Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest 460
prourl writes "The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the 2010 'We're Linux' video contest. The contest seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it." Sadly, the winner will almost certainly be edited in Final Cut Pro on a Mac ;)
Re:"The winner" = Exactly (Score:1, Informative)
I've only ever used Cinelerra and Premiere. I preferred Cinelerra, for that reason above all else. It was a nightmare finding a codec that Premiere liked, and the program was incredibly unstable, causing me to lose work frequently. Cinelerra had a confusing interface, but once you got around that, it did its job well.
So, your a PC? (Score:2, Informative)
So I guess you are advertising yourself as a PC user by being easily frustrated, violent and unable to learn anything so you resort to using an OS soon 10 years out of date...
Somehow I don't think MS will be calling you to advertise for them.
Lets face it:
Mac users = Gay.
Linux users = Elitist assholes.
BSD users = Even more elitist assholes.
PC users = Wishing they could be any of the above so they to could have cool sites to post upon rather then having to claim "I am a geek" on a windows machine.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:4, Informative)
Then you might want to think about a new line of work.
I've installed Ubuntu on roughly 20 different platforms (laptop, desktop, and servers) since 6.06 and I've never had it not boot. In the past some hardware didn't work immediately but was a trivial fix (or ATI) if you could use google and even that hasn't been the case for a few releases for me.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:2, Informative)
2) IF Windows actually has drivers for your hardware
3) IF it actually had 'generic' drivers that work with your disk controller
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:5, Informative)
Put Windows CD in computer. Turn on. Click "next". After the install is done, Windows Update starts automatically, and grabs most of the specific drivers.
Um, that's most definitely *not* how Windows installs. Not any version ever installed like that.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:2, Informative)
Well, the main difference is that Linux offers more choices. More choices, more "uhhhh.... dunnnoooooo..." moments.
It already starts with the partition. Do you want to resize your existing system, do you want to use the unused portion of your disk, do you want to wipe your old system, do you want to use the MBR or install it in a partition and have some other boot manager make the "main" decision... Windows simply offers "I take it all and your old system can suck it". And behold, people accept it because it's easy. It doesn't ask a lot of "stupid" questions they have no answer for.
And that continues throughout the install process. What browser do you want to use, what mail system, what this, what that... Windows simply slaps IE, Mediaplayer and ... whatever their crappy mailproggy is called, forgot it ... at you. Don't like it? Sucks to be you.
People appearantly want their OS like their politicians: Making decisions for them.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Informative)
No problem, here's a driver disk.
Uhh... where's the disk drive?
Ok, here's the drivers on a USB stick.
What do you mean, WinXP can't use it to install the drivers?
(can you tell I already had that problem?)
Re:"The winner" = Exactly (Score:4, Informative)
Those formats except for iSight seem common to me. Now what you probably mean to say was iMovie doesn't support all video formats, that is true. It won't probably support Windows based video formats or obscure formats. But remember iMovie is for consumers to make and edit their home movies; it is not intended for professionals. Final Cut probably supports a larger range of formats.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:5, Informative)
My 5 year old learned to install Ubuntu just a couple weeks ago. I don't think he understands what the password is for, or why the default option of using the entire hard drive was desired over of the other options, but everything else he could figure out on his own.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:4, Informative)
Put Windows CD in computer. Turn on. Click "next". After the install is done, Windows Update starts automatically, and grabs most of the specific drivers.
Assuming it has the base set of drivers to start with and that the computer is configured to boot CDs before the hard drive.
Granted, most cheap computers are probably easily covered. but that doesn't mean their network cards are, or modems, or other things. For example, it's pretty difficult to get a WinModem working in Windows without manufacturer provided drivers. Too many built-in network cards suffer from non-standard drives too.
And don't forget that WinXP until SP2 didn't come with SATA drivers either. So if your hard drive is now a SATA drive, but you only have a recovery disk for WinXP original, you'd be out of luck in using it.
That's where the vendor disks come in - they provide support for how they shipped the system to you, even if the drivers were not part of the standard Windows media.
So I'd still have to say that the average person cannot so easily re-install Windows without a vendor disk - especially when so much of the Windows-oriented hardware does depend on vendor specific drivers that Microsoft doesn't provide.
Re:"The winner" = Exactly (Score:1, Informative)
MPEG-4 and H.264 aren't "Quicktime".
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:1, Informative)
I agree here, except for getting dual monitors to work the way I want. That is effing difficult in every linux distro I've ever used, and simple as pie in Windows.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:4, Informative)
There's a setting to stop that auto-reboot if you want to actually read the message: Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery Settings -> Automatically reboot checkbox.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:1, Informative)
I've installed it several times, likewise various linux distros. I'd say the share of installation problems is about equal.
Bah... it depends on what you mean by "installation problems." I've been using Linux on and off for over a decade. This is BS. My primary machine is Linux these days and has been for a few years, and I've been through a number of different distros on a number of different machines. Even on really, really common, standard hardware, I've had completely bizarre problems emerge during installation. Sure, sometimes I've had weird Windows problems too, but those usually only affect some minor weird setting; on Linux, almost every installation I've tried ends up with some major disruption in basic desktop functionality.
If you're running a server, probably the installation problems are about equal. If you're a typical desktop user, they definitely are not, and the solutions needed to fix them are much more complex.
Typical Windows install for average desktop user -- (1) install on machine, (2) boot to gui, (3) realize that many things were detected correctly, (4) do Google search and download drivers, (5) now 99% of system usually works for basic desktop functionality (unless you're using some truly weird hardware)
Greatest difficulty encountered? Usually using Google to find drivers.
Typical Linux install for average desktop user -- (1) install on machine, (2) boot to gui in wrong resolution or sometimes get kicked to command line, (3) spend time fixing monitor detection, video drivers, etc., perhaps involving recompiling kernel if you're unlucky, (4) hopefully get to reasonably working gui, (5) start trying to get other hardware working, (6) after some basic troubleshooting fails, spend hours searching in linux forums for someone with a similar configuration, (7) try out 2 or 3 solutions to the bugs you're encountering until you get the hardware to work for every hardware item that doesn't work, (8) even after everything seems to work, deal with intermittent sound problems, codec issues when playing various media types, problems with plugins to view the most common internet sites, etc., and (9) eventually give up after a weekend with a system that has about 75% functionality of what the average desktop user wants (browsing, email, basic multimedia playing, etc.).
Common difficulties encountered: having to deal with a CLI, having to solve weird problems caused by interactions between hardware and OS manually rather than by simply downloading a driver, settling for odd multimedia behavior and/or lack of basic functionality on some common websites, etc.
Sure, I have enough experience myself that I can sort through these problems relatively quickly, perhaps sometimes as quickly as the average Windows user could find drivers and download them. I don't think I'm the average desktop user. But I would never make the claim the Linux installations are less problematic or equivalently problematic for average desktop users than Windows installs... despite what many people like to claim on Slashdot.
You can bitch about having to download drivers for Windows installs as much as you want, but it's not like troubleshooting Linux installs. And 99% of the time I've had such issues in Windows, the drivers work, at least for the basic functions most people want. Usually solving such a problem takes 5 minutes. In Linux, similar problems often take me a couple hours of research and fiddling if it's something I haven't seen before.
I've probably spent almost equal time using Linux and Windows over the years, but I think I've spent at least 20 times as much time troubleshooting Linux as I have troubleshooting Windows. Perhaps I'm incredibly unlucky, but I find that Linux desktop installs tend to be broken in ways that are less easy to fix. Complicated server installs are a different story... but that's not what the GP was talking about.
Re:Final cut pro == sad (Score:3, Informative)
It's only sad if people tried to make a video editor for linux and somehow were denied by forces outside their control. If the only reason is that nobody has bothered to write a good one, then that's not sad.
As a Linux user I think it's sad that we don't yet have a decent video editing solution on Linux...
I agree with what you say that Final Cut Pro itself isn't "sad" - but the fact that Linux users making a video about using Linux don't have a decent tool to edit their videos with is kind of a drag...
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:2, Informative)
I've installed Ubuntu on roughly 20 different platforms (laptop, desktop, and servers) since 6.06 and I've never had it not boot.
I've had several installations of Ubuntu fail to boot on a few systems over the last 3 years. Eventually, I figured out it was the fault of my CD burner (8 years old) failing to write good disks. They'd be good enough to mount, good enough to pass Ubuntu's self-checker, but about half the time the installed OS would have some failure. I would not be surprised if bad disks contributed to many of the linux install headaches.