Sometimes, I get tired of Linux

now don't worry I'm not giving up on Linux but as someone who very often participates in Linux conversations and as someone who's been using Linux for 17 years there are some things that really bug me about Linux in general your experience might differ and that's fine but still let's start with me about video is sponsored by tax care they offer a range of services to ensure your Linux server and workstation Fleet stay up to date secure and supported with kernel life patching extended support for end-of-life distributions and Commercial support for Alma Linux and if this range of services is something that interests you and you want to be kept up to date then you can subscribe to their newsletter they will only send you email twice a month so you won't get spammed and they offer news and insights about cyber security vulnerability management Linux and open source news so if you want to be kept in the loop about all of this click the link in the description below and subscribe to darkscares newsletter now first I'd like to talk about something that's always been a double-edged sword for Linux the community now don't get me wrong the Linux world is full of Brilliant Minds and kind-hearted individuals always willing to lend a hand and always developing a bunch of cool stuff I've been a part of this community for many years and I have met some truly incredible people however every rose has its thorns and for Linux these Thorns often take the form of people who resist any form of change AC Linux as a nice little elitist tightly knit group that should never make any concessions to user friendliness every advancement in terms of graphical apps or features is often looked as a watering down of the Linux experience now you can see this in the way they react to newbies seeking help or two developers suggesting changes or to developers refusing certain changes they would rather keep Linux as their own exclusive playground than seed evolve and become accessible to a wider audience and there's a term for this gatekeeping you'll generally recognize these people by a few phrases like you should just learn the command line or guise or bloat or some other weird stuff like that what they they don't realize or what they count on maybe is that this attitude creates barriers it can deter newcomers who might have over time become active contributors offering help or maybe even code it is an open source community and that openness should be reflected on its user base so yes the community aspect of Linux is both a blessing and a curse we need to find a way to reconcile the constant Innovation and detect savviness of Linux with more openness and being more welcoming to other people and just generally accepting that making Linux more user-friendly doesn't prevent you from using Linux in the most tech savvy or convoluted way possible let's look at another thing that's been annoying me and it will sound stupid to a lot of you but still I've gotta talk about it there was a time when each new update brought with it some big shiny feature that got us all excited it was like on unwrapping a present on your birthday we were all super excited every time a new version of a distro came out because there were so many shiny cool stuff that you were gonna play with it was awesome you would hear of a new release of Ubuntu for example and your heart would race with the anticipation of major enhancements revamps and improvements this isn't just Nostalgia speaking Linux desktops truly received constant Innovation and big changes but as Linux desktops have pretty much matured the updates while they're still significant have started to lose some of that wow factor it's kinda like we're getting socks for our birthdays like sure getting new socks is nice but it's not exactly something that will get your adrenaline pumping now this isn't necessarily A Bad Thing the fact that our desktops have matured so much is a testament to the hard work that the community has put in developing all of this the focus has shifted more towards refining what we have and towards back-end work with stuff like pipe wireland portals and the like and there's certainly a lot of value in that however it does make the system less thrilling for users who like me are excited by user interfaces and ux and generally visual changes to how we actually use our systems every day the point I'm trying to make here isn't that Linux is becoming boring or stagnant it's more a reflection on how the nature of Linux updates has changed how they have become more about refinement and less about Revolution for those of us who thrive on the latter it can sometimes leave us longing for the good old days of radical change I suppose it's a case of you can't have your cake and eat it too or in this case you can't have a super stable mature operating system and also have every new update completely turning everything on its head but we can dream right now still talking about stuff that annoy always me I just can't avoid talking about a deep-seated issue which is fragmentation in the development process now when I say fragmentation I'm not talking about the huge number of distros available this goes further than that see the Linux Community is a Melting Pot of people with a wide range of ideologies of ethics of needs and wants and their own way of how they want to use their computers and this diverse set of perspectives is one of linux's greatest strength but it can also hold us back this diversity instead of following a clear unified Direction often leads to differing paths everyone wants their idea of how Linux or an application should work to be the one everyone else works on and if no one else is working on it they'll start working on it even if there's another project that already does 99 of what they want and this is also kind of fine it's the open source where you can grab any part of the code of something you like and improve it as your own project but sometimes I wish people improved it in the same project one manifestation of this issue is redundant effort how many times have we seen different groups working on basically the exact same thing instead of combining their resources look at Mir and Wayland or flat pack and snap or even vanilla OS and blend OS the time energy and talent spent on these parallel paths could have led to faster more efficient progress if channeled towards common goals in turn this lack of concentrated effort can slow down the overall progress of Linux instead of having something like a relay race we have many people crawling next to each other trying to reach almost the same goal but one meter apart so while the diversity of Linux is great sometimes I wish people would just stop working on Parallel things that do 99 of the same stuff but in a different programming language and just pull their efforts to make something great with more people actually working on it if the Linux and open source community in general could find a way to unite their efforts we would see an insane growth and Innovation all the time it is a complex issue without a straightforward solution but acknowledging it is the first step towards creating a more cohesive more Dynamic Linux Community seriously let's stop forking projects for one single feature that we absolutely want and let's stop refusing that single feature even if we don't think it's crucial and somebody already has a merge request for it now the next thing is what I will call the 99 their status by which I mean we very often reach 99 of the feature set of an app or a system but we very rarely go all the way if you've ever seen someone saying yeah LibreOffice colic is great but it can't do this function I need eat or yeah gaming on Linux is awesome but this game doesn't work and I want to play it then you'll know what I mean even our desktop environments I would argue they are now way easier to use and far more user friendly than the Windows or Mac OS experience they're smooth they look awesome they have guise for almost everything and they use less resources and just generally are more intuitive and cohesive but they don't do HDR they don't do fractional scaling very well unless you're using KD on Weyland they don't do variable refresh rates very well either they are lacking some Administration tools they are 110 in some areas but 90 in others we make super fast progress on all fronts but we never go 100 of each feature set and this is super frustrating to see because while personally I am fine with 99 I know that the missing one percent will be used as an excuse for a lot of people to just stop using Linux or not even bother trying it and of course it is hard to actually reach 100 of the feature set of a proprietary company that has thousands of paid employees and makes millions but sometimes it feels like we'll never manage to convince people to move to Linux and to use a more privacy respecting more ethical operating system it feels like there will always be that one percent missing that is a deal breaker or at least a convenient excuse to not deal with the friction that you will inevitably face when you're learning something new now I want to talk about another aspect of Linux that is rather touch and go and it's Hardware support like sure we have plenty of cool Linux manufacturers like system 76 Star Labs tuxedo slim book purism and I'm grateful for their work but what happens when you want to stray from those manufacturers and take a walk on the Windows side of the market well that's where things can get a bit unpredictable for example you've got your external peripherals things like streaming gear or specialized controllers and while these devices will always have drivers for Windows and often for Mac OS with Linux it can be pretty Hit or Miss there can be issues with driver compatibility or outright non-functionality you might find yourself spending more time troubleshooting than you would like wrestling with the device and it just refuses to play nice with your distro of choice personally recently it's been Bluetooth controllers when I set up my steamos console on Holo ISO my dual sense 5 and my Xbox series controllers were recognized instantly on Chimera OS I could not make them work using Bluetooth even though it's the same kernel version and it's the same interface super frustrating but it doesn't stop there even when we look at newer form factors like touch screens two in ones or even something that mimics the functionality energy of a Microsoft Surface device the options available that run Linux natively are few and far between if they even exist at all you will need to buy a Windows device to install Linux on it if you want a touch screen or a tablet or a convertible and support will not be great unless you take the time to find the right kernel the right distro or to configure things yourself even something as seemingly straightforward as a fingerprint reader can become a nightmare you would think that in 2023 with biometric authentication becoming a standard this wouldn't be an issue and yet it's Hardware that is often overlooked when it comes to Linux compatibility and even if the fingerprint reader has a driver often the software to take advantage of it will just not work with plenty of false negatives so when you want to use Linux you either have to be comfortable with the offerings of the likes of system 76 tuxedo slim book and the others or you have to be willing to buy a Windows first device and try to retrofit Linux on it with all the potential headaches this might include because well there is basically no driver support for some weird exotic peripherals and you'll have to Tinker with them and this is annoying because it's yet another barrier that you have to keep in mind when you want to move to Linux your Hardware might just not work so now you've heard my Rants and Raves about Linux but of course it does not mean I think Linux is inferior actually I think it's the best OS for graphical user interfaces for user friendliness and for ethical and privacy reasons but there's still some annoyances and I think it's good to talk about them so let me know down in the comments if you share my problems with Linux or if you have others or if you disagree on some of these problems and in the meantime I'll let you know about our sponsor if you've ever bought a computer shipping with Windows out of the box and try to retrofit Linux on it to notice that yeah it doesn't work properly in every single aspect well I've got a solution click the link in the description below and buy something from tuxedo they make laptops and desktops that ship with Linux pre-installed all the components in their devices are picked specifically because they're compatible with Linux and will run super well under Linux and they have a huge range of devices that will cover every need and every price point whether you want a laptop a desktop something for work through gaming workstation they have it all they're all super customizable all the laptops are openable repairable and upgradable and they ship to most countries in the world so if you want a good Linux experience the next time you purchase a computer click the link in the description instead don't buy something that supports Windows thanks for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications or to write a comment and if you didn't like the video well you can always dislike it and tell me why in the comments as well and if you really enjoy the channel and you want to support it I left plenty of links for that in the description of the video you know how this works so thanks for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one bye [Music]

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 54,227

Keywords: Linux community, Linux issues, Linux fragmentation, Linux diversity, Open source, Linux development, Linux updates, User experience on Linux, Linux hardware support, Linux user-friendly, Linux gatekeeping, Linux innovations, Dev Divisions in Linux, Linux shortcomings, Linux 99% there, Linux compatibility issues, Ubuntu, Wayland, Flatpak, Snap, LibreOffice, Gaming on Linux, KDE, System76, Tuxedo, Slimbook, Starlabs, Purism, Bluetooth on Linux, SteamOS, HoloISO, Chimera OS, what is Linux

Id: a2YZ9GwSkxI

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023