Journal tomhudson's Journal: There will never be a "year of the linux desktop" 29
We like to go around saying that desktops are becoming less relevant, but laptops are still "desktops" - they use the same "desktop" metaphors.
And linux has now achieved a level of both bloat and stupidity on both KDE and GNOME that makes Vista run just as fast (and in some cases faster).
Whereas even a year ago, KDE ran 10 degrees above room temperature, it now triggers the thermal alarm several times a day. The problem is in both the QT libraries (they were always an invitation to do programming-as-fuglyfest) and KDE's "shiny-is-better-than-working" approach.
Throw in that wireless hasn't been working for months, and printing and scanning have never worked because the included linux software is 10 years out of date.
Updates break things and leave them in a state where they can't be repaired - come on - if I wanted an OS that needed a clean install to properly update, I would use Windows.
What am I saying - I'm posting this from my Windows drive because I don't want to be tethered by a wire all the time, and I'm not going to waste time trying to fix the wireless AGAIN. Or having to reboot just to scan or print. Or having to kill a process because I made the mistake of pressing return on the first line of a 10-meg text file and the editor just hangs forever because some idiot decided to make every paragraph, every line, and every text fragment an object that displays itself, and inserting a line means a 15-minute delay.
NO desktop - neither Windows, nor the various linux desktops - is really usable any more. They're all constipated crap. We've just gotten so used to it that we accept it. I blame Java for teaching people lazy techniques, and Microsoft for making bloat acceptable with their "it won't matter in 18 months when the hardware catches up" mantra.
And IBM for not suing Microsoft out of existence when they violated their agreement.
And all of us for pretending this is acceptable.
woot? (Score:1)
dude...what's your problem? OS-es? make your own
"And linux has now achieved a level of both bloat and stupidity on both KDE and GNOME that makes Vista run just as fast (and in some cases faster)." - KDE and GNOME are graphical interfaces for your lazy ass. They have nothing to do with linux, for when you say "linux" you mean the kernel (whole different story)
"Throw in that wireless hasn't been working for months, and printing and scanning have never worked because the included linux software is 10 years out
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Wireless is a kernel problem - not a UI problem. As for the rest, people will understand what I mean.
For printing and scanning, manufacturers are still going to ignore linux because they can get away with it, because laptops (the largest-seling segment of computers) STILL need Windows, or a second machine, if you want to get on the net to find out why your wireless crapped out again.
It's a duopoly out there between Apple and Microsoft, same as smartphones are a duopoly of Apple and Android, and with H
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Printing: Buy a networked PostScript printer and get over it. PostScript should have been industry standard anyway and network has been the only way to go since at least the late nineties.
Scanning: VueScan [hamrick.com]. The Linux stuff sucks, I agree. However, this program is great and is a prime example of how people can make money selling propietary software on Linux.
For the rest: Yes, everything is a mess... It won't get better ever again. The golden days are over. I weep for them, but there is nothing we can do
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I agree that the golden days are long gone. Everyone has a serious case of featuritis, so we get things that "mostly work", and the crazy "it'll be fixed in the next version when we introduce more new bugs", where every update is a new version.
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It does? I'd have expected that the supported hardware would be equivalent on all systems. It does support some really exotic stuff (fully) on Linux. What's your hardware?
I long for the days that you had to understand what a computer did before you could use it. That will never come back.
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Should have gone straight to the FAQ immediately:VueScan supports more than 1600 different scanners on Windows, 1100 scanners on Mac OS X and 700 scanners on Linux.
So, you're totally right...
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Interesting, I check the scanners I have access to... and one is not supported for Linux. The mind boggles, because I made it work under Ubuntu by adding a repository.
That last one baffled me, because it works on Ubuntu... Sure, I had to add a rep
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Ooo, thanks for that! I have been using VueScan for years, but when I went to 64 bit Vista (and later Windows 7) my Minolta Scan Dual II 16/32-bit drivers no longer were supported, and Minolta said "no more for this device." I have to trot out an old XP box if I want to use it. I'll give VueScan's magical driver installation a shot.
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You knew VueScan and didn't ever think of trying?
This software has me so impressed that it's the first thing I'd try when I am confronted with a scanner that isn't supported anymore.
Frankly, it's is stuff like this that makes me want to kill kittens every time a manufacturer drops support for hardware. I mean, I can understand the $20 inkjet printer, but the $500+ hardware that is marketed as semi-professional? No, just, no... That needs to be supported for years, and years and year. For the Minolta Dima
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Mine's also a DImage scanner, and was also in the higher end of the price range at that time. I'd never dealt with VueScan drivers before, as quite frankly I didn't know it had them!
That said, I'm only modestly interested in getting the scanner operational again. My original purpose in buying it was to scan my father in law's extensive 35mm slide collection, burn them to DVDs and present them to him as Christmas gifts over the years. That was very successful, but I was done with it in about 2005. These
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We went SCSI... Back in the day, it was the only way to be sure :-)
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Thanks again for the note. I hadn't updated VueScan since version 8.3 or so, and when I updated to the current V9, it gave me the "driver installation" option that you mentioned, and after a few deletes and disables and reboots, it's actually working again!
And I don't know if you noticed or not, but VueScan really improved the performance of this scanner. The Minolta software took 20 seconds to focus. I could hear the lens motor zooming in and out as it homed itself prior to every focus attempt. The Vue
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No, I hadn't noticed. The main reason being that the last time we ran the original software, I think we were still on Windows 2000. :-) Great to hear that though.
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your wife left you
Feature, not bug.
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+1
Linux in your pocket (Score:1)
It's the desktop itself that's dying because there's no money to be made in WinTel desktops. Linux with Android is approaching half of the mobile market with 5x the profit dollars per device of the desktop PC market. There's gold in them thar hills. More profits in Android mobile devices than in all of desktop and laptop PCs.
Innovation investments follow margin dollars until a solid market is made. At that point the product is copied until it is commoditized and the margins dry up.
Such is as it always
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The mobile market will end up with the same downward pressure on device profits. It's what happens with mass-production of commodities.
Laptops used to command a heavy premium - not
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That was the smoothest possible answer to the question. It's on point, addresses the core issues, and offers a plausible opinion about the outcome. You are to be commended for a quality assessment of the situation.
I still disagree about your projection. I don't believe the outcome will be as you project. I have to admit that my objection is personal bias, that I would prefer your end isn't the end. And still I'm going to say it: this is not how it's going to work out. Now we disagree, and time will t
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HP's recent fumbling had me thinking about declining profits per unit as volumes increase. This is entirely normal, and I think HP is making a huge mistake.
Here's a simplification.
If you produce 1,000 laptops a year, for $1000 apiece , and you make 20% margin, you're netting $200k.
So you ramp up production by 100x, produce 100,000, at $800 apiece. You get economies of scale, plus lower prices for the components, plus your other costs (overhead, advertising, etc) are spread over many more units, so y
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The wisdom of HP spinning off its desktop and laptop division remains to be seen. However it would seem they aren't handling it as well as IBM handled spinning off its desktop and laptop division to Lenovo. HP is creating a lot of uncertainty that is just going to drive customers to other vendors.
Trollaxor (Score:2)
You just resurrected and paid tribute to one of Trollaxor's favourites, I wonder if you did so consciously? Hi, btw.
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I'm just cheesed off that here we are in the second decade of the 21st century, and we still have the same 2 problems - code bloat and essential hardware not working. With commoditization, you'd expect to have the hardware problems under control, since "everyone's using the same small subset of chips", and once something works, you expect it to continue to work.
Instead, wifi no longer works, flash has been dead for a while, compositing works but I end up with windows with the client area completely
Bloat? (Score:2)
Linux desktops are as bloated as what you choose to install. Unlike Vista, the bloat is not forced upon you in Linux.
moof (Score:1)
Not surprised to hear that Qt is bogging down under its own bloat -- it sure sucked programming for it when I tried it briefly back around 2007ish. Made that ancient, crufty MFC with all its macros look modern and clean in comparison. Seemed like about fully half the environment was written for the preprocessor. I know the C++ Standard Library took a long time to be standardized, but at some point you have to break with the necessary horrendous hacks of the past. Yuch.
I think the problem with Open Sores in
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To be fair Stallman and several of the other FSF types have always been Marxist fanbois on a religious crusade. However they at least knew what they were doing.
The pile of steaming crap that Gnome, KDE, Firefox, and others have become in recent years is extremely annoying. My next laptop most likely will run either OS X or Windows 7 or 8. I might have a VM or two for firing up Linux (or windows if I go the OS X route), but the primary OS is going to be something commercial and supported. I may also toss Lin
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True, but I've gathered that the BSD side of Open Sores is just about sharing and hobbyist software that's free monetary cost-wise and modifiable by the highly technically proficient, without the "copyleft" religion-based restrictions and the whole anti-capitalism movement. I don't know that the Marxist wing started out the dominant one, but it sure
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The recent FUD by the FSF and the Software Freedom Center wrt GPLv2 lying about "losing your rights forever", and the stupidity of trying to build up pressure to get linux under the GPLv3 is a case in point where they really have let things go to their head and are threatening to become the gnustapo.
(quick note - a search of google shows ZERO occurrences for "gnustapo". Remember, you heard it here first)
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