Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
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Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#2Shouldn't this be marked with (2014) as it was made at DebConf 14?
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#3Worth watching. But if you don’t... [Linux desktop sucks because application writers don’t make binaries that “just work”, pushing the user to always just have to recompile for their system, they try and address this in the kernel by not breaking things, but the distributions to and screw it all up, because breaking is fine so long as it’s “improving”]
Tons of contrary points I’m sure, but duh. It’s really nice to be able to run Windows 3.1 code on a Windows Server 2019, the idea is nice, practicality aside.
As someone who could run Linux desktop, I see it as the same reason I don’t root an android phone, I do enough tweaking and tinkering in my own code that sometimes I just want tools that immediately work. So I can do my other work. Linux as a system, great, as a desktop, I’ll never set one up for someone I don’t want to hear from all the time.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#4Shouldn't this be marked with (2014) as it was made at DebConf 14?
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!).
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#5Worth watching. But if you don’t... [Linux desktop sucks because application writers don’t make binaries that “just work”, pushing the user to always just have to recompile for their system, they try and address this in the kernel by not breaking things, but the distributions to and screw it all up, because breaking is fine so long as it’s “improving”] Tons of contrary points I’m sure, but duh. It’s really nice to be…
Instead of thinking of Linux for non-technical users, I think you can actually segment non-technical users into people who use a computer and people who use a browser. People who just use a browser for virtually everything (i.e. people who can use a Chromebook and think that it's basically the same as a normal laptop) are actually very common and can use Linux just fine. I had a friend who needed a home computer but was desperately poor. I gave them a machine I picked up at a garage sale with Ubuntu on it. They've been using it for years and have never looked back. After they had been using it for a while I mentioned something to them about their computer having an unusual operating system, and they really didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Because they had never paid attention to the operating system beyond the clicking the browser icon.
Now yeah that's not true for people who will want to plug in different printers all the time, and install Microsoft Office specifically, etc. Surprisingly I think it's actually the people with a medium amount of technical knowledge that have the most trouble adapting to Linux.
But even as someone who virtually never uses anything but Linux, I don't really get the constant drive to have this "year of the Linux desktop". It works fine for me and I love it. I make my smug comment when Windows and OS X users have problems but I'm not in a rush to help them with their problems or give them new ones. If you're bothered enough by the mainstream options to switch, you can learn a few new things. If not, I don't see the problem.
Edit: and I think Linus focuses too much on Debian here. Even in 2014, Ubuntu was already a very easy to use and out-of-the-box distro. Even Fedora was pretty good. My distribution doesn't package Zoom, but if I go to their website and click install I get the right binary and the experience is comparably easy to Microsoft Windows installers. If you're on a fringe distro, you almost certainly love the power that comes with (and requires) building everything from source regularly. So again, I don't see the problem. If you want to be included in Debian, using Debian's shared libraries doesn't seem like an unreasonable policy. It's quite easy to ship an application that is easy to install and upgrade independently. Google Chrome is another app that does it super well. More people would do it if there was demand, but there isn't, and I don't think that's just an app packaging problem at all.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#6it'd be interesting to try to make a hybrid static/dynamic library program. assume you can find the libraries you want on the system, but have a fallback where you go download some Debian packages & install them into your XDG_CACHE_DIR & load libraries from there, when the system (whatever os it is) didn't have it.
part of the trick would be making this code significantly smaller than doing a static build.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#7Worth watching. But if you don’t... [Linux desktop sucks because application writers don’t make binaries that “just work”, pushing the user to always just have to recompile for their system, they try and address this in the kernel by not breaking things, but the distributions to and screw it all up, because breaking is fine so long as it’s “improving”] Tons of contrary points I’m sure, but duh. It’s really nice to be…
> I do enough tweaking and tinkering in my own code that sometimes I just want tools that immediately work
Interestingly, that's exactly the reason I continue to use Linux. Depends on what you're doing, but for the boring work I do, I never have to tinker. Install and use. Once in a while do a boring update.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#8This has improved a lot. Hardware support has caught up. I'm using a 1 year old laptop with hard to support hybrid graphics (AMD integrated, NVIDIA dedicated). In Fedora, it all worked out of the box. And you get an extra 50% battery life over Windows. In 2010, when I last ran a laptop with hybrid graphics, setting up Bumblebee was a disaster.
The only line I had to type into a terminal in Fedora 34 to make it a GUI-usable system was adding the default flathub repo. That fixes the package manager issue. Most people have so much bandwidth and storage coming with their devices, shared libraries make less and less sense anyway.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#9Worth watching. But if you don’t... [Linux desktop sucks because application writers don’t make binaries that “just work”, pushing the user to always just have to recompile for their system, they try and address this in the kernel by not breaking things, but the distributions to and screw it all up, because breaking is fine so long as it’s “improving”] Tons of contrary points I’m sure, but duh. It’s really nice to be…
I use Linux top to bottom in my home.
My work laptop. My wife's PC. Our plex/jellyfin media server.
My sister's pc and my elderly parents PC are also ubuntu.
I have found my support time for all of them dramatically went down after I got them off windows.
Windows slowing down over time. I longer happens, lengthening the age of hardware and pushing off OS reinstalls, which can at times cost money based on the OEM model.
I can still suck more juice out of a machine with a RAM and add drive upgrade, again, without paying for a reinstall, and saving them lots of money in the process.
LTS/stable distros just work, out of the box, for most people.
Its people like me who have an incessant need to tweak everything that will mess up a Linux desktop.
Re: Linus Torvalds on why desktop Linux sucks (2014)
#10does freebsd suffer from this problem as well? specifically, that application package needs to support "15 billion different versions"