[Scottish] Re: time spent on Linux stuff...

[Gordon JC Pearce]

babaguy wrote:
>  William Anderson wrote: This is the Wrong Approach, imo. As Ben mentioned earlier, it's awfulto turn round and say to someone "the distro you have selected is tehwrongness". For general purpose personal computing, Ubuntu is just asappropriate as Fedora, Slackware, SuSE; more so in some cases, andespecially wrt later Ubuntu releases such as Edgy, as the UI andusability is just so strong and easy to pick up (usually).If I have a problem with my 2003 Fiat Punto, I really don't expect to beadvised "tsk, you want a Ford Fiesta, that'll tidy up that disc brakeproblem you're having". Or "can't change channels on your Thomson 28"CRT TV set? A 42" LCD Sony Bravia will sort that out just nicely". Seemy point? William, I certainly see your point and I agree with you. But the problems I've encountered with what should be very straightforward tasks in the Ubuntu 5.10 (from only a year and half ago, after all...) are - I hope and trust - not Linux or even Ubuntu problems generally, but,
 
> as I've said, a concatenation of unfortunate events. One ought to be able to use the Thesaurus in O.O. Writer...
> 
> One ought to be able to cut or copy from a web page and paste into an O.O. Writer document, either via keyboard shortcuts or via the GUI options...

You can.  I've been doing this all week, with a list of translations of 
30-odd pages of a website translated into 14 different languages.

> One ought to be able to open the BIOS, open the different boot options (as I can do) and be able to select the desired boot sequence using the designated keys (which I can't because there is no key or combination of keys that will highlight and selects those options - the only thing one is allowed to do is press esc or F1 to exit ) Yet, as I've said, the Ubuntu booted immediately from CD, installed and wiped the Windows disk without any discernable problems...

You can.  Ubuntu hasn't somehow magically modified your BIOS so you 
can't boot from CD, you're just not doing it right.

> One ought to be able to install downloaded sofware via Synaptic when no other installation pkg is running or has been running during that session, without getting the message that some other pkg like apt-get is running and needs to be closed - 

You can, you're just not following the instructions.  It works for 
everyone else.  If it says another package manager is running, then 
another package manager is running.

> One ought to be able to hit the <tab> key to complete a file name or hit it repeatedly to have it bring up a series of possible software packages or at least give some response besides a beep. 

It beeps if there are no possible tab completions to display.  What do 
you want it to do, try and guess what you mean? If I type 
"sadfasdfasdadsfg<TAB>" what should happen?

> But these are the problems I've encountered. I'm not under the illusion that Slackware or Mandriva or any particular version of Linux would solve these very simple problems....They simply should not occur. The fact they they DO occur and take up all our precious time, is kind of daunting.  

They occur because you're not following the instructions people are 
giving you, or you're making incorrect assumptions about how things work.

> The things that I would like to be able to do with my computer and in Linux are not difficult to comprehend or to do. I don't understand why it has proved so tough to get them done.....

Because you're not following the instructions.

Gordon