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Linux was always a disaster in terms of user experience and isn't improving. Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX

by kick 6y ago

Linux was always a disaster in terms of user experience and isn't improving. Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX usually have only tried a single distribution with a single desktop environment.

addicted44 6y ago
This is a good point. It's really hard for me to use non i3wm supporting OSes now, even though I have to use Windows from work, and have used Macs for the better part of the last 2 decades personally and in college.
BruceEel 6y ago
Interesting. I regularly use RHEL (server/CLI only) but have not tried desktop Linux in a while. I get a fair bit of weekly exposure to Windows 10 and well, it's not like heaps of fun, UX wise. I'm reluctant to drop Apple mainly because I'm so 'tied up' with the rest of the ecosystem, iphone, Apple Music, iCloud etc.. They are not irreplaceable (for sure) but it always feels like moving away will cost way too much effort and be a pain... Well played, Apple.
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  > I'm reluctant to drop Apple mainly because I'm so 'tied up' with the rest of the ecosystem, iphone, Apple Music, iCloud etc.. They are not irreplaceable (for sure) but it always feels like moving away will cost way too much effort and be a pain... Well played, Apple. This is why I don't want anything by Apple.
m463 6y ago
People who have used ubuntu might want to just once try arch linux. I had an ubuntu machine that took a while to boot even with an SSD. Later I installed arch linux on the same machine and boom! it would be to the desktop in seconds. It was night and day.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Debian is just as quick, and does not have the problematic "rolling" updates of Arch. (It does have the "testing" and "unstable" channels which are roughly comparable, but the Debian folks won't tell you to use them in production.)
  - kick 6y ago
    Debian is not just as quick (significantly slower and higher resource usage), but Arch isn't all that fast nowadays, either.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > Debian is not just as quick (significantly slower and higher resource usage) In which respects? Are you talking about apt vs pacman or something? Default DEs?
      - kick 6y ago
        Default install; a default Debian install has about 3x running.
    - Yetanfou 6y ago
      Debian - or Devuan if you don't want systemd - can be made as spartan as you want. It boots in those mentioned few seconds on my 15yo T42p (Pentium M@1.8GHz, 2GB). Use Sid/Unstable if you want more up-to-date software with the accompanying larger flow of updates.
  - m463 6y ago
    > problematic "rolling" updates Rolling updates for me have not been problematic. I've had a few updates that gave an error message, and they were easily fixed in one minute after searching the arch website. I think one was a key expired - I had to manually update it and redo the update process. The other I can recall was a package that had become obsolete/conflicting and a question had to be answered. In general rolling updates are a tiny blip every few months. In comparison, the several debian based distributions I've run have been a "lost weekend" type of upgrade for major updates.
dmitriid 6y ago
> Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX usually have only tried a single distribution with a single desktop environment. Yup. You've just described a disaster. How many permutations of <hundreds of distros> x <dozens of DMs> must a user try before finding a good UX?
- kick 6y ago
  Mac is a BSD. OpenBSD exists. FreeBSD exists. NetBSD exists. Because there are at least four BSDs, Mac therefore isn't good. Do you see how ridiculous applying that logic to any operating system is? Linux isn't a disaster. It's a kernel. There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX, developed by people who are great at it. There are also distributions that aren't.
  - BruceEel 6y ago
    > There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX Could you name some? No sarcasm, actually interested!
    - kick 6y ago
      It sort of depends on what really fascinates you, right? I'll avoid naming some of the most popular ones, because it's likely that you've already tried them. If you haven't, I'd really recommend giving them a try. Many people seem to really love them. In terms of defaults: I've heard really good things about Solus, and its use of AppArmor seems really cool. Never touched its package manager, so I won't recommend it, but it might be worth checking out. Its desktop environment is really snappy and has an interesting design philosophy. Elementary is really cool as a boutique distribution; I don't personally feel any urge to use it seriously (I dislike apt as a package manager), but I always keep its live environment on a flash drive, because it works without any setup on basically anything I throw it at, painlessly, and without error. It's got a cool indie app store full of curated Elementary-centric free software, and overall just feels great. Using it, you'll probably notice a few areas that it clones Mac on, and a few that feel delightfully different. Clear Linux (Intel's desktop distribution) is pretty popular right now because of how simple it is & how Intel seems to be going to great lengths to optimize it and make it a serious contender, but I don't like its desktop environment (vanilla GNOME 3 as far as I'm aware) all that much. ChromiumOS is probably the best-designed desktop operating system on the planet right now technically, and I say that as a person who really hates Google. UI-wise it's so-so, but UX-wise it's really something special. But more interesting are desktop environments in general, since they can be used with any variant of Linux you feel the urge to use. There's an exception there, though, in that Elementary's DE and Deepin's DE tend to not work so well or nicely on platforms that aren't Elementary or Deepin. There are modern environments: Plasma has hands-down the best UX of any sort of desktop operating system assuming you've got an Android smartphone; you say you're coming from Apple's environment, so imagine the interop between your Mac and your iPhone, but going both ways instead of just Mac -> iPhone. Texting, handling calls, taking advantage of the computing resources of connected devices, using your phone as an extra trackpad, notifications, unlocking your PC, painless file-sharing, pretty much anything you'd like. There are a bunch of distributions that ship with Plasma by default. Solus's Budgie is kind of neat in that it takes the main benefit of GNOME 3 (ecosystem) with far fewer downsides. There are also retro environments, if those are your thing. There's a pretty much perfect NeXTSTEP clone (including the programming environment, not just the UI), amiwm is still pretty interesting, there are clones of basically every UNIX UI under the sun, so on. I'm not the best person to answer your question, because for the most part I don't go out of my way to use new desktop environments and distributions, and nothing above is my first choice. (In terms of window management, I usually stick with 9wm & E just because I have ridiculous ADHD and 9wm forces me to focus while E allows me to tile painlessly if I ever need it. I use three distributions overall, none of which are very popular at the moment, pretty much solely because I'm really picky with package managers & design philosophies.) That's a "me" issue rather than a Linux issue, though.
the_af 6y ago
Moreover, I've been running Linux for decades now, both in my personal laptop and at work, and Ubuntu has been (mostly) frictionless for me. I'm not an average user, of course, but for most users a friendly distro would work just as well as Windows (browsing the internet, using whatsapp web, watching movies). In some cases I've had a better user experience with Ubuntu than with Windows or OS X, namely seamlessly installing a wireless HP laser printer.
- hrktb 6y ago
  I only tried Ubuntu, a few month ago. For the day or two spent with it: - multi-language support requires a lot of work to get to the same point as macos. In particular I use third party shortcut mappers to get language switching on left and right command keys (mimicking the JIS keyboards, but with an english international layout). That looks like something I’d have to give up on code myself. - printer support is not at the same level. Using a xerox printer, some options that appear by default on macos where not there on ubuntu. I’m sure there must be drivers somewhere, or I could hunt down more settings. But then my work office two other printers. It would be a PITA to hunt down drivers every time I want to use another printer. - Hi DPI support is still flagged as experimental, and there’s a bunch of hoops to jump through to get a good setting in multi-monitor mode. Sure it’s doable, but still arcane. - sleep/wake was weird. It would work most of the time, but randomly kept awake after closing the lid, or not waking up when opening. Not critical, but still not good (I’d ahte to have the battery depleted while traveling) Overall if I had no choice that would be a fine environment. But as it is now, with all its quirks, I feel macos is still a smoother environment.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Fair enough. I'm not a Mac OS X user so I don't know how it would compare. I can only compare it with my past experience with Windows, and I think it's superior (for me) to Windows circa 7 -- I stopped using Windows entirely at that point, so I wouldn't know how later versions of Windows fare. Portability is also a fair issue to raise, but it's simply not a problem for me. When I say Linux "on the desktop", I literally mean it: to me a laptop is simply a slightly more portable desktop computer. I sometimes take my work laptop to/from the office, and the battery lasts long enough for that. I'm not worried about longer trips, since I don't use laptops for that. Again, if you do care about this (which is completely fair), I'm aware many Linux distros still have issues with battery life. You certainly can't compete with a Macbook Pro, that's for sure! I do note that my experience with printers is opposite to yours. Like I said, when trying to connect to an HP wireless printer, Ubuntu autodetected and self-downloaded the necessary drivers; however, it took a lot of patience to get it to work with a Macbook Pro. Today, that I have it configured for my Ubuntu laptop and my wife's Macbook Pro, the Mac will sometimes fail to print (the print job simply stuck in limbo) while my laptop prints reliably. Who knows? And like I said in another comment, I game (or used to, anyway) a lot with Ubuntu, and many games are even AAA (though they tend to arrive later than on Windows). So I really have a hard time believing Linux is not "ready for the desktop". It is, and has been for many years now. edit: one last thing. You mentioned HDPi modes, multimonitor, multilanguage... none of those are for average users. My mom would be comfortable browsing the net, reading mail and watching movies on Ubuntu. She doesn't even know what HDPi is, nor does she want external monitors. (Spoiler: she still uses Windows because she can't learn anything else at this point... I've thought of tricking her by themeing Ubuntu to look like Windows, but that would just be mean).
tsukurimashou 6y ago
I feel like people still have in mind what Linux desktop was 15 / 20 years ago. It improved a lot in the past years, battery life improved on laptops, Ubuntu that was already very stable and feature complete also got a lot of things with previous releases and I've personally been running Arch on my main computers now for 5+ years and haven't got any major issues while upgrading.
- defnotashton2 6y ago
  Try using the latest version of software that has a more frequent release cycle than arch. If you have an incompatibility there goes your install. Have yet to see a distro do multi monitor hi dipi that results in readable fonts out of the box.. This gets updated yearly - https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...
  - ubercow13 6y ago
    This list is quite comprehensive, but also quite boring. It's just a list of bugs and things that are suboptimal on Linux. You could write one about any operating system. Some of the items like 'such-and-such needs to be configured using a text file' are also not even real problems. What do you mean by 'there goes your install'? There are multiple ways you could run bleeding-edge software before it's packaged for Arch. See for example every 'xxx-git' package in the AUR. Or Flatpak.
  - hexchain 6y ago
    Arch does not have a release cycle, sorry.
lone_haxx0r 6y ago
I use Linux everyday, and it's a UX disaster. I have tried Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, KDE, I like none of them. The only DE that I somewhat liked (Unity) was discontinued. Linux sucks, but I use it becuase it sucks less than windows, for programming at least.
- KajMagnus 6y ago
  How interesting, I like Cinnamon and Gnome and KDE, but didn't like Unity. Instead, for me, the problem is poor printer support.

by kick 6y ago

addicted44 6y ago

This is a good point. It's really hard for me to use non i3wm supporting OSes now, even though I have to use Windows from work, and have used Macs for the better part of the last 2 decades personally and in college.

BruceEel 6y ago

Interesting. I regularly use RHEL (server/CLI only) but have not tried desktop Linux in a while. I get a fair bit of weekly exposure to Windows 10 and well, it's not like heaps of fun, UX wise. I'm reluctant to drop Apple mainly because I'm so 'tied up' with the rest of the ecosystem, iphone, Apple Music, iCloud etc.. They are not irreplaceable (for sure) but it always feels like moving away will cost way too much effort and be a pain... Well played, Apple.

The_Colonel 6y ago
> I'm reluctant to drop Apple mainly because I'm so 'tied up' with the rest of the ecosystem, iphone, Apple Music, iCloud etc.. They are not irreplaceable (for sure) but it always feels like moving away will cost way too much effort and be a pain... Well played, Apple. This is why I don't want anything by Apple.

m463 6y ago

People who have used ubuntu might want to just once try arch linux. I had an ubuntu machine that took a while to boot even with an SSD. Later I installed arch linux on the same machine and boom! it would be to the desktop in seconds. It was night and day.

zozbot234 6y ago
Debian is just as quick, and does not have the problematic "rolling" updates of Arch. (It does have the "testing" and "unstable" channels which are roughly comparable, but the Debian folks won't tell you to use them in production.)
- kick 6y ago
  Debian is not just as quick (significantly slower and higher resource usage), but Arch isn't all that fast nowadays, either.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    > Debian is not just as quick (significantly slower and higher resource usage) In which respects? Are you talking about apt vs pacman or something? Default DEs?
    - kick 6y ago
      Default install; a default Debian install has about 3x running.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    Debian - or Devuan if you don't want systemd - can be made as spartan as you want. It boots in those mentioned few seconds on my 15yo T42p (Pentium M@1.8GHz, 2GB). Use Sid/Unstable if you want more up-to-date software with the accompanying larger flow of updates.
- m463 6y ago
  > problematic "rolling" updates Rolling updates for me have not been problematic. I've had a few updates that gave an error message, and they were easily fixed in one minute after searching the arch website. I think one was a key expired - I had to manually update it and redo the update process. The other I can recall was a package that had become obsolete/conflicting and a question had to be answered. In general rolling updates are a tiny blip every few months. In comparison, the several debian based distributions I've run have been a "lost weekend" type of upgrade for major updates.

dmitriid 6y ago

> Curious: what have you tried? People who use "Linux" as a catch-all in terms of UX usually have only tried a single distribution with a single desktop environment. Yup. You've just described a disaster. How many permutations of <hundreds of distros> x <dozens of DMs> must a user try before finding a good UX?

kick 6y ago
Mac is a BSD. OpenBSD exists. FreeBSD exists. NetBSD exists. Because there are at least four BSDs, Mac therefore isn't good. Do you see how ridiculous applying that logic to any operating system is? Linux isn't a disaster. It's a kernel. There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX, developed by people who are great at it. There are also distributions that aren't.
- BruceEel 6y ago
  > There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX Could you name some? No sarcasm, actually interested!
  - kick 6y ago
    It sort of depends on what really fascinates you, right? I'll avoid naming some of the most popular ones, because it's likely that you've already tried them. If you haven't, I'd really recommend giving them a try. Many people seem to really love them. In terms of defaults: I've heard really good things about Solus, and its use of AppArmor seems really cool. Never touched its package manager, so I won't recommend it, but it might be worth checking out. Its desktop environment is really snappy and has an interesting design philosophy. Elementary is really cool as a boutique distribution; I don't personally feel any urge to use it seriously (I dislike apt as a package manager), but I always keep its live environment on a flash drive, because it works without any setup on basically anything I throw it at, painlessly, and without error. It's got a cool indie app store full of curated Elementary-centric free software, and overall just feels great. Using it, you'll probably notice a few areas that it clones Mac on, and a few that feel delightfully different. Clear Linux (Intel's desktop distribution) is pretty popular right now because of how simple it is & how Intel seems to be going to great lengths to optimize it and make it a serious contender, but I don't like its desktop environment (vanilla GNOME 3 as far as I'm aware) all that much. ChromiumOS is probably the best-designed desktop operating system on the planet right now technically, and I say that as a person who really hates Google. UI-wise it's so-so, but UX-wise it's really something special. But more interesting are desktop environments in general, since they can be used with any variant of Linux you feel the urge to use. There's an exception there, though, in that Elementary's DE and Deepin's DE tend to not work so well or nicely on platforms that aren't Elementary or Deepin. There are modern environments: Plasma has hands-down the best UX of any sort of desktop operating system assuming you've got an Android smartphone; you say you're coming from Apple's environment, so imagine the interop between your Mac and your iPhone, but going both ways instead of just Mac -> iPhone. Texting, handling calls, taking advantage of the computing resources of connected devices, using your phone as an extra trackpad, notifications, unlocking your PC, painless file-sharing, pretty much anything you'd like. There are a bunch of distributions that ship with Plasma by default. Solus's Budgie is kind of neat in that it takes the main benefit of GNOME 3 (ecosystem) with far fewer downsides. There are also retro environments, if those are your thing. There's a pretty much perfect NeXTSTEP clone (including the programming environment, not just the UI), amiwm is still pretty interesting, there are clones of basically every UNIX UI under the sun, so on. I'm not the best person to answer your question, because for the most part I don't go out of my way to use new desktop environments and distributions, and nothing above is my first choice. (In terms of window management, I usually stick with 9wm & E just because I have ridiculous ADHD and 9wm forces me to focus while E allows me to tile painlessly if I ever need it. I use three distributions overall, none of which are very popular at the moment, pretty much solely because I'm really picky with package managers & design philosophies.) That's a "me" issue rather than a Linux issue, though.

the_af 6y ago

Moreover, I've been running Linux for decades now, both in my personal laptop and at work, and Ubuntu has been (mostly) frictionless for me. I'm not an average user, of course, but for most users a friendly distro would work just as well as Windows (browsing the internet, using whatsapp web, watching movies). In some cases I've had a better user experience with Ubuntu than with Windows or OS X, namely seamlessly installing a wireless HP laser printer.

hrktb 6y ago
I only tried Ubuntu, a few month ago. For the day or two spent with it: - multi-language support requires a lot of work to get to the same point as macos. In particular I use third party shortcut mappers to get language switching on left and right command keys (mimicking the JIS keyboards, but with an english international layout). That looks like something I’d have to give up on code myself. - printer support is not at the same level. Using a xerox printer, some options that appear by default on macos where not there on ubuntu. I’m sure there must be drivers somewhere, or I could hunt down more settings. But then my work office two other printers. It would be a PITA to hunt down drivers every time I want to use another printer. - Hi DPI support is still flagged as experimental, and there’s a bunch of hoops to jump through to get a good setting in multi-monitor mode. Sure it’s doable, but still arcane. - sleep/wake was weird. It would work most of the time, but randomly kept awake after closing the lid, or not waking up when opening. Not critical, but still not good (I’d ahte to have the battery depleted while traveling) Overall if I had no choice that would be a fine environment. But as it is now, with all its quirks, I feel macos is still a smoother environment.
- the_af 6y ago
  Fair enough. I'm not a Mac OS X user so I don't know how it would compare. I can only compare it with my past experience with Windows, and I think it's superior (for me) to Windows circa 7 -- I stopped using Windows entirely at that point, so I wouldn't know how later versions of Windows fare. Portability is also a fair issue to raise, but it's simply not a problem for me. When I say Linux "on the desktop", I literally mean it: to me a laptop is simply a slightly more portable desktop computer. I sometimes take my work laptop to/from the office, and the battery lasts long enough for that. I'm not worried about longer trips, since I don't use laptops for that. Again, if you do care about this (which is completely fair), I'm aware many Linux distros still have issues with battery life. You certainly can't compete with a Macbook Pro, that's for sure! I do note that my experience with printers is opposite to yours. Like I said, when trying to connect to an HP wireless printer, Ubuntu autodetected and self-downloaded the necessary drivers; however, it took a lot of patience to get it to work with a Macbook Pro. Today, that I have it configured for my Ubuntu laptop and my wife's Macbook Pro, the Mac will sometimes fail to print (the print job simply stuck in limbo) while my laptop prints reliably. Who knows? And like I said in another comment, I game (or used to, anyway) a lot with Ubuntu, and many games are even AAA (though they tend to arrive later than on Windows). So I really have a hard time believing Linux is not "ready for the desktop". It is, and has been for many years now. edit: one last thing. You mentioned HDPi modes, multimonitor, multilanguage... none of those are for average users. My mom would be comfortable browsing the net, reading mail and watching movies on Ubuntu. She doesn't even know what HDPi is, nor does she want external monitors. (Spoiler: she still uses Windows because she can't learn anything else at this point... I've thought of tricking her by themeing Ubuntu to look like Windows, but that would just be mean).

tsukurimashou 6y ago

I feel like people still have in mind what Linux desktop was 15 / 20 years ago. It improved a lot in the past years, battery life improved on laptops, Ubuntu that was already very stable and feature complete also got a lot of things with previous releases and I've personally been running Arch on my main computers now for 5+ years and haven't got any major issues while upgrading.

defnotashton2 6y ago
Try using the latest version of software that has a more frequent release cycle than arch. If you have an incompatibility there goes your install. Have yet to see a distro do multi monitor hi dipi that results in readable fonts out of the box.. This gets updated yearly - https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html https://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.t...
- ubercow13 6y ago
  This list is quite comprehensive, but also quite boring. It's just a list of bugs and things that are suboptimal on Linux. You could write one about any operating system. Some of the items like 'such-and-such needs to be configured using a text file' are also not even real problems. What do you mean by 'there goes your install'? There are multiple ways you could run bleeding-edge software before it's packaged for Arch. See for example every 'xxx-git' package in the AUR. Or Flatpak.
- hexchain 6y ago
  Arch does not have a release cycle, sorry.

lone_haxx0r 6y ago

I use Linux everyday, and it's a UX disaster. I have tried Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, KDE, I like none of them. The only DE that I somewhat liked (Unity) was discontinued. Linux sucks, but I use it becuase it sucks less than windows, for programming at least.

KajMagnus 6y ago
How interesting, I like Cinnamon and Gnome and KDE, but didn't like Unity. Instead, for me, the problem is poor printer support.