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Linux's greatest strength, freedom of choice, is also it's biggest weakness. Instead of a clear vision and focus, you have a million developers getting frustra

Linux's greatest strength, freedom of choice, is also it's biggest weakness. Instead of a clear vision and focus, you have a million developers getting frustrated with half baked implementations and rolling their own half baked implementations. Because of this there's a constant churn and things can change radically from one version of a distro to the next. A user can live on the same LTS version of a distro for years but eventually they'll need to upgrade. I have yet to see anyone successfully upgrade major releases of any distro without serious issues. The process is basically format and start over. That's unacceptable. Sure Windows and macOS have their own set of problems but for the average user they just work. You don't have to dive into the bowels of the registry or modify ktext files to get most things to work and the majority of users don't even know about the CLI.

pdimitar 10y ago
Why are you getting downvoted for stating facts? Baffling.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  My feeling is that a lot of people around these parts use Linux as their desktop environment and think that just because it works for them, then it will work for everyone else. What they fail to realize is that if they're reading HN comments then they're probably above average when it comes to computer prowess and they're not reliant on someone else to support their computer needs. I've been using Linux in various forms for over 15 years in all forms including daily driver desktop, daily driver laptop, HTPC, foisting it upon my children via netbooks, custom router firmware, Raspberry Pi development, custom ROMs on cellphones, home server hosting, cloud hosting, NAS appliances, development VMs, and production VMs. I tried use the desktop environments really hard for about a decade and constantly founding myself wondering why certain tasks had to be so hard. I always chalked it up to inexperience or unfamiliarity and pushed forward but then my job required me to use OSX. I quickly realized that it was the Linux desktop envs and not me. It was also around this time my kids started using computers more heavily for school and the Linux netbooks I provided them just couldn't cut it. Surprisingly they were able to use Nexus 7 tablets for their school work with relative ease. I still use Linux daily but never on the desktop. CLI or nothing.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    That's precisely my experience and preference -- CLI and servers (all the kinds you enumerated although I didn't do some of them) and please let's just stop there. Linux desktop is just not there in terms of "set it up in 15 minutes and forget it unless you want to heavily modify it". Of all OS-es Linux has the biggest potential to be the ultimate desktop system but alas, not just yet. Thank you.
jlgaddis 10y ago
While I agree with you (for the most part), I do want to say that Debian is king when it comes to upgrading across major releases. I've been using Debian since v1.3 and have upgraded I-don't-know-how-many machines across major versions. I've got production servers running Debian 8 right this moment that were running Debian 6 when they were installed. With regard to RHEL, I always reinstall from scratch instead of attempting upgrades. I think they're a lot better about upgrades nowadays but I still remember, very clearly, the day when attempting an upgrade was just asking for trouble.

pdimitar 10y ago

Why are you getting downvoted for stating facts? Baffling.

cptskippy 10y ago
My feeling is that a lot of people around these parts use Linux as their desktop environment and think that just because it works for them, then it will work for everyone else. What they fail to realize is that if they're reading HN comments then they're probably above average when it comes to computer prowess and they're not reliant on someone else to support their computer needs. I've been using Linux in various forms for over 15 years in all forms including daily driver desktop, daily driver laptop, HTPC, foisting it upon my children via netbooks, custom router firmware, Raspberry Pi development, custom ROMs on cellphones, home server hosting, cloud hosting, NAS appliances, development VMs, and production VMs. I tried use the desktop environments really hard for about a decade and constantly founding myself wondering why certain tasks had to be so hard. I always chalked it up to inexperience or unfamiliarity and pushed forward but then my job required me to use OSX. I quickly realized that it was the Linux desktop envs and not me. It was also around this time my kids started using computers more heavily for school and the Linux netbooks I provided them just couldn't cut it. Surprisingly they were able to use Nexus 7 tablets for their school work with relative ease. I still use Linux daily but never on the desktop. CLI or nothing.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  That's precisely my experience and preference -- CLI and servers (all the kinds you enumerated although I didn't do some of them) and please let's just stop there. Linux desktop is just not there in terms of "set it up in 15 minutes and forget it unless you want to heavily modify it". Of all OS-es Linux has the biggest potential to be the ultimate desktop system but alas, not just yet. Thank you.

jlgaddis 10y ago

While I agree with you (for the most part), I do want to say that Debian is king when it comes to upgrading across major releases. I've been using Debian since v1.3 and have upgraded I-don't-know-how-many machines across major versions. I've got production servers running Debian 8 right this moment that were running Debian 6 when they were installed. With regard to RHEL, I always reinstall from scratch instead of attempting upgrades. I think they're a lot better about upgrades nowadays but I still remember, very clearly, the day when attempting an upgrade was just asking for trouble.