A Continuing Work in Progress: The State of Linux 2006 - Page 2

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Ain't that the truth!!!!

:-D

Where's Spud?, he HAS to say "word" to that xDxD

Alright, I'll bite.

The setting I'm refering to in the Folders area is the infamous "simple filesharing" setting. I would thing it would rather be in the tab where you actually share the folder. What I was refering to is the Folder Options in Control Panel. Two separate things. I agree with what you said, but it was not the argument I was making.

Windows will always try to autofind printers because, like I said, the "master" setting is in Control Panel->Folder Options. Again, two valid arguments about two separate things.

About the autoloading thing, I will conceded that yes, you can do that on an individual basis (per device and per media type) but I would really expect there to be a simple, accessible way to prevent this universally. You know, like what Gnome/KDE offers (but I will concede that Vista does exactly this)

http://www.machall.com/index.php?strip_id=257


Another one, but not as funny as the others

I think it basically boils down to "know-how" and "show-how". In windows all the config settings are in these big wizards, which have to make a lot of assumptions to "dumb down" the setting so that the average user has a clue what's going on. Linux doesn't have all of that luxury (for some), but it gives you absolute power over what's going on. I love Linux. Its just like everyone's said, linux's lack of support for games is just the death nail in the coffin for a widespread desktop OS. For that reason I dual boot my desktop computer.

Just a thought, is there a way to turn off that little bit of code that Micro$oft has built in to "check on" the validation every time you boot? How many lines of HEX code would you have to sift through in the registry to find it? I'm not about to try, but 2000 lines of well commented config files doesn't sound so bad after thinking about that.

Perhaps the thing I hate most about windows is it asks, "Are you sure?!" Fifty million times before 9 of 10 commands. As far as a testimate to absolute power, go delete /bin sometime (I've tried it), you wont here a peep out of linux. Never tired this, just because I'm afraid of all the "Are you sure?!?" boxes I'd get, but try deleting /windows/system32 sometime. That'll make some noise.

If you try to do a "rm -rf /usr/lib" (analogous to /windows/system32), you will encounter exactly one error:

"Cannot delete <first file in /usr/lib>: Permission denied."

Then it dumps you back at your user CLI prompt.

Me too. They suck.

I assume that you've never used anything but a terminal in Linux then? KDE, Gnome, and XFCE are excellent GUIs. Windows Explorer is very, very stripped-down and klunky compared to what you can do with Konqueror, Nautilus, or Thunar.

What do you want your GUI to do? Have Clippy write that paper for you? A good GUI and a good OS are transparent- you don't notice it as its only function is to help you accomplish your work (or play.) If they are doing their job, you never should notice them.

Like:
1. 3rd-party themes support without having to pay for Window Blinds or that ugly uxtheme.dll hack.
2. Built-in SFTP capabilities from the file browser.
3. Tabbed file browsing and multiple panes (Konqueror)
4. Previews for more than just images in the file browser window for ALL of the icons (not just the side pane)
5. The choice of different window managers and file browsers.

The list goes on. Windows has a MUCH less configurable GUI. Look at the KDE or Gnome control centers and then at the Windows "appearance" tab and tell me which one has more options.

So HKEY_LOCAL_USERS/{a567d390-d29b576a-58ea7b89-56782a7e}/VENDOR/APP_NAME/REG_KEY and a hex key is easier than /home/user/.app-name/conf-file where the config file is marked like:

#To enable feature, uncomment FEATURE below:
#FEATURE

Hmm. I kind of thought that it would be the other way around, but hey, if editing hex keys after hunting down a 32-digit hex identifier is easier, it's whatever floats your boat.

That's certainly true. But why would you want somebody to hide things on your computer? I sure as heck don't!

If you know that 32-digit hex ID code for the application and the right hex value, I suppose. Also, if you like to have to sift through 4 different temp folders, Application Data, etc. I just look in /home/user/. and I'll see every single little config file that has to do with my user account. System-wide ones are all in /etc, most in /etc/conf.d.

I guess turning off Clippy must count as an advanced feature. You have to hack that damn registry to even *truly* disable autoplay on the CD-ROM drives for crying out loud.

There are a lot of GUI tools in Linux too. Download SuSE 10.1 and tell me how many config files you have to edit since YaST is there. Also, I'd take config files over a huge monolithic registry any day. If the registry crashes, better hunt down your Windows install disc and all of the reg codes for your software and hope that Mother says you may reinstall them because unless you're lucky and happen to have a recent system backup handy, there's no way in God's green earth that you're going to recover. If there is a config file problem in Linux, well, shoot, you boot a live CD and edit the thing, reboot, and you have a working system within 5 minutes. I've done it. It works.

That is a consideration, especially if you install a lot of packaged from outside the repositories. It used to be much worse in the past- they didn't call it a "dependency hell" for nothing. But repositories have gotten MUCH larger- Debian's is now 20,000+ packages and the maintainers do a very good job of keeping all the dependencies needed by the packages in the repository all present.

Linux uses package dependencies to increase performance and provide a much easier way to patch and upgrade systems. If you have 15 packages that use a certain library, let's call it "foo," then you need only install one copy of foo and each of the programs can use it. In Windows, each one of the15 programs needs to have its own copy of foo. In the old days, having 14 less copies of foo was a large benefit, but since hard drives have gotten bigger, that is really not an issue. But it is once you realize that if you run more than one program that uses the foo library, each must load it into RAM whereas Linux need only one copy of foo to be loaded.

Today, the security angle is more important. If the package foo needs to be patched because of a security issue, you can simply replace the old foo with a new foo and all 15 programs are now fine. In Windows, you must patch all 15 programs to fix the vulnerability. I bet that not all 15 programs have very timely security updates, so you could have an unpatched hole in your system for far longer than you would in Linux.

Oh, and you can look at the "files installed" tab to see what's all in an RPM or DEB and where it goes in the system. I'd like to see that in Windows software too, but when that happens, I'll see Durocs and Landraces flying with the hawks. Sony's not exactly going to tell you that they installed rootkit.exe in C:$SYS$.

Well you certainly are thorough.

I have used both KDE and Gnome. They are both wonderful for navigating your directory structure and looking at files. They are significantly less capable at configuring your computer. Or at least they were last time I tried them.

One specific example is setting up NAT. In Windows you just go into network properties on your network card and click on a check box. There are more options there if you want to configure something specific.

In Linux, for a newbie, setting up IP masqing is a nightmare. Just figuring out where to look for help is not at all easy. The MAN files are generally poorly laid out, poorly written, and not very layman friendly. The SAG and NAG are a bit better but still not very good for a targeted search.

Also, setting up a parallel port zip drive in Linux was anything but a cakewalk. You could argue that this is because of Iomega not providing good driver support, but the fact remains that it took me about a full day of hair pulling.

Then you have general configuration for other things such as setting up a domain and configuring a DNS server, etc.

All of this stuff is fairly simple and straightforward in Windows. No clippy involved. Hell half the things in the Windows Control panel are missing from the Linux GUIs. Thats that stuff I am talking about. Thats the stuff that matters.

Honestly, I have never felt the need to play with a hex editor in the registry because regedit generally does a good job of translating things when needed. Also usually when I go into the registry I am looking for things like
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/microsoft/Windows/currentversion/
Or possibly some game or software product that is listed under the manufacturer's name.

Again, I need to visit my registry much less often than I would need to track down config files in Linux to get the same job done.

Right click clippy, choose hide. He doesn't bother me anymore.

I do not claim that Microsoft is anything other than a monolithic evil empire, but so far they have produced an operating system that is complex enough to satisfy most curious techs' desire to tinker and simple enough to figure out without much effort.

Yes it has lackluster security, hidden files, and more problems than I could shake a stick at, but it works and I don't have to spend several days beating myself up to figure out the solution to a problem. Generally if I do run into a major problem I can fix it in an hour or two. In Linux, it was MUCH more frustrating.

I post these problems not as a taunt saying 'Windows is better than Linux nya nya' but in an attempt to encourage the Linux community to do something about them thus putting them into a position for increased market share and eventually allow me to replace my Windows PC with one running an operating system that is intuitive, easy to use and troubleshoot, and is free from evil DRM garbage and imperical control.

I really do want Linux to be everything that anyone would want from an operating system. I would like nothing more than to see it replace all commercial proprietary operating systems on the market. But as it is now, it fails in intuitive interface and ease of use.

I do admit to having given up on Suse a long time ago when I tried to do some configurations and discovered that the configuration utilities had bizzare and often hard to guess names that I had to look up on the internet every time I wanted to do something.

If those files have been placed in a location that is intutive (ie a control panel like section of the gui) then that would help immensely.

... again with the registry... Seriously you don't need to dig in the registry for any but the most obscure of options. If the Control panel doesn't do it then use the mmc (microsoft management console). Speaking of which that is something that would help Linux a lot. Some Linux equivalent of the mmc, a gui that can load easy to program snap ins that all function very similarly. That is where Microsoft tends to "hide" its more advanced options.

As far as mounting of devices.... I'm not sure what difficulty you would have with this in Windows. Do you mean dismounting them? Windows automounts all drives pretty well. Even removable drives are handled very easily. If you are wanting to make a fixed drive removable that was very easy in Win 9x, a bit more difficult in XP but still doable.

Good, then make it so. A lot of options will 99 times out of 100 be set the exact same way. So remove those options from the GUI and make them defaults that can only be changed through editing the config file, I'm fine with that.

I agree that Linux CAN be made to be this way. The more intuitive and user friendly it gets, the more low end home systems will be loaded with it, then the larger the install base will get, and the more programs will be written for it.