Here's my problem:
You here it all the time, Linux is more stable than Windows, Linux is faster than windows, the software is so much better etc... But my Linux experience is completely different, most of the time when I connect to the internet I'm disconnected within five minutes the only error being along the lines of "Could not read /etc/ppp/options: permission denied" and I connect with root! and when i check the permissions they read owner root with permissions at 755, another problem I have is I have a Lexmark X73 and I have the choice of using cups+gimp-print or cups+foomatic+drv_z42 and it doesn't matter which drivers I use a vast majority of the time my printer will start to print only to stop half way through the page and once Linux actually froze while printing not X11 but the kernel itself and my last major problem is kde crashing during startup and the only way to fix this is reinstalling kde. I just don't get it al I here is how great linux is but I don't have any of these problems with Windows XP I'll be honest Windows 98 crashes all the time but I just don't get nearly as much problems with Windows XP.

Now finally the questions:
Am I the only person in the whole universe that has these problems? Am I the only person in the universe that linux crashes on? Does anyone out there have any similar experiences that they can relate too? Or am I the only one out there?

jtX,

In short, no. You are not the only one. My experience is that Linux is more stable. There always seems to be the occasion when nothing wants to work though. I don't know that I can help to much, but I can offer some suggestions.

First, check to make sure all your hardware is supported by the distro you are using. The distros site should be able to help out with that. Also, it may be worth while to try a different distro. I have heard of people having zero luck with RH and Mandrake works great. (also vis-versa)

I know I can't help with KDE. I have never used it. I am an XFce fan because of how light and feature full it is. You may want to look at other desktops, or look for updates to KDE.

For your modem dial in problem, your user needs to be added to the ppp group to dial in. This would be why root can do it but your user can not. If your user is already in the ppp group then someone else will have to offer a suggestion.

In my linux lifetime, I have so far had good luck. I have had the time or two when unexplained things seemed to be broken though. My usual fix as a clean HD wipe and install. Usually with fresh ISOs if possible. I have rarely found the problems to be Linux, but rather configuration or corruption problems.

I hope you solve your problems, or at least get them to disappear. Linux still involves some tweaking and working with, but I have found it to be more than worth it.



PhilD

Scratched Out

i suggest you give redhat 9 a try. I swear it will resolve ALL hardware issues on install, except for ati 9x00 radeons

it has excellent hardware detection, driver installation, and configuration. It;s rock solid, and shouldnt be a problem

btw, are you new to linux, because slackware is one of the WORST distros to start on, however its very good for pros.

I don't want to start a flame war here, but I'm going to seriously disagree with you on this one. I ran RedHat for about a year and while it worked, I never really learned much about Linux. And what little I did learn usually revolved around RPM's blowing big, meaty chunks.

Since I switched to Slackware a few months ago, I've been able to develop a system that is more stable and has more software available that under RH and I understand what they system is doing (well, most of the time. Ok, at least some of the time )

The only thing "difficult" about Slackware is that you actually have to RTFM. And that ain't a bad thing.....

well its your own fault if you dont learn anything about linux with ANY distro...

btw im not like anti-slack or something, i know they got the all the "big guns" and the "pros" and an insanely dedicated following, but distros like slack, gentoo, and some other, less popular ones just ARENT for newbies...if the whole forum disagrees with me, well, im not losing any sleep over it

I'm just glad to hear that other people out there have simialar problems and that there's good people out there willing to help and give support. It makes me feel a little better that I'm not alone.

RedHat and Mandrake are undergoing a lot of changes now. They are working hard to move into the desktop market. This is almost certainly going to cause a lot of things to be in an unstable state compared to the more tested linux applications. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that RH 7.3 is still the most stable version I have.

If you look at RedHat's Enterprise edition, I think it's still at 7.2

Slackware, in my opinion has some great scripts. It's easy to install and configure. It works.

I really hate to say this but theres still some things that are really bothering me about the linux kernel itself. I have a PCT789T-C1 winmodem chipset and the drivers that it uses are kernel modules and they happen to have a bug in them that can sometimes make the modem hang while dialing out. The documentation about them acknowledges this bug and recommends that the modules be removed, reinserted and the modem should redial just fine but when the modem hangs on my machine the kernel freezes up and to make matters worse this happens with the redhat 8 default kernel (2.4.18-4) the slackware default kernel (2.4.20) and any recompiled kernel as well and nowhere does the pctel driver faq mention the kernel crashing when the modem hangs and I have not found any one else suffering from this problem so I'm in the process of buying an external hardware controlled modem which hopefully this won't happen on but now I wonder because this isn't the only instance of the linux kernel crashing on me, so far it's only happened once while printing and happened a couple times while coming out of standby (which you could blame on a buggy bios) but unfortunately the only other way to have power saving features is to incorporate acpi which is still in an experimental state and lacking decent documentation. If someone could just tell me how to at least have my hard drive spin down after 10 min. of inactivity I would be happy. I know this will anger some hardcore linux users out there but based on my experience there's no way in my mind that the linux kernel is any more stable than Windows XP and before anyone I offended out there tries to accuse me of having defective hardware I've had Windows XP download for a week straight without once having to reboot. There I feel better.

It's true some hardware is just not supported. Some may have limited support.

This is unfortunate, but it's hard to support every piece of hardware if you don't have details about the hardware or if it just has not been done yet.

I am thinking that you could apply this to windows as well. Let's say for instance you have a sun sparc station and you go out and buy a copy of windows to install on it. For some reason it just does not work.

I have a machine that only goes down when the power goes off long enough to run the UPS battery down.

It is running RedHat. It is downloading and uploading every bit of data that goes to and from my house, and handles my mail. APM seems to work fine, hard drives spin down when not in use, screen blanks, etc. It has a modem and can receive faxes, or be used as a dialin server to obtain access to lan or internet.

The system is kept up to date using RedHat up2date

As far as I can tell it will never need to be rebooted. Although one day it will probably go down with a power outage. Oh well, it will be a good time to start using the new kernel that's installed but never used yet.

I also have XP which seems like a pretty stable system. I am not very pleased that it needs to be rebooted everytime there is even the slightest update to fix some bug. However when you are dealing with a registry that's what you must do. Windows server could probably do what I'm doing with my linux box, but it's very expensive, vunerable to viruses, and ICS sucks.