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aysiu
July 9th, 2005, 08:22 PM
A lot of skeptics say that Linux isn't "ready for the desktop" or "ready for primetime." A lot of advocates (like myself) insist that most of the difficulty with Linux comes from the fact that major distributors (Dell, for example) don't sell PCs preloaded and preconfigured with Linux.

I'm just curious--what "Linux use" problems have people actually encountered (not potentially encountered, not heard about a friend encountering). A Linux use problem is not a Linux set-up problem. I consider "set up" anything that can be done only once and be usable. For example, after I install SMEG, I can edit menus. I don't have to install SMEG again. After I adjust my xorg.conf file for my monitor resolution, I don't have to readjust it.

The only problem I've encountered in using Linux (not installing it) may not be a Ubuntu problem (it may be Mozilla), but if I close Thunderbird with the X button in the upper-right-hand corner of the window, I get some error saying that the child terminated in an error state. However, if I hit control-Q to exit, it exits fine. Granted, that error doesn't hamper the functionality of Thunderbird, but it's an error, nonetheless.

So... what other "using Linux" problems have people encountered? Is most of the "trouble" of Linux really just installing and configuring, as I think it is? Or are there a lot of other problems? No trolls, please. Only answer if you actually use Linux, not if you're still busy installing it.

N'Jal
July 9th, 2005, 08:32 PM
Well i have a few really, not as many as i had in windows, (windows wouldn't utilize my graphics card properly, believe it or not)

1) SMEG removed my system preference and admin menu entries, this has been submitted to bugzilla

2) Nautilus crashed fairly often, as in my desktop icons dissappeared, a simple killall nautilus fixed that. I have personally submitted this to bugzilla

3) Sometimes if my computer has been standing for a while and the screen has locked and the password has engauged, i cannot access my system, moving the mouse typing at the keyboard does not grant me access to my computer again. A reboot is needed, followed by shutdown -rF now.

aysiu
July 9th, 2005, 08:38 PM
Thanks for the quick reply. I'd call #1 a setup problem. But #2 and #3 are the use problems I was asking for. Anyone else have others?

BWF89
July 9th, 2005, 08:58 PM
The only problems I have with Linux from past experience:

1. Some distros like Ubuntu don't have a graphical installer like Anaconda.

2. Some printers like my Canon S520 aren't supported by Linux drivers.

Lord Illidan
July 9th, 2005, 09:06 PM
Well, I would say that driver support is one of the largest problems.
That, and also software support.
Ok, instead of Microsoft Office, we have OpenOffice.
Instead of Outlook, we have Evolution and Thunderbird.
Instead of IE, we have Firefox, Konqueror and Epiphany.
But instead of Windows Games, we have what? I don't want to insult the Linux developers, but aside from a few excellent games, the games already out there have a lot to do before they reach the quality of existing games. For example, are you going to compare Glest with Warcraft 3? Ok, some games are being ported to Linux, and wine and cedega are doing a good job, but people want to be certain.

Also, the interface is problematic. I find that many people hate mucking around in terminals. After being raised on 15 years of Windows GUIs, I too found terminals problematic, (though I now find no difficulty at all in using them). Also, the fact that to do most things you have to dip into a terminal is going to drive the average Joe off.

Kvark
July 9th, 2005, 10:23 PM
I've had a LOT of use problems with windows 98, 2k and xp. It is natural for computers to cause trouble for the users. Linux has this talant too but it has given me very few problems.

1. Programs are not added to the menu on install. You should not have to add them manually with a menu editor and installing new programs is something you do from time to time during normal use. So it is a use issue.

2. Doing sudo tasks in GUI is often not possible because you get a "you can't do that" message where you should get a password prompt.

3. When talking to msn users with gaim, some messages I send does not arrive to the msn users.

4. Even with codecs and firefox extensions there is still problems with some rare media files. For example I can't rent a movie online cause that requires both internet explorer active X and some kind of windows media player encryption.

5. The screensaver is sensitive to mouse only, not keyboard, so it goes on when I play racing games.

6. When a game changes screen resolution, a few random panel apps dissapear, different ones each time, everyhing else works as normal and the apps do come back after a random period of time so no biggie.

7. Transperancy for panels does not cascade, so you can make a whole panel transperant only if you can set each individual app on it to the same transperancy. This isn't really a problem, just weird cosmetics.

...uhh, I can't even remember 10 use problems on linux, while I could write a book about use problems on windows, and thats why I use linux.



The reason GPL games are far behind other games is probably that the best games are the bleeding edge of bleeding edge. Most games are antique a year after release. Some abandoned game projects are even rumoured to have become antique before their release. No other software cathegory is that hard to keep up with.

polo_step
July 10th, 2005, 01:03 AM
A lot of skeptics say that Linux isn't "ready for the desktop" or "ready for primetime."
Linux might be, but its applications sure aren't.


I'm just curious--what "Linux use" problems have people actually encountered (not potentially encountered, not heard about a friend encountering). A Linux use problem is not a Linux set-up problem. I consider "set up" anything that can be done only once and be usable..
I don't consider that distinction meaningful or realistic. All a "setup" problem is then, by that definition, is any nosebleed that can somehow be eventually fixed after enough tweaking.

I have no idea if all the application hassles I've encountered are "setup" problems or not.

If you install something according to the directions and it doesn't work right, it's a problem in the eyes of 99% of the people who will be using it.

Anything else is just blaming the victim.

MetalMusicAddict
July 10th, 2005, 01:17 AM
1. Manually editing the fstab. I would LOVE to do this in a similar manner to windows.

2. Hardware support. ie:Scanners

Dave88
July 10th, 2005, 01:29 AM
1 My biggest problem was my graphics card, i couldnt get it to perform the way it should (still doesn't but its good enough)

2 I don't mind mucking about with fstab but a new user shouldn't have to so thats a problem.

aysiu
July 10th, 2005, 01:30 AM
I appreciate all the problems people are volunteering, but these are mostly setup ones, not functioning ones. I don't think the distinction is artificial at all. A setup problem is one you do once. Once it happens properly, it's done--hardware detection, printer setup, anaconda installer. I guess people just didn't get the point of my thread. If people just want to gripe, that's fine, too... but wasn't the point.

Dave88
July 10th, 2005, 01:50 AM
I thought you wanted setup problems, its late where I am.

My using problems are :

1, Music player quits unexpectedly sometimes (not too often though)
2. Sound goes crazy after a reboot(sometimes)
3. ipod sometimes won't mount

Nothing that bad goes wrong

polo_step
July 10th, 2005, 01:54 AM
I appreciate all the problems people are volunteering, but these are mostly setup ones, not functioning ones. I don't think the distinction is artificial at all. A setup problem is one you do once. Once it happens properly, it's done--hardware detection, printer setup, anaconda installer. I guess people just didn't get the point of my thread. If people just want to gripe, that's fine, too... but wasn't the point.
It's a distinction that's only clear in your head, then.

All it means as you describe it is whether or not you can fix the problem or not - change something, tweak something or whatever and make the hassle go away.

I don't know if all the problems I've encountered are like that or if they're just plain old fatal bugs or incompatibilities. There's no way for me to tell, so it's an utterly false distinction.

Here's an example: I can't get audio and video to stay synchronized in the various playback programs. Some people here say that that is a permanent problem due to bad drivers with no available solution and some say it's only a synchronization setup problem.

Which is it? I don't know.

Every problem is a "use problem" until someone comes up with a fix for it and then it retroactively becomes a "setup" problem.

papangul
July 10th, 2005, 02:35 AM
This is my list:
1.I don't get hardware acceleration with my i810.
2.I have problems searching for installed files eg I need to delete the gxine plugin for firefox and I have to consult doc. to find out where it is actually. Also I need to find the the realplay.bin file and I don't know where it is . I face this kind of situation all the time. This is the most annoying thing for me in linux.
3.Multimedia websites-eg- http://raaga.com/channels/hindi/ , IFILM etc.
4.Some html e-books, eg-try opening any book from this list- http://oshoworld.com/*******ooks/index.asp
5. Openoffice takes along time to start compared to MS-office under windows. And perhaps you haven't tried Openoffice-2 yet.
Thats all. Still i am using only linux. Haven't booted into windows for quite some time now.

super
July 10th, 2005, 03:01 AM
i agree that most of the problems here seem like bug that could be fixed

i also agree with polo step that once someone comes up with a fix then the problem becomes a setup problem.

the biggest problems with linux is not specific to ubuntu only. here is my list of probs with linux.

1) driver support - but this can only be fixed by the OEMs

2) eye candy - this is a problem that ubuntu can fix, why can't our desktops look like this out of the box http://www.clan-hash.com/~guli/fvwm/OSX-Milky/Fvwm-OSX_Milky-02.jpg (yes that is a linux box, not a mac)

3) web plugins - we should have these intalled out of the box

this is not to say we are not making progress, we are, but there is still a long way to go.

just my opinion.

egon spengler
July 10th, 2005, 03:24 AM
3. When talking to msn users with gaim, some messages I send does not arrive to the msn users.

4. Even with codecs and firefox extensions there is still problems with some rare media files. For example I can't rent a movie online cause that requires both internet explorer active X and some kind of windows media player encryption.


those aren't really linux problems, most likely the same things or very similar would occur using miranda or opera on windows



5. Openoffice takes along time to start compared to MS-office under windows. And perhaps you haven't tried Openoffice-2 yet..

more than likely if you check in your windows startup folder you'll find a shortcut to microsoft office. office loads so quickly by preloading some of it's files on bootup. i think a similar option is available for open office (it def was there on the windows version i installed but never used about 2 years ago) and so that might speed things up a little. of course it will most likely also slow booting



3) web plugins - we should have these intalled out of the box

i'm pretty sure that the lack of those is because most linux distributions stick to the open software philosophy and so don't include proprietary stuff. on top of that i'm also fairly sure that firefox (which i believe most linux distros use) on windows doesn't come with plugins either. it's a design philosophy i guess. it IS a hassle to have to install them but it's not really a bug per se that linux doesn't include them

poofyhairguy
July 10th, 2005, 04:53 AM
more than likely if you check in your windows startup folder you'll find a shortcut to microsoft office. office loads so quickly by preloading some of it's files on bootup. i think a similar option is available for open office (it def was there on the windows version i installed but never used about 2 years ago) and so that might speed things up a little. of course it will most likely also slow booting

sudo apt-get install ooqstart

aysiu
July 10th, 2005, 08:06 AM
It's a distinction that's only clear in your head, then.
...
I don't know if all the problems I've encountered are like that or if they're just plain old fatal bugs or incompatibilities. There's no way for me to tell, so it's an utterly false distinction.
No, you're totally right. It is clear in my head, but I see your point. If the same person who set up the computer is the one using it, it may be hard for her to tell the difference between what's just a "user" problem and what's a "set up" problem. Maybe that's why the responses I got back were so mixed up.

For me, it's pretty clear to me that the Thunderbird error I get has nothing to do with how I set up my computer, but it is clear to me that the monitor resolution is something I do set up because when I fix it, it's fixed forever.

No, you're right. I thought this was a good idea at the time, but it may actually be a stupid thread...

Knight Palatine
July 15th, 2005, 09:48 PM
Coming back to Linux after a couple of years away, here's what I've found:

1) Out of the box, Totem does nothing. WMP and Real "just work."

2) Rhythmbox worked OK until I switched from GNOME to Ion. My wrist and shoulder already are thanking me for less mousing around, but Rhythmbox no longer recognizes any file format.

3) Large file downloads, either direct or BitTorrent, slow web browsing to an unusable crawl. Didn't have this problem on WinXP.

4) Where, after lo these many years, is the Linux financial management app? GnuCash has a scary number of dependencies. I used MoneyDance a few years back, but it was slow (I have a faster box now).

No others noted at this time. I'll troubleshoot as time permits. To be truly "desktop-ready" though, Linux apps need to mature past having to spend hours on FAQs, forums, and IRC to get them running.

johnmc
July 19th, 2005, 08:31 PM
I thought you wanted setup problems, its late where I am.

My using problems are :

1, Music player quits unexpectedly sometimes (not too often though)


strange, does this happen when listening to mp3's via XMMS?
that's what's happening to me sometimes.... and it kinda sucks!
any ideas about this?

the only problem i had till now

1) no hardware acceleration for my ati mobility radeon 7500 - which also means no s-vhs support so i'm unable to watch videos on my TV

musicman2059
July 19th, 2005, 09:32 PM
Do note that I am running Linux on a crap comp here.

1. Keyboard and mouse seem to be "auto-set" to insanely high repeat rates and delay intervals randomly with xserver. Sometimes it only happens once every few starts, sometimes it happens 4-5 times in a row.

2. As mentioned, OpenOffice takes forever to start up.

3. With some programs, (mainly Bluefish) trying to edit large files becomes a major hassle because it starts to lag horribly. In Bluefish's case, if I were to edit a file of the same size on a similar HTML editor for Windows (1st page would be the closest match), I have no problems.

4. Linux seem to do a really bad job at multitasking with a 366MHz processor.

5. Linux also seems to a a really bad job at managing memory with only 192MB. After startup, I find that 80-85% of my RAM is taken up, almost half of that being cached stuff, (That isn't neccesarily a problem though, seeing it's just a cache) whereas Win98 was only taking around half with no cache.

6. BMP really seems to slow down the rest of my system. (Not too surprised, though.)

7. It would be hella better for people without internet connections if some extra multimedia stuff, such as either an MP3 plugin or player, were available right on the CD.

8. I still have yet to find quite a few programs such as:
- A standalone GIF animator, because GIMP-GAP gets really complicated
- A decent MIDI player or easy-to-install MIDI plugin for BMP or MPlayer
- A MIDI sequencer

poofyhairguy
July 19th, 2005, 09:41 PM
4. Linux seem to do a really bad job at multitasking with a 366MHz processor.

Most modern OSes would.


5. Linux also seems to a a really bad job at managing memory with only 192MB. After startup, I find that 80-85% of my RAM is taken up, almost half of that being cached stuff, (That isn't neccesarily a problem though, seeing it's just a cache) whereas Win98 was only taking around half with no cache.

Is it slower because of it? Is that Gnome's fault or Linux's?



7. It would be hella better for people without internet connections if some extra multimedia stuff, such as either an MP3 plugin or player, were available right on the CD.

Its also hella illegal in many important countries.

musicman2059
July 19th, 2005, 10:27 PM
Most modern OSes would.

True, but it really sucks when the constant movement of your mouse make the CPU jump to 60, but it's still a hell of a lot more consistent than Win98




Is it slower because of it? Is that Gnome's fault or Linux's?

I would assume Gnome, because it seems to run okay under terminal-only. However, without an internet connection, I'm in no position to download a less bloated desktop environment such as xfcs.




Its also hella illegal in many important countries.

Very true.

poofyhairguy
July 20th, 2005, 08:07 AM
I would assume Gnome, because it seems to run okay under terminal-only. However, without an internet connection, I'm in no position to download a less bloated desktop environment such as xfcs.


If I was you....I would pay someone to send me a CD with XFCE and its dependancies on it. Quite honestly, Gnome needs 256mb or RAM (it really wants half a gig) and a 700mhz processor before it doesn't suck....

jeremy
July 20th, 2005, 05:09 PM
My only serious problem is that people say to me, "Do you use XP?" To which I say, "No".
They say, "What do you use?" I say, "Ubuntu". They say "What?"

johnmc
July 20th, 2005, 06:02 PM
hahaha good one :)

wrtrdood
July 20th, 2005, 07:21 PM
There used to be a lot of configuration (setup) issues with various hardware but that's largely a thing of the past. The exceptions, of course, are bleeding-edge stuff. Still, the developer community is doing a remarkable job here.

Use problems? This is a rather subjective question but if you isolate the issues to specific code-related problems or errors (bugs), and make a sincere effort to exclude what can usually be defined as personal preferences, problems "using " Linux and the various applications provided is almost non-existent. The quality of OSS programs is phenomenal.

You want "use" problems? Go back to MS Windows. At least with Linux I have the option of trying to fix what I don't like. The beauty of being a Linux user exclusively is that I get to play dumb when M$ users come looking for "the computer guy" to fix their mess. :grin:

pmj
July 20th, 2005, 07:34 PM
1: I had trouble with the screen resolution that forced me to edit my xorg.conf file.
2: Installing programs often left me wondering what the hell happened and what I have to do to use that program.
3: Gnome feels slow to use. The mouse pointer, how menus open, how painfully slow the screen redraws, stuff like that.

Stormy Eyes
July 20th, 2005, 09:47 PM
Nautilus will sometimes bitch about being unable to connect to Bonobo when I run it under Openbox or E17. Nothing a reboot can't cure. Evolution seems to die screaming every time I close, so I just use Thunderbird instead. Other than that, I don't have "using Linux" problems. Either I f---ed up the config, or an app is broken.

poofyhairguy
July 20th, 2005, 10:47 PM
3: Gnome feels slow to use. The mouse pointer, how menus open, how painfully slow the screen redraws, stuff like that.

Gnome is slow. Its made for modern machines. It kicks ass all over the yard with my 2.6 ghz, 512mb RAM workstation.

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 01:41 AM
Gnome is slow. Its made for modern machines. It kicks ass all over the yard with my 2.6 ghz, 512mb RAM workstation.

It's not bad on my 1.8GHz, 512MB Athlon64 rig, either. But I'm starting to really like Enlightenment 0.17.

poofyhairguy
July 21st, 2005, 01:47 AM
But I'm starting to really like Enlightenment 0.17.

Me too. I would replace it with metacity in Gnome in a heartbeat if I could find a good how to that would tell me how to change themes (the default is super ugly - programming is Rasterman's forte).

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 02:35 AM
Me too. I would replace it with metacity in Gnome in a heartbeat if I could find a good how to that would tell me how to change themes (the default is super ugly - programming is Rasterman's forte).

I'll give you a quick howto for downloading, installing, and using E17 themes:

1. Pick a theme from those listed at get-e.org (http://www.get-e.org/Themes/E17/index.html) and download it to a convenient location.

2. If the theme file you downloaded ends in .edj, then copy it to "~/.e/e/themes". If it's in a tarball, extract it first and then copy the resulting .edj file to ".e/e/themes".

3. Do the following so you can use the default if you must:

cp /usr/share/enlightenment/data/themes/default.edj ~/.e/e/themes/default.edj

4. Wait a few seconds, or restart Enlightenment. Then left-click on your desktop, go to the "Themes" submenu, and pick out your new theme.

I hope this helps. I recommend the ICE-2005 theme myself.

poofyhairguy
July 21st, 2005, 02:38 AM
I'll give you a quick howto for downloading, installing, and using E17 themes:

1. Pick a theme from those listed at get-e.org (http://www.get-e.org/Themes/E17/index.html) and download it to a convenient location.

2. If the theme file you downloaded ends in .edj, then copy it to "~/.e/e/themes". If it's in a tarball, extract it first and then copy the resulting .edj file to ".e/e/themes".

3. Do the following so you can use the default if you must:

cp /usr/share/enlightenment/data/themes/default.edj ~/.e/e/themes/default.edj

4. Wait a few seconds, or restart Enlightenment. Then left-click on your desktop, go to the "Themes" submenu, and pick out your new theme.

I hope this helps. I recommend the ICE-2005 theme myself.

Wow. Thank you very much. Good by forever metacity.

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 02:48 AM
Wow. Thank you very much. Good by forever metacity.

You're welcome. There's something of a manual (http://get-e.org/User_Guide/English/index.html) at get-e.org. I recommend referring to sections 3.3 and 3.4 for icons/menus and backgrounds. I've been making all my own icons, using the icons tarball provided by Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/dyn/icons.xml).

Here's a screenshot of Enlightenment DR17 at work. (http://ubuntuforums.org/gallery/showimage.php?i=558&c=4)

pmj
July 21st, 2005, 05:56 AM
Gnome is slow. Its made for modern machines. It kicks ass all over the yard with my 2.6 ghz, 512mb RAM workstation.

I'm running Ubuntu on a Celeron 2.4ghz and Windows was way faster on that machine. I saw that as a problem, which I thought was the point of this thread. ;)

poofyhairguy
July 21st, 2005, 08:50 AM
I'm running Ubuntu on a Celeron 2.4ghz and Windows was way faster on that machine. I saw that as a problem, which I thought was the point of this thread. ;)

I hope gnome gets faster. I think the best way would be to get it accerated.

ssck
July 21st, 2005, 09:04 AM
i'll say getting drivers for devices would be one of the major issues .... also battery support for laptops as well

lol
July 21st, 2005, 11:13 AM
Some "using Linux" problems:

1 - Poor support for mobile networking. The best tool I could find is the net-applet, but it doesn't take care of the proxy setup. Every time I move my laptop from home to work, getting a working network is a real pain. Every single other tool I tried was almost impossible to setup (but this is no longer a "using" problem...)

2 - Lack of compatibility with MS Office. I still cannot create a .doc file and be sure that it will look the way it is supposed to on a Windows box => I still need a Windows and MS Office on my computer just to check/modify the document I create. And this is definitely a "using" problem: I loose 15 min every time because I have to reboot and start again all my apps :(

3 - Nautilus keeps crashing, Nautilus sucks with the network... I hate Nautilus! Unfortunatly, Rox, which would be an almost perfect file manager for me does not nicely integrate with gnome (maybe setup problem here...)

4 - Lack of consistency between all the applications. Drag and drop doesn't work between GTK, QT or TK or even between Gnome applications. The right clic is not alway available when you would expect it to be, and so on. And this is probably the main reason why I would say that Linux is not "ready for the desktop" => my mother would never ever be able to learn that "for this application, it works this way, but for that one, it works that way". She already has enough problem with a "consistent" environment, she would be completely lost on Linux, no matter which distribution or environment (I know, I tried to make her use a Linux for 2 years).

5 - A small problem that should soon be solved (hopefully): the lack of good IM client with webcam support (to send or receive) and MSN compatibility (I hate this, but it's a fact that most people use MSN, and the number keeps growing).

6 - Bad system behavior with broken hardware. Hardware failures is the best way to get a lot of <defunct> processes, a slow system, hundreds of error messages and all this leads to the one thing I hate the most: a reboot. The perfect example is my Smart card reader. It works most of the time, but fails from time to time. If I make the mistake to read my pictures with gqview directly on the smart card, after a failure I always get a <defunct> qgview (which is impossible to kill) and I cannot start another one. It's also impossible to unload/reload the module (which sometime can solve the card reader's problem) because the module is used ... by the defunct process! All I can do in this case is to reboot the computer or stop using gqview. No such problem with windows... And I had similar issues with a bad HD and more recently with my CD-ROM drive.
You may argue that rebooting is not really such a big problem, and you may be right, but it is really annoying for me. One of the reason I like Linux is that I have to reboot far less often than with Windows, and I dream of a system that NEVER has to be rebooted!

7 - This list is far from being complete, but I guess I would consider Linux "ready for the desktop" if only the first 4 points could be addressed.


On a different subject, in reply to musicman2059 ...

4. Linux seem to do a really bad job at multitasking with a 366MHz processor.

5. Linux also seems to a a really bad job at managing memory with only 192MB. After startup, I find that 80-85% of my RAM is taken up, almost half of that being cached stuff, (That isn't neccesarily a problem though, seeing it's just a cache) whereas Win98 was only taking around half with no cache.

I may be wrong, but for me multitasking means doing several things at the same time. Well, when I start Linux, I quickly clic on 4 or 5 icons to start my applications, and they show up in a reasonnable amount of time. Have you tried to do this on Windows? I did. I had to wait what seems to be hours before the first window actually opened! With Linux, I can also compile an application, copy a huge folder on another drive and continue to browse the net with Opera (with 7 opened windows and more than a 100 tabs). With Windows, as soon as I start moving the huge folder, I am almost stuck: no matter what I try to do, it's going to take ages. Even opening a single IE window. This is definitely not multitasking for me.

Beside, when looking at performances, you cannot compare Win98 with a current Ubuntu/Gnome environment. In 2000,I have been using a Debian (Potato) with WindowMaker on a P75 with 64Mb of RAM without problem, though I admit it may have been slower than Windows 98. On the other hand, Windows 2000 wouldn't even install on such a machine.

Later, I had both Windows XP and a Debian Unstable on a Celeron overclock at 375Mhz. The difference in performance was simply stuning: working with XP was a real pain and we couldn't even watch a Divx, whereas it was possible on Linux.

And finally, last year, I work on a P4 1.8Ghz, with 256Mb de RAM and Windows 2000. I have never seen such a slow system! My Athlon 1.6Ghz at home, still running a Debian unstable seemed to be flying compared to what I had at work.

In the end, I believe that the performances issue is a false one. What matters is to use a system designed and setup for your hardware, and in my experience Linux certainly not worst than Windows (it also probably not better either, though I like to think so. I am sure that a lot of Windows users out there can come up with similar experiences than mime where Windows turned out to be faster than Linux).

Still I would agree that Linux behave badly when the swap is full, and this is another "using" problem. If I remember correctly, Windows doesn't start an application if there isn't enough available memory. Linux tries to start it anyway, and at this point, just trying to kill an application to free memory can take up to 15 min!!

I hope my english wasn't to bad!

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 12:54 PM
I'm running Ubuntu on a Celeron 2.4ghz and Windows was way faster on that machine. I saw that as a problem, which I thought was the point of this thread. ;)

What possessed you to buy a machine with a Celery processor? Celerons are nothing but defective Pentiums.

dataw0lf
July 21st, 2005, 04:33 PM
What possessed you to buy a machine with a Celery processor? Celerons are nothing but defective Pentiums.

We all know Pentiums > Celeron. We also know that Celerons are less expensive than Pentiums. Extending this amazing logic, why do you think he bought it?

Let's keep the trollish comments to a minimum.

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 05:57 PM
We all know Pentiums > Celeron. We also know that Celerons are less expensive than Pentiums. Extending this amazing logic, why do you think he bought it?

When he could have gotten a fully functional AMD Athlon chip instead? I don't know. 32bit Athlon is cheaper than Pentium as well, but still beats Celeron into the ground.


Let's keep the trollish comments to a minimum.

I didn't think I was trolling, as I was dead serious. I could be wrong, of course.

dataw0lf
July 21st, 2005, 06:34 PM
When he could have gotten a fully functional AMD Athlon chip instead? I don't know. 32bit Athlon is cheaper than Pentium as well, but still beats Celeron into the ground.


The point remains that your post offered nothing except provocation.

Don't.

poofyhairguy
July 21st, 2005, 07:19 PM
When he could have gotten a fully functional AMD Athlon chip instead? I don't know. 32bit Athlon is cheaper than Pentium as well, but still beats Celeron into the ground.

Think about it stormy. Sometimes computers are gifts from those that don't know better (is my case).

poofyhairguy
July 21st, 2005, 07:20 PM
Some "using Linux" problems:

1 - Poor support for mobile networking. The best tool I could find is the net-applet, but it doesn't take care of the proxy setup. Every time I move my laptop from home to work, getting a working network is a real pain. Every single other tool I tried was almost impossible to setup (but this is no longer a "using" problem...)




Agreed

pmj
July 21st, 2005, 07:21 PM
What possessed you to buy a machine with a Celery processor? Celerons are nothing but defective Pentiums.

The reason was price and temperature/fan noise. It used to be my backup computer, mostly used for irc, when I had my gaming machine standing at a gaming club. And now you know! :P

Stormy Eyes
July 21st, 2005, 10:29 PM
Think about it stormy. Sometimes computers are gifts from those that don't know better (is my case).

OK. I've never received a computer as a gift, so I wouldn't know. :)

Teroedni
July 21st, 2005, 11:29 PM
Biggest problem is the media.
If i wanted to help some friends to install Ubuntu on their machine , i could run into problem when getting to the win32codecs. In order for them to be able to watch all the latest stuff i had to install the w32 codecs and it would mean that i did something illegal:(
Thats the biggest problem as far as i can see

:-x

poofyhairguy
July 22nd, 2005, 12:27 AM
Biggest problem is the media.
If i wanted to help some friends to install Ubuntu on their machine , i could run into problem when getting to the win32codecs. In order for them to be able to watch all the latest stuff i had to install the w32 codecs and it would mean that i did something illegal:(
Thats the biggest problem as far as i can see

:-x

Tis a problem, and not one Linux and its community can fix easily. If you need legal codecs, the only choice is Linspire.

Stormy Eyes
July 22nd, 2005, 12:57 AM
In order for them to be able to watch all the latest stuff i had to install the w32 codecs and it would mean that i did something illegal. :(

It's only illegal if they catch you and convict you. And the government can't nail everybody who breaks its silly laws; there'd be suckers^Wtaxpayers to feed off of.

lol
July 22nd, 2005, 09:51 AM
Another small but really annoying "using" problem:

I have 3 hard drives, 2 of which should almost always be in sleep mode (I seldom use them AND they are really noisy). Doing the setup to make both of them go in sleep mode after 5 minutes is pretty much straightforward, so no complaint here.

The problem is that everytime I want to Open/Save a file using a gnome application (and maybe others as well, but I am not sure), or I want to browse my folders with Nautilus, something is waking up ALL my drives, even though I never directly access the filesystems on those drives...

As I said, it's a small problem, but still: I have to wait about 10s for all my drives to wake up, and the computer become noisy for the next 5 minutes.

This is a good example of the dozens of problems that are bugging Linux. Each of those, alone, doesn't really matter. But when all added together, they contribute to make Linux a plateform that is always one step behind Windows for the average user.

overcast
July 22nd, 2005, 10:25 AM
well there is lot of discussiion here check this link


http://www.suggestafix.com/index.php?act=ST&f=30&t=16949&

and we'll discuss more here.

ubuntu_demon
July 25th, 2005, 11:05 PM
-the security and the ability to customize everything is worth some glitches
-Ubuntu is more polished and stable than windows. Mac is even more polished and more or less equally stable as Ubuntu.

regarding the problems :
-nautilus and smbclient : nautilus crashes often and most of the time this is related to my mounted remote shares (I haven't really deeply investigated this yet)
-ET and teamspeak don't work together yet for most people who you have onboard audio
see : http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=254384 I don't know who I have to blame for this (teamspeak?,ac97 chip?intel?ubuntu?) but I'm sure it will be solved eventually

some stuff you can't blame on Ubuntu :
-a lot of very cool applications are still heavily in development such as ipodder,freenx,gaim-vv
http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php (just be patient and grateful)
-game industry doesn't like us because linux market share isn't high enough
-hardware manufacturers don't like us because linux market share isn't high enough (HP and a few others being positive exceptions)

El_Don_Casper
July 27th, 2005, 04:12 AM
Three problems;
1: I have a laptop and everything is proprietary so i had to spend 3 hours configuring the wireless card. (just a pet peeve)
2: in order to get 3d to work i had to edit the xorg config file manually instead of using the built in automated thingy
3: installer poorly explains what keys to use to select stuff, (space, who knew)

im a noob only had linux for about 4 month, mostly because windows starting crashing every 5 minutes and i decided screw windows ill just suffer along until i figure out linux

Zodiac
August 11th, 2005, 04:32 PM
2) Nautilus crashed fairly often, as in my desktop icons dissappeared, a simple killall nautilus fixed that. I have personally submitted this to bugzilla.

This one is HUGE for me... have you had any resolution to this????

Stormy Eyes
August 11th, 2005, 04:40 PM
Having had to reinstall Ubuntu after borking my install, I have to say that esd is a huge frigging problem for me, since my machine uses an Audigy2 card. I got rid of it as soon as I could, made sure everything used ALSA for sound, and now my machine purrs like a kitten.

ssck
August 12th, 2005, 02:06 AM
i'll say getting drivers for devices would be one of the major issues .... also battery support for laptops as well

and to add on to what i have said :-

1) i still have problems playing dvds
2) battery support (indicator) still doesn't work
3) nautilus crashes

teapot
August 12th, 2005, 05:23 PM
My list of Linux problems:
1) Installation difficulties (not valid for thread author, but it's a turn-off)
2) Lack of clarity in font rendering
3) Color matching/calibration difficulties (monitor vs printer)
4) Difficulties with multimedia, mainly latency problems
5) Missing drivers (printers, video and mice, in my case)
6) Inconsistancies between applications, particularly drag-and-drop issues
7) Lack of support, especially for #5

Yeah, each point can be overcome, in a way. But it's not "Windows-easy".

...cringing, awaiting flames

poofyhairguy
August 12th, 2005, 07:53 PM
My list of Linux problems:
1) Installation difficulties (not valid for thread author, but it's a turn-off)
2) Lack of clarity in font rendering
3) Color matching/calibration difficulties (monitor vs printer)
4) Difficulties with multimedia, mainly latency problems
5) Missing drivers (printers, video and mice, in my case)
6) Inconsistancies between applications, particularly drag-and-drop issues
7) Lack of support, especially for #5

Yeah, each point can be overcome, in a way. But it's not "Windows-easy".

...cringing, awaiting flames

No flames. We all know Linux has driver problems.

student
August 12th, 2005, 08:02 PM
the one thing that makes me "miss" windows, is a decent mp3 mixer app.
in windows i regularly used "traktor dj".

"All" I look for, is an app that can mix 2 mp3's, and a button to sync the bpm.
I havent fond one yet, but if anyone can point me towards one, windows would almost dissapear from my mind :-)

Nanaki
August 12th, 2005, 10:57 PM
1. Driver support, including non-working Hibernate. Got my hopes up for Breezy.
2. I like installers, I know I should like Synaptic more, but that ain't true for me.
3. Games.
4. Useless apps installed by default (who the *beep* plays that many OS-games? They should narrow it down to three and throw the rest in the repositories).
5. _Three_ menu's for configuration.
6. "Places" was translated incorrectly, so you stare at a misspell all the time. :D They already fixes this tho for Gnome 2.12.
7. Linux/Gnome is slow. While Windows "responds" when I click, Gnome "lags". When I use Firefox in Windows, it flies and responds to my clicks immediatly. In Linux everything feels so much slower.

Especially the last one is the reason I'm not working on Ubuntu most of the time. Oh well, the good thing about OSS is constant improvement. :)

Edit: oh-oh, 8. battery support blows. But I mean really, really blows, big time. I don't care about this because I don't work on my battery a lot, but I tried it one time, and it drained my battery in about 2 houres 30 minutes while I was just browsing. I once played 7 hours Half-Life full detail in Windows. Heh.

granite230
August 13th, 2005, 12:25 AM
what bugs me the most are Gaim's extremely slow filetransfers

greenwom
August 13th, 2005, 04:49 AM
My problems seem to revolve around media.
- Flash doens't always display properly (there's always a fix but it's be nice for it to just work)
- Streaming video I lose the ability to stream audio in mozilla. The Mplayer audio never really workied anyway, I'm still working on this one.
- BIG thing for me is my Wacom tablet. I haven't been able to get it to work and I've kind of given up (for the moment)
- Another thing I've had a problem with is installing programs outside of the repositories, I've followed specific guides and haven't been able to get some programs to run.


The rest of my little problems have been stupid stuff like getting a comadore 64 emmulator to work

Other than that I Love Ubuntu, my first distro and most likely the last.

Stormy Eyes
August 13th, 2005, 05:05 AM
- BIG thing for me is my Wacom tablet. I haven't been able to get it to work and I've kind of given up (for the moment)

Try this HOWTO. I had good results with my wife's Wacom tablet (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=25151&highlight=wacom)

NeoChaosX
August 13th, 2005, 05:39 AM
what bugs me the most are Gaim's extremely slow filetransfers
In my case, I'd have to say lack of support for file transfers over Oscar in Gaim drives me nuts. I really want to send files to people over AIM, I hate booting to Windows and using the bloated official client to do it, and I can't find any info on how to do it over TOC.

Anyway, one thing that bugs me is lack of support for some middle-of-the-road hardware. Make the fglrx driver work with older Radeons (read:Mobility M7), ATI!

mtron
August 13th, 2005, 12:02 PM
The really annoying bug in hoary is the firewire (and usb?) mounting problems of various devices. sometimes they automount correctly, sometimes not. Seems to be still a problem of the 2.6 Kernels (or dbus, or hal, i dunno). What i can say, in the 2.4 days, this never happened to me. i read that it _might_ have something to do with EFI partition support in the kernel, but i never tried recompiling the kernel without it.

EDIT: i just checked once again the bugtracker. There are various bug reports filled, but the developers could not fix it till now :-| Let's hope for breezy.

ghostintheshell
August 13th, 2005, 12:28 PM
(...) 2. Hardware support. ie:Scanners

The same. My scanner is not supported. Thank you HP (my last one!) :-?

Ahriman
September 12th, 2005, 12:15 PM
1. My RAM keeps showing up 512MB less than it should, hasn't caused any problems (yet) but still ...
2. as a new user, everytime I have to go into the terminal, I let loose another sigh *sigh* :) although, I used to use DOS way back when, so it doesn't scare me _all that much_, just annoying
3. Not going to mention driver support again
4. It doesn't crash as often as Windows, which means that I spend more time on the computer, and have to manually shut it down if I want to get some sleep instead of saying "OK, Honey., I'll get off when it freezes on me". Grrrrr ;)