Posted on 07/06/2010 7:12:48 AM PDT by ShadowAce
But Windows isn't exactly for every user either, as I saw yesterday when my wife (who maintains several friends' Windows machines) struggled for hours to get a driver installed for an HP network printer/scanner she bought recently. My Xubuntu box saw the printer right away and connected. I didn't expect the scanner to work, but Xsane saw the scanner immediately as well.
Now I'm sure this is due to HP's Linux support, but that's a smart decision on their part. The quality of support for the Lexmark printer I was using actually went backward in one *buntu upgrade -- so I'm not using that printer, not buying their cartridges... but it's their decision.
And think about that for a minute -- my wife maintains several friends' Window machines. Without her they'd be virtually helpless, or spending a lot on professional support.
Thanks for your replies. What i mean is just by Googling i can find multitudes of quality, rated freeware that will run on multiple Windows platforms (esp. XP), and all i need to do is click on the download link run the installer, and it works as advertised with rarely a problem, and the scope of apps range from apps that give extensive info on your system (like SIW) to turning your keyboard into a piano, harpsichord, etc, (KB piano, version 1.2) to video encoders (Super8, etc.) to a better clock (TclockEx) And thank God for both Firefox and OpenOffice which both Windows and Linux can run.
With just Linux, freeware is out there, and you use Synaptic or the like, but can only safely install software from the distro’s repos, which offerings i find quite limited. You can add other repos, refresh Synaptic, and wait for that to finish, but still not get what you are looking for. (That’s why WINE is needed.) You can Google and find more, but we are warned not to install that way, and most, if any, distros do not make it easy to do so. If it could and did, if you could just download applications and run them, that would be a help.
In addition, as mentioned before, for full multi media capability one must buy certain codecs to be legal in the US. Even getting things like Flash to work in some distros can be problematic.
BTW, I have Minime 2010, a version of PC LinuxOS, installed on a hard drive on this PC, which has a 2..8 CPU and 3GB of ram, and a copy of Linux Mint 7 on an older PC (the new version is to slow) and they run work well, except for getting sound and printer to work, and getting full permissions on a drive from another PC.
Rather than dual booting, i install Linux with its GRUB on a separate drive, and use the F8 key option at boot to choose which drive to boot from. I use XP most of the time, but if i had only Vista i might use Linux more. But i thank God for all. And that we are not living in North Korea.
I used to have Vista, and was often asking for permissions, so i found a way to pretty much negate it (TakeOwnership, and Unlocker). And rarely ran Virus software, and did never needed it, Thank God.
Users should know what is loading with the PC and what is using CPU cycles. A helpful free utility for Windows is “What’s my computer doing?” It shows all programs (with details), that are accessing your hard disk or using the CPU. You also have the option to close these programs or even uninstall them. http://www.itsth.com/en/produkte/Whats-my-computer-doing.php?fromwmcd And WinPatrol (freeware) is also very useful, as it alerts you to surreptitious changes.
In time, things like this may be useful for Linux.
There should be a program that tells more about Internet traffic. I do use the mvps host file which blocks a lot of unwanted sites. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
LOL!!
In time, things like this may be useful for Linux.
All I can say is "wow". You either haven't used Linux in a looooooooooooooooong time or not at all. I can think of multiple ways to do all of that through Linux, from the lowly "ps" command to see running processes, their owner, and just about anything you want to know about them including the full command line as they were invoked, to 'top', or even better - "htop" which shows what's happening on your box at the process and cpu level pretty much real time, to a full-scale system profiler (sysprof), which will identify processes all the way down to individual system calls so you can tell exactly where time is being spent on your computer ti an almost insanely granular level. Then there are things like the KDE or Gnome process managers, that function similarly to the windows process manager, though they give you a lot more power than the toy-like limitiations imposed by microsoft. There are others as well that I don't use because the tools I'm familiar with do everything I want better than anything available out of the box with windows.
Additionally, I have a choice of five or six file managers. Personally I'm kinda partial to "Dolphin" these days, but if I don't like it, or I don't like the direction the developers have decided to take it, I'm perfectly free to use many others including several that operate similar to 'midnight commander', which have some rather excellent features.
All if this is available, as I mentioned previously via yum, (yumex, or any of several package managers). Again, it's all incredibly flexible. You can mix and match what you want to make a system that works for you the way you like it.
Similarly, I have I thionk 6 web browsers installed. I generally use firefox, but use the others for testing because I like to make sure my code is RFC compliant.
Finally, I don't see how anyone can live with a single desktop. I generally run 8, and each program or program type has a specific home, so I know instantly where to go for a word-processor or HTML editor, or browser, or command prompt, file manager, or any of dozens of programs that I might have open at any one time. I don't to worry about finding programs buried underneath other ones, or any of the other weird annoyances that you are limited with in a standard windows install. Any time I have to suffer through sitting at a windows desktop, it's an experience of pure frustration because it simply does not multitask the way I do. Don't get me started about the single windows clipboard. OMG, talk about seriously limiting.
My advise would be to perhaps spend a little time learning about what modern Linux desktop interfaces are like before you start recommending things that "may be useful for Linux". Otherwise, you come off sounding somewhat uninformed.
I speak from recent experience, and am running under Linux (PCLinuxOS/Minime2010, a top distro) as i type, and while you are responding to my comments regarding the alleged need for Linux security, i think your reply may attest to the problem i mentioned in post 62.
While you can run commands which one must learn, and i can tell Windows users to run dxdiag in the run command, can you search “system utilities” as you can do for Windows, and come up with multitudes of such? For me, doing so in Synaptic only results in smartmontools - viable, but doesn’t do all that a Windows equivalent will) among the many irrelevant results. And when i install it, it is not listed anywhere in the Start menu, as has been the case with other programs. Searching for sysprof in Synaptic results in nothing. Looking for “process manager” does not help either. Even Googling “freeware system utilities for linux” did not help much.
Thus the new user cannot just search for freeware, and install it, but must hope the repos of his distro will have what he is looking for, or learn how to get and install programs otherwise.
As for File managers, i have Dolphin, which i like once you configure it to always open in Details mode, and to show the location bar. But i have no need of multiple desktops, as Alt+Tab works well for me. And i do like KDE the best. But under Windows i also have at least 6 browsers, with Firefox also being the prime one, and also use OpenOffice and Thunderbird daily.
As for the Windows clipboard in the standard Windows install, first if we had to live with “standard” Windows installs cyberlife by MS would be rather gray, and government issue, and the clipboard is just one testimony to that. I use Ditto, which will hold virtually unlimited amount of clips with no time/date limit.
As for “maybe useful for Linux,” i was indeed speaking from ignorance, based upon what offerings i have seen in searching, and there is one issue. But as Linux grows, and more effort is put into cross platform compatibility, this can improve.
BTW, what is your opinion of Knoppix? I like the extensive Start menu and its overall speed and maturity, though it is not mean for installing.
Very useful for pulling out and showing users that this Linux thing isn't as scary as they've heard, is actually kind of glossy, and can actually be run without "compiling a kernel"...
[cough]
Very true, that’s why no one OS will be all things to all people. No doubt the fairly recent advances in Linux distress have made both OSX and Windows better platforms.
I’m a huge fan on the SPLAT platform and use it for it’s obvious network security use it can be a great starting point for asecured server. Most of the recent distress I’ve played with have started to develop a tad bit of bloat. However, there is a resin for that.
I've not had any experience with that particular distro. Currently, I'm mostly Fedora at home though I've used ubuntu/kubuntu (debian variants). One of the reasons I like Fedora is because there are several groups that do a really good job of making sure packages are available for just about any program out there. From a brief look at the PCLinuxOS it looks like one of the smaller distros. I might have to give it a run in VMWare to see how well it works.
One of the strong points of linux is also one of its weak points, in that anyone can make a distribution of their own. There are even programs out there that help you to make a custom package just for you. That's good for folk who really like rolloing their own , or who just want a specific subset of tools to perform a specific task. (Puppy linux rocks as a recovery tool) On the other hand, if you go with a distribution like Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, or a few others, you have a much bigger set of programs that have been specifically packaged for you. I'm not really sure what the most popular flavor of linux is these days though, as it changes from year to year and I don't really keep up with it. I just keep using what I like, and recommend it to others because I know I can walk them through any gotchas that crop up fairly easily.
While you can run commands which one must learn, and i can tell Windows users to run dxdiag in the run command,
Yeah, I have some specific programs that I occasionally ask people to run from a prompt as well, because it's a heck of a lot easier than telling them "click here, here here. there... ". However for the novice windows user (or even moderately advanced one for that matter), how likely are the going to know to run 'dxdiag'?
can you search “system utilities” as you can do for Windows, and come up with multitudes of such?
Well, if I click the "K" button (same as "start" in windows), then type "utility", it lists about 20 or so programs that perform various tasks from disk management, text-to-speech tools, encryption, file managers and various other stuff.
kinfocenter will show you tons of stuff about your system.
If you want something similar to the process manager you see in windows, (assuming you're running KDE),
select K
application
system
system monitor
At least that's what works for me. (Personally I prefer 'htop' for process management, because it allows me to bind a given program to individual processors, and to have total control over process niceness.
Thus the new user cannot just search for freeware, and install it, but must hope the repos of his distro will have what he is looking for, or learn how to get and install programs otherwise.
Amazingly similar to windows. You search google, and find programs. Personally I prefer to get stuff through repos, because they've hopefully had someone at least looking at the programs who is not the author. Lord knows, you can't trust everything on the internet you download.
BTW, what is your opinion of Knoppix? I like the extensive Start menu and its overall speed and maturity, though it is not mean for installing.
Knoppix is good. There is a lot of support out there for it. I've used it from time to tine, but have always returned to Fedora and other RPM based distros, mainly because I really don't feel like learning the ins and outs of another package format.
Thanks fo your reply. I think you will like PCLinuxOS (PCLOS), and Minime2010 is a the more basic version of it which i choose as i can do without some things, and was concerned over the codec issue. It is based on Mandriva.
Your comment about a strength of many flavors of Linux also being a weakness is true. Ubuntu has sought to overcome this, but i lik the KDE desktop, and Kbuntu just does not seem to do it as well as PCLOS. I have tried Fedora, and it is one of the tops. And Pupy Linux is very good for old PCs, and does a lot for its size, though HW configuration can be more problematic.
You mentioned kinfocenter, and that is indeed one of the strengths of the KDE desktop, as i think it offers more means of configuration.
Regarding multiple clicks, you are right about eliminating these, and speed is a prime interest for me. Windows and Linux both have shortcuts more people should know about, like (in Windows) the Windows key and Pause/Break to bring up System Properties. Both should run a tutorial on standardized shortcut keys upon installation. MS could even save time on tech support if they trained people to use them.
As for commands, these are very useful, If one changes the folder View settings to be Details as i think it should be, and to allow users to actually see system files, and searches in the Windows C:\Windows\System32\ folder for .cpl, they can find a lot of commands to Control Panel applets, for instance. But MS does not think users would want to even see file types by default, let alone should see system files, the latter for good reason.
But as i will sometimes forget commands, and although we can make shortcut keys to places and things in both Windows and Linux, I use the AutoHotKey utility to launch things, from programs to folders to web sites, individually or simultaneously.
The next step should be a versatile way to configure the OS to obey voice commands. Vista has a very basic and balky program, but besides its inferior voice recognition, you cannot choose it to obey “go to free republic”, or, “Computer, hibernate” for instance. And yes, i was a Trekie.
It seems Automated Speech Recognition (ASR or just SR) on Linux is also quite rudimentary.
I think they ought to put kinfocenter in the 'system settings' wrapper. I know that the first time I went looking for it in Fedora 12, I thought it had been deleted or something! That would have teed me off because I like the way it gathers everything and presents it in one place.
Have you checked out some of the 'ls*' commands? I had to install a couple of them through yum after I'd built my system but they are extremely powerful for identifying hardware and other things.
BTW: have you tried using the 'fish://' protocol in Dolphin? When I first discovered the fish: protocol, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, because of how easy it makes it to move files from one computer to another.
Regarding voice commands: I'd much rather have a DWIMNWIS (Do What I Mean, Not What I Say) interface. Would save me a bit of trouble from time to time.
Thanks for the commands; they all work except lshw (not found). But I do not know how to do the ‘fish://’ protocol in Dolphin.
“I’d much rather have a DWIMNWIS (Do What I Mean, Not What I Say) interface.”
Due to man’s vast ability to verbally communicate it would require lots of programming for a computer to understand him.
I have a copy of Fedora 10, maybe i will try it and upgrade it to 13.
There is no doubt about that. People have underestimated the complexity of what I'd call a true voice recognition system for decades.
I have a copy of Fedora 10, maybe i will try it and upgrade it to 13.
I think you'll be a lot happier with it if you download the ISO of 13 and load that, rather than upgrade. When you get ready to do it, ping me and I'll send you a list of some packages that will make dealing with multimedia stuff lots easier.
Up until 10.04, it was a pain to get my USB headphones to work.
!0.04 works out of the box.
I’ve been using Ubuntu for about 5 years.Still not good at terminal, but that’s why I use Ubuntu and I’m old and forgetful.
Thanks, but before i got your reply, i went ahead and tried to install Fedora 10 on the same HD as the one with PCLOS, but the partitioner twice failed to resize the 20GB HD, though only 3GB is used. So i added another drive and installed Fed 10 on that, but the Kpackagekit upgrade froze for over an a hour (and in later attempts) at Oxygen icon themes (no arch) everytime i tried it. I found the offending themes but there was no right click or any option to exclude them. Then the download package list also froze, though Internet is working (nothing fancy about the DSL connection).
The configuration ability looks good (i like the classic “start” menu, though i could not right click on things and add to panel or desktop).
So maybe i will download and burn 13.
I use Windows 7 64-bit and I’m wondering if AutoHotkey will work without any problems. Could you or anyone tell me?
I like Linux but I’m so used to finding an executable to install software. Installing is a pain in Linux.
I’m amazed by the beautiful screen savers that Linux has (Mint). I wish I could find the same ones to run on Windows (for free of course).
From what i read (there is not much), the newest version works, but make sure it is installed into the Programs files if using Vista, and do not import scripts from a AHK 32 file.
I downloaded and installed the KDE version of Fedora 13, on this Sony RA840G (2.8ghz cpu, 3gb ram) PC, but to be honest it has been rather buggy so far. Below is what happened, the best i recall.
I found and ran the KPackageKit updates, and while it was still doing so it gave me a 3-4 sec. system tray popup that it was done and i needed to restart, but the message disappeared before i could read it all. I did restart, and ran the Software update again, and the same thing happened, but this time i ignored it and installed all the updates.
As Fed 13 does not include either Firefox or OpenOfice (critical for me) by default, I ran KPackageKit again and found and installed Firefox, but OpenOffice is all spilt up into different modules, mostly language ones, so i only installed the actual word processor. I then went back and found java, but KPackageKit hung for a long time, and would not close.
I had to log off and on again, and then tried to install new wallpaper, but while some installed, one was not listed along with the installed ones. Installing it again required overwriting the previous jnp, but it still was not listed. I went on the web and found one that i used with this monitor under XP and installed that, but it was very blurry from what i could see. During this procedure Plamsa crashed, and i sent an error report, though it said i would have had to install more things in order to for it to be of much use.
Later, as i could find no Desktop icon in the Taskbar, i had to minimize Windows in order to see the desktop, and inadvertently clicked on the ? button on a Konqueror window, which ended up freezing the whole system, except i could shut down KPackageKit, but nothing else on the Taskbar worked, and i could not even right click and choose Leave. Using the PC power button did bring up the shutdown options however, and i choose Restart. It did so, but after login i only got a blinking dash in the top left which went on for over a minute before i physically shutdown and reboot.
I later was able to install Java for OpenOffice, but Flash would not install in Firefox, so i searched and found instructions here (http://www.fedorafaq.org/#flash) which required running commands which worked, though it said at the last, “WARNING: I can’t open dir /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped”.
However, sound does not work, either through the integrated mobo or through the Logitec USB phones. Kinfocenter says “Audio is not enabled in config,” and Kmix, which is the only thing i found that might offer GUI configuration, fails to load whenever i try to do so.
I did find System Settings, of which there is two, the more extensive one being under Settings>System Settings in the Classic menu, which was very useful, but I also could not change the clock from UTC to EST, which i option i missed on this last install.
Also, while i do see “Computer” under the KickOff Menu (but not in Classic), i do not see the whole drive which Fed is installed on (just Root in Dolphin), KDiskFree does work, but if very basic, not with a Windows type right click and properties and its many options. Nor does Fed detect and show a USB device which is plugged after Fed loads (and Kwik disk also crashes on loading). An icon to show the desktop would also be useful.
So that is my experience thus far, and it has been a learning one, so i thank God for that.
Once you install those repos, I reccomend installing yumex unless you want to stick with PackageKit.
I think I know what the deal with the sound might be. I had issues with Fedora 12, where it looked like all the sound stuff should have been working, and in fact, if I went to a program to play MP3s, it looked like it was working, but ... no sound. Fortunately the fix for this is pretty easy if you installed Gnome as well as KDE. You simply logout and log back in under Gnome, then select the volume icon up top, unmute it, and turn the sound up. I have no idea why the KDE sound program didn't turn on by default, but that was how I fixed it. Log out and back in under KDE and you're all set.
Normally, when I do a new system load with Fedora, when I get to the point where it asks which package groups I want to install select the button for "customize now", and go throught and pick all the things I want, and deselect what I don't want. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to get the Openoffice stuff and lots of other stuff as well.
I didn't notice before that you're installing this on a 64-bit box. Flash is problematic on all 64-bit systems from what I understand. I eventually gave up trying to get the adobe flash plugin to work correctly, and just installed gnash which suprisingly enough, works for most sites. Personally I hate flash anyway, so I just don't visit the few annoying sites that don't work for me.
If you want to have a fairly trouble-free multimedia experience, you'll want some packages from the rpmfusion repos.
Here's a list of everything I have installed from rpmfusion on my home box. Some of them, you probably won't need, but it's my motto these days that it's better to be safe than sorry...
yum install a52dec audacity-freeworld faad2-libs ffmpeg ffmpeg-libs gpac gpac-libs \
gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly k3b-extras-freeworld \
lame lame-libs libdca libdvbpsi libmad libmimic libmms libmpeg2 libquicktime \
live555 mencoder mjpegtools-libs mozilla-vlc mplayer mplayer-common ogmrip \
opencore-amr subtitleripper thunderbird-enigmail transcode twolame-libs \
vcdimager vcdimager-libs vlc vlc-core xine-lib-extras-freeworld xmms-faad2 \
xmms-mp3 xmms-mplayer xvidcore
I haven't seen the issues you describe of USB devices not being seen. As a matter of fact, USB devices have been one of the most trouble-free things I've found in Fedora over the past few years. It's seen everything I've tried to plug. Saw my printer, and installed the correct driver on install actually.
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