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Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

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Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#41

Post by chousuke »

aspaviento wrote: post #32
arexxbifs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whats the state of Linux on the desktop in 2020? Pretty decent for anyone who can tolerate default Gnome and has the right hardware. So, no, still not ready to be a drop-in Windows replacement for casual users. > What distribution do you recommend for a normal person to use? What's normal? Normal HN reader? Probably Debian-nonfree, which has all the good parts of Ubuntu and almost none of the bad. Soccer mom pinter…

> Soccer mom pinterest poster though? Windows or Mac. Why? If she is going to use the browser almost exclusively, she wouldn't even notice what OS she is using.

This has been my experience after I installed Fedora on my folks' laptops. Pretty much the only support they've required is the occasional major version upgrade I do for them when I visit. Regular patches get autoinstalled.

They'll use Wi-Fi or USB tethering with their phones for internet browsing and my dad will occasionally connect the laptop to the TV set to watch some videos, and it all just works.

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#42

Post by nix23 »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #39
nix23 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that! Maybe you have some fun with BSD-Lore (Kirk McKusick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEEr6dT-4uQ Or Solaris/illumos (Bryan M. Cantrill): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

The Illumos talk is fantastic. I especially enjoy his take on Oracle, 36:30 through 39:00.

The lawn mower ;)

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#43

Post by pantalaimon »

Paianni wrote: post #4
foobar_ wrote: post #2

Reasons start ~ 30 min mark. Linux backward compatibility really sucks. I still don't understand why fedora binaries can't run that easily on debian.

Because they are two separate operating systems.

The Linux Kernel and syscall interface is the same. They even use the same userspace libraries.

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#45

Post by krick »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #6

I watched this a couple weeks ago and it just seems to have so little information density - like this guy talks and talks and talks and the actual content is like 15 minutes of this.

Yeah, but TBH this is true about most of these conference talks: they are just mediocre attempts into stand-up comedy.

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#47

Post by pantalaimon »

megous wrote: post #40
ur-whale wrote: post #14

Super happy finally to see someone call out backward compatibility (around 31:20) Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. EDIT: and statically linking your app doesn't cut it. First, it's barely possible to do that with "modern" glibc. Second, glibc itself breaks old apps.

> Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. Maybe GNU/Linux, but I can run binaries cross-compiled with GCC 10 on Arch Linux on some weird MIPS PoS terminal that's running Linux 2.6.30 without issues, as long as I don't use then non-existent syscalls, so I'm quite happy how Linux kernel handles backwards compatibility.

The Linux Kernel holds backwards compatibility to a very high regards. It's userspace that throws all this out of the window.

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#48

Post by Jonnax »

There is no money in Desktop Linux.

However there is money in running Linux for infrastructure.

Because of this Server linux is great.

The exception is Android but it does a lot of things on its own.

Unless that changes it's not going to be good on the desktop.

Re: Linux Sucks 2020 [video]

#50

Post by otherme123 »

ur-whale wrote: post #14

Super happy finally to see someone call out backward compatibility (around 31:20) Linux is terrible on this axis, way worse than Windows. EDIT: and statically linking your app doesn't cut it. First, it's barely possible to do that with "modern" glibc. Second, glibc itself breaks old apps.

I was once afraid of uploading my Linux box, coming from Windows and fearing that any update would break my system. So I had a pretty old Linux system that at some point couldn't work properly (e.g. Firefox was so old that it didn't work on a lot of websites).

But then for some reason I started to keep in sync with my distro. The update is painless, reasonably quick, and safe. Usually I only have to fix the outdated python version of my virtualenvs, and to this day I never had to rollback. I have a laptop from 2009 that runs the latests distros without problems. But it cannot run W10 properly, let alone do any work.

My point is that Linux is beyond Windows in terms of "upgradeability". Giving the limited resources, why go after Microsoft level of backward compatibility, when any machine can run on the latest distro and libraries? On the other hand, why would anyone keep a XP system around if, acording to the video, a W10 would run their programs so easily? Something doesn't add up.

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