Slashdot Log In
Linux Needs More Haters
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:24 PM
from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.
from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.
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."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
It's an awesome blog (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [tirania.org]. 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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:It's an awesome blog (Score:5, Funny)
Oh really? Are we talking about the same blogger that writes gems like this one?:
Classy all the way. And what an insight.
Parent
just one thing (Score:5, Informative)
Tis sounds crazy, but it is true (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Missing the article's point (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The Pleasure of Hating. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Parent
Re:What kernel bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:What kernel bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What kernel bugs? (Score:5, Funny)
Linux is superior to Mac OS X?? *pop* I'm afraid you just blown my Mac fanboism fuse :-(
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
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. :)
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Or perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
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=
Parent
Re:first tits! (Score:5, Funny)
For a person who spends his time getting first posts on Slashdot, they might as well be.
Parent
Re:Not that much to complain about (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Not that much to complain about (Score:5, Insightful)
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..
Parent