Porteus or linux discontent

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rchase
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Porteus or linux discontent

Post#1 by rchase » 16 Jul 2016, 07:05

"Loose ends" in this context are all the many problems, major and minor, that crop up in the course of trying to use Porteus, as opposed to develop it. Porteus is tantalizingly useable in the sense that end-users may or may not find it useable (i.e. what they need works or it doesn't). Porteus is certainly friendlier to novices than many Linuxes, expecially for one so lightweight, but Linux itself just has embarrassing gaps that undercut its being as universal an OS as Windows has managed to become.

Perhaps the problem (I see is widespead) with getting certain devices to boot from USB without re-plugging them midcourse is one such gap, but I've just been dealing with another notorious problem in Linux of long standing: suspending or hibernating, then successfully resuming. Several computers I have which are much more recent than the introduction of ACPI have such problems, and in dealing with another one (an HP Pavilion 1253w, BIOS from 2006) recently, I came across (not for the first time, I believe) an official explanation from Canonical:
Why won't my computer turn back on after I suspended it?
If you suspend or hibernate your computer, then try to resume it or turn it back on, you may find that it does not work as you expected.
This could be because suspend and hibernate aren't supported properly by your hardware.
This is the maddening reality of Linux as a universal PC OS: the main developer of Linux as an alternative to Windows suggests that PCs which have successfully suspended and resumed running Windows from XP on with consistency (if not absolute consistency -- I don't know) are somehow at fault rather than an OS that can't consistently suspend and resume much hardware (at least not without undertaking a research project and tinkering with its innards first) -- this is called "denial". Suspend and hibernate may not be "properly supported" by much hardware, but somehow Windows and all or most of the improper hardware accomplish suspending -- and resuming!

I just saw your post about photo editing software, saw Darktable and RawTherapee in the repositories, and managed to get the latter to run. I used it successfully to resize and crop a photograph -- something I use Irfanview for in Windows. This strikes me as a typical piece of Linux software -- unbelievably clunky! Its user interface is incredibly obscure and busy. Much software for Linux may excel in capability, but programs' interfaces are atrocious; it must have taken twice as many steps or more to resize and crop using RawTherapee as Irfanview.

I'm a long way from being able to contribute much here. I spend a lot of time (as I suppose most people playing around with Linux do) chasing solutions which were never found, but left a long trail of research and failed attempts.

P.S. I hope you can make sense of this with the aid of machine translation -- I know that I tend to write in fulsomely idiomatic English; it would serve me right if you were to test my poor French by replying likewise en Français.

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Re: Porteus or linux insatisfaction

Post#2 by francois » 16 Jul 2016, 19:53

@rchase:
UEFI
I have forked your post because I think your words merit discussion on their own apart a thread on UEFI. For those wanting to help you sorting out more precisely your problems related to UEFI, see:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=140&t=6043

HIBERNATION
hibernate function to shutdown
where sdxy=the identity of the swap file (to find swap file use fdisk -l or lsblk -f command)
Example (the resume cheatcode as to be added to the appropriate location in the /boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg file:

Code: Select all

root@porteus:~# lsblk -f
NAME   FSTYPE   LABEL   UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                          
├─sda1 ext4     manjaro de406fa9-c113-4b08-9c2a-cba933499f3f /mnt/sda1
├─sda2                                                       
├─sda5 ext4             e70b84a5-da6d-4005-809f-cec19c0694cc /mnt/sda5
├─sda6 ext4             5f5e395e-b078-47d7-a974-d431ffd699b7 /mnt/sda6
└─sda7 swap             ad800b6d-428c-451f-8eb8-1ee7ecaac8f1 [SWAP]

Code: Select all

LABEL gui
MENU LABEL Graphics mode (LXQT)
KERNEL vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=initrd.xz changes=/porteus resume=/dev/sda7
Personally, I have use hibernate function very few under porteus. I am reinstalling it right now. I will report.

COMPARING LINUX (PORTEUS) AND WINDOWS
You are right there is more maintenance work with linux than with windows, and windows is more idiot proof. But for someone expecting that the OS is going to do everything for him, I do not find windows satisfying. In addition, you have to pay for the software, the software, the software, ... ... you have to wait for the updates to load, you have to do it often. You need antivirus, antimalware, anti-etc that slow down your machine.

My great satisfaction with porteus is that it is responsive and fast and that there are nice people on the different forum that will help me to sort out my problems. And now that I know linux enough, I get my machine to do all what I want. You say that you do better with the same type of windows software, it could be. But it could be that you have been used to windows or to the software that comes with it. I agree that pasture is a critical problem with porteus. But this is another story that will be surely solved in a not so far future.

There is no reason that public authorities should not move to linux. Instead of paying fees to monopolies like windows and apple, we could pay computer specialist to troubleshoot windows linux installations in all govermental linked institutions: schools, universities, hospitals ... ... name it.

Links comparing linux and windows:
I think that you will agree with this one:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/five-reaso ... han-linux/

Other opinions:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/operating-system ... ing-system
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2013431/ ... ml?page=2

FRANÇAIS
Il me fait extrêmement plaisir d'élaborer sur tout sujet qui m'intéresse, en particulier en français. Il se peut que mon anglais qui n'est pas assez raffiné, m'empêche de saisir certaines subtilités qui ne sont courantes que dans la langue de Shakespeare. De plus, il m'arrive de lire trop rapidement et de passer à côté du sujet, et ce même en français. La règle dans ce forum est de réserver les propos dans une langue autre que le français aux sous-forii des langues respectives, et par conséquent je ne pourrai m'attarder plus longtemps dans la langue de Molière.

You may change the title of the thread if you want.
Prendre son temps, profiter de celui qui passe.

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Re: Porteus or linux discontent

Post#3 by jmhoward56 » 18 Aug 2016, 16:54

@rchase
This is the maddening reality of Linux as a universal PC OS: the main developer of Linux as an alternative to Windows suggests that PCs which have successfully suspended and resumed running Windows from XP on with consistency (if not absolute consistency -- I don't know) are somehow at fault rather than an OS that can't consistently suspend and resume much hardware (at least not without undertaking a research project and tinkering with its innards first) -- this is called "denial". Suspend and hibernate may not be "properly supported" by much hardware, but somehow Windows and all or most of the improper hardware accomplish suspending -- and resuming!
The statement "properly supported" is a true statement because what you are attributing to windows accomplishing is many times code written by the computer manufacturer to overcome a design decision on their part and not the windows operating system. This is true of many devices developed for windows machines hence the reason for the install cdroms and dvds required to use equipment. As Linux does not constitute a large user base to the same degree as windows and apple the manufacturers see no profit in supporting it. On top of that many of their designs are either proprietary or copyrighted and hence they will not share with the linux community so it can be developed by them.

Second, do not compare Porteus to a full blown linux distribution. It is a stripped down version of linux designed ti fit a niche audience and hence many parts of the linux operating system are missing. This results in having to tinker occasionally in order to get some device to work properly or some piece of software to work. As more and more people start to use linux as an alternative os I can only hope to see more support coming from manufacturers and software vendors to create devices which work as seamlessly as windows or port mainstream software titles to it. I remember in 1996 or 97 when microsoft decided apple was not going away and decided to port office to run on macs. Today they are accepting that linux is not going away and we are starting to see support for linux in hyper v and azure.

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Re: Porteus or linux discontent

Post#4 by brokenman » 19 Aug 2016, 01:49

I agree that there are huge gaps between linux and other OSs in the desktop market. It has always been like this. Personally I have had no trouble getting hibernate to work when set up properly but I rarely use it since Porteus takes only seconds to boot on my machine. I see no need for hibernation.
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Wear your underpants on the outside and put on a cape.

rchase
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Re: Porteus or linux discontent

Post#5 by rchase » 28 Aug 2016, 00:21

I was at least mostly wrong; I do have hardware that doesn't properly support hibernate/suspend -- with Windows.

Brokenman, you have almost achieved perfection; the final Slackware version of Porteus should be the native OS on millions of low-power devices and you should be a multimillionaire -- hail to the genius of Porteus!

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Re: Porteus or linux discontent

Post#6 by brokenman » 28 Aug 2016, 02:00

the final Slackware version of Porteus should be the native OS on millions of low-power devices and you should be a multimillionaire -- hail to the genius of Porteus!
Then I can focus my sites on clean power generation to save the world! :ROFL: Alas, I am no genius. I am merely standing on the shoulders of the giants that were genius, and am helped by a great community.
How do i become super user?
Wear your underpants on the outside and put on a cape.

rchase
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Re: Porteus or linux discontent

Post#7 by rchase » 28 Aug 2016, 03:40

If nothing more, you clearly did something right in assembling so capable a GUI-based Linux a fraction of the size of most such distributions.

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