Mojavelinux writes: ‘Like most linux advocates, I too have that “interested” friend who wants to finally ditch windows (windows xp) and take the Linux “plunge” (as seen by that individual). After debating with myself over which installation to start him out with, I decided to go with RedHat 8.0 simply because it has been classified as one of the most “newbie” oriented distros thanks to the “integrated” look and the superb documentation, and because it has a free download. Was my choice the right one and how did he react to it? Read on to learn exactly how a person who has never seen linux reacts when a long time user attempts to show that person “the ropes.”‘
A Meeting Between a Guru and a Newbie using Redhat 8.0
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This guy may be good with Linux, but he doesn’t know JACK about Redhat 8.0 in particular. Did he even bother to just double-click on an RPM? The fact is, RH8 is no harder to install software on than Windows. Just find the program you want online, and I garentee that if there are any binaries at all, there WILL be a RH8 rpm linked right there, just like there would be an installer for a Windows version. In both cases, you just download and install it, both entirely in the GUI.
Besides, RH8 is nice, but its designed to be a business desktop thats supported by an IT team on a corporate network and doesn’t need all the latest flash-bang stuff. I don’t think Redhat ever intended it to be a home OS for the newbie, and I don’t know anybidy who thinks it is!
Oh, and Redhat DOES setup access to your windows partition during installation if you tell it to. This idiot just didn’t bother appearently. Also, Xine works PERFECTLY in RH8 to play DVDs. And finally, why didn’t he install apt and synaptic? I installed those right away on my RH8 system, and I can’t imagine life without them?
Guru my ass.
>In both cases, you just download and install it, both entirely in the GUI.
Yes, and then you end up breaking other apps if that was a library, or just have dependancy issues…
“Just double click it” is not very efficient yet under any Linux when it comes to new users who do not know about dependancies and dangers of updating a library… MacOSX has solved these issues, but they had to lose a lot of the fat and ways of unix. It can be done, but not without thinking out of the box and offer something that makes sense for the joe user, even if geek developers might not like the solution.
>Oh, and Redhat DOES setup access to your windows partition during installation if you tell it to. This idiot just didn’t bother appearently.
Again, you do not think with the new user’s mind. You think with your own. If there is a partition that CAN be mounted, well, then mount it, as OSX does. As XP does. Or as BeOS does as easily as right clicking on the desktop and selecting it. The idiots are Red Hat, not the user who did not find that on the installation.
If Red Hat wants to have both a desktop and servers, they might want to think of two slightly different offerings, with different installation procedures and desktop solutions.
> Also, Xine works PERFECTLY in RH8 to play DVDs
You mean, after you install XINE and you manually install the DECSS plugin and you configure it, yes. On OSX, you just insert the DVD disk and you sit back.
>And finally, why didn’t he install apt and synaptic? I installed those right away on my RH8 system, and I can’t imagine life without them?
Exactly the problem. For something so BASIC and IMPORTANT, you need to download and install it yourself. The good solution does not come with the OS. The user is not at fault here, Red Hat and every other Linux distro is.
>Yes, and then you end up breaking other apps if that was a library, or just have dependancy issues…
Nonsense! I have NEVER had that happen in RH8 yet. Not once. Every RPM I have installed worked perfectly and broke nothing. Personally, I doubt I ever will. Depenadncy issues do happen, thats true, but then I ususally try Synaptic first, and it takes care of everything.
Besides, my point was that the articles author was being very over-dramatic about the whole thing. I still maintain that RH8 is hardly any more difficult to intall apps on then Windows.
> I still maintain that RH8 is hardly any more difficult to intall apps on then Windows.
I believe that Windows is way easier overall (counting all the weird problems you can encounter with RPM). As for Synaptic’s current UI, sucks goats. It is terrible and the author knows it (we had a long email discussion, I was designing a new UI for him, no idea if he will rewrite the whole thing though…). You can’t possibly say that Synaptic is a easy tool to use, it is already full of complicated or unesessary (for Joe User) options, badly positioned in the window.
>I have NEVER had that happen in RH8 yet
It happened to me after installing GStreamer. mp3 playback on XMMS sucks now on my RH 8.0.
Oh, and you don’t want to hear my libpng adventures a few months ago…
>Depenadncy issues do happen, thats true, but then I ususally try Synaptic first, and it takes care of everything
Dependancy issues should NEVER happen on a consumer OS, and if Synaptic indeed makes the job so great for you, then it or an equivelant tool should be included with RH.
Bottomline is that when for something so important as application installation, RH does not have an integrated solution that makes perfect sense to Joe User on how to work it out, RH is at fault. Not the user.
> Again, you do not think with the new user’s mind. You think with your own. If there is a partition that CAN be mounted, well, then mount it, as OSX does. As XP does. Or as BeOS does as easily as right clicking on the desktop and selecting it. The idiots are Red Hat, not the user who did not find that on the installation.
If Red Hat wants to have both a desktop and servers, they might want to think of two slightly different offerings, with different installation procedures and desktop solutions.
The author is not a newbie user though, and HE is the one who did the partitioning! That is where he should have set mount points for any partitions he wanted mounted, including fat32 partitions. I bet he set mount points for the Linux patitions! Why not the Windows ones?
> You mean, after you install XINE and you manually install the DECSS plugin and you configure it, yes. On OSX, you just insert the DVD disk and you sit back.
No, I mean after pressing two buttons in Synaptic and waiting a few minuted for it to download and install. Instant DVD capability.
> Exactly the problem. For something so BASIC, you need to install it yourself. Good solutions on the matter does not come wiht the OS. The user is not at fault here, Red hat is.
And once again, I reiterate that RH NEVER said this was for a home user. This is a corporate desktop designed to be supported by IT guys. I am faulting the AUTHOR here. HE should have installed it. He claims to be a knolegable Linux guy. Maybe a newbie wouldn’t have been able to get it all done, but even the author said that if it weren’t for him being available, his friend wouldn’t have even got past the partitioning issues and would never have installed Linux. Sure, RH8 does work fine for a home user, as long as a Linux guy can set it up initially for them and get this taken care of.
> Dependancy issues should NEVER happen on a consumer OS, and if Synaptic indeed makes the job so great for you, then it or an equivelant tool should be included with RH.
All the way up in my very first post I clearly stated that RH8 is NOT a home users/newbies OS. It is a corporate/business OS designed to be implimented by an IT department. I am faulting the author here, not the user he was trying to get setup. He should have either known how to get RH8 setup properly for the fellow, or used a consumer disrobution.
>I bet he set mount points for the Linux patitions! Why not the Windows ones?
Simply because this way is not intuitive. It was not like he was presented with some check boxes asking him which parttions he wants mounted by default. OSX would do it on a similar obvious way at least…
>No, I mean after pressing two buttons in Synaptic
Again, you are talking about Synaptic. A tool that performs BASIC capabilities, YET, is not installed by default.
>I reiterate that RH NEVER said this was for a home user.
RH did say that they try to make it to the corporate desktop. When it comes to usability, I can tell you, secretery Ms Mary User is a bigger blobheaded than Mr Mojavelinux… I wouldn’t even want to imagine how Mary would get her pace on her day to day work with RH 8. The admin would be pissed at her after 1-2 days full of support calls.
first of all why would a average person setup a linux or even a windows box.
please, you know 90% of computer user cant do that.
my girlfriend wanted to install windows xp, so she drop off the computer along with a copy (legal) of xp for me to install.
three hours later, she came back and pickup the computer.
> Simply because this way is not intuitive. It was not like he was presented with some check boxes asking him which parttions he wants mounted by default. OSX would do it on a similar obvious way at least…
Er… have you installed RH8? He WAS presented with a list of partitions and all he had to do was tell it to mount the damn thing. Not exactly check boxes, but essentially the same thing. Besides, hes no newbie, so there really was no excuse either way.
> Again, you are talking about Synaptic. A tool that performs BASIC capabilities, YET, is not installed by default.
But that does not excuse the fact that he SHOULD have installed it.
> RH did say that they try to make it to the corporate desktop. When it comes to usability, I can tell you, secretery Ms Mary User is a bigger blobheaded than Mr Mojavelinux… I wouldn’t even want to imagine how Mary would get her pace on her day to day work with RH 8. The admin would be pissed at her after 1-2 days full of support calls.
Except that unlike the author of the article, Ms Mary User the secretary would have hade her copy of Redhat 8 all pre-setup properly in the first place by IT. Besides, I seriously doubt IT could be more pissed than if they sat her down in front of a Windows box. *shudder* I do support for a living, and let me tell you, Id rather she was in front of a computer I have complete control over and that she couldn’t possibly render unworkable then a computer she could screw up repeatadly on a daily basis. The only areas where RH8 is not as easy as Windows is in areas that the secretary shouldn’t touch anyway.
As a long time windows user myself, I installed RedHat for the first time and I find that the author of the article is perfectly right, with all the good and bad points. I had to find an article here on OSNEWS (redHat8 for KDE users by Robert Dowdy) on how to install new fonts, mp3 plugin, apt-get and synaptic. By the way, were on earth during the install could I make the selection to automount the windows partitions ?
The idea is, I liked RedHat destop a lot but, in order to get more market share on desktops, Linux has to become much more user friendly. 99% of the targeted users are not geeks, programmers or IT professionals. The community needs to think at them first; otherwise, linux will remain a hobby OS (desktop use). If that means acting more like windows, that’s fine, I don’t see anything wrong.
>But that does not excuse the fact that he SHOULD have installed it.
You are wrong here, sorry! It is like saying that Windows do not have the capability to change the resolution of the monitor, you would need to go to MS site and download an add-on to the OS. The stuff Synaptic does are *basic* and *needed* by default. That stuff should come with the OS. If the OS does not take care of such stuff, then just delete the whole thing until they get serious with it and fix it.
Bingo! Right on the spot. It’s still too complicated. Most user still have problems with the file/folder metaphor!
Last weekend I had the pleasure to explain the difference between ZoneAlarm and an anti-virus program. Yet the person was obsessed with the need for ZoneAlarm(NO home user needs a firewall anyway).
That’s why I always recommend Macs. Not the fastest (and not cheapest) but they are mostly headache free
This is why I don’t use it anymore. I don’t want to screw around with all the intricacies of it. Everything’s always 80% – 90% of the way there, but never 100%. There’s always “some tweak” that needs to be applied here and there to do this or that or get that application running. I don’t have time to waste on that crap. My desktop machine used to run BeOS, which was largely hassle-free, but now I run OS X on my personal box, and the machines I use to run my business are the various Windows 2000 offerings. My intranet SQL Server running on W2K Server has had over a year of constant uptime. I know Linux is more than capable of beating that, but my point is that W2K has come a long way stability-wise, and is much easier to use, even as a server OS.
I’m not anti-Linux. I hope it succeeds, but I have things to do, and I won’t be jumping on that bandwagon until Linux congeals into something less anarchic. (I doubt that will ever happen, since its the very anarchic nature of Linux that appeals to the Keepers Of The Holy Open Source Flame.)
Fantastically said Phuqker! None of the “consumer” OSS desktop/graphical apps are 100% there, many are not even stable, others just need weird dependancies or tweaks, and others are just ugly and badly designed with no interoperability with other apps or the underneath system.
This morning, I was told “How out of touch I am” because I said FontLab has no competition and this guy comes up and suggests PFA. Which is of course nice, except that it is butt ugly, is missing features, it is not optimized and it is a pain to work with as not all its elements are actually visual as in FontLab. Other than that, “I am out of touch”.
Oh, I forgot to mention that his main reason for shouting at me for not mentioning PFA is that PFA is “FREE” (three times written in capitals). Like it really matters when the app is so behind than a paid commercial one.
” I wouldn’t even want to imagine how Mary would get her pace on her day to day work with RH 8. The admin would be pissed at her after 1-2 days full of support calls.
”
Don’t be silly. Most windows users know how to use one or two apps, don’t know what windows explorer is and only now how to connect to the internet if a big E is on their desktop. You can sit user down in front of RH 8 and say here are the 4 icons you need to get your work done. All of your files are now stored in /home/usr. RH 8 works VERY well for a basic corporate desktop. If you need windows for some specific apps, fine use windows on those machines. But most business small or large have a huge amount of users who only need a basic office suite to get their work done. If RH 8 ready for the home user? Probably not for most users, but I also know plently of users who only surf the web on their pcs. If Redhat 8 were preloaded and set up with an ISP, those user could get along just fine.
we need to issue computer literacy certificates before selling computers, then all of our problems will be over and the GNU/Linuxes will be used. after all, if you know what you’re looking for, you’re not going to look at windows 🙂
There’s always “some tweak” that needs to be applied here and there to do this or that or get that application running. I don’t have time to waste on that crap.
Well,.. if you’re running a business, and you’ve a LAN, you might have some part-time IT person to help maintain it. *You* might not, since you seem pretty computer savvy, but many business owners need help — if only to set it up in the first place. Now, this business owner can hire someone to do it with Win2k (paying the consultant *plus* the MS licensing fees), or hire someone to do it with linux (just pay your consultant).
Either way, the IT person is going to be dealing with the complexity, not the business owner.
I like four things: lack of hassle, practicality, esthetics, and the bash command shell with all the trimmings. That’s why I run OS X and Windows. (Whenever I install Windows the first thing I do is put Cygwin on it so I can dispense with that horrible DOS prompt.)
I just had an argument last weekend with a Priest Of The Open Source Religion who said I’d thrown away thousands of dollars on Windows licensing. (OK, I still have one Linux box acting as a router. It does a smash-up job of that.) The thing is, the cost of licensing is trivial compared to the cost of staffing. And the problem I found with Linux was that each system was so tweaked it was absolutely impossible to reproduce. Each box might as well have been its own distribution. A maintenance nightmare. And if the “tweaker” leaves the company, I’m SOL. With Windows I don’t have nearly as many of these problems. (Though it still happens.)
Let the flames begin, but as an IT manager and programmer, I think TCO of Windows is (depending upon the situation) vastly lower than that of Linux.
This is the 11th distro I tried in two weeks.
Overall very impressive.
simple for newbies while still powerful for expert setup.
menu is logically ordered.
updating software is very simple.
this distro is a keeper.
Any problems with Suse I should know about?
The big reason i stay away from Linux is lack of 3rd party drivers for hardware. I know that there is much hardware supported in the kernel and in modules but this is not good enough. We cant rely on the Linux community to write drivers for every single piece of hardware on the market. Linux needs to present a stable environment that makes it easy for developers to write drivers for thier hardware (eg driver interface compatibility between kernel versions). Just having current hardware detected at install time isnt good enough.
There also needs to be a standard,easy way to install drivers.
The Linux desktop and most of the applications are of great quality-this is not the real issue currently with Linux in my opinion
The authors gripes about software installation issues are valid as well.
One of the other major areas Linux should work on is making it easy to install peripherals to the computer.
The drivers for all the hardware you buy like webcams, printers, scanners etc etc are not there yet. The manufacturers are not really interested in writing drivers for Linux (at least not all of them) until Linux becomes more mainstream. A linux hardcore guy will just say hey you did not know where to look for the drivers. This is neither the distros mistake nor anyone else, but it still is a problem. Also Joe user “may just” find it difficult to mount cdrom drives, external hard disks, peripherals, and they wont understand the reason behind why you need to mount anything in the first place, they just want to plug and play. Of course every OS went through this phase, but Linux developers are reluctant to change their approach regarding this.
I am very new to Linux 1-2 weeks old and right now half of peripherals don’t work and I use mandrake 9.0. Will be trying Redhat 8.0 tonight
“I decided to go with RedHat 8.0 simply because it has been classified as one of the most “newbie” oriented distros”
I don’t know where the author get that from. Certainly not from Redhat!
Redhat is not done for the home user. The desktop environment Redhat target is with the support of an IT.
My guess is that Redhat does not care at all of providing the functionality for the home user. Playing mp3, DVD? Most businees do not care.
What would be the point for Redhat of providing a free easy to install system? They want money in the corporate market selling support. They really don’t care if Joe user can’t install it, Joe user won’t pay their bill!
Don’t get me wrong, Redhat 8.0 is what makes me look at Linux with a lot of interest recently. But it is definitively not for newbie.
> You are wrong here, sorry! It is like saying that Windows do not have the capability to change the resolution of the monitor, you would need to go to MS site and download an add-on to the OS. The stuff Synaptic does are *basic* and *needed* by default. That stuff should come with the OS. If the OS does not take care of such stuff, then just delete the whole thing until they get serious with it and fix it.
Well, of course! I NEVER said otherwise as far as consumer/home OSes are concerned. Of course, your argument means nothing here because it has nothing to do with the class of desktop OS Redhat 8.0 is. Besides, regardless of all that, the author still SHOULD have insalled it!
I’ve been installing various linuxs on a lot of windows users computers for about the last year or two, and although some of the things mentioned in the article are important, I think there are a few other and possibly more important things. Those are the missing apps. Most of the people I have helped install redhat 8 are looking for just a few apps:
The ones that are there:
word processor
aim client
web browser
The ones that aren’t:
something that plays mp3s
something that plays movies
a cd burning utility that can do audio cds
a file sharing client that doesn’t suck
Those couple things are really what RedHat should try to fix now. I also find it hard to believe it doesn’t come with a good package manager…so much hell trying to help someone uninstall then reinstall libogg and libvoris over the telephone…horrid visions….Anyway, if those apps were included they’d have more happy users during the time period they try to take care of these package management problems.
Really though I’m not sure if there is currently a good audio cd burner or a good file sharing client available for linux yet.
Go back. Read the F article. Note that the writer stated that he was looking for points that would trip up a newbie
What part of that confuses you?
Yes, and then you end up breaking other apps if that was a library, or just have dependancy issues…
“Just double click it” is not very efficient yet under any Linux when it comes to new users who do not know about dependancies and dangers of updating a library… MacOSX has solved these issues, but they had to lose a lot of the fat and ways of unix. It can be done, but not without thinking out of the box and offer something that makes sense for the joe user, even if geek developers might not like the solution.
>Oh, and Redhat DOES setup access to your windows partition during installation if you tell it to. This idiot just didn’t bother appearently.
Again, you do not think with the new user’s mind. You think with your own. If there is a partition that CAN be mounted, well, then mount it, as OSX does. As XP does. Or as BeOS does as easily as right clicking on the desktop and selecting it. The idiots are Red Hat, not the user who did not find that on the installation.
If Red Hat wants to have both a desktop and servers, they might want to think of two slightly different offerings, with different installation procedures and desktop solutions.
> Also, Xine works PERFECTLY in RH8 to play DVDs
You mean, after you install XINE and you manually install the DECSS plugin and you configure it, yes. On OSX, you just insert the DVD disk and you sit back.
>And finally, why didn’t he install apt and synaptic? I installed those right away on my RH8 system, and I can’t imagine life without them?
Exactly the problem. For something so BASIC and IMPORTANT, you need to download and install it yourself. The good solution does not come with the OS. The user is not at fault here, Red Hat and every other Linux distro is.
—-
(And some say she’s nuttin but an Apple Basher.)
Amen! Amen! Amen!
You Go, GRRRL!
There is no way a noobie could’ve dealt with any of that (unncecessary) crapadoodle-do.
I was a brand-new noob w/ linux when i installed redhat w/out help. It really was an unpleasant experiance. I spent way too many hours studying the walk-throughs & begging/begging/begging for help on #linuxhelp.
Redhat did not install my onboard sound so i bought a sb512 soundcard, then redhat 7 wouldnt install my sb512 so i downloaded a bunch of things & spent many days for many weeks trying different configurations before finally getting it working.
I did automount the windows partition after messing with some config file somewhere, but linux would not play many of the movie files i wanted to watch. Its like the linux movie players i was using only supported a handful of the video formats & the files were in many other formats that Winmedia player supported. <sigh>
I was suprised to see many apps just crashing like they did in Windows. I thought linux was supposed to be more stable. Some would even hang the whole system. Eventually, Linux kept hanging so much & I had to keep hitting reset. Eventually, the damned redhat box wouldnt even boot into the gui.
hehe guess what? i didnt reinstall it. POS for newbies.
Ah, but i didnt pay for it, a friend gave me the CDs, but if I could choose I would have chosed Deebs, Suse, or slackware. I probably would have had a much better experiance with those distros. btw I’m limited to 41.66k so gentoo is not an option.. well.. theres my little comment.. I hope some distros get nicer cause i love the concept & hate Microshaft. WOW!!!!!!!!!!! MICROSHAFT!!!! Thats their new name!! I’m a genius!
Now, let’s suppose that Mary works someplace like a lot of you do. A little at work websurfing or private emailing if kept within reasonable bounds or done on your lunch break is perfectly okay.
Or, let’s make it a place like where I work, where as long as it’s not porno, they don’t give a damn about surfing, so long as you get your projects done, and where everybody who works a service desk pretty much knows they’re guaranteed 2 hours a day where if they’re not helping a patron, they’re surfing the net.
You would not belive the amount of crap that gets installed on the staff public use terminals: screen savers, maj-jongg, game, ICQ, Yahoo Chat, AIM, Bonzai Buddy, Gozilla …. and the list goes on.
Systems has to re-image those (windows) machines at least 4 times a year. That’s if I can’t clean the mess off with some install/uninstall magic and things utterly head into DLL hell.
I gather that Linux can be even pickyer about that sort of thing than Windows.
“My computer just stopped working! Can you come and fix it?” (And with no mention that it stopped working because Mary was trying to install something to play her MP3s or trying to get a chat client, or a screen saver or a theme up and running.)
The only way you’re going to keep the Marys of the world from utterly trashing a machine is to lock it down mother freaking tight, and then the IT department will have to answer a lot of little “nusiance” service requests. “Can you come up here and make it so I can play CDs?” “Can you make this screen saver work?” “I just found out I’m supposed to watch this on-line streaming video at 3pm today. Can you put Quick Time or Real Player on this machine now?” “Bill is my back up on this project. Can you install ICQ so I don’t have to tie up the phone line when I need to pick his brains?’
Yeah, the IT department is just going to LOVE the 1/2 baked desktop distros most companies are coming out with.
And it doesn’t help that OS X just raised the bar really damn high for making a desktop *nix powerful and easy to use. (In over a year of daily useage, I *finally* made my first trip to the terminal to take care of something that could only be done there.)
> Really though I’m not sure if there is currently a good audio cd burner or a good file sharing client available for linux yet.
Yes and No.
> (And some say she’s nuttin but an Apple Basher.)
Amen! Amen! Amen!
You Go, GRRRL!
There is no way a noobie could’ve dealt with any of that (unncecessary) crapadoodle-do.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Thats absolutly true. Show me where I said it wasn’t.
The author of the article however was NOT a newbie. He SHOULD have done those things. I believe I already provided an excellent reply to that post. Please refer to that.
> Now, let’s suppose that Mary works someplace like a lot of you do. A little at work websurfing or private emailing if kept within reasonable bounds or done on your lunch break is perfectly okay.
Certainly!
> Or, let’s make it a place like where I work, where as long as it’s not porno, they don’t give a damn about surfing, so long as you get your projects done, and where everybody who works a service desk pretty much knows they’re guaranteed 2 hours a day where if they’re not helping a patron, they’re surfing the net.
Sounds good to me.
> You would not belive the amount of crap that gets installed on the staff public use terminals: screen savers, maj-jongg, game, ICQ, Yahoo Chat, AIM, Bonzai Buddy, Gozilla …. and the list goes on.
Yuck. Need better security on those.
> Systems has to re-image those (windows) machines at least 4 times a year. That’s if I can’t clean the mess off with some install/uninstall magic and things utterly head into DLL hell.
Re-imaging very often is usually necessary for Windows terminals in any public or corporate settings.
> I gather that Linux can be even pickyer about that sort of thing than Windows.
Thank god nobody can do anything to it that can actually put you in that situation! Unless of course your in the habit of giving out root passwords.
> “My computer just stopped working! Can you come and fix it?” (And with no mention that it stopped working because Mary was trying to install something to play her MP3s or trying to get a chat client, or a screen saver or a theme up and running.)
Boy, that sounds annoying. Put her on Linux!
> The only way you’re going to keep the Marys of the world from utterly trashing a machine is to lock it down mother freaking tight, and then the IT department will have to answer a lot of little “nusiance” service requests. “Can you come up here and make it so I can play CDs?”
Er… any OS in existance can do that by default. If not, they should have set it up to work when they installed it.
> “Can you make this screen saver work?”
No.
>”I just found out I’m supposed to watch this on-line streaming video at 3pm today. Can you put Quick Time or Real Player on this machine now?”
Should already be on there and ready to go, if not, the idiot IT guys deserve this crap.
> “Bill is my back up on this project. Can you install ICQ so I don’t have to tie up the phone line when I need to pick his brains?’
Once again, should have already been on there. Dumbfuck IT guys were asking for that.
> Yeah, the IT department is just going to LOVE the 1/2 baked desktop distros most companies are coming out with.
I would love it too! No having to put up with all of the above!
> And it doesn’t help that OS X just raised the bar really damn high for making a desktop *nix powerful and easy to use. (In over a year of daily useage, I *finally* made my first trip to the terminal to take care of something that could only be done there.)
Oh, I agree that OSX raised the bar. I LOVE my mac! Of course, Macs are still not viable for any but very special purpose uses in your average enterprise network, so I don’t understand the mention.
“The ones that aren’t:
something that plays mp3s
something that plays movies
a cd burning utility that can do audio cds
a file sharing client that doesn’t suck”
1.) Xmms, Noatun, Kaboodle, etc…
2.) Mplayer can play every video codec known to man and with the Plugger installed you can use it in any broswer like Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror, etc…
3.) Eroaster, Gnome-Toaster, Gcombust, K3B etc…..
4.) Hey I happen to like Gnutella, but there are others like edonkey, gnapster, etc….
P.S. Need a great CD ripper and encoder ? Try Grip ! Need a handy dandy MP3/Ogg tag editor ? Well give Easytag a spin.
I don’t know how exactly you missed this, but I’m refering to red hat 8….the apps that it installs by default that is…there’s no excuse for not installing these basic apps, they already use how many cds for an install?
>1.) Xmms, Noatun, Kaboodle, etc…
there is no mp3 support in any of the players in red hat 8 they don’t even include mpg123….new users have no idea what’s wrong with the player.
>Mplayer can play every video codec known to man and with the Plugger installed you can use it in any broswer like Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror, etc…
Also no media players are installed in red hat 8, so that really sucks…I do like mplayer, athough I think it needs a gui for idiots, so it doesn’t have to be started with a -vo option that would change for every system.
>3.) Eroaster, Gnome-Toaster, Gcombust, K3B etc…..
I know one cd burning program is installed, it may be xcdroast…I don’t use red hat, this is just what I remember caused people problems….but whatever it may be there’s no options for burning audio cds in it…I was looking into a cd burning program to isntall myself also, and most of them have either ogg or mp3 support(not both), and as things went the kde app cdbakeoven appeared the most viable option…unfortunately I couldn’t get the kde 3 version(wich was in cvs) to compile
>4.) Hey I happen to like Gnutella, but there are others like edonkey, gnapster, etc….
Really? How? Gnutella is seriously flawed…searches take forever…I’m not going into it…I know you know better…as for the others…I’ve tried a bunch of them..the only ones that were even ok were edonkey(wich would be impossible for a normal user to set up) and I’m not sure if redhat could legally include that….and giFT, which forces you to update their client from cvs every other month, and then when you do, none of the front ends are updated anyway…
Hmm how often do I have to say: “Linux is not harder then any other OS!” It’s just work ther other way! When you have been grown up with wizards & paperclips, you will have a harder time. But when you know it a little bit better, you can easily solve problems, and not this quotes “hmm windows act strange, let’s reinstall it”. In other words *nix/windows have another learning curver. With windows u learn very quickly, but when problems ur sticked to to good old re-install (quiet often), Linux take some time, but then you can solve like 90% your selves. I’m not a MS basher (I admin both systems!)!
And as a sitenote I installed rh 8.0 @ my parents, and they are very happy with it, they can do the stuff they want to do: browsing, mail, burning cd, listening music, making docs & doing bank businesses (this box has an uptime of 120 days already
). They only have to switch once a year to windows partition because of tax program 
What really is needed is an “InstallShield” like application used by RedHat,Mandrake,Suse,Lycoris.. and everyone else under the sun…
And it would be nice if you redefined all apps to under /usr/applications/<App name>/ or possibly:
/applications/<App name>/
It would also be nessecary to change the runtime linker to be more like beos, which means that you can drop your version of a library in the applications own directory and have that version linked automatically.
Also if Gnome and KDE could agreee on the desktop being:
/home/username/Desktop
and lastly agree how to build and maintain a “start” like menu. That would go a long way towards interoperatibilty.
Siigh, so much work, so little interest by the community
Michael
I just tried out Knoppix yesterday and I’m running it today too
If you want to show the true power of Linux to someone, do use Knoppix! It autodetected and autoconfigured all my devices, launched X11 and KDE, added all my partitions to the desktop (including an XFS partition which I have not been able to get mounted under many other distros) and provided all the nice juicy tools I needed. The only complaint I have is the lack of better internatiolization support although it’s fairly easy to change the language in KDE. Oh and no mplayer :/
RedHat 8 is a bloat piece of crap. I’ve run it for a few days and installed it on some other machines but I’ve always hated it. Even some of my friends who have enthusiastically installed it switched to other friendlier distros in a matter of weeks. And these “friendlier” ones being Gentoo, Mandrake and SuSE.
Also, “guru”, why didnt you offer that “newbie” SuSE?
What really is needed is an “InstallShield” like application used by RedHat,Mandrake,Suse,Lycoris.. and everyone else under the sun…
(plug) http://autopackage.org/ (/plug)
And it would be nice if you redefined all apps to under /usr/applications/<App name>/ or possibly:
/applications/<App name>/
Well, other than the obvious i18n issues with that, we currently use /apps for testing purposes. I dunno why though, actually installing stuff to /usr/local works great.
It would also be nessecary to change the runtime linker to be more like beos, which means that you can drop your version of a library in the applications own directory and have that version linked automatically.
We’re going to have to change ld.so yes, but not in that way. There’s no real problem with splitting binaries, libraries and shared data. Anyway, if you want to do that you might as well statically link everything, which is what we’re working hard to avoid.
Also if Gnome and KDE could agreee on the desktop being:
/home/username/Desktop
There have indeed been discussions on freedesktop.org about this. So far everybody has been too busy with other more important stuff though.
One interesting argument was that it’s not needed, because the home directory should be the desktop. That has a lot of ramifications, but is a cool theory. People who’ve tried it said that once they’d forced themselves to clean up their home directory it was really good.
and lastly agree how to build and maintain a “start” like menu. That would go a long way towards interoperatibilty.
Yes, that’s been done, KDE3.1 will use the new vFolder menus. They aren’t perfect and may well change in future (again), but they are a big improvement over the old system.
Siigh, so much work, so little interest by the community
Michael
On the contrary, this work is going on under your very nose, just subscribe to the right lists and monitor various bugzillas and you’ll see it happening.
As for the article, well a lot of good points have already been made. Redhat 8 is a .0 release and has bugs/missing features as you might expect. Nonetheless, it’s still one of the slickest out there. Linux in general is still unsuitable for general newbies, and when you introduce people to it you should make it absolutely clear that it’s still very much under construction, and a lot of effort will be needed to get up to speed (but it’s worth it!
.
Open source NTFS resize is coming along in BitKeeper. Hopefully sometime this year it’ll be stable enough for distros to integrate it.
For a RH8 install to go off without a hitch and for you to be ready to do any work within a decent amount of time you have to download a burn to cd the following:
apt and synaptic — Just get rid of the links to the old package manager until RH catches a clue and ties package management to apt for dependencies.
Browser plugins — I do not believe any came with RH8 so RealPlayer, Java, flash and plugger would be my list. I believe all of the following including flash come in rpm format.
MS core fonts — someone on sourceforge has these posted.
multimedia stuff — xmms mp3 is the only one I would include and use synaptic to deal with the rest. xine and totem go on my list.
vendor drivers — ATI, or Nvidia or lucent tech winmodem drivers.
NTFS kernel mod — For those folks dual booting between linux and XP.
Codeweavers wine — Its not CrossOver Office but if you are dual-booter it will let you run Word off the win partition with basically no work. Just install the rpm and go pretty much.
Is this a pain, yes.
Once you get the above on a RH8 box things are fine. The problem is that a new linux user would never realize this and I do not defend it. SuSE downloads and tries to install the Nvidia stuff on update. Redhat could do this. A number of distros come with browser plugins. Redhat should do this. The multimedia stuff is just Redhat getting on its high horse and try to make the OSS/FSF fanatics feel good. I hate that. Just pay the fee or ignore the consequences like everyone else in the linux world and ship the mp3 stuff. There has to be a compatibility layer if RH is to be seen as a possible corporate desktop for those looking at alternatives (not even saying it is ready for that yet). Include wine, CrossOver office version or at least cut a deal for fees to get Codeweaver wine rpm on. What about apt? This is the only half way decent way a rpm based distro will ever tackle even part of the dependency hell issues.
The sad part is that if Redhat had the things I listed above it would be the slickest distro out today, No question.
“The big reason I stay away from Linux is lack of 3rd party drivers”
for hardware.”
This is where the big companies like IBM could really help out.
JB wrote:
> The sad part is that if Redhat had the things I listed
> above it would be the slickest distro out today, No
> question.
What might be a good compromise would be to put a link on the desktop to an html doc that outlines these tweaks and provides links to help new users find and install the stuff.
Also, I tried the MS core fonts and went back to luxi sans.
the main reason a newb should use XP is that it’s an easier, faster and more stable desktop than any of the linux distros, and you know deep down that it’s true
I’m all for the open source guys to keep up the good work they do tho
Say,.. regarding this “synaptic” folks are talking about; does it find .deb packages, convert them to rpm, then install them; or does it find you rpms, convert them to debs, then use apt to install them on your system? Or something different?
I’m finding curiously little on it by googling.
Any links to docs/faqs would be appreciated.
Yes, I thought of this. When I get the time (probably two months after Phoebe comes out), I was going to make such a document along with a living with linux article because so many reviews talk about the install (which is usually easy to say the least and nothing else).
BTW, I tend to like the Abobe font suite which I have at work. I too damn moralistic to simply copy Adobe’s stuff over to my home laptop. So, I use the MS fonts that came with my Windows ME install right before I waxed the damn thing off my system. I still got a copy of my license of ME.
Honestly the thing that ticks me off is the fact that almost every complaint listed by folks above that were not just biased rants have solutions and some of the distros take some of these issues into account but no one distro I know of does it all by default.
There is no distro I know of that comes with complete multimedia (avifile and all the extras), browser plugins, will install all the 3rdparty drivers (not just Nvidia), fonts and tie all that to an apt style backend for dependency resolution. Mandrake comes close. SuSE does better than RH ever thought of doing but…all of it? I have not seen it.
I hate doing back to back posts.
http://freshrpms.net/apt/
The deal is that people having posted all these custom rpms and built repository of the distros rpms (the site above is redhat only) so that you can use apt with its damn decent dependency resolution on straight rpms not converted deb packages. Synaptic is the gui front end for this.
I love mentioning this synaptic because the new version rocks and it is very good. The only time you ever really run into trouble is when you try installing big packages that are still very beta from sites that are not tied to apt.
Have the user install SuSE 8.1,
Automatically mounts Windows.
gnorpm is a package that can be installed.
Mplayer installs.
YaST 2 could not be any easier for a newbie to use.
Can you do another article with the user installing SuSE and see what they think??
Ok, here is the deal ppl. RH8, SuSE 8.1, etc etc….. these are what I would call more advanced desktop distros. Distros to be used in a corporate environment or as m$ likes to say “pro” vs. say “home” edition. Also for those of us that like the power of linux but the convience of things like YaST and Synaptic etc. For a complete n00b that doesnt have the first clue about computing other than simple points and clicks, these are not the OSs of choice. If a complete computer idiot wants to install Linux then their best bet is going to be somthing like Lindows, Lycoris, or Xandros.
My personal opinion as an experienced linux user: I dont like ultra dumbed down distros……so Lindows, Lycoris, and Xandros are out for me. Let the n00bs have at em though. I like RH and SuSE, but I dont like how RH is turning into the M$ of Linux in that they are barely conforming to standards. Theyre making sweeping changes to things further seperating their products from ultra standard distros like SuSE, Slackware, Debian, UnitedLinux etc. Further, as a KDE user, Ive been absolutely horrified by what theyve done to KDE in both 8.0 and the upcoming 8.1. SuSE 8.1 is what I use and have been really happy with. It comes ready to rock with nearly everything you need…even wine precompiled and ready to go. I would say its a little more user friendly than RH in several areas but less so when it comes to RPMs. SuSE’s YaST is really the best config tool Ive ever seen in linux. Ive installed most of the latest distros for testing and it seems that most of them with minor exception put stuff in the same place except RH. I really dont understand that….but, oh well its still a good solid distro.
The important thing is to embrace linux….its here to stay and will only continue to improve…..bring on kernel 2.6!! 🙂
I think I said this many times before…
If Apple can make a *nix OS easy to use, the Linux community and all the distro and software developers should be able to do the same.
OSX is just, damn easy to use… It’s a pretty complete desktop OS, powerful, and oh, did I mention easy to use?
What OSX has over *nix counterpart Linux:
– Quartz, Quartz Extreme, Aqua, etc. (Linux? eeesh. XFree86 + the whole load of WM’s out there, are so goddamn slow, and compared to OSX, it’s pretty much lacks all the eye candy and neat features)
– EASE (Wizards, Wizards, Wizards, Drag and Drop, easy to use packages, networking, etc.)
If the distro makers come near to the level of OSX, and still hold it’s flexibility and customizability that Linux offers, that would be one amazing OS.
Or if the OSS community can’t do this on Linux, maybe Apple should just port to other hardware platforms and make OSX more flexible… Heck, who knows, OSX ease + FreeBSD flexibility… That would be something.
You forgot to mention OSX x86 port being released. You wanna talk about the start of an M$ thrashing on the desktop. I just wish they would do it.
man, i only read halfway the article because it just took too much effort trying to make sense of what he was writing.
articles like that should be proofread, i can’t believe ppl at pclinuxonline post an article written so poorly.