Remember that post ages ago about Aptana Studio/Eclipse doing a DoS on my User folder?

[blakeyrat]

@DaveK said:

Apache httpd,

Use IIS for a few weeks and you'll realize how idiotic Apache's design is, and how difficult and annoying it makes application deployment.

@DaveK said:

Blender,

Unusable, even by the already basement-low levels of 3D apps.

@DaveK said:

Thunderbird,

Probably the best app named so far. It's still bloated and ugly as sin.

@DaveK said:

Audacity,

Protip: the mic boost slider on Audacity changes the setting SYSTEM-WIDE. Drop-down menus don't work if you drop them near the bottom of the screen (an inexplicable flaw Notepad++ also has-- what open source window library can't fucking draw menus right, and why the shit is anybody using it?)

Nobody mentioned Inkscape, which is a shame because I have a litany of Inkscape complaints from a recent attempt to use it.

[blakeyrat]

Oh and Morbius': Pidgin? Ignores the OS's accessibility settings, not just the DPI but the touchpad UI and voice-controlled UI features, you know, the ones they'd have gotten for free if they'd just use native widgets in the first place instead of drawing bad simulations of them.

The lesson here is that people who like open source apps have incredibly low standards of app quality.

[error]

@blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

Apache httpd,

Use IIS for a few weeks and you'll realize how idiotic Apache's design is, and how difficult and annoying it makes application deployment.

I've used both IIS and Apache for over a decade now and I don't see that either is head-and-shoulders above the other. Could you share your reasoning here?

[blakeyrat]

And while I'm riled-up, another problem is that the open source world simply does not have many projects you need in day-to-day life. A couple years ago, I needed a MS Project-like Gantt chart program, and the Linux heads just said, "use a spreadsheet" or "Gantt charts suck" or "you don't really need one." Wow, what a great way to recruit people to your OS-- tell them they're idiots for needing a piece of software well-established in every other OS.

And hey I've been spending the last year doing linear video editing. You can do amazing things in Sony Vegas (and it has a pretty damned good UI.) But if I didn't like Vegas, I could use Premiere. Or Avid. Or Pinnacle. Or if I wanted to plonk down more cash, Final Cut. Look at all my choices! But is there a single open source linear editor that actually works? A single one? (No. No there is not. There's Kino which might at some point work.)

[blakeyrat]

@joe.edwards said:

I've used both IIS and Apache for over a decade now and I don't see that either is head-and-shoulders above the other. Could you share your reasoning here?

Well to be fair, I mostly comparing IIS-with-.net to Apache-with-PHP. Ignoring the fact that IIS performs better (which is embarrassing for Apache, BTW), my main beef with it was how difficult it was to host several applications, all of which require different domains, security certificates, PHP configurations, in a single Apache instance. Ironically, even using PHP for the apps, the environment was significantly easier to set up in IIS. (I used IIS on my dev box.)

The way that IIS applications, sites, and instances can all have configurations completely separate from each other is brilliant. In IIS, your website just needs a single XML file to tell the server exactly how to behave for that application-- I never found any equivalent to that in Apache. (Something you can deploy with the app that auto-magically configures the server correctly as well.)

IIS' URL rewrite module is a lot more sane than Apache's.

And of course the IIS authors made a GUI which is actually quite good for what it does, so they made at least some effort to cater to users like me. Where Apache's philosophy is more "fuck you, you bend to the software, the software doesn't bend to the fucking user, now go and get your fucking shine-box."

That's really the areas I have experience with. I dunno, maybe Apache has some add-in to make it easier to work with that I just didn't find. But if so, the guy on my team who spent his entire career in Apache and PHP didn't know about it either.

[Douglasac]

@blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

Eclipse,

Crap.

Of the worst kind. @blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

7-Zip,

Terrible UI.

Also agree, much prefer Peazip (apart from the fact that hitting Enter in the Extract To field does nothing).

I once said how I didn't get the big circlejerk behind 7Zip when there were other products out there that did the same thing but with a less godawful interface (Peazip, winrar if you really want to pay\tolerate the nag boxes) and was told that because it was opensource I could just change it myself if I didn't like it. Cue rant at how that's a terrible fucking idea and so on. @blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

VLC player

Try to figure out how to use the Convert feature on your first try without fucking it up. Awful UI.

When you use it solely as a player, it does the job. For almost anything else, it's dreadful. @blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

OpenOffice,

A solid 15 years behind-the-times, and not just because of the Ribbon-- it was 15 years behind before the Ribbon too. Glacial development pace. Extreme unbelievable bloatedness.

OpenOffice is 15 years behind the times for people who are 15 years behind the times. If you can't figure out how the ribbon works, you're an idiot, it's piss easy and can be picked up in less than afternoon. @blakeyrat said:

@DaveK said:

GIMP?

Awful. A good example of how software should not be written in every goddamned single way. Even the name of the goddamned thing is unacceptable in polite society.

Also agree, and the UI was designed by someone who hates people so much that killing them slowly with the godawful UI seemed like it would be more fun then just slitting their throats or what have you in a comparatively merciful fashion.

EDIT: And let's add Virtualbox. So godawfully bad. VMware Player runs rings around it and if you can afford it or get it for free through work or a uni thing like I did, VMware Workstation eats it for dinner.

[dhromed]

@Douglasac said:

I once said how I didn't get the big circlejerk behind 7Zip when there were other products out there that did the same thing but with a less godawful interface

 

Exactly how much of the UI do you actually use?

I have 7zip, but pretty much the only UI I see is the context menus in explorer.

 

I'm going to have a second look at GIMP. It's been a while since I used its horrible featureless crap; let's hope it's improved a bit.

[Douglasac]

@dhromed said:

Exactly how much of the UI do you actually use?

I have 7zip, but pretty much the only UI I see is the context menus in explorer.

Typically when I have a ZIP file, I've downloaded it in Chrome, clicked the thing at the bottom and open it, inspect the contents briefly to make sure that it is indeed what I want, hit Extract, find an option for the files to be output to a new folder and said folder to be opened when I'm done.

7Zip has no options for the latter two things (extract to new folder, show in Explorer when done) and has a godawful UI that resembles something from Windows 98, with file icons to match... seriously it's 2013, Vista has been out for six years so that's more than enough time to make 128x128 icons and XP has been out for 11.5 which is definitely enough time to make some lousy 48x48 icons.

Peazip's context menu actions suck, so I use WinRAR's context menu actions with peazip for actually going into archives to do crap with them.

[Lorne Kates]

@blakeyrat said:

And of course the IIS authors made a GUI which is actually quite good for what it does

 

Though they are trying to fix that. And by "they" I mean Microsoft, and by "fix that" I mean it sarcastically as in they're making each iteration of the IIS GUI worse and worse.

Simple task: make a site that doesn't use HTTP AUTH, but make one subdirectory that does.

IIS6: Open IIS GUI, expand the site, right click the subfolder, properties, security tab, uncheck "Allow Anonymous", check "Use Windows Authentication". Cool.

IIS7: Open IIS GUI, expand the site, right click the subfolder-- umm, no options there. Properties opens the filesystem properties. Back up. Either perform some divine magic, or go to Google. Get solution.

IIS7 take 2: Go back to IIS GUID, expand site. LEFT CLICK on subfolder. Look around for tiny grey icon on grey background that says "Content View" or something cryptic like that. Click that. That changes the main window view to be a series of settings icons like Control Panel. Of course, it already looked like that. But those were the icons for the SITE, not the folder. How can you tell which one you're dealing with now? Pray, I suppose. Hope the highlight on the left is correct? Who knows.Okay, NOW click on-- security isn't here any more. Authentication, I think. (NOT .Net Authentication, with the same icon).  From there there's a list of auth methods. Right click and-- no, not right click? Click, then move the mouse WAY THE FUCK OVER to the other side of the screen to a tiny hyperlink that says "Enable". Okay. Now enable Windows Authentication or Basic Authentication-- wait, why aren't they there. Magic/Google Time

 IIS7 take 3: Before repeating above steps, open Windows Server Manager. Betcah didn't even know that existed, did you? Drill down through the Server, the computer, to IIS, into Modules, scroll halfway down a screen 100 items long, find something called "Authentication Modules". Find Basic or Windows, and Enable it. Are you done with this MMC completed unrelated to IIS that you probably didn't know existed, that controls basic functionality of IIS? Okay. Close it. Go repeat all the "take 2" steps. NOW there's something there called Windows Authentication. Enable it (remember, tiny hyperlink on the other side of the screen). Now you're done.

Fuck. God forbid you want to change the way error documents work.  Double god forbid IIS should have a configuration error. What'll you get? A near blank 500 page. You can always check the logs-- except IIS7 doesn't write those errors to Event Viewer. Or to any other log file. Anywhere. You just google for what you think is the problem, and hope you get the solution. (hint: you won't).

Apache isn't any better. Imagine all of the headaches of using the IIS7 GUI-- except you don't have a GUI. Any documenation that you can find assumes that you already know what you're doing, know how to do it in the way the developer wanted you to do it, and are using a different version of Apache than you have. And, of course, that you restart Apache once you're done any configuration changes.

Can't Apache just pick up the new changes? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Can't Apache just restart the one site/virtual host/subsite instead of taking down every site? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

But won't that have a negative effect on sites that aren't effected by this change, up to and including wiping out php sessions, perhaps? TOO BAD! REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

[Lorne Kates]

@blakeyrat said:

And hey I've been spending the last year doing linear video editing. You can do amazing things in Sony Vegas (and it has a pretty damned good UI.) But if I didn't like Vegas, I could use Premiere. Or Avid. Or Pinnacle. Or if I wanted to plonk down more cash, Final Cut. Look at all my choices! But is there a single open source linear editor that actually works? A single one? (No. No there is not. There's Kino which might at some point work.)

 

This makes me sad, because it could be one of the hugest killer applications ever. If there was a rock-solid, easy to use video editor, it would night of the long knives for Apple. And there is a huge demand for it, from non-technically skilled people. "I shot my vacation video. I want to easily edit out some chunks, maybe put in a title screen, overlay some music. How can I do that without taking a college course in Premiere, or plunking down $2k+ for an easy to use Apple?"  You can't.

I've tried a few open source video editors, and I gave up when I couldn't even figure out how to open a file. I'll blow my own dildo a bit and say that I'm above average at pickup up new GUIs.  What I can't figure out, I RTFM or look on Google. If I can't figure out how to open a video file (not edit, not manipulate-- just open) within 5 minutes, you've failed. Hard.

My theory is that anyone who tries to program a video editor isn't really an expert at video editing. Because anyone who is an expert has already invested years of time learning Final Cut or Primere. They've gone into the field of video editing. Very few of them are programmers. The few who are are too busy editing videos and programming for a living to invest the YEARS it would take to recreate something anywhere near as polished as Final Cut or Primere.

 Sure, maybe you could get a group of expert video editors together to be project designers on a new open source video editors. There'd have to be a lot of them, and they'd have to be very good at communication. Because they'd have to take a group of highly skilled programmers and impart expert video editing knowledge upon them, so the programmers know how it should behave-- from GUI way down to processing. And those same programmers would have to expertly impart their knowledge of GUI design and computer limitations to teach the video editors what is technically possible to do.

You'd have to have a large team of highly talented and expertly co-ordinated people working together to produce an excellent end product. And you know what you'd have then? Adobe. Or Apple. And you know why you'll never get that talent pool together? Because those people already work for Adobe. Or Apple.

 

[error]

@Lorne Kates said:

Can't Apache just pick up the new changes? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Can't Apache just restart the one site/virtual host/subsite instead of taking down every site? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

But won't that have a negative effect on sites that aren't effected by this change, up to and including wiping out php sessions, perhaps? TOO BAD! REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

[blakeyrat]

For the casual user, there is the non-pro version of all the editors listed above, plus Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, and ArcSoft whatsitcalled. Basically this is a huge, healthy, competitive market-- without a single open source participant. Its more sad than anything. 

[blakeyrat]

@joe.edwards said:

@Lorne Kates said:

Can't Apache just pick up the new changes? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Can't Apache just restart the one site/virtual host/subsite instead of taking down every site? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

But won't that have a negative effect on sites that aren't effected by this change, up to and including wiping out php sessions, perhaps? TOO BAD! REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

Maybe he (and I) would have known that if Apache had made *some* effort to be usable.

[dhromed]

@Douglasac said:

Typically when I have a ZIP file, I've downloaded it in Chrome, clicked the thing at the bottom and open it, inspect the contents briefly to make sure that it is indeed what I want, hit Extract, find an option for the files to be output to a new folder and said folder to be opened when I'm done.

 

I don't understand why you do that.

I doubleclick a zip, it opens, and I drag the contents to their destination folder. I may or may not open a second explorer window for that.

Oh, maybe it's because I never use the 7zip files- but even then, the .7z would open in the UI, and I'd drag the contents to their destination folder.

You're one of them button-clickers, aren't you. I bet you go File > Exit to quit a program. Yeah. I bet you do. Filthy buttonclicker.

[Lorne Kates]

@blakeyrat said:

@joe.edwards said:

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

Maybe he (and I) would have known that if Apache had made *some* effort to be usable.

 

I Google for "How to set up virtual host in Apache 2". First hit is the less than useful Apahce docs. There's no mention of restart or reload.

Second hit is [url="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts"]a tutorial blog[/url]. (emphasis mine)

@Every tutorial I have ever read that has anything to do with changing Apache configuration said:

Step Six—Restart Apache

---

We’ve made a lot of the changes to the configuration, and the virtual host is set up. However none of the changes that we made will take effect until Apache is restarted.

Use this command to restart apache:

 sudo service apache2 restart 

The same is true for every tutorial ever. I've never read a single tutorial that said "reload". If you open up one of Apache's conf files, there's tons of comments in them with sample configurations. Not a single comment about "If you make changes, you don't need to restart. Just reload".

 

[error]

@Lorne Kates said:

My theory is that anyone who tries to program a video editor isn't really an expert at video editing. Because anyone who is an expert has already invested years of time learning Final Cut or Primere. They've gone into the field of video editing.
...

Because they'd have to take a group of highly skilled programmers and impart expert video editing knowledge upon them, so the programmers know how it should behave-- from GUI way down to processing.

Another problem here is that when you've been highly proficient in a given software suite, your knowledge of its workflows and idiosyncrasies boxes your thinking into working that way. You end up launching a competing product that is not much more than a clone of the original, perhaps with minor enhancements, and don't bring any real innovation to the field.

(Of course in this particular case it sounds like a clone would be just fine, as the alternative is literally nothing.)

[Douglasac]

@dhromed said:

I don't understand why you do that.

I doubleclick a zip, it opens, and I drag the contents to their destination folder. I may or may not open a second explorer window for that.

Well, if I've got Chrome open, I click the thing to open Peazip and off I go, otherwise I'd have to open an Explorer window, find the download (which could be on my network share or on the local disc, depends on what kind of mood Chrome is in), etc. which saves clicks.

if I'm in Explorer, right-click it, drag it to a blank space, let go, WinRAR > Extract to T:\Downloads\ZIPFile\

@dhromed said:

You're one of them button-clickers, aren't you. I bet you go File > Exit to quit a program. Yeah. I bet you do. Filthy buttonclicker.

No, actually, I still double-click the top left hand corner most of the time.

[boomzilla]

@blakeyrat said:

@joe.edwards said:

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

Maybe he (and I) would have known that if Apache had made some effort to be usable.

Hmm...on my system, they did! I started typing "service apache2 " and then hit tab twice and I got:

$ service apache2

force-reload        restart             status

graceful-stop       start               stop

reload              start-htcacheclean  stop-htcacheclean

Of course, this requires a little bit of knowledge about the system, but certainly not more than being able to start / stop the running services on a Windows box.

[blakeyrat]

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Anyway, I don't want to dive into the nitty-gritty of all these products, because who gives a fuck? Point is, most (not all) open source apps are of poor quality compared to similar closed-source apps. And in many cases, there exists zero open-source apps to perform a task.

This is enough evidence for me to believe the open source model doesn't work very well.

[boomzilla]

@blakeyrat said:

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Why would you assume they were the same?

@blakeyrat said:

This is enough evidence for me to believe the open source model doesn't work very well.

But then again, you don't believe that two different words are different, so...

[Ben L.]

@blakeyrat said:

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Okay, let me put this into terms that even you can understandmisinterpret:

There are two buttons. Follow me so far?

One button closes the program and re-opens it. That's the restart button.

The other button closes the current file and re-opens it. That's the reload button.

Still getting this?

The restart button probably takes longer, but that's because it does a completely different thing.

[ender]

@joe.edwards said:

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

As long as your config has AllowOverride enabled, you could do nearly all of those changes at the site (or directory) level without ever having to restart anything.


Speaking of IIS, good luck trying to get basic authentication to work without using system users.

[boomzilla]

@Ben L. said:

@blakeyrat said:

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Okay, let me put this into terms that even you can understandmisinterpret:

There are two buttons. Follow me so far?

One button closes the program and re-opens it. That's the restart button.

The other button closes the current file and re-opens it. That's the reload button.

Still getting this?

The restart button probably takes longer, but that's because it does a completely different thing.

Yeah, but how could a computer literate a reasonable person a literate person an angry forum troll possibly predict, even after reading the text on the buttons, that they don't do the exact same thing?

[ender]

@blakeyrat said:

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Because this convention is used by most daemons on *nix? Because the word Reload means something different than the word Restart?

[blakeyrat]

@Ben L. said:

@blakeyrat said:

Why would I assume reload is different from restart?

Okay, let me put this into terms that even you can understandmisinterpret:

There are two buttons. Follow me so far?

One button closes the program and re-opens it. That's the restart button.

The other button closes the current file and re-opens it. That's the reload button.

Still getting this?

But I know from past experience that Linux is so shitty that applications frequently communicate with other applications by using their UI, which makes is conceivable that at some point they renamed "reload" to "restart" and had to keep both variants because otherwise it would break some script written years ago.

So why would I assume they do different things, when they could very well be two names for the same thing?

[error]

@ender said:

@joe.edwards said:

Or you could, you know, do a service apache2 reload to reload the configuration without restarting the daemon.

As long as your config has AllowOverride enabled, you could do nearly all of those changes at the site (or directory) level without ever having to restart anything.

I use it usually when adding/removing/modifying VHosts, which is a fairly routine operation, and it would be absurd if I had to take all of them down to change one.

[boomzilla]

@joe.edwards said:

I use it usually when adding/removing/modifying VHosts, which is a fairly routine operation, and it would be absurd if I had to take all of them down to change one.

It's crazy what software makes you do for simple operations. For instance, just to clear the fucking undo stack, I have to save my excel document.

[morbiuswilters]

@boomzilla said:

One thing I really like about a modern linux distro is the depth of the package manager.

It's true that installing something in the package manager is usually easier than the equivalent Googling->downloading->installing shuffle on Windows. Of course, if something isn't in the package manager, that's when you really have fun. Spending 5 hours trying to get some POS FOSS abandonware to compile against modern libraries just so you can see if it does some tiny, simple task for you is a real joy.

@boomzilla said:

The best proprietary software is truly great. But it's relatively rare, just like great FOSS.

Maybe. I'd say for the things that I really care about (e.g. having an OS with a suspend feature that doesn't fuck up every 5th time I use it; having things like sound and video Just Work without endless tinkering with drivers; having an office suite that actually lets me collaborate with co-workers instead of one that offers me the feature set of Office 2000..) FOSS is really, really behind. Of course, when I need to write a high-performance HTTP daemon, FOSS is my friend. And since I get paid to do that, I'm still stuck with the Linux desktop for the foreseeable future.

@boomzilla said:

Of course, you never see the proprietary software that was abandoned before it matured. It's generally easier to evaluate FOSS than proprietary to see if it's even fit for your purpose, since you don't have to worry about limited feature trial versions or nagware.

The first sentence makes a good point, although I'm not sure if it really supports your argument or mine. The marketplace means that stillborn proprietary software more often dies than ends released to "stable" apt repos, as is the case with FOSS. As for the second sentence, in my experience evaluation software provides sufficient usage to allow me to determine if it solves my problem. While having a full version is obviously nicer, it's a pretty minor ding against proprietary.

Here's another thing: asinine licensing, like the GPL. So we have supposedly "free as in speech" software which can only be compiled against other software with the precise same license. And that's why Linux still lacks a decent, modern filesystem. Someone can compile in a stable, mature, feature-rich fs like ZFS, but they are forbidden from distributing it by the license. So instead Linux stumbles along into its 5th (or is it 6th?) year of btrfs development, and while they continue to assure us there is a light at the end of the tunnel, one wonders if the software will ever be mature enough for use in a HA production environment.

[morbiuswilters]

@boomzilla said:

@morbiuswilters said:

Are you out of your fucking mind? You go to put together a list of FOSS that doesn't suck and you include Eclipse, OpenOffice and GIMP?

This is such a tedious game. Here, put up some of your list of world class non-FOSS, and we'll make fun of your choices.

Visual Studio, Office, Photoshop? I'm not even saying those are fantastic pieces of software, but they are so clearly better than Eclipse, OpenOffice and GIMP.

[morbiuswilters]

@blakeyrat said:

Oh and Morbius': Pidgin? Ignores the OS's accessibility settings...

To be fair, I consider this a feature since I really hate blind people.

[morbiuswilters]

@blakeyrat said:

Where Apache's philosophy is more "fuck you, you bend to the software, the software doesn't bend to the fucking user, now go and get your fucking shine-box."

+1

[morbiuswilters]

@Lorne Kates said:

Can't Apache just pick up the new changes? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Can't Apache just restart the one site/virtual host/subsite instead of taking down every site? NO, REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

But won't that have a negative effect on sites that aren't effected by this change, up to and including wiping out php sessions, perhaps? TOO BAD! REBOOT IT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!

Check out the "reload" argument to your init script (probably something like /etc/init.d/apache2 reload) or just use "apache2ctl graceful". It will reload configuration without killing connections and sessions. You're right about configuration being a bitch. I can configure Apache in my sleep but I've also been doing it for over a decade. And when trying to explain to newbies how features work or why they do what they do, I'm usually at a loss for words.

[blakeyrat]

@morbiuswilters said:

Of course, when I need to write a high-performance HTTP daemon, FOSS is my friend.

Even for that task, is Linux/open source so much better than Windows/closed source? IIS smokes Apache on performance, and somehow is closed source code running on a closed source OS.

EDIT: and yes I am aware there are open source web servers that smoke Apache, too. But still.

[Cassidy]

@ender said:

As long as your config has AllowOverride enabled, you could do nearly all of those changes at the site (or directory) level without ever having to restart anything.

 

True, but there's a performance overhead with parsing .htaccess files at run-time than having the directives in the config file at reload time. I tend to move my directives into the config form dynamic files once my testing is complete.

@ender said:

Because this convention is used by most daemons on *nix? Because the word Reload means something different than the word Restart?

You're talking to someone who's been conditioned to hitting the "start" button to "stop" their system. It's just safer to nod and let it go.

@boomzilla said:

It's crazy what software makes you do for simple operations. For instance, just to clear the fucking undo stack, I have to save my excel document.

Why not just paste the contents into another spreadsheet and save that so that the undo stack of the first excel instance remains untouched? God, you LUDDITE.

@blakeyrat said:

So why would I assume they do different things, when they could very well be two names for the same thing?

Or they could very well not be, and your incorrect assumptions once again show you to be an uninformed idiot.

[boomzilla]

@morbiuswilters said:

Of course, if something isn't in the package manager, that's when you really have fun. Spending 5 hours trying to get some POS FOSS abandonware to compile against modern libraries just so you can see if it does some tiny, simple task for you is a real joy.

True. I've had more luck with just trying some windows junk in Wine, which these days seems to work reasonably well with most random stuff.

@morbiuswilters said:

@boomzilla said:

The best proprietary software is truly great. But it's relatively rare, just like great FOSS.

Maybe. I'd say for the things that I really care about (e.g. having an OS with a suspend feature that doesn't fuck up every 5th time I use it; having things like sound and video Just Work without endless tinkering with drivers; having an office suite that actually lets me collaborate with co-workers instead of one that offers me the feature set of Office 2000..) FOSS is really, really behind. Of course, when I need to write a high-performance HTTP daemon, FOSS is my friend. And since I get paid to do that, I'm still stuck with the Linux desktop for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, MS has the best office software by far. But I'm so happy that I haven't had to do much with any of it for years, aside from reading the occasional Word document or simple spreadsheet. The sound on my laptop is practically unusable in Win7. Loud buzzing at random intervals. I had to tinker to get Linux to detect when I plugged speakers into the jack, and to recognize the built-in mic, but at least it doesn't try to liquefy my inner ears.

Anyways, by rare, I was simply looking at the amount of crap to the amount of good shit. But even the good shit has stuff that sucks, or at least that sucks for some people.

@morbiuswilters said:

@boomzilla said:

Of course, you never see the proprietary software that was abandoned before it matured.

The first sentence makes a good point, although I'm not sure if it really supports your argument or mine. The marketplace means that stillborn proprietary software more often dies than ends released to "stable" apt repos, as is the case with FOSS.

It cuts both ways, but I was really getting at how it affects the perception of FOSS vs proprietary.

[@morbiuswilters said:

@boomzilla said:

It's generally easier to evaluate FOSS than proprietary to see if it's even fit for your purpose, since you don't have to worry about limited feature trial versions or nagware.

As for the second sentence, in my experience evaluation software provides sufficient usage to allow me to determine if it solves my problem. While having a full version is obviously nicer, it's a pretty minor ding against proprietary.

But that presumes that evaluation software even exists for what you're looking at. And here I'm largely thinking about more personal than professional use. If I spend an additional half hour dicking around with something in my free time instead of picking my nose in front of the TV, I'm probably better off, and I'm not losing money like I would be in a professional setting, where time really does translate to money. So I can potentially save myself money by putting in the effort.

@morbiuswilters said:

Here's another thing: asinine licensing, like the GPL.

Yes. I get the sentiment behind it, but...

[Cassidy]

@boomzilla said:

Hmm...on my system, they did! I started typing "service apache2 " and then hit tab twice and I got:

$ service apache2 

 

Amazing. It does on mine:

$ /etc/init.d/httpd ?
Usage: httpd {start|stop|restart|condrestart|reload|status|fullstatus|graceful|help|configtest}

I guess we've been blessed with the only useable Apache installs. Praise Stallman!

Having said that, I know the GUI Apache Manager tool under windows doesn't feature a "reload" option, just a "stop" and "start" option. I encouraged windows admins into reloading the configs via the command prompt; I recall one pointed out that even IIS has a "reload" option as well as stop/start in its GUI.

 

[blakeyrat]

@Cassidy said:

@blakeyrat said:

So why would I assume they do different
things, when they could very well be two names for the same
thing?

Or they could very well not be, and your incorrect assumptions once again show you to be an uninformed idiot.

I didn't make an incorrect assumption, I made no assumption.

[blakeyrat]

@Cassidy said:

I recall one pointed out that even IIS has a "reload" option as well as stop/start in its GUI.

IIS doesn't have to "reload" for 95% of changes, they just kind of automatically happen as if by magic as soon as the XML file is changed.

Apache *could* do this (assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows), they just didn't bother because they don't give a shit about making a good product.

[boomzilla]

@blakeyrat said:

@Cassidy said:

@blakeyrat said:

So why would I assume they do different
things, when they could very well be two names for the same
thing?

Or they could very well not be, and your incorrect assumptions once again show you to be an uninformed idiot.

I didn't make an incorrect assumption, I made no assumption.

Yes, it was our fault for assuming you could read.

[boomzilla]

@blakeyrat said:

Apache could do this (assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows), they just didn't bother because they don't give a shit about making a good product.

Could you imagine a scenario where this wouldn't be a good idea? Why someone wouldn't want to do that? If the roles were reversed, no doubt you'd be bitching that apache doesn't want to make good software, because they immediately deploy whatever you just scribbled all over your configuration. I can't say what was the motivation behind either design decision, but I can see reasons for each. This is because I have critical thinking skills.

[Cassidy]

@blakeyrat said:

IIS doesn't have to "reload" for 95% of changes, they just kind of automatically happen as if by magic as soon as the XML file is changed.

 

This was back in the days of IIS5. 4 needed a restart to pick up config changes, 5 could reload to take them.

I *did* particularly like the XML site export in 5 - I used this feature to clone several testbeds over. Not touched 6 upwards.

@blakeyrat said:

Apache *could* do this (assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows), they just didn't bother because they don't give a shit about making a good product.

I don't honestly know of many Linux services that dynamically pick up config file changes without admin intervention. The only one I know of is SAMBA, and a change in that file broke the service since it decided to reload before I had a chance to test changes.

However, it's a pity that Sharepoint doesn't pick up XML file changes in the same way that IIS does. That'd be a cool feature.

[Cassidy]

@boomzilla said:

I can't say what was the motivation behind either design decision, but I can see reasons for each.

 

It'd be better if this was a configurable setting - auto-reload v manual reload. At least then you have a choice.

[boomzilla]

@Cassidy said:

@boomzilla said:

I can't say what was the motivation behind either design decision, but I can see reasons for each.

It'd be better if this was a configurable setting - auto-reload v manual reload. At least then you have a choice.

Yes, although MS would hide it somewhere you would never find, and apache would make it sound like you were configuring the opposite of what it actually does.

[morbiuswilters]

@Lorne Kates said:

You'd have to have a large team of highly talented and expertly co-ordinated people working together to produce an excellent end product. And you know what you'd have then? Adobe. Or Apple. And you know why you'll never get that talent pool together? Because those people already work for Adobe. Or Apple.

And you'd have to pay them, and the only way you're going to do that is if you charge for your software which automatically makes it EVIL and NOT FREE.

[Ben L.]

@blakeyrat said:

@Cassidy said:

I recall one pointed out that even IIS has a "reload" option as well as stop/start in its GUI.

IIS doesn't have to "reload" for 95% of changes, they just kind of automatically happen as if by magic as soon as the XML file is changed.

Apache *could* do this (assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows), they just didn't bother because they don't give a shit about making a good product.

Here's a concept you might find interestingwill completely ignore and/or complain about the existence of:

Sometimes, computer programs can do things but they choose not to. Why? Because it would violate the principle of least surprise. If I open a youtube video and click the play button, I expect it to make sounds and make pretty lights flash on and off. If I go to a corporate website, I don't expect to hear music or see flashing colors.

Similarly, when I'm editing the configuration file for a server and I need to go look something up, I type ⎋:w↵, which I know is the command to write the changes to the file. I do this because I know that I'm clumsy and I sometimes close editors by mistake and I don't want to lose my partial changes.

If a server were to, without me telling it to, reload its configuration file halfway through me changing it, that would be a bad thing. It could have errors due to me being in the middle of typing a configuration setting that would cause a server to become unusable on its own without me telling it something incorrectly.

An even worse time to reload a file after it was changed is in the middle of an FTP upload. I'm not sure how IIS handles truncated configuration files, but judging by the fact that they're XML, it's not going to be pretty.

[morbiuswilters]

@blakeyrat said:

@morbiuswilters said:

Of course, when I need to write a high-performance HTTP daemon, FOSS is my friend.

Even for that task, is Linux/open source so much better than Windows/closed source?

Didn't say better, it's just competitive with Windows. For the work I do (high-scale web apps and services), I could honestly use either FOSS or M$ and either works okay. It's one of the few areas FOSS isn't a complete embarrassment to itself.

So why not just go full-M$? Because I've got a decade and a half of deep Unix/FOSS experience. If I started over now on another platform, I'd be making half of what I make now. And there are still lots of companies that still feel the cost of licensing Windows and SQL Server is somehow a significant point in favor of Linux. Of course they neglect to realize it's going to take them 9 months to find a good Unix sysadmin and he's going to cost them $140k, plus bennies. (Which isn't to say a M$ shop wouldn't need to hire their own sysadmins, but things in the M$ world are far more standardized. On Unix it's a mess; just try convincing a sysadmin with 20 years experience he needs to put every change in puppet instead of hand-editing config files on 500 servers.)

[bridget99]

@dhromed said:

@Nexzus said:

What are the chances of a fix/improvement done by some random dude being put into production (for lack of a better term) on a large OSS project?

 

Pretty much zero.

The idea that opensourcing your software will cause it to be crowdsourced and increase its quality is a myth. You'll have a small group who are the developers, and everything will be the same as with closed source— except that there is transparency as to what the code does. That's all.

And GIT is the tool that facilitates this. People who really want help assistance with something don't select a source control tool that requires everything to be merged in manually.

[morbiuswilters]

@blakeyrat said:

(assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows)

It's relatively easy, but they'll never do it because "it's not the Unix way".

[Ben L.]

@morbiuswilters said:

@blakeyrat said:

(assuming it's as easy to ask Linux "hey give me an event when this file changes, please buddy?" as it is Windows)

It's relatively easy, but they'll never do it because "it's not the Unix way"it violates the principle of least surprise.

FTFY

[morbiuswilters]

@boomzilla said:

@Cassidy said:

@boomzilla said:

I can't say what was the motivation behind either design decision, but I can see reasons for each.

It'd be better if this was a configurable setting - auto-reload v manual reload. At least then you have a choice.

Yes, although MS would hide it somewhere you would never find, and apache would make it sound like you were configuring the opposite of what it actually does.

And the Apache manual section on it would sound like two programmers arguing over whether the feature even should have been added in the first place.

In Apache 3.0 the manual section will have a red box at the top saying "Warning, the auto-reload feature SHOULD NOT be used because it causes deep filesystem corruption and causes the CPU to emit radiation that will spawn brain tumors in any puppies in a 500 foot radius. However, the feature has not been removed because, hey, maybe you should have read the fucking manual page."