Down With Numbers

As I may have mentioned a while ago (or not; I’m not really sure, and I can’t be bothered to check), I’m currently using Linux (specifically, Ubuntu) as my primary operating system. I wasn’t a complete Linux newbie, since I have dabbled in the dark side before, but never fully made a switch from Windows because I kept getting burned. Ubuntu, however, seemed to pass my tests.

Unfortunately, Windows is still better than Linux. The fact that I continue to use Linux is not contrary to that fact, it’s simply a confirmation that I’m ridiculously lazy and can’t be bothered to switch back to Windows.

Problem one. Xorg. If the Linux window rendering path were a 3-lane motorway, Xorg is roadworks on all 3 lanes forcing you over to the hard shoulder. This is known, of course, and some very clever people are working on a fully OpenGL version of it, called Xgl. (<Neo>Woah.</Neo>)

Problem deux. Codecs. If you download a movie trailer from the internet, or a video of John Carmack’s keynote speech from the latest QuakeCon, then it’s a very hit-and-miss affair as to whether you’ll be able to cajole a movie player in Linux to run it. I know, I know, it’s all about copyrights and suchlike, but it still bothers me. One of the first things I had to do was replace totem-gstreamer with totem-xine because gstreamer is, well, useless - nobody encodes things in the free formats like Ogg Theora.

Problem drei. Fonts. As you’d expect, Linux does not come with fonts identical to Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman. Instead, it comes with its own versions. Problem is, while they look pretty good, they break websites, so you have to install the Windows fonts that have been made freely available by Microsoft. That’s no big deal, but there’s another fonts problem in the form of symbol fonts. I frequent a maths discussion board, and as such plenty of symbol fonts are used for things like Greek letters. Want to see them properly in Firefox? No way Jose. Just refuses to work, no matter how many supposed fixes I apply.

Problem quatro. Games. ‘Nuff said.

Problem, er, five. E-mail. Evolution and Thunderbird just aren’t up to the standard of Outlook. Evolution just about does the job, but its spam filter is pants - they don’t tell you that you have to install a third-party package for it to actually work, and even then no amount of training on hundreds of spams seems to make it catch more than about fifteen out of around a hundred and fifty.

Problem six. DVDs. You’d think that they’d Just Work(TM) after installing libdvdcss. Unfortunately, since I’m writing this paragraph, that can’t possibly be true, and it isn’t. I can get them to play, but only if I run totem(-xine) with root permissions. Otherwise, the movie displays fine, but the sound is completely messed up. Not good.

Problem seven. Gnome niggles. On the whole, I don’t mind Gnome - it does the job pretty well, and it’s enjoyable to program applications for it using Perl and Gtk. However, two things come to mind. Firstly, notifications; if someone sends me an instant message, there is no way (currently) in Gnome for the window button in the window list to flash to notify me. I hear, however, that some half-arsed fix has been put into the new Gnome. Secondly, window buttons in the window list expand and contract like a madman on a pogo stick. If the length of a window’s title changes, there’s no need to expand or contract the button to accomodate it - it’s distracting and ugly. Do it like MS Windows does and have fixed widths depending on how many windows are open.

Problem eight. Mathematica. Since maths is my main hobby (don’t ask), I often use computer algebra packages, of which my preferred one is Mathematica. Fantastic system, does everything I could ask and ten thousand times more. There are versions of Mathematica for every operating system under the sun, so I eagerly installed the Linux version of the trial to see what it’s like. I then tried to do some maths operations by typing in the commands. Unfortunately, Mathematica seems to take a different idea about half the keys I type - if I hit backspace, then a little square appears as a new character. If I hit numpad enter (which is execute in Mathematica) the same happens, rendering it totally useless and forcing me to use the Windows version via VNC if I want to use it.

I’ll stop now, since this is probably quite boring to most people. These eight are off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are a few more.