Comment by Workaccount2
2 months ago
Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.
You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal. No faster way to scare off users than give them a CLI heavy OS and have the trip over the very first copy+paste command they try to run (once they figure out the circa ~1982 cursor)
I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more desperate than ever to leave Windows.
The reason Linux won't take off is because Windows users have unrealistic expectations. They define "intuitive" as "works like Windows".
But Windows is not intuitive - it's, possibly, the least intuitive operating system to ever exist. It's just familiar.
But it's a Catch 22. If Linux is like Windows, then there's zero reason to use it. Just use Windows. But if Linux is not like Windows, then it's not familiar.
The solution is to reframe your expectations. If you expect Linux to work like Windows, you will be disappointed - and rightfully so. Nobody expects MacOS to work like Windows, no, you adapt.
MacOS, iOS, and Android are all unix like OS's that had the wherewithal to hand UX to product people and not engineers.
You end up with very popular operating systems.
Again, the thing perpetually holding desktop Linux back is that it is made by people who like Linux.
I disagree fundamentally. You're describing locked-down UNIX in name only operating systems, controlled by a single corporate entity with an iron fist.
If Linux was like that, it would have no value. Why not? Because these operating systems already exist.
Linux distros are open-source. That means it is fragmented by nature. This is unsolvable - because that is what open-source means. I can fork something, and that's that. If we say "no forking", then it's no longer open-source. This is the Catch-22.
If we want a defragmented Linux, we already have plenty of those. If we want to defragment Linux, it loses literally all of it's value.
The UX on Linux is, IMO, much more intuitive than Windows, and it's not even close. The problem is that it's not like Windows. That's why I use it. That's why everyone who uses Linux uses it. If we wanted an operating system like Windows, I would use Windows.
Downloading software straight from an app store is easier than downloading an exe online. The file browser is easier to use. Updates are easier to do, they're done system-wide. KDE is much, MUCH more cohesive than than Windows GUI. The installers are much more modern. Users are much more intuitive. Permissions are more intuitive. The file system actually makes sense. I mean, really C: drive? Back slashes? Come on now. dbus is better than COM or COM+. Editing a config file is more intuitive than regedit. The search functionality is more intuitive. And on and on.
I mean, picture a typical usecase: install a browser. On Windows, I boot up. First I see if it's already installed. I search, and I get web popups. Okay, not what I want - I don't want to read about Chrome on wikipedia. Okay, I finally get to the Chrome website. I click "Download". Edge tells me not to do this. The computer tells me it's dangerous. Edge tells me it's faster than Chrome. I ignore. I click through the installer. It's installed. Now, I might have to reboot for some reason. Edge then prevents me from making it my default browser. I do it anyway. Finally, I have Google Chrome.
On Linux. I search for Chrome in the search box. It's not installed, but there's a link to the app store. I click it, and I click install. There is no installer, it just installs it. Chrome is now installed.
Linux distros are really good, if and only if you go into them acknowledging they are their own thing, with their own methods.
> Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.
Why is 5% a magic number? Why not 4% or 6% or 10%?
> You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal.
Try Shift+Ins. CLI and GUI conventions have always been different, and the sort of users who work in the terminal are the ones who know the difference. Overloading Ctrl+V, and breaking applications that run in the terminal, just to make two completely different paradigms use the same hotkeys seems a bit ridiculous to me.
BTW, this applies across OSes, and isn't specific to Linux.
The version of Linux that actually moves the needle towards widespread adoption will almost certainly be hated by Linux enthusiasts. It will be annoying and clunky with a lot of prying necessary to make it feel "right".
Macs use Cmd to segregate the worlds. I think that’s neat, and if I were making a Linux computer, I’d think about making Win+XCV system-level copy-paste.
I imagine you have only used Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/outdated linux.
Fedora is a different level completely. With Fedora, I remember installing nvidia drivers via terminal, and that was essentially it.
Sometimes I open up ports for my kid doing minecraft, but that was it. Its not like when you use Ubuntu or Mint and you need to manually update something just to get Netflix to work on Chromium.
Fedora is so good, I won't call it linux. Linux has the Debian/Ubuntu baggage. Fedora stands alone. Its easier to use than Windows, I don't think I'm exaggerating. Windows 11 has ads, unresponsive search, UI/theme issues that make it impossible to read text, it has fake paths to files. Fedora just works.
Fedora is actually older than Ubuntu. And FWIW you still can’t paste with C-v in the terminal.
When we say outdated, we mean the version of the kernel and other software. Not the first time it came out.
When referring to the terminal, these are 1 time events every 12 months. Its not really a huge deal on Fedora because you basically don't need the terminal. On Ubuntu, its a much bigger deal given how many things are broken and need to be repaired.
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> You still cannot crtl+V in the terminal
The more poignant issues might be that there's inconsistencies around UI here. Some terminals allow that directly (Kitty), others require Ctrl+shift+v (Gnome shell, iirc Powershell and Konsole).
To be fair, the best non-windows OS likely is MacOS. It has software support for a lot of commercial prosumer stuff, e. G., Adobe, and has a convenient and stable 3rd Party offering for Windows VMs (Parallels).
As a Linux user it seems like there is a lot to learn in regard to UI consistency from both though (maybe less from Windows). Gnome and KDE are probably moving in the right direction here but it is still a bit off sometimes.
> Gnome and KDE are probably moving in the right direction here
Gnome the desktop seems to have gone to hamburger menus in the last x years. It makes sense for Chrome, but is extremely user unfriendly for a more document creation oriented application.
Ctrl-C means something different in the terminal. Always has been. And if it doesn't make sense to use Ctrl-C, there is no sense in Ctrl-V either.
Windows lets you Ctrl-V while still mapping Ctrl-C to break.
It’s not a “fumble”, because “Linux” is not a company trying to sell as many units as possible.
As you said, it works for the people who make it. Why does it need to do anything else? Linux desktop conquering the world is just an old Slashdot trope, it’s not something anyone is actually working to achieve in real life.
You can't do ctrl-c and ctrl-v in MacOS too, that's doesn't break their marketshare.
It's command-c and command-v there. I only recently learned that command-right arrow goes to the end of line on Mac OS, making the elision of the home and end button on keyboards less egregious than on windows.
Exactly, that's what I'm talking about.
So MacOS lives just fine with their own additional button and bindings, I don't see how it's different for Linux.
Every time I need to do something on MacOS, being Linux user, I stuck hitting ctrl-c/ctrl-v instead of cmd, but nobody says that stops them from having a decent marketshare.
> Linux will be stuck in the 5% range as long as people who love Linux are the ones making Linux.
This makes no sense. There are so many different ways to use Linux, there is not a single profile of "people who love Linux".
>I really cannot say enough about the total fumble of Linux distros in an age when people are more desperate than ever to leave Windows
How is it a fumble? Linux is doing very well to scope up users from people looking to leave windows. Its not a monolithic company. There is no marketing budget only users to spread the word.
I think it is very unfortunate that Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V works for some programs in Linux. This makes the environment inconsistent. These programs should be adapted to the environment they are in and only support selecting using left mouse button highlight followed by middle mouse button press.
Coming from decades of using a Mac, I swap left alt and left ctrl. I remap the Terminal using AutoKey so that ctrl+c and ctrl+v are copy and paste, and alt+c effectively sends a ctrl+c to terminate a program.