Re: ::scr open sores

[simon wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 01:21:49PM +0000, Simon Batistoni said:
> Gah, quit moaning you fule. If you really want the moon on a stick
> then I'll place an order with NASA, but you could try just calming
> down a bit first :) 

It may have come across as moaning but, the point i was making was that
OS software is not the mutts nuts that it's been hyped up to be.


> Different interfaces suit different people. 

True. But there are metrics for suckiness. Most OS software fills that
because they don't have professional interface designers. If there was
no need for them then companies wouldn't employ them. (There are jokes
here about lawyers / marketers etc but I'll let 'em go past)

Have a look at 

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report/report_main.html

http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/1998/abstracts/98-155.html

for OS interface suckiness. Although the last one is about PGP which
isn't technically Open Source because that would be illegal. I just
happen to have the source in a book.



> All the machines I run linux on are far stabler than *any* Windows
> box, running *any* version of Windows, I've ever had.

I admitted that Linux was more stable. Although I've had (supposedly)
stable Linux kernels crap out on me and user land apps take down the 
kernel (which shouldn't happen) and I've had Windows machines that
have never crashed. Until they got a new machine my parents' Win95
mahcine has run with a variety of crap being installed and uninstalled
with no systems patches. It's been running since, er, 95.

Beside the point though (see first line).

> Seriously, all of the criticisms you level at various systems seem a
> bit, well, moon-on-a-stick ish. Do you really expect *any* software
> to be perfect? 

No. My point was that OS software is not the shining moon-on-the-stick
provider that some people claim. 

> The human mind is simply not capable, whether working
> singly or as a team, of creating a nicely laid-out, coherent complex
> system. 

I'd disagree. But I have no proof. I cannot scream.


> Things need to work quickly, to meet business or other deadlines.
> Quality gets sacrificed for speed. This will always happen.

I was actually going to use this argument for Windows GUI vs *nix GUI -
the DRI is in the kernel which means speed but dodgy graphics drivers
can theoretically take down the kernel. 


> I use it all the time as a desktop. 

Fine. But I suspect many people would disagree with you, even in the
Linux camp.
 
> Perhaps your problem is that with Linux, you do need to work a
> little more to make it what you want it to be.
[snip]
> different windowmanagers with differing approaches to the desktop,
[snip]
> Now admittedly, I'm not a typical user, but I think your verdict of
> Linux as a desktop is based on a single bad experience with
> Mandrake, and I think you're wrong.

It's not the customisation that's the problem (I endlessly tweaked my
Windows desktop, even installing various desktop shells) but I think
you've hit upon something with the 'lots of different window managers'
bit. That's exactly the problem. The Mac Interface Guidelines were
probably the single most important thing that the Macintosh provided
(possibly a little over the top that but if we're shooting for points
here :) and it's a pity not everybody started using them. Choice can be
good and bad. 

As for one bad experience, I'm not trying to cock wave, but it's not
true. I've never like any of the *nix WMs that I've used from CDE, FVWM
(and FVWM 95) through Afterstep, Window maker, Enlightenment DR14 (which
I wrote patches for) and all subsequent versions (DR17 looked like it
could rock but ... well, see that last URL I posted in my second mail) 
up to Gnome (which I run on my machine at home).


> > just happens to be better than everything else out there. 
> 
> Your point being? You're complaining that the best webserver
> produced by human endeavour (which is what you're saying it is)

Slip fo the forked tongue. kHTTPd, tHTTPd, Zeus and (I believe, I've
never actually played with it) AOLServer all are better. At serving web
pages. Even at serving CGI stuff. Apache has more support behind it but
if we're going to use that argument then Windows is the best OS out
there.


> But here's where open source is great. You can quit moaning, and fix
> what you think's wrong. 

I wish. Yes, theoretically I could patch bits here and there. Especially
if they were small bits. I patched bugs in E and added functionality so
that there was an option you could set that would make double clicking
on the window bar iconise the window rather than window shading it. But
patch the whole WM? Is that honestly realistic? That point is often over
looked by the OS community. 

You also get what you paid for. But I specifically said that wasn't a
factor - what yu pay doesn't effect how good something is. If it was,
we'd all buy Macs (or Cray XMPs) :)


> > * GCC
> So keep the good bits and rebuild the rest.

??? That doesn't make sense. Which bit would I keep? The Front End -
Back End decoupling?  Then I'd have no parser and no code generator. 

Anyway, true, I could write my own compiler, but see above for reasons
why, in actuality, I couldn't. 

It may be possible, it's not practical.

 
> > * Mozilla
> > /me raises an arched eyebrow
> 
> It's fashionable to diss Mozilla in that knowing way, as if "it's so
> obviously bad that we don't need to explain why".

Mozilla suffered from creature feep. It was too little too late 2 years
ago and it's *still* not finished (nearly but not quite). 

There have been some nice technologies to come out it but I've been
disapointed with Gecko - I haven't really noticed it being blazingly
fast to be honest (the bottleneck tends to be getting the pages, not
rendering them) and it has annoying problems with forms (well, my
version does whihc is pretty recent). 

Gecko != Mozilla though, it's part of the Mozilla project. Nit picking,
moi :) (note to self, when nit picking don't pick nits that have so many
holes in the arguments)

> I'm using mutt. It's the best mail client I've ever used. There's
> nothing more that I could want from it. YMMV.

I'm using mutt as well. It does just about everything that I want it to
but it's not as nicely integrated as, say, Pine is. It just does more
and I happen to need that 'more' more than I need the integration. It's
all about compromises. However I'm going to move hurriedly on because
I'm not helping my argument.

> The display engine has deep problems, because it's lots of hacks
> built on top of each other, but for me it works, and it doesn't get
> in my way.

You'd probably be surprised about how much it gets in your way. By being
difficult to program for it's held back progress which has got in your
way. I'll also *cough* "cut'n'paste' discretely.


> Sorry if this is a bit flamey, but I think you're being
> unreasonable. And you always moan that we don't argue back at you
> enough on this list :)

Flame pretty, tree bad, beer foamy.

My brain was leaking cerebral fluid from trying to write my own
Fixed point (doing floating point calculations with integers) maths lib
for the fucking J2ME!%"$*&£¬ phone. 

*cough*

Anyway, my point was (in a sprwaly, rambly way) that OS isn't all it's
cracked up to be. Despite Eric Raymond's protestations [0] that it would
revolutionise software engineering I think it's failed to do that.
Closed Source software does have advantages over Open Source beyond the
ability to make money off it.


Simon


[0] http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/