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This may well just be troll bait, but anyway: I've been daily-driving KDE/Plasma for... around 7 years now? And I have a really low tolerance for daily technic

This may well just be troll bait, but anyway: I've been daily-driving KDE/Plasma for... around 7 years now? And I have a really low tolerance for daily technical nuisances. There have been some issues over that period, but honestly not more than I would have to deal with on other platforms. I also introduced a partner to Elementary a few years back and she has absolutely fallen in love with it despite the shifting set of glitches it has on every update (she calls "personality"). She's clever but not especially technical and had no Linux experience beforehand. As I see it, there are essentially three desktop platforms to choose from: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Windows is moving in an ad-supported direction that I want no part of and there's even more that I dislike about what Apple is doing (and this from someone who was one of those weird die-hard Apple enthusiasts in the 90s). So I didn't switch to Linux because I'm fanatical about it, but because it was my option of last resort for having a desktop environment that I felt like I could largely control and use the way I wanted to use it. And, it has turned out that I'm really happy with it, most of the time. That's probably not going to be a persuasive argument for the average casual computer user. On the other hand, tired tirades against "the year of the Linux desktop" completely miss the fact that Linux is a completely reasonable desktop experience today.

gman83 5y ago
I've tried to switch to Linux every year for the last decade, but I never manage to complete the switch. I tried again in January and this time I couldn't get Firefox to use GPU acceleration at all, making all web videos extremely choppy. "Yeah you shoudn't use an AMD GPU". The suggestion I got was to just use MPlayer to watch YouTube videos. Ohh well I guess I'll try again next year.
- thaumaturgy 5y ago
  Yeah, GPU issues are absolutely an area that frustrates a lot of would-be Linux users. FWIW that was a consideration when I bought my last two laptops; I filtered out any candidates that didn't have known good Linux drivers for most of the important hardware. And, that took a lot more time reading blogs and forums and the like than I like spending.
- fartcannon 5y ago
- bcrescimanno 5y ago
  In my opinion (disclaimer, I'm currently test driving Arch again in a VMWare installation) this phenomenon is one that is routinely glossed over in discussions about challenges of the Linux desktop. The fact that the most active people hanging out in supposed "community support" channels are the type of technophiles for whom the statement, "You should really just use mplayer to watch YouTube videos" is a completely acceptable solution. They love their home-rolled digital duct tape built system and you should too! That's just not at all acceptable to the majority of people who want to know they can click a link in Firefox (or Chromium or whatever) and watch the damn video. Perhaps more important: it's a prime example of sidestepping the question that is so frequent in these communities where you don't get answers to your questions, you get told random things sort of related to your question that others have done. I started this recent test drive after installing Arch on a secondary system intended to be a home server and, within an hour, I had Steam installed, a DualShock 4 controller connected via bluetooth, and I was playing a windows game (Final Fantasy 12 - The Zodiac Age) at 60FPS stable. I honestly couldn't believe how much "just worked."
notatoad 5y ago
yeah, i have basically the same opinion. i like my M1 mac, but it's got some rough edges that are no worse than the things people call dealbreakers if it happened on something other than an apple product. and i tried using windows 10 shortly after it's release and just couldn't. people like what they're used to. if you're used to windows, linux is a tough sell. but if you're used to linux, so is windows. linux people like to worry about how it is perceived by the average user, but the average user fails all the time on any operating system.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  My problem with Linux as a desktop is that it invariably breaks, and when it does, I have to waste a day figuring out what the hell is wrong with it. Windows 11 Pro is close enough to the things I like about Macs to make the switch, and I can run Linux in the hypervisor so that I never have to touch a Windows shell. Hell, I can even run Linux desktop apps right next to my Windows apps.
  - thaumaturgy 5y ago
    I suspect that recent efforts to make virtualization even more seamless is going to have a big impact on how we do daily computing in the very near future. My next system is going to be a lightweight Linux host with a pile of VMs and something like https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary, with juicy enough hardware to make it feel like I'm only running one OS.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    You've got that backwards. You're going to want to run Windows in VM to protect yourself from Microsoft's bullshit spying. With Linux, at least you _can_ fix the problems.
  - notatoad 5y ago
    my experience with windows has been that troubleshooting it is mostly a waste of time, and if it breaks the best course of action is to re-install from scratch. which is the same as my troubleshooting procedure on ubuntu.

gman83 5y ago

I've tried to switch to Linux every year for the last decade, but I never manage to complete the switch. I tried again in January and this time I couldn't get Firefox to use GPU acceleration at all, making all web videos extremely choppy. "Yeah you shoudn't use an AMD GPU". The suggestion I got was to just use MPlayer to watch YouTube videos. Ohh well I guess I'll try again next year.

thaumaturgy 5y ago
Yeah, GPU issues are absolutely an area that frustrates a lot of would-be Linux users. FWIW that was a consideration when I bought my last two laptops; I filtered out any candidates that didn't have known good Linux drivers for most of the important hardware. And, that took a lot more time reading blogs and forums and the like than I like spending.
fartcannon 5y ago
bcrescimanno 5y ago
In my opinion (disclaimer, I'm currently test driving Arch again in a VMWare installation) this phenomenon is one that is routinely glossed over in discussions about challenges of the Linux desktop. The fact that the most active people hanging out in supposed "community support" channels are the type of technophiles for whom the statement, "You should really just use mplayer to watch YouTube videos" is a completely acceptable solution. They love their home-rolled digital duct tape built system and you should too! That's just not at all acceptable to the majority of people who want to know they can click a link in Firefox (or Chromium or whatever) and watch the damn video. Perhaps more important: it's a prime example of sidestepping the question that is so frequent in these communities where you don't get answers to your questions, you get told random things sort of related to your question that others have done. I started this recent test drive after installing Arch on a secondary system intended to be a home server and, within an hour, I had Steam installed, a DualShock 4 controller connected via bluetooth, and I was playing a windows game (Final Fantasy 12 - The Zodiac Age) at 60FPS stable. I honestly couldn't believe how much "just worked."

notatoad 5y ago

yeah, i have basically the same opinion. i like my M1 mac, but it's got some rough edges that are no worse than the things people call dealbreakers if it happened on something other than an apple product. and i tried using windows 10 shortly after it's release and just couldn't. people like what they're used to. if you're used to windows, linux is a tough sell. but if you're used to linux, so is windows. linux people like to worry about how it is perceived by the average user, but the average user fails all the time on any operating system.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
My problem with Linux as a desktop is that it invariably breaks, and when it does, I have to waste a day figuring out what the hell is wrong with it. Windows 11 Pro is close enough to the things I like about Macs to make the switch, and I can run Linux in the hypervisor so that I never have to touch a Windows shell. Hell, I can even run Linux desktop apps right next to my Windows apps.
- thaumaturgy 5y ago
  I suspect that recent efforts to make virtualization even more seamless is going to have a big impact on how we do daily computing in the very near future. My next system is going to be a lightweight Linux host with a pile of VMs and something like https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary, with juicy enough hardware to make it feel like I'm only running one OS.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  You've got that backwards. You're going to want to run Windows in VM to protect yourself from Microsoft's bullshit spying. With Linux, at least you _can_ fix the problems.
- notatoad 5y ago
  my experience with windows has been that troubleshooting it is mostly a waste of time, and if it breaks the best course of action is to re-install from scratch. which is the same as my troubleshooting procedure on ubuntu.