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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Again?

I’ve been using Linux on my desktop since 2004 or so.

And lack of games is always brought up as if gaming was one essential feature of a computer. That’s what consoles are for.

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I've been using Linux on my desktop even longer, but I agree with at least the premise of the article (even though the arguments are poorly thought out and expressed most of the time).

No Linux-based OS has gained mainstream acceptance. You can try to blame that on marketing or corporations or whatever, but I don't buy that. I think open source software is the best way to make technically-superior software, but I think often it's a poor way to create the best user experiences, because the kinds of people who create open source software often don't care to focus on UX.

> That’s what consoles are for.

Millions (tens? hundreds? more?) of Windows gamers would disagree with you. You buy a console and do what you want, sure, go for it. But there is a market for Windows gaming, a very big one.

Gnome tries to focus on UX and does a pretty good job at it. But they're yet to make a regular user oriented distro, which I think could be a better bet at realizing that 'mainstream linux' idea, because at least they'd care enough to try and figure out the things that get in the way of users having linux running.

Some standard, good enough, apps would help further this idea. Right now, I can’t find a mail client for Gnome that’s as comfortable to use as Apple’s Mail app. I use Mailspring, and it comes really close, but still could be nicer. It’s also not part of Gnome.

Gnome is a very well managed project, but its resources aren’t infinite.

Thunderbird seems to be getting there.

> often don't care to focus on UX.

Or they do, but it's not the average Windows user's UX they focus on.

There are a lot of games that will never make it to consoles because they don't play well (or at all) without a keyboard and mouse. It's also easier (sometimes much easier) to develop games on PC.

That having been said, most games work fine on Linux nowadays anyway.

Same, well, earlier, but Warty was my first time going all in and not dual booting.

I don't game, so that doesn't bother me, though I read it works pretty well these days.

I've used nothing but Linux since, of various flavors. Use it for work, use it for home. Everything just works.

One thing I will note is that despite my general distaste for Electron, it's probably been the biggest recent accelerant for making this all easier. Slack, VSCode, Teams(yuck), MongoDB compass, Postman, etc all work flawlessly. Prior to it existing, we were stuck with Wine, open source alternatives in various states of disrepair, or missing out. I can't even remember the last time I had to 'miss out' because of Linux, I think it was some proprietary VPN blob around 2010 or so.

Games happen to be software, that hundreds of millions use, especially younger tech-oriented people. So yes, it IS essential if you want to make a PC people will use.

Games are particularly interesting though, because they're likely the only legacy software an average person might want to run, while also being the most likely to be closed source.

Anyway, desktop Linux keeps getting relatively better when you compare the increasing hell that a Windows user is subject to.

(Hello hello Ricardo)

Besides proton/wine/VMs for gaming which are all very good, console/computer emulation for gaming is solid in Linux, including literal plug and play joystick support.

With Proton, Wine, Lutris etc you certainly can also game on a Linux if you want. I was just playing Path of Exile 2 on the Steam Deck (a Linux desktop)

>if gaming was one essential feature of a computer.

They are, that's why I have to dual boot. If my games worked on Linux, I would never run Windows. DirectX is their lock-in.

I'm guessing both 2004 YOLD AND 2024 YOLD were both on slashdot. Perhaps introspect as to why...

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