Linux sucks

[PorscheMaD911]

Originally posted by: nweaver
I've not found anything I can't do with Debian Stable, it all works fine. No "Get another distro" things here....

So so true for me. Nice and fast too!

 

[CTho9305]

You see instead of saying 'Linux sucks' you'd go 'This GNU stuff is crap'.

Yeah, but nobody would have seen my warning then, becuase nobody knows (or cares) what GNU is. Next time some noob considers switching to GNU/Linux and searches for "Linux", they'll find my thread example of one thing about it that can be very unpleasant. You can argue all you want that it's not Linux's fault, and that may be true, but GNU is the only linux environment (that I know of), so the distinction is largely irrelevant (ignoring users of BSDs or other *nixes who would experience the GNU problems without using Linux). If I had complained about a problem with the help file for some built-in Windows component it would have been fair to say, "Windows sucks".

Then everybody would go 'Ah, silly use info instead of man, duh'.

man is much simpler and quicker to use. It's supposed to be a quick reference, and on OpenBSD it always is a great one. On Linux, it usually is a good reference too, but it's really annoying when they don't do good QA of the docs. As others have said long man pages (e.g. perlfunc) can be difficult to use, so it's not always great, but for a list of options for programs, it's better than --help since it gives more detail and sometimes examples too.

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Yeah, but nobody would have seen my warning then, becuase nobody knows (or cares) what GNU is. Next time some noob considers switching to GNU/Linux and searches for "Linux", they'll find my thread example of one thing about it that can be very unpleasant.

So anyone who has trouble with a windows application should title their threads "M$ Windoze is TEH SUCK"? Grow the heck up. Sorry, but I have a very low opinion of you and your attention whoring thread title. If you had taken two seconds to type "grep --help" you would have had your answer, but no, you have to sling crap in wide arcs.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: Smilin
I'm a big MS guy and thus far have not said anything negative in this "Linux Sucks" thread but comparing man pages to the 2003 helpfiles is ridiculous. I'm not going to come outright and say "Linux Sucks" but the man pages certainly do. You've just gotten good enough at your OS that the limited functionality they provide is now acceptable. If you had decent helpfiles this thread may never have been started.

Seriously look at em. It's like someone got stuck in the 70s when they wrote em and now that the precident is set no one wants to fix it.

That's the exact same logic that has graphics in kernel space on one operating system and not on another (and we're not here to debate the relative merits of those approaches). It's not like there aren't gui man page viewers that make full use of the mouse and hyperlinking. If anything, text based documentation is better because it can be used in both ways. What do you do if you only have command-line access to the machine?

As was pointed out, you're confusing content with presentation. You're the only one who is complaining about presentation. Maybe you'd like to show us how windows' help system prevents people from writing inaccurate documentation?

That's a pretty big pile of red herring arguments.

The only reason text only would be an advantage is if you were bound to a text only interface! That's not a problem in Windows.

When do you only have command line access to Windows? Recovery console? Hm. all commands are documented there.

I'm not confusing anything. I think *you* are confusing what I began responding to in the first place. I'm definately not griping about presentation, I'm griping about usability. Man pages suck. Awful stuff. Are you disagreeing with this statement or just being defensive about your OS of choice? If I was a *nix guy saying this you would agree I think (see Drag's post for instance). Don't confuse me bashing your man pages as bashing your OS. It's ok to admit they suck. Linus won't kick you out of any fan club

(emphasis added)

I think you're the first one who threw in a red herring. This thread began because someone packaged documentation that did not match the version of the program. That has nothing to do with the format or content or any other property of the documentation; the problem happened in quality assurance. This could just as easily have happened to Windows Help files.

Then, you say something about man pages looking like they came from the 70's. You may need to look up the history of troff(1), but either way, you do seem to fail to perform the distinction and/or separation between content and presentation, which we regard as important.

What exactly is your specific gripe with man pages? If they are not treated as full documentation, but instead as something like an extended /?/--help/-h, they work very well IMO. Unfortunately, sometimes both users and developers treat them as full docs, so users only look there or developers either cram as much into the man system as possible, or perhaps nothing at all.

As for Windows not having a text interface, some things are much easier with a text interface. Anything I can do locally at the command line, I can do remotely and on multiple machines simultaneously. You can't say that about a graphical interface.

Yeah you're still trying to pull me off on to some side argument that you seem to have an interest in. To restate my original point "2003 helpfiles rock IMHO. " Also to restate my gripe with man pages (not my original point but this seems to bug you): "Where man pages fall on their face is if you don't know what you are looking for ahead of time"

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Yeah, but nobody would have seen my warning then, becuase nobody knows (or cares) what GNU is. Next time some noob considers switching to GNU/Linux and searches for "Linux", they'll find my thread example of one thing about it that can be very unpleasant.

So anyone who has trouble with a windows application should title their threads "M$ Windoze is TEH SUCK"? Grow the heck up. Sorry, but I have a very low opinion of you and your attention whoring thread title. If you had taken two seconds to type "grep --help" you would have had your answer, but no, you have to sling crap in wide arcs.

So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Yeah you're still trying to pull me off on to some side argument that you seem to have an interest in. To restate my original point "2003 helpfiles rock IMHO. "

And I don't think anybody's contested that (whether from experience or lack of it, the latter in my case).

Also to restate my gripe with man pages (not my original point but this seems to bug you): "Where man pages fall on their face is if you don't know what you are looking for ahead of time"

As stated before, man -k is quite helpful and if that isn't good enough for you, you're probably not ready for man pages. You should be reading tutorials and other higher level documentation. Nobody is claiming that man pages are the one and only form of documentation, they're just concise references for specific topics.

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: kamper
So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

Dude, get some perspective. He's wanking about one letter changing in a rarely used option on a utility that can be compiled under multiple OS's, including Windows but uses it to declare "Linux Sucks". If he had compiled it under Windows he wouldn't even HAVE a man page. Plus, the utility has built-in help that gives the correct usage -- exactly as you said at the command line. He later admits the title is just a troll to discourage people from using Linux. That is simply pathetic.

 

[n0cmonkey]

You all are insane.

Use OpenBSD. uffy;

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: kamper
So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

Dude, get some perspective. He's wanking about one letter changing in a rarely used option

Read it again. It was a man page for a newer version of the utility and the option didn't exist at all on the installed version. A man page older then the utility would at least be easily explainable, but documentation that's more up to date than the software is just weird.

on a utility that can be compiled under multiple OS's, including Windows

That's completely irrelevant.

but uses it to declare "Linux Sucks".

An extrapolation which he explained quite clearly. The issue in question was just an example in his case. Sure, maybe he blew it out of proportion, but there's no reason to get all offended unless you have fanboyish tendencies. Maybe "Suse sucks" would have been more appropriate.

If he had compiled it under Windows he wouldn't even HAVE a man page. Plus, the utility has built-in help that gives the correct usage -- exactly as you said at the command line.

"foo --help" is not standard. "man foo" is. I'm sure he still would have posted the same gripe had he done the --help because it's not an acceptable excuse for a ****** manual page.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Yeah, but nobody would have seen my warning then, becuase nobody knows (or cares) what GNU is. Next time some noob considers switching to GNU/Linux and searches for "Linux", they'll find my thread example of one thing about it that can be very unpleasant.

So anyone who has trouble with a windows application should title their threads "M$ Windoze is TEH SUCK"? Grow the heck up. Sorry, but I have a very low opinion of you and your attention whoring thread title. If you had taken two seconds to type "grep --help" you would have had your answer, but no, you have to sling crap in wide arcs.

So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

Yeah, doornail is the idiot here. He should have understood that I didn't find what I was looking for in --help which is why I went to the man page.

Further evidence of his poor reading comprehension:

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: kamper
So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

Dude, get some perspective. He's wanking about one letter changing in a rarely used option on a utility that can be compiled under multiple OS's, including Windows but uses it to declare "Linux Sucks". If he had compiled it under Windows he wouldn't even HAVE a man page. Plus, the utility has built-in help that gives the correct usage -- exactly as you said at the command line. He later admits the title is just a troll to discourage people from using Linux. That is simply pathetic.

My gripe was not that sometimes it's buffering vs buffered. My gripe was that the doc lies completely about the existence of any option in any way related to output buffering.

I see Kamper already picked up on doornail's comprehension troubles too.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: kamper

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: kamper
So it doesn't matter if the man page is right or not, so long as "--help" prints out the correct, albeit incomplete, usage? :laughing;

And help files aren't just some application, an operating system is more or less useless without correct documentation, especially at the commandline.

Dude, get some perspective. He's wanking about one letter changing in a rarely used option

Read it again. It was a man page for a newer version of the utility and the option didn't exist at all on the installed version. A man page older then the utility would at least be easily explainable, but documentation that's more up to date than the software is just weird.

on a utility that can be compiled under multiple OS's, including Windows

That's completely irrelevant.

but uses it to declare "Linux Sucks".

An extrapolation which he explained quite clearly. The issue in question was just an example in his case. Sure, maybe he blew it out of proportion, but there's no reason to get all offended unless you have fanboyish tendencies. Maybe "Suse sucks" would have been more appropriate.

If he had compiled it under Windows he wouldn't even HAVE a man page. Plus, the utility has built-in help that gives the correct usage -- exactly as you said at the command line.

"foo --help" is not standard. "man foo" is. I'm sure he still would have posted the same gripe had he done the --help because it's not an acceptable excuse for a ****** manual page.

Actually, --help is rather standard---it's just a different standard, namely GNU's.

Yay pedantry.

 

[Nothinman]

That's completely irrelevant.

Not at all. The thread was titled "Linux sucks" and all he did was complain about one cross platform tool. Maybe I should start a thread entitled "Windows sucks" and explain how Mozilla crashed on me last week. grep is not a part of Linux, infact I'm pretty sure it's been around a good bit longer than Linux.

My gripe was not that sometimes it's buffering vs buffered. My gripe was that the doc lies completely about the existence of any option in any way related to output buffering.

And that's been explained as a SuSe QA bug multiple times already, it has nothing to do with the quality of the docs themselves since SuSe shipped mismatched versions of the binary and the man page. If the next version of Seamonkey was shipped with old docs would you cry about how crappy the OS used to bulid the package was? Of course not, because it makes no sense.

 

[doornail]

Edit.

Must .. not ... feed ... trolls.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

That's completely irrelevant.

Not at all. The thread was titled "Linux sucks" and all he did was complain about one cross platform tool. Maybe I should start a thread entitled "Windows sucks" and explain how Mozilla crashed on me last week. grep is not a part of Linux, infact I'm pretty sure it's been around a good bit longer than Linux.

Maybe the people who shipped versions before Linux knew how to write docs

My gripe was not that sometimes it's buffering vs buffered. My gripe was that the doc lies completely about the existence of any option in any way related to output buffering.

And that's been explained as a SuSe QA bug multiple times already, it has nothing to do with the quality of the docs themselves since SuSe shipped mismatched versions of the binary and the man page. If the next version of Seamonkey was shipped with old docs would you cry about how crappy the OS used to bulid the package was? Of course not, because it makes no sense.

Find me a linux distro that doesn't include grep (excluding those ones that fit on a floppy disk). You can't? Well, that makes it part of the OS. As I said before, the fact that it's not in the kernel is irrelevant if every OS based on the linux kernel includes it (and it's a fairly critical system component). I'd bet you personally wouldn't use a grepless *nix. I guess a severe bug in the init or bash everybody uses wouldn't warrant me saying "linux sucks" in your opinion?

I guess it's a linux geek thing. If they get everybody to blame the specific program/distributor, almost nobody will complain about the kernel itself, so they can pat themselves on the back since there won't be any "Linux" problems discussed anywhere, and they can always say, "use a different distro"... while problems with anything Microsoft ships would be a "Windows" bug just because it happens to ship on the same CD and is thus "Windows".

Find me a Windows box that doesn't have SeaMonkey. 99% don't? Then it's not part of the OS. (I'd still like to know if we have docs in SeaMonkey that are out of date though, so we can fix them, if you actually found problems)

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe the people who shipped versions before Linux knew how to write docs

It's not about writing docs, I would bet money that they simply did something as stupid as miscopy a file. If the core docs were wrong every distribution would have the wrong docs.

Find me a linux distro that doesn't include grep (excluding those ones that fit on a floppy disk).

I like how you explicitly rule out the answers that don't fit your argument. Just because they run from a floppy they don't count?

I'd bet you personally wouldn't use a grepless *nix. I guess a severe bug in the init or bash everybody uses wouldn't warrant me saying "linux sucks" in your opinion?

Of course I wouldn't use a system without grep, but that's beside the point. And no, a bug in bash or init wouldn't warrant you saying that 'linux sucks' because they're not part of the OS either. The fact that there are perfectly valid replacements for them (minit and dash for example) means they are replacable and not a strict requirement for an OS to call itself Linux.

I guess it's a linux geek thing. If they get everybody to blame the specific program/distributor, almost nobody will complain about the kernel itself, so they can pat themselves on the back since there won't be any "Linux" problems discussed anywhere, and they can always say, "use a different distro"... while problems with anything Microsoft ships would be a "Windows" bug just because it happens to ship on the same CD and is thus "Windows".

Not quite, it's a 'tell the correct person about their bugs' thing. There is absolutely zero point in telling RedHat the SuSe's man pages aren't accurate and there's even less point in starting a thread with a trolling/attention getter subject just to cry and vent.

Find me a Windows box that doesn't have SeaMonkey. 99% don't? Then it's not part of the OS. (I'd still like to know if we have docs in SeaMonkey that are out of date though, so we can fix them, if you actually found problems)

GNU grep is just as much a part of the OS as SeaMonkey. If I was inclined it wouldn't be too hard to replace the GNU grep on my machine with OpenBSD grep. And the fact that Slackware uses a BSD init instead of SysV kills your comment about init being part of the OS. Bash might be a little more difficult since you'll undoubtly run into scripts that use bash-specific features, but there's nothing stopping you from replacing your base shell with ash, dash, sash, tcsh, pdksh etc. Infact I had /bin/sh pointing to /bin/dash for a while and never noticed any problems.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
Find me a linux distro that doesn't include grep (excluding those ones that fit on a floppy disk). You can't? Well, that makes it part of the OS. As I said before, the fact that it's not in the kernel is irrelevant if every OS based on the linux kernel includes it (and it's a fairly critical system component). I'd bet you personally wouldn't use a grepless *nix. I guess a severe bug in the init or bash everybody uses wouldn't warrant me saying "linux sucks" in your opinion?

I fail to see what that has to do with anything, since from what I've gathered, there's no problem with neither grep, nor it's docs, it's a problem with SuSE, so how does that mean Linux sucks?
Doesn't make any sense to me, even if you consider grep as part of the OS.

If I slapped together Sunner Linux and didn't even bother shipping docs at all, would that be a crappy distro?
Hell yeah, it would be a really ****** distro, but it still wouldn't mean Linux sucks, it would mean my distro sucks, it's not like all the people creating the utils I ship can help it if I don't ship the accompanying docs.

 

[CTho9305]

I'd bet you personally wouldn't use a grepless *nix. I guess a severe bug in the init or bash everybody uses wouldn't warrant me saying "linux sucks" in your opinion?

Of course I wouldn't use a system without grep, but that's beside the point. And no, a bug in bash or init wouldn't warrant you saying that 'linux sucks' because they're not part of the OS either. The fact that there are perfectly valid replacements for them (minit and dash for example) means they are replacable and not a strict requirement for an OS to call itself Linux.

Ok, tell you what. You get people to always refer to it as [Distro] GNU/Linux, and I'll complain about GNU tools or the distro when it's appropriate. As long as everyone wants to know about switching to "Linux", I'll title my threads so they'll understand what they're getting into - the things they call Linux suck for various reasons.

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: CTho9305
As long as everyone wants to know about switching to "Linux", I'll title my threads so they'll understand what they're getting into - the things they call Linux suck for various reasons.

Tell me something. If having one man page, out of tens of thousands, be slightly out of date completely trashes your ass why are you even trying to use something like Linux? Do you start threads saying "AUTOMOBILES SUCK" because your radio manual had a typo?

Secondly, why do you care if other people try Linux? Seriously, what are you afraid of? Do you assume everyone who downloads an ISO is going to hit the "great grep speedbump" and fail because you did? Sorry, but your inability does NOT make you a better advocate. If I want to learn German I don't seek the opinions of someone who flunked it.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: CTho9305
As long as everyone wants to know about switching to "Linux", I'll title my threads so they'll understand what they're getting into - the things they call Linux suck for various reasons.

Tell me something. If having one man page, out of tens of thousands, be slightly out of date completely trashes your ass why are you even trying to use something like Linux? Do you start threads saying "AUTOMOBILES SUCK" because your radio manual had a typo?

Secondly, why do you care if other people try Linux? Seriously, what are you afraid of? Do you assume everyone who downloads an ISO is going to hit the "great grep speedbump" and fail because you did? Sorry, but your inability does NOT make you a better advocate. If I want to learn German I don't seek the opinions of someone who flunked it.

It's not his inability, it's the fault of SuSE entirely, and he has a proper complaint, I just don't see why Linux sucks because of a mistake SuSE made.
If BMW made only engines and sold them to other manufacturers, would they suck just cause Ford stuck it in a crappy car, while Toyota made an utterly asskicking car using the same engine?
And no, my example has nothing to do with my opinions about European vs American vs Asian cars, I just picked a few brands I could think of quickly

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: CTho9305
As long as everyone wants to know about switching to "Linux", I'll title my threads so they'll understand what they're getting into - the things they call Linux suck for various reasons.

Tell me something. If having one man page, out of tens of thousands, be slightly out of date completely trashes your ass why are you even trying to use something like Linux? Do you start threads saying "AUTOMOBILES SUCK" because your radio manual had a typo?

Secondly, why do you care if other people try Linux? Seriously, what are you afraid of?

They're welcome to try a Linux-based OS (why aren't you calling it [distro] GNU/Linux, which is what I'm really complaining about?). They're welcome to switch. I'm just trying to save them from some potential suffering, or at least warn them that they may be getting into something with documentation that isn't useful. Inconsistent versioning of docs and binaries is one of many reasons Linux-based OSes can be unpleasant to use.

Do you assume everyone who downloads an ISO is going to hit the "great grep speedbump" and fail because you did? Sorry, but your inability does NOT make you a better advocate.

My inability to what? Read docs? I did read the docs, both --help and the man page, and I even Googled for info. It's my fault because I expected that an option described in the documentation would actually exist?

If I want to learn German I don't seek the opinions of someone who flunked it.

I'm actually pretty good with Linux-based OSes. That doesn't mean I like them.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm just trying to save them from some potential suffering, or at least warn them that they may be getting into something with documentation that isn't useful. Inconsistent versioning of docs and binaries is one of many reasons Linux-based OSes can be unpleasant to use.

Potential suffering? Because an option that virtually no one uses wasn't documented properly? I really doubt new users will be reading any man pages at all, let alone the one for grep. Incosistent versioning happened once that I'm aware of, please find another example before you start crying over an isolated incident.