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Comment by ndriscoll | Hacker News Reader

My sample size is fairly small, but I've not encountered driver issues on anything in the last ~15 years. Most stuff is in tree (IME everything except nvidia), and despite what others report, I've never had an issue with nvidia binary drivers. My desktop with gtx1070 has been running the same installation for 8 years now.

Why do you think Linux can't do auto-updates? There's probably a built in option for your distribution, but if not, just run your update command on a timer.

Phones and ARM land seem to be a disaster of hardware support, but x86 PCs/laptops have all worked great for me.

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> Why do you think Linux can't do auto-updates?

Because they literally cannot. Linux package managers like to ask deeply technical questions. Even on Ubuntu dpkg will occasionally ask about configuration file changes and expect you to make decisions like keeping the existing one, replacing the config file with the new one or editing it. Windows never asks such questions. Its configs are relatively stable and usually Windows uses more formally defined forms like registry or XML files. They are much easier to write migration scripts for than human readable text files on Linux.

As far as I know even packages like `unattended-upgrades` from Ubuntu doesn't perform things like kernel upgrades which requires `apt dist-upgrade`. They are required for keeping good security. And forget about upgrading an actual version like from 24.04 to 24.10. On Windows upgrades from 24H1 to 24H2 are relatively painless and can easily rolled back. My Ubuntu running colleagues had to rescue their distros at least twice since a version upgrade went wrong.

That is a Debian/Ubuntu deb package quirk - RPM installation on Fedora/RHEL/OpenSUSE is fully non-interactive, as it should be.

So not only are less technical users not confused, but you will never return only to see a system upgrade stuck on some useless interactive prompt from a deb package.

No. I use RPM distros like OpenSUSE. They just don't ask the necessary questions just notify you. So if you installed SAMBA to share files or printers, the distro update will break stuff without telling you.

A user-friendly OS should require almost 0 system administration except emergencies. Windows is that OS and Linux is not. Android is closest Linux ever got and it is pretty good. I say that as a person who deals with my own cloud stuff (Nextcloud / Jellyfin media servers) and as one of the maintainers of our embedded distro at my day job.

A typical user shouldn't have to install samba. If you're the system admin for them, you install samba when you install their system (they wouldn't be installing windows either!). The only reason this is coming up is because you might not be forced to install samba as part of a typical linux install whereas a typical windows install includes everything you will never need.

That's the thing: the amount of sysadmin role I would like to play for my family is nearly 0. And, no simple file sharing or accessing NAS systems shouldn't require a "sysadmin".

They should work out of the box for a consumer computer system with minimal configuration and updates shouldn't break functionality. Windows provides this Linux doesn't.

Windows OS design, the overall mentality of the developers designing software for Windows also reinforces this pattern. A consumer system should keep working without asking user unnecessary questions. They have to be designed to be somewhat future proof so breaking binary and configuration compatibility is minimal. With Linux systems (or any bazaar-style OS) this is impossible.

> They should work out of the box for a consumer computer system with minimal configuration and updates shouldn't break functionality. Windows provides this Linux doesn't.

Have you asked for a refund?

> Because they literally cannot

Nixos works fine, thanks!

> On Windows upgrades from 24H1 to 24H2 are relatively painless and can easily rolled back.

Nixos does this, but I can't remember the last time I used it. Maybe early on, about 9 years ago.

> > Because they literally cannot

> Nixos works fine, thanks!

me: "Linux is not suitable for non-technical users of my family to keep up-to-date with minimal effort and I don't want them to be dependent on me to solve smaller problems".

you: Let me suggest a distro that goes against many binary conventions and uses a specialty functional programming language to configure itself that not even all Linux users bother to learn.

You just showed how detached you are.

> that goes against many binary conventions

Why would non-technical users care about binary conventions? Wasn't the whole point that you'd set it up for them and they couldn't break it?

That's what nixos does. You refuse to use the right tool for the job and moan that the hammer isn't driving the screw correctly.

I think you are the one recommending an electronic screwdriver for nails.

Non-techies care about whether their systems continue to work with minimal effort and they are assured that the system is secure and I care about providing almost no support to them but still having functional IT at home (working printer, NAS, file sharing).

With Nixos it is more difficult to guarantee that the programs (drivers, third party stuff) keep working since you have to play the guarantor/sysadmin role. Breaking binary compatibility with existing apps opens up problems with drivers and other third parties that conform to rougly LFHS. Even when you compile from source which for me should never happen with consumer OSes.

> to guarantee that the programs (drivers, third party stuff) keep working

You clearly haven't used Windows...

I've experimented with linux auto updates and the only one I found which easily and clearly worked while staying in the background was Mint. Mint seems like a modern lightweight equivalent to what Ubuntu was 20 years ago.

Fedora might be second place with options between "do the updates ASAP but there might be weirdness if you're running something that gets updated" or "download and do a big install when you want to turn the PC off/restart". The bigger problem is that dnf-automatic and apt's automatic-updates seem pretty finicky to set up correctly and get feedback that it's happening, plus the documentation seems old and thin on the ground, it's just enough to cover the happy path and there doesn't seem to be any recent ongoing work. For Arch don't even bother because their attitude is that system admin must be handled by a human, automation for pacman isn't supported.

Yeah I can't remember the last time I looked for a driver for anything on Linux... Even with nvidia I only install it on my desktop because of cuda, but then it's not like windows comes with cuda enabled?!

It does though? And CUDA a freaking GPGPU programming framework? My parents and other family members give 0 fucks about it.

I actually helped more people to setup CUDA on Linux since the environment is so hostile to closed-source and/or out-of-the tree software. The easiest way to get working CUDA on Linux is actually using WSL nowadays. It automatically links with the Windows driver and places necessary interface libraries as symlinks.

My whole point was that it came with every driver I've ever needed, and the cuda thing was to show that only the most esoteric, non-parents-and-other-family device needed a driver.

./nvidia...... ENTER ENTER ENTER has always worked pretty well for me.

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