I've been using Linux as a daily driver for fifteen years. I have shot my share of trouble and the next two guys' too. It's not a good experience. It's bad. Even when things aren't breaking left, right, and sideways (which, to be clear, definitely happens less often today than five years ago, with the corollary that that breakage is usually something a mere mortal can't do too much about), it feels kinda...well, shitty. I've done my time with a bunch of different DEs and each and every one is a fit-and-finish mess. (KDE comes closest. It is still leagues shy of the Mac that's also on my desk.) If you--the general community, not you specifically--can't make something that feels good to use, your foot is already deep in that bucket. Then you add on hardware and software incompatibilities and your answer is "halfway patches or just do without", and you are so deep in Zealotville that me shouting sure isn't going to reach you (but might dissuade a few people from burning themselves along the way).
If you don't have a positive argument for using your thing instead of framing its competition negatively, few people will ever use it. The Linux desktop as a whole doesn't have that positive argument. Because, for most people and including most developers, it is a strictly inferior good. Not to Windows--but to the Mac. You're stomping your feet about people not being bothered to troubleshoot--it ain't their fault that that's still a tire fire! I use a Linux desktop because I know what I'm getting into and I know enough, from the aforementioned fifteen years of dealing with its crap, to make it mostly tolerable for work (not at all for fun, which is why I still use Windows, too!). I sure wouldn't start today, not on either the handwavy "but but telemetry!" grounds nor the usefulness of it.
It's not really my thing, but Plasma seems like a really solid desktop. What are your complaints with it?
And I'll raise this point again:
>You and people like you are the reason that it's not as good as it could be. I use Linux as my daily driver and it works extremely well. But if you continue to let it languish with a small market share because you can't be bothered to troubleshoot it for 10 minutes or maybe live without that piece of software you need so much, then it won't even go anywhere. Yours is a self defeating attitude.
Using proprietary operating systems because Linux isn't there yet is a great way to keep Linux from getting there. It's a chicken and egg problem. What would you prefer: getting your privacy thourougly invaded by a proprietary operating system, or being there to help Linux gain market share and tip the scales? Even if it's not perfect, it's more than enough, and supporting it is the best choice.
> Using proprietary operating systems because Linux isn't there yet is a great way to keep Linux from getting there. It's a chicken and egg problem. What would you prefer: getting your privacy thourougly invaded by a proprietary operating system, or being there to help Linux gain market share and tip the scales? Even if it's not perfect, it's more than enough, and supporting it is the best choice.
The vast majority of people out there see computers (and other devices) as things that get stuff done, right now. They couldn't care less about proprietary vs open source, and the philosophy and the politics of the latter.
So there will never be a critical mass that will tip the scales, ever. You'll get the geeks going there because they care, trying to live with the inconveniences for a while, and then mostly going back to OS X (or even Windows), because they find other things to care about, and stop feeling like struggling with xorg.conf or NetworkManager or whatever is meaningfully "fighting against the system".
I used to study with a guy that openly said "Linux is only free if your time has no value". I've tried Linux so many times, and my longest streak was when having a VMWare Workstaion to run Windows in it. Eventually, I just got fed up.
First and foremost, I need my systems to just WORK. When I sit down to code, the last thing I want to do is debug why it is not properly displaying on all of my monitors.
That's not specific to Linux. I don't even want to calculate the time I've spent on this...in recent Windows. Saying "Windows is only worth it if your time has no value" works the same way, and is just as meaningless.
In other words, I know no current OS which doesn't suck :((( Win7 held some promise, as did OS X, and current Linuxes hold some still; but alas, we're still not in plug-and-play land after many decades of effort.
I have had 0 issues with multiple monitors, even with different resoluions and switching from one to the other when moving about with a laptop. This is during the last 10 years with various different machines. It just works.
But even if you have issues with Windows, I have zero doubt you would spend more time batteling with Linux. It just doesn't have polish or UX as a primary target. It is wonderful for servers, but as a desktop it is a broken experience unless you value tinkering with it.
Interesting, but for your doubt I have the opposite experience. "Windows update came and took away the working drivers again" is a recurring theme, as are Windows networking issues (on many, many different networks). If I want a system that just works, I have one bootable and installable on a USB drive; for endless tinkering (and fighting against "where do we drag you today?"), there's Windows.
Where did that "monitors" issue come in, no idea - typing this on Kubuntu with 3 different displays, also no issues (except for my prankster colleagues unscrewing the video cable).
As someone above noted, I don't care about the OS. I care about the work I do on it - and I have the same Jetbrains tools, the same Firefox, the same Chrome, etc etc etc. Whether the title bar is polished, transparent and the exactly right shade of unmagenta, I don't care.
Are you running special hardware? Ever since Vista I have at most had to install a graphics driver, and that is it. Windows networking failures seems to be driver issues when I debug them, just as they are on Linux, but I haven't had any myself on either system.
To me, and without exception, every single person I talk with about this, have less issues with Windows or OSX, than Linux. This is primarily CS majors that are required to run it to get their degree.
The tools only exist for Linux, but there are plenty of machines available to remote into. Many just choose to install it on their own machine because they want to.
At work, I am a sysadmin/helpdesk monkey taking care of a network of ~80 users and a dozen servers, all on Windows, and let me tell you: Windows has its fair share of weird problems, inexplicable failures, stuff that "worked yesterday"...
Windows may "just work" often enough, but unlike Linux, it also "just stops working" so often, it's just not funny any more. On Linux, once one has it working, at least it keeps working.
I'm not talking to the vast majority of people. I'm talking to Hacker News readers. The sort of people who would care, and who would be technically capable of running the system (though to be quite honest, if it weren't for the mental leap of installing something new, the "vast majority" would have no problem running a modern Linux distro). The Hacker News crowd is also full of developers and, well, hackers. The sorts of people who, if they used free operating systems as their daily driver, would be capable of investing in it and improving it until it reaches the potential to have an impact on the market. I struggle to refer to the readers of HN as "hackers", though, considering many of them are the sort of people who would write comments like yours in defense of Windows and excusing away their proprietary behavior.
You're telling all these people that they should persevere, because by doing so they will "tip the scales".
My point is that they're simply not sufficient to tip the scales. Even if every single HN reader did what you demand they do, it would not tip the scales.
Once you realize that, this whole notion of "fighting the man" by struggling with config files and broken hardware support rather loses its edge.
Hits too close to home. It's fun to have an i3wm as a dual boot because it makes me feel "1337". But all my CAD, FEA, CFD, modelling software, they all run better on Windows, if they even run on Linux at all.
From my perspective as a normal user the trade-off isn't worth it. The pain of using Linux is very real, and the benefits you describe are nebulous and uncertain, considering the amount of time people spend on their computers.
I tried really hard to make it work. If it only took 10 minutes of troubleshooting, then it would have been fine, but it was instead hours of crawling through forums.
Ultimately, this is a theory of mind issue, since proficient users and developers can't quite seem to grasp how regular joes use the software. Or if they do grasp it, they react with contempt instead of trying to fix the issue. Without making it REALLY convenient there is simply no way it will gain more than a small market share. Whether the contempt is justified is irrelevant if the goal is to have the Year of the Linux Desktop.
So X decided to reverse my displays today, despite precisely zero patches or changes being applied to the system, and the GUI tool for rearranging them, because life is tremendously too short to go screw with config files to make my GUI work, won't actually save a config file that fixes the problem on reboot.
This is fine. This is great. Everyone should waste their time with this.
I used to have these problems, but since about 2013 I've just had the same Arch install with Plasma on my desktop and notebook and they have just worked. Update once a week, watch the mailing list for breakage notifications (about once a quarter) and have a boring desktop experience while I get work done. Along the way, my GPU (290) got much faster on the Mesa driver, the kernel has developed new features, btrfs has been stable as hell for me for years, and if I ever need anything I just yaourt it and its there.
Since you used KDE as an example, maybe you switched too soon. A lot of people did. The recent Plasma 5 release was exactly like the KDE 4 release - it took a good 5 - 6 major releases before stability and feature parity with the predecessor were reached. But if you switched from KDE 3 to 4.5, or from 4 to 5.6, the new desktop worked fine. Were on Plasma 5.9 now and its boring. In a good way. It is stable, it works, the features are great, the looks are excellent, it gets out of my way and I can get work done on it very well.
Linux is boring. And thats a good thing. I can easily buy a system76 / Dell computer that runs Ubuntu, install whatever I want on it, and have a crisp experience without issue now, unless I go looking for trouble on the bleeding edge of hardware or software.
> If you don't have a positive argument for using your thing instead of framing its competition negatively, few people will ever use it. The Linux desktop as a whole doesn't have that positive argument.
How about being much easier to keep up to date for the average user? A single tool updates everything and doesn't leave a million bundled copies of various low level libraries in every app that uses them. It's much easier for a normal person (or advanced user) to keep a linux system patched. Keeping your OS and applications takes a lot of effort on windows.
Another is that it comes with a lot more great tools out of the box than windows, users don't have to navigate the web trying to find software or rely on OEM crapware.
UI wise it provides a much more consistent experience and it stays out of your way a lot better (no focus stealing shit everywhere).
> Even when things aren't breaking left, right, and sideways, it feels kinda...well, shitty.
Funny, because this is exactly how I would describe windows 10.
Anyway!
> If you don't have a positive argument for using your thing instead of framing its competition negatively, few people will ever use it.
There are plenty of positive arguments. They have been repeated over and over so I won't do it again.
> It's not a good experience. It's bad.
> Because, for most people and including most developers, it is a strictly inferior good.
Citations needed. Because this seems purely your subjective opinion. I'm sure many people will share it with you, but that definitely isn't my experience and many will share my opinion too.
I have been using Linux and Mac for last 10 years. It nots bad as you note. Actually i had more issues with Mac these days due to updates slowing down the machine and their half transparent UI. As a developer i would far use linux them mac.
If you don't have a positive argument for using your thing instead of framing its competition negatively, few people will ever use it. The Linux desktop as a whole doesn't have that positive argument. Because, for most people and including most developers, it is a strictly inferior good. Not to Windows--but to the Mac. You're stomping your feet about people not being bothered to troubleshoot--it ain't their fault that that's still a tire fire! I use a Linux desktop because I know what I'm getting into and I know enough, from the aforementioned fifteen years of dealing with its crap, to make it mostly tolerable for work (not at all for fun, which is why I still use Windows, too!). I sure wouldn't start today, not on either the handwavy "but but telemetry!" grounds nor the usefulness of it.