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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.
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
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.
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...
nedit does soft wrap.
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.
3. Cups - redhat uses lprng (atleast it did last time I used it) cups is much easier to configure
Red Hat Linux 7.3 now includes both Cups and LprNG. I agree with you, for many reasons, cups is better.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
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
"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
I believe that you truly exemplify the Linux attitude that is keeping is out of mainstream. You are the quintessential Linux user who has had to suffer (if you don't consider it suffering then you probably need to get out a little more) through the FAQ and all the HOWTO manuals and now you want all Linux users to suffer though these needless complex and cryptic manuals and instructions. Not everybody that uses a computer really wants to know how to program a computer to use it that is why the majority of people purchase MS products and choose not to use Linux. So now you not only want me to teach my mother how to use her computer but teach her to program so she can write an app to configure X.
The Linux slogan--Dammed is you do, dammed I you don't
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"
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.
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 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?
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
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!
Looks like you read the questions but not the rest.
He's saying that these things should be easy+intuitive.
Sure, YOU and I know the incantations, key combinations and so on to get things done, but if Linux is to enjoy widespread use among the not-interested-in-RTFM population this stuff needs to get easier. Like bleedin obvious.
Provided that widespread use is the goal of your project (I think it's safe to say Gnome/KDE has that goal) it's wise to listen to complaints like these.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
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.
"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
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
In fact, I love the way the scroll wheel behaves under KDE (and most GTK appsa): The widget where the mouse is over get's scrolled. I get so irritated, when I have to use a Windows box, because of the different wheel behaviour. I always have to click to activate the widget, which I find very distracting.
Anyway, I see this bug as a feature. Just my 0,02 EUR.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
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?
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...;-)
"It's like saying 'or why do we need a X button to close a window when alt-f4 does the trick?"
:)
No no, Alt+f4 is a Windows thing. Here's what does the trick:
1.) Open a Shell window
2.) Log in as Root
3.) Then type 'ps axu | grep my_process_name' (replacing 'my process name' with the name of your window...' and get the GID or UID to indetify it.
4.) Type in: "wcls -xywzvbeha p:(put in the U/GID here
That is so much more powerful than Alt+f4 because once you put in the window ID then you can't possibly close the wrong program by accident!
Damn you Windows users are thick! heh
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
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.
Not once have I ever had to "do a little homework" to figure something out on my Mac, nor on my PC. Everything I know about those two computing platforms have been learned from experience and trial and error.
I cannot say the same about Linux, where I frequently had to search google to find out how to do things that should be (in my opinion) simple.
I find it especially ironic that you're arguing over whether an obscure keystroke used for changing resolutions is good or not, when the problem could be solved by adding a 'monitors' applet to the control panel (which no one can be bothered to write). As is so common with Linux, it doesn't have to be good, just 'good enough'.
I think I see his point from a UI design standpoint. It's due to the rather unique requirements of web browsers.
Normally, you *never* have scrolling forms containing controls. Doing so is bad, bad UI design. However, in the case of web browsers, you have a scrolling page which contains widgets which may scroll. If the widget passes under the mouse cursor in the scrolling page (hard to avoid), then all of a suddent the widget starts grabbing the scroll events.
I don't really see the point of having the scroll wheel interact comboboxes either. I mean, a click and a movement of the mouse actually lets you see what you're choosing from.
May we never see th
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.
Beautiful post.
May we never see th
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.
You lose power, and your server does not boot up because it is prompting for an fsck. This is not a flaw?
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'.
On the RH boxes I have it only prompts if it hasn't got a journal and then the prompt times out anyway (4 sec default). After that it only needs your attention if something's wrong, in which case you really don't want it to continue.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
It can't get much easier that printconf (for Red Hat users).
Never used printconf, but theoretically, you ought to be able to just attach a printer and then print a document with no manual configuration at all... except maybe hitting ok once to install the printer software w/defaults with an option for doing things in advanced mode.
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).
Eek! Computers are necessarily complex. The tools we use on them are often complex, but this doesn't mean they have to be complicated. Somethign can be complex and powerful but still be easy to use. Don't think of a computer as a technical thing you have to sit over dusty tomes to understand. Think of it as a black box tool that you use to accomplish particular tasks.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE?
I have no idea what this is supposed to do but it does nothing for me in KDE, I think I'm on 3.0 in RH7.3. At least it doesn't do anything apparent. Obscure key sequences only work for general use when their obscurity is common knowledge.
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.
Preventing normal people from using a feature by making it difficult to use is NEVER the answer. If you don't want a user to be able to do something, you restrict access to that feature, you don't make them do a little rain dance/consult the local shaman in order to use it.
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.
Alright, I started off on RH-6.1, it could not autodetect my sblive value. I couldn't get it to work. Later I switched to debian (potato). I tried alsa, oss and every other alternative I could find and I could not get sound to work. In fact alsaconf would frequently core dump right off the bat whenever I tried to run it. This was with my sblive value and later a linux approved ensoniq. Now I've got another machine which I've installed the latest RH7.3 and it automagically detected and configured my 2 year old sblive, and although the rear speakers aren't getting anything yet, I think I know how to fix it. So to make a long story short, ease of configuring/setting up sound is only just getting there for me and I'm a CS graduate whose worked in Nix Ops and as a WinDeveloper.
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.
I would call it a bug, but it's not solely Konqueror behavior. IE does this too (although you have to have clicked or tabbed to select the control).
I know several people who have gotten bitten by this behavior... clicking on a drop-down box to select something (say a date) then trying to scroll down to the bottom of the page to hit submit. Unknowingly they just changed the month of their flight from June to July!
These people never meant to use the scroll wheel to select the value of the control, so it doesn't occur to them to check that they didn't just change something.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
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"
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.
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
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.
As others pointed out, this appears to resize the viewable area of the desktop. And ctrl alt +/- is so much more obscure than being able to do it from a desktop configuration program. I'm not saying ctrl alt +/- should be replaced, I'm saying it should be configurable via gui without knowing the correct key sequence. The gui should tell you that you can also change resolutions using ctrl alt +/-
Just make sure you selected all the ones you want when you setup x (Red Hat users use Xconfigurator to select resolutions).
Heh, I just ran Xconfigurator and it hung while testing the resolution. When I originally went through setup, it detected my geForce2 but not my Samsung 955df. Yet when I ran Xconfigurator just now it detected my Samsung 955df but not my geForce2. That's mesed up.
Bugs aside, my problem with a program like XConfigurator is that it takes you through the entire configuration process sequentially each time you go through. If I want to add resolutions or see which resolutions I have selected as available I shouldn't have to go through Monitor/Video card selection to get there.
Filesystem scan? uh ext3 does then automatically for me, besides windows 98 does this too.. and so does NT when it crashes or is shutdown improperly.. BDF...
3) .. don't know... I don't print that much .. I can see if the driver does not exist..
4) as you said.. there is also linuxdoc and www.google.com where boat loads of info are on whatever you want.. I go to google to find out info on just about all my Linux needs.. and programming too ;-) .. this guy is not a windows users , he is a moron..
5) hmm cleaner redraws.. he's never seen my Win2k desktop.. that is all a part of the video subsystem and the drivers... and hardware.. it's not the *nix communities fault that he got a crapy video card... get an ATI or Nvedia.. mine works great ...
6) not sure what he it talking about.. in windowmaker you click on the window title bar, right click and select kill.. how simple is that..
7) samba works real easy .. one it is setup.. setting it up is not that easy, but the rpms make it more easy.. and with kde I think there is some sort of GUI...
8) Sound ssupport is actually pretty good if you get supported hardware.. again not the *nix community fault that he got a bad card, blame the manufacture on that one..
9).. I use nedit and have no idea what he is talking about... you hit CR you get a CR.. simple as that...
10) XF86Setup is not shipped with most distros (at least not RH) and that is a shame.. as that would allow you to set up the system to use multiple resolutions.. I believe that there are ways of switching http://www.caldera.com/support/docs/openlinux/1.3/ english/xwindows.html
look at the bottom of the page.. if your distro can't do this it is not because it is specific to Caldera, itis cause you did not use XF86Setup to configure the desktop....
Only 'flamers' flame!
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.
Yes, you do have to do your homework to use a Mac for the first time. That's what the thin book filled with screenshots and concise accurate descriptions of how things work is for.
You want Linux in the mainstream desktop market?
1. Make it easy for newcomers to Linux to get started.
2. Adopt a single UI standard, and stick with it so those people, and developers, can be productive. I'd recommend Window Maker. Linux is not Windows. Trying to make it a cheap skin-deep Windows knock-off isn't going to win anyone over.
3. Make the console an option. "Here it is, and you might even have some fun figuring this out, but if you don't want it, that's ok too."
...there IS an easy way to change resolution on the fly: press CTRL ALT + or CTRL ALT - to increase and decrease resolution.
Come on, that's silly. You need to be prepared for a server to lose power. What if a CPU in a different machine catches fire and the halon goes off? Halon systems always cut power to the room. It will then be your responsibility to get all the servers back up as fast as possible.
There is no reason to have failure modes that do not need to exist, even if these are as a result of some other failure.
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.
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.
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?"
Why do we have to be so elitist about this? Why not make the UI make sense for most users instead of the die-hards who've frequently wax nostalgic about the very first slackware beta? Guys like you are the ones that scare new users off from giving linux a shot.
You have a good point, and I admit that my post sounded elitist -- but I really get upset by Windows users who look at Unix/Linux with feeling of superiority and somehow know better what's "user-friendly" and what's not.
To me, any piece of software that crashes randomly, and corrupts user data, cannot be, and never will be, user-friendly. That's why I switched to Linux. I just couldn't stand the annoyance that was Windows.
But to answer your question -- I don't really think you can build a user interface that enables non-technically savvy users to utilize the full potential of their system. You just can't. As an example, I know several people who would be really struggling with the concept of configuring video modes in Windows -- they just don't know what a "video controller" is, and what screen resolutions are. In order to have any kind of a sane interface to configuring the hardware on your system, you have to presuppose technical knowledge, otherwise you end up with an interface which still requires training for new users, and limits experienced users to what they can do. To me, the only way to solve the issue of initial configuration of Linux systems for new users, is to make computer systems with pre-installed Linux, which of course some companies are already doing. That's what allowed Windows PCs to be used as ubiquitous appliances by many people, not the alleged "user-friendliness" of the Windows installer.
Bush Lies Watch
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.
info is a humunguous pile of shite which is a pain to navigate and a pointless excercise in confusion. There's a perfectly functional existing standard which is the man page. If you want a pseudo-hypertext manual, what's wrong with html?
I want my documentation on one page, so I can grep it or in a sensible hypertext way, so I can slouch back, slurp my coffee and browse through it with my mouse.
dave
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
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.
Are you serious? I'll assume you are. I personally (and I'm sure a lot of other Linux users are the same) can't stand IE. It has its good points, one being the almost perfect offline browsing, but the rest? I can't stand it's boring as hell user interface (where are the tabs, and why no google search from the location bar?), and the way it completely screws up processing web pages. It's also been weighed down by MSN branding recently. However, if you must have IE, you can run it in the latest builds of Wine I've heard. I don't think it's perfect, but it's certainly usable.
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!
A few months ago, I would have agreed with this statement. Maybe it's Linux turning me into an elitist or something ;) However, really, there is a limit. Computers are hundreds of times more complex than cars, and it takes months to learn how to drive. Some people seem to think that you can continue to make things more and more intuitive and easy until you don't even have to think to operate computers. I'm beginning to think that's wrong. There will always be people who drop off the end, those who can't or won't learn new things.
You can add all the online help you want (and Linux does need better online help), but the idea that somehow if the user can't figure out how to do something it is by definition the developers fault is flawed. Maybe the developer could have made it better - but there is a limit.
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE? Obvious and transparent, no?
Huh? And I guess Ctrl-Alt-Delete to kill processes is more obvious? Having a nice little button to do this would be pointless waste of screen space, this is just something that people will have to learn if they need it.
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.
If I understand this right, emacs in text fill mode does it. For editing text, this usually isn't what you want, for writing documents you should be using a word processor. It is possible however.
Copy and paste... is one of the best features of X. Select, and hit middle mouse to paste. I used a Mac OS X system, and that was what I missed the most - that's actually the one main reason that I ever reach to the mouse. (... but I should also be able to hit the windows key to bring up the K menu...)
--pi
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
CUPS is to be found here. Sorry about that!
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.
I hope it all gets fixed soon!
I reported this bug to bugs.kde.org a long time ago. There were other people that reported duplicates of the same bug, all complaining about how annoying it is. Try using the mouse wheel when you have Slashdot moderation access! More than once I have accidently moderated someone. Or, try navigating Freshmeat.net, where the long filter bars at the top use onChange to trigger them as soon as the mousewheel touches it. That is bad in itself, but worse with this Konqueror bug.
The problem is that as far as I know, the KDE team completely ignored all of the bug reports (there were several) about this. KDE has done a wonderful job with a lot of features, but I'm worried that it has a case of featuritis (or at least app-idis). People work on new eye candy all the time, and add new enhancements (look at the plan for 3.2). Rarely do I see any actual bugs fixed, though, other than crashes and security holes. Granted, those can be the worst kinds of bugs, but user-interface bugs can be just as bad when they get publicised like this!
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.
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.
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.
fwiw
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
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.
It doesn't. Period.
A config file is a config file, you can change it with vim or you can write a EliteConf gui configurator that leaves all options avaliable to you and that would be pretty flexible. There may also be a tool called EasyConf that does the job with significantly reduced flexibility and enhanced ease of use. EasyConf, EliteConf and vim can all be installed side by side. Although not a very good idea from an UI design POW, it is even possible that they are integrated (eg. Simple Setup/Expert Setup/Show Me Config File tabs) Had EasyConf for all programs existed, we wouldn't have had any issue with ease of use. Since unix config files are usually plain text files, there has never been a problem with flexibility either.
All the GUI has done has changed the knowledge from which option to use to which radio box to click.
Actually it is all about keeping underlying structure away from the user unless user wants to tweak it explicitly. Hiding less used options, finding good defaults and grouping options to a goal oriented setup is the key to EasyConf. Exposing all options with a GUI is EliteConf and does not improve ease of use in any way (except perhaps by displaying better baloon helps than comments in the text file.)
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
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.
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE
Obvious and transparent, no?
I'd say slightly more obvious than Window's ctrl-alt-delete, which I don't see hordes of users complaining about.
So because some people stupid, things should be made much more complicated than they need to be for everyone else?
UNIX rm doesn't ask for confirmation. Deletion in MS Explorer does. Formatting and system-modifying commands are tucked away in corners. Should it be trivial to open a big security hole in your system? I'd say no.
[long bit about how to change resolutions in Windows]
And this requires significantly more steps and time than in Linux. It's like like holding down shift to select a range is in Windows. Yes, it's a key that someone has to tell you about, but it isn't exactly hard to use or remember.
May we never see th
I agree that C-A-Esc in KDE is as reasonable as C-A-Del is in Windows.
However, emacs in text fill mode is not soft wrapping. It does indeed wrap things on screen, but it also leaves the linefeeds in the resultant file. That's hard wrapping.
May we never see th
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If you're actually talking about file system scanning you should probably avoid the cute geek term for "fuck." Remember, fsck IS basically a filesystem scan, making your post, as written, a bit redundant.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
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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.
KDE Help Centre-->Browse info pages - uses info2html. Check out "pinfo" too, works like lynx.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
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.
"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.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Actually, *most* programs maintain only a man page. A few (FSF stuff mostly) maintain only an info page. A few maintain both.
I really don't like the info interface -- i'd rather be using lynx or links if I need to be traversing hypertext.
I'd rather obsolete info, have a single markup standard that can translate to man or html (if there isn't already something in groff or tex or xml or something for this), and then let the installing system generate documentation of the desired type at install time as part of the build process.
May we never see th
Yeah? I could redesign the boot system on my system in an hour to do that -- it's really simple. But you know what? I'm not. I like knowing when something's failing.
May we never see th
- 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'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.
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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.
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.
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.
Yes, acutally I do. I like tinkering with engines just as much as I do with Linux.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
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.
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
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."
"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.
... 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.