13 ms·

I want to motivate you to keep trying to switch to Linux

69 points by gscott 10y ago

jxy 10y ago
Logs are your friend, and above all others is the syslog which is at /var/log/syslog. You can either view it with the less command, or you can tail it and watch it scroll by as new entries get added. I had to check the timestamp of this article. And I hope it continues to be true. But I will stay with BSDs.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  I think this is targeted at Windows and OS X users.
untog 10y ago
Eh. The article doesn't really give good reasons to switch to Linux, aside from "freedom". I love the OS, use it on my servers, etc. etc. - but for my personal computer, I don't see a reason to switch away from OS X.
- hoodoof 10y ago
  Smack on. Also Windows 10 seems to be getting some good Linux integration.
- twblalock 10y ago
  Many Linux people make the mistake of thinking that freedom is enough. It's not. People need a non-ideological reason to use software.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    Freedom isn't ideological, it's very concrete. It just means you are allowed to tinker, share, and learn about the software on your computer. And generalizations about what "people" need make the mistake of assuming that all people are the same which they're obviously not.
    - swah 10y ago
      > It just means you are allowed to tinker, share, and learn about the software on your computer. You say tinker, I read "everything broken for non-expert users that can't compile their own kernel modules". Tinkering is fun when all the subsystems are working flawlessly and you're just fiddling with a couple variables. Example: "to get a complex project to compile on Windows requires a lot of tinkering".
      - mbrock 10y ago
        When I was 15, tinkering with kernel modules was the most fun I'd ever had, and the combined experiences of Linux configuration boosted my skills and intelligence. Then thanks to the freedom to tinker I was able to get into open source software communities which gave me a career, new friends, and immeasurable amounts of learning. That's why software freedom isn't a matter of abstract ideology to me.
        uola 10y ago
        I don't see how that is unique to Linux. Plenty of people, probably more, have had those same experiences with other operating systems. I can see why someone would like, or even prefer, to tinker with Linux and it would of course be a loss if it didn't exist, but that doesn't mean that Linux developers are the only ones tinkering. So it does seem like that it's primarily an ideological difference in what tinkering means. Unfortunately the Linux community largely seem to attract and retain people who mainly care about their own freedom to tinker. Every time someone pushes out something broken, users lose thousands of tinkering man hours on trying to make those things work for themselves. As someone who likes to tinker, time is my most valuable commodity and Linux doesn't respect my time.
        mbrock 10y ago
        Do you see how it's a bit rude to insist that my personal appreciation of free software and open source is "ideological" when I just explained how it is actually based on my own concrete experience of being able to modify and share programs within the free software community?
nickpsecurity 10y ago
The funny thing about this is you could put 1996 on it and it would still be true word for word minus maybe HexChat. That's 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Apple cranked out a good, UNIX desktop and Microsoft eventually figured it out by Windows 7 (then lost it). FOSS just sucks at getting desktops done right for everyday user. They're always like an approximation of proprietary competition on the fundamental stuff people want. Some subset.
hoodoof 10y ago
Linux needs to work out how to leverage the sophisticated UI goodness of modern browser renderers in its desktop. That's when Linux desktops and desktop apps will start to look good and modern. Also the only time I should ever see anything that looks like console output is when I run a console. Windows and OSX don't start loading with a "matrix like" blast of fast scrolling super technical load status messages, that sort of stuff says (with a megaphone) to users "GO AWAY, THIS USER EXPERIENCE IS NOT FOR YOU!".
- witty_username 10y ago
  On Ubuntu, you need to press a key to show the "fast scrolling super technical load status messages". Also, it's not _super_ technical.
  - agentdrtran 10y ago
    'normal' people absoultey panic when faced with a terminal window. People who do not know what the start menu is in windows cannot handle typing commands into a command line. This isn't an insult, I don't know how to change my oil or air filters. Everyone is not proficient at using a computer.
    - JupiterMoon 10y ago
      Downvoted because this was in no way a response to the OP.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      Sure, but it isn't _super_ technical, it's technical.
- ldp01 10y ago
  When was the last time you tried desktop Linux? I dual boot Ubuntu 15 and Windows 10 and I prefer the UI experience of Ubuntu. You just have to chuck a decent theme on (I use Arc) and icons (Numix) to get rid of the yucky defaults.
tgarma1234 10y ago
Sorry man, you are about 15 years too late. Everyone knows what Linux is and uses it pretty much all the time along with everything else. The single best way I have found to switch to Linux as a desktop user is to dual boot my main home computer with Windows 7 or 10 and Ubuntu and then run Windows 10 PRO on my HTPC (that's "Home Theater PC" in 2009 parlance) so that I can RDP to it from Ubuntu to use Excel and Powershell and then also have two laptops: A macbook air and then also a Dell that dual boots both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04. I would say that 9/10th of the time I just go ahead and use the macbook air. But booting into Ubuntu gives me that "party like it's 1999" feeling still, like I am really sticking it to the man, especially every time I sudo apt-get upgrade. Yes, I use ubuntu on all of my servers except the one's at work, which are all CentOS. Don't even get me started on my phone and tablet either. Computers turned out to be just about the most schizophrenic world imaginable honestly. You have to know a ton of languages and Operating Systems and literally every company is trying their darnedest to lock you in. Welcome to the future. We are all polyglot. Wouldn't it have been awesome if ATT wouldn't have been such profit hungry assholes in the 80's and we could all be sitting here using UNIX and not having to learn tomorrows hot new language and don't forget google is launching FUCHSIA soon, which is a new OS that will replace Android, Linux, Java and... oh whatever. I should start learning Go I think. Node can suck it by the way, although I am sure some dick is sitting there in college writing a Node OS right now and it will end up powering smart cars and moonbases and microwave ovens and be worth a zillion dollars. I am not smart enough for this.
- recursive 10y ago
  The only linux I use is Android. I've made half-hearted attempts to get into it before, but never enough to overcome the initial friction of confusion. So no, not everyone uses linux all the time.
  - Ace17 10y ago
    Come! Join us before it's too late ... :-)
- vram22 10y ago
  Upvoted for being an amusing comment.
Veen 10y ago
I used Linux on the desktop for years, until I switched to a Mac. It's not really the OS itself that would stop me going back, it's the quality of the applications and the user experience. There's nothing I can do on a Mac that I can't do on Linux – except Apple ecosystem stuff like handoff – but it's generally more pleasant and polished with less faff, which has become more important to me as I've aged.
- kristofferR 10y ago
  Yes, so much this. The OS X app ecosystem is actually really good (from the user's experience at least). On Windows and Linux it seems to be sufficient to develop applications that functions correctly, but on OS X it's also essential to make them look and feel good.
  - Springtime 10y ago
    When I last checked years ago Apple's human interface guidelines were excellent and described in minute detail elements, sizes, and layout principles that help with an application's design. I referred to them when looking at visually balancing preference menus for something completely unrelated and the advice stayed with me. Maintaining a design consistency across a platform helps greatly.
- megalomanu 10y ago
  I believed the same thing until I try a tiling manager on Linux (i3). And today, Mac and Windows annoying. I have the feeling to lose my time each time I perform a simple task. I also dream of a mobile OS as smooth and fast as i3. Android is anti-productive for me, and, as strange as this may sound, the mobile OS ergonomically closest to my i3 experience is Windows Phone.
  - kevincox 10y ago
    It isn't even just tiling managers. As a user of a "traditional" floating window manager I find the Mac window manager painfully inadequate. There are some programs that will help but they don't make it nearly as pleasant to use as KDE, GNOME or any other DE I have tried on linux.
eyelidlessness 10y ago
If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration) that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make it better." The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes. That experience should be expanded! I don't want a Linux environment to be just as good as my Mac. I want it to be better. I'd gladly switch, I'm not tied to much of the Apple ecosystem (other than iCloud Keychain, and I can reset all of those passwords). But my platform choice has always been driven by experience, and I'll choose the best experience I can find. So far, my experience with every Linux distro I've tried has been to approximate, not improve.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration) that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make it better." > The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes. Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu, dock, alt-tab switcher). I've always liked KDE which was more Windows-like but ahead of Windows in providing searchable app launcher (Start menu for Windows users) way before Windows did. (My point is: if you don't like Ubuntu with Unity then remember on Linux you have lots of choices.)
  - slavik81 10y ago
    > Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu, dock, alt-tab switcher). Unity felt a lot more like Windows 7 to me. It has the Start menu vertically on the left side, just I kept mine in Windows. It has the same keyboard shortcuts for starting pinned programs, and the dash is just a better implementation of the Windows 7 start menu's search field. Then it adds its own twist, allowing you to search menus with alt. I loved it. I suppose the fact that the menu is at the top is like OSX, but because programs close when all windows are closed, it doesn't annoy me like it does on macs.
Theodores 10y ago
I do not try to motivate people to 'switch to Linux' even though Ubuntu is the only OS I use (apart from ChromeOS on my Chromebook and Android on my phone). In my experience of using Ubuntu full time in the workplace for a decade or so nobody has seen me fix their problems with Linux world tools and thought 'must give Linux a go'. Instead they stick with what they know, on their PCs or Apple boxes. I have never been evangelical about Linux, however, what I do is fix people's problems. Some of these can be very basic, for instance, how do you merge a big long list of email addresses and remove the duplicates in a spreadsheet program? Well, that is doable but if the task is part of a bigger task then you just want to get that done instantly, i.e. before the spreadsheet program loads... In linux world you can just do a 'sort -u' after concatenating your files with '>>'. Easy if you have muscle memory for 'vi', not easy if you have to hunt around for menus and stuff with a mouse in one of those 'graphical user interfaces' people speak so highly of. So you can do this stuff before people's eyes, explaining what you are doing and keeping focused on the bigger task at hand, e.g. sending out a newsletter in the above example. But does anyone want to do it 'programmer' instead of 'user' style after being shown how much quicker and accurate the 'programmer' way is? Nope!!! With anything to do with images there is a similar problem. Time consuming 'artwork' tasks such as cropping lots of images and compressing them for the web can be done one of two ways. As a 'user' one can open Photoshop and spend all day moving a mouse around doing things very much by eye. Or you can just do it near instantly with a simple script on a 'linux' box. In terms of speed this is the difference between taking a steam boat across the Atlantic or just getting on a plane, hours and days of work are saved. But would a 'graphic designer' think to do it linux style? Even if they could do it with homebrew style things? Nope, never. Doing it 'programmer style' could free them up from boring tasks so they could spend more time doing whatever it is that they are notionally passionate about. But they do not want to know. In fact, even to get a frontend developer to open up a terminal window is a bit of an ask. There are people that use 'grep' and there are people that use 'gui' for everything. I am not convinced that linux ports to Apple or PC environments are any good. My colleague uses 'MAMP' and that ties you in to doing things the GUI way, e.g. typing 'mysql -u me -pWhatever database < latest.sql' will give 'command not found'. Yes but you could add wherever MAMP hides stuff to the path and blah, but it is half baked. The speed of the thing is slow too, even if the linux version is on a legacy PC and the MAMP stack is running on some £1500 brand new machine. Don't get me started on developing a simple web page (e.g. Wordpress) on a Windows PC, in my mind it is as bad for kludges as the Mac dev environment. I also have problems knowing what is really that good about these OSX/Windows programs that are vital to have. I can't open a 'Visio' drawing on my linux box but there is only one guy in the office with licensed Visio anyway, so it is not as if anyone else can open those things. I don't believe there is an open source tool for everything, give me a proper CAD or 3D modelling tool over some 'Blender' effort any day. But most stuff, linux is far superior as far as a toolchain that works. The most amusing one at the moment for me is printing. My linux box just prints fine to those HP printers in the office that nobody ever seems able to print to. So whenever someone wants something printed urgently, it is me who does it for them. 'Look no drivers'!!! Despite these positives (linux to my mind is much better for solving normal problems like getting stuff printed out), there is nobody wanting a linux box like mine. They all stick to what they know (as do I in my special way). To take a dietary analogy, it is much better to be a quiet vegetarian rather than one of those annoying vegans who has to tell you about it every time they fart. A quiet vegetarian has no moral superiority, does not make people feel bad about the death of the planet and animal suffering, just has a personal choice that works for them and expects nobody to change their life long habits.
fsloth 10y ago
"Trying to switch to Linux" - I've been on and off Linux desktops for 15 years. At one point the free C++ development setup was better there than on Windows. That ship sailed, Windows with Visual Studio community edition is too good not to use. It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility. It runs my phone, my file server, my backups, but the only time I want to see it on desktop is when I need to do weird things with PDF:s - this is when bash and the libre pdf tools on Ubuntu provide the fastest solution usually. Value wise - the computer is kinda useless unless used for value added work. What that value is, depends, but for me writing code and art is more valuable than tweaking with config files. The only times my Linux systems seem to work without inflicting heartburns to me is when it's been provided and configured by a commercial third party, running on hardware provided by the said third party. So it seems to me for trouble free computing-as-a-utility experience one needs a complete system with commercial backing. This is anecdotal, of course.
- paulmd 10y ago
  If all you need is some quick command-line tools, Cygwin may be right for you (ask your doctor today!). You get POSIX abstractions around your Windows environment/filesystem/etc. I use it every day at work. It's not perfect, but a surprisingly large amount of command-line stuff will run just fine, particularly Python/Perl/anything with its own package management. VS Community Edition is really fantastic, though MS VC++ of course has its own slightly different, not-entirely-compliant take on the C++ standards.
- pfranz 10y ago
  "It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility." I guess it fits into that box. I use OSX as my desktop at home, but I would 100% go with some Linux before going back to Windows at home. I switched to a Windows job after using Linux for 10years--I really miss using Linux. At first I thought it was a familiarity thing and dove all into powershell and the like, but I the solutions for Windows seems awkward, slow, and clunky. We're probably getting very different "value adds" from Windows vs Linux. I liked Visual Studios' debugger, but I mostly compile other's code (libraries) and write glue-code in things like Python or munge data via the command line. I abhor editors that take 5+ seconds to launch (vi generally loads in much less than 1 second) and using command line tools to compile means I can script and chain things together, or easily run them on a remote computer. As for desktop use at home, I mostly use Internet, Word processor, spreadsheets, and tinker. OSX and google docs fits most of those use-cases.
anirudh24seven 10y ago
Personally, I think there are only 2 advantages (over something more polished like OS X): i. Doomsday scenario: Competing platforms do something awful like direct spying on users, making it unaffordable/inaccessible or generally taking terrible, permanent decisions. Then, a free/open source OS will become The only feasible option. The counter point to this is, competition ensures very few companies will take that route. ii. Learning & contributing: As a developer, I can understand and improve any part of the stack. Counter point: This doesn't address non-developers, who are a majority in today's world.
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  Regarding point 1 didn't MS take that route already with Windows 10?
  - anirudh24seven 10y ago
    I think yes. But I'm not sure if non-technical people understand the implications. They'll probably take it more seriously if Windows-collecting-data has a direct impact on their lives. For example, if their browsing history gets posted on their social networks, or something like that.
    - Sylos 10y ago
      There's one point where it already affects non-technical users: HIPAA-compliance or any form of legal agreement to not disclose information. It's currently not clear whether it's legal to even run Windows 10 Home/Pro, if you have such obligations, as even the best privacy that Microsoft allows, is still sending something to Microsoft and no one knows what it's sending. This becomes even more fun when you consider that in order to be HIPAA-compliant, you have to always keep your software up-to-date. That means you have to upgrade from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10 and therefore can't just stick to a previous version to be legally safe. For bigger health-care institutes, Windows 10 Enterprise might be an option here in order to not risk a lawsuit, but for a simple doctor who'd only need one or two licenses, that's not a viable option either. Maybe we'll see an organization of doctors for buying Windows 10 Enterprise License Volumes together and then sharing the licenses, but if not, they would all have to migrate to OSX or Linux.
gesman 10y ago
I can sacrifice user experience for performance but there is no excuse to that in 21 century countless of people are experiencing countless of package and dependency crap errors. It became a philosophy of linux that when you are trying to solve use case problem - you need to engage into lengthy scavenger hunt for fragmented bits and pieces of information and solutions to stich something together that hopefully works. It's been ..? 30 years? Like that. RTFM is not an answer to millions of WTF?'s
- burrows 10y ago
  > there is no excuse to that in 21 century countless of people are experiencing countless of package and dependency crap errors. Are you arguing that homebrew is better than apt-get/pacman/etc? Not to mention the situation with Windows' installers and their standard tactic of spraying my system with DLLs and untrackable registry writes.
  - orbifold 10y ago
    Homebrew is better in one obvious way: You can't break your system and the packages are usually up to date. With pacman you do one wrong step and your system fails to boot.
    - regecks 10y ago
      When I was forced to use OS X (for about 2 years), my homebrew stopped working (just partially wiped out and required 'doctor' or whatever) twice due to major OS updates. Not exactly breaking the system, but breaking all the tools I cared about. It also randomly broke on other occasions. Not being a first-class citizen on the OS does matter. Been using Xubuntu 14.04 + i3 (and recently, Qubes OS) full time for 3 years now. Never faced a problem with apt, and I have a sane wm instead of the "drag this window out of the way to see the other window" hell (and not having to use my mouse is an added bonus). I loathe booting into a different OS. There are certainly ways to emulate the Linux experience on OS X. But increasingly I found that OS X wasn't delivering any value in itself (I mostly stuck to iTerm + browser), and the less-than-perfect emulation of the Linux environment became infuriating. Using Arch as a comparison for ease-of-use probably isn't terribly indicative of Linux distros generally. It's "bleeding edge". My experience is as a person who mostly writes software for Linux and admins Linux systems. OS X is just an unambiguous productivity drop for me, but I can appreciate that it is probably not the case for casual use.
riprowan 10y ago
If I could run the apps I need, I'd use it in a heartbeat. However I'm an audio and video producer / editor, and Linux A/V editors are not professional-strength. This issue right there is what has kept me out of Linux for more than ten years. If I have to run Windows or Mac anyway, then the additional overhead of a second OS just doesn't add any real value - instead it's another maintenance point and learning curve.
Animats 10y ago
That's one of the worst sales pitches I've ever read. "Linux - Embrace the Pain". I do run Linux on the desktop. I also have a Windows 7 desktop machine for stuff that won't run on Linux, but it's usually off. I have some Linux subnotebooks. And I still think Linux on the desktop kind of sucks. Linux always has GUI bugs that never gets fixed. The Ubuntu dashboard randomly stops finding applications. The cursor disappears after suspend/resume. Both of those have had open bug reports for years. This is considered part of the Linux experience. Microsoft and Apple usually fix that stuff, so they don't get criticized in the press. With enough code bloat, all bugs are deep.
- Rangi42 10y ago
  That cursor bug has bothered me on Xubuntu 16.04. I didn't realize how old it was. Is there a workaround besides "awkwardly save your work and restart using the keyboard and an invisible cursor"? (Please nobody say "stop using a mouse"; just try editing graphics without one.)
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - Animats 10y ago
    Yes. CTL-ALT-F1 CTL-ALT-F7 This takes you from the graphics environment to a full screen text console and back, which re-initializes the graphics environment. It doesn't affect your running applications. First reported in 2012.[1] Search for "cursor disappears ubuntu" for the long and broad history of this bug. I see there's been progress on the bug report.[2] Unfortunately, fixing it seems to have broken some other things. But after years of complaints and confusion, effort is being put in on it. Visualize having to explain this to a CFO whom you're trying to convince to use Linux. [1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-missing-invisible-mouse-pointer-cursor http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-mi... [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/1568604 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...
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ldp01 10y ago
Desktop Linux is great but I don't expect anyone who's uncomfortable with a terminal to use it. For someone like myself who is fine with a slightly more technical desktop experience, using Linux gives me a setup I can shape to fit my requirements and then never have to think about ever again. It's very relaxing compared to using Windows because I don't have to deal with all the little annoyances e.g: Constantly forcing me to install updates; big UI changes between versions; vast quantities of bloatware. However for the people who are strictly averse to the technical aspects of Linux (most people), I would never bother trying get them to switch. It's a pointless uphill battle which ends in frustration.
- deleted 10y ago
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- tigershark 10y ago
  Absolutely false. Desktop Linux is all except great. As they already highlighted in this thread there are plenty of annoyances and it is on the whole a subpar experience compared to Windows and Mac OS X. In windows and Mac you can use the same terminal if you want, but you are not forced to use it. There is no way for me to switch to Linux, Mac OS X gives me exactly the experience that I want, without headache. I don't care if people don't use Mac OS X and so I'm pretty annoyed when there are people that try to push others to switch to Linux, like in this article. Enjoy your Linux, but please don't write untrue absolutes like "Desktop Linux is great".
  - ldp01 10y ago
    In what way was I pushing others to switch to Linux? I literally said I do not bother trying to make others switch. I simply gave the reasons I prefer desktop Linux to Windows and yes I believe desktop Linux is "great". In my experience it is certainly not "subpar" compared to Windows, hence why I use it.
    - tigershark 10y ago
      Where did I say that you were pushing others to switch to Linux? I clearly said that the article was doing that. You instead stated an absolute truth that Desktop Linux is great, that is simply untrue by all means.
rajeshp1986 10y ago
I would use Linux on servers hands down. There is no doubt about it period. But I would not put myself in the torcher of using it on Desktop/Laptop. The UI is buggy and applications crash frequently. No matter how good google docs or any other online doc tools are, I would need Microsoft office to run smoothly on my desktop & laptop. For development environment, MacOS would be my first choice.
sndean 10y ago
The article is less than convincing. The most convincing reason for me to switch to Linux was being poor in college/grad school. The options were using Windows Vista (and, later, Windows 8) on a cheap laptop or using Ubuntu on that cheap laptop after removing Windows Vista. An Apple laptop wasn't possible. After that, I just stuck with using flavors of Ubuntu on laptops (even after buying a Macbook). Maybe the author should've pushed more "free" (as in, not $1000+) and less "freedom."
DanBC 10y ago
> And I’m here to tell you something: You’re not alone! There is help out there. There’s a huge community of people with the highest intentions, dedicated to freedom and Open Source software, available to help you. You just have to reach out to them. Find them. Connect with them. A sizeable number of those people are fucking arseholes and you really shouldn't be pointing confused users towards them. At least you need to provide some training to those users about how to ask questions to reduce the risk of getting bitten. (This isn't unique to Linux.)
z3t4 10y ago
if u only use email web and browser, or is an expert linux is great. Its bad for the intermediate user.
z3t4 10y ago
And billions of tax money going to apple and M, witch could be saved.
newscracker 10y ago
TL;DR - people want to get things done, so support them in doing that while waving your freedom flag, instead of being stuck in the past and appearing primitive. Also, support FLOSS (free/libre open source software) at least monetarily, if not with time and effort. ~~~~~ This article didn't really motivate me to try to switch to Linux. In my reading, it was just a bit of fluff about looking at /var/log/syslog and searching for 'proper and relevant' error messages. That's definitely not enough for a non-tech-savvy common person. There was a time when I used to think that software will improve in stability and quality over time, but I've realized that things are so complex, so diverse and driven by so many people that we've actually gone far away from "it just works" on _every_ _single_ _platform_ (this is about common people, not tech savvy people who can edit config files, look at system logs, debug applications, fix bugs, build from source, etc.). It doesn't matter if you like Windows more or OS X (macOS) more or Linux more - none of them are really great enough for common people to use without being annoyed or downright disrupted in accomplishing what they want to. It's only an ever changing ranking of who's doing worse at any point in time. Coming to Linux, I find the following as deficiencies in the distributions and the applications that prevent people from adopting it on their computers more (this list is a generalization across most distributions, and I know some distributions may be vastly better than others): 1. Hardware drivers (video and network being important ones that people rely on) - this has improved tremendously in the last decade or so, but it still is kind of a coin toss when it comes to saying "ok, I have this laptop and I'm going to install Linux on it" and being confident that it would work. 2. Not including proprietary codecs and stuff that people actually want. Nobody wants to hunt down a codec pack or spend a lot of time just to watch a video they've downloaded. I'm not belittling the fight for free software and freedom, but we have to accept what people are tending toward even if we know they're probably on a destructive or unproductive path. 3. The UI - this is a huge deal, really. Most Linux distributions and applications still use some really ugly fonts and ugly looking GUI elements. It's as if we're still stuck in 1995 admiring Windows '95 as the best thing that's happened to GUIs. I see a similar issue with LibreOffice (which I use), where the UI is primitive looking and difficult to use (especially for those who come from using MS Office - standard menus or ribbon interface doesn't matter). Most people around the world who now own computers are starting to have nicer screens (at least closer to HD or HD). Things start looking even more uglier on those systems. 4. If you want 2016 to be "the year of desktop Linux" [1], you have to start by admitting that this cause was lost long ago and adapt to the better presentation, practices and behaviors seen in other OSes, however primitive, deficient or restrictive those may look to you from different perspectives. Copying ideas, polish and UI paradigms is not a bad thing because most people want to get their work done and not have to learn something new as a stepping stone to getting things done (recall the Windows 8.0 fiasco over the Start button not being there and people not knowing how to shutdown their systems?). There has been a lot of progress here as well over the years on the Linux side, but the polish is definitely not there (in a comparative sense) or comes at cost (not monetarily) that end users don't want to deal with. 5. The update coin toss - this is becoming quite common and a well noticed problem on Windows and OS X as well, but you never know what an update will do to your system and if you'd even be able to boot it up (this could be related to drivers too, but why would a common user even care about who's responsible for what and where the blame should lie if something no longer works?). With all these complaints, what can we collectively do? Beyond corporate sponsorships, I believe tech people should donate more money and ideas to the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) ecosystem. Many people who have been working on these systems for decades or years are doing it from an ideological standpoint, and in my opinion, getting more people and resources to improve things does need more money to start with. Think of it as a recurring contribution to humanity, because we all know that even if Linux doesn't rule the desktop, it does rule mobile and servers - things that we all use in some form or the other everyday. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux
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mstolpm 10y ago
Wow. Is the author really telling me my mom should hunt down errors in log files, search for them in bug trackers and provide "vital feedback to developers"? And she receives back some "freedom"? Then he is completely missing the point for the "normal" user and what he said just boils down to: "Don't try this at home if you're just a desktop user."
Shorel 10y ago
I use Ubuntu everyday and I don't remember a moment where I had to read /var/log/syslog to fix anything.

69 points by gscott 10y ago

jxy 10y ago

Logs are your friend, and above all others is the syslog which is at /var/log/syslog. You can either view it with the less command, or you can tail it and watch it scroll by as new entries get added. I had to check the timestamp of this article. And I hope it continues to be true. But I will stay with BSDs.

justinlardinois 10y ago
I think this is targeted at Windows and OS X users.

untog 10y ago

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

hoodoof 10y ago
Smack on. Also Windows 10 seems to be getting some good Linux integration.
twblalock 10y ago
Many Linux people make the mistake of thinking that freedom is enough. It's not. People need a non-ideological reason to use software.
- mbrock 10y ago
  Freedom isn't ideological, it's very concrete. It just means you are allowed to tinker, share, and learn about the software on your computer. And generalizations about what "people" need make the mistake of assuming that all people are the same which they're obviously not.
  - swah 10y ago
    > It just means you are allowed to tinker, share, and learn about the software on your computer. You say tinker, I read "everything broken for non-expert users that can't compile their own kernel modules". Tinkering is fun when all the subsystems are working flawlessly and you're just fiddling with a couple variables. Example: "to get a complex project to compile on Windows requires a lot of tinkering".
    - mbrock 10y ago
      When I was 15, tinkering with kernel modules was the most fun I'd ever had, and the combined experiences of Linux configuration boosted my skills and intelligence. Then thanks to the freedom to tinker I was able to get into open source software communities which gave me a career, new friends, and immeasurable amounts of learning. That's why software freedom isn't a matter of abstract ideology to me.
      - uola 10y ago
        I don't see how that is unique to Linux. Plenty of people, probably more, have had those same experiences with other operating systems. I can see why someone would like, or even prefer, to tinker with Linux and it would of course be a loss if it didn't exist, but that doesn't mean that Linux developers are the only ones tinkering. So it does seem like that it's primarily an ideological difference in what tinkering means. Unfortunately the Linux community largely seem to attract and retain people who mainly care about their own freedom to tinker. Every time someone pushes out something broken, users lose thousands of tinkering man hours on trying to make those things work for themselves. As someone who likes to tinker, time is my most valuable commodity and Linux doesn't respect my time.
        mbrock 10y ago
        Do you see how it's a bit rude to insist that my personal appreciation of free software and open source is "ideological" when I just explained how it is actually based on my own concrete experience of being able to modify and share programs within the free software community?

nickpsecurity 10y ago

The funny thing about this is you could put 1996 on it and it would still be true word for word minus maybe HexChat. That's 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Apple cranked out a good, UNIX desktop and Microsoft eventually figured it out by Windows 7 (then lost it). FOSS just sucks at getting desktops done right for everyday user. They're always like an approximation of proprietary competition on the fundamental stuff people want. Some subset.

hoodoof 10y ago

Linux needs to work out how to leverage the sophisticated UI goodness of modern browser renderers in its desktop. That's when Linux desktops and desktop apps will start to look good and modern. Also the only time I should ever see anything that looks like console output is when I run a console. Windows and OSX don't start loading with a "matrix like" blast of fast scrolling super technical load status messages, that sort of stuff says (with a megaphone) to users "GO AWAY, THIS USER EXPERIENCE IS NOT FOR YOU!".

witty_username 10y ago
On Ubuntu, you need to press a key to show the "fast scrolling super technical load status messages". Also, it's not _super_ technical.
- agentdrtran 10y ago
  'normal' people absoultey panic when faced with a terminal window. People who do not know what the start menu is in windows cannot handle typing commands into a command line. This isn't an insult, I don't know how to change my oil or air filters. Everyone is not proficient at using a computer.
  - JupiterMoon 10y ago
    Downvoted because this was in no way a response to the OP.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Sure, but it isn't _super_ technical, it's technical.
ldp01 10y ago
When was the last time you tried desktop Linux? I dual boot Ubuntu 15 and Windows 10 and I prefer the UI experience of Ubuntu. You just have to chuck a decent theme on (I use Arc) and icons (Numix) to get rid of the yucky defaults.

tgarma1234 10y ago

Sorry man, you are about 15 years too late. Everyone knows what Linux is and uses it pretty much all the time along with everything else. The single best way I have found to switch to Linux as a desktop user is to dual boot my main home computer with Windows 7 or 10 and Ubuntu and then run Windows 10 PRO on my HTPC (that's "Home Theater PC" in 2009 parlance) so that I can RDP to it from Ubuntu to use Excel and Powershell and then also have two laptops: A macbook air and then also a Dell that dual boots both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04. I would say that 9/10th of the time I just go ahead and use the macbook air. But booting into Ubuntu gives me that "party like it's 1999" feeling still, like I am really sticking it to the man, especially every time I sudo apt-get upgrade. Yes, I use ubuntu on all of my servers except the one's at work, which are all CentOS. Don't even get me started on my phone and tablet either. Computers turned out to be just about the most schizophrenic world imaginable honestly. You have to know a ton of languages and Operating Systems and literally every company is trying their darnedest to lock you in. Welcome to the future. We are all polyglot. Wouldn't it have been awesome if ATT wouldn't have been such profit hungry assholes in the 80's and we could all be sitting here using UNIX and not having to learn tomorrows hot new language and don't forget google is launching FUCHSIA soon, which is a new OS that will replace Android, Linux, Java and... oh whatever. I should start learning Go I think. Node can suck it by the way, although I am sure some dick is sitting there in college writing a Node OS right now and it will end up powering smart cars and moonbases and microwave ovens and be worth a zillion dollars. I am not smart enough for this.

recursive 10y ago
The only linux I use is Android. I've made half-hearted attempts to get into it before, but never enough to overcome the initial friction of confusion. So no, not everyone uses linux all the time.
- Ace17 10y ago
  Come! Join us before it's too late ... :-)
vram22 10y ago
Upvoted for being an amusing comment.

Veen 10y ago

I used Linux on the desktop for years, until I switched to a Mac. It's not really the OS itself that would stop me going back, it's the quality of the applications and the user experience. There's nothing I can do on a Mac that I can't do on Linux – except Apple ecosystem stuff like handoff – but it's generally more pleasant and polished with less faff, which has become more important to me as I've aged.

kristofferR 10y ago
Yes, so much this. The OS X app ecosystem is actually really good (from the user's experience at least). On Windows and Linux it seems to be sufficient to develop applications that functions correctly, but on OS X it's also essential to make them look and feel good.
- Springtime 10y ago
  When I last checked years ago Apple's human interface guidelines were excellent and described in minute detail elements, sizes, and layout principles that help with an application's design. I referred to them when looking at visually balancing preference menus for something completely unrelated and the advice stayed with me. Maintaining a design consistency across a platform helps greatly.
megalomanu 10y ago
I believed the same thing until I try a tiling manager on Linux (i3). And today, Mac and Windows annoying. I have the feeling to lose my time each time I perform a simple task. I also dream of a mobile OS as smooth and fast as i3. Android is anti-productive for me, and, as strange as this may sound, the mobile OS ergonomically closest to my i3 experience is Windows Phone.
- kevincox 10y ago
  It isn't even just tiling managers. As a user of a "traditional" floating window manager I find the Mac window manager painfully inadequate. There are some programs that will help but they don't make it nearly as pleasant to use as KDE, GNOME or any other DE I have tried on linux.

eyelidlessness 10y ago

If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration) that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make it better." The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes. That experience should be expanded! I don't want a Linux environment to be just as good as my Mac. I want it to be better. I'd gladly switch, I'm not tied to much of the Apple ecosystem (other than iCloud Keychain, and I can reset all of those passwords). But my platform choice has always been driven by experience, and I'll choose the best experience I can find. So far, my experience with every Linux distro I've tried has been to approximate, not improve.

reitanqild 10y ago
> If you want Linux to be a primary end-user OS, it needs to stop trying to approximate the experiences of other OSes, and provide an experience the others don't. For some, this is the freedom (source, legal, configuration) that others don't provide. For nearly everyone else, this is "I want to be able to accomplish something. Make it possible, or where it's possible make it better." > The closest thing to this I've found is Ubuntu's Unity, which makes some specific desktop tasks more intuitive than on other OSes. Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu, dock, alt-tab switcher). I've always liked KDE which was more Windows-like but ahead of Windows in providing searchable app launcher (Start menu for Windows users) way before Windows did. (My point is: if you don't like Ubuntu with Unity then remember on Linux you have lots of choices.)
- slavik81 10y ago
  > Seems weird to me: for me Unity just cloned the UI / UX of Mac (single menu, dock, alt-tab switcher). Unity felt a lot more like Windows 7 to me. It has the Start menu vertically on the left side, just I kept mine in Windows. It has the same keyboard shortcuts for starting pinned programs, and the dash is just a better implementation of the Windows 7 start menu's search field. Then it adds its own twist, allowing you to search menus with alt. I loved it. I suppose the fact that the menu is at the top is like OSX, but because programs close when all windows are closed, it doesn't annoy me like it does on macs.

Theodores 10y ago

I do not try to motivate people to 'switch to Linux' even though Ubuntu is the only OS I use (apart from ChromeOS on my Chromebook and Android on my phone). In my experience of using Ubuntu full time in the workplace for a decade or so nobody has seen me fix their problems with Linux world tools and thought 'must give Linux a go'. Instead they stick with what they know, on their PCs or Apple boxes. I have never been evangelical about Linux, however, what I do is fix people's problems. Some of these can be very basic, for instance, how do you merge a big long list of email addresses and remove the duplicates in a spreadsheet program? Well, that is doable but if the task is part of a bigger task then you just want to get that done instantly, i.e. before the spreadsheet program loads... In linux world you can just do a 'sort -u' after concatenating your files with '>>'. Easy if you have muscle memory for 'vi', not easy if you have to hunt around for menus and stuff with a mouse in one of those 'graphical user interfaces' people speak so highly of. So you can do this stuff before people's eyes, explaining what you are doing and keeping focused on the bigger task at hand, e.g. sending out a newsletter in the above example. But does anyone want to do it 'programmer' instead of 'user' style after being shown how much quicker and accurate the 'programmer' way is? Nope!!! With anything to do with images there is a similar problem. Time consuming 'artwork' tasks such as cropping lots of images and compressing them for the web can be done one of two ways. As a 'user' one can open Photoshop and spend all day moving a mouse around doing things very much by eye. Or you can just do it near instantly with a simple script on a 'linux' box. In terms of speed this is the difference between taking a steam boat across the Atlantic or just getting on a plane, hours and days of work are saved. But would a 'graphic designer' think to do it linux style? Even if they could do it with homebrew style things? Nope, never. Doing it 'programmer style' could free them up from boring tasks so they could spend more time doing whatever it is that they are notionally passionate about. But they do not want to know. In fact, even to get a frontend developer to open up a terminal window is a bit of an ask. There are people that use 'grep' and there are people that use 'gui' for everything. I am not convinced that linux ports to Apple or PC environments are any good. My colleague uses 'MAMP' and that ties you in to doing things the GUI way, e.g. typing 'mysql -u me -pWhatever database < latest.sql' will give 'command not found'. Yes but you could add wherever MAMP hides stuff to the path and blah, but it is half baked. The speed of the thing is slow too, even if the linux version is on a legacy PC and the MAMP stack is running on some £1500 brand new machine. Don't get me started on developing a simple web page (e.g. Wordpress) on a Windows PC, in my mind it is as bad for kludges as the Mac dev environment. I also have problems knowing what is really that good about these OSX/Windows programs that are vital to have. I can't open a 'Visio' drawing on my linux box but there is only one guy in the office with licensed Visio anyway, so it is not as if anyone else can open those things. I don't believe there is an open source tool for everything, give me a proper CAD or 3D modelling tool over some 'Blender' effort any day. But most stuff, linux is far superior as far as a toolchain that works. The most amusing one at the moment for me is printing. My linux box just prints fine to those HP printers in the office that nobody ever seems able to print to. So whenever someone wants something printed urgently, it is me who does it for them. 'Look no drivers'!!! Despite these positives (linux to my mind is much better for solving normal problems like getting stuff printed out), there is nobody wanting a linux box like mine. They all stick to what they know (as do I in my special way). To take a dietary analogy, it is much better to be a quiet vegetarian rather than one of those annoying vegans who has to tell you about it every time they fart. A quiet vegetarian has no moral superiority, does not make people feel bad about the death of the planet and animal suffering, just has a personal choice that works for them and expects nobody to change their life long habits.

fsloth 10y ago

"Trying to switch to Linux" - I've been on and off Linux desktops for 15 years. At one point the free C++ development setup was better there than on Windows. That ship sailed, Windows with Visual Studio community edition is too good not to use. It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility. It runs my phone, my file server, my backups, but the only time I want to see it on desktop is when I need to do weird things with PDF:s - this is when bash and the libre pdf tools on Ubuntu provide the fastest solution usually. Value wise - the computer is kinda useless unless used for value added work. What that value is, depends, but for me writing code and art is more valuable than tweaking with config files. The only times my Linux systems seem to work without inflicting heartburns to me is when it's been provided and configured by a commercial third party, running on hardware provided by the said third party. So it seems to me for trouble free computing-as-a-utility experience one needs a complete system with commercial backing. This is anecdotal, of course.

paulmd 10y ago
If all you need is some quick command-line tools, Cygwin may be right for you (ask your doctor today!). You get POSIX abstractions around your Windows environment/filesystem/etc. I use it every day at work. It's not perfect, but a surprisingly large amount of command-line stuff will run just fine, particularly Python/Perl/anything with its own package management. VS Community Edition is really fantastic, though MS VC++ of course has its own slightly different, not-entirely-compliant take on the C++ standards.
pfranz 10y ago
"It's best to think of Linux as a professional utility." I guess it fits into that box. I use OSX as my desktop at home, but I would 100% go with some Linux before going back to Windows at home. I switched to a Windows job after using Linux for 10years--I really miss using Linux. At first I thought it was a familiarity thing and dove all into powershell and the like, but I the solutions for Windows seems awkward, slow, and clunky. We're probably getting very different "value adds" from Windows vs Linux. I liked Visual Studios' debugger, but I mostly compile other's code (libraries) and write glue-code in things like Python or munge data via the command line. I abhor editors that take 5+ seconds to launch (vi generally loads in much less than 1 second) and using command line tools to compile means I can script and chain things together, or easily run them on a remote computer. As for desktop use at home, I mostly use Internet, Word processor, spreadsheets, and tinker. OSX and google docs fits most of those use-cases.

anirudh24seven 10y ago

Personally, I think there are only 2 advantages (over something more polished like OS X): i. Doomsday scenario: Competing platforms do something awful like direct spying on users, making it unaffordable/inaccessible or generally taking terrible, permanent decisions. Then, a free/open source OS will become The only feasible option. The counter point to this is, competition ensures very few companies will take that route. ii. Learning & contributing: As a developer, I can understand and improve any part of the stack. Counter point: This doesn't address non-developers, who are a majority in today's world.

JupiterMoon 10y ago
Regarding point 1 didn't MS take that route already with Windows 10?
- anirudh24seven 10y ago
  I think yes. But I'm not sure if non-technical people understand the implications. They'll probably take it more seriously if Windows-collecting-data has a direct impact on their lives. For example, if their browsing history gets posted on their social networks, or something like that.
  - Sylos 10y ago
    There's one point where it already affects non-technical users: HIPAA-compliance or any form of legal agreement to not disclose information. It's currently not clear whether it's legal to even run Windows 10 Home/Pro, if you have such obligations, as even the best privacy that Microsoft allows, is still sending something to Microsoft and no one knows what it's sending. This becomes even more fun when you consider that in order to be HIPAA-compliant, you have to always keep your software up-to-date. That means you have to upgrade from Windows 7/8 to Windows 10 and therefore can't just stick to a previous version to be legally safe. For bigger health-care institutes, Windows 10 Enterprise might be an option here in order to not risk a lawsuit, but for a simple doctor who'd only need one or two licenses, that's not a viable option either. Maybe we'll see an organization of doctors for buying Windows 10 Enterprise License Volumes together and then sharing the licenses, but if not, they would all have to migrate to OSX or Linux.

gesman 10y ago

I can sacrifice user experience for performance but there is no excuse to that in 21 century countless of people are experiencing countless of package and dependency crap errors. It became a philosophy of linux that when you are trying to solve use case problem - you need to engage into lengthy scavenger hunt for fragmented bits and pieces of information and solutions to stich something together that hopefully works. It's been ..? 30 years? Like that. RTFM is not an answer to millions of WTF?'s

burrows 10y ago
> there is no excuse to that in 21 century countless of people are experiencing countless of package and dependency crap errors. Are you arguing that homebrew is better than apt-get/pacman/etc? Not to mention the situation with Windows' installers and their standard tactic of spraying my system with DLLs and untrackable registry writes.
- orbifold 10y ago
  Homebrew is better in one obvious way: You can't break your system and the packages are usually up to date. With pacman you do one wrong step and your system fails to boot.
  - regecks 10y ago
    When I was forced to use OS X (for about 2 years), my homebrew stopped working (just partially wiped out and required 'doctor' or whatever) twice due to major OS updates. Not exactly breaking the system, but breaking all the tools I cared about. It also randomly broke on other occasions. Not being a first-class citizen on the OS does matter. Been using Xubuntu 14.04 + i3 (and recently, Qubes OS) full time for 3 years now. Never faced a problem with apt, and I have a sane wm instead of the "drag this window out of the way to see the other window" hell (and not having to use my mouse is an added bonus). I loathe booting into a different OS. There are certainly ways to emulate the Linux experience on OS X. But increasingly I found that OS X wasn't delivering any value in itself (I mostly stuck to iTerm + browser), and the less-than-perfect emulation of the Linux environment became infuriating. Using Arch as a comparison for ease-of-use probably isn't terribly indicative of Linux distros generally. It's "bleeding edge". My experience is as a person who mostly writes software for Linux and admins Linux systems. OS X is just an unambiguous productivity drop for me, but I can appreciate that it is probably not the case for casual use.

riprowan 10y ago

If I could run the apps I need, I'd use it in a heartbeat. However I'm an audio and video producer / editor, and Linux A/V editors are not professional-strength. This issue right there is what has kept me out of Linux for more than ten years. If I have to run Windows or Mac anyway, then the additional overhead of a second OS just doesn't add any real value - instead it's another maintenance point and learning curve.

Animats 10y ago

That's one of the worst sales pitches I've ever read. "Linux - Embrace the Pain". I do run Linux on the desktop. I also have a Windows 7 desktop machine for stuff that won't run on Linux, but it's usually off. I have some Linux subnotebooks. And I still think Linux on the desktop kind of sucks. Linux always has GUI bugs that never gets fixed. The Ubuntu dashboard randomly stops finding applications. The cursor disappears after suspend/resume. Both of those have had open bug reports for years. This is considered part of the Linux experience. Microsoft and Apple usually fix that stuff, so they don't get criticized in the press. With enough code bloat, all bugs are deep.

Rangi42 10y ago
That cursor bug has bothered me on Xubuntu 16.04. I didn't realize how old it was. Is there a workaround besides "awkwardly save your work and restart using the keyboard and an invisible cursor"? (Please nobody say "stop using a mouse"; just try editing graphics without one.)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Animats 10y ago
  Yes. CTL-ALT-F1 CTL-ALT-F7 This takes you from the graphics environment to a full screen text console and back, which re-initializes the graphics environment. It doesn't affect your running applications. First reported in 2012.[1] Search for "cursor disappears ubuntu" for the long and broad history of this bug. I see there's been progress on the bug report.[2] Unfortunately, fixing it seems to have broken some other things. But after years of complaints and confusion, effort is being put in on it. Visualize having to explain this to a CFO whom you're trying to convince to use Linux. [1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-missing-invisible-mouse-pointer-cursor http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-mi... [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/1568604 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...
  - 10y ago

ldp01 10y ago

Desktop Linux is great but I don't expect anyone who's uncomfortable with a terminal to use it. For someone like myself who is fine with a slightly more technical desktop experience, using Linux gives me a setup I can shape to fit my requirements and then never have to think about ever again. It's very relaxing compared to using Windows because I don't have to deal with all the little annoyances e.g: Constantly forcing me to install updates; big UI changes between versions; vast quantities of bloatware. However for the people who are strictly averse to the technical aspects of Linux (most people), I would never bother trying get them to switch. It's a pointless uphill battle which ends in frustration.

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tigershark 10y ago
Absolutely false. Desktop Linux is all except great. As they already highlighted in this thread there are plenty of annoyances and it is on the whole a subpar experience compared to Windows and Mac OS X. In windows and Mac you can use the same terminal if you want, but you are not forced to use it. There is no way for me to switch to Linux, Mac OS X gives me exactly the experience that I want, without headache. I don't care if people don't use Mac OS X and so I'm pretty annoyed when there are people that try to push others to switch to Linux, like in this article. Enjoy your Linux, but please don't write untrue absolutes like "Desktop Linux is great".
- ldp01 10y ago
  In what way was I pushing others to switch to Linux? I literally said I do not bother trying to make others switch. I simply gave the reasons I prefer desktop Linux to Windows and yes I believe desktop Linux is "great". In my experience it is certainly not "subpar" compared to Windows, hence why I use it.
  - tigershark 10y ago
    Where did I say that you were pushing others to switch to Linux? I clearly said that the article was doing that. You instead stated an absolute truth that Desktop Linux is great, that is simply untrue by all means.

rajeshp1986 10y ago

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

sndean 10y ago

The article is less than convincing. The most convincing reason for me to switch to Linux was being poor in college/grad school. The options were using Windows Vista (and, later, Windows 8) on a cheap laptop or using Ubuntu on that cheap laptop after removing Windows Vista. An Apple laptop wasn't possible. After that, I just stuck with using flavors of Ubuntu on laptops (even after buying a Macbook). Maybe the author should've pushed more "free" (as in, not $1000+) and less "freedom."

DanBC 10y ago

> And I’m here to tell you something: You’re not alone! There is help out there. There’s a huge community of people with the highest intentions, dedicated to freedom and Open Source software, available to help you. You just have to reach out to them. Find them. Connect with them. A sizeable number of those people are fucking arseholes and you really shouldn't be pointing confused users towards them. At least you need to provide some training to those users about how to ask questions to reduce the risk of getting bitten. (This isn't unique to Linux.)

z3t4 10y ago

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

z3t4 10y ago

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

newscracker 10y ago

TL;DR - people want to get things done, so support them in doing that while waving your freedom flag, instead of being stuck in the past and appearing primitive. Also, support FLOSS (free/libre open source software) at least monetarily, if not with time and effort. ~~~~~ This article didn't really motivate me to try to switch to Linux. In my reading, it was just a bit of fluff about looking at /var/log/syslog and searching for 'proper and relevant' error messages. That's definitely not enough for a non-tech-savvy common person. There was a time when I used to think that software will improve in stability and quality over time, but I've realized that things are so complex, so diverse and driven by so many people that we've actually gone far away from "it just works" on _every_ _single_ _platform_ (this is about common people, not tech savvy people who can edit config files, look at system logs, debug applications, fix bugs, build from source, etc.). It doesn't matter if you like Windows more or OS X (macOS) more or Linux more - none of them are really great enough for common people to use without being annoyed or downright disrupted in accomplishing what they want to. It's only an ever changing ranking of who's doing worse at any point in time. Coming to Linux, I find the following as deficiencies in the distributions and the applications that prevent people from adopting it on their computers more (this list is a generalization across most distributions, and I know some distributions may be vastly better than others): 1. Hardware drivers (video and network being important ones that people rely on) - this has improved tremendously in the last decade or so, but it still is kind of a coin toss when it comes to saying "ok, I have this laptop and I'm going to install Linux on it" and being confident that it would work. 2. Not including proprietary codecs and stuff that people actually want. Nobody wants to hunt down a codec pack or spend a lot of time just to watch a video they've downloaded. I'm not belittling the fight for free software and freedom, but we have to accept what people are tending toward even if we know they're probably on a destructive or unproductive path. 3. The UI - this is a huge deal, really. Most Linux distributions and applications still use some really ugly fonts and ugly looking GUI elements. It's as if we're still stuck in 1995 admiring Windows '95 as the best thing that's happened to GUIs. I see a similar issue with LibreOffice (which I use), where the UI is primitive looking and difficult to use (especially for those who come from using MS Office - standard menus or ribbon interface doesn't matter). Most people around the world who now own computers are starting to have nicer screens (at least closer to HD or HD). Things start looking even more uglier on those systems. 4. If you want 2016 to be "the year of desktop Linux" [1], you have to start by admitting that this cause was lost long ago and adapt to the better presentation, practices and behaviors seen in other OSes, however primitive, deficient or restrictive those may look to you from different perspectives. Copying ideas, polish and UI paradigms is not a bad thing because most people want to get their work done and not have to learn something new as a stepping stone to getting things done (recall the Windows 8.0 fiasco over the Start button not being there and people not knowing how to shutdown their systems?). There has been a lot of progress here as well over the years on the Linux side, but the polish is definitely not there (in a comparative sense) or comes at cost (not monetarily) that end users don't want to deal with. 5. The update coin toss - this is becoming quite common and a well noticed problem on Windows and OS X as well, but you never know what an update will do to your system and if you'd even be able to boot it up (this could be related to drivers too, but why would a common user even care about who's responsible for what and where the blame should lie if something no longer works?). With all these complaints, what can we collectively do? Beyond corporate sponsorships, I believe tech people should donate more money and ideas to the FLOSS (free/libre open source software) ecosystem. Many people who have been working on these systems for decades or years are doing it from an ideological standpoint, and in my opinion, getting more people and resources to improve things does need more money to start with. Think of it as a recurring contribution to humanity, because we all know that even if Linux doesn't rule the desktop, it does rule mobile and servers - things that we all use in some form or the other everyday. [1]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+year+of+desktop+linux

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mstolpm 10y ago

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

Shorel 10y ago

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