[HN Gopher] 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop
___________________________________________________________________
2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop
Author : xrayarx
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-12-25 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justingarrison.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justingarrison.com)
| whateveracct wrote:
| MacOS and Windows treat their users like idiots. Since I have
| technical proficiency, I like to be able to use it. Using forked
| software, scripting, low-level config. It's frustrating how much
| of a pain in the ass that stuff can be on non-Linux desktop
| environments.
|
| That's my main motivation to using Linux as my daily driver (3
| years now).
| willnonya wrote:
| Lol. This is complete nonsense. Numbers that don't hold up,
| assertions which don't pass the smell test.
|
| Linux excels in invironments where people don't ever lnow they're
| using Linux. Servers, embedded and highly customized
| environments. For average users Linux is still too much of a
| disjointed mess with poor hardware support.
|
| I use multiple Linux distros daily and none of them would pass
| for a primetime ready desktop environment in any of my personal
| or professional environments. As much as I hate windows and Macos
| Linux just isn't up to the job of replacing them on the desktop.
| Luckily for them that is becoming less and and less relevant
| outside of the business environment.
|
| In the end Linux is still little more than a random collection of
| software loosely connected through an administrator centric
| framework.
| malkia wrote:
| When I was at Google (2014-2017) - The Linux (I think it was
| Ubuntu based) just worked. Granted it was mostly
| java/blaze/little r/js/go, no dedicated graphics chips us (I came
| there from gamedev background). It was working just fine, and we
| had option to use Cinnamon or something else.
|
| The only thing I remember is that it wasn't that easy (or maybe
| my memory does not serve me well) to "apt update" anything (and
| that makes sense). I think apt was going somehow through internal
| servers. All I remember is that "apt-file" wasn't working or was
| prevented from doing so.
|
| Nonetheless - never had problem with the distro/whatever, and TBH
| never cared what linux is there - as compiler/everything else got
| somehow in, and you just carry on your work in
| Eclipse/CLion/JetBrains/Chrome/Firefox/etc.
| malkia wrote:
| Actually now that I think, I might've had NVIDIA card of sorts.
| But what I meant to say, I never needed/care what GPU I have
| (unlike before), so it must've worked fine somehow. Maybe I got
| once or twice the machine to crash, and it was all the time on.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| If you click through to the link, you'll see that the results add
| up to 150%. That should be a sign that something odd is going on
| with this survey result and we need to interpret it with caution.
|
| The question was "What is _the primary_ operating system in which
| you work. " (Emphasis mine.) The question itself implies that we
| should only be able to pick one, and yet the results clearly
| indicate that more than one was allowed. Most likely, people were
| listing the OSes they use a lot. A great many of us developers
| use a commercial OS locally, but also interact with Linux servers
| or containers on a regular basis.
|
| That said, there's no simple interpretation of that "40% use
| Linux" number that passes the smell test. It's implausibly high
| for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation
| OS, and it's implausibly low for the number of developers who
| regularly work in Linux. More likely, what this number represents
| is that different respondents interpreted the question, which
| appears to have been ambiguously framed, in different and
| incompatible ways, and so the result is statistically
| meaningless.
| dmix wrote:
| Yep, Previous years = 100%, so the question has changed somehow
|
| https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo...
|
| I guess you could use Windows at work and Linux at home (or
| viseversa).
|
| I'd bet some people also say Linux becayse they have
| homeservers and other secondary uses besides their primary
| driver.
| layer8 wrote:
| Also, "the primary operating system in which you work" doesn't
| necessarily imply desktop. People could be using a Windows or
| Mac desktop and then primarily work in Linux via remote
| terminals and/or VMs.
| echelon wrote:
| Now that I'm no longer forced to use a Mac at work, all of my
| work happens on Linux. I only marginally touch Windows and Mac
| for testing and builds.
|
| If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and
| software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too.
|
| I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux
| back.
| sarnowski wrote:
| Microsoft just released Linux support (Ubuntu) in their MDM
| Intune. It's very barebones yet but provides first
| fundamental capabilities.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su...
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-
| help/enrol...
| midasuni wrote:
| Has been for me every year for the last 22.
|
| Occasionally I Remote Desktop into a windows machine or show
| someone something in their MacBook, it's exhausting how bad the
| experience is. Random hangs, applications crashing, lvl of basic
| functions like virtual desktops, and don't get me started on the
| Mac trackpad being the wrong way round.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient,
| but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with.
| Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires
| creating a bash script. Software updates rarely work. There are
| random crashes that take hours to fix. I'm about to give in the
| towel and get a Mac.
|
| I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but
| there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a certain
| amount of technical skills.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| On the flip side, Linux is infinitely more useful to me than
| Windows. My desktop's motherboard's onboard graphics card
| failed but I have an external graphics card. Windows is unable
| to boot because of the failed onboard card. Ubuntu worked
| absolutely fine. I had to modify 1-2 lines in a configuration
| to prevent Ubuntu from loading the onboard graphics at all,
| otherwise it would start off funky.
|
| And MacOS is just too slow. There's far too many animations and
| it's extremely difficult to multitask in a useful way.
|
| It's like Apple has basically been creating MacOS features
| based on 2 criteria's. Either so they look good in a demo, or
| they're a replica of an iOS app.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _I can get it to work because the terminal doesn 't scare me,
| but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a
| certain amount of technical skills._
|
| Then it's a good thing we are on hacker news!!
| bb88 wrote:
| 1. Redhat standardized on RPM. Debian/Ubuntu had dpkg. Arch has
| their AUR packages. Slack used tarballs.
|
| 2. KDE and Gnome created two different rivaling GUI's. Never
| merged and split the development community down the middle.
|
| 3. There are N different GUI libraries: FLTK, GTK+, QT,
| wxWidgets, etc.
|
| 4. There are 3 different cross platform packaging solutions:
| Snap, Flatpak, AppImage
|
| 5. GPU and Wifi drivers can be a pain to get running sometimes,
| even if they're prepackaged for you. (Hell, my Nvidia drivers
| crash my windows laptop all the time).
|
| 6. Support for hardware sometimes requires third party
| libraries (solaar for logitech, etc).
|
| 7. Some software only supports Mac/Windows, but Mac won't
| legally let you install their OS in a VM, (not that it stops
| some people). If you're a business you're forced to use windows
| anyway for niche software that won't run with Wine.
|
| 8. Battery life on laptops typically is worse than a
| comparative windows/mac system -- because windows and mac tweak
| more settings for power and performance.
| krick wrote:
| Actually, I don't imagine switching to Windows or anything
| _because_ I find writing a bash-script much easier than
| constantly dealing with the fact some things just aren 't
| (realistically) configurable at all, and I absolutely hate
| dropdown menus within menus and having to use a mouse for
| everything.
|
| That said, Windows/MacOS are MUCH more stable. Granted, I
| didn't use them nearly as much, as I use Linux (mainly Ubuntu
| and mainly LTS versions), but I basically didn't encounter any
| hardware-specific bugs at all for the last couple of years. Or
| some deep ecosystem problem, like all this Pulseaudio bullshit.
|
| Linux is really frustrating, and I'm starting to actually lose
| hope we'll live to see it becoming, you know, _usable_.
| taurath wrote:
| It always feels like a build-it-yourself vehicle. Using it as a
| daily driver when you need to get to work on time is not
| advised. Even when you get it running for a while, the breakage
| is inevitable, and you'll be under the hood. It is really cool
| if you love to tinker. Its an OS with a lower level of
| abstraction, and one that is less productive overall for most
| users, especially anyone who needs things to just work
| consistently.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I work on Linux for Linux. All I use is terminals, jetbrains
| and Firefox, plus a million command line tools. And maybe the
| occasional gimp or VLC. Nothing ever breaks for me. I've been
| dist-upgrading the same install for over ten years now.
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| Never had any issues with Ubuntu past 16.04, at least not
| anything requiring bash scripts or issues with restarting.
| Still wouldn't recommend it to non-technical users though, but
| that's because 1) They'd have to let me install it for them,
| and 2) That would probably lead to me being tech support, which
| I don't have time for.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| All operating systems are exhausting.* I don't understand why
| Ubuntu updates would break anything, they've been so reliable
| lately that I even let my mom update her computer herself. But
| anyway, if you think they're bad, wait until you see mac OS's.
|
| * Unless your usage is so light that all your computing can be
| done on ChromeOS or iOS, but even those are plenty annoying.
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| > Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed
| requires creating a bash script
|
| Indeed, I never realized there does not seem to be a Ubuntu
| system setting for adjusting the mouse wheel sensitivity.
| Apparently, standard solution requires installing ,,imwheel".
|
| Lol. Weird. Then, again, in 15 years using a scroll wheel mouse
| I never had the need to adjust its sensitivity.
| rietta wrote:
| Not my experience at all. Been running Ubuntu LTS for work for
| years and updates are just about bulletproof.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Novice Linux users often make the mistake of adding third
| party repos to their package manager, which almost invariably
| causes trouble down the line. Some distros (for instance
| Debian) have a culture of discouraging this practice, while
| others (particularly Ubuntu) have a user culture which
| encourages it.
|
| This is easily the most common reason for updates breaking.
| RPM and dpkg are both nigh bullet proof, and you can
| generally count on most distros to keep their own package
| repo in good order. Dependency resolution between out of sync
| and uncoordinated package repos is where things start to
| break down.
| gumboza wrote:
| Yep. I don't use Linux on the desktop simply because I don't
| care enough to be assed with arguing with it. Thus I would
| rather swap my kidney for some Apple crap and put up with the
| trade off which is works vs flexibility.
| fearface wrote:
| I fully agree to that experience. Next thing I tried was to
| have three screens with different DPI's. It's possible (that's
| a lie, since you can't adjust DPI and scaling properly in Linux
| at all, you'll end up with a half working ugly system and
| irrational behavior when you move windows around), but sadly my
| notebook needs to work in more than one place...
|
| I've invited a a long time Linux user who claimed to never had
| any problems whatsover to have a look. His verdict was that I
| should have only one external screen and use the same screen in
| the different places.
|
| This stuff works with Windows and Mac out of the box.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Exhausting compared to what?
|
| If you think that Ubuntu has poor user-friendlyness wait until
| you try this new "Windows 10" thing everyone seems to be on
| about.
|
| You have to click through about ten pages of menus just to set
| up the network, and if you get anything wrong the error message
| is just along the lines of either "Sorry, that didn't work.
| Please try again!" or "Error -X8004a119af3c occurred", neither
| of which are particularly helpful. It doesn't come with a
| usable shell. It doesn't even come with ssh, or zip, or Python.
|
| You're expected to interact with the entire thing by clicking
| on page after page after page of little coloured squares that
| aren't meaningfully labelled. Why is a user interface designed
| like a 1980s "My First Video Game" project supposed to be good?
| sekh60 wrote:
| You mean Windows 11, 10 is old now.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I mean no disrespect but Ubuntu really, really isn't user
| friendly. There is no other distribution that introduced so
| many headaches for me. I think Ubuntu is coasting on there
| reputation from years ago.
| jug wrote:
| I have to disagree here and provide another experience.
|
| I regularly revisit Linux for desktop (like every five years)
| and this time I moved 100% from Windows 11 to Fedora 37 and
| it's been a delight. It's not only a good desktop OS now: I
| find it better than Windows. Why?
|
| * Performance: I think it's more responsive, like the file
| manager. It doesn't have an innate dependency on scanning every
| single thing for viruses that is hard to disable per design. I
| think my SSD loves me now.
|
| * Ads integrated in the OS: Well. It doesn't have these.
|
| * Customizability: Even GNOME that is not known for this can
| adapt to the user much better than Windows 11. Windows 11 is
| terrible and takes steps backwards in this regard. For example
| GNOME Tweaks + Dash to Dock and I have a Mac-like dock. It's
| like the Mac dock but more customizable, and it's easy to
| customize too. Hell I can even customize FreeType to choose
| between ClearType style rendering or macOS Quartz-like
| rendering (respect LCD pixel boundaries vs respect font design
| - you can only have one).
|
| * Apps: Linux culture is to rely on repositories for apps.
| Windows isn't. They have winget and Microsoft Store now but
| it's still an unresolved cultural problem where only a subset
| of apps are found there, and if they do, they more often than
| not do system-wide changes anyway. Linux has nice, easy to use,
| stores like Mac. Linux is also miles ahead with containerized
| app systems like Flatpak or Snap where UWP support (Windows
| counterpart) is more than shaky in the big picture, and I'd
| even say a failure.
|
| * Mouse Scroll Speed: Is set in GNOME settings.
|
| * Software Updates: Have still always worked for the past few
| months.
|
| * Crashes: None yet! Other than app-specific ones but so far
| only "silent" stuff that don't really affect me that seems to
| relate to the file manager and thumbnailing corrupt h.264
| videos? (a guess from the logs)
|
| I guess your mileage MAY still vary here but as for me, this is
| clearly a better and more user friendly OS now than Windows 11.
|
| I'm not a Linux nut either. I was positively surprised and this
| is the first time in twenty years I've finally felt fine with
| moving from Windows.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| There's no singular 'linux experience', all the problems you
| list are expected problems with some software on linux, but
| work just fine with other software systems on linux.
| Unfortunately many of the defaults chosen by Ubuntu are very
| poor and give bad first impressions. I think that recommending
| Ubuntu is an anachronism from the mid to late 00s.
|
| Experience makes it all much easier, simply because you learn
| which software to avoid. Having this experience, linux for me
| is stress free and low hassle. But if you don't want to
| accumulate that experience, if you want to stay on a default
| track with the right choices made for you already, then you
| probably should go with your gut and get a Mac.
|
| Anyway, the "year of the linux desktop" is a joke. The very
| premise is an old meme that nobody should take seriously,
| nobody can even agree what it should mean. The year linux
| became viable for desktop use depends on the person doing the
| considering. For some it was years ago, for others it will be
| never.
| hyperpape wrote:
| > There's no singular 'linux experience'
|
| True, there's two:
|
| 1. Complaining about your experience, only to be told that
| someone else doesn't have problems because they're better at
| it than you.
|
| 2. Being the guy who says he's better.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| And then there's this guy, who gets mad at people who share
| positive experiences because he thinks the discussion is
| the rightful territory of those who want to complain.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| The apparently innocent "sharing" of positive experiences
| - so sweet! so nice! - is from Linux self-identifiers all
| too often a very crude backhanded "you're wrong about the
| problems you claim to have with Linux, and if you're not
| wrong, then you're at least thick or lazy".
| LarryMullins wrote:
| You've pulled these insults out of thin air. I have no
| animosity towards Windows or Mac users, nor for those
| that might hypothetically like Linux but understandably
| have better things to do with their time than learn the
| ins and outs of it.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| Apologies if that seemed directed at you personally,
| which wasn't my intent. Attribute it to HN trigger-
| finger.
|
| It is a general and widespread phenomenon though that
| anyone who has been less than positive towards Linux on
| HN or anywhere will recognise. I don't think it reflects
| animosity towards users of mainstream OS's so much as
| defensiveness, particularly from strongly self-identified
| Linux advocates. Which is all a bit daft, because it's
| (a) perfectly obvious that Linux has plenty of problems
| (how could something as vast as an OS not?), and (b) that
| doesn't make it any less the clear choice for some
| classes of user (like myself).
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Sure, as I say in my first comment, there is a lot of
| software for linux that just isn't very good, and there
| is a lot of bad advice and bad defaults floating around.
| Separating the wheat from the chaff is a daunting task to
| any new user, and I think most will fail and feel
| dejected unless they have a strong personal motive to
| stick with it and learn through experience. It's
| definitely not for everybody and I don't expect it ever
| will be.
|
| But if somebody does stick with it and gain that
| experience, it's often possible for them to find a
| combination of software and settings that earnestly work
| well for them personally. It's not as though linux users
| are all masochists, the reason I continue using Linux is
| because for me, it's lower stress and hassle than
| anything else. I learned to use it when I was younger and
| thought that tinkering with such software was fun. That
| allure wore off years ago and my present self wouldn't
| have the patience to learn it all over again, but Linux
| remains the best choice for me given the experience I
| already have with it.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| I use Linux (Fedora in my case) as my primary (actually
| sole non-mobile right now) OS, with software dev as my
| focus. Its the best for my purpose, though I've used both
| MacOS and Windows extensively so I have a reasonable
| awareness of the relative tradeoffs.
|
| I do find the Linux community often insufferable though.
| Also often extremely helpful however. I guess communities
| also have their tradeoffs.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| At this point in my life I have almost lost all faith in
| people sharing an honest assessment of anything. The Linux
| is hard trope is really starting to bore me. I get it
| things may be different on Linux/Mac/Windows but most UI
| things are pretty easy to accomplish everywhere. Should I
| complain that windows is hard because find-xargs-grep isn't
| available in the default install even though it is pretty
| easy to install the software?
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I think that recommending Ubuntu is an anachronism from the
| mid to late 00s.
|
| What would you recommend as a modern-day user-friendly Linux
| experience? I've been looking for something not too demanding
| to put on an old X220.
| severine wrote:
| MX-Linux, hands down. The most user friendly desktop distro
| I've used.
| uneekname wrote:
| Not sure about performance on an X220, but I've loved
| Fedora workstation edition. The default Gnome setup is
| pretty user-friendly in my opinion, a there's a decent
| amount of support to be found online.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I'm not certain, but "needing a bash script to change the
| mouse scroll speed" sounds like the kind of inanity I've
| come to expect from Gnome. KDE is probably a better
| choice for somebody with this complaint.
|
| It might also be a Wayland and/or libinput limitation.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| To techies who are interested in using Linux, I personally
| recommend OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it has up-to-date
| packages and is relatively stable. Debian Stable is a good
| choice if you're insensitive to outdated packages. Debian
| Sid is alright, but in my experience has more breakage than
| Tumbleweed and recovery from that breakage requires more
| expertise (Tumbleweed automatically creates btrfs snapshots
| before and after every package manager action, making it
| easy to roll back any mistakes or bad upgrades.)
|
| To the average Joe Blow, I don't recommend any Linux
| distro. I only give recommendations about Linux to people
| who already want to use Linux for their own reasons; I
| don't evangelize it to people who are already content with
| Windows or Macs. For such people, Windows or Macs are a
| better choice.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Fedora. If you don't like Gnome, the Fedora KDE spin is
| almost as polished
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Linux mint is brain dead simple. Everything just works.
| Same version runs on a 14 year old laptop as well as it
| does on a newer Epyc deskside workstation. There are others
| like it, but Mint is really quite simple to use, and quite
| a productive environment.
|
| There are others like it as well.
|
| I've been running linux on my desktops/laptops and servers
| for the past 24 years. I've not run into problems from a
| desktop/laptop perspective for the last 15 years. Some
| have, but its rare.
| blangk wrote:
| Mint or manjaro
| sekh60 wrote:
| Agreeing with others, Fedora, partifularly the KDE spin if
| you want somethings a little Windows GUI like.
| whateveracct wrote:
| It's funny. My NixOS machines (desktop and two laptops) have
| had minimal breakage while upgrading. And the breakage was easy
| to fix with a small git commit.
|
| My macOS (Intel MBP) and Windows (Dell laptop) end up with
| something borked by updates pretty much like clockwork. I
| suppose I am a poweruser of those systems by nature of being a
| dev, but something always tends to stop working.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| My T440s has seen Qubes-OS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop-OS, Mint
| [Gnome, i3wm, KDE, Cinnamon). Pop-OS is my favorite on if I
| want a usable nvidia gpu with hybrid graphics. The only issues
| I had with most updates was a full boot partition because I
| skip cleanups.
|
| I have a lot more issues with Windows moving stuff. Settings
| are a mess W7 -> W10 -> W11.
|
| Qubes is still my go-to if I have to deal with malware infested
| things.
|
| I'm full time (95%) on Fedora KDE (Desktop Ryzen 2000, RX500).
| I've had some quirks with Veracrypt and an external drive and
| crashes related to running out of memory (I'm sure DotA2 leaks
| memory since the performance gets worse over time)
|
| I've checked my desktop for mouse scroll speed and actually
| don't have that option. I did change my scroll speed in one
| case which is Firefox (about:config =>
| mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y = 85)
| jonathanoliver wrote:
| I've been running Arch Linux for about 2 years two high-powered
| desktop machines (home and work). I run `sudo pacman -Syu`
| every day and I've only had one video driver update (nvidia)
| that broke me. I had to login from the CLI (which I'm using all
| the time anyway) to rollback and pin the version.
|
| It's been an incredibly smooth experience.
|
| That said, the one thing that I still haven't migrated over to
| fully is Linux on a laptop. I'm macOS on an Apple MacBook Pro
| 14" (powered by Apple's M1 Pro).
| [deleted]
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I've been running desktop Linux since the 90s, and it's been my
| primary desktop since XP was first released (XP was what drove
| my to Linux) and I can count on one hand the number of times
| I've needed to write a shell script to fix basic functionality.
|
| I'm not taking anything away from your experiences though. Just
| offering another data point.
|
| I do get the appeal of macOS. I use it for work but I honestly
| find it more frustrating than pleasurable but that's purely
| because I don't always agree with Apples design choices.
|
| ...And that is the real problem with macOS for me. If you like
| their default experience then it's a much more pleasurable
| platform to use. But if there's any significant part of Apples
| design choices you don't get alone with, then you're often shit
| out of luck. Trying to bend macOS to behave any way outside of
| Apples vision can be more frustrating than dealing with Linux
| quirks.
|
| That all said, I am in love with the battery life on the ARM
| MacBook Pros. I've managed to go a full working day without
| plugging the MBP in. There isn't any comparative device out
| there for Linux.
|
| So in the end I find Linux for personal devices and macOS for
| work is a great compromise for me.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I get about 4 hours productive use out of my work Macbook M1
| pro (32 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe) on battery. I get about 3.5 hours
| productive use out of my Zen2 HP Omen laptop (64 GB RAM, 3TB
| NVME). Though I have to reduce the brightness of the Zen to
| get better lifetime.
|
| I am a bit of a power user, running large builds, analytics,
| and other things, so its not surprising to me that I get less
| than others. I would like to see an all-day battery laptop
| for people like me, though I suspect it will be a few more
| years.
|
| Oh, and the original work windows laptop I had (fully
| corporate controlled) with 32GB RAM and 500GB NVMe barely
| lasted an hour on battery. And it BSODed frequently.
|
| I'd still prefer a Linux work laptop, but the Mac is at least
| a poor-mans version of it. Windows, even with WSL2, was
| horrible.
| spatley wrote:
| For high load activities like builds and analytics, I use a
| server, either on the LAN or in the cloud. It gives me a
| better local performance experience and makes my jobs more
| reproducible for others to run. It for sure includes the
| added complexity of aws-cli scripts and ssh stuff though so
| YMMV.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I have the same feelings about OSX, though. It's probably a
| result of familiarity more than anything else.
|
| Take mouse speed, for example. I remember this being incredibly
| difficult in OSX:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/7bg3gg/removing_...
|
| On linux it's just a menu option in a gui, or a single command.
|
| Every platform has plenty of bugs, but I find it is
| consistently easier to figure out how to change/fix things on
| Linux than on OSX or Windows. OSX is probably the _worst_
| platform as soon as you 're doing something Apple didn't
| anticipate (or, is actively blocking you from doing).
| Aisen8010 wrote:
| My experience is similar. Anything more complicated than the
| basic stuff like surfing the web is hard.
|
| Things are getting better in the Linux desktop, but in a slow
| pace. I had some hope with the PopOs (I don't know what they
| are doing nowadays).
| geysersam wrote:
| Have the totally opposite experience. Ubuntu has a quite
| minimal settings panel, that's good.
|
| Windows settings are much more difficult to navigate. The
| layout / structure has changed a lot between updates. Settings
| are hidden deep within preferences menus with multiple tabs.
|
| Google for things and you find ad ridden pages with screenshots
| and pop-ups about clicking here, there, then here.
|
| It's a mess.
| Legogris wrote:
| > Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as
| changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash
| script.
|
| This is Ubuntu and GNOME both having adopted unfortunate
| strategies wrt UX in recent years. They seem to be trying to
| emulate the Apple "we know best, take it or leave it", removing
| customization and freezing the UI, but without the resources
| spent on getting it "perfect" for the majority.
|
| KDE has supported changing mouse scroll from the UI for some
| time. Linux Mint (including its Debian edition) with MATE or
| Cinnamon, or BudgieWM are other fine choices for non-terminal
| users. Fedora has been picking up as a general all-round
| desktop distro as Ubuntu has been falling from grace.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Now-Has-Wayland-S-Speed
| Gigachad wrote:
| >Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed
| requires creating a bash script.
|
| I just checked on my Macbook and I couldn't find any option to
| change scroll speed. So it's more that on Linux you _can_
| create a bash script to do just about anything even when it's
| not a feature the OS has. Unlike others where it's either a
| simple UI button or you just can't do it.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-your-
| mouses-...
|
| It's under Accessibility.
| cdfuller wrote:
| I was able to find it on the latest macos by opening up
| preferences and searching for "scroll". It's under
| Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad/Mouse Options
| ckolkey wrote:
| You definitely can for both mouse and trackpad
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _If I 'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically
| proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to
| work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll
| speed requires creating a bash script._
|
| A. I'm looking at pointer speed section in Mouse Preference in
| Control Center. It's pretty simple. It give acceleration and
| sensitivy.
|
| B. Just about every GUI aims for decent defaults and doesn't
| allow endless customization and such customization generally
| isn't a beginner task.
|
| I've used the Linux desktop for ten years (Mint then Ubuntu-
| Mate). Haven't customized anything with a bash script for many
| years. It is currently clearer how to do things than Windows -
| it's fricken TWO start menus jumping over each other.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Should have been clearer: mousewheel scroll speed, which
| there's no way to control from the GUI.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Sure, but that is a fairly obscure setting that I don't
| think merits your earlier build-up _" Something as simple
| as..."_.
|
| On the one hand, I'd certainly admit Linux has "warts".
| It's GUI is perfectly usable and clear - it's more now what
| one is doing than the horror that is Windows 11 imo (and
| I'm working on that occasionally now). But the warts of
| Linux are accentuated by the OS attracting a certain kind
| of "OCD" user who will tell you how terrible it is for
| lacking X utterly obscure feature.
| mboto wrote:
| I agree with the parent comment. This isn't that niche a
| requirement and its just one of huge list.
|
| Dismissing people's needs isnt the way to solve this.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Nah, it's pretty inexcusable for Gnome to not surface
| such a setting. LXQt's mouse configuration GUI lets you
| configure it, and LXQt has no more than a handful of
| people working on it. Gnome has more developer resources
| and could implement this easily, but they also have an
| attitude problem and bad priorities.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah, the clear problem here is GNOME and it's arrogant
| disregard for users... Which I guess really is
| historically in line with Linux culture, unfortunately.
| Legogris wrote:
| GNOME and Ubuntu are not representative of "Linux
| culture".
| niek_pas wrote:
| Mousewheel scroll speed is not a niche feature.
| tom_ wrote:
| It's obscure on Linux, perhaps! Meanwhile this setting is
| in the control panel on both windows and macos. No shell
| scripting required.
| Certhas wrote:
| Is there such a setting in Windows/macOS? (genuine
| question, haven't used either much in years)
| [deleted]
| tom_ wrote:
| Yes. It's in the GUI in both cases.
| petra wrote:
| result #2 in google:
| https://www.thewindowsclub.com/change-mouse-scroll-speed-
| win...
| lewantmontreal wrote:
| A scroll wheel speed of one line at a time is not a good
| default.
| willnonya wrote:
| I haven't needed a bash script to customize anything but I
| have had ti spend countless hours in the terminal making
| seemingly mundane software and hardware work.
|
| Just because you've used Linux-training wheels edition and
| don't remember having problems isn't grounds to dismiss the
| large number of people who do have issues with Linux.
|
| I also find Linux exhausting. I use it daily in servers and
| containers. It excels from an administrative perspective. I
| avoid using it as a client desktop pc at all cost because
| that is not where it excels.
| sophacles wrote:
| Observation:
|
| I started daily driving linux in the 90s. When I switched to a
| mac around 2010 if found Mac exhausting. It had different usage
| patterns than I was used to. Some of my most used features
| weren't there. Having a reasonably usable shell experience
| required lots of tweaking and macports then brew. When I
| switched back to linux ~5 years ago there was a while where
| getting back into the linux groove was exhausting because I
| wasn't used to it, but not as exhausting as switching to mac
| because I already knew it, just needed to get back in practice.
|
| Every time i use windows (which is rarely, once a year maybe) i
| find it exhausting.
|
| I propose that it's not the OS that's the exhausting part -
| it's the switching to a new environment with different
| workflows and thought processes around it that is exhausting.
| Similar to how it's much harder to get familiar with a codebase
| in a new (to you) language than in a language you are
| proficient in - but both cases can be taxing.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| This is something those "defending" the harder-to-use/learn
| thing always bring up. As if affordances must always be
| relative to prior knowledge. But they're not (always) - some
| things just are harder to use than others (at least relative
| to a specific meaning of 'use').
|
| Programming languages - you could argue Rust isn't hard to
| learn, by pretending that everyone claiming it is are just
| having trouble adjusting from javascript. But that breaks
| down when you realise the Rust learners finding it hard are
| actually polyglot programmers who are finding it harder than
| all the many other languages, in multiple paradigms, they
| have already successfully learned.
|
| Similar with Linux - I find it harder to 'use' in a certain
| sense (the sense most people mean - which is getting all the
| ordinary hardware & software stuff working) than the others.
| You'll tell me it's unfamiliarity, but it's just not - my
| first Linux was Slackware on floppies, and I've used it
| alongside Windows and MacOS now for decades. I choose it for
| my primary OS for other reasons, but ease of use certainly
| isn't among them. I still have to fiddle more with it .
| scrapcode wrote:
| I agree. When things are working - it's great. And having to
| dig in to get things working right is okay, too. However, when
| there are issues with hardware, it seems that the solutions
| that are in the ether are pretty hackish and you have to spend
| the afternoon trying multiple "fixes" to get things to work
| again.
|
| I have to use Windows for work, and I ended up just throwing in
| the towel this year and switching back to the dark side for the
| time being because I have to get shit done.
| [deleted]
| pjmlp wrote:
| Playing numbers from developers survey, while even Steam places
| it at around 2%.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I mean Steam is probably biased in the opposite direction since
| gamers are clearly going to be more likely to use Windows.
|
| But yeah clearly not nearly as insanely skewed as these
| numbers. Statcounter puts it at 2.8%.
| alexklarjr wrote:
| "The Year of Linux on the Desktop of Developers who bothered to
| register on stackoverflow".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| These comments are hilarious.
|
| Linux user community: Linux has been fine for casual users for
| years! Give it to your grandma, it's not a problem!
|
| Also Linux user community: Wait, you used an _nVidia_ GPU in your
| build? What kind of idiot scrub are you?
|
| If there's one thing I've seen that's consistent with Linux users
| over the last two decades, it's been blaming users for all their
| Linux-related problems.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Or "You mean you want to run two monitors with different DPIs?
| What kind of oddball user are you, anyway?" Linux display
| stack's treatment of monitor DPI is basically "throw our hands
| up and let apps like Firefox make it work!"
| reisse wrote:
| I think you gave this example as a joke, but here is a quote
| from one of the Wayland developers:
|
| > I would suggest that this setting [UI scale] needs to be a
| global and not a per-output thing. If it was a per-output
| thing, windows moving between different monitors would
| probably have problems (text size changes while window size
| does not?). It is hard to imagine how it would work as a per-
| output setting, for me at least.
|
| See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-
| protocols/-/i... , the original issue and the discussion
| gives quite some insights in how Linux developers see the
| world.
| devmunchies wrote:
| Linux scrub Q, does NVIDIA not use any Linux for themselves? Or
| is it a financial reason to ignore Linux?
| pram wrote:
| I think they don't care about the userspace at all. I assume
| from their perspective, most (all?) of the Linux use-case is
| for their expensive cards to be running in servers doing
| CUDA.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Yet CUDA still basically only runs on RHEL and Ubuntu LTS.
|
| (tbf to Nvidia tho, their support is improving and with big
| tech putting a lot of weight behind cloud compute the
| problem will likely resolve itself)
| whateveracct wrote:
| I have two nvidia machines and they work fine on NixOS.
| Including prime on my laptop!
| jerrygenser wrote:
| Ironic for me. 2019, 2021 and half of 2022 were the years that I
| went all in on Ubuntu for desktop. It was an overall awesome
| experience as a developer.... and then Zoom and Slack started
| crashing randomly or having weird bugs where I'd needed to
| restart the app or even the machine in order to get them working
| again.
|
| 2022 is the year I switched back to windows as my development
| experience with WSL2 + being able to use Zoom and Slack without
| them crashing or getting random bugs.
|
| Even running Linux GUI apps works well on Windows. Run evince
| file.pdf from the wsl2 command line and evince opens.
|
| The one thing that doesn't integrate well is linux disk
| encryption utilities and windows. I wish I could use
| LUKS/cryptsetup but ended up giving up and using Bitlocker.
| kibwen wrote:
| Note that you don't even need apps, you can just use Zoom and
| Slack from your web browser. (For Zoom especially, nobody
| should be trusting their native client in the first place after
| their security debacles. Your browser is a convenient security
| boundary.) If your browser locks up to the point where it
| requires you to restart your machine, that sounds like a much
| more serious problem.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The Linux CLI is a dominate user interface I use at work, it is
| also just called bash (well, that's the default shell anyways). I
| have never tried an actual Linux desktop at work, web and native
| Mac applications are still dominate there (besides the CLI).
| TylerE wrote:
| The cli existed when Linus was still in diapers.
|
| Even Bash predates Linux by years.
|
| There is zero that running a bash Shell has to do with "Linux"
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Then I am glad I missed it.
|
| I spend my days fixing other people's Linux problems, I don't
| wish to fix my own on my own time.
|
| I still love the OS, but only for Docker and Kubernetes. I'll run
| a mature desktop OS with a plan over Linux, possibly Windows.
| kewrkewm53 wrote:
| I've been running Linux Mint for years on both laptops
| (Thinkpads) and desktop, it hasn't been any more trouble than
| MacOS or Windows. Things just work out of the box for the needs
| of a basic home-office user & programmer.
|
| I think it's just important to pick the right distro. RHEL which
| I use at work is giving me way more trouble.
| smsm42 wrote:
| So, this person called it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29746655
| sfsylvester wrote:
| Any clue on what distros are causing the growth? First I've heard
| of all this.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| Steam Deck + SteamOS is a catalyst in the making. You pretty
| much have to use Flatpak for application installation otherwise
| you risk your installs getting wiped out when Steam does a
| distro upgrade. You get a managed desktop experience with the
| setup. When you couple the Steam Deck with a good dock you have
| a great desktop computing experience.
| retinaros wrote:
| windows?
| devteambravo wrote:
| Can 2nd this one, I tried Mint and Slackware this year, just
| because of the Win11 app checker thing kept popping and
| reminding me that i don't want another few years worth of BS
| like that.
| pid-1 wrote:
| Article says that doesn't include WSL / Docker
| Sirened wrote:
| It's a joke about people moving to Linux not because it's
| gotten any better but because Windows has been getting
| worse
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't think that's what GP meant with their comment.
| _dain_ wrote:
| steam deck
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Nah, not enough shipping to move the needle
| jupp0r wrote:
| Professional developers use Steam Deck as their main machine?
| I have the wrong job it seems!
| ekianjo wrote:
| Steam Deck is not a distro. SteamOS is.
| tux wrote:
| Not sure how accurate this is, but you can take a look on
| wikipedia. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...
| [deleted]
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Strange article trying to extrapolate a very biased subpopulation
| and grasping at other aspects to claim this year was "the year of
| Linux on the desktop". Unix was already dominating anything non-
| personal and non-mobile. Personal use outside enthusiasts and
| devs is still a blip on the radar.
|
| If anyone thinks otherwise, ask yourself how Windows continues to
| get away with such consumer-unfriendly practices.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Linux != Unix
| rascul wrote:
| While that's true, there is an exception for Huawei EulerOS
| 2.0 on Huawei KunLun Mission Critical Server.
|
| https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3622.htm
|
| I don't think it was renewed, though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Unix has been absolutely dominant on mobile for years now.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Try to write a pure POSIX applications on either iOS or
| Android.
|
| https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/fall2016/atlidakis
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not the same thing though, is it? Even desktop Linux
| is not technically POSIX compliant.
| tmpburning wrote:
| But Android and iOS are complete nightmares in this
| regard.
| Arbortheus wrote:
| Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability,
| simplicity, and productivity, that can reliably be updated
| without the boot partition getting full, random things like
| thunderbolt docks not working, or sleep states being faulty (or
| the machine not working properly after waking from sleep), or
| external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling
| working properly when you have two monitors with different
| resolutions?
|
| Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and
| they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.
| blensor wrote:
| I believe the bigger "problems" happen when a random laptop is
| used instead of the few that are rock solidly supported by
| major distros. I am the same BTW, I usually buy a laptop that
| maybe kinda supported and then cross my fingers and hope that
| it works. Then I start fixing those issues that can be fixed or
| create little workarounds around those that can't. For my wife
| I just bought a Dell XPS and that was that, no tweaks or
| workarounds necessary.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I occasionally try a Linux distro on a new computer that I'm
| building, like Ubuntu and Mint, and so far I've never been able
| to get it running satisfactorily without any major problems.
|
| Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania
| setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display
| resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues
| there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen
| interstitial is very annoying.
| choeger wrote:
| Pick a T-series thinkpad with an AMD CPU/GPU combo and the
| latest fedora. Done.
|
| Don't forget that MacOS ships with very Limited hardware, too.
| Arbortheus wrote:
| Funnily enough, this is the exact spec of laptops (except
| with Nvidia GPUs) that all of my colleagues who have had
| these problems use.
| fsh wrote:
| Not surprising, since Nvidia is famous for terrible Linux
| support. I couldn't get scaling to work on my desktop with
| an Nvidia GPU, but my T-series Thinkpad (AMD CPU and GPU)
| works perfectly fine. In fact, sleep works _better_ than on
| Windows since it doesn 't do the stupid battery-draining
| "Modern Standby". If I send it to sleep on Linux, it
| actually stays asleep until I open the lid.
| hbogert wrote:
| Sleep was broken for a year on those with the amd platform.
| Based on 4 laptops t14s gen 2 iirc.
|
| Latest kernels seem to fix it. But tbh I felt like a fool
| handing those things to our freelancers.
| surrTurr wrote:
| Fedora Workstation
| [deleted]
| pizza234 wrote:
| > that can reliably be updated without the boot partition
| getting full
|
| I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra
| kernels and don't use the system provided ones.
|
| Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided)
| kernels.
|
| Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition
| for `/boot`, so there's no risk.
|
| I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was
| long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier).
|
| > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working
| properly after waking from sleep)
|
| This problem can depend on two things.
|
| S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times
| (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected
| standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!)
| doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo
| dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the
| producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how
| Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables).
|
| If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the
| producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a
| bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react.
|
| Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth
| giving a shot.
|
| I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a
| chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped
| drivers -> small user base).
|
| > random things like thunderbolt docks not working
|
| I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem.
|
| > external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling
| working properly when you have two monitors with different
| resolutions
|
| I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered
| "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody
| mess, and I think it's not related to drivers.
|
| To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver
| cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros
| adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
| For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either -
| this may still take some time.
| reisse wrote:
| > In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for
| example, if they patch the ACPI tables).
|
| It uses Modern Standby (aka S0 Low Power Idle).
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/design/de...
|
| > if there is no S3, it's the producers fault
|
| Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there
| are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on
| Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the
| phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe
| Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some
| effort was put into it?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Fedora was much better than macOS for me. Don't have your kinds
| of complications though.
| mmphosis wrote:
| No. I am using Linux on PC hardware and I miss Mac OS X. I have
| a lot tweaks and hacks that just don't cut it. For example, the
| PC Home and End keys for text boxes are hard coded into X.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Funny you should mention that because I always have to fix
| Home and End on Mac with Karabiner-Elements so they don't go
| the beginning and end of the _entire document_ which is
| totally useless.
|
| That said, I agree with you.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I still haven't fixed that on my Macbook, as iterm2's
| changes mess with Karabiner's changes. It is a pain in the
| ass.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| macOS is a mess. Some apps respect proper bindings
| home/end, some including native Apple ones are just crazy.
| Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E works as a super home/end for VSCode but as
| an ordinary home/end for Jetbrains. Mess, giant mess.
|
| The only thing that macOS did good is a separation between
| ctrl+C and cmnd+C, so I can interrupt apps in console and
| copy text without issues.
| c22 wrote:
| I have a box I've been updating Mint on for the last 10 years
| with no real issues for the last 6 or 7.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| My M1 Macbook pro is connected to a Dell thunderbolt desktop
| docking station. This had caused me so much grief with the
| screen, that I directly connected the 43 inch monitor to the M1
| rather than go through the dock. Moreover, the ethernet on the
| dock is wonky, often dropping out. This makes the work VPN
| sometimes ... challenging.
|
| Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac
| replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS
| machine multiple times.
|
| Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock
| I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash.
|
| But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.
| joombaga wrote:
| > that can reliably be updated without the boot partition
| getting full
|
| Who hurt you? Pop!_OS?
| czx4f4bd wrote:
| Your description of macOS's and MacBooks' reliability doesn't
| match my experience. I've been using MacBook Pros for about 15
| years now, and every single one that I've ever owned or used
| long-term has always had some kind of bizarre issue that ended
| up forcing me to replace it.
|
| It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt
| docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the
| most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually
| swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically
| because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every
| time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop
| has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.
| QIYGT wrote:
| It's not exactly a desktop device (though it can be booted into
| a desktop), but Steam Deck is by far the best Linux experience
| I've had. It seems what you really need is a company with an
| incentive to make a good hardware+software package.
| autotune wrote:
| Steam Deck is the only way I am going to indulge Linux
| Desktop long term in the future. Just have to save a bit so I
| can buy the 512 GB version.
| nverno wrote:
| Sleep states are faulty on the Linux laptop I'm currently on,
| and I do occasionally waste time on interoperability with
| various commercial software, although countless hours seems
| excessive. But when it comes to running dev software or getting
| up and running with a new project, or compiling some github
| source, I think I save much more time than I've lost.
| jorvi wrote:
| What frustrates me is that other Linux users will tell you
| with a straight face that you must be flat-out lying if you
| bring up sleep problems. Had three users tell me that on HN
| just about a day ago.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It's really very hardware-dependent. You can have five
| machines and sleep and PM works just fine, but if you get
| unlucky you also can have five machines and three don't go
| to sleep and two have poor battery life. Sometimes this
| affects even devices marketed for Linux, like the
| framework.
| jraph wrote:
| > Sometimes this affects even devices marketed for Linux,
| like the framework
|
| I was interested in the framework laptop at some point
| but it increasingly looked like a Windows-first laptop on
| which the company is happy about you installing Linux on
| it.
|
| There are laptops marked 10/10 on iFixit on which Linux
| works perfectly, I'll pick them until this changes.
| nverno wrote:
| Yea, but this is something unique to Linux, since everyone
| runs a different distro on different, never 100%-supported,
| hardware. So, they likely have never run into sleep
| problems- my desktop linux box doesn't have any at the
| moment.
|
| Sometimes these difficulties have a silver lining, though,
| after they force you to learn more about the systems you're
| using. I thinks it's less of a trial-by-fire than it was
| even four or five years ago when I switched completely to
| linux, and only getting easier.
| jraph wrote:
| It indeed depends on the hardware. I had computers with
| capricious suspend in the past. The last ones worked
| fine, except one which sometimes hung on wake up and
| sometimes had graphical glitches and random hangs, but
| all this went away when I removed the faulty RAM stick it
| had...
| jorvi wrote:
| I'm sort-of fine with the issues. I'm not fine with the
| increasingly hostile attitude you meet from most of the
| Linux world if you in the public eye dare ding their
| precious baby.
| jraph wrote:
| How dare you, though?
| nverno wrote:
| Well it's kinda understandable, although lamentable,
| since open-source development requires high
| morale/passion if there's no monetary incentives. If
| someone fixes your car for free, but afterward you
| complain about them scuffing the upholstery, they
| probably lose motivation. I know it's not the same thing,
| but I think it comes from the same place.
|
| There's also the safety-in-numbers aspect, similar to
| editor wars, where people adopt the attitude that the
| more people that use their thing, the better it will be,
| so they are waging a propaganda campaign for their cause.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| True and annoying. Writing as a f/t Linux user (Fedora
| Workstation on a laptop), and I appreciate where it shines
| enough to choose its particular set of tradeoffs for
| myself. But there's no doubt Linux users can be annoyingly
| obdurate about its deficiencies. Similar things crop up in
| tech circles all the time - eg. Rust programmers informing
| people having trouble learning Rust that there's nothing
| hard about it.
| pedro2 wrote:
| You must be lying! Are you implying S0x works badly and
| wakes too many times, pcie_aspm requires to be set to force
| to have decent results and enabling S3 is hidden somewhere
| in the BIOS assuming it's there at all?
|
| You must be lying, I never heard of such stories!
|
| NOTE: My computer came without OS. Assuming HP Dev One or
| System 76 behave better in this regard. But I'm a sucker
| for 2-in-1.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Linux doesn't have power nap. That being said, I can
| leave my Thinkpad in my bag for a few days without
| worrying about losing any of the work on it. It won't win
| awards for standby durability, but that may just be a
| lost cause for x86.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Bugs? sounds like they misconfigured their OS
|
| Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at
| once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a
| kernel
|
| If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should
| stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos,
| it has nice "various macos bugs"
|
| There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro
| controllers to datacenters as well as the Steam Deck and the
| nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant
|
| Use what empowers you, no need to spread FUD
| vlovich123 wrote:
| No FUD. On laptops I've repeatedly failed to get the correct
| battery life. I've also struggled with audio working
| correctly and reliably.
|
| Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of
| misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially
| different because Linux is a much sharper tool.
|
| Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems
| Linux has when people say it isn't suitable for the desktop
| (and these days they mean laptop).
|
| Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because
| there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing
| running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day
| to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio,
| video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception
| of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and
| tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw
| configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the
| problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better
| job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build
| against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+
| vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an
| afterthought except if it's relevant to Android).
| Kukumber wrote:
| > On laptops I've repeatedly failed to get the correct
| battery life
|
| You have to configure for it
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
|
| Linux doesn't know nor care about what machine you use, it
| could be a microcontroller without battery to a datacenter
| to a laptop to a console, configure for what you use, it's
| not "windows for Intel PCs, RISC? what is that? fuck off"
|
| > I've also struggled with audio working correctly and
| reliably.
|
| That is very hard to believe, my bluetooth headset worked
| out of the box
|
| > with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a
| carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for
| a carefully chosen hw configuration
|
| That exactly prove my point, users usually misconfigured
| their OS, the moment you configure your Linux OS, just like
| Valve did, with your distro of choice to suit your HW, then
| everything works as expected, that's a one time job
|
| If that workflow doesn't suit you, then linux is not for
| you, and that's ok
|
| > Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the
| problems Linux has when people say it isn't suitable for
| the desktop (and these days they mean laptop).
|
| Because that's the reality of it, the problem is the user
| who expect things to work for him while ignoring its
| dimensional capabilities
|
| That's not a linux problem, that's a user problem, it's
| arrogant and selfish to expect "Linux" to work just for
| your specific HW and specific usecase and all of the effort
| should be dedicated to you, just you, for your own sake
|
| Do like valve did with steam deck and configure your Linux
| OS for your HW, if you are not ready for that, then use
| windows or macos
| Arbortheus wrote:
| In principle I would love to use Linux, as the developer
| experience isn't great on Windows, and I would rather not be
| tied into expensive Apple computers.
|
| However, I don't want to learn about components of my
| operating system, that is below my pay grade.
|
| I'm not trying to spread FUD, I'm speaking firsthand on some
| of the experiences my colleagues have had with their brand
| new $3000 business Thinkpads running all manner of Linux
| distributions.
|
| I don't doubt Linux is the right choice when you are creating
| a tightly integrated, walled off product like a Nintendo
| Switch.
| blangk wrote:
| I think you have some serious rose tinted glasses on if you
| are positing that these fixing OS bug scenarios are limited
| to Linux and do not also commonly occur on proprietary OS.
| The QA on Microsoft releases has been awful in recent
| years.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| How can learning of your tools being below your pay grade?
| Ability to use tools properly is a prerequisite for any
| professional. That sounds very weird to me.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Software development is full of anti-intellectualism and
| friends. So many "professionals" don't think they should
| Learn New Things. Said "professionals" tend to be
| excellent org chart climbers otoh.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Your points doesn't make sense since you expect Linux to be
| Windows, it is not Windows
|
| If you need Windows you use Windows
|
| If you need an OS that is configurable and open, you use
| Linux
|
| If you don't like to configure your OS, then you don't use
| Linux
|
| That's not "elitism", that's respecting the work done by
| countless people to offer a free and configurable OS
| without strings attached
|
| There is FUD in OP's comment since my original reply to
| tell people to use what empowers them got downvoted, -3 pts
| right now
|
| "FUD: Fear, uncertainty and doubt is a propaganda tactic
| used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics,
| polling and cults. FUD is generally a strategy to influence
| perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false
| information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear."
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > the nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant
|
| Nintendo Switch doesn't run FreeBSD, although it does use
| some code from FreeBSD. The Switch OS (Horizon) is a
| proprietary microkernel-based system that isn't POSIX-
| flavored at all. I don't think the full lineage/history is
| publicly documented, but CFW and homebrew toolchain
| developers have noted strong similarities to the 3DS OS.
| srcreigh wrote:
| > that can reliably be updated without the boot partition
| getting full
|
| Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch
| desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up
| XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default
| Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update.
|
| 1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already
| after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There
| was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not
| even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally
| copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the
| front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having
| two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would
| boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not
| present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh...
|
| Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the
| systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a
| separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the
| BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot.
|
| TL;DR Linux is a huge PITA.
| jraph wrote:
| > without the boot partition getting full
|
| This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot
| directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate
| /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the
| computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE
| Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the
| past. [a]
|
| > sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working
| properly after waking from sleep)
|
| > or external monitor resolutions being wrong
|
| Fine on my computers too.
|
| > monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors
| with different resolutions?
|
| I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland
| but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional
| scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS
| is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very
| adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling
| support just right now [1]:
|
| > "What does this do?" you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit
| to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on
| Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an
| integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt
| apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300%
| scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and
| lower power usage.
|
| And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the
| thing that makes me switch in the coming months.
|
| [1] https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-
| wayla...
|
| [a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86
| tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported
| anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than
| recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on
| Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is
| there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless
| and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian
| too.
| srcreigh wrote:
| What partition configuration do you have? Do you have a fdisk
| printout handy (aka `fdisk /dev/FOOBAR` and run the p
| command)
| jraph wrote:
| Disk /dev/sda: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168
| sectors ... Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512
| bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512
| bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512
| bytes Disklabel type: gpt ...
| Device Start End Sectors Size Type
| /dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
| /dev/sda2 1050624 972578815 971528192 463.3G Linux
| filesystem /dev/sda3 972578816 976773134 4194319
| 2G Linux swap
|
| sda1 is the EFI partition mounted on /boot/efi, /boot is a
| folder of /dev/sda2.
|
| sda2 is fully encrypted, subvolumes used to be managed by
| snapper and I installed openSUSE with its installer which
| does a lot of magic so my mount is a bit of a mess. Grub is
| able to find its config and boot the OS but takes ages to
| decrypt so I replaced it with systemd-boot. Here's mount:
| proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
| sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
| devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs
| (rw,nosuid,size=4096k,nr_inodes=3048348,mode=755,inode64)
| securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) tmpfs on /dev/shm
| type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64) devpts on
| /dev/pts type devpts
| (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
| tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=4883644k,nr_
| inodes=819200,mode=755,inode64) cgroup2 on
| /sys/fs/cgroup type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatim
| e,nsdelegate,memory_recursiveprot) pstore on
| /sys/fs/pstore type pstore
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) efivarfs on
| /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) bpf on /sys/fs/bpf
| type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on / type btrfs (rw,noatime,ssd,space_c
| ache=v2,subvolid=266,subvol=/@/.snapshots/1/snapshot)
| systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relat
| ime,fd=28,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pip
| e_ino=16762) debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type
| debugfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) mqueue on
| /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
| hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs
| (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M) tracefs on
| /sys/kernel/tracing type tracefs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) fusectl on
| /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) configfs on
| /sys/kernel/config type configfs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) ramfs on
| /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service type
| ramfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
| ramfs on /run/credentials/systemd-sysctl.service type ramfs
| (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on /.snapshots type btrfs (rw,relatime,
| ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=265,subvol=/@/.snapshots)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/i386-pc type btrfs (rw,r
| elatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=264,subvol=/@/boot/grub
| 2/i386-pc) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /opt type btrfs
| (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/opt)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on /srv type btrfs
| (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=259,subvol=/@/srv)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi type btrfs (r
| w,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=263,subvol=/@/boot/g
| rub2/x86_64-efi) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /usr/local
| type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=258,sub
| vol=/@/usr/local) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /root type
| btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=260,subvol=/
| @/root) /dev/mapper/cr_root on /var type btrfs
| (rw,relatime,ssd,space_cache=v2,subvolid=257,subvol=/@/var)
| /dev/mapper/cr_root on /home type btrfs (rw,relatime,ssd,sp
| ace_cache=v2,subvolid=281,subvol=/@/home) tmpfs on
| /tmp type tmpfs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,size=12209112k,nr_inodes=1048576,inode64)
| /dev/sda1 on /boot/efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dm
| ask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,u
| tf8,errors=remount-ro) ramfs on
| /run/credentials/systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service type ramfs
| (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700) tmpfs on
| /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=24
| 41820k,nr_inodes=610455,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000,inode64)
| portal on /run/user/1000/doc type fuse.portal
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
| gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
| tracefs on /sys/kernel/debug/tracing type tracefs
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime) portal on
| /root/.cache/doc type fuse.portal
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
| gvfsd-fuse on /root/.cache/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse
| (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
|
| I have a similar setup on an nvme disk in another computer.
|
| I might as well delete the 2G swap partition by the way,
| with 24G of RAM I'm not sure it's that useful.
| compumike wrote:
| Out of curiosity I just pulled User-Agent stats from my "Show HN:
| Inflation-adjusted stock charts - Total Real Returns" post
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081943 that was #1 on
| Hacker News on July 13, 2022. Of 38595 clicks that day from
| news.ycombinator.com total: 30.8% (11868)
| Macintosh 22.7% (8745) iPhone 21.7% (8356)
| Windows 15.7% (6065) Android 8.5% (3284) Linux
| (!Android)
|
| That implies a 61%/39% desktop/mobile split.
|
| Mobile: 59%/41% iPhone/Android split.
|
| Desktop: 50%/36%/14% macOS/Windows/Linux split.
|
| Personally I switched back from macOS to Linux (Pop_OS!) as my
| primary desktop operating system in 2020.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That's against the rules.
|
| I've been doing this 20 years.
|
| You can only say next year is the year of the Linux desktop.
|
| No hindsight stuff allowed.
| krick wrote:
| That's moral choice I guess: you were simply making mistakes
| for the last 20 years, an the OP is blatantly lying. Also, you
| were simply giving people hope, and OP is actively sabotaging
| the development, by trying to make false impression that this
| garbage is already working fine. Which, as every actual Linux
| user knows, just isn't the case.
|
| Obviously, that's Microsoft PR department post. Using praise as
| a weapon.
|
| I've had to update Ubuntu (to the latest LTS! which is 8 months
| old already!) on a laptop (a Thinkpad, for God's sake!), and
| I'm still fighting a bunch of problems (not exclusively driver-
| related) that I didn't have on the same machine on older Ubuntu
| (or maybe I've already fixed some of them before and forgot
| about that... but some certainly are new!). I hate it, and I
| have no idea how non-technical people manage to use it for
| daily life and not as a troubleshooting exercise simulator
| (I've heard some of them do -- not sure if that's true though).
| pid-1 wrote:
| Rant: last weekend I finished building my teenager dream PC - 12
| cores cpu, 64GB RAM, RTX 3060 12GB VRAM... GNOME on Ubuntu still
| managed to crash / hang on a fresh install.
|
| Will try Mint / others, but it's a shame the "gateway distro for
| new users" is in such sorry state.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Try Manjaro with KDE.
|
| Manjaro's more stable than Ubuntu (somehow), and KDE is better
| than GNOME. :D
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Gnome Ubuntu is the "gateway distro for new users"? I would
| never ever Recommend that to new users.
|
| Mint, popOS, and a few others for people coming from Windows
| would be the "gateway distro for new users"
|
| gnome 3 is not for new users, back in the day, gnome 2.4 days
| maybe that was the case
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| At this point, the "gateway distro" for new users is running
| any of those in WSL. There is so much more buy-in if you can
| someone that they don't have to throw away their laptop and
| get one with this specific chip selection so that everything
| works. And if you can tell them that yes, of course, you can
| run your games at the same time, without fiddling, dual
| booting, or fear of getting banned for "cheats".
| hpcjoe wrote:
| Almost same config as my deskside. I've got 16 Epyc CPU cores,
| 128GB RAM, and 2TB of NVMe along with 8TB of ZFS mirror with
| hot spare. Same GPU. Linux Mint went on w/o problem. I did have
| to switch from nouveau to nvidia drivers, but that's covered in
| the driver manager.
|
| Again, everything just works. Even the stupid little USB sound
| card I plugged in. Been listening to spotify while working on
| it. Using Zoom on that for my private non-work meetings.
|
| Cinnamon version, 21.1 version of mint. Painless. Even getting
| zfs up and going. I updated to 2.1.7 at that.
| Avamander wrote:
| Nvidia with Wayland? That's on you then, man.
| brookst wrote:
| Exactly why I only use linux for headless serves. God knows
| how many totally obvious mistakes would be "on me" if I tried
| to set up a GUI workstation. Who's got the time to learn why
| you can't use of of the main GPU brands with one of the main
| GUIs?
| choeger wrote:
| Well, you _did_ build your own rig, so some learning is
| expected, no?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Well it has been known for decades the Nvida is openly
| hostile to Linux Desktop, and actively tries to prevent
| development of open source drivers,
|
| Hell Linus has a famous speech where he literally flips of
| Nvida
| brookst wrote:
| Celebrity kernel hackers lobbing attacks at hardware
| makers in speeches is no way to run a compatibility
| matrix.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >Celebrity kernel hackers
|
| Wow... that is a take... Linus is a "Celebrity kernel
| hacker" really?
| bananaboy wrote:
| I could be wrong but it sounds like the poster is making
| a joke by parodying a line from Monty Python and the Holy
| Grail.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| If I ask about this around the office, do you think
| anyone will have any idea what I'm talking about?
|
| It might be obvious in your social circles, but that
| doesn't mean it's even remotely common enough to be
| assumed knowledge for someone trying out linux on the
| desktop for the first time.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>If I ask about this around the office
|
| Depends, is this an office is Linux users? If so then i
| expect yes they would
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This is entirely NVIDIA's fault, not Linux's. AMD plays
| ball.
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| Hackers. You'll find a few around here.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Forget it, I'll just install windows.
| fsociety wrote:
| I recently went through the exercise of setting up two Ryzen
| PCs. One with an AMD GPU and one with an Nvidia GPU.
|
| Surprisingly, the only issues I had with NVIDIA was that my
| window manager would not let me start it because I had an
| NVIDIA GPU. They make you pass a flag along the lines of "yes
| I am running NVIDIA with Wayland".
|
| The AMD GPU was a nightmare thanks to a long running bug. I
| eventually got it working, but it was unexpected. NVIDIA on
| Linux has improved a lot!
| uncletaco wrote:
| Same story: 16 core, 64GB ram, 6900xt. And nothing crashes
| because even when being ridiculous I knew better than use
| Nvidia on Linux
| teawrecks wrote:
| I'll take "Sentiments from the Linux Community that Actively
| Drive Users Away" for 300.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Yeah, there's a huge problem in the community where every
| problem is the user's fault.
|
| Like, using the most popular graphics card provider on
| Linux shouldn't be some outlandish idea that should be
| ridiculed.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| In reality it's more like a sentiment of a certain hardware
| manufacturer towards the Linux community. The best the
| community can do is make it known.
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| Good, too many people are using Linux.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Meanwhile, my Linux partition is rock solid and I cannot for
| the life of me figure out random hangs and crashes on clean
| Windows installs.
|
| It is an Nvidia GPU. Honestly, they're rarely the problem in
| Linux. Not in practice anyway.
|
| Any hardware diag I try passes. Drivers? Tried both
| manufacturer and Windows Update. Always ends the same.
|
| The mouse driver BSODed the machine one time. That was a new
| one.
|
| I'll stick with a Linux distro for real work, thanks.
| UberFly wrote:
| Linus Torvalds giving the finger to Nvidia should be required
| reading for all new Linux adventurers.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my primary OS for around 3 years now
| with an nvidia GPU and haven't had any issues. I don't run
| Wayland for obvious reasons, but otherwise the system is rock
| solid. I have not had anything resembling the nightmare
| experience people claim with Linux and nvidia GPUs.
| robertlf wrote:
| This is utterly ridiculous. Unless you're a long-time Unix hacker
| or system administrator (I was the latter for ten years), trying
| to do anything in Linux is time-consuming, difficult, and
| ultimately very frustrating. Desktop Linux was always be a
| backwater for techies and it has absolutely no hope of widespread
| adoption like Windows or macOS.
| roxgib wrote:
| They're going to be giddy when they learn about Chromebooks!
| wrs wrote:
| "The Year of Linux on the _Developer's_ Desktop" is kind of
| moving the goalposts from the original idea, no?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Not even that - developers that are keen enough to fill in
| Stackoverflow's user survey.
| ITB wrote:
| Ubuntu keeps getting better and better for me. This year I bought
| an Asus laptop with all the bells and whistles, and allegedly the
| only supported Linux was Fedora. I tried to get everything setup
| and failed multiple times, and then I went back to Ubuntu,
| installed a much newer kernel since Ubuntu distros are
| conservative there, and that was pretty much it.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Recently, I've been impressed by Intel's Clear Linux project. It
| really feels like a completely new generation of Linux desktop
| that's designed from the ground-up to be more performant than
| even Windows, while still being "turn-key" pretty much, and a
| bleeding-edge yet stable rolling-release at that.
| eecc wrote:
| I'd argue the problem isn't really with the Linux kernel or the
| command line.
|
| The UI experience is unfortunately the same coherence of design
| horror story it has been since forever.
|
| Windows is of a terrible of it's own, but wayland, gtk, the OS
| services model and user settings are just a horror show.
| jimcaale wrote:
| Welcome
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| After 25 years as a dedicated Mac user, I kind of inadvertently
| switched to Kubuntu for most things, and it's been mostly fine.
| It gets better and better with each release too.
|
| My singular major complaint is that not enough applications
| leverage the KDE system that allows you to rewire various
| keyboard shortcuts, so I can only half-ass having a setup where
| all the shortcuts mimic those of a Mac.
| chazeon wrote:
| I wonder when Linux can finally gain proper fractional scaling
| support. Now I know Gnome has it under wayland, but many other
| applications does not, electron apps sometimes can work with
| caveats, but I still have to make a lot of effort to make it
| really look okay to my eye.
|
| Now out of box, everything feels broken here and there. And every
| time I came to use it as a _real_ desktop environment instead of
| just a development machine I was distracted by the instinct to
| fix things without being to get anything done.
|
| I know if someone reside mainly in terminal or use tile-based
| environment would work okay, but this kind of setup unfortunately
| does not work for me.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| Gnome doesn't have it. Looks like it'll land next year.
| iz_zi wrote:
| It's not finished until more Microsoft and Mac users convert to
| Linux.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > a million steam deck
|
| this is still just a rumor at this stage as there is no source
| apart from one guy saying it in a KDE conference. If Valve had
| indeed shipped more than a million they'd be screaming about it
| on the rooftops.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Why would they? Private companies don't need to brag.
| enneff wrote:
| Also, on track record, Valve have been very quiet in general
| about the huge piles of money they have raked in over the
| last 20 years.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Yes they do if they want to build excitement and interest in
| their niche platform. Money isn't the only reason to brag,
| attention is critical to a platform's success and Valve's
| Linux-based platform is starting from behind.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| >starting from behind
|
| They have 20 years of brand history, what are you talking
| about?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| * * *
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Until Acrobat, Photoshop, and Illustrator work in Wine, it's a
| hard no.
|
| Word and Excel are good :) plus there are tolerable replacements.
| Outlook is buggy as hell, but evolution can do its job.
|
| But when I need to fill out and digitally sign a PDF form -
| something that should be an easy and mundane task - the entire
| Linux ecosystem fails me.
|
| Also, task prioritization is still horrible. I fire up a high CPU
| background task and the mouse cursor stutters? (in GNOME)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I can't consider Linux desktop until copy and paste is consistent
| and seamless and lets me use the macOS key combination
| everywhere.
|
| And of course all this should just work, not be a series of cli
| commands and configs.
| uneekname wrote:
| because it's usually Ctrl + Shift + C to copy from a terminal?
| Otherwise I haven't noticed much inconsistency on the distros
| I've used
| whateveracct wrote:
| It's pretty much just that. People get hooked on the
| beautiful consistency of the command key and overrate how
| much value-add it really provides. They'll make arguments
| about how often they copy-paste and how every bit of
| complexity fills up their brain and other pseudoscientific
| stuff.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| I can't consider MacOS until the ,,@" character is back on its
| internationally standardized place and Apple Safari supports
| VP9 hardware decoding.
| college_physics wrote:
| No it wasn't. Nor was it needed.
|
| Linux is unstoppable. The monotonic accumulation of all that open
| source goodness is like a giant capacitor taking forever to
| charge. The result takes a while compared to a well funded
| commercial enterprise, but it slowly morphs into a super desktop
| that is basically impossible to compete against. Free, super
| capable, private by design. You cannot beat that with bells and
| whistles. The "average person" UX red lines will be met at some
| point.
|
| Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it
| becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke anymore,
| its the new reality.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it
| becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke
| anymore, its the new reality.
|
| A data point: today I was talking with a friend who works in a
| company making a 3D software. Apparently since last year they
| lost most of their clients to Blender, which used to be the
| butt of so many 3D software jokes.
| azeirah wrote:
| Similarly, OBS.
|
| The entire streaming industry uses OBS. Colleagues at work
| use OBS casually to capture recordings.
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