Agree, linux ux has come a long way. I actually used red hat with gnome back in 2002. I though it was very user friendly (even back then), just like windows, only different.
Anyone else thought thought that Windows 2000 was great ? I had Windows 2000 as my first OS ( I was 6 years old, around 2005), but we replaced it with Windows XP a year or so later. Oh and I still was able to play a bunch of games on Windows 2000 I experienced all kinds of issues with XP, but now I realize that hardware was the main problem.
It wasn't even true 5 years ago. If all someone does is web browsing and word processing (90% of users IMO), an Ubuntu long term release is perfect. Out of the roughly 10 people I have convinced to go this route, not one has had any issue. Ranging from technology literate to "my internet isn't working, do I need more memory". You might have to help them get it set up, but there's zero maintenance after that. (If you provide friends and family tech support, you know how valuable that is.) Yes, my absolute favorite. I used it as my primary OS until last January, very snappy UI and no fuss. Firefox dropped support a while back, as did many other tools, and I was forced to "upgrade" to XP. Now migrating to Windows 7 because I can't lock XP down like I did 2000. Need the security updates. Other OSes I remember fondly: FreeBSD -- my first server, back when there were no home routers, and only outlaws used NAT. I couldn't believe it never crashed, amazing at the time. BeOS -- very buggy and unsupported, but very exciting.
I always liked Windows 2000. We had it in school and it was super stable (when compared to 95/98/ME at home). But I could never get it to install properly on my pc, there were always some driver issues. I had a cheap and obscure motherboard at that time. It actually refused to boot with any realtek lan card. The manufacturer had beef with realtek so they made their mobos to refuse boot with any realtek chips. It's still worked on now but they've changed name to Haiku OS.
Great, thanks. I hope I can resist the temptation to Google that, otherwise I will lose the next week of my life. I remember the BeFS developer went on to Apple and implemented many of the same ideas in OS X's filesystem. But, for a while, we had the coolest filesystem on the block. Good times.
Obviously, it's going to be a matter of personal preference to some degree, but I still don't think that the user experience of Linux is even close to making it a mainstream adoptable OS yet. The UI might be cleaner looking and some of the frontends are a little bit easier for less sophisticated users, but under the hood, Linux hasn't really improved at all.
It's a chicken-egg problem, until there's enough people using it, it won't be dumbed down simplified enough to be mainstream. Same for game support. But the package management and rolling updates and booting processes and programs to adjust settings have greatly improved in the last years. Any mainstream Linux distribution is much easier to work with than Windows xp, except the fact that you got to learn how to use it. It's seriously worth it to try mint or elementary now if you tried Linux a few years back and didn't like it. I'm not saying Linux if for everyone. I'm saying its reputation is exaggerated.
Well, I use Linux systems quite regularly (workstation and server configurations of various flavors) and I don't see the improvements that other people seem to think have occurred recently. Package managers are a pain in the ass to use when something doesn't work right (wrong library, wrong version of the library, wrong repo to look for the library, etc.). It has its place, but the exaggeration goes both ways.
Ofc distributions made for servers aren't really user friendly, but check Ubuntu/gnome software centers -> your grandmother can use it.
Do you think that it could be too open-ended and context sensitive to have a solidified desktop user base? It has had many schisms, resulting in a fragmented backdrop of choices for casual desktop use. Most distros require you to know it's unique characteristics and actually know what you are doing. To an enthusiast, that's a fun challenge and something new to understand. To consumers, that idea would be rather inconvenient and burdensome. Windows is popular for form. Microsoft could re-design half of how the core OS functions. As long as the UI looks familiar and the Start Menu is there, people would be content. Linux is the opposite. I used Windows ME voluntarily, on an i166 Pentium machine with 128 MB ram (it was one of those odd transitional Socket 7 motherboards with EDO -and- SD RAM slots).
I have used and continue to use a variety of OSes and none are without faults. On the topic of bad impressions, Windows Vista/8/10 and Mac OSX are at the top of my list. Modern versions of Windows are a pain to deal with if you hate baked in telemetry and OSX forever reeks of being a pricey glossy toy of an OS.
Osx is free in the appstore/itunes. And it can be installed on most modern pc's with a bootloader like chameleon or chimera. I'm dualbooting windows 10 and osx 10.8.2 on my desktop Acer Because it's so hard to find? Or hard to install? Don't get it..
I had a fun bug with Windows 10 back during the original leaks. It would constantly loop killing explorer.exe and restart it but in a way where it never resolved for more than 10 seconds. Was after a major update for the testing OS as well. As for linux, I use an ubuntu based system, with Lubuntu installed over it as i enjoy lightweight packages and alternatives (and the netbook DE as well as its very nice to be less distracted). My most bothersome experience was installing ubuntu on my toaster of a laptop from 2012. For an unknown reason the display would be scrambling and glitching. Asked for some help and never truly found a solution. I eventually decided to use an external hdmi display for it and it was perfectly fine for some reason. Here's the post: http://askubuntu.com/questions/3103...orrectly-or-show-corrupt-screen/310809#310809 Here's the image:
Oh believe me I hunted high and low for drivers compatible with Ubuntu and Mint for this computer. Despite my best efforts and those of my linux-loving friends, the conclusion was that the drivers simply don't exist.
Probably my worst recently was elementary OS 0.3. I love elementary but 0.3 has just been a bag of bugs. It starts out okay, then you update and half your stuff breaks. Wingpanel taking 5 minutes to load (bar at the top). pantheon-files crashing when you simply try to rename a folder. UEFI boot being totally broken out of the gate, despite their claims that it was fixed. Laptop deciding to not wake up from sleep randomly. A random invisible box appearing in the window manager making it so you can't click anything in that area. Noise (music player) crashing when I simply try to import my library. Oh and the OS being rendered completely unbootable just by updating. I could keep going but this post is getting long. Not a particularly painful or hard to reverse experience but bad nonetheless. Also, hackintoshing ftw. I love OS X but the hardware sucks and is overpriced. Dunno why people say it feels like a kiddie OS. I mean sure it does have gatekeeper but you can turn that off. To me it honestly just feels like Linux, but easier to use yet harder to run. And Windows... No. Windows itself is a bad experience to me. xD
Just for fun I would like to try the exclusive North Korean RedStar OS. If anyone is interested, here is a download link. http://www.openingupnorthkorea.com/downloads-2
The EULA prohibits the use of OSX on non-Apple hardware and I prefer having legit licences. Hackintoshes aren't my cup of tea. Though I occasionally use OSX Tiger and OS9 on a Power Mac G4 for older PPC software.
Just that I should probably leave that obsession in the past. Used to install a new OS/distro every weekend, Solarisx86, Slackware, NetBSD, OS/2 (not sure why I wanted to like it so much), SCO, UnixWare... it was getting out of hand. Is hackintoshing really that simple now? Still have a Dell Netbook 10v sitting around. Got it just because it was the only system I could get to run Snow Leopard flawless.
@gladders What is the driver that you are missing? I'm yet to find something that doesn't work out of the box. Broadband drivers you mean Wireless? Only really had problems with Broadcom WiFi + Bluetooth combo card in Linux, but once I connected to the Internet with a cable I was able to get these. Linux has become more user friendly over the years. Installing apps in most distros is even easier than the dreaded Apple appstore I still prefer it to OSX any day. Gaming is holding it back, but quite a few games work in Wine. I would never install Kali as an OS, I don't think it's ever meant to be used that way Go with Ubuntu or Mint Desktop. You will see how easy it is. The real power of Linux really comes with learning the command line and using servers with no GUI.
Good for you, sir. If I had the money I'd prefer legit licenses too. ^^ Oh, ok. I understand you completely, I used have that obsession too It was fun. Hackintoshing is much simpler now, provided you have modern hardware. For example, OS X stopped supporting x86 after Sno Leo iirc. Now it only supports x64 systems. Other than that it's super simple, everything has been scripted and there are lots of pre-hacked distros out there too. Same here, Linux doesn't like Broadcom because their drivers are proprietary or commercial, or some other kind of commie mumbojumbo
