Is this true?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| ColonelPanik Nov 20, 2007 6:24 AM EDT |
What do I do? Can I believe this guy? What if I use Automatix to uninstall those codecs? Where is the stamp collecting thread here? |
| tuxchick Nov 20, 2007 7:24 AM EDT |
Just follow the links in the article. Automatix is dangerous. What I'm wondering is how the poor victimized user in the article found Automatix. The author thinks that a noob should not be expected to research a program like Automatix before installing it and learn of its dangers, but this poor victimized user was resourceful enough to find and install it. It's never been included in the Ubuntu repos, so he had to go out of his way to get it. |
| jhansonxi Nov 20, 2007 8:48 AM EDT |
Automatix has problems but it's primary advantage is usability as compared to Synaptic. Some of it's features will be included in Hardy. Ideally the unmanaged apps it installs need to be made into proper deb packages with upstream support. What is really needed is a package management system with user ratings, reviews, screenshots, license type, and links to alternatives. |
| dinotrac Nov 20, 2007 8:57 AM EDT |
TC - Careful, there. You are conflating Linux noob with computer noob. Not safe. Lots of Windows users know how to search the web for stuff, which is what the article said the user in question did. |
| DarrenR114 Nov 20, 2007 12:46 PM EDT |
Simply following the "Perfect Desktop" series of articles on HowToForge walks you through installing Automatix, so it's not a very well-kept secret. Check out page 5 of this tutorial - http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_debian_etch |
| DarrenR114 Nov 20, 2007 1:01 PM EDT |
Here is the comment I posted to the article:
I have installed the last 3 versions of Ubuntu (6.4, 6.10, 7.4) using the "Perfect Desktop" series of articles and have had NONE of the problems with Automatix that you describe. Before maligning a perfectly good project perhaps you should act more professionally and with greater maturity. You have no clue as to how widespread the problem is, the exact cause of the problem, etc. In other words, you have partial data based on anecdotal testimony that is far from a universal experience. For instance, why didn't my aging Toshiba Satellite laptop suffer from this problem with Automatix? Why didn't my no-name home-built white box suffer this problem with Automatix? Why didn't my son's ancient HP laptop have this problem with Automatix? I have 3 installations to your 1 with no problem. The numbers aren't looking so good for your qualifications as a tech, or researcher. Your article does a great disservice to the FOSS community, and simply gives more fodder to the likes of Steve Ballmer ("See? I told you those Free hippies would be nothing but trouble!") |
| claydoh Nov 20, 2007 2:07 PM EDT |
I dunno, I have seen enough negative experiences (as well as positive ones, to be fair) involving automatix with various Kubuntu versions that I never recommend it. My own experiences with Automatix are from the original releases , which really were awful, and the creator(s) were very rude, to put it mildly. I had bad experiences myself with the app. These days, much of what Automatix provides is available by easier means |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 20, 2007 2:53 PM EDT |
Quoting:For instance, why didn't my aging Toshiba Satellite laptop suffer from this problem with Automatix? Why didn't my no-name home-built white box suffer this problem with Automatix? Why didn't my son's ancient HP laptop have this problem with Automatix? Because your package manager didn't happen to run in the background when you ran Automatix. If you follow the link on page 3 of the article to http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html you get a pretty good summary. It's not that Automatix will screw up your system. It's that it cab screw up your system under certain circumstances. |
| hkwint Nov 20, 2007 3:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:What is really needed is a package management system with user ratings, reviews, screenshots, license type, and links to alternatives. Actually, that's a very good idea. Probably it exists somewhere, but it hasn't made its ways to the masses. The only two package-managers I'm familiar with, are 'portage a.k.a. emerge' (from Gentoo) and pkg_add (*BSD). They do provide the license type, and categories which makes it easier to find alternatives, but nonetheless finding alternatives is quite hard. I remember roaming a whole subdirectory which included 20+ packages, and 'manually' having to read all their descriptions to see if they were an alternative to the package I was looking for. Especially a rating / review system in the package system sounds nice to me. I don't have experience with Automatix, and the few times I tried Ubuntu package management it worked fine (for me). Nonetheless, I remember my Suse nightmare (the broken package manager couldn't install packages before the package manager was updated, and I wasn't able to update the package manager because updating was the task of that very same broken package manager!), and the only way to circumvent the problem was to install an alternative package management system, which worked very fine. Also, I had to install RPM on Gentoo in order to install a certain rpm that I couldn't install otherwise. So I do understand some people want another package manager. However, a system that is able to cause that much problems as Automatix does, should come with a big fat warning message in my opinion; in Gentoo for example installation of those packages requires the sysadmin to manually edit his portage-configuration file to explicitly state it's OK to install this unsafe package. That the package works without problems for 99,9% of the users is not that important ; if it poses a risk to 0,1% of the people it should still have a big fat warning message; just like prescription drugs that can cause severe problems to 0,1% of its users. The problem here probably is, some step by step guides tell you it's a good thing to circumvent this kind of 'security' measures and don't spend enough attention to the problems such a package can give, by stating 'just ignore the warning messages' (I saw many of that guides). It's the same like a Windows step-by-step guide saying 'Click OK" over and over again, without spending attention what the user is actually agreeing upon. My conclusion is, to prevent this kind of problems, projects should provide warning messages themselves, distro's should provide warning messages (if that's possible), and especially people who are writing guides shouldn't act thoughtless by saying it's OK to ignore the warning messages. That the system doesn't cause problems for the writer of the guide and over ten persons he knows is no guarantee in my opinion, and no reason to disparage the warnings. |
| tracyanne Nov 20, 2007 3:51 PM EDT |
This makes me so glad I use Mandriva. Getting the CODECs that this bloke wanted is as simple as linking to Mandriva's PLF repositories, and letting the package manager do the rest. |
| azerthoth Nov 20, 2007 6:42 PM EDT |
Automatix is nothing more than the windows philosophy applied to Linux. K.I.S.S in this case means "Keep Them Stupid, Silly". Doing all the things Automatix does by hand takes only a few minutes when you know where to look and what to do, and you can do it without destabilizing your system in the process. |
| ColonelPanik Nov 20, 2007 7:12 PM EDT |
Apt-Get and Synaptic do the job very well, but if you are dumb and lazy and not all that computer literate, like the Colonel, well then Automatix is a great looking tool. Like "Klik" for Knoppix? The updates from Ubuntu have messed us up several times, no problems yet, at least that we are aware of, from Automatix, but now I am gun-shy. I just looked at Synaptic and Automatix is in the "third-party" repos. So I can't trust these? Maybe this whole computer thing is trickier than it looks. |
| jdixon Nov 20, 2007 7:34 PM EDT |
> Maybe this whole computer thing is trickier than it looks. It is. Dependency checking and package installation removal is a complicated task. No package manager can be trusted to do it correctly 100% of the time. The Debian pacakge management systems (dpkg, apt-get, aptitude, etc.) seem to do the best job, but even they're not perfect. Second best seems to Gentoo's portage system. The rpm based systems seem to have the most problems (feel free to disagree, tracyanne). The Slackware package manager can be found by typing whoami at the command line. :) There's no perfect solution. As to third party repositories, they're a mixed bag. Some are good, some aren't. You have to decide if the software there is worth the risk you take. However, a quick Google search for users having problems with the packages you want will probably uncover any potential quagmires in advance. For example, a search for automatix problems reveals at least half a dozen links discussing problems people have had on the first page. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 20, 2007 9:55 PM EDT |
Quoting:What is really needed is a package management system with user ratings, reviews, screenshots, license type, and links to alternatives. IIRC that's what Linspire's CNR is about. Too bad is has so many other problems. |
| tracyanne Nov 20, 2007 11:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:(feel free to disagree, tracyanne). I've never seriously used anything but Mandriva's URPMI and DrakConf, so I'm not qualified to argue. On the other hand, while URPMI used to be somewhat of a nightmare in my early days of using Linux, it seems to be very good at resolving dependency issues these days, and seems to me no worse than anything else that's available (based on a very limited usage of anything else - apt in my KnoppMyth rig, for example, CNR when I was experimenting with Linspire and Synaptic on PCLOS - and the fact that I don't have any issues these days with URPMI). |
| dinotrac Nov 21, 2007 4:00 AM EDT |
>Apt-Get and Synaptic do the job very well, but if you are dumb and lazy and not all that computer literate, like the Colonel, well then Automatix is a great looking tool. Like "Klik" for Knoppix? Wow, no elitist snobs around here. Y'know, in the early days, those hand-cranked starters for cars did their job very well. But, if you were dumb and lazy, you could use an electric starter. |
| ColonelPanik Nov 21, 2007 5:50 AM EDT |
dinotrac, Hey, my first two cars did have cranks. Just for emergency use ya know. ("early days"?) And everyone knows that it just takes one crank to start a revolution! |
| dinotrac Nov 21, 2007 7:58 AM EDT |
>it just takes one crank to start a revolution! Or to spoil a dinner party! |
| hkwint Nov 21, 2007 12:16 PM EDT |
Back on topic: Automatix is not recommended by Ubuntu; look at this paragraph at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatix_(software)#Response Instead, you should probably look at EasyUbuntu: http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ I have to admit I didn't use either of the two since I don't use Ubuntu in general, but that's just what I read and found on the web. |
| montezuma Nov 22, 2007 7:32 AM EDT |
I have never used Automatix or Easybuntu and I have had about 20 or so Ubuntu installs. A bit of googling around and careful reading of the Ubuntu forum should suffice. Seems like these things are designed for point and clickers (sorry for the elitism) who then have a nightmare when their upgrade borks. The Ubuntu devs are trying to cater to this crowd at present. Good luck. Edit: I had a runin with the Automatix creator on the Ubuntu forum once. Let's just say that he is pretty sure of himself. |
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