Why Linux Sucks

**kevinmchapman** · October 2nd, 2012

Come on Handy, don't fall into the "old person resisting change" stereotype. You've been around long enough to do better. I'm an Arch user with similar history and experience as you. I moved to systemd a few weeks ago without incident. Apart from today's cpupower upgrade, that is

Must sort out suspend (again)...

**pissedoffdude** · October 2nd, 2012

Wait, what's so bad about systemd? I'm no dev, and it looks like the Arch devs are in favor of it, so I'm sure they have good reasons for this. I just upgraded to it yesterday, and from a user's point of view, it was relatively straight forward, and now my computer boots lightning fast.

**handy** · October 3rd, 2012

Here is one of the many critical reviews of systemd:

http://monolight.cc/2011/05/the-systemd-fallacy/

The Arch devs are going with systemd because it will save them time in maintenance.

I don't like being locked out of being able to control my system. Systemd does just that by doing away with the scripts.

I'm not going to argue about this stuff, I know what I like & what I don't. I converted Arch to systemd & it was not difficult due to the incredibly high quality content of the Arch wiki. I dumped Arch & am currently using Fedora (temporarily) LXDE/Openbox (to see what Red Hat are doing with systemd) & Sabayon CoreCDX/Openbox. Gentoo (Sabayon) are resisting systemd. There are people that have gone a long way down the track of removing systemd from Arch (& other distros) so it looks like at least in the short to medium term we will be able to preserve Linux in a systemd free state.

**kevinmchapman** · October 3rd, 2012

Originally Posted by handy

Here is one of the many critical reviews of systemd:

http://monolight.cc/2011/05/the-systemd-fallacy/

The Arch devs are going with systemd because it will save them time in maintenance.

I don't like being locked out of being able to control my system. Systemd does just that by doing away with the scripts.

I'm not going to argue about this stuff, I know what I like & what I don't. I converted Arch to systemd & it was not difficult due to the incredibly high quality content of the Arch wiki. I dumped Arch & am currently using Fedora (temporarily) LXDE/Openbox (to see what Red Hat are doing with systemd) & Sabayon CoreCDX/Openbox. Gentoo (Sabayon) are resisting systemd. There are people that have gone a long way down the track of removing systemd from Arch (& other distros) so it looks like at least in the short to medium term we will be able to preserve Linux in a systemd free state.

Well, it's not worth arguing about, I'd agree. I would have to say, though, that a bad review on the internet is hardly admissible as evidence...

**Mikeb85** · October 3rd, 2012

I'm not sure I'm ready to say Linux sucks, but Ubuntu has been causing me alot of grief, and it illustrates why the year of the Linux desktop will never come (not even with support from Steam, Google, and others).

Stuff breaks too much. Especially on Ubuntu. Ubuntu is supposed to be 'easy' to use, and the Linux of choice for desktops/consumers. But it's the least stable, most annoying to use distro I've come across. My desktop runs Ubuntu 12.04, and stuff seems to always randomly break with updates. Yes sure, the updates sometimes fix the stuff that breaks, but not timely enough.

For the record, I love the Unity DE, and love the usability. My wife likes it too. Just the other day, CUPS wouldn't print a project. It took me 5 minutes to figure out the problem (a backlog of projects that printed but didn't clear from the queue), but I had to run out the door. Annoying. Yesterday I changed the sync settings on Google Chrome, now Chrome crashes everytime I try to open it. I even uninstalled/installed it again, same problem. I'm sure it's only a 10 minute fix. But there's been so many 10 minute fixes that I'm getting sick of it. And I'm not the tinkering type. I use a stock installation, and keep it stock.

I installed the Windows 8 developer preview awhile back. It was incredibly stable, much more so than any Linux I've used. I don't get it - if an Alpha product from MS can be more stable than an LTS product from Canonical, there's a big problem.

And speed - Ubuntu 12.04 is slow. About as slow as Windows 7. I could deal with that, if it were reliable - but it isn't.

I've also used other distros - mainly openSUSE, but also various Ubuntu or Arch spins. openSUSE is usability hell - installing anything requires installing a whole bunch of dependencies. Attaching a printer involves a bunch of settings. Getting Skype to play nice with KDE was an evening's project. But at least openSUSE is fast - very fast, much much faster than Ubuntu (even with KDE). And even though openSUSE ships with alot of bugs, things never break on it. Anytime I've fixed anything on openSUSE, it stays fixed. Forever. But installing stuff will probably always be a pain.

So I'm left with a situation where I can go with an unstable, buggy mess that is well supported and has the largest variety of software available (Ubuntu), or a stable, fast DE that is a pain to install software on (openSUSE).

Or the 3rd option - Windows - which is stable, reliable, runs pretty much any software, but costs money and is less open. Odds are I'll take advantage of cheap Windows 8 upgrades, and upgrade all the licenses I currently own (as I do own several valid Windows licenses even though I primarily use Linux). Most open source projects run on Windows anyway.

**Mikeb85** · October 3rd, 2012

Another reason Linux sucks - lack of support. I'd pay for support without question, but I've heard some pretty terrible stories about Canonical support (hell, even paying for Canonical services is a pain - I tried to upgrade Ubuntu One, it wouldn't accept payment!). Novell and SUSE have been split up by Attachmate, who knows how support will work. Not to mention, SUSE and Red Hat only seem concerned with the Enterprise. Who will offer consumer support?

And finally, Windows is cheap. I don't know about anyone else, but 150-300 dollars for a product that lasts 3+ years (and can be upgraded afterwards for much less) sounds pretty affordable to me. I prefer Linux because of the openness and for ideological reasons, but the pragmatist in me says that MS still has a good thing going. Vista and endless installation CDs drove me away from MS, but Windows 7 and 8 are great products.

Linux is a great kernel, a great tool for specific ends, but a terrible product.

**handy** · October 3rd, 2012

I'm seriously considering going back to PC-BSD / Openbox. It was great in 2006, & has come a long way since then.

I loved Arch, that's why I used it (on two machines) for ~4.5 years.

I want to control my own system, not have the ease of that removed by a monolith from a monopoly. (Hopefully it won't come to that, I just couldn't resist the alliteration.

)

**critin** · October 6th, 2012

Originally Posted by pissedoffdude

I definitely don't think the average user is incredibly linux savy. I was just stating the linux condition as I currently see it.

And I totally agree with you in that it shouldn't be hassle for a new user to install software. Actually, I think it's not so hard at the moment for a user to download a deb and simply double click and install it, and if a deb isn't available that's why I suggested a universal installer as opposed to a package..

Windows users love to scour the web searching for apps and programs to install. Free games. Open source has some sites for their products, but they don't promote them much, only linux users know their names, and the sites don't look like window product sites. I know these sites cost $$ and it's passed on in the price of the products.

But, if linux had a few sites that featured apps that are already in SC and Synaptic, people would be more apt to 'find' them. Discovering what they need is more 'fun' on the web than it is in Synaptic. Synaptic lists its wares by numbers, names that are not understood, and its uninteresting. SC is better, but it's like shopping from home. People want to get out to the mall. (web)

A good web site can show that 'download and install' is just as easy as it is in Windows.

**bfmetcalf** · October 6th, 2012

I don't agree with most of what you said. If you put too many standards on Linux, it just becomes Windows or Mac. Technically, Linux does have kind of a standard package though, it is the tar.gz archive. You can just compile the file for your distro.

I'll keep my different distro's and choice over one standard across the entire Linux world, much more innovation that way. Freedom drives innovation far faster than standards.

**critin** · October 6th, 2012

Originally Posted by Incarnadine

First, let me begin by saying that I love Linux! I place no other OS over Linux for the main reasons of its robustness, my ethics and moral. With that said, let me begin.

Linux can be much more than it is now. The competitor, Microsoft, has a big advantage over Linux though and there are many Linux users that aren't even aware of this. The simple fact that Microsoft has a "standard" for its OS puts it in the lead by far in the PC market. Users want simplicity, and most of all, want to be able to go to the store and by software that they know will work. Linux having so many distrobutions and different packages used to install programs is nothing but a headache for companies trying to reach the PC market. Why would EA Games ever make a game for Linux when they can focus on one standard and spend much less to release it for Windows?

Ubuntu seems to be dominating the Linux market and I'm seeing more packages for this distrobution on the Internet than any other distro of Linux. My question is, how long will this last before Ubuntu is pushed off the table and another big distro makes it to the top?

Bottom line, some type of standard needs to be created for Linux and we need to put our heads together and team up on this project. The creation of different distros only hurts the Linux community and makes Microsoft stronger. Please click the link below for a great video expanding on my thoughts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkgahANeq14

Have any comments on my thoughts? Please reply with your honest opinion, even if you feel that I'm an idiot and need to shut my pie hole

I agree with you. I think the reason we don't have the choices that windows has is because linux isn't dependable. By that I mean, if a app is created for this version, it may not work in the next version. The base changes too often which requires too many updates too often, and needs new drivers too often. Developers just can't spend all that time and money on something that will be out of date in a few months--or possibly at next update. They need to depend on linux.

I can still install an app on windows that is nine years old, and it works just fine. Yes, there are many choices in linux too, but new users don't know what they are, don't know how to install them, and often can't even recognize them by name. They have to be told what they need, where to find it, and someone has to give them the code to install it. That's not fun. They really do want to find and install for their selves. There should be basic standards at least on a few versions. Call it the Starter Version or something. LTS do some of this, but it isn't enough.