it’s not possible to use Linux on the desktop, or to only use Linux on the desktop
Does anybody say this? I've always interpreted the phrase "year of Linux on the desktop" to mean a year when people who wouldn't list "computers" among their personal interests were noticeably using it on their desktops. That still hasn't happened. There are a lot of "year of the -" things I've seen come, when things that were used by professionals and nerds entered common usage and parlance, like burning a CD or installing Firefox (granted those have come and now gone).
You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad. You ask a normie what their opinion of Linux is and most of them won't even know the word, let alone have one. That's why it isn't and may never be "the year of Linux on the desktop".
Yeah, the 'Year of Linux on the Desktop'-trope comes from the end of the nineties. Mainstream Windows was still the Windows 9x branch. Consumers didn't switch to the NT line until Windows XP. And there were a bunch of well-funded Linux distributions that wanted to be serious competitors to Windows (Corel Linux, Caldera OpenLinux, etc.). Given the sorry state of Windows at the time and the strong interest of the industry and press in Linux, there was a contingent within the press and Linux community that believed that desktop Linux could replace Windows. Which lead to the regular question "will this be the year of Linux on the desktop?".
The year of the Linux desktop didn't happen (unless you consider Android phones desktops), but Linux has been massively successful in other ways (servers, phones, embedded, IoT). If anything, the underlying OS matters less and less, since applications are steadily moving to the web (for better or worse).
It also came from an era when utter Microsoft dominance seemed like an existential threat to many people--and the native desktop (and its applications) was an important front in that war. So winning over a material number of governments and companies to Linux, OpenOffice, etc. on PCs seemed an important objective.
Today, what operating system people choose to run on their desktop/laptop just isn't a terribly important question any longer in the scheme of things especially given that most live largely in their browser anyway.
> given that most live largely in their browser anyway
You mean like ... in MS Edge?
EDIT: Adding to my remark by referring to another quote "an era when utter Microsoft dominance seemed like an existential threat". I still see this as an existential threat and that's why I posted the above. We no longer have a healthy competition of browsers and the fact that Microsoft pushes some kind of Chrome fork doesn't improve the situation. The same goes for MS Teams. It's ubiquitous, even in schools, and therefore drives people into the Microsoft ecosystem.
Yep with 4.5% browser market share, Microsoft Edge has sure crushed the rest of the industry. [1]
Teams is better in its category at 16% but that's a case of Office 365 pulling in teams rather than the other way around. (The same way Google Workplace pulls in Meet.)
From the chart you posted the desktop market share of Edge is 11%. It's the second most used browser behind Chrome. Also I wonder what's the "category" for Teams.
Whilst I agree strongly with your general point: Android is not GNU Linux (that is, the Linux kernel plus a userland largely based on and around the GNU's Not Unix toolchain), there is Termux, an Android app which provides a Linux-like userland, including X11 applications for what it's worth. You'll need to install it through a third-party app store or source, such as F-Droid.
Software is packaged under APT, and whilst the package selection is markedly less than, say, Debian (roughly 70k distinct packages last I checked), there are now several thousand available packages, plus more available through Python, Ruby, Perl, and Node.js package managers (and probably others).
You're still subject to Android limitation:
- No general filesystem access outside Termux's and specifically-shared areas.
- Very limited file permissions options unless rooted.
- No privilege escalation unless you've rooted your device.
- Android's mysterious and quite frequently annoying app process management killing off sessions with no discernible rhyme or reason, let alone owner-based control.
But you'll get all the standard base shell utilities, scripting and programming environments, a selection of networking tools (which function again depends in part on whether your device is or isn't rooted), editors, and even a number of servers, though typically running on high-numbered (unprivileged) ports. There's also a slew of tools for interacting with Android itself, including clipboard, screen brightness, wifi, flashlight (if available), "toasts" (alerts/messages), and more.
Termux has long been the one Android app Which Does Not Precisely and Exactly Suck. It was the first app I found which made the OS vaguely useful to me rather than a captured walled-garden toy.
I have certainly heard it said that Linux as a desktop operating system is an utter mess or completely unusable.
> You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad.
The "normies" I know do not have an opinion on Windows 10. Many do not even distinguish between Windows and Word. They have a computer, they know how to get some of their shit done with it. But they don't have a concept of "operating system", let alone an opinion on any one of them.
Some have an opinion on Android vs iPhone, but more often than not it's the quality of the camera they point to, rather than any feature of the operating system.
That said, I agree with your Interpretation of what "the year of Linux on the desktop" means and the fact that it hasn't happened.
I noticed that normies — my extended relatives, SCA folks I know, neighbors — spend their time on mobile and not on the desktop. And Windows is as frustrating to them as anything else. They don’t really care if it is Windows or Linux; it’s mostly a means to get to the browser, or something their desk work requires it.
People don't author papers on mobile yet do they? I mean, an android tablet with a mouse and keyboard should be fine for that given webapps, but I just don't know people who have that workflow. And itbis a biased sampling because of internet pricing, but on planes as I look around I mostly see windows or mac laptops for actual work. A few adults will have tablets, but mostly kids. Adults mostly have a phone reading a book or watching a movie.
At work it seems like developers don't care what the machine they are sitting at is as long as it has ssh and vscode with remote plugin and of course a browser.
Some domain specific tools don't work so well remotely and those people have whatever that software requires, sometimes as a VM but often on metal with a beefy workstation.
For generic office productivity I still see people using Microsoft.
Given how many kids are and have been on ChromeOS since 2020, I wouldn't be surprised to see this changing fairly rapidly, moreso than I'd have otherwise expected. More and more it seems the choice for people is between a Macbook or a Chromebook -- the windows PC is just an expensive gaming device in the realm of personal machines.
Windows still rules the office, for now, but it's not gaining ground, and offices tend to move slowly, but steadily.
A very US specific view, ChromeOS hardly matters outside US school system and most countries outside tier 1 only get Macs to target Apple's mobile platforms.
In my experience, 99% of people just want a browser and maybe Microsoft Office. Plus maybe some other software to work with random stuff. Office works with compatibility layers, so just the "random stuff" category, and the occasional printer issue, are all I see keeping most people from using Linux. That and not knowing about Linux in the first place.
Typically the thing that keeps people from using Linux is their lack of comfort actually installing an operating system. Why do I believe this? Because smart phones are popular and Chromebooks are popular. A Chromebook is generally much _more_ restricted than Linux, and an Android or iPhone is at minimum a different user interface which cannot run the same software, or be installed the same way as Windows. But technically illiterate people have adapted to this just fine.
So I believe since most of them use Adnroid (tablets/smartphones) possibly it is already that Linux achieved goal of pushing Windows out of the window.
While desktop computing still has its value everything shifted and yeah fight from 1990s or 2000s does not matter anymore.
Android’s prevalence should not remotely be considered a victory for the desktop Linux ‘advocates’ because it basically happened almost entirely orthogonally to any of their efforts. The desktop Linux advocates of the 2000 and beyond infuriated me because they were/are in such a bubble that they thought/think that the typical Linux desktop experience was remotely tenable for a civilian, and somehow would mentally blank out all the times they’ve needed to monkey about in the terminal to get something to work.
Of course this entire thing is inconsequential first world problem BS, but within that sphere the desktop Linux advocates certainly don’t deserve to take that W.
Maybe to clarify, by Linux I did not mean any people like "Linux advocates". What I wrote is about Linux as an idea of open kernel that won on its own.
> You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad. You ask a normie what their opinion of Linux is and most of them won't even know the word, let alone have one.
True “normies”, my mom for instance or most of my wife's colleagues, have no idea on which version of Windows their computer is running, let alone have an opinion on the specific version they are using. They don't even know what an operating system is.
People who do know about the different versions of Windows aren't “normies”, they are people who are somewhat tech savy but not nerd enough to try Linux (which most of them have heard about somehow, often from their nerd friend) because it sounds scary and time consuming (installing an entire operating system, wiping your entire Windows including the drivers that comes pre-installed is rightfully scary for most people).
“Linux on the desktop” for the masses cannot exist until it ships with the computer you buy without knowing it. Like Chromebooks for instance.
> You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad. You ask a normie what their opinion of Linux is and most of them won't even know the word, let alone have one. That's why it isn't and may never be "the year of Linux on the desktop."
The fact that the vast majority of consumers don't have any awareness at all that Linux is a simple, widely-available desktop is evidence of the opposite: that the public hasn't decided against Linux, and that the sky is the limit for growth.
i.e. If electric cars had 2% of the market, and 90% of people hadn't even heard of electric cars, the first approximation of the potential market for electric cars as they are is 20%. You'd refine that based on comparing characteristics of the 10% who had heard of them to the 90% who hadn't, but 20% is good enough for a napkin.
With 1) the slow decline in quality and growth of data mining and ads in Windows and MacOS, 2) the ending of Moore's Law, meaning that the development of at least single-threaded software is slower than it used to be, allowing FOSS to catch up where it is behind, 3) greater compatibility and shared software than ever between Windows, MacOS, and Linux through various subsystems, VMs and containers, and 4) the movement of a lot of software to the web, I believe that desktop Linux could take over at any time (or never.)
Windows could just pull another Vista at the same time Apple disables some functionality as a business strategy. Or they could both get cancelled due to major personalities associated with the brands also being associated with politics and the media; Bill Gates obviously, but Jobs' widow owns the Atlantic. Both, neither, or anything else could happen while the Linux desktop was in really good shape and compatible with most of the software that people use.
Agreed. Hardware support has gotten good enough that it "just works" for me 99% of the time, I can watch pretty much any video format, play a lot of video games when I care to, the application I need are there.
Different people have different needs, for mine, Linux has made a better desktop than Windows or macOS for many years now.
Ask a normie what they run on their desktop these days. Then say, okay, fine, your laptop, as you understand they don't have a desktop and haven't for years. Then say, "oh, no laptop either?" to the 30% or so of average folks outside of the tech industry -- turns out, they're using Linux or a BSD on their primary device, that simply doesn't happen to be a desktop anymore.
The year of the linux desktop is the year when the only ones left using desktops are linux nerds. The only desktop in my house has run Slackware for years, because the wife and kid have never had a desktop.
My main workstation is a fedora 36 install. I record videos on OBS for my YouTube channel, I edit those same videos using non-linear video editor. I game via steam and do all my work on it with no issues whatsoever. Oh and i3 changed my life. Tiling done right is amazing. And no vendor lock-in no BS corporate nonsense other than what comes from Redhat
Such anecdotal evidence is cherry picked and completely useless. Ask a random person on the street. If they still even have a laptop or desktop, 80-90 percent will run Windows and macOS as a distant second. In some domains (e.g. education) you'll find some Chromebooks, they run Linux, but it's largely irrelevant, because for most users it's just proprietary Chrome (and if they didn't have a ChromeBook, they'd be running Chrome on Windows).
I am wondering what is the cross-section between “no interest in computing” and sufficient knowledge of Microsoft to have an actionable opinion. I am not sure this group is what “normie” is meant to refer to in this thread.
My wife's laptop is a Chromebook. My kids also had a Chromebook but 2 died in quick succession and I got fed up with the fact that the ones available for sale in my country are only the really shit models and buying one from overseas means no support or returns. So I've bought them a MacBook instead - not my first choice but Apple sell locally and have reasonable (existent) support.
I looked at Chromebooks, but when I added a few requirements (touch screen is a big deal for me), the price goes up above a cheap refurbished Windows laptop. Of course computer prices fluctuate, and the moment I think I know what I'm talking about, I'm wrong.
You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and ...
... they'll tell you that they really like their now iPhone.
Most normal people don't know what Windows is. Maybe they'll find the sticker on their Laptop, but that's about it.
But what everyone knows from work is Word and Excel. And as long as they don't work well on a Linux desktop, Linux feels "broken" to them. Similarly, A LOT of people are stuck having to handle PSD and AI files. Good luck getting the Adobe suite running on Linux. But as long as all of their life's creative work is being held hostile in Adobe-proprietary file formats, they surely won't jump ship.
maybe it will happen, but maybe it will take 'a long time' until we pair/adapt commercial applications into the Linux/GNU ecosystem... as from a business perspective i really can not understand why you would not migrate to a free to use, as well to modify, OS... as long it have what you need
I use many, many commercial applications that run on Linux everyday. In a testament to how “the desktop” has evolved though, most of these applications are hosted in the cloud and I access them through a web browser.
I create applications at work that run on Linux as well though most of those are bought as appliances. Some customers care that they run Linux but most don’t.
In fact, the environment I personally use to create applications is itself a commercial application running on Linux—-JetBrains Rider. I can answer for it at least why I do not use free alternatives and that is that I have more fun and get more done using Rider ( though truthfully I use the free ones too ).
A half functional mainstream Linux distribution is infinitely more stable than Windows 10 and 11. They don't even pump ads into your start menu! There's no telemetry!
I've been using Linux forever in one form or another. It was tough in the Windows XP days (which is the most superior Windows distro to this day), but after Windows 7 released Linux came into it's own. I've had no problems running it on all sorts of hardware and gaming on it has gotten better since proton.
People are just set in their ways. Mac-people will mock Linux because they're the kind of people that will pay $1500 over marginal cost for a few extra pixels and some more color depth. Windows people will mock Linux because...it's not Windows. M1 is not cool enough to justify the cost. Once Windows started calling home every time I click something on my desktop it became too much for me to bear.
The reason is as you stated. When grandma goes to buy a budget PC it comes loaded with Windows crap. Their market penetration is deep and their budget is nearly endless. Based on my experience with Windows 11 demos I think Windows 11 will finally push people to look elsewhere. Either Macs, or a out-of-the-box Linux system. Until Linux natively supports Excel, however, I don't think it'll ever reach widespread corporate adoption. Windows and OS X are both moron-friendly as you can tell by their userbase. That's important when you're trying to sell something. It'll always be "people who know" vs. "people who think they know".
If I were you, I would just ignore the people who mock those who choose another platform. They're zealots or idiots and any attempt at conversation with them is a waste of time.
The truth is, in the wider world, nobody cares about their operating system. They are all good enough and have been for a while. What matters is the same thing that has always mattered - applications.
Mac vs Linux vs Windows feels like something from a bygone era. I don't think people are so zealous anymore. I've used all three as my primary OS at one time or another and currently use Mac and Windows. They're all better at some things than others. None could fully replace the others.
The only people I know of that are using Windows 10 at this point are primarily gamers, as they're the only people who didn't let the automatic update to 11 happen. To be fair, aside from having Windows for work, they're also the only ones I know at this point who have a Windows computer at all.
The real battle these days is BSD vs Linux, aka iOS vs Android. Linux is winning globally, but the domestic kids are still huge on their Fischer Price phones.
> The only people I know of that are using Windows 10 at this point are primarily gamers, as they're the only people who didn't let the automatic update to 11 happen.
Are you claiming that W10 autoupgrades to W11, if you have automatic OS updates enabled? Doesn't seem right to me.
I have Windows 10 with automatic updates enabled, and it hasn't tried installing Windows 11 even once. There is an option for manually triggering the upgrade to W11 in update settings, but I haven't clicked it.
The main sentiment in the article which I don't think I've seen addressed in other comments is the fervency of the people attacking the mere notion that Linux is a viable option. I can understand Ballmer's "Linux is cancer" (it was in his commercial interest to say so), but I'm often surprised with the confidence and sheer malice of people who will attack any notion of Linux being used as a desktop or for gaming.
I've seen it on HN, I've seen it in Gaming subreddits, I've had it in non-technical subreddits and I've had it in real life. People just have no qualms with shitting on it and it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view.
I've attacked it as a viable option because linux users seem to handwave some of the things that make it a non viable option for a large % of the population.
I've tried linux 3 or so times over the years, always the "friendly" distros.
I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working. Drivers, updates, compatibility lag, whatever it is, linux often has me "under the hood" trying to fix stuff that is literally never an issue on another OS.
And i say this as someone who wants linux to be a thing. It's unquestionably healthy for linux to be a real option, ESPECIALLY given windows penchant for trying to sneak in more and more tracking and ads, but even as someone decently techy, I have frequently found linux to feel like gambling, with a question of "will it work today, or am I about to go on a 10 min to multihour rabbit hole hunt to fix something"
"I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working."
I've used Linux on the desktop since 1994. In all that time I recall one breaking update on Debian affecting the wireless network driver. I've used Ubuntu since 2006 and never had any issues like you describe. That is across multiple machine types from Dell, Lenovo and HP. The same is true for my wife who is non-technical and has no issues using Linux (Ubuntu).
As another case in addition to the multiple I mentioned already, I'd vouch for the majority of Android phones running fine without issues caused by new updates, I mention Android since there are people who use their phone exclusively for computing, and oddly.
Summary, use Ubuntu on the desktop, pick a decent manufacturer like Dell, HP or Lenovo (I prefer Dell and/or Alienware from Dell or Lenovo) and maybe pick one that sells with Linux or made for Linux to further enhance your success. I've heard System 76 makes good systems too.
Even Ubuntu desktop can be pretty daunting. I remember the App Store (or whatever they call it) falling apart when trying to install Discord and having to resort to command line magic to fix it. That’s sort of the pattern in my experience - Ubuntu desktop mostly “just works”, but occasionally needs a prod from the command line to fix some issue or install some piece of software… but that’s not really acceptable for nontechnical (or even technical but not Linux-savvy) users.
The LTT videos where they try to game on Linux and experience a range of interesting issues that require semi-advanced Linux-fu to fix is also a good illustration of this.
Ubuntu is still riding high on their very real and definite status as "The most usable Linux Desktop" from ~2008, but they've long since destroyed everything that got them there, so personally I think the community really needs to pick a new champion in that regard.
I've only ever used Discord as a discussion forum. I use Google Voice frequently (audio). I've used Teams and Zoom successfully (native Linux installations). Linus Tech Tips is a jack ass channel. I find it overwhelmingly difficult to comprehend anyone having major issues with Ubuntu. I've not run other Linux varieties much since around 2006.
That's because you are familiar with Linux. I also have had major problems with Linux. I've tried switching to Linux many times, but it has always been a hassle, with major problems (including Ubuntu, although maybe it's gotten better since, I haven't touched for ages). I was only finally able to do it after I learnt a lot more about computers and had the experience from my previous attempts. I could not imagine anyone who is not into computers being able to use Linux in it's current state. I love using Linux now, but it's not perfect, I constantly run into problems, that I can work around, but the average person wouldn't know how to. The reason I still use Linux despite the issues I run into is because I like figuring out that kind of stuff, and I personally find it worth it for all the benefits of Linux.
I've only ever tried Ubuntu based distros (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, KDE Neon), so maybe that's the problem, but I doubt it, seeing as everyone always recommends Ubuntu based distros for beginners. Or maybe it's cause I have an Nvidia GPU, which might've been the cause for the worst problems, but Nvidia is really popular, so it's not like other people wouldn't experience those issues.
Also, you say "Linus Tech Tips is a jack ass channel" in reference to their Linux videos, are you saying that those videos are wrong or misleading? Because the videos showed you all the issues they ran into (and I found that their experience was almost identical to mine, having to spend days troubleshooting various issues, until finally getting it working properly). Are you suggesting that they lied about the issues that they came across? Cause to me it just seemed like a video showing their experience, it didn't seem biased or anything to me at all.
Whenever someone says that they've never had major issues with Linux, I wonder whether we're even talking about the same thing. Did I accidentally download the wrong thing or something? Cause I can't imagine how someone would be able to use Linux and just happen to never come across them.
> I remember the App Store (or whatever they call it) falling apart when trying to install Discord and having to resort to command line magic to fix it.
I wonder why launching a terminal to fix something on Linux is seen as esoteric, but editing registry entries in Windows isn't.
> I've used Ubuntu since 2006 and never had any issues like you describe.
Listen, if you're using Linux and you've never spent hours trying to find out how to install something or fix a problem deep in some obscure configuration file somewhere, are you even on Linux? Don't lie to yourself: you use Linux exactly because you enjoy doing that and pretending like everything works and you never have to fiddle with anything is just dishonest.
This sounds superficially convincing, until you consider how many hours I've spent trying to figure out stuff that goes wrong in Windows or MacOS. It's a coinflip between whether the conclusion of those efforts resolve in a solution, or instead ends with finding out there not a solution, or even that the lack of a solution is intentional, and every OS update comes with code designed to detect those solutions and silently remove them.
> Listen, if you're using Linux and you've never spent hours trying to find out how to install something or fix a problem deep in some obscure configuration file somewhere, are you even on Linux?
This is different from parent's statement that "things stop working".
I definitely spent countless hours with tweaks and fixes (although the pattern is radically different between desktop and laptop systems), but I've essentially never experienced that any component "stopped working".
There is only a single exception - an ethernet card that required a 3rd party package, and an update was buggy (later, the driver got upstreamed).
Based on my old desktop experience with Windows, it was actually inherently more unstable than Linux, as installers could do whatever they wanted - in Linux, package managers track the changes in the file system instead (to a large extent but not fully, although in worst case, excluding packaging bugs, the leftovers are just data).
I have used GNU/Linux as my personal desktop and laptop OS exclusively since 2012 (though I have used Windows 10 and MacOS Yosemite on work computers), and I have had a few issues:
- Going from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10 broke Xorg (maybe a problem with the AMD drivers, I lacked knowledge at that time to look into fixing it).
- I have occasionally gotten kernel panics under OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to recall a time when watching videos on YouTube via Firefox would reliably cause it to happen, I don't remember at all how I fixed it at the time; maybe an update or running from a snapshot... or was it under Arch and I installed the LTS kernel?
- And a problem of my own making: around the time when the KDE project started transitioning to Plasma 5 I was going back and forth between Arch and OpenSUSE TW and wound up trying Plasma 5 before it was really ready for use and I had a difficult time for a week or two.
I also wound up wrecking an Intel NUC the day I got it by putting it to sleep when it had an issue that suspending to RAM would wreck the thing, but that's more of an Intel failure than a GNU/Linux failure.
Anyway, I used Windows from version 3.1.1 until I wrecked my 7 install in 2012 so I've seen plenty of blue screens in my life, and I remember the iMac I used Yosemite on hard rebooting every time I started a Xubuntu VM in VirtualBox, so I have no issue just using GNU/Linux even if I do encounter some warts every now and again.
I've used Ubuntu since 2016 and the only issue I had (which I couldn't solve at the end and had to give up) was to install a driver for an old laser printer. Apart from that, I've had absolutely no issue for installing something and I am not a geek by any means.
For me those issues are either self-inflicted or Nvidia related. It's hard to blame Ubuntu when I'm trying to change the WM for some obscure thingy. I don't tend to do distro upgrades though but install fresh.
I use system76 pop os as a main driver for my desktop.
There is a learning curve to do everything and i do occasionally switch to windows for some games. I am a senior engineer as well.
I think the biggest thing holding linux desktops back is not technical really it's a human element, like the services to talk on a forum, having things setup ahead of time for the user etc...
Windows has a learning curve which people went through if you want to switch to Linux you need to learn. Just as if you start on Linux and wanted to switch to windows you'd have a learning curve.
I use PopOS on a newer Legion 5i. Randomly the BT stopped working after a kernel update last year. Sound and wifi will sometimes not work after resuming from sleep even now. This is my average desktop Linux life experience.
Some will trot out their anecdotes that they've never experienced even one issue in decades and others will have showstopping issues at the installer. Both will be right. Anything that doesn't ship with Linux preinstalled is a total crapshoot in my experience of 25 years of using Linux on desktops and laptops. Chromebooks and Android and SteamDecks prove it can be reliable, but it takes coordinated manufacturer effort. Anything else is always a gamble of current support or future updates breaking something that previously was working.
Linux issues aren't necessarily harder to solve than Windows issues, but since software compatibility still remains the motivation for average users to switch still remains minimal, and if you recommend the switch you instantly become that person's IT support.
For a number of hobbies -- mostly but not entirely male-coded -- there is the hobby itself, and then the hobby of hacking around on the hobby.
I got an espresso machine last year. I was looking for a grinder. A huge chunk of online coffee folks suggested buying a weird grinder from China and swapping out burr sets and and and and ... and all I wanted was a turnkey grinder. I just wanted coffee. I didn't need to make a hobby of the equipment itself.
This also exists with motorcycles. I just want to ride a motorcycle. I don't have any interest in the endless mod culture of motorcycles.
And so Linux on the desktop. Linux on the desktop is great if you enjoy having to actively sysadmin your work environment, but it's shit if you just want to get some work done. The people who run it full time are people, mostly, who like the hacking part of the hobby in addition to the using part of the hobby. And I don't see that changing.
There was definitely a window in the late 90s when this could've been different, but then Apple moved to OS X, and I think that window closed forever.
I’ve been using Linux on the desktop for 4 years now. Im no means a sys admin. I bought a pre configured machine because i didn’t want any hassle. It’s largely delivered and hasn’t been any worse than the Mac I used to use at work.
Im using pop which is a Ubuntu flavor. I’ve had one problem upgrading (some package was ahead of where it needed to be..). It got resolved with a few terminal commands. (I think because I installed steam..) it’s not perfect, the software installer could be better, but man it’s pretty great. Window managers are fantastic.
Honestly after some adjustment I’m staying here. I’m not dependent on any one company and I feel the OS is respectful unlike the commercial offerings.
> it's shit if you just want to get some work done
I donno what work you want to get done but I've been getting work done on Linux for over 15 years without any issues unless they were my own creation by messing about/tinkering with what was provided out of the box by the distro - for those cases, I knew I was into risky waters and was willing to accept the risks (as it happened, I was always able to overcome those and never lost any data etc).
If you do a fresh install and do things like, use web based apps, manage documents/worksheets (say using Libreoffice) and maybe run your business application, I don't know why things would go to shit. Keep your base software changes to security fixes and don't upgrade unless you have to - things should basically chug along.
Disclaimer: if you are running a laptop with Nvidia, then I have to accept that it is shit; causes all kinds of issues with upgrades etc. In that case, either use integrated graphics or go with AMD.
"Linux on the desktop is great if you enjoy having to actively sysadmin your work environment, but it's shit if you just want to get some work done."
My wife who is non-technical uses it to get stuff done, all that she ever did on Windows, no issues after years of use. I know of other non-technical users who use it without issue. They probably know many who use it without issue. So your case seems to be isolated and unusual.
Using a new Dell Alienware PC now, first thing I did, install Ubuntu, wiping Windows. RTX 3080 is the GPU. Been using nvidia for years, they rock. I game on it using Steam Proton which also rocks, and run other native Linux games. Haven't needed to try the WiFi on it yet. Only use one screen, not sure why I'd need two.
Found a new one for you just this morning. My laptop was plugged into an external monitor and I walked away for a bit. I came back a couple hours later, closed the lid, unplugged the HDMI and power and carried it upstairs just like I would do with my Macs or this same computer booted into Windows.
Whoops! How stupid of me. This is Linux, I'm holding it wrong. Unplugging a screen from a sleeping Linux computer is not reasonable user behavior, so an unresponsive black screen it is.
Yeah, I probably could have restarted the UI service manually by hopping over to another shell but it's flat out faster to hard reboot. Linux is still a 3rd tier desktop experience.
> , linux often has me "under the hood" trying to fix stuff that is literally never an issue on another OS.
no, on other OSes you just cannot fix it. e.g. for instance on my computer I have a win32 install and for some reason on it the ethernet network speed seems locked to 100mbit-ish while on linux I get my gigabit ethernet performance. what can I do to debug this on windows when i tried the usual install / remove drivers, etc etc ? absolutely nothing, I just learn to live with the issue like most people on that OS.
I had an issue with a wifi card in my self-built win 10 PC and I'd agree there's nothing I could do myself to fix it. I'm not competent to even help write drivers but at least in theory the Linux community could write me a new one if the same issue happened on Linux.
But the reason I'm on windows in the first place is that I left Linux several years ago when I bought a second monitor and Linux would sometimes work great but sometimes fail to display anything on either of them at startup. That just was not useable. I tried again about a year after and same issue - I would like to go back to Linux but I don't have time to roll the dice on being able to start work in the morning or have to ssh in from another device to figure out what happened to my display.
If you have a windows install and your Ethernet card isn’t getting full performance a normal person will claim on your manufacturer’s warranty, or drop it off with the geek squad. They won’t ‘troubleshoot’.
If they’re running Linux, they can’t even do those things.
A normal person would have no clue they aren't getting full performance. If it's too slow they call the internet provider or buy a new computer or live with it and hate computers or ask a teckie friend.
If they can't login or the screen breaks they run to geek squad. Under no condition will they claim manufacture warranty on an internal part without a techie recommending this and removing the card/part for them
Been using Linux daily on laptops for 20 years. I haven’t ‘tinkered’ with anything for over 10 years of that. I install Debian, get my keys on it and then just clone my tools from git and run install. It’ll set it up so I have (far more) battery life than windows, have all my tooling and software. I upgraded laptops for a very long time without issues. I do pick my hardware for Linux support and I don’t care about gaming. I have really no idea what you or others mean by this? What breaks? Do you have blog posts with details? What do you do differently than me?
I know some use cases are different than mine so I wouldn’t know them, but I always wonder when I see people complaining about things like battery life (I consistently have at least double or more for Linux than on Windows for the same workloads across laptops, both 32 (aka old) and 64 bit), missing or broken drivers (I don’t use gpus locally) etc.
My non tech acquaintances have issues with Windows all the time but they just ignore them. Seems when installing Linux people suddenly want perfection?
It's an unfortunate side-effect of unreliable packaging systems like pacman. Systems like Fedora Silverblue and NixOS offer fascinating (if incomplete) glimpses into how this can be fixed, though:
- Fedora Silverblue wants to reduce software reliance on the OS as a runtime. Relying on Flatpaks allows you to freeze most dependencies in-place and have a fully reproducible (if a bit redundant) runtime environment.
- NixOS wants to eliminate software reliance on the OS by removing the OS altogether. A default NixOS install only has a symlink to sh in the /bin folder, everything else needs to be dynamically loaded by the package manager through the Nix Store (big nuclear soup folder with hashed/labelled package tarballs).
Both OSes have some rough edges that make them hard to recommend, but it does suggest a silver lining for Linux packaging in the future. It's definitely a problem, just more of a distro-specific one rather than a Linux-specific one.
I think the issue I would have with your sentiment here is that you say Linux users are hand wavy about things that make it non viable, but I also see your main argument as having a fair amount of handwave, especially the phrase "they tend to".
This isn't to say that your complaints aren't valid or that you're misrepresenting your own experience, but it doesn't further the discussion and depending on the context with which you are raising it can be seen as a disingenuous way of trying to discredit or undermine Linux as a viable option.
That is to say, in isolation your comment is fine. If a thread on a topic that is related to the Linux desktop only features people citing their unspecific list of issues with desktop Linux then it stop being a reasonable good faith discussion and starts becoming ideological Linux bashing.
> I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working
And over 25 years of Windows updates, I've had breakages too. And I've had disastrous upgrades from XP->7, and 8->10. I'd say I get one bad driver update with Windows every couple of years or so. Windows just seems to not break the main things like the desktop.
On the other hand, I've run a linux desktop for quite a few years: Arch/sway for 2yrs, Ubuntu/kde for 4yrs, and Fedora/gnome for a year. I had zero problems with Arch, a few problems with Ubuntu, and zero with Fedora.
The year of the linux desktop is now largely irrelevant because so many people are using other devices. Still, developers are now using it as their primary driver, as you can develop for the web or for Android on it.
As a counter point, I installed Ubuntu on a 5 year old laptop someone gave me because they bought a tablet and gifted it to a computer illiterate friend whose Windows laptop died. He didn’t notice it wasn’t windows and he has had 0 issues. This was over 5 years ago. He uses it for everything and takes it everywhere.
Like I said in another reply: do you have details on what happens when things break. I have never seen it myself and maybe the community can prevent it if they would know.
My wife didn’t mind Ubuntu on her laptop, except for the initial install had an upside down screen so I had to reconfigure the gyroscope to know which way is up and down, and when her RAM would get full, the system would just lock up and she’d have to restart. She could even use Microsoft Teams for calls with our daughters doctors!
To be fair, these laptops were quite old and I installed windows on another identical laptop, but Windows had totally broken Bluetooth and you couldn’t change the display brightness, which was way more annoying than the relatively minor Ubuntu issue with RAM. I never managed to fix those issues on Windows, so I’m not bashing on Linux here.
Eventually I bought her an M1 MacBook Air. She hasn’t complained once.
I've been using Linux as my daily driver for over a decade. I used to really fight things like multiple monitors, but things for better.
My current laptop is an HP Envy from Costco and I was kind of shocked that everything just worked, even the fingerprint reader.
And then it happened - one day my brightness keys quit working. Why? I have no idea and haven't spent time to find out. You are correct, it still happens, but it has been rare for me where it used to be common.
The worst part is that when they do stop working, I have forgotten the horrible kludge of steps I had to go through to get something working the first time around. Of course the answers are out there, but finding the one answer that worked on the distro I used? Needle, meet haystack. I feel this is due to a reliance on CLI to do almost everything. CLI wouldn't be so problematic if those steps worked on every distro. This is the reason that fragmentation is holding LoD back IMO.
> I've tried linux 3 or so times over the years, always the "friendly" distros.
I did the same thing, it wasn't until I used Arch Linux that I really started to understand Linux. It turned I wasn't looking for a wannabe-MacOS distro, I just really liked a minimalist Gnome 3.12+ (when Gnome hit the sweet spot) or i3 based Linux that had zero background processes, installed programs, or anything that I didn't opt-in to. If you want MacOS just use MacOS.
On Arch I could run `top` and know what everything is which had amazing performance and battery benefits.
Also learning Linux deeply (ie, the directory structures and meaning of /usr /etc, logging, managing services with SystemD, managing diskspace size, proper bash scripting w/ all of the unix tools, etc) really helped me at my job as a programmer ssh'ing into servers.
This is why I'm using Linux in the form of ChromeOS more nowadays; the updates are handled, generally, well by Google and the virtualized Linux container running on the side is quite stable because of its virtualized environment.
Weird, I’ve been using it as a professional desktop for about 20 years now, with a few forays into MacOS for a couple of years at a time thrown in. I can count issues like you describe on the fingers of one hand.
MacOS is generally very stable, of course, because they also control the hardware, but I have experienced unexpected reboots on MacBooks.
I find windows pretty frustrating and opaque, I certainly don’t know how anyone could work on it effectively. Having to find and install third party software packages just to get hardware going is a right nightmare. Recently my windows 11 (I keep it around for gaming) was complaining that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers, and listed stuff for hardware I no longer owned. I ended up on a multi-hour trip down the google rabbit hole to try to fix that because there were no updates and the official line is people should never uninstall any drivers!
All I’m saying is YMMV, maybe you just grok windows but not Linux. It’s not universal though.
> I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working. Drivers, updates, compatibility lag, whatever it is, linux often has me "under the hood" trying to fix stuff that is literally never an issue on another OS.
It's funny because this is, in fact, my reason for dumping Windows and macOS.
The only difference is that I can't open the hood if I'm on Windows or macOS. So, if something breaks there, I'm simply screwed.
Between forced upgrades on macOS (sure, you can keep your OS back, but things like XCode, for example, will do their damndest to force you to upgrade) and random "Windows Update" stupidity ("Nope, no work for you! I must spend 30 minutes upgrading. Oh, by the way, do you want to upgrade to Windows 11 and we put the GTFO button in 6 point italic on your other monitor and we'll harass you again tomorrow.) I finally decamped for Linux permanently and haven't regretted it one iota.
I've used linux for two decades and enjoyed every year of it. The recent 7 years or so have been as painless as windows in my experience. Honestly, handling updates on linux has been better I would say.
All OSes can stop working, or have a component that stops working. What I think is happening here, is that we are more forgiving towards our preferred OS. When something stops working on Windows, I first complain about yet another thing not working in Windows, and then I fix it. When instead something breaks on my favorite Linux distro (not naming it intentionally to avoid a distro war) I just fix it. In my experience, I have less problems on Linux than on Windows, but different users have different experiences and value different aspects of an OS.
> I've tried linux 3 or so times over the years, always the "friendly" distros.
In 2023, you should not try as many distros as possible. They are all similar enough. You should try hardware designed for Linux, instead of one forcing Linux developers to reverse-engineer WiFi and suspend to make it work. Ideally, try it preinstalled. I am happy with my Librem 15, no tinkering is ever required.
> I've attacked it as a viable option because linux users seem to handwave some of the things that make it a non viable option for a large % of the population.
Yep, exactly this. A portion of the Linux Desktop community is so high on its own farts that it can't tolerate the idea that people might have legitimate reasons for not using Linux as their desktop. If you have a problematic use case, their suggestion is to get a different use case.
No more to contribute then those who add their anecdotal experience of having used Linux on the desktop for 20 years "flawlessly" or that their grandma uses it and doesn't have any issues as a response to someone talking about how things they need don't actually work.
If you want to chastise me for echoing parent's sentiment then that's fine. I'm used to getting grief literally any time I complain about anything in Linux. Remarkably, the same is not true when I complain about Windows. Funny that.
IMO Linux Desktops can be the best option for both for a certain type of developer¹ and for extremely unskilled users².
¹ e.g. web, system development, backend, admin. KDE Plasma is both extremely usable and customizable. I haven't missed anything in comparison with Windows and Mac systems (in fact I always miss stuff when using the other systems).
² I switched my parents to Ubuntu a while back and it has been a surprisingly good decision (90% less support call about weird popup windows, missing icons, etc.) Linux comes with it's own challenges, but compared to 10 years ago most of the stuff just works now
I really love KDE's power user configurability as much as I hate Gnome's opinionated design :) I moved to Linux because Apple pissed me off too much so gnome was too much of the same. Though I can see how it does work for other people. So great that Linux still has choices.
I've never used Apple, never liked Jobs or the too high prices. KDE rules, Gnome 2 was good but was never a fan of Gnome 3. KDE has done it right (speaking as a technical user).
If the Mac didn't exist, yeah, it would have been TEMPTING to try and get my parents onto it . . . except: no.
They wanted Quicken and Quickbooks. They wanted easy document sharing with Office. They wanted easy access to scanners for photo conversion. So the Mac was the right choice.
I can see setting up a Linux machine for a less demanding audience, but it's a narrow use case.
Linux won't Quicken for you (a tragedy, I know), but interop with scanners and Microsoft office is easy. Libreoffice has had really straightforward docx support for years and the printer/scanner driver is literally the same one MacOS uses (CUPS).
It's still a nuanced decision and I agree with your original conclusion. That being said, if you're going to assist them with setting up any machine then I don't see why Linux would be particularly difficult (besides the Quicken-ing).
Also, the interoperability of Libreoffice is, in my experience, deeply flawed. It was a compelling option when Office was expensive, but now that the real deal is cheap I don't see many non-ideological reasons to use it.
You have hit on the real issue here, in my opinion, but framed it terribly. The suitability of Linux for any given person often has nothing to do anymore with ease of use or of its capabilities.
As with others here, I have people in my life I provide tech support to. I have moved some off Windows to Linux and had those requests go down. There are others I would never recommend Linux for. My wife uses MacOS.
I use a bit of everything operating system wise. My most frequent daily driver is my wife’s old iMac but I run Linux on it. By default I would have left MacOS on it but MacOS was a massive pain actually. Many of the applications I want to run are a hassle to source and maintain on MacOS. A bigger problem was that the iMac no longer runs the most recent MacOS which means there are many other apps whose current versions cannot be run on it either. For me, moving to Linux on this hardware meant dramatically fewer problems, more focus on actual work, and easy access to a much larger and up-to-date universe of applications. I do not mean just Open Source either. Examples of applications whose latest versions only run on Linux include Microsoft Edge, Teams, Zoom, Slack, and probably a bunch more I have forgotten. I use a lot of Podman ( Docker ) containers and these work significantly better under Linux. I collaborate professionally and share office documents every day using both LibreOffice and Office 365 on the web. To counter your example, peripheral compatibility including my newer printers and scanners is better under Linux as well.
I honestly doubt I represent a less “demanding audience” than your parents. The percentage of the market that would be perfectly happy with my setup is probably not “narrow”.
I have no doubt though that running Qhickbooks would be a hassle for me.
And this I think is the key point of the “normies” argument.
My mother does not have demanding needs. What she does have are friends that will recommend things or send her stuff that assumes the same environment they are using. Her “techie” friends ( hardly ) may send her instructions on how to do things which again assume she is using the same environment they are. Unless you are a tinkerer, all this is just easier and goes better if you are using the same platform ( Windows for almost everyone ). The same could be said of Chrome vs Firefox though really. People buy iPhones so that their text messages to friends show as blue instead of green. For many people, the killer feature is “being the same”.
If you are a “normie” and you heavily rely on an platform specific application, switching is hard. Not because other platforms lack power but simply because they are different.
My wife’s friends and colleagues mostly use Macs and, because of her iPhone, she is a heavy user of the Apple ecosystem. MacOS makes the most sense for her.
If I completely switched back to MacOS or Windows at this point, I would hate it and have a long list of examples of basic tasks that are too hard or how they are not powerful enough for me. Many people who switch to Linux feel the same.
As above though, I use all the major operating systems regularly and, as a casual user ( what I am much of the time ), they are all fine.
Don't get me wrong here, I used (and still use) Windows for decades. All my Video stuff, all my Audio stuff is just not there yet on Linux.
I think Linux Desktop can be great for experts and beginners with simple needs. The inbetweeners are where it can fall short. With the added malus that the network effect favours the big operating systems.
When it comes to audio and video it is weird for me because at the same time there are some bread and butter plugins that I just won't get on Linux, on the other hand the customizability is off the charts. You want to automatically load a certain configuration when a certain device connects? Write a simple udev rule. You want to use three sound cards at the same time? No problem.
I can see how that kind of tinkering is not for everyone, but if a certain thing doesn't work on Windows or MacOS it often means there is no way to do it, while on Linux it often means you just need to spend a day or two on it if you really want that.
I can't remember the last time I plugged in a printer/scanner on Linux and it didn't work without me needing to do anything. Brother, HP, and Kyocera printers over the last couple of years have all worked without issue on first plug.
I think one of the best things that happened to me is that my desktop’s onboard graphics card died sometime mid 2021 or so.
What that meant was that Windows was incapable of booting my computer (even though I have a perfectly functional external graphics card) but Ubuntu was able to do so flawlessly on the first install.
So any “You’re an idiot to use Linux on the desktop because XYZ” comments are super easy for me to brush off. It doesn’t matter what Linux doesn’t do or does wrong, it’s given me a working computer, something neither Windows or MacOS could.
I am negative about linux on desktop because it has been a major disappoinment every time I try it.
Last two attempts - ever since I've built my 5900x desktop last summer I can't even get fedora to boot from stick without freezing. I don't have the energy to deal with such issues anymore - I've spent years rebuilding custom drivers, dealing with upgrade breaking my system, etc. Same desktop - windows just works - needed to download a few drivers manually - other than that - plug and play.
And MacOS is next level in that regard.
I dislike Windows choices very much but Linux desktop is just not an option if you want low maintenance/streamlined experience.
Your comment here is pretty typical of a medium grade HN response. That is to say:
* Thorough and well thought through. Well written (unlike, say, Reddit)
* Polite, doesn't attack the person you're responding to or represent their position as ridiculous
However
* Entirely rooted in personal experience and often missing the broader point or use case being described in OP.
In this case I can see that you're describing why you yourself are negative on the Linux desktop (which is on topic), but responses like this miss the context of Steam Deck, Proton and imply that the issues found are never going to improve, to the point you are writing off the whole concept of a Linux platform for all use cases.
On HN this seems to appear a lot and is used very often to stifle tangential discussions. A thread about how many games now run on Proton will have at least one and likely many people writing a list of all the technical issues they've had with Linux recently and then either explicitly or implicitly saying that as a result Linux is not ready or not suitable for case stated in the article.
Linux on the desktop usually means a Windows replacement - historically, and the most relevant meaning to me personally.
The reason I'm not hopeful things will improve is same as always - not enough critical mass to get the momentum going. I was buying a PCIe wifi card a few months ago and wanted to check support for Linux in case I try again. There were zero options locally where I could reliably determine that onboard BT would work, and there were like 5 modern cards available.
I just don't see what commercial entity is going to push Linux desktop development ? Linux server is mostly a result of big players working together to commoditize the OS, scaling with commercial os on the backed would get prohibitively expensive immediately. Don't see where the desktop push will come from.
Deck seems like a desktop to me. Has x86 hardware, all the same ports as the venerable Macbook Pro and a nice beefy GPU built-into the machine. If the Deck ships with KDE installed and accessible in the settings, I think it's safe to call it a desktop.
The Steam Deck is a full PC that boots into a console UI. You can switch it into desktop mode which uses KDE - a very popular desktop environment.
You can dock the Stem Deck using a USB-C hub to connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. This is a use case that is supported by Valve and Valve sells a first party docking station to facilitate this.
There have been multiple people citing on the Steam Deck subreddit that they regularly use the Steam Deck in this way and a few even saying they use it as their daily driver.
It's a laptop in a handheld form factor. That is all.
It looks like you edited your comment to expand, so I'll address the new points separately.
I think the first thing to note is going back to my OP in that I simply don't understand why people like yourself will go to such lengths to argue against Linux desktop, citing all the issues you've had with it when I don't see this kind of kick back against any other technology or even any other concept more widely. If people don't like something or don't think it'll work they'll either ignore the thread or post a much shorter response expressing doubts. I think the only thing that I saw get to a similar stage was crypto, but it seems like the crypto community split off into their own little world whereas the Linux communities still stay in a fairly close orbit to technical circles.
I think secondly this speaks to another comment I made elsewhere where the counter-arguments for Linux desktop are firmly rooted in personal experience. Here you're also explicitly saying that the issues you're having you don't think are going to improve.
But Linux had improved. It's improved massively in the last 5-10 years. 2 years ago I couldn't play Apex Legends. 5 years ago I couldn't play Direct X games without a lot of effort. 10 years ago I couldn't get YouTube or Netflix.
Things are improving and whilst your personal opinion may still be that Linux still won't be viable, the sheer number of people that comment in a similar vain means that there is a negative smog around Linux that stops or discourages more positive discussion.
The only reason I'm adding negative feedback is because every time I read optimistic feedback on forums I get hopeful and try it - only to get hit by a cold shower. I'll try again - I see that Fedora dropped a new release, but I suspect I'll get similar results.
So I'm not against Linux desktop - I'm just saying the people singing it's praises probably have different expectations from me so I'm trying to add another viewpoint (because it's always subjective experiences in these threads - I can't remember reading statistics about hardware coverage and similar news)
Most people never mention the hardware issue in regards to installing a successful Linux desktop. The expectation that all hardware combinations will just work is a little bit optimistic. I've run Linux desktops ever since X11 was available, but I always research the hardware aspect prior to installing a distribution and have always had a good experience (not perfect, but good).
> ever since I've built my 5900x desktop last summer
As someone who’s been using Ubuntu exclusively since 2008, this comment is bizarre. The pain point with pcs has always been compatibility and driver support. The Microsoft miracle was ubiquitous vendor support they enforced with their monopoly. Apple handles this by tightly controlling hardware and peripherals. Linux being the odd man out has always suffered.
The result of this dynamic has always been that Linux is best on previous generation hardware. So the question for the parent is; did you check support for the components used in your custom build? By explaining the history, I hope this question is received in a non hostile manner by the reader.
Maybe this advice or reality is lost today I don’t know. I find it to be annoying that many don’t know. Related to the way many dismiss the Linux desktop because they can’t use photoshop or application of choice; when cross platform apps have always been the exception.
How hard is it to build a working hackintosh system compared to making a useful Linux install? I've tried Linux a few times over the years (including last year), and every time had to dig deep into terminal commands, tutorials and config files to make basic OS functionality work. If that's what you have to do, maybe it's less of a hassle to build/install a hackintosh system.
I've got linux on half a dozen machines around the house, and all I do to install is decide whether to use ubuntu or debian, then run the install and get a working system spat out in little time.
Hackintoshes require a lot of thought and preparation and things like (for example) nvidia graphics cannot work, and intel wifi is problematic (I see there is an alpha driver now).
What "basic OS functionality" are you talking about that needs terminal commands, tutorials and config files?
Re-reading my comment and considering the general tone of the thread, it seems I was making a rhetorical question or suggestion, but I'm genuinely interested in knowing from people with experience if a hackintosh could be a better alternative to Linux. Looking online it seems to be a horrendous process, but there is also a helpful and competent community, great guides, and very detailed hardware suggestions. If I have to waste a couple of days to turn a new machine into a hackintosh and then have it work as normal, that would be a cheaper price to pay than learning programming - which is more or less required to use Linux as a power user. Not even considering all pro software available on Mac that is not available on Linux.
As for the basic OS functionality I couldn't get functioning in Linux Ubuntu when I had to use it for some weeks last year:
1. Installing software: In the Ubuntu App Store, most software just gave an error without details trying to install. You can't download files and open to install like in other systems. You have to mess with installing different repos and then use commands in terminal. But apt-get Firefox doesn't work, it has to be apt-get install Firefox. Or Yum if you're on another distro.
2. Dual displays with different DPI: I had to make some kind of xrander script with a 0.99999999 instead of 1 hack and run it on every boot to make this work.
3. E-Mail: I couldn't find a client that was good enough for my professional needs and had to resolve to using Fastmail in the browser. The same with Calendar apps; all the Linux options were very basic and not good enough for pro use.
4. Keyboard shortcuts are not shared by all apps like in other OSes, very hard to configure. In macOS there's Better Touch Tool that does absolutely everything.
I won't bring up hardware problems, since that can be blamed on the device manufacturer equally as on Linux, but these things above are already deal breakers to me. I tried other distros, but they were worse than Ubuntu to get to work.
Linux is great for server admins and programmers I believe, and I'm sure it's much better than Windows for a grandparent to browse and just use web apps. But there exists many power users and professionals who need a useful computer and are not able to recompile the OS or nano/vim in huge config files to make their system work. I'm one of them, and desktop Linux is not an option in its current state.
MacOS is not perfect, maybe not even great, but it has all basic OS functionality out of the box. If anything is bothering me or I need special functionality there is always well-polished software available to easily install to solve any problem. Sometimes free, and sometimes for a cheap price. Among many programmers and Linux enthusiasts it seems to be a crime against humanity to pay for software, something I never understood. If I can pay $10 to buy an app that fixes my problem, why would I waste my time recompiling and tinkering, dredging through dense Linux forums? Add to this all the incredible productivity software that can be bought in MacOS for a cheap price.
So that makes me wonder if Hackintosh is not a better option for power users who are not programmers?
> In the Ubuntu App Store, most software just gave an error without details trying to install.
That does sound like an issue. I don't think it's a common one though. I can't say I've had that problem with any of my Ubuntu installs. When was this?
> You can't download files and open to install like in other systems.
You absolutely can, but you shouldn't, we have repositories that handle those, publish updates etc, and everything is of known provenance. Download-and-double-click is a pretty broken model that encourages people to install compromised crap from god knows where and get their systems owned.
> apt-get Firefox doesn't work, it has to be apt-get install Firefox
Seriously, your complaint is that, in multi-function tool apt-get, you have to type "apt-get install firefox" instead of just "apt-get firefox".
This is not a reasonable complaint. You claim to be a "power user", but an extra word (which distinguishes between install, update and remove tasks for apt) is too much trouble? That doesn't sound very power-usery to me.
> Dual displays with different DPI
Yeah fair enough, this has been a problem area. Nvidia-settings will often do the job or you end up with a script. Wayland allegedly fixes this, but isn't suitable for nvidia users.
IMHO once you have your xrandr script though, you end up with a system that's better than either MS or Apple can manage, which displays things more consistently across your screens.
> E-Mail: I couldn't find a client that was good enough for my professional needs
Who even uses an email client any more? Everything's web based. Are there mail clients that provide more functionality than Thunderbird?
> Keyboard shortcuts are not shared by all apps
It's true, however they are consistent enough these days, especially within an ecosystem like gnome or kde, I barely notice.
> need a useful computer and are not able to recompile the OS
> why would I waste my time recompiling and tinkering
Yeah at this point I'm going with the other responder, there's quite a lot of FUD leaking into your post here. The idea that you have to recompile your OS or anything else to get a functional system is around 15 years out of date now and straight out of microsoft's old FUD playbook.
> dredging through dense Linux forums?
Just last week my windows 11 install (I keep it around for gaming) complained that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers. It listed drivers for hardware I no longer owned as being a problem. I ended up on a multi-hour trip down the google rabbit hole to try to fix that because there were no updates to those drivers and the official microsoft line is people should never uninstall any drivers, so they don't provide an interface to do it. Eventually I found some command-line tool, after dredging through a dense windows forum, that MS don't want normal users to know about.
So IMHO, windows is not suitable for the desktop user.
> So that makes me wonder if Hackintosh is not a better option for power users who are not programmers?
The idea that you can run a Hackintosh without messing around even more than a linux install, and without risking total system breakage on every update, is kinda funny.
This is why I felt the need to respond to you - setting up a hackintosh starts as an exercise in finding compatible hardware (because you can't just throw anything at it). Nvidia won't work. AMD cards will work, but you may end up having to do all sorts of odd stuff like device id spoofing (https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/y6yzue/drivers_...)
Note how far you have to get before you even proceed to installation!
I love Macs, and have run hackintoshes in the past, but in general it's not an exercise for someone who's afraid to type the word 'install' in their apt command line to install firefox.
>I can't say I've had that problem with any of my Ubuntu installs. When was this?
This was in 2022 using Ubuntu 20.04 I believe. Like probably many users I was following online tutorials / forums to try to set up my system and maybe I broke something, since it's all copy and pasting terminal commands. Tried to repair/reset but couldn't. I just accepted to use apt-get instead. I needed a working computer every day for my job.
Downloading apps would result in .deb files if I remember right, which would usually not install.
I imagine for a beginner-intermediate Linux user, having to resort to terminal and apt-get command to install software and get started is already too much, unless they have a special interest in Linux. If distro makers insist on terminal use, why not have some mercy and just call the command "install" instead of "apt-get" or "yum"?
Power users are not all programmers or sysadmins, they are also other kind of professionals who use computers effectively for work.
>Who even uses an email client any more?
Millions of people I would believe. The native Mail client in MacOS is really nice and integrates completely with the rest of the system. This saves a ton of time, and to me it's always nicer to use native software. And there are many high quality options to install if I don't like the one that comes in the box.
I haven't used Outlook, but it seems to be very powerful and integrated in the MS Office ecosystem. I know the Linux crowd prefers online clients, and I think it is because native clients are not good enough.
> Yeah at this point I'm going with the other responder, there's quite a lot of FUD leaking into your post here.
I've certainly been down that path where the advice/solution to solve my Linux problems is starting to recompile stuff. My apologies that I don't remember what it was, I believe it was for Bluetooth or sleep to work.
> Just last week my windows 11 install (I keep it around for gaming) complained that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers.
I haven't used Windows for many years, but if things are as they used to be, you can always reinstall Windows to fix it, right? With Linux, reinstalling never improved things for me. With MacOS I could never break the system to the extent that reinstallation would be necessary.
The reason why I'm even here talking about Linux is because Windows is a hopeless case, but why can't Linux devs meet their users half way and make things a little easier? Make some GUIs for common settings and don't throw people into the command line when scratching a little on the surface. Most of users don't want to learn terminal commands, the GUI was invented for normal users.
> The idea that you can run a Hackintosh without messing around even more than a linux install, and without risking total system breakage on every update, is kinda funny.
That's why I'm asking! OS updates would be out of the question on a hackintosh, but after getting an install with all basic OS functionality working would be golden - and could be a better option than Linux for many people. Maybe it could even be a job for people to turn PCs into hackintosh boxes, just like many people here are installing Linux for their grandparents?
> I love Macs, and have run hackintoshes in the past, but in general it's not an exercise for someone who's afraid to type the word 'install' in their apt command line to install firefox.
No need to get stuck on that idea. I'm just wondering if hackintosh would be worth the effort compared to making a well working Linux install, if after that you have an OS with a better user experience and never have the need to mess with it again.
Also to remember is that MacOS is made by a company that for profit reasons is hostile to users trying to install the system on other machines, making the process harder. For Linux there should be no reason making things hard.
So how has your hackintosh experience been? Could you use it as a normal Mac after having gone through the install process? Was there any problem with Apple ID accounts and such? I'm curios to know. Would it have been a computer that you could give to someone else and have them use productively with the caveat "Don't upgrade the OS"?
Edit: One thing I loved with Linux during my recent use was the fantastic looks of the Gnome user interface. Professional and friendly, super consistent. A new gold standard in computer GUIs, superior to MacOS.
> Downloading apps would result in .deb files if I remember right,
You've done something very wrong at that point. Very, very wrong.
> No need to get stuck on that idea. I'm just wondering if hackintosh would be worth the effort compared to making a well working Linux install
Resoundingly no.
Before you fly off on a hackintosh flight of fancy, try actually reading the link I gave you above, it's a massively involved process.
I'm not going to bother going through the rest of your post. The recompilation stuff is many years out of date and there's just so much supposition in there.
> One thing I loved with Linux during my recent use was the fantastic looks of the Gnome user interface. Professional and friendly, super consistent. A new gold standard in computer GUIs
Each one to their own. If this is the face and the conduct of the Linux community, then good luck I guess. Why take it as a personal insult that a stranger has a different opinion than you on GUI look and feel? I looked at your link, yes I know it is a complicated process.
I'm not of nor do I represent "the linux community", I'm a multi-os user with no explicit favourite. I called you a troll because your posts read like deliberate trolling to me.
> rebuilding custom drivers, dealing with upgrade breaking my system
If you compile custom drivers for your operating system, then maybe it breaking at some future upgrade shouldn't come as a great surprise? Presumably you know what you're doing and find these things fun and rewarding in their own right.
Well, Linux has had a rough decade. The messaging around Wayland was like a stubbed toe for many users, with a lot of people trying it and denouncing it for being unfinished (a completely fair criticism). Now that Wayland is starting to get finished, the 'just works' quotient is increasing quite a bit for Linux, and people can share their recent success stories with a bit more impunity.
It's not unreasonable to assume Linux is bad, it's only unreasonable to assume nothing has changed since the last time you tried it. Make of that what you will.
All decades have been rough decades, from modeline generation, to the switch to PulseAudio to Wayland. There is always a construction ground in desktop Linux. That's the sad story of the Linux desktop. It's really a hard problem to crack, it requires vast amounts of manpower, a lot of coordination between various parts of the ecosystem and it doesn't help that most hardware vendors are not cooperative. Go back ten or twenty years and you'll find exactly the same message as yours "it used to be bad, but most problems are solved now, really".
Desktop Linux will always be in a state where it is great for technical users who have the expertise and time to fix and work around things. Because once you've done so, it is infinitely malleable. It will always be a miserable experience for non-technical users or technical users who don't have the time to fix the issues. Linux on the desktop only really excels when one party polishes the experience to be great and makes all the bit work togerther. E.g. like Google did with Android and ChromeBooks or to some extend Red Hat with Fedora (which is the best and most consistent Linux desktop experience).
Outside the desktop, little software is as successful as Linux. It's the substrate of the modern tech world.
Linux fails because it's not a product. Ironically that's the exact reason why it's a breakaway success in the server world, but gets no desktop market share. When you turn Linux into a product and market it (a-la Android, FireTV, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, Tesla Car™, et. al), it's successful all of the sudden again.
Desktop Linux' success is like a hedge bet against Microsoft and OSX. It's just capable enough to be dangerous in a Mexican standoff between the three OSes.
The Nintendo Switch is not running Linux. There is Android and FreeBSD code in there, but at its core its a rewrite of the 3DS OS. it's not like the Steam Deck at all.
Sinking a lot of time into Wayland (via Sway WM) around the pandemic is what finally got me off Linux on my Mac laptop (yes I've worked around the usual issues, it was an arbitrary switch). It's a solid operating system and the configuration can be powerful, but having to mess around with per-monitor screen scaling, installing extra software to get screen sharing to work, learning way too much about pulseaudio and the bluetooth stack to route audio around correctly, I decided it was not worth the effort to get what comes out-of-the-box in commercial operating systems. Modern software is complicated and we really expect so many things to somehow work correctly that it's any wonder that things work at all (and they often break in unexpected ways anyway).
Starting with Sway is not going to give you anything out of the box. Both KDE and GNOME will give you nice settings for display scaling, screen sharing, networking and pre-configured audio.
Not to accuse you of shooting yourself in the foot, but a lot of these things are much nicer managed by complete desktops.
Fractional scaling does not work at all in GNOME. There is an experimental hack to enable it, but all your X11 applications will be blurry. Screen sharing and Bluetooth doesn't properly work half of the time when video conferencing.
I did try to switch to GNOME 40+ but, as a sibling comment says, fractional scaling did not work, and I found GNOME to be even more difficult to tweak precisely.
Wayland only added support for fractional scaling a couple months ago, it will be a while before we see it standardized in desktop settings and app libraries (maybe longer for Electron).
GNOME is certainly a tweak-lover's nightmare though, I'd recommend giving KDE a spin if you're brave. Qt applications and KDE should recieve fractional scaling support much sooner than GNOME (patch is already written/submitted), and generally the settings menu on that desktop is much more granular.
X has worked great and continues to do so and is far more feature rich than Wayland will likely ever be. As long as X is available, I will use X. I can do remote desktop with X and I can so "ssh -X hostname" to run an X app.
FWIW as much as I want Wayland to become the norm already, I still run into bugs when I try to use it. My latest issue is that Firefox somehow stops responding to mouse clicks after I interact with a certain element (I still don't know which one). I'm sure this is an addon or plugin or extension or whatever causing issues, but even for me as an enthusiast, X11 Just Works (TM). My experience trying Wayland on Nvidia, the most popular GPU brand for PC gamers, is also not exactly great. Could just be my hardware though and I'll admit I'm due a reinstall after brute forcing system config files.
On the other hand, Pipewire has fixed so many small audio problems for me that I didn't even know I was having that I'm glad I switched over.
My biggest issue with Linux for mainstream is not Linux or its distros, but the guides online who are outdated, tell people to open a terminal for every little thing, tell people to add random software repositories that will definitely break something about the system within a year as a workaround without listing the implications, or are extremely condescending towards users.
Microsoft Certified Technicians and user forums will usually tell you to reinstall your OS every time an error shows up but at least they don't give detailed instructions on disabling all security on your computer, fucking up your bootloader config with a oneliner from 2009 that doesn't even solve anything or tells you to modify UEFI settings (like secure boot) for no reason at all.
People with no knowledgeable friends and family will find they get little support from help desks and other paid service centers and that's a big problem. Many normal people rely on external parties to help them with their computers when their printer decides to show some kind of error and computer service employees seem to only know Linux from their community college OpenSUSE server management course.
Back when I did helpdesk for a small ISP I had the occasional Linux user (often installed by friends or family because Windows XP stopped getting updates) and the problems I helped fix were all solveable by GUI settings and were documented in the internal IT knowledge base but still I got to do every single call because I "knew Linux". They did the same for OSX, whose users I also gladly helped to the best of my ability, but that's only because I bothered to Google and try because I'd never even seen a Mac. I've been gone for years but I don't think you'll get any support if you try to call that company with a Linux device today.
Strangely enough, this wasn't a problem for my coworkers when Windows released a new overhaul of all systems and settings. I remember when Windows 8 hit and everybody managed to sort out the terribly unintuitive GUI in a week.
My conclusion from this is that people have a very strange view of what Linux really is, based on something they've seen someone else do years ago. It's like basing all your opinions about Windows on someone managing a barebones Windows 2012 install through PowerShell. Several people were amazed when I showed them a screenshot of Linux running a GUI and the fact you could download Discord from a built-in software store blew their mind.
I think it's because some of us have heard about it for... 20 years maybe? And then lost a few days or weeks to trying to make it work.
I'm sure for some people it works perfectly, and I haven't tried for at least 6 years, but I was damn annoyed after the last time I lost a week to a laptop with no WiFi, 45 minutes battery life (instead of 5 hours in windows), and no external monitor support. I was sure (at the time) to tell other people of my issues, so they were aware, if they were being told how awesom a Windows replacement Arch (or whatever) was.
If you're still interested, I would try again now. The experience has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 5 years. I haven't had a WiFi issue since 2018
The thing about long-time Linux (on the desktop) users is that they've got so used to how bad it is, they think it's good.
Install Ubuntu/Mint/Pop/etc on a 3-4 year old laptop and.. Great, it probably works now! That is better than things were 10 years ago. It'll even connect with your Google account, etc. Wow! Looks slick.
Close the lid. Open it again. Hmm. Blank screen. Fans going crazy though. Wait a while. Hold down the power button, start it up again. Spend 3 hours googling and trying things (and in the process, 'sudo'ing all sorts of stuff which appeared to do nothing but may be breaking things even more). Give up. Try to remember to power down instead of expecting sleep/suspend to work.
Let's listen to some MP3's.. Oh.. Sound doesn't work!
[Spend all night trying multiple ways to make sound work]
Yay, sound works, unless it doesn't, in which case reboot. Good enough for now.
Time to do some actual work. Plug in a couple of monitors. Hm, resolutions are a bit weird, let's go and change those in the easy GUI config screen and whaaaAAAT?!
No, I haven’t, and it would only be anecdotal evidence anyway. The issue is that there’s still the same mix of “it works without issues for me” and “I gave up making it work” comments as there was 5/10/15 years ago. I certainly believe that some things have improved, but it appears that in practice it’s still a gamble and heavily depends on one’s particular requirements and use cases.
KDE isn’t exactly new, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
I'm explicitly referring to Proton, a Wine and DXVK project from Valve that now means that many games now work on Linux [0][1].
KDE has had a similar level of investment and polish and I believe has now crossed a threshold where it is comparable in usability and smoothness to Windows or Mac. It now uses Wayland which means that it solves a lot of the janky issues inherent to X. KDE is not new, but it is much better to the point where I feel unless you've used it in the last 2 years you wouldn't be able to fully appreciate.
I think the article linked and my original comment both take issue with the number of negative comments here. People like yourself seem to be taking them as a general barometer at best or at worst a complete indictment, when many of them see to be citing issue that haven't been seen for years.
Specifically, my OP was complaining about how people are so free to spin off these lists of issues without any qualifying context which I believe leads to this misleading representation of the current state of things.
> The main sentiment in your comment which I don't think I've seen addressed in other comments is the fervency of the people attacking the mere notion that Linux is not a viable option...but I'm often surprised with the confidence and sheer malice of people who will attack any notion of Linux not being a viable desktop.
> I've seen it on HN, I've seen it in Gaming subreddits, I've had it in non-technical subreddits and I've had it in real life. People just have no qualms shitting on anyone who expresses problems with linux and it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view.
You can see it up and down this thread, anyone who expresses frustrations or compatibility issues immediately gets 3 replies to the effect of "You're wrong, I've been running linux since 1954 and it works perfectly and no issue like that exists".
I like linux. I maintain a cluster of linux machines at work, and have 2 linux boxes at home because it does things that windows just can't. But those 2 boxes take up about 90% of my "tech support" time.
I also see the complement. My comment's top reply is someone including an attack on Linux rather than expanding on their main motivations (unless they see them as one and the same?) and the responses and children thereof are then all about people either also attacking or trying to defend Linux.
It seems like a topic that is really deeply seated for this audience, but the fact that it is so deeply seated is a blind spot that doesn't seem like people have the ability or the interest to examine.
It's because I've expanded on my issues with linux over and over and over again. And there's always some laundry list of "well did you try..." followed by the kind of forum hunting for answers and CLI inputs that I haven't had to do on any other machine since the 2010's.
And that's if people are being reasonable. I've had plenty of insanely nasty interactions (not that it's unique to linux, but the ratio sure is higher) and it's the only time I've ever been told "well why don't you just write your own driver".
Hell the most simple, concrete, easily documented example in recent times was Linus' attempt to use linux as a gaming platform, where when trying to debug a basic issue, he nuked the machine.
This entire series is an extremely well documented example of what many "mid level" users experience is going to be, and 10 minutes into that video, in attempting to install steam on PopOS, a distro designed for gaming, he uninstalls his desktop.
This is SUCH a red flag for anyone who's ever worked UI/UX. Seriously, look in detail at what he did about 10 min in.
1. Installs PopOS for gaming.
2. Trys to install steam, it fails with a complicated error that is of very little help.
3. Some amount of time spent on offscreen research.
4. Comes up with sudo apt-get install steam as an answer.
And if you're moderately techy at all, that seems like a perfectly reasonable answer (still not the "just use the installer that was SUPPOSED to work but it doesn't seem malicious). Sudo for admin, apt-get is the cli everyone uses, and then just install steam right? Cool.
5. You then get a couple of pages of heavy technobabble if you're not a common linux user with a "type yes you really want to do this prompt". That's a red flag, but again when the CLI entry basically translates to "admin install steam" yeah you're not really expecting it to then uninstall your desktop.
Now the pinned comment on the video is "this has been fixed and shouldn't be possible anymore". And there's TONS of comments saying "oh well he should've done x or y first", but this has been my and many other people's experience with linux for decades, and we're all tired of going in circles.
This video series was a wonderful example of all the little "oops" and "gotcha" moments that I think a ton of linux users just handwave away, or don't even realize they're naturally preventing by having just adapted (well of course i ran a system update after the install? Don't you?). I spend a lot of my job looking very carefully at how people do things, because what most people think is a 4 step process is actually a 10 step process where they just assumed 6 of those steps were obvious, and that's what it has always been like to try and learn linux for me.
I'll try it again in the future I'm sure, but this semantic argument nonsense when there's so much evidence of linux flaws floating around gets old. I don't want to have to write an essay on my childhood traumas and motivations and how that led me to linux every time I try to use an OS. I want it to work, and when it doesn't work, I want the solutions to be easy to find and implement. Not based on what configuration of OS, hardware, versions, and phases of the moon.
Some of that is not directly linux's fault, being unpopular makes it harder for them to support all hardware, but that doesn't matter to the end user.
I think this is a phenomenon less specific to choice of OS and more based in some bad part of the human psyche that inclines people to punish nonconformity/“the out group”. 20 years ago using a Mac was often greeted with similar nasty attitude.
Maybe Windows fans holding onto one of its last remaining advantages? I have a Windows desktop solely for games. I’d be 100% done with Windows if all the games I play worked flawlessly on Linux
I’m working on running windows in a VM with near native performance and then running that under gentoo.
Not technically divesting myself of windows, but having it abstracted from my bare metal will give me a certain peace of mind and smugness. I think anticheat freaks out on one or two games I don’t play doing it like that.
I did the same until a few weeks ago. I then decided that if it doesn't work on Linux I'm not interested anymore. Same with games that I want to play but don't natively support ultra-wide resolutions (looking at you, Fallout 4).
The reason I gave up is because most games that I want to play but don't work is down to anti-cheat software.
I switched to Linux full-time a couple years ago. I had a Windows desktop for the same reasons - games.
Once Valve incorporated Proton, it was all over for Windows for me. I already used Linux (Debian/Devuan) full-time at work on my laptops and servers.
I don't miss Windows at all. Running Devuan right now on an AMD B450 with a 5600, 64GB RAM, and a 1080ti.
I will admit that video driver updates are a little more involved than on Windows, but since I don't have a mainstream Linux distro like Ubuntu, that's to be expected.
I basically went the same way a few years ago. It's a shame that there are still gaps, and I understand why it doesn't work for everyone. But if you really enjoy using Linux or you're really sick of Windows and you're willing to try limiting yourself to Linux-compatible games, you will find that there are more games than you have time to play.
If you're willing to pair Linux with a gaming console, you get coverage that's more than good enough for me.
I think it's likely just tribalism. There is no nuance to the comments, which is a hallmark of tribalism. A more nuanced discussion might make some key basic concessions:
- Windows will have better support in most cases.
- Linux users might need to be more technically savvy in most cases. (although most PC gamers are probably technically savvy enough to _use_ linux.)
- Windows will usually (but surprisingly not always) get somewhat better performance than Linux in gaming.
- etc.
A more nuance discussion might then state that all things being equal, Windows is usually the better gaming platform, however Linux is perfectly viable, particularly if your operating system concerns come before your gaming concerns.
My problem with people saying stuff like this in the open is that we all know it's not true - by recommending it to others, or even saying it out loud for others to hear, they are wasting the time of those who try it. It's malicious.
Just as surprising to me was walking my dogs down my street a couple months ago, and hearing one of my neighbors loudly talking about software that is free from corporate and government interference, and that you can see the source code for such things. And it wasn’t the neighbor that was getting rid of his rack-mountable equipment in a garage sale because he is retiring. Most of the neighbors tinker with cars and off-road vehicles.
Linux must run well on ALL laptops because every distro tells you to just burn a USB stick, install on your rando laptop, and it will work great! Which is, if course, a lie. You end up with a lot of disappointed users who have "done the experiment" and have determined that the Linux desktop doesn't work! Which is true, for their hardware.
Distros aren't doing anyone any favors by not warning potential users that their hardware may not be compatible.
I bought ubuntu-supported dell laptop, and there were still plenty of issues. Ranging from randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack, to display issue plugging it in an external monitor (this still happens to this day, Linux doesn’t work well with a 4k monitor + a lower resolution monitor).
Two years ago, I built a threadripper machine, and even more than 6 months after the CPU was released, linux didn’t work on that yet (iirc, you had to patch or used a special settings on boot, or it crashed). Ubuntu on that same machine suddenly decided last week to NOT recognize a monitor being plugged in via a KVM (there are 2 monitors), booting to windows still works so I am not even sure if it is a hardware or software issue.
At this point, I think people who are claiming linux works perfectly on their machines are the one with special hardware, either very old, or very limited.
For me the only laptops I’ve ever seen that had consistent, efficient, and “just working” sleep is MacBooks.
I’ve had ThinkPads and and Dells over the past 10 years that I just shut down every time I put them in my bag because there were too many occasions where I opened up my bag to find my laptop on, fans blasting, and very very hot.
On the other hand I’ve had a MacBook for the past couple of years and the only time it ever reboots is for system updates. My M1 Pro I can close the lid, come back 2 weeks later, have it instantly wake up and have 90% battery left.
Sleep works consistently for me on older laptops in Linux. My main personal laptop is still an X230, which is rock solid. I do still check that it's asleep though, and there's a handy indicator light on the lid to confirm that. Newer laptops have indeed been less reliable. I always check the power LED if the machine has one.
> For me the only laptops I’ve ever seen that had consistent, efficient, and “just working” sleep is MacBooks.
Up until last year I've used exclusively MacBooks for work (not by choice) and I've had the same issues with those at various points. Tip for MacBook users with the same issue: turn off the setting that allows Bluetooth devices to wake the machine. If a key on your Bluetooth keyboard ever gets pressed while the laptop is nearby it'll wake the laptop in your bag and then often it won't go back to sleep.
>Ranging from randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack //
This has come up a few times on HN recently, it appears to be an issue with all brands of OS. There was an explanation for it to do with Windows wanting to keep the network stack live in "sleep" and so proper sleep having little support. Reports suggested it might be a problem with OSX too.
I never had this issue on MacBooks (a user since 2007, after using desktop Linux from 1994-2007). I don't know any macOS users that had this issue.
I had a Linux certified ThinkPad. I enabled S3 sleep in the firmware to avoid this issue. My battery was always dead after letting the laptop sleep overnight. The fun thing is when this happened Lenovo's USB-C charger would refuse to charge the laptop.
At any rate, I really wanted to switch to Linux on laptops, bought a Linux-certified ThinkPad with a Ryzen CPU that everyone recommended. And it was just a miserable experience. Everything from terrible sleep-wake, bad support for 4k screens to half-working Lenovo USB-C Docks. Near the end, I'd just run Windows, since at least the hardware worked properly and the battery didn't drain in 3-4 hours.
Definitely doesn't happen with Macs. I've had multiple MBPs over the years and it hasn't happened once. Based on what other people say on HN it doesn't happen for them either, while it seems to be common for Linux and occasional for Windows too.
You have to go deep and really research it, which is confusing and rules out most users. If it’s not a well known Linux friendly model you have to search every chipset and other element of the system.
It’s too bad that Dell is selling supposed Linux-supported laptops that are not.
I’ve heard good things about the Thinkpad Carbon X1, System 76, and Star Labs.
> Ranging from randomly wake up from sleep in my backpack
This is so much of an issue in Windows that LTT basically took the stance to tell everybody to buy a MAC instead because they just can't take it anymore. It seems to be more an issue with gaming laptop, not that they wake up more, but that they go through their battery so fast that you charge it overnight, and by the time you take it out of your backpack, the battery is already dead.
Personally it's not that Linux "just works" for me, it's that Windows doesn't either anyway. Once, I had Windows 7 not being able to find my user account and I had to open Windows in failsafe mode and play in the bios.
The worst I've had happen to me in Arch is the DNS not working after an update and having to manually edit it in a file. The thing with Arch though is that when something breaks for you, there's a ton of other people with the same problem so it takes 2 seconds to find an answer. Ironically, Ubuntu, Debian and Mint always gave me much more smaller problems. Like KDE on Kubuntu makes the os bar disappear after I play a certain video game in steam, or my monitor stopped working one time after playing that game, etc.
I've had the exact same things happen to me with Windows machines - apparently computers are still hard. I won't disagree though that the Linux laptop experience is still pretty bad - basically the power management has made it unusable in my experience.
I'm a happy Pop!_OS (or however ridiculously they render their name) desktop user, and so I'm inclined to give their hardware a try next time I look at laptops. Framework may also be a contender.
Built my own machine early in 2022 with 12th gen intel chip and other new components and put arch on it. It has never given me an issue. The only occasional problem is KDE clock freezes rarely and I have to restart the window manager. Overall it’s an incredibly fast computer.
> Two years ago, I built a threadripper machine, and even more than 6 months after the CPU was released, linux didn’t work on that yet (iirc, you had to patch or used a special settings on boot, or it crashed). Ubuntu on that same machine suddenly decide
Are you perhaps thinking of a different Ryzen processor? I built a ThreadRipper PC 5 years ago, and got it running Linux weeks after launch. Interestingly, I couldn't get it to boot off a Windows USB stick; so it only ever ran linux.
Well, my Company provided a Dell XPS 13 running Windows, and that piece of crap doesn't work right with their own docking station. I think it's an issue with that particular company.
Same docking station, but with an Ubuntu based Hp DevOne doesn't cause any troubles at all.
Assuming Dell is providing this laptop, the fact Ubuntu doesn't work properly on it sounds like Dell being at fault.
I've said previously that Linux gets the blame for not working in situations the OEM gets blamed if windows doesn't work. I personally don't think that's fair.
> this still happens to this day, Linux doesn’t work well with a 4k monitor + a lower resolution monitor
I'm typing this response right now from a Thinkpad that is connected to a 4k monitor and two 1920x1080 monitors (using KDE Plasma); works perfectly. All the monitors are Dell.
I'm sincerely not trying to be contrarian here, but I'm curious what issues you've run into and on what hardware? I've installed Linux on literally hundreds of machines over the years, many different architectures, makes, amd models. The only real compatibility challenges I recall were modems in the early 2000s, and graphics cards up until around 2010? I actually have the impression that hardware support is pretty fantastic. As an example, on quite a few occasions occasions I've moved an existing linux installation from one machine to another. New laptop? DD the drive from the old to the new, alter the partition size, grow the filesystem, and you're off to the races.
Brand new hardware can have an issue if Linux hasn't integrated support yet. You get that from day one with a Windows Update or through the shipping hardware. But after a few months it's usually plain sailing. Linux installs nowadays are trivial that my mother-in-law can't even crash them anymore.
Yep, I got a Ryzen 6000 ThinkPad T14s on launch and it would occasionally freeze due to graphics drivers issues. The problem fixed itself after a kernel update about a month and a half later.
Then again, ThinkPads are definitely some of the better hardware for running Linux. At this point Linux support is a major factor for my hardware purchases, though 99% of the time I haven't had to think about it, it just works (Nvidia tends to be that 1%, though it's way better now than a few years ago :S).
slight tangent: I've been looking to upgrade an old AMD card and I'm looking at Nvidia cards, is there a way to know which cards are compatable with Linux and which aren't worth looking at?
Pretty much no nvidia cards will give you good performance with a pure-mainline stack.
Nvidia released an "open source" driver recently... As in it moves lots of work to firmware and just plays nicer with OSS. Maybe check for cards that work with that driver.
Yes, you can. That's what I and almost everyone with Nvidia cards do. The big caveat IMO is if you want GSync/FreeSync, you can't use Wayland. It is also in general less stable/polished with Wayland. I'm ok using Xorg though, at least on my desktop.
Surely that's an OEM and driver support issue and not a Linux issue? The two don't equate if the OEMs and drivers they produce are actively supporting windows and the developers on Linux get no support, meaning reverse engineering drivers, or late support.
Yeah it's shit Linux takes longer to support newer hardware but it's hardly linuxs fault.
Linux and the Linux distros can hardly fix this problem, but for the end user it doesn't matter whose fault it is. They bought their laptop, they want it to work, and in such cases the only way to do that is through Windows.
For example, the Linux kernel had a bug that caused the boot process to freeze after less than a second when you plugged in a display through an HDMI-to-DislayPort-converter on systems running Intel GPUs, caused by a change to the Intel driver that somehow interacted badly with another change in the NFS system if I recall correctly. Not your normal use case, but definitely a problem that shouldn't have taken half a year to get fixed for normal users. I ran into it when I helped a colleague upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu (LTS to LTS) and the only way I could find to work around the issue was to pin the old, unmaintained kernel package and keep and eye out for updates on the bug tracker. If I hadn't known some deeply technical details about the system, he would've probably had to reinstall (or more likely, install Windows) and lose several days getting his dev environment set up again.
There's nothing the Linux project could've done to prevent this issue and I'm not blaming volunteers for not spending their days debugging this, but for the end user such problems are unacceptable.
> For example, the Linux kernel had a bug that caused the boot process to freeze after less than a second when you plugged in a display through an HDMI-to-DislayPort-converter on systems running Intel GPUs, caused by a change to the Intel driver that somehow interacted badly with another change in the NFS system if I recall correctly. Not your normal use case, but definitely a problem that shouldn't have taken half a year to get fixed for normal users.
Ah, the cable pull test. That is a pretty standard test for QA for supported platforms.
Do they say ALL laptops? Here's a direct quote from page 1 of Ubuntu's installation guide:
"Whilst Ubuntu works on a wide range of devices, it is recommended that you use a device listed on the Ubuntu certified hardware page. These devices have been tested and confirmed to work well with Ubuntu."
No, it's not straight up on the download page but should it be?
If you substitute "windows" for Linux, you have a true statement.
All the (mostly rando) laptops in my house (5) which were shipped with windows pre-installed, with broken features/drivers were wiped, and Linux was installed. Many things didn't work under windows. Wifi was the big thing that failed under windows. Then the more generalized networking stack, which was stock, was unable to connect to the internet, despite getting wifi working.
With Linux, none of these were issues. Sound worked well. Networking just worked. GPUs just worked (though there was was some stupidity with nouveau and 2060 bits early on, that's been the only GPU issue I've had in the last 15-ish or so years running linux on laptops/desktops).
I migrated family to MacOS, as it was easier to support than windows, and like linux, it just worked.
Your mileage may vary of course, and you may be the occasional unlucky user with an odd problem. But really, none of the problems are worse than windows, and from my perspective (using computers since 1979 or so), if you start with a well designed distro (Linux Mint, Pop!, elemental, ...) you really won't have a problem. FWIW, Linux Mint is a reworked Ubuntu, with better defaults, drivers, codecs, etc. .
I know people get worked up over this and often try to make jokes about "this year is the year of linux desktop" ... but its been my daily driver for 23 years, its been my desktop/laptop OS as long. Its figuratively all over but the shouting.
So argue against it if you wish, there are many other windmills you can tilt against which might bear better argumentation. This battle is over. Ordinary people are using it, migrating to it.
I'm happy that you have success, but I think there must be something seriously weird with your setup if the default windows install can't connect to WiFi.
If WiFi didn't just work out of the box, I'm sure most people would just return the laptop, as it's most people only connectivity.
I have run Linux as a daily driver on probably 50 laptops/ desktops over 25 years. I have never found a problem I could not solve. Sometimes that required me to use a search engine and understand a bit about debugging. In a few cases issues required my to gain an understanding of how the Linux kernel works, and make some patches. I got code upstreamed in the kernel before I was old enough to drink.
These days you can buy plenty of computers that ship with Linux and everything will work great. If you just want it to work you can pay money and even have a support plan.
That said, if you work in tech you should take note that the whole world runs on Linux now. You will do yourself a major favor just buying any random machine off the shelf, build a DIY distro like Gentoo on it, and learn how to make it run rock solid.
The ability to fix anything about Linux to adapt it to virtually any hardware it was not designed for is a feature, not a bug.
I needed to install Linux last week on a new Intel NUC.
* The NUC has an intel Ax411 Killer 1690i and Linux wouldn't recognize it.
* On my monitors (I tried two different ones) the setup screen didn't fit and the OK/Next buttons on the bottom weren't displayed. I had to guess how many times to "tab" to finish the install. There was no way of fixing that.
* The video card isn't quite compatible. It won't come back after the screen blanking kicks in. I disabled the screen blanking.
* The machine won't wake after a sleep or a suspend
It turns out there are two versions of the AX411. It's the "killer" version that's not supported unless I either:
- recompile the kernel to tell Linux that when it sees the ID for this card, use the driver for the standard card. That has been claimed to work.
- recompile the kernel to enable an experimental feature
This is 22.10 Ubuntu. You can see that the PCI device ID of 0x7af0/1692 is rejected by iwlwifi.
# dmesg | grep iwlwifi
[ 4.753725] iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[ 4.755454] iwlwifi: No config found for PCI dev 7af0/1692, rev=0x430, rfid=0x3010d000
[ 4.755471] iwlwifi: probe of 0000:00:14.3 failed with error -22
One frustrating thing was that all the information in the forums was wrong. People (like you!) will tell me that something will work when it won't. This doesn't help the Linux community get new useres. I had to read the source and figure out what was going on.
After spending a couple of hours on this for a client, I realized I was insane and bought a $20 older, supported WiFi M2 card for this box. These machines will be installed by a client and I didn't want to have to specify a custom kernel build, too. I wanted to specify Unbunto LTS and have the software ready-to-install.
You mentioned that "preinstalled" Linux has fewer problems. Not so. I bought a dell rack-mount server with Linux pre-installed, and that machine couldn't wake from sleep either. It would go to sleep and need to be hard reset to wake up again.
> Fwiw, Windows frequently doesn't support Wi-Fi out of the box but, when it's preinstalled, the drivers usually are too.
That's very true, sometimes even the wired NIC driver.
My dad just replaced an old NUC with a modern AMD based miniPC and everything (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ethernet) works out of the box with Ubuntu LTS, while Windows 11 doesn't even include a usable driver for the Intel I225-V NIC.
Most systems that run Linux are unsupported by the vendor who refuse to provide support. This is the dividing line I find. The vendor might provide source code to the community to make their widget work with Linux but it's provided as-is and unsupported.
I found this out with a dodgy NUC recently. Intel support told me that Linux is unsupported so they can't help. I had to install Windows and show the same issue before the issued the RMA.
"occasional peripheral" is usually WiFi, trackpad, Bluetooth or GPU. Bluetooth may be manageable from that list, but if one of those 4 doesn't work pretty much out of the box, it's a non starter for most people
Install Linux. Find out that WiFi doesn't work. Manually transfer files to compile WiFi driver via usb. Compile WiFi driver. WiFi works. Boot a few weeks later. WiFi no longer works. Driver built without being signed. Kernel now requires signed drivers. Work out how to sign and trust driver. Boot a few weeks later, WiFi no longer works. Kernel has upgraded again. Signed driver not in the right place. Disable security on driver checking. Put laptop in draw forever.
Even though I am capable of fixing all of these things I just don't have the energy. If I want Linux I'll just use WSL or a VM.
The last I had this problem was in 2015, when Dell in their infinite wisdom (or because they got a deal) decided to ship _some_ of their XPS 13s with a "Killer" (?) wifi, which didn't have proper Linux drivers, it was too new. Actually, half of the hardware in that machine at that time was unsupported by Linux, I remember I had to wait for about 6 months to get audio working properly. Oh, and I bought an Intel card which solved all wifi issues immediately...
I haven't had that problem since, in fact, I find that Linux runs more reliably on a typical laptop (OK, I'm a Thinkpad person, if that's "typical") than Windows (except bleeding edge hardware, I don't understand why Intel can't release their drivers for their next in line CPUs in time, but I'm sure they have their reasons...).
My failed attempt was on an HP stream. It was the cheapest laptop in the store and was woefully underpowered for running windows that it came installed with. I thought maybe I could use it as a lightweight, cheap little Linux notebook to do some hobby projects away from the desk. It wasn't to be.
This is my experience. I've been using Ubuntu exclusively since 2015, having installed it on a variety of my own laptops and desktops, as well as a few systems of friends and relatives.
Sure, on occasion something breaks, but I've not encountered any major compatibility issues or installation blockers.
Most WiFi drivers don't require a module. Recent Qualcomm, Intel, and MediaTek chipsets are supported OOTB.
If you need an out of tree module to get your WiFi to work, it might be worth it to get a new WiFi card and get rid of the FakeTek chip your laptop came with.
In my very small sample size, those things "work" well enough. What doesn't work is sleep state and power management. Just my personal experience, but that's what I'm always fiddling with.
My laptop still drains much faster in Linux with the lid shut and "sleeping" despite my fiddling. Hopefully this will be sorted in the next few years and the technology doesn't change again.
Yea, power management is absolutely terrible. I've been messing with it for a year, but I can't really get my Linux laptop on any distro to have better than about 2 hours of battery life while running, and 5-6 while in "standby".
That said, the wifi and mouse issues are often by far the worst. It's probably somehow related to the standby stuff, but sometimes I'll just log in and it'll decide my trackpad didn't reinitialize correctly, so rebooting is the only option to easily fix it. There's also a persistent issue with Gnome where the modal for asking for a password for a wifi connection just crashes consistently until you restart. It's happened to me on 4 different distros.
Power management and sleep (like, closing the lid of the laptop and it waking up correctly every time) has basically never worked for me on Linux machines - of which I had several.
Very interesting, when was this? That, and "audio doesn't work", are one of the few Linux issues I hear people about that I've never had to deal with myself.
Same. Currently my Framework drains battery far too quickly when suspended. Also the fingerprint reader doesn't work, which I don't care about. It turns out for my typical patterns the battery thing is only a nuisance. I assume this experience was at the top of heap, since Framework actively courts Linux installations (I believe they sell Linux preinstalled?).
It's also a bit strange, if predictable, that so many HN commenters seem genuinely surprised that Linux doesn't cleanly find and install every device driver on every mainstream laptop. Given the insider nature of many people here, I wonder if this implies that distro maintainers aren't getting enough first installation feedback. Unironically I suggest starting a TikTok (or something) campaign that encourages people to post short videos of Linux laptop installation going off the rails and wanting to throw the machine against the wall. A bug report, but with more passion.
In my experience: hardware out for fewer than six months will have issues, especially on outdated LTS systems like Ubuntu. For example, my laptop (which I bought before it was even on the Lenovo website) had issues with Intel's audio driver that they forgot/didn't bother to submit firmware for to maintainers, though there was an easy workaround.
In my experience, Linux will usually just work if you don't have any hardware from crappy vendors. Nvidia is one of the most important vendors that refuse to work normally, but many "gaming" vendors also haven't done any work to support Linux. Elgato and friends have hardware that's useless without software support and for that you need Windows or some weird project from Github.
Unlike ten years ago, bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet, sound, video acceleration, suspend/sleep, and all the usual suspects just work if you give the kernel people time to merge the drivers (Windows drivers are ready before release, while Linux often gets them later) and if you pick a recent enough Linux distro.
I think most people can grab a copy of the latest version of Linux Mint and just get started. Maybe Pop_OS! if you want a more Ubuntu feel without the Ubuntu hassle.
I installed Ubuntu on a Dell laptop recently that wasn't on the approved list. It required a few tries, and running some scary commands in my BIOS to change the filesystem parameters. It works fine, and I can still dual boot to my old windows partition.
The issues, funnily enough, happen when I go back to windows: the clock has been set back to UTC time, and the Bluetooth has forgotten my mouse.
And now I switch back to Windows so rarely that it doesn't matter.
Not really. The most successful Linux laptops are probably the various Chromebooks. They sell in the order of tens of millions per year, and certainly doesn't advertise running on any other hardware.
It's mostly a problem with the semi-free Linux distributions that found their market share in this niche. It is not intended to be some majority option, despite what the marketing says.
And with Proton and the Steam Deck, Valve is also removing the argument that you can't game on Linux.
For those who don't know, it's basically a PC in the form of a Switch, with access to a large part of the Steam library (even a lot of unsupported games play well if you're willing to tweak things).
It has very good specs for a handheld, and you can emulate most games up to the Switch, and some Switch games run even better on the deck than on the Switch.
As it's open, you can even install Windows or replace parts if you want.
It has surpassed all my expectations and it feels like the deck together with Proton is solving the last big obstacle with Linux on desktop.
> For those who don't know, it's basically a PC in the form of a Switch, with access to a large part of the Steam library (even a lot of unsupported games play well if you're willing to tweak things).
Not just "basically a PC" but an actual PC running a modified version of Arch Linux (called SteamOS). One of the options in the menu is "Enter Desktop Mode" which does exactly what it says; drops you to a KDE desktop with all the bells and whistles of a normal Linux desktop. From there, you can use it as a normal PC if you want. Hook it up to a USB-C hub with HDMI and USB I/O, and you have a portable computer you can connect to displays with your keyboard and mouse.
Flexible as hell, and it's also pretty nice as a gaming device.
I've had about 2 decades of experience hearing that gaming on Linux is here and being disappointed. I started hearing about Proton and how it was really doing it this time and I was skeptical as always, but I figured it was worth a shot based on who I was hearing it from. And I'll say that for me, Proton is it. Not only does it provide awesome compatibility, it's basically just a checkbox in Steam to enable. I'm sure you can still find issues; even Windows can't provide 100% compatibility with decades of games, but for me, it's arrived.
That's an interesting path to using a Linux desktop, but it makes sense. I'm not sure if you're asking rhetorically, but I'd say that if you wanted a Linux gaming desktop, you'd just start with a normal gaming desktop (prebuilt or custom - you'll find endless guides on either). The thing about Linux/Open Source is that there are nearly endless distributions and politics around those, which is confusing, but I'm a fan of Pop!_OS for its simplicity - I suspect I could install it on my parents machines and they'd be OK, but it's also fine for my uses. The other option I'd consider is SteamOS so you could presumably just run the OS installed on the Deck on your dekstop for commonality, but I have zero experience with it as an OS, so it may be more complicated than that.
I'm using Pop!_OS with an AMD CPU/GPU system that's pretty far from what I'd call stout, but I'm able to play games like "No Man's Sky" or "Crysis" just fine. I've probably tested around a dozen games personally going back as far as "Total Annihilation" from 1997(?) which ran without issue.
You're putting up a scarecrow... you're saying people said that linux was perfect for gaming, except for the fact that it doesn't have anti cheat? No way. If anything, people said: If Linux wants to take off, it needs to have anticheat, but a whole lot more too.
Friend, I've had each of the arguments stated above as absolute statements.
The format of the arguments aren't coherent or well thought through. It uses the quoted argument as a jumping off point before going into an anti-Linux rant, often citing the perception that the year of the Linux desktop has been "coming for 20 years" (or pick whatever number you want) or that the Linux community are toxic (which is ironic since most of the attacks are incredibly toxic).
I think it's laudable that you're giving these people the benefit of the doubt, but they absolutely do exist and their positions are always thin or in bad faith.
> "Linux won't be viable for gaming until I can run Fortnite, Destiny 2 and Xbox Game pass"
> Well you have me there..
FYI MS Game Pass has worked on Linux for months now.
Fortnite and Destiny 2 are two games where the developers have both, for whatever reason, specifically gone on record to say they will ban players that attempt to play their games on Linux.
For what its worth, the Destiny 2 developers did create a feedback thread a few months back on Reddit for the purposes of seeing the level of interest in them supporting Linux/Steam Deck
Game Pass works on Linux? I can't find anything about that, seems unlikely. Unless you're talking about Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is not a replacement for games running on your system, especially for people with bad internet connections.
If Steam Deck was being sucessful by having game studios write Steam Deck games like they bother with Android, iOS, Switch and PlayStation, that would be inovative, emulating Windows and DirectX via a translation layer, not really,
It isn't going to be something I choose to run until there's a VR system that works for it that doesn't feel like it is alpha quality. Even Valve's own Index only kinda-sorta works with half of the features.
Sure proton is great and it does a good job on my steam deck.
But to me the fact that the games are not natively supporting Linux and are instead needing a tool like Proton still means that Linux is not ideal for gaming. Just like Mac is not.
It has nothing to do with the OS itself and everything to do with developer support.
I love my steam deck but I also strongly believe that going with Linux was a short cited decision on Valves part to try to protect themselves from Microsoft. Many (most, all?) of us here are technical enough to understand at least on some level what proton does and what native actually is. But most users are not and that is where the problems come up.
When a game pushes an update that breaks support on the steam deck most users will go to complain to the developers. But the developer was not involved in supporting Linux and rightly so they don't test every update on it.
That is not the right path here.
I strongly believe that to claim that an OS can be good for something it must be targeted by the developers of whatever that thing is and run natively (or at the very least if it is prepackaged with something like proton, it is still distributed by the developers for that OS)
And yes I fully realize this is a chicken and the egg problem with linux and gaming.
> But to me the fact that the games are not natively supporting Linux and are instead needing a tool like Proton still means that Linux is not ideal for gaming. Just like Mac is not.
You’re holding a proof that it isn’t so in your hands and still claim something opposite. The biggest issue with gaming on Linux has always been impossibility of providing a binary build that works everywhere due to lack of a stable kernel API and ABI. Turns out, win32 API is exactly that and works really well on Linux if you put in the work, see proton.
IOW Linux is ready for gaming thanks to and because of Windows, not despite it.
> really well on Linux if you put in the work, see proton.
That work is exactly the problem though. This is not an ideal solution for the average user. My dad plays games and there is no way in hell I would give him a Linux machine to play games. If I end up buying him a steam deck (which I am considering) I will be installing Windows on it for him.
Again I will point out the issues with this not being an officially supported release from the developer of a game. Meaning when they push updates they don't test on Linux and could very easily break it. It happened with Halo recently and could just as easily happen with another game.
If we really want to argue that "if you put in the work" linux is a viable solution, it has been for years been viable as a desktop solution and many people played games on it.
But until we enter a time that on Linux you are running native packages from the developer targeting Linux, we will remain in a situation that Linux Gaming will always be an update away from breaking completely. Not that Windows isnt either, but at least developers test their Windows release.
Edit: For the record I would LOVE an alternative to Windows for PC gaming. Wether that is Linux, Mac, or something else. I despise Windows but I relucantly have a Windows PC. BUT I do not believe this is how we will get there.
Random advice from personal experience: if you buy a steam deck for a non-techy, don't get them to use windows, the user experience is awful. Just use the default OS, and only install games that a labelled as working well through Proton. Anything else will be a fairly painful experience.
I disagree, I have Windows on my steam deck and it works just fine. It is the primary way I use mine (Windows 10 though, not 11) because of the issues I have mentioned here.
The only real issue I have is it being a small screen. But I just have any games I need on my desktop and its easy enough to tap an icon.
Interesting you had more success then me. I just got annoyed with the tiny screen, and lots of minor things that seemed to not work smoothly (although now I can't remember exactly what they were I'll admit).
I detest ageist and ignorant comments like "My dad plays games and there is no way in hell I would give him a Linux machine to play games.".
My mom and dad were gaming into their mid-70's around the time they passed away. I'm approaching 60 and have gamed for 4 decades and see no stopping. I've read multiple comments from people in their 80's and even 90's still gaming.
Proton enables a lot of great games to play on Linux, I use it every day.
Linux lets all users including non-technical, use it every day with ease.
Great job just ignoring the issues I bring up and trying to wipe them away because of "ageist".
I think I can speak on my dads technical understanding better than you can. We have tried to give him an iPhone and he has struggled with that so he continues to use a flip phone.
The last thing I want to do is give him a device that due to Valve pushing a bad OS update (I mean the last Update made it so I could no longer boot normally and I had to do a boot from file and then fix that in the terminal) or games won't load because something breaks in the update for that game, which has happened to me.
That is not ageist to worry about a device not working as expected (which has happened to me, I just have the technical knowledge to fix it).
While I respect your ideological opposition to this and understand your logic, I'm not sure if you've ever seen the lifecycle of a Linux-native game.
For the first 6 months of its release, everything works great! A few minor bugs to fix but your game engine figured everything out for you. Flash forward 2 years - your game is broken on every distro. An Ubuntu hotpatch broke your game on most systems months ago, and glibc changes have decimated the runtime for every user. Steam's own runtime has already bumped it's versioning and is missing 3-4 libraries you used to rely on. The Windows version boots through Proton though, so nobody is complaining yet.
Linux shouldn't need Windows as a stable runtime, but until it fixes it's packaging issues this will continue to be the status-quo.
Admittedly I have not seen how a native linux game works and that to me just makes me continue to feel like linux isn't ready?
Logically I get it, a tool like proton is most likely the only way that Linux (or anything not Windows) was going to be an option for gaming at all.
My concern here is not in how it runs, how good proton is, or even how "easy" it is to setup.
It all boils down to average users for me. I continue to find myself (and I feel like many of us do) overestimating the technical knowledge of the average consumer. I know for many years I had assumed that my generation (I am now 32) would be the generation that the average user would be able to pick up any new technology and run with it. That has been proven false to me many times now...
What happens with it fails, what happens when a game was previously working but breaks in a future version of proton or worse breaks because the developer pushes an update (and maybe its an online service game so you have to update).
Idk something about this entire thing has just felt wrong to me in how we are pushing Linux as a gaming platform.
> What happens with it fails, what happens when a game was previously working but breaks in a future version of proton or worse breaks because the developer pushes an update (and maybe its an online service game so you have to update).
All of these are good questions to have, Valve didn't directly come out and address them so it makes sense that people would feel anxious about it.
Largely, Valve has solved this by running every game in a lightweight container runtime, kinda like Docker. Regardless of the distro you're running on, Valve can define a common runtime for the game and the title should boot using the defined settings. If something then breaks with that runtime, Valve can actually go through on a game-by-game (or even system-by-system) basis and fix it. This is how Elden Ring got performance patches on Linux at launch, or how titles like Rocket League became playable when their native version was not.
It's a complicated technical solution to a nuanced problem, but Valve has done a bang-up job so far.
They have done a good job, I am not denying that. But this approach is not without faults.
I mean when the big winter update for Halo Infinite came out it broke Proton support. Sure they (the people working on Proton) were quick to fix it, but it did break and since it was an online game there really was nothing the user could do about it.
I used to think this. But with so many Linux variants out there I think supporting it is harder than just supporting the windows api that makes it work.
It’s odd but things like docker and the JVM and browser based software mean the software will run abstracted a bit, less optimally, but good enough. Even among the different Linux distros software is distributed differently (rpm, debs, flat pack, pacman….)
Brining more people to Linux is the goal, more developers! and better software packaging eventually.
I do wonder if Valve has tried to discuss with Microsoft what it would like to see out of Windows in the future (potentially Windows 12) to make it a useful OS for a Steam Deck device.
Some sort of advanced suspend/resume functionality similar to the Series X's Quick Resume would be a killer feature. And I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't mind having native Game Pass hooks into a device like that
There has been rumors about Game Pass discussions with Valve at one point but I have not seen anything about that recently.
I feel like most likely not, that seems like something that would benefit Microsoft and not give any benefit to Valve. I know they have stated before some concern regarding the windows store or something.
Game Pass is also the reason I installed Windows on my Steam Deck. Being able to sync game saves between my PC, Xbox, and Steam Deck is just way too powerful. And the obvious benefit of the games in game pass.
Yes and no - the work that's gone into it, and into Proton in general has made game support on linux generally leap forward. I don't have a Steam Deck myself, but because it exists, things are getting patched in Proton often before games even come out, which is a far cry from where things used to be with Wine.
Having a site like ProtonDB to be a single place to go look up any tweaks or config flags for Wine/Proton to get a game to work is invaluable, and it's now actually getting good traffic and data because of Steam Deck.
Presumably you mean that as a criticism but "being supported by a multibillion company" is normally a fantastic sign of success, and "a single hardware configuration" is an indicator of seriousness about guaranteeing a good UX.
Look no further than power management/sleep/awake, which is flawless and snappy on steamdeck. That's more than you can say for 95% of "supported linux laptops".
I don't think Linux will ever be the dominant desktop OS, but that no longer matters because Desktop is no longer the dominant method of interacting with a computer.
You could argue that linux 'won' with Android (and unix 'won' with Android and iOS) but really those OSs are even more locked down than Windows ever was.
We won, but also we lost big.
MacOS and Windows keep getting worse, though, and Lxqt keeps not surprising me. That's all I need, but I fear for the next generation.
Termux used to be around to make Android feel like I was carrying linux around, but eventually Google (afaik) killed it by breaking everything so now I have JuiceSSH and a raspberry pi.
I'm weighing the price of keeping a cloud instance around just to play on when I'm not at home like I used to...
Termux is still live and kicking on FDroid. I don't know if there are particular features that you're thinking of that have been nerfed, but I use termux all the time and love it.
Unlike with windows or Mac, you can get android as unlocked as you want - just buy one of the brands (like Google’s) that intentionally make it super easy to unlock and install a different Android distro. And since Google releases the full kernel and drivers there are no drivers issues.
Some applications, like banking, will refuse to work on systems that aren’t locked down, but they would present the same problem to any Linux system.
To me the year of Linux on a desktop arrived years ago. I'm waiting for the year of Linux on a laptop, because unfortunately, and I'm a free software supporter, I've to say that a Macbook works objectively better than a laptop with Linux on it (and there is small to blame to Linux to be fair, but to hardware manufacturers that doesn't provide a good support, and to be fair even Windows on the same hardware doesn't work that great in most laptop that I see...).
I'm having a very different experience. I've been using Linux on and off for many years, but 2022 was the first time I installed it on a new laptop (Thinkpad X1 Carbon) and I like my overall setup + work experience more than on a MacBook Pro. I was able to tweak a lot of things related to my flow that are more difficult to tweak on macOS. Battery life is excellent, performance maybe not on-par with M1, but still very good and I like the keyboard a lot more.
Long live Linux.
Edit: Oh yeah, the hibernation is still crappy on Linux, but suspend works well and the laptop starts extremely quickly.
I'm curious about the battery life on the X1 Carbon (and the model/specs).
I'm on an M1 Air, but over the years I've also been running (mainly) Mint on various ThinkPads and whilst I loved the experience I never got more than a few hours. And I'm now getting days with Mac OS on the Air, which is the main reason I'm using it - I have become used to not worrying about the battery life, and certainly never having to constrain performance workloads to preserve it.
So I read "Battery life is excellent" and am curious. I get that it won't be M1 (ARM) level, but for doing stuff like a mix of writing plus development (with for example smallish Go compilations) do you have a feel for any kind of averages?
I used Linux on my desktop for many years and also on and off on my laptop but since I got an M1 laptop at my previous job and since bought one for personal use, the Linux/Windows x86 laptops just can't seem to compete for my use. As you mentioned, particularly battery life is stellar on the M1.
> the Linux/Windows x86 laptops just can't seem to compete for my use
I still find it surprising. Not the M1, but the impact the battery life has on my perceptions.
In so many ways I prefer Linux (and Windows) to the Mac. I also prefer the hardware on ThinkPads (and even my old HP ProBook) because whilst the build quality isn't there they have vastly superior keyboards, ports, and/or matte screen.
And yet it's always the Air I pick up because it's always the Air I know will launch virtually instantly and run for hours.
I consistently get 10+ hours. I'm currently using PopOS+GNOME and my typical workload is a combination of a web browser + development in terminal (vim) + Obsidian for notes + cloud sync + listening to music + IM (but not Slack ;) ). It is to say, the workload is rather low.
It is certainly not M1-like battery performance, but plenty for my average workday not to feel constrained.
My current laptop is ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th Gen from 2019 with 1080p screen, 10th gen Intel CPU, 16GB RAM, I replaced SSD for a very fast Samsung one. The laptop has a rather tiny 51Wh battery.
Thanks - I'll bear that in mind going forward and appreciate the info. I currently have a HP ProBook of roughly the same spec (just because I quite like the keyboard and screen) but cheaper, and only get about 5 hours.
I have the IdeaPad S540 from Lenovo, and it runs Fedora 37 more or less flawlessly. Battery life is decent, I'm getting 5-7 hours out of it (light usage, 20% brightness - browsing, e-mail, some videos, office applications like LibreOffice).
Everything on laptops has been good enough for a few years for me now in Linux. Maybe not perfect and there are things that are better out there, but I am not chasing perfection. Good enough is good enough.
> but suspend works well and the laptop starts extremely quickly.
Well... no, since most new laptop manufacturers had removed the S3 state (classic suspend to RAM) because Microsoft said that today they have to go with "Modern standby" that basically is leave the system on at a lower power settings. Beside that it doesn't work and will overheat your laptop if placed in a bag... and unfortunately since it is removed from the UEFI Linux can't do too much to put it back.
I use GNOME with a few extensions. I love that GNOME setup that comes with PopOS has great keyboard shortcuts, snapping and tiling (if desired - on my 14" laptop I don't use it much) out of the box.
From macOS GUI I miss:
1) And the only big one: a good implementation of fractional scaling. Not an issue for the current laptop, but likely will annoy the hell out of me once I upgrade to 1600p in the future.
2) Screen casting works better on macOS.
3) (nit-picky) emoji selector
4) The ability to instantly look up answers to all GUI problems, because so many devs use macOS.
I dunno what you're talking about. I have a 2022 T14s with AMD 6850U. It runs fast and battery lasts at least 5h (not epic, but more than good enough for a day, and I've done no tuning whatsoever). As a daily driver, I have not had serious problems with Linux (Ubuntu) on a notebook (though I stick to Thinkpads) for a long, long time. Until about 5 years ago, battery story wasn't great, but no real issues since then. Have not had problems with suspend to RAM or other day to day features in quite a long time. In fact I tried a Macbook around 2000 and it had those problems, couldn't wait to get rid of that silver blimp.
While hacking is neat, I prefer things to just work with an -intentionally- open ecosystem, one that can't be taken away because of a marketing decision disguised as something else, with companies that are there for this fundamental idea first, and am more than happy with the constant ability to manage the system comprehensively.
It’s not hard to find examples of people having problems with Linux on modern laptop hardware, there are already half a dozen anecdotes as I’m typing this if you scroll down the thread a bit.
I don’t know why this is such a thing in Linux-land, but people love to say, “works for me, case closed”. Desktop Linux is more forgiving with each passing year, but it’s not productive to ignore problems just because you aren’t experiencing them.
Well, in one case you have "it works great, just make sure you have reasonably supported hardware" out of thousands of choices, on the other, you have "You have to use Apple hardware." So I think it's more than reasonable.
As for the "5h is not enough" comments, it seems like a pretty arbitrary number, my work days are not usually longer than 5h per location. USB chargers these days are tiny and ubiquitious, planes have outlets, so it's really not a big deal as a tradeoff for an intentionally open system. People make it sound like they're walking around naked in the world with only their Macbook for weeks at a time and that's the only reality they accept.
If I were doing a weighted choice, at least 5h battery would be critical, but anything more than that is a frill compared to an open ecosystem, which is the world I want to live in.
That is interesting. I have a T14s with 5850U. The high-dpi display was tough nut to crack for me -- I want to use i3, so I need Xorg. Of course, there is also Sway, which is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for i3 on wayland. But for some reason Sway never felt as clean, fast and crisp as i3 to me. I can't even quantify it, and maybe it is in my head, but if I can, I will take i3 over Sway. So Xorg it is. After tuning and tweaking font DPIs and scaling factors for weeks, I got brave and tried to hook up an external display to my docking station. Many i3 config tweaks later, supplying a flurry of arguments to xrandr, bound to arcane key combinations, I got it to work, with readable font sizes on both displays simultaneously. Battery life is still crap though (~3-4h).
In all honesty, I find myself using the old T450s with a fat battery pack from Aliexpress more often than my new glass cannon T14s.
Well, you're running your own WM, though that is one of the advantages of the open source world it can also add a lot of overhead. These days I just try to stick to the out of the box experience because I got tired of fussing with everything. If I have workspaces via hotkeys, exposé, and focus on hover I'm good.
The whole xorg to wayland transition is definitely a drag, I have to use waynergy for input sharing until that's figured out. I haven't noticed any problems with external monitors, though it's mostly incidental for me since I use a desktop with synergy/barrier/waynergy (sigh) as the secondary display.
I did settle for the t14s 1920x1200 400nit 100% RGB display (I've got a 5k display on my desktop). If you've got a higher res display on your Thinkpad that could make some difference. I'm not saying the Linux world is perfect, but it's pretty good or great in most categories, and in the category of "open" Mac and Windows are basically silent except for handouts.
I can't get Linux to not drain my laptop battery when the lid is closed. On my M1 Air I can close the lid and come back a week later with maybe a couple percent less battery; on my Framework with PopOS it drains after just a day (default settings).
Probably goes to S2 instead of S3 deep sleep. Had the same issue on microsoft surface (running Linux on it) - i needed to tweak few kernel flags to force it into deep sleep.
I run Linux on a T480s and it’s pretty good, but there are issues. I’m using Ubuntu 22.04. It’s comfortably usable for me but it would be silly to pretend that these things aren’t major problems for many (perhaps a majority) users.
Off the top of my head:
- Waking from sleep with the lid closed while using an external monitor straight-up doesn’t work. Not with keyboard and mouse input, not even by hitting the power button.
- Thunderbolt hotplugging JUST started working in 22.04, and it still flakes out quite a bit. I think my laptop would normally maintain days to weeks of uptime if it weren’t for Thunderbolt-related issues.
- Battery life in-use is like three hours, max. I’ve never used anything but Linux in this machine so I don’t know how battery life stacks up in Windows, but I know that I was using a MacBook Air at work over a decade ago that did 6+ hours.
I strongly prefer to run Linux and I’ve used it as my primary desktop OS since 2001, but I can’t think of a single Linux laptop in the past 22 years that hasn’t presented me with significant problems that I had to either work around or accept.
+1 to all of these, plus any time I need some sort of mixed UI scaling, like 1.25x on the laptop and 1.75x on my extended display, it introduces a whole skew of problems, like applications not rescaling themselves when they move to the other display, blurry text all over the place, when I disconnect the external display out of frustration the windows don't migrate back to the internal display properly... ironically i3wm/swaywm with some very specific configuration works best for me, but the out-of-the-box experience on common DEs is awful. Windows and Mac OS have largely solved these problems.
Have you activated tlp? That should double your battery life, I use a T490 and had to install that to get battery life comparable to when running Windows
Two things I really miss having moved to Linux are the MBP touchpad and power management (battery-life/sleep/hibernate).
There are also weird audio/mic UX issues. Not sure if this is the same across all platforms, but -
I usually have my laptop hooked up to an external monitor, audio output set to the external monitor, and my headphones plugged into the monitor. Yesterday, I locked my desktop and stepped away from my desk with the music still playing. When I came back, music was playing out loud from the laptop speaker. That's because the monitor went to sleep, so the HDMI audio sink went away, and the OS "helpfully" switched audio output to the laptop speaker which was set to full volume.
Logically, it makes sense that would happen. Clearly, I am to blame.
The classic problems are suspend and hibernation issues, along with worse performance and battery life compared to windows (with manufactur optimised drivers).
I have to agree. My M2 Air is a fantastic dev machine. I'm looking forward to installing an immutable Linux with 100% working and stable hardware support, sleep, multitouch, Wayland, etc., but in the meantime all I can do is continue donating to marcan and crossing my fingers.
Same here... should I use a desktop computer, Linux has been fine for that for quite a while. Laptop is an entirely different matter though. When called to the meeting room, it's sure fun to see my colleagues go there with their lid open and their chargers.
Agree macOS on M1 is the best DX you can get today. However, I've been running Ubuntu 22 on a Framework (Intel 11th gen) laptop - and it's 90% of the DX of macOS.
My $150 Costco special 14" 1080P Chromebook gets as much use as my M1 MacBook Pro because it's also 90% of the DX of a system 10x its cost.
I was initially interested by the Framework, but if I'm spending $1000 or more, I really don't want something that generic in every regard. After moving to OLED, HDR, and/or HFR this year, "here's a laptop that might cost you less if it fails from a repairable issue outside of our 1-year limited warranty, otherwise it's another $1000 for a new mainboard" didn't seem like that awesome a feature in the face of AppleCare+, upcycled ThinkPads, etc.
don't you understand that MSFT and OEM contracts are literally locking the boot process right now -- the cheaper the laptop, the more locking of the boot process. This is an active situation, while smart people here wail like sheep
Linux doesn't run as universally on laptops as Windows does. Microsoft has an army of programmers and partnerships that make that happen, Linux has demand and voluntary contributions.
My Lenovo X1 Extreme runs Linux great, but Lenovo now produces Linux drivers on a regular schedule. Most other folks rely on generic drivers.
I think the most interesting idea in this space would be the following.
Try to consider how locked down and garbage both Windows and Apple desktops would be if it weren't for the pressure and innovation of the Linux desktop(s).
This is where I realized the Linux Desktop is "winning" -- or at least doing exactly what it should be doing and is doing an exemplary job of it; being the free example that's coming to eat your lunch and keeping everyone else honest and quality. True competition.
It's roughly similar to the difference between email and Twitter. It's not great that email is very centrally controlled by gmail et al, but a hell of a lot better than the Twitter trashfire.
> Try to consider how locked down and garbage both Windows and Apple desktops would be if it weren't for the pressure and innovation of the Linux desktop(s).
I tried but I can't say I can imagine anything on the Windows or MacOS desktops that are influenced by pressure from Linux desktop tbh. What are the things you are thinking about?
CLIs, which are becoming increasingly more supported and important on both Windows and MacOS are thanks to Linux. Windows is a really straightforward example of this where Powershell has aliased a bunch of Linux commands to the powershell command (e.g. grep is an Alias for Select-String in powershell).
Window management features are being driven by Linux. The most successful example of this is tiling window functionality driven largely by tiling window managers from the Linux world.
Developers on both Windows and MacOS depend on package management software picked up straight from Linux, such as chocolatey/scoop in the former and brew with the latter.
Almost every Windows and Mac software is developed using git. Git was literally invented for writing Linux.
The list goes on, but Windows and MacOS have a lot to thank Linux for.
Linux has also been a major pillar of open source in general. Much of the open source software ecosystem depends on Linux and the development and philosophy around it to sustain it.
Pretty sure I was using virtual desktops in CDE in 1995. At the time GNU/Linux had extremely limited, if any, desktops.
> CLIs, which are becoming increasingly more supported and important on both Windows and MacOS are thanks to Linux.
CLI's predate Linux by quite some time! DOS, heck Windows 1.0, was essentially a CLI application! Those 'Linux' commands are part of the GNU suite, named for various UNIX programs that they emulate.
> Developers on both Windows and MacOS depend on package management software picked up straight from Linux, such as chocolatey/scoop in the former and brew with the latter.
Can't speak for Windows, but Mac package managers have been around for longer than brew has existed and certainly as long as OS X/macOS has been in existence. Fink (2000) and Macports (2002) spring to mind. The two oldest package managers are dpkg, closely followed by FreeBSD ports in 1994. Everything else is post 2000, barring perhaps RPM and APT.
> Almost every Windows and Mac software is developed using git. Git was literally invented for writing Linux.
Git was invented not for writing Linux, but to maintain the source because BitKeeper screwed the community over. It won mindshare off the back of that because it wasn't CVS or SVN.
This comment is what is bad for Linux. A lot of us old-timers were around for all of this, and before GNU/Linux was a twinkling in the eyes of their founders. Yes, there has been a lot of positive contributions from Linux and the community, but can we please stop presenting it as some sort of panacea? It very definitely isn't.
To add to your points, since macOS is BSD derived, certainly the BSD package manager inspired it more (hence also why MacPorts is popular too from
2002 onwards)
Also, I agree with your last point. Comments like theirs are endemic of having too much of a hyper focus on what one is passionate about, and causing folks to miss seeing the bigger picture. There’s also a heavy recency bias involved.
No one outside of here much cares about the fine grained differences between GNU/Linux and Unix and they mostly shouldn't have to.
The more important part is that the general spirit (strongly buttressed by the GPL and Stallman, I'd argue, more than anything else but we can debate) represents a better and smarter way of looking at computing than letting everything we do get taken over overly greedy companies. There's some need for "capitalism" for sure, but this was the more important part.
I think it’s a bit rude to call them old and grumpy for accurately calling out inaccuracies in the other persons comments.
The GPL’nes of it all didn’t even factor into the other posters comments about feature influence, and I’d argue that it’s not a factor in influencing Windows/Mac at a regular consumer level.
Clearly the GP does as they cite it a things that they think come directly from Linux and/or it's influenced general computing. I'm just setting them straight on few things.
Virtual Desktops predate Linux, and were part of Parc systems. They’re a feature of X, but we’re featured on non X systems as well. Macs had a form of it in MultiFinder before Linux was around and much like many UI elements on the Mac (and everything else really), was more influenced by Xerox.
CLIs also predate the existence of Linux. In fact all the other OSs started out as CLI heavy/only and then moved to adding a UI. The main CLI systems are posix/Unix based not Linux based.
There’s a lot to thank Linux for, or more specifically Linus (for git), but I’d also just take some care in which examples you pick. A lot of these systems have shared influences
It's in no way dishonesty anymore than any other nerd debate. I know we like the idea of things having precise definitions, but the reality is they often don't, even in our field.. Much like "Object Oriented Programming" or "Agile" or whatnot, people literally do have different definitions of what "Linux" is.
I teach in IT, often to students unfamiliar with it. If I came in the class and the first thing I'm doing is stopping and correcting people with "you should really say GNU/Linux instead of Linux," we ain't gettin' nowhere.
honestly I have zero idea what point you’re trying to make. The person said those things originated in Linux or were inspired by it. They’re wrong and were corrected thusly.
You seem to want to let them believe they’re correct and spread that incorrectness because it pushes the ideal of Linux?
Almost? I'm arguing that "Linux" is ambiguous and that what a lot of people think of as "Linux" is shorthand for "open and not like what we're used to with Apple and Windows and also almost universally uses actual Linux code and tools as the software."
Let's try this. If I said "I really like the Apple experience" -- what do you think of?
I can tell you what you're not thinking of: You're NOT thinking of my experience with an Apple II and the freedom of owning a machine and programming in Basic and getting the computer to do what I want. So if I get all uppity and say "What all of you are saying is Apple really isn't THE REAL APPLE" -- sure, to me it's true. Also mostly doesn't matter.
But…this is all irrelevant? Nothing you just said is related to what the thread was about.
You somehow fabricated a random discussion point into the mix? Perhaps you mixed up threads with someone else who was talking about the differentiation of types of Linux, GNU etc??
Even then, I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say. It all seems so ephemeral and hand wavy to me, but I’m genuinely trying to understand what you’re getting at.
Some of those are stretch to call pressure and innovation (CLI? It's old as computing). Some of those are perhaps coming from "pressure" from Linux (some tiling possibilities).
Then you go on to confuse developer tools with desktop.
To say MacOS/Windows desktops would not be what they are today without Linux is absolutely laughable.
Original Macintosh HIGs from 1980s had more innovation on each page with regards to desktop than Linux has had since its inception.
The one thing that I experienced on Linux for the first time was multiple workspaces. Does that come from MacOS or Windows? I haven’t used anything other than Linux in over a decade.
This is one of those things that's so prevalent that it's kind of hard to even say.
One quick example: Look at every version of Windows from Vista to 10, and then look at what KDE was already looking like at the time. Hard to not see major influence.
To me it never made sense, people point out issues that makes linux not suitable for desktop use by quoting how it should follow Windows or OSX approach... to me someone wanted to use linux but without using linux, at that point why don't they use windows or OSX? I also use linux on the desktop and the way it behaves matches my thinking process, If I wanted it to be used as Windows or OSX I would be using Windows or OSX
> to me someone wanted to use linux but without using linux, at that point why don't they use windows or OSX? I also use linux on the desktop and the way it behaves matches my thinking process, If I wanted it to be used as Windows or OSX I would be using Windows or OSX
People want Linux to act like other operating systems because:
1. They want an easy alternative that doesn’t require extensive relearning should their original OS of choice become unpalatable for some reason
2. Advocates of desktop Linux have endlessly sung praises about how customizable it is and how that flexibility is a core tenet, so why shouldn’t it be able to act identically to Windows or macOS, at least as far as UI goes?
The first is particularly big, because remember that at this point a lot of people have decades of usage of Windows/macOS under their belt, and even if switching to Linux is a practical consideration for them, such users probably aren’t keen on tossing out all their little bits of power user knowledge and productivity boosting tricks and having to start out from almost scratch.
> Advocates of desktop Linux have endlessly sung praises about how customizable it is and how that flexibility is a core tenet, so why shouldn’t it be able to act identically to Windows or macOS, at least as far as UI goes?
This is something that I always bothered me. I love using middle click to scroll (you middle click, then move your mouse up and down) in Windows, but there isn't any way to do this in Linux. You can enable it in Firefox for Linux but not on the entire OS, and trying to ask people about this just makes people reply with "why would you want to do this if the default is middle click to copy??".
There are ways to sort of mimic this behavior, but none 100% matches how Windows work.
Yeah I’m sure middle click copy is handy if you’re used to it, but for me “Copy == Command/Ctrl-C” is so deeply rooted at this point that I’d really rather not fight it if I don’t have to.
Part of this is about distro selection. I have a decade plus of windows9x, XP, and 7 experience, so I use Lubuntu which works pretty much exactly like they did, and is honestly less surprising/confusing than Windows 10 (I skipped 8.)
My understanding is that there are also distros that closely match the mac experience.
If you pick up a distro like mainline Ubuntu you might be confronted with potentially confusing new opinions about how desktops should work. I lucked out and tried it back in the Gnome 2 days when it felt like XP.
There are distros/DEs that get within shooting distance of the Windows experience but don’t quite achieve it. The devil is in the details.
There’s nothing that replicates macOS unfortunately. Many point to GNOME, but it’s much more like iPadOS than macOS, or to elementaryOS but it only shares some aesthetics with core features like the global menubar or super-based (as opposed to control-based) key shortcuts being entirely absent. For the latter there’s hacks like Kinto[0] but this is the sort of thing that really needs to be part of the DE.
People who say linux should follow a Windows or OSX approach 1) don't use linux and 2) don't understand what makes a good product or brand.
I don't really care how many people use Linux, it's been my daily driver for a decade and I don't need other people to use it - I just need them to use compatible file formats or sometimes the same web apps as me which is increasingly a solved problem, for people who really need Adobe CS or something they are not going to be using Linux this decade.
Linux can enjoy great success if it finds a suitable OS market segment -- hello Steam deck and Steam OS? After a few tries Gabe may be on to something.
If it happens it will have nothing to do with competing with Microsoft or Apple on their terms.
In the meantime I don't really give a shit because it's great for me and I use it.
I do think the GPL world in general is missing some kind of amazing positioning opportunity - don't know what exactly or how to fix it but basically most of Big Tech are not liked because they're abusers, and GPLed software is the antidote.
> at that point why don't they use windows or OSX?
Because for a lot of people the point is to use a free (as in speech) OS. They are fine with how OSX or Windows works, and they want Linux to work the same. They simply want a good, user-friendly free desktop OS.
Does Linux finally have something like a Device Manager on Windows? Because last time I tried, there is just no BFU suitable way to figure out what is status of this or that peripheral.
Eh, a recent Ryzen laptop with a 2K display will run you less than $500 on Ebay. You won't get Macbook Air battery life, but you're also not spending Macbook Air money. Plus, you could run Docker without bumping your ambient temps up by 5-10c.
Mac hardware is certainly competitive again, but you couldn't pay me a living wage to daily-drive MacOS for development. Given the circumstances, I think the appeal of Mac hardware will depend on the appeal of Mac software for most users.
Intel Macbooks, absolutely: the fan will be on, make sure your room has adequate ventilation. But I've been developing on an M1 Macbook Pro for a few months now. Heavy Docker use, all still AMD64 images so heavily relying on qemu. I'm looking forward to all the pieces lining up to let me use Rosetta inside Docker. I always have what many would consider "too much" running, between Firefox, Docker, JetBrains IDEs, Office, Slack.
I don’t have an M1 but my Ryzen notebook runs Linux and works great. Ryzen 7 5700U, pangolin model which doesn’t seem to be sold anymore..
It’s quite quiet, battery life is great (a minor miracle) and I’ve done some genetics processing in it and it’s quite fast (multi hour runs, 8 core fully loaded) where the fan spins up but is quite low volume. I think the power supply is only 45 watts.
Any of them? I'm talking about CPU performance, since we've already hashed over hardware. Plus, this wasn't really a question directed at you; I'm generally curious if the parent has tried a Ryzen laptop in the past half-decade.
I should have been clearer that I was only talking to your comment that the Mac would "raise the ambient temperature", sorry -- I've not tried a Ryzen, my personal Linux laptop is a Haswell and is fine but won't win any awards for battery, speed, screen, or fan volume. It's really good at cooling though, the only laptop I've seen that makes one's knees cooler as CPU usage increases.
My previous work laptop was an Intel Mac space heater. Nice in winter, not so much in summer. Don't try putting it on your lap. My current work laptop is an M1, and is the one for which I have yet to hear the fan
But you just compromised on every single point they laid out. So it’s not really an alternative any more than a Fiat 500 is equivalent to a Cadillac Escalade.
Sure they both do the same basic task, and they both may be good options in isolation, but they’re not comparable as a whole, and only comparable if you focus on only specific metrics.
I've used Mac hardware though, I know what it does and where it's strong points are. The new Macbook designs are really good, arguably a return to the pre-2015 years when Mac laptops weren't designed with eggshells and fairy teeth. That being said, you can get 80% of the experience for 50% of the price these days. Laptop manufacturers are simply catching up, the gap isn't as wide as it used to be.
But again, your options compromise on what the person states they want.
What might be “80% of the experience” to you , may be a great reduction for them.
Take your previous comment, you already compromised on screen resolution (the Air is higher than 2k - depending especially on what ambiguous definition of 2k is being used , it’s slightly higher than QuadHD and quite a bit higher than 1080p), and battery life. Both of those are things they stated as important to them.
Macbooks are at least $500-1k more expensive than any equivalent PC laptop. For $1k you're only looking at a M1 Macbook Air with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage.
Screen resolution is great on Macbooks, but also great on certain PC models as well, you just need to do your research and buy a good one.
I agree that Macbooks generally have superior battery life.
I have a LG Gram 17 with 17" screen, 32GB RAM, 1TB storage, and 12th gen i7 processor and paid $1,500 for it. A Macbook Pro with 16" screen, 32GB RAM, and 1TB storage starts at $3,500, 2.3x the price. So yea hard disagree on anyone claiming that Macbooks don't carry a significant price premium.
Fair enough - I'm comparing an m1 air which is actually been awesome for dev. I don't need 1TB and 16GB RAM is surprisingly fine, even for Docker + browsers
* I might in the next 5 years, which is at least how long I'd like a $1k+ system to last.
* I do like to download media, including movies. It adds up fast.
* I know for a fact that 1 TB of NVMe storage does not cost $400. Apple's storage pricing is downright offensive and harmful. These machines could last a lot longer if Apple didn't skimp on the storage as much.
I don’t get this obsession everyone outside the Linux-space has with desktop Linux being viable or not.
To me, as a developer who likes to form the tools to fit my needs (as opposed to doing the opposite), Linux is great. It’s not for everyone. It’s not perfect in all ways, but for me it represents a pretty decent local maxima, and that’s all that matters for me.
I could probably rant on about how desktop Windows can never be a true developer OS, because it definitely doesn’t work out for me. But you know what? I’m not going to do that.
Clearly it works for some people as I see some people using Windows for development tasks. Maybe that’s their local maxima? Who am I to judge?
Why obsess over what OS can and can not be used on the desktop (or server)? Why focus on negatives? Why can’t we all just get along? ;)
I've used linux professionally for a long time. I've also used it as my desktop / laptop OS on and off for about the same amount of time.
From a purely selfish point of view, I'd like to stop dual booting. 60% of my CS:GO time is in windows because of faceit anti-cheat. Beyond that, I almost need another OS.
Now I have a bunch of reasons why I think open platforms are better, but they don't matter. Pragmatism tells me that if enough people use linux to game, the anti-cheat problem will go away. There's other software, but wine mostly works now.
Ergo, I don't actually want a steam deck, but I really hope it does well. :)
It is quite a weird assumption I think, that the open source community should want a year of Linux on the desktop. It is a nice project and I’m sure everyone would like it the world to get as much use out of it as possible. But it is a community developed effort. Adding a bunch of new non-technical users to the community who don’t do development wouldn’t be a win, it would be a big new tech support problem with not much upside.
I think it must just be a wrong assumption based on accidentally applying the motivations of for-profit operating systems or something.
At least for me "year of Linux on the desktop" is not about "can Linux be used on desktop" because of course it is possible. For me it means Linux being a popular choice on the desktop. That it is not.
Go to any Walmart or BestBuy here in the US and you'll see an entire row of Chromebooks for sale. They don't do this because these devices don't sell. Steamdeck has now sold tons of desktop-class devices running Linux.
I'd also note that Windows is ubiquitous, but hardly popular. People who know about computers tend to have not-so-great opinions of both MS and Windows while people who don't know about computers are only using Windows because it's what comes bundled with their machine. For the rest, MS has directly or indirectly paid to keep the software they need stuck in the Wintel duopoly (though that is also slowly changing).
SteamDeck is not desktop device, it's pretty much single usecase machine. It is for gaming and that's how most use it. And there is no need to take bad samples and anecdotes on how widely used Linux is. There are multiple longstanding companies tracking the usage numbers of various operating systems. Linux on non-mobile devices is really rare exception.
> Linux on non-mobile devices is really rare exception.
Linux is widespread on basically every single type platform out there, if not dominant in most of them. The only where it's currently lagging is laptops, and of course not as popular as other OSes on desktop. But on the rest of the platforms out in the world, Linux and various derivations is very popular.
You can dock the Deck and use it as a desktop with a monitor, mouse and keyboard. It runs a KDE desktop and many people have said they're using it as their daily driver now.
To me saying that ChromeBook is Linux is as disingenuous as saying that your Android phone is Linux.
Yeah maybe it's the UNIX kernel, but it's not the end-user Linux experience, which is what 99% of the people talk about when they say it's not the "year of Linux on the [insert platform here]".
After a dozen years as a dedicated Linux desktop/laptop user, I now see that trying to keep a Linux desktop functional over time is one of the charms and benefits of linux desktops. Having your wifi randomly go in and out after an update and digging into a fix is one a dozens of reminders of what your computer actually is and how it works (and doesn't). Like having a fussy classic car you have to mess with all the time to keep it running, you come to have a relationship with your computer that would otherwise be masked by abstraction. This relationship and deeper understanding of the machine carries over into other areas of programming and demystifies many things about computers that would be otherwise remain obscure. Yes, it is inconvenient. Yes, it can be frustrating. But how else can you really learn these lessons? How else can you gain the confidence to roll up your sleeves and do for yourself? The linux desktop may never be perfect but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I can see where you are coming from - but what you say is pretty much exactly why I don't use Linux outside of work. If I want to stream a movie or play a new game in my free time, I want a system that is going to deliver that to me with the least friction possible. I don't have the patience to be getting a lesson in hardware drivers when I am off the clock - I'm quite happy to be mollycoddled by Microsoft / Apple at that point.
There has to be a term for it, if you waited long enough it will bound to happen assuming the possibility of it happening is not zero. You can say the same about next year will be the year of Nuclear Fusion or curing cancer.
And it is funny 20 years later there are people who still dont understand why Linux failed to takeover desktop.
I will quote Benedict Evans [1] who seems to be the only few with a decent understanding of Tech and Business.
>"the ideology of (one extremely narrow concept of) freedom works very well for small groups of true believers, but people didn’t move servers to Linux because of freedom - they adopted it because it was a better product."
That is definitely revisionism. I was there when it started happening. It started happening because of two things:
1. Unix vendors were tearing each other apart in the Unix Wars.
2. Linux was cheaper than Windows NT.
The second point is critical: many industries had Unix-based software and even the source code of said software, they just needed a platform to run it on. Linux on x86 servers was orders of magnitude cheaper than Solaris on SPARC, HP-UX on PA-RISC, or AIX on POWER. And for the existing SPARC/PA-RISC/POWER servers running these UNIX OSes, the investment wasn't entirely lost because they could put Linux on those too.
That is what made Linux on servers win. It wasn't better. It was cheaper.
We have spent most of the 2000s catching up to Solaris, AIX, and other server Unix systems. The 2010s was all about catching up to desktop Unix systems like IRIX, Solaris (again!), and NeXT.
Now? We're at the tail end of that effort. Who knows what's next. :)
Cheaper is better, all other things equal. If the other systems were ten times more expensive, were they also ten times better in some other metrics to compensate?
Linux was definitely a worse system back then. But probably not necessarily 10x worse. It definitely got comparatively worse as some Unix vendors added interesting features, but Linux has spent the past couple decades catching up because there was so much money coming in from the people switching from those Unix systems to Linux. :)
I bet a similar effect could happen with the desktop part. Not around price, or we would've already seen it. Actually, I suspect that's really the reason "the year of Linux on the desktop" never materialized: that Microsoft managed to blur the added burden of its licences on the final prices of laptops and desktop computers.
If you've ever worked with non-technical people it becomes clear that the issue is not really about Windows, Mac or Linux. They all have issues and they just delegate it to the "geeks" to figure it out.
The non-technical people I know that use Windows have it re-formatted every other month after something stops working. They're just used to having to call the technician constantly. As someone else pointed out here, they don't even know if it's an OS issue, hardware issue or whatever else. It's just how tech works (or not, hehe).
Windows is in my experience utter garbage to deal with. We've always had jokes about how it "expires" after a few months and you have to re-install or live with how slow and brittle it gets. It's a black box. BSOD are a common thing we've all had to deal with. Not to mention viruses and the crapware that is oh so common on Windows when people don't know any better.
But it really seems like when it comes to Linux people get all critical but for other OSes, they downplay it. All the crashes, issues, quirks, etc are simply not worth mentioning if it's on my favorite non-Linux OS. If it's Linux, oh damn this mess. It's impossible to use! Look!
The reality is that Linux desktop will probably never see the light of day because it's a commercial issue and not a technical one. We keep pretending this is a technical discussion when it's really not. Windows won early by letting people pirate it and won the majority of the market share. They can then use that power to force everyone to build drivers to work better with their OS. They can make huge deals getting almost every computer in the world to have it pre-installed. They pay for it.
Mac has their cult following and hardware that locks people into their OS. People don't choose OSX. It's their only choice. Only hackers and the more curious will ever venture out of the default choices. But once again, they are there because they pay for it.
Nice little article, and funny these 'memes' still get heard.
Linux is now has a lot of polish now, for the last 5 years I have been saying to all the young developers, if you are not on Linux (or BSD), move to it. For Development, Linux is the place to be.
FWIW, I have been exclusively using Linux at work (RHEL) as a desktop for over 10 years. It is a fortune 500 company and I moved as soon as it was allowed. But the other developers in my group still stick to Windows even though I have told them you really need to learn Linux.
Until last summer, I was 8 years deep into Linux Laptop / Desktop use only. We bought MacBook Pro M1 when our startup was funded.
I "got used to it", but I still stumble on the "this isn't working the way I want" rabbit holes, which depending on the issue can be far easier to solve on linux for the someone savvy. Best example is frickin trackball drag scroll which is near impossible to achieve smoothly on a mac.
Obviously sometimes there were really tough issues on linux (mostly hardware compatibility), which was frustrating, but overall I miss it and often think to myself "things used to be faster/smoother with linux".
This sentiment is not popular with most Linux advocates, but I think that cross-platform toolkits are great for the less popular platforms, so they should be more accepted.
If you write a flutter app for Linux then it will also work everywhere else. If you write a flutter app for iOS/android - which is the most common scenario - then let's get you to tweak it for desktop Linux.
I use many electron apps. i don’t like that they are electron, and they are more bloated than native. However, my laptop and desktop never come close to needing more RAM. Each app is basically just a heavy browser tab. The UX is acceptable. That is about it really.
I have a ton of ram. the biggest issue I have with electron is that it sucks battery down.
As cto of a startup, I fully understand the case for it. one codebase, less to maintain and easier to focus on pumping out features.
That said, I wish slack would consider going all native for their desktop apps. Its a memory hog and for something that runs on my desktop all day, I would prefer if it sipped power and ran fast
Fully agree. I think this was also key to the macOS/OS X comeback but with web apps instead of the electron/flutter type stacks we have now.
All those little specialized win32 apps for, like, dentists and accountants and navigation and filing expenses and so on moved to the web, which really eroded Windows’ lock in (obligatory citation of https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...). Electron and flutter type stacks have extended this trend
I predict along the same lines a comeback for Java on the client. Java desktop apps used to feel heavy and awkward but these days they look downright svelte. No good mobile story - yet.
I can't believe how hostile some of the comments here are towards Linux.
We get it! You guys like big tech overlords and you're too comfortable with using whatever spyware they have these days but Linux has been working great for many of us for years and we have no complaints.
Those of us who use Linux appreciate it for what it is, not for what it can be.
People aren't hostile to the idea of mainstream Linux desktops. They're just fed up with people claiming that Linux is mainstream and ready for "ordinary users" when it clearly still isn't (and may never be).
> ready for "ordinary users" when it clearly still
If my family is not made up of 'ordinary users' then I guess we live in different worlds.
I installed ZorinOS on my father's computer more than a year ago. He works with Libre Office, uses internet browser, edits photos with photopea.com and watches videos. So far, not a single time has anything crashed or caused issues for him which was a common occurrence in windows.
So yeah, Linux desktop may never be ready for you but I can literally see Linux desktop being more than ready for ordinary users.
Linux works great for the highly technical and the tech-ignorant.
However, the "ordinary users" among today's young people grew up with tech, and expect more advanced functionality. Advanced functionality that, on Linux, requires advanced knowledge because of how fragmented and rough it is.
If the term 'ordinary users' implies users who use specialized commercial software, then yes, Linux does not have it all yet. It's a reality we all know but it's changing gradually, fortunately.
One doesn't have to switch to Linux to know that it's disruptive tech. It's gaining traction each year and only becoming a better product, whether one likes it or not.
Anecdotes about it working for some people do not mean that it is ready for ordinary users in general.
Maybe that's the real confusion. Nobody is saying that Linux is not "ready for the desktop" (i.e. usable, stable, etc.) for some people on some machines. They're saying it's not ready in general in the same way that Windows and Mac are.
There are still too many random hardware issues, unsupported devices, rough UX edges and so on. Of course Windows and Mac are not immune to those but they cause issues much less commonly.
> There are still too many random hardware issues,
Still too many implies more than 50% of existing hardware has issues which could not be true because I've installed Linux on more than 20 computers with different hardware configuration. The only ones that have given me hardware issues were newer laptops with Nvidia drivers but even those Nvidia issues were fixed by Nvidia (like RTX 3050 not supporting join displays function with external monitor).
Unsupported devices, that's not entirely because of the Linux Desktop. Buy a laptop from Tuxedo and tell me if you get those issues because you 100% of the time are buying a Windows computer. That's like expecting Windows to work properly without issues on MacBook natively and then complaining that Windows does not support Apple when in reality it's the opposite.
Linux is not magic, it's fast, it's efficient, it's amazing but it cannot be one sided. If it doesn't work for your hardware, you can't really blame Linux for not supporting something that does not want to support Linux. Linux will be fine on 99% of the general hardware, but when it's not, just simply accept that it's not compatible. Instead of blaming all of the Linux desktop.
> Of course Windows and Mac are not immune to those but they cause issues much less commonly.
No other reason other than paid and owned occupancy. Linux laptops work great, Linux on desktop works great with most hardware. Newer hardware takes time but can we really blame the kernel maintainers for not getting the edge Microsoft does?
Also, anecdotes about Windows working fine for some people does not mean that it is
working fine for most people either. Tell me you know someone who has never had frequent problems with Windows. Windows, even on fully supported hardware, fails itself on so many levels so frequently.
I don't even know what is that concept of "year of linux desktop", I use Ubuntu then Mint since 2011 as the daily driver and have never had any more problems than on Windows (maybe because I'm not a gamer or play only niche games) and I don't give a ff about anyone using anything else
In the 90s there was some ongoing fight between 'good' Linux and 'evil' Microsoft Windows. Since this was the beginning of the internet (by which I mean the web) for the general public, and there was virtually no mobile computing (phones, etc), the territory to win was perceived to be the regular pc desktop.
Every year, Linux advocates would claim that this year was the year of the Linux desktop (and that Linux would topple Windows and become the dominant OS on personal computers), and every year, well, it didn't happen.
These days, the market is just different : computers are not only desktop computers, but also phones, blu ray player, tvs, smart speakers, and software running on a server is reachable through a browser.
In many ways, Linux is dominant, but simply because it took the new, much bigger,non desktop markets, and the desktop doesn't matter that much these days.
I have been dual booting Windows / Linux on the desktop for ages. Each of them allow me to be very productive on some specific tasks, and I'm OK with it. Also Windows has progressively lost relevance for me, because Linux keeps letting you do more and more things that used to require Windows.
The "Linux Desktop" meme is a completely outdated reference to the old days when Microsoft had a 97+% desktop market share (1995 - 2003) and desktop computers were still novel. OS X, through some kind of market miracle, managed to drop that number to less than 90% and continues a fragile chipping-away.
Now Linux completely dominates in the market to destroy "desktop" "computing" via android devices and Chromebooks. I have a few relatives who don't even own a normal computer and use their phone or tablet for all tasks.
Asking normal people to use GNOME continues to be a bad idea and linux developers continue to mess up linux servers by attempting to (selfishly) make them more desktop-friendly. :)
> unless solves all these new problems we’ve just thought about.
StackOverflow 2022 Developer Survey:
"Windows is the most popular operating system for developers, across both personal and professional use. A Linux-based OS is more popular than macOS - speaking to the appeal of using open source software."
I've run Linux as my primary desktop from 2003 to 2006, and from 2011 until today. I've run it on all my laptops, all my desktops and my media PCs. Additionally, single person I hired over the last 10 years has used Linux as their primary desktop OS.
I think the best thing to happen to 'Linux on the Desktop' is that I finally don't give a shit about this argument any more. I'm ok with the fact that there are people who will never get on with Linux on the desktop, that there are those who will try it every few years and have a bad time. I'm even ok with the ones who seem to actively and gleefully seek out reasons why it's not for them just so they can tell me all about it, apparently trying to convince me to stop using it.
However, it comfortably feels like the critical mass of users like myself has been there for a while now, and I know many other people who consider the experience excellent, better than any of the alternatives available. It also feels like some of the most active distros nowadays assume a certain level of knowledge and interest, and I think that's also great - Linux has found its middle ground. The recent SO survey on OS use vs MacOS kinda confirms it.
I will continue to support the development of desktop Linux in any way I can. However, I no longer consider mainstream adoption to be critical to its success. In fact, I think chasing mainstream adoption at this point would be detrimental to its success as an OS that works for people like me.
The whole desktop computing idea for "most people" isn't really going to have a revival. There are specific niches within desktop computing (business people running excel, software developers running shells/IDEs/editors, gamers, home users, graphics designers, scientists, etc etc) and these niches seem to have very little in common. The "non-gamer home user" is all but dead. That's not a niche that will go anywhere, and if they use a linux-y OS it's not going to be anything other than ChromeOS.
Linux has made strides recently in several of these niches, most notably perhaps software developers are using Linux more, and in graphics/video we see people doing more Blender and perhaps not waiting for the next workstation Macs.
The biggest one in the bunch by far is regular business users doing word processing, spread sheets, SharePoint, video calls, emails. I no longer think desktop linux (in the traditional sense, i.e. Gnome/KDE) will take any chunk of this, within coming decades.
If anything, the whole concept of desktop will be abstracted away into a thin client in some cloud where your same programs and documents are available no matter your device. But one thing is 100% clear: for 99% of business users, that client will connect to a Microsoft service, nothing else.
The year of the Linux desktop arrived long ago, and nobody seemed to take note. It's called ChromeOS. Is it a Windows replacement? No. It's not intended to be. Is it useful? Absolutely, in its context.
As a daily driver desktop OS, I need Windows because of my workflow requirements. There's some software that I just love that's Windows-only. Does that mean Linux sucks? No. Do I like Linux? At the CLI, on servers YES. On desktops, not as much- but I know how to use it and can survive. I did it for almost a decade in the 2000's.
The author has good points of course. But anybody who is being objective will look at MacOS and Windows as a more polished OS that's got a more consistent UI, better software support (although the gap is much narrower than it used to be) and better hardware support (also a narrowing gap).
But isn't that the point of Linux? You can't really have UI consistency when even the developers of the UI's have competing standards. I used to see it as a weakness (and in some cases, it definitely is) but as I get older I'm starting to see the fragmented UI as a sign of its roots rather than as a design flaw. That's not to say I like it (I don't) but it just works for a lot of people.
I think what we conventionally mean by "year of the linux desktop" will never come. The universe has changed in fundamental ways since the time the slogan was adopted. But what will come in its place might be much more important and, dare i say, more beautiful.
Cataclysmic Event 1: As people pointed out already, the vast number of users have switched to a mobile device (or more likely adopted one for the first time). Its a bit silly to argue thats a linux win. The community was as surprised as anybody, witness the still preliminary (true) linux on mobile.
Cataclysmic Event 2: Adtech becomes the primary business model driving tech developments. Linux becomes both an enabler of that shift (the rise of the "cloud") and the last bastion of self-sovereign computing - though that is currently not truly appreciated by the masses
Cataclysmic Effect 3: Machine learning matures to the point of actual use at scale. This is totaly disruptive in ways not yet discernible
Where does this leave a thirty year old dream? Maybe at its best ever chance to change the world (for the better). The linux desktop is the natural home for augmentation of human intelligence the way pioneers envisaged. Its the natural place to run decentalized social networks and who knows what else.
How can we get there? First, its absolutely essential to integrate mobile. I like to think KDE connect as the birth of that convergence. Second its important to develop intelligent desktop applications that preserve privacy and control over algorithms.
We have come a long way. The promised land might be in sight soon.
When civilization collapses to the point where we cannot manufacture new computers, megacorps like Microsoft and Apple simply cannot exist, and the Internet includes sneakernet links again (somebody is maintaining UUCP, right?), but malware still spreads ... Linux will still work and make progress.
I've been using Linux exclusively since 1994 and when I watch people trip over their Windows and Mac systems I don't regret it at all.
I am also an early adopter, having downloaded Slack Linux via 2400baud dialup modem.
To get work done, I have largely spent time on macOS in the last 10 years, but I do have Linux on 4 laptops. Recently I have been experimenting with running Ubuntu using Parallels on my M1 iMac and the experience mostly being in Linux but being able to switch screens to macOS as needed is so far pretty good. Ubuntu has excellent support for ARM64.
In general, most OS vs OS debates are pointless because so many people go at it with the unconscious bias "I have extensive experience of X. When I try Y then all the parts that work differently from X are obviously wrong and stupid".
I guess it's a lot easier to believe that something works in wrong and stupid ways, than admitting that unfamiliarity feels uncomfortable when you're used to feeling like an expert.
For me it's not that the "average user experience" on Linux is bad. It's great. But everyone will eventually run into that one program that they really want to work that just doesn't. Or it's a part of a niche interest and will never be ported to Linux. Or it's 20 years old, and you can't run it through Wine. If Linux has 99% compatibility, it's the 1% that kills it.
Actually, 20 years old Windows software is more likely to run on Wine than brand new software. If Windows does something well, it is backwards compatibility.
It will work and won’t use new API:s which are not implemented on Wine yet.
For me and a lot of folks I know, "the year of the Linux desktop" has already been a reality for ages now … and before anyone tries to feed me some bullshit line about "normies can't handle Linux", I've had many "normal" folks ask me to help them get started with Linux over the years, and every single one of them has been perfectly happy with it once they got used to the few little differences they noticed. The trick is to help them find and focus on the similarities so they're not totally lost and confused, and to help them avoid the stumbling blocks by introducing them early on to the important differences that really matter, so they aren't bringing Windows or Mac mistakes and methods to their new operating system. (The package manager / app store is one good example of that.) Truth is that with each passing year of improvement, Linux becomes ever more "desktop ready" for a growing number of potential users.
I have always taken "the year of Linux on the Desktop" to mean the year when a non-technical person can easily acquire a computer that does everything they need or desire a computer to do, and runs an entirely open-source OS with Linux at its core.
The literal reading of "Linux runs on a desktop computer" is one that has been fulfilled since Torvalds first released it. It is one that has been fulfilled since before the phrase "The Year Of Linux On The Desktop" became a thing. There have been people making a Linux machine running one "friendly" distro or another their daily driver for most of Linux' existence. But if your non-technical relative goes out to buy a new computer, they're gonna either buy a Windows machine or a Mac. They're probably never heard of Linux unless you've talked to them about it. Where's the ads on their favorite shows and sites telling them about Linux? Where's the prominent computer manufacturer without an exclusivity deal with Microsoft trumpeting how their free OS makes for a better product?
Given how many people's computing needs now seem to be served entirely by an Android phone, then perhaps we have passed the Year of Linux on the Palmtop without anyone noticing because they are still focused on computers with multitasking, windowed OSs, designed for large screens. Is the proprietary part of Android small enough for it to count as "Linux" to you?
When your non-technical relative can go into Office Depot, browse the shelves, find an assortment of computers all proudly declaring they run Linux, and take it home and run everything they are buying a computer to run, then it is TYOTLD. Linux runs in a lot of places now, and that's great! But if you walk into a random house that owns a computer, you're probably not gonna find Linux on it, and thus it is not TYOTLD, despite you having run it as your daily driver desktop for the past ten years.
TYOTLD means that when you say "how do I run the standard tools that anyone doing what I am doing uses", you are just pointed to where to install them. If you are pointed to a free, open-source tool, it is because that is what everyone uses now because it beat out any paid, closed-source alternatives.
TYOTLD means that Microsoft's office suite runs on Linux, or that MS Office has been replaced by something that does across the entire world of office work.
TYOTLD means that all of Adobe's tools runs on Linux, or have been replaced by something that does across the entire creative industry.
TYOTLD means Linux won and Microsoft and Apple are both bit players.
If you are preparing a reply about how long it's been TYOTLD for you: great! You've been living in the future! But like Gibson said, the future may be here for you but it's not evenly distributed.
Do you want it to be more evenly distributed? Then when people tell you why it's not here for them, listen to them instead of dismissing "all these new problems we've just thought about", and put some effort into helping to solve some of them. Polish up those compatibility layers to make it easy to run things written for Windows. Improve the open-source tools aiming at replacing the commercial ones. Help create and fund advertising campaigns, help figure out how to pay the people doing all of these things for their time and expertise.
In some ways, the Year of the Linux Desktop has come many times over. We've got phablets, tablets and other Android devices. Alot of the things people would use a desktop computer for are now handled by the aforementioned devices (browsing the web, checking email, personal finance, etc).
I just paid $170 for my new Android phone (unlocked). It has 8GB of ram, 128GB of solid state storage, Wifi, a 5G radio, Bluetooth, a 50 megapixel camera and a nice large screen. It's really incredible the computing power you can get on a phone so inexpensively.
For me this device would handle all of the personal computing needs if there was a good way to dock it into a large display with a keyboard and have more of "Desktop" UI mode.
For me, as a gamer, Linux was not viable until about a decade ago when MS, in their infinite wisdom, pushed Valve to make it viable for gaming. This has always been my major problem with it.
Sure, I could - and did - play Quake 3 on Linux 20 years ago. My god, it used to start immediately whereas it used to take 2 seconds on Windows. Not sure if that was on ttimo, who I believe did the port for id, or just ext being faster.
But what else was out there? Pretty much nothing besides Tux Racing and similar toy projects. Almost no one else bothered until MS tried a little bit too hard. And Linux is the superior platform in terms of gaming, except that my Valve Index doesn't fucking work properly anymore. For your stupid compositor, Valve. I pad 1080 euro for this thing.
The Deck looks fantastic. Would've totally gotten one if I had any use for it but I have two modern desktops for desk and TV gaming so yeah. It doesn't look like they'll abandon it like they did with the Index. In fact, this little device may in fact play a major role in Linux desktop adoption beyond the couple of percent that get attributed to it
Imo the year of the Linux Desktop has passed us by. There was peak Linux Desktop in like 2007 before the X11/Wayland mess and before Gnome imploded where it was this totally usable thing. So in a lot of ways, the Linux Desktop is here in the form of ChromeOS.
Linux can be used on the desktop, but its almost impossible to release commersial applications for it, since there is no stable ABI. The Kernel maintains a stable ABI, but until the ditributions take this seriously Linux will remain behind Windows on the Desktop. There is nothing inherently wrong with Linux that prevents this, its just that the people who maintain distributions, seems to think that software that isnt open source doesnt bring value to Linux, so the answer to this major problem keeps beeing "just recompile!".
The problem isnt that Linux cant be on the desktop, its that the Linux comunity keeps sabotaging it by breaking the ABIs.
You added an /s to the end, but I think this is one of many valid arguments/pain points for a lot of people. It was for me, too: I've been using Linux at work and on my servers for years, but up until recently (September), I was running Windows on my Desktop PC. Now I'm dual booting Windows and Arch Linux, usually using the latter. Windows exists for a handful of games that rely on anti-cheat solutions that do not run on Linux.
The reason it took me this long to use Linux at home were my so-so experiences with Gnome and its derivatives and other DEs I had used: the devil is in the detail. Linux _worked_, but there were always small things that made using it as a daily driver unnecessarily painful. The Gnome save file dialog highlights the file name as being selected, which suggests it is in focus. But when I start typing, a search in the current folder is started instead. Likewise, when typing anything in the file browser, a search in that folder is being started (as opposed to jumping to files and/or folders matching what I'm typing).
This and many other small bothersome things kept me away from Linux as my daily desktop driver for a long time. Microsoft's decision to require a Microsoft account for even the professional version of Windows 11 made me finally decide to switch, and the first DE I had tried (because I had heard so many good things) was KDE. And what a surprise that was, because as it turns out: KDE got all of those little details absolutely right. The file dialogs are heaps better than Gnome's/GTK's, Dolphin (its file browser) is an absolute bliss to use, and so much more.
So, looking back, all it took (at least for me) was just KDE. Better late than never ;)
Your experience sounds a lot like mine - I first cut my teeth on the Linux desktop when I was a kid, using Ubuntu 7.10. As I had an Athlon 64 at the time I thought it'd be cool to run the amd64 build, only to find out that there were no amd64 drivers for my NIC!
Played around with various distros and DEs, but ended up switching back to Windows due to various sharp corners in the desktop UX. Always kept a toe in the water by occasionally booting in to a live DVD or a VM over the years. The progress has been incremental, sometimes a step back (e.g. early GNOME 3.x), but when you look at the bigger picture, it's definitely noticeable and going in the right direction.
I've tried Windows 11 and can't get along with the UI, not to mention the forced online account and data mining. I'll keep running Windows 10 until it goes out of support in 2025 and evaluate my options then. I can see three possible paths:
* Switch to Windows 10 IoT Enterprise, which buys me another 5 years of support
* Switch to Windows 11 (or whatever they call the next version), if they roll back some of the annoying changes
* Switch to Linux - increasingly looking like the path for me, given the improvements in UI/UX
The Linux desktop is simply insufficient. I use Linux extensively at work, entirely in a container context. I have a custom PC in the basement with 2 GPUs that runs and boots Linux exclusively. In my studio I have a RasPI and an Intel skull canyon machine running Linux as servers. I have another dual boot custom PC in my studio which can run windows, but almost always is running Linux as it is right now. While this machine can be used as a desktop at a standing desk I use daily for work, rarely do I ever switch the monitor to use the desktop. The computer I am using to type now is at another desk, certainly has its own host of issues as it is an Intel Apple machine, is more expensive than it ought to be, but realistically I am much happier and productive with Mac OS, despite having some workflows that could easily be ported to Linux. Further, the UI intensive applications that I rely on, simply have no credible peer in the Linux ecosystem. I will leave out a rant about the pervasiveness of the antiquated X window system which is at the core of most Linux desktop environments.
I recently bought a new laptop and initially installed Linux (Ubuntu) on it, but then uninstalled it for the following reasons:
- No 2-finger swipe for back/forward navigation in internet browsers. This is impossible on Linux since Linux doesn't support customizing 2-finger swipe. Sure I could set it on 3-finger swipe, but I wanted 2-finger swipe.
- Couldn't connect my Airpod Pro wireless headphones. Searching around it seemed to not be possible to connect the headphones with microphone.
There were a lot of annoying things I had to fix that work out of the box in Windows/Mac like the scroll speed in Chrome being way too slow (had to install a Chrome extension to fix). Googling solutions leads you somewhere like askubuntu.com which I found extremely unreliable - with often the highest upvoted answer not even answering the question, so you need to go through a bunch of different questions where people tell you to download some random dude's package that hasn't been updated in 5-10 years and doesn't even work.
Ultimately the dealbreakers combined with the general difficulty and hassle of doing basic things led me to uninstall it and go back to Windows (with Windows Subsystem for Linux). I really wanted to use a free open source operating system, but I didn't want to sacrifice on the above functionality and have to waste a lot of time fiddling with my computer just to get basic things working. Shame because there are a lot of things I don't like about Windows and it's not very customizable (eg. can't reduce size of taskbar on Windows 11 without hacky regedit update that cuts off the bottom of the toolbar, no way to alt-tab among same application windows in reverse order where it immediately switches to application. I have an AutoHotKey script that only partially works)
> - No 2-finger swipe for back/forward navigation in internet browsers. This is impossible on Linux since Linux doesn't support customizing 2-finger swipe. Sure I could set it on 3-finger swipe, but I wanted 2-finger swipe.
> - couldn't connect my airpod pro wireless headphones. searching around it seemed to not be possible to connect the headphones with microphone.
Not sure about this tbh. I use Bluetooth earphones and they work great on Zorin. Zorin really makes things easier with all those pre-installed drivers and layouts and all the great UI enhancements.
You can give it a try, Ubuntu was a massive disappointment for me as well.
Ubuntu is truly awesome as a completely free product, and a huge number of people would be perfectly fine running this, as they basically just do browsing, Facebook, write and few documents etc., however the majority of these people still use Windows as it's pre-installed on their sub $700 laptops (clever move by Microsoft).
Having said that, Windows just have SO much more software, making that OS a preferred choice for most people who use their computer for more "advanced" tasks.
Linux, still, offers only a tiny fraction of the software available for Windows. Generally the quality of software for Windows is MUCH higher (an often comparison by Linux fans when I mention Photoshop is Gimp, which makes me wonder if these people simply just are used to low quality software, or just don't know better?).
It's not a choice between Linux and Microsoft, who cares about the OS (the point of a OS is to be invisible anyway), it's a choice between the software which can solve your problem / work / task.. And in that light, Linux is still lightyears behind Microsoft.
Ubuntu isn't peak Linux desktop anymore. Linux Mint has taken that crown. There is a reason it's 4 spots below Mint and one spot below Fedora on Distrowatch.com.
For my usage I am still heavily dependent on Macs since Adobe suite isn't available for Linux and the alternatives just do not compare. Neither in performance or interoperability. Davinci is a nice alternative to Premiere but Lightroom and Photoshop still reign supreme.
For the rest I am 100% on Linux as well. I used to game on Windows but MS made it such a hassle I just went Linux instead.
The elephant in the room with Linux on the desktop is: if you install Linux on a machine, you are de facto the integrator.
If you don't want, or can't, do the job of a system integrator for your PC, you can now buy PC with Linux pre-installed. Or use another pre-installed OS.
You may think installing Linux on a machine is not a big deal (and I'd agree as far as I'm concerned ;) but it's clear it causes a lot of grief and frustration for some.
If you're new to Linux, please get a pre-installed PC. If you want to install Linux on a PC, be aware that the integration is on you. So start easy: well supported models (Thinkpad, Latitude), stick with integrated graphics, be careful about new models particularly with big changes (e.g.: the recent new "soft" webcams), and in general do a bit of research before so you can get confident you can deal with it.
“Next year, 2023, will be my thirtieth year of Linux on the desktop, and the thirtieth year of being told it’s not possible to use Linux on the desktop, (…)
Despite everything, it’s been fun. I’ve been lucky to have been able to take part of this journey.”
My HS gaming days were capped off with me running my games under linux. This was 2000-2002. (Ultimately i went to college, attempted a double math/physics major, and had no time for gaming.)
Don’t let others tell you what you can do or what will make you happy. For linux, definitely be a ray of inspiration for adoption by showing off your desktop and how easy it is achieve-advocacy. Or don’t, of course.
Edit-I get the feeling linux/foss has made a huge difference to the developing or low income world getting online and even industry. That, to me, is at least as important than what Windows did for the desktop.
I think the impression that Linux doesn't work on the desktop mostly comes from Windows being pre-installed on most devices and software only being available for Windows or Mac.
Also, some hardware vendors are actively sabotaging Linux. I regret buying a notebook that has an AMD processor and a Nvidia card in it. With a 4K monitor connected to the graphics card, Gnome is barely performant enough to work on X. Wayland's performance is unbearable. And it didn't work at all for quite a while, because of some passthrough issues with the built-in graphics card. Consider someone not used to tinkering spending more than $3k on a notebook and having this experience.
The next time, I'll make sure to buy well-supported hardware (AMD all the way), but you cannot expect that from the average Joe.
I’ve never seen anybody say “year of the Linux desktop” to mean “is it possible to run Linux on a desktop”. Of course it’s possible. The term refers to Linux having a surge in popularity, whereas right now it’s a niche choice. The closest we’ve gotten here is chromebooks.
I've been hearing this phrase for such a long time but i do not get it. I think Linux by nature is a personal affair, the way i've setup everything is going to be drastically different than somebody else. Which leads me to believe that even the year of linux desktop is a personal matter. My year was about a decade ago, the authors might be 2023, some people from the audience would've seen their year last year perhaps etc. So not really sure about the point of the rant anyway... when something is so good you do not bother about these self-imposed stupid conditions, you just relish, send your blessings to contributors and the creator and hopefully even contribute yourself- chill out & happy tuxing!
My main desktop's primary OS is Arch Linux with KDE as the desktop environment. Before it used to be difficult to setup Arch, but these days I only had to install it with the `archinstall` script.
Most of the additional setup that I needed to do is thoroughly documented on their website. The majority of the packages I need are either available via pacman or the AUR.
The only issues I have to deal with at the moment is the random system instability due to the Nvidia drivers (about once a week). But things are appearing to stabize with each update. Not too bothered by that since I can play a lot of my Steam games with Proton.
I've been using derivatives of Linux since 2007. It just gets better each year.
The article argues with two strawman claims and (unsurprisingly) wins. The first one is that the "year of the Linux desktop" jokes mean that the Linux desktop (or something else in computing) is impossible with open source, and the second one is that they mean no one uses Linux on the desktop. In reality, the "year of the Linux desktop" is a joke because it illustrates how far Linux is from mainstream adoption for desktop computing - a fact.
A "year of the Linux machine" (servers, Android, Chromebooks) perhaps would not be a joke anymore as it was in Ballmer's Microsoft days. The "year of the Linux desktop" still is.
Ubuntu has already accomplished the year of linux on the desktop many years ago. Ubuntu is a good platform for development, for doing office work and even for gaming it's ok now with steam. Unless you're really dependent of a small fraction of things you can't really do on linux, it's been a pretty for many years already.
The second point is about popularity. Who still uses a desktop? Normal people now do most of their stuff on smartphones, tablets or consoles, desktop is that boring thing used only for work in your office. The desktop died before linux becoming popular, that's the reality.
I am using Linux exclusively for the last 8 years as my main os. Nowadays all the games I want run on Linux, even AAA ones. All the applications I need run on Linux. This is the best time to be a linux user. :)
I've used Linux since 1993 or 1994 (Slackware 1.0), including "Linux on the desktop" for most of that, and typically only use anything else when "forced" to do so. This resonated.
Oh look, another Linux thread. It's a fucking cliche, sure enough the top N comments bagging on Linux are handwavey citing "tried a main distro years ago" which usually means "Six years ago, I tried an Ubuntu USB stick that I'd made 7 years ago, and now I'm acting that experience is indicative of Linux today".
I mean, I played Halo Infinite on NixOS the other night, and literally the only problem was one projectile from one gun appearing slightly odd when firing.
I kind of find these discussions hilarious anymore.
It's here. It's been here for a few years now and it's on laptops too. Microsoft knew it was coming and that's why .NET runs on Linux. Expect Microsoft Office for Linux soon.
The first Google result for "linux laptop" is this:
The sad truth is normies outside rich bubbles do not even buy laptops or desktops anymore. They exclusively use phones and/or tablets and they go for the cheap ones which mean Android. If they get a laptop they get a cheap one, and that means a Chromebook.
Linux already won at being the primary end user computing device for most people. The only people that do not realize this are on macbooks surrounded by people who can afford the same.
Can't say I care what most people use -- I considered the fight for Linux won years ago when I first encountered driver difficulties on Windows Vista. Equal opportunity for incompatible hardware was the real turning point, and since that parity seems mostly maintained, I'm happy enough.
Frankly I'm more annoyed with systemd swallowing up perfectly good projects these days far more than I am with the Windows ecosystem.
My challenge is that Linux (Ubuntu) simply does not provide the level of nice, saturated color rendering on any of the browsers (Chrome, Firefox) that MacOS provides. Same problem with Windows, but I am only looking to switch to Linux. I hope this could be fixed one of these days. I tinkered with video card color profile and it gets better, but I couldn’t get it to the level of MacOS “pleasure to look at”.
Why bother about what other people think? I never got this need to take other people's views into consideration when forming your own needs or wants. Do what you want to do for yourself, not for others. As you get older you quickly discover that outside your own direct family that others are pretty much irrelevant and not worth listening to. Trust your own intuition when making decisions and live by them.
In a Fediverse thread some time back I asked Lars how many other Linux users there were when he installed it (well, some other guy did it for him) on his computer.
He replied that there was one other user at the time.
(The thread's buried under one of my several Mastodon profiles. I do swear it actually happened, however.)
2023 will mark my own 26th year of Linux on the Desktop.
From OP: "the thirtieth year of being told it’s not possible to use Linux on the desktop, or to only use Linux on the desktop."
Except for a percentage of users with special needs (corporate office software, gaming), I honestly don't think anyone is saying this. Also, the numbers have been looking great for a while[0].
I may be of the minority opinion that does _not_ want "The Year of the Linux Desktop"(TM). In every instance that I've seen software usage cross a certain threshold, I've seen it dumbed down and abused.
Decades ago, I remember trying to get people excited about computing. When they finally got on board, my email address was circulating the globe via chain letters. Spam began to rule. Blogspam took over 'teh internets'. Operating Systems lost their ability to tweak and nearly all decisions were made by a corporate overlord. Now these same OSes are filled with advertising, tracking and surveillance.
I could go on with so many examples. I think Linux is doing just fine positioned where it is. You can keep the newbies (who more often fight you against positive change) and the vultures they attract.
Linux doesn't have to convince or persuade or become anyone's idea of popular. It will, however, be here when you _need_ it.
> Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of "free", "freak", and "x" (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name "Freax" for about half of a year. Torvalds had already considered the name "Linux", but initially dismissed it as too egotistical.
> In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that "Freax" was a good name. So, he named the project "Linux" on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux".
> To demonstrate how the word "Linux" should be pronounced ([ˈliːnɵks]), Torvalds included an audio guide (listen (help·info)) with the kernel source code.
> Next year, 2023, will be my thirtieth year of Linux on the desktop, and the thirtieth year of being told it’s not possible to use Linux on the desktop, or to only use Linux on the desktop. Some of the people telling me this weren’t born when I started using Linux on the desktop.
Says a hardcore Linux user. This is what happens when you shove the Linux Desktop to people like artists and the distro 'support' becomes EOL. [0] Thousands of complaints, headaches in updating the system software and if all else fails, migration hell.
Now in 2023, we are still telling users to "choose a distro for Desktop" and companies to 'define Linux Desktop support' for their GUI apps which they still cannot do and support all distros like many can with the latest supported versions of Windows or macOS. This is an eternal issue for the Linux Desktop.
At this point the best Linux Desktop is Windows with WSL2 and requires no reformatting, partitioning, migrating and reconfiguring dotfiles in window managers.
The currently-supported version of the distro you're on.
It's a cultural difference. People using Windows seem to spend an inordinate amount of effort coddling along ancient installs of Windows 10, presumably because they're such a pain in the backside to set up (I have personally never successfully installed any version of Windows later than 3.11 and got all my devices working, with graphics and networking support a particular problem).
People using Linux will just blow away the install and stick on the latest LTS, because it's quick and easy and supported. If you've got a lot of apps to install it is generally possible to script all that, and so you pull the trigger on an install and it's ready to go in ten minutes.
One slight counterexample is the situation that Black Magic Design's video software DaVinci Resolve is in, where it's packaged for (and only officially supported on) CentOS 7, which goes EOL next year. However, it turns out it works just fine in CentOS Stream 8, and indeed it can be run on other distros in a Docker container based on CentOS (and of course running it in a container brings other benefits like being able to work with multiple versions on the same computer).
In general though, there's more of a "blow it away and reinstall" approach with Linux when a distro is EOL. I know I'm not the only one that takes this a stage further, and just replaces the hard disk when a new LTS comes out, so if anything happens the old stuff isn't "lost".
Rants against straw arguments that don't exist outside of the rants are always fun.
Nobody is saying it is impossible to use Linux on the desktop. We're saying that it will never overtake things like Windows and MacOS in popularity. That's what we've always been saying, it has never changed.
I've been using Linux on laptops for the last decade or so with no issues. Dunno why the naysayers are so adamant, I haven't had a single hardware feature/piece of hardware not work in a very, very long time (a Wifi card in 2008 or so on my desktop which I just replaced).
The desktop linuxes I've used would be my daily OS if it weren't for the edges. Not necessarily as sharp now as when you could break a CRT with the wrong modeline, but still bad relative to the alternative (for me macOS). I mean things like fonts, copy/paste, screen resolution, kerning, cursor acceleration, bounding boxes, full screen support, sound (and I primarily know what I'm doing with Linux Sound since the OSS days.). It's the churn that keeps the GUI tantalizing close but distant. There are happy kde and gnome users out there, heck I'm on KDE right now typing this, but all those other victories had a unity of involved 'stakeholders' (AWS, millions of ISPs, Android, etc) and the focus in desktop OSes is famously nebulous (or at a minimum splintered along multiple axes). Still things like PopOS give me hope for the future. Also I'm a 2 spaces after a period ghost from the late 1900s whose opinion isn't worth much.
"Year of Linux on the Desktop" is very different from "Year of the Linux Desktop"
I completely agree Linux successfully runs on a desktop (x86 "PC"). I completely disagree Linux is better as a GUI OS (desktop OS) when compared to Mac and Windows.
The problem isn't that it doesn't work, it's that it doesn't work well enough (even as an experienced user, my desire to debug silly desktop environment issues while trying to get stuff done is very little to non existent) - there are many niggles as a daily driver, which are fine if your desire to use it outweighs the aversion to fixing stuff all the time, I can't imagine how a beginner would feel these days as it's so much more complicated and has so many more dependencies than days past.
Downvote edit: nerds aren't counted in adoption statistics, sorry
If you looked you'd notice it isn't a throwaway account, but as I'm not an anti social nerd I used the commonly used 'throwaway' prefix to highlight that it is not an identifying account.
I think this whole meme died as soon as Steam/Proton started being okay. None of the other criticisms were ever in good faith. Linux has been great for everything else for a very long time. Some people do have legitimate criticisms but they are mostly nitpicking and making mountains out of molehills. When gaming becomes great on Linux it's game over for the entire industry of these arguments.
Pretty sure meme died, because desktop is dying, due to hardware slowing down and mobile boom.
Linux has the problem of no commercially successful distro, wasted duplication of effort (which DE, which sound manager, which compositor) and no backwards compatibility (user facing software).
Add onto that reliance on CLI, and lagging behind Windows features for 10+ years, and in-kernel nature of drivers and you have a recipe for lagging.
What a weird rant. Most people don’t even use a desktop anymore but somehow it counts that Linux runs on servers and supercomputers (and Android which apparently is the same kind of things as Fedora or Gentoo).
Linux “on the desktop” is unusable for anyone who is not 1) a computer hobbyist 2) a person with needs limited to a browser
Without disagreeing in any way, because I don't, the thing is this: the year of Linux on the desktop came in 2020, and the world didn't notice, which is good and right and proper.
Here is the evidence and the reasoning:
How can we define when Linux was ready for the desktop? When people chose it. When can we say they chose it in significant numbers? When more people chose Linux than a competing product.
OK, then, what competing products are there?
Well there are really only two: Windows and macOS. That's it.
Those are the mainstream desktop OSes. There are other mainstream end-user OSes, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS, but they're not desktop/laptop OSes. They run on dedicated purpose-built hardware.
Outselling Windows is a high bar. But outselling macOS is easy to measure. It's the #2, and Linux outsold Macs in 2020:
ChromeOS is a Linux. More so even than Android, which has a strange custom userland, libc and so on. ChromeOS doesn't. It's based on Gentoo, it has its own display server and things but it's a Linux and it runs desktop Linux apps.
ChromeOS, Windows and macOS are fungible. You can interchange one for the other. You can install ChromeOS (in its Flex edition) on PCs and on x86 Macs. You can install x86 macOS on x86 PCs: I've done it. You can install Windows and Linux on x86 Macs, and Arm Linux on Arm Macs is getting there. You can install Linux and Windows on Chromebooks. They are interchangeable.
Argue all you like about openness, third-party apps and stuff, it's here and it works. I run Firefox on my Chromebook, because I am awkward like that. It works great.
ChromeOS is a Linux, and ChromeOS outsold Macs 3 years ago.
The 2nd best-selling desktop/laptop OS is a Linux and macOS was relegated to 3rd place.
It is here, it happened, there are some 200 to 300 million happy ChromeOS users out there.
No mainstream Linux vendor noticed. Fans of mainstream Linux didn't notice. It's not their kind of Linux. That's exactly what you'd expect Linux fans to think and say and indeed do.
But the year of Linux on the desktop was 2020. It happened, it came, and the FOSS world was too busy squabbling to notice.
Recently, my Dell started having some troubles after many years of hard use - the wifi chip seems to have some problems. Since I need to be able to at least do email and web things, I went out and got a $130 Chromebook at OfficeMax. I was actually quite impressed with it! But the screen was a bit too small, so I took it back and upgraded to a $250 computer.
I'm very impressed at what it can do for that price. The user experience is very good, all smooth sailing, and in addition, the Linux subsystem is quite usable. I got my Elixir/Phoenix hobby project running on it without much trouble.
My original plan was to just hang on to this computer while I ordered a new Dell, but I'm considering whether I need to do that... $1800-ish for a new XPS 13 is a lot more than $250.
The keybindings and window manager do bug me a bit on ChromeOS compared to the custom stuff I've had set up on Linux that dates back to fvwm2 days, but it looks like if you dig around, you can tweak things. Seems there's even a focus follows mouse option!
As a fellow traveler that adopted Linux a bit later in 1995
I used it as my main desktop at the university.
For my needs back then it was a foot fit and it was damn fast
compared to the undergrad Sun terminals at the labs.
(They had nice servers, there were just far too many people using them)
(People scheduled a lot of things for the middle of the night as well).
(no dialup)
So, my firat year of Linux on the desktop was 1995.
I have never been an OS fanboy.
I use what is most convenient.
UNIX on the desktop has been done already with macOS.
It is great.
Linux on the desktop is done with Chromebooks at least originally.
Not so great.
Linux inside Windows fits somewhere in there but I dont know where.
I wish Microsoft had kept the WinNT 4 architecture to implement
a Linux sub system.
However, the "Year of the desktop Linux" is not a question of "being able to"
but of mass adaptation.
IMHO Linux is stil not ready for that.
I still have significant hassles getting Linux to work well with all parts / systems of a laptop.
Yes, I can buy a laptop specifically made for Linux and it will be much easier.
But bow we have reached the point where "Linux on the desktop" means getting normies to buy a very specific new laptops to run Linux well out of the box.
I use Windows1 + macOS my laptops and desktops.
(Often with a few Linux and FreeBSD virtual machines)
I run Linux and OpenBSD on servers.
I would like to have Windows Server on a couple but $$$$$
I think that
>""Linux runs all top 500 super computers, billions of personal devices, most >servers on the Internet, on all continents, on all oceans, in the air, in orbit, >and on Mars. Oh, and in the air on Mars. All big corporations use open source in >some form.""
Is a detractor for Linux on the desktop.
Nearly all huge financing of Linux comes from giant corporate entities that
deal with 100.000s (millions?) of computer server farm in data centers.
Their priorities are extremely and even conflicting with the needs of a
a desktop Linux for normies.
There is also investment in Linux on smartphones, routers etc.
The priorities here are also conflicting with what a regular desktop
user wants.
Ubuntu and some others are investing in Linux on the desktop but its tiny
sums and efforts if you compare them to the efforts above.
Let us just be happy with macOS for regular desktop users.
Why should a single OS dominante all markets at the same time?
I think that is frightening more than anything else.
I want many more operating systems to choose from.
(Not yet another Linux distro)
In a nutshell, and in my words, the Linux ecosystem consists of a loose collection of related, but fragmented, software, devices, documents and practices. This is fine, as long as you understand what you're dealing with.
Much longer version (I don't have a blog where I can post this):
Consumer devices are more than that though. They are finished, supported products engineered and designed for specific use cases or demographics of users. Consumer devices like these sound great for most people but for some people, it's not what they want. If a consumer device on the market doesn't meet the needs of their application, for example, they need to go elsewhere like commission a custom design or build it themselves. Again, you have to understand what your needs are and what offerings are out there.
You have to be honest about what you're looking at. I have a MacBook and an iPhone. I have certain expectations from these devices, in terms of features and limitations. And a lot of what I expect from these devices is inspired by where they come from: Do they come from a company? What type of company is it? What are the company's values and goals? What does the company think of me, the customer? From the answers to these types of questions I use the devices accordingly. You don't even need to get into the megahertz and gigabytes to form fundamental ideas about what to expect out of a device or computer. You consider the context in which the device orginated.
I also have a ThinkPad running Ubuntu. This is not a consumer device. This does not come from one organization building systems for people like me. It's a collection of tools and I'm responsible for taking those tools and making them work for the application I want and the problems I'm trying to solve. I have to take these kernel versions, drivers, utilities, libraries, layers of software, scripts, configuration files, desktop environments and GUI frameworks to create the system I need for the work I have to do. And even after all that I know the end result is not going to be some slick polished product I'd find on a shelf. But I understand this and I'm prepared to take on the role of part time sys admin, SW dev and researcher and whatever else to get the job done. I also know this wont work for the vast majority of users out there, so I wouldn't bother recommending it.
Maybe one day there will be a company that makes a Linux-based workstation as finished and as much of a "platform" as the Sun Ultra 10 or SGI Indigo2 I used 20 years ago in college. But I'm not holding my breath. Notice I didn't mention Solaris or Irix, fine systems and worthy of mention, but also redundant like saying "my Iphone 11 Pro running iOS". In any case, if such a system did exist, it would likely be a distinct offshoot of the larger Linux ecosystema and only semi-open which would turn off many Linux enthusiats or purists.
IMO, for a proper "platform", the hardware, software, design philosophy, interface, store and support are all integrated by the same company, organization or team with the same objectives and values. If that's what you want, tossing a free Linux distribution on a random laptop made for Windows isn't going to cut it. If that's not what you need and you're willing and able to do some of the work yourself, Linux is great.
As more production work moves to the cloud, so does the corresponding development. The only thing that’s needed is a modern browser and the underlying operating system becomes irrelevant.
Does anybody say this? I've always interpreted the phrase "year of Linux on the desktop" to mean a year when people who wouldn't list "computers" among their personal interests were noticeably using it on their desktops. That still hasn't happened. There are a lot of "year of the -" things I've seen come, when things that were used by professionals and nerds entered common usage and parlance, like burning a CD or installing Firefox (granted those have come and now gone).
You ask a normie "what's your opinion of Windows 10?" and they'll have one, good or bad. You ask a normie what their opinion of Linux is and most of them won't even know the word, let alone have one. That's why it isn't and may never be "the year of Linux on the desktop".