5 ms·

It's still buggy as hell. Ubuntu 15.10 or 14.04 has a lot more annoying quirks than Windows. Lot's of desktop tools are full of memory leaks and crash-prone. KD

by nisa 11y ago

It's still buggy as hell. Ubuntu 15.10 or 14.04 has a lot more annoying quirks than Windows. Lot's of desktop tools are full of memory leaks and crash-prone. KDE is somewhat more stable but needs a usability overhaul. Let's be at least honest. It's mostly usable but a far cry from "better than Windows" Someone more patient than me made a sourced list: http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.th... - I tend to wholly agree. There is something seriously wrong when I remember the KDE 3.x days as the better desktop.

cyphar 11y ago
Many of those problems have been fixed by some distributions. For example, many of the "it can break and then I don't know what do" problems are solved by OpenSUSE's Snapper and automatic rollback on bad boot features. Many of the other issues are not a problem with Linux (such as the graphics driver vendors being anti-free software -- sorry, there's nothing we can do about that other than come up with a replacement for such a flawed model). Not to mention that for a "2016" look at Linux, many of these are either old issues that were solved several years ago or are just whining about non-issues.
- termita 11y ago
  Having multiple distributions makes it more difficult to know when something was fixed. Distro A is nice and all, but crashes when you do X. Distro B does X flawlessly, but has other issues. There are also distros C, D, E, F and G, each with its own good and not-so-good parts. Who knows about all of those? who keeps track? This is not so simple for a non-tech-savvy user. I like Linux, have used Slackware for some time, now I just install Ubuntu and roll with it. I've also installed Ubuntu on a 10 year old laptop for my mom - as long as she can use the internet with Chromium/Firefox, she's happy. I guess Linux works mostly when you are tech-oriented/have some techie friends to guide you.
varjag 11y ago
> It's mostly usable but a far cry from "better than Windows" And what your experiences have been on Windows, I just wonder? Ever had to recover a Win8.1 laptop stuck in failed update that it keeps reinstalling over and over and over? Purge your son's computer from crapware and ad drivel that he manages to somehow sneak through all the antivirii and sanitation apps? Install a Samsung printer driver without Samsung bundled 200mb++ crapball of a control panel? Get Adobe updater to behave? None of the problems that proverbial mom would easily solve. Linux runs circles around Windows in usability department.
- ifdefdebug 11y ago
  > And what your experiences have been on Windows (...)? besides all the bullshit you refer (and I believe if linux desktop was mainstream, Samsung would have a crapball of the same size for that), my main experience is: it feels like the complete OS including Kernel was built around one primary target: the most important task the computer has to take care of is to update the user's display and to respond to the user's mouse and keyboard input as fast as it can. Nothing else matters if there is a problem with the UI look and feel.
- nisa 11y ago
  > And what your experiences have been on Windows, I just wonder? I'm actually surprised about the stability of Windows 7 or 10. Even on old crappy hardware it feels faster than Ubuntu. I only mean the bare OS. There are tons of problems in the Windows world - but but for me it mostly works. > Ever had to recover a Win8.1 laptop stuck in failed update that it keeps reinstalling over and over and over? Not yet. I had gvfs eat multiple GB of memory when opening a folder in nautilus, some indicator-applet using 10% cpu because it's sending constantly xml over dbus for displaying cpu usage. I've had fun getting Qt/GTK3/GTK2 look somewhat similar, having fun with NetworkManager SIGSEVing and fumbling with strace to get a clue about that glib,dbus,libnl mess. I have xorg crash the whole system, editing gconfd oder dconf files for setting options are in the control panel in Windows. Have tens of "System Problem detected" Popups that are positioned below each other and that are provide no real insight besides the fact that commond-not-found has crashed or apport-gtk SIGSEVed again... > Linux runs circles around Windows in usability department. I'm using Linux as my daily driver for more than 15 years. I like it. But I'm mostly in a terminal session. Everything else is quite bleak if you don't have a computer science or technical background. Even with a computer science education debugging polkit or funny locking bugs in glib or gobject is more a black art than fun. This is the reality https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/ and it sucks. I tried to emulate the functionality of superkaramba on KDE5. It's impossible. It sucks. My mom can't handle it. And even I can't. Sure it's probably my problem that I'm not happy that I'm able to to rotate my KDE widgets to 59° but something like xload is still not possible out of the box.

by nisa 11y ago

cyphar 11y ago

Many of those problems have been fixed by some distributions. For example, many of the "it can break and then I don't know what do" problems are solved by OpenSUSE's Snapper and automatic rollback on bad boot features. Many of the other issues are not a problem with Linux (such as the graphics driver vendors being anti-free software -- sorry, there's nothing we can do about that other than come up with a replacement for such a flawed model). Not to mention that for a "2016" look at Linux, many of these are either old issues that were solved several years ago or are just whining about non-issues.

termita 11y ago
Having multiple distributions makes it more difficult to know when something was fixed. Distro A is nice and all, but crashes when you do X. Distro B does X flawlessly, but has other issues. There are also distros C, D, E, F and G, each with its own good and not-so-good parts. Who knows about all of those? who keeps track? This is not so simple for a non-tech-savvy user. I like Linux, have used Slackware for some time, now I just install Ubuntu and roll with it. I've also installed Ubuntu on a 10 year old laptop for my mom - as long as she can use the internet with Chromium/Firefox, she's happy. I guess Linux works mostly when you are tech-oriented/have some techie friends to guide you.

varjag 11y ago

> It's mostly usable but a far cry from "better than Windows" And what your experiences have been on Windows, I just wonder? Ever had to recover a Win8.1 laptop stuck in failed update that it keeps reinstalling over and over and over? Purge your son's computer from crapware and ad drivel that he manages to somehow sneak through all the antivirii and sanitation apps? Install a Samsung printer driver without Samsung bundled 200mb++ crapball of a control panel? Get Adobe updater to behave? None of the problems that proverbial mom would easily solve. Linux runs circles around Windows in usability department.

ifdefdebug 11y ago
> And what your experiences have been on Windows (...)? besides all the bullshit you refer (and I believe if linux desktop was mainstream, Samsung would have a crapball of the same size for that), my main experience is: it feels like the complete OS including Kernel was built around one primary target: the most important task the computer has to take care of is to update the user's display and to respond to the user's mouse and keyboard input as fast as it can. Nothing else matters if there is a problem with the UI look and feel.
nisa 11y ago
> And what your experiences have been on Windows, I just wonder? I'm actually surprised about the stability of Windows 7 or 10. Even on old crappy hardware it feels faster than Ubuntu. I only mean the bare OS. There are tons of problems in the Windows world - but but for me it mostly works. > Ever had to recover a Win8.1 laptop stuck in failed update that it keeps reinstalling over and over and over? Not yet. I had gvfs eat multiple GB of memory when opening a folder in nautilus, some indicator-applet using 10% cpu because it's sending constantly xml over dbus for displaying cpu usage. I've had fun getting Qt/GTK3/GTK2 look somewhat similar, having fun with NetworkManager SIGSEVing and fumbling with strace to get a clue about that glib,dbus,libnl mess. I have xorg crash the whole system, editing gconfd oder dconf files for setting options are in the control panel in Windows. Have tens of "System Problem detected" Popups that are positioned below each other and that are provide no real insight besides the fact that commond-not-found has crashed or apport-gtk SIGSEVed again... > Linux runs circles around Windows in usability department. I'm using Linux as my daily driver for more than 15 years. I like it. But I'm mostly in a terminal session. Everything else is quite bleak if you don't have a computer science or technical background. Even with a computer science education debugging polkit or funny locking bugs in glib or gobject is more a black art than fun. This is the reality https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/04/i-told-you-so-again/ and it sucks. I tried to emulate the functionality of superkaramba on KDE5. It's impossible. It sucks. My mom can't handle it. And even I can't. Sure it's probably my problem that I'm not happy that I'm able to to rotate my KDE widgets to 59° but something like xload is still not possible out of the box.