this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
20 points (83.3% liked)
Linux
63814 readers
1277 users here now
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.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is more about open source in general than Linux specifically, but anyway.
Minor details.
I get the impression that often the developers are passionate about getting things working, but once it works it's hard to keep going to fix 'papercuts': minor UI issues, documentation, small usability improvements, consistency, etc. They want to move on to the next big feature.
Of course commercial products can suffer from the same, but if large enough they may have a program manager who assigns people to specific areas like that which get less coverage when it's based on the devs' desire to work on them.
This was my experience in the before times but over the last 5 years or so I'm consistently pleasantly surprised that everything just works, and works well at that. I guess I'm talking about hardware, docks, monitors, peripherals, printers, et cetera.
Software can be a mixed bag but that's really those software projects rather than "linux"
Exactly that. Drivers don't generally have much UI (I guess module load parameters count) so getting it working is most of the job.
It's the user facing applications which sometimes feel a bit unpolished. That has definitely improved over the years though.