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.

Comments

Not entirely true

[damiam]

#1: No best browser He claims that Mozilla/Galeon can't do AA. This is untrue. Add the following to your prefs.js:

pref("font.FreeType2.enable", true);
pref("font.freetype2.shared-library", "libfreetype.so.6");
pref("font.FreeType2.autohinted", true);
pref("font.FreeType2.unhinted", false);
pref("font.antialias.min", 16);
pref("font.directory.truetype.2", "/usr/share/fonts/truetype");

// AA with Bitmap scaling.
pref("font.scale.aa_bitmap.enable", true);
//pref("font.scale.aa_bitmap.always", true);
pref("font.scale.aa_bitmap.min", 16);

#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.

Re:Changing resolution on the fly..

[1010011010]

Let's say I want to connect my laptop to an LCD projector that supports only 800x600 display, but the laptop is normally configured for its native resolution, which is 1600x1200.

Yeah, I can crtl-alt-whichamafuckle until I get the right res, and hopefully the refresh rate is acceptable. But now, I have to be careful about banging the mouse against the side of the viewable area, to avoid shifting my presentation off-screen. I also have to manually, carefully, size and position windows to make them as large as possible on the projector display.

Pain in the ass. It's much better to just change the size of the desktop, and click "maximize."

Just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not a problem.

Keith Packard is even working on the problem, with his R&R extension.

Re:Quibbles

[Obiwan Kenobi]

I think you may have gotten a bit carried away with yourself here. I have a few counter-points to discuss:

Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2.

Um..I don't know about you, but I have yet to find a desktop that can correctly cut and paste text correctly 100% of the time. At best it's a 60% success rate. From KDE, GNOME, Browsers, consoles, etc, rarely will you find a reliable cut/paste system between the apps.

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-.

But, how many people actually know this? Why isn't there a simple little GUI that runs this command for the user? It's unbelievably sad that one has to SEARCH to change the desktop resolution on their computer. It's silly at best.

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).

Wasn't that what he was complaining about? A crappy front end? The program itself has always been frustrating, but a nice, stable, secure, and easy to use front end for sharing printers and the like...well, that's what Linux Printing has needed forever.