13 ms·

I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems

82 points by samizdis 4y ago

rektide 4y ago
Also posted 9 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31672861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31672861 (5 points, 9 hours ago, 2 comments)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  And one day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166573
hajimuz 4y ago
the hope is ChromeOS…
- hulitu 4y ago
  > the hope is ChromeOS… The hope is that ChromeOS dies. It has nothing to do with Linux except the kernel.
  - forgotpwd16 4y ago
    >It has nothing to do with Linux Which isn't entirely bad since it has some good concepts regarding security that will make good additions to current Linux systems.
  - sbuk 4y ago
    I thought Linux was the kernel…
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Linux is a kernel though. This feels like the opposite of Stallmans GNU/Linux rant.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    I hope some ambitious soul can port the Chrome OS window manager in some way. Chrome OS is the only non Windows or Mac window manager that handles UI scaling correctly in all cases and across all displays with differing scaling settings. There is no Linux WM that I've found anywhere near as good (don't say i3wm).
- dylan-m 4y ago
  I hope not! Outside of the Chrome part, ChromeOS is a mess of awkwardly attached virtual machines. If you want a "native" app (unless your native app is Steam), your best option is Android, which means you're inside an Android VM, your webview component is an Android Chrome webview, you can't see other things on the network (because you have a virtual network device), permissions are granted via the Android Settings panel which is distinct from the Chrome OS Settings panel and an even more user-hostile experience than it already was, and your widgets are all slightly wrong. It is bloat all the way down. Running plain old Linux apps is a similar problem, except it's a "developer feature", so you can't expect an end user to use your app on their Chromebook. It is exceedingly difficult for a developer to contribute any kind of improvement to this because the bug tracker is a black hole and the source code is a gargantuan monorepo with multi-page build instructions that basically require you to sacrifice a computer if you want to get anywhere. Sandboxing is great and all, but the thing is a glorified hypervisor. It has no vision of its own for app distribution, user experience, or developer experience. It boggles my mind that they are doing this with ChromeOS: the OS that runs on the cheapest, slowest, most under-specced computers on the market.
- night-rider 4y ago
  Check out Cloudready. I use it for leveraging the Google ecosystem.
- robonerd 4y ago
  If that's what you want, then use it. There's nothing stopping you. Other people choosing to use something different should be no skin off your back, unless what you really want is some sort of suicide-pact.
foobarian 4y ago
Suggested title edit: "I see the Linux desktop's problems, but that doesn't mean I don't love it"
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  More accurate title... I love the Linux desktop, but I just want one version of it so that I don't have to deal with competition and jobs with different tools. In other words, I'll likely switch to Apple.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    That, and I don't understand the needless fascination with "crushing windows." That's a goal that seems completely misaligned with all the features that make the linux desktop something I want to use; and destroying competition has never been a great long term strategy. I don't care about your market share.. I care about the quality of my own experience.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      It's because market share is important if you want hardware and software support. Right now Linux has terrible support VR, for instance, and one can only imagine that would be different if it were the majority desktop OS.
    - squarefoot 4y ago
      > I don't understand the needless fascination with "crushing windows." That was the common sentiment 20+ years ago when Steve Ballmer, then Microsoft CEO, declared that "Linux is a cancer". Today I'd say it's not the case anymore, especially so since they were forced by market laws to fake some form of friendship with Open Source, not to mention having ruined Windows with all versions from 8 on. Windows is pretty much crushing itself these days.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      > I don't care about your market share.. I care about the quality of my own experience. Exactly this. I've seen where chasing mainstream usability and appeal leads: ipadification. If you want an ipad go buy an ipad. I don't care about linux 'winning' because that sort of win condition would make linux into something that has no value to me. A Pyrrhic victory.
encryptluks2 4y ago
This article is sort of frustrating, because the issue they have isn't like something not working, just that there are multiple competing options and they want unity around all things.
- themitigating 4y ago
  I think having too many options can be frustrating for many people, especially if they aren't experts in the options.
  - jbjohns 4y ago
    Well, I think a bigger issue is so many of the options not really mattering at all.
- sliken 4y ago
  Doesn't seem like there needs to be unity, just that things from the OS are handled in an OS specific way, but things not specific to the OS are handled in an identical way. Seems like container systems like flatpak deliver this. If google chrome flatpak was supported on all OSs then it wouldn't particularly matter to application developers that there were 200 flavors of linux around.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Yeah but the fragmentation is the problem. One reason Windows and macOS are popular is that people know what they are going to get. If you've used one Windows 11 box, for example, you can get on another Windows 11 box and figure out how to use it. It will have the same user interface and window management as the other: the Start menu, the control panel, the desktop, etc. That's just not the case for Linux. There are several popular desktop environments that are very different from each other in look and feel. For an ordinary user, switching from Gnome to KDE would be quite jarring and it would take them a while to get used to it. For power users and tweakers, that diversity of options is an attractive feature of the Linux desktop. For ordinary users, it is a deterrent.
  - 4y ago
xalava 4y ago
As a desktop, Linux is now fully functional for most users. I know administrations running on Linux, law firms, and even my dad. Beginner users don't care about choices, they get Linux Mint or similar with LibreOffice and Firefox and they are good to go for most of their tasks. For advanced users, the abundance is a key benefit of this ecosystem. No company is fully focused on the desktop OS, and I don't see why they should. This article is contradictory saying "desktop operating system will lie in the hands of Apple with macOS and us with Linux". It is not because Microsoft prioritize cloud services that it abandons desktops, it is not a priority for many Linux developers and sponsors as stated above in the article, and it doesn't seem a high priority for Apple either.
- night-rider 4y ago
  The thing about Linux is that it’s hackable and you can customise it to your liking. I’ve been using it for about a decade and the only thing it can’t do is run iTunes so I have a virtual machine for Windows stuff. It’s worth having a separate Linux box where you can tinker with new software and customisations without those changes affecting your daily driver OS. I found that over time the more customisations you do the more the OS breaks down and starts to get buggy. Having a dedicated box for tinkering is essential and you can just do a fresh install when you’ve made many irreversible mistakes.
  - jotm 4y ago
    What I would love is easy GPU (and other hardware) passthrough to the (Windows) VM. You can already use "real" partitions on separate drives to maximize performance. Graphics is the only thing that's complicated. Tbh, I only tried it on a laptop and it was hell, it ended up needing a mountain of configuration and software just to pass an nVidia GPU (fortunately a Quadro, which is slighly easier) to Windows, which has the software that needs it the most. Is it easier on desktop computers with an IGP and a discrete card, or two graphics cards? Or do you still need to fuck around with the VBIOS, fight with power management and hybrid modes (I guess not?), use Looking Glass/RDP/dummy display/DP/HDMI plug and a ton of configuration that sometimes fails after updates? Guess I will try it again on my next computer, which must be a powerful Ryzen build.
idle_zealot 4y ago
If the Linux desktop consolidates/unifies around one option I’d probably stop using it. The primary reason I use Linux on my desktop is so that I can use my niche window manager of choice as a first-class citizen, rather than hacking reasonable window management into the system with scripts on top of a bad-by-default window manager. If I can’t do that anymore I might as well use macOS with yabai and get the broader application support.
- sushisource 4y ago
  I agree that the customization is a huge draw for me. But... I also want things like hibernate to just work, screen tearing to not happen on X11, etc etc. The polish is absolutely not there, and I agree w/ the article that's a result of the fragmented ecosystem. If the Linux community could agree to invest in the underlying APIs for desktop stuff, it seems we'd be in a much better place and still have lots of customization options on top. Of course, I understand that's a huge coordination challenge.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Hibernate is all in the kernel. You trigger it by writing to a file in /sys. Your DE choice has nothing to do with this. Most things on Linux are actually like this, where everything is in the kernel or some other small project and the DE just adds a wrapper GUI (or sometimes a management deamon) and really has absolutely nothing to do with how the thing works. And thank goodness for that because all of the popular DEs use terrible window managers. I wouldn't bother with X11 if those were the only functional choices. Also some people (like me) really don't mind tearing but can't stand an extra frame of latency when we're typing. It's nice to have options since no one agrees on everything.
    - sushisource 4y ago
      Yeah, I'm aware it's in the kernel, but it's only useful for PCs. So effectively it's a "desktop" problem in terms of people deciding to dedicate resources to it. And... hence why it breaks all the damn time.
cm2187 4y ago
I get (and hate) the fact that Microsoft is pushing hard for the desktop to become a light client integrated in their cloud, but isn’t apple doing exactly the same? I don’t own a mac but my iphone nags me all the time to use apple’s cloud services for everything and I understand apple is making MacOS converge to iOS. The obstacle to switching to linux for me is not too many distributions, it is that I have to relearn everything, from my way to the filesystem, how drivers and networking work, virtualisation, web servers, etc. And linux is many things, but intuitive and self discoverable it is not. I just don’t have the time for starting from scratch (and it’s not related to my day job either), until windows becomes really user hostile (I see it coming but not yet there).
- night-rider 4y ago
  Make the time. It’s worth it I promise. The freedom that comes with Linux is astonishing. I’ve been using it for a decade now and haven’t looked back. ‘If you want to move mountains you start by picking up small stones’
- fnord123 4y ago
  > until windows becomes really user hostile (I see it coming but not yet there You are a boiled frog.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  So now Microsoft gets the hate for reviving the UNIX way of working. How do you think companies were using X Windows?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > How do you think companies were using X Windows? By attaching thin clients to a server that was still under their own control, as opposed to making the whole company a serf to Microsoft.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Being a serf of UNIX vendors has always been a thing.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
I hate it, which is why I don't use it. Ubuntu got the closest for me, but the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen made me give up on it altogether. And unless it's a supported distro, I don't want it. Been burned too many times by pet projects that end up being abandoned. The other thing is that in all my years of using Windows and MacOS, I have NEVER had an issue where an upgrade borked being able to log into the desktop. This has happened more times than I remember on Linux.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > but the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen You're going to need to explain that one.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Guessing it's about Unity. https://askubuntu.com/questions/360748/how-do-i-move-the-task-bar-back-to-the-bottom-where-it-belongs https://askubuntu.com/questions/360748/how-do-i-move-the-tas... "There is no way to move the 'task bar' to the bottom of the screen. You are out of luck."
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Oh, the thing from ten years ago that hasn't existed for five, or something?
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  >the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen made me give up on it altogether. You ...do know there are countless desktop environments and window managers just an apt-get away right? If that's too much for you, you could have literally chosen any other flavor. My mother has been happily using xubuntu for years. If she can manage, I think you can too.
  - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
bbertelsen 4y ago
PopOS needs an honorable mention here for the work it's done with pop shell for linux desktop. PopOS has been my daily driver for 3 years, pop shell is icing on the cake. Nvidia drivers baked in too!
- bbertelsen 4y ago
  https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell for the unaware!
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    Pop OS is just Arch Linux
    - Koshkin 4y ago
      The GitHub page says “Built on Ubuntu.”
- MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  Also on PopOS for a couple of years now. It just works and it's pleasant to use.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
KDE is the most fully featured Linux DE, and it's leaps and bounds above Windows's (WAY better file manager, better launcher, more features, and even less bugs somehow). The other day, my Windows 10's explorer.exe crashed when the file manager tried to load a directory, which is something that used to happen in Vista and hasn't happened in KDE for years IME.
- demux 4y ago
  Also shout out to KDE connect!
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    I've been trying to get kde connect working for about a month and I've yet to get to the point where my laptop and phone can actually 'see' each other even after whilelisting the ports in the firewall (or turning it completely off for that matter). FWIW I'm on Endevor OS (arch) with an xps 13 and a pixel 5a.
    - timbit42 4y ago
      Why would you need to make any changes to your firewall? Are you trying to use KDE Connect from outside of your LAN?
      - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
        No, it was just the main suggestion when I said I couldn't connect.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    My favorite feature is KRunner -- a tiny on-screen program launcher, calculator, and dictionary (and more) all in one! :D
- jamesgeck0 4y ago
  > even less bugs somehow This is very far from my experience. I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (recommended as one of the best KDE distros) at the beginning of 2022 and ran into a dozen KDE Plasma bugs within an hour. Stuff like panel widths resizing just because I clicked "customize," or widgets vanishing when I tried to drag them onto panels, or the bluetooth icon vanishing from the status bar until I restarted my session, or even the settings manager freezing up. The basic desktop worked well enough, but as soon as I started customizing it I ran into all sorts of paper-cut edge-case type bugs.
demux 4y ago
I intend to switch my custom built PC from windows to SteamOS 3.0. I haven't been a windows fan since I switched to Manjaro and eventually to Arch; the only reason I have it around is for gaming. But considering Proton is getting much better (and I'm gaming lesser), it seems like a pretty easy sell. In fact I think SteamOS has a lot of potential to bring gamers over to Linux; 3.0 uses arch with KDE so it's not really alien in terms of UI compared to windows. The biggest problem, as always, are GPU driver issues. But the steam handheld is already a successful unit that has seen some good traction, I wonder what a desktop version launched by steam would look like (they had the steam machines project but it looks pretty dead now).
mrj 4y ago
Nonsense. There are billions of Android devices sold and customers don't seem too bothered by its fragmentation. They continue to buy Android devices en mass. So it seems fragmentation has many problems but that alone won't prevent people from using a device. I think the author believes that a critical mass of Linux desktop users will create enough interest in polish and solving problems for end users, so therefore believes if everybody was using the same desktop there would be more polish (or something). I would counter that the desktops have plenty of polish. He says he loves the Linux Desktop and doesn't offer much criticism besides there's too much choice. Nah, they're already great and we don't need to abandon great desktops. Instead, I believe other factors are at play. Familiarity, inertia and monopolistic competition to name a few. Those are powerful factors and much more so than abstract fragmentation.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Because Android is the only viable alternative for those that either can't or won't buy an iPhone.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - criddell 4y ago
    Android is effectively the default choice. If you don't care about your phone, you end up with an Android phone. Lots and lots of people use an Android phone and almost none of them would be called Android enthusiasts.
- pupppet 4y ago
  Call me a snob, but I bet no small number of Android users would have picked an iPhone if it were cheaper.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    Snobbish ones would probably do.
  - 4y ago
Blikkentrekker 4y ago
There seem to be two kinds of “Linux users”: those that constantly think about Windows, compare their operating system to Windows, and seem to think only “Linux” and “Windows” exists, and those that forget Windows exists and mostly compare different Unix flavors with one another. Theo de Raadt had some merit when he said that many “Linux users” seem to talk more about Windows than anything else and don't really like Unix as much as that they hate Windows. But I also find that the latter group rarely even mentions “Linux” that much, which mostly seems to be used as “not-Windows”. This article too is mostly about Windows.
- jotm 4y ago
  Why would I compare Linux distros? You can literally turn any one of them into another, all the packages are there (prebuilt or source). With some exceptions, of course. I had ALL the Desktop Environments I could find installed at one point and was switching between them every other day. Compiz effects were the shizz! But I don't have the time/patience/motivation for that now :D
  - AndroidKitKat 4y ago
    I think most comparisons between Linux distros comes down to defaults/the way it operates out of the box. Sure, both Ubuntu 22.04 and Fedora 36 use GNOME 42 (is that the version they're on nowaday?), but Ubuntu has a drastically different UX (dock on the side, panel-applets, accent color & custom theme, the list goes on) compared to Fedora. Additionally, as an NVIDIA user, I like how easy and simple it is to install the NVIDIA drivers while still maintaining secure boot (something Fedora has neglected / informed their users to 'just disable secure boot').
throw7 4y ago
yeah but microsoft/apple/google are sole owners of the interface and dictate the one interface. there is no such thing in foss, which is a good thing. if gnome 3 was somehow forced to be the gui on linux, I would absolutely stop using linux.
Barrin92 4y ago
Much of the Linux desktop is balkanized and fragmentation is indeed a huge issue. People's obsession with choice is irritating given that doing more or less the same thing in 10 different ways half-right is worse than doing it once correctly. The entire distro-zoo built on top of the same distributions with different DE's on top of it is an example. The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere. That's what most people want, they don't want to spend hours tinkering with their UIs, they want to get work done. It's not even right to compare Linux to Windows, or maybe even call Linux distros operating systems in a strong sense because they don't provide genuinely stable interfaces. People often remark on alleged benefits of open source software such as compatibility, yet it's Windows where I can click on a 20 year old executable and it runs, while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works. It's funny that one of the things that has actually driven Linux adoption is Proton. As one blogger a few months ago remarked, Win32 is basically the stable Linux userland ABI. https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-userland-abi-and-the-consequences/ https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-us...
- 3a2d29 4y ago
  To add to this, I think Linus himself mentioned this issue at a talk at a Debian conference. I think he even mentioned maybe gaming would save Linux from this, since games will not constantly update to fix compatibility issues so distros would be forced to behave.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  Is that really an issue? You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. Oh, some random GTK app will look weird on KDE? Tough. Every Windows app looks different, and even MS's apps always felt out of place on their own OS. And with the proliferation of Electron apps, nothing ever looks "native" anymore. > while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works Maybe, maybe not. But that's also an issue on MacOS. And while Windows prides itself on backwards compatibility (and mostly delivers), that doesn't come free. There's also hardware backwards compatibility. Many devices that used to work with older versions of Windows or MacOS just don't work anymore. Even those that never required custom drivers from their manufacturer. On Linux, if it works once, it'll usually keep on working. I have such an issue: a PCIe USB 3 card, so it isn't even something that old. Used to work with MS Win 10 provided drivers, now (win 11) it's unusable.
sys_64738 4y ago
Linux on the desktop. Where old Mac HW goes to retire when it is unloved by Apple. The rate at which macOS Ventura ruthlessly cut off 2016 and 2017 Macs shows the need more than ever for Aishi Linux.
- sbuk 4y ago
  Pay attention. The “ruthless” cut off is in line with how the PowerPC to Intel transition happened. It’s also following the 68K to PowerPC transition. It’s like ripping off a bandaid. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_proc... I’d expect to see no support for Intel by 2027 or macOS 16.
naranha 4y ago
I mean in 2022, there are so many options in Linux that may not be perfect, but are good enough. Be it KDE,Gnome,Wayland,Xorg,systemd,initd,bash,zsh they are fine to use. Yeah you'll hit a corner case here or there, but most people will find a solution that fits their workflow. Windows on the other hand will always be the Gamer or enduser-that-don't-care OS, and that's fine too. I'm incredibly thankful that Linux exists, because I personally gained so much from it, but I understand as well when people don't care about it. Let them use Windows and deal with their problems (but don't expect me to fix them for you, thanks ;)).
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I've been using linux as my primary OS for over 20 years now. The rough edges are almost entirely gone and linux is absolutely a fantastic OS for everything but gaming, and even there it's getting better. I'm building a gaming computer at the end of this year and I'm strongly considering just throwing linux on it instead of windows as well, because if protondb is to be believed most games run perfectly fine on linux these days.
- em-bee 4y ago
  even gaming. it's amazing how much progress proton/wine is making. i have several games that i didn't dare run on linux a few years ago, that now just run out of the box with wine as if they belonged.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    By pretending to be Windows, what a progress. Let's forget for second that iOS (until 2015), Android, Switch and PlayStation have some POSIX like support and with exception of PS, all support OpenGL in some form, yet most of those studios couldn't be bothered.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      fair point. but it truly is progress, because running windows apps on a linux system results in a more stable desktop experience. for one, i don't have to reboot to recover from a windows app that somehow locks the system. i see a potential future where microsoft will port windows to run on top of a unix kernel. small chance, but not impossible. those studios won't bother with native linux support until a sizeable amount of users play their games on wine. and that numer is growing. which is the point.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Those that cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2" https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-... The section "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows" is worth a close look and introspection about what WINE/Proton effectively bring to the table.
mpsprd 4y ago
I strongly disagree. Normal users now do most of their computing on a web browser, making most Linux desktop issues less critical to adoption. My personal experience in the last ~5 years or so is increasingly reduced friction in adopting a Linux desktop for non-technical users as companies go towards SaaS. Firefox ends up being simply a differently shaped search bar.
NaN1352 4y ago
Holy crap I never heard of the term "DaaS" before. I wish I could go back in time :( I guess I am thankful that Linux desktops in general I both love and hate, are good enough to replace Windows if the needs come to that. Even more so nowadays with Valve setting up Linux as a promising "pc gamer" platform with decent usability. For good or worse the fragmentation is what Linux "fans" want. The kind of users who are never happy and want gazillions options to make something fit their every perceived special needs. The kind of users who think using a mouse is "less productive and efficient" than keyboard only… these are the most vocal users on Linux discussions it seems. Oh well like I said I’m grateful Ubuntu is usable enough and looks half decent… actually moving back from a M1 MacMini soon… but mostly for convenience as I want to keep using my "gaming pc".. and I realized i dont actually do anything very macOS specific … plus homebrew and lack of native containers feels like a hack. I’llmiss the polish of macOS though. While I’m at it let’s be blunt: is there really any half decent looking distro besides Ubuntu? Imho most other distros look like they were designed in 1987, and elementaryOS is such a joke. Personally I could’t see myself using anything else than Ubuntu + the fantastic "Dash to Panel" addon as a valid replacement for Win10 (the win + number shortcuts are amazing).
unsignedint 4y ago
I used to use Linux desktop exclusively but mental and time cost of maintaining it just was just too high and eventually gave up. It actually works great when it does, but more often than not something fails after updates. So I felt like a rolling a dice everytime I have to go though this. There were problems with update process itself -- they tend to wait for users to confirm configuration overwrite/update/patch so when I attempted to perform update overnight, I often find it waiting for my input in the morning 30 percent into update process. Ultimately I had enough of the frustration that I've stopped using it. Where I actually need Linux, I can just use WSL. Windows has its fair share of the problems but I'm definitely not spending as much as time just to keep things running even through major updates.
- HKH2 4y ago
  What distro were you using?
  - unsignedint 4y ago
    Ubuntu
Yizahi 4y ago
The main problem of Linux on desktop is a severe lack of quality control and questionable usability pushed by people not using desktop and running mainly CLI. The issues addressed on desktops are not in correct priority, you should not polish "happy path" in the generalized public system. Corporation can easily work with "happy path"-only software because they can afford to train personnel, and they can afford to fix mistakes in systemic way. Generalized public system should not polish what is mostly working. It should eliminate low occurrence catastrophic failures, because when scaled to ten of millions those low probability failures tend to multiply a lot. That's why I use console Linux every work day and enjoy it, and that's why I wouldn't touch Linux on a desktop with ten foot pole, because all my experiments in that area failed sooner or later. Also (surprise) shell Linux knowledge almost doesn't scale to the debugging GPU drivers, DE and X server issues. This is actually rather disconcerting feeling, when you have a decade of Linux experience but you look at crashing desktop GUI and understand that you have approximately as much understanding of the problem as a first time user.
- shiryel 4y ago
  > Also (surprise) shell Linux knowledge almost doesn't scale to the debugging GPU drivers, DE and X server issues. You will be surprised on how much Wayland solved those issues. At least, in my experience, understanding why Sway crashed is a debug flag away. Unfortunately, Wayland is a double edge sword, even more if you want to run games with multiple monitors (but that is a pain even on Windows in my experience).
- Yizahi 4y ago
  Also I want to add a somewhat representative anecdote story. Preface - my corp issues same laptops to all engineers, including developers actually writing code. Codebase is 100% for Linux, we don't need write anything Windows related. Developers have complete freedom at what to use as a host system on the laptop, there are some guides to help set up host Linux, there are people who already did it and can give advise. Around half of them just opt to host Windows 10 and run all their tools in the Linux virtual machine. That's a group of people who are second in world most suited to run Linux - actual Linux application devs. (first group would be Linux admins I think)
- 4y ago
alexklarjr 4y ago
I don’t think Android is linux desktop, even not a linux mobile. Yes indeed, there is so called kernel there, but it wrapped with custom bootloader, custom apis, custom desktop and set of apps developed and managed by single corporation. Android of course inherit some of linux legacy - instability, inefficiency, inflexibility, tivolization. But half-bakeness, because we say so approach and 70s legacy are not there, due to market competition. When the corporation replace linux/drivers firmware blob with their own, Android will remain Android, and not Fuchisa Desktop.
akelly 4y ago
It's not just that fragmentation results in lack of polish. Having many distros means that when I want to figure out how to do something obscure, or encounter an issue, there's less likely to be someone on my distro with the same problem. But more importantly, I often don't get any good results searching "*issue* *distro*", because the issue is at a different layer in the stack. I have to know whether it is a distro issue, desktop environment issue, kernel issue, systemd issue, X11 issue, etc, which is difficult for new users. Compared to Windows and Mac which aren't modular in this way and therefore don't have this problem.
dasil003 4y ago
I think all the hand-wringing over fragmentation is misguided. Diversity is good. We have plenty of polished UX provided by big tech, but it comes with intractable downsides related to centralized control. Free and open source software provides a different tradeoff and value proposition, one that counteracts the natural forces towards market consolidation and centralized power that exist for software in a globally networked world. Yes, that means we have to work harder to motivate people to cooperate, but such is the cost of freedom.
betwixthewires 4y ago
"Fragmentation" is a derogatory term that means "people doing what they want with the software that they own." The alternative is some priesthood deciding everything for us. Fuck that. My desktop is perfect. Says he sees the problems with the Linux desktop, and only lists one that isn't a problem to anyone actually using a Linux desktop. What about the herculean task of kernel maintenance? Central repository maintenance? There are tons of real problems we can discuss that aren't mentioned.
dr_kiszonka 4y ago
I haven't yet fully converted to Linux because of the incomplete support of Office 365 and... it is silly to admit.. the aesthetics. I used to dig how Ubuntu looked but now it feels dated to me. I get that it's highly subjective, but I want a sexy looking OS with well designed fonts, good contrast, a few vibrant colors (not orange) on dark backgrounds, and not clipped off App names. Instead Ubuntu reminds me of the default classic Java File Chooser. Apologies for being a little negative in my comment. If anyone has recommendations for specific themes, I'm all ears.
akagusu 4y ago
The problem with Linux desktop is that there is no such thing as Linux desktop, because Linux is not an operating system, it is just a kernel. Unfortunately, instead of treat each Linux distribution as a different operating system, people think of Linux distributions as a single operating system with different package managers and wallpapers. And this is the real problem: how people set their expectations. As people think about Linux distributions as a single operating system, they expect they work exactly like Windows or Mac OS, when things work different, they point theses differences as problems, but I guarantee you, everything is working as intended. People need to understand how the Linux ecosystem works and when they do, everything makes sense. First, the kernel Linux is not developed to be used on desktops. It can be used, but companies pay Linus Torvalds to build the kernel for servers and other use cases, desktop is a side effect. Second, the stack that is used to build a Linux distribution for desktops, from systemd to x/wayland to gtk to gnome, is primarily developed by a single company, Red Hat. For the last 20 years, Red Hat is paying directly or indirectly developers to work on software that is part of Linux Desktop stack, but as you know, Red Hat clients are not people, they are businesses. So what people call "Linux Desktop" is a set of loosely coupled parts primarily paid by a single company to satisfy their clients needs. You look to "Linux Desktop" as "Corporate Linux Desktop" all problems of "Linux Desktop" suddenly disappear. "Linux Desktop" usually needs a technical person to be maintained, but it is just fine for corporate desktops, because corporate desktops are maintained by IT people, not by users. "Linux Desktop" sound stack and graphic stack suck, but that is fine too, because the latest Nvidia graphic card that you want to play your favorite games are not needed by corporate desktop office users. And about "Linux Desktop" fragmentation, people need to understand the myriad of desktop environments and applications are not "fragmentation", because there is no unified effort to build a "Linux Desktop", there is a myriad of independent developers working alone or with each other to build software that satisfies their own needs. At the end of day, what people call "Linux Desktop" is just a side effect of different companies and developers building stuff for their own needs. The regular Windows gamer or your mom/dad are not included in the package.
rektide 4y ago
There's a radio station around (one of the 93.9 the rivers): > Without deviation from the norm, progress is impossible. Dont get me wrong; Im glad there are enclaves of stability. GNOME changes paradigm every couple decades, kde less so, & they target the kind of easily knowable fixed world this article espouses. They wrap so much. OSDh->alsa->pulseaudio->pipewire, and plenty of users never notice. X->Wayland, same. Great. Most of the churn & chaos isnt visible. It's wild to me the suggestion that open source should be so focused on winning that it adopts conservative software ideologies. The idea of a static, fixed world, where we normalize all our experiences, for... what... end user convenience, is against the Hacker spirit. Is an anethema.

82 points by samizdis 4y ago

Also posted 9 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31672861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31672861 (5 points, 9 hours ago, 2 comments)

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
And one day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166573

hajimuz 4y ago

the hope is ChromeOS…

hulitu 4y ago
> the hope is ChromeOS… The hope is that ChromeOS dies. It has nothing to do with Linux except the kernel.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  >It has nothing to do with Linux Which isn't entirely bad since it has some good concepts regarding security that will make good additions to current Linux systems.
- sbuk 4y ago
  I thought Linux was the kernel…
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Linux is a kernel though. This feels like the opposite of Stallmans GNU/Linux rant.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  I hope some ambitious soul can port the Chrome OS window manager in some way. Chrome OS is the only non Windows or Mac window manager that handles UI scaling correctly in all cases and across all displays with differing scaling settings. There is no Linux WM that I've found anywhere near as good (don't say i3wm).
dylan-m 4y ago
I hope not! Outside of the Chrome part, ChromeOS is a mess of awkwardly attached virtual machines. If you want a "native" app (unless your native app is Steam), your best option is Android, which means you're inside an Android VM, your webview component is an Android Chrome webview, you can't see other things on the network (because you have a virtual network device), permissions are granted via the Android Settings panel which is distinct from the Chrome OS Settings panel and an even more user-hostile experience than it already was, and your widgets are all slightly wrong. It is bloat all the way down. Running plain old Linux apps is a similar problem, except it's a "developer feature", so you can't expect an end user to use your app on their Chromebook. It is exceedingly difficult for a developer to contribute any kind of improvement to this because the bug tracker is a black hole and the source code is a gargantuan monorepo with multi-page build instructions that basically require you to sacrifice a computer if you want to get anywhere. Sandboxing is great and all, but the thing is a glorified hypervisor. It has no vision of its own for app distribution, user experience, or developer experience. It boggles my mind that they are doing this with ChromeOS: the OS that runs on the cheapest, slowest, most under-specced computers on the market.
night-rider 4y ago
Check out Cloudready. I use it for leveraging the Google ecosystem.
robonerd 4y ago
If that's what you want, then use it. There's nothing stopping you. Other people choosing to use something different should be no skin off your back, unless what you really want is some sort of suicide-pact.

foobarian 4y ago

Suggested title edit: "I see the Linux desktop's problems, but that doesn't mean I don't love it"

encryptluks2 4y ago
More accurate title... I love the Linux desktop, but I just want one version of it so that I don't have to deal with competition and jobs with different tools. In other words, I'll likely switch to Apple.
- akira2501 4y ago
  That, and I don't understand the needless fascination with "crushing windows." That's a goal that seems completely misaligned with all the features that make the linux desktop something I want to use; and destroying competition has never been a great long term strategy. I don't care about your market share.. I care about the quality of my own experience.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    It's because market share is important if you want hardware and software support. Right now Linux has terrible support VR, for instance, and one can only imagine that would be different if it were the majority desktop OS.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    > I don't understand the needless fascination with "crushing windows." That was the common sentiment 20+ years ago when Steve Ballmer, then Microsoft CEO, declared that "Linux is a cancer". Today I'd say it's not the case anymore, especially so since they were forced by market laws to fake some form of friendship with Open Source, not to mention having ruined Windows with all versions from 8 on. Windows is pretty much crushing itself these days.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > I don't care about your market share.. I care about the quality of my own experience. Exactly this. I've seen where chasing mainstream usability and appeal leads: ipadification. If you want an ipad go buy an ipad. I don't care about linux 'winning' because that sort of win condition would make linux into something that has no value to me. A Pyrrhic victory.

encryptluks2 4y ago

This article is sort of frustrating, because the issue they have isn't like something not working, just that there are multiple competing options and they want unity around all things.

themitigating 4y ago
I think having too many options can be frustrating for many people, especially if they aren't experts in the options.
- jbjohns 4y ago
  Well, I think a bigger issue is so many of the options not really mattering at all.
sliken 4y ago
Doesn't seem like there needs to be unity, just that things from the OS are handled in an OS specific way, but things not specific to the OS are handled in an identical way. Seems like container systems like flatpak deliver this. If google chrome flatpak was supported on all OSs then it wouldn't particularly matter to application developers that there were 200 flavors of linux around.
twblalock 4y ago
Yeah but the fragmentation is the problem. One reason Windows and macOS are popular is that people know what they are going to get. If you've used one Windows 11 box, for example, you can get on another Windows 11 box and figure out how to use it. It will have the same user interface and window management as the other: the Start menu, the control panel, the desktop, etc. That's just not the case for Linux. There are several popular desktop environments that are very different from each other in look and feel. For an ordinary user, switching from Gnome to KDE would be quite jarring and it would take them a while to get used to it. For power users and tweakers, that diversity of options is an attractive feature of the Linux desktop. For ordinary users, it is a deterrent.
- 4y ago

xalava 4y ago

As a desktop, Linux is now fully functional for most users. I know administrations running on Linux, law firms, and even my dad. Beginner users don't care about choices, they get Linux Mint or similar with LibreOffice and Firefox and they are good to go for most of their tasks. For advanced users, the abundance is a key benefit of this ecosystem. No company is fully focused on the desktop OS, and I don't see why they should. This article is contradictory saying "desktop operating system will lie in the hands of Apple with macOS and us with Linux". It is not because Microsoft prioritize cloud services that it abandons desktops, it is not a priority for many Linux developers and sponsors as stated above in the article, and it doesn't seem a high priority for Apple either.

night-rider 4y ago
The thing about Linux is that it’s hackable and you can customise it to your liking. I’ve been using it for about a decade and the only thing it can’t do is run iTunes so I have a virtual machine for Windows stuff. It’s worth having a separate Linux box where you can tinker with new software and customisations without those changes affecting your daily driver OS. I found that over time the more customisations you do the more the OS breaks down and starts to get buggy. Having a dedicated box for tinkering is essential and you can just do a fresh install when you’ve made many irreversible mistakes.
- jotm 4y ago
  What I would love is easy GPU (and other hardware) passthrough to the (Windows) VM. You can already use "real" partitions on separate drives to maximize performance. Graphics is the only thing that's complicated. Tbh, I only tried it on a laptop and it was hell, it ended up needing a mountain of configuration and software just to pass an nVidia GPU (fortunately a Quadro, which is slighly easier) to Windows, which has the software that needs it the most. Is it easier on desktop computers with an IGP and a discrete card, or two graphics cards? Or do you still need to fuck around with the VBIOS, fight with power management and hybrid modes (I guess not?), use Looking Glass/RDP/dummy display/DP/HDMI plug and a ton of configuration that sometimes fails after updates? Guess I will try it again on my next computer, which must be a powerful Ryzen build.

idle_zealot 4y ago

If the Linux desktop consolidates/unifies around one option I’d probably stop using it. The primary reason I use Linux on my desktop is so that I can use my niche window manager of choice as a first-class citizen, rather than hacking reasonable window management into the system with scripts on top of a bad-by-default window manager. If I can’t do that anymore I might as well use macOS with yabai and get the broader application support.

sushisource 4y ago
I agree that the customization is a huge draw for me. But... I also want things like hibernate to just work, screen tearing to not happen on X11, etc etc. The polish is absolutely not there, and I agree w/ the article that's a result of the fragmented ecosystem. If the Linux community could agree to invest in the underlying APIs for desktop stuff, it seems we'd be in a much better place and still have lots of customization options on top. Of course, I understand that's a huge coordination challenge.
- usrn 4y ago
  Hibernate is all in the kernel. You trigger it by writing to a file in /sys. Your DE choice has nothing to do with this. Most things on Linux are actually like this, where everything is in the kernel or some other small project and the DE just adds a wrapper GUI (or sometimes a management deamon) and really has absolutely nothing to do with how the thing works. And thank goodness for that because all of the popular DEs use terrible window managers. I wouldn't bother with X11 if those were the only functional choices. Also some people (like me) really don't mind tearing but can't stand an extra frame of latency when we're typing. It's nice to have options since no one agrees on everything.
  - sushisource 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm aware it's in the kernel, but it's only useful for PCs. So effectively it's a "desktop" problem in terms of people deciding to dedicate resources to it. And... hence why it breaks all the damn time.

cm2187 4y ago

I get (and hate) the fact that Microsoft is pushing hard for the desktop to become a light client integrated in their cloud, but isn’t apple doing exactly the same? I don’t own a mac but my iphone nags me all the time to use apple’s cloud services for everything and I understand apple is making MacOS converge to iOS. The obstacle to switching to linux for me is not too many distributions, it is that I have to relearn everything, from my way to the filesystem, how drivers and networking work, virtualisation, web servers, etc. And linux is many things, but intuitive and self discoverable it is not. I just don’t have the time for starting from scratch (and it’s not related to my day job either), until windows becomes really user hostile (I see it coming but not yet there).

night-rider 4y ago
Make the time. It’s worth it I promise. The freedom that comes with Linux is astonishing. I’ve been using it for a decade now and haven’t looked back. ‘If you want to move mountains you start by picking up small stones’
fnord123 4y ago
> until windows becomes really user hostile (I see it coming but not yet there You are a boiled frog.
pjmlp 4y ago
So now Microsoft gets the hate for reviving the UNIX way of working. How do you think companies were using X Windows?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > How do you think companies were using X Windows? By attaching thin clients to a server that was still under their own control, as opposed to making the whole company a serf to Microsoft.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Being a serf of UNIX vendors has always been a thing.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

I hate it, which is why I don't use it. Ubuntu got the closest for me, but the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen made me give up on it altogether. And unless it's a supported distro, I don't want it. Been burned too many times by pet projects that end up being abandoned. The other thing is that in all my years of using Windows and MacOS, I have NEVER had an issue where an upgrade borked being able to log into the desktop. This has happened more times than I remember on Linux.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> but the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen You're going to need to explain that one.
- corrral 4y ago
  Guessing it's about Unity. https://askubuntu.com/questions/360748/how-do-i-move-the-task-bar-back-to-the-bottom-where-it-belongs https://askubuntu.com/questions/360748/how-do-i-move-the-tas... "There is no way to move the 'task bar' to the bottom of the screen. You are out of luck."
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Oh, the thing from ten years ago that hasn't existed for five, or something?
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
>the owner's refusal to allow users to move that taskbar to the bottom of the screen made me give up on it altogether. You ...do know there are countless desktop environments and window managers just an apt-get away right? If that's too much for you, you could have literally chosen any other flavor. My mother has been happily using xubuntu for years. If she can manage, I think you can too.
- sky-kedge0749 4y ago

bbertelsen 4y ago

PopOS needs an honorable mention here for the work it's done with pop shell for linux desktop. PopOS has been my daily driver for 3 years, pop shell is icing on the cake. Nvidia drivers baked in too!

bbertelsen 4y ago
https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell for the unaware!
- glouwbug 4y ago
  Pop OS is just Arch Linux
  - Koshkin 4y ago
    The GitHub page says “Built on Ubuntu.”
MattPalmer1086 4y ago
Also on PopOS for a couple of years now. It just works and it's pleasant to use.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

KDE is the most fully featured Linux DE, and it's leaps and bounds above Windows's (WAY better file manager, better launcher, more features, and even less bugs somehow). The other day, my Windows 10's explorer.exe crashed when the file manager tried to load a directory, which is something that used to happen in Vista and hasn't happened in KDE for years IME.

demux 4y ago
Also shout out to KDE connect!
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  I've been trying to get kde connect working for about a month and I've yet to get to the point where my laptop and phone can actually 'see' each other even after whilelisting the ports in the firewall (or turning it completely off for that matter). FWIW I'm on Endevor OS (arch) with an xps 13 and a pixel 5a.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Why would you need to make any changes to your firewall? Are you trying to use KDE Connect from outside of your LAN?
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      No, it was just the main suggestion when I said I couldn't connect.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  My favorite feature is KRunner -- a tiny on-screen program launcher, calculator, and dictionary (and more) all in one! :D
jamesgeck0 4y ago
> even less bugs somehow This is very far from my experience. I installed OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (recommended as one of the best KDE distros) at the beginning of 2022 and ran into a dozen KDE Plasma bugs within an hour. Stuff like panel widths resizing just because I clicked "customize," or widgets vanishing when I tried to drag them onto panels, or the bluetooth icon vanishing from the status bar until I restarted my session, or even the settings manager freezing up. The basic desktop worked well enough, but as soon as I started customizing it I ran into all sorts of paper-cut edge-case type bugs.

demux 4y ago

I intend to switch my custom built PC from windows to SteamOS 3.0. I haven't been a windows fan since I switched to Manjaro and eventually to Arch; the only reason I have it around is for gaming. But considering Proton is getting much better (and I'm gaming lesser), it seems like a pretty easy sell. In fact I think SteamOS has a lot of potential to bring gamers over to Linux; 3.0 uses arch with KDE so it's not really alien in terms of UI compared to windows. The biggest problem, as always, are GPU driver issues. But the steam handheld is already a successful unit that has seen some good traction, I wonder what a desktop version launched by steam would look like (they had the steam machines project but it looks pretty dead now).

mrj 4y ago

Nonsense. There are billions of Android devices sold and customers don't seem too bothered by its fragmentation. They continue to buy Android devices en mass. So it seems fragmentation has many problems but that alone won't prevent people from using a device. I think the author believes that a critical mass of Linux desktop users will create enough interest in polish and solving problems for end users, so therefore believes if everybody was using the same desktop there would be more polish (or something). I would counter that the desktops have plenty of polish. He says he loves the Linux Desktop and doesn't offer much criticism besides there's too much choice. Nah, they're already great and we don't need to abandon great desktops. Instead, I believe other factors are at play. Familiarity, inertia and monopolistic competition to name a few. Those are powerful factors and much more so than abstract fragmentation.

pjmlp 4y ago
Because Android is the only viable alternative for those that either can't or won't buy an iPhone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- criddell 4y ago
  Android is effectively the default choice. If you don't care about your phone, you end up with an Android phone. Lots and lots of people use an Android phone and almost none of them would be called Android enthusiasts.
pupppet 4y ago
Call me a snob, but I bet no small number of Android users would have picked an iPhone if it were cheaper.
- scotty79 4y ago
  Snobbish ones would probably do.
- 4y ago

Blikkentrekker 4y ago

There seem to be two kinds of “Linux users”: those that constantly think about Windows, compare their operating system to Windows, and seem to think only “Linux” and “Windows” exists, and those that forget Windows exists and mostly compare different Unix flavors with one another. Theo de Raadt had some merit when he said that many “Linux users” seem to talk more about Windows than anything else and don't really like Unix as much as that they hate Windows. But I also find that the latter group rarely even mentions “Linux” that much, which mostly seems to be used as “not-Windows”. This article too is mostly about Windows.

jotm 4y ago
Why would I compare Linux distros? You can literally turn any one of them into another, all the packages are there (prebuilt or source). With some exceptions, of course. I had ALL the Desktop Environments I could find installed at one point and was switching between them every other day. Compiz effects were the shizz! But I don't have the time/patience/motivation for that now :D
- AndroidKitKat 4y ago
  I think most comparisons between Linux distros comes down to defaults/the way it operates out of the box. Sure, both Ubuntu 22.04 and Fedora 36 use GNOME 42 (is that the version they're on nowaday?), but Ubuntu has a drastically different UX (dock on the side, panel-applets, accent color & custom theme, the list goes on) compared to Fedora. Additionally, as an NVIDIA user, I like how easy and simple it is to install the NVIDIA drivers while still maintaining secure boot (something Fedora has neglected / informed their users to 'just disable secure boot').

throw7 4y ago

yeah but microsoft/apple/google are sole owners of the interface and dictate the one interface. there is no such thing in foss, which is a good thing. if gnome 3 was somehow forced to be the gui on linux, I would absolutely stop using linux.

Barrin92 4y ago

Much of the Linux desktop is balkanized and fragmentation is indeed a huge issue. People's obsession with choice is irritating given that doing more or less the same thing in 10 different ways half-right is worse than doing it once correctly. The entire distro-zoo built on top of the same distributions with different DE's on top of it is an example. The problem with Windows or Mac isn't that it looks, feels and works the same everywhere. That's what most people want, they don't want to spend hours tinkering with their UIs, they want to get work done. It's not even right to compare Linux to Windows, or maybe even call Linux distros operating systems in a strong sense because they don't provide genuinely stable interfaces. People often remark on alleged benefits of open source software such as compatibility, yet it's Windows where I can click on a 20 year old executable and it runs, while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works. It's funny that one of the things that has actually driven Linux adoption is Proton. As one blogger a few months ago remarked, Win32 is basically the stable Linux userland ABI. https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-userland-abi-and-the-consequences/ https://sporks.space/2022/02/27/win32-is-the-stable-linux-us...

3a2d29 4y ago
To add to this, I think Linus himself mentioned this issue at a talk at a Debian conference. I think he even mentioned maybe gaming would save Linux from this, since games will not constantly update to fix compatibility issues so distros would be forced to behave.
vladvasiliu 4y ago
Is that really an issue? You want to use Gnome? Use Gnome. You want to use KDE? Use KDE. I3? ditto. Etc. Oh, some random GTK app will look weird on KDE? Tough. Every Windows app looks different, and even MS's apps always felt out of place on their own OS. And with the proliferation of Electron apps, nothing ever looks "native" anymore. > while I don't know if anything that has been built 2 Ubuntu LTS releases ago still works Maybe, maybe not. But that's also an issue on MacOS. And while Windows prides itself on backwards compatibility (and mostly delivers), that doesn't come free. There's also hardware backwards compatibility. Many devices that used to work with older versions of Windows or MacOS just don't work anymore. Even those that never required custom drivers from their manufacturer. On Linux, if it works once, it'll usually keep on working. I have such an issue: a PCIe USB 3 card, so it isn't even something that old. Used to work with MS Win 10 provided drivers, now (win 11) it's unusable.

sys_64738 4y ago

Linux on the desktop. Where old Mac HW goes to retire when it is unloved by Apple. The rate at which macOS Ventura ruthlessly cut off 2016 and 2017 Macs shows the need more than ever for Aishi Linux.

sbuk 4y ago
Pay attention. The “ruthless” cut off is in line with how the PowerPC to Intel transition happened. It’s also following the 68K to PowerPC transition. It’s like ripping off a bandaid. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_transition_to_Intel_proc... I’d expect to see no support for Intel by 2027 or macOS 16.

naranha 4y ago

I mean in 2022, there are so many options in Linux that may not be perfect, but are good enough. Be it KDE,Gnome,Wayland,Xorg,systemd,initd,bash,zsh they are fine to use. Yeah you'll hit a corner case here or there, but most people will find a solution that fits their workflow. Windows on the other hand will always be the Gamer or enduser-that-don't-care OS, and that's fine too. I'm incredibly thankful that Linux exists, because I personally gained so much from it, but I understand as well when people don't care about it. Let them use Windows and deal with their problems (but don't expect me to fix them for you, thanks ;)).

wing-_-nuts 4y ago

I've been using linux as my primary OS for over 20 years now. The rough edges are almost entirely gone and linux is absolutely a fantastic OS for everything but gaming, and even there it's getting better. I'm building a gaming computer at the end of this year and I'm strongly considering just throwing linux on it instead of windows as well, because if protondb is to be believed most games run perfectly fine on linux these days.

em-bee 4y ago
even gaming. it's amazing how much progress proton/wine is making. i have several games that i didn't dare run on linux a few years ago, that now just run out of the box with wine as if they belonged.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  By pretending to be Windows, what a progress. Let's forget for second that iOS (until 2015), Android, Switch and PlayStation have some POSIX like support and with exception of PS, all support OpenGL in some form, yet most of those studios couldn't be bothered.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    fair point. but it truly is progress, because running windows apps on a linux system results in a more stable desktop experience. for one, i don't have to reboot to recover from a windows app that somehow locks the system. i see a potential future where microsoft will port windows to run on top of a unix kernel. small chance, but not impossible. those studios won't bother with native linux support until a sizeable amount of users play their games on wine. and that numer is growing. which is the point.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Those that cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "Half an operating system: The triumph and tragedy of OS/2" https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/half-... The section "A better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows" is worth a close look and introspection about what WINE/Proton effectively bring to the table.

mpsprd 4y ago

I strongly disagree. Normal users now do most of their computing on a web browser, making most Linux desktop issues less critical to adoption. My personal experience in the last ~5 years or so is increasingly reduced friction in adopting a Linux desktop for non-technical users as companies go towards SaaS. Firefox ends up being simply a differently shaped search bar.

NaN1352 4y ago

Holy crap I never heard of the term "DaaS" before. I wish I could go back in time :( I guess I am thankful that Linux desktops in general I both love and hate, are good enough to replace Windows if the needs come to that. Even more so nowadays with Valve setting up Linux as a promising "pc gamer" platform with decent usability. For good or worse the fragmentation is what Linux "fans" want. The kind of users who are never happy and want gazillions options to make something fit their every perceived special needs. The kind of users who think using a mouse is "less productive and efficient" than keyboard only… these are the most vocal users on Linux discussions it seems. Oh well like I said I’m grateful Ubuntu is usable enough and looks half decent… actually moving back from a M1 MacMini soon… but mostly for convenience as I want to keep using my "gaming pc".. and I realized i dont actually do anything very macOS specific … plus homebrew and lack of native containers feels like a hack. I’llmiss the polish of macOS though. While I’m at it let’s be blunt: is there really any half decent looking distro besides Ubuntu? Imho most other distros look like they were designed in 1987, and elementaryOS is such a joke. Personally I could’t see myself using anything else than Ubuntu + the fantastic "Dash to Panel" addon as a valid replacement for Win10 (the win + number shortcuts are amazing).

unsignedint 4y ago

I used to use Linux desktop exclusively but mental and time cost of maintaining it just was just too high and eventually gave up. It actually works great when it does, but more often than not something fails after updates. So I felt like a rolling a dice everytime I have to go though this. There were problems with update process itself -- they tend to wait for users to confirm configuration overwrite/update/patch so when I attempted to perform update overnight, I often find it waiting for my input in the morning 30 percent into update process. Ultimately I had enough of the frustration that I've stopped using it. Where I actually need Linux, I can just use WSL. Windows has its fair share of the problems but I'm definitely not spending as much as time just to keep things running even through major updates.

HKH2 4y ago
What distro were you using?
- unsignedint 4y ago
  Ubuntu

Yizahi 4y ago

The main problem of Linux on desktop is a severe lack of quality control and questionable usability pushed by people not using desktop and running mainly CLI. The issues addressed on desktops are not in correct priority, you should not polish "happy path" in the generalized public system. Corporation can easily work with "happy path"-only software because they can afford to train personnel, and they can afford to fix mistakes in systemic way. Generalized public system should not polish what is mostly working. It should eliminate low occurrence catastrophic failures, because when scaled to ten of millions those low probability failures tend to multiply a lot. That's why I use console Linux every work day and enjoy it, and that's why I wouldn't touch Linux on a desktop with ten foot pole, because all my experiments in that area failed sooner or later. Also (surprise) shell Linux knowledge almost doesn't scale to the debugging GPU drivers, DE and X server issues. This is actually rather disconcerting feeling, when you have a decade of Linux experience but you look at crashing desktop GUI and understand that you have approximately as much understanding of the problem as a first time user.

shiryel 4y ago
> Also (surprise) shell Linux knowledge almost doesn't scale to the debugging GPU drivers, DE and X server issues. You will be surprised on how much Wayland solved those issues. At least, in my experience, understanding why Sway crashed is a debug flag away. Unfortunately, Wayland is a double edge sword, even more if you want to run games with multiple monitors (but that is a pain even on Windows in my experience).
Yizahi 4y ago
Also I want to add a somewhat representative anecdote story. Preface - my corp issues same laptops to all engineers, including developers actually writing code. Codebase is 100% for Linux, we don't need write anything Windows related. Developers have complete freedom at what to use as a host system on the laptop, there are some guides to help set up host Linux, there are people who already did it and can give advise. Around half of them just opt to host Windows 10 and run all their tools in the Linux virtual machine. That's a group of people who are second in world most suited to run Linux - actual Linux application devs. (first group would be Linux admins I think)
4y ago

alexklarjr 4y ago

I don’t think Android is linux desktop, even not a linux mobile. Yes indeed, there is so called kernel there, but it wrapped with custom bootloader, custom apis, custom desktop and set of apps developed and managed by single corporation. Android of course inherit some of linux legacy - instability, inefficiency, inflexibility, tivolization. But half-bakeness, because we say so approach and 70s legacy are not there, due to market competition. When the corporation replace linux/drivers firmware blob with their own, Android will remain Android, and not Fuchisa Desktop.

akelly 4y ago

It's not just that fragmentation results in lack of polish. Having many distros means that when I want to figure out how to do something obscure, or encounter an issue, there's less likely to be someone on my distro with the same problem. But more importantly, I often don't get any good results searching "*issue* *distro*", because the issue is at a different layer in the stack. I have to know whether it is a distro issue, desktop environment issue, kernel issue, systemd issue, X11 issue, etc, which is difficult for new users. Compared to Windows and Mac which aren't modular in this way and therefore don't have this problem.

dasil003 4y ago

I think all the hand-wringing over fragmentation is misguided. Diversity is good. We have plenty of polished UX provided by big tech, but it comes with intractable downsides related to centralized control. Free and open source software provides a different tradeoff and value proposition, one that counteracts the natural forces towards market consolidation and centralized power that exist for software in a globally networked world. Yes, that means we have to work harder to motivate people to cooperate, but such is the cost of freedom.

betwixthewires 4y ago

"Fragmentation" is a derogatory term that means "people doing what they want with the software that they own." The alternative is some priesthood deciding everything for us. Fuck that. My desktop is perfect. Says he sees the problems with the Linux desktop, and only lists one that isn't a problem to anyone actually using a Linux desktop. What about the herculean task of kernel maintenance? Central repository maintenance? There are tons of real problems we can discuss that aren't mentioned.

dr_kiszonka 4y ago

I haven't yet fully converted to Linux because of the incomplete support of Office 365 and... it is silly to admit.. the aesthetics. I used to dig how Ubuntu looked but now it feels dated to me. I get that it's highly subjective, but I want a sexy looking OS with well designed fonts, good contrast, a few vibrant colors (not orange) on dark backgrounds, and not clipped off App names. Instead Ubuntu reminds me of the default classic Java File Chooser. Apologies for being a little negative in my comment. If anyone has recommendations for specific themes, I'm all ears.

akagusu 4y ago

The problem with Linux desktop is that there is no such thing as Linux desktop, because Linux is not an operating system, it is just a kernel. Unfortunately, instead of treat each Linux distribution as a different operating system, people think of Linux distributions as a single operating system with different package managers and wallpapers. And this is the real problem: how people set their expectations. As people think about Linux distributions as a single operating system, they expect they work exactly like Windows or Mac OS, when things work different, they point theses differences as problems, but I guarantee you, everything is working as intended. People need to understand how the Linux ecosystem works and when they do, everything makes sense. First, the kernel Linux is not developed to be used on desktops. It can be used, but companies pay Linus Torvalds to build the kernel for servers and other use cases, desktop is a side effect. Second, the stack that is used to build a Linux distribution for desktops, from systemd to x/wayland to gtk to gnome, is primarily developed by a single company, Red Hat. For the last 20 years, Red Hat is paying directly or indirectly developers to work on software that is part of Linux Desktop stack, but as you know, Red Hat clients are not people, they are businesses. So what people call "Linux Desktop" is a set of loosely coupled parts primarily paid by a single company to satisfy their clients needs. You look to "Linux Desktop" as "Corporate Linux Desktop" all problems of "Linux Desktop" suddenly disappear. "Linux Desktop" usually needs a technical person to be maintained, but it is just fine for corporate desktops, because corporate desktops are maintained by IT people, not by users. "Linux Desktop" sound stack and graphic stack suck, but that is fine too, because the latest Nvidia graphic card that you want to play your favorite games are not needed by corporate desktop office users. And about "Linux Desktop" fragmentation, people need to understand the myriad of desktop environments and applications are not "fragmentation", because there is no unified effort to build a "Linux Desktop", there is a myriad of independent developers working alone or with each other to build software that satisfies their own needs. At the end of day, what people call "Linux Desktop" is just a side effect of different companies and developers building stuff for their own needs. The regular Windows gamer or your mom/dad are not included in the package.

rektide 4y ago

There's a radio station around (one of the 93.9 the rivers): > Without deviation from the norm, progress is impossible. Dont get me wrong; Im glad there are enclaves of stability. GNOME changes paradigm every couple decades, kde less so, & they target the kind of easily knowable fixed world this article espouses. They wrap so much. OSDh->alsa->pulseaudio->pipewire, and plenty of users never notice. X->Wayland, same. Great. Most of the churn & chaos isnt visible. It's wild to me the suggestion that open source should be so focused on winning that it adopts conservative software ideologies. The idea of a static, fixed world, where we normalize all our experiences, for... what... end user convenience, is against the Hacker spirit. Is an anethema.