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BSD vs. Linux (2005)

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Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#111

Post by eropple »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #106
_wdzx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enlighten me - what's the problem with the linux desktops?

Based on this thread, I'd say the problem is a lot of people haven't given them the time. If you select your hardware, they work pretty flawlessly. Certainly right there with Windows or OSX or anything else. In a lot of cases you don't even need to be very selective, you just need to have a modern machine.

I run a Linux desktop for work (typing on it right now) as a dual-boot with my Windows setup. It is a "modern machine", at least if an i7-6700K and a 980Ti are modern, and I couldn't get X to start with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. And yet it did with Ubuntu 14.04, which is bizarre. My time is valuable enough that I didn't debug it further than that--if I wanted to light my time on fire I'd just go set up a Hackintosh and have a better desktop experience, so for now I'm getting by with 14.04. But that sucks profoundly; it was my first attempt at a Linux desktop in probably three years and I was pretty disheartened by how things have gotten worse for my use cases in that time.

"If you select your hardware," you can definitely have a decent time. But I don't know many people for whom the operating system is more important than what you can do with it, and part of "what you can do with it" is "use your hardware."

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#112

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

idobai wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Linux on the desktop from 2001-2007 or so. Switched to OS X until then. It's no contest: OS X is smoother, more consistent, and lower maintenance. Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity.

> Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity. Gnome 2.x is a dead-end - it was buggy and ugly. Gnome 3.x is far better. Unity is just another canonical-outrage.

Would you mind explaining what you mean by outrage? For productivity, Unity beats any Gnome 3 setup I've tried so far. And we're still not talking about the maintenance/security nightmare that is the Gnome 3 plugin system.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#113

Post by [deleted] »

_wdzx wrote: post #104
redwall_hp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChuckMcM's criticisms seem to be of the X Window System, not of any particular desktop environment. Architecturally, it really doesn't fit with modern systems and has a lot of legacy baggage. It doesn't matter what DE you like, X still powers it, and it's the issue. Wayland is on the way, which may bring Linux graphics into the 21st century, but I haven't been following that very closely. Apple's way more on the ball…

Enlighten me - what's the problem with the linux desktops?

[deleted]

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#115

Post by [deleted] »

idobai wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Linux on the desktop from 2001-2007 or so. Switched to OS X until then. It's no contest: OS X is smoother, more consistent, and lower maintenance. Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity.

> Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity. Gnome 2.x is a dead-end - it was buggy and ugly. Gnome 3.x is far better. Unity is just another canonical-outrage.

[deleted]

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#116

Post by aaron-lebo »

eropple wrote: post #111
aaron-lebo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this thread, I'd say the problem is a lot of people haven't given them the time. If you select your hardware, they work pretty flawlessly. Certainly right there with Windows or OSX or anything else. In a lot of cases you don't even need to be very selective, you just need to have a modern machine.

I run a Linux desktop for work (typing on it right now) as a dual-boot with my Windows setup. It is a "modern machine", at least if an i7-6700K and a 980Ti are modern, and I couldn't get X to start with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. And yet it did with Ubuntu 14.04, which is bizarre. My time is valuable enough that I didn't debug it further than that--if I wanted to light my time on fire I'd just go set up a Hackintosh and have…

That is bizarre. I don't use a lot of Ubuntu.

Having had an issue with Ubuntu and nvidia in the past, you might want to google NOMODESET and setting it at boot, which should let you boot into X/Unity and get the latest drivers.

> But I don't know many people for whom the operating system is more important than what you can do with it, and part of "what you can do with it" is "use your hardware."

Absolutely. But if OSes aren't directly equivalent (and the hackability of a nix gives it more power than Windows can ever have), then it's worth sorting out those hardware issues (as frustrating as they are).

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#117

Post by eropple »

rayiner wrote: post #99
brulard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard the opposite. I've switched to OsX 4 years ago after being completely unhappy and irritated with Windows for over 12 years. Now after months of using Ubuntu (unity, xfce) and Mint (Cinnamon) I'm convinced that OsX is best for average (and power) desktop user by a huge margin. Although I would be much more happy with something Open Source.

I used Linux on the desktop from 2001-2007 or so. Switched to OS X until then. It's no contest: OS X is smoother, more consistent, and lower maintenance. Linux desktops seem to have peaked with GNOME 2.x. I'm not even sure what's going on with Unity.

I tend to agree. My development workstation runs Linux (and it's fine, but on that machine I only need Sublime, a terminal, Chrome, and IntelliJ--anything creative or entertaining I do on my laptop or in Windows respectively) literally only because I'm not buying a Mac Pro. It works, sort of, after spending a nontrivial time figuring out kludging together decent replacements for common functionality (xsel garbage for pbcopy/pbpaste, etc.); it probably helps that I already install the GNU coreutils on my Macs because I know the GNU tools better.

In retrospect, a Mac Pro would probably not be that much more expensive than the time I spent getting this fairly minimally demanding environment set up, though on the other hand I did re-learn a decent bit of stuff about Linux in the process. On the gripping hand, things related to X aren't particularly important to my life, so that's kind of a push.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#118

Post by microtonal »

_wdzx wrote: post #104
redwall_hp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChuckMcM's criticisms seem to be of the X Window System, not of any particular desktop environment. Architecturally, it really doesn't fit with modern systems and has a lot of legacy baggage. It doesn't matter what DE you like, X still powers it, and it's the issue. Wayland is on the way, which may bring Linux graphics into the 21st century, but I haven't been following that very closely. Apple's way more on the ball…

Enlighten me - what's the problem with the linux desktops?

For a start, X11's security model. Every X11 application can read all keystrokes, mouse events, do screengrabs of other window's contents, etc.

In other words, your browser can snoop on what passwords you type into an X terminal if it wanted to or is compromised.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#119

Post by eropple »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #116
eropple wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a Linux desktop for work (typing on it right now) as a dual-boot with my Windows setup. It is a "modern machine", at least if an i7-6700K and a 980Ti are modern, and I couldn't get X to start with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. And yet it did with Ubuntu 14.04, which is bizarre. My time is valuable enough that I didn't debug it further than that--if I wanted to light my time on fire I'd just go set up a Hackintosh and have…

That is bizarre. I don't use a lot of Ubuntu. Having had an issue with Ubuntu and nvidia in the past, you might want to google NOMODESET and setting it at boot, which should let you boot into X/Unity and get the latest drivers. > But I don't know many people for whom the operating system is more important than what you can do with it, and part of "what you can do with it" is "use your hardware." Absolutely. But if OS…

> Having had an issue with Ubuntu and nvidia in the past, you might want to google NOMODESET and setting it at boot.

Thanks; I later ran into something that hinted at that. Frankly, though, at this point I don't care. I have something that works and will be patched until 2019. I don't care about my desktops. Every second I spend debugging something stupid on a desktop is a wasted second. This is bad for me and I resent it.

> and the hackability of a nix gives it more power than Windows can ever have

Ehh--if you have to use that "hackability" to get something that is minimally usable, that's kind of a push. (Or, when you consider OS X, a serious negative, because the only thing I have to do to get OS X to where I want is install Homebrew and a short list of packages, none of which require configuration.) I don't care about desktop environments or tiled window managers, the extent of my interaction with my WM, which I could not name, is a sort-of reimplementation of Aero Snap. Again, if I wanted to throw a bunch of time away on an operating system, I would set up a Hackintosh and actually be able to use Photoshop. Which, in keeping with the theme of "Linux desktops are a fractal of unusability", would be a significant improvement. I tried to avoid a reboot and use the GIMP yesterday for something. I think I need counseling now. I ended up using Pinta, whose layered image format ("OpenRaster", which wants to be a standard but it seems like nobody uses it?) is so bonkers and edge-case that ImageMagick doesn't even support it, to say nothing of Photoshop or even Paint.NET.

It turned out, kind of to my surprise, that Linux on the desktop offers very little to me as a Linux developer, sysadmin, and long-time entrails-reading "power user". That's pretty damning, in my book.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#120

Post by lisivka »

thegeomaster wrote: post #94
_wdzx wrote: post #86

> I like FreeBSD, and I use it as a server OS and on a NAS box but you only need look at https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics to understand that if the "Linux Desktop" is a joke compared to MacOS and Windows then the "FreeBSD Desktop" is even more so. I've never heard anything good about the "MacOS desktop" and I'm pretty sure that the "windows desktop" is far behind the "linux desktop"(plugins, performance, menus etc.)…

I use KDE and can confirm, unfortunately, that (at least on my setup) I have encountered many bugs pertaining to graphics. I also often get PulseAudio issues like the sound skipping when the system is under heavier-than-usual momentary load. I can't run Chrome developer tools without it crashing inside the driver every few minutes. Mounting an NTFS partition works on second try every time. I've used GNOME previously,…

I use Mate at Fedora. I see none of your bugs.
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