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There's nothing DIY about a ready made Linux distribution such as the Fedora Desktop. As long as you don't fiddle around too much under the hood, and don't ins

There's nothing DIY about a ready made Linux distribution such as the Fedora Desktop. As long as you don't fiddle around too much under the hood, and don't insert random commands in places because someone on the Internet told you to, things will Just Work like nothing else. There's something to be said to having the developers actually caring about making a useful computer without allowing the marketing department to take charge. Don't try to run it on some unsupported hardware (including outside "third party drivers"), anything bog standard Intel based will do, and you'll be absolutely fine.

oblio 9y ago
The OS itself is not that DYI, even though I don't like being constrained in hardware terms. Let's say that I get over that. Then the DYI part begins, at least for me. I like AAA games, almost none of the games I play are available on Linux (primarily Blizzard games). A lot of desktop apps I like or need are not on Linux, etc. In any case, let's just say I used to have a Linux site and forum back in 2007 or so, I'be been through the Linux evangelism cycle a few times. For many people, such as myself, Linux desktop is acceptable but not the best option. And for a reasonable price I'd rather have the best option for me, personally.
- mcny 9y ago
  > I like AAA games, almost none of the games I play are available on Linux (primarily Blizzard games). A lot of desktop apps I like or need are not on Linux, etc. I don't have any first hand knowledge about the AAA gaming industry but from what I understand, the studios offload a lot of the work to the GPU manufacturer (nVidia most likely) who then "fixes" the bugs in what they call a graphics driver. I think this is the main problem. The so called graphics drivers do too much work and games don't pull their own weight.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    That's certainly a problem, but that's not why games aren't being ported to Linux, in my opinion, it's that A) the user base isn't large enough to bother in many cases (these same companies often release terrible Windows ports for more or less the same reason) and B) It's a pain in the ass for a multitude of reasons not the least of which is that the Linux community thinks it has a great development environment but it doesn't (at least for Destktop stuff).
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      >that's not why games aren't being ported to Linux // What's weird to me is that a lot of games will run on Linux, eg via WINE (PlayOnLinux) say but the companies then appear to be hostile to users doing that. I used to play a load of the Tom Clancy games on WINE [single player], but then Origin messed with something, maybe their cheat system, making it no longer work on Linux. So now I don't buy games from Origin any more and stick with Steam. It's not just "not ported to", game companies seem actively hostile to [paying!] Linux users, I don't know if MS pay them to be like that or what their motivation is?
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
        I think you're reading too much in to it. They just don't want to have to support WINE users and have their brand associated with their problems.
        pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        >They just don't want to have to support WINE users // Couldn't they just respond to support requests with "we don't support non-MS users" rather than actively preventing the use.
    - skgoa 9y ago
      > the Linux community thinks it has a great development environment but it doesn't This is an incredibly important point. The community is full of true believers and college students (and many are both) who just can't fathom that almost all of their dev tools and workflows suck compared to professional grade tooling available outside the FOSS echochamber. I have nothing against FOSS in principle, but in practical use I have become convinced that there is no reason to develop on Linux, unless you develop specifically FOR Linux. And even then it's such a PITA to do anything complex that it's often just not worth it to target Linux if you don't absolutely have to. Microsoft and Apple have realized how important it is to make it easy for developers to create good software.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
> There's nothing DIY about a ready made Linux distribution such as the Fedora Desktop. Until you want to change something. It is trivial to target a single use case and make it easy with Linux (most of the time) or almost any other OS, but that isn't what we want from Desktop OS, we want flexibility so we can conform it to our workflow, and Linux Desktop is absolutely terrible at that because it's become a giant Rube Goldberg machine of schizophrenic and often half-thought out components written with the idea that they're in a multiuser server environment but pretending they were designed for personal desktops. If someone built a new, joy to work with and develop for, userland on top of the Linux kernel that wasn't oriented towards the idea that the system is a multi-user network server in 1983, I would subscribe the hell out of it (though in my opinion it had better be open source regardless). As a side project, I'm actually playing with concepts in this vein, but I'm really not that good a developer and don't have a lot of time to devote to it, it's just that no one else is doing it.
- swiley 9y ago
  If you want to change something then run an OS that's built with the expectation that you change things (Alpine, Gentoo etc.)
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
    They aren't any better because they still use all the same software and follow all the same broken paradigms.
    - swiley 9y ago
      No they don't? Alpine uses the BusyBox deamons (initd, evdev etc.) And Gentoo uses openrc. Both of these are much easier to tweak than systemd. Same for the network manager replacements and so on. Different distros (that aren't just modified Debian or redhat) can differ by quite a lot.
      - majewsky 9y ago

oblio 9y ago

The OS itself is not that DYI, even though I don't like being constrained in hardware terms. Let's say that I get over that. Then the DYI part begins, at least for me. I like AAA games, almost none of the games I play are available on Linux (primarily Blizzard games). A lot of desktop apps I like or need are not on Linux, etc. In any case, let's just say I used to have a Linux site and forum back in 2007 or so, I'be been through the Linux evangelism cycle a few times. For many people, such as myself, Linux desktop is acceptable but not the best option. And for a reasonable price I'd rather have the best option for me, personally.

mcny 9y ago
> I like AAA games, almost none of the games I play are available on Linux (primarily Blizzard games). A lot of desktop apps I like or need are not on Linux, etc. I don't have any first hand knowledge about the AAA gaming industry but from what I understand, the studios offload a lot of the work to the GPU manufacturer (nVidia most likely) who then "fixes" the bugs in what they call a graphics driver. I think this is the main problem. The so called graphics drivers do too much work and games don't pull their own weight.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  That's certainly a problem, but that's not why games aren't being ported to Linux, in my opinion, it's that A) the user base isn't large enough to bother in many cases (these same companies often release terrible Windows ports for more or less the same reason) and B) It's a pain in the ass for a multitude of reasons not the least of which is that the Linux community thinks it has a great development environment but it doesn't (at least for Destktop stuff).
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >that's not why games aren't being ported to Linux // What's weird to me is that a lot of games will run on Linux, eg via WINE (PlayOnLinux) say but the companies then appear to be hostile to users doing that. I used to play a load of the Tom Clancy games on WINE [single player], but then Origin messed with something, maybe their cheat system, making it no longer work on Linux. So now I don't buy games from Origin any more and stick with Steam. It's not just "not ported to", game companies seem actively hostile to [paying!] Linux users, I don't know if MS pay them to be like that or what their motivation is?
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
      I think you're reading too much in to it. They just don't want to have to support WINE users and have their brand associated with their problems.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        >They just don't want to have to support WINE users // Couldn't they just respond to support requests with "we don't support non-MS users" rather than actively preventing the use.
  - skgoa 9y ago
    > the Linux community thinks it has a great development environment but it doesn't This is an incredibly important point. The community is full of true believers and college students (and many are both) who just can't fathom that almost all of their dev tools and workflows suck compared to professional grade tooling available outside the FOSS echochamber. I have nothing against FOSS in principle, but in practical use I have become convinced that there is no reason to develop on Linux, unless you develop specifically FOR Linux. And even then it's such a PITA to do anything complex that it's often just not worth it to target Linux if you don't absolutely have to. Microsoft and Apple have realized how important it is to make it easy for developers to create good software.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

> There's nothing DIY about a ready made Linux distribution such as the Fedora Desktop. Until you want to change something. It is trivial to target a single use case and make it easy with Linux (most of the time) or almost any other OS, but that isn't what we want from Desktop OS, we want flexibility so we can conform it to our workflow, and Linux Desktop is absolutely terrible at that because it's become a giant Rube Goldberg machine of schizophrenic and often half-thought out components written with the idea that they're in a multiuser server environment but pretending they were designed for personal desktops. If someone built a new, joy to work with and develop for, userland on top of the Linux kernel that wasn't oriented towards the idea that the system is a multi-user network server in 1983, I would subscribe the hell out of it (though in my opinion it had better be open source regardless). As a side project, I'm actually playing with concepts in this vein, but I'm really not that good a developer and don't have a lot of time to devote to it, it's just that no one else is doing it.

swiley 9y ago
If you want to change something then run an OS that's built with the expectation that you change things (Alpine, Gentoo etc.)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  They aren't any better because they still use all the same software and follow all the same broken paradigms.
  - swiley 9y ago
    No they don't? Alpine uses the BusyBox deamons (initd, evdev etc.) And Gentoo uses openrc. Both of these are much easier to tweak than systemd. Same for the network manager replacements and so on. Different distros (that aren't just modified Debian or redhat) can differ by quite a lot.
    - majewsky 9y ago