
Returning to Linux, not impressed - c3d
https://grenouillebouillie.wordpress.com/2016/12/21/goodbye-dxo-hello-red-hat/
======
alkz
So, the author tries to run linux on apple hardware. then he goes on
installing a GUI on a server, misunderstands the difference between rpm and
yum, judges package managers by command length. Also mistakes GB for TB

This was a depressing read.

~~~
legulere
Your comment is more depressing in my opinion, as it shows that it's still
typical with the linux to blame users. Software is there to be used by humans,
if you put the blame on your users, you have actually failed to design the
software correctly.

Why blame someone for wanting to install linux on apple hardware (which btw is
often better supported than other hardware)?

Why blame someone developing 3D acceleration for virtual machines for wanting
to have a GUI on the server that contains test VMs?

Why blame someone for being annoyed having to know the difference between 3
package manager programs?

Why blame someone for talking about the usability of command line options, of
which command length certainly is a part?

~~~
michaelmrose
Point by point.

\- If he has a recent model Macbook its KNOWN to be problematic. Searching
"2016 macbook linux" most of the top results are about how it doesn't work
well. He specifically says he assumed because redhat offered it that it worked
with linux. When you can't spend 30 seconds researching your development
machine it might be your fault.

\- Server guis are known to be limited, hard to automate and just generally
inefficient desiring a gui for your server is normally a sign that you just
aren't very good.

\- Users don't have to use ANY command line package managers there is in fact
a gui for that if they prefer. If they choose wholly of their own accord to
use a command line package manager they probably ought to read the relevant
help document
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_management_system](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_management_system)
which makes the usage of the relevant tools pretty clear.

I don't think its untoward that red hat employees that wish to set up Fedora
servers be expected to read documentation.

~~~
legulere
> a sign that you just aren't very good.

Another attack on users, this time pretty direct. I won't discuss the other
points as it's again just shifting blame. The reality is that with Desktop
Linux there's nobody taking responsibility that things actually work.

~~~
michaelmrose
You mean you wont address them because you cannot I presume? The critique is
aimed at desktop Linux as a whole but is 99% is about how fedora works on his
particular known to be problematic hardware.

Fedora is first of all an unstable test bed for a commercial product running
on hardware known to be problematic and the user is a red hat developer.

I realized I had more useful things to do than beta test rhel in 2011 and I
started buying hardware that works well with linux in 2003.

Not knowing to how do this is certainly a forgivable thing in joe random
business user but it becomes ridiculous when we are talking about a red hat
dev. If a device doesn't work with its target platform be it windows, Linux,
or mac you blame the oem.

In this case whose job do you imagine is it to donate free labor to a multi
billion dollar juggernaut to ensure their machines work well with Linux?

Given the benefit Apple has derived from open source software it would be nice
if they would help but they certainly have no real obligation nor do open
source devs whose time is inherently a limited resource.

In the end Linux has plenty of room for improvement but supporting everyone's
hardware for free with finite dev resources just isn't a rational or
achievable goal and lampooning linux as a whole because fedora doesn't work on
your mac isn't even useful dialogue.

Rational actors will react to this by reasonably picking hardware that is
known to be well supported. Irrational actors will continue to complain on the
Internet.

~~~
legulere
I can, but I don't think it's worth my time, you will just counter those and
pass the blame further. The first machine he had problems with was a 2009 mac
mini. The second machine was actually given to him by red hat, which is the
biggest linux company. But all this driver stuff and everything breaking all
the time is hardly a distribution issue, it's shared throughout all
distributions.

Why should OEMs work on supporting Linux when they sell their machines with
other operating systems? That's just passing the blame.

The problem is that Linux is touted all the time as an alternative that is
supposed to be even better, when the reality is that lots of things are broken
and don't work out of the box. Not even on the most sold laptop models, which
are macbooks.

> Rational actors will react to this by reasonably picking hardware that is
> known to be well supported. Irrational actors will continue to complain on
> the Internet.

People that want to actually get work done and do not want to or can not
fiddle around will not use Linux.

~~~
jrnichols
> when the reality is that lots of things are broken and don't work out of the
> box.

And finding a fix can be elusive, when often times the answer is "your distro
sucks, use $OTHER_DISTRO" or "use Google."

> Rational actors will react to this by reasonably picking hardware that is
> known to be well supported.

But what about when you pick hardware that is supposedly well supported and
you _still_ have problems? Run into that more times than I care to remember.

~~~
michaelmrose
Then your complaint is much more legitimate but instead of making a linux
sucks post report the relevant problem to people who might be able to fix it,
consider funding development to improve the relevant software, or roll up your
sleeves and lend a hand.

Nobody said linux or open source software was perfect.

~~~
Hasknewbie
> but instead of making a linux sucks post report the relevant problem to
> people who might be able to fix it.

Yes, do not inform potential users that they might be taken for a ride, don't
mention that 7-years old hardware is not supported, or that Gnome3 doesn't
even know how to switch back to the default display. I mean, we wouldn't want
to have _informed users_ am I right?

You are pretty much making legulere's point: hush hush no criticism in public,
and even if it is valid please report it quietly.

So I assume you would agree if Apple or Microsoft had a similar attitude? (And
no need to mention "yeah but with MS/Apple you paid, therefore...", paying
entitles you to tech support, and we're only talking about informing users
here.)

~~~
michaelmrose
You ought to feel like you can speak freely and critique if applicable but
beware lest you also be judged and found wanting.

------
binaryapparatus
It is bit of a nonsense to pick one distro with specific UI and call it
'Linux' in general.

I did similar thing with Arch recently, was long time user that switched to
Mac six years ago. Then due to all the suspicious moves from Apple I installed
Arch again and can't be happier.

Linux is what you make of it, not what any distro thinks it should be. I am
using xmonad and there is nothing silly looking on my screen.

If doing any usability tests, fedora/red hat would be very low on my
priorities list.

~~~
ageofwant
Yup. Ever since I went i3 I found that most endless discussions about desktop
UI are essentially meaningless twaddle. Using a tiled WM fundamentally changed
the way in which I interact with my machines, and for the better.

I still like the ubuntu eyecandy, but I only see it at most once or twice a
year just before I install i3.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
I second this. i3 is probably the best WM ever made. It's dead simple to
configure, endlessly _configurable_ , but also works right out of the box. And
three keyboard shortcuts ($mod+d, $mod+Q, $mod+E) are all you ever need to
learn (although I'd certainly recommend learning all of them.

It's just _better_. The same way that vi and emacs are better than Notepad and
Gedit.

~~~
zeveb
Take a look at stumpwm sometime … it's a tiling WM written in Lisp. Only
problem is that the default command key is, frankly, insane (C-t). That's
easily fixed, though.

I need to give i3 a shot, though, and port some of its functionality!

~~~
qwertyuiop924
That does look nice, but I'm dubious as to whether it could match the
convenience of i3 for me: They're philosophical opposites.

The nice thing about stumpwm is that you can hack your WM to fit your
purposes. The nice thing about i3 is that while you can customize it to a
greater or lesser extent, you almost never _need_ to. it just works, right out
of the box.

------
jheriko
i'm not sure why anyone would expect to be able to install
linux/windows/anything on a mac without problems these days.

apple go to lengths to make it painful, and my experience of this is that they
have gone to increasingly further lengths in increments over the last 5 years.
you end up having to install some funky efi bootloader like refit or refind,
even if you want to use bootcamp to install windows (i've never seen bootcamp
work correctly on its own, although i have heard that it does work sometimes)
- even then you end up having to hack things to get it to work correctly, or
find that things like the trackpad or keyboard mysteriously don't work
properly if at all...

mounting your hdd into a vm in os x is often a necessity.

its a nightmare. apple don't want you to do these things.

~~~
coldtea
> _i 'm not sure why anyone would expect to be able to install
> linux/windows/anything on a mac without problems these days._

Until 2014 Linus Torvalds used a MacBook Air as his primary laptop. And even
in 2005 or so, his desktop machine was a Mac Pro (the steel ones).

And of course, tons of developers do the same.

I don't advocate it myself, but it's nothing extremely uncommon. They like the
hardware, but want to use Linux on it.

The issues you mention is not because "Apple doesn't want you to do these
things" it's because Apple implements new hardware setups and features without
taking into consideration whether people who want to run Linux have the
drivers to use them.

PC manufactures are less adventurous and rock the boat less, so Linux works
more easily on them with existing drivers.

But that's the whole idea of Apple controlling the hardware and software: that
they can take both in any direction they want, without being held back by
another party (e.g. change the interfaces with which the keyboard/touchpad
talks to the cpu, offer graphics switching, etc.). So it wouldn't make sense
to give that up to wait for Linux drivers to catch up on their new hardware.

~~~
lomnakkus
> But that's the whole idea of Apple controlling the hardware and software:
> that they can take both in any direction they want, without being held back
> by another party

Right. Which is why an "ordinary user" probably shouldn't expect it to "just
work".

(That said, in this kind of situation Arch Linux is probably your best bet
since it's rolling-release with the most-up-to-date drivers -- outside of
compiling your own kernel. It's not trivial to install, though, and that's
probably for the best, honestly.)

~~~
coldtea
> _Right. Which is why an "ordinary user" probably shouldn't expect it to
> "just work"._

Yes, but there's a thing to balance this: unlike PCs which come in 200000
models, there are only a handful of Mac models, and they remain the same for a
year or so before the next update.

So, it should be easier to target those with Linux drivers than to target tons
of individual devices, even if Apple does change their hardware.

~~~
jheriko
its more complicated than just drivers, apple have over the last few
iterations changed the boot mechanism to make it difficult

------
lykron
Everytime I read posts like this, I think I must be the lucky one. Fedora 25
on my laptop and desktop, and I've had no issues what so ever.

The author's package manager complaints are unfounded. Complaining about yum,
and yum being replaced by dnf? C'Mon, software evolves and sometimes you have
to do a hard fork.

The complaints about NFS seem to be a backend issue, and not an issue with the
client.

~~~
IshKebab
You definitely are the lucky one. I've never installed Linux without issues.

~~~
lykron
Don't get me wrong, I've encountered issues before but CentOS 7.2 and Fedora
24/25 have been good to me.

~~~
csydas
I'm with you on this one, perhaps I just got lucky. Either installs on Apple
Hardware or as virtual machines, my linux installs almost always just go and
do what I want them to. I think perhaps my use cases are simplistic as most
are pretty much just appliance VMs or distros meant for end users (back in the
day getting PPC variants of linux to run on old boat-anchor iMacs), but it's
never been a headache for me, whereas very smart computer people I know can't
seem to get a stable install on older Apple hardware.

------
INTPenis
As a long time Linux user I am so proud that we're comparing free Linux
distros with commercial OS' like Mac OS X and Windows 10.

~~~
coldtea
> _As a long time Linux user I am so proud that we 're comparing free Linux
> distros with commercial OS' like Mac OS X and Windows 10._

As probably an even longer time Linux user (used it back in 1997 to 2004, used
classic unices previously, use mostly OS X since and Linux on vms and
servers), I can't share that pride.

Back in 1999 or so, the slogan and the idea was that Linux will soon prevail
"on the Desktop". Every year since then, until the idea died out, has been
touted as the "year of Linux on the Desktop".

And not in the same of some people happily using it either. Those existed back
in 1999 too, heck I had a KDE based desktop and used Konqueror as my main
browser.

It also wasn't about "this phone runs the Linux kernel with some custom
company frontend, but otherwise there's nothing especially Linuxy about it,
and you couldn't tell it from a QNX or iOS phone with a similar facade". So,
no Android is not that dream fullfilled.

"Linux on the Desktop" meant undertaking Microsoft (OS X was negligible or not
still existing then) at their own desktop/office desktop game, and for if not
the majority, of a huge share (30% or more) of users.

Which basically means: a stable desktop OS, with a suite that covers all the
basics. And what we have?

\- Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many
installations.

\- On the 3D compositor/desktop front-end there are still messes for users to
deal with.

\- Desktop environments go here and there, all over the place, sometimes
mimicking Windows, others mimicking OS X, progressing and regressing,
rewriting things for no good reason, etc. Perpetually less capable and/or
stable than both Windows and OS X.

\- Gimp is also perpetually less capable and/or stable than Photoshop (and
still people promise it will all change with the new pipeline, that's close to
a decade in the making)

\- OpenOffice (and it's various forks) are still not as capable as MS Office
and full of quirks and slowdowns, plus the bizarro old-school UI.

And tons of other things besides...

~~~
ageofwant
These are all mostly strawman arguments and can be applied to whatever os you
choose. I develop software on Linux (and for linux) exclusively and have done
so for more than a decade using nothing but linux. The vast majority of users
have no use for Gimp or Openoffice or whatever is not a browser. The game has
changed, "whatever on the desktop" is not what it used to be. Granny browses
midget porn on her Chromebook just fine, thank you very much.

My team and I routinely use google docs to write multi-million dollar
proposals. We use gmail, github and everything else the cool kids use and we
all use Ubuntu on our desktops. A tiny fraction of people gets paid to use
whatever gimp is used for, those people can and should buy the best tools for
the job, and make the rest of us pay for that by claiming the cost back from
tax. Same for Office, of whatever variant. If you spend hours a day doing work
in whatever Office is good for, acquire a word processing appliance and be
done.

Desktop environment envy is a silly human affliction easily cured by using a
tiled window manager, I use i3, and so should you.

And lastly, where has this nonsense of everything on this one laptop came from
? Have a laptop for each of your major tasks. For cutting code, nothing but
Linux will do. Getting paid to 'shop putin and trump in various man-love
positions on top of a horse ? Have yourself a recent mac with elements.

~~~
coldtea
> _These are all mostly strawman arguments and can be applied to whatever os
> you choose._

No, they really aren't. Let's see:

 _#Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many
installations_

That's not an issue at all on Windows or Mac.

 _#On the 3D compositor /desktop front-end there are still messes for users to
deal with_

Again, not an issue at all.

 _#Desktop environments go here and there, all over the place, sometimes
mimicking Windows, others mimicking OS X, progressing and regressing,
rewriting things for no good reason, etc. Perpetually less capable and /or
stable than both Windows and OS X._

Both OS X and Windows change their desktop GUIs, but nowhere to the extend
that Linux does, and without the resulting breakage (e.g. from Gnome 2 to 3,
KDE migrations (and changes to QT) etc), and all for really ho-hum changes.
When Apple makes a ho-hum change to OS X desktop (Cocoa UI, the Finder, etc)
(which they do frequently) all the rest works just fine, apps don't need to be
migrated, whole classes of things (e.g. stuff like Gnome Panel widgets) aren't
suddenly dead, etc.

> _Granny browses midget porn on her Chromebook just fine, thank you very
> much._

And then Granny wants to produce her own senior-porn, or edit her
grandaughter's birthday video, and finds out that multimedia support on
Chromebook is crap, and switches to Windows.

> _Gimp is also perpetually less capable and /or stable than Photoshop (and
> still people promise it will all change with the new pipeline, that's close
> to a decade in the making)_

Well, it's still unusable for professional printing use.

> _My team and I routinely use google docs to write multi-million dollar
> proposals._

Well, that's a moot argument. Doesn't mean Google Docs is "as good as MS
Office" for that, just that multi-million dollar proposals can also be written
with very basic features. Heck, one can write multi-million dollar proposals
in Notepad too. On the other, for industries and documents with more dedicated
workflows (e.g. legal documents, etc) that wont do, as wont be as efficient.

> _And lastly, where has this nonsense of everything on this one laptop came
> from ? Have a laptop for each of your major tasks. For cutting code, nothing
> but Linux will do_

Actually there are more Windows developers than Linux ones. In the enterprise
space it's mostly all Windows (with C#, Java, etc). And even tons of Linux
targetting devs use Windows or OS X and just run a vm, docker or connect to a
remote server (which is cleaner anyway: reproducable, exactly same as the
deployment environment (of which they might have many), with snapshots and
all, and doesn't mess with their main desktop machine for testing server
tasks).

------
fortytw2
perhaps, "returning to RHEL" would be a much more accurate title. The author
has totally understandable grips with RHEL that don't necessarily reflect non-
RHEL based linux distributions, nor are they problems that I have personally,
despite running Linux (arch / gentoo) on my daily drivers for years

~~~
unhammer
Also, he's installing Fedora (w/Wayland) on Apple hardware, and using NFS.

There's quite a lot of things that can go wrong there compared to the less
adventurous Linux experience of, say, Ubuntu LTS on a Thinkpad/XPS/Zenbook.

~~~
vetinari
The biggest mistake is installing on Apple hardware.

Fedora on Thinkpad (including Wayland) is very nice, accessing Synology via
SMB or even AFS works very nicely. If I was feeling adventurous and had a need
for remote block devices, I would try iSCSI too.

------
bjakubski
It seems author consistently is using "GB" when he means "TB". I don't believe
he's running 4-bay NAS with 8GB of total disk space in 2016

~~~
oldopsguy
Yeah I saw this as well and actually scrolled to the top of the page to check
what year it was written :P

------
bmh_ca
I just set up a linux desktop, first time in over a decade.

It was basically a nightmare. Ubuntu-based distros (including Elementary OS,
which I had hoped to try) just wouldn't find the network adapter owing to some
obscure error that took hours to track down any information on.

Debian found the network adapter, but the USB devices wouldn't work. I had to
tweak the USB bios settings – sometimes it'd work with the keyboard, sometimes
with the USB flash drive I was installing from, sometimes not at all. To make
USB work reliably I had to set the BIOS to use USB 1.1. Oh boy. Slow, but it
worked.

It took a lot of fighting to convince the computer to use the network settings
I wanted it to. I basically spent as much time turning off whatever-the-hell
it was trying to do (network-manager, I'm looking at you), and edit the
settings directly.

It took about 11 hours to get the thing setup (including the time to download
4 distros). There were many other nuisance and time-consuming issues.

All that said, now that it's setup it'll probably run perfectly until it
physically dies. The firewall setup, though reasonably complex, was
straightforward with ufw. VPN was a bit of a nuisance, but predictable.

So it would seem that a lot of effort depends on choosing the right hardware,
and I'm probably missing out on some of the newer distros abilities (not that
debian is old, but Ubuntu & Elementary OS clearly have had more resources put
into the desktop-refinement).

~~~
basch
were all four of your test distros Debian based?

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/fedora-25-review-
the-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/fedora-25-review-the-best-
linux-distro-of-2016-arrived-at-the-last-moment/)

~~~
bmh_ca
Indeed they were all Debian based. It is my bias for familiarity — I regularly
set up servers with Debian.

I'll check out Fedora – Thanks for the link. I wouldn't have thought to look
at it.

Cheers

~~~
basch
it was the topic the parent article was frustrate with, ars had a different
experience. Fedora 24 was their favorite as well, albeit with concerns.

------
Mathnerd314
Recent LWN article r.e. linux on mac:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/](https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/). In
general it seems like a lot of pain for little gain.

------
xbmcuser
If you want to run Linux get or build a PC that is compatible ie linux drivers
have been released by the hardware manufacturer. Running Linux on a Mac where
most drivers have been reverse engineered and then comparing it to OSX which
was built for the hardware is a bit disengenous.

------
Gonzih
So Ubuntu is not linux and Fedora is? Yes, running Linux on macbook is a hard
job, but it's doable. And all those minor issues have workarounds at the end.
Older macbook you have higher chances that hardware was reverse engineered and
kernel will support it better.

------
partycoder
So you try one distribution and suddenly make a blanket statement over all the
Linux ecosystem?

There are many more distros out there. I wonder if Ubuntu or ArchLinux might
present these issues.

------
michaelmrose
"Red Hat provided me with a 15″ Mac Book Pro. Since this was one of their
choices of machine for developers, I assumed it was well supported by Fedora"

Why didn't he google Mac Book Pro Linux?

------
formula1
Great article. I remember when I tried toying around with fedora A while back,
I thought that redhat would surely have a better product than debian. Its not
just fedora. Ubuntu also has some frustrating issues in 16.04. I dont
particularly want to install a nonfree operating system and I dont really
imagine myself spending weeks trying to get an arch perfect. But sure do waste
a lot of time in ubuntu :/

------
pif
I wonder: how greedy do you have to be to complain about something you choose
freely and you got for free?

~~~
coldtea
Just because something is free doesn't mean it's good.

If I get some free food in a soup kitchen and get food poisoning, I'll
complain as well.

Not only you should look a gift horse in the mouth, you should also check it
for any diseases before you put it in your stable lest it infects you or other
animals there. And if it is indeed sick, you do have a leg to complain, even
if it was a gift.

But, free software is not exactly a gift. It's also something people put out
(and often companies put out) to reach as many people as possible, and they do
want it to be adopted and users to like it.

Besides, by your logic users not involved in free software projects should
never criticize and complain about their shortcomings. How would their
developers know what users want, and what's wrong with their programs then?

And no, not all development contribute the free software projects just for
themselves and/or other community members only. Some really want the software
to be adopted by as many users as possible, and are interested in their
feedback.

