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itvisiontoday at 9:26 AM4 repliesview on HN

This wiki exemplifies how broken Linux (on desktop) is and it's weird Linux fans ignore this fact.


Replies

Mordisquitostoday at 9:37 AM

I'll bite. How does a wiki targeted at users of a specific GNU/Linux distribution, a distribution which has made the express decision to be orientated towards technical users and not provide user-friendly tools for its configuration, exemplify how "Linux" (i.e. any GNU/Linux distribution) is broken on desktop?

(I use Arch btw)

duckmysicktoday at 12:25 PM

I wish there was a wiki like that for Windows.

charcircuittoday at 9:51 AM

I agree. Every time I visit the arch wiki or forums for that matter its typically due to a failure of the way the software is.

For example instead of the OS noticing that zstd was not supported, it would always use a zstd compressed initramfs image and would require the user to manually configure a supported compression their kernel supported. I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea to break my install for something that should be easy to do automatically. One could say that there is value in the forum having information on how to fix my system, but this isn't something I should have ever seen in the first place.

https://archlinux.org/news/moving-to-zstandard-images-by-def...

MathMonkeyMantoday at 9:30 AM

It exemplifies how complicated a "combine software to make your own user space" system is.

I've been running Ubuntu this or that since 2007. Desktops, laptops, work computers, personal computers, servers. There has been some BS to deal with, but frankly with common hardware it's exactly the same as any other system. Desktop runtime with web browser support. Except that you can do whatever you want, if you choose.

The idea of Arch was that it's supposed to be hard mode, if that's even true anymore. Any non-tech person I've showed my computer is like "oo, what is that?" I say "it's a desktop environment, here's the web browser." And that's all there is to it.