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> "interested in making things better" != "interested in making things the way I'd like them to be" Same difference really if our opinions of what constitutes

> "interested in making things better" != "interested in making things the way I'd like them to be" Same difference really if our opinions of what constitutes "better" are so drastically opposed. > Then contribute some other way instead of just expecting the "community" to accommodate you and your opinions. I have contributed both code and money to projects I think are doing good work. Sadly there are very few of them. > I'm pretty sure that you won't be ignored if you find the developers responsible for the projects you care about and spare 10-20 bucks their way alongside a list of the issues and proposed improvements. I can say with confidence that most the projects I've donated to have given me absolutely no special treatment just because I contribute money. I wouldn't have it any other way really, issues are issues regardless and they should be fixed with regard to severity, not who has deep pockets. Hell, that's probably one of the reasons things in Linux land are so ungodly complicated right now: FAANGs are calling the shots because they have the deep pockets.

rglullis 6y ago
> our opinions of what constitutes "better" are so drastically opposed. I am not sure I follow. You mentioned somewhere else that Lubuntu was the one that gave you the least problems and that you are now using windows. Coincidentally, Lubuntu is the flavor that looks like the most with older versions of Windows. To me it looks like your assumption is that anything that does not look like Windows 2000/XP is "worse". If you are starting from this point, don't be surprised if others disagree and ignore you. (Myself, I've been using Xubuntu for the past 8+ years, but I am really not liking the direction Canonical is taking with snap. Perhaps I will switch to Debian + XFCE when I get a slow weekend but this has nothing to do with desktop issues. It's not perfect but the worst problem I can remember was related to get a blank screen after resuming from sleep, which I solved by changing the screen lock program) > FAANGs are calling the shots What the big companies are doing are related to the infrastructure side of things and have nothing to do with the desktop - perhaps except Google and their ChromeOS, but Google's ChromeOS approach is looking each day more and more like turn of the century MS and their "embrace, extend, extinguish". Anyway, perhaps the issue is that you are conflating "Linux" with "Open Source Desktop" and expecting a central place to solve all solutions?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  > I am not sure I follow. You mentioned somewhere else that Lubuntu was the one that gave you the least problems and that you are now using windows. Coincidentally, Lubuntu is the flavor that looks like the most with older versions of Windows. > To me it looks like your assumption is that anything that does not look like Windows 2000/XP is "worse" That's a very condescending conclusion to draw. I found LXDE less complicated and significantly snappier than alternatives that had their own Ubuntu derivative. I chose an Ubuntu derivative because Ubuntu has the widest range of supported software. But hey, it all has to do with how it looks right? Thinking like that by the Linux Desktop community is why you guys still aren't taken seriously. > What the big companies are doing are related to the infrastructure side of things and have nothing to do with the desktop The desktop experience is not wholly separated from the infrastructure beneath it. The init system, the event subsystem, hardware management, network management, sound system, display server etc. are only abstracted in the leakiest of ways. > Anyway, perhaps the issue is that you are conflating "Linux" with "Open Source Desktop" and expecting a central place to solve all solutions? Unfortunately it pretty much is the only option that is even remotely viable. But mostly I focus on problems with Linux because it has by far the most evangelical community.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    I am not going to be debating what exact problems you had, but I must be extremely lucky if all those years I never had any kind of showstopper critical issue that made me think "Ok, I can't deal with this and I have to go back to a proprietary desktop". It's been at least since 2012 that I had installed Linux and couldn't connect a printer or scanner. Meanwhile my wife's laptop on windows asked to reinstall drivers every time she wanted to print something. Webcams? No problem. Wi-fi? No problem as long as I didn't try to use a chipset that was either too obscure or too new and unsupported. The one thing that I gave up on having on my laptop is low-latency audio to connect a guitar and use software audio effect processors. But the way I solved this was by using a separate old laptop with a custom kernel dedicated to be my "guitar effect box". I still didn't have to give up my freedoms and I did not have to give up any functionality/comfort. > But hey, it all has to do with how it looks right? I believe you when you say that LXDE was snappier than the other Ubuntu alternatives, but were the alternatives slower than whatever version of Windows you have now? That will be very hard to believe. So forgive me for sounding condescending, but you went with probably the most obscure and least popular Ubuntu flavor - the one that has probably almost to no funding from Canonical and maybe a handful of developers interested on it. What were you expecting, exactly? If Ubuntu was bad for you, maybe try Fedora? If you wanted a more knowledgeable community, maybe try Arch? Why instead of sticking with your preconceptions of how things should work, you ask what are the others doing that let them be productive on a FOSS Desktop? Why is it that upon hitting difficulties your reaction is to go back to the comfort zone of a proprietary and familiar system? > only option that is even remotely viable We must have very different thresholds for defining "remotely viable". From http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05-22-my-new-FreeBSD-laptop-Dell-7390.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05-22-my-new-FreeBSD-la... : "Is FreeBSD ready for the desktop? Yes and no. Yes, in that I have a very nice FreeBSD laptop where everything works the way I want. But no, in that it took me two months worth of fiddling with this in my spare time to fix some of the "glitches" which arose; while there wasn't anything particularly challenging, I expect that most people would give up long before they fixed all of the issues I ran into. On the other hand, can FreeBSD be ready for the desktop? Absolutely. I've fixed the issues I ran into — and once we have FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE with packages built for that release the process of bringing up a GUI will be much easier, as well. The biggest thing FreeBSD needs is to have developers acquiring laptops and carefully working their way through the issues which arise; the FreeBSD Foundation has already started doing this, and I hope in the months to come they — and other FreeBSD users — will publish reports telling us which laptops work and what configuration they need."

rglullis 6y ago

> our opinions of what constitutes "better" are so drastically opposed. I am not sure I follow. You mentioned somewhere else that Lubuntu was the one that gave you the least problems and that you are now using windows. Coincidentally, Lubuntu is the flavor that looks like the most with older versions of Windows. To me it looks like your assumption is that anything that does not look like Windows 2000/XP is "worse". If you are starting from this point, don't be surprised if others disagree and ignore you. (Myself, I've been using Xubuntu for the past 8+ years, but I am really not liking the direction Canonical is taking with snap. Perhaps I will switch to Debian + XFCE when I get a slow weekend but this has nothing to do with desktop issues. It's not perfect but the worst problem I can remember was related to get a blank screen after resuming from sleep, which I solved by changing the screen lock program) > FAANGs are calling the shots What the big companies are doing are related to the infrastructure side of things and have nothing to do with the desktop - perhaps except Google and their ChromeOS, but Google's ChromeOS approach is looking each day more and more like turn of the century MS and their "embrace, extend, extinguish". Anyway, perhaps the issue is that you are conflating "Linux" with "Open Source Desktop" and expecting a central place to solve all solutions?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
> I am not sure I follow. You mentioned somewhere else that Lubuntu was the one that gave you the least problems and that you are now using windows. Coincidentally, Lubuntu is the flavor that looks like the most with older versions of Windows. > To me it looks like your assumption is that anything that does not look like Windows 2000/XP is "worse" That's a very condescending conclusion to draw. I found LXDE less complicated and significantly snappier than alternatives that had their own Ubuntu derivative. I chose an Ubuntu derivative because Ubuntu has the widest range of supported software. But hey, it all has to do with how it looks right? Thinking like that by the Linux Desktop community is why you guys still aren't taken seriously. > What the big companies are doing are related to the infrastructure side of things and have nothing to do with the desktop The desktop experience is not wholly separated from the infrastructure beneath it. The init system, the event subsystem, hardware management, network management, sound system, display server etc. are only abstracted in the leakiest of ways. > Anyway, perhaps the issue is that you are conflating "Linux" with "Open Source Desktop" and expecting a central place to solve all solutions? Unfortunately it pretty much is the only option that is even remotely viable. But mostly I focus on problems with Linux because it has by far the most evangelical community.
- rglullis 6y ago
  I am not going to be debating what exact problems you had, but I must be extremely lucky if all those years I never had any kind of showstopper critical issue that made me think "Ok, I can't deal with this and I have to go back to a proprietary desktop". It's been at least since 2012 that I had installed Linux and couldn't connect a printer or scanner. Meanwhile my wife's laptop on windows asked to reinstall drivers every time she wanted to print something. Webcams? No problem. Wi-fi? No problem as long as I didn't try to use a chipset that was either too obscure or too new and unsupported. The one thing that I gave up on having on my laptop is low-latency audio to connect a guitar and use software audio effect processors. But the way I solved this was by using a separate old laptop with a custom kernel dedicated to be my "guitar effect box". I still didn't have to give up my freedoms and I did not have to give up any functionality/comfort. > But hey, it all has to do with how it looks right? I believe you when you say that LXDE was snappier than the other Ubuntu alternatives, but were the alternatives slower than whatever version of Windows you have now? That will be very hard to believe. So forgive me for sounding condescending, but you went with probably the most obscure and least popular Ubuntu flavor - the one that has probably almost to no funding from Canonical and maybe a handful of developers interested on it. What were you expecting, exactly? If Ubuntu was bad for you, maybe try Fedora? If you wanted a more knowledgeable community, maybe try Arch? Why instead of sticking with your preconceptions of how things should work, you ask what are the others doing that let them be productive on a FOSS Desktop? Why is it that upon hitting difficulties your reaction is to go back to the comfort zone of a proprietary and familiar system? > only option that is even remotely viable We must have very different thresholds for defining "remotely viable". From http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05-22-my-new-FreeBSD-laptop-Dell-7390.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2020-05-22-my-new-FreeBSD-la... : "Is FreeBSD ready for the desktop? Yes and no. Yes, in that I have a very nice FreeBSD laptop where everything works the way I want. But no, in that it took me two months worth of fiddling with this in my spare time to fix some of the "glitches" which arose; while there wasn't anything particularly challenging, I expect that most people would give up long before they fixed all of the issues I ran into. On the other hand, can FreeBSD be ready for the desktop? Absolutely. I've fixed the issues I ran into — and once we have FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE with packages built for that release the process of bringing up a GUI will be much easier, as well. The biggest thing FreeBSD needs is to have developers acquiring laptops and carefully working their way through the issues which arise; the FreeBSD Foundation has already started doing this, and I hope in the months to come they — and other FreeBSD users — will publish reports telling us which laptops work and what configuration they need."