
Is Linux ready for desktop? tl;dr – NO - maximveksler
http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
======
bmn_
This is a re-submission. Previous discussions:

•
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214)
(368 comments)

•
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757785)
(2 comments)

•
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616146)

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xlm1717
Interesting how people editorialize the title.

~~~
dang
That's against the site rules, which ask people to use the original title
_unless it is misleading or linkbait_. Submitters: note how that does not say
"add more linkbait".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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crncosta
I am using Debian as my main desktop (laptop in this case) for the last 8
years... sure I am not the only one.

I have suspend/hibernate, great Gnome experience, no issues to run
presentations or use public printers, really stable and very fast experience,
and I did not configure any system aspect to make it work, just installed the
distribution and that works out of box.

Well, I am very happy with Linux desktop. Just presenting a contra-example :)

~~~
yitchelle
What laptop are you using to get such great compatibility match?

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suvelx
I bought the new Dell Precision 5510 (Business version of the new XPS 15) this
week.

With a 4.4 kernel, Everything seems to work more-or-less fine. There's one or
two issues with the graphics stack (HiDPI display, Nvidia Card), but these
have workable solutions.

Heck, my last laptop (Sony Vaio Z), more-or-less worked too.

I think you've just got to follow one rule: Intel, Intel, Intel.

~~~
dagw
"more-or-less worked" is the story of my 15+ year history with Linux as a
desktop. Unfortunately these is always one or two small but important thing
which doesn't quite work which always eventually sends me back to windows/OS
X.

~~~
secstate
Not trying to troll here, but in my experience this is true as well. You know
what the culprit usually is? PULSEAUDIO ... oh my. I appreciate that audio is
a complex solution, but it seems that even suspend issues often come back to,
"oh, well pulseaudio isn't letting it ..." _sigh_

~~~
dagw
Funny you should say that. Pulseaudio, and not getting it to work reliably
with Skype, was what one the main things that drove me away from Linux on my
latest attempt to switch.

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scotty79
> Computing-wise that three week vacation turned out to be very relaxing.
> Machine would suspend and resume without problem, Wi-Fi just worked, audio
> did not stop working, I spend three weeks without having to recompile the
> kernel to adjust this or that, nor fighting the video drivers, or deal with
> the bizarre and random speed degradation that my ThinkPad suffered

For three weeks every system works. After six months every system breaks. Even
Windows 10 and Mac OSX developed various strange bugs (or annoying
idiosyncrasies) after few months of my use.

~~~
Piskvorrr
You seem to be doing something strange. The (Linux,Windows,Android) systems
under my control (mine+family) seem to be working rather well for _years_ ,
without any special sauce on my part, or the users'.

~~~
scotty79
I don't do anything beyond installing, uninstalling and upgrading software. I
don't tamper with the system itself, don't use any automatic system cleaners,
decrapifiers and such.

For example my Windows 10 now got stuck on some system upgrade and
periodically informs me about that with fullscreen message box and sound gets
stuck for fraction of a second from time to time when I watch movies and games
I'm playing get stuck from time to time for few seconds when I'm running them
from one SSD but not the other.

My Mac OSX gets stuck on accessing network share and refuses to continue until
I restart finder, also prefers WiFi when cable connection is available despite
wifi being lower on "set service order".

Haven't run Linux for last few years as a main system but I'd surely find some
stuff that stopped working after few months or in some circumstances.

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sigsergv
Most of points there make sense for power users only. If you need just basic
internet station (no gaming, professional video/audio editing etc) then linux
works almost perfectly.

~~~
mojuba
Any OS is good for a "basic internet station". Today, a school-age hacker can
probably hack together a rudimentary desktop OS for running Chrome and Firefox
with no advanced audio/video codecs. But Linux is no school project, in fact
as an OS it's almost as mature as Windows in terms of their age. And we all
know Linux is quite good, almost unbeatable on the server side.

But for the desktop side, there is no excuse for not having your video, audio
and networking sorted and polished to death. Improving your battery life or
saving internet traffic while on cellular data is not "professional
video/audio", it has become pretty much standard computer experience today.

~~~
downtide
I've a HP Windows 8.1 machine, added an Intel wireless card with Bluetooth.
Bluetooth pretty much disappears after a suspend. And networking can sometimes
die and only recover after a reboot. The control panels/diagnostics for both
networking and bluetooth are also really sucky (and admin in general on 8.1 is
pretty horrible). So don't be under the illusion that Windows is any better.

Bluetooth, how it works, how to use it on Linux is also an Enigma. And that's
been patchy on my Thinkpad, but I haven't had that much of a joyous experience
using Bluetooth on any device.

In short: 'they' could all try harder.

~~~
mojuba
Well, to be fair Bluetooth itself is incredibly difficult to deal with on all
levels, just like any other committee-driven thing out there. It's a mess that
I doubt can ever be fixed.

As for WiFi, my experience with Apple devices is mostly positive, or
definitely better than on any other platform. So WiFi is quite possible to get
right.

~~~
downtide
As a consumer you still get that sinking feeling of something that doesn't
quite work. it's all glitchy.

Has Bluetooth been bettered? I was hoping V4 would iron out wrinks. Wireless
applications that are simple to use could be really, really great. That's what
I thought the initial promise of Bluetooth was. I have some simple wants, like
file exchange, control a media player remotely etc. Send audio output to
another device etc.

The last office I worked in, a colleague had a modern Apple laptop, and he had
connection issues with the wireless router. It wouldn't connect. Lots of
fudging about with it. A fix was falling back to a slower speed to get it to
work. There are issues with most hardware and software.

The wireless issues/fixes suggested for my HP are pretty ridiculous, removing
drivers, installing in a certain order, barring updates etc. Very technical.

I don't think I've ever owned a machine/OS that hasn't had some problem,
including an old Apple.

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restalis
"Android contains the only Linux component - the kernel"

Well, only the kernel IS actually Linux. A Linux-kernel based *nix OS in
itself, which is usually wrongly assumed as Linux, is not in fact Linux (or
not quite). In this regard Android is just like a lot of other Linux-kernel
based distributions, no mater that it runs on an older/modified kernel.

~~~
mojuba
That's not entirely correct. Linux kernel is Linux kernel; what we call
"Linux" usually also includes the GNU userland. And then there are "Linux
flavours" that only differ in the way they screw up packaging and updates of
the kernel and the userland.

~~~
teddyh
What you call “flavors”, most people call “distributions”. And you are wrong;
“Linux” is the name of the kernel.

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humanrebar
ChromeOS uses the Linux kernel and works rather well. There is a paragraph
dismissing Android as a desktop OS, but ChromeOS (including the Chromebox) is
very close to a classic desktop experience, especially if you consider typical
consumer use cases.

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Shorel
Based on the number of issues I've had with either OS, Windows 10 is much less
ready for desktop than Ubuntu.

In fact, using Windows 8.1 or 10 I can't get 1080p video over HDMI without
screen tearing.

With Ubuntu, I can.

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IshKebab
I'm not sure it's even "ready for the server".

I have a server without a monitor I'd like to VNC to. Unfortunately X doesn't
start without a physical monitor plugged in because it uses it for
autodetection. It's such a silly problem that you can even buy fake "monitor"
dongles to plug in to trick X into thinking that there is one.

I don't feel like spending money on a software problem so I followed the
standard workaround - create a static xorg.conf file. This is very suboptimal
because what happens if I later plug in a real monitor?

Ok so now X starts. Sort of. Actually lightdm starts and I still can't get
X11vnc to connect to the `:0` display. Apparently there is a workaround
involving the MIT magic cookie but at this point I've given up.

In fact does X even support monitor hot-plugging?

Oh and also, if the wifi connection goes down and X isn't running it doesn't
automatically reconnect! Wtf? I assume this is because the thing that does the
reconnecting is a GUI tool of some sort.

Madness.

~~~
teddyh
> _I have a server without a monitor I 'd like to VNC to._

That’s your problem right there. You can’t (or, rather, _don’t_ ) “VNC” to
Unix servers. For normal remote access, you use SSH. If you _really_ need to
run a graphical X program _continuously_ on a server, you run a _virtual_ X
server program like “Xvfb”, and point your graphical X program to that. You
can then “VNC” all you like to this virtual X server. All without a monitor or
even a graphics card or a mouse on the actual server.

This thinking – the idea that a server has something one can refer to as “
_the_ ” screen, or “ _the_ ” mouse – is completely and utterly wrong, and
betrays a thinking born from Microsoft Windows and other desktop-only-oriented
operating systems.

~~~
maxerickson
Microsoft is going to ship a headless version of Windows Server:

[https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/mt126167.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/mt126167.aspx)

~~~
teddyh
The problem is that all server software written with Windows in mind already
_assume_ that their interface is a screen and a mouse, and will try to create
a main window, dock icon, and show popups when something happens. How will
they work on a headless Windows server?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Confused: remote desktop makes any server not headless.

~~~
teddyh
So, if I understand you correctly, Windows’ new “headless” servers are not
_actually_ headless, they simply have an _invisible_ head – it’s still there,
you just can’t see it.

~~~
maxerickson
It sure doesn't seem like it is there reading the page I linked.

I guess the software you mention that depends on having a desktop will do some
combination of not working and working poorly, but they aren't targeting
legacy applications with it, they are fleshing out their cloud offering.

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onli
dang, the title is editorialized (and in bad taste).

It was discussed a few days ago with a lots of comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214)

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borkur
I've been running Linux Mint on my private desktop exclusively for 3 years,
and Ubuntu for one year on my laptop (HP EliteBook 8530p). I use Windows 7 at
work. The only thing I miss from Linux is MS Excel.

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sliken
Chromebooks don't count?

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carlsborg
Its a great dev desktop.

