[HN Gopher] 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
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2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 765 points
Date : 2026-01-03 00:15 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (xeiaso.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (xeiaso.net)
| djaouen wrote:
| See, now _this_ is how a website *should* look: mainly text, with
| non-obtrusive ads at the bottom. It 's really not that hard!
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| There's a stickied ad at the bottom that says
|
| > The AI Agent that gets your codebase Copilot & Cursor letting
| you down? Try Augment. Install Now
| djaouen wrote:
| Hey, gotta pay the bills, somehow! *shrug*
| dspillett wrote:
| Very observant of you. The comment you replied to mentioned
| "non-obtrusive ads at the bottom" so they noticed that too.
| IMO "non-obtrusive" is a fair description, given that it
| doesn't seem to be doing excessive tracking (I didn't spot
| any extra cookies or other storage, so it is presumably
| logging little, if any, more than web server logs did in the
| 90s/00s, which is better than the stalking done by most
| adtech these days).
| ktpsns wrote:
| Best luck! My year of the Linux desktop has been 2006, so it's
| now 20 years (with a short 5yrs relapse around 2012). I never
| look back.
|
| (Similarities to smoking cessation are neither coincidental nor
| intentional, but unavoidable.)
| gerdesj wrote:
| Mine was a few years earlier (YoLotD). Sadly, I kept up with
| the fags until 2018 ...
| chrisweekly wrote:
| FTR to other readers, "fags" in this context refers to
| cigarettes (per the GP's parenthetical remark about smoking).
| gerdesj wrote:
| Very kind of you to note a potential en_GB => en_US
| buggeration.
| roxolotl wrote:
| "start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus
| that are actually just webviews"
|
| Haven't used windows in five years or so but I've kept hearing
| bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the
| AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can't be bothered to
| interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs
| something has gone horribly wrong.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The windows problem is every other OS release has included new
| UI libraries. Over the last 10 years they've made something
| like 5 different new ways to make native windows UIs. And, of
| course, they support all of them. You can use the classic Win32
| API or you can use the newest WinUI 3
| memoriuaysj wrote:
| what has gone horribly wrong is the native UIs. they are
| completely worthless, across all OSes - difficult to use,
| limited, and in general suck compared to HTML/CSS.
|
| I've worked with all major GUI frameworks, from MFC to Qt, they
| all suck compared with React/Vue
| cogman10 wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but it does entirely depend on
| the type of application you want to make.
|
| If you need a lot of graphical elements and customization to
| get a look and feel that matches what you want, then yeah,
| nothing really beats html/css/js for both it's flexibility
| and available ecosystem.
|
| But if what you need is an application with a button that
| does magic things when you push it, or a text box or table
| that allows for customization of the text color, then all the
| other types of UX frameworks work just fine. You just can't
| expect to do something like make a pretty chart.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| and yet the Telegram Desktop App, written in Qt/C++ is the
| only goddamn desktop messenger app that actually feels smooth
| and feature rich rather than the webclient wrapper
| abominations of everyone else that eat half a gig of ram on
| startup and randomly hang on searches
| Klonoar wrote:
| macOS has two separate Telegram apps, technically speaking.
| The one (most) everyone uses is AppKit based.
| mbirth wrote:
| I've recently downgraded my 10 year old used-only-for-
| obscure-firmware-updaters laptop to Windows 7 and enabled
| the "Classic" design. The snappiness of that GUI is
| unmatched even with Win 10/11 on much better hardware.
| Makes you wonder about the rest of Windows when Microsoft
| can't even optimise the most basic things in modern Windows
| anymore.
| tvbusy wrote:
| Same here. I developed desktop applications for 15+ years
| and was really frustrated with Microsoft's direction for
| the UI around the time of Windows Phone. While Windows
| Forms may not be the best, it worked for decades until
| then. Now even if someone wants to build a desktop
| application using native UI, it's next to no resource at
| all because it's all about cross platform nowadays.
| cageface wrote:
| SwiftUI on macOS 26 still has issues but it's finally
| starting to evolve into something usable. In particular it
| seems like the long standing performance problems are being
| addressed.
| ffaser5gxlsll wrote:
| For whom?
|
| Every single web or mobile app does his own custom thing
| nowadays. As a user I couldn't care less how it's
| implemented, what I want consistency in behavior and style
| across the board.
|
| It feels like this has been completely lost, even on
| platforms like mac where consistency _used_ to be important.
|
| I'd take MFC everything over random behavior if I could.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > It feels like this has been completely lost, even on
| platforms like mac where consistency used to be important.
|
| There are two kinds of consistency: across apps within a
| platform and across platforms within the same app. As
| someone who uses multiple platforms regularly, I have
| forever been annoyed when eg keyboard shortcuts change when
| I switch to a different computer, especially when I'm using
| the same app.
|
| Apps like Discord, Spotify and VSCode are consistently the
| most pleasurable to use because they are largely the same.
|
| For a unique piece of hardware like the old iPod, it made
| more sense to do your special custom UX as a unified
| product. But we're talking about general purpose computers.
| The "platform" shouldn't be special imo, it should simply
| be predictable and stay out of the way. They mostly provide
| the same thing, like copy paste and maximizing a window,
| yet have different controls. This differentiation adds no
| value, at least to me.
| d12bb wrote:
| You forget you're a minority. Most users use one
| platform, or at most one work one private (probably with
| different software). So most software should be optimized
| for the platform, not consistency across them.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I don't agree with this at all. I'll take AppKit (preferably
| with Swift, but Obj-C is fine too) over anything web. There's
| a number of reasons, but the biggest is that AppKit has an
| expansive set of well implemented, accessible, flexible,
| efficient, and ready to use widgets that are all designed to
| work together, and the truth is that this isn't something you
| can get on the web.
|
| Even the most complete "UI frameworks" on the web are full of
| holes, leaving you to build a patchwork monster out of a
| laundry list of third party widgets (all of which themselves
| are full of shortcomings and concessions) or build your own.
|
| As an aside, this gripe isn't exclusive to the web. It's a
| problem with many others such as Windows App SDK (aka WinUI)
| and Flutter, among others. At least for the things I build,
| they're unsuitable at best.
| bitwize wrote:
| There's one problem: If you're competent with non-web UI
| technologies, it's probably time to schedule your
| colonoscopy.
|
| Late millennials and gen Z have been spoiled by
| declarative, reactive frameworks that work identically
| whether you're doing a local UI or the Web, and the tools
| (for example Figma) that have grown up around these
| frameworks. Using C++, Objective-C, or even Swift will be
| just fine for a personal project, but if you're talking
| something that needs to be maintained and refined over the
| long term by a team, you will have a much worse time
| finding people competent in those languages than in
| JavaScript+React+Electron.
|
| This is also one of the reasons behind rewriting everything
| in Rust: C is so dangerous, people who don't already know
| it inside and out are unwilling to touch it. Virtually all
| of the younger system developers are already working in
| Rust, and would vastly prefer it over working in C given
| the choice, so keeping a C project maintained has gotten a
| whole lot harder.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I write plenty of declarative UI too in the form of
| SwiftUI (where it makes sense; often on Apple platforms
| the imperative frameworks are better suited) and Jetpack
| Compose.
|
| Declarative UI has its upsides, but it's hardly a
| panacea. There are places where it's a straightforward
| dramatic improvement and then others where it's an
| awkward contortion at best. Reactivity can be great but
| works in imperative setups too.
|
| The explosion of popularity of front end web frameworks
| comes down almost entirely to two things: accessibility
| and commodity talent. It has a low bar to entry and
| JS+React is the closest the industry has come yet to
| achieving its undying dream of cheap, easily replaceable,
| interchangeable developers. In most other aspects it's
| objectively worse than alternatives.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > Virtually all of the younger system developers are
| already working in Rust
|
| I'd love to know where you get your statistics from.
|
| FYI, as an anecdote, I am 'younger', in the sense of
| 'only recently joined the workforce', and I write 100+
| lines of C and C++ a day, both at work and in side
| projects. Haven't touched Rust once, although I would
| like to get into it.
|
| And funnily, the one UI framework I did use at work is
| Avalonia, which is strongly inspired by Windows
| Presentation Foundation.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Sucks a whole lot less for users though.
|
| I remember when people argued that because the time spent
| running an app was so much greater than the time spent
| developing it that one should be more conscientious about a
| user's time than a developer's.
|
| After all, wasting a minute of time from 20 million users is
| 38 man-years of lost life. Doing that just to save a
| developer a week or a month is ethically troubling.
|
| Of course, people also upgraded their computers a lot less
| frequently and you'd publish minimum machine requirements for
| software which probably made it easier to make such arguments
| as you'd also lose customers if software was slow or had
| minimum hardware requirements a lot of people didn't have.
|
| That largely went out the window with web developers where
| users were just as likely to blame browser makers or their
| ISP for poor performance. Now with app developers and OS
| makers doing it, I guess there's just so many users at this
| point that losing a few with older hardware just doesn't
| matter.
| fragmede wrote:
| Ugh, opposite. CSS is the fucking worst way of laying out a
| UI. How many human lives have been lost to div class layout
| nonsense that a better system could handle directly.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Not for the user, unless I forgot that today is opposite day.
| yndoendo wrote:
| I would hard disagree. Give me QT to make cross-platform
| applications that properly manage resources, have low
| latency, and barely register in memory usage.
|
| There was a cross-platform QT tool, running on macOS,
| Windows, and Linux, for debugging and updating the firmware
| for an embedded platform solution. macOS & Linux both were
| quick and fast to code. Windows needed more work and also an
| abstracted write management system because the application
| was bringing the OS to screeching halt while writing the
| debug messages to a SQLite database. The write issue was only
| on Windows. HTML pages / reports were being saved into the
| SQLite database and viewable with-in the application. This
| was all packed into a single file executable so nothing and
| to be installed, just copied to the computer and ran.
|
| Often low-end hardware is sold in product solutions and
| frameworks like QT are better suited to make the end user
| happy with load and response time than HTML5. The only reason
| I find bloated frameworks being used on such hardware is
| because the developer only understood one programing language
| and one UI framework. The former developer who's job I took
| over jumped ship because he did not want to learn WPF and
| only knew WinForms.
|
| QT, HTML5, React, WinForms, Gtk ... are all tools in a tool
| box and each has a proper usage. Hell, if I ever make an
| iPhone based application I will be learning Swift and the
| Apple frameworks for such a task.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Microsoft has a history of creating new UI frameworks. IMHO
| it's the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers,
| developers!" attitude, which I think is a _good_ thing at core
| (court the developers that add value to your platform!)
|
| But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to
| elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll _always_ be
| more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add
| incremental fixes to the old one.
|
| React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not
| try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps
| for your platform?
|
| (Tangentially, see also the mixed reaction to Mac native apps
| switching from AppKit to SwiftUI)
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The decisions reg UI frameworks are largely due to internal
| political conflicts, mostly between DevDiv and Windows.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Just curious what is DevDiv? Tools division?
| xmcp123 wrote:
| As I understand it, .NET, developer tools, and VS.
|
| Basically you have tight OS integration vs developer
| friendly cross platform.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think it also includes GitHub now.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thank you!
| easton wrote:
| From the outside looking in one wonders why this is allowed
| to continue. Microsoft's old school "developer tools for
| money" business is slowly dying (because Visual Studio
| proper is less popular than its ever been since so much is
| targeting web), you would think they'd reorganize and move
| .net and GitHub and stuff into their cloud team and yeet
| whatever toxic leadership is preventing Windows from using
| Microsoft's own frameworks.
|
| IIRC .NET was banned from core Windows components after
| longhorn died, but its been 20 years. .NET is fast now, and
| C++ is faster still. Externally developed web frameworks
| shouldn't be required for Windows.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| It's a largely dysfunctional org creating largely
| dysfunctional software, I.e. Conway law. Dysfunctional
| orgs tend not to be capable of fixing themselves,
| especially without external threat. Satya Nadella, like
| many CEOs, seems mostly interested in impressing his
| peers and these days that means fancy AI, before that it
| was Quantum chips.
|
| Microsoft has produced some great technology and when I
| was last there I was definitely focusing on getting as
| much of the good stuff out into open source as possible.
|
| Back in the early V8 days the execs imagined JavaScript
| would keep getting exponentially faster, I tired to
| explain with a similar investment anything V8 could do
| dotnet could do better as we had more information
| available for optimization.
| kombine wrote:
| Yeah, .NET is actually an impressive piece of tech. They
| have F# too which is a really solid programming language.
| And then they chose React of all things to build core OS
| UI.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because .NET is under DevDiv, F# came from Microsoft
| Research, and the OS is under Windows team.
|
| Windows team even refuses to have managed bindings for
| DirectX, like Apple and Google do on their platforms.
|
| Managed DirectX and XNA were pushed by highly motivated
| individuals, and lasted only as long as they stayed at
| Microsoft.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Longhorn was politics, then Google ate their lunch on
| mobile with Java and JavaScript userspace, across two
| platforms.
|
| DevDiv is a "here C++ rules!" silo, even the Rust
| adoption is being widely embraced at Azure, less so on
| Windows team.
| zamalek wrote:
| Yeah, as far as I understand it, that politics is: Sinofsky
| entrenched NIH on every team that he touched.
| asveikau wrote:
| They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation
| of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So
| when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they
| don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up
| doing less.
|
| That was my impression of one of the major problems when I
| worked there 2008-2011. But I don't think it's just one
| problem.
| nextos wrote:
| I think that because their total compensation is lower
| than FAANG, especially at senior levels, and they are
| seen as uncool, they sometimes have issues retaining top-
| notch talent. It's paradoxical, because MS Research is
| probably the best PLT organization in the world. But they
| have failed to move a lot of that know-how into
| production.
|
| Besides, because it's an older company, it might have
| more organizational entropy, i.e. dysfunctional middle-
| management. As you say it's probably several other causes
| too. But still, hard to understand how they can create
| F#, F*, and Dafny, just to name a few, and fail with
| their mainstream products.
| zipy124 wrote:
| You also probably couldn't pay me enough to work in the
| kind of environment that produces such buggy software as
| Microsoft teams. A message based app which can't even
| guarantee delivery of messages, or synchronization across
| devices isn't a good sign for management and delivery.
| asveikau wrote:
| I was a unix head at the time and ran OpenBSD on my
| personal Thinkpad. I figured a stint on the Windows team
| would broaden my horizons and expose me to differences.
| It did that. I don't regret it. I did in the end feel
| that the company was not my vibe, but I respect and
| appreciate some of what came out of there.
| asveikau wrote:
| Back when I was there, part of my calculus was that cost
| of living in Seattle was cheaper than the bay. It was
| about 35% cheaper back then, according to regional CPI
| data I looked at at the time. Not sure what the
| difference is today. I believe housing is still
| substantially cheaper.
|
| I think a few years after I left when more Big Tech
| opened offices in Seattle, competing companies started
| paying Bay Area salaries for Seattle living, removing
| this argument. I haven't watched this closely in recent
| years.
|
| But fwiw, I was able to save and invest a lot in my
| Seattle days, despite a salary that was lower than in the
| bay.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Seattle cost of living is still significantly cheaper
| than the Bay Area. A lower salary goes even farther given
| the lack of state income tax, too.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| But in a world where Amazon prices are the same, car and
| gas are the same, cost of living is just rent?
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| Not sure what you're getting at. Housing is the main
| cost, and is drastically cheaper in Seattle. Food in
| Seattle is a bit more pricey.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Housing is just one component, there is a lot of other
| stuff that has equal price: if you order stuff from
| Amazon the price is the same, if you buy a new car the
| price is the same.
| eloisant wrote:
| Housing makes a huge difference, but there is also the
| cost of groceries, dining out, etc.
|
| Basically the housing price difference can mean buying a
| nice house close to your job vs renting a room in a
| share-apartment.
|
| Best of both worlds is to save in a high-cost area then
| move to a cheaper area.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because those languages were created at Microsoft
| Research, not DevDiv nor Windows.
|
| All different business units.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Is compensation really the issue? Like, people earning
| 160k simply can't take a dive into the OS source code and
| make proper fixes, but people earning 250k magically can?
|
| I don't know. I know there are a lot of people who want
| to work on the OS source code, given the chance, but need
| some hand holding in the beginning. Companies in general
| are not willing to give them the chance, because they
| don't want to hand hold them.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think uncompetitive compensation is the dominant factor
| in Microsoft's decline. Up there with stack ranking. They
| claim that it's 30% cheaper to live there but then they
| go and capture most of that 30% for themselves.
|
| It is my opinion that developer ability is on a Pareto
| distribution, like the 80 20 rule when 80% of the work is
| done by 20% of the people. The job market is more liquid
| for those that are extremely productive so it's pretty
| easy to for them to get a pay rise of 30% by switching
| companies. In the worst case you can often come back with
| a promotion because, like many companies, Microsoft is
| more likely to promote you when trying to poach you back.
| Doing a 2 year stint at Amazon was quite common. The
| other problem is that when your best people leave is that
| the process is iterative, not only are you getting paid
| less but you are now working with people who couldn't
| easily switch jobs. You start being surrounded by
| incompetence. Stack ranking, which I hear is still being
| done unofficially, also means that you put your promotion
| and career in danger by joining a highly productive team.
| So it is rather difficult to get highly productive people
| to work on the same team.
|
| Being paid less, being surrounded by incompetence, and
| being forced to engage in constant high stakes
| politicking really sucks.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I still think there are ways to hand hold people a bit
| and grow an ordinary engineer to a better one who is fit
| for system programming in maybe 12 months.
|
| Otherwise as you said the only way is to offer the best
| compensation so that people don't leave. But again those
| people probably would leave for different reasons
| (culture e.g.).
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Compensation is the easiest way and probably the most
| essential. It is hard to maintain a good culture when
| your best keep getting poached away with large sums of
| money. If Microsoft was the only game in town then sure
| they could get away with paying less, but they're not so
| they cannot.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah you have a point. I wonder what the NT kernel team
| looks like nowadays.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Compensation can be the issue if the cost of living is
| creating problems. If you need 150k to just live in an
| area, 160k is not motivating while 250k gives you the
| peace of mind to focus on the work, not just on
| surviving. If you live in Bangladesh, the difference
| between 160k and 250k is almost meaningless.
|
| Also compensation is a sign of respect and influences
| motivation. If you position yourself lower in the market,
| there is no reason to deliver top results for less money,
| correct? This attracts mediocrity, especially in
| management, and slowly kills companies. Usually there is
| no way back, no large company can replace the entire
| management and once and the mediocre ones will reject
| new, better ones.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you could earn $250k why would you settle for $160?
| There are reasons people do but still money is a powful
| signal
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Theoretically (never happened to me), I'd definitely do a
| $100K Windows kernel, or whatever kernel work, over a
| $150K DE job that I currently have (I used to have a
| $220K DE job too and I won't hesitate to switch).
| jeltz wrote:
| A kernel engineering job is much more fun than yet
| another backend web gig. A large part because when
| working with typical web coding people do not want you to
| do actual software engineering.
|
| But the actual issue is that if you underpay people they
| will not feel respected and valued so they will either
| not be motivated or leave. So you cannot pay below
| market, but you do not need to pay FB salaries either.
| eloisant wrote:
| It's not about the amount, but the type of people who
| stay when they could move to a higher paying job.
|
| And the fact that it's impossible to poach people from
| companies offering a higher salary than you do. Unless
| you give them something more, like better conditions, or
| "mission", or the idea to work on something cool, but I
| don't think any of those apply to Microsoft.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _dysfunctional middle-management_
|
| I thought about this a lot while working at a high-growth
| company recently.
|
| Decided that regular (quarterly) manager rankings (HR-
| supported, anonymous) by 2-3 levels of subordinates is
| the only way to solve this at scale.
|
| The central problem is: assuming a CEO accidentally
| promoted a bad middle manager, then how do they ever find
| out?
|
| Most companies (top-down rankings-only) use project
| success as their primary manager performance signal.
|
| Unfortunately, this has 3 problems: (1) project success
| doesn't prove a manager isn't bad, (2) above-managers
| only hear from managers, and (3) it incentivizes managers
| to hack project success metrics / definitions.
|
| Adding a servant/leader skip-level metric is a critical
| piece of information on "On, this person is toxic and
| _everyone_ thinks poorly of them, despite the fact that
| they say everyone loves them. "
| pjmlp wrote:
| I can confirm, the guys still around for WinUI team and
| related frameworks, always appear clueless when posed
| questions about Windows features they were supposed to
| know about.
|
| Just go watch a few recordings on their YouTube channel.
| Kye wrote:
| Raymond Chen tries to document it, but he's just one
| person.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why
| not try and get those developers more comfortable producing
| apps for your platform?
|
| Because web stuff utterly sucks for making UIs on the
| desktop. Microsoft either doesn't know this (bad sign), or is
| choosing to use the trendy thing even though it'll make their
| software worse for customers (a worse sign). Either way it's
| a very bad look from MS.
| gfody wrote:
| probably trying to repro the crazy success of vscode,
| surely electron is the magic sauce and not the dream team
| of devs. azure data studio should've proved that you can't
| just sprinkle electron dust and get a winner.
|
| sadly I loved azure data studio despite its being afflicted
| with electron, but it became so bug infested they had to
| completely abandon it.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| vscode is successful despite electron, not thanks to
| electron. The electron part is the worst of it.
| user34283 wrote:
| No, it does not suck.
|
| I attempted to use WinUI 3, and could not even get PNGs to
| render the colors correctly, no matter what setting I
| tried.
|
| Then I gave Tauri a try, and everything worked out of the
| box, with the PNGs rendering even better than in the
| Windows Photos app.
|
| Building the UI was much easier, it looked better, and you
| get to build the "backend" in Rust.
|
| Nothing about this sucked.
| lenkite wrote:
| WinUI 3 is basically utterly pathetic bul_sh_t attempting
| to pretend that it is a UI framework. A wet paper plane
| passing itself off as a passenger aircraft. Please
| compare with a _real_ desktop UI framework like GTK or
| Qt. Or just a more modern one like Rust Iced or gpui
| /slint
| drnick1 wrote:
| Operating systems should always use C/C++ UI frameworks, and
| as little costly abstraction as possible, period. Anything
| else is wasting resources.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not so much about wasting resources as it is about the
| added latency, jankiness, and inconsistency in look & feel
| hurting usability.
| oldestofsports wrote:
| Latency is literally wasting resources
| layer8 wrote:
| The point was that users mostly don't care about wasting
| resources, but about usability. If usability wasn't
| impacted, few people would care about resources being
| wasted. But since usability is very much impacted, people
| (rightfully) complain.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| Wasting resources affects usability, and not just through
| latency.
| layer8 wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily. A lot of resources are being
| wasted without impacting usability. Users only start
| noticing and complaining about it when it does.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| It does, period. Less things can run in parallel, fans
| get louder, batteries live shorter and devices feel old
| years before they should, all of which directly affects
| usability. The user not noticing the direct cause or
| having enough resources to waste to at least perform
| _some_ tasks acceptably doesn 't change anything.
| vanviegen wrote:
| And how about reliability? Having to start a web browser
| and a web framework to display core OS functionality adds
| a lot of moving parts that can break.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think the reason they keep trying new UI frameworks is that
| no one really adopts them. Developers know that Microsoft
| won't kill off backward compatibility and break all the
| enterprise apps, so why rewrite? When one framework fails,
| they start working on the next one. I question if they
| understand the corner they've painted themselves into.
| blibble wrote:
| I stopped writing Windows applications back in the early
| 00s
|
| my Windows API knowledge (essentially: just Win32) is still
| exactly as useful as it was then, having missed the 7 or 8
| different UI frameworks in the interim
| stevekemp wrote:
| Me too, back then I wrote applications either using the
| raw Win32 API (GetMessage, TranslateMessage,
| DispatchMessage, etc), or using MFC.
|
| I think MFC is now long-time dead and buried, but at the
| time I liked it despite the ugly macros.
| cyberax wrote:
| MFC is actually still supported by MS, works in the most
| recent MSVS, and even occasionally receives updates.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Win32 is basically frozen on Windows XP.
|
| Since Vista most newer APIs are done in COM, or WinRT
| nowadays.
| trinix912 wrote:
| I remember a thin book describing changes to the API in
| Vista and 7 compared to XP and it was really thin. Just a
| few extra APIs to be able to show controls in the taskbar
| preview and things like that. Win32 is a stable API and I
| hope they don't let anyone from the Windows 11
| modernization team touch it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Except for anything that came after XP, you need to at
| least make use of COM.
|
| WinRT can be avoided if you don't do any modern stuff
| like the new context menu, WinUI, or Windows ML.
| ptx wrote:
| And those new APIs (at least the context menu API)
| apparently require a "package identity", which requires a
| signed MSIX installer, which requires paying for a code-
| signing certificate, unless I'm missing something in the
| docs.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Win32 is a stable API and I hope they don't let anyone
| from the Windows 11 modernization team touch it.
|
| I've heard a Microsoft executive talk about win32 as
| legacy that they want to replace. I don't think that's
| realistic though, it's probably the last piece of
| technology keeping people on the platform.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was the goal with UAP and UWP, but they clearly messed
| up the execution.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/win32-and-
| com/win32-an...
|
| Win32, the C API, is stagnant since Windows XP, other
| than some ...Ex and ...ExN kind of additions.
|
| As mentioned above, the new APIs are mostly delivered as
| COM, occasionally with some .NET bindings.
|
| There is still a silo trying to push WinRT now on Win32
| side, although given how they made a mess of the
| developer experience only those with Microsoft salaries
| care about it.
|
| This oldie shows some of the background,
|
| https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-
| winrt...
| yndoendo wrote:
| Last year I ran into the issue of .NET network bindings
| not returning all NICs. [0] This issue has been present
| in the .NET since the genesis and only resolved in .NET
| 9. I had to create my own Win32 wrapper so everything
| works properly in .NET 4 frameworks ... still need to
| maintain Windows 7 pre-SP1 support in some applications.
|
| Smells like Microsoft was trying to create APIs based on
| assumptions versus a 1:1 method that exposes managed code
| and hides unmanaged.
|
| [0] https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/100824
| RajT88 wrote:
| The software biz in general has a major "out with the old, in
| with the new" attitude, which paired with the attitude of,
| "We're going to build what we know, instead of learning the
| old stuff which is new to us".
|
| I've seen time and again, things like apps rewritten from
| scratch because nobody knew C++, and they only had C# devs.
| Or a massive runaround because the last guy on the team who
| knew C++ wrote a bunch of stuff and left a couple years back,
| and now nobody really knew how any of that stuff worked.
|
| > React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why
| not try and get those developers more comfortable producing
| apps for your platform?
|
| IMO - this is worth talking about. Zune, Windows Phone, and
| some others died when they did not, in fact, suck, and were
| pretty good products which while late to the game, could have
| competed if there had just been a decent app ecosystem.
| Greed wrote:
| I maintain to this day that the Zune was one of the best
| designed hardware and software platforms I've ever used.
| Probably the only truly design forward product that MS ever
| produced.
| midnightclubbed wrote:
| The Zune hardware was slick, particularly the solid state
| players. The music store worked great and their music
| licensing was so much better than Apple - $10 a month for
| unlimited streaming, unlimited downloads (rentals) to
| Zune devices and 10 free mo3 downloads to own.
|
| Their only misstep was making one of their colorways poop
| brown! That and being too late to market with a phone
| that used the same design language
| SllX wrote:
| There was also the fact that Microsoft introduced it 3
| months before Apple announced the product that would kill
| the iPod, leading with the HDD model (a direct competitor
| to what would become known as the iPod Classic line) when
| Apple's real flagship was the iPod nano.
|
| There was also the crap that was Windows Media Player 11
| which I tried to like for about a month.
|
| There was also the incompatibility with Microsoft's own
| DRM ecosystem in PlaysForSure which was full of these
| subscription music services, some of which were quite
| popular with the kind of people that were inclined to buy
| a Zune: folks in Microsoft's ecosystem that had passed up
| on using an iPod and used something from SanDisk,
| Creative, Toshiba or iRiver instead. This is because they
| wanted to replicate the entire iPod+iTunes model
| entirely.
|
| The 2006 lineup of iPods was also particularly strong,
| and included the first aluminum iPod nano's. When
| Microsoft announced and released the Zune, they were
| counter-programming against _that_ , right into the
| Holiday season with a new brand that had no name ID, with
| a product that was just like the iPod, couldn't play any
| of your music from iTunes _or_ Rhapsody, but with... HD
| radio.
|
| More than a few missteps were made.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Their only misstep was making one of their colorways
| poop brown
|
| i think the other big issue was calling it a 'zune' but
| thats just me...
| nightski wrote:
| Name or color had nothing to do with it imho (I like the
| brown personally). It was all timing. They were entering
| a market with a well estaablished leader (iPod) that was
| nearly as good, as good, or better depending on who you
| ask. On top of it phones themselves were taking over the
| music player market at the same time, which is where
| Microsoft really dropped the ball.
|
| I mean, iPhone is a really ridiculous name as well if you
| stop to think about it.
| sylens wrote:
| The Zune software 2.0 remains the pinnacle of Microsoft
| design
| mcv wrote:
| Out with the old, in with the new, doesn't have to be bad,
| but it depends on what your old and new are. I'd be a lot
| less skeptical about migrating OS-level sttuff from C to
| Rust than from C to React.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| If the motivation is "Because I refuse to learn C", then
| both approaches will be bad. You can't avoid
| understanding what you're migrating, but seemingly
| Microsoft thinks they're above that. Fits with the
| average mindset of developers within the Windows
| ecosystem, at least from my experience.
| jeltz wrote:
| Totally agreed, I have learned a lot of technologies to
| understand legacy systems. Either you run them or to
| migrate away from them. If you do not learn and respect
| the legacy system your migration is bound to fail.
| lenkite wrote:
| Windows Phone was actually doing well and adoption was
| taking off when Nadella came in and killed it. It didn't
| help that they changed the app framework and then blamed
| lack of apps. Such a brain-dead decision.
| sylens wrote:
| Windows Phone 7 was doing well; for some reason they did
| a breaking change with Windows Phone 8 and broke app
| compatibility. I will never understand that, they
| kneecapped themselves despite being multiple laps behind
| Apple and Google already...
| close04 wrote:
| The reason was moving from the CE kernel to the NT kernel
| between WP7 and WP8. This was supposed to make
| developers' lives much easier when porting Windows 8
| apps. The minimum hardware requirement had to be bumped
| and old WP7 devices could never meet them.
| jorvi wrote:
| Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services
| did not have first party support, and the third party
| clients kept getting killed / people banned from said
| services.
|
| Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft
| out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps
| client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did
| not work (properly).
|
| And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI
| frameworks 3 or 4 times. And they left phones behind on
| the old OS releases repeatedly, that then couldn't run
| the new frameworks.
|
| Still, Windows Phone its UI concept was really great, and
| I sorely miss the durability of polycarbonate bodies
| versus the glass, metal and standard plastic bodies of
| today.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| What burned me was that there was no updating from WP7 to
| WP8 - After playing around with one and genuinely
| enjoying the experience, I convinced myself to buy a
| Lumia 900 in April of 2012, just for Nokia/Microsoft to
| effectively say "that was stupid, wasn't it?" when the
| Lumia 920 and WP8 launched just 7 months later. Releasing
| a so-called flagship device that they _knew_ would be
| incompatible with their upcoming OS, effectively killing
| software support before the year was even finished,
| really doesn 't inspire confidence in the longevity of a
| product.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| It was always going to be difficult, but classic
| Microsoft blunders and extreme arrogance set back Windows
| Phone dramatically.
|
| They basically couldn't stick to a strategy and alienated
| every potential audience one by one. I was trying to make
| a Windows Phone app back then and for developers they
| forced them to go through an extremely difficult series
| of migrations where some APIs were supported on some
| versions and others on other versions and they were
| extremely unhelpful in the process.
|
| They had a great opportunity with low-end phones because
| Nokia managed to make a very good ~$50 Windows Phone.
| Microsoft decided there was no money in that after they
| bought Nokia they immediately wanted to hard pivot to
| compete head-to-head with Apple with Apple-like prices.
| They then proceeded to churn through 'flagships' that
| suffered updates that broke and undermined those
| flagships shortly after they released thus alienating
| high end users as well.
|
| Having worked at Microsoft I think the greatest problem
| with the culture there is that everyone is trying to
| appeal to a higher up rather than customers, and higher
| ups don't care because they're doing the same. I think
| that works out OK when defending incumbency but when
| battling in a competitive landscape Microsoft has no
| follow through because most shot callers are focused on
| their career trajectory over a <5 year time frame.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| I think it's more of result of "okay we made it and it works,
| how we now can excuse still being employed in same head-
| count" development. And the answer is of course "rewrite,
| rewrite, rewrite". UI works well, no major bugs ? TIME TO
| CHANGE IT TO BE "MODERN"
| bonesss wrote:
| > the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers,
| developers!" attitude
|
| I think Microsoft's framework chasing has been a betrayal of
| that philosophy. Internal divisional politics have been major
| drivers behind fracturing and refusing to unify the stack and
| its UI approach, and without clear guidance from the Office
| team the direction of the entire platforms UI is opaque.
| Short term resume and divisional wins at the expense of the
| whole ecosystem.
|
| A developer centric platform would let developers easily
| create platform specific UIs that look modern and normal. As-
| is the answer to how to 'hello world' a windows desktop app
| is a five hour " _well, akshully..._ " debate that can
| reasonably resolve to using Meta's stack. " _VB6 for the
| buttons, C++ for the hard stuff_ " is a short conversation,
| at least.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Tangentially, see also the mixed reaction to Mac native apps
| switching from AppKit to SwiftUI
|
| I'll take AppKit -> SwiftUI over Win32-> windowsx.h -> VB6 ->
| MFC -> ATL -> WTL -> WFC -> WinForms -> WPF -> WinRT -> UWP
| -> WinUI3 -> MAUI.
|
| Even with all that Microsoft still went outside and used
| React Native for the start menu and Electron for the Visual
| Studio installer and Visual Studio Code.
| partomniscient wrote:
| Remember when Silverlight was _the_ future?
|
| How long did it last. Ironically it _still_ gives me the
| shits because you can 't select text on Netflix's front end.
| dep_b wrote:
| Problem with SwiftUI is that it only works well on macOS 26,
| maybe one version prior. AppKit works well on all macOS
| versions.
|
| Building a macOS 26 only app in SwiftUI today is a great UX,
| just as fast as AppKit.
|
| But it takes quite some effort to turn an iOS SwiftUI app
| into a real macOS experience. Though most macOS optimizations
| help for iPadOS as well.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| When I was a developer I was not amused at all with
| constantly changing APIs to be honest. And UWP was really
| sucky. Way too aligned with mobile and tablet which nobody
| actually uses on windows. Even as a user I'm glad it didn't
| take off.
| nightski wrote:
| Blaming this on Ballmer is a serious stretch, I can't see how
| you would come to that conclusion. Developers Developers
| Developers was for the launch of .NET and it brought us a
| platform that is still considered cutting edge 25 years
| later.
|
| UX was fine in the Windows Forms days, and WPF was a large
| step forward (responsive layouts, etc...). The problem was
| after that it all fell apart with Windows 8 and the attempt
| to switch to Metro, followed by the Windows Store fiasco and
| attempting to move to a sandboxed application model.
|
| It all comes down to Microsoft's failure to adapt to
| mobile/tablets in so many ways. Which is kind of hilarious,
| because they had some really cool tech for the time (the
| PocketPCs were pretty fun back in the day, before touch came
| along).
| Johanx64 wrote:
| >OS manufacturer can't be bothered to interact with their own
| UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly
| wrong.
|
| I honestly think that has way less to do with Microsoft, more
| of a representation of "software engineering" practices these
| days.
|
| For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has
| layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.
|
| I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either
| javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the
| spot, but I don't make the shots.
|
| Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes a
| better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly
| defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard software
| developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop background.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Cosmic (from the PopOS folks) is getting rid of the crappy
| javascript from GNOME Shell. And the CSS in GTK+ themes is
| just for the sake of syntactic convenience.
| tormeh wrote:
| Cosmic is quite nice. There's some polishing left to do,
| but it's already pretty solid. The app store is a bit of a
| turd, but I bet that's just because it's by nature
| connected to the internet. More could surely be done with
| caching and pre-loading, but not sure if I want my computer
| to pre-load app store content all the time just in case I
| open it.
|
| Compared to Windows it's of course absolutely unreal.
| cryptica wrote:
| The last point is very astute.
|
| The software industry has always had more juniors than
| seniors so this issue of juniors calling the shots is not a
| new one but it does feel like it's been getting worse and
| worse... Now it's basically AI slop vibe coders calling the
| shots about coding best-practices.
| amlib wrote:
| But the difference is that none of the CSS or Javascript
| usage in gnome is tied to a webview. They are all binding in
| some way to GTK and much simpler rendering routines.
| kombine wrote:
| > I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either
| javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the
| spot, but I don't make the shots.
|
| KDE Plasma, which is in my opinion the most advanced desktop
| environment is written in Qt QML which is JavaScript. There
| are advantages to that over C++, namely your session won't
| simply crash.
| jenadine wrote:
| QML is not JavaScript.
|
| (While you can use some JavaScript from QML, the
| application still have a C++ core. QML applications can
| still crash. There is no DOM with QML, no browser overhead)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| QML is _absolutely_ not JavaScript. It 's a markup
| language to describe user interfaces, spiced with JS for
| certain interactions. All heavy lifting behind the scenes
| is done in C++ - the QML runtime as well as the
| application logic and data models.
| WackyFighter wrote:
| When I read comments like this, I honestly think that people
| are only complaining about this because the "bad people" are
| doing this (in this case Microsoft/Gnome Team).
|
| Neglecting the fact that almost everyone else is doing
| similar things.
|
| > For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK
| has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.
|
| What GTK is doing isn't really any different than how many UI
| framework work and have done so for quite a while now.
|
| Almost every desktop UI toolkit/library/framework in the past
| 15-20 years has the following:
|
| - Markup interface for defining the layout. If they don't
| have that they have a declarative way of defining the UI.
|
| - Some sort of bindings for popular scripting language that
| hook into native code.
|
| - Some of styling language that isn't that different from
| CSS.
|
| This has been the norm for quite some time now. It works
| reasonably well.
|
| Futhermore there isn't much difference between what desktop
| developers are doing and what web developers are doing.
|
| > I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either
| javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the
| spot, but I don't make the shots.
|
| Why? I find Gnome works really well on Linux. I have a pretty
| nice desktop environment after adding two extensions (Dash To
| Dock and App Indicators). Gnome runs well on relatively
| ancient hardware I own (2011 Dell E6410) with a garbage GPU
| (it isn't OpenGL 3.3 compliant). It actually performs a lot
| better than some other DEs that are 100% native.
|
| JavaScript is indeed a slow language. However in Gnome that
| isn't the bottleneck. People have been making UIs with
| JScript (basically JavaScript) using WSH back in the 90s on
| Windows 98.
|
| > Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes
| a better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly
| defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard
| software developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop
| background.
|
| What makes a better end user experience has nothing to do
| with any of this. There has to be an incentive to create a
| good end user experience and there simply isn't in the vast
| majority of cases.
|
| In many cases it doesn't matter really what the tech behind
| something is. Most popular programmings and associated
| frameworks all work reasonably well on machines that are over
| a decade old. I am running Discord on a 15 year machine dual
| core laptop processor and it works "ok".
|
| So this sort of complaining about "modern devs" I've been
| hearing about for almost 20 years now. The issues I've faced
| with doing quality work has been almost always to do with how
| projects are (mis)-managed.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Yeah. Crazy when the two most significant desktop OS's (Windows
| and MacOS) have native UIs where something has gone horribly
| wrong.
| justinhj wrote:
| Both are absolutely fine. I don't get it.
|
| I use both os daily and neither is remotely laggy, looks
| nice, supports all the hardware and software and I don't have
| to be surprised or spend hours downloading drivers to make it
| work.
| kcplate wrote:
| I can't speak to windows since it's been at least a decade
| since I have had to use it, but I really don't understand the
| hate on the new Apple OSs. I haven't found them to be a
| measurably different user experience than their respective
| prior versions. So when you say "horribly wrong" it makes me
| wonder exactly what you mean, specifically.
| Klonoar wrote:
| You can dislike the visual approach of modern macOS but on a
| framework level the UI ecosystem is generally very powerful
| and feature rich.
|
| With SwiftUI you've been able to pick and choose where to
| integrate it over the years, it's not like you had to go
| whole-hog.
| tjakab wrote:
| It's almost like the rush to ship new features year after
| year without ever pausing to fix and optimize things has
| taken its toll.
| justinhj wrote:
| How the start menu is programmed is of zero consequence to me.
| ezst wrote:
| > is of zero consequence to me
|
| It is inconsequential, until it isn't. In front of me I've
| got a 2017 lenovo thinkpad running the latest Fedora+KDE, as
| well as a 2025 HP elitebook running "last corporate-friendly-
| stable version of W11". I can pop open the lenovo, key in my
| session password and hit enter, and I'm instantly productive,
| with shortcuts like meta+E giving me a working file explorer
| within milliseconds. On the Windows' side, there are several
| seconds of delay between typing my password and the on-screen
| feedback. Once finally unlocked, I've got a laggy environment
| where OS-essentials like the start menu and file explorers
| take whole seconds to render and respond.
|
| It's a shame, if you ask me, that a dozen-or-so CPU and
| "general hardware" generations between those two devices got
| to waste due to poor software engineering and practices. And
| I'm not even talking about quality/reliability which is
| another sore point for Windowses of late.
| winrid wrote:
| Same. 2017 thinkpad, latest KDE, snappier than my 2025 Dell
| with Win11 and a processor that should be about 60% faster
| for single thread tasks.
| justinhj wrote:
| Windows 11 has zero lag on the start menu so I don't care
| if it is hand coded assembler or some bloated web crap.
|
| I even ran Windows 10 on Thinkpad x240 a couple of years
| ago, it also ran fine.
| solumunus wrote:
| Performance isn't a consequence?
| reincarnate0x14 wrote:
| Pretty standard for Microsoft lately. The old stuff is still
| there, we're adding a completely new stack adjacent to it so
| now you can live with the worst of both! The Windows 8 tablet
| interface and the Win11 wtfever that is still sometimes kick
| out a dialogue box unchanged since Windows XP.
|
| One can only imagine what the product managers of like .NET
| think of all this.
| Macha wrote:
| > Pretty standard for Microsoft lately. The old stuff is
| still there, we're adding a completely new stack adjacent to
| it so now you can live with the worst of both! The Windows 8
| tablet interface and the Win11 wtfever that is still
| sometimes kick out a dialogue box unchanged since Windows XP.
|
| At least in Windows 10, there was even still the occasional
| Windows 3.1 file picker hanging around in the really dusty
| locations
| bitwize wrote:
| When Windows 11 first dropped, a Win3.x file picker buried
| deep in the OS was memed around (I believe it was the
| picker for a .dso file for ODBC).
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Microsoft dropped the ball with Universal Windows Platform
| framework, I worked on one project using this framework and it
| was one the best. Our codebase run on both phone and desktop
| Windows 8. This was 2014-ish if I remember, and then Windows
| phone got killed.
| yunnpp wrote:
| I still have my Nokia Lumia around. Best phone I ever had.
|
| And I say this hating everything about Microsoft and Windows.
| That phone clicked just right with the tile design and
| overall usability. Of course, MS having pulled the plug, it's
| basically a DRM brick now.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Truly an underrated phone, this was my wife's phone when we
| met. Developing for Windows 8 was one of the best imo, I
| don't know any C# prior to it but it was just so easy,
| native and fast.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I agree but that's because both iOS and Android are pretty
| bad in several ways.
|
| MeeGo from Nokia was pretty amazing as well and I'm sure it
| could have launched Linux phones into actual competitors to
| iOS and Android - if only Microsoft and Elop didn't manage
| to kill Linux at Nokia.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| I had a cheap $25 Lumia (520?) that was the most delightful
| phone I used.
|
| If it wasn't for 3rd parties sunsetting their apps, there
| would have been no reason to give it up.
|
| Despite being a highly underpowered dirt cheap phone it was
| incredibly smooth and fast to use.
| LeFantome wrote:
| You would really like Uno Platform. It is the same API.
|
| https://platform.uno/platform/
| pjmlp wrote:
| Spot on, .NET Native and C++/CX on top of COM is what .NET
| 1.0 should have been all about.
|
| Unfortunately it was a big ball of mud in mismanagement.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Long time ago, I read a blog about how the user must absolutely
| trust the dialog boxes for Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Adminstrator
| passwords and why they were tricky to get right..
|
| Then I hear that now ctrl alt delete is a webview. Its
| difficult to believe. Do you have a reference?
| memoriuaysj wrote:
| the thing you need to trust is that pressing that combination
| shows the legit OS stuff, that it can't be intercepted
| (Secure Attention Key).
|
| how the OS implements what is displayed is irrelevant
|
| windows has all kinds of virtualizations today, it can
| literally run web views in separate (invisible) VMs for
| security purposes
| _fzslm wrote:
| bump, tbh I think this is hyperbole as on my w11 pc the ctrl
| alt delete menu hasn't changed since 2021's RC (which was
| just a reskinned version of w10's, which was just a reskinned
| version of w8.1's... going all the way back to vista)
| RandomDistort wrote:
| On the new Windows 365 Link thin client I think it is, not
| sure about normal builds of Windows though?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAKg-Z6m8nM - 6:50
| chroma_zone wrote:
| The Win11 start menu used to have a fun bug where pressing
| Ctrl-Minus would open search with the phrase "zoom out". No
| other shortcut did this. Just Zoom Out. No idea how a bug like
| that happens.
| anhner wrote:
| wait till you see the bugs introduced by their AI rewrite!
| jsheard wrote:
| Typing "Visual Studio" into the new start menu may randomly
| trigger a Bing search for "Visual Studio" instead of running
| it, but on the other hand that makes Bings KPIs go up so it's
| impossible to say if it's bad or not.
| darubedarob wrote:
| Objectively it wastes developer time making the OS in a non
| linear way more expensive for companies. Its like a minthly
| subscription for ever more minutes.
| tom_ wrote:
| If your opinion mattered, you would work at Microsoft
| setting the targets that the Start Menu team need to meet
| to hit their bonuses/not get fired.
|
| But you don't. So it doesn't.
|
| (I've pinned Visual Studio to the start menu.)
| devinprater wrote:
| I hate that so much. When blind people are trying to start
| JAWS (the screen reader) by typing "jaws" into the start menu
| and pressing Enter, it will sometimes pull up a Bing page on
| Jaws the movie instead. And the blind person is just sitting
| there waiting for the screen reader to start. I tell people
| to use the run dialog for that reason. Sucks but that's what
| you have to do in the age of inshittisoft.
| eptcyka wrote:
| This is purely insane. Doesn't Microsoft violate
| accessibility laws in some jurisdiction due to this?
| ptx wrote:
| They are apparently replacing the run dialog with a new
| "Modern Run" dialog, so we can look forward to that also
| not working properly:
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/after-3
| 0...
| bytefish wrote:
| It takes literally a click to deactivate it though. One could
| argue about Bing Search being the default, but I didn't run
| the user surveys to see, which is best for the average user.
| solumunus wrote:
| The best is none. I have no idea why anyone would want a
| web search there.
| adithyassekhar wrote:
| Either I am stupid or you're being dishonest. There is no
| one click way to disable it. Only on pro versions of
| windows, with a group policy otherwise a couple of obscure
| registry keys no regular users know.
| bytefish wrote:
| I stand corrected. I didn't know the Home Version has no
| option to disable it. You are right for calling me out.
| user34283 wrote:
| No group policy is needed on Windows 11 Pro, it's in the
| settings:
|
| ---
|
| Type something in the Start menu
|
| Top right meatballs menu button
|
| 'Search settings'
|
| 'Let search apps show results' -> Off (or disable only
| Bing)
|
| ---
|
| I don't know about the Home edition.
| mjmas wrote:
| That doesn't appear for me. Win 11 Pro 25H2.
| user34283 wrote:
| After you typed a Search term, there is no menu button at
| the right on the same vertical row as the 'All / Apps /
| Documents' bar?
|
| You can also launch that Settings page by running in
| powershell: Start-Process "ms-
| settings:cortana-windowssearch"
|
| Or just 'Settings' and in the left navigation 'Privacy &
| Security' -> 'Search'
| user34283 wrote:
| 'Randomly' here likely corresponds to a typo in the search
| term.
|
| If I type "Visual Std" instead of "Visual Stu" it goes to the
| Bing results.
|
| Alternatively it shows No results if you disable Bing in the
| Search settings found in the top right meatballs menu.
|
| I also would expect fuzzy search by default instead of typos
| sending users to Bing.
| mjmas wrote:
| It also orrelates with missing the first letter off search
| terms, such as when you start typing immediately after
| opening the start menu
| user34283 wrote:
| I can only reproduce this by hovering the Windows icon
| with the mouse and having the finger on a character, in
| order to press it immediately after clicking. In that
| case most of the time the Start menu does not open at
| all, and sometimes it opens but does not have the letter.
|
| When I use the Windows key to open the Start menu I
| cannot reproduce this, as eg. Win + E opens the Explorer
| instead of the Start menu.
|
| It does not appear on my machine as if this could
| possibly happen when opening the Start menu during
| regular use. Can you reproduce this on your machine?
| Macha wrote:
| This rarely (but not never) happened on my gaming desktop
| when I had windows on that. On the other hand, on my
| surface go, if it only eats the first character, that's a
| good showing, so it's likely device performance specific
| godelski wrote:
| > orrelates with missing the first letter off
|
| Intended?
|
| Still, that shows an issue of using fuzzy search for Bing
| but not programs. There should be a precedent on local
| items. A typo is far more likely than a web search,
| especially when the web search is resulting in the
| intended application.
|
| Did no one think of that feedback loop? That if the web
| search is suggesting an installed app that that installed
| app should be prioritized?
| encom wrote:
| It's been a while since I used Windows regularly or
| seriously, but I remember start menu search actually being
| good - maybe around Win7 days? You would just press <Win>,
| type a few letters of the software you wanted and hit enter,
| and it would work every time with minimal latency.
|
| You know, like KDE Plasma in 2026.
| CjHuber wrote:
| AFAIK the Start Menu itself is still C++ and XAML however only
| the Recommended section is build with React Native [1]. Funnily
| or rather sadly, they seem to be quite proud of using it as
| seen in the video.
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/kMJNEFHj8b8?t=4m47s
| buccal wrote:
| Still in some cases you have to wait a few minutes to get
| working Start menu search or menu itself on a new not low-end
| device.
| sevensor wrote:
| My work computer takes a full five minutes to become usable
| on the first login after a cold boot, and that's not even
| counting the time from boot to entering my password. Before
| the upgrade from Windows 10, it only took three. Teams, of
| course, takes another five minutes to become functional.
| Meanwhile I have a 13 year old low end Asus laptop at home
| that boots to a fully usable Linux desktop in well under a
| minute.
|
| It's been this way for over a decade. The year of the Linux
| desktop was 2009; the world is only just catching up.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > My work computer takes a full five minutes to become
| usable on the first login after a cold boot, and that's
| not even counting the time from boot to entering my
| password.
|
| Yeah, that's a misconfigured system. I bet you can fuck
| up Linux enough to get a similar experience.
|
| I've always been using Windows and the only time I ever
| had to wait that long was around the Win98 times on slow
| hardware.
|
| After login, I can instantly use everything on Win 11,
| and the only delay is a bunch of apps starting (that I
| chose to start on boot).
| NoGravitas wrote:
| A lot of it is probably the shoveled-on layers of
| enterprise endpoint security bloatware.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I bet stuff like Crowdstrike has a major influence into
| this. I used my work computer before and after
| Crowdstrike and the difference in boot time and general
| behavior is huge.
| ivell wrote:
| In the challenges section, they list a few challenges with
| React Native that they had to overcome. Interesting thing is
| that MS already has XAML, WinUI etc., that they built and
| control and don't havr those "challenges". I don't understand
| what the team got by using React Native compared to using
| XAML. Anyone from MS here who could provide some technical
| benefits for this decision?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It takes over five seconds for task manager to open on my
| Windows 11 work laptop.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Yep, Windows performance on my work laptop reminds me of
| computing in the 90s: waiting and resource management.
| claaams wrote:
| It takes ~5 seconds for activity monitor on my macbook pro to
| populate data, although the window for it opens right away.
| layer8 wrote:
| What's worse, the list of tasks/apps in Task Manager for some
| reason populates gradually over a couple of seconds, so when
| you right-click on some task to perform an action, it might
| switch to a different task under the mouse cursor while
| you're clicking because it's still populating.
| bluecalm wrote:
| For me at least "details" tab populates in one step (there
| is a slight delay and then all processes appear). You can
| set it as the default tab as it's the most useful anyway.
| layer8 wrote:
| I actually need the Processes tab more frequently, which
| shows the process hierarchy and relates to the visible
| windows. For example to restart Explorer.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Holding the control key down stops the task list from
| updating. Release the key to resume updates. Works on
| Windows 10 and 11.
| publicdebates wrote:
| Am I missing something, or hasn't Microsoft done this since
| Windows 9x with apps like Explorer and Control Panel _heavily_
| using web views internally rather than "native" WinAPI GUIs?
| bawolff wrote:
| Remember when Active Desktop! Was the shiny new thing?
| necovek wrote:
| That was actually fun if not very useful (I had a dynamic
| school timetable programmed as my "wallpaper" as I was in
| high school at the time).
|
| Not very useful because you quickly realize you mostly
| obscure your desktop with actual applications you want to
| _use_ on your computer.
| amlib wrote:
| But those weren't entirely done with a webview. They were
| just embedding views where it made sense, like rendering a
| section that looks like a document (with fancy hyperlinks
| woooo) or render a preview of the file you selected in the
| main (native) view of explorer.
|
| Now we are talking about entire apps being built with that
| stuff, down to the window border (or lack of it). It's
| impossible to have a consistent looking and working OS with
| this approach. It's impossible to share code between these
| things and the actual native apps, and often things have to
| be written from scratch and end up using 10x memory than the
| native solution.
| smileson2 wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure Microsoft even cares about Windows
| anymore, to me it's felt like they burned everything internally
| during Windows8 and the ValueAct battles sealed it .. hell they
| even entirely removed the Taskbar back then
|
| I've always wondered what things would be like the Microsoft
| break up went though, I really do think personal computing
| would be better off and the people involved would probably have
| even more money to boot
| chabska wrote:
| Whenever web dev comes up, we got people saying it's fad-driven
| development where a new framework comes out every week. Those
| people have never done real native development. React and
| Angular have been the solid stable bedrock of web frontend for
| ten years, and the churn is nothing compared to Windows, OSX,
| Android, and iOS UI dev.
| jordwest wrote:
| > but if a OS manufacturer can't be bothered to interact with
| their own UI libraries to build native UIs
|
| But if they don't use web tech it would be too expensive to
| build the start menu in a way that works cross platform!
|
| Oh wait
| wiseowise wrote:
| > their own UI libraries
|
| It doesn't help that their own UI libraries are unfinished,
| unpolished, hot garbage.
|
| I commend on using React, though. Like it or hate it, React is
| the closest to one true framework for everything.
| prism56 wrote:
| Not a developer, what's the issue with React Native?
| eptcyka wrote:
| React native will always be more resource intensive than a
| native framework because it relies on a whole javascript
| runtime to work. Don't know about others, but I personally
| don't want a system tool that I cannot disable easily to be
| designed like this - it ultimately be less responsive and
| take up more of my resources from other apps.
|
| Yet somehow I am OK with gnome shell.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I am forced to use windows at work. Last week my web searches
| looked strange ... not getting the ussual results. Bing! Some
| windows update reset my default search from google to bing.
| Again! Microsoft's dirty tricks will never stop.
|
| I am considering writing software specifically to feed random
| junk jnto Microsoft's telemetry cloud. I will call it "fusk-MS"
| and it will send random searches to Bing and fake screenshots
| of a linux desktop to copilot ten times a second until
| Microsoft stops acting like such a jerk.
| kwar13 wrote:
| "update" lol
| yokoprime wrote:
| I'm not maining windows, but i dual-boot it on my gaming pc (no
| BF6 on Linux). In all fairness, Windows is no better or worse
| now than it was 5 years ago. Its not like its suddenly become
| completely unusable (or more unusable, depending on your
| perspective). Copilot fluff is being injected a lot of places,
| but you can largely ignore it and use windows as before. I do
| feel like Windows is on some sort of life support, that its not
| the main focus of Microsoft. Again, this is not really new.
| buo wrote:
| I have to use a Windows laptop for work; it was migrated to
| Windows 11 a few months ago. Win 11 is definitely, measurably
| worse than Win 10, at least in the configuration that my
| employer's IT forces on the machine. One example is that its
| UI is much slower (typing in the search box at normal speed
| often misses keystrokes, for instance -- never happened on
| Win 10).
| II2II wrote:
| I'm not a regular user of Windows, so I don't know if the
| changes I've seen were within the past 5 years or over five
| years ago. But ...
|
| I've noticed Microsoft has introduced things like programs
| hijacking the screen (e.g. first launch of Edge, even if the
| launch was unintentional) and they have been making it
| increasingly difficult to make a local account on
| installation (even in the Pro version). Things like
| promotions for Xbox whatever popping up while I'm at work
| also tweak me the wrong way. Of course they don't know I'm at
| work, which is all the more reason not to do it!
|
| As an operating system, I would rate it as fine. Compared to
| Linux, it appears to have performance issues in some areas,
| with file access being the main one I notice. They have made
| some progress in some areas (improved terminal, winget for
| software management). Compared to Windows of 20 years ago,
| the base operating system appears to be much better. But none
| of that means little when your main goal is for the
| "operating system" to get out of your way and let you use
| what matters.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I am forced to use Windows 11 at work on my laptop (produced in
| 2023). When resuming after hibernation - from the time I press
| the power key and I see the the release-lock prompt screen with
| the password/PIN box - that's maybe 5 to 10 seconds; but from
| that point, until the OS actually responds to key presses and
| shows characters typed into the text box - well, that takes
| between 2 and 3 _minutes_.
|
| And that's just one example. I curse Microsoft every day.
| yndoendo wrote:
| On my work laptop, the only Windows 11 OS I use bare metal,
| the UAC prompt can take 30 seconds to one minute to show
| after requesting _Task Manager_ to start. IT decided to hide
| a number of applications behind UAC.
|
| Newer version of Windows seem to add latency were there was
| none before.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > OS manufacturer can't be bothered to interact with their own
| UI libraries to build native UIs
|
| i wonder if they ever thought about using copilot to fix that
| (insert thinking-face)
| mindcrash wrote:
| A loI of people don't know about this and I don't know if they
| really went ahead with it (been away from everything Microsoft
| professionally just about three years now) but at the time they
| were pretty serious about the idea to build _all_ Office apps
| in React, so (according to them) they could more easily build
| "great multi platform experiences" from the same codebase.
|
| Why they thought it couldn't be done with the .NET stack they
| already had (this was after the purchase of Xamarin and Blazor
| becoming a thing, mind you) still baffles me.
| xattt wrote:
| I'd love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft right now, to see
| if they are in red alert to get users back, planning subterfuge
| by breaking APIs used by Wine or what have you, or if they are
| taking it as a loss.
|
| I recently jumped to Debian/KDE as a daily driver, and it feels
| great. I am coming after many years of running Linux via cli on
| my home server. I am also unironically enjoying wobbly windows.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| I think they have moved on to other sources of revenue, so I
| don't think they care that much anymore.
| tormeh wrote:
| Very much this. I bet the Xbox/games division would be up in
| arms about it, but they got told to spend less money and also
| not to bother the important people. The Windows people might
| care, but with how bad they've been shepherding the OS I'm
| not so sure.
|
| Nadella is focused on AI and Azure. Bet he could hardly care
| less.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yeah, it's all AI, Azure, and Office 365. Everything else
| is basically a forgotten product by microsoft. Even xbox is
| basically dead at this point.
| dspillett wrote:
| VS (and vscode) also get some love, though mainly as
| drivers towards getting things published using Azure
| infrastructure, SQL Server too.
| tormeh wrote:
| Honestly I get the Xbox apathy. There's not that much
| profit in being what, third or fourth place? After Steam,
| Playstation and Nintendo? Depends how you define it, I
| guess, but to me they're in fourth place. Microsoft needs
| to either cut their losses or invest a ton of money. It
| looks like they will pick some weird thing in the middle,
| keeping Xbox on life support. Probably some unhappy
| compromise internally.
| grugagag wrote:
| If it were forgotten it's worked as it did. The problem
| it's that it's nerfed to funnel you through the new AI or
| Cloud user harvesting.
| sroerick wrote:
| Funny, not to oversimplify, but this is basically how IBM
| exited the consumer market
| jama211 wrote:
| Yup. They're not stupid, they're sunsetting that pandering to
| consumers OS market.
| specialp wrote:
| Consumer Windows for those that care is an almost worthless
| business. Nobody will pay what was once paid for a windows
| license anymore. They will squeeze existing users who know no
| different in ways 2006 adware purveyors could dream of and
| monetize it that way. For the rest of non enterprise users,
| they don't care.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> to see if they are in red alert to get users back_
|
| I don't think they much care, long gone are the days of
| consumer Windows being a cash-cow. And if you buy a machine
| with Windows on and put Linux over the top, they still have
| that little bit of money from you via the manufacturer. Adverts
| on the start menu and such, is not an action that would be
| taken by a company with any real pride in their OS.
| themafia wrote:
| Europe has shown themselves to be completely unwilling or
| unable to regulate the giant. So they stopped caring. They
| crank out cheap crap and charge top dollar because no one can
| stop them.
| adabyron wrote:
| They would only start to care when they see their enterprise
| business migrating to Linux. As long as they have large
| businesses buying a suite of licenses for Auth, OS & Office,
| they have an amazing monopoly cash cow distribution platform.
| They can enter new markets, offer an inferior product for free
| as part of their suite & crush the competition.
| 7e wrote:
| They're going from Microsoft to... Linux. From bad to worse. Just
| use macOS and get on with your life.
| drudolph914 wrote:
| tbf mac is starting to get pretty bad too
| breve wrote:
| Why is Linux worse? Why, for example, is KDE worse that the
| macOS desktop?
| subjectsigma wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092464
| maxbond wrote:
| `apt-get update` bricked your system multiple times? How,
| by filling up your disk? That doesn't install or upgrade
| any software. It just updates the local cache of the
| registry. I believe you that there was a real problem I'm
| just confused about how it happened.
|
| I've been unable to login after filling my disk before, I
| wouldn't call the system bricked because I was able to fix
| it by mounting the disk on another computer and freeing up
| space, but I wouldn't quibble over the term either.
| subjectsigma wrote:
| It was apt-get upgrade, then. Whichever command updates
| all packages on the system. I must have misspoke, I don't
| use Debian-based systems all that much anymore.
|
| I remember it had a particular fondness for deleting old
| kernel versions, failing to install the new kernel, and
| thus bricking the system on boot. Alternatively,
| uninstalling the entire WM because one package had a
| conflict.
| maxbond wrote:
| Weird! Sounds like maybe `apt-get dist-upgrade` or `apt-
| get full-upgrade`. `upgrade` shouldn't uninstall anything
| or update your kernel as far as I know. `dist-upgrade` or
| `full-upgrade` could do either. If your `/boot` partition
| was exhausted or you lost power in the middle of a kernel
| upgrade, that could leave the system in a broken state.
|
| At any rate, sorry you had such a frustrating experience.
| Induane wrote:
| It is?
| JCattheATM wrote:
| macOS is particularly annoying and gets in the way more than an
| OS should. Windows can be tamed and the Linux experience can be
| perfectly smooth depending on distro and hardware. I assume
| macOS can be tamed as well, but it seems like much more of an
| uphill battle.
| ruszki wrote:
| If you just install MacOS, Windows, or any major Linux
| distros, all work okay with default settings and drivers,
| almost all the time. Problems start when you want something
| else or more.
|
| It's like when you want Docker on MacOS. Helpful people will
| say that you should just use colima. Yeah it works perfectly
| well... until you want to open udp ports (this was the case
| half a year ago). All 3 OSes are like that, just the flavor
| is different.
|
| If you know how to find "reject all" on all cookie banners,
| Windows will be easier for you.
|
| If you know networking and pf, then MacOS will be easier for
| you.
|
| If you know how to debug driver bugs, Linux will be easier
| for you (and fun as hell imho)
|
| Anyway, if you don't want to do much more than internet
| browsing/video playing/basic gaming/basic coding, it simply
| doesn't matter. // I would still say that the default
| network/firewall settings for MacOS is sketchy as hell
| however
| DustinEchoes wrote:
| What's sketchy about it?
| ruszki wrote:
| A ton of open ports, some of them completely
| undocumented, and many Macs are shipped with all
| firewalls turned off by default. Also, I was quite
| surprised how easy to turn on an unencrypted VNC server
| without a single warning.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| Personally I can't stand the dock paradigm...no way to tell
| if a program is running or not at a glance, and it's not
| easy to switch between one application with multiple
| windows. A lot can be changed even if it requires third
| party add-ons, but I'd say it's the least intuitive OS
| there is.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| The monster that ate Windows have already started eating Mac
| OS.
| DustinEchoes wrote:
| The ai and liquid glass rollouts do not inspire confidence in
| the future of macOS.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Can't stand the MacOS UI philosophy and built in software.
| Gotta skip. The hardware is pretty good though.
| temp0826 wrote:
| This is the biggest pickle for me. Mx Macbook Airs are pretty
| amazing, but Asahi is just not there, and I don't think it
| will ever be without Apple playing ball a little bit
| unfortunately. (I'm currently on a t2/intel macbook and it's
| got more quirks that I care to deal with...but it was free so
| gotta do what I gotta do)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah that's sad. Mac hardware with a Linux Os with proper
| drivers is the dreamland. Asahi is good for M1 though I
| heard?
| temp0826 wrote:
| Maybe for some people, I don't have the capacity to deal
| with that kind of thing willingly anymore. Stability and
| knowing I won't be running into some missing feature that
| may never get fixed/added. It's too small of a project
| and it's a major uphill battle having to reverse engineer
| literally everything. I do commend them but it's just too
| many question marks for wanting a reliable daily driver.
| Dfiesl wrote:
| I'm going from macOS to linux currently. It was the hardware
| obsolesence that kicked things off but I definitely wont miss
| the constant nagging about my iCloud being full
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Just turn off iCloud sync for the things you don't use and
| you won't fill it up. I sync passwords, notes, find my,
| calendar, contacts, and safari. Currently using 800MB of the
| free 5GB.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| yeah. fuck iCloud.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I'm not sure about that.
|
| To me, Windows has been the best experience with gaming (yes,
| including the stupid bullshit anti-cheat software that
| shouldn't exist in the way it does, the devs making it truly
| only support Windows), the desktop experience has been
| tolerable, especially with PowerToys and FancyZones in
| particular and that one registry change to restore classic
| context menu. Still feels like fighting against the OS but
| passable.
|
| Linux has been the best experience for regular computing and
| software development, especially since a lot of the software I
| deploy runs in Docker containers, so getting more or less the
| same user land is nicer than subtle Windows incompatibilities
| (e.g. bind mount permissions, line endings, crap like that).
| Also package managers are just nice and some desktops out there
| are really good for daily driving (personally I like Cinnamon,
| but KDE and XFCE and others all have their place).
|
| Apple stuff has been the best in regards to the hardware
| integration and coherence (e.g. the experience of using a
| MacBook or iPhone and everything working without any driver
| issues on other OSes), having a pretty polished desktop
| experience, but also super weird things such as no proper AA on
| generic external monitors (e.g. 1080p), limited hardware ports,
| oddly locked down ecosystem and odd support choices (e.g. the
| dance you gotta do to install development apps, the PWA
| situation) and just weird choices in regards to keyboard layout
| and how the mouse feels compared to both of the other OSes.
| Okay development, not great gaming situation, worse than Linux
| at this point.
|
| I like my iPhone (reduced Liquid Glass transparency) and
| MacBook Air (great for notes or travel), but daily drive either
| Windows or Linux. Tried FreeBSD for one of my servers too but
| hardware support wasn't wide enough, not sure what the desktop
| situation there is like.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| >>Tried FreeBSD for one of my servers too but hardware
| support wasn't wide enough, not sure what the desktop
| situation there is like.
|
| Hardware support is plenty wide enough. Just buy the hardware
| that supports FreeBSD and that's most of it. Same with the
| desktop and I've run servers and desktops for 25 years using
| easily found, common, name brand hardware that runs FreeBSD.
| gedy wrote:
| I've moved from macOS after 15 years to Linux in past year
| (niri + DankMaterialShell), it's mostly better aside from
| missing Miller columns in Finder.
| xena wrote:
| I would go on full macOS, but I can't afford a Mac Studio at
| the right specs for what I need right now.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| I've been using a system 76 laptop for the past 3 years. Runs
| perfectly, no surprises. Unfortunately, I need a mac for work
| because the laptop service folks do not know what to do with
| linux and do not have a relationship with a vendor like system76.
|
| Pros: The best development experience you can have. Everything is
| native linux. There is no beating that. This of course will be a
| problem if hobbies/work use windows. I've never been a windows
| person. So I've never missed it. Power and peripherals work on
| the system76 seamlessly.
|
| Cons: Battery life. Runs out in about 2.5 hrs but its an AMD not
| an ARM.
|
| I did run linux on a tower exclusively while I did my PhD. Did
| everything on it - code, writing my thesis in LaTeX, store data,
| connect to dropbox for backup, watch netflix, etc.
|
| You're not missing much by dumping windows.
| xmcp123 wrote:
| Really only Photoshop is the big gaping hole I feel as a linux
| user. Gimp is just atrocious.
|
| There is a desktop webview of PhotoPea, but it's not the same.
| grugagag wrote:
| 2.5 hours of battery is a serious gaping hole imo.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I removed the batteries in our laptops because we use them
| like desktops all the time and it's one less fire hazard to
| worry about.
| grugagag wrote:
| I guess it works out for you but I'd be inconvenienced
| for not being able to move around and paranoid that I may
| jerk the wire powering the machine. Still glad you were
| able to find a solution for your setup though.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Even if you are plugged all the time you may want
| batteries as it prevents crashes when power is cut off or
| the cable randomly disconnects (especially with USB-C
| that can easily happen as it's designed to disconnect
| easily). It's not that file system of today are immune to
| stability issues when power randomly cuts off not to
| mention losing your work/state. Batteries are like UPS
| for a desktop computer.
| seemaze wrote:
| Year of the Linux desktop perhaps; Year of the Linux laptop
| perhaps not..
| jraph wrote:
| 2.5h of battery life is absolutely not typical though.
| Linux on laptops is often fine.
|
| Picking hardware with good support helps a lot. I would
| expect system76 to be a safe bet though (but I haven't
| tried their hardware).
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I'm in my 60's and have never run Photoshop. Nor my wife, my
| kids, none of my relatives I'm aware of for that matter. Come
| to think of it, of all the people I know, no one runs
| PhotoShop that I'm aware of.
| starky wrote:
| So? It is still a pretty popular and useful piece of
| software even if your circle doesn't use it.
|
| One of the big barriers to having more people use Linux is
| having the software packages they use to actually do work
| available on the platform. Image editing is the most
| popular software type that isn't really available on Linux
| with an equivalent to the commercial package that everyone
| uses.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| The point is that if of the hundreds or thousands of
| people I know don't use it then it seems mathematically
| provable that the largest majority of people don't use
| them either and so it's not a strong argument against
| Linux becoming the standard OS which is what is happening
| now regardless how much some people don't want it do
| happen.
| gradstudent wrote:
| I thought the same about Gimp, until I sat down and tried to
| learn it's workflows. Once you adjust, it's pretty great.
| imo, ymmv, obviously.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Depending on what you are doing, if you don't fancy Gimp,
| then maybe one of: Krita, Darktable, Inkscape?
| azakai wrote:
| Have you tried Photoshop's online version that runs in a Web
| browser?
|
| (it uses wasm)
| adabyron wrote:
| Have you tried running Affinity products via Wine? I've heard
| good things. I personally ditched Adobe years ago for
| Affinity on Windows & Mac. Only people I know still using
| Adobe for photo or vector work at a company that doesn't
| blink at paying for it.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| gimp is actually pretty good, but things are in different
| places than photoshop and that's a huge change.
| esperent wrote:
| > Cons: Battery life. Runs out in about 2.5 hrs but its an AMD
| not an ARM.
|
| Damn, even my several year old Intel + Nvidia MSI GE66 can
| match that. Why is it so bad?
| Klonoar wrote:
| "Runs perfectly" but it's 2025 and you're getting 2.5 hours of
| battery life.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Seems more hardware than OS related, my MacBook Air M2 on
| Asahi Linux gets to 9+ hours.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| "They've managed to take some of their most revolutionary
| technological innovations (the NT kernel's hybrid design allowing
| it to restart drivers, NTFS, ReFS, WSL, Hyper-V, etc.) then just
| shat all over them".
|
| Well said. I wonder what the kernel team thinks about it.
| gerdesj wrote:
| ReFS riffs on reflinks - take a gander at XFS.
| sylens wrote:
| If this wasn't HN, I would swear that my personal recommendation
| algorithm has gotten Linux desktop-pilled and that's why I'm
| seeing so many posts like these every day. But in reality I think
| there is a groundswell of momentum happening here, and with
| component prices rising, I only see this continuing as more
| people look to breathe new life into older hardware.
| pshc wrote:
| Yeah, myself and several friends of mine with EOL Windows 10
| PCs are looking to jump ship.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I've been seeing it a lot on reddit as well, with a lot of non-
| technical users asking "how do I get started with linux?"
|
| I think this is a real thing and I think a combination of MS
| demanding everyone get new hardware and Valve really polishing
| a lot of linux has gone a long way to get non-technical users
| to start seriously considering linux.
|
| It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with
| linux. I have a 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more
| responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux on
| it.
|
| And I know that laptop will continue to fly because, unlike
| windows, it's never going to get any sort of serious bloatware
| added on as I update it.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Anecdotally I've seen among my non-tech friends more
| questions about VPNs. Several of my friends own Steam Decks
| which is pretty wild to me given they are just normie gamers.
|
| It's literally the ads and bloatware. Windows is horrible
| unless you are technical enough to strategically disable the
| bloatware, and keep on disabling it as the updates
| continually reenable it. And if you are technical enough to
| disable it then Linux isn't a problem.
|
| Microsoft really is enterprise, cloud, and GitHub / AI tools.
| Windows for personal users is harvesting as much cash as
| possible from boomers and gamers, but the gamers are leaving
| en masse now. Software professionals only use macOS or Linux
| unless they are a MS shop that has to use Windows stack.
|
| It is an incredible shift for those of us who have been
| around forever. But it's a true look at how impossible things
| shift, bit by bit, until all of a sudden it all washes away.
| Never believe the tech cos on top today can't be beat. It can
| and will happen someday
| callc wrote:
| > It's literally the ads and bloatware
|
| I hope more companies and MBAs open their eyes to this:
| that the long term cost of user-hostile changes is
| _negative_ compared to respecting users and building good
| products.
|
| Also currently it helps to stand out from the sea of crap
| products.
|
| Play the long game. Make good products. Bring joy and
| positive experience to peoples lives. Sleep well at night.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I'm a big fan of staying private. I own a company that
| took VC many years ago but we strategically stayed
| private for a decade now and made peace with the VC. You
| just keep being honest, stacking customers, playing the
| long game. I see the value of being public but as a 100
| to 500 person company that grows steadily, you keep it
| private and remove the quarterly earnings. The constant
| drive to hit the quarterly nut at all costs causes so
| many stupid short term benefits that hurt long term
| value. There is an enormous number of small companies you
| have never heard of like this. It's just so short sighted
| to kill the golden goose to juice some profit
| callc wrote:
| That's awesome! I want to do the same if I start a
| company.
|
| Indeed quarterly earnings make people think short term,
| disregard long term. Focus on growth above all else
| theturtletalks wrote:
| It won't help, because once those MBAs take VC money, the
| incentives push the product toward enshittification
| sooner or later.
|
| What we're seeing instead is open-source becoming the
| real alternative. People used to look for other
| proprietary tools, but now open-source options are
| getting good enough, and more people are building
| personal software that fits their needs instead of
| bloated do-everything apps.
|
| That's the shift. Open-source is rising, and I don't
| think these companies can reverse course fast enough.
| MBCook wrote:
| > Several of my friends own Steam Decks which is pretty
| wild to me given they are just normie gamers.
|
| I would say that's absolutely the most normal gamer way of
| playing PC games. As someone who is mostly given up on
| playing games on a computer and prefer consoles, I've
| thought of doing the same thing.
|
| I agree it's really impressive that lots of people have
| decided to try Linux, far more than I remember ever before.
|
| But I'm worried this is "the moment". Possibly the best
| shot that's gonna happen for a long time. And if people
| find things aren't as ready as they think from what they
| hear they're going to be burned and they're not coming
| back. The next time around not only will they not come,
| they'll push other people away from trying.
|
| I don't know if we've reached that magical inflection point
| or not. I think some people are using rosy glasses again
| though. The real momentum has never been this strong. But
| it's not a done deal.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was never really a serious gamer and don't do it much
| at all any longer.
|
| But one of my senses is that the sort of games that
| really benefited from a desktop system--primarily Windows
| --like serious simulations and resource allocation games
| are increasingly fringe.
|
| Certainly there are games on Linux today but I also
| wonder if a lot of people won't decide, as you say, that
| consoles are just easier.
| necovek wrote:
| Their point was that Steam Deck is a gaming console with
| Linux on it.
| MBCook wrote:
| That's true. You'd have to be a little picky. I know you
| can plug in a KB and mouse but... why?
|
| Still there are a huge number of games from indies or
| small publishers that may not make it to console but
| would still work fantastically with a controller. Or
| maybe they're successful and they will make it over, you
| just don't want to wait the two years.
|
| Those kind of games are the ones that make me consider
| getting a Steam Deck.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah, I think a big part of the momentum toward Linux is from
| the end of Windows 10 support, and Windows 11's increased
| hardware demands.
|
| Given how rough and uncertain the economy is, this creates a
| large group of people who can't or aren't comfortable
| upgrading their computer, but at the same time don't want to
| be stuck on EOL Windows 10 forever either.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with
| linux. I have a 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more
| responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux
| on it.
|
| I fact, Linux is much easier to run on somewhat older
| hardware because drivers are often a bit slow to land and
| Ubuntu and its derivatives always lag in kernel versions.
|
| Older hardware becoming more valuable because price hikes
| doubly benefit Linux.
| sho_hn wrote:
| KDE's income from individual donations has doubled recently,
| and many of the comments we get with donations are from recent
| Windows switchers.
|
| As I wrote on HN just yesterday, I've been working on the Linux
| desktop for 20 years and the momentum has never been higher.
| 2026 will be fun.
| sylens wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me that I should set up some
| recurring donations to the teams powering my Linux experience
| sho_hn wrote:
| Thank you very much in advance!
| vanviegen wrote:
| That increase in donations may also be due to more prominent
| prompting for them. Got me to donate, at least. But I would
| be pretty sad if the prompting were to get any more in-your-
| face than it currently already is.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| It's a difficult balance, though I think most open source
| projects are too modest in asking for donations, which,
| fair enough is pretty uncomfortable at first. You can
| definitely be too in-your-face, like Jimbo Wales is the
| sad-eyed picture of taking this too far sometimes.
|
| Thing is that explicitly asking for money works, it gets
| results. If you can get people to pay money to watch you
| screaming at video games on Twitch, you can definitely get
| people to pay money for working on useful software.
| glenstein wrote:
| Indeed, it's the Linux super power. I've mentioned this before
| but my favorite linux adventure was, being a borderline
| penniless college student, having broken Toshiba Tecra 8000
| from 1998 with a dead hard drive. But it had a working CD drive
| and USB port, so I got Puppy Linux 4.0 on a CD, booted from a
| CD, and installed to a 1gb USB stick and set it to boot from
| USB.
|
| I had Dillo for a web browser, a stripped down version of VLC
| that could play 360p Youtube videos without issue, downloaded
| via Youtube-DL. I had XMMS which looked just like Winamp, and
| Sega/Nintendo emulation and even Duke Nukem 3D. For programs I
| had epub/pdf/djview readers, xpaint which is like classic MS
| Paint, feh as a hyperlightweight all purpose image viewer and
| background manager, a super lightweight RSI break popup
| program, and even a fully functional web server stack. It also
| had a window manager (JWM) that handled multiple desktops more
| intuitively and effortlessly than Windows does now.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Hah. Feh, I still use that once in a while. It is one of very
| few image viewers that can lock in pan and zoom and then look
| over multiple frames.
|
| Good for checking which photo of a dozen is clearest, while
| zoomed in 800%.
| lanthissa wrote:
| i think its just that its new year and year of the linux
| desktop is a meme (in the actual definition of the word kind of
| way) and the meme is growing over time
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Simpler - it is now objectively a much better OS and it's
| free
| leptons wrote:
| If Microsoft could make me move to Linux, they will be getting
| a lot more people to switch. I was very into Microsoft's OS
| since v3.0, I used Outlook for all my email for decades. I
| recently moved over to Linux Mint and Firebird for email and
| have not looked back. All my Windows VMs are now Linux VMs. All
| of Microsoft's invasive "AI" was the last straw. I don't like
| the direction they are headed.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Just anecdotally, I'm seeing a lot of momentum in my social
| circles. My friends and their parents (!!!) who are asking
| about Linux.
|
| My "year of the Linux desktop" was in 2010, because even then
| everything was much, much faster on Ubuntu. (It helps major
| browsers were shipping 64-bit versions for Linux only, but
| Minecraft simply did not run on my laptop under Windows).
|
| Does anyone else feel kind of sick (something like pity?) when
| they see people using Windows 11? Right click menus which have
| a loading spinner, advertisements littered throughout, and
| headlines from right-wing tabloids spammed in news widgets.
|
| These past six years have been absolutely bonkers incredible
| for Linux, and it can all be attributed to Microsoft shooting
| themselves in the head with Windows. Proton work started after
| Windows 8 and really became usable in late 2019. Now we're
| seeing something again with Windows 11. It's awesome, hope it
| sticks.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| > These past six years have been absolutely bonkers
| incredible for Linux, and it can all be attributed to
| Microsoft shooting themselves in the head with Windows.
|
| It can't _all_ be attributed to Microsoft. There have been
| huge efforts by many parties to make this happen. Folks
| working on the Kernel, desktop environments, distros,
| applications, tooling, advocacy, and more.
|
| I believe people who say they are being pushed away from ms
| because of disillusionment with windows 11. But there also
| needs to be someone to pick up the ball after it was dropped
| -- and those people deserve equal if not more credit
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Yeah, I should have been a bit more nuanced. I don't mean
| to dismiss the incredible mass of raw human achievement
| that is open source.
|
| Microsoft is one of Valve's direct competitors and Valve is
| totally dependent on Microsoft. Among the notoriously
| poorly-received changes in Windows 8, Microsoft also
| started to clamp down on who can run software. Valve saw
| the writing on the walls and released their first Steam
| Machines. But those flopped due to the state of Linux
| gaming at the time, they started pouring resources into
| Proton, which had the distinction from WINE in that they
| would develop Linux-specific patches.
|
| For sure, Valve would have nothing if WINE hadn't already
| done the bulk of the work, if Vulkan didn't exist, if Linux
| didn't exist, etc. But there's a world where Microsoft
| decided not to rock the boat with Windows, and in that
| world, Linux gamers would almost exclusively be dual
| booting.
| stn8188 wrote:
| Same here. I spent a good chunk of the evening just today
| messing around with Steam to see what I could get running on
| Linux. It's been a while since I tried in earnest, but I got
| all the games I wanted running (minus VR, but that felt like it
| was close). Even though I barely play any games anymore, it's
| the last reason I haven't wiped my Win10 drive.
| bsder wrote:
| Avalanches start with small movements ...
|
| I'd argue that its drips and papercuts all over. _Everything_
| is trying to extract rent, and that makes things unreliable
| enough that even basic users are starting to notice.
|
| Um, can't connect to the Internet? Nope, you can't play a game
| on your machine, and you may not even be able to log in.
| Service hiccup? Booted from whatever you were doing because we
| can't extort your if we leave data on your machine. And, oh, if
| you have the nerve to complain, you ungrateful serf, we will
| kickban you with no recourse. etc.
|
| And this is before we even bring the AI bukkake into the
| picture ...
| unsettledturtle wrote:
| I think it's a lot of different factors coming together. The
| success of the steam deck has really breathed life into the
| linux gaming scene - certainly for me personally, that was the
| main blocker to switching from windows.
|
| That, plus (what feels like) a lot of recent advances in Linux.
| When I tried it... 2-3ish years ago? I recall e.g. fractional
| display scaling being basically nonfunctional. But when I tried
| again early 2025, it pretty much Just Worked (arguably even
| better than it did on windows), I just had to manually enable
| wayland. Pretty sure even that's just the default nowadays.
|
| Which basically sums up my personal windows -> linux pipeline:
| bought a steam deck, was impressed at how well it ran my steam
| library; had my old laptop finally die on me, ran my life off
| the steam deck for a while; decided to eventually build a new
| machine, and figured I might as well try installing linux from
| the get-go. Everything worked fine on the first try, and I
| ended up not even installing windows.
|
| certainly within my friend groups, I'm seeing more and more
| people entertaining the idea of making the switch as well.
| Admittedly, that's primarily "tech-savvy" folks though.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Yeah there are many things coming together on top of W11
| fuckups.
|
| Proton was good, but SteamDeck did 2 things:
|
| * informed bigger public that hey, it is good enough for vast
| majority of games/gamers in the public eye
|
| * more importantly, *made developers care* about their stuff
| working on Steam Deck. And if it works on Steam Deck, very
| good chance it will work on <generic linux distro> just fine
| willtemperley wrote:
| Statistics show adoption rate is increasing. According to [1]
| it historically took a decade to double Linux desktop market
| share, but market share has almost doubled since 2022.
|
| Now, two in five PCs worldwide are running Windows 10, an
| unsuppoted OS. What are the user's options? Either buy a new
| PC, switch to Mac or run Linux.
|
| [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/2025-could-finally-be-the-
| year...
| Root_Denied wrote:
| For a lot of those people the options are "spend a lot of
| money to upgrade your hardware to either run Win11 or buy a
| Macbook" or "use your existing hardware and ask your tech
| friend for a Linux distro recommendation".
|
| When prices are going nuts and the economy is tanking the
| option that doesn't cost you money starts to look a lot more
| appealing, and for some the first isn't even an option;
| they're completely priced out of the new market for the
| foreseeable future.
| willtemperley wrote:
| In reality, people will probably keep their insecure Win 10
| machines running as long as they can. Linux is a leap
| especially for busy folk (most people in this economy).
|
| I predict a rise in antivirus company share prices.
|
| If Apple do make the rumoured cheap A-series based MacBook,
| it could be a hit.
| spuz wrote:
| I honest felt like the tide had turned when my elderly parents
| both asked me wipe Windows and install Linux on their laptops
| this Christmas. So far they have both had an overwhelming
| positive experience. They say it's such a relief not to have to
| dodge the minefield of popups and upsells and ads.
| solumunus wrote:
| It feels that way. I'm just one person but I've tried Linux
| several times over the decades and never stuck with it, for
| various reasons. Last year I got so fed up of Windows and tried
| Ubuntu. I can confidently say I'll never install Windows again.
| Ubuntu has been good out of the box, but another difference to
| when I last tried Linux is the invention of LLM's. Any issues
| I've had have been quickly resolved through troubleshooting
| with Claude/Perplexity, and I've used both to quickly learn the
| things I need. There were occasions last time where I spent
| literal days trying to fix things through searching and that
| was intolerable.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| I've even seen gaming YTbers I occasionally watch being fed up
| with that shit and moving or at least trying Linux
|
| MS fucked up
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Pewdiepie's linux video alone is almost at 8 million views.
| There's another 3-4 million views in reaction videos to it. I
| think primagen also stayed on archlinux after his ricing
| experiment
| Notjoanbaez wrote:
| It might be the alignment of several forces :
|
| - macOS is kind of crapifying, with Liquid Glass UI, iCloud
| services pushed down your throat... - Windows 11... - (some)
| Europeans are getting concerned about their complete lack of
| sovereignty on the tech stack, and Linux is one way to reclaim
| a small part of it. - LLM agents like Claude code have lowered
| the bar so much for any setup operation and bash commands.
|
| All in all, it seems like a good time for Linux to broaden a
| bit its adoption.
| dbcooper wrote:
| https://x.com/EnterpriseCPU/status/1972103355012124891?s=20
| cheema33 wrote:
| I am not sure why people do this. Why post a link without
| providing any explanation of what the link is. It is quite
| annoying. No, I am not going to click the link to find out.
| TACIXAT wrote:
| I strongly agree on this. I mained Windows for the last few years
| and got to the point where I was comfortable doing development
| similarly to how I would on Linux (text editor and command line
| build tools, cl, ml64, batch, etc.). I did that mostly so I could
| game and develop on the same machine. I learned a ton doing it
| but it has just gotten too awful to carry on.
|
| It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find
| for file name searches. The start menu was laggy, explorer was
| laggy (open up a folder with a couple dozen OGG files and it
| won't render for a solid minute). Mystery memory usage from
| privileged processes I had little control over. Once I realized
| that the one game I play (Overwatch) ran on Linux I decided to
| swap back.
|
| I installed Linux Mint earlier this year and I've been extremely
| happy. The memory consumption is stable and low, and if something
| is broken I have the control to fix it. It just feels so much
| less hostile. This is largely possible thanks to the work Steam
| has done with Proton. The last real barrier is kernel level anti-
| cheat which prevented me from trying out this years Call of Duty.
| Oh well!
| seemaze wrote:
| >It was faster to rg to search files
|
| This continuously drives me crazy on Windows and macOS. I am
| befuddled at the number of times where I'm searching for a top
| level subdirectory that starts with 'foo' but the search bar
| spins and spins..
|
| Eventually I get fed up and just sort by name and perform an
| alphabetical visual search in meat-space.
| layer8 wrote:
| On Windows, just use Everything: https://www.voidtools.com/
| roryrjb wrote:
| I see this contradiction all the time. Windows is a mess
| but there are lots of examples of rock solid, performant
| applications that have been developed and maintained over
| decades. Everything is one, also one that springs to mind
| which is much more performant compared to Linux
| alternatives is WinMerge.
| fiforpg wrote:
| > much more performant compared to Linux alternatives is
| WinMerge
|
| I have found Beyond Compare to be very good on Linux,
| even on large files/directories.
| SeriousM wrote:
| Yes, "Everything" is the tool to use, but to be honest, why
| isn't MS getting the same speed?
|
| I'm a SE for 25 years now, sticking with C#. Microsoft
| always did great tech platforms and left the missing 20% to
| the developers. Look at the .net framework (the old one),
| microsoft windows until win11, office until 2025, and even
| Excel that can't open csv files because the delimeter is a
| region setting.
|
| On one side I hated this attitude, on the other side it
| allowed and enabled developers to get their own business
| running - see jetbrains resharper functionality - visual
| studio up until 2024 was a mess without it...
| bluecalm wrote:
| While Everything is good on Linux you are spoiled with
| things like fzf or rgfzf (instant fuzzy search on text file
| content so you can find "TODO" or "ideas to try" in any
| file instantly).
| layer8 wrote:
| Fzf also works on Windows. That being said, most content
| search I need is for PDFs and Office documents.
| eviks wrote:
| > It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run
| find for file name searches.
|
| Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a
| nice resizable/sortable table
|
| > if something is broken I have the control to fix it.
|
| Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?
| cjk wrote:
| Yeah. I feel the same way. If not for the fact that my gaming PC
| pulls double duty as a work PC, I'd seriously consider ditching
| Windows 11 for Bazzite.
|
| I worry that we are edging closer and closer to a similar
| phenomenon with macOS as well. Apple seems intent on squandering
| every bit of stability and sanity that macOS used to represent.
| Maybe now that Alan Dye is gone, we will at least see the
| abomination that is Liquid Glass fixed...somehow.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I game on standard Kubuntu, not a custom distro but to each
| their own.
| bradley13 wrote:
| All of my Steam games work under Linux. For one or two, I gave
| to select a specific Proton version, but that's the only issue.
|
| Try dual-booting, and see if your games work...
| cjk wrote:
| It's mostly Mass Effect that's trouble under Proton. It
| requires the stupid EA launcher, which is trash. I have a
| Lenovo Legion Go S and getting it to work reliably is an
| absolute nightmare. Most other games I play are fine.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I just finished playing through Mass Effect Legendary
| Edition. Linux with Lutris. The EA Launcher gave me a few
| issues (like not launching sometimes), but it eventually
| worked. I did not have the game through Steam.
|
| https://theandrewbailey.com/article/290/Mass-Effect-
| Legendar...
| jama211 wrote:
| Depends on your hardware. I have a pascal era nvidia card,
| and everything _supposedly_ works, but games have issues for
| me still that aren't concrete, e.g. cyberpunk crashes in
| specific and repeatable locations for seemingly no reason and
| it never happens to me on windows. New amd cards are probably
| much more reliable. It's no one's fault but nvidias really
| that my card is unreliable in Linux, but as an end user I've
| been told many times Linux "just works" now and I'm upset
| that that hasn't been my experience.
| ideasphere wrote:
| 2026 will certainly be the year of the 'I'm switching to Linux'
| thinkpieces
| amelius wrote:
| My main problem with Linux is that I have to trust all the
| applications that I install (unless I am willing to do an extreme
| amount of sysadmin which I am not). On a smartphone at least I
| can easily assign permissions to each app.
| evilduck wrote:
| Flatpak gives you a lot of permission controls for GUI apps and
| you can similarly sandbox a lot of CLI tools with toolbx or
| distrobox.
| Alupis wrote:
| GUI apps often come in Flatpak[1] these days - which are
| sandboxed[2] like you are expecting. Flathub[3] is the primary
| place to get GUI apps, but many distros also have their own app
| store too.
|
| Flatseal[4] is a GUI that allows you to mange the
| sandboxes/permissions. You can also manage them via cli if you
| prefer.
|
| For CLI apps, you can use distrobox[5] or toolbx[6].
|
| [1] https://flatpak.org/
|
| [2] https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-
| concepts.html#sandb...
|
| [3] https://flathub.org/en
|
| [4] https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
|
| [5] https://distrobox.it/
|
| [6] https://containertoolbx.org/
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| If you use KDE Plasma (like with Fedora KDE or Kinoite), you
| do not need Flatseal, as the functionality is integrated into
| System Settings.
| Alupis wrote:
| Great tip - I do use KDE but didn't know this. Always just
| reached for Flatseal - but the functionality being
| integrated is even better. Very cool.
| themafia wrote:
| > On a smartphone at least I can easily assign permissions to
| each app.
|
| Those permission categories are so coarse grained as to be
| useless. In order to pause a media player when a call comes in
| I have to give the media player access to the phone app. Pure
| madness.
| Alupis wrote:
| I've used Fedora on my laptop for over a decade. I switched my
| main home workstation to Fedora in 2023, and haven't looked back
| since.
|
| My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of
| Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless
| major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet
| containers) on podman. It "Just Works".
|
| Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too. Many
| games even have native Linux support these days - the rest run
| under Proton. The only games that won't play have windows-only
| kernel-level anti-cheat. For some of those games, it's a
| developer choice (there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux
| support on EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it).
|
| I use Flatpaks to install many GUI apps, such as FreeCAD, KiCad,
| Darktable, Steam, Reaper, and a lot more.
|
| It's a great, extremely stable system.
|
| [1] https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
|
| [2] https://distrobox.it/
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| > there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux support on
| EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it
|
| Because support doesn't mean full features. It's like saying
| iPad supports Microsoft Excel. At some point it's the same name
| for different software.
|
| I think especially because it's under Proton, that means it's
| the Windows version of the game you're weakening to anti-cheat
| too. Even Valve's own VAC has issues running under Proton.
| hohithere wrote:
| Reading comments like that really don't motive me to switch
| to Linux for gaming on my +2000 gaming library.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I am one full page ad away from deleting Windows 11 forever. I
| will struggle through infinite driver compatibility issues before
| I sit through a single ad while trying to work. That is my
| redline.
| bbkane wrote:
| For me it was the OneDrive ads on the lock screen. And, when I
| accidentally clicked "enable OneDrive" (a few years ago, this
| might have changed), IT TOOK OVER MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER AND TOLD
| ME THERE WAS NO WAY TO REVERT IT!
| pynappo wrote:
| Yeah onedrive is seriously annoying. It's nice when the free
| 15GB backup/sync for the desktop, pictures, and documents
| folder works (for people who put things there) but the way
| other MS products work with it seems user-hostile to me.
|
| e.g. it took until 2025 for this RFC to be opened on moving
| PowerShell profiles and modules out of Onedrive:
| https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-RFC/pull/388. It
| should not be taking seconds for my powershell profile to
| load just because i have onedrive enabled by default.
|
| I also had a non-technical friend recently get burned by a
| default MS Office setting where edited documents located in
| the OneDrive folder save directly to onedrive, and it only
| gets saved on disk when onedrive gets the new copy and
| uploads it back it to the user's disk. So if the MS office to
| onedrive integration fails your changes won't save.
| Apparently users have to enable a setting to first save to a
| folder on disk? That folder can even be the onedrive folder
| so onedrive will eventually sync it back up.
| ab71e5 wrote:
| What devices are you expecting driver issues with? Even NVidia
| is not much of a problem these days
| nialv7 wrote:
| Actually surprised that Xe wasn't already a Linux user.
| xena wrote:
| Have been for a while, had Windows for games, but now Fedora
| runs them well enough I don't have to care.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wish iPhone users had a new os option. iOS is getting so
| unbearable with each update.
| readdit wrote:
| Why not just use an Android phone?
| layer8 wrote:
| Google.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| https://grapheneos.org
| debo_ wrote:
| This is the perfect iPhone user meme.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| yeah ios26 is objectively a piece of shit
| RachelF wrote:
| Windows has been my main operating system for the last 35 years
| (from version 2). I've used Linux and to a lessor extent BSD and
| Mac as well, but my main desktop has always been Windows, as it
| ran most of the apps that I needed.
|
| Windows 11 UI and spyware are so bad, that Windows 10 is where my
| 35 years of using Windows as my main OS has ended.
| jama211 wrote:
| I dislike windows 11 also and mostly use a mac these days and
| my gaming pc is dual booted with arch... but windows 10 and
| windows 11 for me are so very similar that I'm confused about
| the outrage between them. In both situations I turned off all
| the crap that was awful like the bloatware and so on, and then
| it's kinda the same experience after that.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Been following this blog for a while and this is the _last_
| person I would have expected to be a Windows user.
| xena wrote:
| About half the reason I used windows so much is for vtubing
| software. It barely works on windows, getting it working on
| Linux used to be a process fraught with agony and torment.
| Havoc wrote:
| This rings true...outside of users that play competitive
| FPS...the anticheat continues to be a challenge
|
| As a side note - if you're in that venn diagram overlap group of
| linux and gaming...check out "beyond all reason" RTS if you
| haven't. High chance it'll tickle you:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxwIxz4PaY
|
| edit: not affiliate to linked yt - organic enthusiastism
| zamalek wrote:
| BAR is definitely one of the stars of OSS game dev.
| girvo wrote:
| As someone who plays competitive FPS at quite a high level (I
| compete in the Contenders division in Valorant's Premier
| tournament system, lots of fun!), honestly even that's not the
| biggest deal. I'll eventually get to a point where the only
| reason I have a Windows install at all is for Valorant.
| Everything else will be Linux.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my desktop since 2020, I switched
| because I wanted to play games and maintain a development
| environment I'm familiar with (having run Linux servers for ~15
| years at that point) that would be _stable_. I had long used a
| Windows machine for gaming and a Mac laptop for development. My
| Mac was stable enough, but Windows was not-- it wasn 't blue
| screens it was constant unpredictable updates (sometimes
| erratically running when I didn't want them to). I had an SSD in
| the machine with Windows, but after installing Pop_OS! (as a
| happy accident) I never found a compelling reason to use Windows
| again.
|
| Steam has worked perfectly, clicking install and then hitting
| play, no futzing with drivers or weird updates. The only games I
| haven't been able to play are League of Legends and some of the
| new AAA shooters. I'm okay with that because I don't particularly
| care at this point, and it's not worth maintaining a Windows
| install to periodically play for an hour or so.
|
| Linux has been unbelievably stable. This year, I fully upgraded
| the system and planned on reinstalling but I didn't even need to.
| On first boot, my old install was picked up and mostly just
| worked. On Windows I've tried that before, and it was an
| unrelenting shit show (that resulted in having to nuke the old
| windows install).
|
| The only hitch I've had was installing conflicting NVidia drivers
| (open source vs proprietary); which, I was able to fix by booting
| into the command line then nuking both sets of drivers via _apt
| remove_ and installing the one I wanted. Took me less than five
| minutes and my system was working. It also wouldn 't have
| happened if I hadn't tried being too clever (and Pop_OS! having
| some quirks).
|
| I recently setup a MiniPC to use while traveling to game on and
| this time I tried Arch. To my surprise the install was
| ridiculously easy. The most recent installer makes it a breeze.
| My only mistake was not noticing I'd installed a few desktop
| environments and the default wasn't what I wanted so things
| seemed broken. After selecting KDE from the login menu et volia!
| It worked perfectly. I'm considering switching my primary rig to
| Arch, but I'll give the most recent Pop_OS! release a try to see
| if the newer LTS version gets me access to some new packages
| first.
|
| Linux is great folks. If you stick with a major distro you're
| likely going to love it. It's really low maintenance and just
| works. 11/10 would recommend to anyone.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > If you stick with a major distro you're likely going to love
| it.
|
| Even the smaller ones are unironically pretty fun to work with
| now-a-days. I'm currently rocking Gentoo on my stuff. After the
| painful setup, it's actually quiet easy to maintain.
| cromka wrote:
| Things like this don't help:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471081
| linusr wrote:
| "for me" - this should had been in the title but missed out.
|
| Linux has got better but not yet there.
| grugagag wrote:
| Linux isn't perfect but it's far away from the compromises one
| needs to make to use Windows. It's weird frogs are comfortable
| slowly boiling even when Microsoft turns on the heat to the
| max.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Welcome...1998 was my year of the Linux desktop. Valve seems to
| have been dredging all of the "maybe"s over the last few years on
| a few different fronts. Big ups to them (not that they don't get
| enough praise...still!)
| debo_ wrote:
| People loudly declaring they are switching to Linux feel to me
| like people loudly declaring they are leaving Twitter. That's
| nice? I've had my home machines on Linux since forever and it's
| fun. I like trying new distros about once a year to see what
| people are up to. It's been possible to run a basic setup for
| normies for a solid decade now, it's unfortunate that it took
| Microsoft waging UX war for some techies to notice.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| I made the switch as well. For many years I dual-booted Ubuntu
| and Windows, hanging on to my familiarity with Windows and love
| for Visual Studio. Finally October 2025 some update made games
| laggy on Windows while they still worked fine on Ubuntu. I
| attempted to fix this by reinstalling Windows 11 and found I
| could not figure out how to remove advertisements from the start
| menu. So I finally transferred all my files from ReFS to ZFS and
| committed to 100% Linux.
|
| Something has gone wrong in Microsoft in the product management
| organization where they are more concerned with chasing
| advertising dollars and upselling OneDruge than building a good
| product. It is depressing because all the Microsoft engineers
| I've interacted with in open source work have been excellent.
| le-mark wrote:
| They've done the research and they know x% will never change
| and that's enough for them to monetize. So that's what they're
| doing.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Even, I would imagine those who switch are least likely to
| click on desktop adds anyway.
| tormeh wrote:
| I have to use Windows sometimes at work, and of all indignities,
| this is surely a small one, but it is an indignity. Everyone
| complains about ads, which is a real issue, but to me the biggest
| issue is how blatantly suboptimal everything is. Nobody has put
| any effort into making Windows good for a very very long time.
| The terminal and/or powershell is incredibly slow - ls should not
| take perceptible time to execute. The settings menus are made
| with 3 to 5 different layers of UI frameworks and design
| guidelines. Forced OneDrive. The pestering about copilot... I
| even like LLMs, but my user experience is so clearly subordinate
| to some KPI that it annoys me anyway. I'm sure I could come up
| with more if I had touched it recently, but I thankfully haven't.
| jama211 wrote:
| This post does examplefy what we're seeing, a general indication
| of some swelling of momentum but I bet it's still going to be
| from 2% to maybe 3 or 5% at most until Linux can fix a few things
| about the community, issues with install difficulty such as dual
| booting and other issues, and the technical knowledge barrier to
| entry until more distribution with hardware comes along. Although
| of course system 76 and steam deck are great moves in this
| direction they're still relatively niche for now.
|
| There will never be a "year of the Linux desktop" the same way
| that there has never been a "year of the Mac desktop", it's just
| a slow building of users over time anyway.
| Macha wrote:
| Regarding the Steam Deck, Linux is _already_ 3% of Steam users:
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey, while MacOS is under
| 2%.
|
| I think it's also maybe worth pointing out that "non-enthusiast
| desktop OS user" is a segment that is shrinking. A lot of the
| people that aren't going to Linux are just going to smartphones
| only rather than buy a new laptop for Win11.
| jama211 wrote:
| Steam users represent well the pc gaming crowd, but they
| don't represent well the majority of the mac or Linux user
| crowd, of course.
|
| But you raise a good point that some users will stop using
| windows without ever picking up another desktop os at all.
| Not many that don't already not use desktops, but some for
| sure.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| Most charts I've seen indicate Linux already passed 5% usage
| worldwide.
| layer8 wrote:
| Not quite: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide...
| jimbokun wrote:
| I can't distinguish the colors of the Linux and MacOs
| colors on that chart.
| layer8 wrote:
| You can turn individual lines on and off on the chart by
| clicking on the legend.
| jama211 wrote:
| Depends on how you count it
| october8140 wrote:
| Your describing the impact Steam Deck is having without SteamOS
| being available to easily install on a custom built machine.
| The tipping point is going to come this year when people who
| are building new machines have the option to install Windows or
| SteamOS. A lot of people are going to pick SteamOS.
| jama211 wrote:
| Sure, they'll gain more of the gaming enthusiast segment for
| sure this way, and it will be a tipping point for those
| users. I just hope that there are ways beyond the gaming
| sphere to create converts though, as enthusiast gaming is
| still a smaller segment than people realise, and it will take
| a long time if this is only something people really consider
| with new builds, especially with today's hardware prices! I
| wish I could run steamos myself reliably, but I get issues
| with my old nvidia pascal card still and it causes crashes
| for me on many games, so I can't commit until I buy new
| hardware I don't think.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Ever tried to get answers from "the Windows community?"
|
| https://github.com/hahndorf/Set-Privacy
|
| Still not the year of the Windows desktop.
| jama211 wrote:
| Windows doesn't really have an enthusiast community, it just
| has users.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| s/users/hostages/
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I can't upgrade to Windows 11. I simply can't justify a major
| purchase (now a major major purchase) for a new machine for a
| downgraded OS. My wife would never allow it and I would hate
| myself for asking. If Microsoft doesn't relent, I'll have no
| other choice. I have to believe there are a great many in my
| shoes.
| eviks wrote:
| There are ways to upgrade to Win11 on unsupported hardware,
| though also ways to extend security on Win10 for a few more
| years
| jama211 wrote:
| Why not? There's a known way to skip the security thingo that
| complains and it works on basically anything that runs
| windows 10
| darubedarob wrote:
| Saw a fascinating talk on gui and ui development today, lamenting
| the stagnation at M$ and apple when it comes to desktop computing
| (including browsing).
|
| " there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline"
| and that sentence rings like a bell of all the problems.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Can you ring the same bell at the GTK and GNOME folks? The GTK4
| thing with hamburger menus that replace everything is just a
| mess. I stumbled on nemo the other day while looking for
| nautilus. That... was a breath of fresh air: compact UI, menus,
| features, etc.
|
| It's painful seeing FOSS making some of the same mistakes as
| corporations
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Yes, I don't like all of that stuff either. Too many FOSS
| does make those and other same mistakes; there is much more
| than just that. There are a few people that try to improve
| some aspects of them, but leave other the same, and sometimes
| it is not really an improvement (although sometimes it is a
| matter of opinion).
|
| But, I mostly use command-line programs and write my own
| programs (and sometimes use older DOS programs, even though I
| have Linux), without emoji and without LLM, and also avoiding
| Unicode when I can, and without a desktop environment, etc.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| was it this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ
| rsync wrote:
| "... there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-
| decline ..."
|
| I beg to differ. Tiling window managers like ion, ratpoison,
| dwm, et. al, and the simple and elegant tooling that accompany
| them are a wonderful example of UI innovation.
|
| UI/UX designers who copy, and iterate on, infantile eye candy
| have only themselves to blame.
| Havoc wrote:
| Among the average hn reader...I think it'll stick.
|
| Wider man on street, less sure
|
| As for me - having a good time on linux
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| my 2017 mac air is getting real long in the tooth. I'd definitely
| considering switching to *nix with it but everything I keep
| reading is that process is not so easy.
| sgc wrote:
| Write a strongly worded letter to the manager (apple). It's
| easy on other hardware.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| I've been on linux since 2014; I'm an ocassional user of
| windows, booting into it with much regret to deal with client's
| issues. I generally dislike working with MacOS... but for
| someone used to macOS I see no meaningful degradation of the
| kind there is with windows - your time is better spent
| earning/buying/setting up an m series mac air.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| I am holding out for an M5 air!
| prhn wrote:
| I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for me.
|
| I would have switched by now but film and audio production
| software, including VSTs, don't seem to be greatly supported on
| Linux. I'd love to hear from someone if you are successfully
| doing this.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| > I only really ever play one game, so that's not a blocker for
| me.
|
| I play loads of games; its mainly AAA multiplayers that aren't
| able to run on linux due to kernel anti-cheat - nearly
| everything else runs well with minimal effort using proton via
| steam (either installed via steam or imported as a non-steam
| game).
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I'd say about less than .00000001 percent of the world is in
| the same use case as you.
| einr wrote:
| Music production is indeed still a blocker. I used to use
| Windows for that; I am now on macOS for work and music (much
| better than Windows in every way! I use an old trashcan Mac Pro
| with Monterey for my studio computer) and Debian for my
| personal machines.
| tedk-42 wrote:
| See you in 2027 with the same prediction!
| etempleton wrote:
| I do think Linux is accessible to many more people, but I would
| not say it is ready for the masses. The terminal is going to be a
| non-starter for your average computer user.
|
| But, with that said, I started seriously using Linux for the
| first time in 2025. I bounce between Debian, Windows 11, and
| MacOS, and Debian is probably the most refreshing to use. I don't
| find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have turned
| off most of what people cite as the issues. I find MacOSs Liquid
| Glass redesign to be more aggressively bad.
| grugagag wrote:
| >I don't find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I
| have turned off most of what people cite as the issues.
|
| So you debloated your windows but at any update you have to
| spin your wheels and try to remove any crap they put back in.
| At any time there's the possibility you can no longer remove x
| or y. The vast majority don't have the energy to play this game
| or don't know how to.
| etempleton wrote:
| I agree, it is bad and I don't like it, but I think it is bad
| in a way most users won't care about. I have not really
| considered a version of Windows to be good since...Windows
| 2000...maybe 3.1.1. They have all had major issues, so I just
| kind of shrug off the issues when I use Windows. The
| enshitification of MacOS is relatively new and so still
| stings a bit.
|
| I think where Microsoft is playing with fire is that while
| most users will not care about some of these changes power
| users do. And the 5% of power users ultimately make the
| decisions and provide the recommendations for the other 95%.
| With so many apps and SAAS services going web or web app only
| there will be less and less reason to need to stick with
| Windows and that is where Microsoft will start to lose
| control.
| grugagag wrote:
| I hope they will get burned this time. MS has been playing
| with fire, I agree.
| ruszki wrote:
| It's quite funny, that I was in a very similar thread here a
| few years ago, where it was flat out stated that everything
| worked on Linux. Just like how many people state it now. When
| I commented that, but for example dpi scaling is still broken
| to an unusable level, I got a ton of unhelpful comments,
| either recommending basic things, or just "it works for me".
| Then now, most say that everything started to work in the
| past year, and how great the improvement was. I know these
| people are probably different, but it's funny how the general
| sentiment is always "everything works now, but it was shit a
| year ago".
| newsoftheday wrote:
| > The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average
| computer user.
|
| My wife is the average computer user and has used Linux apps
| for years and never opened a terminal once.
| etempleton wrote:
| Who installed linux and did the initial setup? And then I
| think there is a class of user that is savvy enough to say,
| update their graphics drivers but not willing to use a
| terminal and that is before you get into the mess that is
| Nvidia on linux.
|
| I agree, under a managed setup scenario where a user is only
| really going to use a web browser and a few apps. Linux is
| just fine.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Installing is straightforward these days. You live boot a
| USB and install it from the actual OS
| simonask wrote:
| Booting from a USB is not straightforward to the average
| person. Even understanding what that means is advanced.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I installed, she could do the same, insert USB stick, run
| the graphical installer, remove it, boot into the new OS.
| That's all I did, on this machine, our LR TV PC, MVR PC, DR
| PC (for pleasant visual videos on YouTube), her PC, etc.
| Some are Dell, some are Lenovo, my last PC was an HP. I
| personally have used nVidia on multiple machines and models
| the past 2 decades. On mid-2000's machines I'd sometimes
| have to run the driver installer .sh file I downloaded from
| their site. The past at least 10 years, it gets installed
| automatically, didn't have to do anything.
|
| Glad we agree on casual users. She uses Chrome and only 2
| apps, same as when she was on Windows. Would you agree that
| probably most of the world is made up of casual users?
| gerdesj wrote:
| I mentioned the same thing somewhere north of your comment.
|
| My wife rocks Arch and could not care less.
| gerdesj wrote:
| "The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average
| computer user."
|
| My wife has no idea what a terminal is and does not care - she
| rocks Arch and has no idea what that means. The people that
| attend my uncle's PC clinic to have their "Win 10 that won't
| run Win 11" converted to Linux don't care either.
|
| My Dad's PC will shortly be running Linux after I've taken him
| through MSOffice -> Libre Office + Scribus +
| (Evolution||Thunderbird).
|
| I started off my early IT career as a trainer - I once did a
| day of DTP with Quark Express where I was given the floppies
| the night before. When I hear that Linux (actually LO etc) is
| incapable of doing whatever, I soon find that a deep discussion
| about what constitutes "incapable" generally turns into a
| training session.
|
| For example I often hear about documents that apparently LO
| can't handle. That normally ends up with me teaching
| (proselytizing!) about how to use styles properly or even the
| real basics such as the four tab forms (L/R/C/decimal). Then we
| might segue into spreadsheets ... ahh, you'll want a array
| formula there ... "a what?" and off we go again.
|
| Now, I have wandered off track here somewhat but I'm noting the
| other "not ready" convo that will often happen after we have
| covered how to find your mouse pointer or why Windows seems to
| still have two Control Panels and at least three half arsed IP
| stacks.
|
| I do actually have a fondness for Windows, having used it since
| v2.0 at school in 1986ish. That fondness is rapidly going west
| along with VMware (consultant for 25 years).
|
| I fucking hate being taken for a ride and basically being
| abused. Today, my company received an email from Broadcom
| telling us that we are no longer welcome as a reseller/unpaid
| support org. Luckily we started migrating our customers away
| from VMware some time ago and only the ones with the deepest
| pockets and greatest inertia remain. The rest are rocking
| Proxmox and I'm a much happier consultant too.
|
| One day MS might tell my company that they have decided to
| dispense with our reseller/unpaid support services too, once
| they are sure that everyone is tucked up with a subscription.
|
| Well, they can piss off too. I am capable of running email
| systems on prem (and do) even though I have migrated my firm
| from on prem Exchange to M365. I still point MX records to our
| place (Exim + rspamd) and run an imapd for some mailboxes. A
| calendar app is all that is missing.
|
| What I hope I am getting across is that dumping Windows and co
| is quite a broad subject.
|
| I think that your choice of Deborah and Ian's (bless!) distro
| is a really good solid starter for 10 but to be honest after a
| while you should be able to run any variety of Linux.
|
| You should be able to install multiple Window Managers eg Gnome
| and KDE Plasma and all the rest at the same time and be able to
| select which session to use from your Display Manager (eg
| SDDM).
|
| I have almost certainly overstayed my welcome in this tread but
| before I go, I will suggest that anyone who calls themself an
| IT (anything) should at least have a go at all available
| systems. Nowadays OS/2 Warp on something like 25 floppies is
| not a barrier to play (spin up a VM).
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| it's funny because it's Linux (and especially KDE) that has
| bridged that gap so long ago. I told my dad just open up sftp
| and edit the files. He's on windows of course. There's some
| convoluted thing. I totally forgot he cant literally just put
| in the URL and edit the file in kate!
| spankibalt wrote:
| I'll still be a Windows/Unix dual user. But then again I don't do
| the Windows "Home version" experience so many here seem eager to
| humiliate themselves with over and over.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| I'll toss in my 2 cents: 1. people that have no business
| whatsoever now know what linux is ie sales dawgs that only touch
| a computer for the occasional spreadsheet. 2. 70 year old man fed
| up with windows, moved to linux. it looks great, its fast and
| responsive let's make this happen.
| cryptica wrote:
| I love the fact that there are different Linux distros optimized
| for every person.
|
| I started using Linux almost a decade ago; starting with Ubuntu,
| then I moved to Kubuntu and now I'm on Omarchy which is even more
| optimized for developers.
|
| I feel very comfortable recommending Linux to people now though I
| would recommend a different distro depending on who is asking.
|
| IMO Ubuntu is the simplest general-purpose one. Kubuntu is the
| same but more customizable slightly more developer-focused.
| Omarchy (which is a fork of Arch Linux) is very developer-
| focused.
| fantasizr wrote:
| I've loaded up omarchy and I'm really digging all the keyboard
| short cuts and window tiling.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I would also recommend Mint Cinnamon for anyone. Everything
| worked out of the box, super fast and simple. Just a breath of
| fresh air compared to the bloat of the big corporation OSes
| these days. It's like being back in simpler times with Windows
| XP where things are snappy and it doesn't get in your way
| newsoftheday wrote:
| I run Kubuntu on this gaming machine (AlienWare) and I run it on
| my 16 year old Dell laptop I used for work back then. Runs great
| and with RAM prices high and people looking to make their older
| machines useful instead of trashing them, there's a really good
| chance they can run Linux.
| nntwozz wrote:
| I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt until macOS 27 (but I'm
| still on 15.7.4 hehe).
|
| Mac OS X and Aqua wasn't very well received either at launch.
|
| A similar thing happened with the flat design of iOS 7.
|
| Apple's pattern is initially going overboard with a new design
| and then scaling it back slowly like a sculptor.
|
| I think they're happy with this method, even if things miss at
| first the big changes usually create a lot of hype and excitement
| for the masses.
|
| The vast majority of users don't care about the finer things,
| Apple knows that the nerds can sweat it out until they straighten
| things out at which point everyone is happy in a hero's journey
| kind of way.
|
| I just hope this pattern stays true and that this isn't an
| inflection point.
| sails wrote:
| Adding from Mac perspective, I am also keeping an eye on Linux.
| I've hit a wall with Mac window management, and find the
| operating system just gets in the way for professional use
| across multiple of their digital "desktops". I have no useful
| way to isolate work streams, and would gladly move to something
| better.
|
| The blocker for Linux for me as someone who wants some level of
| reliability has always been fiddling with low level config, but
| now with Claude Code, low level config appeals!
| terhechte wrote:
| There's a mix of both worlds that I've tried for a while and
| want to pick up again in 2026: Use macOS so that I can
| utilize the great hardware and the well integrated drivers
| (e.g. sleep, performance, silence), but then for each project
| / work stream just fire up a lightweight linux VM fullscreen
| and do everything related there. E.g. all browser
| windows/tabs, apps, file explorer windows, terminal sessions.
| When I stop working I pause the VM. When I need to continue
| everything is as I left it. The main reason why I stopped was
| that the 2d hardware acceleration for Linux didn't work in
| UTM.app. I think I'll just need switch to Parallels or VMWare
| bee_rider wrote:
| Like a modeling clay sculptor? I guess if a rock sculptor went
| too far, they would have trouble adding rock back.
| pkaodev wrote:
| Funnily enough today windows pissed me off with a random breaking
| bug (no login screen yay) so now only have Ubuntu installed. Only
| one application I use that's windows only anyways and can use a
| VM for that, so sayonara...
| gethly wrote:
| It will take few more years before people start abandoning W10
| due to security concerns(somehow "hackers" always find some
| insane backdoors and bugs in old windows, it must be a pure
| coincidence), hardware upgrade or just need to reinstall. But
| indeed, it looks like Linux is finally taking over. I'd say that
| beside Microsoft being so bad at their job, it's Valve and gaming
| on Linux in general. It's actually doable. What a miracle!
| anonnon wrote:
| Wait, does Xe not know about this?
| https://www.thurrott.com/dev/330980/microsoft-to-replace-all...
|
| But more seriously, it's pretty ironic to see all of these posts
| on HN, a supposed "tech" community, about switching to Linux,
| especially the comments describing how it defied their low
| expectations (tacitly revealing their own lack of prior first-
| hand experience). You never would have seen this on Slashdot 20
| years ago, where dual booting Linux (or some BSD, despite it
| dying) was the minimum "geek cred" to not be seen as a poser.
|
| And this was at a time when distros were far less user-friendly
| and had far more hardware compatibility issues and far less
| support for running Windows software.
| yakattak wrote:
| > At the very least, when something goes wrong on Linux you have
| log messages that can let you know what went wrong so you can
| search for it.
|
| It is hilarious how accurate this is. When something crashes on
| Windows you better hope it has its own logs you can find because
| the OS itself will tell you nothing. Event Viewer can't hold a
| candle to journald!
| dmix wrote:
| If I didnt have a macbook from work I'd use Linux, but I got a
| macbook
| SamDc73 wrote:
| > then just shat all over them with start menus made with React
| Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews,
| and forcing Copilot down everyone's throats
|
| Thank god I've been using Linux long enough to not experience any
| of that.
|
| At my job in a large non-tech company, almost everyone uses
| Windows (except for the dev team) purely because of Microsoft
| Office. As long as that thing exists, they can do all the dumb
| things they want and still dominate.
| torginus wrote:
| Ironically, MS Office is one of the best working Microsoft
| software on Linux, through Office 365. It works so well, that
| on my Windows work computer, I worked for months editing Word
| docs and Excel sheets every now and then, without realizing I
| didn't have Ms Office installed.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The funny thing is, MS office apps looks less out-of-place on
| Linux because most apps are already different. On Windows 11,
| it looks like the forgotten step-child of Windows 8.
| billy99k wrote:
| Good luck. I've tried to completely replace Windows with Linux
| over the last two decades or so, and it's still lacks polish. I
| really don't enjoy having half-written GUIs for different apps
| and having to compile my own fixes after searching for 3 hours.
|
| I think I finally gave it up in anger, when it was on a laptop I
| was using for a few important projects and it cost me days of
| work.
|
| I now use Windows+WSL and it has the best of both worlds: A fully
| functional GUI with everything I would ever need with Linux.
|
| MacOS is really the best Nix Desktop OS out there. I would use
| this instead, but I still require some windows apps.
| kakadu wrote:
| I ve been a happy user of debian stable for 15 years now, if I
| could get a Linux laptop with a comparable battery life to
| apple's then it's done for me.
|
| I think linux people tend to forget how important battery life is
| on a laptop
| aprilnya wrote:
| Would be great... what I've heard is, Apple's incredible
| battery life comes from the vertical integration - they make
| everything, the laptop, the OS... so they are able to optimize
| it incredibly well. Even running Linux on a Apple Silicon Mac
| doesn't get you the same kind of battery life because of how
| much work the OS does putting different components to sleep
| etc. (though one could argue Apple's arbitrarily making it
| harder for Linux by making it so much reverse engineering work
| to get everything to go into sleep mode!)
| martinald wrote:
| I don't think it's that per se, it's just apple has a lot of
| resources to optimise/test a relatively small amount of
| configurations.
|
| The big "issue" with Linux on non-server workloads imo is a
| lack of testing like this - which is completely
| understandable. Afiak Microsoft runs millions of automated
| tests on various hardware configurations _a day_.
|
| Intel does something similar for the Linux kernel, which no
| doubt explains the relative stability of Linux server vs
| Desktop (servers are running far less "OS level" software in
| general in day to day use than the desktop).
|
| The desktop experience itself needs more automated testing.
| There are so many bugs/regressions which I've noticed in eg
| gnome which should have been caught by e2e testing - I do try
| to report them when I see them.
|
| Doing a bit more digging there seems to be some basic e2e
| testing for gnome ran nightly but currently most tests are
| failing https://openqa.gnome.org/tests/12128.
|
| This isn't a criticism at all btw, it's quite boring and
| resource intensive work for a project like gnome to do. I
| hope soon some large corp decides to go all in on realLinux
| desktop (not ChromeOS) and can devote resources to this.
| chuckadams wrote:
| The vertical integration is what makes for the small amount
| of configurations. The total count of OEMs they have to
| satisfy or work around is one.
| kgwxd wrote:
| How's battery life if you run Linux in a VM on Mac OS?
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| I am most familiar with Debian but only headless. What would be
| a good choice of desktop environment? I'm looking to switch
| over the only windows computer in my house to Linux, it is
| primarily used as a home theatre and gaming PC.
| foresto wrote:
| Desktop environments are a matter of taste, but since you
| asked, I like KDE Plasma. I think it would be pretty
| comfortable for someone coming from Windows.
|
| It's not the default on Debian, but once you install it, you
| can choose it next time you log in.
|
| https://wiki.debian.org/KDE#Installation
| steine65 wrote:
| For media, I'd pick a distro that has the software you need.
| Most should work. I like Debian or CachyOS (Arch). Thr
| desktop environment is likely what will impact your media
| experience the most. I use Hyprland but wouldn't recommend it
| for a media desktop.
| moltopoco wrote:
| Not just battery life, but also webcams and mics. Sure, you can
| use additional gadgets...but being able to open your MacBook
| and just talk to your coworkers is reason enough to keep an M1
| Air around for the next years.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There are several reports of people getting 12+ hours out of a
| Lunar Lake based laptop running Linux. Still a ways away from
| the 20 Intel claims for them, but likely a more realistic
| scenario.
|
| Intel claims Panther Lake will be even better, and we should be
| seeing results within days as there should be Panther Lake
| desktop released during CES this week.
| aprilnya wrote:
| > I haven't booted into Windows in over 3 months on my tower and
| I'm starting to realize that it's not worth wasting the space
| for.
|
| Kind of glad to read this, I went into it thinking it will be
| another person saying "I'll use Linux forever!" the day after
| installing it, similar to everyone who says their new years
| resolution is to work out more, then proceeds to go to the gym 2
| times total :)
|
| (oh, and then, I noticed this is Xe!)
| Root_Denied wrote:
| Moved to NobaraOS back in April (gaming focused Fedora based
| distro) on my desktop tower and haven't used Windows since, nor
| have I felt the need to. Some minor tinkering with launch
| options for Steam games aside it's been a smoother experience
| than Windows was the previous 5 years.
|
| The last Windows computer that I have is my work laptop, which
| is an acceptable compromise as far as I"m concerned.
| colordrops wrote:
| Niri + DankMaterialShell is an amazing desktop experience. I've
| heard great things about the COSMIC DE as well.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are still so many issues around Wayland and fragmentation.
| Gnome is the most popular and has lots of issues and sometimes is
| downright user hostile. Luckily some of the distributions try to
| revert some of the insanity sometimes. But there are still many
| protocols and portals needed and much more standardization.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Just install Mint/Cinnamon and forget about it.
| panick21_ wrote:
| They are moving to Wayland too and will not get around any of
| these issues. And using those things brings with it a number
| of other issues.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I'm a user and the experience has been great.
| teleforce wrote:
| Every year starting back around the year 2000, every year until
| now there's always at least an article from Slashdot and then HN
| on the year of the Linux desktop from believers and non-believers
| alike [1],[2].
|
| [1] Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop
| (2023):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33213663
|
| [2] Why there should never be a "year of the Linux desktop"
| (2009):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821673
| kgwxd wrote:
| The phrase itself has been a well established joke since I can
| remember.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Been bazzite-only since April and I love it
| hifikuno wrote:
| Maybe someone here knows a solution. The ONLY thing keeping me on
| windows is that my employer uses F5/Big IP edge clients. I cannot
| find a Linux client that can also handle Web SSO. Does anyone
| have any Linux experience with this?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I did fight with that a few years ago. Memory is that you can
| get through some steps running Windows in a VM to get thru MFA
| checks, and then close it later.
| bradley13 wrote:
| I'm no expert here, but my employer uses no less that three
| _different_ SSO services (don 't ask).., and all of them work
| under Linux.
|
| Web-based really ought to work. Maybe your admins are being
| weird, and checking the user agent? Try using a plug-in to
| change your user-agent to Windows
| loumf wrote:
| I recently switched to Linux for all development. I still use my
| Mac for everything else.
|
| The main reason was to protect my personal data from possible
| supply chain issues or LLM agent mishaps.
|
| I'm 99% in VSCode, a browser, and a terminal. There's hardly a
| difference day-to-day.
| handbanana_ wrote:
| I really don't understand what is different about my installs of
| Windows 11 compared to what I read in all these types of
| articles.
|
| I have zero issues with the platform day in and day out with
| heavy workloads like Pro Tools and Unreal Engine devkit. Games
| run without stutter and issue, all my features are snappy,
| Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and
| gives decent results. I have tweaked a few settings but nothing
| you can't find in settings menus.
|
| I'm not sure a lot of people having issues with pretty damn
| stable platform are going to have a better experience in
| something they have zero familiarity with and isn't exactly going
| to be intuitive when things go sideways, as they most undoubtedly
| will.
| applied_heat wrote:
| Is your windows 11 home edition or managed by corporate IT?
| mirpa wrote:
| I had to edit windows registry to fix the worst misfeatures of
| start & context menu. I never found solution to random wake up
| after suspend or missing icons after wake up - MS support was
| useless. Linux desktop even with non-zero amount of issues
| can't frustrate me nearly as much as Windows. All games I ran
| so far on Linux worked as good or better as/than on Windows. I
| keep Windows installed just in case some game really won't
| work, but combination of SteamDeck (Proton) and Vulkan did
| wonders for Linux compatibility kudos to Steam/Valve. And I
| would not want to do software development on Windows, that is
| number one reason I am using Linux (not that I am using Unreal
| Engine). Recent MS fever dream with LLMs only adds to general
| frustration with Windows.
| stateofinquiry wrote:
| I have the same confusion as you do. Note, I am not ignorant
| about Linux or MacOS. I ran Linux as my main OS from 2001 -
| 2015, still run it on a server. MacOS from 2015 - 2021. Since
| 2021 I am on Windows for my main machine (a laptop) and my
| gaming desktop.
|
| Win 11 seems fine to me. I do see Copilot appearing everywhere.
| I don't see ads from MS at all, though- sometimes my vendor
| driver-management software asks me if I was to extend my
| warranty. Not Win11 fault, though. Start menu seems fine, phone
| integration is nice, OS runs very stable (in the very early
| days of using Linux 20y ago I marveled at how much more stable
| it was than Win98! That gap is gone now as far as I can tell).
|
| My suspicion: I am paying for M365 (or whatever they call it
| now) and so they don't advertise it (or anything?) to me. I
| don't see CandyCrush or other random things added to my
| machine. All seems OK.
|
| I've read that Win12 will be subscription-based. Maybe I am
| personally already there. For now, M365 offers me good value- I
| use MS Office and OneDrive. But if this changes I can see the
| equation balance shifting and I will then change platforms
| again.
|
| TMI, I left MacOS because of Gatekeeper and the inability to
| repair hardware. Before that I left Linux for work
| interoperability and regressions I saw on my personal mobile
| hardware. Neither were "bad", really, I have experienced
| different trade-offs among the three choices I have used. For
| now, Win 11 is working just fine for me, with no fuss.
| gabrielgio wrote:
| > I do see Copilot appearing everywhere.
|
| > I don't see ads from MS at all
|
| You can only pick one.
| fyredge wrote:
| I suspect these articles are targeted at techies and tinkerers,
| where being able to do things _their way_ is very important to
| them. This is reflected in the many mentions of tinkering with
| registry keys, which I never have nor felt the need to.
|
| I personally run win11 for gaming, android for media
| consumption and proxmox for homelab and I think all of these
| systems are fine as is. They serve their purpose well enough.
|
| My prediction is that steamOS (when it is released) will end up
| being the only mainstream Linux desktop because of its
| corporate backing. It would be interesting to see desktop Linux
| mimicking the android ecosystem, where different vendors
| provide a different skin on top of SteamOS.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > will end up being the only mainstream Linux desktop because
| of its corporate backing
|
| Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Pop!, Deepin (and the list goes on) all
| have corporate backing. Steam is a well-known consumer brand
| though, so that might make a difference.
| okanat wrote:
| I don't think the usual distros care about the desktop
| experience as holistically as a long-term consumer company
| that Valve is. Otherwise one would expect Linux distros
| would be much better than what they were even 10 years ago.
| eviks wrote:
| > Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and
| gives decent results.
|
| There is likely too big of a gap in "terminology".
|
| For example, the file explorer startup is so "Instant" that
| even Microsoft officially added an option to preload the app to
| fix the delay. But if you don't notice / don't appreciate real
| instant, then sure, you won't understand the complaints. (or
| maybe your hardware masks it well enough)
|
| Similarly, if you've never used Everything or better file
| manager for search, you might get used to the bad search
| results and call them "decent" since you're not aware how
| awesome it can be
| CivBase wrote:
| Windows _can_ be a good desktop OS. It just takes a lot of work
| to get it there. And you have to keep putting in a little more
| work with each update.
|
| I set up a lot of PCs and what has astounded me is how much
| less work it takes. Unlike with Windows, most of the defaults
| are fine. I don't have to scour through all the settings after
| a fresh install. I only need to install half as many apps. I
| don't have to run powershell scripts to debloat everything. And
| I don't have to worry about updates undoing all the changes
| I've made in the future.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| This headline couldn't be more absurd. Who cares... computing
| ceased being desktop-centric 12 or 15 years ago.
| mrweasel wrote:
| So at that point a ton of people are going to be forced onto
| Linux?
|
| I don't really disagree with you. More and more I see people
| living with just their phones. Personally it's not for me, but
| it's getting more and more prevalent. Even some business just
| have people using iPads/tables in the field, no point in
| lugging a laptop around when you're only using one or two apps
| and email.
|
| For developers and systems administrators though, we're going
| to need the desktop for decades to come. Nothing else comes
| close in terms of flexibility. Just think how many SREs live in
| the terminal still. Not because there aren't UIs and
| applications, but because those applications can only be
| installed and configured from the command line.
|
| Accounting is also a long way away from dropping the desktop,
| again, they need a ton of flexibility.
|
| Microsoft is probably "correct" in that it's not really worth
| spending to much time on the desktop, because the average user
| launched a browser, Steam or some custom piece of software and
| just stays there all day. It's not really financially viable to
| make something good for the last 10%, on the other hand, those
| people would probably be fine with being stuck on the Windows
| 2000 or XP UI.
| thunderbong wrote:
| For the last few days I was trying to revive an old MacBook Air
| for a non-techie friend. It had 4 GB of RAM.
|
| It had Catalina on it and was completely unusable. Hovering on
| anything would bring up the spinner which would take a couple of
| minutes to resolve itself.
|
| I tried reinstalling the OS, which didn't help. The top
| recommendation was to revert to Mojave.
|
| Finally, after three days of struggle, I gave up and installed
| Linux Mint.
|
| The difference is absolutely unbelievable. Even heavy
| applications like LibreOffice and Zoom are snappy.
|
| Apple makes such good hardware. I felt really sad about the state
| of their software compatibility with older machines.
|
| So, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know one more
| person will be using Linux in 2026!
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yep, we upgraded an old ~2010 iMac to 8gb and put Mint on it,
| good as new.
| henrebotha wrote:
| Yeah I've been running EndeavourOS on my 2015 Air (4 GB) and it
| is so incredibly snappy and efficient now. Makes macOS look
| like a lurching zombie of an OS.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Considering how the load at Linux Mint's forums has recently
| increased to the point that some of it is being re-directed to
| gitHummed (a minute ago there were "3362 users online :: 35
| registered, 3 hidden and 3324 guests" >10 secs to respond, needed
| to login), it _appears_ that distro at least is seeing a lot of
| newcomers.
| xena wrote:
| Those 3324 guests are all AI scrapers sadly.
| the_hoser wrote:
| For those of us that have been using Linux for a long time (since
| 1999, here), the improvements have been incremental, and hard to
| spot over time. But sometimes I encounter something and it just
| blows my mind how good desktop Linux has become.
|
| I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This
| isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that
| everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative modules
| built from source (hopefully with a good DKMS script).
| Everything... just worked. I'd blocked out a few hours to get
| everything working in a satisfactory state and... I had nothing
| to do, really.
|
| And when I say everything I mean _EVERYTHING_ , not just the
| features that were significant to my own use cases. Mind-blowing,
| if you think about it.
| parker-3461 wrote:
| This has been my experience too, with installing common
| (Ubuntu, Fedora, and other popular ones) distros.
|
| The only exception is when we got a really new batch of Lenovo
| P1 laptops for work, and the patches likely were not fully
| merged yet. So as long as you're not getting the first batch it
| is generally pretty good.
| naet wrote:
| I wanted to try Fedora recently but it crashed over and over in
| the install on the screen where you select a time zone. Looked
| it up and tons of people had the same issue and didn't find any
| fix that worked for me.
|
| Turned me off Fedora completely.
|
| Tried two other distros on the same machine right afterwards
| with no problems though.
| Groxx wrote:
| yeah, the "it actually just works now" is quite a powerful
| transition. for all my hardware, that happened like 3 years
| ago, but I've been Mac-bound for a decade until recently so I'm
| only really sinking in now.
| 0000000000100 wrote:
| To temper expectations a bit, I've installed Linux recently on
| my HP Omen to pretty decent results. Still having some
| lingering issues, e.g the WiFi adapter going dead after a
| sleep. But have found the experience relatively similar to my
| recent windows installs.
|
| For a laptop user who likes to game, you'll definitely
| encounter some issues based on my experience. Better than it
| was 2 years ago, but it's not a seamless experience (laptops!!)
| that you'd expect from posts like these.
|
| For a Linux savvy user, it's definitely worth the switch. I
| haven't had any ads in months and it's magical
| amanzi wrote:
| See this for something that might help your Wi-Fi issue. http
| s://gist.github.com/gornostal/192e2ae29af3da1baeea384d0f...
|
| I had the same problem on my new Yoga laptop with Fedora and
| an Intel BE200 Wi-Fi card.
| 0000000000100 wrote:
| Thanks, will give that whirl. Appreciate the info
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Sleep and suspend are still kinda buggy on Linux, and
| probably will be for the near future. This is more of a
| vendor thing (as most of the annoying problems in Linux) than
| a dev thing. To the point where I mostly avoid it, I either
| shutdown the laptop completely or just let it plugged on a
| desk 24h
|
| Things are improving, and we should see this fixed in the
| next years I assume. This is the good thing about it, Linux
| will probably be fixing all annoying bugs in the next few
| years.
| chrysoprace wrote:
| I've made the complete switch recently (been using Linux on and
| off for years, including WSL as well) after my pleasant
| experience with the Steam Deck and it's been fantastic, but not
| without issues. A recurring issue over the years of trying
| Linux has been WiFi drivers; I really can't afford to have WiFi
| not work as I can't run an Ethernet cable to my computer room.
| I get that Linux heavily relies on volunteer work, but a broken
| WiFi driver due to an update is a big roadblock.
|
| Beside that though, I'm happy to have left Windows behind
| completely.
| dash2 wrote:
| I left desktop Linux in 2010 because everything did not just
| work. Looking at the responses to your comment, it seems that
| basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work. If it's
| been true since 2010, I think the problem is systematic, and
| won't go away with "just one more year".
| trinix912 wrote:
| A lot of the WiFi and BT issues were due to proprietary
| firmware blobs which weren't included in package management
| repos either due to licensing issues or decision not to
| pollute OSS repos with nonfree software.
|
| This has mostly been solved by either putting them in the
| nonfree repos or just the fact that WiFi hardware vendors
| aren't using such stuff anymore.
|
| I still remember pulling firmware blobs for my Broadcom
| cards, then it magically worked fine. It was far from trivial
| and I think that's what caused a lot of people who tried
| Linux on laptops in early 2000s to turn away.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| If you mean with "just working" that any distro works out-of-
| the-box with any piece of hardware ever existing, then
| obviously no, that won't happen. It won't happen with any OS
| ever.
|
| I have never had any issues with any Linux-distro regarding
| WiFi. Most hardware I have used has been largely compatible
| even. Maybe I have just been lucky, but it seems there's
| millions of us who are really lucky these days.
|
| What has also changed from 2010's is that the documentation
| like Arch wiki is a lot better. You can also ask an LLM to
| help you configure things - obvs the docs are better and
| safer - so if and when you do have a problem, there's
| actually sources to help you fix it.
| normie3000 wrote:
| > it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always
| just work
|
| This is true. I've been using Ubuntu since 2006, but still
| see issues with
|
| Wifi: Ubuntu 22 didn't work out of the box with a 2014
| macbook air
|
| Bluetooth: maddening trying to set "listening" mode instead
| of headset mode on JBL earphones - it seems to choose
| randomly every time it connects, and the setting isn't
| exposed in any UI
|
| Sleep: I don't think I've ever seen sleep/suspend working
| reliably on a Linux laptop, to the point I don't know the
| difference between the two. I have one thinkpad which never
| wakes from sleep, and also never fully shuts down on system
| shutdown without a long press of the power button.
|
| I accept all this so that I don't have to wait seconds for
| basic UI things to happen, like switching virtual desktop
| (osx) and opening the application launcher (windows).
| pimeys wrote:
| Counterpoint: I've been using enterprise thinkpads for the
| past 15 years and never had issues with wifi, or suspend.
| So again, it's about how you choose your hardware so it
| works with Linux...
| normie3000 wrote:
| I've also used enterprise thinkpads for the last 10
| years. No wifi issues on those, but sleep and bluetooth
| issues as described. I have no idea if Windows would have
| been more reliable.
| pixelesque wrote:
| I had a Thinkpad T480s that was absolutely _perfect_ with
| Linux (Mint), although very underpowered, but that was
| due to Intel CPU.
|
| This year I got a T14s Gen6 AMD as a replacement, and
| it's essentially unusable on Debian-based distros
| (Ubuntu, Mint), but works fine with Fedora and with
| Windows.
|
| On Ubuntu and Mint, X just locks up every 80 seconds or
| so, and I have to hard-reboot it (or switch ttys and
| restart X). Nothing in syslog, nothing in dmesg, nothing
| in X.org.log to show what might be going on.
| throwaway777x wrote:
| This was true in 2010. I use to have a USB wifi adapter that
| was specifically meant to make sure linux would always work.
| I lost that adapter years ago.
|
| I can't remember the last time I tried a distro that didn't
| just work on a random computer with a random wifi but it has
| been several years now.
|
| Nvidia cards on the other hand...last year I had to try about
| 10 distros before I found something that wasn't a huge pain
| in the ass.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always
| just work
|
| This is why I don't use Windows. Early last year I paid for a
| copy of "Windows 10", and it didn't support most of the
| hardware in my laptop. Even plugging in a mouse I had to use
| keyboard shortcuts to let it load a "driver", and after that
| it still didn't support the scroll wheel. Wifi didn't work at
| all, and wired network was painfully slow. It did at least
| support FHD resolution in 24-bit colour but very slowly.
|
| My audio interface was completely unsupported, my MIDI
| interfaces were completely unsupported. Eventually I gave up
| attempting to run it, wiped the laptop again, reinstalled
| Ubuntu, and went for Bitwig instead of Ableton, and I've had
| no problems since.
|
| Maybe one day we'll see the year of Windows on the desktop,
| but this isn't it yet.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I had a similar experience after switching to Fedora Silverblue
| (but any of the immutable Linuxes will probably do - and over
| time, I'm sure most will be like that). Had set aside a bunch
| of time to do a major version update, everything fully backed
| up, and then it was done in a couple of minutes. Literally no
| different from any other update.
|
| I've done more than a handful of major version updates since
| then, and almost don't bother to backup any more.
| solarengineer wrote:
| Which laptop was this? Could you share the exact model?
| basisword wrote:
| >> what really blew me away is that everything... just worked
|
| It has improved greatly over the years. When I was using it
| relatively regularly in the mid-00's it still took a lot of
| effort to get everything to work.
|
| But long-time users being amazed that buying a brand new linux
| laptop in 2026 'just works' says a lot about how far behind it
| is/was. PC's that 'just work' have been available for 40 years.
| That should be the starting point for any shipping product.
| nirui wrote:
| That brings back my memory (again) installing Mandriva on my
| old old old computer which has a NVIDIA TNT2 graphics card. It
| was a completely nightmare back then to install driver for it
| in order to get it to output at the correct resolution and
| refresh rate...
|
| Now I have a Thinkpad T440p with a GeForce GT 730M dGPU which
| NVIDIA no longer provide driver for newer Linux kernels, so I
| have to use slower nouveau driver.
|
| Ah, something never change.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I recall my older brother and his friends trying to install
| Linux on a system with a Matrox S3 graphics pn our families
| computer, HP Pavilion 133mhz with 16mb RAM.
|
| Back when X was Xfree86 and you were required to create the X
| configuration without internet.
| csar wrote:
| Yeah I started in 98 or so and stopped in 2009. I should check
| back in.
| WackyFighter wrote:
| > TL;DR: 2026 is going to be The Year of The Linux Desktop for
| me. I haven't booted into Windows in over 3 months on my tower
| and I'm starting to realize that it's not worth wasting the space
| for.
|
| Similarly I haven't booted up Windows in months now. Debian is
| super stable as a desktop OS and does everything I want at it
| now.
|
| I am in this weird position where I am keeping a Windows
| installation around just in case I need it for something. I had a
| one job interview where they wanted me to use Visual Studio (C#)
| and it turned out they were fine with me using Rider anyway.
| lobito25 wrote:
| Judging by the website repo readme.md, the developer seems very
| obnoxious.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Then you'd probably get along pretty well.
| flakiness wrote:
| The sad part of this narrative is that Linux Desktop can be a
| thing, mostly because other options have gotten
| worse/enshittified vs Linux Desktop itself has gotten better (It
| has, but it is probably not the reason of the rise.)
| sandreas wrote:
| Long time Linux Desktop user here. I really think Linux is a
| great choice as a Desktop in days of liquid glass and webviews.
| There are a lot of choices to make, but in the end it is working
| out really well (at least for me). KDE and the new COSMIC desktop
| environment with tiling support are tempting, but for now I keep
| using GNOME until I have more time to check them out.
|
| The things I personally had problems with is BTRFS and printers.
| BTRFS was completely irrecoverable after a system crash, full
| story see here [1]. Since I've read a lot of these horror stories
| while doing some research after the crash, I would encourage
| everyone using it to be careful and backup your system on a daily
| basis. I switched to ZFS with ZFSBootMenu[2] and never looked
| back.
|
| Printer-wise, I have a Canon network printer / scanner which
| seems to use a strange proprietary protocol. On Fedora everything
| worked fine while on Arch I did not find a way to get this thing
| working (I tried hard with different options like driverless,
| gutenprint, cupsd etc.) - printing also seems to be a bit of a
| security nightmare when changing firewall settings is mandatory.
|
| Everything else is working absolutely stunning.
|
| 1: https://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=13013
|
| 2: https://github.com/sandreas/zarch
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Quick note on #2 - there aren't really any issues with storing
| your encryption root passphrase in a file. If the file is owned
| by root, with no read permissions for any account, only root
| can access it. Since it's stored on an encrypted dataset, and
| your initramfs is as well, it's unreadable when the machine is
| off. Lastly, if anybody _does_ have a root shell on your
| machine, they can change the encryption passphrase without
| needing to know the current value.
|
| In short, I'm not sure there are any real issues with having it
| on disk but unreadable by anybody but root.
| sandreas wrote:
| Absolutely - I know that but thanks for pointing that out
| again. There is no real "use case" for NOT storing the key
| into a root owned file. However, as I don't do it for myself
| there is no way of accidentally deleting the file, copying it
| quickly from my system to another drive when I accidentally
| left a root shell open and went to the restrooms (that never
| happens;) and the one single place I store the key (my head)
| is pretty much unreadable for everyone except me (at least
| for now :-) Being paranoid doesn't mean they are not after
| you :p
|
| Since I reboot my notebook only about once in a month it is
| no real hassle to enter the key twice 12 times a year :-)
| jama211 wrote:
| In general I agree with you but there is one difference - a
| sneaky user with physical access can read it and _not_ change
| it, vs changing it. The latter is more detectable. But this
| is minor.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Yeah. Unfortunately, ZFS encryption is missing a few
| creature comforts of something like LUKS. I've stuck with
| native OpenZFS mechanisms, though, to keep the complexity
| sprawl to a minimum.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I've run BTRFS on my server (and external drive backups) for
| over 10 years without issues. I would use BTRFS on my main rig,
| but Steam (or perhaps Proton in particular) doesn't like it, so
| Ext4 there.
| sylens wrote:
| I'm running BTRFS now on a Cachy install and Steam/Proton
| seems fine - when did you last try?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| About a year ago. Games simply refused to run, and some
| cursory searching suggested it was because my filesystems
| were BTRFS and advised using EXT4 instead. That worked for
| me.
| qaq wrote:
| MY NY resolution is to switch to Linux after two decades of using
| MacOS as primary OS. The UI direction, abysmal quality of
| software and people getting randomly banned from the ecosystem
| without good reason and with no recourse finally pushed me over
| the edge.
| ivanb wrote:
| It will be mine as well but only because consumer agentic AI
| became available and good. Only it makes all quirks and hardware
| incompatibilities bearable. I tell it to investigate the problem
| and it does an incredible amount of digging to help find the
| cause and eventually, after several iteration, either fix it or
| implement a good enough crutch. Even then it takes minutes to
| hours and I would take months.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| How does this work? Do you give the AI read permissions on your
| system, or is it just running arbitrary commands?In the latter
| case, is it prompting you before each?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Proprietary, closed user experiences are like microwave home
| dinners. There's every reason to hope they can be good, it is
| very common for them to be crap, and while its possible to hack
| your own microwave meals you will be doing so in a sub optimal
| environment with limited options.
|
| An open, modular, diverse UX is like having a stocked kitchen of
| staples, pans, tools, fresh produce, and a stove. You add a
| toaster oven, smoker, water bath, grow a kitchen garden of your
| own, find local butchers and fishmongers. Over time you build up
| a small collection of both your own and others' recipes and books
| and articles on food theory and trends. You can also have a
| microwave of course, but you'll use it in many different ways
| than before.
|
| It's harder work but so is walking instead of driving or reading
| instead of watching TV. It can seem irritatingly virtuous to some
| that you put this extra effort into your daily life but they'll
| be swayed when they see you serve up a ZFS snapshot to
| temporarily test an edit over 20GB of data, or pop up a new niri
| workspace to track and purchase concert tickets, or dive into
| editing your journal in a custom distraction free mode you put
| together showing only your editor and this week's GPS logs.
|
| You aren't making _everything_ from scratch, but you do make a
| few ingredients yourself -- pickles and bread in the kitchen and
| scripts and local web hacks on your computer -- and you certainly
| have complete control over the finished product in a way that
| simply isn't possible with a microwave and a boxed lasagna, or a
| copy of Windows 11.
|
| You don't even have to cook! You can have pre-made microwave
| meals with a Linux desktop. They still taste better because they
| were made with love by a global network of friends and family
| instead of by Nestle, Kraft, and Heinz.
| ergonaught wrote:
| On my Windows machines, every time I have to click my Bluetooth
| icon, which is about a dozen times every day, the full second
| pause before it presents me with a menu makes me wish I didn't
| need Windows on two of my systems. It's mindbogglingly stupid
| that a UI element has a one second delay to present a menu
| on...any hardware, much less "2025" hardware.
|
| But that's the kind of product they're shipping, because that's
| the kind of people they're employing, and that's the kind of
| decisions they're allowed to make. It permeates everything.
| bluecalm wrote:
| And on laptops you may need to write a script to disable
| Bluetooth before the lid closes and re-enable it when the lid
| opens because Microsoft in its wisdom forced S0 sleep but
| didn't care to make it stable enough so a drivers can't crash
| your system during it.
|
| Additionally there is no reliable mechanism to do so as doing
| it through Task Scheduler causes a race condition - will your
| script be allowed to run and finish before S0 sleep cuts power
| to it? You can not be sure.
|
| Additionally if you got cornered into making an online account
| Task Scheduler doesn't even work with that reliably (for task
| that require privileges like turning off BT on lock and turning
| it on on unlock) so then you have disable the online account
| Microsoft manipulated you to make. Of course the failure is
| silent so you have to discover all that by yourself.
|
| That is a a driver but Windows can also crash during S0 sleep
| because of its own updater failing to update some random app
| (like Microsoft Phone w/e that is).
|
| On Linux it's just not an issue. The script runs on events and
| is guaranteed to finish. Random updates at random times won't
| happen either.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Why do you touch your bluetooth icon so many times?
| bradley13 wrote:
| Welcome to the club. After years of dual-booting, I deleted my
| Windows partition a few years ago.
|
| And it's not just techies. My non-technical brother-in-law asked
| me to install Linux for him last fall. I installed Xubuntu,
| showed him how everything worked, and haven't had a single
| "support call" since.
| 6ak74rfy wrote:
| For me, 2025 was the year of the Linux desktop. I wanted a
| replacement for an M1, something beefy to build side projects
| etc., so I custom built a PC and put NixOS on it. Still rocking
| it and quite happy with it.
| iamcalledrob wrote:
| Same.
|
| After decades of macOS, and a bit of Windows, I tried Linux again
| recently and it was... good? For the first time in 20+ years, I
| ran into no big issues and no need to switch back.
|
| The new UI stuff happening in Gnome-land, while controversial,
| has started to make the desktop feel modern and cohesive.
|
| After years of Windows Explorer, clicking around in
| ~~Nautilus~~Files felt so snappy. The built-in Gnome document
| viewer is fantastic.
|
| Gnome is starting to show glimmers of being the natural evolution
| of the Mac desktop, not a poor imitation -- which is very
| exciting.
| eviks wrote:
| > I think that Linux on the desktop is ready for the masses now,
| not because it's advanced in a huge leap/bound.
|
| Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the
| masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious
| issues:
|
| - Windows has the following 3 components that became worse.
|
| Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you
| could've spent a few hours per component to replace it (Start
| menu), disable it (Copilot), or find a workaround (invoke process
| manager with a shortcut without going through the webview in
| ctrl-alt-del or maybe there is some non-web app the presents the
| same menu of a few items) or even just ingore it (what are the
| serious practical issues with using dumb webviews for a tiny
| menu?)
|
| But the alternative would require you spending many days learning
| the whole new OS where many things you're used to would simply
| not exist.
|
| Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly
| created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that
| does it.
|
| Got tired of the File Explorer garbage and got used to the
| greatness of Opus? Well, good luck, there is not a single great
| file manager over there
|
| Want to relax and play X, Y, Z games? Oops, only A, B, C have
| good support, will take another decade to fix that (but at least
| someone is working on that)
|
| Want to use your favorite Productivity/VideoShop app? No one is
| even working on that, so another decade would not fix that.
|
| So how is it reasonable (for the masses, not you!) to replace a
| few fixable annoyances with a bigger list of the same and an even
| bigger list of unfixable stuff?
| rrgok wrote:
| Yeah, I started to appreciate Windows more recently. In fact I
| prefer it over MacOS and Linux. WSL2 it's great when I need a
| linux shell.
|
| File manager is one those reason. Damn, there is no
| alternatives to DOPUS.
|
| Don't get me started with AutoHotkey. There is nothing compared
| to that.
| eviks wrote:
| > Don't get me started with AutoHotkey.
|
| Indeed, I've purposefully avoided mentioning that because
| thought it's less "mass-relevant", but yeah, that's a huge
| blocker for any "advanced" customization OS workflow.
| solstice wrote:
| I get your general point but as others said things are getting
| better.
|
| > Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly
| created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app
| that does it.
|
| Fsearch exists and is pretty much exactly that afaict.
| https://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/
| eviks wrote:
| > Fsearch exists and is pretty much exactly that afaict
|
| No it's not, it's worse, and Fsearch dev said that it's not
| possible to implement it as well due to OS deficiencies. So
| nothing is getting better here.
| benbristow wrote:
| Cool, see you back on Windows in a month. There's always
| something. It'll be like the New Year's resolution of going to
| the gym.
| bobek wrote:
| Welcome ;) Linux is my desktop last 20+ years.
| ojr wrote:
| Windows still have the gamers. A lot of anti-cheat system
| completely block out Linux users. The Year of the Linux Desktop
| will still be a meme at the end of this year as well.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Except ProtonDB website reports that completely blocked games
| make up 3% of the top 1000 Steam games.
|
| Meanwhile, 84% is perfectly playable (some with minor tweaks).
|
| https://www.protondb.com/
| timpera wrote:
| To be honest, I've found ProtonDB to be way too optimistic
| when saying that games are "playable" (for example, a game
| running with no multiplayer still counted as "playable").
| Root_Denied wrote:
| I saw someone make a good point about this the other day that
| that 3% of games represents a much larger percentage of the
| gamer population - Pareto distribution comes into play with
| popular games where a small number of games account for a
| larger share of gamers' attention.
| jama211 wrote:
| So you're still rolling a 6 sided dice every time you try a
| new game as to whether it works at all, and half the time you
| need to tweak it still? That's a reasonably large barrier to
| entry then. I have arch Linux but I still boot into windows
| to play games that are supposed to be supported because I got
| sick of playing through 20 min or so of a game for it to
| crash in a specific spot and I'd have to start over in
| windows if I couldn't find a reliable solution. After that
| happens a few times in a few games, I gave up and now I just
| go to windows to play games every time so I stop running into
| issues.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| My guess is that this is going to shift rapidly for new
| games. Once the Steam PC launches, most new games will
| probably run fine on it. There's no logical reason for game
| studios to throw way significant market share over weird
| legacy crap related to "anti cheat". I expect the already
| significant amount of Linux using Steam users will grow to
| the point where game studios can no longer ignore it in terms
| of revenue and angry users and will actively test and ensure
| their games work flawlessly.
|
| Of course one point here is that MS owns some of the more
| problematic game studios. Anti cheat here might be less about
| users cheating and more about them using this as a control
| point to ensure gamers keep on preferring Windows. It will be
| interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think MS has
| much of a moat left for gaming. And it will be tempting for
| them as well to tap into the few percent of Linux using Steam
| users for selling them games. They've long stopped insisting
| on windows for things like Office or SQL Server as well. The
| whole of Azure is pretty much Linux based at this point. So,
| they might dig in for a bit but they'll be under growing
| pressure to give in.
| faraixyz wrote:
| Tempted to do the same. Like it's a good OS but Microsoft seems
| intent to drive it into the ground by being insanely annoying.
| PowerToys is the only bright spot right now.
| timpera wrote:
| I don't really understand why everyone is complaining about
| Windows here, I'm not at all experiencing the same issues. The
| ARM64 version of W11 absolutely is the best OS I've ever used. I
| enjoy using Fedora but it's not coming close for professional use
| in my opinion.
| vanviegen wrote:
| If you want to understand why everyone is complaining about
| Windows, you just need to read what is said in those comments.
| On the other hand, if I want to understand why you think W11 is
| absolutely the best OS you've ever used, I... guess I'll have
| to ask you. So, would you mind sharing what makes W11 great for
| 'professional use'?
| timpera wrote:
| I'll obviously depend on what you're doing for work. Most
| people here are programmers, and I'm not, so your mileage may
| vary.
|
| I find that W11 just works: the multitasking is awesome
| (especially window and monitor management, huge improvement
| over W10), everything is snappy, the ARM64 battery life
| (especially in standby) is Macbook-like, I never have issues
| with USB-C docks and monitors (unlike Fedora where I always
| have to tinker with the terminal at some point), and the
| Windows version of Microsoft Excel is still unmatched.
|
| Also, the UI is very pretty, but that's obviously subjective!
| And you get way more customization options on Linux.
|
| I am not encountering most issues listed here, which I why I
| was confused, although I agree that Microsoft AI-bullshit-
| driven "vision" for Windows is a bit worrying.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| You mention arm64 bit. What sku is that? a 'pro' version or
| did it come installed on retail hardware?
|
| (We use Windows 11 on plastic Thinkpads (L15s, intel) at
| the centre I work in, an educational organisation. They
| have ads, insist on switching to edge even though we need
| Chrome for single sign on and do seem a tad sluggish).
| fainpul wrote:
| Let's use the influx of new users to get some money flowing!
|
| It would be great if all those "I switched to Linux" articles
| would mention a few ways to donate to some important projects,
| helping to make FOSS thrive.
| wazoox wrote:
| For me Windows XP was the intolerably ugly release that made me
| switch once and for all in 2002. Never looked back.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| BTRFS is certainly adventurous. That's one way to make sure you
| have a good backup policy in place.
|
| Corey (a character of mine) says stick with ext4.
| yigalirani wrote:
| where is ChromeOS in this story
| socialcommenter wrote:
| I do what I can by serving webapps from my Linux server, or using
| command line, but I haven't had much success with a Linux RDP or
| VNC server that can compete with MS RDP for performance. If I
| could do that I'd switch fully. Does anyone have recommendations?
| voxleone wrote:
| Welcome to the Linux desktop club. One small heads-up from
| experience: if you're running NVIDIA hardware, expect a few bumps
| along the way. The proprietary drivers work well once set up, but
| kernel updates, Wayland quirks, and driver installs can be more
| hands-on than with AMD or Intel. Not a dealbreaker, just
| something to be aware of.
|
| Overall though, solid choice. Hope 2026 really is your year of
| the Linux desktop.
| xena wrote:
| I had to set up a machine owner key in my motherboard's UEFI to
| get my 4080 working, but it's fine enough. I haven't had any
| issues with nvidia drivers since.
| harel wrote:
| Maybe I'm more tolerant, but for me Linux was ready for the
| desktop in 2005 and windows 11 is ok for what I use it for
| (cubase and games). When I switched my laptop from Windows XP it
| was a test. 3 years later I noticed I didn't boot back into
| windows not even once so concluded the test successful. My
| desktop later was windows only because cubase (and later steam)
| runs on it, but I honestly don't mind. However, I had to do some
| development on windows once for a client and that was indeed a
| horrible experience.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Linux and freebsd have been ready for the desktop for me in
| 1998 already.
| harel wrote:
| Yeah I know, I spoke to "you" around that time and a bit
| earlier, but I wasn't convinced enough to switch. It seemed
| like arcane magic to me then.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Not only is Linux on desktop "ready", it's been parent-proof
| for a long time. Sometime around 2012, Windows XP started
| having issues on my parent's PC, so I installed Xubuntu on it
| (my preferred distro at the time). I told them that "it works
| like Windows", showed them how to check email, browse the web,
| play solitare, and shut down. Even the random HP printer +
| scanner they had worked great! I went back home 2 states away,
| and expected a call from them to "put it back to what it was",
| but it never happened. (The closest was Mom wondering why
| solitare (the gnome-games version) was different, then guided
| her on how to change the game type to klondike.)
|
| If "it [Xubuntu] works like Windows" offended you, I'd like to
| point out that normies don't care about how operating system
| kernels are designed. Normies care about things like a start
| menu, and that the X in the corner closes programs. The
| interface is paramount for non-technical users.
|
| I've run Linux almost everywhere (work machines excluded)
| outside of my main desktop/gaming rig for over 15 years, up
| until a year ago when I switched my desktop. My last Windows
| install is on my retro PC (98SE), and it'll stay that way,
| because changing that would ruin the nostalgia.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| I think the main problem for Linux is the fragmentation and lack
| of focus. If you can live without the Adobe suite and such, any
| number of distros and desktops can serve you well, but it often
| tries to do so
|
| An initiative like Omarchy got a lot of traction just by "picking
| one" of all the infinite options available, writing decent
| documentation for how it all works in Omarchy specifically, and
| having the whole thing install in minutes.
|
| Omarchy and tiling VM's are not for everyone but I think the
| principles are great, and can surely be applied to other DE's as
| well.
| xs4ndro wrote:
| 2026 marks the year of IPv6 and Linux on the desktop.
| prism56 wrote:
| I started using Linux Mint on my Framework laptop. That's 99% of
| my desktop usage. I do have a gaming PC that's rarely used that I
| keep for windows. Mainly for the odd game and/or the odd windows
| thing but it's pretty rare since nearly all my gaming is now on
| my Steam Deck.
| InfiniteQwert wrote:
| Are there any alternatives to Lightroom that are not as complex
| or overwhelming as Darktable. I understand that people say it's
| more powerful, but it also looks like it has a steep learning
| curve I'm not particularly interested in tbh.
| wkjagt wrote:
| Maybe Microsoft knows Windows is terrible and won't last forever,
| so their short term goal is to exploit their marketshare as much
| as possible to grab as much cash as they can until the market
| moves to something else.
| polyterative wrote:
| Given the current situation regarding the hardware getting more
| pricey, I was so fed up with the inconsistencies, the constant
| micro lagging frame rate drops that I finally bit the bullet on a
| Mac studio a couple of weeks ago. This happened after 17 years of
| being a Windows user and having built more than 20 machines
| unfortunately Linux does not have a lot commercial software that
| I needed
| hexbin010 wrote:
| So I just tried KDE with Fedora 43 on a 4 year old Intel Dell
| laptop (I've used Linux pretty extensively for 15+ years). It's
| hilariously bad :
|
| - I managed to make a process crash just clicking around the
| Settings app
|
| - Sleep doesn't work (spins up the fans, then turns them down,
| then turns off off displays etc but I then the fan are spinning,
| so something is running). Looking at the menu, supposedly Firefox
| is 'blocking' sleep, but I blocked it, and that just meant the
| fans stayed spun up during sleep. Wtf?
|
| - Monitor connected via dock via USB-C only worked after I
| plugged it directly into the laptop then back into the dock
|
| - WiFi is preferenced over Ethernet (?!)
|
| - KDE default panel is 'floating' which means wasted pixels below
| it. Looks ugly and wastes precious vertical space. And the blue
| highglight of the active window is over the top. And the default
| panel height is 44 pixels!
|
| - Default fonts especially in Konsole look ugly on a 1920x1080
| laptop LCD.
|
| - Booting takes forever
|
| - Impressive it can stream to Homepods out the box...but it cuts
| out when you open the sound widget in the taskbar. And also at
| random points
|
| - The default pop-up notifications are too numerous
|
| - The Night Light quick option is to suspend it, not to enable
| it. Which is interesting, as it's not enabled currently. I want
| to enable it! There is no option to once-off enable.
|
| EDIT:
|
| - And during boot, the LVM2 unlock is only shown on the built-in
| display. Then the Login Screen is kind of mirrored, but updates
| are only shown on the external display ?! (ie password characters
| not filled in on the built-in display). Very odd
|
| I love Linux, and MacOS might be turning into iOS and becoming
| buggier, but MacOS has none of those issues.
| Alupis wrote:
| Can you run MacOS on your 4 year old Intel Dell laptop?
|
| I've been running Fedora full-time for years and have not
| experienced any of the issues you have listed here. Some of
| your issues sound like hardware to me?
| basisword wrote:
| There is something massive missing from Linux that for me has
| made it even less likely that I would use it full-time (I've
| tinkered with it in my youth): personal data. I have so much
| personal, important data generated regularly thanks to
| smartphones. Photos, videos, voice memos, notes, computer files I
| want to access anywhere, health data etc. etc. iOS/Mac has made
| this seamless, secure, and in 15-20 years it has not gone wrong
| for me. Sure there are horror stories posted from time to time
| but for 99.9% of people it works really well almost all of the
| time. Replicating this with Linux systems is difficult, requires
| lots of setup and maintenance, and incurs significant risk for me
| in terms of data loss.
| rd07 wrote:
| Funny that at the last minute of 2025 (at least in my country), I
| wrote a blog post titled "2025 is the Year of Linux Desktop, at
| least for me".
|
| It is just a short post to note about how in 2025 some of my
| friends are finally migrating to Linux. And that was something
| awesome for me.
|
| https://blog.juliardi.com/2025-is-the-year-of-linux-desktop-...
| neogodless wrote:
| I believe this was Dec. 2023 through Feb. 2024 (I should add
| dates to my little "blog"...):
|
| https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm
|
| If I remember, Linux Mint was on kernel 5.15 at the time.
|
| The TL;DR is that fractional scaling was broken under Cinnamon,
| and Brightness controls were broken under KDE.
|
| Most gaming was good, but a brand new game ( _Hogwart 's Legacy_)
| had major issues, including crashing and vastly worse performance
| compared to Windows. Another game wouldn't work with multiplayer
| ( _Anno 1800_ ) which meant I couldn't play it with my spouse.
|
| So I'm tempted to go back, give Linux 6.8 or 6.11 a try, and see
| if those issues are fixed. (I sold that laptop to a family
| member, so I'd probably try it on a newer Legion 5 Pro, but still
| with Nvidia graphics.)
|
| For my primary machine though... what I would miss most is _DxO
| PhotoLab_. I love my Fujifilm XT-5 and mirrorless photography,
| and I love editing with DxO. I tried Lightroom, darktable, and a
| few other pieces of software, but I kept going back to PhotoLab.
| It 's not objective - it's _very subjective_ but I get the most
| joy out of using PhotoLab for editing.
|
| I really hope (like throw a wish in a bottle) that companies like
| DxO consider supporting Linux[0] but I doubt it's even on their
| radar. Software like this uses hardware in demanding ways, and it
| isn't trivial to support it.
|
| Now, this is one person's anecdote, but I do think it's a factor
| in overall mainstream acceptance. For Linux users, after years or
| decades of use, they've embraced the software available to them,
| but for Windows / macOS users, they will often have to consider
| what compromises they'll have to make. (I know Adobe is thrown
| around a lot, and it's a fine example, but I don't like Adobe's
| subscription model... I still gave it a fair shake but enjoyed
| PhotoLab much more!) But I think my point will still be that
| there's a chicken-and-egg scenario, and it's taking _a very long
| time_ to get Linux to the kind of market share it needs to start
| forcing the hands of the thousands of companies that don 't
| currently support Linux.
|
| [0] https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/4406558299537-Syst...
| jjaksic wrote:
| "I'm going to go with Fedora on my tower and Bazzite (or SteamOS)
| on my handhelds."
|
| Why not Bazzite on both? Bazzite is a fantastic desktop OS!
| Easier to use than naked Fedora and virtually unbreakable.
| mcswell wrote:
| I switched to Linux from Win11 a few months ago, because of all
| the CoPilot junk. Not sure what the native vs. HTML UIs is all
| about, though. Are the HTML UIs slower, or is it a question of
| developers' time?
| petabyt wrote:
| I've spent the past 8 years going back and forth between Linux
| and Windows. When I switched back to Linux last year I was
| shocked how well steam/proton/wine worked compared to a few years
| prior. Valve is truly making incredible progress.
| kgwxd wrote:
| My only hold out until this year was my gaming PC. When Windows
| 10 became unsupported, so did Minecraft updates. I tried
| Windows 11 just enough to get MC installed, only to find out I
| must log into the Microsoft Store to get it to run at all. The
| launcher installed, the desired versions downloaded and
| installed, click play, Store login required. Bedrock and Java
| editions. Just because... why not, I guess?
|
| I decided as long as Rocket League (Steam) runs fine, I'll
| stick with Linux. It did, without any tweaking (other than
| telling it to use Proton because, technically, it has native
| Linux support, just not online play), and it used to require a
| ton of weird tweaking.
|
| Every game I cared about in my Steam library worked too, way
| more than when I tried in 2020, also without any tweaking. So
| did MC Java edition.
|
| The machine has a RTX 3080, which I almost didn't buy, because
| I've had issue with Nvidia on Linux in the past, but haven't
| had to do a single tweak this time.
| ku1ik wrote:
| Here's a copy of my Mastodon post [1] from Oct 2025:
|
| ---
|
| I had a job interview yesterday, which happened via Google Meet.
|
| Even though I use my desktop Linux workstation and Firefox 99% of
| the time for everything, my first instinct was to do this
| interview on a MacBook and Chrome, to avoid surprises and not
| look unprofessional if something doesn't work, which has happened
| in the past. Last year, when I was asked to share the screen
| during a daily, I had to say "um, I'm sorry, Zoom and desktop
| sharing don't work on my system."
|
| But I thought I'd first do a test on my workstation, just to see
| if maybe I shouldn't be concerned anymore. I was sceptical.
|
| The ideal scenario was that on my standard GNOME 48 / Wayland /
| PipeWire desktop I'd be able to use Firefox for this call, and
| AirPods, a Logitech webcam, and desktop sharing (5K ultrawide
| scaled at 125%) would just work with no tweaks whatsoever.
|
| And it did!
|
| I've been using Linux on the desktop for over 20 years (on and
| off, but mostly on) and I know how to hold my Linux systems, but
| the situation with Bluetooth audio and desktop sharing in
| previous years has been... spotty. I was less worried about
| AirPods -- I switched to PipeWire ~3 years ago and so I know
| Linux audio has been rock-solid and pretty much solved already.
| But desktop sharing used to be hit-or-miss, highly dependent on
| whether you used X11 or Wayland, further complicated by the use
| of Flatpaks.
|
| Since my test went well, I did the interview on the desktop
| machine. It went smoothly, with no surprises.
|
| Therefore, I announce 2025 as the Year of the Linux desktop :)
|
| [1] https://hachyderm.io/@ku1ik/115388713511052943
| kshanowski wrote:
| Glad linux works for many. Personally I've switched to windows 10
| ltsc on my work laptop. Main reason for it was the scaling issues
| with hidpi monitors that I connect/disconnect frequently. I think
| scaling is better on win and no issues with any blurry app or
| font or anything related. I also think its faster for my tasks,
| supports hibernation and has better power management. The other
| thing was that I'm a tinkerer and under linux I've lost countless
| hours with optimization and tweaking. I've always monitored and
| had to had everything under control. Windows takes it out of my
| head, so I could finally work. Still linux on my desktop tho.
| wannabe_loser wrote:
| I have been using arch for a while now everything is good except
| BIOS updates after which I need to reset & fix secure boot
| everytime
| abustamam wrote:
| I installed Ubuntu in October just to play around with AI models
| (python and CLI in general was so hard to deal with in Windows)
| and I realized that I didn't ever need to boot back into windows,
| not for gaming, not for anything. It was really relieving.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Wishlist: - No sudo, or at least no conflict
| between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need
| sudo to do routine things" - Executable compatibility
| across distro versions and distros - No CLI required to
| install software - Lag-free pen experience - Good
| touch support - Less fragile. I shouldn't have to worry
| about the PC booting up into a no-GUI terminal after I installed
| something, or edited a file. (See point 1; don't make me edit
| system files to do routine stuff like communicate with a USB
| device without sudo, if they can break the system) - Focus
| on speed, and clawing back the performance losses that have been
| accumulating in all OSs over the years - Let me open an
| application by double-clicking it
|
| I would love to ditch Windows and its corporate BS, but the UX is
| IMO not there yet. I am running a Ubuntu 24 Laptop for work and
| it's generally fine as I run only a small set of software, but
| historically things get messy when I install a broader range of
| software or use non-typical hardware. So, not better than Win yet
| for my personal uses
|
| Bonus: Something like PowerToys. I recognize this diverges from
| core OS functionality.
| amenod wrote:
| It's not that I don't have my own set of gripes about linux,
| but this wishlist is weird, at least to me:
|
| - There is nothing wrong with sudo - or to be precise, it is
| _good thing_ that administrative operations are explicit. And
| sudo is still less annoying than Windows "admin prompt"
| anyway.
|
| - Why do you care? Use apt install, yum install or apk add,
| whatever your distro supports.
|
| - It is not required, there are GUI managers, but again - why?
|
| - Got me there. I don't use pen.
|
| - Used touch on ThinkPad some years ago, it just worked, maybe
| depends on the laptop?
|
| - Until 15 years ago this was true, but I haven't seen this
| happen since then. Debian here if it matters.
|
| - I'm typing this on a 15 years old desktop (with NVME,
| admittedly) and it boots and feels faster than a new MacBook
| Pro I am testing. Linux accumulated much less, if any,
| performance losses. I agree that Windows and Mac both became
| bloated.
|
| - I think doubleclick is the default way, at least in xfce? Or
| I might be missing what you mean. That said, I use keyboard
| shortcuts mostly as I try to avoid mouse for this.
|
| With all that said, of course it will not look and feel the
| same as Windows. It is a different OS, with different
| priorities. I like it better than both Windows and MacOS, but
| maybe it's because I found the combination that fits me (Debian
| + XFCE). Maybe take a look at KDE and XFCE?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I think I can summarize this: In life and devices, I often
| find processes I find are high-friction, or have room for
| user interface or other improvements. There is a guarantee
| that there will be people who will tell me these concerns are
| invalid.
|
| In the case of Linux usability desires, I will make the
| cautious conclusion that there is a group of people who
| consider Linux part of their identity, and any desire for
| improvement or shortcoming is mentally a personal challenge.
| I am just a human using computers as a tool, and don't have a
| desire to play politics on this subject.
|
| I think the "it's fine" / "works for me" / "Actually this is
| a good thing" / "Why don't you just" replies like this are an
| obstacle to improvement, but is often overcome.
| rsync wrote:
| "In life and devices, I often find processes I find are
| high-friction, or have room for user interface or other
| improvements ..."
|
| Agreed - and I find the same thing.
|
| Distilling these processes to terminal commands has the
| highest potential for usability and efficiency gains.
| rsync wrote:
| "No CLI required to install software"
|
| This seems very odd ... a quick one-liner install process is
| _by far_ the simplest and most efficient way to install a piece
| of software ...
|
| What other fragility and unnecessary complexity comes along
| with graphical installation tools ?
|
| Is this a pain point for non-technical users you might prepare
| this system for ? Who do you have in mind when you specify this
| ?
| theragra wrote:
| It is not simpler, if you don't know the exact magic line
| that does it for the specific application. GUI tools allow
| for easy and convenient search.
| megous wrote:
| Easy and convenient is highly subjective and context
| dependent. Thankfully GUI tools exist for people who find
| that convenient.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Perhaps this exercise will help. You are new to a given piece
| of software. A: There is a UI with 2 buttons.
| How many degrees of freedom is that? B: There is a text
| prompt, which accepts any number of unicode characters. How
| many degrees is that?
| vlod wrote:
| With the new PopOS Cosmic and them dumping GNOME for their own UI
| framework based on Iced [0] (and based on rust), I have high
| hopes that things will move to more linux (especially for folks
| here who are rust-heads).
|
| [0]: https://iced.rs/
| ihaveone wrote:
| I already switched to Cachyos. It's Arch based with really good
| defaults.
| woile wrote:
| Last year I got a laptop with Linux, after a Mac gap of 6 years
| (work) and it's been super smooth with NixOS and KDE.
|
| My main issue now was the 16GB of RAM using a VM and working on
| rust, which would kill the system, but now I have more, so all
| the issues are gone.
|
| One of the machines has become a media-center, with a remote
| keyboard, anyone at home can operate now.
|
| Multiple screens, bluetooth, drag and drop, night/light all seems
| to be working
| mindcrash wrote:
| I've just finished the base install of Gentoo on my brand new
| Framework 16 and I still wonder why I didn't make the move
| sooner.
|
| Hardware: HX370, 128G RAM, Radeon 860M iGPU, Radeon RX7700S dGPU,
| Xbox Wireless Cntroller, 2T + 8T SSD storage
|
| Software (as of today, still making additions and refinements):
| Gentoo/OpenRC (I don't like systemd), Kernel 6.12.58 with
| additional module for the Xbox controller, Pipewire+EasyEffects
| 8, KDE Plasma 6.5.4/Wayland, Steam
|
| Experience: KDE runs pretty stable, and only has the things I
| really need (and not the things a vendor thinks I need).
|
| The first game I benchmarked today was Doom (2016), which runs
| smoothly on 90-120 fps on high settings.
|
| The second game I benchmarked today was Indiana Jones and the
| Great Circle (2024) running on ~56fps on recommended settings on
| the 7700.
|
| The one game I tried today and could not get to run properly was
| Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl. I suspect that, given the many
| positives on ProtonDB, that's mainly either a configuration or
| Proton issue. I'll do some more research and give it another try
| in the near future. Right now performance drops to 5 fps
| immediately after starting a new game, and the CPU running on
| 600Mhz maximum when starting the game on Proton Experimental.
|
| For now I am quite happy with the results, and the fact that I
| likely finally am able to eject Windows out of my life.
| lkglglgllm wrote:
| Heavily invested in Microsoft tech, but not using windows. At
| all. Couldn't be happier.
|
| Due to word being too buggy, I switched to libre office in
| windows. Local outlook was also too buggy in windows, I ended up
| running the web version. Switched to vscode b/c VS was to buggy
| and slow.
|
| Teams works better in macos. Web version of teams is ok in Linux,
| you don't want to run the native app in windows, it's a resource
| hog written as a web app anyway.
|
| Dotnet and powershell (pwsh) actually works better in both macos
| and in Linux, than in windows. Not a little better, but much
| better, that ecosystem is very stable and reliable.
|
| And azure has of course no dependency on any local windows, on
| the contrary, dealing with remote systems are easier in Linux,
| particular if you accessing remote Linux systems as well.
|
| Then I realized there was no reason to run windows. At all. It
| will only drag you down when it comes to productivity, it's an
| awful os, filled with malware and other shit.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Been playing with linux for 20y or so. Used it to program,
| mostly. Now after 15 days only of having Claude Code I'm flipping
| my setup to delete windows and have ubuntu as my main. I've never
| been so happy using a computer in my entire life: in this short
| time I already have dozens of customizations, custom scripts,
| opensource stuff personal custom forks, etc. Not to mention the
| fixes, oh so many fixes that could have taken DAYS of work from
| me and got solved by cc in minutes.
|
| I even tried vibecoding my own custom text editor to use for todo
| and notes management, but that didn't go quite well lmao. (if
| anyone curious about my journey: after that I vibe-coded a
| Sublime Text 4 plugin that kinda worked, then I discovered
| Dynalist and it's more structured experience was a big hit. When
| I found out with Dynalist I didn't own my data, I tried other
| outliners (liked none), then I spent a couple of days trying to
| sort out some sort of scheme to use Obsidian similarly to
| Dynalist, didn't look too promising and also Obsidian is not open
| source, so now I'm finally trying Emacs (spacemacs) for the first
| time in my life for org-mode. Wish me luck!)
| QuiEgo wrote:
| I've reached the point where I just use a Mac for most computer
| stuff and a console for gaming. Maybe one day I'll set up a Linux
| gaming box but after spending all day at work trying to wrangle
| Linux boxes, that sounds a bit too much like my job to be
| relaxing.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Wait didn't xeiaso use NixOS?
|
| https://xeiaso.net/talks/asg-2023-nixos/
| xena wrote:
| Did, past tense. I'm no longer using it.
| bibimsz wrote:
| cachyos has been rock solid for me, including gaming. nvidia 40xx
| series, HDR OLED monitor
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