6 ms·

> Nobody makes money on desktop linux and it's in a terrible state. What's terrible about it? Fonts rendering? Or Wayland still not having "won" over XFree86

> Nobody makes money on desktop linux and it's in a terrible state. What's terrible about it? Fonts rendering? Or Wayland still not having "won" over XFree86/Xorg? I'm using Linux as my main computer since more than two decades and, if anything, desktop Linux is much better now than it used to be. Browsers and JetBrains' Java written IDE did a lot for that but even though I don't game I know people are playing games on Linux too. I mean: if you're a dev spending your life in browsers and IntelliJ IDEA (heck, or Emacs), Linux is sweet. Desktop Linux is the distant third player after Windows and OS X but what's terrible about it besides its small market share (on the desktop, servers and appliances being another story)?

JaggerJo 5y ago
HiDPI screens are still an issue.
- derekjdanserl 5y ago
  Not for me on Ubuntu 20.04. I use fractional scaling on my laptop and it works perfectly. Just prefer deb installers instead of flatpak and snap, because flatpak and snap aren’t ready yet. HiDPI works great.
- grogenaut 5y ago
  I finally got them to work well in wayland (literally last night with sway) which supports different resolutions/scaling per monitor unlike xorg. Try out wayland on your desktop, that may be the last part you need. wdisplays to size things. This also seems to be an issue with (albeit likely main use) of running your monitor at double DPI, like you would with a laptop and side monitor. With a 43" 4k monitor and some old 2560x1440 27" monitors the default worked great. Now I just gotta figure out how to get my 2nd nvidia card working on my desktop to get that 5th monitor turned on. Yeah this is several hours of fiddling. I had this working years ago but things got broken, they seem to be on the way to getting fixed. And as other articles have said, I've spent as much or more time unf**ing python on windows, installing WSL2, etc. Really the only things holding me back from a full time windows box were pubg (not a reason now), fusion 360 (can use a VM), and 5+ monitors. If I get those monitors running it's go time. Luckily I have the same computer config at home and at work so it may happen.
  - 6510 5y ago
    you can use the other 20 displays wiht synergy.
    - grogenaut 5y ago
      Do you mean I should hook up N other computers and use synergy between them or just have separate X displays and synergize between them?
      - 6510 5y ago
        N others with a mix of different versions of linux, windows and macOS[0]. There are also clients for Kolibri[1] and Android[2] Can configure some to hibernate until you move the mouse into the display. [0] - https://symless.com/help-articles/operating-systems-supported-by-synergy https://symless.com/help-articles/operating-systems-supporte... [1] - http://board.kolibrios.org/viewtopic.php?t=2544 http://board.kolibrios.org/viewtopic.php?t=2544 [2] - https://github.com/symless/synergy-android-7 https://github.com/symless/synergy-android-7
- OJFord 5y ago
  What's the issue? The only issue I have is not having a good way to get a consistent font/UI sizes across (switching between) different monitors/machines. But I have/had that problem with macOS too.
bubblethink 5y ago
Each user will have their own gripes. Personally, for me, unity 7 was peak desktop. Since both unity and X are abandoned, it is increasingly difficult to get fixes for bugs. So, we need to switch to wayland, which fixes some issues like screen tearing, but things like multi-monitor setup are still quite flaky. And finally, GNOME is just not to my liking. So I would have to wait for KDE or XFCE to sufficiently catch up with wayland. The packaging situation has also become worse. There isn't a single LTS distro doing a good job of packaging chromium.
- halikular 5y ago
  Perhaps Nixos? It isn't LTS, but extremely reliable. https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05&show=chromium&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=chromium https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05&show=chromiu...
da39a3ee 5y ago
From what I've heard, hi res displays, and other features that work perfectly on macs such as suspend/hibernate on closing the laptop, can still be problematic just like 10 years ago when I last had a linux laptop. Is that fair?
- igetspam 5y ago
  It is. Every time my laptop screen blanks or go s to sleep, I have to fix my displays. Not everything is perfect but minor nits are solvable..
- xur17 5y ago
  I think that's fair. I will say, I select for laptops that are known to have good linux support (ex: Thinkpad X1), and my last few have worked pretty well. Sometimes there are weird quirks, but honestly no more than my macbook has.
- derekjdanserl 5y ago
  This is the single problem I have with running Ubuntu 20.04 on my laptop. It takes about 1.5 minutes to wake up. But it does wake up, and then it’s far better than any alternatives
- lillecarl 5y ago
  I'm running NixOS and they take care of my boot stages automatically. I have 2 disks with one boot partition each (unencrypted boot), raid1 for swap and data and neither suspend or hibernate is a problem, though I've previously had issues with not finding my bootloader at all, seems to be solved by calling sync on my boot partitions once I update grub (which nixos does every time I "rebuild" my setup, which is several times a day). This is on a System76 Lemur Pro (lemp10). The fancurve in the firmware is suboptimal, but there's a merged PR for solving that too. I hope they make a fanless ultrabook (don't care if ARM or x86 tbh, as long as KVM works and AES is accelerated), then I could buy one for home as well. I should note that it naturally takes awhile to wake from hibernation if I had a lot of applications running (40GB RAM, which is a weird configuration)
  - 5y ago
darthrupert 5y ago
Wayland has won over xorg already. I have been using it for several months on two laptops and a gaming desktop. Then again, Linux won over Windows in 1996 for me so perhaps I'm a bit of an outlier.
- csdreamer7 5y ago
  Screen recording does not work well in Wayland. Black screen with the mouse cursor. Keeps breaking in Chrome and not even working in FF for me with Google Meet. Haven't used Zoom in a while, but prob still broken. On Gnome Wayland, if you play Sonic Mania, you can feel the latency from when you push a button and Sonic jumps. From what I hear on Linux Unplugged, the latency also exists in other games. KDE Wayland is too broken to try.
- zibzab 5y ago
  Waylandis now default on all big distros. The war is over people. Even the xorg people are happy about this.
  - LinAGKar 5y ago
    Only on GNOME on Mesa though.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Nice definition of won for 1% of desktop market.
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    Why should I care about its market share? How does that affect me?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Because that is the whole point of the thread being discussed and System76 endeavours that started this whole thread. In this context Linux has won nothing, nada, niente.
LinAGKar 5y ago
HDR for one thing. It took years before we got proper Optimus support, and it will probably take just as long to get HDR support. Having to use the command line is another problem. And poor support for HiDPI and multi-monitor. And the lack of a standardized stable platform for application development. LSB tried and failed, and now Flatpak and Steam looks like the best hope. Of course, that goes far beyond a DE, but I hope System76 will push for improvement.

JaggerJo 5y ago

HiDPI screens are still an issue.

derekjdanserl 5y ago
Not for me on Ubuntu 20.04. I use fractional scaling on my laptop and it works perfectly. Just prefer deb installers instead of flatpak and snap, because flatpak and snap aren’t ready yet. HiDPI works great.
grogenaut 5y ago
I finally got them to work well in wayland (literally last night with sway) which supports different resolutions/scaling per monitor unlike xorg. Try out wayland on your desktop, that may be the last part you need. wdisplays to size things. This also seems to be an issue with (albeit likely main use) of running your monitor at double DPI, like you would with a laptop and side monitor. With a 43" 4k monitor and some old 2560x1440 27" monitors the default worked great. Now I just gotta figure out how to get my 2nd nvidia card working on my desktop to get that 5th monitor turned on. Yeah this is several hours of fiddling. I had this working years ago but things got broken, they seem to be on the way to getting fixed. And as other articles have said, I've spent as much or more time unf**ing python on windows, installing WSL2, etc. Really the only things holding me back from a full time windows box were pubg (not a reason now), fusion 360 (can use a VM), and 5+ monitors. If I get those monitors running it's go time. Luckily I have the same computer config at home and at work so it may happen.
- 6510 5y ago
  you can use the other 20 displays wiht synergy.
  - grogenaut 5y ago
    Do you mean I should hook up N other computers and use synergy between them or just have separate X displays and synergize between them?
    - 6510 5y ago
      N others with a mix of different versions of linux, windows and macOS[0]. There are also clients for Kolibri[1] and Android[2] Can configure some to hibernate until you move the mouse into the display. [0] - https://symless.com/help-articles/operating-systems-supported-by-synergy https://symless.com/help-articles/operating-systems-supporte... [1] - http://board.kolibrios.org/viewtopic.php?t=2544 http://board.kolibrios.org/viewtopic.php?t=2544 [2] - https://github.com/symless/synergy-android-7 https://github.com/symless/synergy-android-7
OJFord 5y ago
What's the issue? The only issue I have is not having a good way to get a consistent font/UI sizes across (switching between) different monitors/machines. But I have/had that problem with macOS too.

bubblethink 5y ago

Each user will have their own gripes. Personally, for me, unity 7 was peak desktop. Since both unity and X are abandoned, it is increasingly difficult to get fixes for bugs. So, we need to switch to wayland, which fixes some issues like screen tearing, but things like multi-monitor setup are still quite flaky. And finally, GNOME is just not to my liking. So I would have to wait for KDE or XFCE to sufficiently catch up with wayland. The packaging situation has also become worse. There isn't a single LTS distro doing a good job of packaging chromium.

halikular 5y ago
Perhaps Nixos? It isn't LTS, but extremely reliable. https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05&show=chromium&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=chromium https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=21.05&show=chromiu...

da39a3ee 5y ago

From what I've heard, hi res displays, and other features that work perfectly on macs such as suspend/hibernate on closing the laptop, can still be problematic just like 10 years ago when I last had a linux laptop. Is that fair?

igetspam 5y ago
It is. Every time my laptop screen blanks or go s to sleep, I have to fix my displays. Not everything is perfect but minor nits are solvable..
xur17 5y ago
I think that's fair. I will say, I select for laptops that are known to have good linux support (ex: Thinkpad X1), and my last few have worked pretty well. Sometimes there are weird quirks, but honestly no more than my macbook has.
derekjdanserl 5y ago
This is the single problem I have with running Ubuntu 20.04 on my laptop. It takes about 1.5 minutes to wake up. But it does wake up, and then it’s far better than any alternatives
lillecarl 5y ago
I'm running NixOS and they take care of my boot stages automatically. I have 2 disks with one boot partition each (unencrypted boot), raid1 for swap and data and neither suspend or hibernate is a problem, though I've previously had issues with not finding my bootloader at all, seems to be solved by calling sync on my boot partitions once I update grub (which nixos does every time I "rebuild" my setup, which is several times a day). This is on a System76 Lemur Pro (lemp10). The fancurve in the firmware is suboptimal, but there's a merged PR for solving that too. I hope they make a fanless ultrabook (don't care if ARM or x86 tbh, as long as KVM works and AES is accelerated), then I could buy one for home as well. I should note that it naturally takes awhile to wake from hibernation if I had a lot of applications running (40GB RAM, which is a weird configuration)
- 5y ago

darthrupert 5y ago

Wayland has won over xorg already. I have been using it for several months on two laptops and a gaming desktop. Then again, Linux won over Windows in 1996 for me so perhaps I'm a bit of an outlier.

csdreamer7 5y ago
Screen recording does not work well in Wayland. Black screen with the mouse cursor. Keeps breaking in Chrome and not even working in FF for me with Google Meet. Haven't used Zoom in a while, but prob still broken. On Gnome Wayland, if you play Sonic Mania, you can feel the latency from when you push a button and Sonic jumps. From what I hear on Linux Unplugged, the latency also exists in other games. KDE Wayland is too broken to try.
zibzab 5y ago
Waylandis now default on all big distros. The war is over people. Even the xorg people are happy about this.
- LinAGKar 5y ago
  Only on GNOME on Mesa though.
pjmlp 5y ago
Nice definition of won for 1% of desktop market.
- darthrupert 5y ago
  Why should I care about its market share? How does that affect me?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Because that is the whole point of the thread being discussed and System76 endeavours that started this whole thread. In this context Linux has won nothing, nada, niente.

LinAGKar 5y ago

HDR for one thing. It took years before we got proper Optimus support, and it will probably take just as long to get HDR support. Having to use the command line is another problem. And poor support for HiDPI and multi-monitor. And the lack of a standardized stable platform for application development. LSB tried and failed, and now Flatpak and Steam looks like the best hope. Of course, that goes far beyond a DE, but I hope System76 will push for improvement.