What are the bad things about Linux?
 

Hi,
I've read so many threads that state why linux is better than Microsoft, and people really defend Linux with a passion. This is something I really like about the operating system, that it's really more a way of life.

I don't need convincing, I like linux better than Windows, and I'm going to stick with it. But I'm intrested to know what people really find linix is lacking, or could do better.

I'll start off saying, dependancys. I understand why theree there, I also realise that it cuts down on duplicated code in different applicatins. I must say that the RPM management found in alot of distros is really good, and I like being able to read about an app, then just type its name and it insatlls, BUT when you type its name and it starts to install, then you get the message: could not install because of X Y Z... Its so hard to knwo where to start.

Any way, I hope people can be honest and say there pet hates about this great operating system, just because I'm intrested, and I figuerd I'd learn something from the replies.

Please, its so easy to find posts about why its so great, thats not what I'm looking for, I already know its great =)

Thanks.

My biggest beef would be cross windows environment issues. You have gnome apps and you have KDE apps and they don't play as well together as they could.

Next biggest gripe is CUPS. Printing in Linux is fraking nightmare. It should be easier then this to setup a printer. It's a bigger pain if you want Windows system to be able to print to it.

Next is screen fonts. They never look as good as they can on a Windows box and certainly not as good as on a Mac.

Quickbooks. Someone please give me quickbooks or a good Linux program that can import QB data and not require a CPA to run it.

Those are the four items that have stopped me from ditching Windows altogether.

Honestly, there's nothing I really HATE about linux. But there are some things I can see other people would call a nuisance (I personally like fiddling, so solving these problems is kind of fun for me -- I'd hate it if everything worked perfect without needing to fiddle! :D)

The two things I'm currently struggling a bit with are my wireless connection (which works flawlessly with an unsecured network, but won't connect when it requires encryption) and vpn connection to my work intranet.

Occasionally there's also a program I use on Windows that just doesn't yet have a good equivalent on linux, for whatever reason (if anyone wants to flame me for this one, I'm specifically talking about Solidworks 2006 CAD at work which has no linux client, doesn't work under wine, at least not so far in my efforts, and is $5000 per seat -- I've tried to get management to cough up for proE or something with a linux client, but that's seriously not going to happen). And gamers whine about their favorite windows games, but I'm not much of a gamer (though I do really like Frozen Bubble and Battle for Wesnoth).

And the only other thing that bugs me (but isn't linux's fault) is that sometimes my interoperability with the Windows world at work doesn't work flawlessly. For example, I can use Evolution for all my email and calendaring needs, but no matter what I try, it refuses to use the MS Exchange LDAP server for addresses. The linux tech support guys and I have been working for a while at this and they all have the same problem.

I love linux and use it at home for everything, but I wouldn't say no if some of the hardware vendors were more linux friendly and if other OS's used a little more standardized protocols to make everything work together smoother.

All 2.6 kernels recognise my DVD burner as not being a burner. I'm going to be sneaky here and turn this into a good point because I can still force it to burn using the drive and it works. Linux never assumes it knows more than you, the user and will always allow you to override it's "better" judgement.

The esoteric documentation...

Programmers are NOT capable of writing docs.

I don't like the lack of support for linux; example is no flash for linux x86_64, not until early 2007 with flash 9.

Games can be another issue. I can't play "Call of Duty 2" because linux doesn't have anything to support this. It's not really linux's fault being the game says it runs under Win 2000/XP, but it'd be nice to run these under linux.

One that is more linux again, why can't the web browser and home konqueror be separate?
Unless I'm doing something wrong, if I place "delete" in home, I then see "delete" on the web browser.
It's one of the reasons I switched to mozilla-firefox.

In a sense, windows is easy to work around, software and hardware that is made for windows, simple installation, while linux takes extra codes, packages, etc to get something going.

I don't really understand or care for "gnome" programs to be shown in KDE. Maybe some like it. I'd prefer something more organized than that.

In the menu, it'd be nice to simply remove some applications. I had tried it through 'edit k menu" but a lot of times, even after clicking save, it's still there.

Overall, I love linux, at least the system I use, mandriva2006. I haven't really branched out to other systems yet.

even fixing things are different here than windows. to remove "welcome to kmail/mandriva" in kmail, I have to go to konsole, go in root, and type in something that makes no sense to me to remove it.
I know the code by heart, and it doesn't really bother me, but it's not quite as clear as windows.

I guess overall, the biggest complaint is lack of support. I understand linux doesn't have to run every "windows" program/game, but some things like flash, should be supported.
not that I need it, it's just the principle of it, that not all programs support linux, when it's used by a ton of people often.

Blame the company behind the software, it has squat to do with linux.

In the case of Flash, if you use a 32bit Firefox then Flash will work fine in a x86_64 environment or you can try an open source alternative, Gnash is coming along nicely and they have a functional browser plugin that works fine in 64bit. Gnash development is slow and incomplete but again, not the fault of linux. They're stuck reverse engineering Flash code and trying to figure out how it works so they can implement an alternative, tough job.

Printing---works fine for a while, maybe even weeks. Then--do something strange and everything blows up. While there are a variety of irritations, there is one fundamental common issue--Linux seems to forget where its printers are connected--I have NEVER had Windows do this. It seems like something so fundamental that it would have been fixed by now.

#2: No Photoshop. GIMP is very good, but I still miss Photoshop. I'm not very smart about marketing strategy, but I really wonder if Adobe would lose money porting all their stuff to Linux.

Read my first line up there: I don't like the lack of support for linux; example is no flash for linux x86_64, not until early 2007 with flash 9.

I'm saying I don't like the lack of support for linux, meaning, I dont like such companies that won't support linux.

I'm not even sure where to go or what to do with getting the 32 bit firefox.

Why don't you get a tool for automatic dependency management? apt-get or urpmi do that. I use apt-get and I don't see any problem with dependencies.

What I don't like about linux :
It is a computer operating system and computers are evil.

Agrouf - I do use urpmi, but somethimes there are problems, may be I'm not very good at using it. Most things are a sinch but now and then I find something I just can't get working.

I haven't had dependency problems in quite a few months, pacman is my saviour.

I'd like my games to work so i dont have to dual boot but then i'm getting too old for games anyway ;)

My biggest problem is i have gotten everything working. It looks and behaves the way i want, all my devices work i've not got much left to fiddle with :(

Dependencies are only as good as the repository they sit in. And if you are simply installing a RPM by itself you'll have problems.

The solution is add a lot of third party repositories to what ever you are using.

For Mandrake/Mandriva fans you need to visit easy urpmi http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/. Suse fans, like me, install Smart off of guru's website. http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/

I'm not a Fedora fan so I don't know how they add repos to Yum but I'm sure it's an option. Debian freeks have had this in apt-get from the start.

I'm sure this has all been said before (probably many times over the years), but the two biggest problems I have with Linux are:

1. Difficulty of installing software. Some programs are fairly easy to install, but some are really challenging. Also the vast variety of ways in which software is supplied (Source, DEBs, RPMs, executable installers, tar.gz, ...) make a lot of different methods Linux users have to learn. Also most installation routines don't automatically create menu items, or add themselves to the system path, making extra work for the user after installation. On top of all that there are often dependency issues.

2. Availability of software. Many programs that are available for other OSes don't have Linux versions at all, many more have Linux versions that are inferior to the versions for other systems, and still more don't offer the same level of customer support for their Linux versions.

Neither of these are the "fault" of Linux, but they are certainly both problems that affect Linux users, and hence disadvantages to the user of Linux.

fonts.



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