What is really missing for Linux desktop nowadays? Still drivers? And I guess office software and gui configurability.
Libre Office is more than sufficient for most people.
> gui configurability
A bit confused by that. Linux desktop environments tend to be more configurable, and you can configure most things end users want to configure in a GUI with the major DEs.
Do you mean the sysadmins cannot configure as much in a GUI? I think that probably is a major barrier as it means a lot of retraining.
Also, when you do something different from everyone else, every problem will be blamed on you for doing that.
Buddy, I love Fedora, but this is nonsense.
The UI for Libre Powerpoint(or whatever its called) doesnt have text size on the main screen. The reddit mods on the subreddit literally ban people for complaining about it.
Libre Office isnt the future.
I just use Google sheets.
I was curious, so opened Impress, typed some text, and saw that the font selection and size was by default open on the right-hand "Properties" panel, alongside all the various text configuration options. So that at least is not true.
I believe this way of configuring is much more efficient. Yes, you have to learn some new things, probably even new paradigm. But once you done, it stays mostly the same for long years, and is dead simple. I am, being Linux user for circa 15 years, see administrating Windows with dread. And most Windows sysadmins I know personally, when I tell them about Linux, and they react like it’s some hidden obscure knowledge they have to spend ten years studying it. Which is vice-versa actually. I cannot imagine what that is, to be a Windows sysadmin, especially supporting all this mediocre engineering.
It may be better, but it needs change and retraining.
> I am, being Linux user for circa 15 years, see administrating Windows with dread.
Me too. I do not much like using Windows either and it seems to be getting worse.
> they react like it’s some hidden obscure knowledge they have to spend ten years studying it.
Partly FUD (lots of people make claims like "you have to compile your own software to use Linux") and partly because people hate change, and partly because it took them 10 years to learn Windows (many years ago) and they expect the same again.
For some reason, things like disks, C:\ and D:\ were logical to me, while I couldn’t grasp why cannot I put my files into root directory, and I’m forced to live in a subdirectory (/home/user) instead. It takes some time to re-learn, but I’m looking back with some dread. Things I accepted as simple, are actually unacceptably complex.
I was mostly thinking about the times I end up needing to tweak something through the terminal. I wouldn't expect most desktop users to want to do this. But maybe you're right that the most important stuff is covered by guis nowadays. There seem to be a lack of guardrails for low to semi-technical users though. I wonder if something like Nix could help with guardrails and being able to backtrack.
Something like nix-gui seems like an interesting approach: https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui
Also, security-by-default for apps would be nice. Snap and Flatpak are great starts but it’s still to difficult to manage and too easy to install non-sandboxed software. Some random weather app should never have access to your photos, camera, file system, networking, etc… without the user explicitly granting permission.
Familiarity being used with workflows is the biggest killer, and why I become a stupid user on Windows. Enterprise makes having Linux installed hard mostly because of checkbox security being a thing that favour monopolies
There are office software and I would be interested to know what gui configurability do you need that doesn't exist already. More often than not when someone ask a question about linux in a forum he will gets answers using the command line. This is not because you can't do it with a gui. The reason is that copying and pasting text is much easier than showing people how to navigate into menus using screenshots and videos. Text based interface are just superior when it comes to support and message boards. People use cli a lot on linux because it is convenient.
It's coming, but not necessarily this year - perhaps the next. Until then I need to break out my Windows laptop to see HDR content.