[crowfunder]

Hi, I wanted to share a bit of my frustration about Linux usage after whole 2 years of using it as my daily driver. I collected most of the more annoying issues I've encountered, the list is not long, fortunately, but features some especially gruesome issues.

[jqpabc123]

In other words, Linux remains a tinker's toolkit more so than a polished product.

Who knew?

[crowfunder]

I feel like recently there's been a certain discourse that Linux is a full-fledged replacement for Windows and MacOS, even for non-technical users.

[figassis]

I love and live inside linux, so please go easy on me but...there is some level of product design that an OS needs to be a viable consumer OS. Linux has 100 ways to do any thing, this is 1: paralysis inducing, 2: causes high cognitive load when all you need is to edit/share a spreadsheet, 3: does not create a common experience that you can share with people across jobs. Everyone will do it differently, so you will have an issue communicating how to do task X.

But I see no product people on Linux, I see only engineers wanting maximum Linux. We aren't willing to be more single minded, we want to be nothing like Microsoft (good), but we also want to be nothing like Apple (good in some ways, very bad in others).

Regular users do not need to know what apt is, what a repository is, or any of the 1000 linux things. But those things need to work so consistently well that they could use the OS without ever, and I mean ever, having to know what they are.

Then, I haven't used a linux desktop in a while (tried elementaryOs 2y ago, was a bit lacking), but the desktop environments need to stop looking like some college student's java GUI project.

Finally, I don't know much about the driver/nvidia issues that I hear so much about (that's not where my job takes me), but I don't think we need to solve those before we can get Linux to be a daily desktop driver. I mean let's some up with a list of Linux certified cards and let OEMs pick from those? Maybe this is already done, but if not, we could start there.

[jqpabc123]

So it's the year of the Linux desktop --- again.

[Ekaros]

Surely 2026 will be it!

The issue I see is that if someone comes up with actual polished desktop experience, they will eventually ruin it like rest. And SteamOS is not desktop experience. Even if it is extremely nice store client. They make money from store. Others will make it from adds, analytics and so on... So it will end up ruined.