Linux is not about choice (2008) • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#121

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, May 06, 2013, 10:51 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #110

gcb0 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wheezy is a version alias for v7. testing is testing. it points to the version that is on testing, be it 7-wheezy, or 8-whatever. the only exception to the rule is 'sid'. debian sid is always the bleeding edge, it never becomes a proper version. btw, i hate every versioning alias scheme that does not force the number to appear. such as debian, ubuntu, android... it's all just idiotic.

Why is a number more useful than how Ubuntu or Android do things?

Because it conveys relevant information. If you were on version 7 and the new version is version 13, a message is conveyed that there have been several major iterations since your last upgrade. Numerical versioning schemes (in general) make it simple to know if you're on a current version, and if not, how far off you are.

Now consider trying to make similar determinations if you know you're running "Gingerbread" but the latest version is "Jelly Bean", or if you're on "Intrepid Ibex" and the latest version is "Raring Ringtail".

It's even worse on Ubuntu, where they've chosen a reasonable, useful numerical versioning system (year.month), but then obscure it with stupid codenames.

IMO it's also much more difficult to remember the codenames. I had to verify that Android 4.2 was still called Jelly Bean and though I knew the latest Ubuntu was 13.04, I had to look up its codename altogether.

The fact that these projects continue to have underlying "developer use only"-type numerical versions only further emphasizes the utility of these. The codenames feel like a poorly-conceived marketing thing. I don't think most people have trouble remembering a coupled software package with a version number, like "Windows 7". I don't think they often say, "Oh crap, I know I had version 4 of something ... was it Android or Windows?"

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#122

Post by fest » Mon, May 06, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #59

glesica wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is already winning the OS wars, it's called Android ;-) Just being snarky, I get your point. I've said this before, and I think it is important to keep in mind when discussing GNU/Linux: things work quite well... on supported hardware. The vast majority of tales of woe related to GNU/Linux and hardware end up coming down to incompatible hardware. This is a communication problem, not a technical problem. No one…

GNU/Linux evangelists, on the other hand, have, in the past especially, had a tendency to sell their operating system as magical software that works on every machine always. This is, of course, totally false. It's not totally false; Linux will work on almost everything, most of the time. While I'll second the notion that you should really, really, really, really make sure that your hardware is supported before you bu…

> In my experience, if Linux doesn't support a piece of hardware out of the box, > you had better dump that hardware, because brother, that hardware won't > be supported by anything.

In my experience, the hardware support/drivers, esp. video and wireless, is better in wintel front.

Sure, linux versions of those drivers usually give more power to user regarding configuration of device, but brother, I have never had to fiddle with driver configuration to get HW acceleration working for flash in windows. Just download and install video adapter drivers, install flashplayer, and it just works.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#123

Post by ecaron » Mon, May 06, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

lmickh wrote: post #115

innguest wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It really isn't." "Not really." "Linux sound hasn't been a problem for some of us for, oh, I don't know, well over 10 years" "Sound on Linux wasn't a problem 5 years ago. In fact, it wasn't a problem even earlier." "Sound setup bad? Not compared to 5 or 10 years ago, no. During that period (I can guarantee!) both Win and OSX were ALSO -miserable- experiences." "No, sound is not a problem on Linux. I wonder if it eve…

A lot of it probably stems from the use cases. Most Linux distros have the "out of the box" use case down. When people start to fiddle with it or push the limits, they increasingly change their tone. Nothing fanatical about it. Just different points of view.

I can state it simply. My laptop dual-boots into Linux Mint 14 and Windows 8. Both systems recognized the soundcard without any hassle. If I pick a random YouTube video (so not anything ultra fancy), the Windows 8 sound is phenomenal and Linux Mint sound is passable. And I'm not talking sound on the level of "The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment"[1], I'm talking the quality of a Bose against airline freebie headsets.

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/the-great-mp3-bitra...

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#124

Post by nisa » Mon, May 06, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #23

jacquesm wrote: post #5

OS: the huge pile of code that you need to get process abstraction, a file system, networking and possibly some human interface stuff up and running. Code best not seen nor heard because that means you're not doing what you should be doing: using applications or writing them. OS software is a commodity, and with portability being Linux' mainstay it can now be found on processors of almost any pedigree. Linux is all a…

It's not the proliferation of choices that's the problem, its that so many of those choices don't work.

And that many choices are not documented in an accessible way. Even default choices. People complaining that desktop Linux is full of bugs and does not work. I think it works pretty well now, but the lack of man pages for anything desktop related is just sad. I'd like to understand how this works so that I'm able to fix it. But I can't easily I have to resort to wild googling, joining others in forums trying to decipher what these daemons are doing. This discourages to fix and understand things. At least for me.

Just some random examples from my Ubuntu Desktop (these are running by default as far as I know)

   $ man dconf-service
   No manual entry for dconf-service

   $ man at-spi-dbus-launcher
   No manual entry for at-spi-dbus-launcher

   $ man console-kit-daemon
   No manual entry for console-kit-daemon
   See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are  not available.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#125

Post by jebblue » Mon, May 06, 2013, 10:59 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #9

plutr wrote: post #6

Why is this old stuff from 2008 being posted and upvoted?

It's as right now as it was 5 years ago, and has a lot of corrolary with other customer-facing, resource-constrained software maintenance environments that you might see from a YC participant. And I say this as a Linux user who doesn't use PulseAudio...

>> And I say this as a Linux user who doesn't use PulseAudio...

PulseAudio works great in Linux? We can switch easily between a headset mic, web cam mic, builtin mic, etc. I think this is still problematic on Windows.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#126

Post by jebblue » Mon, May 06, 2013, 11:02 PM UTC

felipebueno wrote: post #10

plutr wrote: post #6

Why is this old stuff from 2008 being posted and upvoted?

Because it's still relevant and, I guess, that's why you are being downvoted.

Ubuntu has won the Desktop and Server Linux wars so the article is no longer valid. RedHat doesn't even care about Desktop Linux or consumers using Linux.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#127

Post by mrud » Mon, May 06, 2013, 11:04 PM UTC

drveen wrote: post #93

Udo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is. I use Linux servers mostly, but about a year ago I installed openSuSE on two new desktops. The problem was that, while sound "worked" in general, only one application could use the sound card at a time. That means when you have your audio player open, Youtube won't work at the same time. You'd have to close both apps and then re-open the browser so it could then hog the audio. The most annoying thing abou…

I've been running openSuSE desktops for years. When pulse became standard, I made a practice of ripping it out (rpm -e...). I've happily had plain ALSA sound with sound from multiple apps at once. No, I don't know the details - only that it works. YMMV.

probably dmix

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#128

Post by justsee » Mon, May 06, 2013, 11:06 PM UTC

This was an entertaining talk from CCC in 2011 on desktop Linux. 'datenwolf' was the speaker, and he starts talking about sound in Linux here. [1]

He's quickly interrupted by the maintainer of PulseAudio, and this interruption continues throughout the talk.

My takeaway was that if there was still this amount of confusion and misunderstanding in the community, my frustrating experiences with sound in desktop Ubuntu was not atypical of dekstop Linux users.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0#t=11m

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#129

Post by dhimes » Mon, May 06, 2013, 11:11 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #121

hythloday wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a number more useful than how Ubuntu or Android do things?

Because it conveys relevant information. If you were on version 7 and the new version is version 13, a message is conveyed that there have been several major iterations since your last upgrade. Numerical versioning schemes (in general) make it simple to know if you're on a current version, and if not, how far off you are. Now consider trying to make similar determinations if you know you're running "Gingerbread" but…

I can't upvote this enough. At least put the cutsie name in the goddamn uname -a result. Drives me bonkers having to look that shit up.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#130

Post by pdpi » Mon, May 06, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #121

hythloday wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a number more useful than how Ubuntu or Android do things?

Because it conveys relevant information. If you were on version 7 and the new version is version 13, a message is conveyed that there have been several major iterations since your last upgrade. Numerical versioning schemes (in general) make it simple to know if you're on a current version, and if not, how far off you are. Now consider trying to make similar determinations if you know you're running "Gingerbread" but…

For what it's worth, Ubuntu versions are always Adjectivated Animals (with the adjective and the animal name always starting with the same letter), and ever since 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake), they've been sorted alphabetically, incrementing the first letter with every release. So even without any further information, you can easily work out that Raring Ringtail is 9 releases ahead of Intrepid Ibex.