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Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a

by hiou 12y ago

Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without issue. "I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects just to get something working." It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme? What is it with Linux that someone really needs to hop in an talk about what's wrong with it, no matter what the topic beyond the mere mention of Linux? Edit: To clarify a bit about this silly meme. Many people find some hunk of junk that the don't use anymore and that they never thought about working with Linux when they bought it. Then they are surprised it doesn't just work. To me, that isn't much different then buying a PC and trying to install OSX on it and complaining about how it didn't just magically work. Many laptops and desktops are certified and targeted to work with Linux. From many of the large manufacturers. You obviously might have trouble if you are trying to cram something onto something that it is not designed for. Are you even an engineer? How do you not realize that?

testing3212 12y ago
> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme? Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing, and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line with the usual commands wouldn't work, so then the only thing that did work was the gui. But what if you don't want to use the gui, because you want the thing to reconnect automatically after power down (an option the gui didn't provide)? Maybe running ubuntu, this wouldn't have been an issue, but beagle bone had archlinux, and then I tried multiple versions for the raspberry pi, most of them debian based. So, no. This meme won't die just because most versions work out of box for desktops. It would have to work out of box for anything linux runs on.
- slgeorge 12y ago
  Sure! So how did you go with running Windows or Mac OSX or Android on that Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi? Linux is the _only_ OS in existence that can run across the variety of hardware it hits. Whether it's from phones through to Supercomputers. Funnily enough when you get to different bits of the hardware spectrum you have to have different skills and capabilities - running on custom ARM hardware doesn't count as standard.
- hiou 12y ago
  "trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell" Can I ask which wifi card/chipset you chose? Was it one that you researched and found out was 100% Linux compatible? Assuming you did do that and didn't find something that was barely hacked to together to have partial support did you actually find editing /etc/network/interfaces with the text below difficult? auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid GUESS_WHAT_GOES_HERE wpa-psk PSK_MEANS_PASSWORD I'm going to assume you chose a wifi solution that was not 100% linux compatible. One that had a weird firmware blob or something else. My point is that I watched someone spend a week trying to get a wifi card working on Linux. He called me up for help so I looked up his Laptop and wifi card. I went on Ebay and spent $7(with shipping) for a card that was 100% compatible, swapped it out and it just worked.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- thearn4 12y ago
  Yeah, I have to agree with this. I used GNU/Linux on my laptop exclusively when I was in grad school, and every "sudo apt-get update && upgrade" felt like taking a turn in Russian roulette. The generic device drivers were almost always a nightmare. Power management was abysmal. And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly. While I never did have a problem that wasn't eventually solvable, I finally came to accept that I really don't like playing sysadmin, and would much rather know that I can pick up my machine, perform library updates, and actually go work on something at a moments notice. At least on a laptop. On a desktop machine, I'm willing to be much more patient.
eslaught 12y ago
This analogy to OS X is completely unreasonable. OS X software and hardware is co-designed to work together, by a single manufacturer/developer. In fact, you could even say that OS X is specifically designed not to work on any hardware not made by Apple. Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business. Linux and Windows are nothing like that. With both, the ecosystem of hardware is quite large, and there is an implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine (ignoring edge cases like embedded hardware). With Windows, this assumption works well because all hardware manufacturers test their machines with Windows. This is almost never the case with Linux, where even if you are lucky to find that a manufacturer has tested with one Linux distro, they might not have tested with your preferred distro. What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"? Just walk away? That's not a reasonable choice for many people.
- e40 12y ago
  Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business. I did it recently, and it's not that hard, if you stick with a subset of hardware known to work. Yeah, upgrades from each dotdot release take a little longer, but it's totally worth it.
- hiou 12y ago
  Do you mean like this? http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd "implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine" Really? I don't think that And OSX can run on many Windows machines http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible You are talking about 6 years ago. Also: "What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"?" Buy something that is.
lelandbatey 12y ago
This is at the top because these complaints are valid even today. Linux doesn't cover the things I have with anything even approaching the level of convenience of Windows. I say this not because I don't use Linux. I love Linux! I love it so much I just spent some serious time building Linux From Scratch[0] on a laptop so I can know and understand it better. I develop exclusively on * nix platforms, and I use it for everything I can. However, my main machine is still a Windows machine with Cygwin installed. I do this because my main workflow is to use 3 portrait monitors[1] for effectively 6 workspaces visible simultaneously[2]. To get this effect, I use Nvidia surround to combine these three monitors into a single continuous desktop, then use a program called "WinSplit Revolution" to manage my windows. I've messed around with countless tools and spent weeks worth of time trying to replicate such an environment on Linux, but I can't. The Nvidia drivers don't support surround, or if they do it's through a nearly undocumented series of settings. I can't find a program to arrange windows this way, after trying tiling window manager after tiling window manager. And, even in more mainstream settings like installing Ubuntu on my new laptop, things like my mouse pad STILL don't work. But on Windows, I can install everything quickly and all my edge cases are covered. It may be to much to ask for Linux to cover all these, so I'm not disparaging it. I just don't use it for this case. All I'm saying is, don't be so quick to ignore complaints about the state of things. The world of desktop Linux could still use a lot of work. [0] -- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ [1] -- http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg [2] -- http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png
shadowfox 12y ago
> Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. And then you took the bait!

by hiou 12y ago

testing3212 12y ago

> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme? Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing, and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line with the usual commands wouldn't work, so then the only thing that did work was the gui. But what if you don't want to use the gui, because you want the thing to reconnect automatically after power down (an option the gui didn't provide)? Maybe running ubuntu, this wouldn't have been an issue, but beagle bone had archlinux, and then I tried multiple versions for the raspberry pi, most of them debian based. So, no. This meme won't die just because most versions work out of box for desktops. It would have to work out of box for anything linux runs on.

slgeorge 12y ago
Sure! So how did you go with running Windows or Mac OSX or Android on that Beagle Bone or Raspberry Pi? Linux is the _only_ OS in existence that can run across the variety of hardware it hits. Whether it's from phones through to Supercomputers. Funnily enough when you get to different bits of the hardware spectrum you have to have different skills and capabilities - running on custom ARM hardware doesn't count as standard.
hiou 12y ago
"trying to get wi-fi setup on my beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell" Can I ask which wifi card/chipset you chose? Was it one that you researched and found out was 100% Linux compatible? Assuming you did do that and didn't find something that was barely hacked to together to have partial support did you actually find editing /etc/network/interfaces with the text below difficult? auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid GUESS_WHAT_GOES_HERE wpa-psk PSK_MEANS_PASSWORD I'm going to assume you chose a wifi solution that was not 100% linux compatible. One that had a weird firmware blob or something else. My point is that I watched someone spend a week trying to get a wifi card working on Linux. He called me up for help so I looked up his Laptop and wifi card. I went on Ebay and spent $7(with shipping) for a card that was 100% compatible, swapped it out and it just worked.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
thearn4 12y ago
Yeah, I have to agree with this. I used GNU/Linux on my laptop exclusively when I was in grad school, and every "sudo apt-get update && upgrade" felt like taking a turn in Russian roulette. The generic device drivers were almost always a nightmare. Power management was abysmal. And this was on a Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly. While I never did have a problem that wasn't eventually solvable, I finally came to accept that I really don't like playing sysadmin, and would much rather know that I can pick up my machine, perform library updates, and actually go work on something at a moments notice. At least on a laptop. On a desktop machine, I'm willing to be much more patient.

eslaught 12y ago

This analogy to OS X is completely unreasonable. OS X software and hardware is co-designed to work together, by a single manufacturer/developer. In fact, you could even say that OS X is specifically designed not to work on any hardware not made by Apple. Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business. Linux and Windows are nothing like that. With both, the ecosystem of hardware is quite large, and there is an implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine (ignoring edge cases like embedded hardware). With Windows, this assumption works well because all hardware manufacturers test their machines with Windows. This is almost never the case with Linux, where even if you are lucky to find that a manufacturer has tested with one Linux distro, they might not have tested with your preferred distro. What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"? Just walk away? That's not a reasonable choice for many people.

e40 12y ago
Creating a "hackintosh" desktop is seriously difficult business. I did it recently, and it's not that hard, if you stick with a subset of hardware known to work. Yeah, upgrades from each dotdot release take a little longer, but it's totally worth it.
hiou 12y ago
Do you mean like this? http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd "implicit expectation that any OS should work on any machine" Really? I don't think that And OSX can run on many Windows machines http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible http://www.hackintosh.com/#hackintosh_compatible You are talking about 6 years ago. Also: "What are you going to do if your distro "isn't certified"?" Buy something that is.

lelandbatey 12y ago

This is at the top because these complaints are valid even today. Linux doesn't cover the things I have with anything even approaching the level of convenience of Windows. I say this not because I don't use Linux. I love Linux! I love it so much I just spent some serious time building Linux From Scratch[0] on a laptop so I can know and understand it better. I develop exclusively on * nix platforms, and I use it for everything I can. However, my main machine is still a Windows machine with Cygwin installed. I do this because my main workflow is to use 3 portrait monitors[1] for effectively 6 workspaces visible simultaneously[2]. To get this effect, I use Nvidia surround to combine these three monitors into a single continuous desktop, then use a program called "WinSplit Revolution" to manage my windows. I've messed around with countless tools and spent weeks worth of time trying to replicate such an environment on Linux, but I can't. The Nvidia drivers don't support surround, or if they do it's through a nearly undocumented series of settings. I can't find a program to arrange windows this way, after trying tiling window manager after tiling window manager. And, even in more mainstream settings like installing Ubuntu on my new laptop, things like my mouse pad STILL don't work. But on Windows, I can install everything quickly and all my edge cases are covered. It may be to much to ask for Linux to cover all these, so I'm not disparaging it. I just don't use it for this case. All I'm saying is, don't be so quick to ignore complaints about the state of things. The world of desktop Linux could still use a lot of work. [0] -- http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ [1] -- http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg http://i.imgur.com/z4dRbll.jpg [2] -- http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png http://i.imgur.com/FEumEXi.png

shadowfox 12y ago

> Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait. And then you took the bait!