Does Linux have an Amiga feel?

[Mrs Beanbag]

I am running out of the office now, so I can't reply to rest right now, but what you describe is simply not how X window managers work. X Window Managers connect to the X *Server* like another client, and use special commands. Clients connect to the X *Server* as well. Your client doesn't even need to know that a window manager is running.

That's exactly what I'm saying. The window manager connects to the X server. It doesn't communicate with the other clients (i.e. your applications) that use the GUI toolkits. So there is a barrier there between the toolkit and the window manager and there is no way to ensure consistency between them. Your client apps can't know anything about the window manager's settings and your window manager can't know anything about your GUI tookit's settings, unless they do happen to run on the same machine and have been programmed specially to get on with each other, but there is no guarantee of that. X windows makes no distinction regarding exactly where, physically, a client program is running, which is part of the beauty of it. The problem is that it does so in such a dumb way.

Wayland integrates the window manager with the X server. What I'm suggesting is really needed, is to integrate the toolkit with the window manager. Which currently would be very difficult to do, because X only has the concept of a top level window, and nothing else.

[polyp2000]

I am running out of the office now, so I can't reply to rest right now...

vidarh I commend you on taking the time and effort to debunk so many of the misconceptions and assumptions regarding linux. I think we are all here because we have a love for the Amiga i cant help but feel that some of us are seeing things through rose coloured spectacles. Im honestly surprised at the animosity towards Linux here. When i first discovered it it seemed to be a natural fit with my amiga background. I wonder how things might have panned out should Amiga had continued with plans to adopt the linux kernel as the basis for a future amiga http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/linuxchoice.html.

All operating systems have their flaws - for me I think the Linux audio subsystem could do with an overhaul , or at least some of the userspace tools could do with improvement. JACK for example is a bit of an artform to get set up right. Still - that doesnt stop me using it for music production with Renoise. https://soundcloud.com/polyp (Renoise is totally what Octamed / Soundstudio should have become ...).

[commodorejohn]

I don't know who "they" refers to in this case. I'm not aware of anyone touting "Linux" as a user-friendly desktop OS. That's what Ubuntu and its variants try to aim for, but that's just the aim of that particular (relatively new) distribution.

"They" are the advocates, the zealots, the people that insist on flogging what is a basically serviceable server OS with a tacked-on graphical environment and a bunch of software with shoddy UI design as the Cure for All Ills in modern computing and the One True Windows-Slayer.

(As for Ubuntu, it's a prime example of the "user-friendly = idiot-oriented" philosophy in dumbed-down UI, though I have seen worse offenders. But even Ubuntu still has that insane Linux complexity under the surface, just waiting for a chance to break out.)

Somewhere in this thread someone noted that  Android was "well regarded" yet later on claimed that Linux was no good  due to various desktop / user interface issues. On one hand accepting  that Linux is just a kernel and on the other citing Linux is both kernel  and userland stuff - depending on which argument it serves most best at  the time.

Let me clarify: I acknowledge that the Linux kernel is a distinct entity, separate from the userland. The reason I don't accept this as an argument for Linux-the-OS is because a kernel is not an OS. It's the core component of an OS, but it isn't one all by itself. Linux-the-kernel may be excellent (though I tend to side with Crumb myself,) but Linux-the-kernel is not what Linux zealots are pushing. They're pushing Linux-the-OS, which adds to the kernel a userland made up of forty years worth of cruft and kludge that has accumulated in trying to build an OS made for timesharing to terminals on mainframes into a modern desktop OS, with stops on every point in between.

Which is basically the reason Android is well-regarded: it ditches that forty years of cruft pretty much altogether, and replaces it with something more modern (as they did with Java as the official language, keeping the reasonable language/syntax and ditching the monstrous Java library and bloated runtime.) That's why I don't accept "people like Android, therefore people like Linux": it may use Linux-the-kernel, but it is not Linux-the-OS.

(And when the best thing you can do to get people to like your OS is to throw out everything but the very core, I think that says something.)

It can't possibly be worse than their old shell,  and it certainly is an *improvement*, but to a large extent they have  missed the point. There's been *numerous* attempts of doing similar  shells with types streams and rich meta-data embedded on the Unix side,  and all of them have stranded on a few very important things:

I'm not an advocate for object-oriented shells, but I would note that the failure of them on Unix doesn't necessarily prove much other than that Unix isn't well-suited to an object-oriented approach - which isn't exactly a surprise. (Of course, neither is Windows, so there you go.) It would be more informative to try such things on a system whose architecture incorporates object-oriented philosophy in a meaningful way...

Have you actually *used* those systems you compare X to?

Yes.

Unlike Windows or OS X, no single authority gets to choose what  we use. The Gnome project, for example, exists because a bunch of people  didn't like what the KDE guys were doing, and built their own thing.  XFCE exists because those guys didn't like either Gnome or KDE.

I know that. The fact that multiple organizations independently made a poor choice doesn't make it not a poor choice.

"Worse is better" simply means that delivering 80% now is better  than delivering 100% ten years from now. It isn't excuse for not  delivering a good product eventually - it is a reason for not  overdesigning a system so that you never ship anything until it's  obsolete. More should learn from that, given the number of great  projects that turn to vapour because people overreach (I'm as guilty as  the next one..)

It isn't supposed to be an excuse for not delivering a good  product - but it often is used as one in spite of that.

Um no, there's a *reason* why most people who  have experienced the GIMP hates it with a passion, it's because it opens  several windows and they spill out all over the place, not being  grouped together in any way. The usual answer from the Linux crown -  that's what workspaces are for.

The irony, of course, being that the GIMP will just throw windows in  whatever workspace you happen to be in, not just the workspace you  launch it in.

[ElPolloDiabl]

I wouldn't mind if this thread was locked, as it has become too boring.
The same argument is just repeating itself.

Yes lock the thread.

[nicholas]

I wouldn't mind if this thread was locked, as it has become too boring.
The same argument is just repeating itself.

Yes lock the thread.

Indeed yet another thread with boorish whiners insisting that their world view and their needs are the only valid view and needs, bullying others from the safety of their chair and keyboard who most likely wouldn't last 5 seconds in a real world confrontation before getting their nose broken.

Who would ever have thought it possible? :/

Autism or just plain old Delusions of Grandeur and arrogance? Short man syndrome perhaps?

Place your bets folks......

[Madshib]

What happened here? I tried to catch up on this thread, but decided to do this instead...rip my face off

edit: please make your point without linking to images like that. thanks.

[psxphill]

Eww.. No, it really isn't. Whenever I have to use a Windows box, I am quickly reminded at how much I detest it and feel tied up and limited by the OS instead of empowered by what functionality it makes available to me, and you can still see the heritage of the abominations that were earlier versions of Windows. They can't make Windows into what I described without ripping out large parts of what makes it Windows.

install mingw + msys, no ripping required.
 

Windows aimed for that explicitly in the first case, so things that came so naturally to Linux with its Unix roots, such as the multi-user network based environment, in Windows seems kind of tacked on as an afterthought. Which of course it is.

Windows NT was a new OS written from scratch with multi user networking, started in 1989 and released in 1993. It was never tacked onto anything. The Security in Windows and Active Directory is way better than anything designed for Linux.

[commodorejohn]

"People are saying things I don't like! Clearly this thread needs to be locked!"

Indeed yet another thread with boorish whiners insisting that their world view and their needs are the only valid view and needs, bullying others from the safety of their chair and keyboard who most likely wouldn't last 5 seconds in a real world confrontation before getting their nose broken.

I'd like to know what someone's capability in physical combat has to do with an argument over the merits of a particular operating system and/or its similarity to a different operating system. But you know what? I don't really care. You're welcome to come to my house and try beating me up. (PM me and I'll give you my address, Internet Tough Guy.) You'll probably even succeed, because hell, I've never claimed any kind of physical prowess. But it won't make a damn bit of difference. You might be fully capable of besting me physically, but you're still a thin-skinned thug who thinks that violence is an appropriate retort to a verbal disagreement.

Autism or just plain old Delusions of Grandeur and arrogance? Short man syndrome perhaps?

For someone who claims to be the father of an autistic child, you sure do like to throw around the 'tard label. Have some class, will you?

[nicholas]

I'd like to know what someone's capability in physical combat has to do with an argument over the merits of a particular operating system and/or its similarity to a different operating system. But you know what? I don't really care. You're welcome to come to my house and try beating me up. (PM me and I'll give you my address, Internet Tough Guy.) You'll probably even succeed, because hell, I've never claimed any kind of physical prowess. But it won't make a damn bit of difference. You might be fully capable of besting me physically, but you're still a thin-skinned thug who thinks that violence is an appropriate retort to a verbal disagreement.

Who said anything about beating you up?  I merely stated that there are people posting in this thread who if they spoke like that and aggressively tried to force their views on others in the real world they would likely be met with violence at some point in their life.

It seems some people are unable to accept that the views and preferences of others are just as valid as their own and resort to insults and threatening behaviour.

The word for such people is 'bully' and bullies by their very nature are pathetic cowards.

For someone who claims to be the father of an autistic child, you sure do like to throw around the 'tard label. Have some class, will you?

If the people who are unable to accept others views as being just as valid as their own then they are either autistic and therefore their behaviour is understandable or they are just a tw@.

[eliyahu]

@thread

things are getting a little heated. as a gentle reminder personal attacks are against the TOS of the site. if you feel the need to do that sort of thing, at least take to PM instead.

thread locked while folks cool off.

edit: thread now reopened. please keep it friendly or the thread will be locked for good. thanks.

-- eliyahu

[Madshib]

Smells like 4chan in here now....

[commodorejohn]

Who said anything about beating you up?  I merely stated that there are people posting in this thread who if they spoke like that and aggressively tried to force their views on others in the real world they would likely be met with violence at some point in their life.

So arguing about a topic equals "trying to force [your] views on" someone? Come on. It's not like anybody's strapped anybody into a Clockwork Orange chair here.

If you can't stand people arguing so much, I'm not sure why you're even in this thread. What were you expecting to find?

It seems some people are unable to accept that the views and preferences of others are just as valid as their own and resort to insults and threatening behaviour.

The word for such people is 'bully' and bullies by their very nature are pathetic cowards.

First off, who has been threatening, or even insulting? You're the only person in this thread who's said anything that could be construed as a threat.

Second, are you seriously going to pull out the "everybody is right, nobody's opinion is invalid" claptrap? Seriously? For starters, it becomes literally impossible for everybody's opinion to be valid when people are holding opposing positions. Additionally, if that were true, there would be zero point in having a discussion about it, so again I'm not sure why you're even in this thread.

[Fats]

"They" are the advocates, the zealots, the people that insist on flogging what is a basically serviceable server OS with a tacked-on graphical environment and a bunch of software with shoddy UI design as the Cure for All Ills in modern computing and the One True Windows-Slayer.

Seriously commodorejohn, in which century are you living ?
I use Linux as my main OS but don't feel the need to argue to other people they should switch to Linux; like all other Linux users I know. This time has long passed.
In this day and age the best place to find a zealot is in the world where everything starts with a 'i'.

[psxphill]

It seems some people are unable to accept that the views and preferences of others are just as valid as their own and resort to insults and threatening behaviour.
 
The word for such people is 'bully' and bullies by their very nature are pathetic cowards.

Yeah, I'm fed up with the Linux bullies.

[Kremlar]

I use Linux as my main OS but don't feel the need to argue to other people they should switch to Linux;

Perhaps you don't, but trust me - there are plenty of Linux fanbois out there who don't understand how someone could actually run Windows and are very vocal about it.
 
As for the iFanbois, there is at least an equal number of Android-fanbois.
 
I guess the camp YOU'RE in is always the rational one.

[commodorejohn]

Seriously commodorejohn, in which century are you living ?
I use Linux as my main OS but don't feel the need to argue to other people they should switch to Linux; like all other Linux users I know. This time has long passed.
In this day and age the best place to find a zealot is in the world where everything starts with a 'i'.

If you don't, that's great. You are totally exempted from any statements about such people - and thank you for not being one of them.

Unfortunately, while they may be less numerous than they were ten years ago, when every neckbeard in the community college would talk your ear off about "GNU/Linux," they still definitely exist; you only have to look around at communities for other alternative OSes (Haiku, for example,) where they constantly argue that FooOS should be more like Linux (because, obviously, Linux is the perfect end-point on the Lamarckian evolutionary ladder of OS development, because reasons,) or that FooOS is pointless and everybody working on it should just devote all their efforts to Linux, or whatever.

It'd be pretty damn nice if their time really had passed, frankly.