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Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

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Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#21

Post by hartator »

The only thing about Linux I never really like is the package system.

Like if you want to install a new software, you usually don’t get .exe or .dmg. If you are lucky, the developer or some fans took the time to package it. Then you can do ‘apt-get’ ‘yum’ or ‘pacman’. However, packages got stalled and sometimes don’t match the original author intent. You can also build from sources, but it takes time and you have to know a bit of CLI. It never felt true freedom to me. But more like whatever the community feels make sense for whatever distribution weird dictactorship. Just a feeling and I still love and support Linux.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#22

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

I've been using a Google Pixelbook (their flagship Chromebook product) as my main development machine for the past couple months, and I love it.

The ChromeOS "Crostini" project allows you to run a full Debian instance in a container, but with the other benefits of a Chromebook and ChromeOS. Each new release of ChromeOS brings better enhancements to Crostini, e.g. right now backups are manual but a native "one click" backup is coming soon - https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/crostini-linux-backup-... . FWIW some of the tools I run are the IntelliJ suite, Atom, postgres, Docker, etc.

IMO Linux on the desktop is awesome, it just happens to be running in a container on ChromeOS.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#23

Post by wwarner »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #12
wwarner wrote: post #3

All this is true, but not really fair. Count up the issue raised by the OP, and Nvidia really has the most power to stabilize the linux desktop. I read that gamers who want peak performance on Linux can get the proprietary Nvidia drivers running well. So it's possible, but it will never be without the friction of open source running along side signed proprietary binaries. What I would love to know is why linux isn't…

Linux seems equal in power management to Apple. On my ThinkPad X1 Carbon with the 57 W-h battery I get a good solid 8 hours of work and often the system consumes as little as 4W. My MacBook Pro with a 54.5 W-h battery runs for at most 4 hours. Now, it's true that I had to edit dozens of little configs to get the ThinkPad with Linux up to where a ThinkPad with Windows is right out of the box, such as enabling PCIe ASP…

Thanks -- I'll have to put a bit more effort into this the next time I run a linux laptop.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#24

Post by peller »

cheerlessbog wrote: post #13
smlacy wrote: post #9

How about a list of all the things that really work great? I've been using Linux on the desktop for nearly 20 years and I'll have to say it's fantastic, despite the occasional headache, which seems to be at a far less frequency than other major desktop operating systems.

I'm guessing you're relatively tech savvy and enjoy troubleshooting (within reason). Most people aren't, of course.

Not the person you're replying to, but I fall in the same boat as them as far as Linux experience goes.

And for me, I find I have way more trouble doing things on Windows/Mac than Linux. I think it's really more a way of thinking about how a "desktop OS" is supposed to work. People coming from Windows expect things to work the same, and that's just not the case.

Likewise, when I unluckily find myself on some closed-source box, _very little works how I expect_. And man is troubleshooting harder, because there are so many "surprises."

My point is, I think blaming the operating system is not the answer - users need to adjust their expectations and open their mind a little.

This is a somewhat poor analogy, but it's sort of like a Chinese citizen (closed-source user) becoming a citizen of a democracy (open-source user). The government is going to work differently, and you can't claim democracy is broken just because it's so different from authoritarianism.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#25

Post by Sendotsh »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #12
wwarner wrote: post #3

All this is true, but not really fair. Count up the issue raised by the OP, and Nvidia really has the most power to stabilize the linux desktop. I read that gamers who want peak performance on Linux can get the proprietary Nvidia drivers running well. So it's possible, but it will never be without the friction of open source running along side signed proprietary binaries. What I would love to know is why linux isn't…

Linux seems equal in power management to Apple. On my ThinkPad X1 Carbon with the 57 W-h battery I get a good solid 8 hours of work and often the system consumes as little as 4W. My MacBook Pro with a 54.5 W-h battery runs for at most 4 hours. Now, it's true that I had to edit dozens of little configs to get the ThinkPad with Linux up to where a ThinkPad with Windows is right out of the box, such as enabling PCIe ASP…

Do you have a link to a good guide for setting up power stuff on the X1C? I've found a few but they conflict, so I'm keen to hear from someone who actually has it all working well.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#26

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

wwarner wrote: post #3

All this is true, but not really fair. Count up the issue raised by the OP, and Nvidia really has the most power to stabilize the linux desktop. I read that gamers who want peak performance on Linux can get the proprietary Nvidia drivers running well. So it's possible, but it will never be without the friction of open source running along side signed proprietary binaries. What I would love to know is why linux isn't…

> Nvidia really has the most power to stabilize the linux desktop

nVidia/ATI had the power to stabilize the Windows desktop too about a decade ago but didn't. (https://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsib...) IIRC, Microsoft had to move to the entirely new WDDM video driver model and its TDR mechanism (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/di...) to finally put an end to video driver BSODs.

The odds of nVidia getting motivated enough to bring their Linux support up to par with Windows is nil.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#27

Post by jrockway »

I feel like a lot of the usability quirks that Linux has are trying to shoehorn a multi-user system into a single-user context. For example, there is so much work done (and even complaining in favor of doing that work in this article) to make it possible for multiple people to sit at the same computer. Nobody does that! Most people have more than one computer! Why do people spend their free time on that use case?

This could be a long rant, so I'll keep it short... but someday I'm just going to rip the concept of users out of Linux and see what it looks like. Oh no, you say, malware will get you! Unlikely. Malware running as my user can fuck over my life just as easily as malware running as root. So why even pretend that that's a good isolation model? It doesn't prevent any attacks.

(As for how Linux in 2019 is doing... I recently switched back to Ubuntu for a desktop. Whenever I lock the screen and have DPMS enabled, it forgets that I have two monitors and that I want 200% DPI scaling when it wakes back up. What? Back in my day you had to hard-code the resolution and monitor configuration in the X11R6 config and there was no way to change it without restarting the X server. May I please have those days back? At least once it started working, it kept working.)

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#28

Post by stendinator »

sullyj3 wrote: post #17
stendinator wrote: post #7

All this time spend creating this list could've been spent fixing at least one single little thing.

Making the issues known isn't just pointless complaining. Everyone who reads this might potentially be interested in contributing.

Nice strawman. I never said it's pointless complaining.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#29

Post by Anon1096 »

Most of these aren't Linux on Desktop issues that any day to day user will ever encounter. A lot of them yes, but stuff like the author's issues with x.org being a bad piece of software are completely orthogonal to anything a desktop user of Linux will care about. This list would be a lot better if it were cut to just the major issues.

Re: Linux Problems on the Desktop (2018)

#30

Post by jaimex2 »

stendinator wrote: post #6

_For instance Microsoft and Apple regularly update ntoskrnl.exe and mach_kernel respectively for security fixes, but it's unheard of that these updates ever compromised the boot process._ I had updates rendering my computer unbootable by messing up the MBR at least twice.

Exactly. You cant walk away from Windows 10 without the chance of coming back to a bricked system because it auto-updated and broke.
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