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> It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency

> It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency will only increase from here on. People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close.

teekert 8y ago
Well I think that from about April 2012 (first generally positive feel about Unity) until about April 2021 (yes I know, this is the end of 16.04 support) you could have had (and can have) a fairly consistent experience. Now, with the introduction of Gnome into Ubuntu there is some (avoidable) flux. If you don't like it, go for a more conservative distro like CentOS, or pick Ubuntu Mate. Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is. I do wonder what makes you say it isn't close though... I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Still, I think even Ubuntu's standard desktop is pretty nice and very usable.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  > I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Get all their .net apps and office/excel stuff to work, and get whatever integrations with office365 are required to work actually working and get it all to sync with their mobile devices... I'm sure you can have them switched in no time...
- mschaef 8y ago
  > Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is. I first entered the 'Linux world' in 1994, when I downloaded SLS onto floppies and installed it on my 486/33. I consider myself less of a 'conservative user who hates change' and more of a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality.
  - teekert 8y ago
    I'm also a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality, this has made me pretty conservative in my Linux Distro picks ;)
mgkimsal 8y ago
> People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close. That was part of my reason for going full mac 10 years ago. Had one in the house, but my main laptops were linux. And it was always such a pain, wireless networking in particular. And ever few months I'd hear/read "oh, but ubuntu's great - everything just works". And then I'd try it on a new laptop, and things wouldn't work, and there'd be no answers, or the answers would be things like "dude, you have to research all your parts before you 'just buy something' - linux isn't like that!" And then I'd read more about "hey, everything now 'just works'!" I came to realize it was mostly people who'd didn't have moderately complex needs (like wanting to use 2 monitors without rebooting an X session), or needing to vpn easily, or... whatever. None of this was simple then. I'm going to guess it probably still isn't now for many 'edge cases' (most of my tech life apparently was an 'edge case' when I was a linux/desktop users). It was tiresome. After 10 years of "year of linux on the desktop" I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook.
- mschaef 8y ago
  > I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook. This is pretty much exactly my experience. There were usually ways to make things work on Linux, but it always required more effort than it was worth. Back in school, spending that effort made sense because it was a learning experience and at the time that was my primary goal. These days, there are enough competing priorities in my life that spending hours wrestling with my computer to make it perform basic functionality just isn't worth the opportunity cost. (I could be learning something people value or doing paid work or spending time with my family or exercising....) One of the things I did love about Linux was the ability to switch to a tiling window manager. That said, as nice as it was, customizations required modifying C source code and writing scripts and never did work nearly as well as anything else. (In particular, I never figured out the right NetworkManager incantations to connect to a new WiFi network.) https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools To put this in perspective, my experience with Linux dates back to 1994, installing SLS from floppies on a 486/33. There has always been this belief that 'the community' will solve the problems and turn Linux into a fully competitive desktop platform. While there's definitely been progress, the reality is that the community has neither the time nor the attention to achieve near the level of polish that the vast majority of people expect these days. (Note that I don't view this as necessarily a problem, just an artifact of people making the same sorts of resource allocations choices for themselves that I described myself making back in the first paragraph.)

teekert 8y ago

Well I think that from about April 2012 (first generally positive feel about Unity) until about April 2021 (yes I know, this is the end of 16.04 support) you could have had (and can have) a fairly consistent experience. Now, with the introduction of Gnome into Ubuntu there is some (avoidable) flux. If you don't like it, go for a more conservative distro like CentOS, or pick Ubuntu Mate. Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is. I do wonder what makes you say it isn't close though... I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Still, I think even Ubuntu's standard desktop is pretty nice and very usable.

mgkimsal 8y ago
> I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Get all their .net apps and office/excel stuff to work, and get whatever integrations with office365 are required to work actually working and get it all to sync with their mobile devices... I'm sure you can have them switched in no time...
mschaef 8y ago
> Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is. I first entered the 'Linux world' in 1994, when I downloaded SLS onto floppies and installed it on my 486/33. I consider myself less of a 'conservative user who hates change' and more of a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality.
- teekert 8y ago
  I'm also a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality, this has made me pretty conservative in my Linux Distro picks ;)

mgkimsal 8y ago

> People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close. That was part of my reason for going full mac 10 years ago. Had one in the house, but my main laptops were linux. And it was always such a pain, wireless networking in particular. And ever few months I'd hear/read "oh, but ubuntu's great - everything just works". And then I'd try it on a new laptop, and things wouldn't work, and there'd be no answers, or the answers would be things like "dude, you have to research all your parts before you 'just buy something' - linux isn't like that!" And then I'd read more about "hey, everything now 'just works'!" I came to realize it was mostly people who'd didn't have moderately complex needs (like wanting to use 2 monitors without rebooting an X session), or needing to vpn easily, or... whatever. None of this was simple then. I'm going to guess it probably still isn't now for many 'edge cases' (most of my tech life apparently was an 'edge case' when I was a linux/desktop users). It was tiresome. After 10 years of "year of linux on the desktop" I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook.

mschaef 8y ago
> I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook. This is pretty much exactly my experience. There were usually ways to make things work on Linux, but it always required more effort than it was worth. Back in school, spending that effort made sense because it was a learning experience and at the time that was my primary goal. These days, there are enough competing priorities in my life that spending hours wrestling with my computer to make it perform basic functionality just isn't worth the opportunity cost. (I could be learning something people value or doing paid work or spending time with my family or exercising....) One of the things I did love about Linux was the ability to switch to a tiling window manager. That said, as nice as it was, customizations required modifying C source code and writing scripts and never did work nearly as well as anything else. (In particular, I never figured out the right NetworkManager incantations to connect to a new WiFi network.) https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools To put this in perspective, my experience with Linux dates back to 1994, installing SLS from floppies on a 486/33. There has always been this belief that 'the community' will solve the problems and turn Linux into a fully competitive desktop platform. While there's definitely been progress, the reality is that the community has neither the time nor the attention to achieve near the level of polish that the vast majority of people expect these days. (Note that I don't view this as necessarily a problem, just an artifact of people making the same sorts of resource allocations choices for themselves that I described myself making back in the first paragraph.)