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Why don't more people use Linux? - DHH

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Why don't more people use Linux?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1064425

And Linux isn't minimal effort. It's an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple. Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. With a sensei who keeps demanding you figure problems out on your own in order to learn and level up.

...

That's why I'd love to see more developers take another look at Linux. Such that they may develop better proficiency in the basic katas of the internet. Such that they aren't scared to connect a computer to the internet without the cover of a cloud.

Related: Omakub

79 comments

  • I love Linux. I'm so glad I switched both my PC and laptop to OpenSUSE and got rid of dual boot Windows. Using Linux exclusively for months has really opened my eyes to the truth:

    • 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.

    • We can force it on them...

      • Lol, tell me you've never worked IT support again.

        The average user can't remember passwords without browser autofill. They don't want to tinker. A "just works" linux distro with a relatively limited set of default features targeted to a specific hardware set to avoid complications, like SteamOS on Steam Deck, is pretty much at the limit of the investment level the average user is willing to put in to keep things working.

    • What was difficult in your experience?

      • One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.

        A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out.

        I installed VMware Horizon for my job's remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn't bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.

        I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies.

        I still can't get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I've stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.

        I still can't find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.

        Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute.

        Plasma recently added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can't figure out why.

        I can't get CopyQ to launch minimised no matter what I do.

        My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can't figure out why they've decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. fixed

        Flatpak Steam app wouldn't pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.

        My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn't supported.

        People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn't include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS's when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows.

  • For 99% of Windows or MacOS users who work in their browser and within simple applications, day-to-day Linux usage is as easy or easier than Windows. Microsoft’s monopolistic practices and lack of government intervention/regulation led us to this point plain and simple.

    • I just a few weeks ago successfully switched my father-in-law's mid-2011 iMac (out of support for years) to Nobara 40. It took some finagling with the SIP settings and some other macOS specific stuff before it would boot the liveUSB but once it did, it works flawlessly OOTB.

      Pretty incredible how frictionless the transition was for him. He even chose to switch from chrome to the default firefox, despite me having setup chromium for him to compare (but he knows its there if a website doesn't load right in Firefox). He's in his 60's and not a techy person at all. Everything is so intuitive with KDE these days he picked it up no problem.

      Only downside is background sync for KDE connect doesn't work on iOS yet, seems this is a sticking point for most FOSS apps for some reason. It was causing disconnect/pairing issues for us. But I showed him localsend for now and it works flawlessly for transferring photos from the phone to the computer.

      He's happy with all the default apps and onlyoffice (which I switched out from libreoffice as I've found much more consistent formatting when sending/receiving to MSoffice users)(maybe this is outdated, haven't tried the new release). Printing and scanning was plug and play. Apple trackpad and keyboard auto-paired. I showed him how to setup widgets and he went nuts. Overall 9.95/10 would convert a normie again.

  • It’s an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple.

    Does it?

    It's different, but I imagine they're not fundamentally different if you exclude established knowledge/already being used to something.

    Normal office use for non-techy people is launching apps, editing documents, and surfing the web. That doesn't work much differently, not fundamentally different, and not fundamentally more difficult.

79 comments