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> desktop Linux frustrates me Yes, there are unresolved issues, and that's not going away But consider the alternatives: 1) ads in your menu bar an a pc

> desktop Linux frustrates me Yes, there are unresolved issues, and that's not going away But consider the alternatives: 1) ads in your menu bar an a pc that calls home to Redmond every 10s 2) a pretty candy-themed adventure in la-la land that you pay through the nose for and where, like in the fabled Hotel California [1], you can never leave. I'll take the minor annoyances every day of the week. [1] https://genius.com/Eagles-hotel-california-lyrics https://genius.com/Eagles-hotel-california-lyrics

lukan 2y ago
"Yes, there are unresolved issues, and that's not going away" Why?!? It is totally possible to get rid of those "minor annoyances". Some obscure driver bug, yeah, those are hard as there are millions of different devices and combinations. But UI scaling and other pain points like consistent UI and UX? That can be solved and it would make life on linux easier for everyone who is not comfortable with the terminal - which is the vast majority of humanity.
- ur-whale 2y ago
  > Why?!? I really wish that wasn't the case. But I've been using Linux since '96, and Unix for way longer than that, and it has always been the case, so likelihood of it remaining that way is high at this point. Second, I believe it is a characteristic of the Open Source world: anything can be forked and evolved, which leads to a very complex ecosystem, especially when it comes to GUIs. The commercial OS vendors don't really have to deal with that issue. Third: hardware evolves, and very fast. Super hirez screen are a good example, and the need for thinking about GUIs in centimeters rather than in pixels is something that has caught all OS builders by surprise. Commercial providers built a a solution quickly, and the OpenSource world will eventually catch up, but they'll be late to the game, as usual. Another example is CPU's with heterogeneous cores, which it took the Linux folks quite a while to adjust to. Or at a more trivial level, the back-lighting of my laptop keyboard. This state of affairs (OpenSource software lagging behind wrt H/W evolution) is very likely to continue: H/W makers have, in general, almost zero incentive in providing drivers and/or early technical support for Linux. Oh, and btw: people believe they do that because opensourcing drivers would expose their intellectual property (see NVidia as one of the worst offenders). In reality, the truth is that it would expose for all to see how shitty, buggy and badly written their software actually is, and therefore they never do it. Net result: H/W has to be adjusted to after the fact by the OSS community (reverse engineering and whatnot), systematically leading to this chronic problem with OpenSource and H/W. I buy a new laptop every two years, wipe windows and install Linux. In over thirty years of doing this, I have yet to see a single time where every device in the laptop worked properly right after the install. Never happened. Yet, I am still a happy user: I do, to a large extent, control what happens on my computer. The same can't be said anymore of either of Android, OSX, Windows, Chrome
  - lukan 2y ago
    "In over thirty years of doing this, I have yet to see a single time where every device in the laptop worked properly right after the install. Never happened." In 15 years I experienced it 2 times by chance. But yes, the battery life was probably still lower than on stock windows. But not having to fight your system, but bugs, is a different feel. I still cannot completely deactivate windows antivirus on my all the time offline laptop. Shit like this. If linux would reliably work out of the box, standards might change. But it is a long way, but I believe it can change. There is momentum (and Valve's engagement helped).
zaptrem 2y ago
As a happy citizen of la-la land, what am I missing with desktop Linux (I use server Linux daily for ML and dev stuff) that’s worth all of the significant drawbacks that come with leaving la-la land?
- ur-whale 2y ago
  > what am I missing with desktop Linux Freedom. Not something that matters much for many people, apparently. But to each his own. [EDIT]: And "significant" is not what I would call it. More like minor annoyances. Living in a golden cage is a much more significant issue AFAIC.
  - XajniN 2y ago
    What freedom? You can use almost all of the OSS on macOS too, but you also have better options available (often at a cost). So, how does your freedom manifest itself exactly?
theanonymousone 2y ago
> I'll take the minor annoyances every day of the week. Maybe some Linux decision makers share this mindset with you, and that's why we are where we are:)

lukan 2y ago

"Yes, there are unresolved issues, and that's not going away" Why?!? It is totally possible to get rid of those "minor annoyances". Some obscure driver bug, yeah, those are hard as there are millions of different devices and combinations. But UI scaling and other pain points like consistent UI and UX? That can be solved and it would make life on linux easier for everyone who is not comfortable with the terminal - which is the vast majority of humanity.

ur-whale 2y ago
> Why?!? I really wish that wasn't the case. But I've been using Linux since '96, and Unix for way longer than that, and it has always been the case, so likelihood of it remaining that way is high at this point. Second, I believe it is a characteristic of the Open Source world: anything can be forked and evolved, which leads to a very complex ecosystem, especially when it comes to GUIs. The commercial OS vendors don't really have to deal with that issue. Third: hardware evolves, and very fast. Super hirez screen are a good example, and the need for thinking about GUIs in centimeters rather than in pixels is something that has caught all OS builders by surprise. Commercial providers built a a solution quickly, and the OpenSource world will eventually catch up, but they'll be late to the game, as usual. Another example is CPU's with heterogeneous cores, which it took the Linux folks quite a while to adjust to. Or at a more trivial level, the back-lighting of my laptop keyboard. This state of affairs (OpenSource software lagging behind wrt H/W evolution) is very likely to continue: H/W makers have, in general, almost zero incentive in providing drivers and/or early technical support for Linux. Oh, and btw: people believe they do that because opensourcing drivers would expose their intellectual property (see NVidia as one of the worst offenders). In reality, the truth is that it would expose for all to see how shitty, buggy and badly written their software actually is, and therefore they never do it. Net result: H/W has to be adjusted to after the fact by the OSS community (reverse engineering and whatnot), systematically leading to this chronic problem with OpenSource and H/W. I buy a new laptop every two years, wipe windows and install Linux. In over thirty years of doing this, I have yet to see a single time where every device in the laptop worked properly right after the install. Never happened. Yet, I am still a happy user: I do, to a large extent, control what happens on my computer. The same can't be said anymore of either of Android, OSX, Windows, Chrome
- lukan 2y ago
  "In over thirty years of doing this, I have yet to see a single time where every device in the laptop worked properly right after the install. Never happened." In 15 years I experienced it 2 times by chance. But yes, the battery life was probably still lower than on stock windows. But not having to fight your system, but bugs, is a different feel. I still cannot completely deactivate windows antivirus on my all the time offline laptop. Shit like this. If linux would reliably work out of the box, standards might change. But it is a long way, but I believe it can change. There is momentum (and Valve's engagement helped).

zaptrem 2y ago

As a happy citizen of la-la land, what am I missing with desktop Linux (I use server Linux daily for ML and dev stuff) that’s worth all of the significant drawbacks that come with leaving la-la land?

ur-whale 2y ago
> what am I missing with desktop Linux Freedom. Not something that matters much for many people, apparently. But to each his own. [EDIT]: And "significant" is not what I would call it. More like minor annoyances. Living in a golden cage is a much more significant issue AFAIC.
- XajniN 2y ago
  What freedom? You can use almost all of the OSS on macOS too, but you also have better options available (often at a cost). So, how does your freedom manifest itself exactly?

theanonymousone 2y ago

> I'll take the minor annoyances every day of the week. Maybe some Linux decision makers share this mindset with you, and that's why we are where we are:)