Comment by UncleEntity
10 months ago
Thing is it will never get to be a daily driver if people don't use it and shake out the bugs.
25 years ago (huh, long time), when Windows ME pissed me off for good, linux wasn't exactly known for being a daily driver but I gave it a try and, unsurprisingly, it did become reliable over the years. Other than Gnome's propensity to make stupid changes to default settings I can't remember the last time I had to even think about messing with the underlying system and other than a simple google search on the linux compatibility of hardware before I buy I just don't think about it. Actually, I take that back, when I first got my current laptop I was messing around to get the AMD mesa drivers (or whatever) working because I wanted to mess around with this fancy GPGPU thing.
Personally, if I were to buy a macbook it would be for the OS and not dodgy linux support because I've walked that road before. If the Christmas sales were just a tiny bit better though...
I am talking about lack of pretty standard features, not bugs. Having more users would not help there. And in general, you dont need a huge influx of users, and you definitely you dont get as much help from users who are not going to put at least some effort in the feedback they give. You want users that are conscious enough about what they are using to give useful feedback and/or support with donations. I am pretty sure that some people still are attracted to running an experimental version of linux.
Imo modern linux experience is much better than the situation you describe, at least as long as you use certain type of hardware. In the past it was definitely harder. But wrt asahi, I want the "luxury" of using an external monitor with my 13" macbook air, and sadly, while in the past x86 machines I put linux I would put some effort and get AMD mesa drivers to work, I cannot do that here. I respect the effort put in the asahi project, but calling it suitable for a daily driver is misleading, unless you specify exactly what sort of daily driver you mean. Stuff like using an external monitor is pretty basic in my book of daily usage.
You can't shake out bugs for features that are not there. More users won't help, only more developers.
> unsurprisingly
In hindsight.
> [Linux] did become reliable over the years.
Might have gone the other way. And if it had, nobody would be surprised at that either, now.