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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 urza9814 on Thursday February 23 2017, @04:26PM
Well...there's fixes and there's "fixes".
Package management has improved a huge amount since I first started using Linux (Mandrake 9). Wifi too. You can even game on it -- and not just Frozen Bubble. Steam, a Steam controller, and a Linux box makes a better gaming system than any Windows PC or console that I've ever used. And it does that without losing any power -- Linux still handles massive amounts of network traffic far better than Windows; ffmpeg still transcodes video faster than most Windows software; and it still never locks up -- sure, you might crash a program, but my Windows 7 system at work still sometimes requires a hard reboot if the mail client fails.
On the other hand, you've got the people who think being able to use a terminal is a "problem" that needs to be "fixed". Most software is significantly harder to configure these days, with configuration strewn through a dozen separate files in multiple directories and occasionally binaries. Logfiles...I almost don't even use logs at all on my Linux systems anymore, I've only got useful logs on the BSD ones. I *try* to use them on my Linux systems, but stuff either doesn't log anything or logs in binary formats and refuses to give you the info you need. What I used to solve by reading logs, I now solve by restarting the service in verbose mode and piping the output to a file. And that is NOT an improvement.
The biggest usability issue in Linux today is the idea that knowing how my software works and what it does is itself a usability issue. Which brings with it a lack of choice -- it used to be that you'd install a package and get a choice of a half dozen different dependencies any of which would provide some necessary service. Now the assumption is that I don't know any better so that choice is made for me.
It's a great time for people switching from Windows to Linux, but there ARE a lot of downsides for people who figured out a while ago that Linux was powerful and flexible enough to be worth the learning curve. But thankfully the BSDs seem to be making some good progress too...