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Comment by Osiris | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you. That's certainly a 'pro' on the side of Linux. I stated that every OS has it's pros and cons, but my goal wasn't to list what those are.

To say unilaterally that it's better for all people at all times in all use cases is, at the very least, an overstatement. While being free is a top concern for you and many others, for some (perhaps many) usability might be their top concern and they may be willing to sacrifice freedom for usability, and that's a choice we should all be free to make.

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>usability might be their top concern and they may be willing to sacrifice freedom for usability

While some argue that this is the current situation, I want to point out that's a false dichotomy. Freedom and usability aren't orthogonal concepts like some make them out to be. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we need to lock everything down to make it "usable".

Also, Freedom of software (and hardware) ultimately has greater implications on society as a whole, which is why I raised the issue. It's not merely a feature, a pro or con, it's something which at least people like here on HN should be greatly concerned about. Computers play an incredibly important role today, and will only become even more important in the future. It's important to retain control over them on a fundamental level, and that requires Open Standards, Free Software and Open Hardware.

> While some argue that this is the current situation, I want to point out that's a false dichotomy. Freedom and usability aren't orthogonal concepts like some make them out to be. I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we need to lock everything down to make it "usable".

Nobody is making this claim, so why are you trying to refute it?

For the virtues of locking everything down, I would switch from free v not to mac v windows. These are the two dominant operating systems, dislike it as I think we do. Apple locks down everything. Apple hardware, on the iphone Apple Software, Apple plugins and addons, everything, to the greatest extent possible, is controlled by Apple. This yields benefits. Driver installs giving you problems? Not with Apple. Screen display no working properly? Not with Apple. They control everything, and they make it all perfect. Windows makes a "something for everyone and everything" strategy. It gives you more options, but it also gives you more headaches. I don't think it is possible to increase options endlessly without costs.

OS X is not really that locked down. There is quite a lot you can go through and change and customise and tinker until your heart is content.

OS X is hardly customizable. The user interface, for example, is pretty hard to customized while on Windows, numerous patches exist to modify completely the user experience (it might be because it is less needed on OSX..). Also, SIMBL allows to patch applications and add features, but it is far from being trivial. I do think Windows is more customizable. Concerning Linux, you can just do what you want with it.

I don't feel like these are a major issues today, or that they have been for some time, but back in the day I know a lot of hatred toward Windows/Microsoft stemmed from Linux users feeling slighted by the lack of support from ISVs and hardware manufacturers, the relatively immature state of Wine, and above all Microsoft's constant FUD / aggressive (and often illegal[1]) politics / lawsuit threats / etc.

Throw debacles like Silverlight, OOXML, IE, and Vista into the mix, and it's not hard to justify a lot of the resentment toward the "Evil Empire" from back then.

Today (though Microsoft had to be dragged here kicking and screaming), Microsoft actively supports open source (CodePlex), open standards (ODF is officially supported by Office), and the open Web (they're clearly genuinely trying with IE9+); on top of that, they're rolling out some pretty solid products (Kinect, Win8, MSE, WP7, Azure/AppFabric, all the random stuff MS Research does, etc.). Mind you, I still wouldn't be caught dead using Windows or any other Microsoft product, but it's nice to such an influential tech company changing for the better.

[1] http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vo...

"To say unilaterally that it's better for all people at all times in all use cases is, at the very least, an overstatement."

Yes. Just better for hackers who want to alter anything about the code they are working with.

"While being free is a top concern for you and many others, for some (perhaps many) usability might be their top concern and they may be willing to sacrifice freedom for usability"

False dichotomy.

>> "While being free is a top concern for you and many others, for some (perhaps many) usability might be their top concern and they may be willing to sacrifice freedom for usability"

> False dichotomy.

I disagree, he's not stating that there's a correlation between free-ness and usability. Just that what he (and maybe most "normal" people?) consider usable is not currently available in free form. As a result they end up with a choice between "better usability" and "worse usability" and it just so happens that the entire former category happens to be non-free.

Now I know a lot of linux fans disagree and say that linux is just as usable as OSX/windows, but I personally disagree and the markets appear to be backing me up on this. Unless you are supposing there is some other important reason for people not to switch?

Theoretically linux and the important applications can be made just as usable, but it hasn't happened yet...

The only thing the market backs up, is that decades of lock-in, billions of dollars in advertising, pre-installation of the OS and lobby-ism make the difference when the competition has no such resources.

The reason people don't switch may very well be that noone except tech-aware people has ever heard of Linux (I'm pretty sure my parents don't). And as this poll suggests, for people that know Linux, it is a very very good alternative to Windows, even better than that ;)

Do you honestly think so many people here would use Linux instead of Windows when it's not "usable"? You know, i'd like to get my work done, so i'm using what makes me most productive. Certainly not Windows.

Sure, for programming linux (any unix, really) is superior (personally I use OSX). But, for just desktop usage (browsing, e-mail, video, music) I much prefer Windows to linux. OSX vs Windows is a bit of a toss-up, I prefer OSX because of the unix environment for programming, but I still keep windows around for games.

Since XP the instability issues have Windows have been a thing of the past and the Windows 7 user experience has been pretty solid in my experience. Granted I don't do anything complicated under Windows (like I said, unix wins for programming), but neither do most "normal" people.

Edit: Also, note I'm not saying that Linux isn't usable, it is just that most trivial desktop tasks take me significantly more effort to get done nicely under Linux. Whether the benefit of other tasks (scripting your system/whatever) taking less effort outweighs this extra effort depends on the frequency of the different types of tasks.

I'd argue that specifically for the standard tasks Internet, Mail, Video, Music, Linux is just as fine from a usability point of view. Of course the user doesn't have a benefit of using Linux if his Laptop comes preinstalled with Windows/MacOSX. But that was my point ;)

I still keep windows around for games. Have you used Wine recently? I'm not a serious gamer, but last time I checked, it ran everything I needed.

Wine for games is still a massive crapshoot. Firstly you will get compatibility problems with many DRM systems which is a killer if you plan or running your legally licensed games without cracking them.

Assuming you can then get the game to work , expect graphical glitches a plenty , occasional/not so occasional crashes , slower performance and issue with the audio and visuals being out of sync.

There are a bunch of older games (GTA3 etc) that work fine in wine, and some indie games that have been built for it to begin with but I couldn't recommend it to anyone as a gaming experience that is close to that available in Windows 7.

Completely agree with you. If you are a gamer, the only solution is Windows, there is no alternative.

Steam on OSX brought some hope, but performances are just not there yet, and in any case, as long as developers will stick to Direct X, there won't be any other choice than having a Windows installation. I cannot blame them, Direct X seems to be largely above OpenGL, notably accessibility wise.

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