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The Linux desktop is its own worst enemy. The fragmentation, the inconsistency, the need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things, and the difficulty of

The Linux desktop is its own worst enemy. The fragmentation, the inconsistency, the need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things, and the difficulty of dealing with driver problems for inexperienced users all do more damage than anything Microsoft attempted to do.

29athrowaway 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Windows is perfectly usable, unfortunately. Microsoft's packaging isn't terrible, and web browsers support it just fine, which makes it good enough for the majority of users. While I haven't used Windows in quite some time, I totally get why people still use it. It really does "just work" on most hardware. The parent comment was on the right track, I think. The Linux desktop constantly sabotages itself, and things like the x11/Wayland rift, the Snap/Flatpak vs Native Packaging battle, and all of the new abstractions do not lend themselves well to usability. Pretty much every open source project has made this mistake at some point, but I think the most consistent party that works against it's community is GNOME. Not only do they ignore the feedback from their users (a problem so pathological it's a meme by now), but they don't ask for help when they make new changes. Inevitably, this leads to worse UI (like the GNOME 40+ dock, the worse GTK widgets, the ugliness that is Adwaita, etc.), which leads to Linux being seen as neckbeard software again. If you enjoy Linux, I encourage you to use it; I use it too, and it's great for a lot of stuff. Everyone responsible for marketing Linux to a wider audience has failed though, and the effort to replace Windows with OSS is looking increasingly Sisyphean.
  - liotier 4y ago
    > things like the x11/Wayland rift, the Snap/Flatpak vs Native Packaging battle, and all of the new abstractions do not lend themselves well to usability Which is why opiniated distributions exist, so that users get a coherent environment from people who made the choices for them.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    You can have Snap, Flatpaks and native packaging running side by side so... and Ubuntu has a unified interface for all of them (the "Software" application). So yeah, another non-problem for the end user. The end user doesn't have to know what X11 and Wayland are. You don't need to know this to use most software. Just use what your distro provides. Most of the complexity you mention is hidden from the end user.
    - timfsu 4y ago
      As a developer, we've had to tell users to switch to X11 to use certain features that are unsupported on Wayland (related to screensharing), so I'd disagree that these things are hidden from end users. Wayland is fine for the everyday use case but there's a lot of software out there that is built on tools like xev and xprop that have been part of the ecosystem for decades.
      - toastal 4y ago
        There's also color management which is not yet supported in Wayland if you need monitor calibration or to do any print work.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Yep. Wayland is nice, and there are components in it that I like, but it gets destroyed by x11 in terms of feature-completeness. Even adding wlroots doesn't get close to the out-of-the-box capabilities x11 offered.
- packetlost 4y ago
  As someone who's work gave me a brand new Dell XPS 15 with broken Wi-Fi drivers out of the box, I kindly disagree with this. Linux is an absolute shitshow unless you happen to have "well supported" hardware. I've had far more problems getting and keeping even Ubuntu stable (oddly, Arch has been the most stable so far) than Windows. Windows still sucks for a lot of reasons, but drivers are not one of them.
wink 4y ago
I dunno, I'd say it depends on how you like to work. GUI program not running on Linux? Find the CLI call, run in terminal, grep and analyze the logs, find the error. GUI program not running on Windows? Eh, good luck digging through the eventlog and 90% see nothing.
maze-le 4y ago
I consider the "need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things" a big plus to be honest. I work with windows machines from time to time and wish PS would be simpler and more expressive.
selfhoster11 4y ago
> the need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things, and the difficulty of dealing with driver problems for inexperienced users Have you used Windows recently? At least the former is a growing problem. Dropping down into the registry to change or create keys is no cakewalk either. If you're an inexperienced user, you're in trouble on Linux and Windows both.

29athrowaway 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago
Windows is perfectly usable, unfortunately. Microsoft's packaging isn't terrible, and web browsers support it just fine, which makes it good enough for the majority of users. While I haven't used Windows in quite some time, I totally get why people still use it. It really does "just work" on most hardware. The parent comment was on the right track, I think. The Linux desktop constantly sabotages itself, and things like the x11/Wayland rift, the Snap/Flatpak vs Native Packaging battle, and all of the new abstractions do not lend themselves well to usability. Pretty much every open source project has made this mistake at some point, but I think the most consistent party that works against it's community is GNOME. Not only do they ignore the feedback from their users (a problem so pathological it's a meme by now), but they don't ask for help when they make new changes. Inevitably, this leads to worse UI (like the GNOME 40+ dock, the worse GTK widgets, the ugliness that is Adwaita, etc.), which leads to Linux being seen as neckbeard software again. If you enjoy Linux, I encourage you to use it; I use it too, and it's great for a lot of stuff. Everyone responsible for marketing Linux to a wider audience has failed though, and the effort to replace Windows with OSS is looking increasingly Sisyphean.
- liotier 4y ago
  > things like the x11/Wayland rift, the Snap/Flatpak vs Native Packaging battle, and all of the new abstractions do not lend themselves well to usability Which is why opiniated distributions exist, so that users get a coherent environment from people who made the choices for them.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  You can have Snap, Flatpaks and native packaging running side by side so... and Ubuntu has a unified interface for all of them (the "Software" application). So yeah, another non-problem for the end user. The end user doesn't have to know what X11 and Wayland are. You don't need to know this to use most software. Just use what your distro provides. Most of the complexity you mention is hidden from the end user.
  - timfsu 4y ago
    As a developer, we've had to tell users to switch to X11 to use certain features that are unsupported on Wayland (related to screensharing), so I'd disagree that these things are hidden from end users. Wayland is fine for the everyday use case but there's a lot of software out there that is built on tools like xev and xprop that have been part of the ecosystem for decades.
    - toastal 4y ago
      There's also color management which is not yet supported in Wayland if you need monitor calibration or to do any print work.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Yep. Wayland is nice, and there are components in it that I like, but it gets destroyed by x11 in terms of feature-completeness. Even adding wlroots doesn't get close to the out-of-the-box capabilities x11 offered.
packetlost 4y ago
As someone who's work gave me a brand new Dell XPS 15 with broken Wi-Fi drivers out of the box, I kindly disagree with this. Linux is an absolute shitshow unless you happen to have "well supported" hardware. I've had far more problems getting and keeping even Ubuntu stable (oddly, Arch has been the most stable so far) than Windows. Windows still sucks for a lot of reasons, but drivers are not one of them.

wink 4y ago

I dunno, I'd say it depends on how you like to work. GUI program not running on Linux? Find the CLI call, run in terminal, grep and analyze the logs, find the error. GUI program not running on Windows? Eh, good luck digging through the eventlog and 90% see nothing.

maze-le 4y ago

I consider the "need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things" a big plus to be honest. I work with windows machines from time to time and wish PS would be simpler and more expressive.

selfhoster11 4y ago

> the need to drop into a terminal to debug certain things, and the difficulty of dealing with driver problems for inexperienced users Have you used Windows recently? At least the former is a growing problem. Dropping down into the registry to change or create keys is no cakewalk either. If you're an inexperienced user, you're in trouble on Linux and Windows both.