6 ms·

Weird. Sounds like you had an issue with a buggy music player. What lead you to think the entire operating system was to blame?

rbanffy 5y ago
A surprising lot of people consider a media player as part of the OS.
WalterBright 5y ago
As a desktop replacement, I expect a music player, just like I expect a browser. The music player is a pretty good test of if the the operating system drivers work, although it was never clear if the music players were bad, or the sound drivers. BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player. I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would: 1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade 2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned
- cowpig 5y ago
  I immediately uninstall the media players that come on any linux distro and install vlc, which is a magnificent piece of software
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I've been burned by this. It was a result of nVidia deprecating support for my video card in new drivers, and Ubuntu only shipping up-to-date and compatible proprietary drivers in their latest releases. According to Canonical, this was because the nouveau driver has some support for the deprecated hardware and the old drivers were no longer compatible with up-to-date distros. If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    It sounds like my issue. If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to: 1. just work 2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore. I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users. Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like: "Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted" are so 1980's :-/
    - Brybry 5y ago
      No desktop operating system meets this criteria though, at least not if you allow user-defined hardware combinations. I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX. I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows. The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      Honestly I'll take that google-able error code over the modern trend of "The software has did a sad, please try again or contact our useless support".

rbanffy 5y ago

A surprising lot of people consider a media player as part of the OS.

WalterBright 5y ago

As a desktop replacement, I expect a music player, just like I expect a browser. The music player is a pretty good test of if the the operating system drivers work, although it was never clear if the music players were bad, or the sound drivers. BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player. I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would: 1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade 2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned

cowpig 5y ago
I immediately uninstall the media players that come on any linux distro and install vlc, which is a magnificent piece of software
heavyset_go 5y ago
I've been burned by this. It was a result of nVidia deprecating support for my video card in new drivers, and Ubuntu only shipping up-to-date and compatible proprietary drivers in their latest releases. According to Canonical, this was because the nouveau driver has some support for the deprecated hardware and the old drivers were no longer compatible with up-to-date distros. If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  It sounds like my issue. If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to: 1. just work 2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore. I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users. Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like: "Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted" are so 1980's :-/
  - Brybry 5y ago
    No desktop operating system meets this criteria though, at least not if you allow user-defined hardware combinations. I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX. I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows. The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Honestly I'll take that google-able error code over the modern trend of "The software has did a sad, please try again or contact our useless support".