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Absolutely false. It may not be for you, but it is not remotely a mess. I do everything from DevOps work, to gaming, to audio production in desktop Linux. It ab

Absolutely false. It may not be for you, but it is not remotely a mess. I do everything from DevOps work, to gaming, to audio production in desktop Linux. It absolutely is a viable alternative for millions of people. But I concede, not for everyone. But your hyperbole is plainly false and likely to deter folks who would otherwise thrive in Linux.

brimble 5y ago
Heavy Linux user since about 2000, was my main desktop (and laptop!) operating system from about 2002-2011. Mainly Mandrake (mostly early on), Ubuntu, Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro), and Debian. I most recently gave it a serious go about a year ago (Fedora and Ubuntu, plus some Void [Void was pretty nice!]) Can confirm it's a mess and there was no hyperbole in the original description. The only reason I didn't realize it back in the 00s was because I was only comparing it to Windows and pre-X macOS (well, and BeOS, but I was under no illusions that was a viable alternative). And, spyware and adware aside (not to dismiss those, they're why I still consider it unsuited for serious work) Windows got a lot better over that span. In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to, and a week later I'd have told you "no, Linux isn't that hard to keep up!" I'd trained myself to avoid doing a bunch of stuff with my computers because it would rarely work and often trigger glitches or crashes (like drag-n-drop operations). Now, when I periodically go back to it, that stuff slaps me in the face so hard it's impossible for me to miss, now that I'm not used to being slapped in the face daily. Missing functionality and software doesn't help either.
- Underphil 5y ago
  It's difficult to 'confirm' something that's just your experience. I, conversely, can confirm it's not a mess in that case. I will admit there are times when I have dig into the system a little to resolve a niggling issue but I consider that the price I pay for avoiding telemetry, vendor lock-in and a mostly proprietary ecosystem. I have not experienced 'drag and drop operations crashing'. '30 minutes' or a 'whole day fucking with dumb shit' hasn't been my experience for many years. I maintain it is not a mess. It is not ideal, but a 'mess' IS hyperbole.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  This really seems hard to credit at face value. The thing that most strikes me is > Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro) > In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to Gentoo really isn't as much a distro as a personal distribution construction kit given that you can trivially swap out major components and put the resulting pieces together however you please rebuilt with any set of options you most prefer. If you were losing a lot of time its possible that this experience wasn't worthwhile meanwhile other people were using gentoo with the just the software they needed and not constantly messing with it and it was presumably working for them. Having used a derivative of Gentoo I can say with confidence that it IS a lot more work and things that are set up for you rely on YOU to set them up including even building software with options that will enable the feature you desire to actually work. I multiple times ran into software that didn't work as expected because I hadn't built it with that option and started reading the use flags on software before installing it. Because Linux is a large ecosystem with software provided by groups ranging from professional companies and excellent amateurs all the way to your cousin bob and his 3 friends you are going to see a variety of differing experiences as I'm sure you are aware. I have several times over 18 years installed distros to realize that something was holy shit wrong with the way they were run but as it comes out I was out a few hours and moved on to one of many better run software projects. If you find software including distributions/desktops/browsers/tools that you have to work around random crashes consider installing different software. There is plenty of functional, stable, useful software for Linux. Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't.
  - brimble 5y ago
    As noted, I used other distros, also for years at a time. They weren't much better, just harder to fix when they broke (usually on upgrades... or when trying to use new hardware... or because I tried to do something that should work, but it didn't). The time on Gentoo just means that I'm pretty good at fixing the "just works" distros when they "just don't". > Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't. Fedora and Ubuntu both served me soggy noodles and burnt meat about a year ago. Got a better suggestion?

brimble 5y ago

Heavy Linux user since about 2000, was my main desktop (and laptop!) operating system from about 2002-2011. Mainly Mandrake (mostly early on), Ubuntu, Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro), and Debian. I most recently gave it a serious go about a year ago (Fedora and Ubuntu, plus some Void [Void was pretty nice!]) Can confirm it's a mess and there was no hyperbole in the original description. The only reason I didn't realize it back in the 00s was because I was only comparing it to Windows and pre-X macOS (well, and BeOS, but I was under no illusions that was a viable alternative). And, spyware and adware aside (not to dismiss those, they're why I still consider it unsuited for serious work) Windows got a lot better over that span. In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to, and a week later I'd have told you "no, Linux isn't that hard to keep up!" I'd trained myself to avoid doing a bunch of stuff with my computers because it would rarely work and often trigger glitches or crashes (like drag-n-drop operations). Now, when I periodically go back to it, that stuff slaps me in the face so hard it's impossible for me to miss, now that I'm not used to being slapped in the face daily. Missing functionality and software doesn't help either.

Underphil 5y ago
It's difficult to 'confirm' something that's just your experience. I, conversely, can confirm it's not a mess in that case. I will admit there are times when I have dig into the system a little to resolve a niggling issue but I consider that the price I pay for avoiding telemetry, vendor lock-in and a mostly proprietary ecosystem. I have not experienced 'drag and drop operations crashing'. '30 minutes' or a 'whole day fucking with dumb shit' hasn't been my experience for many years. I maintain it is not a mess. It is not ideal, but a 'mess' IS hyperbole.
michaelmrose 5y ago
This really seems hard to credit at face value. The thing that most strikes me is > Gentoo (on the laptop, and elsewhere—probably my most-used personal distro) > In hindsight I can tell that I'd become blind to all the time I was losing to it. I'd lose 30 minutes or a whole day fucking with dumb shit that I never should have had to Gentoo really isn't as much a distro as a personal distribution construction kit given that you can trivially swap out major components and put the resulting pieces together however you please rebuilt with any set of options you most prefer. If you were losing a lot of time its possible that this experience wasn't worthwhile meanwhile other people were using gentoo with the just the software they needed and not constantly messing with it and it was presumably working for them. Having used a derivative of Gentoo I can say with confidence that it IS a lot more work and things that are set up for you rely on YOU to set them up including even building software with options that will enable the feature you desire to actually work. I multiple times ran into software that didn't work as expected because I hadn't built it with that option and started reading the use flags on software before installing it. Because Linux is a large ecosystem with software provided by groups ranging from professional companies and excellent amateurs all the way to your cousin bob and his 3 friends you are going to see a variety of differing experiences as I'm sure you are aware. I have several times over 18 years installed distros to realize that something was holy shit wrong with the way they were run but as it comes out I was out a few hours and moved on to one of many better run software projects. If you find software including distributions/desktops/browsers/tools that you have to work around random crashes consider installing different software. There is plenty of functional, stable, useful software for Linux. Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't.
- brimble 5y ago
  As noted, I used other distros, also for years at a time. They weren't much better, just harder to fix when they broke (usually on upgrades... or when trying to use new hardware... or because I tried to do something that should work, but it didn't). The time on Gentoo just means that I'm pretty good at fixing the "just works" distros when they "just don't". > Your complaints kind of read like someone who has found the worst Italian restaurant in their city and loudly exclaimed that Italian food is universally awful because it consists mostly of soggy noddles and burnt meat. Well it doesn't. Fedora and Ubuntu both served me soggy noodles and burnt meat about a year ago. Got a better suggestion?