Hacker News Reader

Comment by actuallyalys | Hacker News Reader

There’s truth in broad strokes (e.g., the lack of a stable ABI is a genuine problem) that I wish people would acknowledge. I think your attitude is a healthy one! However, I don’t think this article is written very charitably. It seems unfair to Linux developers to suggest that they spend “very little to no time” testing their changes for regressions, for example. And while AppImage, snaps, and flatpacks are imperfect, I’m not sure they deserve to be dismissed as just “virtual lightweight machines.” (I’m not sure how accurate that even is for AppImage.)

Linux users can be defensive or even toxic about their operating system so I hardly blame the author for being impatient or frustrated. Still, I don’t blame people for being frustrated in turn at that tone.

View on HN

Saying that Flatpak is "virtual lightweight machines" is just plain wrong.

There is no hardware emulation in a Flatpak. There are no "machines" virtual or otherwise other than the computer and host kernel that you are running as an operating system on it. What Flatpaks provide are the support libraries ( the specific versions of those libraries ) that an application requires to run. That is exactly the strategy that Windows uses as well. Windows applications, usually distributed as binaries from very early in the history of the OS, have learned to bundle most of those libraries themselves. For the low level stuff like C and C++ standard libraries, Windows bundles multiple generations of them that are taking up space ( and providing attack surface ) whether you are using them or not. The biggest difference with Flatpaks is that these libraries are not installed until you install and app that needs them. This is why the author complains that Flatpaks "waste space". Windows takes up tens of gigabytes of storage for a basic install but then does not require as much to be installed later to support legacy apps. Somehow the author thinks this is better.

> I don’t think this article is written very charitably

It definitely isn't, but honestly Linux could use more of a drill-sergeant treatment. It's either that or we keep doting on our little pet OS and give up on the idea of desktop Linux being at all a viable competitor to the goliaths of Microsoft and Apple. Maybe we never stood a chance?

Keep in mind, I'm pretty much committed to Linux myself, as I'm not willing to compromise with Microsoft and Apple's user-disrespecting, locked-down, enshittified software. But I have no illusions about the inconveniences and sacrifices of that decision.

I tend to think it’s not really possible for volunteer open source to directly compete with tech corporations when it comes to polish and cohesion of a large end-user ecosystem—it’s just too much cat herding and uphill battle even to agree on a vision.

That said, Linux has other advantages that corporations will never touch because it doesn’t make business sense. I’m really glad it’s still there as a bulwark against enshittification and all computing freedom being taken away from individuals.

The vast majority of Linux is not volunteer open source. It's corporate developers. It's also focused on the server. Tech companies seem to use a lot of Macs these days although I assume Windows predominates overall.

Yep. A good chunk of desktop Linux is thanks to paid Red Hat developers contributing to projects like GNOME. Valve pays for a good deal of Linux's graphics-related userspace code. And another chunk of paid work is handled by non-profits like the KDE organization. There aren't as many weekend hackers keeping your Debian workstation and Pop!_OS laptop running as you might expect.

Red Hat almost certainly does less on-the-clock desktop-specific work than they used to though I expect there are still a lot of GNOME contributions from employed developers. I'm not sure there is a good paid contributors accounting survey at this point, but it's still mostly paid especially outside of the desktop world.

> a bulwark against enshittification and all computing freedom being taken away from individuals

I'd like to believe that, but I can't help but think that if Microsoft really wanted to lock all PC hardware so that it could only run Windows, or if Google really wanted to add Attestation features to Chrome so major websites only worked on proprietary OSes, "the Linux guys would complain" wouldn't make their executives hesitate even for a moment. (In some cases EU legislators might give them pause, however.)

They managed to add DRM to HTML without too much trouble, after all. And now that Mozilla is an advertising company, that kind of thing will only get easier. And even with the Linux-based Steam Deck selling a million units or so, game companies are still fine locking Linux out if they feel like it.

Desktop Linux is pretty much totally ignored by the money people, the big decision-makers. Linux users are a very tiny minority. Your average person on the street barely knows what it is, if they've heard of it at all. So I'm not sure it qualifies as a "bulwark", I'm sorry to say.

> I don’t think this article is written very charitably

Why would it be? It's about Linux on the _desktop_ where it sucks a$$.

Open Reddit, open any distro related forum, open unix stackexchange - hundreds of support messages daily from a tiny Linux community. That should speak volumes about how ready it is and I didn't even touch on individual issues. The article is called "Final", I will not be actively updating it. The previous one existed for over a decade and I'm done with it.

Well, yeah, and open answers.microsoft.com and it's hundreds of support messages daily from the Windows community. Where else are people going to for Linux problems other than the Linux problem support sites?

Linux on the desktop sucks ass, for the stupid people. Smart people running Linux on the desktop are having a fantastic time with zero problems.

This is a good example of a positive, necessary conversation that was almost thwarted by an engagement-optimized article. It only happened (three quarters of the way down the HN comment section) because a few users were mature enough to not take the bait and actually discuss the issues at hand. Good stuff from both you and the parent poster.

Thanks for your kind words! I do think there are valid criticisms in the article, even if the overall framing isn’t productive.

While the tone and framing may make it especially good at attracting responses, I do want to clarify that I don’t think it was deliberately optimized for the engagement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com