Convert me to the cult of Linux!

[Faqa]

In contrast I get tons of links to sites and blog posts slamming OOXML as being evil.

Oooooooooh, is this a blog war? I wanna play!

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html

(This is about the old file formats, but the rundown it gives on why MS doesn't release a more detailed API is still accurate - it's horribly complex and doesn't make sense for them to do)

TL;DR version: Anything that could reliably make changes to any MS Word document would end up being.... MS Word. MS is still selling that, far as I recall. Why exactly should they give away the core functionality of one of their products? What possible interest does it hold for them to improve Open Office?

You want an MS Word clone, write it yourself. MS has given all the info necessary to do so.

[Pu-239]

Back on topic, for his use case everything other than .doc support should work well, w/o much (any?) command line mucking around since the applications are prepackaged (except maybe Skype - I use Fedora and the Skype RPM's dependencies aren't properly specified causing breakage and annoyance - likely better luck w/ Ubuntu though ).

As for .doc support, depends on how much he cares about interoperability/collaboration w/ more complex documents / dealing w/ formatting quirks. If you're just working on .doc files by yourself or formatting isn't a big issue, it should be fine. If formatting is required but you're just distributing docs, there's export to PDF


I'm also a grad studentm doing CompEng, and all of our computers are mostly Linux w/ a few Macs (funny thing about that is no EDA software runs on MacOS so all real work has to be done in a VM running Windows or Linux). Everyone other than me and the professors uses Windows on their personal laptops though...

We seem to get by throwing .doc/.ppt/.xls's around, although it gets irritating when the occasional file is saved in docx/pptx/xlsx/keynote (usually the Mac people and grad students outside the lab). All the machines do have VMs running Windows for when we do need it though (except mine due to performance reasons ).

Anything where formatting is important gets thrown into LaTeX/Beamer/etc anyway- of course, this isn't an option for most people nonfluent in LaTeX/Beamer.

In my experience, most Word files turn out okay, the main breakage happens w/ spreadsheets and powerpoint.

[Zixinus]

Thanks for the quick advice. Right now, I am trying to figure out which version of EEEbuntu should I get.

Well, to be frank, I think I may have overestimated the importance of using .doc file system. I mostly create these files for myself, with an occasional dose of homework that I have to print out on father's machine. Even those are fairly usually formatted.

That's another thing that would be nice to have, although not vital: ability to join the router-created Workgroup that is between our four computers (dad's deskup and laptop, and my deskup and laptop). I think I haven't quite figured out how it works, other than the router plays part in it and that it's very slow.

[Zixinus]

Well, I have put up Easy Peasy, which is essentially an Ubuntu release with some netbook-specific optimizations.

So far, I am getting used to the GUI and trying to get programs for what I want to do. Mouse is recognized without much fuss, so that is good. Transferring large batch of books, music and so-fort soon. Lost a few personal photos in a while.

Gave dad the netbook to try the new OS out. He instantly found Solitaire.

Right now, I am going to try the text editor software (OpenOffice, I would prefer Jarte) and see what EEEpc functionalities are there. I can increase and decrease voloume and brightness.

[Edi]

Open Office is good enough if you only have to deal with .doc files that don't have a ton of special formatting. For that sort of needs, I've found Open Office far superior to MS Office and if someone needs a complete document, the native export to PDF is just fine.

Given that Open Office is free, I'm pretty satisfied with the bang for buck I'm getting out of it. It also allows certain types of document editing, styling operations and formatting to be put in place far easier than doing the same things in Word. I've had to use both Word and Writer, so I can compare them.

Obviously some of the really fancy stuff won't translate, but for straight up documents with no frills, piece of cake. Power points and spreadsheets, that's a different story. The functions don't go over well.

[Zixinus]

I still would prefer Jarte. Let me show you why:

This is Jarte:


This is OpenOffice Writer:


There is less clutter in Jarte, although it has less functions. Those functions are stuff that I never needed. Jarte has a pretty good GUI: clickless buttons, a good deal of hotkeys and most of all, the interface is pretty clean. You can hide the left bar by F11. Pageview is also more efficient, you only see the text.

Of course, it might be possible to set all of it on OpenOffice but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

[Zixinus]

I have a weird error in Ubuntu, or rather, EEEbuntu 3: its about connection to wireless.

I have set up a hidden wireless access point. I've made a hidden wireless point using WPA2 with a long, random-generated password.

Thing is, I ctrl-v in the answer and then it pops again that it needs a password. I've check the password displayed and its completely different than what I've entered.

[General Zod]

Maybe it just doesn't allow you to copy/paste the password in? Did you try typing it in by hand?

[Zixinus]

Yes. Same result. Even tried changing the password from the admin tools -> networking point. Same result. It insists giving me a different password than what I've given in.

[Dave]

I have a weird error in Ubuntu, or rather, EEEbuntu 3: its about connection to wireless.

I have set up a hidden wireless access point. I've made a hidden wireless point using WPA2 with a long, random-generated password.

Thing is, I ctrl-v in the answer and then it pops again that it needs a password. I've check the password displayed and its completely different than what I've entered.

Try reseting the netbook networking entirely. ( Right-click network-manager in taskbar, disable networking, wait a moment, then reconnect)

Failing that, reboot the netbook and (if possible) the router.

[Zixinus]

I think it has to do how Ubuntu saves the password: it transforms it into a hexadeciamal something. Why does it do this and is there a painless way to disable this? I keep trying to remove the profile I entered trough Network Connections but it keeps popping back up with the wrong password!

EDIT: Disabled and then enabled networking. No change. Rebooting now to see any difference, but I doubt it.
EDIT2: Yup, rebooting has no effect. Still insists on using a hexadecimal keycode instead of actual password.

[Channel72]

A good graphical front, because I have no intention of learning command lines.

Then you should just forget about using Linux, because you won't be able to use Linux for long without using the shell. Look, Linux is a fantastic Operating System. It's open-source and incredibly customizable, and it has a powerful shell. It's fantastic for running servers and has great security features. But despite claims from the fanatics, it's not ready for the Desktop yet, and driver support for many peripherals is spotty at best. Granted, Linux has made great strides towards becoming a true Desktop OS with Ubuntu, but really, if all you want is a nice, intuitive GUI front-end then go with Windows 7 or Mac OS.

[General Zod]

A good graphical front, because I have no intention of learning command lines.

Then you should just forget about using Linux, because you won't be able to use Linux for long without using the shell. Look, Linux is a fantastic Operating System. It's open-source and incredibly customizable, and it has a powerful shell. It's fantastic for running servers and has great security features. But despite claims from the fanatics, it's not ready for the Desktop yet, and driver support for many peripherals is spotty at best. Granted, Linux has made great strides towards becoming a true Desktop OS with Ubuntu, but really, if all you want is a nice, intuitive GUI front-end then go with Windows 7 or Mac OS.

You realize he's talking about a netbook here right? Windows 7 and OSX are out of the question. Incidentally, I'm dubious about your driver claims. The brief time I had to use Ubuntu its driver support was better than fucking Vista out of the box, and I never actually needed to use the command line for anything. Your post sounds like someone who hasn't touched a new linux build in five years.

[Zixinus]

EasyPeasy seems to be OK for the most part. Could do anything without using the terminal.

Thing is, I think Ubuntu's problem is related to how it stores passwords. It encrypts them but seems to forget to decrypt them when I actually want to use that password. Right now, I am trying to figure out how to disable this feature.

[Channel72]

Then you should just forget about using Linux, because you won't be able to use Linux for long without using the shell. Look, Linux is a fantastic Operating System. It's open-source and incredibly customizable, and it has a powerful shell. It's fantastic for running servers and has great security features. But despite claims from the fanatics, it's not ready for the Desktop yet, and driver support for many peripherals is spotty at best. Granted, Linux has made great strides towards becoming a true Desktop OS with Ubuntu, but really, if all you want is a nice, intuitive GUI front-end then go with Windows 7 or Mac OS.

You realize he's talking about a netbook here right? Windows 7 and OSX are out of the question. Incidentally, I'm dubious about your driver claims. The brief time I had to use Ubuntu its driver support was better than fucking Vista out of the box, and I never actually needed to use the command line for anything. Your post sounds like someone who hasn't touched a new linux build in five years.

Well, you're right about the netbook. He'd have to restore XP if he decides against Linux. Anyway, we're really talking about regular usage and maintenance here, not brief usage. I highly doubt that you would be able to use Linux regularly without having to use the command shell every now and then. Particularly since many drivers come as source tarballs rather than binaries, so you have to compile drivers on the command shell and use the make utility. I regularly use Debian 5 with Gnome, but even with Ubuntu 9 (I admit I haven't used 10 yet) getting a relatively popular wireless USB adapter to work was quite annoying. I literally had to edit the source and recompile the driver, or else I was stuck with a horribly buggy wrapper which emulates Windows. Unless Ubuntu 10 has significantly improved the situation, I stand by my original statement about driver support.

Anyway, what hardware were you using that was easier to get working with Ubuntu than Windows Vista?

[General Zod]

Anyway, what hardware were you using that was easier to get working with Ubuntu than Windows Vista?

A simple 10/100 broadcom ethernet port. Vista didn't have the driver to get it working so I couldn't download any of the other drivers I needed in order to get my notebook up and running again. So I installed Ubuntu and it detected almost everything right away. For all the other software I wanted I was able to get it through the repositories. . . but I eventually gave it up when I got paid and bought a copy of Win 7.

[Drooling Iguana]

Then you should just forget about using Linux, because you won't be able to use Linux for long without using the shell.

Ever notice that these sorts of objections never give specific examples?

I can't say with certainty that you'll never need to use the shell in a modern Linux distribution, as I tend to use it fairly often anyway just because some things are easier that way. I can say, however, that I can't think of any recent instance where I had to use the shell. These days there's pretty much always a GUI-driven method to do whatever you want to do (outside of a small amount of copy/pasting if you have a piece of hardware that's not fully supported, but those are getting fewer and farther between,) even if the shell can be a bit faster for a skilled user.

Of course, if Channel72 has some specific examples to give weight to his arguments I'd like to hear them, because it sounds like he's just throwing out the same stock arguments that have been repeated ad nauseum since the 1990s, and haven't been true for quite some time.

[Drooling Iguana]

Please delete this post. It was made by mistake.

[Starglider]

Ever notice that these sorts of objections never give specific examples?

I'll give a specific example. I have never been able to get any sort of hardware accelerated graphics working on Linux without hours of fucking about with dodgy drivers, binary blobs and the labyrinthine horror that is Xfree86/Xorg. I've tried this on many, many computers over the years, Nvidia, ATI, integrated graphics it never works on a fresh install. Which is not to say that it works properly after I've crowbared it with copious console sessions, rebuilds and config file edits either; at best X kinda sorta displays OpenGL stuff with hardware acceleration, when it feels like it, with random glitches. This almost always comes at the price of fucking up the normal 2D graphics, making several display modes unavailable, inexplicably locking the refresh rate, randomly blacking the screen / crashing X / locking the system at roughly 30 minute intervals etc. The perfect shitstorm of the X Windows concept, design and implementation is primarily to blame, though the LOL NO BINARIES FREE SOFTWARE ONLY zealots certainly fuck things up further where they can.

This is why I use Linux all the time on servers but not on the desktop. I used to use it for dev workstations, before accessing the GPU (without investing three days and suffering random shit) became an essential requirement. Maybe things have changed in the two years since I last tried to get Linux to behave like a 21st century operating system, but I doubt it.

[Drooling Iguana]

Ever notice that these sorts of objections never give specific examples?

I'll give a specific example. I have never been able to get any sort of hardware accelerated graphics working on Linux without hours of fucking about with dodgy drivers, binary blobs and the labyrinthine horror that is Xfree86/Xorg. I've tried this on many, many computers over the years, Nvidia, ATI, integrated graphics it never works on a fresh install. Which is not to say that it works properly after I've crowbared it with copious console sessions, rebuilds and config file edits either; at best X kinda sorta displays OpenGL stuff with hardware acceleration, when it feels like it, with random glitches. This almost always comes at the price of fucking up the normal 2D graphics, making several display modes unavailable, inexplicably locking the refresh rate, randomly blacking the screen / crashing X / locking the system at roughly 30 minute intervals etc. The perfect shitstorm of the X Windows concept, design and implementation is primarily to blame, though the LOL NO BINARIES FREE SOFTWARE ONLY zealots certainly fuck things up further where they can.

I've heard of people having problems with ATI card in Linux, which is why I don't buy that brand (while Linux is certainly ready for the desktop, not all desktops are ready for Linux, unfortunately.) However, I've never had the slightest difficulty getting an Nvidia card working in Linux. You have to download their proprietary drivers, sure, but even that's pretty easy in most modern distributions. They can be installed in Ubuntu with just a couple of clicks, for instance.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Windows 7 runs fine on netbook hardware. As a matter of fact it often runs better than XP.

[Stark]

Windows 7 runs fine on netbook hardware. As a matter of fact it often runs better than XP.

Yeah, and it boots faster on a netbook than it does on my desktop. Damn.

[Channel72]

Of course, if Channel72 has some specific examples to give weight to his arguments I'd like to hear them, because it sounds like he's just throwing out the same stock arguments that have been repeated ad nauseum since the 1990s, and haven't been true for quite some time.

What are you talking about? I gave a very specific example one post after the one you quoted.

You can use Ubuntu without having to use the shell, IF

1) You don't need to compile drivers for any hardware
2) You limit yourself to using packaged software through the apt-get framework.

The problem is that the Linux community/culture itself tends to favor distributing source-code rather than binaries, due to the whole GNU "free software" philosophy. Therefore, most programs are distributed as source tarballs rather than binaries. This means that if you ever want to install software on Ubuntu that isn't part of the apt framework, you basically need to use the make utility, which means you need the shell.

[Pu-239]

I think it has to do how Ubuntu saves the password: it transforms it into a hexadeciamal something. Why does it do this and is there a painless way to disable this? I keep trying to remove the profile I entered trough Network Connections but it keeps popping back up with the wrong password!

EDIT: Disabled and then enabled networking. No change. Rebooting now to see any difference, but I doubt it.
EDIT2: Yup, rebooting has no effect. Still insists on using a hexadecimal keycode instead of actual password.

I believe all WPA(2) passwords, are interpreted as hex before being sent off to the router. http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjoris/wpapsk.html

I think Windows XP stored passwords in hex as well; Vista and above stored it verbatim as the original passphrase

I've had problems connecting to hidden wireless points before- try just making it visible. You have WPA2 on anyway, and anybody serious about cracking it and guessing WPA passwords can detect it easily even if hidden. I've gotten hidden wireless to work somehow using the GUI only, but don't really remember and I don't run into those very often.

Windows 7 runs fine on netbook hardware. As a matter of fact it often runs better than XP.

Yeah, and it boots faster on a netbook than it does on my desktop. Damn.

Maybe it's because the netbook uses an SSD? *shrug*

Ever notice that these sorts of objections never give specific examples?

I'll give a specific example. I have never been able to get any sort of hardware accelerated graphics working on Linux without hours of fucking about with dodgy drivers, binary blobs and the labyrinthine horror that is Xfree86/Xorg. I've tried this on many, many computers over the years, Nvidia, ATI, integrated graphics it never works on a fresh install. Which is not to say that it works properly after I've crowbared it with copious console sessions, rebuilds and config file edits either; at best X kinda sorta displays OpenGL stuff with hardware acceleration, when it feels like it, with random glitches. This almost always comes at the price of fucking up the normal 2D graphics, making several display modes unavailable, inexplicably locking the refresh rate, randomly blacking the screen / crashing X / locking the system at roughly 30 minute intervals etc. The perfect shitstorm of the X Windows concept, design and implementation is primarily to blame, though the LOL NO BINARIES FREE SOFTWARE ONLY zealots certainly fuck things up further where they can.

I've heard of people having problems with ATI card in Linux, which is why I don't buy that brand (while Linux is certainly ready for the desktop, not all desktops are ready for Linux, unfortunately.) However, I've never had the slightest difficulty getting an Nvidia card working in Linux. You have to download their proprietary drivers, sure, but even that's pretty easy in most modern distributions. They can be installed in Ubuntu with just a couple of clicks, for instance.

Same here- Fedora is more strict about "free software", but even then it's fairly easy and can be done w/ the GUI. The hard part sadly is knowing what RPMFusion is etc etc. But that's just part of what the user has to know to get stuff working. Slipstreaming drivers into install discs for Windows isn't obvious to the n00b either.

[Pu-239]

Of course, if Channel72 has some specific examples to give weight to his arguments I'd like to hear them, because it sounds like he's just throwing out the same stock arguments that have been repeated ad nauseum since the 1990s, and haven't been true for quite some time.

What are you talking about? I gave a very specific example one post after the one you quoted.

You can use Ubuntu without having to use the shell, IF

1) You don't need to compile drivers for any hardware
2) You limit yourself to using packaged software through the apt-get framework.

The problem is that the Linux community/culture itself tends to favor distributing source-code rather than binaries, due to the whole GNU "free software" philosophy. Therefore, most programs are distributed as source tarballs rather than binaries. This means that if you ever want to install software on Ubuntu that isn't part of the apt framework, you basically need to use the make utility, which means you need the shell.

Name a package that you use that isn't available in some precompiled form.


That's changed a bit, I can find standalone RPMs/DEBs and/or yum/apt repos for most things (I still install via command line instead of doubleclicking the package out of habit though). I haven't compiled stuff for a long time - if it's not precompiled, I can't be bothered to install all the dev libraries and compile it myself. Usually the stuff that I care to use that lack precompiled stuff are command line tools or specialized
stuff the average user won't use anyway.

For Xilinx ISE, I've had to use the command line to install (not compile), but that's also specialized engineering software. Same w/ JDK/Eclipse (new versions), but if you're programming something and you don't know the command line... well...

Something that *is* somewhat problematic is desktop java apps distributed as .jars - you can't doubleclick on them since they get opened up as a zip (which it is).


Drivers for stuff, I can see having to drop into the command line- I've done it to get the GUI scanner frontend to recognize and use a Dell networked scanner. But most people don't use networked scanners. I suppose there's the long tail problem though, where Linux works for 95% of the cases and fails for the remaining 5 percent, which is different for each person...