How do you know Linux is gaining steam outside of the usual circles? When you see writers like Jason Evangelho from Forbes switching over to Linux and writing about his experience.
He's been writing about Linux since early July, his reasoning for trying out Linux I'm sure will sound familiar to anyone who has used Windows often:
A few weeks ago during a time-sensitive 350GB file transfer, Windows 10 rebooted without warning. When the OS restarted I was greeted with an infuriating blue screen that had become all too familiar. No, not that infuriating blue screen. The one that declares "Working On Updates." It was, as they say, the last straw. After two decades of relying on Windows I finally decided it was time for the nuclear option.
He continues on to talk a little about his experience, including Linux Mint having an off day not finding a drive to install on. However, that didn't stop him, whereas I'm sure other writers would have then gone off on a rant he simply picked a different distribution (Ubuntu). Usually, when I see such writers on major news websites writing about Linux, it ends up coming across as a pretty disappointing read as if they've set themselves up not to like it. So it was incredibly refreshing to see him have a little patience to push through it. It's the same for anything that's new to you, if you're not prepared to learn a little—you will probably fail.
The latest article, titled Gaming On Linux: 2 Ridiculous Myths And 2 Brutal Truths, features yours truly after we had a bit of a chat. We went over the usual points, most of which will be well-known to our regular readers and people who've been using Linux for a long time. Still, some of it felt important to actually get across to a wider audience. This is why I appreciate Evangelho's writing, because he reached out to people in the community for feedback and help. To make sure he actually understood various upsides and downsides of using Linux for work and play. Although, it's slightly amusing how I mentioned Wine a little and then along comes Valve with Steam Play.
It's really fantastic to see more people on major websites actually try Linux for themselves and have a positive experience. More like this please.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: ChronariusYou can remove Visual Studio from that list!
https://code.visualstudio.com/Download
Visual Studio Code is very far from Visual Studio.
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Quoting: ArthurI'm a pragmatist myself, and I play proprietary games including on Windows, but unlike many Linux users I don't go around preaching free software while carving out exceptions for myself, like running old or new proprietary games natively or in emulators or compatibility layers which often come with issues.If you want to run proprietary software, surely it's better to do it on a platform you trust? This is not math and two negatives do not make a positive.
I'm not one to preach free software or anything else really, but I don't see how your views are more pragmatic than the ones you condemn. Convenient for you maybe, but that's hardly the same thing.
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Mountain Man Sep 5, 2018
Quoting: MadeanaccounttocommentSystems that come with Windows preinstalled are usually loaded up with junk, plus the usual Windows nonsense of endless updates and multiple reboots as soon as you turn the damn thing on and the constant annoyance of "Hey, I see you changed a default application. Are you sure you don't want to use the Microsoft version instead?" At one point I even asked my wife if she would just let me wipe the hard drive and install Linux instead, but she wouldn't let me because there are one or programs that she uses that are Windows only, and she really doesn't like the idea of learning how to use the Linux alternatives.Quoting: Mountain ManMy wife recently bought a new laptop with Windows preinstalled. I spent a couple of hours uninstalling all the junk software that it came with and configuring the OS so that she could use it.
I had another older computer that needed a fresh OS install, so I put KDE Neon on it. The whole process from start to finish took about 30-minutes, and it "just worked".
I hate Windows.
Couldn't you have just wiped the computer and installed Windows from scratch? The fresh installs don't have any of the manufacturers bloatware. I personally dislike the invasive data collection, having antivirus software, and miss the linux command line when I use Windows but it's stuff all non-linux users are completely accustomed with.
Anyway, the stuff Windows has historically beaten linux hands down on are actively being worked on so hopefully the linux desktop will eventually catch on. Honestly, the last things linux needs to really take off are more OEM's willing to preload it, support for apps that keep people constrained to windows like Office and the adobe suite, and maybe its own exclusive killer apps.
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Mountain Man Sep 5, 2018
Quoting: HamishI have been seeing people get blown away by Linux package management for as long as I have been using it.Linux software has never been that hard to install. I mean:
There is no doubt that Linux has come a long way in the last ten years, and I am glad to see that people like Jason are recognizing this and enjoying it, but I can't help but feel that it often does not get enough credit for what is has been doing well for decades.
./configure
make
make install
This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people seem to have an irrational fear of the command line.
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Quoting: Mountain ManLinux software has never been that hard to install. I mean:
./configure
make
make install
This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people seem to have an irrational fear of the command line.
While there's different reasons people don't want to do that, there's at least (!) one very good one: People should refrain from doing stuff in the command line they don't understand. And no, most people don't know, don't care and shouldn't need to care about 'compiling'.
Last edited by Eike on 5 September 2018 at 1:27 pm UTC
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Quoting: KristianAside from gaming what are the most cited missing applications? MS Office? Visual Studio? Autocad? Adobe's suite of software? Anything else?For people that are OK with running hosted software, the online version of Office is available to use on Linux. I think Manjaro even installs links to it if I remember correctly.
No, I'm not a fan of hosted software myself. But you know what, many other people are. To increase the Linux desktop user base, we need those "many other people."
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Quoting: 14Hmm... I do not think this screen is that bad of a way to ask.I agree. I'm definitely not up in arms about it. But I feel it should be off by default so that someone quickly clicking through stuff isn't enrolled by mistake (i.e. protect privacy by default, make data collection a conscious opt in). Same about their Amazon partnership a few years back (I don't know if that is still a thing) that showed recommendations right in the main menu until you turned it off. Sure it's not forced on users, but it feels dirty to put it in without asking first.
Quoting: KristianAside from gaming what are the most cited missing applications? MS Office? Visual Studio? Autocad? Adobe's suite of software? Anything else?I don't know about most cited, but ones I've experienced myself are speech-to-text software (all I could find were tools for vocal commands and research projects that are unusable by the average person) and computer-assisted translation tools (there are a couple options on Linux, but a lot of companies insist on big names that only run on Windows).
Last edited by Salvatos on 5 September 2018 at 3:46 pm UTC
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Quoting: Mountain ManEhhh, my experience back in the day when I was driven to that sometimes was that it was one of those "works in theory" things . . . half the time it would turn out that no, there was something else I had to get first, or I was supposed to be doing it somewhere else in the filesystem, or some damn thing. Never seemed to just end at those coupla commands. And once I did it, it still didn't have an icon in the menus so I'd have to fiddle with that.Quoting: HamishI have been seeing people get blown away by Linux package management for as long as I have been using it.Linux software has never been that hard to install. I mean:
There is no doubt that Linux has come a long way in the last ten years, and I am glad to see that people like Jason are recognizing this and enjoying it, but I can't help but feel that it often does not get enough credit for what is has been doing well for decades.
./configure
make
make install
This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people seem to have an irrational fear of the command line.
Even .rpm stuff got really annoying. I envied Debian the dependency handling, but not enough to switch from Mandrake which was the only halfway usable desktop distro at the time.
Nowadays . . . smooth as silk and convenient as being handed a drink with an umbrella in it while lolling on the beach.
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Quoting: EikeWhile there's different reasons people don't want to do that, there's at least (!) one very good one: People should refrain from doing stuff in the command line they don't understand. And no, most people don't know, don't care and shouldn't need to care about 'compiling'.This actually feeds into a wider point I was thinking on while reading Jason's articles. The reason why people feel that using a GUI is easier than the command line is that in order to use the terminal effectively you do by and large have to have a more intimate knowledge of the system you a managing.
GUIs by their very nature obscure things to the point that they are easier to fudge, and for most users that is more than good enough. Experienced users don't just gravitate to the console because they are masochists, but because once you have that knowledge it is often the simplest way to do things. And simple is a synonym for easy.
Last edited by Hamish on 6 September 2018 at 1:40 am UTC
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Quoting: HamishI myself as a rule prefer to avoid the command line for that exact sort of reason, even though I know that many GUI tools to get things done are basically wrappers for fairly simple command line, um, commands.Quoting: EikeWhile there's different reasons people don't want to do that, there's at least (!) one very good one: People should refrain from doing stuff in the command line they don't understand. And no, most people don't know, don't care and shouldn't need to care about 'compiling'.This actually feeds into a wider point I was thinking on while reading Jason's articles. The reason why people feel that using a GUI is easier than the command line is that in order to use the terminal effectively you do by and large have to have a more intimate knowledge of the system you a managing.
GUIs by their very nature obscure things to the point that they are easier to fudge, and for most users that is more than good enough. Experienced users don't just gravitate to the console because they are masochists, but because once you have that knowledge it is often the simplest way to do things. And simple is a synonym for easy.
Although I will say one thing: Troubleshooting is much better via command line. It's so much more stable and so much easier to convey. If you have problem X on Windows, a fix for Windows 7 will involve quite different fiddling around with submenus and weird little GUI tools compared to Windows 8 or Windows 10--and the instructions will be extremely complex and easy to get wrong. But with Linux, typically suggestions will be like, "Paste this into the command line" to either get some diagnosis or fix the problem. Many of these things to paste will work across most distros and versions, and intuitive though GUIs might be it's way easier to follow the instructions "Copy&paste this text" than "Go to this menu and do this and then pick that tab on the thing and do the other thing and then uncheck the dealie that should be here on that popup and . . ." Plus, it is much more likely that the GUI tools simply won't have anything that solves the particular problem; the command line is much more complete and powerful in what it can do. I just don't normally need to do the things it's good at, is all.
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