6 ms·
> I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software
by lambda 11y ago
> I have to admit I'm surprised to find that anyone is still trying to make desktop Linux work for normal people, i.e. non-programmers who aren't free-software fanatics.
As far as day to day use goes, modern desktop Linux environments are just as usable by end users as Windows.
The main impediments to adoption tend to be:
1. Software that they need that only runs on Windows or OS X
2. Syncing to devices like iPods or iPhones
3. Lack of easily accessible support infrastructure for when things go wrong, major version upgrades, etc. You can generally take a Windows machine to Best Buy or some other local computer store, or a Mac to an Apple Store, and they can deal with it, but there's little accessible support for the complicated cases on Linux unless you have a friend or relative who's into Linux.
4. Lack of support by IT departments.
So if you have a situation like in the original story, where someone is willing to provide that support voluntarily, and you just need a home computer with internet access and no specialized software, a modern Linux desktop will do just fine.
> My guess is that GNOME 3 and Unity require roughly as much CPU power and RAM as Windows 7.
Lightweight desktops like LXDE and XFCE can run fine on older hardware, and are much lighter weight than Windows 7. If you read the article, you would see that it was running LXDE, not Gnome or Unity.
- tdees40 11y ago"Just as usable by end users as Windows." Have you seen a non-programmer install a printer on a Linux machine? It's terrifying.
- the_af 11y agoAt least as of version 12.04, Ubuntu [1] automagically detects my wireless HP Laserjet printer (albeit with some slightly reduced functionality, IIRC). My wife's Windows 7 laptop struggles with it; the install process was more involved and the printer sometimes refuses to wake up when sending a print job to it. [1] The modern desktop-oriented distro I'm more familiar with. I'm sure other user-friendly distros handle it similarly well.
- yellowapple 11y agoAt the very most, it might involve having to navigate the CUPS web interface (which, admittedly, is a pile of shit; thanks, Apple) in order to get a printer setup. Still rarely involves having to install drivers (though some vendors are better than others; Brother and HP tend to be the most Linux-compatible, while Canon and Konica Minolta have tended to require driver installation on some distros).
- leppr 11y agoIt takes a programmer to click on a "Ok" button now? I seem to recall the process on Windows being at least as involved.
- caryhartline 11y agoWhat installation? At the most, you'll be asked to install packages from HP and you click okay and you're done. On Windows, it's still likely that you'll need to download drivers from a website.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoI generally just plug in the printer and then hit print...
- fnordfnordfnord 11y agoI have. It works as well or better than on Windows. College freshmen, most of whom have never seen a Linux machine manage it.
- rconti 11y ago5. NetworkManager
- lambda 11y agoI have found NetworkManager to be no more difficult to use than setting up networking in Windows. For me, for simple cases, it tends to just work; for more complicated cases with multiple interfaces, it takes some fiddling but can be made to work as well; and pretty similar to the amount of fiddling on Windows. I've found OS X to require less fiddling for some of the simpler and moderately complex cases, but also have problems of its own when you get to some more complicated cases.
- yellowapple 11y agoIt always "just works" at first. The problems start creeping in after a few weeks or months, when NetworkManager inexplicably vomits all over itself with dropped connections, unexplained failures to connect to wireless networks, and duplicate wireless entries (among many, many other things) when the underlying components (namely, wpa_supplicant) work perfectly fine on their own on the same hardware.
- zxcvcxz 11y agoAre you trying to imply every OS doesn't face issues like these? A simple google search of "wifi broken after upgrade [insert OS]" will get you thousands of results. I'd say I had worse wifi issues with Windows than Linux.
- yellowapple 11y agoThis isn't a "oh no, I upgraded and it broke". This is a case of "oh no, it simply stopped working properly without any perceptible cause". Yes, I'm fully aware how broken Windows' wifi implementation is. NetworkManager, however, tends to make the Windows equivalent look wonderful in comparison. And yes, every operating system has problems. That's not my point. My point is that we (the free-software-loving community) can do better than the current state of NetworkManager. It's the one pain point that seems to be pervasive across GNU/Linux distributions, and pretending that "oh, every operating system's wireless stack is broken, so we shouldn't be worried" is delusional. Even if NetworkManager is "just as bad" as the others, why shouldn't we be striving to make something better?