Hey kids~

silly OS.

Well, there are always casualties!

I can't believe, though, that with only 17 posts, you're posting here that you're giving up! Sheesh! You have obviously not used the resources in this particular place that well! I'm guessing that you have an IDE CD-burner - they're not hard to get working at all! 6 months to get Flash enabled? If you use a browser that's based on Gecko (i.e. mozilla/galeon/nutscrape) then it's a piece of cake! As for your RIO! Don't blame the OS - the company that makes your device are more than capable of writing a program that'll do it... they just choose not to!

You may think that it's not good as a workstation, but I can tell you that it is! I've been using Linux as a workstation for ages now - I don't have a single Linux machine that runs as a server!

Hey kid finger51, if any of those distro's you named where actually used by one or two ppl, undocumented, unsupported and never mentioned on websites, newsgroups, mailinglists, irc, etc, etc then your arguments would find some ground.
Now they simply don't (ok, xcept the Rio thing). But then "having bragging rights" isn't the best attitude IMO to start learning something new.

Sorry to see you give up.

I run Linux solely on my old, home laptop. Not everything was simple, but most of it did work as advertised.

Did I do my homework? Darn right. I knew that some modems could be a problem, because I read about in my searches. So I got a PCMCIA modem that worked like a champ as soon as I plugged it in.

Did I visit Linux help sites, search Google, go to my distros Web site, find out where other people had success/no success? Got that right.

I'v'e had problems running Windoze, too. But, I haven't thrown Windoze away, my kids find it useful.

Still, sorry to see you give up.

"As he slowly faded into the setting Sun, he gave up the ghost without so much as a whimper."

I will still be here when you come back buddy

Good luck though, and at least you don't have the "go to he!!" attitude, that's good. When you do come back you might wanna think about giving another distro a try, maybe something a little less "rpm" ish.

Cool

I personally find working with linux is a lot easier than working with UNIX (i.e. AIX, Solaris, etc.). I would even describe linux with the term "user friendly" compared to those OSes. But I agree it may not be ready for the Masses. It all depends on what it is you are trying to do. I still have win2000 on my laptop for everyday use, but to compare a Win2000 server to any linux or UNIX server would be ludicrous. I'd keep at it finger51. The more you understand it, the more you'll like it.

I agree with most of you. The really sad part of it all. Is Linux WASNT so easy about 2 years ago. I started when RedHat was at 4.0. When MKlinux was still in DR stages. Linux as a whole has gotten so simple to setup and use its not even funny. I remmeber having to setup Xwindows before it would boot. Having to edit files on the command prompt. Hell i used more of the command Prompt and programs within it more often then i use Xwindows. In it all, if you want to learn, and arnt just doing it for somthing else other then windows, or a status symbol, then you will suceed.

The big upside to linux is that you can get it to do ANYTHING you want. The Masses don't want to do anything. They wont to do a small subset of "anything". The masses don't want to work for it. They just want it handed to them on a plate... even if they have to pay for it. If fact when they get what they want they feel like they got what they paid for. It would be interesting to hold up the list of "Wizards" for windows beside the list of "Wizards" for linux.

Windows was designed to be compatible with most hardware out there along with flash and other programs. There is a trade-off though if the OS is really compatible then it won't be as stable or secure so you have to weigh the two options out do you want stability or compatibility? Personally this is why I have 2 computers one for straight Windows the other for Wndows, Redhat7.2, Mandrake 8.2 so I can experiment with the 2 Linux Distros and then boot back into Windows for a comparision of speed. Windows is easier to me but that is all I have known until I gave Linux a shot Linux is harder to learn to me because I'm older now and can't sit down and just whack at the keyboard like back in the DOS days. What Distro were you trying on your desktop? I hear that Mandrake 9.0 is really good I like Mandy 8.2 myself. Before you go I would like to ask you to try it once more perhaps as a dual-boot on your current desktop or maybe pickup a used PC just for Linux desktop. I use both Windows & Linux and still have problems with both so there is nothing perfect out there.

Bubba169

-17 posts on this site, there are lots of other forums I've posted to... (anandtech, linuxnewbie, sysopt, sharkey...more)
-yeah, you're right, its an IDE burner (which worked immediately after installing XP and 2k)
-re:flash - this is a perfect example of linux sillyness "if you used..." why should I use a browser that doesn't come with my operating system? Why am I required to download and install (with a prayer) ANOTHER browser? hey thats cool I can now see the flash animation. But now I can't use PHP, or now I can't get java to work... so I can use gecko for my flash sites, but not my bank or whatever... this is just silly.
-re:RIO - show me a portable with the same capabilities as my RIO 500 that has drivers and software written for linux BY THE SAME COMPANY THAT MAKES THE DEVICE (Not some guy that made an rpm for his totally convoluted install of debian/slack/whatever)
and I will paypal you $10.

And on that same note: Why would a company invest time and more importantly money into developing drivers for an OS which would probably fail anyway because there are so many different distros of linux with no standardization of directory structure? So they could have bragging rights for making software that less than 5% of the market will find helpful? I don't blame them.

My last point is the heart of why linux is failing as a workstation OS.

OK, so we're going to get into quoting wars, are we?In your opinion, Linux is failing as a workstation OS. Yours is not the only one, I might remind you! And as for the rest of your post:
- 17 posts, yeah! You may have posted elsewhere, but from what you are saying, you have obviously not listened/read a single word of the advice given! You have obviously not done any research off your own back! You are obviously quite lazy!
- IDE burner! I have one and guess what! It worked straight away! I didn't need to do any tweaking, or fiddling, or anything of that ilk, I just installed the OS, lo and behold the thing works! I happen to know exactly why it works too, but that's beside the point - I don't need to know. Even if it didn't work straight away, I can almost guarantee that it'd only take around 3 or 4 commands to get it to work!
- Galeon comes as a part of most distros these days! Unless you're insisting on running something out of the ark, you're gonna have it! It takes at most 4 commands to install it, it works absolutely fine with PHP... God knows, most servers run LAMP systems, or something similar... let's analyse it, shall we? Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. I think it can cope! And as for you bank! The only reason that you can't use it is because you haven't got it right! You can learn!
- I'll say 1 word for you: KERNEL! Sure, most companies don't write drivers for their own hardware because most people won't be using Linux, but that's no reason to slate the OS. There are thousands, if not millions of people involved in getting the 'drivers' right for each piece of kit! Just as an example - please show me some obscure hardware, like an Atari machine, that can run Win2k? The OS itself is more than capable, it's the user that isn't!
- Bragging point! You really just don't get it, do you! May I suggest that you go away into some dark corner and just leave computers alone completely? If you think that running a piece of software is something to brag about, you are seriously disturbed!

-But don't get me wrong, I'm keeping the server.

- and I think 'bragging rights' was not what I really meant. It just seems like all the linux nuts out there REALLY think linux is the end all be all OS... to the point that they (many, not all) get really snooty about it. I thought if it was 'all that' then I needed to give it a shot. And I think I gave three distros (RH, Mandrake and SuSE) a fair try --

I think the whole 'working for it' camp needs to rethink what it is people actually do while using their computers. The attitude seems like they are saying 'well if you can't gunzip tar-xpf ./configure make make install /[option] /switch' then you don't deserve to be using a computer.' Or "Boy you 'wizard dependent' users are so lame ...blahblahblah'
That camp uses computers for the sake of configuring. tweaking. And then looks down on people who want to use their computers for watching movies, burning cd's, writing letters and surfing.

I feel like I've been 'configuring' for the last six months instead of USING.

I reinstalled Slackware on my main machine a few days ago, a couple of hours of configuring.. and I'm done.. hmmm.. why months of configuring ?? I'm not trying to brag or anything cause I got mine working in one night, just curious why it would take someone so long to get their machine working how they want but never get it working right ??

But hey guys, lets not get this out of hand though..

Watching movies... mplayer. It's really not that hard.
Burning CDs, add hdx=ide-scsi to your lilo.conf, re-run lilo and reboot. Then use something like Eroaster. Most newer distros you won't need to fiddle with your lilo.conf file - it does it for you.
Writing letters - many WPs, and OpenOffice aswell - can't get any closer to MS Office if you tried!
Surfing - Galeon is rock solid and works a treat. It's fast, flexible (some degree of skinning, if that floats your boat), compatible and fast - oh, I already mentioned that

If that's all you want to do, then Linux really is fine as a workstation. If you want to play the latest installment of some game, then you're gonna have problems. I still keep Windows around as my games console - so I'm not really a die-hard Linux prat.

I appologize if I came across as a bit arrogant above - it seemed that you haven't really given Linux a fair try. The things that you've mentioned really are not hard to solve. Give us a try