Re: Linux on the desktop - it's come a long way, but is it there yet?

["Jerry Feldman-2" <user=4@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:50:46 -0400 
"Matt Shields" <[hidden email]> wrote: 

> 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 
> > 
> > 
> You should read the article about some private school in this month's Linux 
> Journal.  They converted to linux 99.9% 5 years ago.  The only thing they 
> have 1 windows desktop for is Quickbooks which they could not find a good 
> alternative, although I believe Quicken now offers a web version.  Instead 
> of trying to co-exist with windows, they just eliminated it completely (with 
> that one exception), and they've done fine.