[clue-talk] A Significantly Better Mousetrap, was Re: [clue-tech] Mephis linux

[David L. Willson]

What ~are~ you doing on this list?  Did you join it when you liked Linux, or something?

Some of your gripes don't fit.  The Free software ecosystem is different than the proprietary software ecosystem.  Funding, feedback, and focus of effort all work very differently in this mostly-volunteer space than they do in the proprietary software space.  You seem to assert that they don't work.  That's fine, but please recognize that that is your minority opinion, in the industry, which has adopted Free software, and especially ~here~ at CLUE.  Linux is better than MacOS.  See how I didn't state that as an opinion, or back it up with fact, rather than more opinion?  I find it grating when other people do that.

Nobody is telling you to "fix it yourself" or that you have to be a developer, that I know of, but I personally am allergic to whining, bitching, and complaining, whenever it isn't accompanied by a healthy dose of working, leading, and suggesting.  I trust and rely on problem-solvers.  Whiners have a very narrow scope of usefulness.  That seems to be what you're doing here, and if this were a dev list, it might be useful, but since it's an enthusiast list, I'm damned if I know what your purpose is.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that you become a developer, I'm suggesting that you become productive or purposeful, because your berating of my favorite Free stuph, stinks.  Offer good ideas.  I mean, isn't that a no-brainer?  Um...  How about, "If you don't have anything good to say..."

Your ~attitude~... You claim to be having fun.  Are you having fun at the expense of your friends here on the Colorado Linux Users and Enthusiasts list?  You think you might be ready for a "second career".  I'd like to hasten you on your way, I think.  I've debated with you, perhaps productively, on this list in the past, but this time, I am entirely unable to find the meaning, the purpose, the reason, for your speech.

I think, maybe, you're trolling, but I thought that activity was the purvey of those with not enough to do, and somewhere along the way, I got the impression that you were a busy man.  Maybe not so much, I guess.  I have to say that you're not winning my referral business any time soon with an attitude like the one you're showing here.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nate Duehr" <nate at natetech.com>
To: "CLUE talk" <clue-talk at cluedenver.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:13:12 PM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
Subject: Re: [clue-talk] A Significantly Better Mousetrap, was Re: [clue-tech] Mephis linux

Collins Richey wrote:

> Hmmm, are those RF systems in as miserable shape as you seem to think
> Linux is? Do you actually have to "do something" to make any of them
> work?

Hmm, not sure what you're getting at here Collins... yeah, I travel to 
the tops of mountains with piles of personally purchased lab-quality 
test gear and measure things, find problems, fix them...

> Do you just carp about how the politicians do their thing, or do you
> make an effort to get involved to improve the results? We already know
> the answer for Linux.

I vote the bad ones out.  :-)  Unfortunately I don't have that option 
with anything in the software world, other than to buy the better 
products and not use the lesser ones.  :-)

> Totally wrong. Most of the Linux fans I've known over the past decade
> are not developers of any sort.

Hmm, interesting point.  A lot of fan-boys are not devs.  Devs tend to 
be less interested in promoting Linux than the fans.

> You've lost me there. I've seen so many things fixed in Linyux and
> open source over the past few years that I've lost count.

We used to call this "polishing the turd" at a company I worked for... 
if you start with something so bad it needs lots of fixes...

Okay, that's not fair, but my point is... "lots of fixes" means nothing.

Only how well it performs RELATIVE to other software is ultimately 
important, because there's no standard for what "good" software really is.

Maybe that's my whole point.  I'm not trying to attack Linux, I'm just 
saying it's not better than anything else "out there".  No open-source 
dev not getting paid to work on their project has to COMMIT to anything, 
and the result is that Linux kinda trails the commercial products, 
copying them.  The only places where Linux shines are in areas the 
commercial vendors can't go by law... breaking DRM.  It's definitely 
useful for that, but since doing that is TECHNICALLY illegal in the U.S. 
where I live... well, that's a different battle.  Linux helps avoid the 
annoyance of DRM in many cases because of its International development 
nature, though.  I'll give it that.

>> By many developers standards that means I have no say in what they work on.
>>  That's fine, but Linux zealouts always say that "the problems get fixed by
>> many eyes"... no they don't.  They get fixed if the devs want them fixed.
>>  The users are rarely consulted on what they'd like to see fixed.
> 
> Where did you come up with this ridiculous idea? There is a lot of
> consultation with users. Of course, there is that category of user
> that has determined that problem x is the most important thing and
> that then whine a lot when others don't agree that problem x is really
> significant.

I don't see it.  Can you cite a single usability study of the Linux 
desktop where users were put in front of the machine, all annoyances 
they ran into where documented, and then fixed by devs?  I know this 
type of testing happens in the commercial world (I've seen it), but it's 
often not documented in public, since the commercial devs are trying to 
maintain a competitive advantage.  But I would *assume" any such work in 
open-source would also be public, and I can't find any signs that any 
large or small scale work on UI's is being done with Linux desktops.

I see a neverending bickering-fest between the KDE and GNOME camps, and 
laughed when Enlightenment made a "come-back" in the popular press this 
year and late last year, after having used it in what... 1997?

I'm not saying the Linux desktop DOESN'T WORK.  It does, but it's not 
developed around any feedback from users.  I'm wondering where you see 
this happening?

> I can think of a few cases like this, but such cases are an
> infinitessimally small part of the whole. I still have the mail tracks
> from a bug I reported that went through 3 releases of Ubuntu (and
> other distros).  It has to do with the way Grub determines device
> ordering at boot time. The developers didn't ignore it. It just took a
> very long time to fix. There were very likely a few hundred duplicate
> reports of the problem.

Your example hits on my problem with this, however.  Isn't the 
BOOTLOADER important enough not to have "sat on" that bugfix while 
thousands of others went through?  I'm not saying the commercial folks 
ALWAYS do a better job of prioritization, but sheesh... fix the 
bootloader and the installer (perennial problems for people loading 
Linux, since no one loads Windows...) before messing with CompWiz, and 
other "gee whiz" stuff.

That's my opinion as a long term user anyway... why am I always fighting 
with broken things in the various non-standardized installers... where 
each distro creates their own?

Shouldn't the installer be a very robust, modular project that ALL 
distros use, like the kernel itself, by now?  Maybe not... I dunno.

Hell, we can't even get distros to agree on whether or not SysV is the 
way to start up a Unix-like system still -- why would I expect 
standardization of installers?  I guess I'm just silly.

>> So in all... I'm just curious how we get to a world where the end-users'
>> desires trump all and actually get worked on.
> 
> Nirvana?

Definitely.  Isn't it possible to move that direction?  :-)  The glass 
isn't half empty, it's half-full, but it never gets water added.  Maybe 
if enough people are tired of that, devs will think about it a little 
harder.

> But of course the alternatives like Windows are perfect and never
> exhibit any cracks and busted stuff. And of course the M$ developers
> are really end-user friendly, ready to jump at your beck and call.

LOL.  Touche'.

> Meanwhile, I'm curious. Have you found the perfect computer and OS
> that does everything the way you want, one where the developers jump
> every time you whine?

Nah, never will.  The fastest to boot machine was the 1985 Tandy, 
though.  LOL.  It had a smokin' fast word processor and the spreadsheet 
wasn't too bad.  You had to wait for them to load from cassette tape, 
but once loaded, they ran in 64K of RAM and didn't need to swap.  HA.

> It appears that you will make every effort to help out with RF
> problems, but you can't be bothered to help out in the open source
> arena. A clue: not all who help are developers. So why do you care to
> comment when others want to know about pluses/minuses of various
> distros since none of the distros can meet your impossible standards
> anyway?

I work on problems I can work on.  Blaming me for not being a developer 
and not helping with software on Linux, isn't going to lead to anything 
useful in the long-term.  I can sysadmin the hell around the good and 
bad stuff on just about any Unix box, but I'm not a software dev.

Your view is "impossible standards", my view is "setting the bar high". 
     Your view is that I'm "picking on" Linux, my view is that I don't 
care if I use Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Windows, OS-2, OS-9, 
VxWorks... whatever works to get the job done and runs with the least 
amount of babysitting -- I'm a sysadmin, let me sleep at night and don't 
dump bad software on my head which makes me deal with cranky "customers" 
and I'm fine.

I don't expect ANY software to ever be perfect, since I haven't met any 
perfect software devs yet (and never will)...

No big deal.  I'm not "anti-Linux", and I'm not "pro-whatever else", I'm 
just pragmatic about all of them.  They all have plusses and minuses. 
"Use whatever works" is the professional sysadmin motto, ya know?

Linux's big minus is a lack of focus by devs on usability on the 
desktop.  Fine by me... my employer will never deploy it in its current 
state on desktops anyway, so I won't have to support it.

My Linux "frustrations" come from helping normal folks who I used to try 
to convince to use Linux.  I don't do that anymore, so no more pain. 
LOL!  I started being more "vocal" about those frustrations in the last 
year or two, and got the response expected... "Fix it yourself".

Whatever... that won't be happening.

For servers, I can hack around on a generally user-unfriendly system, 
make it make or save a company money, and get paid for doing that... no 
problems there!  Plowing through badly documented code, cruddy 
informationless logs, and coming up with a reasonable thesis or two 
about what's really going wrong in complex integrated software/hardware 
systems -- especially telco systems -- is what I've been doing for over 
a decade.

After that much experience with something, you get an instinct for which 
module or hardware is broken, even if you've never seen the platform 
before.  Now is the part of the career when it kinda gets fun, since 
it's easy to figure things out that are quite ugly/complex.  (GRIN)  It 
also MIGHT get a little boring in the next year or two... maybe it's 
time to work on something slightly different.  Not sure I want to 
sysadmin for a living for my entire life either... maybe it's time to 
start working on that "2nd career" and any training needed, etc.

Nate
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