One year, 4 months and 6 days later

Over a year ago, I reported what would be the first of a series of problems with Mandriva’s USB detection. To this day, the bug has never been solved, or even assigned to or handled by anyone.

A USB pointer device detected and supported in earlier releases of Mandrake, SuSE, Red Hat, TurboLinux, and even f––ing FreeBSD, does not function at all in any Mandrake built after their USB overhaul in 2003. And no one cares.

With other users reporting the same problem, not to mention in other USB devices besides my Aiptek T-6000U Grafiktablet, you might think it would at least merit investigation.

It doesn’t.

Today, their cooker automatically crapped out a new E-mail to me: the Dear John of support mails.

– Additional Comment #20 From digri 2005-06-24 12:27 –
I understand you, but it’s not the way you see that. I guess nobody from Mandriva has that piece of HW, with that you’re experiencing problems. But if this works in SuSE, why don’t you find out, what’s the difference and post the patch to fix it? That can’t be so difficult. Either it is the kernel, or the X.Org input drivers or some script.

Linux is about freedom, you can use any distribution you like.

Also I don’t understand, why somebody responsible didn’t ask you for further information or tell us, where could be the problem.

No one responsible asked because no one wanted to work on the problem. Solving a USB input problem affecting a handful of users who actually reported it (not counting the thousands who reformatted, threw the Mandrake disk out their windows, and put a Microsoft OS back on) hardly looks as impressive as creating an OpenGL port of xeyes, or arguing about cycle counts in Doom 3.

I responded to this comment mostly out of annoyance, and because this is my bug. I started the report. It’s been kept alive by poor Achim de Merath–who religiously tests every new cooker build to see if his tablet works yet–but I still started the report.

I’m posting my response in full, because this really is the hammer of reality for what is wrong with Linux, and why it will never ever enter the desktop market beyond a handful of college students and eccentrics. You will sooner see SkyOS and QNX sold as Desktop solutions with boundless hardware support than you will ever see Linux on that same page–and as more than a joke.

Though I’m sure when that comes, Linux will offer more choice. You’ll be able to pick between 300 graphic viewers that are all built off the same core code that cannot display [image format here] because the original author left out support to make a statement and no one else has ever actually written code to display an image, just different ways of interfacing with his library. You’ll be able to have 5,000 spherical x-eyes following your pointer while playing Doom 7 at 9 million frames per second.

However, you will not be able to open new Microsoft Word files, or save properly to such formats because OpenOffice’s fonts are all just a hair off in one of their vectors, braking your text alignment on everything but their software. You won’t be able to lay out the page of a newspaper or design a flyer, because no software operates under Linux to design these either natively, or to support importing from Adobe PageMaker or QuarkXpress–the industry standards.

MPEG Layer-6 will become the rage of file sharing because it encodes 3D drunken band members to jump out of your screen and urinate vodka all over you, just like at a real concert. But only Ogg Vorbis will be supported, and it will be about 9 years behind because the original designer quit and no one else has an idea how the hell Ogg works since they never coded support for it themselves–just used his library.

But hey, it’s truly free!

– Additional Comment #21 From Derrick Sobodash 2005-06-24 14:07 –
digri: I was the original person who reported this problem and essentially, its handling was one of the key things to permanently move me away from ever trying Mandrake again. I still get emails about this problem every few days as Achim keeps bringing it up, but I’ve long since given up hope.

As far as Linux distributions go, TurboLinux is easily the best from an end user standpoint. Its a distribution with such strong work ethic (probably because the people who put it together are getting paid) that if software isn’t already localized in a target distribution language, they localize it themselves. Moreover, I’ve never had nor heard of any of the hardware troubles plaguing SuSE, Mandrake or Red Hat in TurboLinux.

However, even though it works fine, it’s no more than a yearly flirtation of mine. The entire attitude of Linux development — that is, shooting Linux in the foot, then acting surprised when average users get insanely frustrated with it, is why I moved away from Linux. Many advocates have been pushing Linux for years as an alternative desktop, or a desktop for people seeking a little adventure in something new. Most end users do not possess the kernel knowledge necessary to create their own drivers or debug drivers, and for most people in the desktop world, that’s not something they have the time or need to learn. I don’t think I’m speaking for myself alone on this one.

It’s far easier to just go to Microsoft — where hardware does work — than learn C++, a few variants of assembler, then spend years learning enough about basic debugging and signal trapping to move onto a project like reverse-engineering the signals sent from your tablet just to get mouse movement in your OS.

I will admit Linux has come a long way. Back in 1998, we used to have to get the SuSE supported driver list, print it out, then go shopping for the specific part model numbers that *might* actually be supported.

Linux is a great developer OS, it’s a great web server OS, but until the developers and proponents of Linux become stronger in their support of end user problems, Linux will never be a desktop OS. You can make it run a windowing environment, support Microsoft applications through WINE, but until Joe User can install it on his computer and have everything work — or at least have somewhere to actually get help when it doesn’t — it will never be a desktop OS.

I was under the impression the whole point of user-friendly Linux distributions was to get access to Linux into the hands of as many people as possible. Maybe I’m out in left field, but without any kind of support of investigation into these users problems, its like handing them a loaded gun — safety off — and not telling them how to use it. It’s inviting disaster.

Bang.