I tend to be pretty critical of Linux because I do genuinely believe there's a lot of stuff in Linux that's really bad.

Would I ever give it up and switch to Windows/Mac? No, never in a million years. Compared to modern Windows 10, Gnome's UX is masterful.

Linux has actually come pretty far - set up is still annoying, and some problems are still unnecessarily difficult to solve, but for the most part once you get everything up and running you have a system that just works, and that will keep on working without you having to do much.

I've used Linux for a long time, but it's only recently that I've felt confident enough that I've started seriously recommending it to non-technical people. I've got my Mom running Ubuntu as her main computer, and over the past year it cut down on my technical support by about 2/3rds of what I was doing before.

I think it's easy to take the good things for granted. Yeah, to a certain degree Linux is crap, but pretty much all software I or anyone else ever makes is going to be crap - that's the hard lesson you have to learn when you start developing software.

It's still hands-down the best OS out there if you just want a stable, usable computer that respects you, and I still feel really grateful for it every time I boot up my computer to get actual work done.

I was using Gnome on Fedora for a while but I switched to Windows 10 a few months ago and can't say I've had any problems with the UX.

Window snapping works. Minimizing windows works. You can do that thing where it shows a small version of everything you have open on both (win+tab on Win10, don't remember the Gnome shortcut).

Recommending Linux to someone over Windows seems insane to me unless that person is literally just using a web browser for everything or they are a developer. An operating system is useless unless it runs the programs you want to run and Linux is still missing so much. Microsoft Office would be a good start.

I run Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3 because Linux touch support is just too bad right now and because I have maybe two essential applications that don't run on Linux. I would switch it over in a heartbeat if I could, I think the UX is really bad, it's a nightmare for me to maintain.

I hate that the updates are so pushy; I boot into the computer maybe two or three times a month and pretty much every time it wants me to restart and update something. I hate that it installs new updates on startup, I don't know who decided that when I turned on a computer I'd want to wait 3-4 extra minutes for stuff to install. I've been bitten by that multiple times during work presentations and calls.

I hate how glitchy the core OS touch support is; the touch keyboard only pops up about half the time, and manually getting it to show up is a pain. Unbelievably, Gnome is more consistent - which is saying something because Linux touch support is so bad. Periodically, the dock will just decide it doesn't want to hide anymore. There's about a 50% chance if I switch it into tablet mode that screen rotation will work. The default permission prompts don't always tell me which application is requesting authentication. I have #?x! ads in my start menu.

The whole UX is just really... buggy and nonsensical and it feels like none of the designers ever tried to use it outside of demo conditions. Maybe that's my device or whatever, but I'm on a Surface Pro. Microsoft should be able to get that right.

I could go on, but there's not much point. In comparison, my Linux desktop basically never breaks. I set it up once, and it just works. Same for my parents. Especially with the rise of the web, app support is good enough for them and, again, they want their apps to be usable, not flashy, and Open Source usually fits that criteria just fine. The type of person who can get by with an Android tablet instead of a desktop, could also probably get by with a small Linux laptop and might even prefer it now.

There are obviously exceptions, but I don't have a lot of problem recommending Linux to people anymore, because I've found most people want a computer that is set up specifically for them, and then they just want it to work consistently. (Opinion me) most people do not want their computers to evolve, or delight them or something.

I think the demographic that Windows and Apple court is real, but narrower than you might suspect.

> ... I have maybe two essential applications that don't run on Linux. I would switch it over in a heartbeat if I could,

They don't run under wine? (or in a Reactos vm? I assume they don't make sense to run in a vm, as if they did, you'd already run Windows in a vm?)

Unfortunately no, but I retry them every three or four months to see if they will.

Clip Studio is close - really close, but color selection doesn't work and touch controls are messed up (especially with the stylus eraser). Touch support in Linux in general is awful, even with apps that I expect better of like Firefox or MyPaint, but it's almost good enough that I could tolerate it and switch anyway.

I'm semi-hopeful that it'll cross that line in a year or two, and especially hopeful that the work Purism is doing on the Librem Phone might speed that process up.

I honestly haven't tried to run a VM, I just assumed it would eat up battery too much to be useful - and since I use the tablet specifically for these apps, I'd have to spend all of my time in the VM anyway, which doesn't seem like much of an improvement :)

Obviously you're not using LTSB, which is what any sensible Windows 10 user would do.

> unless that person is literally just using a web browser for everything or they are a developer

This describes the personal desktop usage of all of almost every single person I know. I put my dad on Linux Mint almost a decade ago, because regular tech support got much more difficult once I moved away for college. The calls for help got cut down by a factor of 10 after the switch.

Its made some strides, but at least back then, Windows was way too complex for probably the bottom half of the distribution of tech savvy users.

I hear people make claims like this all the time on hacker news and reddit, and I just don't get it.

The only way I can see someone who knows nothing about computers experiencing 10x less issues by switching from Windows to Linux is because they use their computer 10x less or the person they go to for tech support knows Linux better than they know Windows.

To be honest, I'm just as baffled in the other direction. Have you ever seen a Linux Mint system? It's hardly Gentoo. What problems are you imagining, once the setup is completed? (It should be obvious that I didn't hand my dad a Live USB and say "good luck"). Installing software is simple, safe search and click in something named "software center". Updates are the same. Performance tends to be much better.

For a non tech savvy user: How do you install software on Windows? How do you avoid viruses if you're not savvy enough to intuitively pick up on which sites and emails are legit and which are malicious[1]? How do you stop 500 random programs from slowing the crap out of your computer by autostarting and running in the taskbar? This is leaving aside the piss-poor performance of the actual OS itself, which certain tech-savvy people handle by fretting about antivirus programs and the necessity of defragmentation. Go far back enough and you can't even dismiss the former of these concerns offhand, while with Linux, "don't worry about viruses" is an accurate enough directive. I could've said the same for Windows, but the collateral damage would be the very useful "don't download random software from random shady sites". For fuck's sake, at one point Windows had a virus that could infect your system _without even being opened_ (if attached to an email that was opened in Outlook).

Aside from setting up his system, which I'd have to do anyway, I struggle to think of a single problem my dad has had in the ten years since he's switched that wasn't an unforced error that he'd do on any system (ie accidentally changing some setting like screen magnification and being unable to find his way back).

I'm actually really curious about your answers to the above overarching question, because I similarly can't imagine what computing universe you live in that is remotely similar to the one I live in.

[1] some interesting research out of MSR sometime back indicated that bad grammar and other obvious tells in scam emails were actually _intentional_, in that they filtered out all but the least savvy users, who'd have the highest percentage of susceptibility during the more labor-intensive subsequent stages of the scamming process.

> It's still hands-down the best OS out there if you just want a stable, usable computer that respects you, and I still feel really grateful for it every time I boot up my computer to get actual work done.

Anecdotal, but I just recently installed Ubuntu 17.10 on one of my drives because I got tired of windows' shenanigans (was in a forced-update, boot-failure, version-reset loop) and wanted to get work done. I'm no noob to linux (have used it on and off as my main OS for the last 6 years), so I definitely didn't expect it to be a cakewalk, but after installing and 5 minutes of installing software all user input just stopped working completely. It happens about 10 minutes in every boot now. I'm sure there's a fix, but God damn it that's not something I should have to fix (or even think about). Linux on the desktop (much less laptop) has a very, very long way to go. Complexity and options are not always virtuous.

I owe my career in part to the fact that I just bit the bullet, dumped windows, and switched to Ubuntu as my main OS about 7 years ago. In the war on general purpose computing they're still fighting the good fight.

I, for one, am happy that a war is being fought on general purpose computing because it seems to be the only way to make everything "just work" to an acceptable degree.

The iPad is the least general and most locked down computer I've ever used but I love it because it just works. I've never had a problem with it.

I was a diehard Linux guy for five or six years but now I run Windows 10 on all my computers and spend most of my time in the iPad anyways.

Curated stores are fine and can indeed improve quality, but it'll be a tremendously sad day when they'll be mandated by law.

Adding a 30% tax and central control on all software just because we believe users can't be taught to not install random crap is a very bleak outlook indeed. Freedom is sometimes messy, but almost always worth it.

I do not support mandating those things by law.

I am content with letting the Linux people do their thing while I do my thing.

The only people I've only thought wanted to outlaw something are the most extreme Linux/GNU zealots who want to make it illegal for a company to lock down a computer even if it improves the user experience.

It stands to reason that such zealots exist on the other side of the argument as well, but I've never encountered them.

I didn't believe you would, but I fear it's a likely outcome if all that 99% of people ever use is a locked down system. Then misguided (or bribed) lawmakers will almost certainly start getting ideas about banning unlimited computers because "they're only used by hackers and pirates" or "because security" or something.

"I am content with letting the Linux people do their thing while I do my thing."

The problem is that when it becomes too niche, it will be banned out of course. ("Do you have any idea what people can DO with those things??")

Remember, encryption was a munition and controlled accordingly. The need for secure banking is about the only reason we're allowed that. That, and the efforts of people who demand ownership over their machines (or at least something close to it)

That is by no means the case.

It just takes a good number of people getting together and settling on a set of standards. The beauty of the general purpose computing device is it can support any and all at will.

Until people start thinking that "it's better to just let the big companies lock down hardware, then everything will just work!", which leads to hardware impls or subsystems like UEFI that actively fight to deprive the User of their rights to total control of their tool.

No thanks. My machine. My code, my rules, and my data. No one else's. i'll accept the onus of learning how to secure and safely use it. Convenience isn't worth the sacrifice of freedom.

>Until people start thinking that "it's better to just let the big companies lock down hardware, then everything will just work!"

Do a large number of people not already think this? I'm pretty sure that's why Chromebooks and iPads are appealing to many people.

Convenience is worth the sacrifice of freedom if you were never going to use the freedom anyways. It's not even a sacrifice if that's the case.

If someone offers to pay my rent on the condition that I never climb Mt. Everest, I am technically sacrificing freedom for convenience but I'm still going to do it because I wasn't going to climb Mt. Everest anyways.

I've been using Ubuntu almost since it started, because it works and I sure as hell don't miss fiddling with X modelines or compiling my own kernel. I've stuck with the standard Ubuntu, but have tried all the flavors because I wish some degree of customization, and Gnome wishes less every time. Unfortunately they are not as polished.

Since Ubuntu is so great anyway, I try to convince myself that less customization means less wasted time.

I’m of the same opinion. I thought Unity was alright and this new desktop is a great improvement.

Usually when I'm critical of Linux (in a desktop context), it's because I see a lot of potential for Linux to be the absolute best desktop platform out there. It already blows away the competition on a lot of different metrics, but some parts of the overall user experience do sometimes feel clunky or buggy or otherwise non-optimal, and it'd be awesome for that to someday not be the case.

A desktop Linux distro could combine the user-friendliness of the Mac world with the power-user-friendliness of the (pre-8) Windows world and turn both up to eleven while bringing its own element of stability and dependability. It won't get there unless problems - even if they seem minor - are identified and resolved.