Comment by thebouv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebouv | Hacker News Reader

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I love Linux. I use it every day and have since around '98.

Recently I decided to get my teen brother, who's going into CS soon, a Linux laptop for development and a Raspberry Pi for a project we're doing together (a "magic mirror").

Instantly found desktop Linux to still be a giant pain in the ass. Ubuntu on the Pi defaulted wifi to only manual addressing, not DHCP. On top of that, set to IPv6 only as well. After digging through SO and other forums for a while we finally figured it out.

I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box". It still takes a power user to make it even half-way tolerable, and as a power user, I found it intolerable. I could see how overwhelming it was just writ plain on his face. Then realized I was making the same expressions.

Apple is definitely irritating me lately with their hardware decisions, but at the end of the day OSX is just better with desktop tasks. Hell, I'd choose Windows desktop experience over Linux, even with MS's privacy issues with Win10. Because I don't want to spend 3 hours figuring out how to turn on wifi.

>I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box"

Completely the opposite for me. Ubuntu installs on almost anything I've tried (laptops, netbooks, desktops with production dates ranging from 2006 to present day). Install and setup for use usually take less than an hour. For a couple of years now I haven't encountered a single issue (like networking or graphics not working).

Not to say your experience isn't accurate, just wanted to add how impressed I've been with Linux and particularly Ubuntu for the past few years.

Conversely, installing windows (8) on modern, fresh from the factory, HP laptops has been an experience I will never voluntarily repeat.

I totally disagree. I've installed Ubuntu on 4-5 systems over the last 3 years, I find it exceptionally quick and easy compared to installing Windows. Obviously, I can't compare it to OS X for install because it's not possible to buy it standalone.

Additionally, if you're installing on a raspberry pi you're fundamentally at a power user level - my non-techie friends and family are nowhere near that level. If you actually install it on a desktop it's a breeze, I think your frustration stems from engaging in an activity that's fairly challenging no matter what you do. There are plenty of alternatives for your pi, but neither OS X nor Windows are among them.

I'd be more interested to hear how the linux laptop went. Did that come preinstalled? Did your brother like it?

Bad on me for mixing my frustrations with the Pi and the laptops together. I suppose just having frustrations with both in just the past few weeks added up, ha!

The laptop for him seems to be going okay as a development machine. He's definitely not using it as a daily desktop. And editor and console open is mostly what he's using it for.

It wasn't pre-installed, it was a laptop donated from my work without a hard drive. I gave it to him with a new in box HD and a bootable USB stick for his birthday in November and told him to roll with it. Eventually I had to step in and help because the install just wasn't working, we switched to a DVD install disc instead. The USB just wouldn't work.

I did the same for my daughter for Christmas, except with me doing the installation. This was going to be a desktop experience for her to use for homework and the like. Google Docs, watching YouTube videos, etc.

Sound card issues. Browsing issues. Bluetooth headphone issues. Blue or black screens with no response. Eventually I just bought her a Windows laptop and she's been productive ever since. I'm sure given time I could have corrected every issue by delving through documentation and forums, and in fact she was willing to over look all the issues and power through. But at end of the day I wanted to give her something that worked.

I love Linux for servers. But Linux for desktops still seems like a tinkerer's passion to make it work. In my own experiences it seems not that more advanced than it was a decade ago. I'm glad it works for some though.

For comparison, how was it setting up Windows and OSX on the Pi?

Amazing actually. Worked like a charm. Of course these are my own super secret tweaked versions of Windows and OSX developed specifically for the Pi. I'd share with you but I need to clean the code up first. ;)

No, I get it, I mixed together my frustrations with the Pi with my frustrations with the laptop installs. At the end of the day though the combined experiences recently made me go "this is still a pain in the butt".

> I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box".

I keep saying that I have, and its way better now. But, I'm slowly realizing that I haven't done a bare metal install in probably 6 years. I suspect that a lot of people are in the same boat.

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