What's your Opinion on Linux?

[Cacodemon345]

Linux also has poor MIDI support as compared to other OSs like Windows and macOS. It could be a Windows and MacOS killer if it focused on GUI, usability from the start and had professional management. The main reason why I sick with Windows is that most of the apps are written for it and work with it. I moved out of Linux as it was suffering from MIDI support, as well as the lack of proper place for apps.

4 minutes ago, Jerry.C said:

 

Sure. But what baffles me is why they just don't drop in a thin wrapper around Direct3D that provides the needed functions. Even lowly third party developers manage to create something better. Using one of those, I can still run most older source ports without problem, either something like ZDoom which uses DirectDraw directly or older SDL-based stuff that also ultimately use DDraw as the rendering backend.

 

The only good thing is that DirectDraw only had a few years to thrive. Right after Windows 95's release it was unviable to produce Windows-only games, so most were still for DOS and can be run through DOSBox these days, but by XP's release hardware accelerated 3D was so common that almost nobody was using DDraw anymore. So the number of affected games is fortunately limited.

 

Microsofties are so much lazy that they even pulled support for their VMs that could be useful for running older OSs and games. Even DirectDraw could work on such a configuration that Virtual PC provided. And I can understand why DirectDraw is messed up in modern Windows. DirectDraw was only used for the 2D games of that time.

 

And I also have to share another matter about this. Apparently ancient Direct3D and OpenGL has problems on modern hardware as far as I have seen, like overly-fast FPS, broken transparency etc.

[Jerry.C]

28 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

And I also have to share another matter about this. Apparently ancient Direct3D and OpenGL has problems on modern hardware as far as I have seen, like overly-fast FPS, broken transparency etc.

 

That reminds me of old CGA games from early DOS days and shows bad programmers at play who timed their game to the clock rate of the CPU.

One engine that was notorious in its early days for bad 3D hardware support was Unreal which was originally developed on 3DFx's Glide API and the initial ports to Direct3D and OpenGL being rather shitty. One game badly suffering from these problems is Klingon Honor Guard which has become nearly unplayable by now because it never got properly updated.

 

32 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Linux also has poor MIDI support as compared to other OSs like Windows and macOS. It could be a Windows and MacOS killer if it focused on GUI, usability from the start and had professional management.

 

I fully agree with that. It really doesn't help that there is a well-designed kernel underneath if the surface keeps this unprofessional emanation. An OS is more than a collection of random libraries - it has to be a concerted effort to make all these things into a coherent whole, and I cannot see that anywhere. Hold that last thing: I occasionally see such an effort, but what these completely lack is the necessary marketing to get awareness, so these things inevitably die off quickly.

 

 

[chungy]

8 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

On Windows 10 I have to agree that it has become a visual joke with all those crappy looking "modern" apps being part of the system, but on 7 and 8 only those apps which go out of their way to reskin themselves it mostly looks consistent.

Sorry, but Windows 10 isn't where the issues appeared. Maybe arguably the last version where it was self-consistent was Windows 95, but that was shot right out with Windows 98 and their insistence on making half the shit run as MSIE applets. It never recovered; Windows 7 has all the signs of haphazard design including built-in apps that resemble multiple different eras of Windows UI design (95-era, 98/2000-era, XP-era, Vista-era...), as well as showing through the seams with multiple visual styles reflecting all of these phases -- they are not all updated to the Vista/7 style. I can see the point where Windows 8/10 have exacerbated the problem, but they by no means started it.

 

8 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

But every single time I open a Linux desktop [..] the first question that pops up is "Why do those fonts look so amateurish?"

Er. Is this from 15 years ago or something?

 

7 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Linux also has poor MIDI support as compared to other OSs like Windows and macOS.

I swear we've been over this before. Linux absolutely is not lacking in MIDI support and Windows (Vista and newer, granted) is by far the worst one with regards to it.

Edited May 5, 2018 by chungy

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

An "everything just works"* distro has existed for a while now and it's called Mint.  It's pretty much the continuation of what Ubuntu should have been before Ubuntu dove headfirst into the loony bin with their UI choices.  But Ubuntu still chugs on with the name recognition momentum it built up from the days when it was good, and a lot of times the other distros that get advanced by enthusiasts are the geekier ones like Debian or Arch which can't be recommended to the casual convert.

 

The whole "duct taped together from disparate parts" complaint is a thing, though.  It's less of a thing in day-to-day use than it used to, but try anything more customized and you can still hit problems with it.  And the choices offered make for a lot of fragmentation between different distros.  As for getting any software that's not on your official repo to work, that can be varying amounts of a pain depending on how far outside your distro's norm it is (I have plenty of unpleasant memories of trying to get SLADE to compile back before DRD Team started offering builds).  Theoretically, it's not hard to do a build from source, but there's always the chance of something that's just got to do things its own way and complicate everything.  The thing is, a lot of what originally made Linux appealing (open source, customizable) is really only accessible to more technical users, and there is that certain elitist contingent that wants to keep the whole thing being for technical users.

 

7 hours ago, Jerry.C said:

Need some specialty software? You are very likely to find something for Windows for free.

More like you're likely to find something for Windows for "free" that's larded with adware/spyware/other malware, and most of the actually clean options are, surprise, open source programs that often have a Linux version too.

 

* For typical use, anyway.  The "getting esoteric things to work is a pain" thing still holds true in some cases, but I'm not convinced that obscure things are that much easier on other OSes, really.

[Cacodemon345]

55 minutes ago, chungy said:

I swear we've been over this before. Linux absolutely is not lacking in MIDI support and Windows (Vista and newer, granted) is by far the worst one with regards to it.

Linux is lacking in MIDI support in the sense that you can't compose MIDIs properly. MacOS is only good when you are composing MIDIs into some high quality tracks, otherwise it sucks...

[beast]

In the beginning was the command line is an essay by Neal Stephenson that deftly addresses the metaphors of operating systems, hardware and users.

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

14 hours ago, beast said:

In the beginning was the command line is an essay by Neal Stephenson that deftly addresses the metaphors of operating systems, hardware and users.

Here's the Dilbert cartoon that that article alludes to.  It's both significantly less flattering than the author seems to remember it being, and perfectly illustrates how the author comes off too.  That whole "this is for smart people and you would use it too if you were smart" sense of superiority is exactly the sort of attitude that gives the *NIX/FLOSS movements a bad name.  And yes, the bottom line of "GUIs trade away a measure of power for the sake of convenience" is generally true, but also a "no shit Sherlock" point that didn't need a rambling article full of ill-conceived analogies, bizarre tangents, and a paragraph of feverish *NIX-geek wanking over Emacs/Lisp to make.  That's a tradeoff everything in computing, even your bash console, is going to make at some point on the balance, unless you fancy yourself some grand magus of true ultimate power who issues everything to the computer in hand-crafted machine code.

 

While I could rip further into various points and nitpicks about why I think this was a bad article even back in its day, a bigger issue is that, while a lot of it makes for a fascinating time capsule into the state of computing and OSes nearly 20 years ago, it's also not even that relevant to the current big issue when it comes to Linux conversion, which is no longer "does it have a UI that 'them stupid plebs' can understand" (or "Eloi" if we want to run with the pretentious and tortured literary allusion... should people start to worry that Linux users are going to sneak out of their tunnels and eat them in the night?)  If anyone wants a GUI-based, sets-itself-up-as-easily-as-Windows distro for Linux, that stuff's been around for years, maybe it's not "perfect" but it's not like any of the other options are either.  The real modern issue with Linux adoption is, as evidenced in this very thread, "does it run my software that I like"?  That whole BeOS pipe dream of having an OS that blows off all the decades of cruft sure sounds nice, but anything of the sort had better have really good emulation for prior software if it wants to be looked at twice.  Sure, back in the 80s it might've been expected that a new computer you got wouldn't run the software of the old model, full stop, but it's a different world out there nowadays and backwards compatibility is taken for granted enough that some of the people in this thread seem like they don't realize how grateful they should be for what we do have in that regard.

 

Plus, I have to gripe that Windows has a CLI, and has had since pretty much ever, certainly it was around in Windows 95/98 when that article was written, and before that, as was mentioned, Windows was just a bolt-on running over DOS anyway (okay, 95/98 were arguably that too, but they hid it better).  Just run "command" and you've got something that's pretty much your Windows equivalent of the xterm.  Yes, it's based around the DOS command set, and I don't think anyone is going to argue that DOS commands can rival the sort of crazy wizardry you can do with the *NIX commandline tools and enough knowhow, but the author doesn't seem to be arguing that the Windows CLI is weak so much as he acts like it doesn't have one.  Did Windows NT not?  (Plus, I'm pretty sure nowadays Windows offers something even more powerful than the DOS-style command line, but that'd be well after this article was written.)

 

In short, interesting article from a historical perspective but also utterly awful at making its point.  Sadly, that's pretty typical of "why you should use *NIX" articles.

[Cacodemon345]

Linux's main fault is that it didn't try to focus on usability, marketing and GUI from the start. The command-line advocates have embraced elitism that has also hurt Linux all over the years.

 

As for the desktop environments and distros, there are wayyy too many distros and varying desktop environments, preventing anything in Linux in GUI from being standardized if at all. The habit to heavily modify the kernel in distros like Debian and Ubuntu also hurts the ability to run programs across different distros. You should be able to run a Linux program in all Linux distros, not the other way around.

 

Speaking of Ubuntu, it is the only distro that actually contains proper support for some of the proprietary technologies. Running Linux Distros on laptops is difficult for the fact that most hardware companies only care for their profit, money and nothing else, making Windows the only thing worth for developing drivers. It also makes people move back to Windows as it has better driver support and most of the applications actually work for it. And as found in this thread, people expect that all of the software to run in Linux, but they need to realize that first of all,

• they need to find a way to make Linux far more better than it's rivals, and secondly,
• make it support Windows apps and thirdly,
• try to make other people move to Linux and make them realize that we can't be a pawn for the tech giants forever.

These are the only ways to make Linux popular, otherwise there's 0% chance that it will ever gain widespread adoption.

[StevenC21]

@ETTiNGRiNDER cmd.exe, and to a lesser extent powershell, are garbage. Bash ftw!

[chungy]

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Linux's main fault is that it didn't try to focus on usability, marketing and GUI from the start.

Totally wasn't the focus for something that was literally released being stated that it's "just a hobbyist thing, nothing big and professional"

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

As for the desktop environments and distros, there are wayyy too many distros and varying desktop environments, preventing anything in Linux in GUI from being standardized if at all.

Quite a lot actually is. The main distros for corporate environments even settled on a de-facto standard of GNOME for its good accessibility and administration capabilities (can be locked down).

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

The habit to heavily modify the kernel in distros like Debian and Ubuntu also hurts the ability to run programs across different distros.

Barking up the wrong tree. Debian doesn't "heavily modify" the kernel, nor affect compatibility. RHEL has a heavily modified kernel, some devs complain about it, still mostly doesn't affect application developers at all, only driver developers.

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

You should be able to run a Linux program in all Linux distros, not the other way around.

Yes, you can. Main issue happens if you try to use one distro's package on a completely foreign distro -- dynamic linked binaries don't fare so well in those situations. They're not intended to.

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Speaking of Ubuntu, it is the only distro that actually contains proper support for some of the proprietary technologies.

Ubuntu is no more or less capable than anyone else, maybe with the exception of weird things like Trisquel.

12 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Running Linux Distros on laptops is difficult for the fact that most hardware companies only care for their profit, money and nothing else, making Windows the only thing worth for developing drivers. It also makes people move back to Windows as it has better driver support and most of the applications actually work for it.

Quite honestly, driver support and woes is a thing long in the past. NVIDIA GPUs pose a greater challenge these days, but even then it's not a very difficult hill to surmount.

13 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

And as found in this thread, people expect that all of the software to run in Linux, but they need to realize that first of all,

• they need to find a way to make Linux far more better than it's rivals, and secondly,

Very vague. Depends heavily on who the rivals are and what's being counted. Other Unices (*BSDs, illumos, for example) have strengths and weaknesses compared to Linux. Windows and Mac OS each have their own.

13 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

make it support Windows apps

Okay then. Mind that foreign application support hasn't always fared well for increasing an operating system's market penetration. See OS/2, when it was advertised that it was capable of running Windows apps too, developers and users both thought "Why not just stick to Windows?" and nobody made OS/2 apps. Game developers are particularly prone to this today, John Carmack even famously said that he felt developing Wine was a smarter idea than spending money on native LInux ports -- I actually even find it hard to argue that. If a game works perfectly fine in Wine, I don't really care that it's an *.exe file instead of an ELF binary.

13 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

try to make other people move to Linux and make them realize that we can't be a pawn for the tech giants forever.

More vagueness. Some tech giants are the ones developing and promoting Linux as it is. Though the nature of free software and open source means that you can never really be a pawn to them, so maybe it's superior to being subject to Apple and Microsoft.

[kb1]

There's an awful lot of misinformation in this thread - basically opinions touted as facts. Most of these assessments are unfair. If you think about all the work it takes to get just one program to look right, with any possible theme, for multiple countries with different length texts for every screen element, for the visually impaired, on multiple resolutions, on all computers, following some common conventions. Then apply that to all programs. That's a huge amount of work, with only aesthetic appeal. And this has to be done constantly to maintain a consistent look and feel.

 

Think about how long we've been working on Doom, and we're still not done. Both OSes are major accomplishments, and massively powerful tools - so powerful that we sit in front of them for hours and hours. Sure, there's plenty of issues. MS has to keep making money, so they keep putting out the same thing with new looks and new improvements. Linux gets tweaked by many developers, all with different ideas of how things should work. With Linux, usually a large number of people look over everyone else's code, resulting in pretty safe, secure, tight code. MS has great tools, and the resources to put out slick, tight code, but the motivations are completely different.

 

There are some very annoying aspects in both camps. And there are some wonderful qualities of both OSes. Any credible opinion should be deeply considered, and backed by lots of experience.

 

[Cacodemon345]

8 hours ago, chungy said:

Okay then. Mind that foreign application support hasn't always fared well for increasing an operating system's market penetration. See OS/2, when it was advertised that it was capable of running Windows apps too, developers and users both thought "Why not just stick to Windows?" and nobody made OS/2 apps. Game developers are particularly prone to this today, John Carmack even famously said that he felt developing Wine was a smarter idea than spending money on native LInux ports -- I actually even find it hard to argue that. If a game works perfectly fine in Wine, I don't really care that it's an *.exe file instead of an ELF binary.

I think you are probably misunderstanding. Making Linux run Windows apps would only be done if Windows ever receives it's death warrant, which is unlikely. If it receives it's death warrant, Linux would get Windows support. Otherwise, no.

 

It is actually the only way to solve the "does it run my software that I like?" as not even marketing is going to cut it. Because the time for Linux to grab the market share is over.

8 hours ago, chungy said:

More vagueness. Some tech giants are the ones developing and promoting Linux as it is. Though the nature of free software and open source means that you can never really be a pawn to them, so maybe it's superior to being subject to Apple and Microsoft.

You are also misunderstanding this point. Tech giants that are developing Linux aren't necessarily evil. Apple and Microsoft are the only evil tech giants as far as I can see.

 

8 hours ago, chungy said:

Very vague. Depends heavily on who the rivals are and what's being counted. Other Unices (*BSDs, illumos, for example) have strengths and weaknesses compared to Linux. Windows and Mac OS each have their own.

BSDs are pretty much aren't used in consumer products except for gaming consoles. As for other Unices, they aren't really popular among consumers, except for Android maybe.

 

As for Windows and MacOS, I agree.

[chungy]

8 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I think you are probably misunderstanding. Making Linux run Windows apps would only be done if Windows ever receives it's death warrant, which is unlikely. If it receives it's death warrant, Linux would get Windows support. Otherwise, no.

The hyperlink points to the Wine project, which has been giving Linux the Windows support since approximately 1993. Sure, it's reverse engineered and thus not perfect, but it's still said support.

 

9 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

BSDs are pretty much aren't used in consumer products except for gaming consoles. As for other Unices, they aren't really popular among consumers,

There are always people running these systems at home, and they are for sure much bigger in embedded markets and servers. :P

 

10 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

As for other Unices, they aren't really popular among consumers, except for Android maybe.

Android is Linux.

[Cacodemon345]

Just now, chungy said:

Android is Linux.

Android is not Linux as it can't run Linux apps without some root access hackery, and lacks GNU programs.

[Edward850]

22 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Android is not Linux as it can't run Linux apps without some root access hackery, and lacks GNU programs.

Android is Linux in the same way that the sun is hot. It's not really up for debate.

[Cacodemon345]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Android is Linux in the same way that the sun is hot. It's not really up for debate.

Oh boy, do I need to explain it?

 

When you are developing apps for Linux, you are using Google's API to build APKs, not for GTK, XOrg etc.

[Edward850]

Okay, that has nothing to do with Linux though. Linux is an OS kernel. Anything that uses the OS kernel is therefor Linux by association.

[Cacodemon345]

Just now, Edward850 said:

Okay, that has nothing to do with Linux though. Linux is an OS kernel.

Android is Linux underneath, but not outside.

 

I think I will pass rather than arguing.

[Endless]

On 8/4/2018 at 4:36 PM, YukiRaven said:

I greatly prefer Linux over other OSes, specifically Slackware Linux.  If it wasn't for some music production software I use, and a few games, I'd probably be using Linux and nothing else.  Heck, it's already the only OS installed on 6 of my 7 computers.

7 Computers?Holy crackers, thats nasa stuff right there. Haha.

[chungy]

Just now, Cacodemon345 said:

Android is Linux underneath, but not outside.

What is "outside"?

 

The exact same argument can be made that a GNOME desktop isn't Linux.

[Edward850]

Just now, Cacodemon345 said:

Android is Linux underneath, but not outside.

There is no "outside Linux". Linux is a Kernel. I have given you the information, at some point you will have to accept it.

[Cacodemon345]

2 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

There is no "outside Linux". Linux is a Kernel. I have given you the information, at some point you will have to accept it.

I mean, Android uses Linux kernel underneath, but in the user space, it doesn't work like Linux, unless you have rooted your device.

[chungy]

Android works the same way in user space that Linux always does. Applications are relying on the Linux syscall table to carry out tasks. Just that it's not the usual libc doesn't really make a difference.

 

Rooting devices has nothing to do with it, frankly. That's a mechanism to gain extra control on your device. Sure you can use it to initiate a chroot call to load a more traditional GNU system, but that only proves that Android is Linux.

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I mean, Android uses Linux kernel underneath, but in the user space, it doesn't work like Linux, unless you have rooted your device.

You don't on PCs either, because Linux is a kernel. On PC, you typically interact with X Server on the user space.

Let me break it down for you in the simplest way possible; Without Linux, there is no Android. No ifs, ands nor butts about it.

[Remilia Scarlet]

26 minutes ago, Anidrex_1009 said:

7 Computers?Holy crackers, thats nasa stuff right there. Haha.

More like I kept upgrading or repurposing old ones, or I bought cheap ones :-P  There's my desktop, which I technically bought in 2003 then just continuously upgraded.  It's my main computer.  There's still a wire or HDD in it that's original, too.  Then there's my old laptop that I got off a friend for $200 USD, and my newer laptop, which my mom gave to me as a present.  Then there's a desktop that I converted into a multimedia PC thing that I keep attached to my TV.  It used to be my wife's.  Then there's another desktop I built in 2010 or so that was made to be a simple budget computer to use in my bedroom (my main desktop was in another area at the time).  It's been upgraded a few times.  Then there are my two Raspberry Pi computers.

 

Out of all of those, the only one with Windows is my main desktop, and that's only for a few games and my music software.  It's actually dual-booting with Linux on another partition.  All the others run Slackware Linux exclusively.

 

EDIT: oh, and I have a headless file server I keep in my bedroom.

[Cacodemon345]

6 minutes ago, chungy said:

Android works the same way in user space that Linux always does. Applications are relying on the Linux syscall table to carry out tasks. Just that it's not the usual libc doesn't really make a difference.

 

Rooting devices has nothing to do with it, frankly. That's a mechanism to gain extra control on your device. Sure you can use it to initiate a chroot call to load a more traditional GNU system, but that only proves that Android is Linux.

Internal Linux applications are actually carrying out tasks, and Android apps are relying on Android APIs which are just a mere wrapper to Linux syscalls with restrictions. LibBionic is a library upon which internal Linux programs are compiled, and libc isn't even available.

 

When you are developing apps for Android, you use Java language to write them, not C++/C. You also use Google's Android GUI designer (or whatever it is called) to design applications, not GTK/Qt stuff.

 

Plus, Google can change the kernel underneath and we may never know it. It is actually sandboxed from internet access, only Android apps are able to access the internet.

[Edward850]

7 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

When you are developing apps for Android, you use Java language to write them, not C++/C. You also use Google's Android GUI designer (or whatever it is called) to design applications, not GTK/Qt stuff.

You can develop C++ native programs on Android, and even use Qt. Not that it matters because Linux is not GTK or Qt.

 

7 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Plus, Google can change the kernel underneath and we may never know it. It is actually sandboxed from internet access, only Android apps are able to access the internet.

Uhm... No. Android being Open source makes the former logistically impossible, and the latter doesn't have any applicable rational, like I can't even respond to it because its absolute nonsense.

[chungy]

2 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Internal Linux applications are actually carrying out tasks, and Android apps are relying on Android APIs which are just a mere wrapper to Linux syscalls with restrictions. LibBionic is a library upon which internal Linux programs are compiled, and libc isn't even available.

What is an "internal Linux application"? You're just regurgitating that Android has a different runtime than libc. That doesn't disqualify it from being Linux whatsoever.

 

3 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

When you are developing apps for Android, you use Java language to write them, not C++/C.

Don't be ridiculous. You can write desktop Linux applications with Java just as well, or any other language. C and C++ are by no means a requirement or qualifier for a "Linux application."

 

3 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

You also use Google's Android GUI designer (or whatever it is called) to design applications, not GTK/Qt stuff.

Different toolkits, that's all. Do you really think GTK+ and Qt are specific to Linux? They have ports and run on Mac OS and Windows as well, you probably even use a few such applications on Windows.

 

4 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Plus, Google can change the kernel underneath and we may never know it.

This actually has a mediocum of truth. The Dalvik runtime (what mainly makes up Android) is a bit like the JavaVM, and the usage of Linux was mostly one of convenience, being that Linux already had all the drivers. Dalvik has already been ported to non-Linux kernels, such as Windows (Bluestacks) or BlackBerryOS. The only main issue is that you get games written in a "bare metal" language such as C or C++, often for performance or portability, and those are pretty much always Linux binaries and largely won't run on other kernels.

 

6 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

It is actually sandboxed from internet access, only Android apps are able to access the internet.

I frankly have absolutely no clue where you heard this from. It is completely false.

[Cacodemon345]

15 minutes ago, chungy said:

I frankly have absolutely no clue where you heard this from. It is completely false.

I actually meant that the Linux kernel underneath doesn't have access to the internet. I know this because I once tried to run wget in my Android Terminal and it didn't work, despite having Internet connection.

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I actually meant that the Linux kernel underneath doesn't have access to the internet.

It is logistically impossible for that. How do you think Android apps connect to the internet?