[michaelcampbell]

> We are not talking about Linux here, where if you’re lucky, things work.

What percentage of the Internet is even possible due to this, if you're to be believed, barely working and then only by luck, OS?

I get the Apple cultiness, but we don't need it here.

[kitsunesoba]

They’re probably talking about most desktop Linux distributions, which are less stable than what servers are running both because servers run distros with packages that are older and more polished and because servers don’t usually have hardware with notoriously troublesome drivers (e.g. Broadcom, Nvidia, some Realtek stuff, etc).

Of course desktop users can tailor their machines to use with Linux and also run something like Debian but it’s more likely they’re using whatever computer they happened to have and running Ubuntu (or one of its many derivatives), Fedora, or Arch which are indeed more likely on average to break. I know because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own usage.

[acomjean]

I went from Mac to Linux. POPos was what the machine came with. It’s very stable though the UI took a little getting used to, it’s not as big a change as I expected.

The upside is Bioinformatics tools run natively and it saves me from doing all my work on the cluster (just finished a multi day run that was “quick” using all 16 of my cpu cores. ).

[michaelcampbell]

> which are indeed more likely on average to break

Maybe; it's not happened to me in 15 or so years, but people have different experiences. That said, "more likely on average to break" is a far, FAR cry from "it works, if you're lucky".

[chris_wot]

I run Linux on my 2015 iMac. Just upgraded it to Ubuntu 12.10, works great and loving the latest Gnome.

[rahen]

I guess you mean 22.10...

[pixl97]

Na, they installed Quantal Quetzal to get some experimental TLS1.2 support after they could no longer connect to anything with TLS1.0

[chris_wot]

I did :-)

[saagarjha]

Linux on a server and Linux on your laptop are very different experiences.

[michaelcampbell]

Fair point, but I've run *buntu on various laptops (old and new) and desktop(s) my son and I constructed from stuff chosen from pcpartpicker.com not 3 months ago.

"It's just worked". Every time.

[ehutch79]

If comments on HN are anything to go by, linux on the desktop is perfect and easily usable by any office worker.

I'm sure if you walk up to Susan in accounting, handed her an arch install usb, she'll have tmux and neovim up and configured by lunch!

In all seriousness though. I'm not sure a lot of HN commenters (probably myself included) have any actual perspective on how a normal person wants to interact with their computers, or what business need from desktop endpoints.

The fact that anyone things that editing source is a good way to configure a window manager (dwm) is mind boggling.