this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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Shutup10 for sure.
Linux, nah. It still can't do what we need it to do, so it's not the proper tool for the job.
Chicken and egg. Linux is roughly 4% of the OS space. If more people would get on board, it would become a better tool. I use both. Windows because I have to. Linux because I want to.
Linux missed the mark years ago. It's not a lack of people using it, it's a lack of usability for people. You're blaming users because Linux doesn't work for them.
My standard response to "just go Linux" :
I keep having to say this, as much as I like Linux for certain things, as a desktop it's still no competition to Windows, even with this awful shit going on.
As some background - I wrote my first Fortran program on a Sperry Rand Univac (punched cards) in about 1985. Cobol was immediately after Fortran (wish I'd stuck with Cobol).
I had my first UNIX class in about 1990.
I run a Mint laptop (for the hell of it, and I do mean hell) . Update: stopped running Mint on that laptop, it'll never be viable for the intended use-case. Power management is a joke. Configured as best as possible, walked in the other day and it was dead - as in battery at zero, won't even boot.
Windows would never do this, no, Windows can never do this. It is incapable of running a battery to zero, it'll shutoff before then to protect the battery. To really kill it you have to boot to BIOS and let it sit, Windows simply will not let a battery get to zero.
There's no way even possible via the Mint GUI to config power management for things like low/critical battery conditions /actions. None, nada, zip, not at all. Command line only, in the twenty-first century, something Windows has had since I don't recall, 95 I think (I was carrying a laptop then, and I believe it had hibernate, sorry, it's been what, almost thirty years now).
There are many reasons why Linux doesn't compete with Windows on the desktop - this is just one glaring one.
Now let's look at Office. Open an Excel spreadsheet with tables in any app other than excel. Tables are something that's just a given in excel, takes 10 seconds to setup, and you get automatic sorting and filtering, with near-zero effort. The devs of open office refuse to support tables, saying "you should manage data in a proper database app". While I don't disagree with the sentiment, no, I'm not setting up a DB in an open-source competitor to Access. That's just too much effort for simple sorting and filtering tasks, and isn't realistically shareable with other people. I do this several times a day in excel.
Now there's that print monitor that's on by default, and can only be shut up by using a command line. Wtf? Again, in the 21st century?
Networking... Yea, samba works, but how do you clear creds you used one time to connect to a share, even though you didn't say "save creds"? Oh, yea, command line again or go download an app to clear them for for you. In the 21st century?
Oh, you have a wireless Logitech mouse? Linux won't even recognize it. You have to search for a solution and go find a third-party download that makes it work. My brand new wireless mouse works on any version of Windows since Win2k (at the least) and would probably work on Win95.
Someone else said it better than me:
Now I love Linux for my services: Proxmox, UnRAID, TrueNAS, containers for Syncthing, PiHole, Owncloud/NextCloud, CasaOS/Yuno, etc, etc. I even run a few Windows VM's on Linux (Proxmox) because that's better than running Linux VM's on a Windows server.
Linux is brilliant for this stuff. Just not brilliant for a desktop, let alone in a business environment.
Linux doesn't even use a common shell (which is a good thing in it's own way), and that's a massive barrier for users.
If it were 40 years ago, maybe Linux would've had a chance to beat MS, even then it would've required settling on a single GUI (which is arguably half of why Windows became a standard, the other half being a common API), a common build (so the same tools/utilities are always available), and a commitment to put usability for the inexperienced user first.
These are what MS did in the 1980's to make Windows attractive to the 3 groups who contend with desktops: developers, business management, end users.
All this without considering the systems management requirements of even an SMB with perhaps a dozen users (let alone an enterprise with tens of thousands).
It sounds like many of your problems could be fixed by installing kde plasma6 instead.
I think this supports his argument. Having to research desktop environments to decide which is optimized for the potential problems a new user may face, then finding a distro that packages that DE is quite frankly too much for the average user.
I’d argue between 3% and 5% of PC users are willing to research and experiment to find the flavor of Linux that truly works for them.
Linux has come a long way, I still remember using Gentoo as a daily driver and seeing Linux cross 1% of desktop share, but the average desktop user doesn’t know the difference between a kernel and a colonel, and they don’t want to.
Nah, completely wrong take.
Linux can be adapted to fit any use case you have, and that’s an important part of its flexibility. What you really are getting at is that mass producing a machine with an OS built into it is convenient for consumers. See Android phones or Steam decks for evidence of this convenience being important to the sale of Linux based devices.
In the not too distant future, windows will go out of fashion for the home desktop PC. Someone will sell a cheap and cool arm based PC with a decent distribution. It will be a slow win, nothing like what we saw from macOS.
Linux has 4% of the pc market. This is an all time high. The fact that you think linux is a threat in any meaningful way tells me that you're either too stubborn or too stupid to see why linux as it stands today will never even reach 10% of the market ever, let alone become the dominant platform.
Windows could become a yearly subscription at $500 per year, and linux would struggle to reach 6%.
he was wrong but you are way overcompensating. if windows suddenly became exorbetantly expensive, most people would just stop using computers altogether (its already easy for many people live with just a phone no PC). The remaining computer users (not counting businesses) would be enthusiasts, who are much more likely to enjoy the tinkering of Linux, or put up with it to avoid exorbetant costs. so without even gaining anymore users, Linux's desktop market share would shoot up.
to be clear I don't think Linux Desktop taking over is imminant or "near future." thats nuts, it will probably always be a niche for enthusiasts and thier families/friends. but its also not going to stay eternally at 2-4%, the user experience is constantly improving and encompassing more hardware.
I know several people who would switch over to Linux if Windows cost that much and it would be: everyone I know.
It's a moot point, because the average user doesn't install any OS on their system. They get people like us to install it for them.
They don't generally solve their own Windows problems either. OEM is the real bulwark of of Windows dominance. Usability and familiarity is one aspect, but I've set a good few people up with Linux at this stage and very few of them know what a kernel is, or what Plasma/Gnome are, because they don't need to (same way they didn't know or care what NT was either).
Whoosh. This happens literally every time anyone comments about how difficult Linux is, someone just recommends some other distro or obscure fix (this time a new desktop). You’re literally missing the actual problem here because you’re always trying to solve strange problems on Linux. The fact that you know a solution to this and the solution isn’t continue using your current system but instead install a new graphical interface is the exact problem that the person you’re responding to is complaining about.
You're just assuming that installing KDE was a solution to some obscure problem he had instead of it being his existing system.
That's how it's been for me at any rate. I read a lot of the original post while thinking 'I've never had that problem.' After the first day of setting up the installation, I don't really do any meaningful tweaking of the OS. Personally, I switched over from Windows because I was tired of fighting it to make it behave how I wanted and solving obscure problems with meaningless error messages.
I’m not assuming anything. He’s suggesting it as a solution. If your suggestion of a solution is to switch distros then Linux is not ready to be a desktop env. And I’ve seen multiple people recommend KDE as a “solution” to people’s problems so forgive me if I took them suggesting it as a solution as them suggesting it as a solution.
I'm responding to the more general sentiment you and BearOfaTime expressed, which is that one is 'always trying to solve strange problems on Linux.' KDE is being offered as a solution in this instance, but it's also just a default in its own right. Contrary to how you're characterising it, it's not a distro, it's not difficult to install, and it absolutely is not obscure.