[KLUG Advocacy] My Top Ten List Revisited

[Adam Tauno Williams]

Back in the day (September 2002)  I posted my "Top Ten Reasons Linux
Sucks" list.  I've always meant to revisit this, and since I saw sitting
in a really boring meeting I took the opportunity.  Feel free to comment
on if you agree with me.

Original message:
http://www.kalamazoolinux.org/pipermail/advocacy/2002-September/000241.html
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> 1. Printing from applications. 

This has vastly improved, at least in Ximianized applications.  Only if
I go over to Mozilla do I have to do anything so silly as type "lpr
-P..." to print a web page.  Ever other app on my desktop now merrily
enumerates the printers and lets me pick one.  Even the Java
applications.  Alot of this has to do with the move to CUPS, which
actually provides a mechanism for applications to enumerate printers
(Crazy!) as well as the fantastic work of the GNOME team.
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> 2. Documentation.  

Sigh, it still sucks.  And getting documentation "out there" hasn't
gotten any easier either,  it is still treated in most circles like the
ugly step child.  There are some exceptions,  the OpenGroupware
community for instance deserved to be recognized for making
documentation a very high priority both in word and deed.  These
exceptions are pretty rare however.  (Samba documentation is another
example of MUCH IMPROVED).
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> 3. X Windows Cut-N-Paste.  

Much improved, again thanks to the fabulous GNOME people.  Only rarely
does my cut-n-paste buffer seem to get some snippet of text stuck in its
craw.  And even pasting tabular data between a Java app, Open Office,
and a true GNOME app seems to work very well.
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> 4. With all the talk about the security of Open Source software the
shoddy support of filesystem ACLs is shocking.  

Not too suprisingly, no change here.  But now that the UNIX bigot is an
endangered species (see #10) maybe something will happen here.
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> 5. The "use this database for everything" mentality.  

Definitely no change here.  Despite the noble efforts of the GNOME-db
and unixODBC projects most Open Source developers just don't get it. 
Maybe as more applications move to .Net/Mono, where is abstraction is
almost and inherent feature, we will get away from the linking of an
application to a specific database engine.
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> 6. Lack of application finess.  

The GNOME/Ximian people dragged this one out into the alley and beat it
good.  It still creeps up in fringe applications, but most decently
packaged applications now seem to include crazy things like an icon, a
menu link, etc...
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> 7. The lack of support on the desktop for application enabling
technologies.  

Here we are talking about ACAP, SRV, SLP, etc...  Nope, no progress
what-so-ever.  But SuSe (thanks to Novell) 9.1 will include SLP so
automated desktop management and configuration will finally start to
become a reality.
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> 8. No support for password expiration/change in GUI greeters.   

Nope, no progress.  Now I'm thinking that a GDM that uses SASL, instead
of just PAM, might actually be a better fit for the desktop anyway -
yeah, we'll see how long before that happens. {Cringes at the thought of
having to look at the SASL "documentation" again}.
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> 9. Huge and sparse fixed-size dialog boxes.  

All praise the GNOME/Ximian teams!  They wrote a HIG, and they've
ruthlessly implemented it.  Excellent.
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> 10. No list of irritating Linux-ism would be complete without mention
of the UNIX bigot.

Happily, in most forums, the UNIX bigot seems to be declineing into an
endangered species.  Maybe this is because they are now all unemployed
and can't afford broadband anymore? :)  The Bigot has been replaced, to
a degree, by the rabid (and usually clueless) minimalist.  To the
minimalist everything resembling a feature that makes an application
generally useful is "bloat".  KDE is bload, GNOME is bloat, Mono is
bloat (yes, even a developement platform itself can be considered
bloat), and don't even get them started about Open Office.  

Usable preferences?  Bah!  

Integreation between applications?  'What!  Are you too stupid to
cut-n-paste 500 discrete entries every day? You're a lazy bum!'  

And on hardware requirements: 'It requires me to invest $29 in
additional RAM?  Do they think I'm made of money!'  

Fortunately this guy is just annoying, and occasionaly just flat out
amusing, whereas the UNIX Bigot was frequently offensive and
beligerant.  Most people seem to be able to just wait till the
minimalist is don't with his spastic rant and then return to the
substance of the conversation.

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So I figure my last has been about half solved (1, 3, 6, 9 solved - I
give half a point each for 7 and 10). Not bad for two years, and some of
the others might fall pretty soon.  Of course one could easily find new
replacements for 1, 3, 6, & 9..... maybe in another post.