Why Linux sucks


The trouble with Linux on desktop is mainly with hardware. There is almost no officially compatible hardware so you have no chance fully knowing whatever everything will works before a purchase.

  • Incomplete HID support. Even something as simple as mouse wheel can’t be configured to the same extend as on Windows or Mac OS X. When configuring mouse wheel to switch between browsers tabs using tilt (AC Pan), Linux partial support of HID causes that the release events are not reported which causes issue when this action is triggered repeatedly.
  • My desktop Z77 motherboard (Asus P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt) is connected to 5 PWM fans but in Linux the speed of the 5th fan is not reported and neither can it be controlled. This incomplete implementation in nct6775 is known but will newer be fixed.
  • Nouveau is unusable mainly because of lack of vsync with non-GL compositors. (Nvidia drivers can be at least configured so screen tearing will never occur but not with Nouveau.) Again, it can’t even detect the actual number of fans and report correct RPM (after a “fix”, it always expects 2 fans). VDPAU is also unusable.
  • Bay Trail devices are basically unusable. Lenovo tablet Miix 3 under Linux has only partially working Wi-Fi and almost unusable touchscreen and brightness, sound, power management, Bluetooth, accelerometer and camera. Also no Linux distro comes with 32 bit UEFI support out of the box so it requires some DIY. It’s fully according to EFI specifications but distributions just don’t care.
  • How about some TV? USB DVB-T dongles with IT9135 chip (Evolve Mars) are supposed to be supported, right? Wrong! After couple of hours of usage during few weeks plugged in a server, picture starts to gradually corrupt until it stops working correctly. Only solution is to unplug and replug device (as restart doesn’t help).
  • Some bugs in libata are terrifying (and some of them were fixed quite recently). They claim that it’s Micron, Crucial and Samsung who have broken queued trim in their SSD and not libata. Some people suggest that the issue is related to too high queue depth. But who knows?
  • No way to have full control over default permissions. Umask manages that but it will not (for security purposes) anything higher than 666.
  • No way to set default file owner/group within for a chosen path. ACL do a good job but because of a different design philosophy, it will not apply ACLs to copied files (using “cp”) from elsewhere.

Software

  • EFISTUB is great way to avoid having a additional bootloader (GRUB). Unfortunately kernel boot parameters are saved in boot record of either UEFI or bootloader (GRUB). When you want to have the chance to boot from removable device, you need to use GRUB to specify the root volume. The only other way would be hardcoding it in cmdline of rebuild/repacked kernel. That doesn’t seem like good solution.

Here’s another great summary of Main Linux problems on the desktop.

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