something that you feel linux is missing

parchd · 2017-01-16 18:04:23

Awebb wrote:

The word "integration" is the key here. Kontact is useless without an Akonadi/Nepomuk/PIM based environment

Surely that makes it as "integrated" as things get?

Awebb wrote:

and Evolution is a toy.

A toy which does mail, calendar and task management...

I guess someone will need to define "integrated" in the Outlook sense for me, because I'm at a loss.

chickenPie4tea · 2017-02-24 10:16:22

Something better than pavucontrol to switch sound outlet, tends to freeze my system at times.
Better auto mounting of external usb drives, sometimes they mount when I plug them in and sometimes my computer is not in the mood so I have to reboot and then it gets mounted on startup.

parchd · 2017-02-24 10:35:04

pavucontrol occasionally does that to me, but not very often and never worked out what the reason is.
Automounting has always worked fine for me when I've been using Gnome/KDE, but I rarely do and I don't really want automounting anyway - takes me a few seconds to do it myself.

What I think Linux is missing, is free, easy to use, native speech-to-text. Not just for giving voice commands, but for dictating documents. I've recently played about with various things, but nothing does the job, and although they possibly could do, it would require way too much time investment on my behalf.

lahwaacz · 2017-02-24 10:44:25

chickenPie4tea wrote:

[...] sometimes my computer is not in the mood so I have to reboot and then it gets mounted on startup.

Does it by any chance corelate with post-kernel upgrade times?

Awebb · 2017-02-24 10:47:17

parchd wrote:

I guess someone will need to define "integrated" in the Outlook sense for me, because I'm at a loss.

I didn't care about "integration" myself, until I had to give end user support for MS Office in a job. This is the one thing that MS products do well, they all integrate with each other. You can create calendar events, notes, presentations and emails from pretty much anything like a word document and a spreadsheet, without ever leaving the more or less unified interface paradigma.

@chickenPie4tea: Does pasystray do the job?

collector1871 · 2017-03-04 15:21:52

my points here:

1.) compatibility with Adobe stuff, Adobe photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver
2.) converters psd2images

Point 1.) and 2.) --> i know we have GIMP, but Windows is in better position here (GIMP and Photoshop)

3.) better compatibility with Visual Basic and PowerShell

a) VBS:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1089 … -linux-box
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ux-203661/

some of VBS scripts are working under wine, but we are in bad position here.

b) PowerShell
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell
we have something like this, but i did not tested it.
It is working? Someone knows?

4.) Software for auto/car health diagnostic (Renault, Volkswagen)

Last edited by collector1871 (2017-03-04 15:23:29)

teckk · 2017-03-05 16:03:29

1. Tell Adobe to release linux versions. Most people don't want that crap on their machines. It would have to be a version that did not call home every 10 seconds and send your info to them. I've heard people say that they like Adobe products better.

3. Why would one want powershell when they have bash, python, perl, ruby...way more functionality, and cross platform like python, instead of closed and locked to a platform like visual basic.

4. Tell VW to release open source versions of their diagnostic interface.
Or package up something and put it in AUR if you want.
https://www.elmelectronics.com/help/obd/software/
https://samhobbs.co.uk/2015/04/scantool … ware-linux
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/obd-auto-doctor/
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/scantool/

glyons · 2017-03-08 01:54:58

A CIA backdoor!

parchd · 2017-03-21 11:31:47

A client for telepathy that isn't tied in to a particular desktop
As far as I can see, there is empathy (depends on Gnome desktop), and there is kde-telepathy (depends on XFCE4) ((yes, that was a joke)). I'm not short on disk space (anymore), and I always end up installing pretty much every DE and WM sooner or later, but it still feels like a big gap!

Trilby · 2017-03-21 12:11:40

parchd, I don't use anything like that and am not familiar with telepathy, but I just looked into what it'd take.

I'm drawn to much of the apparent design philosophy[1] behind telepathy. It seems to have created an ecosystem of tools with a deliberately toolkit-language-whatever agnostic framework. I appreciate such work: defining a protocol/framework and as long as a client works within the protocol it can be written in whatever language using whatever tools one wishes.

It seems it might not be hard to make a simple[2] telepathy client with nothing other than a base system and dbus. There is also telepathy-glib which would make it even easier with neglibible additional dependencies. It looks like one could quickly make some sort of minimal cli client that can send/receive messages and view online lists. Alternatively a (toolkit free) X11 client with similar functions should not take too much work either.

I've kinda' been on the lookout for my next hobby coding project. But as I don't use any IM services, it'd really not make sense for me to work on this especially as I couldn't really test it in any meaningful ways. But if you are looking for a coding project, I could probably give feedback and/or code review on any bits and peices (for a cli or toolkit-free X11 client at least).

Notes:
[1] I don't know if there really was any 'philosophy' intended behind telepathy, but the end result of a project does convey much of the creator's thinking. To that degree, it seems the creators of telepathy worked to keep it tool-agnostic.

[2] 'Limited' meaning typical messenger functions should be pretty easy. Some of the supported protocols allow for video conferencing and VOIP which would likely take quite a bit more work. Reading and writing text streams on the CLI or in an X11 window is trivial; displaying and capturing video can take some work.

parchd · 2017-03-21 13:21:06

What you describe regarding philosophy, intended or not, is exactly why I was so surprised something hasn't been written already.
I did consider writing it myself, but my plate is well and truly full at the moment with work and university.
I'm terrible at juggling tasks, hobby projects always end up consuming the time I should be working on other things.

It is going on the list of "possible projects one day", but maybe someone else will get there first.

One thing Linux definitely isn't missing, is great people willing to give feedback on coding projects. Thanks for the offer, Trilby .

Awebb · 2017-03-21 14:18:04

parchd wrote:

What you describe regarding philosophy, intended or not, is exactly why I was so surprised something hasn't been written already.

You don't need telepathy, if you don't plan on integrating it into something or make it "inter operable" with something else. The strength of telepathy has been recognized in the libpurple crowd, so somebody wrote telepathy-haze, but that's for the DE crowd, that wants to tap into the rich libpurple sources and not for, say, the ranger devs to implement a telepathy-ranger send-to mechanism. That's why the low-end cli crowd often simply uses something like finch or minbif.

moxin · 2017-03-30 06:05:42

a usable and light Desktop Environment that obeys desktop laws like correct scrollbars that can be used though mouse from the very edge of the desktop when the windows are maximized, and windows that can be closed by moving your mouse to the top left or right edge. Xfce/LXDE/Mate and Gnome sometimes don't obey these simple laws

parchd · 2017-03-30 06:26:10

Which of those things don't work in LXQT? For that matter, which don't work in other DEs?
I use openbox and can scroll from the edge of the screen when a window is maximised, and I can close the window by clicking the X in the right hand corner, or the icon then close in the left hand corner. If I wanted, I could probably have a second X there too, but I never use the mouse to close windows anyway.

olegabrielz · 2017-04-09 22:15:42

a higher percentage of the end user market.

Awebb · 2017-04-10 07:30:24

olegabrielz wrote:

a higher percentage of the end user market.

How would you personally benefit from that?

phw · 2017-04-10 07:33:41

Awebb wrote:

olegabrielz wrote:
a higher percentage of the end user market.
How would you personally benefit from that?

More malware? More stupid questions on these forums?

parchd · 2017-04-10 07:55:16

phw wrote:

Awebb wrote:
olegabrielz wrote:
a higher percentage of the end user market.
How would you personally benefit from that?
More malware? More stupid questions on these forums?

We won't have to wait long for that. `date +%Y` is the year of Linux on the desktop.

Trilby · 2017-04-10 10:30:02

To be fair, the topic of the thread is something that linux is missing, not "something that you would personally benefit from", nor not even "something you wish linux had."

So, while perhaps a banal point, it is true that linux is missing a high percentage of the market.

(edit: sed '$ s/the//')

Last edited by Trilby (2017-04-10 12:59:45)

olegabrielz · 2017-04-10 10:58:19

Awebb wrote:

olegabrielz wrote:
a higher percentage of the end user market.
How would you personally benefit from that?

Personally, as of now, not so much. I'm pretty happy with things as it is. It is more ideology. As I understand the history of Linux, it has gained a lot of ground compared to earlier years (to the chagrin of some and the delight of others). My assumption is that with more people knowing of it and using it in general, the more people will also be triggered into diving deeper. Of course, this will also produce more noise; as waves of nOObs are storming the castle walls. If that problem increases in magnitude, build higher and better walls.

I know this may be a naive (borderline childish) representation, but I won't be the first to compare linux with lego. Lego triggers creativity not only per isolated child, but also in a broader spectrum. They get inspired by eachother, using and building further on what they experience and observe, evolving their understanding of complexity, and therefore also their analytical properties and capabilities in problem solving. I do choose to believe that these are all positive development features for the human properties.

Naive as I am, I choose weigh in for the positive side regarding our future and technology. I do believe we are all better off if a greater part of it belongs to the public, pure and open, not closed, governed and owned by a few. I do also believe that there is a direct link between the size of the user base and the compatibility on the vastness of different platforms/hardware. We all like our open source drivers, don't we? How was the support for hardware when the endusers userbase were next to nothing?

Please don't misinterpret me. I don't mean that systems like arch should be more nOOb friendly. Personaly I would wote for it to move a bit in the opposite direction, reinforcing the walls of the castle.

Trilby · 2017-04-10 11:07:06

I agree that linux having a now not-entirely-trivial market share has driven improvement in linux (e.g. driver support). A larger portion of hardware manufacturers and big software projects are no longer so able to completely ignore linux (some still do, but it's much less common). This is good.

However, I think there may be an optimal range of market share for such benefits. If the market share of linux dropped drastically, manufacturers and service providers would go back to ignoring it completely which would not be good. However, on the other side, if linux gains to much in market share, the same players could try to find ways to "capitalize" on linux. I suspect a majority of the results of this motivation would be bad for linux users.

When linux is a nusiance that they must live with, we benefit. If linux becomes a resource for them to exploit, we suffer.

While the above is mostly semi-philosophical, I can offer a concrete example in support of my worry. My workplace requires a suite of "tools" to be installed on every computer in the workplace. The least-bad part of these "tools" is the horrible resource drain they are running constantly in the background. The more-bad parts are the data they collect: passwords, activity history, key logs, etc and data is sent to a central repository. If you shut down the software, but try to remain on the network IT knows about it and you get locked out (or worse). Every computer must have this software. That is every computer except linux, as this garbage will not run in linux.

IT provides absolutely zero support for linux - which is fine, I wouldn't want their help anyways*. But they also provide zero interference with linux systems. They aren't competant enough to port their crap to a linux system and at the moment the market share is small enough that they are content to ignore us few linux users. If 30% of the people in the workplace were using linux, they'd find a way to ~~mess with~~ support us as well as the do the Windows users.

* Note, very very few people on our IT staff have any computer science background. They intentionally hire computer illiterate people with very good people skills. They give them some training on using this system-management-malware suite in Windows and that is the extent of the technical training of many of our IT staff.

olegabrielz · 2017-04-10 12:10:51

Good points!

Trilby wrote:

I think there may be an optimal range of market share for such benefits.

I fully agree. There is for sure a balance here, making it beneficial for the community, and not too attractive for some individuals or cynical corporate businesses to get crazy ideas. So they are letting you run linux in "their" environment at work. Not bad. Then you should never encourage too many of your colleagues to do the same, keeping the IT guys at a safe distance.

Trilby wrote:

... mostly semi-philosophical, ...

Yeah, I know. LoL

lahwaacz · 2017-04-10 12:42:32

Here, Trilby requested that we quote all his posts with a typo in it

Trilby wrote:

So, while perhaps a banal point, it is true that linux is missing the a high percentage of the market.

That strongly depends on what the "end user market" (as expressed by the OP) is. There are multiple "markets" where Linux has the highest share, for example, on supercomputers it can't go much higher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_sha … y_category

olegabrielz · 2017-04-10 13:17:53

I think it's pretty clear what I meant by end user market

Edit: Typo here as well

Last edited by olegabrielz (2017-04-10 13:19:41)

lahwaacz · 2017-04-10 14:08:54

No, the Wikipedia's definition does not make it any clearer to me. The Linux kernel developers develop the kernel, which is used by other developers and packagers to make a Linux distribution, which is the "product" in this context. By the definition, anybody who has an "instance" of the product and uses it (among other things) for anything that does not involve modifying the instance, is the "end user". This implies that for example a company running a Linux web server is an end users of the product, which is probably far from what you meant by an end user.

Arch Linux

#426 2017-01-16 18:04:23

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

#427 2017-02-24 10:16:22

Re: something that you feel linux is missing

#428 2017-02-24 10:35:04

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#429 2017-02-24 10:44:25

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#430 2017-02-24 10:47:17

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#431 2017-03-04 15:21:52

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#432 2017-03-05 16:03:29

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#433 2017-03-08 01:54:58

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#434 2017-03-21 11:31:47

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#435 2017-03-21 12:11:40

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#436 2017-03-21 13:21:06

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#437 2017-03-21 14:18:04

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#438 2017-03-30 06:05:42

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#439 2017-03-30 06:26:10

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#440 2017-04-09 22:15:42

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#441 2017-04-10 07:30:24

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#442 2017-04-10 07:33:41

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#443 2017-04-10 07:55:16

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#444 2017-04-10 10:30:02

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#445 2017-04-10 10:58:19

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#446 2017-04-10 11:07:06

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#447 2017-04-10 12:10:51

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#448 2017-04-10 12:42:32

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#449 2017-04-10 13:17:53

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#450 2017-04-10 14:08:54

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