[Lancaster] Lancaster Digest, Vol 181, Issue 1

[Ken Hough]

David Smith wrote:
> Ken,
>
> I'd definitely agree with those sentiments and, as we discussed at the
> pub last week, judging by everything I've heard about openSUSE lately,
> the general hardware support from the get-go is very positive news,
> and I'd be in full agreement with you that Ubuntu and (to a certain
> extent) Debian and co. should be much closer to that goal than they
> appear to be.
>
> The caveat about Debian is a tough one though as it's always been the
> 'Freedom loving' distro, intentionally making it (slightly) more
> difficult to install proprietary versions of things - a big stumbling
> block for advanced graphics support, wireless etc in the past.
> Hopefully, the LinuxDrivers project will get the momentum it needs to
> make the change here. Of course, this is heavily supported by Novell,
> so it's nice to see improvements appearing all the time!

The 'Freedom loving' phylosophy of Debian is a laudible objective, but
we all have to live in the real world.

A number of distros already split their repositories into OSS and
non-free stuff, so we do have a choice.

> As regards the comments versus a Windows install, I think it's a
> tricky one (I say this with the caveat that I haven't tried to install
> Vista yet..).
> With XP, installation is every bit as problematic as with Ubuntu, if
> not more so.

I was refering to installing only the Windows operating system and
getting the basic hardware recognised so as to give stable and 'usable'
system. Neither Ubuntu v7.04 or v8.04 got this far on my laptop.

> It may be a little easier in some areas (it doesn't worry itself too
> much with partitions, but neither do recent Linux setups) but once
> it's setup it can be just as tricky to get things working how you want.

Perhaps, tedious rather than tricky.

I agree that it can be a real pain to get MS Windows fully set up with
all drivers, especially with all of the re-boots. I did this a little
while on my laptop back with Win2000. This machine now dual boots SUSE
v10.3 and Win2000 Pro.

BTW: I use Win2000 only for a couple of specialised windows only apps
which won't run under 'wine'.

> Admittedly, manual hacks are not a common-theme to a Windows install,
> but it still requires a fair deal of time

I'd say an unfair deal of time. :-)

> to get all the 'extra' drivers installed to get things working nicely
> (such as USB 2.0, graphics acceleration, sound, and sometimes even
> networking). The advantage Microsoft has - again (and I hate saying
> this because it feels like such a lame excuse) - is that Hardware
> suppliers supply support CDs with their hardware (Motherboards,
> Graphics Cards, Sound Cards) that come packaged as nice, shiny Windows
> applications, and often without Linux packages.

I understand this, but I came back to the point that if a distro offers
to provide a desktop environment, then users should be entitled to
expect this will done on their own hardware and that it will work. The
likes of Fedora, Mandriva and SUSE already do this to a good extent.

> Of course, having said all that, providing 'click and run' installable
> packages for all the different distros and their packaging systems
> would be a nightmare...

The majority of commonly used stuff is already provided in the
repositories of the various distros.

It's rare that I need to compile from source.

>
> I guess the point I was trying to make though is that generally, out
> of the box, a lot of the current 'top line' distributions handle
> installation better than my Windows experiences, which is where I
> believe the difference comes in in looking towards any 'Year of the
> Linux Desktop'... :-)
> For it to be truly as effortless and easy for end users as Windows
> currently is (sic), it needs to come pre-installed more, whichever
> distro it is, as Dell have started to do recently.

There can be little doubt that in terms of providing an operating system
plus application software, Linux CAN be very much easier and much
quicker than the Microsoft route. In my (limited?) experience most
problems during Linux installation relate to hardware recognition.

>
> As mentioned earlier, I would whole-heartedly agree with such comments
> about the wobbles and the difficulties detecting some hardware without
> intimidating command-line hacks affecting first impressions and hence
> the conversion to Linux for new converts but I just can't really see,
> without rapid evolution of the LinuxDrivers Project and similar, these
> changes happening across the board any time soon.
>

The likes of Knoppix (Debian based) can be very good at recognising and
configuring hardware, so it can be done.

> As a positive, every time this comes up I become reinvigorated to try
> and fully test out a SuSE install on my home PC.. :-)

I couldn't possibly comment.  :-)

> Whilst I've not encountered any major difficulties using Ubuntu 8.04
> on both my work Desktop and laptop (I tend to default to Ubuntu after
> finding it easiest on my old Mac), I have been a little irritated by
> such apparent problems as them sticking pulseaudio in the latest
> edition. On both the above examples I've had to remove it and go back
> to esound in order to get all the multimedia applications actually
> playing sound... a little embarrassing seeing as how it worked fine on
> 7.10 - also seemed like an odd choice to stick a relatively new
> technology into a Long Term Support edition... ho hum!

Indeed!

>
> Well, this reply ended up longer than intended, and more than a little
> circular!
>
> Hopefully you'll have SuSE back in place on the laptop next time we're
> at the Brit - would be nice to have a poke around it!

Already done, with the exception of the Lucent 'winmodem' which I no
longer use. I have previously had this working  via the 'Martian Modem'
package. Anyway, should I need to use a modem, it's simple enough to use
a proper modem (which I still have) on the serial port, and phone
sockets are likely to be close to a mains socket for power.


Ken

>
>
>> Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:05:39 +0100
>> From: Ken Hough <kenhough at btinternet.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Lancaster] Observations on Installing and setting up
>>     Debian, Ubuntu, and SUSE on a Thinkpad T21:
>> To: lancaster at mailman.lug.org.uk
>> Message-ID: <48A01D03.8020504 at btinternet.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>
>> Umm! I think that my comments re problems that I had with Debian/Ubuntu
>> v SUSE have not been taken as I had intended.
>>
>> I didn't intend to bang the drum for SUSE above all other distros. I was
>> trying to make the point that some distros do not 'work out of the box'
>> as perhaps one might reasonably expect.
>>
>> Competant sys admins and other experienced Linux hackers, might not
>> think this to be important, but to a 'newbie' it can be a real show
>> stopper. Imagine if Microsoft Windows were to throw up problems during a
>> simple installation......
>>
>> I appreciate that Microsoft have a different business model/phylosophy
>> from the Linux community, but if Linux is to really make serious inroads
>> on the (non-professional/corporate) desktop and become widely popular,
>> IMHO, it must work reliably straight out of the box, and with most
>> PC/laptop hardware. This is the point that I was trying to make.
>>
>> While Ubuntu is widely publicised as being (MS Windows) user friendly
>> and still suffers from 'wobblies' and inabillity to properly recognise
>> and configure for well known hardware, this can only adversely affect
>> the case for Linux in the eyes of potential non-technical users.
>>
>> Perhaps Linux is it's own worst enemy in that it can be configured to
>> tackle pretty much any computer based task. I don't believe that should
>> be an excuse for not providing rock solid configuration for desktop use.
>> The potential benefits for computer users in general are IMHO too great
>> to duck this issue.
>