>Similarly, most laptops and desktop computers come with Windows preinstalled due to manufacturer deals, much like how most Android variations come with adware and other garbage. Nobody wants it, but nobody (at a certain price point), has any alternatives.
I hear this a lot, but I don't think it's the primary reason why Desktop Linux has negligible market share (neither does Linus, FWIW). Plenty of people build their own PCs, or have a custom PC built for them by a friend/independent shop, and even amongst these enthusiasts Linux use is rare.
The main problem, at least in my experience as a user, is the fact that Desktop Linux is janky to use. Unless you have the time and patience to learn about all the subsystems and fix the issues that keep cropping up, you're going to want to just spend the money on an OS that "just works". OSX is obviously the best in this regard, but modern Windows with automatic driver installs comes pretty damn close.
(As a developer, the fact that there's no universally agreed-upon standards make it a pain in the arse to support too.)
>Nobody's going to have good UX or fancy onboarding if they can barely find enough resources to keep the project going and fix all of the bugs, as well as handle the technological churn of keeping dependencies up to date etc.
IMO, the main issue with open-source isn't actually finding developers (people love working on OSS) but doing the kind of boring, rigorous QA that you'll see in a commercial firm. Nobody's going to volunteer to reproduce specific edge cases in a printer driver, so it sits broken for decades.
>The main problem, at least in my experience as a user, is the fact that Desktop Linux is janky to use. Unless you have the time and patience to learn about all the subsystems and fix the issues that keep cropping up, you're going to want to just spend the money on an OS that "just works". OSX is obviously the best in this regard, but modern Windows with automatic driver installs comes pretty damn close.
When was the last time you used Linux, 2003?
The only problem with Linux is manufacturers that don't advertise support of their devices and that there are way too many distros so you can't have one ecosystem like you have a windows or macos ecosystem with certified devices.
But if you stick with Lenovo thinkpads, brother printers and bog standard everything running a Fedora linux is like running a macos with well supported devices.
We'd nerd having all kind of hardware sold whose compatibility is well tested and sold under the <insert your favorite distro> brands.
I used PopOS as well as Fedora on my desktop for school for 2 years. Tried it on a Lenovo as well and that was pretty laughable. I lost 30% of my battery life switching to linux. I gave up this year and just bought the 16" M1 Mac when it came out. Some things are absolutely laughable about it but for the most part it just works TM.
For the 95% use case it's fine but the 5% where stuff just breaks is infuriating.
Office just doesn't work right, and random things subtly break and it's hard to fix even as a technical user. I don't want to navigate between a bunch of files and waste time editing config files for hours. Give me a UI that tells me how to fix my shit.
Only place where I run linux now is on a virtualized server using Proxmox. Linux is a great server OS but it just doesn't work very well as a user distro.
> For the 95% use case it's fine but the 5% where stuff just breaks is infuriating.
This applies to all OSes.
> I don't want to navigate between a bunch of files and waste time editing config files for hours.
Not something you usually do on Linux but well.
> Give me a UI that tells me how to fix my shit.
My understanding of the UI on proprietary OSes when something needs to be fixed is they don't tell you at all how to fix their shit. You just enter an insane loop of "please wait while we fix your issues" dialog windows which almost never solve the issue.
At least in the FOSS world you can usually look at the logs and understand the error. Open the windows event viewer and you are mostly faced with codes that you have to search online for a signification.
2019, with the LTS version of Kubuntu (18.04 at that time). Moved when Windows 7 EOL was announced.
The hardware I specifically had trouble with was a Brother MFC-9320CW, a Kingston MobileLite SD card reader and a TP-Link TL-WN722N WiFi dongle. All ostensibly supported, all janky to the point where I just gave up and installed Windows 10.
I also had some Intel Atom Laptop with Arch and i3wm. I didn't mind that so much since I only ever used it for a few specific functions and none of them were critical for my usual workflows. It also flew with i3. I do remember both the WiFi and CPU power management semi-regularly fucking up though.
You can be as smug as you want with your "2003" comments, but the reality is that it's simply not fit for purpose as a general purpose consumer OS.
> You can be as smug as you want with your "2003" comments, but the reality is that it's simply not fit for purpose as a general purpose consumer OS.
Tell that to my girlfriend who swear against her windows 10 laptop that takes 30 minutes to be usable at boot and who 99% of the time end up borrowing mine to get something done.
Do you call that fit as a general purpose consumer OS?
If every pc comes with a free live in support person then sure. You likely have better hardware than the windows 10 PC and have spent far more time an effort in the last year keeping your PC up to date, where the windows PC had none of that.
So when I spend $99 on O365 I get software that works on my Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and the web. I get five user licenses and 1TB of cloud storage for 6 users.
It’s not just schools don’t want to use open source software and prefer MS Office, the second largest private employee is a huge licensee of Office. I assure you they know a little about Linux…
I hear this a lot, but I don't think it's the primary reason why Desktop Linux has negligible market share (neither does Linus, FWIW). Plenty of people build their own PCs, or have a custom PC built for them by a friend/independent shop, and even amongst these enthusiasts Linux use is rare.
The main problem, at least in my experience as a user, is the fact that Desktop Linux is janky to use. Unless you have the time and patience to learn about all the subsystems and fix the issues that keep cropping up, you're going to want to just spend the money on an OS that "just works". OSX is obviously the best in this regard, but modern Windows with automatic driver installs comes pretty damn close.
(As a developer, the fact that there's no universally agreed-upon standards make it a pain in the arse to support too.)
>Nobody's going to have good UX or fancy onboarding if they can barely find enough resources to keep the project going and fix all of the bugs, as well as handle the technological churn of keeping dependencies up to date etc.
IMO, the main issue with open-source isn't actually finding developers (people love working on OSS) but doing the kind of boring, rigorous QA that you'll see in a commercial firm. Nobody's going to volunteer to reproduce specific edge cases in a printer driver, so it sits broken for decades.