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Yikes. I'm sad to see that stuff backsliding. Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely. I used i3 with Debian. That kept things s

Yikes. I'm sad to see that stuff backsliding. Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely. I used i3 with Debian. That kept things simple enough so I could understand them. That meant no niceties like a display manager. Back then I could explain the differences between startx and xinit, and I could compile kernels. The desktops were way too complicated to fix if they broke. I tired of the whole thing after doing my USA income taxes through fill in PDFs because there is no commercial Linux software. I didn't want a browser based solution. I bit the bullet and bought a Mac. It is the best computing decision I ever made. Proprietary software is readily available and works. Free software is available through Macports. It's Unix when I need it, but when I want a GUI it always works. I spend much less time fixing broken stuff. I miss my Thinkpad keyboard. Also, since Mac is an expensive proprietary platform, bugs in free software take longer to fix. For instance the GHC Haskell compiler currently has issues on Mac OS Sierra and it will take awhile until they fix that. However there are many things on Mac that I could never get in Linux, such as the awsome trackpad and Duet, which gives me a cheap second monitor via an iPad. My days running Linux on hardware are over. If I really want Linux I will get a Mac or even a Windows machine and then run Linux in a VM.

notalaser 10y ago
> Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely I used to do that for a very long time, too, but it's getting unpleasant. A lot of things get upset if you don't have a "proper" session running behind the scenes. It requires me to learn more about xdg and systemd than I can learn without giving in to existential dread about my profession, and frankly, it's a shame to see decades of progress in the GUI go wasted on me just because the Linux community won't get its act together. In some ways, I think I'm more or less like the proverbial dinosaur in this regard. Virtually no one developing for Linux cares about the desktop anymore. The Linux "community" is, increasingly, a bunch of huge hardware manufacturers, automotive consortiums and a few companies with large datacenters to run. This is where the money -- and most of the development effort -- is. Most of the people who were interested in, and could meaningfully contribute to usability-related efforts and desktops have long gone to web or Apple land. Edit: in fact, I think virtually everyone I know has moved to macOS, OpenBSD or Windows. Can't blame them.
ensiferum 10y ago
>> Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely. My experience is that Linux works better on the desktop in general. Laptop's on the other hand have always given me trouble. Overall it's sad to see that the "year of the Linux desktop" is always 10 years from now and it's realistically speaking never going to happen.

notalaser 10y ago

> Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely I used to do that for a very long time, too, but it's getting unpleasant. A lot of things get upset if you don't have a "proper" session running behind the scenes. It requires me to learn more about xdg and systemd than I can learn without giving in to existential dread about my profession, and frankly, it's a shame to see decades of progress in the GUI go wasted on me just because the Linux community won't get its act together. In some ways, I think I'm more or less like the proverbial dinosaur in this regard. Virtually no one developing for Linux cares about the desktop anymore. The Linux "community" is, increasingly, a bunch of huge hardware manufacturers, automotive consortiums and a few companies with large datacenters to run. This is where the money -- and most of the development effort -- is. Most of the people who were interested in, and could meaningfully contribute to usability-related efforts and desktops have long gone to web or Apple land. Edit: in fact, I think virtually everyone I know has moved to macOS, OpenBSD or Windows. Can't blame them.

ensiferum 10y ago

>> Back when I used Linux, my solution was to avoid the desktops entirely. My experience is that Linux works better on the desktop in general. Laptop's on the other hand have always given me trouble. Overall it's sad to see that the "year of the Linux desktop" is always 10 years from now and it's realistically speaking never going to happen.