Linux has some growing up to do

Don't tell me it's not a crash. If it's a non-crash kind of crash, we all need a course in Newspeak.

technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Linux has some growing up to do

Oct. 25, 1999

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, Al Fasoldt

   Don't feel bad if Linux seems like a pain in the butt now and then.
   It's not you. It's the operating system.
   Nothing tells you more about the rough-and-tumble origins of Linux than the crazy ways it does certain things. No doubt they make sense to somebody. They just don't make sense to users who came from Windows.
   Linux grew up in the back alleys of computing, away from the glitter of testing labs and usability studies. It was never designed to be pretty and never engineered to be easy. It was built to be tough.
   The fact that a modern Linux PC can have a stunning graphical desktop that works with simple mouse clicks is a tribute to the other strength of Linux: It was designed to be clever.
   So don't be fooled. Linux may look like Windows sometimes and it may even work like Windows sometimes. But it's not Windows. Looks are only skin deep. Linux is like the guy down the street who wears a funny hat but knows how to fix your mower and how to buy the right kind of paint and how to cheer you up when the squirrels eat all your daisies. He could wear a normal hat, but he'd still be a different kind of guy.
   So what's up with Linux? What ways is it cranky and cantankerous? You could spend an hour with five Linux experts and come up with 100 ways Linux is goofy or unnecessarily difficult to use, but we'll just cover 10 of the dumbest things.
   1. You sometimes get a black screen when you install Linux.
   If Linux can't figure out how to deal with your computer monitor, guess what? Do you suppose you get a warning message asking you to fix the problem in some way? Nope. You get a black screen.
   This happened to me something like 17 times in a row. The version of Linux I was trying to install never did the right thing and I always got a blank screen. Only when I played SuperNerd and typed in a lot of changes to an arcane configuration file did I get a working display.
   This is nonsense. It's not nonsense because it happened 17 times in a row or because it happened to me. It's nonsense because the operating system was already working with the monitor when I ran the installation program. Guess what, Linux experts: The operating system already knows how to deal with the monitor because it's doing it during the installation! So get with the program and make sure the operating system knows how to deal with the monitor AFTER installation!
   (Technically, what's happening is a problem with the X server and not Linux. The X server is -- aw, don't let me fall by the wayside and get technical here! -- the X server is just something Linux uses for the display. But nobody except nerds and Linux experts will care whether the problem is in Linux or somewhere else, because all that matters is whether the screen is working or whether it's black. Of all the dumb things that Linux does, this is the one that is least forgivable. The X server should know what to do if the monitor is set up incorrectly. No one should ever set up a Linux PC and end up with a totally dark screen. The display worked during the installation, and it should work afterward.)
   2. You have a sound card that Linux knows how to deal with, but you don't get any sounds.
   Another Totally Dumb Thing is the way Linux treats sound. It's not an optional extra, yet in nearly every case you won't get a working sound card when you install Linux. You have to set up the sound card yourself. This would be almost excusable if Linux had a really hard time with audio -- if, for example, Linux didn't know squat about sound cards. But that's not the case. Linux knows how to deal with sound cards quite well, yet sound cards are not installed into the operating system when you install Linux.
   Dumb? How about Outrageously Dumb? How about Whacked-Out Dumb? If I install Mandrake Linux 6.1 on a PC with a Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card, I get no sound at all. None. Nada. I have to run a separate sound configuration program to get sound. What do I do when I run that program? I press Enter, press Enter, press Enter and press Enter. In other words, all I do is choose the defaults, because Linux already knows how to deal with my sound card. Is this insane or what?
   3. You're doing all sorts of wonderful things on your Linux PC when suddenly everything just plain disappears and the next thing you know you're being asked to log in again.
   Linux PCs that seem to work like Windows PCs use a graphical environment. The most common one is KDE. One that is catching on fast is Gnome. If either one of these graphical environments crashes, everything on your screen disappears and you're shown a logon box. In other words, as far as anyone with any brains is concerned, your crash-proof PC -- remember why you left Windows? -- has just crashed big time.
   This is absurd. Don't tell me it's not a crash. If it's a non-crash kind of crash, we all need a course in Newspeak. (The Linux operating system is still running fine. It's KDE or Gnome that crashed, but who cares?) The point, in case all those Linux nerds aren't listening close enough, is that nobody with any sense at all will see this problem as anything but a crash. If I'm working merrily away on my tax return and everything on the screen disappears in a sudden POOF, I'd have to call that a crash. And the IRS would have to call it a late return. Anything that makes me lose sleep, lose money or lose sanity like that is a crash.
   This has got to stop. KDE and Gnome need to be crash-resistant. I don't care why they crash. Real programmers don't make excuses. I don't want to hear any. KDE and Gnome need to be fixed.
   4. You can't install your own programs.
   Oh, the wonderful surprises in store for Windows users who think they can install their own programs when they log onto Linux! They might be able to -- and they might not. It all depends. A lot of software won't let the primary user install anything. Only the administrator of the PC can do it.
   The administrator, you say? Everything done under Linux is performed under a set of rules. These rules are based on who owns a file and who has the right to do certain things to it. Files and folders are always owned by someone. And every file and folder has certain rights assigned in addition to the ownership. (Sigh! It gets worse, so grab a cup of coffee and come back. I'll wait for you.)
   Ready? You are not the administrator when you log onto your Linux PC the normal way. You're only the administrator when you log on as the administrator. (I know this seems too simple to go into further, but we have to do it. Sorry!) You log on as the administrator by logging on as root. The root user is the boss. The root user can do anything. And that's why nobody should log onto a Linux PC as root to do normal stuff such as e-mail and word processing and Web browsing, because logging on as root can get you in deep doodoo. I mean very deep. Linux exposes all of its innards to the administrator -- much more of its inner workings than Windows exposes to any user, by the way -- and that means you can totally whack out your Linux PC by doing stupid things when you're logged on as root.
   Read that part again, because years of making mistakes have taught me one very important lesson: People don't absorb stuff that's important the first time they read about it. They read about it and then make the mistakes they've been warned about and then remember that they read about it somewhere. Don't do that. Read the last part again.
   So the root user is the kind of user who is supposed to log on once a day or maybe just once a week to check on things and clean up old files and maybe install a new program or two. For all other operations, you're supposed to log on as a normal user. That's fine as far as it goes, but it's a pain in the root when you want to do more-or-less standard things. You're not going to believe the next part unless you're a Linux veteran, so put your feet up and listen real close.
   What kind of pain? How about this: When you do a standard Linux installation, chances are you won't be able to access your own CD-ROM. The root user can do it, but you won't be able to as a normal user. That's dumb.
   How about this kind of pain? When you want to copy a file to a floppy disk, some versions of Linux (or some methods of installing Linux) won't let you access the floppy disk unless it's already "mounted." (Don't ask what that means; I might tell you, and we'll never get to the next part.)
   Oh, the pain. How about fixing things that are messed up? I don't mean big things. I mean diddly stuff. You'd better be logged on as the administrator.
   I'll admit that some of this pain is easily avoided. You can log on as the administrator and give yourself (as the normal user) some of the rights and powers that you need to do little administrative tasks. Or you can log in as the root user while you're doing other things. (In other words, you don't have to log out as the normal user to log in as another user. Linux does this the same way Unix does, allowing many users to be logged on and working at the same time. On my Linux PCs, I have multiple desktops, and I reserve one of them for administrative tasks. "Root" uses that desktop, while I use the others as the normal user.)
   But you shouldn't have to do this kind of thing. Linux needs a middle ground. It needs a mode that is not a free-for-all with no security the way Windows is but that's not a locked box the way a Unix computer is. (Right now it's just like a Unix computer.) It needs to loosen up without compromising security. (No, I don't have the solution. People who see flames and call the fire department don't need to be experts on putting out fires. They just need to know how to make a phone call.)
    5. You can't play video MPEG files.
   Linux fans will insist that of course Linux PCs can play MPEG (or MPG) video. But on my 464 MHz Linux PC, MPEG videos play at a speed that would make glaciers proud. On my 233 MHz Linux PC, MPEG videos play at a speed that can't be measured -- because the next frame (there are supposed to be 30 a second) doesn't show up in time to be counted. I suppose the next frame might show up in a few minutes or so, but you have to assume that a frame rate of 30 per second means you see the next frame 1/30th of a second later, not 1/30th of an hour later.)
   I don't know what the real problem is, but I'm assuming that the Linux MPEG video players (at least all the ones I've tried) are doing everything, all their work, in software. Players for Windows do as much as possible in hardware. They use the built-in processing of the video card. So Linux MPEG performance will suddenly increase when the graphics drivers for Linux support the hardware features of various graphics cards (they don't, right now, with only a few exceptions) and when MPEG players are rewritten to take advantage of the new graphics drivers.
   Oddly enough, my MPEG player does a fine job playing some AVI videos. It falters at some of them, but plays others just as well as the Windows players do. That's probably nothing more than evidence that AVI playback software is more advanced than MPEG playback software on Linux. (MPEG is newer and takes much more processor effort than AVI.)
   6. If you use Windows and you're enough of a power user to appreciate font smoothing, you can forget it on Linux. No such animal. You can also forget the whole idea of a centralized font system -- a single font folder where all you need to do is delete a font or add one and the operating system takes care of everything.
   No way. Linux uses Type 1 fonts, mostly. (They're not bad, and in fact some of them are outstanding; the Adobe Helvetica Type 1 font, the standard Type 1 font for Linux, is surely the best-looking font of its general category ever designed.) The point isn't whether Type 1 fonts are good or bad. It's that Type 1 fonts are not scalable. In other words, they are far behind the current technology in fonts. And that also means they're just not up to the standard Windows users have come to expect from TrueType fonts. TrueType is the font system in Windows and the Mac. TrueType fonts can be resized (rescaled) to any size without looking bad. Type 1 fonts can only look good at specific sizes; if you make a Type 1 font a size that it can't handle, it will look jagged.
   Linux enthusiasts will tell you that this is not true. They'll say that Linux can indeed use True Type fonts. They're doing a very bad thing. They're encouraging fratricidal behavior.
   As much as I like my fellow Linux enthusiasts, I'll probably whack the first one who tells me that Linux can use TrueType fonts. It was a Linux enthusiast who told me how to get my main Linux PC to stop choking on TrueType fonts. I followed his instruction to the letter and ended up with a non-booting PC. It was another Linux enthusiast who told me the first one was wrong. When I followed the new instructions to the letter -- after reinstalling the operating system that had been wrecked by the first calamity -- I ended up with a PC that wouldn't boot.
   Guess what? A third Linux enthusiast commiserated and offered what he said was much better advice. I took it, after reinstalling the operating system, of course, and ended up with ... oh, you don't want to hear the rest of the story. Or maybe I just don't want to tell it. I hate to cry.
   So I've promised myself never to allow any Linux enthusiast to use the word "font" in my presence until the day that Linux can use TrueType fonts the same way Windows can.
   7. Cut and paste is a nightmare in Linux.
   You know how cut and paste work. You drag your mouse over something (or select it in any other way) and use a menu or a keystroke to store the selected stuff in the clipboard. Then you move your mouse pointer to where you want to paste the stuff and use a menu or a keystroke to paste it.
   In other words, you select something, press Ctrl-C to copy it or Ctrl-X to cut it, then click where you want it to go and press Ctrl-V to paste it. (If you are a Windows user and had no idea that cut and paste uses those keys, be glad that you've just learned something.)
   Ready for the way Linux does it? First, you need to know that sometimes Linux doesn't do it at all. There are programs that run on Linux PCs that don't do copy, cut or paste no matter what. They just don't know how to do it. So much for a modern operating system.
   Some programs use the Alt key instead, so for cut, copy and paste in, say, Netscape Mail, you have to use Alt-X, Alt-C and Alt-V. (Unless someone's remapped the keyboard for Netscape Mail, in which case the combinations with the Ctrl key might actually work.) And many programs, if you have the KDE or Gnome desktops installed, use the Ctrl key.
   Good news, right?
   Don't you wish. Just because a program uses standard keys (or menu items) for cut, copy and paste doesn't mean they work. That's because of the odd way the main Linux windowing software operates. In the X Window system, which Linux uses to supply the basic graphical interface, all you have to do to put something in the clipboard is select it. No need to do anything else. Drag your mouse with the button held down and you select text and put it in the clipboard all at the same time.
   To paste in the X Window system, you just press the middle mouse button. (Don't ask what you do if you have only two mouse buttons, because I don't know. Unix and Linux were made for three-button mice, so don't even think of running Linux without an appropriate mouse. You can get one for $7.)
   This crazy cut-and-paste method is the world's worst invention for anyone used to Windows. In Windows, you can highlight a block of text and then paste anything else into the highlighted area. But not in Linux. If you've already put something in the clipboard, highlighting the text you want replaced puts THAT text into the clipboard. It will drive you crazy.
   So what do you do when you're not going crazy? You avoid selecting text once you've put something in the clipboard. Remember, all that's needed to knock a hundred paragraphs of text out of the clipboard is to select one character. (Forgive me, but I need to do this: ARGH!) Once you get used to that, you can almost forgive the imbecile who built this 'feature' into Linux.
   (In case you think I'm getting carried away on this issue, let me tell you how a million Windows users do a very common thing. You have your Web browser open. It's got a page up on the screen. And that means, naturally, that the address line of the browser has the address of that site in it. With me so far? You're reading something in an e-mail letter or on the Web and you notice a Web address. It's not a real hyperlink, not something you can click on, but it's a real address, so you select it with your mouse. Vavoom! It's in the clipboard. (Windows users have to take the extra step of putting it into the clipboard after selecting it, but Linux users, unsuspecting souls that they are, get a break in the first part of this tragedy.)
   So now you have the address in the clipboard and all you need to do is paste it into the address line of the browser. Still following along? You know what comes next: You click once in the address line of the browser and select all the text and either paste in the new text or erase the selected text (with the Delete key, maybe) and then paste in the address.
   Fuh'get it, bub. When you selected the text in the address line so you could delete it, you got rid of the contents of the clipboard at the same time. Poof! Gone! Bye-Bye Birdie! Sayonara! No paste!
   Oh, there's more. If you're really clever like I am, you closed down the e-mail letter or Web page you got the address from before you went to the browser's address line to do the paste operation. Not only is the thing NOT in the clipboard, the original isn't on your screen any more.
   Do I have to say anything more?
   8. Linux is the world's greatest operating system for making your own CD-ROMs and it has the world's worst software for doing it.
   Ask any Windows user who has a recordable CD-ROM drive and you'll have to listen to tales of woe. Windows is a cooperative operating system, despite Microsoft's assertions that it uses preemptive multitasking. I fell for that dreck, too, until I had suffered through innumerable Windows slowdowns, lockups and crashes. Windows has no way to control what's going on. It just doesn't. There's a free-for-al in your PC each time Windows runs. And that means the sensitive task of making a CD recording is left to the graces of God and the laws of chance.
   But not so on Linux. You wouldn't even dare to breathe on the keyboard of a Windows PC that's making a CD recording, but you can do anything you want on a Linux PC while it's making a CD. You can even install new software while you're making a CD.
   And that's something you'll be eager to do, because the software Linux uses to make CDs is terrible. It works and it works well, but only if you are an expert at Urdu or some sort of occult semi-Martian language. Linux needs its own version of Easy CD Creator, the standard Windows CD recording program.
   9. Want to watch a new DVD movie on your PC's DVD player? Get Windows.
   Someday soon, maybe real soon, Linux will have DVD-playing software. I know it's being worked on. But it's not available yet, and that means you can't watch DVD movies under Linux. I can do it under Windows just fine.
   10. E-mail software for Linux is bad, bad, bad. So bad you won't believe it. So bad you'll be embarrassed.
   I've tried dozens of different e-mail programs for Linux so far and I'm outraged. What have all these Linux programmers been doing, making ham sandwiches? Why haven't they had the common sense to look at what's available in e-mail software for Windows and the Mac? Linux e-mail software is either 10 years behind (try running pine -- yes, it's a lowercase name -- and see if you don't agree) or it's so totally weird that nobody would ever use it anyway. (That gives programmers of weird software an easy out. Nobody ever complains about the software because nobody can figure it out enough to even run it.)
   The only thing Linux has that comes close to what Windows and Mac users expect in e-mail software is Netscape Mail. I like Netscape Mail. I think it's fine, as far as it goes. But the rules (functions that act on mail when it arrives) are inadequate in Netscape Mail -- they won't do forwarding, for example, which makes them totally bozo in my book -- and Netscape Mail has no anti-spam functions at all, a big loss in today's world.
   But quibbling about Netscape Mail misses the point. What Linux is missing is modern mail software from any other source. (Why a company that gives away a browser should be expected to give away a good e-mail program is hard to understand. The world needs good standalone e-mail software, not just acceptable e-mail software that tags along with a browser.) You can find a dozen good attempts, but all of them miss their goal in one way or another -- including the one way that is totally unacceptable, the area of robustness. (In other words, many of them crash a lot.)
   The mail program that is distributed with the KDE desktop, kmail, comes close to an acceptable program, and even seems to have a flexible set of rules for message handling. But the rules are about as simple to figure out as the instructions for creating a hydrogen bomb -- no, the H-bomb instructions are MUCH simpler -- and the program itself has no idea how to deal with mouse clicks, playing dead for a fraction of a second when it should be responding each time you click on a message. I've tried many others -- arrow, mahogany, elm, balsa (wood you like more puns? Don't blame me! Those ARE the names!), StarOffice mail and too many others to list. They're all wimpburgers.
   Where's Eudora for Linux? Where's Outlook for Linux? Where's GroupWise for Linux?
   How about Pegasus Mail for Linux? It's a wonderful program on the Windows platform, and has been free (and very well supported) ever since it first came out. But the programmer says he won't create a Linux version and that's that.
   Oddly, Linux falls down in the same area where it excels. Linux is used to run more mail servers -- computers that sort, collect and forward mail -- than any other operating system. I can only guess that people who have used Linux all these years don't care much about their own e-mail.