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Comment by hanniabu | Hacker News Reader

Linux could kill windows and Microsoft if it just had an improved UI. Currently it looks like a mashup between windows and mac and it's just not working. I've noticed improvements over the years getting closer to Apple's designs, but not quite there and it's unfortunate how much that last minute matters. Once that list mile is covered I think we'll see linux becoming more and more popular as a standard OS.

If Office Libre were to update their UI I think it would make a killer combination.

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I think more then "prettier UI" is necessary. I switched from Windows to Linux a few months ago, and while I appreciate being able to use more developer tools and not have annoying ads in my OS, I feel like Linux is just more unstable. My wifi/bluetooth randomly stop working, forcing me to restart my computer. That's unacceptable.

Unfortunately there's not much the Linux community can do about bad drivers. (I assume you have some broadcom chip). The only people really equipped to write the drivers are the vendors. The documents and firmware running on the chips are not published and you can't realistically email their engineers. So Linux devs are basically SOL. Hats off to the legends who sit down and reverse what's needed anyways.

In general, vendors only have financial incentive to get windows drivers working well.

It's the self defeating prophecy of the Linux desktop.

Apple spins their own hardware and I'm sure gets proper documents from the vendors they select.

Yes there is. Windows can restart it's graphics drivers of they crash for example. And it has a stable driver ABI so companies can actually release closed source or out-of-tree drivers in a sane way.

Linux just assumes that all drivers must be perfect with no bugs, and must be open source and distributed with Linux itself. That's just not realistic.

Upgrading Windows from 7 to 10 caused s lot of older devices to stop working for a lot of people, despite the stable ABI; in most cases, it was just driver unavailability and not incompatibility, but that’s a distinction without a difference for most users.

Linux just keeps on working with old devices across distributions and updates.

Linux takes 6m-24m till vendor unsupported drivers stabilize - but at that point, it works way better than windows (and basically forever) in my experience.

That is simply not true.

Old drivers get shaved out of the kernel tree and good luck getting them to work again in more modern kernel versions.

I am sure they are, as was the i386. And yet, from experience of ~20 people, none had hardware obsoleted by Ubuntu, even very old hardware - though some had hardware obsoleted by win10 (which was in some cases the trigger to try Ubuntu)

Tell that to my AMD card, which no longer has the same OpenGL support level as before they decided to reboot the Radeon drivers.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalys...

Sure, maybe I can take some weekends off to port the missing features to new kernels....

Microsoft windows 8 had a worse ui than any current popular ui in linux. People won't install their own os even if you have a better one to sell them.

Windows 8 was a train wreck, but gnome still has the full-screen start menu that everyone hated in windows 8. At least the search functionality works well in the menu, the MS one hasn't since windows 7.

I recently heard a friend say that Windows 8 was her favorite version because it was so simple. I thought that was really interesting.

I never really got to experience it the way it was intended, because upon first booting it I became horrified that everything had changed, and installed a bunch of tweaks to make it behave like Windows 7.

Conversely, KDE has always offered what is essentially WinXP++ UX (which is exactly what so many people say they want). And there are distros that use that as the default DE, too.

I used to think this too. But I’ve come to wonder. My more recent hypothesis is that it’s not actually possible to do so. My reasoning is basically economics. Free software developers improve and maintain the UI experience that best fits their needs. If there’s shared ground between what the casual user wants and what the developer wants, they’ll even often err on the side of the casual user. The developer community will even reach into casual user space somewhat because it indirectly responds to the recognition and feedback loop that a wider user base is good for the effort in general, helping to secure other forms of acceptance and therefore employment opportunities.

But that’s all only up to a point. There are concessions one starts making as you woo the business/casual user more and more. Since there is no direct financial compensation to offset the increased sacrifice, an equilibrium arises. An equilibrium of good enough for general consumption, enough of a concession for the developer. Unless something changes the balancing point of that equilibrium, then it’s likely to stay about there.

It’s like a neighborhood handyman/craftsman who first fixed up his own house and then, because it gives him purpose and makes him feel good and contributes to the general betterment of the neighbor hood begins doing the odd project throughout the community. The work is quality AND it’s free(ish). As the community embraces the handyman’s efforts more and more, he begins having to do things more and more that don’t fit his vision or lifestyle. He has two choices: start charging or stick to the projects he likes to do. If he starts charging though, now he becomes dependent on trading concessions for income. The relationship fundamentally alters.

Microsoft has so much inertia. For something to be a replacement, it must be 10x better, not 10% better.

People are more willing to try new things and make sacrifices for short term savings. When linux is free and windows is $100, something on par is good enough to make them switch. If linux wasn't free or if windows was free then I would totally agree with your statement.

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