For my Google Summer of Code project, I have been working with PerlQt4 bindings, which requires that I have Qt4 installed. While this is technically possible under a Win32 environment. Lots of people in the free software community vehemently oppose Windows, but while it has its flaws, I think overall the hardware support is still much better than Linux. True, this is because of Microsoft’s shady business practices, and because many companies keep their driver source code closed. I’m still using Windows XP Professional and quite happy with it, stability-wise and feature-wise.
As an Engineer, many applications we use on a regular basis are simply not available on Linux. They’re simply not replaceable with the current state of open source software, though there is some great stuff out there. Nonetheless, we’re still far from a point where engineers in general can switch to Linux — the application support is as important to an operating system as the kernel. Linux would be nothing without GNU’s binutils, for example.
I tried to install Debian first, as this is an environment I’m very familiar with. I use Debian on my development server, and it has worked wonders there. But everything I do on that server is command-line stuff. When trying to install a desktop environment, I followed the KDE Configuration Wizard, which isn’t too bad, but it expects an Internet connection throughout the process. The problem was that I didn’t have enough Ethernet cables to have both the desktop computer and my laptop plugged in at the same time, even though I had a wireless router set up, which meant I had to unplug the computer while updating packages, etc. Some of the updates took quite a bit of time, which was inconvenient for everyone else.
I eventually got the system to install, and told tasksel to set up a desktop environment. It was installing stuff, I typed ‘apt-get install kde’ and assumed everything would Just Work. After installing a whole bunch of stuff (which included a local install of mysqld, on a desktop machine?! — turns out it was due to one of KDE’s recommended packages, it starts with an A, I forget which). Anyway, then the environment didn’t “just work” as I had expected. Upon booting up my system, it just dropped me to a command line prompt. Fine, I thought, I’ll just use startx. But that was broken too. So after another few hours of fiddling I just gave up altogether.
While trying Ubuntu (the last time I had done so was probably in version 7 or so), I downloaded a recent image of Kubuntu 9.04, the Ubuntu flavour using KDE as a default desktop environment. It’s surprising that there has been lots of progress in Ubuntu and Linux in general. I have found that driver support is much better than it used to be, as it now detects my network card – a Broadcom 43xx chip – and does everything it needs to do. For the most part, my operating system “Just Works.” Great. This looks like something I might be able to slowly transition toward, completely replacing Windows except inside WINE or a Virtual Machine container.
Has Debian and Ubuntu made lots of progress? Sure. I can definitely see that Ubuntu is geared a lot more to the average user, while Debian provides bleeding-edge features to the power user. Unfortunately, despite being involved in packaging Perl modules for Debian, I fall into the former category. I’d really just like my desktop system to just work. Oh, and dual monitor support out-of-the-box would be nice too — I hear the new KDE and Gnome support this.
One thing Windows handles rather well is changing hardware profiles – when my computer is connected to its docking station, a ton of peripherals are attached. When I undock, they’re gone. Windows handles this rather gracefully. In Kubuntu, I got lots of notification boxes repeatedly telling me that eth2 was disconnected, etc. This sort of thing is undecipherable for the average user, so I’d really just like for these operating systems to be more human-friendly before they are ready for prime time on the desktop.
@op: “In Kubuntu, I got lots of notification boxes repeatedly telling me that eth2 was disconnected, etc.”
Do the message boxes look like errors, or notifications? If they’re errors, they need to be fixed. But if they’re just notices, they can be disabled (though a replacing of “eth2″ with “Network card #2″ would be in order).
@op: “I tried to install Debian first, as this is an environment I’m very familiar with.”
BTW, Ubuntu is based on Debian, and most of your knowledge will transfer over with little or no reteaching. Apt is used by Ubuntu, for example. If you really want to run Debian, try Sidux. I’m posting this from a Sidux-running notebook.
I just remember being spammed with notifications, which was a bit annoying. I turned off the notices in Windows so perhaps if I did the same for Ubuntu then I would have been happy.
One problem I had with Ubuntu is only related to its release procedure. I wanted to use a new package recently uploaded to Debian, frama-c-gui, which I understand is a program for helping to track down memory issues in C programs.
Unfortunately that wasn’t available in Ubuntu 9.04 and I wasn’t sure how to get the package from whatever the “unstable” equivalent is for Ubuntu.
I finally figured out how to get Debian installed using the automatic install rather than the expert installation thing, so things just worked out of the box. It installed Gnome (much like Ubuntu) but that’s okay with me, I’m using Gnome now. Here’s hoping it crashes less than KDE’s plasma!
“One thing Windows handles rather well is changing hardware profiles”
Good news (uh, bad news? I can’t tell anymore.) Microsoft broke this in Vista. When I got my new laptop I installed Kubuntu upon it but left a small partition for the legacy Vista install in case I needed it thinking I could run it from VMWare. With XP it is fairly easy, just use one hardware profile for “real” windows and another for “virtual” windows. Vista doesn’t have hardware profiles at all so now you have to jump through several hoops including reactivating your suddenly “non-genuine” operating system.
Lucky for Microsoft Linux has Network Manager (the source of your useless message boxes) It seems to be getting less usable with each version.
Yes, I realize that Windows Vista sucks. I’m not a Windows fanboy by any means, I generally just stick to it because it’s the environment I’m most comfortable with, the smoothest-feeling environment (it runs faster than Ubuntu or Debian on my machine, which is relatively recent).
For now I don’t mind Debian, but have rebooted back into Windows and am now trying to get my Debian environment to work both as dual boot and inside my VMware container. To its credit, Kubuntu managed to do this out of the box — I just installed it on a separate partition and then added it to VMware. I’m not sure if this has to do with the versions of GRUB used, however.
I bet you never installed XP on a fresh machine. It is neither user friendly nor working out of the box. Most of the time it needs manual download and install of each driver from each website of each hardware manufacturer… And user interface during install just sucks..
It works ‘out-of-the-box’ becomes it comes pre-installed and you are forced to buy it. Please compare what is comparable, at least…
I did install my machine as Windows XP Performance Edition, which is a stripped down version of Windows (intended for gaming, I guess).
I suppose installing drivers is a PITA. Debian and Ubuntu were better there, it recognized most of my stuff out of the box. However, the *support* for hardware in Debian isn’t great. While it recognizes stuff, it hardly lets you use them to their full potential — for example my issue with dual monitor stuff done automatically.
I don’t think it’s too much to expect that a Display applet or whatever would do it automatically, without me having to muck around in config files, since I’m not always using the same hardware.
I’d like Ubuntu/Debian to adopt something similar to hardware profiles, as it might be a bit faster than re-detecting the hardware every boot-up.
Since Lenny, whatever package manager you’re using has ‘install recommended packages automatically’ checked by default.
Thanks, good to know.
I don’t mind installing recommended packages, but I think installing mysqld with a standard KDE install is a bit obscene.
That’s a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?
Since you are involved with software development, I was tempted to
call your post a “troll” and leave it at that. So this comment is
actually against my better judgement. :-)
I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of a Debian developer and
re-read your post. You will notice that:
1. You complain about a lack of features without making them explicit.
“As an Engineer, many applications we use on a regular basis are
simply not available on Linux. They’re simply not replaceable with the
current state of open source software.”
2. You say that you did foo and then tried bar and say “it did not
work” with too few details for anyone to actually figure out what
happened.
“So after another few hours of fiddling I just gave up altogether.”
I could go on, but you get the picture. There is very little in your
post so that a Debian developer (or more generally a GNU/Linux
developer) could follow up and try to fix things.
Since you are involved in the development of some software, how would
you react to a similar post about that software?
Far from a troll, I’d really like Debian and Ubuntu, but moreso Linux in general, to improve at the pace it has been doing so. It’s made great progress since the last time I tried it out on my desktop, but I have to acknowledge that there are lots of rough edges right now that should be worked out.
One of the advantages of huge proprietary development organizations like Microsoft is that they have tons of developers and can implement new features at a relatively quick pace, even if they’re half-assed. Developers’ pride in the FOSS community prevents this overly quick pace of development in favour of more secure, more stable platforms. Which is a good thing, I think. But nonetheless it results in a “slower” development pace.
The applications I’m complaining about are things like:
- SolidWorks (a CAD tool for designing parts and assemblies, used in manufacturing and mechanical engineering)
- SpectrumSoft Micro-Cap (a version of software similar to PSpice used by my school)
- AutoCAD (another CAD tool)
Luckily this is changing, but only for the large & most popular distributions:
- MathWorks MATLAB (runs on Linux and Solaris, etc.)
- Wolfram Mathematica (which has versions for Linux and MacOS X)
- FEKO (runs on Linux and Solaris among others)
Anyway, I still consider SolidWorks to be a rather big program not supported on Linux, which is a big issue for those working on Civil Engineering programs. There are most probably others which are very domain-specific that I don’t even know about.
There is a nice matrix comparing cross-platform capabilities of CAD software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_CAD_software
Oh, one final thought: perhaps that KDE Recommends: should be moved to a Suggests: instead, on account of its heavy dependencies, requiring mysql-server installed on desktop machines.. WTF!
Oh, and on another note, I re-installed Debian using the non-expert Auto Install and it installed Gnome rather flawlessly, much like installing Ubuntu, which was pretty nice. So kudos to those who have been working on the main installer; it seems as though the advanced ones really give you some rope to hang yourself with, though :-)
patience, young padawan. also aptitude>apt-get. remember to turn off installing recommends by default. also check out the debian wiki page on kde installation. force with you be, padawan
@THD: “That’s a bit of a contradiction, isn’t it?”
MySQL provides the database backing for Amarok media player.
My main point is that your problem with device notifications and docking stations sounds like a ‘paper cut’, the kind of non-bug that degrades the user experience. Ubuntu recently launched a project to minimise this sort of thing, under the banner of the ’100 paper cuts’ project.
See: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-June/008655.html
“I typed ‘apt-get install kde’ ” -> If you were installing testing or unstable, this is not more the way to do it, see http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde4.html .
The mysql dependency comes from KDE upstream.
Regards, Lisandro.
I like this content so much.Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Note that any OS later than Windows XP does not have hardware profiles support.