Views on Linux (from AmigaOS x86 thread)

[stefcep2]

even though im pretty new to linux native, i have mostly ran it in vm as compiler environment tilllately, i cant agree with it. i was pretty surprised how useful and simple it may be even for creative tasks like multitrack audio recording or graphics. i consider it even more handy than windows i must admit. the problem is a choice of not overloaded distribution. for me it has been lubuntu so far.

Until something goes wrong.  And it will.

The greatest tragedy in the opens source movement is it chose Linux.

[stefcep2]

What is that supposed to mean?

"the open source movement", whatever you want to call it, did not chose Linux, it chose whatever people find interesting, useful and profitable. There are plenty of kernels and operating systems to pick from.

It means what its says.

Countless man hours wasted on Linux for no good reason than "its free".  Except its not.  People's time isn't free.  And lots of users have wasted countless hours to fix simple things in Linux.  A CD ROM driver update for example broke PCLOS- "Really? Works here fine, YOU must be the problem"..boots up Windows to get online to find a fix, 1 week later.  NO THANKS- life's too short.

Then there is Linux's "amateurishness" that leads to user frustration: I'm looking at my Mint 17.3 log in screen:  It says stefceplinuxStefceplinux.  Right under it there is a dialog box: It says in medium fonts"Login" underneath that a blinking cursor and in small fonts "Please enter your username".  Now I won't tell you as a user what is wrong with that, I'll let you work it out.  Let me say Linux's User-friendliness goes out the window from the very first login screen, in its "most user friendly" distro too.  Its a joke.

It was "gonna go mainstream" after Vista.  No, wait.  That was gonna happen "after Win 8".  No wait...now that 10 is stealing everyone's identity and sending to M$, its sure go mainstream any day now....

[stefcep2]

I've been running Linux since 2002.  Something went wrong in 2006 and I got a kernel panic.  Turns out it was hardware so I had to spend some $ to replace it.  Haven't had anything go wrong since then.

Wife's windows 10 laptop hung coming out of suspend last week so I had to force it to cold boot.  Daughters netbook got the forced upgrade from windows 7 to 10 and then took 28 minutes to boot.  I bought her a 'new' laptop for $200 and stuck Linux on her old one and it boots in 28 seconds so now I have a spare in case I need it.  I have one other running AROS.

Meh.  I'm running Win 10 on Core2Duo Thinkpad T500 I picked up in a recycle skip.  Boots Win 10 in under 10 seconds. Yeah I splurged on a $35 SSD. Rock solid- and I can stream Foxtel fullscreen  by simply downloading a 6 MB app.  Linux- nope.

We can sit here all day sharing anecdotes...

[stefcep2]

Enlighten those of us that don't have your astounding levels of technical competence and understanding, how is your name not displaying correctly on the Mint Display Manager the fault of Linux?

Knew it.

You DON"T get it.

My user name is correct....the issue is why the F is the dialog asking for my user name, when my username is written right there on the screen just above the Login dialog box, FFS?  

So what does the user think when they see this?  Well the word LOGIN inside a dialog box that has ones username above it intuitively means that user account is selected and it now wants the password, but NOOOOOOOOO, it actually wants my username.  Again.  

So what do users do at the login prompt when they see their username already written above the dialog box?  They enter their password.  Which appears on screen for all to see AND is then written in BIG Fonts on a new password dialog box  

[stefcep2]

Wtf are you on about?  There is no such thing as a 'cd rom driver update'.  That's all built into the kernel.  Not to mention if a patch that the distribution put into their kernel broke your system, then that is entirely the fault of that particular distribution, NOT Linux.  As nicholas said, "why is that the fault of Linux?"

Same for the login screen, use proper Gnome, not that bastardized thing that Mint uses.  Even if you don't like Gnome-Shell, fallback mode is pretty damned close to old gnome 2.0 and is officially supported instead of some 'omg, changes, lets fork!' side project supported by Mint.

Sounds to me like you just need to use a GOOD distribution.  Preferably one that doesn't try to do all the hand-holding (I've learned that while they have decent defaults, much like Windows, if you try to do anything cool with them, they break.)

Slackware was mentioned, though oddly through all my years of using Linux, I haven't really tried Slackware, but I have always ended up going back to Debian.  I've tried all the derivatives of it, and they just end up sucking because they take from Debian, but then break the packaging compatibility so lose all of the great talent that goes into a proper Debian package.

It really sounds like all of your complaints are distribution specific.  Also Arch is fantastic for learning, and you can keep the same install for years!

1.  Stop blaming the user.  Distro's without a simple login screen are not the users fault.  Its not because "its not like Windows"- its because its a brain dead login screen.  And this is on THE most popular distro...

2.  An issue with the cd-rom driver support did in fact break PCLOS. Yes was fixed eventually by some friggin' around with the kernel.

But the kernel is not an operating system  "Wow this kernel is so much better than the Windows kernel, or the Macos kernel"- Said no user ever.  The kernel is nothing without the software that runs on top of it.  Thats what makes the computer useful.

The operating system is how Linux gets judged by most end users.  A well designed OS is intuitive to use without needing to read a tome about it.  Never needed to read an Amiga manual, a Windows manual, or Macos manual or even a Beos manual-but I need to to use Linux?  And that's my fault?  

3.  Just need a good distro, you say?  But not Mint, the most popular?  Not any derivatives of Debian- that would mean no Ubuntu, second most popular.  Arch you say- a bit of digging tells me it will dump me into a cli by default, and then I have to manually:
    create disk partitions
    establish MRB or EFI
    setup network with ( or without) DHCP, including wired or wireless network
    optimize gcc for the specific CPU
    config(and even compile) the main Linux kernel
    config, compile, and install kernel modules
    do some environmental essential configuration
    setup X server and GUI
    …
 And then all the other essentials. Luckily there is a beginners guide- 26 pages LONG.

Why would I want to waste time reading all that when Windows will do it in under 20  minutes?

4.  Yes my complaints are distro-specific.  ALL have their own specific issues.  I've been there, done that.  Life's too short to waste on fixing RST's on Linux.