Help me help Linux, tell me about Linux problems

[Alliancemd]

Not exactly "old and ugly". It's about the integrity. We are used to uniform look of applications, so anything with custom UI plainly stands out, which is not always the good characteristic. It is going to be open source, so go for the third option - multi-UI. You write the interface you love to see done and let anybody else to come up with the integrating interfaces. If you do it the right way, your own UI could be adapted rather than creating a new one from scratch.

Skype on Windows doesn't have anything related to native looking UI and everyone likes the custom UI they made. Linux users always say they want on Linux the UI that is on Windows. They made on Linux an almost native looking UI... Custom UIs gives you power.

[Hirager]

Skype on Windows doesn't have anything related to native looking UI and everyone likes the custom UI they made. Linux users always say they want on Linux the UI that is on Windows. They made on Linux an almost native looking UI... Custom UIs gives you power.

Umm, let's clear it up - I am talking about "looks and themes". You seem to talk about widgets layout... right? Also, in this specific case the Linux Skype UI is so limited in comparison to the Windows one. What I am talking about is, for example, "I would like to see Desura apply the system theme, so it looks like all other programs" - I have no opinion on the internal layout of UI controls and layouts.

[Alliancemd]

Umm, let's clear it up - I am talking about "looks and themes". You seem to talk about widgets layout... right? Also, in this specific case the Linux Skype UI is so limited in comparison to the Windows one. What I am talking about is, for example, "I would like to see Desura apply the system theme, so it looks like all other programs" - I have no opinion on the internal layout of UI controls and layouts.

After I wrote the comment I've read yours one more time and I understood what you meant...
Do you think of something like Winamp skins or just color variations in a theme?

[nightmarex]

3. Standardization.

Believe me, this is an utter pain. Was making a PHP test page to get some OS info. Windows, just use WMI object. FreeBSD? easy, their release numbering is so clear, that standard php_uname instructions work without an issue. Linux???? well, how do I begin... AFAIK there is no /proc entry for OS/Distribution information, /etc/lsb-release is not available by default install in a LOT of Linux distributions (yes Debian, you are one), os-release is even a newer one thus is missing in even more distributions, $insertname-release is also not available in all of them and the name changes according to the distribution (duhh how can I find it if I'm looking for the distribution name in the first place... brilliant idea). And debian_version which guess what, is specific to Debian derivatives. What's left... getting the uname -a output, filtering by hand, and have some luck.

The main reason (BS...excuse) Blizzard gave every time that a Linux client was developed, but never released is that is difficult to support the many variants of distributions out there. Hey, if is so difficult to even check which distribution is used, hey, then checking for needed libs and binaries will be equally painful.

You're right about the reason being BS. The community will get anything running just give us the dependencies you need and release the stupid game (libs,supported drivers,...etc)!

I also saw the driver issue brought up- I use Catalyst for wine games. No issues thank you.

Sorry, back to the subject at hand....

OS drivers are amazing to say the least. Sometimes they do amazing and other times fall flat... Never would hurt to focus on something for them. For instance a simple gui tweaktool for the xf86-video-ati driver.

[RealNC]

That's the response to everything...
I said that a guy chose to make a protocol for video/audio calling and the response was something like this "Another video/audio protocol sounds quite useless to me. No one needs that. Instead, as suggested before, a CLIENT for the voice libs, xmpp libs SIP libs would be much more needed.".
I said that I could make a Client for voice libs, for example based on XMPP and here it is your response.

These are just personal opinions. Of course you should work on something you personally like and/or consider useful yourself :-)

My original suggestion about an audio framework is based on my frustration with current solutions that always seem to be lacking something (one project lacks MP3, another lacks MIDI, another one is not portable enough, etc.)

I took matters into my own hands in regards to SDL_mixer. It lacks the ability to play several audio streams simultaneously. Someone came up with a very basic prototype implementation of stream mixing, and I took that further and implemented full support for this (https://bitbucket.org/realnc/sdl_mixer). But there was never a reply from upstream about a possible integration of this work. So I'm quite frustrated and was hoping someone would come up with an audio/media API that "just works" :-P

[Hirager]

After I wrote the comment I've read yours one more time and I understood what you meant...
Do you think of something like Winamp skins or just color variations in a theme?

I think of neither. QT and GTK themes is the feature I am talking about. The first thing a user new to Linux notices.

[Alliancemd]

The world is working against me: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/06/s...g-bumps-to-4-0