Why don't more people use desktop Linux? I have a theory you might not like
zdnet.com
I'm curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.
I'm curious to hear thoughts on this. I agree for the most part, I just wish people would see the benefit of choice and be brave enough to try it out.
"Why dont more people use the linux desktop" its because they don't care about computers. To most people computers are a tool and they are not interested in what the underlying software is doing as long as they can run a web browser.
Or because Windows comes pre-installed on almost all machines. Many people don't even know what "operating system" is. It's just a part of the computer for them.
steam deck proves this. If everyone loved windows so much they would install it on the deck but they don't. Microsoft pays the PC makers in the states a lot of money to keep Windows Pre-Installed. Even then Hp put our a dev Linux Laptop because Dev's want a Unix like OS ether Linux or Mac.
Valve made games "just work" on the Steam Deck. No tweaks, CLI, hacks, or major performance issues. They took away the friction. I hope that in time all games will just work on Linux. When that happens and I can use my gaming peripherals like wheels and pedals I'll be giving up Windows on my gaming PC.
Man this is so wrong, I don't even know where to start.
Valve has dedicated millions of dollars to making shit work on Linux so that MS cannot control them.
Specifically on handhelds, Windows is ass. Because it's not designed for them. That's why Valve developed a version of Linux specifically intended for this single device.
Windows is still installed on like 95% of gaming PCs because "everyone loves it so much".
What? No. MS charges the PC makers to install Windows, not the other way around... Why would they pay them?
Bingo.
Despite what the clickbait headline says, the main barrier to entry is not just knowing what an operating system is but the know-how to go about replacing the one that came with the computer in the first place. The decision over which distro to choose is relatively easy once you've got past that initial stage.
Or MacOS. They've made it seem like those are the only two options besides chromebooks which are just for those who don't want to spend money.
On the same token - anyone who also knows what an OS is shouldn't care either. Use the best OS for your job and needs. Reap the benefits of all of the OSs that you can run and switch between them like an army knife. It is the best when all of them complement each other.
For me I dont agree with "Use the best OS for your job and needs" sometimes I am willing to use a less functional product because I believe that the future would be better with more FOSS software. Morally I cant dual boot windows to play the games that dont support linux because then im supporting microsoft and games that support mircosoft.
I feel the same way. I've been riding the Linux daily driver train for over a decade now. Back when I first made the switch, Proton wasn't a thing. I could dual boot to play the games that wouldn't run on Wine but I instead made the decision to only buy new games that were Linux native and if existing games didn't run on Wine then it was tough bikkies.
But the issue is that most people sadly don't give a shit. They don't give any thought at all about sending money to Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. despite the fact that those companies are playing a part in actively degrading the user experience (amongst other things). They don't think about how they're screwing over themselves in the long run as well as the younger generations. Most people don't think much beyond what the advertising tells them to buy, convenience and ease of use.
I wish people made more ethical consumer choices but they just don't. And that habit won't change while big business has collectively billion dollar advertising budgets, gets away with monopolising and centralising and has government and regulators in their back pockets.
Not only do people generally not do ethical consumerism, but also often ridicule those who do. Quite infuriating, and would be astonishing if it wasn't so predictably human nature. Presumably it is painful to be reminded that one did not go through the effort to make a conscientious decision but someone else did, and so one belittles the decision and the person willing to make it.
That's ok if you look at it that way. But at the end of the day, it's just a tool like any other. Personally I find it really silly to put any moral questions into it because I don't believe it's worth my time to think about it, lose time on silly things and/or sacrifice the quality of my work. I'm not trying to imply anything about Linux, btw, it's the same for the other ways around. It just feels stupid because it ends up like a political discussion, when it really shouldn't be. You have the option to use basically anything and choosing to limit yourself over that is just plain stupid imo. You could make the arguments for how they process data, which is a whole other discussion, but then again, there are plenty of workarounds to all of those problems (which is exactly what some people are doing with virtualization, different machines entirely, OS tweaks, etc., which is fine, because they're benefiting from it). Nothing against FOSS or otherwise, btw, I do agree about the need to support, but there are so many other ways to do it. Just using it isn't enough, sadly. As the point of this OP is - it's also market adoption, marketing itself, etc. None of this changes the fact that using certain tool(s) (e.g. gdb) is best done on a certain OS (e.g. a Linux distro) at a given time.
Iâve always said this to people. I use Windows, Linux, and MacOS. I use whatever best suits what Iâm doing and I like that idea. It may end up being 20/70/10, but so what. Why battle a shitty Linux app If you have a good MacOS app. Or maybe your liking that windows app for a certain task.
In reality this is really only something a dev or power user would really do though.
Exactly. That's what matters. That's why SteamOS is on Steam Deck, or Linux distros on POS machines, or Windows on ATMs (which is kinda depressing ngl), etc.
It's a tool, nothing more, nothing less. An OS is just a gateway to other apps at the end of the day.
i will agree with this when Linux has 5 to 10% market share just enough to where manufacturers can't ignore us anymore. The problem will come cause the stuff they ignore us with. Is full featured but garbage drivers with Spyware like crap print drivers with pop-up ads or games with rootkits for drm.
Somewhere between 2000 and 2015 pretty much everyone had a computer, because you needed it for doing all the computer stuff. Nowadays you can do so much on a mobile device that thereâs no urgent need to even own a proper computer any more unless you need to do something very specific.
Professionals and hobbyists will continue to need computers in the future, but Joe Average wonât. You can pay your bills using a phone and watch movies on a tablet. Joe doesnât have a 3D printer, write ISO images on USB sticks, try to recover data from old hard disks, flash LineageOS on an old Android phone, or SSH into a raspberry pi. If he still has an old laptgop tucked away in a drawer, itâs probably been sitting there for years because he hasnât really needed it for anything.
So true, outside of work I haven't used a pc/laptop in over 4 years.
I have an android phone and tablet and they serve the majority of my needs perfectly.
That said I'm about to get one of my daughter's old MacBook airs which is beyond OS updates and am going to put Linux on it to tinker with some things I can't do on android. Still not sure which OS to go with but am fifty fifty between Ubuntu and Pop_OS.
Flip a coin and pick one of them. If you face some strange problems and later find out itâs because of the distro, itâs time to do some distrihopping. Before that, itâs important to get started with something.
The author is an idiot.
Only techies ask anyone how they "get into Linux". Say it with me now. "People don't buy, buy into, get into, install, or use operating systems" They buy fuckin computers. It is perceptibly to virtually all non-techies a feature of the device.
There are a million types of cars but people manage to pick one and buy it same with breakfast cereals or shampoo because they are obligated to make a decision or go hungry, dirty, or walk everywhere.
People don't particularly like making decisions and they decided what OS they were going to use when they bought the computer and they have no intention of downloading an iso, write it to a USB, figure out how they boot from it, figure out the bios options they need to disable and what works differently than what they are familiar with.
You lost them around step 2 and lost all hope of moving forward unless the prize at the end is something much better than "does everything I used to do but differently"
The success of Chromebooks, android phones, and the steam deck is that it was driven by devices people wanted to use not an OS people wanted to use. If you want to see more Linux use that is the story you need to focus on.
If Lenovo or HP or whatever started selling their notebooks for way cheaper without the windows license on the machine linux would probably get a lot more usage. But they would probably have to put big warnings on that to avoid a big return wave, which would hamper the whole deal.
Actually OEMS get money for including Windows because they include shovelware trials of crap like Norton that is of greater value than the reduced cost of Windows to the big players. If sold at difference in cost the decrapified Linux version would be more expensive not less.
This is one that we can't just solve by putting computers on the shelf.
Some people have tools that don't work on Linux natively. If somebody is using and is familiar with Microsoft Excel, there isn't a straightforward way to install it and FOSS options aren't the same. The same can be said of Adobe.
Linux as a desktop environment will have to be for enthusiasts for a while longer. Hopefully, somebody gets more feature parity with the existing suites and the transition can just work out of the box.
But Linux when compared to Windows and Mac is a case study of capitalism vs FOSS. We (Linux users) generally think Linux is better and maybe it is, but Microsoft and Apple spent tons of money to make theirs what they are today and we didn't.
Not personally, but there's loads of companies that work and contribute to the kernel and all the surrounding software, they give funds, obviously not as huge as Microsoft's paycheck, but with less I'd say we have achieved way way more in several aspects, application support is entirely on the devs, be it Microsoft (again) or Adobe or what have you, yet we're able to run alternative suites that are at least an 80% of what those proprietary options offer, for the office suite in particular I think we're pretty well off with Onlyoffice.
Money, though important, is clearly not a measure of quality in software
My point wasn't that they spend money on quality. Much of what they spend on is perception and awareness.
Ah then I misunderstood, but what do you mean with that exactly, advertising?
Marketing is a big portion of it. There's also less obvious versions. Microsoft was busy making deals behind the scenes with OEMs for a long while with the intention of getting Windows to be the default OS in stores. Early OEMs didn't just wake up and start building for Windows. Bill Gates showed up at there office and convinced them to.
Apple donated a bunch of computers to schools. Many people just believed that it was because they cared about education but really it is an attempt to get kids hooked into the Apple ecosystem early.
Building brand loyalty isn't just about advertising and it's not even about making the best product. Early and repetitive access is more important. Advertising and product placement are more about awareness than loyalty. Loyalty is generally exploiting people's fear of change.
The open source ecosystem by virtue of being free software just doesn't have those billions of dollars to invest. For office software google docs are sufficient for a whole lot of use cases and easily shareable whereas more complex usage is easily handled by libre office.
Photoshop is legitimately better than alternatives but popular as it is only a tiny fraction of PC users use or need Adobe.
26M vs 2B is approx 1.3% of PCs
I also don't need to select my car based on its ability to haul thousands of pounds of cargo or its performance on a racetrack either.
If we want photoshop for Linux we need to collectively bankroll it. If not there is plenty of space in the market for computers without photoshop because that is by far the majority of computers.
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That's not mutually exclusive with the author's argument, though.
if a computer vendor offers multiple distributions to choose from, the problem of choice remains.
And if the vendor only offers one option, which one should it be? And how can a user verify that it's a "good" option?
It wouldn't really matter, does everyone wonder if the Android ROM they're running is the best and if they should install a different one?
People do notice how good or bad they are, but that's it, at most they'll switch to a different vendor next time they buy a product
Hmm good point!
Most people don't know how to install operating system, even if it's just pressing next in the installer mostly. The reason Linux is not primary system is that it's not preinstalled. It has a bit of chicken and egg problem with some support missing due to low user base, and base lowered by that soft missing but that would change in the instant if everybody suddenly bought PC with linux preinstalled.
Even the win mentioned with linux in gaming is basically just that. Linux preinstalled on steam deck.
Agreed. I've gotten several none technical folks (including older folks) in my life using Linux Mint and loving it.
What did I do?
I installed it for them. That was it.
They're scared of installing a new operating system. It's just so weird.
Because windows is preinstalled on the computer they buy. That is literally it
Yeah. Windows isn't a choice. It's what you get if you never question what OS you use.
Yeah no, that's literally not it. It's because Windows is the only user-friendly OS that they can install.
Nobody ever installs windows themselves
You're focusing on the wrong part of my statement
He's right, most people don't install an OS. They use whatever it comes with.
Jesus Christ đ€Šââïž
@HughJanus windows is not user friendly. You are confusing familiarity with ease of use.
Most are familiar with it since its widely used as the first OS since school. Give it to a lifelong mac user and see how much they struggle. Even ones who are using windows for nearly a decade struggle as soon as they need to use anything more than office, chrome or the file explorer. They fear the control panel nearly as much as they would a terminal and i have to give detailed instruction on what to click
You people keep saying this but it's simply not true. I used Windows for 20 years and never went into the CLI, which is basically a daily occurrence to complete basic tasks in Linux.
For example, today I went to download the new Simplex app. On Windows, download and run the .exe and it installs itself. Done.
On Linux, they only have a .deb version. So to install that on Fedora I have to install some other program, and the only way to install the program is from the CLI. Tried to do that. The first command I copied and pasted the first command into the CLI and...nothing happened. Not even an error message. Give up.
The end.
@HughJanus whos 'you people' here? My point was that just as terminal for linux is scary, many people find even the control panel in windows scary and hard to use. Your personal experience may vary but many issues you point to isnt linux specific.
Assuming you refer to simleX chat, I just grabbed the appimage from their github release page, marked it executable and ran it without a hitch. Took me 5-10 clicks and nearly the same as for Windows. Don't have fedora RN but assume its the same.
"You people" who are delusional and incessantly lie about how "easy" things are.
This is not even remotely comparable. You don't need the control panel to install software (a basic task), and even if you do need it for something, it's fairly intuitive. You just click around until you find what you need. Using the CLI requires you to have a working knowledge of a fucking encyclopedia of gibberish commands.
Yes. They are.
@HughJanus
Legitimately don't remember the last time I *had* to use a terminal to install a program in linux, I pretty much just click to install everything using KDE's Discover store, except for things I download off github which often come as appimages which are practically the same as windows executables in terms of ease of use
@vaidooryam
@HughJanus completey glances over the solution for your precise problem and yet making strawman arguments of how tough linux is and calling others liars without providing any valid proof. End of our conversation. Stay classy.
LOL how exactly do you expect me to prove this? It's just a case of simple observation and I've provided detailed examples. You just don't like them.
Because Windows or iOS is already loaded when they buy the machine.
This is the only answer, and anybody who doesn't agree just doesn't understand users. They just use whatever you give them.
.. and by implication, it guarantees that Linux will (almost definitely) never be the world's desktop. Mainly because there's no one single company to blackmail.
Android managed it, so can desktop Linux. We just need manufacturers who will ship it as default.
Astra Linux will be Russia's main desktop if this war continues for another 4 or 5 years. China UOS (Deepin) will be China's main desktop by 2030 or so if the USA keeps up with the trade war. Lots of countries will adopt Deepin if it's cheaper and just as stable. Linux will never be the main desktop in the West but we'll see non US allied countries become Linux countries in the next 20 years.
Imagine a state driven open source distro like deepin in some years.
Highly probable. But considering Microsoft has been subsidized by the US government indirectly for decades I don't see it being much different except that the GPL license hopefully will allow for the OS to become a common good.
Uhm how is chinese state looking to make profit of Deepin?
What do you mean by make profit of?
MS has to make profit of Windows. China doesn't or can't if Deepin is opensource.
Microsoft is heavily subsidized through government contracts. Deepin has it's paid support UOS alternative with extra services.
What has that to do with my initial comment? And yes that's a rhetorical question.
Sorry I don't understand.
I would really love a 'standard' Linux. Mint, Puppy, Fedora and so on are good enough.
I 'pray' every night for a killer Windows upgrade bug, but I think only Apple would benefit. Teens seem to have only iPhones as a status thing.
This guy:
There are 100 competing distributions:
"Let's add one more, one that's standardized and designed to make it easy for users to start using Linux."
There are now 101 competing distributions.
https://xkcd.com/927/
This has been discussed many times before. Personally, I think that there is an inherent contridiction between the FOSS ethos and mass appeal.
The way things get adopted en masse is by having limited options and limited changes.
This is why most extremely popular software grows stagnant. The company/group that puts it out doesn't want to alienate its user base. Think Ebay, Facebook, ios, etc.
Users get pissed off if their software changes in any significant way. Most people don't care about choice or freedom. They just want to grab a device and have it turn on and do what they tell it.
Look at cell phones. Back in the early 00's when they started to become common for everybody, think about all the weird and wacky designs you saw. Neon, chrome, bizzare form factors, gimmicks, etc. The paradise of consumer choice. So many brands and styles to choose from. I remember going to high school and seeing all the different kinds of phones that everybody had.
Now days, every phone is a black/grey glass slab. The most drastic differences between them are what shape the bezels are and how the camera lenses are oriented on the back.
Consumers in general don't care about choice. They are fine choosing between an Apple glass slab or an Android glass slab. This point is proven even more strongly by gen Z, who apparently don't even care about the few "choices" that Android provides, over 80% of US teens use iphones. Of iphone users, over 30% are gen z, of Android, barely over 10%, three times less
Linux and FOSS in general is all about choice, options, rejecting vendor lock, forking projects and carving out niches for sub-groups of users. A fork for devs, a fork for security concerned folks, a fork for people that liked the way the software looked 10 years ago, a fork for people that don't agree with the political views of the original devs, etc etc.
I don't have a problem with that, personally I love it. The extreme consumer freedom and ability to customize is a huge reasons I love FOSS software. But I also recognize that it means we won't ever be mainstream. Or at the least, if we become mainstream, it will likely be at the cost of much of that freedom.
I am happy with a few percent market share. I don't need more than that to feel like we are successful. As long as Capitalism is the default system in this world, it will always reward products that generate the most profit, and that will never reward freedom or consumer rights long term.
We ought to inform others as much as we can on an individual basis, friends, family etc. Use FOSS, contribute money, code, documentation, tutorials, and user support. Fight the power and stand against the corpos. Our fight should not be based in the goal of becoming "mainstream," it should be based in the principles of freedom, empowerment, and inclusion.
I think people also grossly underestimate how much of an affect million dollar advertising budgets have. Apple spends a mint on their advertising, appealing to younger folk and making their products seem cool and fashionable.
A lot of people won't care about choice when there's a very limited choice of products being advertised as "must-have".
Linux does not have a million dollar advertising budget, it doesn't have huge advertising companies creating slick ad campaigns, it doesn't have restricted choice and railroading people into false ideas of what's necessary. And it doesn't come preinstalled on a majority of devices.
Noone is using windows because it is cool and hip and i doubt microsoft advertises windows. People use windows because they work and do what they want. Maybe they could use ubuntu, but why would they do that? What does ubuntu offer that windows dont?
I'll tell you why they(including me) dont use linux, because maybe their wifi wont work(or they will have to compile the universe to make it work) or their favourite app or game wont work. And even if you could make a piece of hardware or software work in linux, the performance might be inferior because it will be using generic drivers, instead of the proprietary windows only drivers that the manufacturer has made.
Ultimately, people dont care about open source or privacy enough, to sacrifice their convenience.
No, but the PC's it comes reinstalled on are.
Linux isn't for everyone. I still dual boot for damn Adobe products. But as someone who's used Linux as my daily driver for over a decade and installed many different distros on both my own and other people's laptops and PC's, most of what you say happens isn't the case for most people.
It also doesn't acknowledge the fact that many things on Windows don't "just work" and require extra apps, drivers, reg edit or any other number of things that need fiddling with. For example, the Audio Interface for my electric guitar just works in Linux. The kernel already has the driver. This is the case for the majority of the hardware I have connected over the years. On Windows, I have to search out, download and then install the driver.
I talk about people not caring about anything other than what they're advertised, what's convenient or what's easiest for them to use, in another one of my replies in this thread. .
I think the reason is that 1. Linux is still too hard for the average person and 2. The average person just doesn't care
Yes, you don't have to write bash scripts or compile the kernel yourself, but still, Linux is different in many ways from Windows. This is on top of the fact that most people don't know much about tech in general and often have problems with (imo) very basic stuff. I honestly can't imagine them downloading an ISO file, flashing it onto an USB stick and then booting from it. Most people probably don't even know that Windows != PC
Then there's also the fact that the average person just doesn't care. They just want to get things done
(sidenote: I might sound elitist but I'm not. I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in tech, just like it's not reasonable to, for example, expect everyone to be interested in cars. It just so happens that the tech industry is tightly connected to freedom, privacy, etc. while the car industry is not)
I kinda want to softly disagree with this point (and i'm sure others will disagree with my disagreement), because the average user pretty much does everything they do in a web browser. A few of them might have to use thunderbird for email, instead of their web browser, and thats about it.
And to be perfectly honest, Theres no significant functional difference, for those average users, between linux and windows. Just got to put the browser and email icons somewhere on the desktop where its visible and thats basically that.
I speak of personal experience (so take it with a grain of salt and skepticism), because I have pretty much my entire family on linux, though to be fair I got them on linux by basically saying "Listen, your computers old, and the OS is no longer supported. Either you can pay me a lot of money to get you a new computer and new version of windows, or I can install linux on what you have for free and you can keep going without any investment". Being cheap, they always chose linux.
in my experience, almost all the terror that rises from the deep with regards to linux, comes the second you try to do anything more intensive than web browsing/email.. Cause they you are running into installing things, tweaking things, problem finding, etc etc.
Yeah, but when I tried to get my mom to use Linux, she kept asking me how to do some things like moving a file, printing a PDF, saving a document in Libreoffice (even though she had no trouble doing it on Windows also with Libreoffice) etc. I've set up everything to be as seamless and close to Windows as possible but she still always had trouble doing something so I gave up, and reinstalled Windows. Ig my mom is just less tech savy than your family
ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻit takes literally no tech savy to open a browser.
Yeah, my mom didn't have issues with that, but she did have issues with other almost as basic stuff
To the question it's clickbaiting you to see:
And the response is that Linux is not Windows or OSX. It doesn't work the same way. The point of 80 gazillion different flavors is that it can be made to be what is wanted or needed. ChromeOS and Android are Linux and I'd argue they both qualify as "desktop" even if Android rocks many phones in mobile mode. If you don't like sysv init for whatever reason you can find a bunch that don't use it. Want to install a modern version on a 486? You can with lightweight 32-bit distros, though it'll be terrible and it means you're a masochist.
Possibly because OSX is pretty similar under the hood by its nature as a *BSD derivative, and Windows has WSL which has become pretty good from what I'm told. A casual user may simply not encounter the need to install a whole different operating system on bare metal anymore.
But I think the reason, special cases aside, is that they haven't given it an honest try. It's not the Duplo of operating systems, to get what you're after out of it you have to actually try, to learn how. It's easier to give up and go back to what seems to work based on it being the first thing they saw.
you only view those as positives because you are not the average user. for the average user those are actually negatives. The average user's answer to "do you prefer systemd or sysvinit?" would be "why the fuck should I care? I just want something that works. And I want that something to work the same whether it's on my personal machine or my work machine, or my mom's."
If you force the user to have to choose, most times they just won't. So they choose something that does not offer the choice at all. Other operating systems do not require them to give an honest try at being able to try them.
Your hypothetical user could throw a dart at a list of distros and just install the one it hits.
but how does one ensure that their dart lands in the same spot as their employer's and their mom's? consistency is very important for the average user, at odds with us enthusiasts' joy at being able to change anything.
I am not against linux, (I use arch btw) but I accept the fact that most people don't find computers as exciting as I do.
Their employer is probably using Windows because they're locked in so that's a red herring. Their mom, if not using Windows for similar reasons, is probably using some variant of Ubuntu.
it's a hypothetical scenario. And you still failed to even acknowledge my point, let alone get it.
What is your point? That you're more enlightened than us plebs or something?
you keep saying that the average user can do this or that. when the point isn't whether they could, but whether they want to. The average user does not want to choose. Look up the paradox of choice.
It's hard for a system to become mainstream when techy people keep boasting to them that its biggest feature is the one they specifically do not want
Maybe that's just another feature. Eternal September sucks, as evidence by this very interaction.
Win wsl is awful.
âWhen someone comes to me asking how to get into Linux, they do not need to hear a laundry list of distributions to choose from. When they ask, I don't want to have to say, something akin to, "You could try Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS, Zorin OS, or Ubuntu Budgie."â
Ok, so what if I need a car? People will give me a laundry list of car brands to choose from, so I donât really see that as a valid point. What if I want to buy a pair of shoes? Is there another laundry list? Yes there is.
Just pick something popular, and try it out. If you donât like it, youâll have a better idea of the features you want or donât want in the future.
You mean you DON'T drive a Car brand car, wear Shoes brand shoes and drink this delicious-looking beverage??
Thereâs also literal 15% food. Better not think about the remaining 85%. Just see what google translate says about âruokaâ (in Finnish) or âmatâ (in Swedish).
75% no?
Wolfram aplha is probably just violating some fundamental axioms of mathematics to say the answer is 85. Iâm not a mathematician, so who knows.
Well, it's all about expectations and alternatives. People don't expect to be overloaded with choices before the OS even boots.
Linux is the only OS on any platform where they have (to make) this choice.
Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, all of these Systems don't give you a choice between wildly different versions.
Also, the issue extends to after the installation as well. If someone asks me about a Windows issue of medium intensity, I can tell them on the phone how to fix it without having a PC nearby.
Say they ask me how to do something as simple as to install a program from the repository.
Depending on the Linux they are using, they will (or will not) have any one of a few dozen package manager GUIs, which will work wildly different. Even if they don't use the GUI, they might be using apt, yum, pacman, snap or any other of a few dozen CLI package managers.
And depending on their distro, the package in question can have one of a few dozen different names, or might not be in the repo at all, so that I need to add a ppa or some other form of external repository.
That is a massive issue in everyday use. The only viable thing is for the local family/friend group admin to decide which distro to use and then everyone needs to use that distro or get educated themselves.
For example, I got a lot of experience (~10 years) on Debian-based OSes. Put me on Arch and I have no clue.
The same is not true for e.g. Windows, where I have used every single version extensively (except of Win11).
That description sounds a lot like fixing a car or trying to operate it.
How do I turn on the windshield wipers? Oh that depends on the brand. You need to find that thing thatâs usually on the right, but in some cars itâs on the left. Then you need to press, pull, turn or twist it clockwise or counterclockwise depending on stuffâŠ
How do I replace the left headlight? Could be easy, could be a nightmare. Depends on so many things.
That's kinda true, but because of that reason you need to take more than 40h of lessions (at least over here) and two tests before you are allowed to operate a car.
When you then buy a car, the salesman takes about an hour to show you everything you need to know about your car, and the car gets delivered with a pretty well-written 500+ page manual that tells you everything you need to know about operating and maintaining it.
The same is not true for operating systems in general and Linux distros specifically. There you get no course at all, nobody that shows you anything and all your resources are Google and toxic online communities where you get called names for asking questions. Makes it much harder for beginners to get into it.
What's crazy to me is that Linux was out way in front of this. Put me in front of windows back in the aughts and say 'go install a program' and you had to google it, hope you clicked the right download link, install it, hope you didn't get a virus. Ubuntu you just opened up synaptic and bam, there was a wealth of programs you could just install with a single click. It was mind-blowing, and way easier than what everyone else offered.
It's the typical opensource problem. The advantage of FOSS is that anyone who wants to can create a fork. The problem is that everyone does.
There are dozens of rivaling systems that do the exact same thing a slightly different way with a completely different user experience.
I literally don't think the plethora of choices has anything to do with why Linux is not installed by the masses. The only reason is that Microsoft and Apple are huge market forces with the ability to advertise, make deals with other business partners, pre-install their operating systems onto hardware that's sold, operate technical support services, and so on. They have completely flooded the market with their stuff.
Linux has these things, too, but nowhere in scale or scope, and with relative industry latecomers to sell it. If Linux were created 10-12 years sooner and companies like Suse, RH, Canonical, System76 were all formed earlier than they were I think we'd see a healthy amount of Linux out in the world, with maybe a few percent higher market share (which would be extremely massive).
Keep in mind that Apple, as a company, rebuilt itself truly not on the technical excellence of Macintosh, but by driving sales of iPods then iPhones.
Apple's success came from Microsoft's negligence. Too many people had Windows XP computers at home wrecked with toolbars and spyware and garbage.
And people gladly left for a walled garden platform that locked down everything and didn't require them to administer their own systems.
The biggest success in the Linux world has been Chromebooks and Android, where Google administers the system for the user.
Most people don't choose linux because they can't administer their own system. A system that lets them administer however they want has no appeal to them. They instinctively know they can't handle that responsibility. They need their hands held.
Even if all of the operating systems were playing on a fair & ideal field, I do not think Linux would come out as the clear winner.
The Linux ecosystem is stakeholder owned. That is to say that design decisions are made by experienced users for experienced users. Whenever an ergonomic tradeoff exists between ease of use and expressiveness, ease of use loses. New users sense this and feel implicitly unwelcome. It's the original sin of open source software as a whole, really.
I don't necessarily take this state of affairs as a bad thing, but it does lead me to think that the dominant OS software will always be a commercial product of some variety. It doesn't necessarily need to be a proprietary greed-fest like Windows, but at the very least the top-level stakeholders of that specific project need to be directly motivated by user adoption. AOSP (aka: Android) would be a decent example of something like this working in the wild for an open source project (Google attempting to claw back control notwithstanding).
I have a theory that I haven't explored yet. My mom is not a computer user. She barely knows how to use one, so she doesn't have knowledge of the MS Windows or MacOS approach of using computers. I suspect if I gave her a laptop with Ubuntu on it and showed her the ropes of how to use it she'd get along very fine. I think she would be able to navigate the UI and never need more technical knowledge than remembering her computer's password.
Now, before anyone goes and accuses me of being a bad son for leaving my mom in the technological dark, I just want to say she gets by pretty happily with the iPad I got for her, which has an even more foolproof interface than any traditional desktop OS.
I thought about this before, and mostly agree. My mom knows nothing about computers and could probably use Ubuntu if I stick it on a machine and gave it to her. The thing preventing me from doing it is that when things go wrong in Linux, it often requires extensive terminal usage to fix. And my mother can often find new and creative ways to break a computer. If something went wrong with it, I would have to fix it. There is literally no one else she knows who would even know where to start. At least if she's on windows, she can find someone to help her.
The issue isnât an official Linux distribution, per se (and note: Canonical have wanted to be that for years with their Ubuntu).
The issue is that laptop and desktop retail machines come with Windows. And until that changes, Linux on the desktop will never see more traction.
There is probably only one real way this comes to fruition: a company, like Apple, that engineers their own hardware with full stack integration to their own Linux distribution â and the hardware has to be aesthetically pleasing, reasonably priced (unlike Apple), and with in-person support (a la Apple Store).
The closest to that we have, at least in the United States, is System76. But they do not engineer their systems. They basically cobble together all the parts that are known to work with the Linux kernel, toss them into an outsourced chassis, and sell them at what I would consider somewhat bloated prices.
That being said, I love what System 76 is doing with Pop!_OS, but the name sucks, the software versions will always be lagging behind unless using snap and/or flatpak, gaming on Linux is still an uphill battle despite Protonâs strides, and at the end of the day, the user will actually have to do something at some point on the command line.
What Linux desktop users need to embrace is that it is okay to not be the primary desktop operating system of the world. It is okay that it is relegated to geek enthusiasts, developers, and the like.
There really is nothing wrong with that.
I don't think it's completely fine, because, as we see time and time again, Windows being the default, and so the largest player, allows developers, especially in the enterprise and education sectors, to be lazy and support only Windows for their applications. The expectation has been created that everyone has to own a Windows computer and that damages us, since it restricts our choices, for some people it can nullify entirely the effort they put into switching to Linux.
For example, in my country, to do the admission exam to university you need to install the SEB browser, which amounts to pretty much a Windows-only rootkit, now I wouldn't enjoy putting that on my Linux system, but the laziness here is clear, they could have made a a live single-purpose Linux distro that boots up a locked down browser and checks that it hasn't been tampered with when it runs, it didn't have to be the only option, it could have been an additional option for privacy concious users, but why won't they do it? Because it's not trivial to build and the Linux market share is too small to care about and if you use it you are weird.
To a certain extent it's the fault of our institutions that don't allow choice of OS most of the time, let alone forcing the use of Linux, if more would do the latter (because, let's be honest, if they only let us choose they'd treat all other OSes as second class citizens), we might see companies developing more for Linux in turn.
That said, it's not in such a bad situation and it can already be used without issue in many occasions.
Linux needs more companies like steam that develop certain things into Linux that enable more software support. I feel like the steam deck and proton greatly increased the number of people using linux primarily or at least dipping their toes in. Having popular mainstream creative suites, office suites, and a greater userbase is probably what would allow Linux to actually absorb windows users.
For me, the biggest reason not to use linux are windows-only apps like CAD software. That software was a must have on my university, and now Im stuck with it lol. I switched to linux anyway, but still struggling to find best workflow between dual boot and windows in VM.
But linux today is so available and friendly. I have POP! OS on my desktop and partner can use it with no problem (windows user). Its so freaking intuitive, much easier to install and use compared to windows IMO. I believe people are not afraid as much as they dont care and microsoft is pushing their OS much more than any other alternative
FreeCAD isn't the worst and has the ability to output several file formats. But it's definitely wonky and probably not up to the task if that's like your actual job or whatever. I don't know your scenario, but you might check it out if you're still using CAD. It is free.
But yeah, in general, required software is the big hiccup.
Thx, I did try it. FreeCAD is great, but cant compare with software like Solidworks. Feels like 30 years difference unfortunately. Im afraid Im too old for that, but Im sure future generations will have proper FOSS alternative on Linux. I just try not to use it because I hate dual boot hehe.
There are fow more programs I need, but I can run them easy in VM/vine
Time for me to mourn autodesks killoff of eagle again
I dont want to learn their fusion 360 shite and it doesnt run on linux anyway.
I've settled on using wsl2 on a windows machine. I run Ubuntu and kali in wsl as virtual machines on my main windows computer. I was an early user of linux and bsd but have found it's just plain easier to run day to day on windows.
I run both Ubuntu and kali simply because I haven't been able to make sound work correctly with Ubuntu on wsl but it works great in kali, plus kali has all the pentesting stuff so I can play around with that in my free time.
Lazy theory. Think about cars. If the diversity of alternatives was putting off people, I guess we would still all be driving black Ford cars.
I have been using Linux since 1996 and what is putting off people is:
Also, MS pays computer makers to preinstall Windows.
This. Exactly this.
It's very different considering your car only needs to run the software it comes with from the factory (for now).
If we had a thousand different types of fuel, and 95% of people used fuel 1 or 2, and then 5% used one of a thousand other lesser-know fuels, you'd probably just buy a car that uses 1 or 2, because they're the easiest and most popular.
As others have said, most people don't install operating systems. They just buy a system, likely a laptop and run whatever OS is on it. Hardly any laptops come with Linux preinstalled unless you look pretty hard, or are searching specifically for one.
I am going to bring it up a level. I donât really agree with the surface level analysis of ZDNET.
Itâs all a bit janky. The jank is really reduced BUT it is there. There are two flavors: distro jank and app jank. And the reason itâs janky is because the maintainers want it that way.
We should applaud the dedication of companies and people to relentlessly improve. Things are as great as they have ever been. This stuff is hard and Linux does make some things really really simple.
ButâŠgo to any distro support site, and you will see the usual things. Why does the secondary monitor not turn on. Why did audio stop working, laptop wonât wake. Etc etc. the solutions are better and better, but unique hw cfgs causing distros jank is one hill to climb.
The other are the apps. Again, I am glad they are there. And they are better than ever.
However, sometimes app workflow causes a great app to feel janky. Itâs like âgood enoughâ is all the love they get.
Finally, the open source community can be a removed to work with. Anyone who has ever submitted a patch knows that some projects and tools are ⊠interesting.
Itâs likeâŠthank you for your time, but your patch to eliminate jank is rejected because ⊠ego.
Not all open source repos are like this. But more are than youâd think. Different ideas are not always welcome, even if end users would appreciate those very same ideas.
And the repos with a more open mind? No surprise that their results are more usable.
tl;dr FrAgMeNtAtIon
There, saved you a click.
People se Linux fine when it comes preinstalled. See the Steam Deck.
Most people view computers as an appliance to get what they want, like a toaster. They never think to install a different OS, if they even know how to do so or that Linux exists in the first place. Windows comes installed out of the box for every computer not made by Apple for the most part. My boomers aren't dependent on any Windows-specific software as their use-case is just a Facebook machine, so I put them on Fedora with GNOME and there hasn't been a single problem in years. They can even handle installing and updating software with the software center that GNOME provides. They were actually interested in trying something else because even the tech illiterate can see that Windows sucks now. All I had to do was pick the distro and DE and then install it for them. The distro could just as easily be Debian, or Ubuntu, or possibly even Arch. The DE just needs to be absolutely braindead so they can't hurt themselves by accident. Yeah, some use-cases require that people use Windows-specific software, but there's also a lot of Facebook machines that could just as easily be running Linux if the computers at the store shipped with it; Chromebooks are an example of this. And honestly, even the OS-specific software thing is becoming less of a problem as more stuff moves to the browser.
First of all, this guy is correct that this is a significant reason that Linux is not more popular on the desktop. Desktop Linux is a community of things, not just one thing that people can experience and recommend.
That said, XKCD has a nice explanation about why that will never be solved:
https://xkcd.com/927/
From time to time though, a distro will dominate and. Linux will grow. For a while, that was Red Hat. Then, it was Ubuntu. Both of those moved things forward but were too early to reach mass adoption. There really is no front-runner right now but perhaps one will emerge again and âthatâ will be Linux for the masses.
In the meantime, things like Flatpak are addressing a lot of the problem. It is becoming realistic for a dev to target âLinuxâ ( Flatpak ) and have their application run predictably regardless of what distro any given individual has chosen. Freedesktop.org helps as well.
Really though, this problem will exist until most of us ( not all ) agree that one Linux Desktop distro is simply better than the rest and most of us begin to use it. We can then onboard new users onto that.
Linus Torvalds had a great rant about this situation. He believes that it might require Valve to fix this by becoming the de facto standard.
Does Valve ship a usable desktop distro?
Itâs immutable, so you probably consider it unusable, but I think itâs necessary for mass adoption. Developers know exactly how the OS is built and can ensure their applications and games operate well on Steam OS. I think it will become a de facto standard, if itâs not already.
I disagree. I think it's mostly a combination of baby duck syndrome and the perceived difficulty of gaming (unless you're a kid who "needs" to play the flavor of the month over-monetized multiplayer trash)
Baby Duck syndrome is real, and probably the reason I'm using Lubuntu; it superficially resembles the OSs I grew up using (Win9x/OS9/WinXP.) Windows, MacOS, Gnome, and Mate on the other hand relentlessly change their interfaces.
Homoginizing Linux would be destroying so much of what makes Linux special. And besides, as many have pointed out, that's not the source of the problem anyway in that most people don't care what OS is installed or even comprehend what an OS is.
I also don't think Linux needs mass adoption. It'd be great if it did, but it being a tool for those who care about what tools they use is fine too.
That's cool, but I'm not making software for desktop linux until there's one standard GUI api
Just us electron like everyone else /s
He's wrong.
I use Windows because I have Windows software I need to use, whether for work or gaming, and I just want that shit to work with zero effort on my part.
It still blows my mind when people say this. Linux is incredibly NOT user friendly, and you're constantly sent into the CLI for basic debugging or even just installation of software.
The reliance on CLI is exactly why it will never be more popular, and I think Linux users/developers like it that way.
As for an "official" Linux distribution, that's a neat idea but simply never going to happen. No one will ever agree to that.
This is an inherent limitation of "free as in freedom" software. The simple option of choice complicates things, and always will.
You can put a myriad of setup and administration options into the GUI and most people still have no interest in them. These people just have no interest in using a computer like that. They "just want it to work". It's not a CLI v. GUI problem, it's one of assumed responsibility.
"Free as in freedom" really only refers to developers. The non-developers are beholden to whoever packages and distributes their software for them. We Linux users who aren't system developers let the "distro maintainers" do the developer work for us. That's why a distro's website is full of mission statements and declarations of philosophy--it's how we decide who to trust.
And it's the same for the "non-nerds" with system administration. Businesses hire admins to handle their internal software and networks, and at home people let Apple, Microsoft or Google take increasingly more control over their devices so that they aren't responsible for getting it all working.
Yes these are the people I'm referring to also. We're not talking about network engineering or developing software. We're talking about installing a program or virtually any kind of debugging.
The bigger problem is that there's often no one willing to show you how to use it. I had a friend who managed to picked it up himself, and when I asked him to show me the ropes all I got out of him was "just Google it". Now, of course that's how you figure all sorts of things out and an essential skill in itself, but first you need to know what to search for, and if you're just starting out you're probably not going to know what that is - or you'll have more abstract but simple problems like figuring out issues with syntax in the terminal. That kind of thing is really easy for another person who knows to say "no, it's like this, because of that" but can be very difficult for a person to figure out on their own.
Quite often it seems like people have gone through these trials themselves, but then rather than making it easier for other people and helping them they leave them to face the same challenges all over again from scratch. This is very frustrating, when you know there's an answer that someone could just give you but it's not apparent to you, which leads to people throwing in the towel.
When you're saying it, it's actually striking how many Linux users are self taught.
Then again, all my friends the last ten years have known there's a standing offer for me to install Linux for them and teach them how to use it. Some have in occasionally, especially when their windows computers grew unusable, but generally they'll use it and be happy with it and then revert back to windows when they eventually buy a new computer and it comes preinstalled.
The exception is my dad, who now actively asks me to install Ubuntu for him whenever he has a new computer. He never asked me to install it on the first place though - I just accidentally broke Windows while trying to set up a dual boot on the home computer back in my early teenage years.
Your dad asks you because he likes Ubuntu and loves you. This is a good thing, thanks for sharing.
If that were true... Ubuntu used to be the default distro for quite some time.
This ignores a bunch of stuff. Also when a lot of non Linux people think Linux the first distro that comes to mind is Ubuntu so there you go, you have your pr distro. Linux in my experience is not easy at all to use. There people that have been on the platform exclusively for 10+ years really don't understand the modern windows experience. In the 15 years I've been using windows I've only had to use the command line for rather niche things. Winget is a nice curiosity not a necessity like apt or pacman. In windows shit just works. And 99 percent of the time it doesn't it's as easy as right clicking and selecting windows 7 as a compatibility option, and non tech users call you a wizard for knowing how to do that. They get scared when they see a command prompt and I understand it I was like that at one point.
Also everyone is used to using windows. We use it on our schools, we use it on our works, we use it in our libraries. It's what people know and people are reluctant to swap because why learn something new that's considerably harder, when what you already have just works. Almost every computer comes with windows pre-installed. For people it's just plug and play no need to worry about anything. And I belive this is the greatest problem. If there were more devices with Linux out of the box, if school and colleges used Linux instead of windows we would see a dramatic increase in the number of users. But this is going to piss off Microsoft the moment that feel it might injure their bottom line. They want Linux in a leash, a project they can steal from for their own platform, just like github. That's why they donate so much money to the project and the moment they feel threatened they will stop donations, pay politicians to stop any change and sue people for whatever bullshit reason they come up with
I'm interested by the fact that we have very different experiences with Linux. I switched from Windows to Kubuntu when I was starting out and I found it pretty easy to learn, aside from a few new concepts that were just different. Aside from programs that just didn't work because they didn't have Linux versions, I had vastly less problems running Linux than Windows on my PC.
I fully left Windows because things didnât just work and in my experience they did on Linux.
I donât find CLI more necessary in Linux than Windows, if I used my package manager GUI then Iâd use CLI more in Windows than in Linux
I feel that Linux is better for the average person because their use case is opening a web browser. Viruses and tech support scammers will be less likely to hit them
Linux is not an operating system and pretending it is one is counter-productive. Take Ubuntu or Mint or SteamOS or whatever and call that Official Linuxâą if you want, I guess. Or, we can actually promote those operating systems in their own right instead of calling them "flavor of Linux"
If I could only count the number of articles that have made this argument before. Ugh. Nothing new to see here.
yesterday i woke up and didnt found the settings icon in the menu. i had to sudo apt the thing (ubuntu, maybe this is a garbage distro. would fedora or deb be more stable ? ) also why would i have to look up arch documentation for a problem i had with ubuntu ? people using windows just worry about.. windows, not 90 flavours of the thing. nonetheless, windows has become bloated trash beyond win 7.
Because they're all built on the same software for the most part.
I don't really know what kind of issue you had, so I can't say if the following would really work better for you, anyway my personal recommendation is Silverblue for (usually) fewer headaches
there we go, now we r getting somewhere.
You mean you have tried it before?
no but people kept recommending fedora (and debian). didnt know there were multiple versions of fedora. ubuntu doesn't look as serious.
Ah I get it, it's really solid so I don't think you'd have regrets, plus you get up to date software!
Ubuntu is really just meh these days, it is still pretty reliable, but it doesn't look like they're really caring a lot about their users, just my outsider opinion, as I left it a few years ago now
i could really use a take such as yours. there necessarily should be a reason why u changed distros. now my doubts are getting confirmed
I did it for 3 reasons:
Today I still wouldn't use it for their push of Snap, I just don't dig it, I much prefer Flatpak for my apps
i am no dev but also i dont like when other stuff break when i install new stuff and have to spend hours looking up guides to troubleshoot. so at least we share a common middle ground
That's Fedora, though. If they prefer debian distros, Fedora may not be for them. As a (very limited) frame of reference, I prefer debian distros and I love silverblue. It is now my daily driver. I both dislike and very much like the containerization of it all.
I hope you'll overcome your love hate relationship and settle your differences.
sends hug
I want to suggest Vanilla OS, but until the new Orchid is released I'll hold off from it, I thought it would be coming sooner by now, but I guess they still have a lot of work to do
Haha thanks!
Hugs back
I had gotten a used laptop with Win10Pro, and I only use Windows for work. I've always wanted to try Fedora, so I took this opportunity (I grabbed the Win10Pro key off of it beforehand, of course), and I'm very glad I did. Gentoo will be next, I think.
Vanilla looks very interesting! It looks like a very real prospect that I may be able to recommend to new users. Ubuntu's Unity has caused several people to whom I've recommend it, to revert back to Windows. Maybe Vanilla will keep them on Linux. I actually stopped recommending Ubuntu because of Unity, and started recommending Mint to Windows users or Budgie to Mac users. I know it's somewhat configurable, but the side app bar of Unity and the Windows 8 style app menu were among some of the reasons they disliked Ubuntu. They said that it felt "ancient".
Oh that's possible? I had no idea, well, not like I felt the need after discovering MAS on GitHub đ
Good call on the change of recommendations imo, although I worry that those DEs might receive the Wayland treatment too late, that's a pretty important aspect to me.
The "ancient" thing was just funny tho
I use HBCD, grab the keys, and reboot into the Linux installation ISO.
I forgot about MAS!! Man, those scripts were so important when Vista just started losing its registration for kicks and giggles. I haven't really gotten into Wayland, so I'm not familiar with it's benefits yet, but know (just from reading comments) that's they're plentiful.
Good to know, thanks for the info!
MAS is the GOAT TBH- acronym overload
In my experience the only improvement I actually noticed on Wayland was finally being able to screenshare correctly distinct monitors and app windows, there's definitely a whole lot of smaller things that got better with it though, as you say, so I think (if your hardware plays well with it) it is worth moving to
I don't even think the CLI stuff and so on is an issue. The main reason people don't use Linux is because it's simply not pre-installed everywhere as Windows is. The same reason many people use Edge on Windows and don't install Firefox etc. The average user just uses it as it is and doesn't tinker around.
Installed Linux on my grandmother's computer some years ago and she was working with it fine because it was the first time of her using a computer and she learned it that way. For she Linux was was for other people Windows is. She didn't had any issues installing software via apt etc. after getting it explained and teached a few times.
But a user who just uses a system as it is and who is used to Windows will always dislike Linux. I dislike Windows because I find it complicated in many parts. I used Linux and sometimes MacOS for my whole life besides Windows Vista as a child.
Mostly because not all games work on Linux. Also so far I haven't found one with a good update policy. It's either bleeding edge or an update a year.
"There are 14 competing standards!"
"We should make a new one that has all the benefits of the others, and everyone can use that."
"There are now 15 competing standards!"
Rinse and repeat.
I have a solution to this I use. If asked I just tell people to use Kubuntu. You might pick a different distribution, I choose Kubuntu for a variety of reasons.
"What linux should I use?"
"Kubuntu".
No other options given or discussed.
It's my "official linux" even though I no longer use it personally.
Now you just have to do the same. Pick your own official linux that's going to be the only one you tell people to use in real life.
Maybe in a few years they'll decide to distro hop once they understand more, but right here and now they want one answer.
This is also the distro I tell others to use, it's what I started on and I enjoy Linux now.
"To get around this, I would suggest basing the official Linux distribution on Debian but with a few queues from other distros"
"Now there are 15 competing standards"
If you buy a brand new computer, virtually all of them come with Windows or Mac pre installed. For the overwhelming majority of users, they are satisfied with either of these options, and can do everything that they want to do with a computer on these operating systems. The overwhelming majority of users aren't willing to go through the effort of mounting a Linux distro onto a USB, navigating through the BIOS to launch the OS' installer, partitioning their drive to avoid deleting all of their data accidentally, reinstalling and setting up all of their programs again, and learning how to use an entirely new operating system just because "Linux is free, FOSS, and gives you more freedom". The only times Linux has seen widespread adoption is when it comes bundled with specific hardware already, such as with the Steam Deck or Chromebooks
Even for someone like me who prefers linux I still end up using windows most of the time. Even with 90% of games working on linux, theres that 10% I still need to boot up windows for.