What are the main criticisms of Linux in desktop platforms?
One thing that happened recently that really showcases the difference between Linux and Windows is the glibc update that broke several popular video games. These games were specifically built to run on Linux. Ironically, games built to run only on Windows could still be ran on Linux just fine. That’s because those games are run through a compatibility layer that translates the Windows instructions into their corresponding Linux instructions. The games built for Linux use Linux instructions directly, so they don’t need a compatibility layer.
The update to glibc changed how some Linux instructions worked and so any program using the old instructions needed to update to the new ones. Lots of Linux programs are actively maintained or at least open source, so making the change isn’t a big deal. Video games tend not to be open source or actively maintained after they’re released, so some of these broken games will be broken forever. When that was reported to the maintainers of glibc, they responded that they don’t care if they break unmaintained, closed source software. It is the user’s fault for choosing to use such software.
To me, that is the biggest difference between Windows and Linux. If someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now. If someone creates a program for Linux, it could break next week, and the people who broke it won’t care. It’s a bit embarrassing that programs created for Windows work on Linux more reliably than programs created specifically for Linux.
If someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now.
TBF, that’s not even always true, especially with a loss of 32 bit support. For example, BioShock Infinite no longer runs on newer versions of OsX
Total Annihilation is so difficult to run on any semi-modern Windows system, and it’s not even that old… right? (Cries in 1996).
On the other hand you can still play it using modern actively-maintained engines.
But yeah I’m not sure how to evaluate this criticism of maintaining compatibility with unmaintained software, because I know that Windows prioritizes backwards compatibility a lot, but I thought Linux also famously did (don’t break userspace; any bug that people depend on is a feature, etc).
If there’s anyone that truly loses here it’s apple and Mac.
The glibc incident though was self inflicted. The Devs relied on undocumented behaviour in the ABI (application binary interface) which then got fixed/changed after more than a decade by the Devs of said Library.
It was akin to relying on a videogame glitch to do something that shouldn’t have been possible and then be offended that it got patched.
If you’re considering how good software is, how it was made is irrelevant, the only thing to measure is how well it works. A criticism of Linux from a user perspective is still valid regardless of who is or isn’t to blame.
It someone creates a program for Windows, that program will likely still work 10 years from now
I was with you all the way until here. This statement is absolutely laughable to anyone who has messed around with older videogames. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, running it in compatibility mode with the version of Windows the game was made for will work, but oftentimes you’re reliant on fan patches or long installation guides showing you the exact configuration of settings necessary to stop the game from constantly crashing. At that point, getting the older game to run on Windows is just as tedious as getting it to run on Linux, potentially less.
You still are getting more of a guarantee from Microsoft, because Windows versions have typically had long lifecycles and were pretty averse to risky-changes within an OS release, but even that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore with Windows 11.
Software compatibility for things such as Adobe products and other things that are built specifically for windows.
And a lot of hardware
As a longtime Linux user who unfortunately daily drives Windows, this is my main gripe. Windows has killer apps.
And I’ve bought shitty hardware that didn’t work with windows on it, but I’ve also had hardware that works correctly on Windows but not on Linux, because of the hardware manufacturer’s lack of support.
It’s too bad that laptops that are 100% compatible with Linux are always sold at premium prices.
@[email protected] here’s a brief list, in no particular order and based pretty much entirely on my own opinions and experience.
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you have to learn a little bit about what happens behind the scenes sometimes. for example, if you don’t know what distro packages are or what flatpak is (or the reasons behind each of them, honestly) then installing apps kinda sucks at first.
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you can end up installing a package thinking it is the official one, when in fact it is some variety of third-party. generally this doesn’t really hurt anything but it can (look up fedora flatpak).
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sometimes cool features get stuck in limbo because none of the people who want them know how to code
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sometimes cool features get stuck in limbo because of politics (in-project politics, not what you probably thought at first)
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it can be hard to figure out if something is good or if the people reccomending it are just trying to help a new user find something easy and, since they don’t actually use it and haven’t for a while, don’t know that it kind of sucks now (I’m thinking of ubuntu here but it happens with a lot of stuff, distro or otherwise)
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all the damn tribalism
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drivers are hell on most distros
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app availabilty on non-.deb systems
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some apps refuse to look native (gtk apps on kde, qt apps on gnome, anything made by a mac user for some reason, every browser fighting tooth and nail to default to windows titlebar icons)
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all the damn tribalism
I still use Ubuntu and like it. I get that snaps are centralized under canonical, but aside from that it still feels like a good community that I’ve interacted with for years, with a great LTS distro.
For the average person wanting to get started I still recommend Ubuntu. Does that make me stuck in 2008?
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