Manu wrote:
It's certainly missed in my professional environment, but even
outside
that, it's still super handy and saves a lot of time.
Particularly if you
are in the habit of using it.
Do you remember when you first got a mouse with a mouse wheel?
You thought
it was kinda cool, but I'll bet you didn't use it that much...
you weren't
in the habit of it.
Have you tried to use a mouse without a mouse wheel recently?
... it's like
that.
Yes, I agree. My point wasn't that it isn't a convenience, only
that linux tech companies with the ability to implement it
probably haven't seen it as a worth-while effort (financially
speaking) in the past, due to it not effecting their development
practices as much as it may effects other industries (like major
game creators).
I hope, as I'm sure you do, that, due to Valve's interest in
Linux, better debugging features will be seen as more of a
priority. It will be a brighter day for Linux when engine
designers of AAA game companies don't have anything to complain
about when it comes to developing on Linux ;)
Linux UI still feels largely like a facade to me. If ANYTHING
goes wrong,
you are back at square 1, if you're not an expert, you probably
can't fix it.
I recommend trying Elementary OS sometime (also, keep an eye on
Manjaro). There are surely more automatic self-correcting feature
on Windows, but Linux is getting better here I think. There has
simply been more man-hours put into consumer-level features on
Windows.
I still think the biggest problem by far is that only an expert
can fix it
when anything goes wrong. And things *always* go wrong.
I think you may be exaggerating a bit. I've never had any
outstanding issues with distro's like Unbuntu on my machine, but
then, it's subject a lot to the quality of your drivers, which
sometimes get neglected a bit due to linux's lack of popularity
in the desktop consumer space. I've had good success installing
on Intel laptops, for instance, and bad experience installing on
AMD laptops. But I think you'd find the same was probably true
(or worse) with Mac. Which is why I mentioned the only way to
sell Linux would be to put it in a fancy box and paint it's face
with some expensive advertising (just like Mac and Sony do with
BSD, only someone needs to do it more openly).
I do agree, there are some areas Linux needs more time to bake,
the Display Server is a good example (and PulseAudio), also
things like more user-friendly Software Centers. But projects
like Wayland, Gnome, Ubuntu, and Elementary are doing good work,
and there are some good improvements on the way in the next year
or two I think.
