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I tried this year.
It's not ready.
Don't get me wrong, it's fine for most things, but end-user, normie fire-and-forget stuff? Nah.
But by that standard, Windows isn't ready either...
It is by far more "ready" than Linux. But even if it wasn't, that's where 80% of people already are. Whatever quirks Windows has, they are already aware of them.
But seriously, no, that's not a valid argument. Forget software. Hardware compatibility alone makes those two things entirely different from each other. Tell me again what types of GPU I should buy for my Linux gaming PC using an HDR VRR display and what DE I should choose. Is the answer "any"? No? So it's not ready.
I think you’ll find there’s mainly one group of people that fall into the “Linux isn’t ready” category - ‘Windows Power Users who cite specific use cases’.
But wait, I thought the meme was about normies that tried Linux once a long time ago and never bothered with it again. Which is it?
"Specific use cases" here seems to be "has a Nvidia GPU", which seems to be specifically 90% of the PC market. Should a normie gamer with no tech skills who is not a power user try to migrate their mid-range PC with a 3060 to Linux? 3D modellers? Video editors? Twitch streamers?
This conversation always goes like this. Turns out that when you start scratching off all the exceptions then yes, Linux is ready to work first time out of the box. If you're trying to salvage a specifically supported ten year old laptop with no dedicated GPU to do mostly web stuff and coding.
"Specific use cases" here seems to be "has a Nvidia GPU"
My 1080 Ti was plug&play in Mint ...
Literally me lol. I built a brand new Nvidia machine last year, tried a few distros and just had nonstop issues with games. Which became me googling reddit forums for fix actions and advice, which would just be try a new a distro or run these commands that breaks something else so another thing works. I love foss and what it represents, but I'm not a software guy nor do I have time to waste hours googling why kingdom come is playing at 5 fps on my 4080.
Yep. And even recognizing that 4080 owners aren't "mainstream", either, the experience is pretty much the same on any affordable gaming laptop with a dual GPU setup or most mid-range desktop PCs.
I'd say that the rise of AMD APUs is interesting in terms of brute forcing Linux's limitations by making Linux-friendly hardware more popular, but it's a long way to go to GPU parity and it's not like Linux is trivial to get running on those, either. Bazzite and SteamOS help for some applications, but I think people downplay how weird they can be to use as desktop daily drivers just by virtue of being immutable distros with some very specific gaming-focused quirks.
If being ready means "runs Windows applications" to you, then obviously Windows will always be the best choice.
Like, what a metric lol
Next you're gonna tell me MacOS isn't ready either, because you can't play many Windows games on it as well
Complaining about hardware compatibility on Linux while Windows 11 doesn't even support first gen Ryzen CPUs is crazy.
I've put Fedora on my mum's pc after it became clear that Win10 will EoL soon, and that Win11 would refuse to run on it. Have had significantly fewer support requests since then.
Her work is mostly done via Citrix, which has an official Fedora Client. Everything else happens in the Browser, or sometimes in OnlyOffice, which so far has worked as a drop-in replacement for MS Office.
As always, it really depends on the use case.
There's always one "I gave it to my mum" post on these. I don't know if it's always you, but man, it's starting to get very funny.
Yes, my parents are on an Android tablet now as their sole computing device. Want to start arguing for the year of Android desktop? Sure, "for most applications" everything happens on a browser.
That's not what people have desktop PCs for, though, is it? You may be surprised to know I also don't run Windows 11 on my phone. For the same reasons it's less comfortable to run Linux on your desktop PC, incidentally.
For the record, I actively tried to use my Manjaro install to work whenever possible. I only switched back and forth between it and Windows when one broke or something didn't work, as a bit of a test. Turns out I ended up in Windows like 80% of the time.
It's fine, but not ready for mainstream.
Android absolutely is ready for the desktop - its cousin is called ChromeOS which is running on zillions of Chromebooks. And ChromeOS is a version of Linux
Yes, I am aware. Not what we're discussing here, though.
If it's good enough for mums, it's good enough for a lot of people. Because mums are the mainstream.
For desktop computing? Absolutely not. For phones, tablets and maaaaybe thin and light laptops. Maybe.
I'm sure it's a common enough occurrence in a community with lots of computer nerds.
I do recognise that there are a lot of usecases in which Linux isn't currently the sensible choice for most users, but I also feel the ready/not ready thing is quite as clear cut. While I'm obviously rather biased, I do genuinely think that there is a subset of casual users that would do better with Linux than with Windows.
I could talk about how Windows has been a lot more problematic for me than Linux, but that has been mainly down to driver issues with a specific network adapter, and we both know that isn't the reason I prefer Linux anyway.
Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. But as you say, it's not why there is a whole rah-rah fanboy community for an operating system, of all things.
If you DO want to promote a less corporate-driven computing landscape, then there's reason for some frustration, I think. I am not the naysayer in all these threads because I "support Windows" or whatever. I would love to have a Linux offshoot that neatly replaces Windows with a similar set of design sensibilities instead of hanging out with a group of delusional nerds pretending that the current way of developing Linux is bringing it to the masses anytime soon.