Constructive suggestions?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| montezuma Feb 25, 2008 7:27 AM EDT |
I agree with much of this blog however the rather patronizing tone is irritating. We all know that linux is hardware sensitive and in addition often has less support than windows since any hardware makers first priority is to ensure that the dominant OS plays well. Without this the product is dead in the water. Linux support is always an add on to vendors or hard work from hackers. Linux advocates do not generally proclaim fool proof installation as far as I know although the situation is far better than just two years ago. So we come back to the original point. How would the blog author improve on Linux PR given this situation which is hardly the fault of linux distros? One suggestion: If you are a newbie buy it preinstalled (Dell, System 76 etc etc). If you want to get your old piece of hardware working with linux then learn it first using easier options. And for god sakes stop with the condescending tone which means you had a bad weekend with your hardware and linux. |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 25, 2008 8:41 AM EDT |
Quoting: We all know that linux is hardware sensitive and in addition often has less support than windows since any hardware makers first priority is to ensure that the dominant OS plays well. Save for some wireless woes, the fact is that Linux runs on more hardware than any other operating system. "Hardware sensitive" is poor Windows XP not recognizing SATA drives and failing to find a hard drive to install on (my service manager is going through this right now...kinda funny, actually). |
| Abe Feb 25, 2008 8:54 AM EDT |
Quoting:I agree with much of this blog however the rather patronizing tone is irritating. I 2nd agree. Since one distro (Mandriva in this case) worked fine, that is a solid indication that FOSS/Linux can handle most hardware nicely. Therefore, The blame shouldn't go to FOSS/Linux. There are more than 300 different distros out there and most of them are built by amateurs that don't have the resources to cover the vastness of all old and new hardware available. We can't blame every distro either, although the distros like *Ubuntu and Novell could be held responsible for not producing a good thorough quality product for old hardware. OTOH, the questions becomes, is it really worth the effort for commercial distros to support very old hardware? I don't believe so, especially when there is no market for it, and after all, they are in business to make money. On top of all of that, hardware vendors bear the responsibility of furnishing hardware support for their products in the first place. It is time for those bloggers and reports to stop the senseless complains that is leaving the wrong impression that Linux has a general problem of supporting hardware. Instead, it would make a lot more sense and beneficial for them to concentrate on what new hardware has no support under Linux. May be they could influence those vendors to better support their hardware under Linux. |
| jdixon Feb 25, 2008 8:57 AM EDT |
> ...poor Windows XP not recognizing SATA drives... I thought XP did SATA drives. I know 2000 doesn't though. Hmm, time for some research later today.... |
| r_a_trip Feb 25, 2008 9:41 AM EDT |
Joe or Jane Public again? Since when do they do their own OS installs? Incidentally, I was in a computer shop today and some poor sap was talking to the guy behind the counter. Windows was borked and needed fixing. It would cost him EUR 15.00 examination fee, then it would be another EUR 15.00 for a backup. If Windows was borked he would have to pay EUR 45.00 for a reinstall. The examination fee would be dropped in that case though. Still the guy was looking at a price tag of EUR 60.00 just to get Windows up and running again and it would take three days before he could get his computer back. Joe and Jane don't do reinstalls, they don't do alternative OS installs and they are terrified that Windows breaks. Hardware sensitivity in GNU/Linux isn't even on their radar. GNU/Linux needs preloading to become a sizable player on the consumer market. |
| tuxtom Feb 25, 2008 9:47 AM EDT |
@r_a_trip: That is such a bargain that you could start a profitable international mail order repair business. Seriously, he is getting out the door for what a lot of people charge in the USA for the initial diagnostics. |
| hughesjr Feb 25, 2008 9:56 AM EDT |
@abe >
Quoting:There are more than 300 different distros out there and most of them are built by amateurs that don't have the resources to cover the vastness of all old and new hardware available. But in this case, we are dealing with OpenSUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu and Mepis. The only one of those that I MIGHT consider built by an amateur is Mepis, and that is built on a Debian kernel ... so I would not even think that would have a problem. A pentium III 1GHz is plenty new enough to work properly. More than likely, the problem with was burning of CDs / DVDs ... |
| menpro Feb 25, 2008 11:18 AM EDT |
Actually, the problem here was not the age of the hardware, the age or quality of the distros, or the integrity of the CDs/DVDs used. It was a dirty DVD-ROM unit. That's all it took to stymie a number of very excellent, very recent distros. It was surprising and disappointing. To those who felt like my tone was negative, I apologize. This story was not a vent about a 'bad weekend'. It's a recognition that despite the strides of Linux, many people will automatically assume fault with the software, and not their hardware. If you've read my other stuff, you know I love Linux, but I'm not always going to glow about it. For those who think that Joe & Jane Public are a myth: ask Mark Shuttleworth how many CDs he's mailed out. :) I'm still pleasantly surprised to see how many ordinary journalists write about Ubuntu in the print media. It's snowballing. I just hope that all the recipients of those Live CDs have clean, functional systems. All it takes is one instance of Ubuntu aborting out to BusyBox for a curious person to assume the Linux is still not a quality product, and spread the word. As for constructive advice, I'm not sure. That's why I asked the question: Is Windows/Mandriva's success in this case due to fault-tolerance or insensitivity to hardware? I'd like to think the former is true, at least where Mandriva is concerned. But most of the Linux-curious just won't care. They just want something that works, regardless of whether it is through error handling or by sloppy coding. |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 25, 2008 11:53 AM EDT |
Quoting: I thought XP did SATA drives. Depends on the Sp level of XP (this is 2...go figure) and the mobo, etc. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's a pain. Today, it's been a pain for the boss...and a source of constant amusement for the rest of the office. |
| tracyanne Feb 25, 2008 12:00 PM EDT |
@menpro I've been installing Mandriva (and Mandrake when it was) on all sorts of hardware since 2000 with hardly a problem, I can't say that of any other distro I've tried (including Ubuntu or maybe especially Ubuntu). In fact it was because Mandrake installed on my hardware back in 2000, and worked perfectly, and Red Hat and Lycoris and SuSE wouldn't, that I became a convert to Linux and a Mandrake/Mandriva zealot. |
| montezuma Feb 25, 2008 12:26 PM EDT |
tracyanne, I think these things vary from machine to machine and distro to distro. I swapped to Ubuntu from Mandrake in 2004 because of several horrific run ins with hardware and buggy software. Ubuntu since then has bombed a few times for me but I stuck to it because of debs and other reasons. I have tried since 2004 Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware, unadulterated Debian (as opposed to Ubu), Suse, Mandriva, Mepis and PcLinuxOS. ALL have bombed on one piece of hardware or another. In the last year or so Ubuntu only bombs very occasionally now and I bet other distros are similar. |
| Abe Feb 25, 2008 1:38 PM EDT |
Quoting:Actually, the problem here was not the age of the hardware, the age or quality of the distros, or the integrity of the CDs/DVDs used. It was a dirty DVD-ROM unit....I would expect that you don't declare FOSS/Linux to be at fault until after you make sure it wasn't the hardware especially when the hardware being used is old and let alone hacked. I have been running Linux on 2001 hardware (1GHz, 256MB, old Graphics, etc...). I had instances where I had no problem testing one distro but had problems with other. There are differences in the quality of hardware support among distros, no doubt about it. My point was generic. With fast advancements in hardware, we shouldn't expect distros to keep supporting every old hardware any more. There is no practical way to keep up with that. |
| hkwint Feb 25, 2008 2:39 PM EDT |
Quoting:I have tried since 2004 Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware, unadulterated Debian (as opposed to Ubu), Suse, Mandriva, Mepis and PcLinuxOS. However, with the 'rather' complex inits using initrd's and the graphical fb-boot of at least Ubuntu, Mepis and probably PCLOS and Mandriva too it's difficult to find out why it halted, while with at least Gentoo, but probably Slack and Debian too, one can figure out (more easily) where it went wrong and why. I don't know if some distributions have better error handling during boot than others, but I do know some distro's are easier to perform 'manual error handling' with than with the others. I especially have some bet experiences with Ubuntu and MEPIS to a lesser degree ('locking' at the X-screen; not possible to get a tty). |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 25, 2008 2:43 PM EDT |
With 300+ distros out there, somebody will take care of old hardware. CentOS keeps the old RHEL products going for those of us who don't want to pay. Even RHEL/CentOS 2 is still available. Slackware keeps supporting older versions, too. I've seen patches recently for Slack 8. Damn Small Linux, especially, is great about supporting older hardware. You can still run Debian Sarge at this point, and Etch should be around for another couple of years. Part of the fun with old hardware is figuring out how to keep it going. NetBSD can also be a good choice for older hardware -- not just i386, but PPC and 68k systems, too. I'm running a 1999 laptop on Etch right now. It also does well with current versions of Puppy and DSL, and it was great with Slackware 12, too. To sum up, if you don't try to do everything that today's hardware can do, older hardware is very well-supported in Linux and BSD. My 1999 laptop can run OpenOffice in 64 MB. That doesn't mean it's a pleasant experience, but I have AbiWord and Ted ... and a host of text editors. And if you're OK without X, you open the door to many, many older PCs doing just fine with today's Linux or BSD OSes. As long as you don't say, "It's got to be this revision of this distro," I know just about every machine made in the last 15 years can be made to work with some form of Linux. Just keep your expectations reasonable and be willing to do a lot of experimenting until you find what works. |
| jdixon Feb 25, 2008 3:26 PM EDT |
> Depends on the Sp level of XP (this is 2...go figure) Must be a newer, unsupported chipset on the motherboard. Oh, well. Offer to put Linux on it and run XP in a virtual machine for him. :) |
| tuxchick Feb 25, 2008 6:45 PM EDT |
I know I'm being a party-pooper- but blaming Linuxes for not being able to install from a filthy DVD drive is dumb. Windows is very tolerant of hardware errors, and the result is an endless cycle of mysterious post-installation errors that plague users until they fling the darned thing off a cliff. I'm puzzled why anyone would think an operating system that can install successfully on bad hardware is a good thing- a dirty DVD drive is going to make a lot of read errors. Just what you want, masses of read errors at installation! Saves you the bother of introducing them later, I guess. |
| Steven_Rosenber Feb 25, 2008 6:49 PM EDT |
Nothing's going to work with every piece of hardware. Just find what works for the hardware it's running on, then repeat for each computer you have. It's not one-release-fits-all. |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 25, 2008 6:52 PM EDT |
jdixon, I told him several times that I would install Linux for him. Our salesman recently installed Ubuntu in a dual-boot scenario on an old PC at his house, and he offered to install that. (BTW, our sales guy installing Ubuntu, even if only to dump it in a week or two, is a MAJOR accomplishment). |
| jdixon Feb 25, 2008 7:23 PM EDT |
> I told him several times that I would install Linux for him. Does he understand the advantages of running XP in a virtual machine (easy backup and restore, ease of moving to another machine, etc.) and that Linux is effectively virus free? I'd think those, combined with is current installation problems, would make him at least consider it. |
| gus3 Feb 25, 2008 10:25 PM EDT |
Quoting:Just find what works for the hardware it's running on, then repeat for each computer you have. It's not one-release-fits-all.My old boss and I collided on this one. He claimed what you said there, but I took issue with it: "First, decide what it is you want to do. Then, decide what OS/platform will do that. Then, find the hardware supported by that platform." In other words, if you want to build an OpenBSD-based firewall, you don't go out and buy the latest SCSI adapter card just because it's new and shiny! Maybe it has Vista support, but what good does that do you when the manufacturer hasn't released the hardware specs to the OpenBSD devs? |
| rijelkentaurus Feb 26, 2008 3:27 AM EDT |
Quoting: Does he understand the advantages of running XP in a virtual machine Yes, but perhaps I will hammer that point home a little more....... |
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