Linux

"Why dont more people use the linux desktop" its because they don't care about computers. To most people computers are a tool and they are not interested in what the underlying software is doing as long as they can run a web browser.

The author is an idiot.

When someone comes to me asking how to get into Linux, they do not need to hear a laundry list of distributions to choose from.

Only techies ask anyone how they "get into Linux". Say it with me now. "People don't buy, buy into, get into, install, or use operating systems" They buy fuckin computers. It is perceptibly to virtually all non-techies a feature of the device.

There are a million types of cars but people manage to pick one and buy it same with breakfast cereals or shampoo because they are obligated to make a decision or go hungry, dirty, or walk everywhere.

People don't particularly like making decisions and they decided what OS they were going to use when they bought the computer and they have no intention of downloading an iso, write it to a USB, figure out how they boot from it, figure out the bios options they need to disable and what works differently than what they are familiar with.

You lost them around step 2 and lost all hope of moving forward unless the prize at the end is something much better than "does everything I used to do but differently"

The success of Chromebooks, android phones, and the steam deck is that it was driven by devices people wanted to use not an OS people wanted to use. If you want to see more Linux use that is the story you need to focus on.

Most people don't know how to install operating system, even if it's just pressing next in the installer mostly. The reason Linux is not primary system is that it's not preinstalled. It has a bit of chicken and egg problem with some support missing due to low user base, and base lowered by that soft missing but that would change in the instant if everybody suddenly bought PC with linux preinstalled.

Even the win mentioned with linux in gaming is basically just that. Linux preinstalled on steam deck.

Because windows is preinstalled on the computer they buy. That is literally it

Because Windows or iOS is already loaded when they buy the machine.

This guy:

There are 100 competing distributions:

"Let's add one more, one that's standardized and designed to make it easy for users to start using Linux."

There are now 101 competing distributions.

This has been discussed many times before. Personally, I think that there is an inherent contridiction between the FOSS ethos and mass appeal.

The way things get adopted en masse is by having limited options and limited changes.

This is why most extremely popular software grows stagnant. The company/group that puts it out doesn't want to alienate its user base. Think Ebay, Facebook, ios, etc.

Users get pissed off if their software changes in any significant way. Most people don't care about choice or freedom. They just want to grab a device and have it turn on and do what they tell it.

Look at cell phones. Back in the early 00's when they started to become common for everybody, think about all the weird and wacky designs you saw. Neon, chrome, bizzare form factors, gimmicks, etc. The paradise of consumer choice. So many brands and styles to choose from. I remember going to high school and seeing all the different kinds of phones that everybody had.

Now days, every phone is a black/grey glass slab. The most drastic differences between them are what shape the bezels are and how the camera lenses are oriented on the back.

Consumers in general don't care about choice. They are fine choosing between an Apple glass slab or an Android glass slab. This point is proven even more strongly by gen Z, who apparently don't even care about the few "choices" that Android provides, over 80% of US teens use iphones. Of iphone users, over 30% are gen z, of Android, barely over 10%, three times less

Linux and FOSS in general is all about choice, options, rejecting vendor lock, forking projects and carving out niches for sub-groups of users. A fork for devs, a fork for security concerned folks, a fork for people that liked the way the software looked 10 years ago, a fork for people that don't agree with the political views of the original devs, etc etc.

I don't have a problem with that, personally I love it. The extreme consumer freedom and ability to customize is a huge reasons I love FOSS software. But I also recognize that it means we won't ever be mainstream. Or at the least, if we become mainstream, it will likely be at the cost of much of that freedom.

I am happy with a few percent market share. I don't need more than that to feel like we are successful. As long as Capitalism is the default system in this world, it will always reward products that generate the most profit, and that will never reward freedom or consumer rights long term.

We ought to inform others as much as we can on an individual basis, friends, family etc. Use FOSS, contribute money, code, documentation, tutorials, and user support. Fight the power and stand against the corpos. Our fight should not be based in the goal of becoming "mainstream," it should be based in the principles of freedom, empowerment, and inclusion.

I think the reason is that 1. Linux is still too hard for the average person and 2. The average person just doesn't care

Yes, you don't have to write bash scripts or compile the kernel yourself, but still, Linux is different in many ways from Windows. This is on top of the fact that most people don't know much about tech in general and often have problems with (imo) very basic stuff. I honestly can't imagine them downloading an ISO file, flashing it onto an USB stick and then booting from it. Most people probably don't even know that Windows != PC

Then there's also the fact that the average person just doesn't care. They just want to get things done

(sidenote: I might sound elitist but I'm not. I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to be interested in tech, just like it's not reasonable to, for example, expect everyone to be interested in cars. It just so happens that the tech industry is tightly connected to freedom, privacy, etc. while the car industry is not)

To the question it's clickbaiting you to see:

The problem is the lack of a representative version of Linux.

And the response is that Linux is not Windows or OSX. It doesn't work the same way. The point of 80 gazillion different flavors is that it can be made to be what is wanted or needed. ChromeOS and Android are Linux and I'd argue they both qualify as "desktop" even if Android rocks many phones in mobile mode. If you don't like sysv init for whatever reason you can find a bunch that don't use it. Want to install a modern version on a 486? You can with lightweight 32-bit distros, though it'll be terrible and it means you're a masochist.

Possibly because OSX is pretty similar under the hood by its nature as a *BSD derivative, and Windows has WSL which has become pretty good from what I'm told. A casual user may simply not encounter the need to install a whole different operating system on bare metal anymore.

But I think the reason, special cases aside, is that they haven't given it an honest try. It's not the Duplo of operating systems, to get what you're after out of it you have to actually try, to learn how. It's easier to give up and go back to what seems to work based on it being the first thing they saw.

“When someone comes to me asking how to get into Linux, they do not need to hear a laundry list of distributions to choose from. When they ask, I don't want to have to say, something akin to, "You could try Ubuntu, Linux Mint, elementary OS, Zorin OS, or Ubuntu Budgie."”

Ok, so what if I need a car? People will give me a laundry list of car brands to choose from, so I don’t really see that as a valid point. What if I want to buy a pair of shoes? Is there another laundry list? Yes there is.

Just pick something popular, and try it out. If you don’t like it, you’ll have a better idea of the features you want or don’t want in the future.

Can we please stop this nonsense already? With Linux on desktop we had two goals:

• hardware support
• software support

We achieved both goals. Since probably 20 years ago I've been using Linux exclusively both at work and at home. All my hardware works, all my software works. Why would I care if Linux gets to 20%, 80% or 100% market share? At this point if some companies or game developers don't support Linux it's their loss, I will find an alternative. And if some users is still using Windows it's also their loss. I feel sorry for them but I stopped encouraging people to use Linux years ago. We're good, our feature is secured, we don't need to push for more users anymore.

I literally don't think the plethora of choices has anything to do with why Linux is not installed by the masses. The only reason is that Microsoft and Apple are huge market forces with the ability to advertise, make deals with other business partners, pre-install their operating systems onto hardware that's sold, operate technical support services, and so on. They have completely flooded the market with their stuff.

Linux has these things, too, but nowhere in scale or scope, and with relative industry latecomers to sell it. If Linux were created 10-12 years sooner and companies like Suse, RH, Canonical, System76 were all formed earlier than they were I think we'd see a healthy amount of Linux out in the world, with maybe a few percent higher market share (which would be extremely massive).

Keep in mind that Apple, as a company, rebuilt itself truly not on the technical excellence of Macintosh, but by driving sales of iPods then iPhones.

The issue isn’t an official Linux distribution, per se (and note: Canonical have wanted to be that for years with their Ubuntu).

The issue is that laptop and desktop retail machines come with Windows. And until that changes, Linux on the desktop will never see more traction.

There is probably only one real way this comes to fruition: a company, like Apple, that engineers their own hardware with full stack integration to their own Linux distribution — and the hardware has to be aesthetically pleasing, reasonably priced (unlike Apple), and with in-person support (a la Apple Store).

The closest to that we have, at least in the United States, is System76. But they do not engineer their systems. They basically cobble together all the parts that are known to work with the Linux kernel, toss them into an outsourced chassis, and sell them at what I would consider somewhat bloated prices.

That being said, I love what System 76 is doing with Pop!_OS, but the name sucks, the software versions will always be lagging behind unless using snap and/or flatpak, gaming on Linux is still an uphill battle despite Proton’s strides, and at the end of the day, the user will actually have to do something at some point on the command line.

What Linux desktop users need to embrace is that it is okay to not be the primary desktop operating system of the world. It is okay that it is relegated to geek enthusiasts, developers, and the like.

There really is nothing wrong with that.

Lazy theory. Think about cars. If the diversity of alternatives was putting off people, I guess we would still all be driving black Ford cars.

I have been using Linux since 1996 and what is putting off people is:

1. First and foremost: habits and lack of will to learn new ways.
2. Proprietary apps that have no exact equivalent. See 1.
3. A closed proprietary system that limits interoperability. Even if it has improved, certain fenced software perimeters remain an occasional issue.

For me, the biggest reason not to use linux are windows-only apps like CAD software. That software was a must have on my university, and now Im stuck with it lol. I switched to linux anyway, but still struggling to find best workflow between dual boot and windows in VM.

But linux today is so available and friendly. I have POP! OS on my desktop and partner can use it with no problem (windows user). Its so freaking intuitive, much easier to install and use compared to windows IMO. I believe people are not afraid as much as they dont care and microsoft is pushing their OS much more than any other alternative

tl;dr FrAgMeNtAtIon

There, saved you a click.

People se Linux fine when it comes preinstalled. See the Steam Deck.

I am going to bring it up a level. I don’t really agree with the surface level analysis of ZDNET.

It’s all a bit janky. The jank is really reduced BUT it is there. There are two flavors: distro jank and app jank. And the reason it’s janky is because the maintainers want it that way.

We should applaud the dedication of companies and people to relentlessly improve. Things are as great as they have ever been. This stuff is hard and Linux does make some things really really simple.

But…go to any distro support site, and you will see the usual things. Why does the secondary monitor not turn on. Why did audio stop working, laptop won’t wake. Etc etc. the solutions are better and better, but unique hw cfgs causing distros jank is one hill to climb.

The other are the apps. Again, I am glad they are there. And they are better than ever.

However, sometimes app workflow causes a great app to feel janky. It’s like “good enough” is all the love they get.

Finally, the open source community can be a removed to work with. Anyone who has ever submitted a patch knows that some projects and tools are … interesting.

It’s like…thank you for your time, but your patch to eliminate jank is rejected because … ego.

Not all open source repos are like this. But more are than you’d think. Different ideas are not always welcome, even if end users would appreciate those very same ideas.

And the repos with a more open mind? No surprise that their results are more usable.

As others have said, most people don't install operating systems. They just buy a system, likely a laptop and run whatever OS is on it. Hardly any laptops come with Linux preinstalled unless you look pretty hard, or are searching specifically for one.

First of all, this guy is correct that this is a significant reason that Linux is not more popular on the desktop. Desktop Linux is a community of things, not just one thing that people can experience and recommend.

That said, XKCD has a nice explanation about why that will never be solved:

https://xkcd.com/927/

From time to time though, a distro will dominate and. Linux will grow. For a while, that was Red Hat. Then, it was Ubuntu. Both of those moved things forward but were too early to reach mass adoption. There really is no front-runner right now but perhaps one will emerge again and “that” will be Linux for the masses.

In the meantime, things like Flatpak are addressing a lot of the problem. It is becoming realistic for a dev to target “Linux” ( Flatpak ) and have their application run predictably regardless of what distro any given individual has chosen. Freedesktop.org helps as well.

Really though, this problem will exist until most of us ( not all ) agree that one Linux Desktop distro is simply better than the rest and most of us begin to use it. We can then onboard new users onto that.

I disagree. I think it's mostly a combination of baby duck syndrome and the perceived difficulty of gaming (unless you're a kid who "needs" to play the flavor of the month over-monetized multiplayer trash)

Most people view computers as an appliance to get what they want, like a toaster. They never think to install a different OS, if they even know how to do so or that Linux exists in the first place. Windows comes installed out of the box for every computer not made by Apple for the most part. My boomers aren't dependent on any Windows-specific software as their use-case is just a Facebook machine, so I put them on Fedora with GNOME and there hasn't been a single problem in years. They can even handle installing and updating software with the software center that GNOME provides. They were actually interested in trying something else because even the tech illiterate can see that Windows sucks now. All I had to do was pick the distro and DE and then install it for them. The distro could just as easily be Debian, or Ubuntu, or possibly even Arch. The DE just needs to be absolutely braindead so they can't hurt themselves by accident. Yeah, some use-cases require that people use Windows-specific software, but there's also a lot of Facebook machines that could just as easily be running Linux if the computers at the store shipped with it; Chromebooks are an example of this. And honestly, even the OS-specific software thing is becoming less of a problem as more stuff moves to the browser.

Homoginizing Linux would be destroying so much of what makes Linux special. And besides, as many have pointed out, that's not the source of the problem anyway in that most people don't care what OS is installed or even comprehend what an OS is.

I also don't think Linux needs mass adoption. It'd be great if it did, but it being a tool for those who care about what tools they use is fine too.

He's wrong.

I use Windows because I have Windows software I need to use, whether for work or gaming, and I just want that shit to work with zero effort on my part.

The bigger problem is that there's often no one willing to show you how to use it. I had a friend who managed to picked it up himself, and when I asked him to show me the ropes all I got out of him was "just Google it". Now, of course that's how you figure all sorts of things out and an essential skill in itself, but first you need to know what to search for, and if you're just starting out you're probably not going to know what that is - or you'll have more abstract but simple problems like figuring out issues with syntax in the terminal. That kind of thing is really easy for another person who knows to say "no, it's like this, because of that" but can be very difficult for a person to figure out on their own.

Quite often it seems like people have gone through these trials themselves, but then rather than making it easier for other people and helping them they leave them to face the same challenges all over again from scratch. This is very frustrating, when you know there's an answer that someone could just give you but it's not apparent to you, which leads to people throwing in the towel.

Today's Linux is not yesterday's Linux. Now, the platform is incredibly easy to use. There's no more need to use the command line.

It still blows my mind when people say this. Linux is incredibly NOT user friendly, and you're constantly sent into the CLI for basic debugging or even just installation of software.

The reliance on CLI is exactly why it will never be more popular, and I think Linux users/developers like it that way.

As for an "official" Linux distribution, that's a neat idea but simply never going to happen. No one will ever agree to that.

This is an inherent limitation of "free as in freedom" software. The simple option of choice complicates things, and always will.

This ignores a bunch of stuff. Also when a lot of non Linux people think Linux the first distro that comes to mind is Ubuntu so there you go, you have your pr distro. Linux in my experience is not easy at all to use. There people that have been on the platform exclusively for 10+ years really don't understand the modern windows experience. In the 15 years I've been using windows I've only had to use the command line for rather niche things. Winget is a nice curiosity not a necessity like apt or pacman. In windows shit just works. And 99 percent of the time it doesn't it's as easy as right clicking and selecting windows 7 as a compatibility option, and non tech users call you a wizard for knowing how to do that. They get scared when they see a command prompt and I understand it I was like that at one point.

Also everyone is used to using windows. We use it on our schools, we use it on our works, we use it in our libraries. It's what people know and people are reluctant to swap because why learn something new that's considerably harder, when what you already have just works. Almost every computer comes with windows pre-installed. For people it's just plug and play no need to worry about anything. And I belive this is the greatest problem. If there were more devices with Linux out of the box, if school and colleges used Linux instead of windows we would see a dramatic increase in the number of users. But this is going to piss off Microsoft the moment that feel it might injure their bottom line. They want Linux in a leash, a project they can steal from for their own platform, just like github. That's why they donate so much money to the project and the moment they feel threatened they will stop donations, pay politicians to stop any change and sue people for whatever bullshit reason they come up with