sKunKbad Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 What are your feelings regarding Linux desktop distros, and their ability to break through to mainstream usage? I started using Ubuntu about 6 or 7 years ago, and have fooled around with some other distros, but at least for me Ubuntu always seemed the best. I've got my 65 year old mom using it, and my 11 year old son playing with Kubuntu (and learning python!). I don't really consider us normal though; normal being almost too dumb to do more than check email and get on the internet. I've managed to fully switch over to Ubuntu on all of my computers, with the exception of running Windows in a VM for Photoshop and Illustrator. Since I don't use those programs every day, there are a lot of days where I don't see Windows. I never really had a problem with Windows, except for Windows 3.1 was kind of a drag. Getting on the internet on a 56K modem on Windows 95 wasn't any fun either, but that wasn't Windows' fault. I never had the crashes and bad experiences people like to claim makes Windows suck. My main reason for abandoning Windows is just to be more involved with Linux, and hopefully reach Linux guru status someday. I really never liked Macs. I bought one 3 or 4 years ago, and it just felt like I was paying a lot of money for a glorified (and over-hyped) linux distro. I really never liked the feel of the Finder. At the time there was no awesome text editor, and I bought a couple just to test out what I could find. Unlike Windows and Linux, it seemed like nothing is free in the Mac world. I eventually gave the Mac away. We couldn't be friends. I'd really like to see Linux become the dominant OS. It's exciting to see how far Ubuntu has come in the years that I've used it, and I evangelize for Linux/Ubuntu quite a bit. Even still, it can sometimes seem that I am a stranger in a strange world. Do you think we can count on Linux being a bigger part of mainstream computing? One of the problems I see is that there are so many distros that a person investigating Linux may be a little overwhelmed. What do you think is keeping the masses from using Linux desktops? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kicken Posted October 30, 2014 Share Posted October 30, 2014 It's been a while since I used linux as a desktop OS but from what I remember of the scene at the time, linux was fine for basically two groups of people: - Code Developers - Generic net surfers Linux was lacking in software support for a number of things that they might want to do. Wanna play a game? Good luck. It *might* work in WINE or a VM, but you'll probably still need a copy of windows in either case. Graphics designer and need photoshop? Same story. Wanna watch a commercial blu-ray disc? Can't do it without some hack/work around. If linux is going to make it into general consumer use as a desktop OS it needs better software and it needs to be made easier to use so that all the people with the "just work, dammit!" attitude can use it. On the software side of things, I think one of the biggest problems is the "Free as in freedom" philosophy gets confused with the "Free as in beer" desire. A lot of people have the mentality that all this open source software should not cost any money, which for desktop apps usually results in less appealing software either due to complexity in use or a lack of desired features. Developing a media player which can play commercial blu-ray discs legally for example would be difficult due to licensing requirements. On the ease of use side of things the "Free as in freedom" philosophy can get in the way because developers will create software with an ungodly number of configuration options which few people are ever going to care about or even understand. That's not necessarily a bad thing but for your average "just work" user if they open the preferences dialog and see a thousand options they are not going to sit there and sift through every one and figure out what it does. All they want are a few standard options that people are actually likely to want to change. Everything else should just be set to reasonable defaults and hidden away somewhere. Some applications have gotten the options thing down fairly well, for example Mozilla's software only shows common options in the GUI dialog. Everything else is hidden away in the about:config page. VLC has a simplified options dialog by default, with the ability to switch into an advanced mode that shows everything. As I said, it's been a while so the landscape may have improved some. That's just what I noticed at the time that I was using it. All that said I think probably there are two main things someone could do to help get Linux desktops more grounds is: Emphasis that the "Free as in freedom" philosophy is not synonymous with "Free as in beer". You have to be willing to pay some money for good software, either as donations to the various projects or directly from a commercial vendor. Help projects develop simple, "grandma friendly" user interfaces either through suggestions or code contributions if you are able to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sKunKbad Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 Things have come a long ways in the last few years. I think you might be surprised how complete the Ubuntu experience is now. Issues that I had a few years ago no longer exist. 1) Mouse configuration of extra buttons is really easy. 2) Any printer I have connected is instantly recognized and just works. 3) Dual monitor support is built in. 4) Setup of all my programs was easy: a) Chrome b) Sublime Text 2 c) Dropbox d) Filezilla e) Virtualbox f) Apache, MySQL, and PHP g) node, Grunt, composer, sass, and ruby With all of that, I'm set. I don't need anything else really, and if I do I can just fire up Windows VM. Lovin' it really. I ended up setting up all three of my main computers with identical everything. So far so good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted October 31, 2014 Share Posted October 31, 2014 I've never been a linux fan. I like writing code. That's it. Anything that gets in the way of doing that is something I dislike. So, even though I use linux as my work environment, because it's easier to get PHP and a database running there than with WAMP, I always find myself having to dig through configuration files and other nonsense to do my job. And I hate the package system as it's a PITA to downgrade versions. Right now I need to downgrade from Apache 2.4.10 and PHP 5.6.2 because I keep getting a segmentation fault in Apache when accessing certain local files. I can't just go to a 'Programs and Features' window and uninstall. I need to go to the package manager, attempt to uninstall, and pray that the associated packages are also removed. Modern linux is better, but it's not good enough. I'm not the kind of nerd that enjoys tinkering. I just want shit to work correctly out of the box so I can get to work. And linux still has too many warts where I'm spending time setting up my environment rather than working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sKunKbad Posted October 31, 2014 Author Share Posted October 31, 2014 KevinM1, what distro are you running to have PHP 5.6.2? I think Ubuntu comes with 5.5.9. I agree, the package management is a bit over my head. The other day I reinstalled samba on one of my computers, and it uninstalled nautilus-share, which I had no idea it was doing. Later, when the context option to create a local share was missing, I had to search for a while to find what I was missing, and I only found that because of the right Google search. Really though, I find my overall experience on Ubuntu to be really nice. It's a perfect development environment for me. The one thing that bugs me about developing on Windows is that I don't get to test code that takes unix type permissions into account. That can be a big deal when working with files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinM1 Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I'm using Mint 17, but pulled my LAMP stack from a different PPA. Unfortunately, I was having a weird issue with Apache 2.4.10 throwing a segmentation fault every time I tried accessing my Symfony projects' app.php and app_dev.php files. Other PHP files executed just fine, though. I'm in the process of trying to downgrade my Apache and PHP by removing the PPA and getting my LAMP stack from dotdeb's repos instead. I've tried removing and reinstalling Apache, but for some reason the package manager still thinks the version I got from the PPA is what needs to be installed, so it's throwing an error. Which is incredibly frustrating. I know just enough to install stuff, but fixing package dependencies is a real PITA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sKunKbad Posted November 1, 2014 Author Share Posted November 1, 2014 I'm using Mint 17, but pulled my LAMP stack from a different PPA. Unfortunately, I was having a weird issue with Apache 2.4.10 throwing a segmentation fault every time I tried accessing my Symfony projects' app.php and app_dev.php files. Other PHP files executed just fine, though. I'm in the process of trying to downgrade my Apache and PHP by removing the PPA and getting my LAMP stack from dotdeb's repos instead. I've tried removing and reinstalling Apache, but for some reason the package manager still thinks the version I got from the PPA is what needs to be installed, so it's throwing an error. Which is incredibly frustrating. I know just enough to install stuff, but fixing package dependencies is a real PITA. If mint uses apt, you might consider this: https://launchpad.net/ppa-purge/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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