Why don't more people use Linux | Hacker News Reader

Why don't more people use Linux

world.hey.com

8 pointssynergy208 comments

> It's an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple.

This has become less true as time passes. I installed Debian Stable on one of my relatives laptop, configured web browsing and stuff. Hasn't heard anything in years. Whereas my mom who uses Windows will routinely complain about her computer becoming too slow. When you factor in that Windows actively leans towards clear user hostile behavior, I just struggle to see why someone would bother. Granted Macos is a completely different story and find myself recommending it more and more. As long as you are comfortable paying your way out of problems at a premium, that is.

I also took issue with that sentence. I agree that it's less and less true.

I've also been recommending mac or linux mint to the computer illiterates in my life because windows is so unusable (and actively user hostile to boot) that I simply won't deal with it at all under any circumstances. Last time I tried to help a family member configure regular backups on their windows 10 machine I couldn't figure out how to achieve the desired outcome between the three separate settings menus and a total lack of clear explanation (on system or in documentation) about what the settings meant and how they'd behave if the computer was off, actively in use, or whatever. I might just be stupid but I'll tell you I've never had to spend hours chasing up that clarity on modern Debian based Linux or even Mac (which is just awful for never communicating settings clearly). I suppose I'm just saying that I agree that I don't understand why people bother in a long winded way.

More people do use Linux. Everyone with an Android phone uses Linux. Linux runs on many web servers. It runs on many IoT devices. I mean, I know the point this person is trying to make, but they did a sloppy job of it.

> Now I totally understand why most computer users aren't interested in an intellectual workout when all they want to do is browse the web or use an app.

This is exactly what my wife's elderly mother wanted to do. We got fed up trying to support her windows computer so I slapped Debian on an old laptop and gave it to her. She loves it and has been using it for years.

For me it's still total immaturity everywhere in GUI and consumer hardware. The most performant mail client, kMail, cashes too much, when it has more than ten thousand of emails its performance is very bad it's preferences are somewhat crazy. Still a mess with DPI scaling. Still a mess with the mix of different KDE/Gnome/Qt styled applications everywhere. None of the modern distributions can turn off my monitor by DDC when entering dark mode after computer inactivity. I'l kee my hackintosh as long as i can, it handles hardware much more better than any other OS.

kMail is not the most performant mail client. Neomutt works fine with > 10k emails.

DPI scaling works fine with Wayland + Kanshi, and a few environment variables for GTK+ applications.

The "mess" of application styling is an application-level problem, and the same problem exists in plenty of Windows applications.

I didn't use Windows for more than a decade, but I don't remember a mess with the standard dialogs in it. Maybe with the Qt-based applications, which brings their crap everywhere.

Neomutt is not a GUI mail client, and from usual distributives-oob clients, kMail seems to be most performant.

DPI scaling works terribly everywhere in Linux if you have more than one monitor with different DPI, none of the most popular distributives has it fixed.

I understand you wanna say that Linux can be usable on a desktop with a jointer and a file, but my talk about usual people and what is wrong in it from their PoV. I love Linux kernel and how it behaves on servers, but it is a still crappy non-uniform zoo on desktops. Some strokes of light and unifying can be seen with the systemd, but it's not related to GUI yet, and even there it has some strong integration counterforces involved. Linux needs systemd for GUI.

I dont understand it either.

The "computer illiterates" are only "computer illiterates" because they use windows.

Just watching anyone using windows trying to navigate something simple like changing DNS is excruciatingly painful.

The friends I have introduced to Linux would not be without it now.

One issue for me is the state of DRM for video, at least for Raspberry PI OS (on a Raspberry Pi 5). I don't know if this is an issue on other flavours of Linux.

I currently use a MacBook Pro laptop which is great but very expensive if you need a decent amount of RAM.

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