5 ms·

If we're talking about mass adoption of Linux then there really has to be no concept of even "picking a camp". The vast majority of users - even techy people -

by wackget 8mo ago

If we're talking about mass adoption of Linux then there really has to be no concept of even "picking a camp". The vast majority of users - even techy people - will not understand what a window manager is, never mind be capable of choosing one. Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once.

Joe_Cool 8mo ago
Hard disagree. You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example). That's not a hurdle it's a feature. Users who don't know about the feature can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things.
- andai 8mo ago
  Yeah I wanted to say, for people who don't care, there's Linux Mint. (I used to spend all my time tinkering with the DE, now I prefer to spend zero!) Except even with Linux Mint you have to choose which one ;)
- iwanttocomment 8mo ago
  Nope. Linux user for decades, but headless since the early aughts. Decided to dip my toes back into the desktop space with Mint Cinnamon. I can mirror or run lots of phone apps on Windows or macOS, but ironically, not Linux. I decide to run an Android emulator so I can use some phone-only apps. I read up on reviews, then download and install Waydroid as the top contender. Does Waydroid work? No. It fails silently launching from the shortcut after the install. Run it from the command line, and, nope, it's a window manager issue. Mint Cinnamon uses X11, not Wayland, and Waydroid apparently needs... Wayland support. OK, I log out, log into Mint with Wayland support, then re-launch Waydroid. My screen goes into a fugue state where it randomly alternates between black and the desktop. Try a variety of things, and I guess this is just how it is. Google and try any number of fixes, end up giving up. Yes, that's my old pal Linux on the Desktop. Older, faster and wiser, but still flaky in precisely the same ways.
  - nehal3m 8mo ago
    Headless daily driver? Hardcore. What do you use for a browser? I've tried it as a challenge for a couple of days (lynx, mutt, some other TUI stuff) and it made some things like Vim stick (although that may have as much to do with that challenge as Tridactyl did). But I couldn't last longer than a week. It does free you from the burden of system requirements. CPU: Optional.
    - Joe_Cool 8mo ago
      w3m can even display images in a linux console if you have the proper drivers or use KMSCON. It unwieldy but surprisingly usable. And my laptop battery runs for 8 hours which is quite amazing for a Zen1.
      - nomel 8mo ago
        > And my laptop battery runs for 8 hours I imagine your display is almost entirely black for the majority of the time, with your (most probably) LCD backlight blasting away, trying its hardest to get a few thousandths of its light output through the few pixels on the screen that it can escape! XD
        Joe_Cool 8mo ago
        Brightness down, LAN card disabled (the media sense on RTL cards sucks about 1.5W with no cable plugged in, wtf? Thats more than the Wifi needs) And powertop (great piece of software, thanks Intel) tuned to the max + powersave scheduler. All that on Windows or KDE results in about 4-5h of battery though. So fbdev must be somehow really frugal.
  - hparadiz 8mo ago
    That's cause you're using a distro like mint which is using older builds of stuff. Get yourself a most recent plasma 6 Wayland setup with pipewire for audio. It even has rdp server now. What's most likely happening is your user space app wants the newer API but you're running old builds from two years ago. It will continue to degrade for you unless you fully switch to a Wayland DM. Anything built on X11 is basically deprecated now and no one is building on it anymore.
- zahlman 8mo ago
  > You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example) The Flatpaks I've tried don't seem to understand this, however.
anon291 8mo ago
> Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once. I mean this is a solved problem on linux using modern distributions like NixOS or even 'normal' distros with flatpak, appimage, etc. I haven't had to deal with anything like this in years. The windows UIs are way more different than linux was. There was a time in the 90s where UIs were expected to follow platform specifics. These days, most UIs don't and they're almost kind of like the branding. Thus, this is not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. If anything, things like the gnome apps and gtk4 are more consistent than any windows app.
estimator7292 8mo ago
No, it's not about users picking a camp, it's about developers. It's been a long, long time since I've seen an application utterly fail to load because it's a GTK/QT/etc framework running under a totally different DE. Gnome apps look ugly as hell under KDE[0], but they still work. As a user, you don't need to know or care in any way. It'll run on your machine. [0]I don't know if they're ugly because of incompatibility or if that's just How Gnome Is. I suspect the latter
array_key_first 8mo ago
The same is true of Linux - GTK3 apps runs just fine on Plasma, and so do GTK4, and Qt 5, and Qt 6, and X11 apps, and on. Sure they all look slightly different, but it's definitely worse on Windows in that regard.
Orygin 8mo ago
> Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once. Just like Linux. You can run most if not all apps in any DE. Yes gnome will look ugly, but that's gnome's way of doing things. If you pick a decent DE, you will have most basic apps using the same styling, and the rest have CSD anyway. Each GUI toolkit has its own specialties, but you'll use at most two of them, and they will be kept in separate apps. (Apart from flatpak portals which use gtk instead of the system's). Windows has 3-5 different UI/UX layers within the same application ... And the rest have CSD anyway, so they look the same no matter the OS.

by wackget 8mo ago

Joe_Cool 8mo ago

Hard disagree. You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example). That's not a hurdle it's a feature. Users who don't know about the feature can just use a pre-configured system like Mint Cinnamon and never know about any of these things.

andai 8mo ago
Yeah I wanted to say, for people who don't care, there's Linux Mint. (I used to spend all my time tinkering with the DE, now I prefer to spend zero!) Except even with Linux Mint you have to choose which one ;)
iwanttocomment 8mo ago
Nope. Linux user for decades, but headless since the early aughts. Decided to dip my toes back into the desktop space with Mint Cinnamon. I can mirror or run lots of phone apps on Windows or macOS, but ironically, not Linux. I decide to run an Android emulator so I can use some phone-only apps. I read up on reviews, then download and install Waydroid as the top contender. Does Waydroid work? No. It fails silently launching from the shortcut after the install. Run it from the command line, and, nope, it's a window manager issue. Mint Cinnamon uses X11, not Wayland, and Waydroid apparently needs... Wayland support. OK, I log out, log into Mint with Wayland support, then re-launch Waydroid. My screen goes into a fugue state where it randomly alternates between black and the desktop. Try a variety of things, and I guess this is just how it is. Google and try any number of fixes, end up giving up. Yes, that's my old pal Linux on the Desktop. Older, faster and wiser, but still flaky in precisely the same ways.
- nehal3m 8mo ago
  Headless daily driver? Hardcore. What do you use for a browser? I've tried it as a challenge for a couple of days (lynx, mutt, some other TUI stuff) and it made some things like Vim stick (although that may have as much to do with that challenge as Tridactyl did). But I couldn't last longer than a week. It does free you from the burden of system requirements. CPU: Optional.
  - Joe_Cool 8mo ago
    w3m can even display images in a linux console if you have the proper drivers or use KMSCON. It unwieldy but surprisingly usable. And my laptop battery runs for 8 hours which is quite amazing for a Zen1.
    - nomel 8mo ago
      > And my laptop battery runs for 8 hours I imagine your display is almost entirely black for the majority of the time, with your (most probably) LCD backlight blasting away, trying its hardest to get a few thousandths of its light output through the few pixels on the screen that it can escape! XD
      - Joe_Cool 8mo ago
        Brightness down, LAN card disabled (the media sense on RTL cards sucks about 1.5W with no cable plugged in, wtf? Thats more than the Wifi needs) And powertop (great piece of software, thanks Intel) tuned to the max + powersave scheduler. All that on Windows or KDE results in about 4-5h of battery though. So fbdev must be somehow really frugal.
- hparadiz 8mo ago
  That's cause you're using a distro like mint which is using older builds of stuff. Get yourself a most recent plasma 6 Wayland setup with pipewire for audio. It even has rdp server now. What's most likely happening is your user space app wants the newer API but you're running old builds from two years ago. It will continue to degrade for you unless you fully switch to a Wayland DM. Anything built on X11 is basically deprecated now and no one is building on it anymore.
zahlman 8mo ago
> You can run the same programs on any DE or Window Manager or even without one (on pure X11 for example) The Flatpaks I've tried don't seem to understand this, however.

anon291 8mo ago

> Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once. I mean this is a solved problem on linux using modern distributions like NixOS or even 'normal' distros with flatpak, appimage, etc. I haven't had to deal with anything like this in years. The windows UIs are way more different than linux was. There was a time in the 90s where UIs were expected to follow platform specifics. These days, most UIs don't and they're almost kind of like the branding. Thus, this is not as big a deal as you're making it out to be. If anything, things like the gnome apps and gtk4 are more consistent than any windows app.

estimator7292 8mo ago

No, it's not about users picking a camp, it's about developers. It's been a long, long time since I've seen an application utterly fail to load because it's a GTK/QT/etc framework running under a totally different DE. Gnome apps look ugly as hell under KDE[0], but they still work. As a user, you don't need to know or care in any way. It'll run on your machine. [0]I don't know if they're ugly because of incompatibility or if that's just How Gnome Is. I suspect the latter

array_key_first 8mo ago

The same is true of Linux - GTK3 apps runs just fine on Plasma, and so do GTK4, and Qt 5, and Qt 6, and X11 apps, and on. Sure they all look slightly different, but it's definitely worse on Windows in that regard.

Orygin 8mo ago

> Yes, there are many UI implementations in Windows but they are almost totally transparent to the user (no pun intended), and they can all run on the same system at once. Just like Linux. You can run most if not all apps in any DE. Yes gnome will look ugly, but that's gnome's way of doing things. If you pick a decent DE, you will have most basic apps using the same styling, and the rest have CSD anyway. Each GUI toolkit has its own specialties, but you'll use at most two of them, and they will be kept in separate apps. (Apart from flatpak portals which use gtk instead of the system's). Windows has 3-5 different UI/UX layers within the same application ... And the rest have CSD anyway, so they look the same no matter the OS.