The Downsides!

[Gtrax]

Its not that I would normally dwell on completely negative things, but...
I realized the whole reason I keep prowling Distrowatch, and why my partitions get nuked so often, is that I am so unreasonably ungrateful for all the good stuff if I get pissed off by even one or two things I cannot easily change.
Like for instance :-
Xfce inability to have a single click operation on its desktop icons:
SuSE for (insert several answers here)
Gentoo (if ever there was one with great pro's and cons, this is it)
Ubuntu (Go on - why do you keep looking around, even though you have it?)
Fedora (Er.. because if Linus uses it, it must be good.
DSL - I have to admit, this one just is what it is, does not pretend otherwise, and somehow punches above its weight.
KDE4 (Lets start with trying to configure the panel, while we wonder what else has lost functionality to absurd fashion. Have a stiff drink before you explore the rest.
PCLinuxOS is just very good. Pity the repository does not have the stuff I need. If I have to attempt to compile it, I may as well have Gentoo's Portage do the "dependency hell" for me.

There now, whats your favourite grump?

[bigtomrodney]

You know...if we can manage to reply to this without a flamewar breaking out this could be a great thread. Linux therapy for all!

SuSE...borked packages. Probably not true anymore but it chased me away from the distro.
I would love to sees some open 3D nVidia drivers working 100% and for mp3/divx to be freely licenced. This download-from-the-repository nonsense is silly legal tiptoeing when we could be seeing Linux deliver 100% of all needs on one disc.


Asides from that, I'm quite happy. I am looking forward to things like Kernel mode-setting and the Wayland project and further integreation of pulseaudio so we start seeing the benefits that were trumpeted when it appeared.

[oz]

Both, the upsides and the downsides will be different for different computer users. Perfection will only exist where one finds it, and so far at least I have not found it in any distribution, or any operating system for that matter.

Still, I keep looking and do always settle in a bit with whatever seems to be the best at the time. Perhaps the perfect OS for all will exist in the future, but I seriously doubt it.

In the interim, best of luck with whatever you go with!

[techieMoe]

Phew... so many. Don't get me wrong; by and large they're small non-show-stopping things, but every distro has its warts. Multiply that by fifty some odd distros and that's an ugly toad.

What's my "favorite" gripe? Multimedia and 3D drivers, most likely. I don't understand why distributions that are funded by major corporations (SuSE or Mandriva for instance) can't just figure out what the deal is and find a way to legally include these things on their disc.

I'll echo bigtom on this one, feel free to vent folks, but please don't make this a flamefest. Let's consider this a list of things to improve.

[MikeTbob]

You know...if we can manage to reply to this without a flamewar breaking out this could be a great thread. Linux therapy for all!

SuSE...borked packages. Probably not true anymore but it chased me away from the distro.

Suse is still borking packages, they borked up their grub bootloader so bad, I couldn't boot my PC (Gentoo) until I whipped out my Knoppix CD and repaired it. Then after I got all that fixed, they issued the update to fix it.

[elija]

My main complaint would be too many distros and not enough time to try them all...

Oh and wireless networking although that is improving

[rokytnji]

I don't know what it is about rpm distros and my inabilty to run them. Must be a handed down gene thing or something. I'd love to try out PClinuxOS but it refuses to comply on my hardware. Cutting edge distros like Sidux come with scary warnings on the forums to new users like me. Things like you better know what you are doing or cablowy. I tiptoe through linux cuz of this and try to pay attention and keep things from going cablowy. Then I forget, get adventerous, and bork something. Live and learn I guess.

Open suse 9= First taste of Linux, even bought a Suse Linux 8.2 Users manual. still have it and use it to this day.
Mepis 6.6 = Fell in Love
Ubuntu = I can actually make this work
Puppy = If I can learn Ubuntu, I can figure this one out
Mandriva 2008 = Like my 2nd wife, she was good in bed, then the monster surfaced for air
Damn Small Linux = Made a P1 compaq come back to life again
AntiX = Had to have another Mepis based Distro. She is a fine lady

I guess I'm just a happy camper, ever since my Windows Hardrive blew up doing a marathon of updating. Ignorance can be blissful at times.

I would just like to see flash, Dvd Ripping and recording,MP3, the mysterious ways of Alsa config and sound config, and jeez that's about it, made simpler across the board for all distros.

[techieMoe]

Open suse 9= First taste of Linux, even bought a Suse Linux 8.2 Users manual. still have it and use it to this day.

The 9.X series of SuSE is easily my favorite distribution, historically speaking. It's much too old for me to still use today, but in its time it was great, particularly because it included everything I needed right there on the DVDs.

[bigtomrodney]

The 9.X series of SuSE is easily my favorite distribution, historically speaking. It's much too old for me to still use today, but in its time it was great, particularly because it included everything I needed right there on the DVDs.

SuSE 9.3 was their best distro of all that I tried. I really loved that release. From Grub through the bootsplash to KDM/GDM was the same image, it was the first time I used the word 'polished' in relation to Linux.

[Gtrax]

OK - with the claimed aim of generating a "we can do this bit better" list, (weasel excuse for a little rant) lets try some..

1. RantMeister General techieMoe and bigtomrodney cannot both be wrong! 3D drivers is for me also a big candidate for the Linuxforums reverse Oscars (Naffware?) awards. I go further. The one thing that always happens with any new distro I try is the initial little war over the monitor resolution. I have a 19-inch Taxan good for 1600x1200 at 76Hz refresh driven by a NVidia GForce FX 5700LE. The monitor does not identify itself, so we get a default 640x480 or maybe 800x600.
The one tool you need right then is NOT a resolution selector that with poor choices maxed at 800x600. It is NOT a X- Configurator that is going to do very unreliable things with xorg.conf. If it comes in a window that exceeds the display screen, life gets impossible. Even with Ubuntu, you need to get at xorg.conf first, and pour scorn on the attempt to "make it simpler" by putting words like "configured monitor", and "configured device" meaning, "we did it in a secret script somewheres else". Ever tried to get a grab on a Gnome iconbar stuck up the side of a screen with display resolution set so low the icons filled it up? Choosing a resolution before the X-server runs usually means the resolution of the framebuffer the boot messages use to scud up the screen in, not the final X desktop that arrives.

2. The fonts, the FONTS. I once trailed the whole deal through some (excellent) articles on just how they are generated, and how they get put all sorts of places as a function of Distro choice. Also how the sizing threshold routine stupidly scales the font sizes in tiny increments in some places, and huge jumps in others. Complete disagreement about font sizes, the loose relationship to DPI (dots per inch) for the monitor, inability to choose the setting in many famous desktops. Then finally, even you get past the Window Manager level, the applications will go their own way. FireFox, Konqueror will do their own thing, and then within them, Google stuff like Gmail will do even worse font stuff with the added benefit of not ever being able to communicate with anyone real to mention that it was crapped up.
(Gah.. was looking for a flames smiley right about there.! )

3. Appearance, desktop themes, etc. is obviously not a good place to be saying "can't stand that", because its so much about personal preference, but.. one of the most off-putting things for me about SuSE is the relentless green featuring a creature that many would find disgusting. In cultural context, Novell should be aware that across most of Africa South of Chad, a chamelion like that is symbolic of such terrible evil that its just inappropriate! Come to that, the known tendency of Linux Logo inventors to portray living things, devil imagery, stuff from magical myth, etc. in icon and display art does not endear Linux to a very large chunk of the world's population!
(Yeah.. I remember.. last time I mentioned it, the response I got was "Dude! - you need help!")

That's enough for now. My list is not nearly complete, and I am nowhere near the most vitriolic flamingest rant I can muster. I atone a bit by trying to fix some of it.