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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

Modern Linux distros.

Yeah, I have so many complaints about them, but for a wide range of use-cases and hardwares, they "just work" now.

In the olden days, Linux desktops and servers, and especially laptops were much more "pets" than "livestock", needing constant attention and care to keep them working, correctly configured, and up to date. Half the time when you added a new software package or piece of hardware you'd end up breaking your X-windows configuration and need to spend six hours getting things mostly working again.

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Reading your comment (and replies to) is a bit interesting because I almost never see an admission that Linux is anything but gods gift to humanity. (yes, I exaggerate, bot not too much). It's nice to see more reflection and honesty about various annoyances that came with it.

I remember being told (circa 2005) that my PC issues would be resolved if I just switched from Windows to Linux.

I tried Linux a few times back then, and it never stuck. I would hit some small issue that I couldn't solve and eventually I'd give up and go back to Window (which certainly had its own problems, but I wasn't under any illusion that it was a flawless)

I use Linux more now (mostly as part of WSL) and I really enjoy it when I get to use it.

Linux Mint literally just works 99.99999% of the time. It's better than windows, tbh, in terms of stability on my machines.

Compare that to Ubuntu, Mint, or Fedora from even 10 years ago, and it's startling.

Go back to 2004-5 when I was really into this kind of thing in college (and had time to dicker with it), and it's like they're not even the same product.

You're 100% right. Linux desktops used to be pets, very fragile, sensitive pets. Now, they're machines that work. It's remarkable how far its come.

(and I know this is a fanboy statement forever, but) I genuinely do not know what is holding linux back from massive adoption anymore.

Microsoft Office and most desktop games, basically.

Linux is a little too command-line happy, sure, but not being able to run Excel or World of Warcraft is a much bigger deal-breaker for most people.

I found the 0.0001%. Mint could not reliably connect to my run off the mill BW Brother wireless laser printer. I had to reboot often to get printing. Same problem on 2 different PCs.

For me it's the microsoft office suite. I used to make documents in LaTeX and continue in some cases for text heavy or math heavy final documents. Since using powerpoint however, I cannot image going back to either LaTeX or libre office for either presentation or quick intermediate reports. LaTeX is too cumbersome and libre office is just a pain to use (one part of me still hope that I am just using it wrong). Apart from that, gaming is also a reason for my personnal computer.

I remember the old days of having to run a program to generate proper modelines to get XFree86 working with whatever monitor I was trying to use.

Though to be fair, having explicit modelines was once also useful when modifying a BNC Trinitron monitor that ran at one very specific resolution to connect to VGA.

It's nice that monitors mostly just work these days.

You're giving me flashbacks to when I had to compile my own kernel for ubuntu on a macbook.

All to get suspend working.

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