Graf Zahl derails another thread by making up an excuse to troll Linux users, episode #875,482,348,234

[ducon]

2 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Did macOS being closed source made it great? What?

 

Just trolling/joking, of course.

[Graf Zahl]

12 minutes ago, ducon said:

 

When I have to use Windows, I don’t know how it works, what to do if I want to to this or that. It’s a mess and actually, if you want to do things in Windows (for example to fix it or even to kill a crashing application), you really need to be an expert.

Not in Linux.

 

 

When I have to use Linux, I don’t know how it works, what to do if I want to to this or that. It’s a mess and actually, if you want to do things in Linux (for example to fix it or even to kill a crashing application), you really need to be an expert.

Not in Windows.

 

[ducon]

Because you’re not used to Linux as I’m still not used to Windows.

The issue is between the chair and the keyboard, not in the machine but indeed, Windows is a pain in the ass with its old concepts that are outdated (C:, no centralized package upgrade…)

[Cacodemon345]

7 minutes ago, ducon said:

The issue is between the chair and the keyboard, not in the machine but indeed, Windows is a pain in the ass with its old concepts that are outdated (C:, no centralized package upgrade…)

I guess the Unix Filesystem Hierarchy isn't outdated too.

[ducon]

3 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I guess the Unix Filesystem Hierarchy isn't outdated too.

 

Yes it is, but less than C:.

[Cacodemon345]

18 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

if you want to do things in Linux (for example to fix it or even to kill a crashing application),

It's actually easy to kill crashing applications easily with "killall -KILL nameofprogram".

[Graf Zahl]

See, that's the problem. If you use something you know how to use it. But that doesn't mean the competition is bad by default. So please don't badmouth other products you don't know. Everything needs a little experience to be used.

 

20 minutes ago, ducon said:

Because you’re not used to Linux as I’m still not used to Windows.

The issue is between the chair and the keyboard, not in the machine but indeed, Windows is a pain in the ass with its old concepts that are outdated (C:, no centralized package upgrade…)

 

In all your cases, both has its advantages and its disadvantages.None of these systems is inherently better than the other, just different.

 

No,not even the centralized package management, because you suddenly depend on the package management maintainer to always provide the properly updated version of some package. But if they fail to act when needed you are on your own. Have you ever heard of "single point of failure"?

 

But it's typical to hear from the Linux side that their solution is the only good one and everything else is crap, so...

This attitude is precisely why things that may need improvements do not get them. Because some people fight tooth and nail to prevent change.

 

 

 

[ducon]

1 minute ago, Graf Zahl said:

See, that's the problem. If you use something you know how to use it. But that doesn't mean the competition is bad by default. So please don't badmouth other products you don't know. Everything needs a little experience to be used.

 

I know Windows enough, because I’m forced to use it at work.

 

1 minute ago, Graf Zahl said:

No,not even the centralized package management, because you suddenly depend on the package management maintainer to always provide the properly updated version of some package. But if they fail to act when needed you are on your own. Have you ever heard of "single point of failure"?

 

You can always install another version of Firefox, if you really need it in Linux.

[Edward850]

44 minutes ago, ducon said:

Because you’re not used to Linux as I’m still not used to Windows.

The issue is between the chair and the keyboard, not in the machine but indeed, Windows is a pain in the ass with its old concepts that are outdated (C:, no centralized package upgrade…)

DOS style drive enumeration will never vanish, even Xbox still has it. However it's just an emulation for compatability in modern Windows, everything in the background uses UNC paths. And if you want to be really advanced you can alternatively use Unix style NTFS folder mounts.

 

As for your package manager.

[ducon]

I know that Windows has got now symbolic links and even multiple virtual desktop (but it’s a pain to use in Windows 10).

I already had these twenty years ago.

[Maes]

2 hours ago, ducon said:

 

When I have to use Windows, I don’t know how it works, what to do if I want to to this or that. It’s a mess and actually, if you want to do things in Windows (for example to fix it or even to kill a crashing application), you really need to be an expert.

Not in Linux.

 

Wait...so assuming complete lack of knowledge in both OSes, on which one do you think it will be easier to find the "kill app" command? At least on Windows, it used to be that distressed users would hit "Alt-Ctrl-Delete" in a panic, as the universal reboot command (not sure if that's taught or common knowledge anymore, though), which would bring up the Task Manager and from then on it was a piece of cake.Now the shortcut for Task Manager has been changed to Ctrl-Shift-Esc, but I'm digressing.

 

From Windows 7 and onwards (or already from a networked/multiuser XP computer, not sure), with Ctrl-Alt-Del you'd get a screen with choices among which, well, Task Manager. OK, then you need to have the infamous "little birdie" whisper in your ear that you need to select precisely that, but still I think most would manage.

 

But on Linux? With a GUI you might bumble around a bit in order to find the equivalent of Task Manager (different for every distro and window manager, may I add), but the canonical way (knowing how to use the ps and kill commands) cannot really be called "intuitive", not without that help from that infamous little birdie whispering in your ear :-) In fact, no CUI-based OS can be called intuitive and "knowing right away what to do" unless you've had previous training/exposure to at least the basic commands. GUIs allow a complete layman to kinda-sorta work it out, even if not with the utmost refinement or efficiency, but at least they allow them to get something done.

 

But yeah, it's funny how usability stories lead to a lot of The Fox and the Stork kind of situations :-)

 

[ducon]

18 minutes ago, Maes said:

 

Wait...so assuming complete lack of knowledge in both OSes, on which one do you think it will be easier to find the "kill app" command? At least on Windows, it used to be that distressed users would hit "Alt-Ctrl-Delete" in a panic, as the universal reboot command (not sure if that's taught or common knowledge anymore, though), which would bring up the Task Manager and from then on it was a piece of cake.Now the shortcut for Task Manager has been changed to Ctrl-Shift-Esc, but I'm digressing.

 

I know that Ctrl-Alt-Suppr exists but it’s sometimes disabled where I work. Then, I must use the MS-DOS window (compared to a modern xterm) because of course, powershell is not installed.

[Cacodemon345]

11 minutes ago, ducon said:

 

I know that Ctrl-Alt-Suppr exists but it’s sometimes disabled where I work. Then, I must use the MS-DOS window (compared to a modern xterm) because of course, powershell is not installed.

Then it's an issue with your workplace's IT policies.

 

You still can use taskkill /IM nameofprogram /F to kill processes.

[LexiMax]

It's reasonable to disagree on Windows vs Linux on personal preference, but the big elephant in the room about why more software isn't released for it is the fact that distributing software for Linux is way more of a pain in the ass than it should be.

 

Part of that is because of a reason Graf mentioned - everything being dynamically linked to third-party libraries instead of making libraries that are packaged with the software the happy path.  But the other part is distribution.  On Windows, I only have to make one package - maybe two if I want to have a portable zip in addition to the setup program.  On Mac, I only have to make one package.  Linux throws all that out of the window and you are expected to make a at the very least a .deb and .rpm, as well as Linux users demanding you package for their obscure distro, and that's assuming there isn't a problem with a deb not working on a too-old Debian or too-new Ubuntu.  And even if you supply source code, that won't prevent users from asking you why they can't link against their distro library instead of just using the library included with software.  No wonder Steam still uses a chroot to build their software inside.

 

There is some encouraging movement out there in terms of images, but there are multiple image standards - AppImage, Snap, Flatpak - because this is Linux, of COURSE there are multiple standards and of COURSE people can't collaborate on one thing.

[ducon]

3 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

It's reasonable to disagree on Windows vs Linux on personal preference, but the big elephant in the room about why more software isn't released for it is the fact that distributing software for Linux is way more of a pain in the ass than it should be.

 

Oh really? I don’t count the packages available in Debian. If it were so hard to distribute software for Linux, why is there so many?

 

3 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

Part of that is because of a reason Graf mentioned - everything being dynamically linked to third-party libraries instead of making libraries that are packaged with the software the happy path.

 

It’s not mandatory even if it’s recommended.

 

3 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

There is some encouraging movement out there in terms of images, but there are multiple image standards - AppImage, Snap, Flatpak - because this is Linux, of COURSE there are multiple standards and of COURSE people can't collaborate on one thing.

 

There is only one standard: deb. The rest is crap.

Seriously, its bazaar is wealthy and it forces Microsoft to move on. Without Unix, Linux and MacOS, Windows would be stuck in Windows 3.11. Now, Windows has got virtual desktops (woohoo), symbolic links (weeee) but still no centralized package manager. I tried Chocolatey, it’s a good start but it’s far from enough.

I don’t count people who want to code in Python and who struggle with anaconda, pip or exe in order to learn Python with basic libraries like numpy. In Linux (Debian), it’s already installed and works out of the box.

[LexiMax]

33 minutes ago, ducon said:

Oh really? I don’t count the packages available in Debian. If it were so hard to distribute software for Linux, why is there so many? 

 

What if I actually want my software to be updated day-and-date of release on other platforms?  What if my software depends on a library that debian doesn't package?  What if the software I distribute isn't open source?  What if I don't want my software to be considered part of the operating system - as anything installed into /usr/ is considered?

 

Just let me make an installer or portable self-contained package like the other two operating systems.

 

33 minutes ago, ducon said:

There is only one standard: deb. The rest is crap.

 

Hey, there's nothing wrong with having a wrong opinion. :)  Either way, even if you only ever release a deb, the packaging format does not mean that your software will work out of the box on all deb-compatible platforms, all you can do is pick an old version of Debian/Ubuntu LTS and pray.  The only true solution is an distro-agnostic package.

 

33 minutes ago, ducon said:

Seriously, its bazaar is wealthy and it forces Microsoft to move on. Without Unix, Linux and MacOS, Windows would be stuck in Windows 3.11. Now, Windows has got virtual desktops (woohoo), symbolic links (weeee) but still no centralized package manager.

 

Think about what you're saying.  Microsoft has managed to take most of the best parts of Linux....including Linux itself (through WSL)...without any of the baggage.  Far from making Linux more appealing, it basically reduces the use case for me to run Linux on bare metal to "I want to test Linux in a hardware-accelerated graphical capacity".

Edited September 24, 2021 by AlexMax

[Graf Zahl]

37 minutes ago, ducon said:

Seriously, its bazaar is wealthy and it forces Microsoft to move on. Without Unix, Linux and MacOS, Windows would be stuck in Windows 3.11. Now, Windows has got virtual desktops (woohoo), symbolic links (weeee) but still no centralized package manager. I tried Chocolatey, it’s a good start but it’s far from enough.

 

Behold the bias on display here.

 

So a few corrections:

- Windows NT got started long before Windows became truly popular. This was also a time when Linux was still being considered an obscurity and Apple was using an operating system incompatible with everything else in the world.

- I don't know precisely when Windows got symbolic links and virtual desktops, but symbolic links were added at the very latest for Vista, which is a long time back. So please don't pretend this is new stuff. You are also totally ignoring operating system history. Linux got scaled down from Unix so it came with lots of things from a long past of mainframes and a design for remote access. Windows grew out of DOS, i.e. something made for simple PCs. So obviously early version did not have features that at the time had no meaning whatsoever for its users.

 

 

37 minutes ago, ducon said:

I don’t count people who want to code in Python and who struggle with anaconda, pip or exe in order to learn Python with basic libraries like numpy. In Linux (Debian), it’s already installed and works out of the box.

Yeah great. Python is installed, but a working, coherent desktop is not part of the package. Unfortunately here we can clearly see where the problem lies - Linux is mainly used by scientists and developers, but not by consumers, so consumer needs get persistently ignored by people like you living in their own little sandbox.

 

And thus we are back to square one again: Linux's biggest problem are its current users.

 

1 hour ago, AlexMax said:

 

There is some encouraging movement out there in terms of images, but there are multiple image standards - AppImage, Snap, Flatpak - because this is Linux, of COURSE there are multiple standards and of COURSE people can't collaborate on one thing.

 

And this begs the question: Why do we even need a 'standard' here? Shouldn't it be enough to do it the Mac way where all application packages are just folder trees placed in an "Applications" folder with a simple definition file that describes how to start the app? I guess that'd be too easy a solution...

 

[LexiMax]

7 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

And this begs the question: Why do we even need a 'standard' here? Shouldn't it be enough to do it the Mac way where all application packages are just folder trees placed in an "Applications" folder with a simple definition file that describes how to start the app? I guess that'd be too easy a solution... 

 

I think AppImage is the closest to that - it's not a plain directory you can cd into, but it is just a mounted filesystem with a directory structure.  It's what I'm looking at using next time I want to distribute software on Linux in non-source form.

 

Linus Torvalds appears to be a fan of it, but of course AppImage doesn't have enough of an ecosystem or vendor lock-in, so Fedora has Flatpak and Ubuntu has Snap, because of course they do.  I tried both, and I had good luck with Flatpak, but I don't think I was able to use a single Snap without running into sandboxing issues - most hilariously sound didn't work when trying to play Odamex run from the VSCode Snap terminal because it couldn't connect to the sound server.

[Cacodemon345]

10 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

I think AppImage is the closest to that - it's not a plain directory you can cd into, but it is just a mounted filesystem with a directory structure.  It's what I'm looking at using next time I want to distribute software on Linux in non-source form.

I ran AppImages in the past and when they include their own UI libraries they are inconsistent with the UI the system has. Not a good solution yet.

[ducon]

3 hours ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Then it's an issue with your workplace's IT policies.

 

You still can use taskkill /IM nameofprogram /F to kill processes.

 

Yes but Windows command line ecosystem is poor.

I don’t even have a clue on how to do in windows (command line or not) what I do nearly every day in Bash.

 

50 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

What if I actually want my software to be updated day-and-date of release on other platforms?  What if my software depends on a library that debian doesn't package?  What if the software I distribute isn't open source?  What if I don't want my software to be considered part of the operating system - as anything installed into /usr/ is considered?

 

Distribute it in a tgz archive with all its dependencies. Debian developers will do the job… if they want to do it.

Anyway, you can do it by yourself.

 

50 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

Hey, there's nothing wrong with having a wrong opinion. :)  Either way, even if you only ever release a deb, the packaging format does not mean that your software will work out of the box on all deb-compatible platforms, all you can do is pick an old version of Debian/Ubuntu LTS and pray.  The only true solution is an distro-agnostic package.

 

Yes, I was joking, of course.

 

50 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

 

Think about what you're saying.  Microsoft has managed to take most of the best parts of Linux....including Linux itself (through WSL)...without any of the baggage.  Far from making Linux more appealing, it basically reduces the use case for me to run Linux on bare metal to "I want to test Linux in a hardware-accelerated graphical capacity".

 

Yes, I know that WSL is truly a good job, better that Cygwin and so on.

 

15 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Yeah great. Python is installed, but a working, coherent desktop is not part of the package. Unfortunately here we can clearly see where the problem lies - Linux is mainly used by scientists and developers, but not by consumers, so consumer needs get persistently ignored by people like you living in their own little sandbox.

 

This own little sandbox is in nearly every smartphone and connected TV.

 

15 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

And thus we are back to square one again: Linux's biggest problem are its current users.

 

No, of course not.

It’s because Windows has got the monopoly and that end users are not used to any other OS.

 

15 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

And this begs the question: Why do we even need a 'standard' here? Shouldn't it be enough to do it the Mac way where all application packages are just folder trees placed in an "Applications" folder with a simple definition file that describes how to start the app? I guess that'd be too easy a solution...

 

The packages systems were developed when the hard disks were tiny. Now, of course, developers can unleash themselves and copy a gazillion of times the same library in each package.

[Cacodemon345]

3 minutes ago, ducon said:

This own little sandbox is in nearly every smartphone and connected TV.

...and of course locked down with no ability to modify the kernel or drivers to make them better even when rooted because of proprietary drivers.

[ducon]

Yes, and it’s a shame. I own a tablet with Android 4.4. I can’t even install Debian in it.

[LexiMax]

10 minutes ago, ducon said:

This own little sandbox is in nearly every smartphone and connected TV.

 

Which proves that the best use of Linux is to basically relegate the majority of its GNU/Linux userspace to the junk drawer and roll your own interface on top of the Linux kernel.

 

10 minutes ago, ducon said:

It’s because Windows has got the monopoly and that end users are not used to any other OS. 

 

You know how you change that?  Getting developers to port their software.  You know how you do that?

• Making it convenient for developers to distribute their software
• Unifying as much of the underlying user-space API's as much as possible (stop with the systemd vs whatever wars, pick one and go with it).
• Taking bug and jankfixing seriously - taking care of the "0.1% of downloads/sales, 25% of reported bugs" reputation that Linux has.

[ducon]

Is it possible to send a bug report to Microsoft?

[LexiMax]

1 minute ago, ducon said:

Is it possible to send a bug report to Microsoft?

 

....have you used Windows in the past two decades?

 

There's also feedback hub as of Windows 10, and I know that you used to be able to report a bug by calling them, though you had to have repro steps.

 

Not to mention that Microsoft's in-program crashdumps are much more sophisticated than anything out of Linux.  On Linux, the best I can do is get a logged stacktrace of mangled C++ symbols and a full crashdump in a random directory if and only if the user is configured to allow for it.  On Windows, my programs can crash with a minidump that is much smaller than a full dump, not gated by a user setting, and that I can go back and pair with the build's original .exe and .pdb and get visibility into.

[ducon]

Just now, AlexMax said:

....have you used Windows in the past two decades?

 

Yes, but without a crash? For example a feature request or an application that does crap without crashing, or even a typo?

 

Just now, AlexMax said:

There's also feedback hub as of Windows 10, and I know that you used to be able to report a bug by calling them, though you had to have repro steps.

 

Good news but I’d like something like a mail.

 

In fact, for me, the problem is that Windows is closed source and that if Microsoft decides to change something (hello Windows 11), we’re fucked.

[LexiMax]

9 minutes ago, ducon said:

In fact, for me, the problem is that Windows is closed source and that if Microsoft decides to change something (hello Windows 11), we’re fucked. 

 

Oracle is a far more evil company than Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple put together, and two of Oracle's biggest products are open source - Java and MySQL.

 

In fact, corporations love the GPL, because even though the software is open source, as long as the corporation still owns the intellectual property it gives them a leg up on any potential competition.  Oracle can offer MySQL under GPL but also have a proprietary license for MySQL you have to pay for.  MariaDB can't do the same thing with the MySQL portions of MariaDB.

[ducon]

I forgot to talk about Lean, a Coq-like program (formalization of logic) but coded by Microsoft. It’s a really good program too.

[Graf Zahl]

Interestingly, none of Microsoft's Open Source code uses the GPL, they mostly use the Apache license (i.e. a truly free license)

It's somewhat ironic that the GPL in its insane quest for controlling 'freedom' is achieving quite the opposite here - another good example would be Qt.

 

1 hour ago, AlexMax said:

Taking bug and jankfixing seriously - taking care of the "0.1% of downloads/sales, 25% of reported bugs" reputation that Linux has.

 

Funny that you mention that - because it's somewhat the story of the "Technical Issues" forum at zdoom.org or the issue tracker at Github as well.

For its small user share, the amount of system-related problems is disproportionately higher for Linux than it is for both Windows and macOS. And frequently it's really weird stuff like this one:

https://github.com/coelckers/gzdoom/issues/1405

 

[ducon]

6 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Funny that you mention that - because it's somewhat the story of the "Technical Issues" forum at zdoom.org or the issue tracker at Github as well.

For its small user share, the amount of system-related problems is disproportionately higher for Linux than it is for both Windows and macOS.

 

Maybe it’s because there is a lot of different Linux distributions with a lot of architectures.

Windows supports nearly only one architecture with nearly two versions of its distribution.