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by itvision·4y ago·view on hn ↗
So far "Linux works well for you and countless others" but almost all these people fall under the category of IT specialists or people with a high IQ.

There are many anecdotal stories how Windows doesn't work but considering a majority of organizations run Windows (and we are talking about literally hundreds of millions of users) just fine with little to no maintenance while Linux is nowhere to be seen, speaks volumes about the validity and the breadth of your statement. BTW, what's the decent alternatives for AD, GPO, CIFS and something as simple as MSTSC/RDP in Linux/GNU? Pretty much none? Just don't talk about LDAP, SSH, NFS and VNC. There are nowhere near in terms of features and simplicity. 99.9% of people on Earth won't be able to configure them let along install them. I could continue for hours about the things Linux distros are lacking.

When talking about tech and IT it is pertinent to look beyond one's nose. Linux works for me as well. How much time have I spent fixing its bugs and quirks? A hundred times more than reinstalling Windows.

How many issues have you helped solve in the Linux kernel? Zero? I'm over a dozen now. Some of them took literally tens of hours of painful debugging.

There's just one OS where Linux indeed works: Android. Only Android doesn't use the vanilla Linux kernel. Only Android runs on very specific devices. And the Android userspace has/uses zero GNU components.

"Linux works". LMAO.

3 comments
Meanwhile, I got sick of fixing my brother's laptop and threw Ubuntu on it quite a few years back. I didn't hear from him again about it until the screen physically broke. Ubuntu "just worked" for him in ways that Windows didn't, and he's not in IT at all (he's a mechanic), and isn't very patient either.

I showed him how to install software on it through the Synaptic store or whatever it was at the time, and he just ran with it.

Why would I want to choose software based on how well it worked for unintelligent people? Lets take installing software on Ubuntu. If you are used to downloading exes and msis a software store is an additional detail worse it doesn't have absolutely everything you could ever want right off the bat so you now need to learn about software sources.

On net I think the benefit of both is massive over simply downloading exes and msis but for some degree of user you have already crossed the threshhold of complexity they will sit down for. Isn't it ultimately OK to have different software for Grandma to watch netflix on and for techies to have on their desktop?

How does any of this relate to the accusation that 'desktop Linux is a mess'?