What happened to Linux?
 

After a hiatus from Linux, I saw that Slack 13 had come out and I was very excited to try it. My word it seems everything is on the downward, because after fighting over it seeing my hard drives, last block is past the final block or something like that. I finally managed to clear that problem up, then after about a 30+minute wait it finishes everything up, and I go to boot it up, which then I come to find out that even though my keyboard/mouse worked during install doesn't mean it will function in the live environment. Not really want to dive into that, I decided then to give Debian Lenny a try since I hadn't messed with that in a while. Turns out i386 doesn't work for me even though it somewhat did with Slack, so I then have to download the amd64. Using amd64 the netinst went well, except just as I thought nothing works with that due to a mismatch of architecture. I attempted using the Skype Ubuntu 64 package, but that causes a whole new set of issues in itself.

This is a worthless post, but still whatever happened to the Athlon Xp days when architecture only mattered if you were on a sparc box or using a G4. Better yet, why hasn't widespread support for 64 come out because minus some home servers most everything is 64.

I've been having similar thoughts lately. The latest versions of my favorite distributions and window managers are irritating to use. New designs. New engineering philosophies. Installers that don't work or that leave things like dual boot up to the end user to configure. GRUB2 is a disaster inasmuch as it has become complicated to configure when GRUB was simple. KDE4 is horrid. My critical applications like Kontact don't even work properly on KDE4. I've had to switch to Gnome, which I hate. It seems that there is a movement toward bad decisions. I think Microsoft has infiltrated the design teams and is making the distributions go down a bad path. I'm pretty disgusted with the current state of things.

On the plus side it seems that Adobe is making a 64 bit Flash player for Linux. (currently in beta release) And it seems that the Linux base software keeps getting better. Device support seems to be improving all the time. More hardware and software manufacturers are coming on board with native Linux versions of their applications and native Linux drivers for their hardware.

I suppose I should just create my own distribution and my own window manager. That is, after all, the Linux way.

I kind of agree with this *to a degree*. I have had my share of Linux hardships -- brickings of the X server, endless X restarts (take Arch and Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 5 for instance), wireless adapter woes, upgrade panics, kernel oopses, and plenty of other headaches. But did that stop me?! No!

Besides, those oopses just make you find out how to fix them. And even if you can't, report bugs! I do all the time.

afaik, the i386 image should work, even if you're using an AMD processor. You could also try debian squeeze (the testing branch) instead of lenny; it has newer software and a newer kernel, so if there's a hardware problem, there are more chances squeeze have it fixed.

Regards.

I trust you won't mind me pointing out that Linux is the kernel.
Lots of bad decisions are made by projects, distros. The kernel oops' can legitimately be ascribed to Linux. For the rest blame the appropriate owners/devs.

Oh wow, I did not even think about that. Yes you are right, my apologies LQ users, it would have been more appropriate to say "What has happened to Linux Distro's"

As far as the i386 Debian not working, would get to mmoconfig(can't remember precisely) then just wouldn't move forward or do anything for that matter.

What happened ? They changed, so you adapt or roll back.

Things for GNOME users have gotten worse too. You used to right click on a thumbdrive, the menu popped up right away, not in 10 seconds. And I used to be able to unmount individual partitions on my thumbdrives from GNOME, but no longer. I now need to use "umount /media/*".
And personally, GNOME shell seems terrible. Looks like something for a netbook, not your badass looking desktop. Also, I do not have a 64-bit machine in the house. All 32-bit machines of various speeds. So that myth is mutilated and it's well microwaved head on a pike outside my crappy little apartment.

Hi,

One size doesn't fit all! Users need to know their hardware and mate to a specific GNU/Linux. Sometimes a user can get lucky and the hardware is recognized then everything is loaded. Tweaked without intervention. Of course I'm speaking of 'hold your hand GNU/Linux'. (Linux is Not Windows).
:hattip:

Whats the problem here,I mean you can have as stable a system as you want and you can have a cutting edge one as well... If everything in GNU Linux just worked,where would all the fun be... LOL BSD maybe !

No problem using linux here and have no intentions of going back to "pencil and paper" days either.
You got to roll with the punches, jump in there and get a taste of the action. Have fun while you're
at it. "I remember when this was all woods and open fields now look...." Get over it those days are gone
and not coming back any time soon. :)

phil

I personally think that what happened to Linux is that it's been getting progressively more awesome.
I remember starting out with Mandrake 8, back when that was what passed for "most user-friendly distro around". It kinda-sorta worked at basic tasks, but when I had to install new software or update or do anything even slightly tinkery it'd turn out into a nasty, broken mess that eventually made me swear off Linux altogether. When I came back to it, after several years, Ubuntu was all the rage, then in version 8.04. It worked a lot better than I remembered (and the first time I tried apt-get I must have yelled in delight), but it still had trouble with flash video and occasional dependency issues and video drivers for my laptop and whatnot. Then, looking for better flash, I installed Debian, and... well I can't say I found Nirvana, cos Debian can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, but by and large everything Just Worked - including flash. I'm now running Debian Squeeze AMD64 on my main box, first time I try 64-bit Linux, and though it was a bit of a rocky start (apparently the stock GUI settings really don't like my Radeon HD4770) now everything works better than it ever has.

And marvel of marvels, from version 10 even Ubuntu now works properly. Today I've installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.4 on my old EeePC 701 (to be sold to a friend), and it was the most painless Linux install I've ever performed. I've barely had to do anything - and if I had let it self-partition I wouldn't have had to do anything at all. Almost makes me want to keep the tiny thing for myself, despite having a much more capable 1005HA as my mobile system.

On the other hand, I do see a bit of a tendency to pander to the mac-style "oooh me want eye candy" demographic, especially in Ubuntu and its (IMHO) boneheaded decision to move to Unity. I tried UNR 10.10 with Unity on the EeePC 701 before downgrading to 10.4, and it was a friggin' nightmare. Sluggish, resource-intensive, unclear and just plain unpleasant to use - exactly the opposite of what a user interface should be.
But then, that's the beauty of having such a wide choice of versions and packages: nobody forces me to undergo the torture of using Unity if I don't want to.

And then there's the little gem known as Puppy, which since version 5 supports Ubuntu packages and so has defeated its main issue (lack of available software) and can now be made to work for pretty much anyone... though I still think the way it handles the desktop is retarded.

And also plenty other distros that I haven't yet tried (they tell me great things about Arch; I'll probably give it a go one of these days).

Summing up, I think that a lot more good than bad has happened to Linux recently, and I'm looking forward to a healthy continuation of this trend.