2d ago

I see these MFs on a daily basis

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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.
- The average person can't use Mac or Windows efficiently either lol
- Honestly, Windows isn't ready for the desktop, either, it's just not ready in a different way that most people are familiar with.
  Things like an OS update breaking the system should be rare, not so common that people are barely surprised when it happens to them. In a unified system developed as one integral product by one company there should be one config UI, not at least three (one of which is essentially undocumented). "Use third-party software to disable core features of the OS" shouldn't be sensible advice.
  Windows is horribly janky, it's just common enough that people accept that jank as an unavoidable part of using a computer.
- the average user clicks on the chrome icon to open the internet and goes to gmail.com.
  you can do all that in linux.
  
  Until everything breaks because the average user hasn't bothered updating.
  
  With atomic distros, that updating happens in the background, you don't have to do anything. It's like MacOS or Android.
  
  Until everything breaks because the average user held down the power button mid-update because the computer wouldn't shut down.
  
  This is a lot safer on Linux than Windows, this year. A lot of engineering has gone into making updates resilient.
  And Linux hasn't done the Windows 10 to Windows 11 - black screen for a couple hours, hope you know not to touch it - that we sometimes see.
  Linux now has a stronger default permissions model, so it's a lot harder for user error to break the machine in serious ways, even if they do reboot during a sensitive update.
  
  Linux does do the black screen and hope you don't touch it, at least OpenSUSE and Fedora do. And that's a good thing. The "reboot to update is bad" meme needs to die but I digress. I'm skeptical that Linux is more resilient than Windows when it comes to updating but even if it is, Windows automatically rolls back failed updates while Linux will boot you into broken system and expect you to know what to do. Regular people can't deal with this, even if the answer is a simple as selecting a different entry from the GRUB.
  
  while Linux will boot you into broken system and expect you to know what to do.
  But...
  even if the answer is a simple as selecting a different entry from the GRUB.
  Okay. Yeah. It's often that simple.
  I take your point, but I've had my Windows blow itself to hell way more than my Linux has, and putting Linux on relatives machines has been by far the least hassle of the big three, for me.
  But that's just my anecdotal experience.
  
  Anything's possible. But, they try to make that hard. The system always keeps 2 versions around, the newest one and the previous one, so if you screw up the newest one you can always boot into the previous one. And Bazzite, at least, uses BTRFS which uses copy-on-write, so it's much harder to corrupt the filesystem. I think the /boot partition is still ext4 though, so it's possible that if you time it just right you could theoretically mess up your boot partition. Then you'd need to use a rescue USB drive to fix it.
  
  The /boot partition is FAT32 due to RedHat's stupidity but that's neither here nor there. The point is that regular users don't know how to boot into a previous version of the OS. Yes, I know you just have to select it on GRUB but a black screen with a list of kernels qualifies as broken for regular people.
  
  I'd agree that in the current state it's pretty useless. But, I don't think it would take too much to make it usable. If the GRUB menu had some basic information on it like: what version is it, when was it installed, has it booted successfully, etc. then I think that would be enough for most people to figure out. Although, I do think that the current Bazzite timeout is way too short.
  BTW, on my system /boot is ext4, /boot/efi is FAT32 and the rest mounted at /sysroot is BTRFS.
  
  Yep. That's what I'm saying, Linux isn't ready.
  BTW, on my system /boot is ext4, /boot/efi is FAT32 and the rest mounted at /sysroot is BTRFS.
  Your installation is probably quite old. It used to be like that but now the default is mounting the ESP to /boot. The old way makes way more sense to me, btw.
  
  Nope, it's maybe a month old.
  
  So like forced updates in Windows?
  
  Sort of. In my experience with Windows it gets really annoying. They tell you there's an update and that you have to restart. If you put it off for long enough and just hibernate your computer, Windows will eventually boot your computer even if it's "off" to install the update.
  With Bazzite and other atomic distros it's more like it lets you know that there's an update available for you, and that the next time you reboot you'll get that update. I personally haven't ever had it bug me to reboot, but maybe it does that eventually. I don't know of any Linux distros that would have the nerve to boot your system when it's off to install an update.
  Also, if you don't want that update, you can "pin" your current deployment and you don't have to update. Next time you boot you can choose the "pinned" deployment rather than the new one. Normally you wouldn't want to do that because you'd be missing out on security updates, but if you've heard that the newest drivers are unstable, you can definitely choose not to update -- or at least not to boot into the updated version.
  Also worth mentioning that there are always 2 boot entries, the newest one and the previous one. So, if the newest one does get installed and there's some issue, you can reboot and choose the previous one. Theoretically you can also roll back to an earlier one from months ago, but I haven't ever done that.
- I disagree. I'm running Bazzite, which is based on the immutable variant of fedora, and it runs like a charm, even without much knowledge. Most drivers are prepackaged, so stuff like WiFi aren't much of a hassle anymore and I haven't had any issues with Flatpak. It basically eliminates all fiddling at the cost of customizing your OS as much as other distros. Honestly, SteamOS did show that immutable distros are the de facto future for new users. So far I know of Bazzite and Fedora's immutable distros variant, but there might be more.
- I've been playing FFXIV on Linux with dlss, reshade and 3rd party mods and it's been a blast.
  Linux is 100% ready for gaming even with the worst case scenario (nvidia) I've been able to overclock and play just fine.
- My grandma uses Linux, you stupid?
  
  Did she install it herself or did you set it up for them?
  Because the majority of people do not have the luxury of someone who will fix their shit if it breaks. They just bring it back to the store.
  
  Are you calling your grandma stupid? I already stated I use linux as well.

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