That said, fair warning to anyone thinking about getting one: it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work).
Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline linux distribution.
This is in stark contrast to the Purism phones which offer about the same hardware (slightly better CPU but worse GPU) at flagship prices.
This is somewhat also proof that the prices that Purism charges aren’t due to lack of economy of scale you can make these devices on the cheap, the hardware is available.
I have a similar complaint about their laptops they charge a hefty premium for what is essentially a bog standard OEM laptop from China which you can get for almost half the price in many cases including from other direct to customer vendors.
This is very far from truth: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
The i.MX 8M Quad is better than the Allwinner A64: 30% faster CPU clock speed, 140% faster RAM standard, 140% better OpenGL performance, USB 3.0 and support for higher resolution cameras.
(and performance is just one of many reasons to prefer Librem 5 over Pinephone, see the link)
I've never understood that to be their argument. Purism is actively paying people to improve the mobile experience of Linux. They can't charge for software, and they certainly don't get a cut of app sales like Google or Apple. So to fund the devs that write the software, they mark up their hardware.
This improves mobile Linux, makes for a reasonably sustainable company, and gives Pine64 a free ride regarding software like Phosh, Phoc, Calls, Chatty, etc. So without having to pay for developers, Pine can sell their hardware dramatically cheaper. Simply put, I don't think "Good software isn't cheap" should be a surprise to anyone here.
I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones. How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford? The reality is, we can't. And we'll always compare PinePhone and other things to iOS and Android and they'll always come up short.
Also, a large part of using a smart phone is the apps. Without apps the phone is just really a phone.
For me, to want to use PinePhone they would need to make it super easy to have Android on there.
That is not true. As far as I am concerned Linux is clearly superior OS for my laptop over commercial alternatives.
> How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford?
In many cases they win by default. If "no leaking of personal data" is on mandatory feature list then Pinephones are already better than Android!
And there are many projects where there is simply no commercial product at all and is unlikely to ever appear.
I would argue Linux is only superior from the IT software perspective. This is a very narrow perspective that is only inflated if you're in IT or on an IT related site like HN. From almost every other dimension Linux is inferior and therefore from an Overall perspective it is inferior.
The most important dimensions for an operating system are usability and compatibility. Average users are like this while hard core masochist programmers are willing to spend years decoding an interface
As a matter of fact the only use I have for Windows now is for playing games (also Photoshop).
Otoh the amount of clutter and issues I have to deal in Win10 is just bad. I digress but thankfully there is a tool called "Shutup 10" that makes Windows much less annoying.
It is based on Ubuntu and uses the Cinnamon desktop by default, however personally i also rather enjoy the XFCE spin, for example: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4103
To that end, i also enjoy smaller distributions like Xubuntu, which are just customized Ubuntu, should someone not necessarily want to use Mint in particular: https://xubuntu.org/
Of course, the purists out there could also enjoy Debian because it relies more on free software instead of having proprietary drivers, but outside of the server space your experience might vary: https://www.debian.org/
Also, the Windows tool in question is O&O ShutUp10: https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
However, it's unfortunate to have to run it after the occasional update, because Windows is kind enough to enable its spyware functionality automatically sometimes. /s
Also your post touches on the most important dimension. Gaming and graphics and cad. Have you tried doing this stuff on linux? The experience is clearly inferior.
I think there's a psychological blocker here. You're aware Linux is shit for games and photoshop, but you still say linux is better because everything works! That's contradictory. Photoshop and games CLEARLY don't work according to your post which is the exact things I am talking about.
Either way I've still had the Linux OS crash on me within the last month. Something that just doesn't happen ever with windows or OSX anymore.
Of course, usability always depends on the specific task you have to do in a given context. It's possible that for the specific software you have to run for that task, that Windows or Apple software has the better usability. But that's far from the norm.
Compatibility Linux wins though in general, it supports way more hardware and software. If you think proprietary software is better there: Get out of your bubble :)
To get a bit away from this OT discussion: The PinePhone is just a very early project. It's also cheap. Of course it has issues, and they should be made clear to potential buyers. But to try to use that to smear FOSS software in general is dishonest trolling.
Then you are an absolute god of IT and have a very skewed perception of things as a result; alternatively you've made up your own definition of the word "usability" that absolutely no one else uses.
I think Linux is great. I love the customizability it brings to the table and get a lot out of it. The time and effort invested to get here has been significant though. The manpages are dense. Commands are arcane. Error messages are very often inscrutable.
The major distros do a reasonable job as long as everything is working and there happens to be a well maintained program in the preconfigured repos that works well for whatever task it is you're trying to accomplish right then. I've set up Ubuntu for relatives who aren't tech savvy to do basic office work and everything is flawless.
The user experience just isn't on the same level as the proprietary OSes though. There are far fewer well polished apps. Many vendors don't provide compatible versions of their software. The latest gadget you bought probably requires Windows or iOS to sync or whatever it is you need it to do. Leave the well trodden path for whatever reason - something breaks, your new device isn't recognized, something else - and things aren't pretty.
It's not really the OS's fault. FOSS apps are largely written and maintained by volunteers instead of highly paid teams. All modern systems have a staggering amount of complexity under the hood and Linux distros intentionally give you access to it. But if you want or are forced to tinker then you're going to have to contend with it one way or another.
Of course I will caveat this by saying "overall" usability. Clearly with training CLI's can be superior to GUIs. But most people won't be willing to do this, so ONLY from an overall perspective CLIs are worse.
The most common interface is bash (or alternative bash-like languages). Which is pretty much required if your a hardcore linux user. Applications push users towards command line interfaces. This is NOT easy to decipher. You are lying to yourself.
>Of course, usability always depends on the specific task you have to do in a given context. It's possible that for the specific software you have to run for that task, that Windows or Apple software has the better usability. But that's far from the norm.
How about the entire gaming library. The entire CAD field. What about 3D modelling or graphics programs like Photoshop. Or how about Audio production? Open Source choices are lacking while industry standards Don't even run on linux. These are huge and NORMAL aspects of computing that are inferior in a major way.
>Compatibility Linux wins though in general, it supports way more hardware and software. If you think proprietary software is better there: Get out of your bubble :)
Have you tried steam on linux? I've had Linux supported games fail to even start for me. I've had my computer restart on linux games. Not even getting into the steam compatibility layer here.
These are huge issues. A crashing OS is just something that rarely happens with Windows or OSX and I have to say that I've hit this on the regular with Linux on many many different pieces of hardware. This isn't a bubble, I believe the opposite is happening here. I'm a hardcore linux user who's realistic and you're the one deluding yourself into thinking FOSS is superior in every way (It's not).
I am not SMEARING FOSS. That is a dishonest AND personal accusation. There is a huge difference between SMEARING and just stating my opinion.
Look at my original post. There are aspects of FOSS that are SUPERIOR to closed source, but FOSS in general is INFERIOR from a usability and compatibility perspective.
What you are doing here by accusing me of smearing FOSS is starting a witch hunt. Likely you're unaware of the gravity of what you're doing and you just have a biased mob mentality right now. Read your own post, is there anything.. anything at all said that is negative about linux? You are not able to approach this from a fair and balanced perspective. Windows and OSX and Linux are three pillars in the OS world and failing to mention even one positive for Windows and OSX is pretty biased.
What's your distro of choice? I use NixOS, prior to that I was into Arch, and prior to that ubuntu and mint. So I have a very good view of the ecosystem.
You are just wrong about the usability and compatibility. Especially compatibility is the strong suit of FOSS software in general and Linux specifically. There is broader hardware and software support. It's a fact, get over it. Usability always depends on the context and task, your general statement is bs - and it clashes with the comments you got of novice users working very well with Linux. Usability is defined in a DIN ISO norm, have a look at that before using it for arguments.
Your comment is too long to go into the details, but I'll response in short to the main points:
1. No, Bash is not the most common interface, though I like it. It has to be used for the rare edge case, everything else can be done with GUIs. If your impression is otherwise you are not using mainstream distros nor are you doing regular tasks. Use Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu and stop distro hopping.
2. I'm playing exclusively on Linux since Proton got introduced, though I even used Linux for games before that. I'm okay with the occasional game not working, as Windows was vastly more cumbersome to keep in a working state, plus the many games that did not work there will also not be forgotten by me.
3. Void Linux is my current choice. I was a supporter in a Ubuntu forum and used that for many years, and still for the dayjob. I did use Funtoo for a while in between.
If it's not targeting me. Who is it targeting, "Mate?" Clearly it was targeting me, as you're REPLYING to me. Let's be honest here, You were attempting to "smear" me, but now you're back pedaling. Play it safe, don't even use the word "smear." No one is doing that here, it's just opinions and discussion. Keep it that way.
>You are just wrong about the usability and compatibility. Especially compatibility is the strong suit of FOSS software in general and Linux specifically. There is broader hardware and software support. It's a fact, get over it.
Nah I'm totally right. FOSS is less compatible with most hardware. The "official broad support" isn't even the the measuring stick here. It's actual hardware crashes and bugs.
>1. No, Bash is not the most common interface, though I like it. It has to be used for the rare edge case, everything else can be done with GUIs. If your impression is otherwise you are not using mainstream distros nor are you doing regular tasks. Use Gnome or KDE on Ubuntu and stop distro hopping.
"Mate," my impression encompasses gnome and KDE on Ubuntu as well as non mainstream distros, so I know my shit. Bash is 100% the most common interface, even on ubuntu. Any time you want to configure your operating system you will touch the CLI. Applications promote it, tutorials promote it, if you aren't using it I'm not sure what reality you're living in.
If you're thinking of the world as if it's Grandmas using the browser vs. Programmers, then yes, grandmas using the browser have everything they need with ubuntu without touching the CLI. However, there are advanced users of computing outside of the programming world. 3D modelling software, audio production, Network Administration... to get even these things to work right most of these people will indeed touch the CLI.
>2. I'm playing exclusively on Linux since Proton got introduced, though I even used Linux for games before that. I'm okay with the occasional game not working, as Windows was vastly more cumbersome to keep in a working state, plus the many games that did not work there will also not be forgotten by me.
I'm a hardcore gamer so I have over 100 games in my steam library. I have a linux dell laptop with a quadro card. Only low fidelity games work; and certain games trigger the OS to restart. Running windows this never happens. Not even referring to proton. Just talking about games compiled to target linux.
>3. Void Linux is my current choice. I was a supporter in a Ubuntu forum and used that for many years, and still for the dayjob. I did use Funtoo for a while in between.
Try tinkering with NixOS or arch. You will have a better view of compatibility issues that linux suffers from. Ironically the fact that "choices" for distros exist and the fact that you have to pick the "right" OS for the right perspective is a big usability issue in itself.
> I'm a hardcore gamer so I have over 100 games in my steam library.
How hardcore^^ 358 are in mine, + many more GOG and Humble Bundle games + hundreds on CD/DVD I probably will never play again.
> Only low fidelity games work; and certain games trigger the OS to restart.
Linux is around equally strong in gpu driver performance. There are differences ofc, but if game performance is vastly different for you, then your Dell laptop might not be using the Nvidia gpu. Proton is not a factor here, its performance impact is minimal (and it can be faster to run the Windows versions of games with Proton than the Linux version natively).
> Try tinkering with NixOS or arch.
If you tinker don't be surprised if the result is tinkery.
> the fact that you have to pick the "right" OS for the right perspective is a big usability issue in itself.
It's not. You do not know what usability is.
Your initial comment accused me of smearing FOSS. It's inconsiderate and a literal lie. I would say that's the most inappropriate thing that's occurred in this thread.
>How hardcore^^ 358 are in mine, + many more GOG and Humble Bundle games + hundreds on CD/DVD I probably will never play again.
365. and Gog. We're pretty much the same in terms of amount of games. If you have that many games you should know absolutely there are problems. Maybe your hardware configuration just happens to be common and compatible. I use a quadro nvidia card which is not the traditional GeForce stuff. Both of our use cases are valid but you have to combine our use cases to form a holistic broad spectrum view. My use case is an indication of compatibility problems, likely with quadro. This doesn't happen with windows.
>If you tinker don't be surprised if the result is tinkery.
When you tinker you understand the internals more. When you understand the internals more you better understand the issues. I've used ubuntu AND tinkered with NixOS. So I have broader experience than you.
>It's not. You do not know what usability is.
Part of my Job description is UI design. I'm a full stack engineer from the front (browser based UI's and product design) all the way to C++ and embedded systems on the back end. Usability is my Job but also hardcore systems development. Most full stack devs stop at the application layer so I would say because someone pays me to know what usability is, I pretty much know it quite well. Lack of choice is a usability feature, Apple employs this aspect heavily by restricting hardware options; it's a big part of why apple software is perceived to be very robust.
Another big part of usability is also perception. The actual capability of a product contributes less to usability than the perception of the capability of the product. Apple again uses this strategy big time.
CLI? Absolutely.
Desktop interfaces are an inconsistent mess.
But that's besides the point. CLIs in itself are harder to use than GUI and the entire FOSS ecosystem biases itself towards CLI. So that in itself is a marker for inferior usability.
With training a CLI can be made superior in many aspects to a GUI. But it takes training and mostly only people in IT are willing to go through this training. Overall from a common users' standpoint, GUIs are superior.
If you want to branch out to less popular DEs then of course you should be prepared for it being less polished, but does any Linux newbie really expect dozens of super polished DEs?
This is muscle memory. No shortcuts are not an alternative, merely a workaround. The underlying issue would still be there.
Unfortunately Android has taken over this inconsistency, probably because there is nobody that enforces it. "Mark as read" and "Reply" in the notifications are sometimes left/right, sometimes reversed. Yes/no questions are sometimes left, sometimes right. Snooze vs. alarm cancel too. What a disaster.
I feel like this is true only sometimes and even then probably from a particular point of view. For example, i use XFCE for my desktop computers with DEB based distros.
Most of the time, things just work, do so pretty fast and not in a too resource intensive way (which would be a different story with GNOME, Cinnamon or KDE, all of which come close to the Windows desktop resource usage in some cases). However, there is also a lot of software out there, that relies on configuration files instead of UI configuration to get things done.
Take Redshift (a bit like f.lux) as an example, in which you can't edit the screen colors at the different times of day through the UI, but rather have to look up how and where to create a configuration file with the values that you need.
Furthermore, there is also a lot of software out there for *nix that doesn't have GUI front ends in the first place (unless someone has written one) or need to be installed from PPAs and such, or even necessitate messing around with AppImage or Flatpak ways of installation - all of those have their own reasons for existing, be it historical reasons or having to support a variety of system configurations, unlike just packaging an .exe file with some sort of an installer, but the bottom line is that this hinders usability for the common folk out there.
> Of course, usability always depends on the specific task you have to do in a given context.
Of course, the situation with drivers can also be somewhat challenging at times, unless you use the proprietary ones and even then you sometimes have to rely on solutions such as Wine (or Proton, but only for select games) to be able to enjoy games and some other interactive content. There is the upside of being able to use Mono to also run some of the .NET software and honestly the cross-OS interoperability of at least some software feels amazing just because it even exists in the first place, but admittedly there is too much Windows centric software out there that people will have to give up when moving to Linux distros.
This definitely cannot be ignored, since many workflows out there are built around particular tools and their interfaces as well, which won't always be ported, given that they're proprietary. Actually, if Linux had a bigger market share, it'd get more attention, but sadly it's only dominant in the server space and has largely gone under the radar for desktop software. It seems to be changing, but slowly.
To sum up: in my opinion, there are definitely plenty of challenges and thorns that make Linux harder to use. Many are not due to any fault of its own, but rather the historic market conditions. That said, i'm glad that it's even a viable option for desktop computing nowadays and things do seem to be getting better!
If that happens to pretty tech savvy software engineers, the average user has zero chance of using Linux as a desktop effectively.
This is the overall the most important metric.
When it crashes it's 100% a problem in kernel space. Driver issues, compatibility issues. It is NOT an app. The OS should not give the privilege to an app to crash anything else other than itself.
What you MEANT to say is Linux crashes less than before and likely never crashes for certain hardware.
OVERALL linux will still crash MORE than windows when you look at everything holistically.
Buy hardware designed for Linux and you will have no problems. Ideally, with preinstalled Linux.
All hardware on my system have drivers available from the manufacture SO ALL of the hardware is "designed" for linux. It's just like the OP said there is poor support. So there's bugs in the software because all bug fixing resources are aimed at fixing Windows issues. So basically even the THOUGHT of buying specifically designed hardware for windows is non-existent for windows because basically it ALWAYS works.
For windows the OS and hardware are designed to always work and that's all they care about. This is a major major feature that Linux DOES NOT have. Linux is inferior in every way on this aspect.
No user cares about the morality or the reasoning behind why this windows works with so much hardware. They are concerned with tools that help them achieve their objective. Linux is definitively worse than this on many aspects than windows OR OSX.
It's impossible to have good support for every available software. My Purism laptop works without issues for years. No crashes, no problems with WiFi or suspend. Just buy preinstalled Linux, like I did.
That's why linux is inferior. For windows I don't need to buy preinstalled. I can buy whatever I want.
>It's impossible to have good support for every available software.
Except windows pretty much does this. Yeah there's shady business tactics involved but at the end of the day users just want something that works. Linux fails at doing this. So I don't know why you're advising me to buy preinstalled. I can do that, but it just means Linux is FORCING me to do that because it is an inferior OS from a usability standpoint.
Buying preinstalled solves my problem but it only invalidates your point while validating my point.
It just means that the manufacturer received Windows certification. Similar thing exists for Linux.
> Except windows pretty much does this.
Did you just compare the Linux community with a trillion-dollar company?
I don't need certification. I can custom build a computer and pretty much not ever be worried about incompatibility with windows. Such certifications aren't really things a regular user needs to think about for windows.
>Did you just compare the Linux community with a trillion-dollar company?
I'm comparing Linux to Windows. And I'm saying Linux is inferior from a usability standpoint. So yes I am saying the Linux community built an OS ecosystem that is INFERIOR in terms of usability to an OS ecosystem built by Microsoft. That is a Fact.
It does not matter what you need. The fact is, 99% of computers (and of course their hardware) receive Windows certification, because it's the monopoly that everyone uses. There is practically no way to change that.
> I can custom build a computer and pretty much not ever be worried about incompatibility with windows.
See above why.
I wish Linux computers were sold in retail shops. I have no idea why they aren't.
This is irrelevant. The morality and ethics behind why something is the way it is doesn't matter. Users including me only want something that works. What I need matters because it's statistically representative about what most users need and therefore representative of what classifies as usability according to most users.
Linux is inferior from a usability perspective, and that is literally my only point. This point is factually true. The politics behind operating systems involve ideological battles that really only very few people care about.
If what you say is true and that this usability issue can't practically be changed then linux will always be doomed to be less usable than windows. This is the consequence formed from your logic.
In this case I see no reason not to buy preinstalled Linux. Typically, they buy preinstalled Windows, so I do not see any large difference here.
> Linux is inferior from a usability perspective
No, it isn't. Proprietary apps on Linux may be.
> If what you say is true and that this usability issue can't practically be changed then linux will always be doomed to be less usable than windows.
Yes, although this has been slowly changing for years. One can hope that it's not forever.
There are power users of computers who are not programmers who don't have a clue how to use linux. There are people who customize their gaming rigs and other hardware who are completely unwilling to deal with errors and issues with the OS.
The customization of a PC is made trivial with Windows. Literally anyone can plug in modules into slots on a motherboard and not have to debug a bunch of issues on windows. This is not so with linux. It is a huge difference. Tons of people love computers who CAN'T program. Just like how tons of people love cars and customizing their car but aren't car mechanics. Think of it this way. A lot of people like to tinker but they want that tinkering experience to be streamlined meaning they don't want to be hitting any unexpected or overly challenging issues.
Either way the streamlined experience is the experience you get when you build with a gaming rig with windows. Such is NOT the experience when you try to do the same with linux. In fact with linux, guaranteed something isn't going to work out on your custom rig without some actual troubleshooting. That's the keyword. People hate troubleshooting, but they love customization. Windows provides customization without troubleshooting, Linux provides both.
This is so with any OS for which the modules are designed. Of course, if you try to use something in an unentended way, you get into trouble. No news here.
Yes, most things sadly are designed for Windows now, because it's a monopoly. Not a fault of Linux, but it does make it less attractive.
Yes all hardware is designed for either windows or windows and linux, never both and linux is always an after thought. That is why windows is superior from a usability standpoint.
Yes, it's not the fault of linux. But in the end that's not really what matters.
I've can't recall ever have an issue getting my sound working that didn't involve opening settings and making sure the right input/output were selected.
I feel the need to add this to the conversation so people are not dissuaded from trying great open source projects.
The difference is we know already what works with our equipment and what doesn't, so we don't wait until the last minute to figure out if some gadget can be used in an important setting? Also important, some of the engineers that "for some reason prefer Linux" know something that you don't, like the importance of adopting open standards and buying from hardware companies that do not lock you in into their ecosystem?
How many dongles were people forced to buy to continue using whatever peripheral they had already working?
Can you please stop with the goal-post moving?
Linux is, by your own logic, Inferior from a usability or "just works" standpoint. We all agree on this, therefore: End of discussion on this baseline.
Where we disagree is the extent of this incompatibility. Linux IMO is even worse then the baseline above. On linux, my graphics card (arguably a peripheral) has melted down and crashed the OS on me many times. I have a lot of trouble getting my xbox controller to connect with bluetooth to the OS. So anecdotally I would say that even your base line of linux just being inferior is too high.
That's not the end of the story because these small issues extend way past peripherals. You can keep the argument focused on peripherals if you want but this is really a general issue affecting linux and FOSS.
- Webex doesn't provide screen sharing in larger meetings via WebRTC. It really sucks, since it works in smaller ones and people really get suprised by this.
- The last time I used Webex via their "desktop" app, they didn't properly support pipewire.
- Same with zoom, except that they don't seem to provide browser meetings at all sometimes & their app doesn't seem to support pipewire
I've had no issues with jitsi or bbb in the meantime, since they simply allow me to use my browser. Same with other screen recording software. For me, it's pretty clear that the issue lies with vendors trying to make people install their software and then not properly supporting it on linux.
This impedes the usability of linux for this purpose, but there's little that can come from people other than the vendors. Open Source software seems to work fine.
Can you not capture your screen manually and make it available to your browser as a generic web cam? (Not that you should have to, but still.)
> [Zoom] don't seem to provide browser meetings at all sometimes
Last time I used it they were engaging in website trickery. You had to click the link to download (and maybe do something else) before it would present you with the "join from browser" link.
I could but I didn't anticipate that issue with larger meetings and it caught me by surprise
My understanding is that the web cam also uses different compression, leading to issues with readability
> Last time I used it they were engaging in website trickery. You had to click the link to download (and maybe do something else) before it would present you with the "join from browser" link.
Tried that since I've already heard about these dark patterns, but wasn't able to. It's easier and more intuitive to add a local account on windows.
But I can confirm that it works just fine in the browser on Linux.
If the average user means past normal Windows users, maybe yes at first (all changes need relearning a little bit)
But a 0 experience person? It will take maybe less to an user to learn PopOS than Windows.
Personally I prefer Linux, especially for software development. But the company’s default Linux distro (Fedora) can make life “interesting“ when working remotely. E.g. most screenshare only sort of works with Wayland. And now the audio fails, seemingly at random. (At least, I haven’t worked out the trigger yet.)
Unfortunately, as others have noted, there isn’t a huge incentive for companies to support desktop Linux. But it seems worth persisting to avoid the total dominance of one OS controlled by one company.
Having said that, given day to day needs like video calls, it’s probably worth using a less cutting-edge Linux distro at work!
Talk to anyone who installs beta iOS versions and ask them how much crap they have to deal with.
I choose to use Linux despite the bad UX and bad stability for end user. Linux server (and packages) are supremely stable, but any package involving end-user stuffs (sounds, graphics, even Firefox) is an entirely different story altogether.
LibreOffice specifically had serious stability issues a few years ago but has been much better lately. You could run Microsoft Office under Wine all along though (or use Google Docs, etc). Nothing preventing you from paying for stable software in that particular case.
Admittedly 3D graphics (not 2D office applications) can be rocky depending on your vendor. I've had good luck with AMD lately (but not in the past). That's entirely the fault of the vendors (AMD & Nvidia) though. Integrated Intel is and always has been absolutely flawless.
This isn't like some caveat. This is huge. It's pretty bad in terms of overall usability.
You could not have chosen a worse example distro to throw in your flawed presumption. Debian is one of the most rigorously tested and sought after distros specifically for its stability.
There's nothing wrong in you preferring to use Windows or Mac. But throwing unsubstantiated claims around is foolish.
This can also be because this random enterprise want to use something other than zoom for some godforsaken reason.
Spend all that time to get your setup working, but congratulations, it doesn’t work with GloryOnlineMeeting 2.4.
And? I was responding to extremely overstated "open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones"
Even if Linux would be worse for 99% of people who are less IT-centered than me then it would be still counterexample for "always".
Open source project can be for 5 person worldwide without monetization plan. And beat commercial software for that people.
If someone wants to make claim "for average person it is typical that..." then make it, but this hyperbole was clearly false.
We can get rid of the word always if you want. Nobody cares for such semantics. Generalities exist and clearly that's what most people mean when they talk about this. Linux is generally much worse from a usability standpoint than windows. Your post made a claim Linux was the better OS, but not only is Linux not always better, it's not even generally better.
That's just preposterous. Linux user friendliness has not been slow or fragmented, it has come really far just in the last five years. Windows on the other hand has gotten relatively worse since the 'high' periods of early NT kernel OSes.
> The most important dimensions for an operating system are usability and compatibility.
Incorrect. It is only "one" of the important dimensions, but to call it "the most" important one is at -at the very least- misguided and absurd.
> The most important dimensions for an operating system are usability and compatibility. Average users are like this while hard core masochist programmers are willing to spend years decoding an interface
Your inability to use many of the user friendly distros available (like Mint or Elementary) cannot be generalized to the wider public.
Do some research.
It is the most important dimension and the only dimension most users care about. Fully correct.
>Your inability to use many of the user friendly distros available (like Mint or Elementary) cannot be generalized to the wider public.
Illogical statement and incorrect. I've used Mint and elementary and all the issues remain. But let's say you're right.
Then this would STILL be a usability issues. Too many choices... a user has to dig and choose the right distro to be "easy" to use.
>Do some research.
You do the research. I'm more well informed than you.
Original comment contrasted "commercial software" and "open source" so I interpreted it as "paid closed source software" vs "free open source".
But it is not covering all software and in some way Linux can be described as commercial.
Still there is plenty of other cases: say editing OpenStreetMap. In theory there is some ArcGis Esri plugin but for good reasons it is used by approximately noone, with everyone using open source software.
Though some was also developed by grant-supported developers. Is it making it commercial?
I love Linux. I'm a Linux desktop user but I can 100% say my experience is degraded compared to mac and windows users. Not just in apps that are there but in small things like sometimes it changes which mic is being used without telling me.
Driver support is also a thing.
I have my GUI crash on me on a semi regular basis.
And that is on Ubuntu which is a commerical product. And probably the best funded desktop linux there is.
Simply put, it is not stable.
I also have a Mac mini, and my wife has a MacBook pro. They are better but stability has never been an issue with my Linux desktop experience. I've been using it since 2005 or so. It used to offer far less software and a worse user experience but was always very stable.
Arch BTW.
That's true for me at 16.04 or below. I don't really remember encountering one on 18.04 or 20.04 though. May share your use case?
Possible causing factors, java, spotify, or slack.
"Well, that's kinda a big and important thing to ignore" I hear you say. And, I agree. But, it's also not an inadequacy of Linux itself.
I've had this discussion quite a few times, so to distill it down, "OS A is better than OS B" tend to touch on the following:
- Software availability is better (not a limitation of the OS, but I hear you)
- Privacy is better (while, for example MacOS, not being aware that every single executed executable is being logged and transmitted unencrypted)
- User experience is better (while not having given latest gnome a try, which aside from subjective preference is really well done, and in my subjective experience, much more intuitive than apple's approach, as well as windows' "here's two ways to do the same thing")
- ̶A̶r̶t̶i̶f̶i̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶r̶d̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶m̶i̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶ hardware is better. For Apple hardware, this was sort of true up until around 2010. Since then, you get so much less value I'm amazed they can still pull it off.
I see MacOS and Windows going more and more in the direction of a "mobile OS" which less freedom and more telemetry. I see the growing collection of open source hardware as humanity's effort to build something for everyone. Imagine how sad the world would be if Linux or OSS didn't exist.
Before that you say “we need apps”, that’s the heart of your comment.
It can be successfully argued that we don’t need more of what we already have (aka closed walled, ad ridden, privacy off by default - solutions)
We (as in developers) should start believing in these projects and adopt them. Blender for a long time couldn’t match the big boys of 3D creation. Right now it’s really gaining traction. I see a couple of factors for its succes:
- a well managed project with a equally good vision that adapted to changes and demands. - a crowd that believed it could be great - a funding path to attract devs and hire them for a wanted feature - a different way of looking at these projects instead of “we don’t have x from this ecosystem” , how can we as devs be the forerunners in creating something that supersedes it.
> Before that you say “we need apps”, that’s the heart of your comment.
Apps are major reason for using my phone. I don't really phone or text people I use whatsapp, telegram, etc for messaging, Twitter and Reddit for content and a browser for the rest. Then there are covid apps, health tracking apps, etc.
> It can be successfully argued that we don’t need more of what we already have (aka closed walled, ad ridden, privacy off by default - solutions)
Try getting traction when everyone compares you to those things and those things are what people want.
> We (as in developers) should start believing in these projects and adopt them. Blender for a long time couldn’t match the big boys of 3D creation. Right now it’s really gaining traction. I see a couple of factors for its succes:
The issue I see here is that the it supports multiple operating systems and each operating system is a small team. Everyone believes in their version of the operating system.
That kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing. If you want android you can just buy an android phone.
Fingers crossed that the coming pine phone 2.0 or 3.0 sails through on enhanced/xtended funding.
Open source vs commercial is a false dichotomy. But having migrated out of the Google/Facebook world, I find having sometimes less polished software that does what I want is a much better experience than big tech platforms that only allow me to do what they want.
Open source projects will almost always provide a less polished product.
It'll often be better in ways that matter to me (eg availability of a given bit of software over a decade+ span of time, finer control over UX). But those things are not important to everyone, and that's fine.
EDIT: But read the other comments on here and they actually prove you right: First hand reports of low build quality by the same manufacturer (downvoted, of course), someone saying "someone should just add X feature and I'd buy it" (as opposed to true-to-open-source "I'll add X feature, which will make it it a kick ass product")." Another comment that says "Yeah it runs many distros, but none of them polished". It all just sort of proves what you are saying.
The difference is that businesses require scaling, parallelism, distributed stake holding always, and that many parts of non-code product developments scale, while code authoring don’t/must not be.
That causes open source UI to be just under-resourced development compared to proprietary, and proprietary code to be just failed development because of over-distributed decision making.
(I’ll spare us all the Pareto 80%/20% theory here, although I am pretty sure that it applies here.)
The upside is that open source or free software features fewer (and often no) antipatterns modern proprietary software suffers from.
Attempts at making software more approachable are accused of dumbing down or prioritising form over function. There’s an attitude that it’s not ‘real work’ if you don’t have to memorise tonnes of inscrutable commands or spend ages tinkering with config files.
So IMO a dude that read some UX book is not entitled to "know better" what actual users need, especially people that do UX design for an app that they don't even use , so they apply dogmatic principles , remove features that were added because users asked for them( this happened at my work in the past too, designrers removed stuff , stuff that users asked for and developers spent a lot of effort to implement it , ex deleting more items at a time, because they think that repeting same 3 click operation over and over again is enoug.
UX should be done by competent people that actually used the programs or even better that test their designs with actual users.
There's nothing wrong with criticism, but to give simplistic arguments (if they can be called arguments event) and say that it's "low quality" or "will not work" is just absolutely incorrect. But when it gets defended you call it "attacks the ego of many people"? That's just ridicules.
I honestly think the government should step in.
The end result is that while difficult, you can make something like a pinephone where everything is open source EXCEPT for the radio modules and their firmware.
I would argue the closed source software you use is generally higher quality because we are just at the beginning of the conversation when it comes to software. If an open source project with enough mind share can take a long enough view, it is hard to see how it WON'T someday surpass its closed-source competitors. Funding is generally on the side of a closed source project, but time is always on the side of an open source one.
In that respect, commercial software is difficult to beat, if ever. But then, open source plays a differnt game. It is less driven by deadlines to ship, commercial requirements or restrictions, not driven by marketing, for good or bad. The user interaction might not be as polished, but things an open source software does well, it usually does really well. It is difficult to bet often decades of development.
People don't run it because of software quality.
That's demonstrably wrong. Examples are so abundant and obvious that I'm not sure I need to mention any, but for the sake of argument. In software: Linux, Gimp, Firefox, VLC, Blender, OpenOffice, ... In hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagleboard, UltiMaker, Adafruit products, Sparkfun Electronics products, etc...
If you picked an average computer user at random (read: not people on HN) and had them try out Linux, Gimp, and OpenOffice, I don't think they'd agree with you that they're as high-quality as their commercial alternatives.
Try giving an average user Photoshop. See how they weep. These thought experiments are really hard to apply to software on complex domains.
OpenOffice is indeed a terrible example.
Or cost... or abundance of existing tooling for... or a ton more factors that are all considered. And quality itself is multidimensional. Something might be good for engineering flexibility but terrible for exposure to end users, or vice versa. And engineers can work around shortcomings much better than end users can.
OSes aren't like Javascript frameworks. There are only so many viable choices for a given domain. It's like if someone chose T-Mobile over AT&T and Verizon and you automatically concluded it's because of quality.
I do not understand the argument. Linux won. It won because it — for a variety of reasons — fits certain domains well.
The OS vendor can change the kernel being used, and those average users won't notice it all.
The only quality is being a free beer OS, that the OEM vendors can leech at will without bothering one second up-streaming their changes.
And when the community started to be too vocal about it, efforts to use MIT/BSD licensed alternatives were set in motion.
In a couple of years those router OSes, smart televisions, Android phones won't be using the Linux kernel any longer.
MIT/BSD licensed stuff is still free software.
I advise you to read about Zephyr OS, FreeRTOS, Azure RTOS, Fuchsia, NuttX,....
A closed-source OS in this space has no real chance, as it has to be adapted by hardware makers. Microsoft may be able to provide the backing for wider ThreadX adoption, but don't hold your breath.
I don't see how the fact that BSD allows proprietary forks implies it is not high-quality software.
Again, where is the source code to Playstation OS 4 or clang bitcode changes for watchOS?
Got to love FOSS.
I think that’s mostly due to them being different from the thing they are used to, not because they’re inferior.
I’d be more interested in what people going in the other direction (e.g. from LibreOffice to MS Office) would say.
Well you would be wrong. I have LibreOffice 7.1.4.2 in front of me right now and it still can't correctly render stuff I had from 2014. The text boxes and stuff all end up in massively wrong positions, like they always have. (And they render fine in Word, like they always have.)
Similarly, first Excel spreadsheet I try to open in it gives this error: Warning loading {document}: The data could not be loaded completely because the maximum number of columns per sheet was exceeded.
I could waste my time with other examples but it would be that: wasting my time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm rooting for them. Maybe someday there will finally come a free office program that can function like MS Office did a decade ago. I'm looking forward to seeing it before I die. But in the meantime, there's just no way we can honestly tell people LibreOffice is as high-quality as MS Office, regardless of how much we want that to be the case. It's just a lie we keep telling ourselves.
> (in some aspects)
...you just made my point for me.
That's not exactly a fair assessment exercise. I'm not sure what format is the original excel file, but xlsb is a proprietary format.
My experience with Writer is wonderful. Have not had any issues and I know many people who use it daily with no issues.
Try to balance a picture and a couple of paragraphs in M$ Word in a long document and then come back to me on how that "high-quality" software handles it.
> there's just no way we can honestly tell people it's as high-quality as MS Office
Apparently, like many others in this entire thread, you've totally missed the point. I wasn't saying it's "as" high quality as M$ word (although I disagree with the usage of the word high quality here) but just that it is high quality by itself. This is known as an irrelevant conclusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_conclusion
The entire discussion has been regarding this verbatim quote from the top comment: "open source projects will always provide a lower quality than commercial ones". If you replied regarding some other premise, then you're the one missing the point and changing the topic, not me.
> That's not exactly a fair assessment exercise
It sure is fair to me. Just saying this doesn't make it true. And a reality check is warranted here: "it's not fair" is not going to be a satisfactory response to any user you're trying to win over.
> I'm not sure what format is the original excel file, but xlsb is a proprietary format.
No, it's an open format [1], and LibreOffice supports opening it... with poor quality. And again: even if it was, you're not going to win over or satisfy any users with an "it's a proprietary format so we don't support that many columns" excuse. They expect their office programs to dance around their documents, not the other way around.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_forma...
Although you may be right, I prefer to be more optimistic. I think we tend to ignore the more successful premise of open source projects.
They (at their least) demonstrate people of a possibility of more sincere (more eco-friendly, user-friendly or budget-friendly) products and services.
now remembering that open source is typically not democracy but rather fairy autocratic in respect to the project owner you can have - more inclusive or fairly non-inclusive community around it. so the source may be available but the community and the project may be as closed as it seems fit towards individuals that fail to cross certain threshold of required technical (or other) skills.
then software development is encompassed with number of other things - specifications, testing, devops and various integration activities that does not necessarily benefit from being open source. these activities that complement the software/hardware production are actually an important precursor for the perceived quality. it just so coincides that an open source project with proper amount of contributors will naturally benefit from peer-reviews of the code - as long as more than one person i sable to works on certain component of course.
for successful business or entrepreneurship one needs more than software development though - accounting, finance, marketing, packaging and in Pine's case - production of hardware... etc. these are not typically as open as the ... source in the software part. an even if they were - it does not mean they are automatically gotten right.
so to be absolutely fair - open source does not immediately on its own mean a better or even viable product. it means that parts of the system are available for independent review and potentially are free from license burden to be reused in other systems.
it seems a form of cognitive bias to assume that all components of products that are result of partial or entirely open-source process are by definition better to closed-source process.
No, it doesn't: https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph....
I find that free software is generally better, more solid, more stable, and more useful on its own merits than commercial alternatives. There is a clear point where this breaks — new hardware, new hardware interactions — largely because hardware vendors do not do their jobs with regard to Linux / BSDs. But in terms of pure user-friendliness? it's not even a contest.
To me, user-friendliness implies that software is moldable to my workflows, and that other users' stuff is easy to integrate. Also, disruptive change is evil.
This concept of user-friendliness necessarily implies that software should be end-user programmable, and the pieces of the environment should be composable. Most commercial end-user software fails at this. There are clear commercial motivations why it should, given a need to sell 'apps' for every workflow, and the need to work in corporate environments (where limiting users' ability to interact is a necessity for the people who make software buying decisions).
iOS is especially bad at this, given the appification of everything. There seems to be an effort to do at least something good in Shortcuts, but it's very much not enough.
I do most computer stuff in Firefox, Emacs, and xterm. Or WSL (xterm and Emacs) on Windows when I'm on a Windows device because something requires it. I'm actually typing this on a Raspberry Pi, where I only have those three installed as graphical apps. I also occasionally need Darktable (which needs a GPU for any kind of performance) and Office, for which I power on a different computer. Which I would find extremely hostile without WSL.
You can also track how Linux things are percolating into Windows / macOS. Virtual desktops were a thing in Linuces for years and years before coming to those two. Tiling just begins to arrive. UNIX terminal environments are such a pain decreaser that even MS now has a way to use them. With my xmonad setup I live in the future, and that's the future that has been available for a decade.
Browsers are probably the most important user-facing applications right now, and are all opensource-originated. Whether corporate capture of KHTML did any good is a question; I don't think it did.
That depends entirely on the scope of the project.
Projects that can be built by one person are pretty much always better as open source.
That unfortunately does not include mobile operating systems though.
I attempt to list them all at https://linmobapps.frama.io.
So yeah, not flagship but close enough for a lot of people (side by side, the a32 vs s21, for me is not worth the 4x+ pricetag, as in the difference between flagship and not flagship is shrinking fast, ymmv), however...
The pinephone is worse hardware though (In almost all respects but the dipswitches) and the software, at this point, is really alpha quality mostly. But we know this: the promise it will run Linux smoothly on a phone is enough to buy one. It will take time but I would buy any phone that allows me to freely run multiple OSs new out of the box with all hardware supported.
According to https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices - that's a rather uncommon thing to have, and pretty much unobtainable for a recent device (other than pine64/librem5).
The fact that it has been admitted that 'it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important' tells me that it is even worse than that 'Freedom Phone' since not only the PinePhone can't run the same apps as that, but it runs more sluggish than that.
I'd also write all of them off as garbage 'for now', since none of them can be recommended to the average Joe or Jane.
What use is a smartphone that claims to run apps (Native apps, Android apps or Web Apps) but runs them much worse than the user's previous device (or can't run them at all)? To the users hoping to make the switch, it feels more like a downgrade; especially PWAs.
For example, in the FAQ, Librem mentions:
> Unlike most mobile apps on Android and iOS, these applications were not written to monetize users' personal data or extract fees from users, and their code is free/open source, so it can be verified that they aren't spyware or contain code that acts against the best interest of their users.
Well it seems that Signal is a known and a widely recommended messaging app which generally doesn't do all the things claimed by Librem, yet many users that use Signal cannot even run it on their Librem 5 or PinePhone. So they will see no point in considering buying any of these phones anyway.
Therefore, these devices are still not ready yet to be considered serious alternatives to Android users or in general. They're going in the right direction, but it will take years of waiting for improvements in the current state of open source smart phones.
This is really a fault of Signal, because they forbid forks and do not provide a good app for GNU/Linux phones. It's like a walled garden. I do not use Signal for this reason.
Until then, these users are going to have to be waiting for years of improvements first before jumping onboard a product that they will see as 'unfinished' or 'sluggish' than their previous phone.
From the OP:
"... the PinePhone runs mainline Linux as well as anything else you'll get it to run."
Linux is great but being able to run several different OS is, IMO, on a whole `nother level. For example, I am interested in running NetBSD. About 12 years ago, there was a phone called the T-Mobile Sidekick. What OS did it run. That phone was allegedly the first to sync the user data to the "cloud" and provide an "app marketplace". The founder of the company that created it later went on to co-found Android.
DangerOS required all applications to be written in Java and distributed via their store; if you stopped paying your subscription fee you would lose access to the store and to the online backup service as well.
Microsoft bought Danger and eventually closed it, killing all usage.
For a while it was the best device for sysadmins and the Deaf community -- because it had a keyboard and an SSH application.
Was Java a requirement of the OS or was it just a design choice by the developers. The OS was NetBSD AFAIK; of course one can run a JVM on NetBSD but that's not a requirement; I never do. Is Pinephone limited only to running Java applications. I want more programming options than just Java.
Pinephone is completely orthogonal to this.
Do you mean Pine64 has no intention of trying to control what people do with the device?
Did anyone ever try to "root" the Sidekick? Always interested to hear more about it.
Explicitly not trying to control what you do makes up the majority of their business model.
Is there such a thing as a "DangerOS device", or are there devices that can or cannot run "DangerOS" (e.g., NetBSD plus proprietary software). The official slogan of the open source project is "Of course it runs NetBSD!" not "Of course it is a NetBSD device."
Anything said about an OS does not necessarily have anything to do with the device it runs on. Nor does anything said about a device necessarily have anything to do the OS being run on it. That's why we can have OS that run on a variety of devices (e.g., NetBSD, Linux, etc.), as well as devices on which we can boot a variety of OS (e.g., RPi, Pinephone).
Unfortunately this important distinction is carefully omitted from tech company marketing, ignored by sycophant tech bloggers, tech journalists and everyone who follows and subscribes to their brand of anti-competitive "innovation". Hopefully more hardware like RPi and Pinephone can change some people's thinking and allow them to see the possibilities that are constantly being suppressed in the "war on general purpose computing".
- a device with an extremely old battery
- without an open or available SDK
- with a pathetically slow CPU by modern standards
- with a pathetically small amount of RAM by modern standards
- with a mediocre keyboard under a screen with a nifty magnetic hinge mechanism but terrible specs (again, by modern standards)
- with, if I recall correctly, a very low speed GSM data connection
There's no reason to try to resurrect them.
This sentence reminded of the OpenMoko days, hopefully the hardware choices were better than in that era.
The hardware choices are in so far better, as this looks like a normal phone, is not limited to GPRS in a world where connected services based on 3G are taking off, and there‘s also no graphics decelerator built in. Imho, the biggest design flaw is the size of the battery: You don’t get much screen on time with this.
The AllWinner A64 is clearly not the most advanced piece of Silicon though, and support in Linux for that old chip is still advancing so things are a lot better than they were a year ago.
As far as user space software is advancing, there‘s more and more coming which I try to list at [1].
The key difference here is that PINE64 is just providing the hardware and is not very involved in software at all. Thankfully Purism make software for their Librem 5 (which would have been shipping for real by now, but than a component shortage hit the industry), which also runs on PinePhone and works quite well.
Projects like Plasma Mobile are catching up, and long standing Mobile Linux efforts like Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch have also been ported over.
Out of curiosity, how do these bugs/unreliability manifest in realty? I've been fiddling around with making a mobile Linux distro specifically for a car navigation/entertainment system so I'm curious to get some circumstantial feedback.
A good thing is that even if you buy it now and decide it's not reliable enough, you can be sure that the development will never stop and at some point it will be better than Android in every way. I would say in a year.
The current stage is pretty much unusable if you need a reliable phone.
So in one year already, it is supposed to be better than android in every way?
That is a very bold assumption. I mean, would be nice, but I doubt it and would be happy if it gets stable enough to simply use it as a phone and chatdevice, without hickups.