As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany’s TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn’t taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks “are the path toward the desktop.”
Preface: I am a Linux user
The Linux desktop needs to not require users to dig through config files to enable features that both windows and Mac have working by default. Fingerprint sensors, audio interfaces, broken bootloaders that you have to fix yourself. Requiring people to ever use a command line even once will keep people on Windows as the dominant platform.
Every time I have to look at a Linux forum to figure out why something isn’t working and the answers are run these commands I am instantly reminded that this is the exact thing keeping Windows mainstream.
Driver support still isn’t perfect. Software support as well. Linux needs to ship out of the box running exe files in compatibility layers. Linux needs to adopt executable installers for software packages that can be downloaded on the web. If Linux wants to be the way people use computers, Linux needs to fit the mould that windows has built for the people who have used it for the last 40 years.
Doing anything differently is enough of a deterrent for 90% of computer users. And of those 90%, 75% of them will give up immediately trying to fix anything that doesn’t work and either call someone else or decide it’s broken and do nothing.
Linux is incredibly powerful and I believe it should be the way we run computers, but I get exactly why it isn’t.
We already have windows for that. I know I don’t want linux to be another windows. And if it means people won’t use it, so be it.
I stopped using windows thirty fucking years ago, it’s not going to be forced upon me because some wankers can’t rtfm and think all operating systems are the same. I think those people should just use a tablet.
Yeah, plus there’s other downsides to popularity, like it being worthwhile for advertisers and scammers to target. As much as I’d like to see MS fail, there are big advantages to having them run the noob friendly OS, similar to how reddit still existing benefits Lemmy.
Last thing I want to see is Linux selling its soul to appeal to the lowest common denominator because it just gets worse from there.
This one always gets me. There’s rarely an explanation of what the commands do, and “man $command” is often so obtuse that it takes 10 minutes to figure out what the list of switches and options are doing to make sure it’s not going to download some malware in the background.
Then, you run the commands, and the output is six pages of warnings, debug, and test scripts. You might even notice that some of the tests fail (if you can even follow along), but was it important? Who knows? I guess as long as it works, who cares?
You are completely right.
I do also get why the run these commands is a thing, because it’s usually faster and also is distro / desktop environment agnostic.
Why would someone want to write separate guides for Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon etc. when one or two commands will suffice? But on the flip side, my family and friends will see a scary looking command and immediately be put off.
I feel it’s getting a lot better since more apps are just in the browser or electron apps, there’s way way less to actually configure for most end users. The type of people put off by commands generally won’t go digging through the settings anyway.
I do wish there were a proper GUI for configuring GRUB though. Any that I’ve ever found seemed to fall out of date very quickly.
“But on the flip side, my family and friends will see a scary looking command and immediately be put off.”
More to that… these are exactly the people we have all been telling “If you see someone on the internet telling you ‘type this!’ DON’T DO IT!”
ALT-F4 being the benign one.
rm -rf / --no-preserve-root - not so benign.
I remember a story of someone getting the recursive tag wrong on the chmod command and managed to chmod 000 themselves out of everything on the system… including chmod.
Okay so step one is to take GNOME and throw it into the trash where it belongs, and replace it with KDE which is a complete DE and not a bunch of plugins disguised in a trench coat of bash scripts.
Step two is to recommend a distro that targets both user quality and latest stable kernel releases for the most updated modules (Like Fedora or OpenSUSE)
Is the wrong problem because that’s what Flatpak accomplishes without creating distro dependency hell. Regressing to .run and .appimage files for everything is why windows updates suck total ass, and it would nuke one of Linux’s most killer features.
Users are already used to an appstore on mobile, I can personally guarantee you that they have no trouble getting accustomed to a desktop app installer, especially since they find it so much easier to search and click install without opening a bunch of websites. Since it shows both package manager and flatpak apps, they don’t even have to be aware of the backend system.
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The only thing holding back linux at this current point in time is honestly just vendors using it standard in consumer hardware. The dependency hell issue was resolved years ago by both huge improvements in package repos and the widespread support of Flatpak. The leftover baggage from X11 has been replaced by Wayland, which finally became viable around end of 2023. Even stuff like pulseaudio has been replaced by pipewire to handle every edge cases scenario.
I would not have said the same thing 2 years ago. The evidence is that the linux desktop user base is growing at an increasing rate. All they need is to hit a critical share (6-7%) for bigger vendors and OEMs to follow.
The good news is, as mentioned, there are a lot of vendors that are starting to do this. Valve’s steam machine by itself could be enough to add another 10 million users if they play their cards right.
My other anecdotal evidence is that I successfully changed several of my friends and family members over to Fedora just last year because I finally found it viable to throw at any former Windows user.
The only dissatisfaction I caused was one “dependent” person who couldn’t play Fortnite (the only game in their library that didn’t work), which I audaciously told it would be possible in 2026 via waydroid/lepton (valve plz dont fail me lol).
Basically this, it’s why it has worked from that gaming side since just installing steam and running a game is now a painless process thanks to proton.
I agree, but only until the part you mention how people should install their software. And that’s simply because I don’t think that people should install random .exes or .debs from the internet, because repositories are:
Yeah I’d say a large percentage of users don’t even know what a repository is, have no idea what a maintainer does, and wouldn’t even refer to their ‘apps’ as software.
You’re asking a lot of of people who don’t give a fuck.
What even is the benefit of getting the users who don’t even give a fuck about any of the things that are useful to learn (and have for those who did learn enough to use them)?
Yeah, but a lot of people nowadays only use a phone, and they don’t download their software from a random website, but they use a front end (e.g. Play Store/App Store), so they don’t need to get accustomed to it
There’s another thing that frustrates me about Linux and its various philosophies. Should I be allowed to do what I want with my software? Or should the machine protect me from myself? It seems at conflict with itself to allow you to do stuff like delete system files without much more than a warning while also having protections in place as you describe. Windows tried doing this exact thing with S Mode and people get pissed about windows not allowing them to do whatever they want.
I fundamentally disagree that users should not be allowed to install whatever they want from wherever they want.
You can install whatever dodgy file from wherever you want. I (and many others) don’t think that should be the default
I feel much of this, especially the installer situation right now.
I’ve setup and maintained a number of Linux servers from scratch, and I’m used to installing / updating / maintaining server software (via bash / SSH), but desktop kills me.
I didn’t think my Windows setup would be that crazy to get working, but VMWare Workstation, and Splashtop have both been killers (and good triple monitor support to some degree). Steam has been 50/50 for games for me, but I’m running an older NVidia card, so that’s probably my issue.
I started with Open Suse, and liked the OS quite well, but could never get past the errors installing and configuring VMWare (I develop in Windows inside a couple of VMWare images, and will for the next decade at least), so fast / stable VMWare support is key to moving off of Windows.
I also couldn’t get Splashtop running: I need remote access to my machine when outside of the house, and to client machines quite often, so need two different apps installed. There’s also no LogMeIn desktop app for Linux, so that becomes very painful (one of our dealers uses LMI instead of Splashtop).
After a week of that, I paved the disk and loaded Kubuntu, figuring that the better support for those packages would help. I did manage to get VMWare and Splashtop Business installed but everything feels unstable, and there have been lots of issues (third monitor is often black, had to disable 3d acceleration in VMWare, Solarr never seems to see my mouse, can’t browse shared NTFS drives), and have to re-sign VMWare modules every time the OS updates.
I’ve been using Windows for decades, largely without any issue, and would like to move, but it’s been problematic enough for me to put the entire thing on pause, knowing that I’m going to have to start all over again and burn several more days trying to get a base setup working.