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It's a little ironic, but I find Linux to be perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders. It's all the people in between where

It's a little ironic, but I find Linux to be perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders. It's all the people in between where it struggles. Yes, if you need your computer to check email and visit websites, and maybe deal with digital photos and do a little light word processing, Linux is rock solid stable and more than up to the task. I can see my own mother being just fine with it for those purposes. Conversely, if you need to roll some scientific HPC code, it's the preferred solution. But God help you if you need to do multimedia desktop publishing or do Photoshop-level editing of photos or (in my case) do anything requiring a Common Access Card.

WalterBright 5y ago
I used Linux to play my music collection for a while, but it just had too many problems with crashing and randomly needing to regenerate its index. Windows Media Player just works.
- mixedCase 5y ago
  Weird. Sounds like you had an issue with a buggy music player. What lead you to think the entire operating system was to blame?
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    A surprising lot of people consider a media player as part of the OS.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    As a desktop replacement, I expect a music player, just like I expect a browser. The music player is a pretty good test of if the the operating system drivers work, although it was never clear if the music players were bad, or the sound drivers. BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player. I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would: 1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade 2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned
    - cowpig 5y ago
      I immediately uninstall the media players that come on any linux distro and install vlc, which is a magnificent piece of software
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      I've been burned by this. It was a result of nVidia deprecating support for my video card in new drivers, and Ubuntu only shipping up-to-date and compatible proprietary drivers in their latest releases. According to Canonical, this was because the nouveau driver has some support for the deprecated hardware and the old drivers were no longer compatible with up-to-date distros. If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        It sounds like my issue. If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to: 1. just work 2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore. I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users. Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like: "Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted" are so 1980's :-/
        Brybry 5y ago
        No desktop operating system meets this criteria though, at least not if you allow user-defined hardware combinations. I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX. I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows. The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
- habeebtc 5y ago
  The current Windows Media Player is a bloated mess with unnecessary features. Not unlike iTunes. The original WMP was pretty good! But you really can no longer get anything like it. ETA: at least under active development. WMP Classic was a suitable replacement I used to use: https://mpc-hc.org/ https://mpc-hc.org/ Full disclosure: for music I still run Winamp 2.95, and for video it is a mix of Kodi for set top boxes and VLC for PC/Mobile.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    I resort to VLC media player for music for the same reason.
  - eyegor 5y ago
    I'd recommend checking out foobar2000. It feels old in a good way and you can use a lot of the Winamp plugins if you want them for whatever reason. No fancy nonsense, just a music player. There are also plugins to integrate with streaming services, youtube, etc for when you want something outside of your library.
    - glouwbug 5y ago
      Foobar2000 is good example of what a productive snappy user experience should be. It plays music, what else do you want it to do?
      - MikusR 5y ago
        In addition to playing I use Foobar2000 for tagging, ripping, managing and converting.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    >Not unlike iTunes iTunes is dead although its replacements aren't much better. https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/ https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Is it REALLY possible for a media player to be "bloated" to the point that it matters (for playing music), when even the cheapest new PC has 8GB of RAM, 4 cores, and an SSD?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Interestingly, the dev tools on Linux are rock solid. The other stuff, not so much. Hence Windows is my desktop, where I have putty text windows into my Ubuntu machine for dev work.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Aren't you still using Ubuntu 14, or am I remembering a thread from too long ago. "Modern" Ubuntu is absolutely rock solid as my work machine, the current iteration of the windows media player is total rubbish compared to VLC which does actually work with just about everything. Interestingly, this Linux box is the first machine I've had with which the suspend actually works reliably, unlike every windows machine I've used.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      As I mentioned in another post, I am still using 14, as the newer Ubuntus would just crash on the machine. It's perfectly adequate for what I use it for.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  IMO, if you're going to use Linux to manage your music collection, the web app options are your best options, unless you really like mpd for some reason (which is valid because mpd is nice). Funkwhale, Jellyfin, and the dozen Subsonic forks/clones are better than whatever desktop music managers exist, and they have cross-platform clients so you can access your collection on your FireTV or phone. There's no real reason to run any of them on Linux, though, since they're just web apps. Jellyfin and some others are written in C# using .NET Core, so they'd probably be more stable on Windows, anyway.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I don't want a web app to play my local music collection. What I want is: 1. here's the directory with my music files in it 2. shuffle play it. That's it. This is not rocket science. I appear to be a unique snowflake, or somebody on the WMP team is just like me. Because that just causes every other music player to commit seppuku.
    - commoner 5y ago
      VLC (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) has always handled shuffling music without issue for me on Linux (and any other operating system). Have you tried VLC yet? Also, there are other Linux media players that focus more specifically on music: - Lollypop (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop): GTK-based - Elisa (https://elisa.kde.org https://elisa.kde.org): Qt-based - Vvave (https://vvave.kde.org https://vvave.kde.org): Qt-based, mobile-first
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        As I recall, it was VLC that would randomly crash and corrupt its index file. Maybe they fixed it since then, but I got tired of dealing with it. I just want to listen to my tunes while I work. I just can't believe that in 2022, all the streamers I bought except WMP are unable to do this.
    - crb3 5y ago
- herbst 5y ago
  This is sarcastic isnt it?
- grey_earthling 5y ago
  One criticism of Linux that I've never heard before is too few music players ;) Whichever music player didn't work for you here, there are dozens of others that might.
jolmg 5y ago
> or do Photoshop-level editing of photos How far ahead is Photoshop when compared to Gimp for the type of editing an average Photoshop user does? Do people really find Gimp lacking?
- stavros 5y ago
  Well, the average Photoshop user is a professional. I don't know if GIMP is lacking in features, but I definitely feel very out of place whenever I need to do anything. The features might be there, but either the UX is bad or I'm not used to it. I've used GIMP way more often than Photoshop for the past two years, and I definitely don't feel any more at ease. The transform tool, for example, I always find unintuitive and hard, and everything else is more or less the same. It's a pity.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Yes, you’ll often see Gimp’s UX problems handwaved away as the user being too used to Photoshop, but it runs deeper than that.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Until GIMP fixes its UI to be usable to an average graphic designer, it's a complete non-starter. Until it gets CMYK editing and color separation, and nondestructive editing, it's a non-starter.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    What's the point of CMYK? Your image is going to be displayed on a panel that has some form of red, green, and blue LEDs. For something like printing a picture you can always just have the printer do the conversion from RGB to CMYK.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      Conversion isn’t a perfect process and often has undesirable effects on the image. This makes it necessary for documents intended for print to be created in CMYK.
joe_the_user 5y ago
Linux works great for a variety of computer applications, what you mention and others. It has problems on a variety of others but often can be made to work for many of those. Windows also has problems with quite a few applications but also can be made to work for them. Windows has costs in terms of security and control. But to the end user, Windows is "free as in beer", even more than Linux, since it comes just sitting on your new machine and you only have to sign away vague "rights" to use it. So it's no surprise Windows wins.
- abakker 5y ago
  I’ve always found that windows is free as in beer, but Linux is just some jerk handing you bunch of grain and hops and a vague diagram of what to do next. It’s free, and it’ll make beer, but it might also make weird oatmeal instead.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    Depends on distribution. Ubuntu works quite well out of the box for a lot of hardware. It’s great for basic usage like editing docs, browsing the web etc.
    - zamalek 5y ago
      I found that Manjaro just works, which is super confounding: Arch is supposed to be one of the nerdier distros. I've thrown Manjaro (and now pure Arch) at my Linux-hostile laptop, and everything works. Provided you have access to good internet Arch is almost like off-cloud-SaaS on your machine, and that model makes tons of sense for desktop usage. Printers, the bloody cursed things, are far more reliable than Windows. In terms of hardware support, Ubuntu comes really close. The Linux desktop has come very far in the past few years.
      - tartoran 5y ago
        Good to know. I will give it a try too
      - 5y ago
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Yeah, I agree with this. Linux Desktop is fine if what you need is essentially a web kiosk, and if you happen to be doing webdev work or a few other coding disciplines. It's all the many and varied other usecases that exist where it falls down hard, and the really unfortunate part is that when you express that this is why you don't use it the community seems flabbergasted that you don't just want a web kiosk and aren't a webdev. It's kind of maddening.
- wazoox 5y ago
  No, that's just plain wrong. Me, my family and everyone in my company use Linux exclusively for everything, and did so for the past 15 years. We use it for photo editing as well as CRM, video editing as well as videoconferencing, gaming as well as office management, etc.
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    But at what cost? What did your family give up in terms of time, money, mental load, and having to do things on Android or iOS because we use Linux in this household?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    Sure, it seems to work well enough for you, but what are you asserting? That everyone else who is claiming Linux Desktop isn't a good fit for what they use a computer for is intellectually lazy? I think that's a trap Linux Desktop evangelists have fallen into because they can't stand to recognize the truth that maybe a collection of fragmented pseudo-platforms cobbled together from disparately developed software --mostly by hobbyists-- just isn't actually as good at a lot of things as something developed by one well funded professional team as an actual platform. I think the way some of the Linux Desktop community denigrates people who don't use it and pretends that there are no legitimate reasons anyone reasonably competent wouldn't is doing the community as a whole a great disservice and has been for twenty years. Not only are they driving otherwise interested parties away, but they're also refusing to admit to deep seeded problems that subsequently are never addressed.
nescioquid 5y ago
> It's a little ironic, but I find Linux to be perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders. I started using Linux around '99 as a computer-illiterate and became a coder. I see no irony in this. One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using. That, I feel led to the ubiquity of high-quality documentation and materials - an embarrassment of riches. I ordered physical copies of TLDP (two phone books, in size). I read the slackware manual and learned the basics of how filesystems work and networking (culminating in redirecting X from my single good computer to a couple of dumpster-worthy systems on my home network). I didn't need to fork over money I couldn't afford for a compiler. It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  >One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using. This is a huge understated benefit of Linux and FOSS. Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them >It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness I must admit, I do understand this sentiment. Working in a proprietary system its harder to imagine how I would want to change things to better work for you, because I can't see how it works. I wouldn't know what to change because I don't know what's in there, it makes things more difficult to see all the possibilities with the lack of information
  - GlenTheMachine 5y ago
    In theory, sure. But this requires that you be a coder, effectively, and not just a coder but a coder with time on his/her hands. If I'm a professional photographer I'm paid essentially by throughput. The more pictures I take, edit, and post, the more money I make. I literally can't afford to dive into the source for GIMP to try to customize my workflow, even if I had the coding skills to do so. And that's my point really. Yes, IF I'M A CODER, Linux is superb. But if I'm not, those benefits don't really benefit me. To be clear, I personally am a coder. Even then, though, how many of us really have the time to debug Linux device drivers? I don't.
sandworm101 5y ago
It is almost as if the people selling the software align thier product with the middle of the target market. And with only two big players (MS and Apple OSs) they inevitabbly coverge toward that middle until they are back-to-back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law Let linux forever be the desktop of the not-middle. Keep linux different.
- grey_earthling 5y ago
  IMO people making software align the software with their motives. Generally, for proprietary software that's selling services to consumers and/or ad partners; for open source software that's making a useful tool.
oefrha 5y ago
> do a little light word processing For the vast majority of people, “a little light word processing” involves Microsoft Word, which instantly rules out Linux for the near computer illiterate.
- the_af 5y ago
  For the near computer illiterate, the tiny subset of Word they use can be easily replaced by Libre Office or Google Spreadsheets.
  - oefrha 5y ago
    Except of course people send .doc/.docx around and expect .doc/.docx to be sent around. Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero. Speaking from experience dealing with near computer illiterates, including my mom. Of course you can argue that it’s easy to learn to export to .doc/.docx.
    - aembleton 5y ago
      Or you can share your Google doc around and let them edit it without creating new files.
      - r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
        Problem with that is that either they have to have a Google account that they are willing to share with you or you have to make it so that anyone with the link can edit the doc, which is a big no no usually.
    - timeon 5y ago
      > Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero. Sometimes even if you just ask for photo.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
29athrowaway 5y ago
Windows is for the people that knowingly pay to build their own digital prison with ads, where they will be beaten up by other prisoners.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  No, it’s for the average computer user who uses it because megacorps like Microsoft and Adobe need to siphon a profit somehow. People don’t choose to use Windows. It’s a decision made by many of the same industry titans who have increasing influence on the direction of Linux as well. But Linux will never serve the masses because Microsoft and Adobe won’t allow it.
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    Linux already serves the masses pretty well.
er4hn 5y ago
> But God help you if you need to do multimedia desktop publishing or do Photoshop-level editing of photos or (in my case) do anything requiring a Common Access Card. Common Access Card's are one of my favorite examples of regulatory capture. You can use them on any OS you want, as long as it's Window's. The software to use them on Linux is free to anyone with military credentials and has no good way to test it works except by logging onto a military website.
- GlenTheMachine 5y ago
  They now work nearly flawlessly on macOS (this did not used to be the case). I tried it for a year on Linux. Really, I truly tried. I threw out my MacBook and bought a Dell, put Ubuntu on it, and tried to integrate it into a DoD corporate network environment. It was hell. And it was LONELY hell.
mizzao 5y ago
It's always the random stuff like Bluetooth working haphazardly, webcam not having the right driver, USB-C not working with your 4K monitor, or some other cutting edge feature with a dealbreaking kernel bug that gets you. I have an XPS 7390 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (developer edition, so it shipped with Linux) that I'm afraid to upgrade to 20.04 because of a known Bluetooth issue that would prevent me from taking any zoom calls. And the Bluetooth already barely works as is. I do all my zoom calls on Windows. Have you tried WSL lately? It's increasingly reduced the necessity for a dedicated Linux machine.
- coupdejarnac 5y ago
  I have a Precision 7540 that came with 18.04. I wasn't too satisfied with the experience out of the box. However, after upgrading to 20.04, things have been nearly flawless. I installed the default 20.04 image without anything from Dell. You might try installing a more recent version of Ubuntu.
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
It’s not ironic. It’s by design. Too many companies depend on closed-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average user, so they will never allow Linux to serve the masses while also allowing it to remain open and free.
- r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
  To reverse this. Too many companies depend on open-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average dev by persuading them to work for free. Foss isn't free. It merely shifts the costs from users and corporations to that one guy in Nebraska. Foss came about because RMS wanted to fix his printer, other academics wanted to share their code, devs didn't want to have to go through finance to buy software, and internet companies wanted to reduce their costs. The rest is just post hoc rationalization.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
> Yes, if you need your computer to check email and visit websites, and maybe deal with digital photos and do a little light word processing, Linux is rock solid stable and more than up to the task I would go further and say that browsing, email, and light word processing doesn't require a laptop/desktop at all, whatever the OS - this is what a tablet (perhaps with some kind of keyboard) would be perfect for.
amelius 5y ago
> perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders But what if their children all use FaceTime to communicate? I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple.
- wyclif 5y ago
  I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple Except that most software developers at FAANG and other large companies almost always use MacBooks.
  - amelius 5y ago
    You are reversing the argument.
daniel-s 5y ago
Isn't the "computer illiterate" the majority of people. Those other activities are working professionals in relatively niche fields.
phendrenad2 5y ago
I've found this to be true too. And unfortunately, those "in-between" users make up 99% of all users.
pjmlp 5y ago
Better not watch YouTube in the process though. Getting hardware video decoding working is hit-and-miss to this day, even with forced flags, which naturally the computer illiterate don't have a clue.
thedevelopnik 5y ago
Yeah my MIL had a 2012 Dell that my son uses at her house. It was running Windows 7, and took about 10 minutes to boot and the same to shut down. I put Pop_OS on it. It has Firefox and Minecraft which are the only two things he cares about, and it runs so much more quickly. She wanted to throw it out but now it’s less junk in the pile.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 5y ago
But how many people to multimedia desktop publishing or photoshop level editing of photos? I bet it's far less than the number of coders and people who just need a system for web browsing and light office suite usage and other "light" tasks. Linux is perfectly fine for those people. the only people I can think that aren't "almost there" are hardcore gamers and people who need professional software that only runs in windows or macos. Most things in business are in the cloud these days anyway.

WalterBright 5y ago

I used Linux to play my music collection for a while, but it just had too many problems with crashing and randomly needing to regenerate its index. Windows Media Player just works.

mixedCase 5y ago
Weird. Sounds like you had an issue with a buggy music player. What lead you to think the entire operating system was to blame?
- rbanffy 5y ago
  A surprising lot of people consider a media player as part of the OS.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  As a desktop replacement, I expect a music player, just like I expect a browser. The music player is a pretty good test of if the the operating system drivers work, although it was never clear if the music players were bad, or the sound drivers. BTW, the music players on Roku, Grace Digital's streaming boxes, and Galaxy Audio's streaming boxes, are all unusable. The only ones that ever worked were the Turtle Beach Audiotron (now obsolete), and Windows Media Player. I also have an Ubuntu desktop machine. It started pestering me to upgrade to a newer Ubuntu, and I finally relented and did. The new Ubuntu simply would not function with my graphics card. The old one worked fine with it. I spent a whole day trying to figure that one out, but there was no solution other than wiping the disk and reinstalling the older Ubuntu. A proper desktop replacement would: 1. warn me that I needed a new graphics card when pestering me to upgrade 2. refuse to install if I had a graphics card that was abandoned
  - cowpig 5y ago
    I immediately uninstall the media players that come on any linux distro and install vlc, which is a magnificent piece of software
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I've been burned by this. It was a result of nVidia deprecating support for my video card in new drivers, and Ubuntu only shipping up-to-date and compatible proprietary drivers in their latest releases. According to Canonical, this was because the nouveau driver has some support for the deprecated hardware and the old drivers were no longer compatible with up-to-date distros. If that was your issue, there's scripts that patch support for newer distros into the old drivers.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      It sounds like my issue. If there are scripts that fix it, those scripts should be run automatically by the installer. Otherwise, it's just not a desktop replacement. I'm sorry to have to say this, but to call it a desktop replacement means it has to: 1. just work 2. failing that, detect the problem and explain what to do. Crashing is just not acceptable anymore. I do support all the time for the D compilers. In my experience, if the install does anything but "just work", you immediately lose 50-90% of your users. Every error path in the installer needs to be gone over and engineered to "just work". Messages like: "Unknown Error: TXerr 66x53 failed, aborted" are so 1980's :-/
      - Brybry 5y ago
        No desktop operating system meets this criteria though, at least not if you allow user-defined hardware combinations. I remember I had to do some hackery on a driver to get my sister's printer to work with her macbook/OSX. I've had all sorts of issues with printers/scanners/random software combinations/drivers/failed automatic update crash loops(!)/etc with Windows. The only operating systems that might meet the criteria are on tablets and phones (which are obviously not desktops) -- and even then I've had to cross-compile a kernel module to support a wifi adapter w/ USB OTG.
habeebtc 5y ago
The current Windows Media Player is a bloated mess with unnecessary features. Not unlike iTunes. The original WMP was pretty good! But you really can no longer get anything like it. ETA: at least under active development. WMP Classic was a suitable replacement I used to use: https://mpc-hc.org/ https://mpc-hc.org/ Full disclosure: for music I still run Winamp 2.95, and for video it is a mix of Kodi for set top boxes and VLC for PC/Mobile.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  I resort to VLC media player for music for the same reason.
- eyegor 5y ago
  I'd recommend checking out foobar2000. It feels old in a good way and you can use a lot of the Winamp plugins if you want them for whatever reason. No fancy nonsense, just a music player. There are also plugins to integrate with streaming services, youtube, etc for when you want something outside of your library.
  - glouwbug 5y ago
    Foobar2000 is good example of what a productive snappy user experience should be. It plays music, what else do you want it to do?
    - MikusR 5y ago
      In addition to playing I use Foobar2000 for tagging, ripping, managing and converting.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  >Not unlike iTunes iTunes is dead although its replacements aren't much better. https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/ https://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Is it REALLY possible for a media player to be "bloated" to the point that it matters (for playing music), when even the cheapest new PC has 8GB of RAM, 4 cores, and an SSD?
WalterBright 5y ago
Interestingly, the dev tools on Linux are rock solid. The other stuff, not so much. Hence Windows is my desktop, where I have putty text windows into my Ubuntu machine for dev work.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Aren't you still using Ubuntu 14, or am I remembering a thread from too long ago. "Modern" Ubuntu is absolutely rock solid as my work machine, the current iteration of the windows media player is total rubbish compared to VLC which does actually work with just about everything. Interestingly, this Linux box is the first machine I've had with which the suspend actually works reliably, unlike every windows machine I've used.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    As I mentioned in another post, I am still using 14, as the newer Ubuntus would just crash on the machine. It's perfectly adequate for what I use it for.
heavyset_go 5y ago
IMO, if you're going to use Linux to manage your music collection, the web app options are your best options, unless you really like mpd for some reason (which is valid because mpd is nice). Funkwhale, Jellyfin, and the dozen Subsonic forks/clones are better than whatever desktop music managers exist, and they have cross-platform clients so you can access your collection on your FireTV or phone. There's no real reason to run any of them on Linux, though, since they're just web apps. Jellyfin and some others are written in C# using .NET Core, so they'd probably be more stable on Windows, anyway.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I don't want a web app to play my local music collection. What I want is: 1. here's the directory with my music files in it 2. shuffle play it. That's it. This is not rocket science. I appear to be a unique snowflake, or somebody on the WMP team is just like me. Because that just causes every other music player to commit seppuku.
  - commoner 5y ago
    VLC (https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ https://www.videolan.org/vlc/) has always handled shuffling music without issue for me on Linux (and any other operating system). Have you tried VLC yet? Also, there are other Linux media players that focus more specifically on music: - Lollypop (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Lollypop): GTK-based - Elisa (https://elisa.kde.org https://elisa.kde.org): Qt-based - Vvave (https://vvave.kde.org https://vvave.kde.org): Qt-based, mobile-first
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      As I recall, it was VLC that would randomly crash and corrupt its index file. Maybe they fixed it since then, but I got tired of dealing with it. I just want to listen to my tunes while I work. I just can't believe that in 2022, all the streamers I bought except WMP are unable to do this.
  - crb3 5y ago
herbst 5y ago
This is sarcastic isnt it?
grey_earthling 5y ago
One criticism of Linux that I've never heard before is too few music players ;) Whichever music player didn't work for you here, there are dozens of others that might.

jolmg 5y ago

> or do Photoshop-level editing of photos How far ahead is Photoshop when compared to Gimp for the type of editing an average Photoshop user does? Do people really find Gimp lacking?

stavros 5y ago
Well, the average Photoshop user is a professional. I don't know if GIMP is lacking in features, but I definitely feel very out of place whenever I need to do anything. The features might be there, but either the UX is bad or I'm not used to it. I've used GIMP way more often than Photoshop for the past two years, and I definitely don't feel any more at ease. The transform tool, for example, I always find unintuitive and hard, and everything else is more or less the same. It's a pity.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Yes, you’ll often see Gimp’s UX problems handwaved away as the user being too used to Photoshop, but it runs deeper than that.
bitwize 5y ago
Until GIMP fixes its UI to be usable to an average graphic designer, it's a complete non-starter. Until it gets CMYK editing and color separation, and nondestructive editing, it's a non-starter.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  What's the point of CMYK? Your image is going to be displayed on a panel that has some form of red, green, and blue LEDs. For something like printing a picture you can always just have the printer do the conversion from RGB to CMYK.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Conversion isn’t a perfect process and often has undesirable effects on the image. This makes it necessary for documents intended for print to be created in CMYK.

joe_the_user 5y ago

Linux works great for a variety of computer applications, what you mention and others. It has problems on a variety of others but often can be made to work for many of those. Windows also has problems with quite a few applications but also can be made to work for them. Windows has costs in terms of security and control. But to the end user, Windows is "free as in beer", even more than Linux, since it comes just sitting on your new machine and you only have to sign away vague "rights" to use it. So it's no surprise Windows wins.

abakker 5y ago
I’ve always found that windows is free as in beer, but Linux is just some jerk handing you bunch of grain and hops and a vague diagram of what to do next. It’s free, and it’ll make beer, but it might also make weird oatmeal instead.
- tartoran 5y ago
  Depends on distribution. Ubuntu works quite well out of the box for a lot of hardware. It’s great for basic usage like editing docs, browsing the web etc.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    I found that Manjaro just works, which is super confounding: Arch is supposed to be one of the nerdier distros. I've thrown Manjaro (and now pure Arch) at my Linux-hostile laptop, and everything works. Provided you have access to good internet Arch is almost like off-cloud-SaaS on your machine, and that model makes tons of sense for desktop usage. Printers, the bloody cursed things, are far more reliable than Windows. In terms of hardware support, Ubuntu comes really close. The Linux desktop has come very far in the past few years.
    - tartoran 5y ago
      Good to know. I will give it a try too
    - 5y ago

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

Yeah, I agree with this. Linux Desktop is fine if what you need is essentially a web kiosk, and if you happen to be doing webdev work or a few other coding disciplines. It's all the many and varied other usecases that exist where it falls down hard, and the really unfortunate part is that when you express that this is why you don't use it the community seems flabbergasted that you don't just want a web kiosk and aren't a webdev. It's kind of maddening.

wazoox 5y ago
No, that's just plain wrong. Me, my family and everyone in my company use Linux exclusively for everything, and did so for the past 15 years. We use it for photo editing as well as CRM, video editing as well as videoconferencing, gaming as well as office management, etc.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  But at what cost? What did your family give up in terms of time, money, mental load, and having to do things on Android or iOS because we use Linux in this household?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Sure, it seems to work well enough for you, but what are you asserting? That everyone else who is claiming Linux Desktop isn't a good fit for what they use a computer for is intellectually lazy? I think that's a trap Linux Desktop evangelists have fallen into because they can't stand to recognize the truth that maybe a collection of fragmented pseudo-platforms cobbled together from disparately developed software --mostly by hobbyists-- just isn't actually as good at a lot of things as something developed by one well funded professional team as an actual platform. I think the way some of the Linux Desktop community denigrates people who don't use it and pretends that there are no legitimate reasons anyone reasonably competent wouldn't is doing the community as a whole a great disservice and has been for twenty years. Not only are they driving otherwise interested parties away, but they're also refusing to admit to deep seeded problems that subsequently are never addressed.

nescioquid 5y ago

> It's a little ironic, but I find Linux to be perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders. I started using Linux around '99 as a computer-illiterate and became a coder. I see no irony in this. One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using. That, I feel led to the ubiquity of high-quality documentation and materials - an embarrassment of riches. I ordered physical copies of TLDP (two phone books, in size). I read the slackware manual and learned the basics of how filesystems work and networking (culminating in redirecting X from my single good computer to a couple of dumpster-worthy systems on my home network). I didn't need to fork over money I couldn't afford for a compiler. It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness.

netizen-936824 5y ago
>One of RMS' goals was to have the ability to study and learn from the software and systems you were using. This is a huge understated benefit of Linux and FOSS. Instead of being hidden you can see how things work, sometimes you might even need to fix them >It left me with the lasting bias that free software is liberating and proprietary software leads to learned helplessness I must admit, I do understand this sentiment. Working in a proprietary system its harder to imagine how I would want to change things to better work for you, because I can't see how it works. I wouldn't know what to change because I don't know what's in there, it makes things more difficult to see all the possibilities with the lack of information
- GlenTheMachine 5y ago
  In theory, sure. But this requires that you be a coder, effectively, and not just a coder but a coder with time on his/her hands. If I'm a professional photographer I'm paid essentially by throughput. The more pictures I take, edit, and post, the more money I make. I literally can't afford to dive into the source for GIMP to try to customize my workflow, even if I had the coding skills to do so. And that's my point really. Yes, IF I'M A CODER, Linux is superb. But if I'm not, those benefits don't really benefit me. To be clear, I personally am a coder. Even then, though, how many of us really have the time to debug Linux device drivers? I don't.

sandworm101 5y ago

It is almost as if the people selling the software align thier product with the middle of the target market. And with only two big players (MS and Apple OSs) they inevitabbly coverge toward that middle until they are back-to-back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law Let linux forever be the desktop of the not-middle. Keep linux different.

grey_earthling 5y ago
IMO people making software align the software with their motives. Generally, for proprietary software that's selling services to consumers and/or ad partners; for open source software that's making a useful tool.

oefrha 5y ago

> do a little light word processing For the vast majority of people, “a little light word processing” involves Microsoft Word, which instantly rules out Linux for the near computer illiterate.

the_af 5y ago
For the near computer illiterate, the tiny subset of Word they use can be easily replaced by Libre Office or Google Spreadsheets.
- oefrha 5y ago
  Except of course people send .doc/.docx around and expect .doc/.docx to be sent around. Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero. Speaking from experience dealing with near computer illiterates, including my mom. Of course you can argue that it’s easy to learn to export to .doc/.docx.
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Or you can share your Google doc around and let them edit it without creating new files.
    - r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
      Problem with that is that either they have to have a Google account that they are willing to share with you or you have to make it so that anyone with the link can edit the doc, which is a big no no usually.
  - timeon 5y ago
    > Ask the average person to do some word processing and send the result to you, the chance of receiving something else is close to zero. Sometimes even if you just ask for photo.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago

29athrowaway 5y ago

Windows is for the people that knowingly pay to build their own digital prison with ads, where they will be beaten up by other prisoners.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
No, it’s for the average computer user who uses it because megacorps like Microsoft and Adobe need to siphon a profit somehow. People don’t choose to use Windows. It’s a decision made by many of the same industry titans who have increasing influence on the direction of Linux as well. But Linux will never serve the masses because Microsoft and Adobe won’t allow it.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  Linux already serves the masses pretty well.

er4hn 5y ago

> But God help you if you need to do multimedia desktop publishing or do Photoshop-level editing of photos or (in my case) do anything requiring a Common Access Card. Common Access Card's are one of my favorite examples of regulatory capture. You can use them on any OS you want, as long as it's Window's. The software to use them on Linux is free to anyone with military credentials and has no good way to test it works except by logging onto a military website.

GlenTheMachine 5y ago
They now work nearly flawlessly on macOS (this did not used to be the case). I tried it for a year on Linux. Really, I truly tried. I threw out my MacBook and bought a Dell, put Ubuntu on it, and tried to integrate it into a DoD corporate network environment. It was hell. And it was LONELY hell.

mizzao 5y ago

It's always the random stuff like Bluetooth working haphazardly, webcam not having the right driver, USB-C not working with your 4K monitor, or some other cutting edge feature with a dealbreaking kernel bug that gets you. I have an XPS 7390 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (developer edition, so it shipped with Linux) that I'm afraid to upgrade to 20.04 because of a known Bluetooth issue that would prevent me from taking any zoom calls. And the Bluetooth already barely works as is. I do all my zoom calls on Windows. Have you tried WSL lately? It's increasingly reduced the necessity for a dedicated Linux machine.

coupdejarnac 5y ago
I have a Precision 7540 that came with 18.04. I wasn't too satisfied with the experience out of the box. However, after upgrading to 20.04, things have been nearly flawless. I installed the default 20.04 image without anything from Dell. You might try installing a more recent version of Ubuntu.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

It’s not ironic. It’s by design. Too many companies depend on closed-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average user, so they will never allow Linux to serve the masses while also allowing it to remain open and free.

r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
To reverse this. Too many companies depend on open-source ecosystems to siphon a profit from the average dev by persuading them to work for free. Foss isn't free. It merely shifts the costs from users and corporations to that one guy in Nebraska. Foss came about because RMS wanted to fix his printer, other academics wanted to share their code, devs didn't want to have to go through finance to buy software, and internet companies wanted to reduce their costs. The rest is just post hoc rationalization.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

> Yes, if you need your computer to check email and visit websites, and maybe deal with digital photos and do a little light word processing, Linux is rock solid stable and more than up to the task I would go further and say that browsing, email, and light word processing doesn't require a laptop/desktop at all, whatever the OS - this is what a tablet (perhaps with some kind of keyboard) would be perfect for.

amelius 5y ago

> perfect for two groups of people: the nearly computer illiterate, and coders But what if their children all use FaceTime to communicate? I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple.

wyclif 5y ago
I think the illiterate place is already taken by Apple Except that most software developers at FAANG and other large companies almost always use MacBooks.
- amelius 5y ago
  You are reversing the argument.

daniel-s 5y ago

Isn't the "computer illiterate" the majority of people. Those other activities are working professionals in relatively niche fields.

phendrenad2 5y ago

I've found this to be true too. And unfortunately, those "in-between" users make up 99% of all users.

pjmlp 5y ago

Better not watch YouTube in the process though. Getting hardware video decoding working is hit-and-miss to this day, even with forced flags, which naturally the computer illiterate don't have a clue.

thedevelopnik 5y ago

Yeah my MIL had a 2012 Dell that my son uses at her house. It was running Windows 7, and took about 10 minutes to boot and the same to shut down. I put Pop_OS on it. It has Firefox and Minecraft which are the only two things he cares about, and it runs so much more quickly. She wanted to throw it out but now it’s less junk in the pile.

deleted 5y ago

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stjohnswarts 5y ago

But how many people to multimedia desktop publishing or photoshop level editing of photos? I bet it's far less than the number of coders and people who just need a system for web browsing and light office suite usage and other "light" tasks. Linux is perfectly fine for those people. the only people I can think that aren't "almost there" are hardcore gamers and people who need professional software that only runs in windows or macos. Most things in business are in the cloud these days anyway.