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Background : I am IT for 25 years, run Linux on all servers (pro and home), develop open source. I tried to use Linux desktop at least 5 times over the last ye

Background : I am IT for 25 years, run Linux on all servers (pro and home), develop open source. I tried to use Linux desktop at least 5 times over the last years (again a few days ago on the home shared laptop). It is ok-ish when I use the browser and IDEs (vcs, pycharm) but anything else is horrendous. I looked for an equivalent of ShareX, I felt like I was 25 again. Linux desktop is on for the 86% if the train which only uses a browser ("Internet") but I doubt anything more specialized is reasonable. Not that Linux desktop is bad (though it is not good either), it's because there are no ports of that specialized software. If someone is fully (apps, I mean) html5 then why not.

xyproto 9y ago
Gaming is also covered, with 2500+ commercial games available on Steam only. The KDE applications Kdevelop, Kdenlive and Krita has improved a lot the latest 1-2 years, providing a pretty great IDE, video editing and also painting application. 3D animation, modeling and texturing isn't too shabby either, with Maya, Houdini, Blender and 3D-Coat. For ShareX, there are many alternatives for grabbing screenshots. A direct clone is ShareNix (video: http://www.hnng.moe/f/3CI http://www.hnng.moe/f/3CI) If ShareX is what's stopping you, I think that you're mainly stuck with a Windows desktop habit.
- mamon 9y ago
  Regarding gaming: it doesn't matter how many games are there, what matters is WHICH GAMES. Playing games is a social activity after all, especially for teenagers. If all of your Windows-using friends are playing Assassin's Creed: Origins, and you can't because there isn't a Linux version of it then those 2500+ games on Steam do not really matter to you.
  - eitland 9y ago
    CS:GO is there and IMO it has often been more performant there than on Windows :-) While CS:GO might not be your thing it should be proof that the sitiation is improving.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      I’d consider a switch for gaming if Linux had more games than windows, and the graphics drivers were more performant on Linux. 90% of the game library or 95% of game performance Will not do it. Until then, having a windows license even if only for gaming is a no brainer.
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  No - I am stuck with a solution which works out of the box. I mentioned in an earlier comment that downloading Minecraft and opening it by double-clicking opens an archive. This is simply unacceptable for a desktop version. At the same time I run and ran hundreds of servers on Linux and I would never run anything serious on Windows Server. I am probably stuck with a Linux habit here.
- BrandoElFollito 9y ago
  OK, I gave a try to the clone. Download the file from Github - check Start several commands out of the blue - no idea what to do. I call a friend, he tells me to start a terminal and type it over there - check. (98,3% of the population which expected to swap Windows with Linux Desktop is now gone) I am IT, the terminal is my friend. I start ` sharenix` and get (sharenix:2817): GModule-CRITICAL : g_module_close: assertion 'module != NULL' failed Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module" So much for the clone and the experience. Honestly - this is zillions of light years behind Windows. And again: I run hundreds of servers on Linux (and my home server/router/fw). I hacked in 1994 some of the networking kernel (in pre-modules time) on a 386. So I am hardly a Linux hater.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
> Linux desktop is on for the 86% if the train which only uses a browser ("Internet") Ugh. Stop it. Just stop it. It isn't the late 90s or early 2000s anymore. Hardly anyone uses a desktop computer just for the internet because that market is well served by phones and tablets. That segment of the market existed only for a brief time between the rising popularity of the internet and the invention of purpose built consumer devices for browsing the internet. Linux Desktop community continues to prop up this strawman user because it is an easy target. Tell them something is wrong with how the OS works that's keeping people from wanting to use it and they'll point to their strawman and say "most people just browse the internet, and we can do that just fine, it must be something else!". Users hate your software? I'ts because they're drooling morons who don't understand it because they just use a computer to browse Facebook. It's a convenient ego-saving lie, like pretty much every excuse that comes out of the Linux desktop camp for why they aren't better. Excuses is what the Linux Desktop community is best at. I could literally rant for hours about the problems with Linux as a desktop, but the short version is that it sucks because the community behind it sucks, and probably likes that it sucks because it allows them to feel smugly superior to all the "average" (read: drooling browser-only strawman) people. Even when Linus himself bitches them out they don't pay attention: "making binaries for Linux desktop applications is a major fucking pain in the ass. You don’t make binaries for Linux, you make binaries for Fedora 19, Fedora 20, maybe even RHEL5 from 10 years ago. You make binaries for Debian Stable…well actually no, you don't make binaries for Debian Stable because Debian Stable has libraries that are so old that anything built in the last century doesn’t work." --Linus Torvalds (DebConf 2014)
- atondwal 9y ago
  I don't think the "browser-only strawman" is condescending elitists dismissing users --- I'm a self-described GNU zealot on most days the only software I use on are apps like firefox, ssh, and vim and a few other bits like gnome/xmonad, liquid haskell, latex, and rustc. I have no clue how the "average person" uses a computer, but for me it really is all web. Hell, if I had consistent LTE on my laptop, I could very just spend the whole day in a full-screen firefox with a web-ssh connection to my work server for development.
pjmlp 9y ago
The Web has killed the desktop Linux dream, in case you have not realized it. The browser platform makes the kernel completely irrelevant, ChromeOS is a very good example of it.

xyproto 9y ago

Gaming is also covered, with 2500+ commercial games available on Steam only. The KDE applications Kdevelop, Kdenlive and Krita has improved a lot the latest 1-2 years, providing a pretty great IDE, video editing and also painting application. 3D animation, modeling and texturing isn't too shabby either, with Maya, Houdini, Blender and 3D-Coat. For ShareX, there are many alternatives for grabbing screenshots. A direct clone is ShareNix (video: http://www.hnng.moe/f/3CI http://www.hnng.moe/f/3CI) If ShareX is what's stopping you, I think that you're mainly stuck with a Windows desktop habit.

mamon 9y ago
Regarding gaming: it doesn't matter how many games are there, what matters is WHICH GAMES. Playing games is a social activity after all, especially for teenagers. If all of your Windows-using friends are playing Assassin's Creed: Origins, and you can't because there isn't a Linux version of it then those 2500+ games on Steam do not really matter to you.
- eitland 9y ago
  CS:GO is there and IMO it has often been more performant there than on Windows :-) While CS:GO might not be your thing it should be proof that the sitiation is improving.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    I’d consider a switch for gaming if Linux had more games than windows, and the graphics drivers were more performant on Linux. 90% of the game library or 95% of game performance Will not do it. Until then, having a windows license even if only for gaming is a no brainer.
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
No - I am stuck with a solution which works out of the box. I mentioned in an earlier comment that downloading Minecraft and opening it by double-clicking opens an archive. This is simply unacceptable for a desktop version. At the same time I run and ran hundreds of servers on Linux and I would never run anything serious on Windows Server. I am probably stuck with a Linux habit here.
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
OK, I gave a try to the clone. Download the file from Github - check Start several commands out of the blue - no idea what to do. I call a friend, he tells me to start a terminal and type it over there - check. (98,3% of the population which expected to swap Windows with Linux Desktop is now gone) I am IT, the terminal is my friend. I start ` sharenix` and get (sharenix:2817): GModule-CRITICAL : g_module_close: assertion 'module != NULL' failed Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module" So much for the clone and the experience. Honestly - this is zillions of light years behind Windows. And again: I run hundreds of servers on Linux (and my home server/router/fw). I hacked in 1994 some of the networking kernel (in pre-modules time) on a 386. So I am hardly a Linux hater.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

> Linux desktop is on for the 86% if the train which only uses a browser ("Internet") Ugh. Stop it. Just stop it. It isn't the late 90s or early 2000s anymore. Hardly anyone uses a desktop computer just for the internet because that market is well served by phones and tablets. That segment of the market existed only for a brief time between the rising popularity of the internet and the invention of purpose built consumer devices for browsing the internet. Linux Desktop community continues to prop up this strawman user because it is an easy target. Tell them something is wrong with how the OS works that's keeping people from wanting to use it and they'll point to their strawman and say "most people just browse the internet, and we can do that just fine, it must be something else!". Users hate your software? I'ts because they're drooling morons who don't understand it because they just use a computer to browse Facebook. It's a convenient ego-saving lie, like pretty much every excuse that comes out of the Linux desktop camp for why they aren't better. Excuses is what the Linux Desktop community is best at. I could literally rant for hours about the problems with Linux as a desktop, but the short version is that it sucks because the community behind it sucks, and probably likes that it sucks because it allows them to feel smugly superior to all the "average" (read: drooling browser-only strawman) people. Even when Linus himself bitches them out they don't pay attention: "making binaries for Linux desktop applications is a major fucking pain in the ass. You don’t make binaries for Linux, you make binaries for Fedora 19, Fedora 20, maybe even RHEL5 from 10 years ago. You make binaries for Debian Stable…well actually no, you don't make binaries for Debian Stable because Debian Stable has libraries that are so old that anything built in the last century doesn’t work." --Linus Torvalds (DebConf 2014)

atondwal 9y ago
I don't think the "browser-only strawman" is condescending elitists dismissing users --- I'm a self-described GNU zealot on most days the only software I use on are apps like firefox, ssh, and vim and a few other bits like gnome/xmonad, liquid haskell, latex, and rustc. I have no clue how the "average person" uses a computer, but for me it really is all web. Hell, if I had consistent LTE on my laptop, I could very just spend the whole day in a full-screen firefox with a web-ssh connection to my work server for development.

pjmlp 9y ago

The Web has killed the desktop Linux dream, in case you have not realized it. The browser platform makes the kernel completely irrelevant, ChromeOS is a very good example of it.