The Vagina (err...Linux) Chronicles

[abf]

I figure we need a linux related venting thread.......there are so many great things about linux, yet at the same time so many limitations....let your voices be heard :bow:


My Beef:
I have daily access to 3 computer, my old P3 desktop which runs Arch, my laptop (see sig) which runs Ubuntu, and my thinkpad T23 which runs XP (thinking about ubuntu but i have some windows-only progs installed on it..so at least not now). As you might have guessed that leaves VERY little room for gaming. My game collection is pretty limited by ANY standard on this forum, I can list all the games I own on my fingers (HL 1 and 2, GTA3 Vice and San, Far Cry, MS Flight Sim 2k, Sims + 3 expansions, AOE 2 and 3, NFS Underground 1 and 2) ... and since my boxes are all freaken linux, I can't enjoy my games anymore (except AOE2 which runs just fine on the thinkpad). Otherwise though I enjoy the linux experience...i find it more relaxed than having to do daily scans with Spybot and whatever....:-\

[bigtrouble77]

Here are my main issues:

- Graphical API can be very inconsistent across applications. Why can't everything just be GTK2?

- Application standardization among distros is a problem. Why is it that Apache2 has different configuration setups in ubuntu and fedora?

- It would be nice if there was a way to compile software without installing a zillion dev libraries. Ideally I'd like to be able to create a dev library profile in apt so they can be removed cleanly when your done compiling.

- I want commercial software in linux. I'll pay for stuff if it's useful.

- Fonts- still a pain in the ass (but easy to fix if you know what your doing). I wish there were profiles we could choose like Mac font system, Windows Classic fonts, Windows vista fonts with clear type, etc. MS fonts should be free because they are web standards.

- Better multi-audio card support. ALSA needs to be fine tuned. It's very difficult to get certain cards to work with certain apps in certain situations... :w00t:

- Hardware manufacturers not supporting their product in linux- Not that big of an issue, I just don't buy their crap.


Stuff that's no longer an issue but were major issues not long ago:

- Games- Cedega is amazing now with the profile system. I can get enough games working well to keep me happy.

- Dependency issues- Apt/Synaptic, Portage and others have solved this problem. Software repositories are the future.

- 3d Graphic Driver support- Piece of cake to setup now and (nvidia) drivers are pretty mature.

- Command line dependency- Command line is your friend, but we also need good gui tools too. Solved.

- Multimedia- Multimedia support in linux is better than any other platform i've used.

- 64bit support- Amazing support in Ubuntu and Gentoo (haven't tried others)

That's all I can think of.

[abf]

although this personally doesn't bother me i know there is a lot of bitching about WPA support.

boot times can be insane. only once have i encountered a distro (mandrake 2006) that booted marginally fast compared to windows, ok fine...not counting the gui i can make gentoo and sourcemage boot pretty damn fast too.

OSS is my other beef, games and some old school progs still use it, why can't they just all use ALSA and make us all happy? I am getting really tiered of having to kill ESD before i can play some ET.


BT....have you seen instability in ubuntu's 64 bit xorg build? Every other time i start (or try to quit) ET xorg crashes. only happens in 64bit, the i386 ubuntu never done this for me. its true to other games as well so i know its not an ET bug.

[zakaluka2]

Major beefs
- Complete and utter lack of good, commercial software. Crap ported from windows to linux is still crap.

- Very diverse graphical APIs, that make programming an app with support for all of them insane and practically impossible. wxWidgets, etc. are trying to fix that, with limited success. But, even now, it's just a clusterf*ck.

- Cedega, while awesome, just requires too much tweaking and luck to be considered a final solution -- this is my major requirement for switching over completely.

Minor complaints
- Fonts in linux suck. Period. I've tried all kinds of anti-aliasing, different fonts, etc, but they still look worse than under windows.

- Multimedia support is quite good, but still not as painless as it could be.

I know that most of these problems are lack of corporate support for linux, but they are still problems that drive me nuts.

Regards,

zakaluka2.

[bigtrouble77]

BT....have you seen instability in ubuntu's 64 bit xorg build? Every other time i start (or try to quit) ET xorg crashes. only happens in 64bit, the i386 ubuntu never done this for me. its true to other games as well so i know its not an ET bug.
I have not had a crash in dapper amd64 yet. I do have to disable the splash boot screen because logging off goes completely black if I don't. That could be your issue. Just remove the slpash option in your grub menu.lst.

[bigtrouble77]

Major beefs
- Cedega, while awesome, just requires too much tweaking and luck to be considered a final solution -- this is my major requirement for switching over completely.
The latest release of Cedega comes with a ton of config files, something they should have done ages ago. Minimal tweaking now.

Minor complaints
- Fonts in linux suck. Period. I've tried all kinds of anti-aliasing, different fonts, etc, but they still look worse than under windows.

Not sure if this will work in a non ubuntu distro, but this pretty much fixes the font issue for me: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208396&highlight=nice+fonts

- Multimedia support is quite good, but still not as painless as it could be.

If you're using ubuntu download automatix. http://getautomatix.com
Pretty much gets multimedia working in one single shot.

Sorry, I don't know how to resolve these things in other distros.

[abf]

I have not had a crash in dapper amd64 yet. I do have to disable the splash boot screen because logging off goes completely black if I don't. That could be your issue. Just remove the slpash option in your grub menu.lst.

it doesn't go black. Xorg just quits (goes to text mode) and then restarts and I have to log in to gdm again.....

[PDR60]

Hmmm!!! I really can't say I have any major gripes at all. I don't do allot of stuff like Photoshop or video editing. I do everything else on my Linux box. Now that I formatted my E1705 and installed Kubuntu it runs great!! The games I play are all supported very well by Cedega or just native code. By the way the new Quake 4 installer 1.3 supports alsa directly. No oss switch needed. Nice. In Cedega I get super performance from HL1, HL2, Prey, Painkiller, even older titles like Diablo2 and Starcraft. Of course UT2004, Doom 3, and Quake 4 all play fine. I used to support only Mandrake/driva on my site but I now support Kubuntu and Folks have had great success. I even cover gaming in the new How-To.
I look forward to configuring some server builds using Kubuntu to put up on the site.

So Guess I'm one of the satisfied users. I only use windows in a vm session for work on my laptop now.
PDR60

[spincricket]

Here are my main issues:

- It would be nice if there was a way to compile software without installing a zillion dev libraries. Ideally I'd like to be able to create a dev library profile in apt so they can be removed cleanly when your done compiling.


Holy !@#$ I agree! I had to download like 60MB of dev libs to compile like 2.5MB of eyecandy ish! :nono:

Ubuntu or any variant: I hate that upon booting, if there is no connection present, it will try to take a connection out of my ASS for 2-3 minutes, unless i press CONTROL-C! Sometimes i dont want internet damnit.


KubuntuThere is an issue with Kmilo and my laptop. It displays an on screen error every minute due to the special keys on my asus. Its easily fixed, by setting some values to false in teh config, but I want to be able to adjust my screen brightness with my Buttons.

Linux:
-Fonts
-I feel like an ass pronouncing it ass "LIE-NIX" and everyone pronounces it
differently
- This is my own issue, but even after a year of using linux, i cant fully delete windows, im not a gamer anymore, but i fear that one day my linux partition will "stop" working. That's my own psychological reason though.

[seablade]

Well my complaints are much more general, primarily some things need to be standardized on a very baswic level that arent.

LSB is working on this, but hasnt quite gotten there yet.

IE How many different sound servers are out there? Heck there are sound servers that are trying to be professional audio, when a very good professional audio solution exists if people would just use it. Very annoying peeve of mine really, but it is only an example...

How many different distros still use slightly different filenames in /etc for config files? In as far as th ebase system is concerned that needs to be figured out, personally i have a thing for Gentoo's setup cause that is what I am used to, but it would be nice to be able to tell someone in Fedora how to configure modules to startup without having to go, this is how I owuld do it in gentoo, you should have a similar file somewhere in /etc for Fedora, maybe someone else can help you with that?

So pretty much if some things get standardized on a basic level I would be happy.

Seablade

[zakaluka2]

The latest release of Cedega comes with a ton of config files, something they should have done ages ago. Minimal tweaking now.

Not sure if this will work in a non ubuntu distro, but this pretty much fixes the font issue for me: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208396&highlight=nice+fonts

If you're using ubuntu download automatix. http://getautomatix.com
Pretty much gets multimedia working in one single shot.

Sorry, I don't know how to resolve these things in other distros.

Thanks for the suggestions. I might have to try Cedega again.

As for automatix, I really am not a big fan of Ubuntu (always stuck with plain, old Debian). However, I just might check it out, if for nothing else than to see how they do it in Ubuntu and if I can replicate it.

Regards,

zakaluka2.

[abf]

Thanks for the suggestions. I might have to try Cedega again.

As for automatix, I really am not a big fan of Ubuntu (always stuck with plain, old Debian). However, I just might check it out, if for nothing else than to see how they do it in Ubuntu and if I can replicate it.

Regards,

zakaluka2.


i dont see a problem with just installing automatix in debian and install what you need and then restore your sources.list.... i really doubt it would kill your stability. option #2 is to find what exactly automatix does and just write a similar script but for debian packages

[zakaluka2]

Apparently, someone beat me to it:

DebCentral Config: http://debcentral.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=235

I'll have to test it out later.

Regards,

zakaluka2.

[drlouis]

- I want commercial software in linux. I'll pay for stuff if it's useful.
Totally agree. If more companies would offer their wares for Linux I'd finally dump my windows partition. There are just some things you cant get for linux (I use Software from Chessbase, and the free stuff available for linux isn't even in the same class) I'd buy it in a heartbeat if they offered a linux version. Games would be the same way.

[PDR60]

Totally agree. If more companies would offer their wares for Linux I'd finally dump my windows partition. There are just some things you cant get for linux (I use Software from Chessbase, and the free stuff available for linux isn't even in the same class) I'd buy it in a heartbeat if they offered a linux version. Games would be the same way.
How about wine or cedega for your windows software. I found that HL2 actually runs better on linux than winders. In winders I get about 55-80 FPS in linux i get 65-105 fps. Its pretty interesting. I checked several times to be sure.... Cedaga is begining to make a name for itself.

PDR60

[abf]

cedega is good stuff, but it only works about 80% of the time, and even then its better for nvidia than ati (fglrx is the suck).....i honestly wouldn't care for commercial software, like i am set in linux.....

[PDR60]

True!!! Nvidia is supported way better then ATI. That's why a user has to be aware of the hardware they purchase when buying a laptop. Careful selection is paramount to running Linux. When I bought my new Dell I chose the Nvidia card but missed the wireless card. I chose the Dell 1390 card. I have since upgraded to the Intel 3495 and all is well. In fact the only reason I still dual boot is because its almost impossible to use the conexant modem in linux. I hardly ever use a modem but when I need it at least I can connect ......even if it is through winders.....

PDR60

[seablade]

Heh according to a recent article on arstechnica, AMD is considering opening the source code for their newly acquired(Assuming no hangups happen) ATI, so that may change soon for the much better, and much more in favor of ATI. Not to say NVidia wouldnt be a choice as well, just that that would mean many distros that dont support those graphics cards out of the box may start doing so with ATI if that happens as it would then be open source, but I think it depends on the licensing scheme used if/when they are open sourced.

Seablade

[abf]

yep. isn't debian really anal about using (or is it not using :confused:) GPLv2 ?

i'd love to see AMD opensource fglrx. you can just see the gentoo people making something really crazy out of it :w00t: generally speaking in terms of CPUs AMD has been doing a better job than intel with helping out the linux devs.....would be cool to see them to do the same via nvidia in the graphics dept.

[seablade]

Heh you say AMD had been doing a better job than Intel, that just really is debateable. For example if AMD opens up its sources it looks like it will be in response to Intel having already done so for its graphics chipsets, and many of Intel's chipsets are well supported, by I believe Open Source Drivers, but I am not sure.

AMD however DID make the big 64 Bit push at the launch of its chips to its credit though, and have helped in other ways on occasion I believe, so as I said it is certainly debateable I believe.

Seablade

[bigtrouble77]

I've been thinking a bit about intel opening up the driver source and why these companies are so reluctant to do the same.

The question is... Is there really trade secrets in the driver source?
i'm guessing yes, to a degree. We've seen enough evidence of drive tweaks that offer substantial gains to know that driver engineering is an art of itself.

So I'm thinking this may be a ploy by intel to try and get amd and ati to open things up. I don't think Intel has anything to loose by opening up their driver source as their graphics chips are a joke. Intel could possibly benefit from ati's code, but I highly doubt that ati or nvidia are gonna get anything from intel's work.

So even if ati and nvidia stay closed source then all that happens to intel is that they look like the good guys. Who would seriously try and reverse engineer intel's gpu and steal their driver code?

[ollywompus]

Well hell, I'll jump on this one. I've been linux only for years now, but one thing that bothers me is mp3 player support. It's getting better, but it still has a tendency to be buggy. I have a 5G ipod video coming this week, we'll see what happens with it, but grrr that bothers me.

As for the GUI stuff that people don't like, maybe it's because i've been using it so long, but i'm actually MUCH more comfortable doing stuff with the CLI. Yes, I like my eye candy (I do use KDE afterall), but all of my network/wireless stuff, all my editing, everything that's nuts and bolts I do on the command line... SO much more flexible and more control!

Anyway, grrr again at mp3 player support.

-olly

[bigtrouble77]

Anyway, grrr again at mp3 player support.

What mp3 player do you have problems with? I'm pretty sure both amarok and Rythmbox both support creative and apple players. Just about everything else is UMD so it really shouldn't be an issue unless your using something that needs windows media player (and shame on you for buying one of them if that's the case).

[ollywompus]

What mp3 player do you have problems with? I'm pretty sure both amarok and Rythmbox both support creative and apple players. Just about everything else is UMD so it really shouldn't be an issue unless your using something that needs windows media player (and shame on you for buying one of them if that's the case).

I just ordered an apple 5g video, so we'll see how it works. It was more the fact the devices that aren't UMD, like my old Dell Jukebox, would WORK, but the programs were/are buggy as hell (with the exception of gtkpod, which is great). Gnomad2, which is what you use to interface with Creative/Dell players, would crash if I was trying to sync more than like 200 songs at a time. A lot of times it would corrupt the DB file so that my music was unreadable, blah blah, etc.

I know it's gotten better, but love it or hate it, the ease of use of itunes with an ipod is the ultimate goal of mp3 player/software interfaces, and Linux hasn't gotten there yet.

-olly

[abf]

i think thats because most linux users are smart enough not to use proprietary crap....or if they do own an ipod they rockbox or ipodlinux it.... i have an H320 which is plug-n-play mounted as a flashdrive drag and drop file managing setup with the iriver firmware, and hell, i still rockboxed it for reasons beyond me.

i actually find itunes to be a virus. its bloated like no tomorrow. i prefer light media players (think bmp or xmms for music and totem-xine for video) that do their function as PLAYERS and leave everything else (cd burning, etc, etc,) to other programs.

[ollywompus]

I definitely agree that itunes is bloated, don't get me wrong, but it IS a simple process to sync an ipod with it, there's no doubt about that.

At any rate, supposedly amarok has fine tuned things to the point where it syncs just as easily. Even though it's not as straightforward as xmms (which I use religiously for things like internet radio), I love amarok for it's music cataloguing capability (musicbrainz id3 tag editing, album art downloading, lyric syncing, organization of collection, etc).

-olly

[bigtrouble77]

I have to add another thing that's driving me crazy, this time it's a gnome thing...

I cannot stand the way you choose fonts in gnome. First off, why is it that I can't easily change the font color? Black is ok, but I'd rather use a dark gray for some fonts. Second, and more importantly, why does the application font setting affect the gnome panel and also certain fonts within applications?

Assigning fonts is such an obfuscated process. It's like creating a stylesheet and assigning the heading style to be the same thing as the menu font- so everytime you change the heading your menu is affected too.

End rant. :)