linuxmemes

I think once Valve polishes SteamOS for desktop environments there will be actual largescale migration.

I run Linux daily, Linux isn't ready, its really not much of a debate. If the average person can't operate it efficiently then the average person will just stick to mac or windows.

I'll admit it is closer than it has ever been thanks to compatibility layers like proton but the average user still can't figure it out so it still has a way to go.

Proton covers most games that I play, only a couple exceptions involving heavy handed anti-cheat stuff like League of Legends has now. For non-gaming Windows stuff that doesn't work in Linux I would guess that a virtual machine might work.

I stopped using Linux on my desktop PC in 2007. Last year I switched back, and wow everything is so much smoother now. Video, sound, webcam, networking, all worked perfectly out-of-the-box. No more messing with fglrx for hours to get ATI/AMD graphics working. No more figuring out ALSA vs OSS vs PulseAudio vs whatever else. I don't know what the sound subsystem is even called now, because I don't need to know. It just works.

KDE is beautiful now, too. I tried a few desktop environments and liked KDE the best.

Great time to switch. I've been using Linux on servers since 1999, but it's totally viable for desktops these days too.

The problem is that Linux is only ready in certain cases. For me, it isn't there yet, because I can't use it for my gaming machine. Every time this is brought up, Linux enthusiast shrug it off as "no big deal", you can game on Linux, just the games that use kernel level anti-cheat won't work. Well yeah, that's a bit the issue, I still like to play some of those games you see?

Meanwhile, I have Linux Mint running on a laptop that I bring on vacation. I don't game on that one. Then Linux works just as well as any other OS, no issue.

Had a friend of mine rib me for "not just paying for a license (for windows)". Tried to explain that wasn't the point to their befuddlement. Smh

Linux is not ready for most people

The last time i used it was 30 minutes ago

Mum wouldn't even notice as long as the wallpaper is the same

I love Linux, but it isn't ready.

Two weeks ago my side mouse buttons started working (they require Logitech software on Windows, wasn't expecting them to work). Last week they stopped. This week they work again.

Is this major? Not at all. Would it drive my mother-in-law into a rage rivaling that of Cocaine Bear? Absolutely. Spare me from the bear, keep Linux for the tinkerers.

it still surprises me that something like linux exists.

Bad experiences from the past are valid reasons to be apprehensive.

Before I bought a Steam Deck I had never used Linux but now I really like it, honestly I'm tempted to install SteamOS on my PC as it's only ever used for gaming anyway

But it's not ready because insert niche use case that only applies to me and no, I will not seek out open source alternatives to insert closed source software

Wow, so many wrong comments. My parents using Linux laptops for 10 years (which i give them second hand when i buy a new one). Now i set up NixOS with auto updates, and never needed to touch it again myself.

I have had people tell me " I dont feel like building my own OS from scratch " I'm like what are you even talking about?

Ok, I'll bite. I tried Ubuntu a few months ago. Logging into Eduroam was a bit of a process, but eventually I figured it out and it worked. Then one day the internet didn't work and I had no idea why. Something to do with the network drivers. Then I was trying to use OpenOffice (or LibreOffice? The one that came with the OS), and I use Zotero for references. The Zotero plugin had a bunch of glitches that made me not trust it. The Internet (back on Windows) assured me that it worked fine, but it was way glitchier than the Windows version.

The bottom line is that I just need this stuff to work because I don't have time to debug. I love the idea though; maybe I was using the wrong distro.

The main problem still is that for some configuration you still need to use the CLI, the average user does not want to touch that no matter how powerful it is, they want a fully functional GUI that lets you so exactly the same thing but by clicking on buttons. Pair that with drivers that either do not exist or will not work for (some) of your hardware, odd crashed like the Bluetooth stack crapping out and not working anymore until you restart the system, or the system that hangs from hibernation with a black screen. So unless those hurdles are tackled the Linux adoption rate will stay low because the average user wants a system that works, and not one they have to debug.

I've been on and off different distros of Linux since Ubuntu 6 using Pop_OS! as my daily driver for work a few years now, and the same problems I had then are still here today which is a shame honestly.

I tried this year.

It's not ready.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine for most things, but end-user, normie fire-and-forget stuff? Nah.

People who are like this today, tried to install red hat 5/6 using popular mechanics magazine as an instruction booklet and with floppy disks

Either that or they tried to install Open BSD once and survived: https://xkcd.com/349/

By all standards, a completely understandable outcome

Most people's measure of whether it's ready is "How soon until I have to type into a console to get something done".

If it's within the first three months - then it's not ready.

My excuse for not switching to Linux for a long time was that it couldn't play games. Now that proton is a pretty developed thing, that's no longer an excuse. I actually tried out mint Linux for a friend to see how easy it was to use and I just kept using it because it did everything I wanted it to. As a power user I had to modify it quite a lot but my friend just wants to basically load into the OS, launch a browser or play games from steam and that's about it, so for him it's pretty easy and straightforward.

I actually ended up installing kubuntu on his computer and modified it to look exactly like Windows 7, which is what he's upgrading from. It's kind of scary how close it got.

If you want to see what linux was like 15 years ago try installing OpenBSD lol