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

Sorry, but no, this is simply not true. Unlike Gnome, it actually tries to support it, which is laudable, but only Qt programs work reasonably well, other programs "work", but you can tell they only work through a hack. Also, it all goes to hell once you connect an external display with a different PPI...

I will agree that KDE is light years better than Gnome in usability though.

> Thinkpads with nVidia GPUs also have Intel GPUs. You don't have to use the nVidia, it costs nothing to have.

No, the external HDMI port of the laptop is only connected to the nvidia GPU, you have to use it if you want to use external displays.

> There are other distros than Ubuntu and Debian. I use Void, which I find to be a perfectly stable rolling release distro with great package coverage.

I'm afraid that if you don't understand the problem with this "solution", Linux on desktop will continue to be a thing of the past. For me and most people at least. I'm glad that it works for you.

Windows is an absolute no go for me because I can't be bothered turning off the dozens of spying and tracking options anymore. This is despite using WSL for several months and actually enjoying my dev experience.

I don't want to use MacOS either; I got this laptop just for the value of the M1 but at least MacOS doesn't *feel* like the huge spyware/adware that Windows is.

1. Cohesiveness - there are many things Linux does excellently if done independently. But, when you want a cohesive experience to achieve a good user experience, it falls flat in its face.

Examples:

Have an excellent file system? Check. ZFS, ext4 and plenty more. May I expect a simple equivalent of a GUI file explorer in the class of Windows Explorer or Finder? Nope. There is not even thumbnail previews if images in the default views. Sure, there will be some commenter that will prove me wrong by saying “if you choose this district and combine it with this particular program I found and follow on GitHub, and simply run this command, it will all obviously work”. But, that only proves my point. I don’t have the time or the interest to do that. I applaud Linux for its powers in the server ecosystem, and use a cohesive yet restrictive Mac or Windows for the Desktop.

2. Battery life. Of course there is “laptop projects” and a plethora of scripts I can run to make Linux consume less power on a laptop, but the default option will just be poor in comparison with Mac and Windows because of their focus. Linux being powerful is actually at odds with the goal here.

3. Reliability around on/off/on/off/suspend operations like that of a laptop. I expect my Mac to wake up instantly and allow me to pick up work from wherever I left it. I reboot on my terms about once every couple of weeks when I am off work and relaxing. With Linux, it may work, but also not. Updates of packages break each other more often taking my productive time to fix things back in place. That anxiety is simply not worth it IMO.

In my opinion, being a good DesktopOS needs a authoritative and opinionated ecosystem so as to achieve that cohesion at least at the base system level. Unfortunately Linux does not target that. There have been attempts at it from PopOS, ElementaryOS etc, but they haven’t hit the mark yet as they too lose their focus quickly and try to do it all, and add yet another option in an already fragmented toolset. Example: ElementaryOS brought Vala as a language to write apps. Of course their apps are good, but the rest of the apps needed dont look or behave like the ones they made :-(

On my “hobby” workstation, I use Linux and enjoy it because I don’t have the anxiety about losing it at critical times. I simply have my /home backed up throughly and don’t care if the OS gets borked. I can always reinstall and bring my /home. Can’t live with such a setup on work PC.

- Flaky multimonitor setup (it's always this or that, in the case of my PC apparently connecting 1 monitor to the Nvidia card and 1 monitor to the integrated GPU is not possible... I didn't want to deal with the laptop version of that).

- Android Studio: Setting up the environment for android studio was a pain. Adb sometimes works , sometime doesnt.

- Bluetooth audio: I use the Galaxy Buds pro. They sometimes work and sometimes doesn't work in my linux PC. I need them for hangouts.

- Tidal client with Master reproduction isnt available in Linux (pet peeve of mine).

So in general when I was making the decision between Mac or Linux, I decided for Mac because I didn't want to spend any time tinkering for things to work (I didn't consider Windows as to me it feels as a toy OS. And I have it on my pc for the very rare occasion when I want to play something I can't play on linux).