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Comment by longrod | Hacker News Reader

It took Linux desktop some 20 years to reach the point where you could just use it i.e., no tinkering needed, everything works by default, you install the software you need and that's it. It's not perfect even now but it's much better. I rarely have to pop into the terminal to tinker with a system config file now.

We don't have 20 years to wait when it comes to free software phones. The problem is that phones are not meant to be hacked upon. They are meant to be used. Sure, it may feel nice to tinker and stuff but everything should just work before you can even consider it a daily driver.

I haven't personally used Librem or Pinephone so I don't know how far along they are in terms of user experience (not developer experience).

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> The problem is that phones are not meant to be hacked upon. They are meant to be used. Sure, it may feel nice to tinker and stuff but everything should just work before you can even consider it a daily driver.

This is no different than the stuff people said about desktop/personal computers in the pre-smartphone days. And yet plenty of us used linux desktops to participate in a web-centric society without significant trouble while preserving our computing freedoms.

What you're referring to as "phones" aren't even phones. For the vast majority of smartphone users making phone calls is rarely if ever done, despite carrying these devices 24x7x365. Hell they're not even capable of making phone calls anywhere near the low-latency high-quality experience of (land-line) phones.

They're computers without keyboards on a wireless network, plain and simple.

And computers are "meant" to be hacked upon.

I have not used Librem, but I own a Pinephone. Anecdotally, while the initial impression of community edition was not great ( I personally blame ubuntu as default OS ), I eventually tried PostmarketOS ( on HN recommendation actually ) and I am now going through side by side testing with my work phone as a backup.

For basic stuff ( phone, text, light net use ) it works. It is not polished. It is very much underpowered.. but there is something to be said for having that level of control over a machine. I think I agree with you; it will take take time the same way it did with desktop linux. Still, I am more optimistic now.. we are starting to have real options outside of the duopoly forced down humanity's throats.

And.. even if you are not ready to jump onto new hardware, you can install Kali linux in Android now[1].

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxOGyuGq0Ts

> you can install Kali linux in Android now

This solves some problems (running Linux UI and apps) but leaves some very important others unaddressed (security). The point isn't just installing Linux but also removing from devices every piece of non free -as in not open, therefore non auditable and by extension not trustworthy- piece of firmware/OS/software. The hardest part is achieving that goal and many initiatives are struggling to get as close as possible to that point. As a Linux guy, I would love being able to turn a spyware ridden phone into a 100% open Linux platform, but if someone said like that it can be done, but they're using *BSD, or Haiku, or whatewer 100% open OS out there, that would be great anyway.

I don't disagree, but it is important to have options to match various use cases. Even few years ago, it would not be feasible just in terms CPU power to run another OS on top of Android.

So while it does not address some issues ( and one could argue create some new ones ), it is overall a positive development. We want more people looking at it from different angles and saying something along the lines of:

"God damn it. The current status quo is not working for me. Let me change it."

I applaud such effort in that space. Fake Android/Apple choice aggravates me.

Linux has worked much better out of the box than Windows for a number of applications since at least a 2006.

Don't confuse Windows, - slipstreamed and supported by a competent IT department - with what a user gets out of the box from an OEM.

Please note:

I have supported users on Windows from 1995 to somewhere after 2012 (a little bit blurry).

Just saying "you don't know what you are talking about" won't cut it.

You can't know what you are talking about?

Your experience supporting Windows users isn't all encompassing, you defined no criteria whatsoever for "better out of the box", you didn't define any of the applications... the list goes on.

Take ease of install. I assure you in 2006 Linux was not as easy to install as it is today when it comes to things like having working power management. Even something as basic as having a computer successfully go to sleep and come back with working wifi was often a challenge.

Or take gaming. Today Wine/Proton have come leaps and bounds and Linux still ends up excluded from some of the largest gaming titles out there.

Or making a simple word document that renders the same way on Window user's PCs as it does on yours. I was one of those people trying to force OpenOffice/LibreOffice and there was nothing more fun than chasing down weird issues when a Windows user using one of the most popular word editors on earth couldn't properly render your document...

The reality is Windows won on desktop, and a very small minority of people still want to dump on Windows. For all its warts, it's clearly made the tradeoffs that benefit the largest number of desktop users.

>Today Wine/Proton have come leaps and bounds and Linux still ends up excluded from some of the largest gaming titles out there.

It is due to anti-cheat. Whose fault is that? The developers refuse to support linux even if we meet them halfway.

>The reality is Windows won on desktop, and a very small minority of people still want to dump on Windows. For all its warts, it's clearly made the tradeoffs that benefit the largest number of desktop users.

Windows "won" because it was there first and it's stayed there due to its anti-competitive behavior (see halloween documents, windows refund day, etc.). You would be hard-pressed to buy a laptop or something without paying for microsoft's license- they have deals with all the manufacturers to stop competition before it even happens.

Microsoft is sitting on top of a massive cash cow. They will continue to plunder their user-base with ads and spyware, and they will continue neglect their responsibilities as a custodian to the extent that it improves their numbers in some board-room meeting. The "value-offering" of windows will get so bad that users might switch to linux/wine or reactOS. They might not switch now, but here's the way I see it: linux will only improve and windows will only get worse. It's not over until the fat lady sings.

> It is due to anti-cheat. Whose fault is that? The developers refuse to support linux even if we meet them halfway.

Windows meets them all the way. Not having to deal with LSB, Glibc, different distros, etc.

> Windows "won" because it was there first and it's stayed there due to its anti-competitive behavior

Why does every pro-Linux statement devolve into an anti-Windows statement the moment it meets resistance.

If Linux is truly "better" for whatever useful meaning of that word there is, I cannot for the life of me understand why the invariant that Linux cannot actually be promoted on the desktop without tearing down Windows to do so.

>Windows meets them all the way. Not having to deal with LSB, Glibc, different distros, etc.

Windows doesn't do shit besides stand there.

>Why does every pro-Linux statement devolve into an anti-Windows statement the moment it meets resistance.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Imagine I build a robot that does your job faster than you, better than you, more reliably than you, and I distribute it for free. One small issue though: it only speaks French. Are you really going to suggest that in a sane market, you would stand a chance against this robot?

You have to conclude that a market in which windows defeats linux is irrational. If windows did not wield its' reverse compatibility and did not have anti-competitive dealings with manufacturers, it would just be another corpse in the pile of defeated unixes (solaris, etc.).

Microsoft has a unique market position due to its business relationships. That's no attribute of the windows operating system, and it is an advantage that can slowly erode over time. My problem is that you're asserting that there's some characteristic of the windows operating system that is superior. Reverse-compatibility is a anti-feature, It's just not obvious in the short-term.

> Are you really going to suggest that in a sane market, you would stand a chance against this robot?

Yes! Because if no one speaks French, and it's not so much better that people are suddenly willing to learn French, then no one will want to use it!

And Linux is not some vision of perfection either, there are still warts around the quality and polish of userspace applications compared to Windows, so meeting the incredibly high bar of "throw out your entire method of thinking for this" is nearly impossible.

You've just perfectly summed up why "the year of the Linux Desktop" has been coming up for nearly 2 decades now.

There's never a been a year of the anything desktop. That's not a thing that gets proclaimed by anyone at any time. Who would have to say it for you to suddenly accept that Linux desktops are awesome and have been for 20 years. Would you accept it if Steve Balmer said it? Gates? You wouldn't even then because this is a sports team to you.

You're clearly taking this too personally to have a productive conversation so I'll leave it where it was.

Ironic you bring up sports teams though...

No need to be dramatic. If you think of an answer to my query, let us know. Until then I'll consider it resolved.

My experience with installing Windows in 2006 was being presented with a 1-800 number I had to call, so that I could read off a massive hex string and type in an endless series of call-and-response codes. That was AFTER having to dig out a floppy drive -- in 2006 -- because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to update their installation media with SATA drivers.

Once that was done I was faced with a nearly-driverless machine, followed by several hours of shuttling .msi files in via USB drive (including a four hundred megabyte printer driver?!), capped off with a four- to six-hour Windows Update marathon, during which my computer rebooted at random.

Installing Windows was what made me investigate Linux in the first place. Since then I have found peace with Apple products, but I seriously think you're looking at Windows of old with some rose-tinted glasses.

In 2007 or 2008 I remember I spent 4 hours installing one supposedly preconfigured Windows OEM machine.

Meanwhile Linux had live installers.

Driver hunting was still part of a normal Windows installation, meanwhile for many standard configurations Ubuntu worked out of the box or with trivial (apt-getable) additions.

Also I tried to carefully qualify it. There were absolutely cases were Windows would be easier.

> It took Linux desktop some 20 years to reach the point where you could just use it i.e., no tinkering needed, everything works by default, you install the software you need and that's it.

Only took about 5 years for me. And that's probably only because I didn't know about it until '96.

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