21–30 of 99 posts
> While this could absolutely happen, the way that Linux as a whole has been developing over the years isn't always conducive to making the world's Windows and macOS users convert en masse. Its the way Windows is developing that is driving this change. GNOME might be hardly usable but Microsoft managed to top that. Edit: I retract the last sentence. I'm currently trying GNOME and its less usable than Windows.
I HIGHLY agree with this article and IMHO all the comments bashing Gnome just don't really get it. For all of it's faults, I still roll with Ubuntu/Gnome every day because it just freaking works, gets out of my way, gets the job done, and doesn't require a weekend of tweaking software to get everything working just right. I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems…
The main reason for Linux not taking off on the desktop is because most users don't care about what OS they run, they just want a computer that works. If the PC they buy comes with Windows out of the box, they're going to stick with that. Until you get manufacturers shipping PCs with Linux as the default OS, you're mainly going to see desktop Linux as an enthusiast-only option. It's no accident that one of the devices helping to spread Linux (the Steam Deck) comes with Linux as the default option.
They usually do not need to know - they just see a software centre which is app store like.
> they care that their favorite apps will work
That depends on app developers.
> that updates won't break anything (which Windows does all the time)
Already done
> and that they don't have to learn a list of text commands to make basic changes to their computers.
Already done.
> The problem is that these are "wins" because they bring Linux closer to Windows or macOS. I disagree that this is an issue. The main advantage of Linux for me is that I have choice (including using various desktop environments that the author is annoyed by; I used GNOME for years and eventually had too many problems with it so I switched to KDE), and those choices are not controlled by one entity which, in the case…
The biggest battle desktop Linux is losing is the one where a minority of devs are dictating their preferred compute paradigm to a majority of users that don’t agree it’s a good solution.
I can “fix” Gnome in about 2m with extensions, but that doesn’t help when a new user loads it up for the first time and is hit with the unintuitive ideology of some nerds.
I don't even want linux to be mainstream.. this will inevitably lead to more for-profit enshittification of the ecosystem..
I HIGHLY agree with this article and IMHO all the comments bashing Gnome just don't really get it. For all of it's faults, I still roll with Ubuntu/Gnome every day because it just freaking works, gets out of my way, gets the job done, and doesn't require a weekend of tweaking software to get everything working just right. I don't care at all for the SystemD/whatever else flame wars. Sure if you work on these systems…
Yeah the real problem is that the only thing that’s well tested is what devs use. It’s like the FOSS parallel to startups only testing on top of the line MacBook Pros and iPhones (“works on my machine”). As soon as you step outside those bounds, good luck.
I see this issue as well. A CLI setup with Emacs/VIM doing C/C++ development is very stable, because that's how the majority of linux devs interact with Linux.
What puts a bad taste in my mouth is when you mention issues outside of that setup, the usual response isn't "oh this is an issue we need to fix", it's "well your setup sucks, stop using VSCode/Gnome/Chrome/etc"
One thing that I think this argument sorely misses is an honest discussion of how e.g. bad (or perhaps unliked) decisions get made that have big impacts here. For example, count me in with those folks who think the "new" GNOME sucks. Now, maybe you disagree and that's fine -- but so often those discussions start and end with "Well it's open source and so because you're not making anything better you can't even talk."…
I don't even want linux to be mainstream.. this will inevitably lead to more for-profit enshittification of the ecosystem..
Some of us are old enough to remember Corel Linux. It was about as mainstream as Linux could have gotten. It shipped with WordPerfect Office, which was still neck and neck with Microsoft Office at the time, including WordPerfect, Quattro, Corel Presentations, Corel Draw, all there. It had migration tools to move Internet Explorer, Netscape, Outlook, mIRC, and ICQ settings, and Windows registry settings to Corel Linux…
For desktop Linux to be successful, it needs to be the cool different OS -- not the boring Windows that the accountants use, and not the MacOS that the art snobs and marketing hipsters use, but something appealing on its own merits.
And, arguably, that's about where it is now: 70% boring, 15% commercial hipster, 15% indie.