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Why Linux is not ready for the desktop, the final edition


The previous iteration of this article was too technical, too long, and contained a lot of controversial points, so I've been thinking for a long time about rewriting it completely, making it accessible to the non-technical folks, and exposing the deeper core issues that still make Linux a questionable match for the modern desktop PC. The first version, written more than a decade ago, was quite popular, but today this site gets very few hits because the PC is more or less obsolete: most people in the world do everything on their smartphones.

It's crazy to think that they solve software incompatibility in Linux, they just work around it by making the user allocate and run gobs of binary code, unnecessarily taxing their storage, CPU and RAM. Also, despite millions of players, it's hard to call CS2 an AAA title because it's based on Direct3D 11 (which is now more than a decade old) and lacks modern lighting techniques like ray tracing. Linux doesn't offer a native technology similar to Windows file sharing that is easily configurable, discoverable, encrypted and password protected.

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