Major Linux Desktop Problems In 2016

[birdie]

Issues are being addressed? Are we from the same universe? WTF are you all talking about?

Regressions? No, freaking not, QA/QC is just not there - every kernel release brings up to 100 regressions.
No stable APIs/ABIs? All the freaking time. Even glibC developers break compatibility all the time. It's a freaking core library. Oh, libstdc++/gcc is another major offender.
+10 years old bugs no one wants to fix? All the freaking time.
Poorly supported hardware? Welcome to Linux.

Etc. etc. etc.

It's great that your wonderful PC/laptop works with Linux a dozen little nasty bugs notwithstanding. However ... you must upgrade your whole distro every 9 months to stay up to date. You need to cope with the fact that under Linux your laptop battery time is a lot worse than under Windows/MacOS X. You forsake many applications and games because they are simply not available and most likely will never be [made available].

That's all freaking great.

[doom_Oo7]

> And why would you, under normal circumstances, have another ALSA lib above the Pulse server? Am I missing something? Plus Phonon is the application in regards to simple applications.

This happens often when applications were coded directly against ALSA (i.e. for a lot of apps).
Since there can be only one app at once on ALSA, what happens is that pulse provide an ALSA emulation layer that allows apps linked against ALSA to use Pulse "without knowing it".

> Even glibC developers break compatibility all the time. It's a freaking core library. Oh, libstdc++/gcc is another major offender.

In the windows world every version of the msvcrt (which is roughly equivalent to glibc + libstdc++ in a single package), i.e. every two / three years, breaks compatibility entirely.
So what happens is that every app ends up shipping the msvcrt it was built against and you have two hundred copies in your Program Files.
It isn't even compatible between debug and release builds : if you want to make a debug build of your app, you need to link recursively against debug builds of all your dependencies.

Now if tomorrow there was a security flaw in, say, the MSVCRT shipped with Visual Studio 2010, well, a lot of apps would just be fucked. While on linux, a security flaw would just require an update from the package manager.

[birdie]

Incompatible MSVCRT libraries are all bundled separately and Microsoft issues fixes to them occasionally.

# ls -la vc*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  1833232 Nov 15  2000 vc6redistsetup_enu.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3215280 Jul 20  2009 vcredist_x64_2005sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5225304 Jul 12  2009 vcredist_x64_2008sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5718872 Mar 19  2010 vcredist_x64_2010.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10274136 Jun 29  2011 vcredist_x64_2010sp1.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  7188536 Oct  5  2013 vcredist_x64_2013.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  2745256 Jul 20  2009 vcredist_x86_2005sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  4485976 Jul 13  2009 vcredist_x86_2008sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5073240 Mar 19  2010 vcredist_x86_2010.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  8990552 Jun 29  2011 vcredist_x86_2010sp1.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  6498200 Oct  5  2013 vcredist_x86_2013.exe

[chrisb]

Issues are being addressed? Are we from the same universe? WTF are you all talking about?

Regressions? No, freaking not, QA/QC is just not there - every kernel release brings up to 100 regressions.
No stable APIs/ABIs? All the freaking time. Even glibC developers break compatibility all the time. It's a freaking core library. Oh, libstdc++/gcc is another major offender.
+10 years old bugs no one wants to fix? All the freaking time.
Poorly supported hardware? Welcome to Linux.

Etc. etc. etc.

All of these terrible unsolved problems with Linux, and yet somehow Google managed to sell almost 10 million Linux/Chrome OS systems this year, which is praised for being one of the most stable and maintainable operating systems in the world. Chromeboxes are desktop PCs, running a Linux kernel and a distribution based on Gentoo and Linux user space (glibc, gcc, Chrome browser etc.). If problems with these components really were as serious as you think they are, then it would be impossible for Google to build a reliable system out of them, wouldn't it?

[patrakov]

haswell: no hdmi audio

Please disable VT-d in the BIOS or boot with intel_iommu=igfx_off

The last time I talked to an Intel engineer about it (in person), I was told that I should not use VT-d because it only slows things down on a typical desktop, and that my issue (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60769) will not be even looked at, because I am not a customer with a 1000000 install base.

[thelongdivider]

The corresponding list for windows would be amazing. Sure graphics drivers are good, but security, methodology to install packages, and uploading all you information to microsoft are unbelievable.

I tend to find Radeonsi more stable than catalyst on Windows, let alone linux! The other issues make virtually no sense to me.

[buzzrobot]

He's also updated his "Windows Isn't Ready..." post, which hits that OS in all the usual places.

Many of the Linux issues he raises are, at heart, rooted in inadequate vendor hardware support for Linux. Yes, support is usually there for anything that's not brand new. Yes, the performance you can get out of that hardware component is not always as good as what you get on Windows. I don't expect that to change.

Still, many of the assertions, whether I agree or not, are poorly sourced. Citations often point to anecdotal incidents.

[glxextxexlg]

There's a nice saying about this kind of criticism: "Searching for the calf under the ox." (not under the cow where it should be).

[Guest]

Issues are being addressed? Are we from the same universe? WTF are you all talking about?

You're just a known winblows fanboy, so stop your crap already.

Regressions? No, freaking not, QA/QC is just not there - every kernel release brings up to 100 regressions.
No stable APIs/ABIs? All the freaking time. Even glibC developers break compatibility all the time. It's a freaking core library. Oh, libstdc++/gcc is another major offender.
+10 years old bugs no one wants to fix? All the freaking time.
Poorly supported hardware? Welcome to Linux.

Stable APIs/ABIs make windows broken by design, unsecure utter crap. Nearly every new winblows edition is a regression to previous version. And I mean huge regression (ME, Vista, 8). The same goes for OS X and it's slooow. What +10 year old bugs? Will you show me an important and known 10+ year old bug in Linux? There were bugs in vista and/or Win7 since a dos era.

It's great that your wonderful PC/laptop works with Linux a dozen little nasty bugs notwithstanding. However ... you must upgrade your whole distro every 9 months to stay up to date. You need to cope with the fact that under Linux your laptop battery time is a lot worse than under Windows/MacOS X. You forsake many applications and games because they are simply not available and most likely will never be [made available].

That's all freaking great.

Simple logitech gamepad doesn't work in Win7 64bit unless you waste a hour to fix it. It works out of the box in Linux.

[Guest]

Incompatible MSVCRT libraries are all bundled separately and Microsoft issues fixes to them occasionally.

# ls -la vc*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1833232 Nov 15 2000 vc6redistsetup_enu.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3215280 Jul 20 2009 vcredist_x64_2005sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5225304 Jul 12 2009 vcredist_x64_2008sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5718872 Mar 19 2010 vcredist_x64_2010.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10274136 Jun 29 2011 vcredist_x64_2010sp1.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7188536 Oct 5 2013 vcredist_x64_2013.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2745256 Jul 20 2009 vcredist_x86_2005sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4485976 Jul 13 2009 vcredist_x86_2008sp1atl.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5073240 Mar 19 2010 vcredist_x86_2010.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8990552 Jun 29 2011 vcredist_x86_2010sp1.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6498200 Oct 5 2013 vcredist_x86_2013.exe

It's good you mentioned this crap. It makes windows even more insecure and bloated. Furthermore, there's no package management on winblows, so you're screwed. Oh, and this terrible registry thing and dozens of other problems like non consistent UI which make this OS hardly usable.