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Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

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Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#21

Post by jug »

Asooka wrote: post #6
secfirstmd wrote: post #2

Just give a Linux desktop which is a smooth as macOS.

Oh god please no. I would really prefer that we stop the experimentation and just go back to implementing the standard desktop. Linux got its success by being a Unix clone, down to copying the syscall numbers. We should mimic that on desktop by just copying Windows, rather than chasing unproven weird ideas. OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company with massive resources. And even OS…

This sounds essentially like the thinking behind Cinnamon (and MATE) and well, Linux Mint got pretty popular.

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#22

Post by vidarh »

Asooka wrote: post #6
secfirstmd wrote: post #2

Just give a Linux desktop which is a smooth as macOS.

Oh god please no. I would really prefer that we stop the experimentation and just go back to implementing the standard desktop. Linux got its success by being a Unix clone, down to copying the syscall numbers. We should mimic that on desktop by just copying Windows, rather than chasing unproven weird ideas. OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company with massive resources. And even OS…

You may want it copying Windows, but I for one would switch away from whatever distro tries copying Windows, because I detest it.

And that's why Linux will never stop the experimentation: Lots of the people actually writing the code wants to experiment and don't want to copy Windows. You will never get unity (pardon the pun) out of a group whose only unifying characteristic is that we don't want to use Windows or OS X.

> Please stop innovation for innovation's sake and just make Windows 98 again.

That's been tried. Remember Lindows? It even tried for Windows compatibility via Wine.

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#23

Post by AndyMcConachie »

We bought a ZaReason Linux laptop for my wife last year and it has really reset my expectations for what I can expect of a Linux desktop. It works mostly. But things break somewhat regularly and it needs a happy reboot at least once every two days. In short, by 2017 standards it's a buggy piece of shit. For the average computer user who does not want a Mac, I would recommend Windows over Ubuntu at this point. It's more stable and less buggy.

In terms of quality I would put it about 10-15 years behind Mac OSX or Windows. I almost never have to reboot my Mac because something broke, and when I use modern Windows machines I also seldom have to reboot them.

So my message to Canonical is to make something that doesn't suck. My wife doesn't care what window manager is chosen, just pick one and stick with it until it works. And test the crap out of it. test, test, test... Find bugs and fix them. Your geeky Linux user doesn't care about little annoying bugs, but less technical users really do.

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#25

Post by MegaDeKay »

criddell wrote: post #13
Asooka wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh god please no. I would really prefer that we stop the experimentation and just go back to implementing the standard desktop. Linux got its success by being a Unix clone, down to copying the syscall numbers. We should mimic that on desktop by just copying Windows, rather than chasing unproven weird ideas. OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company with massive resources. And even OS…

> OSX succeeds not because it's quirky, but because it is backed by a company with massive resources. If deep pockets was all it took to make an OS succeed, Windows Phone wouldn't be dead. On the desktop, OSX, Windows, and most Linux variants are all good enough. What matters is application support. For my job, 50% of the applications I use run on Linux, 75% run on OSX (natively), and 100% work on Windows. Can you gu…

"Thanks to Valve, Linux has a real shot at picking up some steam..."

Nicely done :-)

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#26

Post by DCKing »

secfirstmd wrote: post #2

Just give a Linux desktop which is a smooth as macOS.

GNOME on Wayland with AMD or Intel graphics (can't tell you about Nvidia) is at least as smooth as Windows 10 or macOS. That's just graphical performance I'm talking about though.

Unfortunately, that alone isn't quite the same 'smooth' experience as Windows and macOS because:

- the only somewhat noob friendly out of the box experience that has this setup is the latest Fedora (at the moment)

- you need to be concerned about whether your graphics card is compatible

- many Linux apps aren't built using modern GTK3 or Qt which will result in some jarring/inconsistent experience when doing actual work in your desktop environment

- there are just fewer quality applications to work with on Linux, and cross-platform applications often are less graphically pleasing than their Windows and especially macOS equivalents

- there's no equivalent of Macbook or Microsoft Precision trackpads on Linux, which to me are part of the subjective 'smooth' experience on Macbooks or recent properly equipped Windows laptops

Wayland in my experience really solves the performance/smoothness problems the Linux desktop has. But there's still a long way to go even after Wayland becomes the default on the Linux desktop.

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#27

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #23

We bought a ZaReason Linux laptop for my wife last year and it has really reset my expectations for what I can expect of a Linux desktop. It works mostly. But things break somewhat regularly and it needs a happy reboot at least once every two days. In short, by 2017 standards it's a buggy piece of shit. For the average computer user who does not want a Mac, I would recommend Windows over Ubuntu at this point. It's mo…

Sorry to hear about your wife's bad experience.

Never heard of the company, but based on the specs of laptops being offered from the website, I'd hazard a guess that the discrete GPU is probably the source of many of your woes. Linux has always been a second-class citizen for video cards, particularly since NVIDIA's binary blobs fly in the face of the FOSS spirit.

If she doesn't do intense graphical editing or gaming, an integrated GPU from Intel would probably run much better on Linux.

FWIW (and I hate countering anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence), I've got a Dell XPS 13 running Fedora and it will run days/weeks without a problem. I reboot it maybe once a month in order to apply the latest kernel, and that's about it.

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #23

We bought a ZaReason Linux laptop for my wife last year and it has really reset my expectations for what I can expect of a Linux desktop. It works mostly. But things break somewhat regularly and it needs a happy reboot at least once every two days. In short, by 2017 standards it's a buggy piece of shit. For the average computer user who does not want a Mac, I would recommend Windows over Ubuntu at this point. It's mo…

[deleted]

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#29

Post by dijit »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #23

We bought a ZaReason Linux laptop for my wife last year and it has really reset my expectations for what I can expect of a Linux desktop. It works mostly. But things break somewhat regularly and it needs a happy reboot at least once every two days. In short, by 2017 standards it's a buggy piece of shit. For the average computer user who does not want a Mac, I would recommend Windows over Ubuntu at this point. It's mo…

I have to respond to this with my own experience on what is admittedly a very expensive machine.

I recently bought a Dell Precision 5520 (a bumped up XPS 15 with Kaby Lake basically) and I have to say that the Ubuntu it shipped with worked pretty flawlessly- I had absolutely no issues at all it's shocking to me how well it ran and all the niggling things I expected to pose problems worked as flawless or even better than the last time I run them on windows. (Wifi/Trackpad/Battery and indicators)

The only issue I had was the Thunderbolt 3 dock I bought with it, for some reason the USB ports didn't work. But after I installed archlinux with a more modern kernel even that went away.

I would say that my laptop is almost better supported than my old Thinkpad. And that thing was damn near flawless already.

Linux on the desktop is improving, and I think Canonical was and continues to be a huge driver of that- Ubuntu is the OS that is the target platform for a lot of these Linux supporting devices and Canonical has a lot of responsibility in that area.

We might do well to appreciate that. Even if we don't like things like systemd/mir/whatever

Re: Where does the Ubuntu Linux desktop go from here?

#30

Post by terrestrial »

systems wrote: post #14

kde is really very good, maybe because i am used to it, i dont see what it is missing, but i think even if it is missing something, it is probably minor as Linus Torvalds said in a video on youtube, what linux on the desktop need is to come preinstalled by the major pc vendor ... ubuntu need more deals with big vendors that is all

KDE and Gnome are both really good nowadays, but Ubuntu is a buggy piece of shit. I've helped friends install it a couple of times recent years, and seen various desktop program crashes every time. It wasn't like this back in the Gnome2 days.

What we really need is Red Hat to start selling Fedora computers. And KDE Neon to ship laptops based on Debian stable. And obviously at least one big retailer to have them in a physical store, so we tell our friends where to go.

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