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posted by on Wednesday February 22 2017, @09:56AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by aim on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:11PM

    by aim (6322) on Wednesday February 22 2017, @03:11PM (#470206)

    disclaimer: I've used Linux on the desktop since around 1995, starting with Slackware and writing my own damn modelines for X Window. I went back to OS/2 for a short while before getting hooked for good on SuSE, later Debian, still later (K)Ubuntu, and in between using quite a lot of different distributions including RHEL and SLES. I'm still using Kubuntu on my Laptop, but FreeBSD on my personal server. I suffer through Windows 10 at the office.

    - dependency hell: hardly ever saw that. My worst experience that way was an attempt to upgrade a Gentoo system that had been without update for too long, with me finally reinstalling from scratch. And yes, I've used different architectures including i386, x86_64, alpha, sparc, sparc64. I guess it helped that my non-x86 platforms were practically all on Debian.

    - Desktop: maybe I'm just getting old, but I just don't get the more recent GNOME or Unity desktops, which seem to get in the way of productivity, hiding too much from the user. KDE seems ok, as are XFCE or some of the classic WindowManagers.

    The UI should enable people to do what they want to get done, without getting in the way. That simple truth is unfortunately lost on too many people who go for "idiot-proof, shiny".

    - My main gripe would be too many levels of abstraction. NetworkManager, PulseAudio, more recently systemd... and some of the management tools of the distributions. Even going back to the basic config files for certain services won't always simply work, as they might be overwritten by other actions.

    KISS, people. Classic Linux is user-friendly, only maybe more choosy than others about who it considers a friend.

    - hardware issues: Well, the classic is of course vendor support. USB Scanners come to mind, or way back Winmodems. You need to be careful what you buy if you want it working on Linux. For most stuff it's a non-issue, but it still might bite. Current challenges, while at least partially solved: decent synchro with a smartphone, idem with a sports watch. I find it particularly disappointing when Linux-based products don't offer decent solutions for working with Linux.

    - software issues: there's always specialized software just not available, or not available in a recent version, on Linux. For my hobby of astrophotography, there's quite some applications for Windows where I don't know of decent equivalents (e.g. fitswork). Depending on your profession, it might be hard to find something for your specific field(s) of endeavour, or fulfilling legal requirements. WINE is not always helpful, and you'll end up dual-booting, running a VM, or just plain stay on RedmontOS or bitten Apple.

    - on the plus: it's still exceedingly rare to see malware on Linux, so no real need to waste CPU cycles on an antivirus or similar. Your classic distro won't phone home, at least not without asking you. Your data remain yours, unless you do something utterly silly. You, or your IT guy, can look under the hood to fix issues. Not much need to battle with licensing issues. It's your OS, you do what you want.

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