Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds’ right-hand man and the maintainer of the 2.6 kernel, will not be attending the LinuxWorld conference in New York this week, but he did speak with eWeek’s Senior Editor Peter Galli about the recent 2.6 kernel release and his vision for Linux.
Andrew Morton and the Linux Desktop
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Instead of all the theory of when/if Linux is ready on the desktop, why not benchmark the two operating systems against each other or something?
Why is is that Linux has such poor backwards compatibility and what is the ETA on when this might change?
Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories? FHS does not even mention graphical applications.
Installers will be broken for as long as backwards compatibility is broken?
If people keep calling it stable and fast then why is it in my experience so unstable and slow and where is this going moving forward?
I know Linux markes RAM unused and does not free it and for good reason. This is the reason “free” shows memory usage higher than windows, but why does it us so much RAM just after boot?
Why does it boot so SLOW…
Why don’t we look at the reasons Desktop Linux falls short rather than beating a dead horse?
Linux is very fast, and on Linux there is more than one desktop. Didn’t you know that? Linux is a platform. I use Gnome and the speed if definately there, it kicks ass on my system (1 GHz AMD processor and 512 RAM PC-100).
Andrew Morton tells the truth. I like to hear from him and get the story because I trust him. Thanks OSNews.
Gnome might be fast, but gtk+ still has redraw issues.
“If people keep calling it stable and fast then why is it in my experience so unstable and slow and where is this going moving forward?”
I have Celeron 266 with 128M RAM. The only DE that I can bear to use on this box is XFCE4, possibly with Gnome panel (KDE _was_ usable there with XFree 3.something, but not with 4.x). So yes, it’s slow on old hardware (though I’ve heard that even in such cases adding RAM can make wonders). But it’s always been perfectly stable for me, as opposed to Win98.
“Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin directories? FHS does not even mention graphical applications.”
Oh my, when people stop complaining about file hierarchy. In a properly set up system you _shouldn’t_care_ about /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and so on. Ideally you shoudn’t ever have to go beyond your homedir. So this is not the problem. The problem is that not every distro makes it right.
“Why does it boot so SLOW…”
…when it’s obvoiusly able to boot fast? I wonder it, too. When all desktop distros will make parallel boot the default?
> When all desktop distros will make parallel boot the default?
What distros have parallel boot as the default?
Artem, you may like to try Syllable ( http://syllable.sf.net ), it should perform very well on your hardware.
Also, you could pick up a 2nd hand Slot1 CPU for 66MHz FSB pretty cheaply. Anything would be faster than those first revision Celerons.
I agree that desktop Linux is too slow on older hardware. Even on my subgigahurt Athlon system the Xfree/KDE desktop feels like flying a brick.
which commandname
The great thing about this wonderful *nix file heirarchy is that things ARE organized. They are so organized in fact, that from the command line I can run almost any program from any directory. This is such a naive complaint. The command availability in Linux is 20% of the reason I switched to it!
Linux isn’t faster, it’s more efficient.
Linux doesn’t boot slow either, quit using RedHat. My system boots up in the same time in Linux or Windows. Both take about 40 seconds, to a gui login prompt from the bootloader. I’m quite serious, they take the SAME time. Linux doesn’t boot slow.
I must say I was totally with Andrew Morton on all of what he said. I have no clue if Linux is more secure than Windows. By default, yea but that’s cause Windows has some insecure defaults (the defaults are your fault not the distributors, change them if you don’t like them). However, I do know that Linux is more stable and more efficient on the desktop. I have found the GTK API to be quicker than GDI, and QT is even more efficient than GTK. Unfortunately, KDE people don’t know how to organize a menu or hide useless features.
Linux hasn’t ceased to amaze me in the last year and a couple months, I gotta love it. I use it on the desktop by the way, on multiple machines.
I know Linux markes RAM unused and does not free it and for good reason. This is the reason “free” shows memory usage higher than windows, but why does it us so much RAM just after boot?
Correct me where i am wrong but i believe most of the intial memory usage is dedicated to RAMDISK. Its not that that memory is not available to the system(like windows bloat). What aspect the RAMDISKS are for i don’t recall. Others more up on this feel free to elaborate and educate me a little more in the process also
that reading the past couple articles and interveiws with Linus and Andrew its good to see that the Linux leaders are level headed and not prone to religious crusades as many of the the Linux users seem to be. They lend more credibility to Linux then all the efforts of IBM and the like combined.
>>”…its good to see that the Linux leaders are level headed and not prone to religious crusades as many of the the Linux users seem to be. They lend more credibility to Linux then all the efforts of IBM and the like combined…”<<
Don’t discount those Linux ‘crusaders’. While level-headedness is important in software development, innovation and change are heavily influenced by people who rock the boat. Users and developers whose opinions fall in the extremities help pull and motivate those in the middle to take bigger strides and to transcend mediocrity. This creates a healthy compromise between inflexibility and drastic change; we call this PROGRESS. Therefore, you need the Linux zealots just as much as you need conservatives. =)
I know Linux markes RAM unused and does not free it and for good reason. This is the reason “free” shows memory usage higher than windows, but why does it us so much RAM just after boot?
Free RAM is used as disk cache. Every disk access during boot will be cached, that’s why free reports a high memory usage (look at the next output line -/+ buffers/cache!). The disk cache won’t be freed until the memory is needed by processes.
I have W2K / Linux (2.6 kernel) and W2K is visibly faster (GUI) than Linux.
Identical hardware, Native video drivers (NVidia).
Go figure…
I’m using Gnome 2.4 at the moment.
“Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories?”
What on Earth are you talking about? What is random about the placement of apps into /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin? It follows a pretty clear principle — apps that are system utils are placed in /bin or /sbin , more user orientated apps are in the /usr tree. Apps that are for administration (and therefore should only be in root’s path) are in the sbin trees. It’s a pretty nice system of organization, much preferable to Windows where everything really is random.
However, I do know that Linux is more stable and more efficient on the desktop.
—
You can’t be serious. Please, compare Mozilla on Windows and on Linux or something. I run Gentoo and have compiled most of my software, including Mozilla, and I still dislike the sluggishness of the GUI. Same with Firebird. I can’t think of any crossplatform GUI app that runs better on Linux than on Windows, including Java apps.
Desktop statility is certainly not better on Linux either. The window manager crashes and your work is gone. When I switch between the console and X, the screen usually becomes garbled and sometimes the system locks up (using ATI drivers). Windows however, doesn’t drop to text mode and kill all your GUI apps when Explorer crashes. What can happen is that the system locks up when you play a game because of a buggy driver.
“It’s a pretty nice system of organization, much preferable to Windows where everything really is random.”
What on Earth are you talking about? What is random about the placement of apps into each own directories?
> Instead of all the theory of when/if Linux is ready on the desktop, why not benchmark the two operating systems against each other or something?
What kind of benchmark?
> Why is is that Linux has such poor backwards compatibility and what is the ETA on when this might change?
Please elaborate. Apps or drivers? Binary drivers *won’t* have a stable kernel API. There’s a good reason for that.
> Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories? FHS does not even mention graphical applications.
/sbin – critical system binaries
/bin – minimal set of apps to get a working system – text editors, directory manipulation commands
/usr/sbin – system binaries that can wait till the /usr partition is mounted
/usr/bin – all other user apps, including ‘graphical applications’
If you’re using the command line, your default path should already be set. If you’re using a GUI, use the shortcuts.
> Installers will be broken for as long as backwards compatibility is broken?
???
> If people keep calling it stable and fast then why is it in my experience so unstable and slow and where is this going moving forward?
Very vague. What instability? Please describe, in great detail. What is slow? Post your system config, hdparm etc.
> I know Linux markes RAM unused and does not free it and for good reason. This is the reason “free” shows memory usage higher than windows, but why does it us so much RAM just after boot?
Someone already explained this.
> Why does it boot so SLOW…
Check if you have several unnecessary daemons starting up.
$chkconfig –list
or System settings->Services
If GNOME and KDE are too bloated, try XFCE4.
Somehow I get the feeling you were trolling, correct me if I’m wrong.
I place my bet on GNUstep as the future of “desktop linux”.
>>”Why is is that Linux has such poor backwards compatibility and what is the ETA on when this might change?”<<
—This only seems to be noticeable when you start trying to plug in old RPMs into a newer distribution. Use Gentoo or a distribution with a better packaging system.
>>”Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories? FHS does not even mention graphical applications.”<<
—I partially agree with this. Many of the directories seem a bit redundant and confusing, but on closer inspection (i.e. if you know what each are really intended for), you’ll see that there *is* a rhyme & reason to this apparent madness. The problem lies with a distribution or software installer changing the rules—once this happens, the hierarchy becomes a meaningless mess. Aside from that, I concede that directory labels and placement aren’t exactly straightforward. They could be reworked into a more logical arrangement.
>>”If people keep calling it stable and fast then why is it in my experience so unstable and slow and where is this going moving forward?”<<
—There’s a lot of confusion about what. If you want stability, go with the *OFFICIAL* stable Debian. Their stable distribution has a reputation for meticulous package testing… I think they’re still using the KDE 2.X series; if they’ve switched to 3.x, it was somewhat recently.
For speed, some might suggest Gentoo for its processor-specific optimizations. But in reality (on my system anyway), even when I do aggressive optimizations, it rarely amounts to any noticeable performance gains.
I believe Gentoo is fast mostly b/c fewer services run by default, among other minor enhancements. This makes sense b/c WindowsXP is relatively fast without program optimization enhancements. In the windows world, almost all of our applications are precompiled executables… less than 1% of these are offered with compiled-in, CPU-specific optimizations. VirtualDub and Povray are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that offer AMD or Intel optimizations. The overall performance differences b/w generic i386 and Athlon/Pentium compiled programs are marginal in the grand scheme of performance “feel.” It’s mostly a psychological gain.
>>”Why does it boot so SLOW…”<<
—Boot speeds vary from distribution to distribution. This mostly results from the positive corelation b/w services and loading-time; basically, the more services you run at boot, the longer the boot; additionally, the more complex services (bigger ones), the longer the bootup.
Many of the larger distributions, i.e. RedHat, SuSE, etc. default to install a plethora of Services (just to make sure they’ve covered every possible user/corporate requirement). For the home desktop user, you can probably trash more than half of them… but that can be difficult, so it might be better to select a more customizable/minimalist distro. On my Gentoo install, I can read all of the system services on one 640×480 screen.
If you’re booting into a KDE/GNOME X-session, that’ll tack-on a good handful of seconds to your boot-time.
There are other ways to enhance boot speed, but as of yet, I can’t seem to beat the 15-second boot to GUI of my WindowsXP install.—[1 GHz Athlon, 512MB PC133]
>>”Why don’t we look at the reasons Desktop Linux falls short rather than beating a dead horse?”<<
—Articles highlighting the faults of Linux appear regularly on this website (coupled with even more commentary). I think it’s just a matter of people (developers) acting on the suggestions and usability/bug reports.
Bug reports might do more than you think… unfortunately, (and this is only a *GUESS*) a majority of Linux users only passively report them, if at all. Case in point–> We can complain all we want, but unless we DO those bug reports and give feedback directly to the developers (in *HIGH* volume)… progress will be slow, if not standstill.
Linux GUI performance is spotty. It can be really fast, or it can be rather slow. The problem is that most of the major apps (Mozilla, OpenOffice, and GNOME) have slow GUIs. It doesn’t have to be that way. My Linux desktop is really fast. I’ve got:
– A 2.6 kernel (2.6.1 to be precise).
– KDE 3.2 beta2 – redraw-wise, one of the fastest GUIs on Linux
– NVIDIA drivers with RENDER enabled
– My USB mouse rate-limited to 80 refreshes/second, to cut down on mouse moved messages (it doesn’t affect pointer movement at all, as far as I can see, but makes resizes smoother)
On this setup, KDE is about as fast as Windows XP running a light theme. The only slow point is that application startup is slow, but with Qt 3.3, KDE prelinking should become usable for those with NVIDIA’s drivers.
“/usr/bin – all other user apps, including ‘graphical applications'”
Maybe in spec, but in practice they are also located in several other derectories. And why throw them in one directory when they don’t need to be in $PATH?
You are telling me you think it’s a good idea to store all graphical apps in one application folder? Good thing you don’t work for Apple.
>>>>>> Why is is that Linux has such poor backwards compatibility and what is the ETA on when this might change?<<<<<<<
&
>>”Please elaborate. Apps or drivers? Binary drivers *won’t* have a stable kernel API. There’s a good reason for that.”<<<
That’s a good way to explain it… simply put, different kernels will require different drivers….
…To compare…you can’t use a Windows9x/ME driver on a Win2000/XP install. Hell, you can’t even use *some* w2k drivers on XP. Most manufacturers produce their drivers for all the popular flavors of Windows. So, when you pop the driver CD in and it automatically works, it gives the perception of backwards compatability.
Linux doesn’t have that luxory (YET!). For now, we’re stuck with dismal, featureless, and often unstable *hacks* that we call drivers. So, i guess the simple answer to his question is…. **When Linux gets more commercial backing, thereby motivating the manufacturers to produce a diverse collection of professional-grade drivers.**
Its great that apps are stored in a single directory. I, like many Linux users, don’t use menus to start apps. Instead, we start them (even GUI apps) from the CLI or a run-command menu.
Why should the user care where the apps are stored? In Linux apps are opaque, and app management is automated. People double-click on the app in Synaptic to install it, and a little shortcut pops up in the KMenu or GNOME-Menu. That’s it, and thats as easy as it can really get.
Linux is much more stable than MS Windows, and it is also faster. In my experience MS Windows degrades very quickly, it’s only good for about a year. In addition Internet Explorer crashes on a regular bases, and there are loads of viruses out there that you have to constantly watch out for, also the Windows update is incredibly slow. I’m afriad that Linux is a much better user experience (once you know how to use the Command Line Interface).
> You are telling me you think it’s a good idea to store all graphical apps in one application folder? Good thing you don’t work for Apple..
🙂
If the desktop environment is designed well, I shouldn’t even *care* where on the disk the app exists. The app in question need not even reside on my disk, but on a host on the network. I should be able to navigate using a desktop shortcut, or a menu or a voice command or my pet genie or whatever. See?
“If the desktop environment is designed well, I shouldn’t even *care* where on the disk the app exists.”
But sometimes you still have to track down the location of the binary to create the shortcut. Windows would also work of you move everything to C: and create shortcuts to all of it, but I wouldn’t want that on my system. It needs some sort of orginazion, the fact that you do not agree is frustrating. It is an example of what people mean by saying Zealots stand between Linux and the desktop. Maybe Linux just cannot be both things at once.
Linux puts binaries in their appropriate place, according to user privledges, however it does not create a shortcut for the desktop and it doesn’t add ‘New Programs’ to the launch menue. Infact maybe some of you have a point about the desktop being slower than MS Windows. To tell you the truth, I don’t use Linux that way. I use the desktop and the command line inteface (CLI) together. I like the CLI because it is more reliable and faster, but the CLI is not a good for viewing images and certain tasks, in that case I use nautilus.
If you install MS Windows and compare the speed of fresh installs, than maybe Windows is faster, however the performance of Windows degrades much faster than Linux. Linux does not have a central registry, and that tends to bloat MS Windows over time. In addition the Linux does not become fragmented, it doesn’t require virus control, and a host of other differences. I have not experienced any backward compatibility problems with Linux but what I do is install the base distribution, than aftewards I build applications from source. So it all has to do with the way you are familiarized with your system. Also with regard to backward compatibility, Morton references ActiveX, which weakens MS Windows security because they placed backwards compatibily ahead of security. What is not backward compatible in Linux is package managers, but that is a distribution issue, not a reality for intermediate users.
“Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories?”
I hate the default *nix directory structure too. That’s why I use GoboLinux (http://www.gobolinux.org). It puts all files belonging to one program in /Programs/foo. Directories have comprehensible non-cryptic names. Configuration files are in /System/Settings rather than in /etc, for example. I’m hoping eventually all Linux distributions will adopt a similar directory structure.
If the problem is just in the ‘names’, than that’s a trivial problem, which can be fixed at the GUI level with aliases.
Linux is much more stable than MS Windows, and it is also faster. In my experience MS Windows degrades very quickly, it’s only good for about a year. In addition Internet Explorer crashes on a regular bases, and there are loads of viruses out there that you have to constantly watch out for, also the Windows update is incredibly slow. I’m afriad that Linux is a much better user experience (once you know how to use the Command Line Interface).
In my experience Linux is a lot slower, offer less apps, has more security leaks (at least during 2k3), has less quality apps, is non-intuitive, has little support, bloaty documentation and has a poor user experience.
This is not to mention that in 95% of the cases you do the same productive task in windows in about half the time… once you learn how to use Windows that is…
The filesystem organization is that way because it makes sense in a networked environment. Unless you want to make Linux useless for networked environments, you don’t want to change the layout.
Also, you don’t need to know where the binary is to make a shortcut to it. As long as it is in your path, you just set the target of the shortcut as the application’s name (gedit, etc). The desktop environment will handle the rest automatically. Again, there is *no* reason to be wandering around in /usr/bin! Other OSs might work that way, but Linux doesn’t, for good reason.
“The filesystem organization is that way because it makes sense in a networked environment. Unless you want to make Linux useless for networked environments, you don’t want to change the layout.”
So you are saying it is impossible to have a more comprehensive filesystem and have it work well in a networked environment? It would be pretty easy to have a directory called /Programs and one called /RemotePrograms or something similar.
“Also, you don’t need to know where the binary is to make a shortcut to it.”
As long as you know what the name of the executable is, that is. Let’s say I have just installed Mozill Firebird. What’s the name of the executable? Something with mozilla? Let’s see moz.. <tab> <tab <tab> nothing. fire… <tab><tab><tab> nothing. So after some experimentation one will find out it is MozillaFirebird, but this is still an annoyance. In Gobo I just look in /Programs/MozillaFirebird/Current/bin to see the executable.
“As long as it is in your path, you just set the target of the shortcut as the application’s name (gedit, etc). The desktop environment will handle the rest automatically. Again, there is *no* reason to be wandering around in /usr/bin! Other OSs might work that way, but Linux doesn’t, for good reason.”
So basically in this case the desktop environment exist to hide a really complicated file system. I prefer to make the file system simpler. If you have a simple file system the user can understand you don’t need to put all kinds of bloated layers on top. That’s the ROX philosophy (http://rox.sourceforge.net). ROX promotes the use of Application Directories and makes extensive use of drag and drop.
> As long as you know what the name of the executable is, that is. Let’s say I have just installed Mozill Firebird. What’s the name of the executable? Something with mozilla? Let’s see moz.. <tab> <tab <tab> nothing. fire… <tab><tab><tab> nothing. So after some experimentation one will find out it is MozillaFirebird, but this is still an annoyance. In Gobo I just look in /Programs/MozillaFirebird/Current/bin to see the executable.
ermm how did you figure out that the path starts at /Programs? That’s completely arbitrary isn’t it? Just as /usr/bin. If I’m running GNOME on MacOSX or Linux or Solaris or Win2K, all of this should be completely transparent to me.
In the ideal case, after a program is installed it should create, after prompting the user, a shortcut in a menu or on the desktop.
Secondly, you should be able to see the list of installed files associated with the package (so rpm -ql package or using a graphical package manager). That solves your problem of locating the executable, right?
Names should matter, the path should not.
@Blah:
> It needs some sort of orginazion, the fact that you do not agree is frustrating. It is an example of what people mean by saying Zealots stand between Linux and the desktop
I’m not trying to frustrate you, honest
I disagree that GNOME has a slow GUI, as compare to KDE. In fact, in my experience it has been exactly the opposite. GNOME is much more responsive on my machine.
1.4GHz Athlon CPU
256MB RAM
(1024 x 768) 19″ Monitor
GNOME-2.4.1/KDE-3.1.5
Under GNOME, menus launch instantaneously and icons are rendered faster on GNOME than on KDE. And applications launch a whole lot faster on GNOME than KDE, with the exception of Mozilla and Mozilla based applications (Epiphany), and OpenOffice.org. The animations in KDE makes it seem unresponsive. Just the same way I think OS X is not responsive. I know you have the options to turn them off, but I don’t bother.
I find it exceedingly vague and absolutely unconvincing to accept that GNOME is slow. In fact, that statement is meaningless. What in GNOME is slow? Do you mean the GNOME panel, the GNOME desktop, Nautilus, GNOME applications, what exactly do you mean by “GNOME is slow”?
Some applications are slower than others. For example, OpenOffice.org is just not responsive in either KDE or GNOME. While applications like Anjuta is way more responsive as compared to say Kdevelop.
When I compare Abiword to Kword, for instance, it is my conclusion that Abiword is a whole lot snappier than Kword. I draw the same conclusion comparing Gnumeric to Kspread. Gpdf launches faster than kghostview, for instance, but I’m in my experience kghostview renders pdfs faster than Gpdf.
I find your generalizations and stand against GNOME/GTK+ biased. I’ve noticed whenever anything regarding GUI s responsiveness is brought up, you begin by lambasting GNOME labeling it as slow and attributing it’s sluggishness to GTK+’s resize issues and what not, without providing concrete evidence. And even when you do, it’s vague, like “GNOME is slow”.
It is a general consensus that XFCE4 is faster than KDE, at least the KDE-3.1.* series. If GTK+ was the bane of GNOME, can you explain to me how I find XFCE4 a bigillion times faster and more responsive than the KDE-3.1.*series despite the fact that it uses GTK+?
You are a generally objective individual, at least based on your well prosed comments, but I find your stance against GNOME/GTK+ in general a little off. If any other person made such statements, I would have ignored him. But I think your posts are generally viewed and respected by most osnews followers, hence my objection.
It would be nice if it was packaged as in it would all work together. But it does not and the endless stream of ‘segmentation faults’ panics and so on are hopeless in Linux. Why have 3 commands in Linux when only one is needed? It makes no sense, it is the podunk of operating systems. Gnome, Kde ect are best left alone.
Windows has the best real Gui of any operating system. In linux it is not even call a gui because it is not.
Your FUD is almost as thick as CNN.
“What on Earth are you talking about? What is random about the placement of apps into each own directories?”
I find it pretty stuppid. To start with, a desktop user should’t care at *all* where the files are.
The unix hierarchi is pretty straighforward: Put the configuration files in /etc (Want to make a backup? Backup /etc and don’t choose in each directory God knows what files)
/usr for static files
/var is for files that change. This, in fact, allows a pretty smart optimization: put /var on a fast disk if you need it in your servers. When will I have this easy way of configuring & optimizing things? NFI. Despite of that, osnews gave that thing the “server os award”. Oh, well…
“ermm how did you figure out that the path starts at /Programs?”
Because it’s intuitive? Let’s face it, when an average user looks at a Unix directory structure, they’re going to guess that /usr has user files and (if they’re English), /bin is where you put something if you want to delete it. The Unix directory structure does not have intuitive naming conventions. Having a standard lookup path only helps if you already know what the binary you’re looking for is named. Nevermind the Mozilla example – what happens when you want to send a command to your firewall, and you don’t even know that the command is “ipfw”. You have to go into about a half dozen directories and use man on anything with a name that looks vaguely promising.
Desktop Linux is a reality for a subset of people, but there are still too many annoyances for an average user. Standardizing on a directory structure with self explanatory names that are localized would be an excellent start towards eliminating some of the annoyances.
JT
“Because it’s intuitive? Let’s face it, when an average user looks at a Unix directory structure, they’re going to guess that /usr has user files and (if they’re English)”
Face it: A desktop user doesn’t care *at all* where their files are. If you want to know where your apps are, take a look to debian menus.
/etc is for configuration files. What the hell do you do in windows when you want to backup things in windows? I *just* backupt /etc. In windows, you’ve to backup everything, unless you know the internals of every app (which you don’t know) to know what files are configruation files and what files aren’t. Oh, you can backup the registry. Then, if you restore it in order to restor some app’s behaviour you’re fscking the rest of the apps which were working well with the current registry and will break with the old registry.
/var is for dynamic files. This allows very smart optimizations: Put /var in a fast disk if you’ve, ej: a mail server. Put /usr in the slow (or fast, depends on what you’re doing) disk. Etc. If you want to do it well, there’re not a lot of modifications around this scheme…
When is windows going to get at this? NFI. However, several people (including some people here) think that windows 2003 server is the *greatest* server OS on earth. Oh well…
> When all desktop distros will make parallel boot the default?
Because it’s slower? Trashing the cache worsens performance. Better to strip the init of all unnecessary things like I’ve done. My box boots less than 5s from LILO.
> The Unix directory structure does not have intuitive naming conventions
Right.
And I don’t care, since I run a sane desktop on top of it.
And why do you assume that ‘Programs’ is intuitive? Or even ‘Applications’? Because you are familiar with the jargon, right? I want to check my email, write up a homework report, make a picture album, record a TV show, play CDs blah blah.
I don’t care if it’s a ‘program’ or that it’s called Red Fire Breathing Lizard. How is ‘C:’ drive intuitive? How is Ctrl-C intuitive? How is right-click intuitive? How is the fscking QWERTY keyboard intuitive???
You grow used to it.
> what happens when you want to send a command to your firewall, and you don’t even know that the command is “ipfw”. You have to go into about a half dozen directories and use man on anything with a name that looks vaguely promising.
You would use a front end if it exists. Failing which, read your distro’s docs – something that says ‘System Administration Primer’. RTFM!
“ermm how did you figure out that the path starts at /Programs?”
Because it’s intuitive? Let’s face it, when an average user looks at a Unix directory structure, they’re going to guess that /usr has user files and (if they’re English), /bin is where you put something if you want to delete it. The Unix directory structure does not have intuitive naming conventions.
Come on, understanding the UNIX structure isn’t hard. /bin means binaries, sbin meaning system/superuser binaries. The only thing the end user should concern themselves with is /usr/local or /opt where their desktop applications should be installed.
Personally, I would prefer applications to be installed in /opt like they are in Solaris, however, that is just a opinion. IIRC, Miguel prefers /usr/local and I am sure there is a rationale to use another directory.
Look at Windows on the other hand, there are dlls, sys’s and drv’s floating every bloody where. There is a dll in system32 then one is the main windows directory, then one some where else. Why hasn’t MICROSOFT come up with a organised structure. Why don’t they simply have /Windows, /Windows/Libraries, /Windows/Applications, /Windows/Applications/CLI, /Windows/Applications/System, etc etc, why have a suffix of dll? NTFS can support files with suffix greater than 3, so why not suffix the end with *.library? why does a driver have 100 different parts? why not just one file called [name].driver?
“In the ideal case, after a program is installed it should create, after prompting the user, a shortcut in a menu or on the desktop.”
In the ideal case, you have a file system that is just as easy to navigate as the start menu, thereby making the start menu obsolete.
>> On this setup, KDE is about as fast as Windows XP running a light theme <<
Yep, there’s little doubt now, that on reasonable hardware (256mb+/1.2ghz+), something like Slack_9.1/KDE_3.2beta2/2.6 is as fast if not faster than XP – as the changes filter through over the next 6 months, it’ll become more widely acknowledged……
Instead of everyone answering Huh’s remarks about Linux, what about if you understood what he’s saying? He’s stating some of the reasons why Linux is clumsy for a desktop. He probably knows how to make it fast, stable, organised and lean. I do. The matter is ***why*** isn’t it so by default. Why is does every distribution (I haven’t checked the 2000 yet, but I doubt I’ll be surprised) throw you into a 70’s server OS with a bloated GUI on top? Please don’t tell me to check XPTOLX which come with Fluxbox by default – XPTOLX may be the way to do for the desktop but it isn’t mainstrean.
And yes, the /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin (repeat for other file types) thing doesn’t help either, and that’s more of an issue than you might think.
But it seems no one is able to take the criticisms for what they are (the other’s experience, and that of many users) and instead take it as an insult or a question. It’s most of the times neither. It’s a ‘this must be addressed’ contribution, an in fact one of the most valuable things in software development. But no, you must bash the author and do your best to have him modded down.
“And why do you assume that ‘Programs’ is intuitive? Or even ‘Applications’? Because you are familiar with the jargon, right?”
Find me a single person older than 6 that does not know what a “computer program” is and would thus not understand what the directory “/Programs” contains.
“Programs” is hardly jargon. “binary” is jargon /bin is a short and cryptic version of that jargon. /usr is even more confusing. For years I thougt it meant “user”, but apparently it stands for “Unix System Resources”.
By the way, can anyone tell me what “/etc” stands for? I know that’s where the configuration files go, but what does it stand for?
“How is ‘C:’ drive intuitive?”
It’s not. I’m not promoting windows here, I’m suggesting we should change the Linux directory hierarchy to something more intuitive.
> The unix hierarchi is pretty straighforward: Put the
> configuration files in /etc (Want to make a backup?
> Backup /etc and don’t choose in each directory God knows
> what files)
Yea? Then where are your DNS tables stored?
> For years I thougt it meant “user”, but apparently it stands for “Unix System Resources”.
Damn, I didn’t know that! Don’t know what /etc/ is either
> I’m suggesting we should change the Linux directory hierarchy to something more intuitive.
You can’t.
1. Tons of apps would break. Or you’d have to go running around making symlinks or some other kludge to keep backwards compatibility.
2. You could make a NEW standard, and we all know what happens to standards
3. What’s intuitive to some isn’t intuitive to the other guy. Then you’d have to be arbitrary.
4. Why fix something that works?
And you shouldn’t care. Some things are braindamaged forever and the only ‘solution’ is to get used to it.
You *are* used to typing on a QWERTY kbd without looking down aren’t you?
>> The filesystem organization is that way because it makes
>> sense in a networked environment. Unless you want to make
>> Linux useless for networked environments, you don’t want
>> to change the layout.
What are you talking about???
>>>> For years I thougt it meant “user”, but apparently it
>> stands for “Unix System Resources”.
>> Damn, I didn’t know that! Don’t know what /etc/ is either
It means etcetera which means ‘everthing else related’
and yes even being a Linux fan I hate /bin /etc and so, if Home is called home, why /etc can no be called SystemConfig
and /bin Programs?????
I agree that the hierarchy names are a little bit awkard
/etc/init.d means nothing to anyone who has not spend a few weeks/months using Linux, something like /SystemConfig/Startup, /SystemCFG/BootServices will be much more intuitive.
I like Gobolinux’s name herarchy, also I consider that at least big applications should reside on separate directories.
One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of posts here is this:
People think that users shouldn’t need to know where in Linux their programs are. They should just use the desktop or the path should have the program in it for use from the CLI. No mention is made of removing programs.
Remember that a lot of people are trying out Linux at home and to learn something new. They have to learn how to administer their boxes, and administering a Linux box can be more difficult to learn than administering a Windows box.
A great deal is made about “choice” in Linux, but I have found from experience that trying to make my choices just work can be a struggle. Things are improving, but there is a chasm to jump from being a basic “user” to get past the intermediate stage and become an effective administrator.
> People think that users shouldn’t need to know where in Linux their programs are.
That’s not *quite* right, read on.
> They should just use the desktop or the path should have the program in it for use from the CLI.
Yes, if I had to add an entry for every app I installed into my $PATH I’d go nuts.
> No mention is made of removing programs. Remember that a lot of people are trying out Linux at home and to learn something new. They have to learn how to administer their boxes
And so they should read the System Administration Primer doc that ships with their distro. Dead tree or online. Which will describe the package removal procedure using a GUI as well as from the command line. Which will also describe how to query the package database, query an individual package, remove a package, upgrade to a newer version etc. etc. And get a list of files that the package installs, and their path. Which is what you wanted – pretty simple right?
But this is *completely* independent of the physical location of the package on the disk.
And look at it this way – those are GNOME or KDE programs, not just Linux. I could run KDE on Cygwin, MacOSX, Solaris, *BSD, a kiosk, a cellphone or a toaster. Is the path to a KDE application guaranteed to be the same in all cases? No, and that’s why I should not even care.
But if I cared (being a sysadmin) I could easily figure out using the package manager.
> Things are improving, but there is a chasm to jump from being a basic “user” to get past the intermediate stage and become an effective administrator.
Good luck. Hope you have fun
– About the FHS. The whole problem with replacing a start menu with the filesystem is that people don’t get hierarchical filesystems. Don’t ask me why, people just tend to have problems with hierarchical structures. A menu is much easier for them to navigate than an app dir. While OS X has something of an app dir, they kinda cheat. They only put major applications in the app dir. Everything else is in directories opaque to the system. And you have to have something like that — should a user have to stare at the 1300 different programs in /usr/bin? If not, then how do you choose which ones to put there and which ones to hide? Should ‘kwin’ get its own place in the app dir? As far as the system is concerned, its just another app, but the user doesn’t really need to know about it. On a UNIX system, where you have lots of apps working together, app dirs just don’t make a lot of sense.
@Jason Gade: Careful about the “remove” example. You can’t remove applications by deleting the folders in Windows. Its a crucial weakness of Window’s lack of package management. The way the registry and DLL system are set up, it needs package management, but doesn’t have it. Worse, it kinda looks like an app-dir style setup to the user, but isn’t. There is a good reason that MS hides c:/program files by default!
@root: I think that you and I have two completely different definitions of speed. The stuff you consider important (application startup, etc) don’t seem very important to me. I just leave my applications open. What is important to me is stuff like who smoothly windows move and resize, and how flicker-free redraws are. Qt/KDE is much better in this regard. I’ve detailed the problems with GTK+’s redraw earlier, and don’t really feel like repeating myself. A few examples should suffice:
– Load up 100k of text into GEdit, and the same into Kate. You can’t resize the GEdit window without the content area lagging behind the window frame, while with Kate, you can load 10x as much text and Kate will handle it perfectly smoothly. Most KDE apps resize without lagging. Even the simplest GTK+ apps do not.
– Load up 1000 MP3s into JuK and Rhythmbox. Try resizing one of the list columns. In JuK, the column divider will stay right under your mouse. In GTK+, it’ll lag behind significantly. Try sorting the lists. The JuK lists will sort instantly, while the Rhythmbox lists will lag.
– Load up Evolution and Kontact. Try resizing both windows, and see which one responds more smoothly. Move a larger window over both, and see which one redraws quicker.
– Load ‘/usr/bin’ into both nautilus and konqueror and see which handles resizing the window more smoothly. With the kwin patch I’m working on, konqueror can actually handle the resize with *no* lag at all.
Instead of all the theory of when/if Linux is ready on the desktop, why not benchmark the two operating systems against each other or something?
Why is is that Linux has such poor backwards compatibility and what is the ETA on when this might change?
Is there ever a time when all my apps might not get thrown in random /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, usr/sbin directories? FHS does not even mention graphical applications.
Installers will be broken for as long as backwards compatibility is broken?
If people keep calling it stable and fast then why is it in my experience so unstable and slow and where is this going moving forward?
I know Linux markes RAM unused and does not free it and for good reason. This is the reason “free” shows memory usage higher than windows, but why does it us so much RAM just after boot?
Why does it boot so SLOW…
Why don’t we look at the reasons Desktop Linux falls short rather than beating a dead horse?
Ok.. If you are running on older hardware then use a distro that is more cli oriented such as slackware or debian.. I dual boot between win98SE and slackware on a p200 with 64 megs of ram and the speed is more then acceptable for my needs! In fact I use slack alot more for buisiness.. Considering the apps are free.. Well since there’s no diablo 2 client yet for linux.. Well that’s why I keep win98SE around..