alt Hacker NewsI don’t know anything about “hard/brittle” analogies for operating systems. What I do know is that Linux distributions don’t seem to have a coherent strategy for building an operating system with sensible defaults and a consistent design that makes it easy to use for non-technical users.
Linux developers seem to almost-universally believe that if the user doesn’t like it or it doesn’t make sense then the user will fix it themselves either via configuration files or patching the source code. That model works fine for users with a lot of knowledge and time on their hands. In other words, it’s an operating system for hobbyists.
MacOS, for all its faults, is still pretty easy to use (though not even close to the ease of use of Classic Mac OS 9 and earlier).
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You are encouraged to play with footguns on Linux, I do not do it and none of my family do it works fine for us. On "Linux desktop" one of the things you are not encouraged to play with is installation of programs. The Linux way is preferable that is why Apple and all the other are walking down the same path.
Not being able to install things sucks, but when you do you will easily destroy your nice shiny brittle desktop. The pebkac is strong here, but making the users enemies is a bad solution, this is why Google, Apple and MS are all bad desktops.
As I said I have been a Linux user my whole life. I know it works as a desktop but it works best with either people who do not care about instaling stuff, or thise who care enough to get it working.
Apple developers seem to almost-universally believe that if the user doesn’t like it or it doesn’t make sense then the user will... just have to learn to live with it.