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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)

42 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Zounds?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whoever wrote this summary should be kicked in the balls, hard, at least three times.

    1. Re:Zounds?! by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, I know how you feel. I'm constantly wanting more tolerance of bad jokes from my inanimate objects.

  2. Duh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Every distro except the one I use does suck.
    And every other window manager, and every other package manager, and every other...

    1. Re:Duh! by thevirtualcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Lucky you.

      They all suck, including the one I use!

    2. Re:Duh! by thevirtualcat · · Score: 5, Funny

      I tried to RTFM, but TFM just says I need to RTFM. :(

    3. Re:Duh! by NotDrWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every distro except the one I use does suck.

      You're joking, but that is actually Linux's biggest problem, and the reason it will never make any significant dent in the desktop market. Apple and MS may have a few minor variations of their OS's, but for the most part they make things pretty simple. The consumer can generally choose from two basic flavors of Windows (Home and Professional) and one flavor of Apple OS.

      But when you get into Linux, you have to start by telling the consumer "Well, there really is no such thing as Linux" and explaining to them that there are hundreds of different distros to choose from, many of which are radically different from one another. This sort of incredible fracturing may be attractive to uber-hardcore geeks, but it sends the average user running as fast as they can back to Windows and Apple.

      For a brief period it seemed like Ubuntu might break through this barrier and become the defacto Linux standard. But, inevitably, the Linux hipsters turned against it ("It used to be about the MUSIC, man! Now you've gone all commercial and so you suck!"). And so we're back to the fringe mess that is "Linux."

      And, no, Android is NOT Linux. No one outside of a few autistic nitpickers thinks that running a heavily modified Linux kernel in an almost inaccessible undercarriage of an OS makes it "Linux." That's like saying that a 747 is a Rolls Royce just because it happens to use Rolls Royce engines.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
  3. Always videos :( by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Always videos :( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I too hate when the harsh light caused by a video playing illuminates my tech dungeon, bro. I can deal with the minimal lumens from a few terminals but it's complete bullshit when someone forces me to examine the filth I wallow in while using my device.

    2. Re:Always videos :( by meerling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Contip: That still doesn't return the wasted bandwidth, nor does it give you the random access ability of a page of text. Additionally, if the subtitles are not hardcoded, jumping the video or increasing the playback speed will usually make the subtitles go away. For that matter, depending on what playback device you use, your options for increasing or reducing playback speeds tend to be very limited, especially at the higher speeds where they tend to skip over entire segments resulting in lost text. And that's not even mentioning that you need a good subtitler to keep the timing reasonable and readable, something that is rather lacking in a large number of those that do subtitles. Maybe you mean for them to hire a professional subtitler, though that would massively increase the cost. (Yes, I watch a lot of subtitled videos.)

      Sorry AC, but your 'protip' doesn't work worth a damn.

      Some things are better for video, some for text, and some for audio. Too bad there's a lot of idiots that think everything should be video. I'm dreading the day I find a video of some baka reading a book, magazine, or newspaper. I'm sure they exist, but fortunately I haven't been forced to view them yet.

    3. Re:Always videos :( by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 2

      Then you get to read it at the speaker’s pace anyway, or try skipping with hopelessly inaccurate scrubbing controls. This completely fails to solve any of the problems mentioned.

      --
      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
    4. Re:Always videos :( by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      I am an AV learner too. However I am also impatient. If something can be summed up in a small paragraph then I find video to be an intolerable waste of time. Video is for intractable subjects, not random musings.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    5. Re:Always videos :( by exomondo · · Score: 2

      Come on, surely on "News for Nerds" it's not going to be that hard to reach the conclusion that the subtitles are there so there's probably some way to extract them and lo, somebody (well actually there are various ones) has already created a tool to do just that.

    6. Re:Always videos :( by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Informative

      Doesn't help, as you can't speed up the video to let you read the text more quickly. Print it all out and let us read that, then we'll be done with that half hour video in less than 5 minutes, saving 99.9999% of the bandwidth (assuming ads are turned off).

      The main reasons people do video is to get a few cents out of youtube or to feed their ego. The only time video helps is if there is some sort of demonstration.

    7. Re:Always videos :( by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      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

      It's because video ads make more money that static ads. That's why so many companies are trying to create 'content.' Netflix, AOL, Microsoft, WSJ, etc.

      I don't like it either but that is the reason.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:Always videos :( by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      The reason people do video is they are barely literate and can just talk into a camera. Any idiot can fumble around and try to 'show' you something on camera. Creating a coherent written document is a lot more work. People who can create good written documentation are rare. People who can ramble on in front of a camera.. not so rare.

  4. Auto-shillelagh by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

    Because canes are for lames.

  5. "Sucks" Is OK by VernonNemitz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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".

    1. Re:"Sucks" Is OK by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nothing sucks like a VAX.

    2. Re:"Sucks" Is OK by Darinbob · · Score: 2

      Actually when I first got Windows 95 I had a OS/2 user ask me how it was, and my response was "doesn't suck as bad as I thought it would".

  6. Amen by future+assassin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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*
    1. Re:Amen by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      Oh, I don't know, once in a while I come across a tutorial that really does benefit from video. Unfortunately about half of those are ruined because the creator didn't think about what he was trying to do first, and just dove straight in. These are easily spotted by constant repetitions of the phrase "I'm just gonna go right ahead and..." followed swiftly by "Okay, that didn't work, let me just..."

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  7. Clearly misinformed by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 2, Funny

    TFS is complete bullshit. There won't be Linux in 2039 because everyone knows time resets to Jan 1, 1970 in 2038.

  8. Basic misunderstandings and self-contradictions by Khopesh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  9. Re:Room buffer overflow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It got a little noisy, someone said "Sssshhh" and everyone shouted out their passwords.

  10. Re:So where is the transcript? by Rashdot · · Score: 5, Informative

    Click on "Hide/Show Transcript" under the video...

    --
    This is not the sig you're looking for.
  11. Re:So where is the transcript? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    What that be the "Hide/Show Transcript" link directly below the video?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  12. Pretty much every OS suck, but... by MindPrison · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...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.
  13. can I mod up the original post? by vpness · · Score: 2

    this was very funny diatribe (and I have mod points). I have mod points ! no, really, I do !

  14. Linux really does have serious issues by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Linux really does have serious issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The rot goes deeper than the interface. It goes down to DBus and Systemctl..... NetworkManager????? good fucking grief. I've seen an article suggesting it's a RedHat NSA conscription to control the kernel and make sure that all the major distros and almost any way you run Linux you're going to have their hooks in your system (yes in selinux, and even if you disable it, it's still there; do you *know* there are no back doors?)

      Hey I'm not paranoid, ... . they're not out to get me ... but only because I don't think I've got anything worth getting. If I did, I'm sure they would.

    2. Re:Linux really does have serious issues by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 2

      +10 Insightful to you, I have problems like you described all the time. And when I think that I managed to fix them, some bastard changes everything again just for the sake of changing and throws all my work down the drain.

      --
      Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
    3. Re:Linux really does have serious issues by smash · · Score: 2

      It isn't just a lack of applications - many of those that are included in a typical desktop distro are either unstable or lacking features. I put it down to a few things:

      • Hobbyist developer(s) who have an itch to scratch, get the app to do what they want and then lose interest when it gets hard (not all cases - there are many talented developers out there who persist, but they don't tend to be desktop application developers
      • Constantly changing API(s) mean so much time is wasted re-inventing the wheel porting to the current desktop environment flavor of the month

      Hardware support is an issue that will fix itself when people have an incentive to run the platform to get actual work done (and by work, I don't just mean network administration and other nerd stuff. i mean actual work that one would do in an office during the course of a typical business).

      Make Linux business friendly, with business/corporate friendly apps and the bean-counters will sit up and take notice. I doubt that will happen any time soon though due to the inherent disconnect between the open source development attitude and corporate needs.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    4. Re:Linux really does have serious issues by smash · · Score: 2

      A typical linux distro may have 10,000 packages. This is not necessarily a plus, or a "solution" to the application problem. If there are say 80 half-assed attempts at an application which each implement perhaps 65% of what I actually want to do, I spend hours and hours just looking for an application to get my job done rather than... you know... just actually doing what I set out to use my computer for.

      I'd much rather take maybe 2-3 applications for a particular job that actually fucking work properly and have a complete feature set, than 80 different apps with their own quirks and different subset of features that I actually need.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  15. WHY by DeathElk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  16. Missed something by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 3

    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.

    1. Re:Missed something by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      Actually there is so much forking because everybody wants it Their Way. It is easier to just grab what's out there and run off with it to change on your own than to communicate and cooperate and work together.

      Software could converge and improve over time and become ever closer to perfect, but instead everybody wants their chunk of code in there that they wrote to replace something they ripped out because doing so was easier than working to understand the old one.

  17. X sucks by TsuruchiBrian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  18. He's full of shit about LibreSSL by Dasher42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  19. Can't we get a written transcript? by damn_registrars · · Score: 2

    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.
  20. Linux doesn't really have any advantages... by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    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/
  21. Linux DOES suck by YoungHack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  22. Linux, it's harder than you've been told. by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.