161–170 of 472 posts
- "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/
> Regressions are introduced all the time because Linux developers spend very little to no time checking that their code changes don't cause regressions or breakages outside of the problems they're trying to fix or features they're implementing. Wow. Such sweeping generalizations make me not want to pay attention to anything this article has to say. But let's entertain the possibility that parts of that statement are…
“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who…
"Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise.
> Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy.
That ultimately depends on your tech stack and app features, much more than your OS. If you build a statically linked ELF binary that runs on the command line, chances are it will continue to work decades from now. If, OTOH, your app depends on a specific version of a GUI toolkit or some esoteric libraries, you might run into issues in the future. This is the same on any other OS. Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems. Same for macOS to a lesser extent (Carbon -> Cocoa, etc.).
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…
In part, all of this right here is why there's still a collection of people who don't consider Linux a viable alternative. It's giving a mix of "You're holding it wrong" and Stack Overflow's "Question Marked as Duplicate"
Based on my experience on Meta, and various random Reddit threads where people complain: in like 90% of cases where someone complains that a Stack Overflow question was unjustly marked as a duplicate, I could go take a look and then write out a clear step by step explanation of not only how it is very obviously a duplicate by Stack Overflow's standards, but exactly how to apply the advice from answers on the target to the original problem.
Even if I didn't previously know anything about the technologies involved.
Please keep in mind that it is not the purpose of Stack Overflow to solve the problem you are currently encountering. The purpose of Stack Overflow is to answer a question that can be useful to others. If your program doesn't work, it is explicitly, by policy, your responsibility to debug first; the point of creating a Minimal Reproducible Example is to demonstrate that you have found the problem and have a legitimate question about why it is a problem.
Someone who closes your question as a duplicate is doing you a kindness. You immediately get answers and don't have to wait for someone else to write one. Closing duplicates is also doing everyone else a kindness, by helping to make sure that, when people use a search engine to find an answer on Stack Overflow, they all end up at the right place with the best-stated version of the question and the best answers for it. In many cases, the person who identifies a duplicate has gone out of the way to figure out the problem (despite an unclear explanation or an attempt to sneak in side questions about unrelated matters).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who…
> It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. "Good enough" is highly subjective. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but millions of people also think otherwise. > Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. That ultimately depends on your tech stack and app features, much more than your OS. If you bu…
Ironically, I might as well point out that billions of people think otherwise of Linux. In some countries, a few trees is “good enough” as a bridge. The IRS, of course, says COBOL is “good enough” to use as a web backend for the moment.
The weirdest thing is how people complain that engineering is a race of the bottom. Scarcely a thread goes by here without a tragedy of the commons reference. Yet inexplicably, business executives are terrified cowards when it involves free software. This of course makes no sense; you can’t have both. Either the complaints are wrong, or Linux is in fact unsuitable for purpose.
> Microsoft does a commendable job at maintaining backwards compatibility for apps written in their supported stacks, but step outside of this and you'll experience problems
Oregon Trail, a game made for Windows 95, still runs on Windows 11. (Edit for below complaint, as I’m posting too fast: You need all the DLLs that came with it on the original CD in the same folder as the EXE.)
Try installing and running any Linux app, be it even GNOME Chess, from four years ago. See how it goes. Consider my allegory of the sand skyscraper.
On that note, the Carbon to Cocoa transition mostly wrapped up a decade ago, and was completed by the majority of apps two decades ago. Try installing a Linux program from 2005 with a UI made in any toolkit of your choice.
The Linux community chases trends and kills APIs more often than Google.
1: I just don't see who these articles are written for. Linux is on the desktop, it's called Steam Deck, and millions are are using it. So, the author is wrong here in the spirit of the question, and the truth of the question. 2: The statement "Linux developers spend very little to no time checking that their code changes don't cause regressions or breakages" cannot be applied to all or possibly most developers. What…
It’s like saying that FreeBSD is on the desktop just because Sony used it as the base for the PS5. These are specific scenarios with specific hardware optimized for each use case. Desktop Linux encompasses the sheer amount of available PCs and laptops that one might install it on, and there is a miles long list of “just about everything works except $x thing” articles.
I otherwise generally agree with your points and think the article itself is more troll-ish than it needs to be.
> Regressions are introduced all the time because Linux developers spend very little to no time checking that their code changes don't cause regressions or breakages outside of the problems they're trying to fix or features they're implementing. Wow. Such sweeping generalizations make me not want to pay attention to anything this article has to say. But let's entertain the possibility that parts of that statement are…
“it's a miracle of modern software engineering and a testament of the power of collaboration and the free software movement that the Linux ecosystem works as well as it does” It can be a miracle, and yet still not be good enough. Even as a business user, knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years, is all I need to know about this hobbyist toy. Linux is fundamentally not ready for anyone who…
Would you say MacOS, Android, and iPhone are also hobbyist toys then?
And by the way, if you statically compile your app for Linux it will basically work forever. Linus's mantra: We Do Not Break Userspace. These are userland problems and can all be avoided with a linker flag if it's a priority for you.
I'm a big linux fan. Use it every day. I even use linux on the desktop to develop Windows software that isn't even distributed on linux. But am I really that alone in recognizing a lot of truth in this article? It's sad to see so much hostility within some of the other comments, even here on HN, quickly coming to linux's defence rather than having at lest some degree of reflection and acceptance towards what are almo…
Linux users can be defensive or even toxic about their operating system so I hardly blame the author for being impatient or frustrated. Still, I don’t blame people for being frustrated in turn at that tone.
Windows software from yesteryear frequently requires an installer that will not run on modern Windows. 16 bit installers are very common. So, the situation is not quite as rosy as reported.
My main complaint though is calling Flatpaks “light-weigh VMs”. If you are technical, you know what he means. If you are not, this leaves a totally wrong impression. Flatpak emulates no hardware. So there are zero “virtual machines”, light-weight or otherwise. Flatpaks run in a sandbox but mostly that is just a feature of the Linux kernel. Flatpak apps run directly on the host kernel just like any other app. It is totally true that Flatpaks “waste” lots of space because the way they provide portability is to bundle all the libraries that the app may need.
If we are going to complain about Flatpaks though, let’s be honest about how older Windows apps work on modern Windows. They do it by bundling all the libraries that the app will need. If you try to run ReactOS, you will learn that often you need to install old versions of the C and C++ standard libraries ( along with other things ). It is true that Windows includes much of this “out-of-the-box” for compatibility. And guess what, you pay the storage space for that on Windows. There is a reason that Windows is 30 GB freshly installed. Linux does not make you pay that tax. Instead, you have to install that stuff the first time you install a Flatpak. If you install a second Flatpak requiring the same libs, they share the space—just like in Windows.
So let’s not dump on Flatpak for wasting space just because it waits until you need it to install all these support libraries. I do not want my Linux distro to require 30 GB minimum drive space just in case I install Space Cadet Pinball.
Do I like Flatpaks? No actually. I use a distro with a huge repo largely to avoid them. Do I think Linux backwards compatibility could be better? Yes, actually. But please, let’s at least be honest and accurate when we talk about these things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, if I want to spend weeks and months of time learning how to: * move my arms again, so I can learn how to * push myself up again, so I can learn how to * move my legs again, so I can learn how to * crawl, so I can learn how to * walk. Cost of entry is a very real issue with NixOS and many/most of us are not interested in taking that time, so until it's easy / reasonable to use for most people's lived experiences…
In my case I managed to get working desktop in about 15 minutes without any prior Nix knowledge just by following their tutorial, then about 16 hours to read/learn/experiment and 8 more hours to complete my environment and 8 more to move my homelab to Nix. Since then I spend around two hours every six months to update and polish my flakes. Although Nix knowledge helped me tremendously in managing heterogenous codebas…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The “go to a website, download a binary, install it, and it runs” model has significant security issues. The security issues are twofold. One is that you could easily be tricked into installing malware. Two is that you will never be able to keep up with security updates, leaving yourself vulnerable to being compromised by flaws in network applications. Making that model of software distribution difficult is a feature…
I fully understand that. And yet until you can convince Debian to include a copy of Adobe Photoshop in their repository you will cut off a significant amount of desktop users. How do you propose to solve that problem? (Yes of course the solution is to fund Gimp until it’s better than Photoshop by so much that the industry switches. It was the solution 20 years ago too. Adobe has run away with this market. Photoshop i…
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...
It works for a number of versions, although not all of them. It is a shame that Adobe does not port Photoshop to Linux. It used to run on IRIX: