Slashdot Mirror
Top 10 Things Wrong With Linux, Today
An anonymous coward sends in this link to a list of the top ten things wrong with Linux today. He's noting things that are "wrong" not with Linux per se, but with a user's experience with Linux; most of his points actually have to do with KDE/X. The KDE 3 bug he's talking about is a user-interface change in konqueror: form elements can be changed by mousing-over them and turning the scroll wheel, which is very bad. Hopefully the KDE guys will roll this change back to the previous behavior.
Very good article. Basically sums up what I've been thinking.. I hope it all gets fixed soon!
Oh wait, nevermind... that's a good thing, but sometimes the press gets all confused.
I suppose everything he says applies to freeBSD, except in one or two cases more so.
But who wants general adoption of linux anyway ? Look what happened to the internet when it got popular...
graspee
Then, in typical KDE fashion, in order to get that konq bug fix, you'll have to download and update ALL of KDE. Bah!
Why only 10? There are hundreds
Most people get scared away with linux as soon as they get X running and discover there is very little they can actually do without someone right next to them holding thier hand. If they are able to get online, chances are the documentation is just too sketchy for a layman to understand, so you need a friend to help you with it. UNFORTUNATLY, and im not trying to flame or be a troll here, most new people to linux at this point are not complete computer nerds. They have decent windows experience, and know what hardware is, but they don't know anyone who is running linux, and if they go look for help on irc (this has happened to me) they are baraged by "WTF did you install *that* distro for? *This distro rules*" and whatnot. Its a very hard world for linux. I was thinking about it the other day, and the main reason why all the IT people are having a hard time getting a job is becuase M$ is making things easier and easier for joe shmoe to do, and doesn't need a tech anymore. You get linux to that level of simplicity and you might have more than 5% of americans using it at home.
I really dislike those that complain about no configuration tools. I dont complain about it.
if i had a gripe I would write one.
he should write them. then he wouldnt have anything to complain about.
No distribution i've installed lately come with the console games. RedHat used to have "go fish" for the console. It was a rad game, i could beat the computer too...
maybe it wasn't redhat, but slackware, i can't remember, this was around 96/97... and i was runing linux on a machine with a green monitor... it was rad.
migration for joe average user problematic will not be solved because fundamentally linux developers develop for themselves and their peers, not general users. This will not change, and I don't think paying developers large sums of money will change it, it is a mindset, the end user is at the absolute bottom of a long list of priorities.
Here's a prime example. Why are all the X toolkits such pixel hogs? An average 17" screen will do 1024x768 @ 85hz, which is a good steady refresh. However try running KDE or Gnome at that res. Absolutely awful, there a dialog boxes taking up well over 3/4 of the screen. This problem should have been addressed, but becaue many developers have system with high end trinitron displays running possibly 1600x1200 on a 17" crt, the problem does not effect them so it does not get fixed.
My take on KDE is that the technology
is great but it's just to much. There are
9 menu alternatives in konqueror that's way to many. There are just to many alternatives to choose from in the control panel, the theme setting are scatterd in various capplets instead of just
having one "appearance" capplet. I think the
KDE folk should spend the next release on
usability.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
I'm not running X right now, but I do believe, you just hit ctrl-alt-[+-] (maybe only on the number pad?) to switch between available resolutions on the fly...
nuff said.
nedit does soft wrap.
1. No 'best' browser.
Gosh, how about the nice thing we call choice?
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Damn, if only this was adjustable, oh yeah...
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
It can't get much easier that printconf (for Red Hat users).
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Yeah, reading a book or taking a class (or searching online) is so hard. When will people realize that a computer it a techinical thing? You have to be willing to do a little homework, even with a mac (if you've never used one).
5. Cleaner redraws.
Ok, sure.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE?
7. Easy way of sharing files.
You like in windows, where I find places like Doctors offices "sharing" all their patient records on the internet? Check out programs like share sniffer if you want to find them too.
8. Sound support.
Ok, if you want professional audio production cards, you got me, but for most other sound cards there just isn't a problem.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Well... pico does this (ctrl-j)
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Actually, it couldn't be easier to change resolutions on the fly. Hold ctrl and alt, then hit - or + on the numberic key pad. This cycles you through all your selected resolutions, on the fly. Just make sure you selected all the ones you want when you setup x (Red Hat users use Xconfigurator to select resolutions).
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
I think he would be better off runing windows. Some of the problems describe here can be solved by a little reading. I mean what's the point of running linux if you don't want to learn something new.
I think that something needs to be done make the learning curve of linux easier. Having just started on linux myself in the past 6 months, I found the initial goings tricky, just doing things like:
I found that there existed a lot application like the poster mentions, that I couldn't find elsewhere. Sure I can by O'Reilly's latest Linux in a nut-case, but it would be great if it was easier to get the information you need right from your install. (I know there are the man pages, but the man pages can be very criptic sometimes, even for me a seasoned programmer). Even a built-in tutorial, taking you through the basic stuff on your first install would be fantastic. And the only thing that would happen is that people would use linux more.
I know my parents won't use anything but windows/mac because they are daunted by the linux learning curve and its reputation as 'geek-ware'. Its not that are against the open-source community or what linux has done, it is just that they don't think that they are 'geeky' enough to learn what they need in order to run it.
The RedHat and Mandrake crews are starting to make this less the case, but if we have a long way to go. If we are serious about putting linux on the desktop as a serious contender to the M$ offers we will need to shed the geek reputation of linux, by making it easy for everyone to use it.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Weird HW detection...sometimes after a reboot i have to rmmod sb/sbawe/soundcore/etc by hand and restart them.
To watch divx5 movies, it is not enough to download a codec like with WMP, but you have to recompile your media player, upgrade your ALSA, upgrade your kernel... in fact, this is the reason i ditched linux and returned to 98. I prefer reboots to downloading endless MBs and recompiling for hours and not being sure it will work.
It is slower. End of story. No matter what you say, no matter what benchmarks or other stuff you come up with, qt/gtk widgets are STILL slower than win32 widgets, watching dvd with XINE takes 40% of my CPU while under windows it takes 5%(five), process spawning is slower (under windows if i run iexplore.exe repeatedly, it pops up new windows at a rate about 5 windows/second. Under linux, the best i could do is 0.5 new windows/sec. Dirty test, i agree, but...
What else?
Lack of Games. To those of you who say that linux is not a desktop os, why do i see all these projects spawning everywhere about SDLs and stuff?
And why instead of getting together and workin in teams, i see a sagan of different apps that are supposed to do one thing, but NONE of them is perfect? Sure, you might say "but windows isn't perfect either!" but don't you want your linux to be?
Lyx owns, blah blah blah, but under windows, to do word processing/type setting, it is 10 clicks away to write in my native, non-english, language. Under linux, i can't even find a faq for it. I don't even want to think what is necessary to actually print.
As i remember new ones i will add them.
IF YOU THINK I AM WRONG ABOUT ONE OF THESE, INSTEAD OF TELLING ME "YOU SUCK!! YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG!!" *PLEASE* tell me what to do to correct them! i am NOT bashing linux! i WANT to use linux! i WANT it to get better!
*sigh*
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
#2: Prompting for a FS scan I'm using Debian sid and ext3, and I've never seen this problem.
#5: Cleaner redraws GTK2 implements double-buffering, and I've yet to see any flicker in GTK2 programs.
#7: Easy way of sharing files. The Ximian Setup Tools have an easy NFS/Samba shares config tool. Not exactly what he wants, but quite good.
#9: No common editor which supports "soft wrapping." I've never had a problem with the way wrapping is done in Linux editors. If you really want it "soft", you can use Abiword.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
You can't be serious. Someone complains about poor X configurability so your solution is for him to write his own program to fix the problem? Nothing would make Bill Gates and MS happier than to see lots and lots of exposure for that kind of opinion, since nothing will make it easier for Windows to fend off Linux on the desktop.
Chief Software Architect, TrustCommerce
Created: July 12, 2002
Last Updated: July 12, 2002
The rapid pace of development of free/open source software has always stunned me. In just a few years, Linux and the free BSDs have become serious players in every major computing market, from embedded systems up to enterprise-class servers. Most impressive, however, is the strides they have made on the desktop. KDE and GNOME rival, and sometimes exceed, commercially available desktop environments who have been around for decades. (With apologies to the BSD developers, I am going to shorten "Linux and the free BSDs" to "Linux" for the rest of this essay.)
And there's nothing that gets FS/OSS moving like criticism. Three years ago journalists and industry pundits complained loudly that Linux has "no journaling filesystem!" Today it has a dozen. Everyone complained, "No good web browsers!" Today there are half a dozen. Everyone complained, "No good office suites!" Today there are three or four. I sense a trend here...
So, in that spirit, I am now going to complain loudly about every major nitpick I can think of. Understand this: I love free and Open Source software. The powerful tools it offers allows me to work at speeds I never could have dreamed of five years ago. And more importantly, it made computers fun again. If there were no FS/OSS and my choices were Windows, MacOS (not counting OS X, which wouldn't exist without FreeBSD anyway), or a proprietary UNIX...I probably would have lost interest in computers long ago. So please realize, the "complaining" I'm doing here is purely an act of love.
As a complement to this piece, I've added a Top N Things That Have Been Solved page.
The List
1. No 'best' browser. There are lots of browser choices (that's good), but there is no one reasonable default choice that can be made available to users. Konqueror enjoys immense popularity because it's the default for KDE, the most popular desktop environment - ironically, the same reason that IE enjoys such success on Windows.
Konq is great - really, it's my favorite browser - but it has contained showstopping bugs in the last two major versions. 2.2.2 had a horrible bug which caused it to lockup about 1 time in 10 when selecting any text in an input box (including the URL bar). I set up RH7.2 boxes for numerous friends and coworkers, and trying to explain why the primary browser locked up so often was quite difficult. I thought 3.0 would save us, but alas - it has an even worse bug whereby forms submit incorrectly about 1 time in 5, causing most functionality-oriented sites (including the TrustCommerce merchant admin site) to be completely unusable. My other major complaint with Konq is its jerky page updates: clicking a link will cause a big white box to suddenly obscure part of the current page - compare to Mozilla which updates the display very cleanly. 3.0 was significantly better on this front, but it's still enough of a problem to hurt the user experience. Finally, it's still slow when you have a lot of browser windows open. The worst is when you middle-click a link to a large PNG image (say, the screenshots on the GNOME site). I minimize the window while the image is loading, but in the meantime my other browser windows become _very_ unresponsive; trying to scroll is jerky and difficult. Very unpleasant.
Mozilla-based browsers are the best. They render most pages correctly and enjoy the commercial support of being the basis for Netscape. However, Mozilla is not integrated with any desktop environment, making tasks such as printing, accessing the file open or save dialogs, and cut-n-paste unpleasant. Galeon is the best browser currently available, to my mind, but the lack of anti-aliased fonts keeps me going back to Konqueror. Opera is good, but it's commercial, and suffers badly from the default fonts being ugly. (You can fix it to look more like Konq if you spend some time fiddling with the config files.)
Solution? Browser developers need to focus on removing the remaining impediments to user-friendliness. Konq needs to be faster and smoother in its display, and stop shipping with major bugs that make it nearly unusable. Mozilla needs to get better desktop integration (such as being able to specify your mail client, and ditching that lame file dialog for the default GTK dialog) and anti-aliased fonts for rendering. Whichever browser is the first to come to completeness on these points should then be chosen as the default by distributions. It's a tight race, and one that will no doubt be won in the next couple of months. Hopefully it will be a tie - having several 'best' browsers would be awesome!
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan. Bad on the desktop, killer on the server. Who in the _world_ wants their bootup process interrupted by this busy work? The introduction of journaling filesystems has greatly helped this (it happens only 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown, rather than about 1 in 4), but it's still bad.
Here's what happens. A power cord gets kicked out of your desktop machine. The system boots, tries to scan the filesystem, can't recover the journal, and panics. You are prompted to enter the root password, and then you're expected to type some cryptic commands like "fsck /dev/rd/c0d0p2", possibly answer a
bunch of cryptic questions like "Deleted inode 12345. Fix? <y>", and
then reboot. Does anyone enjoy going through this process? Does anyone find
themselves wanting to answer "no" to the question of whether to fix inode
12345? I doubt it. The system should just fix the filesystem, even if it
means losing a few recently-written inodes, and get on with booting, without
asking the user anything.
Think it's better server-side? No: it's much, much worse. Now when a machine hardlocks (say, due to hardware that is overheating due to heavy load - a common scenario if you're using standard PC hardware and your webserver gets slashdoted), and you call the colocation facility to ask them to reboot the box, the thing doesn't come back online. Now you've got to ask the person in the facility to wheel a monitor over and plug it in, give them your root password (aggh!), and tell them to type the aforementioned cryptic command. This SUCKS, bad. (Apparently it sucks so much my grammar is starting to suffer!)
To their credit, Mandrake's Aurora boot system asks the user if they want to go ahead and repair the filesystem anyway when this happens. It's only a single, easily-answerable question: quite reasonable for the desktop, but still pretty lame in the server scenario.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure. Offer fewer choices (such as driver selection), and give easy access to print job control, as well as GUI-based diagnosis and correction of errors such as printer jams.
For years I struggled with /etc/printcap; I never could seem to get it to work
quite right, especially for sharing printers on the network. I found it easier
to write device drivers for the Linux kernel than to set up a stupid printer!
(I have written a total of three device drivers for the kernel, but I have yet
to construct a working printcap file.) Today things are better: GUI programs
such as Red Hat's printconf-gui and Mandrakes PrinterDrake make it possible for
mere mortals to set up a printer. But still they remain too difficult. For
example, Red Hat does not install the printer on startup: the user needs to
know to type "su" and then "printconf-gui" at the command prompt. Both have
the problem of prompting you for which driver you would like to use for certain
printer types. For example, I have a basic HP Deskjet at home. Mandrake gave
me two choices for the driver, while Red Hat give me a whopping five! Asking
the user questions they are likely to find irrelevant is bad UI design. The
user doesn't care what driver they use, they just want to be able to print at
the maximum speed and quality possible. If you want to hide this choice in an
"advanced" tab somewhere, that's fine: but don't force them to make the choice!
Ideally printer install should work like this. You run the printer install program, and it gives you two choices: "Set up a printer attached to my computer", and "Set up a printer from the network." The first choice looks in /proc/sys/dev/parport/parport?/autoprobe and determines the type of printer
that is connected and choses a driver for it. It displays the type of printer
detected, then asks you one last question: "Do you want to share this printer
with people on your local network?" After answering this question, it sets up
the printer, and you're done.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things. Most Linux distributions come with a ton of applications, development tools, and support for all sorts of fancy devices. But none of this is very obvious when you boot into KDE or GNOME for the first time. The menu contains a few apps but they are scattered about and don't have names that reveal what they do. The vast majority of tools on the system aren't even in the menus. We need to make it easy for a new user to find out how to do stuff with their shiny new OS, without having to do a web search to find out.
This is, IMO, Linux's top strength on the desktop. Windows comes with an email client, a web browser, and Freecell. MacOS has the same, but iTunes in place of Freecell. You really can't do much with a default install of either OS. On the other hand, Linux comes with a wealth of applications and toys that could keep the user busy for years without ever downloading or purchasing any additional software. Let's make this obvious! Here's how.
There should be an "I want to..." dialog. It should be a large icon on the desktop which is very obvious to any user. Clicking it will open the dialog. At the top is written the text, "I want to..." and below are a long list of things that you can do with your system. These might need to be grouped by expandable categories, as the list could get very long. Here are a few things I suggest:
ELX is the one distro I have seen that tries something like this, but it suffers from the same problem as the KDE & GNOME menus: it gives you a list of programs you can run, instead of tasks that you can do. People use computers to do things, not to run programs.
5. Cleaner redraws. This has long been a complaint of mine in almost every OS and desktop environment: slow or flickery window updates. I have only ever seen one OS do it right, and that's Mac OS X. This isn't a speed issue, really; it's a how-you-update-the-screen issue. Mac OS X pops a window onto the screen all at once. Presumably it does any drawing that it needs to do on a back buffer and then blits it to the screen when it's all done, just like a video game. Even on a slower system, it still appears very "clean" - the window just takes a little while to appear. But you don't see any ugly drawing artifacts in the meantime.
The latest version of Windows is not bad; mostly I think this is due to the fast speed of modern hardware coupled with the minimal eye-candy that the OS offers. Things like the file explorer still don't update all at once, but it's a minor point; they've mostly got it right.
KDE, on the other hand, continues to flicker and pop. Here's a key example: click on the "home" icon in your menu bar. The window pops onscreen, but many of the drawing elements (the files themselves, but many widgets) are temporarily drawn as large white or grey boxes. A split second later the full images appear. Even on a high-end system it looks a little funny; on a slow system it looks terrible.
This is not a functionality issue, so in many ways its not that important. But it is a "user experience" issue; people coming from Mac OS X or even Windows will find their experience a little less pleasant, and that makes them less likely to come back.
This slashdot comment offers some insight into some of the reasons behind X's flickering problems.
6. Die stray processes, die! Windows has this same problem and all you can do is reboot. In Linux you can exit X, drop to a console, and start running "killall kdeinit", "killall mozilla", etc, but this is lame and for non-technical users it boils down to the same thing. Possible solution: when in X, WM should keep track of processes and the windows they are attached to. When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9). This functionality could be configured for debugging whereby instead of killing them, it attaches gdb to the process so that developers could figure out why there are stray processes.
7. Easy way of sharing files. Ideally a right-click on a directory and chose "share this directory". Be able to pull up a list of all folders you are sharing and change permissions or remove the sharing.
NFS is quite easy to set up - if you know exactly what you're doing. If you don't know the magic keywords to add to /etc/exports (server) and /etc/fstab
(client), you're pretty much screwed. I don't think it would be terribly hard
to add this functionality to, say, the Konqueror file browser. (It may be
necessary to set up a small daemon that runs with root privileges in order to
allow users to export the data...)
8. Sound support. OSS was great a few years ago and continues to offer support for modern cards (including professional quality ones such as the Midiman Delta 1010, which is what I have) but it is commercial and it is showing its age. ALSA is a superior solution and has been rolled into the dev kernel. Once it makes its way into the stable kernel and distros start using it uniformly (Mandrake, SuSE, and a few others have offered it for some time now) along with a good configuration tool, audio on Linux will rock.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping." By which I mean displaying things wordwrapped, even when it's one long line. This means you can go back and edit the line and the rest of the paragraph will reformat itself automatically. Evolution's message editor does this, but that doesn't help me for composing text files (like this one!). Others I've tried - Kate, GEdit, and even vi - only support "hard wrapping", where it inserts a newline when you get to the end of the line. Then when you insert more words into the paragraph later, the formatting gets all screwy.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
This varies by distribution, but I the resolution issue is a common one. (The only distro I have seen that does it right was Corel 1.0. You could change your resolution from the KDE control panel. However, I believe this is because they were using the commercial X server Metro-X.) It boggles my mind that, after all these years, the best way to configure X is to run Xconfigurator from the console! This is, I believe, the longest running embarrassment of the free software desktop.
I would argue that this article proves the
a: maturity of Linux on the desktop
b: the tendency to believe big corporations fud
seriously, the browser point that Konq is popular for the same reason as WIndows....wrong. You can download gnome and have a different browser...what is the alternative shell/browser combo on Windows? This guy honestly lists the fact that he is free to choose as a draw? I wish Redhat would TELL me how to surf. You know "Where do I want to go today"
The filescan point, he is right windows is simple
Printing. Hmm...OK you win
Make it easier to find out how...Again see above
The rest are all uniform problems in ALL OSes (except the problem with Xconfig)
1. No 'best' browser.
Galean for sure. He even admits this in his write-up, but doesn't like the fact that it has no AA. I've actually seen some screen shots with AA/Gecko somewhere, so I don't imagine this will take long to be fixed.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
I'm not sure I get the point here. Distros are starting to ship with journaling filesystems, so this really should be rare. He mentions not being able to recover the journal, but I've never had this happen to me. It might be a problem, but surely it doesn't deserve to be in the top 10.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
Mostly fixed, especially with distros that use CUPS. I think the configuration isn't so much the problem anymore, as the fact that there's no good interface for using the printer (at least under gnome). I'd like a quick way to itemize the configured printers and check the status of each and a standard 'print' dialog.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Good idea. You don't need any sort of special app. though. Just an additional menu labeled 'How do I' at the top level, nested as needed. Not a technology problem anyway, but a good configuration suggestion.
5. Cleaner redraws.
I haven't noticed this with Gnome 2. Fixed? Or maybe I just have Gnome 2 installed on better hardware - not sure.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Also pretty rare. The only process I ever had do this was Mozilla (and maybe the old Netscape - I can't remember) and the last time it happened was at least six months ago. Anyway, hardly seems worth it when you can just fix the particular offending applications.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Sure. It wouldn't make my top 10 list, but why not.
8. Sound support.
Used to be a pain. Nowadays it 'just works' for me, so I've actually forgotten why it was so hard before. I think this is fixed for most people.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Just tried it in Gedit to make sure - no problems. Probably a config option in other editors.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
This one I agree with completely, although I've heard rumours that some of the 'easy-to-use' distributions have fixed this. Maybe close to being fixed generally?
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
There are mainly 2 basic uses of an operating system: professional use and non-professional use.
Linux problems in non-professional use are well known for years and mainly boil down to the two points hardware support and usability for non-tech users. This article is just blurb around these old facts. I would mod it as redundant.
But Linux key problems arise on the professional side - the late integration of modern technologies develop in computer science. An old issue with Linux is the microkernel. Don't say now that it won't work 'cos both NT and MacOS X have one. The upcoming issue will be the integration of web services at system level. MS is pushing Windows into this direction. Other issues are AI integration in apps - MS has Baysian Networks in Office for some time now.
And don't fool yourself by Linux support by big players like IBM/SUN etc. These guys just want to take a free ride on OSS and use it as cannon fodder against MS.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to start categorizing applications more specific like "Web Browsers", "FTP Clients", rather than one whole category called "Net". Maybe have Sub Categories in KDE or Gnome?
I think this could help the new user. I remember when I first started playing with Linux I wasn't sure what half the apps did and was afraid to remove them. If I had seen that they were IRC clients that I wasn't going to use then I may have felt a little less overwhelmed and more sure about removing them.
Just an idea.
"That's not a bug, That's a feature"
Remember how much fun we had when MS responded to a bug report with that line? Well in a lot of cases it was the pot calling the kettle black. I See far too many cases where someone pointing out a problem is greated with insults instead of being thanked for filing a bug report.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" /. flame directed at people who point out areas that need addressing.
Pogo (Walt Kelly)
This is often true of the Linux fanatics who chase away new users by making it sound like nobody is intrested in solving issuses. They seem to think that everybody working on free software can quit coding and surf for porn because the software has reached perfection. Thankfully there are people who are working on the code while the hotheads are working on the latest
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
An example is OutLook and OutLook Express. The slimming down of the offical manuals has reduced many functions to the realm of lore, especially if the user does not know the official jargon with which to ask a question in order to get an answer.
The online help is getting better, but is still infuriating.
The situation in Linux basically is that much of the system is Lore Based. It may be superior in all other regards, and some things may be inherently complex and difficult, requiring study, but the bottom line is that it is still Lore Oriented and Lore Based. It is in fact, to some degree a way of life.
Many consumers are not Lore oriented. Some never learn to set the time on the VCR. This forms a barrier to the introduction of Linux to the Broad masses, the "I just want it to work" crowd. Never mind that other systems often never really work right in the first place. Why would people accept the idea that "computers just crash" otherwise?
This is the problem the Lore Masters face: How to make something that is Lore oriented and Lore based accessible to people who aren't
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Noting problems is an important step in improving the OS......
allthough kate looks nice. softwrapping in kate nearly drove me crazy. totally screwed. must nod to this point
set nowrap
set linebreak
If you want various motion commands to work on screen lines, instead of file lines, add things like
map j gj
map k jk
map <down> gj
map <up> gk
map $ g$
map ^ g^
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
The AC makes a great point.
I've been saying this all along. There's nothing wrong with Linux, per se. It's the user interface and the complexity for the user in setting it up and configuring it.
As a developer, I develop where the money is, which right now is Windows. Were it Linux, believe me, I'd be happier.
I might disagree with what the top 10 problems are (a lack of freecell wouldn't be very high on my list), but simply an ease of configuration and basic apps (as he mentioned, browser, e-mail, and so forth). By basic apps, I mean apps that are as simple to configure as their Windows counterparts.
What happens the first time you run Outlook Express? It asks you for the bare minimum of information to receive and send you e-mail. No more than that. Look how simple IE is to run and configure.
I'll grant that the problem with IE now is that people are building web sites that are IE specific. I'd link the article, but I'm too lazy, but it was just in the past few days, so go look yourself.
This problem is simple to fix. Emulate MS. Copy what their browser can do, and you're now compatible. Is that giving in to them? Not so much as it's taking away their advantage.
Same with everything else. Where MS does well, (either by UI or by dominance), emulate and improve.
I use Linux, but I use it for a single thing that I know it's good at: It's my firewall. And frankly, being a very compentent programmer and having almost two decades of experience with the internet, I find IPTABLES to be a bitch to configure. It's more complex than it needs to be. Just like most Linux software.
Here's the general aim at our company with our software: Make it simple enough for the average idiot, but make it configurable that the advanced user can do what they want. If Linux developers would do the same, Linux would benefit a great deal.
I think we all just have to be patient. We all know all these things (and others) will be fixed/added eventually, but users seem to want it done now/yesterday. Linux and OSS is better thought of as a perpetual work-in-progress than as a finished or almost finished product. That is probably another thing that needs to be fixed. Just my 2cents.
Hmm, right-click on a directory in Konqueror (he's using Konqueror) and choose 'Properties'. Go have a look at the 'Sharing' tab.
Rik
as Windows XP. Microsoft is a massive company, they can afford to hire the smartest programmers. I think it is great that thousands of wheel chair bound programmers with typing wands lued to their head haev decided to code for linux. But we can't expect these people to be as good as MS programmers.
...you'd rather be using an OS that is a footnote under Apple for % of desktop machines?
I work as the IT Manager of a small corporation. Throughout my day, I am asked a number of relatively simple questions, such as how do I find out when this file was last created or altered.
My users, which is synonomous with most users, have to be walked through that process practically every single time. Sure, a few of them know how to use the search feature to locate a document and a few even know how to do a few slightly more complicated tasks. However, for the most part they are quite limited in what they know regarding the use of the computer system.
It is far from their job to know how to do anything. From what I have seen. I could set them up with a fully configured KDE3 desktop with all their applications right in front of them and they would still have the same problems.
Making things easier on a computer does help, but there will always be new features and options that negate that ease of use. More options = more difficulty. Lowering that difficulty allows more features to be added.
A modern Operating System is really no more easy or difficult to use then an Operating System that was in use nearly ten years ago.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I think that was his point when he described point 4 of his discussion: Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
There are lots of apps, but unless you've tinkered with Linux a while, knowing how to use them to do what you want can be daunting. (Yes, there are How-tos, but they range from excellent to cryptic.) Although I don't think I'd ever go so far as to advocate a "Clipit" equivalent for Linux, that annoying paper clip serves a useful purpose for the non-geek computer user.
Most newbie Linux websites and books tend to focus on installation but the problem is once the system is installed and the newbie can boot up with X-windows, the book ends.
I just looked over this briefly and really didn't think that much of what he had to say was all that important or even relevant in todays Linux environment
No Best Browser
So what? If people actually made compliant HTML pages, then there would be no need for a "Best Browser". The beauty of Linux is that you can pick from something like Mozilla (fat with features) down to something that is muh leaner and built for speed. Whatever floats your boat
Filesystem scan
This is no longer a problem with Journaling and should really be considered moot.
Printing
IMHO printing is not that hard to configure under lpd with the currently developed tools. I personally found CUPS a lot harder to work with
Make it easier to find out how to do things
There may be too many applications being installed in the MENUs that he is referring to. But I really think that this is a WM configuration problem more than anything else. The idea of creating a "I want to..." dialog I have never found to be a very good system. Examination of the Windows 2000 Help system has shown me that beyond the absolute minimalistic basics of how to turn a computer on and off, this system is really useless. I don't think you will ever make everyone happy by attempting to create a "I Want to..." system.
Cleaner Redraws
I don't see this problem on any of my machines and again think that he may be referring to a KDE specific issue that is tied to his hardware. Personally, I would suggest he try WindowMaker as a high speed system that doesn't have the flicker.
Die Process Die!
This guy probably needs to learn more about how to kill processes. I have never had a problem killing Mozilla without dropping out of the entire X/KDE/KDM application layers
Easy way of sharing files
What he is suggesting I would consider a serious security violation in either practice, ethics, or philosophy. It's just a bad Windows-ish kind of thing to do. Rather than than this, you should be considering moving the appropriate files into a location already designated for sharing. NFS, FTP, SSH, RSYNC all takes a few minutes to configure for access and all have reasonable and varying levels of security associated with them.
Sound Support
Sound Support Sucks, no doubt. If anyone could get this working more consistently and easier, it would be a major improvement upon the entire system with regard to the Desktop application level.
Soft Wrapping editors
See OpenOffice for one example that does support this kind of feature. Again, this is an uninformed analysis of all the potential applications available.
No easy way to configure X
He remarks about changing the resolution on the fly. Where has he been? I don't use it much but I thought that there were some good ways of doing this from the keyboard. Maybe I'm wrong, but I personally have no real use for it myself. With regard to the rest of the X Configuration. You only have to do this the one time and after that there really isn't anything left to configure. I personally do not see this as an issue at all. What would I put down as number 10? Hardware support in general. Anything that has to be added to a computer, mainly peripherals, seem to be very difficult to get configured. The overall Plug-N-Play needs to be more developed.
I'm no KDE user since release 0.9-alpha (I used WindowMaker for years, then I switched to GNOME 1.4), although I've followed KDE evolution...
But, how can you say that "9 menu alternatives in konqueror that's way to many"? I'd love to have that possibility when I use my windows box! (Yes, I've tried LiteStep, but I quite don't like it) Only on my linux box I can change the theme of Mozilla, or the GTK theme, or even the entire WM, depending on what mood I have in the morning when I wake up...
You are complaining about having 9 possible menu alternatives... I'd complain about having none... Just choose one, and live happy with it. :-)
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
As long as we have many competing desktops, Linux will never be as prevelant as Windows. Yea Yea Yea, I've heard the 'Choice is good' argument before, but efforts need to be concentrated on one desktop and only then will Linux be a viable desktop platform.
A desktop choice should be as ubiquitous as Apache, SendMail and other 'standard' Unix programs.
No, I'm serious.
Linux suffers from having configuration files up the wazoo, in all sorts of different formats, with many requiring manual editing, and unless you've memorized the format or have the book sitting next to you (man in multiscreens sucks, and you may not even have gotten X up yet), you've had it.
I propose having an equivalent XML spec for each configuration file.
Phase one: Generate a spec for each file. Then write a compiler to convert the XML version into the typical *nix config file. Use an XML generator to take a spec and make your configs.
Phase two: Modify the programs to use the XML configs directly. Generate a database of the specs, with comments for each XML element. Write an XML generator that will provide these comments automatically as necessary.
Suddenly, you've got a system where configuration of every part of the OS is part of a unified system. (Sounds a lot like Windows, doesn't it?)
But fortunately this was not the case. The Slashdot editors would never do such an immature thing, would they? ;-)
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Really, as much as I enjoy Linux, it's a total pain in the ass doing what Windows does easily.
For example, I spent about an hour this morning trying to get Real Player 8 to work under Slackware. What's the problem? I'm not sure - maybe it's a kernel issue, maybe it's a lib problem, maybe it's an X server problem, maybe it's an audio server problem. Do I have kernel version X? Do I have Nvidia's driver Y? Do I have libs A,B,C, and if so, what versions? BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. Total pain in the ass.
Finally I said screw it, booted into Win98. It works. As much as I hate evil Bill, my Win98 works, and hasn't crashed or locked up for months.
I truly believe we need a standard way of doing things to eliminate the cluster-fuck encountered whenever modifying/adding/etc. Not to mention the way fonts can run off the edge of dialog boxes. WTF is that? I've never seen it in Windows, ever.
I really can't blame software companies for not bothering with Linux desktop apps. I use linux daily for server purposes, command-line text editing, etc, but really don't have a lot of free time to blow fighting the Desktop. Sure, I'll keep doing it, for geek fun, but knowing that the Linux desktop has a LONG LONG LONG way to go before being anything for the regular user.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Three years ago journalists and industry pundits complained loudly that Linux has "no journaling filesystem!" Today it has a dozen. Everyone complained, "No good web browsers!" Today there are half a dozen. Everyone complained, "No good office suites!" Today there are three or four. I sense a trend here...
"Linux has no good Digital Rights Management!"...
And it probably never will...
for my company over the past several years. We use SuSE for workstations and various servers at dozens of locations. Everything from a terabyte NAS box to a school district's email server to a corporate firewall to a simple dhcp/dns server at an ISP and on down to the desktop for me and a couple other employees.
I think that it's this feature of Linux which causes the problem. As others have said before me, there are things that an "average user" might want from his desktop that a systems administrator wouldn't want from his server box. Who needs decent anti-aliasing on a DNS or email server, after all? And yet, the idea of fragmenting Linux into specific versions (like RH and SuSE and others are trying to do with email, firewall, "personal", database, etc.) makes me very nervous.
I *like* being able to buy one distro and modifying it to behave the way I want it. I don't want to have to buy 15 different specific versions of Linux.
Are the two ideals, a decent workstation and a usable server, mutually exclusive within the same distribution? I hope not. SuSE seems to be the best at marrying these two but then they are busily marketing job-specific (email, database and firewall) distros at the same time.
I'd like to see a better separation of the desktop/server model in the install sequence. Something that addresses all the points in this article but leaves server admins some latitude.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
But the other day I was happily using the wheel to scroll down through a slash dot story. I had moderator access at the time. So I was a bit shocked to discover when I hit the moderate button that I had use up two, not one moderator point. Worse than that though, I had moderate a rather nice, intelligent, interesting and informative post as a "-1, Troll". Simply because as I scrolled I just so happened to move a moderate button into my path and -1, Troll must have come up without me noticing...
Unfortunately, the interface gives no way of correcting the mistake. I suspect someone was deeply offended that their carefully worded comment had been marked us a troll. For which I am sorry.
I've never had a problem configuring X, even when I was a newbie I found out about the xf86config and RedHat's Xconfigurator programs. As for changing resolution on the fly, apparently the author was unaware that you can use ctrl+alt and hit the plus key to increase your resolution, and the minus key to decrease it.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
I don't like case-sensativity in file and folder names. It would be nice to be able to switch that feature off if one does not want it.
Table-ized A.I.
The problem with this is that it is not something else.
Linux is more difficult to install and use and configure for 'normal' desktop use because few of you have had to do that for someone else. Few of you have had to support Linux desktops in a 'normal' office environment.
I agree with you and add a little more. As a n00b, non-programmer and also as someone who doesn't run a server, I find the default CD install security positively abominable. It's beyond ridiculous. How the HECK is a newbie supposed to make heads or tails out of this complicated stuff right off the bat? You go on the net, an hour later you are haxored. Try to find a GUI firewall interface that actually works, too, good luck. I mean, is their ANY firewall or distro out there in linux land that is geared towards JOE HOME INTERNET SURFER instead of someone who has a 15 computer home lan cable business multiple game yada yada server? Just a plain vanilla one box, not serving anything firewall with an easy to use GUI interface that isn't packed with acronyms that no one but a guru understands? I know they try, but none of the ones I have used so far seem to work. Staring at my poor modem right now, outgoing packet led light flickering. Tried "high security" on install, you still have a zillion open ports it appears, and anyone can just waltz in. And even so called "closed" ports are still vulnerable, seems everyday there's some new exploit that requires joe newbie to understand 89 lines of code written in progammerish, then my ALL TIME FAVORITE, "now check your logs". Well, as a newbie, you can hire someone to find them and read them outloud to me, I still don't know what I'm looking at, it makes no difference if I have "logs" or not, because you are back to being required to be a software programmer and professional quality sysadminuser to understand them or what to do with them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind learning new things *somewhat*, but as just as user I'm not looking for a full time job, nor am I looking for a hobby that requires several hours a day just to use a computer, I already got a job, already got "hobbies". Most people aren't looking to become full time security professionals, they just want to use the box securely. Less eye candy, more useable security features please, would be my one single request. I'm not dictating, demanding, anything of the sort, merely politely asking the distro distributors out there to think of "us", the people who are sneered at on this forum as the "masses", who will decide in the future of linux makes it or not into our "mainstream". Wanna know why? We are the bulk of computer users, we buy the desktop machines and actually BUY the cd OS install software. We don't download the very latest obscure cvs unstable iso's, nothing of that. nada. Believeth me thou, we could care less how many ways to configure your desktop you can theoretically do, how many elite cool skins you can apply to your apps, whether or not your fonts are available in semi anti aliased urdu, and etc, if ALL of them do nothing to making your box secure and useable in normal use, ya know, modem, dialup, see web pages, use net radio, normal old stuff.
"Best Browser":) Opera for speed, all the way. Konqueror is a REAL close second though. The "font problems" are non-existant, use KDE, Opera-shared-QT and tweak from the preferences menu IF you want to. No "config files" to "fiddle with". The only major bitch I have with Opera is viewing the CNN website. It's just sad and probably easily fixable, doesn't screw up in Windows2k.
"Printing":) CUPS. Easy, web-based, simple management. Add KUPS (for KDE), makes it even better than the Win32 tool.
"Soft Wrapping Editor":) Use VIM, if you live and die by the gui, use GVIM.
"Changing RES":) When you first set up X, select every resolution available to you at the highest color depth. Maybe someone should make an app where the "increase res" and "Decrease res" buttons hit the damn key combo for us. We could make it pretty.
I like music
Mozilla-based browsers are the best. They render most pages correctly and enjoy the commercial support of being the basis for Netscape. However, Mozilla is not integrated with any desktop environment, making tasks such as printing, accessing the file open or save dialogs, and cut-n-paste unpleasant
:-)
/etc/printcap; I never could seem to get it to work quite right, especially for sharing printers on the network
I disagree. First, I take issue with the misuse of the word "integrated". "Integration" is not a good thing from an engineering standpoint -- it's a bad thing. Having compatibility between two pieces of software, or conforming to a standard interface, has nothing to do with integration. MSIE is "integrated" into the Windows operating system -- bits of each rely on each other, a break in one bit breaks other stuff, and updating or removing one messes up the other. Modularity -- not integration -- is a good thing. Of course, having modular software with standard interfaces and supporting standard IPC mechanisms is important.
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2. There have been established standards for cut-and-paste interoperability for X some time (Athena era, at least). KDE broke those, and didn't enter compliance until KDE 3.0. If KDE doesn't work with a compliant piece of software, that's KDE's fault. Mozilla is not to blame here.
Prompting for a filesystem scan...Who in the _world_ wants their bootup process interrupted by this busy work? The interoduction of journalling filesystems has greatly helped this (it happens only 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown, rather than about 1 in 4), but it's still bad
Wow. Where to start?
First, AFAIK, in every distro that I've ever seen, there is *no* prompting for a filesystem scan. It happens automatically on unclean boots and periodically. If you don't like the periodical scan, you can disable it. As a matter of fact, in at least Red Hat (and all the others, for all I know) fsck is told to automatically repair filesystems by default. Now, if there is *serious damage* that might result in your filesystem going to the big Disk in the Sky, then yes, you will get asked to make some decisions about what happens. I *much* prefer to know if my filesystem might be totally trashed in a minute than to just have it happen because a system blindly started guessing what to do.
Scanning on an improperly unmounted filesystem is not busy work. If it isn't done, you could wipe out your filesystem, lose data, whatever. You can't possibly convince me that you're better off skipping fsck. If you have some specialized needs -- must boot in small amount of time and data integrity matters nothing, then you can modify your init system to not run fsck. Frankly, though, I think that for almost any user, power users included, the current convention is easily the best. Windows provides a mechanism for skipping scandisk, which is probably the stupidest thing I've ever seen done, as people who have no idea what they're doing consistently skip the check, compounding corruption problems.
I don't know what this 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown rather than 1 in 4 business is. A journalling filesystem does not need to run fsck. The entire point of journalling is so that you have a system founded on transactions in such a way that you *cannot* corrupt the filesystem. fsck should *always* run on a non-journalling fs in any distro I've used after a bad shutdown. Yes, it also periodically runs on filesystems, but that's pretty rare, and if you don't like it, it's pretty easy to shut off. I personally think the added data integrity makes it worthwhile, but that's just me.
I have written a total of three device drivers for the kernel...
That's funny...I can't find anything in my kernel source tree grepping for your name. What exactly was it that you wrote, again?
For years I struggled with
Perhaps *you* don't like it, but for some of us that have special needs, having a dumbed down printing system would be incredibly frusterating (I'll give you a pass on this if you just want a new front end). However, I salvaged a nice LaserWriter some time ago. The thing doesn't have enough RAM to print any modern PostScript files, but I *could* write a custom print filter that used the excellent psrender.sh script to render the thing to a bitmap, and then send it to the printer as a fax-compressed bitmap in a postscript document...I can reliably print my files on this aging (but well-made) machine. Try doing the same in the "easy to use" Windows environment...you'd be shelling out for a new printer.
Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things
I don't really care whether this is done or not, as long as it doesn't force a bunch of annoying wizards or assistants on people that don't want them.
When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9)
This is the most idiotic suggestion I've heard in some time. Not all apps have a window. What about xbindkeys? There's a damn good reason for this. What about programs (such as daemons on Windows) that just occasionally pop up a warning dialog? You going to kill them off as well?
Sorry, but if you really have truly stray processes, that's a bug in the program, and the program should be fixed. I see tons of idiots killing off "stray" processes on Windows. "Well, I don't know what this is, so it must not be important". Grr.
Easy way of sharing files
Sounds like a KDE flaw. There are plenty of front ends people have made for this sort of thing. This has nothing to do with Linux. Also, I really dislike the idea of adding a small daemon running as root tied to Konqueror. This is starting to sound more and more like the hideously insecure Windows environment.
Sound support
So you have no complaint?
I'd like to see a decent sound system (maybe via a sound server if there's a way to do so with very low latency, though I think there might actually be an argument for doing this in alsa) where sound goes out hardware channels (and is mixed in hardware) until the channels run out, and then the streams for any other sounds playing automatically fall back to being mixed in software. It's an embarrassment to Linux, especially since Windows does this so well in DirectX. On Linux, you have to have all software mixing (currently high latency and with a nasty tendancy to skip, since existing sound systems don't run out of box with elevated priority) or all hardware mixing (requires a fancy sound card, limited in the number of channels).
No common editor which supports "soft wrapping"
Okay, here I'll agree. There needs to be a set of code written that can do this quickly and flexibly (with an arbitrary set of word separation characters), and then have the thing used throughout various programs. It's kind of sad that Emacs doesn't have a mode to do this (there are modes to add hard returns automatically, but no good native mode that simply displays text that internally has no linefeeds onscreen in multiple lines). This may suck for coding, but for some text this makes sense. The days of the 24x80 terminal are long gone -- even terminal fans are using all sorts of wacky sizes (For example, I use a higher resolution vga display), and handing out text files that are hard-wrapped to 80 characters is just silly.
No easy way to configure X -- especially change resolution on the fly
You're full of it. There are tons of front ends to configure X. It's terribly easy to change resolution on the fly in X -- ctrl alt kp+ and ctrl alt kp-. Changing the desktop resolution during runtime isn't supported (though if you had to you could hack it up via DGA modes)...but why would you want to do this? The only reason people did this in Windows was because they wanted to run games or software that needed a lower resolution. They were *forced* to change their desktop size to change their resolution. X simply doesn't force this upon you. I *always* want my desktop using the maximum possible resolution that my video card/monitor can support. If I want larger fonts, I increase the font size (as one should do...trying to read lower res, pixelated fonts is just stupid). If I want bigger borders or titlebars, I enlarge those. If I want to play a game, I just run the thing and it switches res automatically via DGA calls. XFree 4.x does this nicely and cleanly.
May we never see th
Are actually working or are now beginning to work on addressing these issues?
Who are the programmers and what are they concerned with? Mostly men. Just make it work. Form follows function, blah blah blah.
If you wan't it to be beautiful or easy to use(ergonomics) find a woman.
Woman coders who will not leave a project in such a state of ugliness. Who don't care if it works, but only that its beautiful.
There must be balance in the force.
at least, on Mandrake number 4 has already been taken care of. i have a menu that says "What to do" and the nested choices (which each have more choices) are:
administer your system
enjoy music & video
play games
read documentation
use office tools
use the internet
view, modify, or create graphics
find files
the programs under these headings are the same ones you can find elsewhere, but the menu entries have been renamed to something descriptive (e.g. "change your password" or "listen to a CD")
its hard to get much more straigh-forward than that, and it is all right there on the "start" menu in plain sight. no reason why other distros couldn't do this, and should be easy for a user to add entries to the menu too.
.sig on vacation
7. Easy way of sharing files. Ideally a right-click on a directory and chose "share this directory". Be able to pull up a list of all folders you are sharing and change permissions or remove the sharing.
...
Just try KDE3, this already exists !
Appbar -> Add -> Applet -> Public file server.
Now you can choose which directory to share, which bandwidth to allow, and hop, magic, you can watch the bandwidth usage in the appbar ! I really couldn't find anything easier
theefer
You must be quite new to vim.
I have been using linux for many years now, and have found one thing to be great. If you don't like any aspect of it you can CHANGE IT YOUSELF.. What linux doesn't need is a bunch of people crying about lack of options with no motivation to help fix it. I suggest you switch back to windows and cry to microsoft.
No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
** hits Alt-Control-Minus, Alt-Control-Plus
I can!
I just want to say before people start getting upset and start correcting him please take note on what he's saying. We need to look at the ten things wrong in his eyes and see if it's something that we as developers and users of the community to do something about it.
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
I don't have the greatest monitor in the world so im stuck at 1024x768 so I can get a decent refresh rate.
However, If I need some extra space when i'm using photoshop, i'll up it to 1280x1024 and let my eyes bleed.
That's not a bug. If you don't want to change the list selection with the wheel. DON'T put your mouse ON it AND scroll the WHEEL! I don't want to open the whole damn list, so I don't click on the arrow and call it a bug. Duh!
EOF
Windows 2000. Its already super-easy to do - but I've made it even easier. I got shortcuts to little batch files that will change the res. and frequency on the fly.
I put the shortcuts on my taskbar.
Click! 800x600
Click! 1152x864
Click! 1280x960
Why change res? I'm a developer and alot of times its helpfull for me to experience my applications/websites in different resolutions. Thats just one of many reasons I'm always switiching resolutions.
The section about how people want to "do stuff, not run programs" reminded me how very seldom does a linux application have a name that tells the novice user what it IS.
Example: Internet Explorer self-evidently references a browser, and Netscape at least implies *something* to do with the net. So what's with names like Konqueror and Gecko? they don't have anything to do with what the application DOES.
Another example (remember, novices will *not* know what linux acronyms stand for): Photoshop, Photopaint, GIMP. Which one doesn't sound like it has anything to do with editing images?
This may all seem trivial, but it's typical of the (IMO, deliberate) obfuscation that is endemic with GNU and related software.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have my home network converted to a Linux and the biggest complaint fom every member in the family is FONTS, FONTS, FONTS. From Staroffice to Mozilla the majority of the complaints about each application is "The fonts are ugly.. it gives me eye-strain etc."
.rtf, just because of the fonts.
I have been using it since 1993 and I still hate the damn fonts. I have done the font deuglification HOW-TO and still the problem rears it's ugly head. I have spent man-months teaking X, xft, xftt, fonts.scale, fonts.dir and Xresources.
I think I have a pretty nice set-up, compared to a lot that I have seen. But damn it, every time a new user tries it out..."WTF with the fonts"...comes spewing out after a while. I myself gave up on Abiword after a while and switched to Ted for
The big savior was supposed to be anti-aliasing..what hype. Stare at it for more then an hour and you get a headache comparable to a meth addict after a 3 day binge and an empty wallet.
Anti Aliasing isn't the end-all be-all of fonts. What matters is to have good fonts to begin with. If you go get the Microsoft ttf fonts and install them, you'll be much better off in programs that don't support anti-aliasing (easily) like Mozilla. Moz. is infinitely usable and looks just like Moz. Win32 if you use the same fonts.
s .html, http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/mini/TT-Debian -7.html, http://linux.org.mt/article/ttfonts.
I mention that because he complains about anti-aliasing, especially in Mozilla, both on the 10 things needing fixing page, and on the Top N Things That Have Been Solved page.
Microsoft core TTFs are available here: MS TTFs
Install guides and scripts are available several places: http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~jw35/docs/ms-font
The best script to auto-install to RedHat that I've found is here, he has lots of other goodies to boot: http://www.linuxquebec.com/~nomis80/
I like music
1. No 'best' browser.
[..] Mozilla is not integrated with any desktop environment, making tasks such as printing, accessing the file open or save dialogs, and cut-n-paste unpleasant.[..]
Err, unpleasant? Mozilla is working really great, for an 1.0.0 version, printing is not a problem, just click File --> Print..., isn't really difficult, the file open/dialog work without any problems as cut/paste works. Are you sure you were using the browser you talked about. Years of trouble with those Netscrap Communicator now the first version of Mozilla makes IE look like a slow dog and you are whinning....
Btw. Kudos to the Mozilla team for this great piece of sw...;-)
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan
Don't think you can blame Linux here, many things can happen after an unexpected shutdown. The real problem is this cheap crap Wintel PC hardware, mosts "Linux server" don't have the possibilty to redirect the BIOS/POST to the serial console, like real server have. Connected to a terminal server to enable logins, no matter at which point the boot fails/stops.
5. Cleaner redraws.
Don't get it, never had any problems with this?
6. Die stray processes, die!
KDE has something like this, which keeps care of runaways, took me a while to find how to disable this annoying feature.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Works great for me, just press [CTRL][ALT][+|-], couldn't be easier...;-)
I've found two notable exceptions:
I currently use gvim+cream for all my editing and am rather happy with it.
None of the KDE editors in the versions I have tried supported visual wrapping, nor did any of the GNOME editors (gnp does do it, but it's extremely buggy -- when you hit "cursor down", it jumps to the next paragraph instead of the next line, which is unacceptable). Unlike some other poster claimed, gedit, at least in my version (.96), doesn't do visual wrapping. For KDE's showcase editor Kate it's apparently in the works.
Yes, you can use something like abiword, but honestly, abiword is generally a PITA and uses the ugliest screen fonts in the known universe, and who would want to start OpenOffice for editing a text file? Generally, I consider the lack of a properly behaving, usable text editor a big problem and would contribute financially to any project aiming to fix this.
Can't you ctrl-alt-plus or minus to change resolutions? You used to anyways...
$45 per U Colocation Special
The thing that annoys me most while using linux is that copy and paste never seems to work right. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't at all, and sometimes the order on the clipboard is really weird.
Other top annoying things include that browsers never seem to have plugins ready to go and then when you install them it's a pain deciding where to put them since the correct place varies so much across systems. And it's also annoying to click on a URL in instant message and have nothing happen, and then you type entire URL out in browser cos copy paste doesn't work -- this one REALLY pisses me off.
Ok, this bugs me... This guy title's his article "Top 10 Things Wrong With Linux" that would be great if these "flaws" were actually linux flaws. Not one of them is a flaw if you run Linux solely as server. I think he should have titled his article "10 Things I hate About Linux On The Desktop". There should be a clear distinction between Linux on the server and Linux on the Desktop.
BTW: If you tell me that you still have these issues with Linux on the server, my response:
You are a complete idiot for running X on your server. That is just a bad idea. I don't care what cool firewall you have in front of your server. Don't do it!
Many times the X config utilities where enable to configure my screens correctly. Both the textline version and the GUI one.
On the other hand windows knows how to handle plug'n play monitors who return their supported frequencies thru the VGA connector (they all do it now). Why can't Linux/X detect a plug'n play monitor ? The specs and monitors have been out there for half a decade now.
While this is partially true, in the long term this attitude may lead to big problems when people need to learn how to do the things they need to do.
Having tried to teach quite some people to use computers after they had been exposed to windows' "we decided what you needed to do and we wrote the right apps for it" attitude, I've found out that most of them saw the computer as some sort of magic device that does certain tasks if and if only the user performs some obscure and intricated ritual that should be learned by heart and repeated exactly in the same way everytime. While this won't prevent them from doing some office work with their computer, it is going to make it quite harder for them to learn even simple tasks.
On the other side, I found out that people who had been taught briefly what an operating system and and application are, the difference between them and the fact that to do something you have one of the programs that can do it, could learn easily how to use a computer and became soon able to learn to do new things with little or no help from somebody else. Some of them succeded also in migrating from win to an already installed and configured linux, without big problems.
I believe that with this appoach, one could easily solve problems number 1 and 4 of the list, and it could also help with problems 3 (you can just use CUPS instead of the default system), 7 and 10.
Isn't CTL/ALT/+ or CTL/ALT/- the standard way of changing the X screen resolution?
Sounds pretty easy to me.
Ctrl+Alt+[+/-]
God that was hard. Seriously folks, ask before you go off shouting about Linux being terrible. 9 out of 10 complaints I've recieved have been about problems that have solutions. I know some can be arcane, but hop on IRC or e-mail a guru before assuming.
is basically a stupified mode, something you can give to people you meet on the street and they'd instantly know how to use it. it needs an autoinstaller for devices on bootup, automatically selecting the best driver or downloading the newest. And to satisfy you geeks out there the super user mode should be kept pretty much as it is. it shouldn't take more than 1 hour to learn how do most things in an operating system.
RPM hell has had me stymied for years. Example: This morning I tried to install mrproject (Microsoft Project-ish program) on my Ximianized RH7.3 box from the RPM Here's my experience.
Download the RPM and double-click it. I'm given "Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of displaying...". So basically it has never occurred to either the Nautilus developers, Redhat or Ximian that a default viewer for an RPM should be assigned (I know - you use apt-get, but I'm not as smart as you so I deserve what I get - or don't get - if you get me).
So I start GnoRPM and drop the package on it - it places it in packages/applications/project management. That's a good start. Try to install it and I get a Dependancy Problem. "mrproject-0.5.1-for.ximian.1 requires libgal.so.18" It asks me if I want to ignore these problems and possibly make my system unstable - why would anybody want that?
So off I go looking to see what sort of libgal... I have using GnoRPM again - i hit the find button. I'm given the following choices:
FIND PACKAGES THAT:
- Contain File
- Are In The Group
- Provide
- Require
- Conflict With
- Match Label
Uh...how about "match label". I type in "libgal" and hit find - I get NO FEEDBACK. No hourglass-ish thing telling me it's trying, no rapidly changing display of which directory it currently looking in, nothing - after I press the button it returns to it's unpressed state and I'm sitting at my desk wondering how long I should wonder wether it's still working. As far as I can tell it never even tried to search.So I manually look for libgal - it's easy enough to find, it's right in 'libraries'. It turns out I've got libgal.so.19 or something like that - well I need libgal.so.18 so now I have a dilemna - I can install it anyway, but that's never worked for me, or I can return to an older version of libgal - yeah right.
So I give up on the RPM methond and decide to wade a little deeper in the pool and install from source. Download the tar.gz. Just for fun I double-click it. Of course, same problem as with the RPM. "Nautilus has no installed viewer..." Apparently they've never run across a
So drop to a console, "tar -xzf mrproject...." - I've done that before. Now try "./configure" I remember that much, but then what - is it "make" or "make install"? I can't remember. Read the README - it doesn't say. Try "make install" Error - try "make" and Miraculously it's doing something - and GIVING ME FEEDBACK - oh JOY!
Not beeing a C programmer - I foolishly try to run the run-mrproject script - no dice - error. Oh yeah - "make install" first? Ok, FINALLY I got the program running. But was all that really necessary?
I'm desperately trying to ditch windows, but after two years of toying with linux I'm STILL unable to do so completely.
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Beautiful post.
May we never see th
Modelines are no longer necessary in the config file, although they are still supported for those who want 'em.
Die stray processes, die!
Possible solution: when in X, WM should keep track of processes and the windows they are attached to. When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9)
I suppose this is his idea of a "killer app" for Linux! :]
Seriously though, I hope he meant to say that the user would be prompted prior to executing the kill command a la (gulp) Windows "task not responding."
I can just imagine this killer app getting confused and taking out a window named "Open Office: thesis_final_draft.sxw". :]
Can't wait to download v0.2 from SourceForge! :]
I appreciate that he is trying to improve open source by poking at the least developed parts and inspire improvement. However, I have a few responses about some of these points:
/. users'. I do have a 64 MB GeForce2, but that is by no means a cutting edge card. Older hardware may have problems, but I have to say that with prices the way they are and will continue to be this problem will be solved simply by time, if it really even exists.
2. Prompting for filesystem scan. If someone is kicking the power cord out of your system - desktop or server, you have other issues than whether to hit <y> to delete an inode.
4. Make it easier for the user to find out how to do things. Nautilus already does a nice job of this, and can be built upon.
5. Cleaner redraws. I really don't see that problem and my computer (PIII@500) is probably slower than most
6. Die stray processes, die. I think proc.s do a pretty good job of cleaning up behind themselves on Linux - better than on Windows. Rebooting fixes this and MS users are used to that. I really can't comment more other than saying I run procexp on NT to cleanup manually and only reboot every 3 weeks or so and I never even have to think about this on Linux.
7. Sharing files. *sigh* I am a security prof. so I really don't like the idea of easily opening up fileshares, but hey, if that is what users want go right ahead. XP does this fairly well, making you click a message that states you understand the security risks involved in sharing a volume. Maybe a default, read-only single user share could be enabled with a click after the user is presented with a warning.
8. Sound support - this was fixed a long time ago, wasn't it? The last several distros I installed have foung my sound card and made playing CD's and mp3's almost automatic. OK - I had to tell XMMS which sound output to use. No biggie.
10. X configuration. It would be nice to use a windows style slide to select resolution and a drop-down for the number of colors. Users will really like that.
Some comments:
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan. . . The introduction of journaling filesystems has greatly helped this (it happens only 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown)
This is like saying that it should be easier to overhaul the engine in your car: if you'd just stop pushing it past the redline and change the oil every now and then, you wouldn't have this complaint in the first place. In other words, if you have much more than 20 unclean shutdowns in the entire life of your computer, then something is wrong with you. Or your computer. Either way, it needs to be fixed. Also, if the journaling filesystems for Linux are that amazingly bad (where 1 in 20 times you have to run fsck anyway), they need to be fixed too.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
It's true, vi doesn't support this and perhaps other editors don't either. But a big part of the Unix philosophy is to compose functionality from tools instead of building functionality into monolithic applications. Point being, you can just drop
(where "^M" is a control-M, typed in vi by doing control-V control-M) into your ~/.exrc and from that point on, you just type "[f" to redo the word-wrap on any paragraph.And if you don't like the way that works, there are numerous similar commands (some based in Perl) that have more intelligence, in a sort of do-what-i-mean way.
It doesn't seem the author spent much time trying to test his complains.
Complain n.1 about browser, for example... the mentioned bug with KDE 2.2.2 was Klipper's fault, not Konqueror's. Problems with KDE 3.0 and forms where specific to RedHat (at least, SuSE didn't ever suffered them). Mozilla IS integrated with a DE... infact the same Konqueror can use KMozilla as a browser KPart.
But what about printers? The "Ideal printer install" suggested is exactly what SuSE already does!
Complain n.8 (automatically closing all the processes launched with a window that do no more have a window associated!!!) could make it for the worst DE suggestion ever.
Complain n.10 is again addressed by SuSE's Sax in version 8.0.
Sure many of the problems are real ones, and documentation on how to do things surely lacks in many distributions... but one cannot complain if he hasn't at least tried harder.
4. This is, IMO, Linux's top strength on the desktop. .. Linux comes with a wealth of applications and toys that could keep the user busy for years without ever downloading or purchasing any additional software.
Is keeping the user busy with built-in apps really what an OS should be striving to do?! When Microsoft keeps the user busy without having to download additional software, it's considered anti-competitive.
Give me a good application search/install/update facility (Debian apt, anyone?), but PLEASE don't give me a crapload of built-in things to 'keep me busy for years'.
What, desktop users don't get the much-touted benefits of open source software? We're just stuck with Microsoft because the people in charge of the OSS movement don't want to change any more than Microsoft does? Linux isn't for me, but neither is Windows. I use Windows now because it's a lot closer to what is for me than Linux, but that doesn't mean I'm statisfied.
For myself, I was really happy with BeOS. I found it to be the happy medium between a hardcore roll-your-own OS like Linux and the don't-touch-that attitude of Windows. When Be died, I moved back to Windows because Linux has little to offer me. I've messed around with it in the past, but I've found I spend more time learning to use the system rather than using it.
With Be gone, I'm not left with many options. I could take the plunge into Linux, hope my box doesn't get rooted in the time it takes me to figure out how to secure it, or I could stick with Windows and be pushed around by Microsoft. I have hope for distros like Mandrake, but I find they're often incomplete. If I want do Linux right, I have to get down in there and screw around with stuff I don't know how to use.
The deciding issue is whether my reluctance to trudge through Linux is matched by Microsoft's attempts to control what I can do with my computer. Does my ignorance prevent me from doing what I want in Linux more so than Microsoft does in Windows? I have a feeling things will swing the other way about the time Windows 2000 ceases to be a viable option or when distros like Mandrake become mature enough that I can trust it to handle the small stuff.
First of all I must state that I don't really care about linux for average joe user.... I came to linux for a different reason..... I want a fast and stable system on which to do my work if it is more complicated to administer so be it...
1)Hopefully this will sort itself out over the next generation. personally I have not come accross a site that I have not been able to veiw with Mozzilla (I haven't even upgraded to 1.0 yet)... and the guys who sold me my mandrake CD where nice enough to bundle rpms for Flash 5, Java and Acrobat reader)... The print interface in particular needs improvement though.
2)On my mandrake box I get asked if I would like to check my filesystem. I either select yes or wait 5 seconds - If I do a filesystem check it takes less than a second and I see no output. I am using reiserfs.
3)No arguements here... I think that this is now at the top of everybodies list of things to fix. KDE has started and I suspect that GNOME will be doing this soon. I think that more GNOME/GTK projects could make use of gimp print.
4)My latest KDE install already has something like this personally I couldn't care but Its there....
5)I agree with this one but I must admit that my system seems to run fast enough for me not to see these problems. I suspect that E17 when I comes out may do this properly (not the least bit because it will be able to use 3d hardware to accellerate the desktop.) correct me if I am wrong
6)My Mandrake desktop comes with a Icon on it called XKill you click on the Icon then click on the app you want to kill. What could be simpler (maybe a better name).
7) That would be really nice.
8) That would be nice.
9) Quite a few editors in the gnome stable do this . Both Screem and Bluefish HTML editors do this as well as glimmer (or what ever it is called now).
Yup I find myself using KDE as my desktop but mainly gnome apps.
10) I vaguely remember seeing an app for changing resolutions on the fly but I don't know what happend to it or why more hasn't been done. A lot of articles critical of this point have been released lately so I would expect something to be done about this in the near future.
My reasons for using Linux.....
1) I can scan and paint at the same time.... This is the only system I have been able to do this with ever.... My eternal thanks to the Gimp and sane people.
2) I really like browsing with Mozzilla and emailing with Evolution.
3) The fact I have more rights than I did using proprietory software.
4) The fact that I was able to get a linux beta for the 3d software I use and ended up paying less than half that of the Windows product with upgrade to the full version when It becomes available.
5) The fact that there are so many helpful people out there.
Bigest linux wants.
1) A really nice vector art tool.(I am thinking expression2 meets flash)
2) More stability more speed (low latency patches to become standard. NVidia AGP difficulties to be resolved. USB Wacom become more stable...
3) better print support.
4) More companies willing to sell opensource software.
5) More users willing to pay for opensource software...
Could somebody give this guy a kindergarten course 'Using text editors' ? Vim and nedit are soft-wrapping very happily.
I would say there are a lot more than 10 things wrong, but that's just me.
I ranted about this the other day when there was the article about the Linux user who went back to Windows.
Add my list of gripes to the things that the community needs to do.
This is especially frustrating because Linux is so near to being a viable desktop alternative to Windows, and yet I suspect that many in the community won't see these problems as important.
Look at the default mail client (kmail) on the most popular desktop (KDE). The spell-checker has to be manually invoked and doesn't show potential errors by underlying it, but by forcing you to take active steps by evaluating the context of each suspect word. That's *so* 1996. ("Woah! I haven't seen a spell checker like that since before we got Outlook!") Stupid things like this cost us credibility to purchasing managers, and keep up off corporate desktops, who otherwise would jump at Linux (no Klez virii, free licenses, etc.).
We shoot ourselves in the foot each time.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Nedit addresses it. It is by far the most balanced editor in terms of power and ease of use.
Unbalanced editors are (IMHO, no flamewar intented), emacs, nano.
Watching users on the machines brings these two points up over and over again for me (the second only when I'm installing something they need - I don't let people just out of Windows have root access!).
Everything else is down to issues with particular apps (Moz is slow, Opera hangs once or twice a day, there's no good graphical page layout program or Quick Books replacement) and these are all being worked on as we speak. At least I hope they're trying to speed Mozilla up!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
1. No 'best' browser
;-) Or if you use a different distro, golly gee, READ THE F*CKEN MANUAL!
That is very opinionated. In my opinion, Galeon is the best. Followed closely by Mozilla and Opera. But the next person may disagree with me. That's good. Having so many good browsers allows people to use all the competing browsers and decide for themselves which one is better (not what some company decides is better).
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Say no if you don't want to do it! Jesus Christ! The situation you describe is ummm... essential. Without it, your files go down the shitter... You're right: it does suck. But you know what sucks even worse? When that happens to Windows XP, and it doesn't allow you to run scandisk, then you are forced to reformat. Joy!
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
This one I kind of agree with. I like Linux's printing system, but it needs a single standard, easy-to-use frontend. I've always had trouble with printers in Linux.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Linux-Mandrake: Click the menu. Click -> What to do? Look for the option you want to do
5. Cleaner redraws.
Heh? Looks good enough to me....
6. Die stray processes, die!
Quite possibly the worst idea I have ever heard. Need to add a user account. Login as root. Your window manager sees that init has no open windows. It kills init. Your system is now in a state of nothing and you have no choice but to reboot. What a grand idea, lets kill syslogd while we're at it. Oh great, now the whole security system is fubar.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Linux-Mandrake: Right-click a folder, click Sharing... Select Shared. Your folder is now shared.
Other OS: Learn how to do it yourself. It's not hard. Or just download a third party config tool for this.
8. Sound support.
Ummmm... I get better sound quality on my computer in Linux than in Windows.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Jesus, use pico -w. vim seems to do it for me. As does gedit. I could think of a million more, but why bother?
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Increase resolution:
Ctrl-Alt-+
Decrease resolution:
Ctrl-Alt--
A first grader can do that....
You really should have thought this out more before posting... I find Linux easier to use than Windows.
Hypocrisy is the 8th deadly sin.
Don't you just hate it when a Windows user, who thinks they know about software better than the rest of the world, starts blabbering about Linux (in this case GNU applications and other free/open source software). Let's just go through this list, for example:
1. No 'best' browser.
Right. So we should only have one browser. Diversity bad, Microsoft good. Baaah. He then proceeds to explain how Mozilla isn't "integrated" (whatever that means) with any "desktop environment" and how hard it was to print. Well, here's a clue, mister: in the literate technical world, it is considered poor design and poor engineering to "fuse" software the way Microsoft does; while there may be no Mozilla analog of a KParts API, the well-documented programming interface it provides allows for third-party applications to use the rendering engine in a straightforward manner, without having to run a friggin browser in the kernel at all times. Finally, am I really the only person who simply used the default Mozilla printer settings, in order to print successfully?
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Oooh. Oooh. My favorite. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE STARTUP BEHAVIOR, CHANGE THE GODDAMN INIT SCRIPT! If you are unwilling to learn the shell scripting language, and understand how the initialization scripts work, then you have no business messing with Unix, and anything more complicated than a microwave oven, for that matter.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
Well, okay -- I installed Mandrake with CUPS, ran the printer configuration tool (printerdrake), and had a working printer setup two minutes later. Exactly what part of this needs to be improved? In fact, I think that the combination of LaTeX/dvips/dvilj/ghostscript and either lpd or CUPS is one of the best printer setups I've ever used, in terms of flexibility and speed. It was always Windows and its fucked up printer drivers that messed things up with dvips and ghostscript. Now, it's also true that I've only used LaserJet printers with Linux, but for high-quality printing that's what you want, anyway, and things shouldn't be any different with any other PostScript printer.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Please note that both Mandrake and RedHat have big icons pointing to tutorials and documentation on their defaultly configured desktops. Also, learn to be patient, persistent, and studious, and you'll master Unix and the tools it provides. There's no other way to be efficient and productive with computers, just like you can't become a doctor or an engineer in two weeks -- it takes college and learning.
5. Cleaner redraws.
Curiously enough, the link mentioned in this part of the article claims that XFree86 has solved this problem in Linux. Moreover, I disagree with the technical explanation, because there's an extension for X that allows caching of the redraw requests, which eliminates this problem (provided the video hardware and drivers are not slow and/or buggy).
6. Die stray processes, die!
This is actually somewhat of a good point, but the problem is nothing kill/killall can't solve. Just write a cron job that kills all zombie processes every hour or so. Besides, considering how bad of a problem this is with Windows, and how rare it is in Mandrake Linux, I don't see why this even made in Top 10.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Yeah, and I bet you'd like to run always as root, too. There's a good reason for the Unix process privilege organization and it is very simple -- protection of the system. Microsoft cludges like right-clicking on a directory and "exporting it", among others, are poor, insecure design. What part of this are we Unix users failing to enunciate properly enough for Microsoft junkies to comprehend?
8. Sound support.
Well, it says that ALSA rocks, and I'm certainly not going to disagree there! Audio support for consumer-level audio devices has been pretty good in Linux for a long time.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Ever heard of Emacs? That's what I thought.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Yeah, I need to change resolutions on the fly all time in X; that would really improve my productivity. But seriously, this guy obviously didn't even bother the read the damn manual -- use Ctrl Alt + and - to cycle through the various configured resolutions. Why is this so difficult?
Bush Lies Watch
Linux needs long term goals published and incremental improvement in a number of areas.
... can't answer that really.
;-)
Imagine if there was a "Top Ten" site where the most popular complaints and proposed solutions made their way to the top of the list, and you could only vote in the top ten by making a paypal donation of $1 or more to the fix. That might help linux a lot.
File sharing, modem setup, cable modem setup, fonts, development tools.
Having nautilus show help without popping an error message and prompting you for a list of browsers, some of which are mot even installed on your machine.
Menu setup that is not built like frankenstein, not disjoint with bits and pieces here and there.
Better communication with other software vendors...the best IDEs, databases, office suites etc. should all be on extra cds in every distro, free for personal or educational use.
Configuring mime types. Everything on the web should be viewable without having to download, recompile, etc. Sure, MS won't let docs, asf, wml show anytime soon, but
Microsoft, like totalitarian communism, has total control of their sw. The developers do what they are told.
Linux can beat MS, but there is just no charismatic leader that drives people forward.
Linus is not a UI person, and doesn't care about unification or integration. If fact, he encourages chaos. Chaos is probably not the best strategy to use when dealing with MS. Sure, in ten years Linux might be the perfect OS, but if only 10 people are using it in their basements that won't be much of a win.
RMS is so obsessed with the GPL, that he, once again, has no interest in UI or unification/integration issues. Another chaos guy. Same problem mentioned previously...eventually something good will come out of it, but the war be be lost way before that happens.
These guys are great, and totally necessary. Their opinions have a lot of merit. Free software would probably have died long ago if not for their efforts...but where is "The One"? Where is Linux's Neo, the one who will guide this motley crue of programmers and engineers into a well-honed, effective machine that makes the thing not "as good as", not "a little better than"...but triumphant?
Gotta find that person, the one who stands on a stage at an expo, and everyone cheers and wants to do nothing but write the best fricking OS in the universe by the time the speech is over.
Every succcessful group movement has a special someone that ties it all together...and Linux's someone has not risen yet.
Maybe if we crossed JWZ with Kim Polese...let's not go there
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I use several drivers that do not come with default RH7.3 (Lucent winmodem, NVIDIA and NTFS) and even installing official RPMed updates is a pain. For example, I need to keep gcc-2.96 around - 3.1 causes Lucent driver to reboot the machine. I gave up some other patches, like Zaurus because they always caused panics. As for development 2.5 kernels, the number of config options is bewildering (can I just install the newer sound subsystem or do I need both), some defaults really suck (like no keyboard support) and every time I tried I got compile errors. Back in the days of 1.1.x, I actually installed every release for fun to see what's new. Now, I could be running Windows for all I care, since I need to wait for someone's binary updates. I guess building kernels is now just for some elite club of core developers and distribution builders who know what magic version of compiler to use, which modules can compile cleanly, what to patch vs kernel.org etc. The only way out I see is to split kernel into many components with well defined interfaces that do not change often. kernel.org should have just a bootstrap kernel. Let's say you download one file with a "core" source and one with x86 basics such as EIDE and VESA SVGA. Then you can go to, say, kernel-audio.org and download your sound subsystem and a sound blaster driver. Or you should be able to use the old binary ones you already installed if you are satisfied with your sound. Someone will say that fixed interfaces for drivers will hurt efficiency and increase memory footprint (because a kernel might need to support several versions of the interface to let older drivers work). Yet the same is true for every other core system component (X-windows protocol, libc binary interface, PPP protocol) and people are always asking for more modularity, not less. It's better to have a system which is 30% slower, but that let's you watch TV on your tuner card, network with your CLIE and your Zaurus and output sound to your digital speakers (all these drivers are much more likely to be written, especially by vendors, if they can be compiled once and continue working for long time). I am sure current design is more fun to hack for ultimate efficiency (apparently so fun there are 3 different branches of the same kernel on kernel.org), but it's really not fun for the rest of the people to customize.
Well, used to work GREAT on my laptop. Probably still does. It would actually change, not just the damn virtual desktop. Now I have to figure out why it just changes virtual desktops on my 'real computer'.
:-).
Thanks for making much more work for me today
Of course, this now changes the list of non-issues slightly, since it's no longer as trivial as I thought. No one's gonna want to edit XF86Config-4.
On the other hand, screw 'em. Pick a res and stay with it. Do the highest you can read and go on with life, heh. I can't remember the last time I changed res in Windows or Linux for anything.
I like music
Most of the things he mentions are distribution-specific. I doubt that I can just send a patch to RedHat and get it included in the next release. So we're at the mercy of the distributor.
So what can we do?
hit .
The thing with KDE's menu alternatives, is they don't even work properly. Hell, the instructions for getting most themes to work only cover half of what you have to do. Its unbelievable. These "hackers" need to learn how to write decent documentation so people who AREN'T elitist assholes can actually use it.
1. No 'best' browser.
Well the Best Browser is still Lynx{8^)
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Small price for data integrity?
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
APSFilter is an excellent tool. It is not graphical however.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
I have come up with something that I call Willy's Theorum.
Ease of use is in inverse proportion to robustness.
That is to say the easier something is to use the less you can do with it. The harder something is to use the more you can do with it if you just take the time to learn.
Buy a Mac and go with AOL{8^)
5. Cleaner redraws.
What can you say? When you're right you're right.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Again you are quite right but at lease you CAN kill them as apposed to Winders.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
SMB or NFS? The reason M$ does this to seemingly easily is that by default everyone has full control. This is great if you do not consider security important. Remember it is recommended that you do not even turn NetBios on TCP/IP on if you are directly on the internet.
What this adds up to it should be hard to share something unless you are going to learn a little about security.
8. Sound support.
Once again hitting the nail with the hammer.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
I am not sure I understand this.....
I use VI for everything. In VI you can set textwidth for word wrap.....
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
What happened to CTRL+ALT+PLUS on the number pad?
I cycle through 600X400 to 1280X1024 regularly.
Xconfigurator is a Redhat thing I think. xf86config comes with the standard MIT X.
I hope GNU/Linux never becomes the desk top of choice because you would have to cripple it so bad to make it user friendly.
Willy
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
...i was told a while back that tear-off menus can be disabled (it's handy for the rest of you). For the life of me, I am looking for it everywhere in the KDE control center, specifically Look-n-feel. Is this item under legacy? Where can I turn the damn thing off?
Yes I was the one looking for the words 'dotted line' because that's what the thing looked like...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
hit [control][alt][backspace]
11. Common keyboard shortcuts for applications.
This sucks really. For example, Ctrl+S is a common command for saving a file. But when you're typing this in the joe editor, the program will freeze. It happened quite often to me because I pressed the Emacs Ctrl+X, Ctrl+S accidentally. It took me years to find out that this is not a bug of joe, but the "suspend" command for the console, and to learn that Ctrl+Q will unfreeze everything. joe should at least "overwrite" this keyboard shortcut by default. This is the worst user interface design I've ever seen. It's like if one specific Windows application would fake a bluescreen every time you press something common like Ctrl+Insert.
Don't drink and su! antidisestablishmentariazationally
In related news, Linus Torvaldis has been spotted pulling the shades in his room and stockpiling a food supply to last him an estimated 6 months. He mentioned something about 'The Zone' and 'Deep Isolation' and has disconnected all his cellular phones. THe only connection permitted into the room is through his laptop...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
So I give up on the RPM methond and decide to wade a little deeper in the pool and install from source.
I've done that, too. Installing from source is almost always faster and easier than installing from RPMs.
Which, I find, is incredibly ironic.
Uh...how about "match label". I type in "libgal" and hit find - I get NO FEEDBACK. No hourglass-ish thing telling me it's trying, no rapidly changing display of which directory it currently looking in, nothing - after I press the button it returns to it's unpressed state and I'm sitting at my desk wondering how long I should wonder wether it's still working. As far as I can tell it never even tried to search.I've had the same run-in with that on RH6.2 and 7.1.
End users have no time or patience to deal with this sort of thing, nor should they.
Joe Idiot doesn't care that his car won't start at 8:15AM on the third Tuesday of every month. All he knows is that was on the way to work, stopped at the gas station near his house, and is currently stranded at the pump with a car that won't start. He's held in limbo for reasons he doesn't understand and doesn't care to understand.
When he finally gets to the office, all he'll be doing is complaining about how much his car sucks.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
...there IS an easy way to change resolution on the fly: press CTRL ALT + or CTRL ALT - to increase and decrease resolution.
I'm torn on the subject...
I agree that there's no reason certain things like changing resolution on the fly shouldn't be included in any OS, but I also believe that windows makes you stupid (though I use it myself, so I guess I'm with stupid). The 'ease of use' of windows is getting out of control, to the point where I heard someone refer to their computer as 'the magic box the music comes out of', yet he's fully capable of downloading, converting, and burning his own music.
I'm sure there can be a happy medium without offending the people who need to feel they are smarter than everyone else because they have the time to learn every nuance of linux inside-out. Not everyone can dedicate the hours it takes to learn everything there is to know about linux, but not everyone enjoys the blind point and click (with help from animated paper clips) of windows either.
'Windows users need not apply'
So in your eyes there's only windows users and linux users? I beg to differ, but that's a whole other post.
it is written by geeks for geeks. It should be written by geeks for users.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan. Bad on the desktop, killer on the server. Who in the _world_ wants their bootup process interrupted by this busy work?
... Possible solution: when in X, WM should keep track of processes and the windows they are attached to. When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9).
_I_ do. And I've never been prompted, either.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure. Offer fewer choices (such as driver selection), and give easy access to print job control, as well as GUI-based diagnosis and correction of errors such as printer jams.
The user doesn't care what driver they use
Which user is this? He complains about not having enough driver choices - there a plenty, he just didn't pick his finger up to look. Between gimp-print-cups and linuxprinting.org, just about all printers are taken care of. Not to mention KDE3's Windows-like printer wizard.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things. Most Linux distributions come with a ton of applications, development tools, and support for all sorts of fancy devices. But none of this is very obvious when you boot into KDE or GNOME for the first time. The menu contains a few apps but they are scattered about and don't have names that reveal what they do. The vast majority of tools on the system aren't even in the menus. We need to make it easy for a new user to find out how to do stuff with their shiny new OS, without having to do a web search to find out.
Mandrake has already done this. A while ago.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Please kill fetchmail, please?
7. Easy way of sharing files. Ideally a right-click on a directory and chose "share this directory". Be able to pull up a list of all folders you are sharing and change permissions or remove the sharing.
KDE3 has an incredibly easy way of sharing files built in (besides smb) - there's a small little applet daemon that spawns a simple webserver for folders specified. Can't get any easier, takes only a few clicks.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
What are you doing that you need to change resolutions on the fly? The only possible thing I could see would be presentations and hooking a projector up to your monitor. Seriously, how many people really change thier resolutions on the fly? And in any event, I don't think Mandrake's configuration utility could get any easier - it just says "is this ok?" at the end!!!
Poorly thought-out article. To limit "Linux" to "Red Hat + KDE out of the box" is not only stupid but completely untrue. The vast majority of these "problems" are easily fixable or even already there.
Wiggins is right about some of the problems he points out, however, I found some of his arguments to be flawed.
1. No "best" browser.
This is a GOOD THING. It means that there are several products of good quality available, and I can do nothing but wonder how this point made #1 on the list. On Linux, there's browsers for everybody: Galeon, the GNOME browser, Konq, the KDE browser, and then there's Mozilla and Opera for DE-less people and lynx, links and w3m for the console.
Additionally, I find the anti-aliasing discussion more than tiresome. The author cites this as the reason for not using Galeon, which is ridiculous. CVS Mozilla & Galeon, if I'm not mistaken, do make use of AA fonts, anyway.
However, in my opinion, a point that the author already cited should be #1: Font configuration, or lack thereof. It's the biggest, hell, to me it's the ONLY major problem desktop Linux has these days, and it goes hand in hand with the printing dilemma. Again I point everybody to Keith Packard's fontconfig, which seems like it could be a solution (but I haven't had the time yet to take a thorough look at it). Lack of good fonts is a problem, but a minor one as long as MS doesn't pull back its Core Font collection.
7. Easy way of sharing files
No problem. Slightly modified NFS/SMB daemon, a piece of file manager code, there you go. Not really a big hurdle, and something that should definitely be implemented.
I'll put my responses to your various replies here.
Several people think I'm proposing a Windows-like system registry. That has advantages and disadvantages, and I personally would prefer not to have one, though some might disagree. I'd just like all the configuration files to be in the same format.
You're right that some of the information structures look cleaner when done in a specially formatted text file. Still specialized formats introduce specialized problems; a little bit of whitespace in the mount table can cause a lot of headaches. XML isn't elegant, but it's a lot less ambiguous. And yes, if you have to go in with a text editor it's going to be a headache, but a specialized editor will make it easier.
And yes, libxml is a lot more weighty than a simple text parser. Still, the entirety of the XML spec might not be needed for this project, and a stripped-down version might be what's called for.
1) Software management. This has scared off god knows how many people that I've seen. Not being able to easily download and install something from the internet is incredibly lame. And no - new users don't want to use Debian. I myself am working on a solution to this problem (autopackage), expect to see it posted as an open source project in the next few months. The problem basically boils down to two things. Firstly, the fact that Linux distros vary wildly in capabilities and especially file locations. LSB/FHS goes some way towards fixing this problem, but it isn't the entire solution. Secondly, all software managers I've seen rely on having a huge database of everything on your system that is supposed to reflect what's on it - except often it doesn't, if for instance you installed something from the source, or simply copied the program/library from another computer. Autopackage works like autoconf by individually testing your machine for the things a package needs. But enough of that.
2) No object system. Windows has COM/ActiveX, which isn't perfect but it's there. Not sure if MacOS has one, but the culture of code sharing is virtually nonexistant on that platform anyway. Linux has several (KParts/Bonobo/C libraries), but none of them are good enough, and none of them are ubiquitous.
3) Scattered configuration. Despite what this guy says, it is possible with a decent distro to configure almost everything from a GUI. The problem is, these GUIs change. For some things, I can use KControl, for others I must use the GNOME Control Panel, for others I must use YaST (i use suse), and very rarely I must edit text files. The user needs to be able to configure their system from one place. I don't know how this one could be fixed.
4) Good routing for feature requests/bug reports. A lot of the tension and friction I see is because there isn't (yet) a good system for dealing with end user bug reports and feature requests. Up until recently it was easy - 99% of Linux users were also software developers, so they reported bugs to the mailing lists, and wrote the patches themselves. With the increase in non-developer end users, distros need to deal with users requests for them. All too often at the moment, if you need tech support for Linux you must pay huge amounts for it, or use IRC. Needless to say, IRC isn't the most helpful place sometimes. If you want to report a bug, or request a feature, there is a whole load of etiquette you should be aware of, otherwise you'll get flamed. Dealing with users desires is the job of the distros.
5) Windows compatability. Wine is almost there now, but is still imperfect. Once Wine reaches v1, and can run most windows apps, all we'll need is a fully working NTFS driver. Then we're set :)
Oh, finally the point about there being no easy file sharing? It's a dud - in KDE3 you can add a little panel applet which will act as a mini-webserver and integrate with Konqueror. This does however highlight one of his other points - the existance of this panel applet isn't obvious until somebody points it out to you.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people don't know this - the man pages on a linux system will be mostly way out of date anyway. You should be using info instead, you'll have much better luck with it, as that's the documentation that's actually up to date, in most cases.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I can't help thinking you were about to suggest a little animated figure should occasionally pop up and say, "It looks like you're trying to [fill in blank]! Would you like help?"
There is a microkernel Linux called MkLinux.
It runs like MacOS X does... slowly!
NT is not really a microkernel. It was made
to look like one, because that was the fad
when NT was written, but really NT has a
regular kernel like Linux, BSD and UNIX do.
GNU Hurd is a microkernel system. You're not
using it, are you? Nobody else is either.
Performance does matter, and microkernels
just can't deliver.
Look, it's obviously a fundamental problem.
You can convert a regular kernel into a
microkernel by replacing performance-critical
function calls with message passing and task
switches. You can convert a microkernel into
a monolithic kernel by replacing the message
passing and task switches with function calls.
Duh, what would be faster? You don't have to
be a real genius to see that a microkernel can
only outperform a very poor monolithic kernel.
supposedly you can switch resolutions by the following combo:
CTRL+ALT+(PLUS or MINUS)
It doesn't work for my laptop though. For some reason I can only get the default resolution 1600X1200. Messed with every option and config I could find to no avail.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Even though I consider myself a quintessential computer geek, it even gets tiring for me having to figure out things like why KDE 3.0 won't compile according to the directions. Sometimes I just want it to work, because I have other things I need to be doing instead.
I'd like to make sure that I also state how incredibly cool KDE is, as well as many other linux-based apps. Kudos to all of the developers who have contributed their time and talent. BUT...I hope that we move away from a seemingly pervasive mode of thinking that says, "oh well, they'll figure it out...". Linux developers need to start thinking like end users. Even if it means covering the smallest of details, what you end up with is a very polished app that leaves little to go wrong. This is not time unwisely invested, because even for users that are technically inclined, it's still annoying when things don't work as they're intended.
Am I misled or isn't lack of commercial software for linux the biggest reason ppl don't use linux? Does everyone use WINE or multiple multiple boxes or is there some secret I don't know about?
Don't make things easy so people are forced to learn how to do things on their own in order to use their computer? That's insane.
Where do you draw the line? Maybe I think you're an idiot because you don't do everything in binary. Yeah, that's it. You've just had it too cushy with your fancy assembly language.
Let's force people to interact via a series of switches mounted on the front of their box. That way we'll be sure that they really understand exactly what is going on. If you don't want to exert the effort required to master such a system, screw you. You're not worthy anyway. No great loss.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but does this make sense?
load "linux",8,1
Windows users want easy, they even compromise uptime for ease of use. There need to be ways for joe-sixpack to use a GUI to manage the "usual" functionality that users have come to expect in an OS.
/dev/null is, or what ifconfig does and if you want to grab the desktop market, you gotta give people a reason to install linux. (Free stuff isn't good enough when the free stuff is too confusing to get working by joe-sixpack)
There are programs which give more "dashboard" functionality, but more need to be added by default.
File Sharing (if not right click functionality than an easy to use way to mess with smb.conf, or exports)
Printer setup, and sharing (maybe an online database of up-to date url locations of "all" linux printer drivers.)
Standard Installation program (and standard program placement in the path, uninstallation features and a good program to manage all the programs installed.)
Wizards for everything.(that work.)
Interoperability w/visio and office XP(People use them, you know they do, they will send you things in ZP and visio formats, and you will need to read them.)
The average user will not have to know what
A good accountant, knows the tax laws and all standard accounting procedures. It can take a tremendous amount of time just to gain that knowledge let alone to keep up with the latest in accounting practices. Like many professions, there is a continuing education requirement, which puts Certified Public Accounts in schools at least every other year. They simply don't have the time, and many don't have the inclination to learn all the whiz-bang features of their computer, the applications they DON'T use and the esoteric features of their Operating System. An excellent accountant practices only accounting. An Average accountant attempts to be something else at the same time.
A very good engineer spends his/her time practicing their engineering discipline. While some may have a hobbie with computers, it doens't make them a better mechanical engineer because they know how to configure a Linux machine for desktop use. What makes them a good engineer is that they know how to use the standard symbols, which have been altered a few times in the past ten years. They also need to know how to operate the application that they primarily use for their engineering discipline. An average engineer will spend time in other pursuits, while a great engineer will spend his/her time living and breating their chosen field. Most of the time that doesn't include how to configure Sendmail.
As for a marketer... True, they are mostly evil. However, to be a good marketer one needs to know the human mind, psychology and how to handle the media. They may need to know how to create a Powerpoint Presentation, generate a few documents. They have no need to know how to configure the Apache web server. That is what the guys in IT are for. They have need to learn how to program PHP, CGI or any other language that is used in Web-page design. They might come up with a layout, but that is for some IT guy to put together.
Tell me why the above professions need to have knowledge that is similar to what most IT people have? How will that make them better in their fields? How will they find the extra time to keep up with all of the endless data that comes out of IT, when they have to do the same thing for their field?
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
CUPS for printing. The only thing you have to configure on a client is which server is the print server; and you can use a web GUI to manage print jobs, printers etc. I have no compliants whatsoever. KDE integrates with it very very well too. Only minor nit is they could've used broadcasts to announce print servers, instead of having to configure that on the client. Then it would really be zero-maintenance.
As for an editor that does wordwrap without embedding newlines... well NEdit has had this as one mode for years. You can set it with newlines, or without, or don't wrap at all. Only problem is it's a Motif program, but you can get a statically linked one, and it still comes up fast enough. But I've been wanting somebody to port it to GTK or QT for years too. Then maybe a Windows port would also be possible.
Besides that NEdit has everything else you'd want in an editor (programer's editor or otherwise) while managing to be the least ungainly one I've ever seen on any Unix. And it will run on any Unix; so I can use the same editor both at work and at home.
I'd sure like to know what you're using and how you're trying to cut and paste, because (at least in X), 99% of everything responds to the standard select-copy and middle-button-paste. That is, hilight the selection and it's automatically copied. Click the middle mouse button someplace to paste. (I think StarOffice is about the only exception to this I've ever run into.)
Maybe this isn't "intuitive" to a windows user, but you know, so what? C-x,c,v aren't intuitive to me... why should I have to press extra buttons? In the end, it all comes down to a little learning about and investigation into your software environemnt. When exactly did ignorance become OK?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
CUPS is also excellent in GNOME (as one would expect given that it uses the browser). Since I installed it all has been sweetness and light on the printing front. If anyone is having printing hassles they should check-it-out
I Gotcha TOP TEN Hang'in Dude!
CUPS is to be found here. Sorry about that!
It's not really a 'top 10', more a 'random 10 that happened to piss this guy off'. Having said that, he identifes mostly genuine problems, and cogently explains them to boot.
Only thing I don't get is his complaint about filesystem scans. He doesn't say what distro he's using, but my experience of Redhat, older versions of Mandrake, and Debian, is that the filesystem check at boot-up is non-interactive, and chooses whether or not to fix things by itself. I can only remember one occasion when I was asked anything on boot-up, and that was when I'd managed to completely trash my disk. The computer said something to the effect of 'I've no idea what's going on, enter the root password if you think you can fix it.' But user interaction is, as far as I know, only required on those occassions when there really is no other choice.
"Best" is a very individual definition. And I'm happy that with Linux I have a set of browsers that I can use. And if I ever encounter problems, then its usually not the problem of the browser but the problem of sites that doesn't validate to the HTML-DTD. I'm sorry, but its not correct to blame it on the browser if a web author is to stupid to apply true W3C standards.
2. Prompting for a file system scan
I don't see a problem here. Usually the scan just means 1 minute more boot time and doesn't require human intervention. And I'm pretty sure that all is ok when the check is completed.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure
Sorry. I have a somewhat "complex" print configuration using 2 printers (Laser & Deskjet) connected to a LAN printserver. And setting up that thing on Linux was quite more easy than doing it on Windows, especially after I had to change the IP address of the printserver.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things
The things are easy to do. Just RTFM and you know what. And I love that way because it forces me to focus on what I really wanted to do and doesn't distract me with thousands of funny wizards that try to make my life easier but instead make it more complicated. Did you ever got fooled by an automated spellchecker that changes what you are typing? Well, I'm happy that when I type no dumb programm thinks he can correct what I'm doing.
On the other hand there is no system that will be usable for an complete idiot without learning something. Oh... there are and the web is full of the things that those idiots produced because all is so easy to do :-)
5. Cleaner redraws
Honestly, I never saw that problem in my life.
6. Die stray processes, die!
This is wrong in Linux??? Did the author ever try to kill a not responding Explorer Window in Windows? Without getting his system unusable for a minute, killing the taskbar and so on? I'm sorry, but thanks to Linux I see what is running on my PC and I have the ability to kill things as I want.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
What is "not easy" when using NFS?
8. Sound support.
Works nice here under Linux. Ok, its a bit difficult to setup, but once you did it it works and it's not more complicated to use than sound under Windows. So don't bring up the "difficult configuration" here, since that is just a "run once" job. Oh, by the way... also Windows has some flaws in sound configuration, if you ever tried a VIA AC97 sound you will know what I mean.
on Linux will rock. 9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping." :-)
Sorry, I never thougth that "common" doesn't apply to Emacs
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Well, I confess, I need only one resolution because it won't improve on a TFT display if you use something else than the resolution tht it was designed for (here 1024x768). But I remember that there is the option to define a lot of common resolutions (like 640x480, 800x600 and so on) in your XF86Config and then cycle between them by pressing some hotkeys. So if this is not "changing the resolution on the fly" I don't know...
Summary:
I'm sorry, but this list looks like the author was desperatly trying to find flaws and he came out with a list of things that are really no problems for people that want to use the system.
This was well-said in the old Apple User Interface Guidelines, and I won't repeat it here. It's ten year too late for anybody to claim that you need Lore just to run a computer.
> So think about it. If MS released the full source for Windows XP, would it be a fantastic operating system that code-hackers flocked to?
> I myself think not.
Nice Interface, open source codebase.
It is Mac OS X in a nutshell, and while developers may not exactly be flocking to it, it is certainly helping Apples reputation among the Techie crowd.
You can do most of the things you metion on a Mac, with the addition of relatively easy desktop Multimedia publishing.
The slightly more expensive hardware may be a sticking point for some people who have a room full of old x86 machines but even among developers how many people build machines from scratch nowadays and even then it is more for flexibilty and control than it is on cost basis.
The way i see it is if someone thinks they are a 'power user' they really should definately try Linux. If they have to ask me what kind of computer they should buy i tell them to buy a Mac.
A lot can change in year.
Full disclosure: I dont own a Mac but i would like to.
Think Different learn to proper use adverbs good
frankly, linux people don't like windows people and the feeling is pretty mutual. you can see this most in places like /.
why bother go through all the flamewars? it's pretty clear that linux people don't really want regular users to use linux. that's the only explanation i can see. A lot of Linux people are pretty rude and elitest to so called average users.
I think the biggest perversion of the linux movement is the collosal lie that is known as the desktop movement. I mean come on. someone writes a 10 point thing on what he thinks is wrong with linux or what he can't do with it. And suddenly there are linux people swelling the ranks with sharp comments to talk about how wrong he is and what a moron he is. Is this how regular users are gonna be treated? the author seems to be more competent about linux than normal windows converts.
also trite comments like "so and so function works on MY system so you must be a complete moron because it doesn't work on yours" are pretty stupid.
there comments that are posted claim that with windows you can't even do 'so and so linux function' in windows and if you could it would require a reboot and all sorts of voodoo magic. for example i see a lot of comments on the point where people mention killing processes can't be done in windows like it can be in linux.
Well here's my trite comment. On MY windows 2000 installation "CRTL+SHIFT+ESC" works pretty well. click on the tab that says processes and kill all you want"
someone made a comment that windows users should use linux more before they write "linux" articles bashing the limitations of linux. perhaps those linux guys need to use windows more before they respond with rebuttals bashing the limitations of windows.
A strong tendency is to bash the faults of windows from versions long gone like win95 and win98. however when a critic brings up faults of linux programs long gone like kde1 the linux people are quick to point out that it has been fixed in current versions of linux. they should extend the same courtesy when talking about windows. hey guys, news flash win9x is DEAD.
and my last point is linux isn't even the best *nix. when you guys graduate to a real *nix, www.freebsd.org is waiting for you =)
suse allows you to cahnge resolutions from kde control panel.
unfortunately you have to go through yast2 then graphics card and monitor.
getting there could be more intuituve, but neverhteless its there
Using fvwm2, I can grab a window and wave it around on top of other windows (including on top of a konqueror window), and it leaves at most a small trail (dragging it slowly across a complex window). The window on top is not redrawn at all unless I carefully get it behind another window and drag it without raising it. When I resize a window, I just get the frame until I actually select a size. I suspect that more recent window managers are not working to minimize the redraw efforts. The X window manager model is fine-- it's just that window managers frequently don't do a good job. (Applications these days also seem in too much of a hurry to get something on the screen; there's no reason you should see holes).
You can leave off doing word wrap until you're done with the document, and then do a single (hard) word wrap pass. If you get in the habit of separating paragraphs with (at least) a blank line, emacs will redo your word-wrap for a paragraph if you type Esc-q, removing leftover newlines.
Stray processes seem to be a desktop integration thing. As far as I can tell, the desktops start up a ton of stuff for sharing information between applications, which then doesn't get cleaned up.
XFree86 will change resolutions between the ones defined for your setup if you hold ctrl and alt and press + or - on the keypad. Of course, that's virtual resolutions; if you've reduced it, you can move the area you can see with the mouse. I find this very handy for looking at details, reading small print with tired eyes, and letting a roomful of people read things on my screen. I'm not sure what other use there is for lower resolution, but this feature may not serve your purposes (what do you expect to happen to windows which are entirely off the screen in the new resolution?).
I agree that fsck should have an option to say that nobody who uses this machine will have a better idea of what to do about the filesystem that the fsck maintainer, so fsck should use its best judgement. But the only time I've seen a large number of errors, it was due to the memory in the machine being flaky.
NFS isn't really that great a file sharing mechanism: it's insecure and fragile outside a trusted network and doesn't work very well where the client machines are controlled by their users. It is mostly useful for a server distributing files to clients, rather than users sharing files with each other and with themselves across client machines. A better solution is ssh-agent and scp/ssh; hopefully someday there will be an ftp-like or even filesystem interface to this mechanism.
Annoying isn't it? but not as annoying as a machine where vi/vim/elvis/whatever is configured so you cannot use backspace or the arrow keys.
Thank God for gVim, making the learning curve a whole lot smaller. if only there was a gMutt. of course it would probably deserver a better name than gMutt.
So if one browser gets better, and then because of the pressure another gets better, too, this is bad? Maybe we should remove some features from one of them to make another look better? It's sad that we would have to downgrade the capability of something before we are able to make a choice.
I rewrote my rc/boot scripts myself from scratch. I haven't had this problem for 3 years.
We need better standards among printers. Much of the problem is due to so many different kinds of printers, different drivers, different data formats. One single standard is needed and vendors must be force to comply.
I still haven't figured out how to do a number of things on my MS Windows 98 machine. For example, how do I tell Windows that my hardware clock runs as UTC and that it should still show me my local time.
This is more of a programming problem. Certain programmers think that they need to first erase the screen then rewrite it. Back before Linux, I wrote an editor for DOS, and I wrote my own screen window manager for it. The editor could simply open up window objects and update them much like curses, but simpler. When refresh was called, the screen was updated, but there was no flicker because it was never erased first. It simply updated everything, period. Parts that were changing content just changed. Parts that were not changing, didn't. And mine was so fast I could still do scrolling by full screen rewrites even on a 16 MHz machine.
Programming problem again. Teach programmers how to deal with the real world.
Why do you want access to my files? Leave me alone.
Like printers, this is a vendor problem. Find vendors who do a better job of not always changing the driver-to-hardware interface, and favor them over the vendors that keep screwing people over with the next board version. There is no reason every piece of hardware needs to have its own driver disk included, even for MS Windows (and this is a big cause of many system problems in Windows, too ... Bill Gates has said so).
What you are asking for is to show text as if it had newlines, when in fact it has none. Maybe you should be writing HTML instead of plain ASCII text. Don't mail it to me w/o newlines. But if you want to be able to reformat a range of text, maybe you should try emacs.
I just changed my resolution on the fly while entering this line of text by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus combo. Then I pressed Ctrl-Alt-KeypadPlus to revert back.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I started using Linux back in the day when every version number began with a "0." including the kernel. In those days I had such a hard time getting Linux (Slackware) working but I did with the help of a friend. Configuring things like sound meant compiling the kernel again - which took a long time on my 386.
I gave Linux up for the past 2 years or so to be using OS X and Windows XP because "they worked". I deal with computer (WinNT, Win2K and Solaris) problems all day at work - it's not something I wanted to do when I got home. Using ones home PC shouldn't be like work.
I recently got rid of XP and installed Mandrake 8.2 (on my laptop none the less) and my god how the Linux world has changed while I was gone. The PCMCIA configuration used to freeze Dell laptops (you had to edit the config.opts to make it not prob a certain range). Sound used to be much harder to configure (ESS Maestro 3 support is a newer feature). And the NVidia X server was much harder to configure.
When I loaded it up this time I went to the console ONCE after installing and following the easy instruction at nvidia.com to install X. I then edited the inittab file (although even for that the system prompted me after testing and asked to do it for me).
Upon bootup, gnome asked what I wanted the system to look like (as opposed to assuming for me and making me look for the theme configuration), asked a couple basic questions concerning mail configuration and I was in. The configuration tools in Mandrake and Gnome are MUCH better than the Windows counterparts (comparable to OS X's).
It works now, it's back to being my stable system not because I want to learn how it work like I did several years ago but because it works - it's the best tool for the job.
I'm Microsoft free (at home) now - not because of moral standings but because they don't make a product that I want to use.
what amazes me is all the nice tools the RedHat installer had for configuring X but that when you actually have it installed you dont have the same options, safety, and ease of configuration and can quite easily push the resolution up to a level it is unable to display and get stuck there.
In the installer (as in windows) you have to confirm that you can see the message dialog and want to accept the new resolution.
I'd rather have a filesystem scan than a fscked up filesystem. Is this really a big deal to people?
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
I work at a local ISP. My main job is to work on Slackware 7/8 boxen all day. The guys in the shop behind my office work on 98/XP/2000/95 machines all day. The most problems they have are out of XP. It is a NEW OS, therefor not very stable, and is a pain in the arse finding drivers for. Occasionaly I will help them find somthing If they have trouble with it. XP doesn't even support certain VIA chipsets found in EPOX motherboards. They contstantly have to call the user/customer and ask what the password to login is. Its almost to the point to where we will stop supporting it. Most people that Have XP, that call, want Win98 back on their computer.
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Is this a sig?
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It's one of those long-forgotten points: after all the dust settles, ease of use destroys flexibility. Period. Sure, a few things can be made easier. Font setup, for example, could be more automated. The resolution gripe could be messed with too (I seem to recall old SuSe being able to do that...). But, if you have a horridly-flexible program with 20 or so options, each depending partially on other options, etc., NO ease-of-use solution could be made to keep that power and actually make things easier. The bottom line is that Linux in it's current state demands a degree of know-how. You can make things easier by eliminating the know-how required, but that destroys the flexibility, and when distros try that (Mandrake kinda, Corel, Lindows), they get the shit yelled out of them. I know it's an old point and it's been made before, but it always seems to fall between the cracks. Seriously, think about it, the basics that makes Linux powerful and at the same time makes it hard for a newbie have not changed. Amidst the GUI installations and fancy setup tools and transparent menus, things are basically just as difficult. All the GUI has done has changed the knowledge from which option to use to which radio box to click.
konqueror is the M$FT IE of Linux, that is basiclly what KDE is trying to do is make a Windoze looking desktop for Linux, the last decent release of kde was 2.1.1 that was included with Redhat7.1 and Slackware8 i have ordered Slackware8.1 and if Skackware's build of KDE-3.0.x is slow & buggy (like in Redhat7.3) i will just pull the KDE & QT packages off the release# 8 Cdrom and remove the newer KDE & QT from 8.1 and build myself a hybird release of Skack, i allready done some installs with Redhat7.3 using 7.1's release of KDE, one caveat any updater program freaks out because of the older packages...
More on the subject of #11: Game installation is a point where Unix needs improvement. Some systems will start with a few games in
Then there's the dungeon master program dm which restricts what hours that games may be played. For one, this should be expanded to a larger system-wide access control mechanism which can restrict access by security token as well as program name. Back to the subject, however, the problem is that the games installed by the system will use dm, but games you install after that don't. This means you have to do a little bit of extra work to install games to work with your dm settings if you're using it.
Vendors should make a clear method of installing games, and use this method both when installing new software and when installing the OS. If they're not separated from other binaries by directory, they should be assigned to a "games" group so you can easily get a list of the games on your system.
While on the subject of games (especially console games), I can't pass up the opportunity to plug my own console game on Slashdot. Here's hoping this gets modded up!
- Perpetual Newbie
7. NFS is not secure (except for NFSv4). Maybe an HTTP/WebDAV-based file sharing system would be better.
9. I recently discovered Pepper, which is quite nice. Admittedly it's not a common editor.
Start up Mozilla, click File, click New, click Composer Page. Voila, editor that does soft wrapping (since it's the default behavior of HTML browsers).
Also, what's wrong with continuation lines in emacs?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
fwiw
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
KDE is way to buggy for production work. It always has been. If first used it in 1998 and it was dog then, its a dog in 2.2.2 and its dog still in 3.0. I get 2-300% more problems with KDE than gnome. KDE looks slick, but its slow, clunky and buggy. I don't think anyone should base an evaluation of what's wrong with linux based upon it as the user environment
I love this unix-clone, but I hate things that are mainstream. I hate mainstream music, mainstream clothes, mainstream television shows, mainstream websites, etc. I think there are alot of Linux users who feel the same way.
The second I realize Linux is mainstream, like, the Linux section of a computer store being bigger than the Windows or Mac sections, I will say goodbye to Linux forever (hopefully, unless it becomes unavoidable like Survivor and N*Sync).
What will I use if I lose Linux to pop culture? Duh:
* Plan9/Inferno
* A unix-clone as obscure as Linux was in 1994
* Write my own
I know that the reason you're pushing for Linux to become mainstream is because you're a shy nerdy outcast from society who wants to gain some kind of weird acceptance by riding Linux's coat tails. Please, stop immediately. If you want to support Linux, contribute code/docs and money.
Thank you.
at best buy.
Evolution does on-the-fly, underlining spellchecking.
How very, very *good* for it. And I already knew that, I've run it but still prefer Eudora on Wine, for unrelated reasons.
Is Evolution the default mail client for the biggest desktop on Linux? No? Okay, then I'll care about its features when it is.
Why?
Most Windows end users will stick with whatever stupid icons and shortcuts to "Setup MSN" and other crap Microsoft leaves on their desktops. I don't think it's particular to Windows - most users simply aren't brave or interested enough to (remove shortcuts strewn all over their desktop, let alone) try out software simply based on speculation - they stick with what they know. What they know is what is included as defaults with the desktop.
We learned this from having to support secretaries confused by their Windows 95 systems, didn't we? Or did you not ever have to support Windows machines?
Whether Evolution has decent spell checking, voice dictation, secretly funnels money from Bill Gates bank account to mine, and performs excellent fellatio, is irrelevent. The mail client included by default with the most popular desktop must support all the basic features most users will ever need. A "post-1997 era" underlining spellchecker is one of those things.
Otherwise, Linux is not even a credible alternative, let alone a viable one.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
KEdit.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
What's the big deal in pressing CTRL ALT + to change screen resolution, for instance? It may mot be intuitive, but neither is pressing CTRL ALT DEL for killing processes in windows.
If you take someone totally new to computers and have him try to use windows, he will be as baffled as new Linux users are. With the big difference that, by proper study, one can do much more with Linux than with windows. For instance, I am still trying to find out how to keep some programs from starting automatically when windows boots. There seems to be no equivalent to the /etc/rc.d directory. If there is some way to do that in windows, it must be some extremely esoteric registry key.
Totally agree with you.
Computers should make our lives easier not the other way around.
That's the reason I find linux is easy to use for server environment and windows/mac desktop. Both platform have their strengths, but the way linux works now(and I don't wanted it to change) it's simply not user friendly when it comes to desktop.
Plus you can get all those sweet .syn files
Actually - very effective ... like when ya take a crap. You expect the plumber ta keep the drains open ... that's you, byte-boyz.
If they were all good, why would it matter? However, I think there there is a best browser Mozilla or Galeon (which use the same rendering engine). It is by far the most standards compliant one.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
You can easily fix this by adding "-y" to /etc/init.d/checkfs.sh. Traditionally, that was considered bad because if some inode was broken, someone would go in and hack the file system manually. These days, that's illusory. If fsck doesn't fix it properly, you need to restore from backup. So, I agree that this is bad, and it's easy to fix.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
There are a variety of printer configuration programs that help you set up printers. Desktops should include something better. The main problem I see with printing is that it still wedgess.
Note that both Windows and MacOS printing and printer setup are also very rough around the edges. The only case that works smoothly most of the time seems to be installing a printer locally that either came with a disk or is completely standard.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things
Yes, I agree 100%.
5. Cleaner redraws.
At fault seem to be the Gtk+, Mozilla, and Qt toolkits. Mozilla and Qt were apparently written from the outset with a cross-platform mindset, where X11 redraw logic wasn't their primary consideration, and Gtk+ was apparently written trying to "insulate" developers from some tricky but important X11 functionality. X11 might benefit from adding some additional, small features (clear-after-delay, backing-store-during-move, etc.) to help with cleaner updates. However, if the toolkits aren't going to use them, what's the point?
You can get completely clean updates by setting backing store. On modern hardware, that is perhaps acceptable (it isn't on small machines). That should probably be an option.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Linux desktops should include a "process killer" application, accessible through a secure attention key, like Windows. Unlike Windows, it should have more intelligence about showing you processes likely at fault. Also, servers (print server, etc.), should be properly "nannied" so that they get restarted if they are killed, but that they also get suspended or killed automatically if they misbehave. That's quite common for server installations.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Yes, Linux desktops should include a GUI for this. Traditionally, people consider this a sys admin task, and the sys admin GUIs are pretty good.
A fairly simple way of dealing with this would be to standardize on "public_html", "public_ftp", and "public_nfs" subdirectories in the home directory, with nothing to enable or disable.
8. Sound support.
This is a symptom of a deeper problem: dynamically loadable driver support in Linux sucks. Everybody I know ends up having to recompile the kernel, or having someone to recompile the kernel for them, if they want things like sound, APM, etc. to work.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Some of the GUI editors that come with desktops do this. However, it's not clear that it's a good thing.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
You can change X resolutions on the fly: have a look at "xvidtune". Also, many games change the resolution on the fly, and back again when they are done. So, all that is really missing is a better GUI.
The is one fundamental problem with all computer platforms be it PC, Mac, Linux, BSD , SGI, Sun, Playstation2 , Gamecube, $10 Radio Shack Calculator, toasters and pencils. This flaw can be summed up in only one word and it explains 80% of all computer related grievences.
Users.
>
I'm an administrator at a software company. A couple of times a week I almost cry when I see new exploits for IE, Outlook and so on... What can I do then? Nothing. All our workstations are running Windows 2000 and I can't just tell them to stop using IE and Outlook. Sure, you could deactivate scripting and other stuff, but then they come to me boggling about pages that don't work and mail which look screwed up.
This frustrates me, since I cannot just dowload the latest version of the software and compile it myself. I have to way for MS to get their head straight and release a patch. In the meanwhile, I go nuts since every workstation has classified documents on it.
And I can't run any other OS on the workstations either since Word, Powerpoint and such are widely used. Well, you think, use staroffice. Been there, done that. The thing is that EVERYONE (well almost) are using MS Office and so on, making it very hard. StartOffice and other have converters but there is always some small thing that doesn't work. And this leads to more upset people than I'm payed to handle.
Cudos to StarOffice, it's a great office suite. The interoperability between MS Office and Straoffice works fine if you're using fairly simple documents. When they get advanced, like very advanced Excel documents used by finance institues, things get messy.
I love unix though. All our servers are either Linux or BSD (even have a solaris somewhere). For a server system, un*x is the way to go. No question. I would NEVER hook up a windows system directly to the internet. Even with a firewall. This is because you aren't in control of the OS.
* Windows is great for gaming, no question about it.
* Mac OSX is great for publishing and image editing.
* Un*x is great for a server OS, or a workstation if you don't rely on 100% interoperability with windows documents or users.
EOF 2 CENTS
i'd say for the resolution. make it the same way as windows. right click desktop->display properties. but prompt for root password when user clicks on apply. why is it so fucking hard to do this?
i've always said this. software programmers are not engineers. software engineers are bullshit titles.
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X actually provides a mechanism for the apps to negotiate what information they give/get in a cut and paste operation, which allows them to cut and paste anything, as long as both sides understand what it is.
The problem is that most apps don't use it, or they only ever the X clipboard for text. Theoreticaly, X can handle things just as well as Windows or MacOS, but too few developers use it.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
For example, SoftUpdates completely eliminates the need to fix the file system after an unexpected reboot. The author clearly should try the BSDs -- probably FreeBSD.
when in X, WM should keep track of processes and the windows they are attached to. When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9).
This is a completely useless idea. First, the window-manager has no knowledge of pid's (or user-names, remote machine ip-address) etc, for the windows it manages. And even if it is possible to find it in many cases, that doesn't mean it should need to.
Consider an xterm. It is certainly intended to run lot's of programs not opening windows. I do not want my window-manager to kill those (nor do I want it to kill the sessions of other users, daemons running on the machine, or any process running on remote machines).
Ok. so we can fix this by excluding applications that never opened a window (or other kind of connection to the X-server). But that would mean that any kind of deamon (such as e.g. a winpopup daemon aka the one for windows SMB messages), or other background programs monitoring stuff and popping up warnings or error messages would be killed. And there are lot's of other useful X11 utilities that doesn't need their own window. One common example is a screensaver (well at one point it will need a window, but the whole point of a screensaver is to stay out of the way except when you are out of the way). Another would be a program for changing the background image, programs that do session management, menus on the root window, responds to various hotkeys in weird ways, etc...
Randomly killing stuff is seldom a good idea. Randomly killing stuff with -9 is an even worse idea, and if anyone ever tries to do that to me (whether as a result of me running their program, or they just being friendly) it will surely inspire me to experiment with completely new and extremely painful methods of torture on their bodies.
then the world will be ours!
"Now when a machine hardlocks (say, due to hardware that is overheating due to heavy load - a common scenario if you're using standard PC hardware and your webserver gets slashdoted)"
Huh? I've built hundreds of servers out of commodity PC hardware and i've yet to run into this behavior.....even 1u rackmount stuff.
I would give you a 14 inch monitor and set your desktop size to 1600x1200 and make sure that you didn't have permission to edit your XF86Config file. And when you came whining to me about small fonts, guess what I'd say? :-)
I'd say there's a difference there. People want good web browsers, people want good office suites, people want journaling file systems. Sure, the average user may not know what a journaling file system is, but he sure doesn't want to have to deal with fixing the file system after a crash or power outage, which is basically the same thing.
"People" don't want DRM.
Average users don't want it because it restricts their abitily to use information tools and toys like computers and portable music players. Deveopers don't want it because "perfect" DRM is just plain impossible to code. Information philosophers don't want it because they understand that the core ideas behind DRM (the "renting", "expiring", and "control" of information in the posession of untrusted parties) go against the fundamental laws of the "physics of information". Economists who understand what's going on don't want it because they don't want to see huge pieces of the economy resting upon a cracked (har har) foundation.
Large media-based corporations want it because they can use it to fatten their wallets and they can get away with it because joe average doesn't know enough to be able (or willing) to put up a fight.
A large media-based corporation controls windows and is influenced by other large media-based corporations. Developers control linux, and are influenced by insightful information philosophers and technologically astute economists, none of whom are saying "Linux has no good Digital Rights Management!"
I changed the title a bit ...
d &n ame=News&file=article&sid=892&mode=thread&order=0& thold=0
http://www.tuxreports.com/modules.php?op=modloa
I'm sorry - a bit hazy on this. You are saying that Linux needs to come bundled with Evolution as it's default mail client or it doesn't matter that it's good? Linux isn't about "bundling things" like windows. You have a choice. No it is not part of KDE, and I don't want it to be. Linux is supposed to be modular. Besides, you are arguing that Evolution must be installed by default for it to be usefull?? You use eudora through wine!!!
Jeremy
- Access became much cheaper and more ubiquitous. Checking your mail at a net cafe wouldn't have been possible without a popular net. neither would purchasing broadband at current rates.
- Suddenly there was a vast quantity of information and application avaliable through other media that was now avaliable through the net. Your Lord of the Rings trailer wouldn't be visible on the net so easily nobody was watching.
- Monetary incentive meant new and better sites / apps. Google wouldn't exist without their adwards, which in turn wouldn't exist without an audience
- It became possible to meet people outside the geek world on line, and share your mutual interests (cars, ham radio, dessert recipes, whatever)
Imagine an engineer who worked for a motor company in the early days complaining that horseless carriages were ubiquitous and that the roadways were filled with idiots who didn't know how to rebuild an engine.You do know how to rebuild an engine, don't you?
I've been using linux (mandrake 8.1 and kde 2.0) for about 6mo now, and I've used windows for years before, and my top 2 complaints from a joe user perspective are: 1) After I install something new its not always clear where to *find* the the application. Many times they don't show up in the "k" menu or the desktop and I have to go spelunking through the directories to find it. 2) the fonts that come up with the work processors are butt ugly. I expect there's some way to fix this but, out of the box the word processor should at least look decent even if its not word compatible. This particularily puzzling since everything else seems to have decent fonts.
I'm sorry - a bit hazy on this. You are saying that Linux needs to come bundled with Evolution as it's default mail client or it doesn't matter that it's good? Linux isn't about "bundling things" like windows. You have a choice. No it is not part of KDE, and I don't want it to be. Linux is supposed to be modular. Besides, you are arguing that Evolution must be installed by default for it to be usefull?? You use eudora through wine!!!
No, that's not what I'm arguing at all. I'm arguing that the default must be useful.
kmail is the default mail client in the most popular desktop (KDE), but it's not a credible desktop alternative to Windows because it lacks the features (most *glaringly* a spell checker) that Outlook has. If Evolution were the default mail client, I'd argue that it was too big.
The default browser has to be at least as capable as Internet Explorer.
The default mail client has to be at least as capable as Outlook Express.
The default media player has to be at least as capable as Windows Media Player.
Capable = same features, same size and hardware requirements, same stability, same integration with other apps, same ease-of-use.
Otherwise, Linux is *not* going to be seen as a credible alternative to Windows. That's it, that's all.
Most casual users and newbies aren't going to download Evolution because they don't like kmail. They're going to give up, format the hard drive, and stick the Windows CD back in.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
YHBT YHL HAND
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I spel jsut leik JEFFK!!!111!! adn coll sh1t liek M$
The quality of hinting and AA in Mozilla makes gecko look worse, not better, because apparently Mozilla doesn't use Freetype the same way QT and GTK2 do - check Bugzilla for more info. If you have a screenshot to prove otherwise, post it.
I do agree a lot of points in that top 10 things, however, there's one thing wrong with Windows.
It just doesn't do what I need/want.
If you have the source, you have the whole world...
Why? Because its better.
Actually, plenty. I know we all enjoy clicking in our favorite browser, but the Texinfo system supports some things that every web browser I know of lacks. Such as indexing. I find indexes in technical manuals incredibly useful. They are especially useful when they are accessible online with single key. If you ever have the temptation to open the info browser for some manual, hit i and then some keyword (with tab-completion) to go directly to that entry.
In addition, as much as a like using the mouse, I've found that my hands spend a lot of time on the keyboard. With the info browser, hitting n goes to the next page, hitting p goes to the previous page, etc. This is the kind of stuff HTML fans have been wanting for a while now.
Well, at one level, man pages and texinfo are at different levels. Man pages only have quick reference pages. While this is indispensible 90% of the time, Texinfo goes quite a bit farther. You can make entire books online in texinfo.
But you still like the quick reference style of most man pages. Try this command: info --usage su -- and what you get is a lot like your typical man page. But, that manual has to be written in a specific way to use that feature. So it may not work universally. I would like a future where man is simply an alias in my .bashrc.
Another issue is printing. Texinfo isn't just based on TeX, it is TeX. That is, the language is just a macro package on top of TeX -- in the same league as LaTeX. So if you like LaTeX, then you probably like Texinfo. But man pages can also be printed--not just through lpr but as formatted by Nroff. I've never tried this, but I've heard TeX has better quality than Nroff.
So I look at the Texinfo system as a gift. There is good reason why the GNU Project built this system and requires it for its own documentation. And I think this is a great example of innovation in free software. I have to wonder why the leading desktop projects choose to work instead with DocBook -- rather than build a graphical info client. AFAIK, neither documentation systems have these features the info browser has. But I think the participants were busy being infatuated by XML.
So lazy that don't use google to find anything about "linux X11 resolution", which point to lots of howtos and docs, including classic ones on www.linux.org and Linux Documentation Project.
Lazy novices should be among top ten reasons why good projects fail.
Less is more !
> The introduction of journaling filesystems
> has greatly helped this (it happens only 1
> time in 20 on an unclean shutdown, rather
> than about 1 in 4), but it's still bad.
Well... you have 20 power-plug pulling before you say goodbye to your computer? Count yourselves lucky. Power-failure happens less than once a month for me, so 20 means around 2 years. I'd say, it is reasonable to do a complete filesystem checking which cost you 10 minutes after 2 years of use.
If you trust your OS and your hardware so much, feel free to invoke tune2fs and modify that, so that you absolutely need no filesystem check before you trash your harddisk. Being a programmer myself, I know that there are surprises, things like a kernel path that nobody had ever imagine happening, etc. And I know that the longer the surprise is left there, the better the chance that my data learn to fly away from me. I'd rather play safe a bit, especially if my power go away as much as once per month.
On the other hand, if your hidden motivation is that you should be able to do shutdown by pushing the power button, don't. Filesystem is filesystem. It don't know what is happening in the user space. In particular, while the filesystem is intact, the files can go away, or turn to an unusable state. It probably won't take your whole Linux box, but your work can be trashed. Make improper shutdown infrequent.
Often you want to copy and paste a URL from somewhere into your browser location field... but what happens when you highlite the current URL in the location field to erase it? It gets copied! Argh... you always have to backspace out the old URL to middle click and paste the other. That's stupid.
Meh.
It's not just linux - on any *n*x it's the same problem. The reason is the lack of something simular to NT domain and transparent network security.
More technically - OpenLDAP is supposed to solve it, but all vendors ignore it. All (almost) *n*x vendors still use obsolete (although often shadowed) password files in /etc instead of authentifying through OpenLDAp, which is is usually included to distro, but as something alike "contrib", for info, not for use. Without LDAP - no network-transparent authentication, network-transparent user-group security and thus - no secure way to share forlders.
Another general comment. *n*x came as a server - all users login from terminals to the same server where they share their folders under the same root "/". What is that "root" in network? Don't mention me already-depricated NFS - it's not for modern tasks. It's not reliable. And it's not secure.
Linux today is just coming to desktops (remember days of M$-Win 3.1?). Groupware environment is down the road. Be patient.
Less is more !
Subject line probably says it all. It could be alleviated through simple information, provided on the web site for the application (perhaps with links to the dependencies) which is something one occasionally sees and appreciates. It would also be good to have in configure and make error messages -- "couldn't find requiredthing, available from http://requiredthing.sourceforge.net . If you think you've already got this installed, please read readme.ld.so.conf.txt for further troubleshooting instructions".
Of course, the ideal is that it just works without dependency hell. That happens occasionally. If it happened more often I suppose we might miss that wonderful feeling of relief when things actually work as they should.
...people ask what can we put in to fix it rather than what to take out to fix it. The distros need to take things back to basics instead of trying to fix it on the run.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I find it odd that Mac OS X is repeatedly ignored and stepped on. Sure, we all want end-users to be using a *nix operating system using all sorts of 'standards'. OS X is exactly this - it's idiot-proof, has never randomly crashed in my experience - let's see how it stacks up?
1. No 'best' browser.
MacOS has every major browser available for it - IE and Mozilla (and that's all that matters)
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
OSX decides to do this stuff automatically whenever it 'needs' to. With HFS+, I haven't had a problem, and I frequently torture the machine by unplugging it without unmounting. I'm still using my original partition tables from 3 years ago.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
There are no widely used standards for printers. I had the unfortunate pleasure of configuring some printers on an antiquated RS-232C network running SCO OpenServer. While it wasn't linux, it was hell - and these were dot-matrix printers. MacOS 9 wasn't much better in terms of support than linux (I eventually got it working using a flaky piece of software, but it wasn't fun). From what I hear, OSX isn't much better. For end-users, Windows wins this round hands down, while people with high-end printers which support stuff like postscript can use 'alternative' operating systems with ease.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Indeed, linux falls down here. OSX does too. While it doesn't provide the delightfull array of software offered by linux, it doesn't offer a GUI for all of the console tools. OSX can easily mount a SMB share from the command line (VERY easily), but has no GUI. Most commercial Linuxes throw you too many packages to deal with - they either need to organize them logically, or not include them at all.
5. Cleaner redraws.
OSX does this quite nicely. No other OS does.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Every OS does this. It's a programming issue.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
OSX should be able to mount SMB shares easily, since it can be done with an embarrassingly simple command-line command. It can't act as a server, though. No GUI yet.
8. Sound support.
Macs use standardized hardware. Even so, linux has this problem (even though most *good* sound cards can emulate a Sound Blaster)
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Huh.... does ANYTHING do this correctly? I have no clue what this guy's talking about
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Shouldn't this be EASY? For crying out loud, we create what has been repueted to be the world's most secure OS, and we can't change the screen resolution easily. OSX does this with flying colors (as does every other GUI-based OS ever created)
this list would be more appropriately named the Top 10 Things wrong with X Windows.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I am a lousy typist and this to me is the biggest item - I work on Windows but home is an MS-free zone. This is really important to me as a working developer - it is the one feature of MS win that I use ALL the time
the only thing I agree with is the whole sound server bullshit..
but man.. these people put up an OS and its free.. if you have to do a little more work to get something working so be it.
Ever have a problem in windows and had to spend like 10 hours trying to solve it? Atleast you can get shit thats documented fucking REALLY well in linux.. where as MS is like.. heres a patch.. we hope it works.. so apply patch and pray..
Its a 50/50 crap shoot. Ever wonder why System/Network admins with Windows are fucking morons? This is the main reason.. they dont know anything about administration.. they just follow the m$ monkey docs.. and just pray...
I have no respect for windows administrors.. or users.. they are fucking monkeys.
As I am not a novice, my biggest problem with Linux is the lack of "real" thread implementation.
Agreed, the community has done a wonderful job of hacking up pthreads support with the LinuxThreads library, but, face it, it's still a workaround, a "hack-around" the fact that the kernel has no real thread support.
As a result, sometimes you get hung/orphaned and runaway processes, multiple "ps" listings, and slow performance due to this design issue.
Unfortunately, this isn't easy to fix, and I am not aware of any plans to fix it.
It's too bad because Linux (and FreeBSD) is now the last OS that does not have real threads. Even Windows has real threads.
I am involved in creating heavily threaded, scalable real-time high-performance servers.
This issue bites big time on Linux, as the programs run slowest on Linux, much slower than on any other OS.
Linux would suit needs if this was fixed.
Hardware support (such as dvd, cd-rw, sound, SCANNERS) is #2 on my list.
Lenny Primak PP-ASEL-IA,Heli
1.A common clipboard that works across KDE/Gnome etc.
2.The schism between KDE and GNOME is hurting acceptance of Linux on the desktop. INteroperability would be of tremendous value here.
3.Make it easier to connect to the internet i.e. set it up. I have seen many users stumped because the internet configuration didn't work.
is obvious. Though there is some doubt. So in a few years when new markets are opening up and Microsoft (TM) Nipple (TM) hits the market, then maybe Windows will be able to pick up an obvious interface.
Yes, acutally I do. I like tinkering with engines just as much as I do with Linux.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
> I really dislike those that complain about no
... My distribution rules, yours sucks, ... blah blah blah.
...
... what universe are you guys in? I've seen similar things in some other distros. I've recently switched over to RedHat 7.3, and it seems nice. My only gripe thus far is they don't have ReiserFS as a supported fs for their partitioning software, so I booted a Mandrake installer and did the partitioning there and then restarted with the RedHat installer.
...
> configuration tools. I dont complain about it.
> If i had a gripe I would write one.
> he should write them. then he wouldnt have
> anything to complain about.
This is one of the crux problems with linux/open source/geek mentality as I see it.
Oh yeah, like everyone on the universe is supposed to actually WRITE CODE or know all the small nooks and crannies in Linux to solve their problem.
I have been using Linux exclusively for a long time and I write code for a living, but I think that it is utterly ridiculous for people to make assertions like this.
A few reasons why I believe people choose Windows over Linux:
-consistent user interface: who gives a flying fart if you can choose amongst 20 different toolkits? That sort of mentality is stupid beyond belief. The average user appreciates being able to move from one app to another and have a consistent UI. I've said it before, the X guys really dropped the ball by not giving a full-fledged widget set.
-While I am very glad that there are more and more apps and tools out for Linux all the time, for the average user, many problems are beyond solution without a very steep learning curve. If you have to go beyond cursory, surface details to get something done, the documentation is often awful, and you have to be pretty proficient at snooping things in unix to solve problems. I _OFTEN_ have people bugging me at work to solve Linux problems for them, since I've been using unix for almost 20 years now.
-Don't even get me started on fonts... XLFD, while it may be logical, is NOT intuitive. The X guys really dropped the ball here too... Windows has it all over X, still. Luckily this is rapidly changing.
-Printing still sucks. I've been pretty pissed off about CUPS lately; on Mandrake 8.x it hardly works at all, and it works non-deterministically when it does. I've literally had print jobs come out weeks later for reasons unknown to me. lpr had its downsides, but at least it worked consistently, and you could quickly figure out why things weren't printing.
-Zealotism. KDE vs GNOME vs
-cartoonism in distributions: bizzarre things like saying "emacs and vi rule" and whatnot in your installation messages are not going to inspire confidence in the newbie, and certainly don't provide any useful information for when the person actually starts up the os.
-too much "I'm learning to program", or "my test project" type software being put out for general use before it is anywhere near ready for primetime. Please folks, if you are going to put something out for general consumption, do us all a favor and get some peer review, or
-oddball package selections by default for installs: I've been using Mandrake for a couple years now, and, while I like it in general, those guys make some really bizzarre choices for packages to install by default: innd? ypserv?
I have ALWAYS said that I love unix and open source and have used it for a long time now and I believe in it.
There are a LOT of smart and excellent people out there working in unix and open source.
However, I believe that a great deal too much ego is wrapped up in a lot of the code/projects out there. This causes a lot of stupid things to happen and lots of repeated, wasted effort. If people had collaborated earlier on in the unix community instead of everybody coming up with their own 'standard', perhaps unix would be top dog in market share instead of the insufferable Winblows... M$ certainly isn't ahead for technological reasons; it was because of good marketing, and consistency of UI, better documentation, good fonts, good packaging,
-Ralph
How come I just installed XFree 4.2 and still have to go thru the same stupid configuration and was never offered to use the monitors plug'n play option ? (or is it hidden somewhere in a command line option, in which case it defeats the whole "plug'n play" thing IMHO)
Feh.
1. Mozilla.
2. FS scan. Bad? Ooookay..
3. RedHat makes printing that something even your pet rock can set up.
4. Open a fucking x-term and type man.
5. Cleaner redraws? *shrug* Use a different WM or update your hardware.
6. I don't want my apps killed if they have no windows.
7. NFS is rather easy to set up. Read the FAQ. What, you have to read?
8. sndconfig, aumix.
9. Riight.
10. This is just so hillarious that I can't even bear to comment on it.
I remember when I still used windows (97/98) and there were ALWAYS new tidbits I learned on a daily basis. Same thing now with UNIX/Linux..like here's a tidbit I learned today: /home/me -type f | -name '*.gz' ! -perm -100 -atime +30 -print | xargs gzip -v
find
Automatically zips up all files that haven't been touched in 30 days...now, I could have said (damn..windows had this cool little app that did this for me), but every now and then , we find tidbits that make our lives easier. Linux didnt suck because it didnt HAVE this tool. I just didnt know. One can't possibly know how to do everything on a system at any point in time...
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
This has been brought up a few times lately, the issue of 'usability'
Is windows really easier to use than Linux ?
1. Installing Windows - Most average joe users buy a computer with windows installed and configured for them.
Ask them to do it themselves and they'd have to get help to install and configure everything. They wouldn't even know where to start.
What if the BIOS doesn't have boot from CDROM as the first default entry - you expect them to figure that out. Making a boot disk ? - yeah right.
2. Windows programs - most people save all thier documents to the same folder - they are clueless when it comes to creating new folders. So they have to wade though tons of documents all sitting in the same folder.
Forget about 'copy and paste' - this is something seemingly alien to most average computer users.
3. Windows security - the default install of any windows system is insecure. Do you expect average joe user to secure the system themselves ?
Heck, they share entire drives with plain text passwords. Ask them to secure there systems and they'll look at you with a blank expression - "hey, I lock my office when I go home"
4. Windows stability - eventually, on even the most up-to-date windows OS with the latest hardware, windows will fatally crash. Whether that's due to hardware failure, user stupidity, or a security breach is neither here nor there.
An average joe faced with the "blue screen of death" upon bootup will be clueless on how to fix it.
5. Windows Drivers - sure, 9 times out of 10, you have no problems installing drivers on windows. But when you do, my god, even the most adept sysadmin will battle for hours to get some hardware installed. Maybe they are not battling with typing 'cryptic commands' into a terminal, but instead, they are battling with a cryptic GUI that refuses to co-operate.
I know this is somewhat off-topic, but it is relevant.
To think that Windows is vastly more user-friendly than Linux is just missing the point.
Every single average user I've worked with has had at least 3 problems a week with Windows that they are totally powerless to fix.
You can bring any average joe user to a correctly configured Linux system and have them up and using it in 30 minutes.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
I thought it was funny that no one in this thread mentioned that a key feature of linux is that it's free. As "damn stable" as XP is, the crippled home version costs hundreds of dollars and the pro version costs even more. What does this say about the number of people here who actually paid for XP? (wink wink)
If you had to choose between the XP-like linux you talked about for free, and WinXP for hundreds of dollars, which would you get?
In my experience, Linux works great on hw that has been around a year or so, but sucks at brand new hardware.
See, I have a fairly bleeding-edge machine: a dual AMD XP1900, with GeForce4 and Soundblaster Audigy. I installed Windows 2000, works out of the box.
Linux (that is: Suse 7.3, and Mandrake 8.2) doesn't install in VGA mode on that card - just a blank screen and everything stops. Why is it that damn xfree cannot do normal VGA, when a two years old Windows 2000 can do that? Did they make their own variant of VGA mode that "is right" as opposed to the "wrong" VGA mode that comes with W2K?
It is this attitude that is familiar from the mozilla guys: The spec says X, so we do X, and don't care if the rest of the world does Y. Well duh, specs can have mistakes too you know, I want my machine to *work*, not to conform to some spec some group of dufus armchair scientists have come up with while debating obsolete points.
I won't even go into the fact that neither OSS nor ALSA will support my already *outdated* soundcard model (Soundblaster Audigy) - at least not until now.
I agree with your post. In fact, I agree more than you apparently do because you wimped out when you slammed marketers:
As for a marketer... True, they are mostly evil.
I'm a senior software architect who is therefore a long-time programmer who works with marketers every day.
The job of a marketer is tough and important. They are not in general "evil", and though there are exceptions, I've met plenty of evil programmers in my time, too, who pride themselves on the amount of harm they can inflict on others.
Programmers who are only interested in scratching their own itch don't do marketing. Those who want to solve problems for others, not as a side effect but as their intentional goal, need to do marketing to find out about the needs of others. They can do this themselves, and a lot of the best programmers do, but after a while, it makes more sense to split up the work, let a marketer communicate with the market so the programmer has more time to program.
Marketers in other industries are similar. While there are situations where the job of the marketer is to fool people into harming themselves, that's no more the general case for marketers than virus writing is the general activity of computer geeks.
Any organization (for profit or otherwise) that wants to meet the needs of others needs people whose job is to keep paying close attention to those needs. It's not easy, it's not evil, and it's certainly no less noble than, for example, programming to meet your own needs.
Having said that, I'll have to say that probably the single biggest factor underlying the various shortcomings of Linux is the disconnect between what potential users need and what OSS programmers build. Part of this is a lack of incentive for programmers to work on things that are needed by others but not very fun to work on, and part is due to a lack of understanding of, or interest in, those needs. Marketers help solve the latter (and a lot of the good in Linux has been the result of marketing).
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
1. No 'best' browser.
/directory /directory
I think mozilla is a great browser that is available to anybody on any Window Manager.
2. Prompting for file scan.
yes | fsck
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
Right on!
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
I agree, too much choice is a bad thing. Many distributions want to appease every-one by loading the core distribution with thousands of apps.
What they should do is have the core distribution be a simple as slackware. Then have additional CDs with the applications nicely categorized with detailed descriptions. Solaris does this well and many distribution vendors should follow.
5. Cleaner redraws.
I see this problem most often in java applications, you move a window and you get a ugly grey rectangle in the place of a window. With well written applications and enough CPU/memory resources this is a non issue.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Bad idea. There is a seperation between X an its corresponding applications. Some applications work in both X and the console. If you want to switch window managers you would not want the manager to kill all of the applications. Also when you have many displays running it could get very complicated.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
This is not a linux problem this is a samba issue. They should probably do what solaris does:
share
unshare
8. Sound support.
This is up to the sound card designers.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Run pico or nano. ^_^
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
I agree to a point. Although the X config file is extremely logical, I do wish the options were more obvious. For instance setting the scroll wheel is a bit archaic under input device:
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
You can change resolutions by setting up multiple resolutions in Xconfig and hitting crtl,alt,+/-. Good graphical X set up tools allow you to add multiple resolutions.
There isn't a quick and easy option for this like there is for everything else in mozilla because this isn't a live function. It doesn't have all the bugs worked out etc. Mozilla and Galeon in linux are actually much easier to configure via the preferences than ie in windows, but not for things like this that aren't fully live yet.
set wrapmargin=5
set wraptype=word
Does wordwrapping, and works in plain vi, too.
You do know how to rebuild an engine, don't you?
No, but if I ever need to I can always look it up on the internet.
Hey, wait...
--Dan
That little jib at marketers was just meant as a tongue in cheek light hearted fun. You also moved WAY off where that particular vein of conversation was.
The discusssion was about how it didn't matter how simple and easy an operating system is. No matter what, there will always be people that have little to no interest in learning anything but the very small number of applications that they need to use to be able to perform their job duties to the best of their abilities.
How does that have anything to do with what you wrote? Please read over what you wrote before you respond.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Why does everyone get so upset when people start talking about making Linux too easy? The beauty of Linux is that a majority of it is not standardized like Windows versions.
;).
If you don't like one distro then get another one. If I were a betting man I'd bet that Slackware and Debian are not just going to drop everything and busily start covering everything up with a shiny pretty GUI.
I don't mind if there are a few Linux distros that are mainly graphical. Linux is a community of people and not all of them are going to go in the same direction (in this case, pretty GUIs).
That's why Linux rocks. It can do everything and anything people program it to. If a few distros suddenly push to gaudy graphics then just use one that doesn't.
You could always just code your own
Hey it could be a powerpoint presentation.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
You do know how to rebuild an engine, don't you?
I think so.
I've got everything taken apart and spread out all over my driveway right now, but I'm a little bit unsure of how to put it all back together again. I think one or two of the littler parts might have disappeared or got bent when they were removed.
It's supposed to rain a little later today - do you think you could come over and help me figure out where everything goes?
[Couldn't resist just paraphrasing some of the computer help requests I've gotten...]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
IMHO, this is exactly what is keeping Linux from becoming mainstream. Linux is developed by people who like to tinker with things. It is the DIY hotrod of operating systems. Most 'normal' people, when faced with the choice of building their own souped-up muscle car or buying a Ford (when all they want to do is commute) choose the more generic car, the one which requires a minimal effort on their part.
-SablKnight
Keith Packard, the man who brought you the RENDER extension for X 4.0 [and hence antialiased fonts] is working on bringing X 'into the present':
http://www.xfree86.org/~keithp/talks/
No, but if I ever need to I can always look it up on the internet.
Rebuilding engines is just like building a computer... except it's greasier, requires more brute force, and the computer gives you fewer opportunities for accidental amputation.
First Impression...Looks nice, but the screen flickers and my NIC is in loopback mode. No problem, there should be some info here in KDE on how to change the refresh rate and get DHCP going...somewhere...around...here...NOPE!
Go to windoze boxen and go online to linuxnewbies.com...after some looking...EUREKA! Editing XFconfig-4/modes is how to change the resolution. Now for that NIC. Use the ifconfig command...OK. Typing ifconfig -a and I get something to the effect of:
YOUR IN LOOBACK MODE
TUFF LUCK CHARLIE
CONSULT BROWN BOOK W/COWBOY AND HORSE ON COVER
Now if I could just figure out how to diseminate information from O'Reilly books, I'll be in business.
Hmmmm...go to page 522, 'Configuring TCP/IP with Ethernet'...Hey that sounds right. 10 pages in, nothing about DHCP clients...guess I'm fucked!
I wish it was easier to get some examples or tutorials about Linux from online/books. The elitists seem to keep the info pretty cryptic. I have no ego so after I learn enough, I'll make a site with REAL examples and steps, not processes.
"Normal users" were not that stupid when it came to modify AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files or when it comes down to modify the windows Registry.
Some how that was and still is acceptable.
Comes Linux, that has most (all?) of its configuration in clear text files, and somehow that is supposed to be more difficult.
Give me a fscking break.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
like here's a tidbit I learned today ... automatically zips up all files that haven't been touched in 30 days...now, I could have said (damn..windows had this cool little app that did this for me), but every now and then , we find tidbits that make our lives easier.
I was going to point out how easy it is to do this on the Mac, by doing a Sherlock for all files modified before 6/16/02 and dropping them on my Zip program. BUT...
Sherlock got up to 6832 files before it pooped out, complaining that "there is not enough memory to continue searching." This on a 512MB machine.
Of course, this violates two of Apple's own computer interface guidelines-- don't limit the user unnecessarily, and try to provide an alternative way to perform a given action. In this case, my only alternative would be to write an Applescript.
- MFN
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
... I guess I dreamt about all those .ini files in previous Windows incarnations.
And surely, the registry is more convenient than plain text files.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.