Windows 11 is launching with literal TV commercials. The Surface Pro 7 earlier this year launched with commercials comparing the device to Apple laptops -- again, literal TV ads.

So why is it suddenly toxic for a Linux Institute blog to advertise Linux? Why is it toxic to mention in a blog (completely accurately) that the average Linux distro (even commercial distros like Ubuntu) have less telemetry than Windows 11? Windows 11 Home edition does still require a Microsoft account that users need to use airplane mode during setup to circumvent, right? It does genuinely have camera requirements for new manufacturers, right?

It's a wild double standard here to argue, from the position of a company that runs TV ads mocking its competitors about touchbars -- that the Linux community is stoking division by publishing a blog post that compares Linux to Windows on the day of a new Windows release.

Of course there's a bias to the article, it's an advertisement. But I don't understand why the Linux community is held to this standard that no other OS manufacturer follows. Apple/Microsoft/Android run ads attacking competitors all the time, much more prominently, and nobody accuses them of being "territorial" because they try to distinguish their products.

I feel like with the uptick in Linux gaming, Valve's investment in Proton, the Steam Deck, EAC/Battleye compatibility with Proton, modern desktops catching up to Windows look and feel, it's closer to being 'the year of the Linux desktop' than ever before.

Sure, 'the year of the Linux desktop' is a loosely defined term that doesn't necessarily have any key metrics that you'd agree with, and it's not like any of the world's governments or corporations are suddenly going to overhaul their entire desktop IT inventory in 12 months, but for the first time ever I have seen people say '2022 is the year of the Linux desktop' and I think that there is actual substance to it rather than just blind naïve optimism.

"The year of Linux on the desktop" is a meme for a specific reason.

It'll take longer than a year.

The claim is funny because you imagine the whole world switching to Linux, like, overnight. Which is obviously unrealistic. It's a gradual process.

But last year Chromebooks outsold Macs. Chromebooks are Linux. Even if they're not "Linux Linux," there isn't much you can do with one that you can't do with most other distributions. Which demonstrates that the barriers to adoption are falling and a major factor is now the need for better marketing.

That still doesn't mean the percentage of desktops running Linux will be at 97% by end of December. But it'll probably be higher than it was last year.

I agree with this. It's hard to engage with people like GP saying things like 'the year of the Linux desktop will never happen', as they are using the term to essentially dismiss Linux as a platform, however in order to counter it or to highlight the progress that has been made, you are effectively having to sidestep bad-faith framing of the issue.

I don't think GP was universally dismissing Linux in the way that it is normally used (there are plenty of better examples in this thread, though), but it is similarly an inflammatory comment to make that detracts from proper discussion.

As someone who has done a lot of hacking with Linux as a desktop platform, one would be absolutely right to dismiss it. The desktop platforms on Linux are still heavily fragmented and in some ways are still decades behind Windows/Mac. The existence of a better compatibility layer to run Windows games doesn't really change this fundamental flaw. I personally don't think it will ever be fixed because this fragmentation seems to be the whole reason why people want to use Linux on a desktop. That's what I personally would say is meant by "the year of the Linux desktop will never happen".

To put it another way, It's not like the existence of some Steam games is going to suddenly make it so you can go into a Walmart and buy a machine with Arch or Slackware preinstalled on it.

But what of the Steam deck? If it sells well enough then you will absolutely be buying a machine with Arch pre-installed on it from Walmart.

A big 'if', and not currently the case, but also not as impossible as commentators such as yourself would suggest.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the desktop. AFAIK the steam deck is a handheld gaming device similar to a Nintendo Switch, not a desktop PC. It seems about as related to desktop Linux as google stadia, i.e. not much. When I say machine with Arch I mean a desktop/laptop with just the stock Arch on it.

Edit: And if you really want to be pedantic, ChromeOS is technically Gentoo underneath the covers, but the only reason it works for its target use cases is because it's heavily modified with some proprietary components. Getting one of those is really different from the experience you would have with trying to put upstream Gentoo on a laptop.

>AFAIK the steam deck is a handheld gaming device similar to a Nintendo Switch, not a desktop PC

It is essentially a fully fledged desktop PC in a handheld form factor [0]. It is identical architecturally to a desktop PC with integrated controller running Arch-based Steam OS 3.0.

>When I say machine with Arch I mean a desktop/laptop with just the stock Arch on it.

Which is fair, but not what I asked.

[0] https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/steam-deck

Yeah I get that, but you still probably are not going to want to run desktop apps on that thing. It doesn't have a keyboard or mouse. It looks more suited to running tablet apps. And regardless of that, my point is that the status of gaming APIs shipped by one vendor on a proprietary bundling of Linux has little to do with the status of the rest of the platform, which by the way is also woefully inadequate for shipping tablet apps. And also: Linux still is not able to adequately run the majority of desktop software for Windows that people actually want to use, which is all proprietary. Progress has not changed or increased here, Wine is still about as far behind (relatively speaking) as it's ever been. AFAIK the only reason Proton is able to work is because support for Direct3D 11 was added, which at this point is a 13 year old API, and it still doesn't work perfectly.

While I doubt that many people are going to want to run desktop applications on the Steam Deck, it appears to have the ability to connect a monitor and keyboard/mouse. Devices like this, Chromebooks, and many others will make Linux a more consumer facing OS in the decades to come.

I agree that the Windows API, beyond those needed for games, is a thorn in Linux's side. On the other hand, I also see the Linux desktop taking a larger percentage in the years to come. It won't really be because of growth in the Linux user base. It will be because desktops will have less of a presence outside of business use.

"Devices like this, Chromebooks, and many others will make Linux a more consumer facing OS in the decades to come."

Can you see how that's the point I'm making? "Linux" is still decades off from being a viable desktop OS, and it will always be so. A new embedded device running Linux that you can technically connect a keyboard and mouse to doesn't help the general case that Windows targets, or the case of purpose-built desktop/laptops that Apple targets.

With a dock you can have a keyboard and a mouse :)

Moreover, given that the Steam Deck is essentially a PC, any investment in the Deck in drivers, APIs, desktop environments, display manager (Valve have invested in KDE Plasma/Wayland and Gamescope), native game compatibility, compatibility layers (applies to all software, not just games) is also an investment in desktop Linux as a whole. Even if we are just limiting it to games, having more games on Linux makes the platform more viable for people who want to use their computer for gaming.

This isn't even mentioning how much has moved to either web or cross-platform electron apps in the last 10 years (which includes Teams, Spotify, Discord, Youtube, VSCode and others)

>which by the way is also woefully inadequate for shipping tablet apps

I will bow to your experience on this one, I don't have any experience in this area.

>adequately run the majority of desktop software for Windows that people actually want to use

Actually you can run pretty much all Microsoft Office on Linux - the big ones that people still have trouble with are Adobe Creative suite.

All of that stuff is fine and good but it's the same incremental progress as always. I don't see anything particularly special about using this device with a dock, that seems like a really niche use case. These type of devices are not new and have never been big sellers. I'd assume most customers would just use it for games and don't care that it technically runs Linux and allows them to switch out of their game and fumble around trying to use LibreOffice or GIMP on a touchscreen until they get frustrated enough to plug in a keyboard. Unless Valve is planning to invest billions of dollars in overhauling KDE for general uses (including non-gaming uses), then I don't think anything is going to change significantly. Yes, that's how much money it would cost. This is what Google had to do to with Android to make that kind of "Linux" a viable platform, it won't happen with anything else unless similar amounts are invested.

And for windows software I'm not talking about Microsoft Office or Adobe, I'm talking about the "long tail" of Windows apps that don't get attention from Wine developers. There's still a lot of those.

> Linux still is not able to adequately run the majority of desktop software for Windows that people actually want to use, which is all proprietary.

All of this has been getting replaced by the web over the course of twenty years.

The primary exception to this is games, because they're so resource intensive and benefit from being closer to the metal. Which is why gaming APIs are significant -- AAA games don't get converted into a web page and therefore are the main thing still tying a large group of consumers to Windows.

You assume customers don't want to be tied to Windows which is not the case. Maybe you and I got sick of Windows 20-30 years ago but Microsoft's customers (the vast majority of desktop computer users) don't care. They see ads in the OS and they think "that could be our ad up there".

Sure they don't care. But that means they don't care.

If you tried to sell a PC with Linux on it at Walmart in the year 2000, people would return it because it wouldn't natively run Microsoft Outlook or Starcraft.

If in a few years from now you're on webmail regardless and it can run every game on Steam, there is no reason to return it. And it costs less by the amount of a Windows license, so there is a reason to buy it.

That cost reduction doesn't just come out of thin air. If you want to build software that is competitive with Windows in other aspects, then you will have to charge similar amounts. Otherwise you're just leaving money on the table, because we know by now that customers are extremely willing to pay for it. And as long as Microsoft is shipping new APIs on Windows, Linux will never be able to run every game on Steam or every Windows program. It will always be perpetually behind playing catch-up, just like it has been for the last 25 years. The problem with your plan (and with all of these type of plans that I've seen people post) is that it requires Microsoft to give up and cede the market, which is not going to happen.

> That cost reduction doesn't just come out of thin air. If you want to build software that is competitive with Windows in other aspects, then you will have to charge similar amounts.

The assumption here is that development costs are linear.

If you spend a thousand dollars developing an operating system and your competition spends a million dollars, theirs won't be a thousand times better than yours, it will be infinitely better because theirs might actually boot and yours won't.

But if you spend a billion dollars and they spend a trillion dollars, theirs won't be a thousand times better than yours, it will be 2% better. Maybe. Because your billion dollars already caused to exist an operating system that does everything people need from an operating system and there is a point of diminishing returns. Which is where all the major operating systems already are.

What you would expect in a market like this is price competition. 80% as good for 20% of the price wins. 98% as good for 0% of the price wins even more. We're already there -- Microsoft has been giving away the Windows 10 and Windows 11 upgrades for free. They now need that to be competitive.

They can add new APIs all they want, but if Valve is providing ones that are just as good and will allow your games to run on their consoles which have any non-zero market share in addition to Windows, developers will prefer those.

I don't think they are at a point of diminishing returns. There are still advancements in hardware and drivers, and that's where the investment really pays off. Microsoft has historically been really good at designing APIs for this stuff that developers actually want to use. The vertical integration with shipping the whole OS really pays off for them. In Linux, it's extremely difficult to make any changes because you have to plumb everything through several layers of the stack which are all in separate disconnected projects. Only a few wealthy companies can really do it well and those tend to have a narrow focus on a specific vertical (Google, Red Hat, etc).

Price competition on the OS doesn't actually matter, as you have noted the market has moved towards additional services. When you say "98% as good for 0% of the price" you're not factoring in all the additional paid services that the company wants (and needs) to sell. I can tell you that Canonical certainly does not charge 0% of the price for everything, if they are taking a customer from Microsoft then they would probably like to gain 100% or more of that price from any given customer.

I have seen nothing to show that developers will prefer any Valve APIs, a lot of the games still seem to be running in Proton which actually shows that most developers still prefer to use the Microsoft stack and tooling. I should have mentioned this earlier but Visual Studio (the original, not VS Code) is also extremely important and entrenched, game developers are not just going to all switch to Vim and Emacs because Valve sold a product with Linux on it.

>they are using the term to essentially dismiss Linux as a platform

The original framing of 'year of the Linux desktop' from back in the 90s was predicated on the assumption that desktop OSes were mature, that Desktop Linux would soon catch up in usability with the proprietary ones, and then free would win. It was the precursor to Google's "open always wins" mantra with Android.

That is almost certainly never going to happen, and it's fine. The Linux desktop scene is very mature at this point, and we're all the better for it being there as a developer, sysadmin and hobbyist playground. If the traditional GNOME, KDE, xfce, etc style Linux desktop never becomes a mainstream option for high street users that's fine and it's not dismissive. It's just recognising the reality, after well over 20 years.

I think there is a difference between recognising current reality and trying to snub something out of hand. I find those that are doing an honest appraisal of the current situation usually won't use the phrase in either a positive or a negative sense.

But again, I’m not snubbing anything out of hand. If it is controversial to say that regardless of kernel, successful consumer operating systems require billions of dollars of investment, I’ll own that. But that’s being dismissive. That’s being a realist and responding to the nature of the article posted, which in my opinion was a lot of recycled from 2006 talking points that are still getting clicks and discussion like it’s fucking Slashdot or something. OS wars and text editor wars are eternal, I realize. But my response was to the article, not snubbing or even impugning the very hard and very impressive work that has happened over the last 30 years with Linux.

Again, I think there are some really valid reasons to move to Linux. I don’t think this article was a good example.

I think your responses to it being a very flannely, clickbaity article without much substance are fair, but I find that responding to the article by making sweeping statements isn't refuting the material of the article - it's making an appeal to authority where the authority is just the fact that Linux is bad on desktop.

>Again, I think there are some really valid reasons to move to Linux. I don’t think this article was a good example.

I can agree with that. I definitely wouldn't be sending this article to anyone to convince them...

One of the things I learned watching decades of development of computing is to never say never. Things like "the laptop I bought just a couple of years ago is not supported by the most recent version of Windows" might seem insignificant now, but in the hindsight it's one these little things that influence global changes and future trends.

I mean, I’m not dismissing Linux though. I am dismissing the idea that an operating system not funded by a trillion dollar company can make inroads with many , many end users, yes, that’s true (Google, Microsoft, Apple are all in that category), but I’m not dismissing Linux or the massive impact it has had. The Linux kernel is one of the singularly most disruptive forces in computing of the last 30 years. I think there is an argument to be made that it is the most disruptive. But Linux on the desktop, sorry. It’s not going to happen. And I just don’t consider Chrome OS Linux any more than I consider iOS Unix. I’ll probably still call macOS Unix (tho the Unixy bits are getting eroded with every release), but I personally don’t consider the kernel the operating system in this way, I just don't. I actually think the success of Chrome OS and macOS show what is necessary to make a successful desktop operating system: billions of dollars in investment. Not millions. Not tens of millions. Billions. It isn’t about the kernel. It’s about everything else.

My TV has a Linux kernel inside it. My coffee maker is running some variant of Linux or Busybox or something. Again, the Linux kernel is one of the most disruptive and important advancements in computing.

But the article was about switching from Windows to Linux on the desktop. And I think there are plenty of valid reasons to switch. I don’t think that particular article is a good example of them — and I think debates about what desktop OS people want to use are inflammatory by nature.

> I mean, I’m not dismissing Linux though.

> But Linux on the desktop, sorry. It’s not going to happen.

I mean this seems like a dismissal to me. I am specifically talking about the desktop. I don't think the impact that the Linux kernel has had on the server or mobile spaces is up for debate - as you say it's pretty massive.

The issue I have is the certainty with which you can dismiss the viability of Linux desktop. I've seen you mention Proton, but I don't think I've seen you consider or weigh up whether you think that Proton will or will not have an impact on viability of Linux on the desktop. What about EAC and Battleye anti-cheat? The fact that in the last 10 years we've transitioned from Flash to HTML5 and other cross-platform codecs.

I just can't see how you could wave all that off as 'sorry not going to happen'. Like, there has been improvement. There just has! (Going to use your own debating tactic there...). That isn't to say that Linux on the desktop is happening or that it has happened. I am saying that it could happen, and that is in stark contrast to how dismissive you are being about it.

> > I mean, I’m not dismissing Linux though.

> > But Linux on the desktop, sorry. It’s not going to happen.

> I mean this seems like a dismissal to me. I am specifically talking about the desktop. I don't think the impact that the Linux kernel has had on the server or mobile spaces is up for debate - as you say it's pretty massive.

There's never been on a ‘year of the Mac desktop’ in the way that people typically discuss a potential ‘year of the Linux desktop’, and instigating one is pretty obviously not part of Apple's strategy. Imo it's easy to imagine Linux desktops carving out a more secure place in society and ‘the market’ which doesn't involve any kind of mass adoption, meaning that it's safer to assume compatibility or other measures to accommodate desktop Linux users (from vendors, from governments, from social clubs, whatever).

I’ll put it this way, I think that a successful Linux on the desktop would not be something a lot of the people that advocate and love Linux on the desktop would embrace. It would be a lot more like Chrome OS (and Google is writing their own kernel, which just blurs a lot of the lines even more), meaning purposefully obfuscating the Linux bits, using custom or highly-customized desktop environments, being tightly configured with close-sourced backend cloud services, and being very difficult to use custom libraries or app repositories. I think Proton is a good example of this, actually. Valve has done some great work with compatibility and its great to see the work they have done to improve the gaming situation (tho people who claim that Windows and Linux are equivalent in gaming, as far as the desktop goes, are being disingenuous imho) and desktop Linux as a gaming platform is certainly superior to Mac, in terms of library. But Valve’s primary motive is to create a front end for their storefront and to do it in a way so that Valve can avoid paying various licensing fees. Gabe has been very upfront about that from the beginning. Steam Machines were a massive failure (I was at the launch party in Las Vegas the CES they were unveiled) and although I personally preordered a Steam Deck, I don’t think we really know what the actual market is for that kind of device. It could be on-par with consoles or it could be a lot less. But everything we’ve seen from that shows that the experience is very much designed to mimic a console experience — albeit with a lot more freedom for nerds like us. I don’t think that is at all the same thing as Linux Mint or even Ubuntu being the primary desktop OS for end users. Or that if Steam Deck is successful, that we will see computers sold with traditional Linux distros pre-installed at Best Buy (and the developer edition XPS and Lenovo machines aren’t what I’m talking about).

And that doesn’t touch on the still existing consumer software issues on Linux — getting developers like Serif (makers of Affinity) to target the Linux desktop (I’m not even going to try for Adobe) or for existing commercial software to come over.

Now, some of this ceases to matter because the web won and the web runs everywhere. But keep in mind that you’ll need to use that proprietary version of Chrome on your Linux desktop to watch HD Netflix or other DRM content and to access other stuff. The web winning doesn’t mean that software freedom has won.

As I said in my OP, I’m a diehard macOS user and I certainly appreciate the POSIX underpinnings and the fact that the OS has some BSD roots. In fact, it’s a huge part of the appeal for me (like many nerds in their late 30s, I embraced Mac OS X in the early 2000s because it was kind of like Linux but pretty and had Photoshop). But most Unix purists I know don’t like macOS (especially these days) for a variety of reasons and would rather use OpenBSD or pine for the days of Sun OS or Solaris.

So yes, despite the many notable efforts that have been made, no, I don’t think the Linux desktop as I think you define it will happen. If it were to happen, it would look and act a lot more like Windows and macOS with everything good and bad that that entails.

Well that's definitely the answer I was looking for. Thank you for this. I will concede that I agree with your points.

Nothing further to add, your honour.

Hey, thanks for the very nice back and forth. I really enjoyed the discussion!

As a peaceful bystander, I enjoyed it, too! Many good points. And specifically, things to address, like the DRM situation that is unhealthy. Also the browser ecosystem is a concern: if web app developers start to ignore Firefox and encourage macOS users to use Chrome instead of Safari, the user experience on Linux will face another serious problem that we already went through in the early 2000s. Many other things will need to be solved - but what makes me very happy is that we are actually solving issues one by one, and the situation of Linux users in 2022 will be incomparable to what they needed to go through twenty years ago.

IMO "year of the linux desktop" is a meme left over from the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, when everyone was starting Linux companies and everyone thought theirs would be the dominant one. We know now that it's not a growth market, and most of those companies failed. You only have to watch Canonical's missteps to see how this continues even to today. (And realistically, they are the dominant one and have been for some time, not Valve or Red Hat or anyone else.) I actually heavily dislike that phrase and would suggest that people stop using it because it just reflects on the terrible type of bundle-open-source-and-get-rich-quick thinking that plagued that era, and distracts from the actual problems that need to be solved in order to ship Linux in various environments.

Outside US school market and Googleplex, Chromebooks are nowhere to be found.

Also running the Linux kernel is an implementation detail, those that allow for GNU/Linux applications and Android, without breaking security into developer mode, do it with additional VMs, hardly any different from running WSL + WSL/Android on Windows 11.

> Outside US school market and Googleplex, Chromebooks are nowhere to be found.

Lots of consumers buy them directly from Best Buy etc.

But let's say they're only used in schools. Well, then the next generation is being brought up with machines that don't depend on any Windows apps.

> Also running the Linux kernel is an implementation detail, those that allow for GNU/Linux applications and Android, without breaking security into developer mode, do it with additional VMs, hardly any different from running WSL + WSL/Android on Windows 11.

That means it's a subset of Linux. It can't do things Linux can't do, so switching from there to "real" Linux has no significant barriers.

> Lots of consumers buy them directly from Best Buy etc.

Here in Germany every single time they appear on consumer stores in shopping malls, they get promoted every week until finally they manage to get rid of the stock.

It is always an interesting experience to see the same units with different kinds of offers similar to the pile of Android phones close by.

Most consumers have no idea what real Linux is supposed to, they just see a Laptop that cannot make use of the software most of their friends are using.

> modern desktops catching up to Windows look and feel

Honestly, ever since Gnome Shell Linux has been ahead of Windows in look and feel, IMO anyway.

That being said, the year of the Linux desktop isn't a thing anymore because honestly, desktops (or laptops) aren't that much of a thing anymore. For consuming media, phones, tablets and TVs are the main devices. For gaming, phones and consoles. Laptops/desktops are mostly for work, most people I know don't even own one.

This is a fair argument that I don't see as often as I should.

I think in some ways ‘the year of the Linux desktop’ is an artifact from thinking about computing and operating systems in a way that is now outdated in ways unrelated to the situation of desktop Linux.

‘The year of the Linux desktop’ was an interesting vision of the future when thinking about the way people use computers at home meant thinking about Microsoft, and when people commonly (if probably erroneously even then) thought about Microsoft's market position mainly in terms of Windows desktop licenses. But nowadays the computers we use for most things at home are phones or tablets, and web apps have displaced native applications for a ton of the most common activities in desktop computing.

The question of the year of the Linux desktop is also one that's not really asked from the position of Linux users. It's a question about market trends, or what big desktop and laptop manufacturers might be doing with desktop Linux. But for existing Linux desktop users, or even just Linux desktop dabblers, the propositions that might actually impact their decisions or quality of life aren't really interrogated directly by the question of the year of the Linux desktop as it's usually framed.

Existing and prospective Linux desktop users are mostly interested in a ‘weaker’ year of the Linux desktop than one envisioned by massive corporate or government deployments:

* can I buy hardware that I know will just work with pretty much any Linux distro at a reasonable price from more than one or two vendors that are convenient, given where I live? * when I buy peripherals or other accessories, will there be enough options at the store (physical or online) which mention Linux or bear the Tux logo that I can quickly make a choice without having to go online to consult some compatibility database? * will my employer let me use desktop Linux at the office if I prefer it for my workflow? * if I use desktop Linux at home, will I have to do a bunch of extra work to play a few casual rounds of the trendiest online multiplayer game with some friends?

and so on.

> for the first time ever I have seen people say '2022 is the year of the Linux desktop' and I think that there is actual substance to it rather than just blind naïve optimism.

I'm inclined to stay away from the phrase ‘year of the Linux desktop’ because it still recalls a lot of thinking firmly footed in the landscape of the late 90s and early aughts. But when we re-evaluate the YotLD as a proposition centered on current Linux desktop users and users who are likely to consider it in the moderate term, I think it makes sense to talk about it as something that's rapidly arriving or already here.

It is because of our frustration with Windows. There was a time when it was a private system. Sure, the first couple of versions weren't particularly stable or secure, but for some reason you trusted the vendor of your operating system that they won't spy on you.

Unfortunately, things went in the same direction as other greedy companies that pay lip service to valuing their users while exploiting their privacy in all possible ways. Microsoft went a step further, being actively user-hostile, for example changing telemetry settings so that your previous choices wouldn't work and enforcing remote accounts. Name a dark pattern, and Microsoft used it somewhere.

So how couldn't we be frustrated? We receive a box full of adware with little control of how it's updated and what is going to run on it tomorrow. Sure, there are nice things like WSL, but they don't somehow cancel your shady doings. Fortunately the future is more and more web-oriented so it's getting easier to switch from Windows now than it was a decade or two ago.

> Again, use whatever you want. But this is such lazy writing

It is, but I also think ‘use whatever you want’ is lazy, or at least resigned, in a different way.

There's a pattern that often takes hold with new desktop Linux users involving an intense evangelism phase. Some of the reasons for that phase are cultural artifacts that aren't especially interesting or valuable, like a tendency to ground one's identity in consumer choices.

But the evangelistic phase in a new Linux user's journey with desktop Linux is also grounded in experiences of joy, wonder, and a kind of digital ‘pride of place’ that really are special to free software desktops, and is nowhere realized as fully as in the desktop Linux world. Those kinds of experiences are worth sharing, examining, and celebrating, even in naive forms. Some good examples of content creators who've gone through this process in the last few years are Jason Evangelho (Forbes writer and longtime tech/gaming journalist) and Chris Titus (longtime Windows sysadmin and power user gone Linux YouTuber).

The ‘right tool for the job’, ‘use whatever works’ nostrum is as uninteresting and useless a meme as ‘Arch Linux is teh best and Ubuntu is for n00bz!!1’, with the additional problem that that its emptiness is obscured by its apparent even-handedness.

To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers.

> To be clear, I agree with most of what you've said and overall critique of the specific article in the OP. But I want to point out that ‘why Linux’ as a genre or topic is not just flamebait, and that there are other articles along those lines that I think have a legitimate place on HN or any forum where people are interested in people's experiences with computers.

This is totally fair and I wouldn’t want to imply otherwise. My issues are with this article and the others of its ilk, but not the general genre of content.

And you make good points about “use whatever you want” being an uninteresting meme too.

And you make excellent points about the evangelism phase (which I think we both agree, this article isn’t indicative of, tho I imagine the person who shared it might be in that wonderful phase themselves), which is definitely important. As a longtime Mac user, we have that phase too (also, the fact that I still primarily identify as a Mac user even tho I’ve been using Linux since 1998, even if primarily on the server (I still distro hop like a mofo all the damn time tho), speaks to those cultural artifacts you mention that just stick with us), and Mac users are just as obnoxious as Linux users but in a different way.

I truly have come to a place where I want people to enjoy what they enjoy and share that. I’m just exhausted by the evangelism and fierce defensiveness by any sect. But I’m definitely guilty of it too (she says as she types away at 100 words a minute on her iPhone that she is slavishly devoted to).

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that.

The “year” already happened, I don’t know when specifically. We are years into Linux on the desktop. The idea was to provide a perfectly usable DE on Linux and comparable software for the every day user. Which now has several options and a plethora of software. Lots of people run Linux desktops on the daily. Is it mainstream? No, but no one actually cares about that because to get to that point you need some giant exodus migration from every platform to Linux…it’s impossible. So what’s possible for desktop Linux in a practical sense? That it’s available to install and use and is supported. So it’s here and no one cares that there isn’t a big giant annual release with lots of media attention crooning over how awesome the new OS menu is. Instead it’s people working and developing on Linux.

I’m sorry for all those people who can’t live without their niche OS features and software, but it also tells me those people have no real technical skill or understanding anyways. Which is fine that software plane exists too.

> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware (Deepin Linux is literally run by the Chinese government)

Trying to "Both Sides" telemetry and spyware fails because you can use Linux without either, whereas macOS and Windows are inherently married to it and you can't use them without submitting to their respective surveillance regimes. Oddities like Deepin barely matter and can't be used to honestly say Linux is just as bad as a closed-source OS.

I actually disagree. Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One). Not to mention the time Ubuntu inserted Amazon affiliate links into the search app (which to their credit, they eventually removed -- tho the Amazon app that was just an affiliate launcher didn't go away until LAST YEAR).

In fact, I would argue that most distributions with a focus on user interface and usability tend to have a lot more of the things that macOS and Windows have, like user accounts (tied to app stores or whatever), giving back telemetry (which is often really, really important for developers to have), or are part of major enterprise servicing agreements that have a lot of tracking and management by design.

Plus, whether you use a Mac, Windows, or Linux, most users are going to be using Chrome as their web browser, almost certainly attached to a Google account, watching Netflix, using a cloud service for storage, and what, playing games using Proton, which is sure giving Steam a whole lot of your data. The web won and the web surveils us. It just does.

If it makes you feel better that your chosen distro doesn't have as many options enabled by default and that you can't have a common user account to sync settings across multiple desktops, that's awesome. But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.

> I actually disagree.

Of course you disagree because it's your job. Satya Nadella himself makes sure you try to sway the opinion here in favor of your company [0]:

"In fact, this morning, I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress..."

Hint: criticizing Linux in such a heavy-handed way won't work that well.

[0 ]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/events/FY-2019/earn...

Actually, that isn't my job. In fact, very few comments I have made on HN have ever had any association with what I actually do -- and that is by design. I don't speak for my employer, and I'm certainly not astroturfing here.

Hint: Being a jerk to people online using a random account makes you look like an asshole.

I'm not talking about you specifically, but Microsoft employees in general that Nadella says are working hard in order to sway the opinion of HN users towards you ("you" meaning again not you personally but your company).

EDIT: To clarify: I don't know how this works in practice, I assumed accounts explicitly identified as belonging to Microsoft employees are used, so that Nadella can open HN in the morning and assess the efficacy of your (plural) advocacy efforts. That's why I initially not excluded you could be one of these people as you have introduced yourself as an advocacy person at Microsoft. Now that you said you are not, I see no reason not to believe you. But it doesn't invalidate the fact that other Microsoft employees are trying to game HN and that this activity is very important for your CEO.

Please don't be so cynical. I don't work for Microsoft, I've been using Linux for about 20 years and I haven't used Windows seriously in about that long, and I agree entirely with her comment. Once you go adding all the things to Linux that Windows users want, it starts to look a lot like Windows in more than one way...

> Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing

And yet Ubuntu has no "account login thing", and Windows has one. If Ubuntu is doing thing you dislike, it can be easily forked (that's a bit what Pop does, and it works well).

> If it makes you feel better that your chosen distro doesn't have as many options enabled by default and that you can't have a common user account to sync settings across multiple desktops, that's awesome. But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.

I'm glad I'm not using Windows if that's the opinion of a developer advocate at Microsoft.

> Ubuntu has a lot of telemetry on by default (unlike Deepin, they disclose this, but I'm pointing this out) and for many years, Canonical really tried to push the whole account login thing (RIP Ubuntu One).

You can try to make me conflate Linux and Ubuntu but I'm not going to. Debian and Slackware don't have those kinds of things, and, more to the point, you can use the Linux kernel without those kinds of things. It's both technically and legally possible. Can't really say that about Windows or macOS.

> like user accounts (tied to app stores or whatever)

No, most package repos don't require user accounts.

> giving back telemetry (which is often really, really important for developers to have)

Plenty of developers manage just fine without it. The developers of most of the software on a Linux system, for example, with the exception of mainstream web browsers.

> or are part of major enterprise servicing agreements that have a lot of tracking and management by design.

Enterprise is Enterprise. They're off in a world all their own.

> But I think that ignores a fundamental way humans use computers and the web -- regardless of OS. You're being surveilled. Linux isn't going to save you.

Inviting the surveillance into my home is different from being watched when I go outside.

Can you link me to the source code where these egregious privacy concerns are taking place? I'd love to open an issue if you're reluctant to.

That's weird because I ran a tool to disable it in Windows the day I installed it. I'd wager it was even easier than disabling it on those Linux distros.

the tools don't disable all telemetry, besides, most linux distros have no telemetry to disable

Just wait for an update that will reenable everything you've disabled.

Don't forget that it might come bundled with other helpful updates with no way to choose which pieces to pull in.

I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux.

> I can't believe people are actually comparing telemetry in Windows to Linux.

I'm not surprised - at least some of these people are Microsoft employees so it's no wonder they try to use the same strategy as always - fear, uncertainty and doubt. After all, if people start believing that "Linux also has telemetry", why even consider switching?

Actually I'm happy to hear it from the mouth of Microsoft employees (especially "advocacy" guys, i.e. paid to convince others): it means that Microsoft does care, they do consider Linux a threat, and the war is definitely not over.

There's no FUD. Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too. It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there. There is also nothing to be afraid of here either, the effects of it and how to use it are all spelled out clearly in the respective privacy policies.

https://ubuntu.com/legal/data-privacy

https://community.kde.org/Telemetry_Use

"Why even consider switching" is the eternal question that Linux companies have not been able to adequately answer for the last few decades. If you know of a good reason, let me know. Otherwise we can agree that the "war" was already over a long time ago and Microsoft won pretty clearly.

> Ubuntu actually does have telemetry. KDE does too.

Ahh, yes, Ubuntu and KDE = Linux. Very logical.

> It may not be quite the same in implementation as Microsoft's telemetry, but it is there.

There can be a world of difference between telemetry implementations. Debian's popcount, for instance, is opt-in - Windows' are mostly (if not all) opt-out. Ubuntu and KDE send their data to organizations that I trust - Windows do not. Ubuntu and KDE's telemetry remain off when I turn it off - Windows' does not. I know exactly what data KDE collects, because it's spelled out in that page you linked - I don't know what data Windows or Ubuntu collect.

Given the extreme variance in telemetry implementations, trying to falsely equivocate Windows and Linux telemetry is FUD.

"Ahh, yes, Ubuntu and KDE = Linux."

In this case, yes. Ubuntu and KDE are two major players in desktop Linux. There really is not anything stopping Linux vendors from using telemetry, and in fact I'd expect them to use more of it in the event their products get more popular.

"Debian's popcount, for instance, is opt-in - Windows' are mostly (if not all) opt-out."

This is a minor detail and I don't think it actually matters. If a company actually needs that data and is not getting it from that telemetry then they're getting it from somewhere else. For example Canonical builds products on Debian and doesn't use popcon, they use other data collection mechanisms, which are detailed in the privacy policy I posted.

"Ubuntu and KDE send their data to organizations that I trust"

This has nothing to do with the implementation. Plus, Microsoft's dedicated customers do trust Microsoft to similar degree, so this is not going to be convincing to them. You need a better selling point.

"Ubuntu and KDE's telemetry remain off when I turn it off - Windows' does not."

That sounds to me like a bug or glitch that someone should fix. Ubuntu or KDE could also manifest such bugs, I guess we're just lucky they haven't.

"I don't know what data Windows or Ubuntu collect"

It's possible to change that. You can just read the Ubuntu privacy policy that I posted. Windows also has a similar privacy policy, you should do a search for it if you're interested.

"trying to falsely equivocate Windows and Linux telemetry is FUD"

Actually I have not done this, I mentioned they're different, and I explicitly explained how you shouldn't be afraid, uncertain or doubting anything. In a lot of cases (including some you mentioned) telemetry is not actually bad, and Windows users may feel that it's not bad for them either. I can give you more details if you need them. Please just don't misuse the phrase "FUD" like this.

It is clear that we have completely different perspectives. What is a "minor detail" for you is a decisive factor for me. I happily enable the Popularity Contest in Debian because they ask and because I trust them. I deliberately block all possible telemetry on Windows because they don't ask and because I don't trust them.

You know what is a crucial difference? I can take my Linux box and inspect all packets coming in and out and understand what they are for (it will take a long time on a modern system, but it's doable). And if I don't like something, I can block it and be sure (compromised systems aside) it will block everything I ask it to. With Windows... not only I can't be sure what all these packets are for, but I can't even be sure the built-in firewall and the related API will successfully block all packets communicating with Microsoft servers (same with Apple tbf). This is something that doesn't bother 99% of desktop users. But it does bother a certain kind of people who don't like being treated like that. We're different, that's all.

I wasn't talking about my perspective or your perspective though, this would be the perspective of the majority of Ubuntu users and Windows users. (Disclosure: I don't use either of them, I use Debian and I don't have popcon installed)

I'm not sure what you mean you can't sniff packets coming from a Windows machine, Wireshark should just work there as it does on Linux.

I'm not talking about being able to sniff packets but being able to to (1) understand what they are used for, (2) block them all on the same machine reliably, that is, including all communication to/from MS servers. In other words, being able to control the system I own or not.

Well there are a number of ways to set up a firewall, I think you can install from a number of them, and it's also trivial to use a raspberry pi for that. Can you mention which packets you're having trouble understanding? I may not be able to answer, but someone skilled with Windows probably could.

> In this case, yes.

No, not in this case. It does not matter that Ubuntu and KDE are the two biggest desktop Linux vendors, because (1) their telemetry (and, more generally, spying) are in a different league from Windows', and (2) users are capable of choosing to use another distro - a luxury you don't get with Windows.

> This is a minor detail and I don't think it actually matters.

For almost everyone, except possibly you, this is a huge point. Opt-out and opt-in anything are completely different, both in a conceptual sense, and in an actual privacy sense. On a conceptual level, opt-out vs. opt-in defines the normal behavior or expectation for a thing - Microsoft wants you to believe that it's normal for lots of your (potentially-)private data to go to them. On a practical level, many users aren't aware of (or change) the settings, so opt-out vs. opt-in significantly changes the number of people who actually receive telemetry.

Here's a thought experiment to help you understand how important opt-in vs. opt-out is to most people - how many unhappy people are there that organ donation is opt-in - or opt-out? What if you made college opt-out - and got billed for the first semester even if you didn't attend unless you cancelled? What if social security payments were opt-in, or legal rights as an adult, or protection by civil or criminal law?

> This has nothing to do with the implementation.

Red herring - we're not concerned with just the implementation, we're concerned with Microsoft's behavior as a whole, and whether telemetry as a whole is different between Windows and Linux - the answer to which is a resounding "yes", because the exact same data going to Microsoft is far more likely to be exploited (not for the user's benefit) commercially than data going to the KDE foundation. So, sure, it's not related to the implementation - and that's irrelevant.

> That sounds to me like a bug or glitch that someone should fix. Ubuntu or KDE could also manifest such bugs, I guess we're just lucky they haven't.

This issue has been around for years and noticed by thousands of people on the internet, so if it's not intentional, then it's gross negligence, signifying a complete lack of concern for user privacy...that is not shared by Ubuntu or KDE. But, given Microsoft's past history of user abuse, compared with KDE's non-existence history (and Ubuntu's questionable status), it's rather more likely that it's intentional.

> It's possible to change that. You can just read the Ubuntu privacy policy that I posted. Windows also has a similar privacy policy, you should do a search for it if you're interested.

A snide and absolutely useless reply. My point, which you conveniently missed, was that I don't understand what Ubuntu or Microsoft collect because their privacy policies are obtuse, not because I haven't read them.

If you were actually concerned about seeing what data was collected, you would have read the Ubuntu policy and then seen that it does not make clear what data is collected. For instance, on that page, there's a sentence: "Canonical may collect non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request." ...that doesn't enumerate the complete list of "non-personally-identifying information" collected...and all of that applies a hundred times more to Microsoft and Windows, with Canonical being exceptional in being this bad for Linux distros.

I also noticed that you didn't include a link to the Microsoft telemetry privacy policy. Perhaps that's because you weren't actually able to locate it yourself, just like I wasn't? For instance, let's search for "Windows Telemetry Policy" on DDG[1] - none of the first-page results are what we want. Meanwhile, "KDE telemetry policy" returns the document you linked and one on their telemetry philosophy on the first page. (I couldn't find anything on the Ubuntu telemetry)

Meanwhile, if you were to actually go and read the generic Microsoft privacy policy[3], you would see that it is so vague as to not allow you to understand what is actually being collected - like I said.

> Actually I have not done this, I mentioned they're different, and I explicitly explained how you shouldn't be afraid, uncertain or doubting anything.

Except you didn't - you made vague false equivalences meant to try to portray Linux telemetry as being similar to Microsoft telemetry (even though you couldn't actually provide the technical details to back it up), meant to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt in Linux by trying to associate Microsoft's brand of "telemetry" with them. You also didn't explain away any worries about Microsoft's telemetry itself.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=windows+telemetry+policy [2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kde+telemetry+policy [3] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement

"their telemetry (and, more generally, spying) are in a different league from Windows', and (2) users are capable of choosing to use another distro"

I just find this to be not convincing, sorry. It doesn't matter that it's in a different league, they're always going to be different because the requirements are different. And it doesn't really matter that users can switch to a different distro either, what seems to be happening is that the more popular the distro gets with Windows users, the more telemetry it seems to gain. Saying "you can just switch" is more of the same reason why Linux is not popular to begin with. People don't want to keep switching to a new distro every 6 months to evade crapware because some vendor went rogue. So they just suck it up and deal with it all up front from Microsoft.

"For almost everyone, except possibly you, this is a huge point."

Please avoid making these assumptions, see my other comment. This is not about me because I don't use Ubuntu, this would be specifically about those Ubuntu users.

"Opt-out and opt-in anything are completely different, both in a conceptual sense, and in an actual privacy sense."

I get what you're saying but this is one of those things that just doesn't work when it's opt-in. Using one of your examples, social security is another thing that would not work if it was opt-in.

"we're concerned with Microsoft's behavior as a whole"

I don't see why this matters. Microsoft is a huge company, you can cherry pick examples of bad things and good things they do to try to prove a point, just like with the Linux community. In fact the whole point of open source seems to be that companies can commercially exploit the source code without paying. I get what you're saying about the KDE Foundation but that's just it: you've made a value judgement based on their privacy policy, other users can do the same thing about Microsoft and come to the same conclusions, and in fact millions (billions?) of them already do.

"This issue has been around for years and noticed by thousands of people on the internet"

So have many other bugs unfortunately. I just haven't seen any reason to suggest that this one is intentional versus any other bug, what you've made is a guess. If you have some hard data I'd love to see it.

"A snide and absolutely useless reply. My point, which you conveniently missed, was that I don't understand what Ubuntu or Microsoft collect because their privacy policies are obtuse, not because I haven't read them."

Please stop assuming bad faith, this is not helpful. If you're having trouble understanding it then let's go through it together and we can try to clarify. It should be easy enough for us if we put our heads together, those policies are written for laypeople.

"'Canonical may collect non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request.' ...that doesn't enumerate the complete list of "non-personally-identifying information" collected.."

So that would be whatever your web browser transmits, not strictly under the control of Canonical. I suspect that's why they can't say more there.

"and all of that applies a hundred times more to Microsoft and Windows"

If you could mention some things you're confused about then we could work through it. Just let me know, thanks.

"I also noticed that you didn't include a link to the Microsoft telemetry privacy policy."

Well no I figured you could find it because it's pretty prominent when you install Microsoft software or use any of their services. Most companies won't have a "telemetry policy" and I have no idea where you go that term, it always ends up in the privacy policy. And you did post the right link to that privacy statement, that's what I would have posted.

"it is so vague as to not allow you to understand what is actually being collected"

Again please mention what is vague, I'm really not sure what you're referring to, it could be a number of things.

"you made vague false equivalences meant to try to portray Linux telemetry as being similar to Microsoft telemetry (even though you couldn't actually provide the technical details to back it up), meant to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt in Linux by trying to associate Microsoft's brand of 'telemetry' with them"

I've done none of that and I explained why, my whole reason for posting here is to try to clarify the differences and clear up any fear or uncertainty. Please avoid taking this kind of combative attitude and assuming bad faith, we won't have a productive discussion. I don't really know how to put this any clearer. I am a Linux user trying to explain what is happening with Linux. I don't use any Microsoft products and I don't really care for them. If you're looking to accuse me of disparaging Linux to make it look bad then you're barking up the wrong tree, IMO what really makes Linux look bad is the constant infighting among its community members. I wish people would stop that.

> I get what you're saying but this is one of those things that just doesn't work when it's opt-in.

So be it. We have had many operating systems without telemetry at all. If this is the will of users, they should respect it. Instead, you get two buttons: (1) give us everything, (2) give us the things we care about most. There is no third option "give us nothing" so people are downloading third party packages from various sources just to block that, possibly breaking parts of their system. And then MS changes things so it becomes an even worse mess. This is the very definition of being user-hostile - just because they can.

What is missing here is that no other method to collect feedback and product analytics has been proposed. It is impossible to make decisions at a company the size of Microsoft without that type of information. All the larger companies are doing it for this reason. Opt-out telemetry is the easiest and cheapest way to get it. Most Linux desktops don't have to deal with the problem because they aren't that big, and the operating systems that didn't have it at all were built for a different era. You're framing this as something being about the will of the users or being "user-hostile" vs not, but that's honestly not important here, this is a very real technical problem. Overwhelmingly it seems that Windows users (and some Linux users, definitely Android users if you count those as "Linux") are fine with the current state of things.

In some places it seems that people did care, for example the GDPR is a step in the right direction, but there seems to be about zero political will to do anything like that in the United States. And even that doesn't really change the state of telemetry in Windows that much.

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!)

Android(Linux) is used by majority of users (40%), while Windows holds just 32.3%: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share .

Obviously, mobile devices far outnumber desktops and laptops now (servers too), but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong.

The whole meme of the Linux desktop wasn't meant to say, "uses a highly modified version of the Linux kernel with a custom userland, proprietary interface, proprietary services, custom drivers, etc. The idea was not to replace one proprietary system with another mostly proprietary system that happens to have a modified version of the Linux kernel and that puts some of the software in a git repo. I do think it is telling that the most successful user-facing implementations of both Unix and Linux have had to create largely proprietary wrappers over them both.

> but I think conflating Android with both Linux and the Linux desktop is wrong

I think when people say that it's more about saying that the use case for computing in general has changed. Linux is everywhere and runs everything so the fixation on desktops is old-fashioned and not really necessary anymore.

Desktop...

x86 Desktop, to be precise. On non-x86 desktops (e.g. Raspberry Pi 4), Linux holds it position very well.

Linux+ARM desktop can replace Wintel desktop.

Linux kernel is not a public API on Android, app developers don't care where ART + NDK (public APIs) run on.

> that frankly, were settled two decades ago

No, it wasn't. Windows didn't have a camera, TPM, TPM 2.0, and mandatory Microsoft online account requirements two decades ago, nor did it come "bundled" with Cortana, Teams, advertisements in your Start menu, Windows Defender, forced/"highly incentivized" OS updates, loads of dark patterns meant to try to get you to use a Microsoft account or switch to Edge, and telemetry that repeatedly re-enables itself after you disable it.

All of that is new in the past two decades, and even before that, Microsoft was pulling anti-competitive shenanigans like the Secure Boot requirements and bundling IE with Windows.

This article is extremely timely given the recent release of Windows 11, and gave me new information that I didn't have before (such as the requirement to have a camera). Poorly-written as it is, it's still both useful and relevant.

> It will never be the year of the Linux desktop (and that's totally OK!) and poorly-written articles like this do nothing to help change that.

Are you able to predict the future? This is such a shallow dismissal, and the logic is both absurd and defeatist. Even if you had good reason to believe that "the year of the Linux desktop" (which is kind of a straw-man to begin with) was never going to happen, it's still useful to encourage people to switch away from a user-hostile operating system, both to preserve their own freedoms, and also to pressure Microsoft to walk back some of their anti-features.

> Plus, the article is wrong.

One point that you can kind-of contrive to not be universally true out of eleven doesn't seem like a good reason to call the whole article "wrong".

> There are plenty of Linux distributions with tons of telemetry and spyware

Telemetry? Sure. Telemetry that's mostly opt-in and doesn't magically (re-)enable itself, and sends data to a source that I trust. Telemetry that doesn't fit those requirements, and has actual spyware, is rare both by user count (except for Deepin, which is kind of irrelevant for non-Chinese users) and absolute number of distros - and, you know, you have a choice as to which distro you use, whereas I believe that all versions of Windows 11 share the same set of anti-features...

> Again, use whatever you want.

Nobody (well, except maybe RMS), including the article, is telling you that you must switch to Windows. The article is a persuasive piece - and there's nothing wrong with that? If anything, I would expect to see persuasive content on HN (although, ideally, better-written than this one), right alongside technical content.

From the guidelines:

> What to Submit - On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Persuasive pieces generally satisfy my intellectual curiosity. Rants without any good arguments made? Not so much.

> just because people want to get territorial about what computing platform other people use

Sure, some people might be getting territorial - but many others (most?) are actually talking about the very real issues that Windows 11 has. If your best friend tells you that they're planning on quitting their job to play video games full-time, you might get worried about them, and try to talk them out of it, right? That's exactly what's going on here.

> I'm disheartened to see it rank so highly on HN

I'm more disappointed to see responses to it that rely on a bunch of emotional manipulation and shallow dismissals that don't stand up to scrutiny.

As someone who has been using and hacking on Linux for pretty long time and doesn't even use Windows, none of what you said is particularly alarming, and I don't think there are any significant changes that happened in the last few years to warrant any changes in one's outlook. I heard similar comments from the Slashdot crowd when Windows Vista and Windows 8 came out, about how Microsoft is fucking everything up and this is the end for them. And those products were probably much worse than Windows 11 from a perspective of being bad for the user, and just being bad products in general. But in the end nothing happened.

But even if they did fuck up badly, the fact is, the "Linux desktop" is still a bad platform that people don't want to use. The APIs suck and are too fragmented, the developer experience is confusing, the documentation is bad and often missing, the story around packaging and shipping is dreadful, it's just all around not good. There are so many little bits of polish that need to go into something like that to make it really good, and the Linux community has never been able to do that at the scale it needs to be done at to make it competitive with Microsoft. Yes I know there are people working on all of those things but their progress is extremely slow. (I know because I'm one of those people.) You might think I'm being defeatist but honestly this is the way it's always been. Most open source projects are just understaffed and underfunded, and nothing about this has changed in the last 20 years. That's my experience anyway. If you talk to more app developers then you'll probably hear the same complaints.

Postscript: all comments adjacent to "I'm disappointed to see x on HN" is absolutely against the ethos of the site and intellectual discussion in general - please never use it here.

well put! one nit pick:

> Nobody (well, except maybe RMS), including the article, is telling you that you must switch to Windows.

you must mean, switch /from/ Windows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle :).