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And this continues to be why Linux suffers with the mass market. I ran Linux solely from 1997 to 2004 on the desktop and switched back because it was such a pa

And this continues to be why Linux suffers with the mass market. I ran Linux solely from 1997 to 2004 on the desktop and switched back because it was such a pain in the ass to manage. Every time I go back, it just isn’t catching up to the mainstream OSs’ ability to manage without “futzing”. My M2 currently lasts all day on the battery while spending half of it on conference calls and half of it writing code. Nothing can match that right now, but I am still hopeful for a Linux future.

bityard 4y ago
I get irrationally angry when people imply that Mac and Linux are somehow similar, or interchangeable. They are not! Not even close! I think this is where a lot of the negative opinion of Linux comes from, people lament some issue they have with their Mac and someone else will say, "oh you should try Linux, it's really good now." And so they do and are surprised to find that experience is vastly different. Linux is a great choice for people who want the highest degree of control and freedom over how they interact with their computer. The trade-off is that sometimes you have to futz with it or report bugs. If you view your computer strictly as a tool to let you get other things done, then you want Mac. All of the OS and UX decisions have been made for you and you get what you get, but you (should) never have to tinker with the system itself.
- garciasn 4y ago
  Fair enough; if you’re talking about random machines Linux light be installed on. But! I believe System76 should ship their laptops with tools and/or settings and/or configs for other mainline distributions that maximize the experience on their hardware while allowing for the inherent customization Linux-based distributions. I’d argue Sys76 is far closer to Apple than just installing Linux on a random machine.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I disagree that it’s a trade-off. Linux could match Apple’s out of the box battery performance. It’s just that nobody seems to care about Linux’s “out of the box” default configuration because, well, the user can futz with it! Things are slowly getting better though. But we still don’t have that distribution where things are already futzed for you and everything runs as well as it can.
  - runjake 4y ago
    > It’s just that nobody seems to care about Linux’s “out of the box” default configuration Define “out of the box” because with Linux there’s millions of hardware variations to deal with. The only possible way this would work OOB is if the OEM or the community maintained OOB settings for each hardware variant. Heck, I was recently shopping PC laptops and would see variations in CPU OEMs (AMD vs Intel) for the same model.
- cess11 4y ago
  I use Linux because I don't want to futz with all the crap in MacOS and Windows. Takes maybe twenty minutes to install Debian and then I touch pretty much nothing for years, except maybe change apt channel if I want something updated faster. Everyone I know that is stuck in big corporate OS spend more time than that every week fighting something their masters push on them. Application install is a terminal command that's trivially easy to learn, there's no e-shop solution with ads and surveillance, and while I use i3wm I think most people would be about as comfortable in XFCE as in the MICROS~1 OS:es of yesteryears. You decide when to upgrade, there are no nagscreens or forced reboots. At least for the last five years or so I've had no trouble with UEFI, WLAN or sound.
- ccouzens 4y ago
  I prefer Linux (fedora with gnome) because it needs less tinkering out the box. It's the basic things like not having to install third party utilities to have window centric window management (as opposed to app centric window management). Or being able to plug my Android phone in and be able to browse the files without additional utilities.

bityard 4y ago

I get irrationally angry when people imply that Mac and Linux are somehow similar, or interchangeable. They are not! Not even close! I think this is where a lot of the negative opinion of Linux comes from, people lament some issue they have with their Mac and someone else will say, "oh you should try Linux, it's really good now." And so they do and are surprised to find that experience is vastly different. Linux is a great choice for people who want the highest degree of control and freedom over how they interact with their computer. The trade-off is that sometimes you have to futz with it or report bugs. If you view your computer strictly as a tool to let you get other things done, then you want Mac. All of the OS and UX decisions have been made for you and you get what you get, but you (should) never have to tinker with the system itself.

garciasn 4y ago
Fair enough; if you’re talking about random machines Linux light be installed on. But! I believe System76 should ship their laptops with tools and/or settings and/or configs for other mainline distributions that maximize the experience on their hardware while allowing for the inherent customization Linux-based distributions. I’d argue Sys76 is far closer to Apple than just installing Linux on a random machine.
ryandrake 4y ago
I disagree that it’s a trade-off. Linux could match Apple’s out of the box battery performance. It’s just that nobody seems to care about Linux’s “out of the box” default configuration because, well, the user can futz with it! Things are slowly getting better though. But we still don’t have that distribution where things are already futzed for you and everything runs as well as it can.
- runjake 4y ago
  > It’s just that nobody seems to care about Linux’s “out of the box” default configuration Define “out of the box” because with Linux there’s millions of hardware variations to deal with. The only possible way this would work OOB is if the OEM or the community maintained OOB settings for each hardware variant. Heck, I was recently shopping PC laptops and would see variations in CPU OEMs (AMD vs Intel) for the same model.
cess11 4y ago
I use Linux because I don't want to futz with all the crap in MacOS and Windows. Takes maybe twenty minutes to install Debian and then I touch pretty much nothing for years, except maybe change apt channel if I want something updated faster. Everyone I know that is stuck in big corporate OS spend more time than that every week fighting something their masters push on them. Application install is a terminal command that's trivially easy to learn, there's no e-shop solution with ads and surveillance, and while I use i3wm I think most people would be about as comfortable in XFCE as in the MICROS~1 OS:es of yesteryears. You decide when to upgrade, there are no nagscreens or forced reboots. At least for the last five years or so I've had no trouble with UEFI, WLAN or sound.
ccouzens 4y ago
I prefer Linux (fedora with gnome) because it needs less tinkering out the box. It's the basic things like not having to install third party utilities to have window centric window management (as opposed to app centric window management). Or being able to plug my Android phone in and be able to browse the files without additional utilities.