I can't believe I am getting NO advice on this list.
I'll say it: Linux is NOT ready for the desktop.
Not mine, for sure.
Some people manage to hack their way through to
a functional system, but I'm getting nowhere.
And I'm a pretty intrepid hacker.
Can't reach my HP Deskjet 5550 printer.
Prints go nowhere, quietly. I downloaded
a PostScript file and used it to configure
OpenOffice ... the instructions I found
told me to do that as root. So I can run
OpenOffice Writer as root and find my printer,
but the print button just makes the dialog
go away, nothing prints. If I run OpenOffice
Writer as myself, I still don't see my HP printer.
I've been automating setups for 20+ years and
I can't believe with all the talent they have
working on it, that these tools not only don't
work, but don't apologize for not working.
Nothing on the system seems to have any problem
with my disappearing prints.
Sound? Windows 98 says I have a "C-Media AC97
Audio Device" and plays it just fine. RedHat 8
says it's SiS PCI Audio Accelerator and has the
driver i810_audio. The "Detect Sound Card" tool
detects the SiS device and the "Play Sound" button
does nothing - no apology, no complaint.
The hardware browser agrees about device type,
and guesses that I have a permission problem
with /dev/mixer, or that sound support may not
be compiled into my kernel (which is whatever
the RedHat 8 install gave me).
These tools don't go and *look* to find out
whether I have support in the kernel. They don't
*check* the permissions on /dev/mixer, which
happens to be totally open to my userID at the
moment. Since they disagree with Windows on
what type of sound system my motherboard has,
I'm guessing that they aren't even looking at
the hardware but grabbing some clue from a
file somewhere.
I do great with "Unix stuff" in Linux, but
any attempt at desktop operation is hopeless.
OpenOffice Writer fails to display any of my
Word documents decently. I have a three-column
.rtf document that displays *nothing* except
three empty columns and *one* line that is in
Courier font. I tried "Select All" and then
changed font to Courier, but still nothing
appears. Another document has a logo at the
top, but I can't see it in OO Writer.
There's no way I could sell any of this stuff
in my workplace in lieu of *any* of their
desktop operations. They are a heavy tech
shop with lots of Solaris, FreeBSD and some
Linux, but they need their desktop stuff to
work. I need that at home too. Redmond
still is the place to go for that, it seems.
This is not rhetoric intended to stir some
discussion. This really is my consistent
experience with Linux on the desktop.
I don't have time for a serious learning
curve, and you apparently have to be in on
some pretty heavy cultural acclimation to
have any success with this.
Maybe next year?
Vic
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