So I recently became fed up with Windows 8 and decided I would convert all my home computers to Linux. I search a bit and heard a lot about Mint, I gave it a short try, ran into trouble and found the community too small to support a linux noob like me. So I went back to Ubuntu - I have a laptop running 12.10 for awhile now and have been really happy with it - and the community is huge so I can ask questions and expect to find someone knowledgeable to see it.
My mistake was trying the new version, 13.10 and 13.04. The first problem I had was with the NIC card, a Netgear GA311v10 - on all the supported lists (and on a few 'if you have trouble with your card, use this one' lists). After half a dozen OS installs and over a week trying to get it to work to no avail I gave up, and swapped it with one in a different computer (Windows has no trouble using it). Fine, one failure, lots of lost time, but at least I have network.
Next was the browser. I installed Chromium as my preferred browser and added the one extension I can't live without - a password keeper. Oops, that doesn't work either - but it does on my Ubuntu 12.10 laptop. Oh well, I will find a work around, or a different one that does work... Failures: 2. At one point this thought actually went through my mind: 'Once I get the system running, I will search and see what password keeper the Linux snobs
+ suggest I use on their OS.' It was when I realized I was thinking of Ubuntu 13.10 as 'their OS' and not 'my OS' that I started to make the connection with Windows Vista/8.
One of the things I want to do is stream video from Amazon Instant Video. This uses Adobe Flash and has some DRM that uses HAL to work. HAL was obsoleted and is no longer available. Oh well, I have a computer with a card that doesn't work with Ubuntu so I have to keep it on Windows anyway - I will just use that to stream videos. This is a big loss though - you can't even stream online video on the OS (Netflix requires an external application to hack around the limitations of the OS, but there is no such app for Amazon or BBC iPlayer). Failures:3 and patience near 0.
Next in line is Android Studio. Version 0.3 came out and adds a feature I have been looking for (modifying gradle dependencies in GUI instead of manual configuring files). Oops, can't get Android Studio to work either - tons of errors pointing to things out of my control whenever you open or make a project. There might be a fix, who knows, my patience was zero before. Failures: 4. I am done. I have a back up of the system on Windows and am about to fall back and give up entirely.
But MS has made me mad enough to stay my hand, and try Ubuntu 12.10, which worked so well on my laptop. So I Install 12.10 and lo: my Chromium extension works, HAL can be installed and Amazon Instant Video streaming works as does BBC iPlayer. Android Studio installs and runs just fine. Failures: 0 (though, to be honest, I did not use the NIC card, so not sure if that would fail).
To summarize: I am going to use Ubuntu 12.10, I will not change because nothing on Ubuntu 13.10 works, it is a failure of an OS (as far as my experience goes
*). This means I am tied into 12.10, an old version of the OS, just like I was tied to Windows XP when Windows Vista was a failure (and Windows 7 at work since Windows 8 is a failure). I am happy with 12.10, so I am not sure how much of a problem it is now, but I assume at some point I will get hardware which won't work on it and will necessitate a change in OS. Any thoughts by other folks out there?
+Linux snobs might seem derogatory a bit, and I guess it is. But it reflects my opinion that 'they' care more about the 'ideal' than making things that work. For example, there is a tool called Keryx used to help download packages for an offline Linux system. You use it to get the list of dependencies and paths to download the required files, then copy the list to an online computer to download the packages, then copy the packages onto the offline system to install them. Problem is: there is this philosophy of 'Do one thing and do it well' which requires every app to have a long list of dependencies to work - and Keryx is no exception. You can't use it without first downloading and installing dependencies - but downloading the dependencies on an offline system is this app's purpose... which means if you need this app it is useless - you can't download the dependencies to make it work! Sure, you can get it to work - but if you do, you know how to get dependency lists and download them and copy them and install them and no longer need the application. Why would you waste the time doing that for Keryx when really the time would be better spent doing it for the package you actually need (the package for which you would be installing Keryx for). Whoever wrote the app took the ideal 'Do one thing and do it well' and ignored the practicality of it being useful and working. The same sort of ideal is why HAL was removed from the saucey universe with the side effect that DRMed video streaming doesn't work.
*Not literally everything I tried failed. Chromium installed without a hitch, I just couldn't use it for what I wanted. And Oracle's JDK installed without a problem, I just couldn't use it for what I wanted. But that is in fact the limit of everything I did to the OS, Attempts: 6, Fails: 4, Useless Successes: 2.