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How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enoug

How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enough people say "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) that it starts to take hold that if people want to not have this kind of thing happen that they should switch their operating system? Is it even possible for this to ever happen? It seems like there's a race between operating systems that give you ownership and those that don't, and if operating systems that don't give you true ownership of your machine get better/non-intrusive enough to be essentially invisible, there will never be a need/pain-point high enough for people to want operating systems that value this ownership/self-determination. In my nightmare scenario, everyone uses chromebooks, writes code on remote IDEs, programs with rough edges developed by amateurs never see the light of day, and it all works beautifully for the WALL-E-esque end user.

skohan 6y ago
Honestly I think we need more hardware vendors shipping computers pre-installed with Linux for this to happen. 99% of casual users are just not going to go into their UEFI settings and boot from a USB drive to change their operating system.
- roywashere 6y ago
  UEFI & Linux mostly 'just works' nowadays. It is not a problem nor a barrier anymore, except for exotic situations maybe.
  - rzzzt 6y ago
    Replace "UEFI setttings" with "boot menu" in parent's comment -- they are talking about the very first steps required to install an alternative/second operating system to the machine, which definitely is a barrier to new users.
  - skohan 6y ago
    Can you install Linux on a Windows PC without leaving Windows nowadays? I think the maximum you can expect from a casual user is to click a link to download an installer, and then to go through a wizard. But I would wager to guess even a lot of users over 30 would need a friend or relative who is "good with computers" to attempt even this.
    - donatzsky 6y ago
      Don't know if there's any Linux distribution doing it, but it seems to me that it should be possible. You'll just need to have a bootloader that's capable of reading NTFS partitions, that can launch the installation after reboot.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      You can burn an image to a USB and you can restart your computer into BIOS/UEFI. You'd manually have to select the USB device to boot from to continue, which would lead you to the wizard of whatever Linux distro you chose (Ubuntu based ones have "install X alongside Windows" option in there). You could theoretically also shrink a disk partition for a Linux install from a Windows system, but Windows doesn't recognise Linux filesystems (like ext4) natively. As a result, you can't go any further with installing Linux, and I don't know if you can mess around the bootloader to point it to GRUB. That's talking about dual boot of course, because I'm pretty sure you can't completely replace a Windows install from a running Windows system.
      - skohan 6y ago
        Yeah I think the processes you describe would be perceived as extremely technical to 99% of computer users.
      - Okawari 6y ago
        If you could make the bootloader point to grub you could potentially just make an automated install partition, make the computer restart and boot into that. Then from there install Linux from there without requiring user input. Technically not installing it from windows. But the install action would be initiated from windows. Would probably end up super janky in the end tho.
  - bloqs 6y ago
    This sort of nerdy "sweeping under the carpet" is part of the problem. This is totally dishonest. It doesnt "just work". You have no idea how think of it from a non technical users point of view. "I have to press the what to get to the what? When do i press it? Format drive?"
    - idiot900 6y ago
      This is true of Windows as well. What is your reference point for ease of use?
      - PeterisP 6y ago
        The reference point for ease of use is either (a) having the OS preinstalled, or (b) clicking 'next' a few times and waiting some time after a download or inserting media. That's how most people have obtained their OS, they never ever touch boot settings. It must either come preinstalled by the manufacturer, or be installable from a GUI launched from their existing OS, which is what they have done if they have installed a newer version of windows than they had originally.
        fuzzfactor 6y ago
        tl;dr --first sentence & footnote only Multibooting is definitely the way to go, it could be seen 20 years ago when drive space began to outpace size needs of Windows' C: volume under typical user conditions. Every Windows PC eventually was going to have enough drive space for more than one OS, in the long run (now) room for many more. And the hardware was going to boot so fast, there was going to be no reason not to just quickly and simply reboot to Linux for the internet, or Windows for office work or gaming. But you have to be able to teach multibooting, and for that you have to practice it yourself reliably. Well, I'm here to say there are advanced geeks who are still just as bad at multibooting as below-average Windows users are at Linux. So Linux is still not flying off the shelf even though it's free, and can be added to Windows PC's without Windows users losing anything. For years now. The hardware was made for this since the beginning (using multiple floppies, then later multiple HDDs) but it could be considered a manual operation. Later DOS versions supported the IBM concept of partitioning a single HDD into a maximum of 4 primary partitions, analogous to a 4-drawer filing cabinet being replaced by a digital alternative. A folder(s) containing an OS can safely be stored in any drawer no differently than any other folder. Windows iconized DOS directories as folders as time went on. The BIOS (later a biosmenu) chooses which HDD to boot to in the original way, then further boot (menu) sectors/files on the HDD choose a partition having a folder containing an OS, then any OS treats each partition equivalently to a separate _drive_ of its own. This part of the process wasn't even that slow when PC's were 1/10 the speed. And Windows responded by salvos of bloat with each revision, sometimes in separate inter-revision events where much larger amounts of downloaded material was retained by huge leaps over what the originally issued OS started out doing, as drive space made excellent leaps in affordable space for users, the excellence was nullified. In my estimation a most Ballmerish occurrence. Also the original NT6 Vista & Windows 7 versions started out with the BOOT folder right there in the C: volume where the default bootmenu it contains could conceivably be edited easier (easier than it was later when hidden in a separate unexpected partition). Except for the NT6 boot files which became more arcane by orders of magnitude, this is by design. You need sufficient BCDEDIT skillz at the administrative command line to modify your default NT6 bootmenu, but you only needed a text editor for the human-readable BOOT.INI of NT3-5 or CONFIG.SYS in W9x. And with NT5 (or NT6 using BIOS/MBR) you could still boot (multiple) Linux(s) from the regular Windows bootmenu, but no Linux for you with NT6 bootmenu in UEFI, this is by design. No overcoming Windows SecureBoot obstacles in UEFI for Linux either until earlier this year in 2020, this only set Linux back 6 years when it comes to brand-new PC's. And all you have to do is learn how to multiboot well enough so you only have to teach people how to use a boot menu(s) in the way that everyone should have already been using now for decades.[0] Now in a FAT32 ESP with UEFI/GPT, Linux installers put their boot files alongside Microsoft's in the generic shared EFI folder, while the Linux OS itself can be completely directed to a single unused partition, /home /var /usr everything on a single type 83 EXTx volume. Without touching Windows on its established NTFS partition. It works so well, it's the closest thing to Linux on a Windows partition. Windows can make the partition and Linux can do the rest. Then you have two completely different formatted partitions each containing their native OS, and the original common FAT32 ESP containing the key EFI folder now having both OS's boot files in their own subfolders. And the proper Linux install just leaves your mainboard with a new UEFI top-priority firmware bootentry pointing to the new Linux bootfiles in their EFI subfolder, pushing the established firmware bootentry for Windows down the list in the mainboard UEFI. This is after the Linux setup process autofinds and autoadds the Windows install already present on its NTFS volume to the new grub menu so you can choose original Windows or new Linux while the UEFI is set to select the new Linux subfolder within /EFI. You can always set the mainboard UEFI back to boot to the unchanged established Microsoft UEFI bootentry instead of the new Linux UEFI bootentry, and the PC will act like Linux is not there at all, the new grub bootmenu will not appear and Windows will not normally be able to see or access the Linux partition. You could also use a built-in mainboard firmware bootmenu to manually choose between Windows or Linux during bootup, not much differently than if they were on separate HDDs, without needing any grub access to Windows, but not every UEFI mainboard even has a built-in bootmenu any more like BIOS did (BIOS could only choose from different HDDs, not the individual OS's on the HDDs like UEFI sometimes can do in addition), and they are all different but can be useful when there. ______________ [0] If a real programmer is interested, what is still missing is a new standard open-source UEFI bootmenu firmware executable. User-configurable to allow flexibly selecting which mainboard UEFI entries appear on its own menu when called, and their boot priority. And as simple as possible, to be unchanged afterward, we already have overly complex grub & Windows OS bootloaders downstream on the HDD, as moving targets. We just need a new hypervisory bootmenu upstream, to run under UEFI before booting an OS or its particular bootfiles, so there will be a standard way to select from firmware bootentries themselves. Without having to properly access the (otherwise confusing but potentially simple) UEFI boot choices manually while booting, using increasingly divergent mainboard Setup routines as more years go by. In the form of a small .efi executable to be placed on the ESP volume, which can be called from the startup.nsh batch textfile (also store startup.nsh on the ESP volume). While still being able to eventually obtain Microsoft SecureBoot signatures to any extent needed for such a useful bootmenu.efi & startup.nsh to come into simple routine use. Which if present, a startup.nsh file is already the thing addressed by UEFI before the mainboard ratchets down to booting the top-priority bootentry in its own UEFI list instead, and startup.nsh is a userfile so we would best start using it. But nobody's using startup.nsh yet, it's still not significantly underway for over 6 years now. It's just another obstacle where the resulting UEFI mainboard boot-performance landscape is ridiculously unstandard (and getting worse) by comparison to the previous BIOS approach which was never a formally published standard at all, and BIOS got better over the years. That's damage from a big UEFI foisting salvo by design, fully forseen. And Microsoft SecureBoot still looms large as a related obstacle from 2014 since they have not yet signed an open-source UEFI Shell for SecureBoot operation either. Shouldn't be essential for developing a .efi executable bootmenu program anyway, but still a bad lingering deficiency in simple UEFI utilities, and confirms Ballmer's ghost still haunts regardless of WSL or what anyone says otherwise.
  - watt 6y ago
    This is not even remotely the case. I just recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 on a newly bought PC (Asus motherboard). It was really tough - the installer would not recognize the USB stick for the longest time until I found the USB 2.0 slot that worked.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - shock 6y ago
      Did a USB stick with Windows work in the slot the installer wouldn't recognize?
      - watt 6y ago
        It did. I did not rewrite the stick. There seems to be weird problem how USB3 is treated at boot time. This was a problem 3 years ago and it's still a problem: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1030234/installing-with-usb-3-0-on-17-10-or-18-04-gives-initramfs-unable-to-find-a-med#:~:text=If%20the%20USB%203.0%20USB,the%20link%20to%20USB%202.0 https://askubuntu.com/questions/1030234/installing-with-usb-...
        shock 6y ago
        Thank you for the link, I was not aware of that problem. I suspected something UEFI related.
  - trinix912 6y ago
    Many UEFI systems ship with Secure Boot enabled by default, which already causes some trouble for non-technical users who just follow the instructions, insert a Linux USB and expect it to boot properly.
    - pietrovismara 6y ago
      Weeks ago I installed Mint 20 on a new thinkpad x1 8th gen and I didn't have to disable secure boot or anything. It just worked without any intervention or decision from me, except when it asks if you want to install it along windows or to overwrite it. I was amazed.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    I would be wary of saying "just works" - you still have to dig into config files now and then and the potential to completely mess up your installation if you don't know what you are doing is real. I still cannot get my laptop's NVidia GPU working on Ubuntu.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      20.04 seems to just work now, for the first time ever, I didn't need to spend any time getting it to work.
ivalm 6y ago
To be fair, even now, in 2020, even with something user friendly like Ubuntu, on desktop, the win10 experience is way smoother and less liable to crash.
- skohan 6y ago
  I guess it depends what you mean by "smoother". The thing I appreciate about Ubuntu as compared to windows is how quiet it is. The only things I see are the things I put there. With win10 there is so much noise on the desktop, in the start menu, and in system notifications. After switching it feels relatively stressful to use Windows. Also I can't remember the last time Ubuntu crashed on me.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure Arch has never crashed on me; I remember plenty of BSODs from Windows. Sure, I've messed up configuration and myself broken pieces of it, but I could do that on Windows too. But memes won't die, arch is unstable, Linux is hard and for nerds only. (I should add that I'm not even a careful Arch user - one probably should check news before upgrading; I've never bothered.)
    - bluecatswim 6y ago
      I've never used Arch but I think it should be considered as the "default" GNU/Linux distro at this point, Canonical have made plenty of bad decisions in the past year (forcing snaps for certain packages, advertisements in the MOTD, etc) and Ubuntu doesn't provide a lot in terms of user-friendliness over Arch with an installer. And from what I've heard Arch also works painlessly for casual applications like gaming with Proton because of the efforts the community has put into it, despite it not being a distro officially supported by Proton.
      - OJFord 6y ago
        Hm, definitely would need a friendly installer though. To the point of selecting a 'theme' so that it boots up afterwards looking like Ubuntu, or something out of /r/UnixPorn.
nicbou 6y ago
I'm on Mac, and I am not going back. I only use Windows to play a single video game, and that alone is an infuriating experience.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  DirectX was the smartest thing they ever did. If MacBooks had acceptable gaming performance on most new titles, Windows would be largely dead
  - skohan 6y ago
    Part of it is mac being self-defeating and openly hostile to game developers, refusing to support modern OpenGL versions and not supporting Vulkan for example. That said, Proton has gone a long way towards making Windows completely redundant for me.
chx 6y ago
> Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Every time this comes up I am here to offer a perspective perhaps few have. I started using Linux before it was 1.0. It was so long ago, quite a few ppl here weren't even alive (and then again, I am sure there a few here who started in '91 or '92). For a while, only at university department level servers. Then dual booting it at home, with Windows 2000 (maybe even Win98 at the tail end of that, I don't remember) and having Linux as my daily driver first on desktop then on laptop 2004-end of 2017. After this long, I must say, anyone using Linux on a laptop has Stockholm syndrome. You can choose between Ubuntu where infrequent OS updates shatter your system so throughly you can't work for days or you can use Arch Linux which rolls and breaks smaller parts of your system from time to time, mostly scanner, printer, Bluetooth. That's how it goes. https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ this is 1000% true. Oh yes, I use Linux on servers to this day, it's great. Sure, if your usage is plain home wifi and browsing the web, basically something just a tiny bit beyond a Chromebook, it might work but heaven forbid you'd try to connect to some funny enterprise VPN or even worse, enterprise wifi or as I mentioned, have a Bluetooth speaker or an MFD. And there's no help. None. Nobody knows any more what's going on. We had a pretty good handle on how the various parts of the system fit together because it was damn simple but post-systemd noone understands it any more or if they do, they don't share. I posted this more than once, my favorite example here is the DisplayLink adapters (which are awful but they are often a necessary awful) and people said, read the Arch wiki page, well, back then, even like three years after I did, the meat of that page was what I could scrape together from mailing list and blog posts of the relevant driver authors but that's it. I certainly didn't understand it and people blindly copypasting out of the wiki didn't either and if you hit a problem, bam, who is there to help? Or to the previous point and this no help together: the IT lead at my workplace asked some years ago how to make the F5 VPN w/ two factor work on Linux and the deafening silence is the answer. I managed to make it work by running an old enough Firefox as root (!) which could run the F5 NPAPI extension. It's just plain nuts. Yes, F5 should have provided a native Linux client which supported 2FA on Linux but they didn't. It doesn't matter whose fault it is but at the end of the day, I am out of work if I can't log into the VPN. I am running Windows 10 since 2018 January. Not a problem. I ran O&o shutup, I use Classic Shell, so I never even see the Win 10 Start menu, I use WSL and -- everything just works. I have no problems with the system installing security updates at 5am, I set my system once so it only installs those, big updates are postponed by six month or forever and the whole thing just. works. Yes, Windows Subsystem For Linux, because the Linux command line tool are just great. It's everything else that is less great. https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/iej5y6/netflix_on_linux_with_1080p/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/iej5y6/netf... look at this and despair. Once again: I don't care, I have translated Doctorow's speech to Hungarian to spread it, to help fight DRM, no matter how little, even that was 16 years ago, I fought yeah, but the reality is, it's here and I don't want to bother with this. Look here, Linux people say, it-works-or-at-least-ought-to-with-this-workaround this is what I am saying: people will bend over backwards to defend their OS... I am not sure whether I am able to get my point across. sigh.
coldtea 6y ago
>Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enough people say "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) that it starts to take hold that if people want to not have this kind of thing happen that they should switch their operating system? How about not wanting to have this kind of thing happen and NOT having to switch their operating system? Because this sounds like the old political argument "if you don't like this country, move". Well, changing it should always be an option too.
- aszen 6y ago
  I think Windows is moving more and more into a platform where Microsoft will sell you their services. Windows has no other value for Microsoft now after giving away free upgrades so ultimately these stability issues are not going to be a priority for them since their business model is no longer about an OS but rather using that OS has a delivery platform for their other cloud services. If the direction where the country is going is not where you want to go and you have no power to change that then moving out is the smartest choice.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  >Well, changing it should always be an option too Then use free software. Why would you expect to be able to change whatever you want on software you don't own?
- supercheetah 6y ago
  > Because this sounds like the old political argument "if you don't like this country, move". Microsoft isn't a democracy. They're not beholden to the majority of people who use their stuff, just to the majority of the money that's paid to them, and their shareholders.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Democracies aren't in real life "beholden to the majority of people" either. But people can do things to force them to change... Even companies with shareholders still need customers, or at worse, users/eyeballs.
politelemon 6y ago
> "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) I definitely wouldn't peddle Macos or ChromeoS as a reasonable alternative where ownership of your computer is the root solution. They all come with their own versions of middle fingers to users, just that the users are not as vocal about it.
- hardwaresofton 6y ago
  So Mac at the very least is underpinned by software that is flexible in theory -- thinking that that "X" would only be "a linux" is very naive in my opinion, realistically people already think things like "my mac can't get viruses" and such. Also, I think the fundamental business model of Macs running OSX and Chromebooks running ChromeOS are very different, and I'd trust apple before I trusted Google.
fierarul 6y ago
My extended family all switched to Ubuntu because this is what I put on their cheap laptops. I showed them Firefox, Skype and the photo manager and it all worked well. Everything is done in the browser nowadays. At some point one laptop was purchased with Windows so one guy could game. He played Fifa for a week then asked me to put Ubuntu since "this is what he was used to". So, you see, it works that way too! I've also been introducing Chromebooks with some success. One of them seems to fail spectacularly: I assume the battery is dead and needs a hard reset every once in a while which means going through some weird wizard that's confusing for basic users. Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU!
- jamaicahest 6y ago
  > Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU! That, in my opinion, is the deal breaker. My pc is a tool I use for getting things done, not something I want to tinker with every time I have to do something. I'm a literate computer user, programmer and sys admin, and I know how to change settings in Linux but I do not want to spend my time digging through mailinglists for a hack, every time I try to use my webcam/soundcard.
  - roblabla 6y ago
    It's only a problem if you don't do your research before buying. There are a lot of laptops with stellar linux support, some even advertise it. Some laptops have shitty windows drivers too. Whatever you end up buying, you should read the reviews for beforehand anyways.
    - fierarul 6y ago
      True, but when it's among the 1st Ryzen laptops and you need a beefy CPU for work you might take a chance! I still hope a good kernel hacker will buy it and fix the trackpad. I would even chip in some money in a fund, but it's not clear to me how that is done.
lordnacho 6y ago
There's a sort of person who can learn to use anything. Mostly because they practice using stuff, they tinker with things to see what they do, and they know where to find help. Over time, they see there are UI patterns, and when given a new app, they can kinda feel their way forward, regardless of what the app is. You drop them into a new OS, and they can figure out how to open files, start programs, whatever. Most people are not that sort of person. They are shown a particular app like Excel, and they are told the big X in the corner closes the app. They don't wonder what the difference between the big X and the little X (I think this style of document-in-app might be old now, but anyway). You give them another app with an X in the corner, and they come and ask you what the X means. You show them Outlook, and they think Outlook is the only app that can send email. You show them a web based email, and they wonder how they can do all the things Outlook can do, but in a browser. You show them how to google for their problems and they think coming to YOU is the best way to do the search. You drop them into a new OS, and now you are the interface.
jiggawatts 6y ago
I'm your "cool people" that use Windows. Your target is me: the switched-on techy type. I have decades of experience across a dozen operating systems, a dozen programming languages, someone who always gets the "pro" or "advanced" version of everything. I use Firefox despite its glaring flaws. I use AdBlock because I care about privacy. I get my news from YCombinator. I'm your guy. But no, I will not use Linux. I will tell you why. Unfortunately, you won't like it because I'm an outsider, and it'll feel like a personal attack no matter how I phrase it. ( The only time Linux people listen to criticism like this, is the few times it comes from insiders. ESR's rant titled "The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story" nearly perfectly highlights the attitude and the issues that keep me away from Linux, so you can just read that if your prefer: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html ) Every time I have used Linux, it feels like using something written by a visitor from a parallel Earth, someone who brought with them an operating system from a place that never had a Microsoft or Windows. Maybe Linus Torvalds really is from another plane, a different dimension, stuck here in our world? It certainly feels like it to me. It's a thousand little things where if there's some option or a choice, it's virtually guaranteed that Linux will do the opposite of what Windows does. Things like: Does a click get registered on mouse down or mouse up? Is the task bar on the bottom or some other side? Where are the minimise and close buttons? Etc... Now, I get that Linux is copying POSIX and UNIX and many other "standards" that are older than Microsoft the company, let alone Windows. This explains why even though for the last two decades 90% of the entire planet has gotten used to the back-slash (C:\foo\bar) as the path separator, but Linux uses the forward-slash (/mnt/foo/). That's probably the one excuse I've seen that's legitimately too difficult to change, where there is a real reason that nothing can be done. Yet... It feels purposefully contrary, doesn't it? Coming from Windows, like the vast majority of the planet, it's the first slap in the face telling you in no uncertain terms that you and the rest of the majority can go get fucked, that it is YOU that must adapt to Linux, not Linux to you. This is the exact same thing as the United States, with a mere 4.23% of the global population forcing inches and the m/d/y date format down the throats of the other 95.77%. This isn't just some superficial thing, like which character is the path separator. It's a thousand, thousand things that should have been fixed decades ago. But no, Linux people are obstinately conservative, clinging to 50+ year old "standards" that 90-95% of the rest of the abandoned long ago or never heard of. Most of those standards boil down to: "Whatever Berkeley happened to do in the 1970s in their computer labs is the One True Way, and can never be changed." This is why it cracks me up that whenever I talk to open-source developers, the type that carefully avoid all-things-Microsoft like the plague: they actually use Apple Macs to write code. Because Steve Jobs, like me, had no tolerance for conservative, backwards, contrary bullshit. He wanted a usable operating system that didn't waste time. He didn't want something suitable only to a university lab setting, he wanted an operating system for consumers. He wanted an operating system that just worked and didn't require the user to read a textbook and monkey around with text-based config files just to print. Every few years I download a Linux ISO from some random distro and give it a good go, just to see if it has grown up yet. One of my favourite acid tests is this one: Can it join an Active Directory domain? This is something 99% of corporate environments have. Linux people will say: "Yes! It can! There's Kerberos support!" That's like saying that a pile of unshielded copper cable can be used power a computer. Technically true. Not what I want. I want a plug that I can plug in. In Linux, "joining a domain" means some random combination of: Providing dozens of parameters manually that Windows does not ask for and does not provide. Hard-coding IP addresses instead of using DNS names. Running command-line tools on the Windows Domain Controller to export "kerbtab" files. Monkeying about with PAM config files to actually make the authentication show up. Having to do hideous things to the system to actually support ACLs and more than one group membership. You know... more than one. MORE THAN ONE! Crazy, crazy stuff like that. Linux fanboys will rant that this is normal, that this is expected, that Windows is somehow "hiding things from the user". Just seconds ago I searched for "kerbtab" and this is one of the first things that came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338327 The end result is this: Every time one of two redundant domain controllers on a network has a hiccup, or is simply down for maintenance, Windows and Mac clients will smoothly truck along like nothing happened. Linux clients will lose their shit. They will take minutes to authenticate, or simply time out and lock out the users. So who cares, you ask? Why is Active Directory support important? Because when I looked into it more deeply, I found that the core of the issue was that Linux DNS client is hot garbage. Windows and Macs can fail over to the secondary DNS server is milliseconds and transparently maintain the ability to look up the needed SRV records for locating the LDAP endpoints. ( https://petri.com/active_directory_srv_records https://petri.com/active_directory_srv_records ) Linux... can't. That's why it uses IP addresses for the Kerberos configuration parameters. Seriously. Because some lab in Berkely or MIT or wherever "did it that way" back in 1985 or some shit. I'm not kidding. I looked it up. I read through the decades of rants where network engineers where begging the Linux maintainers to see reason and implement DNS server failover properly. Where they begged them to support TTLs and caching properly. The arguments were absolute bonkers. Crazy town stuff. People just foaming at the mouth as they went on and on about how it's somehow critical for preserving the legacy of POSIX to not fail over quickly. Apple Macs fail over instantly. Google's Android fails over instantly. Windows fails over instantly. Linux... has to be contrary. It has to use the primary DNS and sit there patiently waiting for the timeout for every. Single. Request. This breaks more than just Active Directory. Web browsing in this state is virtually impossible. It's just that it still kinda-sorta works, and people just shrug it off. But with Active Directory, it's a show-stopper. Total disaster. You can't even log on! So this is the point where I sigh, delete the virtual machine, and go back to Windows, which "just works" and lets me get my job done. PS: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65 https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65
sjy 6y ago
The world has already realised this – while Windows remains popular on the desktop, the desktop is dying, and Windows has had a small and declining share of total new devices for quite a few years now [1]. As the large pool of workers who learned to use computers during the 1990s and 2000s retires (slowly), Windows will die out in enterprise too. Microsoft is encouraging this by shifting its apps to the web and competing mobile OSes. They want to get businesses into 365 and Azure where they can make sustainable profits, and eventually shed the cost of maintaining Windows. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
vaccinator 6y ago
> How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Mobile OSes are just as bad if not worst
eznzt 6y ago
I'll switch to Linux once there is a good, drop-in reimplementation of Win32, DirectX and .NET. And by good I mean "much better than Wine"
- shock 6y ago
  Nobody cares if you switch to Linux. Or MacOS. Or Windows 2000.
WilTimSon 6y ago
Who do you include in the 'world' category? Tech types use it already, as well as many people who try to be 'cool'. However, the chances of Linux ever beating out Windows for casual users, older people and teens who just need their PC to play games and watch movies, are infinitely small. It's the same problem as people trying to recommend their favourite new obscure app - it's good and it works for a subset of people. But the rest will just never bother with it, no matter how amazing it is. Linux would need to be dumbed down and simplified to a staggering degree before it catches on like Windows did. Besides, Windows has a ton of money and push behind it.
varispeed 6y ago
Unfortunately the software I use only exists on Windows or Mac and does not work under Wine. Linux is still severely lacking when it comes to audio implementation. If I had access to forensic audio analysis tools on Linux I would have switched yesterday. I hate Windows and Mac OS, but it is a necessary evil for now.
PeterisP 6y ago
For me, app compatibility is a dealbraker. For example, I need to run desktop MS Office, so Windows and Mac are viable options for my main machine, but Linux is not. LibreOffice/OpenOffice is not sufficiently compatible (receiving an e-mailed complex Word or Excel document, changing a single letter, and sending it back is not guaranteed to not change anything else), so that's it, the 'network effect' locks me in. I could run Windows in a VM on Linux, or Linux on Windows; but that's a bit inconvenient, so OS X gives a good compromise for that.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  I have an Excel spreadsheet I update on a daily basis and opening it in LibreOffice crashes 100% of the time. Thankfully WPS Office works with it fine, and allowed me to remove Microsoft from my workflow completely. (Windows 10 and it's updates, telemetry, no-notification update reboots, and unexplained slowness for me to finally migrate fully to desktop Linux).
  - ric2b 6y ago
    If you don't mind, can you file a bug report? Crashes are usually the easiest bugs to track down and fix.
- Falkon1313 6y ago
  Similar for me. Although I do use LibreOffice instead of MS, I also have 25+ years of software, some quite niche, all of which still works fine on Windows. I don't want to waste time and effort trying to figure out how to make Linux compatible with each individual program or even determine if it can be. I do like linux for work, and for use as a basic computer for doing basic things like browsing. It has come a very long way over the years, IMHO surpassed Windows 7 and left Mac OS far behind. But Windows 10 is right up there with linux for ease of use, and most importantly has decades of compatibility. Both have their quirks, so that's a tradeoff, and neither set of quirks really outweighs the other for me. But that compatibility with the last quarter-century of my life is a clear point in favor of Windows. For Windows though, I do recommend getting the Pro version and configuring it how you want it. That eliminates almost all the problems of W10 that people complain about, like the random reboots and the tiles on the start menu.
mam2 6y ago
Libreoffice sucks on a massive scale. And Games. These are literally the only reasons i have a dual boot and will never get rid of windows completly.

skohan 6y ago

Honestly I think we need more hardware vendors shipping computers pre-installed with Linux for this to happen. 99% of casual users are just not going to go into their UEFI settings and boot from a USB drive to change their operating system.

roywashere 6y ago
UEFI & Linux mostly 'just works' nowadays. It is not a problem nor a barrier anymore, except for exotic situations maybe.
- rzzzt 6y ago
  Replace "UEFI setttings" with "boot menu" in parent's comment -- they are talking about the very first steps required to install an alternative/second operating system to the machine, which definitely is a barrier to new users.
- skohan 6y ago
  Can you install Linux on a Windows PC without leaving Windows nowadays? I think the maximum you can expect from a casual user is to click a link to download an installer, and then to go through a wizard. But I would wager to guess even a lot of users over 30 would need a friend or relative who is "good with computers" to attempt even this.
  - donatzsky 6y ago
    Don't know if there's any Linux distribution doing it, but it seems to me that it should be possible. You'll just need to have a bootloader that's capable of reading NTFS partitions, that can launch the installation after reboot.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    You can burn an image to a USB and you can restart your computer into BIOS/UEFI. You'd manually have to select the USB device to boot from to continue, which would lead you to the wizard of whatever Linux distro you chose (Ubuntu based ones have "install X alongside Windows" option in there). You could theoretically also shrink a disk partition for a Linux install from a Windows system, but Windows doesn't recognise Linux filesystems (like ext4) natively. As a result, you can't go any further with installing Linux, and I don't know if you can mess around the bootloader to point it to GRUB. That's talking about dual boot of course, because I'm pretty sure you can't completely replace a Windows install from a running Windows system.
    - skohan 6y ago
      Yeah I think the processes you describe would be perceived as extremely technical to 99% of computer users.
    - Okawari 6y ago
      If you could make the bootloader point to grub you could potentially just make an automated install partition, make the computer restart and boot into that. Then from there install Linux from there without requiring user input. Technically not installing it from windows. But the install action would be initiated from windows. Would probably end up super janky in the end tho.
- bloqs 6y ago
  This sort of nerdy "sweeping under the carpet" is part of the problem. This is totally dishonest. It doesnt "just work". You have no idea how think of it from a non technical users point of view. "I have to press the what to get to the what? When do i press it? Format drive?"
  - idiot900 6y ago
    This is true of Windows as well. What is your reference point for ease of use?
    - PeterisP 6y ago
      The reference point for ease of use is either (a) having the OS preinstalled, or (b) clicking 'next' a few times and waiting some time after a download or inserting media. That's how most people have obtained their OS, they never ever touch boot settings. It must either come preinstalled by the manufacturer, or be installable from a GUI launched from their existing OS, which is what they have done if they have installed a newer version of windows than they had originally.
      - fuzzfactor 6y ago
        tl;dr --first sentence & footnote only Multibooting is definitely the way to go, it could be seen 20 years ago when drive space began to outpace size needs of Windows' C: volume under typical user conditions. Every Windows PC eventually was going to have enough drive space for more than one OS, in the long run (now) room for many more. And the hardware was going to boot so fast, there was going to be no reason not to just quickly and simply reboot to Linux for the internet, or Windows for office work or gaming. But you have to be able to teach multibooting, and for that you have to practice it yourself reliably. Well, I'm here to say there are advanced geeks who are still just as bad at multibooting as below-average Windows users are at Linux. So Linux is still not flying off the shelf even though it's free, and can be added to Windows PC's without Windows users losing anything. For years now. The hardware was made for this since the beginning (using multiple floppies, then later multiple HDDs) but it could be considered a manual operation. Later DOS versions supported the IBM concept of partitioning a single HDD into a maximum of 4 primary partitions, analogous to a 4-drawer filing cabinet being replaced by a digital alternative. A folder(s) containing an OS can safely be stored in any drawer no differently than any other folder. Windows iconized DOS directories as folders as time went on. The BIOS (later a biosmenu) chooses which HDD to boot to in the original way, then further boot (menu) sectors/files on the HDD choose a partition having a folder containing an OS, then any OS treats each partition equivalently to a separate _drive_ of its own. This part of the process wasn't even that slow when PC's were 1/10 the speed. And Windows responded by salvos of bloat with each revision, sometimes in separate inter-revision events where much larger amounts of downloaded material was retained by huge leaps over what the originally issued OS started out doing, as drive space made excellent leaps in affordable space for users, the excellence was nullified. In my estimation a most Ballmerish occurrence. Also the original NT6 Vista & Windows 7 versions started out with the BOOT folder right there in the C: volume where the default bootmenu it contains could conceivably be edited easier (easier than it was later when hidden in a separate unexpected partition). Except for the NT6 boot files which became more arcane by orders of magnitude, this is by design. You need sufficient BCDEDIT skillz at the administrative command line to modify your default NT6 bootmenu, but you only needed a text editor for the human-readable BOOT.INI of NT3-5 or CONFIG.SYS in W9x. And with NT5 (or NT6 using BIOS/MBR) you could still boot (multiple) Linux(s) from the regular Windows bootmenu, but no Linux for you with NT6 bootmenu in UEFI, this is by design. No overcoming Windows SecureBoot obstacles in UEFI for Linux either until earlier this year in 2020, this only set Linux back 6 years when it comes to brand-new PC's. And all you have to do is learn how to multiboot well enough so you only have to teach people how to use a boot menu(s) in the way that everyone should have already been using now for decades.[0] Now in a FAT32 ESP with UEFI/GPT, Linux installers put their boot files alongside Microsoft's in the generic shared EFI folder, while the Linux OS itself can be completely directed to a single unused partition, /home /var /usr everything on a single type 83 EXTx volume. Without touching Windows on its established NTFS partition. It works so well, it's the closest thing to Linux on a Windows partition. Windows can make the partition and Linux can do the rest. Then you have two completely different formatted partitions each containing their native OS, and the original common FAT32 ESP containing the key EFI folder now having both OS's boot files in their own subfolders. And the proper Linux install just leaves your mainboard with a new UEFI top-priority firmware bootentry pointing to the new Linux bootfiles in their EFI subfolder, pushing the established firmware bootentry for Windows down the list in the mainboard UEFI. This is after the Linux setup process autofinds and autoadds the Windows install already present on its NTFS volume to the new grub menu so you can choose original Windows or new Linux while the UEFI is set to select the new Linux subfolder within /EFI. You can always set the mainboard UEFI back to boot to the unchanged established Microsoft UEFI bootentry instead of the new Linux UEFI bootentry, and the PC will act like Linux is not there at all, the new grub bootmenu will not appear and Windows will not normally be able to see or access the Linux partition. You could also use a built-in mainboard firmware bootmenu to manually choose between Windows or Linux during bootup, not much differently than if they were on separate HDDs, without needing any grub access to Windows, but not every UEFI mainboard even has a built-in bootmenu any more like BIOS did (BIOS could only choose from different HDDs, not the individual OS's on the HDDs like UEFI sometimes can do in addition), and they are all different but can be useful when there. ______________ [0] If a real programmer is interested, what is still missing is a new standard open-source UEFI bootmenu firmware executable. User-configurable to allow flexibly selecting which mainboard UEFI entries appear on its own menu when called, and their boot priority. And as simple as possible, to be unchanged afterward, we already have overly complex grub & Windows OS bootloaders downstream on the HDD, as moving targets. We just need a new hypervisory bootmenu upstream, to run under UEFI before booting an OS or its particular bootfiles, so there will be a standard way to select from firmware bootentries themselves. Without having to properly access the (otherwise confusing but potentially simple) UEFI boot choices manually while booting, using increasingly divergent mainboard Setup routines as more years go by. In the form of a small .efi executable to be placed on the ESP volume, which can be called from the startup.nsh batch textfile (also store startup.nsh on the ESP volume). While still being able to eventually obtain Microsoft SecureBoot signatures to any extent needed for such a useful bootmenu.efi & startup.nsh to come into simple routine use. Which if present, a startup.nsh file is already the thing addressed by UEFI before the mainboard ratchets down to booting the top-priority bootentry in its own UEFI list instead, and startup.nsh is a userfile so we would best start using it. But nobody's using startup.nsh yet, it's still not significantly underway for over 6 years now. It's just another obstacle where the resulting UEFI mainboard boot-performance landscape is ridiculously unstandard (and getting worse) by comparison to the previous BIOS approach which was never a formally published standard at all, and BIOS got better over the years. That's damage from a big UEFI foisting salvo by design, fully forseen. And Microsoft SecureBoot still looms large as a related obstacle from 2014 since they have not yet signed an open-source UEFI Shell for SecureBoot operation either. Shouldn't be essential for developing a .efi executable bootmenu program anyway, but still a bad lingering deficiency in simple UEFI utilities, and confirms Ballmer's ghost still haunts regardless of WSL or what anyone says otherwise.
- watt 6y ago
  This is not even remotely the case. I just recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 on a newly bought PC (Asus motherboard). It was really tough - the installer would not recognize the USB stick for the longest time until I found the USB 2.0 slot that worked.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - shock 6y ago
    Did a USB stick with Windows work in the slot the installer wouldn't recognize?
    - watt 6y ago
      It did. I did not rewrite the stick. There seems to be weird problem how USB3 is treated at boot time. This was a problem 3 years ago and it's still a problem: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1030234/installing-with-usb-3-0-on-17-10-or-18-04-gives-initramfs-unable-to-find-a-med#:~:text=If%20the%20USB%203.0%20USB,the%20link%20to%20USB%202.0 https://askubuntu.com/questions/1030234/installing-with-usb-...
      - shock 6y ago
        Thank you for the link, I was not aware of that problem. I suspected something UEFI related.
- trinix912 6y ago
  Many UEFI systems ship with Secure Boot enabled by default, which already causes some trouble for non-technical users who just follow the instructions, insert a Linux USB and expect it to boot properly.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    Weeks ago I installed Mint 20 on a new thinkpad x1 8th gen and I didn't have to disable secure boot or anything. It just worked without any intervention or decision from me, except when it asks if you want to install it along windows or to overwrite it. I was amazed.
- varispeed 6y ago
  I would be wary of saying "just works" - you still have to dig into config files now and then and the potential to completely mess up your installation if you don't know what you are doing is real. I still cannot get my laptop's NVidia GPU working on Ubuntu.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    20.04 seems to just work now, for the first time ever, I didn't need to spend any time getting it to work.

ivalm 6y ago

To be fair, even now, in 2020, even with something user friendly like Ubuntu, on desktop, the win10 experience is way smoother and less liable to crash.

skohan 6y ago
I guess it depends what you mean by "smoother". The thing I appreciate about Ubuntu as compared to windows is how quiet it is. The only things I see are the things I put there. With win10 there is so much noise on the desktop, in the start menu, and in system notifications. After switching it feels relatively stressful to use Windows. Also I can't remember the last time Ubuntu crashed on me.
- OJFord 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure Arch has never crashed on me; I remember plenty of BSODs from Windows. Sure, I've messed up configuration and myself broken pieces of it, but I could do that on Windows too. But memes won't die, arch is unstable, Linux is hard and for nerds only. (I should add that I'm not even a careful Arch user - one probably should check news before upgrading; I've never bothered.)
  - bluecatswim 6y ago
    I've never used Arch but I think it should be considered as the "default" GNU/Linux distro at this point, Canonical have made plenty of bad decisions in the past year (forcing snaps for certain packages, advertisements in the MOTD, etc) and Ubuntu doesn't provide a lot in terms of user-friendliness over Arch with an installer. And from what I've heard Arch also works painlessly for casual applications like gaming with Proton because of the efforts the community has put into it, despite it not being a distro officially supported by Proton.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Hm, definitely would need a friendly installer though. To the point of selecting a 'theme' so that it boots up afterwards looking like Ubuntu, or something out of /r/UnixPorn.

nicbou 6y ago

I'm on Mac, and I am not going back. I only use Windows to play a single video game, and that alone is an infuriating experience.

mrgordon 6y ago
DirectX was the smartest thing they ever did. If MacBooks had acceptable gaming performance on most new titles, Windows would be largely dead
- skohan 6y ago
  Part of it is mac being self-defeating and openly hostile to game developers, refusing to support modern OpenGL versions and not supporting Vulkan for example. That said, Proton has gone a long way towards making Windows completely redundant for me.

chx 6y ago

> Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Every time this comes up I am here to offer a perspective perhaps few have. I started using Linux before it was 1.0. It was so long ago, quite a few ppl here weren't even alive (and then again, I am sure there a few here who started in '91 or '92). For a while, only at university department level servers. Then dual booting it at home, with Windows 2000 (maybe even Win98 at the tail end of that, I don't remember) and having Linux as my daily driver first on desktop then on laptop 2004-end of 2017. After this long, I must say, anyone using Linux on a laptop has Stockholm syndrome. You can choose between Ubuntu where infrequent OS updates shatter your system so throughly you can't work for days or you can use Arch Linux which rolls and breaks smaller parts of your system from time to time, mostly scanner, printer, Bluetooth. That's how it goes. https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/ this is 1000% true. Oh yes, I use Linux on servers to this day, it's great. Sure, if your usage is plain home wifi and browsing the web, basically something just a tiny bit beyond a Chromebook, it might work but heaven forbid you'd try to connect to some funny enterprise VPN or even worse, enterprise wifi or as I mentioned, have a Bluetooth speaker or an MFD. And there's no help. None. Nobody knows any more what's going on. We had a pretty good handle on how the various parts of the system fit together because it was damn simple but post-systemd noone understands it any more or if they do, they don't share. I posted this more than once, my favorite example here is the DisplayLink adapters (which are awful but they are often a necessary awful) and people said, read the Arch wiki page, well, back then, even like three years after I did, the meat of that page was what I could scrape together from mailing list and blog posts of the relevant driver authors but that's it. I certainly didn't understand it and people blindly copypasting out of the wiki didn't either and if you hit a problem, bam, who is there to help? Or to the previous point and this no help together: the IT lead at my workplace asked some years ago how to make the F5 VPN w/ two factor work on Linux and the deafening silence is the answer. I managed to make it work by running an old enough Firefox as root (!) which could run the F5 NPAPI extension. It's just plain nuts. Yes, F5 should have provided a native Linux client which supported 2FA on Linux but they didn't. It doesn't matter whose fault it is but at the end of the day, I am out of work if I can't log into the VPN. I am running Windows 10 since 2018 January. Not a problem. I ran O&o shutup, I use Classic Shell, so I never even see the Win 10 Start menu, I use WSL and -- everything just works. I have no problems with the system installing security updates at 5am, I set my system once so it only installs those, big updates are postponed by six month or forever and the whole thing just. works. Yes, Windows Subsystem For Linux, because the Linux command line tool are just great. It's everything else that is less great. https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/iej5y6/netflix_on_linux_with_1080p/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/iej5y6/netf... look at this and despair. Once again: I don't care, I have translated Doctorow's speech to Hungarian to spread it, to help fight DRM, no matter how little, even that was 16 years ago, I fought yeah, but the reality is, it's here and I don't want to bother with this. Look here, Linux people say, it-works-or-at-least-ought-to-with-this-workaround this is what I am saying: people will bend over backwards to defend their OS... I am not sure whether I am able to get my point across. sigh.

coldtea 6y ago

>Do we have to get cool people to use Linux? Is it that once enough people say "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) that it starts to take hold that if people want to not have this kind of thing happen that they should switch their operating system? How about not wanting to have this kind of thing happen and NOT having to switch their operating system? Because this sounds like the old political argument "if you don't like this country, move". Well, changing it should always be an option too.

aszen 6y ago
I think Windows is moving more and more into a platform where Microsoft will sell you their services. Windows has no other value for Microsoft now after giving away free upgrades so ultimately these stability issues are not going to be a priority for them since their business model is no longer about an OS but rather using that OS has a delivery platform for their other cloud services. If the direction where the country is going is not where you want to go and you have no power to change that then moving out is the smartest choice.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
>Well, changing it should always be an option too Then use free software. Why would you expect to be able to change whatever you want on software you don't own?
supercheetah 6y ago
> Because this sounds like the old political argument "if you don't like this country, move". Microsoft isn't a democracy. They're not beholden to the majority of people who use their stuff, just to the majority of the money that's paid to them, and their shareholders.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Democracies aren't in real life "beholden to the majority of people" either. But people can do things to force them to change... Even companies with shareholders still need customers, or at worse, users/eyeballs.

politelemon 6y ago

> "oh I don't have that problem, my computer is X" (where X is either "a mac" or "a linux" or something else) I definitely wouldn't peddle Macos or ChromeoS as a reasonable alternative where ownership of your computer is the root solution. They all come with their own versions of middle fingers to users, just that the users are not as vocal about it.

hardwaresofton 6y ago
So Mac at the very least is underpinned by software that is flexible in theory -- thinking that that "X" would only be "a linux" is very naive in my opinion, realistically people already think things like "my mac can't get viruses" and such. Also, I think the fundamental business model of Macs running OSX and Chromebooks running ChromeOS are very different, and I'd trust apple before I trusted Google.

fierarul 6y ago

My extended family all switched to Ubuntu because this is what I put on their cheap laptops. I showed them Firefox, Skype and the photo manager and it all worked well. Everything is done in the browser nowadays. At some point one laptop was purchased with Windows so one guy could game. He played Fifa for a week then asked me to put Ubuntu since "this is what he was used to". So, you see, it works that way too! I've also been introducing Chromebooks with some success. One of them seems to fail spectacularly: I assume the battery is dead and needs a hard reset every once in a while which means going through some weird wizard that's confusing for basic users. Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU!

jamaicahest 6y ago
> Sadly, Linux hardware support is still hit and miss. My latest Lenovo Legion has a whole lot of issues, the biggest one being that the trackpad just doesn't work. Sound also dies sometimes when waking up from sleep. But other than that it's a beast of a machine with a killer Ryzen CPU! That, in my opinion, is the deal breaker. My pc is a tool I use for getting things done, not something I want to tinker with every time I have to do something. I'm a literate computer user, programmer and sys admin, and I know how to change settings in Linux but I do not want to spend my time digging through mailinglists for a hack, every time I try to use my webcam/soundcard.
- roblabla 6y ago
  It's only a problem if you don't do your research before buying. There are a lot of laptops with stellar linux support, some even advertise it. Some laptops have shitty windows drivers too. Whatever you end up buying, you should read the reviews for beforehand anyways.
  - fierarul 6y ago
    True, but when it's among the 1st Ryzen laptops and you need a beefy CPU for work you might take a chance! I still hope a good kernel hacker will buy it and fix the trackpad. I would even chip in some money in a fund, but it's not clear to me how that is done.

lordnacho 6y ago

There's a sort of person who can learn to use anything. Mostly because they practice using stuff, they tinker with things to see what they do, and they know where to find help. Over time, they see there are UI patterns, and when given a new app, they can kinda feel their way forward, regardless of what the app is. You drop them into a new OS, and they can figure out how to open files, start programs, whatever. Most people are not that sort of person. They are shown a particular app like Excel, and they are told the big X in the corner closes the app. They don't wonder what the difference between the big X and the little X (I think this style of document-in-app might be old now, but anyway). You give them another app with an X in the corner, and they come and ask you what the X means. You show them Outlook, and they think Outlook is the only app that can send email. You show them a web based email, and they wonder how they can do all the things Outlook can do, but in a browser. You show them how to google for their problems and they think coming to YOU is the best way to do the search. You drop them into a new OS, and now you are the interface.

jiggawatts 6y ago

I'm your "cool people" that use Windows. Your target is me: the switched-on techy type. I have decades of experience across a dozen operating systems, a dozen programming languages, someone who always gets the "pro" or "advanced" version of everything. I use Firefox despite its glaring flaws. I use AdBlock because I care about privacy. I get my news from YCombinator. I'm your guy. But no, I will not use Linux. I will tell you why. Unfortunately, you won't like it because I'm an outsider, and it'll feel like a personal attack no matter how I phrase it. ( The only time Linux people listen to criticism like this, is the few times it comes from insiders. ESR's rant titled "The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story" nearly perfectly highlights the attitude and the issues that keep me away from Linux, so you can just read that if your prefer: http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/cups-horror.html ) Every time I have used Linux, it feels like using something written by a visitor from a parallel Earth, someone who brought with them an operating system from a place that never had a Microsoft or Windows. Maybe Linus Torvalds really is from another plane, a different dimension, stuck here in our world? It certainly feels like it to me. It's a thousand little things where if there's some option or a choice, it's virtually guaranteed that Linux will do the opposite of what Windows does. Things like: Does a click get registered on mouse down or mouse up? Is the task bar on the bottom or some other side? Where are the minimise and close buttons? Etc... Now, I get that Linux is copying POSIX and UNIX and many other "standards" that are older than Microsoft the company, let alone Windows. This explains why even though for the last two decades 90% of the entire planet has gotten used to the back-slash (C:\foo\bar) as the path separator, but Linux uses the forward-slash (/mnt/foo/). That's probably the one excuse I've seen that's legitimately too difficult to change, where there is a real reason that nothing can be done. Yet... It feels purposefully contrary, doesn't it? Coming from Windows, like the vast majority of the planet, it's the first slap in the face telling you in no uncertain terms that you and the rest of the majority can go get fucked, that it is YOU that must adapt to Linux, not Linux to you. This is the exact same thing as the United States, with a mere 4.23% of the global population forcing inches and the m/d/y date format down the throats of the other 95.77%. This isn't just some superficial thing, like which character is the path separator. It's a thousand, thousand things that should have been fixed decades ago. But no, Linux people are obstinately conservative, clinging to 50+ year old "standards" that 90-95% of the rest of the abandoned long ago or never heard of. Most of those standards boil down to: "Whatever Berkeley happened to do in the 1970s in their computer labs is the One True Way, and can never be changed." This is why it cracks me up that whenever I talk to open-source developers, the type that carefully avoid all-things-Microsoft like the plague: they actually use Apple Macs to write code. Because Steve Jobs, like me, had no tolerance for conservative, backwards, contrary bullshit. He wanted a usable operating system that didn't waste time. He didn't want something suitable only to a university lab setting, he wanted an operating system for consumers. He wanted an operating system that just worked and didn't require the user to read a textbook and monkey around with text-based config files just to print. Every few years I download a Linux ISO from some random distro and give it a good go, just to see if it has grown up yet. One of my favourite acid tests is this one: Can it join an Active Directory domain? This is something 99% of corporate environments have. Linux people will say: "Yes! It can! There's Kerberos support!" That's like saying that a pile of unshielded copper cable can be used power a computer. Technically true. Not what I want. I want a plug that I can plug in. In Linux, "joining a domain" means some random combination of: Providing dozens of parameters manually that Windows does not ask for and does not provide. Hard-coding IP addresses instead of using DNS names. Running command-line tools on the Windows Domain Controller to export "kerbtab" files. Monkeying about with PAM config files to actually make the authentication show up. Having to do hideous things to the system to actually support ACLs and more than one group membership. You know... more than one. MORE THAN ONE! Crazy, crazy stuff like that. Linux fanboys will rant that this is normal, that this is expected, that Windows is somehow "hiding things from the user". Just seconds ago I searched for "kerbtab" and this is one of the first things that came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338327 The end result is this: Every time one of two redundant domain controllers on a network has a hiccup, or is simply down for maintenance, Windows and Mac clients will smoothly truck along like nothing happened. Linux clients will lose their shit. They will take minutes to authenticate, or simply time out and lock out the users. So who cares, you ask? Why is Active Directory support important? Because when I looked into it more deeply, I found that the core of the issue was that Linux DNS client is hot garbage. Windows and Macs can fail over to the secondary DNS server is milliseconds and transparently maintain the ability to look up the needed SRV records for locating the LDAP endpoints. ( https://petri.com/active_directory_srv_records https://petri.com/active_directory_srv_records ) Linux... can't. That's why it uses IP addresses for the Kerberos configuration parameters. Seriously. Because some lab in Berkely or MIT or wherever "did it that way" back in 1985 or some shit. I'm not kidding. I looked it up. I read through the decades of rants where network engineers where begging the Linux maintainers to see reason and implement DNS server failover properly. Where they begged them to support TTLs and caching properly. The arguments were absolute bonkers. Crazy town stuff. People just foaming at the mouth as they went on and on about how it's somehow critical for preserving the legacy of POSIX to not fail over quickly. Apple Macs fail over instantly. Google's Android fails over instantly. Windows fails over instantly. Linux... has to be contrary. It has to use the primary DNS and sit there patiently waiting for the timeout for every. Single. Request. This breaks more than just Active Directory. Web browsing in this state is virtually impossible. It's just that it still kinda-sorta works, and people just shrug it off. But with Active Directory, it's a show-stopper. Total disaster. You can't even log on! So this is the point where I sigh, delete the virtual machine, and go back to Windows, which "just works" and lets me get my job done. PS: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65 https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65

sjy 6y ago

The world has already realised this – while Windows remains popular on the desktop, the desktop is dying, and Windows has had a small and declining share of total new devices for quite a few years now [1]. As the large pool of workers who learned to use computers during the 1990s and 2000s retires (slowly), Windows will die out in enterprise too. Microsoft is encouraging this by shifting its apps to the web and competing mobile OSes. They want to get businesses into 365 and Azure where they can make sustainable profits, and eventually shed the cost of maintaining Windows. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

vaccinator 6y ago

> How does the world eventually come to realize that there are other reasonable choices for OS? Mobile OSes are just as bad if not worst

eznzt 6y ago

I'll switch to Linux once there is a good, drop-in reimplementation of Win32, DirectX and .NET. And by good I mean "much better than Wine"

shock 6y ago
Nobody cares if you switch to Linux. Or MacOS. Or Windows 2000.

WilTimSon 6y ago

Who do you include in the 'world' category? Tech types use it already, as well as many people who try to be 'cool'. However, the chances of Linux ever beating out Windows for casual users, older people and teens who just need their PC to play games and watch movies, are infinitely small. It's the same problem as people trying to recommend their favourite new obscure app - it's good and it works for a subset of people. But the rest will just never bother with it, no matter how amazing it is. Linux would need to be dumbed down and simplified to a staggering degree before it catches on like Windows did. Besides, Windows has a ton of money and push behind it.

varispeed 6y ago

Unfortunately the software I use only exists on Windows or Mac and does not work under Wine. Linux is still severely lacking when it comes to audio implementation. If I had access to forensic audio analysis tools on Linux I would have switched yesterday. I hate Windows and Mac OS, but it is a necessary evil for now.

PeterisP 6y ago

For me, app compatibility is a dealbraker. For example, I need to run desktop MS Office, so Windows and Mac are viable options for my main machine, but Linux is not. LibreOffice/OpenOffice is not sufficiently compatible (receiving an e-mailed complex Word or Excel document, changing a single letter, and sending it back is not guaranteed to not change anything else), so that's it, the 'network effect' locks me in. I could run Windows in a VM on Linux, or Linux on Windows; but that's a bit inconvenient, so OS X gives a good compromise for that.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago
I have an Excel spreadsheet I update on a daily basis and opening it in LibreOffice crashes 100% of the time. Thankfully WPS Office works with it fine, and allowed me to remove Microsoft from my workflow completely. (Windows 10 and it's updates, telemetry, no-notification update reboots, and unexplained slowness for me to finally migrate fully to desktop Linux).
- ric2b 6y ago
  If you don't mind, can you file a bug report? Crashes are usually the easiest bugs to track down and fix.
Falkon1313 6y ago
Similar for me. Although I do use LibreOffice instead of MS, I also have 25+ years of software, some quite niche, all of which still works fine on Windows. I don't want to waste time and effort trying to figure out how to make Linux compatible with each individual program or even determine if it can be. I do like linux for work, and for use as a basic computer for doing basic things like browsing. It has come a very long way over the years, IMHO surpassed Windows 7 and left Mac OS far behind. But Windows 10 is right up there with linux for ease of use, and most importantly has decades of compatibility. Both have their quirks, so that's a tradeoff, and neither set of quirks really outweighs the other for me. But that compatibility with the last quarter-century of my life is a clear point in favor of Windows. For Windows though, I do recommend getting the Pro version and configuring it how you want it. That eliminates almost all the problems of W10 that people complain about, like the random reboots and the tiles on the start menu.

mam2 6y ago

Libreoffice sucks on a massive scale. And Games. These are literally the only reasons i have a dual boot and will never get rid of windows completly.