Linux Needs Critics

An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas berates the fact that the world of Linux almost entirely lacks critics. In fact, he says, Linux people tend to see genuine critical evaluation as a bad thing. FTA: 'The problem with this anti-criticism approach is that it's damning Linux to an eternity of navel gazing. Nothing can ever get any better. The best hope we have are the instances where a few bright sparks, with their heads screwed on the right way, get together and make something cool (as happened with, say, Firefox back in the day). But that's rare and can't be relied upon.'"

Comments

Re:Nope, it's the putative new users problem

[synthespian]

You guys keep discussing drivers, as if it were the only problem with Linux. But Linux has many issues.

For instance, within a "short time" (2 or 3 KDE GNOME releases, that is, around 1 1/2 year), bloat will render your machine useless.

On the other side of the fence, Joe Sixpack still has Windows XP because it just works. A Vista or Mac OS user will also have a longer lifetime and he/she won't have to jump through all the hoops just to get the damn thing updated.

Updates, for instance: even on a modern distro, updates just break, because most C/Linux developers have no theory about what to do - except keep doing what they do, which is making it up as they go along (contrast: OpenSuSE SAT solver for packages).

On GUIs: GNOME, for example, has conducted one usability study in more than 10 years (!) (that I know of). Spinning cubes do not make a smart solution or improvement on GUIs - it's eye candy

Another example: the UNIX help system. Will it ever use AI?

Linux and BSD are open but they benefit very little from experimentation and smart choices - exception made to OS systems programming - and this is a field very removed from the normal user.