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"Linux is better off avoiding such “default” choices" - and this is what holds Linux (the desktop OS) back. Why do people choose Windows or macOS over Linux tim

by sbuk 4y ago

"Linux is better off avoiding such “default” choices" - and this is what holds Linux (the desktop OS) back. Why do people choose Windows or macOS over Linux time and again? Sensible out-of-the-box defaults. They can fire up a new PC and they are off to the races. The same cannot be said for the majority of Linux distros, except perhaps for the *buntu family.

taskforcegemini 4y ago
> Why do people choose Windows or macOS over Linux time and again? that's not how this works. They choose apple and get macOS or they choose pc and get windows with it.
- sbuk 4y ago
  I'll rephrase then, why do devices preinstalled with Linux continually fail in the mass market?
reacharavindh 4y ago
Oh I am with you on sensible defaults and cohesive OS. But, Linux is too open(for good) that a single player can take control of a massive set of openly developed feature set like that. Canonical certainly cannot be that one... selling something as "hey it's free and open, come use it! , and contribute more features to it.. " then turning around and forcing snaps on them, Amazon ads, and shit like that makes them not worthy IMO. Apple is a commercial entity that purely has the intention of making profit and as a customer you can atleast guess where their incentives are(but can only blindly trust). They also dont benefit from the massive coomunity of developers developing features for them. Airdrop, Continuity thing, display management are stuff they had to pay tons of money to engineers working in house to develop. Hence, they get to dictate the terms. Linux desktop by virtue of being developed by open community doesnt get that commericial dictator. Unless, some company threw their weight behind a custom linux distrbution, and developed a feature set similar to what Apple does on top of base Linux system. But, such commercial entity cannot label themselves as the "free & open" desktop operating system like Canonical does. I see System76 doing something with their own Rust based Desktop thing. If they can bring that cohesion, they get some game.
- sbuk 4y ago
  Everything you say makes complete sense if I look at it through the lens of someone that unflinchingly adheres to the FLOSS ethos, on that we're never going to agree. My view is that the end user is the most important part of the whole stack. To a certain extent, Apple gets this - yes, the salesbro's in corporations do drive direction to some extent, but they have yet to do anything that is really end-user hostile. Microsoft, also to a less extent do this too. FLOSS claims to benefit end users, but I always question this; to me it seems to benefit developers and those that want to 'stick it to the man' more than anything else. Now I will openly admit to oversimplifying and generalising here, and I'm sure my stance could be easily disproven (see another comment in this thread), but to me the is issue in the article seems to be fundamentally that OSS desktop projects cater to a minority. Servers are something else entirely - I'm an older UNIX beard, so I stick with the BSDs - not a fan of the GNU tool chain. Here, I'm very definitely in the minority.
hibbelig 4y ago
> They can fire up a new PC and they are off to the races. I, personally, would have to spend quite a bit of time tweaking my Karabiner Elements and Hammerspoon configurations before I'm off to the races. Until then, I'm off to a crawl... Can I put the config in git and just clone it on a new machine? Yes. But I can do that on a Linux installation, too.
- sbuk 4y ago
  With respect, you are the minority - and a vanishingly small one at that. I'm talking about typical end users. The *buntu family should be appealing, but Linux folks disparage because reasons. For folks like you, there's Fedora or Debian.

by sbuk 4y ago

taskforcegemini 4y ago

> Why do people choose Windows or macOS over Linux time and again? that's not how this works. They choose apple and get macOS or they choose pc and get windows with it.

sbuk 4y ago
I'll rephrase then, why do devices preinstalled with Linux continually fail in the mass market?

reacharavindh 4y ago

Oh I am with you on sensible defaults and cohesive OS. But, Linux is too open(for good) that a single player can take control of a massive set of openly developed feature set like that. Canonical certainly cannot be that one... selling something as "hey it's free and open, come use it! , and contribute more features to it.. " then turning around and forcing snaps on them, Amazon ads, and shit like that makes them not worthy IMO. Apple is a commercial entity that purely has the intention of making profit and as a customer you can atleast guess where their incentives are(but can only blindly trust). They also dont benefit from the massive coomunity of developers developing features for them. Airdrop, Continuity thing, display management are stuff they had to pay tons of money to engineers working in house to develop. Hence, they get to dictate the terms. Linux desktop by virtue of being developed by open community doesnt get that commericial dictator. Unless, some company threw their weight behind a custom linux distrbution, and developed a feature set similar to what Apple does on top of base Linux system. But, such commercial entity cannot label themselves as the "free & open" desktop operating system like Canonical does. I see System76 doing something with their own Rust based Desktop thing. If they can bring that cohesion, they get some game.

sbuk 4y ago
Everything you say makes complete sense if I look at it through the lens of someone that unflinchingly adheres to the FLOSS ethos, on that we're never going to agree. My view is that the end user is the most important part of the whole stack. To a certain extent, Apple gets this - yes, the salesbro's in corporations do drive direction to some extent, but they have yet to do anything that is really end-user hostile. Microsoft, also to a less extent do this too. FLOSS claims to benefit end users, but I always question this; to me it seems to benefit developers and those that want to 'stick it to the man' more than anything else. Now I will openly admit to oversimplifying and generalising here, and I'm sure my stance could be easily disproven (see another comment in this thread), but to me the is issue in the article seems to be fundamentally that OSS desktop projects cater to a minority. Servers are something else entirely - I'm an older UNIX beard, so I stick with the BSDs - not a fan of the GNU tool chain. Here, I'm very definitely in the minority.

hibbelig 4y ago

> They can fire up a new PC and they are off to the races. I, personally, would have to spend quite a bit of time tweaking my Karabiner Elements and Hammerspoon configurations before I'm off to the races. Until then, I'm off to a crawl... Can I put the config in git and just clone it on a new machine? Yes. But I can do that on a Linux installation, too.

sbuk 4y ago
With respect, you are the minority - and a vanishingly small one at that. I'm talking about typical end users. The *buntu family should be appealing, but Linux folks disparage because reasons. For folks like you, there's Fedora or Debian.