You're welcome. But actually, from a usability standpoint, Linux IS as bad as you expected--probably worse. I may have started a flame war just now, but as someone who has been trying to master this OS for over a year now, I would warn you that Linux is not for the faint of heart--or the short of time. More specifically, as a server it's a wonderful platform, for it is well-conceived and well-designed as such. But configuring Linux as a workstation or multimedia platform is, in my experience, next to impossible, and the only reason I'm doing it is that Microsoft is in fact pure evil, and supporting them by running their cruddy software is bound to give me an ulcer before long. So if it's your intention to use Linux as your desktop, be aware that you're probably going to be fighting a long and bloody fight, as I have been. Consider just one example:
<rant>
I want to play a DVD on Linux. Seems like a simple thing, yes? On Windows, I simply install PowerDVD, and away I go. It's a little jerky, but it does the job. On Linux, I tried running Ogle, but that failed miserably and seemed like a pretty shoddy application all around, so I looked to Xine, which seems to be the favored media player right now. I installed all the RPMs it seemed I would need from xine.sourceforge.net, which were several. Of course I got some errors right away, saying it couldn't find /dev/rdvd, and I had to search around until I found a Usenet post from someone who had the same problem (this is one way to figure things out), and I discovered that I had to create a symbolic link to a "raw" device in /dev and then bind that device to my DVD player device using the 'raw' command, the latter of which has to be performed every time I reboot, apparently. With me so far? I did all that and tried playing my DVD again. This time, I saw a few seconds of it (wi!
thout sound), and then it crashed again. So I went back online and searched another thread which suggested compiling Xine from source, rather than using the RPMs. This I did, knowing that procedure only from previous tribulations. After that, I was able to play several minutes of my DVD before crashing, and by tweaking the relevant configuration file (a skill you too will have to master), I was even hearing sound. But the motion was unbearably jerky, the sound was altogether out of sync with the video, and now, when Xine crashed it crashed hard, often bringing my whole system down with it, or tying my DVD player in a knot and forcing me to reboot before going on. So back online I went, plowing through newsgroup archives, FAQs, message boards, joining mailing lists like this one, until I learned that my video driver was no good for playing a DVD: I needed to compile and install a special driver made by NVidia, if I had a chance of attaining my goal. Installing a driver i!
s not easy in Linux, I can tell you. Windows can often do it for you automatically, and even when it can't, you normally only have to run a single program and then reboot. With Linux, it's not so simple, and even finding a driver that's suitable for your particular system can be challanging. Well I found the one I needed and tried to install it. To my dismay, I found that the driver needed to access the "sources" for my kernel, which were not installed because I had had to upgrade my kernel just to get SuSE Linux itself working in the first place, and the RPM I had used had not updated my kernel sources. So now I'm three complicated steps away from any hope of playing that DVD. I find a package containing the required sources and try to install that. No good: it conflicts with my existing kernel sources, which no longer match the kernel I'm running but are still there. So I try to uninstall those sources, in order to install the right ones (four steps away and countin!
g). That fails too, telling me I can't uninstall those sources because gcc and some other things depend on them. Sweet Jesus!
</rant>
I'm still working on this, and it is by no means an isolated misadventure. I have suffered many like it, and you will too, if you mean to use Linux in the same capacity as you have used Windows. Trust me, whatever those elitist nerds who sing the gospel of Linux may tell you, it's a royal pain in the ass to learn. It may be as stable, flexible and efficient as they say (maybe), but I have found it also obstinate, esoteric, and as confounded as anything I have ever known.
So be warned, and good luck!
--Jason Van Cleve
On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 09:32:58 +0100, Geert Van Landeghem
Thanks for the information!
Everything I've read so far indicates that Linux is not as bad as I expected :)
-----Original Message----- From: Jason A.Van Cleve [mailto:jason@vancleve.com] Sent: zaterdag 15 december 2001 6:42 To: Geert Van Landeghem Subject: Re: [SLE] NEWBIE Questions
I can probably get you started on those:
On Fri, 14 Dec 2001 13:45:19 +0100, Geert Van Landeghem
stammered: - How to define users/passwords for the running ftp server? Which ftp client to use?
The normal way is to create actual system users, using the 'useradd' command. Most FTP servers recognize those by default. That is insecure, though, so you're better off just running an anonymous FTP server (this just means using your FTP server anonymously). Some FTP servers allow "fake users" that aren't real ones on your system, but I don't know if that feature is used much.
(I'm using smartftp under windows)
The client is up to you. I'm usually accessing FTP from a Windoze box, on which I would use LeechFTP. On Linux, you could just use the command line tool, "ftp", but I'm sure there are many good XWindows clients. Check freshmeat.org or davecentral.com.
- Is it possible to create batch files under Linux? How to?
Boy, you are new, aren't you? :) In Linux, a "batch file" is a script, or "shell script", as it's called. The Windows Batch language is an abortive and relatively useless attempt at an OS scripting language, whereas Linux features several full-featured scripting languages, depending on which shell you prefer (though most of them are similar). Indeed, the power of these scripting languages is one of the key selling points for Linux. You're probably using the BASH shell, so you would be writing BASH shell scripts. Scripts look like this:
#! /bin/sh # # This is a comment. echo "This will print to the console."
If you create a file somewhere containing those lines, then make it executable, you'll be able to run it by typing its name. If you saved it as "script.sh", you could make it executable (a runnable script: normal files cannot be executed), and then run it, by typing these commands:
chmod 775 script.sh ./script.sh
But I'm reinventing the wheel here. To learn more, just find a good online tutorial. Go to www.google.com, and search for something like "linux bash scripting tutorial", and see what pops up.
- Are there any great 'free' mail servers around?
Most Linux software is free. Pretty cool, huh? I run postfix. Others run sendmail, which was sort of the standard for a long while. There's another popular one around, but I forget its name.
- Apache question: How to define virtual hosts?
That's not a trivial question. Visit apache.org and go from there.
--Jason Van Cleve