It's easy to criticize the chosen trade-offs, but I would argue that Linux would actually be in worse shape today if it had taken the driver ABI approach and encouraged proprietary drivers. Many drivers originally upstreamed in the 32-bit x86 era would no longer be usable on amd64 had they been 32-bit proprietary drivers, and a good number of 64-bit proprietary drivers would be useless on ARM platforms like the Raspberry Pi.

There are a lot of old computers in research laboratories running Windows XP because some proprietary driver for some important piece of equipment (like a mass spectrometer) doesn't have a 64-bit version.

None of the issues mentioned are about some theoretical ideological purity, they're all about very practical pragmatic concerns. There are a lot of open source software that put some ideological purity above all other concerns, but the Linux kernel is certainly not among them - if anything they're among the most "flexible" when it comes to GPL compliance.

If you really care about user experience, I recommend seeking out products made by companies that are vertically integrated, like Apple, because they have the power to curate the components of their products for maximum compatibility and support.

The closest examples so far with Linux are System76 and Purism:

https://system76.com/

https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

This is also what makes the Surface tablets and Surface Book so great. There's a top to bottom alignment of interest in creating the best user experience and making sure the product works.

The closest thing to computing hell is when a commodity operating system is slapped onto the cheapest commodity hardware by someone who isn't concerned at all about using it, but has a list a mile long of systems to configure. There are plenty of enterprise IT-managed work laptops with no display or chipset drivers that can't hibernate, but at least they have McAfee virus scanner installed and the corporate group policy enabled.

That is what I thought when I decided to give money to Asus with 1215B pre-installed with Linux, I was wrong.

Grandma doesn't care about the year of Linux on the Desktop either because she probably just uses a macbook to manage the server farms that are running on Linux and won't need to hibernate.

Honestly how old is "grandma" in 2021? Grandma is probably 60-70 years old, and likely grew up in the "space age" of computers. She likely has a Facebook and uses an Android phone. Grandma should take some time to learn the Linux way, she'll be a better computer user for it.

Why should she? Grandma primarily uses Facebook, Instagram, and Facetime. Grandma doesn't have a goal to become a better computer user in general terms. Linux gives effectively 0 value to her over any other OS. And negative value in a number of various ways. Driver support among them.

At this point, I wonder if Grandma wants a desktop at all. Maybe Grandma just wants a tablet, perhaps with a keyboard. Tablet OSes don't really hibernate, but they use a lot less battery and have software designed to come back from a cold boot quickly.

I use my desktop OSes for my job, but could be perfectly happy with a Chromebook for most of what else I do in my life.

Or she doesn't care about computers and just wants to call her friends via Skype in a pandemic. Why would she care about becoming a better computer user?

Yes, your type of grandma exists, but I don't know her.

> she'll be a better computer user for it

Who (outside of HN readership) wants this?

Linux is tremendously successful. You want to enforce restriction on kernel developers because of "grandma", that's impractical.

Linux is tremendously successful as server OS. Desktop - not very much, because of "grandma"

On server and Android, and IoT. Sleep is enough for my laptop.

I hardly doubt you are kernel developer yet you "know better". Such people always do.

One doesn't have to be kernel developer to acknowledge the fact that Linux on desktop is not doing very well.

By the way, Linux did well on Android because it is made there with "grandma" in mind.

Kernel is one of the best parts about Linux on desktop. It works. I've recently tried Windows, annoyed by hibernate, few seconds to wake up but sleep is instantaneous.

Linux did well on Android because it does not suck. Mainline kernel boots hundred of models (postmarketOS). Another part mostly unchanged — browser. ChromeOS is Linux kernel and browser.

You've said hibernation is a matter ideological purity, no, it is a matter of practicality. You have to be kernel developer to understand practicality.

>> You've said hibernation is a matter ideological purity

I've never said that.

I think this conversation is going nowhere, no reason to continue it.