Windows vs. Linux [my usage]

[xennex81]

dolphin is the best file browser i have ever used. to many good features to list.. one ez one is press F4 for a konsole . you will like if you use konsole alot like me.. (f3 split window)

F4 will only open a Konsole embedded which is pretty much useless, can't see anything in it. The split window of course is an old feature of Norton Commander and Midnight Commander and even "PC Tools" I believe that I used in DOS. And many other file managers. Such as XYPlorer for Windows. A program that has probably seen a million hours more development time than Dolphin and I still think it sucks. Mainly due to choices of the designer. But it has potential. I just like multi window instead of split window I guess.

Ctrl+I lets you filter files in your dir wanna see only mp3s use *.mp3...

Erm, I never have mp3s in a directory with anything other than mp3s ;-). Except for a jpg or a playlist.

[xennex81]

then "I get these windows with the blue glow around it and KSnapShot doesn't work well." in Ksnapshot uncheck the tick box "include window decorations"

It is bugged in KDE 4. I already filed a bug for it but it will probably never get fixed.

[xennex81]

Exactly. Because your "complaints" about Dolphin's behavior aren't logical. Dolphin (as an example) requires much the same style of file system navigation as Windows Explorer.

Yeah, except that it is a very poor program.

While operations in Dolphin are similar to those in Windows Explorer, the underlying mechanism is tightly integrated with how file systems in Linux behave. Of course, while successfully operating Dolphin doesn't require an understanding of FHS, knowing the FHS is certainly helpful.

I don't think that's a problem.

Windows has gone to great lengths to purge the CLI from day-to-day use (though see, as an exception, PowerShell). Most Linux based distributions have not chosen to adopt this goal. Certain operations are much more efficient at the CLI. Seems that you're experiencing this.

Except for typing filenames. Selecting filenames that are presented to you is much faster. If you have to do a lot of file operations (such as organizing) the GUI is always faster. In general I would prefer a GUI for file operations.

https://www.google.com/?q=linux+quick+change+directory

Is it really so hard to search for solutions rather than to write lengthy treatises about how the free software you're using doesn't behave in exactly the manner you wish?

That Google query didn't provide anything that was useful. The most ardent solution was a goto script. I already do this with shell variables. I guess, if you have it, you can extend it to work in KDE as well. But that requires more work. I already have a million projects and I don't even have a computer. I'm not sure if you've ever done all your computer work on a phone.

I could spend all my time searching for solutions and I'd have nothing else to do with my time. I'm not here to solve someone else's problems. If Linux (or KDE, whatever) is flawed, I cannot go and solve everything. This is a community effort. I'm engaging the community. The more flawed a product is, the more time it takes to develop everything on your own, to the point that you have to develop the entire thing. I spend all of my time developing, but I have to focus and engage the community whenever I can. You can spend your entire life seeking solutions in Linux and never get any work done. Another man's product is another man's responsibility. You all seem more knowledgeable than I am. Why should I reinvent the wheel? What good does it do to have a million people do the same search query to solve the same problem that was created by the same developer? Linux is a great waste of time in any case (or an experiment in wasting time) because the developers are not doing what they should do, leaving it up to the end user to do it for them and depending on bug reports to know what is wrong with their product (instead of developing something rightly).

I'm on the Plasma mailing list. Boy, it's a MESS. The amount of complicatedness is STAGGERING. Bugs in X vs. Wayland, file this file that, you have to live in that system for ten years before you know anything about it. Like learning by heart all the holes in a maze. And that is just from scant observation. Workaround building on workaround. "Yes, it is ugly, but a real solution will require months of manwork".

I'm glad they're moving to Wayland though. Will make my goals easier as well.

Also it's statements like these -- "much like ALT+F2 but in a better location" -- that make you seem antagonistic. You ask for advice and you criticize at the same time. Like in this thread: sithlord48 offered some suggestions and your first response was to argue.

I argue to make you UNDERSTAND. You are not reading my intentions correctly. I am not looking for quick solutions within the scope of what is currently possible (mostly) because I feel such solutions don't exist within the scope of what is currently lacking. So I am trying to raise awareness because my issues are also everyone else's issues that can't work with linux. In the hopes that finally eventually enough awareness will be raised that something changes or a momentum exists or comes into being because people wake up to the atrocities that are being committed in the open source development model where everyone is a slave to the goal and foregoes his own identity and his own desires in subservance of a greater ideal.

Baloo, the file indexer in Kubuntu, maintains a list of all folders. KRunner has access to this list. You can press Alt+F2 (or Alt+Space) and simply type the name of a folder. It will appear in the list. Cursor to it and press Enter. This works even if you don't add folders/subdirectories to Dolphin's Places.

Right, thanks. I'll see if I can ever work with that. I don't like search as an operation of my machine. Search is an exceptional action to take when you don't know where something is, not as a means of reaching what you know exactly where it is. The latter always takes more time than a direct action, at least in a well designed system. The direct action involves no uncertainties. A user folder might e.g. exist in three places at the same time, which then requires conscious attention to select the right one.

(I must say I have been using Dolphin's dual pane mode with tabs (tabbed mode, I mean) recently to copy and move files as the tabs gave a clear indication of where my document root was (thanks to Places). That was well integrated.)

By the way, by location I meant screen location, not key location..

I'd argue that nothing about any operating system is intuitive. Manipulating software is a learned behavior. Some of what you know from Windows will work in Linux and KDE. Some of what you know won't. The more time you spend with KDE, the more "intuitive" it will feel.

This is the cynicism of the Linux world. You've so long been used to bad software that you think it's the only reality. You've accustomed to and submitted to that it won't get any better than this. But bad software is NOT a rule and it only comes into being because (mostly) Linux developers see their time and intentions fragmented and driven away from their personal goals. They try to run after the facts and work on projects that don't have their full glory because they can't do what they really want because it is a community owned thing. A guy from the Gnome Ubuntu mailing list says in his sig:

"Nothing ruins creativity like too many voices weighing in. We call it the /Ice Cream Principle/. Tell 10 people to go get ice cream with one condition: they all have to agree on one flavour. That flavour is going to be chocolate or vanilla every time. Groups of people don't agree on what's cool or interesting, they agree on what's easy to agree on."

And that's EXACTLY what happens. Personal power and personal creativity is muffled and lesser solutions are reached because no one can do what he really wants. The group lives the individual, not the other way around. It is deeply communist in nature (hate to use that word) or rather a form of religious Borg-likedness.

Right-click Home in Places and change the label to whatever you want. As in Windows, in KDE the right-click context menu is a powerful thing. Here is an example of a system feature that's shared between the two desktop environments.

Right, I hadn't noticed that before when I asked the question / offered the complaint. I did find out on my own after, but thanks anyway, that was friendly. Home just means "root" to me like I said. Constantly confused.

Thanks for all your answers! Also everyone else who's shared, especially the one with the xdg links or whatever it was (for library locations) and Vinny for the avtools script/reference.

[xennex81]

Btw, about the iShiny and the computer illiteracy.

I believe it is because people are lacking /roots/. I'm a kid of the eighties. I programmed in MSX Basic, Pascal and Assembler in DOS. We (my and my friends) had to deal with low level semantics. Interrupts. Crashes. Reboots. Try again. Hey it works!

Nowadays you can't really learn to program in Windows (or Linux). The best you can do is learn PHP or Python or Javascript. That's high-level. Who is going to tinker with ASM in a huge fcking kernel? People are still using Turbo Pascal for programming courses I believe. Or perhaps a power pc emulator (like it was on university, boring). No one experiences the thrill we did.

I want to go back in some way to the days of past and create something truly astounding in terms of a pristine experience. But like I said, it feels my life is already over since they keep locking me up and I've already lost a year of worthlessness in which I could have done so much and I did nothing as I could hardly breathe in the premises I was located in.

[claydoh]

When using f4 in Dolphin to open an attached konsole, you can resize it to your liking.

As to the file system discussion, why do us Joe Users even have to know about t he file system, or where files go?
(While my attempts to remain a Joe Average User may not be successful, I do strive to remain one as much as possible)

Why doesn't the program, file system, OS, or DE automatically know where things are?
On my shiny new phone, Android is sort of like this, a little. I wonder how they will handle things as phones hold more and more - mine supports up to 2TB sdcards(!!?!!) whenever those are available.

[Simon]

But now the real deal.

I cannot play games in Linux.

Diablo II doesn't work, Diablo III doesn't work. It is all either too slow or the window/graphics handling is real bad. These applications cause resolution changes in the KDE desktop. There is weird window panning with Diablo II. I can't play these games. I do not like virtual boxing yet. So I'm either at dual boot or....

Really? Really really?

Ok seriously, this old box of mine is running some games just fine. I assume you are using WINE without the POL front end GUI?

The trick to running D2;

Just as they did in Starcraft, no screen resolution options... you are fixed at 640x480. In your desktop shortcut you need to run it under a virtual desktop.
Command line should read; wine explorer /desktop=Starcraft,640x480 '/media/Drive D/Starcraft/StarCraft.exe' <--(I think you can figure it out for Diablo)
This will have you playing inside a 640x480 window but there are other Xorg tricks such as Virtual resolution that will scale and stretch the screen. It will end up looking pixelated but that is how it originally was anyway.

Early on in 2010 I was dual booting, then I blew off my Windows XP and installed it on VM Oracle inside Linux. It actually booted quicker in there for some reason. I removed the VM and went straight with WINE for any and all Windows apps - mostly games. I shelved the XP disks and haven't touched it in so long I can't recall how a lot of the system works. I still cannot pass up the bargain software bins at the mall. But recently I have downloaded Steam for Linux and bought Borderlands II not to mention all the free games available.

When I desire to play a game, I do the research and find the way. Linux OS wasn't created to be a "gaming console", but oddly enough it has done a pretty good job.

[xennex81]

The trick to running D2;

Right. I managed to get D2 running in a Window (800x600) but only as long as I kept it in the top left corner of my screen, otherwise weird clipping would ensue. (Part of the window didn't display correctly). 800x600 is too small to play it well though. You are saying I can get it at a higher resolution (size) in a virtual desktop. I'll give that a try. Thank you.

But recently I have downloaded Steam for Linux and bought Borderlands II not to mention all the free games available.

I bought Borderlands 2 too. Runs fine on my system. Haven't played it long, not really my kind of game, but the humour is just too awesome. I plan on doing some more in it when I can but I died at the first encounter pretty bad ;-).

When I desire to play a game, I do the research and find the way. Linux OS wasn't created to be a "gaming console", but oddly enough it has done a pretty good job.

By contrast, I only complain and let others do my work for me. That way I don't have to do work others have already done for me ;-). I'm evil that way. It is my way of contributing to the openmindedness of the Linux world ;-). Hahaha. I'm happy you're such a good person. I can make use of you X-D.

By the way I didn't know what POL is.

[Snowhog]

By the way I didn't know what POL is.

Play on Linux.

Simon, are you the author of this wiki page? http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:...f_Aragon/Linux

[xennex81]

An interesting write-up about the number eight.
I agree with you a limited number of choices or depth of a tree helps navigation by memory. (At least that's how I perceive your reasoning)

It is easier on your mind in general, and easyness translates to fastness (low effort). There is a difference between remembering and recognising, recognising is much faster (less costly) and easy to do in a gui. If you consequently (or consistently) have only a few (not too small, not too many) choices to remember, traversal is fastest. Many menu systems are very cluttered, providing too many choices in a single list (e.g. GIMP, MS Word, OpenOffice), and Microsoft has tried to tackle it with hiding menu entries which didn't work all that well and now they've settled for "ribbon" which is much worse and they should have gone with the number 8 but no one has developed that concept yet. (KDE application menu has about 8 categories).

At the same time I prefer a file manager with a GUI so I don't have to remember every branch of the tree, it is in a very easy to understand and navigate display before me, a bit like the old XTree-Gold.

Sure, but it is still helpful if there are only a limited number of familiar categories to remember and in a computer system it is very rare to come across completely unknown branches (unless you do a lot of searching, which is my hateful thing).

In class I teach to dump the icon view and use 'detail' view in the file manager, that way you know what the file contains and which version you are looking at, towards the end of class most agree this is the only sensible layout for a complex system.

It would be helpful if the detailed list view in Kubuntu actually made sense but it collapsed into something that looks like a tree (for folders) which doesn't make sense. The nondetailed list view provides little of value and so I default to the icon view which is too dispersed to be really helpful.

But in general in Windows for the past 7 years I have always organized everything around the number 8 (unknowingly) for example the number of audio categories was (hiphop + industrial + metal + teenage rock + sweet pop + post rock + piano + pop) = about 8. It just works very well. If the number of categories starts to grow, I start to reorganise. I have always done this. List items (actual albums) don't have to be limited, since they are not categories.

But many real-world problems we are tackling on a computer can't be easily (if at all) reduced to so few choices, a typical production plant will have a multitude of sensors that need to be addressed and displayed.

Sensors are also not categories but it may help to group them.

Although you don't mention it directly I believe many of your Dolphin problems are because you've never fully investigated it's options like right clicking and the detailed view.
(The right click is all but unknown on an iShiny!)

I am not an iShiny person but it is not easy to discover something when the default is so bad that you can't even use the software well enough to investigate. You first have to stick around for a while before you can learn but if you don't do that (because you hate the software) that doesn't happen. Do not think for a second that I'm a bad learner. I just have better things to do than to spend time on using software that doesn't work in the hopes of getting it to work (for me).

Take your remark about the 'difficult to find' USB drive, it's right in your face on Dolphin's Places menu!

Not in places in Devices. You can put it to Places I think. I'm not a mouse using person if I can help it. I just like to get somewhere by quick fast typing. The devices view is pretty disorienting. I often have to guess which device it is based on the volume size or something (not sure). So it is slow. Only Places works reasonably well with a bit of training (and remembering).

my Windows work computer is constantly having issues like assigning a new USB drive to a letter that's already in use as a network drive making both inaccessible (:

Really? Never had THAT happen to me. You can reassign drive letters to whatever position you wish. No problem. Just go to "Computer Management" and then "Drive Management".

I really wish Windows would have a file manager like Dolphin. (the multi-pane managers we had in the Win3 days are gone)

There is XYPlorer. It seems to have an active community and fan base and has many powerful features. It has multi-pane and multi-tab and supports direct pane-to-pane operations and much more. It has a commercial license but I believe the free version is free.

The konsole offered through the F4 key does have a limited number of rows but the last real Unix computer (OS9) I used had a screen with 24 lines of 40 characters and we thought it was fine.

I don't care much about that. It works for me, or it doesn't work for me. I liked that Kubuntu 14.10 had "open in konsole" but it was gone in Plasma 5.

About names like usr, I started programming on a machine with 3K of RAM, user instead of usr would've cost 33% more memory!

pff, what reason to choose something..

PS, I wish you a quick recovery!

Thanks man. I'm sorry if I sound like a loser or whiner or complainer. I guess everyone has his difficulties in life and one problem is not necessarily worse than another. My apologies. Truly. I will not whine anymore.

[xennex81]

As to the file system discussion, why do us Joe Users even have to know about t he file system, or where files go?
(While my attempts to remain a Joe Average User may not be successful, I do strive to remain one as much as possible)

Hey, I agree with you on principle.

Why doesn't the program, file system, OS, or DE automatically know where things are?
On my shiny new phone, Android is sort of like this, a little.

Apple has tried to achieve this with making everything default and uncustomizable. Many search and library systems try to turn everything into metadata. I believe that is the way of the future but I have not seen a system that I liked. That means you lose power instead of gaining it. Ultimately it depends on how good the philosophical concept is. But I must say I like Clementine's library feature and I use it instead of files. First media library I've ever used.

I wonder how they will handle things as phones hold more and more - mine supports up to 2TB sdcards(!!?!!) whenever those are available.

I think it will go fine. Phones are appliances. I have issues with my phone's video library function though. I have so much on it that I can hardly find what I need.

[Simon]

Play on Linux.

Simon, are you the author of this wiki page? http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:...f_Aragon/Linux

The front page was designed by my guild leader, Wendy Black who took the screenshot of me in the guild hall. She is a wizard of wiki. I later picked up and made some individual pages beyond that one. Yes the information on that page is 100% mine.

I have also used my "awesome powers" to help out at Wine HQ when I can.

[sithlord48]

i had a long comment about alot of your ranting but it sums up to this.

Different operating systems act differently , different DE's all work differently and different programs with different use cases work differently. Why would you think otherwise.

and before you say oh i don't expect it to work like whatever go read what you posted its basicly linux is bad cause it don't work like windows or mac os.. dolphin is bad cause its not like explorer or finder.. The FHS is bad cause its not how im used to ...

[xennex81]

Why doesn't the program, file system, OS, or DE automatically know where things are?

On Gnome they have an app called "Music" and a thing called "Tracker" that collects music files as the backend for that Music. Apparently the Ubuntu Gnome people have a problem with that Tracker because you can't select the location for the music files so Tracker won't find your files if it's somewhere else.

Different operating systems act differently , different DE's all work differently and different programs with different use cases work differently. Why would you think otherwise.

Bla bla bla.

and before you say oh i don't expect it to work like whatever go read what you posted its basicly linux is bad cause it don't work like windows or mac os.. dolphin is bad cause its not like explorer or finder..

I don't even like MacOS or Finder. I'm sorry you can't look beyond this Windows vs. Linux hostility.

The FHS is bad cause its not how im used to ...

I'm probably been using FHS for longer than you, but not sure. I just have different ideas about it.

[sithlord48]

Bla bla bla.

that is exactly my point.

I don't even like MacOS or Finder.

can't say i care for mac os either. i find it mostly useless for myself now. i really only use mac os to build test and package the mac os version of applications i write.

I'm sorry you can't look beyond this Windows vs. Linux hostility.

that is a joke right ?

I'm probably been using FHS for longer than you, but not sure. I just have different ideas about it.

Yes you have a different view on it as i have said elsewhere in this thread i like the FHS.

As a developer it makes it easier for me to deploy applications i write for linux .. mac is is just annoying because of its bundle system requires you to ship any dependencies in the bundle and windows is not much better only real difference is that the windows bundles are shown as folder and the mac os ones are shows as an .app file

As an end users i know that if i need to edit somethings configuration its located in either /etc or ~/.config depending on if its a system wide config or user.

[xennex81]

that is exactly my point.

I don't think it was.

can't say i care for mac os either. i find it mostly useless for myself now. i really only use mac os to build test and package the mac os version of applications i write.

That's not really using it ;-). But you probably know more about the system than most regular users.

that is a joke right ?

No. I have no real preference for either Linux or Windows at this point. If the situation was reversed, and I was wanting to do something with Windows and the Windows devs/users was maintaining that the system had no flaws and did not need improvement, I would equally be chastising them for their incompetence. As it stands, the only reason I put so much effort in 'ranting' about Linux's obvious failings is because I care about Linux much more than I care about Windows at this point.

I mean, WTF is Microsoft doing with all those "UI" improvements? I had Windows 10 installed and it's just one big experiment because Microsoft's goals are so conflicting with their software asaservice intentions and they don't really know what they're doing. All they care about is selling their online platform and it's madness. If you don't want in on OneDrive etc the system is suddenly your enemy. What the hell is the point of creating an entire system when half of it is questionable and most if not many users are at least slightly uncomfortable? It is never going to work and Microsoft is not going to survive. They're cutting huge numbers of jobs already.

So I'm not partial. I really have goals with what I write and Microsoft or Linux is equal to me as long as I can achieve my goals. For me it's not ideological but rather practical (maybe even opportunistic).

So you may think I'm hostile to Linux but it is not so. I'm really trying very hard to make my way into it and I'm trying to raise my level of comfort but it's not easy. It's really a steep uphill battle. Whereas getting used to Windows was always a bliss... (I mostly mean in the past, today it is rotten).......

There has been a time earlier when I gave up on Linux. I could not handle it mentally. The constant frustration made me mad and my brain was too weak to handle that emotion. I had to quit using it for my personal health.

That was KDE in some OpenSUSE version I think. It might have been Gnome. Ubuntu was not yet prominent at that time. I could not work with it no matter how hard I tried.

Yes you have a different view on it as i have said elsewhere in this thread i like the FHS.

You seem to approach it only from a developer's point of view. A friend of mine, I said, the problem of Linux is it's being developed by Linux users. He responded, the problem of Mac is it's being developed by Mac users ;-). (He is a Mac guy (and FreeBSD)).

As a developer it makes it easier for me to deploy applications i write for linux .. mac is is just annoying ... and windows is not much better ...

If that is the only or the most important criterium..... ?. I mean, this way there won't be any users to actually use your software.

As an end users i know that if i need to edit somethings configuration its located in either /etc or ~/.config depending on if its a system wide config or user.

Ironically, Apache is the worst "Windows" app to configure of all I've used. It has no configuration tool. Any normal Windows program has a config tool. Not the Apache port. You have to edit the config file which is just rotten if you don't know how to do it. For the simplest of things. A real unfriendly program.

So "knowing where the config files are" is not really the epitome of user friendliness. Not HAVING to edit anything is more like, the epitome of that. Of course, being able to means power. Git has a config tool that is a front end to the config files. You could easily give that a real GUI front end. Everything is a command so configuration is easy to script and automate, and easy to do with a graphical config tool.

The weird thing about Linux is that there are not more good nCurses programs. Remember "make menuconfig"? That IS user friendly.