What Needs Fixing In Linux 865
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek's Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It argues that the 17-year-old open-source operating system still has problems. Leading the list is author Serdar Yegulap's complaint that the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target. He writes: 'The sheer breadth of kernel interfaces means it's entirely possible for something to break in a way that might not even show up in a fairly rigorous code review.' Also on his list of needed fixes are: a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution; native file versioning; audio APIs; and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel."
Yeah! A committee will do it! (Score:2, Insightful)
Because group-think is the way to go!
And they'll figure out how to impose their will on the individual programmers.
????
PROFIT?
Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Insightful)
What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Is more vendor support. Every supposed real problem with Linux is based on or related to a problem with a driver; nine times out of ten this problem is caused by the manufacturer being unwilling or unable to release specifications. The various vendors out there need to realize that Linux may not be the future, but it's a more likely future than Windows, and they need to put some effort into support. Of course, some of them have, and if you reward them by purchasing their hardware, they may do more of it. Regardless, having multiple GUIs isn't actually a real problem - it's an opportunity, not a setback, and meanwhile you can trivially use libqt to draw GTK+ apps [ubuntu.com] or use GTK+ to draw widgets for libqt programs [launchpad.net] (Sorry I haven't updated in a while, my last build FAILED on the build servers but worked at home, and it was a compiler error, NOT a library I forgot to specify. Nice work, Ubuntu!)
The biggest problem is... (Score:0, Insightful)
STOP BREAKING THINGS THAT WORK FINE
Take Gnome Password Protected Windows Network Share Browsing. Worked fine in Gnome 2.22, completely fucking broken in 2.24. Why? Because they changed to gvfs, decided to take out/omit authentication and now don't know how the fuck to fix it. And then you have CIFS which can't resolve Windows Computer Names on a network. What fucking idiot decided that in a world with a 90% Windows desktop market share that removing the ability to browse windows networks was a good idea?
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
That is not a bug. It's a feature.
*yawn* another tired argument (Score:1, Insightful)
The vast majority of Linux distributions each are trying to achieve something different. People like you want only a handful of distinct distributions. If we had that, we wouldn't have Linux, we'd have Windows v2.
See: Linux is NOT Windows [oneandoneis2.org]
Re:Problem #1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually Linux's biggest problem is the vast majority of it's coders complete and utter contempt for "the user".
the problem with linux (Score:4, Insightful)
the problem with linux, is that to many people want it to be to many things. there is no centralised effort to get it to do one thing.
there are several GUI solutions, rather than a centralised effort, there are several browsers gunning to be the main browser, there are several sound sub-systems/servers... why cant these people learn to play together, and come up with something that fits everybody.
i know i will get comments about "choice" its all about "choice", but its not, its not at all about choice to the common user... the common user want to switch the computer on, check their hotmail account, check facebook, and then talk to their friends on live messenger... THATS IT.... thats what the common computer user does now... they dont care how their computer does it, they dont care about the morality behind it, they dont care if the guy who made their file system killed his wife or not.. they dont even know what a file system is.
its only the very advanced users who care about these things, and im afraid to say, that these users dont even account for 1% of all computer users.
if linux based operating systems are to become as big as they want to be, they need to stop fighting among themselves and centralised their efforts. otherwise, we will be having this same story in another 17 years
NetworkManager (Score:5, Insightful)
This one, at least, starts to almost understand. (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, what he seems to be complaining about is the lack of standards, and on this he has a point. But he clearly doesn't understand the difference between standard-as-implementation (the Microsoft way of doing things) and standard-as-protocol (the superior way).
You can see some examples of standard-as-protocol, for example, when he talks about kernel ABIs, audio APIs, and such. But most of what he speaks of is mere whining about how there isn't Just One Way to do something, calling for standard-as-implementation when that simply isn't necessary: for example, the single configuration format or the "tight integration" between X and the kernel.
Re:Problems: (Score:2, Insightful)
How about the fact that there are way too many distrobutions, some of which are separated by nothing more than ideological lines?
I would agree with this. When talking to grandma about trying Linux since all she wants to do is check e-mail, look at pictures of the grand kids and keep her MySpace page updated, you get the question thrown back..."why so many different ones? Are they all different?"
Second item...pick one desktop. GNOME, KDE...whatever. Just pick one.
Third item...attitude of Linux supporters. Stop being so darn elitist! You want people to use it, then be friendly about it. The best way to turn someone off to Linux is to come off sounding like a zealot or an extremist.
It comes down to this summary: Windows users are not used to choice, thus, don't give them any. Market linux to them as more secure. Be honest about some devices not working, explaining that the Microsoft marketing machine is simply more powerful, but Linux will get there someday. We should be able to point the average Windows user to "Linux", a single cohesive product.
For the now, it is a religious battle by a bunch of zealous extremists. Get off your high horses and get to the business of taking over the world first...then argue about which distro was better.
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah! A committee will do it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem that I see with all of these niche distros. Many rarely see a user, simply because they're either indistinguishable from their dozen other competing niche variants or their features are already blanket covered by another distro.
Third parties should make repos, not packages (Score:5, Insightful)
We have the LSB, and distributions which make some effort to ship binary 'compat' packages, so that third parties can distribute their software in RPMv3 format (n.b. not the same format as currently used by RPM-based distros, which are on RPMv4) and it will just install and work on any i386 or x86_64 Linux system. But I wonder if that is slightly the wrong model. At the moment if you want some particular library you have the choice of statically linking it into your executable, or just relying on it being there in the target system; neither is very appealing.
For example, suppose you want GTK version 2.16 or later but LSB specifies an older GTK (actually, it specifies a set of interfaces, but that corresponds to a particular GTK version). You could statically link your app with gtk-2.16, or you could include your own private copy of the library to be stuck in /opt/myapp/libs, but then what about Fedora 10 which does include a new enough GTK?
Instead of providing a single RPM (or worse, lots of different binary RPMs for different distros), we should encourage vendors to set up a yum repository. Then to install their software you could add the third-party's repository to your software sources list and use the normal GUI tools to update and install packages. If they want to use some newer library which is not included in Ye Olde Enterprise Linux 1.1, then they can just add a package for that library to the repository, and it will be installed only on systems that need it. This also takes care of automatic updates, which are not provided if you just give people an RPM file to install manually.
Of course, we don't live in a world where you can just 'encourage' third-party software vendors to do things and they'll jump to it; otherwise Nvidia would long ago have released free drivers. So you need to make it as easy as possible to set up a repository for yum or apt-get or smart or whatever packaging tool distros are using. It needs to be trivially easy. So I would suggest enhancing yum and the other tools to work from a plain directory of rpm files served over http. Just dump the files on a webserver, let Apache serve the directory listing and let yum point to that and Just Work. Or, if that's too dirty for you, use a directory on an ftp site (which at least has a defined protocol for listing the files available).
I think a repository for package management programs like yum satisfies what the author is talking about when he asks for a 'meta-package'.
All your Linux Standard Base are belong to... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, a committee should be responsible for setting standards, similar to how the W3C sets standards for the web.
There is already Linux Standard Base. But what real influence does the LSB Workgroup have in the GNU/Linux ecosystem?
I got plenty issues (Score:4, Insightful)
...and none of them are listed in this article. Most of these are lame rehashes of old stuff that just isn't important. How about stuff like flash not crashing on me every two minutes? A IM client that doesn't freeze on file transfers with native MSN clients (I've tried several and they just don't work), some real compatibility with MS Office (the locked excel sheet for travel expenses breaks every time and I have to unlock it to actually make it work), fix the dual screen setup so that it actually works, that the side buttons on my mouse would work without hacking xorg.conf, all the ways WINE fails me and so on. I don't care that there's plenty choices, I just want at least one choice that works...
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
that's easy: USB, video and documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
USB barely works. It's OK for mass-storage devices, but sucks hugely for high-bandwidth devices, or anything that's removable - and gets removed.
Video: just as bad. Put these two together and you have a mess of non-functional webcams, video applications which sometimes hold together if you're prepared to spend hours and days hunting down just the rtight combination of codecs, libraries and applications.
However, the worst part of Linux is tha parlous state of the documentation. A morass of different styles: .man .info HOWTOs, html, text-files. Almost none is available in more than one language and hardly any is kept up to date. Even less is declared obsolete, to stop people trying techniques that haven't worked in years - but is still highly-linked to on the web.
Frequently, the best documentation for an application is the string command.
Hm (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess these are the main things without wasting too much time on this topic.
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Documentation
Everything else is secondary. Well, most everything. But without usable documentation, all else is futile.
Oh, and would someone do some work on documentation?
Thanks!
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:3, Insightful)
If Linux had a stable interface for binary non-free drivers, we might see more support from the vendors. It's not a crime to not want to disclose your hardware.
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that the purpose of Linux, and Open Source in general, is to beat Microsoft has done more damage to the movement than just about anything else. It forces people to think in terms of how to obtain market share rather than how to improve software and advance the cause of free software.
The biggest single advantage of the free software model is the ability to innovate quickly, because there are more people working on it, and those people have more freedom to tinker around without having to worry about being profitable this quarter. However, since the vast majority of people in the movement these days seem to be primarily concerned with copying Microsoft products in order to beat them at their own game, real innovation is being stifled.
The fact that most major Linux distributions come with a default desktop that mimics Windows in many ways is testament to this fact. It's time to face facts: For most people, it's never going to be the year of Linux on the desktop, and that shouldn't be regarded as a failure to anyone. The end goal of free software is not to defeat Microsoft. Free software is a goal in and of itself.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree. And that's the way I like it.
Yep. And that's exactly why Open Source and Linux are superior. It's the law: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" [wikipedia.org].
Re:Please let us know when the author is done (Score:5, Insightful)
So many people tut and say "Someone should do something", but so few step forward and say "...and that someone is me"
-- Terry Prattchet
Re:Linux is like Wikipedia (Score:2, Insightful)
In the sense that there is little originality, and it seems anything added to linux has to have occurred in another operating system.
and window and OSX are both completely original and have never copied a feature from a different os?, give me a break
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's as likely to be fixed as the problem of stupid comments on Slashdot.
Remote desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish there was a windows remote desktop equivalent. Yeah! I can forward X11 apps over SSH! Network transparency! Cool! But over the internet - usually painful...high latency? oops. Connection dropped? App exits. Hope it autosaves.
Ok, so let's use VNC. A lot better to be sure. Or NX, with its shockingly awesome speed and responsiveness.
But how do I get at the apps I already have running? Nifty, I can ssh in to my desktop machine at home. I know I'm logged in to a gnome/kde/whatever session. Screen locked. What if I have Eclipse open and want to pick up where I left off? :0, and setting environment variables appropriately)? Oh, look at that! Screen's locked. I'll just type in my password and get going. Works fine, except for the fact that my _monitor woke up_ and _everyone can see what I'm doing or hijack my session_ (keyboard and mouse working). Maybe I'll just quickly logout so I can start something in VNC...
-Start a vncserver? That's fantastic. I just bypassed the display manager, so no warning about concurrent sessions. Let's hope that _all_ of my apps are careful about this weird case and don't barf all over my data.
-Forward just eclipse? Maybe if I kill it first from my shell it won't complain.
-Use x11vnc (hoping my session is on display
It's ugly, all of it.
On the windows side, as most everyone here has seen, a) a session started locally can be connected remotely b) a session started remotely can be connected to remotely c) in either case, a "locked" screen is displayed as appropriate and nobody gets to see a haunted cursor and d) none of this breaks 3D acceleration or video overlays when switching back to local display. It's _incredibly_ useful. This is something you'd expect Linux to be _better_ at, a big selling point of desktop Linux...afraid not.
I tried to pick some brains once about even the simplest hacks - like being able to poll X for display updates when it doesn't have a VT. And from that, I don't get the impression Linux will catch up in this department anytime soon.
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:3, Insightful)
The kernel would also end up with multiple different ways of doing the same thing, but no-one ever knowing if they can be removed for fear that some obscure driver hasn't been updated to use the current way.
Windows aims to provide binary compatibility, at the cost of complexity within the OS. UNIX, and Linux doubly-so, aims for source compatibility and improved architectural simplicity at the cost of some administrative complexity, aka 'Worse is Better' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey_style [wikipedia.org]).
Re:the problem with linux (Score:2, Insightful)
its only the very advanced users who care about these things, and im afraid to say, that these users dont even account for 1% of all computer users.
If only 1% care about "these things" (choice of browser etc.) then why have approximately 15-20% of Web users switched to Firefox despite already having Internet Explorer installed by default?
The whole arguement is bogus anyhow. A new Linux user will probably just get Ubuntu recommmend to them and install it. It comes with a default desktop, browser, text editor, IM program etc. and they will probably use these defaults quite happily without having to make any choices at all. The Ubuntu install asks about the same questions as a Windows install - timezone, language, default user etc.
But *if* you want them the choices are there, if not you ignore them.
If it needs fixing, then why isn't it fixed? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the axioms of free software is that users are free to fix whatever they want, when they want. So after 17 years of Linux evolution, why are these "problems" not fixed yet?
In most cases, it's because the cure would be worse than the disease.
So obviously what we need is yet another package management system that's different from all the ones that exist now. Developed from scratch, of course.
Obviously the solution is to rewrite every program in the OS to use a standard configuration file format. Instead of, you know, writing a man page that explains how the configuration file works.
So we should freeze all kernel development until proposed changes go through a 2-year approval process by a configuration control board. We all know that keeps the Debian distro moving along smoothly.
And so on.
Bottom line: the author doesn't like Linux, doesn't bother to understand it, and wishes it were more like a proprietary OS controlled by a single vendor.
Some complaints are not valid (Score:5, Insightful)
consistent configuration system
What a dope; because we know this has worked so well for windows. The registry is a nightmare on Windows. Linux/Unix does have a consistent model and it is known as text configuration files. It's powerful and can be leveraged on even the slowest of links. One size does not fit all - although I've seen far too many applications use XML for this where it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
native file versioning
Seems Linux is now held to a higher standard. Again, what a dope. Outside of the VMS crowd, I've not seen a huge outpouring of demand for this feature. Having said that, I do believe a versioning FS is in the works and for all I know, some may already be available. Realistically, few people want this and most have no clue what it even means. For the general use case, RC-software already exists to fill this niche. His complaint is empty.
audio APIs
As far as I'm concerned, it's done. Pulseaudio [pulseaudio.org] and ALSA [alsa-project.org] are all that you need. If you have more specialized needs, then JACK Audio [jackaudio.org] takes care of you. For the majority of people, Pulseaudio has what you need and is also portable to Windows. Many (most?) distros are already moving or have completed their move to Pulseaudio. As far as I'm concerned, this issue is addressed, save only for migration time for slow adopters.
integration of X11 with apps
This means nothing. What a dope. All GUI applications which communicate with X are integrated.
and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel
Again, what a dope. This means nothing.
In a nutshell, his complaints are silly, meaningless, or have been addressed. As far as I can tell, his only complaint which has any merit is audio API standardization and that has been achieved.
Re:Please let us know when the author is done (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the author is the problem. The title should be "The problems with packaging my proprietary software for Linux Distros and keeping the packages up to date".
The kernel has little or no bearing on the problem. The way he worded the title, he implies that "Linux" (the kernel) is the problem, when in reality the problem is he (and other proprietary software developers) don't have the time to make a package for each distro and keep up with them all.
The reason "open source" sucks for Joe User is that Joe User often wants functionality that is sometimes only available in proprietary software which the distro maintainers are not allowed to distribute and package.
Therefore he has to go out and find the software and figure out how to install it.
It has nothing to do with linux or open source, rather it has everything to do with proprietary licenses and their restrictions on re-distributing the binaries.
If Joe User wants to avoid these issues, he just needs to pay for all of his software and run Windows. If he wants to run free software, along side this proprietary stuff, it's gonna take a little elbow grease. The people with the technical know how to make Joe's life easier, are _not allowed_ to help beyond documenting what needs to be done to make stuff work.
This means poor Joe has to use google and find the info and do it himself, or do without whatever software it is he needs.
FOSS doesn't suck for Joe, the proprietary licensing and distribution restrictions do ;-) The only thing that will fix it is if these people release source for their binaries and/or license the binaries in such a way that the distro maintainers are allowed to build packages that work and distribute them with their distro.
Open source developers and distro maintainers are powerless to fix the situation without more flexible licenses.
-Viz
Re:that's easy: USB, video and documentation (Score:3, Insightful)
One problem with Linux is that it expects the USB hardware/firmware to work the way it should.
There's really nothing wrong with that attitude... except that much USB hardware does not work as it should, and Windows has managed to compensate for it.
So you can look at it two ways: either the vendor implemented USB correctly or they didn't, it's not the fault of Linux if it doesn't work (which is a valid position); the other position is that if you care about keeping users, their mouse should work after the system's been idle. That was my problem, and I ended up buying a USB card with a good implementation, but you're not going to make a lot of friends by telling them that they need to go buy more hardware.
Re:Linux is like Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
Here are some answers
1. Linux has ACL support and all of the major distributions I've used recently include it by default. You may however need to modify your fstab to enable it. From there you can use setfacl and getfacl to set and get ACL entries. I use command line 99% of the time so I can't say if gnome or KDE will allow you to manipulate ACL entries.
2. While I understand what you're saying I don't agree. As a person who also administers Windows networks one thing that always bothered me is there was no way to be "god" and be able to access anything without jumping through some hoops. There has to be some way to access anything or you run the risk of being able to access nothing. You can however create users and grant different permissions to create levels of access. Or use sudo to give granular access to commands. As it always is with Linux, it takes some time to break away from what works for 99% of the users out there.
3. Everything *is* a file, *you* have to build the tools to deal with how the file is formatted. In your specific example, http://www.gnu.org/ [gnu.org] is NOT a file on your system, it is a web resource. If you built a special cd that understood the http protocol then you could do what you have described. One of the UNIX philosophies that Linux adheres to is simplicity. Small tools that can be strung together to solve a larger problem. Having cd "enter" a web site doesn't fit in that philosophy. That's why there is wget, lynx, links or what ever.
Re:Mod TFA -1 Offtopic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is also the notion that "copying" someone else's work as a target is a good thing to do.
Innovation rarely gets it right first time round. There are few examples of big innovations working well first time out.
The huge number of hands to code Open Source projects does enable fast innovation, but copying should not be seen as an evil thing. I don't think there are too many projects where copying the exact functionallity of Microsoft or Apple products is the aim. I would humbly suggest that copying the good parts and improving the poor parts is what drives innovation in many areas - and that this isn't a bad thing.
Cheers
Duncan
But that is what Linux IS (Score:5, Insightful)
Car anologies are of course famous on slashdot, but I won't do that. I will do instead something radically new. A MOTORcycle anology. Yes, you saw it here first!
What is wrong with motor-cycles.
The list goes on. Any of them can be fixed BUT the moment you do that, you no longer have a motorcycle. You got something else.
Back to linux. The NATURE of linux is that it is free. Not just free as in beer or whatever but free as to what anyone does to it. Anyone can create a distro or a new UI or whatever because that is what it is all about.
Change that and you change the nature of linux and you get... well depending on who does it. A Red Hat or a Windows or an OSX. It might be BASED on linux, but it ain't Linux. Same as OSX ain't BSD. It uses it at its core but it ain't BSD. Similar to how Mandriva ain't Suse.
The suggestions made CAN apply to a distro, even perhaps a collection of distro's but NEVER to Linux.
It ain't just about the name, the author talks about kernel interfaces and X11 as if they are the same thing or indeed got anything to do with each other. They don't.
There are already efforts to standarize Linux distro's making them use the same directory layout.
But to make any such effort to official, that is the way into development hell that Windows and for that matter all gigantic software has become.
Notice that Linux constantly improves, constantly changes. Well those two things go together. Either you get Linux that is a constant moving target or you get MS Windows that doesn't change in years and then breaks everything at once. Oh yeah, remember how Vista was such a dud because all its interfaces changed and none of the drivers work? Well guess what, to fix that, the next windows won't change... so you get a NEW OS in the a couple of years that hasn't improved at all, just a few bug fixes, if you are lucky.
Apple knows this and just threw everything overboard two times already, last time with OSX because sometimes if you want to move on, you just got to break things.
GNU/Linux is what it is because of what it is. Change that and you get something different and that might be to big a price to pay to end up with yet another commitee developed OS. We had those. You can get PLENTY of unixes developed by a single entity. Not a single one of them is a popular as linux. (Oh alright OSX might be more popular but that ruins my argument so I am ignoring it)
Re:Problems: (Score:4, Insightful)
The core of the problem is that this entire argument hasn't changed (much less resolved) in oh, about 14 years. Linux at some point looked like it could succeed Windows 98 to become the OS of choice, and then Win2k (and then XP) killed it. That was what, 1998? Just for reference, there was barely a google.stanford.edu then, AltaVista was still the king of the hill, Novel ruled the small server market, and NeXTStep did pretty much everything OS X does today.
The Linux companies (never mind the 'community'; hackers will do what hackers want to, by definition) need to wake up and band together to fix some underlying core issues with the platform: file structure layout, configuration and preferences storage, device support, user management, etc, etc. They are invested way too much in making their *versions* of the platform work as opposed to making the entire platform work, and their versions excel.
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:4, Insightful)
How can Linux win me back? Whatever machine I bring home from Best Buy has to "just work" at the end of the install/config program. Is that too much to ask for?
Presumably, next time Windows fails to "just work" you'll switch straight to Linux. Either that or you have double standards.
Seriously, though, presumably you use a computer all day every day. Why is it not OK take a day or two to make sure your computer works just as you want it? Unless the default setup on your OS of choice is perfect for you (somewhat unlikely), then why not take the time?
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me an OS that isn't. Linux just happens to clean up their messes and change things where they need to rather than continuing to build upon a spaghetti coded architecture.
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows users are not used to choice, thus, don't give them any.
WTF? So now I have to give up choice and competition in the OSS field because you want to cater to the lowest common denominator windows user?
If you don't want choice just take Ubuntu. Don't think about it, just take it. It's the most popular distro and it just works, and to make it even better they don't ask you to choose between Gnome and KDE.
But don't take my choices away from me just because you want to have all of yours made for you.
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it is too much to ask for. Windows is the dominant OS in the consumer market and it doesn't even meet your standards. A pre-configured Linux computer should work but when you install the OS yourself on a huge range of commodity hardware then it probably won't "just work" whether you're installing Wndows or Linux. I always hated this argument because it assumes two things:
Neither of these assumptions are true. Windows often at least requires some third party drivers to be installed. Linux generally does not. If people had to install Windows themselves on every PC they bought then the majority of average computer users would probably be using Apple products. People don't want to mess with configuring anything no matter what OS they are dealing with. The real problem is that Linux doesn't have a "killer app" or feature to lure people into using it. People fear change and there has to be a compelling reason for them to switch. If such a "killer app" is created for Linux most likely it will just be ported to Windows unless there is some underlying architectural difference that prevents it. I've been a Linux user for years and I thought it was a good enough replacement for average users years ago but I've realized since then that it's going to take more than just being "good enough" to make a dent in Microsoft's OS marketshare. I'm just sick of hearing all the BS reasons out there. It's always "the install sucks, X sucks, the kernel ABI sucks, two desktops suck, thousands of distros suck", etc. None of these things have anything to do with why Linux is not on a large percentage of desktops. I could start a business today that sold computers with a fully functional GNOME desktop and I probably wouldn't do too well and that eliminates the "install sucks, kernel ABI sucks, thousnds of distos" and "two desktops" arguments. You're left with "X sucks" which I haven't actually found one person that can articulate why "X sucks".
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup. That's an idea, let's break out of the prison of choice into the bright new freedom of the one true windows dictatorship.
Well, ignoring the false dichotomy and overall tone of this, the prison of choice is, in fact, a prison nonetheless even if the walls are painted the colors I like most. So many here want to see real commercial software delivered to the linux platform, yet are not willing to agree on much of anything. How can we expect commercial software developers to want to target a moving object? How is that realistic or financially solvent?
Free software is nice and fits the needs of some, but a lot of the good software out there that people need is just not available for it.
When the popular distributions can not even agree on a single package manager, this is not something that will change. The LSB is selectively followed at best. Until the community comes together and makes some basic decisions like .tar.gz, .rpm, .deb, .pkg, etc. then how can we possibly expect development houses to even give serious consideration?
I just spent the last week with my father-in-law who is a sole proprietor of an engineering company out of New Jersey. We talked about computers a lot, since it is a common interest. One of his very first laments was being strapped to Windows on all of his computers because it is a requirement for Solidworks. This is a man who would love to change his OS because he started with and loves *nix, but cannot because of his software requirements. I asked him about using Pro-E, since I know it supports a few different *nixes, and he said that it never worked right on them, and that graphically it was inferior to Windows.
His software needs?
Solidworks
Pro-E
Lightwave
This is true for everyone that works for him as well. A whole office of people that are strapped to Windows because of the software.
We can lament that it is the software makers fault for only producing for one or two OSs, but the reality is a chunk of graphics and engineering software supports OS X just fine. It's not a question whether they would produce it for *nix then, but a question of how we can make linux attractive as a platform.
One way to absolutely make sure that does NOT happen is to keep moving the targets and to keep living in our prison of choice.
Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Some distributions have lousy package management tools (RHEL) and proprietary vendors insist on releasing software only for RHEL, taking advantage of every stupid little thing it does differently so the software does not work anywhere else.
2) I want to use complicated programs that no end user needs to touch (i.e. sendmail) but I do not know what I am doing and I screwed up the configuration.
3) Some hardware vendors refuse to give specifications so other people will writer drivers for free, but cannot be bothered to maintain drivers themselves.
4) I want to use a filesystem that has a specific feature, and they exist. I am grumpy that one of them is not the default for my distribution.
5) There are several audio APIs, each with advantages and disadvantages. I apparently do not know what I want to do, so I want one that has all of the advantages and none of the disadvantages so I do not have to plan ahead.
6) I do not understand how graphical environments work on UNIX and think that Linux should be responsible for most of what X11 and graphical toolkits do.
7) I want 'screen' for X11, but do not know about 'xmove'. But what I really want is for my damn proprietary video driver to stop crashing.
8) There is no company that provides a backup solution because there is not enough market share because most Linux users learned how to use rsync and a handful of other tools.
Re:Linux is like Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
I completely disagree with point 2.
One of the dumbest things you can do is restrict root. You would start to run into problems where something went awry such as forgetting to quota a user and being unable to reclaim the drive space because root has lost the power to manage a user's file. The point of an administrator account is to be an administrator. If you want less power, make another account, put them in groups to have file control of whatever, and use sudo to give them selective control of processes.
Re:Please let us know when the author is done (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux will never work for you then. You're too used to Windows, and you just ignore the things that don't work on Windows. I guarantee you that you go out of your way to install various programs and codecs because Windows just won't play some media out of the box, you have 3-4 different media players depending on what you're playing, gotta deal with Patch Tuesday updates, the Windows Firewall, and all kinds of other nifty things that are just ignored by Windows users, but EVERY little thing they get to do with Linux is picked on.
Linux is MUCH more turn-key than Windows any more. Anyone saying otherwise is selling something.
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
Free software is not monolithic entity with a single purpose in mind, and never will be. That is why there are so many licenses. Who are you to decide what free software's goal is? Seriously, what makes you think you can tell other people what their motivation for developing software is? If people want to write software to compete with Microsoft, that is their right. Every person involved has a different motivation from the next.
Laying this kind of idealistic thought process on people stresses them out.
LS
Re:GUI resposiveness (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
The kernel and tools that constitute a Linux distribution are open and free, and there is nothing you can do, legally or otherwise, to prevent someone from creating another distribution. This is the very essence of open source and the GPL, the thing that gives it (and you) so much power.
And it's not like a lot of these smaller distributions are expecting a huge following. Often they fill needs or particular niches and are usually happy remaining small and focused upon a certain thing. This isn't a competition by any means. You don't win any prize for having the most users of any distribution (RedHat notwithstanding). To think this way is treating Linux as a vehicle to stroke your own ego and is an incorrect attitude.
It's Still the Same Stuff (Score:2, Insightful)
After 10+ years, it's still the same stuff that needs fixing:
1. Better documentation, including better man pages with examples.
2. Apps that are multi-screen-aware and, most importantly, network-aware. Some apps send way too much traffic over the local network when run remotely.
3. Awareness of existing design standards and guidelines and compliance with them.
4. Desktop- and distro- agnostic applications.
Re:the problem with linux (Score:3, Insightful)
there are several GUI solutions, rather than a centralised effort, there are several browsers gunning to be the main browser, there are several sound sub-systems/servers... why cant these people learn to play together, and come up with something that fits everybody.
Because you can't. There isn't a car that fits everybody, not a house, not a pen, not a shirt, nothing. And if we can't even agree on a simple *pen* that fits everybody, what makes you think we can agree on something as complex as a computer interface?
If life can teach us anything is that there's no such thing as the "average" human, we're all fucked up in various, wildly different ways, we've got different tastes, and we *will* cry foul when somebody tries to impose theirs onto us. Plus, we may have several different browsers gunning to be the main one, but since they're all better than the shit called IE and the turd called Safari, it seems to be working quite well so far, thankyouverymuch.
Re:Problems: (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows also is a moving target every few years (figures can vary) a new version is out and many applications have to be rebuild at high costs too.
On the other hand you can find dozens of applications that run on every Linux distributions : Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Blender for the free-ones I use, Adobe reader as a non-free one (can't think of another one I'm using currently but I'm certain there are others) and all those applications also run on Windows.
My point is Linux is not more a moving target than Windows, many Windows applications could be developed and work on any platform Windows/Linux and any distrib/packaging system. It's just about money or will to get there, not about a "there are so many packaging system out there, I'm afraid Dave"
If there is only a few potential customers for a product, they won't make any step in that direction. That's all.
And no, "a whole office trapped in windows" is not enough customer. "a whole bunch of big offices trapped in Windows and asking for Linux versions", that would be enough customers
BTW, as a new Linux-user, I do agree that I found the whole various-packaging-systems quite strange, some standardization could help. But I cannot objectively say it has something to do with SolidWorks not being ported to Linux.
Re:What linux ACTUALLY needs (Score:4, Insightful)
Except, of course, in reality the "proprietary information" is something that a competitor should never ever consider using for product development because it's worthless details of a particular (usually bad) implementation of a trivial idea. The real purposes are:
1. Break compatibility and extort money from everyone who tries to achieve it.
2. Hide embarrassing details that demonstrate low professionalism of developers or expose underperforming products.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a decent point, but I don't fully agree. If "beating Microsoft" involved making a viable alternative to Windows/Office that I can actually use instead of Windows/Office for my real-life job, than I'd say the goal of "beating Microsoft" has done a lot of promote Linux and other open source products.
Being able to stick Windows users (which have been the majority of computer users) in front of a computer running Linux and expect them to be productive without a steep learning curve has helped win converts. A bigger user base and greater business viability means more funding. More funding means more developers.
Now I wouldn't claim that user base is everything, nor would I want Linux developers to aim for a Windows clone. Still, making a system that people want to use isn't a waste of time, and having money and developers hasn't hampered the progress of Linux.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like my desk? If you want order above functionality, grab OS X.
Re:Linux is like Wikipedia (Score:3, Insightful)
There aren't very many situations that require ACLs over single user/group -- especially if you create meta-users and combined groups.
For example, I have users for myself and my wife, both in group 'family'. I am also in group 'admin' (for sudo), and group 'coder' (access to src directory). I have a user 'media' that owns all my media directories and 'mediacodec' which I 'su' to for transcoding. The transcoding user is a member of media, but not family, and the programs then have access to the media folder and its files but not my personal files (in case of back door / privilege escalation / etc.).
Intelligent group and user creation makes things very secure, and there's rarely a reason to use root.
Re:The biggest problem is... (Score:0, Insightful)
Have you ever looked at Gnome's source code? I'm surprised that anything works. If you want recurring nightmares, pop open Evolution's source sometime.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. And that's the way I like it.
Aren't all operating systems? On windows or similar you just don't get to see the mess :)
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the effort to lure MS Windows users to GNU/Linux results in copying bad features as well. For example, one of the great things about Unix in general is the hierarchical file system. When I want to work on a certain project, I cd into the appropriate directory and fire up a program such as emacs, which then defaults to looking for files in that directory. However, programs that aim at compatibility with MS Windows don't do this. If I start up OpenOffice.org in my project directory and ask it to open a file, it displays the last directory in which it looked, which may be far off in a different corner of the file system. I then have to navigate into my current project's directory one click at a time, without the speed and ease of the command-line.
Making this kind of behavior available as an option for people new to GNU/Linux is fine, but software running on GNU/Linux ought to take advantage of the core features of GNU/Linux. As a long-time (26 year) Unix person, I resent having inferior features of MS Windows imposed on me so as to attract MS Windows users.
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the community comes together and makes some basic decisions like .tar.gz, .rpm, .deb, .pkg, etc. then how can we possibly expect development houses to even give serious consideration?
The package format is totally unimportant. Making Redhat use .deb or Ubuntu use .rpm would fix absolutely nothing, since the distributions would still be as incompatible to each other as ever. The problem is the underlying dependency tree not the way in which you package the software, said dependency tree is what makes it impossible to install software outside of that tree (i.e. installing Ubuntu7 deb on Ubuntu8 doesn't work, since the dependency tree is a different one).
To fix this issue you would first need to get rid of the dependencies, but to do that you would need a large enough and stable enough core system on which applications could depend instead, but given how Linux development works its not clear if that is ever going to happen or even desirable.
There are however two things I really miss:
* a standard way to ship or even just build third party software that will work across distributions
* a way to install two different versions of the same piece of software
The first problem is somewhat tackled by things like autopackage and LSB, but it still feels more like multiple layers of ducttape instead of a robust solution. The second problem is a direct consequence of stuffing everything into /usr/bin/, which makes it impossible to have two different versions of the same package, a workaround is of course two just build the software yourself to a different --prefix, but it would be nice if distributions had such a feature build in instead of forcing the user to completly bypass anything the distribution provides.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Be careful here. Windows is less of a moving target for binaries, not for software. I'm running software written in the 1970s and 80s all the time under Linux and Darwin without any real problems.
Undoubtedly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Problems: (Score:2, Insightful)
Its amazing how easy it is to sound right but be wrong
As has been pointed out before - ad nauseum - there are many many different distros out there. Some of them attempt to cover the same user demographic, but in reality, it is an overlap rather than a competition. It would be foolish to say Ubuntu is seriously competing for Red Hat's userbase. There is an overlap and in some cases it might be a large overlap, but it isn't really direct competition.
That said though, open source development is as far from communism as it is possible to get. If you write something, feel free to put it into the wild. If people like it, it will take off. If they don't, it becomes one of the projects festering away in the search results at sourceforge. You know the ones I mean, they are the ones which appear to have a massive relevancy for your search term, but haven't been worked on since 2002.
You don't get a more classic example of the free market than open source development. It is totally darwinian, if its fit for purpose and accessible, people find it and it lives. If not, it dies and becomes extinct - except for the sourceforge search results.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually open source is very much a free market. There's no barrier to entry, it's open to anyone to get into. It's entirely competition based.
When the X11 project became mis-managed people forked it off and created Xorg instead, which is now the standard X desktop.
That's a free market. A market where supply and demand are unregulated.
Re:If it needs fixing, then why isn't it fixed? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the many fragmentation problems that makes it difficult for commercial software vendors to offer their products for Linux. No one package format will do the trick across distributions -- not without hassle, anyway.
So obviously what we need is yet another package management system that's different from all the ones that exist now. Developed from scratch, of course.
No, we need a new package format and standard, preferably based on a well supported existing standard like GNUStep, but extended with a mind towards future proofing. Face it, package management on Linux is all geared towards administrators of servers who use OSS software. It is pretty terrible for desktop OS users and software development for those users and with commercial, closed source software. Package management on Linux is ahead of other platforms on bullet points and underlying technology, but inferior for actual end user experience and capabilities.
To that end, there's little or no centralized configuration: everything in the system is controlled through a welter of files, and there's no guarantee that the syntax of any one configuration file will apply to any other.
Obviously the solution is to rewrite every program in the OS to use a standard configuration file format. Instead of, you know, writing a man page that explains how the configuration file works.
Or, you could simply follow in the footsteps of someone who has done this successfully and clone Apple's methodology. That is, define a new standard and have new applications use it and gain additional functionality as a result (it's damn nice to be able to run a program off a USB key and have the right configuration on all three of the machines it is used on for multiple different users, even though the machines have different processors in them).
This is not an all or nothing issue.
Bottom line: the author doesn't like Linux, doesn't bother to understand it, and wishes it were more like a proprietary OS controlled by a single vendor.
Actually, it sounds like the author is a user who would like to use Linux, but is running into real problems in the areas where it is still behind the curve. He doesn't address the areas where Linux is ahead of the curve either because they are not important to the article or because he is unaware of them (they take longer to find than the deficiencies). Some of this is useful feedback and distro developers would do well to pay attention if they're targeting desktop users.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to get ideological here, but I see communism more as something you would be forced into "for your own good", like Windows.
One thing I don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Out of the cloud has appeared such stars as the current glory hog Ubuntu. In the past dozens of others have had their moment in the sun. Most have actually contributed to the good of the whole. Heck if someone hadn't thought Slack was doing it wrong we never would have gotten RH or Debian, then were would we be.
If you want plodding stability. Go with RHEL or Debian Stable. You are guaranteed to be so far back from the edge it isn't even in sight. At the same time you are guarenteed that your code is sufficiently vetted as to have limited problems. Additionally it's advisable to stay away from laptops, wireless, and cloud computing as these are still areas of heavy change.
Seriously I'm tired of people(sheeple) who stand on the periphery, of Linux, capable only of pointing to every imagined flaw, while they type out their punditry in M$Word on Vista.
Oh and a note, my last Winbox was a Windows 95OSR2 system. Don't need M$, I tolerate my wifes MAC, and miss my Amiga.
The real reason for so many distributions (Score:3, Insightful)
All of the main distros have the same set of major third party software. With some variances between them on the more obscure packages. Packing up software is not some major undertaking, which is shown by how quickly new distros can pop up. Figuring out what versions to ship with and what patches to apply can take a fair amount of work, but if you were on any mailing lists you would have realized that a lot of this information and these patches are shared between different distro groups and applied to their own release schedule.
The real reason we have so many different distros is that we have 50,000 Linux users that want to work on packaging, but it only takes 5-500 to package a complete Linux install.
Re:Problems: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you tell her that there are so many different ones. Why are you so determined to confuse her by overcomplicating things?
When you moved her off Windows 98, did you start by telling her that she had to choose between XP and and MCE and Vista Home Premium and Ultimate, and did you describe that as a choice between all the different distributions of the NT kernel? No -- you probably said something like "Here's your new computer. It's pretty similar to the old one, only it won't crash so much and you'll be safer on the internet. Some things look a bit different, so just give me a ring if you have any trouble."
And she probably got a bit frustrated for the first week, then got used to it, and still doesn't know which Windows she's using, which suits her fine because quite frankly she couldn't give a damn as long as she can read her emails and view her photos.
Why? Linux is a kernel, not a product.
If you want a single cohesive product to point Windows users to, then you have that today. It's called Ubuntu. Just Ubuntu. Not "the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux". Not "Ubuntu, or you might prefer Kubuntu, or maybe something else like Fedora or Gentoo, no, wait, actually SuSE has this great thing called YaST... or are you more a BSD sort of person, Grandma? There's FreeBSD, and OpenBSD... here, read the GPL and all the BSD manuals and see what you think."
No, you can forget all that. Only nerds care. For everyone else, just stick with Ubuntu. There you have it: a single cohesive product, aimed at being usable, with one packaging system, one standard desktop environment, a marketing machine, plenty of mindshare, and plenty of support. You don't even have to mention the L-word or the D-word.
Really, what was so difficult about that? All you need to do is stop worrying about how complicated it all is. Screen out all the irrelevant bits, and suddenly it's not so complicated any more.
Re:Problems: (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be foolish to say Ubuntu is seriously competing for Red Hat's userbase.
It would be foolish to say they aren't in competition. They are in competition for users, for developers, and for overall mindshare.
A distro without developers dies. A distro without users loses developers. A distro without mindshare loses both users and developers.
You don't get a more classic example of the free market than open source development. It is totally darwinian, if its fit for purpose and accessible, people find it and it lives. If not, it dies and becomes extinct - except for the sourceforge search results.
In other words, all distros compete for resources, and if they fail, they die?
The problem with this whole argument is that there's no such thing as a free market, and there's no such thing as a completely communist system, nor no such thing as a system with no communism whatsoever, so every side has something they can latch onto to make their case.
Linux is communism in that it's a community effort. Linux is centrally planned in that Linus is the master of all things kernel, and distros all have a central planning body of some sort. Linux is 'free market' in that there are various distros all competing with one another. Linux is capitalism in that anyone is free to enter the marketplace and try to make money off of Linux. Linux is socialism in that everyone involved 'owns' Linux.
Just about the only things Linux isn't (at least, not very much), are things that are dictatorial. Linux isn't terribly feudal, or monarchial, or despotic. This is because there's no real way to 'force' any of those systems, and all of those systems depend on force to get to full steam.
Re:Problems: (Score:3, Insightful)
Same old, same old crap complaint.
It is UTTERLY IRRELEVANT how many distros there are. Ninety five percent of the people use the top five or six - and anybody who isn't a Linux geek hasn't even heard of the others.
This is a bullshit complaint that crops up every time somebody talks about what's wrong with Linux, and it's absolutely irrelevant.
Linux distros need the following:
1) Better QA - stop releasing software that's not ready to be used. "Release early and often" does NOT mean "release CRAP"! Canonical a few versions ago released an installer that wouldn't allow you to leave the mount point management screen! WTF? That means the installer WAS NOT TESTED AT ALL! That sort of thing should be embarrassing for any software outfit.
2) Get better driver support from peripheral manufacturers. And that includes 64-bit support. In reality, this won't be solved until corporations start demanding better driver support from their main hardware distributors like Dell and HP, and then the hardware companies start demanding it from the peripheral manufacturers.
3) Straighten out the package mess. By that I mean all the main distros need to start tuning their package management systems for reliability (no more downed servers every time the repository needs to refresh), better dependency management, and speed (openSUSE has massively sped up its repository refreshes from 10.3 to 11.0 and even includes a "skip refresh" button, thank GOD!) Some consolidation of repositories between distros might be necessary, too, to allow more packages to run on more systems and reduce the need to compile from source, which, although easy, means the system is outside package management.
4) Fix ALL existing bugs BEFORE releasing new features that compound the bugs. This should be obvious but the entire IT industry continues to ignore this basic principle. You CANNOT fix bugs while introducing NEW ones - and if you haven't fixed the old bugs, you WILL introduce new ones. Duh!
5) Stop writing software "BY geeks FOR geeks" - i.e., stop issuing incomprehensible error messages, crashing with no clue why, with user interfaces even Steven Hawking couldn't figure out. In other words, learn to program CORRECTLY before "learning to program" in some language. Learn user interface guidelines. Stop trying to re-invent the wheel. You are NOT better than everybody at Apple at this.
6) In other words, most of the above boil down to: check your ego at the keyboard. Stop assuming you're the world's greatest software designer, GUI designer, programmer, debugger, and system analyst. You're not. There are RULES for doing this stuff developed over the last forty years! Know them and don't break them unless you absolutely have to.
The only thing linux needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it does, it needs to wake up, smell the coffee, and work on some serious standards.
If it doesn't, it can keep doing all the stuff it does now.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the way linux works, there's nothing wrong with only working with other free software, changing every interface whenever it's convenient to do so and forking every five minutes. Absolutely nothing, it's part of what makes Linux great.
However, it's also the reason there will never be a year of the linux desktop.
Ubuntu Needs to Be Fixed! (Score:4, Insightful)
'choice' is a means to an end... (Score:1, Insightful)
What I mean is that I can run KDE 4.2 Beta on my smokin' fast laptop with a shitload of eye candy and with a snazzy configuration utility of a major distro like Suse or Fedora or Ubuntu, or.....
I can run Linux on my $50 350mhz laptop with a tiny window manager like JWM and still have enough juice left over to run a smaller Gecko-based browser like Kazehakazi and OpenOffice.org (believe it or not, it's actually usable), and still get the same functionality of being able to use my old lappy as a productivity machine.
That's what choice offers. It's not choice for its own sake. It allows me to extend the life of my hardware almost but not quite indefinitely.
I shudder to see the day when there's only one window manager for Linux, one browser, one word processor, etc.
Standardization is wicked evil (Score:2, Insightful)
I, personally, hope that GNU/Linux systems are never that standardized. It may be a setback for the community as a whole. I really do not care. Choice is why I moved to Linux. If that choice disappears... I may have to use BSD, Solaris, or something else. The more standardized and popular an OS becomes, so the attacks on its security. The more standardized, the less customizable. The more standardized the more prone to failure when trying to use older legacy software... I hate it. If GNU/Linux becomes more standardized across the board, I will have to make my own distro and add to the plethora already there, just to be a rebel. Then again, there is always GoboLinux.