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What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you? I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manage

What's missing from the Linux Desktop experience for you? I currently use all three operating systems on a weekly basis, Ubuntu with i3 (a window tiling manager) is my daily driver. Everytime I switch to windows or Mac os, it always feels like a downgrade for me because I can't replicate the tiling experience. The one thing I love about mac, is the trackpad experience, I wish windows and Linux could get to that level.

hughrr 5y ago
For me, reliability. Literally I have to futz with it so often. I moved from a Mac recently to a T495 thinkpad with Radeon in it which is supposedly fully supported by Ubuntu. Turns out that depends on what day of the week it is. Constant GPU problems. I have considered switching back to windows.
morrbo 5y ago
It's funny you mention tiling because honestly one of the biggest things preventing me from moving to linux full time is the lack of any decent window manager like https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone... where I can arbitrarily draw/resize zones and drag and drop/snap windows on to them. Every window manager I've used in Linux, and gnome extension, all try and force you to have non resizable areas, areas of equal proportions, don't support snapping etc. And needed serious foo for moving a window about. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear it
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Powertoys is amazing, it allows you to run your Windows machine more like Linux/Mac. Awake is like Amphetamine on macOS. FancyZones is like a tiling window manager. Keyboard Manager allows you to easily rebind a key such as Caps Lock. Power Rename allows you to rename based on regexp. Powertoys Run is basically a light version of Alfred. File Explorer addons allows you to for example preview Markdown (.md) files. Color Picker saves me the hassle of making a screenshot and then uploading it to a website to figure out the hex value (or having to open up a bloated image editor). Useful for (even simple) image editing, web design, etc. I'm sure I missed some utilities but these are the features I use.
NavinF 5y ago
1. Update glibc and everything breaks 2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks 3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel patches from random forums 4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads) 5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters 6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI, but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta do. 7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about performance on old crappy hardware. 8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to get acceptable performance.
- pkphilip 5y ago
  That hasn't been my experience at all - except for the graphics card issue where there is really some work to be done before the specific driver for the card works. For everything else Linux is actually a lot easier to work with than Windows - where you may need to download specific drivers for it to work. As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys. If you don't mind the default settings, it is about the same experience on Linux and Windows. When you start tweaking things, then your mileage will vary.
  - Dayshine 5y ago
    > As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys. This is a pretty bad comparison. Here's a list of things I had to use config files (or terribly documented randomly downloaded CLI apps) for in Ubuntu but have a simple GUI (or just work) in Windows: - Mounting a network drive - Adjusting my touchpad behaviour (whether to supress on keyboard entry) - Restarting my network adapter - Wipe my SSH credentials The last time I touched Windows registry was to disable automatic USB device connection, but that's only because I don't have group policy on this machine.
nanna 5y ago
Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friends and familys aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.) I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
nanna 5y ago
Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friend's and family's aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.) I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.
- pedro2 5y ago
  How much of a tinkerer are you? Try this: https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
- mekster 5y ago
  > I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux Why is this hard to understand? Who uses Linux on desktop? Check some browser stat. Run a remote Windows in a cloud and throw Office in there.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  CrossOver has been working for nearly 20 years on Linux, and Microsoft Word has always been one of their priorities.
- thefr0g 5y ago
  > LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word I mean even different versions of Word can't do that reliably...
- mickotron 5y ago
  I really do not want MS office anywhere near my Linux machine. I wish that Microsoft's products fully supported open document formats and standards.
andai 5y ago
There was recently some kind of fundraiser to hire a developer fulltime to make the trackpad support on Linux closer to macOS.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Last time I checked there was literally one person maintaining trackpad support on Linux; no wonder it needed work!

hughrr 5y ago

For me, reliability. Literally I have to futz with it so often. I moved from a Mac recently to a T495 thinkpad with Radeon in it which is supposedly fully supported by Ubuntu. Turns out that depends on what day of the week it is. Constant GPU problems. I have considered switching back to windows.

morrbo 5y ago

It's funny you mention tiling because honestly one of the biggest things preventing me from moving to linux full time is the lack of any decent window manager like https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzones https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone... where I can arbitrarily draw/resize zones and drag and drop/snap windows on to them. Every window manager I've used in Linux, and gnome extension, all try and force you to have non resizable areas, areas of equal proportions, don't support snapping etc. And needed serious foo for moving a window about. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear it

Fnoord 5y ago
Powertoys is amazing, it allows you to run your Windows machine more like Linux/Mac. Awake is like Amphetamine on macOS. FancyZones is like a tiling window manager. Keyboard Manager allows you to easily rebind a key such as Caps Lock. Power Rename allows you to rename based on regexp. Powertoys Run is basically a light version of Alfred. File Explorer addons allows you to for example preview Markdown (.md) files. Color Picker saves me the hassle of making a screenshot and then uploading it to a website to figure out the hex value (or having to open up a bloated image editor). Useful for (even simple) image editing, web design, etc. I'm sure I missed some utilities but these are the features I use.

NavinF 5y ago

1. Update glibc and everything breaks 2. Update Nvidia drivers and everything breaks 3. 99% of laptops have at least one device with missing or broken drivers. 802.11ac is very old in 2021, but the most popular ac chips still need an out-of-tree driver which will break when you update your kernel. Have fun copying kernel patches from random forums 4. Even the smallest of changes (ex: set display scaling to something that's not a multiple of 100%) require dicking around with config files. Windows 10's neutered control panel is still leagues ahead of Ubuntu's settings app. (Why are the default settings so bad? High DPI 4K monitors have been out for a decade now. Maybe they've fixed this since I've last checked. Or maybe all the devs use 10 year old Thinkpads) 5. Every config file is its own special snowflake with its own syntax, keywords, and escape characters 6. Every distro is its own special snowflake so it takes forever to help someone unfuck their computer if you're not familiar with their distro. Releasing software on Linux is painful for a related reason: The kennel has a stable ABI, but distros don't. You have to ship half the distro with every app if you want it to work out of the box. Using Docker for GUI apps is insane, but sometimes that's that you gotta do. 7. The desktop Linux community seems to only care about performance on old crappy hardware. 8. Audio input and output latency is really high out of the box. That's one of many things that require tweaking just to get acceptable performance.

pkphilip 5y ago
That hasn't been my experience at all - except for the graphics card issue where there is really some work to be done before the specific driver for the card works. For everything else Linux is actually a lot easier to work with than Windows - where you may need to download specific drivers for it to work. As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys. If you don't mind the default settings, it is about the same experience on Linux and Windows. When you start tweaking things, then your mileage will vary.
- Dayshine 5y ago
  > As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys. This is a pretty bad comparison. Here's a list of things I had to use config files (or terribly documented randomly downloaded CLI apps) for in Ubuntu but have a simple GUI (or just work) in Windows: - Mounting a network drive - Adjusting my touchpad behaviour (whether to supress on keyboard entry) - Restarting my network adapter - Wipe my SSH credentials The last time I touched Windows registry was to disable automatic USB device connection, but that's only because I don't have group policy on this machine.

nanna 5y ago

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friends and familys aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.) I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

nanna 5y ago

Microsoft Word. That's literally the only thing which stops me from installing Windows on all of my friend's and family's aging laptops. LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word, which for most people is a deal-breaker. (For me it's not, but for non-techie associates it is.) I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux in exchange for them extracting so much value from Linux for their proprietary operating system.

pedro2 5y ago
How much of a tinkerer are you? Try this: https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
mekster 5y ago
> I just don't understand why there's not more pressure on MS to port Office to Linux Why is this hard to understand? Who uses Linux on desktop? Check some browser stat. Run a remote Windows in a cloud and throw Office in there.
Fnoord 5y ago
CrossOver has been working for nearly 20 years on Linux, and Microsoft Word has always been one of their priorities.
thefr0g 5y ago
> LibreOffice just isn't capable of 100% replicating the formatting of a docx generated by Word I mean even different versions of Word can't do that reliably...
mickotron 5y ago
I really do not want MS office anywhere near my Linux machine. I wish that Microsoft's products fully supported open document formats and standards.

andai 5y ago

There was recently some kind of fundraiser to hire a developer fulltime to make the trackpad support on Linux closer to macOS.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Last time I checked there was literally one person maintaining trackpad support on Linux; no wonder it needed work!