On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 16:57:30 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [Kier] on Sunday 01 January 2006 13:20 \__
>
>> On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 04:29:26 -0800, Bob wrote:
>>
>>> Well, well, local newsstand had an issue of Linux Magazine (which I
>>> never buy) but inside...was a...Mandriva CD! Whoa! Lo and behold. I
>>> know, you guys here go on and on about why don't you just d/l one and
>>> burn it, but most ppl, even advanced users, are just *not going to do
>>> that*. The price was about $12. Another Linux mag had Suse inside, but
>>> the Suse disks had all been ripped out of the 3 copies of the mag. I
>>> cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is for mags like this
>>> to bundle disks and then charge $12-13 a copy. A lot of us who have
>>> never run Linux are just going to buy the mag to get the disk, just for
>>> the Hell of it.
>>
>> I got most of my distros in exactly that way (over here they cost six or
>> seven quid with a DVD or CDs). Linux Format is my magazine of choice.
>
>
> Try /not/ to go for the distribution that is cheapest or is most easily
> obtainable. I once installed Ubuntu for exactly that reason. I came in to
> work and wanted to set up my new machine as soon as possible, so I borrowed
> a copy from a colleague's Ubuntu stack. Ubuntu is almost perfect, but it is
> no SuSE (see below). Wiping, migrating or re-installing once Ubuntu has been
> installed is time-consuming. I have stayed with Ubuntu for nearly a year.
> Happy, but could be happier. It's actually very stable:
>
> 16:40:41 up 82 days, 8:30, 5 users, load average: 0.02, 0.04, 0.00
Tried it for a while, and liked it. As to cheapness, I never had a problem
with the free versions I've picked up over the last couple of years, and
LXF mag offers a wide range of distros to try.
>
>
>>> Looking thru the mag, I see that installation of Linux apps is still
>>> needlessly user-hostile (the (l)user wants one of those Windows packages
>>> that you double-click and away it goes) and mucking around inside of
>>> ordinary apps like Nero Linux seemed frighteningly complex (as in for
>>> programmers only). I can only say that there simply must be Linux
>>> distros that are just as (l)user friendly as Windows and Mac OS.
>>> Otherwise, desktop Linux is headed nowhere in a hurry.
>>
>> Whoa there, boy! User-hostile? I don't think so If any user is
>> sufficiently savvy to want to install a new OS, he's likely to be able to
>> cope with the installation of Mandriva, which has to be one of the most
>> user-friendly installs around. Even dual-booting isn't that complex,
>> particularly if you have more than one hard drive, or a hard drive
>> partitioned in two or three sections.
>
>
> Installations are not user hostile. Initial installation is very simple in
> SuSE and Mandriva. In Ubuntu, it is almost purely automatic and maybe even
> easier than Windows or Mac OS 9 installations (never actually installed 10).
It was certainly easy on my old laptop. Though that's had Mandrake,
Kanotix, SUSE, Arklinux, Ubuntu and a couple of others which escape my
memory on it for a time.
>
> Kier was referring to initial installation of the O/S, but the OP mentions
> package management. In SuSE, YaST takes care of everything. In Ubuntu,
> Synaptic does likewise. You needn't know anything about dependencies. The
> distro knows them all and almost hides these nasty details from you (unless
> of course you wish to review them). Just tick the box next to the
> application which you desire to install, press accept and *Kaboom*; New icon
> in the launcher/kicker (AKA "Start menu"). No need to restart either.
Nice, isn't it? :-)
>
> I suspect that you chose the wrong distro. I see people in the Mandrake
> newsgroup who migrate to SuSE or say something like "Mandriva is OK, but
> it's nowhere compared to SuSE". Mandrake/driva has history, a community,
> sentimental values, expertise, and emotional attachment. [I hope I offend
> nobody here]
Well, I've never found myself dissatisfied with Mandrake/Mandriva. But I
also have SUSe installed on a couple of my machines. I would call it my
second choice of favourite 'major' distro, after Mandriva. My only real
gripe with SUSE is the fiddling around you need to do to get DVDs
playable, and that kind of thing.
But I stick with Mandriva because I like it, and it works well for me.
>
> I used Mandrake for a for a while, but it was not reliable. I used it on two
> machines in fact. Never by choice.
In what way did you find it unreliable? I won't say it's never given me
trouble, but not often, and not anything that put me off it.
>
>
>>> Reading more, it seems sad that Mandriva is still on rpm, which
>>> apparently involves some Linux version of dependency hell.
>>
>> Not really, no. Ever heard of urpmi? Well, Mandriva has this nice easy way
>> to set it up, and from then on, it's generally without problems in the
>> dependancy department. Leastways, I have rarely encountered any that were
>> insoluable by the application of simple common-sense.
>
>
> YaSY makes use of RPM's too, but provided you have all the installation CD's,
> there is no dependency hell, let alone any warnings.
Absolutely. Much the same with Mandriva. And there are some new
technologies coming up that may well banish dependency hell forever in
most if not all distros.
>
>
>>> BTW, is there a Linux distro out there as (l)user friendly as Windows
>>> and Mac OS? You know, like clicky-clicky, GUI-GUI, applet-applet,
>>> what-the-hell-is-a-command line?
>>
>> Most of the major distros. Mandriva, SUSE, and others less well-known but
>> equally good (Mepis is one that comes to mind). Hell, you can even go for
>> Linspire, which is nearly bullet-proof as far as the newbie is concerned.
>> Not so many hard-core advocates like it, but that's neither here nor
>> there; it's still Linux, and it works.
>
>
> I would recommend SuSE if you intend to use many different applications, but
> (K)Ubuntu otherwise.
SUSE is definitely a good choice. It's one of those I tend to recommend
when anyone posts asking which distro is worth trying.
<snip>
|
|
