I think what they meant was hardware standardization and commoditzation driven by PC clones allowed linux to target a cheap standardized hardware platform that IBM had no legal standing to control after Microsoft started selling windows separately, etc. Or something. I was still in diapers, but if you don’t believe me, Neil Stephenson explained this in ‘In the beginning there was the command line.’

Also, I think terrible security and user experience applies to Android now too.

I am a pretty happy Windows user and developer since Windows 3.1.

My main reason to use Linux distributions was to be able to do university work at home.

After all I wouldn't be able to buy an Aix or DG/UX license, the UNIXes we had on campus before computing department started to deploy Linux based PCs.

I always dual booted and tried a few times to just use it as desktop, but eventually gave up on it.

My travel netbook and mobile devices are the only gear still running some form of Linux.

This is not completely true. I was pretty happy with Windows as my Desktop OS, despite the occasional horrors. All my games worked, Visual C worked and most of the random utilities worked.

I partially switched to Linux just as an adventure, because I could.

Hehe, my experience was kind of similar. I was not really unhappy with Windows (98), I had just grown curious about Linux due to all the media hype it got at the time (2000-ish).

After I got past the initial "This is really weird"-phase, Linux was an eye opener. Other than that I use Windows at work, I have not looked back since.

Strictly speaking it is not about GNU/Linux per se, but Windows vs. Unix. One of the BSDs could fill that place just as well, but on Linux, hardware support is usually better, plus the mainstream Linux distros tend to be more friendly to lazy or non-techie users.

>In contrast, there is no obvious need to move away from Android,

Are you serious? Android still has a massive fragmentation problem because OEMs/carriers don't provide updates.

>> there is no obvious need to move away from Android

I don't disagree as of now.

If there'll ever come a time when Android has its Windows security moment, the trigger this time should be Privacy.

In addition to security. Linux and BSDs were not as polished usability-wise as Windows NTs before early 2000s.

Just my humble opinion.

When I first started using Linux (2000), the desktop was still rather clunky. Both KDE and Gnome were so immature I eventually settled on Windowmaker for a few years.

OTOH, the Linux- / free Unix-desktop has come a long way since then. For my personal machines, I think GNU/Linux plus MATE makes for a much better desktop than Windows these days. (Admittedly, my taste might be slightly non-mainstream.)

Still not. Just tried to schedule a disk check on reboot and had to scour a bunch of pages to find something that might work.

No std msc or service manager gui available either. Some of these existed but were lost in a CADT.

Sometimes finding it difficult to do something is an indication you might have a suboptimal work flow.

You can get plenty of info about the health of the drive while the system is running.

There isn't much reason to run a filesystem check unless something is wrong.

Speaking of services it's extremely easy to query which services are running and enable and disable stuff. Plus there aren't 85 different things running.

If you insist you can run something like https://github.com/mmstick/systemd-manager

I’m well aware of the options. The drive isn’t the problem. This thread was about usability and I did happen to need a filesytem check.

I’m not a fan of Microsoft biz practices but if you think Linux has nothing to learn from windows (especially on the desktop) you are mistaken.

Basically the optimal tool for offline maintenance is a live disk which will actually work if the drive is screwed up.

Basically you were holding it wrong.

Here is another gui:

https://rthomsen6.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/introducing-syste...

These look nice but the big problem is that they may not be compatible and maintained over the long term because they are not a std part of the desktop.

Because they aren't needed. We can pretend that the intended user base is your cousin and your grandma if you want but the people that actually use Linux have no problem enabling and disabling services with the command line.