Adoption of Linux on desktop (again!)

[Darmok N Jalad]

Proprietary software can be and is audited. It's just that 3rd party auditors have to sign an NDA first, so that work goes mostly unnoticed. Furthermore, certain software types (e.g. banking) is required to undergo audits all the time, otherwise other parties won't want to talk to it.

That's just an opinion. I tend to agree, but neither you nor I have any numbers to back that up.

Really? Then how come there's no open source Google? How come after all this time, nobody has beaten Office or Photoshop?
Open source can and does receive more contributions. But steering an open source project is usually harder. So there's no clear win there.

The reason I prefer open source is its academic value: it lets everyone see how things are done. And this leads to more competent developers, which, in turn, leads to better software overall.

As a hobby photographer, proprietary for-pay editors are way better. Darktable is decent, but setting it up can feel really open source, and sometimes when it undergoes a major point release, it borks my previous edits, which is a huge fail since that’s the entire point of the program.

Even on desktop/laptop, it hasn't been possible to use Apple hardware without an account for years.

Nah, you can still use Apple devices without an Apple ID. On macOS it’s no big deal unless you want various iCloud functionality. On iPhone and iPad, you’ll be quite a bit more hamstrung since you can’t sideload.

 

[Aleksandar_038]

Nah, you can still use Apple devices without an Apple ID. On macOS it’s no big deal unless you want various iCloud functionality. On iPhone and iPad, you’ll be quite a bit more hamstrung since you can’t sideload.

It is literally the same with Windows - you can use it with local account, unless you want OneDrive and MS account syncing. Yet, Apple is not bashed for asking account for iClound and syncing, Microsoft is. Makes zero sense.

iPhone and iPad are literally expensive coffee saucers without Apple ID.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

It is literally the same with Windows - you can use it with local account, unless you want OneDrive and MS account syncing. Yet, Apple is not bashed for asking account for iClound and syncing, Microsoft is. Makes zero sense.

iPhone and iPad are literally expensive coffee saucers without Apple ID.

Yeah, it’s pretty tough to use any mobile device without an ID. You can sideload on Android, but you’ll need accounts from the other AppStores there too. I know you can download APKs independently of an AppStore, but that seems very risky, IMO. I certainly wouldn’t want to. I have an Android phone from eFoundation that is google free, and it’s not exactly an awesome experience using their store.

 

[R-T-B]

Don't be blinded by your hatred; Windows NT had little in common with OS/2. I'm quoting from the article linked in my previous sentence:

Other than the fact NT was originally planned to be OS/2 3.0 and could run OS/2 text based apps until recently, uh uh.

All I got to add to this is as a linux user I couldn't care less what all you install on your machines, mines working fine (yes it's a Desktop and linux is on it).

 

[AnotherReader]

Other than the fact NT was originally planned to be OS/2 3.0 and could run OS/2 text based apps until recently, uh uh.

All I got to add to this is as a linux user I couldn't care less what all you install on your machines, mines working fine (yes it's a Desktop and linux is on it).

You should read the link; NT was planned to be OS/2 3.0, but they were both developed by separate teams. Some parts were almost certainly worked on by the same teams.

The relationship between NT and 32-bit OS/2 is very murky. It is known that Microsoft was working on 32-bit OS/2 2.0 in the late 1980s. It is also known that NT was initially meant to support a 32-bit OS/2 API, but that plan was later scrapped for obvious political reasons. At least one feature—exception handling—is so similar between OS/2 2.0 and NT and at the same so unique in context of other operating systems that it was clearly designed by the same group of people, and the implementations were intended to be compatible.

 

[R-T-B]

You should read the link; NT was planned to be OS/2 3.0, but they were both developed by separate teams. Some parts were almost certainly worked on by the same teams.

I know I was alive then. I've also read that wiki many times.

 

[AnotherReader]

I know I was alive then. I've also read that wiki many times.

Then you should know that NT owes a lot more to DEC's VMS than OS/2.

 

[R-T-B]

Then you should know that NT owes a lot more to DEC's VMS than OS/2.

Yes. But to say they have nothing in common is misleading as heck as well. (They shared a filesysyem at one point, for starters) Especially given NT was supposed to be OS/2, at least at one point.

The "kinda-sorta" OS/2 lineage of NT is pretty easy to see when you realize an old copy of RAR for OS/2 will in fact, run on WinXP (32-bit anyways).

 

[gurusmi]

Don't be blinded by your hatred; Windows NT had little in common with OS/2. I'm quoting from the article linked in my previous sentence:

If you think so. You miss the link between OS/2 and Windows 3.x and WFW. Which was btw. the direct predecessor of Windows NT.

At the time of OS/2 2.0 I worked at IBM with OS/2 programming Installers in RexX. Later i worked on a project transferring a software from OS/2 over to Windows NT 4.0. At the biggest german firms for pharmacy companies. I was there not only a developer but also a build manager. I know by my own work how the kernels etc did look alike.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Don't get the hate personally, there's room in my life for loads of OS's, I'm up to six today at least I think.

And I am sure steam helped, a bit.

 

[AnotherReader]

If you think so. You miss the link between OS/2 and Windows 3.x and WFW. Which was btw. the direct predecessor of Windows NT.

At the time of OS/2 2.0 I worked at IBM with OS/2 programming Installers in RexX. Later i worked on a project transferring a software from OS/2 over to Windows NT 4.0. At the biggest german firms for pharmacy companies. I was there not only a developer but also a build manager. I know by my own work how the kernels etc did look alike.

It's really cool to hear from someone who was there and intimately involved. My source was about the difference between NT and OS/2, not the 3.x and 95/98/ME series.

Yes. But to say they have nothing in common is misleading as heck as well. (They shared a filesysyem at one point, for starters) Especially given NT was supposed to be OS/2, at least at one point.

The "kinda-sorta" OS/2 lineage of NT is pretty easy to see when you realize an old copy of RAR for OS/2 will in fact, run on WinXP (32-bit anyways).

There's shared history, but to discount the VMS part is rather short-sighted. We know that NT was initially meant to support a 32-bit OS/2 API, but that plan was later scrapped for obvious political reasons.

 

[R-T-B]

but to discount the VMS part is rather short-sighted.

I'm not. The influences there are strong.

 

[gurusmi]

Don't get the hate personally, there's room in my life for loads of OS's, I'm up to six today at least I think.

And I am sure steam helped, a bit.

I guess that M$ and Windows survived because they copied everything. If you compare Linux and Windows you should also add all the commercial unixes and also the mainframe systems to linux. Both, Linux and Windows, have their advantages and disadvantages. The question alsways is if you can live with them.

btw. I'm Counting also in mind the OSses i worked on for a longer time. I started with computers one had to solder on his own. And those ones didn't even had a OS. PC/OS, a CPM Clone on the Olivetti M20, AmigaOS, MS-Dos (Beginning of Win), DR-Dos (with GEM), OS/2, AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, OS/370 (Mainframe), OS/400 (AS/400), A Mainframe System we had at university,... Now we have 11. Those small OS'ses used at the Sharp PC1403 etc. to make a full dozen. Should i count the Linux Distros seperate or as one? :rofl:

 

[phanbuey]

I would live on linux if it weren't for 2 pieces of software: Games and Excel.

Everything else im on my linux vms for -- coding docker containers for ecr images, vscode, postgres mysql etc. all run so much better on linux. I actually enjoy linux OS so much more.

but no games, and no excel support means that basically it's not a full substitute.

 

[gurusmi]

I would live on linux if it weren't for 2 pieces of software: Games and Excel.

I do not game and so i don't know anything about games at Linux. But if the excel Workbooks aren't that complicated, LibreOffice can handle it. I tried that last week. My Workbooks have VBA Code with at least 1200 lines of code. It took a bit more compared to the "original" but it worked.

 

[R-T-B]

but no games, and no excel support means that basically it's not a full substitute.

With proton/dxvk I don't really view games as an issue anymore.

Excel may be more valid, but... I don't know. How behind is Libreoffice on spreadsheet work these days?

 

[Shihab]

I do have my own set of opinions on which sides Linux needs to improve/change to have better adoption. But at the end of the day, the reality is that the average joe doesn't "pick" an OS, they pick a platform that happens to come with the OS. And so far, in the (desktop) Linux ecosystem, only Canonical, System 76 and Valve seem to have figured this out.

Now that Office file formats are open and XML

The strict version is, but Microsoft, being the nefarious, monopolistic, anti-consumer garbage it is, defaults to a "transitional" OOXML version that allows proprietary stuff, in addition to some cheap tricks like defaulting to propriety fonts. Which is why it's rare to have an MS Word-generated docx render the same in a Libre or OpenOffice Writer.

How behind is Libreoffice on spreadsheet work these days?

Performance and responsiveness are still lacking by comparison, and graphs still require work to even start looking decent.
Other than that, there isn't much to complain about.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

As someone said before, MS Outlook has NO comparison, specially if you have an exchange server or exchange online, and no, IMAP is not a viable option, it's trash.

Literally everyone in my circle of acquaintances switched from Hotmail to Gmail, ProtonMail, Tutanota, AOL, GMX, iCloud, Yahoo Mail, etc. years ago.
If I may be very honest, Outlook is very cheap both in looks and features when you compare it to Thunderbird, Postbox, Spark, etc. in 2023.

LibreOffice is slower and clumsier than full MS Office, for example saving a relatively simple native calc sheet takes around 5~10s on a relatively top of the line computer.

I quite believe that there are situations where MS Office achieves faster performance, but the situations where LibreOffice achieves higher performance are more numerous. Also Gnumeric is much faster than MS Office in handling the popular CSV standard. And you can actually also use SQL instead of MS Excel, which is many times faster and produces much smaller files that are much easier to send via email.

Gnumeric can also do something that MS Excel is less good at, namely displaying exact results. It has happened many times in the past that Excel has been used to make important economic calculations, and then it turned out that the result was wrong. So Excel is actually not even suitable for what it is used for.

And let's not even mention the 10-ton Adobe elephant in the room, that alone precludes me from using it at home.

RawTherapee is actually more advanced than Lightroom. And digiKam is more advanced and faster to manage photos than Lightroom.

I have also yet to see Photoshop results that cannot be achieved with GIMP or Krita, and the latter apps are easier to learn. So I am of the opinion that Adobe is not the least of the problems.

Game compatibility is not 100% and not guaranteed, in windows it is guaranteed

The open source AMD driver is currently the best GPU driver in existence. By which I mean that windows has no answer with the proprietary Nvidia/AMD driver that is equally stable and fast.

Game compatibility is not 100% and not guaranteed, in windows it is guaranteed, and if i have to dual boot to play some game in linux and other in windows i might as well stay in windows and enjoy full correct functionality.

There are games that are unplayable on windows due to bugs, and they run perfectly on Linux. You saw this in the past as well but now you see this more and more.
There are also more and more people starting to admit that they can install their favorite game easier on Linux than on windows.

Trying to use RDP was a chore with every RDP app not really working correctly like native mstsc
I also encountered bugs with drag and drop with mail clients where you could NOT drag from a network folder and had to instead click the "attach" icon.

TigerVNC and NoMachine always works perfectly in my experience. Have you already tested this?

The lack of fast/simple network tools like IP/port scanners with simple GUI (if it does not have a GUI i don't care)

I once had windows users install magic-wormhole on windows. On Linux, the installation usually takes +- 22 seconds. But among windows users at the time, no one was able to install it in less than 80 minutes. Although this is one of the simplest Python networking apps in existence. It is also a popular app because it has 17 000 stars on github, which is more than e.g. VLC player that just about everyone knows.
What I actually discovered then is that windows users haven't actually learned anything all these years other than to click a mouse in the least well-functioning operating system in existence.
It gave me the same feeling as an adult walking around in a kindergarten.

In 15 years of the shop i've worked, i can count on one hand the number of clients that came with a computer that had linux, and customers that asked to install linux were less than 3.

Almost all the Linux users can fix their PC on their own. Either they know a Linux person who can fix the PC.
And then you also have the fact that windows and macOs have problems more than Linux and BSD.
Take the entirely unusable MacBook Pro of my sister recently. She's been allowed to pay over 1000 EUR to repair this expensive laptop.
My cheap FreeBSD + bspwm desktop hasn't crashed in over five years.
Considering how intensive and advanced that I use the system, this would be unique if this were accomplished with a windows or macOs system.

I understand from your PC repair position that you prefer windows. Windows systems need frequent recovery, so you can keep practicing your job.

 

[Aleksandar_038]

Literally everyone in my circle of acquaintances switched from Hotmail to Gmail, ProtonMail, Tutanota, AOL, GMX, iCloud, Yahoo Mail, etc. years ago.
If I may be very honest, Outlook is very cheap both in looks and features when you compare it to Thunderbird, Postbox, Spark, etc. in 2023.

Hotmail? Just the thing that you make comparison of Outlook to Proton Mail, iCloud or Gmail speaks for itself - you have no idea what you talk about. Luckily for you, Microsoft will kill Outlook anyway and replace it with web version, so your statement may becbecomeue in future (though even Outlook for web run circles around Gmail or AOL....).

I quite believe that there are situations where MS Office achieves faster performance, but the situations where LibreOffice achieves higher performance are more numerous. Also Gnumeric is much faster than MS Office in handling the popular CSV standard. And you can actually also use SQL instead of MS Excel, which is many times faster and produces much smaller files that are much easier to send via email.

Gnumeric can also do something that MS Excel is less good at, namely displaying exact results. It has happened many times in the past that Excel has been used to make important economic calculations, and then it turned out that the result was wrong. So Excel is actually not even suitable for what it is used for.

Actually, any remotely advanced Excel user will tell you the same: replacements are completely unfit for purpose and pathetic. Excel is de facto standard and that is it. Libre Office is good enough as Word replacement, and that is about it. Everything else is far superior on Microsoft side, and Microsoft is strong-arming whole industry into keeping it that way (they are well aware that Office is actually now more important than Windows itself). And from that point of view, Libre Office and similar alternatives require all the support they can get, but lying to ourselves is not going to help.

I once had windows users install magic-wormhole on windows. On Linux, the installation usually takes +- 22 seconds. But among windows users at the time, no one was able to install it in less than 80 minutes. Although this is one of the simplest Python networking apps in existence. It is also a popular app because it has 17 000 stars on github, which is more than e.g. VLC player that just about everyone knows.
What I actually discovered then is that windows users haven't actually learned anything all these years other than to click a mouse in the least well-functioning operating system in existence.
It gave me the same feeling as an adult walking around in a kindergarten.

Average Joe wants GUI and button to click. Power users do not matter for widespread adoption.

On the other side, why Microsoft keeps steering power users away from Windows is separate question, but Linux community can surely be grateful for that.

Almost all the Linux users can fix their PC on their own. Either they know a Linux person who can fix the PC.
And then you also have the fact that windows and macOs have problems more than Linux and BSD.
Take the entirely unusable MacBook Pro of my sister recently. She's been allowed to pay over 1000 EUR to repair this expensive laptop.
My cheap FreeBSD + bspwm desktop hasn't crashed in over five years.
Considering how intensive and advanced that I use the system, this would be unique if this were accomplished with a windows or macOs system.

Average Joe, not advanced user (yes, if one knows how to service their own PC, they are advanced user, at least at some simple level).

I understand from your PC repair position that you prefer windows. Windows systems need frequent recovery, so you can keep practicing your job.

I installed Windows 10 on my desktop back in 2015. From that time till today, I added more memory, changed graphics, added two more HDDs, had countless updates and in the end updated to Windows 11. Not a single crash.

Frequent recovery in Windows world was common in XP era, which was 20 years ago. WIth 7, it became a rarity, and from Windows 10 era, it is almost existent.

 

[Assimilator]

Performance and responsiveness are still lacking by comparison, and graphs still require work to even start looking decent.
Other than that, there isn't much to complain about.

Also, LibreOffice is FUGLY. I know that is far down the list, but it's still a truth, and for Average Joe/Jill user it's the first impression.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Hotmail? Just the thing that you make comparison of Outlook to Proton Mail, iCloud or Gmail speaks for itself - you have no idea what you talk about. Luckily for you, Microsoft will kill Outlook anyway and replace it with web version, so your statement may becbecomeue in future (though even Outlook for web run circles around Gmail or AOL....).

After the 2013 discontinuation, Hotmail was migrated into Outlook.
A lot of people don’t bother installing Outlook if they aren’t using an enterprise system. Web access is sufficient.
The point I wanted to make is that Outlook in most situations has become unnecessary. Most people switched to Gmail.

Actually, any remotely advanced Excel user will tell you the same: replacements are completely unfit for purpose and pathetic.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/tas.2011.09076

The results suggest that Gnumeric is the most reliable both in performing statistical analysis and for calculations involving statistical distributions.

Excel is not suitable for professional use. It makes math mistakes.

Still Using Excel for Data Analysis? See Why SQL Is Better!

Still Using Excel for Data Analysis? See Why SQL Is Better!

Do you think SQL is only for programmers? See how marketers, HR specialists, and other non-IT professionals use SQL instead of Excel or spreadsheets.

learnsql.com

SAS vs Excel

SAS vs Excel

Data analysis is a crucial component of decision-making in various domains, ranging from business to research. Two popular tools frequently…

medium.com

It's not like there's advanced excel knowledge at school, either, so it shouldn't be a problem to switch to one of faster methods.
Excel is unfortunately not more than a noob tool, which is not optimal for anything.

Average Joe wants GUI and button to click. Power users do not matter for widespread adoption.

Totally (100%) irrelevant. It's got more stars than VLC player, an app that's very popular with average Joe.

And the app has a GUI: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/warp

I added more memory, changed graphics, added two more HDDs, had countless updates and in the end updated to Windows 11. Not a single crash.

The stability of proprietary software is often statistically compared to that of open source software. Turns out most obscure Linux systems are usually more stable than windows. Also, I have to say, I know a lot of window users who say their 'system never crashes'. But then when I play a game with these people, I often see that after a few minutes they've had a full system crash, while I'm sitting there playing on my Linux system, waiting for the windows gamer to fix their computer. This is very annoying and constantly happens when I play with windows gamers.

NTFS vs ext4 for reliability

NTFS vs ext4 for reliability

The reason for this question has to do with recent behaviour of a NTFS 1TB external drive I rely on for important production. Since I work both on Linux and Windows (although primarily Linux-Ubunt...

superuser.com

NTFS is not considered to be a resilient file system, it only journals metadata and suffers from bit rot, which is made worse by the fragmentation it also suffers from.

Blender Developers Find Old Linux Drivers Are Better Maintained Than Windows

Blender Developers Find Old Linux Drivers Are Better Maintained Than Windows - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

Claiming that an operating system that doesn't have a stable file system and has no stable drivers never crash is simply a completely worthless statement.
I don't understand why you bother answering my comments if you don't understand computer science's basics.

 

[Assimilator]

Totally (100%) irrelevant. It's got more stars than VLC player, an app that's very popular with average Joe.

Stars on GitHub have zero relevance for Average Joe.

The stability of proprietary software is often statistically compared to that of open source software. Turns out most obscure Linux systems are usually more stable than windows. Also, I have to say, I know a lot of window users who say their 'system never crashes'. But then when I play a game with these people, I often see that after a few minutes they've had a full system crash, while I'm sitting there playing on my Linux system, waiting for the windows gamer to fix their computer. This is very annoying and constantly happens when I play with windows gamers.

Anecdotes are not evidence.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Stars on GitHub have zero relevance for Average Joe.

Zero relevance?

GitHub stars matter! Here is why

GitHub stars matter! Here is why - Infracost

As Infracost has hit 3,000 GitHub stars , I wanted to share some thoughts as to why GitHub stars matter. Why do people star repos? There are two main reasons why people star GitHub projects: Bookmarks: some people star GitHub repos to bookmark them for later use. For example I can see the repos I've

www.infracost.io

A 2018 academic research survey of over 700 developers found that "three out of four developers consider the number of stars before using or contributing to GitHub projects".

Anecdotes are not evidence.

Anecdotes?

Lockheed Martin goes open source, people freak out.

Lockheed Martin goes open source, people freak out.

I was really pleased to read the announcement that Lockheed Martin’s social networking platform, EurekaStreams, was released as an open source project today. Lockheed is a very conservative company, and while they’re happy to use open source internally and on projects for their customers, this...

opensource.com

Linux is faster at fixing bugs than Apple, Microsoft and Google

Linux is faster at fixing bugs than Apple, Microsoft and Google | AIM

The study looked at data between January 2019 and December 2021 to determine how much time developers took to fix security issues.

analyticsindiamag.com

Study shows open-source code more bug-free than proprietary

Study shows open-source code more bug-free than proprietary

Coverity’s study also examined the Linux kernel, PHP and PostgreSQL … continue reading

sdtimes.com

The results of the scan showed that in 37 million lines of open-source code across 45 projects, there was an average of .45 bugs per thousand lines of code.
Proprietary code, which was sampled anonymously from Coverity’s customer base, included over 300 million lines of code across 41 projects, where it was found that there were .64 bugs per thousand lines.

 

[Assimilator]

A 2018 academic research survey of over 700 developers found that "three out of four developers consider the number of stars before using or contributing to GitHub projects".

Average Joe is not a developer.

The results of the scan showed that in 37 million lines of open-source code across 45 projects, there was an average of .45 bugs per thousand lines of code.
Proprietary code, which was sampled anonymously from Coverity’s customer base, included over 300 million lines of code across 41 projects, where it was found that there were .64 bugs per thousand lines.

Average number of bugs in a sampling of various different types of software source code, has zero correlation with operating system stability.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Average Joe is not a developer.

Who makes the apps that the average person uses?
Your verdict was literally:
Stars on GitHub have zero relevance for Average Joe.
Is this verdict strictly taken wrong or correct?

Average number of bugs in a sampling of various different types of software source code, has zero correlation with operating system stability.

That's the same as claiming that the stability of the apps doesn't impact the general stability of the operating system.
I hope you don't really believe this, because it has an impact in reality.

A buggy app could crash a full operating system (while the operating system wouldn't crash if the app wasn't buggy).