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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but the fragmentation is the problem.

One reason Windows and macOS are popular is that people know what they are going to get. If you've used one Windows 11 box, for example, you can get on another Windows 11 box and figure out how to use it. It will have the same user interface and window management as the other: the Start menu, the control panel, the desktop, etc.

That's just not the case for Linux. There are several popular desktop environments that are very different from each other in look and feel. For an ordinary user, switching from Gnome to KDE would be quite jarring and it would take them a while to get used to it. For power users and tweakers, that diversity of options is an attractive feature of the Linux desktop. For ordinary users, it is a deterrent.

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Therein lies the conundrum: is Linux desktop for power users primarily? Arguably yes. Most people don't know what they want/need, and most people don't want/need x features at the cost of y compromise, if they even understand what the compromise actually means to them as a user. I don't think 99% of people care.

Is it for every power user? No, of course not.

Can Linux be made very simple for casuals? Yup, absolutely, if all people want to do is browse the web, send some emails, the usual stuff, it's fine. The in-between of "can I use Photoshop?" and the answer being "yes, but" isn't going to fly with most folks.

I use it for what it's best at, and use Windows for what it isn't best at, sometimes as a bottle, other times not. But it takes experience to know when to use what, which is what most users don't care to figure out for themselves as it involves trial and error usually. Most folks just want to do their work, and their phone or tablet is the "funsies".

The problem is there is no decent software that runs on linux; I'd switch from Mac to linux if I could run Ableton, Adobe_products.* or Affinity_products.*

And no, I don't want to hear about the software XYZ that is almost just like any of the above, because they aren't even close.

If I just wanted to browse the web, and work in a terminal, then linux is great.

> If I just wanted to browse the web, and work in a terminal, then linux is great.

Or edit video, or make music, or write all the stuff that makes this possible.

The fragmentation is what scares companies like Adobe away.

How many distros would they need to support to make customers happy? At what point does it become a problem of diminishing returns?

Windows and macOS are pretty big. How many more customers would Adobe get by adding support for: Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Mint, Arch, Manjaro, MX, Gentoo, Elementary, and so forth? At some point it just gets silly and devolves into Muppet names and other nonsense -- and each one has a smaller amount of users.

Plus, real professionals are willing to pay for software. Open source is frankly not relevant for professional image editing, video editing, music production, CAD, etc.

> Yeah but the fragmentation is the problem.

Yes, exactly. It's the same problem all over, too - look at transport! You shouldn't ride a bike, you should drive a massive V8-powered 4x4 like I do. It meets my needs, so it must meet yours, right?

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