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So I've been running Linux (and various BSDs) on the Desktop for at least 20 years or so. All flavors and distros. And I think the problems in 2021 are mostly t

So I've been running Linux (and various BSDs) on the Desktop for at least 20 years or so. All flavors and distros. And I think the problems in 2021 are mostly the same as they have always been: caused by vendors. It always comes down to what you're willing to tolerate in your desktop and hardware support and what vendors are dishing out. Most people can just install Linux nowadays on a fresh PC and be done with it. It mostly just works which is amazing in many respects. But - if you come up against some bug for some specific piece of hardware you have (eg graphics driver is not working properly out of the box), you're in for some work. And that's fine if you are OK with that. Personally, I am not OK with that anymore and here are my rules: 1. If I have a random PC I will just run Windows 99% of the time. 2. If I want desktop Linux, I will purchase from a vendor who is testing with their hardware (e.g. System 76 or PINE64) OR I might buy a chrome book for Crostini. But I don't consider Chrome OS or Android "linux" because they are at their hearts proprietary operating systems that happen to utilize the Linux Kernel, IMO. I consider this whole issue orthogonal to systems like macOS. I appreciate the work being done for M1 by the Asahi folks and will donate to it, of course. I believe in 2021 it's time for me to start voting with my dollars if I want Desktop Linux (or phone Linux..) to be a thing. As much as I enjoy building a software system that matches my expectations, it's time for me to fully pass these expectations back to vendors, many of whom deserve my support.

krylon 5y ago
I mostly agree. Except that on my personal machines, I will run Linux or a BSD variant 99% of the time. ;-) At work, I never had much of choice, it was Windows all the way. I know it sucks if the OS does not support your hardware well. And I don't blame people who do not have the time or patience to deal with that. I certainly don't. I used to love spending weekends getting sound or wifi to work, but I have been "too old for this s___" for more than a decade. But personally, I have not run into any problems in more than a decade. I will admit, though, that I have learned to do a little (and I mean little) research before purchasing hardware. Back in the early 2000's, Win modems and printers used to be a minefield for Linux users, but these days, picking hardware that Just Works(tm) is shockingly easy to someone who remembers the "good" old days. I think the main barrier to most people is that Linux is just different from Windows, starting with picking a distro, then picking a desktop environment, and so forth. I still consider it fun to experiment with different distros and desktops, but I can understand that most people don't want to spend/waste their time with that. Which also means that PC vendors have pretty much no incentive to put Linux on their machines except for targeting developers. I don't think Linux (or any of the BSD systems) will ever become a mainstream OS on the desktop, and I can live with that. I might sound a bit cynical, but at least it means that Linux is not and will not be an attractive target for malware. Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. I used to work as a Windows admin, so I'm not just guessing here. But if it hasn't happened by now, I doubt it's going to anytime soon. People tend to like what they know, and with all the third-party software available on Windows and Windows only, Microsoft is going to spend a lot of effort maintaining backwards compatibility for a long time.
- drvdevd 5y ago
  > Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. This. And I would be wrong to say that running Windows is easier - it is not. It just has the vendor support to make it a little bit easier with respect to some hardware, sometimes.
  - krylon 5y ago
    Hehe, the update thing bit me badly more than once. Coming from a Debian background, I just approved any and all incoming updates in WSUS when I started working as a Windows admin. Oh, the stories I could tell... ;-) Siemens SIMATIC, specifically, was so sensitive, I eventually stopped approving Windows Updates for our automation people until I got them to move all their SIMATIC software to virtual machines that had no access to our internal network. Printers, too, were a constant source of head-scratching and cursing. manic laughter The worst part, to me, was that Windows seems to go out of its way to make troubleshooting unnecessarily difficult. I don't mind if a system misbehaves every now and then, as long as I have good chance of figuring out the source of the problem. But troubleshooting Windows is more frustrating than parsing error messages from a C++ compiler complaining about template instantiation problems (at least for me, having only the most superficial experience with C++).
- watermelon0 5y ago
  > Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. System updates don't break things on Linux? The only reason malware is not more popular is because Linux is less attractive platform to target due to low market share for desktop users, not because it's actually more secure. Same goes for macOS.
  - krylon 5y ago
    I agree with you 100% on the malware part. If Linux got a share of, say, 30% on the desktop, things would start looking quite different, I am sure. Updates... well, there's updates and there's upgrades. On Debian and CentOS, I have never encountered any trouble with updates. You pay the price by using software that is usually rather dated, but in my experience, once it works, it keeps working. On rolling-release systems, where there is no clear distinction between updates and upgrades, I have encountered plenty of trouble on Gentoo and openSUSE Tumbleweed. Arch Linux, I'm told, is rock-solid, but I guess once you manage to actually install it, nothing scares you anymore. ;-) (Just kidding, I know that Arch has an actual installer by now. But until fairly recently, installing Arch made the OpenBSD installer look almost decadent.) (Also, to be fair, I was on Gentoo's unstable branch, so in a way, I was kind of asking for trouble.)
itvision 5y ago
> And I think the problems in 2021 are mostly the same as they have always been: caused by vendors. Fewer than 5% of the issues listed in the article have anything to do with HW vendors, while the remaining 95% are caused by Open Source developers who work independently and don't particularly care about the grand vision/unified system which just works.

krylon 5y ago

I mostly agree. Except that on my personal machines, I will run Linux or a BSD variant 99% of the time. ;-) At work, I never had much of choice, it was Windows all the way. I know it sucks if the OS does not support your hardware well. And I don't blame people who do not have the time or patience to deal with that. I certainly don't. I used to love spending weekends getting sound or wifi to work, but I have been "too old for this s___" for more than a decade. But personally, I have not run into any problems in more than a decade. I will admit, though, that I have learned to do a little (and I mean little) research before purchasing hardware. Back in the early 2000's, Win modems and printers used to be a minefield for Linux users, but these days, picking hardware that Just Works(tm) is shockingly easy to someone who remembers the "good" old days. I think the main barrier to most people is that Linux is just different from Windows, starting with picking a distro, then picking a desktop environment, and so forth. I still consider it fun to experiment with different distros and desktops, but I can understand that most people don't want to spend/waste their time with that. Which also means that PC vendors have pretty much no incentive to put Linux on their machines except for targeting developers. I don't think Linux (or any of the BSD systems) will ever become a mainstream OS on the desktop, and I can live with that. I might sound a bit cynical, but at least it means that Linux is not and will not be an attractive target for malware. Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. I used to work as a Windows admin, so I'm not just guessing here. But if it hasn't happened by now, I doubt it's going to anytime soon. People tend to like what they know, and with all the third-party software available on Windows and Windows only, Microsoft is going to spend a lot of effort maintaining backwards compatibility for a long time.

drvdevd 5y ago
> Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. This. And I would be wrong to say that running Windows is easier - it is not. It just has the vendor support to make it a little bit easier with respect to some hardware, sometimes.
- krylon 5y ago
  Hehe, the update thing bit me badly more than once. Coming from a Debian background, I just approved any and all incoming updates in WSUS when I started working as a Windows admin. Oh, the stories I could tell... ;-) Siemens SIMATIC, specifically, was so sensitive, I eventually stopped approving Windows Updates for our automation people until I got them to move all their SIMATIC software to virtual machines that had no access to our internal network. Printers, too, were a constant source of head-scratching and cursing. manic laughter The worst part, to me, was that Windows seems to go out of its way to make troubleshooting unnecessarily difficult. I don't mind if a system misbehaves every now and then, as long as I have good chance of figuring out the source of the problem. But troubleshooting Windows is more frustrating than parsing error messages from a C++ compiler complaining about template instantiation problems (at least for me, having only the most superficial experience with C++).
watermelon0 5y ago
> Given all the crap that Windows users put up with, be it malware or system updates randomly breaking things, I think a fair amount of people might find it worth the effort to give Linux a try. System updates don't break things on Linux? The only reason malware is not more popular is because Linux is less attractive platform to target due to low market share for desktop users, not because it's actually more secure. Same goes for macOS.
- krylon 5y ago
  I agree with you 100% on the malware part. If Linux got a share of, say, 30% on the desktop, things would start looking quite different, I am sure. Updates... well, there's updates and there's upgrades. On Debian and CentOS, I have never encountered any trouble with updates. You pay the price by using software that is usually rather dated, but in my experience, once it works, it keeps working. On rolling-release systems, where there is no clear distinction between updates and upgrades, I have encountered plenty of trouble on Gentoo and openSUSE Tumbleweed. Arch Linux, I'm told, is rock-solid, but I guess once you manage to actually install it, nothing scares you anymore. ;-) (Just kidding, I know that Arch has an actual installer by now. But until fairly recently, installing Arch made the OpenBSD installer look almost decadent.) (Also, to be fair, I was on Gentoo's unstable branch, so in a way, I was kind of asking for trouble.)

itvision 5y ago

> And I think the problems in 2021 are mostly the same as they have always been: caused by vendors. Fewer than 5% of the issues listed in the article have anything to do with HW vendors, while the remaining 95% are caused by Open Source developers who work independently and don't particularly care about the grand vision/unified system which just works.