proof that Linux ***

Status
Not open for further replies.
graudeejs

graudeejs

My sister bought new laptop - Dell Linux Inspiron M5030

Preinstalled Linux was Ubuntu 9.x
It worked fine, but since it was so old, first thought: "Let's upgrade" (Current version is 11.04)

Before upgrading I created backup DVD that was supposed to reset laptop to factory defaults.

After 3 hours of upgrade, it rebooted, but gnome was so laggy, that I decided to install fresh Ubuntu 11.04.
Nothing changed.

Then I downloaded OpenSuse and installed that, the result was about the same... quite unusable system. (I think my Pentium 3 @450Mhz performed better).

Then I tried to install ubuntu 10.x... guess what.... failed

After this I tried to installd Ubuntu 9.x that came with laptop.
Epic fail -- install didn't even started, something crashed...

After this I used backup dvd and tried to recover.... It hanged....

At this time it was about 3-4 am.

Being totally upset about "How great Linux is" I decided to try and see if I could Install FreeBSD on laptop.

I used script that I made for other laptop to create FreeBSD zfs system. everything worked fine.
Just installed KDE4 form ports. Every dam thing is working...
So where all the Linux fan-boys come from?

Till now I could never imagine that I will not be able to install operating system on Laptop, that was pre-installed in first place.


P.S. Sorry if I made many mistakes in this post.. it's 6:26 am, and I haven't been sleeping yet
EDIT:
No flame-war, just telling like it is
 
If you are going to use Ubuntu, I would suggest using 10.04 LTS.

My method of deciding which version of Ubuntu to use:
  1. Check out Ubuntu release EOL table.
  2. Pick whatever has the longest time until EOL, that is more than a month or so old. In practice this usually means an LTS version.

Doing it that way will minimize the time spent upgrading and dealing with flaky stuff, somewhat at the expense of not having the latest and greatest.
 
The only operating system allowed to use on laptop is RHEL here 4.x and 5.x. This is stable. If you want free go for CentOS. For cutting edge experience go with Arch or Fedora.
 
Both FreeBSD and Linux have pros and cons... can't tell which one is better.

Ubuntu, openSUSE are distros, they are not a Linux, the mistake made by the distro owner.
 
alie said:
Ubuntu, openSUSE are a distro, its not a Linux, the mistake made by the distro owner.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I know.
But my experience shows that different distros work very different on same hardware.
 
gkontos said:
What you just described is the result of "microsofting" linux.
Click to expand...

Every time I use a Linux desktop, which thankfully is not often, I get the feeling that they're trying to turn it into Windows 98.
 
killasmurf86 said:
Preinstalled Linux was Ubuntu 9.x
It worked fine, but since it was so old, first thought: "Let's upgrade" (Current version is 11.04)
Click to expand...

There is this saying that has worked very well for me:

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." :)
 
I always fresh-install Ubuntu because upgrading to a new release can fail.

If your fresh-installed Ubuntu is very slow, it is usually because of a wrong video driver problem. Since the Linux kernel is quite new (less than a month old?) and a video driver depends on the kernel (this is a good thing (tm) you know?), some video drivers (e.g. Nvidia proprietary one) do not work well yet.

Try to fresh-install Ubuntu 1 to 2 months after a new release to avoid this kind of problem. By then all these bugs will be ironed out.

One thing I like about the recent Linux distributions with the newest Linux kernel is that now I can play a video synced, flicker free. I hope FreeBSD will soon have the necessary kernel supports for this.
 
ahavatar said:
One thing I like about the recent Linux distributions with the newest Linux kernel is that now I can play a video synced, flicker free. I hope FreeBSD will soon have the necessary kernel supports for this.
Click to expand...
I play all my videos synced and flicker free. SD, HD, you name it... VLC
 
ahavatar said:
I always fresh-install Ubuntu because upgrading to a new release can fail.

If your fresh-installed Ubuntu is very slow, it is usually because of a wrong video driver problem. Since the Linux kernel is quite new (less than a month old?) and a video driver depends on the kernel (this is a good thing (tm) you know?), some video drivers (e.g. Nvidia proprietary one) do not work well yet.

Try to fresh-install Ubuntu 1 to 2 months after a new release to avoid this kind of problem. By then all these bugs will be ironed out.

One thing I like about the recent Linux distributions with the newest Linux kernel is that now I can play a video synced, flicker free. I hope FreeBSD will soon have the necessary kernel supports for this.
Click to expand...

Thanks for tip... but what's the point of releasing a distro which doesn't have proper driver support yet? (Ok, I know it's lInux... no logic needed).

Anyway, trying CentOS 5.6 now.... looks promising.
 
CentOS is ok. Arch/Slack are other two I would've consider installing on laptop, if ever need be (hopefully not).
It's still linux, however. Same kernel, same drivers.
Your story reminded me of when I was dealing with Fedora long time ago. It was like walking trough a mine field.
 
Don't even start on that. I've worked (implemented/developed on) IPCop (Linux network device distribution). The thing logs network connections in /var/log/messages. Imagine a daemonized tcpdump sniffing on wan interface logging everything in the goddamn main system log!

When you take away all the ugly linuxisms every distribution has, I'm good with Debian on PCs running as servers, Red Hat on real servers, and Arch on desktops. The latter is closest to BSD philosophy.

That being said, I'm far more comfortable with developing and administrating any kind of Linux, than Windows.
 
How is arch closest to BSD philosophy? Just because there is a rc.conf file which doesn't act like FreeBSD rc.conf doesn't make it BSD-like.
 
UNIXgod said:
How is arch closest to BSD philosophy? Just because there is a rc.conf file which doesn't act like FreeBSD rc.conf doesn't make it BSD-like.
Click to expand...

While I agree with you that calling it "BSD-like" is a huge stretch (I shudder when people say Gentoo is "just like FreeBSD"), I found Arch to be the most comfortable distribution for me to adjust to. I keep trying to get the feel of Linux, and keep going back to FreeBSD. Not because Linux is inferior, but just because I don't feel like re-learning something when at present I have absolutely no need to.

But Arch does feel at least a little like BSD, except that when it deviates (as its rc.conf is wont to do) it really bites you in the arse because you're completely astonished that something trivial doesn't work as you'd expect. So I suppose in that respect, it's probably better to go with something completely alien. :p
 
bbzz said:
Speaking of that..which linux does feel closest to *BSDs? How's OpenSuse and portage?
Click to expand...

I have used Gentoo and Funtoo. Though portage is a nice package manager which was "inspired" by FreeBSD ports it's still not FreeBSD. Once you have your environment set up they way you want you still feel like it's just a disorganized mess outside the distro mechanisms.

The one thing that has always killed me was no proper use of /usr/local like we do with BSD. It was explained on to me ##freebsd@irc that everything is third party on linux so it makes sense that there would be no separation of configs and user installed programs.

As for my opinion of Ubuntu... My god man!!! have some faith that your users might be smart enough to make one technical or personal choice for crying out loud. They even removed dash in place of bash for their startup scripts due to bashisms found present in them later. Is it really that hard to write simple bourne style in the places needed for speed.

Also the man pages suck on linux and I'd be curious why... especially at this point in it's maturity. Shuttleworth can't afford decent documentors? Or the legion of Stallman's worshipers?

The mis-conceptions of the user base really gets me as well. At a local Ruby user group I had an interesting conversation with an ex-perl programmer who flipped out when I made the suggestion to another user about evaluating 'zsh' for interactive use as an option over bash on his mac laptop. His logic was that bash is the most installed shell so therefor can be found on many systems and thus must have the largest library of scripts to cherry pick from. derp!

I explained to him about the finer points of using the Almquist shell for scripting but I have an idea he had no clue what I was speaking about. Also I am positive since he was in 'debate' mode that he left the conversation thinking that I was just as mis-informed as he was as for him he felt bash was the 'one and only true shell' for shell programming and interactive use.

Mind you I am pretty shell agnostic. I have used them all at some point in my life.

So my biggest diatribe with the whole of ubuntu/linux would be what everyone complained about with windows years ago. It is not vender neutral nor does it make any attempt to stop new users... well it actually encourages new users to learn and use improper and non portable programming technique which they will keep for the duration of their programming careers.

My case in point:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2011-January/061078.html

In reality this is where the real cancer exists.
 
I feel that most of linux user base is there due to successful marketing. Users get sucked/locked into linux. Rarely does one switch directly from Windows to *BSD. In most cases they heard from a 'friend' or 'friend's friend' to try linux.
I'm so positive that half of users would switch to FreeBSD if only they knew about it or had easier time setting up basic system/gui (no, PCBSD doesn't break it, it's just not the same thing. The feeling of successfully setting your own working environment is what works). I met dozens of people who switched to FreeBSD from linux. I've never met anyone who actual gave FreeBSD a chance, and said 'screw it, I'm going back' and went back to linux. FreeBSD is easier to use than any linux distro.
Yeah getting off topic here but I think it would be better for FreeBSD to popularize/advertise itself more.
 
Hm.. This sounds more like a problem between chair and keyboard than linux itself. You didn't even share any errors or comments on hiccups you ran into.

Don't get me wrong - I love FreeBSD and I prefer it over Linux. But world is not just black or white.

I never had any problems using Slackware or Debian (and I still use it on some servers). Oh, wait .. sorry - once. When I was not "informed" enough about LVM/raid and had trouble configuring it via debinstall.

You know - sometimes shi!t happens. And you have to deal with it - doesn't matter when or what with.
 
gkontos said:
I play all my videos synced and flicker free. SD, HD, you name it... VLC
Click to expand...

My understanding is when you use a compositing window manager, without a proper kernel support, you can't achieve that.
 
Pushrod said:
Every time I use a Linux desktop, which thankfully is not often, I get the feeling that they're trying to turn it into Windows 98.
Click to expand...

Open-source desktop operating systems would never get their shit together to manage that lmao

Too busy adding stupid bloated 3D effects rather than a working desktop.

Only Microsoft and Apple can get away with this because at least they already have underlying working desktops (and monopoly of the desktop market).
 
UNIXgod said:
How is arch closest to BSD philosophy? Just because there is a rc.conf file which doesn't act like FreeBSD rc.conf doesn't make it BSD-like.
Click to expand...

No Linux is BSD-like. And BSD-like doesn't equal similarity to BSD philosophy.

To clarify - "no bullshit" text mode installer, minimal base system, package manager doesn't touch system configuration files (contrary on Debian, where you install Apache for example, and it's automatically added to boot scripts and started), clear and commented configuration files.

Yes, it's a narrow set of characteristics, but it's IMHO more closer to the way you operate BSD than any other Linux distribution.
 
In my not so great experience, Linux usually has better driver support than FreeBSD. But, let's face facts, not even Mac OS X has driver support to rival Windows. User interfaces aside, it's hard to run a free (beer/speech) OS in a desktop environment with limited/oddball driver support.

I usually just refer family to whatever OS they're most familiar. Giving them something they don't know is only going to make them call me more often and later at night ;) (That might sound cruel, but I have a HUGE family and I'm no sys-admin.) But...if the driver problem were better resolved* I might be more inclined to push family toward a free (beer/speech) OS.

*I define driver issues to be "resolved" if I can walk into a brick and mortar store and either:
1.) Be safe in assuming whatever shiny new piece of hardware I pick up will work with the free (beer/speech) OS.
2.) Tell freely (given information on the package) whether or not a new piece of hardware will work with the free (beer/speech) OS.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top