Posted on Wednesday 25th of April 2007 at 12:27 in Linux

Why out of the box Linux performance is still important

Recently I reviewed Linux Mint KDE edition and concluded that it's probably missed it's window for success now that distros like Ubuntu are now supplying codecs (etc) on demand. But someone posted a comment that made me second guess my judgement.

I'm not going back on my conclusion of Mint but I am going to explain why I now believe "out of the box" performance to be very important to the growth of Linux.

While out of the box performance is excellent; meaning you can install a new distro and have full media support and office packages from the offset, it's not really necessary now that packages can be downloaded on demand and the use of Synaptic Package Manager means that preloaded software is almost defunct. You can easily browse the catologue and cherry pick the application that suits you.

However, what happens if you don't have an Internet connection? Does this mean Linux is beyond your grasp?

Linux needs the Internet - let's face it. You can't go to the shops to pick up new software for it and Synaptic has made it unlikely that your friends will be able to download "installers" for you to take away on a CD/DVD/USB drive. So what do you do if you want to use Linux without the Internet in this modern age? You need a distro that has everything you need straight out of the box.

You want codecs and full office software as a bare minimum to keep going. You also need the interface to be as intuitive as possible because Linux may have a strong and supportive community but that's no comfort to you if you're without the Internet.

Out of the box functionality is somewhere that is starting to improve and should help give Linux the opportunity to support non-connected users more. It's questionable how many people don't have the Internet but have heard of Linux (and consider it a viable solution) but ultimately I think this is another thing that needs to be done correctly to be taken seriously. But conversely, it's not like Windows comes with codecs preloaded does it?

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I like what you are saying, it would surley be helpful with "out of the box" functionality, even if not connected to the internet. but I really doubt that would be a hit, I mean, who doesn't have internet these days? and for those few who doesn't, I say only this! get it! but one thing the linux community really needs is distros that work out of the box, if linux is about to grow the developers must take this atleast into concidaration, if you download and install any distro. even the largest and most respectfully distros, you can't just start to use it normally right out of the box,, first you must install all kinds of different codecs so you can watch your movies, dvd,xvid,divx,mov, and you name it, in most distros you can't even browse a site made with flash cus there is no flashplayer? what!? and sometimes, you can't even listen on mp3's! this is weak! and this is something that scare off potential linux newbees, they don't have the knowledge to fix it, so they browse around in forums, what to do? this takes alot of time and troubble, and then they get fed up! and go back to good old xp again, people want to use linux not build it. how hard can it be to atleast have multimedia support out of the box?

by Chris on Monday 27th of April 2009 at 08:41

thanks for your article, yes there is a lot of users without Internet access, included mine, one day i wanted to try gnome planner, i found it the deb package but guess what, as i was sure that going back home i will find some strange missing dependencies i decided to download the windows package, that’s a pity.

but fortunately now i am on opensuse, and the build service is a real gift, i can get all the software i need, and it just it work .

really thanks for writing about users from other places where the sun don’t shine.

by djouallah mimoune on Wednesday 2nd of May 2007 at 02:43

Installing packages I got off another connection didn’t quite go so well when I was using ubuntu. I was able to get my Nvidia card working package by package somewhat easily, but trying to get all my media files to play wasn’t as easy. I wasn’t always aware of everything I needed to get a specific file to play correctly and rebooting from the live cd isn’t always an option in an internet cafe or a relatives house.

Of course, none of this may have been an issue if I had been able to get my usb dial-up modem to work. This wasn’t a problem with many of the distributions I tried later and the ones that included what I needed to manage my own slow connection by default made things go even smoother.

If some one really wants to make their distribution usable by as many people as possible they need to think about how much time it will take to get their system running and usable in as many situations as possible while assuming as little as they can about what resources may be at hand to do so.

by Roberts on Thursday 26th of April 2007 at 01:25

obviously some linux distros are better suited to being used on a sys without internet access

with gentoo it would be nearly impossible (at least during installation) due to its almost complete reliance on the "burn-one-install-cd-and-download-whatever-you-need-whenever-you-need-it" way

but there are distros that are better designed to cope without an internet connection

to put it in joe blogs speak, linux isnt so much an operating system as a type of operating system and you need to find the one that suits you

~CW~
a very happy gentoo user

by ~CW~ on Wednesday 25th of April 2007 at 19:14

Unfortunately, simply downloading from packages.ubuntu.com means that you have to also manually download all the dependencies.

Synaptic, though, can still be a valuable tool. I pop in a live CD on an internet-enabled computer, add repositories from my full, tricked-out sources.list on a flash drive, then select my packages and updates. Synaptic has a "create download script from marked packages" feature. I place the script on my flash drive, where it downloads the packages and dependencies with wget.

From there, a simple "sudo dpkg -i *deb" in the packages directory will install them. Sometimes, though, because dpkg installs in alpha. order, unlike apt/Synaptic, which installs dependencies first, packages won’t install properly. In that case, I use AptOnCD (http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/ , or aptoncd in the ubuntu repos) to make my own CD-repository with my downloaded packages. I can then pop in the CD, add it as a repo in synaptic, and install my packages.

But still, I agree. As a dialup user myself, I strongly think that easier methods should exist. Just because I’ve found a system that works for me doesn’t mean other people, in developing countries for example, have that option.

by te27ch on Wednesday 25th of April 2007 at 16:02

Well, I have to disagree with the "Synaptic has made it unlikely that your friends will be able to download ’installers’ for you to take away on a CD/DVD/USB drive" part.

It’s really easy, actually. Just visit the http://packages.ubuntu.com, search for packages you need for your friend, download them (they are just standard *.deb Debian packages, after all) and burn them to the CD/DVD or put them on your USB-stick - and take them to your friend. Then you can either double-click-install them, or - if you prefer the console, like I do - just dpkg -i /path/to/the/package.deb. Done and done.

I have installed quite a few Kubuntu’s recently, a few of them on internet-less boxen; done an upgrade and installed some needed software/codecs that way, so it’s even tested. :)

Or, you can download all the DVDs or 20 CDs of Debian and have all the packages always with you, if you like. I prefer it the burn-one-install-cd-and-download-whatever-you-need-whenever-you-need-it way though. :)

Cheers
rysiek aka mike
Kubuntu/Debian user

by rysiek on Wednesday 25th of April 2007 at 15:11