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I do completely understand and mostly do even agree. Let me explain:



In principle, X is a proven strategy that offers a lot. Sadly, often a lot of overhead and dependencies that are not needed in certain settings. For example, a standalone PC hardly needs X over SSH for remote desktop usage, but on the other hand, Linux is a multi-purpose OS, and X is part of this concept. So it has to fulfill many functions, even if they are not needed in settings as mentioned before.

There are things that are much older than X, and still have their right to exist, because they keep things running. Just think about TCP/IP. In some regards, (A)X.25 is "much better". Change? Rewrite? What about IPv4 vs. IPv6? Abandon the old fashioned v4 completely and use v6 only? You can't do that. Legacy is very important in most settings; furthermore, concepts that just work don't get replaced very fast.



The problem is: Where to start? X? A particular part or module of X? A part of a window manager or desktop environment? A separate program? What about other OSes that use X?

I know that the visual first impression ("first sight effect") is very important for human decisions, and when presented a "boring" DE, people want something more "entertaining", no matter if the "boring" one has better functionalities, faster usage speed and lower resource requirements than the "entertaining" one.



You need to understand that there are several stages of operations within a system. It has to do with privileges, security concerns and OS concepts. It's hard to get some "chaining" between the stages, some interaction. DBUS and HAL are subsystems that do so.

But when we are talking about hardware, we should take the manufacturers into concern first. It's easy to blame developers who reverse-engineer a product that you can use with a free operating system (instead of buying something proprietary) when something does not work. The situation would be much different if hardware manufacturers would conform to existing standards and implement them (instead of producing proprietary crap) or at least release specifications and documentations that would allow developers to make the product usable outside of the "proprietary box".



This has, as far as I know, much to do with legal restrictions. Of course, it would be great just to install mplayer with all codecs from one binary package. But sadly, the sheer amount of different codecs and the restrictions about many of them make it different. If users would stick to open formats that completely could replace the proprietary ones, the problem you mentioned wouldn't be there.



As far as my individual experiences go, mplayer (gmplayer, kmplayer, and mencoder) is the most fantastic media player. With proper configuration and some work (which sadly often implies compiling), it does play everything that's imaginable.



I could not disagree with this statement. But take into mind that the situation is improving. Sadly, it's often a "work against the hardware"; new devices are sold, people want to use them, but the new devices are not compatible. And as soon as they work flawlessly, there are newer devices, and the story goes on.



I'm surprised you didn't go into the gaming sector here. But you're right of course. There's very specialized software that does not run on standard (Linux) platforms or simply is not available there. Again, think about the fact that such software is used on VMS, on AS/400 successors and S/390 successors main frames, some of this software is really old (more than 20 years), and nobody cares that you can't run the stock exchange's system, the hospital's record keeping system or the subway's control system on an ordinary x86 home PC.



No. Gimpshop is the same as "Photoshop". :-)

Honestly, compare the amount of people you know who use "Photoshop" to the amount of people you know who really bought "Photoshop". :-)

In my opinion, especially "Photoshop" is the most used example to express where "Linux is lacking". But there are some really great alternatives, and I'm not talking about The Gimp in the first place. Inkscape, Krita and OpenOffice have a lot to offer, so has Gimpshop, "but" (finally) The Gimp, too. But I need to emphasize that I'm not a professional graphics designer who is mentally tied to "Photoshop" so my experiences don't matter very much.

Well, maybe someone should think about making Linux (and the various distro) "Legal" in some form, god forbid even if we had to pay a "little" something for it. The reverse engineering used to make things work right now is flaky.

Maybe, just maybe, if Linux was made "Legal", we would enjoy much better support from hardware makers and big software devs.

Right now, I can't understand how a Linux user could seriously say that he can do EVERYTHING, with EASE, VS another user running Windows.

Think of Apple and OS X. If Apple could do it, have a OS with a nice GUI, Bling, softwares, legal with all codecs working... I guess Linux could do it too. Windows is not the only OS that can do it all.

Edited 2009-09-13 22:07 UTC

Which is why the linux design strategy of making a platform that is hostile to binary drivers needs to be rethought. It's almost 2010 and linux has 1% of the market. Time to rethink the benefits of demanding hardware companies open their drivers when they have little incentive to do so.

X is fine. A complete rewrite would be an utter waste of time and give us yet another buggy piece of software worse than the original. Even Microsoft has followed the policy of slow but steady enhancements rather than total rewrites and redesigns.

Not this *again*! Every damn time usability comes up, somebody says "replace X!" as if it would solve some problem.

You complain about "overhead" due to "not needed" features but can you tell me exactly how much your experience is degraded by having the ability to e.g. tunnel over ssh? I'll give you a hint: not one iota.

X does have some weak points, but not a single one can be solved more easily by throwing it out and writing something else. You'll throw out the baby, and the bathwater and come back in 2-3 years to the same place you are now... minus a few features.

It's far easier just to improve X. I know you wont believe it, but nothing is *systemically* wrong with X.

X has already been rewritten several times over, and it's still very suitable.



Done. KDE 4 is beautiful to look at and stable. Compiz is stable.



I don't think even you know what you mean.



"Better" support for all codecs? It's already 100%. Hardware acceleration has been here for a couple of years already on Nvidia cards; it's called VDPAU. Note that OS X didn't have hardware acceleration for video codecs until Snow Leopard, and even then it only support H.264 acceleration.



Better in what way? The iPod is supported. The Zune isn't, but who uses the Zune? Samsung are currently #2 in market share for MP3 players and all of theirs are supported on Linux.



It's not, but it's much more legal than the copies of Photoshop that most of the complainers have...

How many people actually need photoshop?

Is that a real impediment for the adoption of Linux for most users?

There are some missing programs/functionality in most linux distros, but I don't think that alone explains the lack of adoption amongst most home users.