After 15-20 years the OpenSource user-land remains confusingly fragmented. Multiple monitors are a pain and applications don't have the understanding of full-screen. Working with icons on the desktops was hard, so now we have launchers, and now we are doing away with the desktop all together - my theory being that drag-able icon interaction was too hard to implement. Distro's are fragmented by their philosophies on software rather then their GUI's - resulting in horrible user experiences. Why the hell does Linux mint come in so many flavors?
Drivers remain a problem, I recently had to recompile modify the kernel because my elan mouse was being detected incorrectly. Ubuntu has made large leaps but I have noticed that their GUI burns power and shutters on systems that are about 5 years old. Also, remember when computers could hibernate?
But, I use Gentoo for work, 'cause kcachegrind is good. I think OSS has delivered something unique to its users but it is whole different from a general purpose operating system like Windows.
I think the comparison between Latex and Word is a good comparison between he OpenSource and propriety world.
When people speak to highlight the progress of OSS I am tempted to ask:
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
How many years do I have to wait?
Whenever I've asked people to provide concrete examples of this, their issue has been that they expect the UI to be a 1:1 clone of whatever application they're used to (usually Photoshop) and so they don't know how to do some things, or can't operate smoothly enough as they haven't taken the time to grow muscle memory comparable to what they have with Photoshop.
I'm not a big fan of GIMP, but I want to scream of frustration on the occassion that I have to work with Photoshop (which I don't know well at all).
I'm glad that those who want MDI have finally stepped up and implemented it. Recently I've been using a tiling window manager that doesn't deal particularly well with floating windows. Now I have the choice.
Right, exactly. I've found that starting GIMP in ratpoison is a little glitchy - two windows spend time competing for a single frame until I pull one of them into another frame - but once I've done that I quite like the experience of using GIMP in ratpoison.
The GP on the other hand is forced to use the exact same interface that Adobe prescribes for Photoshop. Moreover, if Adobe shuts down tomorrow, it is the end of the road for Photoshop development.
also
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48804
--edit, not sure why links to the bugzilla describing the issue are giving me downvotes...
--edit 2 : I actually hit this bug when making a flyer, the bottom had little flaps with our groups email. It broke PowerPoint compatibility, and I had to reboot into Windows.
--edit 3: You made laugh when you mentioned that "You can't invert the text quite so easily, you have to draw a rectangle with text in which can then be rotated any arbitrary degree." That sums up whats wrong with many user side facing programs. Too bad LibreOffice doesn't support pipes :-)
Next time you trawl bug reports looking for anti-Linux material, try reading them more carefully.
On the other hand, Word is great too, I wouldn't write a book on it but most of the time I am not writing books, as for free alternatives to Word, I find them sufficient but I would rather pay 10$ per month to use word and excel than work around libre office and its limitations.
That is a parasitic and unsustainable model. Even if you could find enough volunteers to copy the work of every bit of successful commercial software, that original design and development work still needs to be funded.
Other commenters have noted the quality situation of many of the cloner projects out there. Even cloning takes work and sustainable, quality work needs remuneration.
http://gitlab.org/
Open source software alone can't spin up hardware. It makes sense to pay someone for providing a physical service.
Github is getting paid already for developing what will someday influence a definitive open-source interface to git and collaboration.
Photoshop is really nice software. The GIMP is too, and perpetually improving. Closed-source programs are sometimes the vanguard to show the world that a particular idea is important and useful. Any sufficiently useful closed-source program will be cloned into open source in today's environment.
15-20 years ago, the world had a plethora of closed-source options for a gui-based OS. These days, open-source offerings compete on near-equal footing.
It's almost as easy as typing:
apt-get install debian
on any keyboard anywhere to get access to a functional GNU/Linux system. A lot of closed-source programmers earned a lot of money showing us what features of that system have mass appeal.
Is a government-funded public cloud not beholden to the government which funds it?