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Comment by tgv | Hacker News Reader

Linux isn't there (on the desktop), and I doubt it'll ever be. It lacks so much: newbie support, drivers, easy configuration (user friendliness in general), and software. There's so much software that doesn't run on Linux. Linux also lacks mature frameworks that make development for macOS and .NET easy. The only thing desktop linux does well is browsing. That would be enough for most people, but they also have tablets and phones, and no need for a desktop.

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User friendliness isnt that bad depending on distro, configuration is fine, but not great.

The big problem isn't friendliness, it's that you don't buy a laptop with it installed. Most people are not realistically going to install a different operating system, they're going to use the one the laptop comes with.

https://system76.com

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en

I am quite sympathetic towards Tuxedo, and am considering to replace my work laptop (a 6yr old MBP) with one of those when it stops working, but those are Apple and gaming laptop prices, not mass market prices.

It's unusable even with the "user-friendly" distros like Mint and Ubuntu. Starting with the fact that Mint and Ubuntu don't even agree on what window system to use.

Why should they?

So you don't get a separate set of random video-related problems depending on which you use

I don't understand. First, how is that a problem? Second, why is it the default expectation that different operating systems will have the same set of flaws?

Fragmentation makes compatibility and help-finding more difficult. And newbies do get the expectation that the mainstream options aren't all that different, cause that's what everyone tells them.

You kind of moved the goalpost there. That's different from them being unusable. Windows and OSX are different from each other too, are they unusable as well?

I didn't say that fragmentation is the only thing that makes them unusable, it's just one of many. Yeah it is a big thing though.

People do have difficulty switching between Mac and Windows, but each has critical mass so it's still easy to get help with the finer details. And unrelated to fragmentation, anyone tech literate won't have nearly as many showstopping issues to ask about there in the first place.

> lacks mature frameworks that make development for macOS

Really? And windows does?

C#, or rather .NET, is pretty decent. I rate it lower than the macOS frameworks for UI development, but it brings a lot of functionality, which has been refined since the days of Visual Basic. Linux simply doesn't have that development effort. Completely understandable, but it holds Linux back, in particular on the desktop.

If you're not convinced: look at the difference between desktop Linux and Android. Although Android Studio seems to be a bit of a disaster nowadays, there's a lot of development support for Android, and it shows in the 1.6 million apps that have been built for it. Android has got what people crave: easy, slick, user-friendly apps, no technical hassle. It's an uphill battle, and at the same time, the focus is shifting away from desktop. So I think the year of Linux for the desktop will likely never come.

Absolutely

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