I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user’s perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.
Flatpak as a software distribution solution already exists and is already widespread.
Now all we’re missing is the universal enforcement piece, which I think is non-trivial. It might take off organically but as per my example above, I’m not hopeful.
“Universal enforcement” meaning what? On its face your proposal sounds fundamentally antithetical to what linux is. It’s an open source environment, meaning literally anyone can create software and post it online. Are you wanting all directories to only accept flatpak? I don’t think that would go over well.
You highlight the issue: Linux users like it to be fragmented. So unless Valve forces consolidation, it will stay a mess, and it will continue to repel average users. If that’s what we want, cool. Let’s just stop calling every year the year of Linux, because that will never be the case.
I worry about Wayland for the features it drops from X11. Wayland will never have xdotool support, due to its security model. I worry about onscreen keyboards for drawing tablets and screen readers for the blind.
This is not true, ydotool already works and there’s nothing against that in the wayland design, it just works differently than x, not not at all
gnome is working on an accessibility protocol for wayland called newton, check it out.
ydotool is missing a lot of features. It emulates an input device, so it can only send inputs to the active window. xdotool can send keystrokes to non-active windows, and has features for searching for a window to send to. xdotool can minimize, dismiss, or move windows around.
I’m aware of newton. It’s a work in progress, though, and doesn’t have as many features as X11 accessibility has. Although it might have enough features eventually, I worry that X11 will be deprecated by operating system vendors before that.
kdotool can do all of those if you’re using KDE, but there is no universal solution, not yet.
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
But once you leave Steam […] it gets a lot worse
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
“Linux is ready” - which distro? Fractional (sometimes even non-fractional) scaling is a mess. Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff. Linux Desktop is for nerds and definitely not ready.
Yes it works fine if you know what you are doing but most people don’t. There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds. It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a “non-computer-person” decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?
Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices, Linux is not ready. If I need the freaking terminal because I want to see the day of the week next to the date it’s not ready.
You could just said you havent used linux, muchacho.
Do some testing. Put a non-technical Windows or Mac user on Linux for a week. Don’t explain anything to them, so they can figure it out on their own. Let me know how it goes.
My grandma is using it without problems. What now?
The average Steam Deck user does not even know it’s running Linux. How it’s going: millions sold and counting.
Right. Because they’re interacting with an overlay the entire time, so they don’t have to deal with a shitty UI or manually performing any tasks.
So that’s an irrelevant example.
How about a few million school kids on chrome books. My 6YO is AOK.
Can you open a web browser? Done, Ship it.
My Parents and my Ex were fine on it 20 years ago. (given back then I HAD to do the setup)
The only problem they ever had was when my mother bought bargain bin CD full of shareware and I said no, that’s not going to work. She shrugged and I pointed her to some online solitare games.
Then they’re better off with a Chromebook or tablet. The only reason to be on a pc instead is to access all of the additional functions that would be a nightmare for them to figure out on Linux.
Linux has been ready since 2008. Literally not had a single real problem since Ubuntu 7.10 kept turning my monitor off while booting. Everything just works and has for 17 years now.
Every problem I see people have now (IRL not online) is ‘I don’t like the default theme’ tier nonsense.
It might be nonsense to you, but that’s the first thing people see. No matter how amazing you business is, if your business card is a handwritten phone number on a piece of toilet paper, nobody will call.
Yup. If the theme is causing a mental hang up for laymen, then it’s an issue whether you agree with it or not.
But I suspect it’s more than that, and Linux stans are playing down the shitty UI.
Install Mint. After the updates I tried to install Tailscale. Then proceed to uninstall Linux because I have install using terminal.
The second I am forced to use terminal, I’m uninstalling.
No friend you don’t get it, if you don’t have to memorise a list of commands in order to be able to execute a program, it’s a shitty OS, trust me friend
What’s shitty about typing “cd” as in change directory ?
That there’s not a UI showing you the possible options, there’s just a black screen and online documentation, so people don’t even know what to look for
A Photoshop or affinity would be nice
Yes, affinity suite and dxo photolab or true alternatives is whats keeping me from switching :/
You getting downvoted for this is hilarious.
