Linux user-facing software usability
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ITT: @Tsaukpaetra demanding 100% stability and feature completeness of pre-release software.
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@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
ITT: @Tsaukpaetra demanding 100% stability and feature completeness of pre-release software.
Yet people are doing the same with Linux.
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@Tsaukpaetra release prematurely, release often.
Sounds like my sex life
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@Jaloopa said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra release prematurely, release often.
Sounds like my sex life
I mean, it's gotta work eventually, right?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
ITT: @Tsaukpaetra demanding 100% stability and feature completeness of pre-release software.
Yet people are doing the same with Linux.
Where does it say that Linux 4.9.31 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say that Ubuntu 16.04 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Fedora 25 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Linux Mint 18.1 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Debian 8 is pre-release quality?
Because in Longhorn, it says so right on the desktop all the fucking time.
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@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
ITT: @Tsaukpaetra demanding 100% stability and feature completeness of pre-release software.
Yet people are doing the same with Linux.
Where does it say that Linux 4.9.31 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say that Ubuntu 16.04 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Fedora 25 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Linux Mint 18.1 is pre-release quality?
Where does it say Debian 8 is pre-release quality?
Because in Longhorn, it says so right on the desktop all the fucking time.I'm pretty sure Vista never said so all the fucking time. Now you're moving goal posts.
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@Tsaukpaetra there's a difference between bashing Vista and bashing Longhorn. No one promised Longhorn will work.
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@anonymous234 said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Fifteen fucking dollars
Which is mainly for the DVD playing license iirc, as MS are too cheap to include it with Windows. Funnily enough, my Mac got the DVD Player app even though it doesn't have a disc drive. I wonder if that program is still included on Macs even though none of them have a disc drive anymore.
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@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra there's a difference between bashing Vista and bashing Longhorn. No one promised Longhorn will work.
I'm not bashing Longhorn, I'm talking about the Dell laptop that didn't fully function from an upgrade to Vista from XP.
Just keep pushing that post, eventually someone will kick for it.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra there's a difference between bashing Vista and bashing Longhorn. No one promised Longhorn will work.
I'm not bashing Longhorn, I'm talking about the Dell laptop that didn't fully function from an upgrade to Vista from XP.
So was it Vista or Longhorn, after all?
Anyway. I'm not defending Vista. They fucked it up, hard. And not the system itself - they didn't give driver developers enough time to fix drivers after breaking changes (as everyone who reads The Old New Thing knows, every change in undocumented internal Windows APIs is breaking change, and it's not Microsoft's fault), so half the things didn't work. Also, the Vista Capable fiasco. They should've made a big red warning on startup if the computer doesn't have enough RAM to run smoothly.
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@Polygeekery said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@boomzilla said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
And lo, thirty minutes later a working media center existed (most of which was spent failing at typing the serial with a faulty wireless keyboard).
Yeah, but then you had to watch Last Week Tonight.
Still funnier than "conservative humor"
You've not seen "Tranny Bane".
But I know Lorne.
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@Atazhaia said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Which is mainly for the DVD playing license iirc,
No.
Via LA Licensing
Transparent and Collaborative Global Patent Licensing. The industry's largest patent pool administrator with dozens of IP licensing programs
For MPEG-2 Decoding Products in hardware or software, the royalty is US $2.50 per unit from January 1, 2002 and $4.00 per unit before January 1, 2002 (Sections 2.2 and 3.1.2), but $2.00 from later of January 1, 2010 or execution of license through December 31, 2015. From January 1, 2016 forward, the royalty rate for MPEG-2 Encoding Products will be $0.50 per unit with right of voluntary termination on 30-days written notice, but Licensees may elect a royalty of $0.35 with right of voluntary termination on or after January 1, 2018 on 30-days written notice.
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@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
So was it Vista or Longhorn, after all?
Vista, but I understand it was said ages ago, so here's the post verbatim.
@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
When did I say this was a problem with desktops? This was a Dell laptop with Broadcom wireless IIRC. I didn't think to mention it, but then you assumed.
Did it come with Windows preinstalled? If so, why doesn't preinstalled system come with Wi-Fi driver? If not, then I congratulate you on finding the only laptop in existence that doesn't support Windows. Do you still have it around? Could I get a model number?
It had Windows XP installed. Attempting to update to Vista (yes, this effectively marks it's age) apparently meant clean install,because fuck Vista.
Because, you know, it just works, right?
To my recognizance it was a latitude something thousand.
And then for some reason y'all started talking about Longhorn....
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@Atazhaia said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Funnily enough, my Mac got the DVD Player app even though it doesn't have a disc drive. I wonder if that program is still included on Macs even though none of them have a disc drive anymore.
I have Macs as recently as 2016 models, without DVD drives, that have the DVD player app. I never thought to look until now, but it is there.
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@kt_ said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@asdf said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Video playback Just Works on mainstream distros running on full-sized hardware.
Wrong.
Unless you're using a shitty distro or really weird media formats, it kinda does.
I used to have Arch on EEEPC. Flash used ALSA for sound, Skype used OSS. I tried for half a year to make them both sound clear simultaneously (they each worked on their own, with slightly different config); tried and failed. And I've had to switch between speakers and headphones manually. Fuck this shit, no more Linux on multimedia machine.
What the fuck? What's wrong with you people?! Repeat after me: you don't use Arch, you should never use Arch, Arch is fucked up, Arch is bad for you, you can use Arch only if you're a hard core Linux user with 10 years of experience and have a serious skin condition.
FWIW, I had an Arch install that worked great. Probably luck, but it was unexpectedly painless. The worst part of it was the dual-graphics-card stuff not working great (It basically refused to use the Nvidia card for raisins), but I figured that out eventually.
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@wharrgarbl said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Yeah, actually. But IIRC it was called Longhorn then.
I just remembered the claims it would be a closed garden with all the things DRMed. I wonder how much of it's marketshare MS would maintain if they did it. Maybe it would've been worth it, considering thay 30% the phone markets get on everything.
Well it did make a notable step towards it with the Protected Media Path, but yeah it was nowhere near the announced "Palladium" DRM boogieman.
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@Atazhaia said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Funnily enough, my Mac got the DVD Player app even though it doesn't have a disc drive. I wonder if that program is still included on Macs even though none of them have a disc drive anymore.
It probably is, given that some people are known to attach a USB DVD player to the computer.
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@Atazhaia said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Which is mainly for the DVD playing license iirc, as MS are too cheap to include it with Windows.
The Wii's hardware could play DVDs, but it lacked the software. I still wish they'd just released it on the Wii store.
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@kt_ said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@asdf said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Gąska said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Video playback Just Works on mainstream distros running on full-sized hardware.
Wrong.
Unless you're using a shitty distro or really weird media formats, it kinda does.
I used to have Arch on EEEPC. Flash used ALSA for sound, Skype used OSS. I tried for half a year to make them both sound clear simultaneously (they each worked on their own, with slightly different config); tried and failed. And I've had to switch between speakers and headphones manually. Fuck this shit, no more Linux on multimedia machine.
What the fuck? What's wrong with you people?! Repeat after me: you don't use Arch, you should never use Arch, Arch is fucked up, Arch is bad for you, you can use Arch only if you're a hard core Linux user with 10 years of experience and have a serious skin condition.
What the fuck are you smoking? I used (U/K/X)ubuntu, Debian and Fedora for a number of years before discovering Arch and settled down with it a couple of years ago. Arch is absolutely my favourite distro out of everything I've used, and I'm using it on my laptop and VPS with no complaints whatsoever.
And FYI, my skin is not terrible (but I have been using Linux for around 10 years)
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@bugmenot I agree with you a bit on this one. I will admit that using Linux is indeed a lot less user-friendly than Windows. But, assuming you aren't using a DE or video playing software that is total ass, it really should not be a problem on modern distros to do something as simple as play a video. Did he just install all of this stuff? I'm not familiar with "Peppermint" at all but I have used regular Mint, which is a lot more popular -- consider it a worthy successor to Ubuntu without the selling out, if you will -- and while I've had my fair share of trials and tribulations, there are a lot of Nice Things that I like about using Linux. Mostly the ball-strippingly fast bootup time, entirely customizable UI, and general total user control over things like permissions and such.
The biggest problem is that installing Linux is like putting together a car entirely out of parts that you've ordered piecemeal instead of just buying a manufactured one from the dealership. You choose the chassis, then the engine, alternator, battery, fuel tank, wheels, etc. and then you choose all of the wires that bind those things together. If you fuck up once, it can be of little consequence or it can be a gigantic pain in the ass, depending on the thing that failed and how much knowledge you have about hardware and drivers. Distros are designed to solve that problem but very frequently they don't because the software they've packaged together is always community software which may or may not have issues with the hardware you're using. Again, it has gotten better and better over the years, but there's still problems. For instance, the last time I installed Mint I had to remove their stupid community nVidia driver, which was a useless piece of software that did not work at all, and install nVidia's official Linux drivers (yes, they exist, and yes, you should always install the manufacturer's drivers if they are available). I also had to enter some interesting positional offsets in the nVidia configuration tool for X-Windows to get my multi-monitor setup to work, but it wasn't too painful. One of the biggest pains in the ass I suffered was when I found that I really liked a certain desktop theme for my DE, but I wanted to change the colors a bit and make them more like a different theme, so I thought I'd just, you know, hack them together a bit and try to make it work. That took far more time than I originally envisioned (but I did succeed).
I don't begrudge anyone who wants to avail themselves of this frankly quite large burden of failure points by installing an OS like Windows. The saving grace is that Linux is pretty good about telling you what screwed up, and if it doesn't, there is usually some neckbearded ancient sage on the internet who knows exactly what's gone wrong that can help. Which allows hard-headed folks like myself to continue plowing along until they have a nicely-working Linux-based install.
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@CrazyEyes said in Linux user-facing software usability:
The biggest problem is that installing Linux is like putting together a car entirely out of parts that you've ordered piecemeal instead of just buying a manufactured one from the dealership.
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@CrazyEyes said in Linux user-facing software usability:
But, assuming you aren't using a DE or video playing software that is total ass, it really should not be a problem on modern distros to do something as simple as play a video.
As many people have asserted in this thread, it's not a problem to play a video on modern distros. Like I asked earlier, would anyone be surprised when an oddball, inexpertly stripped down version of WinCE failed to play video? No? But it's WINDOWS! Windows always plays video first time, every time! (I hope you see my point.)
I had to remove their stupid community nVidia driver, which was a useless piece of software that did not work at all...
Yep. That's nVidia's fault. They actively frustrate efforts to develop a Freely licensed driver.
(yes, they exist, and yes, you should always install the manufacturer's drivers if they are available)
Only if you're using nVidia hardware... because the open-source NV drivers are painstakingly reverse engineered, and generally don't work well (or at all, depending on the phase of the moon and other factors).
I also had to enter some interesting positional offsets in the nVidia configuration tool for X-Windows to get my multi-monitor setup to work
That's because the closed-source nVidia drivers are (on every axis other than AAA gaming 3D performance) garbage when compared to Team Blue or Team Red's open source drivers. This stuff Just Works(TM) at least as well as it does in Windows with all of the open source drivers. nVidia loves to reinvent the wheel in an incompatible manner and refuses to use really any of the officially supported methods of doing screen configuration.
Just say no to nVidia if you're planning to run Linux. Compared to the experience with Team Red or Team Blue, it's just an endless trail of heartache.
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@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
heartache
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@CrazyEyes For what it's worth, this year became The Year Of Linux On The Desktop
for my mother. Her ten-year-old HP 530 was running Vista, which is being end-of-life'd, and it was getting extremely slow. I installed Linux Mint Xfce. The hardware wireless button gets funky sometimes, but other than that, it looks great and works great. Use cases: Very simple Office documents (LibreOffice), web browsing (Firefox), listening to audio CDs and running the Java/Swing based Hungarian tax reporting software. She has no problem finding stuff in the LibreOffice interface or the file explorer. Linux Mint is really user friendly in my and her experience. And it's fast too.
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@cark said in Linux user-facing software usability:
(but I have been using Linux for around 10 years)
Well, there's your problem.
Seriously, though. If you ever recommend Arch to a newbie, you're a bad person. I'm glad it works for you, you're a lucky guy. It's a very hard to fix distro, though. If it breaks, you need to read like a hundred of five thousand words articles on the Arch wiki, if you decide to post a question on the forums, you're probably gonna get the "shrug, where are he logs" at some point, and quite often no explanations which logs are needed.
And break it can, because bleeding edge.
So yeah, but no.
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@CrazyEyes said in Linux user-facing software usability:
but I have used regular Mint, which is a lot more popular -- consider it a worthy successor to Ubuntu without the selling out, if you will
Yeah, sure. They can afford not selling out, because they're based on Ubuntu, so most of the hard work that requires selling out was already done by someone else.
The biggest problem is that installing Linux is like putting together a car entirely out of parts that you've ordered piecemeal instead of just buying a manufactured one from the dealership. You choose the chassis, then the engine, alternator, battery, fuel tank, wheels, etc. and then you choose all of the wires that bind those things together.
How? You download Ubuntu and install it.
I don't begrudge anyone who wants to avail themselves of this frankly quite large burden of failure points by installing an OS like Windows. The saving grace is that Linux is pretty good about telling you what screwed up, and if it doesn't, there is usually some neckbearded ancient sage on the internet who knows exactly what's gone wrong that can help. Which allows hard-headed folks like myself to continue plowing along until they have a nicely-working Linux-based install.
I have a problem with your metaphor. Using an OS shouldn't be work.
Fortunately, there are distros that go out of their way to take the "work" out of "using Linux". Ubuntu is the most important one, Ubuntu-based elementary is an awesome system that should just work, at least they go to great pains to ensure that. And they take usability seriously, so when you report a UX bug, they won't just shrug you away. They probably won't fix it right away -- they're a small team -- but they won't shrug it away.
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@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Mine likes to do a half ring before it consults the block list...
That's awful. That's kinda worse than having the phone just ignore the block list and let the call through.
That reminds me: on my phone there's a 50% chance that the Phone App will take until the third ring to do the phone number -> contact name lookup and replace the phone number with the contact name.
I mean, I get that I have like thirty people in my address book, so one can't reasonably expect that operation to complete in less than 3000ms for a dataset of that size...
I think the actual ring is handled at the OS level, and the blocklist at the phone app level. So the phone app has to start before it can drop the call.
It used to be that my call blocking app could black hole calls. It would intervene before the phone ever even rang and answer the call and immediately hang up so that the black holes calls did not even get to voicemail.
Then that behavior became verboten on Android and all they changed the API so that feature could no longer be implemented.
As a business owner who gets somewhere between 5 and eleventy billion spam calls per day, even on weekends and holidays, it made things noticeably worse for me. I preferred the old way. I even looked in to jumping ship to iPhone if it could be done on there. Sadly, no.
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@Polygeekery said in Linux user-facing software usability:
I even looked in to jumping ship to iPhone if it could be done on there. Sadly, no
Guess which phone OS does this flawlessly :(
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@kt_ said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@cark said in Linux user-facing software usability:
(but I have been using Linux for around 10 years)
Well, there's your problem.
Seriously, though. If you ever recommend Arch to a newbie, you're a bad person.
The Arch wiki makes it pretty clear it's meant for experienced Linux users.
I'm glad it works for you, you're a lucky guy. It's a very hard to fix distro, though. If it breaks, you need to read like a hundred of five thousand words articles on the Arch wiki, if you decide to post a question on the forums, you're probably gonna get the "shrug, where are he logs" at some point, and quite often no explanations which logs are needed.
And break it can, because bleeding edge.
I can tell you I have a better experience with any (mainstream) Linux distribution today than any Linux distribution 5 years ago, simply because Linux has gotten better (for me at least). Better hardware support and better out-of-the-box experience overall. "Hard to fix" isn't a problem for me because things rarely break, even on Arch. I'd argue that Arch is much easier to fix (if you are indeed Arch's target audience) but that's besides the point
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@ben_lubar said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
heartache
I would have upvoted this twice for two different reasons if I could. Instead, here are the reasons:
- @ben_lubar insistence on posting an Undertale soundtrack when someone mentions a word from Undertale
- Smooth McGroove
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@cark said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@kt_ said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@cark said in Linux user-facing software usability:
(but I have been using Linux for around 10 years)
Well, there's your problem.
Seriously, though. If you ever recommend Arch to a newbie, you're a bad person.
The Arch wiki makes it pretty clear it's meant for experienced Linux users.
Yeah, I know. That's what we're talking about. Arch doesn't provide great end-User experience. It's meant for experienced users. That's the whole point.
I'm glad it works for you, you're a lucky guy. It's a very hard to fix distro, though. If it breaks, you need to read like a hundred of five thousand words articles on the Arch wiki, if you decide to post a question on the forums, you're probably gonna get the "shrug, where are he logs" at some point, and quite often no explanations which logs are needed.
And break it can, because bleeding edge.
I can tell you I have a better experience with any (mainstream) Linux distribution today than any Linux distribution 5 years ago, simply because Linux has gotten better (for me at least). Better hardware support and better out-of-the-box experience overall. "Hard to fix" isn't a problem for me because things rarely break, even on Arch. I'd argue that Arch is much easier to fix (if you are indeed Arch's target audience) but that's besides the point
You know that breaking for most of the users means "this icon stopped working". Might be an easy fix for you, but in fact they're right. ;)
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@Polygeekery on my mostly vanilla Android 7 phone, I can block numbers from the voicemail screen. Does your manufacturer have a custom interface that removes that option? Or does your carrier not allow Android's built-in voicemail checker to work properly?
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@LB_ On my phone, blocking didn't work with the phone app my manufacturer supplied, but adding the official phone app from the Android App Store (and twiddling with some defaults) fixed that just fine. It was about as hard as replacing the SMS app or the web browser; the real hard part lies in knowing that you can replace the substandard default apps with better versions.
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On my phone, blocking works great... except for the Bluetooth interface with my car. The car's computer still notifies me when someone who I've got blocked tries to text me, even though the phone doesn't.
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@Polygeekery said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@bugmenot said in Linux user-facing software usability:
@Weng said in Linux user-facing software usability:
Mine likes to do a half ring before it consults the block list...
That's awful. That's kinda worse than having the phone just ignore the block list and let the call through.
That reminds me: on my phone there's a 50% chance that the Phone App will take until the third ring to do the phone number -> contact name lookup and replace the phone number with the contact name.
I mean, I get that I have like thirty people in my address book, so one can't reasonably expect that operation to complete in less than 3000ms for a dataset of that size...
I think the actual ring is handled at the OS level, and the blocklist at the phone app level. So the phone app has to start before it can drop the call.
It used to be that my call blocking app could black hole calls. It would intervene before the phone ever even rang and answer the call and immediately hang up so that the black holes calls did not even get to voicemail.
Then that behavior became verboten on Android and all they changed the API so that feature could no longer be implemented.
That's actually a good thing, that this kind of API is no longer available. However, it would be cool if it was a standard functionality in iOS/android.
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No, it's not a good thing.
I, and by extension the apps I run on my behalf, should be free to do whatever I want on my device.Once you resolve the user-app trust issues in one of the usual ways, there should not be any limitations left.
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@createdtodislikethis said in Linux user-facing software usability:
No, it's not a good thing.
I, and by extension the apps I run on my behalf, should be free to do whatever I want on my device.Once you resolve the user-app trust issues in one of the usual ways, there should not be any limitations left.
No, it's not a good idea. It exposes the user to all kinds of threats, attacks that could make the device unusable. Especially in culture where people just click "Accept" to all permission requests, this is a Bad Idea (tm).
If you want to do anything with your device, then root it and you can go wild. However that's not as a great idea as it sounds. You (as a manufacturer) don't want horror stories spoiling your marketing from people who simply got what they had coming.
