> I jest, but this all sounds like a lot more trouble to get the experience you want than most Linux distros would give you
I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here, but instead I'll simply state a well known, agreed upon truth in our industry: Linux is an absolute joke on the desktop. Even Torvalds thinks it's a mess.
Build your desktop from scratch if you like. It's your time. It's your life. But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.
> But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.
So how do I record system audio on macOS in Audacity again?
Remind me how slow homebrew is compared to pacman on Arch? Having to click through the Security thing in System Preferences because Apple wants to protect me from apps I already know I trust, spending two hours trying to compile the new untested Tailscale since the App Store is broken and Tailscale used some API only App Store apps could use, trying to get my Logitech Marble Trackball to scroll when I press a button and roll the wheel so I can use my mouse. God forbid I want to use my mouse and not spend three hours trying to fix it when it took two minutes to copy the config off ArchWiki for X11 and two seconds to paste the command in on GNOME.
I could go on. Just like Linux has problems with user experiencs, macOS has some pretty egregious faults as well. As a developer, Linux is much more user-friendly to me and has a way better user experience. I can make my system do whatever I want without dealing with macOS's restrictions and that's what a good user experience is to me.
Completely fully disagree with you. My colleagues, friends and a family member have been using Linux for years now. I myself started using Linux full time for about ten years now.
I'll never go back, Windows and Mac cannot touch the experience with a ten foot pole. And Mac does not even begin to know what window management is.
I know, it's anecdotal. But claiming that Linux is not viable on the desktop is just plain silly.
I disagree entirely. If a user's use case would be suited well by ChromeOS, then it's been my experience that Ubuntu or something similar with Firefox or Chromium will suit their needs just as well.
Modern desktop Linux is actually a nice user experience, and contrasts with the poor Linux desktop experience before ~2015.
Are you really implying that all willing Chromebook users would prefer an iPad? Chromebooks just work, they're cheap and replaceable, ephemeral even. The UX isn't amazing but it's pretty damn great.
iPad UX is by far some of the worst UX I've ever encountered. Nothing is obvious or straightforward, so many weird gestures and an overloaded single button.
> But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.
"Out of the box" is the key phrase here. GP said that Linux was good at serving a certain "slice" of users, and it sounded like they were arguing that trying to massage MacOS into something those users would like is probably more trouble than it works. The setup described by this blog post isn't really "out of the box" either, so I don't think it's crazy to suggest that to someone inclined to tinker with their setup to make it absolutely perfect would potentially be better served by Linux.
Every single HN thread vaguely related to Linux desktops there's these guys who never tried it for more than a couple of minutes but still feel the need to come here to spread their bullshit. GNOME these days is on par with MacOS if not better on every aspect.
Please do share your experience then. Because it's been working amazingly out of the box since years.
I love macs but I have to spend way more time installing tools and configurations to get it to a level comparable to a similar Linux/GNOME installation
15 year user of Ubuntu. Here's an easy one: a laptop with an iGPU and dGPU playing nice with a dock. Same deal with an eGPU.
I use Linux and in all likelihood, will continue to for a couple years. But there are these rough corners that simply just work in mac (and windows). With the M1 outpacing intel, it's becoming more tempting to jump ship.
> Until you need to install a driver, support a piece of modern hardware, use an nVidia GPU for anything serious, and more.
For f*ck's sake, getting hardware to work on Linux has been easier on Linux than other OSes. Most things are literal plug-and-play, no trash Windows GUIs required. NVIDIA drivers have been exceedingly easy to install on Arch, Ubuntu, and (especially) Pop, and mainstream distros. A few years ago it was a pain, but I haven't had problems in ages. I don't know what you're thinking, but as a daily Linux user today, I have never had "driver issues" with modern hardware. And funnily enough, my niche hardware also tends to work on Linux. My Bluetooth adapter is a random dongle ripped from a VoIP station. I have on Windows, though. Perhaps that's due to the wonderful ArchWiki, no idea.
Also try doing NVIDIA-based ML on Windows. Very hard to set up a dev env. Hard on Linux too, but at least it's supported (last I checked).
Just to add to that list, Fedora is easy to get Nvidia / Optimus cards going these days too - wasn't the case a few years ago but now I can do a clean install and everything just works.
Spot on. I don't know what year people are talking about. I have used KDE the last 5 years and literally everything I have ever wanted to do has just worked.
No one can possibly have less patience for bullshit and things not working than me. At this point it is exactly why I can only use linux. I have barely thought about the OS the last 5 years.
You cited Torvalds. So you were talking about the desktop experience. Now you're talking about hardware compatibility and that's not a fair comparison, on the other hand you have a vendor that makes its own hardware, and the reference OS for every OEM. Linux hardware support has been stellar considering its intrinsic disadvantage.
Linux Desktop, as in the Linux Desktop experience, as in GNOME and its ecosystem, is on par if not superior with boh MacOS and Windows.
Linux Mint is seriously easy to set up with its driver manager. I don't see how any issues would arise and thus far I haven't had any issues with setting up any Linux distro except for arch's ethernet at one point. That's around 15 Linux distros which worked just fine
As someone who uses MacOS, Linux, and Windows daily for development, family, general business use, and infra administration - and have for nearly 30 years - this is just not the case. Plasma is much farther along than GNOME but neither are as fluid and put together as MacOS. Now against windows, it’s very close.
Used to maybe. Last I checked Linux still has font antialiasing with subpixel hinting while MacOS removed it completely and fonts look terrible on anything sub-retina.
> But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box
I use KDE on Linux, and when I do a fresh install, it takes me about 5 minutes to set the settings how I like, 0 janky workarounds, 0 external software, and 0 reboots. The adware/bloatware in Windows and the ridiculous feature deficiency in macOS give me put UX so low that KDE doesn't need to be that good - although it is.
A minimalist-ish Linux distro for a lot of people, especially those who mostly are on the web (hypothetical Grandma etc.) will 100% save you a TON of headaches over Windows, and fare quite well against Mac OS as well.
It's much easier to diagnose + make changes to remedy the problem on Linux (if you know your way around).
Hell, even if you don't: the majority of the system (barring systemd) is fairly transparent, and you can readily find documentation/articles/blogs to better help you understand the problem -- and even fix it. Contrast this to Windows: I have no fucking clue how all the moving pieces come together. I just know that I can fuss about deep in settings/group policy/on the command line and roll the dice to see if any improvements are found.
Granted, most of the time it is the same for Linux, but it's much easier to simply SSH in, muck about, and so on, than it is to use TeamViewer (or go through the logistics headache of actually getting in front of the machine in question).
Ok, lets say I have a Linux install when desktop is flickering and blinking rapidly and all text labels are either not visible or only every second letter is visible but flickering when mouse over. You are in an SSH which is working fine. Now what? :)
PS: real case from a few months ago on Fedora.
PPS: oh, and guess what advice I got from the "helpful" widely advertised Linux community? "You have picked a bad distro and DE combo" (c) and "You have incorrect hw env for these distro and DE, why didn't you pick ubuntu/mate?" (c)
Ha! At one time I cursed those who threw this at me; now I know better, and throw it at others!
All joking aside, I really dislike Fedora and Gnome. It does have a lot of problems.
But, onto your problem: I would start at looking at the xserver logs, and ask about any recently changed settings/configs/options or updates/rollbacks. The logs are usually fairly good at telling you if something is !!!WRONG!!!.
Those are usually the most likely culprits, if the DE was working fine until all of a sudden it didn't anymore.
If it's a fresh install and right-off-the-bat it's buggy, then it's probably a HW issue (or the distro is terribad).
I would try xforwarding, and other built-in remote desktop options, to see if I could tinker around and get real-time feedback on how the display was looking.
On the other hand, if it's Wayland: I must yield, bow my head, wish you well, and withdraw from such an exercise.
"Okay, let's say I got a free car and it had a relatively obscure problem, and all they told me was to go get another free car instead of providing me perfect support exactly as I demanded, for free!"
The only problems I ever had with Linux over last two decades were exclusively "obscure problems". But there were a lot of them and they are always different and very entertaining. Basically it all boils down to the two factors working simultaneously - 1) bad QA process, and 2) extreme fragmentation of literally everything on every level, increasing test coverage beyond possible.
For me Linux will probably never be "home ready" and will stay on servers and embeds where it is perfect and amazing.
Good thing the actual practice disagrees with you.
Dude, I do this. I literally onboard a good amount of friends and family to Linux. Also occasionally help out Mac people as well. Even now, I hear from the Apple people more.
I don't know why you want this to not be true, but, sorry, it just is. Once set up, Linux is MUCH MORE SOLID, much more "set it and forget it" than Windows or Macs. I'd agree that, say, 5 years ago, the set-up was harder. But that's no longer even an issue. I install Xubuntu on the thing, tell them their password, tell them to go ahead and click yes when it's update time and I just don't hear from them all that much ever again.
You used the phrase "5 years ago" and in some other comment I read "few years ago" and I just want to add, well, "add" a few more years ontop of that. I switched away from windows in 2017 and the experience was already very good.
Another switch in 2019 (Unity->KDE) I can't tell if it got even easier, because I was not as much of a noob anymore than 2 years ago, naturally.
It's almost impossible for someone who is computer illiterate to break a Linux install. Every problem I've dealt with on others' Linux desktops was solved with a reboot.
Linus isn't computer illiterate, a computer illiterate person doesn't decide one day to replace their OS nor bruteforces through several warning messages a command-line based administration tool is telling them because they were trained from a different OS over many years to completely ignore warning messages.
If anything the most likely person to have issues and break Linux is the kind of person Linus is: an experienced Windows power user.
That is EXACTLY what a regular person does with computers. Linux crowd completely missed the point of Linus video - he is perfectly capable working with Linux and fixing issues. But in the videos he was role-playing a regular switcher user, that was the whole point of the video.
I think you have a very skewed view towards what regular people do with their computers. What Linus "role played" (which i don't believe he did, he genuinely borked his system) is a power user which is a very tiny percentage of PC users.
The vast majority of people use their PCs like (overly complex) tools while having an at-best superficial understanding of concepts like what files and folders are. By the moment someone realizes something like a folder being nothing more than a file with a list of other files (instead of something handwavy magical that groups files together), they're already above the 0.1% of the PC using population.
99% of everything a regular person does on a computer is done through a web browser these days, or they might use Zoom, Teams, Slack etc, too. Chromebooks suit regular people's computer needs very well, which is why I say that modern desktop Linux would suit them, too. Linux can provide a very stable and fast base upon which web browsers and Zoom etc can run, like ChromeOS.
Interestingly, yesterday, after having to login and "enroll" into some kind of Micro$oft program to download older visual studio 2017 (which I only needed to compile from source and it was a dependency, not actual use). This rubbed me off so much that I thought I need to take a break from Windows. I installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. It took me less time than ever to setup, hiDPI seems to work fine. No problems with suspend, GPU or sounds, everything works. So far I think UX for new users might be even better than macOS. (constant mac laptop user)
are we talking developers or end users in general? Because as a dev linux on the desktop works fine. I've been using basically bog standard ubuntu lts for a long time now. At my work where people can choose their OS it's like 40% mac, 40% linux, 20% windows
as far as I can tell in the industry linux workstations are common.
Installing is easy, configuring not always. Who thought blank defaults were a good idea in their package. But change distro and suddenly you have sensible defaults in the same package.
What have you done with your life, again? What books have have you written? Is it you or me that runs a Discord with 2,000+ members? Have you got 6,000 members for your video courses?
Completely agree. Ubuntu 20.04 with a 5k monitor (Dell UP2715K)? The result: Burn in that lasts for an hour and graphics completely messed up. After a few days the monitor broke. Are 100% scaling too small for your new 4k monitor? Well if you think 200% is too much, you'll have to switch to fractional scaling, where things get blurry. Don't know about macOS, but Windows have no trouble scaling things nicely to 150% for instance.
In Windows there are no monitor issues and it's super easy to set up my PlayStation 3 controller for games (that are also nicely supported). Overall there's just less configuration in Windows.
Instead I run Linux in VMware, which comes with its own perks: By creating a virtual machine per project, everything is neatly grouped in its own workspace, and by suspending instead of shutting down when done, I can get back to where I left off as easy as loading it's previous state from disk, with everything open - unsaved documents, applications, browser tabs, etc. I get the best of both worlds this way.
Yeah, I ran linux on the desktop (and laptop) for years and I learned a lot, but it sucks.
Occasionally I see comments on HN and I’m inspired to try again. It still sucks every time. Basic stuff like bad trackpad support, laptop failing to suspend, software scaling/resolution issues, missing drives on install, etc. etc. - you can hack it to work, but it’s not close. With M1 performance the difference is even more extreme than it’s ever been.
Use what you want of course, but I’m not sure why people pretend it’s something it’s not. Though OS arguments are mostly religious arguments.
I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here, but instead I'll simply state a well known, agreed upon truth in our industry: Linux is an absolute joke on the desktop. Even Torvalds thinks it's a mess.
Build your desktop from scratch if you like. It's your time. It's your life. But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.