Linux Sucks 2020
lbry.tv
lbry.tv
(The about page was frustratingly hard to get to, I had to navigate through four pages before I got there.)
Their web video hosting seems to work well though.
> For the first week, Linux Sucks 2020 is only available (for free) via LBRY. (After one week it will become available everywhere else as well.) LBRY is a great fit for Linux Sucks – Open source and DRM-Free.
> You can watch Linux Sucks 2020, right now, the following ways:
> - straight from the LBRY.tv website
> - or (even better) you can install the LBRY application to download and play the DRM-Free video
But Linux is getting better! <3
It sucks a hell of a lot less than Linux's backwards compatibility. Hell, Linux has better compatibility with Windows software than it does its own older software!
You are given a binary for a GUI application, compiled in 2001. You drop the binary on your system and run it. If it is a Windows application, it has a much better chance of working fine on both Windows and Linux than it does on Linux alone if it is a Linux application!
In other words: it's at least as big a pain in the ass as getting the old binary working.
GNU/Linux: "We're changing the size of a struct, go recompile from source"
Windows: "After long deliberation, we have decided that 16-bit application support will be an optional feature that users have to install manually"
I've been saying for a long time that one of the beauties of Linux is that anyone and everyone can do their own thing but that can also be a weakness. You have thousands of incredible talented developers doing their own thing. If you piss off some of the talent on your own projects they'll leave and do their own thing. That's beautiful in a way but it does weaken the Linux desktop as a whole.
A benevolent dictator / vision is counterintuitive to the OSS spirit but it's priceless IMO.
As a Linux user I am a refugee from Windows. Expat now. They have dictators there, they've got resources, they switch development tools one after another. But somehow they failed. I knew nothing else but I could not stand that anymore.
So I switched and found my promised land, my distribution, my community. That was 12 years ago. I believe each distribution, each application starts from someone with vision. People flock if they like it. Top down approach usually harms - pulse audio and systemd community split still unresolved.
> my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader's name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.
Frank Herbert on Dune
Also vaguely poking fun at therapy as if it was a punishment for something is just plain immature.
Can you look at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ and easily point out those companies, that have a crucial business stake on Linux on the desktop? I can't.
Most people, who are paid to work on Linux and its surrounding ecosystem, are working for companies that are interested on Linux on servers / the cloud and I don't think that it is fair to criticize them for not joining the idealistic movement of bringing Linux onto more desktops.
I wouldn't mind paying as much for a Linux distro that just works as I would for Windows 10, or even double. But one can only dream. I've filed and commented on quite a few bugs only to have them ignored. The paid support for Ubuntu has a minimal order size of 10, so it's not really an option especially since I don't know how well it works. I wonder how big the market is for a paid Linux distro that just works.
Given the general user-unfriendliness of Linux desktop, I can see why so many people use Macbooks who work on Linux. Maybe the servers they work on run Linux. Can't really call the individuals 'dumb' though, like what the video does. At most the Linux 'organization' on the whole comprising these individuals, if there's such a thing, is 'dumb'.
Well, noone would stop us from donating that money. I'd personally like a Patreon-like system, if people donate enough they'll get better service, they reach some threshold, someone could be hired. Though it probably has a lot of nuances and would take a few years minimum to have a somewhat working system.
I'd really like to see an experiment like that.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong!
Baffling how he didn't manage to find that on google.
No, absolutely not.
For instance he talks about how Linux is now a pretty good OS for gaming, something which certainly hasn't always been true. He also talks about Stallman stepping down, and his concerns with what he perceives to be recent cultural changes in the FOSS world.
Stalin? Victory at any cost with no thought to the means to reach that end? Hurd? Just saying.
Just why?
Regarding backward compatibility (discussed around 32:00 in the video), do solutions like AppImage and Flatpak work for the examples he shows (the three proprietary games that were ported to Linux)?
If you use any complex system enough, whether that’s hardware based, software based, or people based, you’ll eventually get come up against all the pain-points.
Especially if you’re tired and / or under time constraints.
It's clear the guy isn't just some clueless Linux-hater.
That's not a "Linux on mobile" problem; it's a "Linux on anything embedded" problem, and steps are being taken to address it. You can run a close-to-mainline kernel already on some devices, it's just not the default. And work is ongoing to also port common non-mobile Linux userland setups to mobile, so that the same stack will eventually be useful for both. A lot of non-trivial work is involved.
You might have noticed that Android phones are supported at most for three years - that's because HW vendors refuse to maintain their drivers compatibility with lots of different kernel versions - it's expensive and takes a lot of work.
Once you have stable kernel APIs - you can write a driver once and forget about it for eternity.
AppImage and containers are just for hiding that tech debt.
The same is true for Docker: having a consistent environment is just very useful.
It might not be the main advertised purpose, but it's the result. Why bother updating some dependency when you can simply not? It makes sense not to, things could break.
[derp]
I'm going to try and phrase this as nicely as I can: I fervently disagree and sincerely hope your opinion is shared only by the smallest minority possible.
The point of computers is to be a tool for people to make their lives better. Being able to run software is better than not being able to run it. The more things a computer can do, the better.
Also, AppImage is great.
The more bugs you can encounter while using a piece of software is not a good thing. Security is increasingly important, running a lot of unmaintained software is a terrible thing for security. UI inconsistencies across software are not a good thing.
I dread the day I will encounter the Linux-equivalent of MS-DOS filenames not being allowed. I hope all such software dies before.
The Windows approach has a lot of downsides you probably don't notice if you're accustomed to using Windows.
Then don't run any software, that's cleary the best solution to avoiding software bugs if you don't actually care about getting anything done.
> Security is increasingly important, running a lot of unmaintained software is a terrible thing for security.
I disagree. Even if a thing is known to be vulnerable, there are ways to mitigate it. Besides, evergreen software just provides more opportunities for bugs as things are constantly reworked and added.
> The Windows approach has a lot of downsides you probably don't notice if you're accustomed to using Windows.
I notice them, they just cause a lot less pain than not being able to use the software I want because it hasn't been curated by a third party for whatever particular distro I'm using.
Or that everyone should run maintained software? I don't know why you're making it so black and white.
> I notice them, they just cause a lot less pain than not being able to use the software I want because it hasn't been curated by a third party for whatever particular distro I'm using.
I didn't find them any less painful than software not working. I've never been so angry about a computer than when using some unmaintained Windows' software.
Because sometimes the software you want to run isn't maintained anymore and all the alternatives are worse for your use case and there's nothing you can do about it. That's just how it is.
> I didn't find them any less painful than software not working. I've never been so angry about a computer than when using some unmaintained Windows' software.
Please explain how "software works with some issues" is somehow more painful than "software doesn't work at all".
One is frustrating for a second, it just doesn't work, second is frustrating for a longer period of time. The total frustration is larger with the latter.
There usually is a better solution than buggy software, at least with consumer stuff. If someone writes a shitty GPU driver, it's probably a better idea to return the GPU than to fiddle it working. At least that's what I think, based on my experience.
One could say that the former is frustrating for infinity because it never works.
> There usually is a better solution than buggy software, at least with consumer stuff. If someone writes a shitty GPU driver, it's probably a better idea to return the GPU than to fiddle it working. At least that's what I think, based on my experience.
Usually, sometimes, maybe. Other times the old software either worked better for your use case or is literally the only option. That's my experience.
edit: I don't object to the content, but the headline.
To be clear I do not object to the content, but I find the title to be divisive click bait.
[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=linux,ub...
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From my perspective these are reason Linux rocks
1. Yay! With web I do not care as much about software, I am free to use Linux.
2. Yay! Even for running old apps on Linux there is solution.
3. Yay! I am not a serf, I can move to other distros. And there are a lot of them.
4. Yay! It would be impossible to have such hardware support without sponsors and hired developers. You've done a great job, thank you.
There are a lot of Linux users - some hate Microsoft with passion, some curse Poettering, some crave world domination - you've got a place too!
There is so much casual media attention now:
* Linux Gaming FINALLY Doesn't SUCK! Sep 22, 2018 (2 000 000 views) [1]
* Microsoft Should be VERY Afraid - Noob's Guide to Linux Gaming, Apr 9, 2019 (2 000 000 views) [2]
Steam games just work thanks to https://www.protondb.com/ (wine basically).
I was amazed that MX Linux intro has 120 000 views [3]
And finally, there was one technical question. Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is developers setup - evergreen /include, /lib. I can recompile all installed packages. I've compiled latest Firefox on Linux. I've compiled Firefox on Windows, it is quite different experience. I've compiled Firefox 3.6 on Linux a month ago, that's different experience too - patching source, requires old pango version. This setup suits me.
Would it be interesting to have make dependencies as they were in Firefox 3.6 days? Absolutely. Does it drug Linux back? No, this case is minor. Same with old binaries. Anyone who cares enough can find or create such distro.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJUphbYnpg
This. Web and electron apps is the greatest thing that happened to "linux desktop". I know that they sucks and are slow, but without it I would not be able to use linux for work.
Simplified example: way too many desktop environments, why do we need so many half-arsed ones?
Half an hour later: woo, we can choose which desktop experience fits our needs the best, who else can do that?
I've followed it for like two or three years and then got tired of the format.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A
[1]: Mentioned in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3wEC6Fj_8, but don't have the exact timestamp
It has no discoverability, and its small and "hard" to see. Which is great, because I know it backwards and would like to look at other things.
I don't know Krita, and it requires a lot of focus. Boy am I glad its not like my de.
To generalize, no one is allowed to criticize things they can improve.
Why not help making it easier to send pull requests or patches, rather than complaining about his complaint?
Making pull request or patch would take significantly more time the writing one and half hour long rant.
1) Low popularity does not mean something sucks. Listen to the global top 10 playlist on Spotify and you will know what I am talking about: the worst, least creative music ever made happens to be the most popular and the greatest works of music in the history of humanity are much less popular.
2) There are many solutions for backwards compatibility, some of them are listed in this video (AppImage, Flatpak) and other ways of making software more self-contained. Now... WINE can sometimes be more backwards compatible than Windows.
3) "Linux foundation executive director presents from a Mac". Well, this has been observed in Microsoft talks too. In fact, there's one talk where the presenter cannot get Internet Explorer to do what he wants so he takes a moment to install Chrome.
4) "Linux people are dumb"... Are they? I would not say so.