Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

I have been using Linux on servers since 1993. I have been dual booting SUSE with Windows 2000 on my desktop between 2000-2004. Ubuntu and then Arch has been my daily driver 2004-2017. I am not exactly a Linux newbie. But, based on these long, long years, I swear Linux desktop advocates have Stockholm syndrome. Some experiences: Samsung stopped making drivers for their MFCs so I needed to toss a perfectly working laser MFC because it stopped working with Linux, just like that. Later, a HP MFC caused endless pain, seemingly every other Arch update broke one of Bluetooth / printer of MFC / scanner of MFC. Plain Wifi eventually worked more or less (but see the endless string of bugs with 5GHz) but enterprise wifi always has been a pain. The strange F5 VPN our company used was not particularly Linux friendly -- I could only get it to work by running Firefox as root (yuck!). The only reference to the entire shebang was our IT asking around on various forums how to get it work under Linux and noone answering. And then Firefox stopped supporting extensions and I needed to tether my phone to get on the VPN. We now have a different VPN, no idea about the Linux support.

I am now using Windows 10 with the Linux Subsystem. O&O shutup takes care of the privacy concerns. I have a Lenovo Graphics Dock and docking and undocking is a nonevent. Do you want to be the one who gets an nVidia GPU hotplugging working on Linux -- and keeps it working through all the improvements the Linux desktop goes through? Worse, get IOMMU passthrough working with this setup because most of the games are still Windows only? I don't, that's for sure. I am 43 years old today and there is not enough time left to use a tamagotchi OS. The Linux Subsystem could have a better I/O performance but I will live. It's a surprisingly frustration free life. Some useful configuration tips https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi...

Before you inevitably downvote this, please comment where I am wrong. If you feel all the above are trivial, give me an offer for maintaing my Linux, I would actually love to get back there but for the time being I do not feel I can. I yearned for someone to take over desktop sysadmin from me for many years but I absolutely couldn't find anyone so eventually I just gave up.

> Samsung stopped making drivers for their MFCs so I needed to toss a perfectly working laser MFC because it stopped working with Linux, just like that.

Erm... The old drivers stopped working with this particular device?

I had a very similar case with perfectly good HP laser printer, which doesn't work on Window 10 anymore because... dunno? No drivers from HP, though. I'm sure it would work just fine with generic PCL or PostScript driver under CUPS.

> Later, a HP MFC caused endless pain, seemingly every other Arch update broke one of Bluetooth / printer of MFC / scanner of MFC.

Well, that's probably self-inflicted because of your choice of Arch, not because Linux (e.g. Debian).

> Plain Wifi eventually worked more or less (but see the endless string of bugs with 5GHz) but enterprise wifi always has been a pain.

Enterprise Wi-Fi has always been a pain, also under Windows.

> The strange F5 VPN our company used was not particularly Linux friendly

VPNs are usually that way. Very few companies can write sensibly working software that would run under Linux.

> -- I could only get it to work by running Firefox as root (yuck!).

You get pretty much the same under Windows, though you don't see it as clearly.

I don't get why you bash Linux. Windows has the exact same problems.

> Erm... The old drivers stopped working with this particular device?

Samsung simply stopped producing Linux drivers. Indeed if you look at https://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/index.html there is more than a few years gap here. Also, if you look at the newer drivers support page now that some models have maximum support versions https://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/supported.html where I persume you are ... if you update -- and "obviously" you can't not to update because eventually some API breaks the driver. My printer broke in 2010 with an Ubuntu update.

> Very few companies can write sensibly working software that would run under Linux.

Which is the problem itself. You got it in one.

> You get pretty much the same under Windows, though you don't see it as clearly.

It's possible I do not see it clearly but the only Bluetooth problem I had was the April Creators update mysteriously changing Chrome to use the internal soundcard which was solved in two clicks in Eartrumpet (which was new to me -- finding that software took a little time). I have yet to meet any of the problems listed: every wifi and VPN I have yet seen have Windows support (and IT is so much more prepared to help if there is a problem), the Bluetooth stack actually didn't break, nor have Windows upgrades haven't broken my MFC yet (although I guess I need to wait -- but how long? I have seen people install HP LaserJet 4 on Win 10 with some struggle). And as I mentioned, my Thunderbolt eGPU just works. Are you saying it would just work on Linux...? Come now.

I love Linux to pieces and I run it on servers and use the userspace components still but I am writing to warn people: it is still not the year of Linux on desktop and probably never will be. Or, if you so prefer, it finally is, it's just Linux on the Windows desktop.

Look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670079 is mih bashing Linux for stating

> I have faced no problems w.r.t stability. ... Occasionally the Desktop compositor hits a snag freezing my machine and requiring a forced reboot

No problems with stability ... except sometimes the machine freezes to an extent where a forced reboot is necessary.

I don't think Arch was the right distro if you wanted a hands-off "just works" experience. Happy Birthday BTW!

I switched from Ubuntu because the six month upgrades made the machine unusable with many things breaking, the smaller updates in Arch at least only broke once thing at a time.

Thanks!

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