I'm going to build my opinion on the software on whatever version they claim is officially supported for my machine.

If they don't want to do a good job supporting the OS I run then don't support it, or call the support a beta version and have an easy user flow to get to the web client or something.

Otherwise yea, I'm going to call a spade a spade and say it's bad software when it doesn't work as intended as an official release on an officially supported target.

Was about to say this. I was with the OP through to ‘I tried it on three computers,’ and when they specified the OS on those computers were three variants of •nix, I laughed a little.

A much, much more fair/reasonable comparison would’ve been the three computers running three different Operating Systems, of course.

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I’m sorry, if you’re on •nix, if commercial software exists for it, count your lucky stars a build even exists - and also remember you are exponentially insignificant compared to all other platforms. You will not get the same standard of support and they probably can’t justify dedicating too many more resources to it if you have issues. You represent a drop or two of water in the dozen gallons of daily users.

I’m shocked there’s even a •nix client. Good on them for making an effort, even. (Not that I’d be caught dead with Zoom on my computer, it seems scarier than Google from a privacy perspective!)

Yes. Yes, you absolutely can.

Not if you're assessing comments like "it just works".

Zoom making their software badly on Linux is 100% in line with the company. They aren't aiming for good design, they are aiming for the nontechnical user using out of the box windows or MacOS.

If you're assessing comments like "it just works", then there are two possibilities. Either it works for you, at which point you have more anecdata, or it doesn't work for you, at which point you have a refutation. This is the same, regardless of whether you are using the Linux version or any other version.

FWIW, the Linux version works fine for me, with a couple of niggles. The most annoying of which is that the software turns the headphone volume up to maximum at the start of every call.

I think the part of the equation missing here is that you don't just have anecdata, you have data that more or less applies to most cases of your specific OS + Browser + other relevant customizations. If you have a highly customized system, you're simply more likely to experience issues from edge cases, yes. That data is also much less reflective of the average user.

No, it's not hard scientific data with a p-value. But IMO it's important to not simply write away all experience as anecdote not data without contextualizing the relevancy of the anecdata in question. I have seen way too many HN comments that look at usability and don't realize how specific their situation is that causes their issue. That and of course their complaints not being relevant/visible to the typical end user.