An ex-Microsoft employee is arguing that Linux is ready for the primetime and that only thing keeping it away is the number of bugs it has. He claims that if these few high-importance bugs are fixed one way or another, Linux can become a dominant power in the desktop OS world.
X Bugs Away from World Domination?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Yes Linux has bugs just like Windows and OSX but the developers work part time, in there own time. It’s easy to sit back and say these bugs need fixing.
“* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser
* Sleep and hibernate don’t work on my hardware yet
* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems
* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy
* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration
* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work
* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes
* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)
* ogg-vorbis is 5x slower at encoding a CD compared to Windows Media”
This is a point of view, the same can be said of Windows or any OS for that matter.
About his complaints:
I won’t argue the multimedia points, I’ve often felt improvement was required there. Only when multimedia support is mostly complete, working properly, and easy to add in will I be satisfied there.
“* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems “
Usually this one is fixed by adding “umask=0” to the options for that partition in /etc/fstab.
“* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy “
SuSE’s SaX2 tool is pretty good for setting up dual head setups or multiple-monitor mirroring. If my memory serves Mandriva might have a tool for this too.
“* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration “
Again that depends on the distribution, this can be done in Mandriva using drakeconf and I’m very certain SuSE’s YaST can also do it graphically and with ease.
“* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work “
In some distributions maybe, but for those with package managers and a reasonable number of volunteers or developers there are usually packages available with those applications and drivers; however, they’re usually a fairly stable release rather than being bleeding edge. Some Debian based distributions (including the real thing) are a little more purist when it comes to sticking to FREE software and in those binary packages of non-FREE software and drivers may be harder to come across or non-existant.
“* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes “
No OS is exempt from this. I can get months of uptime out of Linux on my computer, I could get years if it weren’t for frequent power outages here; Windows XP on the other hand despite being much more stable than it’s predecessors still won’t run more than 24 hours on my computer without crashing. Any atempts to log out after the first one have about an 80% chance of locking the computer up solid, I have checked everything and this is just one of those inexplicable things. Blame it on bad drivers, bad software or some other third party stuff, but either way it proves my point, no OS is exempt from instability due to third party software and drivers.
“* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install) “
That depends on the distribution, I’ve found apt-get to be a nightmare on Libranet Linux, but it has also worked wonderfully on other distributions. I have found it works really good with RPM based distirubitions, I suspect I’m just unlucky with DPKG and for that I dislike it.
“This is a point of view, the same can be said of Windows or any OS for that matter.”
I haven’t used any Macs, so pardon me for giving those no mention here. But Windows XP Home provides a fairly easy way to set up basic file sharing and printer sharing, even if it’s very promitive in that version, I’m sure XP Pro improves on these features, but I’m not one to shell out that kind of money just to find out.
Windows has Windows Media Player and Quicktime, RealPlayer too for those who like that ( hint: I don’t 😛 ), Multimedia support in Windows is not lacking much.
Windows also has a good collection of drivers, no thanks to Microsoft who for the most part just had to sit back and watch the hardware companies do that for them. Too bad the hardare companies didn’t try that hard to make drivers for Linux, but then since the API’s change frequently in Linux and companies don’t want to open up drivers, binary drivers would be deprecated faster than those companies will want to update them. When Linux gets a good stable ABI for drivers we will see better support, in the mean time I’m surprised no one has written some kind of middleman library which would hopefully make the actual API changes transparent to binary drivers.
As far as having hardware hibernation and sleep working, I’ve found that it works fine in Windows on my laptop, but on my desktop it’s problematic. It may work fine for that guy in Windows, but for me it’s hit and miss depending on the hardware and whatever superstitions you may have.
That said I’m actually more fond of Linux than Windows, although I use both depending on my needs. I’ll be honest and tell you that I only use Windows out of necessity, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s without any merit.
Windows XP on the other hand despite being much more stable than it’s predecessors still won’t run more than 24 hours on my computer without crashing.
Then something is wrong. If it’s so frequest, it’s likely a driver/hardware issue. I run XP for weeks/months straight without problems, until I reboot for something (updates, install new hardware, try a new livecd, etc).
“If it’s so frequest, it’s likely a driver/hardware issue.”
Well said. I had the same problem as the OP, I finally realized it was because my two RAM modules had ever-so-slightly different timings, and one module simply refused to work with anything but another just like it. I ditched them both for a single module at twice the capacity (1gb X 1 instead of 512mb X 2) and problem was solved. I lost my dual-channel setup, but the difference from single-channel was negligible anyway.
As for Linux on the desktop…I agree with everyone who says multimedia needs a kick in the butt. For me the only other thing besides multimedia is gaming; World of Warcraft runs on OSX (an OS based on BSD) so when do I get my Linux port, Blizzard?
> “* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems ”
> Usually this one is fixed by adding “umask=0” to the options for that partition in /etc/fstab.
I don’t think it’s about mounting partitions on the regular hard disk. I’ve got an external (USB) HDD, formatted NTFS. It is exactly how the article stated: it is mounted, but only root has permissions. That is opposed to a FAT32 formatted USB-key, that is mounted automatically with write access to my normal user.
Maybe you can change fstab in order to get the permissions set right, but in order to have it work like the USB-key, it’s some policy in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/ that need to be changed. The question is how.
Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration
Huh?
You CAN edit text files, but I haven’t had to do that in years. Nowdays cups exists with its web front end and various gnome and kde front ends. I haven’t had to edit text files since 2000 and that was only to modify some config files for some kooky serial printer from the 80’s. Id say see what your distro uses. Now if you don’t want to use cups, and not have a DE than yeah, you might have to edit some text files, however, in that case, it is more a result of personal choice than configuration.
-Mike
I agree with most points made in the article…many of the problems Linux has today are bugs, and as such that’s very good news, because bugs get fixed.
Coming from an ex-MS employee, that’s a very encouraging prognosis!
Anyone can say that they are an employee of Microsoft. Come on, please.
I thought Linux didn’t have any bugs or security problems. WTF is he talking about?
Why would you assume that he’s not who he says he is? Because of your own heavy pro-MS bias?
I thought Linux didn’t have any bugs or security problems. WTF is he talking about?
The topic isn’t about security problems, so I’ll ignore that part of your comment, which is clearly meant to confuse the issues.
As far as bugs are concerned, who ever said there were no bugs in Linux-based OSes? No one who uses them, for sure. One only needs to take a look at the distro’s bug databases to see this. Now, this doesn’t meant that the OS is worse than, say, Windows or OS X, because these OSes have bugs too…all OSes have bugs.
Double clicks installS?
They already exists. They are just not used so much. But all the installation methods known from Windows do exist – we usually don’t use them though.
The Only thing that i dont like is the use of the Terminal, i dont use it in Windows so i dont wanna use it in Linux ;-(
You don’t have to use the terminal at all, unless you’re using sourcebased distributions like Gentoo.
Take one of the more mainstream distributions like Fedora and Suse, and you won’t have to use the terminal.
I like the terminal, so I’m also using it on Windows, even though the terminal in XP (and Win2K3) is extremely laggy.
Thnaks, Hey you know a distro with a long cycle?
Hmm.. Actually I’ve been using sourcebased distributions for so long, I’ve forgotten most of the small details for binary distributions.
How long a cycle must the distribution have? Fedora usually ceases support for version N when Version N+2 is released. E.g. Support for Fedora Core 2 ceased when Fedora Core 4 was released.
But this might have changed. I’m no fan of binary distributions
[EDIT:] You might wanna take a look at DistroWatcher.
Edited 2006-04-10 07:56
CentOS, based off RedHat Enterprise Linux.
Same release cycle as RHEL, that is slow.
But then don’t come and complain that you have a 1.5 years old gnome version that does not include all the new and improved niceties 🙂
The only thing that I don’t like is the use of the constant mouse based UI, I don’t use the mouse on GNULinux so I don’t wanna use it in Windows.
– Jesse McNelis
ps. GNULinux distrobutions such as linspire, redhat, SUSE are very big on the, use a mouse for everything idea.
Well I couldn’t live without a terminal.
I’m not joking.
Actually if you double click a .rpm file on a Fedora system it will launch an installer. Same for Ubuntu Dapper and .deb files.
Dont know it.. Thanks
The current systems aren’t as simple as double clicking an icon, fair enough. But frankly I’ve found the RPM package manager to be much better for the end user than anything I’ve seen on Windows. With RPM it’s all managed from one program, it’s consistent, it knows all the files installed and removes them all, and it’s reliable. On Windows there is inconsistency as different installers don’t adhere to standards, serveral files are left behind, sometimes you have to look for the uninstaller because it’s not in the menu or in the “Add/Remove Programs” dialog, and sometimes the uninstallers crap out completely and remove almost nothing (which has happened to me too many times).
In the end it’s my personal opinion that RPM is much cleaner, and not too difficult for users to learn.
PLease tell me a distro with a RPM that dont have multiples cds to download..
Arklinux.
Mandrake One.
pclinuxos really nice rpm based distro with ati or nvidia drivers, flash, java etc…
The package management centralization depends on the user, you can install a lot of software from binary or source packages and loose the track of it just as you can install “bad” windows software which does not provide a reliable uninstaller (that should be listed on the Add/Remove programs).
The strength of having package repositories is that you have so many software on it that most of the times you will not care of getting software from other (non centralized an properly managed) sources, this applies to both RPM and APT .
this applies to both RPM and APT
To avoid misconception about package managers, APT equivalent for other distros are YUM, URPMI, YAST Pacman to name a few. RPM equivalent for Debian based distros is DPKG.
I use to think that every program I’d need was in the repository (I’m using Gentoo), but recently I’ve found myself running to more and more packages that aren’t. Integration of third-party packages is important, imo, because you can’t cover everything.
Right now, setting up an ebuild for Gentoo is a pain in the ass. I don’t know how difficult it is for RPM/DEB based distros. The alternative is to have an unmanaged program on your system, which is certainly not preferred.
* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser
Yeah, I can confirm that on flash and mplayer
* Sleep and hibernate don’t work on my hardware yet
They work in my Laptop but not my Desktop(Neither does on windows anyway)
* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems
Easy fix in /etc/fstab, winXP won’t even mount ext3.
* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy
Windows is easier, I can agree
* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration
Can’t tell, never tried that b4.
* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work
Depends on the vendor. Most just put the program in a tarball and hope for the best.(and don’t document the dependencies correctly)
* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes
So in windows
* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)
Never seen that for myself
* ogg-vorbis is 5x slower at encoding a CD compared to Windows Media”
And the quality of the format is lower(According to my audiophile brother in law)
So Windows not mounting ext3 is a logical argument for Linux’s problems with NTFS? Sorry, you guys are the ones wanting our technology not the other way around.
Besides, you act as if MS wouldn’t be able to do it if they tried. On the other hand, you guys seem to be trying pretty damn hard.
We don’t want NTFS-support in Linux. But it’s handy when accessing information on NTFS-partitions. I have an ext2fs-driver installed on Windows, so I can access my Linux-partitions while running Windows. I can RW to ext2/ext3 in Windows as well as Linux. Windows though cannot boot on ext2/ext3, so it’s somewhat outdated in regard to FS support.
So Windows not mounting ext3 is a logical argument for Linux’s problems with NTFS? Sorry, you guys are the ones wanting our technology not the other way around.
What’s with the “You guys” and “our technology”? Unless you happen to own a hefty amount of MS stocks, or are responsible for the elephants load of GNU or Linux code, I don’t think what operating system you have on a computer puts you into a special OS tribe.
Besides, you act as if MS wouldn’t be able to do it if they tried. On the other hand, you guys seem to be trying pretty damn hard.
Yeah, of course-Microsoft adding Windows support for an open format would be really difficult compared to Linux devs reverse engineering the closed NTFS format :-S
Besides, NTFS itself works fine under Linux, specifically on Ubuntu though, it isn’t being mounted with permissions set correctly.
>Besides, NTFS itself works fine under Linux, specifically
>on Ubuntu though, it isn’t being mounted with
>permissions set correctly.
That is not a fault or bug its because writing on a NTFS partition is not 100% safe yet. Ubuntu developers choose to use the umask option out of caution.
> writing on a NTFS partition is not 100% safe yet
It depends on what driver one uses. I’m one of the developers of the Linux-NTFS project which provides the kernel 2.6 NTFS driver and ntfsprogs (ntfsresize, ntfsmount, etc). Our code is 100% safe since its original release around in 2002 and we are not aware of any safety or reliability issue. Actually just the opposite. The feedbacks are highly positive.
Due to NTFS complexity and resource issues, the full feature set is indeed not implemented yet but that shouldn’t be confused with safety. Please.
Read access is perfectly safe, there is no reason to stop normal users having this. The only concern is security, I suppose – but if somebody has enough control over a machine to install another OS I suppose that doesn’t matter.
> Easy fix in /etc/fstab, winXP won’t even mount ext3.
1) A beginner wouldn’t find this fix “easy”.
2)currently we live in a Windows world, so it’s up to Linux to adapt not the other way round, as it’s Linux who has to be better to increase its userbase.
So this isn’t an interesting arguement.
Just thought I should drop my 2 cents here…
2)currently we live in a Windows world, so it’s up to Linux to adapt not the other way round, as it’s Linux who has to be better to increase its userbase.
… I can see your point but do not agree with it.
We live in a “Windows world” ? Perhaps. Do Linux need to mimic every little thing Windows do ? Hell NO!
From where I stand, Linux is better than windows in LOTS of aspects (and I am not naive enough to deny that Windows fights back, being better in other LOTS of aspects).
Should linux increase its userbase ? Yes, it would be benefitial for the majority of its users. But I don’t think the way to increase the userbase is being a windows clone. Linux has been better than windows in many areas that I sure miss when I am on a windows install.
Cheers,
Alexandre Moreira.
Beginners don’t find fixing spyware easy either. What’s your point?
They don’t find adding new users easy, for some reason. What’s your point?
You can’t magically make everything work the way the user wants it
. At some point they _will_ have to learn something. With Windows they learn it when something breaks, with most Linux dists they learn it up front.
Different philosophies. One is “protect the user from needing to know” and the other is “educate the user, he’ll need to know.”
The realities of a turing machine sitting on your desk solving a temptingly large set of problems, oh except that halting thing, are astounding.
I honestly haven’t noticed skipping with multimedia in browsers. But I avoid it and try to get it outside of the browser where it belongs when I can.
I did notice skipping of multimedia when the machine had a medium load on Windows
. I can get it to do it on Linux as well, but it takes a very heavy disk load.
>* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser
>Yeah, I can confirm that on flash and mplayer
Xine, mplayer and others are much better than KDE/GNOME default players. Although linux sound driver model (ALSA) somewhat suffers from performance problems.
>* Sleep and hibernate don’t work on my hardware yet
>They work in my Laptop but not my Desktop(Neither does on windows anyway)
Because kernel guys can’t agree which solution to adopt. Anyway, there is still experimental software suspend 2 for those who need it.
>* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems
>Easy fix in /etc/fstab, winXP won’t even mount ext3.
Not a problem at all, I guess GUI’s should already have graphical tools to configure this, and some distros handle it more properly.
>* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration
>Can’t tell, never tried that b4.
Browser based configuration UI (for CUPS at least. Also KDE has it’s own printer configuration tool. Though linux printing support is still very much divided (between various API’s) and vaguely supported for some win-printers.
>* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy
>Windows is easier, I can agree
Whole X.org configuration system is archaic. Xegl model tries to address this, but it’s development is currently halted. Linux (Unix) world needs dynamic X configuration system with monitor autodetection via sysfs (based on DDC data).
>* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work
>Depends on the vendor. Most just put the program in a tarball and hope for the best.(and don’t document the dependencies correctly)
Linux’s biggest weakness, no reliable way to support third party software on all distros. Project portland or autopackage may give some hope, but linux needs a way to install software as non-root and maybe have it in separate directory space, if needed with it’s own copies of needed libraries. Another “hope” for standardisation is LSB.
>* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes
>So in windows
Yes, in windows too, but in linux there isn’t way to update driver without replacing the kernel. There should be more driver backports, so user can simply update driver module without the usual kernel change hassle (and possible regressions or incompatibility with various versions of udev/HAL for example).
Unsupported hardware is still a problem. Most notably graphic cards (ATI X1000 series still don’t have ANY drivers AFAIK) and wireless chipsets. Now less important, but also weakly supported are various winmodems.
* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)
Never seen that for myself
I have, by dist-upgrading Warty Warthog. Someone told me it was a known bug, but I can’t find a reference atm.
Sorry, Vorbis is actually much BETTER quality. If your brother in law was having quality issues, it is likely because he was using fixed bitrate encoding. If you use VBR and just set a quality level, at the same filesize, the Vorbis audio is much better.
I worked for years as a professional live and recording audio engineer. I have studio mixdown monitors for computer speakers, and a recording studio in my basement.
I am not doubting that he had quality issues, I just think that it was due to settings used, and not the codec itself.
I concur, Ogg is quite superior to all of the other formats I’ve worked with – mp3, ape, wma, au, and ra.
None of them seem to have the compression ratio and playback quality of ogg, although it is an odd creature in the audio world regarding the variable bitrate – it still rocks! And it’s better than most formats simply because it is not controlled by a commercial entitiy, so you don’t face all of the encryption garbage imposed by the RIAA like the others.
I use BeOS (vorbisencoder) to encode all of my CDs into Oggs immediately after I buy new discs. I get mp3-sized files that play on all platforms and sound clean as can be. (and I only use quality level 6.5)
“* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)
Never seen that for myself”
Actually that is reproducible on all debian nased systems. apt-get itself works fine, the dist-upgrade option will hose your machine and require a fresh install. The only times that actually works is if you do an upgrade of the kernel and key files to the version in the new dist prior to running ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’. This has been filed, I was told to bug off, in true debian elitist fashion, so i don;t bother with any debian distros anymore. this is reproducible all day long on any machine.
oggvorbis:
well since your brother in law is an audiophile, he believes in pixie dust to get better sound and $2000 power cords.
If he was a pro audio guy, his opinion would have validity. But then again, his opin about ogg probably goes for the same about cd’s until they have been degaussed properly.
oggvorbis:
well since your brother in law is an audiophile, he believes in pixie dust to get better sound and $2000 power cords.
If he was a pro audio guy, his opinion would have validity. But then again, his opin about ogg probably goes for the same about cd’s until they have been degaussed properly.
Yeah, when “Ubuntu” is bug free world domination will ensue. Don’t make me laugh.
Not particularly Ubuntu, Linux as a whole. I for one don’t like Ubuntu and I know Linux quite well. It’s a matter of preference. It’s also quite unfortunate that most people treat Ubuntu and Linux like they mean the same thing, even when they know the difference.
IMNHO sit elooks like an ad troll…
There is a principal difference in MS and Open Source approach which leads to other comparison criteria than linear bugs/man-years. Open Source implies effective programming style which only can deal with the complexity of SW-engineering today. This idea is discussed best in an generic article by Eric S. Raymond: “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ .
Nice article. I disagreed with it some which you can find here
http://rjdohnert.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/10000-bugs-away-from-worl…
His complaints are accurate to a certain extent, but they fail to hit the mark exactly. I’ll translate what he said into what the problems actually are.
“* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser”
There is little official/legal codec support for popular multimedia content.
“* Sleep and hibernate don’t work on my hardware yet”
The Linux kernel does not support the entire spectrum of hardware because the driver writers cannot depend on outside contributors like Apple and Microsoft do. Further, even if the manufacturer is co-operative, you will not be able to install a driver until you install a new kernel which for end users means a OS version upgrade.
“* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems”
Interoperability with existing proprietary OSes is weak at best, and are usually designed for people using Linux as a sole partition not as dual boot.
“* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy”
(this is an ubuntu complaint, not linux) Once hardware is configured by the installer, there is little the user can do to easily change things once they add or remove hardware. Furthermore, there are often no GUI tools to allow for advanced configurations that deviate from defaults.
“* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration”
Again, interop with other OSes can be difficult to work smoothly. Remote printing works fine if you are printing to an IP address on a network printer, but printing to a windows or mac printer share can and does produce frequent annoying errors.
“* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work”
The linux kernel has no stable ABI which means that in the rare case where there actually are binary drivers, you’re screwed unless you already know what you’re doing.
“* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes”
No complaints with his description here… it’s still far too crashy.
“* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)”
If you fiddle with apt you can lose your settings unless you are an apt guru. It took me a very long time until I knew how to fix the sorts of problems that moderately advanced users encounter a lot.
* ogg-vorbis is 5x slower at encoding a CD compared to Windows Media”
Only 5x slower? Slower than that on my machine…
“* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser”
There is little official/legal codec support for popular multimedia content.
That’s not it at all. I think it has more to do with firefox or mplayerplugin than official codecs. Mplayer works fine for me outside of firefox. It does do wierd things on some pages, but it could also be due to the fact that I only have a 700Mhz machine.
“* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems”
Interoperability with existing proprietary OSes is weak at best, and are usually designed for people using Linux as a sole partition not as dual boot.
What a joke. Interoperability with other operatins systems is much better with Linux than ANY other operating system in existance. I’ve never had a problem with NTFS paritions or HFS+ partitions or FAT paritions, etc.
“* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration”
Again, interop with other OSes can be difficult to work smoothly. Remote printing works fine if you are printing to an IP address on a network printer, but printing to a windows or mac printer share can and does produce frequent annoying errors.
I set up remote printing once. It was years ago, I didn’t know linux at all, and it took me all of ten minutes.
The linux kernel has no stable ABI which means that in the rare case where there actually are binary drivers, you’re screwed unless you already know what you’re doing.
You’re screwed? How? I use binary drivers and I install them with my package manager just like every other program. Not hard at all.
“* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes”
No complaints with his description here… it’s still far too crashy.
You’re doing something wrong. Seriously. I haven’t had a full system crash in years and the only time it happened was due to major hardware failure. I’ll admit there are bugs but showstoppers like you describe I have never seen. In fact if Windows is your operating system of choice then you are definitely doing something wrong if it crashes more than that.
“* apt-get dist-upgrade hosed my machine (had to do a fresh install)”
If you fiddle with apt you can lose your settings unless you are an apt guru. It took me a very long time until I knew how to fix the sorts of problems that moderately advanced users encounter a lot.
That’s a problem with APT not linux. I don’t use it and don’t have that problem.
* ogg-vorbis is 5x slower at encoding a CD compared to Windows Media”
Only 5x slower? Slower than that on my machine…
That has nothing to do with Linux. OGG is available on Windows too. It’s also another problem I don’t have because I encode to flac and if I wanted to I could encode to mp3.
Its kinda sad that some people here are sitting here arguing his points and bashing him.
For Gesus sake this is praise!.
This is more constructive critisim than most distro reviewers give and their stories get flamed less.
Personally I got inspiration and encouragement from that article. Thats the kind of thing thats gunna help change the world a damn site more than a million “its the distros fault” or “you havent configured it right you stupid MS employee”.
Peace
Edited 2006-04-10 07:25
Just my 2 cents, but the things holding back desktop Linux are not really the ones he mentions.
We can all produce a list of our pet problemos, froms cups to ogg-vorbis. The real key to the growth of desktop Linux, though, is OEM preinstalls. Without this as a valid and straightforward option when you buy a PC, desktop Linux is always going to have a very tough time. The Wintel gang put huge efforts into policing the preinstall scene with every monopoly trick in the book. They know full well that once you get your stuff on a customer’s hard disk you have won. Few people ever change the OS their PC came with.
Even so, it is refreshing to hear this from a long-time Microsoftie and some of what he says about bugs rings true. If you are prepared to live with them, though, Linux offers a fine desktop and has done for quite a while now.
I think these are two distinct problems:
1. get Linux ready for the desktop (for the mythical “average user”, whatever that may mean);
2. push Linux on the desktop (having it preloaded on as many different OEM boxes).
The first point is at hand’s reach, but there is still work to be done, and that’s what the article’ about. I agree that Linux has been usable as a desktop for a long time for a medium-to-advanced user (I still remember whene there was no KDE or GNOME and I used WindowMaker plus several heterogeneous apps/utilities) but this means no sane OEM maker would be interested in shipping such a desktop.
So to get to point no. 2 you’ve got to solve 1 first
rehdon
I used WindowMaker plus several heterogeneous apps/utilities) but this means no sane OEM maker would be interested in shipping such a desktop.
Have you seen what OEMs ship? It’s a mess. A ton of useless programs all with different toolkits. Hell, even Windows uses 3 or 4 different toolkits/window decorations themselves.
Silly kid, drugs are not for kids. For someone who worked at Microsoft, he sure does lack common sense.
I think that he hit the nail on the head when he wrote that “the problem with Linux is that it doesn’t have anyone pushing to get the newbie bugs fixed first. At Microsoft, we had Program Managers and one of their responsibilities was to be customer advocates to prioritize the bugs for the devs to fix.” Not only there’s no such “customer advocates” team for Linux, there’s also an often difficult relationship between users and developers.
Fact is, it is true that Linux has been developed by developers for developers for the longest part of his life. This has changed a lot lately, mainly thanks to such projects as GNOME and KDE, but still there isn’t a clear perception of users’ needs/problems by many devs; just to be fair, there is also a good deal of users’ who have an unreasonable attitude towards the dev teams and really don’t know how to provide usable feedback (essential for a sane development of any kind of software).
This is the major “bug” slowing Linux on the desktop IMHO. It would be a good idea, if there were enough resources, to have a dedicated “usability and customer advocates” in the main desktop projects (and possibly within the major distros as well) able to collect and analyse users’ feedback and present it to developers in an unproblematic way.
rehdon
This is a great point and often overlooked.
You see geeks complaining about Microsoft software and complaining how bad it is, and all that. But Microsoft puts time and money into getting real user feedback, and trying to model their software around that.
A lot of linux software is still largery solely thought up and created by developers, with the user feedback being mailing lists and other less-focused and personal communication.
You see geeks complaining about Microsoft software and complaining how bad it is, and all that. But Microsoft puts time and money into getting real user feedback, and trying to model their software around that
But yet MS does not give feedback to simple users like me.
On the other hand, in the FOSS family, developers listen to what I have to say.
When they don’t, I understand that I’ve not done my homework, and realize fast that indeed, I didn’t.
A lot of linux software is still largery solely thought up and created by developers, with the user feedback being mailing lists and other less-focused and personal communication
BS. Even bugzilla is way more personal communication than any comm I ever had with MS (not at home, it’s too expensive), it’s also way more efficient too.
And developers really react to your bug reports.
Most FOSS projects at least accept ideas from their users, and often, the devs are users themselves.
That’s true for successful and not succesful softwares. I even restarted some projects by asking for new functionalities.
FOSS is really a wonderful world in my view.
Sorry, but they can’t listen to everyone. Too much noise. If you really want to be heard, join a beta program. Post on the MS newsgroups.
BS. Even bugzilla is way more personal communication than any comm I ever had with MS (not at home, it’s too expensive), it’s also way more efficient too.
And developers really react to your bug reports.Again, try the newsgroups.
Bugzilla is nice, but it’s not perfect. I would not say it’s better than the processes Microsoft has. The only thing it’s better for are those that like to keep track of various bugs reported. As far as feedback and user focus groups, I think Microsoft has the superior methods.
I always find it funny when people say Linux is designed by dev’s for dev’s. It’s really quite true, as is EVERY OTHER KERNEL THAT HAS EVER BEEN WRITTEN.
Now, a lot of other Free Unix projects develop with developers in mind as well; but certainly not everything. Gnome ignores what advanced users ask for all the time and develops other things; if they were aiming for developers they’d probably have a pathetic Gnome and Gtk would be virtually perfect.
Unix geeks have a bit of a different mindset on user-friendly than the Microsoft and Mac world. It’s more of an education viewpoint: Teach them how to use it and spend your time making it do more things; not be easier to learn to use.
Most Free projects take a lot more actual feedback than Microsoft does. Microsoft runs study groups, and takes software bugs. Free projects take hand-written bug reports, hand-written feature requests, and even often have conversations with real users by real (in a cave type) developers.
To say Free projects aren’t listening is to say one has never tried talking to one. Join a mailing list, e-mail a developer, reach out and avoid touching (it’s rude), but don’t say that Free projects aren’t listening to users.
The fact that the people who manage to talk to developers happen to be technical enough to not care about a gui config utility for apache… Yea, I suppose that’s a reality of life these days?
Of course, apache is a horrible example, because if you need a gui to setup a server you obviously have no business setting one up
. If it saves time, that’s another story.
ma_d, are you sure you’re replying to my post and not someone’s else? because I can’t really see a connection between what I wrote and what you wrote. Let’s see:
I always find it funny when people say Linux is designed by dev’s for dev’s. It’s really quite true, as is EVERY OTHER KERNEL THAT HAS EVER BEEN WRITTEN.
If you stop a second and think about what I wrote, you’ll conclude that I was talking about Linux = the operating system, not Linux = the kernel; GNU/Linux for the politically correct. Plus I used a past tense: “Linux *has been developed* …” so I don’t see where your “when people say Linux *is* …” could come from.
Now, a lot of other Free Unix projects develop with developers in mind as well; but certainly not everything.
Esactly my thinking (and I wrote it, too).
Unix geeks have a bit of a different mindset on user-friendly than the Microsoft and Mac world. It’s more of an education viewpoint: Teach them how to use it and spend your time making it do more things; not be easier to learn to use.
This viewpoint is wrong, elitist and arrogant: not all users want to become IT specialists, believe it or not the great majority of them see a computer as a means to achieve some kind of results. Using this strategy to spread Linux on the desktop is, to be gentle, suicidal. The best you can hope for is a small niche of geeky users looking down to all those “Windows lusers”. Give me a break.
Most Free projects take a lot more actual feedback than Microsoft does. Microsoft runs study groups, and takes software bugs. Free projects take hand-written bug reports, hand-written feature requests, and even often have conversations with real users by real (in a cave type) developers.
Where did I say there is no contact between Linux users and developers? I agree there is possibly more than in other fields (this is according my own experience, I’d like to see some actual data before making that kind of statement), but that’s not the point and that’s not what I was hinting at: the point is that often devs and users fail to communicate in a useful manner, and that results in a loss for both. I’ve seen everything on FOSS mailing lists, from “users must not expect a thing from me because I do this in my free time and it will be as I ****** like” to “your program is only bloatware, if you don’t add feature X, Y and Z I’ll throw it in the dustbin where it really belongs”. The fact that it is so easy to contact the real developers of a FOSS project makes things even worse, can you imagine what happens when “stubborn user” gives feedback to “giant-ego dev”? Fringe case, but not that much …
Users should be educated not to learn and shut up, but to give sensible, useful feedback to devs. Devs should be educated (gasp … terrifying concept, eh?) to take that feedback into account. A middleman could be of help, that was my thought, just to make sure the contact doesn’t turn … abrasive
To say Free projects aren’t listening is to say one has never tried talking to one. Join a mailing list, e-mail a developer, reach out and avoid touching (it’s rude), but don’t say that Free projects aren’t listening to users.
Where exactly did I say that Free projects aren’t listening to users?
The fact that the people who manage to talk to developers happen to be technical enough to not care about a gui config utility for apache… Yea, I suppose that’s a reality of life these days?
Where exactly did ask for a GUI config utility for Apache? Sorry, but your two last sentences look only as straw men to me.
rehdon
I wasn’t so much arguing with you no.
Knowing the software you use has nothing, nothing, to do with being an IT specialist. Knowing the OS you use, maybe, the servers, sure.
Ever met a Latex expert who couldn’t configure a kernel for the life of him? That’s the type of knowing you’re software I’m talking about.
It’s hardly elitist to believe a mnemonic for software is an ok thing.
However, high mnemonic’s for software do tend to make elitist users; but do the other users feel bad for it? I suppose that’s an unfortunate side effect. But I’d take it over yelling at WYSIWYG editors
.
Once again, I’m not arguing with you. I’m probably reinforcing you.
Lil advice: When someone replies and seems to be saying things in line with what you say, take it as a compliment.
Sorry, I thought you were replying directly to me. Well, that surely explains why your words seemed so unrelated to my post ;o)
/me will be less hasty in replying next time …
rehdon
i think that comes from esd. in ubuntu mp3’s skips on my laptop but not i gentoo and i think the reason is that ubuntu uses the esd sound deamon.
i think that comes from esd. in ubuntu mp3’s skips on my laptop but not i gentoo and i think the reason is that ubuntu uses the esd sound deamon.
Actually no, ESD is not the (only) culprit.
There is an entire section of the MPlayer FAQ related to what can make sound (or video) stutter, and no, it’s not because MPlayer is buggy.
And the FAQ is not complete, but it can usely be narrowed down pretty fast with this FAQ.
Some time ago, sound would have noises fr SDL games in Gnome using Gstreamer for example : that was a bug.
Stuttering is no more a problem on Linux, except if you lack power. Now, most configuration is automatic (if not all), so there should be no problem anymore.
I think Ubuntu uses jack or something. ESD has a noticeable 2 second delay.
That is one trouble with sound. For years Linux had to multi-source sound support, so many daemons were written to mix sounds in software; and they all builtin delays! So, of course, if you play a video, it can’t go through that and you’re stuck with one noise. Then, if it gets accidentally routed through esd, wow, it looks pretty funny.
Then a few years ago ALSA became stable. However, I think some hardware is still unsupported for hardware mixing. And so, distributions like Ubuntu have to be prepared to work with those.
In some sense this comes back to the “PC’s are a disparate nightmare of incompatible, sometimes crappy, hardware and very few of the crappy vendors support Linux; not that what they give Windows could be considered good.”
Any distro can be setup to change out those sound daemons or remove them completely. And kernel 2.6 (everything but default slackware) has alsa built in. If you think sound is bad now, I invite you to take a look at how it was on OSS.
My sound works flawlessly.
The problem is that, as many of the comments here have pointed out, most of those bugs have easy workarounds. In fact many of them could be called bad default configurations. The “it just works” factor is missing because the user is expected to know how to configure and install things.
Many distributions seem to compete on who releases packages with the highest version numbers these days. I’ve tried SuSE, ubuntu and kubuntu lately and all of them had obvious flaws in their (default) graphical environments ranging from crashes to configuration tools just not working. Had I not known how to fix the numerous problems by hand I would have gone back to windows in a heartbeat. Distributions really should spend a lot more time on testing. Every crash, no matter how minor, should be addressed.
Of course a great part of the problem are proprietary/patented multimedia algorithms and undocumented hardware. Working with those require manual user intervention. The challenge is to reduce the extra work needed as much as possible.
I find this opinion piece is very good, because it doesn’t disparages Linux stupidly like many.
It even provides feedback, which is a good thing.
I love these feedbacks, because, having my own Linux OS, I’m able to keep up with the latest developments, and so, can really see where distros will be tomorrow (though some distro have been playing BIG catchup), and I can evaluate which of the real problems are already solved, or in the process of being solved.
The good thing here is that most of these are valid problems.
* Multimedia often skips or doesn’t display properly in the browser
Fixed since a long time, but perhaps not so easy in Ubuntu. It worked well for me in Ubuntu, after following the multimedia FAQ.
* Sleep and hibernate don’t work on my hardware yet
He already explains why. This is in the process of being fixed, but will never be truely complete IMHO until the hardware is ready and standard.
* Gnome will mount NTFS, and create an icon on my desktop, but I can’t browse it because of permission problems
Depends on where the FS comes from. If it’s really a bug, Gnome 2.12 fixed it. If it’s the recent Gnome 2.14, that’s a security issue, which has to be configured.
* Enabling external monitors isn’t easy
Depends. Actually, it’s easy, but the fact that XOrg can’t be dynamically updated makes it require several steps, one being editing a conf file.
It’s being worked on though.
* Remote printing requires manual textfile configuration
It doesn’t. Except if the distro installed a brain dead configuration for an inexistant security issue.
* Installing non-free software or drivers requires lots of manual work
It depends on the distro you’re using and the policy of the driver maker. On a commercial Mandriva, all the non-free drivers installed without problem for example.
Linux is not magic nor ridden with illegal processes (pirated software), if the driver maker don’t want distribution without some agreement, you won’t get it.
Has nothing to do with Linux really. Actually, installing non-free drivers do not require lots of manual work, just to know where to put the files.
Non-free software can be problematic to install, which just shows how bad they are then. Linux is not packaging these apps.
* Driver bugs, some hangs and crashes
That’s what you get for using binary drivers. It boggles the mind to read this. This is the specific reason for which kernel devs mark the kernel tainted.
* ogg-vorbis is 5x slower at encoding a CD compared to Windows Media
This is odd really. I didn’t even know we had a Windows Media encoder on Linux. I never checked actually, I would never encode anything in Windows Media format on Linux.
I can not speak for the other Linux users (so no WE in my statement), but for me I am very much happy with using Linux as my only operating system on all my computers.
I don’t need “World Domination”.
I have none of the issues this guy has. But maybe I am not the average Joe User who does not know how to edit /etc/fstab or how to enable media player in a web browser or how to enable sleep and hibernate on my IBM Thinkpad or how to edit my XOrg config file or how to configure CUPS (by editing cupsd.conf or by using the configuration wizard on port 631) ….
This guy has some valid points, but they are mostly valid for him and not for all the Linux users.
He is comming from the Windows world and expects Linux to be almost a 1 to 1 copy of the “Windows way”, but Linux is not Winodows.
I am using Linux since 1994 and since 1999 I am using exclusivly Linux as my desktop system (well… I use VMWare and WINE for some apps but still Linux is my main system). When ever I need to sit down infront of a Windows system and do my work, I see so many points I don’t like about Windows. I could easy write down serval pages of “troubles” I see with Windows. But for what? Windows is the way it is and probably 99.9% of all Windows users are very much happy with Windows the way it is now.
I need computers to work with them. I need them, because I generate money with them I need for living. The funny thing about computing is, that I can walk into a “kiosk” (I don’t know the english word for this, but it is a small store, where you could buy newspaper, candy, etc…) and when I look at the store, then I see about 100 magazines for computers and about 100 magazines for sex and porno. Any other sort of magazine is available in much less quantity then the two above mentioned. So basicly today every one out there is a computer specialist (or a porno/sex adictive). I never hear any one talking about complicated heart operation, who is not a doctor. But I hear constantly people talking about computer stuff, wich don’t know enought about computers. But today it has become a comodity to be a computer specialist. Why? Do those people fix the engine problem of their car, if they have a problem? No! They probably don’t do that. But they keep constantly fixing and tweaking their computer and OS. For what reason?
And why does every one expect Linux to be like Windows? The Linux user I know are not expecting Linux to be like Windows, nor are they expecting Windows to be like Linux.
I think it is hard today to produce a OS wich fits all the needs of all the users. I don’t think I could do that. How to produce a operating system wich is easy so every non computer user can use it (something like Mac OS X) and all the geeks and specialist out there can tweak the hell out of it (something like Linux and BSD, etc)?
For me Linux is ready since years and for me it is the perfect OS for my desktop and for all my 24 servers (I do hosting).
Because he thinks some things should work better and out of the box, you say he just wants Linux to be a 1:1 copy of Windows? That’s a bit naive.
It’s good constructive criticism. If everyone working on Linux had the same attitude, Linux would never make progress on the desktop in the eyes of the average user. I think that is a problem already actually.
If the linux community is not willing to make things easier for the user, even simple things, and listen to what the “average user” wants and has to say, then the linux community should stop pretending linux is good enough for the “average user”.
Because he thinks some things should work better and out of the box, you say he just wants Linux to be a 1:1 copy of Windows? That’s a bit naive.
I did not say, that he WANTS Linux to be a 1:1 copy of Windows. I only wrote, that most user expect Linux to be the same way as Windows. And this is definatly not the case.
It’s good constructive criticism. If everyone working on Linux had the same attitude, Linux would never make progress on the desktop in the eyes of the average user. I think that is a problem already actually.
I completly understand his issues. But on the other hand I do understand that some things needs to be done on the command line and can not or are not available on the GUI. For example the NTFS stuff: I know that this issue can be changed on the command line when doing a mount command or by editing the /etc/fstab file. Now he wants that to be done automaticly. This is fine with me.
I just see the troubles, when something like this would be done automaticly in the DE. Then other people will scream and say that this is a security issue and should not be allowed to the regular user without asking.
A better way would be a GUI component, where you could set such stuff. But then I see other Linux user freaking out, because of another dialog box and they will claim that Linux is bloated etc…
If the linux community is not willing to make things easier for the user, even simple things,…
The Linux community is very much open to make things easier for the user (that is my experiance with the community). But you have to send that requests directly to the developers and not post it some where on the internet. Developers don’t crawl the net for such requests. They work in their own world. Some of them only look up their bug tracking software for new requests. That’s it. Don’t expect them to crawl the net for new requests.
If you have used Linux that long as I am, then you would realize, that the Linux community is very much doing their best to get things easier for the average user. Linux changes very fast. I don’t know any OS wich is changing that quickly (especialy on the DE area).
… and listen to what the “average user” wants and has to say, then the linux community should stop pretending linux is good enough for the “average user”.
Once again: I can not speak for the “average user”, since I can only speak for me.
The most “average user” I know, are not held back to switch to Linux because of those “simple things”. The one I know would not swtich, because they don’t know it. They would not switch to anything. They stay there what they know best.
>> I did not say, that he WANTS Linux to be a 1:1 copy of Windows.
===>>> He is comming from the Windows world and expects Linux to be almost a 1 to 1 copy of the “Windows way”, but Linux is not Winodows.
I’m sorry… what?
A better way would be a GUI component, where you could set such stuff. But then I see other Linux user freaking out, because of another dialog box and they will claim that Linux is bloated etc…
Screw them. Those type of people are the ones slowing down adoption.
The Linux community is very much open to make things easier for the user (that is my experiance with the community). But you have to send that requests directly to the developers and not post it some where on the internet. Developers don’t crawl the net for such requests. They work in their own world. Some of them only look up their bug tracking software for new requests. That’s it. Don’t expect them to crawl the net for new requests.
For the most part, yes. But sometimes developers will snub their nose at certain requests, because they think they know better. I’ve seen it happen. A good project that actually listens to their users for the most part is Firefox, and it shows by it’s success.
If you have used Linux that long as I am, then you would realize, that the Linux community is very much doing their best to get things easier for the average user. Linux changes very fast. I don’t know any OS wich is changing that quickly (especialy on the DE area).
No, I don’t think they are doing their best. They are trying, but they can do better.
I’m sorry… what?
Okay… english is not my native language and I can’t allways express in english what I would like to say.
You wrote about WANT and I wrote about EXPECTING. For me this are two diffrend words with differend meaning.
Screw them. Those type of people are the ones slowing down adoption.
I personaly think that the Gnome DE is following that way. Everything has to be as minimalistic as possible, yet very powerfull. I don’t share their way of looking at the things. But I respect their decision.
For the most part, yes. But sometimes developers will snub their nose at certain requests, because they think they know better. I’ve seen it happen. A good project that actually listens to their users for the most part is Firefox, and it shows by it’s success.
Okay… in real life I am a developer. Not for OSS but I do development for living (working in a company wich is IBM Advanced Business Partner). I can tell you one thing about developer: They mostly think their are good gift to humanity and they behave like divas.
That is a big problem. Not only in OSS development.
Normaly you would have some one talking with the custumer/user, someone analyzing that stuff, someone designing the system and someone developing it.
In OSS you have mostly one person for all the 4 jobs. Developers are not always best suited to have end-user contact and this is what I often see as a problem when you look in the varios DE bug tracking systems.
No, I don’t think they are doing their best. They are trying, but they can do better.
I think that most of them do their best. Off course they can virtualy implement anything they like. They have the man power and the knowledge for doing so. But not all of them do active search for new ways of implementing stuff.
When you use a system for a certain time, then you start to adopt to that system and you start to be blind for the errors other new users would have with the system, because you don’t see them or you lerned to live with them or you have your own way to handle them.
You wrote about WANT and I wrote about EXPECTING. For me this are two diffrend words with differend meaning.
Expect has 2 different meanings are are hard to distinguish sometimes. One of them is pretty much the same thing as “want”. So we what you meant cleared up, and I don’t agree. I don’t think he expects a 1:1 copy, but expects certain parts to work in a common sense way, which usually is the same as windows.
Okay… in real life I am a developer. Not for OSS but I do development for living (working in a company wich is IBM Advanced Business Partner). I can tell you one thing about developer: They mostly think their are good gift to humanity and they behave like divas.
That is a big problem. Not only in OSS development.
I’m a developer too, and I agree. That’s where I think is a flaw in most FOSS projects. Developers should not be the one designing the “user experience” and “flow”. But it’s kind of hard to get someone to do that kind of thing for free, that isn’t a developer. A project like Firefox has that, because Mozilla actually makes money and can pay their employees.
When you use a system for a certain time, then you start to adopt to that system and you start to be blind for the errors other new users would have with the system, because you don’t see them or you lerned to live with them or you have your own way to handle them.
Yep. That’s why you need more layers: QA, Project Managers, User Focus groups, etc.
I think one problem is that users are simply wrong 95% of the time. And it’s not that they don’t know what they want or are stupid or anything like that. It’s just that when two people want two opposing things, well you can’t please both; one has to be “wrong.”
So, when you have 20 users, all wanting conflicting schemes, 19 of them may need to be “wrong.”
And guess what. The 1, or 19, are going to be vocal about how you suck (not necessarily, but given a large enough sample you’ll get some bad apple).
So you’re virtually guaranteed to get someone who says developers aren’t listening. They may very well be, and they may be saying “no” loud and clear.
Then there are users who ask for technically imfeasible solutions. Things which could be done, but at more cost thant the developers are willing to put in.
You can’t please everyone, so, you gotta please yourself
. And since so many small projects are just someone scratching an itch, it turns out that they know exactly how to please themselves.
But let me tell you this. People developing GUI programs. The preference dialog: It’s boring, it’s obnoxious, it’s a pain to keep up, and the developer has _no_ use for it.
He knows his config file like the back of his hand, and that GUI dialog is just troublesome. He didn’t write it to scratch his itch. Remember that the next time you want to accuse him of being completely self-serving.
And it’s not because his mailbox is flooded with e-mails either. Unless you’re on a large project you don’t get a lot of mail, and then it’s going to be from other dev’s as much as users.
Another thing that’s hard to get used to on FOSS projects, and may be a real problem, is that most of them are in a constant development cycle. The KDE and Gnome project, and Linux of course, are almost oddities in the sense that they maintain very stable releases and branches.
Ever used fluxbox stable? Do you know how many years old it is
. Of course, fluxbox-dev is so reliable you only know it’s unstable because there are new features, every now and then.
One man projects just typically don’t keep strong stable releases: It’s a lot of work.
Commercial software, OTOH, has always kept strong releases. They have months (if things work out) of testing before a release, with paid testers.
There’s a saying, “eat your own dog food.” In other words, if you’re a developer, use your last release, and use your next release for a while before you release it.
Visual Studio is one of Microsoft’s most heralded tools, gee, maybe the fact that the whole company (I imagine at least 98% of the developers) uses it has something to do with that?
Of course I’m sure they use a lot of the other products as well, and I’m not picking on any of them; just pointing out that Visual Studio is an excellent product (and I despise IDE’s).
So, don’t feel bad if developers disagree with you.
Developers use your own programs, the ones the users have to use; and use it for real use.
And do realize that FOSS software != commercial software; it’s not gonna be until their development methods have more in common.
For the most part, yes. But sometimes developers will snub their nose at certain requests, because they think they know better. I’ve seen it happen.
True, but it’s the exception, not the norm.
A good project that actually listens to their users for the most part is Firefox, and it shows by it’s success.
There are many other projects that do, including such large ones as KDE.
No, I don’t think they are doing their best. They are trying, but they can do better.
That’s your opinion, but it seems to me your basing it on a few bad apples in a whole orchard. Also, I think such generalizations are a bit useless…
True, but it’s the exception, not the norm.
Yep, hence “sometimes”.
There are many other projects that do, including such large ones as KDE.
Yep. The exceptions.
That’s your opinion, but it seems to me your basing it on a few bad apples in a whole orchard. Also, I think such generalizations are a bit useless…
It’s not meant as an insult. There simply isn’t the incentive there for most FOSS developers. Doing it for the good of the community or to feel good isn’t that great of an incentive.
They don’t have to do anything. If they don’t feel like workingo n it for a week, there’s nothing anyone can do.
No software is bug free. I use Tomahawk Desktop (http://www.tomahawkcomputers.com/) but I am not handicaped by the bugs you are talking about. However when come to Photo printing, I switch to Windows. Why I am doing this because there are no Drivers for high end photo printers. Further, no drivers for high end graphic cards, high end sound card, etc.
Is not bugs that hold Linux from world domination, it is Drivers. No drivers from OEMs for Linux. Why?
OEMs develop drivers for Windows and Apple (FreeBSD). It is illegal to develop closed source drivers for Linux as Linux kernel is licensed under GPL.
This is the biggest bug to be fixed first.
However when come to Photo printing, I switch to Windows. Why I am doing this because there are no Drivers for high end photo printers
Wrong. The fact is thus : there is no free driver for your high end photo printer.
But there is a lot of free and non-free drivers for a lot of high-end printers.
Because you had no free working driver for your high end printer, you assumed there was none for the entire FOSS world : a common wrong idea when someone is new to the world of FOSS (you can use FOSS since a long time and still not understand FOSS, not the same thing).
Further, no drivers for high end graphic cards, high end sound card, etc.
Same misconception as above.
Is not bugs that hold Linux from world domination, it is Drivers. No drivers from OEMs for Linux. Why?
Drivers is not the sole problem. No preinstalled system in big purchase places is one too.
OEMs develop drivers for Windows and Apple (FreeBSD)
There are more drivers for Linux than for Apple, and lots of appliance vendors puts closed-source drivers for Linux on them, but never release Linux drivers to use these appliances, go figure.
It is illegal to develop closed source drivers for Linux as Linux kernel is licensed under GPL
Perhaps it is, but closed source drivers are tolerated on Linux, and nobody was ever thrown to court for providing binary drivers for Linux.
This is the biggest bug to be fixed first
Especially since it is not even a bug.
It’s my personal experience that most vendors actually develop and test their hardware under Linux and *THEN* write Windows drivers. The reason seems to be that Linux is easier to write drivers for and offers better ability to debug problems.
There are a number of reasons that vendors do not release their drivers for Linux, however. The foremost is that most hardware that would require a specific driver is almost always targetting the desktop — and for management, there’s no such thing as desktop Linux (you’ll note that any hardware that’s likely to be used in a server is released forst for Linux, then Windows). Some smaller vendors just assume that the community will reverse-engineer a driver for the hardware and completely eliminate any need for active involvement by them.
Second, of course, is that management is still confused about how they should release a driver. Some vendors have management that fears source code could reveal trade secrets and damage their competitiveness (not likely, and what engineers I know don’t generally agree). Binary drivers are difficult to ship since they might have code dependent on things conditional on how the kernel was compiled. Companies like NVidia ship drivers partially compiled (object code and some C stubs) that are compiled at install time, but that can be tricky and it doesn’t make for a convenient install.
I’d add that Microsoft’s products are becoming increasingly difficult to write drivers for as versions of Windows are prolifertaing and things like Vista introduce more conditionals into the driver model.
I’d also point out that not only is it NOT illegal to develop closed source drivers for Linux, but the kernel developers quite consciously support binary-only driver modules for the Linux kernel. While there are not many, there are a number of OEMs that do ship binary-only drivers for Linux.
I had to find another way to the article because it wasn’t loading at all for me!
http://tinyurl.com/n625o
–bornagainpenguin
Though the point can be made that it’s easy enough for *distributions* to fix for the user.
World domination by fixing that? I don’t think so
i think what holds the desktop back the most is an easy way to install and open programs.
with windows you just download an exe installer and it stalls for yo and puts it in your start menue.
alot of linux applications make you do this manually and a lot of common folk simply don’t know how to use that and these new install services don’t cover even half the available applications for unix.
Some more kool-aid for my clear thinking friend over here. Don’t know how that employee got off his medication.
It’s not meant as an insult. There simply isn’t the incentive there for most FOSS developers. Doing it for the good of the community or to feel good isn’t that great of an incentive.
No, but doing it for the recognition it brings, or to scratch a particular itch, or because it’s their job, those are all good motivators, and it applies to the majority of FOSS developers in my opinion.
Of course there are lots of dead projects, and/or lazy maintainers, but as I said (and to which you apparently agreed) that’s the exception, not the norm…
I didn’t see your post as an insult, but simply as focusing on a subset of developers in a negative way, without putting in in perspective.