Linux is trying to kill me. Really.

fseal said:

So Linux is all about "Thinking Different?" :)

Look I'm a linux developer. And I'll say straight out, Linux is insanely user hostle. No user should ever need to have development tools installed. Period. It's allso commercial software development hostle.

Agreed on that, but for some VERY rare case (like installing NVIDIA binary blob driver), you'd need GCC and some kernel source files (IIRC, I installed it on my OpenSuSE 10.3 back then, to try the infamous Compiz)

fseal said:

Linux is a /personal/ developers OS and will never do anything in the mainstream user space as long as the current way of "Linux thinking" persists.

And maybe that's just fine! People shouldn't make Linux out to be anything other than what it is, and a mainstream desktop OS it's not, and frankly, never will be. There is WAY too much "Linux Thinking" in the way for that to happen in the next 10 years at least. That includes a lot of Linux people (people that get Linux "thinking") that say things that really are not true at all in some sort of hopeful dreamy defiance to reality. I meet far too many of those types as well. :/

Agreed yet again... For those who want to try Linux, must prepare for not so friendly "world". Linux "world" is an "idealist" world, and a harsh one at that. :)

zzz2496

Edit: As a desktop/mainstream OS, maybe Linux can't do much, but once you have a running Linux SERVER, that thing is nearly indestructible...

CommonTater said:

zzz2496 said:

It's just different, need to face the reality and accept that it's different then learn the "ways of Linux".

Absolutely... but *nobody* ... not even you, is there on day 1.

Grasshopper, you must allow the journey if you wish to reach the destination.

Ahahahahaa, agreed... I remembered the day I sat in front of RedHat Linux (I forgot the version), a Text based console, installed off 12 floppy disks (IIRC) and nothing is interesting at that time... By the time I understand the fundamental building blocks of Linux, I was already cursing at "cmd.exe" more than 3 curses/second :)

zzz2496

Well, that was a very interesting conversation to read through.

On a lighter topic... I finally got Mint working normally. gOS, in my -extreme novice- opinion, needs a lot of work...
The dock at the bottom of the screen uses a transparent image behind the icons to hide the program's window, but you can tell it's there by click-dragging from somewhere on the screen to the icons; the selection box just disappears...

Didn't see much a hard drive size difference between it an Mint, and even after updates (which fixed Mint's performance troubles), it still went slow. Wasn't working right with my graphics card. User menu was too small... but then again, it's for netbooks, not full desktops...

I use Fedora 12 and I like it. The problem Linux has is first the support is awful, I have printed off about 25 pages of stuff just to get things running. The other issue and why I don't think it is viable for everyone, is that not all hardware is supported. It is the hardware makers not releasing the info for the driver writers. I would be off Windows completely if my Emu sound card was supported. It is not and probably never will be. With out home audio recording I really have no need for anything but windows. I have Fedora installed just to play around with it and see what has changed at each release.

I had a dual boot with Vista x64 and Ubuntu 8. Why? Vista was too slow.
Now I have Windows 7, it's fast with the same hardware as Vista: no need for Linux.

Anyway, I was successful installing Nvidia drivers and getting SLI working. Difficult, I needed to read two guides on it, take the working parts from them and build my own guide on Nvidia and SLI.
If someone want that guide, I could post it.

CyberZeus

I've looked at this thread, and the other one on Linux (shameless plug: Linux), and I'll reiterate what I've said before: My going-in position is if I cannot use a GUI to run EVERYTHING in the OS, it gets deleted. No more terminal or DOS - been there done that, got the t-shirt.

Ubuntu worked good, Linux Mint works great - a cross between XP and Windows 7 (old style menu + search bar and screenlets (read gadgets) for weather, machine info, etc.)

On the systems that I've tried it (32 bit laptop and 64 bit desktop) Linux Mint 8 has not given me any reason to toss it (so far). I have been able to play all the videos I have (thanks in part to Ubuntu Tweaks - Ubuntu Tweak - Let's rock with Ubuntu), convert my mail from Outlook to Thunderbird, even re-arrange the boot menu order via a small download.

Not ready for prime time? I'm not so sure. Granted, I don't play WoW, Wolfenstein, etc., but for day to day Office-type stuff, browsing, and e-mail it sure looks more and more like something that, as I've said before, Microsoft ought to be looking over their shoulder at.

Bottom line: I didn't have to tweak it any more than I've had to tweak Windows 7 to get it to look and feel like I want it, and all the tweaks were GUI based.

All that said, I'll be staying with Windows 7 because I believe that it is still the best out there (for now) and because I can't see Linus doing a Steve Ballmar monkey dance (try to get THAT image out of your head. :) )

Just my humble opinion.

i have to say i like the theory of linux more than i actually like using it.