[RedRat]

bbvammy said:

Students,

Lesson One.



Linux is not Windows.







Lesson Two.



Linux will never die, because anyone can continue the project.

May I suggest:

Lesson Three: Never say Never!

[WhosYourSeanie]

Hello Redhat,

Thank you so much for your thorough post and reply. I really appreciate all the time and information you and some of the others have added. I believe I did try the 8.04 LTS version, however I did not try it for the particular machine in question. I've tried and played with the last 4 or 5 releases and by far this 9.04 has been the smoothest and has had me the most excited.

As you suggested in your closing I will stick with it. I went back to it last night and for whatever reason this time it asked me to install the missing files, and it did it for me. It's will only play one of the .vob files at a time, but I did some more research on how to deal with that. I'll probably play with converting them to mpeg, although the reason I kept them as the native dvd files was to keep the quality. I'll play with it though and I'll hang in there. One thing I did notice that was sure nice I was using Rambo First Blood as my test movie and it looked great while watching it through Ubuntu's software. It took up almost the complete screen. For comparison purposes I booted into windows, started the movie and for whatever reason the way the media player is set up it takes up much less of the screen real estate. That reason alone will be reason enough for my wife to boot into linux to watch the movie. :)

As you mentioned for specialized stuff there will still be a reason to keep windows. Believe it or not I'm in IT, just a relative newbie and it's all been windows, and I work quite a bit with programs where I have to have windows. My hopes are to move to linux for all of the less specialized stuff and to set machines up for the family when they need one with linux so that they wont have as many support issues. My mom and god mother are about as new to computers as you can get, complete with sending all of the "microsoft will send you money if you forward this email" emails and I would like to be able to give them machines that are much more stable for them than what we usually run into with windows.

Thank you again for your feedback. Have an awesome day and weekend!

[Evildave]

RedRat said:

May I suggest:

Lesson Three: Never say Never!

Yes, never say, "Linux will 'never' be ready for prime-time." It is already.

Could the dominant position of Linux be supplanted? Of course. By something open source, free and BETTER. There is quite a mountain of effort being heaped behind Linux by tens of thousands, right now, and lots of geometrically growing worldwide support for it. It could be replaced in 30 years' time as the dominant open source platform... but it can never die as long as people WANT Linux. Any more than rocks can fall 'up' (outside of some vehicle pulling negative Gees...).

Unlike closed source commercial software that dies as soon as a company 'changes focus', or makes a new product, or decides they can't compete in a market and drop your product, or an executive that evangelized and kept a product alive gets a divorce and has to sell off his shares, or the company gets bought out (or goes out of business). You as the customer end up holding the bag, running 10 and 20 year old PCs because nothing 'new' will run the software that YOU REQUIRE to do business, and ultimately you can't legally expand because licenses for the OS to run the oldest software you need aren't even available anymore, and newer hardware doesn't run that OS correctly anyway (not that you couldn't run it in virtual machines).

If you want business software that can last forever, if only because you have the source code and can pay some individual to extend and maintain it whenever you need to, Open Source is THE WAY.

If you want to personally be prepared for the FUTURE, learn to use Linux and open sourced software. It's not that big a leap. It's different, but only the same kind of 'different' you'd find between competing commercial products, any one of which might go out of business the day after you invest a fortune buying it and tons of time and effort learning it. At least Free Open Source Software is FREE. As in free beer.

Linux won't 'go away' until there's something TRULY better. And even if it does get replaced, 100% of the projects running under it would be ported to the new OS in short order. Right now, there isn't anything better. Only different. And 'different' says a world of negative things when you want something standards-compliant for the long haul. Windoze certainly is no standard. They change the API more often than Bill Gates changes his underpants. Often for the worse, as these so-called 'improvements' kill the 'old' software that you invested past fortunes purchasing, adapting to and standardizing on.

[WhosYourSeanie]

Hello Ricegf,

Thank you also for your detailed information. It's definitely appreciated. As I mentioned to redhat, I'm going to hang in there with this one and see if I can't get a better grip on working with Linux. I really do look forward to working with something that will be much more solid and "user friendly" than the windows machines. I just don't want to set family and friends up with a computer that is going to constantly need to be babied. I get tired of all the troubleshooting I having to do with windows. One case in point I'd like to share that just blew me away. While visiting family over the winter holidays I was working on my mom's new within the last couple of months laptop that was acting like a slug. I noticed vista needed updates and decided to do the updates. Dang thing wouldn't update. I spent 3 days of my vacation working on the phone with microsoft. I've got to hand it to microsoft for hanging in there that long with all of the support calls with me over that time period, but talk about ridiculous. A new machine with a "new" operating system and I spent hours just trying to get the darn thing to do updates.

Anyway, thank you again for the reply and support!

[RedRat]

Evildave,
You really are preaching to choir here. Linux can die away if it does not expand its horizons. My point is that right now, we have too many "Linux evangelicals", so to speak, who have been with the OS for a long time. The very idea of incorporating something new, such as the GUI, rubs them the wrong way and they tend to demean the newbie who comes from the Windows world.
I have blogged here and elsewhere that, unfortunately, Linux has some serious annoyances for the new user. Video/graphics drivers being probably the most severe. Yet the 'evangelicals' tend to dismiss or, worst, rationalize away this particular fault. These people scare away new users.
Linux has got to be made far more bullet proof if it is to get new users into the fold. Unfortunately, many believe that "we don't need more users" Linux is "so great that it stands alone and we have all that we need" seems to be their attitude. They take umbrage at the slightest criticism of Linux and its fault, in many ways falling into the same Microsoft trap that the "fault isn't a fault, its a feature" just slightly different words, but the attitude is still the same.
Like it or not, if Linux is going to attract new users, the developers are going to have to take into consideration the way people use computers. Also, whether they like it or not, those people are going to be coming from the Windows and Mac world. They expect a consistent type interface and interaction with the OS. There is nothing wrong with a GUI, people are now accustomed to this, so why do so many Linux geeks seem hell bent on demanding that everyone use the CLI? Yes, I know it is efficient but for the newbie not so good. In the end, if the developers are developing Linux only for themselves, the user crowd will shrink and Linux will not be prime time.

[Grr8008]

Redhat, that was a perfect post. I myself run linux but it is sometimes a pain to install programs. As I am/was used to Mac and Windows this was a bit disorienting for me. I still love the OS but for the average user or the non computer person it will be pretty hard to use sometimes.For basic tasks like web browsing and word processing? Great. For installing programs not in the Add-remove programs manager? Horrible.

[WhosYourSeanie]

I agree with Grr8008. Great post Redhat. I'm the perfect example of a newbie. I've got remix running from a jump drive on my sammy n120 and playing with it a bit to see if I want to install it. I've spent over an hour so far just trying to figure out how to make the screen brighter. I found the many places for volume control, but havn't had much luck with the brightness. I'm typing this on my regular computer because it is so much easier to see. I've been in the ubuntu forums and on google. I 've read about sudo apt-get... yada yada yada but I'm clueless as to where I need to type that. I've read about "terminal" which I have a pretty good idea of what it is, but no idea how to get to it. I'll probably be making a trip to the bookstore to find the "Ubuntu for the dummest of dummies" book that may help me get a grasp. I've been told by others I've got far more patience for computer troubleshooting than the average person, and if this is what I have to go through you can imagine how long someone as new to this or newer is going to stick with it if they have to spend this much time to make their screen brighter. I'm going to take the challenge and keep plugging away, but I have a feeling the average newbie would be on their way back to windows at this point.

[RedRat]

WhosYourSeanie,

Stick with it.There are some very good books out there. I would suggest, like have blogged elsewhere, that you might want to stick with ubuntu 8.04 LTS version. I have seen a long list of graphic/video problems with the newest release 9.04. I suspect that many of the bugs in regard to graphics/video have been worked out in the 8.04 version. Once you get your feet on the ground, then you might want to explore later updates.

I am not familar with the n120, but usually brightness can be controlled by the laptop/notebook itself. However, depending on the video driver, e.g., nvidia-settings in the Ubuntu installation, you can tweak the video card a bit. I use an older Samsung 191T monitor and have not had problems with brightness. But I suspect that notebooks, in order to keep battery life longer, probably have the background light on the monitor tweaked down a bit. Although I don't really know. Brightness can be a very subjective thing. However, this seems to back up what I have complained about with Linux, ie. the video graphics card connection. Of all those graphics cards out there, Nvidia seems to have the least set of problems, and that is not saying much. ATI cards or chips, seem to have the most complaints in Ubuntu and usenet groups/forums. You might find that after you do a full install of Ubuntu, things might be better.

[WhosYourSeanie]

Redhat,

Thank you again for your help and guidance. I'm in the process of doing an actual install of the remix, which is supposed to be developed for the netbooks, and will see how that goes. If it gets bad I'll definitely take your advice and go for the 8.04 version. As far as screen brightness goes I stumbled across a workaround. I booted into windows to defrag the drive before installing the ubuntu and although the screen brightness was fine there I went ahead and adjusted it up. I defragged, rebooted into Ubuntu remix from the jump drive and dang if the screen brightness was fine. It seems as though making the setting in windows carries over to Ubuntu. I didn't expect that. As you mentioned at the end of the post I'm thinking the full install may make a difference.

Thank you again for all your patience and input. You're awesome!

[RedRat]

WhosYourSeanie,

Glad I could help. If you run into problems with the notebook, definitly try the Ubuntu Forums, there is a lot help to be found there, especially with notebooks and the remix. I have seen this subject brought up there.

Stick with Ubuntu, you will enjoy it.