Chris, As I read your post, I was immediately reminded of the endless hours I spent rebuilding NT & Exchange Servers because of failed Service Packs and other "upgrades". This was doubly frustrating because, once we repaired the server(s), we would usually discover that 3rd party vendor apps (print tracking, time&billing) were incompatible with the current SP. The most damaging "upgrade" was Exchange Server 5.5, SP 2, which corrupted - well - everything and I got to sit on the phone with the "Evil Empire" for 14 hours straight and manually change the entire registry. *shiver* Then there was IE 6, which hosed all our JavaScript procedures provided by 3rd party vendor portals - such as Streaming Video. They simply wouldn't load at the front-end anymore. Not a good thing for a media-based corporation on a global landscape. Regardless, even if Windoze doesn't crash as much as Linux - I can live with it, especially right now. Why? Because of the cost. I gave six presentations last week which required illustrating timelines, resource usage, and other aspects of ERP. I used StarOffice 6.0 and Mr. Project: total cost = $60. Had I used MS Office (2k or XPee) - I would have to shell out $400 clams (USD). Oh! Wait! MS Project is not part of the Office suite, so that's another *gulp* $600(USD)! ...and don't forget about extra licenses for my staff. I'm a consultant nowadays - and those prices are simply not justifiable to me, especially now that there are more economical alternatives. Linux is evolving, as it always should - I look at this as a very exciting time. It reminds me of the mid-80's when 486 fever began sweeping the U.S. The difference is that there's a huge knowledge base this time around - accessible to anyone and everyone at any time. Linux is stepping into the ring with Goliath. I'm bringin' my slingshot. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Carlen" <crcarle@sandia.gov> To: "SuSE" <suse-linux-e@suse.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 5:11 PM Subject: [SLE] My patience has run out
Sorry folks, but as a long time Linux user since Slackware, and Linux kernel 1.2.8, who has tirelessly advocated Linux to my professional colleagues, hoping one day they would realize how much better Linux is to use on their desktops than Windows (but they never believe me, and maybe I don't believe it anymore either), I have become so disappointed with my recent experiences with Suse 8.1 that I really want to just give up. Maybe I will try reviewing another Linux distro in a another few months when I have some more time. But I have blown several days without acheiving even a modicum of useability out of this thing, uncovering nothing but quirks and bugs, that I just can't take it anymore.
I could spend several more hours documenting my problems in even more detail than I have recorded here, to submit to Suse so they might improve it, but I have work to do. I have had a similar experience with StarOffice recently, after several weeks of work on a document, I began to spend most of my time documenting bugs and not doing any work. I can't have this as a hobby anymore, I need to do work, I need to have food to eat at the end of the day. So I gave up on OpenOffice, and now I am reaching the same level of frustration with Suse 8.1. I have been using 7.3 for about a year, which has worked reasonably well after the several weeks I spent getting it tuned up a while back.
I am a user in a corporate environment, and everyone around me is working without a hitch on the system I despise with all my faculties, Windows, and I waste hour after hour fussing with this thing to get the most basic things to work right. Here are some of the things that went wrong in 8.1:
1. Having two konqueror windows open in 8.1: Copy file in one window doesn't make the paste option become available in the other window. This used to be so. Why is it not now? I posted about this before and some folks have responded that they either don't have the problem or were on KDE 3.0.4. I just can't accept continued headaches about such a simple operation that should be intutive. Perhaps something got screwed up on mine, but if it is that easy to cause wierd quirks to develop after using the system for only a few hours, then I can't have that. I should go back to Slackware and fvwm.
2. If I have klipper running, I can copy a file from one konqueror, then if I go to klipper and select the file that I just copied, the paste button becomes active in the other konqueror! Things are looking up, but when I click the paste button in the other konqueror, it gives me a dialog "Konqueror, Filename for clipboard content:" with a space to type in something. Well if I wanted to type long filenames, I would be using a terminal. I know this is asking for the filename to give the copied item, but this isn't very logical considering that it was clearly a file that I am trying to pastet is now what should happen when I click the paste button. I would suggest, that PASTING should happen!
3. Mozilla of course has Java broken by the decision to compile it with the new gcc. But it also has no mail or newsgroups window! What the heck is this? Great decision to install Mozilla, but pretty lame to have broken it almost completely. As usual, it's better to install it myself.
4. Let's try the documentation. Back in the 6.4 days, the documentation tools were simple but actually useable, with the web interface. Since the 7.x versions, I have hated the Suse life preserver icon, and it never gets any better.
The first annoying thing is having to make an index or whatever to use the search, which has to be done as root. Why can't this just all work because the packages were installed?
Next stop within the Suse help center: "Linux documentation." Here we have a great chance to make Linux look like something other than a dark ages UNIX in pretty wrapping paper. What do we see? Info pages and man pages. Man pages will always man pages, and they are fine. But info pages are so patheticly disorganized that their inclusion in this manner is almost useless. Hint: get them in alphabetical order, and if that list is too long then categorize them and alphebetize the subsections. But the present arrangment, which has been the case for years now, is a disorganized mess, and is inappropriate on an OS desktop that might even remotely possibly appear in a business climate.
The man pages are organized into sections, that is good. When I click a section and see the list of commands, I see a "no idea yet" next to each one. That is very bad folks. This looks like something is terribly wrong. Fortuately, clicking a command does at least produce a man page.
Let's go to the Development|Languages section of the Suse help. You know, I have heard that C is an important language in Linux. I would anticipate that one of the first language references I would encounter in the development section would be titled something like "C." Nope. Instead I find a list of four things, two of which I've never heard of, and only two of which are useable. The "gperf" selection gives results.
The java2-jre selection gives a page with some links. Clicking any of them gives a "could not connect to host" error. Hint: it is bad to depend on external web sites for your documentation. At least if you need to link outside, provide the links in a form that people can copy to their usual web browser, which may have the necessary proxy configuration set up, which is probably why this help is broken. Very dumb.
Clicking "phoenix" causes nothing to happen, the help center still shows whatever I was looking at last, the error message. I would count that as another in the lengthy growing list of bugs.
Finally, "SELFHTML" works but it is in German. Ok.
In Libraries, there is the glibc info fortunately converted into a working html interface.
Well the documentation is such a disaster, that I just can't believe it. I know the searching is broken, because I read about it on Suse's web site. But this is really really inexcusable. This stuff is basic, fundamental, core, critical, elementary components of the system, that are just horribly buggy.
5. I was originally writing this list of gripes in kwrite 4.0 (KDE 3.0.3). Some sequence of actions that I performed caused kwrite to explode several words of my text onto different lines. This happened twice and was very irritating to have to go and unexplode the text, so I copied the text into OpenOffice. I have never experienced such problems in KDE editors before, so I would say there is something very broken in this editor, which is not good for such a basic tool which should be absolutely dependable.
6. Let's see if OpenOffice as installed and polished by Suse is able to impress this business user: The default font in OpenOffice is Times. I type some random text with Times, and it looks like crap because the characters are practically laying on top of each other, and the cursor doesn't sit just after a typed character like it should, but lies sort of right on top of the characters. Changing to 14 point and type some more, the new chars are more widely spaced, but not taller than the 12 pt. 16 pt. Scales up, but 18 pt. Is the same as 16. The spacing scales, so presumably the print looks fine, but this is the same scaling awkwardness that I've experienced in StarOffice/OpenOffice for years (yes I know how to make it just the way I want by a very extensive manual overhaul of the X font installation, but that shouldn't be needed in Suse 8.1 in the year 2002, it should just all be perfect), and which is slowly getting better, but this is still not good enough for the business desktop.
I switch to Utopia, and this font is antialiased, but Times wasn't. Gotta love the consistency folks! A sequence of 18 pt., 16 pt., 14 pt., 12 pt., and 10 pt. Chars typed in Utopia scale beautifully. Why didn't Times? I don't really care, I just want whatever fonts there are to work right, and the standard here could be considered the Utopia. Therefore, Times is either broken or limited, and this should have been polished.
7. Several times now while typing in OpenOffice, I have had some sort of menu from KDE pop up on top of my typing. The pop-up menu related to inserting or opening URLs ?local file URL, actions for file...; send URL; send file...?. I don't know what sequence of actions makes this happen as I can't make it repeat, but it is very annoying. Ah, I see it is klipper, and it pops up when I highlight and delete a line of text in OpenOffice! Whatever enhancement to useablility this program was trying to accomplish, it has instead proved to be a confusing annoyance. Oh, and I looked at the documentation for klipper, and the KDE application manual refers to being able to configure it to act like Windows or UNIX, by following this instruction:
?In order to change clipboard modes, select Preferences from the Klipper pop-up menu, and in the dialog box that appears, select the General tab. The Synchronize contents of the clipboard and the selection check box determines the clipboard mode. If the box is selected, the clipboard functions in the UNIX. mode; if not, the Windows./Mac. mode is used. ?
Well, this selection doesn't exist in the klipper I have. Just another example of the disorganized mess.
Well, I have spent an afternoon wasting time describing the problems, and finding more problems at such a high rate that I am left with no other choice but to conclude that this distribution is unuseable for business in it's current state. I could spend another few weeks cleaning it all up, but I have work to do. Maybe hobbyists have that kind of time to play with their toys, but I have work to do, and this doesn't fit the bill. Can someone point me to a professional computer user's OS that works please?
A sad day.
-- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
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