Guys, looking through the comments, I am afraid you are being way too serious. Bryan Lunduke has been giving Linux Sucks talks at LinuxFest NorthWest for many years; they are intended as humorous and good fun.
For others like me who were wondering what the site hosting this video is, it's apparently a peer-to-peer file host with some blockchain thrown in to make it a marketplace. You can read their "About" page here: https://lbry.com/what
(The about page was frustratingly hard to get to, I had to navigate through four pages before I got there.)
> For the first week, Linux Sucks 2020 is only available (for free) via LBRY. (After one week it will become available everywhere else as well.) LBRY is a great fit for Linux Sucks – Open source and DRM-Free.
> You can watch Linux Sucks 2020, right now, the following ways:
> - straight from the LBRY.tv website
> - or (even better) you can install the LBRY application to download and play the DRM-Free video
I second the comments over at [0]: it's not terribly clear what they're going for, or why they're offering a client to download. Is this meant to be a web-based solution, or not? That 'what' page you linked is just awful. Endless rambling.
Their web video hosting seems to work well though.
Brian makes me laugh everytime. Although the humorous critics that he do, almost point he raises there is an underlying truth on it. Linux Sucks not entirely, but some parts sucks so hard. I use Linux daily for almost ten years, and oh hell, it's pretty much better than Windows, but there is no way to deny the problems on it.
That is sad and wish it could be a joke. But there are days I think the same... today I cannot not even run zsnes without problems on most of distros (Arch/Ubuntu/Etc). Linux backward compatibility it's so terrible.
But this isn't just a Linux problem though. Backwards compatibility sucks on Windows and MacOS too. At least Windows tries to give you some janky backwards compatibility options, with questionable results. MacOS just deprecates API's, drops support for older versions of MacOS and tells their users to go buy new stuff.
> But this isn't just a Linux problem though. Backwards compatibility sucks on Windows and MacOS too.
It sucks a hell of a lot less than Linux's backwards compatibility. Hell, Linux has better compatibility with Windows software than it does its own older software!
I've administered Windows networks. Windows backwards compatibility sucks and the fact most Windows legacy software runs better under Wine on a different OS is a testament to that. Almost none of the current OS's are good at backwards compatibility. It's not just a Linux problem. Hell Apple doesn't even try.
Yeah, Windows backwards compatibility has been getting worse, but consider the following:
You are given a binary for a GUI application, compiled in 2001. You drop the binary on your system and run it. If it is a Windows application, it has a much better chance of working fine on both Windows and Linux than it does on Linux alone if it is a Linux application!
Then you still have to get the development environment right, a task so simple it totally isn't a popular usecase for containers (/s), and fix any incompatibilities in the APIs since 2001 and now.
In other words: it's at least as big a pain in the ass as getting the old binary working.
This is the first Linux Sucks that I have seen and although it's humorous it doesn't seem like satire. The issues he humorously points out are real issues with the Linux desktop today.
I've been saying for a long time that one of the beauties of Linux is that anyone and everyone can do their own thing but that can also be a weakness. You have thousands of incredible talented developers doing their own thing. If you piss off some of the talent on your own projects they'll leave and do their own thing. That's beautiful in a way but it does weaken the Linux desktop as a whole.
A benevolent dictator / vision is counterintuitive to the OSS spirit but it's priceless IMO.
As a Linux user I am a refugee from Windows. Expat now. They have dictators there, they've got resources, they switch development tools one after another. But somehow they failed. I knew nothing else but I could not stand that anymore.
So I switched and found my promised land, my distribution, my community. That was 12 years ago. I believe each distribution, each application starts from someone with vision. People flock if they like it. Top down approach usually harms - pulse audio and systemd community split still unresolved.
> my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader's name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.
As much as i like lunduke usually, i find it a bit unreflected to just say "we are stupid for banning our founders" without acknowledging anything they might have done wrong. I do agree that the pitchforks approach to public disagreements should not be our (or anybodies) default. But "leave our founders alone" is not a policy I'd personally subscribe too either.
Also vaguely poking fun at therapy as if it was a punishment for something is just plain immature.
One of his main complaints is "People who promote Linux, don't run Linux" and he specifically focuses on those who hold Linux-related talks at conferences on devices that don't run Linux on the desktop.
Most people, who are paid to work on Linux and its surrounding ecosystem, are working for companies that are interested on Linux on servers / the cloud and I don't think that it is fair to criticize them for not joining the idealistic movement of bringing Linux onto more desktops.
When you see majority of consultants from the biggest Linux company (that also focuses on desktop Linux) using Macs for their work, you know that Linux on desktops won't happen anytime soon.
What a dose of reality for anyone yearning for Linux desktop to succeed. I use Linux at work and at home because of the configurability and security and because our servers run Linux but I absolutely do not enjoy tinkering around when things don't work. Although I can usually figure out a way or workaround, it's such a waste of time and life is short.
I wouldn't mind paying as much for a Linux distro that just works as I would for Windows 10, or even double. But one can only dream. I've filed and commented on quite a few bugs only to have them ignored. The paid support for Ubuntu has a minimal order size of 10, so it's not really an option especially since I don't know how well it works. I wonder how big the market is for a paid Linux distro that just works.
Given the general user-unfriendliness of Linux desktop, I can see why so many people use Macbooks who work on Linux. Maybe the servers they work on run Linux. Can't really call the individuals 'dumb' though, like what the video does. At most the Linux 'organization' on the whole comprising these individuals, if there's such a thing, is 'dumb'.
> I wouldn't mind paying as much for a Linux distro that just works as I would for Windows 10, or even double. But one can only dream.
Well, noone would stop us from donating that money. I'd personally like a Patreon-like system, if people donate enough they'll get better service, they reach some threshold, someone could be hired. Though it probably has a lot of nuances and would take a few years minimum to have a somewhat working system.
For instance he talks about how Linux is now a pretty good OS for gaming, something which certainly hasn't always been true. He also talks about Stallman stepping down, and his concerns with what he perceives to be recent cultural changes in the FOSS world.
Churchill as he was would fit right into Linux. It's a combination of love of the old, tried and true with desperate experimentation that would appeal to his nature.
Stalin? Victory at any cost with no thought to the means to reach that end? Hurd? Just saying.
I'm unable to reply to 29athrowaway so I'll post this at the top level:
Regarding backward compatibility (discussed around 32:00 in the video), do solutions like AppImage and Flatpak work for the examples he shows (the three proprietary games that were ported to Linux)?
If you use any complex system enough, whether that’s hardware based, software based, or people based, you’ll eventually get come up against all the pain-points.
Especially if you’re tired and / or under time constraints.
I kind of like this guy, as in he is funny. But seeing the previous linux sucks videos as well, I must say that he most definitely don't have a too deep knowledge of linux - and it is kind of mean to call Linux people dumb who advocate for flatpak over appimage, especially that he don't really understand the problem at hand. (though imo nix is the only one solving the problem properly)
Linux is not winning on mobile in any shape or form. All mobile vendors use a highly-customized Linux kernel which has nothing to do with mainline and aside from the kernel, there's not much to write home about. So, maybe Bryan could have been a little bit more honest from the get go.
> Linux is not winning on mobile in any shape or form. All mobile vendors use a highly-customized Linux kernel which has nothing to do with mainline
That's not a "Linux on mobile" problem; it's a "Linux on anything embedded" problem, and steps are being taken to address it. You can run a close-to-mainline kernel already on some devices, it's just not the default. And work is ongoing to also port common non-mobile Linux userland setups to mobile, so that the same stack will eventually be useful for both. A lot of non-trivial work is involved.
This will always be hamstrung by the lack of stable APIs - the issue which Google is so fed up with, they are in a process of writing their own microkernel, zircon.
You might have noticed that Android phones are supported at most for three years - that's because HW vendors refuse to maintain their drivers compatibility with lots of different kernel versions - it's expensive and takes a lot of work.
Once you have stable kernel APIs - you can write a driver once and forget about it for eternity.
I'm going to try and phrase this as nicely as I can: I fervently disagree and sincerely hope your opinion is shared only by the smallest minority possible.
The point of computers is to be a tool for people to make their lives better. Being able to run software is better than not being able to run it. The more things a computer can do, the better.
> Being able to run software is better than not being able to run it. The more things a computer can do, the better.
The more bugs you can encounter while using a piece of software is not a good thing. Security is increasingly important, running a lot of unmaintained software is a terrible thing for security. UI inconsistencies across software are not a good thing.
I dread the day I will encounter the Linux-equivalent of MS-DOS filenames not being allowed. I hope all such software dies before.
The Windows approach has a lot of downsides you probably don't notice if you're accustomed to using Windows.
> The more bugs you can encounter while using a piece of software is not a good thing.
Then don't run any software, that's cleary the best solution to avoiding software bugs if you don't actually care about getting anything done.
> Security is increasingly important, running a lot of unmaintained software is a terrible thing for security.
I disagree. Even if a thing is known to be vulnerable, there are ways to mitigate it. Besides, evergreen software just provides more opportunities for bugs as things are constantly reworked and added.
> The Windows approach has a lot of downsides you probably don't notice if you're accustomed to using Windows.
I notice them, they just cause a lot less pain than not being able to use the software I want because it hasn't been curated by a third party for whatever particular distro I'm using.
> Then don't run any software, that's cleary the best solution to avoiding software bugs if you don't actually care about getting anything done.
Or that everyone should run maintained software? I don't know why you're making it so black and white.
> I notice them, they just cause a lot less pain than not being able to use the software I want because it hasn't been curated by a third party for whatever particular distro I'm using.
I didn't find them any less painful than software not working. I've never been so angry about a computer than when using some unmaintained Windows' software.
> Or that everyone should run maintained software? I don't know why you're making it so black and white.
Because sometimes the software you want to run isn't maintained anymore and all the alternatives are worse for your use case and there's nothing you can do about it. That's just how it is.
> I didn't find them any less painful than software not working. I've never been so angry about a computer than when using some unmaintained Windows' software.
Please explain how "software works with some issues" is somehow more painful than "software doesn't work at all".
> Please explain how "software works with some issues" is somehow more painful than "software doesn't work at all".
One is frustrating for a second, it just doesn't work, second is frustrating for a longer period of time. The total frustration is larger with the latter.
There usually is a better solution than buggy software, at least with consumer stuff. If someone writes a shitty GPU driver, it's probably a better idea to return the GPU than to fiddle it working. At least that's what I think, based on my experience.
> One is frustrating for a second, it just doesn't work, second is frustrating for a longer period of time. The total frustration is larger with the latter.
One could say that the former is frustrating for infinity because it never works.
> There usually is a better solution than buggy software, at least with consumer stuff. If someone writes a shitty GPU driver, it's probably a better idea to return the GPU than to fiddle it working. At least that's what I think, based on my experience.
Usually, sometimes, maybe. Other times the old software either worked better for your use case or is literally the only option. That's my experience.
I don't think that the main purpose of AppImage and containers is to hide technical debt. Being able to package an application 1x to run on many Linux distributions is a huge plus - notably if you don't want to waste resources supporting Ubuntu, RHEL, Gentoo, Arch, etc. by maintaing a separate package for each and every Linux package manager out there.
The same is true for Docker: having a consistent environment is just very useful.
> I don't think that the main purpose of AppImage and containers is to hide technical debt.
It might not be the main advertised purpose, but it's the result. Why bother updating some dependency when you can simply not? It makes sense not to, things could break.
You're right, my bad. However, I think "things could break" is ultimately a worse evil than "it might have vulnerabilities". This seems to be the main point of disagreement.
if you just care about having the most perfectly maintained, bug-free system then yes, poor backwards compatibility is a good thing, but if you are talking about market share and general acceptance of a system (which he is addressing in the video) then backwards compatibility is a pretty significant selling point for much of the general population.
In regards to search interest, I have a feeling that specific distributions (specifically "Ubuntu") have replaced the use of "Linux" in Google searches.
I'm not sure I'd call it 'clickbait' exactly. The title works well as an intentionally irreverent name for a well intentioned series by someone who is clearly very serious about Linux. Not an ideal fit as a Hacker News title though.
I understand the video is worthwhile. What I object to is the title on the post. "The linux sucks website has a good video" would be a great title, for example. As it stands, it panders to those of us who like linux and those of us who don't like linux. The title appeals to the worst in us.
To be clear I do not object to the content, but I find the title to be divisive click bait.
TLDR Linux sucks because people do not care much about OS anymore [0], default setup does not run old games, there is no Steve Jobs like dictator, it is sponsored.
I was amazed that MX Linux intro has 120 000 views [3]
And finally, there was one technical question. Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) is developers setup - evergreen /include, /lib. I can recompile all installed packages. I've compiled latest Firefox on Linux. I've compiled Firefox on Windows, it is quite different experience. I've compiled Firefox 3.6 on Linux a month ago, that's different experience too - patching source, requires old pango version. This setup suits me.
Would it be interesting to have make dependencies as they were in Firefox 3.6 days? Absolutely. Does it drug Linux back? No, this case is minor. Same with old binaries. Anyone who cares enough can find or create such distro.
> 1. Yay! With web I do not care as much about software, I am free to use Linux.
This. Web and electron apps is the greatest thing that happened to "linux desktop". I know that they sucks and are slow, but without it I would not be able to use linux for work.
^ very much agree; plus, given that the electron API is very straightforward: the electron devs can fix the underlying memory and speed issues in the underlying code without needing to demand much change from app builders
It's a yearly skit he does in front of a live audience and because of covid he did it in a video. In written form you might actually think he is serious.
It's a yearly thing of his that he spends like half an hour complaining about desktop experience and then twists it around and basically uses the same arguments to say that it's awesome.
Simplified example: way too many desktop environments, why do we need so many half-arsed ones?
Half an hour later: woo, we can choose which desktop experience fits our needs the best, who else can do that?
I've followed it for like two or three years and then got tired of the format.
I've seen a bunch of videos on Youtube where a Linux user is basically analyzing problems in the UI of common desktop environments for Linux and compares them to how the UX is on other OSs. Not sure if those youtubers are actually developers working on the patches because they also report when something they complained about gets fixed.
I’ve never quite understood the “Linux DEs and GUIs are inconsistent” complaint. I wouldn’t want everything to be GTK because that’s IMO not a great GUI toolkit.
This video is sad to watch and could not wait for it to actually end.
1) Low popularity does not mean something sucks. Listen to the global top 10 playlist on Spotify and you will know what I am talking about: the worst, least creative music ever made happens to be the most popular and the greatest works of music in the history of humanity are much less popular.
2) There are many solutions for backwards compatibility, some of them are listed in this video (AppImage, Flatpak) and other ways of making software more self-contained. Now... WINE can sometimes be more backwards compatible than Windows.
3) "Linux foundation executive director presents from a Mac". Well, this has been observed in Microsoft talks too. In fact, there's one talk where the presenter cannot get Internet Explorer to do what he wants so he takes a moment to install Chrome.
4) "Linux people are dumb"... Are they? I would not say so.
