Untitled attachment

@lxo Calling Linux “GNU/Linux” isn’t going to do diddly squat in that regard. When the average individual hears either “Linux” or “GNU/Linux”, they don’t think: “Oh, kernel versus kernel plus core utilities.”, they either don’t know what the Hell those are, or they think: “Oh, that desktop operating system that’s neither macOS nor Windows.”, or maybe they think of servers if they’re a system administrator or something.

Most people either don’t know or don’t care to know how the sausage is made, so saying “GNU/Linux” instead of just “Linux” doesn’t let them know anything; all this does is create a rift in the community and lead people to engage in futile arguments (of which this may be one). If people know what GNU is, saying “GNU/Linux” instead of just “Linux” doesn’t tell them anything new; if they don’t, just saying “GNU/Linux” won’t actually tell them anything, as they will just see it as a longer version of “Linux”, assuming that adding “GNU” to it doesn’t throw them off, which it likely will for some.

Shoving GNU in people’s faces so vehemently isn’t achieving what you think it’s achieving. Most people don’t care about software freedom if it means that what they can do with their device is restricted, or their choice of device is restricted, or both, because that to them is a greater restriction of freedom than the software being closed-source; Hell, sadly, most people don’t even know what open source is.

Say we want to get half a billion people around the globe using Linux. Professing about its software freedom and user privacy benefits could get dozens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands to a million people to come over to Linux that way, but it’s not enough to make a truly meaningful impact. What’s needed to entice the largest number of people possible to switch from Windows and macOS (and eventually macOS on modern Macs with Asahi Linux) is:

for Linux to, at minimum, be essentially at parity with Windows and/or macOS in terms of features, usability, and performance, if not better than it, which it can already be for a lot of people depending on the desktop environment and such
for there to be a hassle-free way to run Linux on the devices that people currently own, because most people don’t want to buy a whole new laptop or motherboard or whatever just to run this newfangled operating system that they don’t yet even know if will work well for them specifically, which there already is for a lot of devices if we accept a few proprietary bits here and there
for there to be a hassle-free way to keep their workflow uninterrupted after switching to Linux, like there being open-source alternatives which are at feature parity or even beyond that with whatever they were using on Windows or macOS and fully support the exact same data exchange formats that they use with their proprietary applications, or the proprietary applications having a Linux build, ala DaVinci Resolve

In other words, there have to be basically no sacrifices made when switching to Linux. You might be willing to sacrifice some things for the cause, but most people aren’t willing to sacrifice things for a cause that they’ve just learned about, let alone those who aren’t in a position to do so no matter how much they would or wouldn’t want to.

I don’t know about you, but a world where most people run Linux with a few blobs here and there and with proprietary firmware seems a lot freer than a world where most people run Windows and macOS with all binary blobs and proprietary firmware. If I had a choice between a world where relatively few people run Linux with no binary blobs and proprietary firmware, whereas the rest just use Windows and macOS with proprietary everything, and a world where no people run Linux with no binary blobs and proprietary firmware, but relatively few people run Windows and macOS and everybody else runs Linux with a few binary blobs, proprietary firmware, and maybe a proprietary application or two, I’d choose the latter any day of the week, because the latter actually has a chance of achieving the end goal of total freedom because it has already gained so much market traction. Things could change if RISC-V gains competitive performance and market traction, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Regarding point three, Wine and virtualisation are options, but those are not exactly hassle-free, since they need some setup. Wine can be hit or miss — CATIA V5R21 failed to install in Wine last time I tried it for example — and virtualisation requires ample memory and storage space at bare minimum if we just stick with VMware Workstation (because VirtualBox’s graphics acceleration is still bugged for Windows guests), whereas going the QEMU route would, on top of that, require more time and skill to set up at the very least; this is all assuming the computer isn’t a potato by the way, which is actually surprisingly common.

By the way, if what you need to do something that requires GPU compute and the application doesn’t have a Linux build, well, you’re kind of out of luck. As far as I know, Wine doesn’t support translating or passing through GPU compute calls, whether OpenCL or others, though I would very much like to be proven otherwise, and neither VMware no VirtualBox’s virtual GPUs are able to provide a compute interface. Passing the GPU through with QEMU works, but not quite if you have a laptop with a muxless NVIDIA dGPU, which is most if not all of them nowadays. Also, if the GPU isn’t cleanly partitioned into its own IOMMU group, passthrough can get hairy from what I’ve heard.

Also, before somebody mentions gaming, that’s actually been essentially fine on my laptop, even with Windows-only titles, aside from one which used NW.js.

Tl;dr

Saying “GNU/Linux” as opposed to just “Linux” doesn’t convey anything useful in and of itself, most people don’t want to restrict what they can do with their devices or what devices they can buy, that is sacrifice things, for a cause that they’ve just learned about or that they don’t have much interest in yet, and a hassle-free experience is basically a necessity for most people to switch over yet can be nigh-impossible depending on what you need to do for work and whatnot.

Public

Notices where this attachment appears