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Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

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Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#81

Post by myk9001 »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #75
tomrod wrote: post #12

My 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’m looking for a laptop. I can’t find any good laptop with 16-32GB RAM at a non-Apple price. Also they all have windows preinstalled. Defeats the purpose. That’s how it is.

Where I am, it's much much cheaper to get a laptop with the least possible amount of RAM preinstalled but -- importantly! -- with two RAM slots.

Then just buy two stick of fast RAM and install them yourself. It often doesn't void your warranty (but make sure to check the warranty of your specific laptop, obviously).

Same applies to SSD, actually.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#82

Post by pjmlp »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #77
pjmlp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't care about window transitions and compiz fusion or anything flashy about my window manager anymore. Xfce. Happy camper since 2015 as my main dev environment. Just run my programs please and provide some easy tools to position multiple windows.

You might not care, but everyone that doesn't want to be yet another Electron developer cares about the developer stack available across all desktops.

Since that is too much effort, you just get Electron apps instead.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#83

Post by bawolff »

pjmlp wrote: post #22
bawolff wrote: post #19

What 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, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows https://chocolatey.org/

Indeed, windows is moving in that direction. Back in the windows XP era, it really did feel revolutionary.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#84

Post by spixy »

red_trumpet wrote: post #15
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #4

Earlier 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?

Try but since its more of them that devs have to support (Flatpak, Snap, AppImage...), problem is still the same.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#86

Post by bawolff »

pjmlp wrote: post #74
worble wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people just listed 4 competing tools shows exactly why this is a problem: 2 of them are essentially community run, and could theoretically at any time be taken over by a hostile (or even just an incompetant) entity and be used to distribute malware. Not that this couldn't happen through an official channel, but it's certainly far less likely. Since the software distribution is not even, I currently have…

RPM Red-Hat, RPM SuSE, deb, tar balls, snap, flatpak, nix, .... Yeah, thankfully it doesn't happen on GNU/Linux.

Yeah, but the average debian user just uses apt. Other people do other things, but as a debian user my experience is basically just one place, which is what matters.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#87

Post by alexpotato »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #52

I hear what he is saying, although I haven't run into issues with applications so much. It makes you respect how much trouble Microsoft has gone to through the years. If I've had a problem with desktop Linux, it's been on the driverish edges. Sleep behavior, printers, graphics cards, wifi, multiple monitors. That's also what seems to make OpenBSD a pain.

On the flip side, I found out recently that if you are sharing a printer connected to a Linux machine using CUPS, you can print to said printer FROM AN IPHONE!

This blew me away when I first tried it and then digging deeper realized it's b/c Apple was the maintainer of the CUPS library. Kudos to Apple for that integration!

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#88

Post by pjmlp »

formerly_proven wrote: post #73
alkonaut wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is the runtime not redistributable? The old one “.NET Framework” is an OS component but has enough compat that you can always upgrade it. The newer one (net5+) is typically fully bundled with each app so no sharing. MSVC also went this way - you bundle them rather than take a dependency on a system wide runtime. These two (.NET and c++ runtimes) were basically the last shared libs on windows, and it’s now…

You are right, but there are still a lot of applications reliant on the "old ways".

Given that the new way for SxS was introduced in Windows XP, the old way is a long time ago.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#89

Post by pjmlp »

bawolff wrote: post #86
pjmlp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RPM Red-Hat, RPM SuSE, deb, tar balls, snap, flatpak, nix, .... Yeah, thankfully it doesn't happen on GNU/Linux.

Yeah, but the average debian user just uses apt. Other people do other things, but as a debian user my experience is basically just one place, which is what matters.

For the developers it matters, and maybe they won't care to deal with deb, though luck.

Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)

#90

Post by pjmlp »

bawolff wrote: post #83
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange, because I can do it, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows https://chocolatey.org/

Indeed, windows is moving in that direction. Back in the windows XP era, it really did feel revolutionary.

It is orthogonal to this discussion, but had Windows NT offered a serious POSIX environment I would never bothered with Linux to start with.
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