alt Hacker NewsThe problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux. Until product people start getting involved, it's damned to it's eternal ~5% consumer market penetration.
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That's how it has to be. Volunteer community doesn't have the bandwidth to make everything maximally user friendly. Users have to do their share too, by accepting the responsibility to learn about their system. Otherwise the model isn't feasible. If you want an appliance experience where you have zero responsibility as a user, you can go to the commercial vendor, but they will also have power over you and abuse it.
Linux is indeed for people who can love linux. For people who don't like computers, there's basically no solution.
The problem with Windows and MacOS is that they are hostile to the user, and that's because they serve a "product" manager who is trying to maximize business value for a massive corporation, not serve you a good OS.
We don't need three garbage corporate operating systems mismanaged by MBAs, we already have two!
I think that's a fair criticism for issues where Linux devs might be blind to the friction a lot of Linux distros come with, but I don't think it's universal for all devs and for all features, all the time.
Personally, although I'm not a Linux maintainer, I am a dev and I love doing work that makes UX better for everyone.
Which isn't really a problem because that doesn't stop anyone from installing it. Next year could be 6%, the year after that 7%... That's quite a lot!
I actually hope “product people” won’t be involved as long as possible. “Product people” is mostly a reason of our current state of enshitification of most of the products. I would actually try my best to gatekeep.
> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux
To specialize that statement a bit, Linux is made and maintained by people who showed up and contributed. These two facts create a vicious cycle. The people show up to add things they love to Linux, and Linux becomes something that only those exact people love. We're deep into this spiral where Linux has become specialized for ultra-nerds who enjoy solving puzzles to get their wifi to work.
If you look at old Linux magazines, the community is completely different. People were focused on "beating Microsoft" and democratizing computing. The people who took those goals seriously have left the scene.
> The problem with linux is that it is made and maintained by people who love linux.
I think I'd probably say that the problem with Windows is it's made and maintained by people who own macbooks.