Dan
While I sympathize with the replies of other group members to the effect that we're a Linux users' group, not a Linux trainers' group or a Linux evangelists' group, and that Colin's post doesn't give enough detail for us to help much, these statistics scare me. Something's wrong here.
Not necessarily. If the group reading this is satisfied with the direction ALUG is going in then I'm 'odd out' and will have to seek other solutions. The group may consist largely of trained computer professionals for whom this idea is irrelevant, and other users may be happy to potter along in their own time. I could be the only one using this list who wants this.
There are other solutions - some costing, some long distance (for me). I'm merely asking if the local one is a possibility. But there's no suggestion of the group having to change if it doesn't want to.
Colin, perhaps you could tell us what your job is, and maybe give us some examples of tasks you've been unable to transfer to Linux, or have been able to transfer, but only at low productivity. I think it probable that we'll be able to come up with some tips to change this.
My job is not really relevant to this, but anyway I'm a video editor in broadcast television - working freelance mostly at Anglia TV, (and I'm doing a late shift on Thursday to midnight). Prior to that I was a cameraman. Anyone viewing broadcast television over the last 20 years will know of the consistent decline of the medium, and sadly I can see no end to this in ITV. Budgets are shrinking and so will quality, but the story is repeated in many other industries. We're also told we may have to work into our 70's if our pensions are to be worth anything. So tentatively I'm keeping an open mind for other avenues to move into if the work I do declines even further.
As to specifics, MJR was good enough to sort out my computer at a ALUG meeting where apparently Apache was loaded (with the O/S) but wasn't functioning. To be useful to me I'd like to load PHP as well, but reading about this (from "PHP & MySQL web development" book) seems to indicate two types of integration, and anyway when I tried it following notes in there it didn't work.
Under Windows loading a program is pretty much cut and dried. All have installers, and basically get on with it. I'm pretty sure that my failure here is almost certainly down to my lack of knowledge about the basics of what I'm doing.
Putting this problem on the list would be difficult as (now) I can't remember exactly what I did or at what point the load failed. Perhaps I'll have another stab at it this wekend. But I doubt the group would want me to thrash around with this sort of problem on the list? What happens when the next piece of software I try out, also doesn't install / run? Wouldn't it be far better for all concerned if I could acquire the basics of what's going on, rather than trying to post possibly stupid beginner problems on the list?
As to low productivity, this may be psychological as much as real. I get the impression that everything happens faster on my Win2000 system (Athlon 1.2GH, 392MB) box than the Xandros (Athlon 2.1GHz, 256MB) box - Win2000 loads in 70% of the time of Xandros despite the slower older system. Even the Win2000 control via a LAN of Xandros windows is better than the KDE control. But the real issue is that when any problem occurs on the Linux system, work stops as solutions are difficult to find. Some of the help files which I have accessed are pretty poor. This is I'm sure just a matter of acclimatisation, and it would be helpful to speed this up.
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Colin, thanks for speaking up and persisting - I think the debate is very valuable.
Not necessarily. If the group reading this is satisfied with the direction ALUG is going in then I'm 'odd out' and will have to seek other solutions. The group may consist largely of trained computer professionals for whom this idea is irrelevant, and other users may be happy to potter along in their own time. I could be the only one using this list who wants this.
The people who post most often may give that impression but I think there are probably a large number of people on the list who are not computer professionals or linux experts and who would be very interested in some sort of more formalised support at meetings.
There are I believe over 200 list members. Maybe a few more people could join in here, if only to say 'yes me too' if you don't want to have a long discussion?
Referring to your list of questions and topics - some will have different answers depending on the distribution being used and some of them are things that no-one can agree on anyway (e.g. the 'best' distro to use)!
That doesn't mean that the questions are not worth asking or trying to answer though, far from it. All I'm saying is that sometimes the answers are not simple - part of the richness but also the frustration of the linux world.
Pity you're working this evening - I'd really have liked to have met up again asap!
Regards Syd
Colin Hards clive1248@hotmail.com wrote:
As to specifics, MJR was good enough to sort out my computer at a ALUG meeting where apparently Apache was loaded (with the O/S) but wasn't functioning. [...]
Oh yes, whoops, I should have followed up about this. I reported the problem found to the distributor (I think it was Mandrake?) and they closed the bug as fixed for the next release. Sorry for not letting you know sooner.
Under Windows loading a program is pretty much cut and dried. All have installers, and basically get on with it. [...]
If it's a program packaged by your distributor, it *should* be about as simple, but bugs happen, sadly. It's also distribution-specific, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
[...] But I doubt the group would want me to thrash around with this sort of problem on the list? What happens when the next piece of software I try out, also doesn't install / run? Wouldn't it be far better for all concerned if I could acquire the basics of what's going on, rather than trying to post possibly stupid beginner problems on the list?
Not really, I think, as if you don't know, it's likely that others on the list don't know either. The only thing that you might find, if you get too specialised, is that we don't know, but things like PHP and so on should be fairly common to enough people on this list to be helpful. The things you have to remember is to quote any versions that you think are useful (distribution, kernel, the software/hardware being installed, anything that you know it depends upon) and don't be afraid to answer followup questions. The normal warning applies about double-checking commands from a list before you do use them.
For faster help, the IRC channel (irc.alug.org.uk #alug) seems to have people in it most of the time now, although sometimes not very talkative.
Some of the help files are pretty poor. I don't think I can argue with that. Some of them are very good and they can often be found online if they didn't come with your distribution, though. Maybe it's a different way of finding help.
On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 09:39:12AM -0000, MJ Ray wrote:
For faster help, the IRC channel (irc.alug.org.uk #alug) seems to have people in it most of the time now, although sometimes not very talkative.
If you do try the channel be prepared to have to hang around for a bit and wait for an answer, if nobody appears to be present ask the question and somebody will reply later (usually) and will either try and help with the problem or point you somewhere that should have more help.
Adam
On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Colin Hards wrote:
As to low productivity, this may be psychological as much as real. I get the impression that everything happens faster on my Win2000 system (Athlon 1.2GH, 392MB) box than the Xandros (Athlon 2.1GHz, 256MB) box - Win2000 loads in 70% of the time of Xandros despite the slower older system.
I too had very slow boot-up under Linux, until recently. Two likely explanations are:
Your machine is loading lots of stuff at boot time that you don't really need. Take a look at the messages that come up while it boots. Are you ever going to use that news server/mail transport agent/third firewall?
Your machine is checking your file-systems rather more thoroughly than (IMO) is necessary at each boot; the equivalent of Windows running scandisk every time it starts. This is only likely if you have non-Linux partitions such as vfat, since Linux' native ext2 file-system handler has a clever mechanism for counting how many times a file-system's been mounted, and only doing the thorough check about once every 20 boots.
Both of these can be fixed by fairly simple configuration tweaks, with the minor irritant that the fix for the first one will vary from distro to distro (I have a reasonably good idea how to do it for Debian, but not necessarily for Xandros.) The second involves an edit of the /etc/fstab file, to tell the boot process not to check the vfat file systems. I don't remember exactly what you have to edit, but "man fstab" will probably tell you.
If anyone _is_ giving a talk on "Linux from start to stop," these would probably be good things to include in it.
Since fstab and the boot scripts are pretty critical things, I'd suggest having a reasonably recent system backup before fiddling with either.
As to low productivity, this may be psychological as much as real. I get the impression that everything happens faster on my Win2000 system (Athlon 1.2GH, 392MB) box than the Xandros (Athlon 2.1GHz, 256MB) box - Win2000 loads in 70% of the time of Xandros despite the slower older system.
I sometimes think that my PII 450 is 'faster' than the PIII 500 - because the display is snappier. So, could be an X-windows issue. Again, something more easily sorted out while sat in front of the box itself.
Also, Win 2000 *loads* faster than the mandrake box - but I prefer *using* mandrake once up and running. In practice I leave mdk running all the time anyway so it's not an issue.
Syd
On 2003.07.10 14:26, Dan Hatton wrote:
I too had very slow boot-up under Linux, until recently. Two likely explanations are:
Your machine is loading lots of stuff at boot time that you don't really need. Take a look at the messages that come up while it boots. Are you ever going to use that news server/mail transport agent/third firewall?
Linux systems tend to wait until all system services are started before presenting either the text mode login prompt or the graphical login (xdm, kdm gdm etc.)
By comparison, windows presents the GUI login screen before all services are started and continues to start them in the background. If you have a GUI login screen on Linux (gdm, kdm or xdm) you could do this on Linux too by changing the order of the symlinks in /etc/rc2.d or /etc/rc3.d (depending on distro).
Steve.
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Adam Bower -
Colin Hards -
Dan Hatton -
MJ Ray -
Steve Fosdick -
Syd Hancock