this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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Honestly, if the FOSS community wants better adoption of these technologies, there needs to be an stronger emphasis on presentation and UI/UX.
The general public isn't interested in using something that looks janky, behaves glitchy, or requires fiddling with settings to get looking nice.
Say what you want about that, I'm not defending it. I think people should care more about content and privacy/freedom vs just shiny things, but that isn't the world we live in right now.
The big tech corpos know this, companies like Apple have become worth trillions by taking existing tech and making it shiny, sexy, and seamless.
Maybe that is just antithetical to FOSS principles. I don't know what is the correct approach. All I know is I've heard so many folks who are curious about trying out FOSS software give it up because they encounter confusing, ugly, buggy user experiences.
Some FOSS products have figured this out, Bitwarden, Proton Mail, and Brave Browser have super polished and clean UX and generally are as or more stable than their closed-source counterparts.
Sad truth. I'm super happy with my FOSS experience overall, but I'm also a techie and very open to tinkering with stuff.
OP, I like several of your examples though. Lots of the old school tech is really solid. Just needs a clean fast front end in many cases.
Linux will never be main stream popular unless it becomes pre-loaded on major brand laptops and computers, however good the desktop enviroments and apps are. This is the thing that doesn't get much talk, but however seemless and easy to install most modern Linux distros people just aren't installing their OS' in the first place. Most people either get their OS pre-installed or ask their local Geek Squad to do it for them.
Valve basically proved this with the Steam Deck. Lots of folks were introduced unknowingly to Linux via that method and realized it's pretty great.
But Valve worked and still work their asses off to get the Steam Deck UI/UX really nice. There were a lot of bumps early on, but things are really good now. Proton works amazingly well, and the look and feel of the Deck is incredible.
I have hope with Framework, System76, and other companies like that which are making computers that work well with, or exclusively are built for Linux. Hopefully they continue to grow the market.
Yes, absolutely, but sadly the Steam Deck and S76 workstations are still niche products, focusing on the gaming and SoftDev markets.
Framework is very promising and I hope they'll succeed breaking into more mainstream markets. But I'm really saddend by Canonical and that they dropped the ball with it because back in the day they made some attempts to partner with larger laptop vendors to pre-load Ubuntu and I think it also had great promise even tho Linux software was not nearly as refines as it is today. But nowadays when the software is much more capable they focus their efforts almost exclusively on business / server side applications.
Even more frustrating that Chromebooks became a thing. It proved that consumers were ready to buy cheap notebooks with an OS that was basically just a browser and no significant computer power.
Any user-friendly Linux distro could have filled that role and done it much better IMO. That one always felt like on of Linux's biggest misses recently. I don't think it was anybody's fault either. Google had the resources, the marketing, and the vision to push those, right place right time.
The emerging immutable distros might be better positioned.
There might be some traction if those laptops and desktops were a little cheaper than those preloaded with Windows.
True. The problem with that, is that Microsoft pays to have windows installed. Such that it's actually cheaper to buy a system with windows and delete it than to buy one with Linux preinstalled.
Ah that's probably how they're able to squeeze Linux out of the market by having it OEM installed at cost.
Not that there are a lot of ordinary people who know what Linux is, much less desire to actively use it if it comes preinstalled on their machine.
One issue is that Microsoft makes so much on data collection, that they actually pay manufacturers to put Windows on there, it's one of the methods used to try to keep stock computer prices low. While this is scummy and anticompetitive, it helps the consumer and gives me a chuckle that installing Windows inherently decreased the worth of a computer.
Yeah, they could have taken the high road compared to Google and Amazon, but instead were like: Hold my beer. And don't get me started on smartphones, "smart" TV's and cars... Wonderful times we're living in!
Yeah. When a Chromebook can satisfy the needs of a lot of users, I feel some distros were ready even a decade ago.
The installation step is a huge hurdle. I don't know anyone, except techies, who has done it and even some techies haven't. You can make it pretty (and some installers are both pretty and dead simple) but getting it on a thumb drive and booting from external media are just not user-friendly steps.