Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey 499
tim1980 writes "Derek Croxton has written a rather long editorial on how he sees the Linux and Open Source communities, and his personal experiences with Linux, the editorial is titled Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey and is over 3,500 words. Excerpt: 'A novice's greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn't behave exactly as advertised.'"
.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:.so hell (Score:5, Informative)
Re:.so hell (Score:2)
As drive space becomes cheaper and cheaper, it seems that you should just be able to keep copies of the needed components with the installed program.
AC
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
Regards,
Steve
Re:.so hell (Score:4, Informative)
I think if you stay inside of your distribution you won't have problems. The problem is when you download something outside of the distro and try to integrate it with your system. Then you get what you are asking for.
If you want to load a particular application - see if your distro has it on their package list first before downloading it from somewhere else. The distribution creators will have integrated it with your distro elimenating headaches for you.
If you must download something from outside of your distro - understand that you may have to do some integration work.
That being said, I have had very good luck loading some packages outside of what Slackware provides. I attribute it to the following:
1. Slackware conforms to the Linux filesystem standard.
2. The applications I have downloaded also conform to the Linux filesystem standard.
3. The applications I have downloaded did not use deprecated or experimental functions within the libraries they call (most libraries are good about staying backwards compatible for standard functions).
The most problems I have had doing integration was trying to get OSS applications to build under SUN Solaris. SUN packages change the default locations for various things (most notably, apps you would normally find under
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
The XP way is easy and opaque, the Linux ways is complex but you know what happens. The Linux crowd apparently prefers that option.
It is however trivial to stick a front end on top that does what that XP gadget does. Mandrake has such a tool in 10.0, I think it was there in 9.x too, and other distributions probably have it too.
However it is a delicate choice to make. Letting the user fiddle with network settings that have huge implications on the wa
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
It should be linked against lib.so.1, or lib.so.1.0.0.3, or whatever. Most likely it should be linked against the major version.
Usually when libraries make major changes that break compatibility packages are created of both versions.
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:.so hell (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, not every single person maintaining a library is as careful as the glibc people, and screwups do happen. It is the distributor's task to maek sure all the programs that ship with a given distribution work with the libraries included in it.
Re:.so hell (Score:4, Informative)
The glibc people aren't careful at all. They are quite, quite happy to break software if they believe the users programs to be "broken". They've broken even high profile apps like Mozilla this way, because their interpretation of a spec was different to everybody elses. But no, Mozilla was "broken" and whoever wrote that function should be "punished" according to the maintainer.
The glibc group, along with many many other free software projects, usually believe they are maintaining backwards compatibility. In practice they are at most maintaining ABI compatibility which is not enough: the interface of an API is so much more than the layout of its structures and prototypes of its functions.
I've written a guide on how to write good shared libraries. It deals a lot with versioning and how to avoid breaking software.
I'm hoping it can be peer reviewed and published somewhere soonish, in the next few weeks. I'd post the draft here but the server hosting it seems to be down.
Re:.so hell (Score:2)
Installation of Debian (Score:3, Informative)
I strongly recommend installing straight to testing ('sarge') using the new Debian-Installer [debian.org] installer.
The current stable ('woody') release (3.0) is way too outdated (over two years old now) for being able to provide an enjoyable desktop/workstation usage experience.
The current testing on the other hand contains up to date versions of software and works very well. It will "soon" become the new stable release (3.1)
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Informative)
It's been years since I had to worry about dependancies.
2 reasons:
Apt-get from debian has been ported to Fedora/Redhat. I use Fedora. (laptop)
I use Debian. (desktop)
That's it.
What to patch?
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
Wham bam thank you mam!
Want mplayer, but Fedora doesn't have the ability to play DVD's or Mp3's?
Head on down to Dag's RPM repositories, follow his directions and go:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install mplayer libdvdcss xmms
done and DONER!!!!
Apt-get IS the killer application for linux.
Update everything, patch everything. Not just core system like in Windows!
No MORE DEPENDANCY HELL.
It's realy quite nice. Install debian, upgrade to unstable. I've been running it for 2 years, no sweat and completely up to date.
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:2)
Everything is split into categories. cd into the directory you want, then do a make, then make install.
If make fails because of a dependancy as described above, quite often you can simply cd to that program and make install.
The trick is, of course if a version is already installed. Then you do make dein
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:
Of course, every time I bring up the idea of standardizing important parts of Linux distributions the lynch mob comes after me, because consistency and distribution-neutral package installation goes against the spirit of Open Source or something ("stifles choice", I've heard).
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to tell someone "just use apt-get and do X, Y, and Z" instead of "[Install Debian] and use apt-get to do X, Y, and Z"?
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:4, Informative)
2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.
3.) I can't remember the last time I couldn't find an RPM. Or just built one myself using developer-supplied Specs files. Debian's system has everything (or so I've heard). And you can always compile a program, or roll your own binary package very easily.
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
How about Slackware? SuSE? Yellowdog? Gentoo? Redhat 6?
See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.
2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.
Care to list them? And would it be too bold an assumption on my part to expect that these files all exist in t
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, if you're ranting in this vein, it's because you haven't yet become comfortable with Linux in general (to subvert your term) to the point where you understand the bigger picture. I could whine all day about the various and sundry differences between Windows versions too...but most folks would find it silly, because we've all got a decade or more of Windows in general experience, so the fact that "Dialup Networking" might be found in 3 different places over the years seems quite trivial. And it is. But what you don't recognize is that to someone who has a good working understanding of and familiarity with Linux in general the differences between the Mandrake package manager and the Fedora one are pretty much that same level of trivial. And if you aren't scared of the command line, apt-get, emerge, yum, and urpmi all end up seeming roughly equivalent, and it isn't much trouble to use any one of them. To someone who has been running Linux for a few years, picking up a new distro isn't any real challenge. (Well, unless it's Linux from Scratch or something ;-)
My point is that once again, people are viewing Linux through Windows-trained eyes. Computer systems have differences, even within families that are similar. Since pretty much anyone who works with computers at all has years of Windows experience these days, people know how to work around the annoyances, and compensate for the differences. When someone gets thrown into the world of Linux, they tend to try out 6 different distros in 6 months...is it really a surprise that minor differences would seem much more serious when you have so little experience with the family of systems in general?
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:4, Interesting)
Installing software in a consistent manner _is_ a big deal. Why are there twenty different ways to install the same piece of software depending on what distribution of Linux you're using? Why can't someone say "if you're using Linux, this is how you install software"? You don't think this would be a tremendous help to Linux?
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
You just can't get over wanting it to be just like Windows. That's your own problem, not Linux's. In particular, you're stuck to the software model where you go "get an installer and run it." That's really not the model most Linux distributions use at all, and in my opinion and that of a lot of people who use Linux, it's an inferior model to boot. Instead, most Linux distributions manage your software for you. You don't go download a Fedora RPM on Gentoo, because that would be silly. It doesn't matter that
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
2)Your FreeBSD experience doesn't really count either, as it's not Linux...but on the other hand, is there really anything that ports isn't giving you?
3)Are you actually claiming that Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE 9.1 lack packages for things you need? Or that you have actually experienced serious dependency problems on them? Becaus
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Insightful)
If the goal is to have an OS/distro that will compete with Windows and OSX, then the OS/distro will have to accommodate the millions (or Billions, even) who will view Linux through Windows-trained eyes.
I spent months following wickedly obscure and time consuming instructions for compiling apps for Mandrake before I discovered the magic of the MCC gui for URPMI, then another couple months finding reliable mirrors.
Now, when a new version of my favorite app come out I have to wait until someone comes along to make an rpm for me, but when the same app releases an update for Windows, all I gotta do is download and click Next a few times. I have seriously broken my Mandrake install trying to install software via means other than URPMI, so I have pretty much quit trying.
Don't tell me to RTFM either, because I have R'd several FM's but they don't help much because of the two dozen different ways the authors and the distros deal with installing software. Although I'm a clueless newbie among the slashdot Gnu/Linux elite, the rest of the world thinks I'm some sort of computer genius. I've been fiddling and reading and making and breaking Linux installs for almost four years now and I still get frustrated with the process.
Meanwhile, my main reason for becoming interested in Linux has evaporated--Windows no longer sucks. In fact, WindowsXP is a pretty darned good OS--better than I could have imagined when suffering with the infernal abomination of WindowsME.
I guess I just get tired of the slashdot mindset that appears every time there is a thread that suggests that maybe just maybe there could be some improvements in the area of user-friendliness of Linux distros. It usually starts with, "Just open a terminal window and..."
The more Unix-y and less Windows-ish or Macintoshy the solution, the longer it will be before any distro makes serious inroads among average users.
I'm willing to spend my hobby time fiddling with and learning about my OS because I have enjoy it, but most people are afraid to click anything they haven't been approved to click.
Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. The technology is there. The technology is proven. The technology is Open Source.
Unless by "Linux in general" you meant Linus' work on the KERNEL. In which case, this does NOT belong there.
"Not every distribution has the ability to use apt or yum or whatever or even a package system."
So? The people who would choose that kind of distribution KNOW what they are get
Yeah, right, whatever. (Score:4, Insightful)
Those filthy Linux guys. Always corrupting our grandmothers! I hate them. All of them!
"Oh, I'm sure apt is portable enough to run on anything. You're just forgetting that a repository is also necessary, which only exists for the major distributions."
No, I'm not forgetting it.
I'm asking you for SPECIFICS and you keep coming back with hypothetical cases.
Again, someone who CHOOSES that distribution already KNOWS the limitations and has CHOSEN it for some reason.
Even in a world with a Central Authority controlling the naming of files, the naming of packages, the placement of files and the actions of the installer, that would STILL be a problem.
Simply put, why should the additional functionality of your hypothetical distribution be REQUIRED of all distributions in the perfect world you claim needs to exist?
If it is NOT required, then you are right back to where you are today. Conflicts and all.
"Because Linux zealots seem to believe that a little bit of distribution consistency is the worst possible thing that could happen..."
I guess that's your problem.
You are NOT advocating for "a little bit of distribution consistency".
If you can't see that, you're an idiot. That was why I pointed out all the things needed to achieve your fantasy. The Central Authority for naming all files, all versions, all packages, all the contents of packages, and all the behaviours of the installer.
Not to mention the limitations on what kernel patches are required to be applied (and which are forbidden).
"So in other words, your standard works as long as you confine yourself to a single platform? Some standard."
It's called a "defacto standard".
It works. The process works. Linux advances. Users have options.
Under your solution, MANY of those options would be TAKEN AWAY so that some idiot would be sure that every possible package he could find would run on his machine.
Re:Package maintenance (Score:4, Informative)
The second biggest problem is that of binary portability.
Where files and such are put isn't actually that big a problem. I know that's what it looks like at first, I thought the same thing. But in practice, it's really not a problem.
How do I know these things? Because for the last two years I've been working on a distribution neutral packaging format, that installs anywhere and is easy to use [autopackage.org]. Go check out the screenshots! There are demo packages you can use as well, like the Inkscape CVS nightly builds. Be warned, I think the Zile package isn't working quite right yet.
Autopackage really needs more people working on it. Right now all the 3 main developers are in a time crunch and it's slowed right down to a crawl. If you want to see easy 1 click installs on Linux (easier than apt-get even for newbies ...) why not come on over and help out?
binary compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would you de
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really only Redhat and Debian that have large sets of packages, right?
Ok, I'm going to correct you, because you're wrong. Gentoo, Mandrake, SuSE, Lindows, Xandros, and probably lots more distros have truly massive package collections. I use Gentoo primarily, and there are thousands of ebuilds out there; the only things I've installed without using emerge were little obscure scripts and such which aren't typically packaged at all beyond source.
Also, if you want the ultim
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the apt-get approach is that it's like living in a town with only one supermarket. OK, so it's a really big supermarket but still:
- If you can't find the food you want in there, you're stuck
- If you can but it's stale, damaged or out of stock, you're stuck
- You are totally dependent on the people running the supermarket
- The larger a supermarket is, the harder it becomes to find things in it. Just imagine taking your grandma to a supermarket where the aisles stretched as far as the eye could see!
To stretch the analogy a bit further than it can really go, just imagine if getting tired of this one supermarket you travelled to the next town and bought a lampshade from a shop there. Bring it all the way back, put it in your house and suddenly your TV explodes.
What happened? "Oh, you mixed different repositories". All centralised systems suffer this but Fedora worse than most - you're fine as long as you stick to the core repositories but if you add others (and you do need to do that, if you want a big enough collection to be useful) things will randomly break due to "conflicts". Just imagine trying to explain that to grandma!
Oh yeah. There are a bunch of other problems as well. I've seen a lot of 3rd party packages of software that are totally broken. Often the users don't connect the problems they are seeing with the packages. This happens a lot with complex software like Wine, Mono etc ... I've seen quite a few packages of Wine that won't even start! It's pretty clear that many 3rd party packagers hardly test what they produce at all, especially in the case of "new release, I'll just bump the number in the spec and rebuild". I'd estimate that about 40-50% of the tech support problems I deal with in Wine are due to incorrectly built packages. It's not even hard! Just configure, make, make install but people still cock it up mightily - using badly done wrapper scripts and moving files around from where they're supposed to be are the most common, but bad builds happen too.
Apt-get has other problems. You have to duplicate this huge effort over and over again for each distro. This doesn't happen so you get vendor lockin - the very thing we're trying to all get away from, no? I've met more than one person in my life whos number 1 reason for using Debian was "I can apt get lots of software". It was not due to the merits of the distribution itself, it was not due to have a nice installer, slick default desktop, solid PAM setup etc etc. It was because installing software was not a pain in the ass.
Apt-get works great as long as you are willing to throw infinite manpower at the problem. We don't have infinite manpower, duh. So centralised packaging cannot be a scalable, sustainable way forward for our community outside of certain use cases like servers (where it works well).
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:5, Informative)
* stable is way behind everybody else, if some piece of software doesn't support your hardware, say XFree86, you are in deep throuble, hardly any newbie will stand this much longer then a few days
* unstable on the other side while being more current can do havoc at any point, beside 'apt-get upgrade' isn't all that fun for modem users, hell even 'apt-get update' is already a serious problem for modem users. testing is still more a game of luck, sometimes it work sometimes it doesn't, nothing that I would give in the hands of a newbie.
* apt-get doesn't fix dependency hell, it just works around it so that dependencies get automatically detected, apt-get however DOES NOT resolve conflicts in a user expected way, if library foo and library bar are incompatible, apt-get will remove everything that depends on the other when I want to install one of them.
* apt-get can't install different versions of -dev packages in most cases since the includes conflict
* apt-get is a one-way thing, it doesn't provide a roll-back. Simple example would be Gnome2, once it got released I took a look at it and it sucked, lots of features removed and stuff didn't work, was there a way to get Gnome1.4 back? No, I was stuck with Gnome2 thanks to apt-get. Sure, I could manually track each and every dependecy and install it in a seperate prefix, but thats nothing that a newbie wants to do.
* apt-get depends extremly on the quality of the repository from which it grabs stuff, unofficial packages often cause throuble and if the maintainers of the repo to something ugly like removing a programm that you depend on, bad luck for you, there is no easy workaround, then to not use apt-get and do everything manually.
A solution to the dependcy hell would be one that is not distrospecific and allows me to download and install any Linux stuff I want from the net, not just the one that some Debian maintainers thought would be worth packaging. It should also allow to install any number of different versions of the same programm without relying on extra work of the maintainer to handle the situation.
Sadly many of the problems are caused by the FHS layout, which is now standardized and thus basically unfixable for a long long time.
Re:.so hell NOT NO MORE FOR ME! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not obvious. If a person has a user account on a Linux computer, and is able to place files there, mark them as executable, and run them, then he SHOULD be able to install packages as well.
The user can do the workaround of manually extracting the package with an archiver tool and then moving around the contents to appropriate positions- but there is no good reason to disallow someone fro
Re:.so hell (Score:2)
The most common solution seems to be to download the source-code and recompile everything. Even worse is when you have version 4 installed, and the new program you want to install is based on version 3. But of course, everything else in your desktop is based on version 4.
At least Linux tells
Off topic: DLL Hell (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procex p
It'll tell all the processes associated with a running program.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/listdll s.shtml [sysinternals.com] will show all the loaded dlls.
Between these two programs, you can sort through most of the dll errors without killing yourself.
disclaimer: I don't know this guy... I just use his sof
Re:.so hell (Score:2, Informative)
I used to resolve this by having a directory that specifically contained old versions of library files. Try ldconfig... a snippet from the man page:
ldconfig creates the necessary links and cache (for use by the run-time linker, ld.so) to the most recent shared libraries found in the directories specified on the command line, in the file /etc/ld.so.conf, and in the trusted directories (/usr/lib and /lib). ldconfig checks the header and file names of the libraries it encounters when determining which versi
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Informative)
Re:.so hell (Score:2, Informative)
When you run a binary which which was originally dynamically linked against version 3 or version 4 ldd loads either
The libfoo.so symlink tells ld w
Re:.so hell (Score:3, Insightful)
OMG (Score:5, Funny)
It's as if he's looked into my very soul... or tapped into my webcam.
Please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
$command --help
man $command
info $command
http://www.google.com/search?q=$command
use brain;
Re:Please.... (Score:5, Insightful)
$how do i read a file from my floppy? "mount?" who woulda thought.
The problem is knowing where to look sometimes. I am still learning useful commands.
Re:Please.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that great? In UNIX it does take a little longer to reach basic competency, compared to windows. But the learning curve doesn't stop there. There's always something new to learn, to give you more control over your machine, and make you more productive. A little time invested reading HOWTOs pays back immensely over time.
Re:Please.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that it wouldn't kill someone to make a bunch of tutorials that speak to average people, and explain things like rm, and ls
Re:Please.... (Score:2)
Re:Please.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Knowing these tricks assumes that you've already had some experience with command-line interfaces. I'm sorry, but none of the examples above are common sense to anyone without command-line experience (except maybe the Google search).
Re:Please.... (Score:2)
1. ls except for dir well DIR did work but it kinda sucked.
2. now that I see the files and I found out that cd worked too. So now I can at least explore the file system. (Kinda it was hit and miss because I didn't know much about ls -l even when I did a man on these commands I wasn't use to taking in information in that method so the man commands were useless fo
Re:Please.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Back in around 1993, the Internet came to the place I was living at the time, in Northern California. My roommate and I were big BBS users, so we were all over that, and signed up the instant that CRL offered service.
What they offered was a dial-in, UNIX command prompt. You were only allowed to run one command at a time, and they didn't offer PPP or SLIP for years, perhaps never. And they didn't ship a manual of any type. You got a dialup number and a logi
Education. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Education. (Score:3, Insightful)
and even if you know the command: man man
man, version 1.5k
usage: man [-adfhktwW] [section] [-M path] [-P pager] [-S list]
[-m system] [-p string] name
uau... much better now
Admit it: cli is not for joe average that only needs to change its pc configuration once in a decade. Even if he learns something, he will forget everything in a couple of months
Re:Education. (Score:2)
just type "man command", that will teach you fairly quickly what a command does.
I've worked on UNIX systems for something like 10 years, and I can say that "man" is frequently my last resort. Usenet/Google Groups, normal Google searches, freindly UNIX admins, some bookmarked web pages and books are all things I try before using man.
Maybe man on Linux is much more useful than the AIX system we use, but frequently I find it far too cyptic to be of use. The sort of man pages I see are only going to scare
Re:Education. (Score:2)
Re:Education. (Score:5, Insightful)
What man is missing is an example section, e.g., "To find all files with mary in the title, use ls -R *mary*" or whatever; "to find all files modified in the last 10 days do..."
I will say right out that perhaps such a facility exists, but I am unaware. I am a GUI user of Linux (SuSE 9.1 X86_64) and my command line skills have rusted since I lived in VMS 20 years ago...
Re:Education. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's one example from the FreeBSD find man page:
find / -newer ttt -user wnj -print
Print out a list of all the files owned by user ``wnj'' that are newer than the file ttt.
Re:Education. (Score:3, Interesting)
Mirror anybody? (Score:2)
Mirrored (Score:5, Informative)
I just spoke with him on the phone, too; cool guy. I don't think he was expecting anyone to actually call him
Fear? (Score:2, Funny)
poetic justice (Score:5, Funny)
someone else w/o a clue links it on slashdot
lemmings knock the site offline
but with no idea of what it means or how to alter (Score:2)
Best newbie interface? (Score:3, Informative)
The Command Line - Best Newbie Interface? [slashdot.org]
symphony OS (Score:3, Insightful)
mad as xxxx and staggeringly heavy on disk space but it takes the problem away.
Re:symphony OS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:symphony OS (Score:3, Interesting)
The problems with shared libraries boil down to exactly two things:
Goto tldp.org (Score:4, Informative)
The linux documentation project is great. Lots of howtos, but also great guides.
I always recommend for a newbie to read:
Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide
Bash Guide for Beginners
The Linux System Administrators' Guide (for "power users")
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide (for "power users")
And maybe the network administrator guide.
All these are cool because they are generally distro agnostic. Anybody can benifit from their knowledge.
AND remember GOOGLE!!!!
The command line IS your friend. It's another form of user interface, and combined with a gui like X makes Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems) have the most flexible and powerfull user interface aviable.
At times it may not be freindly to newbies, but once you have a decent idea what is going on, it's definately worth it.
Those guides will give you the nessicary tools to understand and become comfortable with your Linux installation. No more fighting thru layers of obsofacation and a deep bridge becuase the knowledge of MS insiders/advanced administrators vs Windows users. In linux users can be as knowlegable as the best programmer or developer.
But you don't have to any more due to people like Gnome/KDE/Fedora/Redhat/Suse/Mandrake etc etc. Now it's just a matter of what you want and what you feel most comfortable about.
Fear? (Score:4, Funny)
This is true, a novice's greatest computer fear is sitting there not knowing what to do. This is why a novice:
does not use linux
calls me all the time to ask stupid questions
has a pc infected with spyware
and so on
To me, the attraction of linux is having a need and then discovering how to fill that need. Then finding out that my solution is cludgy and could be done a different and better way. This leads to other cooler and more elegant solutions. Thus a process of learning that is both satisfying and productive. That's why I love linux and it is why the "novice" is afraid.
Re:Fear? (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember sitting in front of a DEC or UNIX machine when I was younger a not knowing at all what to do. I had teachers to help me, and books to learn, so I am not so afraid anymore. I remember sitting in front of the first mac confused. I looked stuff up, and used prior experience, and figured it out.
My m
man oh man (Score:3, Funny)
now you're a MAN!
a MAN, MAN, MAN!
If it's really that hard, Linux should come with a default command prompt that includes " for help, type man [command]. #"
All I learned (Score:5, Funny)
Recently I've been introduced to an operating system known as Linux.
Lured by its low cost, I replaced Windows 98 on my computer with Linux. Unfortunately the more I use it the more I fear that this "Linux" may be an insidious way for the Dark One to gain a stronger foothold here on Earth. I know this may be a shocking claim, but I have evidence to back it up!
To begin with, Linux is based off of an older, obsolete OS called "BSD Unix". The child-indoctrinatingly-cute cartoon mascot of this OS is a devil holding a pitchfork. This OS -- and its Linux offspring -- extensively use what are unsettingly called "daemons" (which is how Pagans write "demon" -- they are notoriously poor spellers: magick, vampyre, etc.) which is a program that hides in the background, doing things without the user's notice. If you are using a computer running Linux then you probably have these "demons" on your computer, hardly something a good Christian would want! Furthermore in order to start or stop these "demons" a user must execute a command called "finger". By "fingering" a "demon" one excercises an unholy power, much the same way that the Lord of Flies controls his black minions.
Linux contains another Satanic holdover from the "BSD Unix" OS mentioned above; to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?
Consider some of these other Linux commands: "sleep", "mount", "unzip", "strip" and "touch". All highly suggestive in a sexual nature. I know that our Lord cannot approve of these, and I urge them to be renamed to something appropriate to the Christian community. Interestingly "CONTROL-G" (the sixth key from the left of the keyboard) does an abort. To write files a "VI" editor is included. All these are to ensnare the unsuspecting christian who could get tempted by typing "VIVIVI" all day long.
Fourth, Linux uses a flavor of DOS known as Bash. Bash is an acronym for "Bourne Again Shell". On the surface this would appear to be supportive of the Lord. However, remember that even Satan can quote the bible for his own purposes! While I believe Linux may be born-again, its obvious by the misspelling of "born" that its not born-again in an Christian church. Will the lies ever cease?
Additionally, one of the main long-haired hippies involved with the GNU Free Software Foundation supports communism, contraception and abortion. He has consistently supported 60's counter-cultural "values", and his web site even advocates government support of contraception. He also wears fake halos, and has quips about his made-up church that relates to his free software. I find such blasphemy to be extremely unsettling.
One must also remember that the creator of Linux, a college student named Linux Torvaldis, comes from Finland. I'm sure all the followers of Christ are aware of the heritical nature of the Finnish: from necrophilia to human sacrifice, Finnish culture is awash in sin. I find little reason to believe anything good and holy could arise from this evil land.
Finally, let us remember that there is an alternative to using the Satan-powered Linux. I think history has shown us that Microsoft is quite holy. I'm told that its founder, William Gates is a strong supporter of our Lord and I encourage my fellow Christians to buy only his products to help keep the Devil at bay.
I wish I had more time to expound upon my findings. Unfortunately a family of Jews has moved in across the street and I must go speak to them of Jesus Christ before they are condemned to eternal hellfire.
Please investigate this as you see fit and I'm sure you'll reach the same conclusions that I have.
Re:All I learned (Score:3, Funny)
Lost in Linuxland (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, most user friendly distros will manage a forehead install [wordspy.com], but invarably there will be at least one critical function that doesn't work. In my experience that has been Palm hotsync (always), printing over the Windows network (usually), and wireless networking (most recently).
I know from hard experience that trying to find a solution for any of these will involve hours if not days of trolling newsgroups, forums, and that special hell called man pages.
I'm not afraid of command prompts, or of learning new things, but I simply cannot afford to waste a whole day trying to print, or sync my calendar.
Re:Lost in Linuxland (Score:5, Insightful)
But once you're set up, you're set up for good. You can't afford to "waste a whole day", but it's not like you are going to have to "waste a whole day" every day, just once. It is called "learning".
Re:Lost in Linuxland (Score:3, Insightful)
unix' learning curve is vertical (Score:2, Informative)
Further some man pages say 'this has moved to info', this has a bastardised Emacs commandset with pagination and hyperlinking, and the novice friendly Emacs keybindings.
Don't
Re:unix' learning curve is vertical (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but you can do pretty well by the RTFM method, and using "tar xvzf file.tar.gz" until you discover that you really want to learn what each of those letters means. By then you'll find yourself wanting to use the man pages, because it tells you about all kinds of other nifty stuff you never knew about.
I find all kinds of useful stuff in man pages all the time. Hell, they're oftentimes more useful than all the newbie-friendly documentation on the web. The difference is that each level of information is ideal for a different level of user. Start with web & HowTo docs, then move to less specific HowTo docs, then go to manpages. It's not that hard; it just takes time.
oh right (Score:5, Funny)
Offtopic: Slashdot should Coralize popular links (Score:3, Interesting)
While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
It refers to Richard Henry's Dana's autobiographical Two Years Before the Mast, what is hands down not only among the best maritime adventures ever written, but is one of my favorite books of any kind.
Dana was a Harvard sophmore in the 1830s who came down with scarlet fever. As a result, his eyesight was suffering. The common prescription for this in those days was to take a sea voyage. Dana, despite being a young person of privilege, didn't take the normal route of travelling to Europe as a tourist. He signed on as a common seaman, a grueling, uncomfortable and by today's standards incredibly dangerous job. He joined a vessel that rounded the Horn in July (through the teeth of the Austral winter) bound for the wild and nearly uncharted region of California. The common seamen slept in the foc'sl, the part of the vessel at the bow; thus "Before the Mast". Two Years Before the Mast became historically important when gold was found at Sutter's Mill, setting of the great gold rush. At the time, it was practically the only book available that had any information about California.
His account is exciting and riveting, and probably unique. Many talented writers have written of the sea, and have gone on sea voyages, but I can't think of anyone else of Dana's literary powers who actually lived as common sailor, did their dangerous job, and slept and ate with them. Dana, who later became a lawyer and great advocate of seaman's rights, comes across as a ready lad, brave, good hearted and adventurous. A fine role model, I think, for people who buck the trend and go with Linux.
Re:While you're waiting for it to be unslashdotted (Score:3, Informative)
Available from Gutenburg here [gutenberg.net].
ahh yes (Score:5, Funny)
I still remember my first experience on a Redhat box. Being my usual 14 year old arrogant self I figured that I didn't have to read any manuals. Hey I figured out DOS by myself, right?
So I type in "X". "Hey wtf this stupid shit is broken, all I see is a grey background and some fucking weird cross? huh? linux sucks".
Oh boy :)
For Linux n00bs (Score:3, Interesting)
linux.exe
It would scan your hardware. Completely. Then leave a text file on your desktop explaining what sound, video, chipset, usb, firewire, cd(rw)/dvd(rw), monitor, network, modem and any other hardware you have in your computer system (which is trivial b/c a lot of people just buy pre-packaged systems etc.) and tell you what you'll need in the way of modules you'll need. Possibly even tell you what distro you
Where has this guy been? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, perhaps the author has inadvertantly drawn attention to the heart of Linux's adoption woes: documentation. Why doesn't this author know about apt-get? Why doesn't he know about urpmi? Why isn't he aware of the vast amount of documentation normally available in /usr/share/docs/ ?
The common answers people receive for this are:
But to even adept computer users (not uber geeks, just adept) the location of "the manual" isn't obvious, they don't know about */docs and, lets face it, man pages are written FGBG (for geeks, by geeks).
In comparison to it's top two competitors, linux is the only OS to date where a user is expected to magically know the location of appropriate documentation, by default have a degree in the documentation jargon of advanced coders, and to be willing to read a small novel on the intricacies of his particular distro's package and system management methods to even use the os to any degree of efficiency.
This is what people mean when they say Linux isn't ready *yet* and to tie it back to the article, these are exactly the sort of apparently groundless complaints that surface as a result of this gaping hole in useability.
Re:Where has this guy been? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Linux's adoption woes: documentation. Why doesn't this author know about
> apt-get? Why doesn't he know about urpmi? Why isn't he aware of the vast
> amount of documentation normally available in
Perhaps the author did not RTFM? The following is addressed to all computer novices everywhere:
I don't expect you to magically know about the 'man' command. I don't expect you to randomly chance upon
The 'M' that I expect you to be capable of reading is your DISTRIBUTION'S MANUAL.
Let's say you installed Debian. Why the hell aren't you looking at http://www.debian.org/doc/? This is the place where you _learn_ about man, info,
Redhat? http://www.redhat.com/docs/.
Mandrake? http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/fdoc.php3
FreeBSD? http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html
And so on. You managed to find an ISO for a Linux distribution, how can it be so difficult to follow the links on the web site to the distro's documentation?
What's that you say, you bought it in a box at a shop? What's that strange thing, why yes, it looks like a... book, with the words MANUAL or DOCUMENTATION printed on it?
I wouldn't expect you to be able to configure a network on Windows or the Mac OS without consulting the documentation. Why do you expect to be able to do the same on Linux?
Bull (Score:3, Interesting)
If there was ONE THING that fascinated me, then it was the blinking prompt, inviting me to just try -anything-
I LOVED it, when I found out about a new command, such as PEEK/POKE.
People are like, born CURIOUS. If it fears you, you have more issues than a GUI can solve.
Dread.
Ohh come on people, this guy is a dufas. (Score:3, Insightful)
He says "On Linux, you single click to run a program." "On Linux, when you double click the title bar, the window shades instead of min/maximize." WTF?! What does he mean "On Linux"? On Mandrake, SuSE, and any other machine with KDE, these options aren't default. Did he write this in 1994?
Bah, with a whole article filled with this crap, I don't know how anyone could take him seriously.
There are worse things than the command line (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's fear. One wrong move and you're dead.
See Blender [blender.org], the open source animation system. In the manual, the "Hotkeys Reference" extends from page 480 to page 505. There are so many hotkeys that they use combinations like SHIFT-PAGEDOWN and ALT-CTRL-T.
Now we'll hear complaints from Blender fans. OK, Blender fans, you're in mesh edit mode. What does ALT-CTL-RIGHTMOUSEBUTTON do? No looking at the manual. Only if you can answer that do you get to comment.
A reply from the author (Score:3, Informative)
Article Rebuttal (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's why in no specific order.
0) He claims to have been running Linux since 1993, but does not know that Macromedia offers easy rpms to install its software and the instructions on how to run the script are also dead easy.
1) He rubishes Linux by claiming that it's just gueswork to know whether what works in one distribution will work in the next one. Nonsense, the four big distributions generally provide identical hardware support. (Suse, MDK, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian).
2) Check out the screenshot on that review. It is of Arklinux, which never had the horrible unattractive KDE 2.0 look, because it didn't ship until much later. This guy is out to make look Linux as bad as possible.
3) The whole thing is his opinion at best. Yet every other sentence has the word fact in it, when the review is far from being factual.
4) "Several distributions have had no trouble recognizing the touchpad on my laptop, but I haven't found anywhere to configured its advanced functions - things like being able to tap directly on the pad rather than using a button..."
Why doesn't he tell us which laptop and which distributions? Because I can use my touchpad fully on MDK, Suse, Red hat and Debian.
He then goes on to claim that powermanagement isn't compiled into the kernel by default. What planet is this guy on? All current distributions will display a nice icon with your battery status and most allow you to suspend to disk and resume without any issues. There are some issues, both because Linux is still maturing in this area and because many bioses have a buggy ACPI implementation, but for the most part, it just works. Of course, if you choose to run Gentoo or LFS, it is up to you to make it work.
5) "If I had been able to buy the laptop with Linux pre-configured on it, no doubt everything would be fine."
But you have been able to do so for the past 4 years.
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
IBM's laptops were sold with Linux for a while, are known to work with linux and are internally tested to do so. Wait for announcements by year's end.
And as of late:
http://www.hp.com -> See the nx5000
6)Since this is an article directed at new users, can someone tell me how speaking about something that you don't understand helps new users? I quote:
"If the difference between widget style, window behavior, desktop environment, and window manager is still unclear to you - well, that's probably because it's unclear to me, too. I have certain notions of what they each mean, but I could not begin to give a good definition of each."
Well, don't bring it up, damn it. Just say to the user that you will be clicking on things to open programs and that your experience in this sense will be fairly similar to what you now do in Windows.
He continues to do this throughout the article to make Linux seem messy and difficult. There is too much choice in window managers, too many in text editors, too much choice everywhere, and you will be confused. The truth is that most distributions that you would put on a desktop, particularly the one on the screenshot, Arklinux, now default to one desktop, install sane defaults and choose best of breed programs.
7) "Since I am considerably more comfortable with computers than the average Windows user, I think I should prepare you for
Nonsense. Utter nonsense. This is an article about desktop usage. My wife has never ever had to touch a configuration file. Everything that she needed to do whether it was in evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Juk, Bookcase or whatever was always readily available through a GUI menu option.
8) "You see, when I right-click o
Depends on your point of view... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just how is the above is different than the following:
Just call me curious. Computers are complex machines. Expect to be befuddled once in a while. It's not a cash register that makes change for you when you press the button marked "hamburger".
Attitudes towards n00bs (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it, and read some of the other comments here. People talk about finding documentation is
- Linux names tend to be more counter-intuitive. What, exactly does apt-get or urpmi mean? I can't tell by looking at it. "About this Macintosh" or "Windows Read Me" on the other hand are extremely descriptive,m as is the omnipresent "help" menu.
- Secondly, there seems to be a prevailing attitude that Linux is by the hardcore, for the hardcore. Too often I've seen simple questions shot down because those responding essentially felt that "every should know this, how can you not?" This attitude is quickly off-putting for new computer users. This is extended to books; there are scores of (arguably) decent intro-to-Windows (or Mac) books on the shelves at Chapters, but very few Linux books of the same type (no, a new computer user doesn't want to read "Hardening Linux for IP-based security hacks" they want to read "Linux for Dummies", sad but true)
Dismiss the new computer users all you want, but understand that the concerns are valid. I have 15+ years of computer experience, almost exclusively on Mac and Windows. But when I use the Linux boxes in my Eng or CIS labs, I barely know the basic commands. Furthering this problem is that in three different labs each uses a different method for something as simple as mounting a floppy.
Yes, there are some dumb computer users out there; but there are also some experienced users who just need to get their foot in the door, and there are several road blcosk to Linux which make that harder.
Re:From TFA (Score:3, Funny)
I think the author is just pissed because he got goatse'd a few times.
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The documentation for the most part is poorly written, and poorly laid out. A lot of times I find docs diving straight into each command or option with its own set of triggers, etc, without first giving a broad overview. I do not have specific examples; just an overall feel from a few years of using Linux and FreeBSD.
Can't really lay blame on anyone, though. People developing software for open source systems would rather create it than write documentation aimed at the greenest of Linux users, or support the software on forums and newsgroups.
Re:From TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
That's sad, and very if I may add.
When I started on linux (slack, then redhat at that time, it took me a few years to land and stick to debian) so when started most of help came from friends who begun earlier and they gave me lots of help and guidence which convinced me even further that linux didn't just come with a style that I loved from the first day, but also with a bunch'a helping f
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing in the article about being homo.
The real article.
Re:From TFA (Score:2)
So you've been to those websites, hmmm?
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Errr. You do realize that this isn't the proper forum to get a date, right? I mean... not that I judge your lifestyle or anything...
Re:First thing to type at a command prompt.... (Score:4, Funny)
No manual entry for what
No manual entry for do
No manual entry for I
No manual entry for do
No manual entry for now?
[root@linux]#wtf?
-bash: wtf?: command not found
[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]# computer, do something
-bash: computer,: command not found
[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]#
(ok lets get out of this...X for exit?)
[root@DEV-INT-AS1 root]#X
ARGH!
Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that next time he RTFM
No, he probably never installed Linux again, and influenced countless friends and business associates not to try it, because it was unstable and unsupported. Seriously.
Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would he want to try Linux again after that?
The problem with making Linux mainstream, is that there WILL be new people. And you're going to have to play nice with them or they'll go right back to Windows.
Re:hmmm ... what shall i try now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or he will just give up on Linux and stick to Windows. Because all Linux users are a bunch of Jirks anyways. I see RTFM. that is the most useless sort of help anyone can give. How about at least poining them to the correct spot in the manual. A lot of times the reason nubes have so much problems with the manual is that they don't have the proper understainging of the way things work so while their brains are trying to make sence of all these forgen commands "rm" "Redo Mount", "Revese memory", "release mount" "remove" then you mix a buch of forgen symboles to the mix \ / ? * . They never seen these things before. So the rm -rf / could logicaly mean to someone who has never seen the command "Restore Machiene" with options Remove Files and the / could mean something about temp files. Who knows if you didn't know that / is your root directory heck when I was a newbee when they told me go to my root directory I did a cd
If you were not able to help him redirect him to a better channel more targeted towards noobies. because doing crap like that only makes them more fustrated and dislike linux.
Re:for pity's sake. (Score:2)
Re:isn't this... (Score:3, Insightful)