Who do newcomers give up on Linux?

[ahmedelsayed]

>Colours are the same on Linux as on Windows - the monitor outputs RGB
>values the same way regardless of the OS. So does the video card. Those
>pieces of hardware don't know/don't care what the OS is on the system,
>they do what they're told to do by the drivers.

>As for fonts, I have no problems with the fonts - there are some tweaks
>you can put in place (for example if you use LCD displays, which I do) to
>enable subpixel sampling and better antialiasing.

as I said before this is based on my short experience with linux
My computer is set to dual boot, when I boot into linux everything seems to be hazy or blurry and not as sharp as windows I wonder why, and colors are not as vivid as they are on windows.



>I use a very old ALPS Glidepoint touchpad on my main system and the
>integrated touchpad on my Dell laptop (provided by work) as well as on a
>Thinkpad (also provided by work). On the Dell I do have some problems
>with tuning (circular scrolling, for example, is awful, but when I have
>tried to turn it off, gsynaptics dies - I know it was fixed in 11.1 but I
>need 11.0 for a few pieces of software.)

again, I've windows and linux both on the same machine, so when a device works flawlessly on windows and not as good on linux, here comes the problem - which is not related to the device itself, most probably the driver - I've a Dell inspiron 6400 btw.



>I have to really work to crash a Linux box. I've got a bunch of them
>right here. My main server (running Novell Open Enterprise Server 2,
>based on SLES10) had an uptime of nearly 200 days before I accidentally
>unplugged it while cleaning my home office space this evening.

>I find the systems I use to be completely stable. Windows, OTOH, when I
>used to use it, was chronically unstable in normal usage. I had to
>rebuild the OS installs about every 6 months from the ground up - it just
>became a regular thing to do because the system would get so horked up.

I'm not talking about servers right now, its a desktop. Servers should be as stable as possible no wonder it stayed 200+ days. Yesterday I had to hard reset my computer 2-3 times when it crashed and that was after a fresh installation on the same day.



>If you want to upgrade, then the cleanest way to do it (regardless of OS)
>is a fresh install. I've talked to people who work in Microsoft's IT
>department, and because they had to go through every alpha, beta, and
>product release on production systems they said they would never, ever,
>EVER do an in-place OS upgrade if they had a choice. And that's
>*Microsoft* talking.

>In-place upgrades in general leave a bunch of cruft around that doesn't
>need to be there. Doesn't matter if it's Linux, Windows, NetWare,
>Solaris, whatever. A clean install should always be the first choice and
>an in-place upgrade should be done only if there is no other option.

No, that wasn't my point, I agree that a fresh install is better than an upgrade. But since every 6-8 months - 8 right now I guess - you have to install the new release, hoping that you'd find fixes for whatever botherning you, you actually find more bugs in different places, whether in a driver or a software or whatever so you'd wait till you get a fix or an update or just revert back to the previous release

so with every new release you no only get fixes but also new bugs, i know its being developed, but how long would anyone wait to get a bug-free release, not 100% bug-free for that would never happen, but a release with the least possible number of bugs.



>Just like on Windows there's one media player, one word processor, one
>math application, etc?

>"The job" varies depending on who you are and what you want. No one app
>could *ever* do "the job" that everyone expects it to do perfectly. Lack
>of choice is anathema to OSS in general, and it seems odd to me that
>anyone coming from having to deal with "the monopoly" in desktop
>computing would be promoting a monopolistic way of doing things on a
>completely open platform.

Yes Windows is shipped with one calculator, media player, IE, wordpad, etc...
WMP for instance plays almost every media format and if it doesn't, you simply install new codecs and it plays whatever you want, on the other hand linux contains about 3 audio players and 4 media players. so, windows contains softwares that do the basic job nicely, If you want more features/options or you want to play an unknown format, or simply if you don't like theses softwares you get other ones

that's what I'm talking about let for instance linux be shipped with one integrated media player (lets say SuperAmarok), it's bug free, it plays almost all media formats, etc.. by that it did the basic job that any ordinary user would want, if you don't like it simply go and search for other media players. does this promot to a monopoly ?? its just makes things easier, right?

[FeatherMonkey]

Linus isn't trying to be a clone of windows.

I think what Jim said is very true it seems the linux mindset doesn't fit into your expectations.

We like linux for the reasons you don't there is already an OS that provides all the things you want.

I like the fact it is configurable as I want, I like the fact I'm not tied down to this app or that app, that I can use that desktop environment and not that one.

Whether that holds up new takers I would say no, I think the early ones about sound, video and codecs have more impact than multiple xyz's and "User friendly" distro's including the latest to keep up with the Jones rather than thinking stable.

ahmedelsayed wrote:
> as I said before this is based on my short experience with linux
> My computer is set to dual boot, when I boot into linux everything
> seems to be hazy or blurry and not as sharp as windows I wonder why, and
> colors are not as vivid as they are on windows.

this is a "chat" forum...not the place to get setup advice...so, let
me suggest you post over in the applications forum
<http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/> you question of why things
are hazy in Linux and not in Redmond's finest..

i guess someone over there might be able to help you sort out the BEST
driver from your graphics card, and lead you down a path of adjusting
dots per inch, maybe contrast and blah blah blah

--
brassy

[DistortedHumor]

One poster metioned that Linux is crashy. Yikes, I abuse software (Running many programs at once, 20 firefox windows open at the same time, ect) and I have yet to crash OpenSUSE 11.1 with GNOME, I have been able to crash KDE 4.x and will most likely switch over to KDE in 11.2. Heck, one of the jokes is that I put $20 up to see which of my friends could crash 11.1 with GNOME, they gave up after three hours.

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by DistortedHumor

One poster metioned that Linux is crashy. Yikes, I abuse software (Running many programs at once, 20 firefox windows open at the same time, ect) and I have yet to crash OpenSUSE 11.1 with GNOME, I have been able to crash KDE 4.x and will most likely switch over to KDE in 11.2. Heck, one of the jokes is that I put $20 up to see which of my friends could crash 11.1 with GNOME, they gave up after three hours.

He probably has no clue what he's talking about. You can't crash Linux that easily if you use the distro kernel which is configured properly. Crashing applications is one thing but crashing the whole system is something very different. Yes Linux is not perfect and *can* crash due to bugs or proprietary drivers that can screw up but distros put up a lot of testing and review before pushing out a new kernel, thus the chances of a real crash are minimized (though it could happen)

During all my Linux years, from 2001 till now I have yet to see one of my systems at home or the servers at work completely crash. At home, I've never experienced a kernel oops (crash) and have only experienced it twice at work, one time due to a proprietary nic driver (which is not really Linux' fault) and one time due to a filesystem bug in XFS itself

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by microchip8

He probably has no clue what he's talking about. You can't crash Linux that easily if you use the distro kernel which is configured properly. Crashing applications is one thing but crashing the whole system is something very different. Yes Linux is not perfect and *can* crash due to bugs or proprietary drivers that can screw up but distros put up a lot of testing and review before pushing out a new kernel, thus the chances of a real crash are minimized (though it could happen)

During all my Linux years, from 2001 till now I have yet to see one of my systems at home or the servers at work completely crash. At home, I've never experienced a kernel oops (crash) and have only experienced it twice at work, one time due to a proprietary nic driver (which is not really Linux' fault) and one time due to a filesystem bug in XFS itself

I've managed to get my system to hang a few times, requiring a hard reboot.

Once I had it so that the system was completely unresponsive and the CAP and NUM LOCK lights were flashing!

Never underestimate the power of Linux to act like Windows!

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by dragonbite

I've managed to get my system to hang a few times, requiring a hard reboot.

Once I had it so that the system was completely unresponsive and the CAP and NUM LOCK lights were flashing!

Never underestimate the power of Linux to act like Windows!

Hanging is *one* thing, crashing is *another*. Hanging could happen for various reasons, including IRQ conflicts and other oddities including HW problems. That's not crashing

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Hanging is *one* thing, crashing is *another*. Hanging could happen for various reasons, including IRQ conflicts and and other oddities. That's not crashing

So what is the definition of "crashing"? screen totally blanks out? windows close? smoke pours out of the vents?

I put anything that makes the system stop working, whether the system is an application or the OS, as "crashing".

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by dragonbite

So what is the definition of "crashing"? screen totally blanks out? windows close? smoke pours out of the vents?

I put anything that makes the system stop working, whether the system is an application or the OS, as "crashing".

Crashing is when suddenly the system, more precisely the kernel itself, crashes/oopses. Hanging is when the system is up but is frozen due to some reasons. Both scenarios make the system unusable but are not the same

[dragonbite]

Originally Posted by microchip8

Crashing is when suddenly the system, more precisely the kernel itself, crashes/oopses. Hanging is when the system is up but is frozen due to some reasons. Both scenarios make the system unusable but are not the same

So when the kernel itself crashes, what are the indicators? screen goes blank? dump into CLI?

Plus, I was told when my system did this during installation it was a kernel panic. That's not a crash?