And now Imagine Linux had actually more market share on the Desktop. But for that, Linux needs at least a little more software support to be reliable for other people. And that software is usually not open source. Maybe with Flatpak, it will finally get somewhere in that regard, if there’s enough interest from people.
Sorry but that’s just wrong. Enough people simply don’t even consider Linux because their needed software doesn’t work + there’s no equivalent alternative. And my PC/OS is not a hobby or a Ideology. It’s a tool that I use to work with.
Is it really wrong? Do you have numbers? I think the most people claim above is at least plausible. It surely fits my personal experience, but that is of course not worth much.
I would argue that most people use their PC for web browsing, light photo editing and personal office stuff and maybe gaming (at least outside work) and those people are not affected by “the software I need does not work and there is no alternative”.
I am a gamer and I run into “the software doesnt do what I want, and theres no way around it/alternative” very often.
almost always cause I want to run another file in the same proton instance of a game to install a mod or do something else.
Or because something just doesnt work, despite following the instructions and others getting it to work.
Like, Cyberpunk is my most recent example. CET doesnt work, followed the guide, installed the packages the guide said to, still nothing. It doesnt prevent me from running the game, but it certainly stops me from enjoying it the way i want to.
I would argue that most people use their PC for web browsing, light photo editing
Maybe just me but I know nobody who still uses a PC for this things anyway. The vast majority of people use their smartphones or tablets for basic stuff like that. People who still use a PCs or Laptops, usually do more work than that.
Gaming is fine if you use Steam and the compatibility layer or jump through hoops, and don’t play basically anything online.
The photo editing tools on Linux are dogshit.
Web browsing is fine, but not if you want to stream any content, because no one will serve you anything even medium quality without DRM.
Office stuff can kind of be replaced, but mostly by using the browser versions of the shit people actually use, because the tools to collaborate with others (particularly non-techy people) don’t exist for open source alternatives.
The software available is absolutely a massive limitation.
Basically the entire multiplayer space is locked out. It’s a massive compromise. And every platform that isn’t Steam requires significant manual configuration and still has issues.
No, they’re not good. And they’re not suitable for any normal person because the UX is a dumpster fire.
Nobody with normal tv/movie content gives you comparable quality on Linux.
Yes, normal people do need to collaborate. And no, none of the office options on Linux are capable of functional collaboration for normal people, except Google/microsoft through browser nonsense.
Basically the entire multiplayer space is locked out.
Not all multiplayer games use this anti cheat techniques (and those might just be working in the near future anyway). CS:Go works perfectly, Rocket League does, Dota 2 does, LoL did at least (I don’t know what they’re up to these days), 7 days to die does, paradox grand strategy does, Mordhau does, Path of Exile does, and those are only sone of the games I personally can confirm.
And they’re not suitable for any normal person because the UX is a dumpster fire.
People who use Photoshop professionally mostly agree, that GIMP is a great app that has just a few drawbacks compared zo photoshop. The UI was a dumpster fire, but they sorted that out. Photo Editing is on par with photoshop, at least with other free plugins. If your UX sucks, maybe it’s an error on osi layer 8.
Nobody with normal tv/movie content gives you comparable quality on Linux.
I’m still running 1080p on everything and Netflix delivers 1080p to all my linux boxes. Is there a problem with 4k?
Yes, normal people do need to collaborate. And no, none of the office options on Linux are capable of functional collaboration for normal people, except Google/microsoft through browser nonsense.
Which tools on windows allow easy collaborative office projects other than microsoft or google? Well, other than cryptpad, OnlyOffice, koofr, almost every nextcloud provider, etherpad…
Your first point is web browsing. Even that doesn‘t work properly on a linux desktop lol. Browser performance is abysmal because the browsers lack out of the box support for hardware acceleration. Even if you get it to work it might not work reliably and an update might break it again.
Try using a discord call and open a youtube video in 4k at the same time on a a freshly installed linux desktop. The audio will be choppy and the video will drop frames like crazy. Just moving around windows on your desktop is not nearly as smooth as it is on windows.
You seem to be very misinformed. Browsers do not lack hardware acceleration. Some distributions do not include the necessary packets in their default configuration. Some. And when you get it to work, like in Arch Linux, where almost nothing is installed by default, it works flawlessly for years, never had an update breaking browser hardware acceleration.
I can run 12 4k youtube videos at the same time and route the audio to different channels of my different audio devices AND accept several calls from different webapps and the only thing that is not smooth is your way of discussing things LOL
I‘ve had this issue on several distros and multiple friends have the same issue. Video hardware acceleration in a browser is a mess. This is definitely not only affecting me as there is a significant amount of complaints on forums and reddit.
And there is no way that the average computer user will use arch.
And as long as you gotta fiddle around with your system to get even the most basic shit running smoothly like watching a high resolution youtube video and moving around windows on your other screen at the same time linux will stay irrelevant as a desktop os. It‘s still a system for nerds and I kinda feel like that this is okay.
I think it’s more that there’s a perception of things not being compatible with Linux nowadays. A lot of the games that didn’t work 5 years ago now do, and I’m still seeing people complain that games like Halo Infinite don’t work on there when they actually do.
The only things I can think of that aren’t compatible and required for some tasks are Photoshop and professional CAD/CAE software. For >90% of the population Linux should be able to handle everything they need
Most people dont want an OS to be different. They are happy if it boots up and does what they want to do. It’s not lazy, it’s an active disagreement with the premise.
This is why nobody upgrades to Windows 10 from 7, or to 11 from 10. Security risks and lack of features aside, their OS just works for them.
Fedora doesn’t provide binary drivers even if they exist, you need to get a pluggable wifi usb tool that is supported and install the repositories and configure binary drivers to get wifi working on a huge amount of laptops.
Ubuntu does provide binary drivers but the configuration tool can just crash by itself a lot of the time and just fail to load the driver.
Ubuntu’s desktop sometimes just crashes.
Fedora uses some strange memory compression driver to handle its paging file and this can sometimes just crash the OS entirely by itself.
These are major issues that shouldn’t be issues, they should either have been fixed as a priority for the crashes or have some kind of workaround that doesn’t require owning specific USBs that regular people just won’t have. There’s no reason for the memory compression thing either, it probably doesn’t do that much for performance overall but random hard-locks are a huge negative. Linux is its own worst enemy on the desktop.
Sometimes the issues with WiFi chipsets is not the distro but the manufacturer. Debian for instance now includes non-free firmware on its installation ISO image, but some manufacturers do not allow the distribution (e.g. Broadcom) of firmware, so Debian can’t legally include them. And unfortunately the manufacturers don’t make it easy to “just download the firmware” so you can put it on the USB stick so the installer can see them. (Literally the only issue with putting Debian on my old 2013 Macbook Pro was the Broadcom firmware - but fortunately, having a Debian desktop I could install the firmware downloader there to get the two files the installer needed).
This is not a fault of the Linux distro, but a fault of the hardware manufacturer. Unfortuantely, like the smell of piss in a subway, we all have to deal with Broadcom.
Realistically windows is really good at repairing itself (or just getting it to a state where its usable again, to most users would be ‘repaired’).
Until linux has some sort of system like this, its just not worth the headache to 99% of users. The linux errors aren’t even that descriptive when they happen, and could be cause by like anything.
they dont even bother to give anything else than an error code which is applicable to 482885 different roots of errors.
Indeed the repairing functionality works. but yeah. the problem will be solved. linux has moved exceptional towards usability and will continue to do so.
I can’t speak for other distributions, but Pop!_OS has had a “Refresh Install” option for a while now that does exactly this. This hasn’t happened often, but there have been a couple of times when something borked my system to the point of making it no longer boot, and re-running the installer in “Refresh Install” mode got everything back and running within 30 minutes while preserving all of my non-system files; in particular this meant that I didn’t have to re-download my Steam and other locally installed games, which is significant because they are the largest apps on my system.
It will never be the year of the linux desktop, until linux is easy to use and easy to troubleshoot and fix.
and let me tell you, every minor problem requiring some kind of arcane terminal ritualism in ancient enochian that only veteran sysadmins know, is not, and will never be, easy to use or troubleshoot.
There, I just gave you 2 ways to turn that arcane terminal ritualism in ancient enochian that only veteran sysadmins know, into a plain english service manual that any literate human being can use to figure out basically any terminal application ever.
Yeah, I’ve done --help. It doesnt make it simple. and it doenst magically let you figure out how to solve the problem, assuming you even know what package is causing the problem.
I’ve gone through more than enough fixing of more than enough problems as an average, not-sysadmin person. I know how bullshit it is. Just because you are used to it doesnt make it easier for regular people to use.
Microsoft has done a lot of shit wrong, but the one thing they got right is the usability of the OS, how any idiot can be sat infront of a computer and know what they’re doing with less than a day of faffing about, and can easily fix most common problems in a few clicks.
Most people are unable to administrate their own systems, therefore GNU/Linux–an operating system built on empowering developers and administrators–is basically unimaginable.
Microsoft and Apple have co-opted the admin duties for users, and that’s why people use their operating systems. It spares them from the disaster we all saw and experienced in the Window XP days–but that comes at a price.
It’s not software support, it’s not anythign to do with Linux. It’s a computer illiteracy problem.
Android could, in some respects, be considered linux’s biggest success story among regular users and that’s because Google co-opts admin duties.
And now Imagine Linux had actually more market share on the Desktop. But for that, Linux needs at least a little more software support to be reliable for other people. And that software is usually not open source. Maybe with Flatpak, it will finally get somewhere in that regard, if there’s enough interest from people.
its not about the software support.
its because people are lazy to learn. most people dont even know that an OS can be different.
for them windows is defacto THE PC.
Sorry but that’s just wrong. Enough people simply don’t even consider Linux because their needed software doesn’t work + there’s no equivalent alternative. And my PC/OS is not a hobby or a Ideology. It’s a tool that I use to work with.
Is it really wrong? Do you have numbers? I think the most people claim above is at least plausible. It surely fits my personal experience, but that is of course not worth much.
I would argue that most people use their PC for web browsing, light photo editing and personal office stuff and maybe gaming (at least outside work) and those people are not affected by “the software I need does not work and there is no alternative”.
I am a gamer and I run into “the software doesnt do what I want, and theres no way around it/alternative” very often.
almost always cause I want to run another file in the same proton instance of a game to install a mod or do something else.
Or because something just doesnt work, despite following the instructions and others getting it to work.
Like, Cyberpunk is my most recent example. CET doesnt work, followed the guide, installed the packages the guide said to, still nothing. It doesnt prevent me from running the game, but it certainly stops me from enjoying it the way i want to.
Maybe just me but I know nobody who still uses a PC for this things anyway. The vast majority of people use their smartphones or tablets for basic stuff like that. People who still use a PCs or Laptops, usually do more work than that.
You named multiple things with major compromises.
Gaming is fine if you use Steam and the compatibility layer or jump through hoops, and don’t play basically anything online.
The photo editing tools on Linux are dogshit.
Web browsing is fine, but not if you want to stream any content, because no one will serve you anything even medium quality without DRM.
Office stuff can kind of be replaced, but mostly by using the browser versions of the shit people actually use, because the tools to collaborate with others (particularly non-techy people) don’t exist for open source alternatives.
The software available is absolutely a massive limitation.
Gaming is fine unless the game has kernel level anti cheat. Minor compromise.
Photo editing tools are good enough for the needs of normal people. Gimp and Darktable are not dogshit, no compromise.
DRM under Firefox works. Never had a problem with it plus most people don’t even watch on computers. No compromise.
Non techy people mostly not do collaborative projects. Plus registering for any cloud with office and collaboration is easy. Minor compromise.
Basically the entire multiplayer space is locked out. It’s a massive compromise. And every platform that isn’t Steam requires significant manual configuration and still has issues.
No, they’re not good. And they’re not suitable for any normal person because the UX is a dumpster fire.
Nobody with normal tv/movie content gives you comparable quality on Linux.
Yes, normal people do need to collaborate. And no, none of the office options on Linux are capable of functional collaboration for normal people, except Google/microsoft through browser nonsense.
Not all multiplayer games use this anti cheat techniques (and those might just be working in the near future anyway). CS:Go works perfectly, Rocket League does, Dota 2 does, LoL did at least (I don’t know what they’re up to these days), 7 days to die does, paradox grand strategy does, Mordhau does, Path of Exile does, and those are only sone of the games I personally can confirm.
People who use Photoshop professionally mostly agree, that GIMP is a great app that has just a few drawbacks compared zo photoshop. The UI was a dumpster fire, but they sorted that out. Photo Editing is on par with photoshop, at least with other free plugins. If your UX sucks, maybe it’s an error on osi layer 8.
I’m still running 1080p on everything and Netflix delivers 1080p to all my linux boxes. Is there a problem with 4k?
Which tools on windows allow easy collaborative office projects other than microsoft or google? Well, other than cryptpad, OnlyOffice, koofr, almost every nextcloud provider, etherpad…
Your first point is web browsing. Even that doesn‘t work properly on a linux desktop lol. Browser performance is abysmal because the browsers lack out of the box support for hardware acceleration. Even if you get it to work it might not work reliably and an update might break it again.
Try using a discord call and open a youtube video in 4k at the same time on a a freshly installed linux desktop. The audio will be choppy and the video will drop frames like crazy. Just moving around windows on your desktop is not nearly as smooth as it is on windows.
You seem to be very misinformed. Browsers do not lack hardware acceleration. Some distributions do not include the necessary packets in their default configuration. Some. And when you get it to work, like in Arch Linux, where almost nothing is installed by default, it works flawlessly for years, never had an update breaking browser hardware acceleration.
I can run 12 4k youtube videos at the same time and route the audio to different channels of my different audio devices AND accept several calls from different webapps and the only thing that is not smooth is your way of discussing things LOL
I‘ve had this issue on several distros and multiple friends have the same issue. Video hardware acceleration in a browser is a mess. This is definitely not only affecting me as there is a significant amount of complaints on forums and reddit.
And there is no way that the average computer user will use arch. And as long as you gotta fiddle around with your system to get even the most basic shit running smoothly like watching a high resolution youtube video and moving around windows on your other screen at the same time linux will stay irrelevant as a desktop os. It‘s still a system for nerds and I kinda feel like that this is okay.
I think it’s more that there’s a perception of things not being compatible with Linux nowadays. A lot of the games that didn’t work 5 years ago now do, and I’m still seeing people complain that games like Halo Infinite don’t work on there when they actually do.
The only things I can think of that aren’t compatible and required for some tasks are Photoshop and professional CAD/CAE software. For >90% of the population Linux should be able to handle everything they need
90% of the population don’t use a PC anymore. Smartphones and Tablets have replaced PCs for the most basic tasks.
For technical people, maybe. For the avg user Windows and Mac are the computer and Linux is that thing nerds talk about sometimes.
Most people dont want an OS to be different. They are happy if it boots up and does what they want to do. It’s not lazy, it’s an active disagreement with the premise.
This is why nobody upgrades to Windows 10 from 7, or to 11 from 10. Security risks and lack of features aside, their OS just works for them.
These things are only a concern to enthusiasts.
It’s also why, as shitty behavior as it is, MS getting aggressive about upgrading to 10/11 is a net good, from a security standpoint.
I am intentionally ignoring the “10/11 is just spyware with an OS bundled in” thing in the above statement.
Linux still has too many issues, for example…
These are major issues that shouldn’t be issues, they should either have been fixed as a priority for the crashes or have some kind of workaround that doesn’t require owning specific USBs that regular people just won’t have. There’s no reason for the memory compression thing either, it probably doesn’t do that much for performance overall but random hard-locks are a huge negative. Linux is its own worst enemy on the desktop.
Sometimes the issues with WiFi chipsets is not the distro but the manufacturer. Debian for instance now includes non-free firmware on its installation ISO image, but some manufacturers do not allow the distribution (e.g. Broadcom) of firmware, so Debian can’t legally include them. And unfortunately the manufacturers don’t make it easy to “just download the firmware” so you can put it on the USB stick so the installer can see them. (Literally the only issue with putting Debian on my old 2013 Macbook Pro was the Broadcom firmware - but fortunately, having a Debian desktop I could install the firmware downloader there to get the two files the installer needed).
This is not a fault of the Linux distro, but a fault of the hardware manufacturer. Unfortuantely, like the smell of piss in a subway, we all have to deal with Broadcom.
Realistically windows is really good at repairing itself (or just getting it to a state where its usable again, to most users would be ‘repaired’).
Until linux has some sort of system like this, its just not worth the headache to 99% of users. The linux errors aren’t even that descriptive when they happen, and could be cause by like anything.
have you ever head windows errors?
they dont even bother to give anything else than an error code which is applicable to 482885 different roots of errors.
Indeed the repairing functionality works. but yeah. the problem will be solved. linux has moved exceptional towards usability and will continue to do so.
But windows is frustrating and slow spyware, so there is that…
I can’t speak for other distributions, but Pop!_OS has had a “Refresh Install” option for a while now that does exactly this. This hasn’t happened often, but there have been a couple of times when something borked my system to the point of making it no longer boot, and re-running the installer in “Refresh Install” mode got everything back and running within 30 minutes while preserving all of my non-system files; in particular this meant that I didn’t have to re-download my Steam and other locally installed games, which is significant because they are the largest apps on my system.
Timeshift
100% Agree.
It will never be the year of the linux desktop, until linux is easy to use and easy to troubleshoot and fix.
and let me tell you, every minor problem requiring some kind of arcane terminal ritualism in ancient enochian that only veteran sysadmins know, is not, and will never be, easy to use or troubleshoot.
There, I just gave you 2 ways to turn that arcane terminal ritualism in ancient enochian that only veteran sysadmins know, into a plain english service manual that any literate human being can use to figure out basically any terminal application ever.
Yeah, I’ve done --help. It doesnt make it simple. and it doenst magically let you figure out how to solve the problem, assuming you even know what package is causing the problem.
I’ve gone through more than enough fixing of more than enough problems as an average, not-sysadmin person. I know how bullshit it is. Just because you are used to it doesnt make it easier for regular people to use.
Microsoft has done a lot of shit wrong, but the one thing they got right is the usability of the OS, how any idiot can be sat infront of a computer and know what they’re doing with less than a day of faffing about, and can easily fix most common problems in a few clicks.
Most people are unable to administrate their own systems, therefore GNU/Linux–an operating system built on empowering developers and administrators–is basically unimaginable.
Microsoft and Apple have co-opted the admin duties for users, and that’s why people use their operating systems. It spares them from the disaster we all saw and experienced in the Window XP days–but that comes at a price.
It’s not software support, it’s not anythign to do with Linux. It’s a computer illiteracy problem.
Android could, in some respects, be considered linux’s biggest success story among regular users and that’s because Google co-opts admin duties.
What disaster?
Did you ever try using a non-power user’s computer with Windows XP?
Yes, but a long time ago. Remind me?