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> common Linux interfaces are very easy to decipher and have a good usability Then you are an absolute god of IT and have a very skewed perception of things as
by d110af5ccf 5y ago
> common Linux interfaces are very easy to decipher and have a good usability
Then you are an absolute god of IT and have a very skewed perception of things as a result; alternatively you've made up your own definition of the word "usability" that absolutely no one else uses.
I think Linux is great. I love the customizability it brings to the table and get a lot out of it. The time and effort invested to get here has been significant though. The manpages are dense. Commands are arcane. Error messages are very often inscrutable.
The major distros do a reasonable job as long as everything is working and there happens to be a well maintained program in the preconfigured repos that works well for whatever task it is you're trying to accomplish right then. I've set up Ubuntu for relatives who aren't tech savvy to do basic office work and everything is flawless.
The user experience just isn't on the same level as the proprietary OSes though. There are far fewer well polished apps. Many vendors don't provide compatible versions of their software. The latest gadget you bought probably requires Windows or iOS to sync or whatever it is you need it to do. Leave the well trodden path for whatever reason - something breaks, your new device isn't recognized, something else - and things aren't pretty.
It's not really the OS's fault. FOSS apps are largely written and maintained by volunteers instead of highly paid teams. All modern systems have a staggering amount of complexity under the hood and Linux distros intentionally give you access to it. But if you want or are forced to tinker then you're going to have to contend with it one way or another.
- christophilus 5y agoGnome 40 is just about as usable as anything I’ve ever used. I honestly find it more intuitive than Mac or Windows at this point. My mom uses Linux now with zero problems, so it passes the anecdotal non-technical old lady test.
- deltaonefour 5y agoAll linux distros bias towards command line. It's not because of the distro or the GUI itself. It's because the entire FOSS ecosystem itself biases towards that interface so it doesn't matter how advanced Gnome or KDE or any of those GUI layers get a command line shell will always be a major part of linux and that brings usability down quite low when compared with closed source. Of course I will caveat this by saying "overall" usability. Clearly with training CLI's can be superior to GUIs. But most people won't be willing to do this, so ONLY from an overall perspective CLIs are worse.