«

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In message <>, Earl Grey wrote:
>
>> If you go for *ubuntu on a
>> custom partitioned or multiple boot system download the alternative
>> installer rather than the standard livecd installer.
>>
>
http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/ubuntu-rel...nate-amd64.iso
>
> Thanks for that link. I'm leaning towards either Debian or Ubuntu at this
> stage.

I'd stick with Gentoo, but use KDE instead. The issue is with your choice of
window manager, not with your choice of distribution. Once you get the
KNode issue sorted (using the non monolithic KDE ebuilds is a good idea if
you want control over what gets installed - all of KDE is BIG - there's a
lot of guff that you most likely won't use) you'll find Gentoo a breeze.

When you installed KNode it should have wanted to install a lot of other KDE
packages too - did it?

Allistar.

In message <AcadndMM1a->, Allistar wrote:

> I'd stick with Gentoo, but use KDE instead.

Which is what I've been trying to do, but ...

> When you installed KNode it should have wanted to install a lot of other
> KDE packages too - did it?

I chose the "monolithic" packages, which seemed to build OK. However, I have
this problem that my libexpat keeps getting upgraded to version 2.0 whereas
KNode seems to want a 1.x version. I can re-emerge KNode, and it builds and
installs, but then it won't run because it wants libexpat.so.0, whereas my
system has libexpat.so.1. I can't understand how it can build against a
version of the library that isn't on my system.

In message <450afb14$>, Robert Cooze wrote:

> I remember the words in a book about installing Linux after you have
> installed it format and start again! you will learn more that way!

Well, I wouldn't go that far.

I have done a whole bunch of Linux installs by now--probably got a total of
a couple of dozen machines--servers and desktops--running for different
clients. I like sniffing around config files and startup scripts and stuff
to figure out how things work. I figure that GUI tools tend to be
distro-specific, whereas there's a lot more commonality in the structure
and function of the underlying config files and scripts.

Nowadays I have users who are wanting to do more and more things themselves,
without calling on me all the time. Naturally they prefer to do things
through the GUI. So I have to become more familiar with that way of doing
things, just so I can explain it to them. And back it up with a few choice
command-line snippets, for situations that the GUI can't handle on its own.

In message <>, Allistar wrote:

> I like the fact that [with Gentoo] I can tweak the installation of
> packages for my exact architecture.

Hmm, yeah. I wonder if this is where I could be going wrong--having some
build option misconfigured.

> The package dependency checking is second to none, IMO.

Fine for adding things, but I wonder about removing things. The Handbook
warns you that the emerge command doesn't do any checking that something
you're removing is required by something else--it's up to you to explicitly
remove the depending package first. Whereas RPM-based systems simply won't
let you remove something that's still needed by something else.

> I like that fact that I have learned 100 times more about Linux
> using Gentoo than I would have had I stuck with Mandrake.

When I bought my first Shuttle over two years ago, it came with a copy of
Mandrake 9.1 "Discovery Edition" in the box. "Discovery" meant that it was
missing the third CD with GCC and developer tools and stuff. So my first
adventure was finding the Mandrake repositories online, and setting my
urpmi configuration to pull down the missing tools from them. I also
noticed some configuration options to do with user-proficiency
level--"beginnner" versus "advanced", that kind of thing--but I never got
very far with figuring out how to tweak that, because after about a couple
of months I took home a copy of SuSE 9.1 that I had been setting up for a
client and installed that.

I kept the option to dual-boot, but I very quickly stopped using it. SuSE
was a much more complete environment, with a good range of packages for
both desktop and server use, so I stuck with that for all of my installs
for clients from then on. I upgraded my Shuttle to SuSE 10.0 when that came
out, and after I'd been running it successfully myself for a couple of
months, I started giving that version to clients.

Now I feel the hankering to broaden my horizons some more.

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:28:27 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<_zealand> exclaimed:

>In message <450afb14$>, Robert Cooze wrote:
>
>> I remember the words in a book about installing Linux after you have
>> installed it format and start again! you will learn more that way!
>
>Well, I wouldn't go that far.
>
>I have done a whole bunch of Linux installs by now--probably got a total of
>a couple of dozen machines--servers and desktops--running for different
>clients. I like sniffing around config files and startup scripts and stuff
>to figure out how things work. I figure that GUI tools tend to be
>distro-specific, whereas there's a lot more commonality in the structure
>and function of the underlying config files and scripts.
>
>Nowadays I have users who are wanting to do more and more things themselves,
>without calling on me all the time. Naturally they prefer to do things
>through the GUI. So I have to become more familiar with that way of doing
>things, just so I can explain it to them. And back it up with a few choice
>command-line snippets, for situations that the GUI can't handle on its own.

Ok, I've resisted up until now, but I really would like to make a
genuine comment here. And no, this is not taking a cheap shot, but
more to highlight the point I've made several times in the past, to
the "poo poo" of the Linux fraternity.

Firstly, I'm not an MS fanboy. I work with both Windows and Linux
regularly, and honestly believe in the best tool for the job, which is
why I use Windows on the desktop, file server, groupware server, etc,
and Linux at the firewall, web server, and sometimes for things like
DNS in a high demand environment.

However, here's my point. I'm not saying that Linux on the desktop is
right for everyone, but over the last few posts you've made the
following points regarding your current favourite flavour of Linux.
This is against a background of the zealots on the group trying to say
that it is a far better option for the mass market than other, more
mature, operating systems (such as Windows).

Just to reiterate a few of your comments:

1. Installation is via a command-line, and you must manually partition
the drive, copy things, build and compile a kernel, etc.
2. The GUI you ended up with was bare and lacked functionality. You
could change to a development version that was very broken but looked
"pretty".
3. Your terminal application did not seem to support copy/paste (this
seems to be common amongst Linux apps - they either don't support it,
each use different shortcuts, or do not support it between
applications).
4. The Usenet reader is broken in a number of ways, from random error
messages through to blank dialogs and images not showing, which, to
date, and despite upgrades etc, you've not been able to fix.
5. It took several hours to download and install a more comprehensive
window manager, which you were, for the most part, not using (just
needed shared libraries).
6. It took an entire day (and god knows how much bandwidth) updating a
minor version of the OS (the equivalent of a "Service Pack"). I assume
the system was either unavailable or available with a reduced response
during this time?
7. In the Linux world, GUI tools tend to be distribution-specific
rather than standardised.
8. Users have said that they don't want to keep having to pay and pay
to have you come and do basic tasks on their systems, and prefer a GUI
that allows them to do it.
9. You still have to provide command-line snippets, as the GUIs in
Linux are not capable of handling non-arbitrary tasks.
10. Not to mention other users who have chimed in with gems like
updating applications breaking the system, etc.

And all this being labelled "bleeding edge".

Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?

And to reiterate, I don't want this to turn into a flame war. Just
honest and frank discussion.

T'was the Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:00:40 +1200 when I remembered Lawrence
D'Oliveiro <_zealand> saying something like
this:

>At the end of it, KNode _still_ didn't work properly. After a bit of hunting
>around on the Web, I found some mention of having to run kbuildsycoca to
>rebuild some system database. Tried that, and _it_ complained about missing
>MIME types too! And it didn't help.

I once installed Agent after a reboot. I doubled clicked on the
application in the folder, and it ran. I like how it stores all its
configuration files in an ini file, Agent runs forever!

Life on the bleeding edge doesn't sound fun from a main desktop point
of view, but fun for inside a virtual machine.
--
Cheers,

Waylon Kenning.

In message <>, Fred Dagg wrote:

> However, here's my point. I'm not saying that Linux on the desktop is
> right for everyone, but over the last few posts you've made the
> following points regarding your current favourite flavour of Linux.
> This is against a background of the zealots on the group trying to say
> that it is a far better option for the mass market than other, more
> mature, operating systems (such as Windows).

Sooner or later it had to happen ... somebody would misunderstand.

> Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
> Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?

Where in this thread did I say that Gentoo was 1) my favourite flavour of
Linux, or 2) a "superior solution ... for the momma and poppa users out
there"?

Which part of the concept of "Bleeding Edge" are you having trouble with?

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:01:05 +1200, Fred Dagg wrote:

[snip]

> And all this being labelled "bleeding edge".
>
> Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
> Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?

Heck, where this enter the thread? The OP was telling us of his
experiences with Gentoo and SUSE. MS was not metioned

>
> And to reiterate, I don't want this to turn into a flame war. Just
> honest and frank discussion.

Seems to me you are trolling for the former.

On Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:37:41 +1200, Shane wrote:

> I have never understood why people use gentoo (Cue Allistar with a thousand
> good and valid reasons to use it)

Because they get enjoyment/satisfaction from it. Why do people go skiing
or play golf or follow rugby etc?

> I built LFS a couple of times, and that put me off the whole compiling
> addiction
> (I have a 1.7 celeron that at the time had 256MB of DDR, and a full
> compilation, from scratch took 10 hours)

I paradox here, is that a slow(er) machine goes faster Gentoo, as building
from the source allows customisation. However, compiling goes so much
better (faster) with plain raw cpu power.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <>, Fred Dagg wrote:
>
>
>>However, here's my point. I'm not saying that Linux on the desktop is
>>right for everyone, but over the last few posts you've made the
>>following points regarding your current favourite flavour of Linux.
>>This is against a background of the zealots on the group trying to say
>>that it is a far better option for the mass market than other, more
>>mature, operating systems (such as Windows).
>
>
> Sooner or later it had to happen ... somebody would misunderstand.
>
>
>>Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
>>Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?
>
>
> Where in this thread did I say that Gentoo was 1) my favourite flavour of
> Linux, or 2) a "superior solution ... for the momma and poppa users out
> there"?
>
> Which part of the concept of "Bleeding Edge" are you having trouble with?

Must say I wondered why you were doing that Gentoo thing - killing time? To see
if you could? Because the things Fred correctly (except that he took them to be
common to all Linux distros) picked out of your post as being disadvantageous to
the user would have driven me up the wall, but then I'm not a geek, I'm a
tool-user and all I ask is for the computer-machine to be a useful tool so I can
do the things I want to do, and those things are challenge enough for me!

So I guess I'll never understand the people who really enjoy the challenge of
putting the machine together, hard- and software, finding out what works and
what doesn't, or not very well, and figuring our how to make it work right. I'm
sure I benefit from people like you, because without you and your kind Linux
wouldn't be forever improving - I just don't "get" making life for yourselves
that difficult in the meantime!

A L P