Top 10 Things Wrong With Linux, Today 737
An anonymous coward sends in this link to a list of the top ten things wrong with Linux today. He's noting things that are "wrong" not with Linux per se, but with a user's experience with Linux; most of his points actually have to do with KDE/X. The KDE 3 bug he's talking about is a user-interface change in konqueror: form elements can be changed by mousing-over them and turning the scroll wheel, which is very bad. Hopefully the KDE guys will roll this change back to the previous behavior.
doom on the horizon if linux becomes popular (Score:5, Insightful)
But who wants general adoption of linux anyway ? Look what happened to the internet when it got popular...
graspee
Re:doom on the horizon if linux becomes popular (Score:2)
Yeah it would suck if Linux was popular enough that hardware manufactors routinly included Linux drivers with their products, and software venders started ports to Linux.
Re:doom on the horizon if linux becomes popular (Score:2)
But you see Linux is already too popular- it's now really easy to install and people don't have to even do any messing about on most distributions and their sound cards etc. are all set up automatically, and they can play mp3s, play divx with mplayer and get work done with gnumeric, abiword, koffice etc.
I had to damn-well switch to freeBSD in an attempt to feel elite, and even there people are realizing that freeBSD is not just for servers! Mplayer, xmms, is there no end to the clever desktop apps that actually work?
(/joke)
Actually my real reason for using free OSs is to escape from the control of MS, and now, with palladium looming on the horizon I feel the need to make the switch total, so xmms, mplayer and friends are total god-sends.
I use freeBSD rather than linux because I *personally* find it easier to configure; I like and am used to the ports system.
As you may have guessed, my original post was joking too, though maybe only half-joking, because while we got a lot of good things when the net became popular we also got the commercial interest, the banner ads, the pr0n subscriptions, the cookies, the pop-ups and unders...
Maybe that was inevitable because marketing scum will go where there are large clumps of people, but it doesn't stop me from regretting that aspect of the internet's popularity.
graspee
Re:doom on the horizon if linux becomes popular (Score:2)
Yeah that was awful. I got cheap broadband access, the ability to host my own content, access my machines from anywhere in the world, and my company got more business in the form of adding a web application layer to our application suite. As linux becomes more popular I'm betting the good will outweigh the bad.
Look what happened to the internet when it got po (Score:5, Insightful)
- Access became much cheaper and more ubiquitous. Checking your mail at a net cafe wouldn't have been possible without a popular net. neither would purchasing broadband at current rates.
- Suddenly there was a vast quantity of information and application avaliable through other media that was now avaliable through the net. Your Lord of the Rings trailer wouldn't be visible on the net so easily nobody was watching.
- Monetary incentive meant new and better sites / apps. Google wouldn't exist without their adwards, which in turn wouldn't exist without an audience
- It became possible to meet people outside the geek world on line, and share your mutual interests (cars, ham radio, dessert recipes, whatever)
Imagine an engineer who worked for a motor company in the early days complaining that horseless carriages were ubiquitous and that the roadways were filled with idiots who didn't know how to rebuild an engine.You do know how to rebuild an engine, don't you?
Re:doom on the horizon if linux becomes popular (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows XP is a pretty damn stable OS; it supports a lot of hardware, video codecs, sound codecs, development tool both free and proprietary etc. You *can* hack with XP. You can install mingw32, an Xserver or client, free game-development libs, free obscure programming languages etc...
BUT XP is anathema to the geek, and why? Lots of reasons: a big nasty corporation control it, there is only one UI and it sucks, there are loads of "dumb filters" designed to by default stop you viewing your files properly or do anything complicated etc.
Well imagine new "popular linux". It could be very like XP. Only one user-interface because most people run it so developers target it (KDE could do this), corporations control it (effectively) by providing commercial applications that you just "gotta have", locking you into their customer-base, dumb filters in place on all the apps which it is tedious to take off, etc.
In fact, "popular linux" could be exactly like Windows XP, except for:
1) We would have the source to the OS
2) errrm.
So think about it. If MS released the full source for Windows XP, would it be a fantastic operating system that code-hackers flocked to?
I myself think not.
graspee
basically right on (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:basically right on (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a thought. Seems like no one has noticed that other than Lindows, and perhaps Mandrake, none of the major linux vendors are interested in Joe Home User. They are all concentrating their efforts on the Corporate user. You know, the guy who has a professional SysAdmin to setup and maintain his box. In this setting, linux makes a compelling solution. It's solid, stable, and has zero liscening costs. OpenOffice/StarOffice work great, Kde3/Gnome2 are both nice desktops. Evolution is killer for email (can even be made to work perfectly with an exchange server, well, at least as well as Outlook, and without all the virus problems).
So I think it's kind of silly to keep talking about how Joe Home User is having all these problems using a product that is not meant for him. About the same as complaining that a Nascar is too hard to maintain for the average driver.
Just something I've noticed...
Wrong assumption... (Score:4, Insightful)
My users, which is synonomous with most users, have to be walked through that process practically every single time. Sure, a few of them know how to use the search feature to locate a document and a few even know how to do a few slightly more complicated tasks. However, for the most part they are quite limited in what they know regarding the use of the computer system.
It is far from their job to know how to do anything. From what I have seen. I could set them up with a fully configured KDE3 desktop with all their applications right in front of them and they would still have the same problems.
Making things easier on a computer does help, but there will always be new features and options that negate that ease of use. More options = more difficulty. Lowering that difficulty allows more features to be added.
A modern Operating System is really no more easy or difficult to use then an Operating System that was in use nearly ten years ago.
-.-
Re:Wrong assumption... (Score:3, Insightful)
The tools should be easy enough to use without him having to spend LOTS OF TIME and MY MONEY to learn to use them
What are you on? (Score:4, Insightful)
A very good engineer spends his/her time practicing their engineering discipline. While some may have a hobbie with computers, it doens't make them a better mechanical engineer because they know how to configure a Linux machine for desktop use. What makes them a good engineer is that they know how to use the standard symbols, which have been altered a few times in the past ten years. They also need to know how to operate the application that they primarily use for their engineering discipline. An average engineer will spend time in other pursuits, while a great engineer will spend his/her time living and breating their chosen field. Most of the time that doesn't include how to configure Sendmail.
As for a marketer... True, they are mostly evil. However, to be a good marketer one needs to know the human mind, psychology and how to handle the media. They may need to know how to create a Powerpoint Presentation, generate a few documents. They have no need to know how to configure the Apache web server. That is what the guys in IT are for. They have need to learn how to program PHP, CGI or any other language that is used in Web-page design. They might come up with a layout, but that is for some IT guy to put together.
Tell me why the above professions need to have knowledge that is similar to what most IT people have? How will that make them better in their fields? How will they find the extra time to keep up with all of the endless data that comes out of IT, when they have to do the same thing for their field?
-.-
Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not running X right now, but I do believe, you just hit ctrl-alt-[+-] (maybe only on the number pad?) to switch between available resolutions on the fly...
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
Are people just switching alot? I don't know anyone, windows user or not, who switches their resolution, ever.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:4, Informative)
Let's say I want to connect my laptop to an LCD projector that supports only 800x600 display, but the laptop is normally configured for its native resolution, which is 1600x1200.
Yeah, I can crtl-alt-whichamafuckle until I get the right res, and hopefully the refresh rate is acceptable. But now, I have to be careful about banging the mouse against the side of the viewable area, to avoid shifting my presentation off-screen. I also have to manually, carefully, size and position windows to make them as large as possible on the projector display.
Pain in the ass. It's much better to just change the size of the desktop, and click "maximize."
Just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Keith Packard is even working on the problem, with his R&R extension.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
Just because you don't get it, doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Just because *you* don't get it doesn't mean it's a problem.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
That's stupid.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:5, Funny)
Screen
fb=/dev/null.
Then boot X and get ready to pull the plug fast if your monitor starts making sizzling sounds as it is driven out of spec.
Of course, unless you have an Nvidia card, in which case you must rot-13 the entire XF86Config file. I can't believe people say X is hard to use, or that anyone is stupid enough to "misuse the program." There is obviously no problem here.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I can crtl-alt-whichamafuckle until I get the right res, and hopefully the refresh rate is acceptable. But now, I have to be careful about banging the mouse against the side of the viewable area, to avoid shifting my presentation off-screen. I also have to manually, carefully, size and position windows to make them as large as possible on the projector display.
Actually, you can run X without modelines if you have a monitor that reports the modes it supports. The only thing you have to do is put the modes you want to use (e.g. "1024x768" "800x600" ...) in the screen section where you already have them. If you want to hook up to a lcd projector (I did this before) or any other display device, just restart X and it will automatically configure the refresh rates and use the highest mode support by the projector (if the project reports its supported modes using vbe (? I forgot what the name is)). The invalid modes (e.g. if the projector can't do 1600x1200) are ignored (a warning is printed during startup). If Windows will automatically configure it, then XFree86 more than likely can. I don't think it is too much hassle to have to restart X because it isn't like Windows where you have to restart the entire machine.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:3, Informative)
If all the apps I'm running are GUI apps, and since I'm trying to use a projector this is likely to be the case, then restarting X and all the apps is inconsequentially better than rebooting the whole machine.
There is a little things called "session management"...most of the programs I use can do session management, and will automatically start after I restart X if they were running before I exited the windowmanager (windowmaker in my case).
Besides, one other nice feature of Winders is that it will ask "does this display setting work," and then revert if you don't answer YES. On X, the equivalent solution is to switch to a console, re-edit XF86config-4, (or not -4, depending), switch back to X, ctral-alt-backspace and hope.
When configuring X, stuff like dexconf will start X for a few seconds with a prompt "Does this display setting work" and will exit after 30 or so second if you don't hit ok, doing basically the same thing.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This "solution" isn't very good. Why should I have to restart all of my apps to change displays?
"You have changed monitors. Please restart for these changes to take effect." This is what we've been making fun of Windows for for years.
People like 0x0d0a seem to think that's acceptable, apparently simply because it's X and Unix. The attitude is, "if you don't know how to handle every obscure option required to do what should be simple things, then you're a moron -- go back to Windows."
I can do all the things that have been suggested. I've used, administered and programmed Linux and other forms of Unix for more than a decade.
The point is, it's stupid to think that a hard-to-use system is somehow a good thing. It's unproductive, elistist, and boneheaded.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So why don't they make one of these front ends accessible by right-clicking on the desktop? That's where 99% of new users look (often in vain) to find the screen settings.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2)
Nope, it changes the resolution but doesn't change the size of your desktop. So you might go down to 800x600 but your desktop remains at 1024x768 so you get to scroll around in it.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:2, Informative)
I've read a while ago that the RandR extension was supposed to fix this, but I haven't heard anything about it recently.
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Changing resolution on the fly.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I own a 21" monitor that can do 1280x1024 at 100hz. I don't see my model in the list of monitors in Xconfigure and that leaves me with two options. Brave the XFree86 config file, or live with a less than optimimum solution.
Gawd, point 10 as the original author stated is probably the biggest embarasment in the open source community. I would venture to say it's a complete failure of human interaction that non OF THE DISTORO'S I HAVE TRIED have fixed this.
CTRL-ALT-+/- works great if your config file is setup correctly, but it's not a likely, and where do you set the frequency?
I would say 80% of the linux geeks can't rant off their frequency-ranges v/h of their monitor. Who keeps the manual ?
Geezus, sorry for the rant.. but this topic has hit a cord with me.
well no (Score:2)
On the other hand windows knows how to handle plug'n play monitors who return their supported frequencies thru the VGA connector (they all do it now). Why can't Linux/X detect a plug'n play monitor ? The specs and monitors have been out there for half a decade now.
soft wrap (Score:2, Informative)
Re:soft wrap (Score:2)
Symptoms of general *nix "problems" (Score:3, Interesting)
But then again I use a real Unix, not Linux
I think that this is important (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that something needs to be done make the learning curve of linux easier. Having just started on linux myself in the past 6 months, I found the initial goings tricky, just doing things like:
I found that there existed a lot application like the poster mentions, that I couldn't find elsewhere. Sure I can by O'Reilly's latest Linux in a nut-case, but it would be great if it was easier to get the information you need right from your install. (I know there are the man pages, but the man pages can be very criptic sometimes, even for me a seasoned programmer). Even a built-in tutorial, taking you through the basic stuff on your first install would be fantastic. And the only thing that would happen is that people would use linux more.
I know my parents won't use anything but windows/mac because they are daunted by the linux learning curve and its reputation as 'geek-ware'. Its not that are against the open-source community or what linux has done, it is just that they don't think that they are 'geeky' enough to learn what they need in order to run it.
The RedHat and Mandrake crews are starting to make this less the case, but if we have a long way to go. If we are serious about putting linux on the desktop as a serious contender to the M$ offers we will need to shed the geek reputation of linux, by making it easy for everyone to use it.
Re:Info, not Man (Score:3, Insightful)
I want my documentation on one page, so I can grep it or in a sensible hypertext way, so I can slouch back, slurp my coffee and browse through it with my mouse.
dave
my top things. (Score:5, Insightful)
To watch divx5 movies, it is not enough to download a codec like with WMP, but you have to recompile your media player, upgrade your ALSA, upgrade your kernel... in fact, this is the reason i ditched linux and returned to 98. I prefer reboots to downloading endless MBs and recompiling for hours and not being sure it will work.
It is slower. End of story. No matter what you say, no matter what benchmarks or other stuff you come up with, qt/gtk widgets are STILL slower than win32 widgets, watching dvd with XINE takes 40% of my CPU while under windows it takes 5%(five), process spawning is slower (under windows if i run iexplore.exe repeatedly, it pops up new windows at a rate about 5 windows/second. Under linux, the best i could do is 0.5 new windows/sec. Dirty test, i agree, but...
What else?
Lack of Games. To those of you who say that linux is not a desktop os, why do i see all these projects spawning everywhere about SDLs and stuff?
And why instead of getting together and workin in teams, i see a sagan of different apps that are supposed to do one thing, but NONE of them is perfect? Sure, you might say "but windows isn't perfect either!" but don't you want your linux to be?
Lyx owns, blah blah blah, but under windows, to do word processing/type setting, it is 10 clicks away to write in my native, non-english, language. Under linux, i can't even find a faq for it. I don't even want to think what is necessary to actually print.
As i remember new ones i will add them.
IF YOU THINK I AM WRONG ABOUT ONE OF THESE, INSTEAD OF TELLING ME "YOU SUCK!! YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG!!" *PLEASE* tell me what to do to correct them! i am NOT bashing linux! i WANT to use linux! i WANT it to get better!
*sigh*
Re:my top things. (Score:2)
What language?
qt/gtk widgets are STILL slower than win32 widgets, watching dvd with XINE takes 40% of my CPU
Thats somethign to do with graphics access, when I watch a DVD I dont usually have widdgets on screen
Re:my top things. (Score:5, Insightful)
<preach>
Linux is not perfect for everything, but it is already damn near perfect for some things. For example, my entire life is managed by a pile of shell scripts 5-15 years old, PostScript-based application printing, and the ability to run legacy X applications over the network.
If we fix a lot of the "problems" with Linux -- for example, radically restructuring the security and filesystem models to be more Windows-like, migrating to non-PostScript-centric applications, changing X to be more Windows-like (i.e. no virtual desktop, color depth switch on-the-fly, no X stream but direct drawing instead), etc. -- then Linux won't actually be useful to me anymore. I'm not a Windows user, but (gasp) this isn't because Windows is put out by the wrong company or crashes too much, etc. -- this is because Windows, even in ideal form, doesn't fulfill >my< needs.
I think part of the problem is that there is an entire demographic of users out there who have been told "Linux is better" not "Linux is different" -- if we make Linux "perfect" by the standards of a Windows user, a lot of existing Linux users will leave, not because the "coolness" factor is gone but simply because some of us actually do live and die by things like backward compatibility of X and shell scripts, the ability to compile our own software (and insert our own set of patches), the ability to use the same hand-built text configuration or script files we've been using for years that are lengthy and cryptic but give functionality not easily duplicated in a click-to-do-the-common-things, no-way-to-do-anything-else environment like Windows...
I think too many people view Linux as a Windows-contender in search of more users, rather than viewing Linux as the correct solution only for a particular group of users. No product is perfect for everybody. If you're looking for a Windows system, buy Windows! For god's sake, there's no need to be embarrassed if the tool used by billions also fits your needs as well.
Linux isn't for everyone, but it is for me. The day it becomes a great system for Windows users is likely also the day I move to BSD or some other system which still retains Unix-like behavior, because that is what I'm looking for!
</preach>
Linux isn't for me (Score:3, Insightful)
For myself, I was really happy with BeOS. I found it to be the happy medium between a hardcore roll-your-own OS like Linux and the don't-touch-that attitude of Windows. When Be died, I moved back to Windows because Linux has little to offer me. I've messed around with it in the past, but I've found I spend more time learning to use the system rather than using it.
With Be gone, I'm not left with many options. I could take the plunge into Linux, hope my box doesn't get rooted in the time it takes me to figure out how to secure it, or I could stick with Windows and be pushed around by Microsoft. I have hope for distros like Mandrake, but I find they're often incomplete. If I want do Linux right, I have to get down in there and screw around with stuff I don't know how to use.
The deciding issue is whether my reluctance to trudge through Linux is matched by Microsoft's attempts to control what I can do with my computer. Does my ignorance prevent me from doing what I want in Linux more so than Microsoft does in Windows? I have a feeling things will swing the other way about the time Windows 2000 ceases to be a viable option or when distros like Mandrake become mature enough that I can trust it to handle the small stuff.
Re:my top things. (Score:3, Insightful)
Security model: solvable with current technology, which is to say ACLs. Redhate's management tools already prompt you for the root password when needed; this is more or less good enough, but it could be better.
Filesystem model: This does not need to change. You can solve any problem here at the presentation level.
Non-Postscript-Centric: Unnecessary. Instead, using ghostscript as a printer filter should become (even) easier, and ghostscript should support more printers.
No virtual desktop: What exactly are you smoking? Typically, default installs of linux don't have edge-pushed virtual desktops anyway, and if you don't click the virtual desktop widget, you'll never end up on another desktop. In addition, the virtual desktop power toy for XP is fairly popular.
Color-Depth switch on the fly: Who uses this in windows any more? Video cards are now fast enough to where you can pick a depth and stick with it and get your shit done. X servers should really provide virtual color depth modes for legacy applications though, like those which refuse to run in anything other than 8bpp color, grayscale, or 1bpp. It's just idiotic that that is still a problem.
No X stream but direct drawing: There's no reason you can't support both. The best way might not be to keep using X, but spinning up anything else at this point would probably involve a horrific delay. X does support direct screen writes; this needs to be supported on more cards. Some apps are just not reasonable to use over a network, like a DVD player. For the record, Windows ALSO supports both "slow" windows API method (GDI -- of course, windows is designed in such a way that video drivers can provide acceleration even when you're using the GDI calls) and direct screen writes. No one uses the latter for anything but video because they don't have to. The windows architecture lets you use those functions and not bog down horribly. Linux with preempt and low-latency improves this considerably but it's still slower; I don't know why, so I won't comment further.
Ultimately windows makes many things easier and faster even when it does them the "wrong" way and THIS is the real reason that linux cannot take the desktop by storm. Installs/Uninstalls, for example, are done very stupidly, but it usually (almost always) works. Sure, linux centralizes things, but upgrading or removing packages gets to be a real bitch, especially on redhate systems, once you've got a fair amount of packages installed. This is stupid. There HAS to be a better way. No, I don't have all the answers, but I sure can find the problems.
Nedit does soft wrapping (Score:4, Informative)
Dear DearSlashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a Windows user who is contemplating switching over to Linux. I am obviously concerned about my experience and how productive I can be with a different OS. What does Michael mean when he says "He's noting things that are "wrong" not with Linux per se, but with a user's experience with Linux; most of his points actually have to do with KDE/X"?
Slave to the Borg, Fremont, CA
Dear Slave -
Every OS has it's bugs and idiosyncrasies. Windows has plenty of problems (as I am sure you know). However, I'm sure you have been in the middle of a vendor finger-pointing session. "It's the OS" says the application vendor. "It's the network" says the OS vendor. "It's the app" says the network guys. And you're left in the middle with no solution.
Well, this is one unfortunate aspect of Linux which hampers it's ability to make progress on the desktop. "It's not Linux, it's the GUI," says Michael, expecting everyone to understand, and yet at the same time not understanding why people then feel uncomfortable with switching from Windows. You probably never thought about it, but Windows contains both a core OS and a GUI, which are, technically, different things. But you don't worry about that, and you probably shouldn't have to. Microsoft spends a lot of money trying to keep it that way (and you pay $ for it).
So if you switch to Linux, that's one more thing you have to worry about. It's part of the geek-pride thing, that Linux is not as easy to manage as Windows. You get a box full of legos and have to put them together yourself. And too many people like it that way for it to change. You see, a lot of hard-core Linux people don't want you, because you represent the bourgeois, the unwashed masses who are currently using Windows and AOL. They don't really want you in their Honeycomb Hideout. You are despised, yet needed for Linux to be successful on the desktop. Ever see one of those robots in the sci-fi films that start shaking, smoking and sparking when they get two conflicting truths? That's what's going on inside a Linux hacker when you say that there are problems with the GUI.
DearSlashdot
Dude ... (Score:3, Funny)
The concluding line to "1. No best browser":
Hopefully it will be a tie - having several 'best' browsers would be awesome!
Can't ... help ... but wonder ...
whether ... Adam Wiggins ... is really ...
Steven [dell.com] ...
Not entirely true (Score:5, Informative)
#2: Prompting for a FS scan I'm using Debian sid and ext3, and I've never seen this problem.
#5: Cleaner redraws GTK2 implements double-buffering, and I've yet to see any flicker in GTK2 programs.
#7: Easy way of sharing files. The Ximian Setup Tools have an easy NFS/Samba shares config tool. Not exactly what he wants, but quite good.
#9: No common editor which supports "soft wrapping." I've never had a problem with the way wrapping is done in Linux editors. If you really want it "soft", you can use Abiword.
Re:Not entirely true (Score:2)
> The Ximian Setup Tools
Uh-huh. Not even Ximian is shipping that... I wish they would!
Re:Not entirely true (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not entirely true (Score:3, Insightful)
Some good points, some I don't get... (Score:4, Interesting)
1. No 'best' browser.
Galean for sure. He even admits this in his write-up, but doesn't like the fact that it has no AA. I've actually seen some screen shots with AA/Gecko somewhere, so I don't imagine this will take long to be fixed.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
I'm not sure I get the point here. Distros are starting to ship with journaling filesystems, so this really should be rare. He mentions not being able to recover the journal, but I've never had this happen to me. It might be a problem, but surely it doesn't deserve to be in the top 10.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
Mostly fixed, especially with distros that use CUPS. I think the configuration isn't so much the problem anymore, as the fact that there's no good interface for using the printer (at least under gnome). I'd like a quick way to itemize the configured printers and check the status of each and a standard 'print' dialog.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Good idea. You don't need any sort of special app. though. Just an additional menu labeled 'How do I' at the top level, nested as needed. Not a technology problem anyway, but a good configuration suggestion.
5. Cleaner redraws.
I haven't noticed this with Gnome 2. Fixed? Or maybe I just have Gnome 2 installed on better hardware - not sure.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Also pretty rare. The only process I ever had do this was Mozilla (and maybe the old Netscape - I can't remember) and the last time it happened was at least six months ago. Anyway, hardly seems worth it when you can just fix the particular offending applications.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Sure. It wouldn't make my top 10 list, but why not.
8. Sound support.
Used to be a pain. Nowadays it 'just works' for me, so I've actually forgotten why it was so hard before. I think this is fixed for most people.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Just tried it in Gedit to make sure - no problems. Probably a config option in other editors.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
This one I agree with completely, although I've heard rumours that some of the 'easy-to-use' distributions have fixed this. Maybe close to being fixed generally?
Changing resolutions (Score:2)
A Bug Report (Score:3, Insightful)
"That's not a bug, That's a feature"
Remember how much fun we had when MS responded to a bug report with that line? Well in a lot of cases it was the pot calling the kettle black. I See far too many cases where someone pointing out a problem is greated with insults instead of being thanked for filing a bug report.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" /. flame directed at people who point out areas that need addressing.
Pogo (Walt Kelly)
This is often true of the Linux fanatics who chase away new users by making it sound like nobody is intrested in solving issuses. They seem to think that everybody working on free software can quit coding and surf for porn because the software has reached perfection. Thankfully there are people who are working on the code while the hotheads are working on the latest
Linux and Lore as a way of Life (Score:4, Insightful)
An example is OutLook and OutLook Express. The slimming down of the offical manuals has reduced many functions to the realm of lore, especially if the user does not know the official jargon with which to ask a question in order to get an answer.
The online help is getting better, but is still infuriating.
The situation in Linux basically is that much of the system is Lore Based. It may be superior in all other regards, and some things may be inherently complex and difficult, requiring study, but the bottom line is that it is still Lore Oriented and Lore Based. It is in fact, to some degree a way of life.
Many consumers are not Lore oriented. Some never learn to set the time on the VCR. This forms a barrier to the introduction of Linux to the Broad masses, the "I just want it to work" crowd. Never mind that other systems often never really work right in the first place. Why would people accept the idea that "computers just crash" otherwise?
This is the problem the Lore Masters face: How to make something that is Lore oriented and Lore based accessible to people who aren't
soft wrapping in vim (Score:2)
set nowrap
set linebreak
If you want various motion commands to work on screen lines, instead of file lines, add things like
map j gj
map k jk
map <down> gj
map <up> gk
map $ g$
map ^ g^
The only problem with Linux is the UI (Score:3, Insightful)
As a developer, I develop where the money is, which right now is Windows. Were it Linux, believe me, I'd be happier.
I might disagree with what the top 10 problems are (a lack of freecell wouldn't be very high on my list), but simply an ease of configuration and basic apps (as he mentioned, browser, e-mail, and so forth). By basic apps, I mean apps that are as simple to configure as their Windows counterparts.
What happens the first time you run Outlook Express? It asks you for the bare minimum of information to receive and send you e-mail. No more than that. Look how simple IE is to run and configure.
I'll grant that the problem with IE now is that people are building web sites that are IE specific. I'd link the article, but I'm too lazy, but it was just in the past few days, so go look yourself.
This problem is simple to fix. Emulate MS. Copy what their browser can do, and you're now compatible. Is that giving in to them? Not so much as it's taking away their advantage.
Same with everything else. Where MS does well, (either by UI or by dominance), emulate and improve.
I use Linux, but I use it for a single thing that I know it's good at: It's my firewall. And frankly, being a very compentent programmer and having almost two decades of experience with the internet, I find IPTABLES to be a bitch to configure. It's more complex than it needs to be. Just like most Linux software.
Here's the general aim at our company with our software: Make it simple enough for the average idiot, but make it configurable that the advanced user can do what they want. If Linux developers would do the same, Linux would benefit a great deal.
XMLize Linux (Score:2)
Linux suffers from having configuration files up the wazoo, in all sorts of different formats, with many requiring manual editing, and unless you've memorized the format or have the book sitting next to you (man in multiscreens sucks, and you may not even have gotten X up yet), you've had it.
I propose having an equivalent XML spec for each configuration file.
Phase one: Generate a spec for each file. Then write a compiler to convert the XML version into the typical *nix config file. Use an XML generator to take a spec and make your configs.
Phase two: Modify the programs to use the XML configs directly. Generate a database of the specs, with comments for each XML element. Write an XML generator that will provide these comments automatically as necessary.
Suddenly, you've got a system where configuration of every part of the OS is part of a unified system. (Sounds a lot like Windows, doesn't it?)
Re:XMLize Linux (Score:2)
The only thing that XML-ifying is going to do is bloat the hell out of the system and make it impossible for Joe User to quickly pop in and change things in his config files. Programs still will have their own specific configuration specifications, but now instead of just using plain text files like most do we get to add the complexity of XML.
I'd suggest as an alternative an
Re:XMLize Linux (Score:2)
Except a single corrupted file doesn't take out the entire systemwide configuration.
I've thought about this too -- there are definite advantages. However, there are also a few drawbacks.
* Some of the difference in config file formats is because a single format can't really cleanly express some of the zany things people can do with their own formats.
* Everything depends on libxml. I hope it doesn't have any bugs and has good performance...currently, it uses much more RAM and CPU time than a simple ad hoc single-line parser.
* XML is hand-editable, but working in "xml tag" units is somewhat less easy than working in "line units". There's been a string convention in UNIX for using the line as the basic unit of config file information, and the editing environments reflect this -- witness Emacs' kill-line (and vi's operate-on-line commands).
Misread it as a cheap shot at Linux Today (Score:2)
But fortunately this was not the case. The Slashdot editors would never do such an immature thing, would they? ;-)
Everything is a PITA (Score:2)
For example, I spent about an hour this morning trying to get Real Player 8 to work under Slackware. What's the problem? I'm not sure - maybe it's a kernel issue, maybe it's a lib problem, maybe it's an X server problem, maybe it's an audio server problem. Do I have kernel version X? Do I have Nvidia's driver Y? Do I have libs A,B,C, and if so, what versions? BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. Total pain in the ass.
Finally I said screw it, booted into Win98. It works. As much as I hate evil Bill, my Win98 works, and hasn't crashed or locked up for months.
I truly believe we need a standard way of doing things to eliminate the cluster-fuck encountered whenever modifying/adding/etc. Not to mention the way fonts can run off the edge of dialog boxes. WTF is that? I've never seen it in Windows, ever.
I really can't blame software companies for not bothering with Linux desktop apps. I use linux daily for server purposes, command-line text editing, etc, but really don't have a lot of free time to blow fighting the Desktop. Sure, I'll keep doing it, for geek fun, but knowing that the Linux desktop has a LONG LONG LONG way to go before being anything for the regular user.
Re:Everything is a PITA (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux has been the "do everything" box... (Score:2)
I think that it's this feature of Linux which causes the problem. As others have said before me, there are things that an "average user" might want from his desktop that a systems administrator wouldn't want from his server box. Who needs decent anti-aliasing on a DNS or email server, after all? And yet, the idea of fragmenting Linux into specific versions (like RH and SuSE and others are trying to do with email, firewall, "personal", database, etc.) makes me very nervous.
I *like* being able to buy one distro and modifying it to behave the way I want it. I don't want to have to buy 15 different specific versions of Linux.
Are the two ideals, a decent workstation and a usable server, mutually exclusive within the same distribution? I hope not. SuSE seems to be the best at marrying these two but then they are busily marketing job-specific (email, database and firewall) distros at the same time.
I'd like to see a better separation of the desktop/server model in the install sequence. Something that addresses all the points in this article but leaves server admins some latitude.
Education Education Education (Score:2)
Linux is more difficult to install and use and configure for 'normal' desktop use because few of you have had to do that for someone else. Few of you have had to support Linux desktops in a 'normal' office environment.
Some answers (Score:2)
"Printing":) CUPS. Easy, web-based, simple management. Add KUPS (for KDE), makes it even better than the Win32 tool.
"Soft Wrapping Editor":) Use VIM, if you live and die by the gui, use GVIM.
"Changing RES":) When you first set up X, select every resolution available to you at the highest color depth. Maybe someone should make an app where the "increase res" and "Decrease res" buttons hit the damn key combo for us. We could make it pretty.
Re:Some answers (Score:2)
Dillo beats opera in the speed department by a mile, and if you're willing to go text-based, I believe lynx renders faster than dillo.
Re:Some answers (Score:2)
It doesn't change the side of the desktop, which is actually what people who remark about this want. What good is a little window on a large virtual desktop? What kind of interface design is hiding large sections of the screen from the user?
Quibbles (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. First, I take issue with the misuse of the word "integrated". "Integration" is not a good thing from an engineering standpoint -- it's a bad thing. Having compatibility between two pieces of software, or conforming to a standard interface, has nothing to do with integration. MSIE is "integrated" into the Windows operating system -- bits of each rely on each other, a break in one bit breaks other stuff, and updating or removing one messes up the other. Modularity -- not integration -- is a good thing. Of course, having modular software with standard interfaces and supporting standard IPC mechanisms is important.
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2. There have been established standards for cut-and-paste interoperability for X some time (Athena era, at least). KDE broke those, and didn't enter compliance until KDE 3.0. If KDE doesn't work with a compliant piece of software, that's KDE's fault. Mozilla is not to blame here.
Prompting for a filesystem scan...Who in the _world_ wants their bootup process interrupted by this busy work? The interoduction of journalling filesystems has greatly helped this (it happens only 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown, rather than about 1 in 4), but it's still bad
Wow. Where to start?
First, AFAIK, in every distro that I've ever seen, there is *no* prompting for a filesystem scan. It happens automatically on unclean boots and periodically. If you don't like the periodical scan, you can disable it. As a matter of fact, in at least Red Hat (and all the others, for all I know) fsck is told to automatically repair filesystems by default. Now, if there is *serious damage* that might result in your filesystem going to the big Disk in the Sky, then yes, you will get asked to make some decisions about what happens. I *much* prefer to know if my filesystem might be totally trashed in a minute than to just have it happen because a system blindly started guessing what to do.
Scanning on an improperly unmounted filesystem is not busy work. If it isn't done, you could wipe out your filesystem, lose data, whatever. You can't possibly convince me that you're better off skipping fsck. If you have some specialized needs -- must boot in small amount of time and data integrity matters nothing, then you can modify your init system to not run fsck. Frankly, though, I think that for almost any user, power users included, the current convention is easily the best. Windows provides a mechanism for skipping scandisk, which is probably the stupidest thing I've ever seen done, as people who have no idea what they're doing consistently skip the check, compounding corruption problems.
I don't know what this 1 time in 20 on an unclean shutdown rather than 1 in 4 business is. A journalling filesystem does not need to run fsck. The entire point of journalling is so that you have a system founded on transactions in such a way that you *cannot* corrupt the filesystem. fsck should *always* run on a non-journalling fs in any distro I've used after a bad shutdown. Yes, it also periodically runs on filesystems, but that's pretty rare, and if you don't like it, it's pretty easy to shut off. I personally think the added data integrity makes it worthwhile, but that's just me.
I have written a total of three device drivers for the kernel...
That's funny...I can't find anything in my kernel source tree grepping for your name. What exactly was it that you wrote, again?
For years I struggled with
Perhaps *you* don't like it, but for some of us that have special needs, having a dumbed down printing system would be incredibly frusterating (I'll give you a pass on this if you just want a new front end). However, I salvaged a nice LaserWriter some time ago. The thing doesn't have enough RAM to print any modern PostScript files, but I *could* write a custom print filter that used the excellent psrender.sh script to render the thing to a bitmap, and then send it to the printer as a fax-compressed bitmap in a postscript document...I can reliably print my files on this aging (but well-made) machine. Try doing the same in the "easy to use" Windows environment...you'd be shelling out for a new printer.
Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things
I don't really care whether this is done or not, as long as it doesn't force a bunch of annoying wizards or assistants on people that don't want them.
When an app has no windows open (or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9)
This is the most idiotic suggestion I've heard in some time. Not all apps have a window. What about xbindkeys? There's a damn good reason for this. What about programs (such as daemons on Windows) that just occasionally pop up a warning dialog? You going to kill them off as well?
Sorry, but if you really have truly stray processes, that's a bug in the program, and the program should be fixed. I see tons of idiots killing off "stray" processes on Windows. "Well, I don't know what this is, so it must not be important". Grr.
Easy way of sharing files
Sounds like a KDE flaw. There are plenty of front ends people have made for this sort of thing. This has nothing to do with Linux. Also, I really dislike the idea of adding a small daemon running as root tied to Konqueror. This is starting to sound more and more like the hideously insecure Windows environment.
Sound support
So you have no complaint?
I'd like to see a decent sound system (maybe via a sound server if there's a way to do so with very low latency, though I think there might actually be an argument for doing this in alsa) where sound goes out hardware channels (and is mixed in hardware) until the channels run out, and then the streams for any other sounds playing automatically fall back to being mixed in software. It's an embarrassment to Linux, especially since Windows does this so well in DirectX. On Linux, you have to have all software mixing (currently high latency and with a nasty tendancy to skip, since existing sound systems don't run out of box with elevated priority) or all hardware mixing (requires a fancy sound card, limited in the number of channels).
No common editor which supports "soft wrapping"
Okay, here I'll agree. There needs to be a set of code written that can do this quickly and flexibly (with an arbitrary set of word separation characters), and then have the thing used throughout various programs. It's kind of sad that Emacs doesn't have a mode to do this (there are modes to add hard returns automatically, but no good native mode that simply displays text that internally has no linefeeds onscreen in multiple lines). This may suck for coding, but for some text this makes sense. The days of the 24x80 terminal are long gone -- even terminal fans are using all sorts of wacky sizes (For example, I use a higher resolution vga display), and handing out text files that are hard-wrapped to 80 characters is just silly.
No easy way to configure X -- especially change resolution on the fly
You're full of it. There are tons of front ends to configure X. It's terribly easy to change resolution on the fly in X -- ctrl alt kp+ and ctrl alt kp-. Changing the desktop resolution during runtime isn't supported (though if you had to you could hack it up via DGA modes)...but why would you want to do this? The only reason people did this in Windows was because they wanted to run games or software that needed a lower resolution. They were *forced* to change their desktop size to change their resolution. X simply doesn't force this upon you. I *always* want my desktop using the maximum possible resolution that my video card/monitor can support. If I want larger fonts, I increase the font size (as one should do...trying to read lower res, pixelated fonts is just stupid). If I want bigger borders or titlebars, I enlarge those. If I want to play a game, I just run the thing and it switches res automatically via DGA calls. XFree 4.x does this nicely and cleanly.
Re:Quibbles (Score:2)
Come on. I've had to manually fsck systems hundreds of times - easily 10 different Unixes. You never want to say no. What are you going to do, fix it yourself? Please. If it's that bad, you are going to have to restore from backups. fsck always knows best. The init scripts should start it with the appropriate options so that it never asks.
Re:Quibbles (Score:4, Informative)
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2.
Um..I don't know about you, but I have yet to find a desktop that can correctly cut and paste text correctly 100% of the time. At best it's a 60% success rate. From KDE, GNOME, Browsers, consoles, etc, rarely will you find a reliable cut/paste system between the apps.
There are tons of front ends to configure X. It's terribly easy to change resolution on the fly in X -- ctrl alt kp+ and ctrl alt kp-.
But, how many people actually know this? Why isn't there a simple little GUI that runs this command for the user? It's unbelievably sad that one has to SEARCH to change the desktop resolution on their computer. It's silly at best.
Perhaps *you* don't like it, but for some of us that have special needs, having a dumbed down printing system would be incredibly frusterating (I'll give you a pass on this if you just want a new front end).
Wasn't that what he was complaining about? A crappy front end? The program itself has always been frustrating, but a nice, stable, secure, and easy to use front end for sharing printers and the like...well, that's what Linux Printing has needed forever.
60%? Er, what method are you using? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd sure like to know what you're using and how you're trying to cut and paste, because (at least in X), 99% of everything responds to the standard select-copy and middle-button-paste. That is, hilight the selection and it's automatically copied. Click the middle mouse button someplace to paste. (I think StarOffice is about the only exception to this I've ever run into.)
Maybe this isn't "intuitive" to a windows user, but you know, so what? C-x,c,v aren't intuitive to me... why should I have to press extra buttons? In the end, it all comes down to a little learning about and investigation into your software environemnt. When exactly did ignorance become OK?
Re:Quibbles (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that sometimes I have to use Ctrl-C/V and other times I have to hilight and middle click. It can be a little annoying at times.
I *much* prefer to know if my filesystem might be totally trashed in a minute than to just have it happen because a system blindly started guessing what to do.
Well, maybe you're more l33t than me, but when it asks me if I want to fix inode xxx my questions often are:
- What is referenced by this inode?
- Why does it need to be fixed?
- What will happen if it isn't fixed?
Looking at a bunch of inode numbers and having to go through and say Y/N to them is, for me, pointless.It's like a car mechanic coming to you and saying "your car is broken, shall I fix area 7 of the car?" without offering (or allowing you to ask) anything about what area 7 is, whats broken with it and what will happen if you don't fix it. In the end, you shrug your shoulders and say "well, I guess so".
Bad analogy i know - but it's the best i can come up with.
Re:Quibbles (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this approach (which Microsoft, Apple, etc. recognized back in the '80s but we still haven't caught up with) is the notion that text is not the only thing that needs to be cut, copied and pasted among and across applications.
Thus, there is inherently a different semantic involved when transferring objects other than text, because X doesn't know how to handle those.
X knows nothing of moving a picture between a charting application and a word processor, for instance. Nor should it.
In order to make up for that deficiency, we're faced with a conundrum: do we take the functionality away from X and hand it to the higher-level desktop environment, or do we go with a hybrid approach, letting X still handle the "plain-text" cut-and-paste functionality and letting the desktop environment handle the rest?
I argue that the hybrid approach is terrible for users, as it adds yet another conditional rule users have to follow when trying to complete a task. This, I believe, was what the author was trying to communicate.
X /can/ handle more sophisticated cut-n-paste (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that most apps don't use it, or they only ever the X clipboard for text. Theoreticaly, X can handle things just as well as Windows or MacOS, but too few developers use it.
himi
Number 4 is done (Score:2, Informative)
at least, on Mandrake number 4 has already been taken care of. i have a menu that says "What to do" and the nested choices (which each have more choices) are:
administer your system
enjoy music & video
play games
read documentation
use office tools
use the internet
view, modify, or create graphics
find files
the programs under these headings are the same ones you can find elsewhere, but the menu entries have been renamed to something descriptive (e.g. "change your password" or "listen to a CD")
its hard to get much more straigh-forward than that, and it is all right there on the "start" menu in plain sight. no reason why other distros couldn't do this, and should be easy for a user to add entries to the menu too.
checkboxes (Score:2)
Re:checkboxes (Score:2, Informative)
Every aspect of the way your GUI looks can be changed. By you. In about 5 minutes.
Unpopular dissenting opinion (Score:2, Redundant)
I've never experienced the lockup mentioned in Konq.
I've never run Xconfigurator from the command-line. I don't even have Xconfigurator.
Look, as far as I can see, this is written from the perspective of a Red Hat user. If you have a beef with RH, take it up with RH.
This does, however, expose another problem: the fact that so many distributions exist, and all have different features/problems. It's impossible for me to participate, as I've used Debian for quite some time and now use Gentoo. KDE, under Gentoo, is sweet but I miss Debian features such as the "menu" utility.
Weird names for stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Example: Internet Explorer self-evidently references a browser, and Netscape at least implies *something* to do with the net. So what's with names like Konqueror and Gecko? they don't have anything to do with what the application DOES.
Another example (remember, novices will *not* know what linux acronyms stand for): Photoshop, Photopaint, GIMP. Which one doesn't sound like it has anything to do with editing images?
This may all seem trivial, but it's typical of the (IMO, deliberate) obfuscation that is endemic with GNU and related software.
Re:Weird names for stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and Konqueror is a take on Netscape Navigator, which is the proper name of the browser that you're calling Netscape.
Outlook, Kmail
Powerpoint, Kpresenter
Acrobat Reader, Xpdf
Visual Studio, GNU Compiler Collection
My Font Whine (Score:2)
I mention that because he complains about anti-aliasing, especially in Mozilla, both on the 10 things needing fixing page, and on the Top N Things That Have Been Solved [trustcommerce.com] page.
Microsoft core TTFs are available here: MS TTFs [microsoft.com]
Install guides and scripts are available several places: http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~jw35/docs/ms-font
The best script to auto-install to RedHat that I've found is here, he has lots of other goodies to boot: http://www.linuxquebec.com/~nomis80/ [linuxquebec.com]
My thoughts about some points (Score:2)
[..] Mozilla is not integrated with any desktop environment, making tasks such as printing, accessing the file open or save dialogs, and cut-n-paste unpleasant.[..]
Err, unpleasant? Mozilla is working really great, for an 1.0.0 version, printing is not a problem, just click File --> Print..., isn't really difficult, the file open/dialog work without any problems as cut/paste works. Are you sure you were using the browser you talked about. Years of trouble with those Netscrap Communicator now the first version of Mozilla makes IE look like a slow dog and you are whinning....
Btw. Kudos to the Mozilla team for this great piece of sw...;-)
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan
Don't think you can blame Linux here, many things can happen after an unexpected shutdown. The real problem is this cheap crap Wintel PC hardware, mosts "Linux server" don't have the possibilty to redirect the BIOS/POST to the serial console, like real server have. Connected to a terminal server to enable logins, no matter at which point the boot fails/stops.
5. Cleaner redraws.
Don't get it, never had any problems with this?
6. Die stray processes, die!
KDE has something like this, which keeps care of runaways, took me a while to find how to disable this annoying feature.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Works great for me, just press [CTRL][ALT][+|-], couldn't be easier...;-)
Soft wrapping editor (Score:2)
I've found two notable exceptions:
I currently use gvim+cream for all my editing and am rather happy with it.
None of the KDE editors in the versions I have tried supported visual wrapping, nor did any of the GNOME editors (gnp does do it, but it's extremely buggy -- when you hit "cursor down", it jumps to the next paragraph instead of the next line, which is unacceptable). Unlike some other poster claimed, gedit, at least in my version (.96), doesn't do visual wrapping. For KDE's showcase editor Kate it's apparently in the works.
Yes, you can use something like abiword, but honestly, abiword is generally a PITA and uses the ugliest screen fonts in the known universe, and who would want to start OpenOffice for editing a text file? Generally, I consider the lack of a properly behaving, usable text editor a big problem and would contribute financially to any project aiming to fix this.
Changing Resolution on X (Score:2)
God that was hard. Seriously folks, ask before you go off shouting about Linux being terrible. 9 out of 10 complaints I've recieved have been about problems that have solutions. I know some can be arcane, but hop on IRC or e-mail a guru before assuming.
Lots of built-in apps good?! Hello? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is keeping the user busy with built-in apps really what an OS should be striving to do?! When Microsoft keeps the user busy without having to download additional software, it's considered anti-competitive.
Give me a good application search/install/update facility (Debian apt, anyone?), but PLEASE don't give me a crapload of built-in things to 'keep me busy for years'.
Quibbles and bits (Score:3, Troll)
So if one browser gets better, and then because of the pressure another gets better, too, this is bad? Maybe we should remove some features from one of them to make another look better? It's sad that we would have to downgrade the capability of something before we are able to make a choice.
I rewrote my rc/boot scripts myself from scratch. I haven't had this problem for 3 years.
We need better standards among printers. Much of the problem is due to so many different kinds of printers, different drivers, different data formats. One single standard is needed and vendors must be force to comply.
I still haven't figured out how to do a number of things on my MS Windows 98 machine. For example, how do I tell Windows that my hardware clock runs as UTC and that it should still show me my local time.
This is more of a programming problem. Certain programmers think that they need to first erase the screen then rewrite it. Back before Linux, I wrote an editor for DOS, and I wrote my own screen window manager for it. The editor could simply open up window objects and update them much like curses, but simpler. When refresh was called, the screen was updated, but there was no flicker because it was never erased first. It simply updated everything, period. Parts that were changing content just changed. Parts that were not changing, didn't. And mine was so fast I could still do scrolling by full screen rewrites even on a 16 MHz machine.
Programming problem again. Teach programmers how to deal with the real world.
Why do you want access to my files? Leave me alone.
Like printers, this is a vendor problem. Find vendors who do a better job of not always changing the driver-to-hardware interface, and favor them over the vendors that keep screwing people over with the next board version. There is no reason every piece of hardware needs to have its own driver disk included, even for MS Windows (and this is a big cause of many system problems in Windows, too ... Bill Gates has said so).
What you are asking for is to show text as if it had newlines, when in fact it has none. Maybe you should be writing HTML instead of plain ASCII text. Don't mail it to me w/o newlines. But if you want to be able to reformat a range of text, maybe you should try emacs.
I just changed my resolution on the fly while entering this line of text by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus combo. Then I pressed Ctrl-Alt-KeypadPlus to revert back.
The past few years have been great for linux... (Score:3, Insightful)
I gave Linux up for the past 2 years or so to be using OS X and Windows XP because "they worked". I deal with computer (WinNT, Win2K and Solaris) problems all day at work - it's not something I wanted to do when I got home. Using ones home PC shouldn't be like work.
I recently got rid of XP and installed Mandrake 8.2 (on my laptop none the less) and my god how the Linux world has changed while I was gone. The PCMCIA configuration used to freeze Dell laptops (you had to edit the config.opts to make it not prob a certain range). Sound used to be much harder to configure (ESS Maestro 3 support is a newer feature). And the NVidia X server was much harder to configure.
When I loaded it up this time I went to the console ONCE after installing and following the easy instruction at nvidia.com to install X. I then edited the inittab file (although even for that the system prompted me after testing and asked to do it for me).
Upon bootup, gnome asked what I wanted the system to look like (as opposed to assuming for me and making me look for the theme configuration), asked a couple basic questions concerning mail configuration and I was in. The configuration tools in Mandrake and Gnome are MUCH better than the Windows counterparts (comparable to OS X's).
It works now, it's back to being my stable system not because I want to learn how it work like I did several years ago but because it works - it's the best tool for the job.
I'm Microsoft free (at home) now - not because of moral standings but because they don't make a product that I want to use.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Insightful)
He's saying that these things should be easy+intuitive.
Sure, YOU and I know the incantations, key combinations and so on to get things done, but if Linux is to enjoy widespread use among the not-interested-in-RTFM population this stuff needs to get easier. Like bleedin obvious.
Provided that widespread use is the goal of your project (I think it's safe to say Gnome/KDE has that goal) it's wise to listen to complaints like these.
Re:Sheesh (Score:5, Interesting)
Gosh, how about the nice thing we call choice?
If they were all very good at doing what they do - that's fine. Sadly, they're not. Whenever I'm in Linux I *always* yearn for IE when I'm browsing, no matter what browser I use. The author's point is that all the current options aren't that amazing, and all have pretty big faults.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
Damn, if only this was adjustable, oh yeah...
Not the most obvious thing in the world to change though - and something IMO the default should be automatically done in the background.
3. Printing needs to be easier to configure.
It can't get much easier that printconf (for Red Hat users).
Ok, in Mandrake it was pretty easy to get my printer working, granted.
4. Make it easy for the user to find out how to do things.
Yeah, reading a book or taking a class (or searching online) is so hard. When will people realize that a computer it a techinical thing? You have to be willing to do a little homework, even with a mac (if you've never used one).
Yeah, good viewpoint. Why make things easier and more intuitive when the users could just get off their lazy asses and go study to use the machine!
Please. Most people will pretty quickly pick up Windows, and most things are pretty easy to work out how to do. There are stable, easy to use, tried and tested configuration screens that work. Complexity and a steep learning curve does not bring superiority.
You don't have to lose power and control by making things easier to use.
5. Cleaner redraws.
Ok, sure.
6. Die stray processes, die!
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE?
Obvious and transparent, no?
7. Easy way of sharing files.
You like in windows, where I find places like Doctors offices "sharing" all their patient records on the internet? Check out programs like share sniffer if you want to find them too.
So, because some people stupid, things should be made much more complicated than they need to be for everyone else? Cars should be made harder to drive - keep all those damn idiots off the roads.
Yeah, right.
8. Sound support.
Ok, if you want professional audio production cards, you got me, but for most other sound cards there just isn't a problem.
I can't say I've had much of a problem with my cards, but they've been pretty standard items.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
Well... pico does this (ctrl-j)
You'd have thought more of the more popular editors would have it (at least as an option). It's a pretty basic thing to have.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
Actually, it couldn't be easier to change resolutions on the fly. Hold ctrl and alt, then hit - or + on the numberic key pad. This cycles you through all your selected resolutions, on the fly. Just make sure you selected all the ones you want when you setup x (Red Hat users use Xconfigurator to select resolutions).
Couldn't be easier? I beg to differ. Once you *know* that you press that combination, and you've already gone through the process of having all your resolutions and refresh rates configured, yeah, it's easy. What really *is* easy is this:
Right click on desktop -> properties -> settings
[or Start -> Control Panel -> Display settings]
Drag the slider to the resolution you want. Select colour depth. Press OK.
No text config file that you need to setup with all the options your system can support.
Yes, Linux should be more powerful and dynamic than Windows - that's part of the whole point of it. However, things can be easier without the expense of control.
Re:Sheesh (Score:3, Insightful)
If they were all very good at doing what they do - that's fine. Sadly, they're not. Whenever I'm in Linux I *always* yearn for IE when I'm browsing, no matter what browser I use. The author's point is that all the current options aren't that amazing, and all have pretty big faults.
Are you serious? I'll assume you are. I personally (and I'm sure a lot of other Linux users are the same) can't stand IE. It has its good points, one being the almost perfect offline browsing, but the rest? I can't stand it's boring as hell user interface (where are the tabs, and why no google search from the location bar?), and the way it completely screws up processing web pages. It's also been weighed down by MSN branding recently. However, if you must have IE, you can run it in the latest builds of Wine I've heard. I don't think it's perfect, but it's certainly usable.
Yeah, good viewpoint. Why make things easier and more intuitive when the users could just get off their lazy asses and go study to use the machine!
A few months ago, I would have agreed with this statement. Maybe it's Linux turning me into an elitist or something ;) However, really, there is a limit. Computers are hundreds of times more complex than cars, and it takes months to learn how to drive. Some people seem to think that you can continue to make things more and more intuitive and easy until you don't even have to think to operate computers. I'm beginning to think that's wrong. There will always be people who drop off the end, those who can't or won't learn new things.
You can add all the online help you want (and Linux does need better online help), but the idea that somehow if the user can't figure out how to do something it is by definition the developers fault is flawed. Maybe the developer could have made it better - but there is a limit.
Ever tried ctrl-alt-escape in KDE? Obvious and transparent, no?
Huh? And I guess Ctrl-Alt-Delete to kill processes is more obvious? Having a nice little button to do this would be pointless waste of screen space, this is just something that people will have to learn if they need it.
You'd have thought more of the more popular editors would have it (at least as an option). It's a pretty basic thing to have.
If I understand this right, emacs in text fill mode does it. For editing text, this usually isn't what you want, for writing documents you should be using a word processor. It is possible however.
Re:Sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)
Not once have I ever had to "do a little homework" to figure something out on my Mac, nor on my PC. Everything I know about those two computing platforms have been learned from experience and trial and error.
I cannot say the same about Linux, where I frequently had to search google to find out how to do things that should be (in my opinion) simple.
I find it especially ironic that you're arguing over whether an obscure keystroke used for changing resolutions is good or not, when the problem could be solved by adding a 'monitors' applet to the control panel (which no one can be bothered to write). As is so common with Linux, it doesn't have to be good, just 'good enough'.
Re:Sheesh (Score:2, Insightful)
3. Cups - redhat uses lprng (atleast it did last time I used it) cups is much easier to configure
Red Hat Linux 7.3 now includes both Cups and LprNG. I agree with you, for many reasons, cups is better.
Re:Sheesh (Score:2, Funny)
No no, Alt+f4 is a Windows thing. Here's what does the trick:
1.) Open a Shell window
2.) Log in as Root
3.) Then type 'ps axu | grep my_process_name' (replacing 'my process name' with the name of your window...' and get the GID or UID to indetify it.
4.) Type in: "wcls -xywzvbeha p:(put in the U/GID here
That is so much more powerful than Alt+f4 because once you put in the window ID then you can't possibly close the wrong program by accident!
Damn you Windows users are thick! heh
Re:no easy way to configure X? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Linux slogan--Dammed is you do, dammed I you don't
Re:I tend to agree.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though I consider myself a quintessential computer geek, it even gets tiring for me having to figure out things like why KDE 3.0 won't compile according to the directions. Sometimes I just want it to work, because I have other things I need to be doing instead.
I'd like to make sure that I also state how incredibly cool KDE is, as well as many other linux-based apps. Kudos to all of the developers who have contributed their time and talent. BUT...I hope that we move away from a seemingly pervasive mode of thinking that says, "oh well, they'll figure it out...". Linux developers need to start thinking like end users. Even if it means covering the smallest of details, what you end up with is a very polished app that leaves little to go wrong. This is not time unwisely invested, because even for users that are technically inclined, it's still annoying when things don't work as they're intended.
the funny thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the funny thing is... (Score:3, Informative)
resolution.
Are you saying that the desktop manager (KDE/Gnome/etc) adjust their taskbars and other niceties to the new viewable dimensions when ctrl/alt/+/- are hit? They certainly don't do that on the Redhat, Caldera, Mandrake and Debian installations I've used over the past 3 years.
Re:Observations (Score:2, Interesting)
I bet there are some things you hate about Linux but, for others, are no problem. For me, it's multiple monitor support. Windows handles this effortlessly - Linux is a PITA. IMO.
And, that's what it boils down to - "IMO". People want things to work. To 99% of the population there's no difference between a GeForce9934 and a Trident-2x3 - they both display video, so whats the problem? You say that people should edit their startup scripts. Hell no, computers are for making hard tasks easy and, for a regular Joe, editing obscure files is hard.
"Linux is only free if your time has no value." and people don't want to spend a more on their software than they have to.
Re:Observations (Score:2)
Re:I've been bitten by the Konq. mouse wheel issue (Score:2)
In fact, I love the way the scroll wheel behaves under KDE (and most GTK appsa): The widget where the mouse is over get's scrolled. I get so irritated, when I have to use a Windows box, because of the different wheel behaviour. I always have to click to activate the widget, which I find very distracting.
Anyway, I see this bug as a feature. Just my 0,02 EUR.
Re:Scroll wheel (Score:2)
Normally, you *never* have scrolling forms containing controls. Doing so is bad, bad UI design. However, in the case of web browsers, you have a scrolling page which contains widgets which may scroll. If the widget passes under the mouse cursor in the scrolling page (hard to avoid), then all of a suddent the widget starts grabbing the scroll events.
I don't really see the point of having the scroll wheel interact comboboxes either. I mean, a click and a movement of the mouse actually lets you see what you're choosing from.
Re:Scroll wheel (Score:3, Insightful)
I know several people who have gotten bitten by this behavior... clicking on a drop-down box to select something (say a date) then trying to scroll down to the bottom of the page to hit submit. Unknowingly they just changed the month of their flight from June to July!
These people never meant to use the scroll wheel to select the value of the control, so it doesn't occur to them to check that they didn't just change something.
Doug
Re:true.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I reported this bug to bugs.kde.org a long time ago. There were other people that reported duplicates of the same bug, all complaining about how annoying it is. Try using the mouse wheel when you have Slashdot moderation access! More than once I have accidently moderated someone. Or, try navigating Freshmeat.net, where the long filter bars at the top use onChange to trigger them as soon as the mousewheel touches it. That is bad in itself, but worse with this Konqueror bug.
The problem is that as far as I know, the KDE team completely ignored all of the bug reports (there were several) about this. KDE has done a wonderful job with a lot of features, but I'm worried that it has a case of featuritis (or at least app-idis). People work on new eye candy all the time, and add new enhancements (look at the plan for 3.2). Rarely do I see any actual bugs fixed, though, other than crashes and security holes. Granted, those can be the worst kinds of bugs, but user-interface bugs can be just as bad when they get publicised like this!
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do you draw the line? Maybe I think you're an idiot because you don't do everything in binary. Yeah, that's it. You've just had it too cushy with your fancy assembly language.
Let's force people to interact via a series of switches mounted on the front of their box. That way we'll be sure that they really understand exactly what is going on. If you don't want to exert the effort required to master such a system, screw you. You're not worthy anyway. No great loss.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but does this make sense?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)