I'd like to use Linux but...

i just hope the kid in nepal or god knows where has better luck than i do.

all you ubuntu guys should just use Debian. dist-upgrade once every three years, if that. your troubles are over.

I don't understand why you're telling people to use debian over Ubuntu. The release schedule is too slow!

So CentOS buddies how is everything going? I'm going to be using this very soon.

I'm been using it for little over a year as a server-only OS and the best thing I can say about it is that it's been stoically reliable.

xp, that is why I'm telling them to use Debian over Ubuntu.

Ubuntu debs are easier to find than Debian debs.

apt-get?

Now, I'm sure this isn't strictly a CentOS thing, but it is amazing how a simple everyday thing like connecting a USB wireless network adapter and making it work can be so easy in Windows and yet such a pain in the ass on Linux.

Yeah, all too often I tend to just expect Linux to work on whatever hardware we have lying around. I make the mistake of thinking that because the operating system is cheap the hardware can be cheap. In future—read, when I have the cash—I will figure out which hardware Linux likes BEFORE I start installing things.

^^

moi aussi.

it seems the typical linux hardware set up that works best is a machine that's actually a year or two older than the latest greatest stuff that doesn't have drivers, etc yet. wait for others to work out the hardware issues, etc. sb live is mostly phasing out in windows builds but it's one of the most supported audio options for example.

used to be fuckin difficult. serial mice and AT keyboards. flickery monitors with no opengl. archaic ethernet. sound?

each time i try a totally new distro i'm amazed at how much easier it keeps getting.

sounds like ubuntu should maybe beta a bit longer though.
m.

caek, I'm talking about apps that build Ubuntu-specific debs. There are loads more of these than Debian-specific ones.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2045/2453748606_a685097ce3_o.png

lovely package of debs she's got there

i'd decompress those tar balls etc etc

Try as you might, you just can't make "tar ball" sound sexy. Sheeeit, you can't even make "tape archive" sound sexy, much less tar.

back in the day a friend told her boyfriend that she'd like to gunzip his package, tar him up, and pipe him to more. that shot my processor usage up. of course, like 10 years ago, any reasonably attractive woman talking unix...

touch -d

amarok

Gave it a go, and no thanks. I can't speak for its life-enhancing powers if you're running kde, but it does not play nice with gnome. It met my burden of proof for that allegation with great speed and remarkable clumsiness. Crashes pretty much every time you open it, sucks huge processor power when you do something way out of line like pause a track... just doesn't work. Feels a lot like running iTunes on Windows 98. (Looks nice, though.)

Nah, I think I have to stick with rhythmbox for right now. It's lightweight and fast and even when it does crash (and of course it does!) it does so neatly and recovers immediately. Amarok does its level best to force me to cold reboot. Bad times.

Tell me more about gtkpod. I've been meaning to play with that, just for the helluvit, but I kinda seriously doubt it's going to let me sync and update and control my iPod as well as iTunes. I'd be extra charmed if it could prove me wrong.

amarok is a KDE-based app, I believe, so if you are using it on Gnome (and not using any other KDE apps), you will have to load up a lot of libraries and so on purely to service it.

I use audacious - it's not *that* lightweight, but it doesn't have any noticeable effect on the system.

you will have to load up a lot of libraries and so on purely to service it

that woud explain it. I don't think I run any other kde apps. Well, that plus not-totally-straightforward places that I want my library kept.

I installed Hardy Heron last night on my laptop and am really impressed with the overall desktop integration. Of course, coming from a couple of years of wearing the Gentoo hair shirt (I regret nothing) I'm easy to impress. Gnome is seems quick enough that I don't think I'll bother installing XFCE.

My only problem right now is that the screen brightness starts at it's lowest setting when it's booting up. The brightness hot keys work, but only during the BIOS load and Gnome session. So if I'm not quick I have to deal with an incredibly dark and unreadable gdm screen. I don't understand why the screen brightness settings aren't saved.

Power management?

I kinda seriously doubt it's going to let me sync and update and control my iPod as well as iTunes. I'd be extra charmed if it could prove me wrong.

BETTER.

- Can copy from your ipod as well as to it
- Lets you manually adjust play counts (if that's your thing)
- Simply never ever makes a mistake
- About 500 things that I can't think of right now

I'm a Gentoo fan myself. My only gripe with it is: sometimes package upgrades can be painful. Which isn't always Gentoo's fault, but their relatively slow installation speed can make recovery slow. I always back up packages before upgrading them now, so I can do a quick revert if needed. If a library has changed its ABI between releases, and Gentoo's maintainers haven't provided for that, you will suddenly find that half the things on your system need reinstallation.

I was bitten at work the other day when upgrading a Samba server from 3.0.14 to 3.0.18 - a minor change, you'd think. Nope. There's a change to a Samba default that randomly prevents *some* Windows XP clients from connecting, unless you delete all their mapped drives and remap them!

xp Oh, gtkpod doesn't aggregate podcasts. IcePodder is great but there's no Hardy build yet.

I always back up packages before upgrading them now, so I can do a quick revert if needed

Game changer.

amarok
> but it does not play nice with gnome

i use it with gnome all the time. fluxbox even. yes, kde libraries are needed but do people really limit themselves to only gnome apps or only kde apps?

> just doesn't work.

works for me 8) (that said, am using version that shipped with edgy, which might be a lot different. hopefully they've fixed the bug that corrupts flacs when you retag them...)

actually i use xmms most of the time (but that has lost flac support after recent update).

audacious isn't available for (my) ubuntu afaict. beep doesn't play files from the command line (you have to pick them using file chooser) and has a tendency to keep the file info window open and locked to top left of screen.

all good fun.

(isn't lack of (recent) ipod support due to apple changing their keys? or have they been cracked?)

Cracked. Touch isn't in libgpod yet though.

Amarok has always worked okay for me, it's just a bit feaure-rich in areas I don't need and feature-poor in areas that I do.

Sooo temped to work with kde4-desktop for a while btw.

BETTER.

- Can copy from your ipod as well as to it

Of course there's no way I can't applaud people doing whatever they damn well feel with their digital files, but I know how I am, and my music collection would be scattered across nine computers inside of a week if I had that option.

- Lets you manually adjust play counts (if that's your thing)

To what end? (Not trying to sound curt, I'm really asking.)

- Simply never ever makes a mistake

Well, neither does my iPod running Apple OS... now that they've replaced the whole thing twice. At any rate, it was never a software issue. I don't think. Oh, what the hell do I know.

I toyed with the idea of moving my whole library to Linux, haxoring the iPod and giving it argyle wallpaper or something "creative," but after a couple good Linux crashes it occurred to me -- this is why I bought a Mac. I really like the way iTunes keeps my music organized and centralized and makes it easy to sort and tag (anyway I'm good n' used to it), and since a lot of these poor little files are irreplaceable or near enough, I'm practically married to Time Machine.

*ha -- I almost called it Flyback, lol Linux Time Machine gimmick -- say, what do some of you other linuxy ppl use to back things up in a scheduled, hands-free kinda way? I need just your basic backup and restore setup, sqlite database, you know the drill. Flyback has all of that except for one maddening thing -- I still can't get the bugger to backup automatically. It just won't do it. The nice boys on google code have stopped responding to bug reports about it altogether, just muttering "subversion... fixd already" and moving on. But it's not fixed! Oh, anyway.

Fuck Linux and fuck RHEL in partic. Shitty-ass unstable crap. When the sales rep calls me back, I'm gonna let him know just how lousy his goddamned product is.

- Can copy from your ipod as well as to it

Of course there's no way I can't applaud people doing whatever they damn well feel with their digital files, but I know how I am, and my music collection would be scattered across nine computers inside of a week if I had that option.

Most of our CDs and mp3 backups are in boxes under the stairs, so it's loads easier to just pull an album off the ipod if 'er indoors wants a copy.

- Lets you manually adjust play counts (if that's your thing)

To what end? (Not trying to sound curt, I'm really asking.)

Meh, I dunno. Some people like the tally.

- Simply never ever makes a mistake

Well, neither does my iPod running Apple OS

Nice option if you have OS X. As Linux options go, gtkpod is a very stable and comprehensive one.

Backups? Haha, nope. I do /home occasionally. Everything important is constantly being emailed and copied to USB sticks anyway.

Fuck Linux and fuck RHEL in partic. Shitty-ass unstable crap. When the sales rep calls me back, I'm gonna let him know just how lousy his goddamned product is.

-- libcrypt, Friday, 2 May 2008 05:47 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Please please please tell us what happened.

While I was typing all that I BURNED THE FRYING PAN.

Well, for some reason, JBoss clustering using JGroups UDP multicasting semi-reliably fails on RHEL 4 + 5. I say semi-reliably because I've gotten it to work twice on RHEL 4, but I can't repeat that same success even on the same machines with which I first obtained it. The problem isn't necessarily the OS: I have no problems clustering on Solaris 10, and it's not necessarily Linux either: Clustering works just fine on some random Debian image I found on vmware.com. Most annoying to me is the fact that it worked ok twice and failed on approximately 20 other instances.

So instead of switching to a better OS (hello, Solaris?), I have to obtain two JBoss "licenses" (~ $5K/per) JUST to solve this issue, since RHEL 4 is our "standard platform".

java is the cobol of our age

^^^ challenging opinion

I figure this problem has something to do with some idiot security "feature" in RHEL that I can't be arsed to learn about. So some Linux guy will eventually come along and say, "oh, that's easy to fix" and blah blah blah, but the problem is that Linux is perpetually suffering from this kinda bullshit. There's always some asinine issue that wouldn't have cropped up in the presence of reasonable QA.

you man like debian?

I used another Linux to test so that I could narrow the scope of the issue.

You are a terribly ineffective troll, Jon.

Debian doesn't have good QA either, FYI.

just a guess, but maybe try dropping the iptables and/or turning off SElinux to get it working. i don't know what rhel defaults are, but it might be worth a check. semi-reliably seems weird.

No entries in iptables. How do you turn off SELinux?

reboot in default kernel

You are a terribly ineffective troll, Jon.

-- libcrypt, Friday, May 2, 2008 2:42 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

More effective than managing packages with rpm

reboot in default kernel

Already went that route too, thinking that the xen stuff was fucking up. Only one bootable kernel, tho, and I'm not about to get into building another.

It wouldn't be bad to have JBoss support, tho, since you get a free license for JON.

check /etc/selinux/config

can change it to SELINUX=permissive in the above file, or i think just run 'setenforce 0'

So instead of switching to a better OS (hello, Solaris?), I have to obtain two JBoss "licenses" (~ $5K/per) JUST to solve this issue, since RHEL 4 is our "standard platform".

-- libcrypt, Saturday, 3 May 2008 04:13 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

lol tight-arse penny-pinching management

(mind, getting decent support from sun in 2008 is like pushing diarrhoea uphill)

beyond Sisyphean imagery

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/funny-pictures-sisyphus-cat-watermelon-water.jpg