Non-server Linux still sucks

2025-01-02 | #linux | @Acidus

A good way to gauge how suitable Linux is for something is to measure the amount of time until you are reading obscure web forum posts to make something work. And by that metric, Linux still sucks in 2025 for non-server uses.

Case in point: I have an old mid-2011 Mac mini that I wanted to turn into old video game emulator for the kids to play. Batocera is perfect for this.

Link

How well does this go on 13 year old hardward? Terribly.

• Audio comes out of the built in speaker, or headphones. Audio over HDMI? Nope

• WiFi? Nope. This thing has a bog-standard Broadcom chip supporting 802.11n.

• Bluetooth? yeah not detected or supported out of the box. This is Bluetooth 4 BTW, from June 2010.

• Game controllers? Assuming I even get Bluetooth working, I stopped reading when the forum posts discussed how to check the internal revision of your PS4 controller to determine what sixaxis plugin I would need to install.

🤓 "But you just need to..."

No, I don't. I really don't. It's 2025 and if an OS requires that I need to be grepping lspci or dmesg for some fireware version number and then downloading some binary blob and the `sudo` editing some file in /etc/, then just no. You are not a user friendly OS.

🤓 "But you just don't know..."

Actually I do. I've regularly used Linux since 2000, and exclusively used desktop Linux on towers and laptops from 2001-2006. Do you have any idea how annoying it was to get Red Hat to correctly use a PCMCIA Orinoco wireless card? And no, not Fedora, not RHEL. Red Hat. Well I do. And sadly, it's not that different from today apparently.

🤓 "Here is what you should do..."

I seriously don't care. > /dev/null