Re: Close to giving up on Linux...
- From: The Natural Philosopher <a@xxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:26:32 +0000
adamomitcheney@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Apologies in advance for the ranty nature of this.Nobody says you have to go Linuix. Well lots of people sayyou do,.
Well, I've almost had enough. I really wanted to replace my crappy
windoze system with a shiny new Linux distro, but after nearly three
days of working on it I have bugger all to show.
I've tried Mandriva, Ubuntu and OpenSuse...
Ubuntu:
CD-based Linux seems to work OK (although lower res than I'm used to).
Installation appears to be proceeding fine until it comes to reboot
time - straight back into windows, no grub (or lilo or whatever it uses
as a boot manager) and not even a CD I can use to point the machine to
the linux loader. I posted something about this earlier and maybe if I
get a response to that query I can go on.
Mandriva:
Despite checking the md5 checksums on the ISO images, loads (and I mean
dozens, if not hundreds) of packages report errors. The graphics test
just gives me a blank screen and mouse pointer and has to be
interrupted with a ctrl-alt-backspace. The ethernet appears not to
work. Rebooting (with the CDROM disk 1 - without it I go straight to
windoze as above) gives me a "GRUB: Read error" message and nothing
else.
Suse:
Actually seems to install although the process is long and annoyingly
interactive (do we *really* need an "OK/Cancel" dialogue *every* time
it tries to detect some piece of hardware?). Disables my ethernet and
no amount of prodding will enable it - in fact, it disables it for
windoze on the next reboot too. Assumes my display 0 is the right-hand
one and no amount of prodding will change that. Awful menus, but I know
I can change that. Rebooting will only work if via the CDROM (then
"Boot from local disk" or whatever the option is).
In summary, despite being something of a Linux advocate, I'm thinking
of going back to Windows. I'm not an expert, but I'm not completely
clueless when it comes to OSs - I shudder when I think how some of the
less-computer-literate people I know would cope. I had really high
hopes - it's been a few years since I played with Linux (Suse Linux
8.2) and I really hoped it had moved on - all that has happened is that
it looks better. It's not like my hardware is even cutting edge.
Linux has an amazing opportunity, as we move to 64-bit, to challenge
M$'s hegemony. Based on my experience, it hasn't a hope in hell.
You will, with linux, exchange one set of problems (appalling instability, memory leaks, virus proneness, inability to fix except by reinstallation) for another set..poor documentation, lack of instant plug'n'play and lack of 3rd party commercial applications of a niche nature.
The good news is that once its working, it stays working, and everything can be fixed and made just the way you want it if you spend the time and effort.
sadly this NG is piss poor place to get advice.
It took me about 4 hard days to get what I wanted going, and I am fairly familiar with Unix and older linux systems.
The result is totally worth it tho. Rock solid headless server, running Mysql, apache. squid. Netatalk and samba.. JUST want I wanted. Now my wife doesn't have to send me apple mac data via e-mail :-)
.
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