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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @03:51PM
Sigh.. If I had a nickle for every time I found some tool, game or other program I wanted to use and found out it was not in the distro repo so it had to be manually installed... then I would have a lot of nickles.
Adding alternative repo sources to the list is often pretty much mandatory if you still want to get some of the more popular-but-not-in-repo software and the developers just happen to run one of those repos for your distro. Doing this is in theory much safer than downloading random installer executables, but of course still a security risk. So the setting is buried in some hard to find configuration file which needs hand editing, which is a great user experience! /s
Also being in a repo should, but does not actually indicate anything about quality. There are a lot of broken packages in there which can and will irreversibly mess up your system upon install.
My point is, the usefulness of a repository is directly related to its contents and in its reliability. If half the software I need is not in the repo, and the other half can still break my audio or X or whatever, then there is not much point to a repo. With a package management situation like that, even the 'download random installer' alternative is better. Because that alternative allows getting things done.
These issues are symptoms of the real problem with Linux. Too much fragmentation. Yes choice is good. Too much choice is detrimental. Debian and Ubuntu, and Mint and Redhat and Suse, and Arch and all others simply need to get their shit together once and for all and designate one package management system as The One, and focus all their efforts on it. Then with a few more changes, maybe we can also start seeing some more commercial software on linux because developers will no longer need to compile/package/test for a dozen different systems all with their own quirks.
Of course, I'm dreaming. None of that will ever happen.