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None of that reasonably characterizes the reality at all, only what some might fear. In practice, any distribution is suitable for any ordinary purpose, and only relatively uncommon hardware lacks drivers out of box. Linux supports a wide variety of applications just fine.

Common software is generally provided by your system package manager and doesn't require adding any repositories. In the cases where you need to rely on one of the various third-party packaging solutions you assume the same risk that is normalized for every software installation on Windows. A curl | sh invocation is not fundamentally less secure than running an .msi installer.

Old forum posts don't actually 404 and you will practically speaking never have to go back that far, and people don't give you broken links, and if the old information somehow really disappeared or became invalid you could just ask again. And no, even in the Arch world they don't give you a run-around intentionally; they just expect you to demonstrate basic problem-solving skills and not waste others' time.

You might have to give up the applications you are used to, and switch to new ones. This might be easy, or it might be impossible. If all you use is the browser, easy.

I have switched from Windows completely to Linux more than 20 years ago, after a few years of dual-booting.

The moment when I could ditch Windows was when I got on Linux several video-related programs, e.g. a DVD player and a program that could use my TV tuner. For all other applications I had already switched to Linux earlier. Those other applications included MS Office, which at that time I continued to use, but I was using it on Linux under CrossOver, where it worked much better than on the contemporaneous Windows XP (!!). The switch to Linux was not free as in beer, because I was using some programs that I had purchased, e.g. MS Office Professional and CrossOver (which is an improved version of Wine, guaranteed to work with certain commercial programs). I did the switch not to save money, but to be able to do things that are awkward or impossible on Windows.

I do all the things that you mention, and many others, on various desktops and laptops with Linux. I do not doubt that there may be Linux distributions where you may have difficulties in combining very different kinds of applications. However, there certainly also exist distributions without such problems.

For instance, I am using Gentoo Linux, precisely because it allows an extreme customization, I really can combine any kinds of applications with minimal problems, even in most cases when they stupidly insist to use dynamic libraries of a certain version, with each application wanting a different version.

As another example, I am using XFCE as a graphic desktop environment, because it provides only the strictly necessary functions and it allows me to easily combine otherwise conflicting applications, e.g. Gnome applications with KDE applications.

XFCE is actually a great example of the problem with Linux

It's wayland support is utterly broken right now and getting very little attention. The major distros are about to put X11 in the grave and then XFCE will die (or more likely it'll live on in some weird offshoot distro).

That's not really an acceptable situation for a consumer product.

now obviously xfce is not one of the main DEs pushed by the distros, but it's plight is a symptom of a couple of problems that plague linux

Compatibility is important. MSFT, for all their faults, puts a shitload of effort into making sure that even old ass software keeps working. They're not perfect (especially in the last few years) but they're miles ahead of linux here. As a user, I shouldn't ever have to know or care about wayland or pipewire or whatever other nonsense, but that's not the case. I have to know just so I can find software that works with my system.

X11 is not gone yet, XFCE is working on wayland support, and in addition to that, there are projects that work on allowing X11 window managers to run on wayland.

XFCE just has not updated.

If this is a "linux problem", then what about android and ios? its a million times worse, but somehow thats a perfectly good situation for a consumer product?

There’s been no similar situation on ios or Android so your comparison doesn’t make sense to me

there isnt? then how come theres several apps I want to install on android 15 that isnt compatible with newer android because google removed/changed APIs?

you may just not have seen them, because other people work around them.

> Sure, just add this totally not sketchy repository

Or my old favourite "trust me, just run `curl foo | bash` to install..."

Just use any major distribution. Fedora, Debian, Mint, Gentoo, etc.

All linux distributions are essentially packaging the same software. The choice of distribution is just the choice of what organization packages the software.

> I do everything from programming, to gaming, video editing, browsing, basic stuff on Office, 3D modelling and printing, etc. from this computer.

I do all of that on a single linux installation. Your problem is probably that your first instinct is to emulate your old workflow instead of finding a new workflow.

> MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckNux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

There is no real compromise here. If you are running a distro that isn't capable of running everything, you are barking up the wrong tree and probably trying to use some random hannah montana linux maintained by 1 guy.

> Your problem is probably that your first instinct is to emulate your old workflow instead of finding a new workflow.

You perfectly captured in a single sentence the attitude of Linux maintainers and why it will never ever be a mainstream OS.

> > MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckNux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

> There is no real compromise here. If you are running a distro that isn't capable of running everything, you are barking up the wrong tree and probably trying to use some random hannah montana linux maintained by 1 guy.

You got me wrong, I'm not saying that you should go for either of those options, but that if you search online a little bit as a layman, you will be confused because some distributions (popular ones at that) advertise themselves as the right choice to do X.

It's all about confusion for the end user. Just search for "linux gaming distro" and see for yourself the slurry of stupid ass distributions recommended when none of them should exist in the first place.

Essentially your argument boils down to "linux is bad because you have choice".

The slop articles you get are the result of the natural SEO competition.

The real problem is that anyone is propagandizing the concept of a "gaming distro" in the first place.

Well from my experience on a Mac or in iOS you either adapt to their workflow or you leave the platform, I don't think there's a middle ground there. From my experience Linux is actually on the total opposite side, which might be even more confusing: it will allow you to create any workflow you want, if you are willing to sacrifice your sanity to get there. Btw Linux user here who already lost part of their mental health.

Ah yes, famous "you're holding it wrong" :)

(My current gripe is with KDE on Wayland - i decided to move from Gnome on X11 for $reasons and it's so hard to get a thing as simple as clipboard, multiple monitors to work consistently. Apparently devs have very strong opinions on workflows...)

TBH some gaming bound distros enable RT based optizations for gaming not seen in any OS. Also, with Flatpak, there's no excuses, you will get the same software everywhere.

Whatever changes they make would be better if upstreamed to a more popular OS.

I do believe distribution matters somewhat. For example, Fedora requires a lot of messing around to get video playback to work. A non-techie is gonna have a hard time installing gstreamer non-free plugins and non-free ffmpeg from RPM Fusion (not to mention figuring out that that's what they have to do in the first place...).

Non-techie NVidia users will similarly have trouble installing NVidia drivers on distros which don't make that easy.

And some distros are less careful about breaking stuff on updates than others. I stopped using Ubuntu after too many updates where random stuff broke just because Debian Testing happened to have shipped a bad package at the repo sync cut-off in the Ubuntu release cycle. One update made the Nextcloud desktop client segfault on launch, another broke auto login in GDM and required switching to TTY and editing a config file from the command line to fix.

Whether the distro ships a software center which makes it easy to install snaps, flatpaks or both will also heavily influence how easy it is for a new user to install the software they need.

Yes, it's just different packaging of many of the same software components. But it matters a whole lot to new users who rely on things to just work without the skills or experience to customize and debug stuff.

Use Ubuntu/Kubuntu LTS , do not upgrade every 6 m0onths to get the latest bugs from upstream just because they GNOME/KDE made some small improvements for some feature you probably do not use. There are PPAs with latest kernels and NVIDIA driver if you really need to upgrade for your work or gaming. This shit on upgrade happens on cool distros too, just Google Arch broke on update and you will see that there were cases where the efi partition was deleted and the user data was lost or some font customization a dude done to GNOME broke the login after an update.

If you want to install Linux to a less tech person you install an LTS distro and enable only the security updates, you can install Firefox from upsteeam and it has auto update and install ad blockers on it but teach the user how to stop it for specific websites in the case the blocker breaks stuff.

I mainly use various Linux distributions since 90s, also while working in systems administration for most of that time, but to say that "all Linux distributions are essentially packaging the same software" and suggest that's all is a vast...... understatement to say the least.

Different kernels, different system libraries, GPU drivers either no free or open source, kernel patches available or not (because there's a conflict no one has time to fix), security patches' availability (with distinct difference between RHEL-adjacent distributions and the others), different init, even filesystems and window managers with their quirks.

It's bordering on false to suggest all the tasks can be easily replicated in all the distributions, which is also the sentiment among the users. Oh well, perhaps, if you spend infinite amount of time preparing a very specific ansible playbook which will bend and coerce this specific flavour to install all the necessary libraries and patches, kick the kernel just right, and backport the Improvements from the incompatible distribution to the chosen one.

Then yeah.

Perhaps. But you're basically saying MacOS is FreeBSD.

> Your problem is probably that your first instinct is to emulate your old workflow instead of finding a new workflow.

I recently started a new job, and was given a choice of Windows or Linux for my desktop. Picked Linux, specifically Ubuntu, since others there use Ubuntu. (I've been using Macs primarily for decades, but can operate in any OS.)

I have my workflow set up mostly fine now, but...there isn't really any alternative to BBEdit. Anywhere but the Mac. And believe me, I've looked. (I'd genuinely love to be proved wrong, though!)

The combination of

- a programmer's text editor

- that's not focused around "workspaces" (like VSCode—which I also use)

- that can do robust regexp search & replace, both within and across files

- that keeps its list of open files in a sidebar, vertically, rather than in tabs, across the top

- that can transparently open & save files requiring privilege elevation (just provide the password when needed)

- that can transparently open & save files over SFTP

- for free (there's a paid upgrade that unlocks more advanced features that are very neat, but that I have never yet needed)

...appears, from what I can tell, to be unique.

So I'm using...I forget, I think it's kate? and it's fine, I can operate...but between that and a variety of other little things, it's just a constant friction. Fortunately, I should be able to get a Mac laptop; it just needs to be quoted, approved, and ordered.

I think you're describing emacs, or vim. :)

OK; you got me. I was insufficiently prepared for pedantry. Let's add another couple of critical points:

- Must be a GUI application.

- Must integrate at least somewhat reasonably with the platform's keyboard shortcuts and similar, not have its own entire way of doing things that needs 6 years to learn.

Not pedantry; just responding to your "genuine" desire for suggestions. My mistake, I guess.

BBEdit is great, but if you need to learn something new anyway, or if being tied to macOS is ever going to be a concern, emacs or vim are equally-capable and cross-platform options.

You can learn 90% of everything you will ever need in a week or two. You will never need to switch editors again. It's a great trade, all things considered.

I've used both emacs and vim before. Long enough to actually know how.

I don't like using them. (I know, this may come as a shock to a diehard advocate.)

I like GUI text editors much better.

But also: How do vim and emacs do with these points from my requirements?

> - that keeps its list of open files in a sidebar, vertically, rather than in tabs, across the top

> - that can transparently open & save files over SFTP

To the best of my recollection, they don't do either of those. Which, if true, means that even your initial "genuine" response not actually in good faith, because I did say I wanted one that did all of those.

...So maybe keep your snide remarks and scare-quotes to yourself?

You're awfully condescending for someone who started out claiming to be genuine.

That sucks. Good luck out there.

(responding to your edits, for the possible benefit of any readers who are genuinely interested...)

Both emacs and vim can do side panels, and remote editing.

Have you tried Geany? It's what I use often. IDK about privilege escalation, you may need some sort of fumbling around with xhost.

SFTP is an interesting one, I am not sure how the interaction with filezilla goes. I tend to just use scp or edit files in nano over ssh.

So..."try this" that ignores multiple of my requirements.

I don't want to be little your experience, but your self professed difficulties are not universal. Especially calling Linux hostile to users (as opposed to friendly Windows??) just seems like you don't like pepperoni pizza so you're going to tell us how horrible pepperoni pizza is for everyone.

it apperas you do not really quite know what you're talking about. you should update your ideas of what distributions are and do

> given that I do everything from programming, to gaming, video editing, browsing, basic stuff on Office, 3D modelling and printing, etc. from this computer. There's literally no way for Linux to support all of this, and even to get 50% of the way there would be a huge headache with emulation and following half outdated tutorials.

> "Oh, you want to install <common software>? Sure, just add this totally not sketchy repository and run this command which will work only Debian Bookworm. Oh, you have another version? Then ignore what I said before and run this wget command on https://haxx.notavirus.net/sexy-girls.exe and run install.sh as root. Oh, it errored in the middle of the installation? Here's a link to the solution on a decade old forum post that is now a 404."

You really haven't given desktop linux a chance in the last two to four years have you? I will agree its not "ergonomic" enough _yet_ for many casual and intermediary users but I assure you a competent intermediary user or advanced user can do all those tasks without much fuss nowadays. I've been using desktop linux for almost 20 years now and its so much easier nowadays to throw random programs (flatpaks, snaps, appimages, distroboxes and whatnot helps a ton) and have them work correctly, build up a generalist linux workstation that does just about anything you want.

> Also not having to wonder which distribution to install because MyAss_OS! works best for Steam but FuckNux works best with video editing software and you happen to need both.

I wish this could be communicated more clearly to prospective desktop linux users but usually what you want is to be using the bleeding edge. Arch is too bloody and complicated for most users, Fedora strikes a nice balance but will leave you with some cuts and Ubuntu is usually the safest choice, but can be a bit stale.

> Linux supporting all common end user applications and games, and working with all consumer hardware reliably, and having an intuitive and modern looking UI.

Try a gnome based distro (without all the prejudice like "eww it looks like a tablet ui") and tell me if it isn't a damn good, modern and intuitive UI. It has it's faults and own goals I wished the knucklehead gnome devs would fix but its a far cry from anemic linux desktop environments of yore.

As far as linux supporting everything under the sun... I just don't think thats a prerequesite for it to be a good windows alternative and amass a critical mass of users. Maybe once it has 20% market share being everything to everyone will be a goal but for now the best you can do is give it an honest try every few years and see for yourself if it's good enough for your use case. See if existing FOSS software is adequate for your needs or weather it's possible or you are willing to run some of the niche windows apps in wine.

There is no chance of linux becoming more popular if even the crowd here at hacker news isn't willing to give it chance once in a while.