My experience with the linux boot has never been flicker-free. It’s bugged me for years, but I don’t have the technical knowledge to fix it. There’s a black screen between BIOS and plymouth, then a black screen between plymouth and the login screen, then another black screen between the login screen and the splash screen, and finally a black screen between the splash screen and when the desktop shows up.
Mac and windows do a much better job at having a seamless experience from boot to desktop.
In the end, I don’t think it matters. People care about accessing what’s used most and if they have to watch ads to do so, they will. If “no ads” starts to have a competitive advantage because people are sick and tired of them, then maybe ads will start to die. We’re a long way from that though.
The linux kernel doesn’t have enough contributors because it’s really difficult + the entire organisational side of it works on antique tech (IRC and mailinglists). The majority of the project itself is also in C which has a horrible developer experience: linting, documentation, debugging, code completion, and the lack of a proper IDE. The entire development cycle is convoluted. How do you seriously want to attract people to the project if everything looks like it’s still in a development cycle of the 90s?
If I were to discover a one-line bug in the kernel by reading it, actually testing the one-line fix would take me, as a newbie probably a solid week. Getting it into the kernel itself would probably take even longer.
The kernel is also known for Linus’ outbursts and being filled with neckbeard elitists. The project in my eyes has an image problem.
As for rust, if that’s what you meant, I’d be interested in knowing the source for not having enough contributors.
Being polite doesn’t mean being passive-aggressive. I can tell you that I completely disagree with your opinion without calling you “a brainless ape that should’ve fucking stayed in school because your dumb ass cannot comprehend the simplest matters”.
NixOS’s documentation is dog. It’s not absolute dog, but it’s dog. The learning curve is brutal.
But… the (mostly) declarative management is its strongest feature. It’s very solid and you can easily unfuck you system if you haven’t done stuff like mess with partitions or delete files manually.
If NixOS had better documentation and GUI to manage the system, it would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately, it is about 5-10 years away from that. The community is very top heavy, but it’s easy to just do your own stuff.