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Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

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Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#241

Post by sprash »

Wayland was supposed to be the rescue from the arcane outdated X11 and it is severely disappointing. The reason is that it does not offer enough features. It should have font rendering, it should have window decorations by default it should have native UI widgets and much more. None of it is offered and the responsibility is pushed away to others like Gnome, KDE and believe it or not, X11.

IMHO the monolithic kitchen sink approach of systemd should be applied to wayland. Not the other way around.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#244

Post by vbarrielle »

xvilka wrote: post #118

"Linux has a 255 bytes limitation for file names (this translates to just 63 four-byte characters in UTF-8) - not a great deal but copying or using files or directories with long names from your Windows PC can become a serious challenge." Not sure what he is speaking about.

I'm curious how one gets long names from a windows pc given the path length limits on windows https://stackoverflow.com/a/1880453

Maybe I'm not understanding that limit correctly but it looks like the whole path cannot be longer than 260 characters. I've hit that limit when transferring files from linux to windows.

As you mention, the linux limit is in bytes, so the issue could appear in some character sets, but it still looks like the path limits are a lot more drastic under windows.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#246

Post by rbanffy »

michaelmrose wrote: post #214
Animats wrote: post #162

He's right, of course. The Linux community has been in denial about this for years. At the kernel level and close to it, the areas that consistently give trouble are video/GPU support and audio support. GPUs are hard, but there's no excuse for the mess in audio persisting for a decade. Video/GPU support is tough, but the current situation, where you have a choice of five different NVidia drivers for the same board, a…

People aren't in denial people are by and large aware of the issues an average person experiences when using Linux and the resources or lack thereof available to reverse engineer an entire universe of unfriendly hardware vendors work to enable joe blow to take his $399 walmart special and install linux on it. If people want linux on the desktop to offer a more polished experience the only way about it is for everyone…

Sorry, but chances are the $399 Walmart special uses an Intel chip with integrated GPU and, because of that, will work out of the box. Perfectly.

Lack of hardware support happens mostly on the other end of the spectrum, with very high-end graphics cards no kernel developer has ever seen from up close and multi-card setups that are essentially unique. I feel sorry for the people who need that but unless hardware manufacturers start to properly document their stuff, make it available to Linux kernel developers and START PAYING MONEY to have drivers developed (like vendors do with Windows) it'll not improve.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#247

Post by alxlaz »

nitrogen wrote: post #195
zaphirplane wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of open source development is there are duplicates. The distribution usually takes chooses from the alternatives the better option and makes it the default. In the GPU driver issue you are raising what is the problem. Fedora comes with nouveau out of the box and you can install an alternative very easily. You may have a gripe but proliferation of alternatives is an unusual gripe, there are multiple browser…

I've been using Linux on the desktop since Mandrake was a thing; if there's one thing I'm tired of it's having the "choice" of five broken implementations of an app rather than just one that works (the reverse is also annoying, when one broken monolith crowds out five working predecessors).

I've been using Linux since about the same time, and while I find the five-broken-implementations thing rather exhausting at times, I am more than thankful for it. It's one of the reasons why Linux (and FOSS software) is so damn useful.

Just look at Windows land, where they do have one implementation to rule them all, more or less (Windows 10). Everyone who dislikes its telemetry or almost touch-only interface is either stuck with Windows 7, which won't be an option for much longer, or is stuck venting against Microsoft and grumpily installing hacks like ClassicShell to make things a little more bearable.

When Gnome 3 came up, everyone who liked the new direction kept using it, everyone else moved to Cinnamon or Mate (or XFCE, KDE...)

It's not just about competition, it's about being able to pursue different visions and different objectives.

Users only see this in terms of choice, but there's a great deal of value about it for developers as well.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#248

Post by kkarakk »

eitland wrote: post #159
cheerlessbog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you're relatively tech savvy and enjoy troubleshooting (within reason). Most people aren't, of course.

I've said for years that Linux works for grandmothers, and for me (and a bunch of others). It doesn't work for people who: - need a locally installed copy of MS Office or other Windows only software - IT admins that stopped learning a long time ago - etc As others point out, for som of us using Windows or Mac is a hassle. They're slow (30% longer compile cycles, don't even get me started on git), missing important cu…

how is git faster on linux?

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#249

Post by rbanffy »

Animats wrote: post #162

He's right, of course. The Linux community has been in denial about this for years. At the kernel level and close to it, the areas that consistently give trouble are video/GPU support and audio support. GPUs are hard, but there's no excuse for the mess in audio persisting for a decade. Video/GPU support is tough, but the current situation, where you have a choice of five different NVidia drivers for the same board, a…

> The Linux community has been in denial about this for years.

That's not right. We all know support for some hardware is spotty and we all have learned to avoid that. My laptops tend to use Intel GPUs, for instance, because I want to work on them, not fix them.

I'm eyeing that new Lenovo thingie with an epaper keyboard, but I know it'll run Windows and probably never be upgraded because nobody will write the drivers to keep that thing alive past Windows 12.

> you have a choice of five different NVidia drivers for the same board, all with different bugs

Stop buying NVidia hardware. They actively sabotage Linux development. AMD is much better in that regard. Buy AMD instead (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Hiri...).

> The sheer bloat of Linux has made it unmaintainable.

Nope. It's still moving forward and it's still quite reliable. All my workloads run on it (except my pets that run on FreeBSD and OpenIndiana because I get a kick out of managing different OSs).

> Big chunks of important code are abandonware.

There is a process to move obsolete codebases out of the kernel. That's why you can't use one of those half-IDE CD-ROMs that came with "multimedia kits" of the early 90's.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#250

Post by Meing4im »

sprash wrote: post #241

Wayland was supposed to be the rescue from the arcane outdated X11 and it is severely disappointing. The reason is that it does not offer enough features. It should have font rendering, it should have window decorations by default it should have native UI widgets and much more. None of it is offered and the responsibility is pushed away to others like Gnome, KDE and believe it or not, X11. IMHO the monolithic kitchen…

I would argue that wayland is still in beta. They are still designing extensions to reimplement X11 desktop features. But with wlroots things have picked up pace.
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