[michaelmrose]

Kubuntu is perhaps not the finest example as it has not been what I would call stable or optimal. I honestly think your analysis is in error. It has forever been the wort kde distro you could pick. You could get a more stable experience by picking a distro by throwing darts at printout of distrowatch.

A number of things have been historically sub optimal on the linux desktop but while the way linux is designed as a bunch of loosely coupled projects DOES seem to be the cause of it being able to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people example different window managers, compositors, file systems its not equally clear that the defects present exist for the same reason.

It seems likely that haiku expanded to thousands of different types of computers could easily be worse or better than linux in practice insofar as buggy behavior while still definitely being objectively worse insofar as not being modular.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Another part of the problem with the Linux desktop is that if you have problems with it someone blames your choice of distro and sends you to one of the other 250 so you can encounter whole new problems and have a whole new community dismiss you until someone else blames your choice of distro.

[michaelmrose]

The way you write this makes it seem like its 6 of one half a dozen of another. While everyone has a different favorite team some really do play objectively better than others.

There are probably over a hundred distros but most users are using some variation of 4 and those who want to use their computer not play with their computer ought to look into using a stable branch of whichever distro suits them.

[waddlesplash]

> You could get a more stable experience by picking a distro by throwing darts at printout of distrowatch.

Great. How was I supposed to know that just under a decade ago when I first installed that? And I'm a programmer; how is any end-user supposed to know that? Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that has a lot of name recognition outside the Linux desktop community; you would assume anything based on it would also be fine.

So while I know that now, it doesn't change the fact that the Linux desktop has a messaging problem. Is it fixable? I have no idea. But it's not now; so come back when it is.

> bunch of loosely coupled projects DOES seem to be the cause of it being able to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people example different window managers, compositors

And that's my problem with it. It's too configurable. If that's what you want, then use Linux. But if you want to do real work? Then people use Windows, or macOS, and maybe in the future, hopefully Haiku.

> than linux in practice insofar as buggy behavior

We already support "thousands of different types of computers". Not sure what you're going after here.

> while still definitely being objectively worse insofar as not being modular.

Our kernel is actually more modular than the Linux kernel is; and in theory you could swap out other components too. But that's beside the point. Why is modularity some great ideal that everything should strive towards? It may be great in theory, but is it so in practice?

[michaelmrose]

I think that the majority of distributions are at least reasonable choices kubuntu is just a particularly bad choice based on prior experience. I just realized that kde isn't supposed to crash all the time and replaced it with something else. Apparently your experience was better until your box committed suicide.

The public somehow deals with their being lots of kinds of cars without melting down. They read reviews, they test drive. You just bought a kia and told people that all cars made outside the US suck because you know Toyota and Honda aren't a thing.

You don't have to do much work to use Linux. It certainly invites tinkering like a big box of legos but you can buy a machine that supports linux or even buy a machine WITH linux install a mainstream distro stable version preferred and do work.

People don't buy windows or mac because its easy to configure. They buy it because someone has gone to the effort to install it on the boxes on display at best buy and walmart and work out any kinks with the hardware/software.

People will only buy Haiku EVER if its sold preloaded on a good looking box.

[waddlesplash]

> Apparently your experience was better until your box committed suicide.

My previous experience was with Ubuntu/Unity, which was the first Linux Desktop system I ever ran. It was ... not a whole lot better.

> You don't have to do much work to use Linux.

I've explained multiple times that this isn't my experience with Linux. Maybe it was for you; but it certainly was not for me.

> People don't buy windows or mac because its easy to configure. They buy it because .. work out any kinks with the hardware/software.

The second half that statement is certainly true. But as for the first half? A good portion of my family, most of whom are programmers, disagrees with you, and so do I.

> People will only buy Haiku EVER if its sold preloaded on a good looking box.

TuneTracker does this already.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> People don't buy windows or mac because its easy to configure. They buy it because someone has gone to the effort to install it on the boxes on display at best buy and walmart and work out any kinks with the hardware/software.

Keep telling yourselves that Linux Destkop folks. Anything to not actually listen to why people don't use your crap.