Linux SUCKS at these 5 day to day tasks...

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#linux #linuxdesktop

00:00 Intro
00:37 Sponsor: 100$ Free Credit for your Linux or Gaming server
01:36 Manipulating, signing, and editing PDFs
05:23 Email, calendar and contacts
09:38 Display related stuff: HDR, scaling, font rendering...
11:36 Automation
12:42 Parental Controls
14:01 Parting Thoughts
14:52 Sponsor: Get a device that runs Linux perfectly
15:58 Support the channel

First one is how you can handle PDFs on Linux. To fill in PDF fields, the native tools just suck.If I want to sign a document, o GNOME, I can't. On KDE, I can digitally sign a document, but that opens an error message saying I need to configure a digital signature.

What you CAN do is open the PDF document with LibreOffice Draw, which will open it in an editable state, let you fill in the form fields, and add your signature image by drag and drop.

If you want to reorder pages inside of a PDF, or remove one and add another one, you need a third party tool. I personally use PDF arranger on GNOME.

Next thing I don't like on Linux is email and calendar handling. SImply put, we don't have really good desktop applications for managing these things on Linux.

Thunderbird is the closest we have, but the interface is insanely confusing and looks like something that's 20 years old.

The default suite for GNOME is also pretty underwhelming. The Calendar option is not something you can use professionally if you need stuff like seeing who is available at which time, or handling of time zones for example. The contacts app is ridiculously simple, without any way to add any form of account that wouldn't be supported by the GNOME Online Accounts, so no iCloud contacts for example. And the email app, Geary can't create folders to triage your inbox, or labels for gmail. It can't unify your inboxes in a single view, and more importantly, it doesn't seem to access all IMAP folders.

Then there's the KDE suite of email, contacts, and calendar, but this thing, while it's insanely powerful and customizable, doesn't look like it has been touched in decades.

Which means the last resort is Evolution. And honestly, it's great, but it also looks pretty outdated, like a GNOME 2 app that barely has received the tiniest of touches to make it feel more modern.

Next is display-related stuff. We are so late on all that stuff. Display scaling, we have, but fractional scaling? It's a damn mess.

HDR isn't a thing at all on Linux, and font rendering is bad by default.

Another pain point for me personally, is automation. Like graphically creating a suite of events that happens when a condition is met. Just can't be done on Linux, as far as I know. You can use scripts, but I want a graphical drag and drop app that lets me do that.

Something that doesn't affect me at all, but seems to be a big pain point for parents I moved to Linux, is the lack of good parental control software. We have some basic things, like blocking certain applications, or web browsers, or even preventing application installs and limiting these by age range, so kids can't install stuff that isn't allowed.

There seem to be third party solutions, but default ones will always be better integrated, and also, all these 3rd party ones look like they're 20 years old at least, so I would be a bit concerned about their abilities and how well they're maintained.

[winlux]

Okular: You can create a custom 'stamp' in the settings and use an image of your signature. This is utterly hidden and the devs know about this, this will get better soonish.

[hakimrouatbi]

Pro tip. Although it's not made for that, Inkscape 1.2 is actually the best tool I found for editing PDFs on Linux.
The latest 1.2 version allows you to open the PDF files, rearrange pages, add or move elements, and best of all, edit any text that's already in the PDF. And it doesn't break the layout at all.
Once you open the file, you just need to ungroup all the elements by pressing ctrl+shift +g a couple of times.
It's a life saver, and haven't found anything better, even after trying many other alternatives, including the ones mentioned in this video.

[IncendiarySolution]

Parental Control is key if we plan on having Linux in schools, which is how so many people picked up apple in the 80s and pcs in the 90s

[somehownick]

Okular offering a 'digital signature' option literally means a cryptographic signature. Why this, a feature probably used by less than 1% of users, was a priority over an actual drawn signature is beyond me.

[DimitrisChr]

This video is soooo spot on!!! You just covered all my major gripes with apps on Linux. PDF editing has been a pain point for me for a loooong time!

[peterschmidt]

Out of all the email clients, I actually prefer Thunderbird. I've been using it even when I was on Windows. So moving over to Linux, it works well for me. They have updated the interface over the last 6 months or so. What I really like about it is it's so easy to organise emails via dates and topic. Then when it's time to archive, they're already in their own years. Or simply close it and it's pretty much hidden. One other great thing about it is if your distro ever breaks, it's relatively easy to just copy the directory contents straight over the newly installed app and you'll have all your emails and settings as they were before.

[ohmygosh]

If there are more people like you complaining about how doing basic stuff in Linux is so hard that you can easily do in other operating systems. Then Linux community would have fixed this kind of issues making Linux number one operating system in the world.

[Ziggurat]

I think that signature is a cryptographic signature. Both types of signatures are useful and needs to be supported

[exciting-burp]

Put your primary monitor to the right of your secondary in KDE, then try and summon the context menu (right click on something). This bug has been around for more than a decade: KDE blames QT, and QT blames KDE.

[UltraCenterHQ]

Some Linux users get annoyed when new users complain too much about their operating system, but it makes devs see these issues and fix it. Making Linux more usable to everyone else

[nezu_cc]

I'm sorry, but webmail is superior for like 90% of society. The reason why there are no good desktop apps is that nobody feels the need for them. Having an email client that you can open from any device, anywhere, without needing to install anything, without needing to wait for any synchronization, just log in and use is a no-brainer for most people.

[ouiVEVO]

I always felt that Linux was for power users first, developers second, and maybe depending on the app the DE the weather the time of day and the users diet, regular users

[KapilBulsara]

Great job compiling this list. This is by far the most practical list I’ve come across. I keep windows on every computer as a backup for PDF editing - luckily I don’t have to do much of that these days.
And you’re so right with mail apps. I’ve been jumping from thunderbird, evolution, neomutt and now currently using Geary which has its own issues.

[KuruGDI]

Parental control would sure be a nice thing, but I think that the amount of potential users is so low that it's not worth it at all. Plus we all know that the FOSS community won't agree to one base line standard but create like 30 different standards which do the exact same thing but work different and require extra development time.

[TopazFilly]

The fact that thunderbird exists in its current state is beyond me and the fact that it is shipped with some major distros is upsetting

[MrGamelover]

You had the same experience with signing the PDF that LTT had. Basically, there's putting your signature on the bottom, and then there's cryptographically signing it. You both were trying to do with the latter, which is why it was so much harder. So technically, it was actually doing it properly.

[kote]

Wow, I didn’t even know that you can fill in something in PDF. I thought this format was only for viewing. This is probably due to the fact that this way of working with documents is not very common in my region.

I'm glad I grew up in a time when there were no parental controls. I learned to consciously find content that really suits me, as well as independently repair the system after my actions. It taught me responsibility.

[limblendokn]

STOP EDITING PDFS
- PDFs WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EDITED
- YEARS OF SENDING AND RECEIVING DOCUMENTS yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for changing the original format
- Wanted to make changes anyway for a laugh? We had a tool for that: it was called “RETYPE IT”
- “Yes, please, give me a non-editable document. Please give me a headache trying to figure out how to edit it” - statements dreamed up by utterly deranged
They have played us for absolute fools.

[PixelShade]

Signing PDFs is a feature I didn't know you even needed. In Sweden we have digital identities provided by our banks. All digital signing happens through this signing process. It feels weird that you slapp an image on top of a PDF and somehow that image is binding that digital document to you? It must be extremely easy to falsify documents like those. :) In case of our signing process, the bank functions like a trust, where they have validated the digital identity with the real life person. And the system is de-centralized.

My biggest gripe with Linux is the lack of new features. Like HDR and fractional scaling, or latest GPU software features. Generally you are several years behind everyone else. I have always found Linux to be best suited for older hardware. Meanwhile those always wanting to be on the bleeding edge suffer in Linux. Other than that, I would like better UI consistency. But due to how open the desktop environment is, I understand why it's extremely hard to get a consistent user experience.

[Yutaro-Yoshii]

I think the signature part displays a clash of ideologies. One party wants to endorse public key encryption so much that they expect everyone to have a ready made key pair, and the other party doesn't take into account that the photo of a signature is really easy to forge and it doesn't make sense to add one in the first place. I personally think that there aren't many cases either of them are really useful though, because these days you can easily verify the source of some file through email addresses (which is protected by a very similar digital signature technology called DKIM) or chat app username. Also, if you want to make the pdf publicly available, your site url along with ssl encryption will verify the content's authenticity, and doubly ensure with posting the file hash somewhere.