• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

2012 - year of Linux!

9to5cynic said:
Oh yeah, that happened to me too on Debian though. Did you install FF from the tar ball on Mozilla's site? That's what I did. If so, the icon will be located in that folder. I put my extracted firefox into /opt.

So here's the path the icon...

/opt/firefox/icons/mozicon128.png
Click to expand...

Didn't quite work. Couldn't type in password in terminal. Thought I'd lost my old IBM clicker.

What is very weird - fussed around, re-uninstalled Chrome (thought I had done so), and up pop all the Firefox icons. The Icon wasn't even under applications.

It is up and working now - so I appreciate the suggestion.
 
argedion said:
What it boils down to is that Linux has traditionally been veiwed as a geeks system not really user friendly if you didn't understand how it worked
Click to expand...

Well to be honest many non-geek PC users don't really know how Windows works. They know how to turn the computer on and start Word or IE, but that's pretty much it. I'm regularly telling work colleagues something quite basic, like how to print documents, or what does "Trial Expired" mean. If something goes wrong with a Windows PC or they have a problem, most would probably pay a tech to fix it.

For my own piece of mind I'd give non-geeks Ubuntu or Linux Mint over Windows(especially XP). Then I can sleep at night.

Was with a friend on holiday last month, she had a Dell Windows 7 Home Basic laptop. It was running very slowly, taking ages to boot, IE wouldn't start, constantly thrashing the HDD, had malware on it. So I just restored it from the backup partition. Unfortunately I couldn't download Ubuntu or Mint, because we only had slow CDMA wireless internet. Laptop will probably get infected again. Just to add, this was when we were on holiday during the Spring Festival, staying in a remote mountain village in Hubei province. I'm now back at home, and my friend is back at home in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.

EDIT:

BTW Windows 7 Home Basic for those not familiar with it, is sort of in-between Win7 Starter and Win7 Home Premium. A low cost version of Win7 intended for low-end PCs and laptops in emerging markets, like Mainland China. Home Premium has a significantly higher licensing cost than Home Basic. Perhaps this was done by Microsoft to discourage PC manufacturers here from installing Linux instead?.
 
FF has a new extension that will integrate with Unity. I accidently got the beta version of FF 11 and that extension drove me nuts. FF would no longer change fonts - either weight or size. You had to change from the desktop, which made the desktop fonts weird.
 
mikedt said:
Well to be honest many non-geek PC users don't really know how Windows works. They know how to turn the computer on and start Word or IE, but that's pretty much it. I'm regularly telling work colleagues something quite basic, like how to print documents, or what does "Trial Expired" mean. If something goes wrong with a Windows PC or they have a problem, most would probably pay a tech to fix it.

For my own piece of mind I'd give non-geeks Ubuntu or Linux Mint over Windows(especially XP). Then I can sleep at night.

Was with a friend on holiday last month, she had a Dell Windows 7 Home Basic laptop. It was running very slowly, taking ages to boot, IE wouldn't start, constantly thrashing the HDD, had malware on it. So I just restored it from the backup partition. Unfortunately I couldn't download Ubuntu or Mint, because we only had slow CDMA wireless internet. Laptop will probably get infected again. Just to add, this was when we were on holiday during the Spring Festival, staying in a remote mountain village in Hubei province. I'm now back at home, and my friend is back at home in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province.

EDIT:

BTW Windows 7 Home Basic for those not familiar with it, is sort of in-between Win7 Starter and Win7 Home Premium. A low cost version of Win7 intended for low-end PCs and laptops in emerging markets, like Mainland China. Home Premium has a significantly higher licensing cost than Home Basic. Perhaps this was done by Microsoft to discourage PC manufacturers here from installing Linux instead?.
Click to expand...

Another really big problem Linux has faced is the fact that Windows users would try it out expecting to find a better Windows. What they got was a completely different OS. Having to "Start all Over" isn't very appealing to most.

I known Window users who didn't even know what browser they were on. It was always a pain to try and walk them through solutions to their issues. People don't want to take the necessary time to learn how to use a system properly they just want to jump in and drive.

I could be positive that Microsoft has offered Home basic to help stop the competition from taking over any market. I personally think its bs to offer different "Levels" of an OS gives us all or nothing.
 
argedion said:
Another really big problem Linux has faced is the fact that Windows users would try it out expecting to find a better Windows. What they got was a completely different OS. Having to "Start all Over" isn't very appealing to most.
Click to expand...

People seem to be able to adapt easily enough to different smart-phone platforms, e.g. changing to Android from iOS, Blackberry, WinMo or Symbian. Another thing is, something like KDE is not really that much different to Windows, many things are in the same place. Main difference there's no IE :) or MS Office. Firefox and Chrome are very much the same on Windows or Linux.

argedion said:
I known Window users who didn't even know what browser they were on. It was always a pain to try and walk them through solutions to their issues. People don't want to take the necessary time to learn how to use a system properly they just want to jump in and drive.
Click to expand...

It's rather like learning to drive. Perhaps there should be some sort of driving test for PCs? One has to have a PC driving license before driving out on the big bad information superhighway. :)

argedion said:
I could be positive that Microsoft has offered Home basic to help stop the competition from taking over any market. I personally think its bs to offer different "Levels" of an OS gives us all or nothing.
Click to expand...

Thing is where I am, many people don't own their own PCs, as they can be very expensive for most Chinese. So they're usually using internet bars, but these can be really horrible places. However what is really taking off here though, is low-cost Chinese Android tablets, as you probably know are Linux based. They just really want their own way of getting on the internet, maybe play some games, browsing and QQ IM. In Hong Kong, I've seen a lot more people using tablets{Android and iPad) rather than using PC laptops now, in restaurants etc.

BTW I certainly do not trust my personal private details with a Chinese Windows computer. Only trust my own PCs here, one of which is running Win 7.
 
mikedt said:
It's rather like learning to drive. Perhaps there should be some sort of driving test for PCs? One has to have a PC driving license before driving out on the big bad information superhighway. :)
Click to expand...

There is the ECDL here (European Computer Driving License).
It has to be done of IE and MS Office. If anything it makes the situation worse :p
 
Well maybe one day in a galaxy far away we will all have access to nothing but open source, opened minds, and true freedom of information. Give credit to those who deserve it but keep it open for sharing.
 
I think the new kernel path (supporting android) along with what Ubuntu is planning in the future (integrating android and ubuntu on one device that can be either a phone or a pc via a dock...) could really help make linux more main stream. Not like Windows, but if 1/10th of the people who got a phone that *could* be docked did dock it (1/10 of that phone, not of all people ;)), that's good for numbers.

It'll be interesting to see!
 
I think as Security becomes more of an issue an a priority then Linux again will have the edge over the competition. Windows even though it is trying really hard to become more secure just simply isn't ready for the task. Linux is. Android at moment I think may have a small way to go but even then it won't be near as hard as it will be for windows. And apple well what do expect from fruit. :p
 
Although security is a big one, I don't think it's the top reason to try Linux for a lot of people. A couple of people have asked me to help them migrate to Linux recently and their main reason was stability/reliability and ease of maintenance. the help they needed was the initial installation part.
 
robomo said:
"this year will be the year of the Linux Desktop!"

How common that's been said year in year out, decade after decade.

Unfortunately, Microsoft/Apple got there first to mass market years before Linux did.

The mobile platform however, is still in it's infancy. Tablets and smart phones are still a relatively new thing. The first HUGE splash came from RIM's Blackberry and Apple's iPhone, and Android is relatively recent - just the past few years.

However, Android's adoption compared to the other, closed source vendors is huge now:
Android and iOS controls 71% US Smartphones market share [Report]|TechLeash

WWQSE.jpg


It's apparent Android is becoming the dominant player in the mobile market, and this next year will see a strong attack on the tablet and even netbook markets.

I think 2012 is the year of Linux in the mobile market - the tipping point where Apple, RIM and Microsoft find Android/Linux as dominant to stay.

Here's to a new year and Android Dominance! :D
Click to expand...

Sounds great! Have you seen the windows phones they got out now (Shudders)?

I even run linux exclusively on my home computer. :)
 
This isn't applicable any more, but with XP (I last installed XP a year or so ago on my machine), installation was a major pain in the ass. Especially if you had drivers that it couldn't find.... :eek:

Linux is/was much easier to install. Now, I get that XP is much older than the Linux distros I'm comparing it to... (and really, XP isn't *that* hard...)

;D
 
I remember when I first tried linux (Caldera Open Linux) the installation took me about 4.5 hours it took a few more hours trying to set it up. I was asked about every little thing. (Kind of miss that now) Now I can have Linux up and running on the computer in about 2 hours. That's with codecs and other things you just can't live without :D and removing those things I can

Although security is a big one, I don't think it's the top reason to try Linux for a lot of people. A couple of people have asked me to help them migrate to Linux recently and their main reason was stability/reliability and ease of maintenance. the help they needed was the initial installation part.
Click to expand...

I blame android for that :p More people are learning basic Linux from the phone and are realizing its not as hard or "Geeky" as they had thought. The toughest thing about installing is understanding the disk structure for partitioning once they learn that its pretty straight forward.
 
Not too long ago, I had a try at installing Slackware in a VM. Although it asked plenty of questions and required some knowledge/familiarity with Linux distros in general, it was still a comparatively quick and painless procedure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom