A Summary of Linux Lately

[RoyGBiv]

This is the final paragraph from a review of openSUSE 11.1, which I have been testing on a separate partition the past few days. While it is about SuSE, the sentiments expressed summarize my thoughts of the general direction of Linux desktops overall, at least the big distros.

"... I found myself disappointed by openSUSE's jumping a bit too hard and fast onto the ease-of-use bandwagon. The tendencies of Linux distribution developers lately to make Linux easier and easier while sacrificing convenient customization is beginning to go too far. While Linux should be easy for new users, making it more difficult and less secure for experienced users isn't the answer. Hopefully, openSUSE and other distributions can find the happy medium and not slip too much further down that slope."

http://www.linux.com/feature/155881

I would add that the ease-of-use bandwagon is also where some gaping security holes lie.

The major desktop managers in particular, KDE and GNOME, are turning into abominations. People with KDE keeping saying, "Just wait until you *see* the next .x.x release ..." I've been doing that since the RC for 4.0, and what I *see* is the same thing, if a marginally improved version of the same thing. Is it *really* too much to provide an easily accessible option allowing me to change default parameters? Oh, but that would be too complicated a thing to put in there for most users.

This is the same bullshit philosophy that has driven Windows for so long.

I think I'm moving to Debian proper this weekend and may just worm myself around to an LFS system over time. And, I have an inkling that the XFCE desktop is in my near future.

I also know I'm being too harsh and will calm myself eventually. But, at the moment, I just see a lot of work being done on Linux desktops in which most of the resources are being geared toward presentation rather than substance, which undercuts a big part of what I *thought* the philosophy was.

[ChromeFoundry]

1. Have to agree...

I'm all for easy... but it's much more important to maintain security and stability.

IMO- A new, flashy looking, resource intensive interface that offers no advantage other than burning more cycles, does nothing but cause more frustration. I mean, do you really need a piece of paper jumping from one folder to another to tell you that you are copying a file!?! Hopefully the Linux distros don't follow the same path microsoft decided to run down.

[RoyGBiv]

2. And another thing ...

Continuing to test the latest SuSE, I just finished sitting in front of my screen for 2 hours trying to get stunnel (an SSL wrapper I use for nntp connections) working. There are two reasons it took me this long.

1) The packages for it are configured improperly ... or seem to be. They don't install it so that it works without some mucking around with the CLI at any rate. They set up a chroot jail and give it the permissions for a user named stunnel but then don't create or let you know that you need to create the user. This was the biggest issue. That is, just figuring out that this was the problem was the biggest issue. Fixing it afterward was trivial. There were other small things, some of them permissions based, one the fact you have to create an SSL signature key and then create the file for it so that stunnel can read and use it. (I knew the latter from previous installations. The MAN page is rather poor as far as setup is concerned.)

2) Finding help online for anything that involves the command line for many of the major distros is becoming more and more difficult. I found stuff for SuSE 9.x and even back to 8.x, but the only things for SuSE 10.x and 11.x did not address this problem directly.

Both issues involve distros seemingly continuously changing the directory structure.

Both issues also involve so much becoming GUI based *without* GUI implementations of critical functions, i.e. configuring stunnel.

I was about to just start over and compile from source, which I should probably do anyway, when I figured out what the log file was actually telling me.

Grrr ...

Now, I need to write a HOWTO so I remember this crap.

[hunter]

3. I run Debian, and I've got Xfce installed on my desktop...

... but I don't often use it. I've become accustomed to GNOME. (sigh)

Lenny is pretty solid for me now; it wasn't quite solid enough for me when I first started using it but I stuck it out, which I hardly ever do. Usually I retreat quickly if I get too close to the bleeding edge.



http://pkg-xfce.alioth.debian.org