Linux why?

arad85 said:
Computers only do what they are told to do. Someone has told it to download more crud and install it.....
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Or, in the case referred to, Windows Updateso_O

Wait a minute, you're right, crud it is! ;)
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Or, in the case referred to, Windows Updateso_O

Wait a minute, you're right, crud it is! ;)
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Meh... too easy to have a go. I've run Windows Updates on all the Windows machines I have ever had and I've only ever had a handful of problems. I have never had WU install clutter at startup.

Too many people are quick to blame the computer and "Windoze" rather than look at the real culprit - themselves.
 
arad85 said:
Click on the checkbox to the left of firefox (actually, the disto I am using calls it iceweasel, but that's a different matter) and once marked, click apply. Not only can you install multiple things in one go (you can search/select multiple packages) you only ever need to go to one place - the package manager. No more google download location, download software then install... SIMPLES ;)
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Well that worked a treat - NOT!
Just said "Mark for installation" so I did and clicked apply.
Told me it needed to download 34MB of more packages but when it tried the location could not be found so it quit!
Not so SIMPLES!
 
Well... works for me :)
 
gadgeteer said:
Simples. If you have to ask then you don't need it. Stick to Windows or Mac
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Some people have an open mind and are curious. Asking can help you find out more about things.
gadgeteer said:
OK so Linux on the desktop is for people who like to do things the hard way and prove their technical prowess to others.
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Weird! I don't like to anything the hard way. And on Linux most things are as easy as other OSs. Linux with all its GUIs is definitely not designed for propellor heads only. I never use the command line (for reasons I posted above) and I have no interest in learning what goes on under the hood. I just use it. And have nothing to prove. As do probably the majority of Linux users. Although I am only guessing the division of casual users to propeller-heads. And I guess anyone using the command line is doing so to maintain their computer and not using it as a user. I.e for photography or office work or actually doing something.
petersmart said:
In Windows to install something I just click on the Application and, HEY, it installs and stays there! - so easy!
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Installing on Linux is as good if not easier as Windows. The Software manager does it all for you in an easy way.
arad85 said:
... you most definitely do not need the command line to install stuff - Ubuntu distributions come with Synaptic Package Manager and Zorin comes with a Software Manager (Start -> Software Manager) which allows you to install from packages.
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Ubuntu also comes with a Software Manager. Synaptic package manager is not normally needed.
 
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ianp5a said:
Some people have an open mind and are curious. Asking can help you find out more about things.
Weird! I don't like to anything the hard way. And on Linux most things are as easy as other OSs. Linux with all its GUIs is definitely not designed for propellor heads only. I never use the command line (for reasons I posted above) and I have no interest in learning what goes on under the hood. I just use it. And have nothing to prove. As do probably the majority of Linux users. Although I am only guessing the division of casual users to propeller-heads. And I guess anyone using the command line is doing so to maintain their computer and not using it as a user. I.e for photography or office work or actually doing something.

Installing on Linux is as good if not easier as Windows. The Software manager does it all for you in an easy way.
Ubuntu also comes with a Software Manager. Synaptic package manager is not normally needed.
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Except it doesn't work!

So for me totally useless.

.
 
petersmart said:
Except it doesn't work!

So for me totally useless.

.
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How are (were?) you try Linux? Full install? Virtual Machine (and if so, saving state, or starting from scratch each time)? Live CD/DVD?

Once a bit of software is installed, you shouldn't have to install it again...
Genuinely interested it what was happening.
 
LCPete said:
Well I've had a think and am going to give Linux mint a go on my old dell laptop:)
I just had a look at it and it's windows xp so either I've got to buy another version of windows or try Linux
It's not worth spending any money on it and I've already got another laptop so nothing to lose
It needed windows reinstalling anyway as it became very slow to boot and the USB ports don't work
I will try installing mint from a DVD next week and no doubt will be posting some questions!
Will probably use the laptop for internet and photo viewing probably won't try any photo editing program's
Thanks everyone for their input it's been a really interesting thread
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It's gotta be worth a go, especially if you were going to re-install anyway (if you don't like it, all you've lost is a few days).
Before you do though, run the Windows 8 compatability tool. XP shouldn't really be allowed out on it's own anymore (there are new unpatched exploits already), so whilst you have windows on there, make sure that the machine is compatable with the newest version.
 
LC2 said:
It's gotta be worth a go, especially if you were going to re-install anyway (if you don't like it, all you've lost is a few days).
Before you do though, run the Windows 8 compatability tool. XP shouldn't really be allowed out on it's own anymore (there are new unpatched exploits already), so whilst you have windows on there, make sure that the machine is compatable with the newest version.
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Thanks thats a good idea will check if it is compatible with windows 8
Hopefully the linux will give it a new lease of life :)
 
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Check this weeks "Micro Mart" for details to change WinXP to a LINUX Distro
 
petersmart said:
Except it doesn't work!

So for me totally useless.

.
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I'd guess that because you're running a virtual machine it can't find the repo to download from - sorry, but i don't have the experience to help troubleshoot that.
 
petersmart said:
Except it doesn't work!

So for me totally useless.

.
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It is probably as simple as refreshing package list. You should be using the polished generic software manager ideally. Synaptic is a power tool in a similar way as command line and may miss the shiny illustrations and tips you were expecting, but didn't spend a minute looking for. It is fine for most users but clearly not all.
 
ianp5a said:
Ubuntu also comes with a Software Manager. Synaptic package manager is not normally needed.
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Sorry - I only quickly googled that distro to try and help Peter. I administer all my Linux installs from the command line so only have vague recollections of any form of package manager... :)
 
ancient_mariner said:
I'd guess that because you're running a virtual machine
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If you're in a VM and can access the Internet, that's all that should be needed as you are able to resolve addresses....
 
neil_g said:
doesnt generally go down well though, especially with the mac users. that lot are a law unto themselves.
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Probably because they chose mac to avoid being managed by IT in the first place (it works in some places!). It is not always nice to be waiting for some key software weeks, never seeing it all or being given an inferior, unknown and paid alternative. Not all IT departments are bad, but even so there is inconvenience asking for every single small thing. I know you have a perfect answer to that - it's the policy...

arad85 said:
I've certainly installed a system without needing the command line too....

This is the bit I don't get. You want to use Scribus - OK - I've never used that or Indesign so wouldn't know one end of either from the other - but you imply the Windows alternative is expensive. OK AN alternative is expensive, but Scribus - like MANY other open apps - is available on Windows. There does appear to be a complete blinkering of the Linux is the Only Way brigade that forgets that most of the free apps (Libre Office etc...) are also available on Windows, so the only extra initial cost is that of the OS - which comes bundled with most PCs. And, as has been said by most on here advocating Linux, other than for reviving old hardware (which Linux does well) most people also can't let go of Windows for one reason or another - normally due to needing certain Windows only apps. Why go to all that effort...?
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It is true that windows will run most, but not all best OSS tools. Some are exclusive to linux, but many will simply run faster (not so much for libre office, but CPU intensive apps will be better).

I think the key reason is the free software. Free as in open and transparent. It is nice to know the software is free from NSA backdoors and is developed by the community rather than a secretive for profit company (apple I am referring to you also). Operating system is a too big deal to be closed source these days
 
daugirdas said:
It is true that windows will run most, but not all best OSS tools. Some are exclusive to linux,
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Your rose tinted glasses are well and truly on tonight... What are the tools I'm missing out on to enrich my life that run exclusively on Linux...

daugirdas said:
but many will simply run faster (not so much for libre office, but CPU intensive apps will be better).
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The CPU intensive apps I've tried (recoding video with ffmpeg which is about as CPU intensive as you can get) runs at approximately the same speed under Windows and Linux. Which ones run significantly quicker?
 
LC2 said:
How are (were?) you try Linux? Full install? Virtual Machine (and if so, saving state, or starting from scratch each time)? Live CD/DVD?

Once a bit of software is installed, you shouldn't have to install it again...
Genuinely interested it what was happening.
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Well I just thought I'd try it and see if Linux had improved at all since I tried another version a few years ago.

I use VirtualBox from Oracle to run a great many different programs for many reasons one of which is that I can try out various programs without all the bother of doing a complete install on my real PC.

But i've never had much luck with Linux ( in various versions).

I downloaded 2 versions of Zorin - lite and the full 32 bit and they both installed but still couldn't install even Firefox and frankly, can't really be bothered any more trying to sort it out - life's just too short.

It's an interesting program but until it is as easy to use as Windows it will, for 99% of the people, be just a niche program.
.
 
Although I'm not a fan of the Ubuntu desktop (Unity), I still recommend Ubuntu for people who want to try Linux on a PC. As it is known to run reliably out of the box without needing any technical knowledge. I don't know about Zorin, but when people had difficulties with Fedora and Suse, you'll find many people suggesting Ubuntu and to forget those other distros and make it easy for yourself. Additionally, the live boot is a more realistic way to try something out rather than use a virtual machine. Apologies if Zorin is also known as an easy starter. More are arriving all the time.
There are other known easy installs such as Mint and Kubuntu, but I wanted to keep it simple.
 
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daugirdas said:
Probably because they chose mac to avoid being managed by IT in the first place (it works in some places!). It is not always nice to be waiting for some key software weeks, never seeing it all or being given an inferior, unknown and paid alternative. Not all IT departments are bad, but even so there is inconvenience asking for every single small thing. I know you have a perfect answer to that - it's the policy...
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ah. ahaha. hahahahahahha.

nope.

giphy_zpse474fb3f.gif
 
neil_g said:
(when ive had a cup of tea i might manage something a little more constructive)
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If you had to look after daugirdas' IT install, you might just turn into the BOFH just to see him self-implode....
 
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daugirdas said:
I think the key reason is the free software. Free as in open and transparent. It is nice to know the software is free from NSA backdoors and is developed by the community rather than a secretive for profit company (apple I am referring to you also). Operating system is a too big deal to be closed source these days
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You don't know it is free from exploitable vulnerabilities at all. Heartbleed was a perfect demonstration of the way that FOSS community assumes that because code is open, it is actually being reviewed by anyone other than the author. It's no better or worse than closed source software from that point of view.

Arguably it's worse, as the only people with the money and inclination to spend millions of dollars scouring security critical technologies are the NSA and friends, who helpfully have all the source code at their fingertips.
 
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neil_g said:
(when ive had a cup of tea i might manage something a little more constructive)
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Having had to try to work around large corporate IT depts. in the past, I did have a little sympathy for his POV, even if I don't agree with it.

One Diagnostics company I worked for had an IT dept that behaved as though the companies product was IT, rather than diagnostic products, which made IT provision a very curious experience. Some of their senior staff (US based) also all seemed to think that they were trainee BOFHs, and after our system in the UK was connected to theirs we discovered what it was like to have hackers inside the company firewall instead of on the outside of it. Quite bizarre, and desperately unprofessional on all sides.
 
arad85 said:
unless you're talking about a machine 5+ years old (Win 7 RTM was mid 2009, so anything bought in 2009 would have likely qualified for a free upgrade), would have come with Win 7 anyway
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you misunderstand, i'm talking about a machine that came with W7 preinstalled (no disks ) but suffered a borked hard drive - having bought a new HDD i then needed a new 64 bit operating system - for which MS wanted to charge me £££ - linux was an obvious alternative

arad85 said:
Windows updates come out once a month - if the machine isn't on very often and you have auto updates on,
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My W7 machine is on ever day - you can still make a cup of tea while it boots up , the real culprit would appear to be the java update which wants to update every single time the machine is turned on.
 
daugirdas said:
Probably because they chose mac to avoid being managed by IT in the first place (it works in some places!). It is not always nice to be waiting for some key software weeks, never seeing it all or being given an inferior, unknown and paid alternative. Not all IT departments are bad, but even so there is inconvenience asking for every single small thing. I know you have a perfect answer to that - it's the policy...
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right okay here we go. based on my 15 years (or whatever im up to) experience:

1) they chose nothing, their job description required a mac (in my opinion there wasnt really any need, illustrator is illustrator on either platform. its a political thing). that mac will have been configured correctly to work with key systems.

2) machines are wiped and key software is installed fresh when a new starter request is put through. additional software is requested through the purchase approval process (by accountants in head office), purchased (if approved) and installed in the shortest times available. if it is not approved then the staff/dept have not made a very good case for purchase, IT merely put in that request with a higher body. typically the longest part of the process is getting someone to approve the purchase.

3) inferior? if it doesnt work then it will get replaced. which is why we generally have a mix of OSX and CS suite versions depending what is compatible, what was available to purchase at the time and/or what works on the hardware. if it aint broke..

my comment was born from users "fiddling" and installing rubbish on their system. both Mac and PC users get the same treatment because otherwise they end up needing their system reinstalled. which we do not have the resource for, we took that out of the equation so we could concentrate on more important things like upgrading key systems to make their day easier.

you'd be surprised how many users tried to update their own work Mac to Mavericks when that was released, fortunately those that tried failed because of lacking admin rights. otherwise they would have found very quickly that at the time it was not compatible with some key systems and hardware. and guess would have had to fix it..

I said it recently in another thread (might have been earlier in this one?) that 99% of system slowdowns are end user caused. people simply cannot be trusted to manage their own systems.
 
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big soft moose said:
you misunderstand, i'm talking about a machine that came with W7 preinstalled (no disks ) but suffered a borked hard drive - having bought a new HDD i then needed a new 64 bit operating system - for which MS wanted to charge me £££ - linux was an obvious alternative
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You had the license key. All you needed was some media which is FREELY AND LEGALLY downloadable from the net. You didn't need to pay a single $ to get Win 7 back on that machine. Here: http://www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325/
 
0.2Mb broadband download speed = not downloading anything as big as an operating system
 
neil_g said:
a linux distro cant be much smaller? (havent checked for a while)
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My linux distro was on a disc (a single disc rather than 4 for W7) off the front of linux user magazine
 
You can lead a horse to water.......
 
arad85 said:
You can lead a horse to water.......
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but if it is happily not at all thirsty because its full of lovely clear linux water, you won't force it to drink a load of boggy microsoft ouse , however much you think it should
 
big soft moose said:
but if it is happily not at all thirsty because its full of lovely clear linux water, you won't force it to drink a load of boggy microsoft ouse , however much you think it should
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Your original point was that you moved to linux because you didn't want to spend money on Windows, but it turned out you already had Windows, just it was on a borked disk. You then said Microsoft wanted £££ to replace it and I pointed out that you can get these things free - you only need the key, so the reasons you claimed you moved to linux weren't real reasons at all - you just wanted to move. Fair enough, but it would have saved effort and frustration if you'd just said that up front and left it at that ;).

As to Linux being bug free... well, don't forget that the heartbleed bug is in a piece of open software that is on all Linux platforms worldwde, so no, Linux is not impervious to bugs.
 
arad85 said:
Your original point was that you moved to linux because you didn't want to spend money on Windows, but it turned out you already had Windows, just it was on a borked disk. You then said Microsoft wanted £££ to replace it and I pointed out that you can get these things free - you only need the key, so the reasons you claimed you moved to linux weren't real reasons at all - you just wanted to move. Fair enough, but it would have saved effort and frustration if you'd just said that up front and left it at that ;).

As to Linux being bug free... well, don't forget that the heartbleed bug is in a piece of open software that is on all Linux platforms worldwde, so no, Linux is not impervious to bugs.
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no - i moved to linux because it was free, easily accesible and available on a disk - as opposed to W7 which was only available on a (functional) disk if i bought a new copy, the disks that were sent out by dell being crap that didnt work.

Having moved and found that linux works fine , ive no intention of moving back to W7 just because you think MS is the one true god

and I've never said that linux is bug free, but my understanding was that heartbleed was a cross platform issue - surely you arent now saying (having previously claimed that the world as we know it was over ) that all MS devices are imune ?
 
big soft moose said:
no - i moved to linux because it was free, easily accesible and available on a disk - as opposed to W7 which was only available on a (functional) disk if i bought a new copy, the disks that were sent out by dell being crap that didnt work.
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And as I said, that is a misinformed position. You can get a fully legal and functional disk for $0.

big soft moose said:
Having moved and found that linux works fine , ive no intention of moving back to W7 just because you think MS is the one true god
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If you read my posts, you'll see that I actually run more Linux systems than Windows. I just don't use Linux as my day-to-day UI as I think it brings more disadvantages than advantages. My basic reasoning is if I have to dual boot or run a VM just to run a UI program, I have chosen the wrong OS - and there's always something I want to run that's MS only somewhere - home is predominantly Lightroom, work is Office. I also think for most others, Windows is probably the right choice due to more people knowing about Windows, so it is easier to get help from others even though both Linux and Windows will do 95% of the jobs as well as each other.

I have no allegiance, nor hidden agenda, just 33 years of experience of getting computers do what I want them to do for far too many hours of the day/days of week.

big soft moose said:
and I've never said that linux is bug free
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You implied it by "drinking the lovely clear Linux water".

big soft moose said:
but my understanding was that heartbleed was a cross platform issue
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It affected any server running a version of OpenSSH within the last few years, whatever the underlying OS was. There was a bug in a trusted and privileged application which opened holes.

big soft moose said:
surely you arent now saying (having previously claimed that the world as we know it was over ) that all MS devices are imune ?
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Don't remember claiming the world as we know it was now over, nor claiming (or implying) that MS devices are immune, just that bugs can be found on Linux too. There may be less exploits, but the ones that are there seem to be pretty big (both heartbleed and the recent Apple SSL bug are pretty major IMHO).
 
big soft moose said:
no - i moved to linux because it was free, easily accesible and available on a disk - as opposed to W7 which was only available on a (functional) disk if i bought a new copy, the disks that were sent out by dell being crap that didnt work.

Having moved and found that linux works fine , ive no intention of moving back to W7 just because you think MS is the one true god

and I've never said that linux is bug free, but my understanding was that heartbleed was a cross platform issue - surely you arent now saying (having previously claimed that the world as we know it was over ) that all MS devices are imune ?
Click to expand...

Pete - some people are never happy unless they've proved themselves absolutely right by proving you wrong in every way they can.
 
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