USB hotplugging subfs automounting disaster and other complaints
Hi: I plugged in my USB flash stick into my 9.1 box, copied a file to my hard drive, then pulled the device. Apparently, this time the system decided not to unmount it. Then I plugged it back in a little while later. Now it's all screwed up. mount says it's mounted, but nothing shows in the Konqueror for the mount point. Then a few minutes later the directories show up, but I get error messages when I try to look into anything. I cannot unmount the drive to reset things. It says "illegal seek". I did use the -f option, as root to attempt unmounting. Fortunately, though I thought I would have to reboot this thing, after shutting down X now root could unmount the device. I cannot get through even a few hours on any Linux desktop box without entering commands as root to clear up quirks. Bah! This removable media stuff (among other things) really needs to made *perfectly dependable* and non-quirky. The way it is now will have the Windows users running back to Bill G. ready to kiss his buttocks. The reality of using a Linux desktop to do complex general purpose computing in a professional capacity does not even match 10% of the hype. We need to become The Linux desktop is not yet ready without further serious polishing. Ease of install is not the issue anymore. It has to work well without quirks. The distributions need to team up and get some consistency in the way things work. It's really ridiculous to have two or more different configuration "control panels" for a system, neither of which can configure everything, which still requires hand editing config files. Then when you use another distro, it's totally different. Then when you update your distro after 6 months, you find that the way of handling things like removable media is totally different. What will they decide to do in another 6 months? Are they trying to impress themselves in the developers cubicles with clever new ways of doing things, or trying to make a consistent and dependable OS? In some applications I single click, in others I must double click to get the same effect. The font antialiasing uses subpixel hinting in KDE apps, not in non-KDE apps. So they look inconsistent. OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it). Some of this isn't Suse's fault, I understand that. The point is more general, pertaining to the state of Linux desktop OS across all distros, and the way they all seem to be making their own way. Choice and freedom is great, and I want that. The world and the IT market desperately needs it. But there has to be consistency as well between distros and between versions of the same distro. SuSE insists on compiling open source apps like OpenOffice with their own wierd tweaks, and then wrapping the program in scripts to fix stuff that they think is broken. Unfortunately, in my years of experience with Suse, I have found this breaks more things than it fixes, and I almost always have to uninstall the Suse Mozilla and OpenOffice to install the vanilla ones, which miraculously work just fine. Why waste time and effort on recompiling them and writing several hundred line wrapper scripts then? What's worse, if you try to update the programs using the vanilla from the actual originating projects, the installers of course don't know anything about Suse's tweaks. So you wind up with even more inconsistencies. It would be Ok if Suse planned to provide prompt update packages for the programs like Mozilla and OOo whenever they are updated at their originating projects, but this doesn't happen. So they only way to get updated programs if you want to play the Suse way is to update the Suse distribution every time, which as I have mentioned brings with it a whole hoard of unexpected difficulties. Ok, rant over. Good day! -- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
Hi, I like the way you made your point :-). Each incremental success Linux achieves towards becoming a complete desktop product gets us that much closer to reducing our reliance on Bill from Redmond’s products. We ARE making steady progress towards this goal. I for one will sit waiting patiently for that day. Regards, Rocky crcarle@sandia.gov (Chris Carlen), 6/8/04, -0700, 10:55 AM
Hi:
I plugged in my USB flash stick into my 9.1 box, copied a file to my hard drive, then pulled the device. Apparently, this time the system decided not to unmount it. Then I plugged it back in a little while later.
Now it's all screwed up. mount says it's mounted, but nothing shows in the Konqueror for the mount point. Then a few minutes later the directories show up, but I get error messages when I try to look into anything.
I cannot unmount the drive to reset things. It says "illegal seek". I did use the -f option, as root to attempt unmounting.
Fortunately, though I thought I would have to reboot this thing, after shutting down X now root could unmount the device.
I cannot get through even a few hours on any Linux desktop box without entering commands as root to clear up quirks.
Bah!
This removable media stuff (among other things) really needs to made *perfectly dependable* and non-quirky. The way it is now will have the Windows users running back to Bill G. ready to kiss his buttocks. The reality of using a Linux desktop to do complex general purpose computing in a professional capacity does not even match 10% of the hype. We need to become
The Linux desktop is not yet ready without further serious polishing. Ease of install is not the issue anymore. It has to work well without quirks. The distributions need to team up and get some consistency in the way things work. It's really ridiculous to have two or more different configuration "control panels" for a system, neither of which can configure everything, which still requires hand editing config files. Then when you use another distro, it's totally different. Then when you update your distro after 6 months, you find that the way of handling things like removable media is totally different. What will they decide to do in another 6 months? Are they trying to impress themselves in the developers cubicles with clever new ways of doing things, or trying to make a consistent and dependable OS?
In some applications I single click, in others I must double click to get the same effect. The font antialiasing uses subpixel hinting in KDE apps, not in non-KDE apps. So they look inconsistent. OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it). Some of this isn't Suse's fault, I understand that. The point is more general, pertaining to the state of Linux desktop OS across all distros, and the way they all seem to be making their own way. Choice and freedom is great, and I want that. The world and the IT market desperately needs it. But there has to be consistency as well between distros and between versions of the same distro.
SuSE insists on compiling open source apps like OpenOffice with their own wierd tweaks, and then wrapping the program in scripts to fix stuff that they think is broken. Unfortunately, in my years of experience with Suse, I have found this breaks more things than it fixes, and I almost always have to uninstall the Suse Mozilla and OpenOffice to install the vanilla ones, which miraculously work just fine. Why waste time and effort on recompiling them and writing several hundred line wrapper scripts then?
What's worse, if you try to update the programs using the vanilla from the actual originating projects, the installers of course don't know anything about Suse's tweaks. So you wind up with even more inconsistencies. It would be Ok if Suse planned to provide prompt update packages for the programs like Mozilla and OOo whenever they are updated at their originating projects, but this doesn't happen. So they only way to get updated programs if you want to play the Suse way is to update the Suse distribution every time, which as I have mentioned brings with it a whole hoard of unexpected difficulties.
Ok, rant over.
Good day!
-- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
On Tuesday 08 Jun 2004 18:55, Chris Carlen wrote:
Hi:
I plugged in my USB flash stick into my 9.1 box, copied a file to my hard drive, then pulled the device. Apparently, this time the system decided not to unmount it. Then I plugged it back in a little while later.
Now it's all screwed up. mount says it's mounted, but nothing shows in the Konqueror for the mount point. Then a few minutes later the directories show up, but I get error messages when I try to look into anything.
I cannot unmount the drive to reset things. It says "illegal seek". I did use the -f option, as root to attempt unmounting.
Fortunately, though I thought I would have to reboot this thing, after shutting down X now root could unmount the device.
I cannot get through even a few hours on any Linux desktop box without entering commands as root to clear up quirks.
Bah!
This removable media stuff (among other things) really needs to made *perfectly dependable* and non-quirky. The way it is now will have the Windows users running back to Bill G. ready to kiss his buttocks. The reality of using a Linux desktop to do complex general purpose computing in a professional capacity does not even match 10% of the hype. We need to become
BUT at least you CAN clear the problems and you dont have to completely reboot the machine like you would in that crapware from M$ Corp the Linux desktop has been ready for a while now it´s just too many comparrisons being made with that crapware from M$ Corp
The Linux desktop is not yet ready without further serious polishing. Ease of install is not the issue anymore. It has to work well without quirks. The distributions need to team up and get some consistency in the way things work. It's really ridiculous to have two or more different configuration "control panels" for a system, neither of which can configure everything, which still requires hand editing config files. Then when you use another distro, it's totally different. Then when you update your distro after 6 months, you find that the way of handling things like removable media is totally different. What will they decide to do in another 6 months? Are they trying to impress themselves in the developers cubicles with clever new ways of doing things, or trying to make a consistent and dependable OS?
In some applications I single click, in others I must double click to get the same effect. The font antialiasing uses subpixel hinting in KDE apps, not in non-KDE apps. So they look inconsistent.
OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it). but there you go again too man comparrisons with that crapware from M$ Corp you see unless you are Re- Educated to remove the M$ Corp blinkers you will never be satisfied you could rename windBlows to Linux and because it is not called windBlows you would complain and start the M$ Corp comparrisons once again ..
Some of this isn't Suse's fault, I understand that. The point is more general, pertaining to the state of Linux desktop OS across all distros, and the way they all seem to be making their own way. Choice and freedom is great, and I want that. The world and the IT market desperately needs it. But there has to be consistency as well between distros and between versions of the same distro.
SuSE insists on compiling open source apps like OpenOffice with their own wierd tweaks, and then wrapping the program in scripts to fix stuff that they think is broken. Unfortunately, in my years of experience with Suse, I have found this breaks more things than it fixes, and I almost always have to uninstall the Suse Mozilla and OpenOffice to install the vanilla ones, which miraculously work just fine. Why waste time and effort on recompiling them and writing several hundred line wrapper scripts then?
What's worse, if you try to update the programs using the vanilla from the actual originating projects, the installers of course don't know anything about Suse's tweaks. So you wind up with even more inconsistencies. It would be Ok if Suse planned to provide prompt update packages for the programs like Mozilla and OOo whenever they are updated at their originating projects, but this doesn't happen. So they only way to get updated programs if you want to play the Suse way is to update the Suse distribution every time, which as I have mentioned brings with it a whole hoard of unexpected difficulties.
Ok, rant over.
Good day!
-- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
-- Linux user No: 256242 Machine No: 139931 G6NJR Pete also MSA registered "Quinton 11" A Linux Only area Happy bug hunting M$ clan PGN
peter Nikolic wrote:
I cannot get through even a few hours on any Linux desktop box without entering commands as root to clear up quirks.
BUT at least you CAN clear the problems and you dont have to completely reboot the machine like you would in that crapware from M$ Corp
Sometimes. Other times the problems are beyond my understanding, and rather than wait two days hoping for a solution from someone on a list or newsgroup, one must reboot. This is comparatively rare for me, since I have been doing Linux for 10 years. But I imagine for new users, this rebooting is the only way out of many problems for them. Though I agree that in theory, this is almost never necessary.
the Linux desktop has been ready for a while now it4s just too many comparrisons being made with that crapware from M$ Corp
OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it).
but there you go again too man comparrisons with that crapware from M$ Corp you see unless you are Re- Educated to remove the M$ Corp blinkers you will never be satisfied you could rename windBlows to Linux and because it is not called windBlows you would complain and start the M$ Corp comparrisons once again ..
Here you are grossly mistaken. You are assuming that I am comparing to Windows. I am not. I have been using Linux as my desktop OS for 95% of my computing for 10 years. Since pre Slackware 95. Kernel 1.2.8. When did you get involved with Linux? Now my point is this: I am comparing Linux not to Windows but to an absolute standard of quality based on what I simply expect to see. Also based on what I have read in hundreds of articles by Linux advocates hyping Linux for the desktop. And what it says on the Suse web pages. In other words, I don't think it lives up to what it's advertized to be. I am basing that view on how I would feel if it were *my* product. I would not ship it unless many aspects were polished and more thoroughly tested. I made a comment about OpenOffice. In Suse 9.1, the truetype fonts are not rendered as cleanly as in Suse 9.1. There is a reason for this, having to do with the freetype lib. So are you going to tell me that I should not expect that my Suse 9.1 box display fonts in OpenOffice that look professional, and not like clunky ugly coarse garbage? That by having the expectation that it look professional I am somehow complaining because I haven't been "re-educated?" Maybe other people don't notice the poor quality of the font rendering in the office application billed by the Linux advocates as the program that can completely replace MS Office. Perhaps the Linux advocates are the ones who are brainwashed, by the poor quality of the font rendering! What kind of re-education should I be subjected to? Sounds like religious extremism to me. Anything that contradicts the false belief that Linux is so much better than Windows means that one is simply brainwashed by M$ Corp. Well I don't need to look at a Windows box with its cleanly rendered fonts to know that the fonts in my Suse 9.1 OpenOffice look like crap. I will fix it. But I am dissatisfied with the quality of the product. I shouldn't have to recompile the font rendering library to get decent looking fonts. If I could, I would invite you to my facility where you could stand on a stage and demonstrate how great Linux is to the masses of Windows users, to re-educate them. When you show them OpenOffice, and hype that it is "almost 100% compatible with Word files" then watch it blow up in your face as you try to open the first corporate form written in Word, not to mention the crummy looking fonts, then I will simply watch you get laughed off the stage. Ironically, this scenario bears a lot of resemblance to a certain historic moment experienced by Bill Gates, demonstrating one of his crummy products. Let me make one final thing very clear. It is the critics, the ones who are not satisfied and who demand better, that do service to Linux. The religious fanatics who worship it and react to any criticism thinking that it is coming from a brainwashed Windows fool, they do disservice to Linux. Good day! -- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
On Wednesday 09 June 2004 15:59, Chris Carlen wrote: <snippage>
OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it).
<snippages>
I made a comment about OpenOffice. In Suse 9.1, the truetype fonts are not rendered as cleanly as in Suse 9.1. There is a reason for this, having to do with the freetype lib. So are you going to tell me that I should not expect that my Suse 9.1 box display fonts in OpenOffice that look professional, and not like clunky ugly coarse garbage?
<err, snip>
I will fix it. But I am dissatisfied with the quality of the product. I shouldn't have to recompile the font rendering library to get decent looking fonts.
I think the bytecode interpreter may be a thing of the past in freetype2? Distant memory from reading something at the freetype site. But the OO fonts are not as nice on my machines in 9.1 as in 9.0, so if you fix it please drop a line to the list. Not only worse on screen, they don't seem to be printing as well either AFAICT, though since I have gone back to 8.2 at work to get things done, I'm not sure. Good luck, do please report Best Fergus
Good day!
-- ____________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser/Optical Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarle@sandia.gov
-- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk
On Wednesday 09 June 2004 11:11 am, Fergus Wilde wrote:
On Wednesday 09 June 2004 15:59, Chris Carlen wrote: <snippage>
OpenOffice looks like unprofessional crap because the freetype lib in Suse 9.1 doesn't have the bytesode interpreter enabled (I think, which I will know for sure after recompiling it).
<snippages>
I made a comment about OpenOffice. In Suse 9.1, the truetype fonts are not rendered as cleanly as in Suse 9.1. There is a reason for this, having to do with the freetype lib. So are you going to tell me that I should not expect that my Suse 9.1 box display fonts in OpenOffice that look professional, and not like clunky ugly coarse garbage?
<err, snip>
I will fix it. But I am dissatisfied with the quality of the product. I shouldn't have to recompile the font rendering library to get decent looking fonts.
I think the bytecode interpreter may be a thing of the past in freetype2? Distant memory from reading something at the freetype site. But the OO fonts are not as nice on my machines in 9.1 as in 9.0, so if you fix it please drop a line to the list. Not only worse on screen, they don't seem to be printing as well either AFAICT, though since I have gone back to 8.2 at work to get things done, I'm not sure.
Good luck, do please report Best Fergus =================
Sorry guys, I just can't seem to find all this bad font display in OO here! Printout is equally nice to the HP inkjet I use. Now I am using the new X.org software, but I don't think that is or makes any difference. I'm not trying to say I know better than you about how to set all this up, I'm sure I don't, but I did a fresh install of 9.1 with normal updates after and I'm just not seeing any bad font display in anything yet. Regards, Lee -- --- KMail v1.6.2 --- SuSE Linux Pro v9.1 --- Registered Linux User #225206 On any other day, that might seem strange...
participants (5)
-
BandiPat -
Chris Carlen -
Fergus Wilde -
peter Nikolic -
Rocky Pope