this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Nothing has really changed. Imagine a typical user. You give them Linux, the user plugs their Blu Ray to watch a movie, distro complains about freedom and DRM, the user throws Linux away.
No one gives a shit about open source philosophy or other esoteric bullshit, people just need to do cool stuff, do their jobs and watch movies. Gnome store is useless. Come back once I can install Photoshop on Linux directly from Adobe Web site.
With all the respect, to deny the progress we had in the last decade seems a bit stubbornish and counterproductive.
In the 2000s, uo to early 2010s, not even a basic non techy user could properly use linux without assistance, and nowadays, they can use it normally. Most of them just need a working browser and a good UI.
I don't say that out of nowhere. I've been doing some work in initiatives for digital inclusion in my country, and we're having great results with linux nowadays, while it was impossible some years ago.
There's still a lot that needs improvement, but we're nowhere near the state we were just one decade ago.
Which progress? None of the professional software is available for Linux still, you still can't watch 4K Netflix on Linux, etc, etc.
Accurate. I used various Linux distros as my daily driver for 15 years (2004-2019), and I swear things are going backwards. I held out a little hope that Ubuntu was going to change everything for the better, but things aren't getting any better. I bought a laptop from System76 in 2018 and had driver issues because the hardware was too new, which I was hoping to avoid by buying from a Linux-first company. Also, why the hell are they still selling laptops with nvidia built in?
The Linux fanboys can deny these problems all they want, but too many still think the only way to use a computer is to make it as hard as possible for Linux to ever become mainstream. Android took off because it has an intuitive GUI in spite of being based on Linux.
You can install mint or Ubuntu on your grandma's laptop these days and she will have fewer issues than she had on Windows. I game on Linux and 95% of the time i just install and it runs.
I wouldn't say it's ready for your average user yet, but to say it's the same as it's always been is just incorrect.
Desktop Linux distros are playing catch up. Yeah, you can finally browse the internet, cool stuff! Now go watch 4K on Netflix. Maybe your grandma would be fine today, I don't know. But a lot of people still need MS Office, for example. A lot of people still need to play DRM protected content. A lot of people still play games with anti-cheat. A lot of people still have printers which don't work correctly under Linux.
Meanwhile Windows literally has zero issues. For many years now. Or MacOS. Linux will never be ready, because being ready is a moving target.
What should happen is simple: one single distro, all proprietary tech included by default, kernel ABI frozen for a reasonably long time, and user land should have backwards compatibility for at least five years.
Lost it on "Windows with literally 0 issues" lol
Ok, how about 4K DRM Netflix streaming? Yeah, right...