I’m curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.
The author is an idiot.
When someone comes to me asking how to get into Linux, they do not need to hear a laundry list of distributions to choose from.
Only techies ask anyone how they “get into Linux”. Say it with me now. “People don’t buy, buy into, get into, install, or use operating systems” They buy fuckin computers. It is perceptibly to virtually all non-techies a feature of the device.
There are a million types of cars but people manage to pick one and buy it same with breakfast cereals or shampoo because they are obligated to make a decision or go hungry, dirty, or walk everywhere.
People don’t particularly like making decisions and they decided what OS they were going to use when they bought the computer and they have no intention of downloading an iso, write it to a USB, figure out how they boot from it, figure out the bios options they need to disable and what works differently than what they are familiar with.
You lost them around step 2 and lost all hope of moving forward unless the prize at the end is something much better than “does everything I used to do but differently”
The success of Chromebooks, android phones, and the steam deck is that it was driven by devices people wanted to use not an OS people wanted to use. If you want to see more Linux use that is the story you need to focus on.
This is one that we can’t just solve by putting computers on the shelf.
Some people have tools that don’t work on Linux natively. If somebody is using and is familiar with Microsoft Excel, there isn’t a straightforward way to install it and FOSS options aren’t the same. The same can be said of Adobe.
Linux as a desktop environment will have to be for enthusiasts for a while longer. Hopefully, somebody gets more feature parity with the existing suites and the transition can just work out of the box.
But Linux when compared to Windows and Mac is a case study of capitalism vs FOSS. We (Linux users) generally think Linux is better and maybe it is, but Microsoft and Apple spent tons of money to make theirs what they are today and we didn’t.
Microsoft and Apple spent tons of money to make theirs what they are today and we didn’t
Not personally, but there’s loads of companies that work and contribute to the kernel and all the surrounding software, they give funds, obviously not as huge as Microsoft’s paycheck, but with less I’d say we have achieved way way more in several aspects, application support is entirely on the devs, be it Microsoft (again) or Adobe or what have you, yet we’re able to run alternative suites that are at least an 80% of what those proprietary options offer, for the office suite in particular I think we’re pretty well off with Onlyoffice.
Money, though important, is clearly not a measure of quality in software
My point wasn’t that they spend money on quality. Much of what they spend on is perception and awareness.
Ah then I misunderstood, but what do you mean with that exactly, advertising?
Marketing is a big portion of it. There’s also less obvious versions. Microsoft was busy making deals behind the scenes with OEMs for a long while with the intention of getting Windows to be the default OS in stores. Early OEMs didn’t just wake up and start building for Windows. Bill Gates showed up at there office and convinced them to.
Apple donated a bunch of computers to schools. Many people just believed that it was because they cared about education but really it is an attempt to get kids hooked into the Apple ecosystem early.
Building brand loyalty isn’t just about advertising and it’s not even about making the best product. Early and repetitive access is more important. Advertising and product placement are more about awareness than loyalty. Loyalty is generally exploiting people’s fear of change.
The open source ecosystem by virtue of being free software just doesn’t have those billions of dollars to invest. For office software google docs are sufficient for a whole lot of use cases and easily shareable whereas more complex usage is easily handled by libre office.
Photoshop is legitimately better than alternatives but popular as it is only a tiny fraction of PC users use or need Adobe.
26M vs 2B is approx 1.3% of PCs
I also don’t need to select my car based on its ability to haul thousands of pounds of cargo or its performance on a racetrack either.
If we want photoshop for Linux we need to collectively bankroll it. If not there is plenty of space in the market for computers without photoshop because that is by far the majority of computers.
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If Lenovo or HP or whatever started selling their notebooks for way cheaper without the windows license on the machine linux would probably get a lot more usage. But they would probably have to put big warnings on that to avoid a big return wave, which would hamper the whole deal.
Actually OEMS get money for including Windows because they include shovelware trials of crap like Norton that is of greater value than the reduced cost of Windows to the big players. If sold at difference in cost the decrapified Linux version would be more expensive not less.
That’s not mutually exclusive with the author’s argument, though.
if a computer vendor offers multiple distributions to choose from, the problem of choice remains.
And if the vendor only offers one option, which one should it be? And how can a user verify that it’s a “good” option?
It wouldn’t really matter, does everyone wonder if the Android ROM they’re running is the best and if they should install a different one?
People do notice how good or bad they are, but that’s it, at most they’ll switch to a different vendor next time they buy a productHmm good point!
Because Windows or iOS is already loaded when they buy the machine.
This is the only answer, and anybody who doesn’t agree just doesn’t understand users. They just use whatever you give them.
… and by implication, it guarantees that Linux will (almost definitely) never be the world’s desktop. Mainly because there’s no one single company to blackmail.
Android managed it, so can desktop Linux. We just need manufacturers who will ship it as default.
Astra Linux will be Russia’s main desktop if this war continues for another 4 or 5 years. China UOS (Deepin) will be China’s main desktop by 2030 or so if the USA keeps up with the trade war. Lots of countries will adopt Deepin if it’s cheaper and just as stable. Linux will never be the main desktop in the West but we’ll see non US allied countries become Linux countries in the next 20 years.
Imagine a state driven open source distro like deepin in some years.
Highly probable. But considering Microsoft has been subsidized by the US government indirectly for decades I don’t see it being much different except that the GPL license hopefully will allow for the OS to become a common good.
Uhm how is chinese state looking to make profit of Deepin?
What do you mean by make profit of?
I would really love a ‘standard’ Linux. Mint, Puppy, Fedora and so on are good enough.
I ‘pray’ every night for a killer Windows upgrade bug, but I think only Apple would benefit. Teens seem to have only iPhones as a status thing.
“Why dont more people use the linux desktop” its because they don’t care about computers. To most people computers are a tool and they are not interested in what the underlying software is doing as long as they can run a web browser.
Or because Windows comes pre-installed on almost all machines. Many people don’t even know what “operating system” is. It’s just a part of the computer for them.
steam deck proves this. If everyone loved windows so much they would install it on the deck but they don’t. Microsoft pays the PC makers in the states a lot of money to keep Windows Pre-Installed. Even then Hp put our a dev Linux Laptop because Dev’s want a Unix like OS ether Linux or Mac.
Valve made games “just work” on the Steam Deck. No tweaks, CLI, hacks, or major performance issues. They took away the friction. I hope that in time all games will just work on Linux. When that happens and I can use my gaming peripherals like wheels and pedals I’ll be giving up Windows on my gaming PC.
Man this is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start.
If everyone loved windows so much they would install it on the deck
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Valve has dedicated millions of dollars to making shit work on Linux so that MS cannot control them.
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Specifically on handhelds, Windows is ass. Because it’s not designed for them. That’s why Valve developed a version of Linux specifically intended for this single device.
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Windows is still installed on like 95% of gaming PCs because “everyone loves it so much”.
Microsoft pays the PC makers in the states a lot of money to keep Windows Pre-Installed.
What? No. MS charges the PC makers to install Windows, not the other way around… Why would they pay them?
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Bingo.
Despite what the clickbait headline says, the main barrier to entry is not just knowing what an operating system is but the know-how to go about replacing the one that came with the computer in the first place. The decision over which distro to choose is relatively easy once you’ve got past that initial stage.
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I have friends who pc game a lot and their desktop background is the default Microsoft logo. Everytime I see it i say “don’t you want to customize your computer even just a bit” and they reply “what would I even do?”
On the same token - anyone who also knows what an OS is shouldn’t care either. Use the best OS for your job and needs. Reap the benefits of all of the OSs that you can run and switch between them like an army knife. It is the best when all of them complement each other.
For me I dont agree with “Use the best OS for your job and needs” sometimes I am willing to use a less functional product because I believe that the future would be better with more FOSS software. Morally I cant dual boot windows to play the games that dont support linux because then im supporting microsoft and games that support mircosoft.
I feel the same way. I’ve been riding the Linux daily driver train for over a decade now. Back when I first made the switch, Proton wasn’t a thing. I could dual boot to play the games that wouldn’t run on Wine but I instead made the decision to only buy new games that were Linux native and if existing games didn’t run on Wine then it was tough bikkies.
But the issue is that most people sadly don’t give a shit. They don’t give any thought at all about sending money to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. despite the fact that those companies are playing a part in actively degrading the user experience (amongst other things). They don’t think about how they’re screwing over themselves in the long run as well as the younger generations. Most people don’t think much beyond what the advertising tells them to buy, convenience and ease of use.
I wish people made more ethical consumer choices but they just don’t. And that habit won’t change while big business has collectively billion dollar advertising budgets, gets away with monopolising and centralising and has government and regulators in their back pockets.
Not only do people generally not do ethical consumerism, but also often ridicule those who do. Quite infuriating, and would be astonishing if it wasn’t so predictably human nature. Presumably it is painful to be reminded that one did not go through the effort to make a conscientious decision but someone else did, and so one belittles the decision and the person willing to make it.
i will agree with this when Linux has 5 to 10% market share just enough to where manufacturers can’t ignore us anymore. The problem will come cause the stuff they ignore us with. Is full featured but garbage drivers with Spyware like crap print drivers with pop-up ads or games with rootkits for drm.
I’ve always said this to people. I use Windows, Linux, and MacOS. I use whatever best suits what I’m doing and I like that idea. It may end up being 20/70/10, but so what. Why battle a shitty Linux app If you have a good MacOS app. Or maybe your liking that windows app for a certain task.
In reality this is really only something a dev or power user would really do though.
I think the reason is that 1. Linux is still too hard for the average person and 2. The average person just doesn’t care
Yes, you don’t have to write bash scripts or compile the kernel yourself, but still, Linux is different in many ways from Windows. This is on top of the fact that most people don’t know much about tech in general and often have problems with (imo) very basic stuff. I honestly can’t imagine them downloading an ISO file, flashing it onto an USB stick and then booting from it. Most people probably don’t even know that Windows != PC
Then there’s also the fact that the average person just doesn’t care. They just want to get things done
(sidenote: I might sound elitist but I’m not. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in tech, just like it’s not reasonable to, for example, expect everyone to be interested in cars. It just so happens that the tech industry is tightly connected to freedom, privacy, etc. while the car industry is not)
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Mostly yeah
Linux is different in many ways from Windows
I kinda want to softly disagree with this point (and i’m sure others will disagree with my disagreement), because the average user pretty much does everything they do in a web browser. A few of them might have to use thunderbird for email, instead of their web browser, and thats about it.
And to be perfectly honest, Theres no significant functional difference, for those average users, between linux and windows. Just got to put the browser and email icons somewhere on the desktop where its visible and thats basically that.
I speak of personal experience (so take it with a grain of salt and skepticism), because I have pretty much my entire family on linux, though to be fair I got them on linux by basically saying “Listen, your computers old, and the OS is no longer supported. Either you can pay me a lot of money to get you a new computer and new version of windows, or I can install linux on what you have for free and you can keep going without any investment”. Being cheap, they always chose linux.
in my experience, almost all the terror that rises from the deep with regards to linux, comes the second you try to do anything more intensive than web browsing/email… Cause they you are running into installing things, tweaking things, problem finding, etc etc.
Yeah, but when I tried to get my mom to use Linux, she kept asking me how to do some things like moving a file, printing a PDF, saving a document in Libreoffice (even though she had no trouble doing it on Windows also with Libreoffice) etc. I’ve set up everything to be as seamless and close to Windows as possible but she still always had trouble doing something so I gave up, and reinstalled Windows. Ig my mom is just less tech savy than your family
¯\_(ツ)_/¯it takes literally no tech savy to open a browser.
Yeah, my mom didn’t have issues with that, but she did have issues with other almost as basic stuff
Because windows is preinstalled on the computer they buy. That is literally it
Yeah. Windows isn’t a choice. It’s what you get if you never question what OS you use.
Yeah no, that’s literally not it. It’s because Windows is the only user-friendly OS that they can install.
Nobody ever installs windows themselves
You’re focusing on the wrong part of my statement
He’s right, most people don’t install an OS. They use whatever it comes with.
Jesus Christ 🤦♂️
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Nope. Not true. Windows has an intuitive and easy to use GUI for everything. Linux depends on CLI for basic functions with commands that aren’t even the same across the various distros. It’s as simple as that.
@HughJanus windows is not user friendly. You are confusing familiarity with ease of use.
Most are familiar with it since its widely used as the first OS since school. Give it to a lifelong mac user and see how much they struggle. Even ones who are using windows for nearly a decade struggle as soon as they need to use anything more than office, chrome or the file explorer. They fear the control panel nearly as much as they would a terminal and i have to give detailed instruction on what to click
You people keep saying this but it’s simply not true. I used Windows for 20 years and never went into the CLI, which is basically a daily occurrence to complete basic tasks in Linux.
For example, today I went to download the new Simplex app. On Windows, download and run the .exe and it installs itself. Done.
On Linux, they only have a .deb version. So to install that on Fedora I have to install some other program, and the only way to install the program is from the CLI. Tried to do that. The first command I copied and pasted the first command into the CLI and…nothing happened. Not even an error message. Give up.
The end.
@HughJanus whos ‘you people’ here? My point was that just as terminal for linux is scary, many people find even the control panel in windows scary and hard to use. Your personal experience may vary but many issues you point to isnt linux specific.
Assuming you refer to simleX chat, I just grabbed the appimage from their github release page, marked it executable and ran it without a hitch. Took me 5-10 clicks and nearly the same as for Windows. Don’t have fedora RN but assume its the same.
whos ‘you people’ here?
“You people” who are delusional and incessantly lie about how “easy” things are.
My point was that just as terminal for linux is scary, many people find even the control panel in windows scary and hard to use.
This is not even remotely comparable. You don’t need the control panel to install software (a basic task), and even if you do need it for something, it’s fairly intuitive. You just click around until you find what you need. Using the CLI requires you to have a working knowledge of a fucking encyclopedia of gibberish commands.
Your personal experience may vary but many issues you point to isnt linux specific.
Yes. They are.
@HughJanus completey glances over the solution for your precise problem and yet making strawman arguments of how tough linux is and calling others liars without providing any valid proof. End of our conversation. Stay classy.
LOL how exactly do you expect me to prove this? It’s just a case of simple observation and I’ve provided detailed examples. You just don’t like them.
@HughJanus
Legitimately don’t remember the last time I *had* to use a terminal to install a program in linux, I pretty much just click to install everything using KDE’s Discover store, except for things I download off github which often come as appimages which are practically the same as windows executables in terms of ease of use
@vaidooryam
Most people don’t know how to install operating system, even if it’s just pressing next in the installer mostly. The reason Linux is not primary system is that it’s not preinstalled. It has a bit of chicken and egg problem with some support missing due to low user base, and base lowered by that soft missing but that would change in the instant if everybody suddenly bought PC with linux preinstalled.
Even the win mentioned with linux in gaming is basically just that. Linux preinstalled on steam deck.
Agreed. I’ve gotten several none technical folks (including older folks) in my life using Linux Mint and loving it.
What did I do?
I installed it for them. That was it.
They’re scared of installing a new operating system. It’s just so weird.
I literally don’t think the plethora of choices has anything to do with why Linux is not installed by the masses. The only reason is that Microsoft and Apple are huge market forces with the ability to advertise, make deals with other business partners, pre-install their operating systems onto hardware that’s sold, operate technical support services, and so on. They have completely flooded the market with their stuff.
Linux has these things, too, but nowhere in scale or scope, and with relative industry latecomers to sell it. If Linux were created 10-12 years sooner and companies like Suse, RH, Canonical, System76 were all formed earlier than they were I think we’d see a healthy amount of Linux out in the world, with maybe a few percent higher market share (which would be extremely massive).
Keep in mind that Apple, as a company, rebuilt itself truly not on the technical excellence of Macintosh, but by driving sales of iPods then iPhones.
Apple’s success came from Microsoft’s negligence. Too many people had Windows XP computers at home wrecked with toolbars and spyware and garbage.
And people gladly left for a walled garden platform that locked down everything and didn’t require them to administer their own systems.
The biggest success in the Linux world has been Chromebooks and Android, where Google administers the system for the user.
Most people don’t choose linux because they can’t administer their own system. A system that lets them administer however they want has no appeal to them. They instinctively know they can’t handle that responsibility. They need their hands held.
Even if all of the operating systems were playing on a fair & ideal field, I do not think Linux would come out as the clear winner.
The Linux ecosystem is stakeholder owned. That is to say that design decisions are made by experienced users for experienced users. Whenever an ergonomic tradeoff exists between ease of use and expressiveness, ease of use loses. New users sense this and feel implicitly unwelcome. It’s the original sin of open source software as a whole, really.
I don’t necessarily take this state of affairs as a bad thing, but it does lead me to think that the dominant OS software will always be a commercial product of some variety. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a proprietary greed-fest like Windows, but at the very least the top-level stakeholders of that specific project need to be directly motivated by user adoption. AOSP (aka: Android) would be a decent example of something like this working in the wild for an open source project (Google attempting to claw back control notwithstanding).
I have a theory that I haven’t explored yet. My mom is not a computer user. She barely knows how to use one, so she doesn’t have knowledge of the MS Windows or MacOS approach of using computers. I suspect if I gave her a laptop with Ubuntu on it and showed her the ropes of how to use it she’d get along very fine. I think she would be able to navigate the UI and never need more technical knowledge than remembering her computer’s password.
Now, before anyone goes and accuses me of being a bad son for leaving my mom in the technological dark, I just want to say she gets by pretty happily with the iPad I got for her, which has an even more foolproof interface than any traditional desktop OS.
I thought about this before, and mostly agree. My mom knows nothing about computers and could probably use Ubuntu if I stick it on a machine and gave it to her. The thing preventing me from doing it is that when things go wrong in Linux, it often requires extensive terminal usage to fix. And my mother can often find new and creative ways to break a computer. If something went wrong with it, I would have to fix it. There is literally no one else she knows who would even know where to start. At least if she’s on windows, she can find someone to help her.
The issue isn’t an official Linux distribution, per se (and note: Canonical have wanted to be that for years with their Ubuntu).
The issue is that laptop and desktop retail machines come with Windows. And until that changes, Linux on the desktop will never see more traction.
There is probably only one real way this comes to fruition: a company, like Apple, that engineers their own hardware with full stack integration to their own Linux distribution — and the hardware has to be aesthetically pleasing, reasonably priced (unlike Apple), and with in-person support (a la Apple Store).
The closest to that we have, at least in the United States, is System76. But they do not engineer their systems. They basically cobble together all the parts that are known to work with the Linux kernel, toss them into an outsourced chassis, and sell them at what I would consider somewhat bloated prices.
That being said, I love what System 76 is doing with Pop!_OS, but the name sucks, the software versions will always be lagging behind unless using snap and/or flatpak, gaming on Linux is still an uphill battle despite Proton’s strides, and at the end of the day, the user will actually have to do something at some point on the command line.
What Linux desktop users need to embrace is that it is okay to not be the primary desktop operating system of the world. It is okay that it is relegated to geek enthusiasts, developers, and the like.
There really is nothing wrong with that.
There really is nothing wrong with that.
I don’t think it’s completely fine, because, as we see time and time again, Windows being the default, and so the largest player, allows developers, especially in the enterprise and education sectors, to be lazy and support only Windows for their applications. The expectation has been created that everyone has to own a Windows computer and that damages us, since it restricts our choices, for some people it can nullify entirely the effort they put into switching to Linux.
For example, in my country, to do the admission exam to university you need to install the SEB browser, which amounts to pretty much a Windows-only rootkit, now I wouldn’t enjoy putting that on my Linux system, but the laziness here is clear, they could have made a a live single-purpose Linux distro that boots up a locked down browser and checks that it hasn’t been tampered with when it runs, it didn’t have to be the only option, it could have been an additional option for privacy concious users, but why won’t they do it? Because it’s not trivial to build and the Linux market share is too small to care about and if you use it you are weird.To a certain extent it’s the fault of our institutions that don’t allow choice of OS most of the time, let alone forcing the use of Linux, if more would do the latter (because, let’s be honest, if they only let us choose they’d treat all other OSes as second class citizens), we might see companies developing more for Linux in turn.
That said, it’s not in such a bad situation and it can already be used without issue in many occasions.
Linux needs more companies like steam that develop certain things into Linux that enable more software support. I feel like the steam deck and proton greatly increased the number of people using linux primarily or at least dipping their toes in. Having popular mainstream creative suites, office suites, and a greater userbase is probably what would allow Linux to actually absorb windows users.
This guy:
There are 100 competing distributions:
“Let’s add one more, one that’s standardized and designed to make it easy for users to start using Linux.”
There are now 101 competing distributions.
Homoginizing Linux would be destroying so much of what makes Linux special. And besides, as many have pointed out, that’s not the source of the problem anyway in that most people don’t care what OS is installed or even comprehend what an OS is.
I also don’t think Linux needs mass adoption. It’d be great if it did, but it being a tool for those who care about what tools they use is fine too.
That’s cool, but I’m not making software for desktop linux until there’s one standard GUI api
Just us electron like everyone else /s
Linux is not an operating system and pretending it is one is counter-productive. Take Ubuntu or Mint or SteamOS or whatever and call that Official Linux™ if you want, I guess. Or, we can actually promote those operating systems in their own right instead of calling them “flavor of Linux”
Most people view computers as an appliance to get what they want, like a toaster. They never think to install a different OS, if they even know how to do so or that Linux exists in the first place. Windows comes installed out of the box for every computer not made by Apple for the most part. My boomers aren’t dependent on any Windows-specific software as their use-case is just a Facebook machine, so I put them on Fedora with GNOME and there hasn’t been a single problem in years. They can even handle installing and updating software with the software center that GNOME provides. They were actually interested in trying something else because even the tech illiterate can see that Windows sucks now. All I had to do was pick the distro and DE and then install it for them. The distro could just as easily be Debian, or Ubuntu, or possibly even Arch. The DE just needs to be absolutely braindead so they can’t hurt themselves by accident. Yeah, some use-cases require that people use Windows-specific software, but there’s also a lot of Facebook machines that could just as easily be running Linux if the computers at the store shipped with it; Chromebooks are an example of this. And honestly, even the OS-specific software thing is becoming less of a problem as more stuff moves to the browser.
If I could only count the number of articles that have made this argument before. Ugh. Nothing new to see here.
“When someone comes to me asking how to get into Linux, they do not need to hear a laundry list of distributions to choose from. When they ask, I don’t want to have to say, something akin to, “You could try Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS, Zorin OS, or Ubuntu Budgie.””
Ok, so what if I need a car? People will give me a laundry list of car brands to choose from, so I don’t really see that as a valid point. What if I want to buy a pair of shoes? Is there another laundry list? Yes there is.
Just pick something popular, and try it out. If you don’t like it, you’ll have a better idea of the features you want or don’t want in the future.
You mean you DON’T drive a Car brand car, wear Shoes brand shoes and drink this delicious-looking beverage??
There’s also literal 15% food. Better not think about the remaining 85%. Just see what google translate says about “ruoka” (in Finnish) or “mat” (in Swedish).
75% no?
Wolfram aplha is probably just violating some fundamental axioms of mathematics to say the answer is 85. I’m not a mathematician, so who knows.
Well, it’s all about expectations and alternatives. People don’t expect to be overloaded with choices before the OS even boots.
Linux is the only OS on any platform where they have (to make) this choice.
Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, all of these Systems don’t give you a choice between wildly different versions.
Also, the issue extends to after the installation as well. If someone asks me about a Windows issue of medium intensity, I can tell them on the phone how to fix it without having a PC nearby.
Say they ask me how to do something as simple as to install a program from the repository.
Depending on the Linux they are using, they will (or will not) have any one of a few dozen package manager GUIs, which will work wildly different. Even if they don’t use the GUI, they might be using apt, yum, pacman, snap or any other of a few dozen CLI package managers.
And depending on their distro, the package in question can have one of a few dozen different names, or might not be in the repo at all, so that I need to add a ppa or some other form of external repository.
That is a massive issue in everyday use. The only viable thing is for the local family/friend group admin to decide which distro to use and then everyone needs to use that distro or get educated themselves.
For example, I got a lot of experience (~10 years) on Debian-based OSes. Put me on Arch and I have no clue.
The same is not true for e.g. Windows, where I have used every single version extensively (except of Win11).
What’s crazy to me is that Linux was out way in front of this. Put me in front of windows back in the aughts and say ‘go install a program’ and you had to google it, hope you clicked the right download link, install it, hope you didn’t get a virus. Ubuntu you just opened up synaptic and bam, there was a wealth of programs you could just install with a single click. It was mind-blowing, and way easier than what everyone else offered.
It’s the typical opensource problem. The advantage of FOSS is that anyone who wants to can create a fork. The problem is that everyone does.
There are dozens of rivaling systems that do the exact same thing a slightly different way with a completely different user experience.
That description sounds a lot like fixing a car or trying to operate it.
How do I turn on the windshield wipers? Oh that depends on the brand. You need to find that thing that’s usually on the right, but in some cars it’s on the left. Then you need to press, pull, turn or twist it clockwise or counterclockwise depending on stuff…
How do I replace the left headlight? Could be easy, could be a nightmare. Depends on so many things.
That’s kinda true, but because of that reason you need to take more than 40h of lessions (at least over here) and two tests before you are allowed to operate a car.
When you then buy a car, the salesman takes about an hour to show you everything you need to know about your car, and the car gets delivered with a pretty well-written 500+ page manual that tells you everything you need to know about operating and maintaining it.
The same is not true for operating systems in general and Linux distros specifically. There you get no course at all, nobody that shows you anything and all your resources are Google and toxic online communities where you get called names for asking questions. Makes it much harder for beginners to get into it.
Can we please stop this nonsense already? With Linux on desktop we had two goals:
- hardware support
- software support
We achieved both goals. Since probably 20 years ago I’ve been using Linux exclusively both at work and at home. All my hardware works, all my software works. Why would I care if Linux gets to 20%, 80% or 100% market share? At this point if some companies or game developers don’t support Linux it’s their loss, I will find an alternative. And if some users is still using Windows it’s also their loss. I feel sorry for them but I stopped encouraging people to use Linux years ago. We’re good, our feature is secured, we don’t need to push for more users anymore.
You have a very loose definition of “achieved.” There are countless hardware devices lacking support. Microsoft Office, the most widely used business productivity tool in the world by far, still has either limited or no support on Linux. Most of the top 20 games on Twitch are either completely unsupported, or require onerous workarounds with poor performance.
It’s great that you have achieved what you desire, but you’re not representative of everyone.
It’s not Linux’s job to run software designed for another OS. It’s great that it sometimes does (thanks to wine/proton), but as a litmus test it seems a little odd.
I’m with that guy. It’s exceptionally easy to run Linux full time these days for anyone who wants to. (Have been doing so since 2007, and it was already easier then than it was for the trailblazers.) It requires almost no thought to ensure the hardware I buy will be fully supported.
I don’t care in the least if someone chooses something else to run on their computer, and I’m years past the point where I can even understand why I’m supposed to.
It’s not Linux’s job to run software designed for another OS.
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. This isn’t about assigning blame. It’s about acknowledging reality. The bottom line is that Linux is still lacking a lot of software and hardware compatibility which Windows offers.
It’s not Linux’s job to run software designed for another OS…as a litmus test it seems a little odd.
LOL it is the job of an operating system (ANY operating system) to be able to run the software you need/want. So in that regard, it’s not “odd” at all.
Go run a Mac binary natively on Windows and let me know how that goes for you.
I don’t care whatsoever if someone wants to use Windows for any reason at all. I take exception to this notion that Linux has some responsibility to be compatible with everything in the world while Windows only has to be compatible with Windows though.
Just make your choice and be open about it, don’t manufacture requirements that are not universal.
I take exception to this notion that Linux has some responsibility to be compatible with everything in the world.
Well this is a point you’ve fabricated in your imagination because no one thinks that. Windows and Mac will both run whatever software a typical user needs. Linux often does not. That makes it not suitable for most users. It’s as simple as that.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that the success of Linux is tied to the needs of the mythical “average user”, in addition to thinking that Linux is somehow responsible for the fact that MS doesn’t make Office binaries for it, or Autocad doesn’t make binaries for it, etc.
We don’t need to agree on either of those, and as I said earlier, I’m years past thinking there’s any reason to “convert” you or anyone else.
I find your premise to be flawed, and that’s my only objection. However, I don’t even care about your flawed premise enough to continue this discussion. You can go have an an OS argument with someone who feels like having one. I’m sure it won’t be hard to find.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that the success of Linux is tied to the needs of the mythical “average user”
Nope. You’re once again just fabricating statements that no one is making.
Linux is not a business so “success” can be measured in a myriad of ways. One of which could be the number of people adopting it as their main desktop/laptop OS. For that, it has to be able to run the software most people are using.
This is also the topic of discussion that you seem to be missing entirely.
in addition to thinking that Linux is somehow responsible for the fact that MS doesn’t make Office binaries for it, or Autocad doesn’t make binaries for it, etc.
More things you’re just making up. No one thinks Linux is responsible for those things. If you want to have an argument with yourself, feel free to write it down on a piece of paper or something.
I find your premise to be flawed
You clearly don’t understand what my premise even is, so you couldn’t possibly.
@JasSmith linux devs cant force every developer out there to release a linux compatible version of their sw. If MS doesnt want to build a linux version of one of their s/w, the best that can be done is support their custom doc format.
Also your argument is very one sided if you want linux to seemlessly run every type of binary like exe, dmg of completely incompatible OS. Linux does provides a decent translation layer that attempts at it. How many of the other OS can do so?
You incorrectly infer blame. This isn’t anyone’s fault. I am simply acknowledging the reality of the situation: Linux still lacks compatibility with a lot of hardware, software, and games. That fact is contributing to its low consumer adoption. In just one year, Steam Deck’s exceptional adoption thanks to seamless compatibility and user experience should prove this.
@JasSmith steam just demonstrated there wasnt much lacking on part of linux but the will of the publishers.
Ive no idea how you expect compatiblity b/w different OS. No such thing exist outside of trans-layers like wine or compile to those specifc platform. You cant run linux packages on windows. Need wsl(which is a linux kernel running virtualised) or a full VM to do so. You can run win on a vm inside linux if you so desire.
Who has to fix nvidia reluctance to properly publish their drivers?
I don’t expect magic, so I don’t expect Linux to be a Windows competitor in the consumer space for many years to come.
Surely you can see the material differences between the Steam Deck and someone trying to install a flavour of Linux for themselves on their Windows PC. Valve has done everything. No tinkering with drivers. The hardware works out of the box. No complicated workarounds. No CLI. Every game is clearly labelled for compatibility in the UI. It even has functionality which Windows doesn’t have like sleep and wake for games in progress. They’ve even gone with an immutable OS, so developers know their games will operate if tested on the one distribution.
