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I find this guy to be very ill informed about the current state of gnome. If he bothered to look at phoronix.com, the ubuntu packages repository etc. He'd know that gnome is currently undergoing a massive overhaul with the gnome-shell interface. I've got it up and running at the moment and it integrates all the 3d graphics stuff directly into the desktop and window manager. It basically joins the two programs into a single app and it changes the way you use gnome. it took from windows 95 until windows XP for the windows default theme to change from boring grey bars. Linux having some of that corporate familiarity isn't a bad thing especially when you consider all the themes available on the internet. Best of both worlds exists in your ubuntu install today.

Now that said Linux does have issues. Running games isn't really one of them. I'm currently running Mirror's Edge, UT3, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Overlord, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, and Prototype all in wine without showstopper issues (this is at 2560x1600 on a 30" dell LCD on an nvidia 260gtx btw). Major platform issues are falling away each day.

My two most obscure pieces of internal hardware are tv tuner cards and both have driver projects underway to get them working. One of them doesn't work right now only because the linuxtv guys didn't know what tuner the card was using, turns out its one they already have a driver for they just need to init it. Intel wireless works and works well, network manager is handling network detection/encryption perfectly on my 4965ABGN card. Pulseaudio ahs come a long way and is rapidly stabilising.

Moving away from internal to external components I have two pieces of really obscure hardware. One is a Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar joystick, and the other is a Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 joystick. Wine and SDL are both getting support for force feedback and I have tested that code with my hardware and it works. The HOTAS Cougar is supported by linux but the compiler and cougar programming language is not supported. That said, wine can run the compiler and programming application and can compile but not upload new configurations to the cougar.... At least not until I install the USB patch for wine which claims to support any windows USB driver. If that's true then I will have eliminated all hardware reliance on windows.

Now if anyone is interested I am writing an application in GTK which will detect and calibrate joysticks similarly to the now defunct jscalibrator application, however I am planning to add force feedback effects support to the program. Help with it would be appreciated. I already have it detecting/using device nodes for an unlimited number of joysticks/gamepads.

In closing I'd like to say that Linux has problems. Lots of problems, but default themes aren't one of them. Instead of focusing on the irrelevant, try focusing on items that affect how people use their machines. I took gnome-mplayer from being a rubbish app noone wanted to use, added multi file add/remove to the playlist, added digital tv support, langauge/subtitles and a couple aspect ratio settings and now it's a widely used application and a lightweight media player classic clone. What Linux needs is not more themes but more good ideas for ease of use implemented in applications. Things like networkmanager, pulseaudio, a joystick configuration app based on HAL, these are things people want. Frontends that unlock the power of the underlying apps whilst still allowing users to strip the system down to a bare minimum configuration are what makes linux great. If themes were why we used linux we'd all have clearlooks on windows .

Edited 2009-09-14 09:02 UTC