Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 23:58:22 +1000 From: "Haikal Saadh" <haikal@freeshell.org> To: "'Giorgos Keramidas'" <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> Cc: <advocacy@FreeBSD.org> Subject: RE: A FreeBSD User Reviews Mandrake. Let the flames flow. Message-ID: <000301c29b9d$35adab60$9802a8c0@warhawk> In-Reply-To: <20021204131506.GB4377@gothmog.gr>
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > * Note: I don't like Mandrake Linux, but the original post isn't > quite objective about the relative advantages and/or disadvantages > that > Mandrake might have over FreeBSD, and I hate seeing people bitch > about something just for the sake of bitching... This makes > FreeBSD look bad too :-( Sorry if I sounded bitchy. My intention was not to promote one over the other. > On 2002-12-04 21:02, Haikal Saadh <haikal@freeshell.org> wrote: > > I want a flavour of unix simply because, well, to bullet it out, > > O I hate windows 9x/ME, and my laptop's really too underpowered > > for 2k or xp. > > Make note here. "Undrepowered laptop" means that this laptop has > too many things to do and too little power to actually go on doing > them. > Fair enough, but win98 was able play mp3's and do some other work (surf, mail, graphics) both at the same time, and that was one of the basis for my comparision. I should have mentioned that. > > Base Requirements: > > O No Bullshit setup/configuration. > > This is too vague to be of any use to someone who's trying to > promote either Linux or BSD. Okay, roughly speaking, what I mean is time spent to get everything working. Also, how easy it is to find and manipulate the config files/tools involved. > > > O Must work with my digital camera. > > Later on, you described that this worked fine. Linux seems > OK here :-] > Yes! It was practically one of the highlights of the whole system. Made my day. I wonder if it works on freebsd, but my freebsd server does not have USB so I have no basis for comparision. > > O Must be able to get on the web with a Mozilla-type browser. > > Mozilla is a resource pig. If your laptop cannot run Windows 95 or > similar without crawling to its knees, I seriously doubt it will be > able to run anything Mozilla-like without being slow. I did say mozilla-type. Again, poor choice of words on my behalf. I actually was using galeon. > > > O Must run evolution. Sorry, no other mailer will do. > > Sorry this mailer is not slim, small, powerful and less of a > resource hungry beast than most of them GUI mailers out there. Granted. > > > O Must be able to get on ICQ,YM,MSN, and IRC. > > I only use the last of these, and even then I have noticed how > difficult it is to be on IRC and do *real* work. You will almost > certainly find programs that let you use all of them though; both > on Linux and BSD. > Yeah. I don't spend much time on IRC, but a lot of my friends are on MSN. I prefer a unified client for all these. I use trillian on my windows desktop, and used Gabber under Mandrake. I have not until now, extensively used freebsd as a desktop, except for a brief circa evolution 1.0.7 when I used it for mail. > > O Must be able to do stuff while listening to mp3's off an smb > > share. > > It's an overworked laptop. Don't expect it to be a fast performer > if you load X11, KDE or Gnome, Mozilla, three of four chat clients, > and a host of other tools and *then* start playing mp3 audio :-/ > Yes, but win98 was able to handle winamp, opera (I was running it before mozilla or phoenix came along) and one other app (office, or flash, usually) > > Super Extended Requirements > > O Must be able to run Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia flash (or > > equivalent) (dream) > > Do these even run at all under Windows emulation? If you really > need these, and a few other MS-based tools that you mentioned, and > you > absolutely cannot do your work without them... is BSD or Linux the > best choise for you? I'm not sure. No they didn't. I didn't try illustrator. The flash installer went as far as unpacking before crashing. I think I mentioned that further down. > > > Package installation was a royal pain, as it was slow as, and in > > grand linux fashion, insisted on crapping shit all over my > harddrive. > > The final install weighed in at around 2.5 gig, as the installer > > did give me gnome and kde, and I did not make any efforts to stop > > it. > > I haven't installed Mandrake Linux lately, but are you sure you had > to install both KDE and Gnome? As a matter of fact, do you really > *need* X11 at all? I don't install anything X11-related to > machines that are relatively slow or have limited resources. > I installed KDE in case I didn't like gnome. I understand that X11 is resource heavy, but I need a GUI desktop. Cannot find a technical reason to justify that need. It's just the way I am. Servers, otoh, where I don't have to spend much time in, I prefer the console. > > The installer itself, I found too colourful for my tastes...as if > > it was aimed at 7 year olds or something. > > Taste is really something that no installer can satisfy for *all* > the possible users of today and ever after. The fact that you > didn't like the looks of the Mandrake installer should be > considered in the same context as something that you mentioned > later: > > > FreeBSD's /stand/sysinstall, like the installer, may not be > > pretty, but it works. Everytime. And you have no other tools > to > > confuse you either. > > If the looks of the installer don't matter, why are you bitching > about the looks of Mandrake's installer? > I did not intend to bitch about it, but to point of a matter of preference. > > The first few hours... > > Were spent in frustration because my network card was not being > > detected. After much frustration at google and google groups not > > being able to answer my question, I finally set the bios setting > > to use 16-bit cardbus, and it worked. > > You need to rebuild a kernel with support for 32-bit PCMCIA cards > for this to work. I remember this from a while ago that I was > reading the PCMCIA-HOWTO. You can find the PCMCIA-HOWTO at: > http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/doc/PCMCIA-HOWTO.html > > The relevant part reads: > > Include 32-bit (CardBus) card support? > > This option must be selected if you wish to use 32-bit CardBus > cards. It is not required for CardBus bridge support, if you > only plan to use 16-bit PC Cards. > > Sorry, but not looking at the existing documentation is not a very > good excuse for complaining in a "this sucks" manner. > Point conceded, but from the point of view of a casual user, would you bother? > > No mention of this setting having to do anything was mention on > > the web. (And google is the web as far as I'm concerned). > > Google is not ``the web'' but, putting this aside, you shouldn't > have started on the web; the documentation of your distribution is > a better place to look for hints about problems. The HOWTOs and > mini-HOWTOs of Linux are installed as part of the system install by > most of the Linux distributions I know of. These documents are an > invaluable resource of information both for Linux users and users > of other UNIX-like > operating systems. Do not *ever* underestimate the number of > mistakes that you can avoid by reading the documentation of your > system :-) > Correct. But the basis for my judgement was, with freebsd, you can just google the freebsd handbook, and if that give you an answer, google groups and the -questions archives would. This is a point which I forgot to make. > > Right, anyhow, once I got the network card fired up, it didn't do > > anything. Didn't try to get a dhcp lease or anything. > > Why should it? You hadn't configured it to do so. Yes, but I was expecting it to at least try and get a dhcp lease. I mean, the thing auto mounts cdroms, so why not try to auto-configure a pcmcia network card? A hot swappable one at that... > > > I tried listeing to mp3's over thenetwork with xmms over an smb > > mounted share, and it crawled. Sound drop outs everytime I tried > > to do anything, like copying files from cd or network. > > You have a laptop system that is twice as fast as my old Pentium > 133 machine. I could play mp3 audio on *that* machine, and have a > kernel compile running in the background even in the days of > Linux-1.2.13. There's nothing wrong with Linux or its applications. > There *is* > something wrong with the way you work though. You're constantly > complaining why the fancy, picturesque, resource eating, GUI > programs that you insist running have eaten all your resources and > brought your machine to its knees. That's not Linux's fault, > sorry. > > There are mp3 players out there that don't need X11 to run. I have > used mpg123 for a while, and I quite liked it. audio/amp works > fine too. Even audio/mp3blaster is better than loading X11 just to > listen to a song! > Correct. But I was trying to recreate the setup I had on windows earlier, though in hindsight, I should have made some concessions. > > Oh, and even though CD's were automounted, I had trouble reading > > one...it had file names with spaces in it. Nah, refused to copy. > > You have forgotten to write "how" you tried to do the copying and > what the error messages (if you got any) were. Are you sure it's > not some mistake you made in your haste to copy the files? Is there more to copying files than cd /mnt/cdrom/dir cp whateever ~ ? Freebsd was able to copy that file. The only difference was that I did have manually mount /cdrom. I was even using tcsh on linux. > > > Moving on, I tried to install the flash demo from the cd under > > wine, but the thing crashes after installshield finished > > extracting, and that's the end of that. > > Flash isn't exactly my idea of a program for resource limited > computers > either. But I should stop saying that old, same story about small > computers and programs that are big, slow, demanding monsters. > It's going to get boring in a while. > And I should stop saying that it worked under windows. > > Maybe I shoulda RTFM, but really, after the xmms test and the cd > > read fiasco, I wasn't going to try. > > Yes, you should. Always start at the manuals. That's why they are > written. By not reading any of them, not only do you put yourself > in a position where you can make many mistakes of varying > significance (mistakes that can cause a lot of trouble and make you > waste time and efforts), but you also offend the people who are > trying to write those documentation texts by your acts. It is just > like saying to them: "I don't care about the time you spent to > write the documentation. It's all crap that I won't ever spend a > minute reading, and you can write all you want. I don't care about > it." > > > So now... > > I'm installing Redhat 8. Will it be good enough to make me not > > overwrite it with FreeBSD once 5.0 comes out? Stay tuned. > > What's wrong with FreeBSD 4.X then? Why are you trying to use > Linux? Is FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE or 4.7-STABLE inadequate for your > needs? If yes, how? > Nothing's wrong with FreeBSD. I was just curious to see that all the hype was about, and as the opportunity presented itself, I took it. Unless redhat impresses me greatly ( which is highly unlikely atm), I will probably be nuking it and putting some version of freebsd on it. At the moment, the only version I have on CD is 4.5, though I have a machine running 4-stable as of a month ago. Im holding out till 5.0 comes out because I am mildly reluctant to do a move from 4-stable to 5. All the docco I have seen recommends a fresh install for 5.0, which is why I am holding out. Also I had to see for myself how far linux has come since way back then. Nothing wrong with that, I think. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>; iQA/AwUBPe4J/uhz+6gkNePcEQLMyACgqYd9PamjCs7ugYLNiFmccjuoljwAoMEe G+30tmEQpLX//sqF57nfPy/o =Jfqt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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