Re: 1998
Really???!!
You want to tell the 20-year old desk worker at my gym who was asking for help from me on his new Mint installation and trying to figure things out? JUST. LAST. WEEK?!!!
tl;dr
You people live in DENIAL. It doesn't matter what you tech-bros arrogantly believe are "facts", what matters are what real, average users that try to switch to Linux actually experience. "Oh, install is SOOOooo easy now!!" Yeah, and what about doing everything else?? Do you even bother to go to forums and YT and listen to average user experiences - note "average", not "gamer" or "power user", Joe Average.
Install is "easy"...on DESKTOPS. Do you even bother to keep up with Linux user feedback on laptops - you know, the devices a lot of younger people use to both maintain portability as well as fit into their small living spaces??
No? I figured.
Linux on laptops still, after 20+ years, can offer headaches. And what does the Linux community do? Lambast them for using the 'wrong' hardware o_O I mean, shouldn't you be buying [all] your hardware under some future expectation, maybe years from now, that you might switch OS's and the new OS doesn't support your hardware...but, hey, it's just "So good!" that it doesn't matter if your device isn't supported? Just go out and buy a new one!
*IF* you install Linux...on supported hardware, mind you...and IF you stick to the install profile and packages available to that distro's package manager...and IF you don't want or need to step out of these 'predestined' ownership paradigms...you may have a good Linux experience.
But what about the REST of the world? And the rest of the users who may want to try things that Linux programmers themselves don't use? You'll get "the Linux community will help!". Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't, or can't. And what happens then?
I'm going to rant: Linux is a SERVER OS. Fans have been 'converting' a server OS into a 'desktop OS' by creating window managers, UI interfaces, package managers, et al, in an attempt to make this system user friendly.
It. Never. Will. Be.
There is a "perfect", *nix desktop OS out there, one actually designed for desktop use in the late 20th Century paradigm - no window manager on top of a CLI-interface OS. It's called "macOS". I'm *not* a Mac user (some of their choices infuriate me) but it is everything in a *nix desktop OS that Linux ISN'T, AND NEVER WILL BE. Yes, it is limited to their hardware but, with the same hardware effort / compatibility issues as Linux, you can Hackintosh it. And, unlike Linux, it actually has professional and polished desktop apps that people are using worldwide. So, use the damn thing and stop pretending that a patched-together collection of utilities and applications, which they euphemistically call a "distro", will *ever* be as integrated an experience and a modern, monolithic desktop OS . It *never* can be - every package, every utility, was programmed by a different developer group with their own ideas of UIX and requirements, creating a "universal hodgepodge" of disjointed experiences. Windows is bad enough now with this, macOS tries to minimize this problem, Linux...sees it as a benefit! Yes! You too can experience radical differences...in experience...by simply changing to a different distro! Don't you *want* to join us here in Linux-land?? Just study the 30+ distros, see if you [can] figure out which one will actually work the way you want, the way you need it on your hardware, with the packages you need, and download it today!! If it doesn't work just download a new distro!! Of course, you'll have to use a friend's computer to do that, because your computer is now a PITA or bricked with a distro you hate or can't even use, but that's not a problem, right? You've got another computer hanging out nearby just in case, after all, you're a Linux user now and "serious" about tech!
Grrr. Linux has FOUR PERCENT of the desktop market after *twenty years* of attempting for more. And WHY? Instead of asking "What are we doing *wrong* that more people won't try us?", I get from the rabid Linux community "You're all a bunch of losers for not going to Linux, the superior OS!" You blame the USERS instead of standing in front of a mirror to ask "Why don't they like us more??!"
STOP forking distros. STOP repeating work, all with limited manpower, and focus on only a few distros, a few packages, a few apps, and *finally* polish the rough edges off the damn things! STOP thinking that keeping CLI-centric usage on a 21st Century desktop experience is "expert" and wanted by the very mainstream that you people are attempting to court. Make 1 or 2 distros that WORK, EVERYWHERE. All the time, on as much hardware as possible and as easy as possible whilst doing it. GUI interfaces on *everything*, (almost) nothing 'hidden' requiring CLI reconfigurations.
Users will *not* come to you, you must go to the users with an experience that has quality *and* is at least equal to the status quo. That's the known theory of customer relations: they will willingly trade for better; only trade for equal if they really must; and if at all possible never trade for worse. Linux just doesn't understand this! You *know* that the user experience, overall, isn't up to the ease-of-use or universality of Windows - never mind Mac! - but you expect users to suffer through their discomforts "because".
Keep waiting.