This website is terrible. Its "resources" are almost entirely just links to articles and youtube videos. The information is poorly presented and poorly written. Why is the front page entirely taken up by a picture of a penguin?
I know that some people say "virus" when they mean malware in general. However, a literal virus is a snippet of code that attaches itself to an executable. When the executable is run, the virus also runs. The virus then finds more executables and attaches itself to those too.
Literal viruses on diverse unices were indeed fairly rare in the past (and are still not common).
Traditionally on most linuxes (and bsds) you obtain trusted executables from a known good source (your distribution ) , whilst files from other sources are never run at all.
This means that Linux viruses find it hard to actually spread in the wild.
This particular strength doesn't mean other kinds of malware can't still be successful, of course. (Though naturally people try to harden Linux against many threats.)
>Traditionally on most linuxes (and bsds) you obtain trusted executables from a known good source (your distribution ) , whilst files from other sources are never run at all.
On the other hand, the vast majority of people installing applications by piping curl output to Bash are also on linuxes and bsds
Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?
If you do not already have a pubkey for which the code can be signed, then there is no chain of trust to verify in the first place. What signature would you check the code against in such a scenario? One you download from the vendor's same website?
>Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?
Well in my case, I screw around a lot on my computer. So I end up copying and pasting a few lines of bash code that download god-knows-what because I accidentally deleted the entire /etc/ directory and the howto guide that was the 3rd result on Google says "run this it will totally work".
So at least for me, yes, it's often worse than installing an .exe from a vendor's website.
But I didn't mean to say Linux installs don't tend to be safer than Windows, just that it's not as rosy as the original comment made it seem like.
> "Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?"
Uh, yes? The naïve Windows user has Windows Defender scanning downloads to offer at least some token protection against known threats.
That's always the problem with using the word "Never". That should have been "Almost Never" or "Rarely" (which is true for me at least) , and I didn't catch it when I proof-read my comment. Sorry about that.
And yes: while traditionally people might install just from their distribution, times have changed a bit and people now do install from pip, cargo, npm, etc; but these are _somewhat_ trusted repositories still (rightly or wrongly).
Some people sometimes use curl as well. Due to the nature and low volume, this still doesn't give literal viruses much leeway. This is because it's not a target-rich environment (only a few executables), it's not guaranteed to happen on many computers, and most importantly, people tend to only curl in one direction. When you curl, you're mostly going to end up downloading executables from some central location. Typically these executables don't subsequently get copied to (m)any other computers or back to the server. So a literal virus doesn't get a lot of traction to replicate the way a virus wants to.
If you do manage to curl some malware, what you'd get is probably going to be something that's properly called a Trojan. Trojans are definitely a thing.
Just because you're on Linux doesn't mean you're magically completely invulnerable to all kinds of malware, you still need to act with care.
On the upside many distributions are more or less designed to keep you safe by default, and won't suddenly do something crazy to get you into trouble. On the downside the human operators are not always similarly inclined. ;-)
I don't understand this phenomena in the Linux community of trying to convert anyone and everyone to Linux. But then again, I'm not want to convert others to my religion, sports team or car model.
Yes, there are Mac and Windows evangelist, but there's more and they are louder in the Linux community. You would think for a community that claims to support "freedom" and "opensource," they would live and let live what others use for operating systems.
MS and Apple are doing plenty more advertising to try to convert people to use their OS. The difference is that Linux is not backed by a large corporation, so naturally it relies on people talking about it, it's more similar to a grassroots movement that tries to e.g. get you to grow your own vegetables instead of buying at the supermarket.
I would also argue that the Mac community in particular is pretty vocal about trying to convert people to macs.
This looks like the sort of website my friends and I would've setup when we were running local community teams for Ubuntu and running computer expo and flea market tables trying to get people to try it. In 2005. I checked, this domain was registered May 2022.
Ever use a 'window manager', particularly tiling, rather than a full 'desktop' or 'display manager'? I've had the opposite experience, i3 and now sway have made macOS & Windows clunky and unusable nightmares to me - even talking strictly just about interface/windowing/interaction.
I've used tiling window managers before, but I don't really find them to be that big of a productivity boost. I have two monitors and I prefer to have all my windows maximized. The only splitting that I need is in my text editor.
The one thing I do like is the command line - I find that to be a much better experience than power shell or cmd. But that is it. If I want to do anything creative that isn't text based it feels flatly inferior. But your mileage may vary based on what you like to do.
I love it in a server, I just don't like linux on the desktop.
I'm not one to make 'productivity' claims about tiling wms. I'm certainly more productive in one, but that's because that's what I'm used to. (Maybe a little bit because it's an innate preference too, but not even sure of that.)
I just find it less frustrating and more organised looking than overlapping windows, swiping between desktops (or it being animated, or somehow slow even with animations turned off).
Basically I just meant I don't think I'd like the Gnome/Xfce/whatever Linux desktop experience either - it would have all the same things that frustrate me on macOS/Windows, and I expect I would agree it's inferior to those (with their massive budgets, UX staff count and salary alone probably dwarfing the Linux OSS projects - not a criticism of them or their efforts).
I’ve tried it before: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux with X and regular as well as tiling WMs. In the end I found no productive advantage to just using Rectangle [1] and LaunchBar [2] on macOS. The system mostly works and enables access to all the Unix software I need. Most of the time I just need a shell, tmux and a web browser.
The ongoing fiddling around – to this day – with a substandard experience regarding battery life, WiFi performance and GPU issues as well as HiDPI especially on laptops is a dealbreaker for me.
But then again, that may be a major purpose of desktop Unix, Linux especially: to enable those who see fiddling around (read: hacking) as an end in itself. After all, a dedicated car mechanic will never be truly happy driving a Toyota.
I have and I’ve never been able to understand tiling WMs. After using nontiling ( I don’t know the term) window managers since Windows 95 my mind is just trained for that sort of window management, anything else feels wrong and frustrating.
It’s not for a lack of trying either, I really have tried to like tiling wms.
Most of my day to day work is on a Thinkpad running Fedora. I also have a work laptop running Windows, and a personal macbook pro. Two quick points:
1. The emphasis in this website of "you can change what you want" targets a pretty small population. Anecdata of the worst sort, but the vast majority of people in my orbit absolutely do not want to manage their computer. They want it to largely disappear so they can work and watch cat videos. Most of them think customizing their computer means changing their wallpaper. And that's fine! I never lead with "I can customize this machine to do what I want." I lead with "Eh, I got tired of forced reboots and disruptive updates and privacy issues so I switched to Fedora and it doesn't do any of that. If I want to fiddle with something I can [and I very, very much do tinker], but I don't have to."
2. I laughed at the notion of using linux to bring an ancient 5-year-old computer in the closet back to life. I mean, yes, that is one of the great things about linux, but the macbook pro I'm typing on right now is 5 years old and it runs like it's new. The hardest thing to convey about Apple equipment is that the TCO is lower because you can easily upgrade on a 5-7-year cycle, pretty much as long as Apple gives security updates. Expensive at the front end (though competitive with similar Windows machines), but not as expensive over the lifespan. (And, emphatically, I'm not saying you can't experience long ownership cycles with PCs, but, from experience, it's harder.)
On the other hand, when this MPB runs out of gas, I'm probably going to replace it with a thinkpad, or possibly with an ARM Mac running linux.
Let's be honest, "you can change what you want" should really be "you will have to change certain things". Which is fine for developery people and people with a lot of time and patience on their hands. But for the overwhelming majority, even fiddling with the contents of /etc or $HOME/.whatever is too much of a hurdle.
People don't choose Windows or Mac despite not being able to change things, they choose it so they don't have to change things.
And let's not forget that, eventually, "you can change what you want" becomes "you have to change what you want" because the developers of your distro / desktop environment / window manager / UI toolkit decide to change the default behavior (if they don't change the entire thing).
I don't understand? What are these things you have to change?
Your second paragraph mentions changing defaults. Of course software evolves over the decades. You may not like every change, but evolving along is always an option, of you don't want to tinker. Also, most UI config is stored in dotfiles. Upgrading doesn't apply the new defaults to an existing account.
Having worked in Linux for years, I'm sorry Windows is more productive for me.
MS office still dominates and our company and customers work in Excel. Without support for office Linux is harder than Windows for me.
With WSL2 almost everything I can do in Linux I can now do in Windows.
Don't get me wrong there are things that I hate about working in Windows. Especially Windows shared folders and mapped drives. Compared to Linux network shares it's horrible.
I get random slow downs when my computer is doing something in the background and explorer becomes non responsive.
I get updates that require a restart all the time.
Today I had to dual boot on windows and literally every operation & interaction felt five times as slow as on Linux on the same hardware. I had a ton of bugs on software that works just fine on Linux. Explorer crashed at some point and I had to add a fucking registry key to enable long paths.
I'm 30 and I never had to use MS Office once in my life, LibreOffice works fine with everything I had to do with it
Much of what I work on involves programs that interop with Excel. Yes there are other ways of writing and reading spreadsheets but sadly none are as reliable as using Excel interop. At least if your spreadsheet has to be compatible with Excel. It is possible someone has build an amazing library that does this but I'm not aware of it.
Edit: I could have Windows on a VM but that is awkward and slow. I find I get more done without that added bit of complexity.
Forced upgrades in the middle of something, invasive "telemetry" and aggressive ads. Plus a Frankenstein UI and Pluto, the system that makes "your" computer no longer yours.
On the one hand, you’re right. I fight this battle in my mind all the time. When I’m happy with MacOS I’m not terribly tempted to go back to Linux and live with the quirks.
But the way Microsoft abuses me every day with its constant invasions that can’t be disabled, and worse: Windows Storage Sense deleted my personal files from my computer. It’s right there in the logs.
So yeah, Windows is out for me. macOS survives a while longer, certainly while my machine feels like mine.
But I really do think something like FOSS operating systems have to survive for people. It’s great that the cloud is run on it, but it’s far too controlled by corporations, and more than a decade ago.
I have been using Windows/Linux/BSD in parallel for decades. Now I'm at the verge to ditch Windows.
Linux/BSD were barely usable on PCs when I started using a computer. Now to my surprise, they are, especially Linux now good enough for my day to day use, even on some old and weak hardware.
In the same time, Windows peaked at Windows 7 then downhill all the way. Windows 8 was quite a surprise by changing the UI, but okay other than that. Windows 10 is the malware. When Windows 10 was first out, my computers fan started to run like crazy in the mid-night but when I checked in the morning everything looked alright. It went on for quite a few month until one day I was woke up by the fan and decided to take a look at what was the computer doing. Yep, upgrading to Windows 10, but the upgrade failed so rolled back to Windows 7 like nothing happened. So I upgraded to Win10 manually which I regret almost immediately. Since then updates just like Russian Roulette. Almost every time there would be something got broken and something broken got fixed. And I started to notice some core utilities which were rock solid like diskpart, ipconfig etc got broken. The most ridiculous time was that all 3 UIs(so called modern, win32 and cli) were broken and I spent hour and had to use a combination of 2 out of the 3 to get back online. And I also constantly got OOM BSOD on one particular version even though I have 64GB RAM installed.
The only reason I still use Windows now is that there are no alternatives for some work related stuffs.
Forced updates and reboots are deal breaker for me. There's nothing more frustrating than leaving a long running simulation up all night only to realize that windows rebooted in the middle of the night. Or you need to reboot for some other reason, you're in a hurry, but now windows needs to install 137 updates.
If a job requires me to use windows, I will find another job.
I find that suggestion odd as well. I can't think of a single reason why Ubuntu should be favoured over Fedora as a quote "easy way to try and step into GNU/Linux" either. All three of their distro suggestions ship GNOME by default. Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
As a Fedora user I can see one almost-reason. IIRC Fedora by default only ships with the FOSS repos enabled.
Most average users probably want to enable the rpmfusion repos to get things like media codecs, drivers, and various other nonfree stuff. It's not hard to do this, but it makes it more of a "turn key twice" solution compared to Ubuntu.
Fedora ships proprietary firmware in their "FOSS" repos, so your first statement isn't entirely accurate. Debian will now install firmware by default too. I think the only distros that now don't are Guix and other FSF affiliated distros.
> Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
I think you've gotten unintentionally close to answering GP's question, and your own.
By virtue of Fedora being the literal upstream of RHEL and getting lots of attention from the RedHat guys, it is (IMO, YMMV) both a big testing ground for new RedHat software, and also pushes new software versions and features probably more aggressively than any distro except rolling release ones.
Keep in mind, software like SystemD, NetworkManager, D-Bus, the PAM implementation most distros use (Wikipedia claims some use the BSD openPAM implementation, can't find those though), PolKit, and others seem to have pretty big financial or engineering support from RedHat. Fedora ends up effectively being "the lowest common denominator" in the sense that most other distros end up being "like Fedora but with <x> replaced with <y>".
The sometimes bleeding edge feature set and use of new functionality (like Wayland, systemd-resolved, pipewire off the top of my head) can make it a bit less "beginner friendly", potentially, than a more conservative distro. It also makes it very appealing if you want to understand the "technical side of Linux", since anything you learn on Fedora will probably transfer more easily to other distros than vice versa, even if Fedora is more convoluted and full of cruft.
That's my takeaway, at least. Compared to Arch, a given release of Fedora will have about as up-to-date versions of major software, with the benefit of release engineering. Rolling release is a drug not everyone is strong enough to take...
edit thoughts: I want to be clear, the projects that RedHat either started or is heavily involved with usually have a lot of community involvement too. I don't want to minimize the importance of other contributors, just pointing out RedHat does a decent amount of work in several low level components of "GNU/Linux"
I really don't get why Google doesn't have the option to serve these requests from the website's domain (maybe even using a random subdomain each time).
Considering Google has their own CA or could use Let's Encrypt, it should be more than feasible.
I love Linux systems. My daily driver, an MSI GS-66, runs Ubuntu as the primary OS. But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things.
The latest issue is that after updating the kernel and graphics drivers, I can't suspend the PC anymore. It dumps a bunch of crap to dmesg, then returns to the login screen. This is a known issue on the forums, and it's still broken.
I also have to deal with broken wifi semi-regularly, most recently last year, when an update took out the wifi drivers until I could roll it back (at home, since I don't have ethernet at work).
I love Linux, but it's a love-hate relationship. I still don't think it's ready for mass adoption until it can be as reliable as windows or MacOS for consumer PCs.
You should consider more linux friendly hardware next time if you still want to run linux. I have mostly owned thinkpads and desktops set up with ubuntu/mint, and my issues have been few and far between.
The GS-66 is a gaming laptop with an NVidia card. The nouveau driver does pretty good, but I find trying to upgrade to the latest version or installing Nvidia's official driver causes more problems than it solves. For the wifi, the Intel Killer AX from only a quick google search looks like it has known issues.
There are a lot of hardware companies that are actively hostile to linux users. MSI is definitely one. Lenovo's Thinkpad and Dell's XPS lines have a big audience to test and fix issues.
MSI can make extra money off of window's users after sale, but HW companies only profit off linux users from selling the hardware.
I did, it is an Asus netbook, with Linux pre-installed, it is the only device that has issues connecting to my router, GL support is GL 3.3 while Asus Windows drivers support DirectX 11 and GL 4.1, occasionally instead of shuting down goes into a sleep state only recoverable by taking out the battery.
> I love Linux systems. My daily driver ... runs Ubuntu... But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things.
Perhaps in some crazy way, because this has his own set of pros and cons, I'm seriously considering evaluating ChromeOS as my daily driver. Fixing things should be a thing of the past here, and I'll still have a full Linux virtual machine running inside of it to work outside of ChromeOS's limitations.
Strange, I have a GS65 which is pretty close and with archlinux it works smoothly with the Nvidia driver. All the bugs I had on Linux also manifested in some ways on windows so I think it just has shitty firmware.
Is it just me or is the Ubuntu font really hard to read for long-form text? It doesn't help that it's larger than normal body text too. Sites like this remind me that custom fonts in CSS were a mistake.
On topic… calling switching to Linux an "upgrade" is pretty presumptuous. It's not an upgrade for someone whose business relies on programs or technologies which are still only available on Windows - for many of those people, that's probably why they're on Windows in the first place.
I find the font very visually appealing at larger (heading, not enlarged paragraph) sizes, but agree even then it’s harder to read than more common choices. The part I think most makes it difficult is the very high x-height to cap-height ratio, then the very low descender to everything ratio. That already makes different letters harder to distinguish, even they didn’t all have very similar curves and understated distinguishing features. It works really well for 1-3 branding words, and it’s very visually striking. But I wouldn’t consider it for much beyond that.
Direct marketing doesn't seem like a very good method to attract people.
Linux needs to do one thing to make it a viable option: Make steam and all windows based steam games work out of the box.
Linux needs to do one thing to win the consumer market: Make all steam games work better than on windows out of the box.
If linux can do that, they can win a market that is not the server market. If Linux cannot do that, then people are trapped on Windows for the foreseeable future.
That is the "did we solve your problem. y/n?" of the desktop environment. It is the only question that matters. I don't see the purpose in marketing Linux for non server purposes until that hurdle has been jumped.
To be honest, it's closer than you'd think. I find very few games now that I can't run through Steam+Proton, to the point I forget I'm not on the 'Native' OS for them.
And what I've also found is that issues that affect my games on Linux Steam are usually also reported for Windows (i.e. black screen on loading, certain freezes).
Steam is remarkably good at running games on linux. I've been using "heroic games launcher" with GOG.com and epic gamesto good effect.
I have a steam deck and it occasionally asks me how well the game I just left ran, cloud sourcing. The steam deck is great, highly recommended (my first unit had a bad battery, but valve handled it quite well and after trying some mitigations, just replaced it).
I definitely expect the 20% tail to be 80% of the effort.
I've also found that often there would be a lag time between the windows release (for total war warhammer for example) and the non windows releases. I've also found OSX versions of things to be a bit buggier (guild wars 2 for example), I assume that is no different for Linux. Reactive solutions to games not running (as opposed to games working by default) seems like the type of behavior that would continue to prevent Linux from being a standard choice over windows. The small frictions build up until you don't want to deal with it anymore.
Making so many games work has been a decade long effort. It's been worked on forever.
That it works so well is as close to a miracle as you can get with software.
What is needed is not "Linux making it work", it's developers making it work on Linux. And it's actually happening, albeit at a slow pace.
Recently the Steam Deck has been very successful at convincing game devs to put in an effort - for the benefit of all Linux users.
If Linux had MS Office and the Adobe suite, there would hardly be a reason to stay on Windows anymore.
I'm sure Microsoft's reluctance to bring office over - despite their self-proclaimed "love of linux" is because they know it would be a nail in Window's coffin.
The Steam Deck is basically this. IMO it runs games in Linux better than Windows (especially with gamescope and the instant sleep and resume feature) and has played every game I have thrown at it. I assume at the pace Valve is updating SteamOS and Proton it will play everything but the super long tail of games soon.
People aren't "trapped" on Windows, by and large they just don't know about Linux. Awareness is the first step. It should answer the needs of the vast majority of people, but they won't consider switching if they think Windows is the only OS.
I don't think that's true at all, personally. I think that attitude is pure hubris (not meant in an attacking way, but in a feedback way). I tried to move my mom to Linux (ubuntu) and she absolutely hated it. Nothing "just worked." Everything was a "new learning opportunity." I came to the conclusion it was the wrong OS for her myself, despite my offer to give her any kind of support she might need.
The linux desktop does not AFAIK have any kind of killer app. The value of running a linux desktop is clear for devs and security professionals, but it is not clear at all for "normal" people. The killer apps for windows are Steam, MS Office, and Firefox/Chrome, to a smaller degree active directory.
The only viable path that I can see for linux is "free" privacy respecting operating system choice, but in order to be a choice it must run exe's without any extra configs, check boxes, pop up windows, or anything else that would indicate something should be understood or configured. It must be able to understand a printer is on the network without any effort at all. It must take no more than 3-5 clicks and a google search to be running Firefox.
Awareness before feature parity (runs MS office, runs steam) increases resistance through bad experiences. If someone has a bad experience, they will be less interested even if it gets better later.
I feel like your comment is not very different than "awareness of rsync is the first step to moving files around."
Some people know about Linux but aren't going to touch it and there are some that touch it but wish nothing to do with it when they aren't configuring servers. It's not necessary limited to Linux, some people use Macs when they work on PCs at the office, but the greater question is what would switching Linux provide to the switchers when you claim, "It should answer the needs of the vast majority of people". If my car is fine for my transport needs, why would I buy a truck?
As somebody who ran desktop Linux on a caseless machine with the CPU cooler screwed into a bulk Top Ramen box, I can confirm it runs just fine on almost PC.
For me, Linux would be a downgrade. Suddenly there's a bunch of software I can't run anymore. I actually really like windows 11, plus I can install and run any linux software as if it is a native windows program, and while I can do this, actually, there really isn't many gui apps in the linux world that aren't already on windows and worth running. However, being able to open a linux shell on windows is really useful. Reading through all the "why", I can't find a practical day to day advantage.
I also really like Windows 11 and find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 10.
The 1st Linux distro I used was TAMU back in 1992. I have tried countless desktop distros over the last 30 years. I still try the major desktop distros when they have a new release but leave disappointed each time. Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues.
With all the keyboards shortcuts, and "new" apps like Windows Terminal, the experience is just wonderful!
Most of my apps are fullscreen, and Windows-Arrows to pin to specific quadrant on the screen is just as good as i3 and tiling wm.
Also, there's software for everything you may even think about: just yesterday, I wanted an app to display pictures while keeping the same position zoom factor, to take bits and include them in a report.
I found nomacs (free software), which is keyboard driven: my workflow became Alt-Tab, Win-Shift-S for snapshot, Alt-Tab again, Control-V, Alt-Tab and the arrow for moving between pictures.
> Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues
It can happen on some Windows install, especially with newer hardware. But there're a lot of eyeballs on Windows, so getting a working solution is more likely.
Aero snap (or whatever Win+arrows is called now) is not a replacement for a tiling wm, and you being happy to finally have a _terminal_, of all things, is just sad.
I have used trackpad support recently. It is indeed better than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it was so awful that substantially improved doesn't mean good. I still find it to be mostly unusable. When testing recent distros with recent desktop environment running either atop X11 or wayland I have had to repeatedly perform gestures because they aren't recognized and frequently gestures just stop working period. Trackpad gestures work without issue on the same hardware when running Windows.
Interesting. I'm using a standard ubuntu install (gnome) with an apple magic trackpad and have generally enjoyed the experience - only notable difference is I've only been using Wayland (noticed gestures missing or screen tearing issues on X11), and had to install Firefox via a apt repo (agree on your complaints about snaps/flatpak/etc. frustration)
Perhaps I've gotten used to the deficiencies, but saying this with a bias of being a macos user for a decade that worked on custom touchpad gesture UI for a while.
Again Linux users trying to convert Windows users at every OS change. It wont work well. Windows users expect Windows, not having to relearn everything from scratch
It depends from person to person. My mother runs GNU/Linux because it runs faster on her potato laptop, I run GNU/Linux because I believe in the fundamental software freedoms and MS refuses to relicense Windows under the (A)GPL.
It really depends on the field. As a programmer, Linux offers plenty of desirable software and I wouldn't use Windows for anything serious (other than maybe programming windows app or using WSL in my gaming PC)
It's also that there are no guarantees your hardware is supported -- so when you do bother, you might find yourself in config hell trying to get your wifi to work.
The most successful commercial desktop linux distribution is probably chrome OS.
I use Manjaro and it's great but it's not for everyone. I've gotten my parents to use Ubuntu for a while on some old laptop. But people like that have a high chance of encountering issues that will require fiddling with configuration files or doing stuff on the command line. And it's deal breaker. People like my parents are simply incapable of doing either of those things. So, my father now has a mac and my mother uses an ipad. Zero IT support needed from me.
Chrome OS is probably the only thing that works well enough that I could recommend it to people like that. And with Chrome Os Flex, that's now an option. But it would be a bit of a downgrade.
My work PC & laptop are running Linux due to development reasons and the first thing I had to do on them is setting up basic functionality such as trackpad scrolling and mitigating weird window behavior and wallpaper resetting on monitor sleep, and it is still a subpar desktop experience compared to macOS or even Windows.
I'm running Ubuntu on a Framework laptop. I installed Linux because I was too cheap to buy Windows, and wanted to try it out (why not, it's free) but now I've found it's very good. Good enough I won't be installing Windows. This surprised me. So, yeah, give it a shot!
Isn't there an unbreakable linux that updates itself, and where you can create VMs to add linux or win applications?
This is what I like about Windows / mac, I don't have to maintain anything and risk breaking my PC.
This almost feels like some sort of anti-linux trolling. Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments in the first couple of hours, all focused on the sub-par website, not the OS.
What I was trying to say here is that Linux advocacy is still very much in its infancy, and of zero complexity.
Linux, as an entire operating system, and not just as a kernel, really needs a strong steward with a vision if it is ever going to be beaten into something that is a cohesive single thing, and not a loose aggregation of software packages.
Unfortunately, by the time most people learn and know enough to become this person, they are at retirement age, and no longer have the energy or the desire to be that person. The younger people who attempt this are simply swatted away by the more toxic members of the Linux fanbase.
The only person I know of who could have possibly have filled this role when they had energy for it is the person behind the Linux Hater's blog of old. That person understood what was wrong with Linux very well, and was vocal about it.
That's who we need, again, someone like that. Someone to point out all the silliness and absurdity and expose it all as the silliness and absurdity that it really is. Because it is all very much incoherent and broken in so many ways. It all functions, it all works, but is it really competitive with MacOS or Windows? Those two both have their flaws, and plenty of them, but I don't think that Linux can hold a candle to either of them, really, for anyone but the most technical of users.
And maybe everyone has just agreed that only the technical users are the users who are important for this operating system. I don't know what the thought is about that, but I'll tell you, technical users are not the only users you need to care about as a Linux application developer.
This site is comically bad. I clicked on "Why" and got "It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC." What is an "almost PC"? Is that what you call a Linux desktop machine? (Yes, I know it's a typo)
Upgrade to ChromeOs. why bother with Linux. I converted an old windows laptop with a touchscreen to a chromeos using now google acquired neverware. love it.
So many shills in the "opensource" and "freedom" Linux community. Harp all day long about how "freedom" yet cry and troll when developers don't support a Linux distro and troll all day about getting others to convert to Linux or specific Linux distro.
If you're for "freedom" software then live and let live what others use for operating systems.
This website is terrible. Its "resources" are almost entirely just links to articles and youtube videos. The information is poorly presented and poorly written. Why is the front page entirely taken up by a picture of a penguin?
If you think that's bad, check out this link: https://www.upgradetolinux.com/linux-differences-an-introduc...
According to the link I clicked on to get here, this is supposed to be "linux differences".
I daily drive linux and recommend it to people who I think would do well with it, but I would never link them this website.
>What do you mean by “It does not get viruses”?
Well, I mean, um https://www.linuxexperten.com/library/e-resources/linux-malw...
I know that some people say "virus" when they mean malware in general. However, a literal virus is a snippet of code that attaches itself to an executable. When the executable is run, the virus also runs. The virus then finds more executables and attaches itself to those too.
Literal viruses on diverse unices were indeed fairly rare in the past (and are still not common).
Traditionally on most linuxes (and bsds) you obtain trusted executables from a known good source (your distribution ) , whilst files from other sources are never run at all.
This means that Linux viruses find it hard to actually spread in the wild.
This particular strength doesn't mean other kinds of malware can't still be successful, of course. (Though naturally people try to harden Linux against many threats.)
>Traditionally on most linuxes (and bsds) you obtain trusted executables from a known good source (your distribution ) , whilst files from other sources are never run at all.
On the other hand, the vast majority of people installing applications by piping curl output to Bash are also on linuxes and bsds
Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?
If you do not already have a pubkey for which the code can be signed, then there is no chain of trust to verify in the first place. What signature would you check the code against in such a scenario? One you download from the vendor's same website?
>Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?
Well in my case, I screw around a lot on my computer. So I end up copying and pasting a few lines of bash code that download god-knows-what because I accidentally deleted the entire /etc/ directory and the howto guide that was the 3rd result on Google says "run this it will totally work".
So at least for me, yes, it's often worse than installing an .exe from a vendor's website.
But I didn't mean to say Linux installs don't tend to be safer than Windows, just that it's not as rosy as the original comment made it seem like.
> "Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it?"
Uh, yes? The naïve Windows user has Windows Defender scanning downloads to offer at least some token protection against known threats.
A tiny bit, maybe. Those commands usually run as root, at least Windows warns you if the installer wants root.
But I think the main point is that this debunks "whilst files from other sources are never run at all".
That's always the problem with using the word "Never". That should have been "Almost Never" or "Rarely" (which is true for me at least) , and I didn't catch it when I proof-read my comment. Sorry about that.
And yes: while traditionally people might install just from their distribution, times have changed a bit and people now do install from pip, cargo, npm, etc; but these are _somewhat_ trusted repositories still (rightly or wrongly).
Some people sometimes use curl as well. Due to the nature and low volume, this still doesn't give literal viruses much leeway. This is because it's not a target-rich environment (only a few executables), it's not guaranteed to happen on many computers, and most importantly, people tend to only curl in one direction. When you curl, you're mostly going to end up downloading executables from some central location. Typically these executables don't subsequently get copied to (m)any other computers or back to the server. So a literal virus doesn't get a lot of traction to replicate the way a virus wants to.
If you do manage to curl some malware, what you'd get is probably going to be something that's properly called a Trojan. Trojans are definitely a thing.
Just because you're on Linux doesn't mean you're magically completely invulnerable to all kinds of malware, you still need to act with care.
On the upside many distributions are more or less designed to keep you safe by default, and won't suddenly do something crazy to get you into trouble. On the downside the human operators are not always similarly inclined. ;-)
Doesn't seem that different from running the application after installing it, to be honest.
What can I say, I enjoy living dangerously.
I wonder what the intended audience of this page is supposed to be
I don't understand this phenomena in the Linux community of trying to convert anyone and everyone to Linux. But then again, I'm not want to convert others to my religion, sports team or car model.
Yes, there are Mac and Windows evangelist, but there's more and they are louder in the Linux community. You would think for a community that claims to support "freedom" and "opensource," they would live and let live what others use for operating systems.
MS and Apple are doing plenty more advertising to try to convert people to use their OS. The difference is that Linux is not backed by a large corporation, so naturally it relies on people talking about it, it's more similar to a grassroots movement that tries to e.g. get you to grow your own vegetables instead of buying at the supermarket.
I would also argue that the Mac community in particular is pretty vocal about trying to convert people to macs.
Lol. Macs are the best of two worlds for many people. Its like properly secured Linux that you dont need to fiddle with.
Thank you for proving my point.
Seo backlinks maybe. Or YouTube traffic generators for ad revenue?
> Where are the .exe files?
Glad they focus on the important stuff, at least.
No I think it's perfect. It sets the tone to what to expect in terms of user experience once it's installed.
It's a reflection of the linux ecosystem because it's imbued with the linux mentality.
Just throw things together (that were all designed and built separately) and convince yourself it will form a coherent whole.
It's so bad it's kinda cool. Gives me Lindows Rock vibes.
Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdRTOh2jeA
I rolled my eyes when I saw the first resource linked under "Why" was a video titled "Microsoft Can Kiss My A*"
This looks like the sort of website my friends and I would've setup when we were running local community teams for Ubuntu and running computer expo and flea market tables trying to get people to try it. In 2005. I checked, this domain was registered May 2022.
Not something I would be likely to direct people to. The most reasonable thing I've found so far is: https://opensource.com/resources/linux
If it was still the year 2012 then this would be a _great_ website.
But yeah. Terrible.
If it was still the year N-10 then this would be a great X more or less sums up my entire desktop linux experience.
Ever use a 'window manager', particularly tiling, rather than a full 'desktop' or 'display manager'? I've had the opposite experience, i3 and now sway have made macOS & Windows clunky and unusable nightmares to me - even talking strictly just about interface/windowing/interaction.
I've used tiling window managers before, but I don't really find them to be that big of a productivity boost. I have two monitors and I prefer to have all my windows maximized. The only splitting that I need is in my text editor.
The one thing I do like is the command line - I find that to be a much better experience than power shell or cmd. But that is it. If I want to do anything creative that isn't text based it feels flatly inferior. But your mileage may vary based on what you like to do.
I love it in a server, I just don't like linux on the desktop.
I'm not one to make 'productivity' claims about tiling wms. I'm certainly more productive in one, but that's because that's what I'm used to. (Maybe a little bit because it's an innate preference too, but not even sure of that.)
I just find it less frustrating and more organised looking than overlapping windows, swiping between desktops (or it being animated, or somehow slow even with animations turned off).
Basically I just meant I don't think I'd like the Gnome/Xfce/whatever Linux desktop experience either - it would have all the same things that frustrate me on macOS/Windows, and I expect I would agree it's inferior to those (with their massive budgets, UX staff count and salary alone probably dwarfing the Linux OSS projects - not a criticism of them or their efforts).
I’ve tried it before: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux with X and regular as well as tiling WMs. In the end I found no productive advantage to just using Rectangle [1] and LaunchBar [2] on macOS. The system mostly works and enables access to all the Unix software I need. Most of the time I just need a shell, tmux and a web browser.
The ongoing fiddling around – to this day – with a substandard experience regarding battery life, WiFi performance and GPU issues as well as HiDPI especially on laptops is a dealbreaker for me.
But then again, that may be a major purpose of desktop Unix, Linux especially: to enable those who see fiddling around (read: hacking) as an end in itself. After all, a dedicated car mechanic will never be truly happy driving a Toyota.
[1]: https://rectangleapp.com/
[2]: https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html
I have and I’ve never been able to understand tiling WMs. After using nontiling ( I don’t know the term) window managers since Windows 95 my mind is just trained for that sort of window management, anything else feels wrong and frustrating.
It’s not for a lack of trying either, I really have tried to like tiling wms.
Web design wasn't invented after 2012. This goes against a ton of principles (Bootstrap was 2011).
It could be a 2012 mobile site without a proper desktop version though.
The penguin's so big that the page title's cropped off the bottom on my (idk, 2020?) phone - I can't imagine it would look better on 2012 phones.
Even the burger menu icon aspect ratio seems 'wrong'.
Open source family has an issue attracting good designers. That applies to web design too.
Most of my day to day work is on a Thinkpad running Fedora. I also have a work laptop running Windows, and a personal macbook pro. Two quick points:
1. The emphasis in this website of "you can change what you want" targets a pretty small population. Anecdata of the worst sort, but the vast majority of people in my orbit absolutely do not want to manage their computer. They want it to largely disappear so they can work and watch cat videos. Most of them think customizing their computer means changing their wallpaper. And that's fine! I never lead with "I can customize this machine to do what I want." I lead with "Eh, I got tired of forced reboots and disruptive updates and privacy issues so I switched to Fedora and it doesn't do any of that. If I want to fiddle with something I can [and I very, very much do tinker], but I don't have to."
2. I laughed at the notion of using linux to bring an ancient 5-year-old computer in the closet back to life. I mean, yes, that is one of the great things about linux, but the macbook pro I'm typing on right now is 5 years old and it runs like it's new. The hardest thing to convey about Apple equipment is that the TCO is lower because you can easily upgrade on a 5-7-year cycle, pretty much as long as Apple gives security updates. Expensive at the front end (though competitive with similar Windows machines), but not as expensive over the lifespan. (And, emphatically, I'm not saying you can't experience long ownership cycles with PCs, but, from experience, it's harder.)
On the other hand, when this MPB runs out of gas, I'm probably going to replace it with a thinkpad, or possibly with an ARM Mac running linux.
Let's be honest, "you can change what you want" should really be "you will have to change certain things". Which is fine for developery people and people with a lot of time and patience on their hands. But for the overwhelming majority, even fiddling with the contents of /etc or $HOME/.whatever is too much of a hurdle. People don't choose Windows or Mac despite not being able to change things, they choose it so they don't have to change things.
And let's not forget that, eventually, "you can change what you want" becomes "you have to change what you want" because the developers of your distro / desktop environment / window manager / UI toolkit decide to change the default behavior (if they don't change the entire thing).
I don't understand? What are these things you have to change?
Your second paragraph mentions changing defaults. Of course software evolves over the decades. You may not like every change, but evolving along is always an option, of you don't want to tinker. Also, most UI config is stored in dotfiles. Upgrading doesn't apply the new defaults to an existing account.
Ubuntu is terrible for this. Every new version comes with a UI redesign, and the 20.04 switch was particularly painful.
Having worked in Linux for years, I'm sorry Windows is more productive for me.
MS office still dominates and our company and customers work in Excel. Without support for office Linux is harder than Windows for me.
With WSL2 almost everything I can do in Linux I can now do in Windows.
Don't get me wrong there are things that I hate about working in Windows. Especially Windows shared folders and mapped drives. Compared to Linux network shares it's horrible.
I get random slow downs when my computer is doing something in the background and explorer becomes non responsive.
I get updates that require a restart all the time.
I can't customize the UI as I would like.
I miss i3 WM.
Today I had to dual boot on windows and literally every operation & interaction felt five times as slow as on Linux on the same hardware. I had a ton of bugs on software that works just fine on Linux. Explorer crashed at some point and I had to add a fucking registry key to enable long paths.
I'm 30 and I never had to use MS Office once in my life, LibreOffice works fine with everything I had to do with it
If I didn't have to use Office or it ran on Linux, I'd be on Linux.
Apparently Office 2000 has 5-star support: https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility?browse=&app_desc=&...
Good luck otherwise.
Office 365 doesn't cut it ?
Unfortunately no. There are a few features missing and I don't want to think how hard interop would be.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/vsto/office-p... assemblies?view=vs-2022
Much of what I work on involves programs that interop with Excel. Yes there are other ways of writing and reading spreadsheets but sadly none are as reliable as using Excel interop. At least if your spreadsheet has to be compatible with Excel. It is possible someone has build an amazing library that does this but I'm not aware of it.
Edit: I could have Windows on a VM but that is awkward and slow. I find I get more done without that added bit of complexity.
Forced upgrades in the middle of something, invasive "telemetry" and aggressive ads. Plus a Frankenstein UI and Pluto, the system that makes "your" computer no longer yours.
What a dream.
My work computer need not be mine for me to get my work done.
On the one hand, you’re right. I fight this battle in my mind all the time. When I’m happy with MacOS I’m not terribly tempted to go back to Linux and live with the quirks.
But the way Microsoft abuses me every day with its constant invasions that can’t be disabled, and worse: Windows Storage Sense deleted my personal files from my computer. It’s right there in the logs.
So yeah, Windows is out for me. macOS survives a while longer, certainly while my machine feels like mine.
But I really do think something like FOSS operating systems have to survive for people. It’s great that the cloud is run on it, but it’s far too controlled by corporations, and more than a decade ago.
I have been using Windows/Linux/BSD in parallel for decades. Now I'm at the verge to ditch Windows.
Linux/BSD were barely usable on PCs when I started using a computer. Now to my surprise, they are, especially Linux now good enough for my day to day use, even on some old and weak hardware.
In the same time, Windows peaked at Windows 7 then downhill all the way. Windows 8 was quite a surprise by changing the UI, but okay other than that. Windows 10 is the malware. When Windows 10 was first out, my computers fan started to run like crazy in the mid-night but when I checked in the morning everything looked alright. It went on for quite a few month until one day I was woke up by the fan and decided to take a look at what was the computer doing. Yep, upgrading to Windows 10, but the upgrade failed so rolled back to Windows 7 like nothing happened. So I upgraded to Win10 manually which I regret almost immediately. Since then updates just like Russian Roulette. Almost every time there would be something got broken and something broken got fixed. And I started to notice some core utilities which were rock solid like diskpart, ipconfig etc got broken. The most ridiculous time was that all 3 UIs(so called modern, win32 and cli) were broken and I spent hour and had to use a combination of 2 out of the 3 to get back online. And I also constantly got OOM BSOD on one particular version even though I have 64GB RAM installed.
The only reason I still use Windows now is that there are no alternatives for some work related stuffs.
>The only reason I still use Windows now is that there are no alternatives for some work related stuffs.
That's basically me as well. I tried hard to use alternatives but it didn't work out.
It's ok, don't be sorry. It happens!
Forced updates and reboots are deal breaker for me. There's nothing more frustrating than leaving a long running simulation up all night only to realize that windows rebooted in the middle of the night. Or you need to reboot for some other reason, you're in a hurry, but now windows needs to install 137 updates.
If a job requires me to use windows, I will find another job.
Sorry, I've already installed GNU/Linux and simply don't have time to try and get both working!
https://www.getgnulinux.org/en/
Strange they recommend Fedora and not Arch for learning Linux internals
I find that suggestion odd as well. I can't think of a single reason why Ubuntu should be favoured over Fedora as a quote "easy way to try and step into GNU/Linux" either. All three of their distro suggestions ship GNOME by default. Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
As a Fedora user I can see one almost-reason. IIRC Fedora by default only ships with the FOSS repos enabled.
Most average users probably want to enable the rpmfusion repos to get things like media codecs, drivers, and various other nonfree stuff. It's not hard to do this, but it makes it more of a "turn key twice" solution compared to Ubuntu.
Fedora ships proprietary firmware in their "FOSS" repos, so your first statement isn't entirely accurate. Debian will now install firmware by default too. I think the only distros that now don't are Guix and other FSF affiliated distros.
> Fedora is such a clear choice for those who want to use GNOME without all of the non-standard crap Canonical insists on tacking onto the DE and the overall environment.
I think you've gotten unintentionally close to answering GP's question, and your own.
By virtue of Fedora being the literal upstream of RHEL and getting lots of attention from the RedHat guys, it is (IMO, YMMV) both a big testing ground for new RedHat software, and also pushes new software versions and features probably more aggressively than any distro except rolling release ones.
Keep in mind, software like SystemD, NetworkManager, D-Bus, the PAM implementation most distros use (Wikipedia claims some use the BSD openPAM implementation, can't find those though), PolKit, and others seem to have pretty big financial or engineering support from RedHat. Fedora ends up effectively being "the lowest common denominator" in the sense that most other distros end up being "like Fedora but with <x> replaced with <y>".
The sometimes bleeding edge feature set and use of new functionality (like Wayland, systemd-resolved, pipewire off the top of my head) can make it a bit less "beginner friendly", potentially, than a more conservative distro. It also makes it very appealing if you want to understand the "technical side of Linux", since anything you learn on Fedora will probably transfer more easily to other distros than vice versa, even if Fedora is more convoluted and full of cruft.
That's my takeaway, at least. Compared to Arch, a given release of Fedora will have about as up-to-date versions of major software, with the benefit of release engineering. Rolling release is a drug not everyone is strong enough to take...
edit thoughts: I want to be clear, the projects that RedHat either started or is heavily involved with usually have a lot of community involvement too. I don't want to minimize the importance of other contributors, just pointing out RedHat does a decent amount of work in several low level components of "GNU/Linux"
"And if you are concerned about privacy...consider a real upgrade … to Linux"
[Opens Network tab]
GET https://www.googletagmanager.com
I really don't get why Google doesn't have the option to serve these requests from the website's domain (maybe even using a random subdomain each time).
Considering Google has their own CA or could use Let's Encrypt, it should be more than feasible.
Shh, don't give them ideas!
They're doing that with the new version of the analytics I think.
Resources page: "even Mac users can upgrade!"
- Link to a 1 minute tik tok video on how to boot Kali off of a thumb drive??
I love Linux systems. My daily driver, an MSI GS-66, runs Ubuntu as the primary OS. But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things.
The latest issue is that after updating the kernel and graphics drivers, I can't suspend the PC anymore. It dumps a bunch of crap to dmesg, then returns to the login screen. This is a known issue on the forums, and it's still broken.
I also have to deal with broken wifi semi-regularly, most recently last year, when an update took out the wifi drivers until I could roll it back (at home, since I don't have ethernet at work).
I love Linux, but it's a love-hate relationship. I still don't think it's ready for mass adoption until it can be as reliable as windows or MacOS for consumer PCs.
You should consider more linux friendly hardware next time if you still want to run linux. I have mostly owned thinkpads and desktops set up with ubuntu/mint, and my issues have been few and far between.
The GS-66 is a gaming laptop with an NVidia card. The nouveau driver does pretty good, but I find trying to upgrade to the latest version or installing Nvidia's official driver causes more problems than it solves. For the wifi, the Intel Killer AX from only a quick google search looks like it has known issues.
There are a lot of hardware companies that are actively hostile to linux users. MSI is definitely one. Lenovo's Thinkpad and Dell's XPS lines have a big audience to test and fix issues.
MSI can make extra money off of window's users after sale, but HW companies only profit off linux users from selling the hardware.
I did, it is an Asus netbook, with Linux pre-installed, it is the only device that has issues connecting to my router, GL support is GL 3.3 while Asus Windows drivers support DirectX 11 and GL 4.1, occasionally instead of shuting down goes into a sleep state only recoverable by taking out the battery.
> I love Linux systems. My daily driver ... runs Ubuntu... But despite the fact that it's 2022, I still have to spend at least a few hours every month fixing things.
Perhaps in some crazy way, because this has his own set of pros and cons, I'm seriously considering evaluating ChromeOS as my daily driver. Fixing things should be a thing of the past here, and I'll still have a full Linux virtual machine running inside of it to work outside of ChromeOS's limitations.
Strange, I have a GS65 which is pretty close and with archlinux it works smoothly with the Nvidia driver. All the bugs I had on Linux also manifested in some ways on windows so I think it just has shitty firmware.
Is it just me or is the Ubuntu font really hard to read for long-form text? It doesn't help that it's larger than normal body text too. Sites like this remind me that custom fonts in CSS were a mistake.
On topic… calling switching to Linux an "upgrade" is pretty presumptuous. It's not an upgrade for someone whose business relies on programs or technologies which are still only available on Windows - for many of those people, that's probably why they're on Windows in the first place.
I find the font very visually appealing at larger (heading, not enlarged paragraph) sizes, but agree even then it’s harder to read than more common choices. The part I think most makes it difficult is the very high x-height to cap-height ratio, then the very low descender to everything ratio. That already makes different letters harder to distinguish, even they didn’t all have very similar curves and understated distinguishing features. It works really well for 1-3 branding words, and it’s very visually striking. But I wouldn’t consider it for much beyond that.
It's not just you, it's a shit font.
Direct marketing doesn't seem like a very good method to attract people.
Linux needs to do one thing to make it a viable option: Make steam and all windows based steam games work out of the box.
Linux needs to do one thing to win the consumer market: Make all steam games work better than on windows out of the box.
If linux can do that, they can win a market that is not the server market. If Linux cannot do that, then people are trapped on Windows for the foreseeable future.
That is the "did we solve your problem. y/n?" of the desktop environment. It is the only question that matters. I don't see the purpose in marketing Linux for non server purposes until that hurdle has been jumped.
To be honest, it's closer than you'd think. I find very few games now that I can't run through Steam+Proton, to the point I forget I'm not on the 'Native' OS for them.
And what I've also found is that issues that affect my games on Linux Steam are usually also reported for Windows (i.e. black screen on loading, certain freezes).
Steam is remarkably good at running games on linux. I've been using "heroic games launcher" with GOG.com and epic gamesto good effect.
I have a steam deck and it occasionally asks me how well the game I just left ran, cloud sourcing. The steam deck is great, highly recommended (my first unit had a bad battery, but valve handled it quite well and after trying some mitigations, just replaced it).
Pretty interesting. I took a look through:
https://www.protondb.com/explore
and I was fairly surprised.
I definitely expect the 20% tail to be 80% of the effort.
I've also found that often there would be a lag time between the windows release (for total war warhammer for example) and the non windows releases. I've also found OSX versions of things to be a bit buggier (guild wars 2 for example), I assume that is no different for Linux. Reactive solutions to games not running (as opposed to games working by default) seems like the type of behavior that would continue to prevent Linux from being a standard choice over windows. The small frictions build up until you don't want to deal with it anymore.
You are right though, closer than I thought.
Making so many games work has been a decade long effort. It's been worked on forever.
That it works so well is as close to a miracle as you can get with software.
What is needed is not "Linux making it work", it's developers making it work on Linux. And it's actually happening, albeit at a slow pace.
Recently the Steam Deck has been very successful at convincing game devs to put in an effort - for the benefit of all Linux users.
If Linux had MS Office and the Adobe suite, there would hardly be a reason to stay on Windows anymore.
I'm sure Microsoft's reluctance to bring office over - despite their self-proclaimed "love of linux" is because they know it would be a nail in Window's coffin.
The Steam Deck is basically this. IMO it runs games in Linux better than Windows (especially with gamescope and the instant sleep and resume feature) and has played every game I have thrown at it. I assume at the pace Valve is updating SteamOS and Proton it will play everything but the super long tail of games soon.
People aren't "trapped" on Windows, by and large they just don't know about Linux. Awareness is the first step. It should answer the needs of the vast majority of people, but they won't consider switching if they think Windows is the only OS.
I don't think that's true at all, personally. I think that attitude is pure hubris (not meant in an attacking way, but in a feedback way). I tried to move my mom to Linux (ubuntu) and she absolutely hated it. Nothing "just worked." Everything was a "new learning opportunity." I came to the conclusion it was the wrong OS for her myself, despite my offer to give her any kind of support she might need.
There is a whole concept of "Killer app" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application) that the industry was founded on.
The linux desktop does not AFAIK have any kind of killer app. The value of running a linux desktop is clear for devs and security professionals, but it is not clear at all for "normal" people. The killer apps for windows are Steam, MS Office, and Firefox/Chrome, to a smaller degree active directory.
The only viable path that I can see for linux is "free" privacy respecting operating system choice, but in order to be a choice it must run exe's without any extra configs, check boxes, pop up windows, or anything else that would indicate something should be understood or configured. It must be able to understand a printer is on the network without any effort at all. It must take no more than 3-5 clicks and a google search to be running Firefox.
Awareness before feature parity (runs MS office, runs steam) increases resistance through bad experiences. If someone has a bad experience, they will be less interested even if it gets better later.
I feel like your comment is not very different than "awareness of rsync is the first step to moving files around."
Some people know about Linux but aren't going to touch it and there are some that touch it but wish nothing to do with it when they aren't configuring servers. It's not necessary limited to Linux, some people use Macs when they work on PCs at the office, but the greater question is what would switching Linux provide to the switchers when you claim, "It should answer the needs of the vast majority of people". If my car is fine for my transport needs, why would I buy a truck?
Truly dreadful website design, I don't know what they were thinking but that's not going to win anyone over.
It feels like it was created by Microsoft(r) PR department.
> Desktop Linux is an alternative to Mac or Windows. It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC
The content here is neat! Running into a typo in the first sentence I read was a little off-putting though.
As somebody who ran desktop Linux on a caseless machine with the CPU cooler screwed into a bulk Top Ramen box, I can confirm it runs just fine on almost PC.
Based off one of the sponser links I followed, methinks the writer's first language might not be english?
Not to deride the site, or any writer.
For me, Linux would be a downgrade. Suddenly there's a bunch of software I can't run anymore. I actually really like windows 11, plus I can install and run any linux software as if it is a native windows program, and while I can do this, actually, there really isn't many gui apps in the linux world that aren't already on windows and worth running. However, being able to open a linux shell on windows is really useful. Reading through all the "why", I can't find a practical day to day advantage.
I also really like Windows 11 and find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 10.
The 1st Linux distro I used was TAMU back in 1992. I have tried countless desktop distros over the last 30 years. I still try the major desktop distros when they have a new release but leave disappointed each time. Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues.
> I also really like Windows 11
Same!
With all the keyboards shortcuts, and "new" apps like Windows Terminal, the experience is just wonderful!
Most of my apps are fullscreen, and Windows-Arrows to pin to specific quadrant on the screen is just as good as i3 and tiling wm.
Also, there's software for everything you may even think about: just yesterday, I wanted an app to display pictures while keeping the same position zoom factor, to take bits and include them in a report.
I found nomacs (free software), which is keyboard driven: my workflow became Alt-Tab, Win-Shift-S for snapshot, Alt-Tab again, Control-V, Alt-Tab and the arrow for moving between pictures.
> Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues
It can happen on some Windows install, especially with newer hardware. But there're a lot of eyeballs on Windows, so getting a working solution is more likely.
Nomacs is about as cross-platform as it gets.
Aero snap (or whatever Win+arrows is called now) is not a replacement for a tiling wm, and you being happy to finally have a _terminal_, of all things, is just sad.
> Nomacs is about as cross-platform as it gets.
Exactly. Most software is cross platform, and a few odd ones run only on Windows, so you get most software.
> Aero snap (or whatever Win+arrows is called now) is not a replacement for a tiling wm
For most cases, yes. Add that other shortcuts to have windows at specific coordinates and stripped of borders, and it's the same.
> you being happy to finally have a _terminal_, of all things, is just sad
lol https://github.com/csdvrx/cuteXterm
Trackpad support has substantially improved in the past couple years, https://linuxtouchpad.org/ has more info.
I have used trackpad support recently. It is indeed better than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it was so awful that substantially improved doesn't mean good. I still find it to be mostly unusable. When testing recent distros with recent desktop environment running either atop X11 or wayland I have had to repeatedly perform gestures because they aren't recognized and frequently gestures just stop working period. Trackpad gestures work without issue on the same hardware when running Windows.
Interesting. I'm using a standard ubuntu install (gnome) with an apple magic trackpad and have generally enjoyed the experience - only notable difference is I've only been using Wayland (noticed gestures missing or screen tearing issues on X11), and had to install Firefox via a apt repo (agree on your complaints about snaps/flatpak/etc. frustration)
Perhaps I've gotten used to the deficiencies, but saying this with a bias of being a macos user for a decade that worked on custom touchpad gesture UI for a while.
This kind of comment is exactly what I feared first time I heard about wsl.
Again Linux users trying to convert Windows users at every OS change. It wont work well. Windows users expect Windows, not having to relearn everything from scratch
Yeah. Microsoft has been more effective at getting users off Windows than Linux ever has.
Since Win 11 I've had multiple inquiries from friends/family about how to switch to a different OS... (or get them back to at least Win 10...)
Clicking on the web browser in Ubuntu isn't any different to doing so on Windows.
How many people need more than: browser, word/excel clone, and email client?
Everything is moving onto the web and Windows becomes less relevant.
Why do you think ChromeOS is so popular?
Well if that's the use case, chromrOS is just better.
> Why do you think ChromeOS is so popular?
Mostly for kids who know nothing about computing.
It may be very different. Ever tried using a touchpad on a Linux laptop?
Also the small issue that despite how much Windows sucks Linux continues to be worse.
It start and ends with applications.
As long as linux doesn't provide unique high-value software that doesn't exist on windows, why should anybody bother ?
It depends from person to person. My mother runs GNU/Linux because it runs faster on her potato laptop, I run GNU/Linux because I believe in the fundamental software freedoms and MS refuses to relicense Windows under the (A)GPL.
For your mother, chromeOS with it's support for android apps and very low maintenance is probably better.
One interesting use case for linux is if you want to run early stage stuff developers wrote. Thats easier with linux.
Maybe there's some practical value in that for non-developers. Not sure.
It really depends on the field. As a programmer, Linux offers plenty of desirable software and I wouldn't use Windows for anything serious (other than maybe programming windows app or using WSL in my gaming PC)
The idea of trying to develop software on windows makes me shudder.
It's also that there are no guarantees your hardware is supported -- so when you do bother, you might find yourself in config hell trying to get your wifi to work.
That used to be the case a decade ago, but I find that most wifi hardware supports linux these days.
The most successful commercial desktop linux distribution is probably chrome OS.
I use Manjaro and it's great but it's not for everyone. I've gotten my parents to use Ubuntu for a while on some old laptop. But people like that have a high chance of encountering issues that will require fiddling with configuration files or doing stuff on the command line. And it's deal breaker. People like my parents are simply incapable of doing either of those things. So, my father now has a mac and my mother uses an ipad. Zero IT support needed from me.
Chrome OS is probably the only thing that works well enough that I could recommend it to people like that. And with Chrome Os Flex, that's now an option. But it would be a bit of a downgrade.
This website seems like it was made by someone who doesn’t know very much about computers
I give the makers of this credit they avoid leading a reader into a burden of disto-choices.
My dream is that someone makes a website (single page app) derived more around workflows between oses, I've kept a rough personal spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcp...
The website refers to Office 365 as "Office 360". That's not a typo, of course.
My work PC & laptop are running Linux due to development reasons and the first thing I had to do on them is setting up basic functionality such as trackpad scrolling and mitigating weird window behavior and wallpaper resetting on monitor sleep, and it is still a subpar desktop experience compared to macOS or even Windows.
I'm running Ubuntu on a Framework laptop. I installed Linux because I was too cheap to buy Windows, and wanted to try it out (why not, it's free) but now I've found it's very good. Good enough I won't be installing Windows. This surprised me. So, yeah, give it a shot!
2023, the year of the Linux desktop!
I have an old Lenovo laptop that was just getting to be laggy with Windows. I put Arch on it and it's perfectly responsive again.
There's something to be said for breathing new life into these machines.
Isn't there an unbreakable linux that updates itself, and where you can create VMs to add linux or win applications? This is what I like about Windows / mac, I don't have to maintain anything and risk breaking my PC.
I know my eyes are not what they used to be but that font size is silly.
Wonder if they were at LinuxCon 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs
This almost feels like some sort of anti-linux trolling. Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments in the first couple of hours, all focused on the sub-par website, not the OS.
> Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments
It's by far the most popular desktop OS, and most people are happy with it.
It would be great to have an in-place upgrade tool to install Linux from Windows without removing any files.
This website is kind of perfect as a preparation for using desktop linux.
No, thanks, my old 4 year laptop is upgraded to Windows 11 already.
I keep seeing these upgrade advertisement since Windows XP days....
On the cutting edge of 1990's Linux marketing.
Just pathetic.
so I see Linux advocacy hasn't advanced a measurable amount in 20 years.
that makes me a bit sad, but as a former Linux desktop user, I would not inflict that experience on anyone.
What I was trying to say here is that Linux advocacy is still very much in its infancy, and of zero complexity.
Linux, as an entire operating system, and not just as a kernel, really needs a strong steward with a vision if it is ever going to be beaten into something that is a cohesive single thing, and not a loose aggregation of software packages.
Unfortunately, by the time most people learn and know enough to become this person, they are at retirement age, and no longer have the energy or the desire to be that person. The younger people who attempt this are simply swatted away by the more toxic members of the Linux fanbase.
The only person I know of who could have possibly have filled this role when they had energy for it is the person behind the Linux Hater's blog of old. That person understood what was wrong with Linux very well, and was vocal about it.
That's who we need, again, someone like that. Someone to point out all the silliness and absurdity and expose it all as the silliness and absurdity that it really is. Because it is all very much incoherent and broken in so many ways. It all functions, it all works, but is it really competitive with MacOS or Windows? Those two both have their flaws, and plenty of them, but I don't think that Linux can hold a candle to either of them, really, for anyone but the most technical of users.
And maybe everyone has just agreed that only the technical users are the users who are important for this operating system. I don't know what the thought is about that, but I'll tell you, technical users are not the only users you need to care about as a Linux application developer.
a blog entry describing the linux Hater's Blog: https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog
an archive of the blog entries: https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters
This is the year of Linux on the desktop!
This site is comically bad. I clicked on "Why" and got "It’s free, more secure, and runs on almost PC." What is an "almost PC"? Is that what you call a Linux desktop machine? (Yes, I know it's a typo)
Upgrade to ChromeOs. why bother with Linux. I converted an old windows laptop with a touchscreen to a chromeos using now google acquired neverware. love it.
ChromeOS is oddly a good choice for older machines, though someone tried to use it for a programing class I took quickly gave up.
chromeos flex had been tested on a lot of older machines.
https://support.google.com/chromeosflex/answer/11513094?hl=e...
So many shills in the "opensource" and "freedom" Linux community. Harp all day long about how "freedom" yet cry and troll when developers don't support a Linux distro and troll all day about getting others to convert to Linux or specific Linux distro.
If you're for "freedom" software then live and let live what others use for operating systems.
It's almost like they're not the same people in the same group.