My experience as a casual user of Linux for 20 years, and my take on why it is never its year

Let me start saying my first approach with Linux was around 2000, the first distro I installed successfully was Debian, then moved to more user-friendly distros (at the time) like Knoppix and Fedora, and ultimately to Ubuntu. In the 2000’s I used Linux mostly for fun, do homework, and browsing. I used Knoppy for like a year because my hard drive was not working properly, it was glorious. I still used windows on the side for the occasional software that was not available on linux.

In the 2010’s I stopped for the following reasons:

• Most of the software I used (and I needed for my research and work) was not available: OriginPro, XRD analysers, EndNote, etc. I dabbled with Wine and PlayOnLinux but it slowed my workflow way too much.
• No single distro recognised all the hardware of my computers (even after adding external repositories and spending unusual amounts in obscure forums). It could be the fingerprint reader, the HDMI output, SD card reader, the touchpad buttons… There was always something missing.

I could see that in the 2010’s installation methods and GUIs improved drastically. Now in the early 2020’s I see that there are new distros in town. And I wanted to give them a try:

• Arch: it was also around 2000’s, but it was only for hardcore users or servers, I never gave it a try back then, and I am surprised so many people now recommend it as a regular distro, because it is not. Anyway, tried to install it in a virtual machine, managed to go through the installation, but it never booted up, I might have screwed up at some point, and I was not willing to try it again. • Debian: The installation was a breeze, recognized all the important stuff except fingerprint sensor. Tried to install stremio and I realised there were so many missing dependencies, and I was not even able to install some. I spent a good afternoon just trying to get stremio installed, and nothing. I gave up. • Mint: To my surprise the installation was slightly less friendly than Debian, but still easy. Recognised everything (expect fingerprint sensor), and most of the software installed just fine. Until I tried to get my GoogleDrive to work. I managed to mount one virtual disk with ocamlfuse, the second one was a pain. And they disappear randomly or with every restart. For me, that was a killer, as I use GDrive for uni/work/personal stuff. OpenOffice could now replace Microsoft Office just fine, and it is compatible with my current reference manager, but lots of people still use *.docx *.xlsx and *.pptx with features that are not compatible with *.odt. Most of my specialised software also work on linux (Matlab, Comsol), so that is refreshing. Still some software to manage hardware in the lab is not available, but hey, I only use them when I am in the lab.

So my final takes and my personal opinion on why linux is still not widespread among casual users, even when there are clear advantages of linux over other OSs. • Linux is very suitable for the computer illiterate, the grandma who just watches facebook videos, the kid who wants to watch youtube and edit basic files for homework. As long as someone set their system, linux is perfect. This is why Android is so popular, even if it is linux based. • Linux is very suitable for highly literate users. Being for using linux for coding, selfhosting, or if you work in a computing environment. • Linux is NOT very suitable for the literate users who collaborate with regular users. Most popular reference managers do not work on linux natively. Most of my collaborators still send me *.docx and *.pptx. • Linux is not suitable if you don’t have the time to troubleshoot some hardware incompatibility for hours. • For some reason, personal cloud services in linux suck. Googledrive, OneDrive and iCloud don’t even work natively. I guess Drobpox would be the best alternative out of the mainstream ones, but in the 2010’s it was a pain to install on linux, not sure how easy it is now.

I still want to migrate full to Linux, but I just can’t, I love the concept, I love how much control I have, but it is the minor inconvenient things that keeps me away. I will still go back to linux from time to time as an exercise, and to try new stuff.