If the Linux commnunity could stop with the idea that people who want easy to use software are inferior, and spending their combined developer efforts on making hundreds of new Linux distributions and media players and text editors, there's certainly enough combined elbow grease gone into Linux software over the past decade to fix suspend/resume or audio playing or multiple screens of different DPI. What there isn't is commercial motivation to do so, which isn't Microsoft's fault anymore than it is Apple's fault, a company which has built a pretty good Unix-on-laptop experience.
> What there isn't is commercial motivation to do so
Yes, is what my comment I about. Commercial motivation (aka "pay me") is exactly what we need, and what we don't have.
> If the Linux commnunity could stop with the idea that people who want easy to use software are inferior
You must be confusing the Linux community with the Linux subreddit or ricing forums. Or you have lost checked the community vibes some 17 years ago. There's certainly no such thing happening broadly today. We want easy to use software, because that means we can get our parents and grandparents off of Windows.
> there's certainly enough combined elbow grease gone into Linux software over the past decade to fix suspend/resume or audio playing or multiple screens of different DPI
No, definitely not enough. There's no fundamental reason (beyond X11 weirdness - which may get replaced by a heavily reworked Wayland in this hypothetical scenario - but I digress) why suspend, audio, multi-monitor and power modes cannot work on Linux as well as they do on Windows. Suspend, multi-monitor and power modes are things that frequently rely on quirky hardware modes and there's no substitute to fixing that other than documentation and manpower.
Audio is better - pipewire seems to be the bringer of much-needed change, and I can actually connect to a Bluetooth headset in A2DP mode almost reliably. This was unthinkable a decade ago.
> and spending their combined developer efforts on making hundreds of new Linux distributions and media players and text editors
1) Explain how the development of new text editors seems to be talking up a significant chunk of available volunteer manpower? Even Emacs and vim couldn't possibly take up such a large chunk of the available manpower, since they are hard to even use and let alone hack on.
2) "hundreds of Linux distributions" is a myth and has been one for a very long time. The fact of the matter is that nearly every new user only needs to try three major distros: Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Fedora. If they are very picky, add another four to the list. If they don't care, pick one for them and they won't complain.
3) not enough "combined developer efforts" is the problem - and could be solved with funding for specific goals, like the Asahi Linux project did to get Linux working on M1 silicon.
> "Explain how the development of new text editors seems to be talking up a significant chunk of available volunteer manpower? Even Emacs and vim couldn't possibly take up such a large chunk of the available manpower, since they are hard to even use and let alone hack on."
These aren't springing out of nowhere, these are all massive amounts of duplicated human effort reinventing wheels over and over.
> "2) "hundreds of Linux distributions" is a myth and has been one for a very long time. The fact of the matter is that nearly every new user only needs to try three major distros"
Distrowatch tracks at least 276 different distributions and those are likely only a subset of all that have ever been created and released. It's bad enough to consider the duplication of effort, even worse if you only three matter.
All that wheel reinvention while important things were just crying out for available effort, right?
> "There's certainly no such thing happening broadly today. We want easy to use software, because that means we can get our parents and grandparents off of Windows."
Even while denying it, your own example is that easy to use software is for people who can't use computers. It's not for the likes of you. It's like a construction company that thinks power tools are for grandmas and handtools are for workers, it makes no sense at all.
