My Top Picks: Long Rant

I looked through the archives to see if any of these were there and I 
didn't see them.  Let me know if they are not clear enough.

1.  Incompatibles between esd and artsd for sound sharing.  These two 
rarely cooperate well, cannot share properly (artsd is really bad about 
not sharing), have different protocols, and generally are poorly 
implemented (based on the crashes I experience daily).  I've frequently 
had to go in and kill off artsd when it locks up and I can't hear 
anything anymore, and it is such a bugger when it comes to sharing the 
sound devices.  I've found esd works better, but it doesn't work with 
the KDE stuff very well.  What I really wish was if these two would get 
together and *finally* adopt a universal sound streaming standard.  
Another option would be to fix the broken sound system so that users of 
the sound devices can share them easier.  It's a stream people. Streams 
can allow multiple writers.  It's kind of the point of a stream.  Other 
OS can do this, why not Linux?

2.  While we're on the subject of sound, can we please set the mixer to 
a sane default rather than making me go insane messing with some weird 
curses interfaces to my particular sound card just to find out that the 
mixer thinks my "headphones" are actually my "aux" output line? And can 
it please remember these settings?  And can it set things up so that 
KDE does *not* blast that horrible sounding knock-off of the 
not-all-that-pleasant-to-begin-with-Windows-startup-sound? Oh wait, I 
don't have that problem because artsd locks up when KDE starts.

I think you could sell a lot of books by just covering the media blues 
related to Linux.

3.  Could Debian *please* stop putting my damn apache cgi-bin under 
/usr/lib/cgi-bin?  This is SOOOOO annoying it just makes me want to 
scream.  It messes up anything that wants to install into a "standard" 
apache configuration, and makes switching over a pain.  Forget about 
automating maintenance in a heterogeneous environment.  I've never 
found the supposed "security advantages" motivation for this 
justifiable.  I find the Debian layout so annoying that sometimes I 
think it was designed just so people would be forced to throw Progeny 
some money.  And I'm not just a RedHat/Mandrake wuss.  This is based on 
seeing how other *BSD and Mac OSX systems do things.

4.  Could KDE take any longer to start up?  It seems to me that the 
advantage of a multi-tasking, threaded, forking capable operating 
system is that I can have stuff happen in the background.  You know, no 
point in starting artsd just so KDE can blast my eardrums right away.  
Do that in the background and get me to my application.  This also has 
usability implications since the user's perception of speed is based on 
what they see happening.  Seeing an annoying "I'm doing this 
nondescript icon now" dialog makes it look slow.

5.  I have actually managed to get my non-geek girlfriend off of 
Windows on to Linux (believe it or not, she asked me since she gets 
tons of spy bots).  She can do everything she needs, which amounts to 
using the Mozilla, Evolution, OpenOffice, Acrobat, and Gaim.  Now, I 
know it's super sexy to have a kiloton of apps in your menu after you 
install the latest release of 
Debian-woody-silverado-unstable-testing-version-alpha-four or upgrade 
from Mandrake 9.1 to 9.1.1 (because you must!  No packages for you!).  
But, when I sit a newbie down in front of it and they try to find 
Mozilla, I have to go through this:

	"Alright, go to the 'K'.  It's like the Start.  Don't ask, they like 
the letter K.  I don't know, maybe the guy is an Ecstacy fan.  Anyway! 
Go to Internet.  Go to Browsers.  Go to Mozilla.  Don't ask.  Go to 
Mozilla.  Look, I said don't ask, Netscape is just weird OK?  No, you 
don't need that other stuff.  No, don't touch the System Menu.  Darn, 
you clicked on KMail, not Netscape.  Crap, I mean Mozilla.  Oh wait, 
get out of KMail.  Damn, you have to fill out the stupid "wizard".  
Yeah, that's really wizardly.  Alright, now run MOZILLA."

I guess what I'm saying is, when a user is setup, maybe asking them if 
they want the kitchen sink menu, or a "Regular Joe" menu, or even 
hiding crap they don't use or putting the common stuff right at the 
top.  Either way, get rid of the junk.  I usually end up spending an 
hour cleaning out the crap.  Oh, and another twenty minutes installing 
Frozen Bubble so she has something to do while I watch Enterprise :-)

5b.  One thing that would be nice is if I can "switch menu views" and 
get a Task Based look, a search interface, an Alpha Sort, etc.

6.  I watch lots of...uh..."movies" online...uh...from the BBC...yeah. 
:-)  Anyway, it would be really nice if I didn't have to download all 
this media to disk and manually run mplayer (or others) from the 
command line.  I usually end up going through the painful process of 
trying to get all the MIME types and file endings (remembering that 
.rpm is actually a RealAudio format) and setting up all of them in 
Mozilla so that it will launch my favorite player.  Couldn't some smart 
guy or gal who packages Mozilla for me do this?  This also applies to 
mp3 files, and others.

That's about it for me for now.  Let me know your thoughts on these, 
and feel free to use them.

Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/