4 ms·

I agree and disagree. The driver issue is frustrating, but I think this is mostly a choice of hardware issue. If you can get a wifi chip with officially support

by willjp 4y ago

I agree and disagree. The driver issue is frustrating, but I think this is mostly a choice of hardware issue. If you can get a wifi chip with officially supported drivers it’s pretty painless. Broadcom, in my experience have consistently been the most painful. There are ui configuration options, but the last I tried them (long ago) they felt inconsistent and painful. It quickly became clear that you needed a terminal to solve most issues, and when you didn’t start that way, you’re now faced with both an uncomfortable environment, and a problem to solve. So I opted to get used to the terminal, and I totally fell in love with it. For my (not experienced) level of use, I find that it’s just several different systems. Once you know the name of the system, you can read it’s docs, find it’s configs, etc. I think one of the reasons for the recent popularity of arch is that you are given the choice of, and are made familiar with several of these systems to build your install. Maybe you’re using netctl, dhcpcd, or networkmanager - but you made that choice, and probably the initial configuration. I don’t like the control panel, and the registry is difficult to navigate. Suffering through deeply nested menus to find a setting is a horrible experience for me. I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords. I have more tools at my disposal. Plus then I can version control and automatically provision a new machine instead of a hunt through ever-changing uis. You’re right that the original configuration takes some extra research and time, but I find for my own setups that the automated setup is worth the investment. This is all very subjective —- I certainly don’t think you’re wrong, but I wanted to share some perspective on how it can be used (in the off chance you weren’t aware) - i hope it might make it more friendly the next time you cross paths :).

kaba0 4y ago
Hell, if you happen to have a supported hardware, linux will give you the best, out-of-the-box experience with it (no “searching for a solution online” and whatever windows doing)
CoolCold 4y ago
> I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords Do you think it's right way in general? If yes, please join my imaginary experiment case: * you are part of Corporate IT support team * your company is let's say Korean speaking and your OS interface (locale) is Korean as well * you have phone call for support request on for something simple like changing desktop background or changing laptop sleep interval be not 5 minutes but 15 I can imagine in say Windows 11, someone press "win", type "battery" in local language and finds the needed setting, but how someone would "grep" for something in non-native language - I'm not sure. ---- I can imagine more examples, say - what is the way to ask for remote assistance or MDM or disk encryption rollout by CorpIT or wiping data in case of loss or... which would demonstrate to me - it's not ready for broader audience beyond 5% of deviation of population (nerds). And your grepping example, to me, says - such use cases are not even considered when someone says "linux is ready for desktop".
- willjp 4y ago
  Internationalization is a strong argument. I don’t like it, but you might be right. I’d still prefer a layer of abstraction between config file keys/comments so your configuration can be localized, but there are additional issues here with user-vs-author comments which the UI solution wouldn’t need to consider. Of course you are correct, I couldn’t imagine teaching grep to my grandpa, most relatives, or even all coworkers. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it would be lovely if this was always an option. I’d much prefer having control, than an opaque system that migrates my settings forwards. Maybe I’m advocating for a system that supports both? Thank you for posting, I never considered this, I need to think about it.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    I'm glad if it helped you to take a look from another angle. Then probably this would be helpful too - try to imagine why the most popular Linux based user facing systems - Android and Chrome OS, are not any kind of "traditional" Linux desktop distribution alike. Does it says something on users? What wonders me as well - when Linux desktops start to finally use telemetry and stop being blind on real user cases, not on the imaginary nerds needs. It will give great productivity boost. Microsoft has it and they know their auditorium. The techies who knows in person how logging is important on fixing bugs - has no such logs! Ridiculous to me.

by willjp 4y ago

kaba0 4y ago

Hell, if you happen to have a supported hardware, linux will give you the best, out-of-the-box experience with it (no “searching for a solution online” and whatever windows doing)

CoolCold 4y ago

> I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords Do you think it's right way in general? If yes, please join my imaginary experiment case: * you are part of Corporate IT support team * your company is let's say Korean speaking and your OS interface (locale) is Korean as well * you have phone call for support request on for something simple like changing desktop background or changing laptop sleep interval be not 5 minutes but 15 I can imagine in say Windows 11, someone press "win", type "battery" in local language and finds the needed setting, but how someone would "grep" for something in non-native language - I'm not sure. ---- I can imagine more examples, say - what is the way to ask for remote assistance or MDM or disk encryption rollout by CorpIT or wiping data in case of loss or... which would demonstrate to me - it's not ready for broader audience beyond 5% of deviation of population (nerds). And your grepping example, to me, says - such use cases are not even considered when someone says "linux is ready for desktop".

willjp 4y ago
Internationalization is a strong argument. I don’t like it, but you might be right. I’d still prefer a layer of abstraction between config file keys/comments so your configuration can be localized, but there are additional issues here with user-vs-author comments which the UI solution wouldn’t need to consider. Of course you are correct, I couldn’t imagine teaching grep to my grandpa, most relatives, or even all coworkers. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it would be lovely if this was always an option. I’d much prefer having control, than an opaque system that migrates my settings forwards. Maybe I’m advocating for a system that supports both? Thank you for posting, I never considered this, I need to think about it.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  I'm glad if it helped you to take a look from another angle. Then probably this would be helpful too - try to imagine why the most popular Linux based user facing systems - Android and Chrome OS, are not any kind of "traditional" Linux desktop distribution alike. Does it says something on users? What wonders me as well - when Linux desktops start to finally use telemetry and stop being blind on real user cases, not on the imaginary nerds needs. It will give great productivity boost. Microsoft has it and they know their auditorium. The techies who knows in person how logging is important on fixing bugs - has no such logs! Ridiculous to me.