5 ms·

The Problem (atleast in my opinion) is that there will "never" be any change in this if people are not willing to sacrifice just a little bit of usability. Why

The Problem (atleast in my opinion) is that there will "never" be any change in this if people are not willing to sacrifice just a little bit of usability. Why should companys write software for an OS that does not get used? Sure, getting stuff done is a high priority, but has it to be number one? Can't we put ethics (or call it whatever you want) above it? We definitely need a lot more competition

thepp1983 8y ago
None of the parties that are involved in Linux actually care one iota about the desktop. At best it is a side project. It is phones, servers and embedded, Only a very small percentage of what is a shrinking market uses it uses it on the desktop. It will never happen. The only company that has really invested into anything close to Desktop Linux is Google and it is Chrome books which are pretty much a walled garden. While it was better than it was 15 years ago, there are still dumb problems like "Why doesn't by usb headset work?" or "Oh X shat itself again with my GPU". Whereas with Windows I can reinstall the GPU drivers while playing a youtube video. The only thing I haven't had work is some cheapo chinese Serial PCI card from fleabay.
- ernst_klim 8y ago
  >Why doesn't by usb headset work? >The only thing I haven't had work is some cheapo chinese Serial PCI card from fleabay. You are contradicting yourself here. Besides, linux hardware support is incredible nowadays, and most of the time if you have problems with linux, you would have them with windows as well (aka, oem drivers for crappy nonstandard custom hardware). Nowadays most of the soundcards, gamepads, headsets would just work, at least their standard functionality. Also, RedHat cares about desktop, and canonical cared a lot. Nowadays RedHat is involved in a proper hybrid graphics support, gnome desktop etc. In some areas linux is lagging behind, for example accessability is still not the best, though gnome people are very concerned about it (that was one of the major reason for using a full gnome shell for login).
  - thepp1983 8y ago
    > You are contradicting yourself here. No I am not. I was just saying that the only thing I've hadn't have work out of the box was some dodgy PCI card from China. It is literally the only thing in the last ten years that wasn't a video card that didn't work out of the box for me. > Besides, linux hardware support is incredible nowadays, and most of the time if you have problems with linux, you would have them with windows as well (aka, oem drivers for crappy nonstandard custom hardware). I've been using *nix now for about 20 years. I still have the same problems with plugging in things like headsets that I had 10 years ago. The headset I am using is a £30 headset that you can buy in almost any supermarket and that is just an example of the problems that you will face on a daily basis. I have a bog standard Dell Latitude laptop (refurb business model). Everything is intel. Yet I still have problems with Power management on popular distros like Ubuntu and Fedora. Everything works fine in Windows Vista and Above. I get screen tearing on my desktop machine because X is utter crap. Also any application can completely kill X, I had it happen the other day. I am sure I could fix some of these issues. But I just don't care enough anymore. > Also, RedHat cares about desktop, and canonical cared a lot. Nowadays RedHat is involved in a proper hybrid graphics support, gnome desktop etc. In some areas linux is lagging behind, for example accessability is still not the best, though gnome people are very concerned about it (that was one of the major reason for using a full gnome shell for login). Redhat used to sell the distro as a desktop Linux that you could buy in a store like PC world, so did Suse and quite a lot of other distros (Mandrake, Lindows, Corel). Very few people bought them, they didn't make any money and they vanished in about 2004/2005ish IIRC. The vast majority of income that Redhat makes is support contacts. As for the gnome team, they threw away years of work when they moved to Gnome 3. That must be 10,000s of man hours. That is nuts. I don't trust a team that throws away years worth of code, user testing and bug reports. I know it been forked into Mate, but that is besides the point.
    - ryacko 8y ago
      The only way to have good hardware support is to buy two computers, and send one to a developer.
    - ernst_klim 8y ago

thepp1983 8y ago

None of the parties that are involved in Linux actually care one iota about the desktop. At best it is a side project. It is phones, servers and embedded, Only a very small percentage of what is a shrinking market uses it uses it on the desktop. It will never happen. The only company that has really invested into anything close to Desktop Linux is Google and it is Chrome books which are pretty much a walled garden. While it was better than it was 15 years ago, there are still dumb problems like "Why doesn't by usb headset work?" or "Oh X shat itself again with my GPU". Whereas with Windows I can reinstall the GPU drivers while playing a youtube video. The only thing I haven't had work is some cheapo chinese Serial PCI card from fleabay.

ernst_klim 8y ago
>Why doesn't by usb headset work? >The only thing I haven't had work is some cheapo chinese Serial PCI card from fleabay. You are contradicting yourself here. Besides, linux hardware support is incredible nowadays, and most of the time if you have problems with linux, you would have them with windows as well (aka, oem drivers for crappy nonstandard custom hardware). Nowadays most of the soundcards, gamepads, headsets would just work, at least their standard functionality. Also, RedHat cares about desktop, and canonical cared a lot. Nowadays RedHat is involved in a proper hybrid graphics support, gnome desktop etc. In some areas linux is lagging behind, for example accessability is still not the best, though gnome people are very concerned about it (that was one of the major reason for using a full gnome shell for login).
- thepp1983 8y ago
  > You are contradicting yourself here. No I am not. I was just saying that the only thing I've hadn't have work out of the box was some dodgy PCI card from China. It is literally the only thing in the last ten years that wasn't a video card that didn't work out of the box for me. > Besides, linux hardware support is incredible nowadays, and most of the time if you have problems with linux, you would have them with windows as well (aka, oem drivers for crappy nonstandard custom hardware). I've been using *nix now for about 20 years. I still have the same problems with plugging in things like headsets that I had 10 years ago. The headset I am using is a £30 headset that you can buy in almost any supermarket and that is just an example of the problems that you will face on a daily basis. I have a bog standard Dell Latitude laptop (refurb business model). Everything is intel. Yet I still have problems with Power management on popular distros like Ubuntu and Fedora. Everything works fine in Windows Vista and Above. I get screen tearing on my desktop machine because X is utter crap. Also any application can completely kill X, I had it happen the other day. I am sure I could fix some of these issues. But I just don't care enough anymore. > Also, RedHat cares about desktop, and canonical cared a lot. Nowadays RedHat is involved in a proper hybrid graphics support, gnome desktop etc. In some areas linux is lagging behind, for example accessability is still not the best, though gnome people are very concerned about it (that was one of the major reason for using a full gnome shell for login). Redhat used to sell the distro as a desktop Linux that you could buy in a store like PC world, so did Suse and quite a lot of other distros (Mandrake, Lindows, Corel). Very few people bought them, they didn't make any money and they vanished in about 2004/2005ish IIRC. The vast majority of income that Redhat makes is support contacts. As for the gnome team, they threw away years of work when they moved to Gnome 3. That must be 10,000s of man hours. That is nuts. I don't trust a team that throws away years worth of code, user testing and bug reports. I know it been forked into Mate, but that is besides the point.
  - ryacko 8y ago
    The only way to have good hardware support is to buy two computers, and send one to a developer.
  - ernst_klim 8y ago