of experience with Linux caused to to be inconvienced for a while…
next time actually take the time to learn about what you are doing…
July 14th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
I agree with TuxRaider, learn the OS from the ground up.
Such a stupid article.
July 14th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
You could have fixed all of these “problems” by simply googling them. Or posting you problem on a forum.
fglrxconfig would have fixed all your video card problems. If only you had payed attention and read a little.
And just because it doesn’t automatically recognize your devices, doesn’t mean a driver for them doesn’t exist. Do a little search, look around a little bit, maybe you can find a suitable driver. Don’t blame linux because developers don’t support it.
July 15th, 2006 at 2:50 am
You should post your questions on ubuntuforums.org. People over there are more than willing to help you with your install problems. The good thing about linux is that once you get your stuff up and running it will stay that way. I haven’t had to do a reinstall or had any major problems since I installed ubuntu last year. I wipped windows last december and haven’t looked back since.
July 15th, 2006 at 3:49 am
Wow, your experience was way outside the norm. Most people who try out Ubuntu these days are astonished that everything simply works. There are a couple of places you can go to to get live, online help: qunu.com (I haven’t tried it, myself) and the Ubuntu IRC channel.
July 23rd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
What is ‘intelligence’? The best definition for the word, is ‘the capacity for learning’.
[See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
If you learn to drive using an automatic, then have to use a stick-shift…you’ll have to LEARN how to operate a differant system. Refusing only limits YOU.
—–
For the record: “taking an egg for a haircut” parallels the axiom, “if it ain’t broke; don’t fix it”. That absolutely can’t be said of Windows.
July 24th, 2006 at 4:19 am
Linux it’s a pain in the ass to configure. I’ve used Ubuntu for 3 months now. I’ve spent a week straight without ever booting into windows. I’ve gotten almost everything to work. But I spent SO MUCH TIME getting everything to work. No sane person who has a job (i’m still a student) would want to put so much tiring google-surfing work into configuring an OS that he just wants to *use* not *create*.
August 1st, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Heh
LOL @ all the linux nutters … they all say you should learn to use Linux, carefully overlooking the point that he already does, as well as BSD.
What a bunch of discheads!
August 4th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Install Gentoo, then you’ll get a better idea about linux, instead of having a nice little walkthough GUI to install (yes, you do get that with the CentOS server cd). As everyone else has said, it’s pretty easy to do all of the thing you’re talking about if you just use Google and search forums for the hundreds of other people that have the same problem and each have had it personally answered by a multitude of people. I love linux, but I wouldn’t recommend switching to it if you’re a gamer; you’ll get no happy results unless you decide to buy Cedega, and even then I’ve heard of many headaches trying to get it to work properly.
Seriously, go install Gentoo if you’ve got a test box. It’s an awesome learning experience (and it really does take days to install, because you’re configuring and compiling all of it yourself - took me about 2 days to do a stage3 install, then plug in X and Gnome. Well worth it.
Also, if you want to stop a lot of these “OMG UR STOOPID” replies in the future, spell check a little =)
Hope your experience is better next time!
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:05 am
How pathetic. First the pathetic individual that has no brain at all, and second all of the Linux folks trying to ‘make everything’ better. Guys if you have been with it long enough, you can see a shill when they put pen to paper. Oh and then Here’s our BSD counterpart. I run BSD too, as well as Ubuntu, Fedora ()all cores) Suse 10, FreeBSD5.4, and 6, with two doze stations just to play games on. BSD is probably one of the most un-friendly OS’s out there. and I have used Solaris, SunOS4, IRIX, SCO, and HPUX all in enterprise environments and with the exception of HPUX BSD has to be the worst one at installation, compatability, and functionality. So what THis gentleman enjoys Windows, So what he can;t find his dipstick under the hood, in todays world of knows and don;t knows he falls in the latter, and thankfully he will not be coming to a job site near you. Oh and for the college student, I have a job and I can install Linux in 30 minutes or less video, sound, the works. give me 15 min more and that scanner would work too. I am not alone most if not all of the *NIX ‘nuts’ can do it too. Give it a rest, go back to your precious XP box and see you next virus…
September 19th, 2006 at 2:56 am
How did you get your visioneer 7600 to work with WIndows XP in the first place? Visioneer doesn’t support it with WIndows XP, and I’ve been trying for years.
September 19th, 2006 at 11:57 am
There was (are?) some instructions on the net.
The installation is old enough to remember the exact installation steps, but the trick something like this:
Install Paperport software (comes with the drivers/installation CD of Visioneer) and then install the drivers for Win2k.
In my case the scanner was a Primax OneTouchUSB 7600 and I’ve used the 7600u2k.exe drivers.
October 20th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
I have been using Kubuntu for a year. There is no alternative to Autodesk Inventor and try to find a program for 3D home design — You can’t. It’s not linux fault. The problems encountered by a new person trying out linux is mostly not reading enough and the vendors of drivers, software ect. There’s so much that could be said here.
May 4th, 2007 at 8:26 am
[...] 4th, 2007 — djstelios I’m ready to take back everything I’ve posted on “Give Desktop Linux a try? No thank you!“. The newer version of Ubuntu Linux is really a “out of the box” solution for a [...]
July 14th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
[...] ready to take back everything I’ve posted on “Give Desktop Linux a try? No thank you!“. The newer version of Ubuntu Linux is really a “out of the box” solution for a [...]