Let Caeser have his awful stuff. We can all push for fun, and free computing.
At least Pottering isn't trying to extort loans from me when I start/stop a service.
False. The FOSS software that I personally use is less useful (on a practical technical level) on average than its technical equivalents.
And beyond my specific tools (which I admit could just be the bad parts of FOSS), FOSS software is near-universally bad (along with almost every other piece of software I've touched - this isn't a condemnation of FOSS, only a pointing out of the fact that it's not good, just better), and nowhere close to a "computing utopian dream". The amount of issues that I've found in open-source software wouldn't fit in a blog post, let alone an HN comment (although if anyone really wants I could provide a sampling).
You can say that some pieces of FOSS are better than their proprietary equivalents in a technical sense, sure - but I've never actually found a single piece of software, FOSS or not, that is anywhere close to "utopian" (or barely even "functioning").
Probably because of which fields you work in. But in software development, I'd say it is almost exclusively the case all over the board.
If you work in digital arts, then Blender is probably the best end-user application example I can think of.
I'm a software developer and have used the following pieces of software that were very non-utopian: gcc gdb sbcl vim emacs vscode atom tmux bash fish make cmake automake autotools m4 cpython pip mypy pyinstaller firefox gradle ant sbt chisel npm qmk (that is - everything I've touched). I also know that virtually everything related to webdev is just straight-up awful.
I've also used Blender and can testify from personal experience that it's bad.
What else is there?
The only thing that causes a comparatively bad experience on Linux is in part software availability or driver related, neither of which is the fault of the operating system itself.
I feel the same about a lot of apps in F-Droid now. Sometimes their functionality is not as complete or they're not as polished as their Google Play counterparts. But the ad/crapware and mandatory logins that is included in those apps take away a lot of usability now.
At that point I gladly give up some polish for a 2MB app that is fast and does just what I need over a bloated 100MB app with stupid animations, ads and tracking. My battery loves it too.
