I disagree. Linux (especially a top-notch distro like CachyOS or Aurora) is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to Windows in several aspects (performance, filesystem features, workload-specific kernel tuning, DE customisation etc). Several benchmarks out there that can show you the performance edge Linux has over Windows. Plus there are several features completely missing from Windows, like atomic updates, immutability, not to mention all the cool features found in filesystems like btrfs. Of course, Windows has some benefits too, but making a sweeping blank statement like "All FOSS consumer operating systems suck" is very egregious and insulting to the all volunteers around the world, who continue to work tirelessly to make FOSS better every single day.
Consumers also use and benefit from those features, even if they're not directly aware of it. For instance, my mom, a non-nerd who lives overseas, uses an immutable and atomic distro, which has the benefit of never breaking. Since she lives far away, it is important that her PC has that sort of stability, especially since she uses it to edit and submit important documents and emails, and ocassionally print and scan stuff. The features found in the filesystem (btrfs) further contributes to this guarantee - such as CoW, which gives her distro the ability to take instant atomic snapshots of the drive and boot from them via the boot menu; data and metadata checksumming which detects silent corruption; self healing via background scrub etc.
Her PC is also 13+ years old (an old Dell Optiplex 9020), which is unsuitable for running any supported versions of Windows. The high -performance, efficient and low-memory-usage nature of Linux makes it possible for her to complete productivity tasks even on such old hardware.
There are also non-nerds benefiting from Linux on low-end gaming devices such as the Steam Deck, or the countless number of emulators such as the Anbernic RG35XX Series, Miyoo Mini etc. Linux is the reason that such humble hardware is feasible for gaming.
I desperately want to use it, but it runs on precisely no decent hardware as far as I can tell. My attempts to get it working on the fxtec and furiphones failed miserably.
Agreed. Linux is the future, fk Android. GrapheneOS should stop wasting their efforts on Android, when they could've contributed towards PostmarketOS or similar, or even made their own distro. Working on Android is a complete and utter waste of time and effort.
Yes ditching a secure OS for one that can easily be pwned by police / ICE / DHS with ease (especially in a time in the US when they’re doing this more and more) when AOSP can just be hard forked users. Thanks for the input, government agent.
Yes, indeed AOSP is trivial to hard fork and maintain independently of Google, which is why so many maintained hard forks of AOSP exists... right, right? Thank for the input, world's most brilliant coder.
This is partially pointing out that every time these discussions invariably come up, nobody addresses the cognitive dissonance of ideologues claiming that the benefit of open source like Linux and Firefox is that “the community can hard fork it and maintain a free version”
Yet somehow this same logic somehow becomes invalid when any open source software made by Google is brought up.
If Linux was targeted for mobile devices, there would inevitably be wasted effort reinventing the wheel just to match the feature set of Android when there’s already a suitable base to start community work from.
For what it is worth, GrapheneOS have expressed interest in a new base OS with an Android compatibility/virtualisation layer, but they do not have the resources to build it themselves and a suitable open source one does not already exist for them to leverage.
The future is an inappropriate OS with catastrophic battery management, zero software available, no sandboxing or proper security measures, and the oh so stable kernel ABI & Gnome APIs to develop for, yep yep yep.
The future is an inappropriate OS which spies on you and harvests your data, gets more and more locked down with every release restricting user freedom, and prioritises corporate interests over end user interest, yep yep yep.
Yes, let's abandon a very mature OS that is still open source, has millions of apps, and billions of users by one one that was designed for desktops, with a security posture fitting the 90s, virtually no phone apps unless you emulate said very mature OS, and which will have all the same problems with remote attestation, etc. </s>
Yes, I'm sure the billions of people will read the advice of a random commentor on a niche site and throw away all their handsets running a "very mature OS" and cause a crisis. </s>
All FOSS consumer operating systems suck. We only tolerate them because they are FOSS.
I disagree. Linux (especially a top-notch distro like CachyOS or Aurora) is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to Windows in several aspects (performance, filesystem features, workload-specific kernel tuning, DE customisation etc). Several benchmarks out there that can show you the performance edge Linux has over Windows. Plus there are several features completely missing from Windows, like atomic updates, immutability, not to mention all the cool features found in filesystems like btrfs. Of course, Windows has some benefits too, but making a sweeping blank statement like "All FOSS consumer operating systems suck" is very egregious and insulting to the all volunteers around the world, who continue to work tirelessly to make FOSS better every single day.
Notice that I said "consumer". You have listed server features, developer features and nerd features.
Consumers also use and benefit from those features, even if they're not directly aware of it. For instance, my mom, a non-nerd who lives overseas, uses an immutable and atomic distro, which has the benefit of never breaking. Since she lives far away, it is important that her PC has that sort of stability, especially since she uses it to edit and submit important documents and emails, and ocassionally print and scan stuff. The features found in the filesystem (btrfs) further contributes to this guarantee - such as CoW, which gives her distro the ability to take instant atomic snapshots of the drive and boot from them via the boot menu; data and metadata checksumming which detects silent corruption; self healing via background scrub etc.
Her PC is also 13+ years old (an old Dell Optiplex 9020), which is unsuitable for running any supported versions of Windows. The high -performance, efficient and low-memory-usage nature of Linux makes it possible for her to complete productivity tasks even on such old hardware.
There are also non-nerds benefiting from Linux on low-end gaming devices such as the Steam Deck, or the countless number of emulators such as the Anbernic RG35XX Series, Miyoo Mini etc. Linux is the reason that such humble hardware is feasible for gaming.
I desperately want to use it, but it runs on precisely no decent hardware as far as I can tell. My attempts to get it working on the fxtec and furiphones failed miserably.
Agreed. Linux is the future, fk Android. GrapheneOS should stop wasting their efforts on Android, when they could've contributed towards PostmarketOS or similar, or even made their own distro. Working on Android is a complete and utter waste of time and effort.
Yes ditching a secure OS for one that can easily be pwned by police / ICE / DHS with ease (especially in a time in the US when they’re doing this more and more) when AOSP can just be hard forked users. Thanks for the input, government agent.
Yes, indeed AOSP is trivial to hard fork and maintain independently of Google, which is why so many maintained hard forks of AOSP exists... right, right? Thank for the input, world's most brilliant coder.
This is partially pointing out that every time these discussions invariably come up, nobody addresses the cognitive dissonance of ideologues claiming that the benefit of open source like Linux and Firefox is that “the community can hard fork it and maintain a free version”
Yet somehow this same logic somehow becomes invalid when any open source software made by Google is brought up.
If Linux was targeted for mobile devices, there would inevitably be wasted effort reinventing the wheel just to match the feature set of Android when there’s already a suitable base to start community work from.
For what it is worth, GrapheneOS have expressed interest in a new base OS with an Android compatibility/virtualisation layer, but they do not have the resources to build it themselves and a suitable open source one does not already exist for them to leverage.
The future is an inappropriate OS with catastrophic battery management, zero software available, no sandboxing or proper security measures, and the oh so stable kernel ABI & Gnome APIs to develop for, yep yep yep.
The future is an inappropriate OS which spies on you and harvests your data, gets more and more locked down with every release restricting user freedom, and prioritises corporate interests over end user interest, yep yep yep.
Yes, let's abandon a very mature OS that is still open source, has millions of apps, and billions of users by one one that was designed for desktops, with a security posture fitting the 90s, virtually no phone apps unless you emulate said very mature OS, and which will have all the same problems with remote attestation, etc. </s>
Yes, I'm sure the billions of people will read the advice of a random commentor on a niche site and throw away all their handsets running a "very mature OS" and cause a crisis. </s>