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As someone who has been using Linux exclusively for my personal machines since 2007, here's the chicken-and-egg problem that the Linux world is constantly battl

As someone who has been using Linux exclusively for my personal machines since 2007, here's the chicken-and-egg problem that the Linux world is constantly battling: new technology is always being released and pushed out before it actually works. It's happened constantly since I started using Linux: KDE 4.0, PulseAudio, btrfs (to be fair, most distros didn't really push btrfs as a default), Wayland, etc, and now Flatpak and Snap. And it's not to say that I don't understand the dilemma: you need to get user feedback to improve the tech, and the pool of Linux users is very small (for desktop stuff). But what that means is that desktop Linux is almost always in a state of partial brokenness. (And please also note that I'm giving a 100% pass on driver issues--that's a given when hardware manufacturers simply only care about working with Windows.) Honestly, when it comes to "just working," desktop Linux is worse today than it was when I first installed it on my budget laptop in 2007. Wayland is mostly fine for my uses, but others still struggle with its missing features; snaps/flatpaks are slow, bloated, and have strange behaviors because of the permissions models that are NEVER going to be obvious to a casual computer user; and managing an Ubuntu install is still really bad UX. As an example of the latter, I usually run an "expert" distro on my personal machines, but I decided to slap Ubuntu on a PC that I hooked up to my TV, and after a year or so of just chugging along and running updates whenever prompted, it started displaying errors that my boot partition was full. You've gotta be kidding me... THIS is supposed to be the "easy" distro for normal humans? How the hell do you expect non-tech people to micromanage the /boot partition and delete old kernels and shit? So, while I agree with all of the technical issues and complaints about things like permissions, security, etc, that advocate for Wayland and Flatpaks/Snaps and whatever, you can't pretend to care about adoption while also pushing out half-baked technology to "stable" versions as though everyone will be happy with beta-at-best functionality.

babypuncher 3y ago
I think part of it is because a lot of these more user-oriented features (desktop compositing, sandboxed app stores, hdr, etc.) don't get a lot of attention on Linux until after the two major commercial operating systems get them and prove people actually want them. The monied interests driving a lot of Linux development do not have the same need for these things as end users. To them, Linux is a server, or a lightweight embedded OS, or needed for some other specialized use case.
- ragnese 3y ago
  That's absolutely the issue. Linux on the desktop is extremely niche, and as such, it doesn't get much attention.
throw555chip 3y ago
> Honestly, when it comes to "just working," desktop Linux is worse today than it was when I first installed it on my budget laptop in 2007. I bought a new Alienware PC in summer 2022, installed Ubuntu immediately, wiping Windows. Everything worked. Still does. This happens on every new Dell (or Alienware), HP or Lenovo desktop or laptop I've bought the past 2 decades. I can't buy a new machine that has issues with Linux, what on Earth could I be doing wrong that they all work. Honestly, do you work in Microsoft marketing.
- ragnese 3y ago
  > Honestly, do you work in Microsoft marketing. I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll take the bait this time. Read my comment again. In it I literally say that I run Linux exclusively on my personal machines. I don't have a Windows computer in my home and the only Mac I have that's still running macOS is a work-issued laptop. What are your Linux-never-Windows credentials? Because I bet they don't beat mine unless you're just significantly older than me and have been doing the same as me but for longer. If one were to read my comment history, they could only conclude that I'm a huge Microsoft hater/skeptic. Given that the ONLY mention of Microsoft or Windows in my comment was a statement that hardware manufacturers only test their drivers with Windows, this comment is just a strange emotional reaction to my point. > Everything worked. Still does. Read the rest of the thread about Flatpak and Snap. Read people's complaints about Wayland. Dig up some old discussions about PulseAudio and Xorg and how we used to have to hand-edit xorg.conf files to set up multiple monitors. If you insist that there are no problems, shortcomings, or missing functionality with Flatpaks, Snaps, and Wayland, you're deluding yourself.
  - oldpersonintx 3y ago
    [dead]
  - saltcured 3y ago
    I'm in that older+longer cohort so I'll comment... I think you are talking about workflow-breaking changes or stability issues during transitions to newer Linux bits. You explicitly excluded hardware/driver issues that a lot of people gripe about with Linux on laptops. I think your experience here can vary dramatically depending on your choice of Linux distribution, your upgrade tempo, and your expectations. I've had some frustrations with the UEFI transition and secure boot, because it forced me do research when I just wanted my system to boot. I've similarly suffered some regressions with MATE recently, where it boots to a black screen and I had to dig around to find that switching to a text console and restarting lightdm would get it unstuck. I'm struggling to answer whether these are "driver" things or not. But, I've been on Fedora for ~20 years now and am happily oblivious to Flatpak, Snap, or even Docker because they have nothing to do with my day to day experience. I also don't think I've dipped my toes into Wayland yet. I've been using XFCE or the MATE desktop rather than GNOME. But I do remember when ALSA was the new thing, then pulseaudio, and now pipewire. I mostly didn't care unless trying to setup some specific sound peripheral. I never had btrfs anywhere except an experimental system, because I always customized partitioning and never really considered the defaults to matter. If I exclude hardware/driver issues, it seems like this same story applies to Windows. It all depends on what part of the ecosystem you consider to be part of your platform experience. Some people might have some favorite apps that essentially work the same as 25 years ago, while others have experienced multiple upheavals as third parties abandoned or hijacked an old favorite application or forced some kind of migration. It's only gotten worse with all the rent-seeking cloud integrations with everything.
beebeepka 3y ago
My experience does not match your assertions. The Linux desktop has never been more accessible. My mother in law has been happily running manjaro with gnome for a while. Now, truth to be told, she was navigating gnome 2 Ubuntu more than a decade ago but things were mostly not working back then. Upgrading versions was a minefield with mostly terrible results. Maybe the state of things suited you better somehow. I just can't imagine how.
type0 3y ago
I'm not sure what distros you have been using but Linux Mint and Debian (if you set it up right) are extremely stable. Snaps have been slow but I have never experienced that with Flapaks; reasonable critique is it takes a lot of disk space and takes too much time to update different versions of underlying tech gtk or qt. Ubuntu has not been a good distro for a few years now. Even Fedora is more stable now and you get new software. We never had as good Linux desktop situation as it is now. The biggest complaint is that if you want to use graphics optimized programs you kinda have to use Nvidia and that's still problematic on Linux.

babypuncher 3y ago

I think part of it is because a lot of these more user-oriented features (desktop compositing, sandboxed app stores, hdr, etc.) don't get a lot of attention on Linux until after the two major commercial operating systems get them and prove people actually want them. The monied interests driving a lot of Linux development do not have the same need for these things as end users. To them, Linux is a server, or a lightweight embedded OS, or needed for some other specialized use case.

ragnese 3y ago
That's absolutely the issue. Linux on the desktop is extremely niche, and as such, it doesn't get much attention.

throw555chip 3y ago

> Honestly, when it comes to "just working," desktop Linux is worse today than it was when I first installed it on my budget laptop in 2007. I bought a new Alienware PC in summer 2022, installed Ubuntu immediately, wiping Windows. Everything worked. Still does. This happens on every new Dell (or Alienware), HP or Lenovo desktop or laptop I've bought the past 2 decades. I can't buy a new machine that has issues with Linux, what on Earth could I be doing wrong that they all work. Honestly, do you work in Microsoft marketing.

ragnese 3y ago
> Honestly, do you work in Microsoft marketing. I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I'll take the bait this time. Read my comment again. In it I literally say that I run Linux exclusively on my personal machines. I don't have a Windows computer in my home and the only Mac I have that's still running macOS is a work-issued laptop. What are your Linux-never-Windows credentials? Because I bet they don't beat mine unless you're just significantly older than me and have been doing the same as me but for longer. If one were to read my comment history, they could only conclude that I'm a huge Microsoft hater/skeptic. Given that the ONLY mention of Microsoft or Windows in my comment was a statement that hardware manufacturers only test their drivers with Windows, this comment is just a strange emotional reaction to my point. > Everything worked. Still does. Read the rest of the thread about Flatpak and Snap. Read people's complaints about Wayland. Dig up some old discussions about PulseAudio and Xorg and how we used to have to hand-edit xorg.conf files to set up multiple monitors. If you insist that there are no problems, shortcomings, or missing functionality with Flatpaks, Snaps, and Wayland, you're deluding yourself.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  [dead]
- saltcured 3y ago
  I'm in that older+longer cohort so I'll comment... I think you are talking about workflow-breaking changes or stability issues during transitions to newer Linux bits. You explicitly excluded hardware/driver issues that a lot of people gripe about with Linux on laptops. I think your experience here can vary dramatically depending on your choice of Linux distribution, your upgrade tempo, and your expectations. I've had some frustrations with the UEFI transition and secure boot, because it forced me do research when I just wanted my system to boot. I've similarly suffered some regressions with MATE recently, where it boots to a black screen and I had to dig around to find that switching to a text console and restarting lightdm would get it unstuck. I'm struggling to answer whether these are "driver" things or not. But, I've been on Fedora for ~20 years now and am happily oblivious to Flatpak, Snap, or even Docker because they have nothing to do with my day to day experience. I also don't think I've dipped my toes into Wayland yet. I've been using XFCE or the MATE desktop rather than GNOME. But I do remember when ALSA was the new thing, then pulseaudio, and now pipewire. I mostly didn't care unless trying to setup some specific sound peripheral. I never had btrfs anywhere except an experimental system, because I always customized partitioning and never really considered the defaults to matter. If I exclude hardware/driver issues, it seems like this same story applies to Windows. It all depends on what part of the ecosystem you consider to be part of your platform experience. Some people might have some favorite apps that essentially work the same as 25 years ago, while others have experienced multiple upheavals as third parties abandoned or hijacked an old favorite application or forced some kind of migration. It's only gotten worse with all the rent-seeking cloud integrations with everything.

beebeepka 3y ago

My experience does not match your assertions. The Linux desktop has never been more accessible. My mother in law has been happily running manjaro with gnome for a while. Now, truth to be told, she was navigating gnome 2 Ubuntu more than a decade ago but things were mostly not working back then. Upgrading versions was a minefield with mostly terrible results. Maybe the state of things suited you better somehow. I just can't imagine how.

type0 3y ago

I'm not sure what distros you have been using but Linux Mint and Debian (if you set it up right) are extremely stable. Snaps have been slow but I have never experienced that with Flapaks; reasonable critique is it takes a lot of disk space and takes too much time to update different versions of underlying tech gtk or qt. Ubuntu has not been a good distro for a few years now. Even Fedora is more stable now and you get new software. We never had as good Linux desktop situation as it is now. The biggest complaint is that if you want to use graphics optimized programs you kinda have to use Nvidia and that's still problematic on Linux.