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[TheBilgeRat]

LOL.  Typical Linux zealot attitude.

Aww, cmon.  If the shoe fits... Who cares?  You run windows.  Pay the tax.  If you run mac, you are getting the benefit of vetted hardware the same as if you bought a Dell laptop made for Ubuntu.  If you manage to F*** up an install where the hardware is all supported, it certainly isn't the software's fault.  I have had machines that I could not get linux running satisfactory on before, or rather I should say that certain chipsets did not work right or were not supported at all.  Granted, that was in the late 90s and pre-kernel 2.4.  Truth is I haven't had to compile a kernel by hand since my 400Mhz AMD was my brand new badass machine.  All of you windows lovers forget there was a learning curve for it as well, you just put the time in ages ago and are not being honest with how long it took you to get up to speed.

Yep, its ALWAYS someone else's fault that Linux sucks, never the system itself..

Yes, sometimes that is exactly true.  Othertimes it is not.  This is why in big person land we don't work in tautologies unless we are doing truth tables.

And what sort exactly do you think I am?

Bubble sort?  Quicksort?  Selection sort?  I give up.

r didn't I give it enough time ?  Was FIVE YEARS not long enough?

Yes.  Five years was long enough.  Although I find this sort of comment hard to believe.  Does this mean that you stuck with the same computer and linux OS for Five years and were completely unable to get it running?  That nowhere in that five year span did you learn to use a terminal shell?  That you couldn't bother to read a man file?  That sounds like an awful time.

I think more realistically that every once in a while, lets say every 6 months or so (or every release cycle of a new flavor) you burned a live ISO, slapped it on an available partition, spent the time getting dual boot going, booted into it once or twice to mess about, got frustrated with the fact that there is a learning curve involved and wiped it off again.

Oh I tried acetone.  DID NO WORK, get it?

And no this wasn't the only reason..

Well, thank goodness virtualclonedrive works great under windows!  Variety is the spice of life as they say.

No, not at all, but hey I've seen enough Linux zealots to see one here..

Really?  Come on, now.  A zealot?

[commodorejohn]

Yes.  Five years was long enough.  Although I find this sort of comment hard to believe.  Does this mean that you stuck with the same computer and linux OS for Five years and were completely unable to get it running?  That nowhere in that five year span did you learn to use a terminal shell?  That you couldn't bother to read a man file?  That sounds like an awful time.

I think more realistically that every once in a while, lets say every 6 months or so (or every release cycle of a new flavor) you burned a live ISO, slapped it on an available partition, spent the time getting dual boot going, booted into it once or twice to mess about, got frustrated with the fact that there is a learning curve involved and wiped it off again.

Wow. Way to ask for clarification and then impugn someone's honesty without even letting them answer in the same post...

[TheBilgeRat]

Wow. Way to ask for clarification and then impugn someone's honesty without even letting them answer in the same post...

Goodness sake, was it really that harsh?  That's what lots of people do.

Not liking linux or not getting it to install has nothing to do with your geek cred, or penis size, or IQ.

People are ranting against linux in a microsoft thread on an Amiga forum.  Obviously there must be some emotion behind these sentiments.

[runequester]

People are ranting against linux in a microsoft thread on an Amiga forum.  Obviously there must be some emotion behind these sentiments.

So how 'bout them atari's ?

[commodorejohn]

Not liking linux or not getting it to install has nothing to do with your geek cred, or penis size, or IQ.

...what.

People are ranting against linux in a microsoft thread on an Amiga forum.  Obviously there must be some emotion behind these sentiments.

Uh, yes? Emotions contributing to such opinions would include: frustration at the needless, Byzantine complexity of the operating system, irritation at the way simple tasks can balloon out into huge projects merely because library X doesn't like library Y and library Z isn't even in the repository, despair of ever getting the system into a state where it both has a complete complement of software needed for the end-user's daily workflow and is working and stable, and anger at zealots who respond to every criticism of their favorite operating system with "you didn't really have that problem," "it works for me," "these issues don't exist," "you don't need that missing feature," "RTFM," "it's really not as complicated as you're pretending it is," "if you don't want hassle why don't you just go back to Windows, you whiner," and so on and so forth.

All of those have been expressed openly in the thread; it's not exactly like anybody was trying to keep it a secret. (And as for the fact that it's being discussed in this thread, the Linux advocates were the ones who brought it up in the first place; the ranting was in reaction to the constant suggestions that maybe this will be the chance for Linux to finally overtake Windows, as if its failure to do so for the last twenty years has only stemmed from a lack of opportunity, and Linux's perpetual failure to address its underlying issues - except for a few projects that seem to be targeted at mouthbreathing idiots under the impression that that's what ordinary users are - is not a factor at all.)

[TheBilgeRat]

Ordinary users are mouthbreating idiots.  Have you not read BOFH?
 
But seriously.  When Windows pisses me off with its own labrynthine absurdities, its DLL hells, its craptastic insistence on some specific library or .Net version, its poor 64 bit support, or its inability to get at what is wrong to fix it, I don't get pissed at all the windows people who behave like zealots and call me TDO.  Windows 7 and 8 are the VERY FIRST that have run stable for me, and by stable I mean not BSODing after any length of uptime.  XP was marginally tolerable once I spent days tweaking registry entries.  I have had to twiddle every operating system I've used in some way or another.  The difference is I recognize that all operating systems suck, its just where they suck and what bull**** you have to do to get them running right.
 
Don't even get me started on that pile of crap known as AmigaOS.

[commodorejohn]

For acknowledging that all systems suck, you've spent a fair bit of this sub-discussion responding to Linux critics with "you're not really having the problems that you say you're having, and furthermore you probably haven't tried enough and aren't up to date, and also everything you're saying is FUD."

[TheBilgeRat]

For acknowledging that all systems suck, you've spent a fair bit of this sub-discussion responding to Linux critics with "you're not really having the problems that you say you're having, and furthermore you probably haven't tried enough and aren't up to date, and also everything you're saying is FUD."

That's because you aren't having any of the problems you say you are having and you haven't tried enough and you aren't up to date and you are spreading FUD.
 
Its one thing to not like Linux or windows due to some bad experience. Its another to say that Linux or windows is inherently flawed, unable to be successful because it is massively flawed, that the many groups who work on aspects of the Linux kernel based operating systems have no knowledge or clue about useable design, or many of the other completely absurd things said by several different people just because it did not work for them.  That IS fud.

[commodorejohn]

Its one thing to not like Linux or windows due to some bad experience. Its another to say that Linux or windows is inherently flawed, unable to be successful because it is massively flawed, that the many groups who work on aspects of the Linux kernel based operating systems have no knowledge or clue about useable design, or many of the other completely absurd things said by several different people just because it did not work for them.  That IS fud.

Where is the distinction there? Are we only supposed to harbor some kind of arbitrary, unreasoning resentment, and any complaints that address specific issues and posit root causes for them are somehow FUD? That doesn't make any sense. I wasn't saying that Linux has bad UI design because I was frustrated with the library issues and wanted to vent, I was saying it because I experienced many very specific issues with the overall UI design. Similarly, I think that the reason for its failure to make any major impact on the desktop market does stem from the fact that it isn't accessible to ordinary users and is overly complex, and nobody has made any serious efforts to address that in the twenty years it's been in development. I honestly think that, it's not something I'm just saying out of spite. It's not fear because I'm not trying to scare people away from Linux - by all means, try it yourself and see. It's not uncertainty because it is in no way vague or unclear. And I'm not seeking to sow doubt; I'm expressing my own analysis of the state of things.

[TheBilgeRat]

Where is the distinction there? Are we only supposed to harbor some kind of arbitrary, unreasoning resentment, and any complaints that address specific issues and posit root causes for them are somehow FUD? That doesn't make any sense. I wasn't saying that Linux has bad UI design because I was frustrated with the library issues and wanted to vent, I was saying it because I experienced many very specific issues with the overall UI design. Similarly, I think that the reason for its failure to make any major impact on the desktop market does stem from the fact that it isn't accessible to ordinary users and is overly complex, and nobody has made any serious efforts to address that in the twenty years it's been in development. I honestly think that, it's not something I'm just saying out of spite. It's not fear because I'm not trying to scare people away from Linux - by all means, try it yourself and see. It's not uncertainty because it is in no way vague or unclear. And I'm not seeking to sow doubt; I'm expressing my own analysis of the state of things.

Fair enough on that.  You honestly haven't been the biggest sower.  I'm too tired to sort back through this list, but my main beef started with blatantly false statements and then took off into some snark where the truth line becomes a bit more fuzzy.  I'm too tired tonight to keep responding and I have had a hand in derailing this Win8 thread (win 8 BTW just replaced my win 7 install.  Its a great Microsoft product.  It is way worth the price, especially if you are still running XP, unless you are still running XP on a P4.  Then, you should upgrade) so I think I'll sleep on it and break my thoughts on this out into a new thread.

[ElPolloDiabl]

People were trying to be constructive, while a certain individual wanted to just complain.
Some people are completely happy with Linux as an OS. With an mp3 player and browser it does everything they need. It is a small amount compared to the Windows bandwagon. They do not have the claimed trouble with Linux.
I certainly have had incompatible hardware with Windows or else had to wait a year for an updated driver.
btw How long do you end up waiting for an Amiga driver to be released?

[Iggy]

...unless you are still running XP on a P4.  Then, you should upgrade)

P4?
Hey, I sold my Phenom II a couple of months ago, and bought an i5 for my Hacckintosh.
But I've still got one machine with a PIII (@1.5GHz)!
And another with a Socket A Athlon!
Both of those are going to continue to run XP for pretty much forever.

And I have Win7 on the i5 Under Parallels.
Why would I want to upgrade to Win8?

On the two old machine, upgrading the OS to Ubuntu would be more economical then changing the hardware.
And there nothing offered by Win8 that would improve the Hackintosh.

Win8 might be a great product if you're running XP or Vista on relatively modern hardware, otherwise why bother?

[TCMSLP]

Wow.  I'm really sorry to hear people have such a difficult time with Linux.  Mounting an ISO image has been a simple task for a very long time and it certainly was not broken in Ubuntu 9.10.  It sounds much more likely the ISO was corrupt, or in fact not an ISO at all (perhaps a zipped ISO without the .zip extension?).  Regardless, I'm sad to hear it was a world of frustration for people.

Regarding the comments on Gimp - I don't understand any of the criticisms.  I wasn't a Photoshop user, instead I migrated from Degas Elite (Atari ST), to Deluxe Paint (Amiga), to Paint Shop Pro (Windows) to Gimp (Linux).   The path wasn't at all painful and I can still switch between Gimp and PSP with very little frustration (basic tools, layer windows etc are all very alike).   Are you sure it's not Photoshop which breaks the convention? I've heard people say Photoshop has a learning curve and can be difficult to get started with - I have no personal experience here.

My surprise at defending Linux on an Amiga forum?  Perhaps I should have worded that as my surprise people are so pro-Windows on an Amiga forum.   The reason I felt so at home in Linux was due to years of experience with the Amiga.   Amiga (AmigaDOS?) to Linux (BASH) seemed a natural progression, certainly a lot more natural than Amiga to Windows.  

If anyone needs any Linux support please feel free to poke me.

[tone007]

I use Linux a lot, mostly on 4+ year old laptops with (by now) fairly well-supported hardware when I think something like Xubuntu would outperform Windows 7.  However, there is the occasional issue of a WiFi chipset not being supported out of the box, usually easily remedied by using something like an "install third-party drivers" option while hooked up to Ethernet (which always seems to work for me.)

However, I've got a newer laptop here with some (probably) less-well supported hardware, Alienware with a hybrid nVidia/Intel video chipset.  I'm going to download one distro (Fedora, probably not the friendliest one to start with) and give it 10 minutes to see if I can get it running well enough to be a daily driver. Lets see what happens.

[stefcep2]

@BilgeRat.
1.  I didn't f**k up the install.  I know that *I* didn't because the only software installed was from the official repo's.  But the one constant with every distro I used was that a with each update, however small, the OS itself *could* f**k itself up. eg PCLOS would not boot after a 150 k cd/dvd driver update.

2.  In 5 years I tried Ubuntu, PCLOS, Kubuntu, Mint and Mandriva.  Problems ranged from bad monitor support, bad sound support, no dial up support, roll your own mobile broadband, cd/dvd burning that was hit and miss, just off the top of my head. Sure, I learned how to use a terminal, editing menu1st blah, blah, blah.  After 5 years of all this s**t, I simply had enough.

3.  People talk about the "Linux Community" as a strength.  But its the same "community" that in the end pisses off the users, because there are too many arrogant pr*cks, who refuse to admit that their OS is, in fact broken.

4.  We have one guy here expecting an XP Mediacentre 2005 to work out of the box.  FFS 18 months after I installed Ubuntu 9.10 I couldn't even update my web browser! OS no longer supported!

5.  Update my OS you say?  Its free.  Why the f8ck should I have to do this in 18 months just to run an updated web browser? I run XP that I installed in 2007, latest web browser, no malware, ever.

6.  The absolutely worst thing anyone can do is run a "rolling-update" distro.  Despite what the maintainers say, they *CANNOT* guarantee that one of their updates won't bork your entire system.

Unlike you, I accept that Linux is an amateur OS on the desktop.

Frankly I am over it.

[TCMSLP]

"After 5 years of all this s**t, I simply had enough."

This is exactly how I've felt when battling with Windows in the past.  The random slow downs, the driver issues causing random blue screens, the endless patch updates that always seem to be applied when least convenient (on startup or shutdown), the need to run stacks of anti virus and anti malware software just to browse the internet, the need for third party software to do absolutely *anything* useful, not to mention every windows version I've tried constantly stealing window focus on startup; you start typing in one window, only for another (windowless) background process to start and sneakily steal focus - half of what you typed has vanished.  Repeat this several times during startup and I'll willingly throw the PC out the window.

And you say Linux is broken...

I suspect it's very much a case of being happiest in whatever environment you're most familiar with.    Personally, I'd be very happy if I could ditch Windows 100% - it's only currently Cubase (or rather the cost of Apple hardware) that's delaying this.