
I want to motivate you to keep trying to switch to Linux - gscott
http://techne.alaya.net/?p=14907
======
Animats
That's one of the worst sales pitches I've ever read. "Linux - Embrace the
Pain".

I do run Linux on the desktop. I also have a Windows 7 desktop machine for
stuff that won't run on Linux, but it's usually off. I have some Linux
subnotebooks. And I still think Linux on the desktop kind of sucks.

Linux always has GUI bugs that never gets fixed. The Ubuntu dashboard randomly
stops finding applications. The cursor disappears after suspend/resume. Both
of those have had open bug reports for years. This is considered part of the
Linux experience. Microsoft and Apple usually fix that stuff, so they don't
get criticized in the press.

 _With enough code bloat, all bugs are deep._

~~~
Rangi42
That cursor bug has bothered me on Xubuntu 16.04. I didn't realize how old it
was. Is there a workaround besides "awkwardly save your work and restart using
the keyboard and an invisible cursor"? (Please nobody say "stop using a
mouse"; just try editing graphics without one.)

~~~
Animats
Yes.

CTL-ALT-F1

CTL-ALT-F7

This takes you from the graphics environment to a full screen text console and
back, which re-initializes the graphics environment. It doesn't affect your
running applications.

First reported in 2012.[1] Search for "cursor disappears ubuntu" for the long
and broad history of this bug. I see there's been progress on the bug
report.[2] Unfortunately, fixing it seems to have broken some other things.
But after years of complaints and confusion, effort is being put in on it.

Visualize having to explain this to a CFO whom you're trying to convince to
use Linux.

[1] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-
mi...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-missing-
invisible-mouse-pointer-cursor) [2]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-
video...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-
intel/+bug/1568604)

~~~
EdHominem
Just today I had Win10 lock up on a brand new surface. None of the inputs did
anything, though the screen remained on and the time changed, etc.

Only holding the power button unreasonably long did anything, and that wasn't
anything good.

------
Veen
I used Linux on the desktop for years, until I switched to a Mac. It's not
really the OS itself that would stop me going back, it's the quality of the
applications and the user experience.

There's nothing I can do on a Mac that I can't do on Linux – except Apple
ecosystem stuff like handoff – but it's generally more pleasant and polished
with less faff, which has become more important to me as I've aged.

~~~
erlehmann_
There is a lot you cannot do on a Mac, but that you can do on Linux. The point
is that you do not see it until you have seen it elsewhere. How do you change
the GUI theme on a Mac? How do you update all the software to the newest
version? With a lot of GNU/Linux distributions, both is easy.

What users do not see, they usually do not miss. E.g. many users of OS X do
not realize that some command line tools Apple ships are almost ten years old
at this point until they find out that “[[” does not work in Bash on OS X or
similar: [https://github.com/sclorg/s2i-python-
container/issues/104](https://github.com/sclorg/s2i-python-
container/issues/104)

~~~
tajen
> How do you change the GUI theme on Mac?

You see, that's the problem: Mac is opinionated, and this is the quality we
most often praise it for.

Changing the GUI is functionnaly useless for any job. That means some folks in
the Linux GUI thingy thought it was good to make everything a variable, not
even a build-time constant, write configuration screens, and poll the value
each time you redraw the window in case someone changed it at runtime. For
every change they also have to test them with a bunch of GUI themes and write
automated tests for them. Plus the added benefit that every line of code is
friction. I'd say they're spending their time on the wrong thing because...

In Mac, it's fixed. That means as a user I benefit from not spending time
choosing a GUI theme. It also means apps can rely on constants. Makes it worth
paying a UX designer to interview users and choose _the right value_ ™. And
this _right value_ will be better than any setting.

\- Mouse: I remember fiddling with xinput a lot because the UI never allowed
me to set the acceleration. On Mac I don't even need to know where that
control is.

\- GUI theme: Ubuntu has a default GUI theme that is wrong, because it has big
fonts and big borders, makes it look like a toy and consumes half the real
estate of my screen. Not great for work, so you have to change the GUI theme.
Mac is just perfect on those two priorities.

~~~
erlehmann_
I think I have written about this some time back. Care to read it and find out
if it is related to your assessment?
[http://blog.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/using-mac-os-x-as-a-
sel...](http://blog.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/using-mac-os-x-as-a-self-binding-
device)

Changing the GUI has a function, btw. Just yesterday I wrote a custom
stylesheet for Slack because its developers chose “the right values” for
people who can see gray-on-grey “contrast” well (so, not me).

~~~
tajen
There is some time I spend procrastinating, but during my year with Ubuntu at
work I was really annoyed by everyday things, enough to suspend my task and
fix my configuration, so I wouldn't describe it as procrastination. I didn't
fix things I could work with (e.g. when I switched on, I would execute some
commands in the shell to fix the mouse...).

Anyway we can discuss for long, but in the end I believe if Linux OSes had the
amount of money that Apple has to hire UX designers, marketers and devs who
don't mind doing mundane bugfixing, at least one version on Linux would become
perfect. It was supposed to be Ubuntu, but let's hope it's the next one.

~~~
erlehmann_
When I fix something, I immediately send it upstream, did you do that? I just
did it now after I fixed a bug, so that neither me nor anyone else has the
problem in the future. Debian has a program called „reportbug“ which you
invoke with the package or file name related to the bug, even if you do not
have a solution.

I think a distribution like Debian should appeal to you for its focus on
quality. New packages in Debian move first to the Unstable distribution and
then after some time to the Testing distribution. Testing is “freezed” before
a Stable release to weed out remaining bugs. [1]

Debian also has a tool called “apt-listbug” that warns you before installing a
new version of a package that has a known bug and gives you an option to not
update that package automatically for as long as that bug exists.

What Ubuntu does is just putting its own stuff on top of Debian Unstable (or
Testing, when it does a Long Term Support release). They have next to no
quality control. When I drew glyphs for Unifont, this meant that for half a
year, Ubuntu had a half-finished Unifont it imported from Debian Testing at
the wrong time. I got complaints as I told people to install Unifont to play
my Unicode proof-of-concept roguelike [2].

The guy from the article I wrote eventually did use Debian. I think he fiddled
around with Emacs for over a month until he arrived at his “perfect” setup
(which is different for everyone, by the way).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian)

[2] [http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/notes/zoo-tycoon-
roguel...](http://news.dieweltistgarnichtso.net/notes/zoo-tycoon-roguelike-
mockup.html)

------
eyelidlessness
If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to
approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the
others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration)
that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be
able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make it
better."

The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some
specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes. That experience
should be expanded!

I don't want a Linux environment to be just as good as my Mac. I want it to be
better. I'd gladly switch, I'm not tied to much of the Apple ecosystem (other
than iCloud Keychain, and I can reset all of those passwords). But my platform
choice has always been driven by experience, and I'll choose the best
experience I can find. So far, my experience with every Linux distro I've
tried has been to approximate, not improve.

~~~
reitanqild
> If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to
> approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the
> others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration)
> that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be
> able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make
> it better."

> The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some
> specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes.

Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu,
dock, alt-tab switcher).

I've always liked KDE which was more Windows-like but ahead of Windows in
providing searchable app launcher (Start menu for Windows users) way before
Windows did.

(My point is: if you don't like Ubuntu with Unity then remember on Linux you
have lots of choices.)

~~~
slavik81
> Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu,
> dock, alt-tab switcher).

Unity felt a lot more like Windows 7 to me. It has the Start menu vertically
on the left side, just I kept mine in Windows. It has the same keyboard
shortcuts for starting pinned programs, and the dash is just a better
implementation of the Windows 7 start menu's search field. Then it adds its
own twist, allowing you to search menus with alt. I loved it.

I suppose the fact that the menu is at the top is like OSX, but because
programs close when all windows are closed, it doesn't annoy me like it does
on macs.

------
gesman
I can sacrifice user experience for performance but there is no excuse to that
in 21 century countless of people are experiencing countless of package and
dependency crap errors.

It became a philosophy of linux that when you are trying to solve use case
problem - you need to engage into lengthy scavenger hunt for fragmented bits
and pieces of information and solutions to stich something together that
hopefully works.

It's been ..? 30 years? Like that.

RTFM is not an answer to millions of WTF?'s

~~~
burrows
> there is no excuse to that in 21 century countless of people are
> experiencing countless of package and dependency crap errors.

Are you arguing that homebrew is better than apt-get/pacman/etc?

Not to mention the situation with Windows' installers and their standard
tactic of spraying my system with DLLs and untrackable registry writes.

~~~
ajdlinux
I'm really interested in the possibilities that are opened up by package
managers such as Nix and Guix. Atomic upgrades/rollbacks, side by side
installation of libraries and apps, multi-user support...

It's just a shame that the maintainers of Nix think that labelling it as "The
Purely Functional Package Manager" is the best way to sell it. Same goes for
Guix, "The Emacs of Distros" \- they say that like it's a _good_ thing.

~~~
mbrock
They're not trying to sell it. They're hackers who use it for their own
purposes and are probably more interested in attracting other hackers who can
help out than they are interested in pretending to be a consumer OS or
actually being one with all the support and polish and work that entails.
Maybe later someone will make the Ubuntu of Nix.

The Emacs of distros sounds exactly what I'd want by the way. What's wrong
with that?

~~~
ajdlinux
Fair call, they are hackers who use it for their own purposes. I'd just love
to see more open source hackers start with the mindset of advancing user
experience from the very outset.

------
tgarma1234
Sorry man, you are about 15 years too late. Everyone knows what Linux is and
uses it pretty much all the time along with everything else.

The single best way I have found to switch to Linux as a desktop user is to
dual boot my main home computer with Windows 7 or 10 and Ubuntu and then run
Windows 10 PRO on my HTPC (that's "Home Theater PC" in 2009 parlance) so that
I can RDP to it from Ubuntu to use Excel and Powershell and then also have two
laptops: A macbook air and then also a Dell that dual boots both Windows 10
and Ubuntu 16.04. I would say that 9/10th of the time I just go ahead and use
the macbook air. But booting into Ubuntu gives me that "party like it's 1999"
feeling still, like I am really sticking it to the man, especially every time
I sudo apt-get upgrade. Yes, I use ubuntu on all of my servers except the
one's at work, which are all CentOS. Don't even get me started on my phone and
tablet either.

Computers turned out to be just about the most schizophrenic world imaginable
honestly. You have to know a ton of languages and Operating Systems and
literally every company is trying their darnedest to lock you in. Welcome to
the future. We are all polyglot. Wouldn't it have been awesome if ATT wouldn't
have been such profit hungry assholes in the 80's and we could all be sitting
here using UNIX and not having to learn tomorrows hot new language and don't
forget google is launching FUCHSIA soon, which is a new OS that will replace
Android, Linux, Java and... oh whatever. I should start learning Go I think.
Node can suck it by the way, although I am sure some dick is sitting there in
college writing a Node OS right now and it will end up powering smart cars and
moonbases and microwave ovens and be worth a zillion dollars. I am not smart
enough for this.

~~~
recursive
The only linux I use is Android. I've made half-hearted attempts to get into
it before, but never enough to overcome the initial friction of confusion.

So no, not everyone uses linux all the time.

~~~
Ace17
Come! Join us before it's too late ... :-)

------
untog
Eh. The article doesn't really give good reasons to switch to Linux, aside
from "freedom". I love the OS, use it on my servers, etc. etc. - but for my
personal computer, I don't see a reason to switch away from OS X.

~~~
twblalock
Many Linux people make the mistake of thinking that freedom is enough. It's
not. People need a non-ideological reason to use software.

~~~
mbrock
Freedom isn't ideological, it's very concrete. It just means you are allowed
to tinker, share, and learn about the software on your computer.

And generalizations about what "people" need make the mistake of assuming that
all people are the same which they're obviously not.

~~~
swah
> It just means you are allowed to tinker, share, and learn about the software
> on your computer.

You say tinker, I read "everything broken for non-expert users that can't
compile their own kernel modules".

Tinkering is fun when all the subsystems are working flawlessly and you're
just fiddling with a couple variables.

Example: "to get a complex project to compile on Windows requires a lot of
tinkering".

~~~
mbrock
When I was 15, tinkering with kernel modules was the most fun I'd ever had,
and the combined experiences of Linux configuration boosted my skills and
intelligence.

Then thanks to the freedom to tinker I was able to get into open source
software communities which gave me a career, new friends, and immeasurable
amounts of learning.

That's why software freedom isn't a matter of abstract ideology to me.

~~~
uola
I don't see how that is unique to Linux. Plenty of people, probably more, have
had those same experiences with other operating systems. I can see why someone
would like, or even prefer, to tinker with Linux and it would of course be a
loss if it didn't exist, but that doesn't mean that Linux developers are the
only ones tinkering. So it does seem like that it's primarily an ideological
difference in what tinkering means.

Unfortunately the Linux community largely seem to attract and retain people
who mainly care about their own freedom to tinker. Every time someone pushes
out something broken, users lose thousands of tinkering man hours on trying to
make those things work for themselves. As someone who likes to tinker, time is
my most valuable commodity and Linux doesn't respect my time.

~~~
mbrock
Do you see how it's a bit rude to insist that my personal appreciation of free
software and open source is "ideological" when I just explained how it is
actually based on my own concrete experience of being able to modify and share
programs within the free software community?

~~~
uola
You are free to tell me why you think I'm rude or respond to any of my
argument and I'll be happy to answer, but please don't use this rhetoric were
I'm supposed to either admit that I'm rude or come off as arrogant denying it.

~~~
mbrock
I'm content just to let you know I think it's rude. Sorry I don't have time to
explain exactly why right now.

------
ldp01
Desktop Linux is great but I don't expect anyone who's uncomfortable with a
terminal to use it.

For someone like myself who is fine with a slightly more technical desktop
experience, using Linux gives me a setup I can shape to fit my requirements
and then never have to think about ever again. It's very relaxing compared to
using Windows because I don't have to deal with all the little annoyances e.g:
Constantly forcing me to install updates; big UI changes between versions;
vast quantities of bloatware.

However for the people who are strictly averse to the technical aspects of
Linux (most people), I would never bother trying get them to switch. It's a
pointless uphill battle which ends in frustration.

~~~
tigershark
Absolutely false. Desktop Linux is all except great. As they already
highlighted in this thread there are plenty of annoyances and it is on the
whole a subpar experience compared to Windows and Mac OS X. In windows and Mac
you can use the same terminal if you want, but you are not _forced_ to use it.
There is no way for me to switch to Linux, Mac OS X gives me exactly the
experience that I want, without headache. I don't care if people don't use Mac
OS X and so I'm pretty annoyed when there are people that try to push others
to switch to Linux, like in this article. Enjoy your Linux, but please don't
write untrue absolutes like "Desktop Linux is great".

~~~
ldp01
In what way was I pushing others to switch to Linux? I literally said I do not
bother trying to make others switch.

I simply gave the reasons I prefer desktop Linux to Windows and yes I believe
desktop Linux is "great". In my experience it is certainly not "subpar"
compared to Windows, hence why I use it.

~~~
tigershark
Where did I say that you were pushing others to switch to Linux? I clearly
said that the article was doing that. You instead stated an absolute truth
that Desktop Linux is great, that is simply untrue by all means.

~~~
mbrock
It's not untrue. It just depends on what you want and like. My laptop Linux
setup is exactly how I want it to be and it's indeed great. If you don't like
it, that doesn't affect me at all.

~~~
tigershark
A great desktop operating system works just out of the box without any
ridiculous quirk and doesn't force the user to spend time to find a solution.
I might call it broken, but for sure not great.

~~~
mbrock
Well, it would be nice if there was an operating system that worked as I
wanted it to out of the box. But there's no such thing, so I'm okay with
"great after initial configuration". My Linux setup, for me, is much greater
than any other I've ever used.

------
nickpsecurity
The funny thing about this is you could put 1996 on it and it would still be
true word for word minus maybe HexChat. That's _20 years ago_. Meanwhile,
Apple cranked out a good, UNIX desktop and Microsoft eventually figured it out
by Windows 7 (then lost it). FOSS just sucks at getting desktops done right
for everyday user. They're always like an approximation of proprietary
competition on the fundamental stuff people want. Some subset.

------
riprowan
If I could run the apps I need, I'd use it in a heartbeat. However I'm an
audio and video producer / editor, and Linux A/V editors are not professional-
strength.

This issue right there is what has kept me out of Linux for more than ten
years. If I have to run Windows or Mac anyway, then the additional overhead of
a second OS just doesn't add any real value - instead it's another maintenance
point and learning curve.

------
fsloth
"Trying to switch to Linux" \- I've been on and off Linux desktops for 15
years. At one point the free C++ development setup was better there than on
Windows. That ship sailed, Windows with Visual Studio community edition is too
good not to use.

It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility. It runs my phone, my
file server, my backups, but the only time I want to see it on desktop is when
I need to do weird things with PDF:s - this is when bash and the libre pdf
tools on Ubuntu provide the fastest solution usually.

Value wise - the computer is kinda useless unless used for value added work.
What that value is, depends, but for me writing code and art is more valuable
than tweaking with config files. The only times my Linux systems seem to work
without inflicting heartburns to me is when it's been provided and configured
by a commercial third party, running on hardware provided by the said third
party.

So it seems to me for trouble free computing-as-a-utility experience one needs
a complete system with commercial backing. This is anecdotal, of course.

~~~
pfranz
"It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility." I guess it fits into
that box. I use OSX as my desktop at home, but I would 100% go with some Linux
before going back to Windows at home. I switched to a Windows job after using
Linux for 10years--I really miss using Linux. At first I thought it was a
familiarity thing and dove all into powershell and the like, but I the
solutions for Windows seems awkward, slow, and clunky.

We're probably getting very different "value adds" from Windows vs Linux. I
liked Visual Studios' debugger, but I mostly compile other's code (libraries)
and write glue-code in things like Python or munge data via the command line.
I abhor editors that take 5+ seconds to launch (vi generally loads in much
less than 1 second) and using command line tools to compile means I can script
and chain things together, or easily run them on a remote computer.

As for desktop use at home, I mostly use Internet, Word processor,
spreadsheets, and tinker. OSX and google docs fits most of those use-cases.

~~~
fsloth
"We're probably getting very different "value adds" from Windows vs Linux."

This. The spectrum of computer uses is so wide that the only obviously wrong
statement is to claim a specific system will undoubtedly fit all users needs.

I am personally responsible for several small DLL C++ projects at work and
have visual studio solutions open to them all of the time so start up time is
not something I care about.

So, for me the OS mostly fades into the background. Grepping through
filedirectories is essential for my work. Windows vanilla tools generally suck
for this but one fixes that by using a third party exe - in this instance,
AgentRansack.

I agree, I would much rather use bash and posix tools for the sort of problems
that those are used than what is available on vanilla windows.

------
jxy

        Logs are your friend, and above all others is the syslog which
        is at /var/log/syslog. You can either view it with the less
        command, or you can tail it and watch it scroll by as new entries
        get added.
    

I had to check the timestamp of this article.

And I hope it continues to be true. But I will stay with BSDs.

~~~
justinlardinois
I think this is targeted at Windows and OS X users.

------
sndean
The article is less than convincing. The most convincing reason for me to
switch to Linux was being poor in college/grad school.

The options were using Windows Vista (and, later, Windows 8) on a cheap laptop
or using Ubuntu on that cheap laptop after removing Windows Vista. An Apple
laptop wasn't possible.

After that, I just stuck with using flavors of Ubuntu on laptops (even after
buying a Macbook). Maybe the author should've pushed more "free" (as in, not
$1000+) and less "freedom."

------
mstolpm
Wow. Is the author really telling me my mom should hunt down errors in log
files, search for them in bug trackers and provide "vital feedback to
developers"? And she receives back some "freedom"? Then he is completely
missing the point for the "normal" user and what he said just boils down to:
"Don't try this at home if you're just a desktop user."

------
anirudh24seven
Personally, I think there are only 2 advantages (over something more polished
like OS X):

i. Doomsday scenario: Competing platforms do something awful like direct
spying on users, making it unaffordable/inaccessible or generally taking
terrible, permanent decisions. Then, a free/open source OS will become The
only feasible option. The counter point to this is, competition ensures very
few companies will take that route.

ii. Learning & contributing: As a developer, I can understand and improve any
part of the stack. Counter point: This doesn't address non-developers, who are
a majority in today's world.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Regarding point 1 didn't MS take that route already with Windows 10?

~~~
anirudh24seven
I think yes. But I'm not sure if non-technical people understand the
implications. They'll probably take it more seriously if Windows-collecting-
data has a direct impact on their lives. For example, if their browsing
history gets posted on their social networks, or something like that.

~~~
Sylos
There's one point where it already affects non-technical users: HIPAA-
compliance or any form of legal agreement to not disclose information.

It's currently not clear whether it's legal to even run Windows 10 Home/Pro,
if you have such obligations, as even the best privacy that Microsoft allows,
is still sending something to Microsoft and no one knows what it's sending.

This becomes even more fun when you consider that in order to be HIPAA-
compliant, you have to always keep your software up-to-date. That means you
have to upgrade from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10 and therefore can't just stick
to a previous version to be legally safe.

For bigger health-care institutes, Windows 10 Enterprise might be an option
here in order to not risk a lawsuit, but for a simple doctor who'd only need
one or two licenses, that's not a viable option either. Maybe we'll see an
organization of doctors for buying Windows 10 Enterprise License Volumes
together and then sharing the licenses, but if not, they would all have to
migrate to OSX or Linux.

------
DanBC
> And I’m here to tell you something: You’re not alone! There is help out
> there. There’s a huge community of people with the highest intentions,
> dedicated to freedom and Open Source software, available to help you. You
> just have to reach out to them. Find them. Connect with them.

A sizeable number of those people are fucking arseholes and you really
shouldn't be pointing confused users towards them. At least you need to
provide some training to those users about how to ask questions to reduce the
risk of getting bitten. (This isn't unique to Linux.)

------
z3t4
if u only use email web and browser, or is an expert linux is great. Its bad
for the intermediate user.

------
Shorel
I use Ubuntu everyday and I don't remember a moment where I had to read
/var/log/syslog to fix anything.

------
Theodores
I do not try to motivate people to 'switch to Linux' even though Ubuntu is the
only OS I use (apart from ChromeOS on my Chromebook and Android on my phone).

In my experience of using Ubuntu full time in the workplace for a decade or so
nobody has seen me fix their problems with Linux world tools and thought 'must
give Linux a go'. Instead they stick with what they know, on their PCs or
Apple boxes.

I have never been evangelical about Linux, however, what I do is fix people's
problems. Some of these can be very basic, for instance, how do you merge a
big long list of email addresses and remove the duplicates in a spreadsheet
program? Well, that is doable but if the task is part of a bigger task then
you just want to get that done instantly, i.e. before the spreadsheet program
loads... In linux world you can just do a 'sort -u' after concatenating your
files with '>>'. Easy if you have muscle memory for 'vi', not easy if you have
to hunt around for menus and stuff with a mouse in one of those 'graphical
user interfaces' people speak so highly of.

So you can do this stuff before people's eyes, explaining what you are doing
and keeping focused on the bigger task at hand, e.g. sending out a newsletter
in the above example. But does anyone want to do it 'programmer' instead of
'user' style after being shown how much quicker and accurate the 'programmer'
way is? Nope!!!

With anything to do with images there is a similar problem. Time consuming
'artwork' tasks such as cropping lots of images and compressing them for the
web can be done one of two ways. As a 'user' one can open Photoshop and spend
all day moving a mouse around doing things very much by eye. Or you can just
do it near instantly with a simple script on a 'linux' box. In terms of speed
this is the difference between taking a steam boat across the Atlantic or just
getting on a plane, hours and days of work are saved. But would a 'graphic
designer' think to do it linux style? Even if they could do it with homebrew
style things? Nope, never. Doing it 'programmer style' could free them up from
boring tasks so they could spend more time doing whatever it is that they are
notionally passionate about. But they do not want to know.

In fact, even to get a frontend developer to open up a terminal window is a
bit of an ask. There are people that use 'grep' and there are people that use
'gui' for everything.

I am not convinced that linux ports to Apple or PC environments are any good.
My colleague uses 'MAMP' and that ties you in to doing things the GUI way,
e.g. typing 'mysql -u me -pWhatever database < latest.sql' will give 'command
not found'. Yes but you could add wherever MAMP hides stuff to the path and
blah, but it is half baked. The speed of the thing is slow too, even if the
linux version is on a legacy PC and the MAMP stack is running on some £1500
brand new machine. Don't get me started on developing a simple web page (e.g.
Wordpress) on a Windows PC, in my mind it is as bad for kludges as the Mac dev
environment.

I also have problems knowing what is really that good about these OSX/Windows
programs that are vital to have. I can't open a 'Visio' drawing on my linux
box but there is only one guy in the office with licensed Visio anyway, so it
is not as if anyone else can open those things. I don't believe there is an
open source tool for everything, give me a proper CAD or 3D modelling tool
over some 'Blender' effort any day. But most stuff, linux is far superior as
far as a toolchain that works.

The most amusing one at the moment for me is printing. My linux box just
prints fine to those HP printers in the office that nobody ever seems able to
print to. So whenever someone wants something printed urgently, it is me who
does it for them. 'Look no drivers'!!!

Despite these positives (linux to my mind is much better for solving normal
problems like getting stuff printed out), there is nobody wanting a linux box
like mine. They all stick to what they know (as do I in my special way).

To take a dietary analogy, it is much better to be a quiet vegetarian rather
than one of those annoying vegans who has to tell you about it every time they
fart. A quiet vegetarian has no moral superiority, does not make people feel
bad about the death of the planet and animal suffering, just has a personal
choice that works for them and expects nobody to change their life long
habits.

~~~
seer
The trouble with Linux most of the time is that it's a craftsman's OS - full
of asumptions that you are proficient at fixing problems and knowing how
everything works from the inside out. And if you don't and mess up a bit the
problems can be much more severe. I've used Linux as a desktop on and off for
years, back from the time before Ubuntu was a thing, and every time I start
using it problems begin to crop up that need fixing, especially when there are
updates involved.

For example my brand new 2016 Ubuntu system magically ran out of disk space
after a weekend of being left running unattended. Funny enough it was some
silly hardware driver issue that kept firing system errors and the log
rotation dilligently zipped those enormous log files till there was no more
space left. It turned out to be "normal" and the solution was to just disable
the message with some arcane terminal commands. After a decade of trying to
solve those kinds of problems I think I'm a bit tired. Sure you have issues
with macOS and Windows as well, but they are generally more mild and hardly
ever work stopping, even if you are using them for dev.

I can live without some new hardware bells and whistles that Apple keeps
producing but I can't stand fixing basic OS problems anymore and I think
that's the thing that Linux desktop should concentrate the most on -
stability, or rather - how to be able to move forward in a stable manner.
Despite myself I keep following the development of NixOS - maybe some day...

~~~
Theodores
I don't see it that way, particularly after reading about how you were able to
solve your hardware driver - disk space problem. You were able to use your
favourite search engine to get a solution. It was solved.

Currently I have a problem with my frontend developer's Mac running MAMP. It
takes several seconds for a page to load. It is some simple DNS error, it
times out 'looking for itself' on the network. So we tried many things,
disabling ipV6, changing the hosts file, re-installing the MAMP software,
changing the ethernet connection, disabling the wifi - it goes on. We also
realised we had a paid for product and asked for support - config files sent
off, no resolution. We also got two people from the company IT dept. to try
and resolve it, again to no avail.

If you are trying to develop a website where you want every page load to be
less than three seconds then it is no good if it takes ten seconds to load a
page from your local development box. So this was an important fix. Searching
the internet for solutions was no joy, it was as if the answers were were
kludges that sometimes worked for some people with no substance to why the
fixed worked. There was no underlying knowledge, just 'hacks'. This happens a
lot in closed source world.

I am okay with arcane terminal commands, they can be reproduced and understood
if need be. I don't mind copying and pasting them in, semi-blindly. As per
your example, things can be fixed that way. But, at the moment, I find myself
frustrated by a paid for bit of 'pro' software on a top-end machine with a
'pro' operating system that has no documented way to fix it.

In my specific example my colleague is pleased that a website can be developed
on the localhost. 10 second page load times are 'no problem'. However, the
same repository on my basic linux box with half the RAM and lame i5 CPU hits
the 3 second target load times with no problems. I feel that too many 'users'
are happy with what they have - 'wow I can develop stuff locally!' \- to not
realise that the performance is poor compared to the 'developer' linux
solution. They don't see the need to fix the performance problems, they do not
imagine better is possible unless it is actively sold to them - 'new, faster
computer!!!', 'enterprise version' etc. They are forever beholden to
marketeers rather than a community.

------
rajeshp1986
I would use Linux on servers hands down. There is no doubt about it period.
But I would not put myself in the torcher of using it on Desktop/Laptop. The
UI is buggy and applications crash frequently. No matter how good google docs
or any other online doc tools are, I would need Microsoft office to run
smoothly on my desktop & laptop. For development environment, MacOS would be
my first choice.

------
newscracker
TL;DR - people want to get things done, so support them in doing that while
waving your freedom flag, instead of being stuck in the past and appearing
primitive. Also, support FLOSS (free/libre open source software) at least
monetarily, if not with time and effort.

~~~~~

This article didn't really motivate me to try to switch to Linux. In my
reading, it was just a bit of fluff about looking at /var/log/syslog and
searching for 'proper and relevant' error messages. That's definitely not
enough for a non-tech-savvy common person.

There was a time when I used to think that software will improve in stability
and quality over time, but I've realized that things are so complex, so
diverse and driven by so many people that we've actually gone far away from
"it just works" on _every_ _single_ _platform_ (this is about common people,
not tech savvy people who can edit config files, look at system logs, debug
applications, fix bugs, build from source, etc.). It doesn't matter if you
like Windows more or OS X (macOS) more or Linux more - none of them are really
great enough for common people to use without being annoyed or downright
disrupted in accomplishing what they want to. It's only an ever changing
ranking of who's doing worse at any point in time.

Coming to Linux, I find the following as deficiencies in the distributions and
the applications that prevent people from adopting it on their computers more
(this list is a generalization across most distributions, and I know some
distributions may be vastly better than others):

1\. Hardware drivers (video and network being important ones that people rely
on) - this has improved tremendously in the last decade or so, but it still is
kind of a coin toss when it comes to saying "ok, I have this laptop and I'm
going to install Linux on it" and being confident that it would work.

2\. Not including proprietary codecs and stuff that people actually want.
Nobody wants to hunt down a codec pack or spend a lot of time just to watch a
video they've downloaded. I'm not belittling the fight for free software and
freedom, but we have to accept what people are tending toward even if we know
they're probably on a destructive or unproductive path.

3\. The UI - this is a huge deal, really. Most Linux distributions and
applications still use some really ugly fonts and ugly looking GUI elements.
It's as if we're still stuck in 1995 admiring Windows '95 as the best thing
that's happened to GUIs. I see a similar issue with LibreOffice (which I use),
where the UI is primitive looking and difficult to use (especially for those
who come from using MS Office - standard menus or ribbon interface doesn't
matter). Most people around the world who now own computers are starting to
have nicer screens (at least closer to HD or HD). Things start looking even
more uglier on those systems.

4\. If you want 2016 to be "the year of desktop Linux" [1], you have to start
by admitting that this cause was lost long ago and adapt to the better
presentation, practices and behaviors seen in other OSes, however primitive,
deficient or restrictive those may look to you from different perspectives.
Copying ideas, polish and UI paradigms is not a bad thing because most people
want to get their work done and not have to learn something new as a stepping
stone to getting things done (recall the Windows 8.0 fiasco over the Start
button not being there and people not knowing how to shutdown their systems?).
There has been a lot of progress here as well over the years on the Linux
side, but the polish is definitely not there (in a comparative sense) or comes
at cost (not monetarily) that end users don't want to deal with.

5\. The update coin toss - this is becoming quite common and a well noticed
problem on Windows and OS X as well, but you never know what an update will do
to your system and if you'd even be able to boot it up (this could be related
to drivers too, but why would a common user even care about who's responsible
for what and where the blame should lie if something no longer works?).

With all these complaints, what can we collectively do? Beyond corporate
sponsorships, I believe tech people should donate more money and ideas to the
FLOSS (free/libre open source software) ecosystem. Many people who have been
working on these systems for decades or years are doing it from an ideological
standpoint, and in my opinion, getting more people and resources to improve
things does need more money to start with. Think of it as a recurring
contribution to humanity, because we all know that even if Linux doesn't rule
the desktop, it does rule mobile and servers - things that we all use in some
form or the other everyday.

[1]:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux)

------
z3t4
And billions of tax money going to apple and M, witch could be saved.

------
hoodoof
Linux needs to work out how to leverage the sophisticated UI goodness of
modern browser renderers in its desktop.

That's when Linux desktops and desktop apps will start to look good and
modern.

Also the only time I should ever see anything that looks like console output
is when I run a console. Windows and OSX don't start loading with a "matrix
like" blast of fast scrolling super technical load status messages, that sort
of stuff says (with a megaphone) to users "GO AWAY, THIS USER EXPERIENCE IS
NOT FOR YOU!".

~~~
ldp01
When was the last time you tried desktop Linux?

I dual boot Ubuntu 15 and Windows 10 and I prefer the UI experience of Ubuntu.
You just have to chuck a decent theme on (I use Arc) and icons (Numix) to get
rid of the yucky defaults.

~~~
swah
> You just have to chuck a decent theme on (I use Arc)

IMO that's half whats wrong with Linux...

[https://www.google.com/search?num=20&q=ubuntu+how+install+th...](https://www.google.com/search?num=20&q=ubuntu+how+install+theme)

[https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme](https://github.com/horst3180/arc-
theme)

A burnt user like me just sees a bunch of instructions that might fail - I
much prefer the experience of starting a modern Android phone for the firs
time...

~~~
ldp01
Yeah that is a fair point. I had actually forgotten what a pain that was
initially.

Nonetheless, if you can make it through setup the end results are quite
attractive.

