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> embrace the chaos Linux was all about chaos and herding cats until a short number of years ago. It's the "standardisation at all costs" brigade who have kil

by rleigh 7y ago

> embrace the chaos Linux was all about chaos and herding cats until a short number of years ago. It's the "standardisation at all costs" brigade who have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It's now far worse than Windows in many aspects. Freedesktop and GNOME deserve the lion's share of the blame, but RedHat, Debian and many others enabled them to achieve this.

foldr 7y ago
Linux GUIs have always been worse than Windows as far as I remember (going back to the mid 90s).
- rleigh 7y ago
  That's very subjective, and not at all related to the point I was making. It wasn't about the niceness of GUIs. Over the last decade, we have experienced a sharp loss of control and had certain entities become almost absolute dictators over how Linux systems are permitted to be run and used. Linux started out quite clunky and unpolished. It could be made polished if you wanted that. But nothing was mandatory. Now that's changed. A modern mainstream Linux distribution gives you about the same control over your system that Windows provides. In some cases, even less. Given its roots in personal freedom, ultimate flexibility, and use as glue that could slot into all sorts of diverse uses, I find the current state of Linux to be an nauseating turn off. And I say that as someone who has used Linux for 24 years, and used to be an absolute Linux fanatic.
  - foldr 7y ago
    People have had similar complaints for a very long time: https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.h...
    - rleigh 7y ago
      True. In that article though, they thought that the commercialisation wouldn't seriously affect true free distributions like Debian. Shame that did not turn out to be the case. The fear of even slight differences has effectively forced or coerced everyone to toe the RedHat line, even when severely detrimental. What we lost was any semblance of true independence.
  - sandov 7y ago
    I'd be fine with an "UI dictatorship" or standardization if it gave us better UI and UX. Gnome's "dictatorship" has only brought bad experiences and inappropriate interfaces.

by rleigh 7y ago

foldr 7y ago

Linux GUIs have always been worse than Windows as far as I remember (going back to the mid 90s).

rleigh 7y ago
That's very subjective, and not at all related to the point I was making. It wasn't about the niceness of GUIs. Over the last decade, we have experienced a sharp loss of control and had certain entities become almost absolute dictators over how Linux systems are permitted to be run and used. Linux started out quite clunky and unpolished. It could be made polished if you wanted that. But nothing was mandatory. Now that's changed. A modern mainstream Linux distribution gives you about the same control over your system that Windows provides. In some cases, even less. Given its roots in personal freedom, ultimate flexibility, and use as glue that could slot into all sorts of diverse uses, I find the current state of Linux to be an nauseating turn off. And I say that as someone who has used Linux for 24 years, and used to be an absolute Linux fanatic.
- foldr 7y ago
  People have had similar complaints for a very long time: https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.h...
  - rleigh 7y ago
    True. In that article though, they thought that the commercialisation wouldn't seriously affect true free distributions like Debian. Shame that did not turn out to be the case. The fear of even slight differences has effectively forced or coerced everyone to toe the RedHat line, even when severely detrimental. What we lost was any semblance of true independence.
- sandov 7y ago
  I'd be fine with an "UI dictatorship" or standardization if it gave us better UI and UX. Gnome's "dictatorship" has only brought bad experiences and inappropriate interfaces.