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Oh you'll find new entries for the list. Linux on the desktop is nowhere near macOS. I'm saying this as a huge fan of Linux on the server, who frequently tries

Oh you'll find new entries for the list. Linux on the desktop is nowhere near macOS. I'm saying this as a huge fan of Linux on the server, who frequently tries it on desktops. There is no Linux desktop experience that is consistent, or coherent. You'll frequently want to use software that happens to be made for the other window manager, and suddenly you have different keyboard layouts depending on the window that's active. Toolbars are sometimes on top, sometimes in the window. Sleep absolutely definitely will never work, unless you muck around in the kernel for a bit. Then it works but your wifi cuts off when you're playing music. Most of design is either created by people who want to punish you for leaving the command line, or these people who put blinking, nascar-style ornaments into their water-cooled, wall-mounted, intel-inside-stickered towers. Oh, and battery life on Skylake is about half of what a Macbook gets.

sharms 10y ago
I think this is a touch dramatic - the Linux desktop is free, open and there are really great projects out there which don't recommend the command line (see elementary: https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/) Is it as refined as MacOS? No. Does it have the same polished application selection? No. Does it need both of those to be useful? Up to you, and you can help mold it and become part of the community
- tychuz 10y ago
  >Up to you, and you can help mold it and become part of the community This is a problem. I want a desktop, not a job with "feeling good" salary.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    > This is a problem. I want a desktop, not a job with "feeling good" salary. That's why I said you can do it, the days when you had to do it are long gone. Seriously, I think two of the biggest problems facing desktop Linux are: - people having outdated experiences - equating Ubuntu, (not that great), with Linux and thinking that Ubuntu problems are Linux problems.
    - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
      Can you recommend a better Linux experience for someone who wants to be able to turn their programmer-brain off when trying to watch Netflix? That's not a challenge -- if there's a better distro for civilian use than Ubuntu, I'd love to give it a shot.
      - AsyncAwait 10y ago
        If you want the absolute easiest to deal with experience, try https://elementary.io https://elementary.io or https://solus-project.com https://solus-project.com or https://linuxmint.com https://linuxmint.com - if you want relatively easy with the latest packages, go with https://antergos.com https://antergos.com
Diederich 10y ago
I've been exclusively Linux as my desktop and laptop, personally and professionally, since the 1990s, and I manage Linux on laptops and desktops of some family members. I am very much of a 'back-end', 'server' kind of guy. My desktop has dozens of 80x24 terminals and a big web browser window, typically running under http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/ http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/ So, I can't directly disagree with most of what you said on point, except for sleep/hibernate/suspend. Especially in the last decade, it often works without any low-level tweaking, and I can get it going in MOST cases without too much fuss. In the last 10+ years, my wifi experience on Linux has been very solid, often more solid than my OSX-using co-workers. But this is all anecdata. Though Ubuntu (and to a much lesser extent, some others) have come light-years toward producing a consistent, coherent Linux desktop experience, it still lags painfully behind OSX and Windows. With all of these disadvantages, though, the 'all the way down' reliability and no-bullshit you get from a Linux desktop (or server) is worth its weight in gold. It's just that the entry fee is still too high.
- bertiewhykovich 10y ago
  I dunno, man -- I feel like constant user-experience problems, bizarre hardware issues, and endless configuration tweaking is both unreliable and bullshit. I often contemplate switching to a Linux system, even if just for a change of pace, but I can't justify giving up a platform that allows me to get the vast majority of what I need to do done without waging war against some other programmer's neuroses.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    It's really about what you're used to using. I tend to have more problems when I'm using macOS than Linux.
    - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
      That's very fair. Most of my non-work computing tends to follow typical consumer trends, and most of my work computing isn't meaningfully compromised by running macOS over Linux (now that VMs are usable, at least) -- but I can imagine that if I depended on applications that don't have clear macOS equivalents that Linux would seem far more "reliable and no-bullshit" to me. That beings said, the vast majority of consumers, and I suspect the vast majority of developers, do not rely on such applications (or their equivalent w/r/t Windows).
amluto 10y ago
> Oh, and battery life on Skylake is about half of what a Macbook gets. Try updating your firmware. My Skylake laptop gets 10 hours or so. If a Macbook got 20, I'd be quite impressed. :)
- cmurf 10y ago
  Yeah I'm on an HP Spectre 13, just released, and with Fedora 25 (prerelease!) and kernel 4.7.7 and 4.8.1, I'm getting 6 hours of active work, and 9-10 when mostly idle.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
I'm not sure when was the last time you used a modern Linux desktop environment, but I'd say that there are a few that are pretty polished right now. Pantheon and Gnome spring to mind. This is especially true when you install a nice GTK theme.
trollian 10y ago
I have both mac and Linux laptops and find Linux generally more stable and reliable.
- tychuz 10y ago
  When video drivers crash - do all GUI applications still crash with the display server? I've toyed with Arch during Windows 7 times - after hearing how linux is more stable than windoze/windblowz - and then nVidia drivers crashed, X server crashed, aaand upon starting X - all GUI applications were closed. Are. You. Friggin. Kidding me? People were talking about stability when such things happened? Linux stability compared to Windows 7 - zero. At that time. Has it changed?
  - jguegant 10y ago
    Yes
  - eikenberry 10y ago
    You might also want to think about using a distribution that emphasizes stability more. Arch is a great distro for people who want a bleeding edge, but it's strength is not stability. Debian is probably the most stable, Ubuntu LTS releases are decent as well.
    - tychuz 10y ago
      Nor Ubuntu, nor Debian produce nVidia drivers.
      - AsyncAwait 10y ago
        What do you mean? You can definitely install them on both.
        tychuz 10y ago
        I mean that nVidia drivers will be nVidia drivers made by nVidia - same ones on Debian, Ubuntu or Arch.
aidenn0 10y ago
I switched to linux for my laptop this year and encountered surprisingly few problems. The distribution defaulted the KDE plasma and I certainly don't feel punished for leaving the command line. [edit] The only issue so far is that when I unplug an external display, it sometimes fails to shrink my desktop accordingly. I've seen issues of a similar level of annoyance on macs as well. [edit2] There are the other standard linux things (every piece of software is configured differently &c.) but as we are talking about someone who uses linux on the server already, I didn't consider that apropos.
cygned 10y ago
Couldn't agree more. I have been using Ubuntu from the beginning till 2013 exclusively watching the system becoming more and more mature but I was constantly tackling small problems. Suddenly the external projector won't work via HDMI anymore, then there's a codec for an audio file broken, and updated crashes apt and you spend hours trying to fix things. Since Windows is not an option for me, I switched to a Mac.
- noobermin 10y ago
  I am very upset that Ubuntu is supposed vanguard of Linux. My experience with Ubuntu has largely been negative. You have random crashes of daemons and apps that I do not see on my gentoo system...the same exact processes! I don't recommend gentoo for everyone although it really isn't that bad--if you can develop a web app, I'm sure you're definitely capable enough to use a supposedly "advanced" distro like arch or gentoo, but Ubuntu isn't that sterling of a system in my experience especially when you need something beyond the defaults.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    Cannot agree more with this, I've been using Arch for close to 4 years and it's been much more stable (!) Arch is rolling release (!) than Ubuntu has ever been. I also enjoy pacman a lot more than apt. Hate that Ubuntu == Linux for many people.
josteink 10y ago
> Oh you'll find new entries for the list. Agreed in a sense. All OSes have their issues. They're just different issues. > Linux on the desktop is nowhere near macOS. And that's because it's a different OS. It's not trying to be MacOS. And I'm glad it isn't. Because if I wanted MacOS I'd run that, don't you think? > Sleep absolutely definitely will never work, unless you muck around in the kernel for a bit. Then it works but your wifi cuts off when you're playing music. I've yet to experience any issues like this on any of my hardware, but I've been shopping around from Linux-friendly OEMs like Dell XPS laptops and Lenovo ThinkPads. So maybe that's just you being unlucky about your hardware? Hard to tell over an internet comment. But let's be real here: Linux as a general purpose desktop OS mostly works on pretty much any hardware you throw at it. OSX works on maybe 3 models made by 1 vendor. Trying to arrest Linux for poor hardware-support in this scenario is a pretty weak hand to play, honestly. Because out of the three big OSes, MacOS is clearly the general purpose operating system with the weakest hardware support of them all. Its hardware support is piss poor.
noobermin 10y ago
>Sleep absolutely definitely will never work, unless you muck around in the kernel for a bit. Then it works but your wifi cuts off when you're playing music. Straight up FUD. This isn't the experience at all. Linux had these issues in the mid 2000s, that hasn't been my experience in years. I agree with the "inconsistency" but I see the same "inconsistency" when I open matplotlib windows (wxgtk I suppose) and they look different, only closing the window fails randomly on OS X and leaves Python interpreter running while I've yet to experience that on Linux. Then, I'd try to kill the non-responding app, and kill works on Linux, but on macOS, it is inconsistent. And that wasn't ten years ago, that was may be two or three days ago.
- nikanj 10y ago
  Anecdotes are not data, but if this is no longer true, then I must somehow still be living in the mid-2000s.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    I mean I can't speak for you as I can only speak for my experience and experience of people I know. You didn't ask for advice, but if I had any, it would be to avoid Ubuntu. Most of the poorly functioning and randomly crashing processes I've seen on Linux was on Ubuntu machines.
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      So what distro is supposed to be the one that 'just works' now? It's really a shame how Ubuntu has degraded, in the 10.4 days I found it worked very well out of the box.

sharms 10y ago

I think this is a touch dramatic - the Linux desktop is free, open and there are really great projects out there which don't recommend the command line (see elementary: https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/) Is it as refined as MacOS? No. Does it have the same polished application selection? No. Does it need both of those to be useful? Up to you, and you can help mold it and become part of the community

tychuz 10y ago
>Up to you, and you can help mold it and become part of the community This is a problem. I want a desktop, not a job with "feeling good" salary.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > This is a problem. I want a desktop, not a job with "feeling good" salary. That's why I said you can do it, the days when you had to do it are long gone. Seriously, I think two of the biggest problems facing desktop Linux are: - people having outdated experiences - equating Ubuntu, (not that great), with Linux and thinking that Ubuntu problems are Linux problems.
  - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    Can you recommend a better Linux experience for someone who wants to be able to turn their programmer-brain off when trying to watch Netflix? That's not a challenge -- if there's a better distro for civilian use than Ubuntu, I'd love to give it a shot.
    - AsyncAwait 10y ago
      If you want the absolute easiest to deal with experience, try https://elementary.io https://elementary.io or https://solus-project.com https://solus-project.com or https://linuxmint.com https://linuxmint.com - if you want relatively easy with the latest packages, go with https://antergos.com https://antergos.com

Diederich 10y ago

I've been exclusively Linux as my desktop and laptop, personally and professionally, since the 1990s, and I manage Linux on laptops and desktops of some family members. I am very much of a 'back-end', 'server' kind of guy. My desktop has dozens of 80x24 terminals and a big web browser window, typically running under http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/ http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/ So, I can't directly disagree with most of what you said on point, except for sleep/hibernate/suspend. Especially in the last decade, it often works without any low-level tweaking, and I can get it going in MOST cases without too much fuss. In the last 10+ years, my wifi experience on Linux has been very solid, often more solid than my OSX-using co-workers. But this is all anecdata. Though Ubuntu (and to a much lesser extent, some others) have come light-years toward producing a consistent, coherent Linux desktop experience, it still lags painfully behind OSX and Windows. With all of these disadvantages, though, the 'all the way down' reliability and no-bullshit you get from a Linux desktop (or server) is worth its weight in gold. It's just that the entry fee is still too high.

bertiewhykovich 10y ago
I dunno, man -- I feel like constant user-experience problems, bizarre hardware issues, and endless configuration tweaking is both unreliable and bullshit. I often contemplate switching to a Linux system, even if just for a change of pace, but I can't justify giving up a platform that allows me to get the vast majority of what I need to do done without waging war against some other programmer's neuroses.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  It's really about what you're used to using. I tend to have more problems when I'm using macOS than Linux.
  - bertiewhykovich 10y ago
    That's very fair. Most of my non-work computing tends to follow typical consumer trends, and most of my work computing isn't meaningfully compromised by running macOS over Linux (now that VMs are usable, at least) -- but I can imagine that if I depended on applications that don't have clear macOS equivalents that Linux would seem far more "reliable and no-bullshit" to me. That beings said, the vast majority of consumers, and I suspect the vast majority of developers, do not rely on such applications (or their equivalent w/r/t Windows).

amluto 10y ago

> Oh, and battery life on Skylake is about half of what a Macbook gets. Try updating your firmware. My Skylake laptop gets 10 hours or so. If a Macbook got 20, I'd be quite impressed. :)

cmurf 10y ago
Yeah I'm on an HP Spectre 13, just released, and with Fedora 25 (prerelease!) and kernel 4.7.7 and 4.8.1, I'm getting 6 hours of active work, and 9-10 when mostly idle.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago

I'm not sure when was the last time you used a modern Linux desktop environment, but I'd say that there are a few that are pretty polished right now. Pantheon and Gnome spring to mind. This is especially true when you install a nice GTK theme.

trollian 10y ago

I have both mac and Linux laptops and find Linux generally more stable and reliable.

tychuz 10y ago
When video drivers crash - do all GUI applications still crash with the display server? I've toyed with Arch during Windows 7 times - after hearing how linux is more stable than windoze/windblowz - and then nVidia drivers crashed, X server crashed, aaand upon starting X - all GUI applications were closed. Are. You. Friggin. Kidding me? People were talking about stability when such things happened? Linux stability compared to Windows 7 - zero. At that time. Has it changed?
- jguegant 10y ago
  Yes
- eikenberry 10y ago
  You might also want to think about using a distribution that emphasizes stability more. Arch is a great distro for people who want a bleeding edge, but it's strength is not stability. Debian is probably the most stable, Ubuntu LTS releases are decent as well.
  - tychuz 10y ago
    Nor Ubuntu, nor Debian produce nVidia drivers.
    - AsyncAwait 10y ago
      What do you mean? You can definitely install them on both.
      - tychuz 10y ago
        I mean that nVidia drivers will be nVidia drivers made by nVidia - same ones on Debian, Ubuntu or Arch.

aidenn0 10y ago

I switched to linux for my laptop this year and encountered surprisingly few problems. The distribution defaulted the KDE plasma and I certainly don't feel punished for leaving the command line. [edit] The only issue so far is that when I unplug an external display, it sometimes fails to shrink my desktop accordingly. I've seen issues of a similar level of annoyance on macs as well. [edit2] There are the other standard linux things (every piece of software is configured differently &c.) but as we are talking about someone who uses linux on the server already, I didn't consider that apropos.

cygned 10y ago

Couldn't agree more. I have been using Ubuntu from the beginning till 2013 exclusively watching the system becoming more and more mature but I was constantly tackling small problems. Suddenly the external projector won't work via HDMI anymore, then there's a codec for an audio file broken, and updated crashes apt and you spend hours trying to fix things. Since Windows is not an option for me, I switched to a Mac.

noobermin 10y ago
I am very upset that Ubuntu is supposed vanguard of Linux. My experience with Ubuntu has largely been negative. You have random crashes of daemons and apps that I do not see on my gentoo system...the same exact processes! I don't recommend gentoo for everyone although it really isn't that bad--if you can develop a web app, I'm sure you're definitely capable enough to use a supposedly "advanced" distro like arch or gentoo, but Ubuntu isn't that sterling of a system in my experience especially when you need something beyond the defaults.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Cannot agree more with this, I've been using Arch for close to 4 years and it's been much more stable (!) Arch is rolling release (!) than Ubuntu has ever been. I also enjoy pacman a lot more than apt. Hate that Ubuntu == Linux for many people.

josteink 10y ago

> Oh you'll find new entries for the list. Agreed in a sense. All OSes have their issues. They're just different issues. > Linux on the desktop is nowhere near macOS. And that's because it's a different OS. It's not trying to be MacOS. And I'm glad it isn't. Because if I wanted MacOS I'd run that, don't you think? > Sleep absolutely definitely will never work, unless you muck around in the kernel for a bit. Then it works but your wifi cuts off when you're playing music. I've yet to experience any issues like this on any of my hardware, but I've been shopping around from Linux-friendly OEMs like Dell XPS laptops and Lenovo ThinkPads. So maybe that's just you being unlucky about your hardware? Hard to tell over an internet comment. But let's be real here: Linux as a general purpose desktop OS mostly works on pretty much any hardware you throw at it. OSX works on maybe 3 models made by 1 vendor. Trying to arrest Linux for poor hardware-support in this scenario is a pretty weak hand to play, honestly. Because out of the three big OSes, MacOS is clearly the general purpose operating system with the weakest hardware support of them all. Its hardware support is piss poor.

noobermin 10y ago

>Sleep absolutely definitely will never work, unless you muck around in the kernel for a bit. Then it works but your wifi cuts off when you're playing music. Straight up FUD. This isn't the experience at all. Linux had these issues in the mid 2000s, that hasn't been my experience in years. I agree with the "inconsistency" but I see the same "inconsistency" when I open matplotlib windows (wxgtk I suppose) and they look different, only closing the window fails randomly on OS X and leaves Python interpreter running while I've yet to experience that on Linux. Then, I'd try to kill the non-responding app, and kill works on Linux, but on macOS, it is inconsistent. And that wasn't ten years ago, that was may be two or three days ago.

nikanj 10y ago
Anecdotes are not data, but if this is no longer true, then I must somehow still be living in the mid-2000s.
- noobermin 10y ago
  I mean I can't speak for you as I can only speak for my experience and experience of people I know. You didn't ask for advice, but if I had any, it would be to avoid Ubuntu. Most of the poorly functioning and randomly crashing processes I've seen on Linux was on Ubuntu machines.
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    So what distro is supposed to be the one that 'just works' now? It's really a shame how Ubuntu has degraded, in the 10.4 days I found it worked very well out of the box.