Probably won’t amount to anything
And since 1992 people have been claiming every year that this is the year of Linux on the desktop.
This year is the year. All you have to do is switch. With products like Ubuntu, there’s no reason not to. It. Just. Works.
Now there’s lih-nux or lie-nux I don’t know how you say it Or how you install it, or use it, or play it Or where you download it, or what programs run But lih-nux, or lie-nux, don’t look like much fun
However you say it, it’s getting great press Though how it survives is anyone’s guess If you ask me, it’s a great big mess For elitist, nerdy shmucks
“It’s free!” they say, if you can get it to run The Geeks say, “Hey, that’s half the fun!” Yeah, but I got a girlfriend, and things to get done The Linux OS SUCKS (I’m sorry to say it, but it does.)
Valve has done amazing work with Steam Play. Seeing how well the steam deck plays games convinced me not to put windows on my new rig.
I don’t agree, however, that it just works. My graphics card needed a mess driver outside of the default repos for Ubuntu lts, and my gpu has been out for almost a year.
I also have one high dpi monitor and one standard-ish dpi monitor, and scaling them independently, moving windows back and forth, and going into and out of full screen games all produce undesired behavior. It’s annoying enough that I now just use one monitor.
Ubuntu LTS is generally used for servers, but if you are going to game on it you should consider using a container such as flatpak. It will share a kernel with your host OS (so if you need a newer kernel you are out of luck) but will be packaged with a newer version of Mesa. Installing drivers outside of the official repos can be a PITA because you often have to re-do everything when you upgrade your OS.
edit: should mention flatpak won’t make your OS work itself. You’ll need a newer distro for that. Ubuntu only gets major software updates for six months until the next release, everything after is minor adjustments like security updates and bug fixes.
It. Just. Works.
No. It. Doesn’t
You all keep saying it works but it still doesn’t work with a whole load of software even with Wine.
If all you do is internet browsing then Linux is fine, but if you need specific software it can be a pain.
it still doesn’t work with a whole load of software even with Wine.
I don’t think being able to run programs designed and compiled for windows is a requirement to be considered a usable os. For example, you can not run safari on windows. Does this mean windows doesn’t count as a usable os?
I think the definition of useable should be that software exists that can do the kind of things you want to do on your computer. In that sense, Linux is perfecty useable on the desktop, at least for people who have similar computing requirements to me.
Yeah seriously lol that’s what they were saying 20 friggin years ago and it was okay at best. Idk how it’s come along since then but honestly Windows is quite stable now, I literally can’t remember the last time I got a bsod or had any real issues. I used to screw around with different builds and dual booting, had strong opinions about which boot loader was best etc, these I just don’t see the point. All I use my computer for is web browsing and excel.
They believe that if they say it enough times it might just magically happen.
Linux is not ready for prime time and to a large degree it is because of Linux users themselves who simply don’t want to admit the massive usability and compatibility problems that their beloved OS has. If they can’t admit it, then clearly it’s not going to get fixed.
And I’ll just sit there and watch my OS since I’ll have no software to run. No thanks.
Else I’d just sit there and watch my OS show me ads and it’d tell me how I should switch to Edge and use Bing. No thanks. /s
All you have to do is switch. With products like Ubuntu, there’s no reason not to. It. Just. Works.
People who say that severely underestimate the time, effort, and expertise they’ve accumulated that makes it easy for themselves, but hard for others.
I tried to switch once before COVID. It was horrible. Oh, I now need to learn about file systems and NTFS and ext3/4(?) - i guess i’ll try Linux on a separate, old hard drive. Ok, something didn’t work, I now have to figure out what driver wasn’t supported and what I need to download. Great, people on forums are helpful but they’re asking me a bunch of gibberish. Now I gotta figure out this command line thing. Oh cool some people built GUIs for certain stuff so i don’t need to play with the command line, but then the GUI doesn’t work occasionally and now I have to figure out if it’s the GUI that broke or something else. And then at some point I got stuck because of file permissions.
Unsurprisingly, I’m back on Windows. It sucks, but at least it really just works.
For majority of people, an OS isn’t something they want to think about, nor something they know a lot about. For example, I’m not a gearhead, so when I buy a car, I just want to drive it off the lot on Day 1 - sure not everything is perfect the way I want it, but i don’t need to do anything if I don’t want to. I don’t want to buy a shell of a car and have to go to 5 different shops to choose a tire, install my own seats, get used to the stick shift being on the roof of the car instead of beside me, and have it break down on me all the time because “you aren’t using it right”.
It all depends on your hardware. If you run standard hardware with an AMD card, all the drivers you need should (theoretically) be in the kernel and will magically just work. As soon as you start using running hardware with proprietary drivers then you have to put in a little effort. Might require you to install separate package(s) from a third-party repo or something, and that will require terminal. It’s just three commands usually: add the repo -> update your package manager -> install the driver. Not hard but if you are used to the Windows way of doing things it can be intimidating.
Even still, some stuff just doesn’t have Linux support at all or it’s completely community-maintained. If every company just open sourced their drivers and did things the “Linux” way then there would be no issue but unfortunately Linux doesn’t have the market share for those companies to care. So you get into the negative feedback loop of: Linux has low market share because of lack of support, and companies don’t support Linux because of low market share.
Wasn’t Linus an actual asshole back in the day. The same as Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates. Seems to be a running trend with OS makers from the early 90’s.
https://itsfoss.com/torvalds-takes-a-break-from-linux/
Not that it is relevant. It’s cool we have Linux. Glad we can celebrate a system that just isn’t quite there yet.
EDIT: Lemmy is a cesspool. You guys need help.
Linus’ brand of assholery extends to cussing out some of his colleagues via email when they did something stupid, sometimes. It’s not even remotely comparable to Steve Jobs (horrible treatment of his daughter) and Bill Gates (EEE strategy, monopolistic practices).
The same as Steve Jobs and even Bill Gates.
In my opinion, not the same as these guys. Jobs and Gates were assholes because they got fuck you money and power, so they were assholes for being assholes’ sake. Linus was an asshole, but he usually had good reasons for acting like that, usually technical, common sense and no-nonsense driven. Sometimes I miss the time before he got therapy or whatever. It was amusing and cathartic to see him roasting some guys because he was right more often than not.
Glad we can celebrate a system that just isn’t quite there yet.
What are you talking about? I mean, if you mean Linux on the Desktop, sure, but nobody who uses Linux on the IT sector cares too much about that. Linux has won on the server arena for a long time already. E: And then there’s also the mobile and embedded market. If you think about it, desktop is the only part in tech that Linux has yet to gain ground.
Someone apparently doesn’t know how Bill Gates actually got his start or how Apple started. “Money and power.”
Bill Gates snuck into a library to learn about computers.
Apple started with a group of people in a damn garage.
“He was an asshole but he had good reason.” Apparently not good enough that Linus thought it was good enough to continue being an asshole. Pat on the back to him.
“It’s won on Server Arena.” Great? Ask enterprise companies and hospitals how secure and reasonable Linux seems for their business models.
“Mobile.” Yeah this one is a joke. Linux is far from ready for the mobile world at least for phones.
“Embedded” now this one is actually a fair point.
Someone apparently doesn’t know how Bill Gates actually got his start or how Apple started. “Money and power.”. Bill Gates snuck into a library to learn about computers. Apple started with a group of people in a damn garage.
How one started is irrelevant to the discussion. A lot of big companies out there had humble beginnings. It’s about what those guys turn into once they hit it big. And the thing is, Linus never really hit it big, not in the way that Jobs or Gates did, because he was always content to be the tech / architecture guy instead of moving up to more higher-level management roles, which is where the money tends to be.
For all their humble beginnings, Jobs and Gates were ruthless when they hit it big. Go read one of the biographies of Jobs - he was a notoriously difficult guy to work with, and was needlessly an asshole very often. Also remember that Apple wasn’t just Jobs; at least half of its early success is due to Wozniak, who is still beloved by everyone to this day, because on top of being a brilliant hardware and software engineer, he isn’t and wasn’t a dick.
I’ll cut some slack to Gates though - as ruthless as he was on his days as CEO, with his philanthropy on the past decade or so he has been at least trying to atone.
Apparently not good enough that Linus thought it was good enough to continue being an asshole. Pat on the back to him.
He didn’t. Did you miss the part where I said he got therapy? He even went so far to apologize, which is more than you can say about most of those tone deaf, narcissistic sociopath CEO types.
Great? Ask enterprise companies and hospitals how secure and reasonable Linux seems for their business models.
I’m not even sure what’s your point here. Sure Linux isn’t applicable to all kinds of business or how they’re built. How that invalidates what I said about the server market?
Yeah this one is a joke. Linux is far from ready for the mobile world at least for phones.
What? So you’re completely ignoring that the largest mobile OS on the market is built on Linux?
IDK about the topic of him being an asshole. I don’t follow him like, at all.
But, I might argue about the server arena part. From my understanding, (not in the field, so feel free to prove me wrong), but Azure, AWS, and others are built on Linux. Right? Just the two sites are a very massive percentage of the internet.
Mobile, again I might be wrong. Android is a fork of Linux or runs the Linux kernel. Is that right?
Just last month I came across a cd I burned with Mandrake Linux that I had downloaded - 26 years ago!
I should try and install that on a virtual PC and see how it feels/looks hahaha
The better Linus.
