Games on Linux are great now this is why I fully moved to Linux. Is the the work place Pc’s market improving.
I think with any alternative to big tech the problem is most people are really unwilling to change their habits and make short term compromises. A lot of people know on a surface level that big tech is stealing their data etc. But actually changing their habits goes to far.
Another issue is that its more or less a systemic issue.
To many people aren’t even awear of what FOSS even is. The state of Foss and is a bit complicated where you do have organizations and activists advocating for it but also gigantic corporations that use Foss technology and exploit the free labor that goes into it.
There definitely needs to be more activism for FOSS technology and alternatives to big tech. And those alternatives should be open to everyone like Linux is. Of course there are always multiple reasons why something isn’t used but I do think it is important to look at a bigger perspective than individual consumer/ in this case users
I think part of the problem is that while Linux software is constantly getting more user friendly, the average user is getting less knowledgeable about computers at just as fast of a rate. People even understanding the concept of files and folders doesn’t seem to be a given anymore.
Everything mainstream is a black box corporate ecosystem these days. Kids learn how to use specific programs and mobile apps, but don’t learn anything about the OS or machine itself because everything is isolated and “just works”.
It’s a really weird spot to be in. We’re used to the older generations being bad with tech, but now it’s also the younger ones too.
That’s more depressing than I can handle
Part of the problem there is that we don’t teach people how to actually use computers, we teach how to use specific programs instead usually.
A few months back I saw a post somewhere about how “kids these days don’t know how to read an analog clock”. And it’s the exact same thing, you have to teach people how to use them. You don’t just innately know how to use these things we created.
Most of the comments here seem to be from the consumer perspective, but if you want broader adoption, you need to consider the corporate market too. Most corporate software these days is web-based, so the problem is less with the software and more with the people responsible for it.
The biggest hurdle is friction with the internal IT team. They like Windows because that’s all they ever learnt and they’re not interested in maintaining a diverse set of company laptops. They won’t entertain Linux in a corporate environment unless it’s mandated by management, and even if the bosses approve it, IT will want a way to lock you out of your laptop, force updates, do a remote wipe, etc.
There are (proprietary) tools to do some of this, but they generally suck and often clash with your package manager. Microsoft is just way ahead of Linux in the “bloatware that tours your hands” department.
This is it. Exactly it. Internal IT management wants a good, centrally managed system to lock down and control corporate devices. Heck, corporations often even contract this task (and help desk) to management companies.
Let’s assume the tools and the experts are there to perform these remote management shenanigans, after this it only comes to “money talks”. Don’t have to replace a 2-4yo laptop with a new one if the old one still performs fine for another 2-4 years. So then you have to weigh the cost of expertise against slower amortization.
My company disabled VPN access for anything but macOS and Win11. Because even though the VPN we use is mandated to be used with a closed source app, and the app has a Linux version, the IT dudes couldn’t exit vim when asked to manually edit /etc/environment
The vast majority of business apps and network admin apps are written for windows so you either can’t run them on unix or they would require an additional layer of complexity that can’t be justified “just to be on unix”.
For dev and IT work I use a mix of windows and RHEL. Business apps in windows and terminal sessions on our linux servers. My db work is almost 100% linux.
Personally for me its compatibility and support. Too many of programs and hardware I use daily aren’t compatible or even have a Linux version or have little to no support officially or not.
For an example I tried to use Mint on my main rig but i was having trouble with my two monitor. I wanted my right monitor to be the main display but i kept wanting to use the left one, issue with how i wanted them to be arranged virtually and a ghost third monitor showing up and it all reverting settings or just breaking when a program open in full screen
OR when i messed with how drop down menus in settings and though steam was busted or something cuz i couldn’t right click on my games in my library
Two things:
- Obviously it needs to come pre-installed. This is a really tough hurdle to overcome and I’m not sure how it can be.
- Security needs a lot of work if Linux is going to lose the small-target advantage.
Adding my voice to the hardware compatibility issue. While most hardware just works, Linux usually lacks the ability to configure the device. Audio interfaces are a good example of this. They work but you can’t set the sample rate or enable any custom features on ANY of them.
I believe government regulators should step in and require hardware manufacturers to provide Linux support equal to Windows or Mac. This could be relaxed for low volume or highly specialised devices, but mainstream consumer stuff should be more universal.
It CAN be configured, but you have to go hunting for the tools to do so.
I’ve got an old 5.1 surround sound speaker setup attached to my main rig, and in both Cinnamon and KDE (the only two I’ve tried), you can’t use the normal DE’s audio control panel to put the thing in 5.1 mode without first installing an old, probably unmaintained tool called ALSAJackRetask. Once you’ve retasked the jacks, several options for surround appear in the DE’s audio control panel. It knows but it can’t do.
Default install from box store systems
Multi-million dollar advertising budgets from apple and Microsoft. Coordinated campaigns to embed those systems in education institutions and workplaces.
This question comes up every other week. I reject the premise that “more users” is a commonly held objective.
For most linux / OSS projects the objective is to be the best the project can be. Having an active community is usually part of that but “more users” is a low priority.
I remember when “the internet” was a bunch of older nerds and kids. My parents, aunts, uncles, etc didn’t even know how to go online. It was great! More users made it much worse. Please don’t become the mainstream OS.
This most difficult one is probably the fact that 99% of people do not install their operating system.
The device they purchase needs to have a clean and elegant out of box experience like the Mac. Regular folk who are willing to stray from windows don’t consider any computer that doesn’t come off the shelf with sane defaults. Everything else is arcane to them.
We are not those people. I have to remind myself that not everyone likes to build their own systems.
I do have a friend who wants to buy a framework laptop with Fedora on it because that’s what they use in the Laboratory he works in but he doesn’t want to assemble it himself he just wants it to come like that.
I think we’re getting there finally.
Either:
- A smarter and wiser population able to discern and care enough that they’re being cucked by Microsoft, overcoming the inertia to install Linux.
- Linux invents a game/feature that is so goddamn appealing that everyone wants in on the action.
- Preinstallation.
There needs to a single “App Store” where regular people can find free and paid apps that will work on all distros.
Basically, we need Steam for non-gamers.
what happened to flathub’s goal of hosting paid apps?
At a guess, the Venn diagram of people who would happily regularly pay for apps and people who have heard of flathub is teeny tiny.
The nomenclature needs a bit of clarity as well for anybody that hasn’t gone digging into the ecosystem.
For non-enterprise users only two things:
- Zero reasonably priced options for support when things go wrong.
- Breaking changes caused by updates that make that support necessary.
If my neighbor’s Windows or Apple machine breaks they can call Microsoft or Apple, the PC manufacturer or a bunch of different support providers. Microsoft provides free support if one of their updates causes problems.
I can’t find any Linux support aimed at home users, only very expensive enterprise support options.
Have u ever talked to tech support of microsoft as usual user? With such quality ofsupport it would be better that it would none,in the end all their support coming please reboot computer.
Most of the people I know are computer illiterate. They know nothing about PC’s and don’t care to learn because they think of PCs as appliances. They want word processing, email, photos, and web, and don’t give a damn what’s going on under the hood. Microsoft support is generally pretty bad, but it’s far better than none at all.
That lack of any support (except me) is the only reason I haven’t moved friends and family to Linux.
Personally for elderely people I installed mint once and forgot it they using laptops from windows 7 era and they were getting dozens of ads malware so I was to reinstall os almost every half year now this problem gone entirely and yes I am aware very well too about what u are talking about such in my case where I am living nobody gonna ever call for tech support of Microsoft cause they don’t know about that it exist and they will ask someone who they know for help about computer if something not work
You can call Microsoft? I thought Microsoft called me
It’s amazing how much damage those scammers cause.
Last year I ran into a retired neighbor at Staples buying a new laptop because her existing machine had been hacked. She came back after leaving it running to find someone was logged in remotely. They drained $8k from her retirement account. Turned out 6 months earlier she got a call from “Microsoft” asking to connect to her machine because they “noticed it had a problem.”
I think it is its image of lack of stability and features; I know there are out there stable distros and almost every well known program has a Linux version, but the image that Linux has had through the years is not that. If Linux overcomes this and gets a better reputation, it would be a great weight lifted for the road ahead of the OS. I hope Proton breaks through the mainstream public and Linux gets more exposed and known out there
I’ve been dragging my feet on making the switch. Some of it is i just doing feel like doing another OS install and desktop setup. Some of it is distro paralysis. There’s a lot and I dont really know what to choose.
I downloaded Mint Cinnamon a while back and was too lazy to install it. Is this still a good choice for gaming and school work? I already use libreoffice.
I’m comfortable enough with configuring and settings, but by no means a superuser.
I guess it would be reducing the need of terminal usage as much as possible. That’s still the only thing a common user struggles with, in my opinion. The rest is just difference or has nothing to do with Linux.
With Linux gaming is rising currently, most common problem is kernel anti-cheat games and it’s not Linux problem, for example. What are devs supposed to do? To develop literal Windows kernel compatibility layer or something? But Linux may do stuff on their end to make cheating difficult to keep game studio’s happy but that would also mean to stray away from its philosophy. As a general platform, it would be hard to do this anyway. This would be possible per distro basis. Maybe Linux dev circles are already discussing this, maybe not, I don’t know honestly.
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