Oh, I got XBMC working at last My PC won't run it full screen for some reason, I just get a blank blue screen until I alt-tab out. Looks purdy in windowed though
It wasn't a question and it was taking YOUR thread off on a tangent but never mind. Perhaps you would try and knock me out.... bit of a stupid thing to say on the internet though. Actually you need to read everything I have said again and get off your high horse... or wash the sand out of your vagina, I'm not sure which. Really I think your more of an offencive shit for brains than I am.... and look, its getting you all pent up with anger. Really though, I like you, you remind me of when I was young and stupid.... Take your time!
Oh, and about the windows thing, it wasn't down to me actually. But yeah, you failed to read properly again. "But, this is where Linux really starts to p*ss me off." you think he was comparing to a Gem Desktop (Atari ST/STE) or Windows???? Te-Rhad!
You just don't know when to quit do you sunshine...
Listen buddy, no one, not me, not CSU1 not his father nor any one on the entire planet has to justify their personal preference's when choosing which operating system into their personal computer. And since when did you become the mouth piece for Linux ? What makes you think you have some divine right to decide who can and can't use a bit of free software ?
CSU1's original post pointed out that both he and his father are new to Linux, and that it's perhaps not as user friendly as it could be. My post only confirmed this.
The sad fact of the matter is i'm probably not that much younger than CSU1's father. And i guess like him i never had the opportunity to study computers at school. Infact we didn't even have a computer to even look at never mind play with. So i, like CSU1's father have come to computing rather late in life. After using Windows for some time and having come to the conclusion that it's actually a heap of crap, have sought out suitable alternatives. Personally i have been using Linux Mint for 2 or 3 yrs, and i love it so much i even gave the developers a few quid as a simple gesture of appreciation. It's not without it's foibles, but maybe with mine and the communities financial help these problems could be rectified, who knows.
Thanks to the synaptic package manager i have very few problems installing new applications into the OS. But every now and then an issue like the one mentioned above comes to light. i.e having to open up the terminal and mess about with the internal structure of the OS. And i'll happily admit that at first glance it can be rather daunting. As someone else mentioned in the thread, with a bit of background reading there shouldn't be to many problems with installing it correctly. Granted it would take me a heck of a lot longer to read-up, put all the instructions into a geek-speak translator, (yes, it can be like a foreign language to some, but then again, you seem to be pretty intolerant of those who have a limited understanding of your language) and then perform the required actions. Thats fine by me, i don't mind taking my time over it, but why is it such a big problem for you, and what the hell has it got to do with you anyway ?.
You do realise that personal insults on this forum usually result in a ban. And you've openly admitted that your intention was to insult me. Do you need to do such things to prove to the world how smart you are ? do you need to belittle a total stranger to give your ego a boost ? Or are you just a self righteous bigot who thinks he has some divine right to lord it over anyone you have decided is as thick as pig shit ?
Yunno, i'll openly admit to not being computer savvy, i've mentioned it on several occasions in this forum over the years. At most i only ever get a bit of friendly ribbing from the other users, and that's fine. But your reply was nothing short of childish playground rudeness. Grow up dude, for your own sake grow up. Otherwise lifes gonna be really tough for you, and you'll end up a sad, lonely, bitter old man.
If you do feel the urge to respond to this post, at least try to show a bit of maturity, there's a good chap...
It was about Linux, you took it off topic, he got sand in his crack about it... lets face it, its not that important. You'll openly admit your not 'savvy' at computers so you posted a rant about something you clearly don't understand, enjoy your tag team, I'm not your buddy and quite frankly I came on this thread to help. All I have done is try to help until your shatty little gob come on ranting how crap Linux is when it became obvious you don't have the faintest clue about it. For the record, I am probably as old as his dad too. Throw help back in my face, well simple, if that's what your both about don't ask anyone for help, more important, don't rant on a "help me" thread, do it on a "rant about me" thread.... I'll make it simply clear
I understand that you're looking for a way to easily organise and play music. But that can be done on any distro. Ubuntu is one of the user-friendliest distros around, and it has a wide range of applications for playing music or movies.
Even on Windows, media player are NOT user-friendly. Windows Media Player is just as confusing, if not more confusing, than something like Rhythmbox (Ubuntu's default music player).
What problems are you facing, and what do you need the player to do?
Seeing as how you're using Ubuntu, have you added the Medibuntu repositories so you can download codecs and software for file types not supported by standard Ubuntu? http://www.medibuntu.org/
To add Medibuntu repositories, you need to open up your Terminal window, and copy-paste (for Hardy Heron):
It will ask you about installing an unvalidated package. Just say yes.
VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) is probably the best media player on Linux. But it's a little complex because it has lots of features. To install it on Ubuntu, type this into Terminal:
sudo apt-get install vlc
Totem is the default movie player, but it also plays music. Very easy to use too. The default Totem uses gstreamer, but gstreamer has some issues with some file types. I recommend you use the xine version. To remove Totem-Gstreamer and install Totem-Xine:
My dad's pretty well out-faced by the computer too. I think it's a confidence thing, CSU. He believes that computers are beyond him, and so they are. In fact mobile phones are beyond him, simply because they are not familiar. In point of fact, cordless house phones that you don't hang up and pick up like the old ones are a challenge. Many's the time he's declared the phoneline to be dead because he hasn't pressed the green handset button after dialling the number.
Many of the problems can be fixed with "training". Familiarisation and understanding are core factors in successfully using a PC. The problem with a Linux distro is that you always finish up having to pop the hood. Linux users like tinkering.. it's a fact. It's WHY they're Linux users. Many of them simply don't understand that AS SOON AS you have to pop the hood, the whole "ease of use" idea is completely blown.
There is a MASSIVE difference between "can be easily fixed" and "doesn't break down". Technophobes need the latter, and all too often Linux distros can't deliver. The "we fix it for free" is moot at that point.. but even if it weren't moot, the very audible mocking from a chorus of l33t Linuxers is instantly terminal. There is always at least one, and unfortunately he's usually the first to post.
theres more to it than technophobia sam
im an electric engineer and in my 20s so im hardly an elderly technophobe however ive been using microsoft os' for god knows how long at least since the 386 so im used to popping open the hood and handcrafting autoexes and config sys files for specific games
the problem with linux for me is 2 things
- im rather glad that the days of editing text files and relying on a stash of bootdisks are over
- having used microsofts products for well over 15 years now i have a very hard time to wrap my head around the repository paradigm as opposed to the microsoft way of install manually and forget about it... it seems like quite a chore to search for a repository that suits your distro first then hope its updated regularly enough that it has files for your version of the distro/kernel then add it to some texfile in a seemingly random location (folder structure on *nix is another one of those paradigms that just confuse me) and then and only then do a sudo to install it from a gigantic list of stuff you dont give a flying coitus about
downloading some setup.exe and clicking through a wizard that actually asks me _where_ on my 5 drives id like to have that progrm end up on seems so much more logical
Well, downloading a .deb for your chosen OS and installing that is hardly any different. Just less "next, next, next, ****.. previous, next, finish". Double click, install, done. Installing for instance Opera with all its dependencies is a breeze that way. Skype the same. The fact that not all vendors provide .debs for their software is of of course sad, but hardly the failing of the repository system itself.
There are also several different package managers around. The huge list of software in say Synaptic can of course be a little daunting, but in most Gnome desktops you have the "Add/Remove" dialog right in the "Applications" menu and that's a lot easier to navigate.
As for choosing an install location, I can certainly see where you're coming from as I had the same annoyance when I first started fiddling with *nix, but honestly why does it matter? My entire Ubuntu install (not counting /home which is on a different partition) with OMG-LOADS!!1! of software installed takes up 6GB. You can fit that on any harddrive made this decade and a few made the last one. Additionally I very much like the consistency of how the filesystem is laid out, even though manually removing all traces of an application from all over the filesystem can be tedious (which is why we have package managers for doing that).
As for editing config files from a console, I can't think of when I last HAD to do that. I've done it because I occasionally find it easier, but in 99% of the cases there is a GUI to get shit done.
In this context it doesn't matter where it fails, if at the end of the day it fails.
You have to have perfect conditions for Linux to be a solution for non-technically-oriented people, or technophobes. Not near-perfect, it has to be perfect. Any deviation from perfect is fail, because non-techs don't meet issues with ANY problem-solving abilities at all.
Vendors not providing Linux software in appropriate packages is a "problem" only solved by market share, and you're telling me Linux won't get market share until this problem's fixed? Catch 22. Guess it's Windows until the end of time then. I'll call up Linus and let him know.
See, technophobes won't be installing software they downloaded from the internet themselves anyway. They'll call me and have me do it for them, if they even know what software is and why they need it. Same when they want to buy a printer or a webcam. The technophobes are in fact the perfect candidates for using a Linux box because they aren't even aware of the things Linux sucks at. Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice and Linux friendly hardware picked by Dell and they're good. Same as with Windows.
Actually, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Linux is a lot more suited to technophobes than Windows is if you buy from an OEM. The amount of crapware the average Windows installation is buried under out of the box makes Ubuntu look like a shining beacon of simplicity and usability. The XP install on my Thinkpad made me cry when I first fired it up, and it took me all of an hour to throw it away and bring up a fully working Ubuntu install.
But wien you're talking from a techie's point of view. Sure a store bought PC with Windows on with come bundled with a load of bloatware, but the end user doesn't care about that because they don't know better. I do however agree with your post on the whole.
And unfortunately I don't think we can really teach the technophobes any better. It's really the emerging users that take advantage of better alternatives, Firefox etc, hopefully that knowledge will be passed on.
My other problem with Linux is, software such as Open Office etc is great, but if it isn't 100%, and I do mean one hundred percent, compatible with the software they will be using at work (MS Office), that instantly creates confusion.
Well, my ~65 year old neighbour sure gets worried about all those popups from various applications in her XP system tray. Just a few days ago I was over there to remove some of the crap that was crying for attention (updates for various software not in use, anti-virus, Windows update etc.). They may not know or care about bloat, but when it gets in their face it's still annoying.
If it wasn't for the fact that she's already somewhat set in her ways with Windows and Outlook I'd rip the thing off her computer and install Ubuntu. It would do everything she needs her computer to do, with less fuss for both me and her.
indeed however in my admitedly short lived attempts to live with linux i think i came across exactly one thing that i could install via a deb
mybe but good luck trying to finding the ntfs drivers in it or preconfigured nvidia drivers (the installation of which in the absence of prepackaged ones is a whole nother topic of frustration particularly compared to how simple it is in windows)
well that might be you but once you start installing stuff like matlab and tons of other scientific applications each of which will easily use up 3+gigs you quickly start to see the advantges of being able to choose where everything goes... even more so if your system drive is a 74gig one
thats another thing and one thing i love lfs for... i fondly remember the dos days of self contained programs that didnt expand all over my harddisk
well i can think of one case where i would probably have had to do it after experiencing the infamous 640 bug in the latest ubuntu
try editing the xorg conf with a 21" crt flickering like mad at 640*480 60hz... see how long you can go before finding out that you have epilepsy after all
firefox is hardly a better alternative
mine has recently developed the habit of taking up to 10-20 seconds to load for no apparent reason
why anyone would ever use either is beyond me anyway... tex (and if you have to pagemaker) ftw
Lmao classic. I think the biggest problem I had too was the Nvidia drivers. When it all goes tits up you get presented with a partially broken text prompt only.
Sure people will say 'just bang in the live CD to go online and find out what's wrong'. No, I'm not waiting for 10 minutes every damn time I make a mistake, to wait for a live CD to boot. You need a second machine lying about if you have to sort out problems that kill the GUI.
The other day my GRUB installation literally just decided it didn't like the location of my HDDs any more. What's the response on ALL the Ubuntu forums? (not that I use Ubuntu but it's the only damn links that come up in Google) - 'Put in the Live CD and restore GRUB'. No, just no.
e: Oh yes Firefox blows balls too, stupid memory usage when you have more than a small number of tabs open. Constant updates to all the bloody plugins. It's only redeeming features for me are Firebug and crash recovery, which is something that blows even bigger balls about Safari.
ah yes i somehow managed to end up with a console where nothing worked (including logout and ctrl alt del) and had forgotten whoch sysreq keystroke would make it reboot safely
for some reason i cant quite fathom i now have a fat formated usb flash drive with a fat filesystem that works just fine but a fedora livecd installation on it that has a filesystem broken enough to instantly drop me to a shell with reduced functionality and wishing me good luck in my attempts to mend it (yes it actually writes "good luck!" with an exclamationmark on the screen when i boot it)
ah i had that happen to me tons of times after using the automatic system updates of ubuntu which cause grub to decide that a useless default menu.lst file is far better than the one i came up with which actually contains all the relevant lines to boot both windows and linux with (and dont get me started on how utterly illogical it is to work out which of my sata drives grub arbitrarily decides to call hd0 instead of a far more useful sdc)
Whoo boy, here we go. Keep in mind I'm currently on the Alpha of Ubuntu 8.10, so the following may be a bit off wrt the current stable version.
I *think* the most recent Ubuntu has NTFS support out of the box. It hasn't been enabled earlier as the implementation has been a bit sketchy. Not shocking since it's reverse engineered without docs. Proprietary Nvidia drivers can be installed through the dialog under "System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers" in Ubuntu (I'm sure other distros have something similar).
Hmm, maybe it's worth looking into mounting /usr/share, /usr/bin or just /usr to a different drive? You can do this during setup, or later with a bit more difficulty. I'm not sure where Matlab stores all its stuff so I can't advice further.
I agree to a certain extent, but I would absolutely love it if LFS stored setups and replays in my User directory like it should instead of in its own directory. That would make it easier to have separate users access LFS without having to share all this user specific data. It would also cure a lot of UAC woes on Vista.
Most likely your screen isn't autodetected due to missing drivers? With Nvidia that can be a problem but I think this should be solved once the drivers are installed? Personally I havent touched xorg.conf for at least a year. Intel and ATI cards can all be configured via the GUI in Gnome. All resolutions are detected automatically and dual head works out of the box.
If your monitor is of an older variety and doesn't provide (proper) EDID information to the driver you may have to add horizontal and vertical refresh rates to xorg.conf though, that's true, and a fair complaint.
EDIT: And yeah. GRUB sucks. Why none of the prominent distros don't just fix it once and for all boggles my mind.
What? Do you think this is average user stuff? Does the average technophobe have to install windows by themselves and fiddle round with drivers and install locations? Somehow I doubt it.
Average joe installs: printers (lexmark anyone?), scanners. For Windows they come around with a nice install cd so even he understands it.
Apart from that: I think Linux has made big steps in the last years when it come to easy handling and configuration. However there are still things that are hard to understand or get to work. And not everyone likes to browse for the answer half an hour. But it's gets better with every version.
Thank you for your the time on the post samjh, i have about six months practice with Ubuntu and Linux and feel quite comfortable, my father however is a complete noobcake, like thousands of others who just can't use Linux for it's (in their mind) over complicated filesystem.
I agree, the collection of default open-source software is enough to get any noob by, if even noob was to conjour the effort to get that far to will it that way in the first place. Noobs generaly would be too afraid of breaking something to install software so the repository is more than likely beyond their grasp.
Imo the universe and all of it's universes and repositorys is enough to get anyone out of a hole...have you seen the amount of open-source software available with one descriptive search?...what more would you need it's the friggen universe with everything in it?
I have /Home and /usr on a seperate partition.
I can't understand something about folder permissions and group policy though.
In folder properties permissions tab there is a group named 'other', what catagory does the group 'other' fall into? why is this group given permissions to create and delete inside installation files by default? what system services reside in 'other', or how do I apply permissions to individual system services white listing them folder access permissions?
It fails because it's over complicated. The whole presentation of system folders is daunting for noob, he/she does'nt need to know any of that stuff, all noob wants is somewhere for his media and use thw web browser.
let's face it, these noobs are Boring, they never press buttons for fear of having to pay someone for help. Showing ie. accessible themes is the only medium which we have to entrust confidence in them when they want to do something boring like install a simple sound converter for example.
Google sucks for free software, and for the noob he never passes third maybe fourth result, he'll wind up with what the masses have, sad really.
Iv'e been playing around with XBMC and it's presentation is nice and easy for an oldie to fumble his way around but the mouse feels a bit dodgy. If all other information the noob needs to know where to be presented in this fashion it would help a great deal.
I guess my question is of OS design.I need to look into making themes for Ubuntu.
what info noob needs to know to keep a healthy system:
disk-space
network logs and alerts
Something to tell them everything about personal folders and filesystem folder access alerts
updates and overall performance and condition
If the OS management could be dumbed down and presented to the level of xbmc the noob might last a bit longer.
The dumb masses retain sync and consume media only, coupled with the use of the web browser it makes for a pretty simple environment.
Overall Ubuntu design resembles a turd imo.
E:
As for the questions about usb peripherals and printers, I've found most hardware does not even need a driver download.
Not the average Joes I deal with, but whatever. If you do want to install a printer you obviously have to check for Linux compatibility before you buy (HP works great out of the box). Is that really too much to ask?
My PC won't run it full screen for some reason, I just get a blank blue screen until I alt-tab out. Looks purdy in windowed though 
