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Beginner friendly distos seem to have solved the package management problem, and there are adequate desktop environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and e
by Silhouette 5y ago
Beginner friendly distos seem to have solved the package management problem, and there are adequate desktop environments, office suites, browsers, gaming, and everything else.
But for professional use "adequate" doesn't cut it. Professionals need "good" and judge that by the standards of what is available on other platforms. 95% compatibility with the industry standard doesn't cut it. 80% of the features working at least 90% of the time doesn't cut it. Free instead of paying a few hundred bucks for the extra percentage points isn't even a question worth asking from a business perspective.
Linux has great software, sometimes the best available on any platform, in certain areas. Developer tools is an obvious one. Servers is another. Some of the multimedia stuff is good. The picture for running games is getting better all the time even if most of them are still ports of some kind rather than truly native applications.
But as much as I hate to say it, the reality is that in most areas that most users are going to care about the Linux ecosystem is still lacking in both quality and quantity. I'd bet on the evolution of web technology disrupting Windows long before the Linux desktop does. But that is hardly a solution to the phone-home and forced-update problems that a lot of us don't like about modern Windows.
- ReaLNero 5y ago> But for professional use "adequate" doesn't cut it. However bad Linux is at package management, Windows is even worse. So I'm not sure how your argument convinces people that Windows package managers are superior?
- SteveMoody73 5y agoMost business software can be installed by the network admins, software that can't doesn't matter for a lot of these companies and just won't be used. Even in my smaller but rapidly growing company they are doing more to restrict what software can be installed. Easy install of packages isn't what a large company wants
- Silhouette 5y agoI didn't say anything about package managers. What counts is the software that is available. The best package manager in the world isn't worth anything if it doesn't have the packages that you need.