I don’t hate Linux, I think it’s an amazing bit of kit. A brilliant idea to build a Unix-like OS for desktop hardware.
The flexibility it has is astounding. The different distros really exposes this.
This flexibility is also it’s Achilles Heel - no single UI to Rule Them All means it’s not approachable by the average user. The lack of standard tools in all distros means you have to add them, but which ones? (Of course this lack of tools means you can assemble a smaller, more compact, reduced risk-surface build for specific purpose).
I currently run 3 or 4 different distros/builds for different purposes - Proxmox, UnRAID, Mint, Truenas, etc.
The problem with Linux is the community. Us tech folks are (as a group) terrible at clearly documenting things in ways that address why someone would be reading docs, e.g. the minimalism of man pages that only show switches. That’s tolerable for man pages (or was 30+ years ago, when the only people using these systems were studious technical folks who had put lots of effort into learning the systems first), but most other docs today look just like them.
Related, we’re also not great at working with people, often assuming they know what we know, so our answers tend toward only answering the very specific part of a question, rather than the bigger picture, e.g. “Use this command”, without explaining what’s going on, how this command addresses the issue, or even trying to understand what they’re actually trying to do. We tend toward efficient terseness.
Just step into a business meeting with Senior Management and tech folks - the tech folks are gritting their teeth to get to the next thing, because in our minds we’ve already solved what management proposed, while management wants to spin the idea around seven ways to Sunday before they feel good about it. (Neither is “wrong” just different sets of priorities and responsibilities).
TL:DR, Don’t hate Linux, we (the tech head community), are the problem.
I’d certainly use it more.
I don’t hate Linux, I think it’s an amazing bit of kit. A brilliant idea to build a Unix-like OS for desktop hardware.
The flexibility it has is astounding. The different distros really exposes this.
This flexibility is also it’s Achilles Heel - no single UI to Rule Them All means it’s not approachable by the average user. The lack of standard tools in all distros means you have to add them, but which ones? (Of course this lack of tools means you can assemble a smaller, more compact, reduced risk-surface build for specific purpose).
I currently run 3 or 4 different distros/builds for different purposes - Proxmox, UnRAID, Mint, Truenas, etc.
The problem with Linux is the community. Us tech folks are (as a group) terrible at clearly documenting things in ways that address why someone would be reading docs, e.g. the minimalism of man pages that only show switches. That’s tolerable for man pages (or was 30+ years ago, when the only people using these systems were studious technical folks who had put lots of effort into learning the systems first), but most other docs today look just like them.
Related, we’re also not great at working with people, often assuming they know what we know, so our answers tend toward only answering the very specific part of a question, rather than the bigger picture, e.g. “Use this command”, without explaining what’s going on, how this command addresses the issue, or even trying to understand what they’re actually trying to do. We tend toward efficient terseness.
Just step into a business meeting with Senior Management and tech folks - the tech folks are gritting their teeth to get to the next thing, because in our minds we’ve already solved what management proposed, while management wants to spin the idea around seven ways to Sunday before they feel good about it. (Neither is “wrong” just different sets of priorities and responsibilities).
TL:DR, Don’t hate Linux, we (the tech head community), are the problem.
rm (-for remove) -fr (French language) /s