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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Is Linux As Good As We Think It Is? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

155 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Obviously, a bit of clickbait. Sorry.

I just got to work and plugged my surface pro into my external monitor. It didn't switch inputs immediately, and I thought "Linux would have done that". But would it?

I find myself far more patient using Linux and De-googled Android than I do with windows or anything else. After all, Linux is mine. I care for it. Grow it like a garden.

And that's a good thing; I get less frustrated with my tech, and I have something that is important to me outside its technical utility. Unlike windows, which I'm perpetually pissed at. (Very often with good reason)

But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the "things that just work". Often they do "just work", and well, with a broad feature set by default.

Most of us are willing to forgo that for the privacy and shear customizability of Linux, but do we assume too much of the tech we use and the tech we don't?

Thoughts?

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

You make an excellent point. I have a lot more patience for something I can understand, control, and most importantly, modify to my needs. Compared to an iThing (when it's interacting with other iThings anyway) Linux is typically embarrassingly user hostile.

Of course, if you want your iThing to do something Apple hasn't decided you shouldn't want to do, it's a Total Fucking Nightmare to get working, so you use the OS that supports your priorities.

Still, I really appreciate the Free software that goes out of its way to make things easy, and it's something I prioritise in my own Free software offerings.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes making an iThing (iPhone) work with another iThing (Fiancée ´s Apple TV) isn’t as easy as it should. Streaming the nba app from my phone to the Apple TV was a nightmare a few years ago. Now I just use my PlayStation as the nba is hostile to Linux even in a browser.

So, taking into account the fact that Linux is free and works on almost any hardware, I can only congratulate the people making Linux possible.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Or the purposeful incompatibility between Android/iOS and others.

Like how Google pulled miracast from Android to push Chromecast as the standard. Now I can't stream to an Amazon FireStick even though it's also fucking Android at its core.

A lot of these private companies purposefully put in "pain points" to get you to spend more money in their ecosystems.

The "pain points" in Linux are "you have to learn something."

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

This too is an excellent take. "Artificial pain points" for capitalism, or "learn some shit" for Linux. Love it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A lot of these private companies purposefully put in “pain points” to get you to spend more money in their ecosystems.

Aka Walled Gardens.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Barbed wire gardens. Painful to get in, painful to get out.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I resonate with that point, since I do a digital art/tech class, which uses Macs. I find app crashes and the inaccessibility of certain menus quite infuriating, i even somewhat rage internally for a while until i either quit what i was doing or search it up.

When my 8 year old Fedora laptop freezes, crashes, or sound drivers crash like what happened yesterday, I stay very calm and think of a solution, such as updating and restarting.

even if I haven't built the OS myself or really customised it at all, i find it more calming that i have options to completely change the software compared to locked down OSes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Have you messed at all with macs "under the hood" so to speak?

Part of the reason my Linux nerd friend swears by them is because command line, they're super similar to Linux since it's actually certified UNIX.

So, it's definitely not 1-to-1 but I'd say macOS is closer to Linux than Windows, including being able to fix shit via CLI.