My Linux rant/manifesto... very long, sorry

[jdragsdale]

I'm a long-time on/off Linux user. I've used everything from Redhat (when basically that was the only REAL bundled distro there was, before there was such a thing as Fedora) to Mandrake, Suse, Debian, and to my current Jaunty Ubuntu (along with a number of distros I can't even remember the names of).

My Linux experiences usually lasted as long as it took for me to get tired of dual-booting to be able to do everything I wanted to do, when I could just do it all in Windows... so back to Windows I would run.

I do think, thankfully, that I've found a keeper with Ubuntu, although I do still have to dual boot, just to be able to do the things I want to do... same as 1990, 18 YEARS AGO.... one of which is just because I have a Zune which is nobodies stupid fault but mine, and the other is loop and live sound based music production. (BTW... please don't point me to the current generation of Linux studio apps, even Ardour, as they are generally woefully, and I mean REALLY behind the curve of even open programs such as Reaper. Maybe someday, but not right now.)

Anyhow, my first OS was a TI-99/4A, followed by C64, then MS-DOS, text based, command line. Next was Windows 3.11, then OS/2 Warp. I've used every flavor of Windows up to and including 64 bit XP Pro (which sucks btw). I currently use XP Pro because I must, and I refuse to use Vista, or any other future MS product by choice. "Why" doesn't matter for purposes of this rant, so chalk it up to being old and fed up/cranky.

I do however, feel like I am a very typical "average" user, if indeed there is such a person that would be posting on a Linux forum to begin with. :P

I may know a lot more about some things than most people, and I certainly know a lot less about many more, but how I USE that knowledge in interacting with my computer is pretty "average" I think (other than the music production I mentioned). Sometimes, I think I know "just" enough more to be really frustrated when things that SHOULD work, don't. Sometimes I think that, and someone else, who knows much more than I, points out (rather mercilessly usually), how little I really DO know... but that's cool too, because it helps me learn more.

I am NOT a Linux geek... I'm not afraid to sudo (hell, I've even enabled /Root a couple of times in Jaunty), but un-tarballing crap still fries my nerves every single time... as does trying to create a consistently working desktop shortcut by the way... why is that? (Not why does it bug me, but rather, why don't my shortcuts "stick"?

I am NOT a Windows geek either, but editing the registry, etc doesn't scare me.

I know less than Jack about a Mac.

I HATE HAVING to use the command line to do basic stuff.
(Note - I don't hate being ABLE to do so. Being ABLE to do so is awesome. I just hate being FORCED to.)

I don't think Windows sucks just because it is Windows. It actually does some things very well.

I don't think Linux rules just because it ISN'T Windows. It actually does some pretty important things REALLY poorly, if at all.

I've used enough OSes to know full well that different is not automatically "better".

Of all the non-windows distros I have ever tried, the one that actually comes closest to "just work"ing as advertised is Ubuntu Jaunty. Overall, I am quite pleased with it.

That said, I DO have a few (or more) headaches that I (and anyone else) should not have in the year 2009.

Now, I use 64 bit, which I understand is "bleeding edge".
Again...Why?
I can't begin to understand why EVERY system built in the last 10 years ISN'T 64 bit. Just failure to adopt by the big players I'm sure, but still... How old is XP-Pro 64? Why is there no AUTOMATIC bridging between 32 bit and 64 bit apps? Who knows. Why would Ubuntu 64 bit ship without built-in 32 bit compatibility for 21st century basic stuff like Flash, etc? (I know, I know... blame Adobe, but still... again...)

Maybe there isn't a compatibility layer yet, as a lot of "old-school" self-proclaimed Linux pros will say, simply because *I* haven't written one yet (as if I could).

From a technical standpoint, it's quite simple to understand why 64 bit things don't work on 32 bit. But c'mon already... why can't 32 bit apps "just work" on 64 bit architecture/OS? Why is there no built-in translation layer? Making 32 bit stuff work is usually easy enough to do of course, on Ubuntu anyhow, as long as you don't mind sudo apt-get installing, or using the package manager. It's figuring out WHY your app doesn't work, WHAT you need to fix it, and HOW to get it installed and working that is the needlessly frustrating part. Backwards compatibility should (almost) always be built in if feasible. Ubuntu, and Linux in general are certainly not unique in 64 bit headaches, Windows for the most part is even worse, although word is the last batch of updates for Vista 64 have made this not so much the case any more. If so, that will be another area where Linux is behind the curve, rather than leading the way. :/

By the way, why can't they make a 32 bit OS that tags part of the first 3 gigs of RAM and uses that as a pointer to the larger array of RAM over the 32 bit addressable threshold, then re-direct system tsr's etc to that overflow area, thereby freeing up ram in the lower range? On the surface, it sounds simple enough, but I'm not a programmer? Find me a motherboard that accepts no more than 4 GB of ram? Find me a processor in two years that Isn’t multi-threaded? Usually software drives hardware development, why does 64 bit (just the expanded RAM alone would seem to be a HUGE deal) seem to be the exception?

Anyhow, I digress.

So 64 bit specific issues aside, here are my (more or less random) thoughts about why people have so hard a time converting from Windows to Linux, and my thoughts (for what they're worth) about how some of these issues might be addressed... maybe they've already been addressed, and I'm just too stupid or noobish to be aware. If so, well... I've got pretty thick skin, and I don't mind being "enlightened", seriously.


So anyhow, the premise(s) these random thoughts spring from....

#1 - Proprietary is BAD - it stifles development, obfuscates technology, and hinders portability.

#2 - STANDARDIZATION is GOOD - (within reason) it promotes stable development, defines a basic framework to INSURE portability, and provides a common ground to jump from.

Windows is proprietary (bad) ... BUT... it is also standardized (good, but in a bad way because of their business model... confused?). Certain of the API layers etc that allow software developers to write programs so they KNOW things will work (like sound, etc) are an integral part of that standardization.

In the case of Windows, what that means for me is this... I can buy a game, and install it on my windows computers, my friend's windows computer, my neighbors windows computer ... and it will "just work" on all of them. Not because it's Windows... because the interface is standardized. (Not always, but 99+% of the time). It may need a driver or something, which most of the time the app is smart enough to tell Windows it needs, and usually even go fetch it.

Linux by contrast is not proprietary (mostly), which is good.
Unfortunately... neither is Linux "Standardized"... which I think causes the bulk of the issues that make switching over a pain for Average Joe.

I can't even install two NATIVE Linux games on the same computer and count on basic stuff such as SOUND or GRAPHICS working. Never mind trying to make them "just work" on different distros. Now I know... not "Linux"s fault (as if there were some separate "Linux" entity). I know the fault usually lies with the applications developers. BUT.... if the hardware translation layers were "standard", then there should be no reason both games would not have sound or graphics. Right?

In other words... if my Linux BOX has sound, then ALL the apps I install on it should ALSO have sound. ALL the sound output streams from ANY program running on my Linux box should be directed to that working stream unless I specifically tell it otherwise. But... ladies and gents... in the year 2009... with the most modern Linux distro available... this is STILL NOT THE CASE.

WHY?

If I understand correctly, that is part of the goal with Pulseaudio as far as sound management goes.

But the *nix community needs to get together and define some standards. That does NOT mean tying the entire community down to for example Fedora's idea of sound implementation. Rather, I would see it as a collaborative agreement where everyone gets together and says .. "Ok... for the sake of our USERS sanity, we are going to AGREE that "XSYSTEM" is going to be the basic jumping off point for sound management. That way, when developer X writes a new game, he can just make sure it works for "Linux Sound", and then to make it really cool, he can also add in support for PulseAudio, or ASIO, or whatever.... but make the basics work first, right?

Then go design whatever... make it better.. innovate... explore... create the next sound system that blows away everything ever made in the past. BUT...in the meanwhile, make the basics still work.

Maybe, in the realm of sound, PulseAudio is the way to go, I'm using it now, and it works for about 80% of everything I want it to. the rest of it may be Pulseaudio, or it may be me, but until it's standard, please don't tie me into it by breaking my system if I don't want to use it (spelled... "can't make it work") on my computer... thank you very much. Remember how well that went over with Microsoft and IE?

Besides, if anybody truly believes that Pulseaudio "just works".... I defy you to make all my games and sound recording apps to work. If one gets set up to where it will actually make sound, it breaks another, ad infinitum. If I didn't want to make music or play games, that wouldn't be an issue... of course, if that were the case, all I'd need would be a typewriter and a calculator, so what would be the point?

The Average Joe is a Windows user (like it or not, they haven't seen the light yet)... which means probably 80% (I don't purport this to be an exact number, just an estimation) of all computer users worldwide do not know, or want to learn, how to build a custom kernel... or sudo apt-get install whateverapp. Or god forbid, spend half an hour just trying to FIND the program they just installed, only to make a link to it on the desktop so they don't have to find it every time, and THEN find out that the link doesn't work next time they reboot. Or even download a codec to play MP3s for chrissakes (IF they can enable the right repository I mean). I know.. licensing, proprietary, non-free... etc etc etc. But c'mon... we're talking MP3s, not NASA backdoors. Work it out, as a community.

Not to keep picking on Pulseaudio, because it is very powerful and configurable.... but the Average Joe does not want to configure Pulse Audio to mediate between ALSA, ASIO, OSS, etc etc etc. He certainly doesn't want to have to do it for every single app. Do you have any idea how long it took to figure out how to direct the audio stream to the proper pulseaudio channel, in real-time, for every single app I run??? I mean really??? (Oh, and try doing it with a full-screen app... tricky tricky...) No, the average user wants Pulseaudio (or whatever sound management system is in place) to simply DO IT... and leave the user out of it.

User *ability* to override = GOOD... User *required* to manually set up every oddball app = pain in the neck.

Why not make Pulseaudio monitor all audio output streams from known sources or to known channels, and make it intercept and route them directly, automatically? Then you have a gem.

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty cool and trick that Pulseaudio can do the things it CAN do, seriously, and it shows just a glimpse of how powerful the app is... but how many new users are gonna have the patience to dig deep enough to figure that out?

The Average user wants to pop in a cd, have the autorun pop up prompting for an install, click ok, ok, ok, finish... and get on with USING the program. Not spend two days searching forums just to figure out how to mount the CD drive, much less HOW to make their new program to run. By the way.. how about an installer that drops a link (working please) to the desktop... or even (I know it’s a lot to ask, but it is 2009) maybe it could even ASK me if I want it added to the Games Menu, or the Sound Menu, etc? Even if every app-developer doesn't do it individually, how abouts a "manager" (you know, like one of the already existing ones) that could just take over that install shell, and do the things the individual app doesn't?

Not to say Windows is flawless either... not by a long shot, so I'm not talking apples/oranges here... I'm talking more like just the best looking bushel of apples possible.

But really, it's 2009, and although I think Ubuntu Jaunty is best-in-class, I don't see "significant" improvement in making the "just work" philosophy actually "just work" since I paid for a boxed Suse distro over 10 years ago. Sure, modern distro's work with current technology that wasn't even around back then, but.. you could have said the exact same thing "back then", and Open Suse fared no worse in "just work"ing than most current distros do, with everything else being equal. Dare I say it even, Open Suse managed my sound better than any current distro does.

And don't take that wrong please, I LOVE Ubuntu, and I think it's really a step in the right direction. But we're still some pretty big steps away. Why is that?

I'm not being sarcastic there, I really would like someone who knows a heck of a lot more than me about Linux (not hard) to explain to me WHY (for example) my sound doesn't "just work", and save me lots of frustration...

"I think" (always dangerous)... but, I think, I fear, that Linux will never be the operating system of the people, until the Linux community as a whole "gets it" that Average Joe is not a power user. He's just your well-intentioned, but pain in the arse cousin who just yesterday deleted all those files in the root directory, because he didn't know what they did, and he didn't put them there, so they were probably unnecessary. Honestly, most of us have been that cousin... we like to tinker, otherwise Linux would scare the hell out of us.

As Linux users, we're not "better", more "pure", more "saintly" or even more "smart" than most Windows users... we are just brave and adventurous souls, not afraid to apt-get-install... crap I broke my install... start over...

I do not want to see Linux turn into just another flavor of windows. I like that it is unique, different... better, stronger, faster.... but all that horsepower scares lots of folks away. I just think that other than being less scary (in other words, less command line interaction) some basic things need to happen.... and I say this with full awareness that the Linux community is, by far and large, just a collective of individuals with a common desire and purpose, and not a 50,000 employee software house with endless resources and programmers... but I'm talking BASIC functionality here...

#1 - Hardware needs to WORK. Not after hours of forums searching, not after days of pounding on the keyboard, not after years of trying to get it right... it needs to work, and it needs to work right now... out of the box. - (Obviously not everything will work, but MOST stuff just simply MUST work.)

If Average Joe has to choose between spending a week getting his video driver to work, only to find that it breaks his sound, he'll just go back to Windows because it's not as much hassle.

#2 - Software needs a STANDARD install. No more friggin tarballs for Christ’s sake.... and for the love of god, no more compiling from the command line. I mean if someone wants to do it, or if the developer is too lazy/busy to make an installer, then fine, that's cool. But don't reply to my install question with a routine response of... "well just compile it from the command line and you can build in the sound drivers as you go" crap.

Average Joe does NOT.... and I repeat at the obvious risk of redundancy... Average Joe DOES NOT want to do that. EVER. Really... compiling crap from the command line scares Average Joe to death, and makes his eyes glaze over, he starts to drool, and the gears in his brain grind slowly to a halt... until his neighbor Average Moe, says..

"Well, do what I did... just (re)install today’s flavor of Windows and you won't have those headaches. Sure, it will cost you a half-grand for software and licensing if you want full functionality, plus you'll have to give out all your financial and personal details, and re-register if you even so much as have an inconveniently timed power outage, or build a new computer...but what the hey, at least you'll be able to watch your neighborhood teens doing backyard wrestling on YouTube again, and have sound for Solitaire too!"

Ya'know... the whole reason Windows was invented was so people DIDN'T HAVE TO DO STUFF FROM THE COMMAND LINE. That was 25 YEARS ago.... is Linux, as a community driven OS, moving forward or backwards here?

I know it's unrealistic to expect such a diversified community to agree on just one format. But the exact same thing that makes Linux wonderful, is the very thing that keeps it from crossing over to mainstream. It has been my personal experience, that the whole Linux "movement" has sometimes been so widely focused on esoteric things, that core functionality for the things users really do from day to day often seem to get overlooked. I mean, seriously... there should never again have to be a post from a new Linux user that starts off with "I can't figure out how to get Linux to mount my whatever". Linux should just DO IT.

So please, keep the tarballs, and RPM's, and DEBs, etc. Whatever. Just give me ONE, INTEGRATED, AUTOMATED INSTALL(ER) that will find, decode, interpret, install, and get those apps working for me without me having to go to the command line to do it. I CAN sudo apt-get install... but I don't want to have to. The OPTION is nice, sure. The requirement?... not so nice.

When I click on a Windows exe by mistake? Don't give me a message that tells me how stupid I am (although, I know I am that stupid regularly)... instead, open Wine HQ, or whatever. Don't make me figure it out each time. I know, I know.. program associations... but really, shouldn't the OS be smart enough to figure that out? Give me a pop-up that says, this is a windows app, do you wanna run it with Wine or what?, not a pop-up that says... "You=FAIL".

When I make a shortcut to an app? Hows about making it work WITHOUT me getting a migraine? How hard is it to simply create a pointer to a file? C'mon....

Oh... and my biggest pet peeve of all.... when I install a hard drive in Windows... it is automatically mounted. AUTOMATICALLY. I don't have to figure out some half-page long cryptic command line instruction (after polling to see WHICH device I want to mount, if I can even figure it out without a degree in Linux engineering) or edit my fstab or any of that other crap.

Just make it work. Automatically. Linux is smart enough to tell me the drive is there, what file system is on there, it knows how to read it, how to write to it, how to interact with it... why the hell does every distro still (in 2009) insist on MAKING me do it manually, each and every time no less... or search for hours through forums to figure out how to make it work? Someone please give me one reasonable reason why ALL my hard drives should NOT be mounted at boot? If I go back in and tell it not to is one thing, the current state of the art is quite another. If I'm running an enterprise-level server, and need to restrict access fine, but on the regular install, for the Average Joe user... why the PITA?

Windows can poll my hardware, get the hardware level ids, figure out which drivers it has and doesn't have, tell me which drivers need to be downloaded, and even download and automatically install them for me.

Why doesn't Linux?

Linux is more powerful, more stable, more clean and unbloated... why does it continue in this day and age to leave Average Joe left scratching his head about why his computer doesn't even show his other hard drive, or automatically see his flash drive when he plugs it in?

I know mounting and unmounting of removable drives is an important topic in managing your data integrity, but still... mount them automatically, remind me at mount time that I need to UNmount them before I just unplug and go so that my data doesn't get corrupted, but life doesn't have to be as hard as it currently is.

I tried for an hour just to get Linux to recognize that my Zune was plugged in... I know it won't work, but I couldn't even get it to show up. I have 8 USB ports, conveniently enough numbered 1-8, but with no other description to even narrow down WHICH port maybe wasn't fired up or mounting. Double-clicking each USB folder in /Media just shows an empty directory, absolutely no other info.

Now.... Somebody probably has a simple answer to that... my point is, there shouldn't be a need for such a question or answer... it should have just worked. I know why the Zune won't work, but my OS should have recognized that there was a device connected to that port, etc.

Like I said, I'm no Linux geek.... it took me a full week to figure out how to get Ubuntu to mount my 2nd hard drive every time I booted, and another week to figure out how to get it to read my Windows partition, and another two nights to figure out how to also mount THAT partition at boot-up. I'm ok with that I guess, but my point is... my wife is NOT ok with that, neither is my son, or my neighbor, or my boss, or 95% of my coworkers, and the frustrating fact is... it doesn't have to be that way, and it's things like that that (I think) keep Average Joe's away in droves.

Games... ok so Windows games don't generally play (as) well on Linux. Fair enough...

But....Why is that?

I mean I'm not too stupid, I understand the "why" it doesn't work. What I don't understand is why do we keep making individual apps work, one at a time, through Wine or VMWare or whatever... rather than addressing the root cause of the problem which is (as I understand it) the way the program writes to the registry etc to interact with the hardware. Why not make a standard, native, clone of the windows registry function (for lack of a better explanation), with a translation layer, that basically fools the game into thinking it is running on windows, rather than making a half dozen programs that try to do that? Maybe when Windows goes open source later this year (yeah right) then something like this could be done.... I dunno.

So anyhow.. my brain hurts now, and I imagine yours does too if you were stubborn or interested enough to read this whole thing, so I'll stop now.

[elija]

Why not make a standard, native, clone of the windows registry function (for lack of a better explanation), with a translation layer, that basically fools the game into thinking it is running on windows

Um. I don't quite know how to break this to you, but you have just asked for Wine

[MikeTbob]

Um. I don't quite know how to break this to you, but you have just asked for Wine

LOL, I was thinking the same thing.

[Hal343]

Windows can poll my hardware, get the hardware level ids, figure out which drivers it has and doesn't have, tell me which drivers need to be downloaded, and even download and automatically install them for me.

What version of Windows does that? I've never seen it. I use live cds of linux to find that out, to fix windows installs that are broken.

[jayd512]

What version of Windows does that? I've never seen it.

I think it's version that comes on the restore disk for the computer

[techieMoe]

I am NOT a Linux geek... but un-tarballing crap still fries my nerves every single time...

I can't say I blame you there, but I can't remember the last time I've had to un-tarball something in Ubuntu. Slackware, sure, but not Ubuntu. Was what you were looking for not present in the repositories?

as does trying to create a consistently working desktop shortcut by the way... why is that? (Not why does it bug me, but rather, why don't my shortcuts "stick"?

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you describe the problem in more detail?

I HATE HAVING to use the command line to do basic stuff.
(Note - I don't hate being ABLE to do so. Being ABLE to do so is awesome. I just hate being FORCED to.)

Again, seldom do I *have* to use the command line in Ubuntu. I simply prefer to in some cases. Could you give an example?

I've used enough OSes to know full well that different is not automatically "better".

You should know that "different" isn't automatically "worse" either.

Now, I use 64 bit, which I understand is "bleeding edge".
Again...Why?
I can't begin to understand why EVERY system built in the last 10 years ISN'T 64 bit. Just failure to adopt by the big players I'm sure, but still... How old is XP-Pro 64?

There is no real answer for this. I like 64-bit, and use it whenever possible, but for some unknown reason the market in general (Linux and Windows by the way) is overwhelmingly still 32-bit. Yes, XP 64-bit exists, as does 64-bit Vista and Windows 7, but do any of them take real advantage of the 64-bit architecture? Not at the moment. I can't tell you why that is.

Why is there no AUTOMATIC bridging between 32 bit and 64 bit apps? Who knows. Why would Ubuntu 64 bit ship without built-in 32 bit compatibility for 21st century basic stuff like Flash, etc?

By the nature of the X86_64 instruction set there is automatic bridging between 32-bit and 64-bit software. That's what allows your 64-bit processor to handle 32-bit apps and a 32-bit OS.

...And Ubuntu doesn't ship with anything proprietary. End of story. That's something you'll have to take up with them.

Maybe there isn't a compatibility layer yet, as a lot of "old-school" self-proclaimed Linux pros will say, simply because *I* haven't written one yet (as if I could).

None is needed. Pretty much all 64-bit Linux distributions come with the 32-bit libraries installed alongside their 64-bit counterparts.

From a technical standpoint, it's quite simple to understand why 64 bit things don't work on 32 bit. But c'mon already... why can't 32 bit apps "just work" on 64 bit architecture/OS?

They do. I don't understand your point. Are you unable to run 32-bit applications on your 64-bit Ubuntu install?

By the way, why can't they make a 32 bit OS that tags part of the first 3 gigs of RAM and uses that as a pointer to the larger array of RAM over the 32 bit addressable threshold, then re-direct system tsr's etc to that overflow area, thereby freeing up ram in the lower range?

The Linux kernel is capable of handling greater than 3GB of RAM with a special compilation flag. Read more about it here:
Ubuntu 4GB Ram Limitation and Solution

Windows is proprietary (bad) ... BUT... it is also standardized (good, but in a bad way because of their business model... confused?). Certain of the API layers etc that allow software developers to write programs so they KNOW things will work (like sound, etc) are an integral part of that standardization.

The Windows API is not exactly a sterling example. There are parts of it that remain undocumented and have since its inception. In fact, if you want to learn more about the internals of Windows itself you have to pay for Microsoft-sponsored programming classes and resources (MSDN), and sometimes sign non-disclosure agreements on the code they show you.

In the case of Windows, what that means for me is this... I can buy a game, and install it on my windows computers, my friend's windows computer, my neighbors windows computer ... and it will "just work" on all of them. Not because it's Windows... because the interface is standardized.

No, you're wrong. You can do that precisely because it's Windows. Windows seems "standardized" because it's the only game in town. Developers know that so they write their software to work well on Windows, warts and all. There's a famous case where the developers of Sim City wrote poor memory management code just to get around a known bug in Windows 3.11. That's how desperate they were to support the platform that's run by 90% of the world. Don't kid yourself. Ubiquitous does not mean "standard."

[techieMoe]

I can't even install two NATIVE Linux games on the same computer and count on basic stuff such as SOUND or GRAPHICS working. Never mind trying to make them "just work" on different distros.

Can you give concrete examples of this? If not you're just trolling, and I have no patience for that. If you're having legimitate trouble with the version of Linux you have installed, start a thread and we can probably help you fix it.

BUT.... if the hardware translation layers were "standard", then there should be no reason both games would not have sound or graphics. Right?

Wrong. You act as though your hardware is the only hardware in the world. Windows developers have just as much trouble with sound and graphics cards but they have the benefit of support from the hardware companies that make them. It's business suicide for a graphics card manufacturer NOT to make their card work well in MS Windows, so game developers get as much help as they need to make things work as close to flawless as possible.
Linux developers, most of whom are volunteers, have no companies ties to call upon when writing software or drivers for devices. Often times companies purposefully obscure their hardware specifications to prevent 3rd-party drivers from being developed. This is getting better (ATI) but there's still a long way to go.
The point I'm trying to make here is there are thousands of brands, models, and makes of devices out there and only a handful have fully-realized drivers in Linux. It's not that simple.

Besides, if anybody truly believes that Pulseaudio "just works".... I defy you to make all my games and sound recording apps to work.

Start a thread. We'll do our best.

Or even download a codec to play MP3s for chrissakes (IF they can enable the right repository I mean). I know.. licensing, proprietary, non-free... etc etc etc. But c'mon... we're talking MP3s, not NASA backdoors. Work it out, as a community.

Your world is black and white. How nice for you. The issue of licensing for MP3s and other multimedia codecs that are owned by various companies worldwide is far from a simple one. Even if most open-source projects had the time and resources (not to mention lawyers) to figure it out, who would pay them? Is that something we as a community should just "work out"?

The Average user wants to pop in a cd, have the autorun pop up prompting for an install, click ok, ok, ok, finish... and get on with USING the program. Not spend two days searching forums just to figure out how to mount the CD drive, much less HOW to make their new program to run.

Are you actually having these problems or are you simply pulling them out of the air for the sake of a straw-man argument?

I'm not being sarcastic there

Could have fooled me.

"I think" (always dangerous)... but, I think, I fear, that Linux will never be the operating system of the people, until the Linux community as a whole "gets it" that Average Joe is not a power user.

There's a good section of the Linux community that doesn't want Linux to be the "operating system of the people." I'm one of them. If that means I "don't get it," so be it. Linux works for me. If MS Windows works for most other folks, great. More power to them.

I do not want to see Linux turn into just another flavor of windows.

Again, you could have fooled me.

#1 - Hardware needs to WORK. Not after hours of forums searching, not after days of pounding on the keyboard, not after years of trying to get it right... it needs to work, and it needs to work right now... out of the box. - (Obviously not everything will work, but MOST stuff just simply MUST work.)

What hardware? Be more specific. You can't just say "it must work" and cover 90% of the hardware out there. If you don't set limits you never end up with a finished product. Look at how long it takes Debian to put out a release because they're so concerned with getting the OS to run on everything imaginable.

If Average Joe has to choose between spending a week getting his video driver to work, only to find that it breaks his sound, he'll just go back to Windows because it's not as much hassle.

If YOU spent a week getting your video driver to work, YOU are doing something wrong. If that's just an example, get a better one.

#2 - Software needs a STANDARD install. No more friggin tarballs for Christ’s sake....

The only major distribution I'm aware of that still uses tarballs is Slackware, and they have a packaging mechanism too, it's just not standard.

and for the love of god, no more compiling from the command line.

What have you had to compile? Most everything I need is in the repositories pre-compiled and ready to go.

Ya'know... the whole reason Windows was invented was so people DIDN'T HAVE TO DO STUFF FROM THE COMMAND LINE. That was 25 YEARS ago.... is Linux, as a community driven OS, moving forward or backwards here?

You say you like the freedom to use the command line and then say this? Do you like the power it gives you or do you consider it antiquated crap? You can't have both.

[techieMoe]

I know it's unrealistic to expect such a diversified community to agree on just one format. But the exact same thing that makes Linux wonderful, is the very thing that keeps it from crossing over to mainstream.

You seem to be laboring under the assumptions that:
1. The Linux community as a whole really cares about becoming "mainstream."
2. Diversity is bad.
I disagree with both of those assumptions.

When I click on a Windows exe by mistake? Don't give me a message that tells me how stupid I am (although, I know I am that stupid regularly)... instead, open Wine HQ, or whatever.

Yeah, I'm still really not convinced that you're not asking Linux to become Windows.

When I make a shortcut to an app? Hows about making it work WITHOUT me getting a migraine? How hard is it to simply create a pointer to a file? C'mon....

I'm genuinely interested in trying to figure out what's happening here. Please start a thread and we'll do our best to figure out what's wrong. You should not have issues creating a shortcut.

I mean I'm not too stupid, I understand the "why" it doesn't work. What I don't understand is why do we keep making individual apps work, one at a time, through Wine or VMWare or whatever... rather than addressing the root cause of the problem which is (as I understand it) the way the program writes to the registry etc to interact with the hardware. Why not make a standard, native, clone of the windows registry function (for lack of a better explanation), with a translation layer, that basically fools the game into thinking it is running on windows, rather than making a half dozen programs that try to do that? Maybe when Windows goes open source later this year (yeah right) then something like this could be done.... I dunno. .

Once again, you're basically saying, "Why doesn't Linux run native Windows applications like Windows does?" Linux is not Windows. It will never be Windows, and in my opinion shouldn't ever TRY to be Windows. If you want to play Windows games that badly, dual boot or go back to XP. Use what works for you. You're coming across like a motorcyclist trying to turn a moped into a sedan. They just aren't the same thing, nor should they be.

[Hal343]

Re: my question
No wonder I've never seen windows do that. The first time I need to re-install Windows to fix it, I install linux, so have never seen the restore disk work.

[jdragsdale]

Um. I don't quite know how to break this to you, but you have just asked for Wine

As I understand it, there are a LOT of programs Wine cannot run without the actual program being installed in an actual installed copy of a Windows OS. What I was wishing for is a way to do away with Windows completely when I'm running Linux, and still be able to play those other games, run those other apps etc.

I know, I want to have my cake and eat it too, I understand that. :P