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I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years,

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly. So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh boy. Linux land really needs some kind of unifying revolution to happen, because this is a mess. Things have gotten a little smoother in the decade or so since I was last exploring Linux desktops, but it's like they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be. GNOME feels like it's stuck between trying to be Windows and OS X, with some super weird details (like the launcher thing) that makes it feel like they had plans to build a touch screen OS for tablets or something. Meanwhile, there's little consistency between apps (and Elementary tries to remove menu bars as a concept, what's up with that?), and everything feels put together randomly by people with widely divergent ideas of what a kind of desktop environment to aspire to. It also struck me how much competition there is -- there are at least three GNOME forks (two of 3.x, one of 2.x), for example -- a situation which seems to exist partly due to infighting. Maybe with out tweaking and plugins and customization you can beat it into some shape that lets you work efficiently, but the experience put me off, to be honest. I don't like being that negative, but I was a bit shocked about how bad it was. Mint was next on my list, but I'm not sure I will continue since it's another GNOME 3 fork.

bsg75 10y ago
This is why I always return to XFCE. It may not be rapidly evolving, but if I'm running a Linux desktop, I want simple.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  On what Distro though? What should I try if I want something that pretty much works out of the box i.e. has acceptable battery life + WiFi + Sound + Suspend mode on a Macbook / Latitude / Thinkpad without me having to set up config files according to all kinds of internet sources for a day... or even a week?
  - kuschku 10y ago
    KDE Neon or Kubuntu. That's what you want. Just works, anyone can use it, and if you wish, you can right-click on anything and have tenthousand config options to make everything exactly as customized as you want it.
  - fstephany 10y ago
    I'm using a Thinkpad T460 with the latest Ubuntu and everything works out of the box. Even the smartcard reader works with my ID to sign my tax form. Battery life is 12-14 hours of real work with the big battery (which costs something like 18$ more than the regular one). I still use a Macbook Air for iOS development but I now boot the Thinkpad for everything else. (Oh and if there's an engineer working for Spotify in the crowd, thanks for the Linux app!)
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    Try Xubuntu off a USB stick on your chosen hardware first.
  - ufo 10y ago
    XFCE is very stable so it should work almost exactly the same on every distro. Just pick the one that you like the most / is easier to install for you / etc. KDE is a bigger and more complex system so it works a bit differently depending on what distribution you use. Some distros like KDE Neon always have the most recent KDE while other like OpenSUSE Leap prefer to use stable versions of the applications. When it comes to wifi/sound/etc it has to do with whether the driver for that contains binary blobs. Some distros don't ship blobs due to security and/or software freedom concerns while other distros have a more relaxed policy when it comes to proprietary software. Thinkpads have a reputation for being very easy to run Linux on. You should expect everything to work out of the box. For the Dell computer you might have to install drivers separately but you can't tell for sure without knowing the exact model you have. You could do a test drive with a Live USB to check out. I wouldn't expect things to work out of the box on the macbook though. Apple isn't very Linux friendly and their macbooks have many specialized components that are only found on Apple products so Linux support is not very good. But even then, some dedicated hackers still try to reverse engineer them so you might have better support if you have an older model instead of the latest macbook. The following table can help a bit with determining if wifi will work on your computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wireless_drivers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wire...
- ctack 10y ago
  I never understood why XFCE is not the default for Ubuntu desktop. It was(is?) part of Xubuntu, the lightweight Ubuntu distro, years ago. I had the most basic entry level laptop, but I managed to connect 2 external monitors to it while the tiling would remember the locations of all programs in all three monitors and it was FAST. Nothing I have tried since has touched it. It set me up for a lot of disappointment! I now have a macbook and while it's a great and integrated machine, CMD-tab - which I use to switch screens - doesn't even work properly if an application is in fullscreen mode.
  - insertnickname 10y ago
    Xubuntu still exists.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Not everyone misses CDE. At least that is what it reminded me of.
    - bsg75 10y ago
      I never really used CDE, but XFCE just turned out to be my speed.
- cabalamat 10y ago
  > [XFCE] may not be rapidly evolving Which is why I use it!
- collyw 10y ago
  And it works. No flashy in your face features trying to impress you with bouncing balls or animations, it's just like an improved version of Windows 2000 interface.
eklavya 10y ago
You can try https://neon.kde.org https://neon.kde.org if you want. I am very pleased with it on a desktop.
- earthnail 10y ago
  Woha! That's some serious design there. I am heavily, heavily impressed by what the KDE folks are building. I will admit that I don't think I'll switch to KDE anytime soon - I had been using it throughout the 3.x series, and was extremely excited about (and then disappointed by) the 4.x releases, but then switched to MacOS and never looked back. If I get myself a workstation again (and there are solid reasons for doing so, like CUDA for DNN development when you're tired of working on servers for local development), I'll definitely give KDE another go.
wineisfine 10y ago
Had the same thing. Turns out, I'm more of a design snob then I thought I was. Trying to move away from macOS and trying out Windows and a few Linux distro's, my god it's all ugly. I don't care much about Apple hardware specifically, but they got my hooked because of the OS. Pretty lame.
- nextos 10y ago
  Try something without any design at all, like Linux with a tiling window manager and some minimal applications.
  - setq 10y ago
    This is what I use Windows for. It's an SSH terminal that has a web browser and plays music (via groove which is actually quite good)
    - somecallitblues 10y ago
      Is Putty still a thing on Win or does it have something native?
      - dagw 10y ago
        Putty (or Kitty or MobaTerm) is still a thing, but there are other options. The Linux subsystem will give you a *nix shell and ssh that works exactly like you expect it to. There is also msys which will give you an ssh client you can run directly from cmd.exe or power shell. Microsoft have been working on a proper native port of OpenSSH, but while it apparently works pretty well, it's still not feature complete or ready to be shipped as a standard part of Windows (hopefully early next year).
      - setq 10y ago
        I use putty. Haven't found a compelling reason to use anything else yet.
    - dkersten 10y ago
kriro 10y ago
Try i3 or fluxbox while you're still experimenting (or KDE for that matter if you've only gone with Gnome so far). Diversity is actually a good thing :) I've standardized on Xubuntu but there are some pretty sweet desktop managers/window managers out there. That being said I feel like I'm fairly close to converting to i3.
michaelmrose 10y ago
You know lots of environments are quite configurable both in aethetics and functionality have you explored this. If you just booted up and didn't explore your options you might have missed the better part of your options. Functionally I think there a lot to be said for tiling window managers and I think they look great with Compton plus semi transparent windows, selectively obviously. Of course it might not be your cup of tea.
aamederen 10y ago
I am experiencing the same thing, but on the reverse side. At my home, I have a Ubuntu desktop which works perfectly. I use Eclipse, Android Studio and Atom editor. On work, I use MBP and pretty much the same environment. I know it is not a common opinion but no matter what I do, I still like Ubuntu more than macos. I agree that macos looks more polished, engineered and complete but somehow, I prefer Ubuntu's plastic feeling. It has been 6 months and still my opinions did not change. There is also the problems of macOS with Eclipse and other GTK applications (Meld) some other stuff about Mac that I couldn't fully adapt yet. Lastly, FYI, no, I am not hater and I like MBP, especially as a solid metal object.
- aroch 10y ago
  Eclipse is just super janky under macOS, and the GUI doesn't even work the same as its Windows counterpart -- which makes teaching classes with Eclipse a study in pain
- dade_ 10y ago
  MacOS lost me somewhere around Mavericks and the idea of a tablet that is also my PC was appealing, so I tried a Surface Pro 3 and decided to keep it. Ubuntu Bash for Windows is great, but is Beta and still needs some work. As for my old 2011 MBP, Ubuntu runs very well on it. For a couple of decades I kept trying Linux on the desktop, and today I am happy with it. From managing photos, CAD for my 3D printer, Python development and music with my keyboard, Dropbox support, it really is remarkable how far the desktop has come. I am still using the web client for OneNote though...
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  I'm just trying to find a high end laptop that will run Linux flawlessly. No trackpad driver issues. Zero. Perfect plug and play. It's the only thing keeping my mac at this point. Fear of having to debug driver shit when i don't want to deal with any of that.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    System76 sells laptops with Linux preloaded. I believe Dell does as well (or at least used to if they don't anymore). I'm not sure how high end you are looking for but a quick glance shows System76's most expensive laptop is well over $2,000.
3131s 10y ago
Try Linux Mint + Mate. It's simple, pleasant looking, and totally intuitive for me at least.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Mate is not only in Mint.
  - 3131s 10y ago
    Right, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. GP said they were considering Linux Mint, and so I replied with a suggestion for a GUI that in my experience pairs well with Mint.
- nycticorax 10y ago
  Or Ubuntu Mate 16.04, and switch to the "TraditionalOK" theme. (The default theme is, IMHO, not attractive.)
glaberficken 10y ago
> "Meanwhile, there's little consistency between apps (and Elementary tries to remove menu bars as a concept, what's up with that?), and everything feels put together randomly by people with widely divergent ideas of what a kind of desktop environment to aspire to." This is the product of dictatorship style development on one side (Windows, OSX) Vs democracy on the other side (Linux distros). Democracy implies diversity. Dictatorship implies uniformity. Can you have the uniformity you are looking for within a democracy? (or some would argue that anarchy would be a better metaphor for the Linux scene)
- fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  It's not democracy vs dictatorship. It's individualism/pluralism vs central planning. You can have central planning with democratic legitimacy or without it. But I don't actually think the horrible state of desktop Linux is down to any of that. Device drivers are Linux's big problem. Desktop environments are a simple matter of getting used to them and learning what to tweak.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - glaberficken 10y ago
    > "the horrible state of desktop Linux" I don't assume the state of desktop Linux to be horrible. It's simply more diverse than the state of Windows and OSX. For many people that is a good thing. There's intrinsic value in variety.
    - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
      As I said, it's driver issues that make the Linux desktop/laptop experience horrible, not the diversity of desktop environments. I don't think it's a good idea for Linux advocates to deny or downplay the effect that driver issues have on the overall desktop/laptop Linux experience.
easytiger 10y ago
> s. Things have gotten a little smoother in the decade or so since I was last exploring Linux desktops, Actually it has gotten worse
somecallitblues 10y ago
I tried Ubuntu and couldn't get over the ugly font and not being able copy paste from anything to anything else. Plus there's no good power management on laptops and no PC ever came out with a quality trackpad that can match macbook.
- josteink 10y ago
  > I tried Ubuntu and couldn't get over the ugly font and not being able copy paste from anything to anything else Please elaborate. I mean... Universal copy paste has just been working the last 20 years... Unless I'm missing something basic?
  - somecallitblues 10y ago
    I remember that ctrl+c and ctrl+v didn't work across applications. I think Terminal was one of them. Couldn't copy and paste into it. Out of the box anyway.
    - dagw 10y ago
      Yea that is a 'feature'. The problem is that ctrl+c already means something else in the terminal. Many (most?) terminals map copy and paste to ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v to get around this. Of course most *nix user use the middle mouse button for copy-paste in the terminal as standard and never really notice this.
      - viraptor 10y ago
        Either that or select - right click - copy/paste. It all works, but the shortcuts don't align. Ctrl-c is sigint, ctrl+v varies, but in vim it escapes special key press.
      - crottypeter 10y ago
        Yes. I miss the middle-click-paste in macOS. Also the maximise behaviour in macOS is really annoying.
mikegerwitz 10y ago
> they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be "It" can be any distro. GNU/Linux distros aren't a single entity, and they never will settle on a common interface---that's a good thing. Larger distros like Ubuntu will, but if you're going to adopt this perspective, you'll need to start thinking about the individual distributions and companies/communities behind them rather than "the" GNU/Linux desktop.
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  > that's a good thing Not if you're looking for a macOS alternative. I'm fine with the "distros" doing what they want. However, that is not going to lead to a cohesive experience of the kind that macOS is able to provide. A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt), and the different environments provide themes to get a unified look. Most apps aren't targeting a particular desktop environment, and so you get this inherent tension, where it's "unopinioned all the way down" and nobody makes a clear decision about a unified look/feel to anything. I can see why a certain group of hackers like this jangly mess where a lot of time is spent on customizing stuff to work exactly the way they like it, being able to choose a completely different "window manager" and so on. I was like that in my early years, and today I just want things that work. What I want is consistency and stability with a mind behind it. I want it to boot up and render high-quality, subpixel-aliased fonts, and then I'd like to get right to work. The KDE community seems more closely aligned with this idea, but they still don't control the apps, and unfortunately they still seem to be stuck in the Windows 2000 copy machine mindset.
  - mikegerwitz 10y ago
    > A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt) I can agree with this criticism (granted, I don't use many GUI programs)---not that they're different toolkits, but that they often have drastically different theming and UX. Uniformity through common theming/UX APIs would be beneficial.
bluedino 10y ago
>> but Windows is still the king of ugly. >> So I've been considering Linux as my first option. Linux re-defines ugly. It works great but it's very kludgy. Like many others I can setup my workflow on any of the three machines and have tried it out on many different machines from Dell to IBM to Apple. Sublime, terminals, Chrome/FireFox, DropBox, it works well enough on anything but I made my current choice on 'niceness', battery life, screen, and form-factor, even if it cost me a couple hundred dollars more. On a machine I use for 3 years it's 30-40 cents a day.
- danielweber 10y ago
  Maybe I'm an old fart, but everything seems to be getting worse. OSX is worse than it was, Windows is worse than it was, Linux is worse than it was. If you just want to browse the web, okay, but anything beyond that and you are off in a maze of twisty passages, none of them like the other.
  - EasyTiger_ 10y ago
    Windows has definitely got worse for the consumer, but great for Microsoft. Not sure MacOSX has got worse... there just isn't much innovation anymore
duck2 10y ago
I have surfed through distros, desktop environments and window managers for nearly a year. My equillibrium point is suckless.org's dwm[0] with all defaults except using Terminus as font and Super(windows) instead of Alt key. ~6 months, no irritation, no configuration change. Tiling window managers which have extensive configuration options are useful as tinkering material, but not actual working environments. If you want a tiling window manager not for eye appeal and beauty but for simplicity and ease of use, look at r/unixporn/ and use whatever they are not using. [0]: http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/
- zeveb 10y ago
  I've ended up in a very similar position: stumpwm, st, Adobe Source Code Pro & Super. For my particular style, being able to extend the WM (not customise endlessly: actually extend) is pretty awesome, but I understand that not everyone's into that. After getting everything set up the way I like it, I'll never switch.
- Gracana 10y ago
  Hah, I run the exact same config. I used to be a wmii user but moved to Windows for quite a while when work and school required software that only ran there. Now I'm back on the tiling window manager train with dwm, and I realize I had forgotten how much I like this setup.
Musonius 10y ago
Great thing about Linux is you can customise it to no end, and you can make it look much better than Macs even.
sgwizdak 10y ago
I recently switched because I need something with some GPU horsepower. I was pleasantly surprised with Windows 10 dark theme + http://cmder.net http://cmder.net

bsg75 10y ago

This is why I always return to XFCE. It may not be rapidly evolving, but if I'm running a Linux desktop, I want simple.

m_mueller 10y ago
On what Distro though? What should I try if I want something that pretty much works out of the box i.e. has acceptable battery life + WiFi + Sound + Suspend mode on a Macbook / Latitude / Thinkpad without me having to set up config files according to all kinds of internet sources for a day... or even a week?
- kuschku 10y ago
  KDE Neon or Kubuntu. That's what you want. Just works, anyone can use it, and if you wish, you can right-click on anything and have tenthousand config options to make everything exactly as customized as you want it.
- fstephany 10y ago
  I'm using a Thinkpad T460 with the latest Ubuntu and everything works out of the box. Even the smartcard reader works with my ID to sign my tax form. Battery life is 12-14 hours of real work with the big battery (which costs something like 18$ more than the regular one). I still use a Macbook Air for iOS development but I now boot the Thinkpad for everything else. (Oh and if there's an engineer working for Spotify in the crowd, thanks for the Linux app!)
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Try Xubuntu off a USB stick on your chosen hardware first.
- ufo 10y ago
  XFCE is very stable so it should work almost exactly the same on every distro. Just pick the one that you like the most / is easier to install for you / etc. KDE is a bigger and more complex system so it works a bit differently depending on what distribution you use. Some distros like KDE Neon always have the most recent KDE while other like OpenSUSE Leap prefer to use stable versions of the applications. When it comes to wifi/sound/etc it has to do with whether the driver for that contains binary blobs. Some distros don't ship blobs due to security and/or software freedom concerns while other distros have a more relaxed policy when it comes to proprietary software. Thinkpads have a reputation for being very easy to run Linux on. You should expect everything to work out of the box. For the Dell computer you might have to install drivers separately but you can't tell for sure without knowing the exact model you have. You could do a test drive with a Live USB to check out. I wouldn't expect things to work out of the box on the macbook though. Apple isn't very Linux friendly and their macbooks have many specialized components that are only found on Apple products so Linux support is not very good. But even then, some dedicated hackers still try to reverse engineer them so you might have better support if you have an older model instead of the latest macbook. The following table can help a bit with determining if wifi will work on your computer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wireless_drivers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wire...
ctack 10y ago
I never understood why XFCE is not the default for Ubuntu desktop. It was(is?) part of Xubuntu, the lightweight Ubuntu distro, years ago. I had the most basic entry level laptop, but I managed to connect 2 external monitors to it while the tiling would remember the locations of all programs in all three monitors and it was FAST. Nothing I have tried since has touched it. It set me up for a lot of disappointment! I now have a macbook and while it's a great and integrated machine, CMD-tab - which I use to switch screens - doesn't even work properly if an application is in fullscreen mode.
- insertnickname 10y ago
  Xubuntu still exists.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Not everyone misses CDE. At least that is what it reminded me of.
  - bsg75 10y ago
    I never really used CDE, but XFCE just turned out to be my speed.
cabalamat 10y ago
> [XFCE] may not be rapidly evolving Which is why I use it!
collyw 10y ago
And it works. No flashy in your face features trying to impress you with bouncing balls or animations, it's just like an improved version of Windows 2000 interface.

eklavya 10y ago

You can try https://neon.kde.org https://neon.kde.org if you want. I am very pleased with it on a desktop.

earthnail 10y ago
Woha! That's some serious design there. I am heavily, heavily impressed by what the KDE folks are building. I will admit that I don't think I'll switch to KDE anytime soon - I had been using it throughout the 3.x series, and was extremely excited about (and then disappointed by) the 4.x releases, but then switched to MacOS and never looked back. If I get myself a workstation again (and there are solid reasons for doing so, like CUDA for DNN development when you're tired of working on servers for local development), I'll definitely give KDE another go.

wineisfine 10y ago

Had the same thing. Turns out, I'm more of a design snob then I thought I was. Trying to move away from macOS and trying out Windows and a few Linux distro's, my god it's all ugly. I don't care much about Apple hardware specifically, but they got my hooked because of the OS. Pretty lame.

nextos 10y ago
Try something without any design at all, like Linux with a tiling window manager and some minimal applications.
- setq 10y ago
  This is what I use Windows for. It's an SSH terminal that has a web browser and plays music (via groove which is actually quite good)
  - somecallitblues 10y ago
    Is Putty still a thing on Win or does it have something native?
    - dagw 10y ago
      Putty (or Kitty or MobaTerm) is still a thing, but there are other options. The Linux subsystem will give you a *nix shell and ssh that works exactly like you expect it to. There is also msys which will give you an ssh client you can run directly from cmd.exe or power shell. Microsoft have been working on a proper native port of OpenSSH, but while it apparently works pretty well, it's still not feature complete or ready to be shipped as a standard part of Windows (hopefully early next year).
    - setq 10y ago
      I use putty. Haven't found a compelling reason to use anything else yet.
  - dkersten 10y ago

kriro 10y ago

Try i3 or fluxbox while you're still experimenting (or KDE for that matter if you've only gone with Gnome so far). Diversity is actually a good thing :) I've standardized on Xubuntu but there are some pretty sweet desktop managers/window managers out there. That being said I feel like I'm fairly close to converting to i3.

michaelmrose 10y ago

You know lots of environments are quite configurable both in aethetics and functionality have you explored this. If you just booted up and didn't explore your options you might have missed the better part of your options. Functionally I think there a lot to be said for tiling window managers and I think they look great with Compton plus semi transparent windows, selectively obviously. Of course it might not be your cup of tea.

aamederen 10y ago

I am experiencing the same thing, but on the reverse side. At my home, I have a Ubuntu desktop which works perfectly. I use Eclipse, Android Studio and Atom editor. On work, I use MBP and pretty much the same environment. I know it is not a common opinion but no matter what I do, I still like Ubuntu more than macos. I agree that macos looks more polished, engineered and complete but somehow, I prefer Ubuntu's plastic feeling. It has been 6 months and still my opinions did not change. There is also the problems of macOS with Eclipse and other GTK applications (Meld) some other stuff about Mac that I couldn't fully adapt yet. Lastly, FYI, no, I am not hater and I like MBP, especially as a solid metal object.

aroch 10y ago
Eclipse is just super janky under macOS, and the GUI doesn't even work the same as its Windows counterpart -- which makes teaching classes with Eclipse a study in pain
dade_ 10y ago
MacOS lost me somewhere around Mavericks and the idea of a tablet that is also my PC was appealing, so I tried a Surface Pro 3 and decided to keep it. Ubuntu Bash for Windows is great, but is Beta and still needs some work. As for my old 2011 MBP, Ubuntu runs very well on it. For a couple of decades I kept trying Linux on the desktop, and today I am happy with it. From managing photos, CAD for my 3D printer, Python development and music with my keyboard, Dropbox support, it really is remarkable how far the desktop has come. I am still using the web client for OneNote though...
notheguyouthink 10y ago
I'm just trying to find a high end laptop that will run Linux flawlessly. No trackpad driver issues. Zero. Perfect plug and play. It's the only thing keeping my mac at this point. Fear of having to debug driver shit when i don't want to deal with any of that.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  System76 sells laptops with Linux preloaded. I believe Dell does as well (or at least used to if they don't anymore). I'm not sure how high end you are looking for but a quick glance shows System76's most expensive laptop is well over $2,000.

3131s 10y ago

Try Linux Mint + Mate. It's simple, pleasant looking, and totally intuitive for me at least.

ekianjo 10y ago
Mate is not only in Mint.
- 3131s 10y ago
  Right, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. GP said they were considering Linux Mint, and so I replied with a suggestion for a GUI that in my experience pairs well with Mint.
nycticorax 10y ago
Or Ubuntu Mate 16.04, and switch to the "TraditionalOK" theme. (The default theme is, IMHO, not attractive.)

glaberficken 10y ago

> "Meanwhile, there's little consistency between apps (and Elementary tries to remove menu bars as a concept, what's up with that?), and everything feels put together randomly by people with widely divergent ideas of what a kind of desktop environment to aspire to." This is the product of dictatorship style development on one side (Windows, OSX) Vs democracy on the other side (Linux distros). Democracy implies diversity. Dictatorship implies uniformity. Can you have the uniformity you are looking for within a democracy? (or some would argue that anarchy would be a better metaphor for the Linux scene)

fauigerzigerk 10y ago
It's not democracy vs dictatorship. It's individualism/pluralism vs central planning. You can have central planning with democratic legitimacy or without it. But I don't actually think the horrible state of desktop Linux is down to any of that. Device drivers are Linux's big problem. Desktop environments are a simple matter of getting used to them and learning what to tweak.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- glaberficken 10y ago
  > "the horrible state of desktop Linux" I don't assume the state of desktop Linux to be horrible. It's simply more diverse than the state of Windows and OSX. For many people that is a good thing. There's intrinsic value in variety.
  - fauigerzigerk 10y ago
    As I said, it's driver issues that make the Linux desktop/laptop experience horrible, not the diversity of desktop environments. I don't think it's a good idea for Linux advocates to deny or downplay the effect that driver issues have on the overall desktop/laptop Linux experience.

easytiger 10y ago

> s. Things have gotten a little smoother in the decade or so since I was last exploring Linux desktops, Actually it has gotten worse

somecallitblues 10y ago

I tried Ubuntu and couldn't get over the ugly font and not being able copy paste from anything to anything else. Plus there's no good power management on laptops and no PC ever came out with a quality trackpad that can match macbook.

josteink 10y ago
> I tried Ubuntu and couldn't get over the ugly font and not being able copy paste from anything to anything else Please elaborate. I mean... Universal copy paste has just been working the last 20 years... Unless I'm missing something basic?
- somecallitblues 10y ago
  I remember that ctrl+c and ctrl+v didn't work across applications. I think Terminal was one of them. Couldn't copy and paste into it. Out of the box anyway.
  - dagw 10y ago
    Yea that is a 'feature'. The problem is that ctrl+c already means something else in the terminal. Many (most?) terminals map copy and paste to ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v to get around this. Of course most *nix user use the middle mouse button for copy-paste in the terminal as standard and never really notice this.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      Either that or select - right click - copy/paste. It all works, but the shortcuts don't align. Ctrl-c is sigint, ctrl+v varies, but in vim it escapes special key press.
    - crottypeter 10y ago
      Yes. I miss the middle-click-paste in macOS. Also the maximise behaviour in macOS is really annoying.

mikegerwitz 10y ago

> they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be "It" can be any distro. GNU/Linux distros aren't a single entity, and they never will settle on a common interface---that's a good thing. Larger distros like Ubuntu will, but if you're going to adopt this perspective, you'll need to start thinking about the individual distributions and companies/communities behind them rather than "the" GNU/Linux desktop.

lobster_johnson 10y ago
> that's a good thing Not if you're looking for a macOS alternative. I'm fine with the "distros" doing what they want. However, that is not going to lead to a cohesive experience of the kind that macOS is able to provide. A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt), and the different environments provide themes to get a unified look. Most apps aren't targeting a particular desktop environment, and so you get this inherent tension, where it's "unopinioned all the way down" and nobody makes a clear decision about a unified look/feel to anything. I can see why a certain group of hackers like this jangly mess where a lot of time is spent on customizing stuff to work exactly the way they like it, being able to choose a completely different "window manager" and so on. I was like that in my early years, and today I just want things that work. What I want is consistency and stability with a mind behind it. I want it to boot up and render high-quality, subpixel-aliased fonts, and then I'd like to get right to work. The KDE community seems more closely aligned with this idea, but they still don't control the apps, and unfortunately they still seem to be stuck in the Windows 2000 copy machine mindset.
- mikegerwitz 10y ago
  > A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt) I can agree with this criticism (granted, I don't use many GUI programs)---not that they're different toolkits, but that they often have drastically different theming and UX. Uniformity through common theming/UX APIs would be beneficial.

bluedino 10y ago

>> but Windows is still the king of ugly. >> So I've been considering Linux as my first option. Linux re-defines ugly. It works great but it's very kludgy. Like many others I can setup my workflow on any of the three machines and have tried it out on many different machines from Dell to IBM to Apple. Sublime, terminals, Chrome/FireFox, DropBox, it works well enough on anything but I made my current choice on 'niceness', battery life, screen, and form-factor, even if it cost me a couple hundred dollars more. On a machine I use for 3 years it's 30-40 cents a day.

danielweber 10y ago
Maybe I'm an old fart, but everything seems to be getting worse. OSX is worse than it was, Windows is worse than it was, Linux is worse than it was. If you just want to browse the web, okay, but anything beyond that and you are off in a maze of twisty passages, none of them like the other.
- EasyTiger_ 10y ago
  Windows has definitely got worse for the consumer, but great for Microsoft. Not sure MacOSX has got worse... there just isn't much innovation anymore

duck2 10y ago

I have surfed through distros, desktop environments and window managers for nearly a year. My equillibrium point is suckless.org's dwm[0] with all defaults except using Terminus as font and Super(windows) instead of Alt key. ~6 months, no irritation, no configuration change. Tiling window managers which have extensive configuration options are useful as tinkering material, but not actual working environments. If you want a tiling window manager not for eye appeal and beauty but for simplicity and ease of use, look at r/unixporn/ and use whatever they are not using. [0]: http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/

zeveb 10y ago
I've ended up in a very similar position: stumpwm, st, Adobe Source Code Pro & Super. For my particular style, being able to extend the WM (not customise endlessly: actually extend) is pretty awesome, but I understand that not everyone's into that. After getting everything set up the way I like it, I'll never switch.
Gracana 10y ago
Hah, I run the exact same config. I used to be a wmii user but moved to Windows for quite a while when work and school required software that only ran there. Now I'm back on the tiling window manager train with dwm, and I realize I had forgotten how much I like this setup.

Musonius 10y ago

Great thing about Linux is you can customise it to no end, and you can make it look much better than Macs even.

sgwizdak 10y ago

I recently switched because I need something with some GPU horsepower. I was pleasantly surprised with Windows 10 dark theme + http://cmder.net http://cmder.net