this is sad [LWN.net]

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 5:48 UTC (Mon) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
In reply to: this is sad by callegar
Parent article: Klumpp: A few words about the future of the Limba project

> you never know if the scanner, camera, printer, TV card, USB video dongle, CDMA dongle, video capture dongle, home surveillance camera, will work seamless, will work at all, or will require you hours to make it work.

ChromeOS supports none of that yet has beating legacy Linux desktop in popularity. People say they want hardware X and software Y on Linux, yet they happily choose platforms where neither is true (iOS, Mac OS, ChromeOS). I'm making two conclusions

- people prefer a clear "not supported" over "git clone the snapshot, build, tinker variables and it somewhat works"
- uncanny valley effect. When libreoffice looks almost like office but has many stubble differences, people get incredibly frustrated. When you tell them there is no direct copy of office, they find some weird way to workaround ala https://xkcd.com/763/

to post comments

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 11:16 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

- people prefer a clear "not supported" over "git clone the snapshot, build, tinker variables and it somewhat works"

For very obvious reason, too: most “Joe Averages” have no idea what git even means (well, they know the meaning: git means git is “a stupid or worthless person”—but how could that help to fix camera driver? they have no idea). Thus for them it's “it does not work” vs “you don't have enough magic points to make it work”. Second is much worse because when you know that something does not work you are at least in the clear, when you don't have enough “magic points” then you have this piece of hardware which is there and tempting… but even so it's uselsss.

this is sad

Posted Jun 21, 2016 12:11 UTC (Tue) by hitmark (guest, #34609) [Link] (1 responses)

Thats because Google have them marketed specifically as Chromebooks. Not as PC (hello Windows) or Mac (hello MacOS) but Chromebooks (hello ChromeOS).

They are effectively marketed more like a phone or TV or some other "device". Not as a PC built from standardized parts (even though they are internally just another laptop PC).

this is sad

Posted Jun 21, 2016 15:45 UTC (Tue) by krake (guest, #55996) [Link]

Very good point!