this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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You obviously haven't tried Linux for at least ten years. It's really not like that.
This is the standard response I’ve heard from Linux advocates for the last 20 years.
I know it’s easy to assume off the back of my initial comment that I might not have, but I assure you, my frustrations with Linux are not borne out of inexperience.
I am not a programmer or anything and I've been using Zorin full time for a while now after trying it as an experiment. I would go so far as to say it's on par with Windows or Mac in many (not quite all) respects. Assuming you're not dependent on some proprietary software the only switching cost these days is... learning to navigate a new system.
Just as an aside, I find it interesting that people using LEMMY of all things for social media would perceive FOSS systems as inferior. I guess that's a testament to how far along ActivityPub development has come.
I wouldn’t disagree, and I’m not saying FOSS is inferior, I’m just whinging about the Linux evangelising.
There is no perfect OS that can have universal approval. However if I’d I said “Windows is a data-harvesting nightmare” or “Being locked in to Apple ecosystems is constricting and expensive” then I’m sure I’d see the upvote button hammered on Lemmy. But to seemingly question the validity of Linux as a silver bullet for the vast majority of desktop users is borderline heresy.
I won't dispute that fanboyism is thing, but also I don't think many evangelists as it were view Linux as a "silver bullet", just as the most ethical option given the alternatives. And they feel very strong feelings about this, that come across as Weird and Scary to people not used to seeing software treated with the same enthusiasm as politics.
Also, I should add that many view open source software as having the potential to one day be the "silver bullet" in a way commercial software can never be due to it's structure.
I’ve been reading about its potential for a long time. Maybe next year will be the year of Linux ;)
If your barometer for "potential" relies on market share, then you don't really understand what motivates a person to contribute effort to a FOSS project in the first place.
What’s your barometer, bearing in mind you said it had the potential to be a silver bullet? Silver bullet for what?
I don’t want to sound defensive, but please don’t assume I’m not invested in FOSS. I’m on Lemmy, Mastodon, Pixelfed and am the developer of half a dozen small FOSS projects on GitHub.
At achieving the task it was designed for. I do not think it's correct to say that Linux can have "market share" in the market of commercial operating systems because it isn't commercial software. By not using proprietary software we are exiting the market.
Linux absolutely does not exist “outside the market”, that’s absurd. Red Hat, Canonical, SUSE etc aren’t charitable organisations. These major contributors to the Linux kernel aren’t doing so out of love for their fellow man.
For you, yes, Linux is “free” if your measurement of cost is purely financial outlay.
There’s a great back and forth here, and the original thread on Mastodon, which nicely covers both the evangelism (my original issue) and the “cost” of Linux. There’s plenty of reactions in there from people talking about the same things, from both sides of the coin.
FOSS