What Are The Biggest Problems With Linux?

[kraftman]

This: Why Linux is not (yet) Ready for the Desktop (a.k.a. Linux problems), 2012 edition

There's one problem no amount of money can solve: for most Open Source developers Linux is a playground, a thing they don't care beyond their aspirations, thus we have constantly broken features and API breakage every odd moon cycle. With such an attitude there's no way Linux will ever attract a big number of serious ISVs. Of course, people will be quick to point that already available Open Source software is enough for everyone - but that's a serious myopia. No, it's not enough, very very far from that.

This is not true when comes to Ubuntu and RHEL. API breakage bullshit while you have 5 years support with Ubuntu LTS... Thankfully Valve proved you wrong.

[Alliancemd]

As for your clicking and Kcalc comparison, I blame QT for being a behemoth. calculator under Ubuntu (thus gtk based) runs fast.

I just launched KCalc under Kubuntu and it launches instantly... Btw, the GTK calculator is just awful. Press "." a few times... Now press "." in KCalc...
I don't like when people lie just because they hate on something(in this case KDE or/and Qt).

[kraftman]

The mentioned problems are getting fixed all the time the problem is that I see no end in sight. Besides, if something doesn't work in Linux, people won't f*cking care whose fault it is, "It works in Windows/MacOS/whatever - Linux sucks", and they are right.

When something doesn't work on OS X or Windows people say they sicks and they're right. If you have nothing smart to say just don't say stupid things. Usually third party members drivers were causing trouble, but it's much better now, but not perfect yet.

[kraftman]

The Linux ecosystem is far too shattered to build something that is able to compete with MacOS or Windows in terms of "general usability". Look at all those different desktop environments, window managers, package formats, audio and input subsystems, distributions with different look-and-feels, license and copyright implications and restrictions, unstable programming interfaces... I'm convinced that Linux would get far more support from end-users, software donators and hardware vendors if the whole thing wouldn't be so directionless, volatile and hostile.

(Of course, this diversity is also a kind of a strength. Most Linux users are well aware of those strenghts and know how to benfit from the freedom-of-choice. But these are the two sides of the same coin...)

I always wonder why some people make same mistakes all the time. Linux is just a kernel and if you want compare something to Windows or OS X you have to compare Linux distributions. Ubuntu is not fragmented, it has a single DE, package format etc. Vendors just should focus on Ubuntu and problems solved. It seems they're even going to do so - Valve, EA. Most of the comments here are just bunch of bull, because they don't understand such simple thing.

[kraftman]

Link for people who not aware about birdie trolling: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...C-Vendor/page2

I was sure I remember this troll from somewhere. Ubuntu just kills Windows and OS X in most aspects and few others are third party dependent.

[kraftman]

Linux constantly evolves? OMG. You even boast about that.

Windows evolves, but APIs and ABIs are rock solid. On Windows 8 I can run software written for ... Windows 3.1 which was released over 25 years ago. Try this feat with Linux software.

And that's Windows is damn vulnerable. It's not a mystery there are security holes from a DOS era! This makes your APIs and ABIs bunch of crap.

Worthless points? Great, go and convince a single company to port its applications from Windows to Linux. Whereas you are theorizing, I deal with big ISVs and I know what they want from Linux. But you are free not to agree with me, just forget about Linux having more than 3% on the desktop.

You're simply dumb. What's Linux missing are just games and some software. That's all. Games are coming and there's more and more software as well. Like I said before Valve proved you wrong.

[kraftman]

Yep, that's the case. But given today's storage sizes, it's not a problem at all.

In Windows 7 64 under winsxs:

Total DLLs: 6828
Unique DLLs: 3604

Don't forget to count dozens of vb runtimes and .Net versions. It makes it a bunch of bloated and security vulnerable mess.

[kraftman]

This is amazing. Thank you for this link, it'll save me a lot of time explaining to people why we don't waste time porting games to Linux.

I bet nobody would like to play your stupid console games.

There's that, plus the complete lack of real QA. The Microsoft Azure QA team alone is larger than the entire developer and tester pool of X.org, Mesa, GTK, GNOME, and the DRI/DRM bits of the kernel. You would crap yourself if you had any idea of the size of the team responsible for just DirectX.

That a real bullshit. I explained you many times there's real QA in Ubuntu, so stop lying. I also explained you when comes to manpower MS lost years ago.

FOSS, for all the talk about it being open to anyone and having "millions of eyeballs," simply does not have a very large developer pool, and has an even smaller "support staff" pool. Real professionals with actual skill/talent are doing their work for pay. The good ones are doing it for a lot of pay. They do not have free time after working 40-60 hours/week to hack on a hobbyist OS or software, and even if they did they probably want to spend their non-working hours doing something other than slaving away on more software. Take that fact along with the fact that the largest FOSS companies have teeny tiny profits compared to even the run of the mill proprietary software companies (Red Hat's recent $1b _gross revenue_ is about the same as the _net profit_ of some of the smaller well-known software companies), and you have the cause for the practically barren developer pool on the important FOSS projects, and the reason why the folks working on those projects keep complaining about being so seriously under-manned.

What a stupid troll you are. The most of the Linux and its ecosystem developers are being paid.

[kraftman]

The actual stats show that the only people leaving Windows are the people going to Macs. Of course, they also show that a lot of the hardcore Linux users of 1990's and early 2000's also moved to Macs. Linux was at 1% in 1999. It's at 1% now. Projecting historical evidence indicates that it'll still be at 1% in 2025.

Ignoring your bunch of bull it's enough to say OS X lives only, because of marketing. It's aiming at desktops since beginning and it's still very niche OS. MS succeeded, because there wasn't real competition in the first years and then they had monopoly. When good software will come to Linux then only idiots will use Windows. In 2025 there will be MS Linux.

I actually worked for a very large government installation for years, doing in-house software development and some light sysadmin work on the Linux server farm. This was back in my Linux fanboy days. It is actually one of the larger catalysts that caused me to turn from a "Linux is the future" proponent like yourself into a "Linux is a nice Web server OS, but thank God there's someone I can give money to in exchange for a less frustrating desktop experience" believer.

No, you turned to MS fanboy and you keep lying all the time when there's some article about Linux. Only idiots wants MS to rule, so you're an idiot. Linux is far more usable and better in many aspects, and thanks God it exists.

Government jobs will best illustrate for you just how great Windows is for idiots who can't tell their assholes from floppy drives and how awful Linux is for "idiots" who can't figure out how to read unified diff files generated by dpkg when foobar-1.7.2b changes config file compatibility with foobar-1.7.2a.

That's sad, because you just proved idiots prefer Windows (not noobs, but idiots).

[cyring]

ATI & nVidia GFX driver is to my pov a big issue.
Beside that I'm using ArchLinux as my day to day office work and it's a great source of knowledge.
Whereelse can you find such a precise documentation like Kernel/Doc.txt, Manuals, Code sources for free.
Remember during the ms-dos age, you may have to buy books to understand psp, mcb, int 21h ...