... And I thought Windoze was bad...!

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I have no more hair.   Not a shred-- it's all over the floor, from being pulled out.

Why?

Linux, more specifically UBuntu flavor.

I thought Microsquish was obscure, proprietary and geek-y in it's "help"....

But Microsquish's help is the very paragon of Proper, Clear English, when compared to the "help" offered by Linux!

Whew....talk about casting obscure spells in dead languages nobody understands anymore-- like, say cuneiform-- no, that is too generous.....!

I'm on my 3rd attempt to install Linux onto my machine--- onto a bare drive...

... and that's a good thing, too:  I've discovered if you try to install any flavor of Ubuntu on a windoze machine, it's boot-loader ...NOT OPTIONAL! (install #1) called "grub" for some obscure and meaningless reason-- will f!!k up the MBR record of your Windoze drives....!

What??

Yep-- you heard correctly, Ubuntu/linux will screw with Windoze's ability to boot normally, requiring a MBR repair-- NOT something for the faint hearted!

(in the voice of Foghorn-Leghorn) Fortunately, I had unplugged my Windoze system drives..... else I'd not be writing this at all.... 

So, install #2 boots to a blinking cursor... no joy.  Back to Windoze, so I can cruse the web looking for answers.  Obscure spells.... no help.

Install #3?  I finally get the damn thing to boot into a very, very crude IBM-Terminal like "login" thingy..  But that's it.  After loging in, I get this no-help blinking cursor, and have ZERO clue how to proceed.    Shades of DOS 1.0....!  (more hair pulling commences)

Perusing the web provides little in the way of help-- apparently, I'm supposed to memorize a series of very long and complicated spells, replete with obscure spell-components, and HOPE it works-- for the replies to these "fixes" are not encouraging in the least.

One page is **not** encouraging in the least:  apparently, Linux does not know how to operate ATI-style of video cards....

WHAT?   The second-most common graphics card, and it don't work with Ubuntu??  

Shades of Apple/IBM ..... if it ain't made by Apple/IBM, it ain't gonna work, nohow...

So.  Here I am in Win7, and I cannot access the stupid Linux drive because it's some stupid proprietary non-readable format...  Else I could try to cast the obscure spells line-by-line by copying and pasting into the affected CONFIG or INI files... but NOOOOOOO.... it has to be unreadable-- Windoze sees the drive fine-- it is clueless what to DO with it, but it sees it fine...

Garbage-- how on EARTH this OS managed to move out of a back-alley garage is beyond me...

.... this stupid OS was supposed to be simple. 

I now see why the blogosphere and the tech journals all claim that Linux requires a slew of experts to make the d!mn thing useful.



Unix?  At least there was a tech manual to refer to.....!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Sorry for your bad luck, it usually installs in a snap, but...

What model of ATi card do you have? I have been using several ATi cards without problems. As for grub, well, that was a warning, remember? The thing is, did you try to run the system from the CD before installing it?

The other is, ext format isn't proprietary, the fact that M$ doesn't provide a way to read it doesn't make it so, in fact if it were proprietary it wouldn't be on linux at all.

Not being able to boot in XWindows has happened to me once a good while ago, there is a chance that the bios on the videocard isn't standard (manufacturers like ASUS sometimes make some changes on the vanilla version) in which case getting the driver to run may be a challenge, namely if there is a compatible driver you'd have to install it on command line.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The LiveCD will run fine-- the screen resolution is crap, and it won't let you change, update or do anything TO the video within the CD-started version.

Worse, is there is apparently no way to read the idiotic "log" files!  Windoze, even WITH a 3rd party driver that supposedly "sees" stupid ext formatted drives, the drive is blank with a bunch of empty folders... worse than useless!

Is there any way to install this frikkin stupid OS onto a usable NTFS partition?  Instead of the useless-nobody-know-how-to-access "ext"? 

Booting into the CD version, I **still** frakkin can't get at those useless log files-- I get a frackkin "access denied" message--!

More "security" garbage from "we know better than YOU" idiot decisions by pimply-faced basement dwellers...

... I was appalled at the utter LACK of choices during the install!  No way to customize it-- no way to check/confirm drivers, availability, etc.   No way to include updated drivers... nothing.  It just ran, and gave me these condescending cutsy-pie "messages" about how "wonderful" it was going to be.....

...right.

Garbage software, as far as I'm concerned-- worse by 1000% than Microsquish.  At least with it, I could provide a 3rd party driver disk during install... and it at LEAST would boot into a "limp home" mode where I could **DO** sh!t....

Can you tell I'm frustrated?   Win95 wasn't THIS bad!

I'm now officially bald....

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

*sigh*

Well, as far as I know, I have Ubuntu up and running... at least it was about an hour ago. 

I had to cast some pretty obscure spells, in the command-line thingy, to make it work-- the forums are full of the particular bug I ran up against, apparently it's well-known, but also apparently, nobody's bothering to fix the distribution...

I downloaded a buncha 'updates' and I was told to re-boot.  I haven't:  so it may be broken again. 

I'm writing this from Win7, I wanted to ensure it was working as it should (it is).

There's still no way for Windoze (any flavor) to see anything on a Linux "proprietary" drive, though-- I've tried several windoze "drivers" to no avail-- blank disks.

*sigh*

So it goes.

Over all?  I'm far from impressed at the performance of Linux.  It's noticeably more sluggish than my Win7 or even my XP installs-- even though this Linux is supposedly 64bit.

However, apparently, there's still several days worth of tweaking I have yet to do on Linux, to make it 'go'.  Apparently, it only uses a single processor 'out of the box' and I must cast still more obscure spells to get it to realize I have 4 cpu's, not one.

I haven't checked if it can see all 8gig of my RAM, nor have I determined if it can see all 1gig of my video memory-- I was just trying to get the stupid thing to boot into a GUI mode....

...which I only accomplished by manually editing some config files!  And telling the d!mn thing to use "limp-home graphics mode".... 

....something Windoze has been able to do on it's own, since win95 days...!

To say I'm 'underwhelmed' would be akin to saying the Atlantic Ocean is 'some water, over there'....

The forums were not very well moderated, either:  too often I saw people "answer" a question with, "do X, you can google for the details how..."

!!!

I may return to it in a bit, but I've pulled enough hairs out for one week.

[beagle]

When I see people say Linux is so much easier to use than Windows I can only conclude they're using a totally different set of judgment criteria to mine.  Or maybe they generally mean versions where Apple,Red Hat or SUSE has carefully hidden the horror.

[Sibling DavidH]

I agree about Linux, but the ruined MBR when you remove it is not such a big deal.  Put in your XP disc and use fdisk/mbr.  I've removed Linux from two machines and it works.  (In fact, I don't have an XP disc so I used my 98SE disc which does the same.)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Frankly I'm very surprised, again, the only difficulty I had was to install an old printer, and in one case with a particular HW configuration.

Apparently, it only uses a single processor 'out of the box' and I must cast still more obscure spells to get it to realize I have 4 cpu's, not one.

WTF?? It has always seen all processors and memory in my case. Also the performance is usually very good but if you are using the generic video driver it is going to look as sluggish as hell. You should be able to install the right videocard drivers by enabling 3rd party drivers in the administration menu.

If you are having such a hard time I wouldn't be surprised if your chipset is one of the problematic ones, which basically means that you had the bad luck of trying a bad combination. Pity.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

If you are having such a hard time I wouldn't be surprised if your chipset is one of the problematic ones, which basically means that you had the bad luck of trying a bad combination. Pity.

I managed to get the "closed" drivers working.... sortof.  The main screen is okay, not quite as crisp as Win7 or WinXP with cleartype tuned and adjusted, but usable.

Monitor 2?  Trash.   It won't rotate to the correct portrait orientation, no matter which obscure spells I cast, or how many frakkin' config files I edit (and reboot-to).  And there's a nasty stripe of colored hash along the top/left side I can't get rid of.   As I said?  2nd Monitor is trashed by Linux-- not usable.

Works exactly how I like it in WinXP and Win7:  a literal falling over simple to setup.  A few clicks and I'm done:  monitor properly in portrait mode, with crisp, clean look.

Linux? Even *with* "closed" or "restricted" drivers, it's sluggish, but workable.  Sortof.

Printing?  Nope.  You Just Can't.  Not with my setup.  I have a perfectly good USB-->Parallel dongle that I've been using for years.  XP?  Just Works.  Win7?  Just Works.   Linux?   You Can't.   You just can't...

Three hours of fiddling with obscure CONFIG files, and with the stupid CUP web-based configurator^₁, and with the "add printer" NON-wizard.... and I still can't.   Well, I do not print all that often-- once a month?  Or less?  But I had sort of considered shifting all my web-based stuff to Linux.   Not if I can't print... 

And?  Apparently there is no registry or registry-equivalent that I can edit to force this stupid piece of non-working CrApple software to recognize how my ancient but serviceable laser printer is attached...   I thought going to Linux was a move **away** from giant corporations!   One reason why I carefully avoided that Novel-owned (Suse) distribution....



I'm afraid to dig into it deeper, let it break again.  It's like walking on eggs.  Or more accurately, it's like the old DOS days, where you spent hours tweaking your CONFIG files to get your memory model Just So, so that you could fit everything in, and still have enough resources to do some actual work... by hand, of course.

By the time they fixed these issues in DOS?  Win95 was well established... and DOS was abandoned.

I still have zero idea if this stupid software can see all my CPU's... it's sluggish as hell, even with the "improved" (but 1/2 functional) graphics driver...

... in truth?  I have no idea how to tell... the GUI is severely limited, if you wish to poke around 'under the hood'.  Few, if any tools are available for this:  the chief non-answer is to use the console, and cast obscure spells.

The problem is:  nobody knows what those spells can do, how to cast them properly, what the spell components should be, or what the results ought to look like...

The  ah-hem, "documentation" (and I use the term very loosely) is mostly basic stuff:  click this, open that, if you want to surf the web, or if you want to do e-mail.  Routine, falling-off-the-log simple stuff.   Very little (or no) assistance if something goes wrong.   Their "troubleshooting" wizards stupids consist of a series of steps designed specifically to generate a bug report, as far as I can tell.  One that nobody will read, or even address...

...yes, I've followed hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of these bug reports to the 'official' repository.  To see the bug, of several years running, still has nobody assigned to look at it, address it or do anything about it... usually forlorn comments by the discoverer of the bug, and every obscure spell he's tried unsuccessfully to cast, to address the issue.  Most often, ended with:  "I could not solve it, so I went back to blah-blah-blah  Hope this gets fixed."

That seems to be the chief "solution" to the majority of issues with Linux:  "I hope somebody figures this out, meantime, I'm going back to X"

Bottom Line:  Not Ready For Normal People.


_________________

^₁ CUP, the printing engine (as far as I can tell) Is owned and produced by CrApple-- what else?  I thought Linux was supposed to be "open source"?  And here I find, deeply embedded is this idiotic CrApple product-- NO WONDER I CAN'T!!!!  The various Linux forums share my extremely low opinion of it as well, it seems... post after post after post of how non-functional printing is, under CUP....

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

So you have a dual setup and one monitor is portrait? That explains a lot, yup, it will not like it, it will work with two same resolution monitors in landscape but doing that kind of management is very hard to do, mainly because ATI/AMD's driver doesn't support it (at least until the last time I tried). As for the printer dongle, well, printers are one weak side of linux in any flavor, and what you are trying to do is pretty much one of the most complicated things to do, you would have to pretty much write the driver for the dongle yourself.

I guess there is a fair warning going into linux that was sadly forgotten: if the system is plain vanilla standard your chances of it working without hassle are 99%. If you are doing some more sophisticated things, like say, having two monitors with one in portrait, or using obscure hardware chances are you will have a hassle. The reason for this isn't because the developers (in this case canonical) are incompetent but because in order to manage hardware you need a working driver, in 98% of cases there is a driver for windows (something to do with it being installed in 90% of computers worldwide), and given that the responsibility of writing that driver lies in the manufacturer you as a user are literally in the hands of the maker for drivers. Incredibly enough linux developers have taken that task themselves successfully in a number of cases for the most common devices but the percentage of drivers available rarely surpasses 40% (think of all the different versions of scanners, printers, webcams, videocards, TV cards, etc, etc, etc, available for windows).

As a comparison check the quantity of hardware that works in Apple (and how expensive it is). You can't go out and buy the first printer you like, you must check first if it supports OSX. With Linux it isn't too different only with the handicap of not knowing from the box.

I'm sorry it didn't work as expected, my suggestion would be (if you are still interested in fiddling with it) is to try it in a more standard box, in fact an older box should do quite well. As for knowing if the system is recognizing memory and processors there is a monitor in the administration menu and there you'll see memory and cores (in different colors).

[ivor]

I never had any of that kind of trouble.  Sorry Bob!  The only big trouble I had was with the RAID card/motherboard combination.  A different motherboard fixed that. 

I was running an ATI Fire MV2250 video card and never had a problem.  With the OS anyways...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Well, I'm calmer now that my frustration level is lower.

Zono:  I'll keep fiddling with the monitors-- they work with landscape/portrait in any flavor of Windoze since win2k-- the combination is one of my favorite styles, actually-- have had it thus for years.  Sure, originally both were CRT bottles, but I'd made a sort of holder-thingy to flip one on it's side...  and as I sad, it was literally a few mouse-clicks to accomplish in windoze.

As for the printing issue?  I've written to my box-maker for an optional cable that would enable a parallel-style of printer port.  My MB has one, but it's a header inside.  Sadly, it's a standard 25 pin parallel port header, and back in the day, I had dozens of extra parallel-to-25-pin D-sub cables lying about... but I tossed all that out when I moved here.   A scan of the internets came up more-or-less blank, but I'm hoping the maker will sell me one-- the MB should have had one in the box it came in.

As a final 'fix' I may install a PCI parallel card-- these are cheap enough.   I'm told that Linux works well enough for parallel-port printing.

------------------

I had to step back, and remind myself this was supposed to be a foray into the world of non-Microsquish.   And I should've remembered:  Microsquish did NOT get to be #1 by making things hard..... and that if Linux really was easy, it would've surpassed Microsqish long, long ago, simply due to the cheap nature of business managers.

So, I'll keep fiddling with it-- it's on a spare drive and costs me nothing to have it there.

_______________

MB:  Yeah, I can imagine.  I saw boatloads of stuff lamenting that RAID architecture was *not* being implemented in Linux very well.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I think I have some parallel cables in a box, let me know and I can send you one in the mail.

Sidenote, sometimes it is easier to reinstall the system when you get new hardware than to install it afterwards. 

[ivor]

It was really the RAID card not liking the motherboard than Linux...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I think I have some parallel cables in a box, let me know and I can send you one in the mail.

Sidenote, sometimes it is easier to reinstall the system when you get new hardware than to install it afterwards. 

Thanks, but I think I can bum some from my local "white box" computer store-- I've an excellent relationship with them, and those old parallel cables were ubiquitous once upon a time.

Since this store is also deeply into the computer recycling game, I imagine somewhere in their copious warehouse, is a box'o'ribbon cables, one of which ought to do the deed.  Then a standard printer parallel-cable (of which I still have several) ought to hook me right up.

Further searching located a source of these on E-bay, but alas, the shop's in Australia...


__________________

It was really the RAID card not liking the motherboard than Linux...

Yeah, I came across any number of forum-threads talking about RAID implementation issues.   It's apparently far better *now* than it was even a year ago, though.

Always a good sign.