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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, @05:00PM
The problem is you're looking at Linux as a single software package like Windows or a friggin' Wii OS. It isn't. It's an ecosystem, like "console gaming". Is the fact that the Playstation won't play XBox games really a community fragmentation problem? Or are they just different platforms with different goals? The great thing about Linux is it's like a Playstation that *does* let you play Xbox games, or at least attempt to. But they don't always work, and there's no real reason to expect that they would! You can try a lot of things, you can try anything you want, but that also has to mean that it's up to you to make sure it'll work. The best thing about Linux is it doesn't try to figure out what you're doing, it doesn't change what you typed on the fly into what it thinks you really meant, it just does what you tell it.
And the biggest problem with Linux today is too many people trying to "fix" the fragmentation "problem", resulting in a less powerful, less flexible system that's more prone to bugs and viruses and hacking. I *want* to see stuff like "Pick which of the following packages you'd like to install to meet the 'Java' dependency" when I'm installing something. Yes, it means more fragmentation. Yes, it means the program might fail if I make a different choice than what the devs have tested on. It also means if there's a bug in one, I can try another. It also means that a security flaw in one can't do as much damage because there aren't as many users, and those users can easily switch if a flaw is found. And it also means I can, for example, more easily avoid Oracle if I just don't like Oracle.
If you want someone else to make the choices for you and to keep the third parties in line, you already have numerous options, the most well known (but certainly not only) choices being Mac or Windows. But PLEASE keep that attitude out of Linux, it really doesn't belong there. For many of us, fragmentation is not a bug but a feature, and that feature is the very reason we use Linux in the first place.