The Linux desktop is a lost cause and the author is better off moving to other things. Not only is desktop a dying segment, but it requires the largest amount of work on driver support (why is my six year old off brand printer not working?), is filled with proprietary apps and companies that make money selling software to end customers who have no incentive to port to Linux (Adobe/Serif are why I still have to keep a Windows VM sitting around), and it requires constant work to keep things working on top of every graphics stack, one of which is famously proprietary (NVIDIA please just open source your drivers already) which reduces the incentives of using Linux in the first place.
You also have GNOME shipping on Fedora and Ubuntu which most new users are going to download, which can't even get their stuff together enough to put a freaking dock and activity indicator on the desktop without having to completely switch to a different activities screen. Asking for a dock will literally get you hung in the village square as people assert that normal users want to use keyboard shortcuts. Everything on the Linux desktop has to either be old fashion or eclectic and tailored to the tech enthusiasts already using it (one of the things that Elementary was actually solving). I tried getting my dad to use GNOME and he gave up after five minutes to go back to his Mac (I can't even launch an app?). It's a mess. Every other distro is basically being held together by a scrappy group of volunteers that are supposed to compete against millions of dollars of investment and armys of full time employees.
I feel bad for Elementary. They made a good product that was actually sane for people coming from MS/A, but they were never going to turn it into something super profitable or even sway companies like Adobe etc. to get their apps running natively on Linux.
This isn't doom and gloom about Linux. Linux owns computing. It's more about how Desktop is niche and not even worth getting into at this point, and how the author has much to gain by just walking away and moving on to other ventures.
Edit:
You can downvote all you want if it brings you catharsis, but you know I'm right. The year of the Linux desktop isn't right around the corner, just like it wasn't right around the corner last year, or the year before that. Linux desktops will always be for enthusiasts, students who want to learn Linux, or people who have to use outdated hardware, which is honestly the way it should be so that Linux keeps its identity and doesn't become yet another replaceable component in a proprietary stack like it is on Android (I'm looking at you Fuchsia).
And no, it doesn't matter that you're reading this right now on Sway using lynx and your mother and sister are using Ubuntu that you installed for them. You are on HN. You are not the segment that makes Linux desktops a lucrative business idea. A software engineer needs to know how to think about market segments and the normal user use cases and not be completely self absorbed into how the world works for them.
I've been daily-driving KDE/Plasma for... around 7 years now? And I have a really low tolerance for daily technical nuisances. There have been some issues over that period, but honestly not more than I would have to deal with on other platforms.
I also introduced a partner to Elementary a few years back and she has absolutely fallen in love with it despite the shifting set of glitches it has on every update (she calls "personality"). She's clever but not especially technical and had no Linux experience beforehand.
As I see it, there are essentially three desktop platforms to choose from: Windows, Mac, and Linux. Windows is moving in an ad-supported direction that I want no part of and there's even more that I dislike about what Apple is doing (and this from someone who was one of those weird die-hard Apple enthusiasts in the 90s).
So I didn't switch to Linux because I'm fanatical about it, but because it was my option of last resort for having a desktop environment that I felt like I could largely control and use the way I wanted to use it. And, it has turned out that I'm really happy with it, most of the time.
That's probably not going to be a persuasive argument for the average casual computer user. On the other hand, tired tirades against "the year of the Linux desktop" completely miss the fact that Linux is a completely reasonable desktop experience today.
I've tried to switch to Linux every year for the last decade, but I never manage to complete the switch. I tried again in January and this time I couldn't get Firefox to use GPU acceleration at all, making all web videos extremely choppy. "Yeah you shoudn't use an AMD GPU". The suggestion I got was to just use MPlayer to watch YouTube videos. Ohh well I guess I'll try again next year.
In my opinion (disclaimer, I'm currently test driving Arch again in a VMWare installation) this phenomenon is one that is routinely glossed over in discussions about challenges of the Linux desktop. The fact that the most active people hanging out in supposed "community support" channels are the type of technophiles for whom the statement, "You should really just use mplayer to watch YouTube videos" is a completely acceptable solution. They love their home-rolled digital duct tape built system and you should too!
That's just not at all acceptable to the majority of people who want to know they can click a link in Firefox (or Chromium or whatever) and watch the damn video. Perhaps more important: it's a prime example of sidestepping the question that is so frequent in these communities where you don't get answers to your questions, you get told random things sort of related to your question that others have done.
I started this recent test drive after installing Arch on a secondary system intended to be a home server and, within an hour, I had Steam installed, a DualShock 4 controller connected via bluetooth, and I was playing a windows game (Final Fantasy 12 - The Zodiac Age) at 60FPS stable. I honestly couldn't believe how much "just worked."
Yeah, GPU issues are absolutely an area that frustrates a lot of would-be Linux users. FWIW that was a consideration when I bought my last two laptops; I filtered out any candidates that didn't have known good Linux drivers for most of the important hardware. And, that took a lot more time reading blogs and forums and the like than I like spending.
yeah, i have basically the same opinion. i like my M1 mac, but it's got some rough edges that are no worse than the things people call dealbreakers if it happened on something other than an apple product.
and i tried using windows 10 shortly after it's release and just couldn't.
people like what they're used to. if you're used to windows, linux is a tough sell. but if you're used to linux, so is windows. linux people like to worry about how it is perceived by the average user, but the average user fails all the time on any operating system.
My problem with Linux as a desktop is that it invariably breaks, and when it does, I have to waste a day figuring out what the hell is wrong with it. Windows 11 Pro is close enough to the things I like about Macs to make the switch, and I can run Linux in the hypervisor so that I never have to touch a Windows shell. Hell, I can even run Linux desktop apps right next to my Windows apps.
You've got that backwards. You're going to want to run Windows in VM to protect yourself from Microsoft's bullshit spying. With Linux, at least you _can_ fix the problems.
I suspect that recent efforts to make virtualization even more seamless is going to have a big impact on how we do daily computing in the very near future.
My next system is going to be a lightweight Linux host with a pile of VMs and something like https://github.com/casualsnek/cassowary, with juicy enough hardware to make it feel like I'm only running one OS.
my experience with windows has been that troubleshooting it is mostly a waste of time, and if it breaks the best course of action is to re-install from scratch.
which is the same as my troubleshooting procedure on ubuntu.
Huh. I just read a comment elsewhere on HN from somebody who said desktop on Linux has never been easier since most of what they do happens in the browser anyway.
I remember talking with a buddy of mine about Linux, and he said the same thing you did about any distro outside of Fedora or Ubuntu: That Linux is held together by a scrappy group of volunteers competing against millions of dollars of investment and armies full of full-time employees. That was 1998 and what do you know, Linux is doing just fine. Linux desktop is still innovating. GNOME might do stupid stuff (though they haven't "literally" hung anybody that I'm aware of) but they innovate. Marketshare hasn't changed much but the size of the market has grown massively. 3% now is a lot different from 3% in 2010, and there are tons of developers and sponsors helping to keep Linux alive on the desktop.
I was the only Linux desktop user in my office of 150 people for awhile. The absolute bullsh*t everybody had to eat from OSX (let alone windows) astounded me. And they just smile and gobble it up because they have a gui in front of their VPN. Let 'em I say. The Linux desktop will do fine without them.
> Linux is held together by a scrappy group of volunteers competing against millions of dollars of investment and armies full of full-time employees.
The best example I know of this is GIMP; it has just a few (4 IIRC, could be 3 or 5 too, but thereabouts) people working on it in their spare time. That's it.
Folks complain that it's not as good as Photoshop, and that's true, but if you consider the team size it's actually pretty darn impressive! How many people work on Photoshop? I betcha it's a few more than a handful.
Not all of the Linux ecosystem is just volunteers though; most kernel contributions come from various companies; Ubuntu and RedHat work on a lot of different things (cue systemd discussion), etc.
That's a great achievement for its developers but as a user it doesn't matter; if the tool doesn't do what I need I will use a different tool. Whether it has 2 developers or 2000 doesn't change that fact.
Sure, but the point is that Linux-the-ecosystem is largely written by a bunch of people in their spare time, not infrequently for their own reasons (fun, "I want this", etc.), with fairly impressive results, and that expecting this to be on-par with a paid for-profit product with hundreds if not thousands of people working on it is kind of an unreasonable comparison.
Seeing these things as "products" where "users" have to choose from in a "free market" is already a flawed outlook. That's not what people are doing or how they're thinking.
Linux on the desktop works basically fine for people who are technically inclined and have any interest in Linux, less well for people who aren't and don't, and there doesn't appear to be any effective movement in changing the status quo.
Getting volunteer coders to work in the customer-service style that is required to make a desktop for non-technical people just doesn't seem to work. And turning a volunteer community into a profit seeking one usually seems to hit these roadblocks.
We should just accept that success for Linux on the desktop looks like what we have now. Which seems fine to me. Everyone who wants it has it. Unending lust for growth is a trait of megacoroprations and cancers, not great company to keep IMO.
This is patently and blatantly not true. I have installed Ubuntu to my mom and my wife's parents, and they are happily browsing internet ever after, without any malware or crapware. In the past few years I have spent ~0 hours on maintenance of these devices.
Previously, when they were using Windows, it was a never-ending nightmare.
You see, a well set up Ubuntu is perfect for people who need the computer to just work. They just can't break it!
My parents are in their 90s and have been using Linux Mint since I replaced their previous desktop about five years ago. Only for email and web browsing, and a little writing (Libre Office), but they have had few complaints. (I have had a huge amount of trouble getting newer kernels to use a USB wi-fi dongle, though. That's ridiculous.)
Huh, last time I tried to help someone switch, they didn't really like it -- but that was a couple years ago (It was a switch to Mint, and it was long enough ago that this was probably the best pick).
"Not liking" != "Not working", especially when the user being introduced to a new system is expecting things to "just work like they use to"
My wife had an older laptop, which had a failing hdd and I used the opportunity to swap for a SSD and asked her to try Ubuntu.
Yeah, she had a lot of questions at first, but eventually she got used to it. She got a new laptop and had to go back to Windows due to her work, but whenever she is just browsing or videocalling anyone, she doesn't mind using the older laptop.
Also, guess which laptop always has issues with the printer?
> Also, guess which laptop always has issues with the printer?
In my experience any laptop on any system will have issues with the goddamn fucking printer :-)
I had an old dot-matrix printer connected to the parallel port for a very long time. Could "print" with just "cat file.txt >/dev/lpt0". It was great. Downside was I couldn't use it in the evening as it woke up the neighbours.
The obstacle that wasn't overcome in this case was the lack of MS Office and the unfamiliarity of Open/Libre Office, if I remember correctly. Personally I can't stand office suites, so I don't really see how this could be such a big deal, but "actually this kind of software is just destined to suck" is not very compelling.
Desktop segment is "dying" and "filled with proprietary apps"? While desktop PC is no longer common as a home entertainment device, there is no replacement for it as a workstation. It is also the only platform where the software and hardware are (at least somehow) independent. You can install custom software on SOME phones, but other than that, contemporary electronic devices just come with their proprietary software you're not allowed to touch.
Even as a workstation - I already pointed out that Adobe and Serif won't port their apps to Linux. And that's one example of a professional use case. Think about the doctors, lawyers, technicians, sound engineers, video engineers, who all need to use some proprietary app that only works on Windows or Mac. Sure, if you're a programmer then you have access to everything you need on Fedora, but we are the least interesting group for the desktop, we are all power users and not the segment that matters.
But Linux is being used in those professional environments in some capacity.
"More recently, Linux has also been used on the workstations used by animators for drawing and modeling their creations, as the leading producers of animation software have tailored their applications to run on Linux." [1]
[2] is a demo video of Pixar's use of linux for animation and rendering.
Ah, you are too optimistic about the desktop in general. Landlines and desktops failed in the developing world first. It is contracting back to workstation users of old (STEM academia, IT, graphics) and maybe Adobe will do their hold out again like refusing to properly support windows when Mac was in the hole but they should get pretty desperate as the gateway platforms to their products become unwanted by the general population.
Adobe and Serif won't be around forever. The list of reasons why NOT to be on Linux in some form has been, and continues to, shrink as old proprietary software gives way to the new. While it's true that industry software is often restrictive when it comes to OS requirements and Linux is often not supported, I think we are seeing more and more platform-agnostic software especially in the for of web applications.
You are entitled to prefer to use whatever you want to use, but you are only the dictator of reality in your own mind.
Also Docks are terrible UI. They are annoying, take up too much space, and you can never really find a good place to move them so they are out of the way.
The Apple Dock was something designed to look cool and fresh in order to sell a bunch of G3 and G4 iMacs back in the day, but it's a step backwards from even Windows 95's taskbar.
Gnome devs staying away from that is one of the more laudable decisions they made in terms of design.
There's a reason why the GNOME devs have screenshots of Apple UIs in their design docs. The GNOME devs are not secretly geniuses of good design at the mercy of an ignorant world.
If you don't like the Dock constantly being visible it's called autohiding and it's been around for awhile. If a user wants to switch apps they don't want to completely switch screens to make a trivial decision they make thousands of times a day. They don't want to guess what apps they have open. They want to move their cursor to the bottom of the screen and pick an app on a little bar that lets them continue to see what they were doing beforehand, lets them see what they have open while continuing to work on what they want to work on. GNOMEs visionary UI is a complete misunderstanding of desktop UX and they are simply too prideful to admit defeat and go with something that people are already familiar with and would actually make normal people happy.
I always agreed with you but 5 years ago I made the switch and I’ll never go back.
Using Ubuntu, Fedora or any other distro with either a large community or a clear funding path (like PopOS) is great. The “2 guys made a distro and have no funding or way to monetize their work” isn’t a Linux problem it’s a business model problem.
I have to disagree with you to a certain extent. Yes the Linux Desktop is a mess, but however I see these issues only when you try stitching things together. I used to do it when I was trying to use Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE and Lubuntu etc. They are basically "light" distros so any compatibility and functionality you want that is not already present needs to be arranged by you. You have the entire system at your disposal. Now, make the call - whether you want to spend a lot of time figuring it out, or do you want to just go ahead and install one of the mainstream ones like Manjaro, Solus, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, KDE Neon is basically up to you. Sometimes it's only a matter of finding the right distro and you're golden once you get there.
I've been using OSX at work and I absolutely hate it. I keep asking myself..why the fuck is my 16GB/512GB Core i7 Mac taking 3 seconds to open the settings UI? Why does the "finder" app suck so much? How come OSX has got some basic usability gaps like windows jumping out of my screen and not having an "auto raise windows on hover" option..? and the list continues. Windows seems better at some of these UX departments in my POV.
Anyway, these proprietary Operating Systems are always a subject of corporate greed. They're never 100% in the user's control and can be remotely toyed with - The companies backing them can happily add/remove your software, send advertisements, spyware, bloatware down your throat and you'll just end up seeing your system resources being leeched away along this process. Apple could be better in this department but I cannot just stand the (subjectively) horrible UX of the entire system.
Anyway, linux can be what you want. I've run KDE Neon on my PC for years without having to deal with any problem whatsoever. It's been smooth and easy and KDE gave me way, way more features than Windows and Mac put together. I'm talking about KDE but on Linux you can get anything you want. All at the convenience of knowing that there is no commercial element behind these things. Since donations are how things usually get paid for in FOSS, you're welcome to donate to keep it lively and bustling. I do, from time to time.
I guess the UX is really subjective. I just switched to macOS from Windows (to be fair my first computer I owned was a PowerBook G4, so it wasn't completely new to it) and so far I prefer to UX to Windows.
The virtual desktops and full screen mode combined with separate program and window switching shortcuts were really easy to get used to and it feels a lot better to use than Windows. The M1 SoC is also a lot faster than anything I've used on Windows laptops in the last few years. On my old Windows laptop I had the same experience as you on macOS. The settings app sometimes taking ages to load and freeze randomly when installing updates.
If I am honest they all suck in different ways (or sometimes the same ways) and most people will be happy with any of them. Of course some people have software that require a certain OS but I guess that's the minority. The biggest advantages of Windows and macOS are Microsoft Office, Adobe Products and the bigger user base. But the first two matter way less because everything is a web app today.
Definitely agree that the UX is all subjective. I just like the convenience of Linux where I can arrange whatever I want, and there are generally tons of programs available. I'm glad that M1 SoC is performing better; hope to try it out at some point.
> I've been using OSX at work and I absolutely hate it.
Are you being hyperbolic here? I move between Linux, Windows 10, iOS, macOS, and Android and they are all mostly fine. I can’t say I love or hate any of them although there are things that each seems to be best at.
I think Linux’s hardware agnosticism is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, you can run it anywhere, but it doesn’t run great anywhere.
I think that could change though. IMHO, Asahi Linux is one of the most interesting things going on in the world of Linux right now. They don’t have to support a lot of different hardware configurations so I think they have a good chance of really getting things dialed in and creating a super polished product.
Since you work on the kernel, maybe you can answer this - does Linux have something similar to timer coalescing? IIRC, that’s one of thing in macOS that helps them with battery life.
> I think Linux’s hardware agnosticism is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, you can run it anywhere, but it doesn’t run great anywhere.
Correct, and the drivers that get worked on are the ones that we kernel developers have access to. The situation has gotten better as more and more vendors have contributed drivers over the years and standards have allowed many devices to run on a single driver and we've become more focused on improving and adopting USB, PCI, etc. Plus kernel builds have become more automated as companies like Intel contribute lots of automated builds against tons of different hardware configurations. Still though, Linux is focused on the server and mobile market. That's what people like me get paid to work on, and so it's going to get the best support.
> Since you work on the kernel, maybe you can answer this - does Linux have something similar to timer coalescing?
Yes it does. Also Google has contributed tons, and tons, and tons of power management code (for Android of course). Power management on Linux has improved tremendously. There's still only so much that can be done, because we don't have as tight of an integration into the hardware stack on Desktop. We can't force vendors to implement certain features or make sure everyone implements certain low power state callbacks in drivers.
> You know I'm right. The year of the Linux desktop isn't right around the corner, just like it wasn't right around the corner last year, or the year before that.
I don’t think you’re wrong, I think you’re missing the point. I can’t speak for the elementary developers but I don’t think you'd start a project like this hoping to take over the world. You start a project like elementary because you think something like elementary should exist.
You are 100% spot on. I use Linux for 20 years and I have several Linux desktops around in my household. Rpi, small intel pcs, etc. The desktop experience is a joke at best. We ha to be honest about things we want to improve. Without honesty there cannot be any improvement.
Well, I upvoted you, not because I agree, but because I think the downvotes are unjustified, you're just voicing your opinion, which I found interesting and well-reasoned.
Linus Torvalds also has many criticisms of the Linux desktop.[1] None of the commercial applications I have bought will run on Linux without wasting time tinkering. For programming, I'm forced to use Xcode because it's required on the App Store. I couldn't use Linux even if I did want to use something worse than macOS.
Well I work on the kernel for a living, so I feel like I have at least some idea. The quality of a distro on your hardware has nothing to do with it. I don't think you understood anything I said about why it's a failed segment.
Saying desktop is "dying" implies it will go away to the point of becoming insignificant. This is ridiculous - what would fill the gap for gamers, creators, professionals, business, and engineers? Tablets, gaming consoles and phones?
Shrinking segment, absolutely. Especially for the casual home-user segment. But leading with exaggerated flamebait is not welcome here, as I'm sure you are aware.
You also have GNOME shipping on Fedora and Ubuntu which most new users are going to download, which can't even get their stuff together enough to put a freaking dock and activity indicator on the desktop without having to completely switch to a different activities screen. Asking for a dock will literally get you hung in the village square as people assert that normal users want to use keyboard shortcuts. Everything on the Linux desktop has to either be old fashion or eclectic and tailored to the tech enthusiasts already using it (one of the things that Elementary was actually solving). I tried getting my dad to use GNOME and he gave up after five minutes to go back to his Mac (I can't even launch an app?). It's a mess. Every other distro is basically being held together by a scrappy group of volunteers that are supposed to compete against millions of dollars of investment and armys of full time employees.
I feel bad for Elementary. They made a good product that was actually sane for people coming from MS/A, but they were never going to turn it into something super profitable or even sway companies like Adobe etc. to get their apps running natively on Linux.
This isn't doom and gloom about Linux. Linux owns computing. It's more about how Desktop is niche and not even worth getting into at this point, and how the author has much to gain by just walking away and moving on to other ventures.
Edit:
You can downvote all you want if it brings you catharsis, but you know I'm right. The year of the Linux desktop isn't right around the corner, just like it wasn't right around the corner last year, or the year before that. Linux desktops will always be for enthusiasts, students who want to learn Linux, or people who have to use outdated hardware, which is honestly the way it should be so that Linux keeps its identity and doesn't become yet another replaceable component in a proprietary stack like it is on Android (I'm looking at you Fuchsia).
And no, it doesn't matter that you're reading this right now on Sway using lynx and your mother and sister are using Ubuntu that you installed for them. You are on HN. You are not the segment that makes Linux desktops a lucrative business idea. A software engineer needs to know how to think about market segments and the normal user use cases and not be completely self absorbed into how the world works for them.