the only reason im using m$ xp is because i cant afford mac and im finding some serious issues with linux, that experienced users probably have no problems with, but for a "stereotypical pothead" who is often compared to cheech or ozzy, these things might cause problems.

1. Great difficulty instaling software i find on the net, i dont know how to compile, and i cant be bothered. as for rpms ect. most the time they dont work. Seriously is it so difficult to make a self installing file for all distros, if m$ dose it you should too.

2. Drivers, i got to admit u linux ppl have done a great job, only 1 prob so far, my netgear wireless pci card, found a driver online but didint manage to install it, i need internet.

3. New technologies, SLI...dose it work yet?

4. Even tho this is just a app, crossover...get itunes and office 2003 pro workin better.

5. Software, dvd decrypter, dvd shrink, alcohol 120, nero, shareaza, would be nice to have linux alternatives to these, that are just as easy to use.

6. THE FILE SYSTEM, dev, mnt, usr.......This requires change, i get lost instantly.....either use understandable named like in xp, or just put it all in 1 big folder under SYSTEM like in osx.

7. Updates, figure out a effective way of updating everything.

8. Standardize, even tho this would have some downsides, it would however make solving these problems easier.

Part from that great work, keep it up!

If you dissagree, or have anything to add please do so.

Please read these links in this exact order:

http://www.psychocats.net/essays/winuxinstall.php
http://www.psychocats.net/essays/linuxtroll.php
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

^^^^^^^^^aysiu great post.

insomniak420, it might help if you also post what distro your using. i have netgear so depending on your setup i might be able to help you. the search on this forum is great and you can find answers faster than waiting for someone to post.

most distors have URPMI or YUM. on mandriva URPMI --auto-delect would update your system after you set your mediums.
having multiple file systems does take some getting use to but its that way for a reason. security. only the root can access certain things, this is why you wont get a virus.
as far as software alternatives. K3b is a great program and there are many others. if your still on XP why not duel boot till you get use to the linux?

1. Since you are using an rpm based distro, I would shy away from installing from source - the rpm database isn't aware of them and you [b]will[/get] problems further down the line. Use apt4rpm/synaptic or YUM or urpmi to install.

Having said that, why can't you be bothered to learn "./configure, make, make install"? It's hardly rocket surgery.

2. What model of card?

3. SLI? Was ist das?

4. Crossover is, indeed, a great app. Try Wine if you don't want to pay for the full version of X-over. Check out www.frankscorner.org for wine help

5. There are far more versions of equivalent software to Windows software than I can list here. Check www.sourceforge.net or www.freshmeat.net

6. Linux is very similar to Unix and shares the very long history. Why should we change? Go to www.tldp.org and our own Tutorial section to learn about the filesystem.

7. We have update methods. In fact, every distro has it's own way of doing it. apt-get, swaret, slackpkg, portage, pacman and many others. They are, I'm afraid, superior to the one used in Windows as we can upgrade from multiple sources.

8. Standardising has been tried and failed miserably. It's just not wanted or needed. Google for "LSB" and/or "Linux Standards Base"

Welcome to LQ

What makes you think so?

If you're going to make an issue out of this, please do so in this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=336407

or this one

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/335897

The ground has been covered many times.

You may also be interested in the Linux Standard Base Project and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

Das Internet is nicht fuer gefingerclickend und giffengrabben. Ist easy droppenpacket der Routers und overloaden der Backbone mit der spammen und der me-tooen. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei die Dummkopfen. Die mausklicken Sichtseeren keepen das Bandwidth-spewen Hands in die Pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das cursorblinken.

floppy

aysiu,
funny links, lol
"For example, if you use Windows-only software, are a big fan of every commercial computer game that comes out, and have a winmodem, Linux isn't for you. If, however, like the majority of computer users, you do what I call the "basic six," you'll be happy with Linux:

1. Check email/instant message
2. Surf the internet
3. Organize pictures
4. Listen to music
5. Word process
6. Play silly games (Solitaire, Tetris)"

but who said linux isint for hardcore gaming freaks, eg, kurumingames linux.


crAckZ,
ive tried loads of distros, i got a pile of 50 cds full of distros(good internet connection :-) ), ubuntu, knoppix, mandrake(mandriva), xsandros, debian....................
and my wNet card is, PCI Netgear Wlan 54Mbps WG311IS

XavierP,
1. is it really that hard to make a self installing package, (if M$ can do it i dont see why you cant, its not as tho self instaling is patented)
3. SLI = Scalable Link Interface, allows you to connect more than one graphics card. and soon there will be crossfire, ati's version of sli.
4. Who said i pay for it.
6. I know the history, but still it cant be that hard to make a distro with a file system that is a bit easyier to navigate for a less experienced user, like having folders named Program Files and SYSTEM, im not saying make it like windows(that would be bad)but instead a bit from osx, abit from xp but still keep it linux.
7. im aware of that, but automatic updates would b nice.
8. There has actually been some talk of trade-marking the linux name, that would standerdise to some extent.


the best distro i tried so far was kurumingames, but i could never figure out how to make it speak english, and even that had the problems i mentioned.

as for drivers, i blame the hardware manufacturers for not developing free open source drivers.

Never compile anything in Linux yet, never bother to get a driver either, also couldn't kick start the wireless, don't see a need to update as new versions are coming out almost weekly but have about 40 in the box.

I have this "Beggar can't be a chooser" mentality and so haven't got the urge to to expect Linux to support SLi technology when it is too expensive to afford it today. People who spent time in pushing the Linux frontier are volunteers and possbly have to do something else in the day time to feed themselves.

The advantage of round up a large number of Linux to boot them is a standard pattern can emerge and getting around isn't as hard as one led to believe.

May be the right strategy is bed with whatever distro that gives you the most of the box and have a fling with the others to get the missing bits. 5Gb hdd space space is all a distro would dream of have a home in.

They are many nice things about Linux for a DOS/Windows users. An example is its boot loaders. One can dig out all the dead DOS/Windows, install them in the box and boot them along side with XP and all the Linux, a feat even M$ could never imagine because it can even be done with a bootable Linux floppy. Perhaps you haven't found out despite Linux can't write a NTFS partition but it can still clone a bootable XP.

If you have compared Koppix, Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva with XP about the functionalties and power may be you will not be as disappointed as you are now.

insomniak420

1. It's not that hard, no. RPM files, to an extent do it. The thing is that different programs have different requirements. If you installed, say, Slackware with absolutely minimal packages and then tried to autoinstall, you would be missing a hell of a lot of packages. These are also known as "dependencies". Because Windows is made by just one company, they have the luxury of forcing a load of files you may not need on you. That means that most of the dependencies are met instantly and the 2 or 3 that aren't can be packaged by the software writer. The simple "./configure, make, make install" means that the program is built for your system and will work well.

3. Dunno. You'd have to talk to ATi about that. They are the only ones who can decide if they want it to work under *nix

4. Typical Windows user I'm afraid. In the Linux community, we support each other. That often means monetarily. Cracking or stealing extremely cheap (often next to no cost) software is a big no no. Because of the relatively low usage of *nix, not paying can drive companies under.

6. Linspire is the best distro for you. Otherwise, do what the rest of us do - RTFM, understand and learn

7. We have automatic updates - SuSE has YOU, the Red Hat distros have Up2Date and so on. The rest of us make do with doing it by hand or setting up a cron job.

8. Linux is trademarked. I don't see how that would help standardisation - it's been done to protect the integrity of the name.

wooo....right....freespire....thanx
gonna try that assoon as possible,

3. Now, I'm not really a "credible source" here, I admit. As far as SLI goes, I don't believe that nVidia has Linux drivers that support it yet. I seem to remember seeing somewhere that SLI support won't come until the 1.0-8xxx driver series comes out; possibly sometime by the end of this year. However, nVidia is notoriously good (much better than ATI; although ATI is getting better as well) at providing Linux driver support. You can download any nVidia drivers you need here. The driver installer requires that you do it without X running, and you have to edit your X configuration file as well; the docs that come with the installer tell you all about it. Alternatively you could just get a single 7800GTX (w00t) which can apparently outperform a pair of 6800GT's -- assuming you can tell the difference between playing Doom 3 at 900 and 1200 FPS, of course...

5. With regards to the specific software you mentioned, http://www.videohelp.com/tools is a really good resource for finding DVD ripping and video editing tools and stuff for Linux. The site isn't devoted to Linux but it isn't devoted to Windows/OSX either. It was invaluable to me when I was learning how to do video editting/encoding and DVD (not just video) ripping under Linux. If you want video encoding and playing software, personally I think ffmpeg and mplayer are by far the best applications for those tasks, respectively -- though some people will swear by mencoder instead of ffmpeg. Be forewarned, they are command line based... and have tons of options. But they are well documented and, once you learn them, extremely powerful and flexible. If you are into video editting, Premiere/Final Cut Pro style, you're probably going to be disappointed by the lack of that particular type of software on Linux. There's some stuff out there but it's not nearly as good; if that is what you are doing then you may want to look into OS X instead -- Tiger is out for Intel chips nowadays.

6. As far as using "understandable names" goes -- the names are understandable to somebody who has learned what they mean. There's a bit of a learning process similar to what you went through the very first time you used Windows. It just takes some getting used to, it's not set up the same way as the OS you are used to is set up. Check out aysiu's links (the filesystem standard ones); they're good sources of information to get you started.

7. The various autoupdate systems were already mentioned above. Personally I really like apt-get, which comes with the Debian distribution. That may just be because I'm used to using it with Fink on OS X, though. For distributions with yum, somebody on this forum pointed me to the Yum Extender the other day; a nice graphical interface to that particular utility. Google for it if you use yum, it should be easy to find.

8. "Standardize" is too general of a demand to make. There's a huge difference between a standard such as AGP (which is supported by Linux) and having, say, a standard GUI widget toolkit (which Windows has but Linux doesn't). There are some things with Linux that you just have to get used to. Pick a distribution you like and learn how it is set up; then stick with it until you're just as good at using it as you are at using Windows.

You're other points were either already addressed or I don't know anything about them.

Hope you can get something out of this to make things smoother,
Jason