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> And they have employed and still do employ many top tier open source developers who contribute open source code to a variety of projects. The money they make

> And they have employed and still do employ many top tier open source developers who contribute open source code to a variety of projects. The money they make makes all of open source better! I have to question that. Nearly all of my worst experiences when using Linux have involved software that they or their developers have, to the best of my knowledge, been significantly involved with creating. I'm thinking of software like systemd, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, GNOME 3, and Wayland, for example. I've wasted far too much of my time dealing with unnecessary, silly, and inexcusable problems involving such software. What makes it even worse is that despite me trying to avoid their ecosystem, their software has unfortunately still made it into other major distros, including Debian.

robmusial 3y ago
If PulseAudio, Wayland, etc are all some of the worst software then how does it keep ending up in distros like Debian? If there are better alternatives why would they willingly adopt it?
- dralley 3y ago
  Part of the reason PulseAudio got a bad rap is because of bad audio drivers (and sometimes bad hardware), because they refused to work around those bugs at the "wrong" layer of the stack. After a few painful years though, the bugs got fixed in the "right" places, and that's part of why Pipewire (also developed by Red Hat) was able to come along and replace it so quickly. And thankfully Pipewire addresses a lot of the actually legitimate issues with PulseAudio
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    dont know much about linux audio -- what are the problmes?
    - dralley 3y ago
      https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ#why-not-just-improve-pulseaudio-instead https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ...
  - kriberg 3y ago
    Lets not forget canonical shipped pulseaudio in Ubuntu before it was really ready. The devs got a lot of hate for something they didn't much control.
_ea1k 3y ago
I keep wondering whether it is even still true that RH drives those projects. Poettering left RH for MS a while back, AFAIK. Are NetworkManager, GNOME, and Wayland still heavily RH driven?
op00to 3y ago
Ever consider if you have a problem with that many different projects, the common denominator is you?
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  I certainly considered that. However, whenever I started searching for solutions to the various problems I was encountering, I pretty much always found numerous other bug reports, mailing list threads, blog posts, Stack Overflow questions, forum posts, and so on, from other people running into the same troubles, along with other problems that I thankfully hadn't been experiencing. It was clear to me that I wasn't alone.

robmusial 3y ago

If PulseAudio, Wayland, etc are all some of the worst software then how does it keep ending up in distros like Debian? If there are better alternatives why would they willingly adopt it?

dralley 3y ago
Part of the reason PulseAudio got a bad rap is because of bad audio drivers (and sometimes bad hardware), because they refused to work around those bugs at the "wrong" layer of the stack. After a few painful years though, the bugs got fixed in the "right" places, and that's part of why Pipewire (also developed by Red Hat) was able to come along and replace it so quickly. And thankfully Pipewire addresses a lot of the actually legitimate issues with PulseAudio
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  dont know much about linux audio -- what are the problmes?
  - dralley 3y ago
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ#why-not-just-improve-pulseaudio-instead https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/FAQ...
- kriberg 3y ago
  Lets not forget canonical shipped pulseaudio in Ubuntu before it was really ready. The devs got a lot of hate for something they didn't much control.

_ea1k 3y ago

I keep wondering whether it is even still true that RH drives those projects. Poettering left RH for MS a while back, AFAIK. Are NetworkManager, GNOME, and Wayland still heavily RH driven?

op00to 3y ago

Ever consider if you have a problem with that many different projects, the common denominator is you?

VancouverMan 3y ago
I certainly considered that. However, whenever I started searching for solutions to the various problems I was encountering, I pretty much always found numerous other bug reports, mailing list threads, blog posts, Stack Overflow questions, forum posts, and so on, from other people running into the same troubles, along with other problems that I thankfully hadn't been experiencing. It was clear to me that I wasn't alone.