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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

The problem exists between chair and keyboard.

You don't understand how archives work and are trying to run a program with many files from an archive before first extracting it to a folder in your filesystem.

You could have taken this time spent blaming Linux and used it to google around a little bit and learn something new. I recommend learning a bit about how your filesystem works and why it can't find linked files from within an archive. This is essential computing knowledge.

The fact that you are not aware that Ubuntu comes with a software package manager means you are still inexperienced and should not blame the system until you have spent more time with it.

You similarly shouldn't blame a car for bad UX because you have to take a class and multiple exams before understanding how to use it?

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This mindset is why Linux will always have basic usability problems.

> I recommend learning a bit about how your filesystem works and why it can't find linked files from within an archive. This is essential computing knowledge.

Really? Is that _really_ essential computing knowledge?

On macOS, you download a disk image, then drag the icon into the application directory. Many publishers include a shortcut to the application directory and a background image with an arrow and instructions. It's primitive, but it works, and hasn't needed to change in like, 20 years. It requires no knowledge of linked files, or even what a disk image is. Drag and drop. Done.

If you can't install an app like that on most Linux distros (I don't think I've ever seen that), then Thunderbird probably shouldn't suggest that as an option. I've moved away from using Linux as an everyday OS because all these little usability things add up and suck too much of my time.

> This mindset is why Linux will always have basic usability problems.

It works fine for me!

People who want to run macOS can do so. Why does everyone act like a free product not being everything for everyone is some kind of moral failing?

> Why does everyone act like a free product not being everything for everyone is some kind of moral failing?

Probably because the free software movement is making (very vocally) it a moral failing that all software should be free. If all software must be free, then all free software must be everything for everyone.

This RMS-style ideological "free software movement" is a tiny minority of the people who actually use, work on, or care about software like Linux. It's best to just ignore them.

If you expect Linux to be like macOS, you can only be disappointed.

It is a different operating system with completely different trade-offs. People are trying to improve usability on Linux (and things have changed substantially for the better since I first used Linux in 2006), but generally, the OS and software will hold your hand less than macOS. Actually, even Windows probably holds your hand less, macOS is clearly an outlier here.

People who like using Linux generally put up with the occasional nuisance or the necessity to sometimes dig a bit deeper when there's a problem for the increased flexibility and independence.

On ubuntu you open Software, search thunderbird, and click the install button. Or you open the terminal and type sudo apt-get install thunderbird.

How come you were able to learn how to do it by drag-and-drop on macOS, even though installing an application by D&D is completely unintuitive and unique to apple, but learning how to do it the linux way is an insurmontable task that you can't expect normal people to figure out?

Imagine if the web worked like that: You couldn't click a link that takes you where you wanna go, instead it's "essential computing knowledge" that you must open a separate tab, type the name of the other page you wanted into a search box and find the page you were looking for on the results page.

Why is it so hard to have a button that installs Thunderbird?

On a brand-new linux desktop, I click the terminal icon and run the following command:

`dnf install thunderbird`

And I get thunderbird.

I'm sorry, but any reasonably complex system is going to come with a basic reading requirement. This system is much more smooth and off-the-shelf than Windows or OS X package management. Linux operating systems by far have the best modern package management.

We can blame traffic engineers all day for naive drivers, or we can compromise and hold both engineers and users accountable, requiring appropriate certification.

If reading a few pages of a quickstart manual is too hard, a simple Google search of "How to install programs on <Linux Distribution>" will immediately show you what you need.

If you can't think to do this, or feel entitled to not do it, the problem is indeed between the chair and keyboard. Any user who feels this way is in desperate need of basic research skills.

I sort of read the OPs message ironically. The OPs point is that this stuff is broken compared to how a Windows or Mac user would do things. Windows/Mac users just click download, and double click. Linux could get to the same spot (more or less) by using Flatpak. I think that has to be the answer here. It's absurd to expect a developer to build their app for a dozen different distros.

> I recommend learning a bit about how your filesystem works and why it can't find linked files from within an archive. This is essential computing knowledge

Billions of people use computers (most of which are, for historical reasons, called "phones") that require none of this "essential" knowledge, and they do just fine. Don't you think humanity is better off for freeing all these people from having to spend their brief time on Earth from having to learn about archives and filesystems? Sometimes difficulty isn't a mark of virtue but instead just pointless pain.

So do I wget the big green Free Download link instead of click on it? Do I then cd to my Downloads folder and tar xf on the file? And then I cd into the extracted directory and ./thunderbird?

...

We see the usability problems here.

User has no business in learning anything about file systems. This is basic UX error and one of many cuts, which are keeping Desktop Linux on its 1% market share.

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