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On this day in 1991, Linus Torvalds announced he was working on what would become Linux
(www.xda-developers.com)
And he immediately got flamed for it (/s)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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This is the way
And now hardly anyone uses microkernels, hilariously.
Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read!
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The better Linus.
… arguably. Torvalds is somewhat famous for being kind of a dick to people, particularly if he thinks their code is bad. He’s getting better.
So it isn't really linux's birthday....more like the anniversary of the pregnancy announcement
"hey we've been raw dogging for a while"
The choice of pictures accompanying this article is somewhat disturbing. First is a windows desktop with a penguin on top, the second is a gnome app launcher exclusively showing android apps.
The android app part is because it's xda-developers which is an android focused website.
And since 1992 people have been claiming every year that this is the year of Linux on the desktop.
It was the year for me. Windows is bad enough and Linux is good enough to make the switch. People are getting tired of the big tech companies with privacy concerns and anti consumer practices - pretty much the reason most of us are on here on lemmy now.
This year is the year. All you have to do is switch. With products like Ubuntu, there's no reason not to. It. Just. Works.
It. Just. Works.
No. It. Doesn't
You all keep saying it works but it still doesn't work with a whole load of software even with Wine.
If all you do is internet browsing then Linux is fine, but if you need specific software it can be a pain.
it still doesn't work with a whole load of software even with Wine.
I don't think being able to run programs designed and compiled for windows is a requirement to be considered a usable os. For example, you can not run safari on windows. Does this mean windows doesn't count as a usable os?
I think the definition of useable should be that software exists that can do the kind of things you want to do on your computer. In that sense, Linux is perfecty useable on the desktop, at least for people who have similar computing requirements to me.
They believe that if they say it enough times it might just magically happen.
Linux is not ready for prime time and to a large degree it is because of Linux users themselves who simply don't want to admit the massive usability and compatibility problems that their beloved OS has. If they can't admit it, then clearly it's not going to get fixed.
I don't think the usability problems with Linux are even visible to most Linux users. Most Linux users are probably either "at least mildly techy (and has been using Linux for a while)" or "just needs web and e-mails."
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All you have to do is switch. With products like Ubuntu, there’s no reason not to. It. Just. Works.
People who say that severely underestimate the time, effort, and expertise they've accumulated that makes it easy for themselves, but hard for others.
I tried to switch once before COVID. It was horrible. Oh, I now need to learn about file systems and NTFS and ext3/4(?) - i guess i'll try Linux on a separate, old hard drive. Ok, something didn't work, I now have to figure out what driver wasn't supported and what I need to download. Great, people on forums are helpful but they're asking me a bunch of gibberish. Now I gotta figure out this command line thing. Oh cool some people built GUIs for certain stuff so i don't need to play with the command line, but then the GUI doesn't work occasionally and now I have to figure out if it's the GUI that broke or something else. Unsurprisingly, I'm back on Windows. It sucks, but at least it really just works.
For majority of people, an OS isn't something they want to think about. I'm not a gearhead. When I buy a car, I just want to drive it off the lot on Day 1 - sure not everything is perfect the way I want it, but i don't need to do anything if I don't want to. I don't want to buy a shell of a car and have to go to 5 different shops to choose a tire, install my own seats, get used to the stick shift being on the roof of the car instead of beside me, and have it break down on me all the time because "you aren't using it right".
It all depends on your hardware. If you run standard hardware with an AMD card, all the drivers you need should (theoretically) be in the kernel and will magically just work. As soon as you start using running hardware with proprietary drivers then you have to put in a little effort. Might require you to install separate package(s) from a third-party repo or something, and that will require terminal. It's just three commands usually: add the repo -> update your package manager -> install the driver. Not hard but if you are used to the Windows way of doing things it can be intimidating.
Even still, some stuff just doesn't have Linux support at all or it's completely community-maintained. If every company just open sourced their drivers and did things the "Linux" way then there would be no issue but unfortunately Linux doesn't have the market share for those companies to care. So you get into the negative feedback loop of: Linux has low market share because of lack of support, and companies don't support Linux because of low market share.
Valve has done amazing work with Steam Play. Seeing how well the steam deck plays games convinced me not to put windows on my new rig.
I don’t agree, however, that it just works. My graphics card needed a mess driver outside of the default repos for Ubuntu lts, and my gpu has been out for almost a year.
I also have one high dpi monitor and one standard-ish dpi monitor, and scaling them independently, moving windows back and forth, and going into and out of full screen games all produce undesired behavior. It’s annoying enough that I now just use one monitor.
Ubuntu LTS is generally used for servers, but if you are going to game on it you should consider using a container such as flatpak. It will share a kernel with your host OS (so if you need a newer kernel you are out of luck) but will be packaged with a newer version of Mesa. Installing drivers outside of the official repos can be a PITA because you often have to re-do everything when you upgrade your OS.
edit: should mention flatpak won't make your OS work itself. You'll need a newer distro for that. Ubuntu only gets major software updates for six months until the next release, everything after is minor adjustments like security updates and bug fixes.
And I'll just sit there and watch my OS since I'll have no software to run. No thanks.
Else I'd just sit there and watch my OS show me ads and it'd tell me how I should switch to Edge and use Bing. No thanks. /s
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Just last month I came across a cd I burned with Mandrake Linux that I had downloaded - 26 years ago!
I should try and install that on a virtual PC and see how it feels/looks hahaha
I recently did that with a Debian 3 (r8 I think) disc, that whole experience was a blast from the past!
And there was much rejoicing!
"A year passed: winter changed into spring, spring changed into summer, summer changed back into winter, and winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn... until one day..."
Probably won't amount to anything
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