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.
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