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Why don't more people use Linux? - DHH
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this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I just wish we could have less ways to do things in Linux.
I get that's one of the main benefits of the eco system, but it adds too much of a burden on developers and users. A developer can release something for Windows easily, same for Mac, but for Linux is it a flatpak, a deb, snap etc?
Also given how many shells and pluggable infrastructure there is it's not like troubleshooting on windows or mac, where you can Google something and others will have exact same problem. On Linux some may have same problem but most of the time it's a slight variation and there are less users in the pool to begin with.
So a lot of stuff is stacked against you, I would love for it to become more mainstream but to do so I feel it needs to be a bit more like android where we just have a singular way to build/install packages, try and get more people onto a common shell/infrastructure so there are more people in same setup to help each other. Even if it's not technically the best possible setup, if its consistent and easy to build for its going to speed up adoption.
I don't think it's realistically possible but it would greatly help adoption from consumers and developers imo.
Yeah that part's a confusing mess. I moved to Linux on my gaming PC a year ago and have been pleasantly surprised multiple times but not with installers!
I love SteamOS for gaming and I think going forward that may get more and more adoption, but a lot of day to day apps or dev tools I use either don't have Linux releases (and can't be run via wine/Proton). I would love to jump over on host rather than dabbling with it via vms/steamdeck but it's just not productive enough.
One especially painful thing is when certain libs I'm developing with need different versions of glibc or gtk to the ones installed by default on OS, and then I die inside.
I'm on Ubuntu which is supposed to be at the least nerdy. Still hella nerdy, I just want to make memes and play games lol
i think flatpak has done a lot to make this easier, but at the same time... i'll admit i'm not a fan of it (mostly due to random issues).
the way i see it, more distros need something like arch linux' AUR. if an application is reasonably easy to build, it really does not take much to get it into the AUR, from where there's also a path towards inclusion in the official repos.
i don't know too much about other distros, but arch really makes it amazingly easy to package software and publish everything needed for others to use it. i feel like linux needs more of this, not less - there's a great writeup that puts why linux maintainers are important way better than i ever could:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230525163337/https://kmkeen.com/maintainers-matter/
Yeah it'd be nice if there was a really standardized Linux distro that gave developers a baseline to aim for, and then those of us who use the nerdier distros could just figure out our own stuff from there. I think Ubuntu was on track for that for a while, but they tend to go off on these tangents (Unity, Mir, Snaps etc.) which sometimes work against them, and now distros like Pop!OS and Mint are starting to fill that space a bit more.
Basically it's this lol
Package management in central is a bit of an issue. I think nix has the right approach where it's incredibly difficult to create a package that won't work on x system. I think appimage flatpak and snap all work in a similar way
Pip is a right pain in the arse though, if I had a nickel for every time a pip install has failed for some specific package with an esoteric error message...