Linux - NewsThis forum is for original Linux News. If you'd like to write content for LQ, feel free to contact us.
All threads in the forum need to be approved before they will appear.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I didn't do much with computers until grad school. (Not beyond email, Finale, and word processing.) My best friend during my Master's was a big computer geek. (Truth be told, he still is.) He offhandedly mentioned that there was another choice besides Windows and Apple back then. I was curious, and another friend (who later became my fiancé) traded an old computer for a loaf of homemade bread and shipping costs. April 23, 2000 my best friend helped me put Debian on it. (And I discovered that the other friend I got the computer from thought of me as more than a friend, but that's another story for another post. )
Not long after that my windows box went belly up, and I moved to do my doctorate. I didn't have much (read: any) money, so I made do with computers Frankensteined from the charity of friends and Boeing Surplus. I certainly didn't have the money for Windows, and I doubt it would've ran on the computers I cobbled together. When I started the DMA, I was taking an intro to computer music class, figuring I'd at least need some common ground with students who might be working in that medium. I got hooked, and all the tools we were using (csound, LISP) existed as ports to Linux. I switched to Slackware around version 9.1, and still use it. I had an ill-fated few months where I used Arch, but I ran screaming for Slackware when I couldn't take it anymore. I used an LFS install for a few months between Debian and Slackware, but maintaining your own distro is really a full time job (props to the Slackware crew), and I just didn't have time for it and a dissertation.
Linux was a life-saver. How can anyone justify putting hundreds of dollars into the OS if you are building a computer from scratch or refurbishing/upgrading one to save money? It's a no-brainer.
I first got into Linux out of need. I had begun to go through Tannenbaum's book on Operating System Design (out of fascination, more than anything else) and, at the same time, discovered a system "in development" called Coherent which was an excellent learning tool, but, at the time, had no tcp/ip stack. Just after the release of the 1.0 kernel, I found and installed yggdrasil and the rest is history. As I recall, it was 1994. I have been a Linux Evangelist ever since.
My only quarrel with Linux and the Linux Developers is the inability, on their part, to develop an environment which would allow a novice, untrained User to successfully use Linux as a Desktop System - and by "successfully use" I mean, not only install and use the operating system, but add software WITHOUT the need to go to a command line. Apple did it - they implemented their Mac environment over BSD Unix so that Mac Users are just at home in OS X as they were in earlier versions of their O/S. Why cannot Linux is beyond me.
Distribution: Xubuntu 17.10, Android 5.0.2, Android 7.1.1, Trisquel 7.0 Mini
Posts: 86
Rep:
Quote:
My only quarrel with Linux and the Linux Developers is the inability, on their part, to develop an environment which would allow a novice, untrained User to successfully use Linux as a Desktop System - and by "successfully use" I mean, not only install and use the operating system, but add software WITHOUT the need to go to a command line. Apple did it - they implemented their Mac environment over BSD Unix so that Mac Users are just at home in OS X as they were in earlier versions of their O/S. Why cannot Linux is beyond me.
I'm not sure I understand you, what with Synaptic etc. the only thing I need to add via the console is the updates of Calibre.
Location: Northeastern Michigan, where Carhartt is a Designer Label
Distribution: Slackware 32- & 64-bit Stable
Posts: 3,541
Rep:
I (kinda) have to agree with @brashley46: I've a friend that was given a Dell notebook (I think that's what it is, it's a like a little laptop sort of gadget) with Xubuntu installed. It boots, it auto connects to her wi-fi, comes up running Xfce and it's click-'n'-drool from there. Has Firefox, has Thunderbird (I insisted that she adopt those on her Win7 desktop, so those are OK), has OpenOffice, pretty much does everything invisibly that needs doing. She moves easily from Win7 to Xfce, thing updates itself (almost daily it seems).
I'm not all that impressed with it -- it does work, it works well, but I like having control and it's real hard to get control of the thing which seems to be common with any of the 'buntus.' But the important thing is that it's invisible to the user and she's happy using it.
It seems I've misspoken about the lack of a "usable" GUI environment for Linux - I suppose that my focus on my chosen O/S has limited my vision into the rest of "Linux" and the many distros out there. I'm currently running openSuSE 13.1 as my desktop, at work, and my "big" system at home. I also own a MacBook Pro running OS X, so I'm familiar with that environment, as well.
Ubuntu, Zorin, and several other Distros provide a User with the ability to insert the DVD and never look at a command line as long as they use their systems. The problem is, as I see it, that no one knows or understands this except the community of Linux Users, so perhaps the failure on the part of the Linux Developer Community isn't so much a failure to deliver a Novice Usable System as it is a failure in Public Relations. A failure in Education. A failure to advertise the fact that MSWindows is not the only solution to their computing needs in a manner that says "There is no reason to fear change".
So which is the bigger failure? The failure to bring to market a viable system (which is, as we know, inaccurate), or the failure to garner any mindshare in the general Computing Population?
Location: Northeastern Michigan, where Carhartt is a Designer Label
Distribution: Slackware 32- & 64-bit Stable
Posts: 3,541
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by LceeL
So which is the bigger failure? The failure to bring to market a viable system (which is, as we know, inaccurate), or the failure to garner any mindshare in the general Computing Population?
I don't think it's either of those.
OS X is, after all, BSD with bells and whistles; it's Unix (more or less). Android is Linux. Both isolate users totally from the guts and balls of the system -- you're not supposed to fiddle around with command line, configuration (beyond the absolute minimum) or much of anything else. You're just supposed to use it: click-'n'-drool, baby.
I happen to use Slackware for all my computing needs. I have two data base servers that run headless and are administered via SSH and a terminal window. Slackware lets me do that easily and is reliable and stable as all get-out. My main system runs Xfce (with which I am completely satisfied), my lap top (which does not get a lot of use) is the same, Xfce, pretty much a mirror of my working system. I don't give a hoot about eye candy, do system administration on the command line, don't play games (well, 4-suit Spider Solitaire every so often), don't watch movies, don't do social media, don't do any of the things that every kid you see with a "smart" phone does.
I think the thrust of many Linux distributions has been computer-as-appliance. I think a lot of them have actually gotten there. We want as many people as possible to be Linux users, we hope that at least some of them become competent with the innards and, maybe, become developers in the open source world. That distributions can be plugged in, hooked up, turned on and work from the get-go is a good thing -- not for everybody (certainly not for me, I can't stand 'em).
OSX is Unix and has been since 10.5 but it is not BSD
FreeBSD is Just OS X Without the Good Bits
This is as much a myth about OS X as about FreeBSD: that OS X is just FreeBSD with a pretty GUI. The two operating systems do share a lot of code, for example most userland utilities and the C library on OS X are derived from FreeBSD versions. Some of this code flow works in the other direction, for example FreeBSD 9.1 and later include a C++ stack and compiler that were originally developed for OS X, with major parts of the work done by Apple employees. Other parts are very different.
The XNU kernel used on OS X includes a few subsystems from (older versions of) FreeBSD, but is mostly an independent implementation. The similarities in the userland, however, make it much easier to port OS X code to FreeBSD than any other system. For example, both libdispatch (Grand Central Dispatch in Apple's marketing) and libc++ were written for OS X and worked on FreeBSD before any other OS.
I first got into Linux out of need. I had begun to go through Tannenbaum's book on Operating System Design (out of fascination, more than anything else) and, at the same time, discovered a system "in development" called Coherent which was an excellent learning tool, but, at the time, had no tcp/ip stack. Just after the release of the 1.0 kernel, I found and installed yggdrasil and the rest is history. As I recall, it was 1994. I have been a Linux Evangelist ever since.
My only quarrel with Linux and the Linux Developers is the inability, on their part, to develop an environment which would allow a novice, untrained User to successfully use Linux as a Desktop System - and by "successfully use" I mean, not only install and use the operating system, but add software WITHOUT the need to go to a command line. Apple did it - they implemented their Mac environment over BSD Unix so that Mac Users are just at home in OS X as they were in earlier versions of their O/S. Why cannot Linux is beyond me.
Fedora and CentOS and Red Hat all work out of the box in a fairly intuitive way without ever touching the command line. I'm sure many, many others do, too.
In the rhel 5 Era, and before, I agree with you. Things were awful in the Linux desktop world.
I find this CENTOS install I'm using less intuitive and harder to deal with than my Arch install. Repos that conflict a package that won't sync across repos and the base I've got three days into setting up what would take me an hour or two in Arch. Having said all that some of my problems are probably mine but intuitive is not what I'd call it it rigid is what I'd call it.
I find this CENTOS install I'm using less intuitive and harder to deal with than my Arch install. Repos that conflict a package that won't sync across repos and the base I've got three days into setting up what would take me an hour or two in Arch. Having said all that some of my problems are probably mine but intuitive is not what I'd call it it rigid is what I'd call it.
You should be a to install the base system, update it, and easily add software...just as I said. Now, if you're adding extra repos, or installing compatibility libs, or other things, it might get complicated. You honestly should have no issues installing the base os, and updating it within less than an hour.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.