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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: 1) by Veyrdite on Wednesday February 22 2017, @10:49PM
Program names - user vs developer expectations
What is the purpose of a program name? Take evince for example. It's a PDF viewer that had its interface completely replaced by something else. The only similarity new version had was that it was a PDF viewer -- but so are zathura, xpdf, katarakt, epdfview and the like -- so why was it called by the same name as the old program? And why does it being called the same name mean that everyone's installation of it had to be replaced with this new program?
"But they're not different -- they both have the same name!"
The reason is that users have a different understanding to what names mean to the developers. Developers see a name and a project as something they own. Users see it as a particular implementation. Package maintainers will follow whatever naming system the devs do, except in very rare circumstances.
There is no correct answer, but from my perspective there is nothing good about finding applications replaced on my system with different ones that go by the same name. I fear the day my Seamonkey/Firefox install will be replaced by Chrome after an update, but of course it would still be called Seamonkey/Firefox, so what am I complaining about?
Oh wait, that probably is going to happen.
I'd love to see distros maintain different versions of packages. Not small releases. Major ones. Ones large enough that if they were assigned a different name then package maintainers would automatically maintain them as a separate package without thought or question. evince-gtk2 and evince-gtk3, for example. Thankfully the MATE project has done this, but you have to know about them or their new package names (which I am sure most people are not aware of).
Other examples of where I've been bitten by 'same name different program': file-roller (GNOME extraction utility), canto (console feed reader) and thunar (file manager). Does anyone here have similar stories?
GTK file open/save dialogs
The GTK2 file open/save dialog is easily my favorite file/save dialog ever. It's resizable, allows keyboard navigation and has a bookmarking system. But it and its successor are not without complaints.
(1) Choosing a folder in the folder select (not file select) dialog is difficult . Sometimes the 'OK' button has been transiently renamed to 'Open' because you accidentally selected a folder in the file list view. How do you deselect it?
Good question.
For years I closed the dialog and started again, or tried to navigate up folders and then back down again. It turns out the solution is to click into the path bar so that your cursor flashes there, then click on 'OK'. Makes sense, right?
(2) The new gtk3 dialog box "searches" as you type. Traditionally (gtk2) this would navigate you around much like a console experience. You type 'avo' and a folder called 'avocado' would be selected. You can hit enter on your keyboard to enter it. I liked this, it was a very fast way to navigate.
Now when you type, it does a full search of either the current folder or your entire home folder. It's slow and I'm sure it makes sense for many people, but it should be a labelled 'search' function or box, not just happen when you try to type. Both systems are valid, but making people use one over the other is silly, and searches in every other piece of software are explicity named so with their own GUI elements.
(3) Adding/removing bookmarks by drag and drop in gtk2filechooser. They always seem to end up in the wrong spot, different to where you dragged them. Am I the only person in the last ten years that has ever used this functionality?
Proliferation of dependencies and services: paper, soft and hard
Hmm, my latest update has yet again installed adwaita-icon-theme and replaced my mouse cursor. Why, which package requires it this time?
Today's culprit: 'darktable'. But, as it turns out, if you forcefully uninstall adwaita-icon-theme, darktable runs just fine. It didn't have any sort of dependency on it. Just one on paper.
Rather than fighting my package manager, I uninstalled darktable and then logged out and back in again.
Another favorite of mine is dbus. It likes to start and then just hang around. How many other programs do that? Why does dbus get special permissions to be always hanging around and running on people's computers? How can I get the application I write to do this on everyone's computer? I'd love to know, lots of money and brand presence to be made here.
As an experiment I replaced dbus-launch and dbus-daemon with a couple of stub shell scripts. I used my computer for a week and only one thing had an issue (admittedly I'm not in a DE): the GIMP. It could not longer communicate between running copies, so if you opened an image file with the gimp whilst another copy was running, you would end up with two copies. I'm amazed. How many lines of code are in dbus, just to be used for something like this? Sureley there is a more efficient way.
Separation of users and developers
Whenever I see devs putting people into categories like 'developers' or 'users' it's often accompanying their reason for certain project changes.
In reality 'users' and 'developers' are two extremely vast and diverse groups. And they overlap. We're talking about humans, not robots. If you take a room full of them them then only a small proportion will fit into the 'user' and 'developer' categories that you imagine, but if you ask them what they think they are you will get a myriad of answers.
What is the truth? There is no such thing as a 'user' or a 'developer'. There are only people, and people sometimes act a bit like what you call a 'user' and sometimes a bit like what you call a 'developer', but mostly everything else and in between.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @06:14AM
dbus is an inter-application messaging service. Some programs never use it and some over use it. As a service, it auto-starts when the computer boots up like every other service. To stop it, simply edit your service settings. To have your program do the same thing, add it as a service. Windows and every OS I know of has services too.