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I feel like linux only works for 2 categories of people: 1. The extreme laymen that do essentially nothing outside of the web browser 2. The tech savant that

I feel like linux only works for 2 categories of people: 1. The extreme laymen that do essentially nothing outside of the web browser 2. The tech savant that has the time, energy, and motivation to spend the countless hours required to get Linux to run anything sufficiently complex. Those in-between typically have the desire to do more than they are able to easily do OOTB with Linux, but also lack the technical ability to actually do it.

dblohm7 4y ago
You're precisely correct, IMHO. I use Windows on my desktop primarily because I don't have the patience to deal with (2).
p4bl0 4y ago
I would have agreed with that 15 and maybe 10 years ago. Nowadays, do you really think this is still true? At the university I work at some of the administrative staff with little to no technical knowledge are using Ubuntu and doing essentially the same thing they would on Windows or Mac, and that really not only web browsing, nor LibreOffice usage. For example they have to use custom horrible tools developed years ago that look just as familiarly awefull on Linux as they do on Windows or Mac (I'm talking of Apogée if any French academics pass by).
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  >I would have agreed with that 15 and maybe 10 years ago. Nowadays, do you really think this is still true? Last month we had six linux desktops at work fail to boot after an upgrade using the disto's built-in update manager because of video card driver issues. These were all workstations manned by data scientists with brains the size of planets who foolishly thought that keeping their systems up-to-date for security reasons was a good idea. "Oh but that's Nvidia's faul.." Doesn't matter. Has never mattered. Will never matter. Upwards of 80% of all blue-screens that trashed Me's reputation were crappy S3 and ATI driver problems. I'm used to it because (to ward off distro bigots) at home I use a Linux distro so cool and advanced that you've never heard of it so I fixed the issues even though that's about six levels below my pay grade. That being said I only use Linux at home for work. And I hardly ever touch it once I get it working in case an update screws up OFED, or CUDA, or some other unresolvable package dependency hell conflict nightmare. "Oh the most current release changed the path to 'foo' even though that had been the standard for 40 years because some maintainer got a wild hair up their ass and wanted things to be 'elegant' and we didn't even bother to create a symlink" or "you can't have that version of a package because sixteen layers down is a dependency we don't want to have to deal with upgrading just do it yourself lol" every couple of months? Yuck. For everything else: macOS, "Because I ain't got time for that shit."
  - jamespo 4y ago
    Well you won't have an unsupported videocard on a mac as you can't plug one in. One day you'll find your mac will no longer upgrade though.
    - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
      >Well you won't have an unsupported videocard on a mac as you can't plug one in. “That’s… why I’m here.” (.gif)
      - p4bl0 4y ago
        I think the point is that you can buy your hardware from vendors that officially support Linux and get the same benefits as Apple's all included material and system. This is especially true if you're willing to put as much money as you would to buy your computer from Apple.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    > Last month we had six linux desktops at work fail to boot after an upgrade using the disto's built-in update manager because of video card driver issues We had a similar issue with updated official drivers at a previous gig at a corporate- but leading to BSoDs on Windows using DELL provided drivers (does that count as a Windows distro?). It was re-solved by downgrading the display driver and re-imaging the whole fleet. At a certain scale: you are bound to run into driver issues - unless you're on Mac with its homogenous hardware, and don't upgrade too early.
tryptophan 4y ago
I think you are right. I tried linux recently. Was surprisingly nice in some ways...but constant bugs. First it was my bluetooth being strange to pair. Then mouse movement/scrolling just felt wierd. Gnome file picker being shit. Then app scaling issues everywhere... Just one annoyance after another. Not something I have the energy to deal with.
- antifa 4y ago
  Have you tried Garuda Linux? Preferably with one of the sane DE like mate/xfce, not the default "dragonized" thing which is a crazy mess.
fsckboy 4y ago
> 2. The tech savant yes but you're saying things in a slightly negative way and not mentioning, for the tech savant it's not just good, but better.

dblohm7 4y ago

You're precisely correct, IMHO. I use Windows on my desktop primarily because I don't have the patience to deal with (2).

p4bl0 4y ago

I would have agreed with that 15 and maybe 10 years ago. Nowadays, do you really think this is still true? At the university I work at some of the administrative staff with little to no technical knowledge are using Ubuntu and doing essentially the same thing they would on Windows or Mac, and that really not only web browsing, nor LibreOffice usage. For example they have to use custom horrible tools developed years ago that look just as familiarly awefull on Linux as they do on Windows or Mac (I'm talking of Apogée if any French academics pass by).

rocket_surgeron 4y ago
>I would have agreed with that 15 and maybe 10 years ago. Nowadays, do you really think this is still true? Last month we had six linux desktops at work fail to boot after an upgrade using the disto's built-in update manager because of video card driver issues. These were all workstations manned by data scientists with brains the size of planets who foolishly thought that keeping their systems up-to-date for security reasons was a good idea. "Oh but that's Nvidia's faul.." Doesn't matter. Has never mattered. Will never matter. Upwards of 80% of all blue-screens that trashed Me's reputation were crappy S3 and ATI driver problems. I'm used to it because (to ward off distro bigots) at home I use a Linux distro so cool and advanced that you've never heard of it so I fixed the issues even though that's about six levels below my pay grade. That being said I only use Linux at home for work. And I hardly ever touch it once I get it working in case an update screws up OFED, or CUDA, or some other unresolvable package dependency hell conflict nightmare. "Oh the most current release changed the path to 'foo' even though that had been the standard for 40 years because some maintainer got a wild hair up their ass and wanted things to be 'elegant' and we didn't even bother to create a symlink" or "you can't have that version of a package because sixteen layers down is a dependency we don't want to have to deal with upgrading just do it yourself lol" every couple of months? Yuck. For everything else: macOS, "Because I ain't got time for that shit."
- jamespo 4y ago
  Well you won't have an unsupported videocard on a mac as you can't plug one in. One day you'll find your mac will no longer upgrade though.
  - rocket_surgeron 4y ago
    >Well you won't have an unsupported videocard on a mac as you can't plug one in. “That’s… why I’m here.” (.gif)
    - p4bl0 4y ago
      I think the point is that you can buy your hardware from vendors that officially support Linux and get the same benefits as Apple's all included material and system. This is especially true if you're willing to put as much money as you would to buy your computer from Apple.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  > Last month we had six linux desktops at work fail to boot after an upgrade using the disto's built-in update manager because of video card driver issues We had a similar issue with updated official drivers at a previous gig at a corporate- but leading to BSoDs on Windows using DELL provided drivers (does that count as a Windows distro?). It was re-solved by downgrading the display driver and re-imaging the whole fleet. At a certain scale: you are bound to run into driver issues - unless you're on Mac with its homogenous hardware, and don't upgrade too early.

tryptophan 4y ago

I think you are right. I tried linux recently. Was surprisingly nice in some ways...but constant bugs. First it was my bluetooth being strange to pair. Then mouse movement/scrolling just felt wierd. Gnome file picker being shit. Then app scaling issues everywhere... Just one annoyance after another. Not something I have the energy to deal with.

antifa 4y ago
Have you tried Garuda Linux? Preferably with one of the sane DE like mate/xfce, not the default "dragonized" thing which is a crazy mess.

fsckboy 4y ago

> 2. The tech savant yes but you're saying things in a slightly negative way and not mentioning, for the tech savant it's not just good, but better.