
Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2016 Edition - gerbilly
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
======
Animats
He's right.

Many of the driver problems come from the fact that Linux finally worked on
the desktop about the time desktop machines were replaced by laptops. Desktops
with slots tended to have relatively well-defined hardware, and plugging in
third party hardware was normal. This is much less true for laptops. OS
development for laptops requires that laptop. It needs a Q/A organization
which has one of everything you support. Linux lacks that.

Microsoft got drivers under control with the Static Driver Verifier, which
uses automatic formal proofs of correctness to determine whether a driver can
crash the kernel. (The driver may not control the device correctly, but at
least it won't blither over kernel memory or make a kernel API call with bogus
parameters. So driver bugs just mean a device doesn't work, and you know which
device and driver.) All signed Windows drivers since Windows 7 have passed
that. This has eliminated most system crashes caused by drivers. Before that,
more than half of Windows crashes were driver related. Linux has no comparable
technology.

The monolithic Linux kernel is just too big. What is it now, 20,000,000 lines?
There's no hope of debugging that. It shows.

~~~
archimedespi
> The monolithic Linux kernel is just too big. What is it now, 20,000,000
> lines? There's no hope of debugging that. It shows.

The Linux kernel is about 20MSLOC. The Windows kernel is about 50MSLOC. IIRC,
OS X used to be ~80KSLOC.

Problems with debugging are endemic to any monolithic kernel. Neither Windows
nor OS X is easier to debug _technologically_ , but Microsoft and Apple both
have many employees and lots of money invested compared to Linux.

(Also, Apple solved the problem by making their OS specific to their
computers, so they had the whole thing under their control.)

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Kernel debuggers exist. Of course, we're all aware of Linus' opinion on the
matter.

~~~
albinofrenchy
Not all debug tools are single step debuggers. There are memory verifiers,
formal proof techniques and self testing frameworks that Linux uses that are
very, very useful

~~~
xjia
What are those tools?

~~~
colin_mccabe
_sparse_ \-- adds annotations to kernel code which can be checked by the
compiler. It is a little bit like a parallel type system which provides
domain-specific knowledge like "this function takes lock A and then lock B" or
"this function runs in interrupt context." See
[https://sparse.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page](https://sparse.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page)

 _kmemcheck_ \-- sort of like valgrind, but for the kernel.

 _CONFIG_FAULT_INJECTION_ \-- inject random faults at runtime (such as in
memory allocation) to test infrequently encountered error paths.

 _CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES_ , _CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK_ \-- run expensive mutex
validation checks at runtime.

 _coccinelle_ \-- a source code matching and transformation engine. You can
use it in some of the same contexts as sed or awk. Unlike those tools, it is
aware of the C language so it can do smarter things like add an extra final
argument to all occurrences of a call to do_foo_bar_baz(). See
[http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/](http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/)

 _checkpatch.pl_ \-- Checks a patch to see if it conforms to the kernel style
guide. Simple things like enforcing 80-column lines, but also more complicated
things as well like variable naming, whitespace, etc.

 _smatch_ , _flawfinder_ \-- static analysis tools that are similar in
principle to Coverity. Like Coverity, they are unsound, but often helpful.

~~~
xjia
Thanks for the summary.

However, what do we have on the formal proof side?

------
Mikeb85
Linux users often take the idea of 'self-examination' way too far and it turns
into 'self-disparagement'.

The fact is, if you vet your hardware and use a major distro (Ubuntu,
OpenSUSE, Fedora) you'll wind up with a perfectly functioning Linux desktop or
laptop.

You think about it, OSX only runs on a few laptops. Linux runs perfectly on
more laptops than exist for OSX. Windows run on many laptops, more often than
not quite well, not always perfect though, despite being bundled together.

I've been using Ubuntu on a ThinkPad T530 for several years, it just works.
Couldn't be happier. Everything works BTW, function keys, fingerprint scanner,
everything.

As for the Linux eco-system - major browsers work, Steam works, there's a
phenomenal ecosystem around Linux if you do any sort of programming, data
science, etc... I really have nothing to complain about these days.

~~~
xorblurb
Exactly. A non negligible part of his rant was about proprietary graphic
drivers. Free software developers can't do anything about that, and anyway
what is the point? Today, if you want to game just use Windows, if you want a
fine Linux laptop get one with something like an Haswell with integrated
graphics (or maybe Broadwell, still wait a little for Skylakes)

And anyway if you look at what the "competition" sells while being this much
critical, you can probably write something at least as long. Even last MS
flagship devices running last Windows 10 versions are full of bugs now -- and
likewise for major PC vendors like Dell -- so GNU/Linux distributions might as
well become attractive just because Windows devices are of terrible quality
today :p

~~~
vacri
I thought a similar thing when I was reading it, but regardless of who is
responsible for a problem, it's still a problem that should be acknowledged in
such a list. Graphics on linux is a hard problem to solve cleanly. It's not
anyone in particular's fault, and it's entirely reasonable when you understand
the context, but it's still a problem. In context, linux does very well given
the restrictions, but it's still not as buttery as the proprietary offerings.

~~~
davidw
> It's not anyone in particular's fault

If the company producing and selling the hardware is not giving the specs to
their users, then it's their fault. Perhaps that's a bit too RMS for some
people, but in this case I basically agree with him. It's mine, I bought it, I
want to run whatever I want to on it.

~~~
jsheard
> If the company producing and selling the hardware is not giving the specs to
> their users, then it's their fault.

AMD started releasing the low-level documentation for their GPUs in 2008, and
although the FOSS drivers have benefitted stability-wise they're still lagging
in API features and often offer less than half the performance of the
proprietary counterparts. As far as I know we don't have a complete FOSS
OpenCL 1.0 (ca. 2009) implementation for any ISA, nevermind newer versions or
competitive performance.

Unfortunately GPUs are so complex that specs alone don't guarantee good
drivers.

------
edtechdev
I've been using Ubuntu Linux as my primary OS since 2006, and I can't disagree
with many of the annoyances. Especially with regards to graphics drivers and
the switch to the Unity desktop. I tried Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop
and it is nicer, but couldn't commit to it I guess.

But everytime I use Windows and Macs again, I get even more annoyed. Mainly
with how slow things are. Even on a new Windows 10 desktop or laptop, it's not
uncommon to have to wait minutes for things to settle down after booting and
logging in, or waiting while updates are installed during startup or shutdown.
And on OS X, the spinning beachball was one of the main reasons why I stopped
macs for the most part in 2002 or so. I figured it was just a byproduct of OS
X still being early in development and computers not being fast enough or
having enough RAM. But no, everytime I try a brand new mac, it still pops up,
especially when trying to type in a URL or something like that. The bouncing
in the dock and not knowing if an app is running or shutdown or not is
annoying, too.

But as long as you keep your stuff backed up or in the cloud (like google
drive, google music, etc.), and stick mostly to stuff that works cross-
platform (Chrome browser, Libreoffice, cross-platform IDEs, etc.), it's very
painless to switch being OS's or devices or to wipe and reinstall things. Even
Microsoft Word and Excel work in the browser nowadays, though I still usually
just stick with Google Docs.

~~~
wvenable
> it's not uncommon to have to wait minutes for things to settle down after
> booting and logging in

This is no longer my experience with Windows on an SSD. I'm always a bit
shocked when I reboot and I'm back at my desktop in under 30 seconds.

On a machine without an SSD, I'm annoyed at how slow _everything_ is -- not
just booting.

~~~
evook
That's actually the reason windows is and will stay my main desktop system.
Former Windows 7, now an "unfucked" Windows 10 Enterprise. It's just smoother
than OSX or Linux Desktop and I always test some linux distros if I get new
Hardware. Last time in novembre I upgrade to i7-6700k, Titan X, Samsung 950Pro
1TB. Of course it's necessary to have always at least one linux based server
vm running I use putty to connect with. That's my ideal desktop setup i am
using for years.

IMHO X11 needs to be replaced as fast as possible.

~~~
0_00_0
I agree, thankfully Wayland is well on its way. GDM uses it by default as of
3.16 and the Gnome DE just needs a --session=-gnome-wayland parameter.

It has actually gotten to the point where it's stable enough for daily use
now.

~~~
progman
> It has actually gotten to the point where it's stable enough for daily use
> now.

Really? What about X11 compatibility?

------
daave
When visiting this blog post on my Android phone, the ads (or something)
redirect me to a page with popups telling me my phone has a virus and
encouraging me to install an app to 'clean' it, using Google branding on some
dodgy domain. I seem to get a different one each time.

Reported it at
[https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/](https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/)
but mentioning here so that others don't fall victim to it.

~~~
notnarb
Easy to see for yourself that this happens by using user agent spoofing in
your browser's dev tools:
[http://i.imgur.com/vlLV8PW.png](http://i.imgur.com/vlLV8PW.png)

Hard to track what exactly is causing this because of the ~200 requests this
website makes before redirecting your browser.

The article itself links archive.org's copy of the article which I would
recommend using over the original website since it appears to be free of
malicious redirects:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20151230152933/http://linuxfonts....](http://web.archive.org/web/20151230152933/http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html)

------
agentultra
I stopped using Linux as my primary desktop OS around 2012. Until then I was
an Arch user with my own desktop environment built on StumpWM and a hodge-
podge of hand-selected tools. There was no Gnome or KDE in my setup. I liked
it quite a bit.

I used Ubuntu on my laptops since I wanted to spend less time administering
drivers and arcane configuration formats.

This is a good list.

I just got tired of the configuration formats, crappy drivers,
inconsistencies, dependencies... I was irritated at how easy it was for Apple
users to plug in a projector and have it just work. I was irritated by every
update to some random library that would cause a sub-system to stop working. I
hated having to spend any amount of time administering my desktop environment.
To me it should just work and the less time I have to spend trawling forums,
logs, and restarting processes to find the correct incantations of
dependencies and configuration variables the better.

I've stuck with my MacPro Retina, despite my early trepidation about a GUI-
driven proprietary OS, because I've spent probably less than an hour in the
last 4 years administering it. It's still snappy and works as well as it did
on day one (also the hardware is nothing short of amazing). The only thing
that sucks at this point is that the OpenGL drivers Apple ships are woefully
out of date and I'm thinking of jumping to Windows unless something changes
(damnit I wants me compute shaders).

I still use Linux every single day... just in a VM, container, or on some
server.

~~~
pera
from StumpWM to OSX? ouch

~~~
agentultra
I was not happy at first. :)

------
jacob019
As a daily user of Linux on the desktop for over 15 years, I can appreciate
many of these complaints, but despite it's flaws Linux on the desktop is a
pleasure to use and is better than any other options. This is a nice resource
for kernel developers and OSS contributors who wish to make a difference and
solve tough problems.

~~~
pera
Same here: started using Linux in 2000. Back then hardware support was a real
big issue, software was missing, graphical environments for normal people not
completely ready, etc. I think things really started to change after Ubuntu,
and I would say that Linux got "ready for desktop" around 2008-9. My parents
for instance have been using Ubuntu for many years (they also have a windows 7
laptop that is completely owned by malware) and they are very happy with it.
Things changed a lot, but yeah, Linux isn't perfect yet, and I agree with some
points (for instance the dpi thing). The only way that Linux could be
massively used on desktop is by having a company like Microsoft making deals
with every single manufacturer in the world for decades.

~~~
Ologn
This has been my experience as well. I started using Linux some time around
1993-1995. Linux was inferior to FreeBSD in many ways back then (and for the
following few years). Things got better and better and by 2008 it was a lot
better on the desktop, and I think Ubuntu gets a lot of credit for that. It
still had some trouble with wireless drivers and that sort of thing, but all
these problems started clearing up over time.

------
msimpson
It's not like this guy is biased. He's just thorough and I appreciate that.
See more:

[http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/best-linux-distro-this-
year.html](http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/best-linux-distro-this-year.html)

[http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-
windows-10-sucks.html](http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-windows-10-sucks.html)

[http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-iphones-and-ipads-
suck.html](http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-iphones-and-ipads-suck.html)

[http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-android-
sucks.html](http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why-android-sucks.html)

~~~
clebio
Gotta say I agree with the basic gist (certainly haven't read this very long,
excellently-detailed article yet), and I've run linux as my primary OS on
various ultrabooks for the past sereral years.

Just skimming, I found this bit on-point and amusing:

> It's worth noting that the most vocal participants of the Open Source
> community are extremely bitchy and overly idealistic people peremptorily
> requiring everything to be open source and free or it has no right to exist
> at all in Linux.

~~~
msimpson
I must not be a vocal participant of Linux, then. Adobe! Shut up and take my
money, already!

------
chx
I have one more which this article doesn't mention: Bluetooth. It's an
_extremely_ fragile house of cards (as far as I can figure, there are a few
kernel modules, dbus, a bluetooth daemon and pulseaudio involved) and every
upgrade you roll is extremely risky. Currently my BT works but after a day or
so uptime it will simply stop working and nothing short of reboot helps. (More
[https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=206032](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=206032)
here)

And yes, I have been running Linux since before there was 1.0. And no, I don't
like it. But the alternatives are even worse IMO.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I constantly battle Bluetooth issues on every platform. It sucks and needs to
die.

~~~
copperx
This is true even on my Mac with wireless Apple accessories. Pairing issues
galore if I have to change the batteries.

------
sandGorgon
I don't understand - I never see a mention of the biggest annoyance to
developers on linux : consistent copy paste. It is a cognitive exercise to
copy from the terminal or paste to the browser...or (the horror) copy from the
terminal and paste on vim.

It does not help that this works beautifully on the Mac.

Is this not an annoyance to anyone else...and more importantly, considering
all distros are now using libinput,can I compile my own libinput that will
universally copy paste using win+c ?

~~~
audeyisaacs
Highlight to copy, middle-click to paste. Works every time for me.

Obviously, if you want to paste into vim you have to be in insert mode.

~~~
e12e
Technically vim exposes the x11 clipboards (plural) as registers - I never use
registers, but I think

    
    
      "+p
    

[Ed: for those not familiar with vim: " can be thought of as 'with/from/into
register named:', + is the register and p is paste. Similarily "+yw is
'yank/copy current word into register named +' ]

should be paste x11 selection. I don't normally use gvim/vim as an x11
application, but looks like * (star) is typically system clipboard:

[http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Accessing_the_system_clipboard](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Accessing_the_system_clipboard)

~~~
sandGorgon
why does it work on osx then ? is there something special happening at the OS
level there ?

~~~
e12e
Afaik ctrl-v works in gvim? (I think its just bound to "+p or similar).

~~~
bla2
Only with :behave ms (default on windows), else ctrl-v starts block visual
mode.

------
crgabrieljr
Tried double-tapping in the article text to get it to reflow, and got one of
those bogus popups claiming my phone is infected with a virus. Thanks for
trying to make my new year interesting. :-(

~~~
daave
The site is now blocked by Google Safe Browsing as a result of these
complains. Author has been emailed asking that he corrects this behavior in
order to be removed from the blacklist.

------
pcwalton
> X.org 2D acceleration technologies and APIs aren't as mature and fast as
> Direct2D and DirectWrite in Windows.

This complaint is confused. X is the wrong place for that stuff (the failure
of XRender to live up to expectations being a testament to this). The
windowing server should be multiplexing GPU buffers and that's it.

Direct2D and DirectWrite are user mode, client side libraries on Windows.
(Maybe the author has them confused with the legacy GDI, which lives in the
kernel?)

What this _should_ say is that Skia-GL/Ganesh and Cairo-GL, which are the open
source Direct2D competitors, are not at performance parity with Direct2D. I've
heard this in the past, though I don't know how accurate it is anymore. Thanks
to the work of Google, which depends on Skia-GL for Chrome and Android, it's
made rapid progress lately. In fact, in my experience, Skia-GL _is_ basically
at performance parity with CG::OGL (i.e. the Mac/iOS 2D rendering backend)—so
if the Mac is your benchmark, Linux has caught up there, if you use the latest
Skia and configure it properly. Very few Linux desktop apps use Skia-GL in
practice, though, which is a separate, and unfortunate, issue.

(Finally, I should mention that Direct2D and its competitors constitute a
really low bar if you compare to the actual state of the art in GPU vector
graphics, which is stuff like Scaleform.)

~~~
pcwalton
Oh, here's another I noticed:

> Year 2015 welcomed us with 134 vulnerabilities in one package alone:
> WebKitGTK+ WSA-2015-0002. More eyes, less vulnerabilities you say, right?

Glancing through the list that was linked to, most of these vulnerabilities
affected Chrome on Windows/Mac and/or Safari on Mac too. It's not fair to use
general vulnerabilities in widely used Web browser engines as an indictment of
Linux specifically. Nor is "look at the number of vulnerabilities in Web
browser engines!" a particularly good proxy for anything other than how
popular, and security-critical, Web browser engines are. (Some of the other
security criticisms, for example of X, seem fair though—e.g. DRI2 is really
bad.)

------
bkor
The website is hard to read on mobile because it is wider than my screen. Bit
unfortunate.

Regarding VA-API: Since gstreamer-vaapi 0.7.0, Totem finally works with VA-
API. Before only MPV worked. IMO if you used mplayer you better just switch to
mpv. It still doesn't work perfectly in VLC, though AFAIK VA-API should be
built in. In my experience filing bugs was enough to get improvements. Once it
works well enough distributions should install it by default. IMO it pretty
reasonable to achieve "va-api installed by default" for major distributions
during 2016 provided enough people put their time in. Heard that gstreamer-
vaapi will be merged into gstreamer itself, so that'll help a lot as well.

Regarding laptop support: Canonical seems to do a lot in this area. Testing
Ubuntu and adding (upstreaming) workarounds/quirks to e.g. the kernel.

Some problematic items I wasn't aware of (good to have this list). E.g. font
anti aliasing. Stuff like that is why freedesktop.org started, to have a way
to agree on such things.

At least for some of the items on this list I have the idea that I can help to
improve. Some items seems impossible. Still, just a little bit of effort can
help a lot. Often I spend less than 30min to get improvements (though mostly
thanks to actual paid developers putting in their effort).

Edit: The site should remove the swearing. You can be explicit in your
disagreement without needing to swear.

~~~
zanny
Up until fairly recently I had a number of issues with VLC and vaapi / vdpau,
but now it all seems to work well. I even have working accelerated video in
Chromium by removing the GPU blacklist and it works fine. The only things
missing now on the video front for Linux is good encoder support, but I can
get that right now with ffmpeg - its just missing in a lot of capture
software.

Though we really should all converge to openmax at some point. Like, all
encode / decode with openmax in the future. It just makes bloody sense.

------
jjuhl
To me this reads as "I can't use hardware xyz on linux". Well, that's no
surprise. There's "wxy" hardware that you can't use with Windows or OS X as
well.

Today Linux supports the same amount (or more) hardware that Windows does.
Hardware support is not a reason to use or not use Linux. The software
ecosystem is much more important - not to mention the freedom aspect...

~~~
lvs
No, there's no consumer-level desktop hardware you can't use on either Windows
or OS X or both. That's false.

Hardware support is indeed a reason not to use Linux, but the question is who
needs to pick up the slack. With other operating systems, manufacturers put
(more or less) effort into writing device drivers that are functional. With
Linux, they really do not. It's a large and moving target, and the market
value of doing so is not clear to them.

~~~
xioxox
Really? There's plenty of old hardware which no longer works in recent Windows
versions. It's not in a manufacture's interest to update a driver to recent OS
versions. In Linux drivers usually remain for a long time.

~~~
lvs
Whether there's continuing support for a product is a very different issue. At
some point, _all_ consumer hardware was functional in a version of Windows or
OS X, since it was released precisely with support for one or both of those
OSs. Yes, updates break things, but that is a very different problem than the
one facing Linux. The problem facing Linux is that manufacturers are not
supporting (or not seeking with much vigor to support) any Linux distribution
upon initial release of the hardware.

~~~
xorblurb
It is a very different issue but can be very much in favor of GNU/Linux
distribution when they work on a given piece of hardware: they are far more
likely to be able to get version N+1 of said distribution than Windows N+1.
Now Windows 10 might bring the best of both worlds for the Windows world, but
for now it does not work well that much.

------
melted
I don't know about this article. I bough a 3rd gen Thinkpad Carbon earlier
this year and Ubuntu runs better than Windows 10 on it. Not a single crash.
The only thing that doesn't work out of the box is the fingerprint reader. Not
that it doesn't have some rough edges, but this is enormous progress compared
to just a few years ago, and the fact that it runs better than the OS _the
laptop was designed for_ is a testament to that.

~~~
izacus
Your single laptop datapoint sure makes this article invalid :)

~~~
melted
The article is just as data free as my single data point. My experience
contradicts it. I use Linux _everywhere_ these days, on the desktop, on the
laptop, and on my workstation at work. It works well. It's just not Windows,
which seems to be the author's main consternation.

~~~
ksk
>The article is just as data free as my single data point.

It is not. The lack of a crash does not indicate lack of bugs. But, even a
single crash confirms that bugs exist. (modulo the obvious)

------
condescendence
I don't get articles like these.

First of all this website is worse than any OS environment I've ever used. So
right from that standpoint I sorta gulped a bit before reading on.

Graphics driver issues in linux are nothing new, Nvidia a few years back
started officially porting drivers to linux but that doesn't solve all the
problems. There's also projects like Nouveau; so if you're complaining about
linux desktop from a drivers standpoint....get in line.

As for the Windows issues:

>Windows boot problems are often fatal and unsolvable unless you reinstall
from scratch

Someone has never used Hirens boot disk

>no system wide update mechanism

wat

>no enforced file system and registry hierarchy

wat

>Android is not Linux (besides have you seen anyone running Android on their
desktop or laptop?)

Actually yes I have, I have it running on mine now. Android-x86 Project. At
first I'll agree Android was not linux, there were some major differences but
these have since been changed.

I'm sorry if this is nitpicking the post but my I don't understand how these
make it to the top of HN

~~~
izacus
It's a single location summary of things that still have to be done / are
lacking in the project. It's thus useful for contributors to see what needs
work, since it's easy to get tunnel vision when working on a project.

Don't you have such yearly reviews on your long-running projects?

~~~
awalton
It's mostly trolly though. I mean, read through some of his complaints:

> No high level, stable, sane (truly forward and backward compatible) and
> standardized API for developing GUI applications

Really? He's calling Win32 _sane_ and _stable_? The API where they're
constantly having to introduce terrifying new hacks to stay bug compatible
with themselves _and still failing_?

Most of it's the same trolls we hear every day. A lot of it is good, well-
founded bitching that the Linux community can absolutely do nothing about (we
don't have access to hardware specifications we don't have, that simple. Until
various trouble manufacturers, nVidia first and foremost, decide to start
playing ball, their hardware is always going to suck on Linux).

~~~
FireBeyond
Yeah. Except he doesn't mention Win32 in this context. Does Win32 have to be
sane/stable before Linux should have something adopted?

------
yason
This is probably one of the theory vs. practice issues. While I admit that the
article is mostly correct then again, in practice, I haven't had much trouble
with Linux in the 00's and 10's while using Debian based distributions
exclusively.

Surely I am not immune to the shortcomings of Linux but I don't remember
having had to tweak my system as part of routine maintenance for... years.
This was commonplace in the 90's. Merely upgrading or changing your X setup
required tweaking configuration files, setting modelines and whatnot. I don't
even know where the X configuration files live anymore. While the foundation
is shallow, things generally work to the extent that I don't have to do
"maintenance" on my Linux computers. Even external displays seem to work
mostly just fine when presenting.

I haven't missed binary compatibility once: the distros compile everything
anyway when libraries update. Compared to clinging to the cruft that makes 30
year old Windows programs work in Windows 10, I feel I'm better off with Linux
even if I have to kill pulseaudio a couple of times each year and there's a
slight chance that one of my laptops won't resume after suspend if it's
unplugged.

I'm not saying that these Linux problems aren't problems. They exist and when
they hit you, it hurts like hell. But my point is that Linux is imperfect as
is the real world and people just tend to work around imperfections, again,
like in the real world. So, mostly things work 5x better than 10 years ago and
50x better than 20 years ago.

------
ris
As a full-time "linux desktop" (whatever that is) user, all of these problems
pain me. But of course the truth is that no other system "just works" either,
so it's not as though it's unique. (We have an office full of Macintoshes
which cause people endless trouble, so don't go there...)

I do feel that the "linux desktop" has regressed slightly in the last few
years however. My transition from a debian wheezy to debian jessie desktop
certainly felt like going backwards. GTK3-ified applications have significant
focus and scrollwheel problems. KDE4 appeared to have reached a peak of
maturity around 4.7/4.8 - jessie's now has notifications that steal focus.
Akonadi/kmail2 has made what used to be one of my favourite applications
essentially unusable.

NetworkManager continues to baffle as ever.

Systemd/journald, well, it's mostly that I'm not particularly _used_ to them
yet, and so tracking down problems requires grappling with a bunch of new
concepts every time there is trouble.

It's a chore occasionally, but I still thank god every day I don't have to use
macos or windows.

~~~
zobzu
Use Plasma 5 (which is "KDE5" if you will). KDE4 is not even supported anymore
on some distros.

It fixes most remaining annoyances of KDE4 and has been really stable for me.
Even kmail 5.5 is a huge step forward compared to the buggy kmail 4.x

~~~
ris
I'm a debian stable user. KDE5 will come to me when it does. Anyway, I'm truly
sceptical of KDE's trajectory now I've been burned a bit (and I'm saying this
as a sort-of former "KDE person"). It seems like a lot of focus & motivation
was lost around the time of the mobile/tablet/vivaldi distraction nonsense.

My main problem with kmail2 is that it feels like POP3/local mail support &
local filtering is a (very broken) afterthought, and while being able to do
everything on IMAP would be lovely, some of us are stuck on POP3 mail for a
little longer...

~~~
zobzu
ive no experience with the POP3 support even in kmail5 (I stopped using my
last POP account a decade ago at least ;-) but the IMAP support in in kmail5
has been pretty good (it used to be terrible).

That said, I still prefer Thunderbird.

By using Debian stable you choose to use 1 or 2year old technology - so you'll
have what I have in 2 years. Courage, that's just 24 month to wait ;-)

------
rifung
So is there anything that a normal developer could do to help fix these
issues? After all, isn't one of the points of OSS that we should be able to
mess with it and change it to our liking?

Or, am I correct in assuming that Linux has gotten so big and complex it'd be
unreasonable to expect your average developer to be able to make a meaningful
contribution?

I really enjoy using Linux, but I'll admit I still barely understand anything
about it after using it for several years and it isn't from a lack of interest
or trying.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Main problems is still apps.

After 15years with OS X I'm more or less fed up with Apple for various reasons
(some bad hardware, crashing and buggy OS, ...).

But what keeps me are the apps, like Lightroom, Omnigraffle, Sketch,
Scrivener, ... - without them I'd use Linux.

------
linuxhansl
Hmm... I use Fedora (and have been for many few years) and have experience
none (or _very_ few) of these problems.

In the past (5 or more years ago) there have been problems, and I had to tweak
things a lot, compile projects myself, etc. With every release I had to do
less of that, and the past years or two everything just works.

Seems the article is outdated.

Video: Just works. No tearing at all, automatically uses H/W decoding.
External monitors just work. Resolution is automatically adjusted.

3D/GL: just works. Both Intel and NVIDIA (use Intel most of the time and
simply start games with "optirun") I do not play the latest games. For that I
use a Playstation/XBox.

Sound: just works. Local speaker, bluetooth external speakers, all just works.

GUI: Despite X11 being old it works remarkably well. I use GL compositions for
desktop effects. KDE works flawlessly.

Printing: Just works. When I got a new network printer KDE found it, asked me
whether I wanted to use it, then downloaded the driver and asked to print a
test page. That's it.

And on top of this Linux enables me to always know what's going on when
needed. I can drop back to a shell at any time and everything is accessible
that way.

I also have a MacBook Pro from work. I have _way_ more problems with that one.
Random hangs with the (admittedly pretty) spinning color wheel. It did not
recognize my network printer. I had to tell it the IP address, find a driver
myself, install that, and then play around for a bit until it finally worked.

Now I do a fair bit of software engineering on my machines, and so I might not
notice the non-obvious things I do anymore. I also have the full development
chain easily at my fingertips completely for free.

And I might very well be biased, since Linux is what I am used to.

Edit: Spelling

------
ChuckMcM
This is my favorite -- _"! Applications development is a major PITA. Different
distros can use a) different libraries versions b) different compiler flags c)
different compilers. This leads to a number of problems raised to the third
power. Packaging all dependent libraries is not a solution, because in this
case your application may depend on older versions of libraries which contain
serious remotely exploitable vulnerabilities."_

Sometimes I explain it that Linux is roughly 65,000 different operating
systems with the same name :-) It isn't as bad as that of course but the
freedom to choose means that people do choose, and the challenges of selling
your non-opensource software into that pool of choices is insurmountable to
most companies.

------
shmerl
_> Applications (GUI toolkits) must implement their own fonts antialiasing -
there's no API for setting system wide fonts rendering. What??! Most sane and
advanced windowing systems work exactly this way - Windows, Android, Mac OS X.
In Wayland all clients (read applications) are totally independent. _

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Is that going to be a huge mess after
Wayland transition (which is likely to happen in 2016)? I'm used to fontconfig
managing global fonts settings. What will happen in Wayland case?

~~~
tadfisher
In both Windows and OSX there are multiple choices for included font rendering
libraries, so I'm not sure what the author is on about. There is no "system-
level" font renderer on any of the three major OSes, and frankly such a thing
doesn't make sense from an engineering standpoint.

~~~
the_why_of_y
What choices are there?

On Windows, there is Uniscribe, DirectWrite (since Windows 7) and also the
legacy GDI font rendering APIs. Probably Microsoft will never remove any of
these options to ensure backward compatibility.

On Mac OS X, you use CoreText - the legacy QuickDraw Text is deprecated and
not even available for 64 bit applications.

There are also applications that do not use the platform font rendering, e.g.
Adobe has their own font rendering code and current versions of Chromium and
Gecko use Harfbuzz on all platforms.

------
PaulHoule
This is a situation that hasn't changed much since 1996 and the story of why
it hasn't changed is a lot more interesting than a large enumeration of the
faults.

To compare it to Windows, Windows really has evolved a lot since the bad old
days. Linux beat the pants off Windows 3.1 completely. Both Win95 and WinNT
were unstable -- Win2K was the first decent version of Windows.

Linux 2.6 was the one really important thing that happened to Linux in all of
that time because it was the first one that worked properly on
multiprocessors.

~~~
linuxhansl
That simply isn't true.

The Kernel is just one aspect of a Linux distribution. The part that is most
responsible for supporting H/W. It has evolved a lot since 1996. Whenever I
try I find the range of supported H/W is larger than Windows and (obviously)
Apple.

On other fronts things have changes radically: Video, Sound, 3D/GL, GUI (KDE,
Gnome), printing, etc, etc.

~~~
PaulHoule
It has all changed and it is all busted.

~~~
linuxhansl
OK...

Care to elaborate? Are/were you using a Linux distribution yourself? Or are
you just parroting what you hear elsewhere?

------
vvpan
It feels like most commenters on this thread have not read past the first page
of that list, because the discussion ends at "my hardware works" or "my
hardware doesn't work". There's much more on that list and imho everybody who
cares about Linux should probably read past the first page.

------
craftkiller
Hopefully the author is reading this: fix your ads! I can't even read 1
sentence on an android phone before your ads do full page redirects to spam.
Completely unusable.

~~~
Paul_S
Not to excuse the owner but a friendly tip - use adblocking (Android uses a
hosts file too!). Also helps with the rest of the Internet.

~~~
craftkiller
I've considered it before, but I've been avoiding using it on my phone out of
some sense of social obligation. After my experience with this site, I think
you're right and its time for me to put on ad blocking on mobile also. Its
really a shame that a few irresponsible websites have to ruin it for everyone.

------
ishbits
I've been using Linux on the desktop daily since about 1998. It may look a
little prettier today, but I find it crashes and freezes a whole lot more
these days.

~~~
massysett
In my experience the kernel and drivers are better than ever, but the desktops
are awful and have grown worse. When KDE 4 came out I went to simple window
managers like i3 and fvwm. These are extremely stable but things as simple as
looking at photos in file manager are painful, and forgetting how to change
the clock when I fly to a new timezone is frustrating.

~~~
workitout
Unity, like it or not, is quite stable.

------
kelnos
There's a lot right about this, but some factual inaccuracies like this make
me wonder:

 _Too many layers of abstraction lead to the situation when the user cannot
determine why his audio input /output doesn't work (ALSA kernel drivers1 ->
ALSA library2 ( -> dmix3 ) -> PulseAudio server4 -> Alsa library5 + Pulse
backend6 -> Application - in other words, six layers of audio redirection; or
seven layers in case of KDE since they have their own audio subsystem called
Phonon)._

That's just not true. In the case of an application that directly supports
PulseAudio, there are merely 3 levels:

ALSA kernel drivers -> ALSA library -> PulseAudio Server/library ->
Application

In the case of an application that doesn't directly support PA (most that
don't will support ALSA), it's one level little worse:

ALSA kernel drivers -> ALSA library -> PulseAudio server/library -> ALSA
library (pulse plugin) -> Application

In that case, 4 levels of indirection.

If dmix is set up in the case where PA is being used, that's a bad system
misconfiguration and the distro should be slapped.

So that's 3 levels of indirection for a "modern" app, and 4 if you need the
compatibility layer. How are OSes like Windows and MacOSX designed? Unless
they have a sound API that goes right to the kernel (and the kernel handles
mixing if the hardware doesn't support it), I don't see how you can do much
better than the current state of affairs, aside from having PulseAudio
directly hit the ALSA kernel interfaces, which seems unnecessary.

(Note: for the purposes of debugging & figuring out why sound isn't working,
I'm considering the PA server and library [or "backend" as the OP calls it] a
single layer. It's true that there's an extra "hop" involved there, but in
practice that's unrelated to any possible audio issue but latency, which isn't
what the OP is talking about.)

------
jmsdnns
oh linux, don't listen to them... there will always be people who say your
desktop experience isn't good enough. the reality for most of the computing
world is that linux has already won, it's just that they're using everywhere
_but_ the desktop. it's in robots, servers, billions of devices, every android
phone, the boxes that power our tv's, inside our tv's now too, and it keeps
spreading. if it isn't already, it'll be powering cars soon enough.

so linux... don't sweat the people who still don't have a working nvidia
driver. it doesn't matter. not even a little bit. you do you, linux, and just
go where ever people writing code take you.

~~~
MegaDeKay
Tesla runs Ubuntu in their cars :-)

------
myztic
Interesting list.

One of the biggest issues for me personally is the split effort. There are
>300 distributions actively maintained, 300 projects whose sole purpose it is
to package the kernel and some userland-stuff to make a usable operating
system and provide for update mechanisms. 300 projects who spend resources on
creating documentation, websites, giving support to users, ...

And the simple truth is: It does not matter too much which distribution you
use, far too much weight is put on that. How much of what you do is
distribution-specific? The type of init-system (mostly not important for a
Desktop), the update mechanism, packages available, available/supported
Desktop Environments / Window Managers, anything I forgot?

Most of the time you are running a browser, editor, terminal, video player,
torrent client, openssh, steam, are using some version of python, ruby, perl,
php, ... it quite simply does not matter whether you do these things on
Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, ArchLinux, Gentoo or FreeBSD.

Linus Torvalds described it in a similar manner once (too lazy to look for the
link, but basically something like "I don't care too much about what
distribution I use, I mainly work on the kernel anyways")

We are users, as such we use an Operating System in order to use programs.

The fragmentation probably mostly is rooted in the fact that it is quite easy
to create your own distribution, and that many out there are head-strong
people who are not patient enough to work their way up a command chain
(regarding distributions with a democratic structure) or to succumb to what
one dictator is saying. And some projects are just boring to work on, for
example GUI-stuff or the code-monster Xorg.

I would not want to bundle all 300 distributions into 1, but (and this of
course boils down to my opinion) 20 or so would do. It is important to have
alternatives, like non-systemd distributions, rolling releases, source-based
distributions, et cetera, but 300...

And if the focus is less on having 300+ distributions and more on making 20 or
so distributions great, quality would rise without a doubt, not only ease of
use, but also support, documentation, et cetera.

 _btw: Visited this page from Firefox, was greeted by the following:

Reported Web Forgery!

This web page at linuxfonts.narod.ru has been reported as a web forgery and
has been blocked based on your security preferences.

Web forgeries are designed to trick you into revealing personal or financial
information by imitating sources you may trust.

Entering any information on this web page may result in identity theft or
other fraud._

~~~
jabbernotty
Same issue here: "Reported Web Forgery!"

It doesn't seem valid, I already took a quick look on my phone and did not see
anything phishy.

------
acomjean
Linux has gotten much better.

I say this as someone who booted and ran some software on desktop fedora
machine from 3 years ago this year (long story, but that machine has working
custom software, not rewriting this year...).

Despite all the complaints, Desktop linux still remarkably better than it was
just 3 years ago. That machine was almost unusable. Setting up the network on
that machine was a couple hour ordeal. All the little fiddly parts that kinda
work most of the time don't make for a great desktop experience. The server
experience is exceptional however (I spent enough time on Solaris and HPUX to
not miss those two at all)

------
hzhou321
Linux' philosophy (generally open source') is to create a paradise for hackers
and it has accomplished that and it should be content at it. GUI desktop is
for consumers who are opposite to hackers. Trying to meet both ends are silly
ambitions. I am not saying Linux cannot meet the consumer ends, but it need
adopt an opposite philosophy from what it starts with. When that happens, some
may be happy but hackers would weep (or would they? Wouldn't they just start
another paradise?)

EDIT: on second thought, Google's android demonstrates my point.

------
Zigurd
My usage patterns is close to "Chromebook + Android Studio" The rest is
occasional use of Eclipse, Libre Office, a smattering of command line
utilities, mainly for internet information (e.g. dig). I'm not a gamer. So
Windows holds no attraction, and I dislike the effort needed to secure it
against Microsoft and evildoers getting at my critical data. I bought a dead
MBP on a lark and will get it fixed to see if I like MacOS X better. But
despite ubuntu developing rather slowly, I'm not so discontented as to leave.

------
rdc12
Can't remember the last time I had an issue with suspend under Linux (years
ago), but on my current desktop I never managed to get suspend to work under
Windoes 7. Go figure.

------
zobzu
bla bla bla.. bunch of lines and lists all of which are refutable easily. sure
linux is far from perfect (and far from bad, too) and thus there are a lot of
potential valid criticism, none of which this article mention.

Therefore, the author just spent time typing down a load of BS/FUD probably
intended for people who don't seriously run Linux on the desktop nowadays.
wow:

So many items are misleading. Some of the links even lead to resolved bugs,
did the author click them? Or the "no alternative to SMB". well duh... linux
users... use SMB. simple as that.

Or another funny point - I'd like to see the author play with a windows laptop
using optimus (its a POS), or seriously gaming on macosx with all AAA titles
(oh, they dont exist, too bad, yet people still love it as desktop...)

Then there's list that "affect every linux user".. none of them affect me, I'm
such a special snowflake! Not even one. Not even the video acceleration one
that seem to be his "biggest point". Firefox uses gstreamer with hw
acceleration support and h264 on youtube. In fact, my laptop uses much less
power playing youtube videos on linux that on windows (turns out I do have a
watt meter and I did use it when I got the laptop).

So yeah.. maybe the author should inform himself a bit before typing random
things.

------
jheriko
i am turned off when the criticisms towards windows, whilst valid, typify the
out-of-touch-with-reality-ness of many linux fanboys. real world users do not
notice, much less care about these issues, nor want them fixed, nor would
their user experience be significantly improved by addressing them. along
similar lines they barely notice that linux exists at all.

there are good reasons why linux dominates the backend space, and windows
dominates user space. linux caters very well to the power user and is
discoverable with a lot of research - the kind power users will do. windows
caters acceptably to the casual user and is so well known they needn't bother
advertising (but continue to do so anyway...).

the one problem that is bigger than anything listed here, imo, is that the
linux development community is building something they want rather than what
others want and then not selling it to anyone especially well.

there have been great strides in this area, but its still not enough. ubuntu
is a joy to install and use compared to linuxes of old. (i remember well
struggling with 'red hat for dummies' in the 90s).

but... its not advertised in the mainstream or known about as an alternative -
why its worth using etc. and appears that it might suffer the classic problems
for regular users that put them off alternative platforms - things like
"doesn't have MS Word which I (think) I need for work (because I've never even
heard of OpenOffice or LibreOffice etc. let alone tried such things)"

its great to see that Dell offer it as an option these days, at least. but
until more people know about it and understand that it won't prevent them from
doing what they want, they just aren't going to use it.

~~~
IshKebab
What planet are you on? Of course real world users notice these issues. It's
just that real world users eventually realise Linux isn't going to change so
they go back to Windows (see Linus's various "I'm doing it right; shut up"
comments on security, stable driver ABIs, etc.).

~~~
jheriko
Earth. you might want to come back down to it...

a minuscule proportion will complain about those things.

the vast bulk of real world users haven't even tried linux or know it exists.

------
peatfreak
This is a good opportunity for us to be positive and to list up-to-date
resources that clearly list laptops that work on Linux, or what to look for,
what models are good and not-so-good, what is Free and mostly-Free, etc, etc.
I am looking for a "mostly-Free", modern Gnu/Linux laptop that I can purchase
either new or recently second hand but am having a terrible time trying to
figure it all out.

------
kuschku
#25 is wrong:

> There are no antiviruses or similar software for Linux. Say, you want to
> install new software which is not included by your distro - currently
> there's no way to check if it's malicious or not.

[http://www.eset.com/int/home/products/antivirus-
linux/](http://www.eset.com/int/home/products/antivirus-linux/)

~~~
amluto
Considering that most Windows AV products appear to be remotely exploitable
and to actively install malware-like things, I think the lack of Linux support
for these tools is a good thing.

------
rusbus
On Android this link seems to go to a malware site. Anyone else see that?

~~~
enobrev
I had the same problem. I tried three different ways of getting into the link
(copy link to chrome, googling link, and of course from here) with the same
spammy popups. Ended up emailing the article to myself so I could read if from
my desktop.

------
mAritz
One problem specific to gaming: Adjusting mouse pointer speed and acceleration
is a huge pain.

I've tried SteamOS for gaming but especially playing FPS type games is really
bad with acceleration. Disabling it usually requires X.org config changes and
knowledge of some semi-arcane acceleration math. It's doable, but certainly
not in any way easy.

~~~
i336_
If you're just using xset, you're missing out massively.

Use xinput instead, it gives you full access to all of X's acceleration
profiles and all the parameters you can tweak with them.

[http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/PointerAccel...](http://www.x.org/wiki/Development/Documentation/PointerAcceleration/)

I cannot agree more that said xinput interface could do with a UI though. Not
because I hate the commandline but because repeatedly entering long commands
with numbers just kills it for me - there's no rapid feedback loop.

And so I continue to avoid using my ThinkPads' Trackpoints because I can never
get them to a point where they aren't a strain to use.....

------
spilk
The HiDPI point is pretty critical - many higher end laptops these days have
HiDPI screens, and HiDPI desktop monitors are getting affordable. I think with
GNOME you only get integer scale factors: way too tiny or way too big on most
HiDPI screens.

~~~
hollerith
>I think with GNOME you only get integer scale factors: way too tiny or way
too big on most HiDPI screens.

OS X has the same property (of giving only integral scale factors).

------
cdonnellytx
Anyone else having trouble viewing this page? I'm on iOS and every time I go
to the link it redirects me to a page claiming I "won" a "reward" with an
alert box that I can't dismiss without tapping OK.

~~~
asdfaoeu
Well that would explain why I get

    
    
         Deceptive site ahead
    
         Attackers on linuxfonts.narod.ru may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers, or credit cards).

------
reedlaw
As a developer I feel neither Windows nor Mac OS are ready for the desktop.
Windows is almost completely useless and you need to immediately resort to
Cygwin or a VM to get anything useful done. Mac OS is much more useful out of
the box but lacks up-to-date packages and a good package manager. I haven't
used Mac OS recently enough to comment on Homebrew, but the last time I tried
it was no where near as robust as many Linux package managers are. Arch Linux
has a huge amount of user-submitted packages so that even relatively unknown
projects tend to be easy to install.

------
ninjakeyboard
Thanks you so much for putting a stop snowing link in. We released some
christmas easer eggs without any way to turn the music off or make the snow
stop and it drove everyone insane :P

~~~
i336_
I think Arc messed up: your comment is in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214),
a thread about all OSes needing to die horrible deaths.

I'm very curious about whatever context this comment was intended for though
:D

------
jcastro
This "Android is not Linux" meme is pretty silly.

"Android contains the only Linux component - the kernel" can also describe any
distribution/OS using Linux.

~~~
izacus
So how does classifying Android as being Linux help anyone? Who does that
definition help? The most important drivers (video, camera) aren't compatible
with desktop, userspace isn't either, most binaries won't work properly due to
use of libbionic, etc.

So what kind of useful definition is "Android is Linux" when you can't really
reuse any Android components on desktop Linux distributions?

~~~
jcastro
It's just completely arbitrary. Other than "It uses a linux kernel" there's no
list anywhere of what makes something "a real Linux". Everything around the
kernel is a pile of reusable components that make up an operating system.

As far as I can tell there's no gatekeeper that says "Tool A in combination
with the kernel is a real linux, but android components don't count." And no
one could be that gatekeeper because Free Software lets people use what they
want. So who draws that line?

This is a list of complaints of what happens when putting certain blocks that
make an OS not work like a cohesive whole. One vendor (Android) decided to use
an entirely different set a blocks (as is their right), and then people are
like "Well that doesn't count." How does it not count? If you don't like the
set of blocks that are out there you make your own blocks, that seems to be a
fundamental point of using OSS in the first place, the right to say "I want to
use different blocks". It's not any less a Linux than my Ubuntu machine or my
Nest thermostat or whatever flavor is on my router.

------
zanny
When you think Gnome, you probably think Fedora. Fedora and Gnome are buddy-
buddy, and being basically the upstream of RHEL makes it the place to be if
you are big on Gnome. KDE has Kubuntu, kind of, since its sponsored by Blue
Systems, but there is a huge issue with how KDE is presented to users in that
the Ubuntu release cycle has no correlation to the KDE one, and since Plasma 5
has started shipping in Kubuntu that problem has become a catastrophic deal
breaker. The KDE community made a great move by breaking up the release cycles
of frameworks / plasma / applications, but Ubuntu itself does not care - which
lead to releases like 15.04, where 5.2 was shipped despite 5.3 coming out the
same week and being significantly more stable, but Kubuntu users would never
see that release until 6 months later. Now, 5.5 is out a few months after
15.10, and again a much more stable release won't see Kubuntu until April of
next year.

I'm pretty high on the KDE koolaid, and contribute a lot to the project, and
it is the most painful experience to know there is no actual answer to the
question of what distro I should be recommending to people for a KDE
experience. A sane KDE distro should be shipping these new updates after a
testing period - all at once, preferably, I use Arch mainly but its release
model also conflicts with KDEs since - for example - 5.5 came out developed
against upstream Frameworks which eventually released weeks later as 5.17
(frameworks are released monthly), but 5.5 with 5.16 was broken as hell.
Applications 15.12 came out weeks later after that, and were a seamless
upgrade because they were _also_ developed against the same Frameworks
version, but they were already available and thus everything went swimmingly.

Fundamentally my point is that I imagine despite Fedora and Gnomes
friendliness, the problem happens there too. It doesn't hurt that software
availability on Fedora is awful and it is not presented at all as a consumer
desktop since its more of a test bed for RHEL. Distros today are shipping
around either fixed releases - that because of the fragmentation of the
ecosystem nobody is targeting upstream - or around arbitrary goals, which can
be years of waiting (cough, Suse, Fedora). But on the flipside an average user
almost certainly does not want a fully rolling release like Arch, because
breakage in Arch often doesn't stop a package from being pushed to release
(and often those bugs are missed because Arch doesn't have enough users of
testing to catch everything) and the constant churn means your system only
works precariously in its current configuration - trying to roll back
_anything_ on Arch is insanely hard, because everything is built against the
latest and greatest of everything else. Thus, there remains significant value
in releasing updates at once.

What I really wish we had was Kubuntu, sponsored by Blue Systems, just with
updated userspace software on a regular basis (feel free to freeze the LTS, or
even have two repos at install - frozen or not) This problem is mentioned in
the OP, but it can be soul crushing for a developer in this purgatory because
your fixes and improvements may not see the light of day for almost a year or
more.

Personally I'd love to see an Arch derivative (since it has IMO the least age
rot and bloat of modern distros, cough Suse /etc/init.d after having systemd
for years) that just did frozen monthly releases. You release, you wait two
weeks, you freeze, you test, you release again all at once. Users get latest
and greatest but you can also hold back anything broken until its unbroken.
But that kind of commitment requires work, the kind of work you cannot just
throw on hobbyists and hope gets done, the kind that needs salaries and
business. I still wonder why there isn't any commercial presence of full stack
computer vendors of Gnome / KDE - boutique vendors that ship distros running
non-Ubuntu that then use their revenue to develop it.

That was a lot of typing, but just some anecdotal remarks:

Linux grsec is the greatest security project ever, and nobody supports it.
Selinux / Apparmor / Tomoyo are all trash by comparison, and Arch's stock
kernel doesn't even have MAC at all. It is also probably the greatest notch in
Linux's belt over Windows that it _can_ be objectively secure, when you
actually care about security _cough_ Wayland. There is a distro I see in my
dreams that has secure packages, user repositories, and PAX enforcement to
prevent malware from accessing anything but its own personal .config file and
.share directory. Users can install their own packages rather than having to
install them systemwide, but the package manager is smart enough to promote
software installed by multiple users to a shared hierarchy rather than
duplicating space usage. And the filesystem layout makes sense (/usr...).

xdg-app is supposed to be this pancea that saves the desktop from application
fragmentation. It should give us sandboxing, appstream metadata dependencies
so we don't need insane duplication of all the system libraries like in click
packages, and a puppy. Lets see if that ever happens.

Audio will never get better. Just use pulseaudio and fix it where you can. I'm
working on improving plasma-pa for KDE right now to make it more like the old
Veromix widget (which was great). It already does its job of catching ALSA
applications that would try to steal the soundcard, and rather than try to
throw away all the work that went into it we just need to make it suck less.

~~~
gerbilly
I found that using Eclipse on KDE lately was very problematic.

Something about SWT requiring Gnome themes, that had been recently
unilaterally converted to use CSS for styling, or something...

Gah!

It took lots of fiddling to be able to open dialogs on Eclipse without
crashing the whole application, and even after all that fiddling it never
worked right.

Had to switch to Gnome to get it to work right, on linux, but hated that...

I know it's not KDE's fault if Gnome wants to change how it's themes work, or
that SWT uses gnome, but between that and systemd making everything utterly
confusing I don't use linux as a desktop os anymore, despite using it since
Yaggsdril.

tl;dr: I now develop on OS X now, so I can open dialogs in Eclipse without
crashing.

~~~
gmb2k1
Add the following to your eclipse.ini:

\--launcher.GTK_version 2

Alternatively set the environment variable SWT_GTK3 to zero to launch eclipse:

export SWT_GTK3=0; /path_to_your_eclipse/eclipse

As a side benefit: GTK2 with a compact theme will also make a much better use
of your screen real estate. Especially important, if you want to work on
laptop with a small screen diagonal. GTK3 as it comes out of the box is just
ridiculous in this regard. Eclipse is completely unusable with GTK3 on my
1200x800 12" machine because of that.

------
keithpeter
At home: Older Thinkpad (x220) with ssd. Slackware 14.1/Microlinux desktop.
Seems to work OK. Noticed no mention of xfce in the OA.

At work: Dual core atom small form factor PC. Large and bright 19" monitor (I
swapped for an 1280x1024 one as I don't like letterbox format monitors).
Windows 10 for Education works OK and has stable graphics drivers for the PC.

I suspect my use cases are so basic any reasonable system would cover them.

------
Paul_S
Quite a few of the points only cause problems to closed source development
whilst having a positive effect on open source development. I don't think it's
objectively a bad thing.

------
ryanlol
>You can thank me by clicking the ad at the top of the page ;-)

Not a good idea.

------
jetskindo
The biggest problem is that the moment I touch the screen the page redirects
to advertising and malware.

------
rythie
I'll add:

NFS home directories don't seem to be tested by KDE developers, taking
30seconds or so to start fully everytime you move machine because they
generate stuff in /tmp.

Most programs don't take quota into account when calculating free space, and
fail in weird ways when it gets exceeded

Cups password authentication can't send a prompt to the user. Windows did this
in XP (OSX has this problem too)

------
taurath
FYI I just got redirect spammed to a phishing/virus site when loading the link
on Android.

------
vesche
This link has ads that are trying to execute malicious code (I'm on mobile).

------
midnitewarrior
This sounds like it's finally going to be the year of Desktop Linux.

------
grogenaut
FYI mozilla has this site flagged. Not sure if this is a joke or real.

------
belleandsebasti
I agree with all the points here.

Despite all of this, Linux is still my preferred desktop. Why?

The power! I can literally do anything with it. Including writing my own
drivers/applications. Linux is my go to for doing things with zero crap. The
same can't be said for Windows nor Mac.

For me, this pro weighs very close to all of the cons I have experienced,
experience daily, or will experience.

Also as a desktop Linux user since 2002, it has gotten a lot better. Xrandr
and pulseaudio apt-get are good examples of this, despite their design
criticisms.

Of the things he listed, the things I would like to see most:

* application-level Sandboxing

* stable and universal high level application API, like Win32/GDI32/DirectX or Cocoa. GTK2+/Xlib/Xwhatever really dropped the ball here. An API that not only assumes a file system, or additionally a graphics system, but an all-encompassing _desktop_.

* stable and universal application packaging

~~~
Const-me
“same can't be said for Windows” is subjective. I can do literally anything
with my Windows. Including writing my own drivers/applications. And I can’t
say the same about Linux. Not because that's impossible, but because I ain't a
Linux developer.

------
serge2k
> Windows, in some regards, is even worse than Linux and it's definitely not
> ready for the desktop either.

uh huh.

