Linux Rant

[coldwar]

Quite recently I bought an AMD64 based PC, fully loaded up with WinXP Pro SP2 Media Edition, and all the goodies- the best high end machine I could find in my area at a decent price. I was, and still am amazed at how snappin' quick and stable this rig is, even though it's running 32 bit Windows in a 64 bit environment. So, I thought that if I could get my hands on a 64 bit OS, it would really make it sing. WRONG!!!

I managed to download the 5 CD set of Fedora Core-4 64 Bit ( which was quite a feat in itself), then had to download a special patch recommended by Microsoft so as to "explode" these ISO-wrapped CD's. Now I was in business.

First try- installed Fedora with the PC "in situ", that is, downstairs where my entertainment gear is, not upstairs with my DSL Modem and Belkin Router. The new PC connects via a USB connected LinkSys Wireless-G adapter which the PC dealer threw in for free to sweeten the deal. So the first thing I had to do was to get Linux to connect over that adapter. Well, it turns out that there ain't no driver for it, nowhere, no-how. So, I brought everything upstairs so I could wire-connect it to the router- no problem with this of course, as Linux recognized the on-board VIA ethernet driver.

So, I ended up with a clean install, and then ran a complete "yum" upgrade. This worked flawlessly, although by now I was starting to notice that Fedora Core 4-64 is noticably slower than Windows XP. With Win, the bootup time is about half that of Linux, and the desktop just snaps into place. The Linux KDE just kind of opens up with several "jerks". Kind of disappointing.

So now I wanted to try using a few things. First- net-surfing with Mozilla. not bad, but noticably slower and jerkier than Mozilla on Windows. Next- see how well Fedora handles music. There are a few music player packages included with the distro, and the default seemingly is a thing called "Noatrun". Well, I downloaded some MP-3's from my little Creative Labs MuVo, and tried to play them. First thing Noatrun tells me is that the "MP3 Plug-in is not installed". WTF? The most common type of music file isn't already loaded? So I tried another package called simply- "Music Player". Again, no go, so I opened up a dialog to configure it. Here, MP3 isn't even a choice! All it's good for is CD Audio, WAV and Ogg-Vorbis! I went back to Noatrun, opened the configuration diaog, and even though it had said "MP3 not installed", it doesn't appear to provide any direct way to install a plug-in of any kind.

So next, I put a DVD loaded with a bunch of WAV files I had recorded from my vinyl collection into the DVD multi-drive. Nothing happened. Oh yeah- this is Linux- ya gotta "mount" everything. So I right clicked "mount", then all the files appeared. OK, so now let's see if Noatrun will play these. I browsed it through to my WAV folder, clicked "select all" and then "play". Noatrun tried to start, but then immdiately stopped. Damn! Well, what about a plain old Audio CD? I pushed the eject button on the DVD drive. Nothing happened. Oh yeah, this is Linux- ya gotta unmount everything. So I clicked "unmount". Disked stopped spinning. THen I pressed the eject button again. Nothing happened. Oh yeah- this is Linux... so I right clicked the Icon, clicked on eject and out came my WAV DVD, and in went my Patsy Cline plain ol' CD. The Icon displayed a little music note beside it, then started to play. Great- so at least Linux is a CD player. So, enough of Patsy- let's see if my WAV files work now. I pressed the eject button- whoops, almost forgot- right click, then eject. I put the WAV disk back in, mounted it, then opened Noatrun and clicked on "Play". And guess what it played? Patsy Cline!!! Patsy wasn't even in the player, but she crooned on anyhow! I tried stopping the player, opened the play-list and clicked on one of my WAV files. This time, I saw the selector move down the list all by itself, right back to Patsy. Now I'm geting it- Linus Torvoold is a real Patsy Cline fan!

Finally, I tried to see if Music Player would play my WAV's. This time I transferred all the WAV files to a HD folder and imported that into Music Player. It showed all the file names but they were all greyed out, and simply would not play. I tried Noatrun again, after deleting Patsy Cline off the list, pointed it to my WAV folder. This time it found all the WAV files- they were not grayed out, so I simply pointed the mouse to one of the files, then clicked on "Play". Again, it tried to start, but immediately stopped.

So what's going on here guys? I know Linux isn't necessarily easy, but c'mon- this is pretty basic stuff. With Win XP, everything just works, and works well. Why can't Linux now be the same after all these years? Am I missing something here?

Dave

The Linux community is slipping many are moving to full Apple or FreeBSD. When my Linux box crashes or dies I don't think I'm going to bother doing anything with it other than load win 2000 pro or FreeBSD.

I use Linux for covert stuff but I've found that I can do even more with OS X. In fact I can do much more I think I've welded a NIC card or two on the receiving end by accident

[Ashman]

if you havent already seen this. check it out...

www.osx86project.org

Mac osx running on pc platform.

I have it triple booting on my computer at home.

I run XP pro, Ubuntu Linux and osx.

Osx runs ok, not bad, some things don't work, but overall its just fun to play with.

Ubuntu linux is cool, I like it, but I still stick to xp most of the time.

I only installed linux and osx because I could and wanted to play with them...

Sounds like you have a nice machine, I am sure it will love a true 64 bit OS that works properly.

Alon

[coldwar]

Originally Posted by Ashman

if you havent already seen this. check it out...

www.osx86project.org

Mac osx running on pc platform.

Sounds like you have a nice machine, I am sure it will love a true 64 bit OS that works properly.

Alon

I knew about Apple's move to Intel, but was not aware of osx86 activity. Thanks for the link but I think after a quick read, it's not something I'd be interested in. For me, the PC is a means to an end, not a hobby. And since Microsoft has been so slow off the line with 64 bit, and when and if it comes out stable it will be priced in the stratosphere. I just wish there would come along an affordable (doesn't have to be free) and stable 64 bit OS that would make the most of my hardware. Maybe I'll give FreeBSD a whirl, I did manage to download and extract the ISO's, but my understanding is that all the "extras" like the Desktop, etc. have to be obtained from other sources, and user-compiled. Too deep and time consuming for me, as I do have this '76 Benz to keep on the road

Priorities

Dave M.

[Bill Wood]

I love Linux for server applications. MercedesShop has run on Linux since 1999. It is solid.
Fastlane runs on Windows Server 2003. So far my experience with that has been pretty good but, time will tell.

For desktop applications I prefer Windows XP. I think Windows XP is the best desktop operating system that Microsoft has ever produced.
Linux just doesn't come close to XP on the desktop. I would rather use Win2000 than Linux.

[DrJ]

Originally Posted by coldwar

Maybe I'll give FreeBSD a whirl, I did manage to download and extract the ISO's, but my understanding is that all the "extras" like the Desktop, etc. have to be obtained from other sources, and user-compiled.
Dave M.

Not so. You can install from either source or binaries in FreeBSD. Source is usually more convenient to upgrade, but binaries do help for the monsters like Gnome (or KDE) and OO.o. All of these are available from ports (see the FreeBSD site, or ask another question here).

I also don't understand the issue with boot times. I boot FreeBSD only when I have upgraded the OS (the kernel, userland and ports), and only since I am using the 6.0 branch at the moment is that more than a couple of times a year. Otherwise, it just keeps running and running and running...

The system is not perfect in the sense that Linux is not perfect: many applications are simply not available. But the core OS and many of the user programs are actually quite good for general-purpose desktop activities. I use it for the majority of my work, and that includes heavy-duty numerical and text processing. REALLY heavy duty, as in two-dimensional, time varying finite element analyses and complicated text (including chemical structures and the like) that would make Word choke.

There is a barrier to getting started with FreeBSD, as it is not particularly newbie friendly. It is all logical, thorough, and well-documented though, and once you get the hang of it, you won't want to leave.

For a user-friendly desktop installation, please check out PC-BSD or DesktopBSD. Both are FreeBSD with many helpful shortcuts for achieving a good desktop system. I know both systems and their developers, and can vouch for both.

DrJ

[diametricalbenz]

That is dissapointing but I bet the XP system will crash sooner than a Fedora run system

Try VLC, this is the best player I have seen.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc

[coldwar]

I think I may have uncovered the cause for the bizarre behaviour observed with Fedora 4-64 installed on my AMD-64 PC. There is a "wrapper" required to allow 32-bit Linux applications to run. Here's a quote from Ubuntoo-

"the linux32 tools allows 64bit systems with support for 32 bit applications to set the execution domain to the 32 bit native type. For instance, on an ia64 machine, commands run with this wrapper will think the machine type is i386, as returned by uname -m."

So far, all I've managed to do is to try and determine if an -RPM version of this thing was already supplied by Fedora, so I searched Red Hat's repository for an equivalent, and once I found it, I tried running an install command. It responded with "already installed", although with Linux that doesn't always mean much- there's often a lot of fussing involved to getting things from being installed to actually working.

I think I'm close- with a few hundred more keystrokes, I might just get there!

Dave