I use Linux all the time. I’m writing this on my primary workstation, a notebook, that’s running Ubuntu 6.10. I have a cluster of computers at home running openSUSE. My home router runs IP Cop. My desktop machine runs Linux. The computer my wife uses runs Linux. The computer hosting this blog runs Linux. There are a lot of great things about Linux but there are a few things that really get under my skin that should have been fixed a long time ago.
Why is it that if I want to have dual-monitor support, I have to change my xorg.conf file and restart my Xserver? If I plug-in my USB hard drive, it just works. If I plug-in my computer to a network, NetworkManager automatically connects me to the network. If I plug-in a PCMCIA card, it automatically starts working. Why can’t we get the same thing with dual-monitor support? Why can’t I just plug-in a projector to my notebook and have it automatically start working? Why can’t I change the orientation of my second monitor without restarting X?
I wish Linux had better support for docking stations. When I go to work, I plug my notebook into a docking station. Sometimes it works, sometimes it crashes. I usually have my notebook turned off when I plug it into the docking station just to be sure that it works and to make sure the display that’s plugged into the docking station comes up properly.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could push the undock button on the docking station and have Linux detach properly from the docking station? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could then plug my notebook back into the docking station and not worry about crashing?
And with improved dual-monitor support, I would really like to plug my notebook into my docking station and have it automatically start using the display I have plugged into the docking station.
Linux has had multi-user support since its inception. This makes sense because it’s based on Unix which was long had excellent multi-user support. It doesn’t make sense to me why it is that multi-user support at the X Windows level sucks so bad. Windows XP got it right. Why has this fallen so far behind in the Linux world? Sure I can have multiple X servers with different users logged in but there’s no easy way to see which users are logged into which X servers. Maybe there’s some distro somewhere that does this well but that distro is not Ubuntu.
A few years back, I used to set up a printer with Cups and seemingly by magic, the printer would show up on all the Linux machines on my network. It was printing Nirvana. Somewhere along the line, that changed. I’m not sure if it was my change to Ubuntu or what but now sharing printers is a ping in the butt. I can understand having default security settings that prevent any anonymous user on the network from printing but shouldn’t it be easy to turn this security off?
Support for suspend and hibernate are flaky at best. Some days they work flawlessly. Other days they don’t. It’s been years since support for suspend and hibernate were added tot he kernel. Why do we still have problems with them? Suspend and Hibernate work great on Windows XP. I have a friend who will go weeks without actually turning off his PowerBook. I yearn to be able to do the same thing running Linux.
In spite of these problems, will I continue using Linux? Absolutely. However, these seam to be problems that should have been solved ages ago but just keep lingering.
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