Okay, look, I don’t want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it’s counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn’t particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that’s what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it’s true. I work with Google’s office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn’t mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you’re still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don’t work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I’m not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I’m going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I’m talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it’s far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don’t get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I’m not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn’t what is there, it’s what’s missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don’t care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it’s not about what’s there, it’s about what’s missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean… nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11’s settings app I don’t find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don’t dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they’re just not a dealbreaker… yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is… off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice… in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don’t need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but… yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I’d love to step away from Windows, and it’s a thing you can do if you’re tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker… but it’s not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
Well, that’s your opinion. For others it works fine. I’ve been using Linux since 1995 and exclusively for both home and work for well over a decade now. And there are rarely issues these days. Teams is a piece of shit, but my coworkers on Windows agree on that. Apart from that everything works for me.
The only point I can really agree with you on here is Adobe products (and some other niche proprietary stuff like AutoDesk – I don’t consider MS Office an industry standard and if your job does I’m very sorry). And that’s just corporate lock-in, if you’re already paying hundreds of dollars a year to use those programs then yeah you’re gonna stay on the corporate OS.
Other than that, everything you brought up just isn’t quite accurate, or evaporates as you get more comfortable with the Linux ecosystem. The distro point, for example: every distro is just a starting point. Outside of some niche exceptions like Gentoo and NixOS that will radically redefine how you configure the system, any distro can largely be made to work similarly to any other. The major differences are just a) initial package set, b) the package manager, and c) the set of available packages. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to “what software should be on a computer”, which is why there are so many distros and spins out there.
I would say gaming is actually pretty close to perfect, provided you don’t play any of the games that have decided they just will never work on Linux – almost exclusively games that use invasive kernel-level anti-cheat software which I wouldn’t want to install on Windows either. There are a handful like Fortnite and Apex Legends which use EAC, which works great on Linux now, but the devs explicitly decided to disable it. Just like the corporate lock-in point, if you’re committed to those games stay on Windows. Heroic and Lutris take a few more clicks to set up than Steam’s one-click magic, but it’s generally pretty straightforward for any game with any popularity.
The point about ads is where I start to think you’re deliberately being obtuse. You think that, what, a splash screen telling you how to use your computer when you first boot it, and notifications from apps you installed, are advertising? And you find them similarly annoying as the actual sponsored content that shows up in your start menu, on the lock screen, in Edge, when you use Cortana… Not to mention the constant pressure from the OS to use those things? The only way I can interpret this without you just trolling is that you’ve spent too long in the Windows ecosystem and you’ve just adjusted to not notice how often it’s shoving something in your face.
Have used Linux for decades. Switched over full time a few months ago and have generally been happy but all your points are extremely valid.
Plasma will occasionally freeze the taskbar/desktop when it wakes up or I switch back to my desktop from work laptop using a KVM, effectively connecting a monitor.
For me that’s fine, manually open a terminal and kill the process so it’ll restart. For all but a handful of my extended friends and family that means the computer is broken until you log off or restart. It’s not a smooth experience.
why are there fans of operating systems in the first place
Operating systems are huge endeavours of engineering and design by entire teams of people over decades, which are used literally daily. Is that not enough of a reason for people to be fans of them?
Hah. Of the concept of operating systems, maybe. I can see one appreciating technical solutions and UX choices just as a matter of skill and execution. Actively fanboying for them? Getting into playground-style arguments where you root for your favorite? Nah. Seems super immature to me.
There aren’t even that many of the things anymore. It’s not like the old days, where every computer brand had their own. Where are the TOS fanboys these days? All them kids and their obnoxious modern software interfaces. That’s not a OS, it’s just graphics.
Regarding Office, fear not! Microsoft is working hard to remove functionality from the Windows and Mac desktop apps, so soon we’ll have feature parity! See: “New Outlook”.
They’ve been pushing this shit for years already, nobody wants it, and they’re forcing it next year despite still not fixing shared calendars (among other things). New Outlook is basically just the web app in a wrapper.
I must be nobody, because I like the new Mac outlook. Granted it’s because I like the option to pin emails in top and I don’t recall any missing feature. Why the hate?
Granted I am used to the web version from the time I used Linux at work. The windows version seemed much worse in comparison
Personally I’m a fairly basic user, so for me it’s “fine”. But I also work in IT so I’m aware of some the problems preventing wide adoption across the org.
Shared calendars and delegation still don’t work correctly. It’s a dealbreaker for a lot of the admin assistants, who are generally the most advanced users.
On the Windows side, PST support is basically gone. Microsoft will claim they support PSTs, but their idea of “support” is to use old Outlook to manually copy your PSTs into server-side folders. That would be bad enough even if it were reliable, and in practice it would take eternity for some users to migrate all their stuff. We have nearly unlimited storage in O365 but it’s still a pain.
The only things I actually like about new Outlook are a couple UX changes that would have easily been applied to old Outlook if MS still gave a shit. Instead, old Outlook has been nearly frozen in time since…2016? Maybe 2019?
I mean, cool. Works for me. As soon as there is feature parity between their web app and their native app I no longer have a problem working with Office out of Windows. Not that I want to use Office in the first place, it’s just not my choice.
But right now I need to push a button that doesn’t exist on Linux, so I have to do it on Windows and that determines what I boot, which is the same situation from anybody who hates Adobe but has to use their software suite as well.
The only reason I have a windows laptop at home is because my employer forces me to. It’s true that Adobe and MS stuff doesn’t run or runs bad, same with some specific live service games. Personally I hate all of those and am more than happy to avoid em like the plague outside of work hours. They’re horrible inadequate tools and horrible predatory games. Everything I actually wanted personally, has so far run just fine for years.
Edit: Remembered one specific thing that does really suck on Linux, and that’s music production. That area is absolutely cluttered with proprietary shit. Even switching between windows and macos is a pain as many of the tools are just not compatible.
It’s not viable for the mainstream. “It depends on the person” suggests it’s luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that’s inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix.
That’s not, “depends on the person”, that’s “doesn’t work for the vast majority of people”. There is a reason for that.
I agree with some of your points but in this one and other comments you are referencing “data” multiple times to provide validity for your opinions, yet you either fail to understand what the data is able to measure or you are using it dishonestly to further your argument.
A usage percentage does not provide reliable data about the usability (“viability for the mainstream”). There are too many factors at play distorting it to make a reliable connection between these two.
“It depends on the person” suggests it’s luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that’s inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix […] that’s “doesn’t work for the vast majority of people”
The only way in which the percentage would be useful is, if you are implying that the other 96-99% chose to not use linux, because it doesn’t work for them, which is obviously not the case. Otherwise it is completely meaningless, as users were never exposed to linux, thus didn‘t have to make a decision, and thus didn’t deem another operating system superior.
There are a few objections along these lines in this thread, where the implication is that Linux is underused because it lacks awareness. Maybe it’s a generational thing? Linux has been around for a long time now, people are aware of it. There are multiple popular device lines out there that use it, several companies even put some marketing behind it.
I don’t know if you were there when Ubuntu first hit, but it was pretty widely reported. And that was twenty years ago. And of course Valve and Raspberry and Android and ChromeOs all were reported to carry flavours of Linux to the masses.
I mean, I’m sure a bigger, more coordinated marketing campaign would help, but it’s not a secret tucked away on nerdy cycles. I remember being in a college classroom in what? 2006? And when a professor didn’t know what Linux was the entire classroom laughed at them for reacting in disbelief at the notion that Linux was free (“so if something breaks who provides support?” I remember them asking, it was hilarious).
Look, it’s been a long time since you can just pull installation media of Linux from the Internet and just give it a try. Awareness is a factor, but it’s not THE reason Linux isn’t more widespread.
I disagree that the implication is only about lack of awareness. Further my point wasn’t that Linux is underused because of a lack of awareness. My point is that user popularity is not a valid measurement for usability.
Awareness definitely plays a role in user numbers but there are other more important factors. For example awareness of Linux doesn’t beat what comes preinstalled, this is a much bigger factor if we are talking about all desktop users in my opinion. Linux could have the best usability out of all desktop OS, most would still not change preinstalled OS for different reasons e.g. not knowledgeable enough, indifference etc… You might argue that if it was the OS it would come preinstalled, but then you would be ignoring the economic reasons that guide that.
I still maintain that popularity of an OS is not a metric that can be used to infer usability. As long as there are different hurdles to getting to the actual using part, actual usability can‘t be determined by popularity.
On a side note about awareness:
Maybe it’s a generational thing?
It could very well be, or it could potentially be something geographical. Anecdotally in my friends group of university students(20-26year olds) in a non-technical-field, not a single Person (beside me) knew what Linux was, and most had never heard the term before I mentioned it in a conversation. Neither would my parents. So maybe not a generational thing. I think you might be viewing the extent of awareness from the eyes of someone broadly in the tech field?
For someone who does a good job of pointing out fallacies in Linux fans’ logic, I find it surprising you’re making the argument that because there isn’t wide adoption yet, it doesn’t work for most people.
That premise only floats if nearly everyone has tried Linux for a while to see if it works for them. Obviously that’s not true.
I disagree with your argument, though. It depends on why people aren’t trying Linux. If they aren’t trying Linux because they don’t know it exists, then yeah, sure.
But it’s been over twenty years. If Linux was convincing people who just stumble upon it reliably it would have done better than going from 2 to 4%. In the time since you’ve been able to install Ubuntu (“it installs just like Windows!”, the PC magazines said at the time) mobile phones were taken over by Symbian, replaced by iOS almost entirely and then iOS lost the lead to Android.
So no, not everybody has tried it, but a whole lot of people have heard of it and avoided it for its (earned) reputation for being finicky, incompatible and hard to set up without tech expertise. If you solve the issues I’m calling out you solve that issue as well.
We may not be reading the word “mainstream” the same way here, because when you have a small oligopoly with one player at 75%, one at 15% and one at 4%… well, yeah, one of those is mainstream and one of those is not. That’s kind of how being mainstream works. Hell, that’s borderline monopolistic.
That’s not the same as a commodity where dozens or hundreds of options are available and compete on relatively equal footing. The comparison isn’t Captain Crunch versus Corn Flakes, it’s Coca-Cola versus Green Cola. I can find Green Cola in my supermarket… but it sure as hell isn’t the mainstream choice.
That’s different to “being ready for the mainstream”, though. Linux is not mainstream because it has big blockers that prevent it. The lack of readiness is a cause of the lack of mainstream appeal, not the other way around. For the same reason that Green Cola’s stevia-forward absolutely wild aftertaste is a cause of its lack of mainstream appeal.
I do realize not everybody will get this comparison, but if you know you know.
That is not true though. The vast majority of people are people that don’t do much on their systems at all. Maybe look at Facebook or a few sites, write the occasional document or email and maybe play a few simple games. The type of people that have never heard of Linux or even know what an OS is let alone able to switch to another one. Those types of people will be perfectly happy on Linux if it came pre installed.
The people switching ATM and having issues are the highly technical people that have far more complex requirements and for those it does depend on the person and what they need to do.
The low percentage of users is not a sign of of it not being ready, just the sheer marketing and effort Microsoft has put into making windows the default option.
Again, same as the response above: that use case is covered in phones and tablets. Nobody who is just browsing the web is changing their entire OS. Especially if their main device is currently running Android or iPadOS/iOS. I am sure my parents could use Linux the same way they use their current device, but their current device is an Android tablet they know how to use and works just like their phone. I’m not switching them over for nerd bragging rights.
I mean, sure, they mostly would use a Linux device as a ChromeOS device (ChromeOS also at residual usage levels, incidentally), but it’s disingenuous to pretend articles like the one linked here are targeting those users, and it’s definitely not the focus for Linux desktop usage and development, either.
No no but see the narrative is that they are a completely neutral Linux user who just knows the truth that no one besides them would ever like Linux because reasons!
To suggest otherwise is straying from that narrative and that is not allowed. Bad XBeam!!
Man, I would love for desktop Linux to get to the level of Android when it comes to dedicated support. Are you kidding me? Hell, I was telling raging fanboy down there that I actually find desktop Android is a more reliable experience for light usage at this point. At least you have some expectation of universal app support across the ecosystem and the hardware comes pre-configured out of the box.
The problem is that a desktop OS is a much, much harder challenge. You’re not shipping a custom image dedicated to the specific piece of hardware and just ensuring all software runs in it, you have to provide a modular install that will not just adjust to whatever weird combo of hardware the user has at the time, but also support radical changes in that hardware going forward. It’s kinda nuts that computers ended up working that way.
But they do. And Windows handles it by way of being the default use case for all that hardware, so it gets all the third party support. And Apple doesn’t handle it because they ship their OS like phones ship their OSs, so they don’t have to.
But I’m telling you right now, the day the desktop Linux experience matches Android I will default to it, no questions asked, just like I did on my phone and on my tablet.
Well that’s unlikely to happen since Android is locked down spyware.
I’m not really seeing your point. You don’t have to use Linux and you are perfectly free to use whatever you want. The strange part is how you keep insisting that it is somehow behind. Linux for me is the only thing that works for me. Windows simply lacks a lot of the Linux feature set and apps. Plus I can’t stand ads, AI and other user hostile stuff. I straight up could not use Windows as it would slow me down.
There are more people who only browse and use cross platform apps that don’t realise they could switch easily, than there are people for whom a switch would be problematic.
Windows has more supported software, but many people use a small range of common software. Gamers are just one niche. Just like you think Linux users are an echo chamber here, you are not considering the echo chamber of gamers you’re in that dont represent most windows users.
Honestly I’m waiting for a small company to license a Linux desktop to companies with support. It would need to be desktop focused and designed to be indestructible.
My concern isn’t gaming. If you do read what I wrote above, I actually say explicitly that gaming improvement is one of the more solid improvements on Linux recently.
The real problem isn’t PC gamers, who are typically tech savvy (although the issues with anticheat and display hardware compatibility are relevant for a big chunk of many millions of casual gamers). The problem is with people who use their PCs for work using unsupported software in Windows or Mac. Those people have no time for troubleshooting. One key piece of software doesn’t work or isn’t available? That’s a dealbreaker. One area of the setup has a problem that needs tinkering for troubleshooting? That’s a dealbreaker. I am using my computer to make money, I don’t have time for posturing. Either all the stuff I need works or it doesn’t.
Gaming is a problem, but it actually has a lot of people working to support it because at least one major company is betting on that to make money. Software and hardware compatibility doesn’t have the same corporate backing and it makes Linux impractical.
I’ve even known gen z people who would prefer a laptop because they are easier to reliably type on and have bigger screens, yet here you are denying that anyone wouldn’t just settle for the crippled experience of a shitty phone or tablet if they could opt for better. As if there aren’t millions of people who would prefer a desktop OS, because of several reasons, but having grown up with them as just being one of them.
That is barely a sentence, let alone a cogent argument.
We do have data on these things, we know how the market breaks down. For the record, the experience for tablet devices is way less crippled than you may remember if you haven’t used one in a while. The tablet my parents use has a very nice detachable keyboard and a dedicated desktop mode. For web applications there isn’t much difference from using a laptop, and they do appreciate the ability to use it as a screen with no keyboard for media consumption.
I have tried to get Linux running on a few PC hybrids and tablets, but most of them are a bit too quirky, and even the ones with some attempt at dedicated support from the community are a bit of a hassle, unfortunately.
Great, my grammar is somehow imperfect so you win. /s
Popularity is far from an indicator of preference. Tablets and phones are cheap and thus popular. Unfortunately I use both often for testing work stuff. It’s never fun. Typing on a touch screen is trash.
Yes, presumably that’s why they put a physical keyboard on the one I’m describing, along with all those other magnetic detachable keyboards they tend to ship these days.
Look, if you’re going to furiously argue with people on the Internet, it helps to read what they write to at least keep your responses vaguely consistent. It’s not a problem of grammar, this is barely a conversation now.
It is not a problem of whether it works for most people or not. It is a cultural problem. People hate change. That’s largely why people hate windows 11 even.
And it even leads people to spend an hour arguing with strangers about how completely unacceptable Linux is for most people when there’s actually a lot of arguments against that and very few in favor of it.
I switched to full-time Linux this year. One of my programmer friends, whom I never expected to embrace Linux, switched to full-time Linux and is not going back. Our libraries have switched to Linux on all user-facing computers. 2 of my e-friends have approached me about Linux. Another friend is, despite not being a computer nerd, going to switch because Windows is forcing him to- and that’s my point. It’s not that Linux doesn’t have deep flaws inherent to its development model, it’s that those flaws are now less significant than those of Windows. Nobody likes Windows 11 and it’s pushing people off.
Nobody even thinks about Windows 11, they just use it if it comes preinstalled. And from the data we have, the people that don’t like Windows 11 are more likely to be on Windows 10 (or Mac OS).
There is no mass exodus to Linux. No data point we have shows that. The biggest Linux uptick we’ve seen recently is related to Steam Deck, which is as much Linux as Android or ChromeOS are.
Desktop Linux is better than it was, and it will be closer to its competitors if people ever agree that one consolidated system to support features that have been standard for years is the way to go… but it’s not a mainstream option. Yes, even against Windows 11.
I didn’t imply a mass exodus, I’m just telling you that ‘linux has issues’ isn’t a good argument when both W10 and W11 also have issues of the same grade and that it is, in some nerd circles, pushing people into Linux because they’d rather deal with Linux problems than Windows problems.
I want to be on the OS with all the support and the software and the compatibility and the patches and the drivers. I don’t want to be in the nerd corner manually troubleshooting every piece of hardware I want to use. More to the point, I have things to do and can’t afford that anyway.
And I would love if that OS happened to be free, open source and not trying to sell me crap.
Hey, if you’re happy with the nerd corner, then that’s great for you, but man, does it not line up with the headline of “I don’t see a reason to switch to Windows anymore”, which is what we’re discussing here.
I never said there shouldn’t be one, I said there are good reasons for most people to not migrate that need to be resolved before they will be one.
I don’t think it’s annoying to have a million distros that each have their own quirks and problems with my system because I don’t want people to move out of Windows, I think it’s annoying because it IS, and it’s one of several reasons preventing me and many others from moving out of the corporate walled gardens.
You sure fooled me. Your whole attitude in this thread is anger at the simple truth: the vast majority of computing done by end users is done in a web browser, and therefore many people could switch oses and barely notice any negative impact. How much irreplaceable desktop software are you running that shapes this perspective?
I’m a power user by all measures and i still typically have no more than 2-3 apps running outside my browser. And even most of those are cross platform apps. It seems like you’re time traveling from 2005 with this take.
Steam OS is just a Linux desktop with the Steam client in fullscreen. With two clicks you are on an ordinary KDE desktop. It’s not at all like Android or ChromeOS. If it were, Android would be a much bigger market for Steam to want to put their games. Everyone outside the US having their Steam library in their pocket would far outweigh however many thousand Decks they’ve sold.
Your ignorance on this tracks with the less obvious clues that you don’t know what you’re talking about, like your talk of “Linux games on Steam”. Linux games on Steam vs playing Steam games on Linux are two different things.
Thankfully Valve has done a ton of work to minimize that divide, although even the two checkboxes you have to tick on most desktop Linux installs to automatically fire off Windows games under Proton instead to filtering out only native Linux games are completely unnecessary and kind of annoying.
As for SteamOS, people need to get their story straight. Either it’s just Big Picture running by default over Linux, and then it’s just like having Steam Big Picture autolaunch on boot on a Windows handheld, or it’s a fantastic consolized UI that is the killer app that makes the Deck so much better than any other handheld.
Honestly, I lean towards the latter. SteamOS is great, compatibility aside. But if you do want to use it as a full Linux install then you have the same limitations you have on any Windows handheld, which kind of defeats the point.
Again, it’s just a computer. You can open it and replace parts. You can plug in a USB hub and a monitor and do spreadsheets with keyboard and mouse.
My favourite bit of weirdness from it being just a computer is that the screen is actually a vertical screen by default, so when you boot to the desktop, for half a second the cursor is rotated the wrong way.
I literally tagged you a Linux hater months ago because you were raging about Linux. So I don’t believe you’re not a hater.
Also I tried to read what you wrote and the idea that it’s unbiased is laughable to me. Claiming to have a dual boot doesn’t sell me that you’re remotely unbiased.
It’s not a claim, I do have a dual boot set up at the moment. Manjaro (on KDE Plasma using Wayland, hence my whining about HDR setups) and Windows 11. Also a Lenovo Legion Go dualbooting Bazzite and Windows 11 and a Steam Deck. Plus a bunch of Linux handhelds, Raspberry Pis and assorted devices around the house that also count, I suppose.
You can ignore me all you want, it’s your prerogative, but I’m as much a part of the actual userbase as you are.
Okay, look, I don’t want to be a hater, I promise. I have a setup with a Linux dual boot in my computer right now. But man, the crazy echo chamber around this issue is not just delusional, it’s counterproductive. Being in denial about the shortcomings isn’t particularly helpful in expanding reach, if that’s what you all say you want.
So, in the spirit of balance, my mostly unbiased take on the listicle:
1 - Web tools get the job done: This is true when it’s true. I work with Google’s office suite, so yeah, many tools are indistinguishable. But not all tools are web tools. A big fallacy in this article is that just because a subset of items have embraced a solution doesn’t mean that the solution is universal. If you need to work with Adobe software you’re still SOL. MS Office still lacks some features on the web app. Some of the tools I use don’t work, so I do still need to run those in a native Windows app. Since I’m not going to switch OSs every time I need to push a particular button, I’m going to default to Windows for work.
2 - Plenty of distros to suit your preference: This one is an active downside, and it pisses me off when it gets parroted. When I last decided to dual boot Linux I had to try five different distros to find one that sort of did everything I needed at once, which was a massive waste of time. I’m talking multiple days. Yes, there are a ton of distros. I only need to use one, though. But I need that one to work all the time. If one of the distros can get my HDR monitor to work but not my 5.1 audio and another can get my 5.1 audio setup to work, but not my monitors, then both distros are broken and neither is useful to me. This actually happened, incidentally.
3 - Steam has a decent collection of Linux games, plus Steam OS: Yes. Gaming on Linux is possible and works alright, but it’s far from perfect. Features my Nvidia card runs reliably on Windows are hit-and-miss under Linux. Not all games are compatible in the first place, either. And while Heroic does a great job of running my GOG and Epic libraries, which are themselves just as big as my Steam one, it is a much bigger hassle to set up to run under the SteamOS game mode UI. Don’t get me wrong, this has made huge strides but again, I’m not going to change OSs every time I hit a compatibility snag. This is the least fallacious of these points, though.
4 - Proprietary choices on Linux: Yes, there are some. Like the web app thing, the problem isn’t what is there, it’s what’s missing. Also, as a side note, I find it extremely obnoxious when you have to enable these manually as an option in your package manager. As a user I don’t care if a package is open source or not, I just want to install it.
5 - Electron makes app availability easier. Cool. Will take your word for it. Acknowledging the ideological debate behind it goes to the same argument I made in the previous point. And as above, it’s not about what’s there, it’s about what’s missing.
6 - No ads in your OS. I mean… nice? I still get ads for my selected distro on first boot, as well as on web apps and notifications for installed apps. Beyond a few direct links to first party apps in the one page of Win 11’s settings app I don’t find anything in Windows particularly intrusive, either. Which is not to say I don’t dislike some of the overly commercial choices in Windows, they’re just not a dealbreaker… yet.
7 - Docker, Homelab and self-hosting: This is… off topic, honestly. I do self host some things. Even used Docker once or twice… in my NAS, where the self-hosting happens. You don’t need to switch your home desktop to Linux for that, and nobody is questioning that Linux is the OS of choice for a whole host of device ranges, from servers to the Raspberry Pi. Linux is great as a customizable underlying framework to build fast support for a niche device with a range of specific applications. We should be honest about how that breaks down if you try to use it as a widely accessible home computer alternative where the priorities are wide compatibility and ease of use.
Well, that became a huge thing, but… yeah, I guess I was annoyed enough by the delusion to rant. Look, I’d love to step away from Windows, and it’s a thing you can do if you’re tech savvy and willing to pretzel around the limitations in your hardware choices and your willingness to tinker… but it’s not a serious mainstream alternative by a wide margin. I wish it was. Self-congratulatory praise within the tiny bubble of pre-existing fans (and why are there fans of operating systems in the first place?) is not going to help improve or widen its reach.
Well, that’s your opinion. For others it works fine. I’ve been using Linux since 1995 and exclusively for both home and work for well over a decade now. And there are rarely issues these days. Teams is a piece of shit, but my coworkers on Windows agree on that. Apart from that everything works for me.
The only point I can really agree with you on here is Adobe products (and some other niche proprietary stuff like AutoDesk – I don’t consider MS Office an industry standard and if your job does I’m very sorry). And that’s just corporate lock-in, if you’re already paying hundreds of dollars a year to use those programs then yeah you’re gonna stay on the corporate OS.
Other than that, everything you brought up just isn’t quite accurate, or evaporates as you get more comfortable with the Linux ecosystem. The distro point, for example: every distro is just a starting point. Outside of some niche exceptions like Gentoo and NixOS that will radically redefine how you configure the system, any distro can largely be made to work similarly to any other. The major differences are just a) initial package set, b) the package manager, and c) the set of available packages. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to “what software should be on a computer”, which is why there are so many distros and spins out there.
I would say gaming is actually pretty close to perfect, provided you don’t play any of the games that have decided they just will never work on Linux – almost exclusively games that use invasive kernel-level anti-cheat software which I wouldn’t want to install on Windows either. There are a handful like Fortnite and Apex Legends which use EAC, which works great on Linux now, but the devs explicitly decided to disable it. Just like the corporate lock-in point, if you’re committed to those games stay on Windows. Heroic and Lutris take a few more clicks to set up than Steam’s one-click magic, but it’s generally pretty straightforward for any game with any popularity.
The point about ads is where I start to think you’re deliberately being obtuse. You think that, what, a splash screen telling you how to use your computer when you first boot it, and notifications from apps you installed, are advertising? And you find them similarly annoying as the actual sponsored content that shows up in your start menu, on the lock screen, in Edge, when you use Cortana… Not to mention the constant pressure from the OS to use those things? The only way I can interpret this without you just trolling is that you’ve spent too long in the Windows ecosystem and you’ve just adjusted to not notice how often it’s shoving something in your face.
Have used Linux for decades. Switched over full time a few months ago and have generally been happy but all your points are extremely valid.
Plasma will occasionally freeze the taskbar/desktop when it wakes up or I switch back to my desktop from work laptop using a KVM, effectively connecting a monitor.
For me that’s fine, manually open a terminal and kill the process so it’ll restart. For all but a handful of my extended friends and family that means the computer is broken until you log off or restart. It’s not a smooth experience.
Operating systems are huge endeavours of engineering and design by entire teams of people over decades, which are used literally daily. Is that not enough of a reason for people to be fans of them?
Hah. Of the concept of operating systems, maybe. I can see one appreciating technical solutions and UX choices just as a matter of skill and execution. Actively fanboying for them? Getting into playground-style arguments where you root for your favorite? Nah. Seems super immature to me.
There aren’t even that many of the things anymore. It’s not like the old days, where every computer brand had their own. Where are the TOS fanboys these days? All them kids and their obnoxious modern software interfaces. That’s not a OS, it’s just graphics.
That is true for any fandom. Why is being a fan if flavour x software bad but being a fan of flavour x car or flavour x sports team is OK?
You are making a ton of assumptions about my opinions of car brand fans and sports fans that I am not ready to verify, friend.
Perfect description of your angry ranting ITT
Your derisive laughing in response to this valid question validates anyone’s negative opinion of your trolling here
Man, the version of me that lives in your head is amazing. I’m gonna dress up as him next Halloween, twirly mustache and everything.
Regarding Office, fear not! Microsoft is working hard to remove functionality from the Windows and Mac desktop apps, so soon we’ll have feature parity! See: “New Outlook”.
They’ve been pushing this shit for years already, nobody wants it, and they’re forcing it next year despite still not fixing shared calendars (among other things). New Outlook is basically just the web app in a wrapper.
I must be nobody, because I like the new Mac outlook. Granted it’s because I like the option to pin emails in top and I don’t recall any missing feature. Why the hate?
Granted I am used to the web version from the time I used Linux at work. The windows version seemed much worse in comparison
Personally I’m a fairly basic user, so for me it’s “fine”. But I also work in IT so I’m aware of some the problems preventing wide adoption across the org.
Shared calendars and delegation still don’t work correctly. It’s a dealbreaker for a lot of the admin assistants, who are generally the most advanced users.
On the Windows side, PST support is basically gone. Microsoft will claim they support PSTs, but their idea of “support” is to use old Outlook to manually copy your PSTs into server-side folders. That would be bad enough even if it were reliable, and in practice it would take eternity for some users to migrate all their stuff. We have nearly unlimited storage in O365 but it’s still a pain.
The only things I actually like about new Outlook are a couple UX changes that would have easily been applied to old Outlook if MS still gave a shit. Instead, old Outlook has been nearly frozen in time since…2016? Maybe 2019?
I mean, cool. Works for me. As soon as there is feature parity between their web app and their native app I no longer have a problem working with Office out of Windows. Not that I want to use Office in the first place, it’s just not my choice.
But right now I need to push a button that doesn’t exist on Linux, so I have to do it on Windows and that determines what I boot, which is the same situation from anybody who hates Adobe but has to use their software suite as well.
The only reason I have a windows laptop at home is because my employer forces me to. It’s true that Adobe and MS stuff doesn’t run or runs bad, same with some specific live service games. Personally I hate all of those and am more than happy to avoid em like the plague outside of work hours. They’re horrible inadequate tools and horrible predatory games. Everything I actually wanted personally, has so far run just fine for years.
Edit: Remembered one specific thing that does really suck on Linux, and that’s music production. That area is absolutely cluttered with proprietary shit. Even switching between windows and macos is a pain as many of the tools are just not compatible.
It works for me and has done so for almost 10 years.
Sure it won’t work for everyone but to say it isn’t viable isn’t true either. It depends on the person.
It’s not viable for the mainstream. “It depends on the person” suggests it’s luck of the draw, but the Linux desktop penetration is something like 1-4%, at best, and that’s inlcuding SteamOS and PiOS in the mix.
That’s not, “depends on the person”, that’s “doesn’t work for the vast majority of people”. There is a reason for that.
I agree with some of your points but in this one and other comments you are referencing “data” multiple times to provide validity for your opinions, yet you either fail to understand what the data is able to measure or you are using it dishonestly to further your argument.
A usage percentage does not provide reliable data about the usability (“viability for the mainstream”). There are too many factors at play distorting it to make a reliable connection between these two.
The only way in which the percentage would be useful is, if you are implying that the other 96-99% chose to not use linux, because it doesn’t work for them, which is obviously not the case. Otherwise it is completely meaningless, as users were never exposed to linux, thus didn‘t have to make a decision, and thus didn’t deem another operating system superior.
There are a few objections along these lines in this thread, where the implication is that Linux is underused because it lacks awareness. Maybe it’s a generational thing? Linux has been around for a long time now, people are aware of it. There are multiple popular device lines out there that use it, several companies even put some marketing behind it.
I don’t know if you were there when Ubuntu first hit, but it was pretty widely reported. And that was twenty years ago. And of course Valve and Raspberry and Android and ChromeOs all were reported to carry flavours of Linux to the masses.
I mean, I’m sure a bigger, more coordinated marketing campaign would help, but it’s not a secret tucked away on nerdy cycles. I remember being in a college classroom in what? 2006? And when a professor didn’t know what Linux was the entire classroom laughed at them for reacting in disbelief at the notion that Linux was free (“so if something breaks who provides support?” I remember them asking, it was hilarious).
Look, it’s been a long time since you can just pull installation media of Linux from the Internet and just give it a try. Awareness is a factor, but it’s not THE reason Linux isn’t more widespread.
I disagree that the implication is only about lack of awareness. Further my point wasn’t that Linux is underused because of a lack of awareness. My point is that user popularity is not a valid measurement for usability.
Awareness definitely plays a role in user numbers but there are other more important factors. For example awareness of Linux doesn’t beat what comes preinstalled, this is a much bigger factor if we are talking about all desktop users in my opinion. Linux could have the best usability out of all desktop OS, most would still not change preinstalled OS for different reasons e.g. not knowledgeable enough, indifference etc… You might argue that if it was the OS it would come preinstalled, but then you would be ignoring the economic reasons that guide that. I still maintain that popularity of an OS is not a metric that can be used to infer usability. As long as there are different hurdles to getting to the actual using part, actual usability can‘t be determined by popularity.
On a side note about awareness:
It could very well be, or it could potentially be something geographical. Anecdotally in my friends group of university students(20-26year olds) in a non-technical-field, not a single Person (beside me) knew what Linux was, and most had never heard the term before I mentioned it in a conversation. Neither would my parents. So maybe not a generational thing. I think you might be viewing the extent of awareness from the eyes of someone broadly in the tech field?
“it’s not ready for the mainstream because it’s not mainstream” truly fantastic logic
For someone who does a good job of pointing out fallacies in Linux fans’ logic, I find it surprising you’re making the argument that because there isn’t wide adoption yet, it doesn’t work for most people.
That premise only floats if nearly everyone has tried Linux for a while to see if it works for them. Obviously that’s not true.
I disagree with your argument, though. It depends on why people aren’t trying Linux. If they aren’t trying Linux because they don’t know it exists, then yeah, sure.
But it’s been over twenty years. If Linux was convincing people who just stumble upon it reliably it would have done better than going from 2 to 4%. In the time since you’ve been able to install Ubuntu (“it installs just like Windows!”, the PC magazines said at the time) mobile phones were taken over by Symbian, replaced by iOS almost entirely and then iOS lost the lead to Android.
So no, not everybody has tried it, but a whole lot of people have heard of it and avoided it for its (earned) reputation for being finicky, incompatible and hard to set up without tech expertise. If you solve the issues I’m calling out you solve that issue as well.
Yeah I’m not going to lie that’s kind of a weird take.
By that logic captain crunch cereal isn’t ready for mainstream because it doesn’t have enough market share.
We may not be reading the word “mainstream” the same way here, because when you have a small oligopoly with one player at 75%, one at 15% and one at 4%… well, yeah, one of those is mainstream and one of those is not. That’s kind of how being mainstream works. Hell, that’s borderline monopolistic.
That’s not the same as a commodity where dozens or hundreds of options are available and compete on relatively equal footing. The comparison isn’t Captain Crunch versus Corn Flakes, it’s Coca-Cola versus Green Cola. I can find Green Cola in my supermarket… but it sure as hell isn’t the mainstream choice.
That’s different to “being ready for the mainstream”, though. Linux is not mainstream because it has big blockers that prevent it. The lack of readiness is a cause of the lack of mainstream appeal, not the other way around. For the same reason that Green Cola’s stevia-forward absolutely wild aftertaste is a cause of its lack of mainstream appeal.
I do realize not everybody will get this comparison, but if you know you know.
That is not true though. The vast majority of people are people that don’t do much on their systems at all. Maybe look at Facebook or a few sites, write the occasional document or email and maybe play a few simple games. The type of people that have never heard of Linux or even know what an OS is let alone able to switch to another one. Those types of people will be perfectly happy on Linux if it came pre installed.
The people switching ATM and having issues are the highly technical people that have far more complex requirements and for those it does depend on the person and what they need to do.
The low percentage of users is not a sign of of it not being ready, just the sheer marketing and effort Microsoft has put into making windows the default option.
Again, same as the response above: that use case is covered in phones and tablets. Nobody who is just browsing the web is changing their entire OS. Especially if their main device is currently running Android or iPadOS/iOS. I am sure my parents could use Linux the same way they use their current device, but their current device is an Android tablet they know how to use and works just like their phone. I’m not switching them over for nerd bragging rights.
I mean, sure, they mostly would use a Linux device as a ChromeOS device (ChromeOS also at residual usage levels, incidentally), but it’s disingenuous to pretend articles like the one linked here are targeting those users, and it’s definitely not the focus for Linux desktop usage and development, either.
You just proved [email protected] point. Android OS is a Linux kernel variant. Since it comes pre-installed, most users have no issue with it.
No no but see the narrative is that they are a completely neutral Linux user who just knows the truth that no one besides them would ever like Linux because reasons!
To suggest otherwise is straying from that narrative and that is not allowed. Bad XBeam!!
Man, I would love for desktop Linux to get to the level of Android when it comes to dedicated support. Are you kidding me? Hell, I was telling raging fanboy down there that I actually find desktop Android is a more reliable experience for light usage at this point. At least you have some expectation of universal app support across the ecosystem and the hardware comes pre-configured out of the box.
The problem is that a desktop OS is a much, much harder challenge. You’re not shipping a custom image dedicated to the specific piece of hardware and just ensuring all software runs in it, you have to provide a modular install that will not just adjust to whatever weird combo of hardware the user has at the time, but also support radical changes in that hardware going forward. It’s kinda nuts that computers ended up working that way.
But they do. And Windows handles it by way of being the default use case for all that hardware, so it gets all the third party support. And Apple doesn’t handle it because they ship their OS like phones ship their OSs, so they don’t have to.
But I’m telling you right now, the day the desktop Linux experience matches Android I will default to it, no questions asked, just like I did on my phone and on my tablet.
Well that’s unlikely to happen since Android is locked down spyware.
I’m not really seeing your point. You don’t have to use Linux and you are perfectly free to use whatever you want. The strange part is how you keep insisting that it is somehow behind. Linux for me is the only thing that works for me. Windows simply lacks a lot of the Linux feature set and apps. Plus I can’t stand ads, AI and other user hostile stuff. I straight up could not use Windows as it would slow me down.
There are more people who only browse and use cross platform apps that don’t realise they could switch easily, than there are people for whom a switch would be problematic.
Windows has more supported software, but many people use a small range of common software. Gamers are just one niche. Just like you think Linux users are an echo chamber here, you are not considering the echo chamber of gamers you’re in that dont represent most windows users.
Honestly I’m waiting for a small company to license a Linux desktop to companies with support. It would need to be desktop focused and designed to be indestructible.
And those people have phones and iPads.
My concern isn’t gaming. If you do read what I wrote above, I actually say explicitly that gaming improvement is one of the more solid improvements on Linux recently.
The real problem isn’t PC gamers, who are typically tech savvy (although the issues with anticheat and display hardware compatibility are relevant for a big chunk of many millions of casual gamers). The problem is with people who use their PCs for work using unsupported software in Windows or Mac. Those people have no time for troubleshooting. One key piece of software doesn’t work or isn’t available? That’s a dealbreaker. One area of the setup has a problem that needs tinkering for troubleshooting? That’s a dealbreaker. I am using my computer to make money, I don’t have time for posturing. Either all the stuff I need works or it doesn’t.
Gaming is a problem, but it actually has a lot of people working to support it because at least one major company is betting on that to make money. Software and hardware compatibility doesn’t have the same corporate backing and it makes Linux impractical.
I’ve even known gen z people who would prefer a laptop because they are easier to reliably type on and have bigger screens, yet here you are denying that anyone wouldn’t just settle for the crippled experience of a shitty phone or tablet if they could opt for better. As if there aren’t millions of people who would prefer a desktop OS, because of several reasons, but having grown up with them as just being one of them.
You really have a rage boner for Linux.
That is barely a sentence, let alone a cogent argument.
We do have data on these things, we know how the market breaks down. For the record, the experience for tablet devices is way less crippled than you may remember if you haven’t used one in a while. The tablet my parents use has a very nice detachable keyboard and a dedicated desktop mode. For web applications there isn’t much difference from using a laptop, and they do appreciate the ability to use it as a screen with no keyboard for media consumption.
I have tried to get Linux running on a few PC hybrids and tablets, but most of them are a bit too quirky, and even the ones with some attempt at dedicated support from the community are a bit of a hassle, unfortunately.
Great, my grammar is somehow imperfect so you win. /s
Popularity is far from an indicator of preference. Tablets and phones are cheap and thus popular. Unfortunately I use both often for testing work stuff. It’s never fun. Typing on a touch screen is trash.
Yes, presumably that’s why they put a physical keyboard on the one I’m describing, along with all those other magnetic detachable keyboards they tend to ship these days.
Look, if you’re going to furiously argue with people on the Internet, it helps to read what they write to at least keep your responses vaguely consistent. It’s not a problem of grammar, this is barely a conversation now.
It is not a problem of whether it works for most people or not. It is a cultural problem. People hate change. That’s largely why people hate windows 11 even.
And it even leads people to spend an hour arguing with strangers about how completely unacceptable Linux is for most people when there’s actually a lot of arguments against that and very few in favor of it.
Rage on. No one believes you’re unbiased lol
Spot on. And like ants to sugar you have 20 or so ACKTUALLYs responding to you.
I’m not reading all that- anyway
I switched to full-time Linux this year. One of my programmer friends, whom I never expected to embrace Linux, switched to full-time Linux and is not going back. Our libraries have switched to Linux on all user-facing computers. 2 of my e-friends have approached me about Linux. Another friend is, despite not being a computer nerd, going to switch because Windows is forcing him to- and that’s my point. It’s not that Linux doesn’t have deep flaws inherent to its development model, it’s that those flaws are now less significant than those of Windows. Nobody likes Windows 11 and it’s pushing people off.
Nobody even thinks about Windows 11, they just use it if it comes preinstalled. And from the data we have, the people that don’t like Windows 11 are more likely to be on Windows 10 (or Mac OS).
There is no mass exodus to Linux. No data point we have shows that. The biggest Linux uptick we’ve seen recently is related to Steam Deck, which is as much Linux as Android or ChromeOS are.
Desktop Linux is better than it was, and it will be closer to its competitors if people ever agree that one consolidated system to support features that have been standard for years is the way to go… but it’s not a mainstream option. Yes, even against Windows 11.
I didn’t imply a mass exodus, I’m just telling you that ‘linux has issues’ isn’t a good argument when both W10 and W11 also have issues of the same grade and that it is, in some nerd circles, pushing people into Linux because they’d rather deal with Linux problems than Windows problems.
But I want a mass exodus.
I want to be on the OS with all the support and the software and the compatibility and the patches and the drivers. I don’t want to be in the nerd corner manually troubleshooting every piece of hardware I want to use. More to the point, I have things to do and can’t afford that anyway.
And I would love if that OS happened to be free, open source and not trying to sell me crap.
Hey, if you’re happy with the nerd corner, then that’s great for you, but man, does it not line up with the headline of “I don’t see a reason to switch to Windows anymore”, which is what we’re discussing here.
Then why are you investing so much energy telling everyone why there shouldn’t be one?
I never said there shouldn’t be one, I said there are good reasons for most people to not migrate that need to be resolved before they will be one.
I don’t think it’s annoying to have a million distros that each have their own quirks and problems with my system because I don’t want people to move out of Windows, I think it’s annoying because it IS, and it’s one of several reasons preventing me and many others from moving out of the corporate walled gardens.
You sure fooled me. Your whole attitude in this thread is anger at the simple truth: the vast majority of computing done by end users is done in a web browser, and therefore many people could switch oses and barely notice any negative impact. How much irreplaceable desktop software are you running that shapes this perspective?
I’m a power user by all measures and i still typically have no more than 2-3 apps running outside my browser. And even most of those are cross platform apps. It seems like you’re time traveling from 2005 with this take.
Steam OS is just a Linux desktop with the Steam client in fullscreen. With two clicks you are on an ordinary KDE desktop. It’s not at all like Android or ChromeOS. If it were, Android would be a much bigger market for Steam to want to put their games. Everyone outside the US having their Steam library in their pocket would far outweigh however many thousand Decks they’ve sold.
Your ignorance on this tracks with the less obvious clues that you don’t know what you’re talking about, like your talk of “Linux games on Steam”. Linux games on Steam vs playing Steam games on Linux are two different things.
Thankfully Valve has done a ton of work to minimize that divide, although even the two checkboxes you have to tick on most desktop Linux installs to automatically fire off Windows games under Proton instead to filtering out only native Linux games are completely unnecessary and kind of annoying.
As for SteamOS, people need to get their story straight. Either it’s just Big Picture running by default over Linux, and then it’s just like having Steam Big Picture autolaunch on boot on a Windows handheld, or it’s a fantastic consolized UI that is the killer app that makes the Deck so much better than any other handheld.
Honestly, I lean towards the latter. SteamOS is great, compatibility aside. But if you do want to use it as a full Linux install then you have the same limitations you have on any Windows handheld, which kind of defeats the point.
🙄 but my Linux works so well on this embedded device, totally the same thing as a desktop!
Again, it’s just a computer. You can open it and replace parts. You can plug in a USB hub and a monitor and do spreadsheets with keyboard and mouse.
My favourite bit of weirdness from it being just a computer is that the screen is actually a vertical screen by default, so when you boot to the desktop, for half a second the cursor is rotated the wrong way.
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I literally tagged you a Linux hater months ago because you were raging about Linux. So I don’t believe you’re not a hater.
Also I tried to read what you wrote and the idea that it’s unbiased is laughable to me. Claiming to have a dual boot doesn’t sell me that you’re remotely unbiased.
You can tag people on lemmy? Great! I’ll tag you as an asshole. Can you please tag me as a shrimp-dick bitch? Thank you.
Cry harder
No u 🥲
It’s not a claim, I do have a dual boot set up at the moment. Manjaro (on KDE Plasma using Wayland, hence my whining about HDR setups) and Windows 11. Also a Lenovo Legion Go dualbooting Bazzite and Windows 11 and a Steam Deck. Plus a bunch of Linux handhelds, Raspberry Pis and assorted devices around the house that also count, I suppose.
You can ignore me all you want, it’s your prerogative, but I’m as much a part of the actual userbase as you are.