Why Linux sucks and will never compete with Windows or OS X | Hacker News Reader

Why Linux sucks and will never compete with Windows or OS X

dvorak.org

38 pointsdsego83 comments

This is a poor rant. You never managed to change the terminal in grub? You couldn't change the background in KDE? These are PICNIC problems. It seems like you're frustrated about a lot of things, which is understandable, linux desktop is very far from perfect. You're also sticking with a distro that's essentially for enterprise server use. Throw that in with a few questionable practices (30 terminals windows?) then yes, I can see why you're not very happy. It seems like you're just taking out _your_ frustration on the linux desktop experience. I finally binned off windows in the last bastion it had in my personal life about 6 months ago (laptop) and it's been great. YMMV.

with nvidia you can have either but not both of:

* proper resolution grub

* proprietary (fast, feature complete) drivers

due to the nvidia drivers not supporting fbdev properly (AFAIK).

also you should see how slowly grub draws its menu on 4k resolution. My whole system is booted half way in that time.

And this is the Linux Kernel's fault, or Nvidia's lousy drivers?

What difference does it make whose fault it is?

So, by that logic, when AMD/ATI's notoriously buggy drivers were failing in windows, you blamed NTOSKRNL and Windows?

I guess I'm looking for consistency in the argument the great-grandparent was making.

For most Mac users, there's a kind of consistency: It doesn't matter whether the drivers or the kernel are to blame; either way, avoiding Windows means avoiding the whole mess.

Read it as "the Linux experience as a desktop user," and not "the Linux kernel."

classy late downvote/reply/moving goalposts combo. Post was at +2 before your reply.

either way, you're proving the inconsistency. ATI drivers for windows suck, but you don't blame windows. NVidia drivers suck in Linux (to the point that Linus Torvalds says "Fuck you NVidia", creating news headlines), and you blame Linux.

And I guess of course "proper resolution grub" is of paramount importance given the time you spend inside grub every day.

At least on my system, the Linux terminal is displayed in the resolution set by grub on boot.

My only Linux computer that uses grub uses the Nvidia proprietary driver and boots grub in the monitor's native resolution.

GRUB is using it's default config, I didn't hardcode any resolutions or anything.

Whatever your issue is, its not caused by Grub or Nvidia's binary drivers.

I used Windows in 2015 (I never used it as my primary OS for more than a year) alongside some Linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Slackware and a few others). I finally settled for Debian, at least for now. Whenever I need to do something with Windows, I just fire up VirtualBox and it's working well so far. I miss games on Windows and I'm not aware of anything comparable (without SteamOS) on Debian.

I switched recently from Windows 10 to Ubuntu 16 at home (I use a Mac at work). Here has been my experience:

* Audio works perfect (Astro mixamp)

* Video works perfect (NVidia)

* Installed several games on Steam

  * TF2, CS, Factorio, Kerbal, etc all run great

  * Rust is laggy, however is alpha, I am not sure how much time they have spent optimizing linux at this point

* XBox 360 controller works perfect

* GnuCash wouldn't open the file saved from the windows version

  * Installed a sqlite lib to resolve this

* TrueCrypt volume mounts OK

* A few sites fail to detect Chromium properly, I use FF to work around this

* Crashplan backups work without issues

* Cisco VPN client works great

* Remote desktop software works OK

The development experience on Linux is a lot better. You get a nice shell, package manager, and compilers. Docker containers launch very quickly. No more windows path limits. Unity has grown on me as well. I couldn't be happier with my choice right now.

> * A few sites fail to detect Chromium properly, I use FF to work around this

What does that mean?

They are looking at the user agent and determining that I am using an "Unsupported" browser. Some sites show a banner, others (OWA) fall back to a different UI.

Not necessarily that important, but Ubuntu's versioning scheme doesn't work the way you think it does.

It's <year>.<month> and they release a new version almost always in April and in October, meaning that the past few Ubuntu versions were 14.04, 14.10, 15.04, 15.10 and now 16.04, which is what you're running.

They then have the usual dot-releases appended to that, so you're probably actually running 16.04.1, the first revision of 16.04.

So, yeah, you would usually say that you're running "16.04", not just "16", as 16.10 will be a completely different version, again...

I am aware. Thanks for the detailed response though.

I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04, and I've had problems with the Software Manager simply just not doing anything. (there's a bug filed for it) and I can't get VPN stuff from Private Internet Access working either. Attempts to connect and then just drops.

Firefox and Chrome have worked ok.

But not really being able to update or install software from the GUI is frustrating. I can do it myself from the command line, but the girlfriend is not a command line user at all.

Are you using Synaptic? There are other package managers out there... I can't think of the name but KDE has one - you also could try getting rid of ubuntu-desktop and going w/ Kubuntu-desktop (or you can install side-by-side and pick your poison at the session screen. ) -- Kubuntu has it's own different package manager.. though I prefer using apt-get to install things...Synaptic if I'm just browing what's available or looking for something not-specific for a task or something.

if you're using the default software manager, and not synaptic - try running: sudo-apt-get install synaptic It should fix all your issues.

Why not use Google Chrome or Google Chrome Beta -- they usually seem to work better than Chromium in my opinion...

Vim/Emacs will suck too if you come from Textmate/Visual Studio and spend 15min poking around.

With a serious time investment I've managed to assemble a system that far surpasses OSX in usability, performance, and aesthetics (see /r/unixporn). I also bought a laptop with Linux in mind with 100% driver support in the kernel.

It wasn't easy learning to use ArchLinux, customizing it, learning how to not break it [1], and finding the right combination of window managers/desktop env/themes/fonts/etc. But it was worth it because I like hacking on systems and learning how they work. Plus I spend all day, every workday on it.

[1] my install has become very low maintenance now that I no longer feel the need to spend hours tweaking every detail, I now know which /etc/ or /usr/ files not to mess with, and have hardware and software that is well supported across every ArchLinux update.

Mind sharing what window manager/desktop env/etc. you're using?

bspwm tiling window manager

sxhkd managing keyboard shortcuts

xmobar statusbar

Gnome/GTK 3.x with built-in dark theme

Rofi app launcher and window switcher (like Alfred on OSX)

Termite terminal with ZSH

Not using a display manager like GDM or XDM, I just run startx via .zlogin

The author^W site's host is a notorious troll who is about as reliable as a broken clock.

https://www.google.com/search?q=macalope+john+dvorak+site:ma...

https://www.google.com/search?q=john+dvorak+site:daringfireb...

Edit: s/author/site's host/

John Dvorak may or may not be a notorious troll, and he may or may not be as reliable as a broken clock. But there's one thing that I can say for sure, and it's that John Dvorak isn't the author of this article.

Thanks god HN is full of people valuing privacy and freedom otherwise a lot of you guys would use macos or windows. /s

But don't worry, it's the fault of the average user if we have mass surveillance, if only they cared enough to avoid proprietary software...

you'll get downvoted to oblivion for this post. The only thing HN hates more than people talking about proprietary software promoting mass surveillance, is people talking about how it's their fault for using proprietary software that promotes mass surveillance.

me? I have karma to burn, so I worry less about being greyed-out.

Most of my Linux use for the last several years has been terminal only, so I am way out of touch with how GUI Linux has improved. How is the desktop nowadays? In particular, how is it as far as consistency among programs goes?

For instance, here is a screenshot I took in 2003 showing several the file open dialogs from several different programs: http://i.imgur.com/Wcwaiwu.jpg

Note that there is almost no consistency between these dialogs. That's because the file open dialog that a program presented was determined by what GUI toolkit the developer picked to use to develop their program.

Compare to Mac and Windows, where file selection dialogs are part of the system, and so almost all applications use them.

People tried to tell me the Linux way was better, because it means the OS vendor wasn't forcing their choice on everyone. Cool...I like choice, but how about putting the choice in the hands of the user, rather than the individual app developers (or rather the GUI toolkit developers)?

It seems to me that the right way to do this is for the system to provide a standardized API for file selection, and provide a way to register multiple implementations, and to provide a way for a user to tell the system which implementation they prefer in general and perhaps for specific programs.

Each toolkit could continue to provide its own implementations of file selection dialogs, but could register those with the system, and access them via the standard API so that if the user prefers the dialogs from a different toolkit the user gets their preferred dialog.

I think I ran into this guy on freenode, he was hanging out in #windows and kept talking about "bringing back the year of linux".

Linux is ready for prime time, and is getting better every year. Microsoft is struggling to maintain it's market share of the OS market which it used to dominate without any trouble, so the article is nonsense, really.

Windows is not more user friendly than a modern Ubuntu or Debian installation. What's actually happened is that users have become familiar with the various Quirks of operating Windows, the same way they would become familiar with any OS after years of use, including Linux.

Here my reasons to hate linux:

* something (guessing nvidia driver) prevents resume from suspend to ram, the machine just sits with a black screen. I have to hard reset

* if you install nvidia from their blob and upgrade your kernel without recompiling the kernel module, it won't let you shut down and one of the cpu cores will lock up

* I tried to use the usb3 hub in my dell monitor and the driver complains about too little bandwidth. forums tell me to disable xhci in the kernel config or bios, I just plugged it into a usb2 port

* I wish there was an easier way to update the kernel with custom options, like automated re-compiling

* I have a usb key with kubuntu that I sometimes boot my macbook air with. Even with not a lot going on, it will get a lot hotter than osx. can the usb3 controller running the boot drive really add that much?

* good luck unmounting a nfs mount that is slow due to network/vpn issues. there is a workaround in creating a dummy network that looks like the nfs server is up and which somehow unclogs the filesystem.

* why can't gvim maximize properly after how many years?

* no netflix or hbo unless you install some deprecated HAL library from untrusted sources

* cannot tell apt to only update specific packages from some repo - adding the spotify repo could replace god knows what on your system

* I love kde plasma, it is what made me try linux as my default boot option again, but why does it have to consume so much ram and why does it crash so often? Thank god it can just be restarted easily, I hope this will still be possible with wayland which promotes integrated window managers

edit:

* under X and highdpi, there is now way to resize applications that use a framework that is not high dpi capable. skype, using Qt 4.8 (IIRC) will have tiny text or icons. (I think you can make it draw text larger, but graphic elements and emoji will be tiny)

I should also say that I really like linux, especially as a work environment. with QtCreator there is a free IDE with auto complete, syntax highlighting, cmake support, cross compilation, etc.

I feel like the *nix/gnu tools are so much more powerful and I would not want to miss them.

batch-converting videos, images, splitting, joining, creating pdfs - all for free without having to install SuperImageConverterPro shareware bundled with bonzi buddy or whatever.

> Even with not a lot going on, it will get a lot hotter than osx. can the usb3 controller running the boot drive really add that much?

This is almost certainly because Linux doesn't properly manage your CPU states. Same story with linux on my windows laptop. Apparently you can recompile the kernel with some third party modules that let you manage that stuff but after a few hours of trying I couldn't get it to work. Probably because there isn't any documentation beyond a couple stack overflow questions and a blog post written in 2011.

I hate linux too. My biggest gripe is that I use differing amounts of monitors and making the nvidia proprietary drivers function correctly with xmonad and multiple screens is something I've managed to make work maybe twice.

do you have a link for this powerstate discussion?

When was the last time you tried to do that multi monitor setup? I heard it got better recently.

Those problems sound terrible. You should ask for your money back.

Being free doesn't give it some sort of free pass on quality.

It exists to be used. If it's not usable, then that's a problem.

Those are reasons to hate linux, but I still started booting it at home as well. I work under linux and would not want to work on anything but. For home use, it is still a mixed bag, but even after finishing a gaming session I would still boot back into linux after a while - especially now with boot times under 3 seconds (is it systemd or the SSD boot drive?). Customizability and control over my own system still feels better and I accept the rough edges.

I have exactly the opposite experience. I switched to Linux 13 years ago (Ubuntu + kde) and 5 years ago switched to Arch with no desktop manager, only xmonad. Works for weeks without poweroff, lots of exotic GUI applications opened, suspend it to RAM each day, resources are rarely filled. And, yes, I have 3 GPUs and program them all the time. It just works.

Meanwhile, I have one OS X machine which is OK for multimedia and internet, but any programming on it sucks (compared to my Linux setup)...

One genuine linux problem (usb3 hub), and a bunch of application issues. When presented with a solution (disable xhci), you decided to ignore it.

Good luck with your kubuntu installation. I've heard it went downhill the last few years (post-systemd).

> no netflix or hbo unless you install some deprecated HAL library from untrusted sources

Netflix works just fine here with Chrome on Ubuntu.

It seems like the most consistent quality of Linux detractors is that they hold Linux to a much higher standard than a proprietary OS.

When an application doesn't work, install, or even exist on Windows or OS X it's the application developer's fault. But on Linux it's Linux's fault.

The driver situation leaves much to be desired, but why does Linux get the blame for NVIDIA or Dell contributing buggy blobs that the community couldn't improve even if it wanted to? (and they do!)

> * I wish there was an easier way to update the kernel with custom options, like automated re-compiling

Just curious, do you even have the ability to recompile the kernel of your preferred OS?

> * cannot tell apt to only update specific packages from some repo - adding the spotify repo could replace god knows what on your system

Not trying to belittle a legitimate problem, but again how would you do this with your preferred package manager on your preferred OS?

Plus just like OSX is tailored to certain hardware, it's best to treat Linux the same way as there are plenty of hw options that work very well with Linux. Requiring zero config. The subset that doesn't draws so much ire towards Linux, so they really should promote a recommended hw list.

> * cannot tell apt to only update specific packages from some repo - adding the spotify repo could replace god knows what on your system

I'm pretty sure that can be done with APT pinning. Never underestimate APT's capabilities.

Windows and OSX are products, and Linux is more like a free commodity. It's great to use it at scale because you save a shit ton of money on licensing fees, but not great for end users. Getting end users to use Linux is like asking drivers to buy barrels of crude and tell them to refine it to use gas.

I agree and I use Linux everyday (and Windows).

For the typical desktop user, we have to ask what the intent of usage is. Running a business with proprietary software and licensing, typing up documents for personal financial planning, playing games.

Linux has never been consistent with so many flavors of the day out there, but generally it is a heck of a Swiss Army knife when it comes to solving problems for me at least.

Well end users have started using Linux and it is getting very popular ie chromebooks.Thing is for 90% of the people Linux is good enough. Its the other 10% though that make the most noise. And with Android apps coming to chromebooks. It won't be long before chromebooks becomes not just the most used Linux distribution but also the most use desktop OS. Android is unlikely to be bumped as the most used OS though.

I think a better analogy is that Linux is like high-octane premium served up at a gas pump without a card reader. The interface throws people off at first but they quickly get used to not opening their wallet.

let's get something straight here.

Linux sucks implies the is something you don't agree with about Linux which is a kernel.

Complaining about GNOME and CentOS are vastly different. Why not say GNOME sucks or CentOS's distribution sucks?

Dvorak knows that he'd have less clicks if he took your advice.

I basically became fed up with Windows 10 deciding everything for my device. When to update, what apps to use, nag me about Microsoft services. Monitor how I use my device. Sadly after decades of Windows loyalty I moved on to Linux. Never a stranger to Linux but until now it was just a hobby OS I chose when I had a older device sitting around. Now, it's on my two main PC's a desktop and a newer Dell laptop and without issues Linux Ubuntu installed perfectly on both. The helpful compatibility lists with Ubuntu gave me confidence my hardware would work with a specific distro. I certainly have become disenchanted with Windows 10 and Microsoft. A company that appears bent on controlling your device in an attempt at marketing their software and services and also selling your information and providing you with unwanted advertising and using Windows 10 as a conduit for this. Sorry Microsoft, that's not what I believe a OS should be doing.

> In many ways the Internet was better 15 years ago when you could get free music on Napster and you could get laid on Craigslist.

I kinda get the point but that is a horrible example. Craigslist is probably one of the few things that works (and looks) exactly as it works before. Whether you get laid on it has hardly anything to do with software quality.

This is the most assinine piece of garbage I've ever read.. I'm by no means a linux pro -- having used it off and on for ten years, and only ditched windows completely 3 years ago -- BUT it BLOWS windows and apple away because of it's open source community. Sure there can be driver issues sometimes, but if you try enough things you can usually get that solved. -- if not then get a better graphics card that's geared specifically for Linux Nvideo is usually better than AMD/ATI (regretfully I have a ati Radeon 270x ) - but the AMDGPU drivers that just came out seem to have fixed most of my issues.

If you don't like gnome or kde don't use them -- I abhor both.. I've installed kubuntu, ubuntu, xubuntu, lxde, and other flavors on top of my existing system only to uninstall them all and go with i3 which is much sleeker, more customizable, just works, and doesn't bloat my system.

I spend 90% of my day in console or sublime-text I only keep xfce around for when I want a visual app manager instead of alt+d and a gui settings manager to fix mouse issues or what not. Since switching to i3 my computer never freezes anymore like it used to, and hardly ever touch the mouse unless in browser.

Centos is more for server work not desktop crap anyways, ubuntu is the best for desktop - or possibly Arch, driver support is generally better for ubuntu kernels but Arch has a vibrant community around it, and when I reformat or build a new p.c. I'm probably switching to Arch + i3.

I just bought a new laptop (GE62 6QD MSI Apache Pro), and I spent the last few days trying to get Ubuntu 16 to run on it. I'm in pretty good shape now, but there are still issues with the microphone and camera (I wrote about the process here http://blog.robertelder.org/installing-ubuntu-16-linux-ge62-...). I've only installed Ubuntu/Linux on a few different laptops, but the process does seem to be getting worse the few times I've done it. The worst part tends to be getting the video cards and wifi to work.

It really makes me wonder what the future will be like. Will we reach a breaking point where someone (or some group) takes on the responsibility of making this stuff work? I can't see people abandoning Linux for Windows, because Windows seems to be decreasing in quality as well. Are we doomed to just have computers that don't work properly?

I had sort of different experience. I guess it heavily depends on what hardware you have. I installed ubuntu in an Asus laptop with the Nvidia/Optimus thingy. The optimus thing did not work but I can't really tell a difference because there is no AAA games in Linux; but at least on first boot it renders the desktop in native resolution.

I also reinstalled Windows 7 in the same laptop later to play SC, it supposed to be working great, but did not. I had to hunt wifi drivers from the laptop maker in a different machine and copy over, then hunt down the video driver because it is stuck in 800x600 otherwise. Same thing basically applies to every hardware you use. It used to be you have to install a driver for the mobo to get usb3 working at high speed.

So I really wonder if Windows should take the credit of "things just work" it's not like they wrote all the drivers.

In my experience Windows 10 has become much better at getting the proper drivers for you. One of the nicer features to the OS.

Wrt optimus, have you tried bumblebee?

http://bumblebee-project.org/

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bumblebee

>Will we reach a breaking point where someone (or some group) takes on the responsibility of making this stuff work?

No.

Or perhaps the answer is better as, lots of people already work very hard to try and make things work, but there's only so much that can be done.

There's no perfect solution because the economics just don't work.

All the major distributions (RH/Suse/Ubuntu) already have full time engineers in the major manufacturers (e.g HP/Dell) and at the major ODM's in places such as Taiwan. There's complex testing the the distributions do to try and make sure that "it just works". But the economics are against them on the client side.

Why does Linux on servers work? Because Linux users represent a major force in the market. HP can't launch a new server that doesn't work with the major Linux distro's so they work with them to make sure that hardware works. If HP's servers don't work with Linux then they'll lose a lot of sales to major players in the finance, oil and gas and military sectors. So, if the network card doesn't work then HP calls up its ODM in Taiwan and gets a driver written or gets one of the distro's paid to write a driver.

Why does Linux on clients not work? Because it's less than 5% of the market. MSI (your laptop brand) doesn't work with any of the distributions. Even if it did, lets say the network card didn't work, would the ODM write a driver? No! It would be economic suicide, and any major brand (HP/Dell) would know this and wouldn't even request it. The margin on client side hardware is wafer thin and the ODM's barely manage. Some of the major brands (HP/Dell/Lenovo) do try and certify their client hardware, particularly workstations. But if something doesn't work it's a tough situation. Generally, what happens is some poor Linux engineer at one of the distro's gets a rubbish half-done driver manual and some hardware - or even worse NO hardware and the distribution has to go out and buy the hardware itself - and then has to try and reverse engineer the solution.

Bottom line, if you want to use Linux as a client it demands that you know more about your hardware and how the OS interacts with it - it's not an easy option, it's an 'alternative' option for those that want to be educated! On the upside that education will come in use at dinner parties and in pub quizzes ;-)

At this point I think Android/Chromebook hybrid has a bigger shot of becoming a Linux Desktop than anything the actual Linux community has put out.

The Linux Kernel and UNIX underpinning are solid as a rock. No issues there, but everything built on top of that (windowing systems, application frameworks, audio stack, etc) is a jumbled mess of incompatible ideas, poor usability, inconsistency, and low performance (in exchange for features nobody is using, like windowing client<->server over a network, replacing core UI components on the fly, etc).

I really like MacOS, Windows 10, and even Chromebook (with all its limitations), but I've never found a Linux desktop solution that feels self-consistent and not frustrating. I'd likely take Chromebook more seriously if it can run the full Android back-catalogue of apps.

Just to be clear I run dozens of Linux servers and devices. This isn't a Linux "hate" thing, this is only a distaste for Linux Desktop, not Linux the OS or Kernel, both of which are fantastic.

Install GalliumOS[0] on a chromebook. You'll be shocked by how much more you enjoy it than ChromeOS or MacOS.

0. https://galliumos.org

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

Any advantages over Xubuntu on a standard laptop, aside from chromebooks being inexpensive?

Most of what Gallium does is polish the distro for Chromebooks. everything Just Works without tweaking or otherwise. Getting a chromebook touchpad to work under Xubuntu requires a kernel patch and a recompile (2 years later, and the drivers haven't been merged upstream yet), as well as fixing the power button and other keyboard settings. I've personally applied all his changes from his github repositories on my fleet of Gentoo-running chromebooks, and it was pretty substantial.

but if you don't have a Chromebook, you won't see the same need for GalliumOS. just use Xubuntu (unless you like the branding).

The major reason Android and/or ChromeOS will grap that seat is because there are products shipping with them preinstalled. Every attempt to do so with a desktop oriented Linux distro has been more about squeezing concessions out of Microsoft than actually shipping a usable product.

Oh, it competes and outshines if you are just comparing OS. Linux even had all the great compiz wobbly windows and other stuff way before windows vista or win 7 had any bling. Oh and it handles all that easily in tiny amount of ram compared to what ginormous amounts of ram windows needs for doing so little. It doesn't bother me with updates in the middle of my work or stop the world even if I decide to update. I don't have to restart computer to use that update unless its kernel update. Best bit is that I dont have to keep an eye on how much data my Linux Os uses. It never caused me over charges when I was using mobile data instead of hogging it all up like windows for I donno what. You might say it doesn't have as much applications or games. But that is not OS. Windows has majority share only because it has someone to push it aggressively via huge marketing and recently via many dark patterns. I can go on and on omg

Sad part is he is right. The last good KDE was 3.x, since then KDE, Gnome, and their collaborators at Freedesktop and Xorg, have been busy chasing the lastest eyecandy, in the process building something that makes Vista look sane.

I love the way that Gnome looks in recent updates. Gnome 3 started off rocky but by 3.12 it started to get very refined and highly usable.

Plus you can use Gnome with tiling window managers, so it's just being used to style windows and apps.

How to change the wallpaper on KDE: Right-click on desktop->Click "Desktop Settings"->Select a wallpaper->Click "Apply".

John Dvorak, classic troll, is using CentOS and wondering why it sucks on the desktop in the same ways Windows Server sucks on the desktop.

Meanwhile, sane people abandoned rpm-based distributions around 2001, because they know that using Fedora/CentOS/RHEL leads to Having a Bad Time (TM).

There is an unwritten rule in Linux: Distributions jump the shark eventually. At one point, everyone was using Yggdrasil. Then they were using Redhat (or slackware) when Yggdrasil petered-out. Then Mandrake became popular when people got tired of Redhat's old packages. Then Ubuntu appeared when someone made Debian user-friendly. Once Ubuntu started the whole Unity mess (and later, systemd), we got our newer crops of good distributions.

If you don't care about systemd, Manjaro and Antergos are fantstic desktop distributions. If you think systemd is cancerous, Calculate Linux will make you happy in ways you haven't felt since 2006. If you have a fleet of chromebooks, GalliumOS will make your life better.

Just stop using/complaining about CentOS or Ubuntu, people.

Just curious, what's so bad about CentOS? (Aside from not really being intended for desktop use.)

every CentOS install I've ever had always felt like a house of cards just waiting for the wind to blow the wrong direction and knock everything down. Especially if you install asterisk/freePBX or yate on top of a base install, wherein a yum update will likely break things in subtle ways. This isn't just limited to CentOS (all RPM-based distros have this problem eventually), but it's the one most people experience the pain points from.

Now that CentOS was purchased by Red Hat, should you be desperate for rpm-compatibility (Government contracts, Pointy-Haired Bosses' demands), Scientific Linux is a better option.

Funny thing is, some Linux distros are already more Windows than Windows itself (has become)

Many of my older family members prefer Linux Mint to Windows. Also, most Browsers and Office Software are already cross OS, so they even get the same stuff they know from Windows.

I simply prefer it for development.

"I used to have the illusion that software was supposed to get better over time."

Well there you go. That's the author's problem. He's caught up in an all-too-common delusion. Of course software gets worse with time. The only counterexample I have is Apache and some CLI tools. I literally cannot think of any other software that has not declined significantly given enough time and features. Whether the product manager wants to add some stupid little widget users will hate, the designer wants to redesign a perfectly good UI into a monstrosity, or the programmer wants to rewrite perfectly good code into a pile of bugs, it is almost a law of nature that software quality will degrade. You can even trace the causes of the author's gripes to one of the above reasons.

Yeah, I feel this is often so true, perhaps I'm a little less pessimistic, but not much. The best way I'd visualise it for FOSS is that it's sort of an oscillating walk upwards (over time) to improvement - though any set of changes could set you back or forward. Then, the big thing that hits (and where you're "decline significantly") happens is that there's some a) change of fashion (lets re-do it with trendy new language/framework etc), b) change contributors which leads to "lets do version 3.0" or the darn thing dies out!

I've often wondered why the 'classics' such as CLI tools seem to be resistant to this. I suspect that over time users just learn to live with the "bugs" and don't expect any further changes: from a time when "being 1.0" meant it was complete!

Well, desktop and desktop apps on linux do suck mightily. By and large, Linux application developers just don't care. The term CADT comes to mind whenever people bring this up.

Personally I cannot live without the xmonad window manager, and for this only I would stick with linux - ever tried to replace the window manager on windows or os X?

EDIT: typo

Everyone loves open source. But truth has to be spoken out loud. Very Very Well said

Hate to be a hater too but this is pretty spot on. I too have been a Linux user since forever... 1993 to be precise.

Linux is getting worse in certain respects on the server too, mostly due to the complexity explosion of systemd and its ilk and a complete lack of attempts to actually fix problems rather than piling on work-around after work-around after work-around.

SysV init was a nasty pile of arcane cruft, and to replace it the systemd crew somehow managed to engineer something more obtuse and arcane. That's an accomplishment I suppose. The whole thing feels "enterprise" from start to finish: awful counter-intuitive UX, monolithic, over-engineered, and I bet it completely destroys any hope of creating a Linux system hardened against local privilege escalation attacks.

Docker is brilliant satire in software form. It's fantastic and very useful, but for reasons that all relate to fundamental shortcomings and impedance mismatches in the core OS. Someone literally threw their hands up and said "F it lets just tar up Linux distributions and treat them like giant statically linked binaries!" and someone else said "wait... that's actually not a bad idea!" and here we are. It's a prank taken to production at scale, and the fact that it is so useful is a deep indictment of the whole ecosystem. If your roof leaks a tarp is useful too.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again: it is harder to make something simple than to make something complex. It require more effort, more knowledge, and more intelligence. Arcane or complex designs are a sign of inferior engineering.

Finally, there are far too many distributions. It makes shipping software for Linux a nightmare. The only reason anyone should ever create a distribution is to customize things for a specialized use case (e.g. embedded) or to explore some fundamentally novel approach to solving the problems outlined above (e.g. the Guix package manager, GoboLinux). Creating another distribution that is fundamentally just like all the others with the same essential approach to packaging and management and the like is needless fragmentation that only multiplies the effort required for every developer to target the platform.

On the 'meta' level: I think it's clear at this point that some of the classic assumptions of the FOSS community and especially the Linux wing of that community are wrong. Among these are Eric Raymond's whole thesis in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." The reality seems to be more like "The Cathedral and the Mess."

... and JWZ is still right: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

linux user since 1998. systemd is a cancer. However, you might like OpenRC or runit (Calculate Linux or Void Linux are your friends).

As for distributions, we as seasoned linux users have to take the initiative to adopt and popularize new distributions, the way we adopted Ubuntu en masse in 2006 out of nowhere. GalliumOS for chromebooks, Calculate Linux for laptops/desktops, and Void Linux (or gentoo hardened) for servers. When newbies ask for advice, we are doing them a disservice by suggesting Ubuntu or debian-based derivatives, despite the availability of binaries for everything, for the same reason that people suggesting RPM-based derivatives (Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora) were doing a disservice to newbies.

My 13yo daughter can get through a Calculate Linux, Manjaro, or Antergos install (though she needs help replacing systemd with OpenRC on the last two). Let's start promoting the new good distributions, now that the old ones have jumped the shark.

You may want to edit that to not link to jwz, since he referer detects and redirects HN to an NSFW image.

The issue with the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" is that he's right for an individual piece of software, but wrong for an integrated system. Can you get the best editor, best grep, best <insert technical tool> with FOSS? The answer is yes. Multiple implementations, and finally the best one "wins", at least for a while.

But you can you get the best system? No, because you land up with multiple incompatible implementations that don't quite fit together. OSX is the most similar option, and it wins because of consistency - consistency is forced on all developers by an overall authority. Keyboard shortcuts are a classic example, OSX has one set, on Linux you get different ones depending on the toolkit used GNOME, KDE, Xwin and a lot of other defunct ones! In the Linux world the desktop environments tried to define their own standards (GNOME and KDE in particular) and it didn't work because users run applications from other tool kits; then they tried through freedesktop.org but it just didn't get/have the buy-in. You've also always had the problem of the major distributions competing (wanting to differentiate) with each other and causing friction. And finally, these days there's just not that much energy in the desktop paradigm on Linux: there are very few "application" focused desktop developers now.

Agreed, that the creation of distributions is also a problem. It seems to be a test that every 'power administrator' does, a bit like every developer creates a text editor/irc client. Somewhere along the line Linux user/developers got the idea that creating their own distribution was cool. Distributions are easy to do at the beginning, and then increasingly hard.

It's a separate issue that you don't get the "best <insert consumer app>" because the people that develop open source don't understand 'consumer apps'.

Sadly, as a front-end developer I can't move out of OS X these days.

I need Sketch / Photoshop for my work and a retina display.

> The KDE was the shortest test. I spen an hour just rying to change the wallpaper and gave up. (sic)

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+change+kde+wallpaper&l=1

* Edit after down votes: Sarcasm is specially regarded as negative behavior in HN, but negativeness for negativeness, this article shouldn't even be here. It's filled with destructive criticism and unjustified claims. I'd accept the wallpaper argument from any person who hardly sits in front of a computer, not from someone whose primary occupation is to write about technology, not from someone who's been using Linux for 20 years (first thing to do? check man pages, do your research). I understand the down votes, but seriously, this article only makes me angry - maybe that's why John Dvorak is widely regarded as a troll.

kubuntu 16.04: right click, desktop settings, wallpaper is already selected. Is Mint doing something weird?

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