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Is software getting worse?
(blog.ploeh.dk)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Programming
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I think that there are many potential causes, but I would like to add monopolization to the list.
People aren't going to switch from windows because they release something bad or buggy, in that case it would already be dead. Windows isn't technically a monopoly, but they have a lot of inertia and there are many programs that only run on windows that people depend on. There is perhaps a limit to how bad windows can be before people abandon it en masse, but they can get away with a lot. The tech world is full of different companies and programs that are in monopolistic-ish positions.
The main issue is that Linux is too fragmented and absolutely not user friendly enough to be consumer-grade in most applications. Steam is doing their best with SteamOS and they have been making great strides in a lot of areas, and they've even allowed me to feel like I can run Linux as a primary OS without losing out on my main off-time workload of gaming. Stuff like DXVK and Proton have made amazing strides towards a gaming OS that isn't Windows.
Unfortunately too much shit goes wrong for the average user. Troubleshooting also becomes problematic when the community itself is fragmented on solutions. Often I will search up a problem and be recommended different solutions that are not using the tools I have available in favor of the other poster's favorite system. It's very annoying to say "I have problem X and have tools Y" and be told "Well, tool Y will do the job but tool Q will do it better".
I've been running Arch on a laptop recently and the first thing I had to do was troubleshoot networking. I looked at the router, wondered if I fucked up the config. Everything else connects fine, must be something else. Turns out that the clock was out of sync and it was preventing the OS from verifying any cryptography. The only time I've had that shit happen on Windows is on an old Surface RT that would randomly decide it was the year 3000.
Oh man, yeah I've been there with the arch networking issues. To be fair, I do think you sign up for some messing around when you decide to install arch, although it wouldn't hurt to make networking a bit easier. Troubleshooting on windows isn't very fun either, although you might not need to do it as often.
While it might be true that a lot of people are scared away by linux weirdness (or not, for all I know picking a beginner friendly distro and not doing anything weird might be a pretty decent experience, I've been using arch and doing weird stuff the past couple of years), most people don't even get far enough to install linux in the first place so the selection happens before that. Part of it is probably software compatibility, part of it might be that most people advocating linux are techy people who mostly talk about the techy reasons for why you should get linux, which aren't that appealing. Part of it could just be that people are resistant to change because it's annoying to have to learn a new system.
Maybe I'm lucky as shit but I've tried Arch Linux on many different systems with quite different hardware, and I've never had a networking issue that wasn't my fault (for not installing dhcp for instance)
Yeah, I'm definitely opening myself up to issues by having installed Arch instead of Ubuntu, but as much as I'll bitch about these problems existing, I really do enjoy the process of fiddling and troubleshooting.
I find Ubuntu can be used right out of the box for productivity depending on your workload and general productivity tools - personally my shop primarily uses Gsuite stuff so I can access everything within the browser, making most of what I do generally agnostic to environment. The main thing I liked about Ubuntu is all the changes MS have made to it, including things like having cloud connectivity for GDrive and OneDrive out of the box, instead of needing some kind of hacky weird solution. I find Ubuntu with all the MS contributions has become a very good productivity OS on top of being a solid server to be using with Hyper-V.