
Linux is Not Windows - lgv
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
======
Goladus
I'd be interested to see a more concise and less sarcastic modern summary of
how Linux is Not Windows.

This reads more like a rant at how windows people Just Don't Get It more than
a genuine attempt to be helpful.

edit: Here's an example of a more helpful style, comparing linux and BSD, and
he even self-deprecatingly files it under rants: <http://www.over-
yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01>

~~~
chrisjsmith
Excellent - thanks for posting that.

I ironically moved from FreeBSD to Debian about 10 years ago. Perhaps it's
time for another look.

~~~
chrisjsmith
Replying to my own post. It still sucks for getting shit done.

------
afy
The problems that the article addresses are not the ones that I would have
chosen.

I think the main problem that new users to Linux have is the steep learning
curve. The author dismisses user friendliness with the implication that the
only reason Linux is difficult to learn is because it is different.

The analogy given is vi versus a standard Windows word processor. I am not
disputing that vi is a much more powerful program, but I am saying that it is
much harder to learn than Microsoft Word. Using Word, without knowing the
keyboard shortcuts, you can use the toolbars to do what you want and in doing
so you learn the shortcuts, most of which are printed next to the menu items.

Using vi, without knowing any keyboard shortcuts, you can do exactly nothing.
Arguably vi is much better off without toolbars because they take up a lot of
screen real estate and would be difficult to implement from a terminal window,
but that does not mean there is no such thing as user friendliness. Another
problem is the problem of hardware support[1], which the author does not
address at all.

Having said that, I will agree with his point that since it doesn't really
matter much to (with notable exceptions) most developers what features people
not already using Linux would like to see, development is centred around
people already using Linux and on more gentle slopes of the learning curve.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2643671>

~~~
gamble
Desktop Linux doesn't have a learning curve; it has a learning cliff.

Linux cribs so much from other operating systems that it's reasonably familiar
and easy to use when you first sit down, but the problems start when you need
to go beyond using it as a dumb terminal: perhaps you need to set up a
printer, or there's an issue with networking or power management. Now you're
over the cliff. It can be a nightmare for a engineer like myself to fix
problems, even though I've been using Linux since the mid-90s. An
unsophisticated user would be finished.

An anecdote: I'm mainly an OSX user now, but I bought an eeePC netbook a
couple of years ago for travel and tried to install the then-current version
of Ubuntu. This was literally one of the most popular laptops on the market,
and Ubuntu installed without a functional network device. Getting it working
was _not_ easy, involving a couple of reinstallations. Even then, power
management was nonfunctional and the netbook got half the battery life as it
did under Windows.

The real problem with desktop Linux isn't that it's hard to use or different;
it's that the average user can expect to struggle with crippling bugs and
hardware incompatibilities that are a nightmare to fix.

~~~
jrockway
_It can be a nightmare for a engineer like myself to fix problems, even though
I've been using Linux since the mid-90s. An unsophisticated user would be
finished._

I hear this a lot, but nobody ever actually describes the problem they have.
You mentioned priting. On my minimal Debian box, you point your web browser at
<http://localhost:631> and click shit and then the printer works. (If you want
to improve print quality / feature support, then you probably need to google
to decide which driver is best.)

On my Ubuntu 11.04 box, you type "printing" into the thing at the top left,
click "add printer", click "network printer", click "find", and click "ok".
That's it. Then you have that printer in every application, and from the
command line via lpr.

It can't get any easier.

The only way you can run into problems is if you buy a printer that's not
supported by Linux. And I think that's where most people run into trouble --
they buy something unsupported, and then spend three months googling in the
hopes that maybe it's not really unsupported. One time in ten, it turns out
that it is. The other nine times lead to stories like "Linux never works".

Nope, shitty hardware never works. Linux just hides that from you less than
Windows.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> Nope, shitty hardware never works. Linux just hides that from you less than
> Windows.

And that's the thing that Windows actually gets right. A typical user doesn't
know nor care about OS-hardware compatibility. He/she buys a printer and wants
it to work. It is up to OS to make this happen.

~~~
justincormack
It is not the OS that makes this happen. The device ships with a windows
driver disk. The manufacturer made it happen. Out of the box Linux probably
ships with more drivers than Windows, but the process is much more
centralised.

~~~
wvenable
You could argue that Microsoft makes it much easier for manufacturers to make
and distribute drivers (that work) for Windows than they can for Linux. Linux
ships with a lot of drivers because that's the primary way you get Linux
drivers.

------
j_baker
You know, to a certain extent, unfriendliness is what I like about Linux. I
like "friendly" systems for browsing the web, email, and watching video. But
for hacking, Linux simply can't be beat. I really don't see why Linux needs to
be an OS for Joe Internet User. What's wrong with Linux being a
server/development OS?

~~~
djd
The reason Linux seems to be un friendly is because windows takes care you as
a baby,most of the time you are not in control and there is nothing much to
worry. So if kids where exposed to Linux first this problem would not arise
IMHO

~~~
eropple
Alternatively, Windows takes care of things that a normal person has no need
to, but Linux forces you to do.

It's like being forced to think about breathing.

~~~
rjbond3rd
I disagree. Windows is always interrupting me with things. Updates, virus
scans, warnings, malware etc. whereas Linux stays in the background (for me).

~~~
eropple
I don't remember the last time I was prompted for, literally, any of that,
with the exception of Windows Update--which is about as annoying as Ubuntu's
nagging updater (that is, not very).

But, then, I don't install crap. Most people do, but most people who do also
don't care so much about whether they see those popups or not. It doesn't
register to them. So, yes, there is an edge case here where you can install
crap and then be offended by said crap's tendency to annoy you...but
personally, I rarely see it.

~~~
rjbond3rd
Really? You don't get told there's a new version of Java, Acrobat Reader,
Flash, updates for whatever security suite, updates for other applications?

You change the motherboard after it fails, now Windows needs to re-validate,
then if you don't do that right away, Windows Security Essentials starts
counting down to when it won't work anymore?

And the Windows re-validation process fails for unknown reasons every time, so
it keeps telling you "this copy isn't genuine" even though it's a 100% legit
retail version (and prompts again each boot).

Which I installed to get rid of the -crap- the hardware vendor installed. And
then on top of that, the -only- stuff I installed was Java, Flash, Firefox and
Reader. That's -it-.

I don't even use Windows -- this is my wife's computer. Linux never bothers
except for security updates.

And in the last year, Windows got infected twice, requiring re-installs when
MalwareBytes and AV could not disinfect (hence, perhaps, the validation
problem).

It takes more effort to keep the Windows machine going than the other 5 Linux
boxes in the house (each running a different distro no less).

~~~
eropple
Acrobat Reader sucks, so I don't install it. I squelch Java's nags because
it's disabled in my browsers and I only have it for running Netbeans. I am
probably more lax in my Flash updates than I should be (because I don't see
them, I squelched them as well), but I run FlashBlock in Chrome so I'm not
overly worried. Microsoft Security Essentials updates through Windows Update
and never bothers me.

I've gotten revalidation prompts, but never failures; I know they can happen
but it's never been an issue for me.

Seriously, I honestly don't know why so many people have trouble with it, but
I have had a pain-free experience since installing Windows 7. Even Vista was
pretty much problem-free, although MSE wasn't around then and I did get
occasional AV nags.

------
deadcyclo
It's really interesting how the article reads as a reply to (most of) the
comments here on hackernews and not the other way around. I have a feeling
that a lot of people commenting here simply read the title and nothing more.
Otherwise, why would you put forth an "argument" which is exactly one of the
arguments discussed in the article as false? I'm probably going to get heat
for posting this, but I feel it's kind of ironic. Normally HN gives me a good
extension to the article in question: Other ideas, other points of view and
expands on the article. Not so here...

------
acabal
I'm guessing the X in title of this post is standing for "desktop", since
that's what the other post on the front page today was referring to. But I
think the problems in this article have nothing to do with the mainstream
indifference towards Linux on the desktop. (And before I start, I should say I
love Linux and have used it as my primary machine for years--and am still
using it now.) I think the problems are:

1\. The milestone-release system in most big distros. For Ubuntu, the biggest
and supposedly most user-friendly distro, I'm expected to upgrade every 6
months. One could argue that if your system is working OK, then you can stick
with one release forever--imagine still using 8.04 in 2011. But what if I want
Firefox 4, or a new version of a single program? In Windows, you just go to
the website and install, or sometimes the program auto-updates itself. On
Ubuntu, I must update _the entire system_ , even if I want just one program to
update. That means when I update to Firefox 4, there's a chance my wifi will
no longer work (happened to me in 9.04), or that hibernate won't work
(happened to me in 11.04) or that my desktop environment will be shockingly
different for no reason. All I wanted was Firefox--but to get it, I've got to
swallow Unity and any other half-baked software the distro throws at me.

My mom ranted at me for 15 minutes because I installed FF4 on her Windows
machine and now her "Home" button was on the other side of the address bar and
her address bar wasn't on top anymore. Can you imagine if she had been using
Ubuntu, clicked "yes" to the upgrade prompt just to get it out of the way, and
had been presented with Unity? She would have had a stroke.

Yes, you can install PPA's and through various console voodoo upgrade only
certain parts of the system, but not every program has a PPA and installing
them is beyond a mere mortal's grasp.

And, even if you decide to skip a 6-month upgrade, at some point you won't
have a choice--security updates will stop coming. Good luck upgrading an
Ubuntu system with 2 years of upgrades in a row--you're going to have to
flatten and reinstall, again something beyond mere mortals.

2\. Quality control--and this is tied in with #1. Again going with Ubuntu (but
I think this applies to most other distros as well): every time I upgrade, I'm
presented with a literal swamp of fresh bugs and regressions for things that
used to work. I've been using the same laptop since 8.04, and with each
upgrade something that used to work breaks, something that was broken before
gets fixed, and I get new bugs to deal with. Sometimes hibernate doesn't work;
sometimes wifi; sometimes the boot splash is corrupt; sometimes this,
sometimes that. I know quality control is a hard thing to do considering it's
all volunteer-powered and we're fighting against propriety lock-in; but
there's just no excuse if you're trying to put Linux on the desktop.

If Linux is to beat Windows, it has to be easy to update specific software
without updating every damn thing and without regressions. Windows has, more
or less, managed to do this. So far Linux hasn't, for whatever reason. Until
they do, it'll be relegated to being an enthusiast's OS (and there's nothing
wrong with that either).

~~~
Mithrandir
Most people (meaning the 'general population', 'mainstream users', and
'average Tom, Dick, or Harry') who aren't GNU/Linux users have either:

a) Never heard of G/L

b) Don't know how to install it; don't care; 'Windows/Mac is good enough for
me'

c) Have had compatibility problems with it when they tried

Of course, the idea of general population depends on who you interact with the
most, but let's assume general means people who go to Best Buy/Costco/Walmart
for computers. These people would probably be willing to try G/L if it _came
by default_. Yet the moment some weird error came up that involved anything
more than a simple Google search, back to the store the computer goes. This is
not only a loss of money for sellers and manufacturers, but also ends up being
really bad PR.

G/L distros like gNewsense or Trisquel (both of which run Linux-libre) would
run and sell really well at Best Buy if the video cards, wifi adapters, etc.
they would come with worked out of the box. Yet God forbid you use some other
[wifi adapter, insert other unsupported device] that doesn't have the right
firmware! (Of course, this also applies to regular G/L albeit much less so.)
Most 'average Joes' don't care about things like FLOSS unless it works and
doesn't require a lot of work to setup and use constantly.

That's not to mention running Windows programs that don't have a FLOSS
alternative.

My point is this: G/L won't become immensely popular without the major
compatibility issues being fixed and it becoming a default install on a whole
major line of computers. Compatibility won't be fixed until the vendors of the
devices or programs see a significant profit intake from releasing the
firmware/whatever and do so. Default installation won't happen until some
major hardware company comes along and sells G/L only.

TL;DR: G/L needs major support to become commercially popular.

~~~
num1
I'd really like to know what happened to Ubuntu being supported by Dell a
while ago. <http://www.dell.com/ubuntu> only lists one machine that you can
buy with Ubuntu pre-installed.

If this had kept up, and more suppliers had joined the bandwagon, it would
have been exactly the major support you are talking about. Why did things move
backwards?

~~~
cschwarm
Indeed. Also netbooks or whatever they were called. Almost exclusively Linux
in the beginning, but then almost every supplier started to use Windows.

~~~
click170
I think this problem was one of perception. I think too many salespeople were
pushing Netbooks as "cheaper smaller computers that can do anything a desktop
can except gaming", which to most people translated to "cheap and small
windows install that can do simple games". But then they took it home and
turned it on and saw something that wasn't windows and they got scared.

------
beloch
The biggest problems preventing Linux from gaining mainstream market share
have nothing do with the actual software.

1\. MS and Apple are both fantastic marketers (although Apple has been doing
better than MS as of late) and throw massive amounts of cash at promoting
their OS's. Nobody is doing this for Linux.

2\. The average customer is more inclined to trust something they saw plastic
people hawking on TV than something that's free. People generally don't trust
free stuff. If you're walking down the street and some random stranger offers
you a sandwich, do you eat it? Most people wouldn't.

3\. Inertia. Almost all computers come pre-loaded with an OS other than Linux.
Most users will never install an OS on their computers themselves.

Most of the stereotypes about Linux are totally false these days. The above
problems need solutions that probably aren't coming anytime soon. I find it
interesting that a loose amalgamation of volunteer open-source programmers can
build such a professional-grade OS and then completely fail to market it. What
Linux needs is for open-source marketing to catch up to open-source software.

~~~
pistacchio
no, the biggest problem is that i never got the extra keys (eject, volume
mute...) of my dell to work under linux, nor the second earplug output, and it
pissed me off because i actually paid for them. also, the day i was like "you
know what? i want to compose some music again, maybe i'll regain the interest"
i was not able to find a semi-decent audio program for linux. this stands true
for the day i was like "the new wacom bamboo tablet is so cool! i want it, who
knows what i can do with that and photoshop".

i installed windows back and in a day i had all my extra keys, the second
plug, photoshop, cubase and my wacom working.

i'm on a mac now, and they make the software for the hardware and the hardware
for the software and i'm on the rich side of the market so adobe and wacom
make software for my os of choice.

------
karmafeeder
Linux will win the desktop when everything moves to the browser. Programmers
want only a good terminal and a good browser. Non-programmers want only a good
browser. Linux has a best kernel and will win on that fact alone in the next
~20 years.

Though likely, when Linux wins the desktop, no one will notice the difference.

~~~
wvenable
Everything is moving to the browser but the browser now requires a lot of
capabilities from the hardware and drivers: 3D acceleration, sound, printing,
power management, etc. Effectively all the problem areas for Linux outside of
custom hardware (like phones).

~~~
sorbus
I've never had problems with any of those on Linux. YMMV, of course, and I may
just have been lucky.

While you might have problems if you build a custom machine or use extremely
recent hardware (which doesn't have good drivers), the general implication of
browser-as-OS is that people wouldn't be installing this new system on old
computers, but instead would buy new computers with it already baked in.
Manufacturers, if they wanted to succeed, would be forced to make sure that
all the drivers and the system in general worked well.

~~~
wvenable
I'm pretty sure this link was posted in response to this earlier link on HN:

[http://batsov.com/Linux/Windows/Rant/2011/06/11/linux-
deskto...](http://batsov.com/Linux/Windows/Rant/2011/06/11/linux-desktop-
experience-killing-linux-on-the-desktop.html)

Which covers most/all of those things. Reasonably new and innovative hardware
(like GPU switching in laptops) just doesn't work, period. There are plenty
more examples. The browser makes Linux worse since the only thing you need
from your underlying platform is really good driver and power management
support.

~~~
sorbus
Yep, I saw that when it was posted earlier.

The only issue on the driver list I've ever encountered is wireless failing
after suspending. Oddly, that issue only showed up after my latest kernel
upgrade (and is a reason that I'm not using my netbook much until I figure out
a fix). I suppose that I've just been very lucky with the hardware I've
installed Linux on.

(I've also removed the FUD comment from my earlier post).

------
coffeeaddicted
Just some nitpicking: His d5w example ignores the fact that you have to count
the words first. Without visual clue - and once you are finished counting you
still have to type it in. While the inferior Ctrl-Shift-Right doesn't need any
mental work, you just do the counting and selecting in one.

------
ChuckMcM
I found the referenced article sort of jumped the shark as it were at the end
there but basically makes some good points for would be Linux adapters.

I've always felt that Linux's biggest challenge was a lack of a voice. Linus
does a great job of being that voice for the kernel and the closest we come
for user land is Canonical. An illustrative example of how that voice might
feel to users, if you have a choice between Gnome (MacOS X inspired UI) or KDE
(Windows inspired UI) then the set of utilities (calculator, IM client,
explorer, etc) might (in a well voiced world) have one implementation and they
would change their behavior depending on window system preference. Some do of
course, but many don't and it confuses new users when they use the KDE version
of a tool on Gnome or vice versa. The concept is that you need one person or
group which is speaking toward how things will be done, so that consistency
can be achieved across a large number of things. The concept seems somewhat
antithetical to some members of the Linux and FOSS communities.

Another area where a good leader / communicator would help out would be in
things like audio and printing and wireless networks. These things are, to the
perspective of someone coming to or trying Linux, horribly horribly broken.
They "just work" on Windows or MacOS.

Graphics and windows have gotten better in recent years but anything that
drops into the 'modify your .Xdefaults file' or 'Xorg configuration' just
mortifies someone who just wants to use the machine they don't want to become
a 'nerd' just to do something useful.

The 'edges' of Linux, especially in places where there are on-going
personality of philosophical wars (like the Canonical/Gnome/KDE wars or the
Wireless vendors vs the world wars) are really yucky places to have a problem.

And there is the point that was made in the article that when you do have a
problem you can't really find an answer sometimes. I wish there was the
'redhat for desktop' equivalent one could point those people at. Canonical is
closer but having a staff that manages issues rather than a wiki/forums page
would make it worth paying for in some circles.

------
bane
Yes yes, Windows users just don't get "it". With "it" apparently a vast
blackhole of time suck spent searching endless forums for conflicting advice
for why basic hardware on random machine doesn't work right, or why xyz
package failed to install or abc driver doesn't work right.

No thanks, I still haven't figured out how to get the 3 days of my life back
trying to share some files over my home network last year when I installed
ubuntu on my old (but perfectly serviceable) computer in my latest attempt at
using Linux.

What didn't work out of the box?

\- Mouse (stock Dell USB mouse), never did fix that, tried 3 different mice,
dug up an old PS/2 mouse and made do with that, probably some obscure usb
issue, but the usb hard drives and keyboard I had connected worked from the
beginning

\- NIC drivers (dunnah, some regular old built in 10/100 part on the mobo),
took an entire day of my life to resolve, and it kept dropping connection
requiring a reboot every 4-5 hours

\- Video drivers (nvidia something or other), never did work right

\- file sharing (I eventually got it to kinda work after hand editing a bunch
of files and installing some older version of samba, really, what's the gui
there for anyways?)

\- Stopped seeing one of the hard drives on the second day, a reinstall of
ubuntu (and all the other crap I had to do) fixed that

\- X died for no apparent reason, reinstall again

\- it refused to sync properly with my perfectly cromulent monitor so I was
doing all this at 640x480, which works brilliantly when half of the gui
controls are off the screen, I was prepared not to care if I could just get
the NIC working and remote in

\- after getting everything working (kinda, with gum and duct tape), ubuntu
did some sort of update that blitzed the whole thing and I just gave up, I
hadn't even really gotten to what I wanted to do with it.

As much as I really tried to get it to work, and I try one of these about once
every year or so since 1996 with whatever is the hot distro of the moment, and
I had no illusions that it would be as straight forward as Windows or OS X, I
_did_ expect things like _actually being able to use the computer enough to
fire up a browser and search for solutions to minor configuration issues_.
Every issue I had was literally a major configuration issue. I spent those 3
days with my MBP sitting next to me so I could look up help in various forums.

By comparison, I wiped the drive, installed Windows XP, most of it was spent
waiting for the files to copy, I had a thumb drive with 4 drivers on it. After
install I clicked setup.exe for each driver, rebooted a handful of times.
Clicked each drive I wanted to share and set it to "share" and that system is
still up and running...I think I've rebooted it 3 times since then. Total time
spent? 90 minutes.

So if "it" is wasting a bunch of my time for absolutely nothing in return? I
can't think of any other area in my life where I would allow that kind of user
experience.

Imagine this was a car, and I had to rebuild the engine or the shifter nob or
pedals or windshield or whatever just to drive it off the lot, and then I'd
find out it wasn't compatible with every road I wanted to go on, unless I
patched it with a different windshield, but when I did that the a/c stopped
working. And the brake pedal would stop activating the brake system every 6
hours unless I turned the car off and restarted the engine. Bringing in my car
for an oil change might make the doors or wheels stop working.

I have pretty low expectations of technology. I don't expect things to "just
work", but I do expect to have a couple pretty clear lines to resolve any
issues, even if I have to get my hands dirty and change the spark plugs
myself.

So if this is "it", no thanks.

~~~
dkarl
Try again with different hardware and your experience will, with very high
probability, be nothing like that. I've installed Linux on seven or eight
computers over the years, and I've never had a mouse or a wired NIC fail to
work out of the box. I've never had a graphics card problem that couldn't be
resolved with one or two hours of Google-and-try, Google-and-try, and the last
time I had trouble setting up graphics was the first time I set up dual
monitors, about six years ago. I work at a Linux shop where the desktop IT
department will only touch Windows, and the group of people running Linux on
their desktops and laptops is much, much larger than the "OMG I love it when
stuff breaks" tinkerer crowd. Most of us don't enjoy being our own sysadmins,
and if it was much trouble, we wouldn't bother.

Also it has to be said over and over again: setting up Windows from a generic
install disk can be just as much of a nightmare as Linux. The reason Windows
works so well for most people has nothing to do with Windows; it has to do
with using essentially a special distribution of Windows put together by the
company that assembled the hardware. They've located, tested, and installed
the right drivers on the system, and they've put together a recovery/reinstall
disk that has all those drivers. Try installing Windows without having the
right drivers pre-selected for you and you can easily end up in the same hell
as a Linux install gone bad, except with less help available online because
it's not a common thing to attempt.

By the way, your handy thumb drive with four drivers on it -- why did you need
that? And why did you _have_ it? Why weren't you that well prepared for the
Linux install? It doesn't seem like a fair comparison if you're comparing a
Windows install where you knew exactly what drivers you needed and already had
them on hand to a Linux install where you hadn't even Googled the right driver
for your video card.

~~~
bane
_By the way, your handy thumb drive with four drivers on it -- why did you
need that? And why did you have it? Why weren't you that well prepared for the
Linux install? It doesn't seem like a fair comparison if you're comparing a
Windows install where you knew exactly what drivers you needed and already had
them on hand to a Linux install where you hadn't even Googled the right driver
for your video card._

I _was_ that well prepared for the Linux install. I had CDs burned with
multiple builds of the drivers, thumb drives with multiple builds of the
drivers, hell, I had an entire other computer available with working access to
the internet, I spent 3 _days_ trying to get things working which are so not
even a problem on other systems. Is there some super human level of support I
should have had available? Should I have built a time machine and brought
forward the Oracle of Delphi and Alan Turing?

That's the point. If you read this thread, and the rest of the topic, the
common factor is that Linux fails to work out of the box on regular old
systems on perfectly normal hardware.

The windows I installed was regular old, bought in the store windows. The
hardware was off-the-shelf in a system I built myself. Nothing exotic (even if
the system was 2 years old at the time). I installed it, it "just worked".
When windows doesn't it's clear, or resolvable in 5 or 10 minutes of googling,
with reliable and repeatable paths to resolution, and the system is usually
able to run in a reduced function level of operation well enough that I was
able to patch it up with fairly minimal fuss. Yeah sure, there's some deep
voodoo that Windows bluebeards know, like how to path a registry by hand or
some nonsense.

I was able to get the same distro to _kinda_ work on another machine. But I
eventually uninstalled it because, while it "worked" it was "not quite right".

Since the mid 90s, I give this a go every year, to see if their is a popular
distro that's up to claims of "just works".

I've _never_ gotten a distro to "just work" and gave up after days in disgust.
Video drivers don't work, common peripherals, like keyboards, don't work
reliably, audio has _never_ worked right, I've brought half working machines
to LUG meetings hoping some greybeard could coax something out of it to no
avail. I've worked in hardware shops with virtually unlimited access to any
sort of hardware you could imagine and after weeks of banging on the machine
been unable to get something as basic as syncing to a monitor to work
correctly. Stupid things like identical video cards eliciting different
responses from the system.

What has improved? The install and available software. I remember 6 or 7 years
ago, getting past the install was seen as a major requirement for acceptance
on the desktop in the community. And coinciding with that having decent
productivity software.

I think the community has stepped up and more or less gotten those resolved.
But useless or nonexistent GUIs, random config files floating around from
distro to distro with help docs that are out of date and have no bearing on
what's actually in the files let along where, or what the configuration
options actually mean, broken default packages, updates that break simple
regression testing, etc. All fail to impress.

I've used Linux systems at times to save failing Windows disks, or rest system
passwords on NT machines, and other utilitarian sorts of things. In embedded
systems I own, where Linux is running as a ground up build for _that_ specific
hardware, it runs brilliantly. I have more Linux systems in my house than I do
Windows for example. But unless problems can be _reliably_ resolved in 1-2
hours, it's a no go.

I'll never understand why people have an issue with a singular piece of
hardware on a Mac or a Windows machine and use that as an excuse to move to
Linux, and then tolerate an absurd and constant barrage of completely solved
problems (on other systems) every day.

~~~
dkarl
You have had the worst luck with Linux that I have ever heard of. Among my
dozen or so personal and work acquaintances who have installed Linux for
desktop use, none of them have put in one tenth of the work you have, and all
of them have multiple fully functional desktop systems to show for it. My
condolences for your absolutely spectacular bad luck.

~~~
bane
_nod_ , I suppose, but a quick peruse of various Linux help forums will show
I'm not really all that rare. This is a reality that the community is going to
have to come to terms with.

Is it better than it used to be? Sure! Is it competitive? Not really.

------
UniIsland
The LEGO argument may make people believe that linux is just a toy and not for
production uses. Apart from that, it's quite simple and straight forward. BTW,
we do have pre-built, highly customized distributions offered for those who
likes things that work out of box.

------
radioact1ve
I think we can all agree Linux != Windows, but shit it's 2011. Somethings
should just work.

~~~
Dunbar
Who writes the drivers for this software that 'Just Works'?

Over and over again I see commercial OS vendors implicitly credited for
writing drivers that were actually supplied by the hardware manufacturers
themselves.

The vast majority of the general population find that their Windows and OS X
machines 'Just Work' because they come preconfigured with all of the
manufacturer's drivers already installed.

Linux can't 'Just Work' in the Desktop space because:

1\. It doesn't have majority market share (like Microsoft), so not all
hardware manufacturers will make it a priority for their hardware to have good
Linux drivers.

2\. It doesn't control the hardware platform (like Apple), so it is likely
that a significant proportion of users will have machines that have
unsupported / badly supported hardware.

~~~
ugh
Tough luck. Life isn’t fair.

Linux has to solve this problem, excuses be damned (and it has become quite
good at solving this problem – most hardware just works).

------
known
Lame excuses. Why don't you give what _users_ need?

~~~
wazoox
If users need windows, so be it. My wife, my mother use Linux being hardly
aware of it; it surfs the web, read emails and run OpenOffice, that covers
100% of their needs.

------
dkarl
_All the Linux community wants is to create a really good, fully-featured,
free operating system. If that results in Linux becoming a hugely popular OS,
then that's great. If that results in Linux having the most intuitive, user-
friendly interface ever created, then that's great. If that results in Linux
becoming the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry, then that's great.

It's great, but it's not the point. The point is to make Linux the best OS
that the community is capable of making. Not for other people: For itself. The
oh-so-common threats of "Linux will never take over the desktop unless it does
such-and-such" are simply irrelevant: The Linux community isn't trying to take
over the desktop. They really don't care if it gets good enough to make it
onto your desktop, so long as it stays good enough to remain on theirs. The
highly-vocal MS-haters, pro-Linux zealots, and money-making FOSS purveyors
might be loud, but they're still minorities._

I believe this still reflects the opinion of the Linux community, but there is
a growing public consensus that is entirely opposite: the goal of Linux is to
gain market share comparable or superior to the major commercial desktop
operating systems, and since the current Linux community itself is a rounding
error by comparison, the goals of Linux have nothing to do with the needs of
its current users and everything to do with serving the people who so far want
nothing to do with it. It seems to me Linux is in the early stages of acting
out the cliché sitcom plot where the main character is sidetracked onto a
quixotic mission to remake themselves as a popular kid, culminating in a
humiliating realization that they aren't any closer to being popular than when
they started, they've picked up vices without learning any virtues, they've
alienated their friends, and worst of all, in the process of rejecting their
identity they've rejected and abandoned their own good qualities.

Linux should learn from what the cool kids do well, of course. It should learn
to be friendly, approachable, well-groomed, and confident. I'm glad it's doing
that. With GNOME, KDE, and Canonical, we have three big projects devoted to
making the Linux desktop smooth, polished, and friendly. Linux and all its
users are benefiting tremendously from that, just like I (a rather frumpy
geek) benefit from periodic attention to upgrading and expanding my wardrobe.

However, Linux needs to think just as much about its strengths, and we don't
hear enough about that. Linux is a powerful system for sophisticated users.
It's got a great command line. It's mostly open-source and has a great
community. Linux has two major integrated desktop environments, and inside the
integrated environment of your choice, or even from a niche window manager put
together by a handful of people, you can run apps from another integrated
environment. On one desktop I run KDE, and on my laptop I usually run Awesome.
When I want to run a KDE app under Awesome, I just apt-get install it and run
it. Isn't that amazing? Not to mention that Linux (like other open sources
Unixes) runs on a range of hardware platforms that puts Windows and OSX to
shame. When's the last time a Windows user needed to run an OS on a virtual
ARM processor on an FPGA, looked in the FPGA manual, and discovered, "Oh good,
it supports Windows, so I'll just install that and have a nice familiar
environment?"

Now, many people who have read this far will wish this was a different kind of
forum where they could just quote the last paragraph followed by the picture
of Ogre screaming "NERDS!!!!" and be done with it. However, it's ridiculous to
dismiss Linux's strength, and in fact everybody's image of Linux is affected
by those strengths. Anybody who cares enough about Linux to click to this page
cares about its geeky awesomeness. If you truly dismiss those strengths from
your mind and see Linux _only_ as a desktop operating system for
unsophisticated users, then Linux is just a pathetic third-place OS that only
a mother or an open source zealot could love. That would be a tragic crisis of
confidence. That's like when the kid who's great at music or math or poetry
hits rock bottom and tells him or herself, _"None of the things I'm good at
matter. Nobody cares about them. Nobody sees me as a kid with this great
ability. They judge me the same way they judge each other. They just see me as
an ugly kid with mediocre social skills."_ Of course, that's when the learning
starts, and by the end of the sitcom or the Saturday morning special, the kid
learns that it's okay to be a little frumpy but her talent is something to
treasure, and for her, two hours of doing her hair and applying makeup in the
morning (which she hates) is not going to pay off as well as a couple of hours
playing the cello or writing code or whatever it is that she really loves and
is good at.

Linux needs to skip the Saturday morning special trap of defining itself
solely by its ability to cater to the mainstream. The Linux community needs to
look at _itself_ as users and say, "Damn, Linux rocks my socks off. How can we
make it more awesome for us?" Not, "Well, I'm a weirdo, and real users are
nothing like me, so it doesn't really matter that I like Linux. I guess from a
normal user's perspective I can't think of anything that Linux is especially
good at. How can the Linux community make Linux suck less for other people?"
Not that the answers to those two questions are entirely disjoint. There's a
lot of overlap between them. It's just that the first is an important
perspective that is in danger of being lost as we concentrate more and more on
the second.

------
drivebyacct2
The problem that I continue to see is, people have this image of Linux and the
"Linux Desktop". That image, that tons of "hacker" types that love OS X seem
to have, hasn't changed in years and is extremely out of date.

I hear people talk about problems or applications that haven't been standard
linux fair for years now, but they haven't tried it and by-golly they're
unbelievably attached to those memories they have of how hard it is to use.

Aw, already with no explanation? That's fine. Let's play a game. Let's count
the number of posts that make it seem completely obvious that Linux is "so
wildly unusable". Then let's count the number of posts that actually describe
any task that is vastly different or categorically harder to do in Linux.
Let's see which count is greater.

My phone works as a modem out of the box in Ubuntu. I can do internet
connection sharing to my Xbox in less than 5 clicks (it required registry
editing and manual editting of UNIX files in use in OS X), and I've yet to get
my phone working as a modem in OS X, period.

~~~
anonymoushn
All of the desktop OSes I use suck.

On Linux, I can't even use X + Awesome + <terminal emulator> without huge
amounts of tearing and nearly 1 second delays while the WM redraws my terminal
emulators while switching virtual desktops. A more experienced friend of mine
suggested that this could be due to using nvidia binary graphics drivers, so I
tried out the open source ones, but the tearing and delays got worse, and
occasionally an entire window would be mangled for no apparent reason. He also
suggested that it could be due to XRandR, but I noticed no change when I
stopped using it (other than that my displays were no longer vertical), so now
I'm using the binary drivers and XRandR again.

After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.04, I was unable to use my onboard NIC
at all. I thought that it had been bricked, so I put another in, but
eventually someone I knew experienced the same problem and was able to fix it
by temporarily removing the battery from his motherboard. Apparently the
drivers that ship with 11.04 like to put your network card into an unusable
state until you physically mess with the machine. You could just be careful
not use them and download the working drivers, but you might need a NIC for
that...

On OSX, Spaces has a bug that causes windows to randomly rearrange themselves
on the Z-axis when switching spaces. It also has a bug that causes your
keyboard to stop working completely. The first time I encountered the second
bug I had to reboot my computer because I couldn't kill Spaces without using
my keyboard, but I have since put Activity Monitor in my dock just in case I
need to do that. Fullscreen games on OSX (Starcraft II or Heroes of Newerth,
for example) run a reasonably high chance of never giving up exclusive mode,
even after dying, so your machine will become mostly inoperable after playing
the game a lot of the time. There's also no reasonable way to run these games
in fullscreen non-exclusive mode (the most useful configuration on other
OSes), so you can't quickly switch between the game and Skype/screencasting
software/IRC.

...And I hardly think I need to tell anyone here what sucks about Windows.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Wait. You're using the nvidia driver, but are you using an accelerated window
manager. Are you using mutter? Are you using compiz?

Ubuntu's 11.04 compiz is unstable, don't let me deceive you. BUT, it is far
superior to plain old metacity with nvidia. Ugh, that shit tears and is awful.

~~~
anonymoushn
I'm using Awesome. <http://awesome.naquadah.org/>

~~~
drivebyacct2
The thing is, the composited window managers? They're actually smoother than
without due to the graphics cards. Even with minimal features (for more
stability, since ahem, shipping versions of compiz aren't always crazy stable,
despite how much I admire where compiz is going).

Take the time to try a composited window manager. While you're at it, install
vlc, and make sure you manually tell it to "Use Hardware Acceleration". It's
amazing how small things can really show you the ability of Linux.

~~~
jrockway
Most people that use window managers like Awesome have no need for a
composited window manager. Yes, they make window moving smoother, but you
don't move windows in Awesome, so it's just a waste of resources.

Similarly, I use VDPAU output for mplayer and full-screen it, taking the
window manager and compositing manager out of the equation entirely.

Not everyone wants OS-X-style eye candy.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>Not everyone wants OS-X-style eye candy.

I think I pretty well acknowledged that even. I didn't know that you don't
move windows in Awesome, especially since the comment was about tearing, and I
merely mentioned that using a compositor helps with tearing...

