I got into Linux when I was younger because I thought it was cool, and I had plenty of time to fix it when things broke. It's been my daily driver for ~10 years now. But there's quite a bit too learn. If I were to try and switch from Windows or Mac today I'm not sure I'd succeed before giving up.
But I'm grateful every day to have a machine that I have some semblance of control over. I use a rolling release distro. I'm running a recent kernel and haven't done a major re-install in 5 years. During that entire time my computing experience has been incredibly stable. No huge UI changes. No forced system updates. Just a reliable tool I can use to get stuff done.
What I'm trying to communicate is, Linux desktop is usable, and it's worth pushing over the hump.
I truly believe that the argument for switching to Linux has never been stronger. Windows has embedded bloatware, and Apple allows no control over your hardware. There's really no other option if you care about these things. (Full disclosure - I do own a Macbook for photography work, and use Bootcamp for gaming.)
Like you, my Linux installs have been incredibly stable for a long time, even with a rolling release distro which is often considered "unstable."
I use Linux at work, and while I struggle with a few tools others do not as regularly (e.g. video teleconferencing software isn't always optimized for Linux, but overall it works fine), I also don't encounter tons of errors they do. From Apple updates bricking machines, to obscure Bluetooth/Wifi issues that you can't fix, or having to run Docker in a VM, I'm pretty convinced I've got it better.
I agree. I've been using Linux for almost 20 years now, and I remember all the gymnastics and research that was required to get things like audio and wifi working. In 2020, the only reason I dual boot windows and Linux is for video games, which are becoming less and less important to me, and less of an issue with the work Valve is doing.
And, while Linux has gotten considerably more stable and hassle-free, at the same time, Windows, in my experience, has gotten _worse_. The start menu is slow, and makes network requests for some reason. The UI is so flat that I can't tell anything apart, and I'm frequently pestered to link my install with my Microsoft account or enable cortana. I wish I could have used Windows 7 forever :\
Why can't you? I'm writing this from Windows 7 as we speak. I also have 10 installed on this PC. I prefer 7. I have SMB1 and RDP turned off, I'm not really worried it'll get owned through my router either. I don't use anti-virus either, but then again, I also don't run random exes that arrive in email or through an ad.
As of January 14, 2020, your computer running Windows 7 will still function but Microsoft will no longer provide the following:
Technical support for any issues
Software updates
Security updates or fixes
Aye, I don't use win7 because it's unsupported. Microsoft also updated it automatically when I wasn't looking.
I don't really care enough to support windows 7 myself; as I mentioned, the only reason I have Windows is for video games, so as long as I'm still getting video driver updates, Win10 could be the worst OS in the world and it wouldn't bother me too much.
I've been using Linux for many years, and it's definitely better, but definitely not what I'd want to use seriously. My gaming desktop has a 20.04 drive which I occasionally use, and yet I still find myself dropping to a TTY occasionally to reboot the machine or restart gdm because it waking from sleep, or just plain crashes.
Also, I have 4k, 28" monitors which is just the size where 1x is comically small, and 2x is comically large. I've tried recent Gnome and KDE, and they just can't scale to look right, like what I can do in MacOS or even Windows.
If I couldn't use MacOS for work, I would give Windows 10 a serious consideration. The new WSL and Windows Terminal are very good. I did use WSL 1 for a few years at a previous job, and it was awful.
Part of the beauty of Linux is that if you're having issues with gdm's stability, you can replace it with another DM. This isn't possible with Windows or Linux.
As for your DPI issues, I've heard many have had better luck with Wayland than Xorg.
Toolkits like Qt and Gtk only support integer scale factors. (Qt does fractional, but still has glitches) The scaling factor in the article inside gnome tweaks only changes the font scale. I personally use 2x Gtk scale and 80% font scale, and it works OK, but it’s not perfect.
Gnome has a feature in Wayland (Ubuntu has a third-party patch for X11) that scales up to an integer ratio then scales the image back down to fit the right size by making the display frame buffer larger. This is what Mac OS does. It’s slower here than on Mac OS, so it’s not very optimized, and it leaves things ever so slightly less sharp.
I think it really depends on what programs you use.
I pretty much only use Firefox and terminals. So I set ~/.Xresources Xft.dpi to something that looked nice. Presumably a bunch of programs ignore this (otherwise I wouldn't be seeing complaints about HiDPI online).
Plasma Desktop does fractional scaling correctly, is stable and comes with sddm as a display manager instead of gdm. I found the GNOME ecosystem to be bug prone and opinionated in ways that I disagree with, and have been impressed with KDE 5's stability and versatility.
They've had some pretty good memory decreases over the past couple of years actually in Plasma, it rivals a similarly configured xfce nowadays. Gnome is bloated in comparison.
Really interestingly I've been using a Windows, a Linux and a MacOS machine for many months, swapping them often. Well, Windows/Linux are on the same Ryzen 2700X with a Geforce 1080Ti, the Mac is a 2018 Mini with 32G RAM and 6 core i5. 4k 32" display in each case.
What surprised me:
- Windows UI is WAY the fastest. Linux is the slowest, and with fractional scaling turned off its hardly tolerable
- the font rendering on Windows is perfect, while MacOS is a bit blurry. This is very surprising to me since all the hype around the good scaling of MacOS. Windows hidpi fonts are just perfectly sharp.
- MacOS is absolutely consistent when it comes to rendering and scaling, the others aren't
It's blurry because they use greyscale anti-aliasing and do not at all try to make the pixels fit into the pixel grid. Windows does try to make them fit into the pixel grid.
Personally, I've turned off AA on my PC (and it's a completely useless feature on high resolution displays). What surprises me is as we have been moving into higher resolution displays, the OS makers have been making it HARDER to turn off anti-aliasing of text and this includes newer versions of Qt which have it turned on apparently so programs using Qt now pick up anti-aliasing even if your PC has it turned off.
People go on about how they love their blurry fonts. I don't get it. I like crisp and sharp.
PS. The version of the font, and the font used also makes a difference. A number of them were made during an era when anti-aliasing wasn't as common, so those are hinted to work well without AA, but I have also run into situations where an older version of a font works great with AA off and the newer version of it doesn't because they screwed something up or removed the hinting in the newer version. So if you have a really good font, back it up.
I have a 4K Display on a Mac and I decided to go with 4x scaling (1920x1080) so that macOS can use Retina. Much sharper. My colleagues go with 2500x or so and I don’t understand how they can stand it.
I have a 2014 Macbook Air that I'm about to replace the battery in. Once that thing goes I really think I'll have to head over to Linux. Mac quality has gone downhill.
I replaced my MBP with a Dell XPS running Ubuntu. I had serious problems with the Killer wifi card but replaced it with an Intel one for $20. Otherwise everything worked perfectly.
Around the same time my Mac Pro refused to upgrade to the latest version of macOS because I had a RAID. I installed Ubuntu on that as well. I was a little worried because it has multiple monitors but that was handled really well and worked fine out of the box. I did the same for the family iMac. Haven’t looked back.
When people start buying nice laptops just for Linux, the experience is a lot better. Most of the time, I've put Linux on scrap-heap computers which has always flavored my Ubuntu experience. Laptops with $300 Celerons with TN panels will always make Linux look subpar.
Linux on a desktop is okay, linux on a laptop is bad.
I think Linux is cool and grew up playing with different distributions (starting around Fedora Core 4).
I spent most of my time on Ubuntu because it worked the best, but also used Yellow Dog Linux (my first laptop was a 12in Apple power pc powerbook g4), Arch, and some others.
Things that often gave me issues:
- Suspend rarely worked without hacks, even with hacks laptop would often wake and heat up to thermal shutdown in backpack. Hibernate was similarly bad.
- 'Normal' apps often didn't work or worked poorly (Netflix, flash, Spotify, 1Password), things are a lot better on this front now.
- Monitor support was typically bad and caused problems, connecting to monitor, multiple monitors, resolution issues on wake, etc.
- WiFi was often a hassle and either wouldn't work without hacks or would stop working for an unknown reason.
- Sound would stop working for unknown reasons.
- Bad anti-aliasing/font support in general.
- Personally I thought the UI (mostly gnome, then unity) felt slow and UI elements/chrome often took up a ton of visual space - in general things were uglier.
I think a lot of this stuff is better now, but I recently went to install ubuntu on an SSD in my desktop and had to spend a few hours trying to figure out why ubuntu refused to see the SSD in the installer. I eventually had to unplug the HDD to force it to recognize it.
The macOS vertical integration of hardware and software is really good. I think the touchbar is a mistake (and hopefully will go away like the butterfly keyboard did), but the OS works well, battery life is good, and the applications are nice.
I don't think Linux can compete for personal use, for most people macOS or Windows with WSL is a better experience. This is definitely true on laptops. On desktops I think linux has fewer negatives, but I'd still miss macOS ecosystem stuff (imessage/texting from laptop, things like that).
Parent here - I used to say this too, but I am running Arch Linux on a laptop (ThinkPad T470p), and it's actually working great for me. I agree this used to be the case.
- Suspend works perfectly fine for me, including hibernating (incl. disk encryption) after a predetermined amount of time, and invoking a screenlock on wait.
- Spotify and 1Password X work perfectly fine for me. I have not tried Netflix any time recently, and Flash is dead.
- I use two external monitors, with different DPIs and resolutions, and this is working perfectly fine for me.
- WiFi works perfectly fine for me, no issues whatsoever.
- Sound works perfectly fine for me, no issues whatsoever.
- Fonts appear perfectly fine for me, no issues whatsoever.
- The UI is a sore spot for Linux. Linux doesn't tend to have consistent UI, between GTK, Qt, and other frameworks. Furthermore, adding Electron apps and things like Spotify into the mix, and things start to get funky. Some people put a lot of work into making their UI consistent, but it's tough. Many of the big distros (e.g. Ubuntu) have pretty good success with this I believe. For me, this isn't a huge issue.
As for iMessage, certainly you're going to miss this on Linux, but that's really Apple's fault for not adding it to icloud.com. I use an Android phone, and messages.android.com works on all my devices.
I think the vertical integration used to be a stronger argument, back before messages.android.com. These days, what is it really buying you? A consistent UI? AirDrop? Actually, I believe there's a Linux implementation of that now too.
Out of interest, how do you define "works perfectly fine"? :)
Obviously you're saying "for me", which I recognise, but from my experience playing around with Linux Mint, Kubuntu and Fedora on a Thinkpad T480S over the past year, while things work technically, getting them perfect (in my opinion) takes a lot longer, and might not even be possible in some cases.
Take for example suspend/resume: yes, this works in terms of the machine waking up again, but things like the keyboard and screen brightness get reset (or are at least inconsistent) each time. Googling the problem, there are a lot of suggestions for hooking up scripts to run xbacklight to store / reset it each time, and I did manage to get it almost working "perfectly", but I'm not really sure why I should have to do this from a user's perspective. It's even more annoying in that at least in Linux Mint and Kubuntu's case, controlling the screen brightness isn't possible until you've logged in, so if you resume the laptop and the screen is dark, it's actually sometimes difficult to verify what's going on at the login screen.
Same goes for things like Dropbox - it doesn't know it's been woken up (maybe it's a Dropbox issue not listening for events), so doesn't resync - there are hacks to make a script to touch a file to trigger the refresh, and basically get it working, but again, why do I need to have to do this?
Even getting decent battery life involves (in my experience) tweaking things and running things like powertop to work out what system services are doing what, etc, etc.
Whilst I do agree it's technically possible to get something I'd term "good" with Linux + Laptop, I'm not convinced the average consumer would be that happy with it compared to a Mac or a PC laptop.
This largely matches my experience whenever I play with it.
Things generally work, but poorly with lots of little issues that degrade the experience and regular users wouldn't tolerate.
If you use linux you learn to tolerate the bad experience, but I think it's just because you adapt to deal with it and lower your expectations of what good even is.
Not really. When I have to use Windows or OS X I'm always at pains to get some shit that should be basic working:
-No package manager. You have to download and install third party stuff like chocolatey (resp. brew). Unless you mean scoop (resp. macports)? In any case you have to commit to one and they're much less complete than Debian repos or the AUR so you still end up downloading stuff manually. A thing I don't miss from my teenage years is having to remember unchecking all the crap adware from installation wizards.
-No "open in terminal" option in file managers. Wtf?
-Windows "administrator mode" is incredibly bad and clunky to use. OS X's is better but sometimes you have to use sudo even though everyone tells you it's bad because nothing else works anyway.
-You can't just "upgrade everything" - package manager upgrades are distinct from system upgrades because, as said before, package managers are not builtin. Not only is this very clunky, you're also completely at the mercy of Microsoft and Apple.
-No shortcuts for basic stuff like "open terminal on ~" or "bring up app list with fuzzy search prompt", "hide all windows and bring desktop to the foreground" - windows used to have them but axed them for some reason? doesn't work anymore last time I tested anyway
-OS X file system is case insensitive. wtf? Windows still as really weird quirk where they won't let you easily browse to the WSL directory from the Explorer file browser, some directories can't be easily accessed and some files can't be created due to some backward compatibility behavior from 1974. wtf?
-lots of hardware won't work on Windows out of the box, especially drives with more exotic filesystems. never had a problem with Linux
Maybe all this stuff is duck syndrome but the same could be said about your "little issues"
I mean that NetworkManager, out of the box, supports every WiFi network I've needed. I mean that ALSA and PulseAudio worked out of the box and haven't had any issues, even with Bluetooth. I mean that fonts do not look pixellated or blurry.
And I personally haven't experienced the screen brightness issue.
Certainly, Linux still requires some extra setup to get going, and I think this area is ripe for improvement. But the experiencing of using Linux has been vastly superior in most cases IMO. And when things do break, I can actually fix them, unlike on macOS!
These are good points (thanks) - and it's always good to hear that things are better than I thought.
Consistent UI is nice and recent M1 chip + good battery life I think is also a bonus of vertical integration. It sounds like linux is becoming more of an option though for people that don't care about those things.
From your description it sounds like baseline functionality mostly works (particularly on a desktop).
The other Apple hardware advantage is the trackpad which even windows machines can't compete with. I suspect this is because Apple factored a lot of their iOS multitouch research into their trackpad support. It'd be hard for me to use a non-apple laptop, but linux on a desktop would probably be fine.
I am definitely hopeful to see Apple's ARM laptops start a trend. I do believe there are distros that already target ARM, such as archlinuxarm.org
And you're right - Apple's trackpad has everything else beat. The gestures are great too! I am more of a keyboard aficionado, so I don't mind this too much, but I'm not an average user in this way.
ARM support without the vertical integration doesn't mean much, windows runs on ARM too.
It's Apple's M1 design plus ARM plus their software stack that makes it great. Their power also lets them force others to write high quality native software for their chip (along with their design just having way better performance).
One of the problems is that experience is highly dependent on hardware choice and/or distro/software choice in rather unpredictable ways.
Generally I agree with grandparent: Linux for the desktop is a lot more reliable than for the laptop. The kind of stuff that needs to work on a desktop/server has considerably more testing and polish behind. With the laptop is about as hit-and-miss as things used to be for desktop in the late 90s. A surprising amount of people just accept some stuff not working or working unreliably in their laptops (some of my mates just "deal with it" - for instance one has a webcam that simply isn't supported, just got an external one - and same for the microphone; another one has trouble with external monitors not keeping config or even crashing the machine sometimes: "it's ok I don't need to use an external monitor", eventually managed to make it work after some research - but I'd rather not have to deal with that sort of thing... etc etc).
Having said that, Apple is so far gone that I'm going to have to move to Linux for my next laptop (Linux is already my main choice on the desktop for a long time).
But the thing is, the way that computers work nowadays, the "choose-your-own-OS model" is broken. It's "less broken" for desktop hardware because it moves so much more slowly and incrementally than they used to, especially at the interface level, but laptop hardware moves faster and mobile a lot faster. Hardware-OS combos with OEM pre-made troubleshooting and tailor-made workarounds (hardware nowadays is very buggy, but the user is sheltered from this fact mainly by kernels and drivers). This is much worse in mobile, btw, people are not expected at all to alter hardware or even connect peripherals beyond strong constraints.
So the situation is that you usually get a machine with something installed that has testing done on it as a combo, and "it works" even if the "internal components" (hardware, OS sub-services, etc) don't quite work to spec. You break this link and someone has to do the patching work, which is often "the community", driver/kernel hackers, etc. But this is a lot harder than working with fixed solutions and stuff keeps breaking, and there's when the end user comes in with some final, hopefully trivial fixes. Or, if the machine is popular enough, "the community" again. But few machine-Linux combos are really popular these days, especially compared to Apple laptops.
TL-DR; server computing is pretty solid, desktop computing is rather solid, laptop computing is a mess, mobile computing is a messy hack. The more things are "integrated" and not expected to be interchangeable, the more likely you are to find hiccups along the way, and the shorter hardware cycles don't help - so it's not a problem with Linux per se (the work behind Linux is amazing in terms of adapting to large ranges of hardware, even when hardware vendors didn't facilitate things) but a problem with installing and troubleshooting your own OS rather than having the OEM do it with flexibility to just change their hardware to make the system work best.
I've been using linux on laptops for the last 16 years. It hasn't been that bad for me.
I've been using:
1. Dells
2. HP Elite books
3. Clevos (Branded by sager)
4. Asus Zenbooks
About 16 years ago, the suspend and hibernate was a bit of work to get right. Now it just works right out of the gate. Sometimes it doesn't.. but that's the same for Windows and Macs.
--
"Normal apps"
There is no Netflix app for linux. Flash is mostly gone away, firefox and chrome fixed that 9 years ago at least. Spotify works.
---
Monitor support, most of the X problems are resolved. Intel graphics support is great.
Nvidia Optimus is still a dumpster fire.
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WIFI- what cards are you using? the intel cards work without an issue.
--
Sound
Yea I don't know what is the deal with alsa vs pulse etc. But most of the time they work out of the gate.. I've had minor issues mostly. Bluetooth audio is annoying. Haven't had complete stopages issues in a very long time.
---
Anti-aliasing/font-support- this is more of your desktop environment than anything. KDE tends to correct those issues.
------
macOS often times has issues with their own software and makes it difficult to troubleshoot when things go wrong.
I bought a lenovo to have a linux laptop earlier this year, and I must say I think it is the best laptop experience I've had. It has fantastic battery life, everything works with very minimal configuration, and with my i3 desktop setup exactly how I like it I'm more productive than I was on my macbook.
These issues were only ever with the consumer lenovo laptops. Thinkpads never had an issue and generally work with Linux without issues (I heard this was because Redhat used Thinkpads and so there were lots of contributions to make things work but that could just be scuttlebutt)
I work for Red Hat, can confirm we get Think Pads and they do work wonderfully with Fedora and RHEL. I don't work with the kernel team but I can't imagine it's a coincidence that we use ThinkPads and it works well on Fedora.
I think it at least partially depends on the hardware.
> - Suspend rarely worked without hacks, even with hacks laptop would often wake and heat up to thermal shutdown in backpack. Hibernate was similarly bad.
I did experience this a little bit, but it's been 2-3 years since the last time it happened.
> - 'Normal' apps often didn't work or worked poorly (Netflix, flash, Spotify, 1Password), things are a lot better on this front now.
No comment on this, I haven't really used any of these on my laptop.
> - Monitor support was typically bad and caused problems, connecting to monitor, multiple monitors, resolution issues on wake, etc.
Only issue I had with this was one TV wouldn't take HDMI output at the same time as displaying to my laptop screen.
Everything else has worked great.
> - WiFi was often a hassle and either wouldn't work without hacks or would stop working for an unknown reason.
Haven't had any issues with this, but I would imagine it would be highly dependent on the wireless card you had.
> - Sound would stop working for unknown reasons.
Yeah, audio on linux kinda sucks right now. I've never been stuck without a workaround, but I've needed workarounds multiple times.
> - Bad anti-aliasing/font support in general.
I've not noticed this, but I also haven't looked.
> - Personally I thought the UI (mostly gnome, then unity) felt slow and UI elements/chrome often took up a ton of visual space - in general things were uglier.
GNOME + Pop_shell at least has gotten fast enough to keep me from installing i3 again. This is of course a matter of personal preference.
I personally trust neither Apple or MS, but they both have their upsides.
> > - Monitor support was typically bad and caused problems, connecting to monitor, multiple monitors, resolution issues on wake, etc.
> Only issue I had with this was one TV wouldn't take HDMI output at the same time as displaying to my laptop screen.
I just wanted to throw out some non-Linux issues I've hit in the past couple years.
I believe I had a MacbookPro 2015 and Apple's USB-C to HDMI I consistently had RGB noise patterns and it worked terribly. I switched to a third-party USB-C to DisplayPort and it worked great. I heard about similar issues online. Some talked about it being specific to hardware configuration (that series of MacbookPros) and others pointed to OS updates that triggered it.
I've had trouble with a Windows desktop and an Nvidia card with detecting which port was used to send video signal to on boot. I think it assumed the first HDMI port when I had the intention of using the DisplayPort. I think it got extra confused if the monitor was off on boot (it was trying to detect the signal?) I would often get the BIOS to show up on one output, then Windows may try and use a different one.
Yup. Basically comparing apples to oranges. Unless you're looking at a System76 Laptop or at least a Thinkpad/Dell that's certified.
I've had a great experience with my XPS 13 so far. Everything (Headphones, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi,...) just works, Dell even provides Bios updates. Whereas Windows 10 didn't recognise that my headphones also have a microphone. Only downside is the limited battery management, this is definitely better on ThinkPads.
I had to swap out my network adapter to get wifi working on linux on my thinkpad, and libinput still occasionally locks up...everything... processing phantom drift from the mouse nipple (which would be less annoying if the touchpad mouse buttons weren't part of the same device as the mouse nipple).
The font rendering is one of the main things that keeps me on Mac.
On Linux the font rendering is either far too thin or far too thick, no matter which setting I fiddle with. I don't have the greatest eyes and bleh font rendering is huge pain.
I understand others may not be so picky, but acting like the font rendering is on par with Mac is just not true.
I had complicated experiences with Linux in the past, but I was young and the problem solver in me loved it.
But, honestly, at lest in the past 5 years, I had no problems especially if we consider laptops that usually have more or less the same standard hardware.
4 years ago I bought an Xiaomi 13' laptop to use it as a browsing machine and occasionally as a media player.
It came with a Chinese windows preinstalled.
Without even looking at the specs I installed Ubuntu on it and I've never had a problem.
I upgraded it from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 to 20.04 and I'm using it right now to watch the 4th season of Fargo
I never had to tweak the configuration or change a single .conf file, it simply worked
The battery lasts 8 hours and if I close the lid it automatically goes on suspend
It's been the best setup I ever had.
Unfortunately it's too underpowered to use it as a working device, but if I could I would be the happiest man in the World.
The thing is, in those ten years the hump's slowly been getting smaller and smaller, every time I reinstall or upgrade there's less and less work to do to get things up and running, to the point where it's not much different than getting a new windows install going.
Install some drivers
Install some apps
Configure things and set up my ui
There's a lot less forum hunting, obscure edge cases you run into, random things not working and all those other problems I remember.
Part of it is my experience at this point, but another large part is just the general improvement of the linux ecosystem over those years.
It really has improved drastically from my first days using it regularly in 2007-2008 or so.
I literally just had to manually debug kernel modules to upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 20.10 because of the breaking changes in proc and renaming "sem[aphore]" to "lock" in places.
So no. There is just as much forum hunting as ever.
Well, I can honestly say in the all the years I've been using linux i've never had to do that. I never said edge cases don't exist, just that they're less frequent.
As a developer I used to have a secondary boot for Ubuntu for stuff that's reliant on *NIX tooling, like Ruby (Ruby on Windows is possible, but it's not worth the hassle).
With Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 I'm able to develop the same without having to dual boot and feeling just as native as running Linux on the system, and I can use Windows software like, say, Photoshop. Visual Studio Code integrates automatically, it's like I've got a Linux 'Window' open.
And when I want to switch off I'm back in Windows for a full gaming environment etc.
I'm completely switched over to full-time Windows now. Maybe not a good thing, but it sure is convenient.
I use Ubuntu for my media PC, and I feel like for the casual user, it's plenty easy enough. I use it as an appliance with a steam client and a browser. Do most users actually need more than that?
It's arguably easier to use than windows and macOS because it doesn't require a bunch of separate sign-ins to do things.
I think the only "hard part" for the average user is getting into the boot settings to actually install ubuntu. For a developer I think it's a non-issue.
I think this post kind of discounts the ways in which stable Ubuntu can break. On my last install, I checked the "Auto Login" button on setup which broke the entire install. I think that Ubuntu is definitely not even close to "regular people can use it no problem", but as with everything, YMMV.
I just find that kind of surprising because I have used Ubuntu for the past 8 or so years, in the cloud and on the desktop, and I have not run into a single issue like this.
I mean, I'm comfortable accepting that I'm an edge case and have the worst luck with linux installations ever, but I still think there's so many things that regularly go wrong (even for people that aren't me), that it's definitely not in contention for regular people's daily drivers.
Really? Like what? I mean linux is the backbone of the internet. I think of it as extremely predictable and rock-solid. Describing it as an os where "so many things that regularly go wrong" seems like a totally foreign concept to me.
The last try, I installed Ubuntu on my desktop and checked the 'Auto Login on Start' box on setup, which broke the UI and required a CLI fix. It wasn't hard (because I'm a dev and it was easy to troubleshoot/fix), but it was more than 0 effort and a person that wasn't a dev might not be able to do it.
Prior to that, I had an issue with bluetooth drivers that, IIRC, required finding a custom driver online or some C source file? I don't really remember the specifics, but it was another "I am a dev and this isn't really difficult but is more than 0 effort and my mom couldn't do it."
Prior to that, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop for college and the display drivers were an absolute mess. The screen brightness flickered from 10% to 80% over and over, regardless of what I was pressing or they were set at. I didn't find a fix and ultimately reformatted and went back to windows.
> I mean linux is the backbone of the internet.
Linux containers are great, I use them all the time. Linux as a desktop environment where I use an array of UI applications to develop software, make and observe video files, make games, etc, I have never once had a good experience with. The most recent try, when I encountered the Auto Login issue, I was also totally unable to get Unity to compile/run my company's game. It was yet another thing that I probably could have fixed, but the value-add vs. the effort of constantly having to manually fix each individual piece of software I intended to use, just didn't seem worth it to me. And, what's probably worse (to me), is the general response I found online was "Those issues aren't that big of a deal", which totally ignores my entire point. Death by a thousand paper cuts is a problem, even if each individual paper cut isn't that bad.
Again, I am happy to be told that my experience isn't indicative of the landscape of the env, and that I myself just have terrible luck, but if we're asking what _I_ think, that is my experience which makes me think it's not yet ready for legitimate non-developer use.
Death by a thousand paper drew a visceral response from me, it describes my experience perfectly.
I'm a developer and power user that wants to do various things beyond just browsing.
Things regularly required troubleshooting and fiddling, and for one thing that is fine, but after the 5th serious time consuming issue I get cross and around the 10th I can the migration attempt and go back to windows. Done this every three or four years for the last couple of decades.
I'm due to have another go around 2022 and fingers crossed it will work then, but I doubt it!
Linux application servers tend to be worth it though, and part of that is the use cases are usually much more limited, and on the well worn path.
As a developer really? Which kinds of issues for example? I feel like Linux is the default platform for software development, and Windows is a 3rd class experience by comparison.
openSUSE tumbleweed is a very nice rolling distribution. The only problem is that it needs an advanced user to configure it (installing video codecs and navigating the powerful and complex installer).
It seems everybody who tries out a Linux distro has individual problems with various UI stacks, rather than Linux itself. The bigger the software (i.e. GNOME, KDE) the harder it fails. And often in unexpected and unpredictable ways, too.
The kind of people who use GNOME or Ubuntu or whatever the 'windows competitor' is always seem to be having problems, but are also the kind of people who see needing to use a terminal as a problem in itself.
I've never ever had a problem with i3, emacs, firefox, and simple <20 line configs. Terminal is fine, it's what most GNU tools are built around in the first place. It's apt that people who really love Linux and appreciate what it does out of the box, and who don't feel the need to turn it into Windows or MacOS, also seem to have the least issues with it.
There is an illusion that there is not as much to learn in Windows or Mac, and in fact all that knowledge is even harder to grasp as a lot of it is proprietary and not transparent.
Although my Macbook is my main personal interface for a lot of things, I've stabilized on Ubuntu for my workstation machines, and they have been rock-solid stable desktop systems since 2009, at least this generation of hardware. I have not had any of the typical issues - my machines just work very well. I've got a system for software development, and another for Audio (yes, Linux is a functional DAW - digital audio workstation), and they are both just pleasant and joyful systems to use.
Of course, the fact that I have the chops to fix things is key, because I really, really do (Systems Programmer, 30+ years building OS and system-level things), but for the Ubuntu experience key factors have also been: pick your hardware nicely (e.g. Presonus=great Audio for Linux), use package management, do frequent manual updates, and use containers/virtualization for anything where ones hacking around might be dodgy - i.e. keep the work part of workstation in mind with all system updates/installations, etc.
Decades of Linux desktop usage means, to me, the cliche is over. Linux is an awesome desktop workstation. Everything just works, audio, video, graphics .. WINE is perfectly functional .. and there is zero bloatware or concern about walled gardeners.
> use containers/virtualization for anything where ones hacking around might be dodgy - i.e. keep the work part of workstation in mind with all system updates/installations, etc.
Care to elaborate? this might be useful to try. I have a similar setup macbook and ubuntu system, but I find that the LTS 18/20 versions often need reboot, and I didn't have the issue with centos. Still, I would probably continue using ubuntu because it usually needs less hacking time in my experience.
My first "real" experience with Linux (setting aside weird things like Lindows/Linspire, or the partial Linux experience of WSL, or the sort of "Linux-like" experience of using macOS and using bash and command line to do most of my work, aside from VS Code, communication apps and web browing) was installing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on a pretty old (maybe 8 years) Dell 11 3137. I hadn't realized the release of 20.04 LTS had just occurred; I was just trying the latest/newest. I put it on a USB stick and did the Try option, and it all loaded up and everything worked. It gave me confidence, so I did a full install. No trouble with WiFi, touch screen, brightness, touch pad. And I was able to install so many of the same cross-platform apps I use everyday that I could get work done on it. (But I prefer a much bigger screen and keyboard.)
I was so impressed, I installed it next on a ~2 year old Asus Flip, and everything worked except for the fingerprint reader. Battery life was about 2/3rd of what I got in Windows 10 (which was already not great) but I used it for a couple of weeks, sometimes getting work done on it, and sometimes playing around with things like Steam - I could play Torchlight on it, or stream Torchlight II from my Windows 10 desktop. Neat! Ended up going back to Windows for better battery, but aside from gaming, the experience was very much on par with Windows, with some things better and some things worse, but no huge differences.
I'm very comfortable with Windows 10 and WSL, and I don't expect Linux to take over as a daily driver any time soon. So I guess in a way, I did "give up" on switching over, but if an employer handed me an all-Linux machine, I think I'd be perfectly pleased to use it all day for work, even if I head back to Windows when I want to play StarCraft.
It great until something breaks. I had a Arch Linux system going for a while and at some point (probably my own fault) broke graphics. I'm technical enough to where I could have probably fixed it on my own but honestly just did not have the time.
Not sure if something like this already exist (especially with ZFS and Btrfs) but it would be nice if there was a easy to use system restore manager you could boot into and restore your system to a last known working state. Again, keyword easy. Yes I'm technical enough to where I could fix it but I just don't have the time.
> I got into Linux when I was younger because I thought it was cool, and I had plenty of time to fix it when things broke.
> What I'm trying to communicate is, Linux desktop is usable, and it's worth pushing over the hump.
Huge fan of all of the above.
I do think though that now desktops are less inherently compelling than they used to be. They used to represent a center of activity, a locus of control for the user.
Now, a very sizable % of our computing is off in far away clouds, & the desktop itself is a less compelling, less interesting place to invest time.
My hope is that the Free Desktop / Linux world can begin to grow new roots, become more connected, & return to a little bit more of a place of prominence & relevance. Lots of visioneering & pioneering & engineering to do.
Very true. For me, I still spend most of my time on a desktop (well a Mac Pro, so 'workstation'), but I acknowledge my use case is different from many. I have access to both cloud and DC resources, but for sheer immediacy (and not shuffling lots of data around, is hard for me to beat local (building build and test infrastructure for managed OpenStack installs).
What do you use? I have tried this multiple times and always give up. I ran FreeBSD for a decade as a server in a datacentre and have a deep and abiding love for it, but it doesn't sound it makes a usable desktop these days. Ubuntu appears to be the desktop of choice, but I find it buggy, sluggish and tedious. I'd like a practical and speedy OS that is responsive and configurable. But I don't know enough :)
I use Arch. I love it and I think it's gotten a easier to install over the years (hard to gauge because I also understand more), but it does lean towards the minimalist side. The big win for me is using a lightweight window manager (i3 in my case), which you can do with any distro.
My main recommendation is stick with one of the major distros because you'll get more results when you search for solutions to issues. With Ubuntu you'll find more hits for specific problems, but I think the quality is also sometimes lower. Whereas I think Arch has the best documentation (for linux in general, not just Arch) but in general you'll need to understand more about what's happening under the hood.
One of my favorite things about Arch is booting up a fresh install and seeing something like 10 processes running and a tiny amount of memory being used (granted that might be archlinuxarm I'm remembering). It feels like a blank canvas.
Rarely. I think between the official repositories and the AUR, there's probably more useful, updated software than is available for Ubuntu.
Granted, I probably use less programs than most people, and I'm the type of person who would rather download the nodejs tarball and update my PATH than use the system package or nvm.
Not OP but I do recommend PopOS. It's worked really well for me.
The sluggish performance you're getting is honestly probably related to CFS (the default linux process scheduler). Windows does an AMAZING job with scheduling for UI applications. You almost never feel like your computer is struggling because anything UI related gets scheduled first. CFS does not do this.
I've found that changing the scheduler to something that may be less efficient overall, but is aimed at desktop use makes my experience so much better.
+1 for PopOS. I used to run Manjaro for ~3 years but then I managed to break it. After that I switched to PopOS. Couldnt be happier after over 4 years of using it.
The sluggish performance you get is from gnome (the user interface/desktop environment that Ubuntu defaults to). Every 6 months there is an update that noticeably improves things. If you don’t want to wait for it to be totally smother out, check out another desktop environment like xfce or plasma. Try plasma first since it’s got prettier visuals, but I like the simplicity of xfce (honestly, I rather enjoy gnome so use that most of the time)
If you're comfortable reading docs and starting from the command line, Arch is the hands down winner IMO. Rolling release distro means everything is up-to-date. AUR is packed with anything you could wish for. The Arch wiki is indispensable.
I have been really happy with Manjaro (the Gnome variant). Based on Arch (love the AUR), but easier to setup (more opinionated out of the box).
Honestly the dark theme of the Gnome variant is the most beautiful dark theme I have ever found for a Linux DE. I know there are lots of ways to tweak the various DEs to get some cool looking dark themes, but my experience is that they can take a lot of manual configuring and tend to still fail on the edge cases. The dark theme bundled with Manjaro Gnome looks amazing right out of the box!
All my Servers are FreeBSD too, but on the Laptop (because of wireless) i have now openSuse Tumbleweed but with the XFS Filesystem. It's fast and reliable, but to be honest i just need a Terminal, mosh/ssh, mpv, uemacs, Firefox, Wine(for MM VI) and Dosbox on it.
Ha, unfortunately I manage to crash it on a regular basis playing games on a Windows 10 VM with PCI passthrough. "Have you tried downloading a better sound card" has become a running joke on our Discord server when I'm having issues with it.
I've been using Linux on and off since 1996, but I settled on it for the past 10 years and the most traumatic thing I had to do since has been changing gear.
And even then, moving your entire setup from a machine to another have never been easier, when you know how to do it.
Corporate OSs are more polished, that's undeniable, Apple especially provides the best out of the box experience, but it's nothing comprared to the flexibility I can experience using Linux.
I can have a beefed up work laptop with Plasma and all the effects enabled and the same exact setup on the cheap low end laptop with XFCE.
Everything, really, just works.
And when it doesn't, I can somehow make it work.
There have been times I spent days trying to make the Nvidia card work, but it was because I was looking for the perfect setup that I usually don't experience on Windows or MacOS, but there's nothing I can do about it, no matter how much time I spend trying to fix it.
It's simply out of reach.
I'm aware that that's not what the average user is willing to go through, and that's perfectly fine, I don't feel better than them because I use a more complicated system, but I cannot go back to being limited in what I can do because I am not allowed to.
Also, modern distros are really really stable out of the box.
The laptop I use as a replacement for media server is an Ubuntu 20, it was an Ubuntu 18 and 16 before, I simply upgraded it to the new version and it worked, every time better than before.
If there's something I've learned in the past 25 years is that freedom do comes at a cost, but as of today, that cost is actually negligible.
P.s. forgot to mention that I do not have to care anymore about bloatware, automatic updates, things calling home, software you rely on going out of business and, most of all, lack of support or documentation
But I'm grateful every day to have a machine that I have some semblance of control over. I use a rolling release distro. I'm running a recent kernel and haven't done a major re-install in 5 years. During that entire time my computing experience has been incredibly stable. No huge UI changes. No forced system updates. Just a reliable tool I can use to get stuff done.
What I'm trying to communicate is, Linux desktop is usable, and it's worth pushing over the hump.