this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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Can't do that if you play games.
Also that's half of the reason Windows hasn't lost the war on home desktop PCs yet. Another half is office applications.
Actually, these are thirds.
Another reason making me say so is that no major user-friendly distribution wants to be just that, they all have a particular madness with no good reason for it.
So I don't know what to recommend, there should be something off the top of my head, but that'd be "just install Debian, it's fine".
So, any single reason of these going away would accelerate Linux adoption notably. Any two would make it a trend visible to housewives. And all three would resemble the flight of ICQ users to Skype.
I recently been arguing with some dude about some PUBG mechanics. It took me quite some time to realize that he was playing PUBG mobile, never played the PC version or even knew that it even existed for that matter. For him, PUBG simply meant PUBG mobile. For those people, they don't even consider using PC for gaming. They might consider console, but PC to them is just more or less a typewriter for school/office tasks.
I've been thinking for some time what to answer and concluded that the normie world is a world of pain.
We - as in FOSS OS users and FOSS paradigm users - desperately need open hardware, so that the rest of the industry could eat all the rubber dicks they want without affecting us significantly.
And I mean not only hardware design, but fabs.
It may seem an impossible future, with semiconductor deficit etc, and Taiwan being that important.
And with starting a fab being so expensive.
Still, they only way a conclusive FOSS victory resulting in even balance happens is if there is a public fab producing general-purpose hardware with public design.
Because right now lots of resources are being wasted on catching up in inherently disadvantageous areas, like supporting proprietary hardware which is always harder for FOSS developers than for MS or Apple.
Without full-chain FOSS hardware production it'll always be bare survival.
What's Ubuntu's "particular madness"? They used to be a little FOSS-only, but they've chilled out on that.
I agree on the other points, though, with one caveat on both.
No matter how many games run on linux, it won't be enough because there aren't ever going to be linux exclusives. Without linux exclusives, there will always be more games that run in Windows than Linux, even if the majority of them run in linux AND run better than in Windows.
Office sounds like a big deal, but Apple managed to prove you don't need it. The real problem Linux has with office is that it has no well-marketed office suite. There's nothing wrong with Libre- or Open- except the complete lack of advertising and passive training to its nuances that we get from MS and Apple office products.
It's not that linux can't win on games or office. It's that the game is rigged against it on both. It took me a few years back in the early 00's, but I quickly realized that there will never be a "year of the linux desktop" regardless of how good Linux gets at games, office, user-friendliness, or anything.
And that's ok because MY life is easier when I use linux.
I remember that it does too much, but without specifics. It's been 4+ years since I touched Ubuntu.
I vaguely remember that "Amazon lens" for Unity, I don't think they ever were that much FOSS-only.
It's fine. That'd still be goal fulfilled.
How so?
I recently had a problem with LO, while editing a document with lots of math formulae - from time to time while adding a formula about half of others (in the whole document) would just become empty.
Not sure something like that would happen under Apple suite's analog of Word, whatever it's called.
With that I agree, somewhere in 2012 I somehow realized that it's already much better than the alternatives, and yes, for a housewife's desktop just as well, if one's honest and thinks of their own needs.
And if one's comparing it to advertising of the competing commercial products, then it's hopeless.