Why I’ll never use Linux for my main desktop
This might sound a little harsh coming from a guy who’s worked for a Linux company for over six years, but things never seem to get easier. Oh sure, the stuff that was hard to deal with last time is easier, but the new features and the stuff you want to check out this time are just as hard as the old crap was last time.
For instance, there’s all this talk about the 3D Desktop stuff in Mandriva. Well, I like eye candy so I want to check it out. I don’t have a sloucher of a machine either so I know for sure it’ll be able to take whatever can be thrown at it. It’s an HP Media Centrt PC m7470n which is essentially an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz), 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon Xpress 200, 300GB SATA drive, and all the other media/TV tuner crap that came with it (it was a powerful machine for a really smoking good price). At any rate, it should be able to handle turning my desktop into a funky cube or whatever the 3d desktop is supposed to do.
Well apparently my system is unsupported. So I spent about 2 hours tonight dicking around, installing the ATI dkms stuff, then realizing I needed the ati rpm, then I had installed the ati-kernel rpm which conflicted with the dkms so I removed the ati-kernel rpm and it still wouldn’t work so “dkms status” was telling me nothing so I removed and reinstalled the ati-dkms rpm and in between all of these things I was rebooting just to ensure that stuff would work properly. Well half the time it wasn’t loading the fglrx module in the kernel, then I had to configure with XFdrake, and it wonked my xorg.conf a bit, then things looked better but glxgears was still only giving me 180FPS which I’m pretty sure is bad, and I’m perusing the Mandriva cooker twiki and the output from glxinfo and finally realize that for some bizarre reason direct rendering is not enabled.
So I look in my Xorg.log files and lo and behold I see:
(WW) fglrx(0): *********************************************** (WW) fglrx(0): * DRI initialization failed! * (WW) fglrx(0): * (maybe driver kernel module missing or bad) * (WW) fglrx(0): * 2D acceleraton available (MMIO) * (WW) fglrx(0): * no 3D acceleration available * (WW) fglrx(0): ********************************************* * ... (II) fglrx(0): Acceleration enabled (II) fglrx(0): Direct rendering disabled
Well WTF?!? AAAARGGGHH!
Are you shitting me? I’ve spent two hours getting the damn ATI kernel module installed, lsmod most definitely tells me that fglrx is loaded and I get this? Suffice it say I gave up. But I’m a stubborn guy so I’ll qualify that with a “for now”.
At any rate I’m less than impressed. Well, with this. Mandriva 2007 seems pretty nice so far (well, I installed RC2 and synced up with cooker right after the install). The 3d desktop is of less importance to me than getting vmware server working on it, but it would have been nice to play with since this is one of the premier features. Sadly, I need a lot more hand-holding than I’m getting.
This kind of thing is precisely why, for me, Linux belongs on the server. Now if those kernel-developing idiots would get there act together and give us a 2.6 kernel that was a) stable and b) supported for more than a week, then I’d really be pleased. I don’t think the problem with Linux on the desktop is Linux… Linux, and the associated bits and pieces make a fine desktop. It works really really well. The problem is how the desktop compares with other desktops. If you just need a functional, no eye-candy, all business desktop… look no further than any Linux distro with an X server. If you want something fun and fancy prepare to either obtain that with wall paper and skins/themes or a few hours of cussing out your machine. Frankly, I don’t have the time to waste on something on that should just plain work.
Yes, I’m ranting… =) It pisses me off that I can’t get that cuby thing on my spanky machine in a reasonable amount of time (I’d be more than happy to invest half an hour, but upwards of 2hrs? Come on!).
Vincent Danen
Speaking of vmware-server, the 64bit Mandriva 2007 doesn’t provide all the packages required for it to run. You will need to download libxtst6 from the i586 repository and install it (it doesn’t require any other dependencies that shouldn’t already be installed so you should be able to just download the one package and urpmi it).
Sep 25, 2006 @ 22:28:58AdamW
Blame ATI. Their proprietary driver sucks, always has sucked and seemingly always will suck. Since it’s proprietary there’s only SO much you can do with packaging to paper over the cracks.
It works absolutely flawlessly on my system, with an ATI chip that uses, guess what – the *free* ATI driver. Run drak3d, pick AIGLX, restart X, works.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 02:14:13SS
man, you’re lame!
.
1. mandriva is not a very good and stable distro. try same in SUSE and you’ll se what i mean.
2. it is a 10 year old problem about ATI drivers. ATI is hardware maker, but not software developer. they just cant develop normal kernel module. so the problem not in linux – problem in ATI. try NVIDIA. have 800 MHz CPU, 256RAM and GeForce 2 GTS with NVIDIA drivers installed, and XGL working perfectly – not even lags. only problem – no rendered in xine
so, just try to look wider! dont say that something sux just because you cant make it work.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 02:51:20guest
eh? how can you claim to have used linux for 6 years(or any computer for that matter) and not realise that you need video drivers for 3d acceleration?
Sep 26, 2006 @ 03:05:15I’m sorry but if you use mandriva you get whats comming to you:) xgl was designed for suse.
wobo
Vincent, I may take into account that *ranting* is always blabbering away without any real point. Still ia have something to reply:
1. Picking an ATI card with all the known issues of ATI and their Linux drivers for a rant against Linux desktops is like picking the most worn out and low-down car modell for a rant against cars on the street. Do the same with a normally supported product like any NVIDIA card.
And who wants these wobbling windows and that cube anyway? It denies me 4 of my usual 8 virtual desktops, it makes me wait after every menu selection until it stops wobbling, etc. This new technology may show some applications some day which may increase productivity, but for now the 3D desktop is just a toy of very questionable benefit (to say the least) like xsnow, xeyes or the mouse odometer.
What has all that you wrote to do with “Using your Linux on your desktop”?
Nothing at all.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 03:46:27Alberto Milone
First of all Mandriva is not the only GNU/Linux distro.
Secondly, the “kernel-developing idiots” (as you call them) have nothing to do with the ATI driver. As a matter of fact ATI drivers (fglrx) are proprietary and this means that the Linux-developers can’t even try to have a look at the source code (which is not available, anyway) because that would be illegal.
Furthermore, there are a lot of users who had XGL or AIXGL working (as well as Compiz) but they can’t be considered stable (especially Compiz). The fact that you’re using an ATI card doesn’t help. Buy a Nvidia Card, wait for the next driver to be released (the stable version) and you will enjoy all that eye-candy. Or, even better, you could buy a graphic card such as Intel (or old ATI cards) which uses an opensource driver. Think that the crappy ATI card (64mb of shared RAM) of my notebook works just fine with AIGLX (and Xfce).
Please, don’t make your post looks like those posts in which some guy says “Linux doesn’t work for me therefore it is crap, it’s not ready for the desktop, etc.”. If you feel the need to bash someone, try with ATI which IMO should work on a better driver (for Linux) for its cards.
P.S. I do understand your frustration but I’m convinced that if the proprietary drivers were better I wouldn’t see guys like you posting rants.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 04:23:02Dave
Try the XGL live CD from http://kororaa.org/ I’ve not found a (modern) PC this doesn’t work on. It will at least give you a taste for it.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 05:15:47Jean Sagi
Have in mind you’re using an ati…
I have the same problems you had and with an nvidia… but I didn’t give up…
And in the process I learned a lot, in conjunction with blogdrake comunity I resolved the problem, activated a mandriva bugzilla account vote for the related bug and seen it fixed before 2007 final.
Did I mention that all that was in the One Live-CD and in a 128 Mb RAM with a nvidia Geforce2 MX/400.
So I think you should be more proactive given your track. I think just complaining don’t help any much.
J.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 07:29:21tabgal
And THAT is why I don buy hardware from shitty vendors.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 07:46:10Olav Dahlum
Especially harsh as you in fact build packages for Mandriva and should know a thing or two about the issues with ATI compared to Nvidia. They have started to address them, but maybe a bit to late.
Anyway, you know where to reach me…
Sep 26, 2006 @ 08:16:29Vincent Danen
Wow.. I’ve drawn some heat with this posting. I suppose I need to clarify a few things as some people apparently misunderstood so I’l respond to these piece by piece.
Adam, I do partially blame ATI. I don’t like their cards but… that’s what the machine came with. So while I’ve got one and have to deal with thier stuff (yes, I much prefer nvidia too), I don’t think I’m unique here. How many other people have machines like this? ATI isn’t a minor vendor… there are *lots* of folks using ATI cards that have to deal with this crap and we’re not making it any easier for them and while part of the blame can be on ATI, isn’t part of the problem our own fault? After all we’re packaging this stuff, right?
As for AIGLX, well, it’s a little hard to select when drak3d tells you that your card isn’t capable of 3d desktop effects, regardless of whether I’m using the ati or fglrx drivers and it doesn’t let me click anything other than “No 3D desktop effects”… (do you think it’s trying to tell me something?)
SS, thanks for calling me lame. I love it! =) I try Mandriva because I work for them so while using SUSE is an option, sure, it’s not my first option (in other words, I eat my own dog food (to some degree)). And yes, I know nvidia is better, but the machine came with an ATI card and considering how much I paid for that machine and what I originally intended it for (a pure WinXP machine), ATI was just fine. It’s just now that I’m doing the dual-boot thing because I wanted a) to check out the 3d desktop stuff and b) to check out the new Mandriva.
guest: apparently you didn’t read. I was using video drivers, and the proprietary ones at that. I suppose you just keyed in on the “using linux for six years” bit and missed the whole rest of the post. I understand… there were a lot of words there.
wobo, again, I understand the ATI issues but keep in mind that I’m not the only person who has an ATI card. As a Linux vendor (or, hell, even a Linux user) do we tell everyone to rip out their ATI card and get an nvidia one instead? Anyways, I can’t pull this one out… it’s onboard so I suppose I’d have to replace the motherboard as well (I could have a second card in there I suppose, but I don’t feel like spending the money).
As for who wants all the wobbly windows and cubes and such? Probably quite a few people… the eye candy of OS X seems to be a pretty nice thing for a lot of people and Vista’s adding some because they seem to think it’s important. For me, I just want to check it out… I don’t necessarily want to use it all the time.
Alberto: I understand that Mandriva isn’t the only Linux distro out there. But it’s the one I’m using. Call me lazy, whatever, but I’ve tried various distros over the years and I keep using Mandriva not just because I work for them but because it’s just plain better. Or, at least, from the time I’m willing to commit to trying other distros.
And sorry, the “kernel-developing idiots” bit wasn’t directly related to ATI drivers. That was related to the fact that we don’t really have a stable 2.6 kernel and was more in context with my usage of Linux on servers. And no, I’m not trying to disuade anyone from using Linux on the desktop. I know I *can’t* do that and considering I work for a company that makes a desktop Linux distro, it goes against my own pay cheque to start evangelizing something *other* than Linux on the desktop. Since this is a *personal* blog, and not CNet or Linux.com or some other “professional” forum, I’m certainly entitled to indicate that I have no real interest in using Linux (of any flavour) on *my* desktop. I’m sure I qualified that by titling this “Why I’ll never use Linux for *my* *main* desktop” which indicates a) my (personal) desktop and b) my main desktop (yes, I do use Linux on other desktop-ish machines, but not for my day-to-day workstation).
Oh, and I don’t think you can entirely blame this on proprietary drivers… this has to do with the whole packaging “experience”. In other words, proprietary drivers or not (at first I tried with the OSS drivers because that was what was installed), this should just *work*. I shouldn’t have to dick around with it for hours on end.
Dave: I’m going to download and give that a try, thanks.
Jean: Yeah, I should be more proactive but time is precious and I don’t want to spend hours on something that really shouldn’t take so long. Complaining isn’t constructive, sure, but it’s a nice venting outlet and doesn’t take nearly as long as actually trying to figure the problem out. =) (Bad reasoning I know, but it’s true).
tabgal: amen to that. =) I actually bought this machine so that my daughter could run some educational software on Windows (it was a stinking good deal) and it runs Windows pretty darn good. But I figured with a 300GB drive surely there was room to dual-boot. So the primary purpose of the computer was to run Windows, a task for which it performs admirably.
Phew… I think this response might be longer than the original post. =)
Sep 26, 2006 @ 08:32:02Vincent Danen
Harsh? I don’t think so. And yeah, I know there are differences between ATI and nvidia, one being better than the other, but I don’t think packaging has anything to do with it (particularly when the stuff I deal with is security-related and patching, not hardware-related).
Sep 26, 2006 @ 08:34:03FACORAT Fabrice
tabgal + Alberto Milone + SS> To all people saying that “people should not buy ATI”, “buy anoter card”, etc … I would say only one thing : that’s exactly the point !
The difficulty to install external drivers under Linux make it not being ready for the desktop !
Under Windows, you bought the card, install the driver from the CD in a graphical ( Accept -> next -> next -> reboot ) and normally it’s working and thus even if you’re using Win2k ( 6 years old ) or WinXP SP1 ( 3 years old ).
Now do the same thing with a Linux distribution dating from 3 years with a modern hardware … even when you have opensource drivers ( think for example I,ntel chipset ), It will not work. In this case you need to update the kernel or Xorg ( in fact migrating from Xfree to Xorg ). But unless you have backports packages, you will need to compil from scratch or upgrade all your system. Please note that devfs was removed in kernel 2.6.17, so if you upgrade from 2.4 or 2.6.5 and you were using devfs …
Now this is the simpliest case : with opensource drivers. Now when having proprietary drivers, it’s even worst because you will have to have source code ( kernel-source ), hope this driver will support your old kernel ( i.e this drivers may need to support sometimes 10 differents API because kernel API is not stable/fixed ), etc …
Do you remember Windows or Mac ? Accept -> next -> next -> reboot
Excuse me dude but this is an issue.
Of course if you have the latest distro version with the latest software ( kernel, xorg ), you may have support support even for your latest hardware. But maybe in 1 year you will have to upgrade to a new version of the distro because you decide to upgrade your hardware.
The monolithic approach in Linux/BSD is interesting because all drivers are already integrated and as they are in a common place, they may have better review. However this system lacks of flexibility.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 08:34:48FACORAT Fabrice
Downbloading the Mandriva one 2007 with proprietary driver will have the same effct that using kororaa.
The point of kororaa is having the ATI driver already on the CD and installed. This is the same for Mandriva Powerpack, or the mandriva-one-2007-sunna-* with the nonfree drivers.
People are giving false answers to true problem. The problem doesn’t lie in the distribution, but in the fact that installing third party software ( and driers ) is hard under linux. When everything is prepackaged, it’s very easy, but when trying to do things afterwards/separatly, this becomes hard
Sep 26, 2006 @ 09:15:16Vincent Danen
I used the sunna DVD to install, but grabbed the ati drivers from the nonfree rep and used those to install. Didn’t make much difference. It looks like, judging by some googling, that for some reason the ATI drivers aren’t using or are unaware of the opengl libraries. Found a post on a gentoo forum that indicates how to fix it (using a gentoo tool), so pretty useless, but that might be the issue.
At any rate, I’m now downloading the latest drivers from ATI… we have 8.28.8 in nonfree, but I see the latest is 8.29.6. Of course, downloading the damn installer is proving to be slow and problematic… =(
Sep 26, 2006 @ 09:27:01AdamW
Vincent, I wasn’t saying you had anything wrong with the procedure, I was just saying that it works very smoothly with open source driver-supported hardware
I do agree it’s a genuine problem, it just gets frustrating when you have several years of direct experience of the sheer shittiness of ATI’s drivers. If I could pick one problem to magically eliminate from the world so I never have to answer a question about it again…it’d probably be the ATI driver. We don’t, generally speaking, have anything LIKE as much of a problem with the NVIDIA driver, which may be proprietary but at least appears not to have been coded by apes on crack. The only problems we had with THAT driver for 2007 were of our own making.
As for the actual problem, if you could try it with the final release (ISOs will be done, apparently, possibly tomorrow, dunno how external guys like us will get ‘em) and let me / blino / bugzilla know how it goes, that’d be good. Your description of the problem seems strange as I have seen some reports in the forums of success with the 3D desktop using the ATI proprietary driver, which shouldn’t be possible if the driver package is actually broken with regards to the GL libs. So I’m not quite sure what’s going on there.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 10:04:42Jean Sagi
Umm… BTW did you noticed you were trying a RC?
I’ll bet you do.
Some problems should remain in the RC2 and I supose that RC2<>Final, in fact is probable that RC2
Let’s see how 2007 final behave itself when released.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 11:51:52SinnerP
“Thou Shalt not installeth videocardes from ATI Shoppe”
ATI cards are a pain to get them to fully work in Linux.
There exist hardware that will not work in WindowsXP b/c it was only meant to work with Windows95, the drivers were (and still are) awful.
Exists hardware that is a pain in the darriere to make it work in OSX. Or they just plain will not work (multi-function scanners anyone?)
So, as always, use for your OS hardware that is know to work in your OS. ATI cards have been only “kinda working”, with some vards not supported at all with ATI’s own (propietary) drivers.
Do you want hardware to work in Linux? Vote with your wallet! I haven’t bought an ATI card for years.
Back to Mandriva and 3D Desktop:
I have a nVidia-powered PC. I tried MDV 2007 RC2, installed nVidia’s driver and… no 3D Desktop! w00t? I searched bugzilla, fiund that there was a bug, I voted for the bug… and last Sunday, the bug was marked as solved. Five minutes later I was spinning the cube in KDE with XGL on my MDV 2007 RC2.
And MDV 2007 RC2′s 3D Destop looks gorgeous and stunning in this PC “not Vista ready”
lol
Salut,
Sep 26, 2006 @ 12:10:44Sinner
Vincent Danen
Yeah, I might be “stupid” because I bought a computer with an ATI card in it (heretic!) but I’m not an illiterate moron… of course I know it’s an RC. However, having said that, it’s not a beta or an alpha… it’s an RC which means it should damn near be as perfect as the final release… or pretty close.
Oh wait… Mandriva has redefined RC… instead of “release candidate” it’s “just another beta, but we want people to think it might be moderately similar to the final even though we’ll end up updating, changing, and recompiling a few hundred packages before you even finishing download the ISO”.
Right, my bad. I shouldn’t have been so optimistic in what is the last RC before the final release. Silly me.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 15:37:03Vincent Danen
Yeah, once I manage to get my hands on the final ISOs, I’ll give it another try. While I was compiling some update kernels for kicks I tried SUSE… no option for proprietary ATI drivers there either, and no DRI working “out of the box”.
Having installed SUSE, some stuff is nice but good lord… hurry and get 2007 final done so I can reinstall over top of it because YaST and how it handles updates are just hideous (not to mention that everytime I try to update packages YaST (or something it’s calling) keeps crashing on me).
Sep 26, 2006 @ 15:39:29Vincent Danen
I didn’t “buy” an ATI card. I bought a computer that has an onboard ATI card. And I’m sorry if being prudent and taking advantage of a really good sale puts me on everyone’s shit-list because it has an ATI card (and yea, thou shalt burn in hell for the sin of trespassing with the daemonic ATI card).
Sure, the ATI drivers might be part of the problem but please don’t confuse the issue that they are the *entire* problem. Vendors work around crap all the time. This crap should be dealt with as well.
And voting with my wallet… good point. Next time I’ll spend an extra $600 to get a similar machine with an nvidia card. That’ll make my wife happy.
Multi-function scanners not working on OS X? Which ones? I’ve used an Epson and HP… scanning, printing… it all works just peachy. In fact, I have *yet* to have a piece of “normal” hardware not work on OS X (printer, scanner, mouse, whatever).
Anyways, me and my shity nvidia-less computer will just enjoy a stock boring “normal” Linux desktop I guess while we enjoy the constant “fool! ATI is evil!” comments. =)
Sep 26, 2006 @ 15:44:13Olav Dahlum
I’m well aware of your position with Mandriva, same goes for Per Øyvind (he forced me into some translation work for 2007.0
)
And I loved the FF 1.5.0.7 packages for 2006.0…
Sep 26, 2006 @ 16:09:55Reinout van Schouwen
Well, for what it’s worth. I have a laptop with an ATI 9600/9700 chip in it which is partially supported by the Xorg m300 driver. After some tweaks (see cooker list) I could run compiz with it. The One-Gnome cd with nonfree driver worked out of the box. I guess I got lucky.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 16:48:41Medieval Mutt
I tried Mandriva 2007 RC2 on three different machines. First on a laptop with the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 chipset. Then on a desktop with an Nvidia FX 5200 card and finally on another laptop which has an Intel graphics chipset.
It worked right out of the box on all three machines. The LiveCD had Compiz running; I didn’t have to configure a thing. In case of ATI and Nvidia, XGL was used and for the Intel chipset, AIGLX was used. Overall I thought the automatic detection was pretty neat though I *personally* don’t like Mandriva very much.
Sep 26, 2006 @ 23:18:08Shiyu Tang
I meet the same problem. So could you tell me how to do it step by step? Where to download Free Ati driver?
Oct 02, 2006 @ 06:46:04Anon
Ok, i’m only a guest but i find this disheartening. You don’t have to be a computer genius to install the ATI crippleware, actually it’s quite straightforward if you read ATI’s instructions first. Sure, it is not as dead simple as clicking four times that i’m really sure to install the driver but almost. Just make sure you have the prerequisites installed, just like ATI’s howto says and there you go. Remove any running radeon or direct rendering manager module — just as the file in /usr/share/fglrx/fglrx.README or if you didn’t read it like /usr/share/fglrx/fglrx-install.log says and load the stupid fglrx module. Duh, really.
I’m against stupid crippleware and all it stands for as much as the next guy, but blaming failure on crippleware just because you don’t read the instructions is a cop-out, sorry. As a 6-year GNU/Linux user and a Mandriva developer, too, you should know about the value of documentation and how to use it.
XGL/Compiz is a different matter, non-trivial stuff, but you never even reached the point where this would matter because you got stuck in a 101 situation, failing to read documentation. Sad, but worse is the disservice to your employer.
BTW, i have a very similiar setup running with an ATI Xpress 200M chipset and GPU, it requires the crippleware driver but it works like a charm if you do it by the book. This rant is really only ranting against yourself. You failed, in a dumb way to boot. Face it.
Oct 02, 2006 @ 07:54:47Vincent Danen
Installing the ATI drivers wasn’t the problem. That was pretty dead simple. My issue isn’t with “crippleware”… in fact, I don’t mind commercial drivers at all.
As well, I shouldn’t *have* to download the ATI drivers from their site. We provide DKMS drivers that should have done the job.
My problem is that even with the fglrx drivers installed, and loaded, I’m still not getting direct rendering. I’ve used the ATI drivers in the past, so I’m not a “novice” when it comes to installing them.
And yes, I know the value of documentation… I write it. =)
Oct 02, 2006 @ 10:04:00Vincent Danen
The drivers can be found here:
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=300
(BTW, going to http://www.ati.com, clicking Drivers, then clicking Linux would have got you there)
Oct 02, 2006 @ 10:07:59Rarsa
Comparing apples and green bananas?
You are comparing a OS that has a 7 years release cycle tht has 100% support from the vendors.
It took several years for Windows XP have support for most of the hardware out there (and actually the HW vendors provided it, not Microsoft). Vista RC1 does not support a lot of HW (current or old). And by the way, I wouldn’t use Vista RC1 as my primary Desktop now or in the next year or two for the same reason.
My point is: There are versions and distributions (Mandriva included) that are quite mature, that will have the most drivers prepackaged.
The release cycles in Linux are quite short in comparison with other OS’s. Some people may argue that it them makes the users the ginea pigs. I’d say it gives the users options. If they want a stable environment they have a longer “refresh” period (And that’s partially why linux servers are usually considered better than the desktop). If they want the latest then they can also have it albeit with some extra effort. With other OSs you don’t even have that option. So in my book, difficult is better than impossible.
Oct 02, 2006 @ 15:23:16linsec.ca Blog
Sigh. I love it when things get thrown out of context and misinformation abounds. I’ve gotten used to this with proprietary vendors and ignorant news sources, but to get this within the open source community? And from a web site that is supposed to be
Oct 02, 2006 @ 17:02:49Alex C
Never had a problem with Windows? I’ve had several problems loading drivers in Windows in the past. I had a client back in 2002, running Windows XP that was extremely unhappy with the ATI video cards I installed, they seemed to crash Autocad when hatching was selected. I replaced them with Nvidia cards and the problem went away….
I’ve been running a Linux desktop since late 2000, and have never looked back.
Currently I’m running Novell SLED10 x86_64, my 3D desktop is beautiful and thus far stable.
Cheers,
Alex
Oct 02, 2006 @ 17:56:05deadrats
vincent,
i never thought i would see the day that a linux developer would make a posting such as yours. personally i agree, there are numerous obstacles to using linux on the desktop as a primary OS, not the least of which is the community that responds with “use different hardware” or “you don’t know what you are doing”.
i have personally tested every distro you can name, and probably a few you don’t even know exist, and i have found the following to be true:
1) doing even the simplest tasks, such as installing drivers, can drive you crazy.
2) the quality of the available software is laughable.
3) the community, as a whole, seems to have the world’s most powerful “reality distortion field” turned up to maximum power or they are just out of their fucking minds.
some perfect examples are the responses you have recieved to your post:
“don’t use an ati card”
“buy an nvidia card”
“use some half-assed work around”
well, why should anyone have to avoid buying certain hardware instead of the OS using a driver model that allows the drivers to be installed without breaking your balls? these guys are trying to tell me that if i want to buy a workstation class graphics card, such as a FireGL, 3DLabs, or Matrox, it sucks to be me?
furthermore, the community seems more than happy to give packaged responses to requests for help, without actually ever checking to see if what they are advising even works. they’ll give you step by step instructions that don’t do jack shit and the OS itself will either give you cryptic error messages or will tell you that everything is working fine when in fact everything is in a state of shit.
don’t even get me started on the pro-linux FUD or that retarded business model were companies such as yours give their half-assed software away for free, then wonder why they can’t make any money on their work.
i could go on, but i think you get the point, linux sucks and so does everyone that uses it.
-deadrats.
Oct 02, 2006 @ 17:56:27Vincent Danen
Who said they never had a problem with windows? I can’t stand windows. It has it’s fair share of issues as well and, yes, crappy drivers abound there too.
But if nothing else, it’s easier to install said crappy drivers on windows than it is on linux. Guess you have to be grateful for something, right?
Oct 02, 2006 @ 18:33:17Vincent Danen
Your comment cracks me up. It absolutely has validity with much of what it says (I recall someone telling me how much better the Linux community was than the OS X community after they had been in the former for a month and the latter for several years). I found it laughable.
Your conclusion I disagree with, however. I think Linux rocks on servers. I wouldn’t use anything else. On the desktop… it’s not bad, but it’s not my first choice for what I want to use a desktop for (although on a few workstations here it works fine).
The responses you get… yes… I agree with you there. It’s not always true, but enough to be disturbing and I’m sure it turns people off (such as yourself). And I certainly shouldn’t have to change my hardware (at more personal cost) just to satisfy the operating system.. that seems backwards to me.
As far as the business model… well, what can I say. It works. Mandriva had issues before with the bankruptcy protection, but it wasn’t due to the business model. It was due to idiot management that are, thankfully, long gone. There are many other companies such as Mandriva that didn’t have to deal with bad management, have the same business model, and not only survive but throw a profit too. So it’s been proven that the business model works… of course, you have to supplement the giving away of free software with something else (such as consulting, etc.). But I heartily disagree with your assesment there (trust me, I wouldn’t be working for a company I didn’t think could pay me).
Oct 02, 2006 @ 18:38:05cl
Vincent,
I think the problem is that your card is not working
Oct 02, 2006 @ 19:36:25with the ATI driver above 8.24.8. Direct rendering will not work on inboard ATI graphic card
Xpress 200 (mine is a 5a41). You should try using 8.24.8.
And i know the list says that it is spport but it only work in 2d. Don’t waste your time making it work with the current driver.
Vincent Danen
Actually, if you look at today’s entries, particularly this one:
http://linsec.ca/blog/index.php?/archives/95-Mandriva-2007,-ATI-Radeon-Xpress-200,-and-Xgl.html
You’ll see that I did end up getting it to work. Mind you, I used the latest posted on ATI’s site (which I had tried before as well). Big difference here is that now I’m using the x86 version instead of the x86_64 version (and also some config file changes as noted in that entry).
Oct 02, 2006 @ 19:53:30Shiyu Tang
Still no work.
Oct 02, 2006 @ 19:54:08So is there any tweak in xorg.conf? Could you post your xorg.conf here?
Vincent Danen
Look at the post I put up today where I indicated how I got it working (you’ll have to go to the front page of the blog). If that doesn’t work for you, put a comment on that entry (this one is getting hard enough to follow as it is)
Oct 02, 2006 @ 20:33:44yoho
FYI, you’ve been “distrowatched”. See (in french) : http://forum.club.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=53733
Oct 03, 2006 @ 02:57:03nomansland
I really don’t understand how well known issues with ATI cards, or similar nonsense can be used to disapprove general use of GNU/Linux on desktops. I quite agree with this comment on Distrowatch:
“You wouldn’t expect something like this to happen at any time, let alone on the eve of Mandriva Linux 2007 release. Last week, two Mandriva developers went on record saying that “Linux is not ready for the desktop”. In a web log post entitled Why I’ll never use Linux for my main desktop, Vincent Danen concluded: “This kind of thing is precisely why, for me, Linux belongs on the server. Now if those kernel-developing idiots would get their act together and give us a 2.6 kernel that was a) stable and b) supported for more than a week, then I’d really be pleased.” Another Mandriva developer, Fabrice Facorat, agreed. In a post called Linux ready for Desktop? Of course not!, he had this to say: “For me when you have control over the environment and the hardware, Linux is ready: think servers, workstations, thin clients, kiosks. However when you have no control on the hardware, Linux is not ready because it somewhat lacks flexibility.”
There you have it, right from the horse’s mouth! From two guys who have been working for a Linux company, developing a popular desktop Linux distribution, for years! Yes, that’s right, Mandriva Linux is not ready for your desktop! Don’t waste your money buying it!
One really has to wonder about the future of a company which happily asks Gaël Duval to leave, yet is quite pleased to keep developers who publicly hint that they consider Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox and other kernel developers “idiots”! A perfect pre-release PR, non?”
Oct 03, 2006 @ 04:17:28Fabian Mandelbaum
Hello Vincent, and all. Read this post throughout and I’ve found there are many rights and wrongs with some concepts here and there.
1st, the “put the card, insert the ‘graphical’ CD, click Next many times, reboot” approach comparision is not “good enough” for the simple fact that it is the hardware vendor the one providing that CD with the drivers for his hardware, not the OS vendor (read: Microsoft, Apple). The hardware vendor chooses to provide drivers for Microsoft OSes mainly just because of “marketing” decisions. I didn’t buy lots of ‘desktop’ hardware lately, but I’m wondering if the downloadable Linux drivers are also included in the CD accompanying the hardware.
2nd, 1st point above has to do with having a consistent-not-ever-changing API against which to write those drivers, indeed.
And yes Vincent, I’ve also bought hardware that was supposed to work and it doesn’t, but I was a bit luckier than you because it’s a scanner so I can just sell it and buy one “that just works”.
My point: you cannot really compare software that comes with the thing, provided by the thing manufacturer, and is “ready to work” on a given OS and software that you have to go through lots of pains (and are bound to the thing’s manufacturer’s will) to package it decently. It’s just not fair.
What it is fair to compare is an API that changes often against one that doesn’t, making the writing of long-lasting drivers possible. That is fair.
About the readiness of Linux for desktop usage or not, it’s just a matter of which hardware you have, like in any OS. There will always be happy and not-happy desktop users out there, no matter what OS they use.
Oct 03, 2006 @ 05:02:47Jason
This is exactly why I haven’t, and don’t intend to switch to Linux either. I love the idea of it, but it just hasn’t made sense to me, and at this point, i’m starting to doubt if it will.
Oct 06, 2006 @ 17:47:03h3rman
This is just a luxury problem. You want to put a blob in your kernel, fine.
For what? Things you need?
No, just eye candy.
Spend your time sending letters to ATi and nVidia asking them to release all the code needed to write good open source drivers, instead of “complaining about caviar prices.”
I admit, I think it could be nice to have Compiz on my FC5 box, make it look a little like OS X, but I’m not going to screw up my kernel with a blob just for eye candy.
Just setup a few shortcut keys for virtual desktops and use ALT TAB, same ease of use.
Oct 09, 2006 @ 02:07:54Fred
You were rebooting just to make sure all the stuff worked? That is a windows user habit mostly unnecessary for linux. But mandriva is trying so hard to emulate windows that I can understand your confusion. I do agree though that 3D on linux is a royal PITA.
Oct 11, 2006 @ 07:38:16myst3rious
Hmm, looks like you r a impatient guy…. , how blubby and wobbly my desktop is, if i could have shown you. And ya, the font rendering is great. I dont miss any MacOSX or window$, Open and Free Linux is what i always play with. I play ad i do my complete work on GNU/Linux.
Oct 20, 2006 @ 14:21:58I forgot to tell you somethig buddy. I installed XGL and compiz with beryl on my Ubuntu-dapper within 1 hr i guess in two trials. I was failed in 1st cuz i was stupid (not those Linux developers). So, admit the same. If u failed, its you.
Upu know, i used to b a windows power user, and then when i meet the TUX, the fuse blown, power gone and user remained only. That user now avoid M$ Windows anyway. Games,wow, i love to play Counter Strike, UT and NFS-UG2 on my Ubuntu using Cedega TransGaming… its great if you got some brains.
I think u got waht i mean to say….
Let me put my experience, my collegue always persuade me to do our work on Windows.. i always prefer Linux and shows him when his windows get automatically reboot by crash(frequent),n i say, oh my Linux misses this feature, wehn m i gonna have that… HEY kernel guys, what r u doing ppl, integrate this feature please.. unexpected reboots and crashes gives user some time for rest and relax.. also i miss those virus.. they used to come n say hello to me always, when i had windows on my system…. i miss them.. i miss them badly man…
Vincent Danen
I am an impatient guy. And I do have wobbly windows and cube transitions (I may be impatient, but I’m also persistent). In fact, now that I’ve tried it, I prefer not having it (go figure). It also messed up fluxbox, so I’m better off without it.
So, sure, part of it was me… I admit it. Some of it wasn’t… I admit that too. =)
I’ve also never been a windows user. So, I pity the fact that you even had to use it. I went from OS/2 (you could call me a power user there) to Linux (and now to Linux and OS X). Never windows tho. Games? I can play games on Linux and OS X and for the rest, I prefer playing on a console (PS2, xbox, etc.). In fact, I prefer the consoles anyways because I never have to worry about hardware upgrades.
I don’t miss anything about windows… I haven’t spent enough time with it to even get to know it that well.
Thanks for the comment… I found it quite amusing. =)
Oct 20, 2006 @ 15:51:19B15HOP
I come from a more indifferent perspective.
Regarding the BUY XYZ hardware to fix problem ABC. I find that this doesn’t guarantee a solution. I bought a Creative Audigy to fix my dmix problems… Only to end up with a micraphone not recording (arecord) after several attempts and forum users telling me to make sure I have checked alsamixer volume / mute settings. The more I try and fix the problem myself the more I screw some other thing up. Now I don’t get any blasted sound at all. Thanks creative…
Yet regarding nvida / ati / etc… regarding driver problems. I had a different problem. The 5200fx caused linux to crash regardless how much better nvidia drivers are than ati. A gpu that overheats, enough to burn my fingers is not a good idea nvida… Yet now, the new ati x1600 still has problems with lockups, stuffing around with recompiling the kernel, half the speed of windows users and terrible font distortion for xfonts. I didn’t mention that conf problem of randomly changing BusID, or lockups switching from X to another pty.
Yes I am sure there is someone out there that can easily blame me, the user. But I believe the whole, buy xyz to fix abc problem doesn’t work when the OS was never the fault. Then again, nvidia was on the xbox and now the new ati chip also, maybe that has something to do with it…
So there is no silver bullet. Linux is not a silver bullet as an ultimate desktop.. Linux as a desktop machine? Maybe, well, why not? It should be, but I seem to be spending more time maintining one thing or another. It’s either kernel recompiling and package sifting vs rebooting and virus sifting…
Nov 05, 2006 @ 20:25:20Beata
Absolutely agree, if you use linux everyday you
should be smart enough to pick some hardware
that works seamlesly. After all it is quite simple.
I tried aiglx on multiple notebooks with intel
graphics crapy old one and brand new second and
it simply rocks.
And if you have no clue some hardware
Nov 10, 2006 @ 08:30:21vendors certify their notebooks for linux …
http://h41087.www4.hp.com/solutions/administrations/hpeduc/linux/produits_mandriva.html