Linux

[gusl]

Just checking: is Linux still ridiculously difficult to get up and running?

I need:
* plug-and-play dual monitor support
* a US-International keyboard in which the sequence c ' results in "ç" rather than "ć".
* (preferably, recognizes the tablet pen on my HP laptop)

By "ridiculously difficult" I mean something requiring more than 10 support messages and/or 10 hours of my attention.

Comments

[demarko (from livejournal.com)]

lolol

[http://users.livejournal.com/cunctator_/]

Judging by how seamlessly ubuntu alpha was set up on 2 laptops, the answer is no. I believe you can find out 1 and 3 in 10 minutes using a livecd, and 2 sounds like a very natural thing to google for (and also something to be expected from a properly localized system that ubuntu aims to be).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Last time I tried (about a year ago), all items (1,2 and 3) failed.

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

Yeh you might get problems with less common or slightly older hardware - although to be fair the same is true of windoze. I put ubuntu on an old laptop and I had to briefly investigate to get an appropriate video driver, but even then video speed was pretty appalling compared to the same laptop running windows - presumably because the linux drivers just weren't as good. More and more these days I advise people to buy OS and hardware together - it just saves loads of hassle. Life's too short.

[lo5an.livejournal.com]

Linux has gotten easier and easier, but a lot still hinges on whether or not your hardware has good support. If you've planned ahead or are a little bit lucky, then things are smooth. If you're unlucky, then things can go quite badly.

Dual monitor support has worked pretty well for me for the last couple of Ubuntu versions. International keyboard support is not as nice as it is with Os X, but I think what you want works with Ubuntu. If I have time on Monday when I'm in front of an Ubuntu box, I'll play around and see.

Tablet pen support is going to be dependent on the specifics of your hardware. I have not guess there.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I might buy Linux hardware next time: http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html

I would love to see Linux be a standard with a large number of users (say 10 million), so that we didn't run into problems so often.

[edanaher.livejournal.com]

So, the new xrandr mostly fixed multi-monitor setups in my experience... it may take some time to read through the docs, but I feel like it's actually the Right Way to do it.

I've been playing with xkb, and you can definitely make "dead keys" that provide the accents, though I'm not sure how well that works with keys that both provide accents and normal characters under different circumstances. I suspect this is a solved problem by somebody... I'm not sure by whom, though.

I feel like you should be able to do at least these two in at most two or three hours in theory... I would claim that part of the problem is that X has been transitioning from old xorg.conf-driven setup (a huge pain, but once you set it up, it's pretty stable) to shiny new autodetect/runtime configuration (does most things right, but sometimes more of a pain to fix wrong things. So it's been in this funny middle-ground where they keep breaking things. It seems to be finally mostly transitioned over to new stuff.

My personal (probably non-representative) experience is that things have stabilized - my last X upgrade didn't break anything, which suggests that things are likely working reasonably well.

Also, what do you mean by "support messages"? I feel like all three of those should be standard enough to already have threads on various fora discussing them, and reading through those would hopefully suffice.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

<< reading through those would hopefully suffice. >>

My experience teaches otherwise. I have very little patience for this sort of thing.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

That's how I am. That's why I own a bunch of macs. And it's why I had a really bad couple of days at work setting up my new @#$#@ computer.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

How does having a Mac help?

I guess you get the goodness of a Unix OS... without the hassle of Linux?

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

That is *precisely* it. Or at least, it's 90% of it. Another thing is that they own the hardware, so you don't have to deal with hardware incompatibilities in the machine you bought from the store. Whether there's drivers for your peripheral devices can be a bit iffy in a few cases (but decreasingly so); for a tablet I would be shocked if the mac weren't supported though.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Great! I should test drive a Mac! I will definitely try to change the GUI to be less snazzy. I will also need my two mouse/touchpad buttons in the normal place.

My tablet is my screen... as in "tablet PC".

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Oh. Yeah, that wouldn't work.

Being designed more by designers than by engineers, the UI defaults aren't going to be what you're used to, but in general you will be better off learning to love them than wasting time twiddling with them.

Probably the bigger issue is that the mac is a few hundred dollars more than the equivalent PC. Ignore what they say about memory; get the minimum and buy more on some reputable site -- Apple doubles the price on memory at installation time.

Oh, another reason to go macwards, for academics: Keynote makes very pretty talks, and its UI is geared to making good talks (lots of pictures, a few animations, not too much text -- the default font is huge).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

what wouldn't work?

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

'My tablet is my screen... as in "tablet PC".'

you're not getting osx on there, reasonably speaking.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

<< but in general you will be better off learning to love them than wasting time twiddling with them. >>

why? is it difficult to tweak the settings?

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

For one, there's not much easily tweakable. For another, apps tend to assume you're using the default, so they might for instance use keybindings that avoid the important OSX ones but clash with your modification.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the GUI (i.e. graphics), windowing system, etc... not key-bindings.

For example, I don't want mouse-in-corner to cause windows to appear or disappear.


Alternatively, if I can get cygwin to not suck, I'll stick with Windows.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Well, go play with a mac to see if you like the GUI well enough. You're not going to be able to change it particularly much.

I switched from cygwin to msys (part of mingw) because it tries less to reinvent the entire OS and merely tries to imperfectly translate.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I just downloaded and installed MinGW. To my disappointment, there is apparently no way of starting a shell: the 3 icons are Uninstall, Update, and a little IE link, which takes you to the MinGW website (which has been taken over by web spammers).

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

OK, so now you should install msys.

Whoah... that's new that mingw is gone. It worked on Thursday!

[shaktool.livejournal.com]

I don't want mouse-in-corner to cause windows to appear or disappear.

That's one of my favorite features, but it's not enabled by default.

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

On Ubuntu, it was quite easy to set up French input.

ç is, for me, , c

Would you like me to talk you through selecting that?

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

That is
right ctrl, c

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but:
* I insist on my combination, the US-International that you get in Windows
* I'm not going to play with Linux today,

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

US-Interntional is a supported keyboard layout. I've never used it.

[trufflesniffer.livejournal.com]

In my (limited) Ubuntu Linux experience from many years ago, the two usual responses Linux advocates have to new/potential users who struggle to do in Linux something that's relatively easy to do in Windows are:

1. Blame the user for not knowing/caring enough how operating systems work and not 'RTFM'


2. Blame the hardware manufacturers for not providing Linux drivers

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by "tablet pen".

I have a wacom bamboo tablet which was plug and play under ubuntu.

[chrisamaphone]

my laptop works fine plug-and-play for monitors and for my tablet (under ubuntu). it's my belief that most laptops these days will, but like bhudson said, it's a matter of whether your hardware happens to work with the drivers.

i don't know anything about international keyboard character stuff, but i don't imagine that'd be hard.