Slashdot Mirror
Why Aren't People Abandoning Windows For Linux? (slashgear.com)
- Updates on Linux are fast and "rarely call for a restart" -- and are also more complete. "Updates are typically downloaded through a 'Software Updater' application that not only checks for operating system patches, but also includes updates for the programs that you've installed from the repository."
- Windows "tries to serve a variety of markets...cramming in a scattered array of features" -- and along those lines, that Microsoft "has gradually implemented monetization schemes and methods for extracting user data." And yet you're still paying for that operating system, while Linux is less bloated and "free forever."
- "Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
The article also touches on a few other points (including battery life), and predicts that problems with Windows are "bound to get worse over time and will only present more of a case for making the switch to Linux."
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen shared the article, along with some new thoughts on why people really stay with Windows:
I think the main "excuse" is the perception of reliability, which is really laughable if you've actually read the EULA. Microsoft certainly doesn't have to help anyone at all. I would argue that Windows support is neither a bug nor a feature, but just a marketing ploy.
Their original submission suggests that maybe Linux needs to buttress the perception of its reliability with a better financial model -- possibly through a new kind of crowd funding which could also be extended to all open source software, or even to journalism).
It does not come 'free' with the PC/Laptop. Even though they will need to pay eventually (upgrades/subscriptions) people still see it as free.
When you buy a Microsoft computer, you agree to use only Microsoft products, including the Windows App Store. Installing Linux is illegal tinkering, and if we catch you doing it, we will delete your data.
- James Kelly, Senior Microsoft PR Executive
The last time I read a "why don't people switch to Linux" piece I had good Slashdot karma.
You STILL have no software and it's the 21st century already. Average people are not running emulators to get their everyday programs to work. Nobody is going to make software unless there's a big enough user base. You can't get that user base because you can't convince anybody to pre-load Linux on their machines. Low-cost netbooks went with Chrome instead, and tablets have Android. You're not going to out-market Google to take either one over.
...will be year of the Linux desktop. Just a few months to go but it might get there.
systemd. HTH! HAND!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The OS doesn't really mean anything at all. The OS only exists to run software which solves specific problems to get jobs done. On paper Linux looks like, but in the real world, it just consistently falls short for desktop usage. It does GREAT in the server world, due to the reliability and performance, but these are less of a concern on the desktop.
On the desktop, we need the ability to accomplish tasks by individuals that are not computer experts and dont have experts sitting around them constantly to ask questions to. Having done tech support in a small business of people who are not tech savvy, routinely being asked how to dial an international phone number, or reply to an email, or send a FAX, these are not tasks that the Linux ecosystem are suited for.
Linux is built for tech savvy people by tech savvy people. Linux is chock full of software engineers, but lacks UX engineers in all aspects of the ecosystem.
That's it, really. I need to be able to run AutoDesk AutoCADD, Inventor, and Revit. If someone can demonstrate those (with all their built-in components, rendering, and plug-ins) running nicely with full capabilities on any type of Linux, I will happily make the switch.
And no, FreeCADD and Blender are not valid substitutes. Sorry.
Z
http://itvision.altervista.org...
Lots of distributions. Lots of ways of doing things. Systemd or not. rpm or dpkg or portage or one of the other dozen or so package managers. Lots of old documentation hanging around telling you to do things that don't work any more. Binary drivers or not. X11 or Wayland. GNOME or KDE or neither.
Putting aside the argument of wasted effort, it's just confusing for the average user. Even those of us who are capable of navigating these waters may easily grow tired of the hassle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You must be fun at parties
Literally no other reason than DRIVERS. Linux still has TERRIBLE wireless driver support. Good luck achieving good wireless AC performance on any laptop. Good luck with the trackpad not being 95% behind on features such as gestures. Linux has shit drivers for things I care about, and my opinion is reflected in adoption statistics.
For the vast majority of users windows works well enough. And their PC / Laptop came with windows.
So there is no incentive to change.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years on everything that I touch and I haven't used Windows since Windows 98 (which I didn't like at all).
I wish I could buy a new laptop or desktop computer off the shelf at Staples or Costco and bring it home and have it boot up into some version of Linux instead of MS Windows.
But I can't, and I have to go through a lot of hoops and now ever play a game of try-to-find-the-bios-settings on any new computer that isn't a custom build.
And most people simply won't do that. I hate doing that and I know how. Most people don't know how do to that so they're even further behind.
Linux on the desktop won't happen until the day that I can buy one at the store and bring it home and start using it immediately.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
... to what happened to gaming on PC and mobile? MMO's, drm and steam proved the public is just downright cretins when it comes to technology. The people who care about personal computing are a minority. The rise of steam, mmo's, always online drm and f2p games means the average pc and software consumer is a fucking moron.
They simply don't care and/or are too irrational. Think about what we used to get with PC games in the 90's -- total ownership, dedicated servers, level editors, free maps, mods and skins. The last 20 years with the rise of the masses that has all been almost wiped out because the internet allowed game companies like valve to steal games in comfort and safety from the middle of the continent while their customers were 100 miles away. Everyone with a brain remembers the great betrayal of valve with half-life 2 and cs in 2004 when he launched steam to steal the fucking software and undermine game ownership. The man pioneered walled gardens, then he gets anxious when MS finally gets a clue and makes windows platform and windows store and suddenly he's interested in proton and linux.
The average person on our planet is a god damn uncaring moron when it comes to these issues. Just look at fortnite with kids paying for skids in a game they don't own. Once that happened software companies have zero incentive to ever give software ownership back to users because there's too many stupid people who feed them money.
Just look at the money game companies are making from mobile gaming, they make more money then almost both the PC and console market combined, just off 3% of the people who spend money on gambling for skins/characters like it's going out of style. These people with evolutionary flaws and gambling type minds have allowed game companies to survive indefinitely and totally undermine software ownership.
This is why corporations want to finally finish off general computing on the PC and other hardware:
https://newzoo.com/wp-content/...
It's all about profits.
It's doubtful many users of Windows use it as an "operating system'". They launch "apps" and use the web browser and that's about it. Probably half the users of Windows are good candidates for a Chromebook.
Windows ME, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 10... all of these abominations of operating systems have had much much more marketshare on the desktop than all of the hundreds of Linux distributions combined . Part of it is application and hardware compatibility but also the experience for Linux on the desktop is even more inconsistent than Android is on mobile, hundreds of different distributions all with their own subtle ways of doing things. How many different shells, command interpreters, file explorers, etc are there for Linux? Almost innumerable and the fact is that yes they do serve a niche but that is why Linux on the desktop has always been a niche. The things that create that inconsistent experience provide minimal advantage but it's a huge disadvantage to the adoption of Linux on the desktop as a whole.
The other side of it is the lack of innovation, the iPhone disrupted the incumbents of the smartphone market because it provided compelling innovation, something that drew in users because it was fundamentally better than the competition. Already I can see in the comments that the "compelling innovation" of Linux appears to be just slagging off Windows, but unless you're damaged beyond the ability to learn from the past you will notice that even the worst Windows operating systems have been far more successful than desktop Linux ever has been. Where is the innovation? Where is the compelling features for users? Nowhere to be found!
Desktop Linux could certainly eclipse Windows but it needs some visionary to bring innovation and disruption to the market, not just this swarm of "me-too" distributions that are just trying to be as Windows-like as possible.
The public just buys what the major tech marketing machines are selling. Very few even know there is an option and why it matters.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Exactly. It's an OS made for programmers, and it sucks for everyone else. That's all fine and good, and it's great that Linux exists to serve that need, but that's never going to fly with general users, or even power users. It's just too damn difficult to get anything done. Until you can simply download and install (as opposed to: download, compile, build, tweak, fail, try again, find the correct version, try again again, still likely fail, eventually give up) a reasonably wide set of applications it simply can't catch on. It's like someone was still building a car that needed the valves manually adjusted every 2000 miles, and required knowledge of carburetor jetting for varying altitudes, etc., and then asking "Why aren't people abandoning their boring-as-shit Hondas for this amazing Linmotorcar?" Well, because IT SUCKS! Nobody outside a dedicated few wants that kind of hassle, and Linux is a massive, nasty hassle that far too frequently can't do what you want anyway (unless you are a programmer).
People don't use Linux on the desktop because people don't want to get involved in all the Linux developer b*tch fights. They don't want to use a program that has no manuals, you have to spend a week on Google reading blogs that may or may not be current to the version you have and when you start to feel you're really getting the hang of it some charismatic brogrammer bleeds off all the supporting devs into a fork that addresses the one aspect of the program HE felt was lacking.
They don't want to have to add repositories and hope they can trust some github build just to install an app.
They just want to turn it on, have it work and get things done. Which is what Windows does in most cases. For the few that can't stand Windows, they can already choose Apple.
Every reason a normal person should use Linux is more a reason that they should use a tablet. If you need a light web browsing machine, light office use, email, etc, then you should be using a tablet. If you need anything more than that, Linux can be a complete pain for a non technical person. Reboots for updates are not as frequent as Windows, but definitely still a thing as there is no way a non-technical user is going to upgrade their kernel in place without rebooting.
I love Linux, I use it every day at work, but there is no way I could ever recommend it to someone to use as a daily operating system unless they were already the type of person that's likely using Linux in the first place.
If you really want every day people to change to Linux, then you need to hope that WINE gets to the point that you can install the latest Windows applications without any additional steps and that they run completely flawlessly. We don't need good enough Windows replacements for popular Windows programs, we need actual popular Windows programs running on Linux.
I am in the process of trying to switch to Linux. Shit's hilariously unfinished. Getting graphics to work with full hardware acceleration and without occasional crashing is a challenge that takes days. I still don't have everything working. That's on a Ryzen 5 2400G, which is not exactly a brand new platform. It has been on the market for more than a year. It does not work reliably with Linux. I'm probably going to end up switching to Windows 10, which I hate. But it works.
You switched from real Unix to a wannabe Unix?
Fool.
I manage a small network for my parents. My dad is a lung doctor, and my mom is a nurse. I cannot get their current EHR system to run under Linux (WINE) and wasn't able to get their previous EHR to run under Linux either. So, for them, I do not save the thousands of dollars that were required to be spent when Windows XP was deprecated, and thousands of dollars again now that Windows 7 is approaching it's end-of-life because I cannot run one critical desktop application under Linux.
We evaluated OpenEHR. It would have required substantial modification to be able to collect, and present, patient data in the manner that would have been useful to their medical office. My software development company could have provided these modifications. As could another, more experienced, software development company that supports OpenEHR. We came to the conclusion that those modifications would be more expensive, and risky, than the commercial licensing, and constant Windows replacement costs. The commercial solution was ready, out of the box, and (not very well, but still) supported.
Until Linux offers better desktop application replacement support, there will be many corporate environments that depend on Windows application which cannot be migrated. WINE is not easy to get everything running under.
The software development company I use relied exclusively on Linux, and open-source software for our developments. However, that does not mean it is a good solution for everyone. Saying "everyone should use Linux" is just as wrong as saying "everyone should use Windows." There are different use cases for different technologies, and attempting to shoehorn everyone into a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't (in my experience) lead to a good outcome.
I can't adequately use the programs I need like Visual Studio for coding, with all the bells and whistles I'm used to from it, from a Virtual Machine - because it performs like a pig (and VS Code doesn't have the bells and whistles I need).
Give me better performing VM's, so I can run all of the Windows software I need from Linux, and I'll ditch it.
Just done with a very painful attempt at making Linux my primary OS - and that attempt failed. Gave it a good few weeks.
Unreliable thereforeskin. People are NOT gonna download some massive package and install this on their perfectly fine laptop. Just ain't godda happen. Read my vulvaed lips. Not godda happen.
I want to play video games and they develop for windows first and linux as an afterthought. Proton is nice but its not native support nice.
It's a pain in the ass to watch videos on linux.
I might stop using Windows when MS stops offering security updates for Windows 7 (in January, unless things change). I have never heard of a single feature of Windows 10 that is attractive to me. Almost everything I see and hear about it makes me actively not want it.
I've already had, for several years, a dedicated Linux desktop that I use almost daily. I have peccadilloes with Ubuntu and Gnome that I'm sure I could fix if it were my primary OS. I mostly hang on to Windows because of proprietary software support. I use ArcGIS for my work, and I play PC games. These days, game publishers are starting to offer Linux versions of their games, and Steam is making it much easier to play Windows games under Linux. And if I had to, I could keep a laptop around with Windows just to run specific software that doesn't work elsewhere.
For the time being, I'm quite comfortable with Windows 7. But as time passes, it's clear that what MS wants me to do is rent my OS from them, and that's just not going to happen.
You clearly don't understand either Linux nor Unix.
I think the main reason is too much distribution fragmentation. E.g all the RPM Distros need to chuck themselves under a single banner, the same with dpkg based distros and the gentoo ones. At the moment Linux is like 5000+ different OSs and noone can get decent documentation on any of them. You end up having to get a bit of config from arch, a bit of config from debian, a bit from ubuntu and pray that the ductape and glue you use holds together. Also new hardware support is garbage. I'm writing this on a Razerblade Stealth 2017. It was a pain to get the scripts right to use my Razer core with it, and I have to disable a libinput keyboard driver in the config files to get my computer to not crash when capslock is pressed. That took 9 months to figure out as there was no clear documentation anywhere online about it. Just an obscure forum post. I've updated the Debian documentation since, and posted to Razer's forums about it. This is where Linux is super weak. I've been using Linux for 18 years, if I'm struggling with issues like this imagine what the newbies are facing.
Which people would abandon Windows? I can't think of many interesting Linux projects that didn't turn into a couple of nights spent on forums and tutorials for me! That's not something most people want to deal with!
The logical error here is thinking someone on Slashdot goes to parties.
I'd love to switch to Linux. Especially now with Windows 10 being unstable spyware. Why don't I?
* Investment. I have a lot of time and experience invested in using Windows and writing Windows software/scripts to do exactly what I need to do.
* Backward compatibility. I can write software that runs on Windows 95 all the way to Windows 10. Microsoft maintains the API. Linux is constantly changing and forking.
* Software. Linux simply doesn't have the software. Much of the software it does have is beta OSS that's constantly being changed and updated. *I don't want smooth updates. I want software that does what I need, dependably, without needing updates.* Dripfeed updating is for the birds. Its only purpose is to acclimate people to cloud computing.
* Geekiness. If I have to open a console window for any reason then the operating system is not finished. We've had good GUIs for 25 years now. There's no excuse for anything that can only be done via command line. In other words, Windows is a tool. Linux is a project.
As I write this I can imagine lots of angry Linux fans who can't imagine why anyone would complain about using command line. That's my final, and perhaps the biggest, major reason that I don't use Linux. It's not designed for productivity. It's designed for adaptability. Most Linux fans don't want to see a truly user-friendly Linux, with a complete GUI and well written help files that any intelligent person can follow. They want to see Windows users switch to Linux. But they want Windows users to switch to their version of Linux, not the version that people actually need.
If we consider Chrome OS as a Linux distribution then it seems to be happening, especially with the recent improvements: better file management, android/Linux app support. As for GNU/Linux, it hasn't any serious commercial support on desktops, it's primarily volunteer driven with so many different projects trying to do the same thing. People want something that is supported and meets their requirements.
Cause slashdot is beating a dead horse.
Joking aside, Linux support has gotten better from the days when posting on a forum would be met with RTFM. It's still not enough to get folks to turn away in masses to Linux. I honestly don't know what the answer is.
It's not games. Valve went as far as to create their own flavor of Linux.
It could be apps. I find that MsOffice is still better than everything else out there. I'm great with Gimp simply because I'm too cheap to pay for Adobe products, but adding stroke to text is still a lot more difficult than it has to be (select layer, convert layer to path, etc)
It could be hardware compatibility. Some of the more "pure" distro's refuse to include binary drivers.
It could also be my cousin Vinny, who is sort of defacto tech support for aunt Jenine (I really don't have an aunt or cousin named that)
Maybe it's the ease of entry as a professional. Windows 10 basic cert is easy, Linux, not so much.
Maybe it's something I just heard in my Security+ training, that GUI's prevent mistakes.
Maybe it's the accountability, you know who you're dealing with, there's at least some central number to call for support, instead of a fragmentation of 10 different companies.
Maybe it's the government, who still swears by windows for a lot of things.
I really don't know. I know I'm typing this from Windows, in a chrome browser. I have my reasons. Having been on slash since the beginning, this question is just never answered. It's almost like Incels asking, "Why can't I get laid?"
Linux is wonderful for sure.
But it's basic issue with toppling Windows dominance over the desktop is Apps. Plain and simple.
Until developers start pushing out major Apps for Linux, it's going to remain in the shadows, running all the backend stuff like it always has. Linux simply has no hope on the desktop until it gets the App support from major companies, like Windows enjoys now.
Which leads to the second problem for Linux. Fragmentation and poor compatibility from distro to distro. There's just no standard for developers to follow, that would ensure their stuff will run as desired on any given Linux desktop. There's ton of different UIs, different display servers, different system tools, different locations for common stuff. Even the basic libraries installed on any given Linux desktop are rarely the same as they are for another one. Different versions of just about everything plagues Linux's viability for big corporation's developers.
Even Steam can be a bit of a chore to get working properly on a Linux desktop install. You gotta make sure the right libraries are in. And even when you get it working, there's absolutely no guarantee any of your games will work. They might. They might not. Windows does not suffer from this issue. You buy a piece of software/game for Windows. It will work. Period.
Don't get me wrong, Linux's various distros have come a long way in addressing compatibility and dependency issues for their software repositories. But, from my view, it's still too much of a disaster for big corps to make the investment in developing their big App suites for Linux.
Once big name corps, like Adobe and Microsoft for example, start pushing out Linux versions of their flagship products, Linux will have arrived. But until then... we're stuck with Windows.
I was loyal to Windows because I earned a living fixing people's computers, and 90 some percent of them were running Windows. In order to work on it, I needed to be very familiar with it. But things change. Now I'm retired and most people just use their phones, or if they do use Windows, they only use the web browser. So recently, getting tired of Microsoft's bad behavior, I started transitioning to Linux Mint. If nothing else, for the geek cred. I still have to go back to Windows on occasion for some proprietary Windows-Only software, but I'm spending most of my time in Linux and I love it!! And it is waaaayyyyyy faster on my powerful but ancient workstation. It's just a matter of time until Microsoft no longer supports this ol' thing, but with dual Xeons, 48GB RAM, and an NVMe SSD it's still got a lot of life left in it.
Linux blows up laptops and doesn't run Microsoft Office.
Convince Microsoft to port to Linux and ensure that it doesn't nuke laptops and you'll see widespread adoption very quickly. Everything else runs quite nicely now on Linux including Slack, Spotify, browsers and so on. These are the fatal blows.
You don't compile on binary Linux distro. You just install and then the installer does its thing and the program is ready. You can get a source distro like Gentoo Linux if you want to learn. Most people can use Debian stable or just some other distro that fits their need.
Most people also just have phones or smart tablets today. They don't use normal PC's today. Most phones are using Android today and that is a Linux distro in it self.
The typical end user doesn't use a computer for the sake of using a computer. They use it to get a job done. That job might be entertainment (computer games, watching a movie); it might be professional; it might be home (budgeting, etc.) To that end, people will use the software that they're familiar with. They will only switch to a different platform (Windows to Linux, Excel to OpenOffice, etc.) if there's a significant pain point, and they perceive it to be easier to switch than to address that pain through some other mechanism.
Linux? For all that distributions tout ease of installation, that's only one part of the problem, and a very small part at that. Once the OS is installed, the user is faced with a plethora of software choices, and it's not easy to wade through the morass to figure out which package will do the job the end user wants to get done. And even when you've figured that out, you still have a learning cliff to get up to speed on that package.
Sure, there's a bunch of technical reasons why Windows isn't "as good as" Linux (for whatever value of "good" you're using.) But here's the thing: the end user doesn't care about what's under the hood. They just want the damn thing to do the job they want it to do. On that front, Linux has a very long way to go, and the "perception of reliability" does nothing to address that.
"Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
IMHO, this advantage would quickly disappear, if really more people use Linux!
"Linux is less bloated and "free forever.""
IMHO, these can easily change, if other OSs really lose their marketshares to Linux!
Also, since anybody in the world can easily modify Linux source code,
is it really hard to guess that, Linux source code must be full of intentionally created SUPERBUGS, to be used as backdoors to any computer running Linux?
Also, remember that when RedHat sold to IBM for over $30Billion, its programmers got $0!
REALIZE that, if open source software eventually wins against proprietary software, all programmers would become worthless (aka min wage) employees
(since they are employees who produce free (aka worthless) products)!!!
REALIZE that all leadership of open source software movement/projects are anti-government (aka anarchist) people!!!
Are those really kind of people you want to help takeover/control/command the world someday???
Windows 10 has been the single best thing Microsoft has ever done for Linux. Well, that and the Vault 7 malware release from the NSA. That was the day I stopped using Windows 7 and went back to Linux. But even my dad decided to finally abandon Windows for Linux after Microsoft forcefully "upgraded" his machine to Windows 10 without his permission and then failed to properly put back one mystery DLL after downgrading back to Windows 8.
Lots of people are using Linux on their phones and tablets these days. Young people are also increasingly opting for cheap Chromebooks instead of paying out the wazoo for a Windows laptop. I'd say Linux is doing just great!
In theory the one benefit OSS/F software can offer us is better security. Those who are able have been willing to pay the price of a little inconvenience for that. In professional settings, against casual attackers this still holds true. In daily life? No. The attack surface is too big, the job of securing things too complicated, the likely attack is more often social engineering than technical, and state level actors can compromise the system at lower levels outside the scope of the kernel. They can compromise the BIOS, the hardware, whatever they want. We lost. They have control. The phone world trained most us to accept it. Everything is spying on us, so fuck it.
The only real security is outside of modern tech entirely. If you're in a car from 10 years ago or more, you're probably safe. "Things we say in the car". It has become an expression I use.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've been trying since the days of Slackware coming on a floppy in a the back of a book to switch to Linux and dump MS. I DETEST MS and their products. Yet I'm typing this on a Windows machine. Why...?
1. Linux can't run the software I absolutely need, including both apps and drivers. Period. Full stop.
2. Linus is a royal pain in the ass to use compared to Windows. Yes, Windows has more than its share of quirks and warts and insanely bad design and implementation issues. I would never argue that point. But the cloud of OSs flying in loose formation calling itself Linux is even worse.
People just don't want to learn anything new, or don't see the need to. Their computer is just a tool and they don't want to think about it any more than they'd think about picking up a hammer to smash a nail. Look how many people use Internet Explorer as their default browser... that's usually my first clue that my tech support is going to have to be reallllllly simplified. People just use what's already installed on their computer and don't know or care what's going on in the background or what it is. Heh heh, kind of reminds me of the moms just calling every single gaming system a Nintendo. They're all the same in their eyes.
You can get psuedo legal copies (keys purchased overseas that are grey market) for around $10-$20 bucks. If you already had Win 7 around they gave 10 away for a few years.
Free isn't enough. It needs applications. For end users that means Office (lots of folks still use the native version) and games. Steams' custom WINE doesn't run everything.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Linux is used on your router, your car, your camera, your "cloud" services, 50% of your phones.
The other 50% of your phones run another POSIX OS, OSX.
What's left for Windows?
Most of the PC/Laptop market.
Second and third place for PC/Laptop is Linux/OSX(POSIX)).
One hopes that as Chromebooks and Ipads are the norm in schools, the next generation can finally stop seeing that ancient dos prompt and C:\.
Or perhaps, Microsoft will buy Canonical....
...programmers can make money from. Not a secret. There are no adult rewards in free work.
I haven't seen that many Anonymous Cowards on one article badmouthing Linux in a while. It really exceeds the usual level of spam.
Microsoft PR department at work?
C - the footgun of programming languages
I've been using computers since the late '70's. Am an Embedded hardware and software Engineer.
Each time I build a new PC, I install Linux and give it a try. But every time there's a show stopper.
Mostly unable to run my Engineering programs, PCB design, etc.
But also a vague feeling that it was written by amateurs.
Poor documentation, configuration files scattered everywhere, childish images and colour schemes.
Inconsistencies with the GUI.
Whatever, I'm certainly no fan of Windows. I keep hoping that something like BeOs/Haiku will come along..
Ubuntu 16.04 is easily on par with Windows 98 edging towards Win7. Some issues. Overall not a hard transition from Windows.
Ubuntu Mate 18.04 is a drop in replacement for Windows. Installs from a USB. Install is easy. Devices just work. The caja browser is very similar to Explorer. USB devices mount and dismount nicely. Printer and scanner works. It even has a boutique software library to kick start users. Office suite comes standard.
Windows is only leading because it comes preinstalled.
For gamers, Ubuntu now has Steam.
It's been 70 years since the standardization of the metric system, which is arguably superior to Imperial units in every way -- but Americans still use the latter, because it's what they were taught, and what they know, and what they are comfortable with.
It's been 38 years since the standardization of the Dvorak keyboard layout, which is faster to type with than the Qwerty layout, and yet very few people use Dvorak, because Qwerty is what they were taught, and what they know, and what they are comfortable with.
If you're a computer buyer, chances are the computer(s) you bought came with Windows preinstalled, so that's what you learned to use -- and if you're not "into" computers, you didn't enjoy learning how to use it, and you really don't want to have to repeat that painful experience for some other operating system. Hence, you'll continue to use Windows unless/until there is some really compelling reason not to; because you're not there to learn about new operating systems, you're there to get your primary task done as quickly as possible, and that means going with what ever tools you already know how to use.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The average computer user is not even qualified to own the device let alone operate it proficiently... There is no substitute for doing your homework before using a piece of technology for productivity.
1. Top-tier games don't not supported, or run more slowly.
2. Top-tier productivity software not supported.
3. Doesn't come preinstalled many/most places.
4. Many users already familiar with another O.S. and don't want to re-educate themselves.
5. Not ideal for developing software deploying to Windows, Mac or iOS.
6. Less likely to be supported by random hardware, e.g. printers.
None of my shit works on Linux.
Unless you know of a way to make Windows stuff to work on Linux????
I don't run Linux as my primary native desktops (but do run it on my laptop and in a bunch of VMs). The primary reasons are:
- I rely on Quicken (not the online "my financial data is only one hacker away from being published" or "my data is gone because the vendor disappeared or just decided to delete it due to a 'retention policy' " version) and it's not available/supported on Linux (yes, I tried to run it on WINE but it was unusable from a performance standpoint and, anyway, then it's only one Quicken or WINE update away from breaking on an unsupported platform).
- I also rely on HR Block tax software (again, not the online "my financial data is only one hacker away from being published" or "my data is gone because the vendor disappeared or just decided to delete it due to a 'retention policy' " version) for my tax prep every year and, again, no Linux version exists (and, for a variety of reasons, I need to look back at taxes for many years beyond the "norm" so "working today" is not good enough).
- While BSOD used to be a modestly regular occurrence on Windows even just 15 years ago, I haven't had it happen for years on Windows (Win 8.1 Pro now), Ubuntu updates break my systems from time to time (which is one reason I run them in a VM -- just restore a checkpoint and try to isolate the problem by selective updating) - I currently have several VMs that I have to remember to uncheck the GRUB updates when doing updates or the system won't boot (yes, I'm sure I could figure out what's wrong, but it worked fine just a few months ago and I've got other things to do than dig into code that I will never update or contribute to).
Perhaps, when forced to Win 10, I will downgrade to a single Win desktop with RDP access for the family for use of essential "Windows Only" software -- but that will depend on the state of Linux desktop then (and, my hopes are not high).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Technology is only as reliable as the understanding of the user using it.
While there are free alternatives for a lot of software available on Linux, the simple fact is that there is a lot thatt is Windows, or Windows/Mac, only.
Games are a great example. While you could screw around with WINE and get World of Warcraft running, it's never going to run as well as it would in its intended environment, and there's every possibility thatt an update to the game that works fine on Windows will not work on Linux with WINE.
There are, however, many use cases for Linux where it can work quite well. For instance, if you're using Chrome to browse the web, Thunderbird to check email, LibreOffice to edit documents, you might do great on Linux. Just be sure it works with all your hardware (printers especially) before making the switch.
I have a laptop which runs Linux (Ubuntu Mate to be precise), and it's great as far as it goes. Getting my printer working with it (an older Canon multi function) was much more annoying than on Windows, particularly when I decided to use it with my Windows box and share it from there. It was doable, but very annoying figuring itt out. I still couldn't use it full time, however. I enjoy playing games on my computer, and not many of them come with Linux support.
Could that be it?
What the article seems to miss, what most people in the tech industry seem to miss, is that the vast majority of the population (around 90%) will stick with whatever software their computer comes with. Most people don't even know what an operating system is, let alone how to find a new one or install an alternative.
Almost every store you can walk into (or shop from on-line) defaults to selling PCs bundled with Windows, therefore that is what virtually everyone buys. If most stores sold their computers with another operating system, Windows would quickly disappear from the market.
This is true of any device, not just PCs. It's the same with phones, tablets, etc. Almost everyone runs Windows or macOS on personal computers, Android or iOS on phones. That will only change is retailers bundle different software with their devices because almost all people regard computers as appliances, not devices that can run a range of operating systems.
Try Ubuntu Mate 18.
TFS doesnt even fucking tell us what this linux thing is im supposed to switch to.
Windows makes a BFD of updating your computer or scanning for mal ware.
Ironically the fact that updates are a big deal on Windows machines makes people aware of them. They are aware when one exists and if they haven't done it. This intrusiveness gives you the sense that as long as you stay updated Microsoft will keep your machine happy and healthy.
Linus doesn't provide that feeling.
You are never really aware if the "kernel" (scary) is upt to date or what that means or how to tell.
So it's daunting.
A linux distro with a security CLippy would give people more confidence something was out there keeping them safe and healthy
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
As has been commented elsewhere in this thread: People want a tool that is easy to use, fairly reliable, has all the programs they need on a daily basis, doesn't have any esoteric UI choices, and doesn't need any under the hood work.
If you want people to switch to Linux the system has to operate faster, crash less, be easier to use and have all of the programs they routinely use. None of this "Open Office works just as well as Windows Office" crap. People want the integrated presentation that MS office has trained people to accept. Without MS Office, AutoDesk AutoCad and Revit, Photoshop (Wine doesn't count) you aren't going to get any traction.
People don't want the solution to be "Well you need an emulator to run that program because it doesn't run natively in Linux". That by itself shoots Linux in the foot.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
The fact of the matter is is that Windows is functionally useful. There's already a ton of free software for it (some that doesn't run on Linux) and the commercial software is what gets in into corporate/business use.
People decry the price of it, but OEMs pay a fractional of retail. Heck, Microsoft apparently waves the cost of Windows on low-end devices to better compete with Chrome OS/Android devices. And people buying higher-end devices are clearly doing something that requires Windows (gaming or the aforementioned business software).
Compare a Windows laptop to an Apple laptop. You'll typically pay twice as much for the same hardware with Apple as you would on a Windows laptop. (And Apple has its own eccentricities about how things should be done.)
Security won't matter since it's usually the users who cause the biggest security problems.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Every time this comes up we have hundreds of posts from slashdot readers who loudly proclaim that they use Linux and they wish everyone did, and btw, Windows sucks. Yeah, yeah. We already know you will never use anything from Microsoft and you're so happy you are so smart and everyone else is so stupid. But here's the bottom line.
It isn't about you. Nobody cares about you or your superior knowledge. As employees people only care about their work application, whether it's some sort of specialized application like a library circulation system that costs hundreds of thousands or an industrial warehouse application, or standard old spreadsheet and word processing. It's provided by the employer. If it doesn't work, call IT.
As a home user all someone wants is to walk into WalMart and buy a cheap laptop that can surf the Web and handle email. That's just about it. An HP Stream Laptop for $100 will work just fine, thanks very much. Update options? Meh, whatevah! Just stay out of the way. Drivers? Say what? You mean the Uber guys?
And THAT'S the computer market these days. Throw in the iPad lovers and that just about covers it. There is simply no need for Linux. This other stuff just works, and that's all we need.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
For many users, Outlook and Excel are the reason. Granted, the Outlook web interface is pretty good, but it does not quite equal the native client. With Excel, the Linux alternatives are poorly known and a point of (often unjustified) concern. I'll add that the Excel interface is generally better than the open source alternatives as well, particularly with things like column fills and conditional formatting.
Finally, let's think about graphics and sound, which are still sketchy way too often on Linux after all these years. Just a month ago, I watched a skilled Linux sysadmin spend days trying to get a 3-monitor setup to work properly. He ultimately succeeded, but what a nightmare!
Articles and commanda like this come from people from the Windows world, who just cannot think in any other way than what they knew from Windows or desktop GUIs.
And who frankly, can not, and have never actually used a computer.
All they used, were appliances that happened to be implemented on a computer. But could also have been hard-wired physical devices. They would not have mindes!
And that is the thing: Once you start *using* a computer, GUIs like that quickly become painful and cumbersome and primitive and just plain useless.
You start to want your for and while loops, make your own functions, use variables, and generally just have things *work* *your way* *automatically*!
Mobile OSes are even worse.
When you were forced to do a repetitve task on some UI list, ask the developer to add it, or outright hack the OS to get it to automate what should be a simpe one-off one-liner loop, you know that computers have been raped to death.
And that you are happy, thar Linux is not, and will never become any of that!
Powerful computer games that are fun.
An OS with working CPU and full GPU support.
Productivity software thats supported over the years.
An OS that can support art, music, photography, video "workflows".
Less complexity about a changing new CoC and free software license.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
P.S.: Mobile phone keyboards are a mhole different level.of insanely retarded nightmare!
Stay with Windows.
I used to think that it would be great to attract more users to Linux. But then that brought us stuff like Pulse Audio, Wayland and systemd. And gamers. My applications run just fine on Linux and X. Stop screwing it up just to get some FPS crap to run on it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Linux is a hot mess. It seems fine until you want to run the simplest kinds of applications. Text editors, browsers I guess if I used it more but no
Linux must be installed on a new machine. Windows doesn't.
That's THE reason right there for you.
"Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
Oh, please. I'm so sick of hearing that.
Linux is more secure because its developers actually want it to be secure as a primary concern, not an afterthought like it is with Windows. The security of Linux has nothing to do with its lack of popularity, it's a difference in priorities. Our developers are in different worlds with different goals... and very different bosses.
Linux has a reputation to protect. When it gets vulnerabilities, everyone knows, so everyone works hard to fix it, because we use that shit, too.
Windows has profits and income to protect. When it gets vulnerabilities, they keep that shit hush-hush and delay patching for as long as possible, simply because cutting corners saves on money and resources.
This is quite honestly what a lot of us want to know. Ditching a beloved hobby just to 'stick it to the man' is just ... No. Why should I be miserable when Microsoft won't even realize I exist anyway?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Already folks, I admit I'm too lazy to sit down go through the book (very thick) and go through the exercises. However, I need a Linux machine, shelling out some money... right now I have other priorities. I have never got VM or virtual box or whatever it's called to work. Even sat down with a friend who says he uses it all the time, he couldn't get it to install even after doing all kinds of HD partitioning and whatever.
I have read and heard many advantages of Linux. Even for serious systems at work and other places I've seen they use Linux. Windows both the OS and the thing that lets you see through walls have no place for these systems.
I have noticed there are two kinds of people: Those that know Linux and they can turn it upside down, in and out about. Know all the gory details of various types from Redhat to Ubutu (sp?), also highly skilled in C, python, unix, and all the other languages. The other people are those that ain't got a clue. I do know it is an operating system, they use a penguin for a mascot, and you don't have to pay Borg Bill a fee every year (or month).
mfwright@batnet.com
I use all three major desktop OSes regularly. IMHO, Linux in the form of Debian and Ubuntu are only slightly more useable than Windows only because the underlying OS is built well e.g. none of this registry crap or installing major applications in such a way that it's impossible to make a bootable backup. The GUI though is just as embarrassing compared to MacOS which is simply elegant. You're never fighting with the GUI. Oh and the simple fact that Windows lies like a rug about the fact that it's not ready to use when you boot it until you let it sit there for 20 minutes while it does major housecleaning is irritating.
A real computer user OS. With a hardware-abstracting kernel,
a nice everything-is-a-file system, a scripting shell, and a set of libraries of common small tools (that could aswell be script functions).
Because then, monolithoc fixed-function nonsense like "applications", which miss the whole damn point of having a computer, by merely giving you a set of fixed appliances, is not even an existing concept, let alone necessary.
To me, you sound like an iUser must sound to you, when he yells that the PC is dead and everybody should use an iPad.
Why should you have only one OS for your self-described hobby and then use it for everything else also? That's retarded. That's your fail.
The primary issue with Linux is it's architected to rely exclusively on source code.
There is no concept of a kernel driver. If I sell a piece of hardware requiring a driver there is no possible means by which I can bring my product to market without extraordinary pain and suffering or by being unreasonably restrictive on supported distros.
Same problem extends to 100% userland commercial software. While basic ABI for executing apps is backwards compatible binaries compiled 20 year ago can still execute in the real world this is meaningless. Any nontrivial software with dependencies require stable interfaces that simply don't exist. Hell they don't even exist across current distributions of Linux. Anything with GUI / GPU access, security stacks, sound, printing.. good luck.
The really telling part of this is the rampant persistence of criminally outdated packages often included with most present day distros. Even people whose whole job it is to work dependencies so all software where source code is available works find the task to be impossibly hard.
Windows has win32... Linux has a bunch of disorganized undisciplined interests scratching their own itches and throwing the word "deprecated" around like it's a badge of honor. The end result is little interest in commercial software for the platform and massive pain and suffering for anyone wanting to run anything not packaged with distro.
Updates are NOT better than windows. They are actually much worse. When you replace a file in use the reference to the old version persists from the perspective of any currently running application. This can have unpredictable repercussions.
Say there are additional resources beyond a dependency that need to be updated and running application is still accessing those resources as if it were still running old version because it doesn't know any better.
Or assume there is a security bug fixed in dependency but the application is long running and continues to execute for months or years with the vulnerability in place because nobody ever bothered to restart application or system.
There is nothing inherent in Linux architecture that makes updates better for Linux than Windows. The restart behavior of Windows updates may be annoying but at least outcomes are predictable WRT actual application of updates.
As for security of Linux over Windows with regards to malware... Linux people are living in an alternate reality if they believe any of this bullshit. The entire UI stack is swiss cheese. Linux has been a nonstop tragedy of privilege escalation vulns just like Windows. There is no architectural advantage Linux has over windows on security. The only meaningful advancements are from architectures using type 1 hypervisors. Even this has been considerably eroded due to proliferation of hardware vulns.
Windows is awesome. Linux is awesome. MacOS is awesome.
Windows has been ripe for the taking since Gates first offered up the lousy original. But Microsoft won cos the competition was infinitely worse.
Opne Source is a nightmare, cos of the extreme dysfunctional psychology of most people drawn to it- users and coders. Weaponised SJW nonsense is just the lastest nonsense to infect the potential 'competition' for Windows- but it is the death knell for any hope that Linux can rise to any challenge.
The real issue is where MS is taking Windows. Large factions in MS want to kill off Win32, and support for the galaxy of amazing programs Windows has accumulated across the years. We NEED a desktop alternative to Windows, but with the Linux mastermind being a completely psychopathic POS, hell will freeze over before Linux gets its act together.
And Apple... the less said about that option the better.
And Google is worse. Android could easily have provided a desktop option- but the time for that option is long gone.
Windows is still fantastic when used in an old school way with the brilliant library of still compatible programs dating back years. The sane voices at MS seem to have regained control for the time being. But what happens if/when the MS loonies finally win? These loonies want to end the NT path (Win10 is still NT), and turn Windows into another Apple/Google anti-user crap fest OS.
Combine this with the Deep State's desire to end private ownership of powerful user controlled computers (Android and iOS with connections ONLY to gov approved sites and applications is the future) and things look very bleak indeed. The walled gardens, and total survellance of Apple and Google is where private computers are heading.
I tried to start up my linux system this morning and X refused to start. Just a big blank screen. It was working yesterday. And this is a relatively recent install with not very much running on it (and no weird tweaking on my part).
I switched to console mode (because I know how to do that) and found that worked...then I used my WINDOWS laptop (since it still worked) to hit the internet and look up some diagnostic commands that I can run.
After a lot of poking around I figured out that a runaway process running under wine had been flooding an invisible log file with errors, and it filled up my entire hard drive.
I fixed it by deleting the file and then wiping everything installed under wine to clean it up, cautiously re-installing what I was using it for.
The level of technical knowledge needed to troubleshoot this, combined with the fact that it happened at all, is what scares people away from Linux. I have never, ever, had this happen to me on a windows system, nor have I had to troubleshoot in such depth to get windows-related problems fixed.
Those if you who canâ(TM)t figure this out need to get your head out of the clouds and realize your view on Linux is just an opinion. In your opinion itâ(TM)s perfect. In the opinion of the vast majority of people Linux is for nerds. They respect nerds, sort of, but nerds need their toys, and they donâ(TM)t understand those toys. So why try? Windows isnâ(TM)t nearly as bad as you make it out to be. It will get the job done, and you can play every game made in the last 20 years. Iâ(TM)ve seen Linux systems hacked every day, and Linux systems crash and data is lost; and guess what, Windows has those same problems too.
If Linux software was this easy to use, it would be a different world.
I use Linux when I must, but it is generally a pain in the ass. I don't enjoy upgrading to the latest version for a 10 minute job. I'm just thankful when I can get away without downloading the source and recompiling.
Even people that hate Microsoft love its convenience. Of course that is starting to change - but ever so slowly
How many times does it have to be explained before it finally sinks in ?
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more . . . . .
It isn't because we like Microsoft. It isn't because we hate Linux.
( I use both depending on what I'm doing )
We don't abandon Windows for one simple reason:
MANY OF THE APPLICATIONS WE USE DON'T EXIST ON LINUX.
It's the same damn problem VR has. Developers don't want to commit resources to something that so few use while, at the same time, so few will consider it because very little is developed for it.
Some have Linux versions ( like Maya ) but, for the most part, many of the professional / commercial applications I use on a daily basis do not.
There may be some open source alternatives but, none of them quite stack up to their established commercial brethren.
This, and only this, is why ( like it or not ) I am f*cking stuck with Windows.
In case you're curious and you want to go find me some free, open-source version *** that performs as well as any of the following ***, here's my list:
The entire Adobe CC suite
Maya & various Maya Plugins ( covered, it works in Linux too )
Zbrush
Rhinocerous 3D w/ Brazil
Substance Designer / Painter
Keyshot
Capture One Pro
Cubase Pro
Sibelius
Various Musical Instrument Libraries
The driver that ties my synth to the DAW
The day all the above developers create a Linux version, I'll switch.
Until then, Windows it is.
Win will always reign supreme. Its actually a hot spaghetti mess of code that is evolving with the current direction of windows dev.
*nix will continue to serve a purpose as an os for mac, android, and development/servers.
People dont want to learn a 1000 new ways of installing and configuring in a day where we are bombarded by information. My take on it. The games are on windows, it comes preinstalled, and its easy.
The days of hating on gates for being rich died with the 90's. He is one of the only mega rich people i actually subscribe to. 50 bln in donations to charity, forward thinking for nuclear energy and pushing for more taxes on large corporations, the guy is a saint in a field full of duds.
They've got a new way of approaching the open source community, cross platform compatibility and they're not a pompous bunch of asses destroying the manufacturing, distributionx and retail sectors of north america. Not yet anyways. I am now an official Bill Gates fan boy.
forced me to find a Linux solution, price tags like that is a good motivates me to make me work out in linux what i wanted to do with windows, and if it was 30 or 40 dollars a copy instead fo damn near 200 micro$soft would lose less customers, but its too late now and i have my security system set up and working the way i want it and i am not going to rebuild it now even if they did lower the price
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Seriously, no one in the home market gives a fuck.
Restart to update is only a big deal in a data center. Anywhere else it's an inconvenience. Most workers I know use it as an excuse to disappear to the smoking area for a half hour and most home users just go and make a sandwich while it's happening. It's not the end of the world.
My mail laptop is too quirky Whenever I try the latest ubuntu my computer hangs on boot and with Debian
my USB 3 port can't be used.
My Dell workstation does the same and it's 5 years older.
I ended virtualizing with virtual box.
Windows to MacOS to Arch, reporting in!
I have used Windows 10, macOS, Linux (lots of flavors, including Mint, Debian, Fedora, Manjaro, and various Ubuntus). Right now I am reasonable convinced that Windows is the best solution for me, although I miss Linux often. The biggest issue for me is the availability of software. Here are some immediate ones that come to mind:
1) The software I use to prepare my taxes (the browser version is more expensive if you can believe that)
2) Skype for business (necessary for my work at my university)
3) Acrobat Reader (necessary for some tax paperwork that requires submission by PDF)
4) Microsoft Office
5) iTunes (because I have an iPhone)
I bought a lifetime license for Crossover Linux because I wanted to support the Wine project. Wine will allow me to get by with an older version of Office (rather well, actually) and some other useful software (like the Epson wireless projection utility). The other items on my list don't work well with the latest version of Crossover. Many of the programs that I run in Linux (Thunderbird, Geany, Eclipse, wxMaxima, Octave, VLC, just to name a few) have Windows versions that work exactly the same way.
Windows also has better search from the start menu for documents and applications, something that only KDE seems to do well, and KDE has its own problems. Don't get me wrong, I spend a lot of time removing all of the asinine parts of Windows 10 from a Powershell session when I do a clean install, but that's not much different than the scripts I use to configure Linux distributions after I install. The addition of the Windows Subsystem for Linux also provides a lot of missing functionality (although it is much slower).
I know the VM solution will probably come up here, but I feel that if I have to use a Windows VM for certain tasks and a Linux host for others, I'm forced to configure two systems for my personal machine and that's time I don't have.
TouchÃ... Dear God what am I doing with my life?
Linux has its place, but there are ten things that keep the world running on Windows 10:
1: Standard enterprise tier management and federation: I can manage millions of machines with AD GPOs and federate control of OUs out to different groups. Puppet, Chef, and Ansible are great at keeping the backend servers in line, but good luck federating out authority under these tools. They are just not designed for this. Macs similar. No MDM can allow for federation out so one department can handle its own things. If you don't know the importance of federation, you have not done IT in any serious capacity.
2: Images and backups. I can restore a Windows box completely using wbadmin or the Veeam agent. There is no supported way under RedHat (other than REAR) to do this. There isn't even anything like Time Machine that can restore the system in one go from a backup. This is a major failing of the OS... even AIX and Solaris can do bare metal backups. Sorry, Clonezilla does't count.
3: Executable signing. Windows has signed executables. Even AIX has trustchk to allow a signed manifest to be generated ensuring that executables, libraries, even scripts are validated before being run. Linux has none of this in place.
4: A standard environment and desktop. Good luck enforcing policies, and stuff basic to Windows GPOs in Linux.
5: Policies to encrypt data on USB flash drives. This is a single click away with GPOs and BitLocker; impossible on Linux.
6: Stability. Other than RedHat, there is no Linux vendor that makes something like LTSB which won't get major upgrades after 5+ years. RedHat used to be that, but they have been bought out by IBM, and their development cycle seems to be getting a lot shorter, and maybe buggier.
7: Vendor platform support. Apple supports Windows 10 with the T2 chip. Linux is blocked from accessing the onboard SSD even when security is turned off.
8: A known, reliable vendor for legal reasons. Auditors don't like a company using just no name software without a rep behind it. With MS, the buck stops with them, and there are no "upstreams/downstreams".
9: Activation. A lot of audits require machines be activated. There is no mechanism to show an activated Linux system from one that isn't genuine or properly licensed. This can mean BIG legal fees if the SBA or BSA comes a knocking.
10: Ease of talent. I can get Windows expertise anywhere. I can get world class consultants from Deloitte, Infosys, Tata, or other places, who know best practices and can get Windows off the ground with the compliances needs met for any company. With Linux, expertise is harder to get, and far more expensive than just paying the Windows license fees.
MS isn't going anywhere in business. In fact, it only is going to gain more ground, as Apple keeps falling on its face.
I work for a small startup company. We had a user whose computer had a bad hard drive, and he needed to get back online ASAP. I had a Linux Mint machine I was working on (XFCE, not Cinnamon), so I temporarily lent that to him. I installed Chromium and Slack, which should have given it everything he needed. I came in the next day to find the computer I had lent him gone and back by my desk.
He freaked straight the fuck out. It wasn't Windows, so he just straight panicked and didn't know what to do with himself. The very act of attempting a change was too much for the guy, he chose instead to work off of his phone for a few hours until his old computer was restored.
In short, unless it looks and acts just like Windows, users will reject it out of hand.
As an evolution from DOS
Windows has been around enough to make its architecture feel instinctive.
Its organized and works well enough.
Linux its a kitchen with too many chefs.
If you stick with Debian, It tends to be organized, almost professional.
but, the fractionality of it, its a pain.
I love the simplicity of Linux and use it for specific tasks,
but general computing, Windows is the boss.
I cant visualize someone using Linux without a technological degree, at least.
Dual boot, ya bitch.
...that $300 Windows laptop, also available for $250 with Linux instead?
Because that is the overwhelming reason why Linux is nowhere on PCs.
And the reason it happens? You do not live in a free market economy (much). Monopolies like Microsoft feed you horse manure all day.
Remember to vote for the parties who the Monopolies pay for! You will too !!!
It's an OS made for programmers, and it sucks for everyone else.
I've been using Linux for around 15 years and I couldn't write a Hello World in Python if there were a gun to my head.
Please explain how I am magically capable of such things.
People _are_ abandoning Windows for Linux, just not on the Desktop.
Many people may use a computer at work for their job, and this computer is likely running Windows, but for their personal computing, many, many people are using Linux - in the form of Android on their mobile device.
This device allows them to send and receive email and text messaging, access Facebook, search Google and run various apps. The vast majority of these apps and services use a Linux back-end.
They don't care, nor even really want to know, anything about the underlying operating system.
Many of these people don't bother with the expense or hassle of maintaining a desktop computer any more - it's all mobile.
linux is simply not user-friendly.
user interfaces of programs not provided by the desktop environment itself are mostly random haphazard piles of shit
printer installation is not 'easy', nor is it 'easy' to even know whether a printer is properly supported or not.. normal folks don't know what the fuck a postscript definition file is or whether their printer is postscript compatible.
wifi drivers are sketchy, 'official' support is still lacking.
the simple idea of remembering window sizes and locations. windows has been able to do this for decades.. linux can't remember shit.
trackpad support sucks ass.
when there's a problem, they're fucked. normal users cannot troubleshoot, they don't know what the hell to do. linux support sites and forums are technical and filled with a bunch of stuck up snobs responding 'rtfm'.. the problem is, there IS no fucking manual in the first place.
it's not installed on mainstream hardware. not supported by mainstream pc makers or hardware vendors to the level needed by normal users.
playing games (mainstream, bought in store types) on linux requires technical knowledge and more than a little luck
user documentation sucks donkey dick.
that last one is repeated because it's the most glaring issue with linux adoption among normal users.
Chrome OS is made to run one application: Google Chrome. If you want to run an application other than Google Chrome, you need a different operating system. And if the Chromebook you own was manufactured before Crostini, that isn't likely to happen.
Linux is a great OS for desktop use! However, the problem lies with support. When a problem arises and a user needs tech assistance there is practically nowhere for them to go. Most local ma and pa computer shops have no idea how to repair a pooched Linux installation. Sure, they can install Linux and get the drivers working for the most part but that is the extent of it. If something needs to be done at a lower level you're on your own.
I've been using Linux for years and support family and a few friends who use it. The overwhelming response I get from people who refuse to use it is that there is no one to go to for help with issues. Support from Microsoft for Windows may be dismal but that doensn't matter when you have hundreds of "backyard techs" in the area that know how to dig into Windows to correct most common issues.
Been a MS computer person since DOS but getting increasingly frustrated with MS and where Windows is going. So I'm right now in the middle of leaving windows but chose Mac over Linux. The story here isn't choosing Mac or Linux, the story here is leaving Windows. MS and Windows are not going in my direction.
MS is a shitshow. They may be mellowing slightly, but I woud never trust them.
Linux is perfectly usable as a general desktop/web surfer, and for most routine office tasks. It's fast and reasonably friendly. It's a lot of fun for development and similar stuff.
But I like to do advanced graphics (Photoshop, Illustrator) and audio/video (Sonar, Mixbus, Premiere Pro, Audition, etc. etc.). Not to mention the thousands of great free or cheap apps and utilities comprising the larger Windows ecosystem. Until Linux has anything remotely comparable, I'll hold my nose and somehow deal with Windows.
It may be that the new MS Win10 update policy fixes most of my concerns about Win10. Until then, I'm sticking with Win7 (super fast and stable on modern hardware).
Linux? Yeah, I run it as a VM sometimes, or on my RPi, but it's still all about itself -- interesting if you want to play with an OS, but useless if you want to get something amazing done creatively, without struggling with your tools every step of the way...
Most Chromebooks support Android apps
Only if they're from Google Play Store. In order to sideload Android applications onto a Chromebook, you have to put the Chromebook in developer mode, and a Chromebook in developer mode will prompt whoever turns it on to wipe all data.
I've thought about this recently, and it goes something like this: I think there are some rings which help categorize whether using Linux makes sense...
Ring 1: Development Applications.
IDEs
Text editors
Compilers
Ring 2: Server Applications.
Web Servers
Routers/Firewalls
Storage/Data Transfer
Databases
Ring 3: Lowest-Common-Denominator Desktop Applications.
Desktop Window Environments
Productivity/Office Suites
Web Browsers
Mail Clients
IM Clients
Audio/Video Players
Ring 4: High Level Desktop Applications.
Audio/Video Editing
Architecture
Finance Software
Legal Software
Medical Software
Point of Sale Software
etc....
Rings 1 and 2 are things that software developers tend to know a lot about, making it very easy to code them well. In most cases, software fitting into those categories are superior to Windows-only applications. The LAMP stack is basically the default for web hosting at this point, and plenty of software-based routers run on Linux or BSD while doing that on Windows is almost comical to suggest.
Ring 3 is pretty mature in general at this point, but it's pretty easy to need a particular function in Excel that isn't available in Calc or some such. The more complex the needs are for a particular application, the more likely the Linux equivalent is going to be a bit of a problem. Even if it can handle it, the learning curve makes it undesirable without an even bigger reason to do it.
Ring 4 is hit-or-miss. Content creation creeps along on Linux, but it's far from mature, and lots of plugins aren't available for the platform. Plenty of line-of-business software *needs* some sort of commercial support, and it's the chicken-and-egg problem that everyone runs Windows because their vendors require it, but none of the vendors make Linux software because virtually none of their clients are running Linux on the desktop. Lots of high profile use cases simply require Windows (or possibly OSX) because there's no reason to develop for what will likely be a support nightmare, and even if one vendor tries to standardize support on Ubuntu, everyone's SoL if the next vendor standardizes on CentOS.
On the dubiously-good side for Linux adoption, the everything-in-a-web-browser trend makes the number of software titles requiring support to decrease as time marches on, making it easier to switch. However, anybody arguing that it's easy to switch has clearly never worked in tier 1 tech support.
I could personally convert a great number of individuals if the options for Linux office suites were compatible with MS office. I don't mean "mostly compatible", I mean 100% compatible. They need to be able to edit word files, and have them open in an identical way for the people they are sharing them with, and those people are using MS Word.
"Sorry my whatever didn't open formatted correctly, I'm using Libreoffice" is an apology I have all-too-often made to coworkers. Libreoffice gets you 90% of the way there. If it got to 99.5%, Linux would be a viable operating system for 90% of the population. Without it, it is a viable operating system for the 5% of us who either *can* go without MS Office, or who are simply too stubborn to put up with MS BS.
I'm baffled that people think it's so great.
I've been saying it for years - Linux needs to be easier to REPAIR! It relies too heavily on re-installing as a "fix all" but I haven't done that since Windows 95. 98se was stable enough until XP came along then Win 7. The latter two I *never* had to reinstall. The other thing is settings being wiped out by re-installing... good god what a draconian solution.
Once that happens I'll switch in a heartbeat. Until then, I don't have time to waste on re-install/reconfigure nonsense.
...that the answer to this question is: The applications! Jeebus... it's the applications!
I know of several people who are "stuck" on Windows because they rely on a sophisticated bit of graphics design software that is only available on Windows (and, occasionally, on MacOS). And I'm sorry, but that, for these users, The GIMP does not suffice no matter how many times some fanatic starts shouting that it does. I'm sure there are other applications that are deeply entrenched into a business that would be too disruptive to uproot and switch everyone over to Linux even if there is an alternative that matches the original feature-for-feature..
That said... plenty of people have abandoned Windows. I know of some who, like Ernie Ball, decided that hassle of dealing with Windows (or the BSA) wasn't worth it and switched to Linux---or, in some cases, some BSD variant. In my case, it happened in the latter half of the '00s after WinXP scribbled on itself one time too many---straw, camel's back, etc. I have a kvm image of Win7 around here somewhere---in case I get nostalgic.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Sure, some version of LibreOffice or one of its forks may be 99.9% bug-for-bug compatible with Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows, but in the corporate world, that 0.1% that causes a pagentation issue when you turn your Word document to a PDF file can cost you a promotion. If you use the corporate-approved Microsoft product, you can blame IT and get away with it.
In K-12 schools, colleges, and universities, people usually use whatever their institution buys or recommends, which usually means whatever company gives the institutions the best deal. For decades, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and others have been giving institutional discounts that made it very hard for the institutions to say "none of the above, we will recommend Linux to everyone, not just our geeky students."
In the non-corporate/home/small-business world, people usually go for "as close to free as in beer as possible, easy to use, and as close to 100% compatible with what everyone else is doing as possible." Whatever they learned at work or school or whatever their kids are learning at school usually equals "easy to use" and if they have kids, they want to be compatible with what the school uses if possible.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All I want is a computer that can securely have a browser, run emulators for my old school video game roms, play my mp3 collection and play all my movies ripped from DVDs. Can Linux handle all these basic tasks?
The Xubuntu operating system runs (among other things) Firefox browser, VLC media player, Mesen and FCEUX for NES ROMs, Mesen-S and bsnes-plus for Super NES ROMs, and mGBA for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance ROMs. Install Wine, and it also runs BGB for Game Boy debugging, j0CC-FamiTracker for composing chiptune music, and OpenMPT for composing sample-based sequenced music.
Linux on the desktop has been promised on the desktop for over 20 years now. Microsoft knows it can get away with abuse and you accept that abuse by refusing to fix problems in Linux. In fact Windows XP despite being unsupported for five years now still has more market share than Linux. What does that tell you that people would rather use unsupported Windows than Linux.
The problem with Linux is not Linux, it's the people that say "I learned it, so you can learn it as well".
Even Linus has to tell his followers to be more civil to newbes. WHY is that.
Well Linus started the "learn it yourself" mantra years ago and it will run in the family for the rest of time.
Getting a simple answer to any kind of question is not possible with Linux People(tm) involved.
Cost is secondary to usability, getting strait answers no matter how dumb the question is where Windows will always over shadow Linux.
This is not a new sentiment and has never be answered or even discussed by Linux People(tm).
And never ask a Linux question when there are more then one Linux Person(tm) within listening distance.
You will get at least three answers and no resolution.
I hate Windows, but where else can I go when I get a new machine ?
Please don't answer this question, as there is not a single Linux People(tm) that can answer it.
don't kid yourself that a little issues like end-of-support lifetime for a very popular version of Windows will do the trick. Remember, we've already gone through this with Windows XP.
Windows XP end of support drove users to Windows 7, which was at the time seen as a desirable operating system. Windows 10's reputation is nowhere near as good now as Windows 7's was when XP support ended.
Feels like 1999. Because for 20 years people who thought linux would slay windows on the desktop have still been scratching their heads trying to solve this.
Is this entire article flamebait? This topic has been argued to death on this site every time the term "OS" comes up.
Business users invariably use MS Excel and Word in their job. They won't change. There is no alternative to Excel. If you give a business user Google Sheets, they will export Excel, work it and then import them back to Google. Google Sheets cannot do filtering, sorting and scrolling at the speed of Desktop Excel.
Linux doesn't run Total Recorder, which is a much better stream capturer than all that other stuff that Linux people say is "good enough". And you have to write text commands to run Linux, like you're supposed to be a programmer or something.
In addition to the issues mentioned already: Adoption is hindered by the lack of good peripheral drivers, which proved access to all device functionality. This is especially important for 'all-in-one' printers, which are commonly used in both office and home environments. Until peripheral manufacturers begin providing linux drivers (or allowing access to information needed to develop Open Source drivers), the adoption of linux will be slow.
If all you do is email, web browsing, word processing and spreadsheets, linux is fine
For CAD, CAM, electronic design, PCB layout, image editing, video editing, music production, and other specialized stuff, you NEED windows
Please don't tell me that there are alternatives for all of these on linux. Yeah, they exist. but they are not even in the parking lot of the ballpark of the same quality
If you need Cubase, Altium, Solidworks, etc... there is no choice
It's because I actually like windows better. I'm not about to give up something I like to use, to use something I like a lot less. I pretty much use Linux where I need to use it and Windows everywhere else.
Drivers, mainly sound and video drivers, when you have to read through pages of forums, make changes manually to X Windows config files to eliminate video tearing or getting your HDMI port to output sound and video without a delay.. and once you have got it right a new update package is deployed that undoes all that manual work to fix what should be working out of the box.
If Intel, NVidia and AMD drivers were stable and bulletproof then I'd move a lot more of my machines to Linux, if it can be easy and stable in Windows or on a Mac OS level then there should be no reason that same hardware just works out of the box under Linux, especially after all these years but the frequency of issues is still far too high.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and I have at least 7 Debian boxes that run 24/7 in different locations - both physical and VPS cloud deployments.
Desktop is still just not cohesive enough. I can handle different look and feel between apps but driver issues are a deal breaker.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Have you considered browsing the SteamOS & Linux game listings at Steam?
Or, for that matter, ProtonDB?
1) Games. Folks with bleeding edge systems that require windows may be a small minority, but the large majority thinks they need Windows to run any recent game.
2) On a related note, the random thing you need to run that doesn't have a LInux version, nor a Linux equivalent
3) Fear. Microsoft may fuck you over every chance they get, but they still have a lot of support. Linux has the same, but you can't exactly go to support.linux.com for help.
We've got linux devs who are sick of zoom etc not working, so they're running WSL and jumping into cloud linux clusters to run stuff.
The other issue for the other 99.9% of the population is installation ease. Both mac and windows makes the few apps you still wanna run as apps , and keeping the OS updated , just eeee zeee .
Linux users complain about commercial software because it isn't open source. Why would commercial products want to support it? They don't.
No one using windows wants to deal with or see scripts... gz, 7z, sh all give regular people Anxiety.
If you don't understand then that is a huge part of the problem.
Linux is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to getting spammed in the face with scripts.
No matter how smart you are, either learn to tie your shoes or very few will want to look at you.
It's called restoring known good backups.
Don't forget restore or reinstall is the solution to many Windows issues as well. Even Windows 10.
Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite, CS:Go, Rocket League, L4D2, Insurgency, Hitman, Portal 2, Metro Last Light Redux, Shadow of Mordor, Divinity Origional Sin, ARK: Survival Evolved, This War of Mine, and about a thousand indie games.
Does every AAA title play on Linux? No. Not ever AAA title is available for Windows either, some are console exclusive. So what.
People understand how windows works, and they don't understand linux. They have software that works in windows and is not ported to linux (or poorly through emulators). There is no trust there. Their companies require them to use windows. Etc.
Also many people are using heir phones and tablets and abandoned their computers for personal stuff.
Finally - linux markets to no one. Most people don't know what it is and don't care. Because they use applications, and the OS matters little to them.
Then I guess you haven't used Linux, then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
thats an idiotic bullshit statement, text editing and browsers are a far better experience under linux.
That's at least what keeps me teethered to Windows.
With games, it gets better. Especially with indie games that rely on development tools like UE or Unity that can easily compile for either platform usually see release for many platforms. But gaming hardware is still a huge problem. Drivers for gaming keyboards or mice are rare, and the few that do exist are mostly half-assed afterthoughts that barely deliver the basic function of the device. If you're looking at anything more specialized like steering wheels or head tracking devices, you're SOL.
For anything important, Windows has long expired.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For the last 20yrs, there has always been that 1 game I must play that is only working on Windows. Forget about Wine - performance matters. Technically though, I use both Windows and Linux - I just can't get rid of that one game, damn it.
Windows users don't switch because Linux is fucking impossible to do anything with if you don't have a level 5 neck beard.
A coworker just picked up a used laptop that is better than their current one, and wants to put Linux on it. His spouse is holding the line and saying it has to have Windows, even though she only uses it for web browsing and email. It is too late now, but I suggested putting Linux on it, and saying it is the newest version of Windows. ;)
Linux and the culture surrounding it are very controlling. People don't like that.
Have been using both Windows and Linux since day one for both. Just put a sock in it.
This is NOT the stuff that matters.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I've been saying it for years - Linux needs to be easier to REPAIR! It relies too heavily on re-installing as a "fix all" but I haven't done that since Windows 95.
Uhm, what? The only time I ever "re-install" Linux is when upgrading from major distro release to another. Repairing is a snap, just CTRL-ALT-Fx to switch to a text console and start typing away at doing whatever repairs you deem necessary. Or boot a Linux Live USB thumb drive and go to town. So much more repairable than Windows.
How does one keep music playback, open web pages, chat sessions, and the like running over a reboot into the other operating system?
You don't compile on binary Linux distro. You just install and then the installer does its thing and the program is ready.
Provided the application that you want to use happens to be in your distribution's repository. Many distributions reject certain categories of application on principle. For example, Fedora rejects video game console emulators out of fear that Nintendo might cause Red Hat to spend money on a legal defense.
I am a Linux people. Many years ago I got a fix into the kernel. But do a quick read through the defensive comments here, the ones where the poster is calling somebody's reasons "crap." Those are all intolerant Linux fans, who won't take the time to listen to real-world issues.
For us techies, Linux gives a lot for a little cost. Scripts just run. Less malware when you build it yourself. Full power. Low cost.
But for Windows users, that's not the case. They don't want to ever have to understand the computer; it's an appliance. A Roku for web browsing, games and a few applications. It's a phone, but with a keyboard and big screen. And Windows is better at that than Linux. You buy something, it will work for Windows. No issues. A printer... just works. A game... just works. A phone plugs in. Not so easy for Linux.
It's actually not a problem with Linux; it could be made nearly that easy. But the responses here are indicative of the underlying problem: Linux fans want to change the users, not the operating environment. While Windows users don't even want to understand that there is one.
I have been a Linux user for many years with quite a few different distros and I have to agree with the other guy. I am running Xubuntu right now and nothing 'just works'. A lot of the programs I want to use don't have documentation. Sometimes you have to read the source code even to know what the program is for. In general Linux program documentation is just utter rubbish compared to most Windows programs. They almost always assume that you have the technical expertise of someone who writes compilers for a living.
Very few program installers bother to add menu or desktop launcher entries and it is by no means easy to do that manually. Many programs are from somewhat to very out of date if you try to just do an 'apt install x' and Ubuntu flavours have one of the best software repositories in the Linux world. Really only Arch Linux can compete. So you have to google the program and hope they have a ppa and many don't and even when they do they are sometimes out of date and when you try to install an out of date ppa it screws up the entire software installation system until you fix the problem which is by no means easy or straightforward.
Installing programs on Linux is often like wrestling an alligator naked. It's almost always a massive massive struggle and yes it isn't that unusual for you to be expected to compile from source and without any instructions on how to do so. Sometimes you get lucky and there is a Snap or Appimage or Flatpack which makes the installation more like Windows, sort of automagical when it works which it doesn't always. Frequently such packages cause problems when you actually try to run the program because the program was not originally written with that sort of installation in mind or because the installer hasn't been updated for 3 years.
Overall I like Linux better than Windows, but that is only because Windows sucks so very very badly because Microsoft is one of the worst software companies on the planet. But Windows at least has consistent single click installs that really do almost always just work and when someone bothers to write a Windows program they nearly always at least tell you what the program is supposed to do and very very often even tell you how to install and run it. I hate to say this but I think at least some people who love Linux love it because it is so difficult to use. I think it's kind of an ego thing. Like they want to feel superior to the retardo Window users who would not have a chance in hell of running even the easiest 'desktop' Linux distro. It makes some people feel so very elite, but that's not what an operating system is for.
After the Windows 10 OS-as-Adware debacle I decided to finally make a serious effort at doing everything except gaming in Linux, but the people who write Linux software don't make that easy. So many of them are like, "Uh yeah I wrote this free program (it's free so stfu and don't complain!), but I don't give even the slightest fuck if even a single person besides myself ever uses it. Really. I. Don't. Care! So go read my uncommented source code with 100 different source files if you want to know how to use it or how to install it (compile from source baby!) or even what it is actually for. If you want to know why I wrote it you can go fuck yourself. No really. Go buy commercial software if you don't like it. Oh there is almost never any commercial software for Linux? Then go run Windows if you want documentation." That last bit is my point. Windows developers usually write docs or even manuals (Manuals OMG!).
I have spent weeks trying to figure out how to compile from source a linux web server I really would like to use, but I can't for the life of me figure it out. It is a massive puzzle or mystery. And no there isn't a binary available. So I had to just give up. There is however a Windows version available and I am pretty sure installing *that* version of the server would be a piece of cake. I have a Linux server though so that doesn't help me. It is open source and I have the source code so I could presum
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Obvious questions have obvious answers.
1. Businesses rely on Windows for their workforce. It has been the standard OS and the tool employees,globally, are familiar with (I use that very loosely) for decades.
2. It does what it needs to do properly.
3. Teaching people who are too retarded to use Windows to use Linux is a hilarious fantasy.
Linux OS sucks just as bad ... and with all the good features of ... REDHAT-6. That was the 1st Linux distro that completely "just worked" for casual lusrs ... and aren't we all ... and no significant improvement in Linux usability has occurred since. Naturally, the content problem still exists ... that few top-drawer discipline-specific free software have been written for Linux ... but rough-edges within the OS make this a 2nd-tier issue.
I use Linux Mint as my daily driver at work, but our home computer is, sadly, still running Windows.
Anything application or hardware runs either on Windows or Linux will work better under Linux. But there are still too many applications, and too many pieces of hardware, that do not work on Linux.
MS Marketing budget in 2018 = 1.6 Billion ...
Canonical total income for 2017 was 130 million at a $500k loss so the total they spent at all was 130.5 million and that includes headcount
Linux will be on the desktops when a company can spend 1.6 billion telling people it should be
I would love to use it. But I'm sick of my laptop not powering down properly. I'm sick of patchy driver support. I'm sick of having no educational apps for my kids to use. I'm sick of every app that works on other platforms not running the same way, or as well, on linux.
Virtualize, ya bitch.
Speaking as someone who has dual booted since around 1993 (Yggdrail plug and play Linux) ...
... These costs must be offset by something that is specific to Linux, and the things that Linux advocates speak of when talking to Windows users are often not meaningful or interesting to the latter. So the typical Windows user sees no gain.
... the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) reduces the number of such things. Various *nix tools or utilities that fit a particular task better than their Windows counterparts are now conveniently available from the Microsoft Store for free. Note that some long time Linux users are finding that WSL lets them have their *nix toolchain under Windows, that's pretty convenient for cross platform development. Kind of a repeat of what we saw with Mac OS X and the BSD console and posix API being available. Such things just make Linux less special than it used to be. In 1993 when I started using Linux it seemed a godsend, I wished I had it for undergraduate CS studies. Fortunately I had it for grad school. But today, its just less special.
Primarily, there are a lot of people that need an app or utility that is only available for Windows.
Some will argue that there are FOSS replacements for the functionality provided by these apps but most of these FOSS replacements are not Linux specific and run under Windows too. Someone wanting to save money by using Gimp does not need Linux.
Secondarily there is the network effect. As the dominant OS Windows just has more people you can ask questions, ask for help. Same for those dominant non-FOSS apps.
Related to this is virtually any hardware gizmo you might want to buy will be supported by Windows. Linux, maybe not.
In short there is a cost from switching to Linux, software availability, what others are using, compatibility,
Regarding things specific to Linux
To be VERY VERY clear, the above is strictly discussing the typical user desktop. If you want to discuss embedded or server environment, of *nix based workstation use, things are quite different than the consumer desktop.
I'm 35, an electrical engineer who has owned a PC for ~29ish years (win 3.1). I build all my own desktops and have for years, I do all the IT work for folks in my family, I am far more competent than the average user, but I'm no sysadmin. I used some linux in the early 2000s and played around with dual boots on a few occasions. I have a family so I don't get to game much, but I do play a few games from time to time, mostly use my PC for coding and A/V stuff. My most recent attempt to ditch windows was a year ago when my CPU from my old computer died, I updated my wife's PC and took her old parts and threw ubuntu onto it. I spent about 80% of my time fixing random driver issues by copying and pasting command line codes into the terminal. I tried to get a few of my games to play using virtual box and other such things (games didn't have native mode) and it was just massively troublesome and performance was terrible. After about a month of spending 3+ hours a week on random issues I had with ubuntu I decided to pull the plug, it was just too much work. After failing to get that computer running I bit the bullet, bought some new hardware and gave a dual boot windows/ubuntu a shot. Once again I ended up spending hours upon hours trying to figure out how to get windows/ubuntu to stop overwriting each other's bootloaders so that I didn't have to restart my computer with boot repair. Eventually, I just gave up and am back to using only windows. As much as people want to pretend linux desktops are ready for primetime, I just don't see it. It's possible I've just had bad luck, but I don't have infinite amounts of time to pour into making my PC work the way I want when Windows works just fine (once you disable all the random MS spyware).
I use OfficeSteam OS! It's great because it runs Microsoft Office and Steam, plus it has the best video driver support. The other OS's don't run these two killer apps nearly as well: Some don't run Microsoft Office at all, or their video drivers and Steam support aren't as good. The makers of this OS are such game fanatics that they named their Siri clone "Cortana!" I know the OS can run other things but I just use a browser for the rest.
I was a fan of Mac OS X years ago.
Still like it over windows but it's been going downhill the last few years.
Really they should stop trying to add features like windows and just keep it really light weight, robust and elegant.
Power users don't really mind running scripts on unix....
Android is the new desktop. People are ditching desktops for phones and tablets.
Windows phone already failed. Android (linux) won.
systemd
I'm not even going to read the post let alone story. There are lots of GNU/Linux users out there. It's certainly true that people still use Microsoft Windows. But that is like saying why don't people abandon Linux for Windows? People's perceptions are just wrong. When you only hang out with a certain type or group of user you'll be mislead as to what other people are actually doing. You end up in an echo chamber. There are more people using GNU/Linux today than there ever have been in the past. It's quite frustrating in fact because its led to shitty more Microsoft/Apple like changes which are WORSE for users. Philosophical differences from this migration has undermined the value of switching from these other operating systems to GNU/Linux. It's not to say that GNU/Linux overall isn't still better, but it's lost a lot of the benefits. Today there is malware because Canonical is retarded and moving away from a proven solution to software management and repository policies (ie anybody can push snap packages out, without regard for whether or not a packager can be trusted so users end up with a Microsoft-like situation where malware exists). Then we have systemd- which abandons the philosophical bedrock that is GNU/Linux: Do one thing and do it well. Among many others (do I need to point out all the privacy issues like Pocket or Amazon etc?)...
People tend to use Windows because they like it. Being preinstalled is a bonus. Linux users use Linux because they want to like it. Coming preisntalled is a problem because it probably isn't using what Graphic driver/kernel configs/Window Manager/Init system/userland that someone who wants Linux wants.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
LOL you don't know programming? Dinosaur.... they teach that to 10 yr olds these days
It's availability.
The average user isn't going to wipe Windows and install Linux. Price, software, difficulty, none of that matters, Linux could run everything faster, better, the fact is they won't because Windows was included with the system and does everything they need.
If you ask them to switch the answer is "Why?", and they are right.
You can say it's X software or Y software or anything else but that isn't really an issue because most people do not use that software or there is an alternative. If you want a good example of how it can happen take a look at Android, people use it because it came with the phone, it's there. It doesn't matter if they prefer IOS, it's an Android phone. Want them to use Linux, you need a major marketing campaign and manufacturers with system in stores. Do that and software makers will come running, but until then it's not going to happen. Android and Chrome had Google backing it, who's backing Linux?
Steam recently started converting most games to run on Linux. https://www.ghacks.net/2018/08/22/steam-improves-windows-game-support-for-linux/
quick
http://wps-community.org/
It is clear that Microsoft is spending a lot on community reviews and influencers as we are all dumping windows.
I converted my office and home computers to Linux Mint
I use both. I usually use Windows except in the laptop. Why?
It's the apps.
* The "standard" apps are mostly available in one form or another on both platforms, but the Big Names are Windows-only.
* Wine is supposed to let many Windows apps work in Linux - but it doesn't have a clean or reliable installation process, and while it worked in Mint 18, for instance, I haven't been able to get it to work in 19.
* Even where some app is available in both Windows and Linux, the Linux version is often a full version or more older, with an incompatible file format and no way for the Windows version to "save back" to the earlier one (looking at you, Gramps and GnuCash).
If I were giving a computer to my parents to do basic office stuff with Libreoffice, web surfing, and email, I wouldn't hesitate to give them Linux. My support hours would be far less. If you want to go beyond that, Windows is pretty much all there is unless you like hacking.
anyone with an IQ of 120 or less is going to have very serious problems installing and using it and that means most of our species.
I've got a USB stick in a drawer with a Kubuntu install on it. Plug it in, boot up, click "install", and it does it in about 10 minutes. If that's scary, you can click the other tile and just run it off the USB stick. It's like 85% as good as installing it.
Making that bootable stick is the hardest part. You have to download a program from the internet, insert a USB stick, and run the installer.
Most of our species aren't doing more on any device than what you listed. And anyone doing more than that is going to have to learn something, even on Windows.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Because they're abandoning Windows for Android on Linux.
On Windows, I can buy whatever mouse/keyboard/monitor/CPU/GPU/sound card/USB headphones/USB drive/etc. that I want, plug it into my PC, and it will work correctly 90% of the time. In fact, most of the time I won't even have to think about it. The other 10% of the time, I'll need to go to Windows Update (or, in very rare cases, the manufacturer's website) to get the driver... which will install itself completely automatically.
On Linux, I have to carefully research which hardware works and which doesn't; which config files I need to edit by hand; and -- if I'm feeling adventurous -- which kernel flags I need to unset to get it all to work. If I'm very lucky, my new hardware will work in some capacity; it will almost never be 100% functional, but maybe I can get it to the point where it's good enough.
This is a massive problem for everyone, but especially for gamers, who absolutely must have their GPU, monitor, audio, and network working correctly and at peak performance. This is also absolutely not a problem for ML developers, network admins, etc., who operate on clusters of 1,000 machines and couldn't care less about all of the peripherals. Guess what, though... there are way more regular users out there than AI network admins.
>|<*:=
I am typing this on a Fedora29 system. It's "Software Center" (apparently called "Discover") is a non-functional hot mess. There appear to be several diffrent software managers installed by default and they seem to all be unaware of eachother and incompatible and none of them fully functional.
Oh, and I'm running Fedora29 because I stupidly allowed the previous Fedora install to auto-update, after which it refused to ever boot again. I put in a new drive and installed a new Fedora and then put the old drive in as a second drive to recover my files before re-formatting that previous mess. NONE of this garbage in in the slightest way "friendly" for an average user.
Linux, being a volunteer effort, is plagued by a version of the tragedy of the commons . In the case of Linux, developers appear to focus on the stuff that particularly interests them or the stuff where they have what they think is a spiffy new idea, and the most basic functionality and useability is completely neglected. It's 2019 and Linux is only now able to play an MP3 file by default - but it still cannot play most video files unless you monkey-about with repository settings and then perform a list of functions to install goofball-named obscure files from unknown repositories on the other side of the planet (I once had a person misunderstand me an think Linux involved "suppositories"...) We still do not have a good standard audio setup, including a good audio API that supports both open- and closed- source programs. We still do not have any decent support for printers and printing (going through a Web Browser? SERIOUSLY? how do you explain THAT to an average user????).
Oh, but there's new desktop and GUI stuff with every release! You may not be able to figure out how to make your printer work on Linux, but those desktop windows sure fade-in and out and snap to edges nicely!
Linux will NEVER take over the desktop, no matter how evil and obnoxious Windows gets, as long as using Linux is such a complete pain in the posterior and such a mystifying and confusing experience for a typical user.
(Oh, and please kill-off the evil idea that an end user wants "help" from either a manpage, or from a webpage loaded from a remote webserver that may not even be accessible to the user! Help files are, by definition, a sign that something is WRONG, so they need to be local and the assumption must be that one of the problems might involve the lack of a high speed internet connection [doh!].
The Linux community needs to switch off the stupid, get out of the geek bubble, and consider the needs of a typical user.
It was a bit of drama, but within a few days everyone was find. No one complaints now.
Productivity is up
Less reboots, no complaints about my computer is not working.
...we've spent years learning all the little quirks and nooks and crannies of Windows, and don't want to do it all over again for another OS of dubious added value only to lose access to Windows-specific games unless we want to go thru the pain of trying to make some damned emulator or other workaround work to get back what we already have working right now. And then there's Photoshop - first search for this returns, "Mar 23, 2018 - You can install Photoshop on Linux and run it using a virtual machine or Wine." Why do I have to VM or Wine? Why not native? I read something like that and expect all kinds of quirky problems. These programs are screwball enough just learning them in the environment for which they were made, let alone learning them and, when it doesn't work, having to wonder, "Is that Photoshop not working, or is it the VM, Wine, or Linux itself?
Why buy into a pile of problems and months or years of getting good at another OS as much as you already are good on Win 10?
And, I just got a new scanner. It came with a software key printed on the bottom of the scanner that contained "1"'s, only they were capital i's, and it took a while to figure that out. Throw in possible problems from a VM or Wine and/or Linux on top of it? Why have to chase 3 - 4 sources of problems when you can limit them to 2 in the environment for which the software was written?
Anyway, that's why...
I used to run Linux in the pre-OSX days and still run linux on my laptop. My desktop will never run it again however.
Yes, linux distributions often have a software repository. So does Windows 10. It's called the Windows Store. The difference with Windows, however, is that it isn't an exercise of installing 5 different programs one after another in an attempt to find one that isn't so buggy it's useless for your needs.
I don't care about customizable desktops. I want a reasonable default where I can get work done.
I get better battery life in Windows 10 than linux on my laptop.
Windows comes on PCs. Most people never have to pay for Windows.
Now, to other places Windows excels: If a new AAA title is coming out, it's going to run best on Windows. It might not even be available for linux and the linux drivers don't have the performance of Windows.
If a new piece of hardware comes out, I can go buy it and use it. I don't have to know anything about its internals or anything else. I can just use it. If it comes with software, it will run on my computer.
If I use some internet service, I don't have to wait a year for linux to catch up and support it. I don't have to jump through hoops. It's going to be tested with Windows and work with it. If I have any problems, the company will provide support.
Linux was great in the early days. Now it's focused more on features than fixing bugs. The whole thing is a bugfest
Just sell the Windows key you got with your laptop to a friend. Sure, it's against the license. Fuck 'em, the key still works, you know it's genuine and you aren't going to be using it, so why the hell not?
I think it's as simple as that. While Linux has gotten much easier to install there are times when you have to get under the covers to fix or enhance things. For less sophisticated users - and let's face it, most users are unsophisticated - it will be seen as a chore. For people that work in an office, most of them are using Windows at work. I have tried using Macs and Linux laptops in Windows shops and while most things work fine there are some incompatibilities.
For home use though, Linux is great. Fast, secure, and nobody is spying on me (we're talking about you, Microsoft).
The same reason Trump is President, people are lazy and stupid...and they don't care.
Because, Linux is still unfriendly to the newcomer. I tried to install Ubuntu on my server but the whole setup was plagued with the usual bad video driver problems - it's a server, and it has a minimal Quadro card that was hot back in 2005.
For those people that are screaming "You should have bought the AMD BLAHXXX card, retard" then that's where your problem is - Linux people talk down to lay folk because they still carry that ego of being some sort of Hackers Angelina Jolie blackhat uber hack anything mentality. The average user doesn't need to know how virtual memory works.
You don't need to understand the physics of a transistor to boot Windows and just do stuff. That's where Linux fails.
I was thinking of moving my home router/server to a non x86 linux box and the syntax for iptables is terrible compared to OpenBSD's packet filter.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Compatibility, compatibility, compatibility.
Table-ized A.I.
Why do people use Windows, and aren't flocking to switch to Linux?
Ultimately people think of Windows as being more reliable. May or may not be true, but perception is reality.
1) People are used to windows, technology has become too complicated. We have to remember so many things. The alternative? People cling to something that they are used to.
2) People know where to go in windows when they want to update their drivers, partition and mount a drive, look at files. This is similar to point #1. People are used to it, and know how to find things in windows. If you can't find something Windows has a good search functionality for that too.
3) The average person doesn't like going to the command line. Cool, I'll learn that, you think. Then after trying for an hour to get some software setup, or BTRFS and a file share setup, then you just lose interest. There are a thousand different things documented online about Linux, and you have to trudge through those to figure it out. Too much information, and too complicated.
4) People on Linux forums are a mixed bag. Maybe I just had a bad experience? Lately I was writing on a Linux forum asking for help on what should have arguably been a working feature in a Linux distribution. Being able to read SMART data from a hard drive. There were some issues with my experience,
a) It should have just worked. It would have just worked on windows (perhaps this is true, and perhaps this is not true, but perception is reality)
b) The person was rude to me. He didn't have the attitude that he was there to help me, he had the attitude that I was being a pain and should be able to figure it out myself, or that I should spend hours trudging through other forums finding the info I needed. He was annoyed that I wasn't able to read between the lines on what he was saying to me. It was too technical, and I wasn't going to spend a lot of time viewing the code samples he was showing me.
5) Linux is fragmented. There are too many distributions. How can I expect consistency if there are so many packages, UI managers. It is not united
6) Linux is unreliable. Times I have tried to switch over, and a couple of things happen. Programs crash, and weird things start happening. It just takes one bad experience like that to kill people's impression or opinion on Linux.
7) Perception is reality. People think of Windows as being the software that just works. Sometimes that's not true, but as I say, perception is reality.
Linux is a great server. It's reliable if you have a fixed task like webserver, or fileserver. But it's not a great desktop operating system for most average users.
I'm sorry to say, but this isn't going to change with the current direction that Linux is going in.
The one and only reason that people should use Windows today is the absolutely massive library of software that it supports. Unfortunately, that's also the most important reason for a user to choose any operating system - a computer is only as good as the software it runs, and that goes for the OS too. It's a lesson that repeats itself endlessly throughout the history of the personal computer, and it's just as true today as it was back at the dawn of the information age. Yet somehow, Linux proponents never get the memo, or far more likely, they choose to ignore it instead.
I don't even know where to begin with this, since pretty much every alternative software package on offer from the Linux community is inadequate in at least one crucial respect when compared to the application that it's supposed to be replacing. It doesn't matter if you can technically do the exact same stuff with the alternative application, if that's even possible - what matters is that it does the job not just as good as its closest competitor, but better. That's how you convince people to make the switch. To give a great example, I'm actually rather fond of Libre Office. It's a powerful productivity suite, and it offers a compelling feature set that puts it, if not on par with Microsoft Office, then pretty close - but that's actually the problem with it. It doesn't do anything that would make me consider it worth the trouble of replacing Microsoft Office on all of the computers at my workplace, teaching all of our users how to do their work with it, and so on. This is especially true now that Office 365 is a thing - say what you want about the obvious, grubby cash grab that is 'software as a service', but it's pretty darn convenient. If Libre Office were as approachable as Microsoft Office to the average user, and it did everything just as good as Microsoft Office does, that would be great, but it's still not enough. It has to actually do more, and it has to actually be easier to maintain, or else it's just not going to be worth the trouble.
That's the best of a bad lot, though. Libre Office is a giant success story compared to the likes of pretty much any Open Source multimedia editing tool except for Audacity and Blender. I used to give Blender a hard time for being way, way too finicky and confusing for any sane person to approach, but they're making big strides these days: A non-expert user can pick this program up and learn it now, and actually do some pretty decent work with the tools it provides. Audacity fills a very particular niche for recording, basic audio editing, that sort of thing, and it's pretty much hassle-free - at least, when your audio drivers actually work in Linux. Then you have programs like GIMP and Inkscape, and the less said about those the better. Linux packages can't even seem to get basic stuff like drivers down pat, things that have been almost completely painless in Microsoft Windows for over a decade now, and the applications for the most part don't fare any better. At best, they're only just as good as the program that you already have, which you're already familiar with, and which you're already happy to use and don't want to abandon. At worst, they're a bunch of square pegs being recommended for round holes, even when far more appropriately shaped pegs are available in the Open Source software library.
The state of the world of Linux applications and how they fare against the incumbent competition reflects something that I and everyone else with more than two braincells to rub together have noticed about the overall user experience on your typical Linux desktop, and that's complete ignorance of the needs, desires, and most importantly the standards of the person in front of the keyboard. Meeting the high bar that modern applications have set isn't easy and it isn't cheap, but if you ignore it, you're never going to win. Microsoft Windows consistently dominates its competition because it can be all things to all people, and how it got there doesn't matter. Linux is still playing
Or, you know, I can single boot into Windows and it does literally everything. I'm not a pedantic cultist or the owner of a tinfoil hat, so I don't need to dual boot into a redundant and shittier option.
Also try cutting off your balls. It will accomplish roughly as much.
In spite of being more usable and accessible than ever, Linux is STILL not refined enough for mainstream use. Of course nerds will protest, forgetting that they take their own expertise for granted. People still use Windows because that's the level they are at, and they aren't going to be enrolling in courses anytime soon. And it's *fine*. If you love Linux, use it, but understand that most people aren't geeks and have no desire to be regardless of what their Instagram may say to the contrary.
My IQ is 144 and Linux is fucking retarded. I want to get shit done.. Not jack off for half a day trying to make something work that takes 30 seconds on windows.
People who want to feel smart use Linux, but they're demonstrably the dumbest motherfuckers in the room.
Hyper-V can't do CEPH with out iscis & updates suck with the 2016 and newer auto updates suck.
watching HD video (say, YouTube) in Windows - 10% CPU
same on Linux - 200% CPU (2 cores x 100%)
Visual Studio or Geany, Firefox Quantum or Chromium.
You're welcome.
"because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
This fails the logic test, Linux is less targeted because less people use it. It this is so then how do you explain that most of the commercial web is run on some variant of Linux and still is rarely hacked.
Mint. Finding resources onlinr to help with linux problems is easier. Makefiles are standard and doc have README and INSTALL. Granted, not for average grandma to fix issues, but half of your complaints are also strengths.
Windows is universal, uniform, boring, and everybody can use it. That means that if you want to sell computers or software you can reach 75% of the market if you pick Windows. And if you are a business who wants to hire people without computer science degrees to do something then pretty much everyone these days can use Windows, Office, Outlook, Chrome/Edge and your recruiting and training costs are smaller
Linux has great diversity. That is fantastic for people who want to pick their own kernel, drivers, systemd or init, windows system, window manger, desktop, libraries, package manager and applications, and have the knowledge to assemble and administer such a system. It's a pain in the arse for everyone else. Which set of those variables are you going to use or target? It's a nightmare for businesses. Often with computers it is simply easier to go with what everyone has and knows. Just about good enough and universal is better than the superior technology that hardly anyone uses. That is why Javascript and PHP are still highly popular.
For the last 25 years converts to Linux have been raving about how Linux is free, secure, diverse and it should replace Windows when it isn't even going to replace MacOS. And free doesn't matter because there isn't large enough Linux market for large manufacturers to target (Dell and others tried). So the marginal cost of a Windows licence is effectively zero because you have to buy a computer with it. Switching to a subscription model would provide an economic incentive to switch to Linux and be a mistake by Microsoft. Security doesn't matter much either, if you run a Windows machine with the default settings and don't do anything risky, you are unlikely to get hacked, and you can cope in the unlikely event if you are prepared.
I use Windows mostly because it comes on the computers I buy, it does what I need: run Chrome and one application that doesn't run well under WINE. There are no Linux applications I need there isn't something available for Windows, even if its an inferior port of the Linux software. Windows has fallen from 90% to 75% of the desktop market over the last 5 years, but the winner hasn't been Linux it's been Other (iOS, Android etc.).
How has slashdot come to this, reduced to spouting anti-Linux MICROS~1 propaganda.
The biggest reason for many companies is that Adobe CSS doesn't run on Linux.
My iq is 145, and I think Mac OS is the way to go. I look down on brainlets like you and your plebeian OS preferences.
Sorry Linux fanbois but linux will *never* be mainstream.
Linux is awesome if you're a sysadmin. If you're a regular user not so much.
There is another flavor of unix that competes just fine with windows and is much better for regular users: Mac OS.
Make linux as easy to install and maintain as Mac OS and then maybe.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Honestly, it's more interesting to discuss why this topic keeps getting brought up than the actual topic itself. Re the original topic, it's pretty much a dead horse at this point: Linux is objectively bad for people who want something which just works (especially for the last 10% cases). That's the main issue, it's always been the main issue, it hasn't gotten any better over the last 15 years, it's unlikely to ever get better, end of story.
So why does this horse keep getting dug up and beaten again every few years? Are the hardcore Linux supporters simply delusional? Is there some marketing push to get more people onto Linux? Is it just a Slashdot thing (ie: keeping the dream alive, even though it's been dead for decades)? Is there any new reason to think the status quo will ever change? Why is this "news"?
Denial.
If any OS has been around for 25+ years and is still struggling to hold on to 1% desktop market share, it's a clear indication that people don't like it. When mainstream users tell Linux fanatics why it sucks, the community refuses to acknowledge that the problems exist, let alone try to fix them. Every day, Linux people tell me there's no reason why it can't dominate the desktop world and you never have to go into a command prompt to do anything... and anyone who says otherwise is citing information that's 10 years out of date. Then you run into a problem, and the only solution is to go to a command prompt and type something.
The first problem Linux needs to solve is "DLL Hell", a problem that Linux people keep jeering about but was solved in the Windows world more than 20 years ago. We have dozens of package managers for the dozens of package managers to install the build environments for the package managers for the scripting languages that create the package managers for the updaters for the installers of the package managers, most of which install directly off the Internet unless you create a local repository, which is easy enough for any normal person to do, of course. Wow. Who knew that copying files from one directory to another was such a complex problem?
... I don't switch... because...
Short answer: experience with windows.
Long answer:
I know what I get with Windows sort of... I know all of the technologies... sort of... I know NTFS...
It has been reliable for a long time... bare some child sickness bugs...
I know ms-dos and it's command.
With linux I know jack shit...
I don't know how well it works...
I read reports about serious bugs in it.
Linux distro GUI seems somewhat flickerish and shaky at time but I can live with that.
Tried linux in the past... didn't live up to it's promise of being more efficient for old machines.
Tried it on new machine via bootable CD that was somewhat impressive...
Still concerned that it might have multi-threading issues when writing to files. Seems silly though since it's used for servers and data centers and what not, though not entirely sure about that... maybe not... maybe unix more used.
Basically Linux would introduce huge ammounts of uncertainty... fear and doubts ! Except the funny part is the FUD is REAL ! LOL.
I will do so when the software I need shows up in Linux. I know you have plenty of spreadsheets and image editors to choose from. When a usable CAD program and some kind of accounting solution finally gets conjured up, gimme a call.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Given that most of the complexity and PITAness in software stems from feature creep, and feature creep is simply the result of some people demanding that feature, while most of the other users don't want it, it was for a long time a benefit of Linux, that nobody liked it.
Take for instance the much hated systemd. For some people it solves the major problem of dealing with complex init dependencies in uncertain conditions and they would not want to do without. For others this is exactly the opposite of what's happening and systemd is a problem in itself.
Similar things can be observed at the application level, with professional spreadsheet, CAD, graphics and audio software definitely leading the field: All of them have many thousands features, but every user deems a different subset of them essential. Thus they cannot simply use the open source alternatives, which still lack some of these features. Whereas I would not even run libreoffice, since everything too complex for gnumeric calls for a script and I enjoy the ultrafast startup times.
In this sense, a small userbase is an asset, not a liability. Like many things in live, it's more a concave relationship. Too little users and your project is dead, too many users and it starts to become an unwieldy beast.
They don't want to. No one cares about computers anymore. Only phones matter. A PC is a device to bring work home and type papers and do taxes. Windows has Microsoft Office. Linux doesn't.
No one runs operating systems. They run apps and the OS is just a screen for the app. Linux nerds do not get this as the focus is learning and fighting the OS. People just don't give a shit alnor want to be a System Administrator. Just let them use Excel
http://saveie6.com/
All are over $10m budgets. That's AAA.
Plenty of AAA titles suck or had shit sales. AAA isn't analogous to platinum (selling 1m records).
Despite the pretending on here, it doesn't run most of the software that people and organisations want to use. Change that and Linux will start to make serious inroads.
Windows is cruddy and unreliable on the desktop. Outlook is probably the world's worst email client (calendar is okay, though), and simple things like moving files around is slow and if you're shifting more than about 30GB, liable to crash.
But people like what they know and most people who use Windows don't really use it for anything more than a bit of web-browsing, nor are they capable of doing anything more complex.
I hate to say this but I think at least some people who love Linux love it because it is so difficult to use.
I find your hypothesis preposterous.
Desktop linux works. I've been running it for the past 5 years. It works so well that the only reason people don't go into it is fear. There are a few rather annoying skillsets that one needs to pick up though. Not least of which is how networking works on linux distros. The other pretty interesting reason why casual users don't use linux is the applications are mostly windows only, and the fact that most linux documentation out there is pretty much outdated. And stackoverflow answers generally might not fit into the scheme of how you view linux. I'm not knocking other OSes, they have their uses, but if users want to try, they need to:
in general
1. take 2 usb sticks.
2. load one with the live iso
3. boot into the live iso
4. if they're happy with it, install into the other usb sticks
4.1 immediately they're faced with the problem of how to format their drives, which if you've never done it before, getting gparted wrong will wipe out the original harddrive, making it a little ho hum when it comes down to how to proceed.
4.2 Strangely enough the partitioning wizard will only take wiping out the original drive as a default one click install. Anything else requires going through partitioning and formatting by hand. Not so friendly for a newcomer. If there was a way of one click install on an external drive, that would improve on the take up rate
5. After rebooting, networking rears it's ugly head. On the net, there are countless ways of achieving networking. In linux, you could use networkmanager, service scripts, ifconfig, iproute2, systemd, commands in rc.local and so on. The first time user is going to be baffled by all this, especially once the network goes down. The documentation out there on how to deal with all this is too fragmented. The casual user isn't going to want to know all the nuances of systemd tweaking the resolv.conf or how the distro is migrating to some other newfangled underlying subsystem. Getting relevant information on the distros quirks will greatly improve takeup.
Well hope that helps
1. must be dumbed down enough for people who didn't do PhD in CS to understand and use ...
2. it must 'just work with all the programs user needs'. And no 'magic error messages' that tell you nothing in you are not expert
3. people are not really motivated/no time or energy to learn all this crap required in 1.,2.
4. see 3 again and think about it
Quite simple really.. Bill gives better head than Linus..
Depending on the industry and where a business is in its growth, there is an increasing number of applications that are going the way of web-based access (which are generally not OS dependent). However, centralized administration and enterprise-level scalability with ease of administration are critically important aspects, all of in which Microsoft excels (and no one else compares. And, even when not considering these factors, some industries line of business applications only exist as Windows applications (in example, think dental software).
When it comes to these things, Microsoft wins. No one comes close to matching up. That is simply the fact. However, when it comes to deep back-end implementations (storage, databases, networking, SIEM, backup appliances, and other) Linux-based systems have significant enough advantages to win over a Windows-based system. This isn't always the case but from what I have seen this is applicable to most cases. Microsoft is trying to regain some territory in this area with the advent of Windows Server 2019 through new and some improved datacenter-centric features and functions.
If Linux wants to win the Desktop, Linux will have to win in business first. Linux already has a place in the server arena, but to win it all Linux will have to put on a marketing hat, improve its productizationability, and get vendors to support Linux (good luck with that - it isn't cost effective for all but for applications in the enterprise-class that are mission critical, and most businesses are nowhere near being 'enterprise-class'). In addition to vendors, Linux is going to have to step out of the primitive free-for-all anti-communism mentality and pick up game with lucrative, powerful, easy to administer and manage, centralized feature and functionality sets on a level high enough to give Active Directory & Gang a run for the money. This kind of thing is not going to be free (it is impossible to support these kind of feature sets for free without any form of continued active development and enterprise-level support). You're going to have to bring in these "big brother" features that all the fear mongerers in the Linux community despise.
The listed benefits of using Linux over Windows seem superficial. If they are the reasons I can see why people stick to Windows.
Restart - Windows now need a lot less restart and restart is only a minor inconvenience which most people can live with.
Windows "tries to serve a variety of market.." - What does Linux do exactly if not 10x more than Windows?
"Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware" - so is DOS 3.3.
If you think putting an ISO file in a FTP server is enough to reach people you are wrong. People don't consume OS's they consume products. Like computers and smartphones. Right now nobody is selling computers with Linux and if they do they do through a web and nobody is taking people to those pages. Do you want Linux to reach people on the streets? Then create the product and sell it like Apple does, otherwise STFU because writting shit about Windows and crying about Linux not being popular in Twitter isn't going to do shit.
That's true but I think a lot of people don't switch because there is a ton of commercial software that is available on Windows but not Linux and many of us need some of this software for work. There is also the Windows Subsystem for Linux which lets you use commercial software and develop, run and test code under Linux without rebooting or the overhead of a VM.
It's like 85% as good as installing it.
You see it's crap like that that gives Linux a bad name. No it's not 85% as good. It's barely 20% as good. It gives you a nice OS wonderfully out of date with a complicated system to store resident files while at the same time being painfully slow.
Running Linux from a USB stick has it's place but claiming it's 85% of anything even remotely resembling a desktop workspace just serves to reinforce the idea that opensource zealots are just pushing an agenda rather than actually presenting a serious product.
... are still strong reasons to stick with Windows.
People will skip generic Linux and move straight to chrome os, but that will still take a few years. Unless chrome os devices continue to rise in price and continue to ask 1000 Euros for a laptop with 64gb storage (no joke).
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
They're abandoning for the BSD's, since they offer a more stable long term platform as an OS base for applications to build compared to Linux's distro and kernel breakage of the year club, and Copyright terms that are more free than Linux's.
thats an idiotic bullshit statement, text editing and browsers are a far better experience under linux.
Linux font rendering sucks. Unless you're into gigantic fonts text editing is the last thing I would want to do on Linux unless it was from a text mode console or a remote shell running from a windows system.
Seriously quality of Linux font rendering is totally unacceptable.
Disclaimer , I use a variety a linux flavor for work, red hat, arch linux, manjaro, ubuntu. While Linux ahs made stride forward here are reason why I will NOT change to linux at home. I will eliminate the self evident reason of software collection which even with wine could not be fully ported.
/etc
* Arcane update process which can break a system. Last week I broke my arch linux because of a frigging partial update (not sure it was my fault I could not tell you what I did differently from usual - sudo pacman -Syu). Windows update CAN and DO break system , but nowhere as often as linux.
* driver installation woe. Beside the problem with proprietary driver I had an update one time which completely broke my sound on gnome. Currently on my manjaro I have youtube playing one single video correctly, then the next one is utter robotic garbage.
* network installation was far away from plug and play. What was it again ensp0 ? Can't recall the name, it would not recognize proxy and stuff, so had to manually edi a file in
* woe with usb and learning to mnt and fsk.
* one MAJOR pet peeve : Spending a day on a problem with a variety of linux page telling me to learn to read the man in a variety of colorful way. Linux community as a whole use terminology and long winded text with so many option 90% will not use and is downright unfriendly , growling at a hint of wanting an easy solution. Yes sure I could spend 1 hour reading a man and every single option. I do that at work. Joe random ? no so much.
* installation isn't as friendly as windows. Sure I can install package around and sudo pacman stuff but it is nowhere as friendly as windows. It isn't about user being idiot it is user recognizing they can spend their time better than learning useless stuff they don't need. Every minute fighting the system, is a minute I did not spend with my children, wife, dogs.
* UI is inconsistent, a jumble of software and some stuff need CLI. This is not about CLI being more efficient or more frightening, this is about drag/drop/click being easier for people to use and learn. *children* can learn good GUI. *even adult* struggle with CLI.
Part of what I said above is about manufacturer not doing open source, but as a whole ? It is about linux making some nice advance to being user friendly, but STILL being nowhere 100000 miles near the user friendliness of windows. Part of it is that people don't want to lose the flexibility of linux, part of it is that to reach that friendliness would mean decades of development and standardization which would probably break down at the next linux kernel change. Personally I have given up on that ever hapening, and I am satisfied when nothing break down at work.
What are you talking about? No one cares.
Updates just are, they take a short time and are done. Most users don't give a shit. It's mildly annoying on a rare occasion but for the desktop computer at home where you have a choice there's always the opportunity for an update to magically apply without ever bugging you. Linux is far more invasive in that regard.
Cost? Windows doesn't cost anything. It's free. It just magically is there on every computer I have. Buy one from the HP website, I have magic windows. Buy a computer from Bestbuy, magic windows. It's as free as Mac which also magically shows up on Mac. Why should I change from one "free" system to another system just because it's actually free, and after I've already paid for my first "free" system? Users don't care about a cost they don't directly see.
Malware? How does Linux stop me from having my Facebook account password leaked? I mean sure I get plenty of viruses sent my way, I can find them in my gmail inbox but for some reason I can't open them or download them. Even so you're entire argument boils down to "no one uses this so we're not a target, please come join us and make us a target".
Your arguments are complete nonsense in the eyes of the people you don't understand. So let me answer your title question: Why do people not abandon an OS in favour of another? Because they don't care!.
Sidenote: You don't reboot your computer? Do you not like security? I get it Linux never needs rebooting. ***fires up putty****
Authenticating with public key "rsa-key-20150627"
Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-43-generic x86_64)
*** System restart required ***
No mail.
Last login: Sun Apr 7 21:59:21 2019 from 192.168.2.109
~# uptime
09:01:36 up 7 days, 11:47, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.26, 0.63
Well shit looks like a security update came through this week and I need to reboot my magical Linux computer.
You're absolutely right of course. Windows is a bit of a toy OS for games.
Parent might be flamebait, but it rings true.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Gaming on Linux is an inferior experience. I flat out could not play everything that I currently play on there.
Recently I set up my older dad a new NUC8i3BEH with Linux Mint, Macbuntu + Docky theme and a 4k monitor, setup in HiDPI fashion, as he was using previous Win7 computer for browsing 99% of the time. Since then I haven't received a single complaint about viruses/weird popups to execute files etc. He is even more happy as I increased the size of the fonts to 117%, which was optimum for him (you can't do that exact adjustment on Windows 7). So he got rid of a miditower in favor of a tiny NUC placed right underneath the monitor and has a stable Linux without worries about virues; yet browsing with Firefox runs as before.
Opening any resource intensive app under Linux (Popcorn Time) see's the desktop grind to a halt whilst the application opens - I don't see this under Windoze so I presume the M$ guys have done a lot of work on a more dynamic scheduler.
1. fear of the unknown.
2. too many distros making it so confusing to choose
3. pick the wrong distro and you will have to create your own partitions which will scare off potential users. not all distros will auto create partitions like ubuntu.
*fewer people are using Linux
Either you do little to nothing with your Linux installation: just browsing, email, and some text editing
Congratulation, you have successfully described what most of our species usually does with a computer ! ( <- you can substitute that with "smartphone" to keep up with times, if you want. But it boils down to the same thing for most average Joes).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
not being installed in the PDF as it should. The USA allows fonts to be copyrighted, so Linux cannot include them unless they pay for a license and then require purchase of a license to use it, which isn't possible. The PDF allows substitute fonts. but does not supply a requirement of info to supply a suitable one, so when Linux susbtitutes a font, it is liable to be a different size and render the image garbled, since PDFs are usually abused to demand that something starts precisely HERE.
of other people's stuff, right? The Office tools are clones of the Wordperfect stuff, etc. It's just that you've got the "Apple Innovation" delusion for Microsoft: when THEY do it off someone else's work, they are innovating it, but if someone points out a prior version from someone else, you neither bother to remember it nor accept it, finding an excuse why it's "not the same thing".
Plus you fucking annoying twats keep whining "But I don't know how to USE the linux version!!!! It's all different from the Windows one I'm used to!!!! They HAVE TO copy the placement and keys and functions, or I cannot use it and therefore the Linux versions are CRAP!!!!!". And with the same breath you'll also demand they not copy Microsoft....
And you will proclaim this isn't a windows problem but a problem with the driver (it wasn't signed, but it was written for Win7). Yet here you are whining about a Wine problem and suddenly it IS an OS problem!!!
Do you have Home? 64 or 32? Professional? Game? Ultimate? Server? SP1,2, 3 or 4? Do you have WinXP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10? For some windows programs, are you licensed for the 4 core 2 processor system? What cores/processor do you HAVE?!?!?!?
On occasion you HAVE TO reinstall. You also need to find and download and install (and click to tell Microsoft that it's your fault, not theirs, if it fucks up now) all the updates for drivers and the base OS from the get-go. Package managers remove almost all of that from Linux. So your case is ONLY true if you don't install shit to update and if something doesn't work out of the box on Windows (or stops working) you stop using it.
is why we know people are Windows shills. No, he said 85% as good. Not 20%. That you completely and fatously overstate your opinion as if it were fact proves you have no care nor shame about lying in public, because you're defending a powerful corporation, a holy item, against a free therefore non capitalist, therefore commuinist (because there can only ever be two options, one clearly BAD the other one clearly GOOD, and, strangely enough, your preferred one too).
I assume you have something like Intel built-in graphics which runs Linux desktop just fine. Put in an Nvidia graphics card and give the virtual machine exclusive access to it. Make it output the screen in the VM window or a separate gaming screen as you prefer. You now have a Linux machine for your desktop that you can play games on.
I tried to install Linux on an old Macook once. Bought a nice big flash drive to boot off of and everything. I found out that Macbooks don't like that, and I quickly gave up.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
macOS is the only alternative that has a reasonable chance to beat windows out of the marketplace.
I've abandoned Linux on the desktop in favor of macOS for many happy years now. Gone are the days where I fight with the kernel to get some module installed or resolve dependencies. I'm still running all my servers on Linux and can't think of a better alternative. But on the desktop? I've seen several non-IT people up close (i.e. family and good friends) trying to jump from windows to either Linux or Mac. The Linux ones were largely failures and all but one went back after some time. The Mac ones were largely successful and created a much lower support burden for me.
Linux won't replace windows. It's been trying for two decades where it was always the next year that will be the year of Linux on the Desktop. We've been through a dozen window managers, some (like E) definitely more interesting, powerful and beautiful than windows, some bare-bones, some competing standards (who remembers the Gnome vs. KDE wars?), some attempts to copy windows, some attempts to copy NeXT (I still have a sweet spot for windowmaker in my heart), some completely new ideas.
None of them had any measurable success. None of the Wine and Parallels have impacted the windows stranglehold. Here's a chart from 2013 to 2019 - Linux barely appears: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Do you know what's eating Microsofts lunch? Android. As soon as you include smartphones and tablets, windows is a minority player in the market. But on the desktop, macOS has ten times the market share of Linux. Forget Linux on the Desktop, after 20 years it's time to get off the dead horse.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Try it with XP. Or Vista. No, it only works if you buy new stuff with a New OS. And how many bits of kit stopped working when you were updated automatically to 10? Did you suddenly go back in time and not buy it, or is your claim about buying new stuff and it just works (tm) on Windows a load of horseshit?
You probably have very low requirements. Professionals need real tools, not toys.
You're TOO DUMB to understand extensions, so it hides them. You're TOO DUMB to understand what those directories are for, so it hides them (and virus/trojan writers have used these), you're TOO DUMB to operate the computer so Windows will decide for you.
Of course, when it comes to liability, Windows knows you're too dumb to notice that they make you click to take the blame for Windows deciding to do something stupid, like when you uninstall and a DLL doesn't get used any more, it goes "Hey, I can't tell if this isn't really used, despite that being WHAT THE FUCKING OS INSTALLER IS SUPPOSED TO DO, so you have to say it is fine to remove so I can't be blamed if something breaks", or "This program you downloaded to install is going to do stuff on your computer, like, say, install itself, so do you want to give it all permissions to the OS so it can install and do anything else? I have to ask, so that YOU are blamed when this thing installs spyware, not me. Cheers!".
Hell, the OS insists on polluting GB upon GB into the C drive (it won't fucking put it anywhere else, because that might screw up other programs that MS had written assuming the C drive was the primary and only drive) for each update in case you want to roll back. Even if it's 20 prior updates ago and it won't let you roll back that far. Because you're TOO DUMB to be trusted with their OS.
And that's not me calling you TOO DUMB, it is Microsoft claiming you are when they wrote up the OS for use by you: they assumed you are TOO DUMB to be trusted to operate their OS and wrote it to hide "scary stuff" like file extensions, etc.
people don't really care and don't want to put in the effort of installing anything else on their pc.
it's not only with computers, but basically with everything. when they buy a car and it comes with a pos build-in radio, they will not bother replacing it with a better unit. a browser included with the OS may be the worst thing ever, but most people won't do the effort of installing a better one. changing lightbulbs with led lights might be better for power consumption & environment but most people won't change unless they are forced to do so, and the list goes on and on...
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Yes, your average windows user knows just how to "start typing away" and not fuck things up. This is the attitude that keeps Linux from succeeding in the home market.
So I should create a back up for every time I change a setting, just in case it borks my system? No thanks. That's something the OS should handle gracefully, not by doing a full restore from backup.
https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html this is the most complete list of real Linux issues which prevent its mass doption.
Updates on Linux are fast and "rarely call for a restart" -- and are also more complete. "Updates are typically downloaded through a 'Software Updater' application that not only checks for operating system patches, but also includes updates for the programs that you've installed from the repository."
Updates on Windows take me about half an hour every six months or so, so I guess that counts as 'rarely call for a restart' too.
Shit, I spend more time updating the Linux subsystem for Windows than I do the main OS.
I'm also very comfortable with updating the applications I use only when I'm ready. I don't need everything updating at once, and anyway, my experience is that Linux distributions only update a subset of the applications so this point isn't even entirely true.
Windows "tries to serve a variety of markets...cramming in a scattered array of features" -- and along those lines, that Microsoft "has gradually implemented monetization schemes and methods for extracting user data." And yet you're still paying for that operating system, while Linux is less bloated and "free forever."
You can disable many of the features in Windows if you don't wish to use them.
I don't mind paying for good software. Windows 10 is bloody good software.
Except for the monetisation and data slurp. That's a very legitimate complaint and one that does fucking annoy me. Which is why I've asked the UK ICO to investigate this illegal activity by Microsoft.
"Because less people use Linux, the platform is less targeted by malware and tends to be more secure than Windows"
"Because Linux is shit people can't be arsed to hack it" isn't really an advert. I don't get malware on Windows either though, so it's not really a differentiator for me.
Much more relevant is the point made by half the people posting here, which is that "Because fewer people use Linux, software functionality needed and used daily by millions is unavailable". That's the differentiator. That's the one that matters.
...umm... because it's not dumbed down enough for the mass idiots. They only want something that works. They want to install a program easily and not deal with issues. Linux, if you are honest, is not that easy. Sometimes it is.... but a lot of times you have to deal with dependencies etc....and when you do come across an issue the learning curve is much higher than windows.
...this time it's really gonna happen. Not like the 25 other yearly Slashdot posts proclaiming that
Super cereal
Are you for real?
Because no matter how hard people try to make Linux accessible, it isn't.
I'm certainly not a "n00B" when it comes to computers; at the same time I'm not a "power user" of any particular platform. I build my own PCs, I code (mainly in C#, but have learned C++ and a number of other languages). I'm probably as close as you'll get to someone "ripe for conversion".
But whenever I've given Linux a try - which I have done on more than one occasion - I've not had a good experience. The first time my graphics card wouldn't work, despite it being a pretty common Nvidia model. Another time it was my sound card that just wouldn't make any noise. A third time everything worked perfectly but with no network connection. Great. That's nul points for a basic installation on common hardware there.
And you know what? When I asked for help, the general reply was "cut & paste this code" or "type 'sudo [something]' in a terminal window". No-one explained WHY I should do that, they just offered random things to try. None of which worked, of course.
People want something that works and that they understand. My mother isn't an expert by a long way, but she knows how to investigate a number of problems, the vast majority of which are solved with a look at "control panel" and a couple of clicks. But ask her to start typing code into a window and she'll switch the damn thing off.
LINUX fans can't have it both ways. You can't tell me the system is "infinitely more flexible than Windows" AND say that "it's easy to use". No, you have an admittedly highly-customisable system that when something doesn't work quite as it should requires either a huge amount of learning, OR a huge amount of trust in the forum where you've just found the proposed solution to your problem is cutting and pasting half a page of code that you don't understand.
Also, every time I've said to a LINUX fan "So... I'd like to give LINUX a try," they immediately start boasting of the benefits of their favourite "flavour". The average user doesn't care about the differences between Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Dubuntu, Arch Ubuntu, Red Trilby, Arsecandle and Fetid Puma Goblin, they want "the best one". If you can't even tell someone who says they'll use a PC for gaming and browsing the internet which is "the best version" (without a three-hour discussion ending with six or seven choices narrowed down from the initial hundreds) then you'll never crack that magical "everyone" market.
The average user wants to turn the computer on and use the applications they know. They don't care how the computer works, as long as it does work. Nobody gives a shit what OS they are using if they can do their stuff. So why would the care if it's Windows or Linux, and why would they bother trying to find out about one or the other. They just use what their computer came with.
It isn't that they are each recounts of personal experience, they're recounts of heard bogeymen or FUD stories taught to people to retain users in the windows ecosystem, or to "scare away" people from that uncapitalistic, therefore communist, because to the binary bigots, there are only ever two options, one clearly WRONG and the other one, theirs.
Do you know Pine64 has a 99$ 11.6" Linux hybrid or 14" laptop that can run also Android?
Perhaps with more marketing and knowledge this cheap and good product would have more sells.
Chrome OS is a Linux (plus Chrome and now LXC contaienrs for Android and GNU/Linux that i like to call Lignux)
Android OS is a Linux (but not Lignux)
But you cannot find machines sold as HP "cocoliso": hybrid with Lignux and KDE
And the smart people that knows how to install an OS - And it is as easy as to read and a little understanding - even if it is just to test it is not much.
And without marketing, even the OS is as good as everybody, == more than 99% is using it for the serious staff as servers - defeating MS even in small servers - and supercomputers the consumer market will not use it.
MS was forced to make their 360 to be able to sell to big companies using desktop Linux, Adobe is migrating also to the web, and I do not know about Autodesk but those 2 companies are the only reason some people cannot migrate - LibreOffice can replace MSO -
Probably in a near future we will see some Lignux computers offered to the public
The article points out "advantages" of linux over windows, but doesn't cover the reasons not to switch to Linux:
1. Compatibility - apps, documents, fonts, plugins, etc. The same reason some find it hard to move to mac or from mac to another OS. OS are different. I can't run apps made for windows (not talking about emulators). When there is an equivalent app, not all features and functions carry over. If I am used to windows, another OS can look strange and have a learning curve. SO at the end of the day, there is no compelling reason to make me switch in this area. Libre Office is nice, but even on windows is not the same as MS Office.
2. Cost - we have to see what happens, but Win 10 was free for most users, and MS keeps adding features and not charging. Much like Mac. So the upgrade cost may have gone away. Time will tell. How many years has Win 10 been doing feature upgrades for free now?
3. "More secure" - attacked less, is not more secure. Although it is targeted less at a consumer level, the number of Linux attacks and exploits is not anywhere close to zero. Although most users may not be running Apache, the libraries that make up much of linux are on desktops and servers and need to be patched just like windows needs patching. Safe browsing and download hygiene apply regardless of OS. Oh and many attacks are social engineering and there are plenty of remote control apps for linux.
4. User capabilities. Mom and Pop that get a PC with Windows, usually don't have the tech abilities to create a bootable installer. If a machine shipped with Linux someone would use it, but are they going to install Linux when Windows works? And again, why would they want to? Compelling reason to switch?
So maybe if you have win7, and your coming up on EOS, you have a reason. But if you still have win7 you are either waiting for a new PC, or you don't like change. If someone was switching to Linux, they would have done it already.
I have used Linux on desktop. I have used Mac as well, and own a mac. I prefer windows.
Quote: Their original submission suggests that maybe Linux needs to buttress the perception of its reliability with a better financial model -- possibly through a new kind of crowd funding which could also be extended to all open source software, or even to journalism).
We do have one form of crowd funding up-and-running right now. I just became a Patreon supporter of Ubuntu MATE. I was skeptical of Patreon, but over time I've warmed to it and begun to think it's actually brilliant. I'd love to see more open source projects getting on Patreon. I mean, example. . . I was severely peeved when Adobe took Lightroom subscription-only, and that was the end of my dealings with them. So, now I'm using RawTherapee here, and I'd be fine with supporting it through Patreon. That's a different kind of subscription, and a far more palatable one to me.
I'm using Linux 100% at home and at work. I don't really care if people switch to it or not. I know it's the superior OS, if you don't want to spend the time to learn how to use it then feel free to pay Microsoft or Apple and be locked in their shit. Everytime they tried to make Linux "user friendly" ithey make it dumber, removing options, customizations. The plebs can keep their walled garden I'll happily stay on this side.
having read comments it seems everyone uses windows and hates linux.
With Steam Play, A shit ton. There is also a good hand full of native AAA titles there is a wiki somewhere dedicated to it if your're really curious. Steam is the best thing to happen to Linux in a long time, they are giving incentive to the people stuck on windows for gaming a reason to switch and abandon the torture.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/l...
https://davidyat.es/2016/09/08...
https://ubuntuforums.org/showt...
https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/...
https://bufferoverflow.io/gpu-...
http://vfio.blogspot.com/2015/...
https://www.se7ensins.com/foru...
There is literally 100 guides to this, whoever told you you need more than a $100 GPU and a cpu that supports VFIO lied to you and you should never trust another word they say.
Just dual boot any Linux distro against Windows 10.
Then install common software like firefox, eclipse, intellij, libre office, steam, etc.. and compare. Linux LOSES on every count PLUS it can't support the hardware and where it does it does a poorer job - AND they abandon hardware support too often.
Burned too many times.
I'll stick with Windoze for general purpose and mac for Music production.
Or you are me. You buy a modern XPS, the same one that dell sells with linux. Only you buy it with windows because it was cheaper (wtf why was it cheaper?). Then you download the latest ubuntu and put it on a usb stick. It fails to launch, so you google and find out you need to add kernel options in order for the install to work.
So you do that and now you can get it to launch, but it's so slow it's almost unusable. You struggle through that and finally get your install. Then you realize that even though you have 16GB of ram, for some reason it only made a 1gb swap partition and now you can't just close the notebook lid and come back to it later, because what you come back to is a kernel panic.
So now you start over and do a custom format to get the right sized swap partition. This time everything works but 3-4 times you get a kernel panic on resume and you don't know why. More research determines it's because your notebook has a nvidia/intel hybrid graphics and even though nvidia is disabled it's still loading a kernel mod that is causing this instability. So now you are in the terminal and you need to add kernel options that you worked for others until you find the one that works for you.
Now you finally have a working notebook and you think, "This is totally ready for my mom to use". I'll give her the ubuntu install media.
Shit I forgot "ya bitch".
This is a flat out lie. Install chrome, uses GPU out of the box for rendering, same with Firefox which comes preinstalled on 90% of distros.
wtf are you talking about? got some proof for this? Because my font renders fine. And I have never experienced an issue with that. There are like 10 things I could complain about on linux, that does not make the list. Thats like saying I don't like windows because Billy Gates is a shill. Maybe the case in fringe cases(outdated text editors, windows articles) but not relevant.
If a few of the big companies said "Hey Adobe, We want to get away form windows expensive licensing. Port CSS to Linux" It would be done in a month. That starts with the nerds on this site guys...
it's totally awesome that you get all software on linux for free that allows you to plug the computer running it into another computer via ethernet, press F1 or DEL or sumething and install the second computer with linux ... no internet connection required, no phone home activation required ... just like that. ... and life ^_^
after installing linux, your biggest problem will be admitting to yourself how much you willingly put up with m$abuse(tm).
after that you will have 50% more time (at least) to acctually something productif with your time
Then why do they run windows?
I've used Linux at home for over 15 years. With my support, my wife can manage to use it. She hasn't needed my help in ages, except for new stuff, like a new printer - copier, stuff for which she would have needed some support with any other OS too.
Depending on the user, the lack of local support and perhaps motivation, added to which the lack of awareness of the option, already explains a large part of the status quo.
Then there are the hard cases, of the lack of (perceived? ) required programs.
With enough marketshare, naturally, Adobe would make their software available on Linux.
Same for other businesses. Today, it makes no sense. Gimp is fine for me, if it's not for someone else, then Linux is probably not for them.
aRTee
I want to be clear that I have managed tens of thousands of linux servers in my life time. I've managed ubuntu, debian, redhat, cent, etc. I've also used linux on and off as a desktop for over at least 15 years. Its still not a good desktop for standard users. When a problem shows up, it's rarely fixable without a deep technical understanding.
At least a as a programmer, there's nothing out there that works as well as Visual Studio 2008/2012. Being able to write my own software when only half-baked crippleware is available from others is a huge feature. For fuck's sake, I bought RealBasic for OSX Tiger so I could write tools on a barely supported and soon-to-be-abandoned PPC Mac.
Games
And then you find a 3rd party repo, and you're off to the races. Seriously its the same as having to go to a website to download say. google chrome or winrar. This is irrelevant.
So, yeah, bullshit to your post.
I can think of several reason why Linux on desktop uptake is so poor.
First and foremost: games. The 3D API's for Linux and OpenGL and Vulkan both of which are, at best, underdogs in the 3D API wars. OpenGL conformance and capability is all over the map as a function of drivers and Vulkan as well. In addition, as an API, OpenGL really does utterly suck. Vulkan is not all that great either: Vulkan can be a major pain in the ass for quite a few game engines because of that the pipeline state object has practically everything to describe the GPU state in it (there were reasons for this, but why it is so much is because having almost everything guaranteed that it works with any GPU that anyone would think about existing). The OpenGL and Vulkan API's are inferior, in terms of developer pain, to Apple's Metal and Microsoft's Direct3D. To be precise, Direct3D 11 is oodles less painful than OpenGL 4.6 and Direct3D 12 is oddless less painful than Vulkan. Metal is also a great API that is soooo much easier to use than Vulkan and provides all of the benefits that Vulkan aims to provide. WORSE: the things out there than generate SPIR-V (this is how shaders are fed to Vulkan API) are not that great really and add (without the necessary Vulkan extension) to generate shader code for games.
Another horribly ugly issue Nouveau. Nowadays, most distros make Nouveau the default and unless you know what you are doing getting the NVIDIA proprietary drivers to work can be a major hassle. Worse, the preferred way (for example by ppa's) relies on the ppa staying up to data with the NVIDIA driver and that, I know, does not happen. Because of a fair number of amusing bits, the old ways of blacking listing the Nouveau drivers may or may not work on modern distros. Before anyone jumps up and say "the Nouveau drivers are just fine", I can say first hand they are FAR from ok. Their feature sets is a -severe- subset of the NVIDIA drivers and their performance for anything with heavy hard shaders is far from optimal. Mesa, as a project, is somewhat impressive in that it is an open source GL driver of drivers, but in terms of how good it is, it is not anywhere in the same category of NVIDIA's closed source drivers. Its only bright side is on AMD where Mesa is okay-ish (and the AMD closed drivers are such garbage really) but because on AMD hardware, the shader compiler backend goes to LLVM and uses the AMD made LLVM backend to AMD GPU's. Intel and NVIDIA GPU's on Mesa are out of luck as those drivers entirely rely on compiler infrastructure inside of Mesa which is at best is barely competent and usually terribly naive. Even ignoring the shader compiler stack (i.e. older games that have very light shaders and/or games from the days before shaders), the Mesa "main", i.e. src/mesa/main is heavier than many other OpenGL implementations.
So games already are hammered on Linux from far less popular API's (OpenGL and Vulkan) but also hammered by worse drivers and additional pain to use them. But the pain continues. The Linux kernel maintains a solid ABI contract to user space, so that is good. But user space ABI for many libraries is -really- bad, essentially there is almost none across distro's. The upshot is that it makes it really hard to deliver binary-only programs. I can hear people getting ready to say "Steam". Has anyone looked under Steam and wondered why it is SOOOO huge on Linux compared to other operation systems? It is so much larger because Steam also provides a massive number of .so's that games would use so that binary compatibility is possible. However, because of the "choiciness" of Linux, even that hammer approach can fail too. Oh yea and Linux has two competing windowing systems STILL: X11 and Wayland. The former is an anachronism and the latter is still too immature AND continues to lack features.
Ok, so gaming is a major pain on Linux and is going to give you all sorts of pain and suffering to even try to get it to work. Worse, the really only good way to get a good gaming experience for the hard
That's it. Simple.
What settings are you changing? If you cant read man pages, and don't know what you're doing. Stay out of things like systemd and conf files in /etc. You will be fine. Or you know, go RTFM
You could even do it on a Raspberry Pi with RetroPie, but you'll get a bit better performance out of a full blown PC.
I run EmulationStation on mine, which has Arcade, Atari2600, SNES, GameboyColor, and a few other emulators on it.
I use VLC for music and videos. Handbrake for ripping DVDs, RipperX for CDs (if you still have those), and I run serviio as a DLNA server for my home network.
Kdenlive for video editing, GIMP for photo work. Plenty of browser choices - I use Pale Moon, Firefox ESR as a backup.
I am running Devuan XFCE, but if you are new I'd suggest Mint w/Cinnamon or MATE desktop environment. I only ditched it because I wanted to get away from systemd. Or there are plenty of other good choices. You can try different distros for free, almost all run as a live CD/DVD so you can give them a whirl to see which you like best before installing it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I'm 35 - software developer by profession. Maybe I'm just getting old but 90% of my computer usage nowadays is.. work. At home it's mostly web browsing, or then learning something new programming related.
Home desktop & laptop Linux, both which I rarely even boot up. Work laptop nowadays is Mac, although all development environments in it are Linux (docker). All my gaming happens on Playstation, and mobile is Android, which I still kind of count as Linux. My fiancee is using Ubuntu also - mostly for web browsing. All in all - no Microsoft anywhere in my life for nearly 20 years and... none of it is really ideological, nor I don't feel like I'm missing anything. There's simply very little need for Microsoft nowadays in any area of life. I feel sorry for those who scream "Office!", I would probably kill myself (or just quit) if my work would need Excel.
Maybe I'm getting old, but computers in general are getting boring, and I tend to spend much more time with my fiancee, doing handycraft works, going to gym and out in general..
Long-time Windows user. I'm comfortable with Linux and have used it for a number of projects, but when it comes to using it as the main OS on my "daily driver", I just can't grapple with it. I actually enjoy tinkering, so part of me would be interested in doing this, and I think about it from time to time. Recently I made a list of the things stopping me:
* I need seamless disk encryption — it looks like there are solutions for this but nothing as stupid simple to set up and deal with as BitLocker.
* Doesn't appear to be any way to get my fingerprint reader to work for login (Dell Precision FIPS) — I hate typing passwords.
* No good MS Exchange client from what I can tell, I need both email and calendaring working well.
* No OneDrive sync client.
* No OneNote client (I suppose I could switch to Evernote).
* No good Quicken alternative, I rely on it a lot for personal finance and managing a small business... Quicken has its own set of issues, but everything else I have tried totally pales in comparison.
* No good way to sync/manage my iPhone (need iTunes here).
* No good way to sync up my iCloud photo library (the Windows iCloud client is pretty terrible, but it does work).
* I use Adobe Lightroom for photo management and I dread having to switch to something else...
I'm actually totally interested in ideas to get around any of these, but I imagine that many of them involve totally changing up how I do things. For example, getting away from Microsoft services (i.e. OneDrive) or Apple services (i.e. iCloud for photos) to switch to something more "Linux-friendly" would impact my whole family. My extended family in the case of Apple. I've got too much going on in my life to take on that project. Looking at this list, I realize that switching to macOS is a lot more feasible; but, I really don't like the direction that Apple is taking with hardware as far as "PCs" are concerned... I don't think that I would be a very happy MacBook owner.
Things have been moving well in the opposite direction, though. With Microsoft's "Subsystem for Linux", when I need Linux for something I rarely actually have to boot it up anymore.
If Linux could play all the DirectX/OpenGL games as they are released then that would take a HUGE cut out of windows.
Because video gaymez.
I work at a glue sniffing company and my IQ is 70 and I prefer the leapfrog OS. But I may have to migrate to Mac OS if I don't change jobs soon.
Look, just get over the things you thought you knew in the 1990s, or you're not going to understand this
My current Windows machine has never crashed. Updates are generally seen as a positive thing. I'm not aware of a security fault in any of my Windows machines over the last 15 years.
You might as well point out that Linux doesn't make you set up EMM386.
You guys are arguing about Windows 95.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
First off, I agree with everything you said. I have been using Linux only on my computer since '98, and have been through a few distros along the way. I remember doing upgrades back then - oh my, the pain. Linux has certainly come a VERY long way since then. But last year I switched to Devuan and I use XFCE. So I still have to dig in on occasion.
But - I think we need to redefine what an "average" computer user is these days. I am not even sure what that would be. Because we do still have people who know next to nothing. My parents are like that, and I know plenty of other people. But kids can navigate and do things very well.
It is a little short-sighted to say aspects of Linux that techies cherish are the ones that alienate the general user. Linux and the philosophy behind it is a major force that allows the general population to use the computers they do today. Whether is it the search of Google, Chromebooks, Android phones, AWS, or the multitudes of the various technologies out there. The Linux desktop is but one aspect of it, but overall it's role in the internet age cannot be over-emphasized. Without it we would not be as far as we are today, and would be facing worse lock-in than ever.
But back to the point of the Desktop, it has come a long way even in the last 10 years. But I think it's less relevant than ever. Microsoft has tried repeatedly to force "new and improved" desktop experiences on everyone, and that hasn't gone well. I am not a Mac person, so I can't speak to that... but I can't think of much of anything in the Windows world that has wowed me in forever. If anything, I have to remove the obstacles put in my way. I see my work machines getting more and more powerful, and performance not improving or even getting slower. So much junk and cruft. I can't think of one feature in Windows10 that I want or cannot do in Linux. Not software mind you - feature of the desktop environment. What I do know is that I can't customize it to behave the way I want, or look the way I want. Which may be due to being under the corporate thumb, but Windows has never been about letting you customize things very easily.
So the question "Why aren't people abandoning Windows for Linux?" is simple. They are. Look around at everyone staring at their phones. Chances are, there is Linux under the hood. The real question is "Why are people still using Windows?". That's easy...
1. I use it at work
2. Some app they can't get anywhere but Windows
3. Change is scary
4. They aren't.. they are using their phone / chromebook / mac. Windows is gathering dust. It will just take more time to become irrelevant.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
People tend to use the same OS as they do in their daily work. Until linux makes substantial inroads into the business desktop market, it will never gain marketshare in the home market. End of story.
For starters, normal people don'[t install OSs. The machine they buy at WorstBuy has Windows. Unless they buy a Chromebook or wander into the Apple section.
Many people use Windows software, like games, MS Office, Quicken. Gnucash isn't Quicken, and Libre Office isn't MS.
And if they need help, there are fewer Linux people to ask, many of whom have a "RTFM n00b" attitude, compared to tons of Windows people to ask.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I love using Kubuntu and I love how gnu/linux makes me feel kind of secure and content, at ease, even, when I'm using it. But what ends up driving me over the edge every bloody time I boot it up (Kubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and 14.04, all different machines) is that Samba gives me no end of fits when it comes to attempting to stream or share my network files located on Windows machines. The Windows machines can see the directories on Kubuntu, but forget file access. Kubuntu can see the folders, access the files, but the files need to be dragged onto the specific Kubuntu box where I want to play/execute/read them.
What doubly grinds my gears is that my stupid little cheap 7-inch Android tablet can access all the Windows network files with no problems at all and I never even had to try and set anything up for that. That's really the head-scratcher for me: Android 4.4.2 gets the network-access stuff right, but for Kubuntu 18.04 it's a "woosh" right over the head.
I know, yeah, yeah, I'm probably doing something wrong, got something zigged where it should have zagged, whatever. But, in my own way, I've been trying to figure this out, leisurely, for about the last five years (Kubuntu 14.04) and I'm really not any closer to a firm understanding than I was before I started.
Oh, yeah, I know I could "ask for help" on some linux boards, but I'd rather not slosh through the innumerable "RTFM" and "Kubuntu sucks" responses to see if perhaps some kind soul who can act like an adult can offer something truly helpful. Hey, I've been using gnu/linux one way or another since 1999 (old RedHat and Mandrake!); this file-sharing stuff just really shouldn't be this difficult by now.
People do not care about the OS. Not at all. They just do not care. They don't care about software, either. Real, well-balanced people do not care about hardware, software, or anything of the sort. People care about what they can do with the equipment they bought with their money. Windows and MacOS guarantee results. Linux does not. It's that simple. Any effort by the FOSS community to compete (or, rather, try to catch up) has so far landed short. FOSS hangs behind on every single important or relevant real-world application. Linux is good for the hobbyist, it's good for servers, it's good for some specialty applications but people who buy tower, desktop or laptop computers are not concerned with this. They want results. Linux does not deliver, it's as simple as that. Nobody wants to spend weeks training themselves to use Linux. Nobody wants to spend nights checking on forums and being treated disrespectfully by lowlifers. It's as simple as that. Windows has reached a level of maturity where adding a component is trivial. Used to be you needed specialized know-how to set up a network, especially if it included shared devices such as printer-scanners. Now? It only takes a few clicks. I sometimes suspect the hatred linux zealots feel for Windows is caused by the latter having made all their knowledge obsolete. Nobody needs the nerd anymore, and the nerd resents that. This was one special area of expertise the nerd felt was its own. Now it's over and it must be painful. I don't know, I'm interested in what I can do with my computer(s), not how it's done. Get over it, folks.
In high school I cut my teeth on RH 5.2 w/ no mentors, no working X - just me and the install manual trying to figure out where in the world the root partition was. Even something as simple as "/" was a little unintuitive to someone who had not yet taken an Operating Systems class! But I made it, learned VI and how to tinker around with a free C compiler. Things are much easier today. Most machines run a GUI, plus Youtube exists.
Installing updates nearly always breaks some packages on linux. Best to avoid that. I wish Linux had a "roll-back" update for the kernel/OS.
Windows 10 ----- Thx, but really a BIG No thx. Not only a nightmare to privacy, but more than that ...
Quality mentioned with either OS and associated APIs is an oxymoron. Windows and Linux are both piles of crap with a crap filling, and a salty caramel coating that has a distinctly crappy aftertaste. However, Windows runs Outlook, Excel, and Autodesk Inventor. Until that gets fixed, I am completely stuck with using Windows. Everything else I do can be run on either pile of sh:t.
I use both OSs daily (I have settled on using Red Hat Linux). My experience has been that Red Hat does have a slightly less crappy aftertaste when compared to other Linux brands. Mainly because I can ask Red Hat a question and not get 30 worthless and inaccurate "answers" from a bunch of maladjusted, neck-bearded incels. Red Hat also have a nice track record on my preferred laptop brand: Thinkpad.
In case anyone asks: Yes, I know there are email programs and spreadsheets for Linux, but the good ones are even more tremendous pieces of crap. Also, Inventor only works with Excel.
It always has been next year. Always since Linuxâ(TM)s inception
I have no idea why you're downloading and double-clicking .deb files. We've had package managers for a long time now. Your issue isn't that linux doesn't work well, it's that it doesn't work like you think it does. That speaks nothing to how well it works, and everything to difficult it is to teach people that microsoft's way isn't the best way to do things.
Maybe this needs to be said more bluntly, you can get all your facts right, but in the end nobody cares! Suzy in purchasing has and never will think about how best to do things with a computer. She wants to complete a task, the computer is a tool and the less time it spends in her way the happier she is.
Pretty much any average user can download and install linux, and do most of what they currently do in Windows out of the box.
You've never worked with any average users then. Average users are sketchy with downloading and installing browser extensions. You are NOT looking at the 95% of the user base here. Users don't give 1 second of thought to the process of I need an OS, and then a browser and my office productivity package before I can do what I want. When they walk up to a computer they will ask does it have internet, or can I use Word/Excel/Powerpoint on it. Many users will want Quickbooks or QuickTax. Even if they can get a techy friend to download and install linux for them as you describe, they aren't going to be able to do any of those out of the box except use internet(unless they get unlucky and even that needs some tweaking too). MS Office and the Quicken toolsets aren't available under Linux period. I know you may reply with OpenOffice, but users will reject that and demand the computer just be put back the way it was when it was working. Try moving users from MS Office 2010 to MS Office 2016 and listen to how many have problems adjusting and missing things they used to be able to find. You have NO idea what users need or are interested in trying to do for themselves.
It's sometimes rather baffling how disconnected from what users actually use their computers for the average slashdotter is.
Indeed. Users can just download Linux, install it, and use it out of the box. Yep, the disconnect is baffling.
Native games or through Steamplay with Proton? I'm primarily use my PS4 for games, but I have tried a couple of games through Steamplay: Star Trek Online and Fallout 3.
Here's a database of games tested with Proton, which ones do or do not work. The number of working games keeps increasing over time
https://www.protondb.com/
And here's the native Linux/SteamOS games page on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com...
Most people use laptops. You want a laptop, you pick one, it comes with Windows, and it works out of the box. (Or you buy an Apple one, if you prefer that. Or a Chromebook.)
You want a laptop with Linux, good luck finding one. You have to really want Linux, because you're in for quite a bit of work finding a laptop without Windows. Then you need to pick a distro, which most people will have no clue about. Then suppose you find a laptop without Windows, it will most likely have no OS installed, and you'd have to install one. Good luck with that if you're not a technical person.
Even if you know enough to install the OS, if you want to learn how to use it or have a device that's not automatically recognised, good luck getting help. Linux is used less, so has less online help, and because it's so fractured, good luck finding the help that matches the version you have.
Then you want to install some software, and you need to research that too, because you can't run what your friends and co-workers have, and even if they do use Linux, they typically have no idea why what they suggest doesn't seem good enough for you.
By this time you've spent tons of time, and will continue to spend tons of time, that you wouldn't have spent if you just stuck to Windows (or Mac OS). If you've saved any up front money (which is doubtful), you've already paid for it with time and stress.
The only reasonable way to get into Linux as a layman is if you have a personal Linux IT person.
By the way, this also applies to desktop, although there if you custom build it you at least save some money, and you already have a clue how to install an OS. But that doesn't save you the need to do a lot of research, make sure the hardware is actually supported by Linux, and in short invest a lot more time.
Some binaries only comes as .deb, .rpm, or large .zip file distribution unless you want a crack at compiling the source (e.g have you tried the latest Netbeans). Also, you may want a fresher version than what is available for the distro.
Since you brought it up, the average user could use an iPad or Android tablet and do most of what they currently do: mainly browsing the web and using social media apps. You certainly don't need to go through the bother of setting up a Linux machine for that, let alone the big headaches when it doesn't work on the hardware you have. So, by your logic, what's the point of this entire thread, including your opinions?
Also, many Linux distros come with severely broken samba configurations and the samba tools do not work very well---especially when trying to network with Windows machines, which, sadly, is their raison d'être.
Sorry to hear that other people have opinions or experineces that aren't yours.
World of Warcraft, Apex, Fortnite, Super Meat Boy?
Not that anyone really reads these anymore, but I'll put in a few words.
Gaming Support - This is a big one, and no, running some half-gimped game under Wine doesn't count. Show me something that can handle current games from this year, and I'll change my mind.
Learning Curve - Desktop has come a long way, but if you want to do anything significant you're going to be typing in commands in a terminal window. And no, users don't want to be doing that shit. I don't care how "easy" it is, no one wants to even BEGIN trying to do that. How about resolving dependencies? Ahahaha, no way in hell the average user will even attempt it.
Linux has its uses, but mainstream appeal is a long way off and by the looks of the fragmented in-fighting between different distros and competing implementations of GUI/UX, it will stay that way for a long time.
It's not just that but the point of an OS is to offer APIs so programming is easier.
It is much much much easier to write quality programs for Windows than Linux. This is why all the game platform is dominated by Windows, so is office software.
Windows API's and quality programming should never be in the same sentence. Both OS's require a learning curve to understand their perspective API's, so if you started learning to code in Windows, that will be more familiar to you. However, there is an awful lot of crap code that comes out with the Windows API's. At least with Linux, there is an entire community to check your code and help improve it. As far as gaming, the main reason has more to do with marketing and not the API's. The simple economics of scale is why the gaming industry shy's away from Linux in favor of Windows. Unfortunately, is a chicken vs. egg situation. We need good Linux games to get people interested in the OS, but we need a lot more people using Linux before the game developers will give it serious consideration.
Here's a fundamental thing that's getting missed. If you could magically have ALL games 100% Linux compatible tomorrow you still would not have given people a reason to switch to Linux. You only removed 1 reason for people to refuse to use it. It is not enough to fix the very many show stopper issues keeping people off Linux, you need to give users something they care about and can't get on their Windows box. Name me something users care about that is better on Linux. Failing that, even provide a GOAL for the Linux community to work towards that would provide users something they care about and can't get elsewhere.
What? Firefox on Linux has had hardware acceleration for video decoding for YEARS. You need a relatively recent video card to accelerate decoding of Google's VP9 though. for Nvidia that's PureVideo feature set F or later. Basically the 750, 950, 960 and the 10xx, Titans, 20xx's, and 16xx's.
[CronoCloud@potos ~]$ ffmpeg -hwaccels
Hardware acceleration methods:
vdpau
cuda
vaapi
qsv
drm
opencl
qsv
cuvid
What you have here is a great example of the tools available for Linux. I don't mean the software, but tools like the egotistical jackass who criticized your post. They would rather lecture and belittle your experiences and opinions (which may be based on their own inaccurate or inconsistent fud in previous posts) than either assist you or try to fix the bigger issue at hand. Their immutable angry nerd syndrome combined with a combination of bad parenting and social interaction only through online media is to blame.
As long as people rely on free Linux tech support forums that are haunted by these consummate PEBCAKs, Linux it will never be generally accepted by the average consumer. Granted, the same is true of Microsoft products, but more people know how to get official support from MS and more people are already familiar with the MS products (insert chicken and egg analogy here).
Was the last time you used Linux, 2001 or something?
The Linux community has spent almost 3 decades now still ignoring desktop users wants and needs. There has been this blind belief that if only parity with the Windows experience(Apps, HW support, ease of use, etc.) could be reached then, finally the world would embrace Linux. Users though do NOT care about their operating system. The user community is not out there wishing against hope for the day they can run Linux on their desktops. Until the Linux community actually decides to look at what they can offer users that Windows can't, and that users actually care about, there will be zero progress towards getting Linux on desktops. Even Apple, with all it's resources and it's user oriented design of OSX had an uphill battle selling itself and had to distinguish itself to users with things like 1 way fo doing things, simplified UI and HW choices, and an overall support model of it works or it need to get replaced. Apple provided users with a simplified experience. What's Linux even attempting to offer?
Then you install the rpmfusion repo, which you're going to do anyway if you have a Nvidia graphics card. Think!
[CronoCloud@potos ~]$ sudo dnf search nintendo
Last metadata expiration check: 0:47:06 ago on Mon 08 Apr 2019 09:02:31 AM CDT.
Summary Matched: nintendo
desmume.x86_64 : A Nintendo DS emulator
zsnes.i686 : A Super Nintendo emulator
gcube.x86_64 : Nintendo Gamecube emulator
desmume-cli.x86_64 : A Nintendo DS emulator (CLI version)
gnome-nds-thumbnailer.x86_64 : Thumbnailer for Nintendo DS ROM files
fakenes.x86_64 : Nintendo Entertainment System emulator
desmume-glade.x86_64 : A Nintendo DS emulator (Glade GUI version)
gnuboy-x.x86_64 : Nintendo GameBoy Color emulator (X version)
snes9x.x86_64 : Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator
gnuboy-sdl.x86_64 : Nintendo GameBoy Color emulator (SDL version)
gnuboy-svgalib.x86_64 : Nintendo GameBoy Color emulator (svgalib version)
gnuboy-fb.x86_64 : Nintendo GameBoy Color emulator (frame buffer version)
snes9x-gtk.x86_64 : Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator - GTK version
In my experience. MOST user are intimidated by the IDEA of an operating system, if they even understand the term. They certainly are not comfortable installing a new one. So unless it can be done automatically, without loosing access to their existing data. Or unless in comes on the computer when they buy it. It's not happening.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. I am constantly having to reboot Linux boxes to make them work after installing software updates. Windows just does try to force it on you preemptively, Oh, and just about every day there are more updates. Do these updates install cleanly every time---hell no, they do not! Oh, and Linux has no risk of downloading malware? (Sure, and I'm Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.) Even the source can be flawed. Just look at things like Heartbleed bug. It's not "infected" it was crap. Open source does not mean safe to use.
Linux is greatly inferior. Don't get me started about getting hibernate to work correctly on most hardware, let alone sleep to hibernate. Of course the Linux-Fu way of handling this problem is to get a circle-jerk set up where they moan that anything more than sleep mode is not needed---and be grateful that works at all.
Go back under your own bridge, you stupid troll.
Working in a place where people are probably closer to normal computer users, they mostly have no idea what Windows is. They have no idea what an operating system is. They may know that a Mac is different from a PC, but that's about it.
Exactly. It's an OS made for programmers, and it sucks for everyone else.
I am not a programmer and I have been using Linux since 2002. In fact, Slashdot articles about Linux are what encouraged me to try it out.
Until you can simply download and install (as opposed to: download, compile, build, tweak, fail, try again, find the correct version, try again again, still likely fail, eventually give up) a reasonably wide set of applications it simply can't catch on.
But you CAN simply download and install a wide variety of applications from software repositories. Some might call me a power user and I have only 6 binaries I've compiled myself on this system:
IDJC and libshout-idjc. IDJC is an internet DJ application, the ONLY reason I compile it is that the version in the repos is not using a few advanced features.
nethack and a cp437 utility. I only compile nethack because I enable a few optional features. I compile up cp437 utility so I can get proper IBMgraphics (and an Epyx Rogue looking rogue level) in my UTF-8 terminal.
overbitenx, there's a binary in there that needs to be compiled to use the overbitenx firefox extension that adds gopher support to modern firefox.
pterm, a Plato terminal emulator, which isn't in the repos.
That's it. The hardest one to compile is nethack, because it uses an archaic build configure method, rather than standard configure scripts. But I have a "recipe" I've been using for years. I just follow the recipe to edit the various conf files and Makefiles and I'm good to go. Basically I use the "unix" hints file and make the necessary edits to enable the features I use and also enable X11 support alongside the standard terminal version so I can play it either way.
I've used Linux, Mac and Windows. I can't count the number of times that a distribution upgrade killed the window system on my Linux box. Of course, it means going to a working Windows box and searching for possible causes and fixes; twiddling some configuration file somewhere. Yes, Linux is infinitely configurable! I'm told that's a feature. It turns out to be a curse.
I've written user mode USB device drivers for both Linux and Windows. Windows drivers are much faster. It seems to me that the context switch from kernel to user space is slower on Linux. I used Linux documentation stating best practices, but bulk transfers are just much faster.
Then there are the Linux distributions that are made to look like Windows. Why bother? Why emulate something else if the platform is better?
For me, I'm going to use whatever platform just works. I don't have time to spend effort trying to keep a box running smoothly. I just want it to work. I've been a Mac user since System 7. I coded classic Macs, transitioned to PowerPC and was present at WWDC in 2001 when OSX was debuted. I also write apps for Windows and Linux. Qt rocks. A few months ago, I spilled wine into the keyboard of my 17 inch PowerBook. Apple stopped system updates for it even though it's a capable I7 platform. So why pay to repair a great laptop that Apple no longer supports. It was hard to let go. Apple has also slowed my iPhone 6 plus to a crawl. It was blazing fast when I first got it. Now it's slow. There is nothing in those updates that made my phone a better experience. Apple just wants me to upgrade. F that. I just bought a new Microsoft Surface Book 2. Wow! It's a nice machine. My next phone will be Android. The point of this, I want something that works. Apple wants to make laptops for people with great vision, I need a laptop with a large screen so I can read it. Tim Cook is out of his league. If I am leaving the platform, other are too. There is a reason that Microsoft stock is rising and Apple's stock is stale. Microsoft's new CEO isn't a Steve Jobs, but he's doing a great job.
Seriously, is your head in the sand to still be asking this?
1. People don't want to relearn. Ever try to convert someone from Windows to OSX, or OSX to Windows. There are 10,000 questions of "what app do I use for this?". "Where do I find stuff?".
2. It is still ugly and disjointed. Sorry, out of the box, it is ugly. Sure, you can make it pretty, but that is too much work already.
3. Which linux? Ya'll got how many distros to use. Which one is the "right one". With OSX and Windows that is known already. You grab the one from Microsoft or Apple, end of story. With Linux, you almost need an advanced degree in reading bullshit. No one is authoritative. No single company is the thought leader. Who are they? Are they stable. You might know these answers, the general public doesn't.
4. When was the last time you saw a Linux commercial showing happy users...Oh right: never. Public perception of Linux is "Who the fuck is Linux". Seriously, they only people that actually know about linux at all are geeks, people working in IT, or people related to them.
5. Not enough supported apps. By this I mean: accounting software. It is still there, used by people running small businesses. And support doesn't just come from the people making it, it also comes from their accountant. Typical accountant procedure is: You can use whatever accounting program you want so long as it is QuickBooks on Windows or Mac. Otherwise find someone else.
Bad User. No biscuit!
Much of the Slashgear reasons are stupid, undesired, and flat out lies. Here are teh questions that need to be answered in order to make people want to try it?
Linux CONTINUES to fail to suit the needs of the Windows and Mac user, even after decades of the same old saw.
Complicated - Which Linux should I use? What's the difference? If all I know is Ubuntu, and I land on a PC running SUSE or Fedora, why is it so utterly alien? Why is the software incompatible? What the fuck is Bash and why do I have to use it?
Incompatible - Why does it not "just work" when I try to run Stupid Widget Game from the internet download link? Why can I not run my book keeping or tax filing software on it? Why is there no alternative book keeping or tax filing software that isn't a 20-years-old-failed-attempt from a 18 years old programmer just learning programming? Why is Microsoft Office 365 and Outlook not an option? Web browser? WFT? Ok I tried it. All sorts of shit doesn't work. It keeps telling me I need Edge or Internet Explorer, how do I install that? LibreOffice? Yea, I looked at it. FUCK YOU TOO!
Incompatible - I just bought this new printer and it doesn't work. Why can't my scanner scan and automatically clean up the document in Acrobat so that I can email, publish... My triple screens don't work. Why does my $1,000 gaming video card not work? I get 151FPS in Windows and only 19FPS in Linux, no Direct-X WTF?
Lacks Incentive - Why should I endure all this inconvenience? What does it do that Windows does not? Security? Perhaps you didn't notice, I don't give a flying-rat-fuck about security. I've been ransom-wared twice and had my identity stolen and my bank account drained and I still gleefully click on links from my Nigerian Prince, while over sharing on a Facebook and Instagram. Fuck your security and your MFA encumbrances!
Not default - What's the point of all the hassle of re-installing my operating system(what's that?) when my new computer comes with Windows and Office 365 and Edge already installed? It runs my games in a click or two as well. Why do I need anything else.
Linux can't do shit. Why would ANYBODY use that? LOL!
These things have not changed since forever. Worst of all, after using Linux solely on my desktop since 1999(20 years now!), I am now giving serious consideration to switching to Windows. Seriously. How fucked up is that? After 20 years I'm feeling that it's just not worth the hassle anymore.
Until you fix the broken, fragmented desktop experience Windows users are not going to find the environment appealing. Installs should be simple and straightforward. Mouse acceleration, wheel click adjustments, and sensitivity should be adjustable without having to edit X file 1, autorunning bash script X, or installing daemon Y. For fucks sake, my screen should not tear with a 900 series GTX in 2019. I know I can hand edit some settings into my xorg.conf to get around it but what simple user is going to want to do that!?
I get that package management is a thing. However, it doesn't work for everyone. Too often the most up-to-date release of a program requires that you compile it from scratch. No simple use is going to want to do that. They want to go to a site, get a precompiled binary, unzip/install, and run. Linux doesn't get that concept. At best you get a .deb or something and whoops, your packages conflict! Better luck next time dumbass. Should have stuck to your distro's out of date package repositories and lived with the bugs or constantly reinstall your distro every six months to stay current.
And that's another issue: the update cycle. Windows gets away with releasing patches while providing a stable environment for years. Grandma is not going to update her distro every six months to a year because developer X can't figure out how to do proper long-term patching and support.
Until Linux figures out that fragmentation is a bad thing on the desktop it's not going to get better. If you want to win against Windows you need to become Windows. You need to get a distro together that looks and behaves like Windows. Ubuntu got close until they decided they wanted to become an OS for tablets. Windows got where they were by copying what worked. Ubuntu tries to innovate and produces shit. The best developers in the world figured out what worked best for desktop computers decades ago and we throw it away for touchy-feely devices simply because they're next cool thing. Go back to what works and stop fucking with it.
Also, NVidia, get your shit together and properly work together with Linux.
Simple GUI settings are enough to cause the system to become unstable.
Linux has come along leaps and bounds but its still not the default so why would anyone bother? In fact the only way I see it ever being used is under the covers of something like ChromeOS where people don't even know what is underneath.
My company recently did a PC refresh. The powers that be backed off of their initial 'sell to employees' idea and decided that they were truly magnanimous saints for offering the old equipment to employees for free.
The equipment was a bit old, re-installing licensed software was a complexity. We decided to load Ubuntu on them and turn them loose. The new owners could use Ubuntu, which performed very well. Or, they could install Windows, which we recommended against as the price versus new purchases ratio made it not worth while. Or they could junk them or whatever.
All PCs were snatched up. The support questions were insane in number, which we had to tell them 'no support'. Roughly 90% of them were junked or remain unused. The remaining 10% are being used for email or are used by boyfriends that are "into computers".
We gave employees that largely could not afford new computers PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed and ready to go, for their personal use. Almost all of them were dumped because of Linux. More specifically, because they were not Windows.
They don't bother because they've already switched to either an iPhone, a Galaxy, or a respective tablet. I am being slightly tongue-in-cheek with this response but the reality is that the number of computer users just aren't what they used to be, at least not on a personal user level. If its your career then sure, you've got one or more actual computers at home but a larger and larger portion of the population simply doesn't. Most users simply don't care to be bothered. They get their email on their phone, browse the web on their phone, watch videos on their phone, etc., etc. Computers are soooo last generation!
I have been a Linux user for many years with quite a few different distros and I have to agree with the other guy. I am running Xubuntu right now and nothing 'just works'.
I've been running Linux since 2002, RedHat type distros, though I have dabbled with a few debian based live distros, DSL, Puppy and Ubuntu. I'm currently running Fedora 29, which "just works"
A lot of the programs I want to use don't have documentation.
Now I would agree that there needs to be some improvement in documentation but it is VERY rare for an application to have no documentation. Not even a manpage? Which applications?
Very few program installers bother to add menu or desktop launcher entries
What? If it is an X application from the repos they almost always install a menu entry.
and it is by no means easy to do that manually.
Sure it is? Xubuntu right? Install MenuLibre (or LXMenuEditor), then you can add new launchers to the menu easily. I just did it to add "NetHack-X11" to my menu. (I compile nethack because I use certain optional features)
But it is easy enough to add them from a terminal, they're simple text files. I could have done the same thing by adding this:
[Desktop Entry] .nethackrc for X11
Version=1.1
Type=Application
Name=NetHack-X11
Comment=NetHack-X11, don't forget to edit the
Icon=/usr/games/lib/nethackdir/nh_icon.xpm
Exec=/usr/games/nethack
Actions=
Categories=Game;X-XFCE;X-Xfce-Toplevel;
To either my .local/share/applications directory or systemwide in /usr/local/share/applications/ as nethack-x11.desktop
yes it isn't that unusual for you to be expected to compile from source and without any instructions on how to do so.
It is VERY unusually to be expected to source compile and even rarer to not have a basic README giving basic compile instructions. Usually it's as easy as entering into the source directory and: ./configure
make
sudo make install
Now sometimes you might have to pass an option to the configure script to enable or disable a feature but that's something like: ./configure --enable-feature --disable-this-feature, ./configure --help will often tell you more.
But I VERY rarely have to compile anything, in fact my /usr/local/src directory only has 6 compiles in it and I'm what might be called a power-user.
I have spent weeks trying to figure out how to compile from source a linux web server I really would like to use, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.
Which one? Perhaps I can help.
In summary, no, Linux is most definitely not ready for general nontechnical users
Poppycock, I'm not a programmer, and as I said, I've been using Linux since 2002.
I have talked to several very experienced Linux users and NONE of them are capable of replicating a BASIC windows functionality that has existed for DECADES.
The temp directory functionality exists across ALL applications in windows (with the exception of maybe some extremely rare an poorly written java applications that don't reference the usual APIs for file management)
This means that if you are a WYSIWYG user... and you do ANYTHING online like using a social media website you might post to...or editing a blog... or ANY kind of file sharing... and you have images/files hosted on another website like a dropbox or imgur or just grabbing an image from a search engine...
You can PASTE THE URL to that image/file into the file dialog. So if you are opening that image in an editor... or uploading it to another website... Windows will transparently download that file to a temporary directory, and then invisibly insert the local file location into the application (image editor... browser... whatever) and the file will auto-magically be there.
The means the steps to manually download the file... and then having to navigate to the download directory... and FIND the file... and then click on that file... just to insert it into a file dialog... are ALL erased. Multiply that across a few hundred times of doing that in a night if you like to upload lots of images or files... and it quickly becomes obvious how goddamn annoying Linux can be if you are in any way creative or social.
Bah, I have no IQ in the 135 range, one teacher back in grade school said it was around 125 or so, but it's probably lower now....and:
[CronoCloud@potos ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 29 (Twenty Nine)
Then again I do browsing, email, text editing, image editing, other things, depending.
Changing a user setting shouldn't bork the system at all, and if it does. login in rescue or single-user mode and revert the change.
No need whatsoever to reinstall.
Sadly, this is hilarious. The year of the Linux desktop will never happen until people pushing for this realize that Linux is not the panacea they profess it is and efforts are made to fix things---not just for the "typical user", but for people who need to get things done for their jobs. Until a large majority of people like engineers (and i'm not talking about software engineers), scientists, and technicians adopt Linux as their daily driver, the "year of the Linux desktop" will always be ridiculed.
Also, it needs to be the year of the Linux LAPTOP, so laptop-related issues like fixing hibernation and sleep-to-hibernation need to work reliably---and not on a select few models. Furthermore, Linux developers need to ditch the attitude of always asking "why do you need to do that" or "do you really need to use that" whenever something isn't working as it would on the same hardware running Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS, etc. Ditching the Pythonesque "Dead Parrot" car dealer mentality may help.
I have to wonder if this idiot has ever been within 100m of a computer running any distro of Linux, or if he's being paid to be an idiot.
Btw, I'm running CentOS 6 on my 10 yr old HP Netbook, with gnome (ugh), and it runs just fine.
I've been using 7 since it launched, or close to it, and really have not had any problems with it. I don't mind using it, I don't need to do anything special to maintain it and all of my games run well on it.
Once 7 is no longer supported by software manufacturers (read: the games I want to play won't run on it), I will make the jump to dual booting Windows 10 with whatever flavor of Linux is the most popular, and then using it as my everyday OS.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Ever since adding Ubuntu and Kali bash shells to Windows I find myself booting into linux less and less. If GUI linux support is ever added that will be the end of linux stand-alone distros I think.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
Gaming
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
I first thought about installing Linux around 2004, but I played a lot of PC games around that time and didn't see the point of dual-booting just for the sake of running a novelty of an OS, so I stuck with Windows.
By 2009 I'd mostly moved to console games, so I gave Linux (I forget what distro) a shot... but the install kept failing. Between school and work I didn't have enough free time to spend diagnosing the problem, so I went back to Windows just so I could get my schoolwork done.
Around 2015 I was building a new PC and didn't want to pay for Windows, so I tried Ubuntu via one of those live USB sticks. It was... functional, but the UI annoyed me. Figuring that I'd just have to get used to it and that I'd eventually learn to customize it to my preferences, I installed it. But the UI kept annoying me and I was wasting a lot of my limited free time in Configuration Hell. I ended up (grudgingly) going back to Windows.
Last year, a relative got a new laptop and gave me their old one and I figured I'd give Linux another shot. Since the laptop was relatively old and underspecced I went with Lubuntu. Although I had some config issues, I was able to resolve them within a couple of hours of digging through user forums for answers. It works well enough for a backup/hobby machine, and I haven't had any problems with it in the last few months. But I'm still using Windows on my desktop because I got back into PC games and not everything I'm interested in runs on Linux.
The only thing preventing me from removing Windows 10 from my PCs is that I cannot run Windows games on Linux.
I've used Linux a bit, enough to see that despite a bit of a learning curve, it's better for most non-gaming stuff. I'm accustomed to tweaking Windows, a habit that began wif M$ Flight Simulator. Always trying to squeeze the most frames from it, and disabling/modifying those Windows things that sucked up a fair bit of the hardware power/processor cycles I paid for. Desiring to get the most fluid performance possible, over time I became a fair hand at tweaks. Moved on to P3D a while back, and still optimizing as much as I can to make flight sims and all the rest look the best. Now that I'm old and retired and have extra $ to put into PC stuff, it's never looked as good as today.
Despite that, Windows still sucks. Forced(and shi__y) updates and other carp, including the soon-to-come WAAS garbage, make me eager to leave Winblows behind me.
Unfortunately, I've yet to find anything that tells me I can run almost any Win10 games on Linux. I'd enjoy learning a new system, something fresh to tweak and optimize for my uses. Lack of games support is all that keeps me from Linux, and I quit hoping that'll change before I die.
Dagnabbit...
Olphart at play. Ruck FepubliKKKans. Welcome to the Worldwide Idiocracy, y'all.
Proton is trying to make this better. But outside of Steam titles, it's a huge pain to get "near native" application performance.
Magic: the Gathering: Arena, for instance, won't run on Proton. So you have to use Lutris and do a bunch of work-arounds to get that to run.
When Linux drops the 100+ distros, actually focuses on trying to be a threat to Windows, that's when it'll be time to consider it as a switch. Not until then.
This is what I don't think a lot of Linux-heads get about Linux. There's too much choice.
So there's never (rarely) one straight-forward way to do things. There's never one version (distro) to use. There's never one way to install stuff. It's always dozens-to-hundreds of choices.
You cannot engage Linux-heads on this matter either. For them it's an outcome of freedom, and they consider any criticism of Linux on this basis to be both unacceptable and wrong. "Why, you must be a MicroShaft supporter!"
Yet it is a problem, and there are real consequences. There is endless wasted effort as the Linux community pursues umpteen variations on any issue Linux related. It means that mature, fully-supported instances of those variations are rare. And it is commonplace to discover abandonware, or not-ready-for-production apps, or communities locked in various states of dysfunction.
Navigating this space is like navigating the oceans, when the maps of the world were incomplete. Is it any wonder that non-technical users simply prefer to make another choice? Why do we have plumbers? It's because a lot of people don't care about plumbing and don't want to learn.
So no, the entire "it was easy for me and therefore it should be easy for everyone" argument is both lazy and misinformed.
For over 20 years, I've read, and occasionally participated in, the Linux versus Microsoft debate, The issues have been analyzed, discussed, and argued and the core issues have not changed. Windows is still the 800 lb gorilla ruling the market, and, Linux is still the affordable, safer, slightly geeky alternative few are willing to try. News flash: the vast majority of general users don't care. They are familiar with Windows, it does what they want (more or less) and they are not interested in trying something new. However, several things are changing this dynamic: more and more people do most of their personal computing on smart phones. Software as on-line service is growing. Alternate OS's like Chrome and Android are taking more and more device market share from Microsoft (have you tried to buy a MS smartphone recently?) When the programs, applications, games and data storage you work and play with are all on-line, and none care what OS you run, so why should the user? At that point, the M$ premium becomes glaringly obvious, and a cheaper OS becomes a rational choice.
... it wants its argument about Linux desktop complexity and its unsuitability for email and faxing back.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
One must have is all it takes to reject linux in favor of windows.
Other factors:
Windows comes pre-installed on every laptop you buy, so why remove the standard OS?
Windows is used in schools, and at work, it is more familiar.
Linux will never be a viable desktop replacement. It's too fragmented from a distribution standpoint. It's way to technical for your average user to get their head around. Further, the OS is completely irrelevant these days. It's all about the apps. If your OS doesn't support mainstream productivity apps or the app you need OOTB then its irrelevant. I still can't believe this dead horse subject gets gets so badly flogged.
I have heard that Microsoft used the BSD stack for their networking. If so, msft must have worked overtime to make it suck. BSD has good networking IMO.
Workgroups, homegroups, only having selective versions of Windows that can join a domain. It's a mess, and getting worse.
Aside from that, in my experience, msft networking just does not reliably work. Copy a large number file from one box to another, and many of the files may get dropped; or it may crap out halfway through. There are ways to do this more reliably, but you should not have to use special hacks.
I was recently asked to help somebody move her files from an XP box, to a Windows 10 home version box. She wants the XP box set up so she can go through it, and copy what she wants where she wants. Should be nothing to it, but it's actually a pain. Put both versions of windows on a workgroup, have full admin privileges. But windows will not allow some directories to be shared. I am not the only person who has noticed this. Windows forums are filed with similar complaints.
Msft offers help pages on this sort of thing. But msft's documentation simply does not work. Msft instructs users to follow a particular procedure, but the OS will not allow it. Crap documentation for a crap OS.
I am not looking for help on this. Just posting my opinion.
Sorry need citation on thst as the gpu issue has been solved for years as well as the wifi issue.
Ask the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. . . (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...it's still tough to manage at times. I've dealt with a lot of failures to boot after what seemed like minor updates. Plus compatibility playing my PC games is still weak...
I can only speak for myself, but I don't really see a benefit to switching to Linux. I built the PC I am using. I have customized the experience so it works the way I want it to. I don't need to set up servers or anything. I have paid a lot of money for software and hardware that are not supported on Linux, only Windows, and OSX. Windows 10 is a smooth experience, and you can turn off the spyware features. I have never had to pay for windows 10, it was a free upgrade from a windows 7 license that I took from a computer that was being retired at work.
Some of the stuff that people are complaining about in this thread are artifacts from windows xp sp1. The world has moved on.
You should realize that people absolutely *HATE* being told that they can be influenced against their 'will' by anything or anyone (including advertising) despite the xxx billions spent on sublimal advertising.
Technically, for many people, their primary computing device has changed from their desktop to their smartphones/tablets. So, you could make the argument that many people HAVE switched from Windows to Linux (and *nix since IOS is a version of *nix..basically BSD with a Darwin Kernel).
I rarely use my desktop PC. The last thing on it is video editing and that's just for the big screen. I can edit video on my phone, too, but it's harder to be precise in the smaller screen. Other than that, I do everything on my (Linux) Android phone. Most apps are easier to use on the phone these days, with the desktop app being inferior in terms of the UI.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Most Windows users aren't ever there, yet. Or if they are, they jump ship to Apple if they haven't been burned by Apple yet.
I say this as someone who uses Windows at home to run Steam VR / Blender / Unity 3D and other light gaming.
I use Ubuntu pretty much exclusively at work, with a Windows 10 VM for those unfortunate times I have to touch our old .net codebase.
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Path of least resistance? Easiest option? I worked on a consultancy in Cambodia - an international financial institution was promoting Windows even though (at the time) the Cambodian policy was to switch to open source software (and I believe thus Linux). I asked the team leader why his organization was pushing windows in spite of the Cambodian policy and he said it was org policy to promote windows.
The more interesting issue for me would be why do organizations (and countries?) that HAVE switched to Linux switch (or consider switching) back to Windows? I suspect it is in large part because of bribery or enticements (corruption???), but I don't recall ever seeing an analysis on why such actions are considered or undertaken. (No, I have never bothered to dig into the backstories. )
Not to mention that, when you boot Windows, the disk chatters for at least 5 minutes and you can hardly start an app. Also, Windows is so weighed down by running all the antivirus, anti malware stuff that it sucks a good portion of the CPU for those tasks.
wake me up when I can use linux for:
1. tax software - no, I don't want to use a web site, I want to do my taxes on my computer
2. make greeting cards easily - I have never found anything that turns any open source UI nightmare like GIMP, Open/Libre/Whatever Office Draw, Inkscape, etc into something as easy to use as MS Publisher
if linux doesn't do basics like this, people aren't going to use it
Look at his 5,000,000+ UID. He's one of those clueless little millennial shits who thinks that being able to match up connectors to plug together a modern PC makes him a tech wizard.
Anyone on Slashdot with a UID over about 1,000,000 probably doesn't know what they are talking about.
All modern CPUs have built in IGPs, you tech illiterate fuck. You use the IGP for the Linux host and the discrete GPU for the Windows guest.
Or just use Wine or Proton. They've made incredible progress and most games will simply work.
I would consider it on my game machine if it was as easy to use as windows and fully supported the steam VR games running at the same FPS.
I have no desire to learn command line commands to install or keep it up to date. Still on win7 because i don't like the auto update thing in 10
Last thing we need is more competition now that the rest of the world has been switching to Linux.
It really is simple. If the country's federal govt switches, then each state/province can switch. Which will get cities to switch, schools, will switch and eventually only a few businesses will be left with Windows anywhere.
I'm happy that the world wants to send their money to the USA for Windows and MS-Office and other business and games.
Thanks, suckers!
If a country wants to send less money and build up their own hi-tech industries, the quickest answer is for the federal govt to switch to Linux and mandate F/LOSS licenses. This is good because it levels the playing field, lets the govt choose who will have the core code, but not prevent others from doing it as well. Why would a govt want to pay for the same stuff for 25 yrs, when they can pay for it for 5 yrs, then coast with ongoing support by a local team?
Only local companies will likely bid on a mandatory Linux + F/LOSS solution. Oracle won't. IBM won't. Microsoft won't. That leaves local companies in the competition, building their expertise, growing. Keeping the money local. Even if some international does bid, the code becomes F/LOSS and they have to re-win every year going forward. No captive customers. Many companies can't compete on that stage, where they have to keep winning the contract every year.
There is one very simple reason, which a lot of Linux geeks just don't get.
There aren't enough user applications available for Linux, Open/LibreOffice and the ubiquitous web browsers aside.
And that's simply because there simply aren't enough of both tools and skilled programmers out there to develop desktop applications that are true replacements for what is available for the last +25 years on Windows.
And no, web/cloud based applications just don't cut it either...
Goes to show that "software devs" get lost as soon as hardware comes into play. You obviously would be better off having 2 discrete gpu's. You can however share one gpu with a little more work. You just used it as an example not realizing it could be done. You don't really care as you never plan on even attempting to install Linux. Your loss not mine.
Mine isn't far before his. I did however read the site for a decade or so not logged in and can't figure out my "Highdude" user info. And even teenagers these days know how to do gpu passthru. Well the ones that like to learn shit and not complain about not being able to do something before googling.
I use Linux exclusively. However, I will say that many Windows programs are more complete, require less of a learning curve, and quite fast for some applications. For example, programs for musicians tend to be all in one and far easier to use than what I have seen in Linux. The industry itself needs to pick up its feet. For example, I need to correct an email address issue. They always want to send a security code. Yet now they want to send that code by txt. Therefore if you have a landline you can't get the code. That strongly implies that they want to track your locations at all times. Perhaps a free Linux email service just might prosper without giving a cell number for privacies sake.
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My 82 year old mother has a linux laptop. Which she actially used up to two years ago to do work on (word processing and scoring music). Her win8 laptop never gets opened. She is most definitely not an engineer.
No other spreadsheet controls the world
Try Ubuntu Mate 18.
What innovative features does it have?
I work for a company that has a lot of Linux desktop users. Every time my team gets together, usually 20% of the time is spent complaining about LibreOffice crashing or formatting badly, having to recover their laptop after an update screwed it up, or some other non-business fiddling required just to keep the damn thing working. And then if you want to have a meeting, much of the commercial meeting software, gotomeeting, skype, skype for business, etc. actually works. (Gotomeeting has improved) The desktop computer is a tool to do a job - there are too many things that just don't work on Linux or require endless fiddling to use or maintain.
Xubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish only has qpdf version 8.21 and I need the latest version which is 8.4. There is an appimage but it won't run for me. I don't know why. Yes I did chmod +x on the appimage. Still won't run.
So I downloaded the source tarball. I need to install two libraries as prerequisites: zlib and jpegturbo. Neither was even easy to find in the distros. It turns out the zlib package I need is called zlib1g-dev, but the software home page neglects to mention that. Of course I installed zlibc which is the wrong compression library entirely before googling and googling enough to discover the package I needed.
So ok I can finally do ./configure and then make as the qpdf web site instructs, but I already had 8.21 installed. Not sure if that is what caused the problem. The software seemed to compile. So I then did a 'make install' as well and it seemed to do something, but when I enter qpdf --version I still get version 8.21. So it did not upgrade the package.
So I figure maybe I have to remove the old package first. So I do apt purge qpdf. Easy enough. It uninstalled version 8.21. Then I tried 'make install' again. No luck. Now when I type qpdf I just get command not found. So it appears like I am going to have to reinstall version 8.21 again even though I managed to get the software to compile from source *and* there is an appimage available. Have I made my point?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
and I think Mac OS is the way to go.
I used it for a long time (since Mac OS 8) and always loved the interface. I thought, "this cost a premium, but it's totally worth it!" But now all I see now is "Apple fucks up" news. When you see this:
>machines ever less upgradable
>machines get OS updates for too little time
>entry level desktops have no dedicated GPU
>high end desktop sucks, not refreshed in 5 years
>laptop with too few ports
>laptop with gimmicky touch mini-screen rather than F-keys
>laptop keyboards with a shitty super thin switch that goes bad for no reason
Do you think that's a viable platform? Something worth a premium?
Circumcision is child abuse.
This is something that Eric Raymond put out in 2006 and it's just as relevant today.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writi...
Users don't want to know what's going on under the hood as long as it's simple and works. Linux UX development still hasn't caught up to Apple and MS on the "Stupidly Simple" interfaces. And likely never will.
it is cheaper because you are buying their linux support for the laptop. Because it is niche the linux support will cost more
To each their own, I find windows to be shit on the desktop. I used Debian personally. Literally the only reason I responded to you was because of your "$20k" comment that was completely false. Had you said all the things you have said just now we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. You make very good points. However if large companies all tell vendors like adobe "were moving to linux, port or we switch" There will be linux releases of every major program within 1 full quarter. The reason there is not many now is because people are complacent getting screwed by microsoft. Every other day there is an article about how $userbase is mad at $Microsoftdivision because of something stupid. As a consumer, I don't like the fact that my pc is not really mine with windows anymore. I used to love windows, hell I used to love windows 10! When it first was released that is, then every few months they would make it a little more unbearable. Now I classify it as spyware/trojan as it should be. Plus the UI is shit tbh. But I love KDE and windows XP so... theres that. What exactly is your bad experience with mint anyways? I have never used it but its what I started my brother on as there's tons of support and I don't like the way ubuntu has been going for a while. I literally have no issues with my OS when I don't break it playing with things I know I shouldn't be. I even have one of the ryzen motherboards that has a a quarky way of interacting with the superIO that made it impossible to see sensors until linux kernel was updated to use a work around. Had a similar issue on windows when it was released also. But other than having to install lmsensors from git, I have 0 other setup that isn't a command or two away.
Most people simply do not realize that they have a choice. They think that Windows is part of the computer. These same people do not know that there is a Linux kernel underneath the Android monstrosity on their phones. Hell, they haven't even heard of Linux.
Microsoft Office is why people are locked into the Windows ecosystem, despite Windows slowly devolving into an unusable, unenjoyable shitshow.
And No. Libre, Open and anything else you've got are not and never will be adequate replacements for MS office's package.
125 is still pretty high compared to most people and I bet you have a technical background. Fedora is actually pretty impressive. A harder distro than Xubuntu which I am using. My IQ is less than 100, but I have many years of programming and Linux experience. So I can manage to run Linux even though I am not really smart enough to manage Linux properly.
I just had to compile an app from scratch which required 2 dependencies and even then I can only run the program from within the 'build' subdirectory. Trying to copy the executable file to usr/local/bin didn't work. Won't run from there.
The appimage that was available also didn't work with certain options and so seems like it won't be reliable in general. The appimage wouldn't run at all at first. It is at least running now and I am not sure how that happened. The app does at least have a thorough and up to date user manual which is like a miracle in the Linux world.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Now I would agree that there needs to be some improvement in documentation but it is VERY rare for an application to have no documentation. Not even a manpage? Which applications?
Well I never said it wasn't rare. It is indeed rare for there to be not even a sentence explaining what the application actually does. Probably less than 1% of Linux apps, but that pretty much never happens with Windows apps. It is so rare that I cannot come up with any examples in the few minutes I have to post this, but they are out there. I have seen lots of examples over the years. Most recently several embedded web servers had zero documentation and I think some gui tools. Usually they are very niche applications and of course obscure. The real problem isn't the nodoc applications. It is that there are so many applications with very bad and ultra-minimal documentation.I would say as many as half the Linux applications I use have what I consider to be inadequate docs and at least 20% have only very minimal documentation.
What? If it is an X application from the repos they almost always install a menu entry.
Really? That hasn't really happened at all with my installation of Xubuntu, but maybe there is something wrong with my installation. I dunno. But I've never run a distro like that. Maybe I should try Fedora sometime if most of the apps install menu entries automatically. I guess I could at least try Kubuntu. I will check out MenuLibre or LXMenuEditor. I have been meaning to look for apps like that. But it shouldn't really be necessary. Linux desperately needs to make software installation a lot easier if it ever wants to get mainstream users.
It is VERY unusually to be expected to source compile and even rarer to not have a basic README giving basic compile instructions. Usually it's as easy as entering into the source directory and: ./configure
make
sudo make install
I don't find it unusual at all. It depends on how obscure the software is, but a lot of the best niche Linux software is only available as source or if you need an up to date version you often have no choice but to compile as I just did with QPDF. I had a similar problem with Eclipse IDE which was not in the Ubuntu repos at all. One of the best things about Linux is the large variety of little software tools available for many different things, but binaries are frequently unavailable for those. The nice thing about Arch Linux which I have used in the past is the AUR often has those little programs and auto-compiles them for you. I think also Arch Linux goes the extra mile in enforcing the sort of strict compilation that you just listed. I wish that always just worked but it frequently does not. And as far as hand editing .desktop files I didn't mean it was hard to figure out how to do it. I just meant it was a long and tedious process. Although I guess it somewhat depends on how fast you can type.
Which one? Perhaps I can help.
appweb and ESP, a web server and MVC framework respectively. I'd really like to be able to use them but I cannot even build them and even if I manage to build them the documentation is so inadequate that I doubt I will be able to get it working. I would like to try though. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Also if you are still feeling generous why can I not upgrade qpdf to the latest version by compiling from source? I did ./configure, make, make install but it didn't actually install the program. It did build it though and if I go to the 'build' directory I can run it from within that directory only. These sort of little problems happen to me constantly with Linux. Software installation and documentation are just not problems with Windows. Of course Windows has no equivalent to qpdf and anyway I wouldn't want to install Windows on m
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Most people do not have enough experience to even attempt an install, simple as it may be.
People are afraid of change. And with Desktop Environments lacking some key features or usability that society has come to love about windows, why would they switch. The effort should be to focus to teaching kids about Linux, so they understand that they have a choice. Or maybe, tech folks could help introduce Linux distros to their friends. If there was a single Linux Distro usable in mostly the same way as Windows, this wouldn't be of concern. It's important to educate, as well as provide familiar tools that feel natural. I don't agree with most user choices, but people like what they like and tend to learn and use software that makes life easier.
There are two distros that I like for these purposes, and they are Kubuntu, and PureOS. Yes, I'm partial to KDE, don't judge me! A few people I know have chosen Gnome Unity, but very few.
Not sure what the right answer is.
Posting on slashdot.
Long time Linux user, at work love the linux servers we admin and hate the windows ones, yadda, yadda...
I have a new-ish laptop, with an nvidia 1070 q.
Tried installing latest version of Ubuntu 18.04.02 at the time, installer hard locked my computer.
(we already lost the regular person who was curious about linux at this point).
Figured out I had to 1) disable my cpu in the bios, 2) change some grub options, 3) reboot, enable gpu, install 4) install nvidia drivers
Not to mention this process failed numerous times because the suggested driver in the repositories didn't work, the propietary nvidia driver did work, but fucked my x configuration, etc, etc, etc.....
Eventually I got it installed and everything updated, but it took me a whole weekend.
Manjaro was even worse, as expected, but w/e.
Heck, last week I had the updates notification icon, I update.... then I try to open one of the vmware I use for work because some apps just don't exist in Linux, and I get an error saying vmmod was not found, whatever the fuck that meant, I eventually found a technote that did not work, but a hero in the comments had the correct suggestion.
This morning, I open the software center and get an error occured message because some keys had expired..
It just keeps adding up, the experience just sucks compared to windows.
For work where I just ssh into servers I absolutely adore Linux, and I think it is unbeatable here.
Really? That hasn't really happened at all with my installation of Xubuntu, but maybe there is something wrong with my installation.
what version of Xubuntu? Creating menu entries is the standard in modern Linux. It should "just happen" whenever you install a graphical application from the repos.
But it shouldn't really be necessary.
It isn't, most of the time.
Linux desperately needs to make software installation a lot easier if it ever wants to get mainstream users.
It IS easy. Want to know how to install Eclipse on Fedora? You can just open up whatever graphical software application your desktop environment has installed, or...it's actually faster to just type "sudo dnf install eclipse" in a terminal.
I had a similar problem with Eclipse IDE which was not in the Ubuntu repos at all.
Yes it is: https://packages.ubuntu.com/co...
appweb and ESP, a web server and MVC framework respectively. I'd really like to be able to use them but I cannot even build them and even if I manage to build them the documentation is so inadequate that I doubt I will be able to get it working.
Now you have to remember I am not a programmer or developer. I can do some basic troubleshooting, but I could not tell you "how" to set up a web server for professional use.
But compiling appweb was as easy as typing "make" in a terminal, that's what the instructions said to do if you didn't want to go to the effort of building their special build too. Which I just did. The final message of the compile said that it could be ran in two ways, one of which was "make run", Which I just did.
It put up a little intro page at 127.0.0.1:4100, which I was able to access so it's working just fine. I didn't compile up ESP, but the build instructions look the same. You'll have to read their more indepth information to get everything setup for "production" use. Don't ask me, not-a-programmer/dev/webadmin
Also if you are still feeling generous why can I not upgrade qpdf to the latest version by compiling from source? I did ./configure, make, make install but it didn't actually install the program. It did build it though and if I go to the 'build' directory I can run it from within that directory only.
On Fedora the version in the repos is the latest version, 8.4.0. Again, which Xubuntu are you using? an LTS version? You might not need the latest version unless it has a feature the older version doesn't.
But your problem is probably either one of two things, the application is installed, but qpdf happens to be of those applications that installs libraries alongside the binary and since you didn't ldconfig after the make install the binary can't find the libs
Or else it's a $PATH issue and for some reason /usr/local/bin isn't ahead of /usr/bin, but that's much less likely. Just run ldconfig as root, that should do the trick.
I bet you have a technical background.
Nope, I work with persons with disabilities, in a non-technical job, and that is all I can say about that.
Fedora is actually pretty impressive. A harder distro than Xubuntu which I am using.
When I first started using Linux, Red Hat based distros were considered the "distros for the non-technical masses" in the way Ubuntu and Mint are now. I'm just used to the "Redhatty" way of doing things. Though back when I first started using Linux fewer things were "automatic", though more things were than what was said in the Linux books I had. One book said one often had to manually edit the /etc/printcap for one's printer.
Not on the Red Hat version I used in 2002, all you had to do is was run "printtool", which was graphical, and select your printer from a list, exactly like how one can do today Though it was a pre-cups system. (Though in most cases you don't even need to do that, and it just works!)
Installing truetype fonts? just put them in the right directory and "maybe" run fc-cache.
Open source jumped the shark as soon as that kind of shit started happening. It was nice while it lasted, but enough is enough!
Windows is easier to use. Plug and play,etc. Printers, etc.
The average user is lazy and wants the simplest path.
They dont know the up front effort is worth it.
I need several apps that don't run on Linux: mostly music production applications and plugins. They don't run reliably on Wine, etc..
That's the only reason for me.
Maybe Linus could contact Albeton and fund a Linux version? If that happened, Linux might pull in tens of thousands users overnight.
Font rendering in Manjaro, MX Linux, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Solus and elementaryOS are superior to font rendering in any version of Windows.
Gnome 3 and the mindset behind it has done more to turn people off than anything Windows could have ever done. Hell, Gnome 3 managed to turn Gnome 2 users off on it. Just how hard is it turn your own userbase against you in the fashion the Gnome 3 developers have done?
The biggest complaint I hear about desktop Linux is that it works beautifully right after you install it...
But as soon as you install the wrong software, get a new piece of hardware, change the wrong setting... it falls apart and you're sitting at a terminal switching between typing obscure commands and hunting through user forums for hours or days.
It's a giant box of spring snakes with a pretty bow on it.
I know it sounds so 1990's, but I feel like the real lack of reach is advertising. As an IT professional, with ~400 machines under my care, I have to pick & choose my foss battles with fellow employees. I manage a network that's about 30/30/30/10 split with Win/Mac/Chrome/*nix. the 10% *nix being machines I've personally brought online. Even the talk of an alternative office suite outside of "Microsoft Office" is heresy with some of these folks. If the gnu/linux community diverted funds via YouTube, TV, etc for proper marketing, I think we could gain a much larger audience. Less than 2% of my coworkers even know that *nix is, it's even worse with the next gen of kids. Last week, I had the pleasure of teaching a 3rd grade class the difference between AC & DC voltage. At the end of the class, I brought up the Raspberry Pi and offered to invest in anyone who was interested in tinkering with electronics. None of the students had even heard of such a device, nor did the teacher. When I told them they could create a home automation assistant, such as an Alexa or Google Home, they literally lost it. They had no idea such tech was within their grasp. Starving minds are out there, ripe for the taking, but we have to be broad and somewhat boisterous in order to make ourselves known. The non-geeks are sitting there, consuming FB & YT content without an ad-blocker. Let's preach our gospel via ads, they learn our ways, then they grow from within. It's an untapped new generation that we are going to miss if we don't take action.
I find installing programs under Linux easier most times. I can run the install through the terminal and I can check the output. On Windows in most cases I don't even know what is happening. If I am lucky I can find some log files somewhere.
I think we need to redefine what an "average" computer user is these days. I am not even sure what that would be.
People who spend 99% of their time in either the browser, or an app that came from an app store, or an app in the browser that came from the browser app store. The median user spends 100% of their time in one of these ways. Only an infinitesimal percentage of "computer users" are doing anything else. In some ways this is a clear victory, because computing has become so ubiquitous. But it remains to be seen what computing's future looks like, and it may include even less general purpose computing devices.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Last I checked, a VM required twice the RAM compared to dual booting: half for the host and half for the guest. That's difficult for people who have already maxed out a motherboard's RAM slots. It also requires the purchase of an operating system license.
Why do you need it updated if you don't use the internet on it?
Many proprietary applications will not run without Internet access because they phone home continuously to verify the continued validity of the software license. I was under the impression that some Autodesk products had instituted this requirement of phoning home.
Does your ISP charge you for using windows? but not linux/macos?
Some cellular ISPs charge subscribers for using Windows, macOS, or desktop Linux, as opposed to iOS or Android.
Crostini works on a new enough Chromebook. It does not work on older Chromebook models because of lack of support for the container in older CPUs and kernel versions. In order to measure the overall user experience, I'll have to see whether sales staff at Walmart, Best Buy, and Office Depot are knowledgeable about whether the Chromebook models in stock support "Crostini" or "Linux apps".
Most people are lazy and complacent. They don't want to put any effort into thinking new thoughts even if it would result in removing some of their burdens, at least they are burdens they are already familiar with.
Also, reinstalling is not usually a necessary step to fix Linux software problems. Read the manpages, infopages, and other available documentation, and you'll be able to fix almost any problem that isn't a hardware one. Linux is an OS that encourages exploration, unlike Windows which requires extra manuals to simply bring it up to Unix standards. Note that fixing a software problem may entail installing a compiler if you haven't already, and recompiling the offending software from source. I remember having a non-functional cron that I had to fix in that way 20 years ago.
The problem with Linux is that every copy comes with a lecture. You aren't REALLY a Linux user unless you have been inducted into the Church of Linux.
Linux people tend to sell stuff that average people don't care that much. Freedom? I mean, it's not a bad thing, but Linux-heads are willing to go through all kinds of contortions to achieve this. They justify any inconvenience, extra time and bad user experiences because 'Freedom'. Ordinary users are accustomed to dealing with companies that lock them in to various degrees and in various ways; this isn't a scary or unfamiliar thing to consumers.
And RMS has to be the poster boy for this cultish behavior. He even insists upon his terminology, as though Gnu-Linux is one of the 1,000 names of God, and only correct use of the holy words is acceptable.
Linux-heads mostly refuse to meet people where they are. Instead of listening and responding to what people actually want and need, and providing exactly that.
How many times have you heard these types of conversations?
"I tried to use Linux and had a problem with X."
"No, your problem wasn't X, it was Y. I don't believe that X is a problem and you need to come around to my way of thinking."
"I had a bad experience getting X working."
"You shouldn't be trying to get X working. Your goal is wrong."
"When I was installing X, a bad thing happened. Why?"
"That has never happened to me. Therefore either this install problem doesn't exist or the problem is you."
A salesman would never try to win over a customer with these messages. Yet this kind of stuff happens in the Linux world every day. The question should be, why do Linux-heads continually engage in these behaviors?
Really? Please tell that to my Ryzen machines.
Its crap like Ubuntu that gives Linux a bad name. Years ago I really thought Linux itself was slow and unreliable. Then I discovered its just Ubuntu.
It's hard to know how to evaluate much of this in a global way. There are many ways of assessing "goodness". Here, however, are a couple I have found. Note I am a statistician, data scientist, and quantitative engineer. I work a lot with numbers and with quantitative and highly structured ways of dealing with text. My world is basically Python 3 or R, and R heavily dominates. I can run either on Ubuntu or on Windows, and I use, at various times, 7 Home Edition, 7 Enterprise ("Pro"), and 10. Python is Python, but its problem is that numpy and scipy do not have the numerical rigor instilled in them seen in a MATLAB or in R. Python has a lot of packages and I will sometimes use it, but primarily to prepare datasets for R. R is my main, so it's my world. The principal problems with R on Ubuntu vs Windows are: (a) On Ubuntu, new packages are expected to be recompiled. Accordingly the outcome of an install is not only dependent upon the new functions being downloaded, but, during compilation, the library base and the compiler versions available. Sometimes these fail. On Windows, the default means of distribution is to distribute binaries. This freezes all interrelationships among packages into a solid, consistent, and mostly often successful mixture. (b) Memory management on Ubuntu -- even with multiple cores -- can be complicated. If I have a calculation which demands 100 Gb of working space, a choice of a fixed memory.limit specification can be lethal. Moreover, much of the focus upon software like Python is to be able to script calculations. This isn't always the best way to do things.