Slashdot Mirror
Linux Needs More Haters
Corrupt brings us a ZDNet column by Jeremy Allison, who says Linux could benefit from more "tough love" in order to improve its functionality and popularity. Excerpting:
"As Elie Wiesel said, 'the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.' LinuxHater really doesn't hate Linux, despite the name. No one takes that much time to point out flaws in a product that they completely loathe and despise. The complaints are really cries of frustration with a system that just doesn't quite do what is desired (albeit well disguised). A friend pointed out to me that the best way to parse LinuxHaters blog is to treat it as a series of bug reports. A perl script could probably parse out the useful information from them and log them as technical bug reports to the projects LinuxHater is writing about. Deep down, I believe LinuxHater really loves Linux, and wants it to succeed."
Saying that Micro de Isofta likes something is not particularly strong praise for free software. Just sayin'.
Errr, have you used Vista... recently? It's pretty much how you describe Linux.
Informative that post?
I dont need any closed source application for Linux. I have all games what I want running on Linux (and I dont own a console) and videoeditors what are easy to use and allow very good looking videos to develop.
Does I get "Informative +5" too because I told my personal toughts too of Linux how it does all what I want, even it was opposite than the other?
OK, then. How about double-clicking the .deb or .rpm file and installing it that way. Since you don't need to click "next, next, next ..." it's easier than the Window's method.
"Ridiculous" is not an argument. It's verbal diarrhea. "I disagree" adds nothing more to the conversation than "ridiculous," either.
Put identity in the browser.
Running a single binary on multiple operating systems is nothing special, and has been done for years, if not decades, and is not even remotely unique to Linux. It's nothing more than a question of supporting the necessary executable formats (semi-trivial) and ABIs (far from trivial). See, for instance, iBCS, WINE, and even Java and .NET. Strictly understood, however, binary compatibility is only a small part of the picture.
Installation/setup, package management, network configuration, GUI, assorted hardware configuration, user management, automated deployment, init/service management, filesystem layout. All of these and more can and do differ from one "distribution" to the next, and are a major part of what differentiates operating systems. Expecting some sort of utopia where an application developed on one "distribution" will be trivially installable and usable on all the others is incredibly naïve.
Incidentally, the XP->Vista analogy is just silly. If RHEL5 won't run some (non-system-level) application that RHEL4 did just fine, you might have a case. But we're not talking about subsequent versions of the same "distribution", we're talking about different "distributions" from different people/companies developed in parallel (and then on dissimilar schedules) toward different goals.
Demanding that everyone be the same so that you don't have to worry about choice is selfish, ignorant, and lazy. If you want to be locked into one path where you don't have to think for yourself, you know where to go.
I can only add to it that "Unix Haters Handbook", ancient as it is, contained absolutely no information that was in any way useful for improving Unix or Unix-like systems -- the supposed flaws were either nonexistent, or became irrelevant after natural progress of technology.
It's especially easy to see on example of X11. OSX went into NeXT-like direction of replacing X, Windows as usual continued pushing DirectX and made yet another two layers above and below everything, Linux developers continued with Xorg/freedesktop.org direction. Current status: X kept all its advantages even after adding all infrastructure for widgets and high-level UI support, and all the eye candy from OpenGL and Composite, Windows Vista UI improvements seem to be mostly successful at wasting resources and irritating users, OSX added clumsy (tvwm-like at best) multiple desktops in latest version, and has no remote capabilities beyond VNC.
Apparently "over-engineered" X11 design was the right thing to do all along -- only Xaw and Motif really had to be abandoned, but that was not something that cheerful "Unix hater" would tell you from his comfy office on Redmond.
So no, this "criticism" is a worthless waste of time. Real users see real problems, ideology warriors write holy books decrying their enemies supposed deficiencies.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.