this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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The problem has been that Intel and Microsoft engaged in anticompetitive strategic execution to ensure that each would be a winner over the course of most of our lifetimes. That’s why “Wintel” became a household term over the late 90s.
Now, if you’re building any sort of hardware, why would you pay developers to write drivers for Linux, a hobbyist operating system that had no money flowing around it? Absolute saints cobbled together drivers for video, audio, modem, and other hardware just to make things barely usable, often with buggy behavior. Without insider knowledge of the hardware and firmware design, nor the sheer manpower to do development, Linux floundered in graphical user environments for a long time.
There were proprietary codecs, browser plugins, winmodems, and all sorts of things tailored to Windows user environments that were difficult or impossible to get working on Linux. Linux experts became surly and inaccessible due to the heavy burden of helping newbies just get the system booted and their VGA settings properly set. And so, Linux remained a hobbyist operating system for a long time. User groups finally got companies like NVIDIA to help write drivers for their hardware, and now, getting to a working Ubuntu desktop is arguably simpler than Windows 11.
IMO the problem remains collaboration, engineering, and gaming. The new Winmodem is AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, and BG3. Until the Linux user base grows to a point that it can’t be ignored by the companies developing these products, it’ll remain a very niche OS.
These, while all probably true (I lack the technical chops to evaluate), don't matter for most people.
What matters to most people is having a computer that doesn't actively interfere with their ability to do their work. And that's where Linux fails, regardless of the reason.
Nobody cares that their machine doesn't do X on Linux because of some cabal behind the scenes arranging it. They care they can't do X on Linux, but they can on Windows.
That was the point I was trying to make ultimately, but apparently failed to articulate it well enough.
Ah. My apologies. I've heard so many people using that line about the cabal to explain why I should be using Linux that I mistakenly attached you to that. 🤣