Vista / Aqua, eat my shorts

[Admiral Valdemar]

Actually, I'm of the opinion that Java is actually pretty nice now. Native look and feel that's almost good enough, it's not really as slow as claimed on modern hardware, at least once it's loaded, and of course supposedly cross platform and all. Oh, and now open source, so screw Mono (which is busy trying to catch up w/ .NET and will never get there).

I find it easier to follow instructions/documentation w/ a CLI - you can input things somewhat verbatim, while on a GUI you have to hunt through the menus and stuff, which may change between versions, rendering documentation obsolete, etc.

I guess Java is a lot better now, though I find it gets a tad slow after a time like when running Mercury Messenger for a fair few hours or days. And I wish Flash was open source more than Java right now.

You're right, it is easier using a CLI for doing most tasks. The only reason people are put off is because they're force fed this GUI tripe that supposedly makes it a more user friendly experience and saves time, while I can do operations far faster using the CLI and without my PC needlessly rendering stupid menus and windows. Just because others are too lazy to learn a basic command or two, doesn't make the system inherently worse. Most people listen to MP3s because they don't bother looking at Ogg Vorbis, yet I'll remain happy using the latter's better compression and quality, even if I'm the minority, so long as I can still enjoy it.

Settling for what everyone else finds acceptable is just being bone idle and if it were the true ideology of the planet, we'd not have OS X and other UNIX systems today.

[phongn]

You're right, it is easier using a CLI for doing most tasks. The only reason people are put off is because they're force fed this GUI tripe that supposedly makes it a more user friendly experience and saves time, while I can do operations far faster using the CLI and without my PC needlessly rendering stupid menus and windows.

There's nothing "supposed" about it. I've never taken an HCI class or read literature in that field indicating that the GUI was not a more user-friendly experience compared to the CLI. Now, a power-user might get the job done faster on the command line, but most users aren't that savvy.

For that matter, "needlessly rendering stupid menus and windows" is something of a strawman, considering that any machine takes virtually zero CPU time to do that!

Just because others are too lazy to learn a basic command or two, doesn't make the system inherently worse. Most people listen to MP3s because they don't bother looking at Ogg Vorbis, yet I'll remain happy using the latter's better compression and quality, even if I'm the minority, so long as I can still enjoy it.

At portable bitrates there is no audible difference in ABX testing between the major codecs and on the desktop I might as well go lossless. And for portable use, MP3 is so widely compatible I don't feel there's any need to use another format like Ogg Vorbis.

Settling for what everyone else finds acceptable is just being bone idle and if it were the true ideology of the planet, we'd not have OS X and other UNIX systems today.

Who said we had to settle? Nobody is arguing that here.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There's nothing "supposed" about it. I've never taken an HCI class or read literature in that field indicating that the GUI was not a more user-friendly experience compared to the CLI. Now, a power-user might get the job done faster on the command line, but most users aren't that savvy.

I never denied it was user friendly, I simply contest its speed and ease of use, with certain exceptions.

For that matter, "needlessly rendering stupid menus and windows" is something of a strawman, considering that any machine takes virtually zero CPU time to do that!

You and I both know that was aimed at having to cycle through menus and dialogs, not because it might drain 0.001% of the CPUs power from other things.

At portable bitrates there is no audible difference in ABX testing between the major codecs and on the desktop I might as well go lossless. And for portable use, MP3 is so widely compatible I don't feel there's any need to use another format like Ogg Vorbis.

Actually, Ogg Vorbis beats all over codecs on everything bar extremely low bitrates, such as 64 kbps which is horrendous to listen to anyway. As for lossless, if I really wanted to have an extra hundred megs taken up by sound I can't hear, I'd go for it. I find my HDD is better used not being taken up by useless artefacts, however.

Who said we had to settle? Nobody is arguing that here.

Again, I'm talking about Joe Bloggs here, not you or me. We both know if we followed what everyone else wanted, we'd be in a sorry state computing-wise now. If it weren't for your natural want to tinker with software, I'd be forced to stick with what MS pumps out. Huzzah for coders, what, what.

[phongn]

I never denied it was user friendly, I simply contest its speed and ease of use, with certain exceptions.

I generally include speed and ease-of-use in the "user friendly" category.

You and I both know that was aimed at having to cycle through menus and dialogs, not because it might drain 0.001% of the CPUs power from other things.

I daresay that's a result of poor menu and dialog box design then, not a failing of the paradigm itself.

Actually, Ogg Vorbis beats all over codecs on everything bar extremely low bitrates, such as 64 kbps which is horrendous to listen to anyway. As for lossless, if I really wanted to have an extra hundred megs taken up by sound I can't hear, I'd go for it. I find my HDD is better used not being taken up by useless artefacts, however.

At least according to this survey, at nominal 128-135K (which is my usual target in portable use) there's no statistical difference. I mainly go to lossless so I can switch to any new codecs that might be popularly implemented later on without having to re-rip my CDs.

Again, I'm talking about Joe Bloggs here, not you or me. We both know if we followed what everyone else wanted, we'd be in a sorry state computing-wise now. If it weren't for your natural want to tinker with software, I'd be forced to stick with what MS pumps out. Huzzah for coders, what, what.

No, but we should pay attention to what Joe Average wants and figure out what really works best for the general population. And, frankly, the CLI is not it - leave it in for power users, yes. But the main focus of the UI? No.

If a regular user ever had to go through that, I guarantee you he would just have said fuck it and put dependable Windows back in. This kind of hassle, that happens far too often, also makes me not want to bother updating myself.

If you think Linux is free or ready for the average user, you are on drugs.

What distribution are you running? I haven't quite seen that happen in awhile. That said, I did run into a nasty Ubuntu problem - an official update broke X11. It wasn't run browsing forums with lynx to discover the resolution. There was also the 5.10 issue where the password was echo'ed into the logfiles

[Admiral Valdemar]

I generally include speed and ease-of-use in the "user friendly" category.

As thou sees fit.

I daresay that's a result of poor menu and dialog box design then, not a failing of the paradigm itself.

My point exactly, and it would be folly to believe that the system is inherently superior based on the hypothetical concept of people never coding shitty interfaces. My computing teachers always made a habit of pointing out a decent man-machine interface is worth more than pointless bells and whistles.

At least according to this survey, at nominal 128-135K (which is my usual target in portable use) there's no statistical difference. I mainly go to lossless so I can switch to any new codecs that might be popularly implemented later on without having to re-rip my CDs.

I only ever use 160 kbps, so I look to that as a baseline for my results where I believe I read Vorbis is the better in terms of size and fidelity. It helps that it means storing more on my portable player, though I still have a lot of MP3s at 128 and MP4 AAC files in 192. I had tried going lossless with FLAC, but I'm not in the habit of letting so much go to music on my HDD. The peeling advantage in Vorbis I could've used though, but everything's already 160 anyway.

No, but we should pay attention to what Joe Average wants and figure out what really works best for the general population. And, frankly, the CLI is not it - leave it in for power users, yes. But the main focus of the UI? No.

Naturally. My point of contention is that people poo-poo the CLI for being old hat and with no use in this day and age. I contend that an amalgamation of improved, shinier GUI with the CLI is the best way for moderately well versed computer users. I do of course know people who can't even tell me what version of Windows they use along with those who insist Workbench is the only OS for pros. I dislike extremes in any case, but one can get a bit too average too.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I want to tell a quick Linux story here, that I am dealing with right now.

So my browser has been messing up cookies for some stupid reason and sending bad requests to this server every so often, forcing me to close the browser, clear all cookies, and log in again. It has been doing this somewhat regularly now. Add to that its annoying aspect of randomly locking up after a few days of use and it randomly adding toolbars after I turn them off (that is really annoying... I don't need a million damn empty toolbars!), and it finally made decide it might be worth it to go ahead and update it.

Well, what a god damn hassle that is. To update konqueror, I would have to get the whole bloody kdebase package. I had to go hunting to find the right package for my distro. And it requires kdelib. Apparently the binary package was compiled with a different version of the compiler than I have installed. So I update gcc and g++. Then it crashes, and digging through the error log reveals it needs an X11 update. So I do. It needs some new font package, so I get it. Then nvidia's damn driver needs to be recompiled, for some inexplicable reason.

Could it have done any of that automatically? It should have, but nooo, this is Linux, it can't just cooperate.

After 15 minutes fucking with the text mode command line, I am back to X, and KDE starts loading. Then I see it lost all the themes, except for their new ugly version, and applications randomly crash on startup.

I now have an updated browser, but a whole lot of other annoying baggage as well. And god their new theme is ugly as hell, so I'm going to have to reinstall that too.


If a regular user ever had to go through that, I guarantee you he would just have said fuck it and put dependable Windows back in. This kind of hassle, that happens far too often, also makes me not want to bother updating myself.

If you think Linux is free or ready for the average user, you are on drugs.

For every story of someone returning to Windows, there's at least two of people praising the new experience. I've seen it myself; a lot of people think Linux = Windows, which is so totally wrong as to give me a headache. So when they start complaining their Linux distro isn't being Windows XP, they throw a tantrum and end with the usual "This software sucks, thank you for making another person turn back to Windows" thread on the distro forums.

Honestly, I've had no problems bar the X11 break phongn mentioned and that was down to a dodgy release file making it into the auto-update suite in Synaptic for Ubuntu. Bar some glitches in my shitty Radeon card which seem to happen in Windows at times as well, my hardware all works fine too. And yes, I'm aware this is not the case 100%, but guess what? I hear an awful lot of business is made from helping people fix Windows too. Least the tech support is free and decent here.

That is a notable advance given when I first considered moving from Windows, I almost cried at what alternatives I had other than forking out for Apple hardware. That was only around 2002-3 with a Chloe from 24 like girl being rather close with me (though she never assimilated me to her Fedora ways).

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'm a Slacker. There is a certain amount of hassle I have grown to expect from Slackware (such as having trouble finding binary packages, thus why I usually compile from source, which also scares me with this gcc update I just was forced into...), but this one really took the cake. When I updated last time, most everything went smoothly. The automatic scripts did their jobs and the only thing broken was the visual appearance, which I quickly restored by playing with the theme settings.

This time it seemed everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Sure, Slackware isn't what you are generally going to see newbies using anyway (though, I find its straight forward approach usually easier than the layers of the other distros), but this update should have been a simple automatic thing with no hassle at all. I'm not quite sure what even went wrong yet.

Ditch it. Go for a distro that isn't aiming to be as pretentious as Gentoo or as complex as FC. There's a reason I started with Mandriva then went through SUSE and on to finally Ubuntu.

[Xisiqomelir]

I seriously think that Slackware's package management is at fault there, not Linux in general.

[Spyder]

Aww, I decided to get in on some of this accelerated desktop action with sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl compiz, I've set up a .Xsession script which invokes it, I've got the pretty cube and other effects but no title bars or window borders.

I think the version of compiz I fetched is broken.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Aww, I decided to get in on some of this accelerated desktop action with sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl compiz, I've set up a .Xsession script which invokes it, I've got the pretty cube and other effects but no title bars or window borders.

I think the version of compiz I fetched is broken.

Did the script kill your standard window manager? That can always be a problem. Try restarting Nautilus/Konqueror and see if it keeps Compiz.

You tried using AIGLX? Beryl and AIGLX was easier for me to start with, rather than Xgl and Compiz.

[Spyder]

Aww, I decided to get in on some of this accelerated desktop action with sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl compiz, I've set up a .Xsession script which invokes it, I've got the pretty cube and other effects but no title bars or window borders.

I think the version of compiz I fetched is broken.

Did the script kill your standard window manager? That can always be a problem. Try restarting Nautilus/Konqueror and see if it keeps Compiz.

You tried using AIGLX? Beryl and AIGLX was easier for me to start with, rather than Xgl and Compiz.

I'll give that a go, see how it turns out.

[RThurmont]

Not a chance. It annoys me at times, but other than a few horror stories, it seems to fit me perfectly. Though, I also dislike GUIs for most things, so I am not a normal user by any stretch.

The difficulties you've described are beyond anything I've experienced in the routine course of administering my distros. Mind you, I haven't been doing this for very long, but so far, the worst problem I've had was breaking X when I installed the wrong driver (something a n00b wouldn't need to do anyway, since the generic drivers work fine and I was trying to get the 3D effects described in this thread). I went to the Suse IRC channel, and they gave me a single command that fixed the problem completely.

I tried Mandriva a while back on a friend's computer, and disliked it for many reasons. The first was it booted to a blank screen! It didn't properly detect there was a second video card present in that computer and didn't output anything to it, and this was the one with the monitor attached. Had to interactive boot and change xorg.conf before it could even start (and if I wasn't there, he would have probably switched right back then). Then came the lameness that is a normal user's GUI. Barf, not my style. He switched back to Windows the following week anyway because his wife needed to use Excel to finish a project for work.

I've had fewer headaches with Mandriva in terms of hardware detection than other distros I've tried. However, you do raise a valid point in that Windows does have a vastly superior selection of applications. For this reason, most people switching (for the forseeable future) won't be able to switch entirely, something they may in some cases be able to do with a Mac. This is unfortunate, but I suspect most people won't mind terribly dual-booting with XP or running XP on a seperate computer until the quality of Linux apps starts to match those of their Windows-based counterparts.

However, in general, I think you really are overestimating the headaches involved in using Linux. It does vary depending on your hardware, but my relative who just installed it installed Ubuntu on a Dell laptop, and all the hardware was detected perfectly and the system runs great. The only minor headache encountered thus far has been getting JRE installed so that it will allow Java applets to run in Firefox, but I've personally had trouble with this in some Windows browsers.

I think you have to recognize, that even if you factor in the kind of administration headaches that Linux sometimes presents, I think most users are still willing to learn how to deal with those if it means not having to worry about the insecurities of Windows XP (or having to go out and purchase expensive Mac hardware). When you see someone like my relative, who couldn't even change her screen resolution or uninstall software on Windows, migrate to Ubuntu and be able to function perfectly in that environment, that convinces me that Linux is ready for adoption.

[Spyder]

I think you have to recognize, that even if you factor in the kind of administration headaches that Linux sometimes presents, I think most users are still willing to learn how to deal with those if it means not having to worry about the insecurities of Windows XP (or having to go out and purchase expensive Mac hardware). When you see someone like my relative, who couldn't even change her screen resolution or uninstall software on Windows, migrate to Ubuntu and be able to function perfectly in that environment, that convinces me that Linux is ready for adoption.

If we're talking total computing novices then perhaps it could work for web and email but as soon as we start looking at multimedia and printing, things go south.

[Pu-239]

I dunno, printing worked pretty well for me, but I guess I was lucky to have a supported printer (Samsung ML-2250 Laser- then again, the recommended pxlmono driver sucks w/ any raster graphics (spend gobs of RAM and CPU trying to convert raster graphics to postscript), so it took awhile to realize that). As for multimedia support, I guess they don't want to piss off Apple, Microsoft, and others who own IP on codecs. Supposedly Linspire has properly licensed these.

[RThurmont]

There are actually a number of legal paths to having full multimedia capability on Linux (DVD playback, .mp3s, etc). Mandriva, for instance, now ships with LinDVD, and Linspire is gearing up to sell a properly licensed DVD-decoder software on its new CNR website (which it intends to open up to all distros within the next few months). There are several free .mp3 players that are fully licensed, AFAIK. Thus, multimedia is increasingly becoming one of those Linux areas that was a major problem a few years ago, but that is now being solved.

[Crayz9000]

The only minor headache encountered thus far has been getting JRE installed so that it will allow Java applets to run in Firefox, but I've personally had trouble with this in some Windows browsers.

Now that Sun GPL'd the entirety of Java, that should become a non-issue very quickly. I know that Gentoo is usually one of the quickest distros to respond, but I had Java readily available with no download restrictions about a week or so after the announcement.

[RThurmont]

Now that Sun GPL'd the entirety of Java, that should become a non-issue very quickly. I know that Gentoo is usually one of the quickest distros to respond, but I had Java readily available with no download restrictions about a week or so after the announcement.

Yeah, I'm hoping Ubuntu will quickly follow suit...the installation proceedures for the JRE on it were somewhat unusual, and I wasn't able to complete them (due to n00bishness). Fortunately, this hasn't caused my relative any problems, so I view this as a non-issue that will be gone in a few months.

[Spyder]

God damn it, I've been monkeying around with beryl, I added beryl-manager to startup programs under system > preferences > sessions. Now it dumps me back to the login screen whenever I try to log in. I've been trying to figure out where the startup programs are kept so I can take it out manually. I thought it would be under ~/gnome2/session-manual but alas no, there's nothing there.

Could someone please tell me where gnome sticks these commands so I can remove it?

I'm using Ubuntu 6.06 by the way

[RThurmont]

Go to the IRC channel #ubuntu on freenode.org and they'll be able to help you. I use Freenode IRC channels whenever I break something. BTW, do you have Kubuntu or Xubuntu working? Or is it dumping you on the command line?

[Admiral Valdemar]

God damn it, I've been monkeying around with beryl, I added beryl-manager to startup programs under system > preferences > sessions. Now it dumps me back to the login screen whenever I try to log in. I've been trying to figure out where the startup programs are kept so I can take it out manually. I thought it would be under ~/gnome2/session-manual but alas no, there's nothing there.

Could someone please tell me where gnome sticks these commands so I can remove it?

I'm using Ubuntu 6.06 by the way

It may be worth upgrading to Edgy, given it's all pre-packaged there. I tried for ages on Breezy to get it working right, but it just hated my 3D card, so I was amazed it worked at all when I used Beryl with Xgl and then AIGLX.

Trust me, it gets tiresome when X won't start or Nautilus fails to render window borders etc. This software is still in beta given how much they're adding to it daily, so unlike Aero or Aqua, you're not finding this as built-in, fully supported feature just yet.

[Spyder]

Thanks for the advice, I managed to fix the problem with apt-get remove. I'll check out that IRC channel the next time I get stuck, that sounds quite useful. I'm loving the ubuntu forums BTW, been able to get quite a few solutions out of there.

Anyway, I'm just running regular ubuntu, I do have e17 (yes, I'm diving into all the beta/pre alpha software, so sue me) installed but that keeps segfaulting so I'm just going to wait for that to come along a bit further before I have a further play with that. At present, just gnome.

But anyway, I've just kicked off the edgy upgrade so we'll see how that turns out.

One thing I have noticed is that I haven't had to wrestle with the sound servers in a while, I used to run into all sorts of problems with those.

[Pu-239]

Yeah, dmix is enabled for alsa by default, so sound servers are basically obsolete, except for legacy apps.

[Spyder]

Yeah, dmix is enabled for alsa by default, so sound servers are basically obsolete, except for legacy apps.

Sweet, you have no idea how much those things were pissing me off. Personally I think they were quite a significant barrier to linux seeing wide adoption.

Edit:

So I complete the update, all is working well, then I give this a try:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ight=beryl

I have managed to break the x-server after updating the nvidia drivers. Getting the "no screens found" error. dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg hasn't helped.



Checking to see what that IRC channel has to say...
...refusing connection.

It hates me.

Edit2:

Ok, screwing around on my own, changing the driver from "nvidia" to "nv" lets x start. So I'm guessing the nvidia drivers are borked.

yep, I think I worked it out. My ti4200 needs legacy drivers.

And fixed...and whoa...beryl...

[Alferd Packer]

Spyder, could you maybe shoot me a PM with a detailed explanation how you got it to work? I'm having the same problem you were having, with a Geforce 3.

[Spyder]

I might actually post it here just so there's a record.

Ok, using the method from the above link, use the option where you install the drivers yourself from the nvidia website. However, the legacy drivers listed on the front page of the nvidia website are also the wrong version, they're a bit too old. However, 9x series nvidia legacy drivers are available here.

Anyway, so the whole method.

Add this repo to /etc/apt/sources.list:

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deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main

Get the key for the repo:

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wget http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Update:

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sudo apt-get update

Edit /etc/default/linux-restricted-modules-common so the last line is

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DISABLED_MODULES="nv"

Fetch building packages:

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sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc gcc-3.4 xserver-xorg-dev

Purge old drivers and take down X.

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sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-kernel-common
sudo rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-*
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

I found that I had to do a ctrl-alt-backspace here, basically just take x down.

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sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-9631-pkg1.run

This should install the nvidia legacy drivers available here.

Next you just need to run Nvidia's config script which will fix xorg.conf.

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sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Or whatever you need to do to get x running again.

If X comes back up then you should be fine. Last thing to do:

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sudo apt-get install beryl emerald-themes

Type "beryl-manager" into a terminal manager and there you go.