Honestly I have no idea what the main point of this video is.
EDIT: I watched it again. I think they’re basically saying:
Stop worrying about the wrapping paper and bow that Linux comes in, and start worrying more about the actual desktop Linux platform.
I don’t think we have to choose one over the other though. And I don’t think it’s a waste of time to make the experience of managing software packages and customization better. I’m not necessarily talking about “ricing” your desktop. There are legitimate reasons to prefer certain software modules over others, e.g. window managers and compositors.
It’s also pretty annoying to hear them downplay the effort that goes into package management and configuration when it’s one of the main technologies that goes into crafting Linux images for various environments e.g. servers and embedded systems. Desktops are actually a small minority of Linux systems.
So I guess I only agree that it would be nice to have more investment in the desktop software. But there’s far less incentive for companies to invest in desktop software when developers are happy on MacBooks and the products they’re building are mostly web services. There are a handful of companies building desktop Linux software, but it’s slow going.
The installation is irrelevant to the use of Linux. The vast majority of people never installed Windows. And they never will.
It’s irrelevant to the user but for most people it’s an obstacle for trying out Linux. Most people won’t just buy a new Linux machine, not even considering the fact that they’re not easy to find. The way you get started is to install it in some old box you have lying around. That’s far too difficult for most people to do right now and therefore a barrier to entry.
That’s not most people no. That’s a tiny number of people.
Don’t get me wrong. Making the installation easier is a good thing. But thinking it will change anything to the usage rate of Linux is naive.
Most people do not install any OS and they will never do. Ever.
Installing Linux is not hard already. The single barrier is partitioning. Well, at least when everything works. Secure boot is also a barrier, as are bios configured to NOT boot on a USB key by default. Or Windows with its fast boot making accessing the bios and booting on devices harder.
If you want to consider people who want to try to install Linux without experience, there are a dozen of barriers, and the installer is not the biggest one, far from it.
I wasn’t talking about the Linux installer but the whole installation process. I agree that the things you mentioned are the real obstacles. Once you have the live system running it’s usually plain sailing.
That means the installation is irrelevant to the use of Windows. The vast majority of people who use Linux installed it themselves.
The corrollary is that pushing Linux usage rate won’t happen through installer improvements but through politics and having access to preinstalled Linux.
My major version updates on 2 computers with linux mint in the past few years have been just one click, wait, reboot when prompted, everything works and you barely even notice that anything changed. Though maybe I’ve just been lucky
though the rest of the video’s takes on the linux experience for new users seems pretty accurate to me (lol downloading an application and using it requires at least a manual chmod +x and that’s the best case scenario. Maybe there’s a distro that has a solution but I have doubts (and “have everything you could possibly need in the package manager” is obviously a nonstarter))
But the community parts seem odd to me:
Is “just disable secure boot” a bad take? Has someone been holding everyone out on a better solution?
and
The only way linux is going to change is when money and development power is given to major dekstop Linux projects. It’s time to stop wasting time on customization or packaging
is just… sure, herd all the cats into one place, make them all work together in harmony, and summon 500 million dollars out of thin air to wrap it all together. Instead of writing bash scripts everyone should be praying to gabe newell to save us lol
I think it’s a horrible idea in any case. Imagine if this had happened 20 years ago, and we were stuck with RPM as the only package manager.
Standards are good, but so is diversity. So is innovation. There isn’t a perfect package manager, or even agreement about whether rolling upgrades are better than fixed releases. We wouldn’t have immutable distros (which I’m not a fan of, but I’m glad someone is researching and experimenting with them).
It’s not “wasting time,” it’s a dynamic, evolutionary ecosystem.
Linux Desktop User Unicorn
Is there a science about who the Linux desktop users are? To me as a user, there doesn’t seem to be much coherent public information on the targetable audience.
Chromebook/ tablet people mostly.
The most likely users for Linux desktop, don’t need a tower. Storage and computing are compact enough.
The heavy compute workload people have a lot of history of how and what they use, they need to explore their own migration path.
Source?
Sorry, sources are all paywalled.
Sales in these devices are up, while PCs are stagnant. Go look
I’m not sure I understand this connection. Linux users aren’t necessarily buying new hardware.
The majority of new Linux users are buying Chromebooks or other devices with it prebuilt
No it does not.
TL;DR: People who cant use linux never learned the basics of computers. They just learned where to click to do x and where to do y in windows, and they just instantly lock up once anything is different
People who cant use linux never learned the basics of computers
that’s like 80% of all people
And you know what? A lot of people don’t give a shit; they just want it to work. They have no interest, desire, or - frankly - need to know how L2 caches work. Or devices drivers. Or the difference between Wayland and X11.
Just as I have no interest or need to be able to take my car’s engine apart. I don’t want to have you stop on my way to the grocery store and fiddle under the hood so that I can make a right turn that my car, for some reason, is refusing to do.
Elitism is not a good attitude.
The problem with your argument is that you are phrasing that as a problem with how the OS is not able to do what you want. But Linux is able to do whatever you ask it to. The real problem is companies.
Most of the problems Windows users have with Linux is “Software X is not working in Linux” followed by “Alternative Software Y is too weird/quirky/broken on Linux”. This used to be a problem with Gaming. With the investment of Valve into Linux, the scene there has dramatically shifted. Yet, you have cases like that of Roblox whose software is clearly capable of running on Linux but they deliberately hobble it and only support Windows. The important thing is that free software is written and maintained by people in their free time for free. So you can’t expect the same level of polish as a dedicated company working on the software (Of course I can point to beautiful exceptions like Blender, VLC, etc.)
So essentially the problem is two fold:
- Software/Game vendors don’t want to support Linux
- Microsoft benefits from having it this way so they bribe their way into having Windows on retail hardware.
Nowadays you can find laptops from manufacturers like Tuxedo or Framework, or even Dell/Lenovo where if you chose to go without windows they often discount your purchase by $100 or in some cases even $200!
So it turns out Microsoft got greedy and is charging like 10% of hardware price as the cost of having Windows pre-installed. (Citation needed, I learnt it here on the fediverse)
You and other people who want their stuff to just work are correct about the assessment of what needs to happen in Linux for it to catch up with Mac or Windows, but are incorrectly attributing the steep gradient set by Microsoft/Apple to inadequacy on the part of Linux.
I’ll up that to 99%.
None of the people I know who aren’t in an IT job or in a relationship with one who is knows how to use a computer.
ok.
it does kinda fit in that if you forced people to learn linux, the basic stuff most people do should in the end not be much more difficult than windows (assuming you don’t run into more bugs)
but that would never happen unless a “linux revolution” was already in full swing
People are running in all kinds of bugs with Windows, just look at their forums.
The major difference is that people have been using Windows all their life and they’ve learned how to circumvent their bugs and hiccup.
Switching to Linux means people will have to learn a new flow and it turns off a lot of people, simply by the fact that they have been using the same OS all their life and can’t bother to learn something new.
And that’s all fine. But to go in your direction, when more manufacturers will offer 100-120$ off on Linux computers (because you don’t pay the Windows license), it will probably boost Linux adoption rate.
