> shocked that there isn't a strong third option for OSes
Why when there is no third OS that has even 1% share and all Linux combined is about 3%. And desktop Linux is bad.
Why when there is no third OS that has even 1% share and all Linux combined is about 3%. And desktop Linux is bad.
I use MacOS (whatever it is called this week) Mint and LXDE
Love Mint (typing on it) The Apple OS has a lot of rough corners (e.g. (max/min)imising windows is a world of pain) LXDE is acceptable because it is on my PI and I do not use the desktop much
I have not used Windows desktop for about a decade, has it really gotten that much better?
I am really happy with desktop Linux
There are a huge range of reasons. There's no consistency, everything changes every 2 years, the documentation is awful when it exists at all, if software is outside your distro's package repo it's a bitch to install, there are too many different distros, the community is full of pricks, fragmentation is a time-honored pastime, complexity is fetishized... fuck sound still didn't work consistently on the last Linux based media center I built. A cursory search of the internet will turn up innumerable reasons Linux Desktop is bad.
Which isn't to say that MacOS and Windows aren't bad (and getting worse), but they're still a damned sight better.
Just a reminder there's like 7 different context menu styles in Windows 10, not to mention two control panels.
And as you say, Windows 10 still sits there having confusing and mediocre system UIs.
With my really simple needs, macOS and Windows is just mostly memory-wasting fluff to me. I switched away from Macs when I realized that what I need and what I can get is cheaper than getting a Mac. ("Cheaper" because I am very sensitive to cost vs. utility. I am typing on thinkpad t430s I found in the trash which I spent just a little to get a better screen, having everything else already that was missing.)
That said, sometimes get frustrating, but they don't happen frequently for me.
In the days of electron and web apps, it's clear that the users either don't care or developers are shooting themselves in the foot.
In either case, consistency died a while ago.
It all depends on the distribution (hence "too many different distros" is good). Choose Debian XFCE and you will never see any change, everything is rock-solid. Tested with my relatives.
In contrast, in all my years of using Apple computers, I've rarely if ever had a driver related issues that wasn't easily solvable by updating my OS.
I switched to Linux when I left the company and while I ran into issues installing it on both my PC and laptop (not Mac), the end result works perfectly. I think all the digging around has made me better understand computers. A lot of the Linux command line skills are transferable to Mac.
(just my data point)
Error messages, crashes, graphical anomalies, hardware kind-of working. There are often fixes, but how much time are you willing to spend trouble-shooting? When you get a new computer or reformat, will you remember what you had to do?
I've experienced this class of issues on a range of hardware and software over 2 decades.
My best guess: Too much design-by-committee, and losing track of emergent concepts - like responsiveness, how the overall ecosystem affects performance, and how the various parts (designed by different people and teams) work together.
Another potential root cause: The way software dependencies and linking works, and the expectation to compile software on your machine.
Keep in mind that the context of my original comment was with respect to having "premium" devices. People pay thousands of dollars for a Macbook because the hardware and the software feel very high-end. The UI/UX is generally seamless. Stuff "just works". There are regular updates. Any software written for MacOS will work on any other Mac, because the hardware/software integration is so tightly controlled. Is it perfect? No. Are there things Linux does better? Sure. But taking the entire Apple ecosystem into account, it feels cohesive and thoughtful, and it feels like it's worth the money.
Contrast that with Linux. With many Linux distros, it doesn't "just work." The OS itself can change very often. The software ecosystem is fragmented. You have to use apt or yum or some other package manager. Sometimes you need five different package managers to install the software you want! On top of that, you can't necessarily run all Linux software on every distro or any hardware. There's little to no UX/UI consistency. As someone else pointed out, Qt vs GTK apps can and do look totally different and there are no style guides or any enforcement mechanisms to make sure that users enjoy the experience. It's the wild west, which is good in many ways, but in the context of making a device feel like a premium device, a wild west methodology fails that criteria pretty hard.
In other words, Linux is fantastic for computer nerds like us who like tinkering with things and don't mind rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty. But it is no way, shape, or form a "premium" experience.