Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d--b | Hacker News Reader

Fragmentation is one thing, but I don't think it's the main point. I've tried Desktop Linux many times. Mostly to avoid paying for Windows. And every time, there is something that I would like to do that I can't do, and then I'm back to Windows.

Whether it's some kind of website addin (things like video conferencing, or offline video player with DRM that require you to download an app), or some development tool (Visual Studio!), or some game, or my printer.

The issue is a catch 22: because Desktop Linux is not well adopted, companies don't develop for it. If companies don't develop for it, then there are things you can do on other systems that you can't do on Linux. And so Desktop Linux does not get more adoption...

This experience is very common. Eventually, people have had to essentially decide to either "burn the ships" and live without the thing they need or give up and live with the pain of Windows.

The good part is that over the past couple decades, the things that require Windows has become vanishingly small. Almost everything can be done on Linux these days.

Rather than hoping for popularity and the attention of companies, I think it makes more sense to help the plethora of free software continue to improve so that people don't have to be tied down to an operating system in the future. Emacs can be used even on Windows. Even if free software doesn't already support an OS, someone who cares more than the others can take it into their own hands to port it. This seems more sustainable to me.

And then there's some companies more invested in the idea of it and having an alternative to Windows like Valve that continue to build for Linux anyways.

When I find something I can't do on Linux I generally take that as a sign that it's not worth doing anyway. Your examples are perfect: video conferencing, DRM, Visual Studio, using a printer that only works on Windows... All things that I'm glad are automatically filtered from my life.

This is precisely what fragmentation causes.

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