Some great suggestions for linux

[Davegod75]

this has probably been posted before but it's worth the read.

http://chabada.sk/better-desktop/

 

[kamper]

Well that specific article might not have been posted, but there's been more than enough debate on the general subject. It'd be nice if, instead of writing all sorts of suggestions, people would just shut up and implement them so we can see whether or not they're any good.

Also, there seems to be a general confusion about the differences between "linux" and "desktop oriented software that happens to run on linux, among other platforms". 😉

 

[bunbun]

This article is aimed at making linux as easy as mac. That will just never happen. Linux is developed by geeks. The best linux apps are command line anyway; that is where the real power of linux is. Customizability. Command line apps give an incredible amount of control over function of a program, granted it takes longer to learn. But the power that linux gives is what makes it appealing, not its eas of use. Sure a nice easy linux distro would be cool but then it would not be any different from windows/mac (except for being more stable. less prone to bugs, faster, more efficient, less prone to harmful software, etc). The people who use linux are after power over there computer, not the latest 3d file navigation utilities.

Bunbun

 

[Nothinman]

This article is aimed at making linux as easy as mac. That will just never happen.

Good, last time I used a Mac it was frustrating as hell because I couldn't find any of the tools I wanted and there was no decent package management.

Some of the suggestions on that site are pretty dumb too.

For instance, he starts one paragraph like: Burning in Gnome is intuitive and good enough for many people. But.... First saying that it's good enough, but proceeds to complain and explain how to make the process more elaborate.

And the section on "Automatic pause of music playback" seems dumb, if I want to pause the song I'll click pause, if I want to mute my volume I'll do that, the two are not synonymous.

I am dreaming about one fine application that will integrate everything needed for home entertainment (music, video, tv, photos, audio and video chat). Something like Windows Media Center or even better like Apple's Front Row and iLife.

AFAIK MythTV does that.

When you look inside home directory for hidden files you realize that there is absolutely mess of configuration files. Better will be if all user configuration files will be inside one hidden directory e.g. ~/.config/ (or ~/.etc/).

He's talking about making things easier for the desktop and yet he's wasting time talking about users editing config files? Those two points seem to be contradictory.

Treat archives like regular folders

I absolutely hate that functionality in Windows.

Hibernation and power management need to improve. When I try to hibernate or suspend with nVidia binary drivers I cannot wake computer. It is possible to setup but again user expects it's working out of the box.

Because the nVidia driver's power management support is virtually non-existant. Supposedly nVidia is working on it, but since they wont open source the drivers we have no way to know. If you use the OSS nv driver, which most distributions do 'out of the box' then suspend should work fine.

Another issue is weird behavior of hibernation. It shuts down my disk, after while it wakes, and only after that shuts down entire computer. Why needs my disk to be shut down twice?

I believe this was fixed very recently, but I don't see the behavior on my notebook so I'm not sure.

I thing that we should stop using old libraries as fast as possible but we still have e.g. gtk1 and applications based on it. If we get them out of the repositories (or at least put them in new not supported repository obsolete) programmers will faster move to use new technology (in this case gtk2) and desktop will be more consistent. And if it is really obsolete and not developing program someone will write new one. Help them be ported or let them die. It's an evolution.

While generally true, removing GTK1 would cause some very important (to me and probably other people) programs like Enlightenment and GNUCash to be obsoleted for no good reason. GNUCash is supposedly being ported to GTK2, but it's a slow process. E16 will never be ported because it's not been under any real development for the past 5 or more years.

I also dislike even when I found that program is even using old gtk2 file open/save dialogs (e.g. gtraslator, inkscape...). It seems to be not professional to have two different dialogs for same thing.

Then he someone should file bug reports for those specific programs.

Frankly, the guy who wrote that page should have taken all of the time he spent on it and instead worked on fixing one or two of the problems he has with the system. It would have been much more productive.

 

[nweaver]

People say linux is hard, but I disagree, I use linux because it's easy, and enables my laziness

 

[n0cmonkey]

Automatic pause of music playback

In same cases user mutes sound. In present every music player still plays music, but no one can hear it. Better will be pause music playback until user unmutes sound. Advantage is that user wouldn't miss a song 🙂.

HIT PAUSE.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Automatic pause of music playback

In same cases user mutes sound. In present every music player still plays music, but no one can hear it. Better will be pause music playback until user unmutes sound. Advantage is that user wouldn't miss a song 🙂.

HIT PAUSE.

why make it easier? common sense is for non geeks

 

[Nothinman]

why make it easier? common sense is for non geeks

Common sense? When you hit mute on your CD player does it pause the current song? I know mine doesn't, so why should the computer be any different?

 

[DasFox]

Originally posted by: nweaver
People say linux is hard, but I disagree, I use linux because it's easy, and enables my laziness

Saying what you just said is to broad a statement, not all Linux is the same.

Yes true some can be very easy, but overall, no Linux is not easier then Windows.

Tell someone who has never used a PC before to install XP, then install Slackware and Gentoo.

Tell me which of the three is the easiest to install?

ALOHA

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
why make it easier? common sense is for non geeks

Common sense tells me that hitting the pause button will pause the music and stop the sound. Common sense also tells me that hitting the mute button will stop the sound but it tells me nothing about pausing the music. Is it common sense to you to have two buttons that do exactly the same thing? What if I want to mute it for some reason without pausing, how do I do that? :roll:

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

why make it easier? common sense is for non geeks

Common sense? When you hit mute on your CD player does it pause the current song? I know mine doesn't, so why should the computer be any different?

No kidding...

Think about this for a second and a half.

If pause button does the same exact behavior as the mute button, then what is the point to having a mute button??

You hit pause to pause a song and you hit mute to pause a song?

What if you have video playing, does then mute have a different behavior depending on weither or not your watching video or are you going to now pause video also?

It's kinda silly.