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.

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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

  • Hawk@lemmynsfw.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    Perhaps another perspective is where to draw the line in terms of expected expertise.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      Sure, and where the line is drawn now is why more people don’t use Linux. I even use it for work, but still don’t want to deal with the hassle at home. I am getting a new home pc soon, and I thought maybe linux is ready. So I started reading up. No, I do not want to have to reinstall the os several times before I get it right. I don’t want another chore.

      • Hawk@lemmynsfw.com
        0·
        2 months ago

        Perhaps you’re simply more familiar with Microsoft / Apple, maybe it’s not more difficult?

        I too use Linux for work, but I have limited experience on Microsoft systems and have been on Linux based systems for over a decade. For me windows is a chore.

        In my opinion, it’s a matter of perspective and experience. Yours is aligned with something different, that’s all.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          I was reading pages about going linux only. Everyone I read warned people off about how it isn’t easy and such. That was just one example. But for work linux is easier to support, hands down. I have supported both. But for my home pc… which surfs the web, plays games, and not much else… windows is sadly easier according to the pages I read.

          • Hawk@lemmynsfw.com
            0·
            2 months ago

            Windows may be easier for games, they’re exclusively written for Microsoft so that’s to be expected ( although Valve has done a lot here).

            Generally speaking, modern distributions like Fedora will be no more difficult than Windows or Mac. The important distinction is that it will be different.

            Microsoft has spent a lot of effort putting their operating system into every single school and business on the face of the Earth and as a result many have decades of training with that OS. That doesn’t mean their operating system is better or easier. It just means it’s familiar. If you used Android for two decades and then picked up an iPhone, I’m sure that would be just as difficult.

            In the scientific space, we’ve been using *nix systems since well before Microsoft was even around so our tooling doesn’t typically support Microsoft. For us Microsoft is more difficult because that’s the training that we have.

            So, it’s not that Linux has a worse user experience per se, rather it provides a different user experience. Some may consider shell scripts worse than control panel, but that’s a preference. One isn’t worse than the other. They are just different.

            In my opinion:

            • Web browser
              • exactly the same
                • slight edge to in terms of privacy and security (there’s a reason Tails isn’t written in Windows)
            • Media – Movies
              • exactly the same

            The difference is in work, If your workflow is heavily Microsoft focused, Is a truly awful experience and you’ll feel like a second-class citizen. But if you’re working on technical things, the inverse is true, eg

            For document production:

            • TeX
              • Linux is much easier
            • HTML / Markdown / pandoc
              • Linux is much Easier
            • Microsoft Office
              • Windows is much better here
                • I don’t use Microsoft Office though so YMMV

            Finally, it’s not really fair to lump all the next distributions into the same bucket, Is over 1,000 distributions and they are all quite different, Only common element is the kernel.

            Gentoo is very technical but it’s also very interesting, Arch is similar. Fedora OTOH we’ll usually walk out of the box And you have your choice of desktop environment with Good support for alternative window managers like sway/Hyprland etc.