Re: Was OT--Win7 and disk partitions; now using Linux
- From: Paul Lagasse <pglagasse@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: xywrite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:34:17 -0400
On 03/19/2010 10:02 AM, Raphael Tennenbaum wrote:
I don't need Ghostscript or Adobe anything to turn any file, whether
it's text or html, into a postscript file, that's built-in (three
different ways in fact, from OpenOffice, the printing system, and the
browsers) --
You might be overselling Ubuntu here, Rafe; Ghostscript is there, on my
system at least; it just happens to be preinstalled (or got installed as
a dependency somewhere along the line). In fact, it's integral --
uninstalling it will also trash CUPS and several other things.
I would also mention three things about Ubuntu make it a viable
end-user OS: 1) the software packages are tightly controlled as far
as I can tell, so they're not just held to a reasonably high standard.
but installation and maintenance are stable and clean, far more so
than any other brand of Linux I've seen;
This may be true of Ubuntu's main repositories, but stuff in the
Universe repositories can be quirky at times, and other add-ons that I
find essential sometimes get trashed by new versions of Ubuntu. Still,
in terms of trying to expand what I can do with Linux and XyWrite,
having handy ready-made tools that may need some tweaking is fine by me.
2) the cooperation with manufacturers allows them to incorporate
proprietary drivers and codecs smoothly, and
I think things work better now than they did some releases ago (say,
7.10) but it still pays to buy a Linux distro preloaded on a laptop or
netbook -- that's the only way to guarantee that (almost) everything
will work (wifi and webcams tend to be problem areas). And as for those
codecs, well, there remain some intriguing legal issues....
3) they've slicked up the way superuser works, which takes a big,
confusing step out of installation, and also makes day-to-day sudo-ing
easier. call it a pop distro if you want, but it happens to be the
best pop distro I've seen, better than Red Hat or Suse.
I'd be willing to call it a pop distro -- Ubuntu seems to be aiming to
produce a Linux distro that "just works" for a computer user who no
longer needs training wheels (out-of-the-box, though, I think Mint does
an even better job for the average user). And Ubuntu does do a pretty
good job -- my wife's been on Ubuntu for the last two years with no more
hiccups than she'd have in Windows -- fewer, probably. For the one or
two things where she really needs Windows, there's XP on VMware. But
"just works" is a tall order for Ubuntu with all the hardware and
Win/Mac-only proprietary drivers that are out there. With time, and a
little Linux critical mass, that might improve.
And I think Debian's massive contribution to Ubuntu gets overlooked too
often (though probably not by Debian fans). All those software
repositories, as well as the sturdy tools (dpkg, apt-get, aptitude,
synaptic) with which to install them, are part of the great debt Ubuntu
owes to Debian. I think it's fair to say that Ubuntu took Debian and
gave it developmental focus and drive, though the 6-month Ubuntu release
cycle is beginning to seem a touch counterproductive to me.
Paul Lagasse
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