[HN Gopher] Linux is good now
___________________________________________________________________
Linux is good now
Author : Vinnl
Score : 286 points
Date : 2026-01-01 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pcgamer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pcgamer.com)
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I think its interesting that mainstream PC gaming press is now
| talking about Linux. We have the benchmark Youtube channels doing
| some benchmarks of it as well and plenty of reports of "it just
| works", which is pretty promising at least for the games that
| aren't intentionally excluded by DRM. For me its still
| controllers and equipment incompatibility due to my VR headset
| and sim wheel/pedals setup, I use Linux everywhere else in my
| router and home servers. I just hope that Nvidia notices that
| there does appear to be a swing happening and improves their
| driver situation.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Gaming now works better on Linux than it does on Windows. This
| must be upsetting for Microsoft, but it was their game to lose.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I dont get the feeling they care. Microsoft is so lost under
| Satya at this point. Totally blinded by Azure and AI and
| stock price growth. At some point they're going to realize
| all the ground they've lost and it's going to be a real
| problem. They're repeating a lot of the same mistakes that
| cost them the browser and mobile market.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "Totally blinded by Azure and AI and stock price growth."
|
| Stock price growth is their core business because that is
| how large firms operate.
|
| MS used to embrace games etc because the whole point was
| all PCs should run Windows. Now the plan is to get you onto
| a subscription to their cloud. The PC bit is largely
| immaterial in that model. Enterprises get the rather
| horrible Intune bollocks to play with but the goal is to
| lock everyone into subs.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| They don't care, they're defunding Xbox and even the
| Windows team is hollowed out.
| diabllicseagull wrote:
| Yeah. MS must have been so hurt about losing to the iPhone,
| they really jumped the gun on AI as if to avoid a similar
| mistake. It's Satya's major play and I think they are
| already paying for that decision. xbox is hollowed out so
| that AI can be funded, while the pc/console hybrid project
| is doomed to fail because "windows everywhere" doesn't work
| if windows is crap. indeed, they might be left with just
| the cloud business in the end.
| spockz wrote:
| Gaming works fine with exception of things like BF6 that
| require kernel level anti cheat.
|
| The one thing I haven't been able to get working reliably is
| steam remote play with the Linux machine as host. Most games
| work fine, others will only capture black screens.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| if you are running KDE you can whitelist Steam for remote
| desktop work, this is because of wayland.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| This still has a "sometimes" on it, there are more then a few
| games that need magic proton flags to run well, nothing you
| can't go look up on protondb, but lots of games you would
| want to play with friends might have some nasty anti-cheat on
| it that just won't let you play it at all.
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| The irony is that gaming on linux got better but the
| instigator was not the OSS community. All of it was funded by
| closed source software competing with other close source
| software. The OSS community by itself did not have the
| conviction to climb over this bulwark.
| nine_k wrote:
| But when Steam started to develop Proton, WINE was 90%
| there! Valve only had to provide the remaining 90%.
|
| The strength of Linux and Free software in general is not
| in that it's completely built by unpaid labor. It's built
| by a lot of paid, full-time labor. But the results are
| shared with everyone. The strength of Free software is that
| it fosters and _enforces_ cooperation of all interested
| parties, and provides a guarantee that defection is an
| unprofitable move.
|
| This is one of the reasons you see Linux everywhere, and
| *BSD, rarely.
| tombert wrote:
| Proton has gotten so good now that I don't even bother
| checking compatibility before buying games.
|
| Granted, I don't play online games, so that might change
| things, but for years I used to have to make a concession
| that "yeah Windows is better for games...", but in the last
| couple years that simply has not been true. Games seem to run
| better on Linux than Windows, and I don't have to deal with a
| bunch of Microsoft advertising bullshit.
|
| Hell, even the Microsoft Xbox One controllers work perfectly
| fine with xpad and the SteamOS/tenfoot interface recognizes
| it as an Xbox pad immediately, and this is _with the official
| Microsoft Xbox dongle_.
|
| At this point, the only valid excuses to stay on Windows, in
| my opinion, are online games and Microsoft Office. I don't
| use Office since I've been on Unixey things so long that I've
| more or less just gotten used to its options, but I've been
| wholly unable to convince my parents to change.
|
| I love my parents, but sometimes I want to kick their ass,
| because they can be a bit stuck in their ways; _I_ am the one
| who is expected to fix their computer every time Windows
| decides to brick their computer, and they act like it 's
| weird for me to ask them to install Linux. If I'm the one who
| has to perform unpaid maintenance on this I don't think it's
| weird for me to try and get them to use an operating system
| that has diagnostic tools that _actually work_.
|
| As far as I can tell, the diagnostic and repair tools in
| Windows have never worked for any human in history, and they
| certainly have never worked for me. I don't see why anyone
| puts up with it when macOS and Linux have had tools that
| actually work for a very long time.
| necessary wrote:
| This is a big reason I'm excited for Steam Frame - high quality
| VR on the Linux desktop.
| pjerem wrote:
| AND high quality Linux desktop on the VR :)
| desireco42 wrote:
| My VR glasses work on Omarchy, to my surprise, I plugged them
| and they work. I have XReal, older model.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Aren't the XReals just displays in the glasses? If they work
| with other devices, it's no surprise linux can just use a
| display standard.
| fooker wrote:
| The last remaining roadblock is kernel level anti-cheat
| frameworks.
|
| Pretty horrible technology, and unfortunately a good majority
| of the gaming industry by revenue relies on it.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The Linux kernel has eBPF now so if they wanted to start
| spying on everything you do they can just do it.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > The Linux kernel has eBPF now so if they wanted to start
| spying on everything you do they can just do it.
|
| Sure, except that anyone can just compile a Linux kernel
| that doesn't allow that.
|
| Anti-cheat systems on Windows work because Windows is
| hard(er) to tamper with.
| tapoxi wrote:
| The interesting solution here is secure boot, only allow
| users to play from a set of trusted kernels.
| monerozcash wrote:
| Yep, a plenty of prior art on how to implement the
| necessary attestations. Valve could totally ship their
| boxes with support for anticheat kernel-attestation.
|
| Is it possible to do this in a relatively hardware-
| agnostic, but reliable manner? Probably not.
| fooker wrote:
| You can switch out the kernel in the running Linux
| desktop.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Uh, you'd have to compile a Kernel that doesn't allow it
| while claiming it does ... And behaves as if it does -
| otherwise you'd just fail the check, no?
|
| I feel like this is way overstated, it's not that easy to
| do, and could conceptually be done on windows too via
| hardware simulation/virtual machines. Both would require
| significant investments in development to pull of
| hparadiz wrote:
| All it takes is going to cd usr src linux and running
| make menuconfig. Turning off a few build flags. Hitting
| save. And then running make to recompile. But that's like
| saying "well if I remove a fat32 support I can't use
| fat32". Yea it will lock you out showing you have it
| disabled. No big deal.
| zamalek wrote:
| Right, the very thing that works against AC on Linux also
| works for it. There are multiple layers (don't forget
| Wine/Proton) to inject a cheat, but those same layers
| could also be exploited to detect cheats (especially
| adding fingerprints over time and issuing massive ban-
| waves).
|
| And then you have BasicallyHomeless on YouTube who is
| stimulating nerves and using actuators to "cheat." With
| the likes of the RP2040, even something like an aim-
| correcting mouse becomes completely cheap and trivial.
| There is a sweet-spot for AC and I feel like kernel-level
| might be a bit too far.
| hparadiz wrote:
| Well yeah but then eBPF would not work and then the anti
| cheat could just show that it's not working and lock you
| out.
|
| This isn't complicated.
|
| Even the Crowdstrike falcon agent has switched to bpf
| because it lowers the risk that a kernel driver will
| brick downstream like what happened with windows that one
| time. I recently configured a corporate single sign on to
| simply not work if the bpf component was disabled.
| swinglock wrote:
| Well but then attackers just compile a kernel with a
| rootkit that hides the hack and itself from the APIs of
| the BPF program, so it has to deal with that too or it's
| trivially bypassed.
|
| Anticheat and antivirus are two similar but different
| games. It's very complicated.
| the_hoser wrote:
| That would require that they actually make the effort to
| develop Linux support. The current "it just works" reality
| is that the games developers don't need to support running
| on Linux.
| jsheard wrote:
| Another unresolved roadblock is Nvidia cards seriously
| underperforming in DX12 games under Proton compared to
| Windows. Implementing DX12 semantics on top of Vulkan runs
| into some nasty performance cliffs on their hardware, so
| Khronos is working on amending the Vulkan spec to smooth that
| over.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You don't have to play these specific games though. I mean,
| what's your privacy, what's not being bombarded by ads in
| your OS worth to you? Have you taken an honest thought about
| this?
| diabllicseagull wrote:
| besides ads and privacy concerns it's been such a delight
| not having to deal with unwanted updates, hunting phantom
| processes that take up cpu time, or the file explorer that
| takes forever to show ten files in the download folder. I
| cannot be paid to use windows at this point.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| If you want to play games with friends, you have to play
| whatever the group plays. This is especially problematic as
| the group tries out new games, increasing the chance you
| can't join because you're not on Windows.
| tormeh wrote:
| This really depends on the friends you have. I've never
| encountered this limitation because no one in my friend
| group plays competitive ranked games. Basically anything
| with private sessions doesn't require anticheat, so
| Valheim, RV There Yet, Deep Rock Galactic, etc. all work
| fine.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Sure, that helps.
|
| But even then, when everyone is trying out a new indie
| game there's a chance it won't work on non-Windows. It's
| happened to me.
| tnel77 wrote:
| Yes, but sometimes it is nice to socialize with other
| people and they might play these types of games. I don't
| enjoy Call of Duty, but I'll play it from time to time so I
| can chat with my brother (this is the only way to get him
| on the phone/microphone for some reason). I value the time
| I am spending with him more than a bit of privacy (in that
| context).
|
| I am very pro-Linux and pro-privacy, and hope that the
| situation improves so I don't have to continue to
| compromise.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Clearly, when there will be enough Linux gamers another
| solution to the kernel-level anti-cheat issue will be found.
| After all, the most played competitive shooter is CS and
| Valve has does not use kernel-level AC.
| jsheard wrote:
| > After all, the most played competitive shooter is CS and
| Valve has does not use kernel-level AC.
|
| Valve doesn't employ kernel AC but in practice others have
| taken that into their own hands - the prevalence of
| cheating on their official CS servers has driven the
| adoption of third-party matchmaking providers like FACEIT,
| which layer their own kernel AC on top of the game. The
| bulk of casual play happens on the former, but serious
| competitive play mostly happens on the latter.
| pityJuke wrote:
| The best description I've been able to give of the
| dichotomy of CS is this: there is no way for a person to
| become good enough to get their signature into the game,
| without using kernel-level ACs.
| jsheard wrote:
| Yeah, I think most if not all of the highest level
| tournaments run on FACEIT, even the ones which are
| endorsed and/or sponsored by Valve themselves. They just
| don't acknowledge the elephant in the room.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The competitive CS leagues do use AC though. The big issue
| for these games is the free-to-play model does not work
| without anti-cheat. Having a ~$20 fee to cheat for a while
| before getting banned significantly reduces the number of
| cheaters, and that's what CS does with their prime server
| model.
|
| And for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Valorant is the
| most played competitive shooter at the moment.
| stackghost wrote:
| Isn't it pretty much an open secret that JVM-based cheats
| can trivially bypass VAC?
| coppsilgold wrote:
| Competent cheat makers don't have much difficulty in
| defeating in-kernel anticheats on Windows. With the amount of
| insight and control available on Linux anticheat makers stand
| little chance.
|
| The best Valve could do is offer a special locked down kernel
| with perhaps some anticheat capabilities and lock down the
| hardware with attestation. If they offer the sources and do
| verified builds it might even be accepted by some.
|
| Doubt it would be popular or even successful on non-Valve
| machines. But I'm not an online gamer and couldn't care less
| about anticheats.
| hinkley wrote:
| When that steam deck clone came out and games played better on
| SteamOS than on Windows on the exact same hardware, it woke a
| bunch of people up. Microsoft scrambled to bring the startup
| time and footprint down but shots had already been fired.
|
| You don't want a vendor you have to publically shame to get
| them to do the right thing. And that's MS if any single
| sentence has ever described them without using curse words.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I've got the Legion Go S with Steam OS, and that shit is
| great. It's stable, my games run well, the OS is pretty much
| entirely in the background, but I can still access it fully
| if I need to. Love it.
| arwineap wrote:
| I'm surprised to hear you are having trouble with wheels /
| pedals, we should be there already!
|
| https://github.com/JacKeTUs/linux-steering-wheels
|
| Hopefully vr headset support will get better
| sieep wrote:
| +1 for CachyOS. I also recommend Mint and Pop!_OS if you prefer
| Debian based distros.
| lorenzohess wrote:
| 2026 YOTLD?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| 2026 YOLOTD!
| ofalkaed wrote:
| The personal desktop has fallen in relevance enough for that to
| be possible. The goalposts moved, now linux needs to have
| phone, tablet, and laptop with smooth effortless integration
| between them all.
|
| I recently switched to using a thumb drive to transfer files to
| and from my phone/tablet, I became demoralized when faced with
| getting it all setup.
| omnicognate wrote:
| > smooth effortless integration between them all
|
| No, thank you! The "smooth, effortless [, compulsory,
| mandated, enforced] integration" between my Apple devices is
| the very worst thing about them.
| sporkxrocket wrote:
| Android is Linux, so it does have a phone, tablet and many
| other form factors like television.
| regularfry wrote:
| KDE has phone and laptop integrated well enough for me. It's
| worth giving it a try but the more devices you want
| integrated the more of a risk it is in case it doesn't quite
| work right. But I've got enough other devices in the house
| which I can't put KDE on (work laptop, Windows machine I need
| for some specific software) that I can recommend
| https://github.com/9001/copyparty over thumb drives.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| I actually intended to set everything up but did not have
| time and needed to copy some files, so dusted off a thumb
| drive. I am liking it quite a bit and I think I prefer it
| to the alternatives.
| jaapz wrote:
| What integration between phone and desktop would you like to
| see?
| ofalkaed wrote:
| YOTLD has nothing to do with my needs and wants and I am
| perfectly happy with my thumb drive and the weird little
| ways linux imposes itself on my life.
| zamalek wrote:
| Its going to be a decade, the slow erosion of Window's market
| share, and we might already be in it.
| savolai wrote:
| Linux desktops have felt flaky for me for a few years now. I'm
| trying to figure out how much of that is bad choices vs real
| problems.
|
| Ubuntu's default desktop felt unstable in a macOS VM. Dual-
| booting on a couple of HP laptops slowed to a crawl after
| installing a few desktop apps, apparently because they pulled in
| background services. What surprised me was how quickly the system
| became unpleasant to use without any obvious "you just broke X"
| moment.
|
| My current guess: not Linux in general, but heavy defaults
| (GNOME, Snap, systemd timers), desktop apps dragging in daemons,
| and OEM firmware / power-management quirks that don't play well
| with Linux. Server Linux holds up because everything stays
| explicit. Desktop distros hide complexity and don't give much
| visibility when things start to rot.
|
| Does this line up with others' experience? If yes, what actually
| works long-term? Minimal bases, immutable distros, avoiding
| certain package systems, strict service hygiene, specific
| hardware?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Does this line up with others' experience?
|
| Not really, no. What did you install that slowed things down?
|
| > If yes, what actually works long-term?
|
| Plain ordinary Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, running on an ancient Thinkpad
| T430 with a whopping 8GB of RAM and an SSD (which is failing,
| but that's not Linux's fault, it's been on its way out for
| about a year and I should probably stop compiling Haiku
| nightlies on it).
|
| Can you give an example of which desktop apps are "dragging in
| daemons"?
| rvnx wrote:
| Edited: My bad, I misread, started ranting about Gimp, how
| terrible this software was
| stryan wrote:
| GIMP is definitely not a daemon; I don't think it even has
| a run in the background mode. Maybe something with snaps?
| rvnx wrote:
| No no, just misread, my fault, sorry. Mixed "dragging up
| demons" and then it reminded me of my traumas with GIMP,
| PulseAudio, CUDA, etc
| stryan wrote:
| Ah, fair and understandable :)
| neoCrimeLabs wrote:
| Gimp is not typically used as background process. It's
| primary use is as an interactive tool with a UI, therefore
| it's not typically a daemon. [1]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)
| rvnx wrote:
| Thank you for the kind and actually helpful answer,
| especially in the face of a rant. I will pay more
| attention next time.
| Fronzie wrote:
| With debian and KDE (both personal preference), but no snap or
| flatpak, it works wonderfully. Power/sleep-management has
| become better than a default windows install. All hardware,
| including the fingerprint sensor, just works.
| azangru wrote:
| Could you share the model of your laptop?
| loeg wrote:
| The only real obnoxious slow-down daemons I'm familiar with are
| the "system indexing" things (GNOME Tracker, KDE Baloo) --
| highly recommend disabling them.
| advael wrote:
| We live in a world with the internet and distributed version
| control, so essentially every piece of software in the world
| has a tradeoff where the people maintaining it might push an
| update that breaks something at any time, but also those
| updates often do good things too, like add functionality, make
| stuff more efficient, fix bugs, or probably most crucially,
| patch out security vulnerabilities.
|
| My experience with FOSS has mostly been that mature projects
| with any reasonable-sized userbase tend to more reliably not
| break things in updates than is the case for proprietary
| software, whether it's an OS or just some SaaS product. YMMV.
| However, I think probably the most potent way to avoid problems
| like this actually ever mattering is a combination of doing my
| updates manually (or at least on an opt-in basis) and being
| willing to go back a version if something breaks. Usually this
| isn't necessary for more than a week or so for well-maintained
| software even in the worst case. I use arch with downgrade
| (Which lets you go back and choose an old version of any given
| package) and need to actually use downgrade maybe once a year
| on average, less in the last 5
| lawn wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| I've run Void Linux + Xmonad for many years without any such
| issues. I also recently installed CachyOS for my kid to game on
| (KDE Plasma) and it works super well.
| class3shock wrote:
| I've been using Kubuntu for years with good results. I prefer
| KDE to Gnome, which Kubuntu takes care of, and I normally add
| in the flatpak repositories so I don't need snap. That has
| generally worked well for me in the last 5 years.
|
| For certain timeperiods I have needed to switch to Fedora, or
| the Fedora KDE spin, to get access to more recent software if
| I'm using newer hardware. That has generally also been pretty
| stable but the constant stream of updates and short OS life are
| not really what I'm looking for in a desktop experience.
|
| There are three issues that linux still has, which are across
| the board:
|
| - Lack of commercial mechanical engineering software support
| (CAD & CAE software)
|
| - Inability to reliably suspend or sleep for laptops
|
| - Worse battery life on laptops
|
| If you are using a desktop and don't care about CAD or CAE
| software I think it's probably a better experience overall than
| windows. Laptops are still more for advanced users imho but if
| you go with something that has good linux support from the
| factory (Dell XPS 13, Framework, etc.) it will be mostly
| frictionless. It just sucks on that one day where you install
| an update, close the laptop lid, put it in your backpack, and
| find it absolutely cooking and near 0% when you take it out.
|
| I also have never found something that gave me the battery life
| I wanted with linux. I used two XPS 13's and they were the
| closest but still were only like 75% of what I would like. My
| current Framework 16 is like 50% of what I would like. That is
| with always going for a 1080p display but using a VPN which
| doesn't help battery life.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Does this line up with others' experience? If yes, what
| actually works long-term? Minimal bases, immutable distros,
| avoiding certain package systems, strict service hygiene,
| specific hardware?
|
| No, not really. A Linux desktop with a DE will always be slower
| and more brittle than an headless machine due to the sheer
| number of packages/components, but something like Arch + Plasma
| Shell (without the whole KDE ecosystem) should be very stable
| and snappy. The headaches caused by immutable distros and
| flatpaks are not worth it IMO, but YMMV.
| mac-attack wrote:
| Between this and the dual boot diaries podcast it's great to see
| mainstream PC outlets covering Linux more broadly.
| adamkittelson wrote:
| I made the move about a month ago to bazzite on my desktop with
| an nvidia graphics card. I still have my windows drive for when I
| need it but that's pretty rare. Bazzite isn't perfect but we've
| reached the point where the rough edges are less painful than the
| self sabotage microsoft has been inflicting on their users in
| recent versions of windows.
| gcr wrote:
| This is the key. It's not that 2026 is the year of the Linux
| desktop, but rather 2026 is very much not the year of the
| Windows desktop.
|
| Bazzite is rough in the way that all distributions are, but I
| imagine Windows 11 is rougher.
| fylo wrote:
| I tried bazzite but ended up on cachyos. The whole layered /
| immutable thing got a bit annoying. I'd rather just run
| snapshots and manage my packages more traditionally
| plagiarist wrote:
| I love the layered thing except for the rough edges.
| Unfortunately the rough edges for me are that Linux
| containerization and permissions are completely idiotic.
|
| In Fedora Atomic it should be foolishly easy to set up a
| system account, with access to specific USB devices via
| group, and attach a volume that can easily be written to by
| a non-root user inside of the container.
| CivBase wrote:
| I think we've reached a point where Windows is about as rough
| as Linux. But the problem is still that people are familiar
| with Windows and have learned how to deal with the roughness;
| not so on Linux. And so long as Windows owns the business and
| education sectors, it will always have the benefit of that
| familiarity.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| It is good, and for 99+% of use cases for 90+% of users (who
| mostly use nothing but the browser), they will hardly even notice
| a difference, besides the lack of obnoxious, instrusive MS
| behavior.
|
| However, despite really, really wanting to switch (and having it
| installed on my laptop), I keep finding things that don't quite
| work right that are preventing me from switching some of my
| machines. My living room PC, which is what my TV is connected to,
| the DVR software that runs my TV tuner card doesn't quite work
| right (despite having a native linux installer), and I couldn't
| get channels to come through as clearly and as easily. I spent a
| couple of hours of troubleshooting and gave up.
|
| My work PC needs to have the Dropbox app (which has a linux
| installer), but it also needs the "online-only" functionality so
| that I can see and browse the entire (very large) dropbox
| directory without needing to have it all stored locally. This has
| been a feature that has been being requested on the linux version
| of the app for years, and dropbox appears unlikely to add it
| anytime soon.
|
| Both of these are pretty niche issues that I don't expect to
| affect the vast majority of users (and the dropbox one in
| particular shouldn't be an issue at all if my org didn't insist
| on using dropbox in a way that it is very much not intended to be
| used, and for which better solutions exist, but I have given up
| on that fight a long time ago), and like I said, I've had linux
| on my laptop for a couple of years so far without any issue, and
| I love it.
|
| I am curious how many "edge cases" like mine exist out there
| though. Maybe there exists some such edge case for a lot of
| people even while almost no one has the _same_ edge case issue.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| There are plenty. I run only Linux at home but CAD software for
| hobbies (Fusion 360), most games that want kernel level anti
| cheat, some embedded DRM-enabled media, all sort of just fail.
| Other things, like GPU tuning or messing with your
| displays/drivers are harder than they should be. My Bluetooth
| earbuds just don't work with my Linux machines.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Bluetooth is such a crapshoot for me, I feel like everyone
| else must be using the single blessed chip and forgot to
| share the memo.
| zamalek wrote:
| FUSE will provide Dropbox in a _more_ integrated way than
| Windows (eg. terminal) and a cursory Google revealed some
| projects for Dropbox that do the JIT download you are after -
| they are old, but I wager still work just fine (an inactive
| project can just mean that it 's complete).
| Paracompact wrote:
| I just switched to Linux. It's a great gig, and I'm actively
| encouraging everyone I know still infected with the malware
| known as Windows 11 to switch.
|
| But some of the drawbacks really aren't edge cases. Apparently
| there is still no way for me to have access to most creative
| apps (e.g. Adobe, Affinity) with GPU acceleration. It's
| irritating that so few Linux install processes are turnkey the
| way they are for Windows/Mac, with errors and caveats that cost
| less-than-expert users hours of experimenting and mucking with
| documentation.
|
| I could go on, but it really feels like a bad time to be a
| casual PC user these days, because Windows is an inhospitable
| swamp, and Linux still has some sharp edges.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| I use OneDrive and Google Drive heavily and there just are
| not good clients for Linux for those that I have found.
| Especially with the ability to not sync files but still
| "look" like they are there in the filesystem. That is my main
| stopper now.
| isatis wrote:
| I agree, I'd cut off dual booting and go full Linux when the
| hardware and software I use supports it. One of which being a
| PCIe Elgato capture card, another being an audio mixer with no
| driver support and the alternatives are very hacky and too
| complicated for me.
| hodgehog11 wrote:
| I permanently switched from Windows to Linux about five years
| ago. I had the same issue as you with Dropbox, so I switched to
| using the Maestral client for Dropbox instead which has support
| for selective sync. Works like a charm for me.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Linux is a viable alternative to Windows/MacOS if you stand back
| and squint.
|
| Not up close due to the vast number of inconsistencies.
|
| This could only be fixed by a user experience built from the
| ground up by a single company.
| regularfry wrote:
| Only true if those inconsistencies actually matter to your
| workflow. Not going to deny that they exist, obviously, but
| their impact is largely overplayed (and gratuitously downplayed
| on Windows, in my experience).
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Yes Windows also sadly has become very inconsistent.
|
| MacOS is highly consistent compared to Windows.
|
| Perhaps Linux operating systems like Steam or ChromeOS might
| finally create a beautiful and consistent UI.
| lawn wrote:
| KDE is vastly better than Windows already.
| yunnpp wrote:
| To be clear, are you suggesting Windows is the standard of
| consistency?
|
| Even modern macs fall short of the UX Apple has traditionally
| been known for...
| WolfeReader wrote:
| Please give an example of an "inconsistency" which makes Linux
| _not_ a "viable alternative to Windows/MacOS"
| 9763468975325 wrote:
| Spoken like a true Windows UX aficionado. Who doesn't love
| multiple system settings apps, a mix of minimal new context
| menus and overcrowded legacy context menus just one more click
| away.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Who doesn't love multiple system settings apps, a mix of
| minimal new context menus and overcrowded legacy context
| menus just one more click away.
|
| I get that you're making a Windows joke, but this describes
| Linux equally well.
| Zealotux wrote:
| It's good until you boot your system and end up with an
| unrecoverable black screen that meeses your day of work for no
| good reason. Linux is free if you don't value your time.
| jbstack wrote:
| You can't really make blanket statements like this about
| "Linux" in general because it depends on what distro you use.
| For example, in NixOS to fix this type of problem all you have
| to do is rollback to a previous configuration that is known to
| work. I've not used it, but I believe Arch has something
| similar.
|
| Even with imperatively configured distros like Ubuntu, it's
| generally much easier to recover from a "screen of death" than
| in Windows because the former is less of a black box than the
| latter. This means its easier to work out what the problem is
| and find a fix for it. With LLMs that's now easier than ever.
|
| And, in the worst case that you have to resort to reinstalling
| your system, it's far less unpleasant to do that in a Linux
| distro than in Windows. The modern Windows installer is painful
| to get through, and then you face hours or days of manually
| reinstalling and reconfiguring software which you can do with a
| small handful of commands in Linux to get back to a state that
| is reasonably similar to what you had before.
| howdyhowdy123 wrote:
| "Screen of death" in Windows? I haven't heard of one of those
| in over a decade.
| WolfeReader wrote:
| I've had one, although it was due to a vendor releasing
| inconsistent driver updates.
|
| Incidentally, I can now honestly say I've had more driver
| issues with Windows than Linux.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I spent years (maybe a decade) without seeing them in the
| Windows 7 and early 10 era, but in the last few years I
| have them sometimes. Many seem Nvidia-related, but I also
| remember some due to a bad update that broke things in some
| laptops.
| advael wrote:
| I dunno, I spend less time fighting with any of my several
| linux systems than the macbook I'm required to use for work,
| even without trying to do anything new with it. I choose to
| view this charitably and assume most of the time investment
| people perceive when switching operating systems is familiarity
| penalties, essentially a switching cost. The longer this
| remains the case, the less charitably I'm willing to view this.
| jbstack wrote:
| You can also mitigate a lot of the "familiarity penalties" by
| planning ahead. For example, by the time I made the decision
| to switch from Windows around 15 years ago, I'd already been
| preferring multi-platform FOSS software for many years
| because I had in mind that I might switch one day. This meant
| that when it came time to switch, I was able to go through
| the list of all the software I was using and find that almost
| all of it was already available in Linux, leaving just a
| small handful of cases that I was able to easily find
| replacements for.
|
| The result was that from day 1 of using Linux I never looked
| back.
| greenbit wrote:
| Of course, MS seems to enjoy inflicting familiarity penalties
| on its established user base every couple of years anyway.
| After having your skills negated in this way enough times,
| the jump to Linux might not look so bad.
| zamalek wrote:
| You aren't comparing Linux to anything here.
|
| Windows has recently been a complete shitshow - so even if
| Linux hasn't gotten any better (it has) it is now likely better
| than fiddling around with unfucking Windows, and Windows doing
| things like deleting all your files.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| You can put some work into windows to slim it down some, a
| unattended generator to turn most of the crap off on install,
| then Shutup OO goes a long way
| zamalek wrote:
| > You can put some work into windows
|
| That's exactly my point.
|
| There's an ever growing list of things to do in order to
| fix Windows, and that list is likely longer than Linux.
| This whole "your time is free" argument hinges on Windows
| not having exactly the same issue, or worse.
| kaylynb wrote:
| Not in my experience. I've run both Windows and Linux for the
| last decade and Windows is the only OS that I ever have
| problems with updates wasting my time and breaking things. I've
| been running image-based Linux for the last two years and the
| worst case is rebooting to rollback to the last deployment.
| Before that it was booting a different btrfs snapshot.
|
| Fun aside: I had a hardware failure a few years ago on my old
| workstation where the first few sectors of every disk got
| erased. I had Linux up and running in 10 minutes. I just had to
| recreate the efi partition and regenerate a UKI after mounting
| my OS from a live USB. Didn't even miss a meeting I had 15
| minutes later. I spent hours trying to recover my Windows
| install. I'm rather familiar with the (largely undocumented)
| Windows boot process but I just couldn't get it to boot after
| hours of work. I just gave up and reinstalled windows from
| scratch and recovered from a restic backup.
| weslleyskah wrote:
| And still, look at all the comments on the article bashing Linux
| because of compatibility, driver and hardware issues.
| jakeydus wrote:
| > bashing Linux because of [skill] issues.
|
| ftfy /s
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Still less than the number of people bashing windows.
| pygar wrote:
| Every year at around this time there is a lot of linux related
| content in tech media.
|
| It's a slow moving evergreen topic perfect for a scheduled
| release while the author is on holiday. This is just filler
| content that could have been written at any point in the last 10
| years with minor changes.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years, and I've
| been using it on the desktop since 1999, so I lived through the
| infamous "Year of the Linux Desktop" era.
|
| I've not seen anything like the current level of momentum,
| ever, nor this level of mainstream exposure. Gaming has changed
| the equation, and 2026 will be wild.
| mkozlows wrote:
| Windows 8 era had the same vibe.
| sudo_and_pray wrote:
| This time there 2 big factors that were not there in '12.
|
| 1. 'office' cloud services - now you just need a browser
| for majority of docs/sheet/slides tasks
|
| 2. gaming - while it was possible back, but it was really
| hit or miss with a game. Nowadays vast majority of games
| work on Linux out of the box.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Gaming, and Microsoft enshittifying Windows 11 to an absurd
| degree.
|
| The bloat is astounding. This is especially egregious now
| that RAM costs a fortune.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Ditto macOS.
|
| To be honest, I always figured we'd make it in the long
| run. We're a thrifty bunch, we aim to set up sustainable
| organizations, we're more enshittification-resistant by
| nature. As long as we're reliable and stick around for long
| enough.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Not just gaming. This year, both Windows and Mac OS had
| absolutely terrible years. The Mac effed up its UI with
| liquid glass, to the point where Alan Dye fled to Meta.
| Microsoft pushed LLMs and ads into everything, screwing up
| what was otherwise a decent release.
|
| On the other hand, on the Linux side, we had the release of
| COSMIC, which is an extremely user-friendly desktop. KDE,
| Gnome, and others are all at a point where they feel polished
| and stable.
| subdavis wrote:
| I guess everyone's in a "fuck it I'm ready to try some new
| stuff" mood too so this content is perfectly suited for new
| years. Would never have noticed this without your comment.
| queuebert wrote:
| What an abysmally cynical take. More good stuff is good. Be
| happy about it.
| solumunus wrote:
| Perhaps it could have been written, but it would have been far
| less accurate.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| I don't think the prevalence of these articles this time of
| year is because the authors go on holiday, but instead is
| because the new year is the perfect time to ponder: "Will this
| be the year of the Linux desktop?"
| dham wrote:
| Except every year you didn't have people like Pewdiepie and DHH
| pushing Linux. As as channels like GamersNexus doing Linux
| benchmarks. At the same time Windows and Mac making very dumb
| mistakes. So this time it does feel different, even if it might
| not be in the end.
| blitzar wrote:
| 2026, the year of linux
| LennyHenrysNuts wrote:
| It's been good for twenty years, the only difference is that OP
| finally gave it a fair go.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Proton for games had changed things dramatically. Gamers can
| legit switch to Linux with barely a second thought, without
| being technical.
|
| Linux/x86 still is poor for battery life compared to Apple.
| ako wrote:
| Most people don't care about gaming, so they shouldn't care
| about proton. What changed recently for those who don't care
| about gaming?
| jakeydus wrote:
| I'd argue the majority of casual online PC discourse is
| driven by gaming. By the numbers LTT is the largest
| PC/IT/consumer computer YouTube channel and the majority of
| their content is focused on gaming.
|
| That's my impression anyway.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The hint here is in the domain name of the article URL.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I'm glad that I am not the only one saying this. I made the
| switch 20+ years ago for my day to day use, and I have rarely
| experienced any problems with it.
| babl-yc wrote:
| I switched my desktop from macOS (10+ years) to Ubuntu 25 last
| year and I'm not going back. The latest release includes a Gnome
| update which fixed some remaining annoyances with high res
| monitors.
|
| I'd say it pretty much "just works" except less popular apps are
| a bit more work to install. On occasion you have to compile apps
| from source, but it's usually relatively straightforward and on
| the upside you get the latest version :)
|
| For anyone who is a developer professionally I'd say the pros
| outweigh the cons at this point for your work machine.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| But what about laptops? I don't use desktop machines anymore
| (last time was in 2012). Apple laptops are top notch. I use
| ubuntu as vm (headless) for software development tho
| babl-yc wrote:
| I don't have an x86 laptop at the moment so sticking with
| Macbook for now. My assumption is Mac laptops still are far
| superior given M-series chips and OS that are tuned for
| battery efficiency. Would love to find out this is no longer
| the case.
| mkozlows wrote:
| Works well if the laptop has hardware designed to support
| Linux. Framework stuff is great, for instance.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| I have the HP Zbook Ultra G1a. AMD 395+, 129GB RAM, 4TB
| 2280 SSD. Works great with Ubuntu 24.04 and the OEM kernel.
| Plays Steam games, runs OpenCL AI models. Only nit is it is
| very picky on what USB PD chargers it will actually charge
| on at all. UGreen has a 140W that works.
|
| Updated Mesa to the latest and the kernel too.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "laptop has hardware designed to support Linux"
|
| I've had Linux running on a variety of laptops since the
| noughties. I've had no more issues than with Windows.
| ndiswrapper was a bit shit but did work back in the day.
|
| What issues have you had?
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| I love Linux, it was all I ran for years. But, unfortunately,
| I needed the better hardware more and haven't been able to
| find a viable way back.
| amlib wrote:
| Best you can do is build a high end desktop at home and
| access it remotely with any laptop you desire. The laptop
| performance then becomes mostly irrelevant (even the OS is
| less relevant) and by using modern game streaming protocols
| you can actually get great image quality, low latency and 60+
| fps. Though, optimizing it for low bandwidth is still a
| chore.
|
| Have that desktop be reachable with SSH for all your CLI and
| sys admin needs, use sunshine/moonlight for the remote
| streaming and tailscale for securing and making sunshine
| globally available.
| buu700 wrote:
| I did some investigation into this the other day. The short
| answer seems to be that if you like MacBooks, you aren't
| willing to accept a downgrade along any axis, and you really
| want to use Linux, your best bet today is an M2 machine. But
| you'll still be sacrificing a few hours of battery life,
| Touch ID support (likely unfixable), and a handful of
| hardware support edge cases. Apple made M3s and M4s harder to
| support, so Linux is still playing catch-up on getting those
| usable.
|
| Beyond that, Lunar Lake chips are evidently really really
| good. The Dell XPS line in particular shows a lot of promise
| for becoming a strict upgrade or sidegrade to the M2 line
| within a few years, assuming the haptic touchpad works as
| well as claimed. In the meantime, I'm sure the XPS is still
| great if you can live with some compromises, and it even has
| official Linux support.
| delaminator wrote:
| I switched in 1999. I've never really had any problems in all
| that time.
|
| Although it was to BSDi then, and then FreeBSD and then OpenBSD
| for 5 years or so. I can't remember why I switched to Debian
| but I've been there ever since.
|
| I'm sat here now playing Oxygen Not Included.
| spiffytech wrote:
| > The latest release includes a Gnome update which fixed some
| remaining annoyances with high res monitors.
|
| Interesting, I've had to switch off from Gnome after the new
| release changed the choices for HiDPI fractional scaling. Now,
| for my display, they only support "perfect vision" and "legally
| blind" scaling options.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| Did you start using Linux on the Mac hardware or on PC
| hardware? I have a late era Intel Macbook and was considering
| switching it to Ubuntu or Debian since it is getting kinda
| slow.
| babl-yc wrote:
| I switched to a new x86 machine. Running Linux on Mac just
| made things unnecessarily complicated and hurt performance.
| Im still open to using docker on Mac to run Linux containers
| but once you want a GUI life was simpler when I switched off.
| hodgehog11 wrote:
| Not the OP, but I have a 2015 Macbook Pro and a desktop PC
| both running Linux. I love Fedora, so that's on the desktop,
| but I followed online recommendations to put Mint on the
| Macbook and it seems to run very well. However, I did need to
| install mbpfan (https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan) to
| get more sane power options and this package
| (https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd) to get the camera
| working. It runs better than Mac OS, but you'll need to
| really tweak some power settings to get it to the efficiency
| of the older Mac versions.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > The latest release includes a Gnome update which fixed some
| remaining annoyances with high res monitors.
|
| Amazing that high dpi still doesn't work. I tried to run linux
| on 4k in around 2016-2017 and the experience was so bad I gave
| up.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Again, I've had two 4k monitors on Linux for about ten years,
| and it has worked well the whole time. Back then I used
| "gnome tweak" to increase the size of widgets etc. Nowadays
| its built into mate, cinnamon, etc.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| What issues? I'm running Mint on a 4k monitor and haven't had
| any issues in years
| baby wrote:
| What pc would someone recommend as someone who just wants to toy
| around and dont necessarily need the power?
| WillAdams wrote:
| Grab one of the old Windows 10 machines which are showing up
| from corporations upgrading to Windows 11.
| layer8 wrote:
| Some N100 based mini PC.
| teekert wrote:
| There is a strange, but pleasant feeling when you hear someone
| claiming "they're early to Linux" and think it's going to be
| something big. (Happened recently.)
| desireco42 wrote:
| I get people are tired of Year of Linux on Desktop, but I feel
| like last year it actually started happening for real. Mostly due
| to Arch which is not what I ever expected.
|
| On one hand we have Steam that will make 1000s of games become
| available on easy to use platform based on Arch.
|
| For developers, we have Omarchy, which makes experience much more
| streamlined and very pleasant and productive. I moved both my
| desktop and laptop to Omarchy and have one Mac laptop, this is
| really good experience, not everything is perfect, but when I
| switch to Mac after Omarchy, I often discover how not easy is to
| use Mac, how many clicks it takes to do something simple.
|
| I think both Microsoft and Apple need some serious competition
| and again, came from Arch who turned out to be more stable and
| serious then Ubuntu.
| desireco42 wrote:
| My main joy of Linux is to have tilling manager and to have
| same machine on which I can both play games and work. Which
| since Windows I couldn't make happen.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I'm a Windows/macOS developer, but I strongly feel that all
| national governments need to convert to Linux, for strategic
| sovereignty.
|
| (My customer demographic is seniors & casual users).
| sowbug wrote:
| Curious: do enterprises using Windows suffer through all the
| system-level ads and nagware? Or do they get a version that
| lets their employees actually focus on work instead of learning
| the many reasons they should consider switching back to Edge?
| sirjaz wrote:
| Enterprise and ltsc have none of the nagware or tracking. Ai
| is still there though
| jackvalentine wrote:
| You _can_ curate the Enterprise edition a lot more with group
| policy/intune and remove all that stuff but my experience has
| been most corporate IT departments don't care/don't know how
| to do it, and MS will just randomly enable new things without
| asking the same as home editions and you have to keep an eye
| on it and go to disable them.
|
| It's super annoying!
| Shacklz wrote:
| No nagware but, at least on the machines of my colleagues, an
| even worse enemy: Microsoft Defender with all the checkboxes
| ticked. Grinds the machine to an absolute halt for any
| development work - sometimes the responsible security
| department has mercy and gives exceptions for certain
| folders/processes, sometimes not.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| My work machine is grossly slow due to all the various
| security software.
|
| Loading Teams can take minutes. I'm often late to meetings
| waiting for the damn thing to load.
|
| Feels like early 90s computing and that Moore's Law was an
| excuse for bad coding practices and pushing newer hardware
| so that "shit you don't care about but is 'part of the
| system'" can do more monitoring and have more control of
| 'your' computer.
| krelas wrote:
| It's all turned on by default even in Windows 11 Enterprise.
| You can turn everything off via AD Group Policy or your MDM
| but you have to go through the labyrinth of Windows policies
| and find them all. Thankfully you only have to do it once and
| then push it to all of your devices.
| system2 wrote:
| Linux is not suitable for the average user. I use Xubuntu on all
| my old computers, but I am 100% sure a normie would not tolerate
| the tedium of it. People want shiny icons with animations and a
| bunch of garbage on their computers to make them feel they are
| doing something. Linux is too static for that.
|
| If I have an issue with an application or if I want an
| application, I must use the terminal. I can't imagine a Mac user
| bothering to learn it. Linux is for people who want to maximize
| the use of their computer without being spied on and without
| weird background processes. Linux won't die, but it won't catch
| Windows or Mac in the next 5 decades. People are too lazy for it.
| Forget about learning. I bet you $100, 99% of the people in the
| street didn't even see Linux in their lives, nor even heard of
| it. It is not because of marketing, it is because people who
| tried it returned to Windows or Mac after deciding it is too hard
| to learn for them to install a driver or an application.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >I use Xubuntu on all my old computers, but I am 100% sure a
| normie would not tolerate the tedium of it. People want shiny
| icons with animations and a bunch of garbage on their computers
| to make them feel they are doing something. Linux is too static
| for that.
|
| "I use xfce, and it's not shiny enough for regular people" is a
| bizarre criticism. The only people that get recommended xfce
| are people with ancient computers or people who think desktop
| design peaked with Windows 98.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Outdated view. Regular people ask for help at the genius bar or
| IT poindexter all the time. And pretty icons are plentiful.
| aborsy wrote:
| Linux desktop is amazing. Coming from Debian, I installed Windows
| and had to quickly purge it from my hardware! Super bloated,
| slow, constantly phoned some CC center, automatically connected
| to OneDrive, ...
|
| Debian is a breath of fresh air in comparison. Totally quiet and
| snappy.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Debian (stable) is great but I wouldn't use it for a gaming PC
| on modern hardware. The drivers included are just too old.
| Bazzite or Arch (DIY option) seem better options.
| nodesocket wrote:
| I have a Windows 11 PC strictly for gaming. Nearly every-time I
| interact with Windows it infuriates me with garbage code,
| Microsoft business BS and anti-privacy. I'd love to switch but
| has Linux gaming solved the anti-cheat requirement issue? Do Epic
| and EA games work on Linux?
|
| I also play a decent amount of Flight Simulator 2024 and losing
| that is almost a non-starter for switching.
| rolph wrote:
| anticheat is not a linux issue, its a developers issue. it
| seems facially easy to solve. pair players with the type of
| game they want. turn on anticheat if you want
| to join no cheat sessions. if you want a cheat game
| turn off anticheat and you join sessions with other cheat
| players. the whole dilemma comes out of malignant
| users that enjoy destruction of other users ability to enjoy
| the game. go nuclear on clients that manage to join
| anticheat sessions with cheats turned on.
| pjb88 wrote:
| Any recommendations for a distro?
|
| I've used Mint in the past, loved it until I spent a day trying
| to get scanner drivers to work. Don't know if that's changed now,
| was 4 years ago
| desireco42 wrote:
| Omarchy is pretty streamlined for developers and you can play
| games as well as they work well.
| phren0logy wrote:
| I tried a number of distros and settled on Omarchy because it
| has a coherent design and nice aesthetics, but it has some
| weird quirks about messing with my dotfiles on updates. It's
| so new I suspect this will be ironed out soon.
| lawn wrote:
| Today I'd recommend CachyOS. While I haven't connected a
| scanner, everything else I've tried just seems to work.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You're going to get everyone's opinion here. Try a bunch of the
| major ones and see what works best. I did this and landed on
| Fedora but ymmv
| riffic wrote:
| the Universal Blue project has got a great suite of
| distributions:
|
| https://universal-blue.org/
| delaminator wrote:
| Simple, Debian with i3-wm
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, Mint for most people.
|
| I am using Fedora on machines with new hardware and liking it
| as well. It has small pluses/minuses vs Mint.
| sylens wrote:
| I've been really enjoying my experience using CachyOS on my
| (formerly Windows) gaming PC. I chose to use Limine and btrfs so
| now if it gets borked by a bad package install/uninstall I can
| roll back pretty easily. My next step is to replace my Nvidia GPU
| with an AMD one so I can stop worrying about that aspect in the
| future.
| nosrepa wrote:
| echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux
| desktop"
| JohnLocke4 wrote:
| Yes. The reason the year of the Linux desktop has yet to arrive
| is because most people don't understand this joke. Linux is
| powerful because it is made for power users (although certain
| distros are changing this)
| chuckadams wrote:
| Just recently started using the desktop machine (under my desk,
| as opposed to my laptop which sits on my desktop) and put NixOS
| on it, and found myself pleasantly surprised. There's certainly
| still some parts of NixOS that require some expertise and getting
| your head around its package model, but overall I was surprised
| at how idiotproof it was to install and use. I mostly play games
| on it with Steam, which also Just Works.
| dashim wrote:
| I use a Linux PC every day but I wouldn't recommend it to normal
| people. They're not going to feel any renewed sense of ownership
| from it, just annoyance at having to think about technical
| gibberish when they just want to get on with using the computer.
| howdyhowdy123 wrote:
| Can I run Solidworks on Linux yet? Excel? Labview? Vivado? Adobe
| products? Altium Designer? (Matlab is mostly yes) Not everybody
| is just writing Javascript and PHP.
|
| Can I get a laptop to sleep after closing the lid yet?
|
| Not that long ago the answer to these questions was mostly no (or
| sort of yes... but very painfully)
|
| On Windows all of this just works.
| cevn wrote:
| Adobe works
| voidfunc wrote:
| These are all pretty niche products at this point. For the true
| professionals that need these tools they're stuck but most
| people can find reasonable alternatives for their hobby or side
| hustle.
| howdyhowdy123 wrote:
| Or... they can use Windows and not have to bend over
| backwards. I know this because I keep trying and giving up
| believe me.
| maccard wrote:
| > Can I get a laptop to sleep after closing the lid yet?
|
| > on windows all of this just works
|
| Disagree on the sleep one - my work laptop doesn't go to sleep
| properly. The only laptop I've ever used that behaves as
| expected with sleep is a macbook.
| class3shock wrote:
| Still no big CAD names that I'm aware of (annoyingly), Libre
| Calc works fine for me as an Excel alternative, I have used
| Matlab on it but not recently, not sure on the others.
|
| Laptop sleep and suspend can still be finicky unfortunately.
|
| I will say my experience using CAD or other CAE software on
| windows has gotten progressively worse over the years to the
| point that FEA is more stable on linux than on windows.
|
| We do really need a Solidworks, Creo or NX on linux though. My
| hope has been that eventually something like Wine, Proton, or
| other efforts to bring windows games to linux will result in us
| getting the ability to run them. They are one of the last
| things holding me back from fully moving away from windows.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I've been giving Linux a go as a daily driver for a few months.
|
| I tried Cinnamon and while it was pleasantly customizable, the
| sigle-threadedness of the UI killed it for me. It was too easy to
| do the wrong thing and lock the UI thread, including several
| desktop or tray Spices from the official repo.
|
| I'm switching to KDE. Seems peppier.
|
| Biggest hardware challenge I've faced is my Logitech mouse, which
| is a huge jump from the old days of fighting with Wi-Fi and sound
| support. Sound is a bit messy with giving a plethora of audio
| devices that would be hidden under windows (like digital and
| analog options for each device) and occasionally compatibility
| for digital vs analog will be flaky from a game or something, but
| I'll take it.
|
| Biggest hassle imho is still installing non-repo software. So
| many packages offer a flatpak and a snap and and build-from-
| source instructions where you have to figure out the local
| package names for each dependency and they offer one .Deb for
| each different version of Debian and its derivatives and it's
| just so tedious to figure which is the right one.
| franczesko wrote:
| I wouldn't mind and wouldn't be surprised by Valve phone at some
| point
| the_af wrote:
| What amazes me is that on Steam they no longer make the
| distinction (in the standard library view) between Windows and
| Linux: every game is assumed to launch in Linux, using Proton
| behind the scenes it needed. There's still a "Linux games" toggle
| but now every game appears ungrayed by default.
|
| And it mostly works! At least for my games library. The only game
| I wasn't able to get to work so far is Space Marine 2, but on
| ProtonDB people report they got it to work.
|
| As for the rest: I've been an exclusive Linux user _on the
| desktop_ for ~20 years now, no regrets.
| solumunus wrote:
| Tried to switch to Linux plenty of times over the past few
| decades, this year it finally stuck. I can confidently say I'll
| never install Windows again. Everything pretty much just works
| and any issues I've had have been quickly resolved with the help
| of LLM's.
| bitanarch wrote:
| HDR still doesn't really work on Linux w/ nVidia GPUs.
|
| 1. 10bpp color depth is not supported on RGB monitors, which are
| the majority of LCD displays on the market. Concretely,
| ARGB2101010 and XRGB2101010 modes are not supported by current
| nVidia Linux drivers - the drivers only offer ABGR2101010 and
| XBGR2101010 (See: https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-
| modules/blob/main/...).
|
| 2. Common browsers like Chrome and Firefox has no real support
| for HDR video playback on nVidia Linux drivers. The "HDR" option
| appears on YouTube, but no HDR color can be displayed with an
| nVidia GPU.
|
| Also, video backgrounds in Google Meet on Chrome are broken with
| nVidia GPUs and Wayland. Ironically it works on Firefox. This has
| been broken for a few years and no fix is in sight.
|
| The "HDR" toggle you get on Plasma or Mutter is hiding a ton of
| problems behind the scenes. If you only have 8bpp, even if you
| can find an app that somehow displays HDR colors on
| nVidia/Wayland - you'll see artifacts on color gradients.
| fruitworks wrote:
| nvidia
| jetbalsa wrote:
| Right, it IS nvidia's fault at this point, but its still like
| what? 90% of the consumer GPU market.
| bitanarch wrote:
| They're also selling $3000 nVidia AI workstations that
| exclusively uses Linux. But what if you want to watch an
| HDR video on it? No. What if you want to use Google Meet on
| Chrome/Wayland? It's broken.
| HansHamster wrote:
| Funny how it went from "just get an Nvidia card for Linux"
| and "oh my god, what did I do to deserve fglrx?" to "just
| get an AMD card" and "it's Nvidia, what did you expect?"
| yunnpp wrote:
| The way it's not meant to be played.
| EnPissant wrote:
| I don't think this is true. I can go into my display settings
| in kde plasma and enable HDR and configure the brightness. I
| have a nvidia blackwell card.
| bitanarch wrote:
| You can enable, yes. But (assuming you're on an LCD display
| and not an OLED), you're likely still on XRGB8888 - i.e.
| 8-bit per channel. Check `drm_info`.
|
| Also, go to YouTube and play this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onVhbeY7nLM
|
| Do it once on "HDR" on Linux, and then on Windows. The "HDR"
| in nVidia/Linux is fake.
|
| The brightness you see on Plasma or Mutter is indeed related
| to the HDR support in the driver. But - it's not really
| useful for the most common HDR tasks at the moment.
| EnPissant wrote:
| It's not obvious how to interpret the output. I pasted it
| into chatgpt and it thinks I am using "Format: ABGR2101010"
| for both monitors (only 1 has HDR on) so I don't trust it.
|
| EDIT: See my sibling comment.
| bitanarch wrote:
| Under the Planes section, look for planes that have non-
| zero "CRTC_ID". Those are the planes that actually get
| output to your monitor.
|
| Here's what I'm getting on an RTX 4090 / InnoCN 27M2V and
| Cooler Master Tempest GP27U.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/SCyyZWt
| EnPissant wrote:
| I asked claude to investigate: Your Display
| Configuration Both monitors are outputting
| 10-bit color using the ABGR2101010 pixel format.
| | Monitor | Connector | Format | Color
| Depth | HDR | Colorspace | |----------------
| --------|-----------|-------------|-------------|----------
| ----|------------| | Dell U2725QE (XXXXXXX) |
| HDMI-A-1 | ABGR2101010 | 10-bit | Enabled (PQ) |
| BT2020_RGB | | Dell U2725QE (XXXXXXX) | HDMI-A-2 |
| ABGR2101010 | 10-bit | Disabled | Default |
|
| * Changed the serial numbers to XXXXXXX
|
| I am on Wayland and outputting via HDMI 2.1 if that helps.
|
| EDIT: Claude explained how it determined this with
| drm_info, and manually verified it:
|
| > Planes 0 and 3 are the primary planes (type=1) for CRTCs
| 62 and 81 respectively - these are what actually display
| your desktop content. The Format: field shows the pixel
| format of the currently attached framebuffer.
|
| EDIT: Also note that I am slowbanned on this site, so may
| not be able to respond for a bit.
|
| EDIT: You should try connecting with HDMI 2.1 (you will
| need a 8k HDMI cable or it will fall back to older
| standards instead of FRL).
|
| EDIT: HDR on youtube appears to work for me. Youtube
| correctly indentifies HDR on only 1 of my monitors and I
| can see a big difference in the flames between them on this
| scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJWvAhNq34
| bitanarch wrote:
| I don't have a Dell U2725QE, but on InnoCN 27M2V and
| Cooler Master GP27U there's no ABGR2101010 support. These
| monitors would only work with ARGB2101010 or XRGB2101010
| which nVidia drivers do not provide.
|
| Here's what I'm getting on both monitors, with HDR
| enabled on Gnome 49: https://imgur.com/a/SCyyZWt
|
| Maybe you're lucky with the Dell. But as I understand,
| HDR playback on Chrome is still broken.
| bitanarch wrote:
| Ok. I've been using DisplayPort 1.4a with my 4090 at the
| moment. Maybe I'll try HDMI 2.1 and see what happens.
|
| I'm actually surprised that YouTube HDR works on your
| side - perhaps it's tied to the ABGR2101010 output mode
| being available.
| tigerlily wrote:
| This is really shaping up to be the Century of Linux on the
| Desktop.
| subdavis wrote:
| Adoption has really picked up since 1900.
| amlib wrote:
| Previous millennium adoption also really pales in comparison
| to current millennium. Let's hope it keeps going strong in
| the next millennium
| johnea wrote:
| > actually own your PC
|
| It's funny they would choose this phasing.
|
| This is exactly the way I described my decision to abandon
| windoze, and switch to linux, over 20 years ago...
| mat_epice wrote:
| After a few months of testing the waters, I just moved my gaming
| PC over to full-time Linux this weekend. Proton has really been
| revolutionary, as I haven't yet encountered something in my Steam
| library that won't work.
| cedws wrote:
| I've been sceptical of the 'Linux desktop' for a long time, but I
| recently started using Bazzite on my gaming PC and I'm super
| impressed. In just a few years since I last daily drove a Linux
| distro it's come such a long way. KDE Plasma is fast and
| beautiful.
|
| So far all the games I want to play run really well, with no
| noticable performance difference. If anything, they feel faster,
| but it could be placebo because the DE is more responsive.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| If people put half the amount of their time into fixing Windows
| as they do installing software on Linux, it'd be way better.
|
| Instead of distro upgrades, spend 3 minutes disabling the newest
| AI feature using regedit.
|
| But, as the author rightly notes: It's more about a "feeling."
| Well then, good luck.
| christophilus wrote:
| I switched in 2020. I run Fedora and Arch. I don't miss MacOS at
| all. The last Windows I used was 8, so my opinion is out of date,
| but yeah... I don't miss Windows, either.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| What makes Linux a viable desktop for so many people now is the
| fact that they don't need to run very much software anymore. It
| runs Chrome so you're good.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| What is really blocking the move for me is zScaler, Zoom (they
| may exist on Linux, not sure about how integrated they are) but
| especially Outlook (the client). The OWA version is subpar and
| without it I cannot function in a work environment.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > without it I cannot function in a work environment.
|
| This is more about what you choose as your operating
| environment, not what your work imposes as your working
| environment.
|
| Most places of work, mine included, run Microsoft services that
| lock them into the ecosystem incredibly tightly.
|
| As per the article title, _" if you want to feel like you
| actually own your PC"_, this is about your PC, not the one
| provided to you by your workplace (since it's likely owned by
| them).
|
| One thing I'm worried about in my work environment is Microsoft
| enforcing the web versions of Office and deprecating the stand
| alone desktop applications. The web versions are a massive step
| down in terms of functionality and ease of use. Your mention of
| OWA makes me feel as if that is what Outlook will be sacrificed
| for at some point in the future anyway.
| byte_0 wrote:
| I had a similar issue, but I ended up installing Debian and
| running Windows 10 as a virtual machine with VirtualBox. The
| webcam can be accessed as if were installed on the guest OS and
| haven't had a problem with Zoom or Teams. Just sharing in case
| it helps.
| mlacks wrote:
| I moved to linux this month for good once i realized I no longer
| needed microsft services (Excel for example "runs on Mac" but is
| missing important features). I chose redhat because its what I've
| been using for over a decade at work and feels like home. Only
| thing I miss is Capcut as that workflow was pretty ironed out.
| Getting the hang of KDENlive
| epistasis wrote:
| Honestly I loved it a lot more pre-2022, when Ubuntu added a
| super aggressive OOM killer that only operates on the level of an
| entire systemd run unit. Meaning that if you are running
| computation in, say, a shell and one for your subprocesses
| running computation takes too much memory, it takes out the
| entire shell and terminal window, leaving no trace of what
| happened, including all the terminal logs.
|
| And if you are running Chrome, and something starts taking a lot
| of memory, say goodbye to the entire app without any niceties.
|
| (Yes, this is a mere pet peeve but it has been causing me so much
| pain over the past year, and it's such an inferior way to deal
| with memory limits tha what came before it, I don't know why
| anybody would have taken OOM logic from systemd services and
| applied it to use launched processes.)
| saghm wrote:
| I have to wonder if Ubuntu's prescriptive stance on things like
| this is becoming increasingly outdated in an age where there's
| actually a decent experience out of the box for a lot more
| stuff on Linux. I've long since moved on from using it
| personally for my devices, but I'm fairly certain my tolerance
| for spending effort tinkering to get things working like I want
| is a lot higher than even most Linux users, so it's hard for me
| to gauge if the window have moved significantly in that regard
| for the average Linux user.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's not just Ubuntu, Arch is just as bad. The primary
| problem is systemd, which provided an adequate OOMd for
| daemons, but then all the distributions seem to be using it
| for interactively launched processes
|
| If anybody can help me out with a better solution with a
| modern distribution, that's about 75% of the reason I'm
| posting. But it's been a major pain and all the GitHub issues
| I have encountered on it show a bug resistance to having
| better behavior like is the default for MacOS, Windows, or
| older Linux.
| mort96 wrote:
| It sounds like your primary issue is that you have a severe RAM
| deficiency for what you're trying to use your machine for. Any
| OOM killer, be it the kernel's per-process one or systemd-
| oomd's per-service one, only exists to try to recover from an
| out-of-memory scenario where the alternative is to kernel panic
| (in the case of the kernel's oom killer) or for the system to
| completely lock up (in the case of systemd-oomd).
|
| Try doing less at once, or getting more memory.
| epistasis wrote:
| My primary issue is that a system that did an OK job at
| dealing with low memory situations has been replaced with a
| completely inadequate system.
|
| If your solution is "don't ever run out of memory" my
| solution is "I won't ever use your OS unless forced to."
|
| Every other OS handles this better, and my work literally
| requires pushing the bounds of memory on the box, whether
| it's 64GB or 1TB of RAM. Killing an entire cgroup is never an
| acceptable solution, except for the long-running servers that
| systemd is meant to run.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| How does Mint work? I recommended it regardless for removing
| snap.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Been so happy with my switch to Linux about 8 months ago. The
| nvidia gremlins that stopped me in prior years are all smoothed
| out.
|
| One big plus with Linux, it's more amenable to AI assistance -
| just copy & paste shell commands, rather than follow GUI step-by-
| steps. And Linux has been in the world long enough to be deeply
| in the LLM training corpuses.
| duttish wrote:
| I've been on Linux desktop for ages, but it's not quite stable
| enough that I can recommend it to anyone. Space Marine 2 was the
| first game in quite a while than didn't just work out of the box,
| but...
|
| E.g three weeks ago nvidia pushed bad drivers which broke my
| desktop after a reboot and I had to swap display (ctrl-alt-f3
| etc), I never got into gnome at all, and roll back to an earlier
| version. Automatic rollback of bad drivers would have saved this.
|
| Are Radeon drivers less shit?
| diabllicseagull wrote:
| I've been using a full amd build with arch on it for years now.
| never had graphics related issues after an update. my biggest
| gripe is with the hdmi organization and how we can't have
| proper support with open source drivers.
| mrkeen wrote:
| I've had mixed experiences with AMD. Back in the day - a bit
| after Linus told Nvidia to fuck off - I tried to get my Radeon
| 5850HD (i think?) working on my Ubuntu. It was one of those
| things I spent the whole weekend (OS reinstalls really add up)
| trying to make work, to no avail. Relative to that nonsense,
| the equivalent proprietary Nvidia driver just worked after
| being installed.
|
| A couple of months ago I bought a second hand RX 7800 XT, and
| prepared myself for a painful experience, but I think it just
| worked. Like I got frustrated trying to find out how to
| download and install the driver, when I think it just came with
| the Linux Mint already.
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| I love this. I spent my holidays hearing non-technical family
| members complain about their ever deteriorating Windows
| experiences, issues that make me righteously angry at Microsoft.
|
| IMO the next important unblocker for Linux adoption is the Adobe
| suite. In a post-mobile world one can use a tablet or phone for
| almost any media consumption. But production is still in the
| realm of the desktop UX and photo/video/creative work is the most
| common form of output. An Adobe CC Linux option would enable that
| set of "power users". And regardless of their actual percentage
| of desktop users, just about ever YouTuber or streamer talking
| about technology is by definition a content creator so opening
| Linux up to them would have a big effect on adoption.
|
| And yes I've tried most of the Linux alternatives, like GIMP,
| Inkscape, DaVinci, RawTherapee, etc. They're mostly /fine/ but
| it's one of the weaker software categories in FOSS-alternatives
| IMO. It also adds an unnecessary learning curve. Gamers would
| laugh if they were told that Linux gaming was great, they just
| have to learn and play an entirely different set of games.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Photoshop (for example) largely works in Wine, the problem is
| the CC itself and the installer, which is unimaginably bloated
| and glued to the Internet Exp... I mean Edge Web View and many
| other Windows-only things.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Linux is my main and sole desktop since around-2006. I needed
| windows for TurboTax a few hours a year in the past but that's
| it, I did not do PC games though, just regular desktop stuff
| including developing code.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Same here, since 1997 though, running the tax software in a
| virtual machine with Linux as host.
| hecifato wrote:
| I've been around the block with Linux distributions since 2020. I
| personally think that Bazzite is the way to go for most people
| coming from Windows, or people experienced with Linux that want
| something as close to "set and forget" as you can.
|
| One thing that can be annoying is how quickly things have moved
| in the Linux gaming space over the past 5 years. I have been a
| part of conversations with coworkers who talk about how Linux
| gaming was in 2019 or 2020. I feel like anyone familiar with
| Linux will know the feeling of how quickly things can improve
| while documentation and public information cannot keep up.
| running101 wrote:
| Year of the Linux desktop!
| WolfeReader wrote:
| The article's title - and the original title of the submission -
| was specific, bold, and contained a call to action. The new title
| is bland and unspecific (Linux has been "good" for servers for
| decades now).
|
| Please revert this submission to use the correct title.
| Biganon wrote:
| I'm tired of people saying Steam on Linux just works. It doesn't.
|
| Tried running Worms: instant crash, no error message.
|
| Tried running Among Us: instant crash, had to add cryptic
| arguments to the command line to get it to run.
|
| Tried running Parkitect: crashes after 5 minutes.
|
| These three games are extremely simple, graphically speaking.
| They don't use any complicated anti-cheat measure. This shouldn't
| be complicated, yet it is.
|
| Oh and I'm using Arch (BTW), the exact distro SteamOS is based
| on.
|
| And of course, as always, those for which it works will tell you
| you're doing-it-wrong(tm) .
| sirjaz wrote:
| If Microsoft could get their heads out of their rears, they could
| potentially get back to a better OS for gaming. The hybrid kernel
| Dave Cutler designed is in many ways still better than the Linux
| kernel. It's the userland that is the issue with Windows 11. Look
| just by enabling true nvme support you close the gap between
| Linux and Windows performance wise.
| kentonv wrote:
| I switched all the machines at https://lanparty.house over to
| Linux a couple months ago. So far, we've experienced noticeably
| _fewer_ problems on Linux compared to Windows. Stability and
| performance are better. I can 't think of one game we tried that
| didn't work. And wow is it nice not to have all the ads and
| crapware in our faces anymore.
|
| (I'm aware that Battlefield series and League of Legends won't
| work due to draconian anti-cheat -- but nobody in my group cares
| to play those I guess.)
| api wrote:
| All Linux desktop has to do is stay still and it will catch up
| with Windows, which is progressively getting worse.
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