4 ms·

> Sure, we now have PipeWire and Wayland. We enjoy many modern advances and yet, the practical use for me is worse than it was 10 years ago. That's what has ma

> Sure, we now have PipeWire and Wayland. We enjoy many modern advances and yet, the practical use for me is worse than it was 10 years ago. That's what has made me leave Linux for Mac OS, and I'm talking about things like the touchpad (libinput) causing physical pain and crashing every couple minutes while the "desktop" wants to appeal to a hypothetical casual tablet user even Microsoft left long behind in the Windows 8.1 era (!). Mind, Mac OS is far from perfect and also regressing (hello window focus management, SIP, refactored-into-uselessness expose, etc, etc) but Mac OS has at least a wealth of new desktop apps created in this millenium to make up for it, unlike the Linux desktop struggling to keep the same old apps running as it's on a refactoring spree to fix self-inflicted problems (like glibc, ld.so) and then still not attracting new developers. I wish I could say, like the author, that containers are the solution, but the canonical example of browser updates also is a case of unwarranted and rampant complexity piling up without the slightest actual benefit for the user as the web is dying.

desumeku 2y ago
> while the "desktop" wants to appeal to a hypothetical casual tablet user even Microsoft left long behind in the Windows 8.1 era This sounds like a GNOME issue, not a Linux one.
imiric 2y ago
I agree to an extent, but Linux is actually very usable if you stick to common quality hardware, and a collection of carefully curated robust and simple software. I realize this is impractical for most people, but having a limited ecosystem is what essentially allows Apple to deliver the exceptional user experience they're known for. The alternative of supporting an insane amount of hardware, and making it work with every combination of software, both legacy and cutting-edge, is much, much harder to achieve. It's a miracle of engineering that Linux works as well as it does, while also being developed in a globally distributed way with no central company driving the effort. Microsoft can also pull this off arguably better, but with a completely different development and business model, and all the resources in the world, so it's hardly comparable. The sad part is that there is really no alternative to Linux if you want full control over your devices, while also having a decent user experience. Windows and macOS are walled gardens, and on the opposite spectrum BSDs and other niche OSs are nowhere near as usable. So the best we can do is pick a good Linux distro, something we're thankfully spoiled for choice, and customize it to our needs, which unfortunately does take a lot of time and effort. I still prefer this over the alternatives, though.
nosioptar 2y ago
I hate libinput and its lack of configuration so much I've contemplated going back to windows. I probably would have if there was a legit way to get win ltsc as an individual.
shiroiushi 2y ago
>while the "desktop" wants to appeal to a hypothetical casual tablet user even Microsoft left long behind in the Windows 8.1 era (!) Using GNOME is a personal choice that you made. There's lots of Linux distros that use better desktop environments like KDE and XFCE.
jwells89 2y ago
In my opinion, what desktop Linux needs to attract the the sort of developers that create the high-polish third party software that macOS is known is a combination DE and UI toolkit that provides the same breadth and depth that's found in AppKit. With AppKit, one can build just about any kind of app imaginable by importing a handful of stock frameworks. The need to use third party libraries is the lowest I've seen on any platform, with many apps not needing any at all. That's huge for lowering the amount of activation energy and friction involved in building things, as well as for reducing ongoing maintenance burden (no fear of the developer of libfoo suddenly disappearing, requiring you to chase down the next best fork or to fork it yourself). The other thing is not being afraid of opinionated design choices, which is also a quality of AppKit. This is going to chafe some developers, but I see it as a necessary evil because it's what allows frameworks to have "happy paths" for any given task that are well-supported, thoroughly tested, and most importantly work as expected. GTK and Qt are probably the closest to this ideal but aren't quite there.
- MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
  I've been meaning to get into Qt dev for a while now, as it seems to be a pretty big, portable framework with batteries included, which would be a big step up from the little headless Python tools I've been writing. What would you say is missing from Qt and the related KDE frameworks compared with AppKit?
  - jwells89 2y ago
    With a disclaimer that I'm not an expert on Qt: - Qt Widgets has a selection of controls that falls a bit short of that of AppKit and doesn't receive much attention any more - Qt Quick/QML seems more mobile-oriented and web-styled, being barebones if you don't pull in a library of third party widgets (e.g. Kirigami) - Neither go as deep as AppKit with functionality and require more third party library usage - Practically speaking, developers are limited to C++ or Python for Widgets and JavaScript for QML - Distribution of Qt apps is messy and error-prone These aren't really dealbreakers on their own but pile up to pull the overall experience down.

desumeku 2y ago

> while the "desktop" wants to appeal to a hypothetical casual tablet user even Microsoft left long behind in the Windows 8.1 era This sounds like a GNOME issue, not a Linux one.

imiric 2y ago

I agree to an extent, but Linux is actually very usable if you stick to common quality hardware, and a collection of carefully curated robust and simple software. I realize this is impractical for most people, but having a limited ecosystem is what essentially allows Apple to deliver the exceptional user experience they're known for. The alternative of supporting an insane amount of hardware, and making it work with every combination of software, both legacy and cutting-edge, is much, much harder to achieve. It's a miracle of engineering that Linux works as well as it does, while also being developed in a globally distributed way with no central company driving the effort. Microsoft can also pull this off arguably better, but with a completely different development and business model, and all the resources in the world, so it's hardly comparable. The sad part is that there is really no alternative to Linux if you want full control over your devices, while also having a decent user experience. Windows and macOS are walled gardens, and on the opposite spectrum BSDs and other niche OSs are nowhere near as usable. So the best we can do is pick a good Linux distro, something we're thankfully spoiled for choice, and customize it to our needs, which unfortunately does take a lot of time and effort. I still prefer this over the alternatives, though.

nosioptar 2y ago

I hate libinput and its lack of configuration so much I've contemplated going back to windows. I probably would have if there was a legit way to get win ltsc as an individual.

shiroiushi 2y ago

>while the "desktop" wants to appeal to a hypothetical casual tablet user even Microsoft left long behind in the Windows 8.1 era (!) Using GNOME is a personal choice that you made. There's lots of Linux distros that use better desktop environments like KDE and XFCE.

jwells89 2y ago

In my opinion, what desktop Linux needs to attract the the sort of developers that create the high-polish third party software that macOS is known is a combination DE and UI toolkit that provides the same breadth and depth that's found in AppKit. With AppKit, one can build just about any kind of app imaginable by importing a handful of stock frameworks. The need to use third party libraries is the lowest I've seen on any platform, with many apps not needing any at all. That's huge for lowering the amount of activation energy and friction involved in building things, as well as for reducing ongoing maintenance burden (no fear of the developer of libfoo suddenly disappearing, requiring you to chase down the next best fork or to fork it yourself). The other thing is not being afraid of opinionated design choices, which is also a quality of AppKit. This is going to chafe some developers, but I see it as a necessary evil because it's what allows frameworks to have "happy paths" for any given task that are well-supported, thoroughly tested, and most importantly work as expected. GTK and Qt are probably the closest to this ideal but aren't quite there.

MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
I've been meaning to get into Qt dev for a while now, as it seems to be a pretty big, portable framework with batteries included, which would be a big step up from the little headless Python tools I've been writing. What would you say is missing from Qt and the related KDE frameworks compared with AppKit?
- jwells89 2y ago
  With a disclaimer that I'm not an expert on Qt: - Qt Widgets has a selection of controls that falls a bit short of that of AppKit and doesn't receive much attention any more - Qt Quick/QML seems more mobile-oriented and web-styled, being barebones if you don't pull in a library of third party widgets (e.g. Kirigami) - Neither go as deep as AppKit with functionality and require more third party library usage - Practically speaking, developers are limited to C++ or Python for Widgets and JavaScript for QML - Distribution of Qt apps is messy and error-prone These aren't really dealbreakers on their own but pile up to pull the overall experience down.