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The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

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Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#71

Post by teilo »

krschultz wrote: post #67
CWuestefeld wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm primarily a Windows user, having just recently installed Ubuntu onto a netbook. Obviously I'm carrying old habits and baggage, but from my point of view, finding and installing stuff in the repository is a nightmare. On one hand, I can see how putting it there makes a unified update system possible. But the system does nothing for me in helping me discover what I need. To learn of the existence of a tool, I still…

You are over complicating the matter. I agree that finding the right tool is sometimes hard because there are so many options. My general rule is open up the package manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager) and search for what I need. Then I google the 3 or 4 options and see what people recommend, and just install that one. I just let Uninstall do its thing, if it misses a few pieces it doesn't real…

And you are over-simplifying it. In Windows, install = double-click setup.exe. In Ubuntu? ... Wait, what was that again? I didn't get it.

For those who have been using unices for many years, it is difficult to remember the challenges of a switcher. I've been using Linux for 12 years, but I have constant reminders, because I'm a CTO, and have to support the end users who are coming into a new OS environment. When you, who have all this stuff in your head, trivialize the new users legitimate challenges, you are part of the usability problem, not part of its solution.

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#73

Post by SwellJoe »

access_denied wrote: post #20
stonemetal wrote: post #7

Isn't the main problem for OSS adoption advertising? If you are a graphic artist and don't give a rat's behonkus about computers do you really dig until you find the GIMP(and the continual slog for documentation and understanding) or do you read graphic artist monthly with big color Photo Shop ads, Photo Shop books on B&N's book shelves, and training courses. The choice is just about made for you, in their world Phot…

GIMP and Inkscape are not ready for prime-time. (And as always at this point: They lack proper support for CMYK, Fonts, Color-Management, Workflow in big publishing and printing shops.) Never mind the usability desaster that the GIMP represents for anyone who is accustomed to PS.

Never mind the usability desaster that the GIMP represents for anyone who is accustomed to PS.

In the interest of fairness...I just bought Adobe CS4 Web Premium (with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). I've been working with the GIMP and Inkscape for a good long while, off and on, and I'm still finding Photoshop and Illustrator to be incredibly hard to use and obtuse. I've been watching video tutorials, reading the docs, searching the web, and tinkering, for a couple of weeks now, and I'm still nowhere near as productive as I am in GIMP or Inkscape. Partly this is just that the Adobe products do more. This is an acceptable cost, to me, but I still find myself feeling grouchy a lot of the time because things do not work as I would expect (not just "as the GIMP or Inkscape would do it", but also in terms of discoverability...for example, sometimes I accidentally break my workspace, or whatever it is called, and can't figure out what I did or how to fix it; you can't undo workspace changes, as far as I know).

Take it all with a grain of salt, as I'm a barely functioning idiot with quite a few products that are supposed to be easy to use. iTunes, for example, is a nightmare for me; I always end up deleting my whole collection either on the device or on the computer or having something else go totally amok and I have to reboot into Linux just to recover all of my data. So, maybe Adobe software is "easy to use" like Apple software is "easy to use", and I'm just an idiot.

Stability of the Adobe stuff also leaves a lot to be desired. It's kinda like Inkscape a couple of years ago, or GIMP ten or twelve years ago (or during the 2.0 beta years). Sometimes weird things happen and it just freezes up. This may be the newer Adobe stuff; I'm usually watching a tutorial video when it happens, so maybe Air or Flex or whatever is to blame, rather than Photoshop or Illustrator. But it happens a lot when I'm watching those videos.

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#74

Post by davidw »

teilo wrote: post #69
indiejade wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. It is possible to make professional-quality, shiny, colorful graphics with GIMP if you know what you're doing. Sure, installing the non-default fonts (that is, not having a one-button install method) and configuring everything is what prevents most people from adopting it. There are graphic designers who are graphic designers, and then there are web developers who are also graphic designers. Have a look at what…

You miss the point. The Gimp and Inkscape, as for as they go, are great tools - if you care about nothing but the Web. They are in no way, shape, or form, ready for the print production environment. Not even close.

How many photoshop users really need to do print production work? Compared to people who just need to whip up some graphics, perhaps for the web?

It's not necessarily about being "the best", it's about being "good enough". The Gimp is probably there for what a lot of people need.

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#75

Post by gaius »

rbanffy wrote: post #70
sethg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one reason Linux user interfaces have been catching up with Windows (if not Mac) is that for the past ten years or so, desktop-app usability has remained stagnant (or, in the case of MS Office, regressed). Twenty years ago, Apple and Microsoft had to convince non-geek consumers that personal computers were worth buying, and so they had an incentive to make their products as usable as possible (given the const…

"Linux user interfaces have been catching up with Windows (if not Mac)" is a common misconception. I love the tabbed file system views in Gnome. It's much more comfortable than the Finder. Windows Explorer too is simply terrible. I have been using Windows at work and Gnome at home and can't even begin to decribe all the ways Windows is completely broken from a usability standpoint. People tolerate it because they kno…

Yes this is the Year of the Linux Desktop.

smirk

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#76

Post by nailer »

access_denied wrote: post #20
stonemetal wrote: post #7

Isn't the main problem for OSS adoption advertising? If you are a graphic artist and don't give a rat's behonkus about computers do you really dig until you find the GIMP(and the continual slog for documentation and understanding) or do you read graphic artist monthly with big color Photo Shop ads, Photo Shop books on B&N's book shelves, and training courses. The choice is just about made for you, in their world Phot…

GIMP and Inkscape are not ready for prime-time. (And as always at this point: They lack proper support for CMYK, Fonts, Color-Management, Workflow in big publishing and printing shops.) Never mind the usability desaster that the GIMP represents for anyone who is accustomed to PS.

I agree GIMPs UI is a clusterfuck, but I do believe it has CMYK and OpenType support these days. Are they lacking somehow?

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#77

Post by 0xdefec8 »

paulgb wrote: post #51
0xdefec8 wrote: post #33

As a dude who just tried Ubuntu for the first time in 5 years to see how far they've come, but couldn't because the fucking liveCD didn't have a driver for my cdrom, this rings true. But for what it's worth, after a few grueling days getting the p.o.s. up and running, I was shocked to have all the UI fluff my macbook has, plus the infinite list of other great stuff that's inherent to Linux. The moral? Just shrinkwrap…

To be fair, what percent of Windows users could actually install the OS if they needed to?

Not sure I understand the question, you mean could they install Windows on the same machine? It was running XPsp2 prior to Ubuntu 9.04.

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#78

Post by sophacles »

0xdefec8 wrote: post #68
krschultz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux users have no need to court people like you. We're not a business, market share is a meaningless metric. I don't care if 1% or 100% of the people using computers use Linux, what I care about is if there are enough people working on the projects to make it usable for ME. There are. People who complain about FOSS community's "attitude" should really check their own sense of entitlement. We are talking about you g…

Keep beating that strawman, you're sure to make a point eventually. The argument isn't whether or not Linux is useful to a bunch of nerds, myself included, or whether or not I should kiss rms for bestowing this gift unto humanity for free. It's whether it's competitive against its better known closed source counterparts on the Desktop. And you basically answered that question in your first paragraph.

Speaking of strawmen...

Please tell me which desktop you mean. Do you mean the home desktop? Or perhaps the administrative assistant desktop that needs access to the calendar, word, and email, (maybe the web too...). Perhaps you mean the desktops of the engineers, using autocad and a pile of specialized tools. And so on.

Each of the above has different needs (perhaps even vastly different). A smart consultant/company/etc would go ahead and stop trying to use the same tool for every job. Some of those environments could probably switch to linux, and after a couple of months of "getting used to it time" everything would continue on as if nothing happened.

The point is that "the desktop" has always struck me as a strawman to begin with.

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#79

Post by teilo »

davidw wrote: post #74
teilo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. The Gimp and Inkscape, as for as they go, are great tools - if you care about nothing but the Web. They are in no way, shape, or form, ready for the print production environment. Not even close.

How many photoshop users really need to do print production work? Compared to people who just need to whip up some graphics, perhaps for the web? It's not necessarily about being "the best", it's about being "good enough". The Gimp is probably there for what a lot of people need.

Oh, how about almost anyone who needs to work with a commercial printer? And I said Gimp is fine "for the web". Were you listening?

This is not a question of "best" vs. "good enough" for those who need CMYK and color management. It's a question of "works" vs. "doesn't work".

Re: The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks

#80

Post by cschwarm »

psadauskas wrote: post #61
cschwarm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an explanation, not a reason. Why does it have to be like that? Why does Linux distributions fall in one of two categories: either "stable foundation and out-dated apps" or "unstable foundation and recent apps"? What many people want is a stable foundation and recent apps. This is easier to get with a decentral installation system.

Who's foundation? I'm a web developer, so to me, I want the latest ruby, apache, etc... However, a server admin might want the more "stable" versions of the same. I know that Gentoo, at least, has the facility to accomplish this. They have package masking, so you can specify exactly the packages you want to be kept on the bleeding edge. Taken a step further, you can set up your own "profile", and list exactly what ve…

Of course, it is easy. When you're already assuming something like RSS feeds for app updates exists, don't you think it's possible to have an application download them once a week and update all apps automatically? For an end-user, there's no difference to APT.

Also, you seem to misunderstand the point. To have a third kind of distribution -- "stable foundation and recent apps" -- doesn't affect your choice of distribution, at all. When you're satisfied with Gentoo, you simply continue using it.

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