Linux Needs Critics 1127
An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas berates the fact that the world of Linux almost entirely lacks critics. In fact, he says, Linux people tend to see genuine critical evaluation as a bad thing. FTA: 'The problem with this anti-criticism approach is that it's damning Linux to an eternity of navel gazing. Nothing can ever get any better. The best hope we have are the instances where a few bright sparks, with their heads screwed on the right way, get together and make something cool (as happened with, say, Firefox back in the day). But that's rare and can't be relied upon.'"
I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. (Score:3, Interesting)
Mostly from uneducated haters, but there's no lack of it.
Oh, and in lots of cases, it IS ready for the desktop. Either in a managed environment with a guru at the top, for those who know what they're doing, and for locked down spoon fed distros.
Maybe Linux needs more trolling journalists? (Score:3, Interesting)
From mailing lists and public bug trackers, my sense is that there are plenty of critics, and they are frequently able to find the right place to criticize.
I think that the extent of criticism within the system reduces the need for lobbying in the press to get your pet peeve addressed.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. What a strange article.
I would even go so far as to say that Linux (and the Free Software ecosystem that surrounds it) has a lot more critics than closed software - or at least more effective critics.
Large software companies pay PR departments to generate positive coverage. Most Open Source projects have no PR effort behind them at all. So criticism of the software is less likely to be drowned out by astroturf.
Re:Hit the nail on the head (Score:4, Interesting)
Well none of that is (completely) true. It's (mostly) just your perception. Also your analogy is nearly meaningless, speak plainly.
I think the biggest flaw of Linux for a Windows user is that it's different. Of course that flaw is the same for an old Unix user too, Linux is just different enough from Unix to be a little confusing too.
I am not sure what "community" you are referring to, there are several of them that operate independently and have little interaction with one another. I tend to favor LKML, but that's a highly technical community. There is usually a LUG in most areas, if you want a generally far more laid back community that might actually help a new person out.
Most people on the internet would rather insult you and beat you over the head when you ask questions that have been answered before, that's not something that is unique to the Linux crowd. If you wish to use the Internet to help you out with learning Linux (or with learning just about anything else), you'll either have to tolerate the bullshit people do or find some other resources.
Re:Nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
Only if you happen to be a programmer and have no life.
Er (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you've heard some of the non fanboi mac users rant..
They are brutal
Especially about the OS X finder which while working isn't where it needs to be yet.
Don't get them started on the Dock.
Re:The problem is more complicated... (Score:1, Interesting)
Been there, done that, wrote the five part article, got the talking down from Bruce Perens himself. Bruce, like many in the OSS community, is a great guy. But the community suffers from a form of tunnel-vision where they can't see how the alternatives can possibly provide superior usability. They keep falling back on the tired, "but you don't get all these great programs at your finger-tips with Windows or Mac!" Which completely ignores the variety of issues with code that can't be in the repositories, the constant library hell present in most Linuxes, and the lack of usability in the desktop systems. The only real response to these criticisms is that "Debian keeps its repository up to date at all times". Not really an answer. More like avoiding the criticism.
Posting anonymously, because I really don't want to get into it again. I'm not the one doing the day to day work on Linux, nor have I managed to find the time to handle day to day activities. So I'll just leave it at that. And again I'll stress that Bruce is a great guy. Don't think that I have a personal issue with him in any way, or that he is callous or otherwise close-minded. Bruce is very much one of the "good guys". (Speaking of which, last I heard Bruce was working on a new version of the LSB that should hopefully reduce many of the cross-distro problems in the future. Here's to hoping he succeeds.)
I only pick on Bruce a smidge because the issue is representative of a greater issue in the community. The only person inside the community who has recognized the issue and tried to turn the ship slowly but surely is Mark Shuttleworth. That's why Ubuntu is such a popular version of Linux. Because Shuttleworth is attempting to directly address the usability concerns. But he's only a figurehead and he knows it. No one person wields significant power over the community and their decisions. Which is why he moves so slowly. Baby steps.
Re:What Linux needs is (Score:3, Interesting)
Who are the ones that can't? I spend a bit of time of freenode with other developers of many different open source projects. If I go into a channel and ask why some feature works a certain way or why something is missing or broken, I generally get a response that they could use help in fixing the issue.
Re:Here, have some criticism (Score:2, Interesting)
Commercial apps for linux are few and far between.
Games on linux (that are available for Windows and OSX) basically suck and are usually bad clones of games that are awesome on other OSes.
I feel I have to step in. While this is true to a degree it's not the fault of linux. Unless game's developers port their code to linux or better yet use APIs like openGL over DX then games on linux will never happen in a meaningful way.
My main rig runs windows vista, why? Because vista has DX10 and all my games run under it without installing extra applications or APIs.
The day and hour the games I play come out in a linux version then I will wipe that vista partition so quick your head will spin.
It's a massive catch 22, Publishers won't publish linux games due to the lack of market. There is a lack of market as Gamers *MUST* use windows to play their games.
My Ideal install on my main rig is a small kernel that when booted takes me to a commandline menu:
Choose Action:
1) Play a Game
--1) Company of Heroes
--2) Battlefield 2
--3) Back to main Menu
2) Install a Game
--1) From CD/DVD ROM
--2) From ISO
--3) Back to main Menu
3) Uninstall a Game
--1) Company of Heroes
--2) Battlefield 2
--3) Back to main Menu
and that's it. We are talking a 500Mb install tops (to allow for gfx APIs and libraries), with a 20Mb memory footprint.
I don't want anymore than that on my machine, my rig is only for playing games, my laptop is for working on, so a heavier install with GUI and more apps is on it.
How'd linux get this far? (Score:2, Interesting)
Without critics Linux can't improve, yet it has improved steadily year after year.
Something just doesn't add up here.
Re:constructive Criticism. (Score:3, Interesting)
Says that the OSS community doesn't really care about Groupware, which is something I've been saying for years and years.
How I'd love to drop Exchange for good. Wow, what a dream. And people always go nuts when you say something like, "I had to have Exchange."
They say stupid shit like, "D00d U shuld use Evolution," which just misses the entire point of Exchange...
Sigh. Old rant. Anyway, I agree with you. To throw stones at another sacred cow, fricking OpenOffice still needs a lot of work. Exchange, Office, and a good web browser are the three things we have to have, and we've only really got 1 of 3.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. Mostly from uneducated haters, but there's no lack of it.
My problem is the opposite, uneducated Linux developers. I'll submit a bug asking for feature parity with Windows or OS X and get a response back that clearly misunderstands how those OS's work. I then spend a week educating the person and explaining to them why (from and end user perspective) the way Linux does things now really isn't better and what the other OS in question does. In the the end they usually agree, it would be cool to improve Linux to work that way, but too much work or would be incompatible with other distros, so they ignore it.
Alternately, I submit a usability bug (I have worked as a UI/usability expert in the past) and then spend hours trying to explain to a server engineer working on making a desktop, why their design ignores all the research in the field and (if they did testing) is going to be a huge problem when they test it.
Don't get me wrong. I like and use Linux. In many ways it has leapt ahead of other OS's and provides a model for them to follow. It just does have some serious flaws and problems that have gone unaddressed for a long time and don't seem likely to be fixed anytime soon.
Oh, and in lots of cases, it IS ready for the desktop. Either in a managed environment with a guru at the top, for those who know what they're doing, and for locked down spoon fed distros.
I agree it can work and save money in certain uses.
Re:because that is how sound cards work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Agreed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to be too critical, but it sure reads as if you also needs to calm down and take a breath. Fanboism [urbandictionary.com] has been around long before there was linux, unix, or even computers for that matter. And don't get me wrong, I too at times need to step back and simply ignore the illogical rants from all sides.
I read TFA and Keir's blog post [pcworld.com] to which he was referring and all I can say to Keir is that he needs to grow thicker skin. If he intends to continue as a journalist on any topic he'll need to train himself to ignore the rants that make no sense.
In reading the responses in his blog post I'd say he had comments from the open source user community but absolutely no comments from the open source developer community. And he had plenty of Apple and Windows fainbois joining in for some perverse circle jerking so I don't see any basis for the wide stroke with which he paints the open source community.
What Keir needs to understand is that criticism of open source is not going to be focused and centralized on his personal blog, it takes place within the developer community and all one has to do is read the archives of the mailing lists to see the flames of debate that take place within the developer community.
As far as convincing your PHB goes, I'd suggest you hit him up with the language he understands, fixed costs, gross margins, return on investment, pay back, etc. If he is making business decisions based on some end user's wailing on an obscure journalist blog you have much bigger problems than fanbois who get you tweaked.
So lets all just chill and let the fanbois be fanbois.
Re:Nonsense (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:You should look into linuxhaters (Score:5, Interesting)
For some reason which I have yet to understand, they picked option 2 and ALSA was born. Meanwhile, FreeBSD just kept OSS in the tree and kept up to date with (backwards-compatible) improvements to the API (and ABI). To play a sound on FreeBSD I (as a developer) open /dev/dsp, issue ioctls to set the sample rate, number of channels, and so on, and then write the data there. In total, it's around five lines of code (less if you want the default sample rate and number of channels) and uses the standard UNIX system calls so I don't need to link (and worry about the existence of) any libraries. Starting with FreeBSD 4, the kernel did mixing in software if the sound card didn't support it. Starting with FreeBSD 5 (around 2003), the kernel would automatically assign new virtual channels whenever a new app opened /dev/dsp. With FreeBSD 8 (7 if you add some out-of-tree patches) each vchan gets its own volume control and the mixing performance is improved with a new fixed-point algorithm.
Now let's compare this to Linux. On Linux, the OSS APIs may work. For some value of 'work,' because there are four different ways in which OSS may be implemented on Linux:
In some of these cases, only one program can be using the OSS device at once. In others, you get proper sound mixing. In the OSS 4 configuration, you get per-vchan volume controls. Most Linux systems, however, ship with ALSA. Unlike OSS, which is supported on *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, and so on, ALSA is Linux-only. It is also very poorly documented. Because ALSA isn't ubiquitous (and for a long time didn't handle mixing), a lot of systems started shipping with userspace sound daemons, which did this mixing. These all came with their own APIs, their own client libraries, and a complete inability to work together.
The Linux solution to this mess? Add another userspace sound daemon, but this time call it 'standard'.
Re:They are in there (Score:3, Interesting)
Could you give some examples? I don't feel like googling for "young one complain language foss project crappy fork code get distro use".
Ok dammit I just did, first result was your parent comment.
Re:Let me be the first critic (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone saying Linux lacks consistency is looking at Windows through rose-colored glasses, and possibly ignorant of the current repository based Linux architecture. Windows is consistent, but none of the applications you get are, and you have to go hunt down some random application from some dodgy site to get anything other than checking email and surfing the web done. That's 180 degrees from Linux, where applications to do almost everything you need are right in the software repositories. Just use the install new programs application (which actually does like it says, unlike Windows) and install what you want.
There are benefits and drawbacks to every OS. It depends on what you're looking to get out of it as to what you choose. I personally want a system that does what I want (even if it takes a little hacking), rather than choosing from what it allows me to do. Therefore, I choose Linux. You're obviously quite happy with choosing something predefined but easy, so Windows is great.
Underdog psychology (Score:3, Interesting)
Self-identified underdog psychology is the worst of in-group/out-group behaviors.
When a group forms and identifies itself as an underdog, it closes ranks and will not criticize the prevailing dogma because it perceives itself as too weak already.
This is in dramatic contrast to psychological compensation, or cognitive dissonance, wherein people who paid too much for an art deco Macintosh need to invent some moral superiority to what they do as no evidence suggests technical superiority.
Linux advocates can escape underdog psychology by looking at the positive data first: Linux has a firmly entrenched market share doing what it does best. It will always have this base and it has a growing hobbyist base, which is where all the interesting stuff (IMO) occurs in computing anyway.
Anti-Microsoft rants, etc. conceal the fact that Windows still rules the desktop and Linux may never be ready to take on the software base of win32 applications developed over the past thirty years. When Linux users rant at Microsoft, they reinforce the sense of inferiority that fuels the underdog complex.
We are not magicians (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let me be the first critic (Score:3, Interesting)
Cost/benefit analysis kicks in. It really depends on the user and what they hope to do with their computer. I have seen people give up on certain hardware because the benefits of GNU -- the developer-friendly environment, the reliability, the lack of restrictions on use, etc. -- far outweighed the benefits of having that hardware functional.
Re:Let me be the first critic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Let me be the first critic (Score:3, Interesting)
Video - NVidia : On most distros (perhaps with adding a repository in a GUI) just works
Intel : As Above just works
ATI : As above Just works
Audio Cards : As above all the ones listed just work
(Note many people had problems installing Vista with manufacturers drivers, but their Linux system worked fine...)
Many of the Linux drivers for these were written by IBM/Redhat etc.. to support paying customers, or by the manufacturers
Your Video capture card is totally different, it is a relatively low volume specialist card and since the people in the Linux community writing the drivers are all working for free, in most cases they are happy if the system works for them and the hardware they have, they have no incentive to write drivers for every new card that comes on the market. I can understand why the manufacturer only supports Windows, and can understand that they do not want to support a "minority" operating system, but please note that because of this the card will not work on earlier versions of windows or (if it is an earlier card) on later versions of Windows, the manufacturers attitude to writing drivers to work on earlier or later versions of Windows will be the same as writing drivers for Linux or Intel Mac, there is not enough demand
Re:Nope, it's the putative new users problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes you feel like what Linux lacks the most is simply "common sense"
Linux, IMHO, lacks an 80/20 filter. Windows has a pretty good one in parts; menus hide things that haven't been used recently. Linux types are so big on making sure that it can do *everything* they lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the time a single option would have sufficed. Allowing an extended set of choices is fine but there has to be some way to hide it so that life can be simple. Sometimes people actually want to get something accomplished and not just play with their OS.
No critics?! (Score:3, Interesting)
What about, oh I don't know, the entirety of the mainstream software industry? Every major proprietary developer? Every company and individual that has ever looked at the (generally cost-free) open source software and yet decided to go with something else? They're all critics you know, and they're all the people Linux (et al) are working very hard to try to impress.
And there are internal critics too- just look at the so-called "distribution wars". Every time a new distro starts, it is generally as a response to something that the developers believe is being done wrong. Take Ubuntu- originally it was launched to take the tech of Debian and put it in a professional development environment (specifically, regular releases more than once every 3 years). Take also KDE/GNOME/XFCE/etc. All of them are constantly competing on their respective merits, and all of their adherents are constantly criticizing the rivals.
Criticism is there if you look for it. It just doesn't have as many critics as Windows, due entirely to the fact that it isn't quite so mind numbingly awful.
A little tale of an epic Linux fail (Score:4, Interesting)
Some couple of years ago, Brazil's government cut taxes for "popular" computers - low-end machines that came with Linux out-of-the-box. The idea was to create a competitive atmosphere and offer a cheap alternative to Windows XP.
This was an epic fail. The UI was so badly done - obviously by a Linux nerd who spent too much time in his life with fluxbox, that Linux looked, 2 years ago, something out of the stone age.
Massive uninstalls was what happened. A great time for computer technicians to install XP.
You talk to people who used those out-of-the-box Linux and they shudder just to hear about it. They describe it as something terribly outdated. The other day I was talking to a sales guys at the audio/video section at FNAC (a French chain also present in Brazil). I told him he should install Linux on one the PlayStation 3 units and show people how flexible the PS3 is - you get a BluRay DVD player, a video game that's the best on the market AND a nice operating system for the home. Do you know what he said? "Oh, but isn't Linux kinda old - it looks very old." Of course, I was thinking about gorgeous Englightement TerraSoft used on PS3's, but he was thinking about the pathetic thingies he saw.
Now, you might not care about killing a niche for Linux on a big market, but many people do. But when linux developers act like autistic nerds (when they're not autistic), then it's suicidal.
See: http://www.linux.com/articles/59637 [linux.com]
Look at the source (Score:1, Interesting)
It's Keir Thomas. He wrote Beginning Ubuntu Linux.
I bought it when I switched to Ubuntu with 5.10. Since I started way back with Commodore but was still a Linux noob, I though I'd review the book for /., because wouldn't it be great if dot'ers knew about a good book they could hand to people with the Ubuntu LiveCD? That'd be very useful.
Trouble was, it wasn't a good book. It was half bad, and reviewing a bad book is much harder than a good book because you have to dig very thoroughly to be sure you're not missing the good bits. But in the end, the flawed book couldn't be THE good book that dot'ers needed to know about, so I dropped the project.
Keir, here's your constructive criticism:
First, the web is large. Anything you say about Linux, or about anything with fans, will send dipshits to their keyboards to flame you. Emails and forum posts are in no way the same sort of general feedback as a theater audience. Hecklers and morons are amplified.
Second, for godssakes man, you aren't talking about Linux, you're talking about Linux Desktop Distros.
Third, and related, if you're going to talk about criticism about Linux Desktop Distros then at /least/ review how user and developers feedback works for all the projects that make up a distro.
I'll leave it at that. Keir, I don't think you're an idiot, so I think you can expand those points to consider what they mean. Next time you open your mouth to make another quick prop of your pundit career, think about digging in as journalist. Then maybe you'll get positive feedback from people who know what they're talking about, to balance the twits a little. Right now you're largely ignored as a misinformed twit yourself.
(AC because we share a publisher, and I might want another contract someday.)
Re:Nope, it's the putative new users problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Weird. Every time I stick a piece of hardware in a Windows box it doesn't work. Then I install the drivers from the CD and it still doesn't work. Next I get the drivers from the vendors site and then it sometimes works. In the final step I figure out the chipset and get a driver from its creator and then it works most of the time.
With Linux all I do is check about the state of the hardware support before buying and most of the time it just works without doing any of the above.
Re:Nope, it's the putative new users problem (Score:3, Interesting)
You might be able to get new users when they're switching out their old hardware, but what about people who want to give this Linux a shot but don't want to invest in new hardware. They'll see it won't work and bam, bad impression of Linux for a long time, if not forever. Virtually everyone on slashdot is not your average user so you gotta stop thinking like you do and think thats just the way it is. What we see is the real problem isn't the problem that the average user sees. We gotta solve their problem, not try to make them understand that they're just doing it wrong.
Re:Volunteering (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also needlessly wasteful and slower to launch a UI app across a slow network, not to mention extraordinarily difficult to script GUI apps.
Let's see.....we then have to worry about which widget set you have installed in order to ensure that the GUI will display correctly, and of course, you need the entire X window infrastructure installed, just to do anything, when the app you're configuring is some tiny little daemon that will work in runlevel 3 (or lower).
I'm getting bored now, so I hope you'll accept the first batch of reasons as proof enough that your position is indefensible.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux. (Score:3, Interesting)
Your post would also be far more interesting without a "wah wah wah people disagree with me" on the end.