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It may be true that Linux on the desktop is finally here, but I used to read about that on /. in the late '90s and early '00s, and people talk about it occasion

It may be true that Linux on the desktop is finally here, but I used to read about that on /. in the late '90s and early '00s, and people talk about it occasionally on HN. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't, but like 25 / 0 of the last "Linux is taking over the desktop" moments have been predicted.

littlestymaar 3y ago
Linux have been usable as a daily driver for at least the past ten years (exhibit: my mom), and with Proton it has even become usable for gaming. For people above 60 who've spent two decades using windows, Linux Mint has even shown to be more manageable than jumping to a newer version of Windows.
amlib 3y ago
I think by this point Linux desktop has matured enough that you can say with certain that the biggest problems is application availability. Users want to run Adobe's creative suite or Affinity software (because they have to, even tough there are some decent alternatives) or run some very specific Scientific/CAD/whatever software that has no parallel in the Linux world. Worse, sometimes its hard to get Linux native software to run on your choice of distro due to it not being available in your distro repositories yet (flatpaks are changing that but still not a perfect solution) or it being some proprietary software that was really only tested on some old version of Readhat meant for high end workstations which requires you to run some arcane scripts on the command line to install and therefore tainting your whole installation, kinda defeating the purpose of running away from messy Windows installations.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I understand that there are closed source software tools used in science out there, but it seems pretty wrong-headed to me. A scientific tool that doesn’t have exposed source code seems not very trustworthy. If you get unexpected results, how do you know it wasn’t a bug?
  - amlib 3y ago
    I was just citing it as an example, I wouldn't advocate for such thing nor do I know really how common this happens.
tormeh 3y ago
Linux is usable now, but it's not preinstalled for personal use and not approved for corporate use. That's the current issue.

littlestymaar 3y ago

Linux have been usable as a daily driver for at least the past ten years (exhibit: my mom), and with Proton it has even become usable for gaming. For people above 60 who've spent two decades using windows, Linux Mint has even shown to be more manageable than jumping to a newer version of Windows.

amlib 3y ago

I think by this point Linux desktop has matured enough that you can say with certain that the biggest problems is application availability. Users want to run Adobe's creative suite or Affinity software (because they have to, even tough there are some decent alternatives) or run some very specific Scientific/CAD/whatever software that has no parallel in the Linux world. Worse, sometimes its hard to get Linux native software to run on your choice of distro due to it not being available in your distro repositories yet (flatpaks are changing that but still not a perfect solution) or it being some proprietary software that was really only tested on some old version of Readhat meant for high end workstations which requires you to run some arcane scripts on the command line to install and therefore tainting your whole installation, kinda defeating the purpose of running away from messy Windows installations.

bee_rider 3y ago
I understand that there are closed source software tools used in science out there, but it seems pretty wrong-headed to me. A scientific tool that doesn’t have exposed source code seems not very trustworthy. If you get unexpected results, how do you know it wasn’t a bug?
- amlib 3y ago
  I was just citing it as an example, I wouldn't advocate for such thing nor do I know really how common this happens.

tormeh 3y ago

Linux is usable now, but it's not preinstalled for personal use and not approved for corporate use. That's the current issue.