Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mojuba 3824 days ago
Any OS is good for a "basic internet station". Today, a school-age hacker can probably hack together a rudimentary desktop OS for running Chrome and Firefox with no advanced audio/video codecs. But Linux is no school project, in fact as an OS it's almost as mature as Windows in terms of their age. And we all know Linux is quite good, almost unbeatable on the server side.

But for the desktop side, there is no excuse for not having your video, audio and networking sorted and polished to death. Improving your battery life or saving internet traffic while on cellular data is not "professional video/audio", it has become pretty much standard computer experience today.
1 comments
downtide 3824 days ago
I've a HP Windows 8.1 machine, added an Intel wireless card with Bluetooth. Bluetooth pretty much disappears after a suspend. And networking can sometimes die and only recover after a reboot. The control panels/diagnostics for both networking and bluetooth are also really sucky (and admin in general on 8.1 is pretty horrible). So don't be under the illusion that Windows is any better.

Bluetooth, how it works, how to use it on Linux is also an Enigma. And that's been patchy on my Thinkpad, but I haven't had that much of a joyous experience using Bluetooth on any device.

In short: 'they' could all try harder.

link
mojuba 3824 days ago
Well, to be fair Bluetooth itself is incredibly difficult to deal with on all levels, just like any other committee-driven thing out there. It's a mess that I doubt can ever be fixed.

As for WiFi, my experience with Apple devices is mostly positive, or definitely better than on any other platform. So WiFi is quite possible to get right.

link
downtide 3824 days ago
As a consumer you still get that sinking feeling of something that doesn't quite work. it's all glitchy.

Has Bluetooth been bettered? I was hoping V4 would iron out wrinks. Wireless applications that are simple to use could be really, really great. That's what I thought the initial promise of Bluetooth was. I have some simple wants, like file exchange, control a media player remotely etc. Send audio output to another device etc.

The last office I worked in, a colleague had a modern Apple laptop, and he had connection issues with the wireless router. It wouldn't connect. Lots of fudging about with it. A fix was falling back to a slower speed to get it to work. There are issues with most hardware and software.

The wireless issues/fixes suggested for my HP are pretty ridiculous, removing drivers, installing in a certain order, barring updates etc. Very technical.

I don't think I've ever owned a machine/OS that hasn't had some problem, including an old Apple.

link