SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:07AM
I'm a pretty dedicated Linux user - except for gaming, it's my OS 99% of the time. However, I'm not a Linux configuration expert - I just use it to get work done.
It's hard to describe, but the thing that bugs me most about Linux are the expected things that happen. Let's call it a problem with "predictability".
Let me explain by giving an example: I was chasing an audio problem a couple of months ago. Google knows all, and I followed a recommendation to install some additional audio package or other. It was in Synaptic, so it wasn't anything too exotic. It didn't solve my problem, so I uninstalled it. From the moment I installed it: whenever I mount a new partition (for example, an external disk), my screen background changes back to the default. If I log out, and back in, I get my normal background back. Damned if I know why, and it's a bigger mystery why installing an audio package should affect the desktop in the first place.
I run into inexplicable things like this every couple of months, and they accumulate. I am happy when the next Ubuntu LTS comes out, because it gives me a reason to nuke everything from orbit, and start over with a fresh install.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:15AM
I meant: the un expected things that happen...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:24AM
I agree, my main issue is it trying to do too much behind the scenes without clear and verbosive output.
There is a reason why none of my desktop machines (excepting the RPi with kodi) boots into a gui, and why my normal desktop is free of icons - it is normally more timeeffecient to just read the complete documentation of a program than to piecemeal try to find how you turn off all the annoyances.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday February 22 2017, @04:19PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @05:51AM
I've had similar issues. My guess to you is part of your desktop manager is crashing. Underneath everything is an annoying web of cross application messaging running through everything that wants to listen to it. Likely the desktop sees the message of a new mount and wants to play a notification sound. Somehow that sound playback setting is corrupted or the sound file is missing thus the software crashes because most developers are too lazy to care about quality. Change your notification settings and the wallpaper might stick around.
My biggest annoyance is the Eye of MATE image viewer (and all the other branded versions. Why the fuck does every distro need to re-brand the exact same software as something else?). It seems they all talk to each other. Open up a hundred different instances of the program, using --new-instance or not, and they all slow down whenever you do something in one of them such as opening another image or just moving to the next image in a sequence. They either broadcast their change out to each other or they're all sharing some pool in the background despite them claiming to be different instances. WTF software writers? Please stop ignoring scaling issues. Computers can handle so much more, the software they run can't.