5 ms·

What do you think Linux users are missing?

by dismalaf 2y ago

adastra22 2y ago
Better UI/UX.
- geniium 2y ago
  and the "it simply works" feeling
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    aka, the apple lie.
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    Install a modern distro. It does just work. I've literally done zero config to my laptop, nothing has broken or not worked. Literally everything works. Touchpad, touchscreen, webcam, fingerprint reader, stylus, suspend, audio, etc...
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Depends on the laptop.
      - dismalaf 2y ago
        I've had a ThinkPad, an Acer and now an MSI. All worked flawlessly. Even the MSI which, according to the Internet, probably wouldn't work.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      Always love how arrogant Linux users are: "You can't possibly experience something different from me" I wanted to make a genuine effort to get into using Linux because it's the only OS I'm not super comfortable admin'ing. I bought a secondhand Lenovo t440 and installed Linux Mint on it. Everything seemed to work well, boot was nice and quick, no issues with WiFi chipset or sleep and battery life was at least okay. It was fine for browsing the web with Firefox for my normal web browsing, and made a great netflix machine. Then I kept trying to do other things. I was playing with Blender at the time and despite the laptop being old at the time, it Mint installed a broken intel graphics driver. It couldn't render anything without artifacts and was unusable. The fixed driver was older than the release of Mint I was using. Why didn't Mint install an up to date driver? I wanted use my steam controller to control mouse and keyboard input exactly like you can on any windows machine. In Linux, it required you to hand edit some config files to allow Steam to even communicate with it's own controller. Like what the fuck? Why? I wanted to dual boot Windows to play more steam games (this was before proton) but if you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, you have to install windows FIRST. Otherwise you have to be an expert in x86-64 boot semantics to do the configuration required. So this was impossible without reinstalling everything. So fine, I decided to just install Windows on it. Windows pulled the license details out of the BIOS from the previous owner (whoops) and auto-registered itself, and had the fixed intel graphics driver from the get go. I installed steam and the steam controller worked as expected. Battery life was SIGNIFICANTLY better. THAT'S usability. THAT'S "just works".
      - dismalaf 2y ago
        Not going to lie, Mint is a buggy POS and the fact anyone recommends it at all is a travesty. It's so bad it makes me think it's sponsored by Microsoft to sabotage new users. Mint basically takes a years old Ubuntu, then an even older fork of a DE, uses an abandoned protocol then rolls it together and adds even more bugs to it. It's honestly one of the worst distros that exists. Ubuntu, Fedora and (open)Suse are the only ones worth using if you want a smooth experience (ie. the corporate ones). Edit - also needing to install Windows first to dual boot is a result of Windows installation wiping existing bootloaders.
        int_19h 2y ago
        Funny you should say that. I just tried to install some recent Linux distro on my Thinkpad two days ago. Fedora 42 wouldn't even install because apparently the installer doesn't support boot partition located past the 2Tb boundary, and that laptop has a 4Tb SSD with the first 2Tb used up by Windows. The error was completely incomprehensible, though. Mint, OTOH, installed just fine and is working great.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  I'd personally take Gnome Shell over both Windows and OSX. It's minimal, gets out of your way, has better touchpad gestures and keyboard shortcuts for navigating, and looks great. So I think Linux is there. But this is kind of a personal thing. My wife likes Windows with a super cluttered desktop and I absolutely hate the idea of any desktop icons and I like everything hidden. I have a colleague who has OSX with again, a ton of desktop icons and like 20 things open at any given time, just looking at his screen gives me anxiety.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    It’s not just the desktop, it is the app ecosystem too. There are a lot of really great UX and productivity hacks in the macOS sphere which dead simple to install and intuitive to use.
    - dismalaf 2y ago
      So a hand-wavy Apple "ecosystem" argument, gotcha. I am curious if you have any examples though.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  Which OSes have better UI/UX then, because Windows 11 certainly isn't one. Can you name a couple?
TiredOfLife 2y ago
foobar2000, Total Commander, Excel
- dismalaf 2y ago
  > Excel Yeah, I'm really missing Excel and VBA... Between Google Sheets, Gnumeric (Python "macros" are so much better than VBA), R Studio, I definitely don't miss Excel an iota. Google Sheets is a better choice for average Joe spreadsheet user, make a spreadsheet, some nice graphics, share it. Gnumeric has better scripting and better maths functions. R Studio is better for data analysis. I have a degree in economics and didn't touch Excel for any of it (Stata, R, Python got me through). In fact, I could go further and write an entire dissertation about how Excel as a program is cursed and a net negative to society. The amount of times I've seen broken spreadsheets lead to real business problems is way, way higher than it should be. So much of what people do in Excel should just be handled by a Python script or something. Whoever thought it was a good idea to couple data and functions and then to put that in the hands of Jane from accounting did a massive disservice to all of society.

What do you think Linux users are missing?

adastra22 2y ago

Better UI/UX.

geniium 2y ago
and the "it simply works" feeling
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  aka, the apple lie.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  Install a modern distro. It does just work. I've literally done zero config to my laptop, nothing has broken or not worked. Literally everything works. Touchpad, touchscreen, webcam, fingerprint reader, stylus, suspend, audio, etc...
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Depends on the laptop.
    - dismalaf 2y ago
      I've had a ThinkPad, an Acer and now an MSI. All worked flawlessly. Even the MSI which, according to the Internet, probably wouldn't work.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Always love how arrogant Linux users are: "You can't possibly experience something different from me" I wanted to make a genuine effort to get into using Linux because it's the only OS I'm not super comfortable admin'ing. I bought a secondhand Lenovo t440 and installed Linux Mint on it. Everything seemed to work well, boot was nice and quick, no issues with WiFi chipset or sleep and battery life was at least okay. It was fine for browsing the web with Firefox for my normal web browsing, and made a great netflix machine. Then I kept trying to do other things. I was playing with Blender at the time and despite the laptop being old at the time, it Mint installed a broken intel graphics driver. It couldn't render anything without artifacts and was unusable. The fixed driver was older than the release of Mint I was using. Why didn't Mint install an up to date driver? I wanted use my steam controller to control mouse and keyboard input exactly like you can on any windows machine. In Linux, it required you to hand edit some config files to allow Steam to even communicate with it's own controller. Like what the fuck? Why? I wanted to dual boot Windows to play more steam games (this was before proton) but if you want to dual boot Linux and Windows, you have to install windows FIRST. Otherwise you have to be an expert in x86-64 boot semantics to do the configuration required. So this was impossible without reinstalling everything. So fine, I decided to just install Windows on it. Windows pulled the license details out of the BIOS from the previous owner (whoops) and auto-registered itself, and had the fixed intel graphics driver from the get go. I installed steam and the steam controller worked as expected. Battery life was SIGNIFICANTLY better. THAT'S usability. THAT'S "just works".
    - dismalaf 2y ago
      Not going to lie, Mint is a buggy POS and the fact anyone recommends it at all is a travesty. It's so bad it makes me think it's sponsored by Microsoft to sabotage new users. Mint basically takes a years old Ubuntu, then an even older fork of a DE, uses an abandoned protocol then rolls it together and adds even more bugs to it. It's honestly one of the worst distros that exists. Ubuntu, Fedora and (open)Suse are the only ones worth using if you want a smooth experience (ie. the corporate ones). Edit - also needing to install Windows first to dual boot is a result of Windows installation wiping existing bootloaders.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        Funny you should say that. I just tried to install some recent Linux distro on my Thinkpad two days ago. Fedora 42 wouldn't even install because apparently the installer doesn't support boot partition located past the 2Tb boundary, and that laptop has a 4Tb SSD with the first 2Tb used up by Windows. The error was completely incomprehensible, though. Mint, OTOH, installed just fine and is working great.
dismalaf 2y ago
I'd personally take Gnome Shell over both Windows and OSX. It's minimal, gets out of your way, has better touchpad gestures and keyboard shortcuts for navigating, and looks great. So I think Linux is there. But this is kind of a personal thing. My wife likes Windows with a super cluttered desktop and I absolutely hate the idea of any desktop icons and I like everything hidden. I have a colleague who has OSX with again, a ton of desktop icons and like 20 things open at any given time, just looking at his screen gives me anxiety.
- adastra22 2y ago
  It’s not just the desktop, it is the app ecosystem too. There are a lot of really great UX and productivity hacks in the macOS sphere which dead simple to install and intuitive to use.
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    So a hand-wavy Apple "ecosystem" argument, gotcha. I am curious if you have any examples though.
antisthenes 2y ago
Which OSes have better UI/UX then, because Windows 11 certainly isn't one. Can you name a couple?

TiredOfLife 2y ago

foobar2000, Total Commander, Excel

dismalaf 2y ago
> Excel Yeah, I'm really missing Excel and VBA... Between Google Sheets, Gnumeric (Python "macros" are so much better than VBA), R Studio, I definitely don't miss Excel an iota. Google Sheets is a better choice for average Joe spreadsheet user, make a spreadsheet, some nice graphics, share it. Gnumeric has better scripting and better maths functions. R Studio is better for data analysis. I have a degree in economics and didn't touch Excel for any of it (Stata, R, Python got me through). In fact, I could go further and write an entire dissertation about how Excel as a program is cursed and a net negative to society. The amount of times I've seen broken spreadsheets lead to real business problems is way, way higher than it should be. So much of what people do in Excel should just be handled by a Python script or something. Whoever thought it was a good idea to couple data and functions and then to put that in the hands of Jane from accounting did a massive disservice to all of society.