Linux

Blue Mountain said:
I have always been puzzled at the glowing reviews I've seen for Ubuntu. Between its broken security model (by default, knowing the primary user's password also gives you root access), its cluelessness over runlevels (1=single user, 2=3=5=GUI with full networking), and its tendency to break its own X configuration (I've spent hours sometimes trying to get flat panel monitors to work at their preferred resolution and get dual-heads working), I'm not impressed with it.
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Its security model is retarded. They should at least have a separate root password. What I always do, is name my primary user account "admin" and use it just for root operations, and then create a secondary user account under my own name just for regular daily usage.

The only time I ever had Ubuntu break its desktop configuration was when I first tried upgrading to KDE 4. That was a horrible experience all the way round.

On the other hand, I really like the Debian package management model, with apt and all that, and Ubuntu seems to have the most comprehensive set of repos.


Blue Mountain said:
My preferred distro is Fedora, but it's not without its problems either. They push the envelope pretty hard, with the effect that fifteen years of experience in some area of Linux (init.d, networking, X setup) have a tendency to go out the window with each major release because Red Hat decided to toss the old model and bring in a totally new one. And you have to upgrade from time to time, because if you don't you can't get software to to compile any more. Authors use the latest and greatest releases, and it seems no one writes software these days with an eye to having it compile against older libraries.
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Also, Fedora's net install is a bitch! Their servers are so goddamn slow... The last time I tried installing Fedora, I gave up after 3 attempts, even letting it run overnight.

One distro I've learned to love is OpenSUSE. It has a killer set of repositories and the whole distro seems designed to cater to developers. The OpenSUSE Build Service allows you to quickly and easily package and release any software you make for any and all distros. It also makes a great server platform.
 
John Albert said:
Its security model is retarded. They should at least have a separate root password. What I always do, is name my primary user account "admin" and use it just for root operations, and then create a secondary user account under my own name just for regular daily usage.
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If you look at /etc/passwd, you will see that Ubuntu comes with a root user, but the account is disabled by default (at least this was the case for me). You should be able to enable the root user by issuing the command

$ sudo passwd root

That should give you a standard Linux root user with superuser privileges.

Jay
 
The Norseman said:
Printing with Linux is mostly done through CUPS, though it's still fallible.

And the last holdout as far as a pain-in-the-neck-to-configure is figuring out webcams.

The interesting thing I found out is that Win7 doesn't support my older notebook webcam, but Linux sure does. Go figure.
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Thanks, and I've installed these drivers. It still doesn't print. There is an icon at the bottom of the screen of a printer with an exclamation point on it. When I click it to get more information, it says "there is a missing print filter for printer 'Brother-MFC-255CW". I've even tried deleting and reinstalling the printer, to no avail.

When I go through the printer trouble shooter after a failed attempt at getting it to print, I get "Printer 'Brother-MFC-255CW' requires the 'brlpdwrappermfc255cw' program, but it is not currently installed".

Can't seem to find this file or where I can download it or install it from. I'll keep looking for a solution, but I may just get a cheap printer that works a lot better with Linux like an Epson or HP.
 
Zelenius said:
Thanks, and I've installed these drivers. It still doesn't print. There is an icon at the bottom of the screen of a printer with an exclamation point on it. When I click it to get more information, it says "there is a missing print filter for printer 'Brother-MFC-255CW". I've even tried deleting and reinstalling the printer, to no avail.

When I go through the printer trouble shooter after a failed attempt at getting it to print, I get "Printer 'Brother-MFC-255CW' requires the 'brlpdwrappermfc255cw' program, but it is not currently installed".

Can't seem to find this file or where I can download it or install it from. I'll keep looking for a solution, but I may just get a cheap printer that works a lot better with Linux like an Epson or HP.
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Link to the driver http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/download_prn.html#MFC-255CW, I am not sure but I think you need both the LPR driver and cupswrapper driver.

Edit: found this page http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1256630 should help I hope.
 
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Lolly said:
It seems to be part of the cupswrapper? Maybe it's in the wrong spot and you need a link for it to find the file?
http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#125
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That troubleshooting question and answer involves Gentoo Linux, so I ignored it earlier since I use Ubuntu/Mint. I just tried it anyway and it still hasn't solved this problem(it is like nothings changed). I'll keep deleting and reinstalling the drivers and trying to do things a little differently to see what happens, and also try to come up with something new. Still new to Linux and still a lot to learn. Thanks anyway.
 
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jt512 said:
If you look at /etc/passwd, you will see that Ubuntu comes with a root user, but the account is disabled by default (at least this was the case for me). You should be able to enable the root user by issuing the command

$ sudo passwd root

That should give you a standard Linux root user with superuser privileges.

Jay
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Ah... perhaps I'll just start doing that then.

Up till now I've been using

$ sudo -s

to get to a root shell from my "admin" account.
 
Zelenius said:
That troubleshooting question and answer involves Gentoo Linux, so I ignored it earlier since I use Ubuntu/Mint. I just tried it anyway and it still hasn't solved this problem(it is like nothings changed).
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No, doing exactly that was unlikely to fix it, but it may be that that file isn't where it's supposed to be. I know when I installed my Brother printer driver, I had to create a folder so that it would install to the correct location.
 
Saw that a few posters were using Mint 12 so I gave it a go. I am glad I did.
 
I've been using Mint ever since ubuntu shoehorned in Unity, and I haven't looked back since.
 
Zelenius said:
That troubleshooting question and answer involves Gentoo Linux, so I ignored it earlier since I use Ubuntu/Mint. I just tried it anyway and it still hasn't solved this problem(it is like nothings changed). I'll keep deleting and reinstalling the drivers and trying to do things a little differently to see what happens, and also try to come up with something new. Still new to Linux and still a lot to learn. Thanks anyway.
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I'm a bit late reading this but, in case this solves the problem for somebody - did you install the drivers in the correct order? lpr first and then cupswrapper?
 
Am I the only one using Arch? I guess it's been eight years or so since I started to prefer it. I've used most everything else, and I've liked FreeBSD and Debian Testing at times during the past, but Arch hits the spot for me.
 
AgeGap said:
Saw that a few posters were using Mint 12 so I gave it a go. I am glad I did.
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I'm not a tech guy at all and I run Mint without problems.

Whenever something like flash needs an update, you go to the software centre and everything works again.

Also, I use a five-year-old computer that I thought was write-off.
 
Fishstick said:
I've been using Mint ever since ubuntu shoehorned in Unity, and I haven't looked back since.
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I've been using pre-release Ubuntu 12.04 for about a month, and Unity has improved a lot. It will be worth trying it out with a live CD when 12.04 comes out, or installing Unity in Mint 13 if it is available.

It's much more responsive than before and has features such as more quicklists and showing recent applications and files in the dash (overlay) instead of those eight buttons there were before, and lots of other things.

I still prefer Gnome Shell, but Unity is catching up.
 
Alan said:
I still prefer Gnome Shell, but Unity is catching up.
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I'm one of those people who despise what Gnome is doing. "Mobile is the future," they say, and then they try to force touch-screen interfaces on our devices which don't have touch screens.

Call me an old man, and by the way, get off my lawn.

I don't see any point in trying to adapt to Gnome 3. I prefer Xfce, Fluxbox, Openbox, Awesome, Xmonad, and several other window managers to somebody's borked vision of the future that fails to account for my hardware and how I've learned best to use it.

I flat out don't like maximized windows. For one thing, most of what I do is text-oriented, and longer lines are harder to read. I usually have a few apps organized so they peek around each other. Click to focus. I know what I'm doing, and why should I change what works so well?

Successful revolutions aren't made to stick by those who merely think that revolutions are neat ideas. They come from a deep and urgent need, and I don't see anything like that kind of need here.
 
I don't get the criticism of Gnome Shell and Unity being focused too much on touchscreens. Windows 8 is what that problem looks like. Gnome Shell and Unity benefit a lot from having a mouse or keyboard to do things, and when it comes to touchscreens to keyboards, they're leaning much more towards keyboards.

Gnome Shell and Unity don't require maximised windows. You can have them peeking around each other, and you can click on a window to maximise it.

But you don't need to like or use either of these. All those alternatives you mentioned and like exist, so you could be happy that an alternative that some other people want exists too. :)
 
Alan said:
I don't get the criticism of Gnome Shell and Unity being focused too much on touchscreens. Windows 8 is what that problem looks like. Gnome Shell and Unity benefit a lot from having a mouse or keyboard to do things, and when it comes to touchscreens to keyboards, they're leaning much more towards keyboards.
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I'm referring partly to the big, gaudy icon bar (I can't minimize it enough, so I have to hide it). Some of my other complaints, such as the lack of controls relevant to non-touch devices like context menus and tooltips, seem less annoying to me right now.

You see, I'm posting this from Unity 2D on Ubuntu 12.04. I don't see any other Gnome option other than Metacity, which I suppose is retro. I have the Nvidia driver installed and activated, so shouldn't I have a more complete, bells and whistles Unity option?

Maybe I'm currently in half-and-half land, but the interface doesn't seem too bad right now.

One thing that bothers me is that Gnome is moving away from configuration options. In the past with Gnome3 I was able to configure fonts a bit (via a somewhat primitive DPI slider, IIRC), but now on Unity2D I can't see any control for this. I'm an old man with crappy eyes, so these things matter to me.

Alan said:
Gnome Shell and Unity don't require maximised windows. You can have them peeking around each other, and you can click on a window to maximise it.
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That's true, but if you read about the design philosophy of the Gnome team, they want you to use one app at a time, full screen. I don't get why that's even theoretically better than balancing however many apps you happen to be using whatever way you like.

What I have on screen right now is fine, but like I said, I'm not sure that Unity2D is giving me the full Gnome3 experience.

Alan said:
But you don't need to like or use either of these. All those alternatives you mentioned and like exist, so you could be happy that an alternative that some other people want exists too. :)
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Yeah, don't mind my ranting. I'm not unhappy about anything, just critical. And I keep trying all the new things that come down the pipe. I think Gnome3 will get better.
 
I found that installing the recommended and 'necessary' proprietary NVIDEA drivers for 3D made it so I could only use Unity 2D. I think it's due to Optimus or something. Perhaps you could uninstall the driver and see if it allows you to use Unity 3D.

You can change font sizes when you install gnome-tweak-tool (the application then shows up as Advanced Settings). That has gnome-shell as a dependency and will install that along with some other dependencies.

Although Unity2D in 11.10 and 12.04 is runs on top of Gnome 3, it's different from Gnome Shell, and I'm wondering if you've tried that? I just ask as we seem to be talking about one and the other interchangably.
Gnome Shell is this one:


I think that using one app per workspace in full screen is what they're going for, with easy tiling if people want that (dragging to a side to make a window cover that half of the screen). I don't use different workspaces.
 
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