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from the it's-already-perfect-is-not-the-right-answer dept.
We all know about Microsoft's latest OS, so I won't rehash. A lot of us intensely dislike it, to put it politely. Those of us who can, use other operating systems. This is Soylent, so let's focus on the one that is the most important to us: Linux.
I have been using Windows as my OS since right after Atari times. A few years ago I bought an ARM (ARMHF/ARMv7) netbook and put Lubuntu on it. I had problems with my first Linux experience, mainly in the area of installing software: missing packages in Synaptic, small dependency hells, installing a package at a time by hand, some broken stuff. I put it down mainly to the architecture I have been using, which can't be supported as well as x86-64.
Now, we all know that no software is perfect, and neither is Linux, even though it is now my main OS. We support it in spirit and financially, but there is always room for improvement.
So, the question is: What are your problems with Linux and how can we fix them? How do we better it? Maybe it's filesystems, maybe it's the famous/infamous systemd. Let's have at it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @02:34PM
The problem is lack of agreement combined with stupidity combined with bad judgment.
The first problem is I want a unix like OS with human editable config files and lack of suprise and high productivity for, well, there's no nice way to put it, higher functioning, higher IQ people. I don't want a fisher price toy that makes easy things easier for dumb people and harder things impossible even for smart people. Its like arguing about wheelchairs, I'm sure they need engineering improvements, but I don't need one, don't want one, aren't going to sit in one, aren't going to dogfood one. Please will all you "gnome bootloader people" stop trying to turn my nice new aeron chair into their weird idea of what wheelchair users want while I'm sitting in it. Yes yes I'm sure those features are very important to people who need wheelchairs unlike myself. I don't need to be squashed into that productivity hell of LARPing that we're all sitting in wheelchairs and nobody isn't handicapped. I don't want GUIs for network and sound that don't really work but if they did work at least sometimes between crashes they'd let dumb people do things in five minutes that take me 30 seconds in emacs. I don't want an "environment" I live in a perfectly good meatspace environment and all I need is urxvt, emacs, and chrome browser go away with your shitty LARPy fake copy of macOS from 1987 I actively don't want that. The arrogance is so annoying, a SN car analogy would be we need to bulldoze the Autozone store because it sells stuff that low IQ morons can't use so to make it fair we'll have to bulldoze it and make it impossible for the general public to work on their cars and we can hire nice expensive mechanics to do all the work. "everyone knows" that "everyone knows" that "everyone needs" a whole stinking pile of manure no one actually wants, a scene right out of the emperor has no clothes.
The stupidity angle is in all organizations you can always replace working system A with expensive complete overhaul paid system B like new versions of office or MS software that are a complete mystery to past users, but you can't replace with system C thats free that also is a complete mystery to past users. When MS scraps the UI and replaces it with mysterious junk thats the best thing ever, but you can't use open office unless its bug for bug compatible with the current version of Word. How stupid.
The bad judgment issue is you'll end up with cascading support contract requirements. We have to use Oracle because only pay software provided adequate performance on 90s hardware and we can't switch to Debian on a rasp pi which is powerful enough but too much of a forklift upgrade and Oracle insists on Redhat only or just steaming piles of dependency hell like that. Furthermore we need support contacts because ... we don't know, we've never used them and there's no point in asking a script reader in India if I should reboot my PC. But supposedly they're required for ... something, although nobody ever uses support.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:10PM
But...you can HAVE that with Linux. You want Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, or some minimal Debian install, then just {emerge|pacman|apt-get|bloody well do it yourself} your packages.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:22PM
But looping the argument back around to the original topic, now we got systemd instead and any time someone whips out the linux desktop meme the handwringing over KDE and gnome begin, despite my desktops having nothing to do with and no interest at all in either.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:30PM
Arch has a non-systemd package set in the AUR if i remember right. Gentoo/Funtoo are OpenRC by default. Not sure what Slack does but I'm told it's not systemd. And BSD is its own thing entirely, something like Gentoo's British cousin with a surprisingly high IQ.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:31AM
Slack is still using sysvinit, but hasn't committed to not including it in a future release. Slack is notoriously slow on updating its core; it only got pulse a version or two ago because its too tangled in the stack these days.
Still always moving