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> 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 environ

> 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.
    - BruceEel 6y ago
      This is excellent and indeed largely novel information, thank you. It sounds like the finding right combination of DE and package management solution plays a big role here. I don't remember much of my experience with Gentoo's package manager in the early 2000's other than finding it generally did its job (if a bit slowly)... Experience with package managers on Mac (brew, macports) hasn't been great so I'm eager to play around with modern ones on Linux. Same goes for the DE actually: stock, out-of-the-box, macOS is essentially unusable for me until I get my customization (scroll, trackpad, KeyboardMaestro) done exactly right, I can't imagine this not being better on Linux, if anything for the ability to switch among the various DE's. I'm starting to contemplate this (fully untested) strategy: trying out a few distros and installing the one I like best on VMWare Fusion and then try to use it as much as possible, falling back to macOS if I get stuck or I'm short on time but gradually replacing Mac-specific stuff as I find suitable replacements.. TextMate, the masterpiece of Allan Odgaard (author of the article being discussed here) probably going to be the toughest one. If I'm successful, I should eventually be able to let Linux 'out of the box' and run it on real hardware.. PS: amiwm! This is going to be a must. I do miss the Amiga, a fair bit..
      - kick 6y ago
        My favorite package managers, personally: xbps apk (terrible interface; wonderful technically) pacman (wonderful interface; so-so technically; dislike the distro that uses it because of technical choices) InstallPackage (GoboLinux is kind of cheating, because InstallPackage isn't a "real" package manager, but that's kind of the point) I love TextMate, too! Something you might find nice is how easy it is to run Mac in a VM on Linux; there are scripts that manage the entire thing for you, and it's pretty painless (and so fast; I was surprised). Useful if you have a few packages you can't find replacements for. You mention Apple Music elsewhere, which you might be interested to know has an Android client and a web client, and you can probably get a native client on Linux, though I'm not immediately aware of one.
        BruceEel 6y ago
        > I love TextMate, too! Something you might find nice is how easy it is to run Mac in a VM on Linux; there are scripts that manage the entire thing for you, and it's pretty painless (and so fast; I was surprised). That would be excellent! I like the idea of swapping host and guest with this VM strategy, sort of evolutionary platform switching.
  - 3combinatorHN 6y ago
    Stable distributions Fedora manjaro ubuntu UIX gnome kde xfce all works
- saagarjha 6y ago
  macOS is actually kind of mediocre at being a BSD these days ;)
- dmitriid 6y ago
  > Do you see how ridiculous applying that logic to any operating system is? Somehow, when you ask a person about PC or a Mac, the answer is: Windows or MacOS, and then the discussion is about their quirks, or advantages, or deficiencies. You ask about Linux, and this is what you get: > Linux isn't a disaster. It's a kernel. There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX So, once again: which one of the hundreds of permutations of <distro> x <DM> has a great UX?
  - kick 6y ago
    Ask a person about UNIX, they'll list Mac, Solaris, whatever. All UNIX distributions! I listed a bunch elsewhere in this subthread. Feel free to check them out, but for some reason I'm beginning to suspect that you're probably not going to.
the_af 6y ago
Ubuntu pretty much works out of the box for a lot of "regular" users (I'm excluding gaming, which also works but is not as easy). I'm sure there are other user-friendly distros that similarly let average users browse the internet, write documents, listen to music and watch movies painlessly.
- captainbland 6y ago
  I'd say gaming on Ubuntu LTS (if not Linux in general) is quite easy provided you stay in the safe haven of games that natively support the OS, which to be fair is a pretty solid selection of games these days albeit one which is pretty much a strict subset of the games on Windows. As soon as you go outside that area and start messing with Wine or whatever all bets are off, though.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Agreed! I play a lot of games on Linux, bought via Steam or GOG, occasionally with help of WINE but mostly without. I excluded gaming because if one thing is likely to cause more problems than on Windows, it's games. But yes, I use Ubuntu even for gaming. The fact I can install Steam and play an AAA like Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor mostly seamlessly makes me wonder why people still claim Linux on the desktop is a no-go.
    - konart 6y ago
      >The fact I can install Steam and play an AAA like Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor mostly seamlessly makes me wonder why people still claim Linux on the desktop is a no-go. Because they and few others are exceptions? Can you play the latest CoD? GTA V? Assasin's Creed maybe?
      - the_af 6y ago
        I think you're missing the point. I'm not arguing that Linux is the best platform if your use case is primarily gaming. Nothing beats Windows -- or a console! -- if gaming is the most important thing to you. > GTA V? I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if I could using WINE. A huge library of Windows AAA games work on WINE. > Assasin's Creed I don't know, but Mad Max and Shadow of Mordor are pretty much the same kind of game as Assassin's Creed, following the same kind of gameplay and using the same kind and complexity of 3D graphics/engine. In any case, these are not exceptions. I forgot to mention the XCOM remake, Alien: Isolation (this is interesting because it has tons of graphics effects, including chroma aberration -- it looks awesome on Linux), SOMA, Victor Vran, Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II, L4D2, and many others. There are tons of Linux games on GOG and Steam, many of them AAA games. If you count indie games or 2D platformers there are literally thousands of them, but I guess that's not what you're after.
catalogia 6y ago
> Yup. You've just described a disaster. Hardly. The existence of a distro I don't like doesn't degrade my experience using a distro I do like. You may as well be upset at an ice cream shop for having dozens of flavors when you only like strawberry. Choose the one you like and ignore the ones you don't. It's not rocket science, even children can figure that out.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > The existence of a distro I don't like doesn't degrade my experience using a distro I do like. The problem under discussion here is not that of using a distro you like, but finding a distro that you like.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    If an icecream shop only has one flavor, I might get lucky and discover it's the flavor I like. But more likely, I'll just be screwed and have to settle for something I don't like. Only an icecream shop with variety can hope to give the most amount of people an optimal experience.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      Unless the ice cream shop provides you with hundreds of flavours, 90% of which are nearly indistinguishable from each other. And hardly anyone on this planet can answer a straight question of "Which flavour is good".
      - catalogia 6y ago
        If they're 90% indistinguishable, how is that distinguishable from an icecream shop that simply has fewer flavors?

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.
  - BruceEel 6y ago
    This is excellent and indeed largely novel information, thank you. It sounds like the finding right combination of DE and package management solution plays a big role here. I don't remember much of my experience with Gentoo's package manager in the early 2000's other than finding it generally did its job (if a bit slowly)... Experience with package managers on Mac (brew, macports) hasn't been great so I'm eager to play around with modern ones on Linux. Same goes for the DE actually: stock, out-of-the-box, macOS is essentially unusable for me until I get my customization (scroll, trackpad, KeyboardMaestro) done exactly right, I can't imagine this not being better on Linux, if anything for the ability to switch among the various DE's. I'm starting to contemplate this (fully untested) strategy: trying out a few distros and installing the one I like best on VMWare Fusion and then try to use it as much as possible, falling back to macOS if I get stuck or I'm short on time but gradually replacing Mac-specific stuff as I find suitable replacements.. TextMate, the masterpiece of Allan Odgaard (author of the article being discussed here) probably going to be the toughest one. If I'm successful, I should eventually be able to let Linux 'out of the box' and run it on real hardware.. PS: amiwm! This is going to be a must. I do miss the Amiga, a fair bit..
    - kick 6y ago
      My favorite package managers, personally: xbps apk (terrible interface; wonderful technically) pacman (wonderful interface; so-so technically; dislike the distro that uses it because of technical choices) InstallPackage (GoboLinux is kind of cheating, because InstallPackage isn't a "real" package manager, but that's kind of the point) I love TextMate, too! Something you might find nice is how easy it is to run Mac in a VM on Linux; there are scripts that manage the entire thing for you, and it's pretty painless (and so fast; I was surprised). Useful if you have a few packages you can't find replacements for. You mention Apple Music elsewhere, which you might be interested to know has an Android client and a web client, and you can probably get a native client on Linux, though I'm not immediately aware of one.
      - BruceEel 6y ago
        > I love TextMate, too! Something you might find nice is how easy it is to run Mac in a VM on Linux; there are scripts that manage the entire thing for you, and it's pretty painless (and so fast; I was surprised). That would be excellent! I like the idea of swapping host and guest with this VM strategy, sort of evolutionary platform switching.
- 3combinatorHN 6y ago
  Stable distributions Fedora manjaro ubuntu UIX gnome kde xfce all works
saagarjha 6y ago
macOS is actually kind of mediocre at being a BSD these days ;)
dmitriid 6y ago
> Do you see how ridiculous applying that logic to any operating system is? Somehow, when you ask a person about PC or a Mac, the answer is: Windows or MacOS, and then the discussion is about their quirks, or advantages, or deficiencies. You ask about Linux, and this is what you get: > Linux isn't a disaster. It's a kernel. There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX So, once again: which one of the hundreds of permutations of <distro> x <DM> has a great UX?
- kick 6y ago
  Ask a person about UNIX, they'll list Mac, Solaris, whatever. All UNIX distributions! I listed a bunch elsewhere in this subthread. Feel free to check them out, but for some reason I'm beginning to suspect that you're probably not going to.

the_af 6y ago

Ubuntu pretty much works out of the box for a lot of "regular" users (I'm excluding gaming, which also works but is not as easy). I'm sure there are other user-friendly distros that similarly let average users browse the internet, write documents, listen to music and watch movies painlessly.

captainbland 6y ago
I'd say gaming on Ubuntu LTS (if not Linux in general) is quite easy provided you stay in the safe haven of games that natively support the OS, which to be fair is a pretty solid selection of games these days albeit one which is pretty much a strict subset of the games on Windows. As soon as you go outside that area and start messing with Wine or whatever all bets are off, though.
- the_af 6y ago
  Agreed! I play a lot of games on Linux, bought via Steam or GOG, occasionally with help of WINE but mostly without. I excluded gaming because if one thing is likely to cause more problems than on Windows, it's games. But yes, I use Ubuntu even for gaming. The fact I can install Steam and play an AAA like Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor mostly seamlessly makes me wonder why people still claim Linux on the desktop is a no-go.
  - konart 6y ago
    >The fact I can install Steam and play an AAA like Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor mostly seamlessly makes me wonder why people still claim Linux on the desktop is a no-go. Because they and few others are exceptions? Can you play the latest CoD? GTA V? Assasin's Creed maybe?
    - the_af 6y ago
      I think you're missing the point. I'm not arguing that Linux is the best platform if your use case is primarily gaming. Nothing beats Windows -- or a console! -- if gaming is the most important thing to you. > GTA V? I honestly don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if I could using WINE. A huge library of Windows AAA games work on WINE. > Assasin's Creed I don't know, but Mad Max and Shadow of Mordor are pretty much the same kind of game as Assassin's Creed, following the same kind of gameplay and using the same kind and complexity of 3D graphics/engine. In any case, these are not exceptions. I forgot to mention the XCOM remake, Alien: Isolation (this is interesting because it has tons of graphics effects, including chroma aberration -- it looks awesome on Linux), SOMA, Victor Vran, Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II, L4D2, and many others. There are tons of Linux games on GOG and Steam, many of them AAA games. If you count indie games or 2D platformers there are literally thousands of them, but I guess that's not what you're after.

catalogia 6y ago

> Yup. You've just described a disaster. Hardly. The existence of a distro I don't like doesn't degrade my experience using a distro I do like. You may as well be upset at an ice cream shop for having dozens of flavors when you only like strawberry. Choose the one you like and ignore the ones you don't. It's not rocket science, even children can figure that out.

wtallis 6y ago
> The existence of a distro I don't like doesn't degrade my experience using a distro I do like. The problem under discussion here is not that of using a distro you like, but finding a distro that you like.
- catalogia 6y ago
  If an icecream shop only has one flavor, I might get lucky and discover it's the flavor I like. But more likely, I'll just be screwed and have to settle for something I don't like. Only an icecream shop with variety can hope to give the most amount of people an optimal experience.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    Unless the ice cream shop provides you with hundreds of flavours, 90% of which are nearly indistinguishable from each other. And hardly anyone on this planet can answer a straight question of "Which flavour is good".
    - catalogia 6y ago
      If they're 90% indistinguishable, how is that distinguishable from an icecream shop that simply has fewer flavors?