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Comment by hilbert42 | Hacker News Reader

"And Linux isn't minimal effort. It's an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple."

I wish this weren't so but it's true. Microsoft and Apple also have the numbers game on their side, and humans mainly want to be part of the crowd/with the numbers—not outsiders.

There's also the matter of how Linux is developed, developers tend to develop for purposes other than maximizing its usability for end users, that is there's been no cohesive or strategic effort on the part of Linux developers (the Linux community as a whole) to steal users away from MS and Apple (there's no financial incentive to do so).

It's the 'individuality' of Linux that hinders its widespread adoption.

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To me that is the best part. There is no shareholder value to answer to, there is no market share because there is nothing for sale. People can complain about gnome or kde and it doesn't matter one bit. You can't stage a "hostile takeover" and force a group to stop releasing their own work for free. There is no threat of an overnight architecture change for the sake of vertical integration. It's freedom when your tools are not at the mercy of these things. Honestly it's amazing that folks can team up from all over the world with this shared goal to take control of their computing.

I think PulseAudio and systemd are significant counterexamples to your claim against staging a "hostile takeover." The community has learned, at a practical level, "hostile takeovers" can and will happen.

yeah!!! I agree with you!

"And Linux isn't minimal effort."

I don't agree with this anymore!!! Linux, presently, it's an easy OS. You don't have to get to the CLI if you don't want to. If you're "just" a simple user you can just live in the GUI like in windows and get on with it!!!

Is it, really?

With Windows you can just download an app.

With MacOS you sometimes need to pick between Intel or Apple Silicon.

For Linux you invariably have to navigate list of Deb or RPM, perhaps TarGz files, maybe a torrent or two.

Sticking with apt can lead to a list of issues of ensuring you have the right dependencies.

Let’s start before that : With Windows the OS usually comes pre installed, with Macs, always.

Linux - with one to pick? Ubuntu, PopOS, Elementary?

Oh, so you picked Ubuntu - congratulations - now which DE? Or should you pick a derivative such as Mint first?

I’m a huge fan of Linux servers - I think they’re so easy to work with on a server level even with many of the same issues I described above and I’m actively ripping out every Windows server in our environment and replacing it with Linux.

But I still, after all these years, can’t seem to pick a Desktop Linux platform that I feel comfortable with. And this after 40 years in the industry.

Right, for ordinary users there's an inertia to Linux that Apple and Windows don't have.

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