I have heard that before, to be quite honest.
My resolve is building for a new attempt, but I have repeatedly tried for over 15 years now to make this switch, and still it remains the domain of servers and raspberry pis in my house.
The problem is not getting the base system running to a reasonable level. It is fixing the slew of problems that occur when I try to do literally anything beyond web browsing andxtext editing. Every single new program or piece of hardware seems to take hours of investigation and troubleshooting.
Did you know that the Ubuntu I installed on my second machine can’t play MP4s at all? Like… the default program just refuses to play anything. I’ve tried to fix it but it’s not an issue anyone else seems to have. It’s that broken out of the box. And this is after I got Samba working which took several attempts when I had the energy, and I cannot face the notion of installing another flavour of linux just to go through all that again and find out whatever new issues there are, so I guess the server I use to capture footage just can’t play back that footage. Great.
One of the hardest transitions will be my Pimax VR headset, which runs on a proprietary program made in house by the sole hardware manufacturer that interfaces with SteamVR and only runs on Windows. The program is temperamental at best without running it through Wine, which I’ve never heard of anybody successfully doing.
So like, nice idea, but you linux evangelists need to stop being so glib about the switch and understand that the ecosystem just doesn’t have the critical mass it needs for switching to be an unambiguous good.
I want to be able to switch. I have read the articles. I have reviewed the flavours. I have trisd the livedisks. I have had a toxic fanboy attack me under a 7 year old stackoverflow thread because my question mentioned using PuTTY. I am a programmer. I have tried for literal decades. It is not. That. Simple.
ericjmorey@discuss.online 10 months ago
Linux will never be on the cutting edge of consumer technology where you want to exist. But most people don’t want to exist on that edge (or can’t afford it).
If you want to make Linux work for you, you’d have to accept that you’re going to need separate devices (sometimes MacOS, sometimes Windows OS, even iOS or Android OS at times) to work with the newest toys and gadgets. Not even VMs will cut it every time.
People recommending Linux as a primary OS fir home use are a self selected group of people who don’t value those new products and exclusive software.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 10 months ago
It absolutely is on the cutting edge in lots of ways. It can move faster than other systems that have to wait for full releases to make major changes, and those changes don’t have to satisfy a board of directors by incorporating the latest buzzword scams. The problem is that it doesn’t have critical mass. This works on a similar network effect to what we see in the fediverse. It will just take getting to a tipping point where hardware and software makers can no longer ignore it, and then I think we’ll quickly see a change. It’s already happened in servers and general hacker gear and maker stuff. It just hasn’t quite made it there for the desktop. Who knows how long that will take.
ericjmorey@discuss.online 10 months ago
Linux certainly has the possibility of being cutting edge in the consumer market but isn’t and there’s disincentive from a social and economic standpoint to make me confident that it will likely never be. Companies like System76 give me a but of hope though. (Although I suspect that they have long-term plans to adopt RedoxOS as their primary OS eventually.