Obviously, a bit of clickbait. Sorry.
I just got to work and plugged my surface pro into my external monitor. It didn’t switch inputs immediately, and I thought “Linux would have done that”. But would it?
I find myself far more patient using Linux and De-googled Android than I do with windows or anything else. After all, Linux is mine. I care for it. Grow it like a garden.
And that’s a good thing; I get less frustrated with my tech, and I have something that is important to me outside its technical utility. Unlike windows, which I’m perpetually pissed at. (Very often with good reason)
But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work”. Often they do “just work”, and well, with a broad feature set by default.
Most of us are willing to forgo that for the privacy and shear customizability of Linux, but do we assume too much of the tech we use and the tech we don’t?
Thoughts?
For privacy and security? Yes. For usability? Noooo.
Actually, if Linux/BSD/… doesn’t work the way I want it to, I can always tweak it. Win or Mac? Tough luck. So Linux’s usability is always there, whereas the proprietary OS’s quickly hits a very hard, annoying wall.
When I’ve thought about this is in the past I’ve concluded that my expectations of Linux are actually higher than Windows or Mac. It’s given me the expectation that if something doesn’t work the way I want it then it will be possible to make it do that, whereas with other operating systems I have been more inclined to just accept a limitation and move on.
E x a c t l y! On Windows/Mac, you’re less inclined to be charitable, because most of the time you’re facing down artificially-imposed limitations on how you can interact with your own machine. They seem to say “You’re too dumb to be allowed to mess with that,” which is a tolerable slight if it Just Works every time… But when it doesn’t, ohhh boy…
When Linux doesn’t do what I want, it’s never because it was deliberately designed not to do what I want in order to increase shareholder value
IMO more people should be critical of the systems and tools that they use instead of shitting on the tools that others choose to use.
We do assume too much of our tools, but many people here are guilty of assuming that other OS’s are broken in ways that do not reflect the average customer experience.
This was a lot of what I was getting at. We artificially build our own walled garden. We’ll let anyone in just as much as we’ll throw turds over the fence. Your shit don’t stink if you throw it at someone else
Recent Linux convert here. Had some small background with it due to use at work (through WSL, unfortunately 😅). When Windows became too overbearing and intrusive for my own taste, decided to take a plunge and created a dual-boot setup with Bazzite (of course on my private machine). It was honestly refreshing to see stuff run with the same (or sometimes even better) performance.
This short anecdote now leads me to the conclusion; is it as good as we think it is?
Imo: hell fuckin’ yeah. It gets the job done and respects me as an end-user (with the trade-off of “some manual work might be required”).
Also, as a side-note: I live in the EU; I grew tired with an overbearing, salesman/rapist-like mentality of MS (and Windows, by extension) while reaping benefits of some modicum of privacy regulations. I cannot even begin to fathom how fucked the situation is where ppl don’t have these protections to rely on.
Just this morning I tried to make Outlook on my work laptop to open on startup. I have to find and add a shortcut of Outlook, buried somewhere in the machine, to the startup folder, buried somewhere else in the machine. The startup apps settings menu was just an eclectic list of programs and is of no use at all.
With Mint on my home machine I just go to startup programs settings menu and I can add whatever I want just by pointing it to the right program. It just works.
WIN+R , “shell:startup” in future by the way.
The other list you saw is programs that have added thier own AutoRuns registry keys.
I’m actually kinda surprised that functionality isn’t in the new task manager yet. You can toggle on and off basically all startup items from there, but not add stuff.
XP-7 had this right with a folder in the start menu for startup items, just drag a file or shortcut there and it runs on startup.
XP-7 had this right with a folder in the start menu for startup items, just drag a file or shortcut there and it runs on startup.
It’s the same in 10. This is actually one thing I find obnoxious in Linux, even as a user for 25+ years… menu “shortcuts” aka .desktop files are harder to make and poorly documented.
Does windows 10 have it? I didn’t see it in the start menu of my VM.
It’s hidden by default but it should be there in
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUpfor “all users” and%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startupseparately for each user.
Like anything else, can be, depending on your needs.
Exactly. I give more credits to linux, and it deserves this. I like your garden metaphor, yes my linux pc is like my garden and linux behaves to be, unlike windows.
It depends on who you ask. If you ask this to a M$ refugee, they will praise it. If you ask a *BSD user, they will bitch about it.
But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work”.
No, I don’t think so. There should be an expected difference between Windows (for example) and Linux as far as “it just works” goes, simply by virtue of the fact that one is actively developed by a company with eleventy-bajillion dollars and the other is developed by lots of hobbyists and a handful of profitable companies.
If Windows doesn’t work, it’s not unreasonable to expect that it should. If Linux doesn’t work, it is unreasonable to expect that it always will.
To be fair, a big portion of the work that goes into Linux (at least the kernel) is done by paid developers working for big corporations.
That’s true, it’s not just hobbyists. I meant that the paid effort is relatively small potatoes compared to giant companies like MS.
Additionally much software (and hardware even more) primarely targets windows as a platform. The way printers mostly "just work"™ on Linux still amazes me, because printer vendors have all the incentives to make their stuff work for the most used platform, which sadly isn’t Linux right now.
And let’s not forget that printer vendors historically bungle even that much. That they work at all on Linux is a testament to the various Linux devs.
Also a testament to how much of a benefit it is when the vendors just get out of the way and don’t feel the need to add their own Special SauceTM to the drivers.
Pls stop giving billion dollar corporations so much credit.
The difference comes from windows dominant (home pc) market position meaning that almost all software and hardware is specifically made to work with it, with even things that officially support linux being afterthoughts.
Linux to me is just an optional substitute of an OS, but it has yet to make it my primary day-to-day use. Linux isn’t going to make the problems I get aggravated with like the verification-hell we deal with, go away. It’s going to happen on both Windows or Linux regardless.
I have more patience when I give any laptop I get Linux, than I ever will should I decide to make Linux a primary OS of choice on my primary desktop machine. Because Linux does give me the whole ‘works out of the box’ feel with laptops than Windows would when it comes to driver hunting and I’m talking with old laptops, not newer ones where all of that is currently provided.
Is Linux As Good As We Think It Is?
No, it’s better.
Seriously, when something that I paid for it doesn’t work is annoying when something that I choose to use doesn’t work is somewhat my fault, I think that’s the difference.
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