Re: I've thought better of Linux

cstacy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:

> 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.

Its pretty easy to eliminate gpm from the equation and see if that
makes things work better. try the following

1. Log out of X so that the screen returns to the gdm/xdm login window
2. Switch to a virtual console with Ctl-Alt-F1
3. login as root and type

/etc/init.d/gpm stop

4. Switch back to X with Alt-F7
5. At the X login window, hit Ctl-Alt-backspace. This will restart the
X server.
6. Login and see if the mouse behaves better. If it does, then we know
the problem is due to an interaction between gpm and the X mouse
driver. At this pint you can either remove the gpm package or
reconfigure gpm to pass through mouse events to X. If you never/rarely
use the virtual console and don't use a mouse when you do, then its
probably easiest to just remove gpm with apt-get remove gpm.

> > > 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?)

It might be the way your using it? If you do the cut from emacs and
then switch to firefox and double click on the url to highlight it,
you will lose your previous selection as it will be replaced by the
double clicking to highlight the url. I've had no problems with cuting
and pasting between emacs and firefox in either direction.

> 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.)

Aha! A vital piece of information. Some KVM boxes, especially cheaper
ones do have some odd side effects with mice - I've had problems with
this and had to reconfigure gpm to get it to work reliably with
X. However, when I moved to a "blackbox" KVM, the problem vanished. I
found this especially with modern USB mice which were PS/2 compatible
and I was running them via a KVM using a USB to PS/2 converter. Don't
know why the KVM should do this as I thought it would just "pass
through" the data with no interference, but cheaper KVMs do seem to
cause problems. I've used two different models of the black box KVM
without any problems.


> 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

Can't see anything wrong with this.

> 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

These modules are X extensions which are not part of the base X
specification and which can improve performance or add support for
things like GLX graphics etc. Some of the entries are not familiar to
me and not included in my config e.g.

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "speedo"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
Load "xtt"
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.

Possibly, but I'd consider it unlikely. Gnome has a very large user
base and bugs tend to get fixed fairly quickly. I certainly didn't see
anything like this when I was running Gnome.

> > 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.

No, thats not what I said or implied. The "standard" desktop worked
fine for me. I got rid of it because Gnome didn't offer me any
functionality I needed or wanted. So, why have something you don't use
consuming resources? No reason I could think of, so I stopped running
it. Its one of the things I like about X and Linux, you are not locked
into using/running stuff you really don't need - you have the choice,
unlike Windows, where your stuck with what they provide and often
forced to upgrade hardware to support additional functionality you
never wanted and cannot disable.

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

Well, I guess that depends on what you call progress. Does Gnome
provide anything you need that you couldn't get under twm? If not,
then how is it progress? If it does, then thats great and probably
justifies sticking with it. I know lots of users who have no problems
with Gnome and they are very happy with it. I ran it for a few years,
but decided I'd rather have the extra memory and disk space for stuff
I really wanted.

> > 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.

I'm not and have never said Linux was some sort of magic solution
which would solve all the worlds problems. I do challenge claims made
by you and others that it is a totally broken and non functional
environment because I've been using it both professionally and at home
for over 15 years very successfully. I also know a large number of
users who are also using it very successfully as well. However, I
would never claim it is right for everyone and have on many occasions
recommended that someone not use Linux based on factors like their
willingness to move to a different paradigm, ability and
requirements. In other posts in this thread, you have pretty much
insinuated I've lied when stating I've had no problems getting my
desktop to work in a fully functioning and reliable way, which makes
me suspect that your one of those users who immediately blame any
problem on bugs, when more often than not its something the user has
done wrong and refuse to accept it when others tell you they have
things functioning fine.

> > 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"?

The size of the package is irrelevant to the point. Linux is really
just a kernel and a few basic utilities. All the rest is put together
by the body responsible for the distribution and often, the
distribution will modify the packages to either put their own "stamp"
on them or to modify how they are configured or apply special patches
etc. This is why there is such a difference between the various
distributions. The point is, you cannot say things like th eLinux
desktop is broken because there is no such thing as one Linux desktop
or even one version of KDE or Gnome or whatever. You cannot even state
all desktops running under Linux are broken until you have tried them
all out.

> > 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.

Again, my experience and the experience of those I work with and many
of my colleagues and friends has been that they do work and work as
well as Windows does. In fact, for my own personal experience, I would
say its only with the most recent releases of Windows that I've found
my Windows desktop runs as reliably as my Linux one has been doing for
15 years. I've never had anything like a BSoD under Linux or had the
whole system grind to a halt while anti-virus software started
scanning or just have things lock up. However, I'm not going around
making claims that the Windows desktop is broken and useuless.

> > 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.

Yes, windows does support a wider range of hardware - mainly because
many hardware vendors ensurer they have drivers available and because
they work with many vendors directly. Thats one of the side benefits
of representing the lions share of the market - harware vendors are
very keen to ensure their hardware is supported. Linux doesn't have
that luxury and many hardware vendors actually work against Linux by
refusing to provide specifications etc. However, unlike you, I have
had problems with Windows working correctly with some hardware and I
have been forced on occasions to download and install a vendor's
driver to get windows to work correctly with my hardware. I won't even
go into the problems regarding older but fully functional hardware and
XP.

If you are waiting until Linux has the same degree of hardware
detection and support as MS, then I'd suggest you give up now and just
stick with Windows. Linux is unlikely to ever reach that level because
vendors don't see it as a real market and are not interested in
working with individuals to get their hardware supported. There are
some notable exceptions, like nvidia, who actually produce Linux
drivers and more vendors are beginning to see that providing details
of hardware specifications etc is not going to threaten business
etc. But the basic fact remains that drivers and detection of new
hardware depends on volunteers willing to put in the time to do the
real work. While Linux has shown the potential of such an
orgnaisational structure, there will always be a greater lag time
between when hardware is made available and when it is supported under
Linux.

> 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.

I think the font issue is really a result of there being very few good
quality fonts which have a free or open source license. You can get
much better fonts for Linux and really improve how it all looks, but
you have to pay for them. I suspect you will also find differences in
what fonts are available between distributions because diffeent
distributions have different manifestos. For example, Red Hat isn't
that worried about licenses, while Debian has a very definite goal to
promote and distribute only software with an appropriate open source
license. This is to such an extent that in fact the XFree86 software
that is now being distributed with Debian is no longer the standard
X.org software because X.org changed its license and is no longer
compatible with the license requirements for inclusion in Debian. Now
Debian is maintaining its own branch which has a more GPL'ish license
than the new X.org license.


> 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.

With the exception of the camera, I've got all of that working with
minimal effort.

> > 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?

Possibly its just simply that your in the minority of users and not
the majority position you feel you are in? Yes, I do tend to stick to
fairly standard hardware vendors, but not because of compatibility,
but rather just for reliability (I've found you do tend to get what
you pay for with hardware). However, I don't think my setup is at all
strange or very different. My home desktop was fairly highly spec'd
when I got it because at the time I was doing a lot of scanning and
OCR work and a fair amount of sound related stuff, so I got a
multi-channel sound card (SB Live), an Adaptec Ultra Wide SCSI
controller ATLAS SCSI HD and HP SCSI scanner. All of this hardware
worked just fine without any need to chase down problems, find
additional drivers or do anything else unusual. My desktop at work is
a packaged Dell system and it worked fine with no problems except for
an initial reconfig of the mouse (which I now know was due to the
cheap KVM I wa using). My work laptop is one of those tiny Dell X300
and I expected to have considerable problems getting it to
work. However, it all worked fine with the exception of the wireless
card, but I knew it wouldn't work as it is based on hardware with
closed source specs (though I expect someone will reverse engineer it
before too long). I just got a pmcia wireless card which is supported
and use that.

> > > 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/
>

> 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.

Well, I may know what the problem could be. Your sources.list contains
references to both "sarge" and to "testing". Personally, I run testing
as I've found it to be very stable and more up-to-date than Debians
"stable" release (Debian has acknowledged their release cycle is a bit
slow for their stable versions). I would recommend you do the
following

1. Make a backup of /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Edit sources.list and remove the cdrom source entries
3. Remove all entries referring to "sarge"
4. Include just two lines, one for the normal debian distribution and
one for the non-us distribution.
5. Do the following

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

This should get your system in sync with the current testing version
of Debian (etch). The dist-upgrade will check to make sure all package
dependencies are met.

My sources.list file contains the following -

deb ftp://ftp.at.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free
deb ftp://ftp.at.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://commonwerx.org/software/contrib/slime/deb ./

> > 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 agree. I don't beleive Linux is for everyone and it depends on the
person, what they do and their aptitude and interest. However, I do
beleive that Linux can provide a stable reliable and fully functional
alternative to Windows for many people.

> 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 use Debian because I also like its package system and find its
selection of packages better suits my own needs. I've seen a lot of
people get bitten by fedora - its really very "bleeding edge" and a
testbed for RH. In that respect, I'd argue Debian is much more
stable.


> 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 doubtful Linux will ever represent a very large slice of the
desktop market. Its strength is definately in the server world. I
think a lot of developers are likely to use Linux simply because there
is a lot of stuff out there you can use and try out which is just too
expensive to do under Windows. Personally, I've lost interest in
really following Linux that much. I use it because I find it more
stable and easier than Windows. In fact, I constantly get frustrated
at how hard it is to diagnose problems under windows - there seems to
be a lot of "hidden" knowledge - even worse than Linux and I find the
inconsistencies annoying. One thing I've always like about Unix and
Linux is that it seems far more consistent in how it does things - you
may not like directories full of text files which need to be changed
by hand and find command line programs frustrating, but personally, I
prefer this to (what seems to me to be) obscure little GUI utilities
which get info from data files in odd locations and only work for the
common situation and which log to weird and unexpected
locations. Under Linux, once you know the basic framework, it just
seems more consistent - config files tend to be in /etc somewhere,
logs tend to be in /var, documentation in /usr/share/doc, manpages
devided up into fairly standard sections, boot stuff in /etc/init.d
etc. More than likely, its just what I'm use to, but even co-workers
who adminster Windows admit there is a lot of "acquired" knowledge
which is not immediately accessible

tim
--
Tim Cross
The e-mail address on this message is FALSE (obviously!). My real e-mail is
to a company in Australia called rapttech and my login is tcross - if you
really need to send mail, you should be able to work it out!
.