Causally recommending linux and shutting down inane tech support questions aren’t the same thing. If I get asked: “X feature stopped working in the newest macOS. What do I do?” I tell them the truth: “I switched to linux to get the feature back.”
IMO the biggest problem is simply that not enough devices are sold with it.
The amount of people who want to/can be arsed to/even know they can install an OS on their PC is pretty small. And even then, most that can will just stick to what they know (this is obviously part of the mindset issue that you speak of).
If mainstream devices were sold with Linux on them, it would get over that hurdle, and also get over the daunting hurdle of “ok I want to switch to Linux, what’s a good distro?” hurdle, to which people online will say everything from Debian to fucking Arch Linux.
Chromebooks (bastardised though they may be) and the Steam Deck prove that Linux isn’t unviable. People just won’t install it of their own volition.
And even then, most that can will just stick to what they know (this is obviously part of the mindset issue that you speak of).
It’s the change. People hate change, in general, not just in IT.
IT workers are used to frequent changes and they usually adapt quickly, so it’s not such a huge problem for them. But, most people aren’t used to change, they like things pretty much static.
If mainstream devices were sold with Linux on them, it would get over that hurdle, and also get over the daunting hurdle of “ok I want to switch to Linux, what’s a good distro?” hurdle, to which people online will say everything from Debian to fucking Arch Linux.
I’ve seen people recommend Arch for a beginner, that’s a terrible choice… it will drive potential users away. I usually recommend Mint for beginners, LMDE mostly nowadays, ince Ubuntu isn’t what it used to be and that will most probably leave a skewed picture to the user of what Linux is. Yes, there are tools that make things easier, but under the hood there is no UI, it’s all commands. You wanna jump in, go right ahed. You don’t feel OK with that, that’s fine as well, use whatever GUI tools you like, LMDE has plenty of them.
Chromebooks and the Steam Deck prove that Linux isn’t unviable. People just won’t install it of their own volition.
Yep, pretty much the truth. This basically means that if, oh let’s say, Debian cut a deal with some laptop/PC manufacturers, Linux could actually be used by many users.
And even then, most that can will just stick to what they know (this is obviously part of the mindset issue that you speak of).
It’s the change. People hate change, in general, not just in IT.
IT workers are used to frequent changes and they usually adapt quickly, so it’s not such a huge problem for them. But, most people aren’t used to change, they like things pretty much static.
If mainstream devices were sold with Linux on them, it would get over that hurdle, and also get over the daunting hurdle of “ok I want to switch to Linux, what’s a good distro?” hurdle, to which people online will say everything from Debian to fucking Arch Linux.
I’ve seen people recommend Arch for a beginner, that’s a terrible choice… it will drive potential users away. I usually recommend Mint for beginners, LMDE mostly nowadays, since Ubuntu isn’t what it used to be and that will most probably leave a skewed picture to the user of what Linux is. Yes, there are tools that make things easier, but under the hood there is no UI, it’s all commands. You wanna jump in, go right ahed. You don’t feel OK with that, that’s fine as well, use whatever GUI tools you like, LMDE has plenty of them.
Chromebooks and the Steam Deck prove that Linux isn’t unviable. People just won’t install it of their own volition.
Yep, pretty much the truth. This basically means that if, oh let’s say, Debian cut a deal with some laptop/PC manufacturers, Linux could actually be used by many users.
From personal experience working in a Microsoft ecosystem, it’s mostly a matter of being able to hire the right people.
There is a near-infinite source of IT workers that have some expertise with Microsoft software and services. And those kinds of numbers simply don’t exist for the Linux world, especially with all the different configurations out there.
Medium-sized organizations have to employ a strategy of throwing enough idiots at a problem in order to keep things running. This also creates some of the issues they need the idiots for because no one has detailed knowledge of how things work.
My attempts at proposing a linux-based application server have been met with all sorts of “but our domain policy”, “we can’t guarantee continuity”, “none of my people know how to admin this stuff” type responses.
It definitely is a matter of mindset, but there is also a big commitment to make if switching systems to Linux. And that is a choice managers will only make if the benefits are clearly illustrated in a businesscase.
Medium-sized organizations have to employ a strategy of throwing enough idiots at a problem in order to keep things running.
Lol 🤣, that’s one way to say it 😂.
And I meant more as in computers for personal use. I completely get why most things are MS centered in the workplace, and that’s fine. If the workflow requires it, there is nothing wrong with that.
It’s pretty easy for me to use Linux at work thanks to VMs. But if you want to also avoid using windows or all the other Microsoft 365 stuff, that’s more difficult.
do you have anything to back this up other than a fuzzy claim of authority? so far when I see people say things like this they’re always talking about a handful of since fixed vulnerabilities early on in the project
Every time I update my flatpak apps I get a warning about deprecated libraries. I don’t think flatpak is the issue but rather apps being able to not update really old libraries that could have security patches available. Does anyone know of a way to force these old libraries to update?
On Flatpak? Probably not. You update those libraries, even manually, and things will most probably break.
One of the many reasons I don’t like Flatpak. You really don’t have any control over how these packages are delivered. What the package maintainer did, that is it. But there’s a new version. Nope, not if the package maintainer doesn’t update.
People complaining about something opensource not doing what they want it to do: dudes/dudettes, if you want to maintain X11, go right ahead. Or if you want it maintained, pay somebody to do it. But stop this incessant whining about opensource devs choosing a direction you don’t like and pretending it’s the end of the world. This isn’t some faceless, megacorp with closed-source shit you have no control over.
If all the people complaining about wayland either put their energy to positive stuff like making wayland better or making X11 better, this wouldn’t be a problem.
My pet peeve is when people complain someone else’s free labor isn’t being done in the way they’d prefer. First of all, it’s entitled. Secondly, complaining on social media rarely if ever accomplishes anything in FOSS land.
Counterpoint, if all of the people advocating for wayland actually worked on improving wayland to a usable state instead maybe people would actually want to use it.
No one’s forcing you to use it. If you don’t want to, stick to X11. I’ve been testing wayland for a few months now and it’s fine. It does most of I want it to. I don’t need fancy fractional scaling, adaptive refresh rates, or whatever other fancy stuff people complain about that isn’t there. It shows my windows, allows screen-share, and… that’s it. Only thing missing for me is scriptability.
I’m not advocating for Wayland nor X11, just saying to stop shitting on devs who give a lot of free time to write opensource code that none of us have to pay for. All we have to do is be nice - maybe report bugs, maybe maybe donate if we have the means.
Good thing the world is that simple, you’re completely correct. Nobody who could theoretically prevent something they don’t like is not entitled to their dislike, duh!
I let a friend try out Linux after I’ve been using it for years and they were shocked how much easier some things are. I think the idea of throwing them into a like Windows distro is the wrong direction. I’m ready POP OS’s new desktop whenever it comes out.
“Move fast and break things” may be fine for software gurus who love to experiment and have no problem hitting their head against the wall every few days while believing in the promise of a free-to-fix future, but this isn’t true for poor or busy people who are NOT middle class folks living in their own house in a suburb with a garage full of computer parts. There are single parents, caregivers with disabled and/or elderly, folks who need a reliable computer for their studies, and in general people who simply need something that JUST WORKS.
I’m a caregiver, and unfortunate I’m poor enough that I don’t have money to buy a commercial OS. Heck, I wish Windows just worked instead of making old versions obsolete. I was perfectly fine with Windows 7 ten years ago until Microsoft started doing planned obsolescence bullshit with their forced updates. I had to switch to Linux because Windows became very unreliable and I needed a stable platform that wouldn’t ruin my work.
(So if you’re one of the persons who reply to “Help my Linux is having problems” with “well you should know Linux is like that, you should have thought it twice before switching”, then you’re part of the problem because that’s a very, very shitty answer to give to a non technical end user with limited time and resources)
The year of the Linux desktop will never arrive if developers keep pushing incomplete and buggy software to the end users instead of actually fixing bugs and delivering their stuff ONLY when they’re ready.
You’re not wrong but also misinterpreting this. Yes, it’s bad to push incomplete software on end users, and it’s even apart of the entire development ideals of Linux: never break userspace. There’s even small bits of code (see: egrep and fgrep) in the core commands that has been on the chopping block for removal for 2 decades but hasn’t because removing them would break apps.
The choice of PUSHING Wayland on end users is not up to the developers making wayland, it’s up to the distro maintainers, and this image honestly doesn’t even make sense. Most distros right now are either so nothing, and the ones that do are disabling Wayland until it’s more feature complete. The only big distro I remember that’s specifically is pushing for it is Fedora, and Fedora is specifically known for pushing for new initiatives.
X11 works just fine, and will work just fine for a long time, and if there’s ever a point where a majority of apps start dropping X11 support for Wayland, it’s going to be because Wayland just works by that point and has for long enough for devs to care.
That article itself against has been a pain point for years because it over-dramaticises a lot of the pain points about Wayland and a lot of the issues it touts don’t… exist anymore. I’ve used lots of software like OBS on Wayland just fine a long time ago even though the article says it’s been broken for years. Nvidia on Wayland has also just gotten to a good state on proprietary drivers while the article implies you need the crappy open source drivers to use Wayland at all, which hasn’t been true for a very long time. I could go on about this article, but Brodie Robertson has already talked it to death on YouTube.
Wayland does “just work” (no bugs, no configuration, just switch to it and nothing breaks) for a lot of users at this point, and I’m tired of this article ignoring that and trying to make it seem like Wayland is this buggy slop everyone’s being forcefed when it’s not.
if developers keep pushing incomplete and buggy software to the end users instead of actually fixing bugs
My understanding is, the issue is that fixing bugs in X has become too much of an issue due to bloat and bad historical architecture, so the developers working on it - and providing the software for free, if not working for free - instead worked together to develop a new standard aiming to fix the issues inherent to X’s code and design.
The “list of problems” is absolute bullshit right from the start. The first two sections are “It didn’t used to work like this in X, Wayland is trash!” and “I had some screen recording software using X APIs and they don’t work when not running in X!”. In fact, a lot of them follow this pattern, blaming Wayland because it doesn’t have 100% backwards compatibility. It’s not an X rewrite, it’s meant to be a new, better piece of software.
I will not deny that Wayland has problems, of course - but those mostly come down to NVidia refusing to support open protocols, missing features that are yet to be implemented, and missing software support for Wayland.
I will also say that on Arch, which doesn’t assume I’m using X, Wayland does work completely fine for me when following instructions. It might be an issue with the distro you’re using not having good support, or one of those edge cases like problematic hardware. I definitely agree that you should stick with X for now if you have problems, but I’ll also say that you’re getting it for free, and if you don’t report problems, they might also not know about them, for example because it only occurs on specific hardware.
Pointing out flaws is fine. Shitting on devs, is not, just like devs shitting on users isn’t.
Don’t be surprised if you attack somebody and they defend themselves.
Saying “X doesn’t work” is completely fine. Writing a rant about how opensource devs don’t think about people, yadayada. Buddy, these are people giving up their free time to write stuff. Nobody’s forcing you to use it. There are no guarantees provided, no warranties either. It’s provided as is.
The way you are is as if someone built a free house in the woods, you showed up and complained about how the door is creaky, the toilet leaky, a draft coming through the windows, and you wrote a review online disparaging the free work. Does that sound like good behavior to you?
Users can’t even add a feature request because they’re met with a storm of insults and snobbery.
How did you write the feature request? “I demand this be implemented because you’re providing a product and I’m a customer” or “It would be great if X were added for reason Y”? If it’s the latter and you were met with unkindness, of course that’s shit, no doubt.
I understand devs being busy. What I can’t stand is their fan club who keep shitting on every user asking questions or not having the time to do a deep search on every single solution and the problems that come with it.
Maybe this is news for you, but FOSS communities are incredibly toxic. Every single suggestion or legitimate complaint is taken as a personal attack.
Then they wonder why people don’t pay enough attention to Linux and Open Source Software in general.
Perhaps they should realize there’s too many assholes in the community who keep driving people away. Normal folks have a limit. They just leave and hope their Windows doesn’t crash away, which is less frustrating than having to personally deal not only with tech issues but the shitty attitude of peple who are knowledgeable enough.
Worse, when you want to point out a flaw, you need to build an exhaustive list of reddit posts, archive org pages and so on and face trial because unless you give every single piece of evidence then your complaint is invalid. And I’m sorry but normal people just don’t have time for this shit.
Remember that joke? Ask for help and you get no response; Say linux sucks because you can’t do X and you get dozens of apologetic posts explaining step by step how to do stuff.
don’t shit on people who donate their free time to make a product you can use for free with no warranty whatsoever, unless they treat you like shit
many FOSS communities are toxic: I wholeheartedly agree. Fuck those that are. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Still point 2 does not invalidate point 1.
I’ve had to deal with toxic ubuntu, debian, arch, nixos, rust, java, python, … communities. The ones that piss me off the most are linux communities that treat newcomers like gutter-filth, refuse to endorse GUIs, good documentation, and just a generally better newcomer experience, then wonder why there’s no “year of the linux desktop”. I hate those gatekeepers with a passion. “If you use Linux, you must learn to use the command line”, no how about you fuck off to whatever CLI cave you came from and learn to be a productive member of the community?
As I said, I get it. But again, writing an angry bug report, demanding a new feature be implemented, writing a tirade about “how bad opensource software is” or whatever? Nah. Not OK
Remember that joke? Ask for help and you get no response; Say linux sucks because you can’t do X and you get dozens of apologetic posts explaining step by step how to do stuff.
There are single parents, caregivers with disabled and/or elderly, folks who need a reliable computer for their studies, and in general people who simply need something that JUST WORKS.
This is also one of the many reasons why Linux as an OS fails to establish a bigger user base. Of course, this is one of the smallest problems, but it still is.
Like Linus said, every tool every dev made was usually because they wanted to fix problems in their workflow, not because users needed something that they can provide. Sure, I’d also look at things from this perspective. After all, god made his beard first, not everyone else’s, but the trouble is, things don’t really move fast enough in that direction. Don’t get me wrong, there has been progress in GUI tools, but not enough IMO. Most tools are terminal based, and while that is not a problem for most UNIX type OS enjoyers, that is a problem for your averige Joe. That might not be the crowd we’re trying to get off of MS and Apple products, but they still play an important role IMO, more of a guide as how a UI should look and feel to the average user. Linux and other UNIX based OSes kinda messed up with this one. Things are getting better though, have to say. I don’t use some of the UIs for stuff people usually do, but I have tried a few and I have to say that things are moving in the right direction the past few years. Just not fast enough…
after a brief glance it looks like it, but that’s the same case as x over ssh. otherwise there’s things like vnc that wouldn’t care what each side is running
It’s such a niche feature that I bet most people under 30yrs never heard or used that it’s become too cringey that everyone keeps mentioning it.
But there’s the solution already mentioned.
I’d just like that some people would look a bit at themselves and realize that almost nobody wants or cares about that single weird feature. There are many remote desktop solutions more known to end users that need that kind of interaction.
Actual Unix users care. Maybe people that just jumped ship from Microsoft don’t, but I think that’s just because they don’t know what’s possible and how convenient it is.
I gotta be honest, Microsoft did a great job with the UX of their 365 ecosystem. It’s great as a user, but as an administrator or small business it is a nightmare.
But in a large corpo setting, it works really well.
The wider Linux community could learn a lot from it.
I don’t know, I think UX has vastly improved since I started using it in 2008 and is still improving every year. It’s just all these cloud and communication features we’re behind on.
It would be cool to have something P2P, like Syncthing and Tox, integrated into all mainstream distros for sync and communacation Then you have some sort of a single sign-on that connects you to all your devices and people you want to communicate with. Instead of Microsoft login you have a built in pw manager that automatically creates and stores (and syncs) accounts for you and so on.
Back in the day, Ubuntu made huge strides in UX and usability, and they’re still riding the coattails of that success even now that they’ve shifted to the corporate sector.
ElementaryOS came out and was super polished, simple, and beautiful. That’s still kinda true, but their small team has meant that they’re now falling behind the likes of Gnome, who’ve set out to do a similar thing.
The Cinnamon desktop is ugly out of the box, but other aspects of UX have been pretty great - everything is simple, they were pioneers in making everything a GUI option, rather than the last 5% of things having to be done in a config file or via terminal.
And finally, Gnome. Extremely polished, consistent, beautiful, and heavily UX-focused. That applies not only to their own system, but also to their third party app ecosystem. Just look at the apps on Gnome Circle - a Gnome project for showcasing apps that nail the Gnome design guidelines. Tell me they don’t look like they have a focus on UX.
Honestly, even MacOS struggles to feel as UX-focused as Gnome, and that’s saying something. UX is like, Apple’s entire schtick. Everything from trackpad gestures to UI elements, subtle animations, etc in Gnome is about UX.
Even KDE Plasma, which is often mocked for being hilariously inconsistent and filled with bizarre clunky UX, has made major strides in the past couple of years, and Plasma 6, releasing very soon, will fix a bunch of fundamental things that currently hold Plasma back from being consistent, and a significant portion of bugs have been fixed - it looks like it won’t be the buggy mess that Plasma 4 and early Plasma 5 was. We’re about to see a major improvement.
What are you talking about? It’s horrible from a users perspective. I never know where I am saving anything
I only use Windows at work (because I have to). The thing that drives me fucking nuts, as an advanced computer user in general, is how God damned unintuitive the 365 Office,OneDrive, and File explorer integration is.
I have no idea where I am saving stuff half the time(or more accurately have to change it each time because the defaults are dumb). I don’t want it in my OneDrive downloads folder or OneDrive documents folder. I want it in my fucking laptop download folder or local documents folder.
Then Teams is saving stuff in SharePoint in the background, permissions are annoying AF. At least they’ll flag that a recipient of an email attachment or imbedded url doesn’t have access. So that’s nice I guess.
Oh, then sometimes I’m prompted to save a copy of a shared document, but that’s different from “download a copy”. If you save a copy it just makes a new shared copy for everyone in the SharePoint site.
I feel like a boomer when I work with MS now. Maybe it’s all enterprise settings for where I work and maybe it’s not MS’s fault but hot damn I am so much less productive than if I just used Gsuite, only office, on Mac or .
Maybe I just need to spend a week taking training classes on these products. But who tf has time for that when you have your actual job to do. So I guess that really sums up Microsoft for me: it’s in the way and slowing me down.
X11 is already dead, and it will not become more or less usable it will always stay the way it’s and wayland will gwt better. that’s the difference and flatpak is just an option it doesn’t try to replace what’s already availible. spreading distrust and miainformation about these softwares doesn’t help
How do you mean that? I’ve been using X11 for like 17 years. i3 uses X11, and I will most likely not use another WM if I can help it. It’s perfect for me. X11 is available in the core repositories of all the big distros.
Just because they don’t do full releases doesn’t mean it isn’t developed anymore. They switched to updating modules individually, with three updates made this month. Doesn’t sound very abandoned to me.
I actually used Sway for a while. Can’t remember why I switched back though. What would X11 “going end-of-life” entail? Not being distributed/packaged anymore? Is there an official timeline for that or something?
Essentially they’re not doing feature work on the core codebase. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but the packaging of it wouldn’t be up to the developers but the distro maintainers.
I’ll say that while it still has features that Wayland doesn’t it’s not dead, it doesn’t get updates yes but it still used by a lot of people for the fact that Wayland just doesn’t support some stuff that x11 does. Great example I have is TeamViewer and Nvidia+KDE
While TeamViewer is definitely neglected I use it often on Wayland and it works well actually!
In the past year or so it doesn’t shut down correctly. But the core functionality works well.
I’ve been experimenting with Rustdesk as an alternative because I doubt they’ll update the Linux client anytime soon. The Windows version looks like an entirely different application at this point
In terms of feature parity. I believe the only thing left is global hotkeys, which hyprland proved it can be done.
I think it is unusual. As a software engineer who has a large circle of friends, loads of them know I use Linux, but literally no one cares or is curious about knowing more. And honestly I’m not interested in explaining. We talk about and do other things lol. I sometimes talk about differences and news about both with those who have jobs or interests closer to the IT business, and we have a short conversation about those news, but nobody asks me about Linux, and especially not Windows. It’s not interesting.
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