As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany’s TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn’t taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks “are the path toward the desktop.”
He’s right. If vendors offered Linux based machines people would try. Valve is helping Linux adoption more than all the big names like Dell, Lenovo, HP… combined.
Preface: I am a Linux user
The Linux desktop needs to not require users to dig through config files to enable features that both windows and Mac have working by default. Fingerprint sensors, audio interfaces, broken bootloaders that you have to fix yourself. Requiring people to ever use a command line even once will keep people on Windows as the dominant platform.
Every time I have to look at a Linux forum to figure out why something isn’t working and the answers are run these commands I am instantly reminded that this is the exact thing keeping Windows mainstream.
Driver support still isn’t perfect. Software support as well. Linux needs to ship out of the box running exe files in compatibility layers. Linux needs to adopt executable installers for software packages that can be downloaded on the web. If Linux wants to be the way people use computers, Linux needs to fit the mould that windows has built for the people who have used it for the last 40 years.
Doing anything differently is enough of a deterrent for 90% of computer users. And of those 90%, 75% of them will give up immediately trying to fix anything that doesn’t work and either call someone else or decide it’s broken and do nothing.
Linux is incredibly powerful and I believe it should be the way we run computers, but I get exactly why it isn’t.
and the answers are run these commands
This one always gets me. There’s rarely an explanation of what the commands do, and “man $command” is often so obtuse that it takes 10 minutes to figure out what the list of switches and options are doing to make sure it’s not going to download some malware in the background.
Then, you run the commands, and the output is six pages of warnings, debug, and test scripts. You might even notice that some of the tests fail (if you can even follow along), but was it important? Who knows? I guess as long as it works, who cares?
You are completely right.
I do also get why the run these commands is a thing, because it’s usually faster and also is distro / desktop environment agnostic.
Why would someone want to write separate guides for Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon etc. when one or two commands will suffice? But on the flip side, my family and friends will see a scary looking command and immediately be put off.
I feel it’s getting a lot better since more apps are just in the browser or electron apps, there’s way way less to actually configure for most end users. The type of people put off by commands generally won’t go digging through the settings anyway.
I do wish there were a proper GUI for configuring GRUB though. Any that I’ve ever found seemed to fall out of date very quickly.
“But on the flip side, my family and friends will see a scary looking command and immediately be put off.”
More to that… these are exactly the people we have all been telling “If you see someone on the internet telling you ‘type this!’ DON’T DO IT!”
ALT-F4 being the benign one.
rm -rf / --no-preserve-root - not so benign.
I remember a story of someone getting the recursive tag wrong on the chmod command and managed to chmod 000 themselves out of everything on the system… including chmod.
Plugging in a flash drive and having it just work would be a start. Linux beginners don’t care about the plight with exfat support.
I do a lot of work setting up computers and laptops for people, mostly getting software they need installed and setting up ad blocking so I don’t need to come back later on and clean up a million viruses.
Lately, I’ve been offering a discount to people that allow me to get rid of windows entirely and install Linux, with the option to reinstall Windows for free later. I’ve had several people take me up on the offer, especially once I explain what Recall is to them. Only 1 has had me switch it back, and they needed to use some super niche piece of software that I just absolutely could not get running with wine no matter what I installed, and I suspect that it has something built in to make it not run on non-windows systems.
Basically, just explaining Microsoft’s security nightmare in a way that your average person can understand (and I mean a real average person, not the average person as people on Linux forums see them) has gotten over 2 dozen clients to switch over to Linux with minimal issues.
Also windows borking like 5 peoples SSDs certainly helped!
Do you mind sharing your “script” or bullet points how you tell people about the Recall thing?
Basically it goes like this -
Imagine a stranger is standing over your shoulder with a notepad and a camera. Every couple seconds, he takes a photo of what you’re doing and writes down everything you’ve typed. Then, the man hands that information off to another person. When you ask what that person is going to do with the info, the stranger assures you that he’s a friend and your information is perfectly safe.
You don’t know what it’s being used for, and you can’t be certain that the second stranger will actually keep your information safe. What if he just tosses it into an unlocked file cabinet? Anyone can now just come along and grab your information. That could be something as simple as something you looked at on Facebook. Or, it could contain your banking login. You can’t be certain what they’re taking notes and photos of, and what they or the strangers they supposedly trust are going to do with your information…
So basically just explaining what Recall and data selling are using metaphor combined with a not insignificant amount of fear mongering. The best way I’ve found to explain 99% of computer concepts to lay people is to avoid mentioning a computer as much as possible. This varies depending on the age of the person, but most of the time I’m cleaning or setting up computers and laptops, I’m doing it for someone 50+
- Game studios support - most games don’t support Linux natively (and no, I don’t want compatibility layer upon layer).
- “Default” Linux distribution for average consumers. Average consumers don’t want 2000 distro choices as they will rather stick to one Windows that having to think between many Linux distros and pick one.
- The “default” Linux needs to have the consumer-marketing name of simply “Linux OS”.
Who would make this “default” Linux? Who would be in charge of it? What power would they have over directing development of the kernel? What happens when this centralization that’s so important to soothing the confusion of people who aren’t even using the OS yet inevitably causes it to enshitify and brings us right back to the Windows problem?
No, I’m sorry - there may be some things that would make Linux more palatable to non-techies, but this just recreates the Windows problem again. The same dichotomy that’s been at play for the past 30 years is still at play - you can have it easy or you can have freedom and control, but you can’t have both.
“Default” is basically Ubuntu. By “default” I mean you can use most things without needing to ever think about which desktop environment do I have, which package manager I have etc… it “just works”. It is very bad for average Joe if it says “Linux app” and then you can’t install it using apt because it’s available only in another package manager.
It looks like you can’t install Linux apps onto Linux. What kind of message does that send to the broad consumer market?
The biggest barrier to Linux is people who don’t know that Windows and Android fucking suck. I can’t wait for PostmarketOS to take off so I can tell Google to suck it. Actually, that reminds me to make a donation.
Linux needs nothing to succeed. It just needs to wait and be there while the big corporations continue to fuck up their systems all on their own.
The recent surge in Linux use from the Windows 10 deprecation and Windows 11 being annoying proves that.
More and more Vendors like Valve will pop up with a growing user base.
