Things that you hate about linux

Hey, so far so good, let's hope it stays this way

Okay, I 1000 percent agree with the rest of you. I'm sure some people see it as having choice, which of course is a positive thing. However, the what, maybe several hundred distros? They create confusion. It also creates a lot of inconsistency in support, and, as we've seen numerous times, a lot of dev teams dissolve.

Hardware support is and, I think personally, will always be the Achilles Heel of the Linux world. Oh, by the way, you think Linux vs Windows fights are bad? Check out some of the FOSS vs everybody else fights some time I've also suffered the help issue as well. You can ask a relatively simple question, and suddenly find yourself being verbally ran over by some "expert" that thinks your post is wasting space and "If it's too hard, go back to Windows" mentality.

For all that it could be, and for as far as it has come since the early 2000's and earlier, Linux as a desktop is still too problematic to become anything other than an alternative. As always, just an opinion. You can keep the tinder away from my feet.

 

Why command line stuff? Once you got the know a few words, it makes life a lot easier

 

The only problem I have is ATI's support for linux. It's always not been very good. I always come across some problem that is just a problem with the driver itself.

Other than that, I haven't found hardware support any worse than on Windows.

 

Really?
I'm looking for a laptop, and trying hard to avoid NVIDIA's Optimus.
It seems to be everywhere, and not supported under Linux. Do you use a recent NVIDIA card? Can you use the card?
Maybe i'm reading things wrong, or i get to disable Optimus in the BIOS.

 

Laptops don't mix well with linux in my experience. I have an ATI card... there have been issues. I know Optimus is no good on linux either.

 

Oh, and of course, the community. Sometimes you get the helpful users and sometimes you get the ubuntu elitists who think that just because they're on baby's-first-linux they're uber haxors.

 

IME, some things don't work quite as well due to proprietary stuff, but it compensates on all the other things.
I got used to it, and i'm no guru. I'm using Win7 on a borrowed laptop, and i can only say, these i3's are amazing lol.

 

I'm going to be trying to install laptop with NVidia 540M (optimus)

Been trying to finD something on this as I knew it would be a problem. The Linux distro should provide a basic driver and NVidia do also provide a driver. None of them provide Optimus support. I'm currently looking at Bumblebee to see if I can get everything working.

https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee#readme Edit: Outdated, Dont UseI hope I will get it working...may fail though I s'pose

EDIT: New Bumblebee Project (Only tested with Ubuntu & Arch)
https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee



I suppose all this kinda demonstrates the driver support issue lol

 

Anybody else use distrowatch.com to stay informed about the latest distributions?

 

Yes, I don't currently have a distro installed on my home machines, but I am always keeping up to speed with news.

 

I've been using linux mint for more than a year now as my main desktop. Have tried various flavours over the years and this is easily the longest a distro has lasted.

While there are a number of things to like, there are a number of things to dislike. Even during this installation, I had to go to the net to find out how to get around a driver bug otherwise I couldn't complete the installation.

My major dislikes are

Too many flavours of distro, desktop, install methods (i.e. apt vs. rpm vs. yast etc.)

missing drivers: I have a atsc capture card with no linux driver. There was a LONG time where most wireless network cards had no linux support.

Constant nagging issues: Often when I want to install something, I can't just install it. I have to go search on the net to fix some issue. Frequently minor issues, but something nonetheless.

User community: The community has a prevalent "you should become a guru" attitude. In other words, if you haven't spent a significant amount of time reading manuals and learning install tools or diagnostic tools or something, you get some attitude from some of the user community. I know they are donating their time, but most people with a computer don't WANT to become an expert in the app. or OS. They just want to use it. If they can't, they go back to Windows or Mac.

Frequent changes to the apps: I find this one quite frustrating. The underlying method of operation for the apps changes frequently, and often for no good reason. So I'm having a problem, do a search, find others who have had and solved the problem in the last 2 years, then when I try to apply the fix I find the utilities they used have either been merged with some other utility or the utility has changed name or has different windows or options and I can't find what I'm looking for, or have removed the "fix" as an option altogether. So I have to go do more searching to find answers to these new questions.

While most of the above can be overcome with some time and net searches, the fact is I don't have to do that with Windows nearly as often, or the time I spend finding my answer is shortened. Like it or not, that makes the amount of time I spend trying to get something done takes longer on linux.

Those problems have gotten better over the years (except the excessive distro issue), but I've become convinced they will never be solved enough to get average uses to come over to linux. The saddest part is, if the community could have just settled on one distro and one desktop, they could probably have solved most of the other issues. I know "choice is good" but choice is also confusing and IMO that is the biggest issue holding linux back.

 

I agree with all those who have stated their dislike of some people across all Linux forums on the www who give the holier than thou attitude and sneering, sarcastic comments. It puts off so many people from using or trying Linux.

That is something I hate and loathe about Linux. Just don't understand why so unsupportive

Is it a problem with Linux? I guess it much be, sadly . It could so easily be addressed by unified support & documentation from all the major distros.

 

i agree

but sometimes what happens is .........let say a beautiful girl born........hey beautiful hey cute hey barbie doll .....at age 16-18 ........hey sexy .......hey buxom........hey gorgeous.....bla bla bla.........

at 20

a suddenly a nice guy come and say...... hey beautiful she replay in @#$% he thinks what a B!#ch .........she not a B!#ch and didnt mean that ....but........by that time her mechanism become by that way ........its kinda auto response......

hmmmm imagine a guy telling 70 guys how to install a distro or helping same thing and you come at 71 and he lost...or bad day...........or you be victim of mr nice guy syndrome.

its not frustration on you but he on himself OMG now i need to tell the whole story again

too much troubleshooting = too much frustration = aggressive sometimes

your mind ≠ his mind = too much frustration = aggressive sometimes

its same like language problem


if you see the starting thread word hate like mrk said pretty strong word and i really didnt mean it just come out of my barbie doll atitude or maybe i put it wickedly so other dont show barbie doll attitude and be nice

human nature is funny no

 

For me, it's the sheer number of versions and trying to figure what the differences really are. Trying to figure out what's available for each one that will be an equivalent to the tools I use. The process of installing these apps seems different on every distro. It gets hard to tell what is compatible with which version. The names of the apps and components don't tell me much of anything useful.

For me, the command line gets confusing. I've spent years with DOS and so much of Linux command line seems backwards in comparison. It's like completely starting over and would be easier if I'd never learned DOS.

The constant version updating would be an issue for me. I upgrade when I need to, not just to get the current version. If an OS or application does what I need, I stay with it unless the newer version offers something I want.

Given time, I could learn it but it's time I don't have to spare. I've got too much else to do to just sit there and read manuals.

 

I agree that it's far too often, but it's certainly from a vocal minority. Most are friendly and helpful.

Just to provide a different perspective, from someone who also searched for help, and was lost too.
The flip side: many people - not all or most, but many - i see asking for help start with the wrong attitude (thumbs down, strong and negative words, etc.), vague, or show they never even searched for solutions.
It's hard to distinguish someone who is genuinely lost and in need of help (people who come even more confused after searching, or don't know what to search for), from those who are just dumping a problem on their laps.

But it's true that it's not uncommon to get a RTFM* or similar. I had a few, but i never took it the wrong way. Even if they meant it that way.

What i did was RTFM, and most of the time, they were right.

*RTFM - Read The F[censured] Manual

 

Those with the attitudes are a minority really. There are plenty of helpful people in most of the forums dedicated to one distro or another. You need to overlook the ones with attitude, and focus on the people that can help you. There is usually plenty of documentation available for those who like to read too. I've always had good luck by just asking in the forums about any issues I encountered. And more often than not, just searching for my issue led to a solution someone else had already found and posted.

 

Command line itself!

 

Love the ideas behind Linux and other free software, and have been waiting for years for the Linux desktop to mature. I want to like it.

Stability - I've had far more app crashes under various Ubuntu releases than under Windows 7, and I've used Ubuntu <1% of the time. No BSODs though.

Drivers - never had any Linux distribution install without having to sort out drivers. ATI and Nvidia don't support it properly, so with my media netbook I'm better off in Windows for 720p.

Thin veneer of GUI - the moment anything goes wrong, little can be done via the GUI and I've always had to resort to the command line in order to more fully sort out problems. I used DOS as a child and am comfortable with it, so there's a steep learning curve for me in learning the Linux way.

GUI - the windows have such a thin selectable border (in Ubuntu), that it is difficult to resize Windows easily, and makes me feel like I'm using Windows 3.11.

Also Firefox is horrible on Ubuntu for many reasons.

 

I'm curious, you had issues with Nvidia? The normal answer to any graphics issue from users is "Get an Nvidia card". In Linux, BSOD stands for "Black Screen of Death", and I've seen plenty of them, lol. It's almost always because of graphics issues too. As far as apps crashing, for KDE it seems pretty standard. Gnome never gave me too many issues FWIW.

 

I used to always get told how great Linux was for games during the Quake 2 era, but by the time I actually tried it years later I found that I was better off in Windows. For example, Wolf:ET ran slow as anything in Linux, regardless of using the Nvidia proprietary drivers or the generic.

Main reason I use Linux is as a rescue disc, or a quick test to rule out a hardware problem. I've been meaning to use Puppy Arcade for all my old games but have never gotten around to it

 

Gaming is nowhere near what it is in Windows, admittedly a deliberate choice by game devs, but yeah. Lol, I can't even use a Linux rescue disk, doesn't work on my system. Maybe Steve Ballmer put my computer together himself

 

That's weird, what happens? Clearly you know how to properly burn an ISO so that's not the problem

 

It just ignores it. I haven't had to actually use one for an emergency, but if I test any of them, Windows just bypasses it. That's why I can't use backup programs that use any Linux-based recovery, my system pretends it isn't even there.

 

If it doesn't even begin to load, then it's BIOS related, not Windows.
Maybe i'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time..

 

(1) Drivers.
(2) GNOME 3 is horrifying crap. KDE is crap. XFCE is okay.
(3) Lots of application crashes for no apparent reason.
(4) Few distros that have full-disk encryption in the standard installer. That's why I use Fedora.
(5) There seems to be two extremes - developers who want to polish everything past the point of usability (GNOME devs, I guess) and developers who want things to be hard.

Other than that, I'm fairly satisfied with Fedora 15. I don't expect to run games on it, of course.