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J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
Late at night, by candle light, Jan Panteltje
<[email protected]> penned this immortal opus:
I've had Windows break badly and found a solution within hours without
needing to reinstall the whole kit and kaboodle. If the intent is to
popularize Linux, a laudable goal, the documentation and maintenance
issues need to be looked hard at.


One thing that is not clear from your gentoo / openoffice experience is:
Was it openoffice update that screwed up?
Or was it Linux?

I have never used gentoo, I only used SLS, Slackware, Suse, Rathead, SPB Linux from
http://www.spblinux.de/2.0/, grml, debian, knoppix..
None of these ever gave update problems, except Suse (nowadays Suse-Balmer) that
cleared all my binaries in /usr/bin, well it was a test run, cleaned the partition
and installed grml (and that runs still).
I have an old StarOffice from Sun, and OK I have Openoffice too on Debian somewhere.
I only used the StarOffice for envelope printing... Oh, and maybe to import MS word
IIRC...

I _do_ know MS windows and use it for my Canon scanner and Epson printcd layout.
Those are easy to use....

So those distributions.... I dunno.
Of all I had Slackware was the cleanest, but that was so many years ago.
I have YellowDog Linux boot CD for the PS3, if I ever buy one I am ready :)

Yes, life and the world we live in will likely become more complex over time.
An ape cannot use a computer.. next generations will have to be smarter and smarter...
evolution.... It is possible there is a limit to our species in the sense that newborns
have simply too much info dumped on them, no way can you learn all that stuff....
But for now some 11 year olds seem to have few problems with IT.

One thing though: 'upgrade the OS' is usually a bad idea, unless you make a new system.
If it works do not fix it.
Upgrading applications is something else, and should work normally, unless it needs newer
libs.:)
Just buy a new PC.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jan,

Jan Panteltje said:
Yes, life and the world we live in will likely become more complex over
time.

I disagree. I think -- while the distribution in the complexity with which
most people deal with the world may be widening -- in general people today
live in a no-more-complex world than people living 100 years ago. In many
ways people live in a *simpler* world! For instance, think of cars: 40 years
ago, the "average" person probably still knew how to change the oil and air
filter, even tweak the carburetor a little between seasons or if they'd be
driving over mountains. Today, the average person knows little to nothing of
vehicle maintenance -- they just take it into the dealer every 7,500 miles,
and things like carburetor adjustments no longer exist due to fuel injection
with a computer controlling the oxygen intake. Similarly, 100 years ago, the
average person knew how to hunt and farm, whereas today the average person
only knows where the nearest 7-11, Starbucks, McDonalds, and a grocery store
is.

Of course, the average person today knows many things people 100 years ago
didn't -- how to write e-mail, how to play a DVD -- but my point is that the
world is no more *complex* today for the *average* person, just... different.
An ape cannot use a computer.. next generations will have to be smarter and
smarter...
evolution.... It is possible there is a limit to our species in the sense
that newborns
have simply too much info dumped on them, no way can you learn all that
stuff....

What country did you say you're in? Here in the U.S. there's a TV show, "Are
you smarter than a fifth grader?" where they routintely demonstrate that a lot
of what's learned in grade school is lost in adulthood. School standards
today in math and science are decidedly lower than what they were 40 years
ago, and not just in primary education: An average EE today learns far less
math than one who graduated in in '60s, and while they do know how to create
web pages and program microcontrollers, the point again is that much of what
they know is just different -- but not necessarily more complex -- than what
would have been taught decades back.
But for now some 11 year olds seem to have few problems with IT.

The ability to learn does become slower as we age; that's an unfortunate fact.
However, a significant decrease in many people is because they *don't* learn
new things on a regular basis: It's no surprise that people who are used to
learning all the time are better at it as they age than people who have, e.g.,
a manufacturing job where they do the same thing for 40 years. Just as many
60 year old men who've been working out most every day for their entire lives
are in better shape than a 40-year-old couch potato.

---Joel
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
Of course, the average person today knows many things people 100 years ago
didn't -- how to write e-mail, how to play a DVD -- but my point is that the
world is no more *complex* today for the *average* person, just... different.


I think in big lines we agree here, different knowledge.
That is actually dangerous for humanity, if only very few know to make
for example a chip (semiconductor), and because of some disaster those people get
killed, then it would set the rest of humanity way back.
For example a lot of tech the Romans had was lost during the dark ages in Europe.
An asteroid or WW3 could do that to us.

What country did you say you're in?
Netherlands.

Here in the U.S. there's a TV show, "Are
you smarter than a fifth grader?" where they routintely demonstrate that a lot
of what's learned in grade school is lost in adulthood.

If I have to believe Hollywood productions ... right...
Few languages, no geography, bad math...
I have been to the states many times, for long times....
People know _other_ things...

School standards
today in math and science are decidedly lower than what they were 40 years
ago, and not just in primary education: An average EE today learns far less
math than one who graduated in in '60s, and while they do know how to create
web pages and program microcontrollers, the point again is that much of what
they know is just different -- but not necessarily more complex -- than what
would have been taught decades back.

Well, I think it is more complex, and especially the part people have hands on
experience with, relative to all the learned stuff, becomes smaller and smaller.

The ability to learn does become slower as we age; that's an unfortunate fact.
However, a significant decrease in many people is because they *don't* learn
new things on a regular basis: It's no surprise that people who are used to
learning all the time are better at it as they age than people who have, e.g.,
a manufacturing job where they do the same thing for 40 years. Just as many
60 year old men who've been working out most every day for their entire lives
are in better shape than a 40-year-old couch potato.

I pretty much learn all the time, many different fields.
Some things I try to understand and I notice that I have problems, having to
go over the quantum computer again.... then you find once you finally find the right
papers by the right prof, most people only _think_ they know it, just like electronics.

I have this thing that I want to be able to do it myself.
Maybe good maybe bad, that includes that car too, it took apart an rebuild
the engine.
Made some mistakes, learned from that, was fun, saved some money too.
Others go watch baseball, I write a program for example.

Fine with me :)
 
Y

YD

Jan 1, 1970
0
Late at night, by candle light, Jan Panteltje
One thing that is not clear from your gentoo / openoffice experience is:
Was it openoffice update that screwed up?
Or was it Linux?

Linux itself screwed up, OO is fine. It kind of insisted on some
critical updates so I let it run. After that neither the updater nor
the system configurator worked. Running them from console gave some
hints, after asking around I found the update breaks python regularly.
So find the relevant python distro, set it up and install. A couple of
hours watching gobble-de-gook running across the screen while it
fetches whatever else seems to be missing. No joy, won't run until the
packagedb is fully updated and portage broke too. So run pkgdb.update
or some such. Chomps around on the HD for a couple of hours then gives
up with an error report stating clearly it's a bug. Won't tell which
nor can I find any report on it. This is where I go and do something
that might have a chance of succeeding.

OO and solitaire work fine but the wife gripes that xfreecell doesn't
look and feel like MS freecell. Most everything else appears to be OK
but I'm not even thinking of trying to update any of it.

I've set up a few FreeBSD servers in my time, so I'm not unfamiliar
with CLI. FBSD has the added advantage that the documentation is
clear, consistent and up to date. Last time I looked Xwindows on FBSD
sucked big time.

- YD.
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
Late at night, by candle light, Jan Panteltje
<[email protected]> penned this immortal opus:

Linux itself screwed up, OO is fine. It kind of insisted on some
critical updates so I let it run. After that neither the updater nor
the system configurator worked. Running them from console gave some
hints, after asking around I found the update breaks python regularly.
So find the relevant python distro, set it up and install. A couple of
hours watching gobble-de-gook running across the screen while it
fetches whatever else seems to be missing. No joy, won't run until the
packagedb is fully updated and portage broke too. So run pkgdb.update
or some such. Chomps around on the HD for a couple of hours then gives
up with an error report stating clearly it's a bug. Won't tell which
nor can I find any report on it. This is where I go and do something
that might have a chance of succeeding.

OO and solitaire work fine but the wife gripes that xfreecell doesn't
look and feel like MS freecell. Most everything else appears to be OK
but I'm not even thinking of trying to update any of it.

I've set up a few FreeBSD servers in my time, so I'm not unfamiliar
with CLI. FBSD has the added advantage that the documentation is
clear, consistent and up to date. Last time I looked Xwindows on FBSD
sucked big time.

Yes, well..... I admit that things like 'pkgdb.update' or whatever
it is called in a distro, have their bugs...
I can only make a few suggestions.
I have on PC with several Linuxes (Grub boot loader selects at power up),
and much of my _data_ is on different harddisks.
I like to work with source, so I have to compile the same stuff for all
these older and newer systems.... sometimes I just grab stuff from
an other system.
What can I say?
Get one distro, the simplest one, compile a kernel and its modules (the
ones you need).
Now after that brain stretching (kernel config) stretch some more
by making a new Grub.....
You know all that if you came from BSD I suppose.
For a person who only wants open office to work.. get a complete distro
that has it, with printer drivers etc..., have them run as non-root,
and if a new Debian, or whatever you use, comes out, buy a new harddisk, and
install the new stuff, test it, mount the old harddisk as hdb or something,
ln -s (softlink) it to something in the current distro, and continue.
Even that will be too difficult for some people, but I do not think
updating MS applications is easier, but maybe it is as I never do that.
Usually it does not even install right the first time (MS drivers etc).

But in my view it is _faster_ to grab a good Unix book, and a Linux PC,
and just learn the basics.
I clearly remember (I used Unix at work in 1979 or so) the day I decided
(MSDOS days, and we were discussing other OSes too) to buy that Unix book.
It went on the bookshelf, but when I had the SLS Linux command line, I
grabbed it, and went over it again command by command.
'What do I type?'
And there were so many different commands, that I had many pages of notes,
how to format a floppy, how to mount, how to make a swap partition, how to -anything-.
It took years and still I sometimes know a command exists, but no idea what it is called.
And I find new ones everyday too.
In the old days you could hit tab twice to get the number of commands, but now I did it this way:
ls /usr/bin/ > q
ls /usr/local/bin/ >> q
ls /usr/X11R6/bin >> q
ls /usr/local/sbin/ >> q
joe q
I count 5346 lines.
5346 commands.

And there are more, some are not in those dirs, but maybe for example in a compile directory,
linked to an icon.
Each command has a manual..... some like 'firefox' can do a lot.
Each command has command line options.

You cannot expect somebody to know 5300 commands just like that (or ever).
Therefore Linux is not for dummies.
Oh well :)

But you do not have to know them all, but any Unix user should know some basic ones.
I do not normally use .deb or .rpm to 'upgrade' and kernels I get from
www.kernel.org and install myself....
No problems.
Just look for the source (yes open office is big, so is mozilla, in that case grab a binary for
your system), because usually you also need the related headers.....
Those .deb and .rpm systems break as soon as their database is not updated after you installed
something alien from source.
Leave the OS itself as is, unless you want to config a kernel.
Actually this subject is too big to write a guide on Usenet.....
 
J

jasen

Jan 1, 1970
0
My question is always, "Read _WHICH_ Fucking Manual?" It's like going
to the Library of Congress with a keyword, and I have to find the right
book that has that chapter.

****! read the man manual! :)

Seriously it it goes someway to explainig how to find the one you want
But usually, I've found that if you ask nicely, they'll at least give
you a link to something that's in the category you're looking for.

And everything has a "man page", which is the instruction manual for
the program, but they were written by whatever Phd wrote the app, so
a lot of them are pretty much incomprehensible. :)

there is is that, the one thing many manpages don't cover is why one might
want to use the application under discussion. eg:

.. The yacc utility shall read a description of a context-free grammar in
.. grammar and write C source code, conforming to the ISO C standard, to a
.. code file, and optionally header information into a header file, in the
.. current directory. The C code shall define a function and related rou-
.. tines and macros for an automaton that executes a parsing algorithm
.. meeting the requirements in Algorithms.


Bye.
Jasen
 
J

jasen

Jan 1, 1970
0
11 years since I installed Debian (same package management as Ubuntu),
and although I've upgraded the hardware three times, I've never done
a clean re-install and I've *never* had the problem you describe, though
a couple of the major upgrades were a bit more difficult than others. It
doesn't do to leave the system without running a dist-upgrade for more
than a few months. So AFAICS this comment is basically sh1t with regard
to Ubuntu, which is *better* than Debian. Other distros have probs tho'.

Ubuntu is faster to release new features,that doesn't make it better, It just
means there's less testing done.

Bye.
Jasen
 
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