Live data from Hacker News

Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

itvision.altervista.org

11–20 of 472 posts

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#12

- "The vast majority of applications exist only for Windows, and speaking of games, Linux hasn't seen any AAA titles for many years now," The vast majority of AAA titles run seamlessly on Linux. Per protondb[0], ≥80% of the top 10, top 100, and top 1000 are rated "platinum" or "gold" for Linux functioning (by users). [0] https://www.protondb.com/

Steam Deck wouldn't be a thing if Steam/Windows games didn't run well on Proton/Linux.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#13

- "The vast majority of applications exist only for Windows, and speaking of games, Linux hasn't seen any AAA titles for many years now," The vast majority of AAA titles run seamlessly on Linux. Per protondb[0], ≥80% of the top 10, top 100, and top 1000 are rated "platinum" or "gold" for Linux functioning (by users). [0] https://www.protondb.com/

Just played Red Dead Redemtion 2 on Kubuntu 24. Doesn't get any more AAA than that.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#14
Recently a friend of mine asked me to help him with his Surface laptop. He was unable to install Windows whatever he tried. I didn't believe him but it was exactly as he said - during the first boot the laptop would turn off and then show a generic error next boot. Ubuntu worked just fine.

What was the issue? Immediately after power management initialization during the first boot the system seen that the battery was in a bad condition and tried to hibernate but for some reason crashed instead. Out of warranty, the battery is extremely hard to replace, so a registry quirk injected through a Linux boot cd immediately after setup helped.

Is Windows actually ready for desktop?

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#15

  For example, Windows or Android software from ten years ago will still work in Windows 11 or Android 15 or whatever their current versions are. For Windows, software compatibility is actually excellent: a lot of 32-bit Windows 95 software still runs perfectly on Windows 11 64 almost 30 years later. Nothing remotely close exists for Linux.
I completely disagree.

Android applications made for older versions DO NOT work nowadays. Windows applications usually do not install and to run them you have to install them on old version and upgrade. Backward compatibility is no longer the key point for OS creators, and I would say they event want to break it somehow (like Android new set of permissions and removing old apps from the store)

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#16

- "The vast majority of applications exist only for Windows, and speaking of games, Linux hasn't seen any AAA titles for many years now," The vast majority of AAA titles run seamlessly on Linux. Per protondb[0], ≥80% of the top 10, top 100, and top 1000 are rated "platinum" or "gold" for Linux functioning (by users). [0] https://www.protondb.com/

> Also, despite millions of players, it's hard to call CS2 an AAA title because it's based on Direct3D 11 (which is now more than a decade old) and lacks modern lighting techniques like ray tracing.

Some of the quotes from the OP's page border on parody. So, CS2 doesn't count as a AAA title because it's based on DX11 and doesn't have realtime ray tracing. But apparently this same person is oblivious to the fact that both real-time RT and DX12 translation have been completely usable on Linux for years now. Nvidia helped ship native RT to Linux clients in Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Proton has supported the majority of DX12 games with RT since before the Steam Deck existed.

Kinda makes you glad that this is the final edition, if that's the sort of due diligence being exercised.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#17
If the vast majority of applications and games are built for Windows, and that means I shouldn't use Linux, I suppose the same is true about this Macbook I'm on right now. You know what, I'm tossing it out the window the second after I post this message.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#18
Very trollish. The second such article I have seen recently on the HN front page.

What does "not ready for the desktop" even mean? Its been ready for MY desktop for over 20 years. Points 1,2,3 and 4 are pretty much wrong. Point 5 is a problem for other OSes too (there are bugs in applications!), point 6 is only relevant if you have particular hardware you want to work with Linux, and point 7 is not my experience.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#19
All I can say as a person using Linux exclusively for the last 10 years:

- You're using the wrong Linux distribution

- You're using the wrong Linux kernel version

- You have the wrong hardware

- You're using Linux incorrectly

- You're asking for too much

- Go debug or fix it yourself.

Edit: This is sarcasm by the way. These bullets come from the article.

In all seriousness though. I think another poster had the right idea. Linux requires a mindset shift. You must be willing to be a master of your own destiny. I've used Linux largely problem free for 10 years. I took some time to learn how to do things "the Linux way" but once I did it's been smooth sailing.

I recently have had to use Windows for work and it's annoying as hell. Every day after lunch one of my monitors just turns off and rearranges all my windows. On Linux, I could dig into the problem, and worse case just have a xrandr script to hack a solution together. On Windows I'm just SOL looking and dead Windows message board threads.

Re: Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition

#20

I've been patiently trying a distro of Linux every other year for the past 20... Someday. The general trend: Things work well from a native install. When you start installing software and drivers, the OS gets totalled , sooner or later. > What's worse is that software compiled for the current version of Linux X will not necessarily work for the current version of Linux Y. Linux distros insist that all the software mu…

Described my windows experience. Except that windows insistently tries to convince you to make an account and has a very startmenu behavior.
Post reply on HN