   linux usability
   ...or, why do I bother.
   © 2002, 2003 Jamie Zawinski

   In December 2002, I tried to install some                                  
   software on my computer. The experience was,                               
   shall we say, less than pleasant. On many                                  
   levels. I wrote about my experience, as I so                               
   often do.                                                                  
                                                                              
   Then in January, the jackasses over at                                     
   Slashdot posted a link to it, calling it a                                 
   "review" of Linux video software. I guess you                              
   could consider it a review, if you were to                                 
   squint at it just right. But really what it is                             
   is a rant about how I had an evening stolen                                
   from me by crap software design. It is a flame                             
   about the pathetic state of Linux usability in                             
   general, and the handful of video players I    While I am flattered that   
   tried out in particular. It makes no attempt   so many logorrheic Linux    
   to be balanced or objective or exhaustive. It  fanboys are sufficiently    
   is a description of my experience. Perhaps     interested in my opinions   
   your experience was different. Good for you.   and experiences to share    
                                                  their deeply heartfelt      
   So of course that day I got hundreds of emails views with me, you can all  
   about it. Every Linux apologist in the world   rest assured that:          
   wanted to make sure I was fully informed of                                
   their opinion. The replies were roughly in the      * I've heard it        
   following groups:                                     before; and          
                                                       * I didn't care the    
     * "Right on! I had exactly the same                 first time.
       experience! Thank you for putting it into  
       words." (This was about 1/3 of the         So please. Don't bother
       replies.)                                  sending me any more mail
     * "You're clearly an idiot, Linux is too     about this. It's a near
       sophisticated for you, you clearly are     certainty that I will just
       incapable of understanding anything, you   delete it unread, so you
       should go back to kindergarten and/or use  might as well not waste
       a Mac." (Oddly, all of these messages used your time. Feel free to
       the word `clearly' repeatedly.)            call me names on your own
     * "If you don't like it, fix it yourself."   web page if you feel the
     * "Netscape sucks! XEmacs sucks! You suck! I need to get it out of your
       never liked you anyway! And you swear too  system. But kindly stay out
       much!"                                     of my inbox.
     * "How dare you criticize someone else's     
       work! You got it for free! You should be   
       on your knees thanking them for wasting    
       your time!"                                
     * "While you have some valid complaints, I'm 
       going to focus on this one inconsequential 
       error you made in your characterization of 
       one of the many roadblocks you             
       encountered. You suck!"                    
     * "It's your fault for using Red Hat! You    
       should be using Debian/Mandrake/Gentoo     
       instead!"                                  
     * "Red Hat 7.2 is totally obsolete! It's     
       almost 14 months old! What were you        
       expecting!"                                

   that said...

   I understand that one can play videos on one's computer. I understand
   these videos come in many different formats. Every now and then I try to
   figure out what the Done Thing is, as far as playing movies on one's Linux
   machine.

     (Really my eventual goal is to be able to create video on Linux, but I
     figured I'd start small, and see if I could just get playback working
     before trying something that is undoubtedly ten thousand times harder.)

   I finally found RPMs of mplayer that would consent to install themselves
   on a Red Hat 7.2 machine, and actually got it to play some videos.
   Amazing. But it's a total pain in the ass to use due to rampant
   "themeing." Why do people do this? They map this stupid shaped window with
   no titlebar (oh, sorry, your choice of a dozen stupidly-shaped windows
   without titlebars) all of which use fonts that are way too small to read.
   But, here's the best part, there's no way to raise the window to the top.
   So if another window ever gets on top of it, well, sorry, you're out of
   luck. And half of the themes always map the window at the very bottom of
   the screen -- conveniently under my panel where I can't reach it.

   Resizing the window changes the aspect ratio of the video! Yeah, I'm sure
   someone has ever wanted that.

   It moves the mouse to the upper left corner of every dialog box it
   creates! Which is great, because that means that when it gets into this
   cute little state of popping up a blank dialog that says "Error" five
   times a second, you can't even move the mouse over to another window to
   kill the program, you have to log in from another machine.

   Fucking morons.

   So I gave up on that, and tried to install gstreamer. Get this. Their
   propose ``solution'' for distributing binaries on Red Hat systems? They
   point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system! Yeah,
   that's a good idea, I want to struggle with two competing packaging
   systems on my machine just to install a single app. Well, I found some
   RPMs for Red Hat 7.2, but apparently they expect you to have already
   rectally inserted Gnome2 on that 7.2 system first. Uh, no. I've seen the
   horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there's no fucking way I'm putting Gnome2 on
   any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year.

   Ok, no gstreamer. Let's try Xine. I found RPMs, and it sucks about the
   same as mplayer, and in about the same ways, though slightly less bad: it
   doesn't screw the aspect ratio when you resize the window; and at least
   its stupidly-shaped window is always forced to be on top. I don't like
   that either, but it's better than never being on top. It took me ten
   minutes to figure out where the "Open File" dialog was. It's on the button
   labeled "://" whose tooltip says "MRL Browser". Then you get to select
   file names from an oh-so-cute window that I guess is supposed to look like
   a tty, or maybe an LCD screen. It conveniently centers the file names in
   the list, and truncates them at about 30 characters. The scrollbar is also
   composed of "characters": it's an underscore.

   What are these fucktards thinking???

   Then I checked out Ogle again, and it hasn't been updated since the last
   time I tried, six months ago. It's a pretty decent DVD player, if you have
   the physical DVD. It does on-screen menus, and you can click on them with
   the mouse. But I don't need a DVD player (I have a hardware DVD player
   that works just fine.) It can't, as far as I can tell, play anything but
   actual discs.

   Oh, and even though I have libdvdcss installed (as evidenced by the fact
   that Ogle actually works) Xine won't play the same disc that Ogle will
   play. It seems to be claiming that the CSS stuff isn't installed, which it
   clearly is.

   An idiocy that all of these programs have in common is that, in addition
   to opening a window for the movie, and a window for the control panel,
   they also spray a constant spatter of curses crud on the terminal they
   were started from. I imagine at some point, there was some user who said,
   ``this program is pretty nice, but you know what it's missing? It's
   missing a lot of pointless chatter about what plugins and fonts have been
   loaded!''

     ----------------------------------------------------------------------

   And here's the Random Commentary section:

     Makali wrote:
       Whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their
       computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave
       and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls.

     I am fully in support of this proposed audio-cock technology.

     Various people wrote:

       You shouldn't even bother compiling the GUI into mplayer!

     So I should solve the problem of ``crappy GUI'' by replacing it with
     ``no GUI at all?'' I should use the program only from the command line,
     or by memorizing magic keystrokes? Awesome idea.

     Various other people wrote:

       You didn't try vlc!

     True, I hadn't. Now I have. It has an overly-complicated UI, (the
     Preferences panel is a festival of overkill) but at least it uses
     standard menus and buttons, so it doesn't make you want to claw your
     eyes out immediately. But, it can only play a miniscule number of video
     formats, so it's mostly useless. *plonk*

     Someone else wrote:

       Have you considered changing distributions?

     Yes, every single time I try something like this, I very seriously
     consider getting a Mac.

     Really the only thing that's stopping me is that I fear the Emacs
     situation.

     (By which I mean, ``Lack of a usable version thereof.'' No, running
     RMSmacs inside a terminal window doesn't qualify. Nor does running an X
     server on the Mac: if I were going to switch, why in the world would I
     continue inflicting the X Windows Disaster on myself? Wouldn't getting
     away from that be the whole point?)

       (I understand there is an almost-functional Aqua version of RMSmacs
       now. I'll probably check it out at some point, but the problem with me
       switching from XEmacs to RMSmacs is that it would probably result in
       another Slashdork post, meaning I'd wake up to another 150+ poorly
       spelled flames in my inbox... I'm hoping for a Aquafied XEmacs, but I
       know that's not likely to happen any time soon.)

     By the way, the suggestion to switch Linux distrubutions in order to get
     a single app to work might sound absurd at first. And that's because it
     is. But I've been saturated with Unix-peanut-gallery effluvia for so
     long that it no longer even surprises me when every question -- no
     matter how simple -- results in someone suggesting that you either A)
     patch your kernel or B) change distros. It's inevitable and inescapable,
     like Hitler.

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