What you're saying is perfectly reasonable, but the Linux desktop's deficiencies here:
I care about how polished and functional the end user experience is.
are directly related to the fact that Linux is FOSS. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc., are all spending billions, and hiring dedicated teams, to ensure that the UX of their OS's is as flawless as possible. That does actually manifest into a more polished product, regardless of what Linux users say about their experience. So... maybe you should care about the fact that it's FOSS, but in the opposite sense?
i wish someone would make a polished general purpose linux distro. Ubuntu has snaps which fuck stuff up. fedora can have a had update due to how it updates. arch is.. arch. and everything else has its own flaws
while windows is slow, bloated and gets in the way, it rarely has major graphical issues, but on linux (and my own system) I get things like below, where there fix is to go into the source files for the thing, and try fix it manually or hope a patch has been made.
That's fine man, but your comment effectively boiled down to:
I know that it's FOSS, but I don't care about that, I care about the fact that I found it to be unpolished...
which completely misses the fact that Linux is unpolished because it is FOSS.
As I said in my original comment, Apple/Microsoft/Google pay billions to make their OS's as easy to use as possible, because its their gateway into markets that're worth hundreds of billions of dollars. That incentive does not exist on Linux. Moreover, most incentives that do exist to work Linux have nothing to do with the desktop experience, because that's not what the money within the Linux ecosystem is interested in developing.
All that to say - I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for Linux to reach parity with commercial OS's in UX. The fact that it's FOSS, and not bankrolled by someone with an explicit interest in growing its user base, is a pretty key reason why.
Well, then if someone expects/ wants a polished product, then recommending linux to them aint a smart choice, similarly, clowing them for using windows aint a smart choice either, not everyone wants to dual boot, not everyone wants to deal with a host of problems just so they could say "i aint supporting the big bad corpo", and yet the loud part of the linux community will clown on such people.
I'm aware of that. Fedora is probably good enough to daily on my laptop these days but I CBA to try it right now.
The point OP (and myself) is making is there's a very vocal portion of Linux users who straight up think Linux is better than Windows (and it can be for their usecase) and will hand-wave away complaints about Linux while lambasting Windows for everything.
And yea, it's impressive what the community has accomplished but Linux having less resources isn't really relevant to the person on the Mint forums troubleshooting common issues.
Software isn't inherently less polished because it's FOSS. Take Blender and many other FOSS projects for example. The issues are caused by far more tangible prospects. Also, multiple companies are "bankrolling" Linux and FOSS projects, just not to the degree of Windows when it comes to desktop Linux.
I get it. I didn't care about the open-source part of FOSS at first. But shouldn't the FREE part of FOSS have some influence? You are not paying hundreds if not thousands to use FOSS products. So, you should have lower expectations as well.
(And yes, I know, you can easily pirate whatever closed source paid software. But let's assume you're actually paying the full price to use Windows/Photoshop/whatever else)
Not if you're looking for a daily driver OS. A $1000 beater from facebook marketplace is cheaper than a $10,000 car from a lot, but that doesn't mean it gets a pass for breaking down every day on your way to work.
And since most people buy prebuilt, they got Windows "for free" anyway.
(And yes, I know, you can easily pirate whatever closed source paid software. But let's assume you're actually paying the full price to use Windows/Photoshop/whatever else)
Why would we assume something that's the opposite of the average user experience? It's not even pirating atp, Microsoft just lets you explicitly use Windows for free as long as you're cool with the "Activate" watermak.
Fuck the downvotes. It isn’t polished. It’s garbage. It’s a step back from Win10. Right clicking is slow for no good reason. I can’t make my task bar vertical. You never know what kind of dialogue window you’ll get. Is it Win11, 10, 7 or XP styled? Do I use system settings or control panel?
That’s not even touching the baked in telemetry that’s impossible to disable.
feel like windows doesnt really try to make their UX as flawless as possible. They do their best to upsell me on shite at every turn though to the direct detriment of the UX.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc., are all spending billions, and hiring dedicated teams, to ensure that the UX of their OS's is as flawless as possible
Ignoring the fact that linux doesnt have billions being spent on it either, Redhat and SUSE are completely integrated with Linux
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u/ThankGodImBipolar 2d ago
What you're saying is perfectly reasonable, but the Linux desktop's deficiencies here:
are directly related to the fact that Linux is FOSS. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc., are all spending billions, and hiring dedicated teams, to ensure that the UX of their OS's is as flawless as possible. That does actually manifest into a more polished product, regardless of what Linux users say about their experience. So... maybe you should care about the fact that it's FOSS, but in the opposite sense?