4 ms·

Why don't more people use Linux?

10 points by dotcoma 2y ago

jqpabc123 2y ago
Why don't more people use Linux? Because time is more valuable than money. You can always get more money but you can't get more time. This is just as true for developers as anyone else. Time spent fiddling with your OS is less time you have available to create new software or plan for your next career or build a life beyond computers.
- udev4096 2y ago
  That might have been true a decade ago. Modern linux distros require no "fiddling" unless you are using arch on bleeding edge
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    The author of the article apparently doesn't agree with that: "And Linux isn't minimal effort. It's an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple."
    - dotcoma 2y ago
      I think it might cost more effort than OSX, but not nearly as many headaches as Windows.
    - udev4096 2y ago
      The author thinks that installing lots of 3rd party dependencies and software is a good idea and somehow makes for a better development environment. I think he first needs a lesson on UNIX philosophy
  - eternityforest 2y ago
    Unfortunately if you ask "Hey what distro should I use" some of the responses will be things like Manjaro. Even Mint wasn't 100% fiddling free last time I tried, anything using traditional package management is never going to be reliable as far as I can tell. Expecting a dozen modern apps updated constantly with 100 overlapping dependencies each to not have conflicts seems completely insane. The whole idea came from the era of systems maintained by hand over time, sometimes with things compiled from source, mostly using simple CLI software.
- rolph 2y ago
  the major reason i scrubbed windows from my hardware, was too much fiddling required to stop unwanted behavior, and keep it stopped. so i moved to an OS that does what its told, and stays like that until its told otherwise.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  "Time spent fiddling with your OS is less time you have available..." This makes the common assumption that Windows (or MacOS) requires less fiddling than Linux. I haven't compiled a Linux kernel in anger in maybe 10-12 years. Installing or uninstalling software is frankly painless. On the flip side, I'm forever fixing my wife's wireless or printing, or trying to figure out why some file doesn't open magically. Typically, she just emails files to me to print, although this may be due to me buying a Kyocera laser printer, and her using some trash HP inkjet. Time spent working around some Windows inconsistency or big or missing feature or poorly documented feature fits in the same category.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  Yup, this is precisely why I use Linux for work. Windows for me now presents more problems and requires more tweaking and management than Linux. It has for a long time and it just keeps getting worse. Linux has gotten progressively better and less needy over the years. Windows today is just as broken and janky as Linux was a decade ago. It's crazy how bad things have gotten.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
> "If exercising is so healthy, why don't more people do it?" Whether you like Linux or not, this is a circular argument. It attempts to answer why Linux is beneficial by analogizing Linux to exercise, good diet, etc. which itself presupposes that Linux is as beneficial as those things. Beyond that, a lot of things you can do from a Linux shell can also be done through Windows Powershell even if the syntax is clunkier and documentation is harder to find. Windows has not been standing still.
- e40 2y ago
  The answer for exercise and learning linux is the same: exercise is a chore to do and linux is a chore to learn.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Games. Network effects in business. Social networks. Balkanization in Linux. Marketing. Pre-Installation at point of sale. Lack of a central company that people can "trust"
- rolph 2y ago
  [Marketing. Pre-Installation at point of sale.] these march hand in hand, and are probably the most potent factors. mix it in with extreme friction uninstalling windows and deconfiguring the other than windows settings, and this is a vendor lockout. the consequent question seems to be, why are there not more POS "nux" installations on new hardware?
  - eternityforest 2y ago
    There's no "Linux" TO pre install, since nobody agrees on a standard distro. Everyone who tries to do that seems to invent their own distro, making fragmentation worse, and now they have to also be distro makers which probably doesn't help costs much.
    - rolph 2y ago
      does "linux" prevent you from switching distros, or multi booting, or using a system app that you coded yourself ?
      - eternityforest 2y ago
        If it's not pre-installed, most users won't do any of that. If I wasn't a developer, and wasn't often using cheaper hardware, I might also be using completely stock windows. I'm not sure what the "killer app" would be aside from privacy concerns. I wouldn't even think of coding a system app myself unless I worked for Canonical or Red Hat, whatever I make is almost guaranteed to not be the next big thing with a full paid team backing it, and I'm not a fan of "software for one person".
        2y ago
troymc 2y ago
A lot of people are using Linux without even knowing it. Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel; it depends on the Linux kernel project. According to Statcounter, Android has about 72% global market share on smartphones, with iOS at about 28% [1]. Many websites and web services run on Linux, at least in part. Wordpress, the most popular CMS, with around 63% market share [2], can run on other OSes, but it's usually run on Linux. Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server [3]. Linux is also used in lots of other everyday things, e.g. automobiles, microwave ovens, routers, etc. You get the idea. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide [2] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma... [3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-linux-is-now-more-used-on-azure-than-windows-server/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-li...
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
  >Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel Increasingly, it is using a mostly standard kernel. The kernel fork is here,[0] although I'm not sure exactly how many out of upstream patches they have now. It would be nice if someone how knows how to do this in git could check. See also GKI.[1] [0] https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/ https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/ [1] https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/generic-kernel-image https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/gen...
xbjfk 2y ago
I would argue that the reason is much simpler than what any other commenter suggested - Windows is just the default, and most people just live with the default.
mrcsharp 2y ago
Referring to linux he said: >Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. I have to disagree here. Using Linux doesn't mean you "understand" computers better. It just means you understand linux better. Every operating system abstracts the hardware in its own way. They are opinionated in how they do this with some shared fundamentals. Being extremely comfortable in linux means you are comfortable in how linux abstracts the hardware. That's all. I am not trying to discredit linux as an OS here. Just not a fan of the elitist mentality that if you are not a linux user, then you don't know computers.
- pookybear223 2y ago
  [flagged]
- bigfatkitten 2y ago
  His argument is especially nonsensical when pointing the finger at software developers. Writing web apps that run in Linux containers on some cloud provider somewhere teaches you very little about the fundamentals of how computers work. For the most part, it doesn't even teach you much about how Linux works. The developer is so far abstracted from the hardware at that point that the OS doesn't really matter.

10 points by dotcoma 2y ago

Why don't more people use Linux? Because time is more valuable than money. You can always get more money but you can't get more time. This is just as true for developers as anyone else. Time spent fiddling with your OS is less time you have available to create new software or plan for your next career or build a life beyond computers.

udev4096 2y ago
That might have been true a decade ago. Modern linux distros require no "fiddling" unless you are using arch on bleeding edge
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  The author of the article apparently doesn't agree with that: "And Linux isn't minimal effort. It's an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple."
  - dotcoma 2y ago
    I think it might cost more effort than OSX, but not nearly as many headaches as Windows.
  - udev4096 2y ago
    The author thinks that installing lots of 3rd party dependencies and software is a good idea and somehow makes for a better development environment. I think he first needs a lesson on UNIX philosophy
- eternityforest 2y ago
  Unfortunately if you ask "Hey what distro should I use" some of the responses will be things like Manjaro. Even Mint wasn't 100% fiddling free last time I tried, anything using traditional package management is never going to be reliable as far as I can tell. Expecting a dozen modern apps updated constantly with 100 overlapping dependencies each to not have conflicts seems completely insane. The whole idea came from the era of systems maintained by hand over time, sometimes with things compiled from source, mostly using simple CLI software.
rolph 2y ago
the major reason i scrubbed windows from my hardware, was too much fiddling required to stop unwanted behavior, and keep it stopped. so i moved to an OS that does what its told, and stays like that until its told otherwise.
bediger4000 2y ago
"Time spent fiddling with your OS is less time you have available..." This makes the common assumption that Windows (or MacOS) requires less fiddling than Linux. I haven't compiled a Linux kernel in anger in maybe 10-12 years. Installing or uninstalling software is frankly painless. On the flip side, I'm forever fixing my wife's wireless or printing, or trying to figure out why some file doesn't open magically. Typically, she just emails files to me to print, although this may be due to me buying a Kyocera laser printer, and her using some trash HP inkjet. Time spent working around some Windows inconsistency or big or missing feature or poorly documented feature fits in the same category.
mystified5016 2y ago
Yup, this is precisely why I use Linux for work. Windows for me now presents more problems and requires more tweaking and management than Linux. It has for a long time and it just keeps getting worse. Linux has gotten progressively better and less needy over the years. Windows today is just as broken and janky as Linux was a decade ago. It's crazy how bad things have gotten.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

> "If exercising is so healthy, why don't more people do it?" Whether you like Linux or not, this is a circular argument. It attempts to answer why Linux is beneficial by analogizing Linux to exercise, good diet, etc. which itself presupposes that Linux is as beneficial as those things. Beyond that, a lot of things you can do from a Linux shell can also be done through Windows Powershell even if the syntax is clunkier and documentation is harder to find. Windows has not been standing still.

e40 2y ago
The answer for exercise and learning linux is the same: exercise is a chore to do and linux is a chore to learn.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

Games. Network effects in business. Social networks. Balkanization in Linux. Marketing. Pre-Installation at point of sale. Lack of a central company that people can "trust"

rolph 2y ago
[Marketing. Pre-Installation at point of sale.] these march hand in hand, and are probably the most potent factors. mix it in with extreme friction uninstalling windows and deconfiguring the other than windows settings, and this is a vendor lockout. the consequent question seems to be, why are there not more POS "nux" installations on new hardware?
- eternityforest 2y ago
  There's no "Linux" TO pre install, since nobody agrees on a standard distro. Everyone who tries to do that seems to invent their own distro, making fragmentation worse, and now they have to also be distro makers which probably doesn't help costs much.
  - rolph 2y ago
    does "linux" prevent you from switching distros, or multi booting, or using a system app that you coded yourself ?
    - eternityforest 2y ago
      If it's not pre-installed, most users won't do any of that. If I wasn't a developer, and wasn't often using cheaper hardware, I might also be using completely stock windows. I'm not sure what the "killer app" would be aside from privacy concerns. I wouldn't even think of coding a system app myself unless I worked for Canonical or Red Hat, whatever I make is almost guaranteed to not be the next big thing with a full paid team backing it, and I'm not a fan of "software for one person".
      - 2y ago

troymc 2y ago

A lot of people are using Linux without even knowing it. Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel; it depends on the Linux kernel project. According to Statcounter, Android has about 72% global market share on smartphones, with iOS at about 28% [1]. Many websites and web services run on Linux, at least in part. Wordpress, the most popular CMS, with around 63% market share [2], can run on other OSes, but it's usually run on Linux. Linux is now more used on Azure than Windows Server [3]. Linux is also used in lots of other everyday things, e.g. automobiles, microwave ovens, routers, etc. You get the idea. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide [2] https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_ma... [3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-linux-is-now-more-used-on-azure-than-windows-server/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-li...

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
>Android uses a modified version of the Linux kernel Increasingly, it is using a mostly standard kernel. The kernel fork is here,[0] although I'm not sure exactly how many out of upstream patches they have now. It would be nice if someone how knows how to do this in git could check. See also GKI.[1] [0] https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/ https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/common/ [1] https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/generic-kernel-image https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/gen...

xbjfk 2y ago

I would argue that the reason is much simpler than what any other commenter suggested - Windows is just the default, and most people just live with the default.

mrcsharp 2y ago

Referring to linux he said: >Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. I have to disagree here. Using Linux doesn't mean you "understand" computers better. It just means you understand linux better. Every operating system abstracts the hardware in its own way. They are opinionated in how they do this with some shared fundamentals. Being extremely comfortable in linux means you are comfortable in how linux abstracts the hardware. That's all. I am not trying to discredit linux as an OS here. Just not a fan of the elitist mentality that if you are not a linux user, then you don't know computers.

pookybear223 2y ago
[flagged]
bigfatkitten 2y ago
His argument is especially nonsensical when pointing the finger at software developers. Writing web apps that run in Linux containers on some cloud provider somewhere teaches you very little about the fundamentals of how computers work. For the most part, it doesn't even teach you much about how Linux works. The developer is so far abstracted from the hardware at that point that the OS doesn't really matter.