The nvidia driver is a known issue for a lot of people. If you are using RH9 you must have binutls (in your Development Tools) or you will never succed (I couldn't anyways). There a dozens of posts in these forums about this.

originally quoted by Tesl

No, I totally disagree.

It's not the hardware "per se", but the supporting documentation. Even a complete idiot can make a computer work with clear, concise, understandable documentation.

I'm not questioning anyones mental abilities here, but if you look here, you will see what I feel is an excellent example of a site that explains some quite complicated stuff (well, I should clarify, under the technical section, because there is lots of quite complicated technical concepts explained - I haven't looked into everything on the site), in an excellent, clear and concise way. If "things linux" where explained in such a way, then the actual hardware wouldn't be a problem.

That's why I feel that such a large part of linux documentation is a waste of time - all the effort has gone into making the software clever, but not the doc's.

With this corrected, then any problems encountered by "n00b's" would be easily sorted out.

You only have to check out some of the books produced by "O'Really" , to see that while they, mostly, contain an absolute "plethora" of info, it's often presented in overly technical rhetoric.

Why ? don't know. Maybe geek snobbery.

But, I feel that "they" haven't gained anything by producing their info in this way, because those of you with "geek like tendancies", don't really need escalated rhetoric, in the same way, if the books where written in a more "straight forward" manner, then you would just pick out the salient bit's of info, while not feeling that you are being patronised, talked down to, whatever!

Just my

regards

John

i agree with bigjohn, the majority of documentation is either written for the total utter newbie and is useless for actually doing something or it is written for the systems programmer. there is very little documentation for the 'in the middle' people.

by bigjohn
Why ? don't know. Maybe geek snobbery.

i dont think thats fair, most true geeks are very accepting and are not snobbish in the slightest the ones who are, are more than likely being like that to cover the fact they dont know what there talking about.

i believe the documentation problem is caused by two reasons, the first being programmers like to program, they dont like to write documentation. the second reason is i believe(and i may be wrong) that most computer programmers or technically minded people in general have some sort of higer functioning autism or aspergers syndrome of varying degrees. people with these conditions find it very difficult to see things from other peoples point of view so can only write documentation that people with a similar knowledge to themselves can understand, and unfortunatly i cant see this changing in the future.

fair point bigjohn

when i meant the main problem is with hardware, i still stand by that. When a person installs Linux and it auto detects every single piece of hardware (like happened for me) i think its way easier to enjoy it and reap the benefits. If it doesnt work and they have to start recompiling kernels to get support for their hardware (as well as a few other things perhaps) then it can be near impossible for a newbie to get some odd piece of hardware to work. Linux (in some cases) has to settle for poorer device drivers, if the hardware manufacturers dont release any technical information.

iv never had to look up anything for getting my hardware to work on windows, it always just has. Thats very comforting for people. I do believe that it would be like that for Linux once the hardware manufacturers see a reason to do so, and then a main hurdle will be out the way.

If i came across some hardware which wasnt auto detected now, i wouldnt have problems doing a recompile with added whatever support to get it working. It wouldnt be fair for someone completely new to get it working. Most people that dont like Linux have tried it once, it hasnt recognised their printer and they have hated it since.

Documentation could be better, but it would be better to fix the root of the problem (hardware support) than concentrating on documentation.

You do make a point on documentation though, and it is (slowly) being addressed. Kev82 explained why documentation is lacking, but it will improve as more people get involved.

Im working on a site now, and am starting to add more content towards Linux. I plan to have some straight forward step by step HOWTO's on there that people can follow, whether its installing that difficult package, configuring that weird hardware or recompiling a new kernel. I do plan to start writing some GPL software, but dont feel im good enough quite yet

feel free to drop a hand and help improve the documentation

i disagree that hardware is the one major problem, i would say the three major problem causers are mplayer, wine, and troubleshooting which all come down to documentation or rather a lack of it. just look at the number of threads about mplayer, wine, or help its broke.

i think you are lucky to have not had any hardware problems in windows you should have tried getting things to work in nt4 or w95.

<<A Linux installation MUST be a no-brainer initially, so that a complete beginner like myself can at least get a fully working system. Then, I can explore the inner intricacies piece by piece and hopefully become an expert, and actually enjoy its charms(?!).>>

Most major distros ARE no brainers to install. 20 - 40 min and you are up and running......Sound, video, several office suites, database, several e-mail clients to choose from, 3 or more internet browsers, documentation out the wazoo, more configuration tools than you can shake a stick at, development tools, multiple window managers - KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc., server and client software, diskless workstations, ------all of this and more comes included as available options for the major distros, and all of it at one low price, or if you are already familiar with linux as a free download. You can even, with a little experience, roll your own distribution. Try that with MS, or for that matter, Apple.

Yes, software can be a real pain to get working, and yes, some of the configs absolutely byzantine, but when it is done, it is as solid as a rock and much easier to use on a day to day basis than Win9X, ME, Win2k or XP.

Keep MS for gaming and those proprietary apps, often with a propriety file format, that you find you cannot do without because even if you find an open source equivalent your data won't migrate well if at all. Linux may eventually supplant MS but it ain't gonna happen next year or within the next 5 years, if ever.
format for data

i dont mean its "the one" major problem, its just a major issue. Im not sure that being unable to install one particular program would stop people from using Linux. I mean, iv never ran Wine (although i do have it installed)

If people cant even get as far to run Linux due to hardware, that can be more damaging than not being able to run Wine.

At the end of the day everything is improving over time, and will do for the forseeable future. Linux has its short comings, but the gap is being bridged (and at a good pace too)

as for hardware issues, iv never had any with any operating system iv ever ran. Only little things, but usually got em fixed.

I give up.
After playing with Mandrake, SuSE, and Red Hat.
I am so frustrated with the difficulty to tweak out the GUI's
and do networking that I give up on Linux. I'll put it on the
back burner for about 3 more years while it tries to play
catchup to XP Pro.

XP Pro is so easy to do everything and I can buy bulk licenses
for about $109 XP Professional, $69 Home Edition

I do graphics, gaming, networking and run multiple programs
for web design on XP. Linux is where Windows was in 1994 as far
as ease of use and user friendliness is concerned.

Sorry guys, see you in about 3 years, maybe.

I still think Linux is designed by programmers for programmers.
XP Pro is made for the "end user".

Nonsense

Linux is an OS, you people have issues with the interface.

The commandline thing you type in. KDE for general use is easy as it comes (granted not as advanced as Windows in some respects ... the shortcut menu is my personal beef).

Installing a driver on ANY OS is an issue. Trust me, if you can do it on Windows you are up there with the top, call it 20% of users. if you can install Windows, you are up there in the top 7%. If you can do ANY linux install you are not that much more special, at probably 6% a 6% that might not have tried, but it isn't that hard.

The key is reading the screen. If you get the choice of 1) Select this to kill your install so far, or 2) install the kernel, or 3) install one of the other kernels, that might not work. Which do you pick?

Well, not 1. 2 if you want the thing to work, or 3 if you know what you're doing. It's easy.

Right then comes the issue of installing software. I have a CD here, compiled by myself, which list "glibc 2.x (too dumb to install)" ... can't do it, it will not compile. So i grab the tgz, or rpm, or deb and use it instead. And when i have a day to waste, i might see if i can get it happening. It doesn't affect my ability to get, XChat, with it's tag instruction "now type make and pray" to compile.

Linux is so flexible, whatever you want to do, there is a way regardless of your skill. It's when you THINK you want to be a "leet hacksaw" (read moron) that you run into a wall. Sure we learn that way, but taking the road of "wow finally installed linux for the first time, now i'll see if i can compile Apache from scratch" doesn't make sense.

Here comes the argument, that installing linux and wanting 3d accelleration is not necessarily easy. Sure it is. We've ALL done it, installed linux, tried to get XFree86 running and had the system bomb out on us. what do we do? we try again. Might take some time, but if you use logic, and read what it says, odds are you cut your time down to 10%.

Ok, so i'm a programmer, and ok my computer using friends give me crap along the lines of "I'll never try linux, i know how many hassles chakkerz has had". Sure there are hassles, but it isn't hassles with stuff i need. Xxhat 1.8.1 worked, i wanted 2.0.0 and i needed to fullfil dependencies. SuSE wouldn't play ball. Did i need the latest version of Xchat? No. Did i get it working after i read the errormessages and did what it said to do? YES.

Granted Linux is a learning exercise, but if you don't want to learn, then don't. Stick to a stock standard RedHat install, or Mandrake or whatever. Choose the one that is easy, don't jump into the deep end and go Gentoo or Debian. You don't go out installing RC1 of the Beta for MicroSoft's latest offering do you? why not? cause it's buggy (for that matter so is it's actual release). Same with Linux.

Certain distros are behind, in versions cause they are aiming for stability, that doesn't mean they are easy to use. Stable, yes, Polished, no. Others are polished but not as stable. YOU have to know what you want, Linus doesn't know what you want, i doubt he knows you or cares about what you want, he wants a stable OS, as does the rest of the community, not someone whining they miss their MS install wizard (or whatever it's called).

true true chakkerz

<<XP Pro is so easy to do everything and I can buy bulk licenses
for about $109 XP Professional, $69 Home Edition

I do graphics, gaming, networking and run multiple programs
for web design on XP. Linux is where Windows was in 1994 as far
as ease of use and user friendliness is concerned.

Sorry guys, see you in about 3 years, maybe.>>

While Linux is for the most part free, it is not without price. It is a feature rich highly configurable computing environment for single user, multi user, server, client, cluster, smp, and 32 or 64 bit capable. The price, of course, is that you must learn to do things a little differently. Yes, some installs can be a little difficult, but most are as easy as cliicking on an RPM file, or typing apt-get "program name" on the command line or typing tar -xvzf "program name " to install new software. Not much of anything more difficult than that. Once you are past the initial learning curve, you will find Linux much easier to use than MS. No BSOD, no constant rebooting, no 'swiss cheese' effect re: viruses and worms, no memory issues, no compability issues from one version to the next, or even, for that matter, from 1 distro to the next. Linux can be re-installed or a different distro installed without losing valuable data or installed user software, very easy to administer as opposed to MS, secure, and the list just goes on and on and on. Any desktop version of Linux is an upgrade from any version of Windows save XP Pro, and there are at least 2 or 3 distros that are at least on a par with XP Pro. With the current rate of development(you would not believe the difference in SuSE, Redhat, or Mandrake, for example, between 1999 and today)Linux stands poised to easily outdistance MS.

Linux is like any other product on the market: you have to earn it. The difference is that the coin for MS is your hard earned dollars and the the coin for Linux is climbing the learning curve. We each have to decide which coin we wish to spend.

i'm a linux newbie...if I wanted it easy I wouldv'e stuck with windoze

<<i'm a linux newbie...if I wanted it easy I wouldv'e stuck with windoze>>

The point I was trying to make is that Linux, once you have climbed the curve, is easier than MS.

The problem with Linux is that it doesn't have much support. There aren't many drivers around. That's why many people complain that the mouse wheel doesnt' work, there is no sound, etc, (which is my case). I already tried the suggestions mentioned in this forum but with no success. Now I am waiting for those companies to release drivers for my mouse and my sound card.

I believe Linux is more powerful and stable than Windows, but Linux will never present any serious threat to Windows unless it becomes user-friendly. That's the key, and there is nothing wrong in using an user-friendly OS.

I think Red Hat or Suse can do it. Making Linux user-friendly is the key to take market from Microsoft. Once Linux gains territory, companies will give it more support.