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As a long time Linux user I am so proud that we're comparing free Linux distros with commercial OS' like Mac OS X and Windows 10.

mfukar 10y ago
Why is that?
uitgewis 10y ago
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not...
- msane 10y ago
  the fact that his username is INTPenis ... doesn't quite elucidate it either, actually.
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72deluxe 10y ago
Not sure you should be proud given the basic issues he is experiencing: non-working keyboards, non functioning WiFi and no display after unplugging a monitor from a laptop. It's a bit like being proud that someone compares your Lada to their Bugati :-)
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  The basic issue seems to be that the user purchased a machine known not to have great linux support tried to put linux on it and discovered that it didn't have great linux support. Obviously developers try to support as much hardware as possible with varying degrees of cooperation from the manufacturers but its not reasonable to expect support for every device under the sun. Developer hours are expensive and finite the logical solution is to buy machines with linux in mind if you want to run linux. This is probably why I've been running Linux for 13 years with limited difficulty because I take responsibility for making reasonable choices instead of complaining.
Asooka 10y ago
Except... I've been using Linux for close to 15 years now and in that time it hasn't gotten any better at providing a stable desktop experience. You can even go all the way back and read JWZ's rant on how the GNOME project just drops all bugs that are "too old" and how this newfangled GNOME 2 thing has all the old issues, but just resets the bugzilla because it's a "new project". The current state of Desktop Linux is the same as Desktop Linux 15 years ago, and it will never change. I still use it, because I like all the control it gives me, I just don't like having to exercise said control so often.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  You could totally ignore crud like gnome and have a consistently working experience that just keeps getting better except pulseaudio seriously can we just crowd fund an entirely new linux audio stack from scratch please I'll contribute.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Please not, or we'll end up with two disjunct audio stacks. There are people (like me) for whom PulseAudio has been working wonderfully without any problems at all from day one. Admittedly, "day one" was not when Ubuntu switched to PulseAudio well too soon. It was around 2012, and it was just magical to have the whole network transparency of audio devices just work.
coldtea 10y ago
>As a long time Linux user I am so proud that we're comparing free Linux distros with commercial OS' like Mac OS X and Windows 10. As probably an even longer time Linux user (used it back in 1997 to 2004, used classic unices previously, use mostly OS X since and Linux on vms and servers), I can't share that pride. Back in 1999 or so, the slogan and the idea was that Linux will soon prevail "on the Desktop". Every year since then, until the idea died out, has been touted as the "year of Linux on the Desktop". And not in the same of some people happily using it either. Those existed back in 1999 too, heck I had a KDE based desktop and used Konqueror as my main browser. It also wasn't about "this phone runs the Linux kernel with some custom company frontend, but otherwise there's nothing especially Linuxy about it, and you couldn't tell it from a QNX or iOS phone with a similar facade". So, no Android is not that dream fullfilled. "Linux on the Desktop" meant undertaking Microsoft (OS X was negligible or not still existing then) at their own desktop/office desktop game, and for if not the majority, of a huge share (30% or more) of users. Which basically means: a stable desktop OS, with a suite that covers all the basics. And what we have? - Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many installations. - On the 3D compositor/desktop front-end there are still messes for users to deal with. - Desktop environments go here and there, all over the place, sometimes mimicking Windows, others mimicking OS X, progressing and regressing, rewriting things for no good reason, etc. Perpetually less capable and/or stable than both Windows and OS X. - Gimp is also perpetually less capable and/or stable than Photoshop (and still people promise it will all change with the new pipeline, that's close to a decade in the making) - OpenOffice (and it's various forks) are still not as capable as MS Office and full of quirks and slowdowns, plus the bizarro old-school UI. And tons of other things besides...
- StavrosK 10y ago
  > Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many installations. Is that the OS's fault? Manufacturers supply drivers for Windows, but Linux is left to just figure it out by itself.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Well, that's the way Linux wants it (figuratively using "Linux" as a substitute for large parts of the community), it doesn't want those stinking binary closed drivers, and manufactures wont get out of their way to create and open source drivers for their stuff.
dagw 10y ago
"We've" been doing that since forever. I distinctly remember a slew of articles back when windows 2000 was a thing.
piyush_soni 10y ago
Depends on how you look at it. I see that even after so long, it's still not 'comparable' with any of the commercial OSs from a UX perspective. I come back to try Linux every 3-4 years or so, and every time I face so 'basic' problems that I'm almost immediately turned off by it. Displays not working on cards, basic GUI not working, strange connectivity problems, hardware compatibility problems, and then I have to turn the 'geek mode' on, just to solve these problems which wouldn't have occurred on any other OS and I'd be actually working on the things that matter to me. Within no time, you're found manually fiddling with files like xorg.conf in the black terminal. The worst problem is, almost always someone would come up and reply with one standard answer : "Oh, that's because you're using distro <x>. Had you used distro <y>, this problem would never occur!". More than two decades, and Linux hasn't got the basic things right, and still remains a Nerd only OS (and it's coming from a nerd).

mfukar 10y ago

Why is that?

uitgewis 10y ago

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not...

msane 10y ago
the fact that his username is INTPenis ... doesn't quite elucidate it either, actually.
deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

72deluxe 10y ago

Not sure you should be proud given the basic issues he is experiencing: non-working keyboards, non functioning WiFi and no display after unplugging a monitor from a laptop. It's a bit like being proud that someone compares your Lada to their Bugati :-)

michaelmrose 10y ago
The basic issue seems to be that the user purchased a machine known not to have great linux support tried to put linux on it and discovered that it didn't have great linux support. Obviously developers try to support as much hardware as possible with varying degrees of cooperation from the manufacturers but its not reasonable to expect support for every device under the sun. Developer hours are expensive and finite the logical solution is to buy machines with linux in mind if you want to run linux. This is probably why I've been running Linux for 13 years with limited difficulty because I take responsibility for making reasonable choices instead of complaining.

Asooka 10y ago

Except... I've been using Linux for close to 15 years now and in that time it hasn't gotten any better at providing a stable desktop experience. You can even go all the way back and read JWZ's rant on how the GNOME project just drops all bugs that are "too old" and how this newfangled GNOME 2 thing has all the old issues, but just resets the bugzilla because it's a "new project". The current state of Desktop Linux is the same as Desktop Linux 15 years ago, and it will never change. I still use it, because I like all the control it gives me, I just don't like having to exercise said control so often.

michaelmrose 10y ago
You could totally ignore crud like gnome and have a consistently working experience that just keeps getting better except pulseaudio seriously can we just crowd fund an entirely new linux audio stack from scratch please I'll contribute.
- majewsky 10y ago
  Please not, or we'll end up with two disjunct audio stacks. There are people (like me) for whom PulseAudio has been working wonderfully without any problems at all from day one. Admittedly, "day one" was not when Ubuntu switched to PulseAudio well too soon. It was around 2012, and it was just magical to have the whole network transparency of audio devices just work.

coldtea 10y ago

>As a long time Linux user I am so proud that we're comparing free Linux distros with commercial OS' like Mac OS X and Windows 10. As probably an even longer time Linux user (used it back in 1997 to 2004, used classic unices previously, use mostly OS X since and Linux on vms and servers), I can't share that pride. Back in 1999 or so, the slogan and the idea was that Linux will soon prevail "on the Desktop". Every year since then, until the idea died out, has been touted as the "year of Linux on the Desktop". And not in the same of some people happily using it either. Those existed back in 1999 too, heck I had a KDE based desktop and used Konqueror as my main browser. It also wasn't about "this phone runs the Linux kernel with some custom company frontend, but otherwise there's nothing especially Linuxy about it, and you couldn't tell it from a QNX or iOS phone with a similar facade". So, no Android is not that dream fullfilled. "Linux on the Desktop" meant undertaking Microsoft (OS X was negligible or not still existing then) at their own desktop/office desktop game, and for if not the majority, of a huge share (30% or more) of users. Which basically means: a stable desktop OS, with a suite that covers all the basics. And what we have? - Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many installations. - On the 3D compositor/desktop front-end there are still messes for users to deal with. - Desktop environments go here and there, all over the place, sometimes mimicking Windows, others mimicking OS X, progressing and regressing, rewriting things for no good reason, etc. Perpetually less capable and/or stable than both Windows and OS X. - Gimp is also perpetually less capable and/or stable than Photoshop (and still people promise it will all change with the new pipeline, that's close to a decade in the making) - OpenOffice (and it's various forks) are still not as capable as MS Office and full of quirks and slowdowns, plus the bizarro old-school UI. And tons of other things besides...

StavrosK 10y ago
> Basic things like sleep, working touchpads etc are still issues on many installations. Is that the OS's fault? Manufacturers supply drivers for Windows, but Linux is left to just figure it out by itself.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Well, that's the way Linux wants it (figuratively using "Linux" as a substitute for large parts of the community), it doesn't want those stinking binary closed drivers, and manufactures wont get out of their way to create and open source drivers for their stuff.

dagw 10y ago

"We've" been doing that since forever. I distinctly remember a slew of articles back when windows 2000 was a thing.

piyush_soni 10y ago

Depends on how you look at it. I see that even after so long, it's still not 'comparable' with any of the commercial OSs from a UX perspective. I come back to try Linux every 3-4 years or so, and every time I face so 'basic' problems that I'm almost immediately turned off by it. Displays not working on cards, basic GUI not working, strange connectivity problems, hardware compatibility problems, and then I have to turn the 'geek mode' on, just to solve these problems which wouldn't have occurred on any other OS and I'd be actually working on the things that matter to me. Within no time, you're found manually fiddling with files like xorg.conf in the black terminal. The worst problem is, almost always someone would come up and reply with one standard answer : "Oh, that's because you're using distro <x>. Had you used distro <y>, this problem would never occur!". More than two decades, and Linux hasn't got the basic things right, and still remains a Nerd only OS (and it's coming from a nerd).