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Comment by GhettoComputers | Hacker News Reader

I agree completely I don’t care if it’s not mainstream. Desktops are usually gaming computers from what I see in my groups no reason to have Linux on there. Linux is on all the servers, most mobile devices, and I mentioned even Sony cameras run Android.

I don’t see any benefit to Linux on desktop being mainstream. I like that it keeps away a lot of users since making things too easy since they’re unwilling to compile from GitHub is a feature, not a bug. It’s a mostly a programmer OS for programmers.

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I find this attitude completely elitist and counter productive. Why shouldn’t Linux be for everybody, usable on every type of device? Why should we need to rely on proprietary software for our day-to-day tasks? Don’t you think there is benefit to this?

>Why shouldn't Linux be for everybody, usable on every type of device?

It is, but you often have the effort to put into it. Windows isn't usable for everyone, but that doesn't make me elitist, OSX is hard for others, but I don't see that being a problem. Some people can't do everything you do, and there are differences in our abilities. If you expect everything to be easy, and people not willing to put in work to have a functional OS, you should not expect them to use linux, it offers no benefits to most users, its made by hackers to hack on, Android is linux for everyone, and even then they find it hard. Don't expect people to run when they can't crawl.

>Why should we need to rely on proprietary software for our day-to-day tasks?

Because the free stuff sucks, GIMP still sucks. They stuck to having 3 windows open forever, GNOME doesn't like being configured, GTK always breaks stuff, and I just want stuff that "just works". When FOSS does it well like KDE being better than Windows's UI, or Firefox being better than IE6 I will choose it. I don't pick based on their principals, I just want good software, and like most people I am willing to pay for quality. I refuse to use a pinephone out of principal, I refuse to make my life hell.

FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a decade. fwiw, I love gimp as it is (and I prefer multi windows).

I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one of the most amazing foss project of all times and it’s maintainers.

Yes Gimp isn’t photoshop but it covers 100% of my needs. Totally worth the money I never put on it.

>FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a decade.

I know, I used it recently. They are so bad with the UI I find myself using Krita as a better photoshop replacement.

>I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one of the most amazing foss project of all times and it’s maintainers.

Comparing it to Krita, it is hard to compliment any of it, the UI, the features, the difficulty. Its been 25 years, and lots of FOSS stuff has caught up with paid options, and I see Krita being a photoshop replacement way before GIMP becomes usable.

Somebody can probably say the same things about ms paint, not much of an argument there.

I think the problem is mostly that mass popularity is sort of at odds with the cowboy attitude of a lot of Linux desktop users. Creating a "standardized experience" like Windows usually means that configurability goes right out the window. It's how you get abominations like dconf or the GNOME music player that won't let you change the directory to read your mp3s from. And a lot of people see things like Wayland this way. Sure, maybe its easier for the average user to have all these formerly separate components like hotkey daemons or screenshot software integrated into one compositor. But why shouldn't I be able to run xbindkeys or sxhkd or whatever hotkey dameon I want? (I know there are reasons for/against, I'm just summarizing the argument.)

Wayland doesn’t prevent you from doing that. It just prevents you from doing that without privilege, because let’s be honest, who thought it was a good idea to let any random program snoop every single keypress?!

>Creating a "standardized experience" like Windows usually means that configurability goes right out the window. It's how you get abominations like dconf or the GNOME music player

I don't understand how you connected these dots and I'd suggest against calling things abominations. You don't have to use dconf or the GNOME music player, those aren't standardized. If someone does like them I think they're perfectly fine, they do exactly what they're advertised to do and nothing more than that. It's also fine if you don't like them, they're just two options from the many configuration databases and media players that you can choose from.

>But why shouldn't I be able to run xbindkeys or sxhkd or whatever hotkey dameon I want?

In some ways you actually can but it depends on the hotkey daemon and how it's implemented. The reason for that is technical, those are implemented with X grabs which are an X11-only API and they have a number of usability and security issues. There are a few key rebinding daemons that use evdev directly so they work with both X11 and Wayland, and also on the console:

https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct

https://github.com/snyball/Hawck

But these also do have similar security issues to X key grabs, in that they effectively operate as keyloggers. If you're looking for an API that works purely within Wayland and lets unprivileged clients request key rebinding, that doesn't exist yet. Somebody would need to specify what that API looks like and figure out a good way to make it secure. What would the end goal of the API be, and how could the system (and by extension, the user) tell the difference between a legitimate hotkey daemon and a malicious keylogger? And would it actually be any better than the approach of snooping evdev? I don't know the answer to these questions but you may have more experience with this than I do.

I have to agree with the OP. If Linux OS going to be for mainstream users, it will eventually succumb to the same issues that plague proprietary OSes. Like low configurability (gnome is already doing this). Mainstream users want very different things from a computer than we do. And in many cases they don't even want a computer anymore, they'll just use their phone or iPad for everything.

I also don't think the mainstream really care about privacy and control. Most of them are really happy in their walled gardens. As a power user I don't want to 'dumb down' my experience and work towards that, so if they really want it they'll have to buy it from a vendor that does it for them. Most of the big names are trying to get there already (like canonical)

And yes eventually a company will make another walled garden based on Linux but it will suck because of the vendor lock-in, limited access to its internals ("because otherwise we can't support it"), and commercial to subscription services. Basically this is exactly what ChromeOS is already.

Personally I just think that a Linux that's for everyone is simply not Linux as we know and love it anymore.

>Personally I just think that a Linux that's for everyone is simply not Linux as we know and love it anymore.

Android is Linux for everyone, it’s imperfect and it’s nice in many ways, but I don’t run x86 android on my computer.

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