I mean, it’s less of an issue on Linux for both design and user profile reasons, but imagine a world where somebody can send all the normie Windows users a file called Chromesetup.exe to sit alongside ChromeSetup.exe. Your grandma would never stop calling you to ask why her computer stopped working, ever.
He shipped enough clunkers (and terrible design decisions) that I never bought the mythification of Jobs.
In any case, the Deck is a different beast. For one, it’s the second attempt. Remember Steam Machines? But also, it’s very much an iteration on pre-existing products where its biggest asset is pushing having an endless budget and first party control of the platform to use scale for a pricing advantage.
It does prove that the system itself is not the problem, in case we hadn’t picked up on that with Android and ChromeOS. The issue is having a do-everything free system where some of the do-everything requires you to intervene. That’s not how most people use Windows (or Android, or ChromeOS), and it’s definitely not how you use any part of SteamOS unless you want to tinker past the official support, either. That’s the big lesson, I think. Valve isn’t even trying to push Linux, beyond their Microsoft blood feud. As with Google, it’s just a convenient stepping stone in their product design.
What the mainline Linux developer community can learn from it, IMO, is that for onboarding coupling the software and hardware very closely is important and Linux should find a way to do that on more product categories, even if it is by partnering with manufacturers that won’t do it themselves.
Yeah, right? Are we pretending that having case sensitive file names isn’t a bad call, or…? There are literally no upsides to it. Is that the joke?
You got it. The moment you surface the idea that there are multiple distros or DEs you’ve missed the goal the thread is suggesting. Presintalled, customized software built for the hardware is the way to ease people in with zero tweaking, which is crucial for newcomers.
I have a maps service on for trips I do every day. I don’t even need to learn how to get there, I just like the beep-boop arrow showing where I am like a videogame minimap.
We put spaceships in orbit just to use them as a marker by doing magic relativity maths and you’re telling me you don’t constantly just look at that shit? That’s crazy. I can look at it in my watch now. How do you guys do anything else when you’re outside?
Oh, that works for me, definitely. It just takes maybe two hours, instead of 20 minutes. Same principle, though.
How do you get motivated in the afternoon? I have maybe three, four hours of semi-effective brain function between waking up and what seems to be some form of power saving mode that lasts the rest of the day. If I’ve eaten food with a fork that day, doing things is a struggle. Send motivation tips for post-lunch humaning, please.
I genuinely think Linux misses a beat by not having a widely available distro that is a) very closely tied to specific hardware and b) mostly focused on web browsing and media watching. It’s kinda nuts and a knock on Linux devs that Google is running away with that segment through both Android and ChromeOS. My parents aren’t on Windows anymore but for convenience purposes the device that does that for them is a Samsung tablet.
I keep trying to explain how Linux advocacy gets the challenges of mainstream Linux usage wrong and, while I appreciate the fresh take here, I’m afraid that’s still the case.
Effectively this guide is: lightly compromise your Windows experience for a while until you’re ready, followed by “here’s a bunch of alien concepts you don’t know or care about and actively disprove the idea that it’s all about the app alternatives.”
I understand why this doesn’t read that way to the “community”, but parse it as an outsider for a moment. What’s a snap? Why are they bad? Why would I hate updates? Aren’t updates automatic as they are in Windows? Why would I ever pick the hardware-incompatible distros? What’s the tradeoff supposed to be, does that imply there is a downside to Mint over Ubuntu? It sure feels like I need to think about this picking a distro thing a lot more than the headline suggested. Also, what’s a DE and how is that different to a distro? Did they just say I need a virtual machine to test these DE things before I can find one that works? WTF is that about?
Look, I keep trying to articulate the key misunderstanding and it’s genuinely hard. I think the best way to put it is that all these “switch to Linux, it’s fun!” guides are all trying to onboard users to a world of fun tinkering as a hobby. And that’s great, it IS fun to tinker as a hobby, to some people. But that’s not the reason people use Windows.
If you’re on Windows and mildly frustrated about whatever MS is doing that week, the thing you want is a one button install that does everything for you, works first time and requires zero tinkering in the first place. App substitutes are whatever, UI changes and different choices in different DEs are trivial to adapt to (honestly, it’s all mostly Windows-like or Mac-like, clearly normies don’t particularly struggle with that). But if you’re out there introducing even a hint of arguments about multiple technical choices, competing standards for app packages or VMs being used to test out different desktop environments you’re kinda missing the point of what’s keeping the average user from stepping away from their mainstream commercial OS.
In fairness, this isn’t the guide’s fault, it’s all intrinsic to the Linux desktop ecosystem. It IS more cumbersome and convoluted from that perspective. If you ask me, the real advice I would have for a Windows user that wants to consider swapping would be: get a device that comes with a dedicated Linux setup out of the box. Seriously, go get a Steam Deck, go get a System76 laptop, a Raspberry Pi or whatever else you can find out there that has some flavor of Linux built specifically for it and use that for a bit. That bypasses 100% of this crap and just works out of the box, the way Android or ChromeOS work out of the box. You’ll get to know whether that’s for you much quicker, more organically and with much less of a hassle that way… at the cost of needing new hardware. But hey, on the plus side, new hardware!
Man, the lack of a sense of humor in this thread is palpable. Can cut the harrumph with a knife.
Eh… where? This seems like a very location-specific question.
Yeah, this seems like one of those things where people casually discussing the issue are talking about wildly different scales. I, to be clear, am talking about having a hangover or sleeping in a rough position and pinching my neck once in maybe two or three months and refusing to take an analgesic to get through it faster. I get the feeling that what you’re describing is either on a way different level or a rarer interaction or side effect.
Which is why my other comment below still goes: if you need to deal with pain beyond sporadic usage to get through a one-off event, please go talk to a doctor and don’t listen to me or anybody else on the Internet.
Old USB implementation used to be a finicky nightmare, though. You make it sound like it wasn’t changed for a reason, MTP connectivity on Android as it is now is so much more functional, as well as safer.
In any case, that solves the misunderstanding. I thought you meant you couldn’t directly access phone storage anymore, which isn’t the case.
The printer scenario seems like an edge case to me. I mean, MTP has been the default for what? Over a decade? If you have a recent printer you’re probably fine (also, it probably has wifi and a dedicated mobile app or at least enough third party support to be used from your phone regardless). If your printer is older than that you’re probably better served by going through your PC first anyway. Sure, you don’t get direct USB access to printing photos, but now we’re talking about a very specific feature that was in use for a very specific sliver of time, and it requires you to be tethered to a device anyway. I don’t think that’s enough to justify legacy storage support on phones.
Cx Expolorer on Android can access network shares and Samba shares like a desktop OS. It really isn’t a particularly outdated option, it’s so much less fiddly than direct drive access from a PC and it effectively works just like a USB stick, interface-wise, without having to do the whole “where did I put my thumbdrive” dance each time.
Wait, what feature? You can’t access the phone’s storage? I’m pretty sure I can access my phone’s storage.
Define “slightest pain”.
If you’re in occassional discomfort and it’s impacting your wellbeing having an aspirin once in a while is probably not a huge deal.
If you have recurring pain constantly or frequently then you need medical attention and you should follow that guidance, not what anybody says on the Internet.
Man, this took me so long to get through my skull. I used to be a “I don’t need the medicine, why self-medicate when I can just endure it and it will go away”.
I got older, started having those little aches turn into ruin-your-day annoyances that only reset with a sleep overnight and now I mildly resent young me for being silly about it.
I do for many things. It’s just convenient and their logistics muscle at this point is wild.
That said, I will go to first party online stores for things like hardware most times. It’s often just cheaper and delivery is about the same.
An interesting observation: Back when I lived somewhere else there was a local alternative, because it was a country far enough out of the way that Amazon didn’t directly support it, and it’s interesting that the local alternative wasn’t meaningfully worse at the logistics or availability. Amazon’s existence does, in fact, heavily suppress competition. You don’t need to be as big as they are to do what they do, it’s just impossible to do it if they’re already there.
I don’t have feelings about corporations.
“Loving” or “hating” brands, let alone massive oligarchal conglomerates makes no sense at all. I want them well regulated and split down to reasonable size if necessary. Ideally competing in a well populated marketplace and restricted in their ability to cause damage.
That’s not “hate”. And it certainly doesn’t stop me using Google products and services and judging them based on their quality and performance.
Yes, I am a riot at parties, thank you very much.
Well, camel case does help readability on file names. But I guess that’s the point of case insensitive names, it doesn’t matter. However you want to call them will work.