The Geek Forum
Main Forums => Hardware, Software, and Other Imperialist Crap => Topic started by: phyre on September 25, 2010, 09:23:57 AM
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So I finally buckled under to the madness that some of you have espoused and installed Mandriva (KDE) on my desktop and laptop, and I'm stumbling around it like a drunk sailor on leave trying to figure out how to do anything. In general, I'm pretty pleased, so far none of the stuff I've done has broken it, but I haven't done anything seriously complicated yet because, quite frankly, I don't do much on my computer these days. It's an embarrassing admission, but the majority of my time on the computer is spent on (somewhat) serious tasks such as email and web browsing, and the occasional torrent download. No gaming, video editing, crazy graphic mods to the interface, nada. However, I do have a few minimum requirements not yet being met two weeks into my experiment, and when I can't find a way to do them I just bounce back out and into my dual-boot Windows, handle those tasks, and come back a day or so later. This is where I find Linux to be slightly lacking, although I'm betting that's just because I lack understanding, not that the OS or the community hasn't come up with answers to my problems.
This brings up the question- I'm delving in to downloading packages and compiling source and 'make' and 'sudo' and 'apt-get' commands, and I'm finding that those commands aren't there. I have to go and locate the packages that contain them, then install those packages, then i can compile and install the packages that made me want to use those commands in the first damn place. Not good. So this is where I seek some advice from those of you who've been there, done that- What am I doing here? Did I screw up the installation and leave those packages out, or is Mandriva set up to be so newbie-friendly that it doesn't include some of the more complex commands which might wind up breaking things? Or the third option, is this how all distributions of Linux are set up? Do you have to download all your commands before being able to do anything purposeful here?
Am I actually insane?
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So as it turns out, I'm an idiot- it's not KDE, it's the GNOME flavor of Mandriva.
Still wondering if I'm insane.
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Shouldn't you be painting or something? Geez, if you got time to lean, you got time to clean.
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Pfbbbt. Painting's for losers. Linux, now that's for teh win.
:roll: :)
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Mandriva is garbage. Here. Try this (http://www.linuxmint.com) instead. Trust me. You'll like it.
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Never heard of it. What is it, multiple implementations of different distributions?
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Linux Mint is mostly just a better re-implementation of Ubuntu. There are Mint spinoffs, but the Linux Mint "main edition" is, as they put it "we take the best, and make it better".
Everything just works out of the box (whereas with vanilla Ubuntu sometimes you need to do some tweaking to get basic things to work right).
I've been using Mint for about a year now on a variety of machines and I've had wonderful luck with it. It's rock solid. I think you'd have a much better experience with Mint than the trainwreck that is Mandriva.
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Okay, I'll give it a shot. If it's a redo of Ubuntu, does that mean it'll use the same packages that were designed for Ubuntu?
Side note, is it KDE or GNOME? What's the difference anyway?
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Linux Mint Main Edition (stay away from the others, that'll just complicate things for now) is 100% backward compatible with Ubuntu. Anything that is in the Ubuntu repositories will work in Mint.
The main edition uses GNOME as the default desktop environment. There is a Linux Mint KDE Edition as well. The difference is what desktop environment it uses by default. GNOME and KDE are very, very different from each other. I would still recommend the Main Edition (which uses GNOME), as KDE recently (over the past couple of years) has undergone a complete from the ground up recode, and as such is still (in my opinion) kind of a half-assed mess.
GNOME by comparison is actually quite a bit more user friendly, at least for now. And it's a hell of a lot more stable.
This is something I spend a lot of time fiddling with, so let me know if you have any trouble or other questions. :)
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Whoops. I'm not a very good Linux guru, am I?
Ahem. What I should have been saying here is "RTFM n00b!!!!!11"
;)
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Ha! If I could find one manual to do all the crap I need to do, I'd be glad to. The big thing I'm running into is that every problem I encounter has a rabbit trail of potential resources to follow, and having to run down the trail every time is a real nuisance when I'm busy learning a new job and fixing up a new house. Plus we're trying to plan a wedding. Weeee!
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No problemo man. Like I said, I've been using Linux Mint in some form or another on multiple machines for about a year now; if you encounter any weirdness, let me know... I've probably already run into it.
Plus, I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS since around 2002. There's a lot to know, a lot of things that simply work differently, and I know it's a different way of thinking. Don't be afraid to ask stupid questions, because plunging right in like you are there are bound to be lots of things that don't make sense at first.
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I'M BACK, GUYS!!!!
Ah, good times. :)
Good to see ya again, man.
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Whatever, Banshee. You didn't even miss me.
Also, I still have that avatar I shopped with you sticking a finger up your nose. Good times.
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Alright, Demo! Credit where credit's due- I've been using Mint for the last 3 hours and I'm already happier with it than I was with Mandriva. I'm especially pleased that I don't have to jump through any hoops to make my MTP player (Creative Zen) work with it, I can just copy files and go.
You done good, my friend.
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Excellent! They really know what they're doing. I threw them a good donation to show my appreciation a few months ago. I definitely don't mind supporting a project that's worked this well for me (and is free for the taking, no less).
The Mint forums (http://forum.linuxmint.com/) are pretty nice too. I've gotten a lot of answers just by searching around there when I've run into some of the few roadblocks I've hit, and I've had good response from members whenever I've asked for help or contributed.
Glad to hear it's working for you! 8-)
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTczMjkwNTA5) works really well in Mint too... I've been using it since about April or so on all of my machines and it's been perfect. Since it works on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines, Dropbox is a really good way to keep files synced up among multiple machines without a lot of strife.
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So I have to put a caveat- I can read and delete files on my portable player, but I can't write them yet- that's been sluggish and produced an error every time. I'll reinstall some packages and see what comes of it.
I'll poke around Dropbox, but I doubt I'll find much use for it- right now I can't download anything at all on a work computer, and if I need something on the laptop I'll just plug my external in to it. It might prove useful for file sharing between my Linux boxen and my fiancées Windows box, especially because she's the one with the printer.
Or not, looks like I can network to her just fine... now about mounting a network printer...
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So I have to put a caveat- I can read and delete files on my portable player, but I can't write them yet- that's been sluggish and produced an error every time. I'll reinstall some packages and see what comes of it.
That doesn't make much sense... if you can delete, you have write permissions on it. Still, it might not be a bad idea to see what ownership/permissions are in the folder to which you're trying to write. You might need to adjust a thing or two (I know I did with my MP3 player).
It might prove useful for file sharing between my Linux boxen and my fiancées Windows box, especially because she's the one with the printer.
My wife and I use a couple of shared Dropbox folders for lots of stuff like that in our house. We'd use shared local folders, but with Dropbox, it works no matter where our respective computers are, as long as we have internet where we're at.
Or not, looks like I can network to her just fine... now about mounting a network printer...
I print to the Epson CX4800 my wife has shared out from her iMac over our home network all the time. Works pretty effortlessly.
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Yeah, actually, I just got the printer to spit out a test page. It was kind of a woot moment for me, though I know it's a simple victory (didn't require all that much work), it's a proof-of-concept that I need to be able to bull through this stuff and continue pursuing an all-Linux desktop. If I can make it meet all of my personal minimum-requirements (one is network printing, another is interoperability with my Zen), then the rest is just gravy. Plus it's fun.
W00t! :)
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It is fun.
One of the biggest things that I realized after using a Linux-based OS as my primary operating system for a while was the much higher degree of control I suddenly found I had over my own computer. You simply don't have that in Windows. You have to just accept that a lot of what's going on you can't change, no matter how good you are at reghacks and poweruser level tweaks.
Windows is still going to do what Windows is going to do.
Not so in the Linux world. And it doesn't have to be complicated, that's the thing.
As I'm sure you've already found with Linux Mint, it's pretty simple to do what you need to do. Most of the time if something doesn't work, it's not due to a failing (anymore) of Linux, but barriers that others are erecting to make life difficult for those not using Windows.
In time, those barriers will go away completely. They've already been greatly diminished, even over the past 4 or 5 years.
It's getting to the point where average users -- non-techies -- can sit down and use something other than Mac OS-X or Windows and do what they need to do with not only no pain, but LESS pain than in Windows.
About a year ago, fed up with the constant hand-holding my aunts needed with Windows, I laid down the law. I was going to start charging them to continue supporting their personal computers as long as they continued running Windows -- ANY flavor of Windows. If they switched to a Linux based OS, I'd continue to support them for free.
So now my Aunt Jean runs Ubuntu (and has for the past year), and my Aunt JoAnn runs Linux Mint. Both are very happy, and I can tell you that I don't have to hold their hands with NEARLY as many things as I used to when they were both on Windows.
Heh. My Aunt Jean has to use Windows 7 where she works... she hates it. She's commented that "everything seems a lot more in your face and harder to do than it is in Ubuntu".
Having to use Win7 where I work myself, I am inclined to agree. Windows 7 seems so behind the times... it's like I'm using a 5 year old OS when compared to what I'm used to these days.
/soapbox
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So I have to put a caveat- I can read and delete files on my portable player, but I can't write them yet- that's been sluggish and produced an error every time. I'll reinstall some packages and see what comes of it.
I'll poke around Dropbox, but I doubt I'll find much use for it- right now I can't download anything at all on a work computer, and if I need something on the laptop I'll just plug my external in to it. It might prove useful for file sharing between my Linux boxen and my fiancées Windows box, especially because she's the one with the printer.
Or not, looks like I can network to her just fine... now about mounting a network printer...
Heh, since you were talking about the fiancée, I read the last part as fiancée rather than network printer...
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Well, that one I've got figured out already. :)
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I thought that was you guys I saw on that amateur site :-o
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wb2u phyre!
Remember, if you ever want Linux advice someplace on the Internet, just tell them something can't be done in Linux as well as it can in Windows and they'll tell you exactly how to do it.
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I kind of want to switch to Linux after reading that rant, Demo.
Think I could dual boot it and ask some questions if I needed help? I'm not ready to jump in with both feet quite yet.
Linux Mint, here I come tomorrow!
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I kind of want to switch to Linux after reading that rant, Demo.
Think I could dual boot it and ask some questions if I needed help? I'm not ready to jump in with both feet quite yet.
Linux Mint, here I come tomorrow!
Sweet! Sure, I'll be happy to answer questions. I think if a lot more people just gave a good distro like Mint a decent try, they'd find that it's a lot better and a lot easier than they'd been led to believe.
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Yeah, I'm not bold enough to drop Windows quite yet myself, Banshee- dual boot is a little like training wheels, you keep it on for a while and when you get your balance you let it go.
And it was far easier than I'd been led to believe, especially in light of my last foray into the great penguin's territory.
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One big hurdle for newbies to the Linux world are apps. Anymore, it's not so much the lack of them (equivalents to apps you use in Windows), as much as it is there are too many of them.
And they're not all named very descriptively.
Who, among the uninitiated from the Windows world, knows what the hell to do with apps like "Gwibber", "Brasero", "Conky", "PCManFM", "Arora", "Transmission", "Sylpheed", or any other rather obtuse-sounding applications?
Trust me, however... if there's something you do in Windows, there is almost ALWAYS an equivalent in the Linux world, and in a lot of cases you have MORE choices there, and often they're even better than the way you're used to doing it.
If you need to figure out what's what for something, just ask. A simple question, like "Hey, what music player should I be looking at?" or "what's a good, lightweight image editor?" will usually result in a couple of good suggestions and save you some digging and trial-and-error. :)
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One big hurdle for newbies to the Linux world are apps. Anymore, it's not so much the lack of them (equivalents to apps you use in Windows), as much as it is there are too many of them.
And they're not all named very descriptively.
Who, among the uninitiated from the Windows world, knows what the hell to do with apps like "Gwibber", "Brasero", "Conky", "PCManFM", "Arora", "Transmission", "Sylpheed", or any other rather obtuse-sounding applications?
Trust me, however... if there's something you do in Windows, there is almost ALWAYS an equivalent in the Linux world, and in a lot of cases you have MORE choices there, and often they're even better than the way you're used to doing it.
If you need to figure out what's what for something, just ask. A simple question, like "Hey, what music player should I be looking at?" or "what's a good, lightweight image editor?" will usually result in a couple of good suggestions and save you some digging and trial-and-error. :)
Sounds good. I'll create a thread when I actually pull the trigger on it.
I assume all of the basic low-level stuff necessary to run the hardware is preloaded in the distro? i.e. I don't need to locate device drivers for my hard drive and such before starting the install process?
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Unless you're running some really screwy hardware, nope. Everything should pretty much work out of the box.