It's over there, next to the unicorn
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| lcafiero May 04, 2012 4:17 PM EDT |
While this is an interesting exercise in following a false premise, someone should break it to the writer that there's no perfect distro, especially right out of the proverbial box. I think that's why there are 320-something distros out there. But good luck in your search. |
| cr May 04, 2012 4:48 PM EDT |
Got that right. In the end, "there can be only one". Edit: s/the/your/ Clear enough now? |
| gus3 May 04, 2012 5:18 PM EDT |
And it's Slackware. /me ducks and runs |
| lcafiero May 04, 2012 5:23 PM EDT |
gus3 -- Heh. Very funny. |
| montezuma May 04, 2012 5:31 PM EDT |
Yawn. The thing is free for goodness sake. Almost by definition this means it won't be perfect. Anyway the search for perfection is rather OCD. This blogger needs to join the Church of the Subgenius "The central belief in the church is the pursuit of Slack, which generally stands for the sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you stop worrying about personal goals. In essence, Slack is about finding satisfaction with what you have and who you are, as opposed for searching for satisfaction in accomplishment" |
| caitlyn May 04, 2012 5:52 PM EDT |
The thing is, some of his requirements for perfection are things I absolutely, positively want no part of. He also says limiting the choice of apps is a good thing. Sorry, no. I like having choices. |
| DrGeoffrey May 04, 2012 6:04 PM EDT |
Quoting:Sorry, no. I like having choices. And any true fan of Linux prefers choices, too. |
| DrGeoffrey May 04, 2012 6:08 PM EDT |
BTW, does anyone know of a rolling release based on Slackware? Preferably one that is one step removed from Slack, and does not require me to compile everything. True power-sipping laptops tend not to come with an over abundance of processing power. |
| lcafiero May 04, 2012 6:10 PM EDT |
I don't know if Salix OS is a rolling release -- caitlyn? -- but it's my favorite Slack-based distro since Wolvix went away. |
| tracyanne May 04, 2012 6:13 PM EDT |
I think what the writer is asking for is mostly there in the more popular distributions. The biggest problem is one that fancy GUis and encrypted home partitions won't fix, and which the Linux community as a whole probably can't easily fix. Hardware support for Linux. Too much new hardware as a rule doesn't support Linux OOTB, either because the manufacturers don't care or won't care. |
| Khamul May 04, 2012 6:37 PM EDT |
@ta: Exactly which new hardware doesn't support Linux OOTB these days? The obvious exceptions of course are video cards and cheap inkjet printers, but aside from those, I haven't heard of much hardware having any kind of lack of Linux support these days. |
| tracyanne May 04, 2012 7:56 PM EDT |
video cards sounds like a show stopper, for non techie type first time Linux users, to me |
| tracyanne May 04, 2012 8:05 PM EDT |
BTW I dispute the "only" cheap inkjet Printers. I've seen many quite expensive printers that don't work with Linux,. especially the ones with fancy additional functionality, like wireless and Photo printing from SD cards etc (the type of printer most consumers find irresistible, while most of the cheap ones I've come across work quite well OOTB |
| jdixon May 04, 2012 8:40 PM EDT |
> ...does anyone know of a rolling release based on Slackware? You could always just run Slackware-current. I don't recommend it, but... There is apparently a distro based on Slackware-current and Salix. It's called Slackel, and you can find out more about it at http://www.slackel.gr/ I don't know if it qualifies as a rolling release or not though. If you want a Slackware type distro with a rolling release, you may want Arch. |
| Khamul May 04, 2012 9:42 PM EDT |
@ta: There's not much that can be done about the video cards, except for the Nouveau devs to keep plugging away. Unfortunately, video drivers are a big project and a difficult problem compared to other drivers. As for printers, those "fancy" printers you describe all look cheap to me. They're usually under $100 or 200, and have some nice-looking features that won't work well for long, such as document feeders. If you want a printer with a document feeder that won't constantly jam and can handle more than 15 pages, you need to spend probably at least $1000, or get a nice used office printer. Anything that's aimed at consumers is generally junk and a scam, with the scam being that the hardware is dirt cheap and failure-prone, and the ink cartridges will cost you far more than the printer ever did. AFAIC, inkjet printers are ALL junk; if you want to print stuff, get a laser. There's lots of inexpensive lasers these days. If you want photos, send them to Walgreens. If you want to print photos at home, and don't want to spend much money upfront on it, prepare to be shafted. It'd be pointless for any volunteers to work on supporting these printers in Linux anyway, because by the time they got something working, the printer they were targeting would be replaced by other models, and all those models would have stopped working and been thrown in the trash. That kind of printer simply doesn't last. |
| tracyanne May 04, 2012 10:33 PM EDT |
Quoting:inkjet printers are ALL junk; Tell that to the next person who's blaming Linux, when their fancy inkjet printer that works perfectly on Windows, has suddenly become an expensive paper weight when they try to use it with that Linux distribution, you suggested they try. |
| BernardSwiss May 05, 2012 1:24 AM EDT |
Time for my bi-annual rant about "Win-hardware". Except I just delivered it a few days ago. http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/33129/ |
| caitlyn May 05, 2012 2:06 AM EDT |
SalixOS is not rolling release. They do a release after a Slackware release. I'm so glad Khamul has decided for me that my Epson inkjet printer that actually does a beautiful job with photos is "junk". I didn't know that I had to use equipment from a Khamul-approved list. FWIW, there are very expensive printers that don't work with Linux either. Some manufacturers (HP, Epson) do a good job supporting Linux. Other (Lexmark, Canon, etc...) do not and lots and bunches of their stuff up and down the product lines just don't work. tracyanne has this 100% right when it comes to printers. Having said that, Linux supports more hardware out of the box than Windows does by a wide margin. The difference is that Windows is preinstalled and Linux is not. The other difference is that every manufacturer supports Windows while only some support Linux. FWIW, the contention that only video and cheap printers are unsupported is also wrong. There are still wireless chipsets which are unsupported, cameras which are unsupported, scanners which are unsupported, and so on. |
| Koriel May 05, 2012 12:32 PM EDT |
In the last couple of weeks I have tried ROSA Beta, Mageia 2 Beta 3 and Linux Mint KDE in my search for the perfect KDE distro so far the best of the bunch is Mint KDE both ROSA and Mageia 2 have a lot of issues which is not suprising as they are beta after all. Mint KDE also has issues but are minor and probably related to the fact that the KDE is a slightly outdated version. I very much liked Mageia 2 its going to be very impressive when it's finalised but I do wish they would fix their Firefox package as its system proxy settings is broken just as in Mageia 1. Replaced it with the official download from Mozilla and it works just fine, it must be something the Mageia devs are doing or their is a broken dependency somewhere as it works in Mandriva and ROSA. @caitlyn Canon have significantly improved their Linux support, I just installed a brand new Canon PIXMA M420 here at home and it all works great on Linux using the Canon supplied drivers for scanning and printing. The scanning across a wireless network is impressive the Canon scanning app ScangearMP works in conjunction with Gimp and is easy to use. Both drivers were simple to install and come in RPM and Deb packages and as long as the printer is properly configured and on at the time of install everything is auto-detected it really was so simple and it was actually faster to set up my linux machines than my windows machines. |
| tuxchick May 05, 2012 1:27 PM EDT |
TurboPrint is a great option for color printers on Linux. It costs a few bucks, oh noes, and you get full printer functionality like ink levels and color adjustments. It would be lovely if hardware vendors would pull their heads out and open their specs and drivers, but as long as paranoid eyepee PHBs exist we'll have to work around them. |
| Khamul May 05, 2012 2:16 PM EDT |
@caitlyn: I'm sure any Lexmark or Canon printer that supports Postscript or PDF will work just fine with Linux. As for your inkjet printer, let it sit for a few months without printing anything, then see if you can print anything out of it again without replacing the ink cartridges or wasting a ton of ink on "cleaning cycles". And last I heard, wireless wasn't a big problem any more, though it certainly was 5+ years ago. |
| lcafiero May 05, 2012 2:27 PM EDT |
Actually, Khamul, you're incorrect yet again. Lexmark and Canon printers are painfully notorious for being incompatible with Linux, and your comment clearly shows that you have no experience with using them. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but bear in mind that it should be based, at least remotely, in reality, especially when it comes to technical issues. |
| Khamul May 05, 2012 4:04 PM EDT |
@Icafiero: Exactly which printers are "painfully notorious" for being incompatible with Linux? Any decent business printer for the last 20 years has supported Postscript; you don't need "drivers", you just need to send the printer a postscript file. Lately (last 5+ years), any decent business printer also supports PDF in addition to Postscript. Again, no "drivers" needed; you just connect to the right network port (9100) and send it your file. If a printer needs "drivers", then it isn't a business printer. That said, I don't think I've ever seen a Canon business printer, though I have seen Lexmark ones. Generally, the big brands are HP, Ricoh, and Xerox. I've never had much trouble printing to any of these once I figure out the IP address. |
| tracyanne May 05, 2012 5:35 PM EDT |
What Khamul has to say about printers may or may not be accurate, in technical terms. But it's also irrelevant in terms of non techie but potential Linux users. All they see is their favourite printer, that works great on Windows, not working on Linux, so they blame Linux. The problem isn't Linux, it's the hardware manufacturer not supporting Linux, either at all, or on that model. |
| BernardSwiss May 05, 2012 6:25 PM EDT |
OK. Now I'm curious -- are there any Postscript-compliant printers that don't work well with Linux? I thought the painful part these days was "multi-function" printers. And I've sometimes wondered if multi-function devices that * print * well enough as Postscript-compliant devices might sometimes still be a pain for scanning or faxing tasks. - - - PS: (Personally, I just stick to HP for printing, though I believe Brother also supports their hardware pretty well.) - - - PPS: According to spell-check (from Firefox, I believe) "multi-function" is incorrectly spelled, but "mufti-function" is a valid possibility". .... ??? |
| Koriel May 05, 2012 6:40 PM EDT |
Well I have no problems with either my Canon PIXMA Multifunction or my Canon camera on linux so I will happily doff my hat to Canon for making it a very painless experience unlike my last Epson where they point blank refused to implement their own binary blob scanner driver and it was never implemented in sane either which is one of the reasons I went with Canon this time round as I checked before purchasing that working linux drivers were available. One thing I did note was that the Linux drivers are not available from the Canon US site you have to go to Canon Europe to get them, what is up with that? |
| Fettoosh May 05, 2012 11:58 PM EDT |
Quoting: I'm sure any Lexmark or Canon printer that supports Postscript or PDF will work just fine with Linux. I believe this is true and correct statement, that is what PS & PDF were created for and have been very successful. I think most people's complains are about some printer multi-functions not working well on Linux. YMMV. |
| caitlyn May 06, 2012 6:36 PM EDT |
My Epson NX-305 all in one works just fine under Linux: scanning and printing are supported out of the box. All the functionality you get under Windows you also get under Linux, including things like ink levels. Funny, I had an old Epson which had been boxed up for about two years. It needed new ink cartridges and I saw them on clearance. I bought them, installed them, made sure everything was working perfectly (which it was) and gave it to someone who needed it. Maybe if I had only let it sit for six months as Khamul suggested I would have had a problem. After two years everything was fine on an Epson Stylus Color 600. |
| Koriel May 06, 2012 7:01 PM EDT |
My Epson was a CX5800F, scanner was never supported on linux and the FAX failed 1 month after the warranty expired, so i phoned them up hoping they would give me some leeway on the warranty and fix it but they wouldn't so i put them off my xmas list. I did have one Epson clog up on me after a period of non-use but since I was using cheap third party ink which I have no intention of ever using again in any printer, it would be harsh to blame Epson for that. As for the Canon ink level it is supported on the USB connection but not wireless, which is no biggie as the Canon has a nice colour LCD display and clearly shows ink levels everything else appears to be well supported. |
| tracyanne May 06, 2012 7:03 PM EDT |
I offer this as an interesting piece argument of information, not as supporting argument for anything I've already said. I've been in the process of setting up a small recording studio, for myself, I'm using Ardour, Audacity and Hydrogen, mostly with Rosegarden amd other bits and pieces, as I discover a potential use for them. The biggest problem I've had so far is locating hardware that works with Ardour, that isn't super expensive. It appears, that almost all the affordable (read cheap) consumer grade hardware only works with Windows or Mac, the really expensive Professional grade Hardware almost always includes Linux and naturally Ardour. I have managed to find some hardware that suits my needs, and I can afford, but It took a lot of work and phone calls by the salesman at the Music store where I get my gear. It's not cheap, being at the lower end of the Professional range, but I can afford it. The thing that annoys me here is that a Windows or Mac user can choose cheap and cheerful right through to Expensive and Professional, and they don't have to spend days, and phone calls to find something that meets their needs... if they are lucky. |
| montezuma May 07, 2012 8:48 AM EDT |
bn |
| tuxchick May 07, 2012 11:55 AM EDT |
The author makes contradictory assumptions, that it must be easy enough for Grandma and Grandpa, who still make fire by rubbing sticks together and use grunts instead of language, and it must also offer advanced features in the installer like LVM and a firewall. Microsoft caters to the "don't want to know anything" crowd. Let 'em have 'em. |
| jdixon May 07, 2012 12:10 PM EDT |
Is montezuma at a loss for words today? This is the third thread with a two letter post from him. |
| Fettoosh May 07, 2012 12:37 PM EDT |
He must be suffering from a sore throat, it is allergy season. :-) |
| DrGeoffrey May 07, 2012 12:47 PM EDT |
Re: montezuma I admire his brevity. . . but I wish I had a table of definitions for his acronyms! |
| ComputerBob May 07, 2012 5:01 PM EDT |
bn = "Been under the weather lately. Probably caught it from someone at work. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." |
| montezuma May 07, 2012 6:02 PM EDT |
LOL I had a brain fart this morning and kept posting a reply in the wrong thread. Early onset dementia I expect. |
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