Problems With Linux

[Lewis]

Major Linux Problems
or Why Linux is not (yet) Ready for the Desktop,
2012 edition

This is in 4 post below


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Preface:
In this document we only discuss main Linux problems and deficiencies while everyone should keep in mind that there are areas where Linux has excelled other OSes (excellent package management, usually excellent stability, no widely circulating viruses/malware, complete system reinstallation is not required, free as a beer).
This is not a Windows vs. Linux comparison however sometimes I make comparisons to Windows or MacOS as the point of reference (after all their market penetration is in an order of magnitude higher).
Probably you've heard many times that Android thus Linux is conquering the entire world by occupying the most of smart phones (which are indeed little specialized computers but not desktops). However there's one important thing to remember - Android is not Linux. Android contains the only Linux component - the kernel. So this document is not about Android, it's about Linux distros and Open Source Software included by these distros.
Feel free to express your discord with anything you don't agree with in the comments section.
Attention:
Greenish items are either partially resolved, or not crucial, or they have workarounds.
This list desperately needs to be reorganized because some of the problems mentioned here are crucial and some are not. There's a great chance that you as a user won't ever encounter any of them (if you have the right hardware, never mess with your system and use the software from your distro exclusively).


Desktop Linux problems and major shortcomings:

(For those who hate reading long texts, there's a TL;DR version below). So Linux sucks because ...

• Hardware support:
  1. Video accelerators/acceleration (also see the X system section).
     • ! NVIDIA Optimus technology and ATI dynamic GPU switching are not officially supported on Linux, and they aren't even remotely usable with the implemented hacks to support them. At most you can switch GPUs using BIOS settings or change an active GPU on boot before running the graphical subsystem. Optimus issue is now semi-solved by Linux hackers (but still it's not supported out of the box by any Linux distro).
     • ! NVIDIA and AMD graphics proprietary drivers don't work reliably for many people (crashes, unsupported new kernel and X server, slow downs, extreme temperatures, a very loud fan, etc.).
     • ! No high quality open source NVIDIA and AMD drivers: 0, 1, 2, 3 (NVIDIA drivers are reverse engineered and provide only incomplete and slow 3D support, open source AMD drivers have quite poor 3D performance, newer AMD GPUs are often unsupported, like the current HD6XXX GPUs).
     • Proprietary NVIDIA/AMD graphics drivers don't support KMS/VirtualFB and lag in features implementation (proper and full Randr support, full 2D acceleration, support for new X.org and kernel releases, etc.)
     • The complete OpenGL stack cannot be legally implemented in/imported into Linux because many OpenGL features (like S3TC texture compression and floating point textures) are patented.
     • No unified API for H.264 AVC/Microsoft VC acceleration. VDPAU is only supported on NVIDIA GPUs. Intel's VAAPI is still immature and it's not yet merged and accepted (by mplayer/ffmpeg/xine/etc.) AMD doesn't yet have a working implementation.
     • A lot of users complain about video tearing (for desktop effects and while watching videos/youtube) - personally, I've never had this problem with NVIDIA blobs, maybe I'm lucky.
  2. Audio subsystem:
     • No reliable sound system, no reliable unified software audio mixing (implemented in all modern OSes except Linux), many old or/and proprietary applications still open audio output exclusively causing major user problems and headache.
     • Too many layers of abstraction lead to the situation when the user cannot determine why his audio doesn't work (ALSA kernel drivers -> ALSA library ( -> dmix ) -> PulseAudio server -> Application).
     • (Applies only to certain sound cards, e.g. Creative Audigy series) Insanely difficult to set up volume levels, audio recording and in some situations even audio output. Highly confusing, not self-explanatory audio channels names/settings.
     • (Almost resolved in 2012) By default many distros do not set volume levels properly (no audio output/no sound recording). Linux primary audio subsystem ALSA also "forgets" to set sane defaults upon initializing audio drivers.
     • (Linux devs don't care about backwards compatibility - OSS is mostly unsupported nowadays, OSSv4 is no longer being developed. ALSA FTW - like it or not) Changing the default sound card for all applications (i.e. for old applications using OSS or ALSA directly) if you have more than one of them is a major PITA.
  3. Printers, scanners and other more or less peripheral devices:
     • ! There are still many printers which are not supported at all or only barely supported (amongst them are Lexmark and Canon).
     • Many printers features are only implemented in Windows drivers.
     • ! Some models of scanners and (web-)cameras are still inadequately supported (again many features from Windows drivers are missing) or not supported at all.
     • Incomplete or unstable drivers for some hardware. Problems setting up some hardware (like sound cards or TV tuners/Web Cameras/Wi-Fi cards).
  4. Laptops/notebooks special buttons and features often don't work (e.g. Fn + F1-F12 combination or special power saving modes).
  5. ! An insane number of regressions in the Linux kernel, when with every new kernel release some hardware can stop working inexplicably. I have personally reported two serious audio playback regressions, which have been consequently resolved, however most users don't know how to file bugs, how to bisect regressions, how to identify faulty components.
  6. ! Incomplete or missing support for many power saving features modern laptops employ (like e.g. PCIe ASPM, proper video decoding acceleration, deep power saving states, etc.) thus under Linux you won't get the same battery life as under Windows or MacOS and you laptop will run a lot hotter. Jupiter.
• Software support:
  1. X system:
     • X.org is largely outdated, unsuitable and even insecure for modern PCs and applications.
     • No high level, stable and standardized API for developing GUI applications (like core Win32 API - most Windows 95 applications still run fine in Windows 8 - that's 17 years of binary compatibility). Both GTK and Qt (incompatible GTK versions 1, 2, 3 and incompatible Qt versions 2, 3, 4, 5 just for the last decade) don't strive to be backwards compatible.
     • ! No true safe-mode for X.org server. Misconfiguration and broken drivers can leave you with a non-functional system, where sometimes you cannot access text virtual consoles to rectify the situation.
     • ! Keyboard shortcuts handling for people using local keyboard layouts is broken (this bug is now 8 years old).
     • ! X.org doesn't automatically switch between desktop resolutions if you have a full screen application with a custom resolution running. But since Linux is not a gaming platform and no one is interested in Linux as a gaming platform this problem importance is debatable. Valve is going to release Steam for Linux and they are now porting their games for Linux - but that's a drop in the bucket.
     • ! Scrolling in various applications causes artifacts.
     • ! X.org allows applications to exclusively grab keyboard and mouse input. If such applications misbehave you are left with a system you cannot manage, you cannot even switch to text terminals.
     • Under some circumstances GUI becomes slow and unresponsive (video drivers performance, video drivers breakage (thus using software accelerated VESA drivers), notorious bug 12309 - it's ostensibly fixed but some people still experience it)
     • ! Adobe Flash player has numerous problems under Linux (badly supported/unsupported video acceleration, video tearing, crashes, frames dropping at 100% CPU usage even on high end systems). In 2012 Adobe announced that Adobe Flash player wouldn't be supported any longer for any browsers other than Google Chrome.
     • ! X.org server currently has no means of permanently storing and restoring settings changed by the user (xrender settings, Xv settings, etc). NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers both employ custom utilities for this purpose.
     • There's no way to replace/upgrade/downgrade X.org graphics drivers on the fly (simply put - to restart X server retaining a user session and running applications).
  2. Font rendering (which is implemented via high level GUI libraries) issues:
     • Quite often default fonts look ugly, due to missing good (catered to the LCD screen - subpixel RGB full hinting) default fontconfig settings.
     • Fonts antialiasing is very difficult to implement properly when not using GTK/Qt libraries (Opera had been struggling with fonts antialiasing for a year before they made it work correctly, Google Chrome has had fonts rendering broken for the last eight (!) months already and the issue is still not resolved).
     • (Getting better but we're not yet there) By default most distros come without good or even Windows compatible fonts.
     • Fonts antialiasing settings cannot be applied on-the-fly under many DE.
     • By default most distros disable good fonts antialiasing due to patents - more or less resolved in 2012 (however even in 2012 there are still distros which forget/refuse to enable SPR in freetype2).

 

[Lewis]

• 1. The Linux kernel:
     • ! The kernel cannot recover from video, sound and network drivers crashes (I'm very sorry for drawing a comparison with Windows Vista/7/8 where this feature is implemented and works beautifully in a lot of cases).
     • KMS exclusively grabs video output and disallows VESA graphics modes (thus it's impossible to switch different versions of graphics drivers on the fly).
     • KMS video drivers cannot be unloaded or reloaded.
     • Traditional Linux/Unix (ext4/reiser/xfs/jfs/btrfs/etc.) filesystems are unsuable for mass media storage.
     • File and network sockets cannot be forcibly closed - it's indeed unsafe to remove USB sticks without unmounting them first as it leads to stale mount points, and in certain cases to oopses and crashes.
  2. Problems stemming from the vast number of Linux distributions:
     • ! No unified configuration system for computer settings, devices and system services. E.g. distro A sets up networking using these utilities, outputting certain settings residing in certain file system locations, distro B sets up everything differently. This drives most users mad.
     • ! No unified installer/package manager/universal package format across all distros. Consider RPM (which has several incompatible versions, yeah), deb, portage, tar.gz, sources, etc. It adds to cost of software development.
     • ! Distros' repositories do not contain all available open source software (libraries conflicts don't even allow that luxury). The user should never be bothered with using ./configure && make && make install (besides it's insecure and can break things in a major way). It should be possible to install any software by downloading a package and double clicking it (yes, like in Windows, but probably prompting for a user/administrator password).
     • ! Applications development is a major PITA. Different distros can use a) different libraries versions b) different compiler flags c) different compilers. This leads to a number of problems raised to the third power. Packaging all dependent libraries is not a solution, because in this case your application may depend on older versions of libraries which contain serious remotely exploitable vulnerabilities.
     • ! Two most popular open source desktops, KDE and Gnome, can configure only few settings by themselves thus each distro creates its own bicycle (applications/utilities) for configuring a boot loader/firewall/network/users and groups/services/etc.
     • Linux is a hell for ISP/ISV support personnel. Within the organization you can force a single distro on anyone, but it cannot be accomplished when your clients have the freedom to choose.
  3. ! It should be possible to configure almost everything via GUI which is still not a case for too many situations and operations.
  4. ! No polish and universally followed conventions. Different applications may have totally different shortcuts for the same actions, UI elements may be placed and look differently, etc. E.g. KDE's start menu can become a bloody mess.
• Problems stemming from low linux popularity and open source nature:
  1. ! Few software titles, inability to run familiar Windows software (some applications which don't work in Wine have zero Linux equivalents).
  2. ! No equivalent of some hardcore Windows software like ArchiCAD/3ds Max/Adobe Premier/Adobe Photoshop/Corel Draw/DVD authoring applications/etc. Home and enterprise users just won't bother installing Linux until they can get their work done.
  3. ! Very few games, and no AAA games for the past five years. Cedega (now dead) and Wine offer very incomplete support (besides open source AMD and NVIDIA GPU drivers don't offer enough performance and compatibility, and stuck on OpenGL 3.0 - 2012, trailing the specification for 5,5 years already).
  4. Questionable patents and legality status. USA Linux users cannot play many popular audio and video formats until they purchase appropriate codecs.
  5. General Linux problems:
     1. !! There's no guarantee whatsoever that your system will (re)boot successfully after GRUB (bootloader) or kernel updates - sometimes even minor kernel updates break the boot process. For instance Microsoft and Apple regularly update ntoskrnl.exe and mach_kernel respectively for security fixes, but it's unheard of that these updates ever compromised the boot process. GRUB updates have broken the boot process on PCs around me almost ten times. (Also see compatibility issues below).
     2. ! Fixed applications versions during a distro life-cycle. Say, you use DistroX v10.10 which comes with certain software. Before DistroX 11.10 gets released some applications get updated, get new exciting features but you cannot officially install, nor use them.
     3. No native or/and simple solutions for really simple file sharing in the local network.
     4. Glibc by design "leaks" memory. Firefox for Linux now uses its own memory allocator. KDE Konsole application uses its own memory allocation routines.
     5. ! Just (Gnome) not enough (KDE) manpower (X.org) - three major Open Source projects are seriously understaffed.
     6. ! Linux/open source developers are usually not interested in fixing bugs if they cannot easily reproduce them. This problem plagues virtually all Open Source projects.
     7. ! A galore of software bugs across all applications. Just look into KDE or Gnome bugzilla's - some bugs are now ten years old with over several dozens of duplicates and no one is working on them. KDE/Gnome/etc developers are busy adding new features and breaking old APIs, fixing bugs is of course a tedious and difficult chore.
     8. ! Steep learning curve (even in 2012 sometimes you need to run CLI and complete some non trivial tasks).
     9. ! Poor or almost missing regression testing in Linux kernel (and, alas, in other Open Source software too) leading to a situation when new kernels may become totally unusable for some hardware configurations (software suspend doesn't work, crashes, unable to boot, networking problems, video tearing, etc.)
     10. ! Network management in Linux is a bloody mess. Consider yourself lucky if NetworkManager works reliably for you. In too many cases NM won't see your existing eth0 connection, nor it'll be able to detect it, even this connection has never been configured before. NM cannot change your NIC hardware parameters, even the most basic ones like MAC address - MAC address can be changed now, in 2012. You cannot establish PPPoE connections over WiFi. (To be resolved in 2012 in most recent NM releases) In Windows and MacOS you can have IP address/mask/default gateway assigned using DHCP and a custom DNS server(s) - NM does not support this configuration.
     11. Poor interoperability between the kernel and user space applications. E.g. many kernel features get a decent userspace support years after introduction.
     12. ! Linux security/permissions management is a bloody mess: PAM, SeLinux, Udev, HAL (replaced with udisk/upower/libudev), PolicyKit, ConsoleKit and usual Unix permission (/etc/passwd, /etc/group) all have their separate incompatible permissions management systems spread all over the file system. Quite often people cannot use their digital devices unless they switch to a super user.
     13. No application level firewall (to clarify this point - there's no way to block or allow certain applications to access the Internet, e.g. /usr/bin/firefox) - SeLinux doesn't solve this problem because SeLinux policies by default don't apply to normal user applications and SeLinux is not a firewall solution - it can control networking but you cannot tune firewall policies with it.
     14. No (easy to use) application level sandbox (like e.g. SandBoxie) - Fedora is working hard on it.
     15. Observed general slowness: just compare load times between e.g. OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. If you don't like this example, try running OpenOffice in Windows and in Linux. In the latter case it will be much slower.
     16. ! CLI (command line interface) errors for user applications. All GUI applications should have a visible errors representation.
     17. ! Very poor documentation and absence of good manuals/help system.
     18. Questionable services for Desktop installations (Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu).
     19. ! A very bad backwards and forward compatibility.
         • ! Due to unstable and constantly changing kernel APIs/ABIs Linux is a hell for companies which cannot push their drivers upstream into the kernel for various reasons like their closedness (NVIDIA, ATI, Broadcom, etc.), or inability to control development or co-develop (VirtualBox/Oracle, VMWare/Workstation, etc.), or licensing issues (4Front Technologies/OSS).
         • Old applications rarely work in new Linux distros (glibc incompatibilities (double-free errors, memory corruption, etc.), missing libraries, wrong/new libraries versions). Abandoned Linux GUI software generally doesn't work in newer Linux distros. Most well written GUI applications for Windows 95 will work in Windows 7 (15 years of compatibility on binary level).
         • New applications linked only against lib C will refuse to work in old distros. (Even though they are 100% source compatible with old distros).
         • New libraries versions bugs, regressions and incompatibilities.
         • Distro upgrade can render your system unusable (kernel might not boot, some features may stop working).
         • There's a myth that backwards compatibility is a non-issue in Linux because all the software has sources. However a lot of software just cannot be compiled on newer Linux distros due to 1) outdated no longer available libraries and dependencies 2) every GCC release becoming much stricter about C/C++ syntax 3) Users just won't bother compiling old software because they don't know how to 'compile', nor they should know how to do that.
         • DE developers (KDE/Gnome) routinely cardinally change UI elements, configuration, behaviour, etc.
         • Open Source developers usually don't care about applications behaviour beyond their own usage scenarios. I.e. coreutils developers for no good reasons have broken head/tails functionality which is used by the Loki installer.
     20. Random ramblings: 1) KDE: troubleshooting kded4 Bugs. 2) A big discussion on Slashdot as to why people still prefer Windows over Linux. 3) Another big discussion on Slashdot as to why Linux still lacks. 4) Any KDE plasmoid can freeze the entire KDE desktop. 5) Why Desktop Linux Hasn't Taken Off - Slashdot. 6) Torvalds Slams NVIDIA's Linux Support - Slashdot. 7) Are Open-Source Desktops Losing Competitiveness? - Slashdot (A general consensus - No). 8) Broadcom WiFi adapters under linux is a PITA. 9) A Gnome developer laments the state of Gnome 3 development.

 

[Lewis]

• 1. 1. (Being slowly resolved: google for gold linker) Slow (libraries) linker. Braindead slow linker. Intolerably slow linker. (A binutils linker has nothing has nothing to do with loading of applications). Still, a Windows version of OpenOffice when being run from Wine starts up in less time than its native Linux version. Microsoft Office 2003 starts from Wine in a matter of few seconds even on 1GHz CPUs with a slow HDD. Still gold'en linker is not universally used.
     2. (Being resolved: systemd) No parallel boot of system services. No delayed loading of system services.
     3. (Being resolved: systemd) Huge shutdown time.
  2. Software development under Linux
     1. ! Stable API nonsense: you cannot develop kernel drivers out of the kernel tree, because they will soon become incompatible with mainline. That's the sole reason why RHEL and other LTS distros are so popular in enterprise.
     2. Games development: no complete multimedia framework. Flaky OpenGL support. In 2012 open source GPU drivers support only OpenGL 3.0 (DirectX 11 level graphics require features implemented in OpenGL 4.0, DX10 - OpenGL 3.2).
     3. A lot of points mentioned above apply to this category, they won't be reiterated.
  3. Enterprise level Linux problems:
     1. Most distros don't allow you to easily set up a server with e.g. such a configuration: Samba, SMTP/POP3, Apache HTTP Auth and FTP where all users are virtual. LDAP is a PITA. Authentication against MySQL/any other DB is also a PITA.
     2. ! No software (group) policies.
     3. ! No standard way of software deployment (pushing software via SSH is indeed an option, but it's in no way comfortable, easy to use, and obvious).
     4. Unix permissions systems is absolutely outdated and unsuitable for the modern world. Posix ACL system is quite often disabled by default and not transparent. Also ACL is very tough to configure without GUI but there are no DE level implementations/no standard console utilities for graphical/pseudo-graphical ACL editing.
     5. ! No CIFS/AD level replacement/equivalent (SAMBA doesn't count for many reasons): 1) Centralized and easily manageable user directory. 2) Simple file sharing. 3) Simple (LAN) computers discovery and browsing.
  
  The TLDR version of this text:
• No stability, bugs, regressions, regressions & regressions: There's an incredible amount of regressions (both in the kernel and in user space applications) when things which used to work break inexplicably, some of regressions can even lead to data loss. Basically there is no quality control (QA/QC) and regression testing in most Open Source projects. Serious bugs which impede normal workflow can take years to be resolved. A lot of crucial hardware (e.g. GPUs, WiFi cards) isn't properly supported.
• Hardware issues: Under Linux many devices and devices features are still poorly supported or not supported at all. Some hardware (e.g. Broadcom WiFi adapters) cannot be used unless you already have a working Internet connection. New hardware often becomes supported months after indroduction. Specialized software to manage devices like printers, scanners, cameras, webcams, audio players, smartphones, etc. almost always just doesn't exist - so you won't be able to fully control your new iPad and update firmware on your Galaxy SIII. Linux graphics support is a big bloody mess because kernel/X.org APIs/ABIs constantly change and NVIDIA/ATI/Broadcom/etc. don't want to allocate extra resources and waste their money just to keep up with an insane rate of changes in the Open Source software.
• The lack of standartization, unwarranted & excessive variety: Too many Linux distros with incompatible and dissimilar configurations, packaging systems and incompatible libraries. Different distros employ totally different different desktop environments, different graphical and console applications for configuring your computer settings. E.g. Debian based distros oblige you to use the strictly text based `dpkg-reconfigure` utility for certain system related maintenance tasks.
• A lot of rapid changes: Most Linux distros have very short upgrade/release cycles (as short as six months in some cases, or e.g. Arch which is a rolling distro, or Fedora which gets updated every six months), thus you are constantly bombarded with changes you don't expect or don't want. LTS (long term support) distros are in most cases unsuitable for the desktop users due to the policy of preserving applications versions (and usually there's no officially approved way to install bleeding edge applications - please, don't remind me of PPAs and backports - these hacks are not officially supported, nor guaranteed to work) Another show-stopping problem for LTS distros is that LTS kernels often do not support new hardware - i.e. a new Intel Atom IC is only supported well by Linux kernel 3.5 - no LTS distro has this kernel.
• Unstable APIs/ABIs & the lack of real compatibility: It's very difficult to use old open and closed source software in new distros (in many cases it becomes impossible due to changes in core Linux components like kernel or glibc). Almost non-existent backwards compatibility makes it incredibly difficult and costly to create closed source applications for Linux distros. Open Source software which doesn't have active developers or maintainers gets simply dropped if its dependencies cannot be satisfied because older libraries have become obsolete and they are no longer available. For this reason for instance a lot of KDE3/Qt3 applications are not available in modern Linux distros even though alternatives do not exist. Developing drivers out of the main Linux kernel tree is an excruciating and expensive chore.

 

[Lewis]

• Software issues: Very few games and no AAA games at all (Humble Indie Bundles and Oil Rush - two independent, very rare occurrences (vs thousands of games released for Windows every year) don't really count), no familiar Windows software, no Microsoft Office (LibreOffice still has major troubles opening correctly Microsoft Office produced documents), no native CIFS (simple to use, password protected and encrypted network file sharing) equivalent, no Active Directory or its equivalent.
• Money, enthusiasm and motivation: I predicted years ago that FOSS developers would start drifting away from the platform as FOSS is no longer a playground, it requires substantial efforts and time, i.e. the fun is over, developers want real money to get the really hard work done. FOSS development, which lacks financial backing, shows its fatigue and disillusionment. The FOSS platform after all requires financially motivated developers as underfunded projects start to wane and critical bugs stay open for years. One could say "Good riddance", but the problem is that oftentimes those dying projects have no alternatives or similarly featured successors.
• No polish, no consistency and no HIG adherence (even KDE developers admit it).

A commentary from the author.
A lot of people who are new to Linux or those who use a very tiny subset of applications are quick to disregard the entire list saying things like, "Audio in Linux works just fine me." or "I've never had any troubles with video in Linux." Guess what there are thousands of users who have immense problems because they have a different set of hardware or software. Do yourself a favour - come and visit Ubuntu or Linux.com forums and count the number of threads which contain "I have erased PulseAudio and only now audio works for me" or "I have finally discovered I can use nouveau instead of NVIDIA binary drivers (or vice versa) and my problems are gone."
There's another important thing critics fail to understand. If something doesn't work in Linux, people will not care whose fault it is, they will automatically and rightly assume it's Linux'es fault. For the average Joe Linux is just another operating system, he or she doesn't care if a particular company ABC chose not to support Linux or not to release fully functional drivers for Linux - their hard earned hardware just doesn't work, i.e. Linux doesn't work. People won't care if Skype crashes every five minutes under some circumstances - even though in reality Skype is an awful piece of software which has tonnes of glitches and sometimes crashes even under Windows and MacOS.
I want to answer a common misconception that support for older hardware in Linux is a lot better than in Windows. It's partly true but it's also false. For instance neither nouveau nor proprietary NVIDIA drivers have good support for older NVIDIA GPUs. Nouveau's OpenGL acceleration speed is lacking, NVIDIA's blob doesn't support many crucial features found in Xrandr or features required for proper acceleration of modern Linux GUIs (like Gnome 3 or KDE4). In case your old hardware is magically still supported, Linux drivers almost always offer only a small subset of features found in Windows drivers, so saying that Linux hardware support is better, just because you don't have to spend 20 minutes installing drivers, is unfair at best.
Some comments just astonish me: "This was terrible. I mean, it's full of half-truths and opinions. NVIDIA Optimus (Then don't use it, go with Intel or something else)." No ****, sir! I've bought my laptop to enjoy games in Wine/dualboot and you say to me I shouldn't have bought in the first place? I kindly suggest you not to impose your opinion on other people who can actually get pleasure from playing high quality games. Saying that SSHFS is a replacement for Windows File Sharing is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in my entire life.
It's worth noting that the most vocal participants of the Open Source community are extremely bitchy and overly idealistic people peremptorily requiring everything to be open source and free or it has no right to exist at all in Linux. With an attitude like this, it's no surprise that a lot of companies completely disregard and shun the Linux desktop. Linus Torvalds once talked about this: There are "extremists" in the free software world, but that's one major reason why I don't call what I do "free software" any more. I don't want to be associated with the people for whom it's about exclusion and hatred.
Most importantly this list is not an opinion. Almost every listed point has links to appropriate articles, threads and discussions centered on it, proving that I haven't pulled it out of my < expletive >. And please always check your "facts".
If you get an impression that Linux sucks - you are largely wrong. If I had to create a list of Windows problems, it would be almost as long as this one. Intrinsic Windows problems are almost impossible to fix unless Microsoft starts from the scratch. Linux problems are indeed approachable.
On a positive side currently there are several project underway which are made to unify the Linux desktop and make it truly modern and unified. They are systemd, Wayland, file system unification first proposed and implemented by Fedora, and others. Valve Software is currently developing Steam (digital games distribution and management system) and the Source Engine for Linux so there's a chance that Linux users will finally get a few AAA titles.
I'm not really sorry for citing slashdot comments as a proof of what I'm writing here about, since I have one very strong justification for doing that - ./ crowd is very large, it mostly consists of smart people, IT specialists, scientists, etc. - and if a comment over there gets promoted to +5 insightful it certainly means that many people share the same opinion or have the same experience.
If anyone's interested I can publish a list of measures required to make Linux edible, usable, pleasant and attractive for both users and developers but savvy readers have probably deduced everything on their own .

P.S. Sometimes I have reasons to say that indeed Linux sucks and I do hate it. For this week (the 32nd week of 2012) alone Alan Cox has closed two feature requests providing in the latter case no explanation, no comments, nothing, nil, nada. Lennart Poettering doesn't give a flying **** about how I want to use my system, and I don't even want to mention that those two things used to work previously. "I'm a developer - I know better how users want to use their software and systems", says an average Linux developer. The end result is that most innovations draw universal anger and loathing - Gnome 3, Unity, KDE 4.0 are the perfect examples of this tendency of screwing Linux users.


© 2009-2012 Artem S. Tashkinov. Last revised August 22, 2012. The most current version can be found here.

• Continued in post below

 

[Mike]

Tim, I think Lewis just spent 4 posts calling your baby ugly.

 

[tim-from-pa]

Well, Mike, at least I don't have to format and reload all my data every other week, and not worry about slowing the computer down with other such security issues and software. All I know is when my in-laws had MS OS's they knew I worked on computers and I was constantly being bugged and harassed to come fix their systems. The one finally got a Mac and I haven't heard about a computer problem in years...... but that being said, I actually agree with some of the issues listed as no computer OS is without it's bugs or needed improvement, and I never said that Linux was without it's bugs. It's a matter of what one's willing to put up with.

Take this for instance:

Video accelerators/acceleration (also see the X system section).! NVIDIA Optimus technology and ATI dynamic GPU switching are not officially supported on Linux, and they aren't even remotely usable with the implemented hacks to support them. At most you can switch GPUs using BIOS settings or change an active GPU on boot before running the graphical subsystem. Optimus issue is now semi-solved by Linux hackers (but still it's not supported out of the box by any Linux distro

I have one of those 10-year-old video cards and yeah, Adobe flash does not work on my clunker Linux desktop. It just stopped working one day, and I understand the issue was Adobe was not willing to work with Linux over the issue. I understand there's a flash issue with the portable devices, e.g. smart phones and whatnot, so it's not just the OS per se. Plus the browser scrolls slowly especially if it has a lot of bells and whistle type video ads all over the place. But it works on youtube with Linux version of flash, and also if videos are HTML5 it works fine (the wave of the future anyway is to get away from Adobe Flash) So, I consider this problem severe enough to consider building a new desktop and install Linux on that. But what the hey? The computer's 10 years old and tell me what other modern OS can even work on it? All considering, I think this is phenomenal. In the case of MS, the best my clunker can support is XP Pro which is not going to be supported until after next year, so the same thing is going to happen anyway if I would have decided to stay with MS.

And I don't want to make this computer sound useless. It can burn DVD's OK without a hitch, I can make and upload web pages with no problem. I can play chess games. I can make math spread sheets and doc files, and even create .pdf files which I couldn't do on my old Microsoft. And it also communicates with my Nook reader (file management) that the XP could not do. So what I lack here I gained in other things, and with a newer computer it will even get better.

 

[WIP]

Ok, Tim, you've taken this with great humility and I'm proud of you so I'll say it for you.

Linux? Did someone say "Linux" and "problems" in the same paragraph? Who said that? :biglol

Just joshin' ya.

 

[tim-from-pa]

Ok, Tim, you've taken this with great humility and I'm proud of you so I'll say it for you.

Linux? Did someone say "Linux" and "problems" in the same paragraph? Who said that? :biglol

Just joshin' ya.

Right, and I at least don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for these problems. That's nice of Linux! But that's the thing. When you don't pay for something, you don't get as much, either. I guess I'll have to settle for just one or two problems now and then. :p Oh well, I guess we get what we pay for!

 

[rrowell]

Right, and I at least don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for these problems. That's nice of Linux! But that's the thing. When you don't pay for something, you don't get as much, either. I guess I'll have to settle for just one or two problems now and then. :p Oh well, I guess we get what we pay for!

Actually Tim, Linux/Unix has been most dominate in corporate use, it is faster with much less overhead...

There are still a lot of web hosts using Linux for that reason alone... the only problem with Unix is there are so many variations and not all compatible, Linux being the most popular though... and there not all free (Red Hat for example)

But the general public likes bells and whistles...

 

[tim-from-pa]

Actually Tim, Linux/Unix has been most dominate in corporate use, it is faster with much less overhead...

There are still a lot of web hosts using Linux for that reason alone... the only problem with Unix is there are so many variations and not all compatible, Linux being the most popular though... and there not all free (Red Hat for example)

But the general public likes bells and whistles...

Thank you for the encouragement, but you are fairly new here yet and haven't read all my posts. I am well aware of what you said. You see, I was employed almost 25 years right in the heart of Unix country in Allentown Pa Western Electric/AT&T/Lucent Technologies, and finally Agere were next to us was Bell Labs. All our equipment in the testing department used Linux. And the engineers there actually knew how to work it, too. Only the desktops had Microsoft (and got all the viruses, too! )

When people say, "Linux can't do this or that..." I always reply "well then we have to design a program that will do that." It's not that Linux is not capable.... I've seen what it can do in the testing department. Those were no simple tasks to test chips with hundreds of ball contacts (aka BGA ball grid array), or again, thin probes to contact the pads on wafers with chips. These were complex computer and communication circuits and had to be tested using many patterns of conditions. (And remember, this was back when I was finally laid off around 2004 almost a decade ago).

Indeed, Linux has comparable programs to Microsoft and Mac, and since it's for free (with a few exceptions), I don't know what people are complaining about. Like you said, they want "bells and whistles", and then pay dearly for it, only to get destroyed by a virus a week later. Boggles my mind why anyone would want to do that.

 

[rrowell]

Thank you for the encouragement, but you are fairly new here yet and haven't read all my posts. I am well aware of what you said. You see, I was employed almost 25 years right in the heart of Unix country in Allentown Pa Western Electric/AT&T/Lucent Technologies, and finally Agere were next to us was Bell Labs. All our equipment in the testing department used Linux. And the engineers there actually knew how to work it, too. Only the desktops had Microsoft (and got all the viruses, too! )

When people say, "Linux can't do this or that..." I always reply "well then we have to design a program that will do that." It's not that Linux is not capable.... I've seen what it can do in the testing department. Those were no simple tasks to test chips with hundreds of ball contacts (aka BGA ball grid array), or again, thin probes to contact the pads on wafers with chips. These were complex computer and communication circuits and had to be tested using many patterns of conditions. (And remember, this was back when I was finally laid off around 2004 almost a decade ago).

Indeed, Linux has comparable programs to Microsoft and Mac, and since it's for free (with a few exceptions), I don't know what people are complaining about. Like you said, they want "bells and whistles", and then pay dearly for it, only to get destroyed by a virus a week later. Boggles my mind why anyone would want to do that.

The nice thing about Unix was it comes/came with source code and a "C" compiler to boot... so if you needed to make it do something you could, so what was one of its compliments eventually became its detriment as there became so many flavors of Unix there became as you know comparability problems, it really wasn't until Red Had came out that it stabilized...

I loved the "C" programming language (before the Object Oriented was Bjarne (I mean born )) Dennis Richie developed it (right there next to you, Bell Labs)...

And for what its worth, I still miss DOS LoL...

 

[tim-from-pa]

And for what its worth, I still like DOS LoL...

Yeah, I do too. It shows our age.

I was very efficient with those commands in my day. Actually, despite the viruses, I liked windows 98SE and before, I really did--- not nearly as complex even if one did get a virus, it was more of a joke back then. You could even burn a complete OS Microsoft CD back then (not that you were supposed to, but we all did) But it all changed when XP came out. And it really changed for me when I had to go to XP (in 2006) because 98SE was not supported any longer. Forced me to get newer hardware and that attitudinal shift did not go over with with me well at all. Like a marriage that soured, that was my first time I started detesting Microsoft, and it was all downhill from there. In the meantime, I got a new girl, Knoppix live CD where I experimented and "cheated" on Microsoft. Loved her better and decided to marry her (to put it abstractly).

I guess I have some good memories, but that's all they are. Those days are long gone. Here's the new Linux girl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78xwTDrUR04

 

[rrowell]

Yeah, I do too. It shows our age.

I was very efficient with those commands in my day. Actually, despite the viruses, I liked windows 98SE and before, I really did--- not nearly as complex even if one did get a virus, it was more of a joke back then. You could even burn a complete OS Microsoft CD back then (not that you were supposed to, but we all did) But it all changed when XP came out. And it really changed for me when I had to go to XP (in 2006) because 98SE was not supported any longer. Forced me to get newer hardware and that attitudinal shift did not go over with with me well at all. Like a marriage that soured, that was my first time I started detesting Microsoft, and it was all downhill from there. In the meantime, I got a new girl, Knoppix live CD where I experimented and "cheated" on Microsoft. Loved her better and decided to marry her (to put it abstractly).

I guess I have some good memories, but that's all they are. Those days are long gone. Here's the new Linux girl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78xwTDrUR04

It wasn't until they came out with Win95 that I even used windows (still used MS DOS and it came on Floppies LoL), windows 3.x was such a memory hog you had to start most programs from the command line, I even had the whole motherboard filled (remember all those chips LoL)...

Windows 98 was I think still one of the best MS OS they made, fast and stable...

Yep, we are telling our age