I've installed Fedora in a VM.

Fedora is the most broken distro so far. I installed Chrome x64 and it won't even open. Just hangs and then closes. I tried Chromium too, via Software Manager, and it does the same thing.

The software manager has lots of duplicate entries. It has "Recommended Graphics Applications" twice, and "Recommended Productivity Applications" twice.

The UI, GNOME 3, is batshit. There are no window controls except close! How do you minimize a window?

I'm starting to think that Linux is hopeless on the desktop. My various Pi servers are all great, Debian via SSH, but desktop... It's just broken.

Ask me if you have any questions, things you want to debate or just need to confirm your batshit assumption about me.

Reply here, or if you prefer formal debate I suggest debate.net or similar.

I already asked Mashiki, but for some reason he declined... Come at me.

Got Ubuntu working in a VM by setting it to UEFI mode and opting not to install updates during initial setup. Once it was going I set about getting it updated... But where is the updater?

You can configure updates in the system settings, but not actually start them. There doesn't seem to be a start menu or app draw, just a few random quick launch icons, including some Amazon spam. Eventually resorted to searching.

Mouse wheel is just as broken as Mint. Window controls on the wrong side and oddly placed in full screen mode, menus hidden by default. Apparently the window control position is now hard coded because... Fuck you I guess. Lost interest at that point, going back to Mint.

So, mouse wheel input is fucked in Linux.

There is no way to configure how much the wheel scrolls by. It's fixed. And it's incredibly slow in many apps, and inconsistent between apps because it's up to each one what it does with a single scroll "tick".

Some people have asked on forums and Stack Exchange how to fix it. Turns out, you can't. You can hack around with imwheel, but it translates the wheel into key presses and breaks some apps and is ignored by others. There is libinput, but when I tried it configuration changes had no effect in Cinnamon.

How can something so basic be so broken? It's actually better if you have a trackpad because at least that is configurable.

Chrome is more or less usable if you install an extension to speed up scrolling. Scrolling is not as smooth as Windows, but that could be cause it is running in a VM.

Found some instructions here: http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2014/07/29/japanese-input-on-linux-mint-17-qiana-cinnamon/

They are out of date though. Basically you need to install IBus and you chosen IME (I used mozc) and then add it to the list in the IBus preferences. It says "Japanese" in there by default, but that apparently doesn't do anything and you have to install the IME. I would have thought that the basic Japanese entry would have at least let you enter kana... Oh well.

Anyway, it now actually works better than Windows. The mode keys on the keyboard work, which is something that Windows can't handle apparently. At least not if your OS language is English, in which case you have to hack the registry just to get a working Japanese keyboard layout.

Speaking of layouts, I use a custom one on Windows that has extra alt keys for symbols like degrees, Pi, plus/minus and so on. Maybe I can do that under Linux too.

I'm trying to switch away from Windows 8.1 because Windows 10 is just too much. Decided to start with Linux Mint in a VM.

Installation was smooth and easy. Went for Cinnamon because it's the recommended one. Coped with having a Japanese keyboard and English (not American) locale. Installation was very quick. On first boot a window appeared with some info, one of which was drivers. That offered to install an Intel microcode update so I went for it.

Set screen resolution. Mouse wheel seems laggy, need to look for mouse options later. First thing is updates. The update icon is in the tray area it seems. At first it wasn't doing anything... The output window said that updates were inhibited for some reason. I refreshed it a few times and it found some updates. Selected a local mirror.

Updates installed quickly and relatively easily. Only hitch was when it asked about some Gnome config file that had apparently been changed and did I want to overwrite with the one from the update. I have no idea, the diff output didn't really help so I just went with the updated file. Looked like it was just resetting some default apps.

After that it says my system is up to date (no reboot, much better than Windows) but there are two updates marked as level 5 red security updates... So not up to date? For some reason I have to manually select them, because why wouldn't I want level 5 red security updates..

I seem to be getting asked for my password a lot. Isn't once when I open the update app enough? Reminds me of the bad old days of Windows Vista with UAC prompts every 5 seconds for fairly common tasks.

The font rendering in the little "details" terminal window is crap. Linux has historically had bad font rendering... But most of it looks good. The high DPI support is a bit limited (only 1x or 2x scaling, nothing in-between) but it does at least seem to work reliably in my limited testing. No support for monitors with different scaling settings though (e.g. you have a laptop with 4k display and plug in a 2k external monitor), and lots of stuff seems to use bitmap graphics that look bad zoomed in.

Installed open-vm-tools, not sure if it actually did anything. Clipboard sharing doesn't seem to work.

Trying to get Japanese input to work is a real pain. I installed it as an input language, but it seems that I need to manually start Ibus. Found some instructions but they were out of date. The Ubuntu wiki says load it and press CTRL+space to activate, but it doesn't work. Tried changing it to CTRL+space in the prefs, didn't work. The IME switching key and the kana/roma switching keys don't work. Found a forum post that detailed how to make the daemon auto-start and suggested a restart may be required to make it work. Still did not work.

Gave up with the IME for now, but I need to get it working.

The mouse wheel is very slow. Should be easy to fix... But apparently it needs some hacking around with the command line. Can't be bothered right now... I mean, it's a basic preference. Pick this up later.

http://image-assets.stackcommerce.com/images/2906/medium_2906_PWYWLearntoCode2016_MF.jpg is annoying! I checked the box for "Ads Disabled", and it still showed up later. Argh! I am going to tell ad blocker filters to block stackcommerce.com! :(

The target substrate consists of coherently aligned (vertically) carbon nanotubes saturated with a one to one mix of deuterium-tritium fuel, and sealed with a single-molecule layer of lithium deuteride. A fuel wafer so formed is approximately 100 mm in diameter and .01mm thick - it is backed with a GaS-doped silicon substrate which is wired into a central power bus. A megawatt Nd:glass laser is optically split into 256 equal beams and focussed on the fuel wafer at minimal power. When fired, the laser beam will strike the target, and the lithium deuteride seal will be driven into the fuel mixture at relativistic speeds, and sufficient temperature/pressure levels will be produced inside the confined space of the carbon nanotube to achieve fusion of the fuel mixture. The energy of fusion will produce helium nuclei, each having almost three million electron volts of energy, which when they strike the silicon backing, will deliver an enormous burst of electrical energy to the power bus which can be smoothed and rectified to usable power as subsequent cells are fired. Power levels are sufficient to not only drive the laser and fuel replacement mechanism, but provide 1900% net power gain.

For 11 years physicist Robert Bussard quietly worked on Boron Fusion research for the U.S. Navy.
Just as his experiments promised to bear fruit, the funding ran out, and an explosion in his laboratory put an emphatic end to his efforts.

Now, in a Defense News article, the details of this fusion technology emerge, along with Bussard's claims that a remarkably small amount of funding could finish the job and deliver a working fusion reactor decades ahead of competing efforts - a reactor that runs on Boron and produces electricity directly - without radiation.

Has anyone else noticed that with replies not enabled, the amount of trolling and flaming has dropped to historically low levels?

It's so peaceful...

"The moderation system for Slashdot is currently down."

Shazaaaaam... Sarge?

You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!

*crackle*

Gots mo' Mod points. Saving one for a verrry special purpose.

You have 5 Moderator Points! Use 'em or lose 'em!
_______________

Time to throw down.

Metmaodded today... mod points again... karmalized!