I don't think I ever flamed a Linux Help forum
But the reality is I almost gave up Linux after the first 3 months - so there is an inkling of sympathy to a few frustrated user.
Again, yes once all makes sense - you really don't want to go back ever.

The worse problem in my case was the WinModem scenario.
How can you have an Operating System without internet?
But still because I had Conexant or whatever it was - everyone was telling me to compile drivers, patch the kernel - fancy that when you have a first taste of Linux. And besides I don't think there is a solution till this date (USB ADSL Modem)

Noone could ever think laterally to the solution.
No, it was not connecting via another PC running Windows
Buying a ROUTER was the solution: yes a little investment which made all the difference, and ROUTERS are just that added extra security and convenience (as long as you change the default admin password please!)

So I was very persistant for a solution:
My cycle of distributions went like this:
Red Hat 9.0 -> Mandrake PowerPack 9.2 -> Suse Professional 9.0 -> Fedora 2 -> Gentoo -> Libranet -> Mandrake 10.

Red Hat 9.0
That was OK - it was extremely cheap and slick and fun, but too many annoying bugs and constraints (few crashes, couldn't play some videos, etc)

Mandrake PowerPack
Seemed more complete at first (playing most videos, mounting window shares and CD-Roms!!), but it did crash like hell. I bought it thinking it would make my USB ADSL Connexant modem work (somehow got that impression - read it from the boards) ... I was wrong. Sigh!

Suse Pro 9.0
That was a nasty experience. Really nasty. It just wouldn't work on my DELL (bizarelly) - and on the laptop it would crawl (really slow). I got the problems with sound. So I started getting upset with support after they replied they don't deal with sounds, or 2 PCs .. etc etc - but you could buy Support Tickets $$$ .. I flared up in rage and .. went about installing my next trial.

Fedora 2 Core 1
This version really stank. It was like a Red Hat but with 10x more bugs. ... the voices of MS kept chanting in my ear "Told you so!"

Gentoo
I tried installating Stage 1 - on a laptop - followed the online manual to the letter. It was fun watching the Matrix like characters whizzing up the screen, boot-strapping, compiling .. all to end up with some Error #696 Missing glub-glub.so&so ncurse-this-stuff.

... Debian, is so much better (ppl say) - Debian users and Slack users reigns supreme. We RPM ppl are but plebes ... so let's get kingly (not kinky ok?) and lets install Debian ... I mean lets try ...

Libranet (a meant-to-be user-friendlier version of Debian)
Then the questions started: How many DIPS does your monitor have, and what is the Vertical and Horizontal Free Range Hertz/Sync/Eggz/Wotever .. Then a very reasuring message: Caution - if you supply the wrong info I will melt your screen. In the end it looked and feeled very stable - only one problem though: I found it damn ugly

By that time I bought the ROUTER (after shopping around and asking and making the vendors swear it will work with Linux) ...

My other options included trying Gentoo again (no thanks perhaps another time), Debian or Slack (I am not that spiritually evolved OK? perhaps on my next life) ... Xandros/Lycoris/Linspire (ok now you are being patronizing )

So I got my Mandrake 9.2 and reinstalled ... and then upgraded to 10
and then never looked back (9 months now using it)
Linux brought back fun at computing (after much frustration! granted)
I would hate to go back to Windows- impossible. The round-trip was tough - but well worth it.

It seems that 90%+ of computer users worldwide have signed away all rights to privacy and autonomy. Of course, most people don't know or don't care what they agree to in EULAs, and it will take a serious violation of implicit trust (the trust the user THINKS they have with a company like Microsoft) to help people to wake up.

If the current pattern continues, future EULAs will be even more overbearing, and they will likely be bundled with security or stability related patches (which is what XP is).

Even if users understand the problem of EULAs and just general corporate control of their computers, there still needs to be an alternative, and unfortunately it needs to be a fairly easy-to-use one.

This is why I started linuxadvocate.org. So far I've got a very positive message up, and soon I would like to have more talk like this, although it's a fine line between advocacy and fanaticism.

Jon, drop me an email if you're interested in contributing.

-Ian

ian_mcintosh--at sign here--linuxadvocate.org

@ linux advocate.

love the site. great idea.
but if icould make a surgestion, one thing i think linux newbies find very usefull would be a Windows -> linux software equivelance list.

there are always far too many new linux users looking for "Kazaa for linux" or trying to run kazaa under wine completely unaware that there are great linux alternativs that run without adware.
or even trying to install windows drivers from cd's that come with there hardware.

things like

MS Office = Open Office / Star Office / KDE Office / Crossover Office
Kazaa = Apollon / GTK-gnutella / LimeWire
MSN MEssenger = kopetet / gaim / gAIM
Scanning software = XSANE
photo software = digiKam
winamp = XMMS
MS Media player = ZINE / MPLAYER
CD-RIPPER = GRIP;
cd Burner (nero ?) = K3B

would have been a great help to me when i started out.

Great Idea qwijibow. I personally would love a list like that. I'm going to dump Windows off my Laptop this week and let Linux fly solo so I'm forced to use it but there are some Windows apps I am going to have problems living without and haven't been able to find a decent clone of in Linux. A list would be a huge help.

My desktop will still have Windows for my games and 3d/digital graphics stuff.

the info in this link is a bit dated, but would provide a nice starting point for anyone wanting to update.

hope this helps.

this reply is for kainhart,
What in god's name are you talking about? Dependency problems are easily solved in most cases. There's apps like apt, and up2date. What are you talking about that Linux distros are lacking? My copy of Fedora Core 2 came with far more useful apps then any copy of windows ever did. I personally do not want computers to get any easier because they are already easy enough! The more you make computers easy to use the less power you have. People get confused when they see things they never heard of. The only way to solve such problems is to make all of the advanced programs (and useful ones) run from a command line. In the future they'll be further innovation (I hope), but current difficulty of Linux is fine.

I too am responsible for fixing the computers of the people around me, and 80-90% of the time it's user error. The other 10-20% are things like viruses. Maybe it's me, but computers seem extremely easy to use. There's a developer out there who stated programing when he was 8 (David Allen, I think). That say it all. Do you want to make computers so easy that all you have to do is think about doing something and it's done? I've used redhat 8-Fedora core 2, and I've had no real problems. The problem with most people "the general population" is that they're afraid to, or are too lazy to "explore" their computer. They don't care how it works they just want to use it, and that fine. People use toilets, but when it breaks down do they fix it? No they call a plumber. I also think that if people can't figure out how to use Linux then they should use it. One of these days I'm going to hand out a few mandrake cds to people I know and see what happens!

The problems with Linux are simple. Like every thing else it take time! Most distros install relatively easily (save for advanced distros hence slackware, and the notoriously hard to install debian (lol)). As a long term stance, the interfaces will change. Maybe they'll get 3d or vr who knows? However the "easiness" is fine. How easier can it be? There's already not one but 2 easy to understand and well polished guis in addition to several other ones. Installing programs have even gotten much easier, because of programs like apt, yum, up2date, and several gui based package managers. When I first started using computers way back when I was about 7 do you think anyone told me how to use one? I justed figured it out. Of course as I became older and started using computers more advanced than the apple 2 (the first computer I ever used) I had to read a few manuals to understand commands. Now you can use Linux, Mac, or windows painlessly because all three have good guis. Linux isn't all that hard to use. Sure you might have to know a few commands to install things or to configure settings (in some cases! There's programs like harddrake.), but they are fairly easy to learn. who can't remember cd, apt-get , apt-cache, ls, rpm -ihv, tar xvzf, etc. They are easy to understand commands. There's also many books you can buy (Linux in a nutshell) or web pages you can goto for help.

If you can't "learn" who to use Linux your a fool, and if you do something stupid like opening your inittab file and changing you default run level to 6 or 0 (lol) your a fool. If you have no idea what I'm talking about (I hope you do I can't see how any Linux user doesn't) look it up!!!!!

The fact of the matter is that it's easy to use already. Developers should focus more on function than usability. If Linux loses function and becomes another drone OS where everything does stuff automatically I'll just use some other OS. There's a lot of them out there. Many are Unix like or Unix based so I don't have to learn many new commands.

To a lot of people I sound like I hate the average computer user. However that's untrue. I realize that Linux is a great thing that could do wonders to the world if it was used more, However, I see making something easy to use means dumbing it down. Which ruins the whole point of using Linux in the first place. You also have to realize that things as complex as operating systems wont always work right out of the box unless it come with soft ware specifically made for the computer it's running on. There will always be problems like, because most OS es can be run on many brands of computer parts. Dumbing Linux down will not help that problem. It's already easy to use there's just several things you may not be able to do without reading a few very long articles or books. You can't make any thing run perfectly on everything.

I also have to say that I am say the same thing as qwijibow is. To make Linux "easier" you lose choice and choice is power!

re: Windows/Linux equivalence list

Great suggestion, qwijibow. I'm happy to say that it's already in progress! I'm replacing the "Playground" page with a "Compare" page, which has a list of tasks and how they're accomplished on both operating systems.

These are done:

• Desktop Look & Feel
• Productivity - Word Processing
• Productivity - Spreadsheets
• Playing DVD Movies and MP3 Music

These are planned:

• Productivity - Presentations
• Email and Instant Messaging

What else needs to be here?

-Ian
linuxadvocate.org

Cool! If you don't mind me asking, where'd you get all of the screen shots?

o and you should also a a section for mac vs linux

Making Linux easier doesn't have to interfere with choice or power. It's simply ANOTHER choice. Why flame people because they want easier software installation? Hell, to me, tarballs are one rung higher on the evolution ladder than punch cards and an utter pain in the @ss to install. Still, I believe that's because I never used DOS, I never touched a computer until Win95, (I'm more visually oriented, I can't remember commands worth a damn) now I'm senior tech. Guess i should never use Linux because I'm not good with command lines and hate using them unless I have to and despise 'cd' ing, I'd much rather click my way through.

No one is trying to limit choice, we're trying to offer more.

Linuxadvocate


Newsgroup software?
Adobe products (we all know about GIMP but what else is there for Illustrator, In Design, Premiere)
3d apps
web design
Voice recognition


I just remember seeing lots of posts concerning these. If I think of more I'll post.

Screenshots are all from the web (thank you, Google Image Search!), except for one or two that I made myself.

Finding suitable screenshots is one of the hardest and most time consuming jobs. I could definitely use help here if anyone is interested.

Also, if anyone has a better screenshot than one of the ones up there, please let me know! (is Linux's OpenOffice Writer screenshot actually running in Windows? I'm not sure...)

-----------

re: mac vs linux.

I don't plan to do this for several reasons:

- I actually like macs and OSX (before I decided that Linux really was ready for the desktop, I was quite the apple promoter)

- There's so little hope of converting an Apple user to Linux, it's not worth the effort

- I have no desire to convert Apple users to Linux. Apple is a much more responsible company than you-know-who. Further, Apple is a good source of inspiration (or in other words, they come up with cool things for Linux to copy!).

-----------

By the way, new content is online (including an updated welcome page and the first few "compare" pages) if anyone is interested.

-Ian

linuxadvocate.org

I think prophet621 is right-on here. There will always be power users who want a powerful distro, and they will make it if necessary.

The existence of easy alternatives will only have a positive effect on the Linux scene (more users means more money means more vendor/hardware support).

It will also have a positive effect for Windows users. What market share do you think Linux will need before we see the price of Windows plummet?

-Ian
linuxadvocate.org

Came to mind, i just wished i started with Linux, open source, build by people for people,
all i know about win is worth nothig ATM, 15 years of work with win i gained so much expertice/experience
within win and i was just imagining what i could have done, created if i spend that time or just half the time on Linux
win doesnt allow u too alter/make/remake like u can with Linux as probably most of u know
it is not "just" and operating system it is "our" operating system
this truly is the essence inner spirit of it, i havent realized this until now
just a thourd i had, wanted to share....

Regards Deag