On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:40:01 +0100, clipka wrote:

> Jim Henderson schrieb:
> 
>> But it failed to detect my wireless card.  I had to actually plug into
>> the wired network.  Then it downloaded updates automatically and
>> installed a driver for the wireless card.  OK, it did eventually work;
>> but with oS 11.2, it just worked - didn't have to download anything.
> 
> So you acquired the oS 11.2 live CD as a pressed disc somewhere? Or did
> you perhaps burn it yourself from a /downloaded/ image?

I "downloaded" it and burned it myself, but it is the official release 
version.  (My download was a copy across the network from one of the 
download servers - handy to work for the company that produces it ;-) )

My point is that the LiveCD and DVD images "just worked".

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> > For another, it's not possible to configure virtual
> > desktop switching to the mouse wheel (when used on the background).

> Interesting, I never thought about this use of the mouse wheel before.

  It's addictive once you get used to it. Guess why I didn't like KDE4.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 14:58:51 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> > For another, it's not possible to configure virtual desktop switching
>> > to the mouse wheel (when used on the background).
> 
>> Interesting, I never thought about this use of the mouse wheel before.
> 
>   It's addictive once you get used to it. Guess why I didn't like KDE4.

Because it's unfamiliar?  I have to say that the couple of days I've 
spent playing with it, I've found it looks good, but some of the 
functionality seems to work inconsistently - though part of that could be 
unfamiliarity on my part because I'm a GNOME user myself.

Jim

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Jim Henderson schrieb:

> Yeah, I know - and yet there are still claims that Windows "Just works" 
> and Linux doesn't.

I can give (and actually did give, as you may recall :-)) an example of 
where Linux does /not/ "just work":

When I got my AMD Phenom machine, I installed Debian "Etch" 4.0r5 on it 
out-of-the-box. Everything /seemed/ to be fine, until I discovered that 
something was wrong with the system time: The clock ran double speed!

Now you would think that this is a pretty basic and non-complex 
functionality. Still Linux managed to get it wrong.

And it's not like fixing such things would be easy with Linux - at least 
that's how it appears to me: By now it "just works" in many cases, but 
when it doesn't and you don't happen to have administrative skills for 
Linux, you're perfectly screwed. With Windows, OTOH, at least for such 
basic stuff you're pretty likely to find something helpful on the 
mainboard manufacturer's website.

I think the observation of most Linux users that Linux "just works" is 
clouded by them typically having at least some basic experience in 
administering Unix machines.


To add another thought, the idea that /any/ existing operating system 
"just works" is pretty much a myth at present. I have /never ever/ seen 
anyone just learning how to use a computer who didn't at one time or the 
other have to get more experienced people fix things that got broken 
/somehow/ (or never worked in the first place).

Well, maybe Mac comes close, at least that's the impression I got from 
my first and only contact with a Mac and a user thereof.

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Jim Henderson schrieb:

>> So you acquired the oS 11.2 live CD as a pressed disc somewhere? Or did
>> you perhaps burn it yourself from a /downloaded/ image?
> 
> I "downloaded" it and burned it myself, but it is the official release 
> version.  (My download was a copy across the network from one of the 
> download servers - handy to work for the company that produces it ;-) )
> 
> My point is that the LiveCD and DVD images "just worked".

I gather that it is a brand new release, too. Will it "just work" with 
hardware to come in a few months' time as well? Or could that possibly 
necessitate downloading a driver update for one or two components, too?

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On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:19:07 +0100, clipka wrote:

> I can give (and actually did give, as you may recall ) an example of
> where Linux does /not/ "just work":

Oh, sure, I never said that one couldn't come up with a configuration 
that didn't "just work" - and I would never make that claim.  But there 
*are* people who make that claim about Windows, and that's a completely 
false claim.

It isn't about having administration experience, either - I was talking 
purely about the installation, which doesn't require any admin experience 
for either OS platform.  I was merely talking about hardware a detection 
comparison on identical hardware and the challenges I had in getting Win7 
to work on hardware that openSUSE 11.2 installed, configured, and found 
all hardware properly for.

I agree, though, that ultimately the idea that any OS "just works" out of 
the box is a myth as long as the software vendor has no control over all 
the hardware (which MacOS may have as an advantage - not all hardware, 
but certainly the hardware categories that Windows and Linux have issues 
with.

Jim

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On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:27:18 +0100, clipka wrote:

> Jim Henderson schrieb:
> 
>>> So you acquired the oS 11.2 live CD as a pressed disc somewhere? Or
>>> did you perhaps burn it yourself from a /downloaded/ image?
>> 
>> I "downloaded" it and burned it myself, but it is the official release
>> version.  (My download was a copy across the network from one of the
>> download servers - handy to work for the company that produces it ;-) )
>> 
>> My point is that the LiveCD and DVD images "just worked".
> 
> I gather that it is a brand new release, too. 

Yes, it was released on Thursday.

> Will it "just work" with
> hardware to come in a few months' time as well? Or could that possibly
> necessitate downloading a driver update for one or two components, too?

Shall I answer this question with a "well, duh", or an "it depends on 
what new hardware is released and what compatibility there is with 
existing drivers"?  (The latter, of course, is a more wordy way of saying 
the first answer).

Jim

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On 11/15/09 16:19, clipka wrote:
> I think the observation of most Linux users that Linux "just works" is
> clouded by them typically having at least some basic experience in
> administering Unix machines.

	Same goes for Windows, which I guess you alluded to in the next 
paragraph. How far will a Windows user get if he does not know about the 
Control Panel?

-- 
Why is the person who invests all your money called a broker?

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Jim Henderson schrieb:

>> 	Did you try a pre 4.2 version?
>>
>> 	4.2 was supposed to be the first stable one (by their own 
> standards).
> 
> That's a good point, 11.2 ships with version 4.3 on it, so the suggestion 
> I made as to how to enable auto-hide may not have been in an earlier 
> release.

Speaking of KDE versions: I thought I might give KDE a try (after the 
Gnome version that comes with Debian 5.0.3 "Lenny" turned out incapable 
of providing proper XDMCP support, and looks nasty with XDM instead - 
not to mention that I'm a bit worried about running it in this hybrid 
mode), but the Debian KDE package version numbering puzzles me a bit:

- According to information on the Debian wiki, Lenny is supposed to use 
KDE 3.5.
- The "kde" main package and a few others have version number "5:48".
- Most other pagages named "kde*" bear version numbers "4:3.5.some".
- Yet others bear version numbers "4:4.1.some" (some of them are titled 
kdebase-runtime*".

Anyone have some idea how to interpret this?

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> I think the observation of most Linux users that Linux "just works" is 
> clouded by them typically having at least some basic experience in 
> administering Unix machines.

  I think it depends a lot on the hardware setup you have. With the right
hardware you probably can just install OpenSUSE or a similar distro and
everything will just work, right out of the box.

  However, if you have even slightly more exotic hardware (and sometimes
even some quite common hardware) you might have to struggle for hours
before you will get the system fully working.

  For example, when I first installed Suse on my PC it had a HomePNA card
as its network card, and it just wouldn't work. It wouldn't work with
Ubuntu or Debian either.

  I had to struggle for hours with that problem, searching the net for info
and trying tons of things. In the end, it was enought to add *one* line in
one configuration file, and the network card started working like a charm.
I just can't understand why the installer couldn't to that itself, as it
was rather obvious in restrospect (but 100% non-obvious if you don't know
about it). I don't know if newer versions of OpenSUSE have fixed this.

  Likewise many ATI graphics cards work poorly, if at all, out of the box
when installing a Linux distro (any distro). For example both Ubuntu and
Debian were completely unable to even start X with my old ATI card. Suse
was able to start it, but without any kind of hardware acceleration and
with a lousy 60 Hz refresh rate. It wasn't until I ran ATI's proprietary
configuration tool (which has to be downloaded separately from AMD's
website) that I got hardware-accelerated windowing at 85 Hz. (There exists
a third-party driver for ATI cards which is able to use higher refresh
rates and hardware acceleration, but for some reason it was unable to
*configure* itself appropriately. I had to run ATI's configuration utility
before it started working.)

  Linux distros sometimes also have problems with sound cards and sound
chips, even popular ones (eg. I have had severe problems with a SoundBlaster
Live, even though one would think there would be full support for such a
classic sound card out-of-the-box in any distro in existence).

  And be careful if you try to install Linux on a *secondary* partition,
while keeping Windows on the primary one. While distro installers generally
won't cause any harm, they might get confused and configure Grub incorrectly
so that neither OS will load (I think I had that kind of problem with
Ubuntu). You'll have to manually fix the Grub settings so that they will
work properly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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