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

itvision.altervista.org

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

#461

Post by pxoe »

talldayo wrote: post #278
pxoe wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can't argue with that. I'm still not super worried for Valve though; between Alyx , Deadlock , the Deck, and Proton, it's pretty clear that CS2 is less of a new norm and more of an outlier too popular to be announced dead and buried yet. Counter Strike has always felt like the drunk uncle of Valve's IP, it would be nice to see him clean up for once but I'm also not upset having him at a holiday party or out at the ba…

I would be worried for Valve if even with their infinite resources they cannot manage to do right by their most popular game on Steam. There's enough multiplayer shooter games from Valve that are also neglected (tf2, l4d, both have huge issues with bots and hackers) to suggest that it is the norm for them, be it due do disinterest, incompetence, or both.

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

#462

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jpc0 wrote: post #456
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is I can just target winforms on windows, or GDI if I need that. And the reality is that you can just target GTK on Linux. That you happen to have picked a single option on NT doesn't magically make it different, it just means you already made the decision.

Which version of GTK should I pick since you seem so confident? And should I target X or Wayland? Which Wayland extensions are ubiquitous enough so that I don't need to manually reimplement things in my app? Should I target pipewire for audio? Pulse? If I pick a modern stack like Wayland + GTK 4 + pipewire it might not work on older linux distros. Maybe that's fine for my needs, maybe it's not. If I pick X + GTK 3 +…

It seems like you've picked 1 option for Windows and decided that it's perfect, and then looked at every single remotely possible option on Linux, and then pretended that that was somehow a fair comparison. If we use every GUI toolkit that Microsoft has ever offered, and also every sound API they've ever offered, and also every distribution format (do you use the store? .msi? bundle up a Portable App so you don't need an installer?), your matrix will also blow up.

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

#463

Post by hulitu »

> the core issue is that [Software] is in a constant state of flux. Regressions are introduced all the time because [Software] 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

There, i fixed it for you. This is not specific to Linux. See Microsoft, Mozilla, Google.

Linux desktop is fine since the first release of XFree86 for it.

Quality of software has decreased.

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

#464

Post by jpc0 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #462
jpc0 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which version of GTK should I pick since you seem so confident? And should I target X or Wayland? Which Wayland extensions are ubiquitous enough so that I don't need to manually reimplement things in my app? Should I target pipewire for audio? Pulse? If I pick a modern stack like Wayland + GTK 4 + pipewire it might not work on older linux distros. Maybe that's fine for my needs, maybe it's not. If I pick X + GTK 3 +…

It seems like you've picked 1 option for Windows and decided that it's perfect, and then looked at every single remotely possible option on Linux, and then pretended that that was somehow a fair comparison. If we use every GUI toolkit that Microsoft has ever offered, and also every sound API they've ever offered, and also every distribution format (do you use the store? .msi? bundle up a Portable App so you don't nee…

Feel free to look at the other comment thread here for my opinion on windows toolkits.

But to answer ypur question, if I pick winforms + an exe + wasapi for audio it will work on all supported versions of windows and I don't need to compromise on features. It will very likely also work under wine on linux and macos for that matter...

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

#465

Post by geon »

tuna74 wrote: post #370
AndyKelley wrote: post #101

> Linux is not an operating system It is though. Go ahead and find me any distribution of Linux on which this binary of the Zig compiler does not work: https://ziglang.org/download/0.13.0/zig-linux-x86_64-0.13.0.... You can't, because it's a static executable whose only runtime dependencies are a file system. And if kernel devs would bless us with a stable graphics ABI, then we could do this for games, too. Unfortuna…

Linux is an OS kernel. Without a lot of other stuff (like Grub) it won't even boot.

No one says "gnu/linux".

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

#466

Post by Draiken »

itvision wrote: post #365
Draiken wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally have to reinstall windows because of how broken it got, and that's somehow okay? The amount of BSOD I've seen and unfixable issues after spending hours googling and browsing windows shitty support sites are just the tip of the iceberg. Windows is utter trash and the only reason it won is because of the monopoly it established, forcing everyone to use it, hardware manufacturers to support it and once the…

> You literally have to reinstall windows because of how broken it got, and that's somehow okay? Last time I did it was in the Windows XP SP0 days. > The amount of BSOD I've seen and unfixable issues after spending hours googling and browsing windows shitty support sites are just the tip of the iceberg. When was the last time you got BSOD? I've not seen them after Vista. > The only reason Linux won't win the desktop…

Wow, I guess some people are such die hard fans that they try to mention "aliens" instead of giving a semblance of an argument.

Keep your ad ridden Windows mate, you clearly deserve it. Not worth my time to answer this low level of a reply.

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

#467

Post by itvision »

Draiken wrote: post #466
itvision wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You literally have to reinstall windows because of how broken it got, and that's somehow okay? Last time I did it was in the Windows XP SP0 days. > The amount of BSOD I've seen and unfixable issues after spending hours googling and browsing windows shitty support sites are just the tip of the iceberg. When was the last time you got BSOD? I've not seen them after Vista. > The only reason Linux won't win the desktop…

Wow, I guess some people are such die hard fans that they try to mention "aliens" instead of giving a semblance of an argument. Keep your ad ridden Windows mate, you clearly deserve it. Not worth my time to answer this low level of a reply.

Rabid fanboyism is solely on you, mate.

I've been running Linux exclusively since RedHat 5.0 (no, that's not RHEL, that's more than a decade earlier).

This entire article is 1000% true. Every word of it. You can "opine" and "disagree" with it as much as you want. It's become too damn popular in the western world lately to opine about anything.

Feel free to opine about gravity, just don't fall off the top of a 10-storey building.

BTW this is why the entire world is running "ad-ridden"/"privacy-invading" Windows.

People run it because

1. Windows doesn't get in the way and allows them to run their software.

2. Windows is rock stable and doesn't break randomly after every upgrade (sans occasional conflicts with third-party software here and there affecting ~0.05% of people).

3. Windows is simple.

Linux has no implied compatibility, it's full of regressions, it's complicated as hell and it still has poor HW support. Yes.

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

#468

Post by cloudsec9 »

rerdavies wrote: post #302
cloudsec9 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+ y…

Because you might want to run more than one program at a time without having to spin up a VM to do it.

I run many programs at the same time AND run VMs; as long as you have enough memory, this shouldn't be an issue.

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

#469

Post by cloudsec9 »

RossBencina wrote: post #449
cloudsec9 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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+ y…

Without intending to be inflammatory, I think that the mindset that you are espousing is broken. Security is is a real issue for a subset of computing tasks. To further your point, for those tasks you can argue that constant vigilance and patching are a necessity of the modern world (an alternative and arguably better approach would be that formal verification and not updating, as often applied in safety critical con…

Okay, I understand what you are trying to say, but some of what you are using as examples doesn't support your argument. Games, unless they are simple single player games, need the network. Scientific sims and math research are best served on the latest hardware, which often needs the latest OS/software to get the most out of it. I think your arguing that MOST software should run without needing to be updated, and when we lived in a dial-up world and before, that was a very viable position. But with all of our machines on an always on network, the OS has to be kept up to date.

Most businesses just want things to work; their software/hardware costs are often rounding errors when amortized over their lifetime. I'm sympathetic to users who have paid for programs wanting to run them forever, but software businesses have to make money and sell new versions, so they add new features and follow the OS upgrades. It's hard for businesses to support older software or a big diversity of versions; it's why companies mandate a standard and try to enforce it.

With Microsoft, they are making millions on OS and related basic programs, and so can afford to support things for a long time. With OSS like Linux, there is less funding and less people who are interested in running old versions. As someone who has had to keep some software up to date on Linux, it can sometimes be more of a pain to update a package (because of dependencies) them to just recompile the thing from source. The 5 years that LTS releases get are good for 2 average commercial update cycles, which I think is reasonable. Beyond that, people's skills are going to be out of date.

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

#470

Post by Draiken »

itvision wrote: post #467
Draiken wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I guess some people are such die hard fans that they try to mention "aliens" instead of giving a semblance of an argument. Keep your ad ridden Windows mate, you clearly deserve it. Not worth my time to answer this low level of a reply.

Rabid fanboyism is solely on you, mate. I've been running Linux exclusively since RedHat 5.0 (no, that's not RHEL, that's more than a decade earlier). This entire article is 1000% true. Every word of it. You can "opine" and "disagree" with it as much as you want. It's become too damn popular in the western world lately to opine about anything. Feel free to opine about gravity, just don't fall off the top of a 10-stor…

People run Windows because it comes installed in their machines.

> Windows is rock stable and doesn't break randomly after every upgrade (sans occasional conflicts with third-party software here and there affecting ~0.05% of people).

What? I've lost count of the amount of times that I've had to restore botched Windows updates. It has gotten better lately, but it still happened more times than I've had to deal with update issues on my Linux installation. And I run my Linux near the bleeding edge where, in theory, everything should break all the time, right? Well, it doesn't.

My point stands. People don't choose their OS. It's chosen by the hardware manufacturer, their employers or their requirements. I'm gonna repeat this because it's extremely important: people don't spend a single second choosing their OS.

If you want to game, you have to use Windows (yes I know about Proton and love it, but mainstream online games require Windows). If you want to use your computer for work, you need Office. Even with Google Docs, people in my country simply default to the Office suite. Again, not because they choose it, but because it was already chosen for them by the monopoly that is already in place.

Aside from Office, you have all of the other specialized tools like the Adobe suite and many others that force you to use Windows again.

Windows doesn't have anyone competing with them. Their monopoly guarantees they can get away with anything. It's not a competition.

Windows 11 is a great example of this. Nobody asked for it. It's garbage with more ads in it. It wasn't built to improve the system for users, it was built to sell ads and force people to buy new computers. Being the only option allows them to do all of this. Windows simply doesn't need to add, change or remove features because of competitors since there aren't any.

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