Worst Linux Annoyances? 1918
greenrd writes "Ever spent hours trying (and failing) to get a printer driver to work on Linux? Struggled to configure something ever-so-slightly out-of-the-ordinary? What have been your biggest annoyances when using Linux? Three O'Reilly authors are compiling a book on Linux annoyances - and their suggested solutions - and they've started a mailing list here. I can't help but think, though, that such a book will be dated quite quickly. Sure, some problems do languish unfixed for years - but equally, I suspect many of the problems will be fixed before, or soon after, the book's publication date. Still, increased visibility might motivate developers to create fixes or workarounds for some of the problems, so maybe this is an ideal opportunity to get your pet peeve finally addressed!"
Wine (Score:1, Interesting)
Trying to get a Nvidia dual port card to work (Score:3, Interesting)
from a user's perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
Worst Linux annoyance- (Score:5, Interesting)
I gave up on Linux (and went back to BeOS) simply because the attitude of the Linux users I ran across was intollerable. You won't find that with BeOS users.
(And I'm willing to bet money this gets modded as flamebait, but it's the painful truth)
CUPS (Score:5, Interesting)
Its features are variously undocumented or vastly overdocumented to the point of utter incomprehensibility. It configuration is totally frickin' opaque. And every day or so it just stops printing anything until I restart both the printer and the server (but only in that order!).
I am baffled that anyone prefers CUPS to the old reliable lpd. It's a nightmarish beast that nearly makes me consider going back to Windows.
--G
Re:Hardware support (Score:4, Interesting)
Just a funny note: I installed an Airport wireless LAN card in an iBook last weekend. It didn't really strike me then, but I realize that something wass odd about the installation.
When I threw away the old cardbord box today I looked through it to see if there was anything to kepp. I then realized that there was no manual on how to install it and no drivers disc (there might have been an upgrade disc accompanying the box but it was never used).
It can actually be made this simple. Open box. Turn off computer. Open keyboard. Read sticker with instructions. Follow instructions. Close keyboard. Turn on computer. It works.
This is so wastly different from my windows - Linux reality that is my daily life.
10 years later (Score:2, Interesting)
So what did I find myself doing now that I did 10 years ago? Editing with vi the XFreee86 config file to get the graphics to work. 10 YEARS....and still the same old shit...lucky for me I remember all the details of getting that to work, but I can't see ol'grandma doing that whenever X kaks on some hardware.
I run Linux on my servers and love it, but the desktop is just not quite there....I'll try in another few years.
Lack of Commercial software support (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, kernel compiling is a PITA. I've been using Linux since Slackware .something and have been custom compiling my own kernels since then. But with RH9 its always complaining of something. Can't find X module even tho its compiled into the kernel. Failure to startup my USB devices even tho those are compiled in as well. I'm not sure what change recently but i've never had these problems before.
The fact that all these other idiots use Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't get support from my cable company because most of their customers use Windows.
I can't use some web sites, especially for streaming media, because most of their customers use Windows.
My boss worries about using OpenOffice.org because it may not be compatible with MS Office.
I have to pay more for a laptop because it has Windows preinstalled or the OEM pays MS even if it doesn't.
Then there's the availablity of apps or clients or drivers, compatibility with Windows networks, Winmodems, kids' games.
Geez, it's so bad, someone should think about looking into whether any other OS could even fairly compete! Oh, wait, there's another annoyance:
I have to worry about Linux being made illegal in one way or another, because Gates has bought up all the politicians!
Damn Windows!
Re:XFree86 (Score:1, Interesting)
Worst Annoyance - Security and not knowing (Score:2, Interesting)
Samba client in the GUIs (Score:1, Interesting)
Honestly...I just want the network browsing and file sharing to work....
Companies! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:RTFM (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to say it, but you're problem is that you RTFM but not all the way.
rpm doesn't require a -p option. If you're installing, just use:
rpm -i packname.rpm
If you're uninstalling use:
rpm -e packname.rpm
Hell, in Nautilus (the program meant for folks that won't RTFM), you can just double-click on the darn things.
Try burn:/// in Nautilus and that should take care of your cd-burner whining.
file-roller will take care of your tar problems too plus give you a nice little GUI.
These all come by default with RH9.
Re:The main difference between Linux and Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd quibble with the idea that macs enjoy good hardware support. They generally don't, but because nobody tries installing MacOS on 5 year old machines they found in the closet "just to try it out" it doesn't have to jump through the hoops that Linux is expected to.
Re:CUPS ( http://localhost:631 is your friend! ) (Score:1, Interesting)
http://localhost:631
When I found out about this, I'm never going back to LPD or anything like that. I've set up aliases for my printer, such as High Quality, Low Quality, B&W, etc. It really rocks. It should be the first line in their docs...
It's easy than Windows to set up.
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, for those of us to shun nautilus and heavy GUIs in general, his suggestions to tar make sense. Are those who don't use KDE-GNOME not entitled to be annoyed by some of the GNU tools?
Here are a few... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess what I find annoying isn't the Linux kernel, per se, but rather the maze of infrastructure around it. DON'T Hate me. I love Linux, but confession is cleansing and most of these are things Linux inherited from *NIX/SystemV and the fact that it was put together over a period of decades by thousands of contibutors, so there wasn't a history of system management to learn from yet when it was initially designed.
I also may be overdue for my meds. (Ahem...)
TWO desktop environments with similar capabilities.
Distros that put things in weird places.
The fact that distros have the freedom to put things in weird places.
The fact that 'weird places' means that there are a half-dozen places for binaries to go (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin/, etc...)
Don't even bring up /opt!
"User-friendly" management tools with a learning curve that is almost as steep as that for the service or feature they are managing.
The same goes for script-based management systems.
The fact that these tools are necessary so I can cope with the management idiosynchosies and conventions of two dudes in Argentina that have been sysadmins of a UNIX server farm for 16 years.
The SH/BASH scripting language. (!!!!)
Configuration files based on archaic paradigms like the SH/BASH scripting language.
Software that uses configuration files that served as an experiment in parsing for somebody's undergrad senior project. (Therefore, it has a unique, confusing syntax with zero readability and requires one of them there "management tools" I mentioned earlier.... I'M TALKING TO YOU, SENDMAIL!!!!)
I'm sure I can think up more, but that'll get the discussion started.
No developer documentation/cooperation (Score:2, Interesting)
Most users won't really be bothered by this, but since Linux is a DIY platform, this is a significant annoyance to developers: most Linux programs give you the source, but they don't bother writing the documentation.
While it is theoretically possible to go in and fix some broken app, many times I just don't bother because it would take too much time just getting familiar with the code. If only developers would bother to at least provide a 'big picture' of the app's structure, it's major subsystems, etc, it would be much easier to track and fix small errors.
This extends to comments. There's lots of good code out there, but too few people bother to comment it, except for the odd mental note. All in all, it would be good if developers keep in mind the fact that their software is _open source_ and other people might want to contribute to it some day.
Annoyance no. 2:
There are too many close-but-no-cigar apps. Very often, several apps do more or less the same thing, but none of them does it really great, simply because they are all developed by one or two people who don't have time to do more than the basics. Such developers would be capable of doing great things for Linux if they would only work together and build one great app instead of five mediocre ones.
Opportunity? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's open source...your opportunity is now. Make the change yourself...don't wait for someone else to address it.
The ability to review and change source code is touted as open source's strongest point. It would appear, from the response to this article, it's also one of open source's least used attributes.
DevFS and chmod (Score:2, Interesting)
Then I figured out that you couldn't use chmod on the devices. Oh no, you have to go edit some cryptic
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Interesting)
the highlight then copy, and the ctrl-c and ctrl-v can get really confusing at times...sometimes I will go to paste something and what I paste is something I pasted an hour before. I will just use the other method of pasting (middle click) and that usually works but having a decent system that works across all programs would be better. I know it's not a linux but a GNU-X11 thing but still...makes a guy wish he could afford a powerbook *sigh*
--Bryan
Re:RTFM (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Unmounting devices (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good point. If I press the eject button while in [common windowing environment] and the CD cannot be ejected because some file is in use, I really ought to get a popup window and warning ding explaining that an application is currently using a file on the CD, a list of what files are in use by what applications, and an option to kill thoses apps, with a warning that that can cause data loss, and etc. and that I should try closing the applications first. Or the apps using the files should pop up and ask if you want to stop doing whatever it was that had the files open.
Re:RTFM (Score:5, Interesting)
*sigh*
In addition to this the host of lameness in GNOME, for example, the lack of ability to paste text after you've closed the application it's been copied from. They are talking about taking over the desktop and this doesn't work yet? WTF!!!
Other things in my list (mostly gnome):
- no easy menu editing (ie: drag to where you want it)
- nautilus views are neat but you loose the functionality to be able to select of rename files in say, the audio (media) view
- mime type editing sucks. make it easier
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the file at the end of the command is usually the file that gets acted upon. In this case it is the file that you want to add to a tape archive. The tar file is provided as an output file, and it is actually optional. If you don't provide an output file, then it should just print the results to STDOUT, which is exactly what tar does.
Also if you placed the tar file to be created at the end, then how would you provide multiple filenames to be added to the tar file?
tar cf outfile.tar file1 file2 file3 dir1 dir2
This really is the best way to do it (IMHO)...
Re:RTFM (Score:2, Interesting)
And I would have been happy to, if smoeone had said that rather than cuss me out for 3 minutes and then kickban me without a word.
Before I asked my question I idled for a bit and watched them treat other users, even ones who were perfectly calm and rational with their questions, the exact same way.
Just looks really poor when a simple topic of "This channel is not for support, please go to #linuxhelp" or something would stem the tide.
Re:Parent point valid despite foul language (Score:1, Interesting)
20 years. That's how long it took Windows to catch up.
A linux user for over 9 years. (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Lack of hardware support is the biggest annoyance. Specifically from the following for me:
- Canon (I had a Canon usb flatbed scanner which I had to give away due to lack of drivers).
- Lexmark (Lexmark's so called Linux support sucked! If you have a custom built Linux system. Everyone is not using Redhat with lprng. Now I have a large paperweight by Lexmark. There are really no good printer drivers for most inkjet printers under Linux. I am going for a HP laser printer next when I get the money).
- ATI (I no longer buy or consider buying ATI video cards after my Rage 128 Fury card a while back was not supported under Linux for over 8 months. I went and got a NVIDIA card TNT2 card at that time and never looked at another ATI card. Currently my Gforce4 is awesome while I play unreal).
2. I had a lot of grief setting of many of the USB devices under Linux. For example, why do I have to remove and install the kernel module usb-storage in-order for it to determine that I have a CF card in my CF card reader?
3. Why can I not burn CD's using CDrecord DAO mode with my IDE cd burner with speeds past 8x without creating a coaster? Is it due to the ide-scsi emulation which you must use? Maybe this is a problem just affecting me. I have not looked into this one a lot.
4. I wish to see more commercial software for Linux like games. (Yes, I am willing to pay for GOOD software! Even if I get some great software for free.)
I am trying hard but this is really all that I can come up with for Linux annoyances. This is hardly enough reasons for me to quit using Linux now. Don't get me started about my annoyances about M$ Windows.
Memory leaks (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no reason my web browsing and window scrolling should get slower and slower with time, just because I've been continuously logged in and hacking for a few weeks. It's not as if something is wearing out and has to be refurbished by my logging out, restarting the X server, and logging back in, really.
Maybe, someday, the authors of large programs that tend to run for days at a time will start to take the attitude that any memory leak is a bug. Surely at least one of the major distro compilers could afford a copy of Purify, understand its output, and fix the leaks.
Flame about Lisp machines that never leaked memory, in the early 1980's, deleted - redundant.
Re:False user experience level dichotomy (Score:3, Interesting)
Some became jealous of common experience and chose to subvert it. Jealousy begat microsoft. Bill Gates spoke to his people and we can make this easier but you must forget that there are others like you but not you.
So Gnu and came to destroy the evil kingdoms of pseudo standards. "We will give you the code as long as you give onto others", they said. Gnu begat standards based tools that conformed to the venerable POSIX standard and the people rejoiced.
So it was, until the era of Internet. Many came to see and use the work that so many others had formed from years of review. "Why doesn't this tool do as I asked?", said the children of the internet. "Have you RTFM?" replied those of *nix. This would not do in the eyes of the digital so soon the children of the internet came together and studied the books of the POSIX and decided what to keep and what to remake anew.
Re:RTFM (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the UNIX way of thinking is, different functionalities should be embodied in different programs. If someone, say, upgrades the bzip2 algorithm, all you have to do is update bzip2. If it was built into tar, then you'd have to update tar and bzip2 whenever the algorithm changes. This is just an example, but it demonstrates the way UNIX is "supposed" to work.
I admit it seems arrogant. It is arrogant. The problem Linux is having and will continue to have is, there is a rather large subset of "old school" users who harbor certain ingrained ideologies about what is "correct" behavior. This subset happens to overlap a great deal with the subset of people who actually program Linux apps. What this means is, the operating system has evolved largely in the direction that hard-core, old-school UNIX hackers wanted it to.
Someone else brought up the example that users have to edit config files by hand. As a developer, it's really easy for me to see why this is the case. It really sucks designing configuration dialog boxes. It's boring. As a developer, you just want the correct configuration loaded into variables right now, and as bizarre as it seems, the developer really would rather not care what makes the user's life easier.
For MS and Apple, this is a necessity because they are selling a product to users. But you have to understand that Linux developers really don't have customers. There are users, and the users often complain loudly on mailing lists about lack of functionality, or ease-of-use. It isn't that I'm not sympathetic to that. But it's really hard to motivate yourself to do boring programming work (UI design is really really boring for most people), when the only motivation is a bunch of screaming users, and no compensation.
The rewards for programming free software are largely egotistical -- "I implemented this cool functionality in a better, cleverer way than anyone else has!" -- and time spent writing user-friendly interfaces is time not spent stroking the ego.
Re:RTFM (Score:1, Interesting)
Lately the channel has gotten incredibly bad. They force you to read the channel rules on a webpage, message the last word of the rules (4 or 5 pages of HTML that you have to click through) to a bot, and then get +v.
A typical person joining #linux on EFnet for the first time:
joined Whoever #linux
please stop messaging me, read the topic, message the bot.
+v Whoever #linux
I can't get foo to work on Linux.
did you google for your question first?
no. I thought I would ask here first.
and are we here to do your homework for you? Re-read the rules page. google/man first, then ask.
wouldn't it just be easier for you to tell me what to do?
-v Whoever on #linux
I will give you time to re-read the rules and re-think the way you talk to us in here. We aren't here to hand hold you (they use that phrase quite frequently)
I see you are ignoring me, consider your problem taken care of.
+b Whoever on #linux
assholes.
Re:False user experience level dichotomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me make sure I understand your complaint: Gnome is too easy/featureless. Most CLI commands are too hard/feature-filled.
You want to make the easy things harder and the hard things easier.
You basically want Linux to target the "Middle 50%" of users that Microsoft writes their software for.
This will make Linux better?
Re:RTFM (Score:1, Interesting)
Some bastard called "Hymie" bans people for YEARS on one chan.
Re:Please don't break the scripts! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RTFM (Score:2, Interesting)
I just tried to go to #linux -- despite the fact that I've never been there before, I'm already banned. Maybe they just don't like my college's address space. Who knows.
I dropped in on #linuxhelp, too, because I'm having a problem with Yellow Dog Linux and I figured it might be a good place. When I asked if anyone had PPC Linux experience, one guy told me to install Gentoo (YDL is insufficiently leet, I guess) and nobody else responded.
Woo-hoo. Back to Google.
--saint
Re:Distros just don't do proper integration testin (Score:2, Interesting)
I18n - Asian Language support - UTF8 (Score:2, Interesting)
First of all, I have to dual-boot since writing Korean and having a Swiss-German environement is unthinkable. So she's booting in a Korean environement with Korean language support, while I have to boot my Swiss German partition. Really really annoying if you ask me. ("Can I reboot the computer, I need to write a note in Korean to one of my friends." -"OK, go ahead, but please reboot after sending that note, I need to work on my files")
On a related note some applications still don't know what UTF8 means. The Korean environment is in UTF8, but you should see all those applications that cannot display other than ASCII+Korean characters.
On a related note, why can't she write an OpenOffice.org document in Korean with German intermixed, without always changing font when changing the language?
Re:Parent point valid despite foul language (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I think the AmigaOS way of handling that situation is even better. Rather than showing the popup when you try to eject, it actually let you eject the disk. If some app is really going to use the CD you will get a popup requesting you to reinsert the CD. That popup have a retry button and a cancel button. You can actually insert another CD and start using it. You can have two different apps (or even the same) using the two discs. You will get requests when you need to switch.
What I have described is the way AmigaOS handles floppies (and probably also CDs, but I never owned an Amiga with CDROM). And it is the way I want Linux to handle CDs, and other removable media as far as hardware permits. Of course in Linux it gets complicated by X vs. terminals and the fact that the graphical user interface is not a part of the kernel. It also gets complicated by the fact there can be multiple users. But I have ideas about how to handle all of those problems.
The clicking sound. (Score:3, Interesting)
Normally, the Amiga steps the heads constantly between track 0 and track 1. However, with later models, they realised they could issue a command to the drive to step to track -1. The drive would refuse to step the heads (so no clicking sound), but would still update the disk inserted status.
The reason this couldn't be used universally is because some of the older drives used in really old Amigas would actually try and go to track -1, then break
Re:Parent point valid despite foul language (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:downlaod binaries (Score:3, Interesting)
That is a fair complaint. I have had an idea for a while now that it would be really cool to have a really nice GUI-based source-code installer. This installer could parse the
Anyway, I think this is a tool we need.
bash bahavior (Score:3, Interesting)
Examples that spring to mind:
1. By default, bash (or readline) often doesn't know that [Home] means ^a and [End] means ^e. Sometimes it doesn't get [Delete] right either.
2. readline is not tolerant or verbose about problems with
3. While it's true that a Unix text file should have "\n" line endings rather than "\r\n", we do, in fact, live in a world with The Internet and The Microsoft. Both of them use "\r\n" line endings. Some Linux progs silently support reading from "\r\n" files and that's great. bash doesn't though, so on several occasions I've had to deal with weird errors when copying
Yes, I know there's probably a better way out of these problems than simply bitching--but the question was what annoyed me the most, so there you go.
P.S.
In SuSe 7.2, the way to burn CDs involved setting up the CD-R drive as a pseudo-SCSI device using SCSI emulation. Is this ugly hack still necessary? or can Linux now handle IDE CD burners?
Qmail (Score:2, Interesting)
Top annoyances (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Debian is a pain in the ass to install. People, get it together - put a standard, official netboot ISO up for download for each version of Debian that actually works, and supports more than 2 network cards. And try to actually autodetect the net card so I don't have to grope around flicking to another window and cat'ing
2. Debian has far too many packages, and 10 solutions to everything. Have recommended packages for things like "audio mixer". Oooh, politics
3. X is still a pain in the ass to set up. I've been doing this since 1993, and it STILL takes me over an hour, and the loss of a bunch of hair every time.
4. All the window managers are either fat & bloated or flaky as hell. And normally both.
5. X permissions (xauth, etc) are just CRAP.
6. "scp file foo@bar" just does a normal cp,
without objecting to the fact that I ommited
a ":" at the end. Why the fuck would I use
scp to do a local file copy?
7. File compression is not transparent. I hate
doing "bzcat patch-file.bz2 | patch -p1". Would be much easier to do "patch -p1 patch-file.bz2". And don't whine about wrappers. The right place to fix this is probably the fs layer.
8. We need less "oh, but you can fix X by doing Y then Z, and standing on your head", and more "it just works. Out the box. without fiddling with shit".
9. Fonts. Enough said.
10. GNU's fucked up arrogant attitude to man pages. No, I don't want a fucking info page, at least for the basics. You shouldn't have made it such a bloated piece of featuritus'ed crap in the first place.
Kind of like RTFM..... (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole point of this is... these are annoyances. One shouldn't have to hunt down a solution to the built-in problems. The solution should be built-in. The problem shouldn't exist. This is my chief annoyance; that for every problem, there are a half-dozen solutions, which you have to track down on your own, which are not standard across distributions.
My top 5 (Score:3, Interesting)
The absolute worst thing about Linux, beyond a doubt, is sound. It doesn't freakin' work. What is it, three different APIs? And none of them work properly on any of the half dozen machines I've tried installing Linux on. Finding out why is hellish too--you have your kernel drivers, then ALSA and OSS add a layer of complexity, then libao adds another layer of crap to deal with, then KDE adds its own set of daemons... If you've got a generic SoundBlaster card everything might work without screwing around; anything else, good luck. The best bet seems to be to go with the latest bleeding-edge kernel and ALSA releases, cross your fingers, and wave a dead chicken over the speakers. OK, I have sound now, at least on my own machine, even if /dev/sndstat doesn't exist the way the FAQs assure me it
should. Hopefully some time soon they'll fix that buzzing problem...
The second worst thing about Linux is missing documentation, like all the FSF software that has either no manual page at all, or no useful manual page. Often there's just a note challenging you to try and find the information in their crappy info hypertext system. I don't care if RMS likes emacs, the standard for accessing UNIX documentation is man. It doesn't help that all the info browsers I've tried are godawful. The Debian guys have the right idea here--missing man pages are a software defect, and defective software should not be included in the distribution.
The third worst thing about Linux is KDE vs Gnome. I side with KDE on everything--Gnome was a butt-headed political decision, and should have been abandoned once Qt was made available under the (L)GPL. But no, the obstinate FSF egos had to waste their time implementing an overcomplicated CORBA architecture to provide functionality hardly anyone needed for a desktop system nobody wanted.
The fourth worst thing is the plague of window managers. Every time I look, there's another forking window manager. (Looking at one list I found via Google, it seems there are over 90 of the things.) It wouldn't be so bad, except that almost all of them suck by default. "Yeah," say the handful of people using each one, "but you can configure it to be really good." Yes, but I can configure almost any wm to be really good, given enough time to spend in pointless dicking around. In fact, you can pretty much configure any of these window managers to look like any of the others. What is it about Linux programmers that everyone wants to write a window manager, and nobody seems to be able to get around to writing an MP3 player that's even as good as iTunes?
The fifth thing, suggested by the window manager plague, is that Linux suffers a lot from needless configurability and rampant optionitis. The original UNIX idea (circa v7) was that you wrote a program to do one task, do it properly, and do it well. If you wanted your directory listing sorted into reverse order, you piped it through sort; if you wanted it in columns, you piped it through column.
Take a look at the man page for GNU cat. I particularly like that they've added options -A, -e and -t just to save you from having to type two options, and given you an option -u that doesn't do anything. That's almost as good as the -d option to diff.