Re: distro or add-on?

[Jean Francois Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

Darin Lang a écrit :

> on 4/20/01 7:12 PM, Jean Francois Martinez at jfm2@club-internet.fr wrote:
>
> > And while we are at it I would like to have Windows transfuges
> > (specially if they learned unassisted) in the team because
> > they know about the problems people face when
> > they shift to Linux.
>
> I have been lurking up till now, but I am here to help on that account. I
> found Seul and Indy after failing to get Slackware Linux 7.1 running
> completely last November. I spent about a month full time studying and
> tweeking my GNU Linux, compiling and recompiling, trying to get it to work.
> I had no experience with Linux prior to that whatsoever. I installed it as a
> dual boot with Win98. I have never been able to get the sound card to work
> in Linux. I am only able to print text and just setting that up took me
> several days of study, it was a major difficulty. X windows was another
> nightmare to configure, I even have the original manuals for my monitor, but
> the data in the manual does not fit in the slot provided by X windows, the
> data X wants is missing. I had to write my x86free config file by hand,
> using the calculation how tos for X another confusing, obfuscated nightmare.
> The auto option no matter how I did it did not work at all, period. It took
> me most of a week to get X windows running, it still does not run properly,
> and my monitor shifts and jitters a bit. I was able to get Apple Networking
> running fine. And in fact I normally only access the Linux machine via
> telnet from my Macintosh even though they are side by side. I have never
> gotten the windows networking running. Samba says it is running and
> intstalled properly, but I can't access the other PC on the Network. I did
> get Apache running, with PHP, MySQL and Perl. I also have IP-Aliasing
> running and can access several virtual web sites on my Linux Intranet Server
> from every computer on the intranet.
>
>     Accessing the CD drive is another confusing nightmare that took me
> several hours to figure out even though both KDE and GNOME are supposed to
> recognize it automatically. I had to issue commands at the prompt after
> searching endlessly to find those commands.
>
>     I gave up using it as a desktop. I mainly use it for web site
> development and testing. I work entirely alone. I have no friends who know
> anything about computers, so I learn entirely from books and newsgroups. As
> a web server it is great, it can't be beat. The Gimp is outstanding superior
> to standalone photoshap in many ways, but unable to compress graphics
> sufficiently. I use it for it's incredible effects occasionally and then
> transfer it over to the Mac to make it web ready. Emacs is another great
> program. But I couldn't find a free software Office Suite with capability to
> match M$ Office or even AppleWorks. Supposedly I can download one somewhere,
> but I didn't see the point after all the other difficulties I had.
>
>     Another particularly frustrating feature is file permissions. I am
> constantly warned not to run as root, but I constantly have to switch back
> to root to change a file permission so I can access it. I don't need
> multiple users, I am the only one, it would be much easier to do away with
> that. I still do not fully understand file permissions and I have never
> found a thorough explanation of them anywhere, though I have found many
> attempted explanations.
>
>      I wish it was possible to replace Windows and Mac, it would be a great
> accomplishment. Someday I imagine it will happen, but there is so much work
> to do.  Overall I think it has a long way to go before your average person
> can use it. It doesn't have the software I need as a webdeveloper
> (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Freehand, etc.), but the Mac
> doesn't have PHP, Apache, MySQL and Perl either. Mac midi sucks, so I need a
> PC for sound editing and midi. I wish there was one machine that could do it
> all.
>
> FWIW,
> Darin Lang
> --
> WIN A TRILLION: $1,000,000,000,000.00 at MoonBughead.com
> http://MoonBughead.com/contest/

Slackware is not representative of modern Linux.  Your typical Linux distrib
will
detect what card you have and select the appropriate driver, it will also
detect
monitor and will select frequencies for it (provided your monitor is new
enough),
it will include FAR more software than Slckware, a kernel who is near optimal
out of the box (so you don't need to recompile it), menus who update
automtically,
far better config software and many more.

Of couse distros can not do miracles and drive hardware who has no Linux
drivers
or provide software for atask when none has been ported to Linux.  But the more
Linuxers
the more Linux will get hardware and drivers.

                                                                  JFM