I have. I have been able to find offending runaway Flash sessions and kill them without taking out all my Firefox windows. I have been able to force wifi associations when some software flaw is preventing an automatic join to those networks. In similar situations Windows will simply not enumerate the network and recourse is limited. The examples go on for situations where things don't work.
Look, I agree with you and the criticisms of the CADT development model. I'm not claiming the Linux experience is objectively great, end-of-story. I'm claiming that if the hardware is supported by a mature enough driver (which is true of a lot of hardware!), I don't find the Linux experience to be more frustrating than Windows/Mac, subject to the caveats I made about commercial software in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18444723 . And it's great to not to have to go out of my way to keep the OS vendor from gathering data from my system without my express permission.
Another nice thing about Linux is that it makes a good host for VMs, so for those times when Windows is needed (assuming not for games), it can be kept in a VM with some measure of control.
We are a long way from desktop software utopia, but real breakthroughs probably depend more on rigorously-architected and implemented environments vs. working on the edges of decades-old architectures whose fundamental shortcomings are legion and are implemented in unsafe languages. Windows, MacOS, and Linux (or name your choice of free Unix-alike) all suck in this regard.
> And worse, that's the culture the community seems to prefer. Case in point: the one guy who's shown a willingness to unify that plumbing, Lennart Pottering, is loathed for being successful at it.
I don't know that that's a fair characterization. With some of the people raging, you'll pry their current way of doing business out of their cold dead hands. Others welcome better and more sound ways of doing things <raises hand>. But there are plenty of problems with the ad-hoc, NIH, and questionable software quality approach that the systemd implementers use. There was a front-page HN submission just a day or two ago on readiness protocols (written by J. de Boyne Pollard) covering systemd shortcomings, not to mention udev screwups, dhcp issues (does systemd really need its own dhcp client??), etc. All in all, MHO is that systemd is a significant step forward but suffers mightily from its ad-hoc development approach.
Just for clarification: the punctuation in that sentence should not be mis-read as my FGA on readiness protocols covering udev and DHCP, which it does not. (-:
I have. I have been able to find offending runaway Flash sessions and kill them without taking out all my Firefox windows. I have been able to force wifi associations when some software flaw is preventing an automatic join to those networks. In similar situations Windows will simply not enumerate the network and recourse is limited. The examples go on for situations where things don't work.
Look, I agree with you and the criticisms of the CADT development model. I'm not claiming the Linux experience is objectively great, end-of-story. I'm claiming that if the hardware is supported by a mature enough driver (which is true of a lot of hardware!), I don't find the Linux experience to be more frustrating than Windows/Mac, subject to the caveats I made about commercial software in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18444723 . And it's great to not to have to go out of my way to keep the OS vendor from gathering data from my system without my express permission.
Another nice thing about Linux is that it makes a good host for VMs, so for those times when Windows is needed (assuming not for games), it can be kept in a VM with some measure of control.
We are a long way from desktop software utopia, but real breakthroughs probably depend more on rigorously-architected and implemented environments vs. working on the edges of decades-old architectures whose fundamental shortcomings are legion and are implemented in unsafe languages. Windows, MacOS, and Linux (or name your choice of free Unix-alike) all suck in this regard.
> And worse, that's the culture the community seems to prefer. Case in point: the one guy who's shown a willingness to unify that plumbing, Lennart Pottering, is loathed for being successful at it.
I don't know that that's a fair characterization. With some of the people raging, you'll pry their current way of doing business out of their cold dead hands. Others welcome better and more sound ways of doing things <raises hand>. But there are plenty of problems with the ad-hoc, NIH, and questionable software quality approach that the systemd implementers use. There was a front-page HN submission just a day or two ago on readiness protocols (written by J. de Boyne Pollard) covering systemd shortcomings, not to mention udev screwups, dhcp issues (does systemd really need its own dhcp client??), etc. All in all, MHO is that systemd is a significant step forward but suffers mightily from its ad-hoc development approach.