Percent of PCs with .NET framework installed?

[Trond]

In italic, then: The problem is, Linux sucks.

Or, certain people assume they know everything when in reality they know close to nothing!

Well:
- Monolithic kernel which means that a driver bug can (and does) take the entire system down

Yeah, like any OS, monolithic or microkernel, can prevent a driver bug from taking the entire system down... Here's a hint: protected mode doesn't work once hardware gets involved (drivers interface to hardware, FYI).

Here's another hint: With a proper microkernel the drivers run in userspace processes and do not need unrestricted access to the hardware.

- Unfrozen kernel ABI, which means that drivers must be compiled for your particular kernel, which means that vendors can't easily create stable drivers without a lot of maintenance work

The ABI is not *intentionally* not frozen to discourage people from maintaining "drivers" outside the mainline kernel tree. This is because any driver maintained outside the main tree is generally either 1) horrible code anyway, or 2) a violation of the copyright terms Linux is distributed under. When this isn't the case, a driver will be merged and included with any standard kernel distribution, thus avoiding any ABI issues.

1) And why is that? Because no serious actor writes drivers for linux because...
2) How the terms linux is distributed under applies to software that is not bundled with linux is beyond me.

- X is a client-server system that effectively kills screen performance

How does it kill performance at all? Cite some sources. When the X11 programs are on the same computer as the display, the protocol uses UNIX sockets, which are completely local and don't have the overhead of TCP/IP. For programs that demand low-latency drawing, X11 extensions such as Xv and DRI/GLX allow the local application to bypass the socket layer completely and draw directly the the screen.

Firstly, it's not necessary to cite source for something that you can see just by starting the program (X). But if you really want a benchmark: http://www.rocklyte.com/athene/benchmarks.html

- In addition to X, GTk, the de facto GUI toolkit, is roughly twice as slow as the Windows API even without drawing anything.

Yes, GTK sucks. But with the rest of your "points", you prove that GTK is *not* the de facto GUI toolkit. Qt's toolkit, on the other hand, is far more mature and has no such speed issues.

God's own distro (according to kale) uses GTk as standard. So does Red Hat's distro. And guess what? Novell's distro has Gnome as the default DE.

- Missing web browser integration: No linux web browser exists that uses native GTk widgets.

Konqueror is the most standards compliant web browser today and, guess what, uses native Qt widgets!

Opera supports more css than any other browser.

- Missing office suite integration: No linux office suite suitable for large work (like OpenOffice) exists that uses native GTk widgets.

KOffice works just fine and again, uses native Qt widgets!

If it works just fine, why does the official faq say otherwise?
http://www.koffice.org/faq/#CanIwritemy ... swithKWord

- Missing standardised software installation procedure

As if this problem is specific to any OS? There is no cross-platform installation procedure, period. A Windows installer will not work on OSX, nor will an OSX installer work on Fedora. Nor will a Fedora installer work on Kubuntu.

A Windows 3.11 installer will work on Windows XP. A backwards compatibility of several years. A Windows NT installer worked on Windows 9.x. Compatibility across different kernels. An installer for Ubuntu doesn't work on Fedora. Incompatiblity across the SAME kernel, SAME GUI toolkit, the SAME processor, the SAME standard libraries and so on.

Keep in mind that Linux is just *one* small part of the OS, and has absolutely nothing to do with software installation.

Distributing an operating system in small parts isn't a very good idea in my opinion.

- Missing graphics program suitable for serious work (GIMP doesn't even have CMYK support (!))

Try Krita. It supports CMYK, and uses *gasp* native Qt widgets!

I will try Krita.

- Font rendering of small serif fonts is dreadful

This is not a technical problem, but rather a legal problem in the United States. Bytecode and subpixel rendering of TrueType fonts is patented and for an OS to distribute these capabilities would leave them open to lawsuits from someone (probably Microsoft). The only legal workaround is for the end user to recompile TrueType with the patented code enabled themselves.

It's not a legal problem where I live. Also, RiscOS renders fonts VERY well. They don't use any copyrighted bytecode interpreters.

- File type system is not broken, it's absent

WTF does this even mean??

I forgot a word. I meant the association of file types to programs. It's not consistent and often simply wrong.

Yeah, sure, as if the OS can provide support for hardware when the vendors refuse to provide documentation of it (yes, often Linux *does* support these, but only through hours if not months of reverse engineering). If your WiFi doesn't work in Linux, it is due to either the chipset being extremely new, or the vendor intentionally not cooperating with the Linux developers.

The problem is NOT that the wifi does not work. The problem is that Linux distros CLAIM it will work WHILE they know very well that it doesn't (or don't they read their bug reports?). Besides, the company has released the driver under the GPL. Firmware is not necessary.

can't edit documents (neither AbiWord nor OpenOffice can render serif fonts properly, dragging the middle right handle on a picture to make it wider makes it shorter in AbiWord), can't edit graphics for print,

Please explain how fonts looking slightly less pretty makes it impossible to edit documents.

It's not "slightly" less.

can't reinstall (ubuntu's *debootstraps doesn't actually work with ubuntu(!)),

Oh, no! So why don't you try reinstalling like you would any other OS? That is, boot off the install CD and start from scratch.

Maybe because my cdrom was broken. That being said just as many distros boots as those which don't. Fedora, as an example, always gives a kernel panic.

can't extract files without having them deleted (did you try tar recently?),

User error, I'm sure.

It has in fact happened both when I used tar manually and when I used a GUI program to extract the tar file. The GUI program does not delete any other files when they are extracted.

Add to all of that...

- Its very unfriendly

If someone has never used a computer in any form before in their life, KDE and probably even GNOME would both be far easier to learn than Windows's poor interface.

Sure, both KDE and GNOME are easier than using Windows. How important is that when checking "Enable" in the gnome network manager hangs the entire computer? Extracting files from an archive deletes the archive? Hibernating deletes files that weren't sync'ed from the terminal? When touchpad precision sucks? When the easy-to-use resolution applet in GNOME does not display your monitor's native resolution in the list?

- No standardized GUI

So developers usually have to produce two or more versions of their programs or decide on one of the GUI's loose the users of the one they didn't choose as potential customers.

Do OSX and Windows have a standardized GUI? Seriously, you people love to keep double standards, don't you?

Yes, Windows has a standardized GUI in the API. OSX has a standardized set of GUI widgets and windows as well (called Cocoa). Linux has GTk, QT, wxWidgets, wine's widgets, motif, lesstif, x-forms, FLTK, GnuSTEP, TK, XUL and EFL just to name a few. None of these are standard.

Just go attempt to download the binaries for some linux program and you get all kinds of choices. Binaries for Debian, SuSE, RedHat, Ubunto, etc., etc,. etc. and a separate binary for different versions of each. What a nightmare!

You don't see that in the Windows world and if you do its usually divided between DOS based (95/98/98SE/ME) or NT based (NT4/2000/XP/Vista).

Windows is one operating system. "Linux" is a whole category of operating systems. Big difference.

Windows 95 and Windows NT are two very different operating system with completely different kernels.

[Trond]

(This is a default setup)

Edit:
Just now I tried to open a pdf document in evince. Evince opens and closes without any error message. When it is run from the console it does however print an error message to the console.
1) Why can't a GUI application display errors in a message box?
2) The error is "Out of memory". The pdf file is only 821 kb. I have 250 mb free memory.

[bembulak]

Why can't a GUI application display errors in a message box?

You can't use it in the shell for further working. You can "pipe" (|) this output with whatever you want and this is it's strength. Might not look important in this case, but somtimes the output is long and you can get a lot from it's output.
Next, evince seems to be coded in C or C++ so it seems to be "std.err", this is usual and makes sense too.

[thefool]

Why can't a GUI application display errors in a message box?

You can't use it in the shell for further working. You can "pipe" (|) this output with whatever you want and this is it's strength. Might not look important in this case, but somtimes the output is long and you can get a lot from it's output.
Next, evince seems to be coded in C or C++ so it seems to be "std.err", this is usual and makes sense too.

So this make linux any more usefull/easy how?

[Rescator]

The problem is Linux is schizophrenic.
As Trond stated, there's like several dozen GUI systems.
If it was reduced to one official "standard" a lot of issues would be solved.

Windows (and Mac as well I'm sure) has a user interface style guide document (or several), does such exist at all for Linux?

Linux is a great example of open source, where thousands come together to build a OS, but it also shows the downside of thousands making a OS as open source.

Some sort of Linux Standardization Board is needed,
so that a GUI standard can be chosen and improved further on, likewise with various other parts of the OS.
A user interface style guide for Linux is needed.
Guidelines for various other OS parts would also be needed.

Microsoft for example have their very own department that only focuses on making sure all other teams/departments follow the design guides if I recall correctly.
(silly things still slip through though)

How many Linux flavors are there currently? 10? 20? 30?
And do any of these actually follow any design guidelines or compatibility guidelines?
Sadly no. If they had, then Windows would probably have been killed by Linux many years ago. (and I would have applauded it) and the majority games would have been available for Linux etc as well. Microsoft may even have been forced to make a Microsoft Linux.

This would mean that all Linux would have the same core, but each "company" would make OS Suits. (kinda like now but much much better standards) Java programs would be a part of history as all programs/games executables would work across all Linux systems be it Microsoft Linux, Apple Linux or Sun Linux etc.

I just hope such a ideal will come true one day.

[Kale]

The problem is Linux is schizophrenic.
As Trond stated, there's like several dozen GUI systems.
If it was reduced to one official "standard" a lot of issues would be solved.

Windows (and Mac as well I'm sure) has a user interface style guide document (or several), does such exist at all for Linux?

Linux is a great example of open source, where thousands come together to build a OS, but it also shows the downside of thousands making a OS as open source.

Some sort of Linux Standardization Board is needed,
so that a GUI standard can be chosen and improved further on, likewise with various other parts of the OS.
A user interface style guide for Linux is needed.
Guidelines for various other OS parts would also be needed.

Microsoft for example have their very own department that only focuses on making sure all other teams/departments follow the design guides if I recall correctly.
(silly things still slip through though)

How many Linux flavors are there currently? 10? 20? 30?
And do any of these actually follow any design guidelines or compatibility guidelines?
Sadly no. If they had, then Windows would probably have been killed by Linux many years ago. (and I would have applauded it) and the majority games would have been available for Linux etc as well. Microsoft may even have been forced to make a Microsoft Linux.

This would mean that all Linux would have the same core, but each "company" would make OS Suits. (kinda like now but much much better standards) Java programs would be a part of history as all programs/games executables would work across all Linux systems be it Microsoft Linux, Apple Linux or Sun Linux etc.

I just hope such a ideal will come true one day.

One word, Ubuntu.

[bembulak]

Linux is built on the idea of _freedom_.
So you're free to use the enviroment, you want. And, honestly, _every_ greater UI on Linux is good to use, it's just a matter of taste. And even the small windowmanagers like wmi, ratpoisen, .. are great to deal with, when you've learned how to use it.

Also the choice of toolkit is a matter of taste. But the toolkits also have nothing to do with the idea of havin a shell. If there was one standard UI, Linux soon would be come like OSX or M$.

Some sort of Linux Standardization Board is needed

This exists, or how would you think thousands of coders all over the world could build up such a system?

A user interface style guide for Linux is needed.
Guidelines for various other OS parts would also be needed.

Also existing. Gnome and KDE for example even have styleguides for the Icons and Images used in the UI.

How many Linux flavors are there currently?

Uncountable since you can use LFS (Linux from Scratch) and build up a system from sources (to fit _your_ needs).

So this make linux any more usefull/easy how?

To me it makes more sense to read a std.err output (that I can parse or pipe) than this:

or this

If you want to google for this, you have to type the error yourself. You can't even copy and paste it.
I can do that on Linux (if it ever happens).

What is also attractive on a shell? I can use my linux box 100% with the keyboard and do not need a mouse. The shell is damn fast... and so on.

[Kiffi]

If you want to google for this, you have to type the error yourself. You can't even copy and paste it.

Ctrl + C works in most cases to copy the requester-text to the clipboard. Did
you ever try this?

Greetings ... Kiffi

[bembulak]

Hm, I did not know, that Ctrl+c works with message boxes.
What a shame.

[Tipperton]

If you want to google for this, you have to type the error yourself. You can't even copy and paste it.

If that's a standard message box, while it is the active window, if you press Ctrl-C (copy), this will be copied as text to the clipboard:

---------------------------
BINOPC.EXE - Application Error
---------------------------
The excepton unknown software excepnon (0x000006be) occured in the application at location 0x77e1fc31
---------------------------
OK Cancel
---------------------------

Hi Kiffi!

[Luke-Jr]

Good thing you agree in you can say whats usefull for him. Now let me tell you something, most companies don't care a damn if its platform dependant or not. They just want something that works! And .net works (most of the time).

Yes, it's true-- most companies don't care enough about quality and things being done right.

Well:
- Monolithic kernel which means that a driver bug can (and does) take the entire system down

Yeah, like any OS, monolithic or microkernel, can prevent a driver bug from taking the entire system down... Here's a hint: protected mode doesn't work once hardware gets involved (drivers interface to hardware, FYI).

Here's another hint: With a proper microkernel the drivers run in userspace processes and do not need unrestricted access to the hardware.

Drivers cannot run in userspace and need access to hardware. What do you think they're for? Accessing hardware.

- Unfrozen kernel ABI, which means that drivers must be compiled for your particular kernel, which means that vendors can't easily create stable drivers without a lot of maintenance work

The ABI is not *intentionally* not frozen to discourage people from maintaining "drivers" outside the mainline kernel tree. This is because any driver maintained outside the main tree is generally either 1) horrible code anyway, or 2) a violation of the copyright terms Linux is distributed under. When this isn't the case, a driver will be merged and included with any standard kernel distribution, thus avoiding any ABI issues.

1) And why is that? Because no serious actor writes drivers for linux because...

Nope. It's because those maintained outside the tree are merged unless the code sucks. As for why some have crappy code, it's usually those which are company-sponsored, and again, companies don't care about quality.

2) How the terms linux is distributed under applies to software that is not bundled with linux is beyond me.

Due to Linux's design, drivers are inherently derivative works of Linux.

- X is a client-server system that effectively kills screen performance

How does it kill performance at all? Cite some sources. When the X11 programs are on the same computer as the display, the protocol uses UNIX sockets, which are completely local and don't have the overhead of TCP/IP. For programs that demand low-latency drawing, X11 extensions such as Xv and DRI/GLX allow the local application to bypass the socket layer completely and draw directly the the screen.

Firstly, it's not necessary to cite source for something that you can see just by starting the program (X). But if you really want a benchmark: http://www.rocklyte.com/athene/benchmarks.html

Benchmarks don't quite cut it either-- the latency can easily be implementation rather than design. You were attacking the design. Also, note the benchmarks don't compare with Xv or OpenGL, which would be used if low-latency was needed.

- In addition to X, GTk, the de facto GUI toolkit, is roughly twice as slow as the Windows API even without drawing anything.

Yes, GTK sucks. But with the rest of your "points", you prove that GTK is *not* the de facto GUI toolkit. Qt's toolkit, on the other hand, is far more mature and has no such speed issues.

God's own distro (according to kale) uses GTk as standard. So does Red Hat's distro. And guess what? Novell's distro has Gnome as the default DE.

And guess what? kale is wrong and RedHat/Novell suck. Big deal. As I pointed out, you already proved below that GTK is not de facto standard.

- Missing web browser integration: No linux web browser exists that uses native GTk widgets.

Konqueror is the most standards compliant web browser today and, guess what, uses native Qt widgets!

Opera supports more css than any other browser.

Opera may very well be close, but it was not the first or even second to pass ACID2. Or are you not counting correctness of the rendering?

- Missing office suite integration: No linux office suite suitable for large work (like OpenOffice) exists that uses native GTk widgets.

KOffice works just fine and again, uses native Qt widgets!

If it works just fine, why does the official faq say otherwise?
http://www.koffice.org/faq/#CanIwritemy ... swithKWord

Explain how that says otherwise in any way?

- Missing standardised software installation procedure

As if this problem is specific to any OS? There is no cross-platform installation procedure, period. A Windows installer will not work on OSX, nor will an OSX installer work on Fedora. Nor will a Fedora installer work on Kubuntu.

A Windows 3.11 installer will work on Windows XP. A backwards compatibility of several years. A Windows NT installer worked on Windows 9.x. Compatibility across different kernels. An installer for Ubuntu doesn't work on Fedora. Incompatiblity across the SAME kernel, SAME GUI toolkit, the SAME processor, the SAME standard libraries and so on.

An installation program is the lack of a proper package manager, so your NT/9x example is flawed from the start. Either way, Windows is a single OS that Microsoft has had lots of revisions of, and sells with varying degrees of restrictions. On the other hand, Ubuntu and Fedora are two very different OS designed in parellel competitively.

Keep in mind that Linux is just *one* small part of the OS, and has absolutely nothing to do with software installation.

Distributing an operating system in small parts isn't a very good idea in my opinion.

Hence why most operating systems aren't distributed in small parts. My point is that "Linux" is not an operating system. "Ubuntu" is. "Fedora" is. But they are different operating systems that just happen to share a lot of common software.

- Font rendering of small serif fonts is dreadful

This is not a technical problem, but rather a legal problem in the United States. Bytecode and subpixel rendering of TrueType fonts is patented and for an OS to distribute these capabilities would leave them open to lawsuits from someone (probably Microsoft). The only legal workaround is for the end user to recompile TrueType with the patented code enabled themselves.

It's not a legal problem where I live.

A legal problem in the US is going to affect anyone outside the US today, as annoying as this may seem.

- File type system is not broken, it's absent

WTF does this even mean??

I forgot a word. I meant the association of file types to programs. It's not consistent and often simply wrong.

Linux doesn't do this, period. Some applications use file extensions like Windows does. Some use magic. I think KDE uses both.

Yeah, sure, as if the OS can provide support for hardware when the vendors refuse to provide documentation of it (yes, often Linux *does* support these, but only through hours if not months of reverse engineering). If your WiFi doesn't work in Linux, it is due to either the chipset being extremely new, or the vendor intentionally not cooperating with the Linux developers.

The problem is NOT that the wifi does not work. The problem is that Linux distros CLAIM it will work WHILE they know very well that it doesn't (or don't they read their bug reports?). Besides, the company has released the driver under the GPL. Firmware is not necessary.

Never heard of this problem. Maybe it's an isolated case.

can't reinstall (ubuntu's *debootstraps doesn't actually work with ubuntu(!)),

Oh, no! So why don't you try reinstalling like you would any other OS? That is, boot off the install CD and start from scratch.

Maybe because my cdrom was broken.

So do a fair comparison-- how would you reinstall Windows with a broken cdrom?

Add to all of that...

- Its very unfriendly

If someone has never used a computer in any form before in their life, KDE and probably even GNOME would both be far easier to learn than Windows's poor interface.

Sure, both KDE and GNOME are easier than using Windows. How important is that when checking "Enable" in the gnome network manager hangs the entire computer? Extracting files from an archive deletes the archive? Hibernating deletes files that weren't sync'ed from the terminal? When touchpad precision sucks? When the easy-to-use resolution applet in GNOME does not display your monitor's native resolution in the list?

So don't use GNOME if it's that buggy still. But bugs like this are not usability issues.

- No standardized GUI

So developers usually have to produce two or more versions of their programs or decide on one of the GUI's loose the users of the one they didn't choose as potential customers.

Do OSX and Windows have a standardized GUI? Seriously, you people love to keep double standards, don't you?

Yes, Windows has a standardized GUI in the API. OSX has a standardized set of GUI widgets and windows as well (called Cocoa). Linux has GTk, QT, wxWidgets, wine's widgets, motif, lesstif, x-forms, FLTK, GnuSTEP, TK, XUL and EFL just to name a few. None of these are standard.

I meant that you're comparing different things again. Windows has their API; OSX has theirs. Neither are compatible. Likewise, Ubuntu has GTK and Knoppix has Qt. Not compatible, but at least they can run programs designed for the other. You can't run a Windows app in OSX at all. Each OS has a native toolkit, and those apps fit in properly. The question is what happens when the OS encounters an app designed for a non-native system. *nix systems happily execute these. Windows won't even make the attempt to run an OSX app.

Just go attempt to download the binaries for some linux program and you get all kinds of choices. Binaries for Debian, SuSE, RedHat, Ubunto, etc., etc,. etc. and a separate binary for different versions of each. What a nightmare!

You don't see that in the Windows world and if you do its usually divided between DOS based (95/98/98SE/ME) or NT based (NT4/2000/XP/Vista).

Windows is one operating system. "Linux" is a whole category of operating systems. Big difference.

Windows 95 and Windows NT are two very different operating system with completely different kernels.

As if kernels define the entire OS.
Either way, you did mention that 95/NT often have different versions of programs. And both certainly share the same package manager, so yes, the packages are compatible too. Last I checked, a Debian package has a very good chance of working on Ubuntu.

[Kale]

And guess what? kale is wrong

No i'm not! Ubuntu is God's own distro! It rocks so much even Chuck Norris uses it!

[milan1612]

And guess what? kale is wrong

No i'm not! Ubuntu is God's own distro! It rocks so much even Chuck Norris uses it!

[Trond]

Bembulak:

CLEARLY the second one is better. Not getting the error message at all (like when it's piped to a non-existing console or not displayed) is obviously inferior to getting it displayed. Who do you think you're fooling?
Also, Ctrl+C copies the message box contents on Windows. It does NOT do that on Linux...

What is also attractive on a shell? I can use my linux box 100% with the keyboard and do not need a mouse. The shell is damn fast... and so on.

And I can use computer with Windows 100% with the keyboard and do not need a mouse ... except when I'm using Linux, under which keyboard navigation is in a very sad state. No wonder you prefer the shell! 99% of consumers will, however, want a graphical interface.

Luke:
It runs drivers in userspace: http://www.minix3.org/
How can you say that GTk is not the standard when 53% uses GNOME or Xfce and only 35% uses KDE with QT?
Opera was the first browser with a public release that passed the acid2 test including the scrollbar.
If you say that Ubuntu packages can't be used on Fedora because Ubuntu is a separate operating system, why on earth can't Ubuntu packages from Ubuntu run on Ubuntu?

So don't use GNOME if it's that buggy still. But bugs like this are not usability issues.

Most of these are kernel and X issues. And I simply explained why Linux sucks even if it's easy to use. But hey! Doesn't easy to use imply that it's actually possible to use it? That's not possible when enabling a network connection hangs the computer, is it?

I meant that you're comparing different things again. Windows has their API; OSX has theirs. Neither are compatible. Likewise, Ubuntu has GTK and Knoppix has Qt. Not compatible, but at least they can run programs designed for the other. You can't run a Windows app in OSX at all. Each OS has a native toolkit, and those apps fit in properly. The question is what happens when the OS encounters an app designed for a non-native system. *nix systems happily execute these. Windows won't even make the attempt to run an OSX app.

A QT application compiled for windows will use native OS widgets. That same for OS X. But when a QT application is compiled for Linux it draws its own widgets.

Last I checked, a Debian package has a very good chance of working on Ubuntu.

Last time I checked, a Debian package (that was statically linked to avoid library version conflicts) segfaulted on Zenwalk (slackware-like).

[electrochrisso]

According to the Australian software developer employment opportunities, it looks like to me that dot net is just about the only way to go if you want to get into the industry. It enables large companies to shuffle programmers around the country and continuously lower the standards of pay and still produce shockingly over bloated, non user friendly business applications that look like they were created back in the eighties using DOS.

I have got Visual Studio 6 Enterprise, which I think is not too bad, but no where near as good as PB. and I have Visual Studio dot net which sits in my cupboard because I hated it and hate Microsoft's rip off techniques when it comes to updates. Thats how big boy billy made his money, he is more of a Richie rich self centered business tycoon than a programmer.

By the way I lost my MSDN 98 disks anyone know where I could get a copy of these. I do have the dot net ones but it looks like there is no easy way to get VS6 to work with them.