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."

Comments

Re:Or perhaps...

[houstonbofh]

You can help a project without "fixing code." One way is by taking the support load off the hardcore devs. When you do that, for some amazing reason your bug reports also take on a greater weight. Just bitching doesn't do much.

Re:Or perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every user is going to be a developer, that's why developers need to listen to the critics, because the critics don't have a developer's hat.

THAT is one of the things that makes OSS great.

Re:Or perhaps...

[4D6963]

They could take off the critic's hat and -fix- the things that they complain about.

I mean, isn't that one of the things that makes OSS great?

Yeah, and the other great thing about OSS is that it's as easy to fix kernel bugs as it is to point them out! Yay, you see, anyone can be a kernel developer!

Re:Or perhaps...

[techno-vampire]

Not everybody has the coding skills needed to fix problems with Linux, Gnome, KDE or whatever program is giving them trouble. Of those who do, most of them have jobs that take up most of their time, and such things as eating, sleeping, and other personal maintenance tasks take up most of their Copious Free Time. Even if they did try to fix a bug, it would take them a long time -- weeks at least, if not months -- to familiarize themselves sufficiently with the code to do any good. Complaining publicly about the bugs, preferably in a forum that the developers follow, is probably the most effective use of their time. YMMV, but if so, how many times have you dug into the source code of a FOSS program you're not involved in developing and patched a bug?

Re:Or perhaps...

[Blakey Rat]

They could spent 9 months learning the code, the build instructions, how it all fits together, creating their patch, testing their patch, submitting the patch, then hoping and praying that the project accepts the patch--

Or they could put in a bug report than the project maintainer can fix in 5 minutes, since he's already done all that work.

Which one sounds more efficient?

Of course, the real problem is that (most) open source projects don't read their bug trackers, even if the public is putting in bugs. I estimate around 75% of the time the bug never even gets assigned. This is after expressly asking users to submit bugs when they encounter them. I've given up, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this.

Re:first tits!

[MrNaz]

For a person who spends his time getting first posts on Slashdot, they might as well be.

It's an awesome blog

[Digana]

LinuxHater's blog is aweseome, and I say this as someone who deeply loves Linux and GNU and all that is based on them. His criticisms are very well thought-out, not just stupid name calling, but clear, effective, technical, and explicit complaints about everything that is wrong with free software. He coats it with sardonic and bitter vitriol, yet beneath that tough exterior, there are the complaints of someone who has evidently spent a lot of time poking around the system, down to its gritty internals, and has found everything that could be improved about it.

Even Miguel de Icaza loves LinuxHater's blog. I recommend that any free software enthusiast spend some good time reading the blog. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wonder how you can make it all better.

Re:It's an awesome blog

[Hatta]

I can't agree. Look at Friday's post, no real constructive criticism there. Just HAHA look at the lusers!

Now look at Thursdays, complaining about too much choice. He's ignoring the fact that every desktop distro makes a working set of default choices. Whether you use Ubuntu, Mandriva, Xandros, or whatever, you'll have a desktop environment, browser, music player, etc, etc chosen for you. And just what does he think we're going to do about having too much choice? Tell people they can't code window managers any more? Again, this is not constructive criticism.

Back to Wednesday, again just poking fun.

On tuesday still nothing useful. Google using linux isn't a reason for you to, sure I buy that. But it's not a reason not to either.

Virtual desktops, I dunno about OS X, but he suggests VirtuaWin for windows. UGH! It's incredibly slow, it doesn't guarantee the order of windows after a desktop change, and it doesn't support mouse wheeling. Makes you wonder if he's used virtual desktops for any length of tim on any OS.

Make uninstall, that's what autopackage is for. Enough said. Most of the rest is just arguing that Windows isn't all that bad, which is true, but it's not a criticism of Linux.

Monday, is more of the same. He does a good job knocking down arguments against windows, but very little actually criticising linux. Which is to be expected really, Linux is at least as good an OS as windows, the only place it really lacks is in application support. And if he wants to fix that, he should be arguing for linux, not against it.

Re:It's an awesome blog

[Anonymous Coward]

His criticisms are very well thought-out, not just stupid name calling, but clear, effective, technical, and explicit complaints about everything that is wrong with free software.

Oh really? Are we talking about the same blogger that writes gems like this one?:

One sure thing that a luser will say to you when you criticize his shitty operating system goes something along the lines of "but at least I don't get any viruses."

Good for you dude. I don't get any viruses from your mom either. I'm protected. So please cease and desist your blabbering.

Classy all the way. And what an insight.

Re:It's an awesome blog

[Foofoobar]

Yep... sometimes he trolls just to troll. On one post he proclaimed ...

Besides, I can make my computer immune to viruses. Just watch. Pop! Did you see that? I unplugged my network cable. The luser wretches, "Oh but that makes your computer useless!" Yeah, well so does putting Linux on it. What's your point?

This was his answer on the question about how Windows was more prone to hacking and viruses whereas Linux was more secure. He does make some goods points but then he loses his audience by being a troll like this.

You can't have it both ways. If you want an audience to respect what you have to say, you can't turn around the next second and just be emotionally illogical and say 'because I say so'.

Re:It's an awesome blog

[orasio]

Miguel de Icaza is not that much of a free software fan, though.
I think of them like the Count Dooku of software development. The guy has a vision, and doesn't care about how to get there, even if it means putting all of us at risk.

just one thing

[callmetheraven]

The only thing wrong with linux is lack of availability of 3rd party shrink-wrap type applications and games. I would love to give up XP, but linux can't run the video editing software that I need and games that I want.

Re:just one thing

[howlingmadhowie]

i'm not sure that it is 'the only thing wrong with linux', as i think that linux as a distribution has a number of other flaws, but it is remarkable to think that this is where the problem now is. after years of hearing about the complexity and command-line intricacies of gnu/linux as being the showstoppers, i'm reading more and more posts from people saying things like 'ubuntu is just as easy or even easier to use than vista and it has better hardware support, but it's a pain getting WoW running on it'.

do you think it is fair to say that if the next big game was available on ubuntu for example, and for the sake of argument, let's throw the next version of photoshop in there as well, we could see a fairly large movement towards linux distributions on the desktop?

Not that much to complain about

[HangingChad]

One of the reasons I like Linux so much is that there's so little to complain about. Everything just works. Occasionally there's a driver hunt or compatibility issue, getting a scanner to work, but overall, once it's set up and working, smooth sailing.

That was the way Windows used to be. Everything would install and just work, while the Linux tinkerers spent hours chasing down compatibility issues and combing through HCL's. But Vista changed that perception and the very time Linux was making progress in big leaps.

Five years ago if you wanted a smooth install and minimal fuss you picked Windows 2000 or XP. Now you install Ubuntu or buy a Mac. The reality is probably a little more complex but the perception certainly has changed.

Re:Not that much to complain about

[dash2]

Er, I think you need to go and read the Linuxhater blog. You may find your experience is not typical.

My current status is: I installed Ubuntu Hardy to try it after giving up on Debian 5 years ago. It's pretty nice, but whenever I take my Thinkpad out of its dock, it crashes. Windows is much better: whenever I plug the Thinkpad into the dock, it crashes.

:-( /me hates all computers equally

Re:Not that much to complain about

[nine-times]

One of the reasons I like Linux so much is that there's so little to complain about. Everything just works. Occasionally there's a driver hunt or compatibility issue, getting a scanner to work, but overall, once it's set up and working, smooth sailing.

I don't mean to offend you or anyone else, but I think you might be a bit overly-optimistic. There are a lot of valid complaints about Linux. Not that I see a lot of constant show-stopper bugs in major distros or anything, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of smaller problems, annoyances, and missed opportunities to do things better.

I'd say Linux does a very good job at loads of things *relative other currently available operating systems* (i.e. other operating systems have their share of problems, too). But computing in general still has a lot of room for improvement. If any Linux developers out there think Linux is perfect and feel like they're running out of things to improve, let me know. I can help you find things.

That was the way Windows used to be. Everything would install and just work, while the Linux tinkerers spent hours chasing down compatibility issues and combing through HCL's.

I'll grant you that Windows was a good desktop OS for its time, back around 2000. At the time, nothing was doing a better job of meeting most users' needs. But it has always been far from perfect, and each version has had plenty of technical/design problems..

Re:Or perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with all the warts, OS X is what Linux wants to be - and is stumbling miserably in many ways. As long as developers only work on what interests them, Linux will be hindered. Few coders really want to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work of writing 4,000 printer drivers, GUI front ends to countless mundane command line functions or software ordinary people want to use in daily life. That's what Apple pays themselves to do.

Re:Or perhaps...

[TheLink]

You can know how to eat without knowing how to cook.

It's silly to expect people to take time to learn how to cook before complaining that the Linux stew lacks something.

But it's fair to ignore complainers who just say "it's bad" without giving anything useful.

Tis sounds crazy, but it is true

[MobyDisk]

I know lots of smart developers who have tried Linux and ported apps to it, just to expand their knowledge of the operating system and learn how to port stuff and to keep their skills up-to-date. But most of them fallback to Windows. The more pragmatic ones switch to OS X because it is just like a Unix OS, but with far greater usability.

At one point I kept a blog of all the troubles I had with using Linux. Most of the items were really simple things that made it very difficult to use. But often even constructive comments were met with disdain, so I gave up. No sense in complaining to a deaf audience.

This all comes back to the zealous Linux pragmatism where truly constructive criticism is turned into that with-us-or-against-us mentality.

OS X

[dan dan the dna man]

OS X is the 'tough love' that Linux needs. I use Linux on the server (although I have a rack of Xserves too) and there's a reason I am happy with it there (unlike OS X).

On the desktop? Well I use a Mac. And I don't think I will ever go back (in the interests of fairness this is being posted from my 'Games and things' XP laptop).

I love the fact Linux is dynamic, and open source. I really do. I don't like the fact that it doesn't seem to 'evolve'. The fragementation of WM's, distro's etc. never actually seems to weed things out. What we never end up with is a 'de facto' solution.

People argue that choice is good. I'm sure it is. But the reason that Windows and OS X still beat Linux on the desktop experience is because they are standardised - there just aren't alternatives. And OS X is a better 'desktop Unix', so as a person who wants that, where else am I meant to go? If nothing else KDE 4 would drive me away... yuck.

I did use Linux on the desktop. For several years. I only tried OS X on a whim.

I don't hate Linux, but I don't think I'm alone. Go to a confernce these days (I'm an academic) and I used to see people booting into myriad versions of Linux as they opened their laptops. These people are now in a minority, as the Apple logo is raised in unison at the beginning of any talk.

Fanboy? Maybe.

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh, another heap of bullshit. There are really three simple reasons why Linux have difficulties becoming mainstream in the environments you describe. NONE of those have anything with any of that "standardization" bullshit you seem to believe in.

Reason #1. Linux doesn't generally come pre-installed. If you want it, you've got to install it yourself. Usually after you've already paid for another OS. Don't have time, or can't be bothered? Get your ass into the folder your OEM have decided for you to be in.

Reason #2. All OEMs fall over themselves to get stuff working with Windows - in the case of Apple, obviously they fix it for you. Not so with Linux. In fact there are plenty of OEMs who seems to deliberatly try to make life difficult to use anything but the original, OEM approved OS.

Reason #3. ISVs reluctant to try new markets until it's obvious that they are on the verge of becoming obsoleted. (Don't feed me that "all distros are incompatible" line, it's horse shit). In fact, the way for instance Adobe behaves, one might actually start to wonder if there aren't cheques coming in from certain parties in order to assure that some applications stay off the Linux platform.

These three reasons are basically all there is to it. If Linux had shipped pre-installed, and OEMs didn't put obstacles in the way, I bet we would see a lot more of it. And if some ISVs actually grew some backbone, instead of cowardly assisting with the vendor lock-in, we'd probably see even more of it. It has NOTHING to do with the fact that some people prefer a wm, some gnome and yet others prefer kde on their desktop. Just get your damned libraries in line, and you're home. Anyone with a IQ above that of a log can see that.

Re:OS X

[Magic5Ball]

The main difference I've found between commercially developing for Linux and commercially for OS X is that suggestions for improvement generally get the response "that's a problem with [other part of the stack]", where the [other part of the stack] gives the same form of response, and the pointers rarely dereference to anyone who takes responsibility or ownership of the issue.

A fine example currently is asking for modal dialogs to be dismissable on 400 px tall screens of UMPCs ("Please let me scroll the dialog, or locate the OK/Cancel/Apply/Help buttons on screen where I can see and click them"). The echo chamber of "talk to (app | xorg | GTK | Intel | Java | Nvidia | distribution | libc | vendor | etc.)" really turns me off of wanting to help any of them resolve the issue. As a developer on Linux (but with OSI Layer 2/3 stuff, rather than GUI things), I could probably spend a week or two to figure out how all of those pieces interact (without deeply understanding the design philosophy or project plans) and make patches that would work on my current setup, but that would generate significantly more regression testing and QA load than would be required if the patches came from in-house where the developers are already intimately familiar with their own code. Also, as one of the advantages of a package management system is supposed to be that it all gets taken care of for me, I have no interest in maintaining my own versions of app, X, GTK, etc, nor do I want to spend a day each understanding the 32 to 200 KB spec files that build those packages, nor am I interested in waiting 3 months to year before the fix makes it into the non-beta parts of the distributions I might use.

Now, ask grandma to change the screen resolution back to 800x400 (using a dialog the entirety of which she can't see or access) after she experiments with plugging a regular monitor into her new eeePC (or whatever UMPC the banks are giving away these days) and it stays mirrored at the new resolution after the experiment. It's unreasonable to expect that random non-technical user would want or need to understand that the entire stack around the problem even exists, let alone attempt to fix it.

By contrast, if I encounter an issue manifesting in CoreFoo, Cocoa, some kext or library or wherever else on OS X, Apple will offer to take ownership of it even if it isn't directly their problem (and then work on it in the background), other vendors/developers in the stack will at least acknowledge if not fully investigate the problem in the test case(s) submitted, and random other developers in the same space will be thankful for the new knowledge instead of responding with RTFM or its analogues. Granted, fixes in OS X still take weeks to a couple of months to widely roll out, but that's still faster than many distributions update their stable packages.

And then there are (the comparatively few) great OSS people like Tim Waugh, who knows the (printing) stack up and down, and responds with a reasonable fix or workaround within 48 hours, even though the problem is not in his part of the stack, regardless of who's customer you are. Plus, you'll usually get some insights by responding to his "I'm curious about what you're doing with this" follow-up.

Missing the article's point

[jake_fehr]

I read the article and I thought, "Well, that sounds like a good idea." Too often when anyone mentions ANY of GNU/Linux's shortcomings (which, to be fair, are far less in number than Windows's), they are labelled a troll and are either attacked or ignored.

So what happens? The comments for this story include gems like "Not that much to complain about" and "Linux + GPL what is there not to love."

Legitimately easy-to-use GNU/Linux distributions such as Ubuntu didn't happen because of the GNU/Linux Yes-Men out there. It happened because the people at Canonical listened to complaints from people like GNU/Linux haters and tried to address the issues.

Or for that matter, flip the situation around. It seems that many users on Slashdot love GNU/Linux and hate Windows. If someone wrote an article saying that Microsoft should listen to the issues of Windows haters to help improve their product, wouldn't you think it was a good idea?

Don't Turn Blind Eye To Complaints

[reallocate]

Linux lovers should be grateful that anyone bothers to provide free criticism. Commercial vendors spend big bucks on focus sessions to acquire the same information.

One troubling trait exhibited by some Linux devotees is their insistence on responding to any criticism of the software by touting it's free software/open source roots. Frankly, that's little consolation to someone who's pointing out why they're unhappy with the software. Why should the model used to develop and distribute software mollify users when they see inadequacies in that software?

Of course, linked to that is the really annoying challenge to "Just fix it yourself! You've got the source!" That's an absurd claim. It's either premised on a wish to rid the Linux community of anyone who is not a bona fide developer, or it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to be a competent developer.

Linux is a great OS and the best desktop distributions have nothing to hide. But, nothing ever gets better when people deliberately turn a blind eye to complaints.

Re:Don't Turn Blind Eye To Complaints

[dargaud]

Of course, linked to that is the really annoying challenge to "Just fix it yourself! You've got the source!" That's an absurd claim.

Yup. I write, among other things, device drivers under Linux for a living. But each time I take a Linux graphical app and try to make some changes to it, it fails. Wrong compiler setup. Wrong libraries. Wrong rpm. Wrong system config. Wrong wrongness.

It's to the point that there are only 3 types of Linux progs that work: the one that comes with the system (and its updates), the simple "./configure; make; make install" and the kind I write myself. Any of that "fix it yourself" is crap.

Re:Or perhaps...

[tinkertim]

I'm not sure about the months, weeks or even days. Sometimes it can be hours, sometimes even minutes, it all depends on a bug.

My bug report work flow:

1 - Make sure I'm not the bug
2 - Grab the source
3 - Browse
4 - Figure out (approximately) what point in the code my bug is coming from
5 - Write a bug report like this:

Hi,

Your program foo just killed my cat. No shit, killer pokes aren't funny dammit and you said this would work on a commodore PET! My cat had a seizure and its dead claws are now embedded in my skull as I write this.

As far as I can tell, its fate was sealed somewhere around line 2113. Looking at your commit logs, it looks like someone got ahold of the user "hsimpson"'s password, please ask him to change it.

I would help diagnose this more, but I have to get this cat off my head.

See? Even if I know _nothing_ about the code, I do know _something_ about the bug .. and can usually provide a little bit of information beyond 'its fucked up, fix it' .. which is the gist of the common bug report. :)

The Pleasure of Hating.

[delire]

If Jeremy is correct, then the author of Linux Haters has chosen what is possibly the least likely route to garnering interest from Linux developers. Which linux developer would consciously choose to read a blog that refers to them as a 'luser' incessantly from paragraph to paragraph.

The 'benchmark' OS he seems to use as the basis of the bulk of his criticisms is OSX, an OS I find really frustrating to use (and I use it fairly often these days). If I were to start an OSX Haters on this basis should I expect the Aqua and XCode authors to read it daily in the interests of improving all the braindead things about both those aspects of OSX? Didn't think so.. Maybe the guy just has a crippling case of Internet Rabies induced by deep boredom and Jeremy's simply being a little generous..

There are, afterall, blogs featuring meticulously prepared images of meals that people hated eating. Perhaps this blog is simply in the same vein; just another masochist whiling away the hours in public.

Must be a slow news day.

You have to care to hate

[Maxo-Texas]

This is important to learn in life. When you reject someone that loves you, then they hate you. As long as they hate you, they still love you.

Once they don't care any more then it's over.

It discovered this all on my own when going through a bad breakup so that part of the comment particularly leapt out from the page to me.

Re:Or perhaps...

[digitig]

They could take off the critic's hat and -fix- the things that they complain about.

I mean, isn't that one of the things that makes OSS great?

And there is the fundamental problem with Linux -- the "geeks only" attitude of so many of its proponents. The lawyer who wants an office system, the granny who has just heard that they can video-conference with their grandchild halfway around the world, the schoolkid who wants to get their geography assignment done -- most potential Linux users will never have anything to contribute to Linux except advocacy, and as long as any requests for help are met with "fix it yourself" suggestions or a pile of technical gibberish (heck, I am a coder, and I struggle to understand most of the supposed support on offer) then they will stay with other systems whose developers do understand the needs of the non-technical user. That way they'll never be more than potential users, and Linux won't even get their advocacy.

Re:Or perhaps...

[Smidge204]

Unfortunately that's one thing a lot of Linux advocates fail to get: Not everyone has the ability to alter the code to "fix" things.

This is especially important for the types of Linux advocates that are pushing for "Linux on the Desktop" and other non-specialized applications. You are trying to push Linux onto people who can barely turn a computer on without electrocuting themselves - do not expect them to "scratch their own itch."

What we need are fewer self-righteous asshats who can actually put themselves in the position of a novice and try to understand their needs - or at least listen to them without condescending retorts. Windows, for all it's shortcomings, tailors specifically to novice users (ie the vast majority of computer users) and that's why it's so popular. Cry monopoly all you want but until you fix your usability issues you are not going to make much progress.
=Smidge=

Re:What kernel bugs?

[hal9000(jr)]

What makes Windows and OSX more popular than Linux is the same reason why Java is more popular than Python or Ruby, it's corporate sponsorship.

Nope. Not even close. How are these for corporate sponsors: Redhat, Novell, Sun.

What makes Windows and OSX so popular are applications that are commercially supported. That's it. Look no further. Without applications, your OS, no matter how fancy, is useless. I rememeber when I got my first computer, I turned it on to see C:\>. It was useless to me without apps that I could use (I was also introduced to warez that day).

Now, I know that there are alot of apps for Linux, but the installation and use of them are not as seamless as those for Windows or OSX. What I would like to see, and perhaps this is already available, is a set of agreed upon application practices, written by distribution maintainers, that developers follow that standardize the interface, the population of the OS menus, the distribution of files, etc, so that it app installs are seamless. Yes, it would be a PITA to support each distribution of OS, but quite frankly, that could be automated. And then have app developers actually follow the guidelines.

That would go along way to streamlining apps in Linux.

Re:What kernel bugs?

[4D6963]

Linux is superior to Mac OS X?? *pop* I'm afraid you just blown my Mac fanboism fuse :-(

Re:What kernel bugs?

[i.of.the.storm]

I do agree that app support is the major problem with linux, but I'd actually argue that for the apps that are in package managers, it's a lot easier and more seamless to install them than a random Windows or OS X app. Of course, if the package manager doesn't have it or fails, then you might be worse off...

Re:first tits!

[hostyle]

Igor! Just the man I was looking. I have fallen badly from a /. comment and now I need some stitching on the left leg. Seem to be missing a patch of skin off my arm too.

Re:Or perhaps...

[aurispector]

The for-profit model has a built in advantage in that once the people controlling a project decide making a change is a priority they can FORCE the people on the team to do it. OSS is exactly the opposite; if nobody feels like fixing a bug it doesn't get done, or it takes more time. There are strengths and weaknesses to both systems.

Re:What kernel bugs?

[gbjbaanb]

true, I've found instaling apps in Linux to be easier than Windows once you have a binary distribution that is packaged.

I think perhaps the problem isn't the apps that are out there, but the development of them. Microsoft produces more development tools than there are days to figure out how to use them, and they produce documentation that is really good (assuming you want to be a WinCE or .NET developer nowadays). If I could develop my apps for Linux with the ease I could develop for Linux, there would be more apps and more uptake for Linux.

The mass of boring, specific-solution apps out there dwwarf everything you can get commercially. Windows is built on the premise that it is easy to create apps, and that supporting them is easy even if the original developer leave, you'll be able to find another who can take up their code because they will be familiar with the technology used to produce it.

This, I feel is one of the reasons for Java having so much uptake - it was well documented, and if you wrote a Swing app, you knew your investment in it would be safe.

Of course, momentum and installed base helps a lot, but Windows cannot ever compete with free.

Why I still have to boot into Windows.

[crhylove]

I'll give fair crits.

Let me say first and foremost, that I prefer booting into Ubuntu and using that as my daily driver. Sometimes I just can't though.

Here is a list of short reasons why:

Skype seems to be faster, and work better in w32. My video gets sent at higher resolution, and I can hear the other party better. Dunno why, this is just the case.

7zip is screwed up in Linux. I installed a wine version, AND a native version, only the wine version will start and it flickers and won't let me select a package to extract. Making it unusable.

Random crashes. I mean, probably as many or more as I get regularly in Windows, with the added inconvenience of ctrl+alt+bckspce not being near as good as ctrl+alt+delete, which brings up a handy task menu for me to clean up (usually).

No two sound things going at once. Sometimes I like to put on mp3s, and THEN go kill people in Urban Terror. This is easy and works perfect in W32, but not in Ubuntu, I just get the mp3s, and NO sound in a game whilst they are playing.

TVtime not recognizing my TV card. Dscaler turns on perfectly in Windows. So does TVtime in Ubuntu, but then the screen is blue and there is no menu for me to figure out what is wrong, either.

Joost. Works in windows, not in Ubuntu. I'm sure partially Joost's fault, but still sad.

Civilization 2. Best/funnest version of the game, will not play in wine even though it's like 10 years old.

I like how Windows arranges it's GUI, start button, quicklaunch, then task list, then systray and clock. Less real estate, all the same functionality, but without a top AND bottom bar.

Zsnes. Does not work in any way shape or form, or under wine.

What Linux gets RIGHT however is it's ability to find and install 99% of my hardware without me hunting for hours for drivers, inclusion of most of the software I prefer (firefox, gimp, pidgin, open office, cd burner), Compiz Fusion (blows every Windows attempt away!), and it's open source nature. There is something good knowing the code to my machine is inspected by lots of eyes, not just one corporation, and it's also good to know that if I was knowledgeable enough, some of those eyes could be mine.

Honestly Linux feels "closer" than it ever did. It just needs to solve a few naggling issues before it can fully dominate the world by desktop. Another way it could do so is by being AHEAD of the curve. It would be nice if there was a superior FOSS Skype killer, since skype is actually deficient in numerous ways, including not being FOSS. Speex is a better speech compression algorithm, so it would seem like we have the tools in hand to beat the current corporate paradigm too, and yet it sadly isn't happening.

Re:What kernel bugs?

[LaskoVortex]

What I would like to see, and perhaps this is already available, is a set of agreed upon application practices, written by distribution maintainers, that developers follow that standardize the interface, the population of the OS menus, the distribution of files, etc, so that it app installs are seamless.

Mega dittos, Rush. I think OSX is gaining a lot of ground because the installation of apps is trivial: drag the thing from the disk-image file to your app folder. Of course its almost as easy in ubuntu, where you select from a pre-defined list. But linux definitely needs a common mechanism. RPMs, apt, and yum simply don't hack it. Though package management seems like a good idea, it quickly locks a user into specific versions that must be compatible with specific libraries. I think the difficulty of installing apps, the difficulty of patching the OS, the lack of standard distribution practices, and the inflexibility of package management systems can make otherwise embracing users a little hostile towards Linux. In fact, I'm starting to feel a little hostile myself and I'm one of those Linux evangelists.

Re:What kernel bugs?

[amn108]

Agreed.

ACPI support is not finished yet, in terms of completeness.

The Intel X3100 Open Source driver DRI module exhibits issues, which send interrupts to the CPU every time screen refreshes - i.e. 60 times per second, preventing the CPU from idling, and thus eating battery and power.

USB driver interrupts the CPU without any device plugged in to the bus.

yenta_sockets module - same story.

The above may only hold true to the Thinkpad machines, but the laptop (mobile) Linux is just not there yet, given that my Thinkpad has a standard Intel graphics, and standard Intel USB controller. I am sure other notebook machines have similiar issues.

In addition to that Linux starts to exhibit side-effects of "too much choice". There are at least two desktop interfaces (GTK, and QT) so, half of the people only get half of the applications, because their desktop user interface is not supported. Things like that.

It may well be that Ubuntu != all linux distros, but the majority of packages are shared between distributions, and so most of the quirks, bugs and status-quos make it everywhere.

I admire the programmers, who implement newest hardware support in software for Linux though. Like ACPI. But there is more that needs to be done, and I don't have time to learn ACPI right now, so all I can do is complain :-)

Re:What kernel bugs?

[jimicus]

What makes Windows and OSX so popular are applications that are commercially supported. That's it. Look no further. Without applications, your OS, no matter how fancy, is useless. I rememeber when I got my first computer, I turned it on to see C:\>. It was useless to me without apps that I could use (I was also introduced to warez that day).

As soon as a post like this appears on /., it's almost guaranteed you'll have a dozen or more replies saying "But Linux has all the packages you could ever need! Just look at any package manager!!!oneoneone" so I'll chime in with what I perceive as being a bit of clarification.

As far as the end user is concerned, provided they're not a hardcore gamer this is quite correct.

But a lot of people own PCs for reasons other than just the sake of owning a computer - and these reasons are quite often business related. Be it "one PC in a business which employs 3 people", "30 PCs in a business which employs 30 people" or "1000 PCs in a business that employs 1000 people", the problem is the same.

Linux apps which do the boring stuff aren't there. The payroll, accounting and small business automation systems which may never sell more than 1000 copies don't exist. Or if they do, they're seldom well maintained examples of everything that can go right with F/OSS. Hell, virtually every single Exchange alternative out there (and today there are many) appears to either work out just as expensive as Exchange or to have completely missed the point regarding "100% full interoperability with Outlook or a client on a similar par".

Consider the business owner's perspective. They want a tool to help them do a job, not a religion. Therefore, reasons which are badly thought out at best (eg. "Anyone can support it!" - right, so who's this "anyone" and how come the Yellow Pages isn't full of such "anyones" offering their services because it sure is for Windows systems?) to downright ludicrous ("You can always pay someone to add the extra functionality!" - right, so my business which turns over just enough money to keep a couple of people employed and is much the same as 100 others in terms of IT requirements has to waste months agreeing requirements with an expensive software developer to get a single system which when all is said and done won't be any better than something off the shelf and will cost a small fortune in both time and cash for added functionality in the future, with the added bonus that if this individual developer disappears off the face of the Earth shortly before something goes wrong, I'm totally screwed?) are plain silly.

Similarly, arguments like "We can't implement 100% interoperability with Exchange because it's proprietary" won't result in a small IT consultancy saying "Ah, poor you. Never mind, I'll just tell my clients that they can't have the functionality". They'll result in the small consultancy saying "I'd like to buy a copy of Windows Small Business Server please".

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worthless.

[EEBaum]

On the contrary:

1) I consider the vacation time I get at work insufficient, so I often take unpaid time off (management is cool with that). If I were using a Linux system at home and were to spend a significant amount of time trying to fix it rather than doing the things I intended to with my time off, this is indeed time I could otherwise have been paid for.
2) I maintain a few Linux boxes at work. If I spend time debugging problems on them that commercial software would have fixed, this is company money spent on getting OSS to work. Perhaps a commercial product would cost the company $100 out-of-pocket, where debugging and configuring the OSS product would cost $500 of employee time.
3) I consider my free time much more valuable than money earned. I value a non-working Saturday more highly than a working Saturday with double overtime pay. Personally, I consider time-spent-at-my-discretion-at-a-reasonable-standard-of-living my baseline goal, rather than bank balance, with the money I earn at work serving as an enabler of that. If I get a raise, I consider it an opportunity to take a few more days off rather than to get a few more bucks. So, everything that costs me discretionary time, where I feel I'm not getting much out of it, is very detrimental to my bottom line. If it means that I'll spend 50 fewer hours configuring and debugging my system, I'll gladly plonk $200 for Windows at the stupidly cheap rate of $4/hour of free time.

Re:Or perhaps...

[ozmanjusri]

I think your sarcasm detector may be broken

It's easy to criticise. How about you try fixing it instead?

Linux is for bitches

[Lank]

OK. I've got karma to burn, but seriously, check out this website first before starting to flame or mod me down - at the very least it's got a funny picture on the page :)

http://www.linuxisforbitches.com/

Seems fairly appropriate given the topic at hand...

Re:OH SHUT UP

[Jasonjk74]

If an app isn't supported, don't use it

That goes along with the mantra of Linux, as LinuxHater pointed out: if something doesn't work in Linux, convince yourself you don't need it.