Distro watch for Ubuntu lovers: What's ahead in Linux land

With the death of Unity, Canonical will focus more attention on Ubuntu servers, Ubuntu in the cloud and Ubuntu in the so-called Internet of Things. Even if you give Canonical the benefit of the doubt - that it will continue working on desktop Ubuntu - at the very least, desktop Ubuntu's future looks uncertain. Post Unity, how …

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

Why is it so f*cking hard to do PC makers? After years of owning every top-brand of PC/Laptop for work and home, I despise them all now. I'll nurse existing rigs indefinitely. Say no to Microsoft using Facebook+Google offline-credit-card & online-profile snooping built-into an OS! Request Mint!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

It's all or nothing though. If they bundle Linux Microsoft cut them off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"Microsoft cut them off"

So what, charge the retail price for Windows on top of the systems, you don't have to have cheap Windows licensing. Lets see who the victor is.

Pirated Windows I suspect.

Apple seems to do just fine without Windows. I suspect if an OEM emerged specialising in Linux and picked a universally usable Linux distro and configured it appropriately out of the box there would be a decent level of success.

Chromebooks have found their place. Why not Linux?

My experience is that if you explain Linux, people tend not 'get it' and stay away. If you show people Linux, you can win them over easily.

Ive moved a lot of people to Linux. Mainly consumers. If you take the time to sit down with them, listen to what they want and show them how its done in Linux there is a tendency for them to ask questions like:

1. Why doesn't Windows do that?

2. Why is that so hard to find on Windows?

3. Is that all it takes to do that?

And statements like:

1. I didnt think that was possible.

2. That was fast. Windows takes longer than that to install.

3. I've wanted to be able to do that for years.

Get a few machines out there on display for people to try and the market will come.

Trouble is, its hard to convince an investor to stump up the seed capital.

Underskilled and underqualified IT guys in workplaces have a lot to answer for as well. Lazy IT guys. Some of you are here right now.

Stand up bastards working at RBWM telling an employee that Ubuntu wont work with your Dell/Citrix environment. Theres an official client that can only be downloaded via a partner licensing portal. You can give her a copy.

I know it exists, you know it exists.

One of the people I look after was told it was mandatory to have Windows as Ubuntu isn't supported by the system which is just plain bollocks.

By lying through your greasy, Microsoft Certified, worthless teeth you're making a persons life needlessly hard. Be ashamed of yourselves. I'm ashamed of you.

Forcing windows by claiming something "isnt supported" is as bad as Linux guy selling Linux because "Windows is shit".

I don't take that line of tact, I just promote choice, if someone prefers Windows then fine, buy it. Its your choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I've moved a lot of people to Linux.

if you could find a Windows comparable bluetooth HFP setup so I could use my laptop headset with my Android mobile phone, you'd be able to move me too.

Fantastic as Linux is, it's nowhere near ready to takeover from Windows.

[czarnajama]

Re: I've moved a lot of people to Linux.

Unless you ABSOLUTELY have to use some Windows-only software, Linux is much better than Windows for everything. Even then, there are some workarounds, such as WINE, or better yet, a virtual machine setup which allows you to run both systems simultaneously (or in extremis, dual booting).. Of course, it very much helps to know a bit about your system and computers in general. If you don't, and you don't have people at hand to help, you can find answers to most problems via Google... if you can ask the right questions.

[czarnajama]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

I don't quite understand why there's a fuss about Linux not being pre-installed very much. So long as your system isn't some bleeding-edge gamers' laptop, most current distros should install painlessly. Search on Google for possible incompatibilities. I recall my first laptop, an IBM T20, installed Redhat 7.1 as a double-booter flawlessly in 2001, after I repartitioned the disk with some standard software. I recall that Slackware in 1995 and early Redhats needed manual editing of the Xwindow config file ... but since 2000 or so, mainstream Linux distributions install automatically and more easily than Windows installs, even automatically doing the disk repartitioning and booter install to allow easy coexistence with Windows. Since 2005 or so, I have used Ubuntu, now Ubuntu MATE and a Mint-derived distribution using MATE called Distro Astro. GNOME was fine, but I converted my main system from Unity to MATE, because I just couldn't get Unity to do what I have become accustomed to since Sunview back in the 80's. Long term support is crucial, I believe, so Ubuntu LTS works really well, ditto RHEL (at an institution). Google allows you to find answers to all problems, and to find needed software. I don't see why there's an issue with Unity being dropped, since other window interfaces are very well developed and being maintained (the KDE universe is one example), and Ubuntu supports the main ones. A little bit of reading is needed, perhaps a bit of trial and error, to find the GUI which suits one the best, and use it on one of the mainstream distributions supporting it and which offers good updating and long term support. This article pretty much names them all. You won't go wrong.

In any case, if it's a stationary PC, it's more fun to configure your own box. Then you can check that each subsystem is compatible with Linux, and usually it will be, because you will be choosing known components and not what was cheapest that week in the Chinese supply environment of your integrator. A modern system can give you ten years of good service with some care.

[PNGuinn]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"even automatically doing the disk repartitioning and booter install to allow easy coexistence with Windows!

What is this Windows of which you speak? Some new fangled replacement for systemd? Say it isn't so.

[jelabarre59]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

What is this Windows of which you speak? Some new fangled replacement for systemd? Say it isn't so.

I thought systemd *was* MSWindows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

Linux nowadays works incredibly well, for about 95% of what you want to do, but unfortunately the final 5% is often still as frustrating as ever.

WiFi and Bluetooth can still be incredibly annoyingly complicated and fiddly to get working, often requiring a lot of forum reading and downloading firmware from "quirky" chipset manufacturers' websites.

In the end, it was this that grudgingly drove me to Mac: nice, but really rather too overpriced for what it is, and increasingly annoyingly non-upgradeable hardware.

I do miss the simplicity of apt-get and friends, though. Unfortunately the Mac world hasn't settled on a single repo/software management service for the FOSS apps I like to use.

[PNGuinn]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"Forcing windows by claiming something "isnt supported" is as bad as Linux guy selling Linux because "Windows is shit"."

Not at all.

The former is probably either a downright lie re the hardware or a tacit admission that the claimant is a sad PC World type "techie" with no knowledge of the world outside the dungeon Slurp has his mind chained up in. Possibly as you suggest. Borg Certified.

Sadly the latter, increasingly, is true.

Q the downvotes.

No, I'm NOT a Linux fanboy. I just want something stable, reliable, secure and easy to update. With honest docs.

As a matter of fact, as a happy penguin I'm about to give one of the BSDs a whirl. I get the feeling that it'll be a great learning curve if nothing else.

Oh, and it's MY bloody computer. I'll set it up MY way, thanks. And, NO ms, you DON'T have my permission to crawl all over or mess with my systems, NOT EVEN TO PEEP. Which would have been a good reason in itself to dump you if I hadn't done it years ago.

[Richard Plinston]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

> So what, charge the retail price for Windows on top of the systems, you don't have to have cheap Windows licensing.

Yes, the OEMs and retailers do. The difference between OEM and retail pricing is > $100 and that would mean zero or negative profit or zero sales against nearly identical machines from other OEMs that were $100 or more cheaper. It is just as well that nobody employs you as anything to do with costs and finance.

> Apple seems to do just fine without Windows.

Apple produce a superior system at a premium price but can also run Windows.

> I suspect if an OEM emerged specialising in Linux and picked a universally usable Linux distro and configured it appropriately out of the box there would be a decent level of success.

> Chromebooks have found their place. Why not Linux?

ChromeOS _is_ a Linux distro, and has a decent level of success, which is why some OEMs have chosen to sell it. Android is a Linux distro too, just not a GNU/Xwindows one (for good technical reasons).

> Forcing windows by claiming something "isnt supported" is as bad as ...

OEMs and retailers make very small margins on selling computers, the market is too competitive with many manufacturers having nearly identical machines. They need to make their profit by including added-value (and added price) items or up selling with expensive addons. Windows makes this easy to do with games, security products, Office and so on. They also get a replacement sale every two or three years, or at least upgrades. This makes it a profitable business.

Apple have a much higher price and a good profit margin, so these are profitable even if there is much less add-on and upgrade market.

ChromeBooks have a free (or very cheap) OS and low end hardware and so do make a profit even though they are inexpensive. Windows 10S is likely to be free to OEMs to compete.

Selling a Linux based system would need to undercut the same hardware with Windows, would not have the profitable add-ons and would not have the repeat upgrade and replacement business because Linux machines are not replaced and upgraded like Windows machines are (my machines are all 5 to 14 years old, mostly discards from clients).

Why would an OEM or retailer want to add a non-profitable line to their business ?

[tom dial]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

It might be more palatable to Microsoft if manufacturers offered one or more Linux distributions alongside Windows if the price were the same in all cases. If, in addition, the money collected for the Linux sales were sent to the respective distribution maintainers instead of Microsoft, everyone would benefit.

[Mark 65]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

I believe that for a lot of manufacturers it comes down to the components they have chosen and the availability of drivers. I would guess that it is where most would have cheaped out on a component and the OEM only makes drivers for windows. It's a lot better these days. I installed Mint on a 2008 MacBook straight from a live cd/USB, no special work required.

[Chemical Bob]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"If they bundle Linux Microsoft cut them off."

You say that like it's a bad thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"It's all or nothing though. If they bundle Linux Microsoft cut them off."

So?

They can still sell retail licenses. Trouble is, the Microsoft tax becomes less transparent this way.

We don't want consumers seeing how hard they're being shafted now do we?

[Richard Plinston]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

> They can still sell retail licenses. Trouble is, the Microsoft tax becomes less transparent this way.

The OEM could still _buy_ licenses at retail prices.

FTFY

Trouble is, they would have to sell machines at $100 - $150 more than their competitors can, or make equivalent losses.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

You can usually buy top brand PCs with RedHat or Suse installed, Dell offers Ubuntu.

You won't probably see distro like Debian, especially when they keep on making a fuss about proprietary drivers, so it's hard for OEMs to deliver supported drivers for their hardware. Some distro should really become more friendlier if they want to get preinstalled, otherwise for OEMs it's much simpler to tell you to install the OS of your choice yourself, and don't bother them with support issues.

Often you can also order PCs without any OS and then install whatever you like - just usually they are the business models lines, not the consumer ones, but not always. Dell AFAIK offers Ubuntu for consumers PCs too.

Just don't expect them to offer many distros - it would just mean a support nightmare.

[Anonymous Coward]

'You can usually buy top brand PCs with RedHat or Suse installed'

Sure in larger cities in UK / US maybe... But large parts of Latam / Asia / Central-Eastern Europe its PC-World-Dixons-Walmart-Target type stores with Win10, take it or leave it. Yes there are smaller specialist outfits, but they're hard to find and the prices aren't as competitive. Online is better, but the complexity of VAT/SalesTax/IVA + uncompetitive delivery charges and complicated returns, introduces many other minefields...

[xehpuk]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

Yes, I have the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, it came with Ubuntu installed. I love it, even the Unity desktop (just weeks before Unity was announced abandoned I began liking it after so many years frowning at it).

[tom dial]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

The claim that it is hard for OEMs to deliver supported drivers for their hardware seems quite badly overstated. Debian maintainers are, indeed, picky about proprietary (i. e., non-free) software in the "main" repository. They are less so about what is in "contrib" and much less so about "non-free," which on my systems has five or six hundred packages, a good many of them drivers, many with blobs or blob downloader/installers.

The problem likely has more to do with overall unwillingness of device manufacturers to develop and test Linux drivers in addition to those for the rather different Windows environment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

Because when you are imaging drive by the thousand, it's actually more expensive to do a one off Linux build...and what variant of Linux? If you stick on Mint, you'll have another bunch of whiners complaining it isn't Ubuntu, if you stick on Ubuntu, another bunch will whine it not Arch....

Then they is the cost, do you know oc the price of an OEM license, but then if people want Windows, you tell them to pay for a retail edition.

Like it or not, 99.999% people "want"" an Intel box with Windows on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

"Like it or not, 99.999% people "want"" an Intel box with Windows on it."

Well... don't stop,!! keep'em comin'!!

99.999% of people want to use GE light bulbs with 120V.

99.999% of people want to ride roller coasters that use 2-cycle bearing grease. (Flame on!)

[phuzz]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

120V? What is this, electricity for ants? Can you even light up a bulb with 120V?

230V@13A or GTFO!

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

> 230V@13A or GTFO!

230!

Pah

New fangled half arsed rubbish

Real People want a return to 240V

[jelabarre59]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

120V? What is this, electricity for ants? Can you even light up a bulb with 120V?

230V@13A or GTFO!

I wouldn't want to see them try to push 230v through the crap power infrastructure we have here in the states.

[CAPS LOCK]

@ jelabarre59 - Au contraire good sir...

... The insulation is most likely adequate for full strength, proper 240 VAC and the wire guage is FOUR times as big as would be required for the power. W=I^2. R

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

99.999% of people want ketchup on their chips. The rest are Belgians. Whilst bot a majority, the Belgians treat their chips with respect. Which makes the 99.999% that want ketchup entirely wrong.

[IanMoore33]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

If you are Canadian you put gravy on your "chips"

[itzman]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

I challenge your statement.

99.99% of people who buy pre-installed computers just want to be told how to make it send and receive emails print and browse. They couldn't care less if its windows OSX or a linux.

The fact that android exists shows that.

Dumb users are OS agnostic.

They might just bitch if they cant play DoomQuakeNukeEm on it tho

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

You can image Linux just fine using PXE.

You can also get your first install exactly the way it needs to be and create an installable ISO from it to use with PXE.

There are also various LDAP solutions out there for Linux (e.g. OpenLDAP). Including Active Directory itself.

Don't give us any deployment crap please. Im beginning to find all these central management / deployment arguments to be a bit weak.

You once had to learn how to use ximage (or imagex whatever it is) and Active Directory, so learn how to use some alternatives. Its your job, you're in IT. A profession that pummels you into the ground if you don't keep learning.

[phuzz]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

Well, now Windows 10 includes it's Linux subsystem, so most PCs you can buy now include Linux.

That's what you wanted, right?

[Mage]

Re: Windows 10 includes it's Linux subsystem

No more point to that than the MS Unix option they offered for years. Though you had to add a separate X11 server. Never as popular as cygwin. It's actually in that sense anything not available since before Win2K.

[kryptylomese]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

The Linux sub system is not the same as running Linux directly - Windows simply cannot do what Linux can and the subsystem has to sit on top of Windows. So no, it is not what was wanted!

[Mage]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

I can't see it by default yet, though if windows gets much worse ...

Dell first started offering it pre-installed on some systems in 1999 at least. Certainly that's when I first gave a Linux course to Dell Plus staff. It was Redhat then.

When netbooks first came out they had only Linux.

I've actually found that LXDE is better than XFCE or Mate, as desktop for Mint on Netbooks. Tested N270 Aspire One (1.5G RAM), an N450 (2G) and an N455 (1G) with Mint 17.3 and 18.1, obviously the N270 can only run 32bits. It seems to make no difference running 32bit or 64bit Linux on the N45x version Atoms. All that family can only have 2G RAM. There isn't much point to 64bits if the CPU or Mobo can't do more than 4G. Unlike Windows 7 64 bit vs 32bit, there seems to be no compatibility penalty with 64 bit Linux.

On smaller / lower resolution screens I set fonts to 8 point. I turn of graphic styles on panels and desktop. I use "Redmond" theme. Many theme are too dark or too flat or too low contrast.

I wish STUPID Mozilla would not ignore my theme / desktop and make Thunderbird and Firefox flatter and more stupid GUI with each release. LibreOffice seems to be creeping this way and the the default Mint Calculator is stupidly flat and low contrast!

[Avatar of They]

Re: Now if just 1 major PC maker installed Linux by default...

I have a dell XPS laptop running native Ubuntu that Dell put on. Ubuntu 14 but runs sweet with a 4k touch screen and all the whistles.

There is a Dell support forum and I have downloaded the ISO and image files for when I break it :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware

I take issue with the fact that Slackware is described as "more difficult".

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Slackware

Once upon a time, it was difficult. Oh, back around 1998 or so it was a PITA especially when trying to install it from Floppies (remember them?). But now? Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Slackware

More to the point - how come /slackware/ is not labelled an "old-time" distro, but puppy is?

[jelabarre59]

Re: Slackware

More to the point - how come /slackware/ is not labelled an "old-time" distro, but puppy is?

Because Slackware dates from *before* time? (no disrespect to the Slack, it was my first distro)

[Mage]

Re: Slackware

Gentoo?

[4d3fect]

Re: Slackware

Gesundheit!

[beep54]

I haven't heard all that much about FreeBSD in a while. How's it doing? Can I run it off a USB? I might have enough space for a virtual drive now, maybe I should give a go.

[gv]

Not sure about the USB opton, but I think it works fine, especially on older hardware. Using a modern DE does slow it down a bit, but maybe that was because I was running it on the older hardware.

[Missing Semicolon]

FreeBSD wireless device support

... is seriously poo.

Anyone using FreeBSD by proxy (by installing pfSense) will find that most USB wireless devices are unsupported, many miniPCi cards only sort-of-work, and hitting the boundaries of what a particular device/driver combo supports usually results in a kernel freeze.

So, much as I would like to, no thanks.

[Hstubbe]

Re: FreeBSD wireless device support

Ah, time for my pet peeve: linux still has no support for the wifi driver in my (by now) 3 year old laptop.. if you want hardware support, windows still is your best bet :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: FreeBSD wireless device support

"linux still has no support for the wifi driver "

Buy a cheap USB wifi stick !

[Chemist]

Re: FreeBSD wireless device support

""linux still has no support for the wifi driver ""

The advice to buy a usb wifi stick is quite valid - a number of makes are sold cheaply for older Rasp. Pis and work well on all the Linux PCs I've tried them on. As they are only ~1cm long when plugged -in they scarcely increase the footprint of a laptop.

The one I've got on a Pi (running Motion ) is :

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter called a WiPi from one of the on-line Pi retailers

[Tim036]

Re: FreeBSD wireless device support

Edimax from Amazon have a stick that is accepted by Ubuntu without question and works exceptionally well.

IMHO don't bother with any other as there are loads of rubbish ones out there !

: ))

Tim

[keithpeter]

@gv

OpenBSD seems OK on laptops (especially Thinkpads). A little spartan but functional.

[tom dial]

FreeBSD works just fine*, and will run from a USB drive (i. e., installed on a USB drive) and also runs quite nicely as a VM under qemu/kvm.

*HP EliteBook 8570w, Shuttle Xpc SK22G20, Supermicro X9DR3-LN4F+

[Anonymous Coward]

"ahead of the curve on some somewhat esoteric [...] for example color management"

Esoteric for the average sysadmin using a text shell, every day issue for those working in the imaging and graphic industry, and some others.

It was color management availability one of the main features that gave Apple its stronghold in that industry. Apple introduced ColorSync in 1993, Windows matched some of the graphics capabilities soon enough, but it too took to long to include a good color management engine.

While working on a catalog software for a museum years ago, I worked with people with an astounding capability of discerning colors - and if they didn't seen on the screen or prints the "correct" ones, the software wasn't working.

[keithpeter]

Re: "ahead of the curve on some somewhat esoteric [...] for example color management"

@LDS

"While working on a catalog software for a museum years ago, I worked with people with an astounding capability of discerning colors - and if they didn't seen on the screen or prints the "correct" ones, the software wasn't working."

So colourimeter and Eizo or NEC monitor for photo? Or Pantone for spot? I imagine former.

[nematoad]

Some bits missing.

This article appears to be a partial look at the range of distros available. Yes, Linux Mint and Ubuntu are popular but what about some of the other branches?

Mandrake pioneered a lot of the user-friendly things now found in Linux distros and to my mind diskdrake still takes some beating when it comes to partitioning. After the regrettable demise of Mandriva/Mandrake there have appeared a number of derivatives such as Mageia, PCLinuxOS and Rosa. They have all inherited the Mandrake tools to make life easy for new users and are in the top rankings of Distrowatch so they must be doing something right.

My choice is PCLinuxOS.

As I say it is simple to administer and does not have the beast known as systemd entwined around it. Added to that PCLOS is a rolling release that seems to have cracked the problem of keeping the distro up to date without breaking anything. Added to which it does not use sudo as the default which gets a thumbs up from me as I consider the way Ubuntu uses sudo to be an accident waiting to happen.

So yes, the distros mentioned are worthy members of the Linux family, but the article only really tells one side of the story.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Some bits missing.

My choice is PCLinuxOS

I looked at them and they didn't fit my use-case (headless, cli-based VMs). Sure - you can strip the desktopy bits out but it's a pain to have it install everything when you don't want a GUI..

[Alan1kiwi]

Re: Some bits missing.

PCLOS rocks- rolling release, easy................

[e^iπ+1=0]

Re: Some bits missing.

"I consider the way Ubuntu uses sudo to be an accident waiting to happen."

Agreed. At the moment there are lower hanging fruit out there (Watwrmelon? Apple? Coconut?)

[wolfetone]

elementaryOS isn't worth the USB disk you'd write it to.

Sure, it looks lovely. But it turns to crap after any length of use. Crashes, bugs, you name it. Awful, awful trash.

P.S: I've had it installed on my laptop for 18 months.

[Andy 97]

Forgive me for posing such an obvious question, but I thought all you Linux enthusiasts were able to fix anything.

Is there an underlying problem that prevents you?

[nematoad]

"...I thought all you Linux enthusiasts were able to fix anything."

We are , it's just that from time to time some of us like to discuss in a rational and measured way some of the challenges involved.

[wolfetone]

"We are , it's just that from time to time some of us like to discuss in a rational and measured way some of the challenges involved."

Indeed.

Besides, elementaryOS is about on a par usability wise as Windows 98 was before the 2nd edition.

So you may like it.

[Missing Semicolon]

Printing

... does that work yet?

That seems to be the big weakness of Linux-on-the-desktop, that commodity inkjets and lasers are only supported, if at all, by generic drivers. And there is the age-old problem of cancelling and restarting jobs. CUPS is evil - modern printers are peripherals, not line-printers-on-acid.

Oh, if you use the word "PostScript" in ytour response, you're banned :-)

[Chemist]

Re: Printing

"commodity inkjets and lasers are only supported, if at all, by generic drivers."

Not here, not for years and years. My Samsung laser even came with a linux driver disk. I also have a cheap, Epson all-in-one scanner/ink-jet - that also is no problem neither the scanner or the printer.**

As for installation and control even the Rasp.Pis on this network can automatically find and install the printers.

**(Using OpenSUSE and installing the printers (by GUI) as network printers - no problem)

BTW for PC loaded with a variety of Linux point your browser to :

https://nimbusoft.com/

(Never tried them yet so can't comment)

[xehpuk]

Re: Printing

That's up to the printer maker. I have never had a problem with my HP printers. All just work out of box. No need to search the Web for a driver that Windows used to need.

[tom dial]

Re: Printing

If you use CUPS, as seems reasonable, there is very large number of supported printers, although probably significantly fewer of them than the full range of printers. Some require proprietary bundles that may involve some difficulty and some lack support for all features. Most HP printers, including some very old ones like the 1020 and p1505, are fully supported through HP Linux Imaging and Printing*.

I have had few problems with printing (all HP, though). Windows machines have been more problematic than Linux ones because the Windows interface to those managed using CUPS is a bit more obscure and maybe a bit less stable - I have a multifunction printer that had been set up with a Windows system that has been forgotten and apparently needs to be set up again.

* Full disclosure: I do own shares in HPE and HPQ (and Keysight and Agilent).

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Printing

Strange that I've found more issues with Windows and printing (And especially scanning) than with Linux or OSX/MacOS over the years.

Lets take the case of my Brother Laser PRinter.

Point Linux or MacOS at it (on the LAN) and that's it. IT is all connected and works and not a driver to load.

With Windows, I have to download and install a driver to get duplex printing.

Then with Scanning...

I have a perfectly good Canon EIDE 20 Scanner. There is no windows 10 driver for it. It works without issue on Linux (CentOS) or MacOS.

YMMV

[Mage]

Re: Printing

Yes, my external SB USB sound box and Wacom tablet always install wrong driver on Windows.

My old Perfection 1200 scanner and SCSI card a nightmare on newer windows.

All "just worked" years ago on Linux (no need to look for drivers) and just work today on fresh install 64 bit Mint 18.1

USB adapter to 4 pole 3.5mm jack difficult on Windows and just works, no driver to look for to setup/read two way radios with Chirp.

RTL USB TV stick simpler to set up on Linux with Gqrx than on Windows.

[Richard Plinston]

Re: Printing

> with Linux or OSX/MacOS

The CUPS printing system was written by Apple for Unix like systems which includes their BSD based OSX. I have never had a problem getting specific drivers for the printers that I have used because [most] manufacturers need to support their use on Apple computers.

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Printing

Well printing from W10 on systems that have been upgraded from earlier version seems to be about as reliable as your average politician(1). Whereas my Linux boxes always seem quite happy to talk to all my printers.

(1) on all my updated PCs and from Googling around, lots of other peoples too. You're mileage may vary. I'm happy for you.

[Mage]

Re: Printing

Brother has great support.

They also make decent Laser printers and MFCs

My party trick in 1999 for the Dell course was to install a flimsy toy Canon inkjet, set it up on low spec notebook running Redhat.

Then share it. The class would set up a dual boot PC with NT4.0 and RH and then use the Canon as native Canon or a postscript printer, from NT4 or RH.

[PNGuinn]

Re: Printing

"... does that work yet?

That seems to be the big weakness of Linux-on-the-desktop, that commodity inkjets and lasers are only supported, if at all, by generic drivers."

Nope, sorry you'll have to wait a while yet until the likes of hp get off their asses and produce those luvverly multidecagigabite driver packages.

In the meantime, if you just want to print ... I assume you've bought a proper printer - not a cheap 'n nasty windows gdi only paperweight. Although an increasing number of those have been made to work very well.

I once bought a Samsung multifunction, mainly 'cos I needed a new photocopier, and this was waaay cheaper than any optical imaging copier at the time. That it was claimed as Linux compatible was a bonus.

I installed the "drivers" only to find that those Korean basturds had stomped all over and crapped on cups and installed the beast as the default printer. I found out later that the software wanted ROOT priviledges. ???? Samsung, stuff the entire production run where the sun don't shine. Sideways. Add a candle, light it, and in its light write this 10,000 times in your blood: "I must not attempt to write software until I have grown up and have learned to do so" And check your spelling.

Fortunately some upright citizen has done a little reverse engineering, and we have the SPLIX driver, which works great AND plays nicely with CUPS.

I'm sure she could write better drivers>>

PS - PostScript.

Only here to please.

[4d3fect]

Re: Printing

Have the original HP deskjet that came with our original W98SE system, it's been working with nary a hiccup since we went with Dapper (Ubuntu 6 ish IIRC), still does now with 16.04.2. Don't print much anymore anyway, thought that's what modern tech was supposed to supplant?

[dmacleo]

Re: Printing

my Brother MFC-L8850CDW Printer mfc has nix drivers and seems to work ok.

haven't played around a lot so unsure if the scan direct to pc function on nix works as simple as it does on windows or not but printing (including double sided) is ok.

[conscience]

Re: Printing

My Oki laser printer came with a Linux driver and works flawlessly.

[CAPS LOCK]

@ Missing Semicolon

"Does printing work yet?" - Yes.

I sense you have doubts young padawan. Stretch out with your USB stick and try it out WITHOUT INSTALLING ANYTHING TO YOUR DISK.

[Uncle Slacky]

Solus FTW!

A fast, independent distro with its own DE (Budgie) as well as MATE, GNOME, i3 and (soon) KDE Plasma, optimised for desktop usage (particularly gaming). The devs are responsive and willing to package software not yet in their repo. Highly recommended.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

KVM

Arch for a couple years now and know my way around it pretty well and I still can't ever get it working right in Virtualbox

I can't get it to run successfully in a KVM VM either. It gets partway through the install and (the 3 times I've tried it) ends up in a situation where the install won't finish because of conflicting library requirements..

Which is why I went over to FreeBSD instead. I used Slackware many, many years ago (and tried it again recently) but decided to go all-out and switch to FreeBSD

[Tim99]

Wot no Devuan?

RC2 without systemd - Too soon? Link.

[Buttons]

Linux is a viable alternative for a range of uses these days.

I've been toying with various Linux distro's for years but never really settled on any one in particular.

Recently my elderly neighbour wanted a computer just to surf the internets, pick up webmail and do a bit of buying and selling online. I enabled them by giving them an old Dell box with Zorin OS and a single icon on the desktop for Firefox.

I've recently installed Linux Mint (Mate) for a business user who did not want the expense of a W10 upgrade after a hardware refresh. They previously used W7 and Office 2013 with Outlook installed locally. They can scan and print to Canon and Brother devices, also connect to a NAS for file sharing using Mint. A lot of their work is internet based and as a Firefox user in Windows there was no transition training needed to allow them to access their various web apps when using Firefox for Linux.

They are a wary of Libre Office ( They don't want a learning curve) and feel more comfortable with MS Office apps, especially Excel which they use a lot and can access through their Office Live account. There was no need to install Office locally and they can connect to their remotely stored documents from any location with various devices if required.

Mint has been installed three weeks now without a problem and the user tells me they are working just as well, if not a bit faster. When they have reported issues its been to provide a missing facility which they had used previously within windows, like scanning to a Brother printer. I have not had any problems (so far) in being able to provide for their requests.

I've given someone a working option to their Windows installation at a reduced cost. I am by no stretch of the imagination a whizz at his sort of thing, so I'm doubly pleased.

[Peter Ford]

Re: Linux is a viable alternative for a range of uses these days.

+1 for ZorinOS

My boss's good lady got ransomwared on her windows PC a good few months ago, so I blasted it and installed ZorinOS. No complaints so far...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only shit I think is interesting is TrueOS / Free BSD desktop

[asdf]

Especially with Lumina. Was liking the direction that DE was going last I tried it and love the fact its not dependent on the Red Hat hair ball (udev, systemd, gnome, etc). Haven't tried lxqt but that was looking promising as well. KDE well same as it ever was (*cough bloated).

[enerider]

Manjaro - easy mode Arch

Recently I jumped from Linux Mint to Manjaro - purely because I needed the newer kernel stuff (Ryzen needed kernel >= 4.10). Manjaro follows Arch in being a rolling release.

Steam out of the box, and Rocket League at 60-125 FPS using open source drivers (AMDGPU / RX480).

Did have some initial issues with the Ethernet card on the motherboard - which went away once I got connectivity via alternative means and stuffed the updates in.

Also had issues with the motherboard on-board sound: output is clear, but the input has crackle added to it (which I worked around by adding a USB sound card and using the mic port on that. I tried various audio changes, and excluded PulseAudio from the picture, but the crackle persisted with on-board input. The USB audio is completely clear).

The UI is XFCE-based and the default theme and setup I quite like.

Have lived with this setup for a few months and things are going well.

[asdf]

only thing I find Ubuntu useful for these days

When your use case is general POSIX development environment in a VM Lubuntu is awful hard to beat. Boots nearly instantly and runs comfortable in well less than a gig of memory and has the widest number of libraries and development tools available (via 3rd party PPAs) of any POSIX environment imo. Best of all you don't worry about this Unity to Gnome or whatever shit.

[keithpeter]

Distro not DE

"Even if you give Canonical the benefit of the doubt - that it will continue working on desktop Ubuntu - at the very least, desktop Ubuntu's future looks uncertain."

Er - no not uncertain.

Has not the Stubbled One said that Ubuntu will ship with Gnome by default as Ubuntu used to before the Unity excursion? Said excursion into potential new markets the wisdom of which I am not competent to evaluate.

All the other DEs will be in the repos. Strange article seemed to confuse distro with DE.

Coat: Mine's the one with the 5.04 dual CD-ROM in the pocket

[Brian Allan 1]

All too confusing!!

If it is too confusing for the pros to figure out, why in hell would the average person consider a Linux platform!? I'll stick with Window, thank you!

[conscience]

Re: All too confusing!!

Hardly! I previously used MS Windows from Windows 3 until Windows 7 and the backported telemetry attempt when I walked away from MS.

Despite the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt spread about Linux by various online reputation managers on here and elsewhere, I took the plunge and switched to Linux Mint. I set up a dual boot with an unpatched Windows 7 SP1 (MS lost my trust with updates), but in truth I cannot even remember the last time I booted to Windows so I suppose at some point I'll just recover the disk space. The best part is I won't miss Microsoft as I have found everything about Linux in my daily computing easier to use than Windows. I've found plenty of good quality, free software that lets me do everything I like to do and I'm enjoying my trouble-free computing a lot more than while I had Windows installed. Zero problems whatsoever, and plenty of online info and help if you have a question.

As a double bonus, I can still play all the Steam games I care about and the Linux games library is growing fast and newer games especially increasingly come with a Linux version now that Linux options are built into all the latest game engines that most game developers use. And, if I need to, I can even run the Windows version of Steam and my few Windows games (using WINE) straight from my Linux Desktop (which is as simple as running it on Windows directly).

Same goes for my family. They have no IT or tech background at all, they're aged about 5-66 years old and still they all switched to Linux Mint without incident and zero problems. Associated support calls have dropped to zero ever since because it 'just works' out of the box - there's just been nothing to 'fix'. As a bonus, old printers and various other hardware are now working again without any additional drivers (drivers that weren't available for Windows anymore forcing people to spend money unnecessarily).

Maybe you should try it before deciding it's confusing? As a general rule, if you can use Windows then you will already know how to use Linux when you first see it e.g. a familiar looking desktop, proper menu button to launch software, etc.

[bexley]

there is real value for us in windows being the most used OS

most of the malware is targeted at windows versions due in part at least, to them being so widely used.

This is fine by me but if Linux were suddenly the most widely used platform then a lot of malware authors would turn their attention to us.

Let windows take the flak, i´m happy to be the Linux underdog.

[PenGun]

Oh you poor fools. Lost in the wilderness of windose and systemd.

There is salvation at hand. Slackware64 14.2 is everything you need in an OS, with possible exception of games.

It's partly the curse you invoke when using unclean software that ails you. Not many know that both Sys V and systend are the artifacts of a power that do not wish you well. Of course windose does not even try to hide this fact.

BSD Init is the one true way.

I could go on, but I sense you would rather I did not. ;)

[asdf]

>Slackware64 14.2 is everything you need in an OS

Nothing with the Linux kernel is going to be everything you need in an OS. For majority of use cases yes but there is a lot of positive to be said about proprietary UNIX running on very limited and very heavily verified/tested redundant RAD hardware for production systems. Never seen an HP-UX kernel panic due to software. Can't say the same about Linux of course.

[cutterman]

SAMBA

I have yet to find an Ubuntu-based distro that makes communication on a mixed (OSX/Linux/Windows) network easy, let alone one that "just works". OSX handles CIFS/SMB seamlessly but apparently uses a Bonjour-type resolver. Mint 18.1 is a lovely distro, but has a partial implementation of Samba (Nemo-share) that doesn't even work (it's missing a lot of dependencies). Ubuntu needs Samba installed, but when you do, it still omits several vital bits that you have to go and get yourself.

I don't know of a single distro (haven't tried Fedora or SuSE) that makes getting a working CIFS/SMB network simple. Yet the Debian base does so many other things right. This is a MAJOR fault in all Ubuntu based distros, has been for years and has never been addressed. I see no reason why I should have to spend hours and hours farting around with smb.conf and LMHosts and whatnot to get a simple home network going.

B...y ridiculous!

Andrew

[bexley]

Re: SAMBA

Yeah, it used to work fine in previous versions but samba is totally fucked in Mint 18.1, even after you install it you have to manually set permissions on some config files.

It´s as if it was never tested, not even once.

Thankfully, there is a community that makes solving these problems as simple as googling it.

[David McCoy]

Would you like Windows or Linux as your OS, Why not both?

Since the advent of Vista, I have been offering the choice of OS on systems I build.

Occasionally I get asked to do a dual-boot system, and about 50% of the time I've had it back to wipe the windows partition, and, it must be said, 10 to 15% ask to have linux removed in favour of windows. Usually because they have bought an el-cheapo windows only printer, occasionally because their boss has insisted that their system be Windows, or we can't find a linux equivalent for a windows program that they do need, usually Quickbooks or MYOB.

The pricing of the systems reflect that I can download a copy of, usually, LinuxMint in about 15 minutes and burn it to a dvd and that the setup is far quicker than for Windows.

Windows is still leading the install rate at roughly 80%, because that's what people are used to.

[Robert Forsyth]

You can install many desktops

Reading the comments, it seems a lot of people seem to think you can only access one DE from your login

[IanMoore33]

Desktop Linux ?

Who runs desktops with Linux ... it's a MAC world now for professionals and Windows turd for the poorly educated . Linux has proven to be a poor choice for laptops and it hasn't gotten any better.

Ubuntu has always been a POS; Canonical support is almost non-exist .

[itzman]

Re: Desktop Linux ?

...written on a linux mint equipped laptop that installed and ran 'out of the box'

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora or die

All the other distros are dogshitte