@nyanide I keep saying it, the Linux community is bad. And he's right, most of the good software you associate with Linux is available on Windows too. So there's little incentive in switching to Linux in the first place.
Until user friendliness becomes a priority, Linux is not a good choice for a desktop OS for the average user.
It's a good choice for some programmers, people who like to tinker, and maybe some other niche users. But not for... pretty much everyone else on Earth.
@nyanide Honestly... I can live without package managers. It's definitely an useful feature Linux has, but at times, especially when I was in the Ubuntu ecosystem, I just wanted the ability to download a .exe equivalent setup file from a webpage, and know it will "just work".
Ubuntu had .deb at the time, but those could be hit or miss if the dev didn't package for the latest Ubuntu version. These days, AppImage is a good equivalent, but not everyone uses them. And I have trust issues with Snap and Flatpaks that devs seem to prefer.
These days, arch repositories & AUR really do seem to have everything, so haven't felt that "just give me a damn .exe!" need in many years.
But software packaging is still a mess in Linux overall. Too many package managers, too many standards. Windows keeping it somewhat simple is a big benefit for the average users I talk about.
>But software packaging is still a mess in Linux overall. Too many package managers, too many standards.
Actually true, christ almighty some aspects of Linux are legitimately cucked because of weird distro maintainers.
@nyanide The schizoid thing got me moving away from Ubuntu too, so I get it. For me it wasn't necesarily an issue of getting all software up to date, but I'd hear "Gimp has this new feature!", and then I'd discover Ubuntu wouldn't put it in for several months. And I've had issues with PPAs too... so I wanted out. Solution for me was Manjaro and currently Endeavour. Together with KDE, I'm actually happy right now.
I have days when I think about going Windows again, but not strong enough to actually do it. But I also don't want to change my distro unless someone pays me a lot.
>Windows keeping it somewhat simple is a big benefit for the average users I talk about.
That's mostly a end-user abstraction. Creating a Windows installer package is one of the worst experiences someone can have in developing software. Much much worse than what Linux has to offer in terms of rpm or even dpkg. Pure horror.
>the rest...
I agree with most. Packaging software for multiple distros is insane especially since you have to support like 4 version of Ubuntu, 3 Fedora versions, 2 openSUSE versions. Most of those issues could be eliminated by throwing away point release distros for desktops though. They serve little to no purpose anyway.
@phnt @nyanide
>Creating a Windows installer package is one of the worst experiences
I'm sure it is. But I'm not talking about developers. I'm talking about users. From the user pov, "it just works". Of course, it's not always perfect. I'm sure I've had issues every now and then, and at some point, really old .exe installers don't play nice with anything after Win7. But there's also cases where I got software made for Win9x working on modern Windows. Dependencies usually prevent that from happening on Linux completely. There was a few days ago a similar thread where someone was saying that they found reports of games that had had a release for Linux, where people recommended playing the Windows version through Proton instead, because "it just works". When you can get these kinds of situations, something ain't right imo.
>Until user friendliness becomes a priority, Linux is not a good choice for a desktop OS for the average user.
I don't want to derail this thread more, but I don't want Linux to be good for the average user. The developers that already have this kind of thinking now are making Linux worse every month and most of them want to turn it into a mobile OS with full on permissions for everything. I simply don't want that.
@yomiel @nyanide @phnt
I install software through a GUI on Arch too. Installing software is not the issue. The issue is when you need to configure stuff, or something breaks, and the solution always seem to involve the terminal at some point or another.
To be clear, I'm not complaining for myself. I'm just saying what needs to be accomplished to get average Windows users to switch. As long as the terminal is a standout advertised feature for Linux, instead of something hidden out of sight, like Command Prompt is on Windows, Linux will not be considered user friendly for most PC users.
@phnt @nyanide
That's fine. I don't have an issue with this take. If that's where Linux decides to go, that's fine by me. I'll still use it, cause I can handle it as it has been for the last decade. I just want people to stop with the "year of desktop Linux" stuff, stop with the "switch to Linux" stuff, and stop attacking Windows.
There's nothing wrong with Linux not wanting to replace Windows. But in that case, the community needs to stop acting like they want it to. Linux users should enjoy what they have, and let Windows users enjoy what they have.
@sysrq @nyanide @branman65
And you're a smart nigger.
@branman65 @nyanide @sysrq
Win7 was such a game changer. Used it as beta, on a shitty computer that had no place running anything above XP. It was the most stable experience I had on that thing. The fucking BETA was more stable than the OS the computer was designed for.
Everything is a file? More like everything is a graphical application. In NT, they still have support for legacy psuedo-devices (low budget block devices, files you can write to and the device will react according to what you wrote) that were designed for versions of DOS that did not support folders.
@alyx@gameliberty.club @nyanide@lab.nyanide.com
Until user friendliness becomes a priority
The thing is that GNU+Linux is very user friendly already. It will allow any user to customize it exactly to their desires, and allow them to do so with relatively little effort. It doesn't try to fuck you over every time a big corpo decides they don't like the way you use your computer.