Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Debian GNU is Not Unix Software

What's Missing from Free Software? 141

Posted by Cliff from the finding-those-stray-puzzle-pieces dept.
dan.hunt asks: "Klaus Knopper was interviewed here and the interviewer, technobeast, asked: 'If you were asking the questions, what would be the 1st one you would ask?' Klaus answered in part 'What are you missing in the available Free Software, and how would you like to change that?'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

What's Missing from Free Software? More

What's Missing from Free Software?

Comments Filter:

  • Packaging and Installation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {niromd}> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @07:53AM (#6613963) Homepage Journal
    Easy. Source distribution should be optional. If I recommend a free piece of software to somebody in the windows world I want it to come in one downloadable file, with an installer with lots of dialogue boxes.
    • Source distribution should be optional

      !@!@@!"$$!$!$!@!$@!$@!$@

      Source distribution is optional, as long as you distribute it for cost if requested. Theres tons of OSS which is one downloadable file. Mozilla, for example, or even rpm's and debs.

      • Re:Packaging and Installation (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AndyBusch ( 160585 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:22AM (#6614057)
        I really don't think they meant optional in the sense that the GPL software should be binary only. I think he meant optional in that each program should be packaged. Sure, many (maybe even most) programs come packaged -- for some version of some distribution. You run into lots of chances for incompatibilites that I rarely see on Windows. In fact, it's this irregularity in packaging that made me switch from Red Hat to Slackware. Slack plays much nicer with a hybrid of packages and source compiles.
        • I wish you'd tried out checkinstall [asic-linux.com.mx]. It builds packages (deb, rpm, even slack) from ordinary old tarballs. Anybody using Linux with a package-based system should have it installed.
        • You rarely see incompatibilities on windows? Come on, you see them all the time!

          One of the biggest reasons why Windows tends to fail for misterious reasons is exactly due to consistent lack of packaging. Some programs throw DLLs in the system directory. Some will write them to their own. Some will forget to increment the usage counter, and some to decrement it. Some braindead installers will overwrite files without checking the version. Others will leave with a mix where the errors of the program appear in
    • I'd recomend LART'ing the clueless Windoze luser, and yourself while you're at it.
    • Easy. Source distribution should be optional. If I recommend a free piece of software to somebody in the windows world I want it to come in one downloadable file, with an installer with lots of dialogue boxes.

      this was moderated as Insightful? Funny at the most if it was cynical humour :) Anyway, for those that don't even know what's Free Software [gnu.org] and could be fooled by such a statement, here's a short piece of information:

      Check the link, but in short, any software which is licensed in such a way that
  • In Linux.. hardware compatibility is missing.
    In Mozilla.. not much is missing.
    In Open Office.. Microsoft Office is missing.
    • Agreed. But generally...

      Documentation is where Linux applications often fall down. Granted, it's not always that good on Windows either, but there is generally an expectation among Windows users that it should be there.

    • Actually, I've started using O.O recently, and trust me, for the most part, it liases with MS Office perfectly. Opens all my three years worth of presentations, documents etc without a hassle, and what's more, the UI feels so similar to MS Office, that after a while you'll forget you're not using MS Office (although, admittedly, the look is still not as sleek).

      And then, there's this new export to PDF/Shockwave feature that's a kickass thing to have, especially in academic environments (the corporate world,

  • suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tirel ( 692085 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:03AM (#6613985)
    he writes that the 700MB are not enough, and with every version he has to dump some programs for others. how about dumping KDE in favor of some other wm that takes less space? icewm and *boxes come to mind.

    • Re:suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)

      by croddy ( 659025 )
      there are a lot of different desktops/window managers on the standard knoppix disc, not just KDE.

      look at KNOPPIX/knoppix-cheatcodes.txt (or hit F2 when it boots). fluxbox, icewm, twm, and windowmaker come to mind.

      besides he's asking about free software, not the knoppix distribution...

    • KDE is not a Window Manager (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      KDE is not a window manager. It is a desktop environment comprising several libraries, utilities applets, office applications and the KWM window manager.

  • niche applications (Score:4, Interesting)

    by croddy ( 659025 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:03AM (#6613986)
    a common complaint is that there is not enough support for specific hardware devices under (gnu/)linux or other GPL OS's.

    really I think this is just a function of another, larger phenomenon: with free software there is a great focus on the most common applications but not for niche applications. everyone uses a web browser, office programs, CD recording, audio extraction/encoding/playback, etc. the same is true for server systems: apache, perl, python et al, samba, SQL & friends all fill the voids in a free server system

    but until recently, applications that only a few people would find useful have not been available. it's only been recently that linux has become a viable platform for audio production/editing. I think device drivers will follow soon.

    it only takes one programmer to write the code and then it can be copied at a marginal cost approaching zero.

    • a common complaint is that there is not enough support for specific hardware devices under (gnu/)linux

      This is a myth which is a result of the status quo ten years ago. It is no longer true, but it is believed by pundits and the ignorant who have not kept up with recent developments. Nowadays the Linux kernel often gets support for new hardware before commercial OSs since many of the hardware companies employ engineers who are enthusiastic about Linux and knowledgeable enough to write device drivers.

      • true -- there are hardly any devices left that aren't supported. but, there are still "MS only" houses such as Silicon Integrated Systems, who are very mysterious and secretive about their VGA drivers -- they release drivers for their AGP chipsets, but won't even release specifications for the graphics chipsets.

        yeah, so don't buy anything from SiS! lesson learned.

        • Yeah, I got bitten years ago when I tried to install Linux on a system with an on-board SIS AGP graphics chipset. I never did get anything better than 16-bit graphics out of it until the mobo blew up and I got a real graphics card.

          Having said that, on-board chipsets aren't as bad as they used to be. I set up Slackware on my wife's new computer the other week. She's not a geek, but she's cool :-). Who said you can't have Linux on the Desktop?

          The box is a Pentium 4 on an MSI mobo with on-board sound. It came

      • > > a common complaint is that there is not enough support for
        > > specific hardware devices under (gnu/)linux
        >
        > This is a myth which is a result of the status quo ten years ago.

        More like five years ago. And the world still contains a lot of
        five-year-old hardware.
    • well duh. I am sorry but that is like saying that there are fewer shops in say Hickcity Alabama dedicated to Bonzai growing then to football.

      Most, not all, open source software is written by people who want to use the software themselves. Not because somebody told them to. Hence only programs will be available for wich someone has an intrest and a skill in programming.

      Only rarely does someone write code in his own time for someone else (the braille drivers for linux come to mind, at least I presume the co

  • What is missing much of the time is honest labelling. At download.com, much of what is called "free" or "freeware" is really crippleware.

    Consider the soundstream-to-MP3 program that is labelled free but is really ridiculously crippled in the free version (record 15 seconds!) and has "pay $49 to upgrade now" banners all over the place.

    • What is missing much of the time is honest labelling. At download.com, much of what is called "free" or "freeware" is really crippleware.

      That is a valid point, but it is however not open source software you are refering to. The post was talking about the "Open source community" and if you search Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] instead of Download.com you will find a quite different result. Let's not confuse OSS with the crippled spyware you find at Download.com.

  • Focus, not features or programs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gseidman ( 97 ) <gss+sdot&anthropohedron,net> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:21AM (#6614051)
    What's missing from open source software has little to do with the software itself, but with the approach to it.

    Consider a sampling of successful and focused OSS projects: Perl, Python, Ruby, Linux, Apache, GCC, GNU file/text tools. What is it about themthat makes them successful? They focus on a single audience. Perl, Python, Ruby, and GCC focus on developers, and serve them well. Apache focuses on web serving (and, in its subprojects, web development), and does it well. The GNU utilities focus on the Unix user, and provides the expected interface well. Linux focuses on providing OS support for a wide variety of hardware (I am speaking solely of the kernel and its modules here), and does it well.

    Now consider some less focused, yet still popular, OSS projects: GNOME, KDE, Mozilla. They try to be all things to all people. This is, indeed, one of Microsoft's (many) failings: for example, Windows attempts to be a home, workstation, and server OS using the same interface, and Word attempts to provide word processing for Grandma as well as document creation for technical authors and collaborative document management for corporate teams and everything in between. They are mediocre for all of their supposed purposes.

    Mozilla is a bloated pig because it can be used for so many different things. (I happen to use much of the bloat, but that doesn't justify its lack of focus.) This is why it is being broken up into separate tools, and rightly so.

    Ultimately, compelling software is compelling not because of how many people can find a use for it, but how well it serves some particular audience. This is the inverse of the "right tool for the job" platitude: make your tool the right one for some job, not a tolerable one for several jobs.

    I will point out what I believe is (much of) the proximate cause of this tendency to lack focus. The mantra "release early, release often" encourages a lack of focus; once a community of users springs up (which is vital for a successful OSS project) they begin pushing and pulling the developers to support this feature or that. One hopes that some of the users will actually contribute code, which means that features that stray from the focus of the tool may be harder not to include than to include. If the developers do not keep a firm grasp of their focus, it will stray.

    This is not to say one should not "release early, release often," but that one must maintain focus in the midst of users and contributors who have their own goals. I applaud the mutt team for keeping it a MUA, and nothing more. Sure, I'd like to see NNTP support, but there are perfectly good newsreading tools out there and, instead, mutt development can focus on being the best MUA it can be. I applaud Linus for rejecting innumerable patches when they don't fit his focus for the kernel. Project leads must discipline themselves if they wish to produce compelling software.
    • While I agree with much of what you said, I'd like to point out one thing: you mention that Microsoft has 'failed' by having a lack of focus. I think it depends on what you mean by 'fail'. Word makes them tons of money and is used by tens of millions of people. While it is bloated and unfocused, the projects that you mentioned as focused tend to be hard to use, and only used by a small user group (outside of the slashdot crowd how many people use Ruby, or administrate Apache?). Personally, I like the s

      • While I agree with much of what you said, I'd like to point out one thing: you mention that Microsoft has 'failed' by having a lack of focus. I think it depends on what you mean by 'fail'.

        I didn't say that Microsoft had failed. I said that lack of focus is one of its failings. The distinction is important. Windows isn't a failed product, it is a poor product. The same is true of Word. I will mention that, in contrast, Excel is neither a failed nor a poor product; I claim it is because it has a strong

    • Now consider some less focused, yet still popular, OSS projects: GNOME, KDE, Mozilla. They try to be all things to all people.

      I don't think these examples really support your point. GNOME has been targeting a different audience than KDE since their 2.0 release by uncluttering and simplifying their desktop even to the point of alienating many old-school GNOME aficionados who had the (first) impression GNOME had been "dumbed down".

      And as for Mozilla, remember it was based on a bloated and unfocused piece o
    • Mozilla is a bloated pig because it can be used for so many different things.

      You are about right, it comes with: Browser, HTML Editor, EMAIL, NNTP, Chat. However, soon we'll see these apps packaged individually. I think you'll also start to see more apps using the "mozilla as a platform" technologies.
    • My number #1 wish list item is parrot. You mentioned Perl, Python, and Ruby as successful projects. I see them as fragmented and this is why Parrot is my #1 wish list item. Imagine the power of merging class libraries from all three of these communities. Throw in javascript and PHP too.
      Additionally, I think we could start to expect apps to build in scripting using parrot. If javascript can be implemented in parrot, then Mozilla could easily adopt it and life would get very sweet.

      Mozilla is my number #2 ite

      • Re:My Wish List (Score:3, Informative)

        by __past__ ( 542467 )

        I'd like to see configuration of everything move to an XML standard, and this should be coupled with flexible visual tools.

        This is a very bad idea. And I say that as someone who uses XML daily, and is generally very fond of it.

        A telling example: XML-based configuration files have made my working with XML quite a lot harder. As you might know, XML systems - and SGML systems before them - can use so-called "catalogs" that map public identifiers or URIs to local files, so that when you reference the offic

        • Your argument is summed up when you stated "the main effect of the new format is that you cannot use the traditional Unix tools anymore".

          Well, if existing unix command line tools don't deal with it well, then obviously we need some new command line tools. XML is not going away, so this is a good idea regardless.
    • I applaud the mutt team for keeping it a MUA, and nothing more. Sure, I'd like to see NNTP support, but there are perfectly good newsreading tools out there and, instead, mutt development can focus on being the best MUA it can be.

      There is an user-maintained NNTP patch for mutt. I used to use it, and it was quite good... It's linked to from somewhere on mutt.org, but I don't remember where.

  • It's obvious. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tanaan ( 546923 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:33AM (#6614115)
    Consistency.

    But the whole nature of free/open software is that everyone wants to do things their way (myself included), so it's something that's impossible to fix.

  • A sense of Aesthetics. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bons ( 119581 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:40AM (#6614141) Homepage Journal
    No one is reaching out to the graphic design community. While they also have a tradition of copyleft, free fonts, and royalty free no cost photography, the two communities simply don't talk to each other.

    (Which really isn't all that surprising since both of them tend to look down on each other as worthless parasites.)

    I'm sorry, it looks good enough for programmers, but it doesn't look good. And there's a difference, especially if you want the masses to adopt it.
    • I've never met any programmer that looks down on the graphic design community. And I doubt visa-versa.

      However, in art, people don't _want_ other people modifying their art/music - and most of them hate the very thought of it.
      It's this difference that can cause problems.

      • Try reading the other replies to this comment:

        "... are you talking about apps on linux for photoshop monkeys? (as a programmer I of course think all those involved in graphical design are the lice in the pelt of the human race) "
        • oh come - you can probably pull a quote to disprove anything. I would still stick to that the majority of programmers respect artists (as long as they are good artists - a bad web designer can leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth)

  • I have a few ideas of things missing in OSS... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xutopia ( 469129 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @08:52AM (#6614204) Homepage
    1. Names that mean something (Internet Explorer vs Mozilla/Konqueror, KDE/GNOME vs Windows)
    2. A way to do everything graphically (yes I know that we have unmatched power on the command line but doing things graphically works for everyone)
    3. Internet Connection Sharing (yes it would be very helpful)
    4. NTFS write support (would help people out)
    5. Installation without a CD or a Floppy (using a Linux box you insert a HDD, format it, put all the installation files, put the HDD in the new computer and boot for installation).
    6. Simple folder naming convention like Program Files, Document and settings, (what the heck does var, etc, proc mean anyway?) etc...
    7. A single distribution that comes out every two years with only non-beta software (version x.xx.xx.xx of something doesn't meant a thing to me either, give me a version 1, 1.5, 2005 or something that Joe Blow can understand please)
    • * internet connection sharing. we used to call that a router.

      win98-style internet connection sharing is a simple matter under linux. I never could get it to work under windows.

      my roommates' windows 2000 boxes are configured to login to my box, and bring the connection up or down automatically. my ppp connection is routed out my network card with a standard iptables routing chain. the whole system is controlled by a pair of shell scripts. one keeps track of who wants the connection, and when none are left, i

    • # Names that mean something (Internet Explorer vs Mozilla/Konqueror, KDE/GNOME vs Windows)
      Try it and get sued. Not much you can do here, Adobe and Microsoft own most Word(tm)s.

      # A way to do everything graphically (yes I know that we have unmatched power on the command line but doing things graphically works for everyone)
      It dosn't work for people without powerful enough machines to push a good gui. However, this point is moot anyway, as you really can do everything from a gui now.

      # Internet Connection

    • well.... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LittleBigLui ( 304739 )
      1. KDE means K Desktop Environment. I guess thats even more descriptive than windows. Excel, Outlook, Entourage, ... all very descriptive. You can't just name everyone of the gazillion open source web browsers "Web Browser", can you?

      2. No, doing things graphically doesn't work for everyone. If people understand what they are doing, they can do most of the stuff that requires a console (which isn't that much, anyways) on the console; if they don't understand that, they probably won't be helped all that much
      • your tact is amazing.

        1. Entourage is a word that means something last I checked in the dictionary. The metaphor is easy to understand for users of the software (provided they know the real meaning of the word). As for Outlook I can understand the metaphor and Excel is the only one without a metaphor but it is short and easy to remember.

        2. Maybe you prefer typing complicated commands. 99% of people prefer clicking on start > find > "myfilename" rather than type > find . "myfilename"

        3. thanks
        • your tact is amazing.
          Sorry, i was in a really bad mood. Don't really know why, i doubt it had anything to do with your post. I feel honestly sorry for that, i'm a very nice guy usually :)

          1, Okay, english isn't my first language (and neither is french), so i didn't actually know what entourage meant. Obviously, even if the name is actually descriptive (and even after a quick look at dictionary.com, i don't find the term "outlook" to be descriptive of a groupware/e-mail program, much less "outlook express" f
    • > Internet Connection Sharing
      Linux has had this for a long, LONG time. Some distros even have
      a GUI setup tool for it.

      > NTFS write support
      Very much agreed. With WinXP basically taking over Win98's OEM
      market share, this will be absolutely *vital* a year from now.
      It's already a very noteworthy lack of feature.

      It's being worked on, BTW, but it's highly alpha and definitely
      not ready for real users yet.

      > Installation without a CD or a Floppy
      The biggest thing needed is a major hardware vendor to adop
      • > Simple folder naming convention like Program Files, Document
        > and settings,
        I must disagree here for three reasons. First, most users
        don't want to know about the filesystem; they want to open
        the program they used to create the document and pick the
        document off an MRU list or maybe hit File->Open and pick
        it from the default folder (on *nix, hopefully that's ~/).
        Folder names only matter to power users. Secondly, putting
        spaces in pathnames breaks all sorts of things. If you want
        to call the directorie
    • Names that mean something (Internet Explorer vs Mozilla...

      Sorry, but Outlook Express means something? Apart from bugs and viruses, that is :-). OK, what about PowerPoint then?

      And last time I looked, Windows XP didn't fit on a floppy, either. And I've set up Linux of a variety of flavours on many machines over the last 10 years, and I have never once done it by swapping HDDs. I can't think of anything more ridiculous. The install from CD is as easy as Windows if you try something like Mandrake or RedHat (ea

    • Re:I have a few ideas of things missing in OSS... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The Cydonian ( 603441 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:22AM (#6614852) Homepage Journal
      Consider this.

      You have two competing products. One is called, say, Infoseek, while the other is called, say, Google. Infoseek's name is pretty intutive; obviously, it's a place where you go to seek information. The other, Google, is a nerdy pun on the mathematical name for a multiple of 10 that has 100 zeroes in it.

      Even if you don't consider the relative merits of the product per se, I'm sure you know which brand-name is more popular.

      That said, your general point is well-taken; yes, OSS/Software Libre needs some marketing, but no, good marketing need not always equate to instantaneous comprehensibility.

    • 1. I agree that "names that mean something" is a good idea, but your suggestion that Microsoft's names "mean something" is ridiculous. Instead of "Internet Explorer", lets try "Browser" or "Web Browser"

      2. Unless you consider the registry editor "graphical" I don't think you can do everything in Windows "graphically". But we do need the a solution that is superior to the typical Windows gui. One HUGE advantage of text files is that they can have comments and you can easily cut & paste items to duplicate
      • 6. Actually it may be a good idea to have abstract one-syllable names like "bin" and "etc".

        I knew there would be an idiot who would defend the arcane /var, /etc, /bin convention. Because you see, half of the /.ers start from the assumption that *nix is perfect.

        • You idiot, if you read my post you would see that I was complaining that perhaps not the naming, but the structure needs to be changed. This is huge compared to adding a symbolic link that Linux defenders keep suggesting will "fix" Linux. I am actually saying that much bigger changes are needed than morons who think long english words are a way to fix bad structure.

          You are the idiot for thinking that anybody who suggests anything different than the Microsoft line is not being imaginative.

          And I will stan

    • "Simple folder naming convention like Program Files, Document and settings, (what the heck does var, etc, proc mean anyway?) etc..."

      The solution to this can be found in Mac OS X and also in your post:

      "A way to do everything graphically (yes I know that we have unmatched power on the command line but doing things graphically works for everyone)"

      The graphical file managers should not be able to see /etc, /var, /pub and so on. You can only get to those on OS X when you're poking around in the console.

  • Is there an Open-Source CAD program out there, or even a proprietary one that runs on Linux? Considering what AutoCAD costs, I'm sure some companies would be happy to look at a free software package.
    • Starting with its latest release, ProE [ptc.com] runs on Linux.

      It's proprietary (and expensive), though.
    • What kind of CAD? I downloaded the free version of Cadsoft Eagle PCB/Schematic editor. It looks nice, but I haven't actually designed any boards with it just yet... I got stuck trying to define an unusual SMT package.

  • MS Interchangeability (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:02AM (#6614271) Homepage Journal

    Dear Santa,

    We need a robust WINE implementation that permits any shrink-wrapped software bought at BestBuy to be run on any Linux box.

    We need OpenOffice to fully support all the heavily-used Microsoft file formats.

    We need user-interfaces that can be made to look enough like Microsoft application interfaces that retraining costs are minimized.

    In short, we need to address the recurring issues that come up when you ask knowledgeable IT managers,

    "Why won't you consider running Linux more in your enterprise?"

    P.S. I need a high-quality recent-standard-conforming SVG implementation in Mozilla Firebird.

    • We need OpenOffice to fully support all the heavily-used Microsoft file formats.

      From my experience, OpenOffice supports those formats way better than even the version of MS Office they were written with.

      I've had MS Office files that couldn't be opened by the same Office installation that wrote them. Opened them with OpenOffice, saved them as MS Office there, they shrank in size and were readable again.
    • Most people out there running Windows see Linux as a free suite of Microsoft software.
    • This is the best softwares meeting your criteria:

      The better implementation of Win32 is Microsoft Windows. It permits any shrink-wrapped software bought at BestBuy to be run.

      Again, Microsoft Office fully support all the heavily-used Microsoft file formats.

      Finally, the Microsoft Windows user-interfaces look enough like Microsoft application interfaces so retraining costs is minimized.

      In short: Why people won't consider running Linux more in their enterprises? Because there is Windows for the desktop and t

  • 2 main reasons why Linux isn't my main desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @09:07AM (#6614300)
    - Documentation, including *examples*.
    - Good UI. For the love of all widgets, *please* take a UI course, before bestowing us with your gift. KDE is looking *real* sweet, but there's 9,000+ other programs that look like crap, and guess what, they aren't as usable as the majority of Windows/Mac programs. Guess there is a lot to be said for a standard.
    • I run GNOME, on all my machines. There are maybe one or two apps left that I need that don't have a GNOME interface, and they number that don't meet the GNOME HIG are decreasing as well. When I consider a new app for something having a GNOME or at least GTK+ interface is an important part of the decision. It wouldn't make me give up an app that I need or really want, but consistancy is so much more conducive to efficient computing (I find, at least) that its extremely important.

      For example until recentl
    • Guess there is a lot to be said for a standard.

      Even if it's a bad one?

      There are other desktop environments than KDE out there, and I presume you don't need me to bang drums to advertise them. But I thought I used a large-ish number of programs (molecular modelling, math applications, programming, wp, web browsing, email, graphics manipulation, spreadsheets, cd burning mainly) but nowhere near 9000, even including all the programs running that don't need a UI. I can't really say the differences in interface

      • Come to think of it, last time I looked at WinZip or PhotoShop, they didn't look that native to Windows.

        Wow I guess you haven't looked at either in a long time. The latest versions WinZip and Photoshop both go out of their way to emulate XP-style widgets. This includes skinning and visual feedback on mouse-overs.

    • YES! Examples! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WoTG ( 610710 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @12:38PM (#6616184) Homepage Journal
      I can't count the number of times I've tried to read a man page to get the basic usage of a tool, only to get frustrated by endless pages of options and no examples. Inevitably, I end up searching Google Groups, or Google...
    • - Documentation, including *examples*.

      Take a look at FreeBSD. It ships with a huge amount of documentation (which is actually well written). It also has a very nice package system which lets you install binaries (when you are in a hurry) or from source in a consistent manner, resolving dependency chains for you. Being able to build from source without breaking your packages is very useful if you need to customise something. For example, I enabled GTK2 support on my build of gvim, so it integrates nice

    • Guess there is a lot to be said for a standard.

      1. There are more standards in Open Software than MS will ever have. Perhaps you meant consistency.
      2. If you spend much time working with various versions of MS OS's and app's you'll soon realize that MS is not very consistent either. I've known lots of folks over the years who have had to use Star Office/Open Office or even Word Perfect, to edit old MS Word docs that the new version of Word wouldn't edit.
      3. Even if it were true that MS was consistent
  • I'd like to click help and be presented with some easy way to get support. If it was a phone number, put it in big bold letters. If it's only an email address, give me a form to fill out that's prepopulated w/ all the information about the app.

    I hate benig on both the giving and receiving end of bad support. I hate hearing "It doesn't work." to saying, "Ok, this app is broken in such a way, how do i get around it or fix it?" and not knowhign where to go.

    I still remember having an ncr scsi card (ncr875
    • I'd like to point out that if you try to get a driver working in Windows and it doesn't work, any actual support is going to be limited to the traditional "reboot, reinstall, reformat".

      Real, always-there, truly competent tech support costs far more than an end user is willing to pay for.
      • Well, some problems aren't solvable.. but for those stupid problems like, "How do I add a user".. calling MS, even at a cost, is easier to do than find someone to support the ncr875 driver.
  • Well I must say that I can get all of my work done using linux on my laptop, even in the office thanks to samba. However for fun I like to play around with music software, specifically this program called Fruity Loops (actually its FL Studio now). I like to think of it as a RAD tool for music... It's so easy to throw a song together, and its mostly drag and drop (kind of like making a quick GUI). There are a couple of sequencers and samplers out there for linux but nothing quite compares to FL Studio for
  • I know Knopper is already putting extra effort into this, but Linux hardware detection and autoconfiguration is still one of its weakest areas. There are some kinds of devices which get detected and configured fairly reliably, but not nearly enough kinds of hardware fall into this group.
  • I have few gripes with most of the open-source tools I've tried, but something that can bring my work to a near-stop is inaccurate or insufficient documentation. I understand that these projects are labors of love and time is generally short as it is for project developers, but decent+ documentation not only opens your audience beyond hard-core tinkerers but also demonstrates thoroughness and dedication to "dotting the i's" -- which I believe not only attracts new users but encourages those users to simply

    • > inaccurate or insufficient documentation.

      Agreed. Most Open Source documentation is unusable because it is either unclear, incomplete, incorrect, or out-of-date. But the second part of the question is: "How would you like to change that?" So here are some thoughts from a documentation volunteer on the front-lines...

      First of all, name some famous Open Source programmers. Now name some famous documentation writers who aren't also famous programmers. See how hard that was? Documentation volunteers des

    • A related problem may be that there really aren't any good tools for writing the documentation in the first place. Most people still use Emacs to hack DocBook, and while I'm a raving Emacs fan, its XML support is lacking and needs improvement, and a native Gnome/KDE solution surely would be a great win.

  • Speed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gooru ( 592512 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:05AM (#6614713)
    I'd say the key thing that's missing is speed. Sure, the software that you need/want eventually comes out. However, it takes forever before it does. Part of this is that good software takes good time, and the continual peer review slows down the process. Much of it is also the emulation of existing software packages that take time, since you have to work on something that already exists, so there's a seeming lag.

    However, large corporations can crank out huge software projects that are high quality such as Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Office, Studio MX, etc. Perhaps part of it is also because their programmers don't have to worry about having enough money to eat and pay their rent. If only there were a realistic open source model that's good for the programmer, this would work better. Sure, you can charge tech support, but how many programmers really want to do that anyway?

    • Sure, the software that you need/want eventually comes out. However, it takes forever before it does. However, large corporations can crank out huge software projects that are high quality such as Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Office, Studio MX, etc. Perhaps part of it is also because their programmers don't have to worry about having enough money to eat and pay their rent.

      Let's examine this for a second. You think that OSS applikcations take longer to code. Closed source applications, however, are quicker.

      • Maybe instead of whining, you should just run back to MSFT and get your on-time, $500 software packages [...] if you want it to happen quicker, try contributing code.

        Just for shits and giggles, have you ever thought that your wonderful attitude is one of the reasons 'stuff' is missing from open source software? Perhaps -just perhaps- this is the type of thing that drives people away?

        Here's an idea. Instead of putting people in their place and 'telling them how it is' when they ask for these far-out thin

  • Not a spreadsheet, there's tons of those. What's needed is a good accounting suite like Quickbooks or Peachtree that does Invoices, Purchase Orders, Packing Slips, records accounts recievable, accounts payable, etc.

  • Rethinking some fundamentals? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pmz ( 462998 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @10:34AM (#6614938) Homepage
    One thing that is a consistent burden in Open Source software is the raw complexity of the build tools used. What should be an intuitive set of makefiles and header files is replaced by over ten thousand lines of un-decipherable and un-debuggable shell script (configure scripts and libtool). When they don't work, understanding the failure is often nearly impossible, and, frequently, they only work on GNU/Linux systems (so much for portability!).

    Everytime I download and attempt to compile something from the source, I get this nagging feeling that there has to be a better way. However, the short-comings of the build systems used could be just a sign that Open Source software still has quite a bit of growing left, and, perhaps more accurately, open source is lacking in configuration management tools, in general. Configuration management is a very complex issue, I admit, considering that package management, too, is still highly volatile and broken (even commercial UNIX could improve in this regard).

    Whatever future tools are invented to deal with these problems, I beg that all developers strive to attack fundamental problems rather than use band-aids. Too often, it seems, a well-intentioned developer creates a general tool that appears to solve a problem, but, fundamentally, it only creates more complexity, a higher learning burden, and, ultimately, more well-intentioned tools designed to deal with the earlier well-intentioned tools.

    Somewhere, this cycle of naive optimism regarding fix-all tools needs to stop. If a programmer finds that an aberration like a configure script is needed, for example, I suggest the programmer go back to the source code itself and strip out the cause. The program is probably better for it, and we should be brave enough to say "tough doodie" to people that whine about having to actually improve something.

    If we continue to let open source decompose into a mess of broken tools, then it is, clearly, no better than anything Microsoft has produced. And, to be honest, when I see the hard-coded path names in GNOME configure files and libtool files, the first thing that comes to my mind is, "Windows Registry" (I hope that offends a lot of people, because it should).
    • You know, it really is sad that automake and autoconf (complex, fragile, hard to learn and not particularly consistent) are the standard for ensuring portable makefiles.

      GNU make is better quality-wise, but still (IMHO) far more complex than is necessary.
      • You know, it really is sad that automake and autoconf (complex, fragile, hard to learn and not particularly consistent) are the standard for ensuring portable makefiles.

        GNU make is better quality-wise, but still (IMHO) far more complex than is necessary.

        One thing that really bugs me about autoconf and similar tools is that they increase the distance between the developer and the build process and add a murky "black box" type layer that is hard to understand and control. It is easy to argue by default th
  • I've been dismayed lately to see that all the new programs seem to be for X only, and usually only work with a pile of gnome/kde libraries. I appreciate what these two projects are doing, but there's a lot about both of them that irks many people.

    What I'd like to see is a push to bring some of the benefits that Gnome and KDE have brought software into the console application world. I frequently am stuck using a windows computer, and the only access to my machine is over a slow ssh link. Being able to check
    • I agree with you wholeheartedly.

      Specifically, I would like to see a Word Perfect 5.1 port or clone for linux. Screw a front end to the whole of Open Office. I want something that can fit on a floppy linux.

      One a port of WP 5.1 was done, but you can't find it anywhere. It was part of a "Professional" edition of one of the Corel Linuxes. There are also instructions on the web on how to get the SCO Unix WP 5.1 working on Linux. But what we really need is a Free version.

      If there were a possibility of buy

  • Polish and consistency (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @11:49AM (#6615611)
    What I have found is missing from a lot of freeware, and even more so from OSS, is the fit and polish that a company writing for profit can give an application. Simply put, when there's millions of dollars at stake, there is a big incentive to add those little nuances and details to the interface and feature set that make a program feel polished, professional and efficient.

    COnsistency also suffers when a variety of developers are working on one project. For all the downsides of closed-source, a profit-making company generally has one vision for software, and makes its programmers stick to that. This does generally lead to a level of consistency often unmatched in open-source.
    1. User Documentation: Most wanted... manuals that are readable off-line! Wikis suck! Don't give me the old excuse: "No one reads the manual..." Just because *you* don't read the manual doesn't mean others don't. Change this by giving documentation volunteers the same props as coders!
    2. Packaging: This means easy installation *and* configuration. Sorry, XML or LISP-based config files are inscrutable for non-programmers. Release RPMS along with tarballs and stick to simple config files (or maybe an easy-to-use
  • I need to be able to edit Visio diagrams in Linux. There are some rumblings that it might work with Codeweaver's product, and I haven't tested that, but that's the #1 thing I miss for work. Oh, and GnuCash still hasn't caught up with MS Money IMHO, which is really the only reason I dual-boot at home.
    • Visio does work with CodeWeaver's product. I have used Visio 2000 Enterprise for over a year. The best part, startup times are faster than on Windows!

  • DTP, Font portability, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by infernalC ( 51228 ) <matthew...mellon@@@google...com> on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @12:28PM (#6616056) Homepage Journal
    TeX is great, and LaTeX is a great abstraction layer. However, we lack a mature DTP application which allows us to readily and easily design new documents (newsletters, company letterhead, etc.), especially in a GUI. Scribus is a good start, but we really need something like InDesign.

    Also, fonts are a problem. Great progress has been made here (TTF support for X, etc.), but I want a good way to manage my fonts such that my fonts in X are available to TeX and vice versa. I shouldn't have to do 50 steps to install a font for LaTeX and not have it available in OO.

    LaTeX, being essentially a markup language, needs to be reformulated in XML (with Unicode encoding) and brought into the 21st century. It appears that XHTML 2 is becoming very LaTeX-ish (markup represents soley the structure of the documents), and styling is done via stylesheets kinda like LaTeX packages. If both were XML-based, translation would be a breeze, and we would have a nice convergence of print and online publication, something that has been very shitty to this point.

    I would also like to see categorized font browsing in applications; I want to go to choose a font, choose sans-serif, then choose Helvetica from a list of 20 faces, not having to find it in a list of 200.

    Just my $0.02.
  • I just want an Outlook/Exchange replacement system that works flawlessly with Outlook, and allows the configurability, stability and customizability of 'normal' *nix mail servers. It'd be nice if it had an instant messanger that came with it to allow for interoffice messages, and calendar/contact/task management.

    Oh, and it'd be great if it were free...

  • OLAP (Score:1)

    by omibus ( 116064 )
    A good OLAP service. Something to compete with Microsoft Analysis Service, Hyperion, and Oracle.



    Other than that: a full Exchange and Outlook alternative. This is parcially there, but is really a "sum of parts" implementation, not one cohesive unit.

  • What many people seem to forget is that:

    1.) businesses are the largest source of potential income for Open Source developers / consultants.

    2.) businesses typically don't care about how you arrive at a solution but rather: does it do the job properly and is the price right?

    3.) businesses buy computers and operating environments (commodity software) to run their core business software (CRM, ERP, groupware, accounting, etc.)

    So, if we want to see Free Software expand, there needs to be a focus on meeting t
  • Some way to calibrate monitors and printers to a standard.
    It should work better than windows, maybe even as well as Mac.
    Feel free to tell me how stupid I am to not know about solution X, just do so in some detail.

    Cut and paste that worked between arbitrary applications would be nice as well

  • Self-contained app installs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2003 @07:19PM (#6621250) Homepage Journal
    I would like to run one command, or click one button, to install an app. I HATE having to download a variety of libraries to install something. It's stupid.

    This should be a universal thing across all distributions. Or, there should be one distribution with all the niceties of Windows. It's just too fragmented and finicky to go anywhere.

  • I won't be able to give up Windows (or possibly Mac) until there is some equivalent of TurboTax

Slashdot Top Deals

"Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch." -- Robert Orben

Close