I'd like to use Linux but...

Manufacturers make drivers for Windows. You cannot blame any Linux for this. It's like putting milk in your car and expecting it to go.

More manufacturers are supporting Linux now, but until they all do there will still be a few problems. Companies like Dell offer Linux pre-installed so you don't have to do anything.

That's what I was doing wrong! I was putting milk in my car when it should have been Sunny D!

somewhere between edgy and feisty my cpu stopped scaling so it was 1800MHz all the time and fan was much more prone to come on (made the room noticably hotter as well).

Really? I'm on feisty and have had no such problem. I did lower the temp at which the fan kicks in in order to stop the bastard overheating (it's a Dell), but I probably didn't have to.

My old PC (P3 866MHz, 256Mb RAM) was ratshit with Win2000, to the point where it got so loaded up with its own crap (and viruses/spyware, presumably) that it was literally unusable. I put edgy on it and it ran like a dream.

> Really? I'm on feisty and have had no such problem.

yeah, is very hardware specific from what i gather. have always had add acpi=off to kernel boot parameters which should make any scaling impossible but, for some reason, it works in edgy. have read pages (in italian and german. luckily acpi is acpi in all languages 8) by people with similar laptops to mine (an Asus A6KM Q013H) who have no such problems (or have other problems). have changed bioses, replaced dsdt tables, recompiled kernels but nothing...

Autumn, I don't actually think it's a driver issue anyway. I tried an old CD drive (which had previously successfully installed linux on an older machine) and this too failed with the same error.

So it's probly my shitty motherboard, which quite frankly has always had 'issues' ever since I bought the shitty thing from PC shitty World

(note to ilxors, never ever buy from PC World. They are rub)

Manufacturers make drivers for Windows. You cannot blame any Linux for this. It's like putting milk in your car and expecting it to go.

A DVD-ROM drive is a generic IDE device that does not need drivers. This probably isn't a driver issue.

Anyway, the fact is, Linux didn't work out of the box on his hardware in the most basic and fundamental way. This "don't blame Linux, contact your manufacturer" attitude, while perhaps fair in some cases, comes across to curious people as passing the buck.

So really, when Linux has problems like this (which is increasingly rare, as you say) it's like giving away organic milk which you claim will work in cars whose manufacturers support it, and then blaming the manufacturer for not publishing the specifications of their engine when it doesn't work. The fact is, it doesn't work. Who gives a shit why apart from the dairy farmer?

A fair argument, but by blaming Linux for driver troubles you're still blaming the wrong entity.

I agree that it should work with an IDE ROM drive though. I've honestly not heard of a difficulty like that before.

A fair argument, but by blaming Linux for driver troubles you're still blaming the wrong entity.

I don't think anyone is actually blaming Linux on this thread.

hi Hanle y!!

someone must have launched an exploding pig against the night sky?

i only like eating food that Abbott can't afford

I'd like to use Linux, and in fact have Gutsy running on my laptop, but for some reason I can't get an internet connection going anymore. I'm working through it on the support forums, but it's slow going. I had my share of issues with connectivity back when I was running XP, so as per usual I suspect it's a hardware issue, but it's no less frustrating.

Here's my thread on the Ubuntu Forum if anyone wants to take a crack at it.

I'd like to use Linux but...

1) I use my machines for work, not just for internet terminals and general futzing around with photos and music and what have you.

2) I've never been motivated enough to learn to make it work even for that much.

3) Why bother?

Linux is fine for x-terminals, but I'll run it on my main machine when you pry Solaris from my cold dead fingers.

You use Solaris as your desktop? Why?

Because he has Suns.

That said, Dave, is there a minimal sparc CD set for getting OpenSolaris runnning? I don't want to burn 6 cds.

Sun will send you one, IIRC.

I don't have a DVD drive or an x86 machine

I don't run Solaris on the desktop, I refered to "x-terminals" and "main machine" yaknow. Terminals live on desktops, computers live in racks.

I'm actually still running Solaris 8, because I want to maintain a consistant environment between my ss1000's and my E3500. That's not a very good reason, but...

E10K's are beginning to get cheap on the used market... mmmmmm.

You can get the CDs for sparc here http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/solaris-express/get.jsp -- Solaris express is "built on OpenSolaris technologies" which may or may not be what you want.
xpost
we have just binned some at our work; they refuse to give them to me "for legal reasons".

Shit, sorry Jon, that link is for DVDs for X86 only. I could have sworn it said CD mailing as well.

3) Why bother?

-- kenan, Wednesday, 21 November 2007 03:47 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I have Vista somewhere on this machine, and every time I've tried to use it it's done something incredibly annoying, or incredibly stupid, or gone wrong in some way. Ubuntu just works.

Linux is a crap option for games though.

i only like eating food that Abbott can't afford

Hahahaha well obv I prefer that food (ie most everything) BUT....I can't afford it.

I have Vista somewhere on this machine

Yeah... I dropped back to XP myself. Just like in the Mac commercial.

vista wouldn't let me :(

i used to use suse but i got fed up with it :(

No, you can't just GO back, you have to reformat, reinstall, and start aaaaaall over.

Upside: a fresh install of XP on a blank drive will mbring back those wonderful long-ago times when your PC was fast.

Dave, you wouldn't believe some of the deals I see on Suns in Manhattan....

Last couple of times I've done linux installs - it has been:
a) quicker than a windows xp install
b) all the hardware works straight away (more than with xp)

I'd recommend Ubuntu or Fedora.
I do still think that there is a massive problem if you need to open word, excel, powerpoint documents.
Openoffice is ok but documents still never come out exactly right. I have this problem with Mac too though
- it's really the lack of a proper office standard than a problem with Linux.

yeah i did but something causes the XP install program to crash xxxpost

Hi Tracer!

My boss is trying to get me to boot off Linux live cd.s like knoppix, but the way I see it if I can't use good applications I'm not sure I'll have much use, unless I was a programmer.
If there is a good linux based multitrack sound recorder...
Still, I am really liking garageband.
I guess its just romatic to think of everyone using their own different OS , but in the end there is a need for everyone to be on the same page too

ew knoppix

Ubuntu is a live CD, use that. Knoppix is suited to small storage devices and therefore a bit rubbish for everything else.

Ubuntu?
Of course after years of poverty I am just learning the entire MAC OS X now too. My parents bought me a macbook to help me throu gh school days.
I wonder if I could run a linux on it? Isnt MAC OS X unix based?

You can run Linux on Apple hardware fine, but as you say the default operating system is Unix-based and considerably better put together as far as the average end-user is concerned, so very few people bother.

[Exception: software packaging, dependency resolution, upgrading and other sysadmin stuff on Debian-based Linux >>> than on OS X]

^^^

I'm upgrading feisty to gutsy and EVERY FOUR SECONDS it's stopping the 50-minute upgrade to ask me if I want to replace a file. YES I WANT TO REPLACE A FILE, JUST FUCKING DO IT.

There is a command line switch to say yes to every question if you're doing this using apt-get rather tha Synaptic.

       -y, --yes, --assume-yes,

              Automatic  yes to prompts; assume "yes" as answer to all prompts

              and run non-interactively. If an undesirable situation, such  as

              changing  a held package or removing an essential package occurs

              then  apt-get  will  abort.  Configuration  Item:  APT::Get::As-

              sume-Yes.

Oh, yeah, thanks, but I'd already kicked it off in the Update Manager thing. It didn't start hassling me until after I'd downloaded the 1.5Gb of updates.

Christ. After upgrading to gutsy I couldn't hotplug usb devices. Had to go into some obscure setting to fix it. Clearly some way to go for the ordinary folk.

I'd like to use Linux but...

1) I use my machines for work, not just for internet terminals and general futzing around with photos and music and what have you.

2) I've never been motivated enough to learn to make it work even for that much.

3) Why bother?

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I'd eat those words. I didn't know it would be this soon, though. So, ok... Windows XP is gone. Completely done with. Now it's all about Ubuntu 7.10, the "Greedy Gardener" or whatever the fuck they're calling it. Some initial observations:

First the bad news. Configuring drivers can be a honking pain in the butt. I still haven't gotten it to properly recognize my 5-button mouse. The driver for my monitor had to be reinstalled a couple of times before it stuck. Don't ask me why. installing fonts is a minor disaster. And of course there's a bit of a learning curve, but really it's not nearly as daunting as it has been for me in the past.

The good things: A very impressive amount of it Just Works. The Totem media player, for instance, is maybe the only media player I have ever seen that searches for codecs, finds them, installs them correctly, and then plays the frickin' movie. It's a brave new world. Also... my goodness it's fast! Even rendering those wacky graphics, like Beryl stuff, is just burnin'. The graphics rendering as a whole is top-notch, and the font smoothing is exceptional -- better than Mac, I'd say. It's highly customizable, which I love, since unnecessarily changing the color of things is one of my favorite computer pastimes. Of course Gimp can't replace Photoshop, but every time I play with it, I'm impressed with how much it does do.

There is more work to be done before I can report on some more essential stuff, like networking. Apparently you can remote desktop into Mac OS? And vice versa? That sounds exciting.

This thread is exactly why Linux should be avoided, especially for desktop use. Plus, guilting people into Linux is really low-down.

Apparently you can remote desktop into Mac OS? And vice versa? That sounds exciting.

Yes, you can use Apple Remote Desktop (faster) or VNC (slower). VNC works with basically every GUI under the sun, except maybe Aegis.

Guilting people into using Linux? Huh??

7.10 has a REALLY annoying bug that means my backlight won't go off when I close the laptop lid, and "da community" won't release a fix until April (probably because it's a kernel bug). This gives me the shits, but the fact that Vista's first service pack won't be out until next year puts things into perspective.

Guilting people into using Linux? Huh??

Do you really want to support the EVIL empire, Microsoft? Are you just a just a puppet, a corporate TOOL who has never considered that the OS yr PC comes with might not be the ONLY OS? Are you really in favor of PROPRIETARY applications that limit FREEDOM in favor of bloody PROFITS? Have you sold your SOUL for thirty pieces of SILVER?

And so on. By and large, folks who say they'd like to run Linux, but... are often speaking from some vague sense of guilt-by-association with Microsoft, not by a desire to have some functionality Linux offers that Windows doesn't. (I'm not saying that anyone here ain't Linuxing entirely of their own free will, etc., nor that there's a Linux guilt squad on the loose.) The geeks who are driven to Linux by a need to tinker never find themselves in need of an "excuse". And I sure have heard a lotta folks offer guilty excuses regarding why they aren't using Linux. This is sad. Folks ought feel no obligation to do this or that or whatever with their computers. If you want to tinker, then do so, but it's not an obligation.

Besides, there are more tinkerable choices than Linux, anyways.

Oh yeah, fair enough.

Beryl/Compiz alone is incentive enough for people to look beyond Windows/Mac.

(Incidentally, whilst typing the above sentence my work Windows PC froze for 20 seconds for no reason.)

The whole reason I went (back) to Linux 10 months ago is Windows-specific issues: Viruses and spyware, poor performance, hulking registry.

I have learned much. Lesson #1 -- RTFM. Do not go off googling stuff and installing programs and drivers that were compatible with earlier editions of the OS. That's a bad idea, born of hubris.

Ok, so I reinstalled and started fresh, and with user manual on screen and a determination not to mess with what need not be messed with, I have reached to point of saying that Ubuntu Linux 7.10 is a thing of blinding operating-system beauty. I installed it on my work PC now, and was amazed -- AMAZED! -- at the way it detected networks, computers, printers... it was the easiest computer setup I've ever had the pleasure of overseeing. It looks great. It feels intuitive. It's endlessly customizable. It runs Office docs with grace and aplomb. It's fast as doo doo. Compared to XP, it's the difference between It's A Small World and Space Mountain. I am totally sold.

:) :)

you're all getting Chromebooks for the holidays

Great I'll install Linux on it.

Tried some fixes but in the end went for the full reinstall and now I just don't get the option to dual boot, it goes straight to windows. I've reinstalled again, deleted the old install and reinstalled, terminated the partition with extreme prejudice and reinstalled, purged and reinstalled grub2 from the ubuntu usb. Nothing. Fuck windows, fuck linux, fuck all computers.

even after 20 years of using Linux as my main driver, the boot process is still a mystery to me. i had to temporarily install window$ for a dual boot last month and it completely took over my boot process.

burn rEFInd to a usb stick and it should let you boot your linux partition: https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
from there it's a matter of mounting your EFI partition, reinstalling grub onto it, and then hopefully it'll resolve itself. i blame window$ for being a bad citizen

these steps should work: https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall

installed ubuntu now. NOt sure of drawbacks yet. It does at least recognise the new internal hard drive taht Linux couldn't mount permanently . But it was there at installation so not sure if that would be why..
Have yet to find out if camera will be recognised. But fingers crossed.
Anyway hoping that this si less frustrating than Linux has been for various reasons.
& there are other OSes that I've yet to explore. Anybody use anything else for a PC type desktop that they'd recommend?

So why did Windoze stop talking to the internet though ?

(just sounds like it would be easier to maybe fix that instead)

preferable definitely, or i'd lose access to photoshop and lightroom (about the only things worth keeping windows for). easier? hmm. where linux is arcane and complicated, windows is obscure and secretive.

you're all getting Chromebooks for the holidays

am working on a chromebook now, it's fine except the screen is half the size of my desktop, feel like i'm peering through a glass darkly.

these steps should work: https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall

thanks, will try them once i've worked up the will power.

Stevolende, is that disk formatted NTFS or something? If you're gone full Linux, would be good to back it up then format ext4. Though if you want to read it easily on Windows at some point, then fat32 or exfat

People asking about other alternate OSes, I'm at a loss. My Chromebook "recommendation", I mean, that's also Linux, like Android is as well. Mint and Ubuntu are the easiest things you'll find for full featured* Linux installs... much better than the days when new users were recommended something like Mandrake or Redhat. Steveolende, what did you try before Ubuntu?

* I think it's worth considering how basic you'd like to make things and go with that. I'm using Mint with basic 'window manager' xfce, as opposed to the fancy Gnome or KDE variants. I gave my parents the Cinnamon version as a more user friendly looking compromise (it does the best job of a "Start" menu bar that I've ever seen)... to my slight surprise, it gives all of us less grief than Windows.

I've heard good things about the distribution "elementaryOS" as far as simplifying goes as well.

I've just been dabbling in this stuff a long time. If computers were my job I wouldn't have the patience at all

tried running a linux machine back in 2007. it didn't do a bad job, but when something went wrong my only recourse was The Community. the thing about "volunteers", you know, there's a question of motivation, and what a lot of them get out of it is the ability to feel superior and to gatekeep, the sort of people who refer to anyone who isn't an expert on the workings of their operating system as a "luser" (it's a unix joke, ha ha, get it?)

hate to invoke the "tanstaafl" cliche, but in the case of linux i find it to be true. i can handle everything about linux but the fucking attitude.

yeah, brutal. I even try to read as little as I can get away with online when I do have issues.

Has anyone tried Hackintosh? I'm not into the Mac OS but that could be another option.

allegedly, all you need to do to get an answer from Linux nerd community is to pose the question like this:

"it's really easy to do <x> on Windows, but you can't do it on Linux, what a pile of shit"

isn't stackoverflow yer one stop shop for all flavours of computer problems now?

haha xp

Just been reminded what prompted me to move off Windows 7. Avast installed a free trial of premium that screwed up some functions on the machine.
They've just billed me and taken money about 2 months after I had to move off windows because of them.i thought I was told they'd extended beyond the trial and cancelled particularly as I have not used the service on my desktop since it messed up. Phone apparently has same account though. Aaargh

i'm old enough to remember lilo, the thing grub replaced.

linux installs did get a lot easier - nobody's compiling their own kernels anymore - until UEFI came along and put a (intel- / microsoft-shaped) spanner in the works.

(then there was unity and systemd and wayland and a bunch of other things that didn't help. i fear change. which is why i run mint mate)

it's also a good idea not to use too new a laptop - the nvidia card on this one caused some problems initially and the wireless. the community fixed it quite quickly though.

we should all just use os/2

OpenBSD all the way baybee

we should all just use os/2

― L'assie (Euler)

half an os for half a computer lolllll

everybody knows the one true operating system is TempleOS

Had to look up that TempleOS

"... If I want to code an OS that uses interpretive dance as the input method, I should be allowed to do so..."

(I should add that's not what TempleOS is about, just a funny quote from the wiki)

I needed something to do to distract me from relentless misery, so perhaps unwisely I decided to wipe my ancient windows 7 laptop and stick Mint on it. It actually worked first time! And it's a lot faster and the fan is quieter. Sorry to besmirch you Mint. Guessing perhaps VMWare or Virtual Box or whatever it was I used before was the problem.

Hope your installation lasts longer than the new govt.
Had to move off it after a month and a half myself. BUt could be this computer and not being able to get photos off a digital camera, or direct files to restore on a disc too.So your experience may well be different.

I pasted a

mkdir -p WHATEVER

-p

rmdir -- -p
rmdir ./-p
rmdir -- ./-p
rm -rf -- -p
rm -rf -- ./-p

The rmdir commands all result in

rmdir: failed to remove './-p': No such file or directory

-p

rm -rf

try rm -rfi * which will delete everything but prompt you first. so reply no for the things you want to keep and yes for that one directory.

** test it on a /tmp directory first, I'm not sure how rf and i will interact **

also i find using command line completion is sometimes handy so rmdir and hit tab and it'll list the directories *including any escape characters it needs to deal with the special characters*. useful if the filenames include spaces or brackets etc

just want to say oof and <3, i hate this shit

If you've copied and pasted from somewhere my first thought (backed up by my complete inability to create a directory called -p even with single quotes, double quotes, escaping) is that the - is not in fact a normal dash character but some kind of fancy Unicode en-dash as copied and pasted from something e.g. written on a Mac or in Word.

If you copy the directory name directly from the output of ls, then
ls -d <paste directory name>
(you may need to add quote marks but it worked for me without) does it return just that one directory? Can you then rmdir it by pasting?

(the -d tells it to show you the details for the directory and not the files in it)

(Or you can check the weird character theory by piping the output of ls into the hex byte viewer tool hexdump, e.g. if you run this ls command:
ls -d ?p/ | hexdump -C

NB If it says "No such file or directory" try "ls -d *p | hexdump -C" but that will also pick up any other directory names ending in p - the ? should only match one character, but if it's a really weird character or your encoding settings are wrong ? may not work.

To test I've created a filename which is –p where the – is an en-dash character I copied off a webpage and the results I see are:

00000000 e2 80 93 70 2f 0a |...p/.|

The 70 is the p character, 2f is / and 0a is the final newline, so the mysterious character is E2 80 93 in utf-8 (Ubuntu's default encoding). Whereas if the character is actually a regular - character you should see:

00000000 2d 70 2f 0a |-p/.|

You don't necessarily have the same E2 80 93 dash character but if the hexdump output is longer than the bottom version then it's some kind of non-ascii character.)

I'm lazy and always deleted/renamed those with mc or if it's not installed then whatever GUI file manager is available.

ls -li to get the inode number of the directory
find . -type d -inum ### -exec rm '{}' \;
where you replace ### in the second command with the einode number that was in the output of the first command

That works anytime you have a file or directory with weird characters in the name

If you've copied and pasted from somewhere my first thought (backed up by my complete inability to create a directory called -p even with single quotes, double quotes, escaping) is that the - is not in fact a normal dash character but some kind of fancy Unicode en-dash as copied and pasted from something e.g. written on a Mac or in Word.

I think this was it. I just ls'ed the parent dir, copied the offending dir, and a rmdir was able to get rid of it with no fuss. Thanks!

migrating thunderbird mail to a new distro... create a new profile, tell it to use the common drive rather than the distro-specific drive, only it's not obvious it wants a profile directory, not the directory that the profiles go in (like making my home directory /home rather than /home/koogy). so now if i delete the new profile it'll nuke ALL profiles. luckily i noticed and corrected it.

bit of a panic when the Mail directory looked completely empty, 10 years of emails gone, before i realised .thunderbird is hidden because of the leading dot.

but at least they've fixed the zoom now