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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: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday February 22 2017, @06:48PM
In particular, I'd like to be able to run some applications that depend on Linux version 2.2 (approx. ... around 1999) without dropping into qemu. I think that for my particular problem the problem was with some glibc changes, though I never bothered to find out the details, since virtualization was the only answer. It's got its points, but it's quite a bother. I'd rather be able to run it as easily as wine, though ideally with a lot better reliability.
An attached problem is that when I'm running in virtualization, either the virtual environment must not have sound, or there must be NO sounds from the base system...otherwise I get horrendous static.
Another attached problem is making is feasible to save files from the virtualized environment in a way that can be read from the underlying environment.
Now just how much of this is strictly Linux is a question. You could claim that it's all properly the domain of, say, qemu. But it's a problem in the Linux environment.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 22 2017, @08:42PM
For one of your problems, as you mentioned using QEMU I assume you also use KVM: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/9p_virtio [linux-kvm.org]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:40AM
Generally the problem is library skew. It's possible to side-by-side install older ABIs and get them all to work if you're dedicated (I've managed to get a.out binaries going on Ubuntu 14.04 as a shit and giggles moment).
Easiest thing to do is if you're running a debian derivative is simply debootstrap a release from that era. Something like "debootstrap --arch i386 potato /my-chroot-path http://archive.debian.org/debian/" [debian.org] should do the trick.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:01PM
That was definitely the problem. (I'm running, I think, Red Hat 5.2 in the virtualized environment.) But the request was for "what would make Linux better to use", and for me that's the problem...and by now the only problem, though I have a few MSWind95 games I'd like to play, I've never felt the need sufficiently to get the virtualization working...but wine doesn't really handle them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.