4 ms·

I'm asking for Android-based desktop. Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover. MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and

I'm asking for Android-based desktop. Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover. MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for. Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to. Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen. So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.

KetoManx64 11mo ago
It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?
- lukaslalinsky 11mo ago
  I'm sorry, but there are MANY users of GNOME who are happy with the direction. I'd personally choose GNOME over any desktop environment on any OS.
- vbezhenar 11mo ago
  I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues. Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works. My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project. There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.
  - wild_egg 11mo ago
    XFCE is plenty mature and very stable
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - theandrewbailey 11mo ago
      Add Chicago95, and you've got some comfortable nostalgia. https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
      - jasonvorhe 11mo ago
        This is just beautiful, thank you!
  - dziulius 11mo ago
    Cinnamon DE (linux mint) is stable, mature and miles ahead of gnome
    - Tanoc 11mo ago
      Cinnamon is probably the best to use right now followed by XFCE because it uses XWayland by default. It provides nearly full use in both directions while still allowing both the new plugins and old widgets systems. It's also surprisingly stable. The only bug I've ever encountered in my now ten years of using it is on an N100 powered laptop, where if I let the computer go to sleep instead of turning it off eventually Cinnamon's process keeps requesting CPU time until it uses an entire core to itself.
      - officeplant 11mo ago
        Cinnamon getting good recently kind of blew my mind. I'm an ancient Gnome 2.x elitist, and typically hated cinnamon every-time I've tried it. Every now and then I distro hop and ended up on LMDE (linux mint debian edition, the real linux mint) which only has a cinnamon offering out of the box. Much to my surprise its actually good. It still has random bugs triggered by stuff I've tried adding to the panel, but that's par for the course with gnome, XFCE, and MATE lately anyway. Over all it's a solid DE now even if the stock start/menu is underwhelming everything is fixable.
- gf000 11mo ago
  > It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.
  - dredmorbius 11mo ago
    GNOME does in fact have a long track record on this point. Decades old.
    - wltr 11mo ago
      And in my option is finally good enough for me to switch from macOS and to recommend Gnome to others. Not everyone likes that Gnome 2 (wasn’t bad, I must admit, but I don’t like it) and especially Gnome 3 was. I quite enjoy modern Gnome, and whilst there are some minor inconveniences I’d prefer being different, I can live with that for the sake of overall simplicity.
- prmoustache 11mo ago
  Dunno, Gnome hasn't been hostile to me.
WorldPeas 11mo ago
My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.
- vbezhenar 11mo ago
  Home computers are inherently more open to sideloading. So I don't see a scenario where they would close it. But may be I'm spoiled by x86, wouldn't be surprised to find out that ARM computers would not be open to boot unlock and all that stuff.
  - WorldPeas 11mo ago
    If you're not accustomed to it, arm computers have no BIOS/UEFI boot selection and usually require a custom bootloader to load a new OS. I remember many fun hobby projects of old with x86 where I could take an old x86 appliance and put in a clean linux disk to use the hardware however I wanted, nowadays your OS needs to be signed, and because the root is owned, the software can be limited to that what the OEM or OS company desires, much like what MS is trying to do with TPM2 and Win11. Of all the ARM phones I've seen, perhaps 10% support bootloader unlock, and that's only with a certain carrier, the problem is that it's not a unified platform, support has to be implemented per-device, so even if the bootloader is open, the OS may not be up to date (as many have noted with dodgy third party arm boards)
  - ajvs 11mo ago
    Just think about how few Android devices have an open bootloader right now, there's no reason to think it'd be any different on larger hardware.
    - nolist_policy 11mo ago
atkirtland 11mo ago
What's the GNOME bug?
- vbezhenar 11mo ago
  I'm using shortcuts <Super>+1 ... <Super>+4 to switch between virtual desktops. Let's say there's Xwayland application launched on desktop 1 and I'm on desktop 4. Vscode for example. Now I press <Super>+1 to switch to desktop 1. At this point, vscode starts printing "11111111" until I press Esc. This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
  - throwaway173738 11mo ago
    Oh wow that explains a ton of problems I was having before I switched to KDE.
  - kachapopopow 11mo ago
    try cosmic desktop since it was made to be similar to gnome - it's maintained by system76 and is shaping up to be one of the most polished desktops out there, gnome has been feeling like it's going downwards for a while. I can't comment too much tho since I am too used to KDE at the moment and tiling support is just not there yet compared to KWin.
  - rmu09 11mo ago
    Interesting. I sometimes get similar behaviour on KDE / wayland, usually it is "2" or "3", and it seems to only affect electron apps. Always thought it has something to do with a dodgy ps/2 to usb converter I use to attach my old mechanical keyboards. I think it does not happen if electron apps are started with "--ozone-platform=wayland" but not completely sure, and I have no reliable way to reproduce or somehow trigger that behaviour.
rendaw 11mo ago
Windows is bad because it has opinions about advertisements and AI. MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use. Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.
- mvdwoord 11mo ago
  No opinions? Have you ever read a code of conduct? :)
- palata 11mo ago
  My opinion is that I should be able to choose my window manager and have a proper tiling window manager if I wish, and Linux is the only one allowing me to do that. It's a feature, not a bug.
bobthepanda 11mo ago
Isn’t Valve having a go at making Linux more consumer friendly?
realusername 11mo ago
Depends what you mean by security, if by security you mean sanboxing of apps sure, if by security you mean that you trust what's in your OS and you can control it, it's worse than desktop Linux. Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.
- gf000 11mo ago
  But that's more like talking about a particular distro, like I wouldn't trust North Korea's Linux distro either, compared to Debian. Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.
  - fsflover 11mo ago
    Perhaps you may like Qubes OS.
    - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
      Suggesting Qubes OS as the GNU/Linux equivalent of Android is admitting defeat. Android sandboxes multiple apps running on the same system/kernel. Qubes OS sandboxes multiple apps running on multiple different systems (VMs). Qubes, laudable as it may be, is not a parallel to Android.
      - fsflover 11mo ago
        Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside, which is that Google owns it and steers its development toward enshittification and control [0]. The latter even affects security directly [1]. Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root privileges or a possibility to take screenshots. Also, you don't have to run every app in a dedicated VM on Qubes: Instead you group them into security domains, which allowed me to organize my digital life like never before [3]. In addition, Qubes can protect you from supply-chain attacks by isolating VMs from the network and using different OSes side by side. I dream of using Qubes on mobile. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 [2] https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to-organize-your-qubes.html https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to...
prmoustache 11mo ago
Are you pretending android doesn't have bugs?
dlt713705 11mo ago
> Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in. Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms? For the record, I despise web apps.
hulitu 11mo ago
> So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.

KetoManx64 11mo ago

It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?

lukaslalinsky 11mo ago
I'm sorry, but there are MANY users of GNOME who are happy with the direction. I'd personally choose GNOME over any desktop environment on any OS.
vbezhenar 11mo ago
I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues. Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works. My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project. There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.
- wild_egg 11mo ago
  XFCE is plenty mature and very stable
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - theandrewbailey 11mo ago
    Add Chicago95, and you've got some comfortable nostalgia. https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
    - jasonvorhe 11mo ago
      This is just beautiful, thank you!
- dziulius 11mo ago
  Cinnamon DE (linux mint) is stable, mature and miles ahead of gnome
  - Tanoc 11mo ago
    Cinnamon is probably the best to use right now followed by XFCE because it uses XWayland by default. It provides nearly full use in both directions while still allowing both the new plugins and old widgets systems. It's also surprisingly stable. The only bug I've ever encountered in my now ten years of using it is on an N100 powered laptop, where if I let the computer go to sleep instead of turning it off eventually Cinnamon's process keeps requesting CPU time until it uses an entire core to itself.
    - officeplant 11mo ago
      Cinnamon getting good recently kind of blew my mind. I'm an ancient Gnome 2.x elitist, and typically hated cinnamon every-time I've tried it. Every now and then I distro hop and ended up on LMDE (linux mint debian edition, the real linux mint) which only has a cinnamon offering out of the box. Much to my surprise its actually good. It still has random bugs triggered by stuff I've tried adding to the panel, but that's par for the course with gnome, XFCE, and MATE lately anyway. Over all it's a solid DE now even if the stock start/menu is underwhelming everything is fixable.
gf000 11mo ago
> It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.
- dredmorbius 11mo ago
  GNOME does in fact have a long track record on this point. Decades old.
  - wltr 11mo ago
    And in my option is finally good enough for me to switch from macOS and to recommend Gnome to others. Not everyone likes that Gnome 2 (wasn’t bad, I must admit, but I don’t like it) and especially Gnome 3 was. I quite enjoy modern Gnome, and whilst there are some minor inconveniences I’d prefer being different, I can live with that for the sake of overall simplicity.
prmoustache 11mo ago
Dunno, Gnome hasn't been hostile to me.

WorldPeas 11mo ago

My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.

vbezhenar 11mo ago
Home computers are inherently more open to sideloading. So I don't see a scenario where they would close it. But may be I'm spoiled by x86, wouldn't be surprised to find out that ARM computers would not be open to boot unlock and all that stuff.
- WorldPeas 11mo ago
  If you're not accustomed to it, arm computers have no BIOS/UEFI boot selection and usually require a custom bootloader to load a new OS. I remember many fun hobby projects of old with x86 where I could take an old x86 appliance and put in a clean linux disk to use the hardware however I wanted, nowadays your OS needs to be signed, and because the root is owned, the software can be limited to that what the OEM or OS company desires, much like what MS is trying to do with TPM2 and Win11. Of all the ARM phones I've seen, perhaps 10% support bootloader unlock, and that's only with a certain carrier, the problem is that it's not a unified platform, support has to be implemented per-device, so even if the bootloader is open, the OS may not be up to date (as many have noted with dodgy third party arm boards)
- ajvs 11mo ago
  Just think about how few Android devices have an open bootloader right now, there's no reason to think it'd be any different on larger hardware.
  - nolist_policy 11mo ago

atkirtland 11mo ago

What's the GNOME bug?

vbezhenar 11mo ago
I'm using shortcuts <Super>+1 ... <Super>+4 to switch between virtual desktops. Let's say there's Xwayland application launched on desktop 1 and I'm on desktop 4. Vscode for example. Now I press <Super>+1 to switch to desktop 1. At this point, vscode starts printing "11111111" until I press Esc. This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
- throwaway173738 11mo ago
  Oh wow that explains a ton of problems I was having before I switched to KDE.
- kachapopopow 11mo ago
  try cosmic desktop since it was made to be similar to gnome - it's maintained by system76 and is shaping up to be one of the most polished desktops out there, gnome has been feeling like it's going downwards for a while. I can't comment too much tho since I am too used to KDE at the moment and tiling support is just not there yet compared to KWin.
- rmu09 11mo ago
  Interesting. I sometimes get similar behaviour on KDE / wayland, usually it is "2" or "3", and it seems to only affect electron apps. Always thought it has something to do with a dodgy ps/2 to usb converter I use to attach my old mechanical keyboards. I think it does not happen if electron apps are started with "--ozone-platform=wayland" but not completely sure, and I have no reliable way to reproduce or somehow trigger that behaviour.

rendaw 11mo ago

Windows is bad because it has opinions about advertisements and AI. MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use. Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.

mvdwoord 11mo ago
No opinions? Have you ever read a code of conduct? :)
palata 11mo ago
My opinion is that I should be able to choose my window manager and have a proper tiling window manager if I wish, and Linux is the only one allowing me to do that. It's a feature, not a bug.

bobthepanda 11mo ago

Isn’t Valve having a go at making Linux more consumer friendly?

realusername 11mo ago

Depends what you mean by security, if by security you mean sanboxing of apps sure, if by security you mean that you trust what's in your OS and you can control it, it's worse than desktop Linux. Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.

gf000 11mo ago
But that's more like talking about a particular distro, like I wouldn't trust North Korea's Linux distro either, compared to Debian. Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.
- fsflover 11mo ago
  Perhaps you may like Qubes OS.
  - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
    Suggesting Qubes OS as the GNU/Linux equivalent of Android is admitting defeat. Android sandboxes multiple apps running on the same system/kernel. Qubes OS sandboxes multiple apps running on multiple different systems (VMs). Qubes, laudable as it may be, is not a parallel to Android.
    - fsflover 11mo ago
      Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside, which is that Google owns it and steers its development toward enshittification and control [0]. The latter even affects security directly [1]. Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root privileges or a possibility to take screenshots. Also, you don't have to run every app in a dedicated VM on Qubes: Instead you group them into security domains, which allowed me to organize my digital life like never before [3]. In addition, Qubes can protect you from supply-chain attacks by isolating VMs from the network and using different OSes side by side. I dream of using Qubes on mobile. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028 [2] https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to-organize-your-qubes.html https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to...

prmoustache 11mo ago

Are you pretending android doesn't have bugs?

dlt713705 11mo ago

> Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in. Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms? For the record, I despise web apps.

hulitu 11mo ago

> So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.