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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: 5, Interesting) by NCommander on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:36AM
I've been a long time Linux (RHL 4.5) user, and before that FreeBSD (2.2 I think). Honestly, and it pains me to say this, I find usability on the whole to be backsliding rather than going forward to the point that my new laptop has been running Windows for the time being. I'd also like to think of myself as not being stuck in the past. While I find Windows 7/Server 2008 to be superior in terms of UI, I never had serious issues with Win 8, 8.1, or 10 as far as user experience went (I mostly ignored Metro). It did its job and got out of the way.
From a desktop experience, Linux desktop environments on the whole have tried very hard to make life miserable. GNOME3, and Xfce have steadily gotten worse in past years. I've experimented with MATE and Cinnamon, but I find the entire experience to be just lackluster on the whole. Right now, my primary desktop (perdition) is chugging along with LXDE and Ubuntu 14.04, and my previously laptop was previously running Debian 7 with Cinnamon after switching from XMonad. My testing of Ubuntu 16.04 has turned me off that distribution entirely, combined with a lot of NIH that Canonical has been pushing. A lot of the problems I've found is that I'm fighting a battle to do anything with the system, or it just doesn't integrate cleanly. Using LibreOffice can grind my system to a halt. A perfect example of this pain is that I use an actual HID bluetooth mouse with my laptop, and I constantly am fighting with BlueZ on newer Linux's to get it to work. On Windows, I click "Enable Bluetooth", and within five seconds, my mouse is connected and I don't have to fiddle or fight with it.
A fun litmus test you can try is loading up an older Debian release, or older Ubuntu, and comparing it to the current "cutting edge". It's depressing. I once used to advocate fairly hard for Linux adaption, now I just go "meh". You can't advocate for something if you don't believe in the product. There's just no care for quality assurance any more. Now I feel like I get a heap of parts, and some assembly required.
On the flip side of the coin, I find the KDE experience to be all over the map; it reminds me unfavorably of using OS/2 and how it did seamless mode with Windows 3.1 applications. Non-KDE applications sorely stick out, and just don't integrate cleanly; Chrome, Firefox, LibreOffice, and Visual Studio Code (as well as Atom) all scream to me I'm running foreign applications in a "pure" KDE experience. The K-version of apps such as KOffice and KDevelop always feel clunky and unrefined. While the situation may have gotten better, last time I tried KDE, notifications often had hiccups with KDE integration, and the UI felt very rough. While I can piss on GNOME for removing settings and hiding them away, the problem is KDE's system preferences is (or at least was) on par with the space shuttle in terms of switches and complexity.
There was a serious point where I felt a sane distribution (Ubuntu around 12.04-ish) could have seriously taken on Microsoft on their home turf and crossed the gap so to speak. Perhaps another distribution could take up that mantle and begin pushing for change, but the entirety of corporate-backed distros (Canonical, Red Hat) have more or less taken leave of their senses. I still find Linux for the most part to be a better platform for embedded, specialist, or creating appliance like devices, but for general usage?
I think I rather install CDE and use that. At least I can depend on that not changing every week.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:49AM
I gave Linux over 20 years to get its desktop act together. If it hasn't by now, it never will.
Linux has found its niche: as the no-GUI server OS. Nothing will ever change that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @01:35PM
Last I check, you can still install Debian 3.0, stable kernel 2.6 ABI :)
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday February 22 2017, @08:22PM
I agree partially regarding Linux desktop distributions degenerating. But unfortunately I still have to log in to Windows once in a while, and it still is a far worse pain in the ass. Maybe some products like a bluetooth mouse work out of the box, but I'm working in test-automation on a cross-platform product, and still I see issues with
I really hate any work I have to do for that platform. Current linux desktops are often a pain in the ass as well, but usually can be fixed. By Xfce also slightly degenerated, the "switch user" feature doesn't work (but "alt-ctrl-F2, text terminal login., startx" works), sometimes I have to disable wifi and enable it again to get it working because it is somehow stuck, recently the computer often doesn't wake up properly from hibernate and needs to be restarted, and all that is quite annoying. But still much easier than more stable than Windows 7/8/10. Even our on-site-support finally told me 2014 to just banish Windows 8 into a VM, take snapshots once in a while and recover from there, when the system breaks. They were not able to get MS Office running again without a full wipe/re-install...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @11:38PM
Two notes for people who run into similar situations. The path length limit can be avoided by prepending \\?\ to the path. UNC doesn't have the same limit. I, sadly, have to use that workaround in Explorer a little too often, usually to delete files put there by some program or another.
Also, I think that case-preserving file systems make more sense. The prevent situations of having two items in the same directory with the same name except for the case. They also prevent typos from causing weird issues. I can't really see the use case for two things with the same name but different capitalization in a folder.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday February 23 2017, @12:07AM
The path length limit can be avoided by prepending \\?\ to the path.
Thanks, we saw that as well. But I don't think Jenkins [jenkins-ci.org] supports this mechanism.
I can't really see the use case for two things with the same name but different capitalization in a folder.
Compatibility to other relevant systems (Android, Linux, iOS, QNX to name some we work with). We use repo with manifest files, teams add their git repositories there, and are not always checking for similar names. Also I just expect software to distinguish different names, it's just common in any programming language I used for the past decade, iirc. So why should bash or bat act differently?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:19AM
This only works if you're directly passing UNC paths to OpenFile()/etc, and you still have an upper limit of 32k kilobytes to command line arguments (a hardcoded constrain on CreateProcess as far as I can tell) which causes headaches when compiling extremely large software packages. As for case-sensitive vs not, I personally agree with you, but the problem is when you have to work with a system that does preserve case, you're going to be in for a world of hurt (the Linux kernel has several files that only vary in case). Fortunately, it IS possible to get case-sensitive behavior on Windows if you enable it, but your application has to specifically be enabled to use it (it has to do CreateFile with POSIX_ACCESS_ATTRIBUTE, else its undefined which file you'll get). You can however tell cygwin to wrap all API calls with that flag and get a case-preserving cygwin environment.
A bigger issue is the fact that symlinks are badly borked on Windows since UAC became a thing. SymLinks by default require admin permissions to create on Windows, but this can be changed with a GPO/registry tweak. So far so good. However, when logged in as an Administrator, UAC will drop the symlink permission unconditionally, so you get the absurd situation where you have to "Run As Administrator" if you're an admin, or you can just make symlinks if you're an unprivileged user. As far as I can tell, there's no way to change the security profiles used by UAC.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:13PM
I've definitely got some very similar feelings. Although I think you've got a few years on me (I started with Mandrake 9.) Just wanted to say, since I didn't see you mention it, that I've recently found great joy in using the Enlightenment window manager on an Antergos system. It's a bit buggy sometimes -- between being bleeding edge and using less popular packages, I occasionally hit minor issues like when desktop compositing or suspend stops working for a week. I'm trying to remember to NOT update every other day if nothing is broken yet :) So on that front you might have better luck with a distro like Bhodi. But Enlightenment is so easy to configure and has so many options...I can't find anything that I want to change and can't, and found SO MANY things I never knew I wanted to change because the option just never existed.
Even with a System76 Bonobo (a 17" beast of a gaming laptop) KDE lately is bloated and just feels...claustrophobic. I mean I've always been a fan of more minimalist interfaces, spent a lot of time on Openbox and IceWM and even WindowMaker. For a while I'd install KDE when I got a new system, then a year or two later switch to OpenBox or something as it aged. But lately I'm finding that more system resources just means more for KDE to waste on crap like search indexing that I don't even use! Enlightenment just gives me a wallpaper and a program menu then gets the hell out of my way :)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday February 24 2017, @01:24AM
I've been debating jumping on the E17 ship and see how it is. As far as full DEs go, I'm fairly tempted to stay with LXDE or switch to Cinnamon, but I could be convinced to go to E17 if focus-follows-mouse works respectably. I recently went to WindowMaker for awhile, but I couldn't get the dock to work respectably; it's mostly bitrotten out of most distributions.
I used E16 for a very long time so going to E17 does have some appeal in that regard.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday February 24 2017, @03:41PM
Yeah, I use focus follows mouse (one of the settings I discovered I liked only after switching to Enlightenment -- I think it may be their default) and it works pretty well. The only issue I've ever noticed is that every once in a while when switching virtual desktops the initial focus won't match the mouse location. For example, my first desktop has a browser and a terminal side-by-side, and sometimes when flipping to that desktop focus will be on Firefox when the mouse is over the Terminal. I think it has something to do with the way it moves the mouse pointer when you change desktops to try to keep focus on the window you were using last time you were on that desktop. But it's rare enough that I haven't bothered to really try to figure out what's going on, I just move the mouse over and back and it corrects itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2017, @06:40PM
The Bodhi team became disillusioned with the way E18 development was going[1] so they forked E17 to produce Moksha.
If you are going to try a newer version of the Enlightenment desktop environment, you may find some extra tweaks which you appreciate in that fork.
[1] We've seen a similar thing with early releases of new version numbers of some notable DEs.
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