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Comment by frozenport | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard anybody say Linux doesn't look sexy. Remember when we were comparing Compiz to Windows XP, or Enlightenment to Windows 2000? Ubuntu is one of the few OSs that can pull a black theme.

Linux problems include:

1. Hardware compatibility

2. Office compatibility (also Adobe + games)

3. Easy to mess up your system with no hope of fixing it

I don't see how any of these address the problems with Linux.

I run Gentoo with XFCE as my main OS, SUSE at work, and Windows to make presentations.

Fun things to do include: tight WINE integration, better genkernel, modular configuration structure so that it is harder to mess up and easier to restore.

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Compiz is sexy, with it's sexy animations, and it's sexy rotations, and I still couldn't get it as usable as I had windows be. That's the point. Sexy is secondary to utility. They appear to be basically trying to copy the good parts of OSX.

Which "good parts", exactly, are you talking about? There's a lot of talk of elementary copying OSX, but much of the video is default functionality of GNOME/Compiz -- no one is specifying _exactly_ what is being copied. The only major difference is a grey theme, which is probably triggering the whole OSX copy nonsense.

In fact, the video (and Luna) uses neither GNOME nor compiz. We use our own window manager called "Gala"[1] (it is based on the same library that gnome's is) in our own desktop environment called "Pantheon"[2].

[1] http://elementaryos.org/journal/meet-gala-window-manager

[2] (I couldn't find an elementary journal article explicitly about this, but here's one from the Gentoo wiki): http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Pantheon

> 3. Easy to mess up your system with no hope of fixing it

That's the main point of them making decisions for you. The more opinionated the software, the less decisions the user has to make, the harder it is to mess up the system.

Note that if they position this as competitor to OS X instead of Windows, then GNU/Linux and Elementary OS actually have better hardware compatibility (broadly) than OS X.

OS X & Linux are not direct competitors, they are in different market segments. Extensive hardware support is not that important to end users. The important thing is that the OS supports well the individual hardware you use.

Hardware support matters to end users in terms of portability of app data. If I use an app which is not ported to other platforms, I can't use my data in a new hardware, until the platform itself is ported.

If the data has an open format, then this problem is reduced, but many applications out there have a proprietary data format.

Hardware compatibility hasn't been an issue for me for years. Back in 2000? Yes, major issue.

#2 -- Specifically Adobe applications & Excel present big roadblocks from companies rolling over from Windows on OSX. Much of the other software that stopped companies in the past is now web browser based.

#3 -- Definitely an issue.

Isn't #3 largely attenuated by not giving users root? How do you mess up a system beyond the point of fixing it if you don't have root access?

I've seen many users who have (but shouldn't have) Administrator on their Windows boxes mess them up beyond fixing, usually because of malware.

Yes but users still need to install new software and make basic changes. The complaint, as I understand it, is that when breakage occurs, for whatever reason that may be, you pretty much get locked out of your system. Either you have a lot of work to do to repair the issue or you may just need to do a re-install.

I am far from a Linux/Unix expert, but I think this has to do with updates and dependencies. Using an Ubuntu LTS release along with not messing with any of the system settings seems to be fairly fool proof. Windows has its share of problems but the only complete failures I have experienced in two decades of use were hardware or malware related.

Is Open Office Impress really that unusable that you have to turn to Windows for presentations?

I can't help it, but this sounds like straight from 2001.

Never had any issues with the things you mentioned for the last 3 to 4 years.

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