There's hope for Linux yet

Subject: your ubuntu experiences

104 updates... updates for critical bugfixes and security updates. Making your machine ultra-secure. There are TONS of holes in xp & even vista which are widely known, but not patched. So you like Microsoft not patching their software well?

I also suggest you get some better help... wine is a win32 compatability layer to get windows applications working, not to connect to other computers. I'd advise you check out ubuntuforums.org and also #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net where everyone will be more than happy to help. You can access the latter through gaim's irc.

I think you should remember how conditioned you are to windows, how long it took you to learn how to use it well. Then remember that we have 10s of thousands of pieces of software in our repositories (which may require patches) that you can do almost anything with... just not always in the same way as in windows.

I urge you to give ubuntu a second chance, remembering that Linux IS NOT windows. Maybe even do a base XP install alongside and compare what each does without extra apps. (office programs, music players etc.) You'll find Ubuntu has a lot more to offer without using the internet or buying 3rd party applications.

If you need help then please come to the community,

Joseph "PriceChild" Price
Ubuntu Member

Subject: dell throwing the book at former employees

did they really have people on their payroll called "wetcurtain" and "crtl-alt-delete" ???? the names of the accused are more comical than the article itself.

Werner

Subject: Ubuntu spurns Microsoft's advances

Flame Alert - re:Ubuntu spurns Microsoft's advances

You edited this pile of stinking sh*&? You should have thrown it out, it has all the smell of sh*&, but none of the nutritional value. It is so void of content, it would even kill my plants.

I play with Linux occasionally, and Samba is a no brainier. If the author has played with computers since 1972, and he can't get that working... he does not have the mental capacity to be in the field, period. (maybe dementia has set in?)

BTW, my wife is constantly complaining that she cannot see my XP and 2000 PC's from her Windows 2000 machine. It is sporadic, and not caused by firewalls. I guess if I really loved her I would spend the time to figure it out. I guess that if I had Andrew I.Q., I would just have to switch to Apple.

Just another loyal Canadian reader (but too much of this drivel will force me to make "the Reg" my home page, Please don't make me! )

Please withhold Name! Thanks.

Subject: Ballmer blames pirates for poor Vista sales

I told myself I wasn't going to write and comment on anything this week. Well, I was wrong, as usual.

However, I am compelled to. What the hell is Microsoft thinking? What are/were they expecting? Are we all supposed to jump and throw our money at them because Vista is new and improved. This is not a new Hollywood Block Buster. It is not show time, there are no stars. And, I am certainly not waiting for the outcome in the series. Not with my apps, hardware and software you don't. Not for 400 balloons.

Then there is the ‘XP Factor'. Sure, they spent enough money in Vista development to put a man on the moon. But didn't some of those ‘rocket scientists' at the top figure they were competing against a truly great OS, their own? Hello. XP literally blows everything MS (The Vole) has PUSHED in the past

OLD GAMES PLAYED
OLD HARDWARE WORKED
NETWORKING IS GOOD
NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE IS A BREEZE
THE MORE SILICON YOU THROW AT IT, THE BETTER IT RUNS.
OVERCLOCKING SCALES UP (to a point)
STABLE!!

"HEY, Billyboy and Stevie, ya did real good last time out. What da ya want? Ya put lipstick on that fat pig VISTA and shoved it out the door, up against a real refined, natural beauty."

"There are NO conspiracy theories. There are NO pirates. You have NO real competition. The corporate world ain't buying it, neither are people with "old machines"

WHAT YOU HAVE IS A GREAT OS.

IT'S CALLED XP PRO.

Joseph M. Santamaria

Subject: Banks

"Perhaps someone can tell me exactly what service - other than to their own shareholders - banks actually offer these days."

With pleasure. Banks ceased to have any regard for their customers' wishes or satisfaction about the time that having a bank account became, to all intents and purposes, compulsory. Just like insurance, in fact. The "free enterprise, free market" system that we are supposed to have has rotted to varying extents, but in the area of what are laughingly called "financial services" it has vanished altogether, to be replaced by an unending vista of grey bureaucracy.

Why is it that, when some of the world's leading private schools compared notes about their fees, they were done by the Monopolies Commission - in spit of the fact that they are charities and make no profits - while banks and insurance companies can present as united a front as they wish (i.e. rotten service for excessive charges) and no one in government gives a toss?

welsht

Subject: Dell throws book at ex-employees

In business there is a saying that for every single person you screw your actually screwing 10 people or more in the process. With the internet that' s probably more like 50 people today. Much more adding the INQ getting a hold of this information and posting it. Being that they were former employees I would imagine they still live in the areas relative to the Dell facility to which they worked. Not to mention still friends with people who still work for Dell. Which leads me wonder why would a company shit in its own back yard?

Lock down or remove the incentive because of abuse but this is just plain stupid business.

Mitchell

Subject: You're lucky it clears in 3 days

You should be pleased a check clears in three days.

I receive checks from a company called Google which should be a bit more trusted than an average company considering all the checks they send to people. Yet, in my lovely country called Romania, it takes 5 (yes, five) weeks to clear. And each time I have do deposit a 15$ guarantee which is lost if the check bounces back (never happened to me though).

The folks at the bank did mention that there is a special type of check which clears instantly as it has some kind of guarantee but I'm not that lucky.

Oh, one more thing, it doesn't even matter that you deposit the check on a Monday as it will be only processed with the rest of the checks gathered all week,on Friday, at 17.00.

Considering this, the ideal way to transfer money for me would be Western Union if only they would not charge over 10% processing fee for their services.

Thanks for the articles to you and the rest of the The Inquirer team.

Marius

Subject: Ubuntu spurns Microsoft's advances

hy,

for the starters: if you "been playing with computers since 1972" and you filed to simply google out a solution, or read the documentation - I am strongly disappointed in you, because my girlfriend managed to a year or two ago do the same you attempted and filed. by the way, she never had any experience installing windows.

so the solution to your problem: due the specifics of how passwords are encrypted/stored in linux/unix and windows, and because once encrypted, there is no technically feasible way to convert from one store format into another, despite default passwd/shadow database in linux samba has one of its own. lets say your login is andrew. to change yours linux password, you will use a command "passwd andrew". for samba, you will first need to add yourself into its database "sudo smbpasswd -a andrew", and once you are in there, next time you can change it by simply "smbpasswd andrew". by the way, samba can be told to sync your samba password with yours linux one upon you run "smbpasswd" command...

ArturasK

Subject: AMD Greening Planet

As nonsensical as mr. Brewer is, you still have to admire that someone is actually trying to make a difference, however pathetic the spin.

If the PR team were to turn it's attention to outdoor lighting (ala sleep states), the world demand on energy and global warming could be reduced in short order by a whopping 7-8 %. A solution that is so doable and simple that no one is bothering to do it. Picture a Rubik's cube with one square to a side instead of 9. Nobody would want to play with that.

RobertB

Subject: Linux? doesn't work?

I know you'll probably get a lot of hate mail about this article about your linux problems, but i agree. For all the advances Linux has made over the past couple of years, it still has a lot longer of a way to go than anyone in that particular community is probably willing to admit. I'm hardly a windows user (Mac OS is my flavor of choice) but you're correct. Until Linux can be anywhere near idiot-proof, it doesn't have a chance in hell at taking Windows off all those countless millions of desktops Microsoft is still holding onto for dear life.

smortensen

Subject: Linux maturity

You did it all wrong, what you should have done was look through obscure MAN files that make excel sheets look clever and configured even more obscure things yourself, such as driver options and archaic pseudo scripting settings.

Don't you understand that Linux is a billion times better than windows? see for yourself! It has better security, better file system, better user flexibility, better this and that blah blah blah...BUT it just wasn't designed to work with anything except itself and that is of course only if you are an expert or a REALLY patient power user.

So there, obviously the problem is all you.

I think perhaps the problem is inherit in dumbing things down. After all, when you take something very complex and want to give everyone the optiuon to use it, you have to make it very easy to use.

Linux: nasty command line style wich makes DOS look like lego.
Windows: Click here, double click there, occasional right click and you're done.

Why is this? Because when you have a company you have DEADLINES, you also have BUDGET CONSTRAINTS, that makes people RESEARCH, to maximize potential PROFIT which often depends on the TARGET MARKET.

Most linux distros do not have; DEADLINES, BUDGET CONSTRAINTS (usually no money at all) they do not RESEARCH who would want their OS, they make no PROFIT (so no one would want to invest) and they have no idea what a TARGET MARKET is.

PS

Subject: you need different friends...

Your story is a sad one. All I can think is that what you really need is a new set of friends, because it doesn't sound like your current friends know any more about Linux than you do. Why, for example, would they recommend that you install WINE - a Windows emulator - to solve a networking problem?

I'm also a bit unsure about your level of technical skills. Being a computer user for 35 years does not necessarily mean you're an admin-quality user, and your tone of writing seems to suggest on one hand that you have no understanding of the technical issues at play, while at the same time you hint at your greybeardedness, perhaps indicating more savvy than you're leading people to believe.

Regardless, while Ubuntu is an amazing distro, which I've personally never had difficult installing (literally: insert CD, let it run, everything is magical, no user intervention required - but then, I have dhcp on my networks), I can see where a non-technical person with only a Windows upbringing might have problems.

I have ideas on why your authentication failed from Linux to Windows, but it would take fiddling. As for all the patches, just because you downloaded the "latest ISO" doesn't mean it's particularly new. You also are incorrectly equating software updates with OS patches. The Linux updating mechanism fetches software updates *and* OS updates. After installing XP SP2, I would expect there to be about 50-60 OS patches. I can almost guarantee that of the 104 updates downloaded, less than a dozen were directly related to the OS.

This last is an important different to note between Windows and Linux. Linux is really a very small, core, modular OS. The rest is add-on software. Windows, however, is one big, messy, integrated, heterogeneous blob, in which a problem in something like the integrated web browser (IE) or the integrated media player (WMP) can result in an overall threat to the OS itself. This is rarely the case with Linux where the applications operate in a space separate from the core OS itself.

fwiw.

cheers,
Ben

Subject: Linux Has Hope Yet

After reading your recent article, Ubuntu spurns Microsoft's advances I must admit nodding along to a lot of it. After becoming seriously disappointed by Vista and the DRM infections, Linux called to me and I too found the many problems with installing Ubuntu or Kubuntu, finding problem after problem and having to reformat and reinstall more times than I have XP since I first got it.

HOWEVER, (I use capitals to hope to keep your attention) there is a long awaited distribution that is due to be out sometime towards the end of the month called PCLinuxOS. Upon installing the Test Release (YES THE TEST RELEASE! NOT FINAL!) I found it to be FAR more stable than any other distro I've tried recently. The installation is easy and everything is configured graphically and correctly without you even knowing you did it! The installation even helps you to set up the bootloader in case you have another (or multiple) OS(es) on the same hard drive or box.

Please please please Mr Thomas, don't throw out Linux just yet. It is all a matter of finding your flavour. Some prefer the heavy command line interface where everything is customisable, flexible and at your fingertips. Where others prefer their OS to be highly configurable but easily and PCLinuxOS has it. I for one am extremely happy with Test Release 2 and hope that The Inquirer may be able to do a review on PCLinuxOS 2007 final when it is released at the end of the month.

If you delve into the PCLinuxOS forums and look at the comments people have left regarding the delay of 2007 by a month, everybody is happy to wait because they know it is worth it to get a decent and stable Operating System at the end.

iSE

Subject: Ubuntu spurns Microsoft's advances

Hi,

Interesting story Andrew Thomas has there.

I started using PCs in 1988, and didn't build my own until 1998. (which means Andrew has more than 15 yrs of experience over what I have)...Yet, Andrew can't figure out networking a Linux box with Windows boxes? But I can? That doesn't make sense, does it?!

I started Linux in late 2004. (Because I simply didn't agree with WGA and Activation in Windows XP, so I abandoned anything from WinXP and newer...You won't find me touching Vista!)

I managed to connect to a Windows network with a bit of reading, and 30 minutes in figuring out Samba. I used Fedora Core 3 at the time. (I now use Arch Linux instead as I prefer to build my own setups from a clean base).

I hate to say it, but Andrew's friends seem like they have absolutley no clue when it comes to Linux. (They should be shot for giving him such poor advice!)

Why would you need Wine to handle Windows networking? Wine is used to run Windows apps on Linux. Its got nothing to do with talking to Windows boxes for sharing files and printers! I am at a loss as to why his friends suggested that nonsense!

Its something to do with Samba and how it was configured. Does he still have his config file for Samba? /etc/samba/smb.conf

Or has he formatted in fustration?

Seriously, if Andrew wanted to make an effort into Linux, tell him NOT to talk to friends! Talk to people who actually use Linux everyday. Find forums, documentation, etc of the distro he's using, and ask questions in the "newbie" sections. Did he follow guides like these?

Setting Up Samba https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpSamba

Share files using Samba http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Share_files_using_Samba

Unofficial Ubuntu Guide http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edgy

The above took less than 20 seconds to find in Google.

Or did he take the typical "blind fire" Windows user approach and expected everything to work?

That's what really concerns me about Windows users. They bring their Windows habits and try to use them on Linux without a thought! I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way.

Repeat after me: Linux is NOT Windows! (So why are you bringing Windows skills and thinking into Linux?)

Such an approach to Linux always results in failure and the eventual public announcement that Linux doesn't work for this person. This is proven by Andrew's article and his fustrated tone. (as well as in many blogs and forums around the world).

He has to set aside some time and do this properly. He has to forget his previous Windows habits when he uses Linux. He has to Steve Jobs's advice and "think different". That is: plan, prepare, and execute.

What's the plan? To connect to a Windows network. What do I need? Samba. Will my Linux box be acting as the server for sharing files and printing? Yes. Its what I want. How do I configure Samba under such a scenario? See above guides and supplement it with official Samba documentation if necessary. (as the Samba docs will explain in more detail about certain things guides won't go into).

He hasn't demonstrated that logical approach of an experienced computer user. He has, however, demonstrated the typical behaviour of an impatient and fustrated "experienced Windows user", trying Linux by diving in head first.

You know what happens when you dive into a bed of water without checking the depth? That's right, you break your neck and back.

Remember, this person has a good 16 yrs of computing experience ahead of me, but he couldn't figure out Linux where I could? Might I suggest two beginner books for anyone wanting to try Ubuntu for the first time.

* Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: A Pain-Free, Project-Based, Get-Things-Done Guidebook by Rickford Grant

* Moving to Ubuntu Linux by Marcel Gagné

They explain things in plain English. Its not in a "technical tone", but more of a regular conversation approach.

Regards
Stmok