Tech Gurus Still Don't "Get" Linux

Datamation ^ | 7 April 2014 | Matt Hartley

[ShadowAce]

That doesn’t make it Windows’ fault.

I didn't say it was Windows' fault--notice I even said that drivers are NOT written by Microsoft.

That’s an artifact of market power.

Correct.

[9YearLurker]

No, you didn’t say it was Windows’ fault—but the writer did.

[zeugma]

"Hey, Dave, you need to SSH in to the client's server and find out what's wrong with their configuration.

OK, so you're a windows user, and someone says the above to you. How do you do it? You can't unless you've already installed a separate program (putty or something to even be able to ssh to another box). If you don't have it, then it's off to google to find a program to provide ssh capabilities. Then you have to download it, install it, and figure out how to use it. With linux it would be really unusual not to have the ssh command already installed. Either way, however you get there, you'll be sitting at a command prompt on the remote box, and you'd have to know how to do what it is you've been asked to do.

Another scenerio... You need to copy a file from your home directory on box Able to the box you're on. From windows, you're going to have to know how to map directories, and a whole lot of other stuff. In linux, you can do it with a simple command "scp able:file.txt .". Even better, let's say you need to move a file from Able to Baker, but you're on Charlie. How would you do that with windows? It's not something that grandma would be able to do on windows, yet it is somehow supposed to be so magically easy that gramma can do it with Linux. (from Charlie, depending upon your version of ssh, you should be able to "scp able:file.txt baker:."

[Organic Panic]

I’ll stick to my C64 thank you very much.

[arbitrary.squid]

While I agree about tech writers getting Linux wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s not entirely suited for everyone’s needs.

I love Linux. I have been an IT professional for the past 18 years. I have used Linux and Unix since the days of Windows 3.1. My home computer is a dual-boot Win7 and Linux Mint machine that these days, almost never boots into Linux for the following reasons:

1. Handling of large music libraries. I have over 2TB of music files, spread across 5 hard drives, and I have yet to find a Linux music app that doesn’t crash when trying to index these sources. That said, only Foobar2000 on Windows does a good job with all this, but it does work flawlessly. I also run my weekly public radio show off of a Windows laptop running Foobar2000, and it works all the time.

2. Photography. I taught myself photo processing in Photoshop many years ago, and despite knowing my way around Gimp, I can process photos in Photoshop and process RAW files in Canon’s Digital Photo Pro without much thought. There is finally a version of DPP for Linux, but even then, print support for my large-format printer is just not there.

3. Netflix. I haven’t looked into it lately, but last time I looked, there was no support for Netflix on Linux.

For me, it turns out that my more intensive use of the computer makes Windows a better bet for me.

[zeugma]

and the other tool that is useful is “apropos” also known as “whatis.”

When I first started using unix, way back in the dark ages, it was on DEC's version, called Ultrix. We actually had bound copies of the printed man pages. The problem was, in order to find out how to use the command, you had to know what it was first! It was quite a while before I found the apropos command. I remember doing a little dance in the office when I discovered it.

[TexasRepublic]

“which distribution would you recommend for a Linux beginner?”

My 1st & 2nd recommendations for a beginner are Mint, then Ubuntu. They are the easiest to install (easier than Windows!) and the most likely to work. You might have to try several brands to find which ones are most compatible with your computer. Mint is sometimes fussier about video cards, in own my experience. There are several desktop flavors of each brand. Visit those websites, download some of the various versions, and burn bootable DVD’s from them on your Windows machine. Then boot from the DVD’s and test drive them.

Years ago I had tried several other brands of Linux (Mepis, Puppy, Knoppix) with general success, except I could not get them print after manually installing the drivers. When I tried Ubuntu for the first time, it automatically detected the right printer and installed the driver without asking. And it printed fine. I was an instant convert.

[cynwoody]

Text is not a bad form for reading, but it is terrible for storage and computation of programs as it essentially surrenders all syntactic and semantic knowledge (which then have to be recomputed), and they can be accessed/modified by anyone/anything at any time, meaning that a perfectly compilable file may not be compilable in any subsequent compiling (and this is unknowable, again forcing the recalculation [compilation] previously mentioned).

Actually, for reading, text is inferior to even basic HTML markup.

However, for writing computer code, text is fine (as long as you have a decent editor). From time to time, someone comes along with an idea for a graphical programming language, where you create algorithms visually, but these never seem to amount to anything. To be sure, there are fancy IDEs, such as Xcode, which are geared to producing GUI apps. These can help out by generating boiler-plate code, maintaining the project build script, and doing certain refactorings. But, ultimately, you are still left dealing with textual source code, be it Objective C, Java, C#, whatever.

Text is also quite robust for data storage and transmission, e.g., CSV, XML, YAML, JSON. However, binary formats will outperform text, at the cost of some increase in fragility.

[OneWingedShark]

OK, so you're a windows user, and someone says the above to you. How do you do it? You can't unless you've already installed a separate program (putty or something to even be able to ssh to another box). If you don't have it, then it's off to google to find a program to provide ssh capabilities. Then you have to download it, install it, and figure out how to use it.

And? I don't see a problem with having some functionality in other programs/packages.
Granted, you can go overboard and ship out a really bare-bones OS.

Another scenerio... You need to copy a file from your home directory on box Able to the box you're on. From windows, you're going to have to know how to map directories, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Mapping directories is fairly easy in Windows… I haven't had to use it in a few years though.

In linux, you can do it with a simple command "scp able:file.txt .". Even better, let's say you need to move a file from Able to Baker, but you're on Charlie. How would you do that with windows? It's not something that grandma would be able to do on windows, yet it is somehow supposed to be so magically easy that gramma can do it with Linux. (from Charlie, depending upon your version of ssh, you should be able to "scp able:file.txt baker:."

Depends on your set-up w/ Windows; I used to have several desktops LANed together — doing the operation above is easy: open the folder on Able, open a folder on Baker, drag what you want from Able's folder to Bakers. Done.

[Stentor]

I am thinking of switching to Mint or Lubuntu...I am running Lubuntu on an Atom processor and it runs way better than that crappy Windows starter. It's a Dell 1018 with 1 gig of memory. Youtube loads slowly, mostly because of Chromium extensions but it plays decently.

[OneWingedShark]

Actually, for reading, text is inferior to even basic HTML markup.

Not really — perhaps for navigation or simplistic formatting. (Both of those are not strictly-speaking "reading".)

However, for writing computer code, text is fine (as long as you have a decent editor). From time to time, someone comes along with an idea for a graphical programming language, where you create algorithms visually, but these never seem to amount to anything.

I think you misunderstand: I'm not saying that the language should be atextual, but that text is unsuitable for storing programs.
As I said before: there is no way to guarantee a textfile is a valid program; on the other hand, a structured data-format can.

To be sure, there are fancy IDEs, such as Xcode, which are geared to producing GUI apps. These can help out by generating boiler-plate code, maintaining the project build script, and doing certain refactorings. But, ultimately, you are still left dealing with textual source code, be it Objective C, Java, C#, whatever.

Yes — and there's a major failing in that they view programs as text.

Text is also quite robust for data storage and transmission, e.g., CSV, XML, YAML, JSON. However, binary formats will outperform text, at the cost of some increase in fragility.

Right.

[cynwoody]

Not really — perhaps for navigation or simplistic formatting. (Both of those are not strictly-speaking "reading".)

What I meant to say was that even basic HTML markup improves the readability of text.

E.g., in your #11, you used <ol>, <tt>, <i>, <sup>. These and other simple elements of HTML markup made your post easier to read than it would have been, had you been restricted to writing pure tty-compatible ASCII.

[sand88]

3. Netflix. I haven’t looked into it lately, but last time I looked, there was no support for Netflix on Linux.

Netflix can run under Ubuntu and other distros. The issue revolves around DRM and Silverlight. The studios demand DRM.

Do a google search on Pipelight. It is a nice, straightforward solution that is available.

[OneWingedShark]

What I meant to say was that even basic HTML markup improves the readability of text.

The markup [proper] certainly hinders readibilty, only the rendering of the formatting is what aids readability.

E.g., in your #11, you used <ol>, <tt>, <i>, <sup>. These and other simple elements of HTML markup made your post easier to read than it would have been, had you been restricted to writing pure tty-compatible ASCII.

Granted, though there's a surprising amount that you can do without markup:

	As an example, I am using Notepad to make a chunk of 'formatted' plain-text -- as you can see,
tabs can perform indenting which is still something that HTML lacks. As for ordered-lists, the following
is common enough:
		1) Element one.
		2) Element two.
		3) Element three.
		x) Element X.
	In addition to that we can do the same with unorderd lists using '-', '+', '*', '•', '—', 'º',
or '›'.

[martin_fierro]

I’ve had very good experiences with both Ubuntu and xubuntu Linux.

I’m running xubuntu on 3 older laptops. Definitely worth a shot!

[cynwoody]

        It's more than a bit of a cluge, but you can indent paragraphs using only HTML. E.g., you can use a string of &nbsp; entities at the beginning of each paragraph. However, to indent paragraphs cleanly, you need CSS text-indent. CSS lets you do hanging indents as well. But FR strips out CSS, alas.

[OneWingedShark]

CSS is itself a kludge* — much of the difficulties of web-dev stem from one of two things, and both are the same root-cause:

1. Trying to impose state on a stateless system, and
2. trying to use HTML [and CSS] to specify formatting,

Both of these are working against the design-goals of the underlying technology: in the case of sate HTTP is stateless (so all the Web 2.0 / AJAX crap is, essentially, trying to bolt on state[-management]) and, in the case of formatting, HTML was speciffically designed sso that the viewer [browser] could render the page appropriately… imagine, if you will, an audio-based browser for the visually impaired <Strong>some text</Strong> could be rendered [via text-to-speech] into James Earl Jones while being displayed in mere bold font for those of us normal people.

* You can tell by how difficult it is to manage layout (as opposed to formatting) such as centering both horizontally and vertically contents in a container which is itself dependent upon other containers.