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

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what are the specs of this $100 laptop? Am I then going to carry around 7 laptops so I can get 14 hours of battery life? Am I going to run a cluster of them when I need to do something worthwhile with them? What exactly do you do “daily” with a $100 laptop? From your past comments, I’m assuming you are developer, are you really using a $100 computer?

I'm currently posting from a Dell Inspiron 3505 which has an 8-core AMD CPU and 6gb of ram. I got it new for roughly $300 and from quickly looking on ebay can be had for under $200 used. I'm waiting on the mail for a $70 Chromebook with 8gb of ram and a 2-core/4-thread CPU to replace this laptop because of a half-damaged charging port. I picked a Chromebook for the 10+ hour battery life, the same reason you chose a M…

I couldn’t run any decent number of Docker containers on that and if I were doing Android development, the emulator would run like trash.

Not to mention how many slow bloated Electron apps or Chrome itself runs on that.

I definitely couldn’t do any serious development on a ChromeBook.

But you said you care about an ad free experience and privacy and you are okay with hardware and an OS by Google????

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

#242

cant wait for 'the final edition, part 2' next year ...

There won't be one. I've said it all.

I was thinking about adding a "Security" section but I wasn't convinced it was necessary. Security in Linux is horrible in general.

* People use `sudo` for anything and everything all the time. * `git pull whatever_crap_from_the_web` and run it happily. * Tens of thousands of pieces of malware via NPMs and other frameworks. * No AV of any kind (the one that actually executes code in a sandbox and verifies its safe). * Permissions/users/groups/pam.d/logind/selinux/apparmor - it's a huge intricate mess.

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

#243

- "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…

CS2 is at most AA and mostly just facilitates skin gambling. The way that CS2 was kinda clumsily dropped, replacing a game with another game in kind of an unpolished state, also doesn't suggest that it could even be "AAA". It's low key a public playtest still. Early access. But that's besides that point.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For macOS and Windows you basically have a model where you can go to a website, download a binary, install it, and it runs. We have already had this on Linux for years, it's called AppImage.

You mean exceedingly rare apps that use it? Yeah. And they weigh in hundreds of megabytes, right, because they come with all the dependencies starting with glibc. Yeah, that will totally work and has been a smashing success. Except it never has.

Drawio, Session, and SimpleX are three that use AppImage, just off the top of my head.

> because they come with all the dependencies starting with glibc

Good, because my system doesn't have glibc, by choice.

> Yeah, that will totally work

It's already working.

> And they weigh in hundreds of megabytes

My home connection is 2-gigabit symmetrical and the internal NVMe in my laptop is 4TB. So cry more poorfag.

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

#245
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the point of view of most users, Linux is very similar to iOS or Android - you install software from the "store". I believe the comment you're replying to is stating that Linux (and its app ecosystem) is much more fragmented than iOS and Android. Each distro has a "store" of apps that only reliably work on that distro.

Unless the "store" is GNOME Software, which as far as I can tell doesn't work reliably on any distro.

That made me laugh.

I knew rms at Berkeley, when he was still (considered) cool.

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

#246

This website is for hackers, not "geek squad". I am very disappointed that something of such low quality could manage to be linked on one of the first few pages of this site.

You are commenting on a site that effectively represents the VC-centric startup world, not the /.-esque hacker world of yesterday. That it uses the term “hacker” in its name doesn’t make it Linux-central.

I agree with you 100% and yes I left that part out. So yeah:

  NOT GEEK SQUAD

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

#247

This website is for hackers, not "geek squad". I am very disappointed that something of such low quality could manage to be linked on one of the first few pages of this site.

You mean a page without 30MB of JavaScript dependencies, 50MB of images, 10MB of fonts and not sucking all your private data is "low quality". Yeah, you're absolutely right, I'm going for quality content, not shiny crap.

The content is total garbage, which is where the problem ultimately lies.

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

#248

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…

> knowing that if I build an app and it probably won’t work in 5 years 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.

This is a broken mindset, that you should be able to take an app and use it for 5+ years. When computers were in their infancy, and systems were only updated every 4-6 years, it might have made sense, but this doesn't in our modern software environment.

Nowadays all software is built on libraries and frameworks, and they have security issues and even just bugs, and you want to get those fixes. If you want to run 5+ year old software, you can now do it natively in a VM in almost any computer; so why does my shiny new OS have to run ancient binaries again?

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

#249
post #7

Again? I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since 2004 or so. And lack of games is always brought up as if gaming was one essential feature of a computer. That’s what consoles are for.

I'm guessing both 2004 YOLD AND 2024 YOLD were both on slashdot. Perhaps introspect as to why...

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

#250

The Windows desktop is unusable shite, not the Linux one. OSX also fine. My Linux desktop machine does not crash. It runs whatever I ask of it boringly reliably. So does a laptop. That's been my experience for twenty years now. My shiny new Windows 11 work laptop locks up about twice a day. Reboots if I hold power for long enough to start running again. Gives me no indication what is going wrong. Doesn't even give a…

Windows definitely has its problems, but hundreds of millions of people use it daily without these kinds of issues. You’re doing something very, very wrong if that’s truthfully your daily experience.
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