Re: Universal sound card?

mike wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
bobbie sellers wrote:
snip


I would not recommend any of the *buntus as a distribution for newbies
because of the "dedicated desktop support" concept.

Lots of people in SF-LUG really like the 'buntus but I never
had good luck with an install.

Shoulda read this first, cause Ubuntu 8.04 is what I was downloading.
Here's what happened:

Decided to install within windows on a laptop. Seemed to be the lowest risk
solution. Stuck in the Cd and clicked install. Sorry, charlie,you
need 256MB of ram...but I HAVE 256 MB of ram. Tried another computer...
same problem. Fortunately, I had another computer and could google for
the answer. Need to use a magic incantation that ignores the memory limit.
Now, this is symptomatic of my experiences with linux. Somebody made
some arbitrary decision and didn't fully consider the impact of that
decision on users. If it REQUIRES 256MB, why won't it install on a system with 256MB of memory and why can I tell it NOT
to require 256MB? My lptop does NOT have shared video ram, but I expect
that many do and that should have been considered. FWIW, I routinely run win2k in 128MB of ram. My preferred course was to install on
a 1GHZ laptop with 128MB of ram. Ram expansion costs many times the
cost of the laptop, so that ain't gonna happen.

Ok, so use the magic incantation and wait almost an hour for Ubuntu to checksum files and load 'em...error, can't read disk, do you want to try again? Well, yes...but Ubuntu's idea of "trying again" is to START OVER.
An hour later, same errror. Burned a new CD. An hour later, same error.
Replaced the CD drive. An hour later, same error.
Copied the cd to the hard drive and tried to install from there.
Windows didn't have any problems reading the cd and copying it.
Sorry, Charlie, can't install from hard drive.

Had it not been for the encouragement in this thread, I'd have
said (expletive deleted)-it and gone out to do something more
fun than pulling out my hair.

More googling.
Gotta copy the .iso file to the hard drive and install.
An hour later, it's installed...well it reboots. Turns out it takes
much longer to actually install. I can't complain about the time
to install, but I sure can complain about the lack of feedback.
Ubuntu gives no clues about what's happening and how long it will take. Something that looks like a progress bar halts for ten minutes at a time, most of that with no disk activity. And when the "progress bar"
gets to the other end, it starts moving backwards. Not a clue as to when it might be done. Agian, developer decisions that significantly
impact the user experience based on (aparently) complete ignorance of
that usere expereince. Haven't linux developers ever heard of alpha testing or focus groups?

About 14 hours into the project, I finally had
linux booted. Horny heron...I thought I was being original with the
chicken-egg thing...

I gotta say, I was impressed. Different user interface
than I'm used to with other linuxes, but after poking around, I got some
of it to work. It recognized my thumb drive. I could play an mp3.
Wireless network wouldn't work and I couldn't figure out how to configure it. I pulled out the card and stuffed in an old Prism 16-bit card. The network came up and I could surf the web. Cool. Good thing
that it came up automatically, cause I couldn't have configured it.

So, after all that fuss and muss, I'm pretty impressed with the improvements in the last year. One nagging problem that hasn't been
fixed is lack of user feedback. Some programs have the linux equivalent
of the windows hourglass to tell you it's busy doing something. But many
actions don't give any feedback at all. I tend to get impatient and click it again. A minute later, several instances pop up. Lack of
feedback is unacceptable for actions that take more than a second or so.
In general, I find linux feels much slower than windows on the same machine.

A related issue is the system not keeping up with typing speed.
You bang on the keys and entry into the text box just stops for seconds
at a time. Even when it doesn't halt, I can often type faster than the text
shows up on the screen. Very disconcerting, 'cause I don't type all
that fast.

I tried installing a different music player. That went without a hitch,
although I thought 40MB of stuff downloaded was excessive for a music player.
I tried installing a basic programming environment. Worked fine until
I tried to run the program. Bunch of stuff missing. So much for
dependency checking.
Haven't tried plugging in a usb webcam.

Bottom line is that the core is getting better. I'm not talking about
performance. I'm talking about ability to get something, anything, running.
But there are a few
implementation decisions made by geeks for geeks that significantly
impede adoption by those of us who are not geeks.

I agree. But the geek to user interface is lacking.

I wrote my first computer program in 1967. I've got advanced engineering degrees. I've managed hardware designs for unix workstations. I don't claim to be an ubergeek, but
I oughta be able to do this.

Yes and you did do it with what I consider a distro requiring
more modern hardware..

Typical reaction from linux users is, "you're an idiot."
That may be, but it's symptomatic of linux. "If you can't
make it work, it's because you're a windows idiot." A more productive
reaction might be to consider that everybody is not a geek and
improve the user experience. Quirks that you "work around" every day
can be show stoppers for the uninitiated. How simple the solution is
not nearly as important as how widely known the solution. Better yet
is NOT to need a solution.

You wouldn't hear that from me about being an idiot because you\
have problems with GNU/Linux. It isn't as easy without long experience
with computers and without being something of a hobbyist at that.


Like it or not, the way Windows works is
the way all computers have to work. You don't get to change that until
AFTER you have significant market share.
mike

And if you pay attention to your hardware and to the distro
choice you will have a computer that works largely as the Windows works
or as the Amiga worked but better than either. I was given the Dell
2400 with only 128 MB installed and quickly jammed another Gigabyte
of memory into it and found a graphic card that would work and I
had the fastest machine I had ever owned. I like lots of memory because
I want to do work with Gimp without shutting down Thunderbird or
Firefox or even OpenOffice Writer, if KWrite won't do the job I need
to have done then.


Ubuntu does not come
with KDE/Qt applications, and Kubuntu does not come with Gnome/GTK
applications. This can be confusing for the newbie, so I would recommend a distribution
that supports both. Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, SuSE, Fedora Core - although I
personally don't like RH/FC/CentOS over their boycot of anything other
than /ext3/ for the filesystem - or Debian. Slackware if you want to get your hands dirty. Gentoo if you want to get
them really, really, really dirty - I'm talking real Gentoo here, not
Sabayon - and LFS if you like crawling through the mud of the battlefield
first and then go basejumping next. :-)

Slackware and Gentoo are beyond my knowlege to assemble. I think it
could be a very educational experience to install these major distros.
I have not had good luck with Debian but have managed to use Knoppix
successfully for various projects. Knoppix is a excellent release
based on Debian and I got my first release of Knoppix from a book
called Knoppix for Dummies which illustrates very well my level of
competence at these games. AmigaDOS never needed a Dummies book
but had AmigaDOS Companion books which helped me learn to do a
lot with a home computer. Wish I could find the same sort of
a book about Linux... The Linux books I have seen are either
as big as phone directories or simplified exposition of
the GUI on one or another release.

And if you can be satisfied with a simpler system look
at the 200 MB Slaxware distro based on Slackware but which
is one of the really handy distros along with Puppy and
Damned Small Linux for older machines.


later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)

--
bobbie sellers -(Back to Angband)Team *AMIGA & SF-LUG*

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.
.

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