Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2016 edition

Edward78 · 18 Sep 2016 at 06:21

http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html Makes lots of seeeense, if Windows 10 didn't spy it might be ok to just use that... It would still be virus/malware prone though... I thought linux was better, but that article has some great points, is there a better OS that is secure & easy to use? AKA a secure windows...

JRS · 18 Sep 2016 at 17:13

You want a secure OS, just run with no network connection whatsoever.

Boom, secure :cool:

Meanwhile in the real world - Windows 10 is barely any worse for reporting back to home than Google is for tracking your every move, both Windows and Linux in its myriad forms are a lot less irritating than Apple's OSX, and Ubuntu is pretty solid on 95% of the hardware out there in daily use. I'm currently running 16.04 on an ancient Sony Vaio - WiFi worked out of the box, the performance is fine, it just sits there happily clattering away as a web browsing and emailing machine for upstairs.

joeyjojo · 19 Sep 2016 at 08:46

The author/s must be a bit deranged to have written such a fuming article about an operating system. Some people have too much time on their hands I suppose.

JRS said:
Meanwhile in the real world - Windows 10 is barely any worse for reporting back to home than Google is for tracking your every move...

A bit like saying smoking cigarettes is fine because they're only slightly more likely to cause cancer than cigars.

JRS · 19 Sep 2016 at 12:13

joeyjojo said:
A bit like saying smoking cigarettes is fine because they're only slightly more likely to cause cancer than cigars.

True enough

But look how many people whine and stamp their feet about how 'evil' Windows 10 is, while at the same time handing over every detail of their life to Google, Facebook et al

Edward78 · 19 Sep 2016 at 20:56

JRS said:
True enough But look how many people whine and stamp their feet about how 'evil' Windows 10 is, while at the same time handing over every detail of their life to Google, Facebook et al

You have choice in info you provide to Google/Facebook, just stay of the sites if you are major paranoid... When you have Win10, the keylogger is always there, the mic gets recorded & webcam... Desktops you can unplug them, but not laptops... Want your bank info/credit card info being keylogged, not me... MS might use the keylogger with good intentions, but the logger is there for the hacker to cath the info if they redirect the traffic...

JRS · 20 Sep 2016 at 09:15

*sigh*

Settings - Privacy - General - turn off "Send Microsoft info about how I write". Then under Speech, inking and typing hit the "Stop getting to know me" button. Makes Cortana utterly useless but that's no major loss.

stopper · 20 Sep 2016 at 11:12

JRS said:
*sigh*

snip

There is much more to it than those 2 things.

JRS · 20 Sep 2016 at 12:10

Yeah, fair enough. You can go a bit further and disable the telemetry and dmwappushsvc services which shuts down the telemetry engine entirely.

BlackAle · 21 Sep 2016 at 02:51

Edward78 said:
You have choice in info you provide to Google/Facebook, just stay of the sites if you are major paranoid... When you have Win10, the keylogger is always there, the mic gets recorded & webcam... Desktops you can unplug them, but not laptops... Want your bank info/credit card info being keylogged, not me... MS might use the keylogger with good intentions, but the logger is there for the hacker to cath the info if they redirect the traffic...

What a load of paranoid nonsense.

joeyjojo · 21 Sep 2016 at 09:14

BlackAle said:
What a load of paranoid nonsense.

Do you have total trust in Microsoft?

Neither you or I can disprove the assertions in Edward78's post, since the source code for Windows 10 is not public.

I agree it seems unlikely, but there's no way of knowing for certain.

Vonhelmet · 21 Sep 2016 at 13:48

joeyjojo said:
The author/s must be a bit deranged to have written such a fuming article about an operating system. Some people have too much time on their hands I suppose.

Not really. It comes across as someone who is passionate about Linux and is legitimately frustrated that some problems persist for years and years.

joeyjojo · 21 Sep 2016 at 16:14

Vonhelmet said:
Not really. It comes across as someone who is passionate about Linux and is legitimately frustrated that some problems persist for years and years.

I assume you're ignoring the 'Rant' section half way down. Did you find anything sensible in there? The opening lines read

Sometimes I have reasons to say that indeed Linux ******* sucks **** and I do hate it. Lennart Poettering doesn't give a flying f*ck about how I want to use my system, and I don't even want to mention that those two things used to work previously.

That's not passionate, it's pathetic.

But really the fact that the author blames so many things that aren't Linux on Linux is what really sets alarm bells ringing for me.

Just looking at item 1 (Hardware support) point 1, for example, the fault is mostly with Nvidia and AMD (note the author has written ATI several times), not 'Linux', because they haven't/won't provide free drivers and therefore require developers to reverse-engineer big chunks of functionality.

Other complaints I can see are with X.org and mesa, which are independent projects unrelated to Linux (they're not even 'for' Linux, both work with various BSDs too). The section goes on whining about support from other manufacturers including Nvidia (again), Creative, Lexmark, and Canon. Writing that products from these manufacturers should 'just work' and blaming Linux developers seems to unfairly exonerate these companies for not contributing to the support of their products. These things work on Windows for the obvious reason that the companies have developed drivers for Windows. :rolleyes:

The only really legitimate point I can see in that entire first section is about ALSA, which is part of the Linux kernel.

Dressing up a very wide collection of gripes about FOSS as an article of 'major Linux problems' shows the author either badly misunderstands the nature of the things he/she is criticising, or is hunting for clicks, or is deranged (or some combination of these).

A.N.Other · 21 Sep 2016 at 19:40

Meh Arch solves many / most of these things for me.

lamboman · 23 Sep 2016 at 21:21

The author is viewing these issues from the perspective of an "average Joe" who views Linux as an ecosystem, combing an "operating system" (i.e. a collection of various distributions) and commonly associated projects, regardless of whether they are Linux specific or not. Quite frankly, from a desktop perspective this isn't an unreasonable thing to do, and many of the issues that have been mentioned are perfectly valid. Aforementioned Joe Average (or his slightly more technically inclined counterpart) isn't likely to go round swapping init systems or similar. View this as "running some form of Linux as a desktop operating system", and it makes perfect sense.

A.N.Other said:
Meh Arch solves many / most of these things for me.

I'd argue that Arch (and similar barebones distributions) solve these issues by avoiding them altogether, whether that be through a lack of default configuration (the entire point of a DIY distribution like Arch) or because it's somewhat common for at least some users of these distributions to avoid some of the problematic projects altogether; for example, you can't have many issues with GUI applications (desktop environments, poor GUI network management, poor documentation) when you're living in the CLI