Mac dosage

[vakkotaur]

I tried the Mac laptop today and didn't get very far. I did get Opera installed and started fiddling with it and found that everything that had been a single key action (or one key and a click) was now a two-key (or two-key and click) action. There was a two-key and click that still is two-key and click, but the keys are now awkward, even for a laptop. Unfortunately while that might be a Mac standard, it's non-standard for, well, everything else. And when I was lucky the two keys could be reached by one hand without contortions. I wasn't lucky very often and gave up quickly. My wrist wasn't hurting, yet, but the weird precursor feeling was starting in.

I think that's a less than subtle hint that I should look at the new Wolvix or maybe Xubuntu.

Comments

[catwoman69y2k.livejournal.com]

Join me in Kubuntu land...Its nice here.

Kat

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

If the laptop had the cycles to spare, then I might. As it is, XFCE is the most I think it can reasonably take for a Desktop Environment. I've been considering dropping from XFCE to IceWM for the laptop, which would lose a few nice things admittedly, but would result in snappier performance.

On the desktop I've been reasonbly impressed with PCLinuxOS. Maybe that's because I started with Mandrake, went to Fedora, and now am back at a Mandriva derivative. Almost everything works without my having to fiddle with it. I know {X,K}ubuntu makes the same claim, but I found I had to make a lot more changes to get to where I liked it. Maybe that's changed. I almost put Kubuntu on the desktop machine, but PCLOS won partly from simply not having all the annoying animations of KDE left on by default. Still, at least with any KDE (or XFCE, or IceWM), I can make the adjustments.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... have you considered Enlightenment? e17 has admittedly been hovering in "beta" or something like it for years, but is actually pretty nice and usable.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I've tried it from time to time, when it was the default for some distribution I was checking out, and found it irritated me as it was always trying too hard to be "kewl" rather than getting out of my way and simply being usable. I have never been able to think of Enlightenment as light at all. I neither need nor want a bunch of gimmicks cluttering up my screen. If that's not Enlightenment doing that, I have yet to see it nice, plain, and actually usable.

Fluxbox, on the other hand, goes a bit too far into being spartan. IceWM seems to strike a good balance. There are certainly things I might like to have that are not there, but when a 90 MHz original Pentium becomes snappy or at least close, I get impressed. The laptop is 266 MHz, I think, fwiw.

The one issue that so far is in favor of the Mac is WPA. NO linux distribution I've tried (including *buntu) has let me simply enter the information for the network and simply start using it. Annoyingly, some have even said to get wireless working, first I need to download something... see a problem? Sure, most places (hotels) don't use WPA, but at home the wireless network uses WPA. WPA has been around for a few years. It shouldn't be this hard to get it working.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

This is apparently how to get WPA/WPA2 working under Ubuntu (perhaps Edgy or Feisty? The post is from June 2006).

NO THANK YOU!

I only hope it's not this hairy under Gibbon.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Like so much that has come out of the Apple world, the Mac "style" often seems to be different just for the sake of being different.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I expect it conforms with Apple's "usability guidelines" but I have to wonder what mutant they were designed to be usable for. If there's a nice way to change some of the things that desperately need changing they are non-obvious. Really, it seems like the difference between the Steves. Jobs has a history of wanting to close the box and limit choice, whereas Wozniak figured people should be able to get at things as I see it. The "business community" hail Jobs as Apple's savior and maybe he finally is or was, but those who know Apple's history know Jobs nearly killed the company several times.

I suspect that I would be a bit more forgiving of Mac OS X if my only other experience had been with Windows. As it is, I know it's not simply Mac vs Windows. Really, I just want what Linux says works, to actually work without hassle (printing - which is horribly broken, and WPA - which is broken even worse... at least I've seen Linux print). Or have the Mac interface actually be as user friendly as Apple likes to claim. Either would do.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. You think Mac printing is broken or Linux printing is broken?

The Mac user interface is friendly to people who only use Macintoshes and therefore suffer from the notion that what Macs do is what computers are supposed to do. Of course the same rule applies to Windows and to most ofher user environments.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Linux printing. Even with CUPS, I get goofiness like being able to cajole CUPS into eventually printing a test page, but then even when I have told the system that a user can print, I try printing as a user and get nothing. I know I've cajoled, threatened, and beaten CUPS into actually working once before, but I haven't managed to recall the specific incantation to repeat the feat. Looking for help on the web, I get pages that tell me to do exactly what I have already done and everything should just work. "Tell me another one." is my reply. As far as I am concerned, Eric S. Raymond's rant about CUPS (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html) is still sadly valid.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sorry if I'm covering ground you've already been over, but perhaps some of the following will help.

My experience with CUPS is this. If the printer understands raw Postscript, and you tell CUPS it is a "raw printer", you're in business. Otherwise, all bets are off. But that has always been true of UNIX printing too, for the most part, so that's not terribly surprising.

The other problem with any print control system in Linux is that it must be properly integrated into the distribution. Many I've had to deal with were not integrated at all, but rather hung on the side as sort of "filters" and that never works well.

If you are printing to a network printer, the problem may lie in the network connection and access privileges for the network device, which aren't really part of CUPS itself. This is especially the case with Samba-based printing (usually where the printer is controlled by a Windows server.) Where the printer is a standalone network device (e.g., HP JetDirect or something similar) then the particular API you tell CUPS to use must be activated on the print device (JetDirects supported at least four protocols last time I checked.)

If the printer is directly attached to a physical device on the system from which you are printing, then be sure the device allows write privileges.

Sorry if I'm covering ground you've already been over, but perhaps some of this will help.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

My experience with CUPS is this. If the printer understands raw Postscript, and you tell CUPS it is a "raw printer", you're in business. Otherwise, all bets are off. But that has always been true of UNIX printing too, for the most part, so that's not terribly surprising.

This is why I'll try to make my next printer be a PostScript printer. I've had absolutely no problems with them anywhere. They're by far the easiest to get working. All my non-PostScript printers have had some sort of issue printing (mostly in getting decent output).

For JetDirect, I'd make it use raw mode (direct to port 9100). Then CUPS can be told to use a ghostscript driver or raw mode if it's PostScript, and dump the contents directly to the JetDirect card.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Postscript printers are a lot less expensive than they used to be. I have a Laserjet 1320n here that I got two years ago for about $300 after rebate. It does Postscript, PCL, and HPGL, double sided printing, envelopes, the whole bit, and works perfectly with CUPS, including all the features if you load the PPD file from HP's web site. The Jetdirect interface is built in too, so you just have to plug in a cable and go.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu (Gibbon) seemed to work OK tonight, letting me set up a PostScript printer (which was on a JetDirect interface) with the included administration widget. One big problem, though:

Apps state the page size is Letter, the printer setup states it's Letter, the TEST PAGE prints in Letter, but the system paper size defaults to A4. Ergo, the output to the printer is almost always in A4. And unless you're onto the shenanigans, you'll be driven insane.

dpkg-reconfigure libpaper1 to sort it out, although that shouldn't ever have to be done. It should be in the administration dialog! Things worked fine after that.