Introductory linux hate

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From: Luke A. Kanies
Subject: Introductory linux hate
Date: 06:37 on 14 Jan 2004
Wow, maybe this list will be my saviour....  I've got so much software
bile it's giving me an ulcer.  So much...  But this month it's linux.  I
hate most software, and especially operating systems, but I reserve a
special place in my cankerous stomach for linux.

I just want two simple things (in this case):  Audio, and my LCD powered
off after a timeout.

Audio worked fine for a long time.  I mean, XMMS sucks, but it works.  But
then something happened and I had to upgrade to ALSA (which becomes
standard in 2.6) for some reason, and, well, nothing works now.  Or at
least, not often.  About 1 in 3 times my stupid linux box hangs on startup
trying to restore the ALSA mixer settings.  Or, conveniently, it hangs at
shutdown.  About 1 in 2 times, XMMS decides to grind the disk until I
restart it.  Eventually, almost every time, XMMS just decides to take 100%
of one of my cpus and I have to kill -9 it.

Okay, maybe I'll use something else.  How about rhythmbox and gstreamer?
They're cool and new and support ALSA natively.  I get the stupid ALSA
thing started again, and, um, rhythmbox finally (on the fourth try)
imports my 7000 songs.  But after that I never once get it to successfully
start.  Oh, and this is really cool: there's a settings app for gstreamer
(which rhythmbox requires) and if that settings app is open, rhythmbox
will never start.  Close the app, the stupid mp3 player starts.

Yeah, and it apparently uses gnump3d or something, and gnump3d-index
maybe, except I can't tell, although it did start the process, but it
doesn't use the process's index, and instead builds an 80k XML file.  This
app sucks.

Why is it that something that everyone else (except maybe windows I guess,
but do they even count?) can do so stinking easily is so stinking hard on
linux.  Even fricking _Solaris_ can do audio trivially.  Really.  It's
trivial.  Works every time.  Why the hell is this so difficult?  "Oooh, I
know, let's replace a simple crappy system with a really complex crappy
system!"  Oh yeah, that's the OSS innovation we all wanted.  Thanks.

And don't even get me started on the fact that I have two mac laptops and
a linux box, and I need some way to synchronize their libraries on disk
(which is easy) and in the stupid apps.  But since everyone wants to
maintain their own database of the files, and no one provides an external,
automateable indexing function, no dice.  Yeah, thanks.  "Apple:  We make
the easy things easy and everything else impossible, and we insult you if
you try them!"

But really, that just makes me mad.  What really pisses me off is that my
stupid linux box refuses to power off my LCD if it's connected via the DVI
port.  Oh yeah, it's a bug.  It's a bug that was fixed three years ago.
It's a bug that's been patched.  About ten times.  By ten different
people.  For each linux distro.  And Debian even ships with a patch.  But
it doesn't work.  I recompiled xfree86.  Four times.  Still nothing.

So, I take my expensive digital display and connect it to the stupid
analog port.  Except when I briefly (wonderfully) had two LCDs connected,
the primary via DVI and the secondary via VGA.  That was even better:  The
primary wouldn't power off and the secondary would not even blank.  That
was really cool.

Xfree86 sucks, and I hope all those xfree86 core developers, sitting in
their parents' basements with no pants, have to suffer through their own
code for the rest of eternity and aren't allowed to use the newer, better
code that I'm hoping will supplant this crap.

Oooh, and the primary has a USB hub in it, so I (stupidly) connected my
USB mouse to it, because hey, it's USB, that's cool.  Except that it won't
power itself off.  So I have to.  And when I power it back on, well, the
mouse doesn't work anymore.  I got about 10 very helpful messages that the
mouse driver was already loaded, but, well, the stupid mouse never worked.
Bouncy bouncy.

I just discovered this list today, but you guys may be hearing a lot from
me.  I've got a lot of software hate.

Luke Kanies

-- 
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but
they've always worked for me.                     -- Hunter S. Thompson

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