YMMV, but MY Linux desktop stinks

On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 00:31, Victor Odhner wrote:
> 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?
---
your attitude stinks - the first message on any of these subjects that I
noticed.

distro Red Hat 8?

Red Hat - System Tools - Printing
set up the printer - can you print test page? No reason to try to print
from Open Office until you can print test page from printing utility
(command line it is redhat-config-printer)

IIRC - sound in Red Hat 8 seemed to work after I ran sndconfig - which I
believe has been deprecated now (fedora). I thought that sound support
was through modules and not compiled in kernels but I could be wrong.

Desktop Experience - consider that RH 8 is now well over a year old and
has been twice replaced (soon to be 3 times) - that is light years in
desktop linux. IIRC, Open Office back then was like 1.0.0 or 1.0.1 and
they are now up to 1.1.0 or possibly newer and the improvements are
awesome. Likewise, Evolution, Mozilla and all of the typical user
applications have gained a lot of maturity in the last few distro
releases. This is of major importance to someone that actually wants to
use it for desktop and less important to someone that wants to use it
for server daemons or unix commands.

Likewise the new additions and improvements in kernel modules in newer
distro's give better support for hardware, hardware detection and
resolution and setup. Improvements to Gnome, KDE etc. have been been
ongoing as well. But I don't recall anyone saying that the desktop user
experience on any Linux at this point is equal to that of Microsoft or
Apple but let's not forget that they are not without problems too.

I have been using Linux on my desktop exclusively for years now, though
I will qualify the exclusively by saying that I still use my Mac for
desktop publishing of documents that already exist.

Craig