this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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It really just depends on what you do, and how you do it.
A formula-1 car is not for normies, but a regular car is. Same principle applies here. My tech illiterate mom has Fedora on her laptop, and she finds it considerably more intuitive to use, than her previous Windows installations
This is fair. But at that point the same could be said of a Chromebook for her needs, which I’d venture is true for most people’s computing needs given entire swaths of the world do everything on a phone or tablet.
The Linux vs Windows debate is peculiar, because it really only applies to users who are more advanced than the average, arguing about problems that only arise when you want to do more demanding things with your machine like development and gaming. Your average user doesn’t care about any of the anti-monopolistic / FOSS reasons to use Linux, which makes the argument for them essentially “you should use this operating system that takes more work to use because it’s better for you for reasons you don’t care about.”
In order for Linux to become more mainstream, it needs to be able to exceed Windows’ performance and ease of use for gaming and productivity - which is challenging since when most users think of productivity apps, they only think of Microsoft products. It’s not enough to be equal in order to compel people to switch from what they’re accustomed to.
1000% agree.
As a software dev, I'm using windows and I know I shouldn't switch.
Tbh it's even worse, I can not switch. And that's why it's even more ridiculous. Linux power users like to say that you can do everything you can in windows but with more control. And with "control" they are right, but with "everything" more than wrong. Everything that's not working out of the box is a gamble on time wasted getting said thing to work. For the simplest thing you can be stuck for weeks just by sheer bad luck.
Say you are a software dev? Yeah Linux is pretty solid.
3d artist? Meh. Blender is the last thing that works, otherwise you are stuck. Octane, 3ds max, Maya, c4d, Houdini, v-ray, real flow, ... You gotta be lucky to find them to be compatible even if it's only with a workaround.
Music production? Well you are stuck on LMMS, which is basically only used by very specific experimental artists. Also plugins, especially those with copyright protection will give you one hell of a hard time.
Images? Well gimp is not Photoshop if we're honest, and stuff like coreldraw is also hard to replace on Linux.
Video cutting? You have to carefully tip toe about everything Adobe, and that's an awful hassle. And because everyone would love to give Adobe the middle finger, we are slowly realizing how hard it is to replace Adobe and that if you go somewhere, it is not working as well by default, you have to really make it work.
And especially in big enterprises time is money. So every time someone thinks about where to migrate to, how to migrate, or when they are migrating, and than when they have to propose new workflows, new solutions, a bunch of workarounds, maintenance pipelines, etc. it's just not worth it. Not on a big company scale, and unfortunately also not on a me scale.
At the end of the day, an OS is a tool to me, not a lifestyle choice, a hobby or a commitment. And it shouldn't be. As long as Linux is at least 2 of those things for everyone that's not using it, it's not very compelling to switch. And that goes for every distro.
Btw. this is the reason why I can understand people using apple over windows. Yeah it's 1000 bucks to take like 20min less to do a thing. But it stacks up exponentially with every device that integrates into Apple's universe. And if you spend even 20min less per day, that's already more than 2h per week that you now have to dedicate to other things.
I'm not rich and this doesn't entice me, but I get it.
So yeah, make a distro that's not only modular and expendable,but make it also very easy to understand and make it as easy. And make it either as compatible with Windows software or add those features in a different way. And then people like me can dream about a FOSS universe for everyone.
Not disagreeing with your general point, but music production in Linux is not "stuck on LMMS". Reaper runs natively, and there is plenty more.
I remember running FL Studio under Wine with no issues; Windows VSTs work under yabridge
Their general point of view is definitely not wrong.
When it comes to music, I've had a good time using Reaper for casual guitar recording, however a bunch of my plugins struggle horrible with Yabridge. A lot of this stuff has online per-system drm these days, namely anything from NeuralDSP, so that often puts it to a halt
It’s easy to forget that Windows’ success doesn’t come from people seeking it out and installing it as an OS intentionally. They’re buying machines that come preloaded with it. Linux’s success, however big or small, lies in how its methods of distribution compare to Windows OEM dominance.
Let’s be real: when it comes to the actual installation of an OS, regular users ask people like us to do it for them. I don’t think Linux is going to outpace Windows anytime soon, but the last few times I’ve been asked for that kind of help, I’ve installed Linux for them, because it is absolutely ready to be used by regular people.
I fully believe PC gaming’s future is on Linux. Valve are pushing compatibility heavily enough to the point where Proton runs virtually all my games as smoothly as Windows would and as hard as it would have been to believe a few years ago, most my library has native support anyway. Combined with the fact that Linux has a smaller runtime overhead than Windows, most of my games run better.
Ease of use is the harder metric to gauge. Most people seem to forget that Windows isn’t built for ease of use; not like MacOS anyway. Things break on Windows all the time; most people are just more familiar with the common workarounds. Even installing things are easier (once the user learns the singular command they need to do this) and flatpak installations align more with how people are used to installing apps on their phones and tablets.
Or be the same but cheaper, but yes inertia is huge at the difference in market share
But how do you get the average user, for whom the cost of licensing the OS is completely opaque, to even think about cost at all? The computer they bought comes with Windows or MacOS on it already. Neither of which currently has any additional recurring monetary cost to the user.
You’d need mass-market laptops and desktops coming with a Linux distribution tuned well enough to run Microsoft Office and Adobe products without any more work for the user than running them on Windows. It needs to come pre installed and work so well at the “prosumer” use cases that they aren’t constantly thinking about how much easier it was to run Windows. Doing that means the OEM has to do much more unit testing and compatibility checks to ensure that when the customer opens the box and goes to install Steam and Apex or whatever that it just works without any terminal work necessary. Add to that that the OEM will want support from the company that manages the OS, and suddenly the cost to license tried and true Windows vs almost any Linux distribution for end user workstations is nearly moot.
And to make a dent in gaming, there is still an ocean to cross in terms of driver readiness and ease of use. It’s coming along, no doubt, and Valve investing as heavily as they are in Linux gaming is sure to move the needle, but it will still be an area of difficulty for some time because the user experience needs to accommodate completely custom builds with unexpected hardware configurations and box-built gaming PCs that can be OE tested and configured and everything in between.