I am too bored to know what to believe…
I am so bored by the plethora of so-called “news” (and “advancements”) in the Linux distroland… Say, Pardus 2009 receives warm praises, but it also means that there is no way back to KDE 3.5, the graphical package manager still doesn’t have an option to show ALL the packages (installed or not), and apparently removing a package doesn’t remove the dependencies, leaving orphans. Oh my…
Then, I don’t understand what’s the fuss about what default desktop environment is openSUSE going to have: it’s only natural for it to be KDE4 (SuSE has always been a pro-KDE distro)! What matters is what will SLED have as defaults, but SLED11 is still fresh, and by the time SLED12 is born, all kind of things can happen…
I am personally puzzled about the future of GNOME (they recently showed signs of a particular form of idiocy), and now that Mutter is Metacity3, I expect its quality and stability to decrease. Will it have some kind of plasmoids too?
Of course, there is no risk for RHEL6 to include a really broken GNOME… should it release some day. The problem I see with RHEL6 is that it should include KDE4 by default (all the KDE/Qt-related spec files from Fedora/EPEL show that intention, i.e. “kde” is KDE4 and “kde3″ is legacy for RHEL6), but KDE4 is still not enterprise-grade. What’s going to be included with RHEL6, and why is the release date for its first Beta such a well-kept secret?!
KDE4 gradually improves, but it’s still something clumsy (I can’t get used with the plasmoids), incomplete, and it still crashes the same way KDE3 crashed years ago. I thought KDE4 was totally rewritten in such a way that SIGSEGV wouldn’t happen. After all, Windows Vista is “bad” (maybe it really is so, I can’t tell as I am not using it), but at least its components don’t crash! Eh?!
Don’t tell me that XFCE 4.6.1 is the path to the future. I am not buying it… nor would I buy a Mac! (FreeBSD, PC-BSD and OpenSolaris are even less likely to gain momentum in the foreseeable future.)
DWW Issue 315 includes in the comment #27 something that summarize the reasons for I despise whatever I despise: «The recent Intel graphics issue has made it a pain to find a good distro that works…».
So, faute de mieux, my “free Windows XP” is the choice of EL clones: CentOS 5.3 and Scientific Linux 5.3.
But I still suspect that Windows 7 will sell quite well, actually. Sigh. Could the Linux crowd be responsible in part for this situation? Constantly broken X drivers, constantly inferior wireless support, stupid KDE4, stupid GNOME3 in sight, mediocre XFCE, etc. etc.
Rant over.
Aug 13, 2009 at 03:01
"Don’t tell me that XFCE 4.6.1 is the path to the future. I am not buying it"
It may not be the path to anywhere (which is maybe the point) but in terms of being a relief from DE's which impose multiple (branded) stupidities and brain dead methods it does just fine.
Using Gnome, or especially KDE, it's hard to avoid the feeling that the user is required to think like the developers (a severely retrograde step for anyone over 20 years old) but at least Xfce lets a person just use the applications without the DE announcing itself, imposing itself, and generally getting in the way like a persistent salesman. It also doesn't share KDE's famous Krashing Engine (surely this exists) and is thoroughly stable. Gnome do a lot of things right but window management is not one of them; it's 'do it our way or pay a penalty' with loss of function and graphical oddities if one prefers to stray from default settings or replace metacity.
Perhaps if Mr Shuttleworth gets his way regarding 'cadence' we can derive a great benefit; the various distro and upstream projects can plan ahead and together decide to find one component of the free desktop which works nicely and all break it in unison
Aug 13, 2009 at 03:04
Linux on the desktop is a complete waste of time. There is NOTHING that Desktop Linux offers that isn't already done better on WinXP.
For all the whiners that cry "but Linux is FREE" - big F*cking deal. My time is NOT free and since I bought WinXP for $140 USD in 2003, that means it's cost me less then $24 per year (or 10.2% of my billable hourly rate).
Plus there are plenty of GREAT free windows App's - and unlikely their retarded Linux cousins, they actually look good, work good, and are simple to install.
Linux Fanboys that argue differently are completely delusional and only marginally less annoying then the religious bible thumpers (who invented self delusion).
Linux on the server is a different story - but I've noticed that real Linux SysAdmins aren't the raving fanboy types.
Aug 13, 2009 at 06:48
Actually Mandriva 2009.1 works perfectly with the Intel Graphic Cards.
Aug 13, 2009 at 08:11
All too true.
I guess at the end of the day we can only wait and see…
(and hope for the best)
Aug 13, 2009 at 09:14
I, for one, do not look back to the feces-throwing competition known as Linux, with its Hardware Abstraction Layers of the Year, and other crap. Windows7 I could buy if they would sell me a 4:3 (or √2) laptop with it…
http://iki.fi/tuomov/b/archives/2009/07/21/T17_26_09/
Aug 13, 2009 at 10:05
I'm sure RHEL6 will ship with GNOME 2.xx. It's stable and I can't imagine any stable GNOME 3 in the next 2 years. Assuming GNOME will just dump 2 after releasing 3, as they did with 1 when they released 2, Red Hat is known to support its products for a very long time. I'm sure they'll find a way to support GNOME 2 for at least 4 years from now on. After all, they're fucking expensive, they're expected to offer that kind of support.
Aug 13, 2009 at 10:41
@elbeto: yes, but if I insert Mandriva One 2009.1 in my old PC which has a Radeon 9200, it goes out of sync. So *something* is still screwed, eh? Older versions of fglrx worked well, and the CRT supports plenty of video modes, plenty (up to 1920 to 1440), but it can't cope with the screwed mode — and Ctrl+Alt+Num_Plus/Minus doesn't change the mode.
@tuommov: gee, I was waiting for "defection, part 3", but I forgot to check your site!
Aug 13, 2009 at 11:20
Oh boy, so you're sold to WinXP…
Aug 13, 2009 at 12:11
I've two laptops with Intel GMA which work fine, 3D acceleration et al. Am I doing something wrong? Would I better off posing the question with a coprophiliac reference?
I notice tuomov's non-faeces throwing system lacks an accurate spellchecker.
Aug 13, 2009 at 13:46
I've been using KDE4 since sidux make the crossover, as i use sidux for some time already, and i find it ok.
likes:
-dolphin - i liked konqueror as a file manager too, i actually can use this file manager; on Windows i can't use Explorer and i get mad without a NortonCommander clone, like freecommander; there are plenty of little things that help me: file previews, tree like access of folders in detail views, paste a text right into a new file, the split view.
-global notification system - pretty fun, i get all the copy/move/download/compress/decompress/link loading in one control space;
-composition effects ( using XRENDER not OpenGL ) - pretty nifty, no wobbly windows and no cubes, just some transparency, some windows/desktop switch effects, simple and crash free so far ( but i use nVidia )
dislikes:
-device mounting thing - always asking me what to do with my usb stick or dvd or whatever; i need a "always use this action" check-box there, i only want it to mount it and open the damn folder anyway
-theming for Qt3 and GTK2+ apps is pretty screwy, i used a Qt3 kontrol app from KDE3.5.10 to set them, not funny! there is a gtk-qt app theme thing and that works somewhat too;
-composition effects ( using OpenGL ) - nice effects, but was rather unstable a few months ago, maybe it's ok now, but i don't miss any of those effects
-gwenview ( picture displaying app ) - was instable before 4.2.4, looks ok now ( rotate more than 10 or 20 pictures, press apply, it rotates them and it crashes )
-no easy transitions for my color themes;
indiferent:
);
-plasmoids ( i don't use desktop icons, so anything on the desktop except the wallpaper and conkys' system info is useless for me ); oh downloading plasmoids from that provided service works 10% of the time, sometimes i guess it needs to compile them or something, it always failed on my system;
-konqueror - i use it sometimes for sites that don't work out ok in Opera;
-"Oxygen"/"Air" themes - i like them for now, when the "new" factor wears off i'll change it;
-fonts - i use a 22" LCD at 1680×1050, 99dpi setting with DejaVu Sans 9pt and it looks great ( for me at least
my KDE3 desk ( with my modified Solaris theme and custom Opera theme ): http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3228/desklnx1tm3.jpg
my KDE4 desk : http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4259/opera10beta.jpg
Aug 13, 2009 at 13:48
Dude Windows 7 sucks big time, I tried the RC, just plain horrible for an RC!
Aug 13, 2009 at 15:06
I am totally fed up with the attitude in Linux world. First KDE4 came. Now looking at the GNOME3 world, I see that at least the KDE4 guys did not break all the conventions of a "traditional" desktop. At least there still exists a menu where you can choose applications from. Look at Gnome Shell. You write a keyword and all the applications are listed without categorical classifications. Look at video at http://www.gnome.org/~otaylor/gnome-shell-talk/4-gnome-shell-more.ogg. The guy writes "gnome" in the activities tab and the search results give an application list which is 4 pages long and not categorized. Are you kidding me? Retarded gnome people!!
And what should i say that disabling CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE in Ubuntu and Fedora? Now we cannot restart X anymore the way we used to do… There were good old days when we used to write "telinit 3" to change run-levels and install graphics card driver… I feel really sick about this and I cannot see any distribution to stick with for the foreseeable future which will not join all this stupidity. Maybe Slackware, huh?
Aug 14, 2009 at 01:51
@ vonskippy: why do you bother then to write rant after rant about it? I really dislike Windows, even though being a sys-admin of it, but I write close to nothing about it. Actually many serious desktop Linux users don't. If you don't like what some vocal supporters write, why then imitate them? Leave it, get some rest, do your work.
If price would be the only argument for some, I agree it's not a solid argument in view of total user time. I however ditch Windows just because it can't do a lot of the things that I view as necessities. A pro choice is better than an anti one; anti based decisions tend to make a person disillusioned from distinguishing real matters that matter.
…
Pretty cool to see the Ion guy dropping by. Tuomov your choice looks like a real pain. I read your blog post before, and I've never been able to understand how you, a supernatural coder compared to me, could run into so many problems. If it wouldn't have been for all uncertainties I would have given Ion a spin. As for now Awesome fits my computing habits pretty well.
..
@ Béranger: if Intel drivers are an example of brokenness, then I suppose it's not the "Linux crowd's responsibility", if not a big corporation as Intel is viewed as belonging to the crowed (do you mean plain user crowed, sympathisers of anyone using, developing and support Linux?). It puzzles me however that Intel runs into these issues. As a top contributor to Linux you would expect them to get their act together on X as well.
Personally I don't even remember in what year I had a broken X. Unfortunately though some seem to encounter these issues on all the big three, Intel, AMD/Ati and Nvidia; luckily most don't. On the other hand we'll rarely read "just wanted to tell everybody that X works", since bad news look better in print.
Why are you so harsh in your criticism of XFCE? I'm not a DE user, but once in a while I use XFCE on systems that are supposed to fit a larger public. It's not super light but quite snappy. Easy to set the most basic settings, like getting sharp fonts, adjust the window manager, mounting portable media and so on. It would be nice though if Thunar had the MC style of two columns (Dolhpin has). The line about "path to future" isn't the question since it's the user who decides what's the future.
You make it sound like developers by purpose are torturing you with unusable DEs. Maybe time to rephrase the lyric of a great old Zappa song, "The torture never stops".
Aug 15, 2009 at 12:06
Kim, it *is* Linux crowd's responsibility! Who the fuck is *forcing* them to include in recent distros the latest-and-most-broken Intel video drivers?
Just one of the reason I am using EL5 clones: they include working Intel drivers.
Aug 15, 2009 at 12:42
Béranger, as you well know some bugs aren't discovered despite months of testing. The test base is unfortunately not big enough to cover all combinations of hardware. Sure, at times, even though not affected by it personally and it's down to me trusting complaints, I might wonder whether it would have been good to wait a little wail. Still waiting put you in the same seat since it only might delay the discovery of the bugs.
Microsoft plays in a different league. If I recall the figure correctly 14 millions have run Windows 7 beta and RC. The Vista fiasco might have increased the interest in Windows 7, but whatever reason there is 14 million testers during such a long testing period is valuable asset. Hence we would expect their releases to be pain free, but are they?
In a way your choice to run an EL5 clone is a constructive approach. On a PC at work or for serious work might not need kernel support for all kinds of obscure gadgets anyway. Interestingly though you can notice how the same users who complain about "broken that or that", sometimes true sometimes not, are pushing their distro of choice to implement all the newest code available. There's a natural conflict of interest. What would be nice to see is a more polished distro for casual Linux users moderately upgraded, just like the clones you refer to; a distro with slow release cycles, but at times patched to include support for necessary new hardware. I'm afraid though that it might be hard to make a breakthrough on the crowded Linux scene, especially since Ubuntu and co takes the lime light for already being every man's and women's distro (but at times being more buggy than the by purpose risky distros).
Aug 15, 2009 at 22:12
@KimTjik
I agree 100% with both posts.
——-
We are talking about the use of Linux or Windows by computer literates, but what happens with the other extreme? The minimal-minimal users? I know, my Mom's case isn't general, but I'm curious to see what do you think. Let's forget the install, and talk only about the maintenance-free usage. I would like to know the crowd's opinion.
My Mom has a Pentium III with a LinuxMint 4 installed more than two years ago. The main reason was to give her a cheap and reliable computer (due to her zero computing knowledge) through which we can be in contact using skype daily. I'm living far away from her. Sometimes she is using a screenlet to listen online-radio.
Is here anybody who supposes that my Mom would do her daily "tasks" without any glitches and pain if I would install an XP (with or without protection software, with or without enabling updates)?
So, with Mint she's happy. It works perfect, simple like a phone. Ok it takes a minute or two to boot. No messages, no questions. She's 70 and I'm very proud that she's a Linux-Mom
Aug 16, 2009 at 17:58
@TMC : if your mom’s djihad-Mint breaks, she wo not find anyone to fix it… If anyone’s W$$$ breaks, tons of volunteers or professionals are ready to somehow repair it….
@Kim : if “some bugs aren’t discovered despite months of testing” may it is because testing is not the appropriate method, especially in the Open Source world :
if people working in photos taken from planes need to know whether their OS will be able to safely decode them, they read the strategic parts of the code for Open Source OSes … and they negotiate with the infamous Micro$$$$oft the right to read the strategic parts of its unholy code…. and they choose on this basis -not on the “M$ is unethical!!! Linux is GREAT as it is open source” way of reasoning….
This opportunity to review the code was a strong argument -in my opinion- in favor of Open Source (and some testing, when it comes with the sign {it is the most likely to be wrong} of small additive|substractive corrections in physics, is very inefficient, whatever the number of black-box testers and the number of years it would take).
Code reviewing, which was claimed as the big advantage of O. Source, is very slow, and when there are too frequent “up”dates, it becomes unpossible, as code is produced faster than it can be tested by reading it….
Aug 16, 2009 at 20:33
@Gidouille du Père Ubu
Thank you for your answer. My my goal was to install a system which don't demands intervention, instead of easy recruiting "tons of volunteers or professionals", in fact pseudo-sysadmins
(your "djihad-Mint" allusion was perceived, understood and ignored)
Aug 17, 2009 at 00:16
About two years ago, I bought a 1000cc BMW motorcycle, a "classic" bike, built like we were back in 1969. Heavy four-stroke two-cylinder engine, no ABS, no electronics, nothing fancy, just pure bavarian steel and chrome.
Recently the idea crossed my mind that my operating system is like my bike. Nothing spectactular, though by now I really like it. Works every day of the year, and I've streamlined it so much it even works surprisingly well on old hardware (by "old", I mean PIII 700 and 128 MB RAM).
From time to time, some young "pilot" on a GSX-R or a R1 or a Hayabusa comes along and explains to me that my bike is shit compared to his cruise missile. Usually I just wonder why I never cross these loudmouths during the winter season.
Cheers,
Kiki Novak (CentOS 5.3)
Aug 19, 2009 at 11:17
"About two years ago, I bought a 1000cc BMW motorcycle, a "classic" bike, built like we were back in 1969. Heavy four-stroke two-cylinder engine, no ABS, no electronics, nothing fancy, just pure bavarian steel and chrome.
Recently the idea crossed my mind that my operating system is like my bike."
Your OS is DOS?
(Sorry, had to make that remark.)
Aug 19, 2009 at 11:23
Mmm… if so, I'm afraid DOS is not ready for the desktop. Currently, it lacks applications, then it lacks wireless, webcam and fingerprint support. Too bad, because otherwise it was light in resources.
(Sorry, I too felt I had to say this.)
Aug 19, 2009 at 12:15
"a system which don't demands intervention, instead of easy recruiting "tons of volunteers or professionals", in fact pseudo-sysadmins "
IF a system "does not demand intervention" (rather a slogan than a fact) and unexpectedly breaks there are two solutions (I exclude reformatting anything, even /home, as many linuxers do -if you have a bruise , change the leg-):
* find a pseudo sysadmin (I do not need a doctor to hail my fluenza/ my bruises) : with XP, it is very easy to find a neighbor who has (seems/claims to have) enough knowledge to fix it : and milions of XP go on working like that (of course, they have the ritual malware, the pavlovian viruses, it sucks , but all these drawbacks remain hidden enough it goes on "working").
May be it is because the world is buggy, but pragmatic arguments seem buggy, too..
For your info : I have XP installed since 5 years : the only annoying feature I found was a trojan I managed to "download" (without any effort) … at an Australian Linux advocate's site…
* find a real systyran (for XP, you have to pay him; for linux….. you just have to find him and it takes enough time not to break further your PC).
Aug 20, 2009 at 09:57
Hey, come on… My computers runs great with Linux and whatever versions of this and that. The release numbers are just release numbers. Development is always going on, sometimes things break in code. Of course it shouldn’t but maybe the distro could do some testing before releasing.
Mr Beranger, please write on a fully positive article about something for a change. There is thousands of positive things to look at. Could you write one article about the positive things.