On Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:50:39 -0400, Jeff Glatt wrote:
>>Moshe Goldfarb <brick.n.straw@gmail.com>
>>Linux and the Linux community is a ball of confusion
>
> Overall, yes. But then, any sufficiently large demographic seems confused to me
> because... well, people can be really, really different from each other.
Linux needs some organization because it's obvious that everyone is doing
their own thing and no clear "winner" has emerged, except maybe
Ubuntu/Debian.
There has to be a focus to fix what is wrong with Linux rather than
releasing even more broken distributions.
>>filled with hateful, arrogant people
>
> If you're talking about the "I hate MS and everything associated with it"
> brigade, then yeah, those folks are really annoying and useless. Also, the
> Linux "unpaid salesmen" (typically referred to as "fanbois") are really
> annoying, because they're more interested in selling you on their particular
> pet distro than actually being honest and helpful. They also almost always
> belong to the aforementioned brigade, which makes them doubly useless.
You've just described COLA to the letter.
There are a couple of PAID fanbois in COLA as well though.
> The annoyance of too many Ubuntu fanbois helped convince me to switch to
> Debian. I just found Debian to a more serious distro where you can find good
> help without having to endure fanbois as much. I was able to put together a
> Debian system to do exactly what I wanted easier than with Ubuntu.
Agreed.
I think they should rename their trees though because the stable/unstable
etc stuff is confusing.
>>and which has no direction or leadership.
>
> Overall yes. But see my comment above about large demographics.
>
>>Everyone is free to do their own thing, which is fine if you wish to remain
>>like the above.
>>However if Linux ever has a hope of challenging Microsoft for the desktop
>>it is going to have to reign in the confusion and become organized, even if
>>it is loosely organized at first.
>
>>They can start with why the need for so many different package managers.
>
> Yeah, that really needs to be addressed. I read an article about a guy who
> proposed to have an API added to Linux to aid in the installation of software.
> He got a bunch of developers of various package managers together, and got some
> feedback from them. The conclusion seemed to be that most of them were planning
> to simply keep doing things their own way, weren't all that interested in a
> standard Linux API for installation purposes, and didn't really have much of an
> interest in working on a more common solution. C'est la vie. So what we have is
> a bunch of package systems, and app developers who don't support them all
> because it's too much of a pain in the ass.
This is called "choice" in COLA.
While technically it is choice, it is also confusing and not helping the
Linux cause at all.
Fragmentation is not a good thing for Linux.
Too many Indians and not enough Chiefs IMHO.
> When I package my software, I make a deb, and that's it. It's not that I have
> anything against other package managers, but I happen to use apt-based distros,
> and I just don't have the time nor inclination to bother with the package
> managers of other distros. If those folks don't want to make it easier for me,
> then I'm not interested in them.
>
>>Then they can move to why they need 15 different sound systems.
>
> Because nearly all of them have their flaws, being designed by people who have
> some good ideas, but unfortunately, do not seem to choose to have those ideas
> peer reviewed by appropriate people (other sound developers, musicians, etc)
> before coding starts. This is a really big problem with lots of open source
> development. People start coding without taking the extra step of first writing
> up some sort of detailed documentation about how the API will work, and getting
> that peer-reviewed by other folks who could give good feedback (and maybe
> propose some changes that will head off a lot of future dissatisfaction with
> the finished code, and forestall a reason for those other dissatisfied folks to
> start their own sound system. For some reason, those other dissatisfied folks
> repeat the same mistake of not doing what the first programmer should have
> done).
This is where "pooling resources" would help Linux.
The idea is that people want to play/record/edit sounds.
They don't want to have to play with various Linux sound systems and they
certainly don't need the different sound systems all competing for
interrupts and thus resulting in no sound at all.
IOW playing two sounds from two different applications at once is a crap
shoot depending upon which sound system is active.
We've all seen the /dev/dspx is in use by another program/process message.
This just doesn't happen under Windows unless you are using some high end
package like Nuendo which assumes it is the only application using the
sound subsystem.
IOW it's highly unlikely a musician would be listening to streaming radio
while mixing or recording his latest project
> I always write up the docs for my software before I even start coding. I
> *never* use any sort of utility that creates docs from comments in the source
> code, and I think that stuff should be outlawed because it encourages people to
> fail to do enough "flow charting" and proper peer review before they start
> coding.
That's another Linux problem, documentation.
Either the docs are too minimul (ie:The File menu contains, etc )
or they are too complex.
And then there is the tons of outdated How-To's and so forth on the net as
well as specific doc for each individual distribution and now you have a
giant mess.
>>Why so many different native file systems.
>
> Probably for the same reasons as above.
Yep.
Everyone is doing their own thing.
Except maybe Hans Reiser who will be doing what he is told for the rest of
his life, most likely.
>>They should take the best of the best, meld it into ONE TOTALLY WORKING
>>distribution and then put all the other stuff in a repository free to
>>download if anyone wants to.
>
>>But the Linux community won't allow this because they cry "we want
>>choice!!"
>
> I'm sort of with you here. But actually I want more real choice. What I'm
> getting with Linux is a bunch of choices that are, to me, pretty much all the
> same thing. For example, I don't want a choice between a GUI API that runs atop
> of X (and inherents its inherent limitations and design flaws) such as Gnome,
> and another GUI API that runs atop of X too such as KDE. I want people to
> support more real choices, like instead of dividing up programming attention
> between those two, maybe support something that really is much more different
> (such as directfb). I don't want a choice between Pulse Audio (ick) or ALSA
> (better than Pulse Audio, but still with its problems -- problems that Pulse
> Audio inherents because it rides on top of ALSA). I want a choice between sound
> systems that really do have a radically different approach. Etc.
We agree.
I also see a need for the targeted distributions like DSL (low resource
systems) or the firewall on a floppy distribution (I can't remember it's
name but it is very good), audio recording based distributions are ok as
well.
It's the distributions that are nothing but graphics, maybe a different
menu strutcture etc that are confusing things because they are so close to
the versions they are based on.
How many Ubunut offshoots are there?
There must be at least 100 of those alone.
> There are way, way too many Linux "choices" that are far too similiar, have the
> same basic set of features and limitations, and seem to exist simply because
> people aren't collaborating better. I'd rather see more collaboration among
> people who are doing pretty much the same thing, and encourage "choice" where
> it really offers something significantly different. The problem Linux has is
> that people aren't collaborating enough when they should, nor are they doing
> something significantly different when they should. We're getting choices that
> aren't enough of a choice.
The problem is they are reinventing the wheel over and over again and while
a particular distribution may solve one problem, it creates another problem
in the process and the cycle continues.
Your post is a fine one BTW Jeff.
The people in COLA could learn from your honesty and unbiased view of
things.
BTW when I make mention of Linux loons etc I am speaking of COLA and real
zealots. I'm not referring to Linux advocates in general because most of
them don't act like the loons in COLA do.
--
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Please visit The Hall of Linux Idiots:
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/