Not trying to start flamewars, but more and more I wonder how much are people willing to put up with such practices. On linux for 15+ years and everytime I try to use mac or win, it is an ordeal. And ads. F*cking ads in a system someone has purchased. And spying. Really user hostile environment. No, thank you.
Because Linux is full of sharp edges which nobody seems to find it fit to fix.
I’ve been dabbling in Linux since the early 2000s with Yellow Dog, SUSE, and Ubuntu, tried making it my daily driver in the early-mid 2010s, and for the past 5 or so years have been using it in a secondary/tertiary role.
Recently I’ve been trying to move my gaming box from Windows to Fedora (which I’ve found mostly makes the right tradeoffs to suit my preferences). I’ve gotten things to mostly work, including games that have been blockers in the past, but just yesterday my ethernet connection listing disappeared and broke network connectivity. No big deal I thought, just go into settings and add it back, but as it turns out the KDE settings UI for NetworkManager is horrifically flaky and most critically, its add interface wizard doesn’t set correct settings for a successful connection. No, you have to drop down and use nmcli afterwards to fix things because the UI also doesn’t surface the right checkbox. I wouldn’t have even figured that out if it hadn’t been for a chatbot’s assistance.
This is the exact sort of time-burning nonsense that isn’t a problem on either of the commercial platforms that I tend to encounter under Linux. Is this single instance going to push me to reboot that box back into Windows? No, but if issues like that keep cropping up eventually one will become the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Desire to avoid continued frustration will win over the logical portion of most peoples’ brains.
I really can't tell if you mean "Explorer.exe is good enough and I never felt like it needed improvement" or "Oh, I can make anything I want to, with free tools? This is great! I'll make a file manager for my personal usage that's perfect for me."
The former. You use one DE, typeahead triggers full text search. You use another, no metadata like image width/height when selecting images. You use a third one, no folder thumbnails.
"Just learn hundreds of different tools, spend dozens of hours reading all their man pages, understand all their limitations, and pick the correct one before starting your task, all so you can accomplish something completely ancillary to the task you actually want done. Geez, it's not hard."
"Choice is bad because I might have opinions and then instead of the computer saying no I might switch to software that better suits my preferences. I just want a corporation to tell me what to want"
It’s more like, “I already have opinions and preferences and despite the various options available, none of them suit me well and so choosing any one results in a high degree of compromise, and so the next best thing is using a different one depending on the circumstance which brings its own compromises.”
Unfortunately, just because you have choices that doesn't mean those choices are good.
I was forced to the file explorer on Windows, and the file explorer was good so I didn't mind. I was also forced to use MS Paint. And it was good for a long time, until they added layers. Now my primary use case of it (pasting an image and cropping it) doesn't work as well as it used to.
On Linux I don't even have that choice. There are choices, yes, but none of them do what I want anyway.
What truly drives me insane is that if you say "I just want what Windows does" people tell you that it's not Windows, it's "different(tm)." Then you ask why do Linux software sucks in comparison to Windows, and you get told "well, it's because Windows has $ to spend in R&D." So it's double-think. Developers are aware proprietary software spends tons of money they don't have in R&D, and yet they shy away from just copying the results because they don't want to be Windows.
I just want Windows, but with freedom. I don't want "different" if it's not going to be better.
> Then you ask why do Linux software sucks in comparison to Windows, and you get told "well, it's because Windows has $ to spend in R&D."
Are there actually people who claim this? Microsoft has plenty of money but the premise that they use it to improve the user experience seems contrary to evidence.
When something sucks on Linux with no alternatives it's usually because most people don't use the feature you want, e.g. because there is another way to do the same thing and more people are doing it that way, and then no one bothers to make thing you want because their desire to have that is already being satisfied by something else.
Of course, one of the choices you have is to build the thing you want yourself, which is why it works out that way. The chances of someone having done that go up the more people want it to exist.
It's baffling that you can't see that what OP is getting at is that there is not in fact any 'file manager he likes'. 50 half baked solutions are just that - half baked solutions.
Someone did though. Otherwise they wouldn't have created FilePilot. I have never had issues with any file manager in Linux. Explorer on the other hand is annoying as heck. Of course I am not picky with a file manager as I rarely use it on Linux anyway.
vitro · · focus · HN ↗
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
I’ve been dabbling in Linux since the early 2000s with Yellow Dog, SUSE, and Ubuntu, tried making it my daily driver in the early-mid 2010s, and for the past 5 or so years have been using it in a secondary/tertiary role.
Recently I’ve been trying to move my gaming box from Windows to Fedora (which I’ve found mostly makes the right tradeoffs to suit my preferences). I’ve gotten things to mostly work, including games that have been blockers in the past, but just yesterday my ethernet connection listing disappeared and broke network connectivity. No big deal I thought, just go into settings and add it back, but as it turns out the KDE settings UI for NetworkManager is horrifically flaky and most critically, its add interface wizard doesn’t set correct settings for a successful connection. No, you have to drop down and use nmcli afterwards to fix things because the UI also doesn’t surface the right checkbox. I wouldn’t have even figured that out if it hadn’t been for a chatbot’s assistance.
This is the exact sort of time-burning nonsense that isn’t a problem on either of the commercial platforms that I tend to encounter under Linux. Is this single instance going to push me to reboot that box back into Windows? No, but if issues like that keep cropping up eventually one will become the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Desire to avoid continued frustration will win over the logical portion of most peoples’ brains.
AlienRobot · · focus · HN ↗
I thought that after a few months of using Linux.
philsnow · · focus · HN ↗
AlienRobot · · focus · HN ↗
mijowi · · focus · HN ↗
feoren · · focus · HN ↗
advael · · focus · HN ↗
cosmic_cheese · · focus · HN ↗
AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
If you don't like something on a proprietary OS, you can save a lot of time by having no way to change it and suffering the problems permanently.
AlienRobot · · focus · HN ↗
I was forced to the file explorer on Windows, and the file explorer was good so I didn't mind. I was also forced to use MS Paint. And it was good for a long time, until they added layers. Now my primary use case of it (pasting an image and cropping it) doesn't work as well as it used to.
On Linux I don't even have that choice. There are choices, yes, but none of them do what I want anyway.
What truly drives me insane is that if you say "I just want what Windows does" people tell you that it's not Windows, it's "different(tm)." Then you ask why do Linux software sucks in comparison to Windows, and you get told "well, it's because Windows has $ to spend in R&D." So it's double-think. Developers are aware proprietary software spends tons of money they don't have in R&D, and yet they shy away from just copying the results because they don't want to be Windows.
I just want Windows, but with freedom. I don't want "different" if it's not going to be better.
AnthonyMouse · · focus · HN ↗
Are there actually people who claim this? Microsoft has plenty of money but the premise that they use it to improve the user experience seems contrary to evidence.
When something sucks on Linux with no alternatives it's usually because most people don't use the feature you want, e.g. because there is another way to do the same thing and more people are doing it that way, and then no one bothers to make thing you want because their desire to have that is already being satisfied by something else.
Of course, one of the choices you have is to build the thing you want yourself, which is why it works out that way. The chances of someone having done that go up the more people want it to exist.
TitaRusell · · focus · HN ↗
famouswaffles · · focus · HN ↗
jjuel · · focus · HN ↗