What IS IT with these crappy new DE's?

[MaxPF]

Gnome, KDE, and even Microsoft seems to think keyboards and mice are obsolete. I say this because they all seem to be developing DE's that seem like they were intended for touchscreen pads, and thus they blow on actual computers.

For the record, i am referring to Gnome 3.x (3.4 in my specific case), but KDE and even Windows 8 are f**ked (although i don't really care about Windows).

What brought this on was my recent upgrade to Fedora 17. I was on Fedora 16 previously, which sported the equally hideous Gnome 3.2, but thankfully the Avant Window Navigator saved the DE and made it fairly useful. Workspace switching was still cumbersome and stupid, and I hadn't researched ways to make it better, so I lived with it. Well, Gnome 3.4 is no longer compatible with the now-unmaintained Avant Window navigator, so I found myself pretty much screwed when I installed F17...

Luckily, a bit of researched gave me some decent solutions. Turns out https://extensions.gnome.org/ has all sorts of useful extensions (after you sort through them to find the decent ones that do what you want). Also, installing Gnome tweak tool gives far greater control vs the limited stock control panel. Now, I have a compact upper panel with my commonly used launchers, a task bar, and 4 fixed workspaces with a panel switcher and <ctrl>+<alt>+<up or down> switching. FINALLY! Gnome 3.4 is useable!

Also, as a side note: Anyone who suggests Ubuntu can choke on a bag full of d!cks! Their "Unity" interface is beyond atrocious! Whoever came up with that DE theme needs to have their scrotum ground under a stiletto heel. On top of it, Ubuntu is buggy and seems designed for dumbasses, not power users. Linux Mint is better, but it is ubuntu based, which means Debian based, and I prefer the way Red Hat/Fedora structures things. RHEL and Solaris are my backgrounds, and I found using apt-get/.deb on the CLI to be a PITA for getting the correct packages vs yum/.rpm. So there! :wink:

/Rant Off

 

[alrock]

I have no idea what you are talking about :emb:

 

[4508js]

I have no idea what you are talking about :emb:

^ Yeah what he said !!

 

[Gunner_45]

All I got out of it was that little Ubuntu (His Feed the Children adoptee),
apparently has some sort of bug infestation and/or a medical issue with
his genitailia, that some how results in a type of choking incident.

Also, he may or may not be wearing a red fedora.

CPS should probably become involved.

 

[Pappibri]

WOW...OK.. I understand alot of what you are saying due to the fact that I am in Network and Security Management. But I am still early in the field and still learning alot. That was a earful to say the least. Maybe I can bend your ear sometime on computer related issues..

 

[Bigunit]

 

[autumn walker]

lol wow that was quite a rant.

I have not really used Linux for awhile... I've basically switched to OS X; it's my new favorite *nix distro

 

[cbetts]

I found a way under Ubuntu to allow the Gnome 2 like taskbar under Gnome 3. I kinda hated Unity when I first used it but have grown accustomed to it now. Only thing I wish it had was a window list since I usually have about twenty terminal sessions open at any given time.

There are still a plethora of window managers for UNIX/Linux though. XFCE still does a good job with minimal horsepower. LXDE and Enlightment also provide the old feel as well.

I can clearly remember the uproar with users when Microsoft came out with Windows 95 and forced users to use the Start button. We adjusted then, we will adjust now. Personally, I think the new method is going to be better. It will allow us to use the same interface whether it be on a desktop or a tablet. Yes, some more tweaking needs to be done but I think it is the right direction.

 

[LagunaH1]

I really like Ubuntu's Unity UI. Props to Ubuntu for daring to be different, but they seem to have been *cough* "inspired" by OS X rather a lot I think. In general, I like Ubuntu for desktop applications, it's one of the most problem-free distros I have played with and it is *very* well supported by its user community.

In my opinion, the IT world is one of the places where things are *always* changing and I have found that it works better for me to try and keep up rather than feel left behind. I still wonder about the whole "touch computing" idea..... It's great for casual web surfing and navigating apps where you read or "consume" whatever data the app is presenting, but to me, a real mouse and keyboard is exponentially more effective for *any* kind of data entry, even just a post like this one: I typed it out much, much quicker on a keyboard than I ever could have on a tablet with a touch interface.

It'll be interesting to see how things evolve as generations who grew up with touch computing gets to the workforce and starts to influence things. I'm sure they will find ways to do things that none of us could have even imagined.

 

[RuggedH2]

[video=youtube;9bZkp7q19f0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0[/video]

 

[MaxPF]

lol wow that was quite a rant.

I have not really used Linux for awhile... I've basically switched to OS X; it's my new favorite *nix distro

Ugh. Rather than point out all the ways OS X sucks, I will post up a link that sums it up nicely: :link:

I found a way under Ubuntu to allow the Gnome 2 like taskbar under Gnome 3. I kinda hated Unity when I first used it but have grown accustomed to it now. Only thing I wish it had was a window list since I usually have about twenty terminal sessions open at any given time.

One of many reasons Unity sucks.

I really like Ubuntu's Unity UI. Props to Ubuntu for daring to be different, but they seem to have been *cough* "inspired" by OS X rather a lot I think. In general, I like Ubuntu for desktop applications, it's one of the most problem-free distros I have played with and it is *very* well supported by its user community.

Unity wasn't the only thing I hated about Ubuntu. I suppose it's geared for users migrating over from Windows or Mac, but I found it extremely limiting. Also, as I mentioned above, I prefer the Fedora/Red Hat way of doing things, and I think they have better tested systems (especially RHEL/CentOS). So many Ubuntu/Mint/Debian people wax on about how great apt-get and .deb is, whereas my experience has been that yum and .rpm is a superior system. A simple example is the installation of kernel-headers. First off, they are called "linux-headers" in Ubuntu, which is dumb. Dumber yet is I have to tell apt-get which kernel version to get the headers for "apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`". In Fedora, I do a simple "yum install kernel-headers" and it knows which headers to get. Also, apt-get doesn't seem to have deltas like the yum/.rpm system, so large updates (i.e. LibreOffice, kernel and sources, etc) can take more time to download. None of these are really problems or deal breakers, but like i said, I prefer the Fedora/Red Hat way of doing things.

I think a lot of it comes down to the type of user and how computer saavy you are. IMO Fedora is just as easy for a noob to use as Ubuntu. Ubuntu does simplify some things, especially non-open-source and 3rd party packages: In Ubuntu, you can just open up the software installer and install, say, Adobe Reader. In Fedora, you have to install the repository first, THEN you can install Adobe Reader with the installer. These can both be done via the GUI, but it is an extra step that you don't have to do in Ubuntu. OTOH, for the power user I think Fedora is superior. You can configure Ubuntu for power use, but you're much closer with a stock Fedora install. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that Ubuntu is designed for easy use/transition by people familiar with Windows and OS X, whereas Fedora gives you bleeding edge features and is designed for power users and developers.

For the non-Linux non-power users that have no clue how to use a CLI or scripts, they would not believe how easy it is to set up a system with scripting. They would not believe how easy it is to backup or clone your home directory on an external drive, or synchronize it with another machine. I have my laptop and desktop synchronized, so I can move between them seamlessly and have all my data accessible on either machine. Not to mention backed up (redundantly, since the desktop has two hard drives in a RAID 1 setup). Yes, you can do this on Windows, but not nearly as easily. On Linux, if I decide to do a fresh install when I upgrade, I have a simple script that automates the install of all the software I use. I fire it off, come back in an hour, and it's ready to go. Plug in my USB hard drive, do a simple rsync command, and my entire home directory is copied back onto the machine. It took about 4 hours for me to install F17, install updates, install all the apps I use, copy my home directory back onto the hard drive, and be able to use my system. Of that 4 hours, I spent about 10 minutes at they keyboard. The rest was automatic. How cool is that?

 

[cbetts]

I used to be a die hard Solaris admin. Over the years, I have migrated most of my apps at work over to Red Hat or Centos. Red Hat variants tend to have the most support mainly due to them being in the game so early.

I found Debian variants to be pretty simple. Yeah, it is different than RPMs but they still have the same end result. I found Ubuntu much easier to admin in an enterprise. I tried RH Satellite Server but it was a pricey product. Also, I work on segregated networks so any form of RPM management system is out the window. I was able to mirror the packages I need to keep up to date onto a DVD and bring it into my other networks.

Most of the glitches I have witnessed in Ubuntu were from running developmental (non LTS) releases or running LTS too soon. I have learned to wait about six months after a new LTS release to move over. Only draw back is you will not be running the cutting edge stuff.

I do not see one variant being better than the other. It all depends on what you are doing, how big of a mass you are deploying and what you are comfortable handling. Kinda like comparing Hummers and Jeeps.

Oh, my kickstart server dishes up images for Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu and Solaris! Okay, the Solaris is handled by a jumpstart server, but it is the same hardware (ESXi).

 

[LagunaH1]

I've basically switched to OS X; it's my new favorite *nix distro

Same here. OS X is the biggest reason folks like Canonical haven't grown into bigger companies IMO: OS X Is an excellent OS with good commercial support. Apple as a company still has a *lot* to learn about customer support and being transparent but that's an entirely different discussion :cheers:

 

[MaxPF]

I used to be a die hard Solaris admin.

Same here. Now that Oracle owns it I won't touch it.

Over the years, I have migrated most of my apps at work over to Red Hat or Centos. Red Hat variants tend to have the most support mainly due to them being in the game so early.

I found Debian variants to be pretty simple. Yeah, it is different than RPMs but they still have the same end result. I found Ubuntu much easier to admin in an enterprise.

How so?

I tried RH Satellite Server but it was a pricey product. Also, I work on segregated networks so any form of RPM management system is out the window.

Explain please. I'm curious.

 

[cbetts]

Explain please. I'm curious.

Red Hat Satellite server requires an internet connection which my segregated nets do not have. I have tried multiple times to work with Red Hat on a solution but I am not prepared to pay their outrageous fees. Granted, I probably could script something like I have for my Ubuntu group, but why? I already have a great script from Ubuntu that does the job . . . and I do not have to maintain it!

I am not fully away from Solaris since I am one of the few admins out there that use trusted extensions along with Sun Ray thin clients. Since Oracle (Sun) hired Ian Murdock to rewrite the Solaris packaging system, I think adopting Debian style packages has benefited me since they (Solaris and Ubuntu) now share a similar system.

Please don't take this as me knocking RPMs. At one time, I also was a sysadmin on a Mandrake/Mandriva network and used RPMs there. When it comes down to it, they are both performing the same function and are only as good as the code they put on the computer.

 

[MaxPF]

Red Hat Satellite server requires an internet connection which my segregated nets do not have. I have tried multiple times to work with Red Hat on a solution but I am not prepared to pay their outrageous fees. Granted, I probably could script something like I have for my Ubuntu group, but why? I already have a great script from Ubuntu that does the job . . . and I do not have to maintain it!

How does the Ubuntu setup get away with not having an internet connection? One way or another you have to get updates and patches to the systems on the isolated nets, which means either a dedicated internal mirror or sneakernet. When I was a Solaris admin we always downloaded the patch clusters/software installs/updates onto our own internal server and pushed them out to the individual workstations. This was primarily to alleviate bandwith congestion on the external network line and to speed up the process, since internal networks have much more distributed bandwidth.

I am not fully away from Solaris since I am one of the few admins out there that use trusted extensions along with Sun Ray thin clients. Since Oracle (Sun) hired Ian Murdock to rewrite the Solaris packaging system, I think adopting Debian style packages has benefited me since they (Solaris and Ubuntu) now share a similar system.

If I still worked in a Solaris shop I wouldn't care - I'd admin the systems and collect my paycheck. But on my own personal machines I see no use in messing with it anymore. It is too bad that Oracle killed OpenSolaris and went closed source with the current Solaris - Solaris still has a lot of really cool features that no other OS has. However, even back in 2001 when I admin'd Solaris boxes we were phasing them out in favor of Dells running Red Hat. We ran EDA software, and the Sun hardware couldn't compete with the speed of the x86 boxes running Linux. By the time we decided to deploy Linux workstations we had already been running x86 servers with Red Hat for about a year. They ran simulation jobs (i.e. SPICE) FAR faster than much more expensive Sun hardware. Granted, that was a function of the hardware, not the OS, but Solaris X86 was available back then, and Red Hat consistently beat it doing the same work on the same hardware. Hence the name "Slowaris" :wink: I also tested Linux on the SPARC hardware for grins, and it was substantially faster than Solaris. No apps would run on it though, so it didn't matter much. I do remember that, back then, Solaris handled heavy loads better, but that lead disappeared years ago as well. Oh well, time marches on. Anyway, enough rambling on that...

Please don't take this as me knocking RPMs. At one time, I also was a sysadmin on a Mandrake/Mandriva network and used RPMs there. When it comes down to it, they are both performing the same function and are only as good as the code they put on the computer.

No worries. I realize that, from a packaging point of view, RPMs and DEBs do the same thing with equal efficiency. I seldom do rpms on the CLI anymore - everything gets done with package managers these days (unless you are buildng a package for distribution, of course). I just observed that yum seemed to do the same tasks with fewer keystrokes vs apt. I know back in the day RPMs left a bad taste in sysadmin's mouths, but thankfully those days are long gone.

What tasks to the Ubuntu machines you administer used for? In the commercial environments I am familiar with it was typical to use Red Hat, SuSE, or Debian (or CentOS noandays) since those were the distros explicitly tested and certified to run the EDA software we used. On the server side everyone stuck with those OSes as well because they were the most stable, tested, and had the most current security and bug patches.

 

[skeptic]

LinuxMint - probably the best distro for those who want a Windows XP/7 like DE. Easy to install, comes with all the "non-free" stuff out of the box that the Ubuntu purists (canonical) hate, and easy to use. This is what I'd recommend to any non-techy that wanted to give Linux a shot. The biggest issue to me is it's designed to not support online version updates (package updates, fixes, etc. all all easy upgrades). Not too difficult to get around and upgrade on the fly, but I'd rather stick with a distro that is designed for this and is well tested.

I switched from LinuxMint to Ubuntu a while back just to make it easier for upgrades, but I HATE the new Unity DE so I switched to Kubuntu. I don't follow things like KDE 5.0 changes, but I'm unaware of them making drastic "tablet centric" changes like Gnome did.

Another reason for me to go with (K)ubuntu on my desktop is I use Mythbuntu for my media center setup. Backend in a wiring closet, front-ends at each TV. Sticking with a ubuntu variant on my desktop and my kids desktops helps to keep everything at the same version. I'll probably switch to XBMC for the front-ends when version xbmc 12 is released, but that's another topic.

 

[cbetts]

There are some scripts that have been developed to grab updates from the Debian repositories and make a CD/DVD/tape image to carry to my isolated nets. Nothing fancy, but it works. As far as apps, we have a lot of engineering stuff (Cadance, MatLab, Green Hills) along with a lot of internal tools. Some of these were "tweaked" to get them to run on the different distributions since many companies only support Red Hat.

As far as speed, my big iron Solaris boxes (E25K and T4) will clean house over Linux. Solaris runs better on multi-CPU environments especially when you get over 32 CPUs. I also run many zones on each box. Small servers and workstations . . . Linux kicks butt. Generally, I agree with the Slowlaris comment, but not everyone can afford the big iron. Mips/Dollar, Linux is a much better bargain.

 

[MaxPF]

There are some scripts that have been developed to grab updates from the Debian repositories and make a CD/DVD/tape image to carry to my isolated nets. Nothing fancy, but it works. As far as apps, we have a lot of engineering stuff (Cadance, MatLab, Green Hills) along with a lot of internal tools. Some of these were "tweaked" to get them to run on the different distributions since many companies only support Red Hat.

Heh, nothing like doing updates via Sneakernet. That would be an easy script to write for yum/rpm based systems, but as you said you don't have to maintain it, which is always a Good Thing™ We scripted most stuff, but the scripts were written long before I showed up and generally needed no maintenance, so it was easy to keep things running smoothly. We ran Cadence tools as well as Synopsis tools and others. IIRC, Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian were all supported distros, so I imagine running them on Ubuntu wouldn't be too difficult. We deployed Red Hat simply because it was the best supported (by the ISV's) at the time.

As far as speed, my big iron Solaris boxes (E25K and T4) will clean house over Linux. Solaris runs better on multi-CPU environments especially when you get over 32 CPUs. I also run many zones on each box. Small servers and workstations . . . Linux kicks butt. Generally, I agree with the Slowlaris comment, but not everyone can afford the big iron. Mips/Dollar, Linux is a much better bargain.

Big Iron is a whole 'nother ballgame. In that arena, Solaris rules, since that's what it was built for. Unfortunately, the kernel overhead necessary for high performance many-multiprocessor performance is a liability in systems with 1-8 cores. With the current trend of distributed processing it's not as advantageous as it used to be. Big iron still has it's niches, but most have been supplanted by networked server/blade systems. It really all depends on the application.

 

[RuggedH2]

[video=youtube;0hQb7m7AAcQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hQb7m7AAcQ&amp;feature=related[/video]

 

[cbetts]

I am slowly picking up on running SGI Ultraviolet systems now. Unfortunately, the dodo engineers wanted SuSe on them instead of Red Hat. I have to go check the specs again but each system is five racks, four of which are all storage (5 PB). The head sysadmin only lets me loose on it when she can't figure problems out. Fine by me! I have enough to do with all the other stuff I take cars of (VMWare ESXi clusters running virtual Windows desktops and servers).

Oh yeah . . . PROUD TO BE A NERD!

 

[skeptic]

Oh yeah . . . PROUD TO BE A NERD!

I'm pretty much indifferent. Burned out, would like a career change, but what could I possibly change to without starting over and cutting my salary down to 1/3 of what it is? Unix admin, primarily AIX, since '92. Work from home (not as good as it sounds but no commute is nice, especially in the winter), decent paycheck, and my day job gives me the skills to do things like build a centralized whole house media center setup better than anything you can buy off the shelf.

 

[LagunaH1]

I'm pretty much indifferent. Burned out, would like a career change, but what could I possibly change to without starting over and cutting my salary down to 1/3 of what it is?

Yup. Seems very familiar.

 

[cbetts]

My IT career started in 1986 when I sold my first program to read Lotus 1-2-3 data files and interpret a blank entry as a real blank instead of a zero as Lotus did.
Oh, I was only fifteen then!

I never made it through college and held many rough jobs (roofing, truck driver, janitor, warehouseman). I got a lucky break when I help set up a program called Maximo to take automate the back office stuff for the warehouse I ran for NASA. The IT department noticed my skills and made me an offer, causing my IT career to take off. Any time I start to feel burned-out, I think back to my previous jobs and the money I earned doing them and I feel better real quick.

Back on topic . . .

If you browse through the credits for XFCE, you will see my name. I was the Solaris guy for the project back when it was rewritten in GTK (used to be XForms if you remember that). At the time, I really hated CDE and OpenLook. Gnome and KDE ran extremely sluggish, especially on a multi-user system like a Sun Ray server. I grabbed the current code (still beta at that time) and did some tweaks to get it to compile under Sun Studio and also recognize things like Solaris audio devices.

I have played with many other window managers. I even played with Rat Poison, which works only with a keyboard. I used to customize WMs like crazy until I started doing end-user support. I found it easier to stick with default settings for the most part. There are still some setting that I can not seem to break myself away from like focus follows mouse. I know how engineers feel when they lose their emacs config!