Views on Linux (from AmigaOS x86 thread)

[slaapliedje]

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....

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!

[slaapliedje]

Na. Not interested, I did HP UX, Solaris and Redhat for 10 years at work. But I'm a classic user. And use Win10 for everything else. Works flawlessly with all the software I brought from Win7-8.1-10.

Ha, reminds me of when I got Windows 7.... for the life of me I could not get Interstate '76 (from GoG) working on it, but it works wonderfully under wine.

Only time I ever boot into Windows 10 these days is to play the games that haven't been released for Linux.  And even then the %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@! thing gets in my way.  Granted I won't blame Windows for Kasperky trying to block VorpX (a program to try to route GPU calls to a VR headset), but yet games locking up on it is a pretty common experience.  Oddly enough Windows 10 itself rarely locks up, but the software on it certainly likes to freeze.

Granted, my favorite is the 'oh, well you normally schedule updates at this time, and you randomly can't sleep so you're working on something, but I'm going to reboot even if you're actively using your computer.  Tough %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!!' situation.  Though I think they may have fixed that in one of the updates, it did that to me even during the day when it was first released.

[slaapliedje]

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.

1. No where did I blame the user, I specifically was saying the distro.  The only blame on the user in this case is choosing a distribution that is a fork of a fork.

2. While the point still remains, distributions maintain their own patches in the kernel.  very few people just take the source off of kernel.org and compile it on their own.  I  would occasionally back in the day, but haven't had to do that for 15+ years...

3. Just use Debian.  Not a fork / derivative.  Install Debian Jessie, you can choose whatever major desktop at install time, and you can enable backports if you need newer video drivers.

Arch is very much a "build your own system", but once it is built, runs forever.  Only reason mine finally died was because my hard drive decided to start clicking in the middle of the night, and I had that install updated from about 6 years of use.  

I can get a full Arch install with desktop in 20-30 min, depending on download speeds, and it will stay running forever.  Windows... hell I am already considering re-installing mine because some random software doesn't uninstall itself correctly.

4. All software has bugs.  Just depends if said bugs are the kind where you want to rip the sisk out and stomp on it or not.  Windows has done terrible things to me in the past and present to make me not want to use it for anything serious.  Windows 10 will spontaneously teboot because of forced updates.  They took away the "wait another hour" option.

[slaapliedje]

I was just thinking...

It's kind of funny that it was mentioned that Linux Mint is the most popular distribution.

Chronology went something like this;
Debian=OMG hard to install, old gnome in stable release! >
Ubuntu=Goal, to bring out a set release every 6 months of Debian Unstable, and keep Gnome current for desktop usage... (server edition using same Debian installer, because Debian reallyi wasn't hard to install, just for a long time was curses based, so had bad rep.  Strangely enough, Ubuntu server install still uses the curses based installer, rather than the gtk based one)
Then Gnome-shell was progressing and "OMG, we don't like this.  We'll create our own clone and call it Unity!"  But of course that's pretty much %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!tier than Gnome-shell, there is a reason no other distro adopted it.
Then came Mint... which then forked Gnome-shell to make Mate or Cinnamon (for some reason I can never remember which is the gtk2 based straight fork of Gnome2 or which one is basically GTK3+some gnome-shell stuff, but with gnome2's style of interface)  

So Debian > Ubuntu > Mint.  Problem is that Mint (with the exception of their poorly maintained Debian Edition) is based off of Ubuntu, and Ubuntu has, much like PCLOS it seems, makes terrible kernel patches that causes issues.  

I'd installed Ubuntu as a 'friendlier' Linux on a friends laptop and it literally ate the extended partitions that it was installed on.  I thought for sure that the drive was dying (it was kicking up a ton of I/O errors, when I mounted it with a  liveCD).  I ended up formatting the corrupted partitions and it was 100% fine after that.  Installed Debian and he's perfectly happy with it.

[slaapliedje]

Hmm, I wonder how many of those tweaks are in the SteamOS kernel.

Not sure how much they change over the stock Debian one.  I had thought liquorix as a distribution had died long ago.

[slaapliedje]

Liquorix has never been a distribution.  It's a debian repo with builds of the Zen Kernel for easy updates.

Are you thinking of Lycoris Linux from the early naughties? They are unrelated projects.

This kernel build is much more noticeably responsive than the SteamOS kernel on the same hardware. It's kinda BeOS/Amiga style responsiveness.

You're right, I was thinking of Lycoris.  interesting, I will have to give that a try, i genereally just stick to sid on my desktop and stesting on my more work related desktop systems.

[slaapliedje]

With Arch being a derivative of Slackware you might be able to get away with installing this package.  Saves on compiling Zen yourself.  

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-lqx/

Yes I'm on a pimping spree, can't praise Liquorix / Zen enough.  

Pimp away!  installed the liquorix kernel and it does seem a bit snappier!  Oddly it feels much like it did when I first installed my Debian system.  I think I probably went install crazy and have set stuff up that I don't really use, and should purge it out, but this reminds me of when I first got an SSD.  nice and snappy.  On the other hand my non-SSD installed Arch feels snappier than my Debian install does currently (seriously need to spend some time to figure out why, or just dump package list, re-install, then install what I actually use...)

Anyhow, thanks for the heads up, this is working quite nicely.