Why Ubuntu (Still) Sucks - Part3: X11

You call this an article?

I also had a few xorg.conf issues a few years ago with Linux, true. However, I have never had a single issue with Ubuntu - it's called progress. I also use Zenwalk and no problems. So, I can choose between an operating system costing $400, plus more for virus protection, office software, photo-shop, adobe writer, say another $400 or one that is free and has not given me any configuration problems at all in the last 4 years.

Is this series of "Ubuntu Sucks..." articles a parody of ill-informed and rather dim-witted Linux-bashing. If so, it is brilliant satire.

Otherwise, you are ill-informed and dim-witted.

I'm looking forward to your sabre-sharp destruction of the myth of OpenOffice and the Gimp amongst others in your next section. No doubt you will say that OpenOffice is worse than Office97...

Man you are retard!

Ok I am getting tired reading your tirade against Ubuntu. Again, I'm not a fanboy of any OS. This is a slightly valid point though. It is very difficult if the display isn't configured automatically.

But it seems like your comments are highly biased against Ubuntu. Let me tell you about one of my "user-friendly" experiences with Windows XP.

I repartitioned & reformatted my hard drive, installed Windows XP fresh. It was my oversight to have forgotten about the Network Card drivers, I accept. But I had no network connectivity, can you believe that? A computer without a network connection, is as good as no computer at all!!

The network card is a humble Realtek RTL8139D. I misplaced the driver disk (a floppy). Not to worry, I can browse the internet with Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Wolvix in live environment! I fetched the drivers from the Realtek website. Tried installing the drivers, "Windows couldn't find a suitable driver for this hardware!" This couldn't be true, Windows can't fail at detecting & installing drivers! But it did.

To date I have downloaded 30 MB of various driver files from different sources, but Windows can't find the network drivers. Stupid Windows, I just clicked browse & showed it the folder than contains the driver file!! I spent 4 days with access to internet. That was it, I bought a new D-Link NIC with the drivers.

Device support always depends on the drivers. Hardware manufacturers On Windows, every hardware manufacturer writes the driver and provides it with the hardware. On Linux drivers are written by programmers who integrate into the kernel. Who's fault is it that your display card isn't supported by Ubuntu? Obviously the manufacturer who didn't bother supplying the driver for Linux.

So, while you have a valid point in saying that it's difficult to get display reconfigured if its broken. So was my experience with Windows XP & NIC. The only difference is, I am not pretending to be some tech specialist and writing stuff like "Why Windows Still Sucks - part 1, 2, 3..."

PS. This is the last post of your that I read. Thank me for my time & patience!!

What? You're still here? Could you please go away?

Biased articles: worth nothing.

And if you only try to learn 5 minutes of vi you can discover you can do things that with any other editor you cannot even dream. But you have to use your brain, and this - I suppose - is the tough part...

Last time I tried to boot into "safe mode" on my XP computer I got myself a surprise: I would get to the login-screen, maybe even manage to input my password and get to the desktop, and then the computer got a BSOD. If I did not log in I would also get a BOSD after a couple of moments. Normal boot worked just fine, but safe mode was dead and buried.

I tried to consult all kinds of forums and experts, but they all gave the same answer: Reinstall. But hey, at least the XP installation routine is graphical, so I can use my lovely mouse to click "yes" and "next" and "finish", rather than pressing old fashioned keys on a stupid keyboard. Who wants to use a CLI to fix a single sub-component of a system, when they can spend half a day reinstalling the entire system, drivers, applicatinos and data using multiple bright and shiny GUIs?

that's all bullshit. all the articles you wrote until now are a waste of time and will not change anybody's mind. i have been struggling with the windows errors for years - almost daily my friends called me to fix their windows problems. now, with linux, everything stabilized. the only thing that is hard is the difference between windows and linux. if you are too lazy to learn new things, then shut up ... i think that in the time that you lost by writing this articles would have been waaay much more useful if you did some community work :D. the only thing that you demonstrated is that you are incapable to see things differently. it's really visible that you are a windows troll. do you feel hurt? interesting ... you did the same thing to us ... linux users ...

someone please start a Why Windows (Still) Sucks - Part1:

Wow, these articles should be named "Why Randall Kennedy (Still)Sucks", because apparently he's too stupid to make Ubuntu, one of the easier linux distros, to work.

You're right, Xorg errors are a rite of passage for Ubuntu users. But rather than being Ubuntu's fault the finger should be pointed at the driver developers. When the VGA mode came out it was because someone decided to write a driver for it and convince video card manufacturers to support it, or at least use basic functionality in the boards.

Ubuntu Gutsy has a FailSafe Xorg mode that comes up when there's video issues. (Funny how you didn't mention that. Do you know it exists? Have you tried using it?) It's not perfect, and when I hit it with my older Nvidia card I couldn't get to the desktop (perhaps because of the card's age), but many are using it with excellent results and are able to get to the desktop to fix their video issues via a GUI.

Can you FUBAR your video settings in Ubuntu Gutsy's GUI? Of course you can. The only reason you may not be able to do it in Vista is because Windows has been getting video driver development BY THE VIDEO CARD MANUFACTURERS for so much longer. But all it takes is one careless user to make Xorg cry. Is that user's carelessness Ubuntu's fault? I think not. While an OS is only as good as its developers the user experience is only as good as the user.

I look forward to seeing what you have to say about apps in Ubuntu. I know there are gaps. I run Dreamweaver and Fireworks with Wine because I have yet to find comparable apps native in Linux (of any flavor). But based on the first three articles in this series I hope your next article is written with more real research than the first three have gotten. And with a lot less bias, because so far you come across as a shill, nothing more, nothing less. I'm not going to engage in the flaming that others have (which makes the rest of us Ubuntu users look like twelve year olds), but I will call a spade a spade.

Please prove to us that you're not being paid by Microsoft to lessen the threat of Ubuntu. Please show us you can be unbiased and that you actually oput some time in to researching before you write, including spending enough time with an OS you're not familiar with to find out what it can really do.

When Ubuntu Dapper was released, I screwed up my video drivers trying to get Compiz/XGL running. I was still able to surf the web with Lynx to read help forums, chat with other Ubuntu users using IRC, and even play NetHack when I needed a break from troubleshooting. None of those apps were installed before I screwed up, I was able to install them easily from the shell (apt-get), and run them all simultaneously. Within an hour or two, I got the GUI back and Compiz in all its glory. An Ubuntu system without a GUI is still a USABLE system, that is a beautiful thing you are apparently unable to appreciate. An XP system without a GUI is a paperweight.

No "why Windows sucks" article is required - the people who visit this site know by daily experience. It would be like writing a series of articles on why air is important.

Randall, you have my sympathy. The rest of you Linux fanbois, you are so right and so wrong, and most of you are the second-biggest problem with Linux.

First, Randall, you point out correctly that it is not hard to mangle your X settings and get an unreadable screen. Fr an example of this in Windows, change your LCD monitor to something default, choose a refresh rate of 85 or 90 Hz, and Apply. Thankfully Windows gives you a 15 second second chance. Gnome? KDE? nada. You be stuck.

Fixing it by going to a terminal screen and editing the xorg.conf is the best way, but man that's some enigmatic stuff in there.

And then, Randall, you have the temerity to diss vi. Well, I do to. It's beyond unlike anything else out there. I would rather use ed. Actually, on every Linux box I build, one of the first things I do is install Joe. It's Wordstar-like, and it works, and it has, *gasp*, help. yes, actual readable help. A rarity in most Linux utilities. forgive me, but I'm not a programmer, and the man pages are not helpful. Truly, I should do the community the ultimate favor and write alternative man pages. In Plain English. Yes, you can bet they would seem to be in the Windows style of writing. Get over it.

But, Randall, you have exposed the smelly underside of Linux. The helpful advice from the Linux community. I share my recent experiences:

When my Fedora Core 3 box failed in production, I found out that despite my best efforts, software Raid 1 had failed to write to the slave drive. I went to some forums asking for advice. Most of the advice I received was a variation of these themes:

- If you don't know what you're doing, go back to Windows (note, I have never run my Internet services on Windows. Nothing to go 'back' to.)

- First, you should read the man pages, dum&%^.

- You need to ask a coherent question.

- Try Reinstalling from scratch. (oh, this is a server that is dead. Yes, I am reinstalling. I was asking for advice on how to avoid the problem on the reinstall)

- Update to the current version of Fedora, you dumb&#$. (Yes, the current version then was Core 4. I didn't upgrade on advice from my best friend who found out the update process caused more problems than it solved.)

- Try running {insert your current favorite distro here}, cause {insert everyone else's favorite distro here} sucks.

With advice like that, who needs enemies?

Another Linux box I just started up, this one at home. Fairly simple hardware. I loaded Fedora Core 6 on it. Got intermittant network errors, and found that it would intermittantly simply NOT access some IP addresses. Like the fedoraforum, and most update sites. Oh, and it installed IPV6 despite my specifically NOT including it on install. I asked for some help. Responses included:

- Must be your DNS. (I'm posting on the machine via Firefox. DNS works fine for this address, why not another one? Oh, and I can't even ping those addresses via IP. Not DNS)

- Must be your ISP's DNS. (See above. Plus, my Windows machine next to it will happily resolve and access those sites, by IP and URL.)

- Must be your hardware. (I install a 3C905B card. No change. A Linksys 10/100 card, the one I used for the LTS project. No change.)

- Must be your install. (FIFTH install, THIRD after wiping the drive.)

- You should read the forums and see how other people solved this. Don't waste our time. (Other forums have a few reports of this. No resolutions back in June.)

- You should read the man pages, dumb$%&. (OK, you read the man pages on 'fails to route'.)

- and countless other rehashes of the DNS/ISP/router advice. Ultimately, the recommendation was to change my motherboard, NIC, router, and ISP. I don't think so. No response from anyone that seemed 'official' in the Fedora community. Oh, and the IPV6 issue? Ever try to turn off IPV6 in FC6? If so, you know what I'm talking about.

I resolved the problem by installing Fiesty. NO PROBLEMS. For me, this rules out DNS, hardware, ISP, router, and everything recommended. But I want/need to run Fedora on this box. I'm trying FC7 this weekend, mostly because this thread has gotten me fired up again to go do battle with Linux.

I've used linux since the 0.9x series kernels, and since Slackware was just called Slackware. I'm not an expert 'cause I have to focus on Windows to earn a living. But Linux help has not improved since then. It's still mostly UNhelpful advice from the UNfriendly Linux community.

Randall, you are so right that most Linux diehards hate you. Just keep coming back. One day, there will be a distro that will appease you. Real Soon Now.

- rick

These 'articles' are really embarassing...

'indecipherable "vi"'

Lets see, use lower case i (stands for insert)

Move cusor arrow keys to move the cursor where you want to make a change,

Make a change.

Use the Escape key to get out of insert.

:w to write and :q to quit.

Yup, really indecipherable.

Cool your head and listen. Unless your running Linux on a computer that is made for Linux, there is no guarantee that Linux is going to work "out of the box." It is like mixing parts together from different cars without first seeing what fits with what. Who knows what kind of results you are going to get. Plus, you never mentioned what graphics card you are using. Some cards do not except open source drivers (who knows why). Get a computer made, or at least fully compatible, with Linux, spend some time with it, and write an article that doesn't sound like a ten year old complaining about a broken toy because he did not read the manual. Oh, and I think curmudgeon fits you perfectly.

Please! Ubuntu should stick to making dairy products and leave the business of bad operating systems to Microsoft.

Why dont you get Steve Balmer's dick out of your mouth and learn how to use a computer. Oh yeah, use perl;

I believe you have been miss-informed.

Ubuntu never claimed to be idiot-proof operating system. Principles of Ubuntu mean humanity to others, which is quite different from "idiot can buy and use this software".

And yes, you should learn 'ways of the cryptic linux command line', then you might understand what is MS aiming for with it's still unrealised Powershell.

You are judging Ubuntu by Microsoft standards, and that is wrong. It's goals are different.

In linux there are no 'idiots-can-do-it' 'click-and-use' cycle.Unlike windows, linux never tried to hide technicalities for "user well-being". Can you tweak windows refresh frequencies like in linux? Do you have well documented configuration files in windows? Rather than being idiotproof linux encourages 'learn-understand-use' cycle, which in the end does not only gives us better operating system, but also better users.

That is what software freedom is about.

So far your lousy attempt at journalism has been the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen (and I've seen LOTS of crap in my day). This problem is the only one so far that has any real basis at all, and even then it's far more than excessively biased.

Basically, if you don't want to learn how to properly leverage the power of Linux, shut up and go away. The Linux community doesn't want you. You remind me of a child who bashes math because they can't do it. The funny thing is, that it's true. You bash Linux because you "can't do it."

If you're serious about Linux, do your self a favor: Learn the command line. Despite popular belief, it's not hard. Also, Linux isn't and shouldn't be like Windows; get over it. Linux is more stable, easier to use, and far more productive because it's NOT like Windows. There is a certain mentality about Linux that make it much easier to use once you figure out that mentality. It takes LOTS of time to really get used to Linux, just as it took LOTS of time for you to come to the comfort level you have in Windows. Again, if you're not serious enough to really sit down and learn Linux, shut up and go away; we don't want you.

D. Brown

Yeah, vi is indecipherable. Like much in Linux AND Windows.

How do you move a block of text in vi? How do you replace text, say replace '/ujr/mail' with '/usr/mail'?

I'm not going to go any further down this road. It ain't simple. Even edlin had its moments. I really don't use an editor often enough to become a student of it. If I did, it WOULD be vi. But I prefer that my tools serve me, not that I serve my tools.

Again, you give a good 10-second vi primer. How do I open another file? What is the help command? After the first 10 seconds, vi isn't worth the effort for me. It's not vi, it's me.

And you know what that means...

Randall, I feel for ya.

My biggest problem with this whole line of articles is that it's nothing more than childish bashing of something Randall clearly doesn't like. I use Windows for my job, and I use it at home. I don't use Linux on a regular basis, although I have used it for certain applications.

However, this article doesn't provide any useful information for anyone, except to prove that Randall is so biased against Linux and for Windows that his opinion is rendered worthless.

Randall, you are more than a curmudgeon. You're a close-minded Windows pimp, who is unable to grasp reality. Yes, Windows is great for the unwashed masses who need to be asked "Are you sure?" every time they touch something, and who don't mind having to constantly reboot. But for those of us who actually do work for a living (as opposed to people who just get to bitch about stuff they don't like), Windows is a lead-painted, overpriced, bloated toy.

Since you clearly have exactly zero journalistic integrity, I choose to stop reading this drivel.

Jeesh, are you just trying to start a flamewar? First off let me state that I am primarily a Windows user (just recently got a laptop at home with Vista Home Premium and I'm happy with it). I write programs in VB6 and VB.Net. I've tried Ubuntu and other distributions of Linux a few times and haven't been overly impressed by them (though I will say that Ubuntu by far was the easiest one to get up and running). That being said I don't think I've ever read a set of articles so one-sided and arrogant as the ones that you've written. As others have asked, is anyone at InfoWorld reviewing this stuff before it gets posted. I mean, the titles alone are nothing but flame-bait. Granted, I think there's more than a few people here that will post inflamatory messages at the mere hint of a possible suggestion that Windows or Microsoft actually does anything right. But, dude, if you want a flamewar, take it to a newsgroup. Its where this drivel belongs.

Perhaps we need to agree to disagree. While I find some points more and less valid than others, what I take umbrage with is the tone these articles are written in. I think that all users of any Linux distro understand that Linux is still (relatively) hard. A casual user can't just pick it up and run with it. Ubuntu has done a great job trying to bridge this gap. Hopefully this will continue, and Linux will develop to the point where it can compete on the average user's desktop with Windows and Macs. In the meantime, that isn't the case.

And the points about the video card manufacturers not releasing driver info that I saw mentioned a couple of times are extremely valid. Your point, while expressed in a way that wasn't very clear, is valid. However, as previously expressed, this is due to the manufacturers not playing nice, and is not the fault of Ubuntu or any other Linux distro. If anything, those of us who use Linux owe the developers who have in their own time written work-around drivers a huge thanks.

Nothing to see here... move along...

Our (very) small business has been trying hard to use Ubuntu for about a year on several older Dell Inspirons but we've been held back by headaches which mainly come from X config problems, just like the author describes.

If your system's graphics card is immediately compatible with Ubuntu & Compiz, then it's easy to think Ubuntu is BEST, but if it's not (like the nVidia GeForce4 Go & GeForce440 Go in our Dell Inspiron 8000 & 8200), then it's a whole different story. We recently had to reinstall a freshly built up and customize system after we tried to activate Compiz b/c we couldn't trouble-shoot the x config this time. Call us idiots if you like, but it stalled our plans for an exclusively Linux office.

It is very unfortunate that a "simple" graphics card should prevent people and businesses from adopting Ubuntu. The sooner Ubuntu supporters realize and accept this, the sooner it will be given the high-priority issue status it deserves.

I regret that, for us, this article is dead-on. We lack a super technical admin, but we shouldn't need one for this sort of issue.

lol. how can you take a guy, reviewing linux, seriously when they state that VI is "indecipherable".

might as well let 13 year-olds, without any driving experience, decide who gets the J.D. Power and Associates award for car of the year.

I've got one word for you..

vimtutor

you'd love it if you would only take the time to learn it. There's nothing more percise than VI...

Never had that problem myself, always understood what resolution was supported, and what was not, hell it tells you right in your monitor's handbook, sometimes even written on the back of the monitor. Or how about the video card hand book that tells you what resolutions are supported and what are not.

Forget about those, lets take this card to the limit and see how many consecutive lines we can make on the screen so we can say how crappy the software is even though it was our fault.

I got something for your, it's called common sense, use it...... Oh by the way when you booting up there is a (RECOVERY MODE) that puts you back to defaults, don't guess you saw that?

a fair amount of you guys are idiots. first, it has nothing to do with being able to use a computer. it's called being able to deliver a product that works and doesn't require me to join the kernel hackers to get a stupid video card working. some of you just sound like dumb high school idiots who think you're savy because you can click around a lot, or have a freaking back-background-green-foreground terminal open to look like you're doing some mighty m34n hax0ring. talk about drinking the koolaid. what we should be looking at is the reasons why linux falls short in areas such as video. so instead of being a bunch of tools (esp. the "I hate M$" fanboy group -- god, what is wrong with you??), admit "yes, linux is kind of shitty in some areas. why is that?"

that being said, video support under linux blows for a few reasons (and those of you who keep insisting that "*I've* never had a problem, therefore it's awesome" should try to remember that limiting oneself to old video cards that have been supported since kernel 2.0.36 is a pretty crappy cop-out, and a pretty crappy reason, to think linux video support is spectacular). the first, a number of companies do not release full specs of their chipsets to the public so that driver writers can actually have something to work with. companies also often do not want to invest time and money into developing or aiding developers in developing drivers for a single digit percentage market share of computer users. second, video has not been a high enough priority in the linux developer community. more resources are spent elsewhere (how many people actually work on linux video related software, versus say video card companies). Now that a broader end user base is forming, perhaps it'll force distributions to focus on aspects that are more apparent. and regarding resources, unless a company actually distributes the work (and is paying your salary), things will not get done (so quickly). open source doesn't always get what needs to be done "done". the stuff that gets done is often what people want to work on (hopefully that's a good enough antidote for the blind believers among you).

i can say from experience that *default* support for video in my case has dropped in quality since feisty. and i can say that part of ubuntu's failure is its unwillingness to use (by default) free but closed software for some stupid ideological reasons (what the hell is that? are you people full of retard granola?). how many people using linux give a shit if it's closed or not?! (case in point: unrar utility). what people care about is that it's stable, it works, and it's free. take stallman's crusty weiner out of your mouths for a moment and stop to think how impractical that 'purist' position is.

(and before you decide to mouth off, let me just add that i switched to ubuntu after using slackware for several years).

so, fuck the hype and acknowledge the good and the suck as necessary.

Randall there is this way "nifty" command to auto-configure your video settings perhaps you've heard of it? It is called xorgconf or if you don't want to auto-configure you can always use xorgsetup to specify settings manually. I've tried Kubuntu and I didn't think much of it. I like Slackware better since the day I tried it. The laptop I currently use has XP pro and I use Slackware on it via the vmware-like qemu and it runs perfectly.

Still better than Windows blue screen of death, or did they change it to some weird green color in Vista?
At least here you have a fully function operating system running with a neat command line interface. Simple commands that you can easily lookup from the internet and you're back on, no need for an hour and a half of reinstallation and 2 years to recover your lost files!

No wonder you hate Linux so much, you're too stupid to even use Vi?

Also, if you RTFM you might not break your system trying to mess around with the xorg.conf file.