Linux is pissing me off as of late...

I've been using it for many months and am currently running slackware. By all means it's better than Windows on many aspects, but there are things that bothering me. Like compiler errors. And missing libraries. I need a distro that does dependecies for me. Like Gentoo.

The only problem, however, is that our neibor, who is in charge of our network setup, blocks almost every port. (And that's not about to change) He allows FTP, HTTP, POP3, SMTP, ect. Basic things. So naturally, rsync, aka emerge sync, dosn't work. So I have to use emerge websync. To top if all off, the LiveCD dosn't recognize the emereg websync command. So here I am, with Slackware, months later.

It seems that every time I go to compile a package, I always end up getting some sort of error, like "missing library" or "couldn't find this file" or "error on line x" and so on.

To use the popular metaphor, a computer is like a car. You shouldn't have to know how every part works in order to use it. But you should have access to those parts. That's why I use linux. But why should I have to go hunt down libraries and debunk compiler errors just to install a package? I know how to compile something. So why should I have to do it manually?

My question is this: Should I stay with Slackware and just troubleshoot things? Should I move to an RPM based distro?:shudders: Or should I give Gentoo another shot?

*sigh*

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I check my e-mail.

I say NO.

This is a rant, not a question. PLEASE do not move.

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I check my e-mail.

I say "to the Technology forum!"

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Snail racing: (500 posts per line)
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I agree. Surely it wouldn't kill the software authors to compile the progs for you.... especially for new users like me who don't really know how to do it.



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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

To this I say "Why the hell did you think Linux isn't a popular OS?"

I mean seriously. There's a reason why the overwhelming majority of people who use Linux as a primary operating system are CS students and a bunch of sniveling wannabe CS students who spend most of their day in their basement lamenting their lack of female contact and occasionally crying "LOL MICRO$HAFT LOLOLOL" in nasally voices. Of the utter minuscule minority of people who actually use Linux for legitimate purposes (rather than to compare wang sizes on Slashdot), all of them use it for either a server or because they're developing content for a Linux server.

It's not horribly unpopular because of some Nazi Socialist Commie Pinko Zionist conspiracy to keep the underdog down and to support buggy halfassed software products in the primary position. Linux is unpopular because it's difficult to use, and even at the absolute best of times it's still mildly inconvenient. Everybody except you seemed to know this.

Given that you willingly ate $80 on a Radeon 9800 in order to run an OS which is generally held as totally substandard for the home PC and only even remotely useful for development or servers, I'm guessing you either didn't care or you didn't pay enough attention before jumping on the ol' anti-Microsoft bandwagon.

Better luck next time.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

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I check my e-mail.

Come on Mystic, you know you were happier with Windows. Don't let GBK trick you into thinking that Linux is any better.

You guys are all on crack! I like linux. I am not getting rid of it anytime soon. Things will smooth out after a while...

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I check my e-mail.

hehe. I love the Noooo...

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Snail racing: (500 posts per line)
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well, no s***, linux isn't exactly easy to use and is not at all designed for the typical dumba$$ aol user. Rather, it's an incredibly powerful, incredibly stable operating system designed for situations where something simply has to work at all costs or everyone dies.

I'm probably going to have to read a book (or several) on usuing linux before I become even remotely proficient with it and will be able to use it for any real work other than basking in its power. There wouldn't happen to be a "redhat for dummies" book, would there? (probably is, but too lazy/busy to check right now)

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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited March 23, 2004).]

Well put. Don't worry, Redhat is for dummies.

If you have any questions just ask. Generally stay away from linux books unless you heard that it was especially good.

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I check my e-mail.

Dont worry, that was my thought as well.

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And everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon...
DSettahr's Homepage | Cantina Cloud | Rally NY

It's funny because in Mystic0's original post he expresses displeasure because Linux isn't working well in situations where it should be. I can do all sorts of things in Windows without being told that I am missing libraries (and I'm using Win98, not the most stable of the family).

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--Hinch
Terry Hinch's Web Comic
All opinions expressed by Hinch are the explicit views of Hinch, and only Hinch and his 7 other personalities. In the event that said personalities are in dispute, the majority shall prevail. All opinions are held in perpetuity of the present, past, and future throughout this universe, mirror universes, and all multi-verses, including alternate time lines.

Oh, and I hate dummies books with a passion. They waste tons of space on, well, space. As long as treating you like a compete idiot, they throw in some dumb jokes.

All the documentation you could ever need to become a uber-root-super-mega-power-user can be found with www.google.com and www.tldp.org .

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I check my e-mail.

Yes and no. The reason I'm having trouble is because either a) somewhere along the line there was some poorly written code, or b) I'm not savvy enough (remember the car/parts thing)

Incidently, Win98 is pitifully unstable next to windows 2000. I think most people will agree with me on that. (Lets not start a debate here)

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I check my e-mail.

Yeah, i did a windows 98 install today, in fact. I just loaded it so I could run Windows XP Corporate setup (which refuses to install properly in straight DOS for some reason). Win98 is little more than Win95 with full IE integration and a few interface touchups.



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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

No, the reason you're having trouble is because you're missing source packages for about 10,000 libraries which is the #1 complaint about Linux and the very reason why Portage was created in the first place.

To put it in other terms, no, you don't know what you are doing, but to make you feel a little better the general Linux developer doesn't know what he's doing either. He's just satisfied with adding to the hulking morass of conflicting source files which is gradually making Windows 9x DLL Hell look tame.



Why on earth would you be trying to install Windows XP from DOS? Windows XP CDs are all bootable, so unless you're running a computer made before.. oh.. the remarkable advent of the Pentium 2 you should be able to boot off of it without any problems.

Or if you're trying to install from an incompetently-done rip of a Windows XP CD, but I'm sure you're not into that piracy thing.

[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited March 23, 2004).]

5th ammendment....



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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

I had similar problems with Slackware. Gentoo solved them.

Mystic: You can download snapshots of the portage tree (essentially identical to emerge sync'ing) from the mirrors. Here, for example. Get the most recent tar and put it on a CD or something. When the manual tells you to emerge sync, untar it in /usr. You should end up with a /usr/portage directory filled with other directories like net-ppp and games-emulation. Continue normally and everything should work fine.

Jon`C: Did some Slashdot geek key your car? Linux zealots are annoying enough. You don't need to go pound for pound with their BS. I use Linux regularly for a host of good reasons, yet some how avoid fitting your dichotomy. Sometimes it's okay to use an OS with making it Jesus or Hitler.

[This message has been edited by Ictus (edited March 23, 2004).]

Jon'C is like GBK, inverted.

And thank you for being *helpful*, Ictus.
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I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited March 23, 2004).]

Yeah, that's great. Tell me: Do you actually use Linux for anything meaningful, or is it just a case of sitting in IRC and occasionally checking a few websites?

In Linux, if you intend to do absolutely anything more than the bare minimum that most distributions expect, you muck around with config files. You have to download additional library source packages. To make it worse, virtually every distribution targeted toward the end-user installs about 3 GB of totally useless apps that nobody would ever use. Ever.

Ironically enough, the easiest-to-use, fastest, and by far the most stable distribution is Gentoo, but it's totally offset by the incredible effort and time it requires to actually install.

I don't know all of the reasons why you Linux users think it's so much better than Windows, but since Windows has yet to be too retarded to understand how to communicate with a USB keyboard, supports sound card feature sets more complicated than a Sound Blaster Pro and "omg help me w/ windows" threads never end up in the user reinstalling Linux, I'm going to make an educated guess here:

Linux is a neat toy, but a week after Christmas the kid's just going to end up playing with the box it came in.

Stop with the offensive, Jon. I just needed to vent a little, I wasn't looking to pick a fight.

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I check my e-mail.

Are we fighting? That's strange. Since the point of the thread you started is to complain about Linux, I figured you had agreed with me.





Can you make up your mind?

I render scenes in POV-Ray, which is noticably faster under Linux as an optimized binary. I dabble with C++ and PHP, browse the Internet, check my email, IRC... basically everything I do in Windows except play games.

Linux distributions are bloated. I liked Slackware because it was less so, and really liked Gentoo because it's not. Installing wasn't incredibly difficult and didn't take require babysitting. Of course, this is after I did the whole Linux from Scratch thing. Several times.

I haven't had any hardware problems yet, and I have a winmodem and an eight button mouse (although imwheel is the suck). I've used Linux for two years now and have yet to find any flaws that outweigh the total benefits.

Feel free to do your desparately-unhappy-and-oozing-bitterness thing now. It energizes you with the power of funny.

[This message has been edited by Ictus (edited March 23, 2004).]

I'm sorry Jon, I didn't mean to take the defensive. It just seemed like you were angry. I recognize that Linux has problems. However, in my opinion, linux pros and and windows cons far outweigh Windows pros and linux cons.

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I check my e-mail.

I don't want to get in on this argument, so I'm going to give you some good advice:

Install Debian. Debian is the best of both worlds. You don't have to worry about compiler errors or anything like that (unless you choose to ignore the package maintainer's years of knowledge and go try to compile everything yourself).

You want a piece of software? apt-get install it. Period.

The -most- trouble I have ever had was trying to install bittorrent. I apt-get install bittorrent and it installed successfully. I ran it, and it gave me an error (the GUI version - the console version worked perfectly) that I needed wxpython2.3 installed. It even told me the name of the debian package I needed. So I apt-get installed the package. The apt-get said, "that version is no longer available, but we have the 2.4 version, would you like to install that instead?" So of course I said yes, and now the gui to bittorrent works perfectly.

So, step 1, get & install Debian. If the install scares you (it's really not that hard, but *shrug*), you can download and run knoppix, then hd-install it. Then you will have a fully functional debian system at your fingertips. Knoppix is nice because you don't have to go through the trouble of installing stable and then upgrading to testing, it just puts all the latest and greatest right there for you.

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Thank you Brian. I wasn't looking for a debate in the first place. A couple questions:

1. Does Debian check dependancies? If so, does it autimatically download them for you, or do I have to do that manually?

2. Are .deb packages pre-compiled or from the source?

3. I hear that Debian development cycles are slow. Is this true? If so, does it significantly affect you?

4. Edit- Do I only need disks 1 & 2? And should I use the 'vanilla' flavor?
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I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited March 23, 2004).]

is Debian easier than red hat? If red hat is the easiest, then I have a long way to go....



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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

I like Linux and have used it off and on for about 4 years now.
My first install was RH6.x from the HDD because I didn't have a burner. But for the life of me I couldn't get it to go online.
RH7 was different. And easier.

I have installed and tried for short periods, Debian, Mandrake and Slackware.
The nicest and second easiest to use is RH. I am currently trying out Fedora which so far seems to be RH10. :/
Yes PW, RH is as easy as it gets.
I liked Debian while I used it but as a personal fav I switched back to RH (I was triple booting for awhile there ).

I use Linux to do almost everything I need to do except play games.
I do not have any real affinity for any Windows apps so I don't NEED Windows. It did take me awhile to give up Editplus2 though. I used Kate and now I'm installing Bluefish which has the features of Editplus2 that I found hard to give up.

I made www.htp.ca with Kate in Linux. I consider that real. I'm redesigning www.plagiarized.com in Linux with Kate and Bluefish using gFTP to upload it to the server. I'll be checking the the development on Firefox and Opera in Linux and in IE on my wifes comp.

My question to you Jon'C is, what does the average computer user use thier computer for?

My answer is this. Surfing, chatting and checking e-mail. With RH and Mandrake you can do all of that just the same as you would in Windows. And just as easy as in Windows because Linux installs about 3GB of totally useless apps that nobody ever uses. But then they do.

I use the music player it came with.
I use the mail client it came with.
I use the graphics program it came with.
I use Firefox browser but it did come with Mozilla. :/
I use the FTP client it came with.
I use the text editor it came with.
I use the IM client it came with.
I use the chat client it came with.

I downloaded a p2p client and a few other things I wanted to try.
Just like a Windows user.

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To artificial life, all reality is virtual.
HTP

[This message has been edited by Darth Evad (edited March 23, 2004).]

Debian? Probobly not. I'd say Redhat is one of the easiest. Not necessarilly the best, but one of the easiest.

Why don't you look into SuSe or Mandrake? Mandrake focuses on being very user friendly. SuSe is good all-around and is very customizable. They are both easy to use and are RPM based, like Redhat.

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I check my e-mail.

I am a designer, so I'm not ready to give up my tool kit that I am well-versed in. Committing entirely to linux would mean that I would have to find and learn linux replacements for:

1. photoshop 7
2. illustrator 10
3. Indesign 2
4. Streamline 4
5. Premiere 6
6. Livemotion 2
7. Flash MX 2004
8. Cold Fusion MX
9. Homesite 5.5
10 Extensis Mask Pro for Photoshop (pure gold, trust me)


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Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited March 23, 2004).]

Then you should switch to OSX. LOL!
You aren't going to get that in Linux.
In my experience, GIMP was something to get used to. But not as powerful as PSP.

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To artificial life, all reality is virtual.
HTP

Nice thread.

Just a cent here: If you are interested in trying Mandrake 10 because of its 2.6 kernel, wait for the final release, don't bother with Community. Although it might work just fine for you, I had trouble with DVI output on my desktop, and the touchpad and sound system on a laptop. If those get fixed, however, it might be pretty good.

Ha ha, Super Space Robot.

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Flibbledy-dibbledy! Nyaaaaaaaahhh!

-The Last True Evil

1. Does Debian check dependancies? If so, does it autimatically download them for you, or do I have to do that manually?

Typing apt-get install someprogram will resolve all dependencies, download and install them, all before it actually does the install of the package you're asking for. So, you don't have to do anything extra to get it to figure out deps - the whole system is built around the idea that YOU shouldn't have to resolve dependencies. See, people can't add packages to the debian repository that are dependent on packages that AREN'T in the repository.

2. Are .deb packages pre-compiled or from the source?

There are both binary and source packages. I have never used a source package (except kernel-source).

3. I hear that Debian development cycles are slow. Is this true? If so, does it significantly affect you?

Debian-STABLE is slow. I use some combination of testing and unstable. It works like this: debian stable is the pristine, ultra-secure, ultra-stable version. Before a package goes into stable, it must be in testing for xx amount of time and have no outstanding bugs/etc. So testing is more up to date than stable, and it's a good starting point for building your system (knoppix uses some combination of testing/unstable, just like I do). UNSTABLE is generally as stable as most other distributions. When I was running unstable, I didn't have any issues. However, some packages get committed with bugs, so if you apt-get upgrade (which is - update all your packages to the latest version) and there is a package with a bug, it COULD render your system unstable. I generally run testing, unless I know for sure I want a later version of a package, then I apt-get install mypackage/unstable and that will install the "unstable" version. I guess I only use that for PHP.

4. Edit- Do I only need disks 1 & 2? And should I use the 'vanilla' flavor?

I'm not sure how you're installing it. I always get the boot cd and do a net-install, because I only install minimal packages and then install the ones I need later.

I really, really, really recommend downloading the KNOPPIX iso and hd-installing off that - it takes care of all the configuration of all your hardware automatically, which vanilla Debian DOES NOT. Once it's installed, YOU HAVE a fully customized Debian testing/unstable install waiting for you, and it takes about half an hour!

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Try FreeBSD. Ports is what portage was based on, so you won't lose any functionality there. It'll download the source, all of its dependencies, set the USEFLAGS and other oddities for you, compile, and install everything.

Also, if an application isn't native under FreeBSD, there is support for Linux emulation as well. Many people have has success running Linux games (like Quake 3 or RTCW) under FreeBSD without any trouble at all. I've gotten Vmware and Staroffice 7 (which I hate with a passion) to run under FreeBSD as well.

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[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]

What? There's a level above uber-root-super-mega user? Dammit...and all the time I thought I was at the top of the tree with uber-root-super-mega user status.


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Founder of the Massassi Brute Squad (MBS)

B'tduz: A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.

"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" - His Grace His Excellency the Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes.

Morituri Nolumus Mori

/me walks into thread

/me looks around

I aint touching this!

/me runs

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The future is here, and all bets are off.

You, sir, are smart.

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EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Thanks Brian.

I *have* Debian 3 on a CD somewhere. I never got past the install. (That was a while ago) At this point I am leaning towards Gentoo. Is there any reason I should use Knoppnix instead? Thanks.

(I can handle the Gentoo install, I've done it before)

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I check my e-mail.