| Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #107847] |
Sat, 21 September 2013 00:40  |
mikeaudet
Messages: 474
Registered: February 2009
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Senior Member |
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Hi Guys,
I've been poking around with Windows alternatives just to see where the Microsoft alternatives are at, and it's been a pretty disappointing experience. I'm wondering if my experience is typical.
I gave PC-BSD a try first, and it didn't detect my two Windows installations, leaving me stuck in BSD. The only documentation I could find was out of date, and there wasn't much of it. I had to boot from my Windows 7 install CD to fix my MBR. Only one of my three monitors was detected. I think the lack of Google search results is what got me to delete it. There's almost no information to help solve problems, which makes me think almost no one is using it as a desktop OS. That's fine for those who are experts already and love it, but not for the rest of us.
Next I tried Ubuntu. The install went better, but there were still problems. I could only get one of my three monitors to work using the default, GPL ATI driver. By switching to the proprietary drivers, I got two of the three working. There seemed to be no way to get all three going.
Then I tried adding a printer. The searching for printers app crashed, leaving the dialog stuck in the middle of the screen for a few hours. I restarted, and the process worked the second time.
I opened up Calc (libre office's excel) to see if making a table out of a large data set worked any better than it does on Windows. It basically locked up (same as on Windows). But, on Ubuntu, it locked up the entire Ubuntu UI with it. On Windows, only Calc got stuck. The Windows UI was unaffected, which is how it should be.
I take no joy in these observations. I was really hoping that Linux or FreeBSD might be a new development front to get rid of Microsoft. But, I've never been so happy to get back into Windows 7, where everything just works.
Is Microsoft really as far ahead as it seems to me? Ubuntu was especially disappointing. It felt like the UI was less multi threaded than Windows XP. It actually reminded me of NT 4.
Maybe my ATI HD 5450 video cards are a bad fit with Ubuntu, but I got them because they have no fans, which is important in a studio PC.
Anybody have any different experiences?
All the best,
Mike
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| Re: Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #107853 is a reply to message #107847] |
Sat, 21 September 2013 13:41  |
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I was on Ubuntu for quite a while, running both a desktop in my living room and a server in the back office. I still have the server, and it's pretty much bullet-proof, but the desktop became too much of a PITA for the same reasons you detail. There's nothing wrong with the concept at all, just got to be too much dealing with petty to major irritants like graphics issues etc. I keep an eye on it though - philosophically I'd love to go back and would certainly accept a certain amount of inconvenience to do so.
"... being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die..." - anon
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| Re: Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #107856 is a reply to message #107853] |
Sat, 21 September 2013 18:28 |
mikeaudet
Messages: 474
Registered: February 2009
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Senior Member |
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I Remember seeing TCB's name on the forums all the time. Has he been around here? It would be great to pick his brain. I have a friend who works for Canonical, but I don't want to bug him with tech support problems.
I have a greater appreciation for how much work the Microsoft programmers have done on Windows after spending some time with Linux. I'm betting they spend zillions of man hours chasing down the endlessly long tail of hardware configurations to make sure they all work. I don't think I appreciated that as much before.
Maybe whoever replaces Ballmer wont be a giant ass-hat, and we can stick with Windows, as great as BSD would be. I think just boycotting Windows 8.x for the time being maybe the best approach given the zillion dollar investment that BSD needs in terms of drivers and documentation.
I don't mean to diminish the work of the BSD team. It's absolutely incredible. But maybe not as a mass market OS at this time. And, I don't have the resources to try to change that.
If I spend a whole bunch of time porting the drivers to BSD or Linux, I may end up inadvertently committing to a whole bunch more time doing support for that long tail of devices. And, I don't think that would be the best use of my very limited free time.
But, if BSD was as well supported as Windows, that would be the perfect OS world from my perspective.
I guess we'll see what happens. At least Ballmer got fired. There's some hope.
I think I needed to work this out for myself before I got back to working on the ASIO driver and moving parts of the PSCL into the scherzo. I needed to commit one way or the other.
All the best,
Mike
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| Re: Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #107863 is a reply to message #107861] |
Sun, 22 September 2013 02:55 |
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A cursory search shows Thad's posts - at least under "TCB" - date from 2008 and earlier; I'm not sure he's logged in since. He didn't have a working email address attached to his account (that's common with memberships transferred in from the NG since you didn't have to have one to be part of it). If anyone knows him outside the NG or forums please let him know he's welcome to drop by any time!
"... being bitter is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die..." - anon
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| Re: Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #108007 is a reply to message #107847] |
Wed, 01 January 2014 01:15 |
Doug Wellington
Messages: 251
Registered: June 2005
Location: Tucson, AZ, USA
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Senior Member |
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I used to work with FreeBSD a lot, at least up through version 4. Loved it. Really happy when Apple adopted it for use in OS X. However, now I would only use FreeBSD for server stuff, not for the desktop. Indeed, at the same time, I'd only use OS X for the desktop. Of course, I don't like Apple any more (I despise the fact that they haven't come up with anything new since Jobs died, they don't seem to care about OS X except as the development platform for iOS, and they seem to be using litigation as their main tool to stay in front of competition), so I'm steadily getting rid of my Macs. I'm actually using a Raspberry Pi in place of one of them...LOL...can't beat the price!
I don't have any experience with Ubuntu. My Linux experience is mainly RedHat Enterprise, CentOS and some Fedora. I use RHEL every day at work. Highly recommended. My number one linux suggestion: use an Nvidia graphics card.
FWIW, Windows really is the main choice for Engineering apps. Even our spectrum analyzers and scopes all run Windows these days...
Regards,
Doug
http://www.parisfaqs.com
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| Re: Anyone using Ubuntu or FreeBSD much? [message #108012 is a reply to message #108007] |
Sat, 04 January 2014 15:05 |
excelav
Messages: 2130
Registered: July 2005
Location: Metro Detroit
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Senior Member |
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I have to agree about Apple, they seem to only care about consumer products like iPads etc. There move to kill off the Mac Pro tower with PCI slots was not the greatest idea. They need to have a slow migration over 4 or 5 years with PCI towers. There hardware prices are still ridiculously expensive. Killing off support for older computers is seriously not cool. It's like you buy a product and they change the locks on the doors and lock you out, and then tell you to buy again. Them forcing us to move to cloud computing is not cool or right. To sync things between systems you have to pay them for iCloud and go through their cloud, this is controlling and greedy, not to mention the possible security issues. They are taking things right out of the old MS play book. Being greedy, controlling and tricking people is never cool! This is why I do not like Adobe, MS or Apple anymore. I predict that if Apple stays on the corse they are on now, they will be in trouble in ten years. The true visionary has left the building. I'm sure they were working on cool things under Jobs that we haven't seen yet, but I still think Tim Cook has no idea what he is doing. I guess we'll see. One thing I know is, he is pissing off loyal Mac users that have supported the company for years.
James
[Updated on: Sat, 04 January 2014 15:08] Report message to a moderator |
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