Ok, so for those of you who missed the original thread....
http://www.usmessageboard.com/computers/353678-trying-linux-again-not-an-encouraging-start.html
Having talked with various Linux fans, I was convinced to try out Linux again. At the time, I had an old Gateway Solo Laptop, Pentium III 700 mhz, with 164 MB of ram, and 10 gig HDD.
I tried out several different Linux distrobutions, Legacy OS, Puppy Linux, D Small Linux, and Ubuntu, and Lubuntu.
I had simply too many problems to keep going.
I realized that the limitations of the hardware were too great to do anything I wanted. I needed to upgrade ram, and get ethernet connectivity. The ram would cost $20 per stick of 256 mb, and I would need two, giving me 546 MB of ram. I would also need an Ethernet PC card.
I'd end up sinking $55 (plus shipping), to get that old latop up to semi-usefullness.
I realized that for just a few bucks more I could get a newer laptop with far better specs, and so I did. On craigslist I found a Dell Latitude D510. Pentium M 1.5 Ghz, with 1 Gig of memory, 40 Gig HDD, built in Ethernet and Wifi for $80.
Installing...
So I first tried out Puppy Linux, and it ran well, but after playing around with it, I found that it was just too limited in functionality. Many of the problems I had before, were still there, although now I could run programs that before would exit.
I didn't realize that many of the programs that I had a problem with before, were exiting because there was not enough memory. The program would simply exit, and no explanation was given for why it closed.
Of course all the jitters and pauses that were common on the older laptop are all but gone.
Nevertheless I wanted to try out a fuller more comprehensive system like Lubuntu that was suggested by the poster on the other thread.
I already had Lubuntu 14.04 disc, and it installed without problem. The system found the Ethernet, and connected without issue.
Although the installation was not problematic, it was forever. I was amazed at just how long it required to install. Mac OSX 10.6 was a fraction of the time. So was Windows 7. Nevertheless, I'm typing this on Lubuntu now.
Lubuntu 14.04
Over all, it's a nice system. Far more polished than the others I've tried thus far. I can see why Ubuntu has become the leading standard for Linux. Nevertheless, I have a few basic problem.
Tell me you are working, or not.
When I click on something, the system gives me no indication that it is working. So sometimes I think it's working, and I'm waiting there for ages.... only to realize er... nope it's not doing anything. Other times, I click on something multiple times thinking it's not working, when it is.... then suddenly I have 5 windows of Firefox on my screen. GRAGH!
As much as we all hate the wheel of death spinning, it's better to have the system give you some acknowledgement that it is working, than having use sit there with a stupid look on our face going
Another example would be short cut commands. In Mac OSX, if I hit control C, to copy, or Control V to paste, the menu flashes to let me know the computer got that command. Linux doesn't seem to think I need to know if it worked or not.
Let me know what is connected
Puppy Linux popped up Icons for everything connected to the computer. If I plugged in a USB drive, it would show a USB drive icon, for each one connected. It would also show me network drives, and a icon of CD or DVD for whatever was in the optical drive.
Lubuntu does not deem it necessary to tell me anything about what is connected. So I pop in a DVD or CD, and.... nothing. Or worse I remove the CD or DVD and forget I did so, then I try and play the disc, and can't figure out why it's not working. After fussing with it a few minutes, I pop open the drive to find it empty.
Windows 3.1 told you if there was a CD in the drive, but Lubuntu does not?
What's with the time clock and wifi?
From my previous thread, I shared how trying to set the clock, caused the screen to suddenly go completely blank, like the system had crashed. After nearly a minute of pitch black, the screen pops back only to display a message "Screen may go blank, but will return".... after doing so.
With Lubuntu, the clock was already set, because it connected to the internet, and synced from there. Which is nice.... however it was set to 24-hour, so 15:13 was anoying. It should be a simple matter to switch it to 12-hour time.
But after clicking on clock, I get... "Clock Format: %R:%M Format code: man 3 shiftime; %n for line break"
Really.... 0.o What the crap is that? I had to spend a good hour looking up garbage on the internet to find what cryptic trash I had to enter in to accomplish the extremely complex task of a 12-hour clock.... which turned out to be %I:%M %P Really..... That was on final Jeopardy last night.....
Out of all the millions of tasks that a computer can accomplish, the one causing the most problems in Linux world is "Displaying the time"?
Additionally, I'm still having issues with the Wifi. Now ironically, when I installed Puppy Linux on the system, it found and setup the built-in wifi of this laptop automatically, which I found surprisingly easy to configure.
I had assumed that the built-in wifi was simply a more common model, that Linux had drives pre-installed for. But when I changed over to Lubuntu, it couldn't find the wifi at all. When I open the network control panel, it shows wifi, but selecting it accomplishes nothing.
After doing some searching, I found one post which said that Ubuntu won't load wifi drivers if Ethernet drivers are already loaded...... huh? Why the heck is that? On my Mac OSX, I can be connected to the network over Bluetooth, USB, Ethernet, and Wifi, all at the same time. But Lubuntu chokes up on two?
Still, it's better than before where I had no network connection at all... or this thread would not have been written.
Getting Software
Now I get it. All the software is free. I personally have never a problem paying for all the software I have.
But the way in which you get this free software is a little wacky. All software is aquired through software depositories, which are accessed through package downloading software. Like Steam, or Apple Software Store.
I knew I was in trouble when I found there were three different programs to do this.
Lubuntu Software Center
GDebi Package Installer
Synaptic Package Manager
This is like playing a DVD that I posted in the other thread, where they have five different programs that all do the same thing. If they all work, why have five programs? Just install one good program, and if people want a different one, they can install it themselves. But of course it depends on "if they all work", and what I find is they don't.
So I picked one, I believe GDebi, and picked out something to download.
A message popped up: "This package is availible from the Lubuntu Software Center. You should use that to install this package."
If you are just going to tell me to use Lubuntu Software Center instead of GDebi, why have GDebi installed to begin with? Er... ok whatever. No problem.
Quit out of GDebi, and loaded up Lubuntu Software Center, found the same package, and clicked install. "Software package failed to install. Could not find dependencies." Or something....
Really....?
Quit out of Lubuntu Software Center, and load up GDebi again, select package, ignore warning message, and install. Installed just fine.
really......
Additionally I found that sometimes even the basic task of locating the software you want, is painfully retarded.
Sometimes, you can punch in a name, and there it is, simple easy and unambigious. However other times, where there are lists of options, that all have similar names.
So I wanted a program called "Sauerbraten", and I'm given the option of....
Sauerbraten-common
Sauerbraten-data
Sauerbraten-wake6
Sauerbraten-dbg
Sauerbraten-scr
Sauerbraten-server
Huh? Now let me take a stab at this.... I'm guessing that some of those I need, and some I don't need. If I don't need them, why are they there? If I do need them, why are they not combined into a single complete package?
So of course I installed "common", that was my best guess. Of course it did nothing. I needed the 'main package' in order to make use of the common. Which as it turns out, you also needed data, with common, to make the package work.
Why not have one package... "Sauerbraten full package" which holds everything you need to make the program work? Why this jigsaw puzzle of package crap, just to make me waste my time trying to figure out why the package I installed does nothing?
Another example was trying to install LiberOffice. Lubuntu comes with AbiWord, which is apparently the equivlent of WordPad. So Windows has Notepad, WordPad, and MS Word. Wordpad is the between the barely anything Notepad, and full word processor MS Word. That's apparently what AbiWord is on Linux.
So I really wanted a full fledge word processor, and in fact an entire Office suit. So I set about getting LiberOffice.
Dozens on dozens, of "LibreOffice" came up. Sorting through the dozens of options was frustrating. There was no "Just install LibreOffice" package to choose.
I did finally get it installed, and find LibreOffice to be very functional thus far.
Final comments
I had been somehow convinced by some that Linux offered vast cross compatibility with Windows software. This as it turns out, is not entirely true.
I installed Wine, and Cedega. There is a very simple time waster I play called Stronghold Kingdoms. It's a very slow real time stratege game. No 3D graphics. No graphics to speak of at all really. We're talking lower graphic than the old Ultima games of the 90s. I figured if a Windows on Linux system could do anything, it would be this.
I was wrong. Neither could run the little 400 MB game.... which is shocking.
Nor could I get DosBox to work. I can 'mount c ~' to my home directory, but I can't mount c directly to my /home/me/dosbox, which is odd. Further, I can't get it to mount the cdrom directory at all. Which prevents me from doing anything else. It keeps telling me the directory dfcd does not exist, even while I'm looking right at it in the other window.
I've heard some people install Wine to emulate windows, and run DosBox for windows under Wine to emulate Dos. ... really... That seems a little ridiculous. I'll keep looking into that.
I'm also wondering how one goes about upgrading from Lubuntu 14.04, to 14.10, or if there is even a reason to do that. I certainly don't want to end up reinstalling Lubuntu, when I finally got this where I want it.
Anyway.... the adventure continues. We'll see how it goes.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/computers/353678-trying-linux-again-not-an-encouraging-start.html
Having talked with various Linux fans, I was convinced to try out Linux again. At the time, I had an old Gateway Solo Laptop, Pentium III 700 mhz, with 164 MB of ram, and 10 gig HDD.
I tried out several different Linux distrobutions, Legacy OS, Puppy Linux, D Small Linux, and Ubuntu, and Lubuntu.
I had simply too many problems to keep going.
I realized that the limitations of the hardware were too great to do anything I wanted. I needed to upgrade ram, and get ethernet connectivity. The ram would cost $20 per stick of 256 mb, and I would need two, giving me 546 MB of ram. I would also need an Ethernet PC card.
I'd end up sinking $55 (plus shipping), to get that old latop up to semi-usefullness.
I realized that for just a few bucks more I could get a newer laptop with far better specs, and so I did. On craigslist I found a Dell Latitude D510. Pentium M 1.5 Ghz, with 1 Gig of memory, 40 Gig HDD, built in Ethernet and Wifi for $80.
Installing...
So I first tried out Puppy Linux, and it ran well, but after playing around with it, I found that it was just too limited in functionality. Many of the problems I had before, were still there, although now I could run programs that before would exit.
I didn't realize that many of the programs that I had a problem with before, were exiting because there was not enough memory. The program would simply exit, and no explanation was given for why it closed.
Of course all the jitters and pauses that were common on the older laptop are all but gone.
Nevertheless I wanted to try out a fuller more comprehensive system like Lubuntu that was suggested by the poster on the other thread.
I already had Lubuntu 14.04 disc, and it installed without problem. The system found the Ethernet, and connected without issue.
Although the installation was not problematic, it was forever. I was amazed at just how long it required to install. Mac OSX 10.6 was a fraction of the time. So was Windows 7. Nevertheless, I'm typing this on Lubuntu now.
Lubuntu 14.04
Over all, it's a nice system. Far more polished than the others I've tried thus far. I can see why Ubuntu has become the leading standard for Linux. Nevertheless, I have a few basic problem.
Tell me you are working, or not.
When I click on something, the system gives me no indication that it is working. So sometimes I think it's working, and I'm waiting there for ages.... only to realize er... nope it's not doing anything. Other times, I click on something multiple times thinking it's not working, when it is.... then suddenly I have 5 windows of Firefox on my screen. GRAGH!
As much as we all hate the wheel of death spinning, it's better to have the system give you some acknowledgement that it is working, than having use sit there with a stupid look on our face going
Another example would be short cut commands. In Mac OSX, if I hit control C, to copy, or Control V to paste, the menu flashes to let me know the computer got that command. Linux doesn't seem to think I need to know if it worked or not.
Let me know what is connected
Puppy Linux popped up Icons for everything connected to the computer. If I plugged in a USB drive, it would show a USB drive icon, for each one connected. It would also show me network drives, and a icon of CD or DVD for whatever was in the optical drive.
Lubuntu does not deem it necessary to tell me anything about what is connected. So I pop in a DVD or CD, and.... nothing. Or worse I remove the CD or DVD and forget I did so, then I try and play the disc, and can't figure out why it's not working. After fussing with it a few minutes, I pop open the drive to find it empty.
Windows 3.1 told you if there was a CD in the drive, but Lubuntu does not?
What's with the time clock and wifi?
From my previous thread, I shared how trying to set the clock, caused the screen to suddenly go completely blank, like the system had crashed. After nearly a minute of pitch black, the screen pops back only to display a message "Screen may go blank, but will return".... after doing so.
With Lubuntu, the clock was already set, because it connected to the internet, and synced from there. Which is nice.... however it was set to 24-hour, so 15:13 was anoying. It should be a simple matter to switch it to 12-hour time.
But after clicking on clock, I get... "Clock Format: %R:%M Format code: man 3 shiftime; %n for line break"
Really.... 0.o What the crap is that? I had to spend a good hour looking up garbage on the internet to find what cryptic trash I had to enter in to accomplish the extremely complex task of a 12-hour clock.... which turned out to be %I:%M %P Really..... That was on final Jeopardy last night.....
Out of all the millions of tasks that a computer can accomplish, the one causing the most problems in Linux world is "Displaying the time"?
Additionally, I'm still having issues with the Wifi. Now ironically, when I installed Puppy Linux on the system, it found and setup the built-in wifi of this laptop automatically, which I found surprisingly easy to configure.
I had assumed that the built-in wifi was simply a more common model, that Linux had drives pre-installed for. But when I changed over to Lubuntu, it couldn't find the wifi at all. When I open the network control panel, it shows wifi, but selecting it accomplishes nothing.
After doing some searching, I found one post which said that Ubuntu won't load wifi drivers if Ethernet drivers are already loaded...... huh? Why the heck is that? On my Mac OSX, I can be connected to the network over Bluetooth, USB, Ethernet, and Wifi, all at the same time. But Lubuntu chokes up on two?
Still, it's better than before where I had no network connection at all... or this thread would not have been written.
Getting Software
Now I get it. All the software is free. I personally have never a problem paying for all the software I have.
But the way in which you get this free software is a little wacky. All software is aquired through software depositories, which are accessed through package downloading software. Like Steam, or Apple Software Store.
I knew I was in trouble when I found there were three different programs to do this.
Lubuntu Software Center
GDebi Package Installer
Synaptic Package Manager
This is like playing a DVD that I posted in the other thread, where they have five different programs that all do the same thing. If they all work, why have five programs? Just install one good program, and if people want a different one, they can install it themselves. But of course it depends on "if they all work", and what I find is they don't.
So I picked one, I believe GDebi, and picked out something to download.
A message popped up: "This package is availible from the Lubuntu Software Center. You should use that to install this package."
If you are just going to tell me to use Lubuntu Software Center instead of GDebi, why have GDebi installed to begin with? Er... ok whatever. No problem.
Quit out of GDebi, and loaded up Lubuntu Software Center, found the same package, and clicked install. "Software package failed to install. Could not find dependencies." Or something....
Really....?Quit out of Lubuntu Software Center, and load up GDebi again, select package, ignore warning message, and install. Installed just fine.
really......Additionally I found that sometimes even the basic task of locating the software you want, is painfully retarded.
Sometimes, you can punch in a name, and there it is, simple easy and unambigious. However other times, where there are lists of options, that all have similar names.
So I wanted a program called "Sauerbraten", and I'm given the option of....
Sauerbraten-common
Sauerbraten-data
Sauerbraten-wake6
Sauerbraten-dbg
Sauerbraten-scr
Sauerbraten-server
Huh? Now let me take a stab at this.... I'm guessing that some of those I need, and some I don't need. If I don't need them, why are they there? If I do need them, why are they not combined into a single complete package?
So of course I installed "common", that was my best guess. Of course it did nothing. I needed the 'main package' in order to make use of the common. Which as it turns out, you also needed data, with common, to make the package work.
Why not have one package... "Sauerbraten full package" which holds everything you need to make the program work? Why this jigsaw puzzle of package crap, just to make me waste my time trying to figure out why the package I installed does nothing?
Another example was trying to install LiberOffice. Lubuntu comes with AbiWord, which is apparently the equivlent of WordPad. So Windows has Notepad, WordPad, and MS Word. Wordpad is the between the barely anything Notepad, and full word processor MS Word. That's apparently what AbiWord is on Linux.
So I really wanted a full fledge word processor, and in fact an entire Office suit. So I set about getting LiberOffice.
Dozens on dozens, of "LibreOffice" came up. Sorting through the dozens of options was frustrating. There was no "Just install LibreOffice" package to choose.
I did finally get it installed, and find LibreOffice to be very functional thus far.
Final comments
I had been somehow convinced by some that Linux offered vast cross compatibility with Windows software. This as it turns out, is not entirely true.
I installed Wine, and Cedega. There is a very simple time waster I play called Stronghold Kingdoms. It's a very slow real time stratege game. No 3D graphics. No graphics to speak of at all really. We're talking lower graphic than the old Ultima games of the 90s. I figured if a Windows on Linux system could do anything, it would be this.
I was wrong. Neither could run the little 400 MB game.... which is shocking.
Nor could I get DosBox to work. I can 'mount c ~' to my home directory, but I can't mount c directly to my /home/me/dosbox, which is odd. Further, I can't get it to mount the cdrom directory at all. Which prevents me from doing anything else. It keeps telling me the directory dfcd does not exist, even while I'm looking right at it in the other window.
I've heard some people install Wine to emulate windows, and run DosBox for windows under Wine to emulate Dos. ... really... That seems a little ridiculous. I'll keep looking into that.
I'm also wondering how one goes about upgrading from Lubuntu 14.04, to 14.10, or if there is even a reason to do that. I certainly don't want to end up reinstalling Lubuntu, when I finally got this where I want it.
Anyway.... the adventure continues. We'll see how it goes.
