|
On August 31 2008 13:50 PsycHOTemplar wrote:
My brother is a computer science graduate and his job is actually specifically related to programming and fixing computers, not to mention just a fetish he has with being a tech geek... All I know is that my brother said he and the guy he bought it from tried to get XP on there, and it wasn't working.
If he had a fetish, that computer would have been running XP a week ago. Hes either A) completely lost or B) too busy to actually install XP on the machine.
Now I'm going to take a wild guess that the kid who threw ubuntu on the labtop installed grub into the master boot record, XP doesn't like that. If you fix the MBR, XP should install.
|
by me, earlier:
edit: apparently i was wrong. there's a library that lets you do this in Oo, libwps. hi5 to the open source community. ill go boot up my ubuntu and see if it works
i kinda forgot, but about 30min ago i remembered and..
in case anyone wondered, i couldn't find shit with respect to libwps except some garbage that didn't seem to be updated since 2007. apparently OO wanted to include wps support in their 3.0 version (i'm currently using 2.4) but that fell out the window.
this is why i fucking hate ubuntu, to get ANYTHING to work you have to google it. and yes it's probably possible to get to work, and sure that's better than not working at all which is the case with windows unless you have $ (or a bittorrent client), but it's not something i want to concern myself with anymore.
back when I used ubuntu, it was fun for a while, i got a sense of accomplishment until i realized i had to go through this damn thing every time i wanted to get something to work.
ugh
edit: although i do give ubuntu props for teaching me how to use google to search for specific filetypes, specific domains, excluding keywords, etc. google sure has some nice features.
|
not to be a troll but this sounds alot similar to what a person might say if they were playing an RTS, lets say SC.
You're used to playing all these 'modern RTS' outthere and you just learned about starcraft, so you pick up the game and the UI frustrates you, and despites everyone telling you that the game is better, you refuse to believe so since you want to play to have fun, and not really to 'compete' with the mass spammers. How can an easier UI make a game worse? All the other games already let you do whatever you want, and you cant see how this "e-sport" title can do it better, especially with such an outdated UI and game engine.
/end my rant
|
About .wps support: wps is a proprietary format. It's secret. That means it's a huge amount of work for open source programs like OOo to figure out how .wps works in detail. And that means that it'll take a while until it is supported. But .wps is also rare, so the chances of it ever being supported are slim.
Basically, just stop using .wps and Works. Even Microsoft is moving to open formats (OOXML) with their newer software. And OOo can handle the much more common .doc relatively fine. Hell, it's even hard in Windows to display .wps files - I had one such file in the past and it took me like 30 minutes to find a program to display it (don't remember the name, sorry).
Please, stop using .wps  It's a format no one can deal with except if he has MS Works, which is rare because MS Office is so much better and even if people can't or don't want to afford it, they have it anyway (pirated). Rare proprietary formats like .wps are a complete pain in the ass.
Use OpenOffice instead and save your stuff as .odf (Open Document Format). Yes, MS Office can display that (if not out of the box yet, there's an official plugin from Microsoft). MS Works probably can't, but who cares? MS Works is rarely used and like a bad version of Word anyway.
The other program I might want to run, since I basically can't use my PC at all when it's on, is called MediaCoder. A catchall converter. All2Avi on rare occasions that I need to mix soft subs with a video.
I've never heard of these. But there's for example mencoder or ffmpeg, with some frontends like kencoder or winff.
For CD ripping you could use grip, for DVD ripping k9copy or dvd::rip
There are many more though, and I rarely do things with them so I can't really make a recommendation; these are just some I've tried and they work for the basic stuff I did. Here's a list of mencoder frontends: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/projects.html
@JeeJee: that's normal... but at some point you won't have to resort to Google anymore for every small problem. The thing is that you have to get used to the whole Linux ecosystem to be able to deal with almost anything for yourself. For example you need to know about programs you can use, you need to understand the boot process and how to rescue your system, you have to learn the permission system, how the package management works, and stuff like that.
Almost everyone grows up using Windows so Windows is automatically learned; switching to a completely different system is going to take effort and some pain, but it's rewarding in the end.
@XCetron: not really, because (some) Linux GUIs have far more features than Windows, and while it takes some time to learn how to use them, it'll make you work more efficiently. The best thing is learning to use the shell, which will boost your speed incredibly in some cases. It's not an outdated interface, it's still the fastest way to do some things. Point-and-click is nice and visual, but it's SLOW.
So it's not like switching to SC1 which is hard because it has no features.  Windows users are probably more like SC1 players: they're used to having almost no features, no control etc., and they even like it that way.
|
Point-and-click is nice and visual, but it's SLOW.
That's why my mouse speed is set to max :D
It may be rare, but the people I send .wps files to actually do have it. It's rare that I can't just save it as .rtf for someone who doesn't.
I'm gonna try getting XP on it tomorrow and just hope my brother is wrong... If it blows up, I'll report back to tell everyone how sad I am.
|
Well I already gave an example earlier, installing new stuff in Ubuntu is much faster when using the commandline. There's no way you can be as fast using Synaptic or other graphical frontends.
Another example: searching for text within all text files in a directory. Command line: grep 'text' *.txt
That's why the commandline is not obsolete or ancient. It's an advanced tool to get stuff done faster in many cases. Geeks know that and use it extensively. Even Microsoft, who are always dumbing down interfaces in order not to confuse newbies, is starting to offer more commandline power, for example they've developed PowerShell, and Windows Server 2008 can be installed and administered using the command line only, which is a first for Microsoft. Not sure how good these efforts actually are but it's a move in the right direction.
|
On September 01 2008 15:39 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
@JeeJee: that's normal... but at some point you won't have to resort to Google anymore for every small problem. The thing is that you have to get used to the whole Linux ecosystem to be able to deal with almost anything for yourself. For example you need to know about programs you can use, you need to understand the boot process and how to rescue your system, you have to learn the permission system, how the package management works, and stuff like that.
Almost everyone grows up using Windows so Windows is automatically learned; switching to a completely different system is going to take effort and some pain, but it's rewarding in the end.
obviously eventually i'll run out of things to google
but, i've had to go through a lot of crap to get basic system functionality before, and it's not like its ingrained in my memory so ill have to look for it again if the issue comes up
some of the ones that i think of rightaway when using ubuntu were:
grub errors. i hate grub. first error (it was 17, i remember xD) totally freaked me out, i thought i irreversibly messed up my pc. but sure, after googling, analyzing fdisk output, editing menu.lst and all that garbage, it's not that bad. it's still not something i want to go through again because i don't remember what i did
wireless
ndiswrapper. need i say more?
ATI in general blows nuts. fglrx i hate you. xgl xserver sucks. aiglx is marginally better
all the "eye candy" that the ubuntu fanboys touted as a great "selling point" took me like 2 days to get working
basic movie playing capability. first i had to figure out why the default crap (totem player? i think) that came with ubuntu wouldn't play anything. good thing VLC rules socks on ubuntu as well
partitioning. i almost managed to wipe my harddrive using the WMD known as GParted. not to mention the whole dual boot process took at least a day to figure out what with the mounting restrictions and /media/ (oh how i hate that /media/). i really don't need to know about /, about swap, the difference between ntfs and ext3, the backup process risks, etc. i do now, (or i did anyway, i forget most of it) of course
lets not get into the fun stuff that solaris+linux does together at night
basic settings. if i ever head the words "just edit xorg line ___" i will kill the person
seriously these are all totally basic things that at most need a driver download in windows rather than a day of googling to figure out why your particular video card decides to get a composite error. sure it makes me more knowledgeable about the OS (nevermind that i didn't ask for this), and you basically had to know what's stored where (like in here: http://www.mylinuxway.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/filesystem-hierarchy.jpg, or more detailed, here: http://rute.2038bug.com/node38.html.gz) if you wanted to get anywhere
windows is just a lot less hassle =/
|
@Grub Error: shouldn't happen, but if it does it's not so bad. I don't really see how this could be used as a negative point for Linux because a powerful boot loader is necessary if you want to boot multiple systems. The Windows boot loader can't do shit.
@Wireless/Ndiswrapper: That sucks if you have to use ndiswrapper. Are you certain that you had to that? Anyway, that is easily dealt with by buying Linux compatible hardware.
@ATI: yes, they did suck. However, they've made a big move recently by open sourcing their driver, so their driver quality will very soon improve a lot. Just like Intel's, which is great. NVidia unfortunately has no plans of open sourcing theirs, but their driver has always been good, so... no problem for the normal user.
@Movie playing: yes, I wish Linux distributions (particularly Ubuntu because it is currently the "standard" distribution newbies try out) would make that more clear what needs to be done to make all the codecs work, and why they don't work from the start. Almost everyone seems to be puzzled about this. You can read about the reasons here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats
It's mostly to keep the distribution clean respectively truly free and stay out of potential legal trouble.
At least Ubuntu makes it really easy to install that functionality as you can see (just install that one metapackage and then all the standard media players can play everything). VLC comes with a ton of codecs, it doesn't rely on other ones.
@Partitioning: yeah well that's just something you have to learn, some things just can't be made intuitive... that's something you have to deal with if you use multiple OSses.
@Editing xorg.conf: Hehe. I don't see what's hard about that. But it's true, it shouldn't be necessary anymore except maybe for some advanced tweaking. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good graphical tool for managing all those settings. Anyway, it was MUCH worse in the past. These days, editing the xorg.conf is usually just an exception. In Ubuntu 8.04, much is configured automatically, the default xorg.conf is very minimal too. Also, X now has a failsafe mode which was long overdue. In the past, if you had an error in your xorg.conf your X didn't start anymore and that was probably painful for a lot of newbies. With current Ubuntu versions you always have a graphical interface available, like in Windows. Well, unless you delete/uninstall X. :p
Windows can be less hassle, yes, but it really depends a lot on the user and the PC too. I've seen normal people with near zero PC experience switch from Windows to Ubuntu without any problems. Of course that doesn't mean that it'll Just Work out of the box for everyone, or that everything is perfect like it is, it just means that if you have compatible hardware and aren't dependant on specific Windows programs or aren't used to a specific way of doing things then it's much easier to switch.
|
Woe... It is the motherboard. The harddrive controller (or whatever it's called) on it is messed up or something, cause when I boot from CD with my XP stuff, it looks all promising for awhile, and then it tells me my harddrive doesn't exist... Which doesn't make any sense, because it obvious does if I can save stuff onto it in Ubuntu. I think the problem is the motherboard is "close enough" to work on the laptop, but not actually the same one that came with the laptop... My dad and I have been working thru this laptop for the past hour or so, and there's been no luck.
|
what youre saying doesn't make any sense to any of us I dont think, I am so lost right now.
|
On September 02 2008 04:24 PsycHOTemplar wrote:
Woe... It is the motherboard. The harddrive controller (or whatever it's called) on it is messed up or something, cause when I boot from CD with my XP stuff, it looks all promising for awhile, and then it tells me my harddrive doesn't exist... Which doesn't make any sense, because it obvious does if I can save stuff onto it in Ubuntu. I think the problem is the motherboard is "close enough" to work on the laptop, but not actually the same one that came with the laptop... My dad and I have been working thru this laptop for the past hour or so, and there's been no luck.
I had this problem before, but it was with a Pentium MMX $20 yard sale Dell. I'm not sure if laptop hdds use different connections but you could just take it and format via desktop.
Just so we're clear, the problem I had was that the mobo would only boot into one IDE device, so it was either CD to format without a hdd or hdd to use without the password. Yep. Then again ask the guy who put Ubuntu on there for you because obviously he had to get it on there somehow.
|
|
|
On August 31 2008 13:50 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
Then it should be noted that Linux is far more useable than Windows if you already know your way around (and use the powerful shell quite a bit). Whenever some Windows user sees me doing stuff on Linux, they're usually amazed at how fast I can do standard things and how many features are hidden below the surface. The Windows UI is extremely inefficient, but you only learn that after using an alternative long enough, which most people don't do.
I call bullshit. Ubuntu has a slow ass GUI interface which sucks even compared to XP, modern my ass, are they trying to outdo Vista on useless graphical functions? If you want usability and quickness, why would you ever go for such a heavy OS and not just use the shell prompt? I had it on my last computer with 256 RAM for a few months, and it was a PAIN. Not to mention everything you clicked on took 10 seconds to load, some things were pretty difficult to configure and download even though Ubuntu boasts with usability for even the Windows retards. Simple things like flash, codecs, media player-streaming, games to run with wine etcetera became very painful with the OS change. Another thing that is also frustrating me is that Linux users are generally super paranoid and on most OSes including Ubuntu it is very difficult to gain full administration rights and even then you still can't do everything.
|
To the ignorant posters
Are you sure you really understand what Linux (Ubuntu in your case) is all about?
You see, that's the issue with you guys. You don't spend the time and effort to learn something but expect some one with a magic wand to solve the world's problem for you.
I spend a total of 3 years getting used to Linux. Now i love it. I don't have to use a particular software just because every other dumb fucking user is using it, I don't have to result to patching some thing that i don't truly understand. I don't have to rely on a system that is faulty by design and principle.
I can get legal and free software that does just about anything that i can think of.
If you are still confused about the bugs and go through the google phase. Then my suggestion is that don't install or patch all the new updates until you truly understand the different kernel modes and configuration settings.
|
On September 11 2008 12:04 Shauni wrote:Show nested quote +On August 31 2008 13:50 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
Then it should be noted that Linux is far more useable than Windows if you already know your way around (and use the powerful shell quite a bit). Whenever some Windows user sees me doing stuff on Linux, they're usually amazed at how fast I can do standard things and how many features are hidden below the surface. The Windows UI is extremely inefficient, but you only learn that after using an alternative long enough, which most people don't do.
I call bullshit. Ubuntu has a slow ass GUI interface which sucks even compared to XP, modern my ass, are they trying to outdo Vista on useless graphical functions? If you want usability and quickness, why would you ever go for such a heavy OS and not just use the shell prompt? I had it on my last computer with 256 RAM for a few months, and it was a PAIN. Not to mention everything you clicked on took 10 seconds to load, some things were pretty difficult to configure and download even though Ubuntu boasts with usability for even the Windows retards. Simple things like flash, codecs, media player-streaming, games to run with wine etcetera became very painful with the OS change. Another thing that is also frustrating me is that Linux users are generally super paranoid and on most OSes including Ubuntu it is very difficult to gain full administration rights and even then you still can't do everything.
Ubuntu is not light-weight, yes. 256 RAM is not enough. You better have 512 MB for basic usage.
There are very light-weight distributions though (but they are not as user-friendly), for example Damn Small Linux. For almost every use case, you'll find one suitable distribution.
Comparing a recent version of Ubuntu to XP isn't too smart, because XP is from 2001. Better use Vista for that (which has far higher system requirements).
And there's a reason why common codecs aren't included (but EASILY installable; in fact if you doubleclick an mp3 file in Nautilus for example, Ubuntu prompts you to download and install the codec, which takes like 2 clicks and then you have it).
See the link above about restricted formats. You actually have to PAY license fees for some codecs to include in the distribution, so free distributions don't do that (Windows, MacOS and commercial Linux distributions do that of course), but they offer it for download. Also, there are different laws in different countries, so to stay out of trouble it makes sense for free Linux distributions to offer NON-free stuff only as a separate download.
In a perfect world, everyone would use Ogg Vorbis (better than MP3 and WMA anyway), FLAC (for lossless compression / very high quality) and Ogg Theora for video (NOT the best codec unfortunately, but it's decent), but people just use what they know, and that's all proprietary formats with license and patent restrictions.
And Windows games - yes, you can't run Windows games. So? This will never change. Either the game developers create a Linux version or you can't run it (or try to use Wine, which of course might not work properly). Best to have a secondary Windows installation just for that.
In any case, that's not Linux' fault; Linux is very capable of running games, but with like 2% market share it simply doesn't exist for 95% of the game developers, so they just don't care.
It'll only get better when more people start using Linux.
|
I spend a total of 3 years getting used to Linux. Now i love it.
In 3 years I'll have graduated University and won't really need a laptop, lol. In any case, my main issue was and is compatibility with my home PC. The rant was just blowing steam because in my opinion, if you plan to sell a laptop, it's only logical that it have an operating system most people are used to.
PS: Can it please be a bannable offence to bump an old blog with a comment that just tells a person to kill themselves? Seriously? I'm sick of idiots who think this board is a big joke.
|
On September 11 2008 21:28 haduken wrote:
To the ignorant posters
Are you sure you really understand what Linux (Ubuntu in your case) is all about?
You see, that's the issue with you guys. You don't spend the time and effort to learn something but expect some one with a magic wand to solve the world's problem for you.
I spend a total of 3 years getting used to Linux. Now i love it. I don't have to use a particular software just because every other dumb fucking user is using it, I don't have to result to patching some thing that i don't truly understand. I don't have to rely on a system that is faulty by design and principle.
I can get legal and free software that does just about anything that i can think of.
If you are still confused about the bugs and go through the google phase. Then my suggestion is that don't install or patch all the new updates until you truly understand the different kernel modes and configuration settings.
condescend much?
linux isn't a good OS for the average user. the general perception of people that think linux is "too hard" is a correct one.
the mere fact that you had to spend 3 years to get used to linux should set off alarm bells in anyone considering using that as a main OS
it's a toy. a toy that can't do a lot of things an average user wants it to do, period. not even if they magically became a linux guru.
go construct a cost/benefit analysis of your switch to linux and tell me if it was worth it. i sure as hell know my months wasted on it were interesting, but ultimately just that.. a waste of time.
|
The average user will be fine with Linux unless he needs specific Windows software/games to which there's no alternative.
And the more Windows knowledge one has, the harder it'll be for one to switch to Linux. (And by "knowledge" I don't mean like programmer or system administrator knowledge, but simply the knowledge which programs you need and how to configure them so that you can do your stuff - because in Linux you'll most likely need completely different programs and that can already be a very tough situation for many long-time Windows users - especially when they don't even know which programs are all "good" (the big choice you have in the Linux world is a disadvantage in that situation -- it's only an advantage if you already know your way around)).
|
On September 12 2008 06:45 JeeJee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2008 21:28 haduken wrote:
To the ignorant posters
Are you sure you really understand what Linux (Ubuntu in your case) is all about?
You see, that's the issue with you guys. You don't spend the time and effort to learn something but expect some one with a magic wand to solve the world's problem for you.
I spend a total of 3 years getting used to Linux. Now i love it. I don't have to use a particular software just because every other dumb fucking user is using it, I don't have to result to patching some thing that i don't truly understand. I don't have to rely on a system that is faulty by design and principle.
I can get legal and free software that does just about anything that i can think of.
If you are still confused about the bugs and go through the google phase. Then my suggestion is that don't install or patch all the new updates until you truly understand the different kernel modes and configuration settings. condescend much? linux isn't a good OS for the average user. the general perception of people that think linux is "too hard" is a correct one. the mere fact that you had to spend 3 years to get used to linux should set off alarm bells in anyone considering using that as a main OS it's a toy. a toy that can't do a lot of things an average user wants it to do, period. not even if they magically became a linux guru. go construct a cost/benefit analysis of your switch to linux and tell me if it was worth it. i sure as hell know my months wasted on it were interesting, but ultimately just that.. a waste of time.
A toy? A toy maybe but it's a toy that is more flexible and powerful than any professional OS that M$ can come up with.
Your argument only make sense when you think that the average computer user = Windows.
But so what? A new or beginner user is not going to care if it's Windows / Linux. They will just be confused.
I don't think i need to construct any analysis on the subject. Linux is definitely more useful and it's FREE and do you even understand the fact that Linux is used in professional environments and getting used to the system is a potential job skill?
|
On September 12 2008 08:45 haduken wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2008 06:45 JeeJee wrote:On September 11 2008 21:28 haduken wrote:
To the ignorant posters
Are you sure you really understand what Linux (Ubuntu in your case) is all about?
You see, that's the issue with you guys. You don't spend the time and effort to learn something but expect some one with a magic wand to solve the world's problem for you.
I spend a total of 3 years getting used to Linux. Now i love it. I don't have to use a particular software just because every other dumb fucking user is using it, I don't have to result to patching some thing that i don't truly understand. I don't have to rely on a system that is faulty by design and principle.
I can get legal and free software that does just about anything that i can think of.
If you are still confused about the bugs and go through the google phase. Then my suggestion is that don't install or patch all the new updates until you truly understand the different kernel modes and configuration settings. condescend much? linux isn't a good OS for the average user. the general perception of people that think linux is "too hard" is a correct one. the mere fact that you had to spend 3 years to get used to linux should set off alarm bells in anyone considering using that as a main OS it's a toy. a toy that can't do a lot of things an average user wants it to do, period. not even if they magically became a linux guru. go construct a cost/benefit analysis of your switch to linux and tell me if it was worth it. i sure as hell know my months wasted on it were interesting, but ultimately just that.. a waste of time. A toy? A toy maybe but it's a toy that is more flexible and powerful than any professional OS that M$ can come up with. this isn't true.Your argument only make sense when you think that the average computer user = Windows. which is trueBut so what? A new or beginner user is not going to care if it's Windows / Linux. They will just be confused. they will care once their friends go "whoa man check out this game" and they can't play it. or <insert any other of windows-specific things that linux can't do ever. or without hours of googling if you're lucky>I don't think i need to construct any analysis on the subject. Linux is definitely more useful and it's FREE and do you even understand the fact that Linux is used in professional environments and getting used to the system is a potential job skill? and windows isn't? lol?
did you seriously just say that linux is more useful? for who? certainly not the majority. if you don't know windows, you're useless. if you don't know linux, it's a feature you don't have, but not one that many people care about
as for the whole 'free' thing. so what?
i'm going to quote AL on the subject because it's quite humorous
AL wrote:
I don't understand successful people doing things for free. If someone offers you a free pair of shoes, you wouldn't take it. You would think something's wrong with the shoes, that if they were any good they would cost money, that someone's trying to pull a fast one on you. It's the same way with people's time. Someone offers me something for free, I have no choice but to assume it has no value. Someone says they'll help me for free, they must not be very good at what they're offering to help me do. I wouldn't send a child to a free school, I wouldn't rely on the free police to protect my family, and I certainly wouldn't want someone building a house for me if they weren't good enough at it that they could charge some money.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/1/16/DIF-Duck.jpg)
