On 02/25/2013 06:35 PM, Mark Filipak wrote:
Hi Chris,Are you a fan of Shakespeare tragedies? I think Linux is a good subject. It's so hard to comment constructively without seeming to bitch. It's a tragedy.I'm an electronics engineer technoweenie with over 3 decades of experience with such a wide range of mainframes/minicomputers/microcomputers it would make your head spin. If ever there was a customer for Linux, I would be it.Linux scares the crap out of me. Windows has its problems, but they're known problems and I have decades of experience with them. I use applications, not operating systems. Linux and Mac users put Windoze down a lot, but they do a lot of lying in an attempt to hide problems with those OSes and that's what scares me... that, and the knowledge that, because it's free, people who could help, won't (or bail out at the first sign of trouble)... and because it's free, complaints and/or suggestions seem like bitching and no one likes to listen to someone bitch.So what am I doing? I'm bitching. Hahahahahahahahahaha. I despair.I have a Dell Precision M90. It's not listed as candidate hardware for Debian (http://tuxmobil.org/dell.html). But I know what hardware is in the M90. I know the video chip. I know the CPU. I know the bridge chip used.If I go to Intel or Nvidia or Ricoh and find drivers for the chips that claim to be Linux drivers, will they work for Debian? What if I don't find Linux drivers at the chip-manufacturer sites? Then what? If I invest months learning the care and feeding of Debian to the point where I can be comfortably secure with it and can advise others, will I be able to maintain that level next year when Debian is different?I could just try it and see, but that could eat a lot of my time and I don't have the time to waste.I won't go past WinXP. The latest versions of MS-Windows don't enforce interface standards at all. Even in later WinXP applications, some programs are almost impossible to figure out how to use. Some don't even have menus!What's Debian going to be like? It's an OS with no GUI-cops at all. No one wants to do anything standard ...it's boring and you can't bore volunteer programers and keep them as volunteers. Look at Firefox and Thunderbird. They're getting harder and harder to use by the day. Why? Because no one is enforcing interface standards. But you can't say anything without someone else throwing "What do you want for free?" in your face.Also, my experience with Firebox and Thunderbird may advise against Debian. In my opinion, success is everything. And success is a lot easier when you keep things simple. Firefox and Thunderbird are not simple. They are overly complex and are becoming less reliable quickly, but one can't even talk with the developers. They are in a world of their own. And who can blame them? They're doing what they want and you can't criticize because they're not getting paid. So I should just shut up.That's why I'm lurking the Debian list ...to see what people's attitudes are. To see whether the developers are accessible.I tried to get involved fixing the PAM authorization stack architecture for my server. I got absolutely nowhere because the developers of PAM didn't want to talk with anyone who wasn't willing to write and compile code. Will Debian be any different?Do you know of any very-experienced Debian folks who speak truths and wouldn't mind holding my hand? (and who maybe won't be put off by a little bitching?)Ciao - Mark (who spent 2 very pleasant months in NZ in the mid-80s, but decided that the Hutt Valley was not enough like Silicon Valley).On 2013/2/24 8:16 PM, Chris Bannister wrote:On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 07:48:10PM -0500, Mark Filipak wrote:Thanks for the encouragement, Hugo, but I'm not real keen on freeware. Open source is great, but free generally means not good and not supported - and a user forum is not support.I don't like forums either. Yes, this is a mailing list. The support is better than a lot of commercial software, and I personally believe the quality is better than a lot of commercial software. Have a read: http://www.debian.org/intro/about
I'd like to trim that, but I don't know where. . . . Anyway, just a comment or two.You are comfortable with non-free software--I am too, and I don't mind paying a reasonable price for something I need. That said, there is a bunch of software that is "non-free" but available for nothing. Perhaps you haven't been around Linux long enough to know the difference. There are some folks in the Linux community who insist that software be "free" in the sense of open source. The people who distribute Debian are in that group, so you won't find Thunderbird or Firefox there--they have some clones with funny names--but you also won't find some things that you'd probably want, and are not cloned. They are free in the normal sense of the word, but not open source. Like Adobe Reader, for instance. The Linux pdf reader works, but does not tell you how big the file is, so you don't know whether you are going to print 10 pages or 150. And there are problems with codecs that you can get from other Linux distros, but not Debian.
As a user of Windows, you will probably be more comfortable with the KDE GUI. Several distros use that, including PCLinuxOS, Kubuntu, Mint, and others. Some of them use rpm format install files, others use deb format (from Debian, of course). I don't know it there's any advantage to one of the other of rpm or deb, but they're not really compatible, altho a program called alien may be able to convert--and may not. If you stay within the repo for your distro, you won't care, but if you need something outside of the distro sources, you'll need either rpm or deb, or compile your own from source. (I'm more comfortable with rpm.) The installer in the system is also important, There is YAST and YUM and Synaptic, and apt-get, and probably others. Synaptic has the big advantage that the files are
listed for your selection.You sneer at forums. I would have to say that a forum is not as convenient as a mailing list, but probably is more helpful. Just my own opinion, YMMV. Your feeling that you have to do your own programming is false. While you are welcome to do programming, and to share what you write with the community, I would guess that something like 85% of Linux users don't program--at least not specific Linux apps. However, your experience with Unix and Unix-like systems will be a tremendous help to you in the Linux world. I wish I could write BASH scripts. I actually have done some programming in Pascal, and before that, BASIC, but BASH is an entirely different world!
So I welcome you to Linux. But I advise you to look around before you commit to Debian. Maybe Deb is for you. Maybe not. But don't tie yourself in until you look around some. Subscribe to some lists. Join a forum or two. Read the mail. See what is available. There are actually hundreds (!) of Linux distros, but you'll surely find something you'll be happy with among the top 10 or 15. And when you read the mail, you'll probably find one or two that seem to be more trouble than they're worth. One of the older, well-known distros seems to be going thru some serious upheaval right now, for instance. That's what comes from reading the mail.
I won't tell you what I'm using (mostly) except that it's not Debian or Ubuntu. (However, Ubuntu has probably the best help information of all the distros, by a large margin! And a batch of it will apply everywhere. Look it up when you need it.)
enough, already. --doug