New Failsafe Graphics Mode For Ubuntu 505
ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."
Oooooooh! (Score:4, Funny)
I guess that's an advance.
Re:Oooooooh! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:5, Insightful)
This is more "easy GUI re-configuration of X.org when X.org blows up".
Well
Re:Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:5, Insightful)
A command line driven OS is, to 99.999% of humanity, not an operating system. The OS is the metaphor. Dropping into a text-based mode might as well be powering down. In fact it's almost certainly worse, from a user's perspective - more confronting, confusing and frustrating.
It does no good to tell my Mom or my non-tech friend "Don't worry, your operating system is fine, it's just the GUI." They likely blew something up using the GUI. Trying to find which text file to edit, and how to edit text files, and how to navigate directories, all with a CLI, is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If I break it in GUI, I need to be able to fix it in GUI, or it won't get fixed.
Stop being a part of the problem here. If X doesn't work, the OS is broken. This is a major improvement in Ubuntu overall, not just some minor fix to X.
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How many Linux users do you think do anything without loading a GUI on their userspace system?
Re:Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:4, Insightful)
Please learn what an operating system is. You don't know what you are talking about. The machine is functional without a GUI. You can do nearly everything without a GUI that you can do with a GUI. Some things are even substantially faster at the command line.
If you believe a command-line shell can be considered part of the "operating system", you have zero grounds for saying a graphical shell is not. They are merely different implementations of the same concept.
Re:Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:5, Insightful)
To which users? Linux is strongest in the server room/data center. Why would you bother with running X on your db server when you can just ssh in and use GUI tools from a desktop that is running X? That desktop might even be a Windows box running cygwin/Xorg. X is not Linux, and Linux is not X.
Re:Linux has always had "safe mode". (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they didn't, but we really aren't dealing with the same userbase. The number of computer users back then is significantly smaller and more computer savvy than the computer users of today.
Just because people don't know something doesn't mean they can't learn btw. Learning is good.
Well, if you don't want more people using linux, then force them to learn the command line. Seriously, the average computer user doesn't even have a clue (nor do they care) what the "black box with white letters" (i.e., a MSDOS prompt window) is, what it is for, or why they need it.
The vast majority of linux systems don't have X installed btw. They don't even have monitors or keyboards.
We are not talking about servers. That is a completely different (and significantly more knowledgeable) userbase. We are talking about desktop computers that "normal" people (i.e., people that don't eat, sleep, and dream about computers) will be using on a daily basis.
Most of the most advanced software for the platform does not require X at all.
Regardless of how advanced a piece of software is, if it doesn't run in a window or have an icon they can click on, then it does not exist to "normal" people.
It is attitudes like this that hold back the wide-spread adoption of Linux on the desktop.
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No, if X doesn't work, you haven't configured X properly. Don't say the OS is broken...its not. Maybe the distro is ;p
If X doesn't work, the COMPUTER is broken. And chances of a non-techie (or even a techie with limited Linux CLI experience) fixing a broken Linux install from the command line without knowing exactly what was broken are very, very small.
Your average computer user (and your average Linux user is approaching your average computer user in this sense, it's the price of becoming popular instead of staying a clique of elitist geeks) it doesn't matter if it's X, Gnome, their nVidia drivers, or the anterior dors
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In terms of modern computing from the aspect of the average end user, the OS is OS + GUI + basic applications, period. Not only that, but continuing to ignore this simple fact marginalizes Linux, especially since most college age computer users have never used a PC without a mouse and GUI, ever. Meeting basic user expectations in terms of usability only helps the so-ca
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No it doesn't. I work at
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Common posting mistake (Score:2, Funny)
Again
I will be more careful next time
Again
I will be more careful next time
Again
I will be more careful next time
ok I got it... again sorry dude. :)
great! (Score:5, Interesting)
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D:\ubuntu-desktop.iso
Re:great! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:great! (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I don't do post-burn checks, then the disc will be a bad burn? How odd...
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Often, people will download an ISO, click on it in XP which very helpfuly asks "make a CD ?".. which they do.. but they are not making a bootable CD.. all they have done is copy the ISO to the CD.
If you browse a newly created Ubuntu disk.. it will NOT be one file ending in .iso
There should be several directories.. If not it isn't burned correctly.
You need a proper burning program like Nero or Active ISO Bur
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I don't encounter many computers so old they won't run win98 anymore, or winxp for that matter. I have encountered MANY that have x issues. This is a godsend that I have been begging for, for years.
Re:great! (Score:5, Informative)
It is very good news, but I hope this fail safe also works for everyone in the installer. I had a machine which wasn't possible to install Feisty Fawn on it, via the graphical Ubuntu install program. This was due to the default resolution being lower than required, for the window size of the install program. (So it wasn't possible to complete options in the installer windows and so continue with the install, using that program). (It occured with the on board graphics card on a new PC build at work, so the quickest work around was simply to put a better graphics card in which I had to hand and was planning on using it at some point anyway. A software only solution would have taken longer and isn't going to be so easy for non-technical users who just hope to try out Ubuntu. (I would expect it to be unfortunately enough to put off some non-technical users).
So anything they can do to improve the graphical support is very good news. The more Ubuntu users the better.
Re:great! (Score:5, Informative)
[alt+leftmousebutton] will allow you to drag the window around as needed from any part of that window. Should have been a tip during install. I found this out by accident.
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Beyond the atypical odd-ball hardware which is reasonable, I typically have fundamental installation problems. I'm not the only one either.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/+bugs?field.search text=ubiquity&search=Search+Bug+Reports&field.scop e=all&field.scope.target= [launchpad.net]
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Mine wouldn't work on one system because of bad sectors in RAM.
So that is 100% minus one at most.
Positive step (Score:2, Interesting)
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>we won't have the satisfaction to know we are running a better OS anymore
I don't think were gonna run outta debatable things.
I remember back when Slashdot first got started. There was a guy, don't remember his name but he was a regular, who posted all the time and was quite interesting. Used to tell everybody to quit pushing Linux to the masses. T
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Not due to running a particular operating system anyway. Interestingly, most of those who have a right to smugness and superiority are probably running Linux. That is, most who have a great enough intellect that they SHOULD feel superior to the idiotic conformist cattle that comprises the general population.
This is the sort of thing OS needs to focus on (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst to the average Slashdotter this may sound silly, I'd bet it's one of the biggest things that puts your average Joe off Linux through the years. Being able to easier recover from broken Linux installs will, imo go a long way to keeping people using Linux rather than the current situation where quite a few try, but many give up. Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows. This is however why I'd say Ubuntu has been making such headway in attracting new users to Linux because they do seem to understand what problems exactly that up until now have been putting many new users off Linux.
I think that is more a problem of perception. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
Personally, I find it far, Far, FAR, FAR easier to recover a damaged Linux box than a damaged Windows box. But that is primarily because the damaged Windows boxes that I get have major Registry issues.
As long as you can get an Ubuntu box to boot to the command line, it is "easy" to fix. "Easy" is in quotes because it takes a little bit of knowledge. But not much. I'm running Gutsy Gibbon at home and even with 2 problems (it is still alpha) I've been able to recover my system without rebooting in less than 5 minutes.
The magic is in APT and the repositories. As long as I can connect to the repositories and run APT, I can remove the problem or re-install over it.
As more people become familiar with Ubuntu (and Debian and Debian-based distributions) the "fear" of Linux will vanish. It's just so much EASIER than Windows. (unless your hardware isn't supported but that's a different issue)
It is a problem of perception. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.
And the problem with your perception is that you think that the linux command line mentality is better for the average joe user. I don't disagree that if you know what you're doing, it is much easier to fix a broken Linux than it is to fix a broken Windows. But the key here is that most people don't know what they're doing. Parts of the design of Windows are aimed at users that don't know what they're doing so that their PC will at least be somewhat functional for them with all of the familiar interfaces even if something bad happens.
You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with. If you can't expect failure in your software and implement necessary messages and functionality to recover to a close but not quite mode expected by the user, it doesn't mean a damn thing because they will end up calling the nearest geek to fix it. And when they do that, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to fix or even if you can't fix it. They've already lost time waiting for your service and your service is only seen as a backup effort. If geeks were not available, they probably would have considered their computer broken and the only way to fix it would be to purchase a new one.
The people at Ubuntu are doing more for linux and open source software adoption than anyone else has. Take a hint and learn something about understanding other (non-techy) user's viewpoints. If all open source developers could actually understand those users, then linux might eventually be ready for the desktop.
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I'd say the important part is that when something goes wrong with a Unix system, it CAN be fixed, AT ALL.
It's not some anecdote that Windows users have to reinstall all the time... There really is no other way to fix serious problems in Windows. Even after 10 years of experience, and extensive knowledge of Window
Re:I think that is more a problem of perception. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, I can't let that go.
Yes Mandrake was the first user-friendly distro, but they messed up several times.
1) Adverts in the installer
2) All the
3) Sacking of Gael Duval was the final straw. It shows the mentality of a lost management team.
Ubuntu has filled the gap left by where Mandrake could have been and Mandriva is.
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You must live in a special little world of your own. The size of the repositories are nowhere near comparable. Even after you add Apt for RPM and the 3rd party repositories for use with it (and I have had problems with conflicts between those third party repositories) the software selection doesn't compare.
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In Windows you get very-obvious tools which may or may not help you figure out what the problem is and very-obvious tools which will probably *not* get the problem fixed. The problem is too hard to solve most of the time for an average user.
In Linux you get no few clues as to what went wrong and no clues as to what too
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Again, what's 'foo'? There's no point in Grandma Josephine writing that down on her 3x5. What's the actual command?
Are you really so arrogant that you assume that the kind of user who's likely to bork their GUI and not know how to fix it from the command line also has a spare machine sitting right there where they can Goo
Re:This is the sort of thing OS needs to focus on (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Linux since MkLinux zero-point-something, and when I had to update a Gentoo box from XFree to X.org, my old conf file didn't work and xconfigurator (or whichever one the command-line tool is called) didn't generate a working file. Eventually it turned out that a serial mouse isn't supported, and switching to a USB mouse allowed a working conf file to be generated that I could then tweak. I never did get the beloved old mouse working.
So anything that improves the X configuration process is a very welcome improvement over calling users names when the crappy old tools don't work.
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You've got to be kidding. When something goes wrong in windows, standard practice is to format and reinstall. At least with linux you have ways to diagnose and repair the system.
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Dual booting into Windows to trouble shoot X is a real trial of a newbie's patience.
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Cue the zealots screaming 'fix it yourself!'
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Most usual cause of Windows boot fail
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sudo rm
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I've been a power computer user for some years now, I built my own machine and know windows backwards, however linux confuses the heck out of me.
You're a power WINDOWS user. Don't worry - it's a common mistake. ;)
Seriously though... it seems to me that this is a core issue. People gain a certain familiarity with a particular system (according to marketshare, that's likely to be Windows) and then feel threatened when confronted with something entirely different.
Years ago, I did desktop support for a large organization. There was a small number of Macs out there... very few of my tech coworkers wanted to deal with them. Myself included. Unfortun
Very good (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember that back in the day YaST (SuSE's Yet Another Setup Tool) used to be incredibly handy because the CLI and GUI for the tool, which controlled almost all configurable options of the Linux distro, would behave almost exactly the same. The CLI used curses for display, and I believe the GUI was QT-based. They functioned pretty much identically. Personally, I have no problem just editing a text file. But, if you are a linux newbie and you poke around in the GUI and mess something up, then suddenly you can't start X, you feel a little bit safer knowing that there's a tool you can use to revert your settings that works exactly the same on the CLI as it does in the GUI, so you can access the program in almost any situation, even from a remote terminal.
Good! (Score:3, Informative)
Both - because it depends upon the situation. (Score:2)
Unless you're in an office environment where you have many machines that are identical. Then you can just push out the default configuration and allow the user to change from there (<Ctrl><Alt><+> & <Ctrl><Alt><->).
Having the GUI is great for home users who will have every p
Thanks, Ubuntu. (Score:5, Interesting)
Changing to Linux is now something I'm thinking about on at least a weekly basis, and the upcoming version Ubuntu seems very likely to make me leave Windows. (Except for a small gaming partition).
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i have been an MS user/programmer since 3.1, and before that I cut my teeth on MSDOS. Today I split between linux (Ubuntu feisty) for home and ms or work. i will do what I can to avoid Vista.
Linux Ubuntu is not quite ready for the average user, but almost there. I've had to do a few more steps to get things to work then your normal click and go crowd, but not much more.
Maybe by Krazy Koala they will surpass M$ in user friendly adjustment, and developers will discover that compiling source code to
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I think you are correct there. There's a gap in the middle between power user and web+email types who have needs a bit more complex but can't do more than "click and go". With the rate of improvement of Ubuntu I suspect that gap will disappear shortly.
It's getting close though. I'm reminded of the DOS days where a moderately in
How is this news? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
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In case you didn't notice, that particular distribution became a synonym of Linux among the laymen.
Nice (Score:3, Interesting)
Also Planned (Score:3, Funny)
Planned for a while... (Score:5, Informative)
OSS on the move! (Score:5, Funny)
I suggested this ages ago! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Windows doesn't have this problem because when manf. make video cards and monitors, they (usually) just make sure their product is "good enough for windows".
Re:I suggested this ages ago! (Score:4, Interesting)
The problems occur when you do something as simple as move the graphics card to a different slot after installation. X is not smart enough to figure out that it just needs to substitute a different PCI bus ID.
Who is this Bryce Harrington? (Score:2)
Just kidding. Bryce is a fine fellow, and is also the excellent boss of the Inkscape [inkscape.org] project.
Cool, now we need better font support (Score:2)
I sometimes wonder if the Ubuntu team should *really* focus on fixing all the problems with GNOME/KDE. Put all their energy into making the GUI as good as it can possibly be. All the other pieces of a Linux d
Modes (Score:2)
I say this because I know that many of the current GTK dialogs are too large for 640x480, and because there are Windows dialogs that are annoyingly unusable in Windows "safe mode".
Sax2? (Score:2)
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This is a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
In my kitchen is a laptop. It's running Ubuntu. It's the machine my non-techy wife uses. She has been using linux since 2002 and I would guess she represents a "typical" user. Present her with a GUI, dialog boxes, a clear and user friendly interface and she's fine; put her in front of a shell prompt and she's lost.
Features like this "Failsafe Graphics Mode" are critical if we expect more widespread adoption of linux. This is where Microsoft and Apple have done a very good job of making it easy for a typical person with limited or no technical background to configure and use the machines. A previous poster suggested that linux has always had a failsafe mode; but, booting into single user mode and dumping someone at a shell prompt is not good enough. At that point most people would give up. We have to work to make the platform as user friendly as possible if we expect it to be adopted. linux needs more of these user friendly interfaces for diagnosing problems and configuring hardware. That laptop my wife uses, in order to get the wifi interface to work I had to drop back to a command prompt to troubleshoot the problem, then edit a couple of configuration files to make it work. (and for the record, it's a Ralink 2500 based card made by Asus, which is supposed to be well supported) That's just unacceptable to most users. Let's try to keep the typical end user in mind when we design these projects. I think the folks working on Ubuntu are setting a fine example.
This is new? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure its nice, but doesnt seem 'earth shaking'
Welcome to the 90's (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't look that good.. (Score:5, Interesting)
1) You're running an x86 PC with a VESA compliant graphics card, or any platform which has 'legacy VGA' registers mapped. What about PPC or something? It's frighteningly rare for the kernel framebuffer not to work on these platforms but there are some times where the X.org driver/autodetect or most commonly GDM doesn't quite configure your card correctly and hands you a garbage display. I never understood why X.org can't have a TRUE framebuffer console driver which simply inherits the mode the kernel gives it.
This isn't bulletproof it's just a band-aid.
2) Everyone loves GTK+ - well, I pretty much don't. Does this mean the Kubuntu guys have to install GTK now? Actually not, because there is a cute KDE app for it, but seriously.. why does everyone fawn over the GTK stuff and never show the Qt stuff?
In fact, it turns out this was a KDE app to start with. Quote;
Which just begs the question, why wasn't this news when the KDE app got written?
3) Everyone loves GDM, well, I don't. What's up with KDM these days? Does it handle it better? None of the developers are telling the success story on any project I'm watching right now, it's all "GDM breaks this" and "we have problems with that". So it worked on KDE before, but nobody thought to say "this is a great feature, now we port it to GTK"?
There are some very strange priorities in the software world these days.. bug reports flood the net and nobody talks about anything being finished..
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Nobody, but there are graphical tools that will fairly reliably detect and configure your X for you. Or you can look up the settings for your card/monitor. What X really needs to do is detect your monitor and video card dynamically on every boot.
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The only thing that would merit it would be a fundamental change to the rendering model necessitating a core protocol change, and really, X's renderi
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You might not have heard, but these days the X.Org Foundation [x.org] is the one running the show and making the reference implementation (latest being X11R7.2 [x.org] as of now). If you've used a desktop-oriented distribution of Linux within the last five years, chances are that it came equipped with it as the default choice.
In any case, I'm not exactly sure about what cause would be served by changing the base protocol.
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This has been a glaring hole in Linux desktop systems until... now? It is a feature that should always be present. Manual X configuration is a painful touch and go process even if you know how.
So basically, it makes sense to add this to the base release because it is a capability that is needed for virtually every X installation (for modularity you should be able to remove it of course, embedded applications a
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Probably because the original GP post proposed moving from X11 to X12 to fix usability problems, but the '11' actually refers to the version of the low level client-server communications protocol, which has little to do with usability.
Re:Nice (Score:5, Informative)
Because the protocol version number is "11", and the name "X11" includes the protocol version number. The X Window System (or just "X" for short) has been stable on version 11 of the protocol for a long time now.
The name "X12" implies a change in the protocol that is so serious that no existing X software will know how to talk to it (because all existing X software is X11 software).
They keep on changing the release revision; we are up to 7.2 now, as in "X11R7.2".
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Take in computers that need repair, fix them using my bench and give the tower back to the customer knowing their system would automatically adjust itself to their display and input devices when they went home from win95b on. The fact that I STILL can't do that with Linux/X today is just pathetic.
The X.org guys are in fact working on that. The fact that we can't do it today is just legacy fallout from the poor way that the Xfree86 guys used to run things.
A short (and not polite) summary of the history of X:
-- X invented at a university. Runs quickly through version numbers but stabilises at 11.
-- X not generally available for free for years.
-- Some guys make a free version of X for the 386, and call it "Xfree86".
-- Xfree86 becomes the standard X for free OSes.
-- Xfree86 project management becomes an obvious problem.
-- Talented X developer Keith Packard starts talking to people about ways to improve Xfree86 project management.
-- Xfree86 lead developers accuse Keith Packard of trying to "subvert" Xfree86 management, and kick Keith Packard out of Xfree86. Keith Packard goes to X.org.
-- Xfree86 lead developers go completely insane, and change the licence for X to include onerous new "advertising" requirements.
-- The whole Free Software world, more or less simultaneously, abandons Xfree86, and X.org becomes the new standard X.
-- Xfree86 is now completely irrelevant.
-- X.org guys (including Keith Packard) revamp X to make it easier to work on, revamp dev protocols to make it easier to get things done, and start making cool stuff happen.
Feel free to look up X11, Xfree86, etc. on Wikipedia if you want to know more.
Re:Mark Your History Books (Score:5, Funny)
Done already. In fact, Linux has many of them: apt-get, yum, emerge, and more! It's a veritable cornucopia of unified program installation methods.
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Until every task the average user needs to do can be done with a GUI, Linux will not be ready for prime time.
Re:Mark Your History Books (Score:4, Informative)
Synaptic contains a list of repositories. Each repository is a website that has a group of applications for the OS. Synaptic comes with some default repositories and has an easy way for the user to add new ones using a GUI interface (or a text interface).
You run synaptic and it will give you a list of all possible programs to install on the OS. Everything. You click on a program to install. If it requires other applications to be installed, it will warn you that it will also install the other applications.
The magic comes when a new version of any application (ie: Firefox) comes out that you already have installed. The OS knows that there is a new version because the repositories will have a version number higher than the version installed on your system. The OS will put a little star in the corner of the screen. Click on it will bring up synaptic with the option to install the newer version.
Think of it as a Windows Update that does not send information about your system to any website, and which can update any program installed on your system (including OS files and files not distributed by Microsoft), regardless of who makes it. (repositories are available for proprietary products such as Opera and Google Earth).
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Re:Mark Your History Books (Score:4, Informative)
yes.
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Far, far, better than what Windows or OSX offers IMHO.
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But in case you're not a troll, nearly all Linux distributions have come with package management systems for some time, and most of those have GUI front-ends for them. Admittedly some of those GUIs are difficult to use, but your comment is still quite ironic given that neither
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Re:Useless (Score:5, Informative)
A Windows user boots Ubuntu on a new laptop, say, and gets a low-res 'safe mode' telling them that there's no specific support for their video hardware ("Ubuntu failed to start the windowing system because it was unable to properly configure your hardware").
Out of the box Xorg supports more video cards than Windows does. It also supports the use of generic drivers for standards compliant cards, such as VESA.
They can't download a driver package and update.
Of course they can. ATI and nVidia, the two biggest graphics card vendors provide Linux driver packages you can download. In fact, Ubuntu has a utility that will do this automatically for you.
They can't use a driver off a CD that came with the machine, because there aren't any.
Generally it's the same with Windows. My last computer, a Compaq, didn't come with any CD. The only option was to create a "restore" CD/DVD which amounted to little more than a disk image. Say I want to install a different version of Windows than what the machine was imaged with, where are the drivers?
None of your arguments against X hold water, and of course if you actually put some thought into it, you'd be able to come up with some simple reasons why failsafe mode is useful. What if your X has the right drivers, but the auto detect failed or something you did borked the configuration? With failsafe mode you can revert back to a correct driver setting and recover your desktop rather quickly and painlessly.
You cite Windows as "the superior way," but don't you even realize that Windows has a graphics safe mode for exactly the same reason as Ubuntu has now? If anything Ubuntu is mimicking something Windows has done for over a decade. If the feature were as useless as you claim, why hasn't Microsoft removed that feature by now, and why do I have so much first hand experience utilizing it at home and work?
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I do it all the time. I never even noticed, since the binary drivers and their kernel modules get upgraded along with the kernel itself with the upgrade manager.
Oh unless you are talking about compiling your own kernel, then you will have to recompile the nvidia kernel module... Of course, if you want to compile your own kernel, then you can surely live with the consequences. For everyone else, there's no issue, since the update manager u
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It will not detect your video card, monitor, etc. right the first time in every case. Especially if you're using weird and old hardware.
This gives an easy way for a user to try to fix it themselves, without having to use the command line.
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You're so right. After all, Apple's use of non-standard interfaces like PCI, USB, FireWire, AGP and others means that Apple can easily account for anything you've plugged into your Mac. There's only a couple of possible options for PCI slots, surely?
Well, I'm not really talking about hardware interfaces in and of themselves, but I'll skip your bitterly sarcastic tone and respond just the same: In terms of what's made to be Mac compatible? Yes, absolutely. You're *not* going to find people trying to mak
Re:oes this work for drivers that need X to be.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Now I can try linux again! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The killer for me was "ergonomic" refresh rates (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, if they still work, save them in your cellar! They will soon be collectors items and you can make a fortune!
But if you are trying to work with them, it's obvious that the only reason you don't microwave your install CD is that you are so cheap you make Scrooge look lavish. I can spend $5-$10 at the local thrift store to get SVGA, 1280x1024 monitors, 15 inch. If you're still using IBM VGA monitors and you expect everything else to work on them, you are [
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a certified Linux admin. I'm one of "today's linux users".
I am not afraid of the command line. All my servers are installed without an X server.
What I am afraid of is a cryptic "no screens found" error from xorg. This happens way too often.
When you install display drivers, this can happen despite seemingly doing everything right.
I'm stunned it took this long to get failsafe X server support.