This is a particular bugbear of mine. If Linux isn't ready as a desktop system, how is it that I have been using it as such for 15 years? I get that it isn't all things to all people, but it has long fulfilled my needs; I've always been able to find a good quality tool for any task I want to do. Generally speaking, I'm happier with Linux than Windows or Mac OS, though I'm sure familiarity is part of the equation.
To summarize: Linux was a decent desktop ten years ago, and it didn't get any worse, at the very least, since then.
- Some software defaults to installation as sandboxed packages. Try explaining that to someone who is used to dragging and dropping files from the desktop into their programs to open them.
- Want to watch a movie? Sure, but you won't get vsynced video without opening up a text editor as root to configure your graphics driver.
- Ohh, your laptop has THAT particular Wifi/Bluetooth/PCI bridge/whatever chip? Sorry...
- No, don't open "Christmas Wishlist.doc", that's from last year. The new one is called "Christmas wishlist.doc".
While Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Apple) has gotten a lot of flak over shoddy updates lately, things are, by and large, much more prone to breaking on Linux. And when they break, even just a little, you need to know your way around a terminal to fix them.
I recently had to downgrade my kernel because of the bugs in i915. To do so, I had to first identify the problem by following the syslog and then do some heavy lifting in GRUB to lock my boot process to an older kernel version. The prerequisite knowledge to be able to perform what we might consider a simple task, has been built up during decades of me being a computer nerd.
For someone without a keen interest in computers, Linux on the desktop isn't all that great. The thing is, I like it that way. I want the freedom of choice. I want the level of control it gives me. When (or if) it becomes ready for the desktop, it's probably ready to be abandoned for something else.
I agree concerning word processing and especially video chatting, I much prefer using these applications on MacOS.
I disagree though about online shopping, in my experience running Firefox under Linux or Windows is pretty much exactly the same.
I'm veering a bit OT here, but is anyone aware of the justification for having a case-sensitive file system? It's something that's always annoyed me about Linux and *BSD, but I wonder if there is any real benefit I've just never grasped?
Case insensitivity adds a whole set of complications. The operating system has to either canonicalize all filenames, or preserve them (case preserving) but have an equivalence class of filenames. Canonicalization can be problematic (like ß -> SS, or perhaps ß -> ẞ? And let's not think of the dotless i), and to make things worse, can change with newer versions of the Unicode standard (as new characters and their case mappings are added); at least NTFS works around that by storing a case mapping table in the filesystem metadata, so a filesystem created by a newer Windows release can have a different case mapping (and you can have different case mappings for each filesystem in the same machine). It can also confuse software: even with a case preserving system, a program can open a file named FOO for writing, and not find it later when listing the directory (because it already existed as lowercase "foo"). This kind of thing has led to security issues in the past.
Obviously the bar for "ready as a desktop system" is subjective and thus will change wildly from person to person.
For me, it's not ready primarily because it lacks any remote desktop solution comparable to RDP. Yes I've tried VNC, X2Go, NoMachines and some others I can't recall (though not ogon yet).
I find it's also a lot more fiddly than Windows, but I could have lived with that.
I'm using a 7th Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon. When I got it everything worked out of the box with Fedora.
Without coming pre-installed, I don't see how it can be readier.
Of course if you buy a machine with exotic hardware (cough Broadcom) then it'll be a pain.
And to this day, the OpenGL and video hardware decoding capabilities are castrated by the open source version of the AMD driver, that did not considered worthwhile to support Brazos APUs to the same level that fxglr had.
So much for coming pre-installed.
Even the fingerprint sensor? Using a X1 Yoga here, had trouble with it.
https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/com.synaptics.prometheus.firm...
With desktop-class hardware (Wi-Fi, input devices, various non-standard USB gadget, setc) the situation is much worse.
Neither one is ready as a desktop operating system. Linus Torvalds said that himself about Linux. Since FreeBSD lags behind Linux, it's safe to assume that is true for FreeBSD, too.
Fast reading the author's previous articles on FreeBSD VS Linux, it's easy to see that it's dislike for Linux and praise for FreeBSD it's based solely on politics. He hates Windows 10 which he names an "horrible operating system" and now he hates Linux too. And that is just because Linux has big contributions by companies willing to gain money, in contrast to software written solely for passion, which he deems much better.
He even goes as far as state that technical merits matter much less than politics.
That I regard as pretty immature.
Now the author struggles to come up with technical reasons to pick FreeBSD over Linux. If he succeeds on that, that is for any reader to judge.
Rants like the author's previous articles on Linux VS FreeBSD seem to make even Richard Stallman an reasonable man in contrast.
Some developers, some companies are providing software for free, both as in "free beer" and as in "free speech". That means time and money. He thinks that he and other users are entitled to much more than that. He feels like he should say to others in what way should they contribute to free software.