Originally posted by krazy
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Why Desktop Linux Sucks and What We can Do About It
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Originally posted by krazy View PostMacs can't be compared to linux (or even windows) for hardware support, since official mac hardware & software is provided/supported by the same vendor, while linux is expected to work with everything. Even given that, I really don't understand your argument here. I could equally say "Wifi generally works great across all distros with a fully open source driver stack". And any problem with buggy or non-existent closed source drivers is "a driver issue of the manufacturer".
Have you got any numbers on regressions in updates for Ubuntu (or any other distro) vs. Windows vs. OSX? Because I completely disagree with that last sentence.
I distinctly remember upgrading XP to Vista when the latter was released, and having a heap of hardware trouble. Even my old scanner (Canoscan lide 20) still doesn't work with vista x86_64 (no 64-bit version of the driver). It works perfectly with linux, and has done with all the latest versions since I've had it.
I haven't used nero much, so can't pick on that one
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Originally posted by deanjo View PostYou can't compare hackintoshes to linux when it comes to compatibility. OS X is designed for a specific set of controlled hardware. Apple does not cater to the hackintosh crowd. It does not develop for that crew so to compare the hackintosh issues is completely invalid. Your trying to compare a products capability using resources it was never intended to be used for. You might as well be trying to adapt a VCR to play through HDMI.
I don't think legacy hardware support in Linux is something bad. Does core kernel devs care about it?
Even 3rd party devices like ralink tend to have their drivers up to snuff on OS X and don't break with the frequency they do on linux.Last edited by kraftman; 03 May 2009, 01:46 PM.
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what i feel that has a great impact on linux desktop "suckiness" is the lack of some sort of leadership
i don't think there is something like a distribution consortium or whatever that can give "directions" to all the people that contribute to open source desktop
this leads in duplication of many apps, libraries etc and -as a consequence- wasted resources (ie developers) which in Open Source development are extremely valuable
of course noone can force people -especially hobbyists- to work on specific things but i believe something like that would make things better
anyway
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I've been following Bryan for a while. Been listening to the Linux Action Show (and CastaBlasta) for over a year now. I never considered him "THE authority" in my Linux news, but he's never frustrated me as much as he has with this video.
Like others have said, Gstreamer is a pile. With Mplayer and Xine, I can watch 720p on my old AthlonXP rig. Using Gstreamer, I can't even watch DVD's because of so much frame-droppage. I'm all for standardizing on something, but why standardize on a pile of crap? That's not going to make us look any better.
So, yeah, not sure why he rags on Phonon. KDE built an API that works, so that application developers don't have to care about what's going on underneath. And that API hooks into whatever the system has (gstreamer, Xine, Mplayer, Quicktime, Direct Show). I don't see what the problem is.
I don't agree with the packaging concerns. I agree that it's getting kind of ridiculous, but it's not nearly as simple as he makes it sound. I don't think the Gentoo or SourceMage guys will be happy using RPM or deb.
What really pissed me off is his rant about the openSUSE Build Service. I'm not a developer, but I don't doubt that the service isn't perfect. The complaints about having to manually create build scripts for each package are probably perfectly valid. BUT:
1) You only have to do that once per distro package. Any time you need to rebuild, the scripts are still there, and they still work.
2) That situation could change. It's not like Novell brought the OBS online and was like "all right, we're done. It's working and we're not tweaking it again. Ever."
3) He doesn't look at it from a user's perspective. Combine the openSUSE Build Service with software.opensuse.org/search and it's pretty sweet. You can find pretty much anything, your package management system will watch the repos for changes, and you can make your system as bleeding edge as you want in between release cycles.
4) This is the big one. He doesn't compare it to anything. I'm not an Ubuntu user, so I could be wrong on this. But isn't Launchpad (and it's PPA's) fairly similar to the openSUSE Build Service?
All he did was bitch about where the OBS wasn't perfect. No praise for what it does right, no ideas for where it could be improved, no comparison to other, similar services. Just "oh, this is kind of a pain in some respects, write it off as a lost cause".
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Originally posted by 89c51 View Postwhat i feel that has a great impact on linux desktop "suckiness" is the lack of some sort of leadership
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Originally posted by jeffro-tull View PostLike others have said, Gstreamer is a pile....
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All he did was bitch about where the OBS wasn't perfect. No praise for what it does right, no ideas for where it could be improved, no comparison to other, similar services. Just "oh, this is kind of a pain in some respects, write it off as a lost cause".
You guys seem to contradict yourself
- gstreamer sucks
- phonon is great
- phonon uses gstreamer
What???? (Someone either has facts or opinions wrong because those statements don't align)
And I agree - OBS isn't perfect and is a good direction / even if as a intermediary measure.
That being said - it's a presentation, meant to promote discussion... like what is happening here. Could he have been more graceful - sure - could he have not mentioned any examples - no because that would get him ranged on / just like his choices of examples get ranged on. Nothing pleases finicky FOSS users...
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The discussion shouldn't be why his examples suck... it should what can we do to improve Desktop Linux. And it has been stated more than once that the multitude of options is painful - and when the "solution" is yet-another-option it can be frustrating (even if it is a quality solution in the making)
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Originally posted by kraftman View PostSo don't compare preinstaled Macs to not preinstaled Linux distros (they're little like hackintoshes, but support far more hardware and work better).Last edited by deanjo; 03 May 2009, 04:05 PM.
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Originally posted by Craig73 View PostYou guys seem to contradict yourself
- gstreamer sucks
- phonon is great
- phonon uses gstreamer
If you actually listen to his comments on OBS it's not so much the service that he has a beef with but the lack of a unified packaging solution for linux which again is not really a OBS issue. Another misdirected rant. He basically wants OBS to have the capability of a reliable "checkinstall" type of scenario where you drop the source in and it creates a valid package.Last edited by deanjo; 03 May 2009, 04:13 PM.
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Originally posted by deanjo View PostHave you even been following the Ubuntu 8.04 ---> 9.04 upgrade fiasco on netbooks? Perfect example right there. Stuff used to work, now it doesn't meanwhile systems that meet the minimum requirements of 10.5 still have working wifi out of the box.Again, I'm not saying that regressions don't happen in windows or osx. They do happen.
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