Okay, I'm officially DONE with the linux!

[sedativechunk]

Okay this is the final straw. I got on Steam today to play Kerbal Space Program, and to my completely surprise and shock, my Kerbal Space Program installation was completely deleted from my install, with all mods, game saves, and other data removed.

Two days ago, I installed Linux Ubuntu on a separate hard drive on my desktop. I specifically and only installed it just for KSP. I play this game enough where I was fed up with the memory restrictions on Windows and thought I would try Linux out. Not to my surprise, I've had nothing but absolute problems when working with linux in general. Before I move on, I have been in the IT industry for nearly 10 years. I've had official training and college education specifically on UNIX. I took over a years worth of college courses just on working with terminal alone. This is but a growing list of annoying problems I've had with linux desktop over the past five years.

Despite all my knowledge of this OS, I am officially declaring that I hate linux for traditional desktop use. It works great for web servers, but it is absolutely pointless, stupid, and annoying to use as a regular consumer desktop user! Even as a developer, I have no reason/advantages to using linux for everything. I have windows and mac which I find both superior to linux. In fact, Mac OSX is unix/linux is a facelift, and in my opinion it is everything linux wishes it could be. A huge lack of quality software, bugged drivers, annoying and time consuming terminal commands for everything make me hate this OS. Heck, even at my old college where I learned UNIX (all the machines had Debian installed), I would say at least 5-6 computers in that college were not working with debian on any given day. They even gave us flash drives with Debian and none of the flash drives worked in our whole class.

I love linux/unix and web server usage, but I am freaking done with this POS operating system. Luckily, my KSP is backed up, and I've only lost a mere days worth of playing which was mostly spent trying to fix a number of issues on linux. Despite the increased memory limitations, KSP did not work well on linux for me. The camera stuttered, the GPU drivers are buggy, my steam overlay never worked right, and I had several other issues with the game. This one with the game completely disappearing tops the freaking list!

Let this be a warning to others. If you are thinking about installing linux just for KSP, don't do it. Use less mods on the Windows version and enjoy the game for what it is. Linux is not the magic wand to fix the issues this game has on Windows. This is especially true if you've never worked with any linux OS before. I will say, Ubuntu is highly polished, it's made a lot of progress over the years. But it's still mediocre compared to what you will get on Windows and Mac in general. I'm going back to KSP on Windows, screw this.

[Sandworm]

unix /= linux.

"time consuming terminal commands for everything" Which OS are you using? I seriously doubt its the approved linux os for KSP/steam (ie ubuntu). And ubuntu /= debian. They are related but certainly not interchangeable.

It sounds like you are dual/duel-booting. Don't. Windows and linux don't play nice together. Any number of driver update or security issues can crop up and cause instability. Shoehorning two radically different OSs into a single box will never yield the best experience. Dual booting is a marketing ploy to get people trying linux without removing windows. Use a dedicated machine.

KSP on ubuntu linux is stable... very stable. There are quirks here and there depending on your hardware, but all in all it is far more stable than any windows build I've seen. It's probably the most stable 3d game I've ever played. Even my old NES failed every so often. But in over a year of playing KSP I've had only a handful of crashes, and those were all mod-related.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Sandworm

[sal_vager]

If you told us what went wrong and what trouble you had, we'd be able to help....

[waterlubber]

I've been running Ubuntu for two years. Hate Windows, never going back. I don't see what was wrong.

You don't *need* to use the terminal, though it certainly is useful.

And I have so many mods on KSP it takes up all my RAM if I let it...seriously, the game EATS memory.

64-bit ftw! Sacrifice the computer for the Kraken!

[sal_vager]

Linux user for many years here, I rarely need the terminal and that is usually only for the odd command line only program I use (like Toc2Cue), not going back to Windows, I cannot be dealing with virus and malware rubbish anymore or the endless pain of updating individual programs.

Wine is good for nearly everything I play, anything else usually has a Linux build these days

[White Owl]

OP, I'm with you. Nothing in Linux ever works right out of the box; you have to troubleshoot and fix the install of everything you might want to use. Even Audacity, open source software I've been using near daily for years and is designed to work with Linux... wouldn't work until I opened the hood and fixed a bunch of crap. And after three straight days of troubleshooting software specifically to play and record KSP without crippling RAM limitations, I find the game has unplayable framerates with any more than a dozen parts in flight. Well hell, if I'm going to have to accept a low framerate then I might as well go back to KSP win86 with the openGL hack. So those frustrating three days were a complete waste of time and effort.

[Kulebron]

KSP runs prefectly for me, except that my laptop has only built-in weak video.

I use Ubuntu since 2008, as web developer I have same Ubuntu everywhere, so maintaining it is not a problem. But I acknowledge without this side-effect it's a hard duty. Lack of quality is a big problem. Audacity/GIMP/(name a famous Windows program analogue) all crash regularly, but still it's not my main job.

Not going to use Windows as main system in near future, but if I change profession from web dev to design/research, will give MacOS a try.

Linux was designed with "fix it yourself" philosophy. Turns out the area where users are skilled enough to do this is limited to servers and infra.

[Kulebron]

OP, I'm with you. Nothing in Linux ever works right out of the box; you have to troubleshoot and fix the install of everything you might want to use. Even Audacity, open source software I've been using near daily for years and is designed to work with Linux... wouldn't work until I opened the hood and fixed a bunch of crap.

I rarely had such issues. What Ubuntu version and hardware did you use?

I only had blocking problem in booting, when I needed to boot with a special option, but no more serious issues.

[micha]

Funny.. in the OP post if you substitute Windows for Linux, that is largely my experience.

I've just totally and utterly HAD it with that piece of ....e, unfortunately I can't get around not using Windows for work. Not even for remote desktop since our VPN software is bespoke. Argh!

As for Linux, long-time happy Debian user. Both on my server as well as my Desktops and Laptops. KSP works fine, as does Oolite, and pretty much most software I need. An annoying exception is Garmin stuff. But even my "new" secondhand dive computer, nothing but trouble trying to get it to run under Windows (unsigned drivers and all sorts of crap) but, and I must admit I was shocked and surprised by this, it just worked out of the box under Linux with an open-source dive program called Subsurface.

Now, I fully admit that I'm not a typical user. I know my way reasonably well around PC's, having played and worked on them for the better part of 25 years now. The one thing which I would -totally- dispute though is that it's difficult to get stuff working on Linux. Either it's totally incompatble, in which case you should find that info quite quickly and stop wasting time, or pretty much all the problems are well documented with solutions which can be worked through. In contrast to Windows, where pretty much the only solution is "have you tried turning it off and on again?" followed by "have you tried reinstalling"?

Maybe I just don't know where to look, but in Linux, any issue typed into Google gets a result quickly, whereas for Windows I spend hours searching.

</counter rant>

[Guest]

Linux user for many years here, I rarely need the terminal and that is usually only for the odd command line only program I use (like Toc2Cue), not going back to Windows, I cannot be dealing with virus and malware rubbish anymore or the endless pain of updating individual programs.

Wine is good for nearly everything I play, anything else usually has a Linux build these days

"Virus and malware rubbish" is never fun. But in my experience, an infected machine, regardless of the OS, is the fault of the user 99.99% of the time. Now, the user may have been ignorant of the fact that he/she was participating in high risk behavior, but it still is the fault of the user. Absolutely no OS is malware proof. Most malware is injected into your system either through opening that "it's to good to be true email, but I'm opening it anyway" or through some sort of facebook scam, or some type of "click me" trick advertising. My windows installations, one laptop and one desktop, have been free from serious infection for years now, mainly due to the fact that I've already fell for nearly every trick in the book and had to learn to clean up my own messes. I don't use anti-virus. My Windows is never allowed to auto-update. And I use adblockers in all of my web browsers.

As far as the OP is concerned, I see he actually gave few details. Maybe the particular linux distribution in question would have been a good start. Whenever I see these types of posts anymore, I usually just ignore it and move on. But, I wanted to stop by and say that fear of malware rubbish is not a good reason to choose one OS over another. The best reasons for choosing linux, IMO, are 1. It's FREE and 2. It's FREE. nuff said.

[pxi]

It's a YMMV thing in my opinion. My personal experience with Linux has been nothing but joy, but I'm one of these people that really likes using the terminal. I've had very little hassle getting hardware to work with Linux, and in many cases where I reinstall Windows to find that device manager presents you with a list of 'unknown devices' reaching for my trusty Linux on a stick, and a quick lspci -v gets me the information that I want far quicker than any other method I could think of.

It's not for everyone though.

[steve_v]

It sounds like you are dual/duel-booting. Don't. Windows and linux don't play nice together. Any number of driver update or security issues can crop up and cause instability. Shoehorning two radically different OSs into a single box will never yield the best experience. Dual booting is a marketing ploy to get people trying linux without removing windows. Use a dedicated machine.

Rubbish.

Unless you are talking about some dubious 'run Linux from within Windows' system with virtual disks AKA WUBI, you can have as many seperated operating systems on one PC as you have partitions/disks. They will never see or interact with one another unless you move files back and forth - this *may* cause issues, but it's almost always due to PEBCAK not the multiboot setup.

Windows can't even read ext4 partitions without additional software, so how driver or security issues supposedly propagate from one to the other is beyond me.

That said, my dual booted Windows 7 install has gone un-booted for *years* now, I just haven't got 'round to deleting it yet.

On the OP topic:

I loathe using Windows as much as the OP does Linux. Not because of anything intrinsic to the OS, but because of the inherent lack of freedom.

The "you must pay someone to get anything done" mentatlity; where pretty much every program comes with a purchase, a bunch of ads or a restrictive licence preventing me from doing what I set out to do in the first place.

And the "Microsoft knows best" where it works a certain way and if you don't like it, tough.

Linux on the other hand comes with a free modular toolkit, AKA the GNU userland, and literally tens of thousands of open source applications.

Everything is open, if it doesn't do what you want out of the box you are free to modify it so that it does and give said modifications back to the community for others to use.

While the Windows way may suit those that want things to 'just work' and are willing to pay for it - both in terms of $$ and in freedom, I much prefer a system that I can get to do exactly what I want it to - even if it does involve some tinkering on my end. IMHO, if you want to use free software, you should be contributing anyway - even if only in a non-coder sense, by reporting bugs etc.

The quality of the proprietary drivers on Linux is a case in point - no matter how much we want them to be better there is absolutely squat we can do about it because they are closed source.

The whole 'Linux on the desktop sucks" argument makes little sense to me - my idea of a desktop is probably quite different from anyone elses. If you come to the party with preconceptions of how things are supposed to work, and are unwilling to take the time to make it so, you will be disappointed.

There is no "Desktop Linux". It's a myth. Distros may try to set things up in a sane default configuration, but in the end there is Linux, there is GNU, there is X.org, there is GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Ratpoison etc. etc. The list goes on.

How you bolt them together to make a useable desktop - and what said desktop looks like - is up to you, much like a certain game I might mention...

I got on Steam today to play Kerbal Space Program, and to my completely surprise and shock, my Kerbal Space Program installation was completely deleted from my install

So?

Blame Steam, No OS I know of just randomly deletes files.

I have my KSP install (whole PC in fact) backed up to an hourly snapshotted, compressed & checksummed ZFS array - I can roll back my local filesystem to any point I like.

Linux is not to blame for your lack of backups.

Edited November 29, 2014 by steve_v

[Sandworm]

Rubbish.

Unless you are talking about some dubious 'run Linux from within Windows' system with virtual disks AKA WUBI, you can have as many seperated operating systems on one PC as you have partitions/disks. They will never see or interact with one another unless you move files back and forth - this *may* cause issues, but it's almost always due to PEBCAK not the multiboot setup.

Windows can't even read ext4 partitions without additional software, so how driver or security issues supposedly propagate from one to the other is beyond me.

That said, my dual booted Windows 7 install has gone un-booted for *years* now, I just haven't got 'round to deleting it yet.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Secure_boot

That;s just the start. Some hardware (mostly special stuff, but including a few graphics cards) retain changes between boots. A change made under one OS might not be recognized or fixable when the second magically appears after the next boot, resulting in annoying, difficult to repeat, issues.

[steve_v]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Secure_boot

SecureBoot isn't really a problem anymore, as recent releases of the 'big' distros - eg. Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse - now support it.

Besides, it can be turned off. I for one don't particularly like the idea of Microsoft deciding what I can run on my PC, so I disable it wherever I encounter it.

If your distro doesn't have pre-signed efi binaries, or a shim signed by M$, the spec says you can import your own into the firmware. Hardware that can't do this is broken and should be returned.

Some hardware (mostly special stuff, but including a few graphics cards) retain changes between boots.

Sure, I guess it's possible. I haven't actually seen anything that can't be set right with a cold-boot though. Any examples in the wild?

Edited November 30, 2014 by steve_v

[cantab]

To everyone else, I'll say only that sedativechunk's experience is not the norm. He may have had hardware compatibility issues - less of an issue than it used to be but it does still arise sometimes. He may have followed bad advice or used old techniques on the setup - a potential issue with any OS or software.

As for WhiteOwl's experience, sound is one thing that's a massive mess in Linux unfortunately. Try not to end up messing with it.

I've been using various Linux distributions as my primary OS for a decade now and have got on well with it. Valve trust it enough to use as their planned Steam Machine's OS. It's not without issues, but no software is.

Oh, and OSX is in my limited experience an annoying and hard-to-use interface. It may share design concepts with Unix but Apple's philosophies are the antithesis of those of most Linux distros.

[waterlubber]

I'll make a second post:

Linux is not everyone's cup of tea. It is made for advanced users. So many people use Windows that it's become the main OS troubleshooters (and [========] virus creators aim for).

Linux, however, does not have the support of Windows. I put up with Linux because I know Windows isn't any better.

The thing is, there are a lot of small peeves in Linux. For example, my startup screen is incredibly ugly because I messed it up. No longer is it the clean ubuntu loader, somehow ubuntu studio stuck it's ugly face all over it, and it's broken to bits.

[segaprophet]

You know it's true

Once you go Mac you don't go back

[pxi]

Once you go Mac you don't go back

I dispute this. I loved this Mac:

But I cannot stand OSX. The only positive thing I can say about it is that at least it has bash. Other than that I'd refuse to support it.

Edited December 3, 2014 by pxi

[Flymetothemun]

I'll make a second post:

Linux is not everyone's cup of tea. It is made for advanced users. So many people use Windows that it's become the main OS troubleshooters (and [========] virus creators aim for).

Linux, however, does not have the support of Windows. I put up with Linux because I know Windows isn't any better.

The thing is, there are a lot of small peeves in Linux. For example, my startup screen is incredibly ugly because I messed it up. No longer is it the clean ubuntu loader, somehow ubuntu studio stuck it's ugly face all over it, and it's broken to bits.

I agree with the bold & underlined. An analogy that I use is that Linux is a semi truck, Windows is a pickup truck, and Mac is a saloon. Semis can be used for almost anything, but you need special training and knowledge to legally operate one. Saloons can't be used for a lot other than transporting people, medium-sized things or the shopping, but can be used by almost anyone. Pickup trucks are a bit of a balance between a Semi and a Saloon, you can use them to transport large things, but they can be used by almost everybody if you can deal with different handling than a saloon or a semi.

[segaprophet]

Saloons can't be used for a lot other than transporting people, medium-sized things or the shopping, but can be used by almost anyone.

Without resorting to bringing up gaming industry support (or lack thereof), what kind of task can a Linux or Windows box do that a Mac lacks the horsepower or software to do?

[Flymetothemun]

Without resorting to bringing up gaming industry support (or lack thereof), what kind of task can a Linux or Windows box do that a Mac lacks the horsepower or software to do?

I meant to use Transportation as an analogy to the amount and/or level of customization one can do, sorry for any misunderstanding.

Edited December 3, 2014 by Flymetothemun

[segaprophet]

I meant to use Transportation as an analogy to the amount and/or level of customization one can do, sorry for any misunderstanding.

With hardware customization, you're spot on. Although with software customization Win and OS X are largely in the same boat, with a slight edge to OS X. Linux software customization is, of course, only limited by the skill of the user.

Although Mac is my primary platform, I built a gaming PC principally because I didn't want to shell out for a whole new Mac every time a new generation of games come along that obsolete it. My Mac provides a great work environment for video editing, photoshop, web work, general non-gaming tasks as well as less demanding games - while the gaming PC provides the juice when I want some higher end gaming (plus it was fun to build!).

Edited December 3, 2014 by segaprophet

[steve_v]

I actually used to like Macs... the LCII was a good machine, MacOS9 was a good OS. OSX is really just BSD/Mach with a lot of shiny on top.

Nowadays Apple seem to go to great lengths to prevent people from changing any hardware or software components. By bye Apple, moving on to something I can actually *own*.

Case in point: running Windows / Linux on a modern x86 Mac should be dead easy. It isn't. Not for any technical reason, but because Apple don't want you to. Replacing batteries in apple portable products should requite only a screwdriver, thanks to Apple it's a *special* screwdriver + some fancy shaped bits of plastic.

[segaprophet]

Using modern Macs, I do sorely miss the hardware customization - for example, I loved the heck out my old B/W Power Mac G3 -

I used it between 2002-2006 and upgraded everything possible in that time (HDD, RAM, GPU, CPU, ODD, FAN).

[table]

[tr]

[td]I took it from this -

OS 9

400mhz PowerPC G3

64mb RAM

20GB HDD on native 33mhz bus

ATI Rage 128 16mb

CD-ROM[/td]

[td]eventually to this -

OS X 10.4 Tiger

1.1ghz PowerPC G3

1gb RAM

250GB HDD on PCI 133mhz bus

ATI Radeon 9200 128mb

DVD-R DL[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

ah the memories . .

Edited December 3, 2014 by segaprophet

[Camacha]

Using modern Macs, I do sorely miss the hardware customization - for example, I loved the heck out my old B/W Power Mac G3 -

That's unfortunately what you buy into when you buy a Mac. Apple actively discourages people changing their own hardware by using unnecessary proprietary plugs with just a different pin-out that the standard stuff. I don't like companies that do that - it always suggests that the companies are not trusting their own products to sell.