Who thinks Linux is better??

[James]

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

 

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here
 

 

[kelvinhall05]

Works better on old/weak hardware.

IMO sexier (Deepin OwO)

More secure in terms of viruses

FREE!

Easy to install (except Arch lol)

Customizable (KDE especially)

Easy to install software (espcially on Arch-based stuff with the AUR and whatnot)

Less spying/data collection (none on some distros)

More variety (distro for everything from a NAS to tablets to just regular desktops)

[Senzelian]

One of my jobs is to deploy Alcatel PBXs, which use a very cut down version of Linux as their OS. What I like about that, is the performance! 256MB of RAM and it just runs like butter!

[jiyeon]

In no particular order:

• Low RAM usage
• Low storage usage
• No spying
• Hella customisation
• Updates at my own will
• No bloatware

 

My Asus ZenBook UX410 uses Manjaro Linux and it's a miles better experience than Windows 10 that it came with out the box. I customised mine to look exactly like macOS.

I love that there is no spying or data collection as I'm running an independent distro, not to mention the updates that I download and install myself thanks to Manjaro being a rolling release distro.

It's a clean, pure, and free-ranged operating system compared to Windows which is why I love to use it, even if I do miss out on Windows .exe programs sometimes.

[Guest]

At the end of the day, most mission critical, uptime sensitive things are running some form of Linux.

For me that's it's biggest plus. I can go to sleep without worrying about my servers restarting from a forced update and something being broken.

[Guest]

And there's a ton of distros specialized for whatever you want to do with linux. 

[Kon-Tiki]

The following I really like about Linux, no particular order:

• Linux distros (with the exception of Suse Linux Enterprise and RedHat) are free of charge
• No data collection/ telemetry (telemetry option is available in Ubuntu but can be disabled)
• Stability
• Faster, more reliable update process (no "Updating Windows 30% done. Do not turn off the Computer", just a simple and quick reboot at best)
• Tons of free and open source software through the repositories (e.g. for development but also for basically every other task you can imagine)
• Customizability
• No bloatware (Candy Crush and alike)
• Performance on both old and new hardware (due to the large number of different distros, nearly every system, even quite aged ones, can still be used in a useful and productive way)
• Possibility to run Linux on embedded and low power systems
• Security: Even when logged in to the system as root, you usually have to enter your password before applications can perform certain critical tasks. Thus it is harder for malware to run with elevated privileges

[Guest]

I run it day in and day out on my laptop, and not because it's slow as it has 6 cores w/ 32GB of ram, don't laugh at my 1050 Ti tho.

• Low resource usage
  • I can take pleasure knowing that onedrive which isn't logged in doesn't spike to 100% CPU usage and slow down the desktop on a 6 core system, even on fresh installs from various versions
  • Super responsive, just a smoother desktop experience overall
  • Desktop usage easily sits under 800MB on a heavier DE whereas others can easily be lower
• Feature rich if need be, minimal if need be
• More choice and control
  • WM/DE (Plasma, Gnome, Mate, i3, Sway, even Ratpoison if that's how you roll)
  • Compositing effects, I love my wobbly windows
  • Display Server
• Rock solid stable, and I'm on a rolling distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed) and don't experience random system crashes or kernel panics (BSOD in the Windows world)
• Dev tools, well everything I've ever needed has been on here and less of a hassle to setup compared to windows
• I've had better battery life on this laptop whether comparing power saver mode or performance mode, but your millage may vary
• Reliable installing and updates to apps and the system, one command is enough.
• No ads and selling of data on most distros

It also has all the tools I need and over 90% of the games I play run on linux in one way or another.

Pics for fun

Spoiler

 

[CactusMan]

• Scalability and the ability customize everything. I can have a full desktop experience like with Manjaro, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora, OR I can have a very stripped down desktop experience for very low resource usage like TinyCore.
• I can change the look and feel of my desktop however I want. I can make it imitate Windows or MacOS. (KDE ftw)
• Want to take your distro on the go? Install it onto a flash drive, SD card, or external HDD/SDD.
• The fact that the terminal is practically all you need. I can edit text files or browse the internet.
• Almost every driver you need is already part of the kernel. (Barring Nvidia)
• Centralized package repositories certified by the distro maintainers. Plus the option to use custom repositories to get more applications.
• No forced updates! You can keep your pc on 24/7.
• Free (as in freedom) and Open Source Software

[williamcll]

Debian distros can run more PC games than macs these days.

 

Oh if only mobile and desktop Linux are compatible sharing the same libraries rather than running VMs.

[rogervn]

One of the best things about opensource software is that something really bothers you, you can absolutely have all the details of how it works, and even change it if you have programming skills. But usually just understanding and having enough knobs is enough.

 

Once you're used to this kind of power over your OS, it's really hard to accept something someone thought would be better for you for whatever reasons (specially when they're shady).

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Been running Mint on my laptop (Samsung NP900X4D) for several years now.  

 

I had to install no drivers at all, even most of the function keys (screen brightness, keyboard backlight brightness, volume, touchpad on/off) worked out of the box. 

Only the manual fan on/off and the WiFi on/off button don't do anything, but I suspect that this functionality under Windows is part of Samsung's own software suite.  It shouldn't be that hard to enable it under Linux too, but I don't ever use those buttons so I haven't bothered to look into it. 

 

Why I prefer it:

• the responsiveness.  Everything is smoother and faster, even the mouse and trackpad response feels much better than on Windows (different accelleration?).
• no forced updates, no built-in advertisements, no unnecessary telemetry. 
• updates won't add or remove programs or adjust your privacy settings, unlike some other OS does on a regular basis.
• using repositories means that all your installed programs are automatically updated with a single command, no more need to let the programs themselves check for updates or to download them individually.
• you can keep using your programs while the system is updating them.  Also no need to stop working or immediately restart when there is an OS update. 
• the ability to boot from an external USB3 drive.  I find that having several (encrypted) external drives and using those is much more convenient than setting up a multiboot environment.  This allows me to do any financial and crypto stuff on a completely separate OS without actually having to buy a different machine for that purpose.  Even if there would be something nasty on my regular install, there's just no way for it to jump over. 
• choice.  Don't like something?  Change it.  Switch to a completely different distro if you want, there's plenty of stuff out there to suit everyone's tastes.  As long as you have a separate home partition set up, you don't even need to move or back up your files (although the latter is still always a good idea)
• free ... as in "freedom" as well as "free beer".  
• Security issues get patched a LOT faster. 

 

In fairness I have to add that I usually run Windows 7 on my main PC, but I will completely switch that one over to Linux when 7 goes EoL. 

 

Apart from GTA5, which I haven't played in months anyway, my entire Steam library has native Linux support. 

I do have this desire to pick up WoW Classic to relive my youth, but not if that means having to install Windows 8.1 or 10 in a couple of months. 

[AngryBeaver]

I think that linux has some pretty good strengths, but also for most users also comes with downsides that outweigh them for all but the more IT savvy users.

 

Now don't get me wrong some distros are getting much more user friendly, but still even the best ones require some command line here and there. So I think that is where it really hurts itself. Where as with windows you don't really need to know any command line at all. Yes, you can use it to make life easier and do some more advanced things, but from the day to day it just isn't needed.

 

Then you have to look at cost. Yes linux is free, but you are stuck with forums and other users to help you solve a problem. With windows you do need to pay, but you also get support from them when needed. 

 

Now you have to look at compatibility. Yes, linux isn't bad about recognizing hardware and such, but it doesn't have the same software capabilities. Pretty much all software will run on windows (a few exceptions) and gaming is still currently better on windows, but linux is gaining ground there at least.

 

Linux for a home user is a little more secure, but a lot of that is because it just isn't targeted like windows due to market share. Updating is nicer since you don't need to restart unless you update the kernel. It uses less resources (ram) pretty much across the board and is open source so you have much more options when it comes to customization.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

On 9/28/2019 at 1:13 AM, AngryBeaver said:

even the best ones require some command line here and there. So I think that is where it really hurts itself. Where as with windows you don't really need to know any command line at all.

The thing is that Windows has only one interface.  The various Linux distros have so many different interfaces and menus that it's always easier to say "enter this command in the terminal" than to ask what distro and desktop environment someone uses and to then tell them which buttons to look for and which options to click in which menus.  I don't like using command line either, but it often is just a lot more convenient than using the UI. 

 

I'd reply to the "Linux forums vs Microsoft support" comment, but in all fairness the last time I contacted Microsoft's support was because of problems with the then newly released Vista SP1.  Their support was pretty horrible back then.  Judging by the irrelevant and generic "solutions" that their reps post in the answers.microsoft.com community forum whenever someone reports a problem, I doubt that there has been any improvement since.

[The_Prycer]

Oh ho, you're approaching me?

 

First of all, Linux is the BEST OS ever thanks to being open source and completely open to customization. If you're a giganerd and want to change something, you are absolutely free to do so and make it your own as many other nerds have done to create their own distros.

 

EVERYTHING IS FREE. There are certain paid services, but if I want to run a program on Linux, I can find a comparable piece of open source software that works just as well if not better than a paid version for Windows or Mac.

 

THE UTILITIES. I use drive cloning on Puppy more than almost any other utility and it is far more convenient than trying to do a Windows or Mac variation of this. As an actual IT person in an office, Linux is my default OS on my laptop so when I don't need Active Directory for something, I can just use Linux.

 

I can run Linux on basically anything and revive old hardware with it. No longer do I need to toss out old tech when I can just run Linux on it and keep using my machines while not contributing to e-waste. 

 

Gaming on Linux has come a long way in the past few years. While not all of my favorite titles are compatible yet, developers are making Linux versions of games and developers are patching things so I can play all my games without needing Windows spying on me.

 

The community surrounding it. Windows is just what the masses use, Mac still carries a yuppie air of superiority about it, but Linux? You see another distro user and you're both instantly friends as you bond over your love of the kernel.

 

 

It reminds me of Anthony and anything involving Anthony is a good thing.

[YellowJersey]

I run Linux Mint (MATE), started at 17.3 now running 19. Here's why I use it

 

1) Great for breathing new life into old machines. It means I can buy cheap refurb laptops, install Linux, and away we go. It's saved me a lot of money because I need to upgrade less often. One of my laptops ran for 10 years, four of those on Linux after it just couldn't run Windows 7 any more without freezing up and crashing all the time (Lenovo T500 2009-2019, RIP). I also imagine it's better for the environment that way as you get a longer usable life out of your computer.

 

2) Free.

 

3) Gets you away from Windows' data mining. So I find it's nice for the privacy oriented.

 

4) Unless you're into gaming or specific use applications (video editing, photo editing, etc), I find it's really all you need. If you're something looking to browse the web, watch netflix and youtube, and do some word processing and officey kind of stuff, then you need look no further. So I think a significant number of users could switch to Linux and not be left wanting.

 

5) Non-intrusive updates. I can download and install system updates without needing to pause what I'm doing or restart the machine.

 

6) There's a distro for everyone and you can try them out risk free. I settled on Mint because I was coming from Windows and it felt very familiar and it's ready out-of-the-box.

 

7) Doesn't seem to slow down over time the way Windows seemed to.

 

8) It actually detects external harddrives and USB sticks when inserted on the first try. Windows seems very flakey by comparison.

 

9) Tonnes of useful free packages. I've downloaded some very useful PDF tools for merging and cutting up PDFs and it's been a huge help compared to Windows where you either have to buy software or put your faith in some really dodgy free software.

I do want to clarify, though, that I don't think Linux is for everyone. If you need to edit video, depend on third party peripherals, or have some other use case that relies on software or hardware that needs tinkering to get working on Linux, then it's probably not for you as Windows or MacOS would likely be just more convenient than tinkering or setting up a VM. But, I think a significant number of people use their computers for basic stuff like web browsing, media consumption (netflix, youtube, etc), and basic office productivity and those users could use a distro like Mint and never look back.

 I never thought an OS could get me excited. Linus Mint changed that.

 

 

[rogervn]

I don't really get that people might think that having many distros is a downside.

 

For people who don't want to mess around much, they'll probably be better off choosing basic Ubuntu right away. It's not overwhelming to just do that.

 

But if you're thinking about the feeling that they might be losing on something better because they don't want to research other distros and other WDMs, that might happen, but is that a downside?

 

Feels like is better to have a monopoly because it's overwhelming to look at all competitors.

[Merkey]

Unless I need to run any Windows only applications, I prefer Linux. Here is why:

• Privacy, freedom
• App load times and responsiveness is generally much better on Linux, the whole system feels faster, more stable
• The ability to customize almost everything

I wouldn't recommend Linux to everybody of course, but for those of us who like tech and more challenging things to play with, Linux is in my opinion not only a great platform to learn new things on, but a good daily driver OS as well

[Augustin]

You can do interesting things with networking and storage without additional software.

If drivers are open source then hardware installation is actually easier.

 

[finest feck fips]

Background: I first dabbled in Linux use on the desktop when I was 12 or so. By the time I was 14, it was my primary OS, but I would still dual-boot for gaming. As an adult, I've gone exclusive: I haven't booted Windows on my own hardware since I was 18, now ten years ago. I started out on one of those cutesy WIndows-imitation distros (Xandros, an ancestor of Linspire (formerly ‘Lindows’)), terrified of the terminal, tried every distro that ever came in the free DVD bundled with a Linux magazine from 2005-2010, and eventually made my way over to my favorite weird-ass boutique distro, NixOS.

 

1. Respect: freedom, privacy, and control
   • The most important thing for me about using a free software operating system is that free software operating systems are the only ones that allow me to feel respected as a user. macOS is condescending and restrictive: ‘You will follow our paradigm and you will like it, idiot.’ But the Linux desktop makes no pretensions about the best way to use your computer; even distros designed with a very specific paradigm will stay out of your way should you go to change them. Windows is invasive and controlling: ‘Before you use this computer I'm gonna need you to agree that I'm allowed to spy on you at any time for any reason. I'll be cool about it, but you gotta sign. And oh yeah, you should definitely log into your local machine using a cloud account. It makes perfect sense. What? You don't want to? Alright, take a walk around the back.’ After so many years on Linux, the idea of agreeing to a EULA to use my operating system is very alien, and frankly, deeply offensive to me. The walled garden approach and the nagging panopticon are both insulting to my values. Linux feels just right.
2. Software management: ease and trust
   • Once you get used to it, Linux-style software management is something you miss everywhere else. Other operating systems allow every program to go rogue, nagging you for its own update, spawning background processes and using custom installers for each and every program. And on Mac and Windows, operating system updates are handled by totally different mechanisms from the updates of ordinary software! On top of it all, both Mac and Windows OS updates frequently require you to reboot, sometimes multiple times for a single update or series of updates! Frankly, that's caveman shit.
     • Linux software management, on the other hand, is uniform: you update everything the same way, and all at once. The only upgrades that actually require reboots are upgrades to the kernel (and maybe sometimes the init system or a driver update). And in those cases, you can reboot just once after all of your updates are finished, and nothing hijacks your first boot after the upgrade to ‘finish installing updates’ (wtf is that??). You can literally verify that everything on your system has the latest security patches in one place, and that's not info you get from some stupid, performance-draining, anti-virus program that hooks itself into your system like a rootkit that you had to pay for— it's a native part of the software management system.
   • Manually navigating the web to download executable installers which can contain arbitrary code is the sketchiest possible way to install anything on your computer. On Linux distros, you can put some trust in your distro maintainers and other repository providers to vet the software that is made available to you. In most distros, packages are securely signed, and there's a formal review process (which takes place out in the open!) for adding packages to a distro repository.
3. Transparency: an ‘open-world operating system’
   • Free software operating systems leave you totally free to explore and inspect the system. When there's a problem, you can always dive deeper, from error messages to terminal output, to debug symbols, to source code. Nearly every component is replaceable, every application has alternatives, and there's always a clear path from your current knowledge level to something more advanced. But Windows is opaque; it's full of invisible walls from the moment you boot it up and it hides what the operating system is dong before you get to your desktop. macOS demands to be used in its peculiar way: the main quest is your mission and that's that. But Linux has no invisible walls; even its most fatal errors are rarely dead ends, and nothing the distro developers have put in place is too sacred for you to use or abuse as you see fit. Linux is an operating system for explorers, for side questers, for archaeologists, for detectives, for vandals— for adventurers.
4. Driver integration: when it's there, it's excellent, and it's there to stay
   • Unlike other operating systems, where hardware vendors are expected to produce drivers and bring them to the OS, Linux often has to fight tooth and nail for the drivers it has, to extract them from uncooperative hardware makers. The selection sometimes suffers for that. But when hardware is supported, that support is extremely well integrated. There is no plugging a damn mouse in and waiting for the OS to figure out that it's a mouse. There are no tedious hardware auto-recognition wizards. If you take a page out of the Mac (or Hackintosh) user's book and buy  systems, components, and peripherals with your OS in mind, you will have a very good time. Moreover, unlike with either macOS or Windows, once a device's drivers are integrated into the Linux kernel, support tends not to age out. You won't really find Linux users doing things like installing an older version of whatever distro just so they can get old hardware to work, a choice Windows users are sometimes faced with, as has even happened at LMG.
5. First-class terminal: the GNU hotness
   • GNU/Linux provides the most featureful, well-integrated terminal experience available, period. I stress GNU here because it is GNU utilities that drive full-fat CLI experiences: GNU grep, GNU awk, GNU find, GNU sed, and GNU coreutils. Apple can brag until the cows come home about how their OS is genuine Unix, but their CLI environment is insanely outdated and so much less capable than the GNU alternatives that the first thing many developers on macOS do is install various GNU utilities in some form. Linux has a vastly superior selection of terminal emulators. The most popular terminal emulators and command-line environments and tools on other operating systems somehow routinely have performance problems, but even the default terminal emulators for Plasma and Gnome (both Linux exclusive) are feature-rich and admirable performers, as are the CLI utilities themselves. And of course, Microsoft's current emulation layer-based approach to the command-line essentially concedes that Linux has the terminal to beat.
6. Real community: even, you know, people who actually hang out together
   • The word ‘community’ gets thrown around a hell of a lot these days; a manufacturer of tablecloths might refer to their customers, most of whom have never spoken to a single other such customer, as a ‘community’. But in Linux, the community is the real fuckin' deal: there is probably a Linux users group in your city. They do things like get together at the library once a month to walk newbies through tough installs or setting up tricky hardware, educate one another on interesting new Linux toys, teach new users how to make their way, and go out for beers and pizza when it's all done. Folks from the Linux users group mailing list in my hometown have done things like drive 50 miles to go help another user's blind mother physically plug in a computer, in exchange for dinner. There are many actual, real Linux communities, and they're characterized by a spirit of generous volunteerism and goodwill. Randos pasting mysterious things like ‘Error Code 0x0001’ into Stack Overflow just don't compare, and neither does Apple's cult of conspicuous consumption. And like their standout in-person counterparts, roots in online Linux communities run deeper than anything you'll find for other operating systems, full stop.

Damn, that came out long.

[finest feck fips]

8 hours ago, Merkey said:

Unless I need to run any Windows only applications, I prefer Linux. Here is why:

• Privacy, freedom
• App load times and responsiveness is generally much better on Linux, the whole system feels faster, more stable
• The ability to customize almost everything

I wouldn't recommend Linux to everybody of course, but for those of us who like tech and more challenging things to play with, Linux is in my opinion not only a great platform to learn new things on, but a good daily driver OS as well

Seconded. Linux's ties to the server market combined with its openness mean that there are a lot of cool technologies you get to play with ‘for free’ on Linux, where ‘free’ means both ‘free of charge’ and ‘natively’.

[vanished]

I guess I can throw my two cents in here.  Can't promise this will be in any particular order though

• Command line.  Some say the necessity is a downside, and that may be, but the option is definitely a pro.  You can do some amazing things both manually and through bash scripts.  Hell, you can even run the whole OS like that without any visual system at all.  That's a powerful feature.
• Efficient.  I've often found that while hardware "support" isn't as good as Windows, "the basics" always work at least as well if not massively better.  It doesn't rape the disk, it uses less RAM, and things just overall load and feel snappier.  I've even qualified it objectively before by playing a game on Linux successfully at 720p60 solid that could not do the same on Windows.  All of these effects really show through on older hardware, which brings me to my next point:
• Breathes new life into old machines.
• A second opinion.  If Windows is all you have, it's hard to know what behaviour is the fault of Windows or the hardware.  By having another totally different system you can run at any time, it lets you separate the two.
• Free, both as in beer and in freedom.
• Extremely customizable
• Doesn't slow down over time.  This is less of an issue now since Windows no longer does this either when installed on an SSD, but back in the days of HDD for boot, being able to keep the same system for a while instead of reinstalling every year was a nice plus.
• Saveable.  If something goes wrong I can kill the graphical environment with control + alt + backspace, or just switch to a command line environment with control alt F1 and kill the program, or run anything else I need to.  On Windows if there's an issue that takes down the interface, you're kinda SOL
• Security.  Whether it's due to a superior architecture that can't be as easily exploited, or simply because it's less popular and thus less targeted, the fact remains you're less likely to encounter malware on Linux

[ryao]

On 9/26/2019 at 5:22 PM, James said:

Hey guys! We're doing another "10 Reasons _____ is just Better" video - this time with Linux. Now's your chance to tell us what you love about Linux and/or why Linux is better than MacOS/ Windows.

 

Note: we're not interested in hearing from non-Linux users here
 

 

I am a Linux distribution developer:

 

https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/developers/

 

Here is my list off the top of my head:

• Public issue trackers. Have you ever had a problem and you wanted to talk to the developers about getting it fixed? Have fun doing that with Microsoft and while Apple has a form that you can fill out, there is no possible way to see the status of the issue or talk about it. There is no way for the developers to ask for more information.
• Software transparency. There is far less need to worry about whether you were given software that has undocumented backdoors or telemetry because you get the source code. Everything is distributed by HTTPS mirrors and checksummed/signed to ensure that you really are getting the same updates as everyone else. There are no system identifiers being requested/provided to mirrors. The mirrors distributing updates have no opportunity to give you some “special” version based on one.
• Updates occur when you decide to do them and are never forced on you.
• If support gets dropped, you are not limited by your OS developer’s support decisions and you can fork or go elsewhere easily.
• Nearly all of the software is installed through the package manager (excluding games installed through steam), so system updates update basically everything. You do not have updaters running in the background wasting resources and you do not need to go hunt for updates when you want to do them. Security issues in shared libraries like libpng, OpenSSL and others do not put you at the mercy of every developer whose software you use when it comes to vulnerabilities in them. If those developers are long gone you still get the security updates. Each securityupdate is only done once and applies to everything using a shared library, unlike on Windows and Mac OS X where it gets to be done per application.
• You get a large number of choices for customization that others either do not provide or are a pain on them. For example, you can have different desktop environments to completely change the look and feel of the system. Replacing the desktop environment on Windows just is not done and it is a huge pain to do on Mac OS X. You can have different filesystem options. If you do not like the poor data integrity of the default filesystem option, you can use ZFSOnLinux (which I also help develop) and have some assurance that it will keep working through updates, unlike on Windows and Mac OS X. ZFS ports exist for those two, but you have no guarantee that it will work after doing Microsoft’s 6 month upgrade/update or Apple’s yearly upgrade/update. You could have tried using ReFS on Windows, but Microsoft actually took that away in an update a few years ago, so it definitely stopped working after that update.
• You do not need an antivirus. Malware designed for Linux is exceedingly rare and the ingress mechanisms are all patched fairly quickly. You would need to go out of your way to download and execute malicious code to get it. On other systems, downloading and executing code is normal, so you are not doing anything special when your system gets infected. On Linux, you get software through the package manager, so getting malware generally does require doing something special. The result is no antivirus in the background slowing your system down.
• You do not need a firewall for the most part. Linux distributions often do not start network daemons (and if they do in the case of say cups, you can configure them to not talk to the network). Without any open ports to target, a firewall just is not needed. Many ship them anyway, but being locked down by default goes a long way toward improving security.
• You do not need a defragmenter. Linux filesystems are designed to minimize the performance loss caused by defragmentation by allocating from different regions of the disk as opposed to Windows which tries to write all new data linearly to maximize sequential write performance (with the trade off that horrible slowdowns later happen when reading what was written). This means that you do not see extreme the slowdowns from file fragmentation that you see on Windows and you do not need a defragmenter wasting resources in the background to try to fix it.
• No UAC dialogs. With the exception of things that really do require root access (like software updates), you do not get dialogs saying a program is trying to do something. Those dialogues are so routine that even if they by chance caught something, an end user would click yes anyway, so there is not much point beyond annoying users. The restriction of asking for user permission to things that truly require elevated privileges makes being asked for root permissions much more useful in the rare event that something is doing something malicious. The predictability of these dialogs (being mostly only for software updates and adjusting system settings) means that you really can tell when it is for something that is not routine.

[finest feck fips]

16 hours ago, rogervn said:

I don't really get that people might think that having many distros is a downside.

 

For people who don't want to mess around much, they'll probably be better off choosing basic Ubuntu right away. It's not overwhelming to just do that.

 

But if you're thinking about the feeling that they might be losing on something better because they don't want to research other distros and other WDMs, that might happen, but is that a downside?

 

Feels like is better to have a monopoly because it's overwhelming to look at all competitors.

The variety of distros out there is not immediately harmful to end users, but the wide range of distros does pose a problem for third-party developers who are considering developing for Linux, especially developers of proprietary software. F/OSS developers can generally get away with just releasing source, and if their application is good and their source code is portable and easy to build, their software will find its way into the distros as distro maintainers pick it up. But proprietary software developers have to choose a distro or a limited range of distros to develop for and test on, which makes Linux harder to support and a less attractive platform because it further divides the already relatively small userbase.

I don't really need much of any proprietary software in my life, but videogames, for example, are nice to have. Steam partially solves this problem with its own runtime, but even then you get a lot of ‘Are you running Ubuntu?’ any time you try to report a bug with Steam or one of the Linux games on it. The solution, though, isn't to somehow get rid of a bunch of distros, but to move forward with desktop container technology like Snappy, Flatpak, and PipeWire, until we have a reliable cross-distro target for development.

(And I didn't mention any, but there are lots of good things about having many different distros each pushing their own vision for the desktop (or server, or whatever. I just wanted to articulate some of the more negative consequences since you were wondering about them.)

[SenKa]

18 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

4) Unless you're into gaming or specific use applications (video editing, photo editing, etc), I find it's really all you need. If you're something looking to browse the web, watch netflix and youtube, and do some word processing and officey kind of stuff, then you need look no further. So I think a significant number of users could switch to Linux and not be left wanting.

DaVinci Resolve and GIMP FTW