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The main sentiment in the article which I don't think I've seen addressed in other comments is the fervency of the people attacking the mere notion that Linux i

• nordsieck 4y ago
  > it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view. It's extremely easy for people to absorb what they do into their identity.
• goodoldneon 4y ago
  Maybe Windows fans holding onto one of its last remaining advantages? I have a Windows desktop solely for games. I’d be 100% done with Windows if all the games I play worked flawlessly on Linux
  • chapium 4y ago
    All of the games on my Switch run on linux flawlessly :)
  • zamalek 4y ago
    90% of games work flawlessly on Linux. 10% of that 90% work better.
  • mikrl 4y ago
    I’m working on running windows in a VM with near native performance and then running that under gentoo. Not technically divesting myself of windows, but having it abstracted from my bare metal will give me a certain peace of mind and smugness. I think anticheat freaks out on one or two games I don’t play doing it like that.
  • Accacin 4y ago
    I did the same until a few weeks ago. I then decided that if it doesn't work on Linux I'm not interested anymore. Same with games that I want to play but don't natively support ultra-wide resolutions (looking at you, Fallout 4). The reason I gave up is because most games that I want to play but don't work is down to anti-cheat software.
    • LooseMarmoset 4y ago
      I switched to Linux full-time a couple years ago. I had a Windows desktop for the same reasons - games. Once Valve incorporated Proton, it was all over for Windows for me. I already used Linux (Debian/Devuan) full-time at work on my laptops and servers. I don't miss Windows at all. Running Devuan right now on an AMD B450 with a 5600, 64GB RAM, and a 1080ti. I will admit that video driver updates are a little more involved than on Windows, but since I don't have a mainstream Linux distro like Ubuntu, that's to be expected.
    • pxc 4y ago
      I basically went the same way a few years ago. It's a shame that there are still gaps, and I understand why it doesn't work for everyone. But if you really enjoy using Linux or you're really sick of Windows and you're willing to try limiting yourself to Linux-compatible games, you will find that there are more games than you have time to play. If you're willing to pair Linux with a gaming console, you get coverage that's more than good enough for me.
• rhaway84773 4y ago
  I think one of the best things that happened to me is that my desktop’s onboard graphics card died sometime mid 2021 or so. What that meant was that Windows was incapable of booting my computer (even though I have a perfectly functional external graphics card) but Ubuntu was able to do so flawlessly on the first install. So any “You’re an idiot to use Linux on the desktop because XYZ” comments are super easy for me to brush off. It doesn’t matter what Linux doesn’t do or does wrong, it’s given me a working computer, something neither Windows or MacOS could.
• atoav 4y ago
  IMO Linux Desktops can be the best option for both for a certain type of developer¹ and for extremely unskilled users². ¹ e.g. web, system development, backend, admin. KDE Plasma is both extremely usable and customizable. I haven't missed anything in comparison with Windows and Mac systems (in fact I always miss stuff when using the other systems). ² I switched my parents to Ubuntu a while back and it has been a surprisingly good decision (90% less support call about weird popup windows, missing icons, etc.) Linux comes with it's own challenges, but compared to 10 years ago most of the stuff just works now
  • wkat4242 4y ago
    I really love KDE's power user configurability as much as I hate Gnome's opinionated design :) I moved to Linux because Apple pissed me off too much so gnome was too much of the same. Though I can see how it does work for other people. So great that Linux still has choices.
    • wankle 4y ago
      I've never used Apple, never liked Jobs or the too high prices. KDE rules, Gnome 2 was good but was never a fan of Gnome 3. KDE has done it right (speaking as a technical user).
  • paulwilsondev 4y ago
    same - the only issue I run into is printer
    • diydsp 4y ago
      Same gah. Also bluetooth. TIOATOA solves the prob tho
      • _emacsomancer_ 4y ago
        What is TIOATOA?
• mnky9800n 4y ago
  Linux is amazing but I still prefer to ssh to it over using the desktop. Mostly because there's always something fiddly to do.
• smoldesu 4y ago
  Well, Linux has had a rough decade. The messaging around Wayland was like a stubbed toe for many users, with a lot of people trying it and denouncing it for being unfinished (a completely fair criticism). Now that Wayland is starting to get finished, the 'just works' quotient is increasing quite a bit for Linux, and people can share their recent success stories with a bit more impunity. It's not unreasonable to assume Linux is bad, it's only unreasonable to assume nothing has changed since the last time you tried it. Make of that what you will.
  • siraben 4y ago
    Sinking a lot of time into Wayland (via Sway WM) around the pandemic is what finally got me off Linux on my Mac laptop (yes I've worked around the usual issues, it was an arbitrary switch). It's a solid operating system and the configuration can be powerful, but having to mess around with per-monitor screen scaling, installing extra software to get screen sharing to work, learning way too much about pulseaudio and the bluetooth stack to route audio around correctly, I decided it was not worth the effort to get what comes out-of-the-box in commercial operating systems. Modern software is complicated and we really expect so many things to somehow work correctly that it's any wonder that things work at all (and they often break in unexpected ways anyway).
    • smoldesu 4y ago
      Starting with Sway is not going to give you anything out of the box. Both KDE and GNOME will give you nice settings for display scaling, screen sharing, networking and pre-configured audio. Not to accuse you of shooting yourself in the foot, but a lot of these things are much nicer managed by complete desktops.
      • microtonal 4y ago
        Fractional scaling does not work at all in GNOME. There is an experimental hack to enable it, but all your X11 applications will be blurry. Screen sharing and Bluetooth doesn't properly work half of the time when video conferencing.
      • 4y ago
• moonchrome 4y ago
  I haven't noticed this. I am negative about linux on desktop because it has been a major disappoinment every time I try it. Last two attempts - ever since I've built my 5900x desktop last summer I can't even get fedora to boot from stick without freezing. I don't have the energy to deal with such issues anymore - I've spent years rebuilding custom drivers, dealing with upgrade breaking my system, etc. Same desktop - windows just works - needed to download a few drivers manually - other than that - plug and play. And MacOS is next level in that regard. I dislike Windows choices very much but Linux desktop is just not an option if you want low maintenance/streamlined experience.
  • Zhyl 4y ago
    Your comment here is pretty typical of a medium grade HN response. That is to say: * Thorough and well thought through. Well written (unlike, say, Reddit) * Polite, doesn't attack the person you're responding to or represent their position as ridiculous However * Entirely rooted in personal experience and often missing the broader point or use case being described in OP. In this case I can see that you're describing why you yourself are negative on the Linux desktop (which is on topic), but responses like this miss the context of Steam Deck, Proton and imply that the issues found are never going to improve, to the point you are writing off the whole concept of a Linux platform for all use cases. On HN this seems to appear a lot and is used very often to stifle tangential discussions. A thread about how many games now run on Proton will have at least one and likely many people writing a list of all the technical issues they've had with Linux recently and then either explicitly or implicitly saying that as a result Linux is not ready or not suitable for case stated in the article.
    • moonchrome 4y ago
      But steam deck is not a desktop - it's a console. Linux on the desktop usually means a Windows replacement - historically, and the most relevant meaning to me personally. The reason I'm not hopeful things will improve is same as always - not enough critical mass to get the momentum going. I was buying a PCIe wifi card a few months ago and wanted to check support for Linux in case I try again. There were zero options locally where I could reliably determine that onboard BT would work, and there were like 5 modern cards available. I just don't see what commercial entity is going to push Linux desktop development ? Linux server is mostly a result of big players working together to commoditize the OS, scaling with commercial os on the backed would get prohibitively expensive immediately. Don't see where the desktop push will come from.
• macNchz 4y ago
  I think this is a phenomenon less specific to choice of OS and more based in some bad part of the human psyche that inclines people to punish nonconformity/“the out group”. 20 years ago using a Mac was often greeted with similar nasty attitude.
• Eji1700 4y ago
  I've attacked it as a viable option because linux users seem to handwave some of the things that make it a non viable option for a large % of the population. I've tried linux 3 or so times over the years, always the "friendly" distros. I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working. Drivers, updates, compatibility lag, whatever it is, linux often has me "under the hood" trying to fix stuff that is literally never an issue on another OS. And i say this as someone who wants linux to be a thing. It's unquestionably healthy for linux to be a real option, ESPECIALLY given windows penchant for trying to sneak in more and more tracking and ads, but even as someone decently techy, I have frequently found linux to feel like gambling, with a question of "will it work today, or am I about to go on a 10 min to multihour rabbit hole hunt to fix something"
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  • binkHN 4y ago
    This is why I'm using Linux in the form of ChromeOS more nowadays; the updates are handled, generally, well by Google and the virtualized Linux container running on the side is quite stable because of its virtualized environment.
  • twothamendment 4y ago
    I've been using Linux as my daily driver for over a decade. I used to really fight things like multiple monitors, but things for better. My current laptop is an HP Envy from Costco and I was kind of shocked that everything just worked, even the fingerprint reader. And then it happened - one day my brightness keys quit working. Why? I have no idea and haven't spent time to find out. You are correct, it still happens, but it has been rare for me where it used to be common.
    • Zhyl 4y ago
      As a counter point, I've had multiple issues with my HP Envy on Windows that are similar (keys stopping working, random glitches in software).
• CJefferson 4y ago
  I think it's because some of us have heard about it for... 20 years maybe? And then lost a few days or weeks to trying to make it work. I'm sure for some people it works perfectly, and I haven't tried for at least 6 years, but I was damn annoyed after the last time I lost a week to a laptop with no WiFi, 45 minutes battery life (instead of 5 hours in windows), and no external monitor support. I was sure (at the time) to tell other people of my issues, so they were aware, if they were being told how awesom a Windows replacement Arch (or whatever) was.
  • Zhyl 4y ago
    If you're still interested, I would try again now. The experience has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 5 years. I haven't had a WiFi issue since 2018
    • layer8 4y ago
      I've been reading comments like this for 15 years now.
      • Zhyl 4y ago
        And have you tried it in the last 5 years? Desktops like KDE and things like Proton have genuinely meant it's crossed a threshold.
        • layer8 4y ago
          No, I haven’t, and it would only be anecdotal evidence anyway. The issue is that there’s still the same mix of “it works without issues for me” and “I gave up making it work” comments as there was 5/10/15 years ago. I certainly believe that some things have improved, but it appears that in practice it’s still a gamble and heavily depends on one’s particular requirements and use cases. KDE isn’t exactly new, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
          • Zhyl 4y ago
• hosh 4y ago
  It is surprising. Just as surprising to me was walking my dogs down my street a couple months ago, and hearing one of my neighbors loudly talking about software that is free from corporate and government interference, and that you can see the source code for such things. And it wasn’t the neighbor that was getting rid of his rack-mountable equipment in a garage sale because he is retiring. Most of the neighbors tinker with cars and off-road vehicles.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I haven't really seen that. In fact, it has tended to be the other way around, for me (as an Apple dev). I won't go into details. But I have great faith in Linux; partly because I have a lot of faith in the "Linu" part of "Linux." Despite his acerbic reputation, Torvalds is one hell of a coder.
• angry_moose 4y ago
  Slightly tonque-in-cheek, but: > The main sentiment in your comment which I don't think I've seen addressed in other comments is the fervency of the people attacking the mere notion that Linux is not a viable option...but I'm often surprised with the confidence and sheer malice of people who will attack any notion of Linux not being a viable desktop. > I've seen it on HN, I've seen it in Gaming subreddits, I've had it in non-technical subreddits and I've had it in real life. People just have no qualms shitting on anyone who expresses problems with linux and it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view. You can see it up and down this thread, anyone who expresses frustrations or compatibility issues immediately gets 3 replies to the effect of "You're wrong, I've been running linux since 1954 and it works perfectly and no issue like that exists". I like linux. I maintain a cluster of linux machines at work, and have 2 linux boxes at home because it does things that windows just can't. But those 2 boxes take up about 90% of my "tech support" time.
  • Zhyl 4y ago
    I also see the complement. My comment's top reply is someone including an attack on Linux rather than expanding on their main motivations (unless they see them as one and the same?) and the responses and children thereof are then all about people either also attacking or trying to defend Linux. It seems like a topic that is really deeply seated for this audience, but the fact that it is so deeply seated is a blind spot that doesn't seem like people have the ability or the interest to examine.
    • Eji1700 4y ago
      It's because I've expanded on my issues with linux over and over and over again. And there's always some laundry list of "well did you try..." followed by the kind of forum hunting for answers and CLI inputs that I haven't had to do on any other machine since the 2010's. And that's if people are being reasonable. I've had plenty of insanely nasty interactions (not that it's unique to linux, but the ratio sure is higher) and it's the only time I've ever been told "well why don't you just write your own driver". Hell the most simple, concrete, easily documented example in recent times was Linus' attempt to use linux as a gaming platform, where when trying to debug a basic issue, he nuked the machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M This entire series is an extremely well documented example of what many "mid level" users experience is going to be, and 10 minutes into that video, in attempting to install steam on PopOS, a distro designed for gaming, he uninstalls his desktop. This is SUCH a red flag for anyone who's ever worked UI/UX. Seriously, look in detail at what he did about 10 min in. 1. Installs PopOS for gaming. 2. Trys to install steam, it fails with a complicated error that is of very little help. 3. Some amount of time spent on offscreen research. 4. Comes up with sudo apt-get install steam as an answer. And if you're moderately techy at all, that seems like a perfectly reasonable answer (still not the "just use the installer that was SUPPOSED to work but it doesn't seem malicious). Sudo for admin, apt-get is the cli everyone uses, and then just install steam right? Cool. 5. You then get a couple of pages of heavy technobabble if you're not a common linux user with a "type yes you really want to do this prompt". That's a red flag, but again when the CLI entry basically translates to "admin install steam" yeah you're not really expecting it to then uninstall your desktop. Now the pinned comment on the video is "this has been fixed and shouldn't be possible anymore". And there's TONS of comments saying "oh well he should've done x or y first", but this has been my and many other people's experience with linux for decades, and we're all tired of going in circles. This video series was a wonderful example of all the little "oops" and "gotcha" moments that I think a ton of linux users just handwave away, or don't even realize they're naturally preventing by having just adapted (well of course i ran a system update after the install? Don't you?). I spend a lot of my job looking very carefully at how people do things, because what most people think is a 4 step process is actually a 10 step process where they just assumed 6 of those steps were obvious, and that's what it has always been like to try and learn linux for me. I'll try it again in the future I'm sure, but this semantic argument nonsense when there's so much evidence of linux flaws floating around gets old. I don't want to have to write an essay on my childhood traumas and motivations and how that led me to linux every time I try to use an OS. I want it to work, and when it doesn't work, I want the solutions to be easy to find and implement. Not based on what configuration of OS, hardware, versions, and phases of the moon. Some of that is not directly linux's fault, being unpopular makes it harder for them to support all hardware, but that doesn't matter to the end user.
• vasqw 4y ago
  My problem with people saying stuff like this in the open is that we all know it's not true - by recommending it to others, or even saying it out loud for others to hear, they are wasting the time of those who try it. It's malicious.
• everdrive 4y ago
  I think it's likely just tribalism. There is no nuance to the comments, which is a hallmark of tribalism. A more nuanced discussion might make some key basic concessions: - Windows will have better support in most cases. - Linux users might need to be more technically savvy in most cases. (although most PC gamers are probably technically savvy enough to _use_ linux.) - Windows will usually (but surprisingly not always) get somewhat better performance than Linux in gaming. - etc. A more nuance discussion might then state that all things being equal, Windows is usually the better gaming platform, however Linux is perfectly viable, particularly if your operating system concerns come before your gaming concerns.
  • Zhyl 4y ago
    I think this is on the money and makes me sad.
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