Linux is ready for the desktop!

[Shlomi Fish]

Hello Ely,

please reply to the list (or don't reply at all.).

On Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:52:04 +0300
Ely Levy <elylevy at cs.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> Hi,
> You might want to take a look at:
> 
> http://www.hboeck.de/archives/787-The-sad-state-of-the-Linux-Desktop.html
> 
> Or one of the other million posts on the web about it.

A million posts? Did you count them?

And this post is kinda long.

> Linux desktop is a mess, from video support (no ogl 3 even) 

By "ogl 3", do you mean OpenGL version 3? All the video files I throw at VLC
or mplayer just work, but I admit I'm not an OpenGL power user (which is 3-D
graphics for games/etc. and not particularly related to video playback.).

> sucky sound
> support (pulseaudio has it's share of bugs and alsa is way too limited)

I never liked PulseAudio and always disable it. What's wrong with ALSA?

> Lack of programs (Most of the program are not in the level you can give a
> simple user e.g. normal sound/video/flash editor and so on).

I admit the situation with Video editors is a problem, and I don't know about
Adobe Flash editors (I don't really like Flash). But my father had no problems
coping with Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) on Windows, and I'm
using it for various small tasks too. What do you find is lacking with it?

I should note that I'm also skeptical about how many people ever edit sound,
video or Flash.

> The programs which are around don't play nicely with each other. 

How so?

> Freedesktop
> is so busy in not deciding on any standard that it changes
> utility programs every 2 days and never document any of them.
> (policykit/udisks/upower/dbus? who say what to who?). 

Well, I'm a little overwhelmed by this myself, but it otherwise seems to work
and not be a concern of a user.

> Sucky unicode
> support/sucky nonstandard bidi support. 

1. Why do you think that Linux's Bidirectionality support is non-standard?

2. Why do you think that Linux's Unicode support is bad?

It's been a while since I recall having a significant Unicode problem with
Linux. 

> Lack of normal office suite. 

Well, by this card, the only "normal" office suite around is Microsoft Office
(which only runs properly on Windows), and all the alternatives are much
lamer. Many users will be perfectly happy with OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.

> Lack of
> production quality voice/video over ip client. 

Do you mean SIP or something like Skype?

> For programs things are even
> worth, nothing that compared to xcode or visual studio, million of gui
> interfaces, no debugger with good interface  or profiler (oprofile is way
> too complicated unless you are a linux savvy). 

Well, many programmers (including me and many people I interact with on IRC) are
perfectly happy developing on Linux using command-line tools and non-IDE
editors. There are also Eclipse, KDevelop, Anjuta, etc. that some people like
and also see:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/editors-and-IDEs/

* http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Devtools/ides.html (also see the comment at the
  bottom).

I should note that XCode is primarily useful for people developing using
Apple-blessed technologies, and that MS Visual Studio is not much better in
this respect.

> Every new technology takes
> years before it get open source support (try finding normal opencl utilities
> on linux) and I can continue for days.
> 
> And please spare me all that hardware people fault or everyone like
> microsoft. If there is one good thing apple did, it's making this excuse
> void.
> 

Well, companies can create dedicated hardware where Linux works well.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
List of Portability Libraries - http://shlom.in/port-libs

There is no IGLU Cabal! None of them could pass the Turing test. But strangely
enough a computer program they coded, could.

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