30 ms·

I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and mac laptop. This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago, and

• Tenoke 5y ago
  GUI issues are probably the worst but there's also just more that you have to tinker with to fix/adjust on Linux, even on Ubuntu which is likely the most user-friendly distro. Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux, sometimes even with tinkering you are left with subpar scaling on one. Mac on the other hand just handles whatever combo of monitors and resolutions you throw at it with nothing that you have to do on your side and has done so for a decade now. Things are much more likely to eventually break if you use an installation too long - I rarely have issues with 5+ year old Windows but most distros don't even support that, and even if they do good luck getting through all the upgrades without having to tinker. Hell, I have to manually mess with PPAs at least once a year just to apply updates. There's also just too much choice with so many of the options having drawbacks that are hard to distinguish between, especially for non-power users. There's a ton of other stuff like that that we Linux users are used to so it's not too bad for us but that cause so many people who get a linux machine from a friend to eventually just pay for a Windows install on it since they can't deal with it..
  • caslon 5y ago
    > Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux, Just Works™ actually. Using a laptop/external simultaneous combo at different resolutions right now, and it's literally perfect. It even gets the scaling right. Not a second of configuration.
    • Tenoke 5y ago
      Lucky. I'm currently on a 20.04 install with a 1080p laptop + 4k, and the scaling options are 100% or 200% for a monitor with fractional scaling I can apply with tinkering that applies to both at the same time. I just sort of have it in a non-optimal for either monitor state but I'm sure there's some way which I didnt find when I first installed it to make it okay. On a different machine and combination of monitors I've gotten it to work but with a lot of xrandr tinkering instead. I'm hopeful that your comment might suggest that next time I upgrade it'll work out of the box.
      • heavyset_go 5y ago
        Ubuntu's upstream and release schedule ensures that its packages are relatively out of date. It might be worth trying 21.04 for real fractional scaling with Wayland or a different distro with recent packages and Wayland.
        • Tenoke 5y ago
          You're almost certainly right, as far as I can tell it should be fine with Wayland and 21.04 but I am just tired of reinstalling my OS every 6 months and don't trust direct upgrades much since they lose me even more time diagnosing an issue in the cases where they do break something.
          • heavyset_go 5y ago
            I've upgraded a few of my systems from 20.04 to 21.04 without an issue. If you take a btrfs snapshot before upgrading, you can roll back the changes if it turns out there's an issue with them.
• rrss 5y ago
  6) Linux falls over under memory pressure
  • Tenoke 5y ago
    I've stopped having as much issues with this when I stopped using swap which must be one of the biggest traps for desktop in common linux guides. In my desktop I'd much rather something crash than my system to grind to a halt.
    • kyuudou 5y ago
      I want to identify the memory hog(s) first so I can determine the next course of action. Suddenly seeing a black screen with an Apple while I'm in the middle of something important is irritating at best, especially when it happens repeatedly and I haven't pinned down the RC.
      • GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Yeah this seems increasingly more common on Mac lately. It's been happening a lot to me too. And I regularly reimage my systems because I manage a fleet of them. It's not just some weird driver.
    • est31 5y ago
      Actually for me it's the opposite. The linux system grinds to a halt when I don't use swap. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620545 https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/8/4/15 https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/8/4/15
      • Tenoke 5y ago
        Maybe because nvme is more common now? Last time I had swap was a few years ago now and every time I'd enter it, it'd be so slow as to be hard to even fix it. Since I've had no swap I've had a couple of times when docker or whatever just crashes instead and that's it but possibly with my current nvme swap wouldn't be too awful if it gets used.
• dwrodri 5y ago
  Spitballing a wild hypothetical that is probably wrong, but was inspired by what you said so I thought I'd share: I wonder if the arrival of the 3D revolution was just a little too early for computer nerds to embrace an open source ecosystem from the get-go and how different it would've been if "If you want to run DOOM/Quake/Unreal Tournament then install OpenSUSE/Slackware so you don't have to bother Fiddling with drivers on DOS" would've been more commonplace. From the 80s to the 2000s, video games became a multi-billion dollar industry that inspired two half-generations of kids to pursue careers in technology, but the world of FOSS was so focused on different use cases that the middle ground of "computer curious" kids probably wasn't as big of a revolution as it could've been. Hopefully, the work Valve is putting into Proton/WINE + Steam Deck will give us a piece of that alternate history.
  • cryptoquick 5y ago
    Proton is already pretty good. I expect it to get better. I've been daily-driving Arch on both a custom-built PC and a ThinkPad for 3 years and I haven't looked back, not even for games.
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I will try some linux apologetics 1. What is great about the windows GUI? Virtual desktops depend on monitors, annoying popup notifications that cannot be disabled and its resource intensive. IMHO linux has always been light years ahead of windows for as long as I remember, theres dozens of window managers better than the windows one. I am never 100% comfortable in windows, it's so locked down I feel like I am living in a hotel. 2. I do everything with the google docs these days, even on windows. So do a lot of businesses. 3. Again, most people seem to be using google calendar. 4. I actually found it easier to install on laptops back in the day. UEFI made it more painful. 5. A lot of unix tools are 2nd class citizens on windows. You can use WSL but file access is dog slow compared to the real thing.
  • dboreham 5y ago
    Use WSL2 for non-dog-slow filesystem.
    • LAC-Tech 5y ago
      I've got a hazy memory of trying this but had to back out because something broke. There was some big limitation of WSL2 I cant remember.
      • Tenoke 5y ago
        I'd bet it was network access. It's a bizarre and common problem (I see more people commenting on the issues all the time) which you can kind of fix by forcing 8.8.8.8 or a different nameserver into /etc/resolv.conf but it's unclear to me why this doesn't work out of the box.
        • LAC-Tech 5y ago
          yes that was 100% it! I use WSL to do web dev in a windows machine so I can use all my favourite tools. So no WSL2 for me (though that work around is worth a shot).
    • andrewmackrodt 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• yoyohello13 5y ago
  I've been using Linux desktop exclusively for about 5 years and I agree with everything you said. > Open source yadda yadda. This is it right here. I think this is the main differentiator. At the end of the day whether a person is happy on Linux depends on how much they care about software freedom. I'm willing to put up with the Linux jank because free software is really important to me and aligns with my values.
  • kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
    I feel like some Linux users (like me) stop noticing the jank over time since we slowly become very adept at coping with it (eg. finding good resources on how to solve the problem so we can find the fix pretty quickly, or just knowing the fix out of experience. In the end, it gets not so bad. But GUI front ends for package managers, like [especially] GNOME Software are horrendous from my experience. Which is not so great of a look; of all the things that should be user-friendly it should be package management (IMHO). Package manager failures (conflicts, whatever) are handled horribly by GUI front-ends and even then usually require some expertise to fix, which is a pain. At least Fedora Silverblue nails the updates so that stuff usually doesn't break... but of all the things that were broken OOTB for me on my install... it was (duh!) GNOME Software.
    • pessimizer 5y ago
      This is doubly awful because when I show a non-tech user around linux, the thing they're always most impressed by and which is most distinct about the linux experience compared to Win/Mac is the ability to pull arbitrary software from distro repos. But the GUIs are awful. The cli experience is awful, too, but better and we get used to it. They're never going to get used to it, and why would they want to? I don't know the answer; package management is a complicated problem. But maybe some sort of distributed app-store experience where the package manager also manages marketing for and forums about the apps. See, I really don't know - but having to go to a webpage and read a bunch of marketing material then download, or go to an app store and get descriptions, screenshots, and commentary by other users is somehow a subjectively better experience for non-tech types than "apt-cache search" or its GUI equivalents.
• peatmoss 5y ago
  I can’t agree with this in 2021, but not for the reasons one might think. I agree that native app development never became a cohesive or predictable thing. But then most apps that people use these days aren’t native. Business apps: Google Docs & Microsoft Office both have web versions that are good enough for many people. Mail / calendar clients: I am a nerd who prefers to use emacs for email, but I’m the weirdo—just like anyone who uses a native Outlook client. I also use Fastmail’s web interface, its iOS app, and the mail app on my iPhone. And even that is weird, because everyone just uses Gmail. Laptop support: Yes that used to be a problem for Linux for varying definitions of “recently.” Used to be. My corp-issued laptop took to Linux just fine with nothing discernibly less functional than Windows. The apps that don’t exist on the web are getting more and more niche.
  • ubermonkey 5y ago
    I do not interact with any professional contacts who use Gmail. It's universally Exchange in my professional life. This MIGHT be because the invite/accept/scheduling setup in Exchange is so good that it's hard to sell anything else. It also might be that most big orgs are very wisely reticent to host their email with an advertising company. I'm also gonna push back on the "web tools are enough for most people." I mean, how effective is the web version of Excel, really? Can it easily interact with local data stores for elaborate data mining and updatable queries? My guess is "probably not". How is it for macro development? My company works closely with the finance orgs of our client parties, and let me tell you a LOT of these folks are extremely advanced Excel users. Web tools aren't to par here. Web Outlook is also pretty awful compared to the native version, quite honestly, as is Word. Maybe PowerPoint is okay, but I'm not a power user of PPT so I don't really know.
    • troutwine 5y ago
      Huh, interesting. Since GSuite became a thing I've never seen Exchange in my professional life, so, generously, since 2007/8? I've only had one employer that used Exchange and they sold a setup for it, but even they were switching internally to use GSuite by the time I left, if I recall correctly. I recall the switch as being extremely abrupt in that era.
• type0 5y ago
  > Gimp is fine, but it has never been close to photoshop. You can use photoshop cc on linux https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl3Pa8udFQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl3Pa8udFQQ
  • istingray 5y ago
    In terms of UI or actually under the hood? I've found PhotoGIMP makes GIMP UI more like Photoshop, which helps me a lot: https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP/releases https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP/releases On a Mac I switched from Photoshop to Pixelmator no problem. Hoping PhotoGimp can help me do the same.
    • cmeacham98 5y ago
      Photoshop CC runs in wine as of the last time I checked, although I think some tweaking was needed?
  • tkp 5y ago
    Krita, while originally focused on painting, is also worth a try for image editing. It has effect layers missing in Gimp, and an easy to grasp GUI.
• heavyset_go 5y ago
  > This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago Desktop Linux in 2021 is nothing like it was 20 years ago. Plasma Desktop is a great experience these days, and in my opinion, surpasses both the Windows and macOS desktop shell experiences while implementing features from both systems.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Desktop Linux in 2021 is nothing like it was 20 years ago. True, it's now significantly more complicated and there at least 300 more distros worth of fragmentation. But at least sound finally works!... usually...
    • likeclockwork 5y ago
      And there he is!
      • deleted 5y ago
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  • herbst 5y ago
    I am such a fan of the way gnome shell reinvented distraction less desktop computing (essentially the thing metro should have been) that I feel sorry for people that can never try it. Yes Linux desktops have been a complicated topic. But it's incredible easy to build something less distractive than windows 10.
  • lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    I just spun up a linux Desktop machine for the first time in almost a decade and agree that Plasma has come a long way but it's still rough around the edges and, well, slow. Not as slow as the Windows UI, but still slower than xfce or the like. One problem I do have with Plasma (though this may just be how arch packages it) - Dolphin, the native plasma file manager, is not included by default. Yes, I know it's not much of an imposition to do pacman -Sy dolphin but a file manager seems like an integral part of the system to me worthy of being included in the base package for a desktop environment. Little choices like that affect new user adoption.
• simonh 5y ago
  The Linux desktop never made it because it’s a terrible platform for distributing commercial applications. The brutal fact is commercial software is essential to the success of any desktop or mobile platform. That’s because it brings massive investment. The total ongoing investment in commercial applications dwarfs that of open source desktop applications, in developer-hours terms, probably thousands, or tens of thousands to one. Getting to that scale means paying people money, and not just developers. Artists, designers, QA and domain experts in the specialist fields niche apps serve. There’s just no way open source apps can possibly compete. By failing to provide compelling support for commercial application development and distribution, the Linux desktop has starved itself of the breadth and depth of apps needed to succeed. When you’re competing with the Mac, Windows, iOS or Android you’re not just competing with Apple, Microsoft or Google. You’re competing with the hundreds of billions of dollars in app and service ecosystems that have been built around those platforms.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • jacquesm 5y ago
    I actually love this aspect of Linux, and if it ever does become successful it will kill it for me. Because every medium that gains a certain level of popularity will bring along a whole raft of commercial parasites that will spoil the original experience. It happened to the web, it happened to smart phones and it certainly would happen to Linux if it ever did gain substantial traction on the desktop.
    • kzrdude 5y ago
      Has this happened to macos? I don't get that impression. It has other problems, but not that.
      • JadeNB 5y ago
        With the increasing convergence of macOS and iOS, we're surely on the way. Already it's true that the app mindset has encouraged a lot of the wonderful free software I loved on the Mac to become paid. (Which, (1) of course is the creator's right, but I still miss the old mindset, and (2) "why not just keep using the old software?" doesn't work because Apple's commitment to backward compatibility is, umm, not high.)
• polote 5y ago
  I've been using the same arch + i3 setup for at least 5 years, never had to change my habits due to an update (except thunderbird which is becoming worse and worse). I've lost a lot a lot of time setting up hibernation and sleep and solving broken depencies, but I have never been limited by gui tools, quite the opposite actually, it is easier to use Pacman than what you need to do on windows or mac. I honestly don't see what I would gain using Mac or windows , except that hibernation works from the start
  • lugged 5y ago
    Same sentiment here. About 7 years of arch and i3. Machine migrations are literally dd or rysync commands. I am in love with the fact my OS layer just does not change at all. It's boring and I like it that way.
  • codethief 5y ago
    +1 ~8-9 years of Ubuntu + i3 (and 11 years on Ubuntu in total), on 4 different laptops (3 Thinkpads), all using the same set of dotfiles and working stably for years. Installing Linux on a laptop is pretty much painless these days. Also, the neat thing about being able to (re-)store my configs / dotfiles is that I can run my install script on any machine and 5 minutes later the entire machine is completely set up and feels like one of the machines I've been using for years. Back in the 2000s I went through the process of reinstalling Windows a bunch of times and I still remember how painful that was because after installation everything had to be reconfigured and customized in some GUI, which would take hours and never result in quite the same setup I used to have. Now with Linux I've been using the same setup for the past 10 years across machines. (Which is nice as it allows me to tweak my settings over time.)
  • herbst 5y ago
    > I honestly don't see what I would gain using Mac or windows , except that hibernation works from the start And even that. My only longer Mac experience was a MBP (2016?) and this machine (and none of my co-workers) wasn't able to re attach a external monitor and external keyboard after hypernating. The time I worked there nobody found a solution
• bamboozled 5y ago
  Here's the thing, what do you need a desktop to do? I use Gnome 3 on wayland, and I don't really pay attention to the "Desktop", I do 90% of my work in a web browser and a terminal. I use gimp and inkscape sometimes. Gnome 3 is perfect for 99% of what I need it to do. I still own an iPhone, it compliments my Linux laptop well where I do my serious work, the phone is a toy.
  • kbelder 5y ago
    Equally or more pertinent: What does an office admin, an assistant merchandiser, a product designer, or a copy editor use their desktop for? They use a Web browser, email, calendar, word processor, spreadsheet, an image editor, and a dozen smaller proprietary apps that are absolutely essential to their job. I think it may be the last of those... all the various industry specific apps that are hindering Linux as much as the obvious big players like Microsoft. I think word processing on Linux is fine; but your company's eight year old customized CRM tool will never, ever, be available on anything but Windows. Or specialized document scanner. Or sales commission tracker.
    • BeefWellington 5y ago
      Anecdotally, I've done work with a few medium-sized businesses around updating legacy business critical apps now and in at least one case the app just wouldn't run on Windows 10 at all but worked fine in Wine with no special configuration. Microsoft appears to have taken a step back from their long-held focus of not breaking things on upgrades. Granted, these clients should not be using Win9x apps still and hoping for compatibility.
      • scns 5y ago
        Well, good for you (work/pay) and good for them (security/efficiency), win win.
    • kelnos 5y ago
      I do feel like this becomes less and less of an issue with many of these bespoke apps becoming web apps. Certainly there are still a lot of old native apps that you might not be able to run on Linux, but there are far fewer of these than there were even 5 or 10 years ago, and especially 15 or 20 years ago when the web browser didn't offer enough functionality to build complex, performant apps.
• hn-is-life 5y ago
  Sorry but you can also manage these 150 servers from a linux desktop since you are probably using putty …
• 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  It's way better these days. I'm on Gentoo now and game on it
• hindsightbias 5y ago
  > super unpopular Only if you’re not in 99.9% of the computer user base.
• silisili 5y ago
  As someone using Linux on the desktop for a looong time, I don't have any real arguments against any of these except 1(I quite like Gnome). I think it just comes down to how you uses a computer. I mainly program, web browse, and listen to music. I don't game, watch movies, nor use or want to use 'business' apps. Abiword is about the most business app I use with any regularity. If I -have- to do something else, usually GDocs can handle it. Re: 5) It might depend on the person. I've only ever used Gimp, and while it has redone the UI multiple times, and some things remain nonintuitive, I find myself around it well enough. When PhotoPea launched with its PS style UI, I wanted to give it a try to see what I was missing. I find myself lost, probably how a PS user feels going into Gimp.
  • BeefWellington 5y ago
    > I don't game, watch movies, nor use or want to use 'business' apps. Abiword is about the most business app I use with any regularity. If I -have- to do something else, usually GDocs can handle it. A lot of the items that GP and you are discussing are, from my perspective, complaints about Linux circa 2005, maybe 2010 in a few cases. I do all the above things and problems are rare. To the point where I ditched my Windows install for gaming. Steam's work on Proton means games seem to just work with the exception of specific Anti-Cheat software in certain games (and even in those games it's usually just MP that doesn't work). KDE Plasma gives me basically the Windows 7 desktop interface with whatever window dressing I want and virtual desktop support out of the box. Plus, I can do everything that Linux can without any Windows overhead. Maybe I'm really lucky re: productivity stuff but honestly I don't have a ton of complaints about it.
    • kelnos 5y ago
      Yeah, I feel like a lot of people who complain about Linux not working well for some things haven't looked at it for 10-15 years. It certainly can't run everything a Windows desktop can, but I think it's caught up meaningfully enough that people who dabbled long ago would find it sufficient for day-to-day use. I don't think it's for everyone; I wouldn't there's even a subset of the software developers I know who probably wouldn't like it, but many of the complaints I hear nowadays are very outdated.
• paganel 5y ago
  For me as a programmer the biggest issue with Linux on desktop was the wifi thing, you were never sure if it would work out of the box or if you needed to copy some obscure .bin files found on the Internet so that it would work with your wifi adapter. I think I lost a day or two on this about 15 years ago when I last set up a Linux desktop machine for myself. The second thing (and which you mention) is the laptop install situation, I was never sure if running Linux on whatever laptop would work, and if yes if it would work 100%, meaning no wifi/sound/battery drain issues. That was one of the main reasons that has kept me away from Linux since then. Granted, if Apple goes on its current way of trying to restrict access to its machines I may make the switch back sometime in the near future.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • jacurtis 5y ago
    I've had the experience you are talking about in the past, But this is mostly gone now. Most of the distros ship with wifi drivers so you can do an internet install. Most wifi cards on Laptops now are either Intel or Killer. So most distros will ship with these common ones. They also usually ship with universal drivers for things like trackpads and monitors so that at least everything "works" out of the box on a fresh install. However you still are best hunting down specific drivers for your equipment to get the best experience or performance. My personal experience is that if you use a Dell or Lenovo laptop, that you won't need to worry about compatibility. These two companies in particular seem to have the best linux support so their equipment generally just works. I have found HP to "mostly" work. Good luck with Asus or Gigabyte. I wouldn't even try a lesser brand than those. Battery life on Linux is a mixed bag. There are tools you can install that can give you incredible control over your battery and drag a battery's life out much longer than you would get from the same laptop on Windows. But you will need to constantly manage it and be aware of it. For example I need to go into the terminal and manually change a profile every time I connect and disconnect from the charger. As opposed to Mac and Windows that mostly manage themselves to get the best performance/battery life ratio. I found that if you don't do anything with Linux and just run it on battery that you will get substantially lower battery life than the same device would give you on Windows.
• techrat 5y ago
  Gonna be one of those to disagree to some extent. I flirted with Linux but never used it full time until about 2017 when the C710 Chromebook came out. What I really wanted was a basic laptop that was cheap enough to toss into a bag. So I nuked ChromeOS and started using ChrUbuntu. Windows 10 had been out for about 2 years by that point and it became an increasing source of frustration, but I also knew I couldn't stay on Windows 7 forever. What surprised me was that I came to prefer using my ChrUbuntu laptop despite having a much, much, MUCH more powerful desktop. Windows 10 broke me. Why? How? Inconsistency in the UI. Still finding old shit buried under several layers of new shit. It was still all shit in the end. Ads in the Start Menu. Haphazard driver support. Forced updates and starts. Kind of a problem when you're trying to do a 17 hour overnight render job, y'know... The problems I had in Windows just didn't seem to exist in Linux. The things people said "Oh, you have to go to the command line to fix everything" didn't seem to ring true at all. The memes, stereotypes, the disclaimers and talking points, all of it, were badly out of date. With Ubuntu, I could install from LiveUSB, entirely graphical, go through less steps during the installation process compared to Windows and still install software like Steam, vendor specific drivers and other stuff without ever touching the command line. AND Ubuntu doesn't piss me off by forcing me to restart when I don't want to. After that, I continued to have BSOD's in Windows 10 with hardware that ran flawlessly under Ubuntu. Networking, filesystem management was slower in Windows 10. I didn't have any issue getting Samba working in Linux to use with the NAS drives during video editing and transfer. Google Drive was more than good enough when it came to office file compatibility. In the production house I worked out of, it came to be the preferred method. Gone was the Office shackles... and rightly so, after decades of email attachments being the viral vector for Windows systems, it's safer to just share a Drive link. It was also because of the overhead of management that the house ended up switching from Outlook/Exchange to GoogleApps completely. The more we did online, the less it mattered what type of system we were using. The last, and still current, issue we still had? Adobe. After Apple's Final Cut fiasco, Adobe's failure to provide themselves as an alternative on Linux based setups was a major disappointment. So, at this point... I have a separate airgapped Windows 7 box that runs my offline Adobe CS apps. They don't get updated and they don't need to be. (Why Win 7? Windows 10 BSODs on that box, too.) Recently did an upgrade on my main system as well. Had a Ryzen 7 2700X setup that ran great for 3 years. Decided to make that my Windows 10 sidebox for apps that still don't quite work under Wine (though Proton is really helping to reduce that number of apps) and... yep. Have gotten hard freezes and BSODs for the first time when all I did was format the SSD to put Windows 10 on it. Windows is decades of crap compressed into an OS. Despite having started with MSDos5.0 and Windows 3.0, using WinNT4 through to Win7 as my primary and only OS... I find Windows cumbersome, clunky, kludgy and badly implemented compared to where Ubuntu is today. Year of the Linux desktop? Fuck off. People repeat that like it's some great joke, but the honest truth is... I use Linux now despite never having had a Linux background because it is less annoying to use than Windows.
• sjcoles 5y ago
  I manage hundreds of Linux desktops (VDI, laptops, desktops) and about 75 Windows 10 laptops. I see at least 25 Windows tickets for every Linux desktop ticket. Sure I am paid more than an equivalent Windows admin but the ongoing cost of support is far less. Stuff just doesn't randomly stop working like in Windows. It's really nice.
  • noirbot 5y ago
    How much of this is because the Linux users are more likely to know how to fix their own stuff/not break it in a weird way compared to the Windows users?
    • techrat 5y ago
      i'll argue it's because any given linux install is less likely to shit all over itself and the filesystem compared to windows.
      • noirbot 5y ago
        That may be true, but that doesn't negate the question I was asking. At most companies I've worked at, most of the technical/developer types had OS X or Linux computers, and the people with Windows boxes tended to be people using them more for administrative tasks with Outlook/Excel. I know I have plenty of small problems with my Linux desktop, same as I have with my old Windows desktops, but I generally know how to fix/learn to fix those without going to a support line. That would be true even if you gave me a Windows computer. Essentially, if you gave the people filing all the Windows support tickets a Linux machine instead, would that fix the problem? Or is it that those people are more likely to need support help AND also happen to prefer/need Windows.
        • sjcoles 5y ago
          None of the users have admin on either set of machines. We are comprised of largely technical individuals. It's not your average office I'll admit that, but we do have non-technical people on Linux that work help desk and RMA (think $100k networking gear). Windows Rant Incoming: Windows Update sucks. It just sucks. I fucking hate it. It fails for no reason, it fails for every reason. With how important updates are for Windows updating should JUST WORK. I was trying to curate updates via WSUS and then moved to W4B SAC but recently said eff it and just let them update however they want. Just let the updates fail, they'll work eventually. I really don't care anymore or have the energy to.
• a_square_peg 5y ago
  Yep. This was it for me. I’m getting a MacBook just so I can run Word and Outlook.
• overgard 5y ago
  > Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot. Sadly, it still is. I have a System76 Oryx running the manufacturers distro and I still have issues with hybrid graphics, Wifi breaking randomly, Bluetooth devices not connecting, and the the fans spinning up like crazy and the UI freezing for seconds at a time. On a laptop built for Linux! I still like it but I can't tell anyone it "just works"
  • jcelerier 5y ago
    > Sadly, it still is. I have a System76 Oryx running the manufacturers distro and I still have issues with hybrid graphics, Wifi breaking randomly, Bluetooth devices not connecting, and the the fans spinning up like crazy and the UI freezing for seconds at a time. On a laptop built for Linux! I still like it but I can't tell anyone it "just works" I mean, my laptop is a MSI GS65 and : - fans spin up like crazy randomly - if I plug an ethernet cable, I have to disable & reenable the adapter on windows - sometimes on reboot the mousepad won't work and I have to power off and wait and power back on - sometimes on reboot the HDMI won't work and I have to power off and wait and power back on and all this on Windows, Linux also have the two last problems (though much less since some recent kernels) but not the two first. Laptops just suck.
  • freedomben 5y ago
    dang, this is seriously disappointing. have you alerted system76 support? they have been known to fix drivers, so worth reporting. I've been using Lenovo Thinkpad's with no problems at all. I just ordered a Frame.Work laptop that I'm stoked for. Hopefully it goes well.
  • ergo14 5y ago
    My dell e5470 will bluescreen 80% of time when connecting a screen via HDMI on windows 10. Nothing like that happens under linux. The "it just works on other platform" is a myth - they all suck in different ways.
• ant6n 5y ago
  > 4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot. It still is. I mean it will sort of work, but power management, battery management, and even obvious things like swap drives may just not work right after install.
• cutler 5y ago
  6) fontconfig
• gerdesj 5y ago
  I manage 1000s of Windows servers from my Linux laptop and desktop. I also manage 1000s of Linux boxes too. I don't denigrate your approach with Windows but please don't tell me I can't do x because I literally can on Linux. My Linux devices are often domain joined - I log into an AD (used to be eDirectory but wth) I don't care. AD is quite a decent LDAP directory - not as good as eDir though but I doubt many here are capable of discussing that little number. I make huge use of Kerberos - all my browsers can connect to my Apaches etc with SSO if I so wish. Let's Encrypt and putting AD and vCentre CA certs into the various places like /usr/local/share/whatever and running the maint script keeps the browsers from getting upset. I used to have email via GroupWise but we moved to Exchange back in the day (2011 from memory) I've used Evolution EWS since then. Provided you get your endpoints and DNS in line then you can use Kerberos, otherwise it's NTLM ... lol. You can put Exchange behind HA Proxy. That gets you loads of extra goodies like being able to hide squidgy bits and upping the SSL/TLS to the point where you can make say Exchange 2013 PCI/DSS compliant. I have no idea why you fixate on GIMP, there are so many graphics apps available it is quite embarrassing. Have a look at say Krita. Ditch OpenOffice. LibreOffice is capable and where the development is happening. Back in the day I was a MS Office trainer (and a few other things). I know what leading and kerning actually means and dealing with hanging indents, n and m dashes and all the rest. Upper case used to be stored in the upper row of cases in a printer's workshop, leading was shims of lead to move letters up and down. I taught Lotus 1-2-3 macros to company execs as well as Super Calc and even Excel. I can write macros in more languages badly than I care to recall. I wrote a Finite Capacity Scheduler (yes: finite) in Excel VBA for a pie factory near Plymouth. I'm quite happy with LO. It's quite capable in my opinion. I've got loads of CAD options - I'm a fan of 3D printing. LibreCAD and OpenSCAD are absolutely belting and getting better every month. Blender is quite capable I'm told. I have not even started on that little number but I gather it is absolutely the dog's nadgers. Apparently film studios use it. I have so many high quality options available to me using Linux. I'm 50 years old. I've used computers from ZX80 and I still have a Commodore 64 (with a USB interface now). My first real PC was a 8086. I managed to get a cracked copy of AutoCAD to work on my 80286 with a 80287 co-processor that my parents bought me for my birthday at something like £120 back in 1987ish. I'm a sysadmin so not too fussed about IDEs but there are an absolute shitload of them available. Bear in mind the real difference between a Linux distro and Windows and Apples: We've always had an appstore and it is part of the system and not a bolt on. When I type: # emerge -Uve --deep --newuse @world # yay -Syu # apt update && apt upgrade etc, I update everything. Everything. Apart from the first one (which may involve a pact with the old gods) they will all finish within a few minutes at most. I've seen Windows updates last for days at worst. At best it takes at least 15 minutes. On average you'll need around 30 mins except for Defender updates. So: 1) Take your pick - for me KDE 2) LO for Office apps. There are so many first class apps it's hard to create a starting point 3) Evo + EWS. OK I'll accept that there is only one app here. You do get all functionality including calendar. You also have more options for notifications 4) Really? 5) You have access to a ridiculous amount of software from a central source I think that open source has already surpassed closed source stuff by quite a long way. I own my own company and live and die by my choices. I've been doing IT for about 30 years and for about the last 15 of those I have not used MS software on my personal gear. I wrote this a while back but I do keep it up to date: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet - might be handy for someone integrating Linux in a Windows world.
• jraph 5y ago
  > There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows. I don't think the target is "better than mac/windows", but I'd argue KDE focuses a lot on making a good UI. Read [1] a bit, you'll see that a lot of work is done on fixing usability bugs and bringing small improvements to an already great desktop environment. By the way, I've entered in a store that sells computers and noticed the Windows laptops. I was shocked to see myself think "Wait, are they selling computers on Plasma now?". If think it was Windows 11, it's amazing to see that it really resembles Plasma with a white theme. [1] https://pointieststick.com/ https://pointieststick.com/
• marcosdumay 5y ago
  You know, all of those were true at some point, but things change, and not in a good way, but in a way that makes Linux much more competitive. About your #1, well a few tried and for some people they succeeded, but for most people KDE got about equally good some time ago, and both Windows and MacOS kept getting worse and worse. The result is that KDE is much better than those now. About #2, with the new Office365, Windows is also lacking a reasonably good outlook-like client. The exchange OWA is a much better alternative now, and you can access it from Linux just as easily as from Windows.
• anigbrowl 5y ago
  Agree completely. Back around 2000 my daily driver was running Red Hat, Gnome, and Enlightenment DR16 and it felt like The Future. I still have a linux laptop that I use regularly but honestly don't like it that much compared to Windows. Considering picking up and older Mac now that the hardware is finally affordable prices as more of it hits the used market. Not sure if I'll leave MacOS on it or install windows or Linux.
• zepearl 5y ago
  You're not wrong (you're probably right in the context of the article which focuses on "desktop from MacOS"), but in my opinion here we're once more generalizing too much => I think that being happy with Linux and as well distro [X] is linked to the type of work you do & the type of person you are. On one hand telling a random MacOS/Winows-person to switch to Linux is most probably NOK. Image&video editing & office apps and probably other stuff (doubts about audio apps - I loved Linux+"Jack"+filters when playing guitar as an amateur) are not as good as on those OSs. On the other hand telling the same to a techy guy/girl >might< be OK. E.g. a huge amount of programming languages can be installed & handled very easily, many different filesystems (with their pros&cons) are available, same for networking stuff (e.g. Wireguard, nfs with multiple connections since kernel ~5.3, bundle multiple separate TCP/IP connections together, etc...), same for virtualization technologies(Xen, KVM, multiple container flavours), etc... is available to be installed&configured&used quite easily, a lot of stuff can be read/dealt through "/sys" and "/proc" (makes it easy e.g. when reversing-engineering a controller), etc... . It's literally "dreamland" if 1) you wish for something like that (or maybe you aren't even aware that something like that can be done easily on this SW-level) and 2) you're able&willing to invest time in it. E.g. in my case, on the desktop, I'm super happy with Linux+Gentoo; I guess because I'm a pure techy guy + picky hehe: I don't have a strong need for any "office" app (Libreoffice is more or less ok for the basic stuff that I need, graphics editing is more or less ok with the available apps), at the same time I want some things (e.g. placement of some windows when I start them, remapping of keyboard keys, ...) to be set up "just as I want them to be" which cannot work with Windows (and I'm excluding OSx by default as being too protective - e.g. bought many years ago an iPod nano 6th gen, could not copy to it files from Linux as the iPod storage was encrypted therefore I threw it away) => yes, Linux & the distro is not easy to handle, but that in turn made me learn a lot of stuff, which in turn made me able to handle a lot of extra stuff (e.g. recently to install ~20 different DBs to do tests & in some cases proof-of-concepts, to understand better networking & tunnels to then work around limitations at work, a lot more stuff...), which in turn made me able to handle as well servers.
• hakube 5y ago
  those software you mentioned that are on Linux are opensource. You're really comparing corporate developed software to a software that was developed by a community for free. It's like you're comparing apples to oranges. And this statement is really old, I've seen it in years. Linux apps are better now and gives more functionality and control than bloated apps on Windows and Mac. Of course, Gimp will never be close to Photoshop because it never aimed to be
• stereoradonc 5y ago
  I completely agree with this assessment. I hate data-lock ins, from the proprietary applications, but the "open source" equivalents have inconsistent UI. Open Office, for example, never rebranded itself or had similar effects to MS Office.
• busymom0 5y ago
  Regarding number 5, I would highly recommend trying out Photopea.com It's basically Photoshop inside browser (works offline) and I have been using it for creating all my screenshots and icons for my app store listings for 3 years now. It's built by a solo developer.
• ekianjo 5y ago
  Linux desktop does not need to be dominant to be relevant. Business apps are important but you seem to forget most people hardly use anything but 1 percent of what Excel or Word can do anyway. I agree that cal, mail situation is not ideal though. Laptops is a no problem if you restrict yourself to certaiin brands. as for apps, I dont know, Linux is superior in many ways for non GUI work. If you need photoshop then yeah this is not the right OS for you. But I would not want to touch anything Adobe with their dirty subscription models. its not true of all categories though. Krita for digital painting is amazing. Blender for 3d work too. The real answer is... it depends.
• nailer 5y ago
  This is why WSL is amazing - apt-get is superior to homebrew and macports and the hardware support is unmatched.
• mark_l_watson 5y ago
  As much as I enjoy my System 76 Linux laptop where everything, including CUDA setup for the GPU “just works,” I find a M1 MacBook Pro just makes more sense for my workflow. For fun, I have a very small Lenovo Chromebook that is a partial replacement for my iPad for web surfing and consuming media, and the Linux container support also just works when I want that, and with a nice UI.
• userbinator 5y ago
  a little hyperbolic - a lot of high-end post production apps and audio apps all made it over ...and some very expensive (6-figure prices - per year) IC design software is Linux-only. Look at Cadence Virtuoso, for example. Not available on Windows nor Mac.
• Aperocky 5y ago
  Except... how do you manage them? With an UI? I don't know but I've always interacted in terminal, making the fact that I use macOS not significant.
  • the_solenoid 5y ago
    On the terminal of course, with apps like SecureCRT
• vmception 5y ago
  > I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and mac laptop. Exactly. Except I am quite pleased how OpenOffice is right now, but I digress back to agreeing with you. I use Linux everywhere, just rarely on bare metal. All the linux I use is in memory somewhere. My bare metal machine recreational and general use machine is Mac. It runs Windows but it hasn't in two years. The OS isn't the hill I'm here to die on. Its just the fact of life. Gimp. I shudder at the thought. Honestly at this point, I feel the same about Gimp as I do about people clinging onto to pre-subscription Photoshop. Its like these arbitrary and clueless bragging points they now both have to rationalize life choices - whether it is an attempt to stick it to the man because they became the get of my lawn people resistant to change without realizing it, or because they actually can't afford it and this is also a byproduct of their life decisions. In either scenario, there seems to be a lack of observation that the commercial products are lightyears ahead now and there is no point in intentionally inconveniencing yourself for a cause nobody else cares about.
• liquidify 5y ago
  What audio apps made it over? Audio is a gaping hole in Linux land. No drivers, no major support, no major DAW's, etc.. I can't move to linux primarily because of audio... not because of the other stuff you mentioned.
  • scns 5y ago
    Agree to disagree partially. Bitwig is a major DAW, runs on Ubuntu. Native Instruments interfaces have their drivers in the kernel. YMMV with other DAWs/interfaces though.
  • mackrevinack 5y ago
    bitwig and reaper are major daw's imo
  • wyclif 5y ago
    This is why musicians are almost uniformly on macOS. I love Linux and I've been using it since 1998, but there's a lot of work to be done on the audio front for them to catch up to Apple.
• eitland 5y ago
  A couple of corrections from my perspective (Used Windows since 3.1 in 1995, worked and supported others on Windows until 2012, switched to Linux around 2006 after having used it on and off since 2001): > There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows. Many of us have preferred Linux desktops for a decade or two. Calling a desktop gui better when it lacks the basics like multiple virtual desktops is quite a stretch IMO. Same goes for not being able to update your kernel without getting a brand new desktop environment either you want it or not. Same goes for not being able to customize CMD-tab on Mac. > A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps so far so good until this: > OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works. In fact for many years OpenOffice, now Libre Office has been less alien to large segments of the user base. For a number of things it has also been significantly better at times: I remember very well having to import a certain report patched together by four others to use an actually working styling system. > lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client) This was a good point for a long time. I can work around it by using my iPad for this these days. > Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot. Having Linux work better on laptops than Windows is the default state for most laptops and have been for a decase. Last big issue was a screen resolution problem solved by installing the 915 driver using synapse on nc6230 or something back in 2006. Getting a Windows machine to stop lagging unpredictably though, that is job best left for a specialist. Some come working out of the box, but those are the exception. (Although it should be noted that I hate lagging as much as designers hate misalignment.)
• Rd6n6 5y ago
  I personally find gnomes keyboard driven Ux to be the best option out there. Managing multiple workspaces/desktops in Mac is almost as good, but isn’t even close in windows. Foss projects do need to attract more ux designers though. I was telling a friend the other day about how amazing blender is… but had to admit it was so unintuitive/un-discoverable that you can’t really use the program without going through fairly specific tutorials for what you are trying to do
• unixhero 5y ago
  (1) This is not a problem. (2) Wrong. Just by you saying "Open Office" means that you are out of touch. You are stuck back in 2010. There is no pathos here. If you have not gotten the memo that Open Office is dead and the project that took over and continued improving is called Libre Office, then it is a sign you are out of touch. Libre Office is not janky, and hundreds of thousands of users beg to differ. (3) There are several. Thunderbird and Evolution. However you always have your outlook.com for work email. (4) Wrong. Recently? Define recently. The last 10 years has been a joyride. (5) Wrong. Krita for photoshop workloads is amazing. Applications are thriving.
• laurent92 5y ago
  And right when Ubuntu would have become up to paar with Windows, bahm, Unity came, Alt+Tab didn’t work, the docker didn’t accept new icons, the Meta key blanked the screen (to display a search bar full-screen) and we were back to a young buggy desktop again. Linux is the ever-restarting progress. What the Linux desktops lacked is powerful leadership, period.
  • herbst 5y ago
    This might be true about Ubuntu. But what about Fedora? Manjaro? Arch? Or even Debian? I would only recommend Ubuntu to people I dislike.
• reilly3000 5y ago
  The latest versions of LibreOffice are really quite good. They have implemented the Ribbon-style nav as an option and have some decent default styles. I was pleasantly surprised when I last used it.
• mackrevinack 5y ago
  i learned recently that gimp has a command palette that you can access by pressing the / key. this might sound a bit over the top but its been a game changer for me. no more having to scan though icons looking for whatever tool, just type something like /crop. its makes it very quick to create or delete layers, open things like levels, colour balance etc I'm surprised the photoshop doesn't have the same feature. it would makes things so much easier for online tutorials just to name the tool or setting instead of having to list out the full location in the file menu (which is something that might be subject to change in future versions)
• globular-toast 5y ago
  > Fragmented gui development. There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows. Not really true. Windows has copied loads of stuff from Linux GUIs over the years. I began to notice this around Windows Vista. > A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works This is valid. Shouldn't be so bad today with web apps being a thing. > lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client). Holy fudge, I tried to get this going and people just crapped on me for suggesting it. Yeah, because MS locks other mail clients out. Thunderbird is an excellent email client. Outlook is some proprietary business messaging thing that also happens to support email (badly).
  • the_solenoid 5y ago
    Fragmented meaning if I was taking a year or 2 to get a code base up for a linux port, I have to take one of a few roads. 1, my app is specialized enough where we dictate the rules and probably it runs well on just one distro, or I have to account for all the different flavors of GUI and windowing systems to target users with their current setups. The former I think happened all the time with specific apps, the latter kept commercial devs far away. I think the situation is less bad now, but my point was the boat had mostly sailed. -- Thunderbird is fine (i use it daily), but nothing touches the functionality of outlook (on windows - not the limited versions that exist on the web and elsewhere). And I was as anti MS as anyone back then, but once I had to actually implement exchange servers as part of my job vs using sendmail and a bunch of random crap - there was just no contest. I always knew it was important, but it really is the killer business app. And now that you dont need to hire 1.5 people minimum to manage it, and pay for servers and infrastructure etc to get the benefits, it is now more a killer app than ever, to those who need it. (really, I hope to never manage on-location exchange ever again) --
• lostlogin 5y ago
  > 2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works. Having recently reentered the world of the full MS and Office stack, janky shit is the standard. Word - the app, online and teams. None of them work right. The meme where someone thinks they’ll just move an image is accurate. Headers and footers, formatting and most other parts are actually broken or have unpredictable behaviour across apps that are presumably supposed to be the same? I feel like an old man shouting into a void, but it isn’t right how crappy the industry standard has become.
  • bodge5000 5y ago
    Your right, teams and office are really very janky. The difference is, if you launched it for the first time without seeing it before, you'd think (if you were a normal person) it looks clean and modern and so on. You open up OpenOffice for the first time, it looks like software from 10 years ago. I hate teams with a searing passion, but the thing is though it does break, it looks pretty good doing it.
• dude4you 5y ago
  1) Fragmented gui Question of taste. Really. If you like an os inspired by sonic the hedgehog, Mac and windows is for you. 2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class What are you lacking? OpenOffice not good enough? Use softmaker. Does windows actually have an SSH by now? 3) lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc Evolution, Thunderbird and a few proprietary ones 4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot. I had not had a problem in 20 years 5) Just, apps, in general. Gimp is fine, but it has Fair point. I have used Photoshop with wine for some specific color maps
  • herbst 5y ago
    Lack of software is such a one sided argument always. As Linux user it took me forever to find proper alternatives on a Mac and I still have no idea how and if I can replace and use some for me common things on windows. Which is the only OS I can't get looking like I want to either way
  • the_solenoid 5y ago
    1) is 2 points (the second touched on by point 5). 1st, it makes development stupid if you have moving targets (not as bad today, but ffs it was horrible in the early days). 2nd is 99.99% of consumer computer users have a hard enough time with OS GUIs that hold their hand - the fact I cannot sit someone down to any 3 random linux machines and have the same experience (again MUCH worse 20 years ago) means it can never make desktop inroads. 2) here is where peoples blind spots can be, but they really reallllly don't understand that MS made some apps that basically need to be aped feature for feature to allow for migration to linux as a desktop. Again touching on familiarity (as in with the gui) but also feature set. People who make money writing certain things can't use certain apps because the features needed by those users don't exist because the software (at the time it needed to be) wasn't mature enough. 3) Thunderbird and evolution are not replacements for outlook. Exchange/outlook had database backed mail and calendaring. No one to this day is even remotely close. Not google, not anyone. This is the biggest app in business for better or worse. Not only did you have database backed calendaring and email, but you also had ridiculously fine-grained group policy management, and way better tools for retention (and this is actually a bfd) If an oss replacement had been made 15-20 years ago the computing landscape would be hugely different. Only windows gets the full feature set to this day - ios/mac/android/web all don't get the full thing (because no/limited GPOs) There WAS a project called zimbra or something, and I think they knew replacing exchange was a holy grail (and wanted to benefit monetarily), but iirc it was a paid thing, and never took off in any meaningful way. 4) remember, you, we, are not 99.99% of computer users. I have had hmm, 4 linux laptops over the years, and while fine, it was never problem free. Driver support mostly came down to age and brand, most of them were Dells.
• josteink 5y ago
  > This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago, Nothing to feel bad about saying. As a mass-market option it absolutely did. There was no flood of new users coming along back then, and there wont be this time around either. But for me as a developer, I still think a Linux-desktop is the best desktop I can get. So that's what I'm going to use. And that's all I care about. That the wider masses run Windows or MacOS doesn't really bother me at all. After all, why should it?
• anotheryou 5y ago
  RE 2 and 3: browser apps will do the trick once they mature. I hate office on the web because of the horrible UI legacy ported from the desktop, but it's still an impressive implementation. Another example would be chromebooks with google docs. Google docs is really really well with much less of the legacy bloat others have.
• heresie-dabord 5y ago
  In its beginning, Apple marketed its computers as easier to use. The GUI was a selling strategy. Applications tied themselves to the GUI and suddenly consumers were buying a computer to use Adobe products, with a little browsing and e-mail on the side. Eventually, competitive pressure forced Microsoft to develop ("heavily borrow") a GUI. All sarcasms aside, mWindows has become usable. But this GUI is a heavy cost. GNU-Linux is a success. For the generations of people who were sold "a GUI", Linux is often seen as too hard. But for people who found easy access to compilers and other tools through GNU-Linux, there is nothing better. There is room for all these operating systems, obviously. As for which one is best, there is no contest in my mind. The one that does not lock me in and lets me build what I need is an easy winner.
• peterhung 5y ago
  I agree that there are many apps missing on Linux. But that depends on the type of users: for devs & office workers, I think Google suite can replace MS Office and many Internet apps can help with many other types of everyday app that's available on Mac or Window.