Bad concepts

[minthaka]

I have a friend and I'm wanting to install Linux on her PC.
Guess what was her first question?
- Could I continue to record TV programs with my TV card as I did on Windows?
Well, I spent hours to find a decent video recording program for Linux.
The word decent in my terms has meaning : "easy to understand, easy to handle, easy to install"

First I've tried MythTV. It took me at least 3 hours to get to nowhere. After the wrestling with MySQL server, and a 100 settings I still could not watch the movie played from a videorecorder via Bt878 card. The morbid thing is that when you surf for help, everywhere is introduced as an "easy program".

Then, I've tried Freevo, well that one wasn't hard to install, but when I typed freevo in terminal I got KDE frozen.

Thirdly, I have tried VDR, the most promising choice. At the start it wanted me to turn off utf-8. From my experiences with Mepis, changing locales is not as a good idea. So I left without possibilities.

This trip took me 8 hours. Just to compare, I remember, even the stupidest MS Video application is installed within 2 minutes, and setting up is a basic task.

After that I must consider Linux as not ready for desktop use. There's an array of bad concepts in Linux, which are in my opinion, the main obstacles hindering Linux from becoming the leading OS:

1. There are too many possibilities within an application, and you get lost.
2. Solutions have bad concepts, using a server instead of config files leads to despair.
3. The programmers are forgetting where they came from, and what was their knowledge when they got involved into Linux.

Remember, I've only tried to find an application to watch and record the content of a videotape!!! And I had to learn MySQL basics, changing locales and othe delicate things. It could seem an easy task for old wolves with over 2000 posts on Linuxforums, but just guess how a newbie feels himself?

[oz]

It's already been said on these forums many times before, but I'll repeat it again here... Linux is not meant to be a replacement OS, but merely an alternative. It will not satisfy the needs of every user and probably never will. All users should adopt whatever OS works best for them, regardless of its origins.

Thankfully, we have lots of options to choose from. Hopefully, that will remain so in the future.

[Roxoff]

Hmmm, I have two tv cards inside Linux computers. I have a DVB-T card that sits in my media centre, and a usb stick which i use with my laptop. I used both with Kaffeine from Fedora Core 6, and latterly Fedora 7 on the laptop.

They both worked without any tweaking - straight out of the box, just installed it and off I went. As it's Freeview digital telly, I had to a channel scan, but after that it just worked - records, plays, pause in play, etc.

[anomie]

After that I must consider Linux as not ready for desktop use.

Each individual's needs are unique. It sounds like she (your friend) is not a good candidate for a Linux desktop. No need to make generalizations that don't apply to lots of other folks.

[minthaka]

Hmmm, I have two tv cards inside Linux computers. I have a DVB-T card that sits in my media centre, and a usb stick which i use with my laptop. I used both with Kaffeine from Fedora Core 6, and latterly Fedora 7 on the laptop.

They both worked without any tweaking - straight out of the box, just installed it and off I went. As it's Freeview digital telly, I had to a channel scan, but after that it just worked - records, plays, pause in play, etc.

Well, I could watch TV with KdeTV, TvTime ... But I wanted to record or capture the movie. Next thing I'll try is VLC. By the way, which application are you using for recording?

I didn't want to rise tensions, but there are some facts that are making me angry sometimes. One of them are man pages: they are hard to read, no concrete examples. I know, Linux is firstly console-based OS, so man pages are invented for that.
Anyway, I like Linux with all its failures. Since a week ago I wiped out the last remnants of MS Empire from my PC's!

[fingal]

Hmmm it's possible to take the wrong route when trying to achieve things under Linux. I had a lot of problems with my TV card (for all I know I could make it work now, since I upgraded my OS).

So much depends on your hardware, chipsets, choice of packages and your assumptions about how to get things done.

Increasingly 'things just work' out of the box, but I'll admit it helps to be an experienced user. As for manuals, they aren't perfect: it depends on who writes them. After a while you'll become skilled in skimming through a manual - without reading every word - and extracting what you need from it.

Edit: After this Google search: Xine OR kaffeine ~record TV
I found this. It might be useful, and it looks up-to-date.

What I found with my own card was that my distro was meant to work with it, but wouldn't because although the manufacturers retained the same name for the card, they started shipping it out with a different chipset. It can take developers time to catch up with things like that.

[Roxoff]

Well, I could watch TV with KdeTV, TvTime ... But I wanted to record or capture the movie. Next thing I'll try is VLC. By the way, which application are you using for recording?
...

I don't want this to seem like a flame ('cos it's not), but did you actually read what I'd written? It's hardly surprising that you struggle with the manpages; you're not paying attention to what you read. Also remember that the manual is intended for reference it gives you the detail of how a tool works, it's not there to tell you how to do the things the tool can be used for. If you want fully-blown examples, then use Google; it's always served me well.

Just to reiterate I use Kaffeine to record - but it does so digitally. DVB supplies the stream in MPEG format already, kaffeine just writes it to disk.

[minthaka]

This is something that we can only imagine. In my country you don't have such an option. You have so called cable-TVs, which are mainly stealing the programs of satellites and distributing them via internal optical network. Our reality are roof-mounted aerials. It's probably hard to believe for a citizen of a "first-world" country, but it's true. I saw the possibilities of Kaffeine for DVB, but since we don't have them at all, there's no use of it.
That's why I told you about video tapes, and analog TV channels.

I'm trying to read thoroughly the man-pages (Roxoff), but since I'm a teacher I have some experiences about how to teach children, and I suppose the grownups too. I think the text of these pages are much too dense. They are giving you a command and options, but not a real example. It's confusing when you have to type the paths, whether to use:
/home/media/something.txt or
' /home/media/something.txt ' or even
"/home/media/something.txt "
the same thing is valid for the parameters and options. It would only take a line or two more to make all things clear to everyone.

After all, we want also to popularize the Linux, isn't?
Its a great thing and it could become even better. That's why I'm arguing somedays.

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

nobody explains it in the man pages because most man pages use the same format. why should the authors waste their time teaching you to use the shell? that's not their job. if the man pages are too complex then google it, as roxoff said before.

[Roxoff]

You're still using a roof mounted aerial? Wow, you've gotta move on with the times... I have TWO roof mounted aerials on my house!

Terrestrial DVB here in the UK uses signals broadcast from the analogue transmission equipment which has been in place here for fifty years. There is no difference between what our system uses and yours, except that in the UK there is a digital stream alongside the analogue stream.

I'm pretty sure that Kaffeine can do the same with analogue TV that it can with DVB - it'd just need an analogue TV card. It's then just a matter of what drivers for the card exist, and what codecs are around to decode the signal.