If you click through to the link, you'll see that the results add up to 150%. That should be a sign that something odd is going on with this survey result and we need to interpret it with caution.
The question was "What is the primary operating system in which you work." (Emphasis mine.) The question itself implies that we should only be able to pick one, and yet the results clearly indicate that more than one was allowed. Most likely, people were listing the OSes they use a lot. A great many of us developers use a commercial OS locally, but also interact with Linux servers or containers on a regular basis.
That said, there's no simple interpretation of that "40% use Linux" number that passes the smell test. It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS, and it's implausibly low for the number of developers who regularly work in Linux. More likely, what this number represents is that different respondents interpreted the question, which appears to have been ambiguously framed, in different and incompatible ways, and so the result is statistically meaningless.
Where I work our laptop runs OSX but we're not allowed to do any work on it (and it's heavily locked down to prevent it.) Instead all of our actual work is done on a machine we ssh into.
If you use Windows at home I wonder if it would be wrong to list all three popular OSes.
But I think your point is sound. Our totally not monopolistic tech giant friends would never dream of colluding to make mobile device management proprietary. To lose hold of MDM would unravel too much. and iStuff doesn't play nice w/ Linux. If there were a decent way to get Messages and SMS on a desktop Linux OS I would be there today.
> It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS
This might just be the bias of the circles I move in, but over the last five years me running Linux on the desktop in a development work environment has gone from a weird oddity, to uncommon, to boringly normal. I've had a few non-work tech-adjacent friends ask for opinions on running Linux on Thinkpads for example.
I strongly suspect there's a multitude of factors including the rise of the cloud, the maturation of Linux desktop distros, Linux being the default/only options for things like Raspberry Pi's, developer software being multi-platform, etc.
While some hardware issue still remain, getting Linux compatible hardware of any type is pretty easy. It's not 100% guaranteed situation like Windows is, but you'll have multiple options for whatever you are looking for, which is a massive difference compared to years passed where some hardware categories simply did not have a fully fledge Linux compatible option.
Also, “the primary operating system in which you work” doesn’t necessarily imply desktop. People could be using a Windows or Mac desktop and then primarily work in Linux via remote terminals and/or VMs.
If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script. Software updates rarely work. There are random crashes that take hours to fix. I'm about to give in the towel and get a Mac.
I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a certain amount of technical skills.
I started daily driving linux in the 90s. When I switched to a mac around 2010 if found Mac exhausting. It had different usage patterns than I was used to. Some of my most used features weren't there. Having a reasonably usable shell experience required lots of tweaking and macports then brew. When I switched back to linux ~5 years ago there was a while where getting back into the linux groove was exhausting because I wasn't used to it, but not as exhausting as switching to mac because I already knew it, just needed to get back in practice.
Every time i use windows (which is rarely, once a year maybe) i find it exhausting.
I propose that it's not the OS that's the exhausting part - it's the switching to a new environment with different workflows and thought processes around it that is exhausting. Similar to how it's much harder to get familiar with a codebase in a new (to you) language than in a language you are proficient in - but both cases can be taxing.
This is something those "defending" the harder-to-use/learn thing always bring up. As if affordances must always be relative to prior knowledge. But they're not (always) - some things just are harder to use than others (at least relative to a specific meaning of 'use').
Programming languages - you could argue Rust isn't hard to learn, by pretending that everyone claiming it is are just having trouble adjusting from javascript. But that breaks down when you realise the Rust learners finding it hard are actually polyglot programmers who are finding it harder than all the many other languages, in multiple paradigms, they have already successfully learned.
Similar with Linux - I find it harder to 'use' in a certain sense (the sense most people mean - which is getting all the ordinary hardware & software stuff working) than the others. You'll tell me it's unfamiliarity, but it's just not - my first Linux was Slackware on floppies, and I've used it alongside Windows and MacOS now for decades. I choose it for my primary OS for other reasons, but ease of use certainly isn't among them. I still have to fiddle more with it .
If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script.
A. I'm looking at pointer speed section in Mouse Preference in Control Center. It's pretty simple. It give acceleration and sensitivy.
B. Just about every GUI aims for decent defaults and doesn't allow endless customization and such customization generally isn't a beginner task.
I've used the Linux desktop for ten years (Mint then Ubuntu-Mate). Haven't customized anything with a bash script for many years. It is currently clearer how to do things than Windows - it's fricken TWO start menus jumping over each other.
I haven't needed a bash script to customize anything but I have had ti spend countless hours in the terminal making seemingly mundane software and hardware work.
Just because you've used Linux-training wheels edition and don't remember having problems isn't grounds to dismiss the large number of people who do have issues with Linux.
I also find Linux exhausting. I use it daily in servers and containers. It excels from an administrative perspective. I avoid using it as a client desktop pc at all cost because that is not where it excels.
There's no singular 'linux experience', all the problems you list are expected problems with some software on linux, but work just fine with other software systems on linux. Unfortunately many of the defaults chosen by Ubuntu are very poor and give bad first impressions. I think that recommending Ubuntu is an anachronism from the mid to late 00s.
Experience makes it all much easier, simply because you learn which software to avoid. Having this experience, linux for me is stress free and low hassle. But if you don't want to accumulate that experience, if you want to stay on a default track with the right choices made for you already, then you probably should go with your gut and get a Mac.
Anyway, the "year of the linux desktop" is a joke. The very premise is an old meme that nobody should take seriously, nobody can even agree what it should mean. The year linux became viable for desktop use depends on the person doing the considering. For some it was years ago, for others it will be never.
I’ve been running desktop Linux since the 90s, and it’s been my primary desktop since XP was first released (XP was what drove my to Linux) and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve needed to write a shell script to fix basic functionality.
I’m not taking anything away from your experiences though. Just offering another data point.
I do get the appeal of macOS. I use it for work but I honestly find it more frustrating than pleasurable but that’s purely because I don’t always agree with Apples design choices.
…And that is the real problem with macOS for me. If you like their default experience then it’s a much more pleasurable platform to use. But if there’s any significant part of Apples design choices you don’t get alone with, then you’re often shit out of luck. Trying to bend macOS to behave any way outside of Apples vision can be more frustrating than dealing with Linux quirks.
That all said, I am in love with the battery life on the ARM MacBook Pros. I’ve managed to go a full working day without plugging the MBP in. There isn’t any comparative device out there for Linux.
So in the end I find Linux for personal devices and macOS for work is a great compromise for me.
I get about 4 hours productive use out of my work Macbook M1 pro (32 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe) on battery. I get about 3.5 hours productive use out of my Zen2 HP Omen laptop (64 GB RAM, 3TB NVME). Though I have to reduce the brightness of the Zen to get better lifetime.
I am a bit of a power user, running large builds, analytics, and other things, so its not surprising to me that I get less than others. I would like to see an all-day battery laptop for people like me, though I suspect it will be a few more years.
Oh, and the original work windows laptop I had (fully corporate controlled) with 32GB RAM and 500GB NVMe barely lasted an hour on battery. And it BSODed frequently.
I'd still prefer a Linux work laptop, but the Mac is at least a poor-mans version of it. Windows, even with WSL2, was horrible.
> Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script.
This is Ubuntu and GNOME both having adopted unfortunate strategies wrt UX in recent years. They seem to be trying to emulate the Apple "we know best, take it or leave it", removing customization and freezing the UI, but without the resources spent on getting it "perfect" for the majority. They may still be fine choices for some users but they closed the door on being the "just use this" generic options.
KDE has supported changing mouse scroll from the UI for some time. Linux Mint (including its Debian edition) with MATE or Cinnamon, or BudgieWM are other fine choices for non-terminal users. Fedora has been picking up as a general all-round desktop distro as Ubuntu has been falling from grace.
If you think that Ubuntu has poor user-friendlyness wait until you try this new "Windows 10" thing everyone seems to be on about.
You have to click through about ten pages of menus just to set up the network, and if you get anything wrong the error message is just along the lines of either "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again!" or "Error -X8004a119af3c occurred", neither of which are particularly helpful. It doesn't come with a usable shell. It doesn't even come with ssh, or zip, or Python.
You're expected to interact with the entire thing by clicking on page after page after page of little coloured squares that aren't meaningfully labelled. Why is a user interface designed like a 1980s "My First Video Game" project supposed to be good?
1. Redhat standardized on RPM. Debian/Ubuntu had dpkg. Arch has their AUR packages. Slack used tarballs.
2. KDE and Gnome created two different rivaling GUI's. Never merged and split the development community down the middle.
3. There are N different GUI libraries: FLTK, GTK+, QT, wxWidgets, etc.
4. There are 3 different cross platform packaging solutions: Snap, Flatpak, AppImage
5. GPU and Wifi drivers can be a pain to get running sometimes, even if they're prepackaged for you. (Hell, my Nvidia drivers crash my windows laptop all the time).
6. Support for hardware sometimes requires third party libraries (solaar for logitech, etc).
7. Some software only supports Mac/Windows, but Mac won't legally let you install their OS in a VM, (not that it stops some people). If you're a business you're forced to use windows anyway for niche software that won't run with Wine.
8. Battery life on laptops typically is worse than a comparative windows/mac system -- because windows and mac tweak more settings for power and performance.
On the flip side, Linux is infinitely more useful to me than Windows. My desktop’s motherboard’s onboard graphics card failed but I have an external graphics card. Windows is unable to boot because of the failed onboard card. Ubuntu worked absolutely fine. I had to modify 1-2 lines in a configuration to prevent Ubuntu from loading the onboard graphics at all, otherwise it would start off funky.
And MacOS is just too slow. There’s far too many animations and it’s extremely difficult to multitask in a useful way.
It’s like Apple has basically been creating MacOS features based on 2 criteria’s. Either so they look good in a demo, or they’re a replica of an iOS app.
>Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script.
I just checked on my Macbook and I couldn't find any option to change scroll speed. So it's more that on Linux you _can_ create a bash script to do just about anything even when it's not a feature the OS has. Unlike others where it's either a simple UI button or you just can't do it.
I was able to find it on the latest macos by opening up preferences and searching for "scroll". It's under Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad/Mouse Options
Actually, I don't imagine switching to Windows or anything because I find writing a bash-script much easier than constantly dealing with the fact some things just aren't (realistically) configurable at all, and I absolutely hate dropdown menus within menus and having to use a mouse for everything.
That said, Windows/MacOS are MUCH more stable. Granted, I didn't use them nearly as much, as I use Linux (mainly Ubuntu and mainly LTS versions), but I basically didn't encounter any hardware-specific bugs at all for the last couple of years. Or some deep ecosystem problem, like all this Pulseaudio bullshit.
Linux is really frustrating, and I'm starting to actually lose hope we'll live to see it becoming, you know, usable.
Novice Linux users often make the mistake of adding third party repos to their package manager, which almost invariably causes trouble down the line. Some distros (for instance Debian) have a culture of discouraging this practice, while others (particularly Ubuntu) have a user culture which encourages it.
This is easily the most common reason for updates breaking. RPM and dpkg are both nigh bullet proof, and you can generally count on most distros to keep their own package repo in good order. Dependency resolution between out of sync and uncoordinated package repos is where things start to break down.
Have the totally opposite experience. Ubuntu has a quite minimal settings panel, that's good.
Windows settings are much more difficult to navigate. The layout / structure has changed a lot between updates. Settings are hidden deep within preferences menus with multiple tabs.
Google for things and you find ad ridden pages with screenshots and pop-ups about clicking here, there, then here.
Windows 11 fixed a lot of problems caused by Windows 8 that continued into Windows 10 when it comes to settings. My computer doesn't support it for arbitrary reasons Microsoft came up with so I can't use it where it matters, but I've got to give it to them that the UI for settings improved a lot.
The start menu, task bar, context menus and almost every other aspect of the UI got a significant downgrade in the process, which is a pain, but at least the settings were fixed.
On linux it's just a menu option in a gui, or a single command.
Every platform has plenty of bugs, but I find it is consistently easier to figure out how to change/fix things on Linux than on OSX or Windows. OSX is probably the worst platform as soon as you're doing something Apple didn't anticipate (or, is actively blocking you from doing).
It always feels like a build-it-yourself vehicle. Using it as a daily driver when you need to get to work on time is not advised. Even when you get it running for a while, the breakage is inevitable, and you'll be under the hood. It is really cool if you love to tinker. Its an OS with a lower level of abstraction, and one that is less productive overall for most users, especially anyone who needs things to just work consistently.
I work on Linux for Linux. All I use is terminals, jetbrains and Firefox, plus a million command line tools. And maybe the occasional gimp or VLC. Nothing ever breaks for me. I've been dist-upgrading the same install for over ten years now.
> Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script
Indeed, I never realized there does not seem to be a Ubuntu system setting for adjusting the mouse wheel sensitivity. Apparently, standard solution requires installing „imwheel“.
Lol. Weird. Then, again, in 15 years using a scroll wheel mouse I never had the need to adjust its sensitivity.
My T440s has seen Qubes-OS, Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop-OS, Mint [Gnome, i3wm, KDE, Cinnamon).
Pop-OS is my favorite on if I want a usable nvidia gpu with hybrid graphics.
The only issues I had with most updates was a full boot partition because I skip cleanups.
I have a lot more issues with Windows moving stuff.
Settings are a mess W7 -> W10 -> W11.
Qubes is still my go-to if I have to deal with malware infested things.
I'm full time (95%) on Fedora KDE (Desktop Ryzen 2000, RX500). I've had some quirks with Veracrypt and an external drive and crashes related to running out of memory (I'm sure DotA2 leaks memory since the performance gets worse over time)
I've checked my desktop for mouse scroll speed and actually don't have that option. I did change my scroll speed in one case which is Firefox (about:config => mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y = 85)
What do you mean saying "Ubuntu" — I suppose it means Gnome desktop by default?
Try KDE / Kubuntu, it features the scroll speed control [1]. (Xfce, sadly, does not.)
Also sadly, Mac is increasingly windows-like, with things that tend not to work out of the box (and just unsupported), and software updates bringing some trouble, especially huge updates like a new OS version.
I stick with a Linux desktop where I at least acceptably understand and control every important aspect. I did have a Mac at work for several years, and it was also pretty fiddly in certain aspects.
I have to disagree here and provide another experience.
I regularly revisit Linux for desktop (like every five years) and this time I moved 100% from Windows 11 to Fedora 37 and it's been a delight. It's not only a good desktop OS now: I find it better than Windows. Why?
* Performance: I think it's more responsive, like the file manager. It doesn't have an innate dependency on scanning every single thing for viruses that is hard to disable per design. I think my SSD loves me now.
* Ads integrated in the OS: Well. It doesn't have these.
* Customizability: Even GNOME that is not known for this can adapt to the user much better than Windows 11. Windows 11 is terrible and takes steps backwards in this regard. For example GNOME Tweaks + Dash to Dock and I have a Mac-like dock. It's like the Mac dock but more customizable, and it's easy to customize too. Hell I can even customize FreeType to choose between ClearType style rendering or macOS Quartz-like rendering (respect LCD pixel boundaries vs respect font design - you can only have one).
* Apps: Linux culture is to rely on repositories for apps. Windows isn't. They have winget and Microsoft Store now but it's still an unresolved cultural problem where only a subset of apps are found there, and if they do, they more often than not do system-wide changes anyway. Linux has nice, easy to use, stores like Mac. Linux is also miles ahead with containerized app systems like Flatpak or Snap where UWP support (Windows counterpart) is more than shaky in the big picture, and I'd even say a failure.
* Mouse Scroll Speed: Is set in GNOME settings.
* Software Updates: Have still always worked for the past few months.
* Crashes: None yet! Other than app-specific ones but so far only "silent" stuff that don't really affect me that seems to relate to the file manager and thumbnailing corrupt h.264 videos? (a guess from the logs)
I guess your mileage MAY still vary here but as for me, this is clearly a better and more user friendly OS now than Windows 11. I can't believe I'm saying this. But it just is for me and my hardware + software setup now. I like photography and Darktable is a full-fledged Lightroom competitor too.
I'm not a Linux nut either. I was positively surprised and this is the first time in twenty years I've finally felt fine with moving from Windows.
Games? Yes, at 40+ years of age I still do that, juggling time with family life. I have an Xbox Series X for that, letting me use a tiny Intel NUC as my PC. The Xbox gives me a much more fun experience with gaming than a Mac. Been there. Never again.
All operating systems are exhausting.* I don't understand why Ubuntu updates would break anything, they've been so reliable lately that I even let my mom update her computer herself. But anyway, if you think they're bad, wait until you see mac OS's.
* Unless your usage is so light that all your computing can be done on ChromeOS or iOS, but even those are plenty annoying.
> If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script
This is a totally legitimate gripe. On the other hand, I like to have the key repeat speed set to higher than MacOS lets me in their menu, so I also need to configure this in the terminal, except the only references I can find for it safe random stackoverflow questions and blog posts rather than official documentation, so the units are unclear (I can't remember if it's the delay before repeat or the actual repeat speed, but I remember being surprised about how one of them worked with regard to needing to modify the value in the opposite direction than I expected), and I need to log out and back in to test it, after which I might need to tweak again due to not really understanding the units and maybe overcalibrating, which requires another logout...etc.
MacOS is probably easier if you don't want to stray at all off the prescribed path, but any time I needed to do something even slightly outside the seemingly arbitrary sanctioned happy path, it ends up being either even more annoying to configure than Linux, requiring some app that inevitably wants to me to pay them for what feels like basic functionality to me, or is completely impossible regardless of how much effort or money I'm willing to spend. Given how much I like the setup I've been using for years on Linux and how rarely things break for me compared to MacOS updates due to functionality being provided by third party apps (e.g. my iTerm shortcut for showing/hiding the fullscreen terminal occasionally not working after being required to a major OS update, but working just enough of the time that I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a fix), I won't ever be running anything else on my personal machine unless something drastically changes.
I'm on Arch and a 4K display and had to hack the package 'xf86-input-libinput' to be able to adjust mouse scroll speed, towards faster. Upstream has been unwilling to implement it. I published the mod here: https://seitics.de/files/xf86-input-libinput/ should anyone stumble on this post via search engine. To change scroll speed from 1 1 to 2 2 use e.g.
> but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script. Software updates rarely work. There are random crashes that take hours to fix.
You either have hardware problems, or something screwed up your install; the settings manager for mouse acceleration is available where all other settings are, no scripts or command line editing necessary, just a couple clicks and you're done. Now I'm not exactly a fan of Ubuntu and prefer other distros but software updates do actually work on Ubuntu, and I'm not aware of any problems that could cause random crashes. At least on Debian I lost memory of the last time I had to reset the machine due to a crash. Check your system, it may have software and/or hardware problems elsewhere.
This mouse setting depends on several factors (i.e. Wayland availability, evdev vs libinput) and the setting doesn't apply to every application if you do manage to change it. The modularity of the Linux ecosystem has several parties argue that it's not really their place to implement a fix, so issues get closed without a proper resolution.
The updates are fine these days unless you add external repositories. Sadly, that's what every forum post and blog article will tell you to do.
Rsndom crashes occur if your hardware has problematic drivers (Nvidia, sometimes Intel) and they're a mixed bag. Laptops are more of a problem than desktops but sometimes you just have bad luck. It can also depend on the kernel your distro chose because sometimes a lot of problems can be fixed by updating to a higher LTS version, but the end user should never even need to know this is an option let alone try it for themselves. Canonical and others also include their own kernel patches sometimes which is a whole lot of fun when it comes to reporting bugs.
Yep. I don't use Linux on the desktop simply because I don't care enough to be assed with arguing with it. Thus I would rather swap my kidney for some Apple crap and put up with the trade off which is works vs flexibility.
The reason why I like Linux is because I can use the terminal a lot. Unfortunately I'm forced to use terrible ElectronJS apps from time to time, though, and more and more programs seem to either not have a TUI or be a full rootfs (as a docker container) because apparently the devs don't know how to properly package them?
I definitely don't recommend Linux for people who don't want to use the terminal. Actually I hate it when they do and try to make Linux look like Windows/macOS. If you want the Windows/macOS experience, use Windows/macOS.
I've been running Arch Linux for about 2 years two high-powered desktop machines (home and work). I run `sudo pacman -Syu` every day and I've only had one video driver update (nvidia) that broke me. I had to login from the CLI (which I'm using all the time anyway) to rollback and pin the version.
It's been an incredibly smooth experience.
That said, the one thing that I still haven't migrated over to fully is Linux on a laptop. I'm macOS on an Apple MacBook Pro 14" (powered by Apple's M1 Pro).
I agree. When things are working - it's great. And having to dig in to get things working right is okay, too. However, when there are issues with hardware, it seems that the solutions that are in the ether are pretty hackish and you have to spend the afternoon trying multiple "fixes" to get things to work again.
I have to use Windows for work, and I ended up just throwing in the towel this year and switching back to the dark side for the time being because I have to get shit done.
It's funny. My NixOS machines (desktop and two laptops) have had minimal breakage while upgrading. And the breakage was easy to fix with a small git commit.
My macOS (Intel MBP) and Windows (Dell laptop) end up with something borked by updates pretty much like clockwork. I suppose I am a poweruser of those systems by nature of being a dev, but something always tends to stop working.
As a counter example I have helped hundreds of nontechnical people switch to Linux over the past 15 years who prefer it to Windows and can do anything they want via the GUI without knowing how to manage an antivirus.
ChromeOS and Android are also Linux and users seem to get along just fine with those too.
I never experience crashes except when I have maxed out my ram doing something dumb.
Never had any issues with Ubuntu past 16.04, at least not anything requiring bash scripts or issues with restarting. Still wouldn't recommend it to non-technical users though, but that's because 1) They'd have to let me install it for them, and 2) That would probably lead to me being tech support, which I don't have time for.
I mean no disrespect but Ubuntu really, really isn't user friendly. There is no other distribution that introduced so many headaches for me. I think Ubuntu is coasting on there reputation from years ago.
I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a certain amount of technical skills.
I feel like non-free OSes like OSX and Windows are exhausting. Everything is driven by politics and PR rather than what actually works and it's all made artificially inflexible. Trivial things become rocket science because of this war over mind share.
I think it really depends on what you use at home though. I've run Linux as my primary OS from the beginning (when I got my first laptop at 10y/o.) If you use different technology at work and at home you're probably going to run into this. Something I've done in the past when this gets bad is to find excuses to use the technology at home (even if I think it's inferior to what I would have otherwise chosen.) This tends to resolve the problem even if I don't stick with it.
I fully agree to that experience. Next thing I tried was to have three screens with different DPI’s. It’s possible (that’s a lie, since you can’t adjust DPI and scaling properly in Linux at all, you’ll end up with a half working ugly system and irrational behavior when you move windows around), but sadly my notebook needs to work in more than one place…
I’ve invited a a long time Linux user who claimed to never had any problems whatsover to have a look. His verdict was that I should have only one external screen and use the same screen in the different places.
This stuff works with Windows and Mac out of the box.
The article is disappointingly short, but at least for me, the title is true; at long last, 2022 was finally the Year of the Linux Desktop. May the YotLD meme live on in spirit.
I finally switched my desktop and laptops 100% to Linux. Some games don't run - fine - plenty of other games do. Ableton runs well in Wine, but Bitwig is native, and yabridge runs VSTs. MuseScore was saved. KDE is pleasant and productive. Blender is amazing. Pipewire is audio done right. Electron, despite its problems, makes Linux a build target of ordinary apps. Flatpak and AppImage enable simple cross-linux-distro app distribution. Critical mass achieved.
No desktop is perfect, but at least for people with a nominal, base level of experience, Linux is the least bad.
Looking to the future, I hope the Desktop Linux experience improves with respect to memory exhaustion, and I hope a Patreon-like platform gains prominence to enable easily donating to keep projects alive; it's currently cumbersome to find all the different places to donate.
With great gratitude to every free software and open source contributor, happy end of 2022!
That has been my experience this year as well. After a frustrating bout with my video drivers on windows, my thinking was "well, that is usually what keeps me coming back to windows whenever it happens on Linux, so what do I have to lose?"
Turns out Debian+KDE +Wayland is exactly right for me, especially KDE connect. The only pain point has been VR gaming, so I've kept a minimal windows install on a small ssd. Everything else has been smooth sailing and I'm considerably less frustrated by design choices when I can just fix them.
Hear hear! I use Gnome purely because home-manager can configure 99% of it. I had to use Windows a few days ago in order to use Serif products and, beyond looking shit, the lack of the gnomeflow is bloody annoying.
Same. The only ones that seem to have problems are the ones that explicitly don’t support Linux via anti cheat or weird launchers or DRM. If it’s just a normal game, it runs fine.
Before MuseScore being saved I had to run a Windows VM with Cubase/NotePerformer to get decent mock-ups. I'm waiting Debian Stable to receive a better Pipewire with the next version. Truly a phenomenal year!
Linux is unstoppable. The monotonic accumulation of all that open source goodness is like a giant capacitor taking forever to charge. The result takes a while compared to a well funded commercial enterprise, but it slowly morphs into a super desktop that is basically impossible to compete against. Free, super capable, private by design. You cannot beat that with bells and whistles. The "average person" UX red lines will be met at some point.
Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke anymore, its the new reality.
> Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke anymore, its the new reality.
A data point: today I was talking with a friend who works in a company making a 3D software. Apparently since last year they lost most of their clients to Blender, which used to be the butt of so many 3D software jokes.
Let’s not forget that the other players in the OS game are literally the biggest and richest companies in the world. Apple, MS, Google. It’s phenomenal what Linux has achieved and will continue to achieve
Linux user community: Linux has been fine for casual users for years! Give it to your grandma, it's not a problem!
Also Linux user community: Wait, you used an nVidia GPU in your build? What kind of idiot scrub are you?
If there's one thing I've seen that's consistent with Linux users over the last two decades, it's been blaming users for all their Linux-related problems.
Or “You mean you want to run two monitors with different DPIs? What kind of oddball user are you, anyway?” Linux display stack’s treatment of monitor DPI is basically “throw our hands up and let apps like Firefox make it work!”
I think you gave this example as a joke, but here is a quote from one of the Wayland developers:
> I would suggest that this setting [UI scale] needs to be a global and not a per-output thing. If it was a per-output thing, windows moving between different monitors would probably have problems (text size changes while window size does not?). It is hard to imagine how it would work as a per-output setting, for me at least.
I will offer a third perspective: Linux has a really horrible user experience on the Desktop but it is the least shit option of the mainstream operating systems.
For me the choice is simple because a non-free operating would not be acceptable. And no, I am hardcore ideological about it, I use a Linux Kernel with binary blobs and all but the point is having system that serves me and me alone. Telemetry, advertisement, forced updates, not allowing me to do whatever the fuck I want with my system are non-starters.
Beyond the ideological I want to note that while learning curve with Linux is steep there are some aspects that make it worth it:
It is mostly a one time investment: Linux is pretty conservative. Once you get it, you get it and wont really have to learn anything new. Most of the time even the bigger disruptions to the ecosystem are not that relevant to the end user and can always be simply avoided if one chooses to, not just for years but decades or forever.
Compare this to Windows. I used Windows XP heavily and absolutely wouldn't be able to perform basic tasks on an modern Windows system. In comparison, if as Linux user from the Windows XP era were teleported into our times, they would still feel at home on today's Linux and could be perfectly productive in nearly not time.
If you are in tech, you might have to learn Linux anyway: Linux server skills are really important to have. And these skills translate back to the Linux Desktop and vice versa as well.
Also docker performance is vastly better on Linux than on Windows or Mac so that alone makes the Linux the best platform for developers. (Not to mention many tools being only Linux native or having priority Linux support.)
Also people need to stop using Ubuntu. I have been using Linux for ages and find the UI super confusing and wouldn't be able to do anything on it. It's just shit.
Use Linux Mint.
Oh and I am using NVIDIA GPUs just fine on Linux. I had some trouble with freezes and crashes but most of these got fixed in updates.
Maybe we can use Haiku as a daily driver one day but for now there is really no good alternative to Linux.
My last attempt was using Mint precisely because that's what people kept recommending and it still sucked ass, ran into major resolution/scaling and audio issues immediately that made me abandon it for Windows 10.
It's too bad, because W10 has its own annoyances (mostly the forced updates and boot interstitials) but at least it actually worked. While I don't have a problem with proprietary software as a Principe, it is nice to have community driven stuff as a counterpart, which is why I periodically test the waters with Linux. It's just that, every time I run into annoyances and problems that make me give it up.
Anyway, ideology aside, I use all three major desktop OSes regularly: gaming desktop is Windows, work laptop is MacOS, workstation is Linux. Linux has certain niceties for developers, but for non-dev-specific stuff it's the most painful to use overall (although MacOS has a penchant for hiding things from the user which can be very frustrating). I also encounter the most instability with it, I think, though these days all three aren't that bad on that front.
Edit: though I'm thinking about a Steam Deck, and that's a Linux PC I suppose. Valve has been doing great work at making Linux more viable for PC gaming.
NVidia makes the best Linux driver + graphics card combination going, and always have. If you actually want to play games on Linux, NVidia cards are the way to go. But open-source people don't like them because their driver isn't open-source, and Wayland people don't like them because their driver has limited Wayland support.
I think they don't care about the userspace at all. I assume from their perspective, most (all?) of the Linux use-case is for their expensive cards to be running in servers doing CUDA.
I've got elderly relatives using ChromeOS laptops and Android phones just fine. Both run on Linux and are far easier for them to use and for me to support than the alternatives.
Out of curiosity I just pulled User-Agent stats from my “Show HN: Inflation-adjusted stock charts – Total Real Returns” post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081943 that was #1 on Hacker News on July 13, 2022. Of 38595 clicks that day from news.ycombinator.com total:
30.8% (11868) Macintosh
22.7% (8745) iPhone
21.7% (8356) Windows
15.7% (6065) Android
8.5% (3284) Linux (!Android)
That implies a 61%/39% desktop/mobile split.
Mobile: 59%/41% iPhone/Android split.
Desktop: 50%/36%/14% macOS/Windows/Linux split.
Personally I switched back from macOS to Linux (Pop_OS!) as my primary desktop operating system in 2020.
Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full, random things like thunderbolt docks not working, or sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep), or external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions?
Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.
Sleep states are faulty on the Linux laptop I'm currently on, and I do occasionally waste time on interoperability with various commercial software, although countless hours seems excessive. But when it comes to running dev software or getting up and running with a new project, or compiling some github source, I think I save much more time than I've lost.
What frustrates me is that other Linux users will tell you with a straight face that you must be flat-out lying if you bring up sleep problems. Had three users tell me that on HN just about a day ago.
It's not exactly a desktop device (though it can be booted into a desktop), but Steam Deck is by far the best Linux experience I've had. It seems what you really need is a company with an incentive to make a good hardware+software package.
No. I am using Linux on PC hardware and I miss Mac OS X. I have a lot tweaks and hacks that just don’t cut it. For example, the PC Home and End keys for text boxes are hard coded into X.
Funny you should mention that because I always have to fix Home and End on Mac with Karabiner-Elements so they don't go the beginning and end of the entire document which is totally useless.
Your description of macOS's and MacBooks' reliability doesn't match my experience. I've been using MacBook Pros for about 15 years now, and every single one that I've ever owned or used long-term has always had some kind of bizarre issue that ended up forcing me to replace it.
It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.
This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the past. [a]
> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)
> or external monitor resolutions being wrong
Fine on my computers too.
> monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions?
I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling support just right now [1]:
> “What does this do?” you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300% scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage.
And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the thing that makes me switch in the coming months.
[a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86 tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian too.
My M1 Macbook pro is connected to a Dell thunderbolt desktop docking station. This had caused me so much grief with the screen, that I directly connected the 43 inch monitor to the M1 rather than go through the dock. Moreover, the ethernet on the dock is wonky, often dropping out. This makes the work VPN sometimes ... challenging.
Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS machine multiple times.
Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash.
But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.
My M1 pro is also way fiddlier and flakier with thunderbolt docks than my Linux thinkpad. Just monitor detection and enabling itself seems slower and buggier on a mac.
I believe the bigger "problems" happen when a random laptop is used instead of the few that are rock solidly supported by major distros. I am the same BTW, I usually buy a laptop that maybe kinda supported and then cross my fingers and hope that it works.
Then I start fixing those issues that can be fixed or create little workarounds around those that can't.
For my wife I just bought a Dell XPS and that was that, no tweaks or workarounds necessary.
I occasionally try a Linux distro on a new computer that I'm building, like Ubuntu and Mint, and so far I've never been able to get it running satisfactorily without any major problems.
Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen interstitial is very annoying.
Random hardware which is designed for Windows typically gets Linux support within a couple years after its release. But if you are actually serious about trying Linux, buy it preinstalled.
> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full
I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra kernels and don't use the system provided ones.
Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided) kernels.
Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition for `/boot`, so there's no risk.
I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier).
> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)
This problem can depend on two things.
S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!) doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables).
If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react.
Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth giving a shot.
I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped drivers -> small user base).
> random things like thunderbolt docks not working
I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem.
> external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions
I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody mess, and I think it's not related to drivers.
To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either - this may still take some time.
Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some effort was put into it?
> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full
Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update.
1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh...
Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot.
Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a kernel
If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos, it has nice "various macos bugs"
There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro controllers to datacenters as well as the Steam Deck and the nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant
No FUD. On laptops I’ve repeatedly failed to get the correct battery life. I’ve also struggled with audio working correctly and reliably.
Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially different because Linux is a much sharper tool.
Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop).
Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio, video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+ vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an afterthought except if it’s relevant to Android).
Nintendo Switch doesn't run FreeBSD, although it does use some code from FreeBSD. The Switch OS (Horizon) is a proprietary microkernel-based system that isn't POSIX-flavored at all. I don't think the full lineage/history is publicly documented, but CFW and homebrew toolchain developers have noted strong similarities to the 3DS OS.
In principle I would love to use Linux, as the developer experience isn’t great on Windows, and I would rather not be tied into expensive Apple computers.
However, I don’t want to learn about components of my operating system, that is below my pay grade.
I’m not trying to spread FUD, I’m speaking firsthand on some of the experiences my colleagues have had with their brand new $3000 business Thinkpads running all manner of Linux distributions.
I don’t doubt Linux is the right choice when you are creating a tightly integrated, walled off product like a Nintendo Switch.
Ironic for me. 2019, 2021 and half of 2022 were the years that I went all in on Ubuntu for desktop. It was an overall awesome experience as a developer.... and then Zoom and Slack started crashing randomly or having weird bugs where I'd needed to restart the app or even the machine in order to get them working again.
2022 is the year I switched back to windows as my development experience with WSL2 + being able to use Zoom and Slack without them crashing or getting random bugs.
Even running Linux GUI apps works well on Windows. Run evince file.pdf from the wsl2 command line and evince opens.
The one thing that doesn't integrate well is linux disk encryption utilities and windows. I wish I could use LUKS/cryptsetup but ended up giving up and using Bitlocker.
Note that you don't even need apps, you can just use Zoom and Slack from your web browser. (For Zoom especially, nobody should be trusting their native client in the first place after their security debacles. Your browser is a convenient security boundary.) If your browser locks up to the point where it requires you to restart your machine, that sounds like a much more serious problem.
Readit News
The question was "What is the primary operating system in which you work." (Emphasis mine.) The question itself implies that we should only be able to pick one, and yet the results clearly indicate that more than one was allowed. Most likely, people were listing the OSes they use a lot. A great many of us developers use a commercial OS locally, but also interact with Linux servers or containers on a regular basis.
That said, there's no simple interpretation of that "40% use Linux" number that passes the smell test. It's implausibly high for the number of people who use it as their primary workstation OS, and it's implausibly low for the number of developers who regularly work in Linux. More likely, what this number represents is that different respondents interpreted the question, which appears to have been ambiguously framed, in different and incompatible ways, and so the result is statistically meaningless.
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#technology-mo...
I guess you could use Windows at work and Linux at home (or viseversa).
I'd bet some people also say Linux becayse they have homeservers and other secondary uses besides their primary driver.
If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too.
I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux back.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enrol...
But I think your point is sound. Our totally not monopolistic tech giant friends would never dream of colluding to make mobile device management proprietary. To lose hold of MDM would unravel too much. and iStuff doesn't play nice w/ Linux. If there were a decent way to get Messages and SMS on a desktop Linux OS I would be there today.
This might just be the bias of the circles I move in, but over the last five years me running Linux on the desktop in a development work environment has gone from a weird oddity, to uncommon, to boringly normal. I've had a few non-work tech-adjacent friends ask for opinions on running Linux on Thinkpads for example.
I strongly suspect there's a multitude of factors including the rise of the cloud, the maturation of Linux desktop distros, Linux being the default/only options for things like Raspberry Pi's, developer software being multi-platform, etc.
While some hardware issue still remain, getting Linux compatible hardware of any type is pretty easy. It's not 100% guaranteed situation like Windows is, but you'll have multiple options for whatever you are looking for, which is a massive difference compared to years passed where some hardware categories simply did not have a fully fledge Linux compatible option.
I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone without a certain amount of technical skills.
I started daily driving linux in the 90s. When I switched to a mac around 2010 if found Mac exhausting. It had different usage patterns than I was used to. Some of my most used features weren't there. Having a reasonably usable shell experience required lots of tweaking and macports then brew. When I switched back to linux ~5 years ago there was a while where getting back into the linux groove was exhausting because I wasn't used to it, but not as exhausting as switching to mac because I already knew it, just needed to get back in practice.
Every time i use windows (which is rarely, once a year maybe) i find it exhausting.
I propose that it's not the OS that's the exhausting part - it's the switching to a new environment with different workflows and thought processes around it that is exhausting. Similar to how it's much harder to get familiar with a codebase in a new (to you) language than in a language you are proficient in - but both cases can be taxing.
Programming languages - you could argue Rust isn't hard to learn, by pretending that everyone claiming it is are just having trouble adjusting from javascript. But that breaks down when you realise the Rust learners finding it hard are actually polyglot programmers who are finding it harder than all the many other languages, in multiple paradigms, they have already successfully learned.
Similar with Linux - I find it harder to 'use' in a certain sense (the sense most people mean - which is getting all the ordinary hardware & software stuff working) than the others. You'll tell me it's unfamiliarity, but it's just not - my first Linux was Slackware on floppies, and I've used it alongside Windows and MacOS now for decades. I choose it for my primary OS for other reasons, but ease of use certainly isn't among them. I still have to fiddle more with it .
A. I'm looking at pointer speed section in Mouse Preference in Control Center. It's pretty simple. It give acceleration and sensitivy.
B. Just about every GUI aims for decent defaults and doesn't allow endless customization and such customization generally isn't a beginner task.
I've used the Linux desktop for ten years (Mint then Ubuntu-Mate). Haven't customized anything with a bash script for many years. It is currently clearer how to do things than Windows - it's fricken TWO start menus jumping over each other.
Just because you've used Linux-training wheels edition and don't remember having problems isn't grounds to dismiss the large number of people who do have issues with Linux.
I also find Linux exhausting. I use it daily in servers and containers. It excels from an administrative perspective. I avoid using it as a client desktop pc at all cost because that is not where it excels.
Experience makes it all much easier, simply because you learn which software to avoid. Having this experience, linux for me is stress free and low hassle. But if you don't want to accumulate that experience, if you want to stay on a default track with the right choices made for you already, then you probably should go with your gut and get a Mac.
Anyway, the "year of the linux desktop" is a joke. The very premise is an old meme that nobody should take seriously, nobody can even agree what it should mean. The year linux became viable for desktop use depends on the person doing the considering. For some it was years ago, for others it will be never.
True, there’s two:
1. Complaining about your experience, only to be told that someone else doesn’t have problems because they’re better at it than you.
2. Being the guy who says he’s better.
What would you recommend as a modern-day user-friendly Linux experience? I've been looking for something not too demanding to put on an old X220.
I’m not taking anything away from your experiences though. Just offering another data point.
I do get the appeal of macOS. I use it for work but I honestly find it more frustrating than pleasurable but that’s purely because I don’t always agree with Apples design choices.
…And that is the real problem with macOS for me. If you like their default experience then it’s a much more pleasurable platform to use. But if there’s any significant part of Apples design choices you don’t get alone with, then you’re often shit out of luck. Trying to bend macOS to behave any way outside of Apples vision can be more frustrating than dealing with Linux quirks.
That all said, I am in love with the battery life on the ARM MacBook Pros. I’ve managed to go a full working day without plugging the MBP in. There isn’t any comparative device out there for Linux.
So in the end I find Linux for personal devices and macOS for work is a great compromise for me.
I am a bit of a power user, running large builds, analytics, and other things, so its not surprising to me that I get less than others. I would like to see an all-day battery laptop for people like me, though I suspect it will be a few more years.
Oh, and the original work windows laptop I had (fully corporate controlled) with 32GB RAM and 500GB NVMe barely lasted an hour on battery. And it BSODed frequently.
I'd still prefer a Linux work laptop, but the Mac is at least a poor-mans version of it. Windows, even with WSL2, was horrible.
This is Ubuntu and GNOME both having adopted unfortunate strategies wrt UX in recent years. They seem to be trying to emulate the Apple "we know best, take it or leave it", removing customization and freezing the UI, but without the resources spent on getting it "perfect" for the majority. They may still be fine choices for some users but they closed the door on being the "just use this" generic options.
KDE has supported changing mouse scroll from the UI for some time. Linux Mint (including its Debian edition) with MATE or Cinnamon, or BudgieWM are other fine choices for non-terminal users. Fedora has been picking up as a general all-round desktop distro as Ubuntu has been falling from grace.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Now-Has-Wayland-S-Speed
If you think that Ubuntu has poor user-friendlyness wait until you try this new "Windows 10" thing everyone seems to be on about.
You have to click through about ten pages of menus just to set up the network, and if you get anything wrong the error message is just along the lines of either "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again!" or "Error -X8004a119af3c occurred", neither of which are particularly helpful. It doesn't come with a usable shell. It doesn't even come with ssh, or zip, or Python.
You're expected to interact with the entire thing by clicking on page after page after page of little coloured squares that aren't meaningfully labelled. Why is a user interface designed like a 1980s "My First Video Game" project supposed to be good?
2. KDE and Gnome created two different rivaling GUI's. Never merged and split the development community down the middle.
3. There are N different GUI libraries: FLTK, GTK+, QT, wxWidgets, etc.
4. There are 3 different cross platform packaging solutions: Snap, Flatpak, AppImage
5. GPU and Wifi drivers can be a pain to get running sometimes, even if they're prepackaged for you. (Hell, my Nvidia drivers crash my windows laptop all the time).
6. Support for hardware sometimes requires third party libraries (solaar for logitech, etc).
7. Some software only supports Mac/Windows, but Mac won't legally let you install their OS in a VM, (not that it stops some people). If you're a business you're forced to use windows anyway for niche software that won't run with Wine.
8. Battery life on laptops typically is worse than a comparative windows/mac system -- because windows and mac tweak more settings for power and performance.
And MacOS is just too slow. There’s far too many animations and it’s extremely difficult to multitask in a useful way.
It’s like Apple has basically been creating MacOS features based on 2 criteria’s. Either so they look good in a demo, or they’re a replica of an iOS app.
I just checked on my Macbook and I couldn't find any option to change scroll speed. So it's more that on Linux you _can_ create a bash script to do just about anything even when it's not a feature the OS has. Unlike others where it's either a simple UI button or you just can't do it.
It’s under Accessibility.
That said, Windows/MacOS are MUCH more stable. Granted, I didn't use them nearly as much, as I use Linux (mainly Ubuntu and mainly LTS versions), but I basically didn't encounter any hardware-specific bugs at all for the last couple of years. Or some deep ecosystem problem, like all this Pulseaudio bullshit.
Linux is really frustrating, and I'm starting to actually lose hope we'll live to see it becoming, you know, usable.
This is easily the most common reason for updates breaking. RPM and dpkg are both nigh bullet proof, and you can generally count on most distros to keep their own package repo in good order. Dependency resolution between out of sync and uncoordinated package repos is where things start to break down.
Windows settings are much more difficult to navigate. The layout / structure has changed a lot between updates. Settings are hidden deep within preferences menus with multiple tabs.
Google for things and you find ad ridden pages with screenshots and pop-ups about clicking here, there, then here.
It's a mess.
The start menu, task bar, context menus and almost every other aspect of the UI got a significant downgrade in the process, which is a pain, but at least the settings were fixed.
Take mouse speed, for example. I remember this being incredibly difficult in OSX: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/7bg3gg/removing_...
On linux it's just a menu option in a gui, or a single command.
Every platform has plenty of bugs, but I find it is consistently easier to figure out how to change/fix things on Linux than on OSX or Windows. OSX is probably the worst platform as soon as you're doing something Apple didn't anticipate (or, is actively blocking you from doing).
Indeed, I never realized there does not seem to be a Ubuntu system setting for adjusting the mouse wheel sensitivity. Apparently, standard solution requires installing „imwheel“.
Lol. Weird. Then, again, in 15 years using a scroll wheel mouse I never had the need to adjust its sensitivity.
I have a lot more issues with Windows moving stuff. Settings are a mess W7 -> W10 -> W11.
Qubes is still my go-to if I have to deal with malware infested things.
I'm full time (95%) on Fedora KDE (Desktop Ryzen 2000, RX500). I've had some quirks with Veracrypt and an external drive and crashes related to running out of memory (I'm sure DotA2 leaks memory since the performance gets worse over time)
I've checked my desktop for mouse scroll speed and actually don't have that option. I did change my scroll speed in one case which is Firefox (about:config => mousewheel.default.delta_multiplier_y = 85)
Try KDE / Kubuntu, it features the scroll speed control [1]. (Xfce, sadly, does not.)
Also sadly, Mac is increasingly windows-like, with things that tend not to work out of the box (and just unsupported), and software updates bringing some trouble, especially huge updates like a new OS version.
I stick with a Linux desktop where I at least acceptably understand and control every important aspect. I did have a Mac at work for several years, and it was also pretty fiddly in certain aspects.
[1]: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=160416
I regularly revisit Linux for desktop (like every five years) and this time I moved 100% from Windows 11 to Fedora 37 and it's been a delight. It's not only a good desktop OS now: I find it better than Windows. Why?
* Performance: I think it's more responsive, like the file manager. It doesn't have an innate dependency on scanning every single thing for viruses that is hard to disable per design. I think my SSD loves me now.
* Ads integrated in the OS: Well. It doesn't have these.
* Customizability: Even GNOME that is not known for this can adapt to the user much better than Windows 11. Windows 11 is terrible and takes steps backwards in this regard. For example GNOME Tweaks + Dash to Dock and I have a Mac-like dock. It's like the Mac dock but more customizable, and it's easy to customize too. Hell I can even customize FreeType to choose between ClearType style rendering or macOS Quartz-like rendering (respect LCD pixel boundaries vs respect font design - you can only have one).
* Apps: Linux culture is to rely on repositories for apps. Windows isn't. They have winget and Microsoft Store now but it's still an unresolved cultural problem where only a subset of apps are found there, and if they do, they more often than not do system-wide changes anyway. Linux has nice, easy to use, stores like Mac. Linux is also miles ahead with containerized app systems like Flatpak or Snap where UWP support (Windows counterpart) is more than shaky in the big picture, and I'd even say a failure.
* Mouse Scroll Speed: Is set in GNOME settings.
* Software Updates: Have still always worked for the past few months.
* Crashes: None yet! Other than app-specific ones but so far only "silent" stuff that don't really affect me that seems to relate to the file manager and thumbnailing corrupt h.264 videos? (a guess from the logs)
I guess your mileage MAY still vary here but as for me, this is clearly a better and more user friendly OS now than Windows 11. I can't believe I'm saying this. But it just is for me and my hardware + software setup now. I like photography and Darktable is a full-fledged Lightroom competitor too.
I'm not a Linux nut either. I was positively surprised and this is the first time in twenty years I've finally felt fine with moving from Windows.
Games? Yes, at 40+ years of age I still do that, juggling time with family life. I have an Xbox Series X for that, letting me use a tiny Intel NUC as my PC. The Xbox gives me a much more fun experience with gaming than a Mac. Been there. Never again.
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* Unless your usage is so light that all your computing can be done on ChromeOS or iOS, but even those are plenty annoying.
This is a totally legitimate gripe. On the other hand, I like to have the key repeat speed set to higher than MacOS lets me in their menu, so I also need to configure this in the terminal, except the only references I can find for it safe random stackoverflow questions and blog posts rather than official documentation, so the units are unclear (I can't remember if it's the delay before repeat or the actual repeat speed, but I remember being surprised about how one of them worked with regard to needing to modify the value in the opposite direction than I expected), and I need to log out and back in to test it, after which I might need to tweak again due to not really understanding the units and maybe overcalibrating, which requires another logout...etc.
MacOS is probably easier if you don't want to stray at all off the prescribed path, but any time I needed to do something even slightly outside the seemingly arbitrary sanctioned happy path, it ends up being either even more annoying to configure than Linux, requiring some app that inevitably wants to me to pay them for what feels like basic functionality to me, or is completely impossible regardless of how much effort or money I'm willing to spend. Given how much I like the setup I've been using for years on Linux and how rarely things break for me compared to MacOS updates due to functionality being provided by third party apps (e.g. my iTerm shortcut for showing/hiding the fullscreen terminal occasionally not working after being required to a major OS update, but working just enough of the time that I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a fix), I won't ever be running anything else on my personal machine unless something drastically changes.
xinput --set-prop "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse D" "libinput Scroll Distance Scale" 2 2
aside from
xinput --set-prop "Kingsis Peripherals Evoluent VerticalMouse D" "libinput Accel Speed" -1.0
for cursor speed which already worked. HTH
Edit: Patch by 3rd party, I fixed it up so would apply cleanly to most recent package.
You either have hardware problems, or something screwed up your install; the settings manager for mouse acceleration is available where all other settings are, no scripts or command line editing necessary, just a couple clicks and you're done. Now I'm not exactly a fan of Ubuntu and prefer other distros but software updates do actually work on Ubuntu, and I'm not aware of any problems that could cause random crashes. At least on Debian I lost memory of the last time I had to reset the machine due to a crash. Check your system, it may have software and/or hardware problems elsewhere.
The updates are fine these days unless you add external repositories. Sadly, that's what every forum post and blog article will tell you to do.
Rsndom crashes occur if your hardware has problematic drivers (Nvidia, sometimes Intel) and they're a mixed bag. Laptops are more of a problem than desktops but sometimes you just have bad luck. It can also depend on the kernel your distro chose because sometimes a lot of problems can be fixed by updating to a higher LTS version, but the end user should never even need to know this is an option let alone try it for themselves. Canonical and others also include their own kernel patches sometimes which is a whole lot of fun when it comes to reporting bugs.
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Things are getting better in the Linux desktop, but in a slow pace. I had some hope with the PopOs (I don't know what they are doing nowadays).
I definitely don't recommend Linux for people who don't want to use the terminal. Actually I hate it when they do and try to make Linux look like Windows/macOS. If you want the Windows/macOS experience, use Windows/macOS.
It's been an incredibly smooth experience.
That said, the one thing that I still haven't migrated over to fully is Linux on a laptop. I'm macOS on an Apple MacBook Pro 14" (powered by Apple's M1 Pro).
I have to use Windows for work, and I ended up just throwing in the towel this year and switching back to the dark side for the time being because I have to get shit done.
My macOS (Intel MBP) and Windows (Dell laptop) end up with something borked by updates pretty much like clockwork. I suppose I am a poweruser of those systems by nature of being a dev, but something always tends to stop working.
ChromeOS and Android are also Linux and users seem to get along just fine with those too.
I never experience crashes except when I have maxed out my ram doing something dumb.
This (IMO) is precisely why Ubuntu is not a user-friendly distro. Fedora (and especially Silverblue) is much more user-friendly in this regard.
I know it's common to judge Linux in general on the basis of Ubuntu in particular, but I don't think it's a fair assessment.
Then it's a good thing we are on hacker news!!
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I think it really depends on what you use at home though. I've run Linux as my primary OS from the beginning (when I got my first laptop at 10y/o.) If you use different technology at work and at home you're probably going to run into this. Something I've done in the past when this gets bad is to find excuses to use the technology at home (even if I think it's inferior to what I would have otherwise chosen.) This tends to resolve the problem even if I don't stick with it.
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I’ve invited a a long time Linux user who claimed to never had any problems whatsover to have a look. His verdict was that I should have only one external screen and use the same screen in the different places.
This stuff works with Windows and Mac out of the box.
I finally switched my desktop and laptops 100% to Linux. Some games don't run - fine - plenty of other games do. Ableton runs well in Wine, but Bitwig is native, and yabridge runs VSTs. MuseScore was saved. KDE is pleasant and productive. Blender is amazing. Pipewire is audio done right. Electron, despite its problems, makes Linux a build target of ordinary apps. Flatpak and AppImage enable simple cross-linux-distro app distribution. Critical mass achieved.
No desktop is perfect, but at least for people with a nominal, base level of experience, Linux is the least bad.
Looking to the future, I hope the Desktop Linux experience improves with respect to memory exhaustion, and I hope a Patreon-like platform gains prominence to enable easily donating to keep projects alive; it's currently cumbersome to find all the different places to donate.
With great gratitude to every free software and open source contributor, happy end of 2022!
Turns out Debian+KDE +Wayland is exactly right for me, especially KDE connect. The only pain point has been VR gaming, so I've kept a minimal windows install on a small ssd. Everything else has been smooth sailing and I'm considerably less frustrated by design choices when I can just fix them.
Hear hear! I use Gnome purely because home-manager can configure 99% of it. I had to use Windows a few days ago in order to use Serif products and, beyond looking shit, the lack of the gnomeflow is bloody annoying.
FWIW Elementary sports a pay-what-you-want store.
Linux is unstoppable. The monotonic accumulation of all that open source goodness is like a giant capacitor taking forever to charge. The result takes a while compared to a well funded commercial enterprise, but it slowly morphs into a super desktop that is basically impossible to compete against. Free, super capable, private by design. You cannot beat that with bells and whistles. The "average person" UX red lines will be met at some point.
Make no mistake. Life is not linear. Nothing much happens, it becomes a running joke and then, boom and its not a joke anymore, its the new reality.
A data point: today I was talking with a friend who works in a company making a 3D software. Apparently since last year they lost most of their clients to Blender, which used to be the butt of so many 3D software jokes.
The entire streaming industry uses OBS. Colleagues at work use OBS casually to capture recordings.
Linux user community: Linux has been fine for casual users for years! Give it to your grandma, it's not a problem!
Also Linux user community: Wait, you used an nVidia GPU in your build? What kind of idiot scrub are you?
If there's one thing I've seen that's consistent with Linux users over the last two decades, it's been blaming users for all their Linux-related problems.
> I would suggest that this setting [UI scale] needs to be a global and not a per-output thing. If it was a per-output thing, windows moving between different monitors would probably have problems (text size changes while window size does not?). It is hard to imagine how it would work as a per-output setting, for me at least.
See https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/i... , the original issue and the discussion gives quite some insights in how Linux developers see the world.
For me the choice is simple because a non-free operating would not be acceptable. And no, I am hardcore ideological about it, I use a Linux Kernel with binary blobs and all but the point is having system that serves me and me alone. Telemetry, advertisement, forced updates, not allowing me to do whatever the fuck I want with my system are non-starters.
Beyond the ideological I want to note that while learning curve with Linux is steep there are some aspects that make it worth it:
It is mostly a one time investment: Linux is pretty conservative. Once you get it, you get it and wont really have to learn anything new. Most of the time even the bigger disruptions to the ecosystem are not that relevant to the end user and can always be simply avoided if one chooses to, not just for years but decades or forever.
Compare this to Windows. I used Windows XP heavily and absolutely wouldn't be able to perform basic tasks on an modern Windows system. In comparison, if as Linux user from the Windows XP era were teleported into our times, they would still feel at home on today's Linux and could be perfectly productive in nearly not time.
If you are in tech, you might have to learn Linux anyway: Linux server skills are really important to have. And these skills translate back to the Linux Desktop and vice versa as well.
Also docker performance is vastly better on Linux than on Windows or Mac so that alone makes the Linux the best platform for developers. (Not to mention many tools being only Linux native or having priority Linux support.)
Also people need to stop using Ubuntu. I have been using Linux for ages and find the UI super confusing and wouldn't be able to do anything on it. It's just shit.
Use Linux Mint.
Oh and I am using NVIDIA GPUs just fine on Linux. I had some trouble with freezes and crashes but most of these got fixed in updates.
Maybe we can use Haiku as a daily driver one day but for now there is really no good alternative to Linux.
It's too bad, because W10 has its own annoyances (mostly the forced updates and boot interstitials) but at least it actually worked. While I don't have a problem with proprietary software as a Principe, it is nice to have community driven stuff as a counterpart, which is why I periodically test the waters with Linux. It's just that, every time I run into annoyances and problems that make me give it up.
Anyway, ideology aside, I use all three major desktop OSes regularly: gaming desktop is Windows, work laptop is MacOS, workstation is Linux. Linux has certain niceties for developers, but for non-dev-specific stuff it's the most painful to use overall (although MacOS has a penchant for hiding things from the user which can be very frustrating). I also encounter the most instability with it, I think, though these days all three aren't that bad on that front.
Edit: though I'm thinking about a Steam Deck, and that's a Linux PC I suppose. Valve has been doing great work at making Linux more viable for PC gaming.
I mean there are also alternatives not based on Ubuntu (Arch, Debian, Fedora, Alpine, Void, ...)
You're technically correct, and for practical purposes incorrect.
Trying to figure out how being easy enough for your grandma is related at all to nvidia gpus.
Mobile: 59%/41% iPhone/Android split.
Desktop: 50%/36%/14% macOS/Windows/Linux split.
Personally I switched back from macOS to Linux (Pop_OS!) as my primary desktop operating system in 2020.
Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.
That said, I agree with you.
It's actually funny that you mention issues with Thunderbolt docks and monitors, because I feel like those were some of the most frequent issues I've encountered. This year, I actually swapped my work MacBook Pro for a Linux laptop specifically because my Mac would completely and irrecoverably lock up every time I tried docking it to two 4K monitors. My new Linux laptop has some issues of its own, but nothing that severe, at least.
This is very annoying. Some distributions are able to boot directly from the main partition, without a need for a separate /boot though, even with Btrfs. This is the case for the computer I'm writing this comment with running openSUSE Tumbleweed, I think I had that with Debian or Ubuntu in the past. [a]
> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)
> or external monitor resolutions being wrong
Fine on my computers too.
> monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions?
I gave up temporarily on this. It seems to work well on Wayland but I can't bear the blurry fonts that comes with fractional scaling on Wayland (and this is not just Linux, I think macOS is like this too), and I'm still on X11 the scaling is not very adaptative. HOWEVER KDE is getting proper fractional scaling support just right now [1]:
> “What does this do?” you might ask. It allows the Qt toolkit to turn on its pre-existing fractional scaling support on Wayland that it always had on X11. No more rendering to an integer size and then scaling down! This should result in Qt apps that are scaled to anything other than 100%, 200%, or 300% scale having better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage.
And KDE on Wayland may be usable now, so that might be the thing that makes me switch in the coming months.
[1] https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/16/this-week-in-kde-wayla...
[a] edit: by the way, I just installed Debian on an old x86 tablet that was running Ubuntu (because i386 is not supported anymore, and recent versions of Debian are way better than recent versions of Ubuntu anyway). It had a separate /boot on Ubuntu, I installed Debian in a Btrfs subvolume, its /boot is there so now the separate boot partition is completely useless and I will get rid of it. So I can confirm it works on Debian too.
Was just as wonky when I had the windows laptop that the mac replaced. BSODs were common with it, and its crashed the MacOS machine multiple times.
Linux OTOH, doesn't seem to have a problem with the other dock I have it connected to. Haven't had a crash.
But hey, doesn't fit the "linux sux" narrative, so YMMV.
Who hurt you? Pop!_OS?
Last time, I was using an Intel barebones NUC for a stepmania setup, and ran into major problems with both audio and display resolution. Gave up and went to Windows 10, no major issues there setting it up, though the occasional boot screen interstitial is very annoying.
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I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra kernels and don't use the system provided ones.
Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided) kernels.
Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition for `/boot`, so there's no risk.
I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier).
> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)
This problem can depend on two things.
S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!) doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables).
If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react.
Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth giving a shot.
I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped drivers -> small user base).
> random things like thunderbolt docks not working
I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem.
> external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions
I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody mess, and I think it's not related to drivers.
To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either - this may still take some time.
It uses Modern Standby (aka S0 Low Power Idle).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
> if there is no S3, it's the producers fault
Or it's Linux fault for not supporting the S0LP? Sure, there are a lot of problems with the S0LP implementation on Windows, but the idea itself is good - that's what all the phones have utilized for at least previous 10 years. Maybe Linux actually could do it better than Windows, if some effort was put into it?
Funny you say that. I can't boot into my dual Windows-arch desktop atm. systemd-boot is broken after I tried to set up XBOOTLDR partition, which I only had to do since the default Windows EFI partition didn't have space after an update.
1h20m to backup the 500GB SSD. I had to restore it once already after a botched shrinking of a Windows data partition. There was also a problem where literally nothing would boot - not even a USB. I believe this happened because I accidentally copied my main SSD (with the arch/windows EFI partition at the front) to the 8GB USB drive, and (again, speculating) having two similar drives confused the BIOS enough that nothing would boot, it just kept defaulting to network boot. "(Drive not present)" on the Windows/arch boot options. Sigh...
Anyways, I still need to try adding/removing a timeout for the systemd-boot config. I've already tried hosting everything on a separate, larger EFI partition. When I boot to Linux from the BIOS it just shows me options for Windows 10 and back to boot.
TL;DR Linux is a huge PITA.
Don't forget that MacOS ships with very Limited hardware, too.
Latest kernels seem to fix it. But tbh I felt like a fool handing those things to our freelancers.
Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a kernel
If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos, it has nice "various macos bugs"
There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro controllers to datacenters as well as the Steam Deck and the nintendo switch for its FreeBSD variant
Use what empowers you, no need to spread FUD
Sure, something might be misconfigured but the universe of misconfiguration for a Mac and Linux are substantially different because Linux is a much sharper tool.
Pointing the finger at the user is emblematic of the problems Linux has when people say it isn’t suitable for the desktop (and these days they mean laptop).
Linux empowers from micro controllers to data centers because there are domain experts being paid to keep the whole thing running AND NONE of those use cases are for interactive day to day customer use on a laptop (eg power saving, audio, video playback, video conferencing, etc) b with the exception of steam deck and switch that have a carefully tuned and tightly controlled OS distribution for a carefully chosen hw configuration. Windows is arguably the closest to the problems Linux faces but generally Windows does a much better job providing usable and stable APIs that vendors build against whereas Linux does not always do such a good job (+ vendors care about Windows whereas Linux is generally an afterthought except if it’s relevant to Android).
Nintendo Switch doesn't run FreeBSD, although it does use some code from FreeBSD. The Switch OS (Horizon) is a proprietary microkernel-based system that isn't POSIX-flavored at all. I don't think the full lineage/history is publicly documented, but CFW and homebrew toolchain developers have noted strong similarities to the 3DS OS.
However, I don’t want to learn about components of my operating system, that is below my pay grade.
I’m not trying to spread FUD, I’m speaking firsthand on some of the experiences my colleagues have had with their brand new $3000 business Thinkpads running all manner of Linux distributions.
I don’t doubt Linux is the right choice when you are creating a tightly integrated, walled off product like a Nintendo Switch.
But BSD isn't Linux... Both belong to *nix family, but so does macOS
Nintendo Switch doesn't use BSD, it is a microkernel.
2022 is the year I switched back to windows as my development experience with WSL2 + being able to use Zoom and Slack without them crashing or getting random bugs.
Even running Linux GUI apps works well on Windows. Run evince file.pdf from the wsl2 command line and evince opens.
The one thing that doesn't integrate well is linux disk encryption utilities and windows. I wish I could use LUKS/cryptsetup but ended up giving up and using Bitlocker.