Linux Questions

fermi

A lot of that is why I tend to use KDE no matter what distribution. Not saying that is perfect, but it at least gives you a much greater ability to tweak settings of that sort to what you want, rather than what a developer thinks is the best default.

Modern Gnome, Unity etc are very poor if you don't want to work in the way their developers think are best.

Fightsback

Stoke wrote: »

It's not just hardware mate, trust me. Ubuntu and Fedora (at least), both have what I call 'features for the sake of features'. Things that people have clearly coined up while sitting in their bedroom thinking "what feature can i do next, oh I'll do X,Y,Z". Features that provide absolutely no benefit to 99.8% of the population and are either annoying or a hindrance in reality. A great example, the sticky edges on Ubuntu when using a dual monitor. Which bright spark came up with that idea. It means you have to push your mouse really hard to switch monitors, like you're trying to break through a virtual glass door.

!!!! idea, poorly implemented.

There are lot's of alternative DE's to Unity (bloody awful IMO too) so you can change it. Plenty of things in Windows (or other OS's) I have no use for either or were poorly implemented. The amount of shovelware on some android devices that require root to shift it is staggering.

Fightsback

fermi wrote: »

A lot of that is why I tend to use KDE no matter what distribution. Not saying that is perfect, but it at least gives you a much greater ability to tweak settings of that sort to what you want, rather than what a developer thinks is the best default..

KDE is my favourite DE and the major reason I use Linux Desktop, the new KDE 5 is looking excellent.

fermi

Fightsback wrote: »

KDE is my favourite DE and the major reason I use Linux Desktop, the new KDE 5 is looking excellent.

It's certainly getting there, but a few things holding me back. They will probably be sorted in 6 months or so.

One of the things about Linux is that KDE4 wasn't available by default on this distro when I last wanted to do an upgrade of this PC, so I just grabbed the source, went ahead and built it myself. :cool:

Stoke

Fightsback wrote: »

There are lot's of alternative DE's to Unity (bloody awful IMO too) so you can change it. Plenty of things in Windows (or other OS's) I have no use for either or were poorly implemented. The amount of shovelware on some android devices that require root to shift it is staggering.

You're right. I put on Gnome because Unity is so !!!!.

Now I feel like I'm using a cross between Windows 95 and Windows XP. Staggering how outdated Gnome is. There's other alternatives which 'just work'..... like LXDE... oh wait, no that doesn't work at all. That's a sack of !!!! as well. Buggy beyond rational belief.

Fedora 17 was horrific. Officially the worst operating system I've ever used and I've used Windows ME. Truly an awful creation. I hear the newer versions are much better, but due to restrictions by the customer, I had to use Fedora 17.

Windows 7 is arguably the best operating system ever made. It blows the competition out of the water, including it's successor. Windows 10 will have to live up to high expectations.

As for Android, you cannot compare mate. Shovelware is added by OEM's, not Google and the fact it's usually added as System Apps is an anti-feature.

Edit:
I haven't tried KDE for years. I remember using Kubuntu a long time ago.

Fightsback

fermi wrote: »

It's certainly getting there, but a few things holding me back. They will probably be sorted in 6 months or so.

One of the things about Linux is that KDE4 wasn't available by default on this distro when I last wanted to do an upgrade of this PC, so I just grabbed the source, went ahead and built it myself. :cool:

Switch to Suse

Plus you have the excellent suse studio too.:cool:

https://susestudio.com/

Agreed KDE5 not for primetime yet, it's running on a tumbleweed VM for testing purposes. Waiting for Nvidia to release wayland support in their binary blob, not far off now perhaps 3-6 months.

fermi

It was mostly laziness and inertia that stopped me doing something like that. Plus had a lot of scientific software that is always a fiddle to get working with that much of a fresh install.

This time......

onomatopoeia99

My linux systems are all debian based (because apt), and all accessed via ssh as I don't install x11 on them. Gnome, Unity, KDE are not part of my world.

For a desktop and development OS I use Windows 7.

esuhl

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Why does everything I try to do on Linux involve several google searches and copying of some pretty arcane lines into files hidden 20 levels down in the file system to even stand a chance of working?

Either you don't know enough about Linux (sorry! :-P), or you're using a distro that doesn't suit you. I currently use Arch Linux, and it's very rare I have to google anything -- everything's explained in the wiki.

I found myself in your situation when I tried using Ubuntu. There was no comprehensive wiki, the forums were full of people who also didn't know what they were doing, and the distro was so bloated it's hard to get your head round it. What really drove me crazy was that there seemed to be so many different ways to do anything -- and trying one method would often overwrite the text files undoing everything you'd tried thus far. At least Arch uses the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy.

esuhl

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Do I need something like WINE to make a 3 mobile broadband dongle connect with Linux, and are there any distros apart from Ubuntu where it'll work 'out of the box'?

I don't know about it working "out of the box", but I'd try to avoid using WINE for... well... everything if you can help it! It rarely works well for me.

There's some general information on the Arch Linux wiki, which might help you identify what packages you might need and the configuration options. (N.B. netctl has been deprecated in favour of iproute2.)

General USB 3G modem info:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_3G_Modem

Example of Huawei E1550 3G modem setup:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Huawei_E1550_3G_modem