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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.
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 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
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
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
1. No 'best' browser.
Gosh, how about the nice thing we call choice?
If they were all very good at doing what they do - that's fine. Sadly, they're not. Whenever I'm in Linux I *always* yearn for IE when I'm browsing, no matter what browser I use. The author's point is that all the current options aren't that amazing, and all have pretty big faults.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Damn, if only this was adjustable, oh yeah...
Not the most obvious thing in the world to change though - and something IMO the default should be automatically done in the background.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
It can't get much easier that printconf (for Red Hat users).
Ok, in Mandrake it was pretty easy to get my printer working, granted.
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).
Yeah, good viewpoint. Why make things easier and more intuitive when the users could just get off their lazy asses and go study to use the machine!
Please. Most people will pretty quickly pick up Windows, and most things are pretty easy to work out how to do. There are stable, easy to use, tried and tested configuration screens that work. Complexity and a steep learning curve does not bring superiority.
You don't have to lose power and control by making things easier to use.
5. Cleaner redraws.
Ok, sure.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE?
Obvious and transparent, no?
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.
So, because some people stupid, things should be made much more complicated than they need to be for everyone else? Cars should be made harder to drive - keep all those damn idiots off the roads.
Yeah, right.
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.
I can't say I've had much of a problem with my cards, but they've been pretty standard items.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Well... pico does this (ctrl-j)
You'd have thought more of the more popular editors would have it (at least as an option). It's a pretty basic thing to have.
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).
Couldn't be easier? I beg to differ. Once you *know* that you press that combination, and you've already gone through the process of having all your resolutions and refresh rates configured, yeah, it's easy. What really *is* easy is this:
Right click on desktop -> properties -> settings
[or Start -> Control Panel -> Display settings]
Drag the slider to the resolution you want. Select colour depth. Press OK.
No text config file that you need to setup with all the options your system can support.
Yes, Linux should be more powerful and dynamic than Windows - that's part of the whole point of it. However, things can be easier without the expense of control.
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?
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'.
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.
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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