Why Linux Rocks and Sucks
Rocks:
My computer has never run beter than it has today. My gentoo system just got a full update to the latest unstable AMD64 release and the difference is quite noticeable. The new kernel, 2.6.25 actually gave me a decent performance boost as did the move to the new gnome 2.22 desktop. I was previously thinking about investing in a quad core proc to get some speed improvement, now those thoughts are history.
Linux core2 2.6.25-gentoo #2 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 17 19:46:30 CDT 2008 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
Sucks:
There are a few line items on why Linux sucks. These are the things that people keep sighting and then saying “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop”. If your needs are one of these things, then you may be right.
1. The new IPod Classic crashes Banshee and Rhythmbox — This one hurt. I was trying to show my mother how cool Linux was by syncing her new IPod. It didn’t work and I had to resort to using a mac to get the sync to work.
2. Skype video chat doesn’t work for me — I recently purchased a creative live cam video im pro webcam device. It works great with most Linux apps, but not with Skype. This is important to me as nothing else does what Skype does right now. I have several familiy members on the Windows version of it that I can’t video chat with.
3. Epiphany bookmark related crashes — I’ll post on this later in more depth. On my box, epiphany cannot even import its own exported bookmarks. There is a bug out there for this.
4. ATI video isn’t 3d accelerated — This is a work in progress right now. There is a lot of effort to get the specs that ATI released into a xorg driver. The two main efforts for this are the ati and radeonhd drivers. This will get there, it will just take time. xcompmgr still works fine so my desktop looks snazzy; its just slow.
Please don’t take these critisms harshly. I am in no way trying to dismiss or invalidate the great work these projects represent.
Tags: Linux, Opinion, Tech