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Linux Sucks (Video)
How do we know Linux sucks? Because Bryan Lunduke says so. How did he become a Linux authority? By using Linux, of course. He has also written a kids Linux book, Linux for Hank, and a grown-up Linux book, Linux is Badass. But wait! That's not all! Bryan is also one of the people behind the infamous Bad Voltage podcast.
And now, for something slightly different: In moments of weakness, Bryan admits that maybe Linux suckage isn't total, and Linux may have a good point or two and maybe some of the suckage could be removed. Zounds! Is that possible? Watch our video chat with Bryan (and/or read the transcript) and see. Or watch the entire 44 minute speech he gave at the 2014 LinuxFest Northwest, which was the 5th (or maybe 6th) "Linux Sucks" speech he's given at LFNW. That makes this a tradition, not just a speech. So if you find yourself in or near Bellingham, Washington, in 2039 you might want to pop in and see if Bryan is still updating his "Linux Sucks" speech. He'll be the geezer hobbling to the front of the room with help from his AutoCane, a device sure to be developed between now and then -- which will no doubt run Linux. (Alternate video link)
And now, for something slightly different: In moments of weakness, Bryan admits that maybe Linux suckage isn't total, and Linux may have a good point or two and maybe some of the suckage could be removed. Zounds! Is that possible? Watch our video chat with Bryan (and/or read the transcript) and see. Or watch the entire 44 minute speech he gave at the 2014 LinuxFest Northwest, which was the 5th (or maybe 6th) "Linux Sucks" speech he's given at LFNW. That makes this a tradition, not just a speech. So if you find yourself in or near Bellingham, Washington, in 2039 you might want to pop in and see if Bryan is still updating his "Linux Sucks" speech. He'll be the geezer hobbling to the front of the room with help from his AutoCane, a device sure to be developed between now and then -- which will no doubt run Linux. (Alternate video link)
Whoever wrote this summary should be kicked in the balls, hard, at least three times.
Every distro except the one I use does suck.
And every other window manager, and every other package manager, and every other...
I don't like this growing trend where people insist on creating everything as video, even things where the video doesn't actually serve any purpose other than showing a talking head. Information is so much easier to consume when you can consume it at your own pace, depending on your own speed of reading with no distracting heads and not being limited by the speed at which the video happens to progress. Text also happens to let you quickly jump over things you already are familiar with or jump back and forth between interesting passages.
I want less videos. I want more text.
I see several links to the video...
But nothing for the transcript. Which makes it hard to read....
And why should I give a shit what his opinion is?
No forking in OS X land.
Because canes are for lames.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I'll just keep using Windows. At least Microsoft can innovate instead of just copying everyone else work and crying "fweeeeeedom" in their best Braveheart voice.
No I will not watch a lame video.
Garbage like this say nothing but hipster, douchebags.
Can we at least get a [Paid Post] tag/image or something, and let people with high karma filter this crap out?
That Dave Barry fella is worth a chuckle or two. Why not shitpost about him as well Roblimo?
He drinks Shasta. His judgement is suspect immediately.
So long as other operating systems suck worse. Kind of like "democracy is not really a good form of government, but all the others suck worse".
I have no idea who inisited on it and when it became cool to have to watch a slow ass instructional video when a small write up and 10 photos will do the job 10x faster and I can scroll up and down the page or print it when I need a reference. Its so painfull just see how many vdeo tutorials where are for say Drupal.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
There's some serious face-palm material in the kernel, particularly in the less mainstream parts. But Linux sucks a little less than the alternatives, so we use it anyway, right?.
Wow, after listening to this I want a Prius with Leather Seats. Other than that nothing here move along.
Your video player fucking suuuuuucks. Won't keep the video buffered, keeps stopping.
who, for years, trounced those lesser mortals for using anything less than Debian or Slackware. Then it was Gentoo, then Crux, then Arch. If you were not running a version of Linux that took "years" of your life to download, install, and configure, you were a loser of the highest order. Now? We have actually cool guys like Cory Doctorow using Ubuntu. A guy like him surely doesn't need the geek cred. I use Ubuntu at home myself and, as a *nix administrator since 1998, also feel I need to impress no one.
The possessive plural of "kid" is not "kids," but "kids'."
It so happens that Linux sucks less.
TFS is complete bullshit. There won't be Linux in 2039 because everyone knows time resets to Jan 1, 1970 in 2038.
OpenSSL doesn't listen to bug reports. They don't even accept offered patches to known bugs. It's this spirit of non-cooperation that caused the forking into LibreSSL. See the 30 day prospectus (/. coverage) from the LibreSSL project lead, which details all of the problems. Brian even says forking is ultimately a benefit, and that he "loves that they're doing it."
It seems to be that his definition of "sucks" is "has room for improvement" ... Everything has room for improvement, so apparently everything sucks.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
It got a little noisy, someone said "Sssshhh" and everyone shouted out their passwords.
And blows! At the same time!
All together now: every computer crashes, cause every OS sucks!
Disclaimer: I didn't watch the entire video, so I suppose that makes me one of the idiots he asks not to comment.
There are lots of thigns about the Linux "Desktop" that have sucked in the past year, mostly due to project managers going completely off the rails and destroying years of design evolution in misguided ego. (Looking at you, Gnome),, but here he just complains about the only solution we have, the the one thing that makes Open Source software so strong. Forking is the only thing saving Open Source project from themselves. Sure, there is redundant waste of resources, and you might not like all the projects that are proposed, (*cough* Unity *cough*). But regardless, forking is how the best and most liked projects gain dominance, and bad and batshit stupid ideas are left behind to die in obscurity.
Why not just use Windows? It was sluggish, unstable and unsecure in the past, but those problems are mostly fixed in NT 6. Why use some crusty open source solutions which do not allow me to squeeze out the most of my computer? Tell me.
The summary says that there are multiple links to the same video, but the summary is wrong. There are links to different videos.
There is no transcript for any of them.
...at least with Linux, we have the power to do something about it without the constant hassle of a commercial system with all its secrecy, NDAs, policy approvals and we don't have to hide the fact we screwed up in order not go get sued by every paying customer, we just FIX it...and then another bug appears, but hey...have you ever found any human to be perfect? When you bought your first house, was it perfect? I bet not.
At least with OPEN SOURCE everyone is free to chip in, that is the magic of Linux. Suspect a bug? A backdoor somewhere? If you have the knowledge, you're free to look. I've been compiling my own Kernel since the early Slackware days, and albeit I'd never recommend this system to Aunt Daphne and rather have her purchase an Apple iMac instead...Linux is all about freedom. And if you missed this point, maybe Linux isn't for you.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
this was very funny diatribe (and I have mod points). I have mod points ! no, really, I do !
This Bryan guy is a moron.
... at making me want a shasta cola.
Linux has many positives, there is no doubt. However, there are many problems with the system. The lack of applications leads to situations where a user is told is a great OS, but there is nothing on the OS that does what they want to do. Its great to have a kernel that works well but whats the point if you cant do what you need on it because of the lack of applications. Wine has been around for 20 years yet still has yet to develop an emulation layer that can run 99% of Windows applications reliably. It constantly breaks support for older applications carelessly. The changelogs seem to be filled with obscure performance hacks that lead to a .01% improvement in performance but it appears little is happening in major progress on supporting all of the Windows API.
The bigger problem is lack of hardware support, to the point that the application issue may just be a result of the problem with it being so difficult to get new, novel, or unusual hardware to work on Linux. The fact is, hardware makers will always provide better working drivers in a timely manner than backwards engineering. Its a pipe dream to think that many hardware makers will open source the drivers. By the time open source drivers come around, the hardware is often so old its not even being sold any more or is out of date. Some hardware has no drivers available.
This problem stems from the attitude of the Linux kernel developers. Many of the Linux community have an absolute aversion to actually working with hardware manufacturers to get hardware support implemented, especially with Dell. With Microsoft repetedly throwing Dell and other manufacturers under the bus, there was an opportunity to reach out to Dell to look at Linux as an alternative. This option has been thrown away by Linux. Linux could have gotten much wider adoption by accepting the users using small amount of binary code, which wouldnt even be required to be used as open source drivers would still be developed. Part of the problem as well is the badly documented or not documented at all kernel driver interfaces. It is actually almost impossible to find any comprehensive reference on kernel internals and the driver interfaces. Driver interfaces which seem to change with each kernel version as well, blowing up hardware support for users in the process. Backward compatability is critical throughout the system. Users need to be able to be assured they can use applications and driver accross kernel versions. I have suggested before a driver compatability layer for binary drivers so they will work between kernel versions.
Another problem is the bone headedness of Canonical and Gnome who have copied every disasterous mistake and disaster of Windows 8 in creating user interfaces that are incomprehensible. The fact is, for users, an interface that is well known and practical rather than some hair brained scheme concocted by some crackhead who thinks they know better than everyone else and wants to ram their self righteous idea of user interface design on users, as with Ubuntu Unity and Gnome 3. Just stick with the tried and true taskbar start menu paradigm, please. These people are actually worse than the kernel developers because they think that they are genuises with user interface design but are self absorbed, obsessed and arrogant with trying their insane user interface experiments without any sense of practicality or really caring about users at all. The user interfaces they create are vastly worse than what the kernel developers would come up with.
I've watched two of these stupid talking head videos. Why is it that I've wanted to punch both of the subjects in the face?
You: Linux Sucks!
Me: Hmmm... Well I guess it does in some ways, but to be so one sided must mean you have something new or insightful to add to the conversation. 'Click'
You: Well actually Linux sucks and it's great at the same time!
Me: So why did you claim that Linux sucks then?
You: Because people are forking stuff and um, companies are making business decisions that I don't like.
Me: Huh?
You: Well someone forked OpenSSL and that makes Linux suck.
Me: Well that's one out of thousands of components within Linux, but I'm not sure it justifies a headline claiming that Linux sucks in general.
You: Right see, it's also awesome that we have an ecosystem where someone can just come around and fork stuff. Isn't it cool that things suck and are great at the same time?
Me: So you have no sensible opinion about any of this.
You: Well no, but you played the video, so I win.
Me: Fuck you and fuck Slashdot for promoting you.
Shasta Cola man!
The G
While I find hybrid Linux like Chrome OS doing better at marketing a "Linux" kernel. I find that as a whole Linux is dead on the PC desktop except for those cheap nerds who still think a Pentium 3 is a modern chip. I once thought that Ubuntu, Suse, Red Hat and Mint were potential candidates to break Linux out from the hobby OS for PC's. After all how good does a "free" has to be in order to gain users? Well apparently you need much more then what Linux has offered to date.
Like I said, Chrome OS has its roots in Ubuntu but it also maintains a very strict hardware profile which obviously like Apple and Mac's help keep things stable.
Windows has always had driver issues and given the vast amount of hardware and peripherals its no wonder things break. I have always found hardware to be the biggest obstacle to Linux success. Talk to anyone who has bought a Linux desktop or laptop out of the box. They will have a much better experience.
Instead what Linux should do is focus on the better experience by supporting specific hardware and work to provide a better first install experience. Otherwise, it continues to be a hobby OS for nerds.
One thing I think he misses pointing out is the good ol' saying: The right tool for the job.
Which is probably a huge reason there's so much forking and so many different distros for Linux and all the open source software that follows it, and for that matter the reason there's more than one OS.
We want to use the right tool for the job.
I do like the general premise 'Linux Sucks', because I think it's good that Linux as a collective, a community, can look at their creation and say, "Well, it still sucks." And carries on to keep making it better every day.
A slashvertisement for this dbag's podcast, in which HE slashvertised for a chat client.
Meanwhile the rest of us to back to making a living running and using Linux.
Thanks Linus!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Zounds!
For anyone who wants to explore this specific topic further, this is a really good video talking about the problems with X from former X developer and current Wayland developer David Stone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
A fork of OpenSSL which is stripping out support for VMS, Win16, and other ancient platforms by the *OpenBSD* group is making a bug more likely? It's supposed to make another Heartbleed twice as likely? This guy is completely full of shit. He has no idea what coding is, he just wants to hear himself talk. Give me 8:32 back!
Any halfwit can post their monologue to youtube. Spare me the lecture, and save me some time - post a damned transcript. If you are too cool to post your actual slides, just post the transcript of what you said.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It seems that the philosophy of "video >>>>> text" is particularly popular with politicians. I figured they liked it because they tend to get a little more control of the propagation of the medium (as slightly fewer people know how to rip videos from youtube than know how to use copy and paste) and because they can use it to ensure that the people the message is being delivered to are a fully captive audience.
Why exactly this guy feels that he has something to gain by posting his monologue as a video instead of as text - especially when he is clearly giving a canned presentation that was made in some sort of powerpoint-type program - is unclear at the very least.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
back in the days of Win 98 it was loads more stable, faster, and it used all my hardware.
With XP, Microsoft got it mostly right and with 7 SP 1 they fixed it. Yeah, Vista and 8 suck, but you don't have to run those. So until Win 7 drops support I can't think of anything practical I _get_ with Linux besides a kick ass shell. I do like Bash though. But I'll run some Linux in a VM for that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I stopped listening while he was talking about LibreSSL. This guy is utterly ignorant of why LibreSSL was forked (because the OpenSSL maintainers were not responsive to bug reports and were actively working around memory issue detection), of who was forking it (OpenBSD, Linux has nothing at all to do with it), and what is hoped to be accomplished by the fork.
I just can't pay attention when someone is blabbing about something he has no idea about. Sigh.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
if this is some sort of joke it' clearly woooshed me.
please someone explain what's funny in this ignorant nonsense. this guy has absolutely no idea of what he is talking about, and makes it evident on every single sentence. i don't even unterstand how this gets published here. is it a parody?
I'm a die hard Linux user, but seriously, it sucks.
X breaks my shit every time I upgrade. I just spent 90 minutes tonight getting my Synaptics touchpad working again. I spent hours 2 years ago making it work. All the focus on compositing is leaving good 2D stuff in the lurch I feel. I do a lot of work remotely, and it is the devil trying to find a display manager that will work over VNC and let you choose your window manager without crashing. And then what do you use, Gnome, Unity, KDE? It's getting to where nothing works without a compositor and 3D.
Sound is a disaster. How many Linux sound systems are there? OSS, ALSA, Jack, ESound, PulseAudio, some I don't even remember. Alsa has been a disaster since it came out, from the perspective of documentation. I don't know how anyone ever wrote the first ALSA applications. They're supposed to be compatible, but they're not. If you play ALSA applications on my PulseAudio system, you get static and distortion. I went through all the fixes, and none of them work on my system. Fortunately the author of my application added PulseAudio as a natively supported output method (in addition to the OSS and ALSA that they already supported). I need to send them a thank you.
Notifications? Behavior I depended on two versions ago has been removed from the current version.
My system tray in XFCE4 is quirky. Some application icons won't appear unless I run the application as root (Hamster and redshift). Maybe that's a quirk of upgrading, but Google tells me I'm not the only one with these problems. And XFCE4 sucks less than other window managers, so it's a behavior I just live with.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.
And it sucks.
Started Linux with RedHat in the mid 90's I gave up in disgust when I couldn't create the "partitions" or split up the hard drive as required. I've been doing the same for a while with Mint over many installations, this one time I let Mint select it's placement, as it's never put itself where I've suggest it to.
When Grub was my bootloader the problems really started, of all the things that doesn't have a GUI it's grub; I've complained recently that everything was GUI. Linux is a learning process to many (myself included) nothing to put on-line blind (while a firewall is available it's off and has zero settings, not even examples.
I knew Mint would claim the boot but also expected EasyBCD (NeoSmart Technologies) to fix it, as it's been very good at that.
I've always had a dual boot system, having Linux Mint available would work just fine. Yet working with Grub is no easy task. Some don't even mess with Grub they just select the drive from the BIOS when their computer starts. http://community.linuxmint.com... this one creates two grubs - I don't see it
http://www.howtoforge.com/dual... Just saying many avoid Grub, in one way or the other.
I had to be at the computer when it started to select windows, or have to reboot; playing around with Mint and having to use it are two different things; EasyBCD was of no help...
So I reinstalled Win7; I had been planning to reinstall Win7 as it was showing signs that it was time. It's no big deal (normally) C:\ drive is my Win7 Drives D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L (total of three drives) are support, another OS, or storage. I just format C drive, reinstall windows, the drivers and my favorite programs; 2 hours time I can be up and running with my base system.
Now here's where I came across Microsoft messing with those who use Linux; once a MBR has been touched by Linux, Windows won't have anything to do with it, and it's a damn pain.
This time the Win7 install claimed "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition" (a new one for me) I was able to continue on, it gave me a 100K boot partition, and Win7 partition, this screwed up my drive arrangement (my drives are named Drive_D, and so on). I formatted the drive again using Hirens boot disk 14 and Win7 install format both. This time I couldn't install Win7 at all, there's even a "FAST PUBLISH" "as-is in response to emerging issues". Support.microsoft.com/kb/2272294 claiming the partition the BOOTMGR is located must be in 4K clusters (NTFS is 4K clusters).
Searching for the problem, the accepted fix is to disconnect all drives except the one to hold Win7. I did that, no big deal as it's how I installed Mint without Grub loading Win7; and it worked, but there were problems. Win7 wasn't acting right, things weren't working as they should if at all.
So I started over, all this time the MBR seemed to be the problem but with Win7 formatting it before the install it should of been taken care of that, as well as my using Dart (Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset) http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... to repair the boot structure; specifically the "Bootrec" command. I had every reason to assumed it had been taken care of.
It was only when I specifically wrote the Win7 header to the MBR did everything start working. This was three days into the fiasco.
Until I learn Grub I'm not going there again, and Grub isn't all the friendly.
i didnt watch the videos or read the articles or books. I had used many linux distros, the most used was ubuntu.
why does linux suck? because it can't be used by someone who isn't a computer geek. You have to use the terminal for almost everything. A regular computer user who just plays games / browses the internet, etc doesn't wanna figure out how to update their video card / sound card, etc On top of that it isn't even reliant, most of the time you will run into issues and you have to find run arounds. Linux is horrible because it isn't easy to easy, its a POS because its not as easy as windows or Mac. It will never be a mainstream OS that will beat windows or mac if it stays at the level of accessibility that it is now. Make the terminal more useless or as useless as the mac uses it, then linux can be a good OS
What is this utter form of bullshit?
That snippet of text loosely called "article" was the worst thing I read this week.
As soon as I saw his eyebrows and glasses, I figured out the video wasn't worth watching.
This actually saves time, even when you compare with text only media.
One must filter information according to prejudices that one have on the physical aspect of the Narrator...
“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances”
Oscar Wilde
On the verge of 10 years using Linux as my primary OS. Who is this person and why should I care?
Must be a 'pop culture' thing, inside Linux dev's.
I suspect by the writing style Brian Lunduke wrote this..
I totally agree, videos suck for things like this, but were you completely oblivious to the text that said "Hide/Show Transcript"?
No, fuck that. Forking is awesome. When the people managing a project, he mentions GNOME, that's a good example, when those people get their heads too far up their asses and no longer serve the interests of the people who actually USE their software, forking lets us take back control by making an entirely new project without their shitty management. Is he really arguing that projects like MATE and Cinnamon are somehow bad things? Because a substantial number of users would disagree, and many developers, too.
Likewise, OpenSSL is a huge mess. The folks at OpenBSD have a track record of doing shit right and making it very secure (some would say to a fault, but this is supposed to be core software used to secure nearly every web server on the internet, I don't think there's such a thing as "too secure"). Their philosophy is perfect for a project like this, and I think their OpenSSL fork, if it ever branches out from being OpenBSD-specific, will probably be a lot better than the original.
Obviously, forking has other uses, as well. Sometimes someone just wants to take the software in a different direction that's outside of the scope of the original project. That's perfectly fine. I don't know if he's implying that's a bad thing, but if he is, fuck that. He's wrong.
I agree with his overall philosophy that GNU/Linux has some good and some bad shit about it. That's to be expected, it's not perfect, and we absolutely do need to acknowledge the suckage. But forking is a good thing, not part of that suckage, and it pisses me off that he would even insinuate that it's a bad thing. Now, the fact that things so often get to the point where forking is necessary, that is most definitely suckage.
I'm plenty technical enough to install/maintain a box, but it's too much work.
People tell me to switch all the time, but no one wants to answer ALL of the questions for ALL of the piddly little things/common problems. Mac/Windows does NOT have this problem. There's no 'Read the damn forty-page sticky' at the header of all forums for every frigging question you ask, and we ALL get asked the same question forty-thousand-times on Macs/PCs.
My Dad still can't 'right-click My Computer' without an explanation, even though he's done it every time he calls with a problem. I don't sigh and make him feel like crap (though a little piece of me dies every time he does it), THAT is the problem with Linux.
Simply put: Don't EVER tell someone to install Linux when they didn't ask you about it unless you're going to set up their box from them, and field a reasonable amount of calls.
So...pages about shotgunning bad drivers and pages about why videos are annoying. Maybe about 2 about the actual subject. BTW - I am really liking Mint and thought all LinSuckage was removed until I went to add a printer.
Linux devs hides problems to the public:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/critical-linux-vulnerability-imperils-users-even-after-silent-fix/
"...The fix to the Linux kernel was published last month. Its documentation did not mention that the code patched a critical vulnerability that could jeopardize the security of organizations running Linux in highly sensitive environments. This lack of security advisories has been standard practice for years among Linus Torvalds and other developers of the Linux kernelÃ"and has occasionally been the subject of intense criticism from some in security circles...."
"...The Linux kernel developers are notorious for not documenting security fixes. Here's an instance from a couple weeks ago. A security issue was fixed, but it wasn't documented as such, which simply leaves people guessing. Brad Spengler has been very vocal about this issue, and has found many, many patches that were pushed to the mainline that were to fix security vulnerabilities, yet weren't documented as security fixes. He's not the only one, but he has a fairly long track record of actually discovering vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel (as well as the creator of the grsecurity patchset)...."
Hmmm, you got my attention sir.
I am not too happy about a sort of private company doing a distro (nothing against them, but after Canonical I'm sceptic)
But I'll give it a try... one of the nice things of Linux is that we can change distros, software and whatever just like we change underwear ;)
-- 29A the number of the Beast
did not read all the comments, so maybe someone hit the point before.
1. who is on the list of nsa supporters? hm? linus torvald? richard stallman? but this is not the point!
2. the point: i am lucky, every day i can use something that is so perfect like gnu/linux. hey the people that do it, want to make good things, have fun and are not willing to be slaves.
3. every thing is transparent! (ok may be the wrong word): but that's the point: open your mind for the good things! only if you have a chance to understand, whats going on, you can become part of it.
4. or stay slave ...
Does he listen to what he say's when he talk's?
Because NSA can't put backdoors in linux