Yesterday, I posted a
blog post
containing a list of issues with Windows,
in
response to a similar list for Linux, which has received quite some
response; I've seen people +1 it on google+, and I've received a number
of replies on the blog post itself. One of these replies was by the
author of the original list; and as expected, he totally and utterly
failed to see the point. He also has the audacity to claim I haven't
installed Linux yet what?!? The last time I used anything
other than Linux on my
personal machine for any real
work was on
Windows 98. And no, that was
not because I
was too cheap to buy the latest and greatest. I have used Windows in
some cases since then, but never on my own hardware.
First of all, I should note that the list which I posted was only
semi-serious (with tongue in cheek); the fact that it refers to Windows
as the operating system which "attempts to replace Linux as the major
operating system" should have been a pretty big clue to that effect.
Like the original list that it was a reply to, my list contains things
that are only true in a particular context (e.g., the one about
requiring recent hardware), it contains things that don't matter for the
large majority of Windows users (e.g., the point about
focus-follows-mouse) but that are major arguments for why
I
don't use Windows, it contains things that are so alien to what most of
us are used to that even most Linux users don't use it, while on the
other hand some swear by it (like the SELinux argument), and it contains
some things that a seasoned Windows user will call bullshit on but that
are real actual problems for the non-seasoned Windows user that I am
(such as the mouse argument). It also contains some actual facts, like
the statement about most crashes being a direct result of faulty
drivers that's pulled directly from
a
scientific study on the subject conducted by Microsoft, together
with some independent researchers. Like the original list, I don't
expect this list to change anything for the better, precisely because it
is flawed in exactly the same way.
But whether the items on that list were right or wrong isn't the
point. This is:
Nobody (except nutcases) ever said Linux is perfect, or that it's
useful for everyone; and while the issues Artem lists may be bugs or may
be design flaws or any of a number of other things that could be real
problems, the fact is that creating a long "list of issues" isn't going
to solve anything.
If you find that there are problems with Linux, you basically have
three options: fix the problem, get someone to fix it for you, or
stop using Linux. Really.
Rather than better or worse, Linux is
different. It will
have its own set of problems, and it will have its own set of
advantages. Some of the design decisions cause problems, but also have
serious advantages, and focussing on
only these problems (the
existence of which I'm not denying) isn't very helpful.
A good example is the library model: under Linux, libraries are
typically installed in a system-wide location, and use a SONAME which is
(part of) the filename of that library and which defines the binary
interface exported by that library. In contrary to the situation under
Windows, Linux libraries also
must use position-independent
code.
The result is a more robust library model. The downside to that
model, however, is that when you install older applications that require
older SONAME versions of a particular library, getting those older
versions may be a challenge. While
in theory, installing an
older version of a library is not going to cause
any problem if
the SONAME is different, in practice you'll often find that you'll need
to go to (unsupported) older packages from older versions of the
distribution, which may not install due to missing or conflicting
dependencies, or which may expect data files in a different format
in the same location that newer versions of the same library
do, or which may have any number of other issues. When that happens, the
solution is to either use an older version of the distribution in a
chroot or some such, or to patch and/or compile the needed libraries
yourself, and install them alongside the newer version of the same
library. That's perfectly possible, after all, precisely because of the
SONAME.
Another good example is the development model: where Windows has a
central authority (Microsoft) which defines what it is to be "Windows"
and what is and isn't part of that, the same simply isn't true about
Linux. Yes, Linus defines what the official Linux kernel has, but he
doesn't have any say about the user interface, the boot process, or any
number of other things; other people make decisions there. As a result,
in effect, who decides what it means to be a "Linux system" is, really,
you, the user. If you believe that the Linux user space is
completely wrong, you can just change it to something else entirely; and
that's precisely what Google did when they created Android.
Since there's no central authority making decisions about what will
and won't go into the system, this means that inevitably, at any given
time, there will be many competing options for many subsystems. Usually
this will be an advantage; e.g., the competition between KDE and Gnome
benefits both. Sometimes, however, the competing options are so
confusingly interwoven that even those who should know the system inside
out can't make heads or tails of it, and debugging issues then becomes
quite a challenge. Unfortunately, the Linux sound subsystem is currently
an example of the latter.
I'm not saying that
all the items in Artem's
list are invalid; a minority are, in fact, actual problems for a
majority of Linux users. Most however, are personal opinions, issues
affecting only a small minority of Linux users, or, as above, things
where he only talks about the downsides of a design decision that also
has major advantages. As an example of something in the second category:
it's easy, for example, to list hundreds if not thousands of issues
relating to particular pieces of hardware that don't work under Linux,
simply because the manufacturer doesn't provide any information, and the
people developing drivers for Linux have to reverse engineer how
everything works. If you're a bit careful in what you buy,
however much like MacOS users need to be careful, too then
using Linux isn't an issue. My Lenovo Thinkpad X220, for instance, has
no parts that don't work; and this includes things like a
docking station, and the fact that my (9-cell) battery life is
over
fourteen hours, which (I believe) is
more than on the same
laptop with the same battery under Windows.
So how is making a list of issues useful? The answer to that is
simply,
not at all. If you want to help, don't look for
other people's problems; we can all do that. Instead, try to look for
solutions to these problems. That's not always easy, and in
many cases requires that you first understand
why something is
done in a particular way. If you don't want to spend time doing that,
that's perfectly fine; but then don't expect that open source developers
(who are already strapped for time, usually) will suddenly jump up and
fix the problems
you think are most important, as opposed to
what they think should be worked on most urgently.
After all, most Open Source developers have their own sets of
priorities what
they think requires most work, and that's what
they'll work on not what's shown in a particular list by someone
they don't know and have no reason to respect, somewhere on the
Internet.
Finally, I'd like to note that any statement which claims that Linux
isn't "ready" to be used on the desktop, when hundreds of thousands (if
not millions) of people are using it in exactly that way for their
day-to-day work, is insulting these people's intelligence. Since that
includes me, it's also insulting my intelligence. And I don't like to
have my intelligence insulted...
Today, a small
package was waiting for me at my door step, containing 52 printed and
stapled copies of a paper that I wrote a while ago. To be more precise, two years ago, when I submitted the main results of my math Diploma Thesis to the Israel Journal of Mathematics. Next year at christmas eve, it was accepted and published online. And now, it seems, it finally went into print. So my paper now has page numbers and I have this pile of printouts that outnumbers the set of possibly interested readers by four dozens or more, and they would probably just download the online version instead of asking for this print out. This seems all very anachronistic to me.
As 
not much to report this week, still a short summary:
I m on my way back from 
Normally around this time of year I would post a picture of one of my children in their Halloween costumes but alas this All-Hallows Eve, Hurricane Sandy has put an end to such frivolity. For, from out of this hell-born wind comes the tale of a creature so horrifying that even puissant warlocks of dark power cower in their Batman pajamas at the sound of his doom-laden moans rending the night as he wanders pitiously through the blackened streets searching for his forbidden love. I speak of the one known only as...
pyBit - cross-platform package building using AMQP
Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (
The lab is hosted on 
From here, each router in the tree knows how to handle multicast
packets from 
Since October 2011 my flatmate and I where quite busy realizing a little pet project of ours called 
