You have to understand that, one, Linux and the devs that do work on FOSS software, do so in their free time. Two, the devs that develop anything FOSS related usually develop things to fix/overcome personal problems they might be having in their own setup or workflow. If someone else happens to like using that, great, if not, hey, I just put it out there 🤷. Three, there is no guarantee that a particular piece of software that you like and is something niche, will be supported in the future. There are hundreds of examples like this in Linux and FOSS history in general. There isn’t enough interest for it, the main dev drops development, so the project dies 🤷. Another project might take it’s place, it might get forker, but if it’s niche enough, you probably won’t see that happen. So, the only other alternative you have is to get your hands dirty and keep patching the software to work on your particular setup, or in case of closed source software, patch your setup to make it work with that piece of software for the foreseeable future, until another piece of similar software pops up on the radar and then you can switch.
I’m sorry, it’s just how things are. Linux and any other non-commercial OS project is basically a community effort thing. If everyone in the world knew how to code or patch, or at least 80% of people, then these projects would thrive, no doubt there, cuz the workload would be balanced between the users. That is not the case, so 10% of the people that use FOSS software are basically the maintainers of what is out there. That is just not enough 🤷.
You cannot say that definitely. There’s every chance my problems are fixed, the more people who adopt linux the more similar problems people will have.
I agree that Linux desktop will probably never take off due to the nature of its development, but we dont know that for sure. If companies like Valve want to keep investing into it, there’s always a chance.
I would say the chances of the Linux desktop taking off are slim to none. Sure, people that like playing old games will just use Linux with Steam, but let’s face it, those are very few… and they will only do it because Windows is just moving on from DX and all that and has no support for it any more. But, most gamers that like playing new games will just stick to Windows. One, it has support, two installing the game is 3 clicks away. And let’s face it, those are the majority when it comes to gaming.
And, even if they’d like to switch to Linux and there are, generally, no problems with their game running on Linux (it might even be supported by the developer natively), guess what… Linux doesn’t like your nVidia card 🤦. Or you’d have to configure the shit out of your card to make it run that game… or you have a multi monitor setup with monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates and all hell breaks loose.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with Linux. I don’t game at all, I have a single monitor setup and I’m fine with that, I don’t need anything else. But, I’m also aware that I’m not the majority of PC/laptop users. People usually want more than just one monitor these days and they like to be able to just click and play their games or their software to just work without major problems, like not being able to run because libfoo is not installed or a wrong version of it is installed and that just doesn’t work with what they wanna run. Sure, Flatpack has somewhat solved this problem, but let’s face it, it has it’s own problems (everything runs sandboxed).
And then, on top of all this, you put the companies with proprietary software that mainly don’t give AF about FOSS and generally (there are exceptions, but very few) just put out the Linux version of their software for the heck of it. It gets updated far lesser than their mainstream Windows/MacOS versions and it’s full of bugs that are not present in the Windows/MacOS versions.
And this is why Linux desktop will never take off IMO… at least not with this economic and social structure in place.
That will probably never happen.
You have to understand that, one, Linux and the devs that do work on FOSS software, do so in their free time. Two, the devs that develop anything FOSS related usually develop things to fix/overcome personal problems they might be having in their own setup or workflow. If someone else happens to like using that, great, if not, hey, I just put it out there 🤷. Three, there is no guarantee that a particular piece of software that you like and is something niche, will be supported in the future. There are hundreds of examples like this in Linux and FOSS history in general. There isn’t enough interest for it, the main dev drops development, so the project dies 🤷. Another project might take it’s place, it might get forker, but if it’s niche enough, you probably won’t see that happen. So, the only other alternative you have is to get your hands dirty and keep patching the software to work on your particular setup, or in case of closed source software, patch your setup to make it work with that piece of software for the foreseeable future, until another piece of similar software pops up on the radar and then you can switch.
I’m sorry, it’s just how things are. Linux and any other non-commercial OS project is basically a community effort thing. If everyone in the world knew how to code or patch, or at least 80% of people, then these projects would thrive, no doubt there, cuz the workload would be balanced between the users. That is not the case, so 10% of the people that use FOSS software are basically the maintainers of what is out there. That is just not enough 🤷.
You cannot say that definitely. There’s every chance my problems are fixed, the more people who adopt linux the more similar problems people will have.
I agree that Linux desktop will probably never take off due to the nature of its development, but we dont know that for sure. If companies like Valve want to keep investing into it, there’s always a chance.
I would say the chances of the Linux desktop taking off are slim to none. Sure, people that like playing old games will just use Linux with Steam, but let’s face it, those are very few… and they will only do it because Windows is just moving on from DX and all that and has no support for it any more. But, most gamers that like playing new games will just stick to Windows. One, it has support, two installing the game is 3 clicks away. And let’s face it, those are the majority when it comes to gaming.
And, even if they’d like to switch to Linux and there are, generally, no problems with their game running on Linux (it might even be supported by the developer natively), guess what… Linux doesn’t like your nVidia card 🤦. Or you’d have to configure the shit out of your card to make it run that game… or you have a multi monitor setup with monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates and all hell breaks loose.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with Linux. I don’t game at all, I have a single monitor setup and I’m fine with that, I don’t need anything else. But, I’m also aware that I’m not the majority of PC/laptop users. People usually want more than just one monitor these days and they like to be able to just click and play their games or their software to just work without major problems, like not being able to run because libfoo is not installed or a wrong version of it is installed and that just doesn’t work with what they wanna run. Sure, Flatpack has somewhat solved this problem, but let’s face it, it has it’s own problems (everything runs sandboxed).
And then, on top of all this, you put the companies with proprietary software that mainly don’t give AF about FOSS and generally (there are exceptions, but very few) just put out the Linux version of their software for the heck of it. It gets updated far lesser than their mainstream Windows/MacOS versions and it’s full of bugs that are not present in the Windows/MacOS versions.
And this is why Linux desktop will never take off IMO… at least not with this economic and social structure in place.