Nobody seems to realize how truly ancient Linux is. We're living in the internet age when 5 years is a long time and 10 an eternity, yet Linux is over 40 years old. It wasn't known by that name 40 years ago but that hardly matters since it's hardly changed since. Linux dates back to a prehistoric era when computer dinosaurs roamed the Earth and stern patriarchs ruled the home. And it shows!
Dictatorship
Linux has 40 years' worth of mistakes and missed opportunities accumulated in a gigantic pile of crap. First was refusing to use a capability security model in favour of intrinsically broken access control lists. Oh sure, the morons at the time didn't know ACLs were intrinsically broken. What they DID know was that ACLs appealed to evil totalitarian power-hungry pieces of shit. Far from taking the hint, they considered it a plus! Which is why Linux's model of users is still based on Fascism.
Stalin would approve of a unique special super-user that has total control over every other user's existence. Everything from creating users to parceling out resources to controlling which groups exist and who belongs to them. Approve? That's putting it mildly. Stalin could only DREAM of having this much power. Yet moronic programmers don't think twice about the dictatorship that's hard-coded in this supposedly "multi-user" OS.
Apparently, not only do most people think totalitarian dictatorship's a fine solution to political problems, they also think it's the first and best solution. Something de rigueur and hardly worth mentioning. My mind boggles.
Low Level
The second mistake was becoming wedded to an intrinsically decrepit low-level programming language. I'll remind you that LISP had already been invented by then so it was clear that C was horrifically low-level. That too was considered a plus! But it didn't stop there since Ken Thompson made his inability to grasp higher-level abstractions blatant when he went on to create Plan 9 at Bell Labs.
Plan 9 is "what Unix should have been". It is an abject failure even by Thompson's rather miserable standards (processes aren't really files in Plan 9 and can't be copied using file tools). In 1980, Xerox PARC released Smalltalk-80. Did Ken Thompson learn anything from it? Fuck no. Throughout the 80s and even in the late 90s when object-orientation was the buzzword of the day, the whole concept of objects was completely beyond Ken Thompson. You see, he was still obsessed with FILES.
The fact that Linux failed to stick to its paradigm of everything-is-a-file when the need for a graphical system came along never made Thompson think twice about whether this pathetic files+bytestream filters paradigm was good enough. The fact that Smalltalk was awe-inspiringly beautiful apparently never crossed his mind either. No, he spent over a decade trying to redeem his failure. Trying to prove that he wasn't some overpaid loser that got lucky and struck it rich.
Which just goes to show: living in the past doesn't pay off, it only proves you're a loser has-been incapable of moving on. Ever heard of "moving on" Ken? Bah, never mind. Alan Kay never learned to move on after his failure to create a programming language for children either. Hint: it can't be done because half the population lacks analysis and can't master programming at any age.
No Graphics
That's another thing, Linux grew up long before 2D graphics was a gleam in anyone's eyes. And it never, ever integrated it. X Window is a piece of crap that's officially "not part of the operating system" despite the fact it had to run as super-user with the ability to crash the machine at will. This was considered a plus!
That's right, just because a major piece of the programmatic base of the machine violates ALL OF the fundamental principles of the OS, that's no cause for concern. Just say it's "not part of the OS" and you can pat yourself on the back for fixing the problem. And who cares if they don't integrate together?
I mean, it's not like anyone would ever want the window they're using to be given absolute priority by the machine! It's not like Linux is suddenly an interactive operating system just because it's suddenly got graphics. Who cares if windows suddenly become unresponsive? Batch processing and teletypes are so much better! It's not like users want to actually be in control. It's not like they want the machine to be responsive.
More than 25 years later, and Linux still can't handle 2D graphics correctly. How many years has it been since 3D graphics became commonplace? At the rate it's stagnating, Linux will have integrated 3D graphics in about 100 years. That's 50 years for the first half-wit systems developer to grasp what 3D is good for in operating systems, and another 50 years for Linux to get it. So yeah, in the year 2110, Linux might be fit for use by our generation.
Metaphors Make Bad Models
Let's not even go into the "desktop" and "office" metaphors. Because the whole notion of using, let alone relying on, metaphors in systems design is vile, repulsive and disgusting. It's the kind of crap that ought to get your design credentials revoked for life. Yet again, software developers consider it a plus! Then again, software developers have always been pretty contemptuous of everyday users.
Fucking "icons" as if users were weak-minded retarded morons who can't possibly learn what an object's representation means without it superficially resembling something completely different they're already overly familiar with. You'd almost think users were as retarded as software developers. That'll be the day. When users spend all of their time on projects 90% of which fail to deliver any value to anyone then we can start comparing users to developers.
Fucking technological obsession, as if there weren't perfectly good buttons on the keyboard to use in concert with a button-less mouse. Ever heard of synergy?! It's a word. If you don't know what it means then go back, back to the 80s! But no, a mouse is a Holy Technological Artifact and a keyboard is a Completely Separate Holy Technological Artifact, and never the twain shall meet in the mind of the users. Why, it would be sacrilege!
Ever wonder why there has to be a metaphor of the physical mouse inside of the user's model of their workspace? I did and the answer is obvious: because software developers are too fucking stupid to understand "the user's model of their workspace". In fact, software developers are too fucking stupid to understand that what's inside the computer isn't their workspace!
Proof: you only have one mouse, so you "should" have only one mouse pointer, right? Wrong! You should have two. That way you can swap between them at will. You leave one somewhere then swap and move the other one to the other end, then hit some key (on the keyboard) and all the objects between your pointers get selected. It is fucking obvious when you think about it. It is fucking obvious when you're unhappy with drag-selection being modal and bother to spend just a few hours coming up with something better!
Yet it's equally "obvious" to an OS developer that what's inside your workspace really belongs to them. They're programming software drivers for one mouse so in their atrophied minds, it's obvious there can only be one pointer. Never mind what's in your mind, because you don't matter!
Conclusion
It's amazingly difficult to convey exactly how ancient, how capricious, how fucked up, and how totally dysfunctional this piece of crapware called Linux is.
It's vile, incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory, meaningless, arbitrary, senseless, ad hoc, unprincipled, bloated, arrogant, dictatorial, fetid, rotten, corrupt, and just plain evil. That's when it's working. When its laughable insecurity (called "security" for some incomprehensible reason - I suppose it sounds better) hasn't been cracked open like an eggshell, your computer crashed and all your data corrupted.
And do you want to know why? It's because software developers are egotistical pricks. They have the same cognitive type as engineers, physicists and economists. But they have fewer limitations imposed on their work. They don't answer to physical reality, they don't answer to their peers thirsting for power & knowledge, and they don't answer to rich & powerful masters wanting to oppress the poor. They answer only to themselves. And that's why Linux is a pile of decrepit unusable crap.
To a software developer, running amock having "fun" is called hacking ... and it's a plus!
A warning to the people
The good and the evil
This is war
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23 comments:
Hmm, I think I'd get hits from google on this post if I renamed it to Why Linux Sucks. Am I enough of an attention whore to give up a great title? No, no I'm not.
Any suggestions?
Hmmm as a linux user I have to agree but hell,i've nothing else to do but fuck about getting know where,thats what linux is about,right?
Or a PC user. It's been theorized as far back as two decades ago that the main psychological difference between a Mac and PC user is the latter gets a feeling of achievement or satisfaction from getting their machine to work at all.
& How's Your Kernel coming along, Hmm? You know, that OS you've been working on? Will I be able to download, try & install if for free? Can I burn it to a DVD, CD, USB stick, SD card or install over a network? Can I modify the source code to suit my individual hardware & software needs? Do you have a dedicated community of developers willing to volunteer their time & services to improve my user experience? Will Kulix be used on the next supercomputers & my next smartphone?
LOL. I needed a laugh today. I agree, Linux is crap. Decided to play with it awhile on an old machine I'm about to retire. After a few hours trying to get it to see all the hardware (that XP or "7" can find by itself) I gave up. If I got to go to the command-prompt just to get an O/S running these days then the O/S is still stuck in the 80's.
Would you like your computer to be a democracy?
How about giving lil' ole me a say in how your computer works?
Actually, it's not your computer, because it's nobody's. Why are you dictating it you remorseless DICTATOR?
WOW what angst, X11 had windows before mshit had windows.X11 is not part of the operating system because it's not meant to be so no BSOD, X crashes you have a console damn that sucks. As for C you go write to hardware in lisp and see how far you get, I await your hardware interface libraries without holding my breath, just because you can't code is no reason to complain. Linux installs on everything I have used in the last 11 years, sure 0.99l was harder but hey I'm not computer illiterate. Buy OSX I know it's only based on BSD which is you know unix but shhh don't tell anyone and you can pretend steve jobs made it.
ja, it's funny to see such ignorant people talking about what they can't even comprehend, this guy is obviously frustrated because he wasn't even able to know how to use the "ls" command , or because it's a vagrant with just primary-level education that never needed to debug a program or make a serious engineering or scientific work ,but i understand, such pathetic monkeys that only does use a computer for chating or playing browser based games could never understand the freedom and power of open source software, so, have fun playing, my beloved pig, your puny mind can't see beyond the chains that bind you to Gate's or Job's dick
if you send soldiers to war, do you give them completely disassembled tanks ???
After having to deal with file rights issues caused by sudo and fixed via chmod, chgrp and chown, I must concur. Linux sucks donkey balls.
Here's a tip: Never run a command as sudo unless you need to. Good luck knowing whether or not you need to. Good luck keeping your environment clear in your mind when doing anything that moves, copies or touches files or directories.
yaa.. Linux is shit for home use.
But i think it is what is called liberty.
A free man have to work more than a slave to get what he intent.But for slave what he intent is what his master intent.
There's a Turkish proverb saying: there's no good steak with free meat!
the whole Linux distroes with all bunch of funky programming languages designed for them are piece of absolute crap.
There's no use in using Linux at all. On all hardware, Windows operates perfect. Now, when you install Linux on your piece of hardware, you can see the difference.
I agree with Richard. I've been using Linux since Redhat 7. I've used differnt distro's on numerous different motherboard/cpu combo's and out of the 100's of installs done, I can remember 2 or 3 that went flawlessly. Same amount of windows installs and I can recall 5 to 10 that failed. If after 40 years the "developers" still can't get linux to work properly than something is wrong. People want their computer to work, not spend hours searching forums and howto's just to get their pc to function correctly. All this talk about linux being wonderful and easy to use reminds me of politicians who promise the world but deliver a 20 year old atlas. I just installed lubuntu 14 next to xp on an old p4 machine. Everything works fine in Xp but lubuntu locks up the mouse within 4 seconds of logon. That isn't a useable computer. That's inneptitude and incompetence. I've tried mint 17 on the same computer and can't even get to a login screen; text or graphical. These linux fan bois can praise linux all they want but until they get this simple stuff right then they'll stay stuck with the meagre market share. I love/hate linux but it has so much potential going to waste. Get the bloody screen and mouse going and maybe people with give it a go. Windows has improved immensely over the years but linux still can't get a mouse and screen working. That tells me a lot.
I so much enjoyed the start of this article. Then I read the comments and realised the author is a fan of the shittest linux version EVAH - OS X.
:facepalm:
You haven't put Unix in a historial context. C was developed because it was too hard\error prone\unproductive to write programs in assembly language. Unix is obsessed with files because they are necessary. See how Unix handles 20000+ files in a fresh Moodle installation with ease compared with Windows. Microsoft even had to write a wrapper for their Windows API to get C Programmers on side. In Windows fopen() is a wrapper for CreateFile().
Unix as a web server or embedded in a telephone exchange or in a bank is fine. At home the fun applications run on other operating systems.
In a historical context CPM didn't even have subdirectories.
Digital with VMS didn't last long. The point of Unix is input and output. Fast.
Then there is the process model. Unix can fork() something Windows didn't replicate until the mid 90s with multi-threading and mad COM out-of-process nonsense.
File permissions can be a nightmare, I admit, but you just do the minimum to get by. That's good enough.
You haven't put Unix in a historial context. C was developed because it was too hard\error prone\unproductive to write programs in assembly language. Unix is obsessed with files because they are necessary. See how Unix handles 20000+ files in a fresh Moodle installation with ease compared with Windows. Microsoft even had to write a wrapper for their Windows API to get C Programmers on side. In Windows fopen() is a wrapper for CreateFile().
Unix as a web server or embedded in a telephone exchange or in a bank is fine. At home the fun applications run on other operating systems.
In a historical context CPM didn't even have subdirectories.
Digital with VMS didn't last long. The point of Unix is input and output. Fast.
Then there is the process model. Unix can fork() something Windows didn't replicate until the mid 90s with multi-threading and mad COM out-of-process nonsense.
File permissions can be a nightmare, I admit, but you just do the minimum to get by. That's good enough.
Well, Gaian scum, "the minimum to get by" just isn't good enough.
C was invented after LISP already existed, so it is a historical downgrade.
UNIX was explicitly a castrated version of MULTICS. People knew better than to create access control lists but they still did because it provided for caste-based social organizations of users. Which is something you value positively and something that any sane person (ie, a person NOT of your personality type) despises and deplores.
Go collar yourself you worthless slave. Maybe someone will enslave you and you'll have a master to take care of your sexual needs. Because for a certainty you have no brain and no mind to think with. Everything with you is about consumer demand and not about abstractions or concepts, because your brain is incapable of processing either abstractions OR concepts.
So basically, you should never speak to me as you are of an inferior caste to me. And you will remember this after I slap you in the face sufficiently. And oh how much I wish I could slap you across the face right now. I would do so hard with the back of my hand, and then I would pull out brass knuckles as a warning.
Shut the fuck up you retarded unthinking dereistic evolution-worshiping Gaian scum. You fucking mutant abortion of evolution.
The author sees beyond everyday horizon! His criticism of the OS tells the story of developers with only technical knowledge.
In my opinion a wise way to approach this is to know yourself. Do what Victor E. Frankl says - do it yourself. Only then you can find meaning.
A practical guide to DIY:
- don't try to replace everything at once. there are thousands of man years of work.
- first do conceptual blockbusting. this is hard. you are grasping at concepts worth years of study.
- erode the existing system. capture the concepts in LISP. where you don't have time use existing functionality. otherwise DIY the concept.
- enable communication in the system
- repeat
Do not lump Unix and Linux together as if they are one and the same.
Linux is a hack (kludge) of Unix, and it is not nearly the same quality of coding.
Torvalds convinced a bunch of people (via Usenet) to join his circle-jerk and hack an OS. I've tried Linux many times over the past 20 years (and used BSD and Irix also). I see no real progress with Linux on the desktop. Yeah, there are some new DE/GUI choices, mostly the same paradigm.
The fact is, most 'distros' can't even set 1920x1080 native resolution in a VM or bare metal. This is the most common monitor resolution for the past 10+ years. Most distros cannot even self-configure networking. Hell, Windows 2000 did it better.
Open-Solaris and BSD can self-configure networking and 1920x1080 res, both offer ZFS, and do -not- use systemd.
Moreover, Windows 10 Enterprise (LTSB) features a developer mode with a complete Linux shell, capable of running various GUI's with a few tweaks. Linux apps? Most were cloned from Unix.
Internet, web, and File Servers? Many are BSD based boxes (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etal).
Why the hell does anyone bother with Linus' kludge when we've got Unix, OSX, and Win10 + bash?
Agreed so hard. Linux is pile of garbage.
When I tinker long enough with Linux (which I invariably do) then strange thing start to happen.
Things start to randomly change. Sometimes the graphical interface would break and I would not be able to get past the text mode.
Luckily I didn't experience that now. I have a graphical login screen with various options (GNOME, Cinnamon, etc.). Now I noticed that a could of options randomly appear or disappear at every boot.
Also there is an icon at the top right of the Gnome shell. Sometimes it shows a battery, sometimes it shows a power button.
So, yeah...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11939851 <- this is a link to an interview with Alan Kay. I thought you might find it interesting.
You’re mean
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