Why I Love and Hate Linux
For no particular reason, I decided to install Linux to a new disk partition today. It’s been a while since my last encounter with the OS (some ancient version of Gentoo) and things have changed a lot.
Linux’s graphical interface is no longer so ugly that you have to hide it behind a black command prompt and call it “non-bloated and functional”. In fact, a Linux installation that is customized to perfection has the most beautiful GUI eye candies ever known to computing outside of Hollywood movies.
Take a look at this video demonstration if you don’t believe me.
Installation
I chose Ubuntu as my distro of choice because it is widely supported and frankly the minute differences between Linux distros have no effects on my intended uses. Installing Linux is pretty simple: Most distros only require you to boot up a Live CD and then click install. (That’s provided you either don’t care about it formatting your hard disk or you have already taken care of the partitioning using something like PartitionMagic.)
Linux has relatively little support from hardware vendors. Most of the drivers it uses were written by third parties and released under an open source license for free, so it’s pretty amazing just how much stuff it can support by default. Ubuntu auto-configured my sound card, my USB devices and pretty much everything. In fact, the lack of official drivers ironically made the process a lot more painless than on Windows, provided your hardware is not too obscure.
But alas, my configuration is somewhat uncommon. My motherboard has two PCI-e slots and I have three monitors running off two Nvidia graphics cards of different models. I couldn’t get this set-up to work, even with the official closed-source Linux drivers from Nvidia. After hours of frustration, I gave up and stuck to my single 24-inch monitor instead. I sort of expected this to happen.
That annoyance aside, Ubuntu is pretty user-friendly, relatively speaking. My prior experience with Linux consisted of: Mandrake when I was in primary school (didn’t support my sound card and couldn’t mount FAT32 drives), SimpleMEPIS about three years ago (couldn’t do dual monitor), and Gentoo (took about five years to configure the install), so Ubuntu came as a pleasant surprise, especially when it didn’t threaten to blow up my CPU or format my Windows partition.
Compiz Fusion rocks!
Pretty soon I got all the essential apps up and running and was happily flipping video screens and Firefox windows around with Compiz Fusion. Here’s another video if you skipped the last one, this time with explanations:
Compiz Fusion is simply awesome. It’s not just eye candy either; it’s seriously useful. Everyone who has ever used Vista should give Compiz’s windows management effects a try. My AMD machine is a few generations outdated and it runs all the effects that you see in the video, completely lag free. Clearly, Vista must be doing something seriously wrong when turning on a few visual effects makes it run like a cow.
The rest, not so much…
But sadly, Ubuntu is not all sunshine and roses. Like most Linux distros in general, it is basically tsundere.
Setting things up still involve quite a bit of command line fiddling and pure luck. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or self-deluded. Applications have graphical interfaces that fall into two categories: overly-simplified options that force you to access vital settings through the terminal, or overly-complicated options with a ton of useless selections that no one will ever touch.
Some annoyances I encountered: Amarok doesn’t manage songs the way I want it to, gedit takes years to open a 8KB text file with no line breaks, applications in Wine look uglier than they do in Windows, Firefox in Linux renders Arial like crap, (after I installed Arial via apt-get because Ubuntu doesn’t come with it) and the list goes on. I’m sure there are fixes out there somewhere for most of the problems, but these things shouldn’t be issues in the first place. Moreover, Open Office and GIMP just don’t cut it for me.
The good news is that Wine now works extremely well. Games like World of Warcraft run fine with it, and apparently Photoshop CS2 works too. I tried a few Windows application and they ran without a hitch. This makes things much more bearable, but it still doesn’t excuse the lack of quality native GUI applications.
Conclusion
It seems to me that the roles have been switched: Windows XP is now the productive but ugly desktop, while Linux is awesome-looking and a blast to use but lacking in substance. (Vista is ugly and unproductive.) Of course I am referring only to GUI interfaces and purely desktop-related functions; Linux is after all still the king of productivity and stability when it comes to CLI implementations, such as servers.
In terms of general desktop usage however, Ubuntu (and Linux in general) currently covers the needs of two extremes: people who don’t need anything more than a browser, e-mail, chat and Open Office, and people who dream in Python and can write their own Linux kernels.
It needs to work on the middle: people who require more advanced features but don’t want to deal with command lines, or worse: write them from scratch.
That said, I for one don’t mind living with all Ubuntu’s flaws, except one: my monitor setup doesn’t work. I find that the lag-free window effects actually improve productivity and the seamlessly-integrated virtual workspaces (different sides of the rotating cube) create a very nice clutter-free working environment. I would totally run it on my laptop too, but alas Samsung has some seriously unorthodox hardware configuration that kills every single Linux distro I’ve tried.
I will definitely switch over to Ubuntu as my main OS the next time I build a new rig (after making sure that the setup is compatible) and use my current machine for network storage, BitTorrent and perhaps running an occasional Windows application or two.
I feel kind of empty inside as I write this post back in boring old XP… I want my rotating cube back. ;_;
P.S. I also gained a greater appreciation for Apple’s vision behind Mac OSX… But it’s still overpriced.
P.P.S. I wonder how many of you actually read this entry?
February 9th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Use Unix.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:43 am
It took me ages to get my Laptop’s Wifi Card to work with Ubuntu. I would agree with this article except I haven’t had any problems with Vista on my main PC. I’m using Xp right now on my Laptop but when I built a osx86 Hackintosh but couldn’t get the wifi card to work at all.If you are not too afraid of slight pitacy try osx86, its OSX on a PC :)
February 9th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Out of many people writing about their switch to Linux, i think you hit the nail perfectly. Many reviews are biased on either side of the fence. (Windows/OSX fanboys or Linux/BSD zealots). But the thing about needing applications for the middle is perfectly true for advanced Windows users. But i do not think such application will be written since there is no incentive to do so. The people who would be able, are more than happy with their CLI and rather write something intresting then make a frontend for CLI apps.
You might want to try OSX, many say its very nice. I don’t know myself, I am a happy CLI user (mutt, irssi, bitlbee, mpd, vi) dreaming in Pascal and Haskell.
By the way, “Linux is tsundere”. You made my day ;)
February 9th, 2008 at 2:23 am
I have to chime in with ddaedalus and agree that there’s a Linux gap for people such as myself - code-illiterate, but wanting to do more on my laptop than just word-process.
That said, if you do just want to word-process (I know several who do, and who use Linux) it’s probably the way to go, especially thinking about reliability (shades of Ockham’s Razor here).
As for Open Office and the GIMP, among my most-used programs: I’d have to not eat to save up for good alternatives, given my spending priorities. In that particular case, quality wasn’t a consideration.
February 9th, 2008 at 2:44 am
I had hardware troubles with Ubuntu, and as much as I do love it (especially Compiz Fusion), I find general performance on XP a lot better and I love XP’s font rendering and spacing and all that. In some ways I’m amazed by Ubuntu’s GUI, but its installation methods (for apps that aren’t in Add/Remove or the Package Manager) are often complicated and require prior Linux knowledge =/
February 9th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Actually this afternoon I saw your IRC quit message said “Ex-chat” and I was going hmm…
I’m on Linux Mint now (which is basically Ubuntu anyway) and also have a BLAG machine, only thing is that the BLAG machine’s configurations went crazy again after another improper shutdown (stupid thunderstorms) so I guess I need to set it up with PCLinuxOS soon.
We use OpenSUSE at uni, with Ubuntu and RHEL the semester before. OpenSUSE is a biatch to configure with networking (I pity my juniors…), can’t even set up iptables accordingly with YaST overriding it all the time.
Well, you’re a power user so I don’t think anything Linux can offer will appease you actually. Nobody else I know use three monitors on a single desktop. Plus the way you’re relying on WINE means that well, I guess you can’t take away all the Windows programs you’re used to. The only instance I ran WINE was for Notepad, since, like you said, gedit can be so annoying.
What I didn’t like with the distros I worked on at uni was dependency hell with RPM-based distros. I had to practically bookmark every single RPM distro site out there. It also took me so long to know of a good download splitter for Linux - d4x.
All in all, I think that different distros already target different people (Ubuntu wants to be the friendliest out there… can’t disagree actually, if you think of stuff like Slackware and Gentoo) but it’s the strong grip of proprietary software on certain aspects of our techworld that makes it less easier for them to migrate.
I seriously wanted to use this but the setup died everytime T_T (tried Momonga too… 60% of stuff didn’t work)
February 9th, 2008 at 3:24 am
I have recently tried out Ubuntu on a spare laptop as well. My main problem with it is that I have problems typing in Japanese!
I added the ubuntu jp source, added the necessary packages, and did a few command prompt commands (copied from ubuntuforums), and I was able to type in Japanese just fine everywhere, except in flash!
So whenever I visit niconico, I basically had to type comments somewhere else, then copy and paste the comments back into the viewer, and press enter. It basically makes commenting in niconico very poor.
And yeah, web pages look horrible in firefox because of the fonts…
February 9th, 2008 at 4:01 am
I’ve always wanted to try linux but just havent got the time or spare set up to try it on… I may try that partitioning you mentioned… Alas, I also believe I would be too lazy to really do it =P
February 9th, 2008 at 4:11 am
Linux Mint is better with drivers than Ubuntu, because it downloads and uses commercial drivers if you want it to. Also I read one reviewer reporting that for the first time in his Linux experience he was able configure for multiple monitors. That said, Mint feels a little … wonkier than Ubuntu. It doesn’t crash, but it feels less stable for some reason.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:36 am
I read random lines, if that counts ;P
February 9th, 2008 at 5:30 am
It’s a shame to refuse to deal with command lines, really. Mouse clicks only only get you so far. I’d say it’s easier to explain oneself with words rather than tapping one’s finger.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:23 am
I only use ubuntu when modifying my partition and changing boot flags. The last time I used it is when i was installing Mac OSX leopard on my pc : )
February 9th, 2008 at 7:26 am
lolz after knowing that wine can run Photoshop CS2 pretty fine I really fall in love with Ubuntu. Now whenever I start my XP laptop the only word in my mind is “LINUX”.
Know it’s hard to use command lines since I tried a dual-OS of XP and Ubuntu before, but if one has the determination, he can do it :)
February 9th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I’m using Feisty Fawn since it’s release too (mainly because my Windows insists on my RAM being deffet and crashes constantly) and well…many apps a easy to install, just klick&done, but as you said…some are not.
I can’t bring my TV Card to do anything for example.
But Fusion is the most awesome invetion i’ve seen in quite some time.
I was using 2 monitors with windows (cause tabbing sucks), but the multiple rotation screen is much more convenient.
Though my 2nd monitor is doomed to rot now.
Whats really funny is that there are a lot of Games (mainly anime games) that won’t work with my Windows (yeah i did all the unicode stuff, still doesn’t work), but they run just fine with wine. Great invention too.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Time to make your own “Tsundere Linux” distro, DM. Maybe users might enjoy the abuse then :)
February 9th, 2008 at 7:47 am
I read it ^^ Very interesting, an interlude from the usual.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:45 am
I have to say that I don’t completely agree with DM, however I rather belong to the better skilled ppl according to this post :-)
For one, if you don’t need to have windows spanning multiple screens, configuring a static n-screen monitor setup becomes rather easy. However I don’t know what would happen during screen switching of an OpenGL app (it probably would have to use some special tricks in the app itself). And Compiz Fusion 99% would shit bricks seeing a non-Xinerama (i.e. Windows-style) multi-screen setup.
As for rest of the points - Fonts are tricky, especially given the way the community choosed for dealing with fonts in new apps, which keeps all the nice rendering stuff away from older and makes for a lot of weird hacks. Though most of the time I don’t have troubles with fonts now.
However, the last time I tried Ubuntu it couldn’t install on my well tried, linux compatible computer :-D
February 9th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Seraphim :
I imagine that OSX86 will have more compatibility and driver issues than Linux. >_>
Farplaner:
I didn’t try Japanese input, but I did have problems getting Flash to work in Firefox.
Peter S:
Ubuntu can download closed source drivers too. I was actually using Nvidia’s commercial driver in Ubuntu.
I’m pretty sure multi-monitor setups can work if you don’t rely on auto-config apps and edit xorg.conf yourself, but the problem is that I have multiple monitors on two graphics cards, which seems to cause some problems.
mt-i:
As I said, I don’t mind messing with the CLI, which was how I got my sole monitor working anyway. (The built-in GUI monitor dialogue is completely useless.) But I think Linux relies on it too much. Apt-get for one should be something that has a completely functional graphical replacement.
And wow I’m surprised so many techies read my blog.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I’m using Debian as main OS since the release of OpenOffice 1.0, before that various linux distro has been my secondary OS. Still using windows though, still can’t find good video editing on linux and aegisub, the linux version crashed every 5 minutes :(.
I’ve got no problem on japanese input (using uim+canna). Flash works but often crash opera/konqueror/firefox. Fonts looks better than windows counterpart (gotta build your own libfreetype). Got no problem playing any codec/format. Multihead worked once, but failed again when upgrading nvidia driver, but only got 1 monitor now. Of course all of that came from hours spent on tweaking configuration on CLI :D
BTW, the only time I reinstall my Debian is when I switched from 32-bit to 64-bit. I changed hardwares, even main HDD many times but I only need to change some configs.