Uhhm actually . . . “Computing is jank”
If we begin to list the workarounds to make things functional, this thread would never end.
2 Likes
*screeches in BGP*
1 Like
Part 3:
The Raccoon Review:
This is invaluable input for the Cinnamon, KDE and OBS devs. They nailed the point at the end so dead on. But KDE in general relegating everything to the notifications pane is how their devs are used to things being, but NOT beginner friendly at all. Okular being like “Did you install the necessary packages to sign this PDF?” is not intuitive at all neither. Luke did choose a open-source PDF reader and that was completely reasonable if you knew where to look.
I feel DXVK, Proton GE, and ESPECIALLY D9VK has that condescending tone to new users because they expect everyone to know everything already. I’ve experienced it trying to get Hat in Time working on Linux, only for Joshua Ashton to reply saying “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE(tard)”. GloriousEggroll is also condescending in that “If you keep complaining, and do nothing about it, you’re not welcome in my private Discord server.” (WHICH HAPPENS TO BE THE ONLY WAY TO REPORT BUGS WITH PROTON GE)
The Dolphin root issue will NEVER be solved. KDE has their philosophy that the user should not use KDE apps in root pretty far up their ass. This is why I use Nemo on KDE, and why I’m glad to install Kubuntu Desktop ON TOP of a regular Ubuntu install because sometimes you do need to open something with a GNOME app like gedit in root because of KDE’s “no root” philosophy.
KDE saying themselves they need to simplify themselves is completely out of touch because of how they built it up to be their own cult of “our tailored experience.”
But yeah, when the “no root” clause is in place, this cannot ever be met if you’re going to run into exactly what is demonstrated with this video doing a major pointing out of the fundamental flaws of KDE (and partially Wayland) at the moment.
The VLC being blank on fullscreen is ENTIRELY because it probably was a Flatpak and the 2 libGLX shared libraries from the flatpak and Nvidia driver are conflicting. This is why Flatpaks and Snaps are a nightmare on Nvidia.
The “Play a HDR video” list item they threw in there because they wanted to be a dick to Xorg. Xorg is trying, but they haven’t yet gotten ANY workable solution yet, nor has Wayland. That was just plain unfair.
Also, YAY! The Linux Gamer gets a genuine citation in this video!
This one I felt had the most impact if it’s widely shared to the developers of these desktop environments. Wayland devs also need to take note, cause ignorance is not going to save them from the onslaught this time.
1 Like
Uhm dude the philosophy is common because Wayland no longer allows that. You must have policykit ask Wayland for root via admin:///(path)
Now if the documentation was proper Linus would have no trouble. Don’t start bashing a good security feature because its not as well documented. Feel free to bash the condescending devs for lack of docs
Gnome and XFCE (Thunar) do exactly this. They ask for the permissions I’m a proper way and also throw a ton of warnings if you do it via the terminal. GUI apps should not run as root. Unfortunately Xwayland allows it. For all intents and purposes admin:///(path) call is different than giving an application full sudo run mode
Not a hard fix but again an area with very little documentation. You can tell the flatpak to use system libraries.
In any case a lot of this is poor documentation that needs to be addressed. And in all honesty if the devs are too busy to do it. Its a good time for a layman to step up and write some and have the devs insert their technical stuff later. This provides a framework they often don’t want to write
1 Like
So poor documentation on how things SHOULD BE because maintenance of the code means more than treating new users like special snowflakes means user error. See, that’s the problem.
We’re going to have in-fighting because of these “set rules” and no one is going to agree or be kind enough to teach this since they’re all too busy. Prepare for a lot of rage over the next little while as developer fights developer.
You’re going to have things that make sense to the developer that are good security features make no sense to someone just jumping in, and they constantly blame the user for using it wrong. So Wayland forces everything into userspace. This is going to be a huge hassle going forward as people are used to the “Run as Administrator” prompt on Windows. Now you’re basically saying with Wayland that no longer exists, and the terminal and learning cp or mv (which are dangerous tools to a newbie) is better.
“You moved /opt and Wine is now broken? it’s your own damn fault you never learned the mv command.” is exactly Linus’ point.
1 Like
I 100 percent understand this point. I was more demystifying that the developer isnt actually doing a bad thing they are just poor communicators.
I talk to and mentor students into becoming practicing engineers all the time and the one thing I am always discussing with them in a harsh hard knocks way is how do you explain something at the engineering level to someone not at the engineering level.
Developers do not get this slap in the face unfortunately they have a good commnunity often but the good ones enable the bad ones and they all enable each other not being good communicators. In fact they make 100s of excuses why they dont need to do it. Now the really good developers who have become more outreach and political learned to communicate.
This is made worse by “nerds” (calling a spade a spade here) are told they can avoid human contact more going into x career. Its a horrible mentality to have. I understand what linus is saying and I also understand that this:
will net absolutely nothing. It takes someone coming in and changing the environment. Focusing on communication and documentation
Einstein once said you do not trully master what you know until you can explain it to an 8 year old the first time and have them understand it and repeat that success everytime
3 Likes
Well said. I feel this is an extremely valid point to bring up on the WAN show.
I mean I could always hit him up but I would rather it come from a devs mouth not an engineer
Devs get way to touchy in my experience when an engineer points out a flaw, particularly a software engineer which I am not. Perhaps Wendel or one of his industry contacts could make the point?
Linus would have had 0 issues with Linux if he did not try to stick his nose in the terminal. Had he updated his OS before trying to install Steam on Pop!_OS, he would still have been in Pop!_OS and ran things from the GUI.
Also, I agree with KDE, users should never run GUI programs as root. If a user is not advanced enough to know how his OS functions, then the user should not try to move files and folders in places that are owned by root.
I think the only good thing that can be learned from all of this is for people who want to help newbies to create more distro-specific tutorials using the GUI and screenshots.
And if you want actual serious UX feedback, you should watch quidsup’s “Week of Raspberry Pi 4 as a desktop PC” challenge, where his wife, a complete Linux noob coming from Windows tries to use a different DE each day. That series has been done right and that is the actual invaluable feedback that developers and designers need to get. Not what Linus did.
In fact, if Linus replicates quidsup’s series with his wife or with Sarah, because other LTT employees, with maybe the exception of Brandon and Taran, don’t appear to have great attention to detail, or they’re already Linux gurus, like Anthony, it can be the feedback that Linus said he wants to give to linux devs and designers.
I do object to the idea that intuitive = the way windows does it. Familiarity is not intuity. I don’t think Windows is necessarily all that intuitive, and I think some of the cases where Linux is less intuitive kind of do make sense when you learn a bit more.
As an example, when I first moved to Linux a couple of months ago I also found it unintuitive how to execute files I’d downloaded (or scripts I’d written), or to write data to a new hard drive. Then I learnt about about and used chmod and thought about the security implication of anyone and everyone automatically being given read, write and execute permissions over everything and actually now I wouldn’t change it. It’s something that makes using Linux not only more secure but also private (particularly if I were using a shared family machine, for instance.) Once I learnt the system of how to do what I wanted, I don’t mind it and I think it’s better this way. I wouldn’t change it.
In fact I’m going to say something that on reddit would get me downvoted: I know, such a hot take. You can manage permissions like this in Windows’s GUI, but it is much more convoluted and complicated than using chmod in the terminal. People have this idea that terminal necessarily means complex and scary for new users, but that hasn’t been my experience at all. As a new Linux user, I see why the terminal is used so much. It is much more concise, predictable and user friendly than the way you do things in WIndows as a power user. Maybe it’s because I am coming from a Physics and Engineering background so when I find instructions online I do like to learn what those commands actually do rather than blindly copy and paste, but I definitely find the terminal resonates with how I like to use the machine.
3 Likes
For sure, Wendell on that potential Part 5 video can make the point.
BTW, I just searched “Flatpak use system libraries” and “Ubuntu snap use system libraries” on DuckDuckGo and both results came up with zero useful results in the top 10 search results. In Google, the first result for Flatpak was a Github issue that included that condescending tone Linus complained about. Number one result for Snap on Google mentioned a less secure “Classic mode” that’s up to the developer, not instructions for the user on how to use it in it’s current iteration or modify Snap settings to allow it.
BTW, both Google results did not provide the answer on page one of the search results.
Okay so sift through the data on whatever specific package you obtained. Or just start probing and testing yourself. Look at some point if you need software to work you stop asking for help and just do it yourself. It sucks but sometimes thats what you gotta do. In industry we call this finishing… aka a problem came up… and instead of being a squeaky wheel you nut up, take initiative, do the ground work, document it… finish it and have something useful at the end regardless of the obstacles or rather people in front of you
Yeah, but the whole point of this challenge is “at what point does the frustration make someone potentially give up?”
The 15 minute challenge on Okular was a perfect example.
Im glad they are finding that but also dont ruminate on it. I dont think thats productive either. In any case to answer your question the easiest ways to make flatpak do what you googled is using flatpak override and override the filesystem permissions etc. flatpak-override(1) — Arch manual pages Using the override to set the filesystem to system and then the packaged stuff is ignored and the system libraries are used. I had to use that with NVidia stuff. It was fairly easy but again this took me 5 minutes of research. Admittedly this wont be the case for most people. I am already geared to solving and finishing problems because of my career. So is luke and you see there is a skill here. Normal users wont have it, this is correct. Unfortunately I dont see this frustration changing because of what we discussed prior
What WOULD be good to teach someone is the mentality to search for MAN pages beyond just googling a wiki without saying RTFM. It will be more time consuming and potentially annoying but people are smart and are likely to figure out the solution and avoid condescending people.
Strictly speaking overrides are annoying and shouldnt be required but sometimes you just have to make your own hack or solution. That is both the beauty and crutch of linux.
Im not sure but I wish there was a graphical way to say execute man docker
for example so someone does not need to use a terminal. If there is. Someone correct me. I live in the terminal
man is starting to become a habit for me when I’m not sure on something like ln to create symbolic links.
But it takes a LOT to get someone into that mentality. “You are your own IT department” is the mentality that you kinda have to be in, but is the exact same mentality criticized in the series by Linus.
I think the biggest criticism he is making is that if you are going to make someone be their own IT department it needs to be turn key and that’s not the case on linux
This is a growing pain they don’t know they need. And I have my doubts this will be realized.
I mean the shitty but true thing to say here is
welcome to Linux, it sucks, break shit a little while
You’ve said that several times before and was rebuked by several, including myself. Repeating a falsehood does not make it true 
2 Likes