Major Linux Problems on the Desktop: 2015 Edition

Well, it seems this article is a fairly damning summary of why Linux will not succeed on the desktop.

Thoughts?

This is a good resource for a summary of Linux problems. I do have a question for those who have a System 76 machine. How many of the issues outlined in this article, specifically hardware issues, do System 76 machines face? And how much support is given for peripherals. I have been trying to get a printer working on my laptop running Ubuntu and have been unsuccessful. Does System 76 provide help for things like that?

The only issue I have with this article is snow. It has been well below freezing where I am at and the snow in the background of the page just makes it colder! :smile:

If even a handful of the things he notes are in need of attention, Linux as a desktop distro would be a much more appealing proposition. As it stands, it’s a pretty good list of reasons why I use OS X :wink:

What I posted about this over on G+:

"Huh. A few quick thoughts. Then I wouldn’t mind hearing what you guys think…

  1. That website is not ready for the Internet. There are exactly two bits of artwork on it and those are – floating snowflakes and a giant banner ad. Two of the most annoying things on the entire planet.

  2. The author of this comes to conclusions without any basis in reality. Statements such as “Android is not Linux” and declarations that nobody uses Android as a “Desktop”. He obviously never asked me about that. (It goes on from there… that was just an early on example.)

  3. Most of the items listed seem to either a) be fixed already, b) be fixed in most distros (just not the ones he/she uses apparently), c) be not actually an issue at all or d) be an issue that impacts all (or most) other operating systems.

A quick note to the author, Artem S. Tashkinov: From one guy (who likes to stand up and talk about why things “suck”) to another… you’re doing it wrong."

1 Like

This was exactly the first thought that crossed my mind after opening the page. How can you be serious about a document published on a website with fucking animated snowflakes falling off?! Come on, people, this is not 1997 anymore.

I have a System76 machine since mid December. They provide a repository (ppa) that contains all necessary drivers to run the machine as it is (mainly GPU driver). They normally use very common hardware that is supported by the linux kernel without any additional tweaks.

Its many years since I had the last time any issues with a printer.

I even have a dvb-t tuner that runs out of the box. In Windows I had to manually install a hundreds of MB large driver to use it.

You should come up to LinuxFest Northwest next month; I’ll be giving a talk with a mutual friend of ours:

2014 was the Year of the Linux Desktop. You missed it.

1 Like

The article made for an interesting read, and does raise some good points even though the author seems to be taking his personal opinion as something that affects every Linux user.

For example I think the point made about the AMD propietary driver is something that has affected me personally and I’m fairly technically competent (sort of). And some of the various other issues mentioned are ones that I have experienced in the past, although they’re not something that’s been seen recently.

Now I should add a disclaimer at this point that this is my opinion: I think the majority of the problems mentioned are actually problems which can be attributed to the open source, although I think calling them problems is maybe the wrong word for it.

Thinking about OS X/iOS, Android, and Windows regardless of whether they are open or closed source they all have a single entity guiding which keeps development focused on a single way of doing things (for better or worse). This means that there’s just one team working on the sound system, just one team working on the network stack etc etc…

With Linux and the Open Source way of doing things while there might be one team working on the network stack, there’s nothing stopping someone else from forking their work, or starting from scratch and creating their own. I think the whole X, Mir and Wayland situation is the perfect example of this. We have one team working on X (although it’s probably more in maintenance mode now), but you have another team working on Wayland (yes I’m ignoring overlap in the teams), and then someone decided that they don’t like the way Wayland are doing things so they created Mir… So now rather than everyone focusing on one way of doing things we’ve actually got 2. That’s just one example. There are plenty of other examples… Gnome vs KDE vs XFCE vs Cinamon vs Elementary vs whatever else… Or systemd vs initv vs upstart… You get the idea.

This isn’t a bad thing. This is the great thing about Linux… You have the choice… And don’t like the choices that are already available!? Fine, fuck it and create a new choice for everyone… Or contribute to make one of the choices available better… It’s up to you…

Actually thinking about it I could have made this post a lot shorter by linking to @bryanlunduke’s video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pOxlazS3zs)!

2 Likes

This phrase should be uttered in every forum from here until the ends of the Earth.

Everything this man says is true.

EVERYTHING.