I did take a look there. I had it working before it broke.
I disagree that the growing pains are steadily going down, too. Maybe I’m just old, but to me the golden age of Linux “just working” is definitely not now. It was the early days of Ubuntu where the hardware itself was simple but the drivers were already new enough to be fairly standardized.
The thing that killed Linux getting bigger then was the lack of software support. Who knows where we’d be if those early “easy” distros had better, more hassle-free translation layers available.
Now? This is a mess by comparison. You have Nvidia with a near-monopoly on GPUs pushing proprietary features as a selling point, crazy multi-GPU laptops with a bunch of custom drivers, weird form factors, touchscreens, pens, arbitrary framerates and resolutions… it’s complete chaos. I’m not surprised Linux struggles to keep up (and Windows buckles under the pressure), but it still makes it harder to swtich.
Anyway, let this be a note that the handling of third party FSs and external mounted drives in Linux should get much better and Steam should start giving non-SteamOS distros some love, because some of these library bugs are old.
I disagree that the growing pains are steadily going down, too. Maybe I’m just old, but to me the golden age of Linux “just working” is definitely not now.
Well, you can disagree all you like, but it doesn’t line up with reality. Hell, I even have my parents on Linux and it’s working great for them. Since setting them up with Linux the amount of times I have to connect to their computer or even drive over there has gone down to nearly zero.
The thing that killed Linux getting bigger then was the lack of software support.
You actually have that backwards, but that’s neither here nor there. The reality is that Linux is more compatible than ever. Most services that anyone uses is done online in a browser. Most Steam games work out of the box, not including live-service and multiplayer games with prohibitive anticheat. Even most non-Steam games work without much fuss. Lutris makes many games a one-click installation.
it’s complete chaos.
Not really. It may seem that way, but it’s just the fast progress of tech. Frankly, Linux leads that progress because of its monopolistic use in servers.
let this be a note that the handling of third party FSs
Not going to happen, unless you want to have a chat with Microsoft.
external mounted drives in Linux should get much better
There’s no issues with external drives in Linux beyond the usual stuff every OS deals with.
Steam should start giving non-SteamOS distros some love
Steam has worked swimmingly on other distros well before SteamOS was ever a thing.
You either misread or ignored what I actually wrote, so maybe give it another look. Specifically, I said the issue with Linux in the early 2000s was lack of software support, not now.
For the record, there is plenty wrong with the way Linux handles external drives, at least UX-wise. For one thing Dolphin mounts them differently than a mount command, which is insane. In the case of Samba shares it also mounts them in an entirely different location, which is extra insane. And the whole thing keeps a distinction between drives included as part of the system and external drives, even if the external drives are fixed, so if you want to add your extra hard drives to the navigation path for software you either have to go messing with fstab (which is both risky and terrible UX for newcomers) or manually click them every time you reboot your PC.
By comparison on Windows any time you mount a drive it just gets a drive letter and as long as you don’t remove it it stays there. Samba shares, optical media, USB drives, hard drives… doesn’t matter, mount it as a drive, assign it a letter, navigate to it consistently for the foreseeable future. It’s just better.
Oh, and when digging for solutions to my issues I found some of the same problems I’m encountering reported as bugs in threads from 2020, with the same workarounds being suggested in threads all the way from then to now. So your definition of “swimmingly” may not be the same as mine.
And you’re wrong about Linux being less of a hassle now, too, anecdotes aside. Although I’m not surprised, given that your parents probably aren’t trying to game on a modern HDR monitor. “Everything works on a browser” isn’t a good argument for Linux. It’s a good argument for getting your parents a tablet and calling it a day (which, incidentally, is what I did with mine and I haven’t had to troubleshoot it, either; Chrome is Chrome).
I did take a look there. I had it working before it broke.
I disagree that the growing pains are steadily going down, too. Maybe I’m just old, but to me the golden age of Linux “just working” is definitely not now. It was the early days of Ubuntu where the hardware itself was simple but the drivers were already new enough to be fairly standardized.
The thing that killed Linux getting bigger then was the lack of software support. Who knows where we’d be if those early “easy” distros had better, more hassle-free translation layers available.
Now? This is a mess by comparison. You have Nvidia with a near-monopoly on GPUs pushing proprietary features as a selling point, crazy multi-GPU laptops with a bunch of custom drivers, weird form factors, touchscreens, pens, arbitrary framerates and resolutions… it’s complete chaos. I’m not surprised Linux struggles to keep up (and Windows buckles under the pressure), but it still makes it harder to swtich.
Anyway, let this be a note that the handling of third party FSs and external mounted drives in Linux should get much better and Steam should start giving non-SteamOS distros some love, because some of these library bugs are old.
Well, you can disagree all you like, but it doesn’t line up with reality. Hell, I even have my parents on Linux and it’s working great for them. Since setting them up with Linux the amount of times I have to connect to their computer or even drive over there has gone down to nearly zero.
You actually have that backwards, but that’s neither here nor there. The reality is that Linux is more compatible than ever. Most services that anyone uses is done online in a browser. Most Steam games work out of the box, not including live-service and multiplayer games with prohibitive anticheat. Even most non-Steam games work without much fuss. Lutris makes many games a one-click installation.
Not really. It may seem that way, but it’s just the fast progress of tech. Frankly, Linux leads that progress because of its monopolistic use in servers.
Not going to happen, unless you want to have a chat with Microsoft.
There’s no issues with external drives in Linux beyond the usual stuff every OS deals with.
Steam has worked swimmingly on other distros well before SteamOS was ever a thing.
You either misread or ignored what I actually wrote, so maybe give it another look. Specifically, I said the issue with Linux in the early 2000s was lack of software support, not now.
For the record, there is plenty wrong with the way Linux handles external drives, at least UX-wise. For one thing Dolphin mounts them differently than a mount command, which is insane. In the case of Samba shares it also mounts them in an entirely different location, which is extra insane. And the whole thing keeps a distinction between drives included as part of the system and external drives, even if the external drives are fixed, so if you want to add your extra hard drives to the navigation path for software you either have to go messing with fstab (which is both risky and terrible UX for newcomers) or manually click them every time you reboot your PC.
By comparison on Windows any time you mount a drive it just gets a drive letter and as long as you don’t remove it it stays there. Samba shares, optical media, USB drives, hard drives… doesn’t matter, mount it as a drive, assign it a letter, navigate to it consistently for the foreseeable future. It’s just better.
Oh, and when digging for solutions to my issues I found some of the same problems I’m encountering reported as bugs in threads from 2020, with the same workarounds being suggested in threads all the way from then to now. So your definition of “swimmingly” may not be the same as mine.
And you’re wrong about Linux being less of a hassle now, too, anecdotes aside. Although I’m not surprised, given that your parents probably aren’t trying to game on a modern HDR monitor. “Everything works on a browser” isn’t a good argument for Linux. It’s a good argument for getting your parents a tablet and calling it a day (which, incidentally, is what I did with mine and I haven’t had to troubleshoot it, either; Chrome is Chrome).