Can you be more specific? What gives you the impression that the security models are actually different?

This sounds like a good idea. What about filing an Ubuntu bug for that?

Hmm, gksudo works fine here. That said, it is not recommended to run GUI applications as root, so avoid it if possible.

Would it hurt to spend some time trying to understand how the UNIX file system works? Apparently so...

This stuff is not intended for naive users; it never was. Still, the rules are very clear and not at all difficult to understand, but you have to put some effort into that.

I'm feeling generous today, I'll give you a formula:

cd /etc/X11
gksudo gedit xorg.conf

And, besides, what the heck are you doing with your system that you have to edit xorg.conf that often?

Is it better in Windows? Whenever I have to suffer a Windows command line, I find navigation deeply unnerving, but this is off-topic. Look, I've been using the Unix command line regularly since the early 90s. And you know what I do when I have to find my way arround a large file hierachy? I open a nautilus window (often issuing 'nautilus .' from the command line, so that it opens where I'm standing), and navigate to where I want to go. But, anyway, if you you are so adamant about doing everything from the command line, tab completion is your friend, use it!

'man bash' is your friend here, but, as I said, I'm feeling generous today:

set -P

will solve your problem. And, again, "gksudo nautilus"? Where does your obsession with running everything as root come from? Windows, maybe?

What do you call "find feature" and what do you want to do with it? I would point you to the find and locate commands, but they may or may not fit your needs.

Sorry to say this, but I fear you'll have to learn how the shell works in order to use it effectively. If you really really want to learn (and you seem to) my recommendation to you is to read "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Ritchie. It's an old book, but it explains the UNIX philosophy better than anything else I know, and I bet most of the examples there will still run properly on any modern Linux system.

What you're seeing the is not the MIME handling for the most part, but problems with the implementation of nautilus.

Fascinating, indeed! Q. Why is it that I do things similar to those you describe on a daily basis without running into trouble? A. Because I know what I'm doing, of course!. Once again, spend an hour or two reading about the UNIX file system, it will be worth it. I bet you just attempted the operations on directories (this is how "folders" are called here in Unixland) for which you don't have write permissions. And the reason you don't have write permissions is in order to prevent you from messing up your system, which is what you seem to desperately be trying to do right now.

Why did you do that? Typing "fennec ubuntu" into Google led me to this forum thread where someone is kindly maintaining an Ubuntu repository for Fennec, so that you don't have to trash your /usr/share directory by installing it manually. By the way, if you install stuff from hand, do it under /usr/local. Everything else belongs to the distribution and should never be touched if you want to keep it running.

You seem to be surprised by the fact that you're now dealing with an entirely different system, and seem to desperately want to make it fit into the Windows model you have in your head. I don't blame you for that, but accepting that you're now working with something different and dedicating some time to really learning it may actually be the path of less resistance.

You probably mean 8.10, which, by the way, stands for October 2008.

Known problem: some hardware won't work as easily, or won't work at all. Unfortunately, it is impossible to create an operating system that runs on any random hardware, however rare, or new, or special it may be. I always buy my hardware with Linux compatibility in mind, but I can see that this is not necessarily an option for the casual user.

Interesting. I just typed "ubuntu installing programs" into Google (this was the first set of search terms that came to my mind) and the first result I got was this site, which contains a nice picture tour of Ubuntu software installation.

Indeed, an introductory video would help, but as your experiences and those of the TFA's author show, there would have to be a version of it aimed specifically at Windows power users. The problem is obviously not the package manager in itself, but the fact that Windows power users approach the system with a particular, technical mindset, which happens not too match linux at all. As a result, great frustration and confusion ensue.

Ironically, naive users often have a much easier time migrating, because, for them, the system just looks a bit different. The power user, on the other hand, is suddenly confronted with an entirely different beast, and he feels frustrated when he notices that his entire bad of tricks, learned over years, doesn't work any more. I wouldn't blame Ubuntu for this problem, but I agree that doing something to make it easier for expert users to migrate would be a good idea.

Who is speaking about esoteric commands here? Ubuntu has two different GUI programs for installing software. One is accessible by opening the "Applications" menu (which is equivalent to Windows' "Start") and selecting the last option, aptly named "Add/Remove...". This one is intended for newbie users: it only presents user-level applications (system stuff and daemons are excluded) and reduces the list to one application for each particular task (e.g., only one instant messaging client will be offered, even if there are many available in the repository).

The second one, Synaptic, is placed under the "System|Administration" menu, and offers access to the full repository, through software categories, as well as a convenient search-as-you-type feature. This is the option I normally use, even despite of the fact that I have been using Unix systems since the early 90s and am well acquainted with the command line.

By the way, these two options are discussed in the TFA, including nice, color screenshots. 2002 came and went. Why are you still complaining about cryptic commands?

In order to get the software ahead of schedule. Ubuntu generally makes lots of small changes to make sure that software packages run properly inside the distribution. This integration work takes time and effort, and, obviously, requires testing. For this reason, new major releases of big distribution components, such as OO, get only released when Ubuntu itself is updated, that is, every six months.

Of course, you can often get updates for individual software packages before Ubuntu releases a whole distribution update, but, in this case, you have to go through the extra effort of activating a special repository. Otherwise, you just wait, and you'll get a distribution update offered in due time.

If they do all the hard work, how come so many people are installing Ubuntu instead of just plain Debian? Or, seen another way, if it's so easy to turn Debian into Ubuntu, why haven't Debian developers done that themselves?

Yes, the Debian guys do lots of valuable work, but they are far from being responsible for Ubuntu's success. Saying they are is just laughable.

Of course there is a state, you're using a standard computer to run the program, so there must be a state somewhere. Still, the point is that even if the language implementation works by changing the computer's memory state, the abstraction you use to program isn't state-based. In a pure functional programming language, you don't program by manipulating a state, but by computing the results of functions.

Regarding the SICP book, like most functional programming languages, Scheme isn't a pure functional language. It contains constructs with side effects, which actually change the program state directly. Such constructs are available because there are problems that are very difficult (but not impossible) to handle with pure functional programming, so language designers end up making compromises.

Just my 2 (Euro) cents

What makes you think that interactive notifications are less likely to get stuck than non-interactive notifications? This all boils down to the reliability of the notification daemon, not to the interaction style. If the daemon displaying an interactive notification suddenly hangs, you won't be able to interact with the notification anyway. You'll have to restart the daemon.

I would say that a daemon that can only display non-interactive notifications will probably be simpler, and, thus, more likely to be reliable. We'll see how Canonical's implementation fares in this regard.