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Linux is not about choice (2008)

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Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#231

Post by marshray »

bkor wrote: post #179
marshray wrote: post #149

Who is this redhat.com and why should I care what color their fedora is? Of course I'm being a quite facetious here. But the point is that I have many computers and VMs running several operating systems, many with Linux kernels, but somehow I've not chosen the Red Fedora. I wasn't aware they even cared that much about desktop users. Perhaps I have the "disease which strangles the mind"?

You should investigate how much Red Hat contributes all over Linux. Server side, but also loads of components used by various desktops. Not knowing about the huge contributions makes it overdue to investigate.

I do know, which is why I said I was being facetious. My point was that it's ironic for them to be talking about reducing user choice when somehow given all their contributions to Linux I'd not chosen to use their system anyway.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#232

Post by pjmlp »

VLM wrote: post #223
simonh wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm, sorry, are you suggesting that integrated GUI environemnts such as MacOSX, Windows (and I'd argue iOS and Android too), are epic failures? In contrast of course to the awesome, eternal empire of success that is the Linux desktop?

The epic fail is in some misguided areas of linux land tying the GUI background image renderer and program launcher to the sound driver such that they (supposedly) cannot be separated in practice although there is no technical reason why they shouldn't be separated. And that's considered anything other than an epic fail. It would be like demanding if I install grub bootloader, the plain text grub config file may ONLY…

> Its a creeping windows "all in one" design model, which is mostly awful. The opposite of the unix "do one thing really well" model.

I always find it funny that people only pick on Windows, when this is the model followed by any computer system outside the UNIX world.

Maybe lack of experience with computing in the 80-90's?

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#233

Post by happy_dino »

ctdonath wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #2

Epic: "But the chain of logic from 'Linux is about choice' to 'ship everything and let the user chose how they want their sound to not work' starts with fallacy and ends with disaster."

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

> why Linux can't win the OS wars

It can't win, because it pretty much already has.

Embedded: Linux. Smartphones: Linux. Appliances: Linux. Desktop: Windows. Server: Linux. HPC: Linux.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#234

Post by cookiecaper »

Hello71 wrote: post #228
cookiecaper wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PulseAudio instantly respawns from this if you have autospawn set to yes (and most distributions do, and it takes some effort to get it working without that). Typically when I want a quick-and-dirty "kill PulseAudio for real" solution I move /usr/bin/pulseaudio to /usr/bin/pulse-dead, issue pkill pulseaudio, and proceed until I want PA to come back to life, at which time I mv the binary back.

pasuspender

That only works as long as the command it wraps is living. I could use that approach, but typically I don't just want pulseaudio dead while gedit or something is running, I want it dead until I decide that I want it back. It usually happens this way when I'm debugging an audio issue, so it'd be annoying to have PA constantly cycling that way.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#235

Post by cookiecaper »

Flimm wrote: post #199
pdpi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A not very well publicised guideline is that the codenames are only supposed to be used before release, and the version number after release. If you go to ubuntu.com they consistently use the version number, not the codename.

But then the system still says things like "quantal" all over the place (like when "apt-get update"ing).

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#236

Post by teeja »

teeja wrote: post #49
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

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. Swim 10 yards, gain a foot bad. Make music for 5 minutes, debug the system for 2 hours bad. Hmmph. Kids nowadays.

Instead of the word "sound" I should have made clear that I was referring to professional audio, not PC-speaker quality sound. Unless you could afford a full-time technician, the hard- and software hurdles were formidable.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#237

Post by kyrias »

cookiecaper wrote: post #234
Hello71 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pasuspender

That only works as long as the command it wraps is living. I could use that approach, but typically I don't just want pulseaudio dead while gedit or something is running, I want it dead until I decide that I want it back. It usually happens this way when I'm debugging an audio issue, so it'd be annoying to have PA constantly cycling that way.

  paususpender while true
  do
  done

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#238

Post by Hello71 »

kyrias wrote: post #237
cookiecaper wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works as long as the command it wraps is living. I could use that approach, but typically I don't just want pulseaudio dead while gedit or something is running, I want it dead until I decide that I want it back. It usually happens this way when I'm debugging an audio issue, so it'd be annoying to have PA constantly cycling that way.

paususpender while true do done

  pasuspender cat
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