Why Linux Sucks and Why it Doesn't

Why it sucks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh-cnaJoGCw

Why it doesn't
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfLqLK7VdQY

I suggest watching them in that order, as that's the order they're presented in.

 

I'll watch these now, thanks. At the same time, I'm frightened as to what you may have started

 

Video two is great if any Windows fanboys watch. He rips on 8 in both of them a few times but in the second video he's a bit meaner.

 

I like this guy. In the first video, he nailed all the problems that are still happening. I mean, it's true, some of these issues should not be with us in 2012. In the second video, he never denies that these issues exist (although it did kinda turn into a Linux rally, which admittedly will happen at a Linux discussion with Linux users), but that they are much less an issue than say, 2-3 years ago. I loved the Win 8 comments, they're so true, lol. My only complaint is that I wanted to put the camera guy into one of those brace-devices they used in early photography to help subjects stay still.

Very interesting videos and a very no-BS, entertaining presenter.

 

Hmm.. 45 minutes, I'll watch it later.

There's only 2 reasons I can think of Linux "sucking".

1. Its full potential is probably held back by patents.
2. It still doesn't have a shell as good as Aero, although XFCE is so close.

I guess the video will bring up other things.

 

For me, what really sucks about Linux is the LibreOffice spreadsheet. For example, consider a 75MB Excel file (XLSX) with 300K lines in six sheets. Using Excel 2007 on Windows 7 x64 on a low-end machine with an AMD Athalon II X4 645 CPU (3.1 GHz) and 6GB memory, that file opens in under two minutes. Conversely, opening that file takes over 15 minutes using LibreOffice 3.4 on Ubuntu 11.04 x64 on a machine with an Intel Core-Duo Quad CPU (2.66GHz) and 6GB memory. Furthermore, even Excel 2003 running in a Windows XP x86 VM (one core and 1GB memory) on that same Ubuntu machine opens the file in under two minutes. In my experience, OpenOffice does no better.

 

Just curious but how does it handle after it is saved in .ods format?

 

For me, what really sucks about Windows is the LibreOffice spreadsheet...

LibreOffice is not Linux, nor Linux exclusive.

 

It's slow!

There's a sheet with 60K rows and 40 columns. Column A contains row headers, row 1 contains column headers, and the rest of columns B through AN contain integers. For each column, I want subtotals for 15 of the most common column header values. So I write "=SUMIF($A$2:$A$60000,$A60002,B$2:B$60000)" in cell B60002, copy that cell, and paste it into cells B60002 through AN60016 (585 cells).

In Excel 2007 on the Windows 7 x64 box, it takes less than a second to calculate after pasting (using all four CPUs). In LibreOffice 3.4 on the Ubuntu 11.04 x64 box, after converting the file to ODS format and saving it, it takes 30 seconds to calculate after pasting. Only one CPU can be used. In Excel 2003 on the Windows XP VM on that same Ubuntu 11.04 x64 box, after converting the file to XLS format and saving it, it takes about one second to calculate after pasting.

Somebody's probably going to tell me that I could do it in 300 msec using a shell script. Maybe I could. But I'd rather use Excel. On the other hand, if I had 100K small text files to process, I'd use grep and sed in Linux.

 

That's true.

So is there a better spreadsheet that runs in Linux?

In my experience, Excel 2003 in Wine is iffy, and Excel 2007 is useless.

 

I would say your experience is clearly a deal breaker and totally justifies staying with Windows. Fortunately, I don't need to handle such large spreadsheets and so LibreOffice is just fine with me. I do have a lot of data but I have structured it into chewable bites.

BTW, the first video is horrible. I'm not going to bother with the second. That was due to "technical reasons" at my end.

 

ot posts removed

 

I wasn't clear enough, it seems. I'm quite OS agnostic. I have Windows boxes, Linux boxes, BSD boxes (including pfSense) and an ESXi box (which is basically Linux, I think) -- both real and virtual. My data sits on various NAS boxes. I use whatever tools are appropriate, on whatever OS they like best, with whatever hardware is required. I haven't needed a Mac, but I'd use one if appropriate. I also have about six hammers

 

I actually like the way packaging is done. Yes, it sucks if you want your software to target all the distros, but overall it is better for security. If we had one standard install file (say .deb) across all distros, then people would ignore package managers and go around downloading random crap off the Internet just like they do on Windows. Then we would have a lot of boxes getting owned.

So the different package formats actually help with security in a way. Newbs have no idea how to install software *unless* they use their package manager (which they should be doing anyway), which protects them from being stupid.

 

Being hard to use is not a great security feature.

 

I can still go around and "download random crap". Nothing protects a persistent, stupid user from doing stupid things. Only an unplugged box can do that. Repositories are one of the reasons for better security, not packaging. If it's from a trusted source, .rpm, .deb, none of that matters. I've also seen many occasions where you're simply better doing a manual install because the package manager completely screws up the process.

 

Pretty much dw. The big thing that protects a user from social engineering is that you don't google for a PDF viewer or some such thing you search "PDF" in your app-repository.

A nice side effect is that Linux also handles all updates for the user. Even my Flash, which I downloaded from Adobe, is updated through my Linux Update Manager shortening the gap between a hacker finding a vulnerability and the time that I'm unpatched.

 

Yeah, I love not needing to keep up with software updates and not having to have a separate program for just such a job. A guy like me can install something, only use it once in a while, forget it's even there, and miss updates. Not the case with Linux and a solid repository.

 

I think my favorite part about using Linux would be not having to think about updates. Updates for all of my programs are checked for daily, it's great.

 

Yeah, that, and pretty much having no concern for malware etc....

 

I haven't seen even one instance since I switched to Linux last August.

 

The only issue I've had is when downloading a .deb and when I open it up it's "corrupted." My in-manager installs have been more reliable.

 

That's not what Chronomatic said, if I read the post above yours correctly.

 

I read this as: people don't know how to install software (because of the fragmentation with rpm deb etc) which protects them because they have to use the package management service

ie: it's hard to install without the package management so users are protected

Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

 

PCLinuxOS (a big source of such issues), OpenSUSE, Mepis, those all gave me sometimes screwed up installs of programs. Never had a single issue and still don't with Ubuntu itself and another favorite of mine, Sabayon.