this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This article's two qualms with Linux UI are justified but, I think, somewhat overstated. The first point basically boils down to " 'Linux's' network filesystem handling doesn't have a GUI and is half baked", which are both true, but this is what happens when you're making a thousand utilities with a thousand different functions each. There is a will to support SMB, as evidenced by both Gnome and KDE having means to mount it, but the UI isn't great because it's not a focus and most people don't use network shares, so there's fewer feature requests and less development. Nautilus has 500 issues on the repo and 200 are bugs with 27000 commits from only a handful of authors.
The second issue is less justifiable as the author just wants this Linux utility to work like Windows. Partition management should absolutely only do what you tell it to do. Even on Windows I had to Google how to resize partitions, and I think Googling how to do that using the partition manager you're using is fair. Gnome Disks even has a nice help page for formatting a disk.
The author says that Linux should be as usable for grandparents as it is for children, and for people who have never used a computer before and only need to do what children and grandparents do (gaming (various caveats), writing, internetting), I think Linux provides a vastly better UX. For people doing advanced tasks (network shares, video editing, etc) there has to be a reasonable expectation of willingness to learn how to use a new operating system
My problem with this statement constantly bombarded on us is that it assumes that someone somewhere out there who cares.
To me, it seems that is the actual deciding factor in sticking with Linux... Realizing that if you want something that doesn't exist, you'll have to make it.