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Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands--a central planning authority. I'm reminde

by cletus 11y ago

Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands--a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as Windows with a better underlying OS or Unix with a decent UI. Either way it's a win. [1]: https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/

zxcvcxz 11y ago
Linux on the Desktop works stunningly for me. Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again. Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked. To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  > As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Since he's a Mac user, that's not necessarily a good bet. Safari wins out handily in battery life, and Firefox's UI text rendering (tabs/URL/bookmarks) is comparatively atrocious. Chrome benefits from its cross-platform bookmark sync, but the snappier interface, extra hour of battery, and the fact that it comes preinstalled all make Safari a pretty popular choice on OS X. EDIT: Though I suppose Safari is a sorta-open-source project in the same way that Chrome is. Mostly it's the same as WebKit, but not entirely. Does Apple get much in the way of community contributions, or is it a "we have to publish the source, but we're not going to take your input" arrangement like Android?
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  In terms of UI speed, stability and conscientious use of memory without leaks, Opera 12 on Windows is still unbeaten.
- outworlder 11y ago
  > Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": The operating system is fine. Complaining about a bunch of built-in applications gets us nowhere. I'd rather complain about the fact that the default filesystem is case insensitive, for instance.
  - ake1 11y ago
    > I'd rather complain about the fact that the default filesystem is case insensitive, for instance. i see that as a positive thing.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, Fairly low chance of this. She could be using Safari (closed source), Chrome (closed source) and in third place Firefox. NB if a binary with additional closed source blobs its not really open source anymore according to the standard definitions of open source.
antocv 11y ago
KDE is the best UI there exists and has been since about 10 years already.
dhimes 11y ago
I have to disagree about the linux desktop. I wish it was better, but for the first time in 10 years I started using microsoft (8.1) again on one of my computers. It has the same problems linux does: drivers, wifi connections. And when I try to close down to go somewhere, I occasionally get some kind of warning that I can't shut down or unplug because it's doing an update. Very aggravating (I'm getting a little wiser about it, but still I would like to be the one who decides when to update). The problem, and the reason I wanted to give it a try, is software. Things like gotomeeting and such simple work there and are difficult to get working on linux. It cost me a (remote) developer, so I decided that my travel/home rig would be win 8.1 with linux in a VM. So far it's quite convenient, but I don't use much on the windows side. I think with more adoption we could fix the software issues.
progman 11y ago
> Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. This claim is usually made by Windows users who don't want to invest any effort and time to learn another desktop -- which they had to do in Win8 anyway. Linux offers several nice desktops (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, E17, etc.) which we can freely choose from. I am a Linux user since the 90's and I have always used it as my primary desktop. It works perfectly well for me. I consider the new Windows metro "desktop" more horrible than even simple Linux desktops. Freedom has a price. Education has a price. Both require the sincere willingness to do something for it.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  One of my gripes with Linux is that software all tends to feel like it was designed to look nice on the developer's particular flavor of window manager. The system as whole comes across as an inconsistent pile of different UIs. OS X has benefited a lot from interfaces all being put together in Xcode with elements snapping to the HIG standardized margins. And when something doesn't match (looking at you, cross platform Java apps), the users notice. Maybe the average Linux user is OK with this, but I can't help but be bugged by it. Cost of having so many options, I suppose. Elementary does better than most, but only by including a set of software designed explicitly to fit there.
  - mnw21cam 11y ago
    I would point out that Windows programs written for different versions of the OS will appear different when running on the same machine. For instance, in my Windows 7 VM, LibreOffice has a white X on a red button to close the window, while Word has a black X on a grey background.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      Hm, I haven't seen different versions of the close glyph, but I believe it. There are about 10 variations on contextual menus depending on what you're right clicking. I don't love that about Windows either. As far as the general look and feel though, it still manages to feel more consistent. There are enough conventions like "clickable things have a hover effect" and relatively consistent styling of UI icons (pre-10 anyway) for it to feel like it's all one system.
weland 11y ago
I have no love for the direction in which Linux desktop seems to be heading today, but engineering concerns aside, it's been working fine for a long time.
- danieldk 11y ago
  No, it's not. Besides driver problems, missing support for newer OpenGL standards, fragmentation of desktop environments and a dozen of other problems, it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input): http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security-circus-on-gui-isolation.html http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security...
  - weland 11y ago
    > Besides driver problems As long as you stay away from perpetually-beta distributions that I shall not name, driver problems are really a non-issue. I haven't had a malfunctioning peripheral under Linux in a very long time now (years?). Driver problems are on-par with what you see on Windows :-). > missing support for newer OpenGL standards This has been a common complaint about OS X for a long time, and no one thought desktop on it didn't work. > fragmentation of desktop environments As long as the desktop respects ICCCM (hint: they all tend to do) and you don't write your application using some obscure, non-ICCCM compliant toolkit, this tends to be a non-issue. > it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input): This is true. However, the expectation is that you'll usually run open source software from trusted sources (and you can run untrusted applications in an Xnest session). Methods aside, it's just as easy for a malicious user to keylog you on Windows or OS X, the Linux keylogger is just more trivial to write.
    - makomk 11y ago
      I don't think it's even true that keyloggers are any harder to write on say Windows. The only thing they can't trivially get hold of is your password for the machine itself. (Of course, if you write a naive keylogger you're going to get caught by any AV software worth its salt.)
fla 11y ago
I've been working 4 years on Ubuntu Linux now and I'm very happy about it. My life is much easier and I don't loose time fighting with my system. I have a Win7 partition that I boot now and then when I must use software that can't be virtualized well enough. In 4 years I've never lost work and I had only two crashes after messing with my GPU settings. If only the biggest proprietary software we available on linux (Looking at you Adobe), I would never go back.
- pjc50 11y ago
  How is Steam on Linux (+Wine) these days?
  - timboslice 11y ago
    Pretty good. It usually comes down to the drivers available. AMD is doing good things with open source drivers, while Nvidia usually lags behind.
  - dottrap 11y ago
    SteamOS officially launches in November. It's starting to get pretty good. Don't know about Wine.
    - vlunkr 11y ago
      Do you have a source on that? That's pretty exciting news.
      - dottrap 11y ago
        Here's a review from the other day. http://boilingsteam.com/one-week-with-brewmaster-steamos/ http://boilingsteam.com/one-week-with-brewmaster-steamos/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105200)
  - rkrzr 11y ago
    Steam works great for me. There is no discernible difference to the Windows version. There are 1400+ games available now for Linux, including some (older) AAA games like Bioshock Infinite. Just make sure to buy a Nvidia graphics card (and use their proprietary driver). The (proprietary) AMD drivers work, but their performance is much worse than on Windows.
chriswarbo 11y ago
> Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. I disagree. MS-DOS "works fine", and had many users. I would say that on average, UIs on Linux (both commandline and GUI) are better than those on MS-DOS, hence Linux UIs also work fine. I wouldn't claim that the average Linux UI is great, or follows any HCI guidelines, or whatever. What I would claim is that it doesn't matter; all that matters is that it's possible to get the job done. Just like it was possible to get the job done on MS-DOS. Regarding the XKCD reference, I think that's covered in the parent's statement "if you come over, then all the desktop software makers will port their software to Linux". Those kinds of distinctions make it all too easy to move the goalposts; eg. "Linux is useless because it doesn't run MyProprietaryApp(TM)".
sandGorgon 11y ago
Please do try Fedora 22 with Gnome. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
jqm 11y ago
"Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible." Strongly disagree. I have no trouble getting around in KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE or i3. They are all just fine.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  <rant sorry="yes"> Somewhat disagree. I use GNU/Linux-based OSes as my primary systems (because alternatives are less usable for my purposes), and I perceive them all being an ugly mess of barely cooperating pieces of software with piles of hacks to force those to work together. Seriously, I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count different UI toolkits (every other one having its own font rendering, duh), service/daemon management subsystems, audio subsystems and VFS implementations, each having incompatible API and behaving differently. Every other program has its own standards - what would happen upon just clicking a link heavily depends on where you do this. Most software "somewhat works", not "works just fine". Besides, maybe, the very core GNU userland, which is, indeed, rock solid and quite consistent. I'm unaware of alternatives, though. Fear, there aren't any. </rant>
ewzimm 11y ago
You're talking about a subjective experience as if it's something that can be objectively measured. I find it the other way around. I've used Macs since the 80's, but lately I hardly touch them, in part because I think the desktop experience is so much worse than GNOME, KDE, Unity, or even XFCE. GNOME 3 in perticular is the best arranged desktop in my opinion because the way it separates the desktop and application launcher/switcher/search into two distinct modes and makes context switching so easy with just a key press, a click, or a hot corner. Everything is always in the same place and easy to access with little cognitive overhead. Whereas using the Mac application bar is really messy, trying to follow flyout menus that go off at odd angles, etc., and that's far from the only reason I dislike the UI. GNOME follows the way my mind works. I'm either using the applications I want or switching between them, and unifying everything in these categories makes so much sense, I'm surprised everyone doesn't follow the model. That's entirely my opinion, and I tend to be biased and think the only reason people complain about the desktop experience is because it's not whatever they're used to, but the only thing I know for sure is that there's no one way to arrange a desktop that appeals to everyone.

by cletus 11y ago

zxcvcxz 11y ago

Linux on the Desktop works stunningly for me. Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10010395 As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Windows has nothing to show for the billions of dollars put into it. Every installation of windows I've ever had was a piece of crap that got bugged out after a months use. It would be snappy at first and then it would start taking five minutes to boot, then when it did boot the whole OS would choke as soon as I opened the start menu. Then you have to give it a "cool down period" before you open any programs or it'll choke again. Linux doesn't have this problem. It's a myth that Windows "just works" or that os x "just works". You have just as many buggy drivers and weird issues on those operating systems as you do Linux. For me, Linux with GNOME is just the easiest to use, most stable, prettiest, OS out there. I didn't have to use the command line or configure any text files. It just worked. To install windows 10 I actually needed to use command line instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3081048

wlesieutre 11y ago
> As far as OSS interfaces go, I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, seeing as the closed source alternatives don't compare. Since he's a Mac user, that's not necessarily a good bet. Safari wins out handily in battery life, and Firefox's UI text rendering (tabs/URL/bookmarks) is comparatively atrocious. Chrome benefits from its cross-platform bookmark sync, but the snappier interface, extra hour of battery, and the fact that it comes preinstalled all make Safari a pretty popular choice on OS X. EDIT: Though I suppose Safari is a sorta-open-source project in the same way that Chrome is. Mostly it's the same as WebKit, but not entirely. Does Apple get much in the way of community contributions, or is it a "we have to publish the source, but we're not going to take your input" arrangement like Android?
Mithaldu 11y ago
In terms of UI speed, stability and conscientious use of memory without leaks, Opera 12 on Windows is still unbeaten.
outworlder 11y ago
> Seeing as you're an OS X fan I'm going to link you to this HN thread so we can go ahead and stop pretending that trash OS "just works": The operating system is fine. Complaining about a bunch of built-in applications gets us nowhere. I'd rather complain about the fact that the default filesystem is case insensitive, for instance.
- ake1 11y ago
  > I'd rather complain about the fact that the default filesystem is case insensitive, for instance. i see that as a positive thing.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
> I wouldn't be surprised if you're using an open source browser right now, Fairly low chance of this. She could be using Safari (closed source), Chrome (closed source) and in third place Firefox. NB if a binary with additional closed source blobs its not really open source anymore according to the standard definitions of open source.

antocv 11y ago

KDE is the best UI there exists and has been since about 10 years already.

dhimes 11y ago

I have to disagree about the linux desktop. I wish it was better, but for the first time in 10 years I started using microsoft (8.1) again on one of my computers. It has the same problems linux does: drivers, wifi connections. And when I try to close down to go somewhere, I occasionally get some kind of warning that I can't shut down or unplug because it's doing an update. Very aggravating (I'm getting a little wiser about it, but still I would like to be the one who decides when to update). The problem, and the reason I wanted to give it a try, is software. Things like gotomeeting and such simple work there and are difficult to get working on linux. It cost me a (remote) developer, so I decided that my travel/home rig would be win 8.1 with linux in a VM. So far it's quite convenient, but I don't use much on the windows side. I think with more adoption we could fix the software issues.

progman 11y ago

> Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. This claim is usually made by Windows users who don't want to invest any effort and time to learn another desktop -- which they had to do in Win8 anyway. Linux offers several nice desktops (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, E17, etc.) which we can freely choose from. I am a Linux user since the 90's and I have always used it as my primary desktop. It works perfectly well for me. I consider the new Windows metro "desktop" more horrible than even simple Linux desktops. Freedom has a price. Education has a price. Both require the sincere willingness to do something for it.

wlesieutre 11y ago
One of my gripes with Linux is that software all tends to feel like it was designed to look nice on the developer's particular flavor of window manager. The system as whole comes across as an inconsistent pile of different UIs. OS X has benefited a lot from interfaces all being put together in Xcode with elements snapping to the HIG standardized margins. And when something doesn't match (looking at you, cross platform Java apps), the users notice. Maybe the average Linux user is OK with this, but I can't help but be bugged by it. Cost of having so many options, I suppose. Elementary does better than most, but only by including a set of software designed explicitly to fit there.
- mnw21cam 11y ago
  I would point out that Windows programs written for different versions of the OS will appear different when running on the same machine. For instance, in my Windows 7 VM, LibreOffice has a white X on a red button to close the window, while Word has a black X on a grey background.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Hm, I haven't seen different versions of the close glyph, but I believe it. There are about 10 variations on contextual menus depending on what you're right clicking. I don't love that about Windows either. As far as the general look and feel though, it still manages to feel more consistent. There are enough conventions like "clickable things have a hover effect" and relatively consistent styling of UI icons (pre-10 anyway) for it to feel like it's all one system.

weland 11y ago

I have no love for the direction in which Linux desktop seems to be heading today, but engineering concerns aside, it's been working fine for a long time.

danieldk 11y ago
No, it's not. Besides driver problems, missing support for newer OpenGL standards, fragmentation of desktop environments and a dozen of other problems, it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input): http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security-circus-on-gui-isolation.html http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security...
- weland 11y ago
  > Besides driver problems As long as you stay away from perpetually-beta distributions that I shall not name, driver problems are really a non-issue. I haven't had a malfunctioning peripheral under Linux in a very long time now (years?). Driver problems are on-par with what you see on Windows :-). > missing support for newer OpenGL standards This has been a common complaint about OS X for a long time, and no one thought desktop on it didn't work. > fragmentation of desktop environments As long as the desktop respects ICCCM (hint: they all tend to do) and you don't write your application using some obscure, non-ICCCM compliant toolkit, this tends to be a non-issue. > it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input): This is true. However, the expectation is that you'll usually run open source software from trusted sources (and you can run untrusted applications in an Xnest session). Methods aside, it's just as easy for a malicious user to keylog you on Windows or OS X, the Linux keylogger is just more trivial to write.
  - makomk 11y ago
    I don't think it's even true that keyloggers are any harder to write on say Windows. The only thing they can't trivially get hold of is your password for the machine itself. (Of course, if you write a naive keylogger you're going to get caught by any AV software worth its salt.)

fla 11y ago

I've been working 4 years on Ubuntu Linux now and I'm very happy about it. My life is much easier and I don't loose time fighting with my system. I have a Win7 partition that I boot now and then when I must use software that can't be virtualized well enough. In 4 years I've never lost work and I had only two crashes after messing with my GPU settings. If only the biggest proprietary software we available on linux (Looking at you Adobe), I would never go back.

pjc50 11y ago
How is Steam on Linux (+Wine) these days?
- timboslice 11y ago
  Pretty good. It usually comes down to the drivers available. AMD is doing good things with open source drivers, while Nvidia usually lags behind.
- dottrap 11y ago
  SteamOS officially launches in November. It's starting to get pretty good. Don't know about Wine.
  - vlunkr 11y ago
    Do you have a source on that? That's pretty exciting news.
    - dottrap 11y ago
      Here's a review from the other day. http://boilingsteam.com/one-week-with-brewmaster-steamos/ http://boilingsteam.com/one-week-with-brewmaster-steamos/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105200)
- rkrzr 11y ago
  Steam works great for me. There is no discernible difference to the Windows version. There are 1400+ games available now for Linux, including some (older) AAA games like Bioshock Infinite. Just make sure to buy a Nvidia graphics card (and use their proprietary driver). The (proprietary) AMD drivers work, but their performance is much worse than on Windows.

chriswarbo 11y ago

> Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. I disagree. MS-DOS "works fine", and had many users. I would say that on average, UIs on Linux (both commandline and GUI) are better than those on MS-DOS, hence Linux UIs also work fine. I wouldn't claim that the average Linux UI is great, or follows any HCI guidelines, or whatever. What I would claim is that it doesn't matter; all that matters is that it's possible to get the job done. Just like it was possible to get the job done on MS-DOS. Regarding the XKCD reference, I think that's covered in the parent's statement "if you come over, then all the desktop software makers will port their software to Linux". Those kinds of distinctions make it all too easy to move the goalposts; eg. "Linux is useless because it doesn't run MyProprietaryApp(TM)".

sandGorgon 11y ago

Please do try Fedora 22 with Gnome. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

jqm 11y ago

"Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible." Strongly disagree. I have no trouble getting around in KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, XFCE or i3. They are all just fine.

drdaeman 11y ago
<rant sorry="yes"> Somewhat disagree. I use GNU/Linux-based OSes as my primary systems (because alternatives are less usable for my purposes), and I perceive them all being an ugly mess of barely cooperating pieces of software with piles of hacks to force those to work together. Seriously, I don't have enough fingers on my hands to count different UI toolkits (every other one having its own font rendering, duh), service/daemon management subsystems, audio subsystems and VFS implementations, each having incompatible API and behaving differently. Every other program has its own standards - what would happen upon just clicking a link heavily depends on where you do this. Most software "somewhat works", not "works just fine". Besides, maybe, the very core GNU userland, which is, indeed, rock solid and quite consistent. I'm unaware of alternatives, though. Fear, there aren't any. </rant>

ewzimm 11y ago

You're talking about a subjective experience as if it's something that can be objectively measured. I find it the other way around. I've used Macs since the 80's, but lately I hardly touch them, in part because I think the desktop experience is so much worse than GNOME, KDE, Unity, or even XFCE. GNOME 3 in perticular is the best arranged desktop in my opinion because the way it separates the desktop and application launcher/switcher/search into two distinct modes and makes context switching so easy with just a key press, a click, or a hot corner. Everything is always in the same place and easy to access with little cognitive overhead. Whereas using the Mac application bar is really messy, trying to follow flyout menus that go off at odd angles, etc., and that's far from the only reason I dislike the UI. GNOME follows the way my mind works. I'm either using the applications I want or switching between them, and unifying everything in these categories makes so much sense, I'm surprised everyone doesn't follow the model. That's entirely my opinion, and I tend to be biased and think the only reason people complain about the desktop experience is because it's not whatever they're used to, but the only thing I know for sure is that there's no one way to arrange a desktop that appeals to everyone.