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What Are The Biggest Problems With Linux?

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  • Some comments in this thread are just based on disappointments with the Desktop !
    Just refresh your mind that the popular Android jvm runs on top of Linux
    Linux is a success. One of the first & may be the first OS used in the Internet servers.
    Man says "Clound" is the futur, so Will be Linux. Just give a look to vendors, they will propose you robust distro as CentOS, Mint, Debian

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    • By the way, the most sold DSL-TV set-to-box in France runs thanks to Linux (using a stable 2.6 release kernel). I'm talking about million of units.
      What's yours in your country ?

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      • The biggest problem with [GNU/]Linux today, IMHO, is exposure. And I mean too much exposure.

        Bringing Linux down to the masses makes everyone want his/her own feature and focus on aspects that are totally irrelevant of GNU/Linux roots: freedom of choice. Bringing the GNU desktop to the masses implies leading the clueless user and make choices for him while GNU and Linux is all about freedom and choices.

        We've come to a situation where experienced GNU/Linux users expect the best control from their system and in the meantime where as few choices as possible must remain to the clueless users... to prevent them from screwing up their computer, for instance.

        I'm just fearing the trend nowadays (due to bringing more audience at all prices) is to flatten the learning curve. GNU/Linux must remain easy to use, of course but it must remain somehow exciting to learn; being able to identify, diagnose, understand and fix an issue on my own has been the best experience to me. Not requiring to learn about GNU/Linux shall make it as tasteless and pointless as any other [flat-learning-curve-where-everything-is-done-for-you] system, IMHO.

        But I might just be wrong.

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        • Originally posted by VinzC View Post
          The biggest problem with [GNU/]Linux today, IMHO, is exposure. And I mean too much exposure.

          Bringing Linux down to the masses makes everyone want his/her own feature and focus on aspects that are totally irrelevant of GNU/Linux roots: freedom of choice. Bringing the GNU desktop to the masses implies leading the clueless user and make choices for him while GNU and Linux is all about freedom and choices.

          We've come to a situation where experienced GNU/Linux users expect the best control from their system and in the meantime where as few choices as possible must remain to the clueless users... to prevent them from screwing up their computer, for instance.

          I'm just fearing the trend nowadays (due to bringing more audience at all prices) is to flatten the learning curve. GNU/Linux must remain easy to use, of course but it must remain somehow exciting to learn; being able to identify, diagnose, understand and fix an issue on my own has been the best experience to me. Not requiring to learn about GNU/Linux shall make it as tasteless and pointless as any other [flat-learning-curve-where-everything-is-done-for-you] system, IMHO.

          But I might just be wrong.
          I don't think I understand this though. You're complaining more about a particular distro (Ubuntu perhaps?) or software stack than you are GNU/Linux. You're still free to find as difficult a distribution as you'd like, or even roll your own. There are distros out there aimed at non-clueless users.

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          • Originally posted by mcirsta View Post
            The biggest problem with Linux is probably the API and ABI changing almost every day and new features and software expecting that new API/ABI. MS invests a lot of time and money on maintaining a stable API and ABI , only breaking it on rare occasions. I'm a maintainer for a small Linux distribution, Frugalware and I see the problems we are face with every day ... You need to use a new version of libX but using a new version of libX will break progY while progZ still needs it. Also the new version of libX will expose a bug in progZ and so on...
            Red Hat tried to do something with RHEL to keep things stable in the long term but ... you can install a driver for the latest Radeon GPU and have it work with Windows XP from 10 years ago. You need the latest kernel and even then it won't probably work right in Linux.
            With decent HW and SW support I think Linux could start to gain some market share but someone needs to start it all and invest and talk to the open source community , collaborate with them. What I have seen working are things like WebKit. It was open source at first , then it was embraced by Apple and now it's the basis of the world'd most successful browser ( Chrome ). For open source and Linux to really succeed it's likely that a company has to take it and develop it in-house while at the same time collaborating with interested open source developers, companies. Google did so with Android and it's a success no matter what people say, let's not forget that they did have to fork the kernel ...
            This, exactly, as a platform Linux needs to have some semblance of a few good properties.
            Stability in a platform is important. < Hoping this will improve as a number of things are maturing right now.
            advanced features < Very much still lacking, it does not help that hardware also changes continuously.



            The worst ideas in execution I have seen is in driver and infrastructure design.
            Tying drivers to specific infrastructure versions (graphics drivers to specific X.org versions) makes for a holy mess.
            As experienced by many people. Developers should realize this more. Linus himself should speak up when someone makes this stupid decision to tie everything very thigh together. With constant distribution breakage as consequence.

            A lot of projects don't have good names because of other meanings of the same word.
            This scares average Joe away.

            As a developer:
            I miss stable api's.
            Good drivers
            A lot of distribution specifics that form problems.
            Lack of software delivery especially considering file formats and file system.
            Concerning the file system < seriously people, learn to organize things better! (Gobolinux)

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            • Originally posted by VinzC View Post
              The biggest problem with [GNU/]Linux today, IMHO, is exposure. And I mean too much exposure.

              Bringing Linux down to the masses makes everyone want his/her own feature and focus on aspects that are totally irrelevant of GNU/Linux roots: freedom of choice. Bringing the GNU desktop to the masses implies leading the clueless user and make choices for him while GNU and Linux is all about freedom and choices.

              We've come to a situation where experienced GNU/Linux users expect the best control from their system and in the meantime where as few choices as possible must remain to the clueless users... to prevent them from screwing up their computer, for instance.

              I'm just fearing the trend nowadays (due to bringing more audience at all prices) is to flatten the learning curve. GNU/Linux must remain easy to use, of course but it must remain somehow exciting to learn; being able to identify, diagnose, understand and fix an issue on my own has been the best experience to me. Not requiring to learn about GNU/Linux shall make it as tasteless and pointless as any other [flat-learning-curve-where-everything-is-done-for-you] system, IMHO.

              But I might just be wrong.
              Flatten the learning curve is a motivator to learn about the system.
              Do not EVER develop a system for the purpose of being exciting to learn!!!

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              • Originally posted by johnc View Post
                I don't think I understand this though. You're complaining more about a particular distro (Ubuntu perhaps?) or software stack than you are GNU/Linux. You're still free to find as difficult a distribution as you'd like, or even roll your own. There are distros out there aimed at non-clueless users.
                I indeed thought of distributions such as Ubuntu when I wrote my comment, that's right. Howeer this is not a complain rather than a general observation that I made, reading comments here and there and also from my own experience. My distribution of choice is Gentoo; (not that I wished Gentoo were the one distribution for everyone, of course) what I think is happening is that major GNU/Linux supporters (sponsors) are making the desktop more seducing for the average Joe/Jane, who need to be lead throughout. And this doesn't come without consequences.

                While it relies upon noble principles (have more people discover GNU/Linux and make them compare it with other systems), the roots of GNU/Linux might fade away and dissolve into the mass effect because, IMHO, most people are interested in a machine that just works. They don't care about the philosophy behind. Nor do they care about choices and freedom. Nor do they care about learning their system. They don't care about their rights being limited or not being able to fully control their system. Bringing a GNU/Linux desktop to that user base is ?dangerous? to me as it might result in being tainted with values that it was once against.

                These people should be educated (i.e. informed and convinced about the goods of it) prior to using our favourite system.

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                • Originally posted by Staffan View Post
                  I wrote "towards microkernel", which is where other systems are going.
                  What systems? It seems you're mixing user space drivers with micro-kernel design...

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                  • Originally posted by Alliancemd View Post
                    In Windows you have a lot of crashes too, they just don't ask you to report them and they put it in a way that won't scare the user. In Windows XP they were asking you to send or not to send the problem, in Windows 7 they just do it automatically. When a crash happens in Windows 7 it says "Windows is checking for a solution to the problem...", not like in Linux "Segmentation Fault: Fatal error...".
                    That makes the overall experience of the user more pleasing, he doesn't think that the OS has crashes because it doesn't tell him.
                    Thanks for the info. Maybe Ubuntu will do something similar, but I think it will be better if they make more user friendly bug reporting tool, so issues will not be hidden like in Windows, but fixed. In XP SP3 I sometimes hit bugs and report them, but this is were MS interest ends. I also had couple of BSoD. Sometimes Catalyst is the culprit and some other time embedded sound card. In Linux X just restarted when I had a crash with Catalyst, so even with binary blob it's more stable.

                    Originally posted by johnc View Post
                    This post should end the thread.
                    Thanks a lot for your nice comment.

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                    • In reference of this post.
                      Originally posted by kraftman View Post
                      Thanks for the info. Maybe Ubuntu will do something similar, but I think it will be better if they make more user friendly bug reporting tool, so issues will not be hidden like in Windows, but fixed.
                      No need to look further. Fedora, one of largest Linux distributions, since its 11th release does have a similar Windows 7 method called ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool). Documentation is available in plain sight. I am amazed Canonical did not adopt that feature for their Ubuntu releases.
                      Last edited by finalzone; 11 June 2012, 01:57 PM.

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