quantum-

I don't really expect Python library management to be smooth on Windows because library management on Windows hasn't been great for any language in my (limited) experience. Certainly if compared to Linux/BSD. The reason it's unacceptable for Python application/library management to be so bad on Linux is that the infrastructure has been there for nearly decades, the PSF just need to actually fix this problem.

It runs even deeper than this. there are articles complaining at length about how developers screw over distributions, how programming languages screw over distributions and how distributions and app stores screw over everyone. Open standards exist for a reason and there needs to be more of them and more adherence to the ones that already exist. Apparently Torvalds hoped that Valve would do this when they released Steam for Linux (forcing distros to provide much needed ABI stability for the ecosystem as a whole too), instead they (Valve) shipped their own runtime.

I think Drew made a decent point that I definitely agree with though, quoting from the first article, I can't recall a satisfactory answer to this from Linus, Luke, or anyone who wants more people to switch to Linux. If you are a Windows user, it is far easier to remove the included bloat and malware in Windows than it is to try and run things on Linux. Why should the average Windows user switch if fixes for the problems with their current OS exist and applying those fixes has a much lower barrier to entry than changing their OS? Drew makes a number of criticisms of desktop Linux and the community in the second article. I agree that all of the points mentioned there (and several others that weren't) are issues that can (and must) be fixed by the community, but I don't think the paucity of desktop Linux users is one of them.

tbf, I'd hold judgement till I see the tutorial that led him there.

The UX is terrible for the average end-user, but GitHub is not designed to be a way for the average end-user to download software from. Tutorials that claim to be "new-user friendly" need to either stop relying on getting users to download things from GitHub or give a doorstop explanation of git/shell scripts/file permissions. Heck, if enough people want one, I'll write it myself so they can just link to/copy it. Apparently they fixed this in a recent update.

Oh no it's fixed now, and there are programs with similar problems that aren't available as Snaps/Flatpaks (CLI stuff mainly). One current issue I have is that I'm using a version of libxml which is newer than the version on the community branch because another tool (latexmlmath) requires it.

In fairness, my comment about rolling release distros being too unstable was primarily about new users, but I'll admit that wasn't clear. I've had a number of issues with Arch package dependencies not lining up because some have been updated while others haven't. I had to pin a certain version of a library for a few months because another program (which I relied on daily) wouldn't work with a newer version and the package maintainer hadn't gotten round to updating it.

While the Arch wiki is one of the best Linux resources on the Internet, I'd say it's far from intelligible to a newfriend, and once you're at the point where you can make sense of it, you're probably at the point where you can apply the information to distributions which aren't Arch based. I don't think it's worth using a rolling release distro because you primarily want to use the Arch Wiki, they're too unstable. But the difference is that most people learn how to use a computer as they learn how to use Windows. It shapes their expectations of how computers are supposed to behave.

I think this is still a hurdle for most Windows users. You're dealing with an OS that treats how programs are installed quite differently and to properly get things working you'll need to at least appreciate that. I'd say many issues that new Linux users face boil down to the fact that Linux-based OSes are fundamentally different from Windows and so you can't expect certain things from Linux. You can hide the differences behind a GUI, but at some point they have to be reckoned with.

This frankly. I don't know why people recommend distros like Manjaro or PopOS! to new users when they're relatively niche distros with not a lot of official support and backing. Fedora and Ubuntu are two user friendly choices with a lot of support. You can make changes to them so that they run games just like PopOS! would, but since you're making the changes, you'll learn what you're doing.

True, but they can validate the OS against their builds to make sure it doesn't fail as catastrophically. (at least I hope they do)

Even disregarding software support issues, this is still true. Linux in 2021 is not a plug and play solution and I don't think it should have been described as such by the community (I myself have some comments I'd probably take back regarding this).

Not that I've tried it on their own hardware, but the UX is probably better there since they have control over the entire stack.

I think these are the reasons why someone like Linus might choose Pop in the first place. They don't want to spend a lot of time on their OS, they simply want to install something quickly and run games/stream things. If System76 can make changes to stock Ubuntu that facilitate this, I wouldn't fault them as long as those changes make the user experience better, even if the documentation around it wasn't super great. The issue, like you point out, is when these changes aren't good and the UX is bad. I still can't blame System76 for this because their business is selling PCs, not designing an OS, and they're not a huge company. But I can definitely stop recommending PopOS! as a gaming friendly distribution. The same thing applies to most other distros that are spun-off from a larger one or are only supported by a small group.