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+---
+title: "The abysmal state of Linux in the year 2024"
+url: the-abysmal-state-of-linux-in-the-year-2024.html
+date: 2024-03-10T21:41:52+01:00
+type: post
+draft: false
+---
+
+This is in part difficult to write, but then I think it is necessary. How
+come Linux is worse than it was 10 years ago. This may very well be
+a subjective opinion, or maybe I am looking at the situation with
+rose-tinted glasses.
+
+Sure, we now have PipeWire and Wayland. We enjoy many modern advances
+and yet, the practical use for me is worse than it was 10 years ago. Now
+all of a sudden, I can't rely on the system to be stable like it was. I
+don't remember the system bricking after an update, or the system becoming
+laggy after 10 days uptime. This may be the issue with Fedora, though.
+
+Over the years, I have daily driven many distributions. From Gentoo,
+Arch, Fedora to Ubuntu. My best memories were always with Debian. Just
+pure Debian always proved to be the most stable system. I never had
+issue or system breaking after an update. I can't say the same for Fedora.
+
+From the get-go, I had issues. I have an Nvidia card and even booting
+presented issues sometime. This never happened on other distributions,
+though they had their problems. Updating the system was basically an
+exercise in gambling. How come an operating system that boasts with
+the stability is so instable? And this was not isolated to my main
+machine. This also happened on my X220 ThinkPad with Fedora on.
+
+Shared dependencies were a mistake! I understand that disk space was
+limited back then. But this has given me more grief than any other
+thing. I am all in for AppImages or something like that. I don't care
+if these images are 10x bigger. Disk space now is plenty, and they
+solve the issue with "libFlac.8.so is missing" and I have version 12
+installed. Which comes with unnecessary symlinking, downloading of older
+versions and hoping that this will resolve the issue.
+
+Now, the biggest apologist of Linux will never admit this and even saying
+something is wrong with this is considered a mortal sin. I, however, am
+not concerned with cultist behaviors. This is bullshit! Things should be
+better than 10 years ago, not worse. And I don't care how much lipstick
+you put on this pig. After more than 20 years of using Linux as my main
+system, I think I have earned a badge that gives me the right to say
+the truth.
+
+Regardless of all this, I am still a massive fan. I still think Linux
+is probably the most unobtrusive operating system, bar none. But the
+complexity has gotten the best of it. It's bloated and too complicated
+at this point. Understandably, you can't have a modern operating system
+that competes with alternatives without sacrificing simplicity. But I
+still think that there is another way.
+
+One of the best aspects of Linux must be outstanding package manager
+support. Nevertheless, they are essentially solving a problem that should
+have been solved and done with years ago. The number of gymnastics
+that happen in the background for you to install a software is just
+mind-boggling. The dependency graphs are insane. And Snaps and Flatpaks
+tried to solve some of these things, but until a distribution comes out
+that is completely devoid of shared dependencies, we will still live in
+this purgatory.
+
+It would be an interesting exercise to make a prototype distribution
+that does not rely on shared objects, but has everything packed in
+AppImages. Probably a foolish endeavor, but maybe worth looking into. I
+sense this kind of distribution would be highly unusable. Interesting
+how far we have gotten.
+
+The year of the Linux desktop? I have strong doubts. We are in a worse
+state than we were. This is very similar to The Paradox of Choice. The
+more options we have, the worse it gets. Wayland competing with X. So
+many window managers, you just get lost. So many choices. I have no idea
+if this is even salvageable, or something new must be invented.
+
+Some interesting talks and videos
+
+- [Jonathan Blow on how an operating system should work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0uE_chSnV8)
+- [The Thirty Million Line Problem by Casey Muratori](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk)
+- [Avoiding a Shared Library Nightmare by John Biron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPAGVT4Ctt4)