So true. That's a very good point. Some old software is great. But keep in mind. Sometimes older software doesn't play well with newer things. Here is one example. FreetuxTV requires the older version of VLC player in order to work correctly. This does not make it necessarily a bad program depending on when when FreetuxTV was created and when the newer version of VLC came out. There can other possibilities also. Perhaps they only came out with only one version of FreetuxTV and never updated it. You see what I mean about new and old sometimes don't work together.

rtmistler, You make very good points. Those are all possibilities. I think you said it best.

OT - I have installed or used a few programs that I did not consider to be very useful or well considered for one reason or another but would not call them garbage if they were free-dom-ly offered by their authors.

I have also written quite a bit that I would not want any not-fully-informed person to review. By fully informed I mean someone who understood the specific problem addressed and the parameters and limitations of the code. But I would not want anyone to call those garbage either.

The only things that I would call garbage-ware are proprietary commercial products that perform poorly or come with built in hooks, snares and exploits intended to trap the user rather than facilitate their uses. Basically anything marketed by Micro$oft, IMO, and a few others.

In the world of free labor, freely offered for your use, the only thing I would label as crap is any of the various forms of exploit-ware.

And the only other thing in the software category that really made me scream, "Crap!", was when I found a terrific free program that did just what I needed, and responded to requests for support with cash and code, only to see the very next release taken proprietary... Crap! But I still continue to use and extend the last free version as a kind of private fork, and it is still great work, freely received, for which I am very thankful!!

I couldn't agree with you more. True. That is annoying and unethical. I would call software like that, "Pearl Harbor-ware."

Oddly enough I tried to install freetuxtv as it sounded intriguing but it certainly isn't working on this laptop running Sid. The thing is, though, that I don't know whether it is down to the program itself, Gnome libraries or the Debian packaging team. If you think about it the Debian team are ultimately responsible for either packaging something which doesn't work or packaging the wrong version or setting the wrong dependencies.
I think that's a fourth category to add to rtmistler's list -- packaging issues.

1 members found this post helpful.

This is very helpful for everyone on how software is handled in the Linux community that didn't know that.

There are, and have been for a long while, issues with Google Earth either not installing on 64 bit Debian-based distributions or crashing all the time and I don't think there's a single distribution on which photographs from Panoramio work without lots of messing around. The install issues were a packaging issue with Google making a deprecated package a dependency and the crashing and photo issues seem to be mismatched libraries.
Oh, for what it's worth, freetux TV would not open on Debian Sid but on Linux Mint Debian Edition (I have a VM) it seem to be working fine.

1 members found this post helpful.

I hate to see new users kill themselves with Bleachbit.

Utter crap.
</opinion>

1 members found this post helpful.

It didn't work on openSUSE either which I had before Manjaro.

It does seem to do the job it's made for fairly well -- sadly the job it's made for is a destructive one and one which given a correctly configured system should be unnecessary (my opinion).
dd is extremely destructive, remember, far more destructive than Bleachbit but certainly very far from "crap".



I've a feeling it may be a Gnome library issue but it is odd that it doesn't work in Debian Sid but does in Mint LMDE which is based, if I recall correctly, on Testing.

QMC2 didn't work for me when I tried it recently.

But that doesn't mean it works for no-one else.

That wouldn't surprise me. When I heard of that program I thought of Disk Cleaner in Windows. I ran the Disk Cleaner in Windows and it destroyed the OS. I had to reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows because of it. I would never consider running any program that resembles it no matter what OS or how good someone says it is.

It would if the "user" would leave the default options alone.

Well, yes, you've reminded me of that "garbage, useless, won't install properly" distribution Kali or that "slow, buggy, full of nasty websites" ToR.
Then there's Red Hat on which, as we all know, is completely useless rubbish as nothing can be installed upon RHEL 5!
I have to admit I've moaned about software not installing correctly only to be humbled when I've taken the writers' advice and used ldd and taken a minute to think about things instead of expecting to be handed things on a plate.

2 members found this post helpful.

bleachbit is just a gui got some terminal commands

all in all it is not bad -- not great, but not bad .

it is however more for "peace of mind" for the non technically inclined

i do find "srm" and "shred" and "dd" to be very useful

BUT!!!!
and here is the point with "crap-ware"
BleachBit is FREE under the GPL
it is NOT a "trial version" that you need to pay $20 to $30 USD to continue to use.
and it is NOT "preinstalled"