Re: I've thought better of Linux

Tim X <timx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> > 1. It just doesn't work with my generic (HP) scroll mouse.
> > I can't figure out why. (Actually, it starts out working,
> > for a few minutes, then it totally stops working!)
>
> With some mice, you can get complications arising between gpm (the
> mouse driver for the text consoles) and X. When I had some problems
> with an optical mouse, I found the solution was very simple. All I had
> to do was follow advice from the gpm man pages on setting up gpm to
> use 'raw' mode. Check the gpm HOWTOs and google and I'm sure you find
> a straight forward solution. Alternatively, try disabling/turning off
> gpm before starting X.

Thanks for this hint (and any other specific technical
advice you want to give me). I have never even heard of
gpm, but I suppose if I poke around, I can figure out where
it gets turned on.) But see below about whether it's a
problem elsewhere.

> > 2. Cut and paste do not work in the applications that I use
> > (eg. paste a URL or text between Emacs and Firefox).
>
> I suspect this is also due to a misconfigured mouse. As mentioned,
> either its interference between gpm and the X mouse driver or you have
> not configured the mouse driver correctly in XF86Config. Is the scroll
> wheel working? If not, its very likely you have the mouse configured
> for a very basic 3 button mouse rather than a 5 button scroll wheel mouse.

I don't think the cut/paste has anything to do with the
mouse driver. It happens on other people's machines, too.
General pointing and clicking works during the entire time.
Also, seems random. Sometimes cutting and pasting fails.
Sometimes immediately thereafter, it works. Then, maybe not.
I suspect that it's a bug in either Emacs or Firefox.
Some people tell me that cut and paste with those apps
just never work for them at all. (I was about to tell
them they were crazy and that it worked for me.
Then I tried it.... But I always thought it worked!
Maybe it used to?)

The scroll wheel works, sometimes, right after the machine
is booted, but then soon stops working and never works again.
One way to get it to stop working is to use the KVM switch.
However, it always works on all the other machines on the
switch, which are running Windows. Maybe the driver has
some bug related to being sensitive to something that
happens when I switch. (I don't even know what happens,
electrically, if anything, when I use the KVM switch.)

Here's what the black magic in my XF86Config-4 file says
about my mouse (which is a two-button + scroll mouse).
I wound up writing the whole XF86Config-4 by hand,
so it's entirely possible I messed this up.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "PS/2 Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "XFree86 Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "PS/2 Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection


There's also this junk, and I don't remember
what any of it is about. Maybe there's
something fishy in there:

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "xtrap"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
####
Load "GLcore"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "freetype"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

> > 5. I had to manually configure X for the totally generic
> > video card. And I fucked something up: when Gnome launches,
> > there's an extra mouse cursor ("X") sitting in the middle
> > of the screen. It's a turd. I can make it go away
> > by launching a shell and clicking on its titlebar.
> > Then I close that shell, because I do everything from Emacs.
> > (Clicking on the Emacs titlebar doesn't clear the turd.)
>
> Again, almost certainly a misconfigured mouse driver for X.

I think the extra mouse cursor may be a bug in Gnome.
The problem doesn't happen in KDE.

> Note that recent versions of the X server have a switch
> which you can use that will get the server to return
> what it thinks is your hardware and how it should be
> configured.

There was soms sort of X autoconfiguration utility
that ran during system installation, but it failed.

> Personally, I hate overly complex window managers.
> I've got rid of Gnome, KDE etc and now just run sawfish

So the best way to use Linux as a desktop machine that's
like Windows or MacOS is not to use the desktop software?
Maybe I should use the Zen window manager.

I could just go back to twm, I guess.
But that doesn't really seem like progress.
YMMV.

> Firstly, the comment "Why can't Linux just pick ONE and
> make that really WORK?" reveals what I think is a basic
> conceptual flaw. Firstly, it implies Linux is something
> akin to a company like Microsoft or Apple.

I am making a comment on the quality of the net result
of particular major project developed for Linux under
the free software theory of the universe, specifically
noting that the people involved in the effort have
been unable to come together to produce a high quality
component that they identify as a critical centerpiece
and which they prostletyze as being comparable or better
than the one on the commercial systems.

Instead, it seems that they got into a fight about
whose broken software was more politically correct.

I don't want a political mission or a hobby,
and I don't want to debug the operating system.
I just want the computer to work so I can use
it to run basic applications that I want.
If Linux is not up to that, fine.
Let's just be honest about it, that's all.

> All the rest is really just packages collected by
> the Distro (Debian, Red Hat, SuSe, etc). Therefore, there
> is no central body to just "pick one and make it work".

X Windows and KDE and Gnome are "little packages"?

> I'd also argue many of the window managers do work as
> well and even better than Windows.

Perhaps, but not the ones that are the standard choices
promoted and offered in the popular distributions.

> How many of us have defined a colour scheme under windows
> only to find some apps refuse to follow it, or even
> worse, follow only part of it and you end up with dialog
> boxes or windows using the same colour for the foreground
> and background?

I have never tried to change the colors under Windows,
or Linux for that matter. I don't care about things
like that. I can believe that it's broken in Windows.

I merely want Linux to correctly autodetect my video card
and mouse and stuff, like Windows _always_ does.

Well, and it would be nice if the font selection
features worked better. (They don't work better
in Windows, by the way; they just don't look so ugly
there that I feel compelled to mess with them.)
Other than that, and some other minor hard-to-fathom
general buggyness in the desktop environment.
I am fairly happy with Linux. I'm mostly giving
examples of things that would terribly impact
your average desktop user.

If I start using it as my desktop, though, I will want
the sound to work. Also the scanner, camera, printer,
DVD writer, etc. I haven't tried any of that stuff.

> I sometimes wonder why it is I hear about people having all
> these problems, yet I've never really experienced them.

Because in your very limited set of experiences
you happen to have been very lucky?
Because your hardware happens to work with the standard drivers?
Because you're not using the standad desktop environment?
To me, it's no wonder at all.
Do you have some more plausible theory?

> > 7. The "security update notification" widget doesn't work.
> > It beeps and complains that security upgrades are ready.
> > Then it launches Synaptic, which doesn't agree.
> > I am left wondering what critical security patches I am missing.
>
> What have you got in your /etc/apt/sources.list file? have you got the
> site for the security updates as well as the normal source sites?

I have:

deb http://debian.crosslink.net/debian/ testing main
deb-src http://debian.crosslink.net/debian/ testing main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-2 (20041231)]/ unstable contrib main
deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20041231)]/ unstable contrib main
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/

> What does qpopper or wine have to do with apt and security updates?
> Isn't one a pop server and the other a windows emulator?

One time recently when trying to debug the "security" problem,
I was playing around with Synaptic and got it to mention that
something was funky about those two packages. (At least I think
that's where I remember seeing the message. I sort of gave up
paying close attention to the system recently, figuring that
I'll probably have to do some kind of total re-install soon.
Luckily, I'm not using it for anything critical lately.)
My theory is that possibly something about the status of those
two random packages is confusing the buggy security update
icon widget. As I mentioned, I believe this all started on
the day that Sarge changed over to stable.

> There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't
> want to pay for a polished commercial product,
> be prepared to put in a little extra brain time
> to figure some of it out.

This is why I do mostly use commercial products.

> For your friend who wants Linux to do some development,
> but doesn't want to spend time trying to work things out
> and configure the system, then pay for a commercial
> Linux distro like Red Hat Workstation - its still
> relatively cheap and you get support (but check their
> support matrix to ensure your hardware will be
> supported).

This is the same as saying, "For your aged grandmother who
just wants to drive her car to the grocery store, but doesn't
want to spend time figuring out how the catalytic converter
works -- and it's going to need some tweaking --- she should
buy a commercially sold vehicle".

And I fully agree.

> What I really find hard to understand is all the people out there
> who continually make comparisons with commercial OSs like Windows
> and OS X to "free" ones like Linux and BSD and then complain about
> how lousy they are when they don't get the same degree of polish or
> "out of the box" support.

I'm not complaining. Did I start this thread?
No. I am merely responding to people who seem to be
claiming that Linux is as polished as those commercial
systems, and particularly well suited for your average
home desktop user.

I think RedHat 9 worked better in alot of these respects,
as I recall. My buddy's recent flirtation with Fedora
tends to support that recollection. But Debian was touted
as the stable Linux, and I like its package system better,
and it seems to get the most attention from the developers
of Lisp implementations such as CMUCL/SBCL.

I think Linux is a much better server than Windows.
Rabid announcements of its superiority in the desktop
domain are still somewhat premature, however.
I expect this to greatly improve in the future,
unless the Linux proponents deny the reality of the
situation and how far they have to go. In the past,
there seemed to be some weird antipathy towards improvements
in these areas. I thought that had passed,
but lately I am not so sure.

I am still hoping to be able to switch my main computer
off of MS Windows. But Linux isn't quite there yet.
.