I do not know how that article covered so much background on GNU hURD and the quest for a micro-kernel UNIX without mentioning Redox OS.

https://www.redox-os.org/

Redox is also micro-kernel based POSIX compatible operating system (UNIX compatible). So quite like the GNU project and HURD in that sense.

Redox is younger, 10 years old instead of 30, and more “modern” (eg. written in Rust). It can be seen as a GNU competitor as it does not rely on the GNU C library or utilities.

If you like Paint.net, try Pinta.

Sure.

But “missing significant foundational and complex functionality is not really a bug”, it is a feature. I mean, I guess I could file a bug that says “won’t run ALL Windows software” and talk about how long it stays open.

As each of these dominos falls, it gets easier to add more functionality on top. I feel like they have made more progress in the past two years than they have in the 10 before that.

Given how slowly they move, the obvious choice is to bet against them.

That said…

It already works for some stuff. There are already people that have been able to use ReactOS to run legacy but vital applications. I cannot remember any details but I have heard of a few instances where businesses saved rather substantial amounts of money with ReactOS.

Similarly, there are certainly people that find it runs the particular applications they want and runs on the hardware they have. Some legacy gamers use it. But perhaps you have hardware that is only supported under Windows XP.

And, if people keep using Windows, it will eventually become usable enough to be a viable alternative. If it had Windows 7 level features today and ran modern apps, a lot of people would find it good enough to switch. It does not have to be better than Windows or support every Windows feature.

As slow as they are, they have gotten further than most people would have expected.

I would agree with you. That said, bad experiences with things like PPA’s are one the reasons people reach for immutable distros.

I think as soon as you start adding PPA’s to your system, you should consider a distro with a larger repository. But that is just my opinion.

I think the main reason is experience on a distro with a crappy package manager that can easily result in a damaged or even unbootable system. Some of the most popular and even reportedly “stable” distros fall into this category.

You can think of an immutable distro as a system that treats the entire core OS as a single package. As long as you have that installed, it will boot.

Flatpak wins because we need one “Linux-wide” solution—one universal package format—and it was the first.

Distrobox can make any package format work on any distro if that is what you want.

My favourite package manager is APK v3 but the distros that use it do not have big repositories. So I end up using an APK host with Pacman / Yay running in a Distrobox.

Ya. I feel like professional VFX has largely migrated off Windows already.

Photoshop is perhaps the canonical example of software that does not run on Linux and is actually needed by “professionals”.

Photoshop does not run well enough on Wine that I would expect a pro to run it this way. And, if you are a print professional, there really are no Open Source tools that do what you need yet.

But outside of print, I think it is more about familiarity than capability even with regards to Adobe alternatives. And there are alternatives UI options for things like GIMP if the Adobe metaphor works better for you.

Inkscape seems to be attracting some actual professional use. Scribus seems close to getting there too. The furthest behind is GiMP.

That said, I am impressed with the development pace of GIMP now that version 3 has finally shipped. And it seems that proper CMYK support is on their near-term roadmap. I could see them shipping something functional next year. I would say similar things about non-destructive editing.

It will be interesting to see if attitudes change towards GIMP after these issues are addressed. The UI also takes a lot of heat. Now that there is a consistent cadence of releases (it seems), perhaps that will see steady evolution as well.

This is a funny take given that for most of Linux history, the majority of Linux desktop user have been “working professionals”, largely IT workers and developers to be fair.

At this point, you cannot really make a blanket statement about who Linux is appropriate for. It is down to individual use cases and preferences.

I have been using Linux for decades and, while I have also used Windows and macOS, other operating systems are frustrating to use due to the many limitations. And I have been several kinds of “working professional” over that time at many different levels of seniority. But I recognize that this is because all my workflows and expectations evolved on Linux.

The “working professionals” you imagine likely have the same issue. It is not that Linux could not work, or even that it is not a better place to start. It is document compatibility and familiarity.

At this point, Linux “being ready” comes down almost completely to a tolerance for learning and change. Nobody says you have to change of course. But working differently does not mean that something else does not work.

There are of course still some software gaps. CAD is not great on Linux (getting there). Print graphics professionals (people with CMYK workflows) will hit real roadblocks. Some debugging tools available on Windows are worth the productivity for certain workflows. Pro audio too I guess though this not my area. And “office document” users may encounter display inconsistencies when sharing documents depending on which features they rely on. Perhaps the latter is what you mean.

As for gaming, it depends on what titles you favour. Some Windows games play better on Linux. Some worse. And of course some not at all.

When choosing software for a company, I consider something that cannot work on the Linux desktop or through the cloud disqualifying. I can think of few cases where that has been the wrong decision.

MIT is a “free license “ and software that uses it is Free Software. See the Free Software Foundation website for details.

My only goalpost is accuracy.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

The most interesting chip is the Tenstorrent Ascalon. They are releasing a version on their own Silicon called Atlantis. Ascalon-X is expected to match AMD Zen 5 performance.

https://tenstorrent.com/en/ip/tt-ascalon

There is also the Spacemit K3 and a few others. Maybe Qualcomm will surprise us with something.

So when I install EOS for the first time, I should use the ISO from when the project was founded?

This comment is silly. The fact that every rolling release I can think of tracks against releases in exactly this way is not.

Of course they do. It is a silly comment.

Now that GIMP has finally released version 3, they seem to be moving faster. I hope they are able to get more positive mind-share.

For example, they are close to releasing 3.2 that already has lots of great stuff in it. It looks like 3.4 could address some really long running deficiencies like native CMYK.

If stuff actually gets released, they may not only attract users but developers which is what they really need.

Lots of nice changes in this release. I see lots of the things people complain about.

I am not a GNOME user myself but since Niri uses XDG-desktop-portal-GNOME, this looks like a release to look forward to.

What an odd boast. What is it based on?

MIT licensed software outnumbers GPL licensed software two to one or more in most Linux distros and elsewhere.

There was more MIT code in the X server than there was GPL code in the world before Linux came along.

And even Linux will never be GPL3 or even drop its exceptions. So, while it is ironically the crown jewel in the GPL universe, it is not even really GPL.

“Linux” as it is used in the real world means “Linux distribution” which is a Linux based operating system that runs the ecosystem of applications and desktop environments common to the “Linux” ecosystem.

If people mean the “Linux kernel”, they say so. With few exceptions beyond trying to make GNU/Linux a thing*, people do not mean just the kernel when they say “Linux” on its own. Even the Linux Kernel Mailing List says “kernel”‘when that is what they mean. And you do not get the kernel from the linux.org website. Guess what you do find there—a bunch of information about Linux distros (real ones, not ChromeOS and Android).

People ARE saying what they mean because they know what the word Linux means. Swearing does not make you more correct.

If I say “United States”, only morons pop up to tell me that I need to say USA because otherwise people might think I mean United States of Mexico. Everybody in the world knows what United States means. Swearing and shouting “say what you mean” would be ridiculous. And nobody wonders if I mean the city or the country if I say Mexico. If I meant just the city, I would say so.

And people know what Linux means too.

• why isn’t GNU/Linux a thing? Well, amongst the many reasons is that many Linux distros that are clearly “Linux” and even “desktop Linux” do not use GNU software. The most extreme is Chimera Linux probably but Alpine, Void, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Serpent, and others match this description to various degrees. And outside of RHEL, actual GNU software makes up a tiny fraction of the software even in distros that use it (like say Arch). Chimera Linux, Void Linux, and Arch Linux are all remarkably similar though they differ dramatically in GNU usage. They are all “Linux” but not GNU/Linux. Android is totally different from all of them despite using the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux is one of the least descriptively accurate terms you could come up with for any reason other than purely political.

The kernel is copyleft (100% of it). The majority (more than half) of the other software in a typical Linux distro is not copyleft. The most popular license is MIT. Apache 2.0 (the license that Android uses) is pretty common in Linux distros as well.

To top it off. the majority of GPL software has nothing whatsoever to do with the GNU project, starting with the Linux kernel.

This idiot has been writing articles over there for decades. He has always been pro Linux which is nice. Unfortunately, he has also always been an idiot.