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Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

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Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#41

Post by gizmo »

thingie wrote: post #39
gizmo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say advanced as if that's a good thing. I think a lighter system that considers hardware acceleration and multiple monitors from the ground up may be a good investment in the long run. Not to mention audio, and vector graphics and so on. Multiple X sessions (one for each monitor + one for each vnc session + virtual X sessions for whatever reason) has to be combined with Xinemera and with graphic drives and with a…

X.org considers hardware acceleration, with XRender, for example. Quite too often, buggy and incomplete graphic drivers and other problems makes it even worse than no acceleration at all. I don't really see these problems as X.org specific, is there any evidence that they are? I think it's more likely caused by very limited resources that are available, incomplete or proprietary (ati and nvidia tends to lag months be…

You kind of have to bury X, otherwise you're going to end up with two competing projects and then you're even worse off. See: Linux audio.

If X were to disappear from the face of the earth open source programmers would scramble to get something new into place, and that would in all likelihood be better at dealing the realities of graphics today.

Just because it's the best we got doesn't mean it's good enough.

(I'm not advocating we actually should bury X... just making the general point that sometimes it's worth it to stake a step back to take two steps forward later. I realize it's often not politically feasible.)

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#43

Post by nitrogen »

If the camera person for that video reads this, I suggest placing the speaker in the bottom-left/bottom-right corner of the video frame and keeping the slide visible at all times. You can pan around when people ask questions, but keep as much of the slide visible as possible and move back when the question is done.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#45

Post by cookiecaper »

Maro wrote: post #42

Here's one suggestion: adopt the drag & drop software installation model of OSX.

There's no reason this couldn't be done now, someone just needs to implement that in PackageKit and it would work fine on many distros and package managers. The backend and everything is all there, just make a drag and drop event instead of clicking an "Install" button.

That said, installation of software on Linux has been one its shining points for a long time. Package management is awesome and neither OS X or Windows offer it.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#46

Post by k-zed »

The major advantage of "Desktop Linux" (that I've been using happily for quite a few years now) is that it's utterly unlike Mac OS X or Windows. We use Linux not because it's free, but because it's more comfortable, the UI is better and friendlier, and developing programs for it is a whole hell of a lot easier.

Everything Gnome, Ubuntu and this sort of people do work against these advantages. We use Linux because of its differences - these differences to other systems need to be accentuated (zsh, the suckless project, etc), not fought against (Ubuntu, network-manager, HAL, etc).

By every step these people take, Linux gets more difficult to develop for and less comfortable to use. This needs to stop.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#47

Post by machrider »

The audio situation is a total debacle. n-1 of the sound systems need to be killed so we can focus on making the remaining one work really well.

It's really funny that this is his first point, because I ran into it just two days ago... the microphone jack on my laptop, which worked fine in Ubuntu hardy, intrepid, and jaunty, no longer works in karmic thanks to the upgrade to pulseaudio (bug has existed in launchpad since november). It's insane that something so simple (analog input jack) on such common hardware (Intel 82801i) could be non-functional in 2010. Of all the weird driver problems I've had in 12+ years of Linux use, this one is probably the most shocking.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#48

Post by hristov »

Maro wrote: post #42

Here's one suggestion: adopt the drag & drop software installation model of OSX.

Don't agree. Installation of distribution supported software on linux is very easy already. Drag and drop will just cause a lot of issues with software that actually requires more complicated installation, as well as libraries, etc.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#49

Post by colonelxc »

machrider wrote: post #47

The audio situation is a total debacle. n-1 of the sound systems need to be killed so we can focus on making the remaining one work really well. It's really funny that this is his first point, because I ran into it just two days ago... the microphone jack on my laptop, which worked fine in Ubuntu hardy, intrepid, and jaunty, no longer works in karmic thanks to the upgrade to pulseaudio (bug has existed in launchpad s…

It is hard to believe that sound can be so broken, after all these years (and looking at the huge strides other parts of the desktop have made).

If Ubuntu wants to be the uber-friendly, runs anywhere (just works!) distro, they need to avoid these types of regressions from one version to the next. I know they're not in charge of all the upstream work, but they are the ones that make the decision on what version of pulse audio to use (or X version, or whatever). Instead it seems that Ubuntu always tries to stay on the bleeding edge, which is inevitably going to be broken for some people.

Re: Why Desktop Linux (Still) Sucks. And What We Can Do To Fix It.

#50

Post by thingie »

gizmo wrote: post #41
thingie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X.org considers hardware acceleration, with XRender, for example. Quite too often, buggy and incomplete graphic drivers and other problems makes it even worse than no acceleration at all. I don't really see these problems as X.org specific, is there any evidence that they are? I think it's more likely caused by very limited resources that are available, incomplete or proprietary (ati and nvidia tends to lag months be…

You kind of have to bury X, otherwise you're going to end up with two competing projects and then you're even worse off. See: Linux audio. If X were to disappear from the face of the earth open source programmers would scramble to get something new into place, and that would in all likelihood be better at dealing the realities of graphics today. Just because it's the best we got doesn't mean it's good enough. (I'm no…

Well, I was hoping for many more than just two. I don't really see any other way than many competing projects, one eventually killing all others.

But it shouldn't be that painful. As you've said, it's mostly about toolkits, and it's easy to simply run X server atop of the new system (Mac OS X does that, Linux does that in some ways, Windows can do that, so anybody can). I guess that the terrible mess of Linux audio can be avoided (after all, you don't have X11 applications locking whole graphic system for just themselves, as is often the case in audio).

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