Linus himself trashes Gnome 3. The comments are originally from Google+ according to the article.
I for one ditched Fedora/Gnome and went back to Ubuntu where I'm fighting with Unity. Unity would have pissed me off if not for encountering Gnome 3 first. Reading this makes me feel better about my previous rant about Gnome 3 and it's epic failure.
I hate being right.
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Friday, August 5, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Fedora 15 - Gnome 3
These are the comments that I posted elsewhere and thought they were worth keeping.
http://ostatic.com/blog/fedora-15-released-gnome-3-looks-good
(not me)
1) Stop trying to hide all of the configuration options. How can I change my system fonts? Have to hack it. 2) Then you hide the important stuff - like how to restart the fucking system - put that in the menu option when I click my user name - why should i have to hold down the ALT key to make Suspend go to Poweroff? or logout in order to restart? 3) No real screensaver - really? Who's the dipshit that thought of that? 4) Minimize - the old minimize missing button war - i've read all of the reason behind it, but if i can still right click on the window bar and minimize the window, all of those reasons are bullshit. Put the fuckin' minimize button back on the window. 5) Accessing workspaces requires me to move my mouse to the upper left hand corner hotspot to get the desktop overview display and then all the way back to the right to select my workspace. Again, who's the dipshit that though of that? Why not create a hotspot in the upper right hand corner that brings up the workspaces? This is not that hard folks. Is anyone who works on Gnome 3 actually using Gnome 3?
It is not complete horrible, but it is not good either. There are definitely some complete morons working on this project from an overall design and usability perspective.
(me)
I agree with Enzo. Trying to turn my machine off was confusing and so i got pissed and found a terminal window. It has been off for 2 days now while i decide if i want to deal with this again. I came over to Linux so that I could customize and change things. Gnome 3 is very reluctant to let me do that.
Wasn't aware of Enzo's observation about the (lack of) screensaver and use of the Alt key.
I am a new Mac owner and I have to tell you this is not what i was looking for in my Linux desktop. I see a lot of potential in Gnome 3 but right now it's utter crap. Why would you release a version of software with so many glaring usability flaws? It feels like they were trying to push this release out the door the way Mozilla crew is pushing out FireFox and Thunderbird quicker just to inflate their release numbers.
-------
Now that I've had 24 hours to reflect on things and play with Gnome some more, I still feel the same way. One of the old jokes about Linux is "fixing stuff is part of the fun of using it." Bull shit. That mindset went out the window five years ago when they got the brilliant idea to believe it could be a threat to the desktop world. If people want to make an interface that kicks ass then they should spend the time to make it instead of churning out a half finished product and expecting everyone to put in a lot of work to finish it. If they have a vision as to what they're trying to build then to hell with the release dates and version numbers... finish the damn product!
The other argument I've heard for years is that since it's open source it's OK that things aren't working perfectly. You should expect it to be a bit buggy and you get what you pay for. Sorry but that's a cop out. Most people involved in these projects do this for a living where their code is held to a standard. Dare I say, experienced coders would bring a level of professionalism. I'm sure most are genuinely upset that people like me are unhappy with their product but then the entire team should not only take pride in their accomplishments but also feel ashamed of their short comings.
For what it's worth, I finally figured out how to change the background on my desktop but no chance at changing the theme colors or even a screensaver. Took me 30 min to figure out where Firefox went when minimized it and wasn't too happy to find all 15 of my instances when i did figure it out.
Gnome 3 is failing for me right now...
http://ostatic.com/blog/fedora-15-released-gnome-3-looks-good
(not me)
by Enzo on May. 25, 2011
Looks good, works bad. I'm trying to give Gnome 3 a fair chance and have been using it for awhile now on a daily basis, but a few things still bug the shit out of me and plenty of other people as well.1) Stop trying to hide all of the configuration options. How can I change my system fonts? Have to hack it. 2) Then you hide the important stuff - like how to restart the fucking system - put that in the menu option when I click my user name - why should i have to hold down the ALT key to make Suspend go to Poweroff? or logout in order to restart? 3) No real screensaver - really? Who's the dipshit that thought of that? 4) Minimize - the old minimize missing button war - i've read all of the reason behind it, but if i can still right click on the window bar and minimize the window, all of those reasons are bullshit. Put the fuckin' minimize button back on the window. 5) Accessing workspaces requires me to move my mouse to the upper left hand corner hotspot to get the desktop overview display and then all the way back to the right to select my workspace. Again, who's the dipshit that though of that? Why not create a hotspot in the upper right hand corner that brings up the workspaces? This is not that hard folks. Is anyone who works on Gnome 3 actually using Gnome 3?
It is not complete horrible, but it is not good either. There are definitely some complete morons working on this project from an overall design and usability perspective.
(me)
I agree with Enzo. Trying to turn my machine off was confusing and so i got pissed and found a terminal window. It has been off for 2 days now while i decide if i want to deal with this again. I came over to Linux so that I could customize and change things. Gnome 3 is very reluctant to let me do that.
Wasn't aware of Enzo's observation about the (lack of) screensaver and use of the Alt key.
I am a new Mac owner and I have to tell you this is not what i was looking for in my Linux desktop. I see a lot of potential in Gnome 3 but right now it's utter crap. Why would you release a version of software with so many glaring usability flaws? It feels like they were trying to push this release out the door the way Mozilla crew is pushing out FireFox and Thunderbird quicker just to inflate their release numbers.
-------
Now that I've had 24 hours to reflect on things and play with Gnome some more, I still feel the same way. One of the old jokes about Linux is "fixing stuff is part of the fun of using it." Bull shit. That mindset went out the window five years ago when they got the brilliant idea to believe it could be a threat to the desktop world. If people want to make an interface that kicks ass then they should spend the time to make it instead of churning out a half finished product and expecting everyone to put in a lot of work to finish it. If they have a vision as to what they're trying to build then to hell with the release dates and version numbers... finish the damn product!
The other argument I've heard for years is that since it's open source it's OK that things aren't working perfectly. You should expect it to be a bit buggy and you get what you pay for. Sorry but that's a cop out. Most people involved in these projects do this for a living where their code is held to a standard. Dare I say, experienced coders would bring a level of professionalism. I'm sure most are genuinely upset that people like me are unhappy with their product but then the entire team should not only take pride in their accomplishments but also feel ashamed of their short comings.
For what it's worth, I finally figured out how to change the background on my desktop but no chance at changing the theme colors or even a screensaver. Took me 30 min to figure out where Firefox went when minimized it and wasn't too happy to find all 15 of my instances when i did figure it out.
Gnome 3 is failing for me right now...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Fedora 15 Install Progress
I installed Fedora 15 the other day. Initially it looked like a good product. The install went pretty smooth. I have /home on a separate disk so had to specify my mount points of / (root) and /home which was to be expected. Installer made me format / as ext4 whereas it had been ext3 in the past. No big deal for me. Since /home/username already existed and i chose there was a little confusion for the installer. It apparently had to change permissions on the directory. Finished install and ran updates.
Welcome to Gnome 3!
Yeah. Not a fan of it out of the box. It looks pretty. I installed a few programs and they were able to sync up with the preexisting user data in /home/username. Despite the different look and feel of Gnome things were starting to work again so I thought I'd give it a shot and try to get with the times.
Right now I'm hung up on trying to update the Nvidia drivers which seem to be a bigger pain than they need to be. I tried:
Another issue I'm running into is when i open up terminal and pwd, I'm not in /home/username where i should be. I have a hunch this is the ghost of my old profile and planning on testing this by creating a different user to see if this holds true. If so, then I'll back up important files and blast the old user and then recreate. Sounds simple enough which is why I'm sure something will go wrong!
Meantime I'm starting to read up on Gnome 3 some more. I couldn't save anything to my desktop which I tend to do a lot. Not sure if this is considered normal or not. Also had issues copying stuff from a flash drive to /home/username. It was very awkward and not intuitive.
Game plan is to take another crack at a couple of my issues one of these evenings. Then reinstall and take better notes as I go along.
I'm conflicted right now. I wanted to like what I saw. I knew things would be broken out of the box like with every other Linux distro. Right now I have a sinking feeling in my stomach because of what I've experienced with it. For all of the prettiness that I saw I'm not not as impressed. KDE is quickly becoming an option and I'm even considering going in a different direction and use Kubuntu. I want to like this creation of mine but I have a feeling that in order to save it I might be forced to destroy it.
This situation is going to take some consideration.
Welcome to Gnome 3!
Yeah. Not a fan of it out of the box. It looks pretty. I installed a few programs and they were able to sync up with the preexisting user data in /home/username. Despite the different look and feel of Gnome things were starting to work again so I thought I'd give it a shot and try to get with the times.
Right now I'm hung up on trying to update the Nvidia drivers which seem to be a bigger pain than they need to be. I tried:
- /etc/init.d/gdm stop
- killall x
- init 3
Another issue I'm running into is when i open up terminal and pwd, I'm not in /home/username where i should be. I have a hunch this is the ghost of my old profile and planning on testing this by creating a different user to see if this holds true. If so, then I'll back up important files and blast the old user and then recreate. Sounds simple enough which is why I'm sure something will go wrong!
Meantime I'm starting to read up on Gnome 3 some more. I couldn't save anything to my desktop which I tend to do a lot. Not sure if this is considered normal or not. Also had issues copying stuff from a flash drive to /home/username. It was very awkward and not intuitive.
Game plan is to take another crack at a couple of my issues one of these evenings. Then reinstall and take better notes as I go along.
I'm conflicted right now. I wanted to like what I saw. I knew things would be broken out of the box like with every other Linux distro. Right now I have a sinking feeling in my stomach because of what I've experienced with it. For all of the prettiness that I saw I'm not not as impressed. KDE is quickly becoming an option and I'm even considering going in a different direction and use Kubuntu. I want to like this creation of mine but I have a feeling that in order to save it I might be forced to destroy it.
This situation is going to take some consideration.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Comments on "Is there life after Windows?"
Courtesy of Independent.co.UK
I am now a Linux user. Not only am i a user but I'm also using the same distro mentioned in this article. Yes my version is 8.04 vs 8.10 but there isn't all THAT much difference between them.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the feedback comments at the bottom really make it complete. That fact that they bothered to identify what most average users use their computer for (browsing, IM, Office, and music) was a relief. For years i have argued that most of the garbage on a standard PC isn't needed by home users. At best, they need a thin client and they'd never notice the difference. Finally an article has addressed what i've felt has been obvious for a long time. One of the reasons for making the switch for myself was specifically because the bulk of what i do daily can be done on any platform.
When reading the feedback of the 4 testers I found myself having flashbacks. Every lesson learned over the years of dabbling came flooding back to me in an instant as i read the words of the reviewers.
My first reaction to this was that none of the 4 testers had the same problem. As maddening as this can be, i think it's a sign that things have really come a long way. Everyone views their computer in a different way. For some people it's a media center where they have their music collection that gets them through the day. Some people base it's performance solely on how Office behaves. Others use it excusively for browsing and checking sports scores. This is what it comes down to. Developers shouldn't tell people how to use their machines. People have to tell developers how they use it and developers should react accordingly.
The feedback comments seem to really focus in on the tester named Tony Messenger. He tried to zero in on codecs being the issue which seemed to me to be his way of seperating himself from the rest of the pack. The reality is, this was a vanilla install and therefore didn't have any mp3/flash/adobe plugins enabled because of EULA's that need to be agreed upon and other fun stuff. If this had been a virgin install of Windoze, he would have had the same problems. Perhapse it's been too long since he's had a clean install or maybe he's never even used a clean install before.
Someone like Mr Messenger needs to heed the advice of Yoda and "unlearn what you have learned". The harsh reality is that this is a fairly typical response for someone who has used Windoze exclusively. It's easy for commenters to sit back and say "all you need to do is enable this via add/remove and it'll grab the packages for you and do the work". I would laugh if someone had the same problem if it was their first time on a Windoze machine. "Didn't you know you're supposed to install flash so you can view youtube? Duh!" It was only after reading the simple documentation about mp3's + linux that i understood why it's like that out of the box. Just because it's logical doesn't mean it's common sense!
Finally, the tester named Androulla Polydorou hit the nail on the head with their comment: "I had a few problems at first, such as finding the right icon to turn up the volume. I think perhaps I'm so used to Windows that I'm not used to searching around for icons." There's a glimmer of hope yet! Rather than attacking Mr Messenger about his inablility to deal with the "codecs" issue I'd hoped that the feedback comments would have zeroed in on this instead. Here was someone who was able to acknowledge their own personal bias based on history and they seem acutely aware of how it's influencing their testing experience. Whether you're using a Mac, PC, or *nix, you should be aware of what you're used to seeing. The benchmark has already been set.
Do I think Ubuntu/linux is ready for the people en masse as an alternative? No. There are still dependencies and "quirks" which need to be resolved. People will not be willing to make the jump until they know they can do everything they're used to doing on their old PC. They're willing to roll the dice and deal with their AV's and malware if it means their machine runs the way they're used to. Installing windoze apps under Wine can still be a nightmare.
In the end, people don't like change. When WinXP launched, the die hards said they were sticking with 98 or 2k forever. Where are they now? Running XP. Vista/7 are drastically different from XP and once again users will not have a choice. In 2 years there will be less grumbling because users will be acclimated to the new environments and resistant to the newest release. Facebook recently changed their layout again. Everyone wants it to revert back to the old way. Nevermind the fact that when the "old" version launched 6 months ago, people grumbled and wanted it to go back to the version before that. The changes held and there was no mass exodus. The world did not stop spinning.
I would like to say that i really liked this article. It never announced a verdict one way or another. It presented the facts and left everything open ended. My only grumble that i have is that they should have given users vanilla installs of a Windoze OS on identical hardware for a side by side comparrison. Hindsite is 20/20 and this doesn't keep me from enjoying what i read. I look forward to reading further articles on this topic as time goes by.
I am now a Linux user. Not only am i a user but I'm also using the same distro mentioned in this article. Yes my version is 8.04 vs 8.10 but there isn't all THAT much difference between them.
I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the feedback comments at the bottom really make it complete. That fact that they bothered to identify what most average users use their computer for (browsing, IM, Office, and music) was a relief. For years i have argued that most of the garbage on a standard PC isn't needed by home users. At best, they need a thin client and they'd never notice the difference. Finally an article has addressed what i've felt has been obvious for a long time. One of the reasons for making the switch for myself was specifically because the bulk of what i do daily can be done on any platform.
When reading the feedback of the 4 testers I found myself having flashbacks. Every lesson learned over the years of dabbling came flooding back to me in an instant as i read the words of the reviewers.
My first reaction to this was that none of the 4 testers had the same problem. As maddening as this can be, i think it's a sign that things have really come a long way. Everyone views their computer in a different way. For some people it's a media center where they have their music collection that gets them through the day. Some people base it's performance solely on how Office behaves. Others use it excusively for browsing and checking sports scores. This is what it comes down to. Developers shouldn't tell people how to use their machines. People have to tell developers how they use it and developers should react accordingly.
The feedback comments seem to really focus in on the tester named Tony Messenger. He tried to zero in on codecs being the issue which seemed to me to be his way of seperating himself from the rest of the pack. The reality is, this was a vanilla install and therefore didn't have any mp3/flash/adobe plugins enabled because of EULA's that need to be agreed upon and other fun stuff. If this had been a virgin install of Windoze, he would have had the same problems. Perhapse it's been too long since he's had a clean install or maybe he's never even used a clean install before.
Someone like Mr Messenger needs to heed the advice of Yoda and "unlearn what you have learned". The harsh reality is that this is a fairly typical response for someone who has used Windoze exclusively. It's easy for commenters to sit back and say "all you need to do is enable this via add/remove and it'll grab the packages for you and do the work". I would laugh if someone had the same problem if it was their first time on a Windoze machine. "Didn't you know you're supposed to install flash so you can view youtube? Duh!" It was only after reading the simple documentation about mp3's + linux that i understood why it's like that out of the box. Just because it's logical doesn't mean it's common sense!
Finally, the tester named Androulla Polydorou hit the nail on the head with their comment: "I had a few problems at first, such as finding the right icon to turn up the volume. I think perhaps I'm so used to Windows that I'm not used to searching around for icons." There's a glimmer of hope yet! Rather than attacking Mr Messenger about his inablility to deal with the "codecs" issue I'd hoped that the feedback comments would have zeroed in on this instead. Here was someone who was able to acknowledge their own personal bias based on history and they seem acutely aware of how it's influencing their testing experience. Whether you're using a Mac, PC, or *nix, you should be aware of what you're used to seeing. The benchmark has already been set.
Do I think Ubuntu/linux is ready for the people en masse as an alternative? No. There are still dependencies and "quirks" which need to be resolved. People will not be willing to make the jump until they know they can do everything they're used to doing on their old PC. They're willing to roll the dice and deal with their AV's and malware if it means their machine runs the way they're used to. Installing windoze apps under Wine can still be a nightmare.
In the end, people don't like change. When WinXP launched, the die hards said they were sticking with 98 or 2k forever. Where are they now? Running XP. Vista/7 are drastically different from XP and once again users will not have a choice. In 2 years there will be less grumbling because users will be acclimated to the new environments and resistant to the newest release. Facebook recently changed their layout again. Everyone wants it to revert back to the old way. Nevermind the fact that when the "old" version launched 6 months ago, people grumbled and wanted it to go back to the version before that. The changes held and there was no mass exodus. The world did not stop spinning.
I would like to say that i really liked this article. It never announced a verdict one way or another. It presented the facts and left everything open ended. My only grumble that i have is that they should have given users vanilla installs of a Windoze OS on identical hardware for a side by side comparrison. Hindsite is 20/20 and this doesn't keep me from enjoying what i read. I look forward to reading further articles on this topic as time goes by.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Lesson Learned - Ubuntu
I've clearly been using windows too much. Despite warnings from my friend/mentor, my issues this weekend were my own fault. I accepted full responsibility for my ignorance surrounding the actions taken.
Saturday, my Ubuntu 8.04 machine notified me that i had "critical security updates." No new kernel. Some of the updates were for VIM which made me "wtf" and look closely at what was being offered. It was mostly libs and so i grabbed them blindly. After system restart, sound was no longer working and Pidgin would freeze as it loaded. Much like winXP and SP2, unexpected things broke.
I tried looking through forums about updates, sound, and Pidgin breaking for others but no luck. This being a new build, i opted for the fix that was the most drastic but would get me up and running quickest. Upgrade to 8.10 time!
No luck. My machine felt laggy and hesitated a lot more AND sound was still broken. So much for that idea. All that's left was to reinstall. After consulting with a friend, i had a better game plan as to how i would configure my setup.
Previously i had left the install as vanilla as possible and so everything was on one partition which means everything would be lost. I was advised to create a separate partition for /home which would mean i wouldn't lose my files again. What a novel idea! As i was in the partition manager during install, it dawned on me that i can have /home be a separate drive and so i plugged in a spare 40g sata drive. When all was said and done, the mount point for / would become the 40g drive and 1.5tb would be allocated to /home. Let the install begin!
Install was no problem. Everything was working fine. Success. Wait a minute. I can't leave a sleeping beast alone, can i?
Yesterday I reinstalled again blowing away all system files while keeping /home on the seperate drive. During install it found /home no problem and asked if i wanted to import the data and settings from there. Sure. Why not?
After install was completed and i logged in, my background and files were intact. Woohoo! It makes sense that all of these files and settings exist in /home and since that was untouched then everything should look the same again (excluding lack of programs). Just because it makes sense doesn't mean that I'll truly grasp it until the first time i do it though.
If not for me blindly trusting the "updates", i feel i wouldn't have learned this tidbit for a long time. It's refreshing to have a sense of safety now knowing that whatever i wind up having in /home will remain intact after cleaning up yet another mess. I was genuinely pissed when that sound issue arose. Rather than whine and complain and get bitter about it, i used it as an excuse to try something new and different. Today i sit here knowing that i have absorbed another piece of the puzzle that i'm trying to conquer in my spare time.
Now... I need a beer BADLY!!! :)
Saturday, my Ubuntu 8.04 machine notified me that i had "critical security updates." No new kernel. Some of the updates were for VIM which made me "wtf" and look closely at what was being offered. It was mostly libs and so i grabbed them blindly. After system restart, sound was no longer working and Pidgin would freeze as it loaded. Much like winXP and SP2, unexpected things broke.
I tried looking through forums about updates, sound, and Pidgin breaking for others but no luck. This being a new build, i opted for the fix that was the most drastic but would get me up and running quickest. Upgrade to 8.10 time!
No luck. My machine felt laggy and hesitated a lot more AND sound was still broken. So much for that idea. All that's left was to reinstall. After consulting with a friend, i had a better game plan as to how i would configure my setup.
Previously i had left the install as vanilla as possible and so everything was on one partition which means everything would be lost. I was advised to create a separate partition for /home which would mean i wouldn't lose my files again. What a novel idea! As i was in the partition manager during install, it dawned on me that i can have /home be a separate drive and so i plugged in a spare 40g sata drive. When all was said and done, the mount point for / would become the 40g drive and 1.5tb would be allocated to /home. Let the install begin!
Install was no problem. Everything was working fine. Success. Wait a minute. I can't leave a sleeping beast alone, can i?
Yesterday I reinstalled again blowing away all system files while keeping /home on the seperate drive. During install it found /home no problem and asked if i wanted to import the data and settings from there. Sure. Why not?
After install was completed and i logged in, my background and files were intact. Woohoo! It makes sense that all of these files and settings exist in /home and since that was untouched then everything should look the same again (excluding lack of programs). Just because it makes sense doesn't mean that I'll truly grasp it until the first time i do it though.
If not for me blindly trusting the "updates", i feel i wouldn't have learned this tidbit for a long time. It's refreshing to have a sense of safety now knowing that whatever i wind up having in /home will remain intact after cleaning up yet another mess. I was genuinely pissed when that sound issue arose. Rather than whine and complain and get bitter about it, i used it as an excuse to try something new and different. Today i sit here knowing that i have absorbed another piece of the puzzle that i'm trying to conquer in my spare time.
Now... I need a beer BADLY!!! :)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New and Improved!
I've been running Ubuntu 8.04 for a couple weeks now. Got sick of the constant M$ updates, adware, and patches and decided i was ready for a new challenge. This coincided with building a new machine and what better way to break it in than with a new OS, right?
The stats:
Why Ubuntu? Why not just install my copy of XP again and streamline it? Why not jump onto Vista or xp-64? I've been using windows for 10 years now and things have gotten boring in my life. Everyone is eager to jump on the M$ bashing boat but most refuse to put their money (or OS) where their mouth is. Out of the box Ubuntu mostly works with minimal swearing and headaches which is ideal for my home machine. I need an OS that won't cause me headaches and allow me to web bowse, IRC, IM, torrent, and listen to music. I don't have the patience anymore dealing with trying to remove some malware like Vundo that somehow got past my AV and decides to pop up 10 minutes before i leave for work. I don't have the patience to go looking for yet another burning program because i have an NRG file and i don't have Nero installed anymore. I don't have the patience to go out there and find a program that will make an iso image that i can later mount for VM's. I don't have the patience to go out and find yet a different app that will let me mount an iso file. This leaves me with Linux.
The reality is, i personally identify with linux more than i do with windows. I like how straight forward linux is. Once you find a decent text editor, linux is a bunch of conf files that need to be uncommented and edited. I can't play games on it easily yet but then i never played many games to begin with. Burning an iso was idiot proof with the default burning software (brasero) which was a huge relief. Gone are the days of fighting wth Nero and Power ISO and every other burner app i had to download just to get something unique to burn.
I'm still learning the structure gradually and so i have only a vague idea as to what these gremlins are doing. I don't care. Gone are the days of wondering what malware got hooked in startup in the registry. I've only begun to learn concepts of how to shell script. I don't care. I don't exactly know how to make a proper .bat or .vbs either so what's the point? I like the fact that most things log to an intelligible log file and so you can actually decipher what is going on from reading that file as opposed to looking at the cryptic event viewer in windows. There are days that i used to wonder if you needed an MCSE to understand the event viewer and what it was trying to tell you. I now have a machine in my life that i'm interested in and will help keep me in the work mindset more consistently. My machine is logical. It spews info into /var/log/messages where i can see problems arise in real time rather than waiting for a BSOD.
I'm home.
The stats:
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
- SAMSUNG 2232BW+ Black 22" 2ms Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 DC 8000:1(1000:1)
- EVGA 512-P3-N807-RX GeForce 8800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
- EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard
- Kingston ValueRAM 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale 3.16GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
- Samsung dvd burner
Why Ubuntu? Why not just install my copy of XP again and streamline it? Why not jump onto Vista or xp-64? I've been using windows for 10 years now and things have gotten boring in my life. Everyone is eager to jump on the M$ bashing boat but most refuse to put their money (or OS) where their mouth is. Out of the box Ubuntu mostly works with minimal swearing and headaches which is ideal for my home machine. I need an OS that won't cause me headaches and allow me to web bowse, IRC, IM, torrent, and listen to music. I don't have the patience anymore dealing with trying to remove some malware like Vundo that somehow got past my AV and decides to pop up 10 minutes before i leave for work. I don't have the patience to go looking for yet another burning program because i have an NRG file and i don't have Nero installed anymore. I don't have the patience to go out there and find a program that will make an iso image that i can later mount for VM's. I don't have the patience to go out and find yet a different app that will let me mount an iso file. This leaves me with Linux.
The reality is, i personally identify with linux more than i do with windows. I like how straight forward linux is. Once you find a decent text editor, linux is a bunch of conf files that need to be uncommented and edited. I can't play games on it easily yet but then i never played many games to begin with. Burning an iso was idiot proof with the default burning software (brasero) which was a huge relief. Gone are the days of fighting wth Nero and Power ISO and every other burner app i had to download just to get something unique to burn.
I'm still learning the structure gradually and so i have only a vague idea as to what these gremlins are doing. I don't care. Gone are the days of wondering what malware got hooked in startup in the registry. I've only begun to learn concepts of how to shell script. I don't care. I don't exactly know how to make a proper .bat or .vbs either so what's the point? I like the fact that most things log to an intelligible log file and so you can actually decipher what is going on from reading that file as opposed to looking at the cryptic event viewer in windows. There are days that i used to wonder if you needed an MCSE to understand the event viewer and what it was trying to tell you. I now have a machine in my life that i'm interested in and will help keep me in the work mindset more consistently. My machine is logical. It spews info into /var/log/messages where i can see problems arise in real time rather than waiting for a BSOD.
I'm home.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
CentOS 4.7 - Install (follow up)
It worked!
[root@null ~]# yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
It took like 20 minutes do download and process the headers but it worked. Now all i have to do is type "startx" and i'm in. Hot damn. I must say though that the background that CentOS has by default in gnome is pretty fruity. Yikes. Seriously guys. Do you have to make your default backgrounds that ugly? I'm not exactly a fan of the Ubuntu brown theme but c'mon!
Off run updates and start the web server process (again).
[root@null ~]# yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
It took like 20 minutes do download and process the headers but it worked. Now all i have to do is type "startx" and i'm in. Hot damn. I must say though that the background that CentOS has by default in gnome is pretty fruity. Yikes. Seriously guys. Do you have to make your default backgrounds that ugly? I'm not exactly a fan of the Ubuntu brown theme but c'mon!
Off run updates and start the web server process (again).
CentOS 4.7 - Install
Oh great! I burned all 4 iso's just to find out that all i truly needed were the first two disks. Typical. I went through the same garbage with Fedora and look where it got me.
The real irritation about this install so far surrounds "xterm". It seems that the package which is on iso #2 is corrupt and thus your install won't get past that if you're using Gnome. I went through 3 downloads and burns of iso's before i figured this out. It seems as though that CentOS 4.7 i386 iso #2 on all of the mirrors have the same date/time stamp which implies they're all bad. I wondered if this is the same on the dvd version which is "newer" but then i don't have a dvd drive in that box so that's kind of a pointless issue for me.
My workaround has been pretty half assed and seems to be working for the moment. I did a bare bones stripped down install with no x server or gnome. In theory i could have installed everything and just unchecked the package for xterm in the x server packages but opted to go the stripped down route instead to prevent any further unknown issues like this. Well... that and i figured why the heck not see what it's like. :)
Install went fast and smooth which isn't much of a surprise. SSH was selected to be on right away and all i had to do was add a user account. Currently i'm SSH'ed into the machine and trying to install gnome via yum. OMG. YUM has been pulling down headers for the past 20 minutes and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
I've decided to let YUM do it's thing over night and hopefully it'll be done in the morning so i can begin the fun task of setting up Apache in my spare time while at work. If successful, this will be my most half assed install of any OS to date. I'm starting to get the hang of this!
The real irritation about this install so far surrounds "xterm". It seems that the package which is on iso #2 is corrupt and thus your install won't get past that if you're using Gnome. I went through 3 downloads and burns of iso's before i figured this out. It seems as though that CentOS 4.7 i386 iso #2 on all of the mirrors have the same date/time stamp which implies they're all bad. I wondered if this is the same on the dvd version which is "newer" but then i don't have a dvd drive in that box so that's kind of a pointless issue for me.
My workaround has been pretty half assed and seems to be working for the moment. I did a bare bones stripped down install with no x server or gnome. In theory i could have installed everything and just unchecked the package for xterm in the x server packages but opted to go the stripped down route instead to prevent any further unknown issues like this. Well... that and i figured why the heck not see what it's like. :)
Install went fast and smooth which isn't much of a surprise. SSH was selected to be on right away and all i had to do was add a user account. Currently i'm SSH'ed into the machine and trying to install gnome via yum. OMG. YUM has been pulling down headers for the past 20 minutes and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.
I've decided to let YUM do it's thing over night and hopefully it'll be done in the morning so i can begin the fun task of setting up Apache in my spare time while at work. If successful, this will be my most half assed install of any OS to date. I'm starting to get the hang of this!
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