I have a brand new Ryzen box at my desk & I’ve been using it to go cold-turkey with Linux.
First stop was Ubuntu. I easily got Ubuntu working, only to find out that Electron-based applications wouldn’t work. Turns out there may have been a change to a GNU library that broke Electron.
If Mom & Grandad were on Ubuntu, they’d be SOL when their applications stopped working. Unfortunately, the sugar-coated applications on Linux tend to be Electron-based.
One thing I’ve noticed doing Windows 10 support for Mom & Grandad is that many issues are caused by purchasing the cheapest PC available. With Windows 10, I’m seeing less virus & malware issues. The biggest problem for Mom & Grandad has been Windows Update. My experience, your mileage may vary from mine.
For Mom & Grandad, they would better served with a locked-down iPad Pro with keyboard.
Back to Linux for a moment. For my new system, I setup Ubuntu. Only problem is Ubuntu doesn’t seem to easily install to a PC where I’m using EFI in place of legacy BIOS. From what I can tell, I’d have to make a custom bootable USB memory stick to force Ubuntu to install using EFI. Canonical should provide a second installer image to fix this.
So... I try Fedora. Fedora installs, but won’t support my WiFi card do to ideological reasons. The driver isn’t open-source. I had to run a 50 foot ethernet cable down the hall to try and figure out how to make WiFi work on Fedora.
Nineteen years ago, I can remember trying to get SuSE working on a laptop for my employer. After 19 years, I’m still fighting the same hardware issues I had with that laptop.
Software installation? I have 5 methods for each platform. This is ridiculous. On Ubuntu, Snap installs are useless.
Most of the alternative distributions would be better served by providing their special windowing environment on top of the 3 common Linux distributions & skipping creating yet another unique distribution.
If the efforts spent to create all these distributions were spent to create a solid single Linux system, they’d have winner.
As it stands, Desktop Linux is a failure for the average schlub.
Fedora has some improvements. Electron apps on Fedora actually work.
I have a brand new Ryzen box at my desk & I’ve been using it to go cold-turkey with Linux. Which model Ryzen? For 300.00 ( minus OS, monitor and peripherals) one could build a pretty good Desktop using Ryzen 3 2200G.
First stop was Ubuntu. I easily got Ubuntu working, only to find out that Electron-based applications wouldn’t work. Turns out there may have been a change to a GNU library that broke Electron.
That can happen.
One thing I’ve noticed doing Windows 10 support for Mom & Grandad is that many issues are caused by purchasing the cheapest PC available. With Windows 10, I’m seeing less virus & malware issues. The biggest problem for Mom & Grandad has been Windows Update. My experience, your mileage may vary from mine.
Thus it may be best to build your own. I have had no problems with Windows Update under W.10, thanks be to God, but I have them delayed for up to 35 days (Start>Windows Update>Advanced...
If the efforts spent to create all these distributions were spent to create a solid single Linux system, they’d have winner.
I agree, yet Ubuntu was kinda supposed to be that as I recall. Free-dom is good, but without a model of what the goal should be and working to that consensus under leadership then you can have a lot of good players but not a great team.
If there was a substantial consensus on what a OS should easily enable the user to do, and the best and worse aspects of each OS was, including Windows, and with a great degree of easy optional customization and increased functionality (as with Firefox before it went to Quantum) and a directed (and funded) team work working towards the goal of creating this, then I believe there could be a Linux Desktop OS that would at least surpass the Macintosh share.