this is sad [LWN.net]

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 8:07 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: this is sad by bronson
Parent article: Klumpp: A few words about the future of the Limba project

It's easy enough to get Linux preinstalled too.

Here in Germany it isn't – you can't walk into the local white-box electronics store and buy a Linux machine “over the counter” the way you can buy a Windows PC. There are no glitzy high-street shops that sell Linux PCs the way the Apple Store sells Macs. Amazon offers me exactly one computer with pre-installed Linux, and that's a low-spec machine with Linux Mint that has some pretty bad reviews. With diligence you can probably find some specialist outfits that sell reasonable pre-installed Linux PCs on the Internet, but that's not how most people buy their computers. I don't consider that “easy enough”.

The reason so few people are interested in the Linux desktop runs deeper than that.

I support a few friends (non-technical people) who are running Linux on their desktops. They're happy with it – they enjoy the performance, the reliability, and the fact that they don't need to worry about malware. I've been doing this for almost 20 years now and I don't buy the idea that there is something inherent about Linux that turns people off once they have it running properly – at least not more so than with the other popular operating systems.

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this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 8:47 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> Here in Germany it isn't – you can't walk into the local white-box electronics store and buy a Linux machine “over the counter” the way you can buy a Windows PC.
Computers (especially laptops) with Linux were popular in Russia back in middle 2000-s. For a very simple reason - they didn't include the price of Windows license. Consequently, the first question of buyers of these computers was: "Can I install Windows on it?"

Pre-installed Linux desktops were tried many times but they have never caught up.

> I support a few friends (non-technical people) who are running Linux on their desktops. They're happy with it – they enjoy the performance, the reliability, and the fact that they don't need to worry about malware.
Are they using anything that's outside of Chromebooks' capabilities?

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 9:06 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (5 responses)

Pre-installed Linux desktops were tried many times but they have never caught up.

All the pre-installed Linux desktops I've seen were low-spec machines with weird Linux distributions that were built in a slap-dash way. Even the mainstream vendors that experimented with pre-installed Linux often didn't do a great job on it. No wonder people don't like it. I have yet to meet someone who was presented with a well-installed Linux on good hardware who wanted to replace it with (of all things) Windows.

The real problem is that vendors don't see a lot of gain in providing good pre-installed Linux, because customers don't seem to want it. Customers don't want Linux because they've heard it is different from Windows (which they usually know) and nobody they know has it. And nobody they know has Linux because it isn't sold pre-installed in white-box stores alongside pre-installed Windows PCs and Macs, because vendors don't offer good pre-installed Linux machines. Catch-22.

Are they using anything that's outside of Chromebooks' capabilities?

How would I know? I don't look over their shoulders all the time, and I have no idea what Chromebooks can actually do. For example, can Chromebooks handle multiple displays? Do Chromebooks run Digikam, The GIMP, and Kdenlive? These are things some of my friends use as a matter of course.

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 13:37 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

My experience too and there was no price difference in laptops ( from those few available with linux pre-installed ) here and those with windows. Then there was a lack of applications compatible ( or just feature compatible ) to what is available on windows outside the standard applications ( email, browser, office simple editor and calculator etc ) as well as hardware incompatibilities and no easy way to do a simple firmware upgrade on the device from vendors and so on.

Those novice end users ( which includes developers ) that atleast switched to Fedora for a brief time to try linux and did not have a joyful experience in doing so left the linux ecosystem entirely ( the complaint from developers not being able to use Fedora was they spent more time setting up their development environment and use manage it than hacking and novice end user did not like the instability in the ui design in Gnome 2 and 3. ). Those end users did not try alternative desktop environment like the KDE version of Fedora ( The entire Fedora brand suffered at the cost of one desktop environment ) or other distributions like Ubuntu or Debian or Mint since from their perspective they had tried "Linux" and it did not work for them and they did just want to go back to the environment they where familiar with ( Windows,Apple ). Arguably it would be better for if those Desktop Environment would release their own release then users could stay with/away from GnomeOS and try kdeEOS, ChromeOS etc. as in those desktop environment brands would suffer the loss ( or success ) of end users directly themselves but it really does not matter since linux desktop will never materialize for novice end user ( outside potentially Android ) when the ecosystem remains so fragmented but only be usable for tinkeres and administrators which I think everyone is aware of except those that are developing desktop environment.

this is sad

Posted Jun 20, 2016 17:35 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> All the pre-installed Linux desktops I've seen were low-spec machines with weird Linux distributions that were built in a slap-dash way.
I've seen all kinds.

> Even the mainstream vendors that experimented with pre-installed Linux often didn't do a great job on it.
Dell is still selling Linux laptops and they actually tried to make them nice (for example, they wrote DKMS for Debian/Ubuntu).

Ultimately, making a Linux PC is not complicated. The fact that it has never attracted more than a trace interest is notable.

this is sad

Posted Jun 21, 2016 15:28 UTC (Tue) by krake (guest, #55996) [Link] (2 responses)

> I've seen all kinds.

Then you are in luck.
I've never seen any other then maybe Netbooks in physical stores and online stores still fail to offer Linux as an OS option.

> Dell is still selling Linux laptops

They started recently with single models for which reports often say that things don't actually work and official blogs telling about workarounds or making promises of updates.
They have yet to actually offer Linux as an option on their machines for customers who buy computers based on requirements.

> The fact that it has never attracted more than a trace interest is notable.

We don't know, since there has never been any attempt in offering Linux as a pre-install option from any of the major vendors.
Only specialized vendors such as ZaReason or System76 do and they don't have widespread presence and only a limited range of models.

So far, whenever I needed to buy a new laptop, none of the vendors who's products met the requirements closely enough to get into the final consideration was able to offer the device without OS, let alone with Linux.

It is great if that is different in the place where you are from.

this is sad

Posted Jun 21, 2016 21:49 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> They started recently with single models for which reports often say that things don't actually work and official blogs telling about workarounds or making promises of updates.
You mean, 8 years ago is "recently"? And their models are reasonable.

> So far, whenever I needed to buy a new laptop, none of the vendors who's products met the requirements closely enough to get into the final consideration was able to offer the device without OS, let alone with Linux.
Not anymore, after anti-piracy laws got stricter.

"Reports"

Posted Jun 21, 2016 22:31 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

Going by "reports", my report is that the 2013 Dell XPS 13 Developer with Ubuntu worked really well for me. Another "report" is that I am right now using a 2015 Dell m3800, which was going to be a Developer model but I didn't want to wait so I bought the Windows 8.1 version and installed Fedora on it. It also works great.

> We don't know, since there has never been any attempt in offering Linux as a pre-install option from any of the major vendors.

Dell seems pretty major to me.

And they have the small laptop (XPS 13) and the big laptop (m3800) with Linux. I am having a hard time imagining requirements that can't be met by one or the other. Maybe price. Neither one is particularly cheap. Optical drives, wired Ethernet, or old weird ports are handled by adapters.