Linux Sucks !

[MattH]

I know it's my fault, but that silly shoot-em-up game that ships with every distro shouldn't lag/crash a 3 month old computer. Time to repair.

[Asher]

My point was it's not your fault, it's just that the software quality for most of the mainstream Linux apps wouldn't even pass QA for most proprietary applications.

[Spiffor]

Well, it seems to be a problem from my graphic Card (GeForce4 specific to laptops). But I didn't quite understand what Nvidia was talking about in its support page. Heck, I guess I'll try tomorrow

[geeslaka]

Mandrake and Redhat may have friendly-looking installers but they aren't the best distros. They are trying to make Linux look like windows and succeeding in all the wrong places.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
No, we just concentrate on more important and productive stuff than "10 trillion possible ways you can **** around with your OS"

Like "reinstall your system every 6 months?"

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Linux is more stable and secure than Windows, doncha know.

Sure. There are no Blaster worms or SoBig viruses for *nix floating around.

Originally posted by Asher
It crashed because of you, not because Linux isn't an uncrashable, unhackable tank like so many people want to believe.

More like you believe what other people believe.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by geeslaka
Mandrake and Redhat may have friendly-looking installers but they aren't the best distros. They are trying to make Linux look like windows and succeeding in all the wrong places.

Actually, I am willfully testing Linux as a lambda user (well, I have some computer knowledge, but nearly no Linux-knowledge). I have a friends working on a user-friendly project for a Linux product, and I'm trying to see what makes Linux so unappealing to the general public.

So far, I've seen quite a few things :
- too many things are documented in unfriendly manuals. An easy-to-use help is findable in Redhat's installer, and that's about it. I have barely begun experiencing a problem, and I'm stuck searching on google and Redhat's library without any satisfying answer.

- Some things would deserve to be explained to the newbie. For example, the strengths and weaknesses of KDE and Gnome. This way, I could choose between the two (rather than installing both)

- The paranoidness with security, secret logins, and crap like that are really a pain for the non-geek. When you belong to the great majority of people who doesn't constantly fear being hacked (i.e all the non-geeks on the Planet), this whole login + password charade is highly annoying. At least, under Windows and MacOS, you can act as if logins didn't exist. Or you don't have to enter a password.

- The mouse reacts better under windows. It may sound stupid, but a good mouse make things much more convenient.

Those are only a few things that came after a few hours of Linux experience. They may look absurd to the average Linux-lover or geek, but they sure aren't to the average user who wants a computer to check his E-mails, browse porn and browse 'Poly. If you want to get rid of the plague that is windows, some Distros should be made even more simple and user-friendly than RedHat.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Like "reinstall your system every 6 months?"

You know, I've never, ever had to reinstall my OS and I've been using computers since 1979. I don't know why you keep screwing yours up, but not all Windows users are as incompetent.

[Q Classic]

linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net

[Q Classic]

openoffice sucks.

well, not really. it's just slow. this is better for word processing:

https://www.abisource.com

[geeslaka]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Actually, I am willfully testing Linux as a lambda user (well, I have some computer knowledge, but nearly no Linux-knowledge). I have a friends working on a user-friendly project for a Linux product, and I'm trying to see what makes Linux so unappealing to the general public.

Unfamiliarity. A person can't like something they have never used.

So far, I've seen quite a few things :
- too many things are documented in unfriendly manuals. An easy-to-use help is findable in Redhat's installer, and that's about it. I have barely begun experiencing a problem, and I'm stuck searching on google and Redhat's library without any satisfying answer.

Always try to find an info or man page for something. Info pages are more friendly, but man pages can tell you command line options faster.

- Some things would deserve to be explained to the newbie. For example, the strengths and weaknesses of KDE and Gnome. This way, I could choose between the two (rather than installing both)

True. I use neither. However, it is a good idea to have the libs for both installed because many games depend on their libs but will still run under different window managers.

- The paranoidness with security, secret logins, and crap like that are really a pain for the non-geek. When you belong to the great majority of people who doesn't constantly fear being hacked (i.e all the non-geeks on the Planet), this whole login + password charade is highly annoying. At least, under Windows and MacOS, you can act as if logins didn't exist. Or you don't have to enter a password.

KDE has a way to set this up. In the Control Center menu, find the Login Manager. It will ask for the root password before it runs. This "screenshot" is actually to screenshots that were made for a very different purpose pasted together. You want either the Users tab or the Convenience tab. I'm not sure which and I don't feel like logging into KDE just to check.

- The mouse reacts better under windows. It may sound stupid, but a good mouse make things much more convenient.

Those are only a few things that came after a few hours of Linux experience. They may look absurd to the average Linux-lover or geek, but they sure aren't to the average user who wants a computer to check his E-mails, browse porn and browse 'Poly. If you want to get rid of the plague that is windows, some Distros should be made even more simple and user-friendly than RedHat.

And as far as a replacement for Paintshop Pro goes, use The Gimp. I should warn you though, the newest version of The Gimp requires the GTK2 source files which Redhat and Mandrake do not install by default. However, once I started installing GTK2, it only took me a few hours and lots of programs besides The Gimp use GTK2(like Freeciv's GTK2 client).

[Asher]

Good God, look how f*cking hideous that is.
Reminds me of a slightly imrpvoed Windows 3.1.

Cutting edge Linux desktops, booyah...

[geeslaka]

On the hideousness of that particular KDE theme and that single point alone, I agree with Asher.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Spiffor - unlike my previous Redhat 8 (which I didn't use at all), this cretin Linux refuses to let me have a 1024*768 resolution which would strectch to fit my 1600*1200. Either I have 1024*768 pixels displayed in the middle of the screen, or I have to go to the 1600 Res. In both cases, it's way too small and kills my eyes. I tried quite a fex changes (changed the resolution, changed the alledged max. res, defined the ppp, etc.) to no avail If I can't fix that, thes Redhat will follow the same fate as the previous one.

From ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Li...496/README.txt , find the FlatPanelProperties option. If I've understood it correctly, you should add this line:

Option "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = native, Dithering = default"

... under the Section "Device" line in your /etc/X11/XF86Config. You might have to twiddle with this setting to get it to work..

- I still can't access my NTFS partitions under Linux . Mind you, I have been so busy looking for solutions for my Res problems, I didn't look for solutions to access NTFS. I actually switched to RedHat 9 because someone told me it understood NTFS out of the box Well, I'll look into it as soon as I solve this resolution issue...

Follow Q Cubed's lead.

- I couldn't make a "swap" particion. I've let 520 Megs out of any partition in the past, and RedHat refused to use it as swap. A problem with Cylinders apparently (can't know more). Fortunately, my PC is generous with RAM (1024 Mb), so it's not that bad.

Sounds like a weird-ass BIOS, Linux often has a hard time understanding those. If you do need swap one day, and you have support for loopback devices in the userland and the kernel (and if you have RH, you ought to), you could configure a swap file (note: I'm not sure if these commands will work, even on my system - I'm just writing them from memory):

touch /swapfile (creates a size 0 file named swapfile in you root directory)
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile count=1024 bs=1M (fills swapfile with one gigabyte of nothing)
mkswap /swapfile (initialises swapfile to be used for swapping)
losetup /dev/loop0 /swapfile (makes /dev/loop0 a block device pointing to swapfile)
swapon /dev/loop0 (makes the kernel use /dev/loop0 as a swap area)

To get rid of the swapfile without rebooting:

swapoff /dev/loop0 (makes the kernel read everything that's been swapped out to /dev/loop0 back into memory, then remove the device from its list of swap partitions)
losetup -d /dev/loop0 (the opposite of the first losetup command)
rm /swapfile (removes the swapfile)

losetup and swapon/swapoff status aren't retained over reboots, but the rest of the stuff that I mentioned is. Thus, removal after reboot requres you to run only the rm, while reinitialisation after reboot requires you to run only the losetup and swapon. If you want to keep the swapfile over reboots without having to run any extraneous commands... well, you could hack your init scripts, but it's likely that RH has an "official" way to do it, too...

BTW, can anybody tell me if I can find real games free for download under Linux ? I heard about FreeCiv and Quake. Are there other games free for download ?

You might want to start at http://happypenguin.org ... or... do some Googling:

ari@p166-122 app-games $ ls
aaquake2 cannonsmash emilia-pinball freecraft gnushogi hexxagon matritsa parsec quake3-nsco slashem tuxracer xevil
aaut castle-combat enemy-territory freecraft-fcmp gracer hlstats mcl pathological quake3-osp slune tuxtype xfrisk
abuse_sdl cgoban enigma freedoom grande-KXL icebreaker mindless pcgen quake3-ra3 soccar uglygs xgalaga
ace cgoban2 excido freedroid greedy ivan mirrormagic penguin-command quake3-ruinhunters solarwolf umodpack xgammon
adom chromium exult freedroidrpg groach jumpnbump missile penguzzle quake3-threewave soldieroffortune unreal xkobo
adonthell circuslinux fakk2 freelords groundhog kamikaze monopd phobiaii quake3-truecombat spacearyarya-kxl unreal-tournament xmahjongg
americas-army codebreaker falconseye frotz grustibus kiki moon-buggy phobiaiii quake3-urbanterror spacehulk unreal-tournament-bonuspacks xpenguins
anaglyph-stereo-quake construo fbg frozen-bubble gtetrinet kmc mt_dolphin_ia pingus quintalign spacetripperdemo unreal-tournament-goty xpilot
angband corewars flightgear funny-manpages gtkatlantic kmuddy mt_gtk_client planeshift race stickers unreal-tournament-infiltration xqf
armagetron cowsay foobillard gcompris gtkballs knights mt_ncurses_client planets racer-bin stoned uqm xrick
asc crack-attack fortune-mod geki2-KXL gtkboard kobodeluxe mudix poopmup raptor2 strikeforce ut2003 xscorch
ascii-invaders crafty fortune-mod-bofh-excuses geki3-KXL gwiz koth mutantstormdemo powermanga red-blue-quake2 teg ut2003-ded xscrabble
asr-manpages crimson fortune-mod-calvin gemdropx halfd koules nethack prboom r-katro tenebrae ut2003-demo xshipwars
atanks criticalmass fortune-mod-dubya ggz-gtk-client halflife-adminmod kwappen netris project-starfighter rocksndiamonds tetrix vegastrike xskat
atlas c++robots fortune-mod-futurama ggz-gtk-games halflife-clanmod late neverball pyddr rott tf wakkabox xtux
atomix crossfire-client fortune-mod-gentoo-dev ggz-txt-client halflife-cstrike lbreakout nighthawk pyddr-songs rtcw tintin wastesedge xwelltris
attal cube fortune-mod-hitchhiker glaxium halflife-dpb lbreakout2 njam pysol scid tkMOO-light wolfgl xzip
avp-cvs cuyo fortune-mod-homer gltron halflife-entmod lgeneral noegnud-data pysol-sound-server scorched3d tome wtf ytin
barrage daemonshogi fortune-mod-humorixfortunes gl117 halflife-hlguard lincity noegnud-nethack qstat scummvm toppler wumpus zangband
billardgl descent3 fortune-mod-kernelcookies gMOO halflife-hookmod liquidwar noegnud-slashem quadra sdlroids torcs xarchon zoom
blackshades-cvs digger fortune-mod-osfortune gmudix halflife-metamod lletters nprquake-sdl quakeforge sdlsasteriods trackballs xbill 0verkill
bombermaze doomlegacy fortune-mod-simpsons-chalkboard gnocatan halflife-modsetup lpairs nwn quake1 searchandrescue transfusion-bin xblockout 4stattack
boson dopewars fortune-mod-smac gnome-mud halflife-ns lsdldoom nwn-ded quake2-data searchtool trophy xboard
bsd-games duke3d fortune-mod-sp-fortunes gnono halflife-server ltris openglad quake2-relnev senken ttyquake xboing
bsd-games-non-free dungeon fortune-mod-starwars gnubg halflife-statsme maelstrom openrpg quake3 sex tuxkart xbomb
bub-n-bros d2x fortune-mod-tao gnuchess halflife-steam magiccube4d orbital-eunuchs-sniper quake3-alternatefire simutrans tuxmath xbomber
bumprace eboard freeciv gnugo heavygear2 maitretarot orbz-demo quake3-cpma sirius tuxmathscrabble xboxgw
bzflag egoboo freecnc gnurobots heroes marbles panache quake3-demo sjeng tuxpuck xcruise

[Ted Striker]

Ari,

The length and complexity of your post demonstrates why Linux blows.