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“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as we

“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook (which also runs Steam, by the way). It’s like pointing to a skyscraper made out of sand. Sure, it collapses every time the tide comes in, but your robots can rebuild it in 5 minutes flat, so it’s clearly ready for tenants.

acaloiar 2y ago
> this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook Wow, piss right off you to you, too. Linux is ready for me, and has been for decades. By your logic, I need nothing but a Chromebook. Linux is imperfect, like you, but it's never been an ass.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  I’ve used Linux since 2011; I know all about it; and I would recommend it to nobody because the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. For my part, I’m back on Windows and Mac. Screw the community’s arrogance more than the project. The community, as even the comments here show, does not deserve a victory.
  - __d 2y ago
    I think it’s clear that today’s “desktop Linux” distributions are not what you want. That’s ok. Your criticisms come from the point of view of a usage that is poorly supported. Android is perhaps the closest to what you seem to want, although even it is much more aggressive about deprecating APIs, ABIs, and features than Windows. The is no Linux distribution today that even attempts to deliver the interface stability you appear to want. And given the development model and business structures involved, I think it’s unlikely there ever will be. You, and the many computer users like you, will probably never have a suitable Linux distribution. That’s an unfortunate reality. It’s not your fault: what you want is reasonable, but Linux isn’t set up to deliver it.
  - toofy 2y ago
    > …the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. if one’s “criticism” is snarky or just plain needlessly rude, one shouldn’t be surprised when they receive the same in return, this is extremely basic human behavior. very very basic. we all learn this in like elementary school, if you’re rude, people will treat you like a rude person. it’s not shocking and it’s not unexpected. its extremely basic social shit learned by even small children.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Which community can you walk into telling everyone that everything they care about is shit and they are shit and will never make it, and they will take it productively? I Certainly admit that some Linux users are heavily in denial about linux's flaws, and don't take criticisms healthily, but this is a trait in humanity, not just in Linux users. If your version of diplomacy is starting off a meeting with urinating on their flag, don't say diplomacy never works because no other countries can take criticism.
do_not_redeem 2y ago
> knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years Would you say MacOS, Android, and iPhone are also hobbyist toys then? And by the way, if you statically compile your app for Linux it will basically work forever. Linus's mantra: We Do Not Break Userspace. These are userland problems and can all be avoided with a linker flag if it's a priority for you.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  A statically compiled app that used Xorg won’t run on many Linux distributions at the moment. A statically compiled app that used Jack for audio might have problems running on PipeWire. A statically compiled app from 2012 that used PolicyKit for authorization might not work today when asking for sudo. Everyone’s moved on to polkit. The meme is wrong, don’t regurgitate nonsense. I can guarantee you my Windows app compiled in 2007 still has the UAC prompt and the audio system working correctly.
  - do_not_redeem 2y ago
    What distro are you using that doesn't package Xwayland or pipewire-jack? Sure those are compatibility layers, but so is WoW64. The Linux and Windows backcompat strategies aren't all that different here.
    - bandrami 2y ago
      pipewire-jack won't work with a program that links libjack statically. Pipewire preloads its own .so and hijacks those library calls.
  - ben-schaaf 2y ago
    > A statically compiled app that used Xorg won’t run on many Linux distributions at the moment. Not a single major distribution doesn't ship Xwayland by default. The entire gaming community relies on X11 continuing to work, just like they rely on x86 libraries to stick around. > A statically compiled app that used Jack for audio might have problems running on PipeWire. A statically compiled app that uses Jack for audio might have problems running on Pulseaudio/ALSA/OSS. Jack's never a thing that's generally available, so claiming it's a backwards compatibility issue is nonsense. If your application requires Jack, then you need to ship it. Note that you'll also have issues on Windows and Mac because Jack - unsurprisingly - is not installed by default on those platforms either. > A statically compiled app from 2012 that used PolicyKit for authorization might not work today when asking for sudo. Everyone’s moved on to polkit. If you used policykit correctly you should have either used the dbus protocol, or the command line utilities. These are the APIs for userspace and they haven't changed since 2012.
imiric 2y ago
> It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. "Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise. > Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. That ultimately depends on your tech stack and app features, much more than your OS. If you build a statically linked ELF binary that runs on the command line, chances are it will continue to work decades from now. If, OTOH, your app depends on a specific version of a GUI toolkit or some esoteric libraries, you might run into issues in the future. This is the same on any other OS. Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems. Same for macOS to a lesser extent (Carbon -> Cocoa, etc.).
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > “Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise. Ironically, I might as well point out that billions of people think otherwise of Linux. In some countries, a few trees is “good enough” as a bridge. The IRS, of course, says COBOL is “good enough” to use as a web backend for the moment. The weirdest thing is how people complain that engineering is a race of the bottom. Scarcely a thread goes by here without a tragedy of the commons reference. Yet inexplicably, business executives are terrified cowards when it involves free software. This of course makes no sense; you can’t have both. Either the complaints are wrong, or Linux is in fact unsuitable for purpose. > Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems Oregon Trail, a game made for Windows 95, still runs on Windows 11. (Edit for below complaint, as I’m posting too fast: You need all the DLLs that came with it on the original CD in the same folder as the EXE.) Try installing and running any Linux app, be it even GNOME Chess, from four years ago. See how it goes. Consider my allegory of the sand skyscraper. On that note, the Carbon to Cocoa transition mostly wrapped up a decade ago, and was completed by the majority of apps two decades ago. Try installing a Linux program from 2005 with a UI made in any toolkit of your choice. The Linux community chases trends and kills APIs more often than Google.
tapoxi 2y ago
> It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy Build a Flatpak, you're done. Your application can depend on a stable runtime and work on any Linux distribution. > Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook (which also runs Steam, by the way). Chromebooks now cover 85% of the U.S. education market, that's most workloads. The Steam Deck is also Linux (SteamOS). What's left in the world of Win32 apps? Specialty commercial applications like Photoshop, first person shooter games that require an anticheat kernel driver. If you don't need those, a system like Bazzite is much less user hostile than what Windows has become in the era of Windows 11.
- curt15 2y ago
  >Build a Flatpak, you're done. Your application can depend on a stable runtime and work on any Linux distribution. Flatpak weakens but does not entirely remove the dependence on the underlying Linux distributon. Flatpak relies on a system service called xdg-desktop-portal to bridge apps inside the flatpak sandbox with the host OS. Applications distributed using flatpak may not work as expected if the distribution ships too old a version of xdg-desktop-portal.
devops99 2y ago
> and it probably won’t work in 5 years Containers have been around for over a decade now. This "no backwards compatibility" meme is utter horse shit.
cloudsec9 2y ago
At one time I was a big advocate for Unix/Linux on the desktop, but I think that ship has mostly sailed. But, it seems that FUD about what it is capable of is still actively here, which is good to know. With frameworks and libraries, there is a 0% chance you don't have SOME update for your Windows app in a couple years, forget 5. Now, there are lots of headwinds against Linux -- Windows is a known quantity, everyone knows the MS Office suite, people hate change and don't want to learn new stuff. But to pretend that Linux is a house of cards because there are sometimes issues that cause troubles is not being honest. Even Windows can have big issues, or have we forgotten the CrowdStrike outage earlier this year? All OSes have always had issues; that's why all of them have patches and updates.
- ryao 2y ago
  I would blame Microsoft for that one, since they had the ability to ban crowdstrike and others who have no business being in the NT kernel from the NT kernel, but instead gave them access by giving them code signing certificates. Apple on the other hand got them to switch to userspace: https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-supports-new-macos-big-sur/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-supports-...
- ghaff 2y ago
  >everyone knows the MS Office suite How many people are running a locally-installed office suite at this point? Mailing files around seems archaic for most purposes. At my prior (open source) employer, even we had mostly given up on running local office productivity apps.

acaloiar 2y ago

> this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook Wow, piss right off you to you, too. Linux is ready for me, and has been for decades. By your logic, I need nothing but a Chromebook. Linux is imperfect, like you, but it's never been an ass.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
I’ve used Linux since 2011; I know all about it; and I would recommend it to nobody because the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. For my part, I’m back on Windows and Mac. Screw the community’s arrogance more than the project. The community, as even the comments here show, does not deserve a victory.
- __d 2y ago
  I think it’s clear that today’s “desktop Linux” distributions are not what you want. That’s ok. Your criticisms come from the point of view of a usage that is poorly supported. Android is perhaps the closest to what you seem to want, although even it is much more aggressive about deprecating APIs, ABIs, and features than Windows. The is no Linux distribution today that even attempts to deliver the interface stability you appear to want. And given the development model and business structures involved, I think it’s unlikely there ever will be. You, and the many computer users like you, will probably never have a suitable Linux distribution. That’s an unfortunate reality. It’s not your fault: what you want is reasonable, but Linux isn’t set up to deliver it.
- toofy 2y ago
  > …the community can hear no criticism, bear no criticism, and self-rationalizes everything. Sometimes it takes a bold stance to make a point against one of the most toxic, delusional, and self-righteous communities online. if one’s “criticism” is snarky or just plain needlessly rude, one shouldn’t be surprised when they receive the same in return, this is extremely basic human behavior. very very basic. we all learn this in like elementary school, if you’re rude, people will treat you like a rude person. it’s not shocking and it’s not unexpected. its extremely basic social shit learned by even small children.
- freedomben 2y ago
  Which community can you walk into telling everyone that everything they care about is shit and they are shit and will never make it, and they will take it productively? I Certainly admit that some Linux users are heavily in denial about linux's flaws, and don't take criticisms healthily, but this is a trait in humanity, not just in Linux users. If your version of diplomacy is starting off a meeting with urinating on their flag, don't say diplomacy never works because no other countries can take criticism.

do_not_redeem 2y ago

> knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years Would you say MacOS, Android, and iPhone are also hobbyist toys then? And by the way, if you statically compile your app for Linux it will basically work forever. Linus's mantra: We Do Not Break Userspace. These are userland problems and can all be avoided with a linker flag if it's a priority for you.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
A statically compiled app that used Xorg won’t run on many Linux distributions at the moment. A statically compiled app that used Jack for audio might have problems running on PipeWire. A statically compiled app from 2012 that used PolicyKit for authorization might not work today when asking for sudo. Everyone’s moved on to polkit. The meme is wrong, don’t regurgitate nonsense. I can guarantee you my Windows app compiled in 2007 still has the UAC prompt and the audio system working correctly.
- do_not_redeem 2y ago
  What distro are you using that doesn't package Xwayland or pipewire-jack? Sure those are compatibility layers, but so is WoW64. The Linux and Windows backcompat strategies aren't all that different here.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    pipewire-jack won't work with a program that links libjack statically. Pipewire preloads its own .so and hijacks those library calls.
- ben-schaaf 2y ago
  > A statically compiled app that used Xorg won’t run on many Linux distributions at the moment. Not a single major distribution doesn't ship Xwayland by default. The entire gaming community relies on X11 continuing to work, just like they rely on x86 libraries to stick around. > A statically compiled app that used Jack for audio might have problems running on PipeWire. A statically compiled app that uses Jack for audio might have problems running on Pulseaudio/ALSA/OSS. Jack's never a thing that's generally available, so claiming it's a backwards compatibility issue is nonsense. If your application requires Jack, then you need to ship it. Note that you'll also have issues on Windows and Mac because Jack - unsurprisingly - is not installed by default on those platforms either. > A statically compiled app from 2012 that used PolicyKit for authorization might not work today when asking for sudo. Everyone’s moved on to polkit. If you used policykit correctly you should have either used the dbus protocol, or the command line utilities. These are the APIs for userspace and they haven't changed since 2012.

imiric 2y ago

> It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. "Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise. > Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. That ultimately depends on your tech stack and app features, much more than your OS. If you build a statically linked ELF binary that runs on the command line, chances are it will continue to work decades from now. If, OTOH, your app depends on a specific version of a GUI toolkit or some esoteric libraries, you might run into issues in the future. This is the same on any other OS. Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems. Same for macOS to a lesser extent (Carbon -> Cocoa, etc.).

gjsman-1000 2y ago
> “Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise. Ironically, I might as well point out that billions of people think otherwise of Linux. In some countries, a few trees is “good enough” as a bridge. The IRS, of course, says COBOL is “good enough” to use as a web backend for the moment. The weirdest thing is how people complain that engineering is a race of the bottom. Scarcely a thread goes by here without a tragedy of the commons reference. Yet inexplicably, business executives are terrified cowards when it involves free software. This of course makes no sense; you can’t have both. Either the complaints are wrong, or Linux is in fact unsuitable for purpose. > Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems Oregon Trail, a game made for Windows 95, still runs on Windows 11. (Edit for below complaint, as I’m posting too fast: You need all the DLLs that came with it on the original CD in the same folder as the EXE.) Try installing and running any Linux app, be it even GNOME Chess, from four years ago. See how it goes. Consider my allegory of the sand skyscraper. On that note, the Carbon to Cocoa transition mostly wrapped up a decade ago, and was completed by the majority of apps two decades ago. Try installing a Linux program from 2005 with a UI made in any toolkit of your choice. The Linux community chases trends and kills APIs more often than Google.

tapoxi 2y ago

> It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy Build a Flatpak, you're done. Your application can depend on a stable runtime and work on any Linux distribution. > Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who has needs more than a Chromebook (which also runs Steam, by the way). Chromebooks now cover 85% of the U.S. education market, that's most workloads. The Steam Deck is also Linux (SteamOS). What's left in the world of Win32 apps? Specialty commercial applications like Photoshop, first person shooter games that require an anticheat kernel driver. If you don't need those, a system like Bazzite is much less user hostile than what Windows has become in the era of Windows 11.

curt15 2y ago
>Build a Flatpak, you're done. Your application can depend on a stable runtime and work on any Linux distribution. Flatpak weakens but does not entirely remove the dependence on the underlying Linux distributon. Flatpak relies on a system service called xdg-desktop-portal to bridge apps inside the flatpak sandbox with the host OS. Applications distributed using flatpak may not work as expected if the distribution ships too old a version of xdg-desktop-portal.

devops99 2y ago

> and it probably won’t work in 5 years Containers have been around for over a decade now. This "no backwards compatibility" meme is utter horse shit.

cloudsec9 2y ago

At one time I was a big advocate for Unix/Linux on the desktop, but I think that ship has mostly sailed. But, it seems that FUD about what it is capable of is still actively here, which is good to know. With frameworks and libraries, there is a 0% chance you don't have SOME update for your Windows app in a couple years, forget 5. Now, there are lots of headwinds against Linux -- Windows is a known quantity, everyone knows the MS Office suite, people hate change and don't want to learn new stuff. But to pretend that Linux is a house of cards because there are sometimes issues that cause troubles is not being honest. Even Windows can have big issues, or have we forgotten the CrowdStrike outage earlier this year? All OSes have always had issues; that's why all of them have patches and updates.

ryao 2y ago
I would blame Microsoft for that one, since they had the ability to ban crowdstrike and others who have no business being in the NT kernel from the NT kernel, but instead gave them access by giving them code signing certificates. Apple on the other hand got them to switch to userspace: https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-supports-new-macos-big-sur/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/crowdstrike-supports-...
ghaff 2y ago
>everyone knows the MS Office suite How many people are running a locally-installed office suite at this point? Mailing files around seems archaic for most purposes. At my prior (open source) employer, even we had mostly given up on running local office productivity apps.