Re: Linux, The Great Time Waster!!

From: Saint Vincent (numonic_at_landstat.gov)
Date: 03/26/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 15:43:30 -0500

Actually ***,
it works really great. It's very intuitive. Possibly you need more time on
computers in general. Does the name *** Trouser have anything in common
with "Trouser Trout"??
"Dick Trouser" <dick_trouser@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1111867183.918208.158250@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Does ANYTHING actually work with Linux other than basic web browsing
> and email? I made the mistake of wasting the last 4 days trying to make
> Suse 9.2 at least as functional as my Windows system and so far it has
> been a losing proposition. The first problem was that 4 of my hardisks
> were not recognized by the install program. They are installed on the
> built in RAID controller, but are not running as RAID, just as normal
> IDE drives. Windows sees them as such and they work fine. I do some
> research and discover that this Asus board has a VIA6410 controller
> that Linux with kernel 2.6 is supposed to support but I see no way to
> make it work. I do even more research and see on the kernel mailing
> list that I must compile the kernel and turn on something called
> "config_scsi_sata_via" even though these are not SAT drives. So now
> what the hell is a kernel compile? Well I find information on that and
> it doesn't look too hard except that I have to install a ton of
> packages to make it work and I install/try/install some more missing
> ones/try again and still I can't compile because I am always missing
> one package or another.
> Finally I scratch the install and re-install, this time checking the
> install everything box. Ok so now dutifully following the kernel
> compile how-to I do a make menuconfig and start searching for these
> options.
> I find nothing, and I can't find any other information on this.
> Wow, I though Linux was well documented. It might be documented but
> much of it is outdated, obtuse and just plain wrong and inaccurate.
> IOW there seem to be a lot of people asking questions but so very few
> answers.
>
> So I move on, who needs 4 200 gig drives anyway since I have 2 more on
> the standard IDE controllers and they work.
>
> Now I try and get my Nvidia MX4000 PCI card to work. I use Yast to
> install the Nvidia package and it hoses the whole system leaving me
> with some vesa driver that makes the screen really small and almost
> unviewable. I use another computer to search this problem out and
> finally figure out how to manually install the software and change the
> xorg.conf file by hand. So now this works, or at least I see an Nvidea
> aplsash screen.
>
> Moving on to playing some videos I soon discover that the
> xine/mplayer/kaffeine program included with Suse is somehow brain
> damaged and won't play anything.
> More research and I find some cumbuca site that seems to have what I
> need. I install these 20 packages or so and now video plays but the
> sound skips.
> I discover by yet more searching that artsd is not what I should be
> using so I switch it to alsa and turn off artsd which took a couple of
> hours to figure out. So now this works.
>
> Now I try and use my iPod MINI which is supposed to work with gtkpod.
> No luck again, this is starting to become a PITA at this point.
>
> I'm on the web again but I notice firefox seems sluggish on some sites
> and I stumble on directions to turn off ipv6 in suse and that fixes
> that problem.
> Oh yea my CDROM skips as well so I figured out how to turn on DMA along
> with all the rest of the things I am figuring out.
> Back to the ipod MINI. I find a place that says I have to disable
> config_efi_partition in the kernel because it is causing the ipod MINI
> to report incorrect sector size.
> Ok so back to make menuconfig and this time I find the entry, disable
> it and do a compile and modules install per the documentation.
> I see the warning to run /sbin/lilo prior to rebooting and I do it.
> I reboot the system and it reboots but when the gui starts up I am left
> with that miserable VESA driver and I can barely see the screen.
>
> I try installing the nvidia driver again but this time it won't take
> and gives me all kinds of errors, dumps me at a command prompt and
> that's the end of it.
>
> At this point I have HAD IT UP TO MY EARS with Linux.
> This operating system just plain sucks beyond belief.
> How in hell is an average person going to figure out all the things I
> had to go through?
> And more importantly, WHY should they have to.
> Windows XP worked perfectly with everything listed above and at worst I
> had to put the CD that came with the hardware in the drive and that was
> it.
>
> Linux is a great time waster but in todays world time is precious and
> is certainly not free.
> Is Linux really free?
> I don't think so, at least not when time has a dollar value.
>
> For those that like to tinker, Linux might be great.
>
> For me?
> I'd rather be running applications then trying to un-hose this mess
> called Linux.
>
> ***
>
> P.S. Please don't tell me how this is all fixed in the:
> 1. Next release of Suse.
> 2. Another distribution
> 3. Gentoo
>
> I've been hearing the same dribble for years and nothing has changed.
> Linux still sucks.
>

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