What are the main criticisms of Linux in desktop platforms?
Linux seems catered for the most basic users (grandma) and extremely advanced users (Linux enthusiasts, programmers). I’m in the middle where I’m pretty good on a computer but not that into the tweaking and tuning. I don’t think my demographic is catered to very well.
There’s a LOT of super cool stuff on Linux but a lot of it is buried on GitHub and needs configuration to work right. 1, I don’t have time to find that stuff and 2, I don’t care enough usually to make it work even though I typically could with sufficient effort.
Forced to use the command line like you’re programming for ZX Spectrum in 1982
For Gnome there isn’t an easy way to add programs to the application menu. And yes I know tools exist to do this but it should be easier. Other then that I’m pretty good with Linux.
Had this conversation with my boss yesterday. They cant use Azure mdm with Linux.
Run Linux on your machine as a VM.
mdm?
“It’s different! It is not what I learned to use!”
it’s made out of like a thousand different independently maintained hobby projects
That’s actually not true. It’s made out of dozends independent non-profit organizations that are backed by hundreds of companies. And thousands of different independent hobby projects.
Which makes it all the more impressive
Every few years, i come back to Linux to see how far i can get before hitting a major obstacle. Installed Linux mint summer last year to get away from windows.
First impression: Steam and proton are great, i can play my favorite game Mechabellum without any issue. Helldivers 2 otoh won’t work due to what seems to be an anti cheat tool.
Software development is also kinda good. Install vs code, let’s go.
But then the trouble begins: my brother laser printer that works out of the box with windows and macOS refuses to print. No error message or anything, just nothing happens. Next thing is that i want to use lm studio to host local llms, but they don’t have a full release for Linux, only a beta that is not available from the mint AppStore. There is an appimage available however, so i have to learn how to handle these. Too bad the Linux version does not support in app update, you always have to install the newest appimage manually.
I would like to develop an llm application using C#. I download the dotnet framework from the AppStore, but VSCODE is not able to find it. After investing several hours trying to find out why this is, i surrender.
And then, for some reason, my NVIDIA card breaks. I try to reset to an older version of the driver, but to no avail - i don’t know whats going on, but steam only shows if i deactivate hardware acceleration and games also will only run on the integrated graphics card.
I surrendered and went back to windows. See you guys in 2 years.
Edit: some spelling
What’s ironic about the LLM stuff too is that they are usually developed in Linux, not Windows, and when you do get one working, it works a bit faster. The issue, like most things Linux, is there’s no good GUI options on Linux, because the same people working on it in Linux seem to assume you don’t need one because you use Linux.
As long as this remains the norm, adoption will be slow.
That’s a great explanation! I guess I could use Ollama instead of lm studio, but this is also another command line tool without an UI
Many things in a FOSS ecosystem will sooner or later confront you with one hard truth:
The program you’re using was not developed for you.
It was developed because the creator saw a problem and wanted to fix it. Then they made a program to fix it and stopped refining the program the moment they were content with it. Little to no consideration for other users or mass-adoption. Which is fine, they developed it, it’s their time.
But it also means that you will frequently be confronted with things that are objectively unintuitive and unreasonable from a new user’s perspective because they make sense from a developer’s perspective. The former will always be outranked by the latter, even though there will always be more users than developers. Unfortunately that’s just how it is. There are some few exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions.This is a great explanation. I started an open source project that was reasonably popular because I was off for two weeks and had a problem I wanted to solve. Before those two weeks were up, I had completed everything I set out to do. I didn’t really expect anyone else to use it or care. But they did, and over the next 2-3 years I burned myself out testing different distro configurations, debating with people on mailing lists on other projects that affected mine, responding to hundreds or thousands of issues that came in, coordinating language translations, reviewing pull requests, etc. I kept going thinking that maybe it would look good on my resume or lead to work in the future, but the only person in an interview that had heard of it told me he disagreed with its existence!
Even though I had total control of the project, it was so hard to keep my original vision in place. Should I turn down an incredibly ingenious pull request because it didn’t fit my original vision, even though many other people will use it? But if I accept it, it’s another complexity to maintain. What about a pull request that meets a lot of goals but is only half way there in terms of implementation - do I take my time to finish that? Some of the people arguing in the ecosystem were paid employees of Canonical, Microsoft or some other entity that seemingly had nothing to do all day but try to bend projects to their will. I really had no time left to deal with my own interests in improving the project.
I know this is a long rant, but many of the projects in the Linux ecosystem are maintained by people in a similar situation. It’s pretty amazing that it’s as cohesive as it is.
It’s pretty amazing that it’s as cohesive as it is.
That’s a very good point. I’ve often wondered that myself. We may have reached peak Linux already - it’s so hard to scale up massive FOSS projects without somehow sacrificing ideals on the way.
the vast majority of my work software is windows/mac (although the expensive software I wish I could afford just added linux support in 2022). that’s the big one for me. on a smaller note i haven’t checked on my games since, i mean if i’m going to have to run a windows box i might as well take advantage of the plusses, but i understand there is significantly worse compatibility on linux.
Many (most?l tools I use and games I play aren’t natively compatible, and while there are sometimes free alternatives to them, they’re usually buggy, unmaintained, or lacking basic features
I’m having a hard time believing that is true of late. Unless it’s really niche?
Doesn’t have the apps people need/want
For me if an application isn’t on the pop-shop then its very hard to install, I’ve had people tell me to just not download things from the internet, but when the application I need isn’t on the pop-shop or the repos its a non-starter.
Downloading the .deb from the website is very hard? Not being sarcastic, hoping to understand
If its a flarpack it just works, but most other formats I’ve had enough trouble with to not bother with them anymore. Incl .debs.
Debs should work just fine on a Debian based os like pop.
Debs should work just fine on a Debian based os like pop.
hahahahahahaha
Downloading the .deb from the website is very hard? Not being sarcastic, hoping to understand
It has to be specific to your distro, and your version of the distro, and compatible with any modules you’ve added. Ain’t gunna happen.
This is why containers like flatpacks and snaps were developed.
Pop-os is Ubuntu based as far as I’m aware
Ubuntu is based on Debian, so Pop_OS! still uses .deb
One thing that happened recently that really showcases the difference between Linux and Windows is the glibc update that broke several popular video games. These games were specifically built to run on Linux. Ironically, games built to run only on Windows could still be ran on Linux just fine. That’s because those games are run through a compatibility layer that translates the Windows instructions into their corresponding Linux instructions. The games built for Linux use Linux instructions directly, so they don’t need a compatibility layer.
The update to glibc changed how some Linux instructions worked and so any program using the old instructions needed to update to the new ones. Lots of Linux programs are actively maintained or at least open source, so making the change isn’t a big deal. Video games tend not to be open source or actively maintained after they’re released, so some of these broken games will be broken forever. When that was reported to the maintainers of glibc, they responded that they don’t care if they break unmaintained, closed source software. It is the user’s fault for choosing to use such software.
To me, that is the biggest difference between Windows and Linux. If someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now. If someone creates a program for Linux, it could break next week, and the people who broke it won’t care. It’s a bit embarrassing that programs created for Windows work on Linux more reliably than programs created specifically for Linux.
It someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now
I was with you all the way until here. This statement is absolutely laughable to anyone who has messed around with older videogames. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, running it in compatibility mode with the version of Windows the game was made for will work, but oftentimes you’re reliant on fan patches or long installation guides showing you the exact configuration of settings necessary to stop the game from constantly crashing. At that point, getting the older game to run on Windows is just as tedious as getting it to run on Linux, potentially less.
You still are getting more of a guarantee from Microsoft, because Windows versions have typically had long lifecycles and were pretty averse to risky-changes within an OS release, but even that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore with Windows 11.
If someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now.
TBF, that’s not even always true, especially with a loss of 32 bit support. For example, BioShock Infinite no longer runs on newer versions of OsX
The glibc incident though was self inflicted. The Devs relied on undocumented behaviour in the ABI (application binary interface) which then got fixed/changed after more than a decade by the Devs of said Library.
It was akin to relying on a videogame glitch to do something that shouldn’t have been possible and then be offended that it got patched.
It was akin to relying on a videogame glitch to do something that shouldn’t have been possible and then be offended that it got patched.
Let me introduce you to any% speedrunners
“Put it back! I liked it better when it was broken!”
Jokes aside though, have you SEEN GamesDoneQuick’s Triforce% TAS? Jesus Turing Christ, that was amazing. It felt like the gaming equivalent of watching the Lunar Landing.
If you’re considering how good software is, how it was made is irrelevant, the only thing to measure is how well it works. A criticism of Linux from a user perspective is still valid regardless of who is or isn’t to blame.
I simply wanted to add context…
Yeah, sorry, my tone was too harsh there, it’s definitely relevant context
Hey thanks for the apology. I appreciate it.
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Just installed Debian, no wifi
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Lots more stuff just like #1, such as my 10 year old and 3 month old Logitech wireless mice weren’t detected, and support for them is (fortunately) only available from a third party, which I found by searching the web for an answer.
I could give you pages of why Linux doesn’t compare to Windows for the desktop, which I’d follow with where it really shines - as a server for all kinds of things. It’s so good for specific tasks that even VMware replaced their own Workstation virtualization with Linux KVM.
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I can give you my experience so far, seeing as the common criticisms of Linux usually boil down to unwillingness to try it as well as kernel level anticheat and Adobe products, and I…honestly don’t miss either of them, but I’m mostly a dev and a single player games enjoyer, so not much to miss, really.
The speakers on my Razer blade laptop (running EndeavourOS, btw) stopped working randomly, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t my fault since I did have to work on the laptop internals for unrelated reasons and might have screwed something up.
My webcam on my desktop, a Logitech Brio, has been acting up as of a couple of weeks on Bazzite, where the microphone keeps kinda dying and I have to unplug/re-plug the webcam to have a working mic. Also the audio quality on my Sony XM5s keeps changing to shitty quality, mostly when I do the re-plugging of the webcam, but it’s happened at random times before. Gotta go change the codec on the audio settings every now and then due to it.
Monitor brightness can sometimes behave weirdly, not going back to a brighter setting after auto-dimming.
Games with kernel anticheat don’t let me play online.
This has mostly been it, to be honest. There’s a microscopic learning curve for Bazzite since it’s immutable, so I have flatpaks for most stuff, and “figure it out” for anything else, but other than that, it’s just better than Windows ever was. If you run into an issue, you’re most likely going to be able to solve it with a quick online search or by consulting the eldritch hallucinations of OpenAI or of your choosing.
