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On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 9:12 AM, Rich Braun <[hidden email]> wrote: > Before the rise of the Windows desktop, long ago my preferred desktop > environment was a pretty typical Unix/X11-based workstation. When Linux > came > out, that's what I used for the first year or two but once editing and > finance > software emerged on Windows, I embraced that and never could get it to run > with emulators of those early days so since then my home setup has always > had > separate systems to run Windows on the desktop and Linux for back-end > services. > > I started to install VMware at work several months ago so now I decided to > once again try merging Linux/Windows at home. Just a few weeks ago, > openSUSE > came out with its 11.0 release. Aha, perhaps the Linux Desktop has truly > arrived, I thought! > > This new version from SUSE is a tour de force in terms of fixing the > annoyances of 10.3. Once I got an autoyast file set up the way I wanted, > all > the server-side issues come up the way I wanted. (It can even install on a > four-drive RAID10, even though the GUI doesn't include the option.) > > *However* let me count all the ways that it fell apart once I tried setting > up > my typical desktop. Mine is atypical in one way: like many people, I use > a > dual-head desktop (dating to 10 years ago when Win98 came with support for > this out of the box); but I turn one of the two monitors sideways for > portrait > mode. (Don't you just *hate* scrolling through screenfuls in a browser > session? And how often do you really want to watch widescreen DVDs or > compare > two side-by-side pages of text anyway?) > > 1) > Monitor rotation in sax2 falls apart totally if you have two screens. It's > clear that no one at SUSE or the X consortium ever did QA on this stuff. > I'm > sure I could debug the 5 or 6 issues that I found with it, but I don't have > the time. Any time I do something "stupid" like resize a window to > full-screen (something that's worked on Windows since the 98 era), it > scrambles my frame buffer sufficiently to require log-out and restart. > > 2) > The xrandr rotation support, at least on the Intel DG33TLM motherboard > display > interface I'm using, is exceedingly slow. Maybe there is an acceleration > parameter I could set--but this is the sort of thing that just works right > out > of the box in a Windows XP installation. > > 3) > When *will* Linux screensaver support actually work? The latest failure > I'm > having is that I've got a "clear" screensaver--it locks the display so I > have > to type a password to unlock it, but the applications remain visible. I've > never been able to get it to activate Energy Star monitor-standby mode. > The > most common problem I have with the screensaver is that it simply fails to > activate: you come in to the office in the morning and see the same root > shell that you were working with the previous day, a major security > headache. > > -- > Footnote: I have a kubuntu KDE setup at the office; it was much harder to > get > dual-head mode working than this openSUSE system at home. (I've never > tried > rotating one of the monitors there, mainly because I don't want to breathe > on > that setup.) The screensaver problems are just as bad on Ubuntu as > openSUSE. > > Well I just had to vent. My conclusion: Linux is *still* not truly ready > for > the desktop, at age 17. Maybe once it reaches drinking age? > > -rich > >
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