6 ms·

"Now don't get me wrong, Linux does great things but it's never worked out of the box well enough as a desktop. There's always something to tinker with, some dr

by mclemme 12y ago

"Now don't get me wrong, Linux does great things but it's never worked out of the box well enough as a desktop. There's always something to tinker with, some driver to compile, some knob to fiddle with." Been using Linux (Ubuntu LTS releases) as my everyday desktop and laptop OS since around 2007/8. I had issues at first with drivers, especially with wifi and graphics cards. But lately (approx since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS), stuff just works, no need to manually install or compile anything, no need to tweak anything unless I want to. Of course you can find hardware that doesn't work on Linux, but that's just a matter of a bit of googling before buying a laptop/desktop. I've found that lately, it seems like Ubuntu requires less fiddling than osx or windows, especially with printers & scanners, where I just plug it in and it works (or it auto detects if it's on a network). But colleagues on windows or osx have to download drivers, usually filled with crapware (i.e. "YOU ARE OUT IF INK, BUY IT HERE" messages, unless they're careful to download the barebone drivers instead of the full driver pack).

btgeekboy 12y ago
To add to this: I just installed Fedora 21 on a Thinkpad T430. No additional configuration was required - I dropped in my wireless password using the GUI, and I'm good to go. Plugged in an external monitor, and it "just worked." No network, trackpad, sound, or special key (sound/etc) drivers required - it "just worked." Desktop Linux has come far from where it used to be just 5 years ago.
- exprL 12y ago
  It's an endless battle with different peripherals – you are never going to support every obscure device with community backing, when none of the developers have even heard of your gadget, much less owned it. When you have simpler needs, like me – you want to run Linux software on a desktop computer that's comprised of well-known, widely used and well-supported hardware, desktop Linux with Fedora Core “just worked” over twelve years ago. (NVIDIA's proprietary drivers never came and never will come by default, but I considered that less a requirement when you had to install them yourself on Windows XP, too. The drivers were already back then top notch.) I wasn't that good with computers back then, and my biggest gripe, by far, were the fonts that didn't look like the pixelated fonts I'd grown used to with Windows'.
keithpeter 12y ago
OK, I've puggled around with OpenBSD and paid for a 5.6 cd as a contribution to the project. I'm trying to work out how to set up cups printing to a Samsung printer (splix drivers) and keep suspend working when the cups daemon and dbus is running. Oh, and hot plugging USB sticks (toad) with XFCE4 and having problems. So I slink back to Debian Sid which just works... OpenBSD works fine and suspends on a ThinkPad X61s but trying to keep that going with a variety of services seems to be complex. I'd be delighted to rtfm if anyone has any pointers...
- stsp 12y ago
  To get the obvious question out of the way: You did follow the instructions in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ for both cups (might require a kernel without ulpt) and toad (requires hotplugd running)? I did spend some time to make toad work with xfce for the 5.6 release (resulting in reports such as https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724916 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724916). If toad is really broken in 5.6 I'd really like to know how and why.
  - keithpeter 12y ago
    Main problem with toad was suspend/resume not working. Yes, I had hotplugd installed and starting up, after which suspend/resume stopped working. Thanks for reply - I'm motivated to put 5.6 back on the X60s test laptop and have another go at it all and perhaps post bugs.
derekp7 12y ago
Another data point: My parents' computer (which was running XP) recently died -- so I helped them pick out a new system (came with Windows 8.1). First, I had to install a classic shell program, because the Start screen was throwing them off. Then I couldn't get their USB scanner to work -- HP don't make drivers for it for Windows 8 (scanner is too old and unsupported). But the scanner works find under Linux.
- aceperry 12y ago
  I picked up a lot of printers for free that were orphaned from windows vista, 7, and now windows 8. They worked fine under linux, without any monkeying around. Free printers due to windows updates. Great stuff!
geofft 12y ago
The same has been my experience, both personally (with a few exceptions involving super-recent hardware) and professionally (my day job involves selling people Windows-virtualized-on-Ubuntu, because have you ever tried to get the same Windows image running on two different models of hardware?). So I think we need to rethink whether out-of-the-box driver support is sufficient for the Year of Linux on the Desktop. It seems like it's necessary, but not enough to get people to move over en masse.
- r3bl 12y ago
  Of course it is not. Linux needs to offer something new, something fresh to the table. Almost every software available on Linux is available on Windows too, which means that there is no reason for a user to make this switch. Luckily, Windows screwed up with Windows 8, and ended supporting XP, which did gave a certain popularity to Linux platform. Most people I know (now to be clear, I'm talking about non-tech related people) learned about Linux in that area of time. This is coincidentally the same time when I made the switch, not because of those reasons, but it happened around that time. So, to really have "a year of Linux", Windows will have to make a lot of screw-ups, Linux will have to offer something new to the table, and there are many other prerequisites as well. Moving most of the Windows applications to the cloud does definitely help. I love being able to edit Word documents and to use Evernote without anything installed on my hard drive.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
MiddleEndian 12y ago
I can confirm similar experiences with Linux Mint KDE. Didn't need to install graphics drivers manually, and my specific model of Wacom tablet was auto-detected. Easily the most pleasant desktop experience.
jrobn 12y ago
At least with printer drivers, OS X is a breeze. Plug in a printer, get a prompt asking to download driver, downloads in 10 seconds, installs and I'm printing in less than 3 minutes. No crapware. No fiddling in a terminal.
cbd1984 12y ago
It seems "ready for the desktop" when applied to Linux means something different from "ready for the desktop" when applied to, say, Windows. Windows: It can come with crapware pre-installed, such as "personal firewalls" and "antivirus" software which are mainly ad delivery platforms for the partners of whoever sold you the hardware. It can require you to go to malware-ridden sites with deliberately deceptive webpage designs in order to download some kinds of software. It occasionally requires maintenance in the form of digging through sometimes deliberately obfuscatory registry settings. It only runs Windows software; if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. That's ready. Linux: It must have no deficiencies. It has a package manager which performs dependency tracking (something alien to Windows, as far as I know) and contains no malware. It can never requires maintenance of any kind. It must run Windows software flawlessly. Only then will it be ready. MacOS X: It has settings you can't change. It does things its way. If you disagree, you're wrong. It runs nobody else's software. That's ready.
- akira2501 12y ago
  > if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. We make good use of cygwin at our workplace. While it's not a perfect solution, it's very easy to install and use. It's incredibly useful to run linux/unix applications "inside" a windows environment.
  - aceperry 12y ago
    I haven't tried cygwin in quite a few years, but I hear that it's improved a lot. Still a large installation though, but very useful if you must use windows.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  The Windows world is slowly getting package managers https://chocolatey.org/packages https://chocolatey.org/packages Windows Desktop is thought in a top down approach. There was a lot less design than in the unix world (historically no permissions, no package management etc). You download a .exe, then you get a new icon. Plus its ubiquitous community, making weird things solvable (something Ubuntu leveraged too). It's a more "human" approach, people don't have to really think through, it either work or they find someone to make it work, whether or not it's built on solid principles doesn't matter for the average joe. That's what, to me, people called a Desktop. Also it used to be a centralized, even though now Windows embeds different frameworks (and starts to feel like linux dependency papercuts). In linux you have options, leading to paradox of choice.
bdg 12y ago
I was using a FreeBSD desktop for about two years as my main work machine and finally gave up after constant goofing around with things. I switched to Manjaro yesterday on a brand new laptop, I was blown away at how quickly everything worked right out of the box. It even had Steam on it. (Manjaro is an Arch based distro; I can see how Steam being on a default install would upset some people)
- mfisher87 12y ago
  Ooo, thanks for the tip on Manjaro. I'm an Arch addict, give me the pure stuff. But I've been looking for a good alternative to Ubuntu Desktop for introducing Linux to newer users. Steam pre-packaged would be a plus for that demographic :) IMO, if someone doesn't like the design philosophy because it strays too far from Arch, why do they care? It's not actually Arch Linux. It doesn't affect them. That's the beauty of a fork.
mdnormy 12y ago
> I've found that lately, it seems like Ubuntu requires less fiddling than osx or windows, especially with printers & scanners. I'd like to share that I have the same experience especially with 14.04. I work with huge array of industrial printer from digital to thermal(HP/Epson/Canon/Xerox/Zebra). Vendor only officially support Windows 7 64bit, but it works perfectly on Ubuntu 14.04 that upon our advice, one of our vendor started to recommend 14.04 for their other client.
millstone 12y ago
As a counterbalance, I bought an Intel NUC about eight months ago. Linux did not work out of the box, and it required a confusing process of installing a BIOS update before it would boot. After that, it worked OK, with the exception of the IR port, which required a lot of command line tweaking. I was surprised that a modern computer like a NUC wouldn't work with Linux out of the box.

by mclemme 12y ago

btgeekboy 12y ago

To add to this: I just installed Fedora 21 on a Thinkpad T430. No additional configuration was required - I dropped in my wireless password using the GUI, and I'm good to go. Plugged in an external monitor, and it "just worked." No network, trackpad, sound, or special key (sound/etc) drivers required - it "just worked." Desktop Linux has come far from where it used to be just 5 years ago.

exprL 12y ago
It's an endless battle with different peripherals – you are never going to support every obscure device with community backing, when none of the developers have even heard of your gadget, much less owned it. When you have simpler needs, like me – you want to run Linux software on a desktop computer that's comprised of well-known, widely used and well-supported hardware, desktop Linux with Fedora Core “just worked” over twelve years ago. (NVIDIA's proprietary drivers never came and never will come by default, but I considered that less a requirement when you had to install them yourself on Windows XP, too. The drivers were already back then top notch.) I wasn't that good with computers back then, and my biggest gripe, by far, were the fonts that didn't look like the pixelated fonts I'd grown used to with Windows'.

keithpeter 12y ago

OK, I've puggled around with OpenBSD and paid for a 5.6 cd as a contribution to the project. I'm trying to work out how to set up cups printing to a Samsung printer (splix drivers) and keep suspend working when the cups daemon and dbus is running. Oh, and hot plugging USB sticks (toad) with XFCE4 and having problems. So I slink back to Debian Sid which just works... OpenBSD works fine and suspends on a ThinkPad X61s but trying to keep that going with a variety of services seems to be complex. I'd be delighted to rtfm if anyone has any pointers...

stsp 12y ago
To get the obvious question out of the way: You did follow the instructions in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/ for both cups (might require a kernel without ulpt) and toad (requires hotplugd running)? I did spend some time to make toad work with xfce for the 5.6 release (resulting in reports such as https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724916 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724916). If toad is really broken in 5.6 I'd really like to know how and why.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  Main problem with toad was suspend/resume not working. Yes, I had hotplugd installed and starting up, after which suspend/resume stopped working. Thanks for reply - I'm motivated to put 5.6 back on the X60s test laptop and have another go at it all and perhaps post bugs.

derekp7 12y ago

Another data point: My parents' computer (which was running XP) recently died -- so I helped them pick out a new system (came with Windows 8.1). First, I had to install a classic shell program, because the Start screen was throwing them off. Then I couldn't get their USB scanner to work -- HP don't make drivers for it for Windows 8 (scanner is too old and unsupported). But the scanner works find under Linux.

aceperry 12y ago
I picked up a lot of printers for free that were orphaned from windows vista, 7, and now windows 8. They worked fine under linux, without any monkeying around. Free printers due to windows updates. Great stuff!

geofft 12y ago

The same has been my experience, both personally (with a few exceptions involving super-recent hardware) and professionally (my day job involves selling people Windows-virtualized-on-Ubuntu, because have you ever tried to get the same Windows image running on two different models of hardware?). So I think we need to rethink whether out-of-the-box driver support is sufficient for the Year of Linux on the Desktop. It seems like it's necessary, but not enough to get people to move over en masse.

r3bl 12y ago
Of course it is not. Linux needs to offer something new, something fresh to the table. Almost every software available on Linux is available on Windows too, which means that there is no reason for a user to make this switch. Luckily, Windows screwed up with Windows 8, and ended supporting XP, which did gave a certain popularity to Linux platform. Most people I know (now to be clear, I'm talking about non-tech related people) learned about Linux in that area of time. This is coincidentally the same time when I made the switch, not because of those reasons, but it happened around that time. So, to really have "a year of Linux", Windows will have to make a lot of screw-ups, Linux will have to offer something new to the table, and there are many other prerequisites as well. Moving most of the Windows applications to the cloud does definitely help. I love being able to edit Word documents and to use Evernote without anything installed on my hard drive.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

MiddleEndian 12y ago

I can confirm similar experiences with Linux Mint KDE. Didn't need to install graphics drivers manually, and my specific model of Wacom tablet was auto-detected. Easily the most pleasant desktop experience.

jrobn 12y ago

At least with printer drivers, OS X is a breeze. Plug in a printer, get a prompt asking to download driver, downloads in 10 seconds, installs and I'm printing in less than 3 minutes. No crapware. No fiddling in a terminal.

cbd1984 12y ago

It seems "ready for the desktop" when applied to Linux means something different from "ready for the desktop" when applied to, say, Windows. Windows: It can come with crapware pre-installed, such as "personal firewalls" and "antivirus" software which are mainly ad delivery platforms for the partners of whoever sold you the hardware. It can require you to go to malware-ridden sites with deliberately deceptive webpage designs in order to download some kinds of software. It occasionally requires maintenance in the form of digging through sometimes deliberately obfuscatory registry settings. It only runs Windows software; if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. That's ready. Linux: It must have no deficiencies. It has a package manager which performs dependency tracking (something alien to Windows, as far as I know) and contains no malware. It can never requires maintenance of any kind. It must run Windows software flawlessly. Only then will it be ready. MacOS X: It has settings you can't change. It does things its way. If you disagree, you're wrong. It runs nobody else's software. That's ready.

akira2501 12y ago
> if you try to run Mac or Linux software on it, people laugh at you like you're insane. We make good use of cygwin at our workplace. While it's not a perfect solution, it's very easy to install and use. It's incredibly useful to run linux/unix applications "inside" a windows environment.
- aceperry 12y ago
  I haven't tried cygwin in quite a few years, but I hear that it's improved a lot. Still a large installation though, but very useful if you must use windows.
agumonkey 12y ago
The Windows world is slowly getting package managers https://chocolatey.org/packages https://chocolatey.org/packages Windows Desktop is thought in a top down approach. There was a lot less design than in the unix world (historically no permissions, no package management etc). You download a .exe, then you get a new icon. Plus its ubiquitous community, making weird things solvable (something Ubuntu leveraged too). It's a more "human" approach, people don't have to really think through, it either work or they find someone to make it work, whether or not it's built on solid principles doesn't matter for the average joe. That's what, to me, people called a Desktop. Also it used to be a centralized, even though now Windows embeds different frameworks (and starts to feel like linux dependency papercuts). In linux you have options, leading to paradox of choice.

bdg 12y ago

I was using a FreeBSD desktop for about two years as my main work machine and finally gave up after constant goofing around with things. I switched to Manjaro yesterday on a brand new laptop, I was blown away at how quickly everything worked right out of the box. It even had Steam on it. (Manjaro is an Arch based distro; I can see how Steam being on a default install would upset some people)

mfisher87 12y ago
Ooo, thanks for the tip on Manjaro. I'm an Arch addict, give me the pure stuff. But I've been looking for a good alternative to Ubuntu Desktop for introducing Linux to newer users. Steam pre-packaged would be a plus for that demographic :) IMO, if someone doesn't like the design philosophy because it strays too far from Arch, why do they care? It's not actually Arch Linux. It doesn't affect them. That's the beauty of a fork.

mdnormy 12y ago

> I've found that lately, it seems like Ubuntu requires less fiddling than osx or windows, especially with printers & scanners. I'd like to share that I have the same experience especially with 14.04. I work with huge array of industrial printer from digital to thermal(HP/Epson/Canon/Xerox/Zebra). Vendor only officially support Windows 7 64bit, but it works perfectly on Ubuntu 14.04 that upon our advice, one of our vendor started to recommend 14.04 for their other client.

millstone 12y ago

As a counterbalance, I bought an Intel NUC about eight months ago. Linux did not work out of the box, and it required a confusing process of installing a BIOS update before it would boot. After that, it worked OK, with the exception of the IR port, which required a lot of command line tweaking. I was surprised that a modern computer like a NUC wouldn't work with Linux out of the box.