What Are The Biggest Problems With Linux?

[WorBlux]

You make a good point and perhaps your experience is different than mine, but from my perspective the breakage is minimal and easily mitigated by a dedicated distribution that is watchful of what it pushes out to its users.

And if you ever complain about missing hardware drivers, try using a micro-kernel and you'll really understand what no harddrive support means. Great example is throwing Windows XP onto a computer and it doesn't support the network card because it only comes with 31-flavors of network drivers, and the one I've got doesn't exactly fit. It's almost never the case with Linux there. Sure, you might still miss hardware, but you'll have a whole heaping lot more with a monolithic kernel. Not to mention Micro-kernels can (but not necessarily) be inefficient.

Microsoft just didn't have to care, they had a virtual monopoly, and the OEM's did the hard work for them. So long as a default install can boot to a desktop so the actual drivers can be installed it didn't/doesn't concern them. Usually the user doesn't have to go hunting for drivers.

[WorBlux]

1)
2) Empowering user instead of power-user/developer is still utopia. Core problem is that entire system relies on sysadmin to be available at all times, and a sysadmin that knows what he is doing at that. That is because most of settings still need CLI. Bad sysadmin - like a kid - can way too easily destroy whole system. So you wanna install Flash on family computer to see funny videos but dad is on two month business trip to Uganda? Sorry kid, your dad's files are too important!

Actually you don't, last time I checked you could install browser plugins by dropping them in ~/.mozilla/plugins/
There's also a little thing called ssh.

CLI is necessarily for scripting, and many settings do have wizards available.

[daedaluz]

1) Developing for linux is like trying to shoot a diving hawk with a slingshot two kilometres away blindfolded. That's why there is so much unnecessary work that needs to be done: packaging for every individual distro, maintaining package in repository, testing aka freeze periods to make sure they all fit together, testing make scripts individually.... it's a bloody mess. I would prefer a situation where dev himself simply packages his binary and that's it.
2) Empowering user instead of power-user/developer is still utopia. Core problem is that entire system relies on sysadmin to be available at all times, and a sysadmin that knows what he is doing at that. That is because most of settings still need CLI. Bad sysadmin - like a kid - can way too easily destroy whole system. So you wanna install Flash on family computer to see funny videos but dad is on two month business trip to Uganda? Sorry kid, your dad's files are too important!
3) GNOME has good effort in it especially starting with GNOME 3.2, but it is not enough. Basic things like setting the amount of lines one click on mousewheel scrolls globally are impossible because of underlying design fuckups which nobody has fixed in 20 years and original guy is propably dead already.
4) While GNOME has good effort going on, so has XFCE, Mate, Trinity, Unity and even to lesser extend but with less success KDE. What I mean is GUI toolkits, enviroments and libraries are a mess. Chakra is the only distro I know of which at least attempts to function like a operating system with one standard way of making applications for it, being Qt-only and purged of GTK/Mono entirely. Now most of you are like "why would you do so", where I answer "so that your system doesn't end up broken inside like Windows ME". Plus it is more than likely possible to test and maintain limited set of libraries than stapling everything together and cross fingers it works.
5) Bread. Hacking for free only gets you starving and dead. Hacking for corporations gets you bread, boredom and bureaucracy. So you had super-cool idea? Too bad here's buggy Access server. Fix it or die on street. I seriously applaud long-time contributors doing things for free. I don't bother anymore. Someone may pay me for that.
6) Hacking is not engineering. Sure it was fun being kiddie-tr00h4x0rz back in the days but trying to figure out things deeper just made me confused. There is only so much one can figure out by himself without starving to death while at it. Unless, ofcourse, you are a Batman with trillion moneys on account.

so yeah.

[Prince781]

A Little Problem There

And if you ever complain about missing hardware drivers, try using a micro-kernel and you'll really understand what no harddrive support means. Great example is throwing Windows XP onto a computer and it doesn't support the network card because it only comes with 31-flavors of network drivers, and the one I've got doesn't exactly fit. It's almost never the case with Linux there. Sure, you might still miss hardware, but you'll have a whole heaping lot more with a monolithic kernel. Not to mention Micro-kernels can (but not necessarily) be inefficient.

The only problem with your statement is that Windows XP is technically a Hybrid Kernel (despite some theories that this is a marketing term, hybrid kernels have a balance between services being in user-space and kernel-space), and I believe its drivers are in kernel-space (same model of Linux).

As to your claims of driver support, I would venture and assert this to be untrue; in relation to hardware support, with the exception of CPU architectures and "exotic" GPUs, Windows generally has superiority in this area. Although certain instances of this support can be attributed to the higher amount of cooperation from other companies in aiding compatability, I think it should be commended, on the part of Microsoft alone, for their ability to produce an operating system that generally works on most modern hardware. Using an outdated example from a decade ago, such as Windows XP, is not a fair or logical method of arguing your point. Looking towards Windows 7, however, one can see that there is a wider range of compatability--even for legacy hardware--than XP.

[Yfrwlf]

QT can integrate with GTK(2)themes. QT is a pretty nice cross platform toolkit, it looks decent in gnome and windows.

Since it's now open source, it might be a good standard to use then for Linux GUI apps. I don't know if wxWidgets has more features than Qt but I assume the Qt has a lot more work put into it and is probably more featureful of the two.

[Yfrwlf]

You make a good point and perhaps your experience is different than mine, but from my perspective the breakage is minimal and easily mitigated by a dedicated distribution that is watchful of what it pushes out to its users.

And if you ever complain about missing hardware drivers, try using a micro-kernel and you'll really understand what no harddrive support means. Great example is throwing Windows XP onto a computer and it doesn't support the network card because it only comes with 31-flavors of network drivers, and the one I've got doesn't exactly fit. It's almost never the case with Linux there. Sure, you might still miss hardware, but you'll have a whole heaping lot more with a monolithic kernel. Not to mention Micro-kernels can (but not necessarily) be inefficient.

You shouldn't have to depend on anyone. Freedom means anyone, even users who only know how to point and click, can install drivers. When modifications are required for every tiny version difference, that makes that an impossibility unless you create an automated compilation system. Having a standardized driver ABI is much more efficient and a nicer feature, though.

As for your "not having the right driver" Windows XP example, that is BS. Windows XP not coming with enough drivers on the installation medium vs. Linux installation mediums containing more drivers has nothing to do with anything except that open source licensing means all the drivers can legally be included, whereas Microsoft relied on proprietary drivers being supplied from outside sources. A Linux installation medium can contain the same number of drivers regardless of whether the kernel is micro or monolithic.

[bwat47]

+99999999999999999

1. Developers, stop releasing source-only packages. Linux is never ever going to get mainstream adoption without functional, distro-agnostic binaries being made available for the major projects. This includes desktop environments. Stop forcing users to beg a distro company for updates. Linux is supposed to mean freedom. My first and foremost goal developing a project is getting it easily to users, but it seems many developers don't give a crap about users, ease-of-use, and installation.
2. Developers need to use a package standard which will get dependencies no matter what. I don't care if libjdwrujbs-2.125 isn't in my distro's repo, download that version from the library's website. Otherwise, if the library isn't nicely and readily available, get them to be a better project host, or include the specific version along with your program.
3. Use libraries which have better standards and don't constantly break the API so users won't need a different version for every program.

So far the only real solutions that seem to exist that I've found (feel free to give me better ones) is packaging systems like Zero Install which allows nice installation, updates, etc in a cross-distro fashion, so you install a 2nd package manager side-by-side with the existing one, and it plays nice. Also, using cross-desktop environment standards, like wxWidgets? Or can Qt also mimick GTK? You need to use something like that so your program looks good no matter the desktop environment the user is running.

If those are the best standards that Linux has right now, freedesktop.org and other standards bodies need to recommend them. It would be really great if Linux stopped being stupid with drivers too though, yes. Make a driver communication standard that never or very rarely has to change. If that means "making the Linux kernel sort of into a macro kernel" then why not? The reasons for not doing it are stupid. Making it easier to maintain and create a driver for Linux means win for Linux and its users.

QT can integrate with GTK(2)themes. QT is a pretty nice cross platform toolkit, it looks decent in gnome and windows.

[cdobrich]

Linux is a monolithic kernel and every time they update it it can break many things. That's why micro-kernels are better and device drivers should be in user space not kernel space.

You make a good point and perhaps your experience is different than mine, but from my perspective the breakage is minimal and easily mitigated by a dedicated distribution that is watchful of what it pushes out to its users.

And if you ever complain about missing hardware drivers, try using a micro-kernel and you'll really understand what no harddrive support means. Great example is throwing Windows XP onto a computer and it doesn't support the network card because it only comes with 31-flavors of network drivers, and the one I've got doesn't exactly fit. It's almost never the case with Linux there. Sure, you might still miss hardware, but you'll have a whole heaping lot more with a monolithic kernel. Not to mention Micro-kernels can (but not necessarily) be inefficient.

[Yfrwlf]

The main problem in my opinion is the lack of standardization, not only between distributions, but also between desktop environments.
And Linux needs a common way to install/remove applications.

+99999999999999999

1. Developers, stop releasing source-only packages. Linux is never ever going to get mainstream adoption without functional, distro-agnostic binaries being made available for the major projects. This includes desktop environments. Stop forcing users to beg a distro company for updates. Linux is supposed to mean freedom. My first and foremost goal developing a project is getting it easily to users, but it seems many developers don't give a crap about users, ease-of-use, and installation.
2. Developers need to use a package standard which will get dependencies no matter what. I don't care if libjdwrujbs-2.125 isn't in my distro's repo, download that version from the library's website. Otherwise, if the library isn't nicely and readily available, get them to be a better project host, or include the specific version along with your program.
3. Use libraries which have better standards and don't constantly break the API so users won't need a different version for every program.

So far the only real solutions that seem to exist that I've found (feel free to give me better ones) is packaging systems like Zero Install which allows nice installation, updates, etc in a cross-distro fashion, so you install a 2nd package manager side-by-side with the existing one, and it plays nice. Also, using cross-desktop environment standards, like wxWidgets? Or can Qt also mimick GTK? You need to use something like that so your program looks good no matter the desktop environment the user is running.

If those are the best standards that Linux has right now, freedesktop.org and other standards bodies need to recommend them. It would be really great if Linux stopped being stupid with drivers too though, yes. Make a driver communication standard that never or very rarely has to change. If that means "making the Linux kernel sort of into a macro kernel" then why not? The reasons for not doing it are stupid. Making it easier to maintain and create a driver for Linux means win for Linux and its users.

[gamerk2]

Why should 90% of Linux devices have to waste a lot of time cutting out bloat because a few percent want it?

"Bloat" is and always will be subjective. In the days of mutli-terrabyte HDD's, a few hundred megabytes of extra hardware support is minimal overhead, especially if said code is never actually run.

I find it ironic that some people love linux because of how easy it is to configure, then complain about not wanting to carry some features that enable linux to run on a wider variety of hardware.

Of course it does. It pushes your maintenance costs off onto the OS developers, who have to maintain crusty old crap forever.

Which is why Windows is so full of bloat, security holes and bugs. Microsoft even have to support old, undocumented bugs because SuperWizzoWriter 2000 crashes if they fix them.

I'd stop complaining about MS's security holes, since Windows is significantly better off then most other OS's on the market right now.

I think you miss the point.

Most Linux users don't care, and most Linux developers are building custom systems for Linux. We don't need to support crusty old APIs because we don't care that you don't want to invest any time in maintenance work to deal with API changes.

There are only two non-game, non-free applications I run on my Linux box and one of them has a Linux port; I prefer running the Windows version in Wine because I don't trust random software installers with root permission.

Translation: You don't run it, so you couldn't care if support was dropped for it.