Honestly, I agree with @StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net
Ok fair enough, but I wouldn't have installed Linux if I had not seen it recommended.
I'm not a computer toucher, but I can follow written advice.
These sorts of posts always scold anyone giving out actual solutions just so being miserable can continue. This cultural thing almost has an end of history type vibe to it. It's also pretty hostile to divergent and often solution focused neurotypes.
Linux evangelism kinda makes sense, no one is spending billions on marketing and ads for it. I think Linux evangelists should ask about use cases first, instead of just posting a generic "use Linux".
As someone who uses Arch and Gentoo Linux and wants to delve into Guix (and have used Linux for a decade now), Linux still has a long way to go to be usable for most people (and I believe more computer education is necessary for the majority of the population), and I don't see development accelerating fast enough to overcome the monopoly of Microsoft, Apple, and Google before we have a revolution. We should try to push people away from proprietary surveillance systems and recover their tech sovereignty, but the development into open source projects is way too underfunded and slow (at least in the West) for a proper open source OS marketshare to manifest until capitalism and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is abolished. When revolution comes, I imagine phones and computers are mostly out the window until we succeed.
Nah, most people just want a good looking UI and a web browser. Unless you mean it on the slightly more savvy user that need other stuff like some office suite and wants to play games, but even then, I think it's pretty good on that end, it's only when you get to more specific stuff like image editing tools and such that it is lacking heavily.
Don't forget the other camp who just HAVE to play their video game slop. The linux distro must be capable of running 100% of their video games, every single one of them, or they turn into a crybaby puddle and give up. God forbid they have to give up playing the latest battle royale slop
Yeah and it's always followed with the most annoying remark they can muster about Linux lol. G*mers just need to be insufferable.
I often encounter bugs and lack of features that there are no alternatives or workarounds for. FreeCAD (an open source project not related to Linux, but I am using as an example for open source in general) won't even let me trim a curve at a point without going through this ridiculous process. Wayland development is slow and full of developers arguing over simple features for years. Flatpaks still have a lot of issues, and installing packages is still a moderately steep learning curve for new users, and GUIs for package managers are still slow and failure-prone to this day. When Linux breaks, it's nice we can look into where it failed and fix it, but this requires users to have some proficient technical skills that the majority of the population doesn't have. Battery life is still a problem, even on laptops. Plug-and-play input devices and other peripherals and hardware still do not always work out of the box. Linux security is not user friendly nor to the level of Android devices. The Linux kernel is in a constant state of flux and isn't ever really stable. File and folder sharing is still not as user friendly as it is on Windows. Lack of proper sandboxing and malware scanning.
The list goes on. I believe there still a lot of missing infrastructure that is reliable and not requiring CLI on Linux. Users who try Linux inevitably have to start learning to do IT professional work when something in their system breaks. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if we had more funding in open source, which I don't see happening by the time our system collapses.
That is true, I'd just want to add that for me, even though Linux has many flaws lurking underneath, the broader issues stem from Capitalism, again as you noted.
It's because the FLOSS movement and Linux for that matter is weird in that regard. Most popular FOSS software has funding from a lot of orgs and other donors, and only really work because of 'donations'. Some say (right-adjacent libs) that this is because it is inherently unprofitable and hobbyist in nature (FOSS) and that either find a way to make money off of it or risk burnout. But us, we say, abolish capitalism or at least make sure that we can coherently organize, plan and subsidize FLOSS for everyone, so that developers can focus on features and if/how to implement them.
I do think that even in a state subsidized like computer running Linux or whatever there should still be alternatives and stuff, like.. yes, flatpaks or the equivalent should be made better and standard in socialism, but having appimages (or snaps, but they're.. weird) around wouldn't be bad either, only really needs people to be interested in the format itself.
I wonder how a Linux kernel fork of like a theoretical socialist state would work..? Hmm. (I say fork because it's.. complicated in how the Linux Foundation and Linus Torvalds will handle a theoretical socialist state using Linux, though the PRC has Deepin, right?)
Your complaints are valid, but I genuinely think the proportion is a little bit exaggerated on some of these because most people wouldn't face a lot of these issues. Also I completely agree with LadyCajAsca, I just want to address most of the points you mentioned here.
I don't use FreeCAD, and like I said, it falls under the more niche uses because that's not something most people would need, but your complaint is completely fair, we really lack in some software, even if said software might not be necessarily related to Linux. And even if most people don't need nor use this type of program, it's something that hinders Linux potential and adoption. On the other hand, Linux also has stuff like EasyEffects which is amazing and that afaik has no equivalent on Windows.
Fair, almost every time I looked into Wayland PRs and feature requests it's always filled with endless arguing, but for the most part now Wayland is ready and every major distro is either moving to it, or have already moved. So even if the development is not the most smooth thing, Wayland is in a more than good enough state right now.
Also fair, I don't keep with Flatpak development, but I have faced issues with Flatpak apps before that I never saw resolved, like VSCodium and Zed don't see my Brew install, so things I use in the terminal aren't available there, which made me have to layer both packages on Bazzite. I also faced issues with Heroic's Flatpak and playing pirated games that require Steam because of a limitation in Flatpak, so I now use the AppImage, and Blender doesn't have HIP support on Flatpak, so I now use the Steam version. That being said, most Flatpaks just work for the majority of people. I myself use a lot of Flatpaks that I never had to mess with.
For the vast majority of distros I completely agree, but that's where stuff like Atomic distros come in, it should make that a non-issue for the most part. Also, stuff breaks on Windows too, I have faced issues on my Windows installations multiple times that I couldn't find a fix for, and when it was something I couldn't ignore I had to just reinstall.
My laptop has bad battery life on Linux, but I have also seen reports of people that got better battery life ootb on Linux compared to Windows. It's definitely something that needs to become better.
Doesn't that also happen on Mac? Nowadays there are better support for a lot of the more common devices with even community made programs to manage these devices. Support can definitely be better, but unfortunately this is a case of Linux needing bigger adoption so hardware manufacturers think of including support for Linux.
I don't know how it works on other DEs, but I know KDE has tried to make it much more user friendly.
I also agree. The less need for CLI the better, but I also don't think there is something wrong with pushing people to learn it. When someone goes from Windows to Mac or from Mac to Windows, they have to learn the quirks and ways of said systems, it's only fair that they also learn at least the basics of Linux too.
Yeah LadyCajAsca understood my point. The struggles of open source in a capitalist system stem from the system itself, and the flaws won't be resolved until the system is abolished, we nationalize the tech companies, subsidize open source development, and put the means of computing/production into the workers' hands.
I love Linux; I love open source technology. It has been my passion for years, and I have tried really hard to push people into taking back their soveriegnty, and I am not going to stop doing so. You essentially understood each of the points I have made, and I do want to mention KDE is an exception for the file and folder sharing convenience, though setting up Samba is a pain, especially with SELinux, and working with sshfs and nfs requires people to go into power user territory.
I'm not necessarily complaining about Linux. I just recognize there's a lot of important flaws both underneath the hood and outside, and seeing the current system in the West collapse very quickly gives me the sense that we're not likely going to see those flaws fixed off the backs of people's free time and barely sustainable donations alone, but only once we change the system as a whole that is weighing us down and stopping us and the products of our labor from reaching our full potential.
Oh I agree a 100%. I was just expanding on what you said because despite these flaws I genuinely think Linux is usable for the majority of people right now, even tho without actually systemic change I doubt it is going to become widespread like you said. But to be fair, Linux adoption is rising faster and faster, even if it is still small. Last I checked, I think Linux already had the same number of g*mers as Mac if I'm not mistaken.
Also, something you might find interesting, there was a time when the Brasilian government was trying to adopt FLOSS, there's this hour long great video by the Brasilian Marxist tech youtuber Zawacki that goes into it. And even tho this never really took off, there are Open Source and Libre software the government develops here, which I think is cool.
There's also this other cool video/react he made about the development of Lua, which I only learned was Brasilian when it popped in my timeline. It's all in portuguese, so I hope youtube's auto subtitle is good enough.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
wow a lot of Guix users on Hexbear (including myself!)
I haven't used Guix yet, but I have been researching it for a while and would like to practice using it soon.
i think the first part is skewing the second
having used mint for a year or so before moving on to arch, mint is entirely usable for the average person
you never have to touch a command line, everything is where you would expect it to be if you came from windows, everything a normal user would need is in the official repositories, and the packages are old enough to be stable
the only things i would say would make mint unusable would be; if you have certain laptops which have hardware with bad support, if you wanted to do audio production, or if you have very specific requirements when it comes to what exact programs you use for particular tasks (which would push you out of "average user" imo)
From my experience, there was always some issue with me using "beginner friendly" distros that forced me down the Arch/Gentoo/etc. path, often due to lack of hardware support for newer devices or some feature unsupported in fixed release distros that I needed. I wish Mint offered a KDE version like it used to, and these forks of corporate Linux distros tend to get screwed over in some way and either have to support an abandoned feature or hardware or fix a controversial issue nobody likes, or they don't have the manpower to continue the project. Thus we need more funding and to overthrow capitalism so we can efficiently push for progress and standardization like China has been doing.
The key to widespread adoption of Linux is for state actors to ban Windows and MacOS as Western spyware. Without Windows and MacOS, people will have to learn Linux by necessity. It doesn't matter if Linux is not user-friendly if it's the only OS in town. And it also doesn't matter if people have bootleg versions of Windows at home because the majority of PC being sold are used within enterprise and educational settings.