a simple OS. please?!

[ABlipinTime]

Reading today about Ubuntu and Fedora on Ars:

Ubuntu's new look:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2011/05/riding-the-narwhal-ars-reviews-unity-in-ubuntu-1104.ars

Fedora's new problems
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/06/howto-four-tweaks-to-bring-back-missing-functionality-in-gnome-30.ars

... I started to remember my life-long wish for linux: something that would be simple and just work.
I'm not going to go complaining about linux OSes. They're free, and that's a nice luxury that is often overlooked. I'm grateful people make this stuff and give it away. However, I'd like to ask, isn't there an OS out there that is simple and does what people want it to without having to be CS majors? I mean really, I don't need my desktop to look like Mac or do neat looking jiggles whenever I move the window or hide the shut-down button from me (see Fedora article). What I need from it is this:

>) Easy access to shutdown/restart
>) Easy access to control panel and trouble-shooting methods
>) Everything to NOT be locked or inaccessible - I want more control
>) Easy installation of programs (if installation is necessary), or better yet, no installation required. If things do install, it would be nice to have all the files or it least all of the configuration files in one place, that way I don't have to scan my entire computer (as in Ubuntu) and make sure I change every last one of them.
>) Run everything I throw at it
>) Not wholly or even partly dependent on command-line operations (but those still be an option)

What might be nice:
>) A speedily accessible search bar (requires archiving of files for fast searching)


Anyone else feel the same way?

I do realize I picked a measly two articles to bring up this issue, but it's something to look at. There are a ton more articles that could be brought up (unrelated but along the lines of free software: Firefox's look change to Opera, yes Opera (Google Chrome was not the first to have the look)), but these have the biggest, latest OS update info so far as I know.

Also, I do realize that there are a ton of compatibility issues with the idea of "running everything I throw at it". But I know we have emulators like VMWare and such, so surely we should be able to build stuff like that in or run it natively on opening such programs.

Like I said, I'm grateful for linux. I have Ubuntu 10.04 installed on my computer. Needless to say, I am running Windows. To be precise, Vista (and before you talk about how bad it is, remember to give me another option 'cause this is all I've got).

[Xeno]

Well I'm an OS X user, have been for over 3 years now. I "defected" from the Windows camp to Mac OS 10.5 after Vista came out and couldn't do anything. I've found that, while Windows fanboys think I'm using a computer designed for a fetus, it's incredibly simple to use yet powerful in what it can do. I plan on continuing to use Mac OS going forward as my primary OS. But on the flip side, I do like Windows 7. It seems to not suffer from the massive amount of suck that was Vista, and I could see myself using it as a primary OS if OS X wasn't available to me. I know Macintosh computers are expensive (I have one myself), but there are other "options" for running OS X on a custom rig. I plan on doing that very thing within the next year or so.

[ABlipinTime]

My family has a couple of Macs and they work fine. It's not that Mac is bad (or cheap, :p), it's that there are a certain way I'd like things, and OSes, including Mac, keep moving away from them. It's as if they're going more for aesthetics than functionality, and the functionality they do add is always specialized for certain things, usually for some random program you think you'll never use (but might at some point). There is no do-everything-you-want-OS that I know of.

And no, you're not a baby for using Mac. I've never heard anyone say that about Mac users though.

[Arya Raiin]

Okay, I'll give you the spill on Ubuntu. It's nice, but the way it is set up is rather frustrating. The over all layout is very different from both Windows and the Mac. The basic operating system that you install is stripped to the bone and actually doesn't have everything it needs to run like a Mac or Windows. You have to get on their app store and download add-ons and apps to play music and such. However, it does include FireFox and some decent office tools and a lot of the apps are free. If you haven't used any Linux software before, you'll be really confused. However, if you have used Linux before you'll love it. You have to have a high speed internet connect for it to work well. I'd only recommend it to people who have the time to learn it. Also remember that the software has to be linux compatible. I don't really have enough time so I'm planning on installing Windows 7 or XP.

[TheMewster]

I've been using Windows XP and it's great! So try that.

[Atria35]

I've been using Windows XP and it's great! So try that.

Considering that OS is going obsolete, I don't think that's the way he would want to go >.>

[ADXC]

Windows 7 is pretty nice. Soooooo much better than Vista.

[klomp123]

I upgraded to 11.04 when it first came out. At first I was really excited, especially because I didn't have to compile my tablet kernel. Unfortunately, the Unity interface doesn't live up to it's name, and it's completely un-themeable.
I'm hoping the next release will polish up the clunky design.
I tried Gnome3 recently. It's like a unicorn and a Mac got together and had a magical computer baby. Unfortunately, it has a lot of pixel padding and the settings were minimal at best. You really can't adjust much.
So I'm stuck with a clunky design with efficient use of screen space until they design a better interface. As a side note, all the settings are in one place, so there's that.
Oh, and you can easily unlock things with a simple command or two. Sudo for command line tasks, gksudo nautilus for gui file management. You just have to be careful and use common sense.

[ABlipinTime]

@klomp123
Yeah, Linux does that command line thingy (the Terminal). I have worked with some command line like stuff before, but for now I'll stick to my GUI. It isn't easy to learn to use the Terminal (though one of these days I'll have to anyways).
Thanks for the info

[Mithrandir]

while Windows fanboys think I'm using a computer designed for a fetus, it's incredibly simple to use yet powerful in what it can do

Most of your geekiest computer professionals don't use windows. A surprisingly high percentage of us use Macs.

[Warrior4Christ]

[quote="Mithrandir (post: 1488426)"]Most of your geekiest computer professionals don't use windows. A surprisingly high percentage of us use Macs. ]
Or if they do, it's Windows + Cygwin?

[TheMewster]

I upgraded to 11.04 when it first came out. At first I was really excited, especially because I didn't have to compile my tablet kernel. Unfortunately, the Unity interface doesn't live up to it's name, and it's completely un-themeable.
I'm hoping the next release will polish up the clunky design.
I tried Gnome3 recently. It's like a unicorn and a Mac got together and had a magical computer baby. Unfortunately, it has a lot of pixel padding and the settings were minimal at best. You really can't adjust much.
So I'm stuck with a clunky design with efficient use of screen space until they design a better interface. As a side note, all the settings are in one place, so there's that.
Oh, and you can easily unlock things with a simple command or two. Sudo for command line tasks, gksudo nautilus for gui file management. You just have to be careful and use common sense.

Ah, that's why I use 10.04. Anyway I don't recommend Ubuntu unless you have a LOT of patience.

[ABlipinTime]

^ lol. I found that out. I considered switching to Fedora, and then I found out the mess the tech team made of that. Any other ideas?

[Warrior4Christ]

Those that are disgruntled with the Unity interface seem to be switching to http://linuxmint.com/.

[ABlipinTime]

The interface is a minor problem to me. My biggest issue is trying to install 3rd party software, or at the very least, compile code that I can then run. Every linux distro I've looked at does things the same way: synaptic or APT(?) (some command line thing). So I may have to learn how to use the command line?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24109/c-ide-for-linux

[Warrior4Christ]

If there's an Ubuntu package for it, then you can do "sudo apt-get install packagename", which I'm quite sure there's a GUI package manager that does the same thing.
I'm not sure if that's what you'd call 3rd party though, so in that case you download a Debian package usually that works pretty straightforwardly with double clicking.
Or if you install from source, you just follow the installation instructions provided, which is usually "make, make install" at the command line. And in unfortunate cases, that doesn't work smoothly and it complains about a missing library halfway through the make that you have to find yourself, then do "make, make install" on that one and that one has a missing dependency, and rinse, repeat. But mostly that doesn't happen.

I'm not sure what relevance the stackoverflow link has, because this issue has nothing to do with GUI IDEs.

[ABlipinTime]

The stackoverflow link was me having another simulateous thought that didn't get finished.

You make it sound so easy. Mostly, my problem is I'd like to compile or "make" code I've written on linux. I ought to spend more time on learning linux (maybe it's not as bad as I've initially found it).
But another problem I have (with Ubuntu) is that everything is scattered everywhere. I'm sure that's fine for security, but not when I'm trying to completely remove the last traces of a program from my computer. Maybe only Windows has that problem, but I'm pretty sure log files and other menial stuff like that doesn't always get removed on uninstall.

[TheMewster]

To those disgruntled with the Unity interface: Try Kubuntu. It's Ubuntu with KDE. I use KDE with Ubuntu and it works great (it's just harder to turn off:you have to log out then shut down at the login screen, at least if you start with GNOME and install KDE as a side interface after just plain old Ubuntu. This may be different in Kubuntu.)