The real issue, macos has one distribution, Windows has one distribution, Linux has so many I doubt anyone really keeps track. The issue with Linux is they’re working in fragments instead of as one. The problem is oss not the operating system but the culture it was developed in.
Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
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Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#22What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…
Strange, because I can do it,
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#23We have Linux on all desktops and laptops. This has been the case for more than 10 years by now. There are still a couple Windows VM's (mainly for checking how some things work on Windows in case need be).
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, 2014. Although I’m not sure anything has improved on his main complaints. There is no possibility of compatibility between binaries for the end user which means the experience will rarely be download and run. The distorts will always be incompatible, the package managers don’t care about you, and the core system components will break things in the name of progress (for them, hope you can come along!).
Things like Flatpak or Snap try to solve this problems. Do you think they don't succeed?
Has Linus any opinion on flatpak, snap or appimage?
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#25What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…
I totally agree. This is one of the things that makes Windows feel like a second-tier OS to me compared with Linux and Mac. If I have to do something "tech-y", on Linux or Mac, I look for it in the package registry. I trust that action would probably have been taken by the community if it were doing something malicious, and usually I can find the project on github and peruse the source if I really want.
By contrast on Windows, it usually means finding some GUI-based utility on some sketchy website filled with ads, and maybe a fake download button. Probably it's freemium, so during the task maybe I have to dodge several calls to action to upgrade to the paid version. And then a week later, maybe I check the task manager, and find out it's gone and set itself to run in the background at startup, doing god knows what, without asking.
It's just one of the ways that Windows feels less like it's my computer.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#26What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…
The two aren’t mutually exclusive! The package repo need only be a list of “endorsed” applications/binaries once they’ve been packaged. The fact that it requires so much work on the package maintainers’ part (essentially duplicating the effort for every distribution) is the main problem being pointed out — and that is original to what you’re expressing.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#27The real issue, macos has one distribution, Windows has one distribution, Linux has so many I doubt anyone really keeps track. The issue with Linux is they’re working in fragments instead of as one. The problem is oss not the operating system but the culture it was developed in.
In the mid-90's, I had hope that GNU/Linux would eventually evolve into either GNOME or KDE as the main desktop environment with their frameworks filling the same role as Kits in OS X, BeOS, WinAPI.
Instead, it is not only the distributions, the whole desktop stacks keep being re-invented way more that what Apple or Microsoft have done thus far.
Then there are the whole set of GNOME and KDE forks from those not happy with those reboots.
Not a surprise that only ChromeOS and Android have managed to have stuck as desktop/mobile variants of Linux based OSes.
So those are the only "desktop" Linux that I ended up caring about.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#28What he's saying is true, but also i think the app-store type approach that apt-get provides is a major benefit. With windows i have to find some random program, hope its not malware, possibly pay for it, etc. With linux, i have reasonable assurance that packages (from main repos) aren't evil, they are free (as in beer), and i can easily search through and find something for my usecase. I can't really do that in wind…
Except that all my packages are out of date, and manually install a ton of stuff because of missing features or unpatched bugs. But it's a good first start.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#29Does appimage not solve this problem? Linus himself released software by appimage the next year (2015).
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#30My family and I have used Linux desktops since 2008, when Windows Vista failed to run full screen video with BSOD. There was a learning curve for a few months, but I've never regretted the shift and it has made for significant contributions to my career. YMMV.
I switched to Linux around the same time as you. Before that I was a Windows user from 1997 until ~2008. In the late 1990s and early 2000s people just accepted that Windows crashing everyday was a normal feature of that software, and they blamed every crash on user error, eg: "your drivers are bad", "you're running buggy software", etc. My Windows 98 install couldn't run for more than ~4 hours without crashing, it wa…
because printer/scanners don't work with the included software, and linux has a reputation.