A sad day for Ubuntu

Well it looks like the easy installer for all those nice codecs has finally come to an end with the discontinuation of Automaticx2 ( http://www.getautomatix.com/ ). So now it's back to doing things the hard way again.

Won't Linux users be used to doing that anyway?

I never used Automaticx2 anyway.

Never installed a single codec by hand with Ubuntu, and I have never had a single problem with playing any movie. On the Microsoft Windows on the other hand there is lots of trouble. Windows is not really geared towards beginners, you need to actually download random installers from the internet and it doesn't even have an updater program!

Are you saying Linux is? Wow!

As far as codecs and Windows go, just download the K-Lite codec pack and be done with it.

Every day with Ubuntu is a sad day. I hope that stupid nerd OS dies again and again, since it already is dead.

The Linux retards go on and on about how great Ubuntu is and how it is going to wipe out MS, and then when someone complains about how hard it is to make it do anything, they dismiss that person as not being willing to "learn" the OS.

I have enough things to do already, I don't want to compound them by having to "learn" something that should just do what I want automatically.

Nobody forces you to use Linux. Why are you offending Linux users anyway?

Ubuntu is by far the best distro I've encountered and I choose it over Windows Vista any day. I never used Automatix, never even heard of it before. Using Synaptics or the command line version apt-get or aptitude will do fine enough for me.

Totem Mediaplayer always offers to download and install missing codecs. Never had problems with it. So imo the codes support on Ubuntu is just the fine the way it is.

I don't know how to use commandline tools in windows let alone linux. Most people just want to have a simple installer and be done with it.

Bmax with mingw is pain enough and would have put me off if I hadn't gotten hooked on B3D and wanted to stick with it. A lot of people coming from windows to linux will want it to do most things for you like windows does.

I saw Ubuntu was on the BBC web page today, next version installed on windows without any need to do anything at all to prep your HD etc. Sounded interesting.

Being primarily an artist, Linux is just a irritation with no decent software that compares favourably to the commercial software I need to work professionaly. But I can see how it might surfice for basic office tasks if more people adopted it.

Automatix was handy 2-3 versions of Ubuntu ago. Now it's just not needed.

Not a sad day - just an integration of its abilities into the core OS.

I always just let Mplayer get the codecs automatically since V7.10.

Most common software you use is easier and faster to install than in windows!!
With a modern mainstream distro, you just tick the software you want from an enourmous searchable (gui based) 3rd party list and it installs on its own (no nextnextnext)
I rarely use the command line unless i need to administer my server stuff. I can pretty much configure my box to do everything i do in windows with just the gui
(except for playing DX3D only games & B3D).

I dont consider myself a "retard" and MS are doing a fine job of that by themselves. I dont think MS has much to worry about about Ubuntu itself though with its relatively small 9-10 million following. However, linux/unix in general is big threat to them in other areas like dedicated UIs & Thin client Xdesktop environments.
Anyway, whats wrong with having to learn something new if it eventually leads to something better?
Couldn't the same be said of say.... "game engines" for example?

I would have thought PhotoShop, PaintShop 9, gimp, Maya, blender, AC3D, Wings and others would be more than adequate for most.
I run these fine on ubuntu.

I had linux servers running in my basement for web, ftp, and samba backup for over 8 years and finally shut them all down about 8 months ago. I'm no linux expert, but I learned that "sure you can do good things, but you must have no life what-so-ever to learn it".

A. Flavors and Who's got what?
It's all to typical, hey php 5.0.x is released and some OS WCM software uses some feature and need php5 dual installed with php4. Not only do you need to figure out how to get it installed together (and happy together) but you need to 'NOT' destroy the rest of the web installation (apache2, squirlmail, imap, ssl, mysql and all of it's lovely hooks, and so on). So you search through thousands of thousands of news groups and forum posts to find someone who successfully did it (with the same flavor of linux, and the same packages you want to work together) and hope to the loving GOD almighty that they posted a step by step so that you don't destroy work that you did in the past similar to this because trying to remember ALL of the wonderfully over-complicated packages you had to install to get this to balance out right would be impossible....

B. New Kernal, YEAY now everything is broken again!
Debian released 4.0 late last year, so all 3 of my servers were running 3.1, I downloaded and installed 4.0 on another machine to pull some data from one of my old server linux drives (as to not mess with shutting down the existing servers to install the drive to mount it to pull the data from it, to shut it back down, and hope everything is ok coming back up, in theory sure, but with linux you NEVER just hope things will come back up). So I installed 4.0 and ran through some of my usual online step-by-steps for installing apache2 with php4 and 5 as I was thinking about using this machine as a backup webserver (cause for some reason with linux, I am always scared a server will die, and you cant just boot that hdd on another box because the hduid is different on another box and it fails to boot). So none of the online step-by-steps work because certain things are missing from this installation (or they moved it to a different location) so the usual "spend 4 days doing the step-by-step over and over until it finally works" turns into a 2 week "go over each step and replace the needed file with it's new location, after finding it of course, and then hoping it all works in the end again".

C. You too can learn how to compile an install!
Sure, I can compile my own installs from the source right? I mean all I have to do is figure out what options and plugins I want it configured with and then type in all 500 command line switches, wait the hour and a half for compilation, run the install, and then realize I forgot something.....

Point is, if you have enough free time to learn all the quirks of linux, sure you can do great things! But the rest of the world will pass by your boarded up house and wonder what kind of hermit lives in such a stink infested hole because most likely you haven't left the computer to eat, bathe, or socialize... Linux CAN BE GREAT if it would be just a bit more user friendly. A simple installer is all I ask. Perhaps a package or two that isn't dependent on someone else's open source library that they just updated and broke...

The Apt package system is the best thing that ever happened to linux and they would do well to keep it around.

Bottom line: Sure you can argue that "hey, if you used Ubuntu over Debian, you wouldn't have these issues" however there was a time when Debian was good also. Ubuntu will see it's end soon enough as the world tends to rotate on Linux distros. Once it was Red Hat, then it was Debian, now it's Ubuntu, tomorrow it might be SUSE (/me cringes).

For the love of GOD, look at this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

Sure, you have a choice of ANYTHING.... Hell, your little brother could be turning out a distro of his own next week which might have a few thousand users around the world....

And lets talk file systems, whoa!!!! At least with windows I had the FAT32 and NTFS file systems. Windows picks them up automatically. And most linux users (like myself) would argue that Windows SHOULD have a ext3 driver built in. Now I can see why they dont. If the journal has info in it, who knows how that drive was left. Besides how many other file systems are used by the other distros, which one should we pick, and remember that which ever one we pick to be supported by windows probably wont be the distro of choice in the next 2 years and we will hear linux user's bitch some more about how unfriendly we are as windows users because we wont support <insert flavor of the day here> distro.

I give it to Apple, at least they try to have something common across 1. Their different OS distributions and 2. With the most popular OS company in the world (Microsoft). Sure the Mac and Windows users squabble like brother and sister (I think we know which one is which) however at least they don't have to argue with their younger red headed step brother linux who likes to dress in all black and paint his finger nails a different shade of gray every day dreaming of one day over stepping his older siblings as ruler of all however knowing that eventually he will fail and ultimately subside to the fact that his life was merely to stay home and share torrents, do basic firewalling and network address translation. No one really wants you poor linux boy, you just too cumbersome in this ever growing user-friendly world. Hehe, just imagine if you had to do what you do in linux on your cell phone to send a text message, or to install a game, or perhaps on your TV to program the stations. Imagine if you had to do in linux in other areas of your life like working on Cars, planting a garden, and so on. Hell I modded my Xbox a few years back and it was a BREEZE compared to using linux, and IT USES LINUX!!!!!

whew... Yeah, I just pay for web hosting now (they can spend the time to manage it)... I will be putting all 3 of my servers up on ebay very soon, most likely get about 50 bucks each..... Hell even the linux fullon dual PIII 900s will probably go for about 25 bucks. Sad really.....

Yikes, never had any of those problems. Never had to compile anything either ('cept my stuff). W3.1/dos -> W98 then W98->XP now XP>Vista "Broke" more stuff for me than any Ubuntu kernel Update.

I only use the popular, main & well supported distros like Fedora(free red hat) and Ubuntu(a "modern" debian). The fundementals are not *that* dissimilar at all and did not take me long to get up and running in Fedora or DSL after using ubuntu. Never lost my social life, learned it when i needed to do something outside the scope of what it already did "out of the box". I dual ran Ubuntu with windows for 3 years and gradually started using it more and more. Ok something new would initially take a longer time, but only the first time you do it.

A total noob windows user would probably take just as long to do something new & unknown. Hilarious example: my mum spent 3 hours once searching for a file in every single folder of the hard disk. Another time she got all panicky because the panda antivirus got out of date and she ended up following the security center's advice installing Norton on top, bluescreening the whole thing.

- Ironically the same woman uses ubuntu with no problems at all, as it just works and stays working, as without being root you cant break it. Any (rarely needed) admin i do from sweden over ssh/vnc.

*Shudder*
DEATH to Automatix!
That was a good day for Ubuntu. The codecs are in the official repositories; they install themselves. What's left can be downloaded from Medibuntu, which actually does things right.

Automatix, at this point, does nothing more than damage Ubuntu's upgrade path and mess with apt. It was good when it came out (Dapper, I believe) but its developers and users have been needlessly clinging to it on some kind of sadistic wish for the olden days to return.
As for being easy, Automatix is absolutely not easy and I hope people never recommend it to a new user again. Downloading an entire other (redundant) program in order to install more programs in a way that is not consistent with the rest of the platform is absolutely not easy, especially looking at the long-term pain down the road.


As for D4NM4N's example, I agree entirely. In terms of user interface, GNOME is brilliantly designed. 2.22 (seen in Hardy Heron) is unfortunately a tad broken because a parade of lunatics rushed in to adding PolicyKit without thinking about the implications of having the needed Unlock button at the bottom right of every window, beside Close. 2.24 will be a good one...
Anyhow, the menus are actually usable in GNOME, whereas in Windows you have a start menu with no standard organization and actual program menus that require strange witchcraft like View -> Sidebar -> History to get the needed information. If you were looking for history, would you expect to find it there?

Programs are better organized with most Linux operating systems for a number of reasons. Most importantly, they define themselves via .desktop files in /usr/share/applications. Those files have name, category, MIME types, description (hopefully keywords some day). As a result, the menus can be well organized in a standard way and searching for applications is unmatched. Whereas with Windows or MacOS you must still know the name of the application's launcher to search for it, I can search for an application here using any word from its description (and hopefully some day a keyword). As a result, "Photos" gives me the F-Spot Photo Manager. Photos or Photographs in Spotlight on MacOS gives you nothing.

Having said that, virus scanners seem to be the largest source of confusion for unadapted Windows users, so maybe it's only a matter of time. Oh, and those "you have 500 viruses" popup ads; I came to the recent realization that those are what people are talking about when they say "Norton wants them to pay more money to fix the viruses".


While I am at it, I will throw this in:
Bash is an infinitely better shell than the garbage Windows users must suffer with. Tough to explain why, but to start off, try tab completion. It works with Everything.

Uh, I put Ubuntu on my GF's system without her even NOTICING.

I modded the icons, start menu etc, looked just like windows MCE. She did ask what theme I had set (the icons weren't spot on) but she didn't know the difference.

Firefox works, that's all she cares about. And she didn't notice I swapped IE for Firefox about a year ago haha.

LOL

See if you can swap a 360 for a Wii, as a social experiment ;)

If you give a computer user who only uses a browser and email a Linux box, they will be fine.

If you give a super user Linux, they will struggle for a little while but end up fine. Only struggling every once in a while during upgrades.

But, that accounts for about 20% of computer users. 18% are the ones that do nothing but browse and email and 2% are the real super users who can handle Linux.

The rest of the people are just going to end up getting themselves in over their heads over and over again. And it will get frustrating. Linux just isn't ready for the everyday user. I wish it was, but it isn't.

I prefer installing/uninstalling via drag, drop & delete. And the rare dive into Terminal.

More than that, my total novice of a mum (from my example above) can use hers for Office, email, browsing, She like playing with Paintshop Pro, using her (easy2use) video camera to make home DVDs, print pics from her digital camera, some kind of money manager thing and listen to and manage mp3s. Which is a vast improvement from a year or so ago.
She simply writes these instructions down and does it parrot fashion. The reason she can do this is because the system just works and is always the same, with no confusing interruptions like constant updates, scans, inconsistent startup times and other popups.

This is one of many reasons why i like it too, although they dont confuse me, they just annoy the crap out of me.

Also, that huge list of linux kernels posted above is ridiculous, if you just took the main ones instead of all the obscure pet & specialised projects there would be about 5, and anyone who knows one of these can very easily adapt to another reasonably quickly.