On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 02:01:02PM +0200, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 23 September 2013 at 11:52:28 UTC, Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> >On 21/09/2013 16:07, Manu wrote:
> >>...
> >
> >My feelings exactly. I learned about Linux and studied it when I
> >was in high-school (Windows 98/Me era), and I was quite excited
> >about it. Windows was more shite those days, and I knew Linux was
> >not for the average user, but I thought that once I learned it
> >well enough (shell, network, configuring partitions, automounting,
> >the X server, etc.), it would be worthwhile to use.
> >That wasn't the case unfortunately. There was always new stuff
> >that would come up that you would need to learn how to configure,
> >or need to thinker, or there would be shortcomings in application
> >functionality. After a certain point it was just annoying. It
> >might be "fun" for people who get kicks out of working the innards
> >of a system and being closer to how things work, but on my
> >computer I wanted to either have my leisure time, or get real work
> >done. And spending time configuring stuff (that in Windows just
> >worked out of the box) is not a productive use of one's time in
> >any way, shape or form.
> >
> >True, this was like 10 years ago and Linux distros got better, but so has Windows, and nowdays there is little motivation now for me to try a different OS/desktop-environment.
> 
> Ironically, this is exactly the reason I have never succeeded in using the Windows for daily work. Amount of manual configuration and subverting the defaults needed to make it actually usable for my programming flow is outstanding. In the same time on my Linux distro it is mostly `pacman -Sy gnome gnome-extra xorg-server nvidia dlang vim git` and I am ready to work on a fresh install.

Ditto.

I'm surprised at people talking about the amount of time spent configuring stuff on Linux, etc., because it's never happened to me! I mean, OK, in the early days you had to manually configure X11 and deal with all of the obscure problems, but that's no longer the case today. All I have to do is 'apt-get install <package>' and it Just Works(tm).

I do like to tweak stuff -- and this is where Windows falls flat for me, 'cos it forces you to work a certain way, and when you go outside of that, things just stop working or it becomes an uphill battle (disclaimer: I haven't touched Windows for over a decade, so this may no longer be true today) -- but the default settings installed by apt-get *do* work. So I've no idea what people are talking about when they complain about needing to tweak this and that by hand. Linux *lets* you tweak stuff by hand, but, at least as far as Debian is concerned, the defaults pretty much Just Work.

The whole bit about me recompiling the kernel and stuff -- the whole point was that I *wanted* to run a custom kernel, and Linux lets me do that. On Windows, this isn't even an option to begin with. The stock Debian kernel actually just works out of the box -- and had I wanted to, I could have just used that instead and never needed to do anything else.


T

-- 
INTEL = Only half of "intelligence".

On 23/09/2013 15:50, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I'm surprised at people talking about the amount of time spent
> configuring stuff on Linux, etc., because it's never happened to me! I
> mean, OK, in the early days you had to manually configure X11 and deal
> with all of the obscure problems, but that's no longer the case today.
> All I have to do is 'apt-get install <package>' and it Just Works(tm).

Yeah, that was several years ago. Nowadays the hardware support and configuration seems to work straight out from the box as well.
The remaining reasons that keep me away from Linux are other now.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 07:50:43 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 02:01:02PM +0200, Dicebot wrote:
> > 
> > Ironically, this is exactly the reason I have never succeeded in using the Windows for daily work. Amount of manual configuration and subverting the defaults needed to make it actually usable for my programming flow is outstanding. In the same time on my Linux distro it is mostly `pacman -Sy gnome gnome-extra xorg-server nvidia dlang vim git` and I am ready to work on a fresh install.
> 
> Ditto.

Similar here, at least these days. Last time I got a new system, it had
Win7 preinstalled. I'd already been using Windows as my primary
system (for ages), but it took me about *a week or two* of googling and
tweaking and third party hacks before I had finally got it to a point
that was more or less usable (but still frequently irritating and
impractical).

> 
> I'm surprised at people talking about the amount of time spent configuring stuff on Linux, etc., because it's never happened to me! I mean, OK, in the early days you had to manually configure X11 and deal with all of the obscure problems, but that's no longer the case today. All I have to do is 'apt-get install <package>' and it Just Works(tm).
> 

Yea, I find installing software is often (not always, but often) *easier* on Linux these days, thanks to apt and such. It used to be a nightmare of dependency issues in the days of dpkg/rpm[1]. But now, most of the time it's just one trivial command. Done. Or if you prefer GUIs, the...uhh...what's it called, Synaptec?, is just as easy, *and* good for discoverability: It's basically a freeware app store, but Linux had it even *before* iOS.

And when you install a GUI app it puts *one* item in the "start menu", not "Company Name -> Program Name -> Tons of Junk including docs and an uninstall link that's right next to the launch link"

Of course, sometimes windows is still easier, too. I get so frustrated when I discover some Posix program through the web and it gives *no* indication how to download or install it because they just assume it's already in everyone's distro repos and that everyone knows what their distro named the package, and that you're installing it *on* the same Posix distro you're already familiar with.

For example, last night I tried to install the cmdline 7z on an OSX machine, and after nearly an hour of completely useless *official* webpages, and screwing around with sources, etc, I gave up.

[1] Of course I know dpkg/rpm are still there under the hood.

> I do like to tweak stuff -- and this is where Windows falls flat for me, 'cos it forces you to work a certain way, and when you go outside of that, things just stop working or it becomes an uphill battle (disclaimer: I haven't touched Windows for over a decade, so this may no longer be true today)

That's actually *more* true now than it was with XP. MS used to be pretty big on preferences, customization, etc (maybe not *AS* much as Linux, but still). But lately they've been very noticeably trying to become Apple/Mozilla, complete with forcing every change on everybody and minimizing how much they'll allow you to revert any of their endless stream of crazy "UI flavor of the month" ideas.

On Monday, 23 September 2013 at 21:21:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:

clip

> Yea, I find installing software is often (not always, but often)
> *easier* on Linux these days, thanks to apt and such. It used to be a
> nightmare of dependency issues in the days of dpkg/rpm[1]. But now,
> most of the time it's just one trivial command. Done. Or if you prefer
> GUIs, the...uhh...what's it called, Synaptec?, is just as easy, *and*
> good for discoverability: It's basically a freeware app store, but
> Linux had it even *before* iOS.
>

Just a short story to reinforce the above point.  In our Grad Lab
at school the girl I sat beside was also the system admin.  One
day I was working and I needed a piece of software that wasn't
installed on my computer. So I asked her if she could install it
when she had the chance.

She said "sure" and asked me for the PC name I was working on so
I to told her, and then I said, "No great rush, but can you let
me know when you have it installed". Without a pause she just
said, "It's already installed".  I typed the command and the
program started.  Total time 6 or 7 seconds.

I was very impressed (the lab computers ran Ubuntu).

Craig

On 9/23/13 5:30 PM, Craig Dillabaugh wrote:
> On Monday, 23 September 2013 at 21:21:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
> wrote:
>
> clip
>
>> Yea, I find installing software is often (not always, but often)
>> *easier* on Linux these days, thanks to apt and such. It used to be a
>> nightmare of dependency issues in the days of dpkg/rpm[1]. But now,
>> most of the time it's just one trivial command. Done. Or if you prefer
>> GUIs, the...uhh...what's it called, Synaptec?, is just as easy, *and*
>> good for discoverability: It's basically a freeware app store, but
>> Linux had it even *before* iOS.
>>
>
> Just a short story to reinforce the above point.  In our Grad Lab
> at school the girl I sat beside was also the system admin.  One
> day I was working and I needed a piece of software that wasn't
> installed on my computer. So I asked her if she could install it
> when she had the chance.
>
> She said "sure" and asked me for the PC name I was working on so
> I to told her, and then I said, "No great rush, but can you let
> me know when you have it installed". Without a pause she just
> said, "It's already installed".  I typed the command and the
> program started.  Total time 6 or 7 seconds.
>
> I was very impressed (the lab computers ran Ubuntu).

Marriage material! :o)

Andrei