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Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#51

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

haileys wrote: post #27
dschuessler wrote: post #8

The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable. Another comment here on HN described it as the trackpad completely disappearing from your mind. You don't have to fight it at all. You don't even think about it anymore. The cursor just becomes a natural extension of your hand. Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Prev…

I've been using a Magic Trackpad 2 on my Linux desktop for a year now and it's great. Two finger scroll and right click works, but it also does three finger middle click which is super convenient for opening and closing tabs in Firefox - it's something I miss when I'm on macOS. Inertial scrolling depends on the app, but Firefox implements it well and that takes care of 80% of it for me.

Any idea on how to adjust the minimum steps? I can't figure out how to change it in firefox running on PureOS/Gnome Wayland. Also two finger swipe for back or forward doesn't work very well using the firefox extension SwipeToNavigate.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#52

Post by cybwraith »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #38

Switching OS incurs costs. The benefits must outweigh the costs. I'm a great fan of the principles and philosophies of Linux, but if I'm to use it as my daily driver, it has to be above all else a practical solution. There's so much weird shit involved with Linux that the costs outweigh the benefits. Weird shit like, Linux refusing to let me copy files on an external hard drive because "I'm not the owner" of those fi…

Linux or not, I highly suggest trying Krita instead of GIMP

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#53

Post by settrans »

luke2m wrote: post #31
dschuessler wrote: post #8

The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable. Another comment here on HN described it as the trackpad completely disappearing from your mind. You don't have to fight it at all. You don't even think about it anymore. The cursor just becomes a natural extension of your hand. Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Prev…

My Lenovo Flex 5 with Fedora 34 (GNOME) has an incredibly smooth trackpad experience. Also, GNOME sushi is a useful preview.app alternative, maybe not on the same level, but you should try it. I used Xfce before getting my new laptop, but on newish hardware, GNOME is great.

GNOME’s equivalent of Preview.app would be evince, which is strictly inferior to Preview, but for one singular feature: the hand tool.

In fact, GNOME is in fact my daily driver and I keep a Windows VM tucked away in case I ever need to manipulate a PDF. And even that is worse than Preview.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#54

Post by Alan_Dillman »

captainmisery wrote: post #10

I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others. Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix. After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution. "Well, you know, you…

Yeah its funny how experiences differ.

I was at my parents,and wanted to sketch out something for my dad. So I grabbed my mom's win10 laptop, went to the blender download location, downloaded, double clicked, got a popup about updates. Whatever, not my computer, not my problem. double click again. Again with the popup. Read it carefully this time. WTF? I NEED to update their store to install a third party package?

Not my computer, not my mandate.

It looked like I could install the stores' version, but of course, its not up to date. Then some more bullshit about updating.

I shut it down and went for paper and pencil.

Yeah. I know. You don't want to SUDO this or SUDO that. But I want a operating system that does what I tell it to do.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#55

Post by fsflover »

dschuessler wrote: post #8

The trackpad experience on MacBooks is unbeatable. Another comment here on HN described it as the trackpad completely disappearing from your mind. You don't have to fight it at all. You don't even think about it anymore. The cursor just becomes a natural extension of your hand. Also, as a person working with PDF documents on a regular basis, I don't know of any application that can beat the feature set and UX of Prev…

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23615218.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#56

Post by orangepanda »

Because I’m not a masochist. I use ubuntu for work, some issues I’ve encountered:

* No sleep mode by default

* Snap is cancer. When I’m sent a pdf, I cant open it directly because the current app is isolated and cant see that a pdf reader is installed. Same with all other app specific extensions.

* Snap, again. Whenever I’m sent a file on Skype, I have to reboot; It overrides my $home directory and I cant open or access anything elsewhere.

* Why do links sometimes keep opening in firefox? I dont have it installed, did a full scan and cant find where it comes from. Yeah Microsoft is pushy about Edge, but at least it respects your settings when you do change them.

* There’s a memory leak somewhere, I have to reboot every week. Probably that’s why sleep is disabled…

* spotify sometimes can no longer find an output device and everything gets muted (might be an app issue, but I haven’t encountered it on other platforms so ubuntu gets the blame)

* When disconnecting external displays, the pointer still “sees” them and disappears into oblivion. Also it doesn’t work for half the screen.

* With external displays, I sometimes have to log in twice

For personal devices, I just want reasonable defaults so I dont have to tinker with them

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#57

Post by haunter »

Too confusing for me. Too many different distros. Too many different DEs. Too many different package systems.

Just look at this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Comparison_of_desktop_envir... And this one distro doesn't even cover the package systems that differs between distros and other distros based on those (see how Ubuntu is based on Debian but there are distros based on Ubuntu, it's like the Inception). Of course some of these doesn't matter on a huge scale but analysis paralysis is real. And stone me for that but I really don't believe the more choice is better. Or leads to better things in this case. Like imagine if people would work together to have _one_ better distro instead of having... hundreds or thousands of different one.

I have to use Linux for some projects in VM but that's more than enough for me.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#58

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

I just switched from macOS to PureOS running on a purism Librem 14 about a month ago. Overall, it's pretty good and I'm happy with it. It really is the kind of computer I've dreamt of since the early 2000's. All black, no logos, aluminum case. The ports I need and nothing more. The right size and weight. And privacy first.

As other have mentioned here, the trackpad experience on macOS is literally an extension of your body it's that good, so it's hard to compete. It really is pretty incredible that my 10 year old macbook air trackpad is still technologically superior to literally every trackpad in existence that isn't from apple. From the glass surface, to non-linear scrolling of screen lines per trackpad distance traveled, to inertial scrolling, to two finger swipe for back and forward, to pinch and twist to adjust Preview'ed files. It goes on...

Beyond the trackpad, the battery life is iffy and wake from suspend still somehow doesn't work perfectly every time are my only complaints. Of course it took a few weeks of getting things configured to how I like it, but I feel set now. I also only really browse the internet and watch movies. I don't code or do strenuous video, image, or audio editing. Oh, and the audio is terrible compared to apple laptops, which again Apple somehow is incredible at.

The big issue for me is privacy and ownership of my hardware. I will put up with all these small issues to truly own my computer. Most don't care, which is sad, but it's a common discussion point here which I won't get into.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#59

Post by fsflover »

zbrozek wrote: post #15

Generally unpolished quirkiness that requires time and attention to resolve. For example, in ten years of using Linux at work I've never experienced tear-free browser scrolling despite hours of fussing with X11 and compositor settings or graphics drivers. Or how my default file associations change unbidden all the time, frequently to poor choices like GIMP to open a JPEG. And more recently Internet Explorer through W…

> in ten years of using Linux at work I've never experienced tear-free browser scrolling

Sounds like a hardware/driver problem. How is this a fault of Linux? I guess your hardware came with Windows and the vendor never cared about Linux support.

Re: Ask HN: Why don’t you use Linux as your daily driver OS?

#60

Post by tluyben2 »

captainmisery wrote: post #10

I'm using Windows 10. In the past year I've tried: Manjaro, Fedora, Linux Mint and some others. Why I'm not switching? Because every time I login there is something that needs a quick update or a quick fix. After I've tried Fedora the last time, I turned on my PC and the resolution of my monitor switched to 800x600 from the 1920x1080. There was no way of setting it back to the correct resolution. "Well, you know, you…

Like others here I have the opposite experience: to such extend that I am actually installing Ubuntu instead of Windows10 on computers of friends who are not technical and they love that it works so well.
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