El 30.10.2017 a las 08:29, Scott Kostyshak escribió:
> Do you still have access to Linux?
Yes. I work with Linux as testing system for 3 months now. Long story
short, I am a bit disappointed. Linux is OK for Internet, office and
email. But that is it. I mean I even cannot fill out a PDF form on Linux
because poppler doesn't yet support everything. (You can test this by
filling out LyX's PDF-form.lyx after exporting it as PDF (pdflatex).)
My camera doesn't work, my scanner doesn't work, WLAN made problems (see
below), CAD is not working well...
I realized that Linux's monolithic kernel is a problem. Every device
driver needs to be part of the kernel. This is hard for small
manufacturers of e.g. USB microscopes. Also for CAD the monolithic
kernel is a problem. I mean at work things just have to work because
every minute counts. So if for example a CAD program has problems I can
easily switch the driver (go back to an older version usually) and after
only 5 minutes of reinstalling I am productive again. With Linux I
cannot do that.
An example: I bought a laptop with a built in Wifi chip from Intel. In
Linux kernels 4.8 to 4.12 the Wifi driver iwlwifi had a bug. A fix was
already available and I could download it. But I could not get it to
work. Someone in a forum explained me that the kernel needs to be
compiled using the fixed driver before it will work. But compiling the
kernel as a normal user? No chance. And indeed I had to wait until Linux
4.13 was released until I had a stable WLAN connection with my laptop.
(I could not use an older kernel because the components of my laptop
required kernel 4.8 or newer.)
That is sad because I really like KDE. This is a much more versatile
desktop than the one of Windows 10. But doesn't help me if I cannot use
devices I need every day like my scanner. I even managed to get help
from a student who administrates Linux PCs and also he failed to get my
scanner to work (I own an 8 year old scanner/printer and the printer
part worked fine out of the box.)
Nevertheless I will continue using Linux as second OS. I hope that in
future things like filling PDF forms will work. I also hope that
developers of Linux applications unite and not split. I mean there are
now about 8 proper Linux desktop environments while the libraries
everybody uses like e.g. poppler lack manpower. I tried many desktop
environments and all are poor when it comes to searching in the file
explorer for filenames and for content in files. But searching is
essential. Windows is here much better and provides therefore more
productivity.
I think in the end the most productive systems will survive because
users expect things to just work without being forced to learn about
them. I mean I use a car to get from place A to place B. I have no time
to learn how the gearbox of the car works. I expect it to just run to be
able to concentrate to my work. So I use the car just as a tool as I use
a file explorer just as a tool.
regards Uwe
