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I agree with your arguments but the Linux desktop sucks, I would never want to use it full time let alone support it (note that I used to be a full time Linux d

I agree with your arguments but the Linux desktop sucks, I would never want to use it full time let alone support it (note that I used to be a full time Linux desktop user, I left after KDE 4 came about). Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are.

raspyberr 5y ago
I can imagine Linux desktop being made to work pretty well for a constrained work environment like an office.
jhgs 5y ago
>Linus Tech Tips Sorry
nivenkos 5y ago
I've used Linux full-time at home for 10 years, and now at work (in an enterprise). For the most part, it works well and doesn't require a whole lot more support. The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. But to judge so much on that is unreasonable, shit happens in software engineering, it'd be like trying to use Facebook in the window where it was down and concluding that Facebook is completely unreliable. I'm not a PopOS user myself, but I have a lot of respect for everything they've achieved. It's not fair to constantly attack them for this one incident.
- Folcon 5y ago
  As someone who used to be an avid linux desktop user, but has subsequently moved away from it and is interested in the current ecosystem with a view to maybe coming back, what would you say is a good entry point? I used to run Ubuntu back in the day if that helps. I'm curious to get a sense of how much has changed.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    Ubuntu is very stable and easy to get started with. I know there's some frustration with Canonical's direction, but it's still very much the distro I'd recommend to anyone who's just getting started. Everything more or less works out of the box for me (as much as it ever did with Windows), and Ubuntu still has the advantage of being the primary focus of most online documentation.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    I'd recommend Arch Linux for developers. It takes a little bit of set-up / learning at the start. But you can easily try it out with a tool like ALMA - https://github.com/r-darwish/alma https://github.com/r-darwish/alma See my preset files here - https://github.com/jamesmcm/arch-i3-usb https://github.com/jamesmcm/arch-i3-usb But PopOS is probably the closest to the previous beginner Ubuntu experience now.
    - cyber_kinetist 5y ago
      Also, if you don’t want the hardcore(!!!) installation experience of Arch Linux, try Manjaro Linux instead. It has one of the most sane defaults and the best GPU driver management system, and you can customize a lot of it since it’s just Arch under the hood.
    - nvrspyx 5y ago
      As a counter-recommendation, I'd recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed for developers. It is also rolling-release, but packages are more heavily tested. It's easier to set up. And by default, it uses btrfs and provides a useful snapshot tool called snapper. While breaking has become relatively rare on Arch, it's simply easier to set up a stable environment without having to keep a close eye on updates with Tumbleweed.
    - Iolaum 5y ago
      > I'd recommend Arch for Linux developers. fixed it for you ;)
    - Folcon 5y ago
      Thanks for the presets, I'll have a glance through it.
- ndiddy 5y ago
  > The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour The PopOS install ISO was made during when the packaging bug was occurring. and remained up for months. They finally replaced it after the Linus Tech Tips video came out. Anyone who installed Steam without first updating the system broke their install.
- RedShift1 5y ago
  > The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. It's not just that. There are a whole lot more issues that were explained in the WAN show episodes, for example not being able to drag and drop between a GTK and QT app. As a technical user I understand why this happens but am frustrated that this issue exists in the first place as there is also no technical reason why it can't be fixed. As a new user or someone not technically inclined it must be completely mind boggling to have to find out the hard way that certain things don't work between certain apps.
vancan1ty 5y ago
I like KDE 5 very much, personally, and am a user of the KDE Neon distro. If you've looked again at KDE recently, what are your primary paint points?
winstonschmidt 5y ago
I really don't get the hate that Linux Desktop gets. When comparing Mac OS to Gnome the difference feels marginal (at least for normal users) these days - everything feels snappy, consistent and looks nice. What exactly are the pain points?
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Hmm, I use Ubuntu for casual non-work stuff on a couple of old laptops, and it's totally fine for that, but the few times I have tried to do work things start to get a little less fine. Even with a clipboard manager, copy and paste is less reliable than on macOS, keyboard shortcuts (and ability to tweak them per-program or OS-wide) are clunkier or just not possible. Of course, I feel the same way when I have to use Windows for anything other than games...
cardanome 5y ago
I would agree that the Linux Desktop sucks in absolute terms when we think what a sane Desktop experience could look like but compared to Windows, this does not hold true. Linux has quite improved from the early KDE 4 days. These days, you install Linux Mint with Cinnamon and you are good to go. Super easy to use and just works. It is based on Ubuntu, so you can use all the packages but with the bad stuff and experiments removed. Modern Windows is absolutely dystopian in comparison. Not being happy with getting money from licenses, they try to gather all the data about you that they can and try to shove their other services into your face. And then the whole update story. Not only do you need to restart the computer, you can't even do anything else while it is updating and it is taking its time. Plus every damn Windows Computer in every school, university or whatever has always been maddening slow. (Yeah, I know it all depends on the specs and how it is configured and if you are running some silly antivirus and so on but still. Install Linux and you get a fast and responsive experience and it stays that way.) Honestly I don't see any reason to run Windows instead of Linux in 2021 except maybe running very specific software that does not run well on Wine.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  KDE 5 is also really good IMO. I like it much more than Mate or Cinnamon.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  This has been said ad infinitum. My experience is that Windows works, but very poorly. It is slow, hangs, steals my data and treats me like an abusive parent treats a toddler. But for me, Linux doesn't work. Or maybe it works 90%. Something's always broken, and a different thing is broken with each update. It requires constant tinkering. One flawless and amazing experience I had was working on Linux at a medium-sized tech firm, which had a dedicated sysadmin team who knew what they were doing. As a decent Linux user I could never maintain anything like that level of service on personal machines. I think it's quite telling that so few vendors sell you hardware+Linux+promise of it all working well. There are quite a few who will sell you hardware and pinky promise you can install Linux on it yourself, but that's not the same.
  - 5y ago
jeroenhd 5y ago
Honestly, all desktops suck these days. I find GNOME quite usable if you don't approach it as "fake Windows" or "fake macOS", while Windows 11 feels more like an incomplete KDE fork that tries to be Windows 10. The problems the LTT videos are pointing out are problems that office workers don't need to deal with. They don't need to deal with package management, drivers or games. They need a browser, a home directory and an office suite. The LTT videos struggle with the obvious problems, most of which come down to very specific use cases (say, video streaming) and compatibility stuff (getting things developed for Windows, mostly games, to work). Also note that while Linus has been having tons of issues, his counterpart Luke has mostly been encountering minor annoyances. I think the Linux desktop is great for a) advanced users and b) beginners that only do basic home and office work. The pain comes when you need to do moderately advanced stuff like automations, system configurations and obscure tools that few other people are using, or that aren't designed to run on that platform. In those circumstances, the community will direct you to the command line more often than not, and those users don't have the experience (or even the need, normally) to use it. In a recent podcast the LTT folks said they were considering doing an episode approaching Windows from the same standpoint as Linux. Getting some basic stuff working on Windows (or macOS, for that matter) can be as much of a pain as getting it done on Linux, but we've been teaching kids how to use those systems for decades now.
BenjiWiebe 5y ago
I can understand why you left after kde 4 came out. That release gave me more trouble with desktop Linux than anything else in the last 10 years.
JTbane 5y ago
>Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are. I watched it, they failed to install Steam (the game platform) on Pop!_OS via the package manager, then tried to remove it. A bug also caused apt to remove the entire desktop shell (with 3 separate warnings to NOT DO THIS), and Linus happily typed "Yes, do as I say!" and broke the desktop env.
sjcoles 5y ago
For what it's worth I have about 200 Linux Laptops and VDI (about 3:1 ratio) and the support burden is much less than Windows. Need to perform an update on the fleet? Click a couple buttons to version a repo to dev, old dev to test, test to prod, schedule a remote execution of `yum update -y`, wait. None of this will it won't it work song and dance of Windows updates. Need to perform a config change? Branch the ansible playbook repo, test your changes, merge to master, pull down repo on foreman, and schedule playbook execution. No bullshit, all text files, all standard protocols. It just works as I would hope Windows would.
dachryn 5y ago
Linux came a long way since then. For projects like this, Zorin would be a great way to start. But even a standard desktop like Mint would already be a very good starting point. Don't forget that LTT is has two things that are not relevant for administration work: they try to game (which heavily influences their OS choice) and they need to figure out everything themselves. These cities can offer curated packages, the user does not have to figure out which package to use for what, the IT team provides them. With those two things in mind, the LTT story shows exactly that this can actually work, provided there is support for the rough edges. Windows also has rough edges by the way.
heurisko 5y ago
My favourite desktop is the Unity desktop by Canonical, which used to be the old Ubuntu desktop. I felt like I could tell they were building it for actual users. There were things like the corner pixels activating logout, so you could just drag your mouse straight to the corner of the screen. It also ran well on old hardware. Ubuntu moving to the Gnome interface again was a step back in my opinion, but it shows what can be done if there is a business with a clear vision.
- bubblethink 5y ago
  Ditto. Unity still works but is increasingly broken and will never work on wayland. However, kde plasma can be made to work like like unity. I recently went through this exercise a couple of days ago, and I think I'll be able to manage with plasma once unity dies.
- zeppelin101 5y ago
  I quite liked Unity, myself, but I recall that the Linux community was very upset and vocal at Canonical for having ditched Gnome. It's really hard to please everyone.

raspyberr 5y ago

I can imagine Linux desktop being made to work pretty well for a constrained work environment like an office.

jhgs 5y ago

>Linus Tech Tips Sorry

nivenkos 5y ago

I've used Linux full-time at home for 10 years, and now at work (in an enterprise). For the most part, it works well and doesn't require a whole lot more support. The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. But to judge so much on that is unreasonable, shit happens in software engineering, it'd be like trying to use Facebook in the window where it was down and concluding that Facebook is completely unreliable. I'm not a PopOS user myself, but I have a lot of respect for everything they've achieved. It's not fair to constantly attack them for this one incident.

Folcon 5y ago
As someone who used to be an avid linux desktop user, but has subsequently moved away from it and is interested in the current ecosystem with a view to maybe coming back, what would you say is a good entry point? I used to run Ubuntu back in the day if that helps. I'm curious to get a sense of how much has changed.
- lolinder 5y ago
  Ubuntu is very stable and easy to get started with. I know there's some frustration with Canonical's direction, but it's still very much the distro I'd recommend to anyone who's just getting started. Everything more or less works out of the box for me (as much as it ever did with Windows), and Ubuntu still has the advantage of being the primary focus of most online documentation.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  I'd recommend Arch Linux for developers. It takes a little bit of set-up / learning at the start. But you can easily try it out with a tool like ALMA - https://github.com/r-darwish/alma https://github.com/r-darwish/alma See my preset files here - https://github.com/jamesmcm/arch-i3-usb https://github.com/jamesmcm/arch-i3-usb But PopOS is probably the closest to the previous beginner Ubuntu experience now.
  - cyber_kinetist 5y ago
    Also, if you don’t want the hardcore(!!!) installation experience of Arch Linux, try Manjaro Linux instead. It has one of the most sane defaults and the best GPU driver management system, and you can customize a lot of it since it’s just Arch under the hood.
  - nvrspyx 5y ago
    As a counter-recommendation, I'd recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed for developers. It is also rolling-release, but packages are more heavily tested. It's easier to set up. And by default, it uses btrfs and provides a useful snapshot tool called snapper. While breaking has become relatively rare on Arch, it's simply easier to set up a stable environment without having to keep a close eye on updates with Tumbleweed.
  - Iolaum 5y ago
    > I'd recommend Arch for Linux developers. fixed it for you ;)
  - Folcon 5y ago
    Thanks for the presets, I'll have a glance through it.
ndiddy 5y ago
> The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour The PopOS install ISO was made during when the packaging bug was occurring. and remained up for months. They finally replaced it after the Linus Tech Tips video came out. Anyone who installed Steam without first updating the system broke their install.
RedShift1 5y ago
> The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. It's not just that. There are a whole lot more issues that were explained in the WAN show episodes, for example not being able to drag and drop between a GTK and QT app. As a technical user I understand why this happens but am frustrated that this issue exists in the first place as there is also no technical reason why it can't be fixed. As a new user or someone not technically inclined it must be completely mind boggling to have to find out the hard way that certain things don't work between certain apps.

vancan1ty 5y ago

I like KDE 5 very much, personally, and am a user of the KDE Neon distro. If you've looked again at KDE recently, what are your primary paint points?

winstonschmidt 5y ago

I really don't get the hate that Linux Desktop gets. When comparing Mac OS to Gnome the difference feels marginal (at least for normal users) these days - everything feels snappy, consistent and looks nice. What exactly are the pain points?

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Hmm, I use Ubuntu for casual non-work stuff on a couple of old laptops, and it's totally fine for that, but the few times I have tried to do work things start to get a little less fine. Even with a clipboard manager, copy and paste is less reliable than on macOS, keyboard shortcuts (and ability to tweak them per-program or OS-wide) are clunkier or just not possible. Of course, I feel the same way when I have to use Windows for anything other than games...

cardanome 5y ago

I would agree that the Linux Desktop sucks in absolute terms when we think what a sane Desktop experience could look like but compared to Windows, this does not hold true. Linux has quite improved from the early KDE 4 days. These days, you install Linux Mint with Cinnamon and you are good to go. Super easy to use and just works. It is based on Ubuntu, so you can use all the packages but with the bad stuff and experiments removed. Modern Windows is absolutely dystopian in comparison. Not being happy with getting money from licenses, they try to gather all the data about you that they can and try to shove their other services into your face. And then the whole update story. Not only do you need to restart the computer, you can't even do anything else while it is updating and it is taking its time. Plus every damn Windows Computer in every school, university or whatever has always been maddening slow. (Yeah, I know it all depends on the specs and how it is configured and if you are running some silly antivirus and so on but still. Install Linux and you get a fast and responsive experience and it stays that way.) Honestly I don't see any reason to run Windows instead of Linux in 2021 except maybe running very specific software that does not run well on Wine.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
KDE 5 is also really good IMO. I like it much more than Mate or Cinnamon.
rich_sasha 5y ago
This has been said ad infinitum. My experience is that Windows works, but very poorly. It is slow, hangs, steals my data and treats me like an abusive parent treats a toddler. But for me, Linux doesn't work. Or maybe it works 90%. Something's always broken, and a different thing is broken with each update. It requires constant tinkering. One flawless and amazing experience I had was working on Linux at a medium-sized tech firm, which had a dedicated sysadmin team who knew what they were doing. As a decent Linux user I could never maintain anything like that level of service on personal machines. I think it's quite telling that so few vendors sell you hardware+Linux+promise of it all working well. There are quite a few who will sell you hardware and pinky promise you can install Linux on it yourself, but that's not the same.
- 5y ago

jeroenhd 5y ago

Honestly, all desktops suck these days. I find GNOME quite usable if you don't approach it as "fake Windows" or "fake macOS", while Windows 11 feels more like an incomplete KDE fork that tries to be Windows 10. The problems the LTT videos are pointing out are problems that office workers don't need to deal with. They don't need to deal with package management, drivers or games. They need a browser, a home directory and an office suite. The LTT videos struggle with the obvious problems, most of which come down to very specific use cases (say, video streaming) and compatibility stuff (getting things developed for Windows, mostly games, to work). Also note that while Linus has been having tons of issues, his counterpart Luke has mostly been encountering minor annoyances. I think the Linux desktop is great for a) advanced users and b) beginners that only do basic home and office work. The pain comes when you need to do moderately advanced stuff like automations, system configurations and obscure tools that few other people are using, or that aren't designed to run on that platform. In those circumstances, the community will direct you to the command line more often than not, and those users don't have the experience (or even the need, normally) to use it. In a recent podcast the LTT folks said they were considering doing an episode approaching Windows from the same standpoint as Linux. Getting some basic stuff working on Windows (or macOS, for that matter) can be as much of a pain as getting it done on Linux, but we've been teaching kids how to use those systems for decades now.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago

I can understand why you left after kde 4 came out. That release gave me more trouble with desktop Linux than anything else in the last 10 years.

JTbane 5y ago

>Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are. I watched it, they failed to install Steam (the game platform) on Pop!_OS via the package manager, then tried to remove it. A bug also caused apt to remove the entire desktop shell (with 3 separate warnings to NOT DO THIS), and Linus happily typed "Yes, do as I say!" and broke the desktop env.

sjcoles 5y ago

For what it's worth I have about 200 Linux Laptops and VDI (about 3:1 ratio) and the support burden is much less than Windows. Need to perform an update on the fleet? Click a couple buttons to version a repo to dev, old dev to test, test to prod, schedule a remote execution of `yum update -y`, wait. None of this will it won't it work song and dance of Windows updates. Need to perform a config change? Branch the ansible playbook repo, test your changes, merge to master, pull down repo on foreman, and schedule playbook execution. No bullshit, all text files, all standard protocols. It just works as I would hope Windows would.

dachryn 5y ago

Linux came a long way since then. For projects like this, Zorin would be a great way to start. But even a standard desktop like Mint would already be a very good starting point. Don't forget that LTT is has two things that are not relevant for administration work: they try to game (which heavily influences their OS choice) and they need to figure out everything themselves. These cities can offer curated packages, the user does not have to figure out which package to use for what, the IT team provides them. With those two things in mind, the LTT story shows exactly that this can actually work, provided there is support for the rough edges. Windows also has rough edges by the way.

heurisko 5y ago

My favourite desktop is the Unity desktop by Canonical, which used to be the old Ubuntu desktop. I felt like I could tell they were building it for actual users. There were things like the corner pixels activating logout, so you could just drag your mouse straight to the corner of the screen. It also ran well on old hardware. Ubuntu moving to the Gnome interface again was a step back in my opinion, but it shows what can be done if there is a business with a clear vision.

bubblethink 5y ago
Ditto. Unity still works but is increasingly broken and will never work on wayland. However, kde plasma can be made to work like like unity. I recently went through this exercise a couple of days ago, and I think I'll be able to manage with plasma once unity dies.
zeppelin101 5y ago
I quite liked Unity, myself, but I recall that the Linux community was very upset and vocal at Canonical for having ditched Gnome. It's really hard to please everyone.