On Saturday, 16 July 2016 at 04:54:02 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 05:02:55PM -0700, Walter Bright via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
On 7/15/2016 3:43 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> One of the many reasons I gave up on Windows many years ago,
> and never looked back. ;-)
I have my grump list for Linux, too. Tried to install it once
on an HP laptop, and the installer crashed with some long
error message in hex. Like a good boy, I posted a bug report
on it on the distro seb site. One of their devs closed it the
next day because I wouldn't attach a remote debugger to it.
I have my list of gripes against Linux, too. The good thing
about Linux, though, is that if something doesn't work, you can
go under the hood and fix stuff. Dig into config files and
stuff -- which are plain text as opposed to opaque, unreadable
binary format -- and if you're up for it, download the source
and fix it yourself. And there's lots of online resources
about how to get under the hood and fix things. You can even
replace system executables with your own, if it doesn't do what
you want. In Windows, basically the hood is welded shut, and if
there's a bug in system software, you're basically screwed.
Plus, Linux software generally are much more resilient to
customization, so I can customize the heck out of my system and
make it resemble nothing anyone else would know how to use.
Replace system components with alternatives. Dispense with GUI
bloatware altogether and install ratpoison. Kill off the
rodent. Use Adam's graphical terminal. Streamline everything
to suit the way I work.
In Windows, even something so trivially simple as changing to
lazy focus causes tons of programs to break left, right and
center, because everything is built around a set of implicit
assumptions of how the user is supposed to use the PC. Trying
to do anything other than the "Windows way" is an exercise in
frustration. Not to mention those endless menus hidden inside
submenus that give me an aneurysm just trying to find that one
obscure checkbox that may or may not exist and may or may not
do what I want. Whereas on Linux I just edit a system config
file, restart a daemon or two, and off I go. No need for my
hands to ever leave the keyboard.
The Ubuntu printer install isn't any better than Microsoft's.
I wonder what it is about printers. I can plug in USB drives,
internal drives, all sorts of things, and they just work.
Even when it's working, the simplest things fail. I learned to
never queue a second job until the first one is completely
finished, else it botches up both jobs.
It's not like it's a weird printer, either. It's an HP
LaserJet, fer chrissakes.
Haha, yes, this is one of the annoying things about Linux. You
have to be careful about what hardware you buy, 'cos some
hardware doesn't have drivers, or only has proprietary drivers
(which are inevitably horribly out of date or somehow
incompatible with your system unless you have 100% the exact
hardware environment and software settings they used to test it
15 years ago), or worse, just no driver at all. If you're
lucky, there's a generic driver for it, but be prepared for
malfunctions, missing features, or just outright breakage.
When you get the right hardware, things Just Work. But when you
don't, it's an endless journey of pain.
You'd think distros like Ubuntu ought to have gotten their act
together in this respect, but sometimes it's still a shot in
the dark... Plus, I hate the default Ubuntu install because it
comes with all sorts of cruft I'm not interested in. I rather
just install a plain vanilla no-frills Debian base system, then
add individual components that I actually need, as I need them.
A couple of years ago I got a new PC with Ubuntu preinstalled,
and the first thing I did upon bootup was to uninstall the
default GUI and a whole bunch of useless stuff, change
/etc/apt/sources.list to point to the Debian repo instead, and
install the exact packages that I need. Now it has been
transmogrified into a custom Debian system, and I like it that
way. :-P
I had much better result with SuSE than with Mint (i.e. an Ubuntu
based distro) concerning hardware support. On Linux impossible to
get my Samsung Laser Printer and my Canon scanner to work. The
laser printer would only ever print one page with the message
that it can't print, bummer. On SuSE in worked out of the box.
The annoying thing with SuSE was that it installed sys partition
with btrfs, on small partition it is problematic because the
snapshoting could fill it up until breakage, annoying.
