BW )(: Call for Constructive Flaming

Wed Jun 25 16:43:58 BST 2008

Dare I get involved ....

Some answers to your points MJR, perhaps I should be the nice flamer?

M

ben at bristolwireless.net wrote:
> Quoting MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop>:
> 
>> "Ben Green" <ben at bristolwireless.net> wrote:
>>> I personally whole heartedly agree with everything she says, the
>>> usability problems she has with Linux ARE USABILITY PROBLEMS LINUX
>>> HAS, that's just how it is. Because I keep up with kernel and
>>> GNU/Linux development I know that a lot of solutions are in the
>>> pipeline - live cross kernel driver updates, more hardware vendors on
>>> board by the day, but it really isn't there yet.
>>
>> Three random snippets about those "problems" there:-
>>
>>   "It should be easy to plug in a new monitor. It should be easy to
>>   get wireless, it should be easy to add a new printer. It should be
>>   easy to play a DVD."
>>
>> Well, I don't play mainstream DVDs (evil Hollywood's encryption
>> probably causes trouble there, but that's hardly GNU/Linux's fault)
>> but none of the others has caused me much trouble. I do look before I
>> buy hardware, though.

No it's not Linux's fault per se, but it's a political issue to do with 
DRM and region codes, etc.  Because Linux is a politicised system, and 
because I generally attempt to boycott Holywood films, then it's not a 
problem for me.

Most folk are just happy consumers and wish to watch Holywood films with 
DRM, and in fact don't give a damn about DRM, actually probably don't 
even know what it is or know why it should be of concern to them; hence 
the political issue is lost on them, or of no interest to them and it 
just doesn't damn well work for them.

In the interest of an experiment, a young friend lent me South Park 
Season 2 disc 3.

I put it in my laptop loaded up with the latest Ubuntu Studio, Open 
Movie Player let me play it, and installed the codecs from the 
restricted set, great.

I still can't see anything other than a load of greem blobs, must be 
still encoded or something.

I installed 'ogle', which then failed because it required OSS support, 
which I don't have.  VLC didn't work, gxine neither.

So I can't watch South Park boo!

I could just buy a DVD player from ASDALs for about 30 quid and be done 
with it.

>>
>>   "Apple controls the hardware, so there never is a problem with it."
>>
>> I laughed when I read that, but maybe something has changed since I
>> was a tech worker for a Mac-using university department!  Do you
>> really agree wholeheartedly that there's never a problem with Apple
>> hardware?

No, no not that at all.  Of course all hardware fails, and Apples does. 
  I've had Macs that have been the best, most reliable and resilience 
machines I ever had, to complete donkeys.  I can say that about Dells 
to, and most manufacturers come to mention it; except Acer who are in my 
experience dependably crap always.

It's obvious to me here she is saying, Apple's hardware works because 
they build the hardware and then they build the software to work with 
the hardware.  This is true and in my experience OS X does indeed work 
very well with Apple's hardware.  Compare this with Vista or Linux on 
Apple's hardware, not quite so good.

>>
>>   "there does not exist a decent usable twitter client for Linux"
>>
>> Erm, twitter's fairly open.  I've used both IceWeasel and jabber to
>> update it, as well as a webtv in a hotel room.  Why use a specialised
>> client?

Erm, what's twitter?

> 
> Okay, I don't agree with absolutely everything she had to say, but I 
> certainly think that Linux does have some elements of usability that 
> proprietary OSes do, and that people seem to have more luck maintaining 
> their own Mac systems without much support.

Absolutely.

> 
> "It should be easy to get wireless, it should be easy to add a new 
> printer."
> 
> Now, that is real rub, Linux wireless support is a bit sucky for off the 
> shelf HW, so too for printing. This needs to be sorted out somehow. A 
> further threat is that when inexperienced users can buy hardware with a 
> "Works with Linux" sticker on the box which doesn't actually work (you 
> know, binary blobs on a CD that only work on Red Hat 7 and the like).

imho at the moment Linux support for wireless is really coming together, 
using Ubuntu Studio or 64 Studio as I have tried recently, it pretty 
much just works out of the box, the little network manager tool is cool 
and you can connect to open and protected/encrypted networks too without 
much hassle.

So I say that Wifi is pretty much there.  It's not as slick as Mac OS X 
of course, that works like a dream really, but it's a hell of a lot 
easier to configure than on XP and Vista, which is a mess imho.

Printers generally work fine mostly.  Some of the really cheap ones 
aren't so easy, but HP, the leading manufacturer, is very well 
supported, by HP themselves.  My OfficeJet works, fax, printer and 
scanner.  This crappy free Dell printer, required a search on the net, 
to discover that a Dell Printer 720 is actually a Lexmark z600 and that 
there were some debian packages available, made by some kind soul into 
hard rock.  They installed and the thing worked.  But of course that's a 
bit tricky for a user, but then so can installing the drivers that came 
with the printer in windows as well in my experience, otherwise there 
wouldn't be such a large support industry for it or Mac.

> 
> The Apple thing, yes true, their hardware can be bad too, but the 
> control of the whole production line does tend to make things more 
> acceptable.
> 
> Twitter, dunno, but there's certainly no shortage in terms of numbers, 
> surely one must be half decent?
> http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps
> 
> It doesn't matter if things are "Linux's fault", if they are problems 
> then they are problems.
> 
> 
> ==
>  From Ben Green
> 
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