Hard disagree.
I author multimedia documents, play AAA videogames (on Steam and GOG), watch videos, access my gadgets and devices, organize my ebooks collection, print documents on my wireless laser printer, etc.
There's not much desktop Linux cannot easily accomplish for me.
This "bad Linux desktop" meme needs to die.
Every time I install Linux there is something that doesn't work. As recently as last year it took me days to get the Wifi working because of driver problems. I still haven't got Bluetooth to work right on my current workstation. Similarly the USB file transfer UI is broken because the buffer size is too large and it's not been accounted for in the transfer completion calculation. It's a million things and pretty basic and essential ones.
And it's impossible to debug, you have to spend 10 hours typing obscure commands because the Linux voodoo-priests have never heard of buttons and GUIs.
It used to be that Windows worked for every standard small functionality. And on the rare occasions when you had a problem you would immediately know what part of the control panel or the registry to go to and fix it yourself. Occasionally you had to google and people would give you simple instructions to follow. That was before Microsoft ruined it, but my point is there was a clear difference between Linux and Windows and the best Linux distro did not come close to the level of UX that Windows did.
It's not a fair comparison because Linux is so fragmented but to me it remains that the Linux desktop experience is broken in some way for many people who use it.
I don't believe anyone in the history of ever has fixed a problem on their Windows box by confidently wading into the system registry and changing exactly the correct thing. Of all the things to wave around as superior to the Linux way of doing things, the system registry is an odd choice.
In fact, I lay a challenge: without googling, type the full path of any single registry key.
Open regedit HKLM/CurrentVersion?/MicrosoftWindows/…/<something>/Run and delete whatever dumb Dell startup tray app has set itself up to start automatically. I don’t remember the name of the key but I can navigate to it quickly using arrow keys.
Of course this is many years ago before I knew about msconfig…
Strawman.
You can click registry paths and look around, you can search, and sometimes when something is borked, messages in the logs even tell you what registry key to fiddle with.
I've been fiddling with the registry before google was around, so it certainly does not require google or any search. Those only make it easier to share things with others.
And since pretty much forever, even more so on Windows.
The difference is that windows users are used to those defects, they pretty much probably didnt realize there was a choice, so that is always the baseline for them.
On the whole, if you took a blank computer, gave linux and gave windows, people who had never used a computer before would find themselves more helped with linux than windows. Hell, for nearly a decade it was impossible to install windows on a sata disk(which was by far the standard) without breaking out a floppy drive.
Users will shop around for web browsers and everything else but settle for Windows because... why?
I would actually not be surprised if the market share of Linux exceeds the market share of Windows where Windows was installed by the user (let's exclude corporate environments because the discussion is much more complicated)
The 'Linux Desktop' is just as solid as Windows... depending on what you do with it. Just as Windows could be horrible compared to Linux... depending on what you're doing with it
It is not a fair competition.
Seriously, how is that not working out of the box in 2022? Even macs get this right.
And that's not even getting into the install process and driver downloads, printer configuration, setting up containers, a proper posix shell out of the box, local accounts, and on and on.
Windows is basically good for running Steam and has many more OEM supported hardware options. What other advantages does it even have?
There are ui configuration options, but the last I tried them (long ago) they felt inconsistent and painful. It quickly became clear that you needed a terminal to solve most issues, and when you didn’t start that way, you’re now faced with both an uncomfortable environment, and a problem to solve. So I opted to get used to the terminal, and I totally fell in love with it.
For my (not experienced) level of use, I find that it’s just several different systems. Once you know the name of the system, you can read it’s docs, find it’s configs, etc. I think one of the reasons for the recent popularity of arch is that you are given the choice of, and are made familiar with several of these systems to build your install. Maybe you’re using netctl, dhcpcd, or networkmanager - but you made that choice, and probably the initial configuration.
I don’t like the control panel, and the registry is difficult to navigate. Suffering through deeply nested menus to find a setting is a horrible experience for me. I’d much prefer grepping a directory of files for keywords. I have more tools at my disposal. Plus then I can version control and automatically provision a new machine instead of a hunt through ever-changing uis. You’re right that the original configuration takes some extra research and time, but I find for my own setups that the automated setup is worth the investment.
This is all very subjective —- I certainly don’t think you’re wrong, but I wanted to share some perspective on how it can be used (in the off chance you weren’t aware) - i hope it might make it more friendly the next time you cross paths :).
Do you think it's right way in general? If yes, please join my imaginary experiment case:
* you are part of Corporate IT support team
* your company is let's say Korean speaking and your OS interface (locale) is Korean as well
* you have phone call for support request on for something simple like changing desktop background or changing laptop sleep interval be not 5 minutes but 15
I can imagine in say Windows 11, someone press "win", type "battery" in local language and finds the needed setting, but how someone would "grep" for something in non-native language - I'm not sure.
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I can imagine more examples, say - what is the way to ask for remote assistance or MDM or disk encryption rollout by CorpIT or wiping data in case of loss or... which would demonstrate to me - it's not ready for broader audience beyond 5% of deviation of population (nerds). And your grepping example, to me, says - such use cases are not even considered when someone says "linux is ready for desktop".
I don’t like it, but you might be right. I’d still prefer a layer of abstraction between config file keys/comments so your configuration can be localized, but there are additional issues here with user-vs-author comments which the UI solution wouldn’t need to consider.
Of course you are correct, I couldn’t imagine teaching grep to my grandpa, most relatives, or even all coworkers. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it would be lovely if this was always an option. I’d much prefer having control, than an opaque system that migrates my settings forwards. Maybe I’m advocating for a system that supports both?
Thank you for posting, I never considered this, I need to think about it.
Then probably this would be helpful too - try to imagine why the most popular Linux based user facing systems - Android and Chrome OS, are not any kind of "traditional" Linux desktop distribution alike. Does it says something on users?
What wonders me as well - when Linux desktops start to finally use telemetry and stop being blind on real user cases, not on the imaginary nerds needs. It will give great productivity boost. Microsoft has it and they know their auditorium. The techies who knows in person how logging is important on fixing bugs - has no such logs! Ridiculous to me.
(The example I always give is that my wireless HP LaserJet printer works automagically with Ubuntu, but always gives trouble with macOS!)
So... all desktops suck?
Please show me some software where it is not the case. Like, not being sarcastic, windows has million little cuts all around and my mac is the only modern hardware that managed to reboot on its own. I don’t think Linux is comparably worse, if we are being as unbiased as possible.
Sure, in certain compartments windows and osx can be better, but they all suck in others. For example, having multiple screens seems to be an insurmountable problem humanity is not yet ready to solve.
At least it can be debugged. Good luck doing that on Windows. It isn't by chance that the most common advice is "format and install again."
>And on the rare occasions when you had a problem you would immediately know what part of the control panel or the registry to go to and fix it yourself.
I vastly prefer running few commands over going through a dozen of interfaces from multiple eras or worse going through the mess that registry is.
Linux obviously isn't lost, given that I and many others use Linux for content creation.
It would help the discussion if people stopped talking in hyperbolic all-or-nothing extremes.
Like I said, this is a meme that needs to die.
What does that mean?
Even macOS, the supposed gold standard of good usability and quality, frustrates me to no end at times.