Comment 2 Steps Forward and 2 Steps Back (Score 1) 103
Linux has come a long way since I first tried a Slackware distro in 2002. Stability has never been better, updates no longer break everything, dependency hell is less of a thing, there's a nice diversity of distros and desktop environments, hardware support is good, font rendering is much better, etc.
Some things aren't so rosy. X11 is in its twilight and Wayland is immature and not widely supported, snaps and flatpacks are a spreading dumpster fire, dual monitor support is still poor, the Japanese IME broke years ago and not suitably fixed, Dolphin still has issues, and connectivity with other devices is just bad. The biggest problem by far is the increasing amount of ANNOYANCES on the software side that increases with each update. Buttons, buttons, and more buttons! Hamburgers are good for mobile devices and not a replacement for desktop menus, unnecessary visuals effects like transparencies that can't all be disabled make my desktop look like a wet newspaper (Plasma), applications that try to index my hard drive without asking (Audacity, etc.), popup update notifications for some random package update seemingly every hour and can't be disabled (Mint), "features" enabled by default like the update that removed all of my window borders, web browsers that are all a hive of annoyances, etc. It seems like developers no longer ask themselves "Will this 'feature' be annoying in any way to people?"
Linux has come to require far less expertise to get started, but I still wouldn't put a fully configured environment in front of my 70 year old parents to replace their Windows. The fact that I still need WinXP for my home networking and Japanese IME speaks volumes on how far Linux has to go.
Some things aren't so rosy. X11 is in its twilight and Wayland is immature and not widely supported, snaps and flatpacks are a spreading dumpster fire, dual monitor support is still poor, the Japanese IME broke years ago and not suitably fixed, Dolphin still has issues, and connectivity with other devices is just bad. The biggest problem by far is the increasing amount of ANNOYANCES on the software side that increases with each update. Buttons, buttons, and more buttons! Hamburgers are good for mobile devices and not a replacement for desktop menus, unnecessary visuals effects like transparencies that can't all be disabled make my desktop look like a wet newspaper (Plasma), applications that try to index my hard drive without asking (Audacity, etc.), popup update notifications for some random package update seemingly every hour and can't be disabled (Mint), "features" enabled by default like the update that removed all of my window borders, web browsers that are all a hive of annoyances, etc. It seems like developers no longer ask themselves "Will this 'feature' be annoying in any way to people?"
Linux has come to require far less expertise to get started, but I still wouldn't put a fully configured environment in front of my 70 year old parents to replace their Windows. The fact that I still need WinXP for my home networking and Japanese IME speaks volumes on how far Linux has to go.
