=============================================================================== Title: GNU/Linux OSs and desktop users Date: 01-03-2021 =============================================================================== Let's briefly talk about desktop-oriented OSs. I'm a happy GNU/Linux user and - despite my young age - I've been for more than 10 years. So my perspective isn't objective at all. I'm not going to talk about the same old struggle between free software and proprietary software. By the way I'm not an extremist and I'm convinced that in a free world there is room for the second one. I'd like to point out here that, despite the experience in the smartphone sector, my beloved penguin hasn't yet managed to break through in the desktop sector. And it's been decades now. Yet some users find it ubeatable. Certainly these are not typical users, but there would be a reason why developers and IT experts choose Arch or Debian - to mention two - for their daily business. Probably there isn't just one reason, but there are many. As for me, I summarize my arguments in three points: - I need fast, lean, no-frills software that doesn't make my hardware obsolete; - I want to be in complete control of everything that happens on my laptop from the graphic aspect to daemons running in background; - I need a system that makes it really easy for me to interface with remote services. Two out of three reasons are related to necessity and maybe this shows once again that this kind of OS is naturally used by professionals - not that I consider myself as much. Let's be honest: the learning curve is pretty steep. But it's the inevitable price for the benefits. And that cost is much higher the more you intend to modify and optimize to your liking or necessity. For example I use a desktop manager named Awesome and, although I didn't give a damn, I had to waste time understanding the goddamn Lua syntax since the configuration file uses it. TL;DR Linux is Awesome and Lua sucks.