[Yuioup]

Video, sound, competing standards (which will hinder adoption), antiquated X11. Also when a full-screen X11 overlay (like a game) freezes then the whole desktop freezes (CTRL+ALT+F1 doesn't help).

A Linux enthousiast will forgive these mistakes and find a way around them but Linux noobs wouldn't know what to do.

[cLeEOGPw]

Even if they would know what to do, it would still be something you wouldn't have to do on Windows, so anyone who is agnostic to what OS he is using and chooses based on practical criteria and not ideology or philosophy, will most often choose Windows over Linux. Linux experience just isn't there (would like to add "yet", but I don't see it even moving in that direction). I said this before and I'm gonna say again - Linux forces user to learn about OS and computer in general, which is not needed for most of people.

[jebblue]

>> Linux forces user to learn about OS and computer in general, which is not needed for most of people.

My wife switched in one summer night in 2007, she hasn't looked back, she's a casual user, her laptop came from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed. I guarantee you, she is the typical, non-techie user.

[cLeEOGPw]

Because it was pre-installed. Everything was already set up by an expert. Let her install a fresh copy and see how it goes. Then let her install windows on same machine and see the difference.

[nly]

I'm not sure what you mean about video and sound. OpenGL is first class on Linux distros, sound is almost exclusively pulseaudio now...and X11 is on its way out, hopefully it'll be dead to most desktop users within a small number of years.

[Yuioup]

Video on dual-screen setups is a bit wonky. Yes it's my fault for using crappy proprietary ATI drivers but try to explain that to someone new to Linux.

I have two issues with sound: 1) Sticking my headphone connector to my laptop's headphone jack does not work. I have to reboot in order to get headphone sound (works on Windows). 2) Connecting my PC to my TV via HDMI and playing a YouTube video ... Last time I heard a scratchy sound like that was when I tried to play a heavily damaged 45" record on my parent's turntable back in the early 80s.

[VintageCool]

For the headphones issue, try using pavucontrol. It allowed me to direct audio output to headphones or speakers on an app-by-app basis.

Alternatively, it's possible that you might need to reload pulseaudio after plugging in the headphones.

[dmix]

I'm curious when the last time you tried Linux was? I used to have these issues in 2011 which is why I stuck with OSX, but now I use Linux exclusively because these problems are non-existent now.

[phaemon]

> antiquated X11

What does that mean? X11R7.7 was only released last year! How is that antiquated?

[Yuioup]

Wayland is being developed to specifically replace X11 the latter being based on antiquated principles.

[binarycrusader]

The vast majority of successful software is arguably based on antiquated principles.

People seem to continually blame X11 as the source of all of Linux's woes, completely ignoring the history of computing.

Most high-end workstations were UNIX-based at one time, and the graphical interface ran on X11. People forget that Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat Reader used to be produced for UNIX and UNIX-like systems.

X11 is not the primary issue at hand with Linux; nVidia has proven that repeatedly.

At most, I'd be willing to agree that X11 is not optimally architected for local rendering context, but again, I don't think that's going to make the huge difference that people seem to imply.

[phaemon]

You've just given me a fact I'm already well aware of ("Wayland is being developed...") and then restated that X11 is antiquated, but you've never given me a reason why you think that.

Do you actually know, or are you just repeating something you read somewhere but didn't really understand?

[Yuioup]

Okay fair enough. No I don't know. It's just what I heard. From what I have understood in the limited knowledge I have of X11, it seems to have no true full screen support, unnecessary layering due to it's legacy client-server architecture and ugly hacks.

Clearly you're passionate about X11 and I would like to hear why it is not antiquated.

[phaemon]

Well, it's difficult to explain why something isn't antiquated, but on the points you raised:

1. You misunderstood the full-screen thing. X11 does have proper full screen. The trouble is that it's a bit too proper: the full screen app receives all the keyboard instructions, so how do you switch to a different app? The app needs to release some keys to you, or you need to exit or kill it. This isn't so good for games where you might have a chat program running in the background.

2. The client-server architecture is not really relevant since it uses sockets when it's on localhost.

3. Ugly hacks? Anything more specific?

X11 is a modular architecture and the very fact it's still in use suggests it's an effective one. Look at the difficulty Microsoft had getting compositing working (XP -> Vista), but it was added to X11 without having to invent a brand new windowing system.

I'm not quite as passionate about X11 as you might think. It's not so long ago that I was arguing that I'm excited to see what Wayland and Mir can produce. But it's not because X11 is bad, it's because I think things can be even better.

[jebblue]

Your data seems like, off. Ctrl+Alt+F1 does indeed give you a nice way to kill the game. On Windows, you have to hit power reset and hope you don't lose anything important.