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whm1974 wrote:

EndlessWaves wrote:
Nobody's expecting Linux to be at the cutting edge of UI design but it has to at least be in the same ballpark if it wants to be taken seriously as a consumer OS alongside Windows/Android/iOS.

Most desktop environments have now become newbie friendly enough for new users to figure out with a little bit of effort on their part. Yes some reading is still required, but the documentation has gotten better.

I disagree. Most Linux desktops require no reading at all if the person has passing familiarity with using a computer. You can put an average person in front of XFCE, MATE, KDE, and they'll no trouble at all. Unity and Gnome3 would be slightly confusing, but not by a huge amount.

Now if you're talking about configuring/customizing it, that's another story.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:
You can put an average person in front of XFCE, MATE, KDE, and they'll no trouble at all.

Yeah I put a few people before in front of XFCE and it it took them awhile figure out they weren't using Windows...

Now if you're talking about configuring/customizing it, that's another story.

Well yes, but depending on the disto this has getting easier for new users to do and the documentaton is easier to read as well.

I used to have links to documentation [i]intended[/i for new users, but I lost them awhile back. Oh well they would most likely be outdated anyway...

whm1974 wrote:

I used to have links to documentation [i]intended[/i for new users, but I lost them awhile back. Oh well they would most likely be outdated anyway...

I'd even replace "would most likely" with "are guaranteed to" in that statement, unless that documentation was focusing on things like file system organization, CLI, and other low-level UNIX-y things. Which disqualifies them from being "for new users", assuming you're dealing with a vaguely modern distro.

I'm now wondering what problems new users will have with Linux these days. I'm guessing that whatever they consider to be a problem, I will see it as a feature...

whm1974 wrote:

I'm now wondering what problems new users will have with Linux these days. I'm guessing that whatever they consider to be a problem, I will see it as a feature...

You consider wonky Nvidia/AMD GPU and Broadcom WiFi drivers to be a feature...? (Those seem to be the most common Linux issues these days.)

just brew it wrote:
You consider wonky Nvidia/AMD GPU and Broadcom WiFi drivers to be a feature...? (Those seem to be the most common Linux issues these days.)

Well no...

What are some improvements that can be made to Linux itself and the documentation for new users?

whm1974 wrote:

What are some improvements that can be made to Linux itself and the documentation for new users?

Deal with the GPU and Broadcom WiFi driver issues, and we're basically there on OS side IMO. Documentation isn't the issue there.

You've still got the application issues, of course. If someone needs MS Office, SolidWorks, Amazon's Cloud Music Player or Kindle Reader, Adobe Photoshop, etc. then they just aren't a good fit for Linux in the first place. Sure, you can run some of those things in a VM; but at that point you've already gone way past "new user" territory, by definition.

So does anyone has something that we could give to new users that is more up to date?

The Arch wiki is probably the best resource I have found for anything Linux for my own personal Linux tinkering even for other distros. It is probably too in depth for the nontechies though.

I find Youtube a really good source of information to see how different Linux distributions performs today and how they looks like. No matter what distribution you choose, it does have the advantage that all software in it has been tested to work together. It is very rare (for Debian that is) you ever need to go out on the web to look for a specific software to download and install, everything is already there, you simply click and it downloads and installs.

To compare the above with any Windows system, you always needs to download software from the web, and you haveto put your trust in the fact that software has been checked for viruses, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it does not. Also it's common for software to come bundled with other software (take Adobe Reader for example) with additional software which you haveto unclick or in some cases it does not show up at all, and you get some extra software in your system which you've never wanted in the first place.

There's so much I could write about the + and - with both Linux and Windows, that I probably could write a short sized pocket book about it, but the most important thing is what you yourself need. For me I've used Debian since 1999 and it's in my opinion the most well tested distro and you can have a very old Debian system that you actually had for 10+ years in total and just make distro upgrades all the way, without ever replacing the hard disc or computer, that's pretty cool in my opinion. Most distros cannot achieve that, and the famous Ubuntu is a real joke if we're discussing a quality distro, but it's good for newbies as it's been for a very long time, and as a result, it became popular and also have many, many former Windows users which went over.

The choice should always be free no matter what you want or choose, as for what is best, the user decides.

just brew it! wrote:

Amazon's Cloud Music Player

Quick aside - are you talking about the website? That doesn't have cause any trouble for me.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

What are some improvements that can be made to Linux itself and the documentation for new users?

Deal with the GPU and Broadcom WiFi driver issues, and we're basically there on OS side IMO. Documentation isn't the issue there.

You've still got the application issues, of course. If someone needs MS Office, SolidWorks, Amazon's Cloud Music Player or Kindle Reader, Adobe Photoshop, etc. then they just aren't a good fit for Linux in the first place. Sure, you can run some of those things in a VM; but at that point you've already gone way past "new user" territory, by definition.

Am I the only one who finds video drivers to be a huge hurdle for linux? As in, not having the basic "Facebook machine" example be stable with dual monitors and the proprietary driver. Though maybe I should try my test machines (basic Core 2's, IGP on one, nvidia on the other) again and see if anything's changed. Maybe Manjaro as well.

I still can't help but wonder though... with the amount of people buying iPads (and I barely use mine, preferring a laptop, desktop, or phone in nearly all cases), would a linux box with good vendor support, Chrome, Google Docs loaded in there, etc ever be much of an issue? One of these days, I'd really like to see a major vendor throw their weight behind linux, full blast, solve the most nagging issues that make it unfriendly (ex. please do NOT make me use the terminal to install drivers half the time, that's still an issue IMO), advertise that it's not a Win10-style nagger and you're not going to keep changing the UI every version or two (notice how people constantly downgrading is rarely an issue for other companies?), and there you go.

whm1974 wrote:

When I switched to Linux, I think it helped that I used OS/2 and BeOS before, and I READ READ and READ the documentation before I switched.

I used OS/2.

I used Unix at work in the past: AIX, HP|UX, Irix (or whatever SGI's was called).

Currently at work, I telnet into a Linux mainframe to do HPC runs on large datasets all the time, then FTP the results into my work PC (Windows).

But at home? I still use Win 7, because I want to play games, watch pr0n, and stream video with the minimum of hassle.

localhostrulez wrote:

Am I the only one who finds video drivers to be a huge hurdle for linux?

No, it's basically one of the biggest issues and receives tons of attention from news and devs alike.

As in, not having the basic "Facebook machine" example be stable with dual monitors and the proprietary driver. Though maybe I should try my test machines (basic Core 2's, IGP on one, nvidia on the other) again and see if anything's changed. Maybe Manjaro as well.

If you're making a facebook box, maybe use the open source drivers?

I still can't help but wonder though... with the amount of people buying iPads (and I barely use mine, preferring a laptop, desktop, or phone in nearly all cases), would a linux box with good vendor support, Chrome, Google Docs loaded in there, etc ever be much of an issue? One of these days, I'd really like to see a major vendor throw their weight behind linux, full blast, solve the most nagging issues that make it unfriendly (ex. please do NOT make me use the terminal to install drivers half the time, that's still an issue IMO), advertise that it's not a Win10-style nagger and you're not going to keep changing the UI every version or two (notice how people constantly downgrading is rarely an issue for other companies?), and there you go.

Isn't this what Chromebooks essentially are?

Thing is, at least with the geforce 310 I was using (mind you, it's rock solid in XP/7/8.1/10), none of the drivers I tried, on any linux OS, seemed particularly stable. The 4500MHD just freaking worked though, out of the box.

As for Chromebooks... Eh, sorta, but even the average Joe might benefit from the versatility of a linux (Mint?) box over a Chromebook. I'm talking about a full on desktop replacement that's good enough for a lot of people, so that Windows can hopefully be dethroned a bit.

localhostrulez wrote:

s in, not having the basic "Facebook machine" example be stable with dual monitors and the proprietary driver.

I'm typing this on a dual monitor linux machine right now, XFCE and a 7850 I got because the fan died. Nothing proprietary. I haven't had any issues with it, and it does end up getting used for facebook rather heavily.

Then again, there was a severe issue with dual monitors in XFCE until the version I'm on now (4.12), so yeah, it's still not perfect at times I guess.

But it seems to work for me right now anyway.

As I recall, the built in driver (nvidia anyway) didn't have full hardware acceleration. And for things like vmware workstation, that makes a difference. I should also mention that I was running dual monitors - though those worked out of the box (as much as the driver worked at all, that is).

I did actually try hackintoshing the desktop with the 310/E8400 (figured it'd be funny if OS X handled the video card fine, but linux distros didn't). But alas, it didn't like the lack of UEFI on that machine, and I gave up for the time being.

My major points of confusion with Linux were the partition layout (How can I create a "drive"?) and once I wanted a non-admin user to be able to access a USB drive, and it wouldn't let me without doing sudo stuff.

So yeah, never really used it much.

localhostrulez wrote:

Am I the only one who finds video drivers to be a huge hurdle for linux? As in, not having the basic "Facebook machine" example be stable with dual monitors and the proprietary driver.

I ran dual monitors on Linux on my home desktop for a while, and triple head at work. For various reasons (not driver related) I'm back to single head on both, but I've gotten it to work reasonably well in the past.

That said, yes Linux video drivers can be a royal PITA. GPU drivers are the biggest problem area when it comes to hardware support.

Ninjitsu wrote:

My major points of confusion with Linux were the partition layout (How can I create a "drive"?) and once I wanted a non-admin user to be able to access a USB drive, and it wouldn't let me without doing sudo stuff.

Both of those issues are a thing of the past, provided you're running a modern desktop. For partitioning, gparted is your friend. Nice, reasonably intuitive, GUI-based UI. USB drives "just work" -- plug them in, they show up in the file manager. You can still do things the old-fashioned CLI way if you want, but you don't *need* to.

localhostrulez wrote:

As I recall, the built in driver (nvidia anyway) didn't have full hardware acceleration. And for things like vmware workstation, that makes a difference. I should also mention that I was running dual monitors - though those worked out of the box (as much as the driver worked at all, that is).

This is something beyond just making a Facebook machine. And yeah, there is some distance to go. I suspect in 6-9 months, AMD gets their open source driver into shape, and then with Intel and AMD things will be pretty good (Intel should be pretty good now).

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

This is something beyond just making a Facebook machine. And yeah, there is some distance to go. I suspect in 6-9 months, AMD gets their open source driver into shape, and then with Intel and AMD things will be pretty good (Intel should be pretty good now).

Yes, Intel's Linux drivers generally "just work". Which is more than can be said for either nVidia or AMD.

BobbinThreadbare wrote:

localhostrulez wrote:

As I recall, the built in driver (nvidia anyway) didn't have full hardware acceleration. And for things like vmware workstation, that makes a difference. I should also mention that I was running dual monitors - though those worked out of the box (as much as the driver worked at all, that is).

This is something beyond just making a Facebook machine. And yeah, there is some distance to go. I suspect in 6-9 months, AMD gets their open source driver into shape, and then with Intel and AMD things will be pretty good (Intel should be pretty good now).

Yeah, fair enough (and installing VMware on Linux was a PITA of its own - mind telling me about undocumented prereqs rather than silently failing?). But the point is, the stock drivers didn't really have proper acceleration enabled. It just so happens that VMware cares more about this than other things.

localhostrulez wrote:

Yeah, fair enough (and installing VMware on Linux was a PITA of its own - mind telling me about undocumented prereqs rather than silently failing?).

Could be worse. VirtualBox's pre-built package for Ubuntu LTS (in a cooperative f**kup with apt) *tries* to be helpful by installing the prereqs it thinks you need, but gets it wrong and hoses your X stack. (I believe this only applies to the package from Oracle; if you install from the Ubuntu repo you should be OK but you'll be stuck with an older version.)

Since everyone above me is talking about dependencies, package managers, and the goof ups that sometimes happen. I was digging through my old posts when I discovered this old thread: Linux=PAIN still a nice reminder of some helpful changes to Linux that have taken place since.

just brew it! wrote:

Both of those issues are a thing of the past, provided you're running a modern desktop. For partitioning, gparted is your friend. Nice, reasonably intuitive, GUI-based UI. USB drives "just work" -- plug them in, they show up in the file manager. You can still do things the old-fashioned CLI way if you want, but you don't *need* to.

I was about 3 years ago.

And I meant, questions like "what's the swap partition? Why can't I just set pagefile like I do in Windows? How much swap is needed? What's my home directory? Is it similar to C: or to my documents?" used to crop up during installation.

And the USB drives would show up, but if I wasn't a superuser then it wouldn't let me access the USB drive without entering the admin/sudo password. If that's changed now, then that's cool I guess - but experiences like these are discouraging when you want something to just work - unless of course you go out of your way to tinker with the OS.

the article wrote:

Problem #5: The myth of "user-friendly"

lol what's the author talking about? Linux is super-user friendly

Ninjitsu wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Both of those issues are a thing of the past, provided you're running a modern desktop. For partitioning, gparted is your friend. Nice, reasonably intuitive, GUI-based UI. USB drives "just work" -- plug them in, they show up in the file manager. You can still do things the old-fashioned CLI way if you want, but you don't *need* to.

I was about 3 years ago.

And I meant, questions like "what's the swap partition? Why can't I just set pagefile like I do in Windows? How much swap is needed? What's my home directory? Is it similar to C: or to my documents?" used to crop up during installation.

Ahh, OK. Well, with distros like Ubuntu (and its derivatives) you can generally just take the defaults on everything (choose the automatic partitioning option, assuming you're not trying to do something crazy like dual-boot or RAID-boot) and you'll generally be fine. Unless you're drastically short on RAM the default swap partition size chosen by the installer should be adequate as well.

Ninjitsu wrote:

And the USB drives would show up, but if I wasn't a superuser then it wouldn't let me access the USB drive without entering the admin/sudo password. If that's changed now, then that's cool I guess - but experiences like these are discouraging when you want something to just work - unless of course you go out of your way to tinker with the OS.

What distro and desktop was this? This sort of behavior hasn't been the norm on mainstream distros/DEs for at least a half decade.

When is the last time you checked out Linux Ninjitsu? Modern Ditstros and Environments have few or none of the problems you are describing and haven't for a while now.