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I was linux-only from 2002 to about 2009, on laptops, when I switched to Mac. I just set up a linux desktop for kicks the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't s

I was linux-only from 2002 to about 2009, on laptops, when I switched to Mac. I just set up a linux desktop for kicks the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't seem to me to be any better than it was a decade ago. * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) * To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not * installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt I remain reasonably happy with it, but Mac is still so far ahead of it in terms of usability it's wild.

erikbye 7y ago
Many of these complaints are resolved by using another desktop environment, e.g. KDE. Others of the distro (use another one if you want up-to-date packages).
- Frondo 7y ago
  I last used KDE about a year ago, so I'm not sure if this is still a problem, but even KDE doesn't let you slow down mouse cursor speed, only make it faster. Is that still the case? They didn't even have a slider for controlling mouse speed, only a numerical text entry. It boggles the mind.
  - palebluedot 7y ago
    Settings->Input Devices->Mouse There is a slider for adjusting pointer speed.
  - MegaDeKay 7y ago
    The "Mouse" Systems Setting I have on screen on my up-to-date KDE right now has a slider for pointer speed with no numerical entry. There is only a small handful of other settings that quite useful (acceleration profile, invert scroll direction, and a couple other things). KDE has been working hard on usability lately.
    - morning_gelato 7y ago
      KDE's pointer acceleration settings have never worked on X11 unfortunately.
      - ahartmetz 7y ago
        ...for you. For me they always worked, maybe not around the time of the libinput transition.
        morning_gelato 7y ago
        There were no mouse acceleration options for Plasma until release 5.13 which was released in 2018, which is well after the libinput transition. Essentially since the feature was added there's been an open bug report on it not working on X11. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398713 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398713
    - ognarb 7y ago
      Yes the KDE Usability & Productivity initiative helped a lot making KDE suck less in this regard. A lot of configuration dialogs were improved, a lot of small irritating bugs were fixed and the default are more sane now. And because Nate Graham blog about all these changes every week, KDE also got a lot of new contributors. Btw Plasma 5.17 will be released tomorrow, so all the improvements of the last 6 months will be available very soon.
JustFinishedBSG 7y ago
All your points seems like they are trivially solved by using another DE and distribution
- llimllib 7y ago
  your definition of "trivial" is different from mine haha (fwiw: my propensity for installing new DEs and distros in the hope of solving all my problems was what made me leave linux in the first place)
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    While I'm glad that I'm not the only one who is in the same situation and frame-of-mind as you, I wish more people admitted this. The endless chain of Linux re-distroing to fix issues is absolutely the main issue with Linux.
    - floren 7y ago
      I blame Ubuntu's mid-2000s decision to offer "Ubuntu", "Lubuntu", "Kubuntu", and "Xubuntu", which seemed to convince people that the only way to change desktop environments is to reinstall Linux. They're all there, just a few clicks away in whatever crap-ass GUI Ubuntu has stuck on top of apt these days. At the end of the day, all these distros are just Debian, Redhat, or (rarely) Arch under the hood, so if you get sick of lack of support for JimBobLinux, you can just install Debian and quit fucking around. I did that 15 years ago (good god) and haven't regretted it.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The answer that never changes regarding the use of desktop Linux.
  - baot 7y ago
    Because Linux isn't a UI.
esotericn 7y ago
Gnome (3) is just a bit crap. It's the Windows DE of the GNU/Linux world. It's explicitly designed to be boring and not very customizable so that delicate users don't get scared. I use i3 and basically everything is configured via text files. Keyboard shortcuts are trivial etc. You don't need Karabiner to "rebind" because you can directly bind. You don't need to go scary tiling WM, Xfce probably works well, it's been years since I last used it. If apt is out of date that's probably because you're using a stable rather than rolling release distro. All of this requires some research and tinkering. If you're me, you prefer research to being told what to do.
- taurath 7y ago
  I tend to feel like there’s already enough roadblocks in the way to get things done. I used to tinker around with my OSs but now I want them out of the way to a large extent.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Unfortunately no-one provides what I consider to be a sane default. I'm fairly happy with what I have. I add the odd alias to my dotfiles and a few things I pick up but for the most part I've had my config for half a decade or so now. By contrast I could never figure out how to like, get Windows to fuck off with the telemetry ads bullshit. It always felt like I would disable it and then behind my back some randoservice would enable it again or install an update that brings back OneDrive or some madness. The best bit about my Linux setup is that it's all just files. Home folder, few flat text files with the odd bit of json, we're home.
    - furst 7y ago
      For what it's worth, I've had a lot of success with the Tron script[1] for getting rid of Windows Bloat. It disables a ton of garbage via Registry Keys which windows is much less likely to overwrite. It can be a little aggressive on some stuff like blocking your microphone from working in any app (easily fixable) but I'd rather have it that way than having to uninstall Candy Crush once a week. [1]https://github.com/bmrf/tron https://github.com/bmrf/tron
computerex 7y ago
Everything you have listed is solvable by using a different distribution/desktop environment. You can use something like Manjaro to get really up to date software, and it comes with different desktop environment flavors like Cinnamon. I think a more modern desktop environment would suit you best, and I highly recommend Cinnamon.
- NotATroll 7y ago
  I concur. Manjaro solves a lot of the problems of the Linux desktop, and brings with it the great Arch community. And for keybindings, you're probably better off figuring out how xmodmap works. It's not pretty. But honestly, if you want pretty when it comes to keybinding, nothing beats a good keyboard. Like the UHKB, Ergo Dox, anything supported by QMK basically.
  - llimllib 7y ago
    Is there good documentation/tutorials on setting up xmodmap? It seems like that's a road I'll need to go down at least a bit.
  - torbjorn 7y ago
    Look into "kmonad", it is designed to bring the features of the QMK fireware to any keyboard on a Linux system. It is better than xmodmap IMHO.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  This is my issue with Linux, though, despite having a dev VM environment of several distros. There are a metric f*ckton of Linux distros out there and, for every one of them that fixes the problems mentioned in one breath, they break or ignore a whole litany of other things. When I first started with Linux, it was pretty much Red Hat or bust and that was a pain but you knew what you were getting into. Now, it's nearly impossible to know what a lot of the differences are between all the different distros and which one may or may not work for your particular situation. Worse yet, it's now happened to me twice where I've set up a distro, spent the time to get it mostly working, and then, after using it for a few weeks, there's some annoyance or hardware issue that I can't resolve that is resolved in another distro. So I install the next one, get it mostly working, and then run into some other non-trivial annoyance or issue. Repeat, ad nauseam. Linux, to me, is still very much a tinkerer's OS. If you don't have the time to tinker and get things working and just want to get things done, Linux is not the way to go.
deleted 7y ago
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harshitaneja 7y ago
Which version of gnome are you on? >No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there. >To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying Open the app and right click the app icon in dock(if that is what you mean by favorites bar) and it should have an option to add to favorites. >modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent I have found gnome to have the easiest way to edit all shortcuts. Settings>Devices>Keyboard should show you all the keyboard shortcuts and if you scroll to bottom you will find option to add custom shortcuts which you can set to any command. Much more extensive than the frustrating MacOS keyboard shortcuts in my opinion. > installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be https://extensions.gnome.org/ https://extensions.gnome.org/ for finding the extensions for installing the extensions on the website use this chrome extension using which all you then have to do is click install while on the website https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integration/gphhapmejobijbbhgpjhcjognlahblep?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integr... Gnome tweaks to manage them otherwise > brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt Agreed. That's why I use pacman. Pacman is hands down the best package manager I have ever used. Combined with AUR it has the most extensive up-to-date packages. Pacman is the default package manager for Arch Linux. I use arch, btw. Had to do this :) I agree linux was in a pretty bad shape a decade ago and we still need to improve a lot but to say it is still the same is ignoring all the hardwork of a large number of wonderful people who have been contributing to the codebase.
- llimllib 7y ago
  > Which version of gnome are you on? 3.24 I think? whatever the ubuntu beta is using. > I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there. I can assure you it is not edit to add issue link: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/379 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/3... > Open the app and right click the app icon in dock(if that is what you mean by favorites bar) and it should have an option to add to favorites. neat! that didn't work for kitty though, for example, I had to do it manually. > I have found gnome to have the easiest way to edit all shortcuts. Settings>Devices>Keyboard should show you all the keyboard shortcuts and if you scroll to bottom you will find option to add custom shortcuts which you can set to any command. Much more extensive than the frustrating MacOS keyboard shortcuts in my opinion. The shortcuts panel is indeed very nice, and the shortcuts that you can change there are nice. However, many aren't changeable there, and you have to install (!) and go to the very poorly designed keyboard modifications panel of gnome-tweaks, for example, to change caps lock to esc and tell gnome what you want your windows/mac key to do. Where it falls down from karabiner is: 1. there's no way to have different settings for different keyboards. I have two that I use regularly, with fairly different layouts 2. it lacks the power of karabiner; I'd love to have a rule like "command-c equals ctrl-shift-c but command-t equals ctrl-t". Trivial in karabiner, impossible in gnome > all you then have to do is click install while on the website I'm glad they have that, but I don't want to give my browser that security hole, so I grant you that one's a bit on me. Should be easier to do a manual installation anyway. > I agree linux was in a pretty bad shape a decade ago and we still need to improve a lot but to say it is still the same is ignoring all the hardwork of a large number of wonderful people who have been contributing to the codebase. I do not at all mean to trash the hard work people have done, I really (truly!) respect it. However, from this particular user's perspective, the problems are about equal to what they were a decade ago.
newscracker 7y ago
I had a somewhat similar experience with Linux on an old Mac mini a few years ago. Too many things had to be fiddled with using config files and scripts. I had to resort to using a Magic Trackpad like a regular mouse. There was quite a bit missing "out of the box". I will admit that Linux has improved a lot over the years. But I find that macOS seems to be the one with a "batteries included" experience and is the least annoying among Windows, Linux and macOS. While it's possible to setup Linux to one's preferences with some effort, I find Windows to be standing in my way and slowing me down most of the time even for trivial things (I'm looking at you, Windows 10).
- computerex 7y ago
  I think the one annoying thing about Windows is the forced updates. Apple has started taking a leaf from Windows. A few weeks ago my system updated and asked to restart without giving me any choice of saying no.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    This is necessary for security. Still you can trivially disable updates for a week or report them again and again. What would be nice though is if they developed a live patching system like the modern Linux kernel allow which means: Windows partial updates without rebooting.
    - computerex 7y ago
      No operating system should update against the user's wishes. And this time the system didn't give me an option to delay, it simply let me know that it's about to restart and that I better save my work.
      - The_rationalist 7y ago
        Sometimes people must be protected from themselves. Still, windows should allow you to delay it many times until forcing you, it's a shame it doesn't.
stratosmacker 7y ago
I felt the same way so for my Linux laptop I moved over to Plasma. It's a real desktop with sane defaults, and I can recommend it. Obviously not quite the same level of polish as the Mac, but try it, you may be pleasantly surprised. Gnome3 has been such a regression of user experience, I've never had a good time using it.
aidenn0 7y ago
Having used Linux since about 2000, gnome has regressed and KDE has improved. I switched to KDE about a year ago and haven't looked back: > * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) - Never had to do this, but I checked. Under "Input Devices" I see "Mouse wheel scrolls by:" as a setting > * To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying - With KDE you can drag any application to the quicklaunch widget, or right-click to add. > * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent I've not used Karabiner, but a quick look does make it look more feature-complete than any single GUI tool I know of on linux. However, keyboard shortcuts are all configurable from a central place on KDE. My biggest downside is that the organization of the "Global Shortcuts" has a UI that only makes sense to a KDE developer. IMO a single list would be more useful than having categories. > * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not True of most systems these days unfortunately; looking for the date of the post on forums/stack-overflow helps > * installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be I've not needed to install a KDE widget that wasn't in the base setup, so I cannot comment. > * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt I have nothing good to say about Ubuntu in general except that it's popularity means that it is easier to get the correct answer by googling. It is by far the most finicky distro I've administered, including Gentoo (which is so high-maintenance that you should only run it if administering systems is a fun hobby). If you want up-to-date software from your package manager, use a rolling release distro. Otherwise the best you can do is something like a base setup and then side-load the software you want. This problem has been identified to the point where there are several brew-like systems (and things like snap as well), but no clear winner yet. > I remain reasonably happy with it, but Mac is still so far ahead of it in terms of usability it's wild. I think this will always be true. The Mac has such a lead in "There is a bright path and things will be fine so long as you don't stray from it" coupled with the fact that they control both hardware and software means that there just don't seem to be enough people who both want a Linux like that and have the know-how to make it happen. The counterpoint is perhaps chromebooks, which occupy such a different price-point compared to macs that they make their own niche at least in primary and secondary education.
jlarocco 7y ago
> * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent That's not a Linux problem, it's a window manager problem. Setting keyboard shortcuts is a piece of cake in StumpWM. > * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not That's a search engine problem, and it affects a lot of stuff besides Linux. > * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt That depends on your distro. Lots of systems use Apt, and they all have their own package servers. I've used Debian testing for years, and it's always been reasonably up to date.
dleslie 7y ago
Stay far away from Gnome3; it's a performance, usability and accessibility dumpster fire. MATE, XFCE, LXDE and KDE are all better choices.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Dont forget Budgie. While not quite as polished as it can be its a newcomer so I am not surprised. It is otherwise a sweet DE for me.
  - vips7L 7y ago
    I ran budgie for about a year before switching back to windows for work and its leagues better than Gnome in my experience. Though at this point I think I would go for KDE given the opportunity.
    - giancarlostoro 7y ago
      I dont mind KDE and I do like Kubuntu but at work everyones on Gnome DEs so I try to have close enough environments so they dont blame KDE for all my problems when things break.
      - vips7L 7y ago
        I get it. The mac dev's like to blame windows at my place.
        giancarlostoro 7y ago
        Windows usually has some easier to setup utilities to develop on for some projects. We have Mac, Windows and mostly Linux devs. I sometimes wish I was on Windows its more predictable to me.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Sadly Gnome3, although sucking badly in many aspects, dumbed down and bloated, is the only viable option for tablets. Unless something has changed in the last months, having correct screen orientation and rotation consistent with correct touch management without adding/editing scripts by hand is a nightmare: imagine you finally get the screen correctly orientated but now if you drag the finger to the right the arrow goes up.
yummypaint 7y ago
"Linux" in 2019 refers to such a broad array of software that it's almost meaningless when talking about a specific experience. It's annoying to do, but trying some different distros and guis is well worth the time. There are plenty of people who self identify as full time linux users who cant stand to use each others computers, so there isn't any kind of consensus about what a good linux experience is because people are often trying to get very different things done. Personally i thing gnome 3 is utter garbage, and poisons people against the whole ecosystem because it's usually what people try first because the screenshots look shiny. You might have a better time with mate or something similar.
oxguy3 7y ago
> * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent Lol, different strokes for different folks. Having to use Karabiner instead of the much more versatile tools on Linux really peeved me when I switched over a few years ago. I like to rebind my caps lock to function as an extra modifier key. On Linux, you just set it to Hyper; ezpz. On Mac, you just straight up can't, so I have to bind it to command+control+option+shift to get the next best thing (since I would never actually press all four of those keys). And I've had issues with Mac's Keyboard Shortcuts -- some of my shortcuts have just stopped working. I used to have CapsLock+[1-9] as shortcuts to switch to Workspaces 1-9, but some of the shortcuts just stopped working and I've had no luck finding a fix. On Linux, it may take more effort to do something, but it'll always be possible. So many of the things I want to do on Mac are just not options. When I retire this MacBook, I'll be going back to Linux.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  This pretty much sums up both why I switched from Windows to Linux and why I'll never buy anything Apple is pushing. On Linux, the easy stuff is annoying and the hard-but-necessary stuff is even more annoying; on Windows and Mac, the easy stuff is easy and the hard-but-necessary stuff is impossible. Edit: Well, that and also because, if my OS is going to randomly break whenever some idiot pushes a "update", it might as well be one I don't pay money for, and one that only updates when I tell it to.
deergomoo 7y ago
I wanted to find out the proper way to disable middle-click paste because all the solutions I could find involved basically disabling the button all together, but I still wanted to use it for closing tabs etc. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. One high rated StackOverflow answer I found suggested purchasing a mouse with a less sensitive mouse wheel.
- bschwindHN 7y ago
  This was one of my biggest grievances with desktop Linux. Not driver support or a lack of applications or ugly interfaces, but the fucking middle click to paste enabled by default! It just shows such poor taste for defaults, especially when tap-to-click is enabled. Text gets randomly inserted everywhere. On Manjaro this causes sticky notes to be created everywhere on the desktop. It's insane that someone gave it the thumbs up. And the stackoverflow solutions all just disable the middle click altogether like you said.
rurp 7y ago
> modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent This had been a headache for me as well, but I've had great luck with AutoKey. Obviously it would be better if there was a native solution, but at least this works IME.
catalogia 7y ago
The GNOME project has gone very far astray. Their UX "experts" are self-appointed tyrants who want to control how you use the computer and seem to get sick kicks out of telling users that they're wrong whenever users want do something even slightly different. "You THINK you want to change your mouse speed but actually you're an idiot and you're wrong" is a classic example of this. GNOME is more of a problem than linux itself. It doesn't have to be this bad. More distros could be packaging KDE (or even XFCE?) as the default, but incentives seem misaligned.
- neop1x 7y ago
  I switched to KDE on Arch Linux two years ago and I am happy since. Even KDE Connect works there (android notification sync).
heavyset_go 7y ago
> To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying Just install the Menu Editor app from the Ubuntu Software channel. > installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be Go to extensions.gnome.org, install the Firefox or Chrome extension and click the "Install" button on the website to install gnome-shell extensions. > brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt Use snaps or flatpak. Using Homebrew on Linux feels wrong.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. .desktop files are about the dumbest damn thing ever. Why is the 'category' of an application, which pretty much every menu interprets as its sub-folder location, determined here [0]? Why is there absolutely no ability whatsoever to set a relative path to an icon file [1]? It's like there were designed by someone who had never used a GUI before and had one described to him while writing the spec [0]. [0] Given other choices made by FreeDesktop.org, this might actually be true.
nkoren 7y ago
> * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) Oh yeah, that! Lost another five-ish hours to that, and eventually just decided to live with crappy scrolling.
resonator 7y ago
> modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent Good news. There is. It's called autokey. Its a bit clunkier and crashes occasionally, but it allows you to rebind you application shortcuts. Finding this made migrating back to linux possible for me. https://github.com/autokey/autokey/wiki/API-Examples https://github.com/autokey/autokey/wiki/API-Examples
pnutjam 7y ago
KDE let's me do all this stuff, on OpenSuse. Zypper is also way ahead of apt.

erikbye 7y ago

Many of these complaints are resolved by using another desktop environment, e.g. KDE. Others of the distro (use another one if you want up-to-date packages).

Frondo 7y ago
I last used KDE about a year ago, so I'm not sure if this is still a problem, but even KDE doesn't let you slow down mouse cursor speed, only make it faster. Is that still the case? They didn't even have a slider for controlling mouse speed, only a numerical text entry. It boggles the mind.
- palebluedot 7y ago
  Settings->Input Devices->Mouse There is a slider for adjusting pointer speed.
- MegaDeKay 7y ago
  The "Mouse" Systems Setting I have on screen on my up-to-date KDE right now has a slider for pointer speed with no numerical entry. There is only a small handful of other settings that quite useful (acceleration profile, invert scroll direction, and a couple other things). KDE has been working hard on usability lately.
  - morning_gelato 7y ago
    KDE's pointer acceleration settings have never worked on X11 unfortunately.
    - ahartmetz 7y ago
      ...for you. For me they always worked, maybe not around the time of the libinput transition.
      - morning_gelato 7y ago
        There were no mouse acceleration options for Plasma until release 5.13 which was released in 2018, which is well after the libinput transition. Essentially since the feature was added there's been an open bug report on it not working on X11. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398713 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398713
  - ognarb 7y ago
    Yes the KDE Usability & Productivity initiative helped a lot making KDE suck less in this regard. A lot of configuration dialogs were improved, a lot of small irritating bugs were fixed and the default are more sane now. And because Nate Graham blog about all these changes every week, KDE also got a lot of new contributors. Btw Plasma 5.17 will be released tomorrow, so all the improvements of the last 6 months will be available very soon.

JustFinishedBSG 7y ago

All your points seems like they are trivially solved by using another DE and distribution

llimllib 7y ago
your definition of "trivial" is different from mine haha (fwiw: my propensity for installing new DEs and distros in the hope of solving all my problems was what made me leave linux in the first place)
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  While I'm glad that I'm not the only one who is in the same situation and frame-of-mind as you, I wish more people admitted this. The endless chain of Linux re-distroing to fix issues is absolutely the main issue with Linux.
  - floren 7y ago
    I blame Ubuntu's mid-2000s decision to offer "Ubuntu", "Lubuntu", "Kubuntu", and "Xubuntu", which seemed to convince people that the only way to change desktop environments is to reinstall Linux. They're all there, just a few clicks away in whatever crap-ass GUI Ubuntu has stuck on top of apt these days. At the end of the day, all these distros are just Debian, Redhat, or (rarely) Arch under the hood, so if you get sick of lack of support for JimBobLinux, you can just install Debian and quit fucking around. I did that 15 years ago (good god) and haven't regretted it.
pjmlp 7y ago
The answer that never changes regarding the use of desktop Linux.
- baot 7y ago
  Because Linux isn't a UI.

esotericn 7y ago

Gnome (3) is just a bit crap. It's the Windows DE of the GNU/Linux world. It's explicitly designed to be boring and not very customizable so that delicate users don't get scared. I use i3 and basically everything is configured via text files. Keyboard shortcuts are trivial etc. You don't need Karabiner to "rebind" because you can directly bind. You don't need to go scary tiling WM, Xfce probably works well, it's been years since I last used it. If apt is out of date that's probably because you're using a stable rather than rolling release distro. All of this requires some research and tinkering. If you're me, you prefer research to being told what to do.

taurath 7y ago
I tend to feel like there’s already enough roadblocks in the way to get things done. I used to tinker around with my OSs but now I want them out of the way to a large extent.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Unfortunately no-one provides what I consider to be a sane default. I'm fairly happy with what I have. I add the odd alias to my dotfiles and a few things I pick up but for the most part I've had my config for half a decade or so now. By contrast I could never figure out how to like, get Windows to fuck off with the telemetry ads bullshit. It always felt like I would disable it and then behind my back some randoservice would enable it again or install an update that brings back OneDrive or some madness. The best bit about my Linux setup is that it's all just files. Home folder, few flat text files with the odd bit of json, we're home.
  - furst 7y ago
    For what it's worth, I've had a lot of success with the Tron script[1] for getting rid of Windows Bloat. It disables a ton of garbage via Registry Keys which windows is much less likely to overwrite. It can be a little aggressive on some stuff like blocking your microphone from working in any app (easily fixable) but I'd rather have it that way than having to uninstall Candy Crush once a week. [1]https://github.com/bmrf/tron https://github.com/bmrf/tron

computerex 7y ago

Everything you have listed is solvable by using a different distribution/desktop environment. You can use something like Manjaro to get really up to date software, and it comes with different desktop environment flavors like Cinnamon. I think a more modern desktop environment would suit you best, and I highly recommend Cinnamon.

NotATroll 7y ago
I concur. Manjaro solves a lot of the problems of the Linux desktop, and brings with it the great Arch community. And for keybindings, you're probably better off figuring out how xmodmap works. It's not pretty. But honestly, if you want pretty when it comes to keybinding, nothing beats a good keyboard. Like the UHKB, Ergo Dox, anything supported by QMK basically.
- llimllib 7y ago
  Is there good documentation/tutorials on setting up xmodmap? It seems like that's a road I'll need to go down at least a bit.
- torbjorn 7y ago
  Look into "kmonad", it is designed to bring the features of the QMK fireware to any keyboard on a Linux system. It is better than xmodmap IMHO.
dkonofalski 7y ago
This is my issue with Linux, though, despite having a dev VM environment of several distros. There are a metric f*ckton of Linux distros out there and, for every one of them that fixes the problems mentioned in one breath, they break or ignore a whole litany of other things. When I first started with Linux, it was pretty much Red Hat or bust and that was a pain but you knew what you were getting into. Now, it's nearly impossible to know what a lot of the differences are between all the different distros and which one may or may not work for your particular situation. Worse yet, it's now happened to me twice where I've set up a distro, spent the time to get it mostly working, and then, after using it for a few weeks, there's some annoyance or hardware issue that I can't resolve that is resolved in another distro. So I install the next one, get it mostly working, and then run into some other non-trivial annoyance or issue. Repeat, ad nauseam. Linux, to me, is still very much a tinkerer's OS. If you don't have the time to tinker and get things working and just want to get things done, Linux is not the way to go.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

harshitaneja 7y ago

Which version of gnome are you on? >No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there. >To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying Open the app and right click the app icon in dock(if that is what you mean by favorites bar) and it should have an option to add to favorites. >modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent I have found gnome to have the easiest way to edit all shortcuts. Settings>Devices>Keyboard should show you all the keyboard shortcuts and if you scroll to bottom you will find option to add custom shortcuts which you can set to any command. Much more extensive than the frustrating MacOS keyboard shortcuts in my opinion. > installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be https://extensions.gnome.org/ https://extensions.gnome.org/ for finding the extensions for installing the extensions on the website use this chrome extension using which all you then have to do is click install while on the website https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integration/gphhapmejobijbbhgpjhcjognlahblep?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integr... Gnome tweaks to manage them otherwise > brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt Agreed. That's why I use pacman. Pacman is hands down the best package manager I have ever used. Combined with AUR it has the most extensive up-to-date packages. Pacman is the default package manager for Arch Linux. I use arch, btw. Had to do this :) I agree linux was in a pretty bad shape a decade ago and we still need to improve a lot but to say it is still the same is ignoring all the hardwork of a large number of wonderful people who have been contributing to the codebase.

llimllib 7y ago
> Which version of gnome are you on? 3.24 I think? whatever the ubuntu beta is using. > I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there. I can assure you it is not edit to add issue link: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/379 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/3... > Open the app and right click the app icon in dock(if that is what you mean by favorites bar) and it should have an option to add to favorites. neat! that didn't work for kitty though, for example, I had to do it manually. > I have found gnome to have the easiest way to edit all shortcuts. Settings>Devices>Keyboard should show you all the keyboard shortcuts and if you scroll to bottom you will find option to add custom shortcuts which you can set to any command. Much more extensive than the frustrating MacOS keyboard shortcuts in my opinion. The shortcuts panel is indeed very nice, and the shortcuts that you can change there are nice. However, many aren't changeable there, and you have to install (!) and go to the very poorly designed keyboard modifications panel of gnome-tweaks, for example, to change caps lock to esc and tell gnome what you want your windows/mac key to do. Where it falls down from karabiner is: 1. there's no way to have different settings for different keyboards. I have two that I use regularly, with fairly different layouts 2. it lacks the power of karabiner; I'd love to have a rule like "command-c equals ctrl-shift-c but command-t equals ctrl-t". Trivial in karabiner, impossible in gnome > all you then have to do is click install while on the website I'm glad they have that, but I don't want to give my browser that security hole, so I grant you that one's a bit on me. Should be easier to do a manual installation anyway. > I agree linux was in a pretty bad shape a decade ago and we still need to improve a lot but to say it is still the same is ignoring all the hardwork of a large number of wonderful people who have been contributing to the codebase. I do not at all mean to trash the hard work people have done, I really (truly!) respect it. However, from this particular user's perspective, the problems are about equal to what they were a decade ago.

newscracker 7y ago

I had a somewhat similar experience with Linux on an old Mac mini a few years ago. Too many things had to be fiddled with using config files and scripts. I had to resort to using a Magic Trackpad like a regular mouse. There was quite a bit missing "out of the box". I will admit that Linux has improved a lot over the years. But I find that macOS seems to be the one with a "batteries included" experience and is the least annoying among Windows, Linux and macOS. While it's possible to setup Linux to one's preferences with some effort, I find Windows to be standing in my way and slowing me down most of the time even for trivial things (I'm looking at you, Windows 10).

computerex 7y ago
I think the one annoying thing about Windows is the forced updates. Apple has started taking a leaf from Windows. A few weeks ago my system updated and asked to restart without giving me any choice of saying no.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  This is necessary for security. Still you can trivially disable updates for a week or report them again and again. What would be nice though is if they developed a live patching system like the modern Linux kernel allow which means: Windows partial updates without rebooting.
  - computerex 7y ago
    No operating system should update against the user's wishes. And this time the system didn't give me an option to delay, it simply let me know that it's about to restart and that I better save my work.
    - The_rationalist 7y ago
      Sometimes people must be protected from themselves. Still, windows should allow you to delay it many times until forcing you, it's a shame it doesn't.

stratosmacker 7y ago

I felt the same way so for my Linux laptop I moved over to Plasma. It's a real desktop with sane defaults, and I can recommend it. Obviously not quite the same level of polish as the Mac, but try it, you may be pleasantly surprised. Gnome3 has been such a regression of user experience, I've never had a good time using it.

aidenn0 7y ago

Having used Linux since about 2000, gnome has regressed and KDE has improved. I switched to KDE about a year ago and haven't looked back: > * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) - Never had to do this, but I checked. Under "Input Devices" I see "Mouse wheel scrolls by:" as a setting > * To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying - With KDE you can drag any application to the quicklaunch widget, or right-click to add. > * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent I've not used Karabiner, but a quick look does make it look more feature-complete than any single GUI tool I know of on linux. However, keyboard shortcuts are all configurable from a central place on KDE. My biggest downside is that the organization of the "Global Shortcuts" has a UI that only makes sense to a KDE developer. IMO a single list would be more useful than having categories. > * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not True of most systems these days unfortunately; looking for the date of the post on forums/stack-overflow helps > * installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be I've not needed to install a KDE widget that wasn't in the base setup, so I cannot comment. > * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt I have nothing good to say about Ubuntu in general except that it's popularity means that it is easier to get the correct answer by googling. It is by far the most finicky distro I've administered, including Gentoo (which is so high-maintenance that you should only run it if administering systems is a fun hobby). If you want up-to-date software from your package manager, use a rolling release distro. Otherwise the best you can do is something like a base setup and then side-load the software you want. This problem has been identified to the point where there are several brew-like systems (and things like snap as well), but no clear winner yet. > I remain reasonably happy with it, but Mac is still so far ahead of it in terms of usability it's wild. I think this will always be true. The Mac has such a lead in "There is a bright path and things will be fine so long as you don't stray from it" coupled with the fact that they control both hardware and software means that there just don't seem to be enough people who both want a Linux like that and have the know-how to make it happen. The counterpoint is perhaps chromebooks, which occupy such a different price-point compared to macs that they make their own niche at least in primary and secondary education.

jlarocco 7y ago

> * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent That's not a Linux problem, it's a window manager problem. Setting keyboard shortcuts is a piece of cake in StumpWM. > * searching for help usually yields results that are half a decade or more old, and it's very difficult to figure out if it's current advice or not That's a search engine problem, and it affects a lot of stuff besides Linux. > * brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt That depends on your distro. Lots of systems use Apt, and they all have their own package servers. I've used Debian testing for years, and it's always been reasonably up to date.

dleslie 7y ago

Stay far away from Gnome3; it's a performance, usability and accessibility dumpster fire. MATE, XFCE, LXDE and KDE are all better choices.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Dont forget Budgie. While not quite as polished as it can be its a newcomer so I am not surprised. It is otherwise a sweet DE for me.
- vips7L 7y ago
  I ran budgie for about a year before switching back to windows for work and its leagues better than Gnome in my experience. Though at this point I think I would go for KDE given the opportunity.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    I dont mind KDE and I do like Kubuntu but at work everyones on Gnome DEs so I try to have close enough environments so they dont blame KDE for all my problems when things break.
    - vips7L 7y ago
      I get it. The mac dev's like to blame windows at my place.
      - giancarlostoro 7y ago
        Windows usually has some easier to setup utilities to develop on for some projects. We have Mac, Windows and mostly Linux devs. I sometimes wish I was on Windows its more predictable to me.
squarefoot 7y ago
Sadly Gnome3, although sucking badly in many aspects, dumbed down and bloated, is the only viable option for tablets. Unless something has changed in the last months, having correct screen orientation and rotation consistent with correct touch management without adding/editing scripts by hand is a nightmare: imagine you finally get the screen correctly orientated but now if you drag the finger to the right the arrow goes up.

yummypaint 7y ago

"Linux" in 2019 refers to such a broad array of software that it's almost meaningless when talking about a specific experience. It's annoying to do, but trying some different distros and guis is well worth the time. There are plenty of people who self identify as full time linux users who cant stand to use each others computers, so there isn't any kind of consensus about what a good linux experience is because people are often trying to get very different things done. Personally i thing gnome 3 is utter garbage, and poisons people against the whole ecosystem because it's usually what people try first because the screenshots look shiny. You might have a better time with mate or something similar.

oxguy3 7y ago

> * modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent Lol, different strokes for different folks. Having to use Karabiner instead of the much more versatile tools on Linux really peeved me when I switched over a few years ago. I like to rebind my caps lock to function as an extra modifier key. On Linux, you just set it to Hyper; ezpz. On Mac, you just straight up can't, so I have to bind it to command+control+option+shift to get the next best thing (since I would never actually press all four of those keys). And I've had issues with Mac's Keyboard Shortcuts -- some of my shortcuts have just stopped working. I used to have CapsLock+[1-9] as shortcuts to switch to Workspaces 1-9, but some of the shortcuts just stopped working and I've had no luck finding a fix. On Linux, it may take more effort to do something, but it'll always be possible. So many of the things I want to do on Mac are just not options. When I retire this MacBook, I'll be going back to Linux.

a1369209993 7y ago
This pretty much sums up both why I switched from Windows to Linux and why I'll never buy anything Apple is pushing. On Linux, the easy stuff is annoying and the hard-but-necessary stuff is even more annoying; on Windows and Mac, the easy stuff is easy and the hard-but-necessary stuff is impossible. Edit: Well, that and also because, if my OS is going to randomly break whenever some idiot pushes a "update", it might as well be one I don't pay money for, and one that only updates when I tell it to.

deergomoo 7y ago

I wanted to find out the proper way to disable middle-click paste because all the solutions I could find involved basically disabling the button all together, but I still wanted to use it for closing tabs etc. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. One high rated StackOverflow answer I found suggested purchasing a mouse with a less sensitive mouse wheel.

bschwindHN 7y ago
This was one of my biggest grievances with desktop Linux. Not driver support or a lack of applications or ugly interfaces, but the fucking middle click to paste enabled by default! It just shows such poor taste for defaults, especially when tap-to-click is enabled. Text gets randomly inserted everywhere. On Manjaro this causes sticky notes to be created everywhere on the desktop. It's insane that someone gave it the thumbs up. And the stackoverflow solutions all just disable the middle click altogether like you said.

rurp 7y ago

> modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent This had been a headache for me as well, but I've had great luck with AutoKey. Obviously it would be better if there was a native solution, but at least this works IME.

catalogia 7y ago

The GNOME project has gone very far astray. Their UX "experts" are self-appointed tyrants who want to control how you use the computer and seem to get sick kicks out of telling users that they're wrong whenever users want do something even slightly different. "You THINK you want to change your mouse speed but actually you're an idiot and you're wrong" is a classic example of this. GNOME is more of a problem than linux itself. It doesn't have to be this bad. More distros could be packaging KDE (or even XFCE?) as the default, but incentives seem misaligned.

neop1x 7y ago
I switched to KDE on Arch Linux two years ago and I am happy since. Even KDE Connect works there (android notification sync).

heavyset_go 7y ago

> To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. I mean, I'm a programmer, so I'm capable of it, but it's seriously annoying Just install the Menu Editor app from the Ubuntu Software channel. > installing a gnome-shell extension was way more difficult than it should be Go to extensions.gnome.org, install the Firefox or Chrome extension and click the "Install" button on the website to install gnome-shell extensions. > brew isn't the best, but on linux I need to use both brew _and_ apt because you can't reliably get anything approaching up-to-date software with apt Use snaps or flatpak. Using Homebrew on Linux feels wrong.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness. .desktop files are about the dumbest damn thing ever. Why is the 'category' of an application, which pretty much every menu interprets as its sub-folder location, determined here [0]? Why is there absolutely no ability whatsoever to set a relative path to an icon file [1]? It's like there were designed by someone who had never used a GUI before and had one described to him while writing the spec [0]. [0] Given other choices made by FreeDesktop.org, this might actually be true.

nkoren 7y ago

> * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) Oh yeah, that! Lost another five-ish hours to that, and eventually just decided to live with crappy scrolling.

resonator 7y ago

> modifying keyboard shortcuts is extremely difficult; I really wish linux had a karabiner equivalent Good news. There is. It's called autokey. Its a bit clunkier and crashes occasionally, but it allows you to rebind you application shortcuts. Finding this made migrating back to linux possible for me. https://github.com/autokey/autokey/wiki/API-Examples https://github.com/autokey/autokey/wiki/API-Examples

pnutjam 7y ago

KDE let's me do all this stuff, on OpenSuse. Zypper is also way ahead of apt.