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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

I find this to be strange timing. For the most part stuff just works on Linux these days. I've had more trouble trying to get old printers working on Windows machines than I have had on Linux boxes. I've also had more trouble with buggy graphics drivers on Windows in the last 3 years than I've had on Linux. (Civ 5 still doesn't display right after 4 driver updates). Linux also seems to be the only place where innovation is happening on the desktop. We get small refreshes every 6 months, whereas the last time Mac users got a significant desktop refresh was for 10.5 in 2007, and Windows users get updates even less frequently. We've had KDE4 in the meantime, and Gnome3 is coming soon.

His real complaint seems to be that OpenOffice doesn't interact well Microsoft Office. There are several different good ways of running Microsoft Office on Linux (I recommend CrossOver).

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No, sorry, you missed the point of the author's post. Read the last part again:

"My stress level of fighting machines to do basic things just got lower. And for that, I’ll gladly pay Apple the premium over buying base hardware and doing it all myself."

That's right, there are at least two things even more valuable to the author than having more freedom or the saving a bit of money: His time and sanity.

If you've gotten a computer to, you know, actually get stuff done, why spend any time fiddling with the software and hardware and get stressed out about it? Why even worry about drivers? Why not be able to double click and have stuff just open properly? Why spend hours trying to configure anything? Why not spend just a bit more cash and go from frustration to satisfaction?

This point is central to the reason why Linux, as it stands today, will never become a mainstream desktop alternative.

You sight Windows as having more troubles now than Linux. Fine. But where in the article did the author ever mention Windows? That battle was 10 years ago. The author is not even considering Windows. OS X has been a great desktop environment for years and now even the hardcore Linux enthusiasts are willing to pay Apple to kick the "battle your desktop" habit.

As for meaningful desktop innovation, there's been one thing that Linux desktops (Debian-based distributions, specifically) have that OS X doesn't. One killer feature: Package management with aptitude/Synaptic. Like it or not, aptitude/Synaptic is the best feature that Linux has been able to claim for itself. A one-stop-shop for all of those thousands and thousands of packages. And the upgrades. And the system upgrades. And the dependency management. Graphical, fast, categorized. It has been a wonder to use, truly.

Unfortunately, Apple now has the App Store for OS X and you can actually buy real, usable, curated, and user-rated apps for the desktop and get your updates from the same place. Whoops. Linux doesn't have a killer feature for the desktop anymore, if it ever did.

No I didn't miss the point. My point is that you don't need to fiddle with Linux. You can, but you don't have to. You don't need to spend hours configuring anything.

Why worry about drivers? In Linux, all drivers come bundled with the operating system. On Windows or a Mac you have to install them yourself.

As for your App Store argument: what percentage of Mac applications are available on the App store. Adobe apps are the reason many people run Macs -- what are the chances we'll ever see those there?

"My point is that you don't need to fiddle with Linux. You can, but you don't have to. You don't need to spend hours configuring anything."

What are you basing that claim on, just your own personal experience? It's a pretty extraordinarily claim to say that linux on the desktop requires no configuration, and I think such a claim deserves at least a little bit of evidence above and beyond your own personal experience.

As a counter example to your claim, I just finished installing Ubuntu 10.10 on an Asus EeePC 1015. In the process I ran into the following issues: 1) Wireless doesn't work without additional drivers 2) Multitouch input doesn't work 3) Samba sharing with a windows pc doesn't work. The Asus EeePC isn't exactly an exotic piece of hardware, so it's difficult for me to comprehend why ubuntu can't get wireless working, let alone the other issues. Rewind back to Ubuntu 10.04, and in the default install, X won't even start.

"In Linux, all drivers come bundled with the operating system. On Windows or a Mac you have to install them yourself." In my experience the complete opposite is true. When installing linux I have to go download my wireless drivers using a wired connection, same goes for my printer. On a fresh install of windows 7 (from a RTM version - i.e. not what the manufacturer includes on the machine) everything works "out of the box", including wireless, the touchpad, and my wireless printer.

Now I'm not disputing the fact that linux has made significant gains in usability over the past 17 years, but I will strongly dispute the claim that everything generally works without additional tinkering and configuration.

Depends on the hardware, mostly. Our university LUG does an event called Free Your Machine every quarter, and for most people, it's just defrag, install, show 'em how to use Synaptic, and they're out.

It also depends on what you're trying to do. The basic things have been mostly ironed out by now (wireless is still a bit iffy), but the more advanced things, sure, they'll take some time and swearing.

"it's just defrag, install, show 'em how to use Synaptic, and they're out."

I think it would be really interesting to see some statistics from this, for example the % of computers on which the default install works without additional configuration, the % of users who encounter problems a week later, the % of users who give up and reinstall windows within a month, the technical saviness of the users, etc. It seems like there's a lot of interesting data we could learn from an install-fest.

"The basic things have been mostly ironed out by now (wireless is still a bit iffy), but the more advanced things, sure, they'll take some time and swearing."

This seems to confirm my objection to the original point, no? I wouldn't consider wireless advanced. If my wireless connection, my printer, and my touchpad don't work out of the box (nevermind my entire graphics subsystem in 10.04) that's a show-stopper in my opinion.

If you've gotten a computer to, you know, actually get stuff done, why spend any time fiddling with the software and hardware and get stressed out about it?

My business does just that. Then again, we buy from vendors who install and support GNU/Linux. Why compare buying from Apple to building a computer yourself? That's a false dilemma.

While I agree with you in that CUPS is solid, and his printer issues are elsewhere--Guess what's used for mac printing?--the "no innovation elsewhere" is a bit misleading. The interface on a Mac is settling down because it really doesn't need any tweaking. Most of the extra stuff now is just churn (the hideous widget placement on the App Store for one). Instead, the work is going into simplifying workflows: the twitterization of everything.

Time-Machine for one-click backups, AirTunes for OTA plug-and-play. Hell, even the TZ selector now integrates skyhook so it's generally correct, NAT withstanding.

That type of ideology carries over to dealing with Word files. Is it really necessary to dick around with CrossOver or WINE's bottling, when the end goal he stated is not to? Some is infinitely more than none to a pedant.

"The interface on a Mac is settling down because it really doesn't need any tweaking"

And yet there are others in this thread whose primary reason to stay away from OS X is that window management on Linux is so much superior. It's not my primary reason, but it is certainly a factor.

"dick around with CrossOver's bottling". Umm, CrossOver is a pretty much a click to install and forget-about-it operation. That's why you pay for CrossOver rather than dicking around with wine. Me I really appreciate the fact that every crappy Windows application I install is completely sandboxed away from each other.

As a Crossover customer, you should know CodeWeavers have a very specific list of things that don't work for each version of MS Office when running under CrossOver.

Sure, but I've never needed any of them. Of course, it helps that I'm not running Office 2007 yet.

I looked at the other reasons in here. And they were all about configurability, which is completely anathema to what the OP is talking about. "Just works" does not mean, "just have to configure what's out of the box to my preference"

Another interesting answer was about emacs bindings in all applications. Since the OP said the majority of his workflow was in Word, I highly doubt this is relevant.

"so much superior"

That's an opinion.

For me the killer feature is having multiple workspaces, in combination with ktimetracker keeping track of how much time is spent on each workspace for billing purposes. Each task gets it's own workspace and can stay live for months.

"Just works" is not incompatible with "being able to customize to my preference". As long you have sane defaults (which Ubuntu does), and as long as customization is not difficult (which it shouldn't be for somebody who's been using Linux for 17 years), the ability to customize is definitely Linux's major feature.

Which is more useful to people who use their computers for more than reading Word documents, granted.

> stuff just works on Linux these days.

...

> OpenOffice doesn't interact well Microsoft Office

That's a big one for a lot of people.

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