New Linux Install

<rant>Ok, so yesterday I installed Kubuntu an my desktop along with XP. I am beginning to wonder why I bothered. I can see some of the reasons why people love Linux so much but I have had far more problems than solutions. Here are my reasons for being so dissatisfied:
1. I can't get dual monitors to work. I installed the nVidia restricted drivers, edited the xorg.conf file, and still have nothing. I don't even think the OS recognizes the second monitor.
2. Every time I try to install Flash player I get some kind of error. With the RPM its failed dependencies, with the flashplayer-installer its just some generic "I won't do this" error.
3. Ditto for Java.
3. Amarok is coded too poorly to run my whole music library in a playlist. WMP does this fine. Fortunately Kaffeine does fine with it.
4. This kinda goes along with 2. Windows comes with installers. Double-click, installed. Linux comes with a variety of formats for installations, almost none of which I can get to work.

All said, I feel sure that if I was a Linux expert none of these problems would exist. Unfortunately for me I'm no expert. Windows just seems so much more user friendly. Maybe there is some big secret I'm missing. But then, if its a big secret then it isn't very user friendly. It seems like all Linux would do for me is make my life more difficult. Even if I got everything to work like it should I would be back to where I started. I want this to work, but I don't see it. Do any of you have ideas for what has gone wrong? Why should I stick with it? AT, here is your chance to save a wayward Linux user.</rant>

PS: For what its worth it was easier to get Linux to see my Windows Server than it was to get Vista to see it (that is one thing I will concede, Linux kicks Vista's ass, but who didn't already know that?).

 

OK, I'll bite.

• Why Should I care which OS you choose? I feel Linux is worlds better, but I'm not the one who has to use your PC.
• I've already made my opinions of *ubuntu well known in the forums. It's kind of a broken distro, IMHO. Being popular does not make something good.
• Linux is different than Windows, not a better version of Windows. They're very different things. Don't expect one to be like the other!
• I can't reproduce the issue you're complaining about in Amarok. I loaded around 8,000 tracks -- that's 3 weeks of 24x7 playtime -- with no problems whatsoever. Your issue could be Kubuntu-specfic, I don't know. It could also be configurational.
• Linux is free in every sense of the word. Licenses are free, the code is open, and it allows you to do what you want.
• Linux is fast, secure and stable. It gets better and more powerful in your hands the more about it you learn. If none of this sounds attractive, or if you're happy enough with Windows, then why bother with Linux? Why bother with your rant? Just go use Windows and be happy.

Here are some of the reasons I personally like Linux and prefer it over Windows, or OS X:

1. Open source. We see and are ultimately responsible for the code.
2. It belongs to us, not some huge company. I don't trust big companies to make the best decisions for me.
3. It's stable. I've never had an OS crash in Linux, which is great on desktops and even more important on servers.
4. It's free. Free as in beer, free as in the recipe, free as in where and when and how you drink it.
5. I don't like worrying about licensing, compliance, etc. I want my software to work for me, not be a burden.
6. I don't like my own PC telling me what I can or cannot do with it. Keep your DRM, Microsoft, Apple, Sony... I don't want it.
7. Who wants to dedicate half the capacity of their PC to searching for viruses and other malware? Not me.
8. Do you like running an OS that can be compromised by the simple act of inserting a CD, a memory stick, or an MP3 player? If so, I don't envy you.
9. I can customize it, rebuild it to my needs, take out bits I don't like and tweak the stuff I do like. It's my OS, not Microsoft's, not Apple's, but mine. Ours.
10. I can rebuild my own kernel, the core-most part of an OS, and make it as efficient as possible by tuning it specific to my own hardware. That's not possible with Windows or OS X, because we don't have access to the sourcecode.
11. If we did have access to the sourcecode of Windows or Mac OS, would we like what we saw? I don't know, and neither do you.
12. I can literally play 50 movies simultaneously and still leave my PC in quite a usable state. I wouldn't have a need to, but I can. Running Vista, my PC would cripple itself intentionally when I play multimedia. As fun as that sounds, I'll pass on that too.
13. I don't have to buy thousands of dollars of software to have a powerful software library, nor do I cheapen myself with software piracy. All the software I need is open-source. I buy games on occasion, but that's just gravy.
14. I can, without exaggeration, compile 12 kernels simultaneously in the background, in *virtual machines*, while I play ET:QW at 75FPS full-screen. w00t anyone?
15. I can spend money that would normally be wasted on a limited, proprietary OS on better hardware instead.
16. My hardware is not wasted on bloated and intentionally slow software, but rather, I can make full use of it to my own ends.
17. Linux is the Swiss Army Knife of operating systems. If I ever need a router, firewall, load-balancer, web server, file server, database server, mail server, proxy server, content filter, VPN concentrator, terminal server, game server, chat server, VOIP server, video surveillance, media center, jukebox, compile farm, discreet traffic sniffer, high-end graphics workstation, supercomputer cluster, thin-client, etc.... I can make that, out of almost any hardware, using only one OS. Or, I could buy hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars worth of proprietary software and hardware to do the same or almost as good of a job. And then, I would still be limited by the whims of the vendor.

This is all nothing personal. But you asked, and I'm answering honestly.

 

We used to get this all the time on the Amarok mailing list. Amarok is not designed to support thousands of songs on a single playlist. Instead you should use the dynamic playlists feature. It was designed to do exactly this, create a smart playlist with the criteria you want, and then load it into a dynamic playlist. If you want to search your whole collection, thats what the search box in the collection browser is for. Visit the amarok dev squad at #amarok on irc.freenode.net if you want more help. Don't accuse developers of poor coding if you haven't even looked at the source code.

By the way, you should be using your default package manager to install software. RPM's on a Debian based system? Flash player is easy to install, e.g. go to a site with flash on and click the install flash player box where an animation should be. E.g. hardwareforums arcade.

Java works fine for me.

The Linux world isn't trying to make your life hard. If you have difficulties with something its easy to rant and put the blame on something, whatever it is but it doesn't make the problem go away. the beauty of open source software is that it enables you to DO something about it.

As AT said, Linux isn't a better Windows. Once you stop thinking like a Windows user and not expect everything to be spoon fed to you then it's quite a capable system. If you still aren't satisfied, then return it for a refund...oh yea forgot about that...

 

you just need to specify 2 different monitors in the xorg, although, personally, i would add the second monitor in System Settings > Monitor & Display (basically graphically)

that why it's better to install stuff with you chosen package manager because it takes care of all those pesky dependencies

it easy to get flash working, my browser (Swiftweasel) automatically installs the flash plugin (by allowing a blocked popup)

i have to agree about Java because i'm very annoyed that i haven't got Java working yet, however,

personally i'm not very familiar with Amarok

as i've said you are better to install ALL software with your chosen package manager & then configure the installed software

i've discussed a few here

i've added my 2 pence worth too, hopefully nobody will mind

personally, i haven't done any networking, as i only have a single Kubuntu box at home

if i cant find a .deb, i convert a RPM to a deb with Alien (obviously if i can find an RPM)

 

I think it's a SQLite limitation, not an Amarok limitation. I'm using MySQL with Amarok, since i have a local MySQL server on my home network anyway. I can load an indefinite number of files in a playlist without any problems or slowdowns. If you really, really want playlists that damn big, and I can't think of a good reason anyway, run the mysql server on your client, and setup amarok to work with it. But honestly, it's kind of pointless to have a playlist that's more than a day's worth of music, isn't it?

 

Ok, so I got flamed, but I guess I had that coming (although I do appreciate your response, donkey, as it did have some ideas and solutions for some of the problems I mentioned).

Ok, what distro would you suggest over it. There are thousands out there, and it is hard to blame me for choosing a popular one.

I realize that I can do all of that, but I don't know how. Of course I could learn, but that is not a direction I want to go. I want an OS that will work reasonably well out of the box (or iso image). I don't want to have so set up an SQL server to get a media player to run properly. I'm not asking for it to do everything perfectly and exactly the way I want it, I just want basic functions to be usable.

I realize this, that is why I am trying to switch. But really, I want an easy transition. I'm not a programmer, I'm just a humble user. And, like I said, I don't expect the OS to be perfect, but I do expect a system that will give me basic functionality while I learn how to set up MySQL or modify a kernel. Until I can do that though, I don't want to have to think about coding this or rebuilding that, I just want it to work. Does Linux do that?

 

The problems you've been facing are simply teething problems. They aren't what we would call "in-the-shit" problems. A bit of googling should do the trick.

I use the MySQL server too for the little bit of extra performance, but it really doesn't make _that_ much of a difference. The issue is in fact to do with the coding of the listview component Amarok uses. Quite simply, huge playlists of thousands of tracks used too much memory with Qt3, Amarok2 will remedy this situation and make large playlists perform better, but at the same time discourage it.

Dual monitors and the like is not what I would call basic functionality. You should probably try a different distribution, and there is a whole thread(s) dedicated to such questions like this. You don't have to install MySQL at all, or compile your own kernels. You just need to be patient and do some research in setting up a new system. Just as you would if you were new to Windows and moving to it (God help us if that ever was the case).

 

Ahh, that's the problem with written expression -- it's hard to read inflection. I was simply stating facts, not flaming. At least, that was the intent.

I'm not "blaming" you for anything actually, merely stating a point. Ubuntu does some strange things at times, design wise, so sometimes it can deviate from how Linux is expected to behave.

Really, I don't see how Amarok isn't usable because you can't have thousands of tracks in a playlist, but again, your needs may be different from mine. But, it's not like Amarok is your only choice, either. There are many dozens of audio players for Linux, and Amarok is just one of them. If you don't like it for whatever reason, try a different one.

I'm not a programmer either. To be fair, I am a network engineer and a systems administrator though. But my wife runs Linux, my dad runs linux, my sister runs Linux, and none of them are technical at all. It's just a matter of learning the differences, getting comfortable with new software, etc. If you don't want to learn, don't bother with Linux. That's not a flame, it's honest advice.

 

Well, all said this point ends up being moot because as I said I am using Kaffeine and it works. I was just stating that I found the playlist issue to be a limitation of Amarok (and a big one, it did cause the application to crash multiple times).

Anyways, this has somewhat hardened my resolve to figure this out. Maybe its just because I have to one up everyone I'm around, but regardless, I have to prove that I'm not a closed minded MS user.

 

I never cared for Kaffeine, but I suppose if you're after a WMP act-alike, that's pretty close. Still, Amarok works fine for me with huge playlists. It takes a few seconds to load a playlist of that size, but it's doing a lot more than queuing tracks. Amarok keeps very detailed records, so there's a lot going on there for a playlist that large. Here's a temp link to a video of me loading an 8,000 track playlist in Amarok, under Debian Linux: http://anti-trend.homelinux.org/tmp/huge_playlist.ogm It works without problems for me every time, so I suspect that the issue you're having may indeed be Ubuntu-specific.

You can do anything if you put your mind to it. I'm not pretending to have any insight into your character, but most people don't have the tenacity to learn something new when what they have works "well enough". If you can stick with Linux long enough to really learn it, a whole new world will open up to you. And if not, well, maybe you'll learn a few things anyway.

 

I know I'm a bit late in joining the conversation, but I thought I might as well throw in my two cents even though a lot of this has been touched upon.

Like AT, I have had no problems playing incredibly large playlists. I have a very similarly sized library to AT and yet never had Amarok crash loading parts or all of it. However when, for a period of time, I was using *ubuntu I had all sorts of crazy problems with freezing and crashing. On the same machine, running Debian Lenny I get no problems with that sort of thing. And although you seem to be doing fine thus far with Kaffeine, I think you should check out Songbird. It is not quite finished yet, but in my opinion it seems very well done and maybe it will solve the problems you're having in Amarok.

In *ubuntu 7.10 there is a package named something like kubuntu-multimedia-something that installs a whole bunch of restricted stuff that should make movies playable, java, flash, etc. Apt-get or synaptic that package and see what it does for you.

As everyone else said, the repos are there for a reason. First look for things in your repos. And for things that aren't in the repositories, most programs will offer a .deb or .rpm format (ie: cedega). A even a lot of .sh files will bring up a graphical installer if it is executable (ie: UT2k4, Savage).

For one thing, I would expect it to be a hell of a lot more user-friendly for the cost difference. Secondly, in my experience a properly configured linux box is way easier to use (and for longer, more consistent period of time) than a Windows box or Mac. AT's wife knows very little about Linux and yet has been using Linux for years with very little help from AT. And she seems to do everything she wants to. At least, I dont think I've ever heard her complain about it. My girlfriend actually asked me to install linux on her computer. I never suggested it once. She was tired of the problems and instability she was having in Windows. Those are her words, not mine. Recently she told me she sometimes wishes she could play some Windows games she likes that dont run in Cedega/Wine and immediately after told me it would not be worth it (running Windows).

I'll admit, though, that Linux was also quite a learning curve for me as well. I was very fortunate to have AT living very close to me to help me with all my little problems. But the real learning came when AT finally told me he wouldn't help me until I had really tried for myself. Some problems he left me with for a month or more before helping me with them. So yes, there's a learning curve but it is well worth it.

I also want to mention that my first several times (and even now) using a mac were very difficult for me. This is after having extensively used both Windows and Linux. Sometimes things just don't make any sense on there. My point is that your problems have less to do with the quality of the OS and more to do with change your are experiencing.

Along the lines of your "I just want it to work" speech, I want think its important to consider that you saying "MS just works" is coming from the mouth of an experienced MS user. I work in a computer repair shop and let me tell you, I get a huge amount of customers in that can't get DVDs to play out of the box. Doesn't sound very user friendly. Most MS computers dont come with the proper files to play DVDs and some DVD playing software for MS also dont come with the proper files. In a recent incident a brand new vista computer didn't have the region for dvd playing set correctly on the cdrom settings and the person couldn't play dvds. The fix was more complicated than they would have ever figured out. I've seen on many, many occasions in Vista the optical drive just vanish from my computer. How to fix it? Delete some registry entries. WTF? And this happens fairly often in XP also, though not as much. I've worked on countless infected computers and countless computers that need registry fixes, have broken Windows files. I've also seen countless computers being fixed remotely end up with a missing NTLDR just from breaking connection. These problems I'm describing are not sole incidents. I see them almost daily. Beyond very very limited use of a MS computer, operation and fixes are complicated and nonsensical.

Much earlier, you asked what distro to use and honestly its not fair for one of us to push one on you. The reason there are so many linux distros out there are because people's needs vary so much. If you have the time/patience, i would suggest going to distrowatch.com and spending some time looking through some of them and reading the descriptions. I have personally used quite a few linux distros and it never feels like "home" until I come back to Debian. Some you may want to try are Debian, Mint, *ubuntu, Fedora, or Mandriva. I dont really care for several of these, but they all have decent support and I know people that use each of them quite happily.
[ot]This turned out much longer than anticipated. I hope it at least provided a little insight. And for the record, none of this is meant to offend, just to inform [/ot]

 

@Fred, is it ubuntu-restricted-extras ?

 

BTW, I was wrong. On my laptop, I'm running Debian "Lenny" also, and on that machine I'm using SQLite instead of MySQL for Amarok's database. On that machine too I can load huge playlists without problems. So, it's entirely possible it's jut an Ubuntu-specific weirdness when it comes to Amarok.

 

That must be it. I believe they have similar packages for the other *ubuntus, especially kubuntu and xubuntu though I may be off.

 

Ok, so if its a broken distro *ubuntu is out of the question. Mandriva gave me major problems when I tried to install it (as in the installer did not properly recognize my hard drives, showed an area as free space, and wrote over my Windows installation). Debian, Mint, and Fedora all sound like candidates. I'll look over them.

 

I know I'm beating a dead horse but I just have to mention one more thing about Windows "just working"... Today I installed a new motherboard on my main rig because of problems I was having with it. This motherboard was not an exact replacement. Totally different chipset on the motherboard including the onboard sound and ethernet. After installation I booted straight into Linux. My internet was not working, so graphically I went into my network settings and simply chose dhcp on my new network card, told it to start at boot, and enabled it. Internet started working. In never even checked my sound but instead simply opened a terminal and typed alsaconf, pressed enter a couple of times and my system was fully functional after a motherboard install. In Windows, I would have had to install drivers for the motherboard and all of the onboard components. Theres also the fact that it is common after installing a motherboard in an existing Windows install to have bsod's without restoring the computer. So that's my story and I felt I had to share.

 

Fair enough except how would you expect someone to 'just know' to use the 'alsaconf' command?

Windows may be buggy when changing hardware but they never said it wouldn't be, they tie in the the licensing to the hardware profile so you can hardly expect to be able to just change mobo's willy nilly - although i have changed between two very different asus mobo's and had windows run fine - still without a bsod to this day - its on a clients machine, was so happy when i didn't have to re-install a thing

 

He didn't say a person could somehow magically know an OS without learning it, he said the drivers worked out of the box.

Again, he said on occasion the BSOD on new mobo thing happens in Windows. He's right, it does. I've had it happen to me many times when I ran Windows. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

I talked to my boss today about Linux. He's a big user. He recommended CentOS. Any thoughts? How user friendly is it?

 

CentOS is "Community ENTerprise Operating System", a free community re-package of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's very... enterprisey. I run it on most of my servers, since it's extremely stable and reliable, and has a very long lifetime of support (7 years). Be warned though that I don't use a GUI on servers at all, so I can't really speak for the desktop-centric polish. I haven't run Red Hat on a desktop in about 4 years, but my impression then was "all business". It's dependable, predictable and it gets the job done. I felt productive on a RHEL desktop. However, there weren't any frills to speak of at the time, not exactly what you'd expect on a home desktop.

As for ease of use, they have some powerful GUI tools they're famous for. Also, their installation software is better and easier than Microsoft's by a long shot, though it does have a lot more options. Once it's setup, it's a lot like every other Linux distro, except that there are almost no multimedia-type apps, codecs, etc in the main repositories. You'll have to add a 3rd-party repo like RPMForge to get a lot of the goodies you'd normally want on a home desktop.