Why don't more people use Linux?
world.hey.com
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet asking: "If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it?" And it's a fair question! It intuitively rings true until you give it a moment's consideration. Linux is even free, so what's stopping mass adoption, if it's actually better? My response: “If exercising is so healthy, why don't more peo...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ndlug.org/post/1064425

And Linux isn’t minimal effort. It’s an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple. Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. With a sensei who keeps demanding you figure problems out on your own in order to learn and level up.

…

That’s why I’d love to see more developers take another look at Linux. Such that they may develop better proficiency in the basic katas of the internet. Such that they aren’t scared to connect a computer to the internet without the cover of a cloud.

Related: Omakub

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
    361·
    2 months ago

    Linux isn’t minimal effort. It’s an operating system that demands more of you than does the commercial offerings from Microsoft and Apple. Thus, it serves as a dojo for understanding computers better. With a sensei who keeps demanding you figure problems out on your own in order to learn and level up.

    Guy says this as if it’s a good thing lol. That’s the real reason people don’t use Linux, nobody making Linux seems to care about user experience for normal people.

    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
      5·
      2 months ago

      Yea I agree. Good UX is a lot of work, and I think FOSS projects rarely prioritize it. Even good documentation is hard to come by. When you write software for your own use case, it’s easy to cut UX corners, because you don’t need your hand held.

      And good UX for a programmer might be completely different from good UX for someone that only knows how to use GUIs. E.g. NixOS has amazing UX for programmers, but the code-illiterate would be completely lost.

      I believe that the solution is “progressive disclosure”, and it requires a lot of effort. You basically need every interface to have both the “handholding GUI” and the underlying “poweruser config,” and there needs to be a seamless transition between the two.

      I actually think we could have an amazing Linux distro for both “normies” and powerusers if this type of UX were the primary focus of developers.

    • QuadriLiteral@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      What you say describes my experience 10 to 15 years ago, not my experience today. Compare the settings dialog in KDE Plasma to the windows settings dialog for instance. Or should I say myriad of Windows settings dialogues.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
        7·
        2 months ago

        No it’s not. Good user experience should also allow for extensive customization. There is nothing mutually exclusive about these things.

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
            61·
            2 months ago

            Yes but it has subpar user experience. But there is no reason you can’t have both, that’s what I’m saying.

              • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
                51·
                2 months ago

                I’ve previously posted a few examples:

                Two 4k external monitors through a docking station - Why is this seemingly effortless for Windows but basically impossible for Linux?

                Is there a way to keep Linux responsive when at ~100% CPU usage?

                I also regularly have my window manager crash when inserting my laptop into my docking station. Happens maybe 20% of the time. Sometimes even when it works the display scaling makes things blurry until I reset the scaling from 150% back to 100% and back again, then it’s fine. Add to this a few annoyances with UI, but these are more forgivable.

                There’s all kinds of these small problems that compound to just make for a much worse experience. It doesn’t just work but it needs to if it really wants to provide a viable alternative to normal people.

                Keep in mind, I am not a “normal person” - I am a professional software engineer and I still find all this stuff super annoying.

                • arendjr@programming.dev
                  2·
                  2 months ago

                  I agree with your examples and it’s certainly true there are plenty of rough edges on Linux. Then again, how many examples are there for things that should “just work” and do on Linux but don’t on Windows? There’s enough that make me not use Windows at all, because it has a subpar user experience. I even used a Macbook for a few years, mainly for work, and there were too many small things that annoyed me about it, so it too had a subpar user experience.

                  Seems it’s mostly a matter of perspective which issues are more important to you.

                  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
                    1·
                    2 months ago

                    Then again, how many examples are there for things that should “just work” and do on Linux but don’t on Windows?

                    Maybe some but much, much fewer. It shouldn’t be surprising - Microsoft has hundreds if not thousands of people hired specifically for creating working UX and design. Linux just can’t compete with that since it’s mostly developers working on it and, again, developers unfortunately make for awful UX designers.

                    I don’t think external monitors or a responsive UI is a matter of “perspective”. These are things that should just work, always, for everyone.

                    What are the examples you are thinking of btw?

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
        21·
        2 months ago

        There’s like a thousand Linux distros. Having one be ready and easy to use, no hassle or deeper knowledge needed, won’t stop the great many others that exist without bumper rails. Arch and Nix etc will still keep existing, so you can chill out, edgelord.