Linux vs Windows

Another day, another article read about how users should switch to Linux.

I seem to write about this a lot. So I just want to clear the air. The proof is in the pudding. People love free stuff. And yet, Linux (proper Linux OSs) have almost no market share. That says literally everything you need to know about the situation.

And, I'm not really sure why people in the Linux community are surprised by this. I had a lengthy article written out, but it was too long for what I wanted to get into here, so here are the basic points:

• Generating a bootable USB is hit and miss. Despite claims otherwise, most distro's really only work with one or a small subset of imaging tools. And, improperly formatting a USB key before even getting to the writing step is pretty simple.
• Booting to a USB key is more difficult to the average user than Linux community seems to understand. Combined with the above point, it can be all the more confusing and infuriating.
• Live Distros are the ONLY viable option for mainstream computer users, which limits options (though admittedly most of the distros with live images are also best suited for beginners).
• Installations generally ask too many questions and aren't really user friendly. Especially if your goal is to replace Windows.
• Driver support is abysmal. nVidia is the most common discrete graphics card provider and they have the worst Linux support. And WiFi is the next most troublesome, and if you're a Linux noob and your WiFi doesn't work... you're screwed. Period.
• Most modern computers are touch enabled. I have yet to experience the Linux distro (Chrome OS and Android excluded) which come anywhere near the touch friendliness of Windows. And, if you have a touchscreen, you're pretty much guaranteed to use it at some point.

The real reason for this post? I switched my Dell Tablet back to Windows 10. Why? Driver support. There were simply too many components which didn't work. And, the most important, is either impossible or so close to impossible to make work that I haven't found a single forum or thread advertising any success. In fact, most have buckled and bought a USB WiFi stick or replaced the internal card. The web cam didn't work. Bluetooth didn't work. And, because of a weird choice in pairing a 32-bit BIOS with a 64-bit processor most distros won't even boot from a USB key without heavy modification and fewer still will gracefully install.

This is the PERFECT example scenario in my opinion though. The frequent argument is "Linux is great for making old hardware run like new again". Well, this IS old hardware. Intel CPU and graphics even. I feel like the Linux community loves to tout Linux as the answer to old hardware for a reason; new hardware almost never works. It takes time to build support into the Kernel. But, there is a VERY wrong assumption that all, or even most hardware is eventually supported in the standard Kernel.

As I've said in the past, no matter what the hardware. No matter what the time lapse. Almost every device of mine I've ever tried Linux has at least one piece of hardware which either isn't picked up out of the box, or runs like garbage.

If your solution is to google how to patch a kernel or replace the hardware with something supported... you're worse than a fool if you believe the typical user can handle that. It ain't happening.

I hope this is the last time I write one of these.

Oh, I had also planned on writing up what could be improved. Here it is:

• Most users will use whatever OS ships with the PC. If, pre-configured Linux machines were more widely available, pre-installed with all drivers actually working... that would remove pretty much every hurdle except the learning curve for new users.
• For upgraders, most are coming from Windows (since most PCs are still Windows). Build a tool which runs on Windows, analyzes the hardware, scans for device support and even compiles a custom kernel based on hardware needs. Then, offer the reboot the system to USB key. If you ask all of the installation questions within the Windows UI, you can actually just have the USB stick pre-configured to either install, or run live.

If there were a Linux distro which did the above, the odds of having users migrate would increase. 

PS: I AM still running Linux on my other laptop. The WiFi works, but the driver support is poor and it caps out at a 2MBs download rate. Fully a 1/3 of what I got on that card in Windows. I also get some sort of system error about a minute after the computer boots up... EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

PPS: As a developer however, it works well enough, and the things I want it for actually work better on Linux. In short there are apps I can manually configure and code to do exactly what I want and it works better than the Windows equivalent (which I have partially sorted out on the Dell). Understand, this situation applies to literally no one else I know.