4 ms·
Three reasons. 1. Cohesiveness - there are many things Linux does excellently if done independently. But, when you want a cohesive experience to achieve a good
by reacharavindh 5y ago
Three reasons.
1. Cohesiveness - there are many things Linux does excellently if done independently. But, when you want a cohesive experience to achieve a good user experience, it falls flat in its face.
Examples:
Have an excellent file system? Check. ZFS, ext4 and plenty more.
May I expect a simple equivalent of a GUI file explorer in the class of Windows Explorer or Finder? Nope. There is not even thumbnail previews if images in the default views. Sure, there will be some commenter that will prove me wrong by saying “if you choose this district and combine it with this particular program I found and follow on GitHub, and simply run this command, it will all obviously work”. But, that only proves my point. I don’t have the time or the interest to do that. I applaud Linux for its powers in the server ecosystem, and use a cohesive yet restrictive Mac or Windows for the Desktop.
2. Battery life. Of course there is “laptop projects” and a plethora of scripts I can run to make Linux consume less power on a laptop, but the default option will just be poor in comparison with Mac and Windows because of their focus. Linux being powerful is actually at odds with the goal here.
3. Reliability around on/off/on/off/suspend operations like that of a laptop. I expect my Mac to wake up instantly and allow me to pick up work from wherever I left it. I reboot on my terms about once every couple of weeks when I am off work and relaxing. With Linux, it may work, but also not. Updates of packages break each other more often taking my productive time to fix things back in place. That anxiety is simply not worth it IMO.
In my opinion, being a good DesktopOS needs a authoritative and opinionated ecosystem so as to achieve that cohesion at least at the base system level. Unfortunately Linux does not target that. There have been attempts at it from PopOS, ElementaryOS etc, but they haven’t hit the mark yet as they too lose their focus quickly and try to do it all, and add yet another option in an already fragmented toolset. Example: ElementaryOS brought Vala as a language to write apps. Of course their apps are good, but the rest of the apps needed dont look or behave like the ones they made :-(
On my “hobby” workstation, I use Linux and enjoy it because I don’t have the anxiety about losing it at critical times. I simply have my /home backed up throughly and don’t care if the OS gets borked. I can always reinstall and bring my /home. Can’t live with such a setup on work PC.
- fsflover 5y ago> 3. Reliability around on/off/on/off/suspend operations like that of a laptop. This is definitely caused by unsupported hardware. I'm using Linux for many years, suspend works 100% of the time on my Librem 15 and Lenovo.
- garbagecoder 5y agoSo?
- hammyhavoc 5y agoSo, there is an objectively superior experience to be had with more appropriate hardware.
- reacharavindh 5y agoYes, I was sure there were few combinations of Linux Distro + Hardware manufacturer + Model number that would work fine 100% of the time for sleep issues. Now, would that combination also have decent battery life, decent display etc, Now, I will have to find the hours to go hunt for these details and reviews. You get my point... The ecosystem is simply not mature.