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2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

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Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#151

Post by willnonya »

Lol. This is complete nonsense. Numbers that don't hold up, assertions which don't pass the smell test.

Linux excels in invironments where people don't ever lnow they're using Linux. Servers, embedded and highly customized environments. For average users Linux is still too much of a disjointed mess with poor hardware support.

I use multiple Linux distros daily and none of them would pass for a primetime ready desktop environment in any of my personal or professional environments. As much as I hate windows and Macos Linux just isn't up to the job of replacing them on the desktop. Luckily for them that is becoming less and and less relevant outside of the business environment.

In the end Linux is still little more than a random collection of software loosely connected through an administrator centric framework.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#152

Post by malkia »

When I was at Google (2014-2017) - The Linux (I think it was Ubuntu based) just worked. Granted it was mostly java/blaze/little r/js/go, no dedicated graphics chips us (I came there from gamedev background). It was working just fine, and we had option to use Cinnamon or something else.

The only thing I remember is that it wasn't that easy (or maybe my memory does not serve me well) to "apt update" anything (and that makes sense). I think apt was going somehow through internal servers. All I remember is that "apt-file" wasn't working or was prevented from doing so.

Nonetheless - never had problem with the distro/whatever, and TBH never cared what linux is there - as compiler/everything else got somehow in, and you just carry on your work in Eclipse/CLion/JetBrains/Chrome/Firefox/etc.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#153

Post by midasuni »

Has been for me every year for the last 22.

Occasionally I Remote Desktop into a windows machine or show someone something in their MacBook, it’s exhausting how bad the experience is. Random hangs, applications crashing, lvl of basic functions like virtual desktops, and don’t get me started on the Mac trackpad being the wrong way round.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#154

Post by sekh60 »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #128
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #39

If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script. Software updates rarely work. There are random crashes that take hours to fix. I'm about to give in the towel and get a Mac. I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I…

Exhausting compared to what? If you think that Ubuntu has poor user-friendlyness wait until you try this new "Windows 10" thing everyone seems to be on about. You have to click through about ten pages of menus just to set up the network, and if you get anything wrong the error message is just along the lines of either "Sorry, that didn't work. Please try again!" or "Error -X8004a119af3c occurred", neither of which ar…

You mean Windows 11, 10 is old now.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#155

Post by vbezhenar »

Arbortheus wrote: post #58
Kukumber wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs? sounds like they misconfigured their OS Linux is not a commercial product that'll suit everyone all at once, you need to learn about its components, linux is just a kernel If your argumentation is "various linux bugs", then you should stick to Windows, it has nice "various windows bugs", or macos, it has nice "various macos bugs" There must be a reason why linux empowers the world from micro controllers to data…

In principle I would love to use Linux, as the developer experience isn’t great on Windows, and I would rather not be tied into expensive Apple computers. However, I don’t want to learn about components of my operating system, that is below my pay grade. I’m not trying to spread FUD, I’m speaking firsthand on some of the experiences my colleagues have had with their brand new $3000 business Thinkpads running all mann…

How can learning of your tools being below your pay grade? Ability to use tools properly is a prerequisite for any professional. That sounds very weird to me.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#156

Post by pizza234 »

Arbortheus wrote: post #5

Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full, random things like thunderbolt docks not working, or sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep), or external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors wit…

> that can reliably be updated without the boot partition getting full

I have the suspicion that this is caused by users who add extra kernels and don't use the system provided ones.

Ubuntu retains only a certain number of (distro-provided) kernels.

Ubuntu desktop version doesn't even use a separate partition for `/boot`, so there's no risk.

I remember this being a problem for Ubuntu Server, but it was long ago (I think 16.04, or maybe earlier).

> sleep states being faulty (or the machine not working properly after waking from sleep)

This problem can depend on two things.

S3 (suspend to RAM) became a bloody mess in recent times (possibly, because of Microsoft's push for the Connected standby). The firmware of some laptops (and even desktops!) doesn't advertise the state. One can verify this with `sudo dmesg | grep "supports S"`: if there is no S3, it's the producers fault. In such cases, I actually don't know how Windows works (for example, if they patch the ACPI tables).

If S3 is advertised, but it doesn't work well, then the producer didn't release proper drivers. Best thing is to open a bug in the kernel tracker; some producers do actually react.

Kernel v6.1 released a lot of fixes for laptops, so it's worth giving a shot.

I'm definitely not justifying the status quo, but it's a chicken and egg situation (small user base -> underdeveloped drivers -> small user base).

> random things like thunderbolt docks not working

I suspect this is a similar (hardware drivers) problem.

> external monitor resolutions being wrong, and monitor scaling working properly when you have two monitors with different resolutions

I suspect this is an X11 problem, which can be considered "Linux", although I'm not sure exaclty. Scaling is a bloody mess, and I think it's not related to drivers.

To summarize, the fault is a mixed bag. for hardware/driver cases (and they're many), there's nothing to do; some distros adopt kernels earlier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. For display scaling, I suspect there's nothing to do, either - this may still take some time.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#157

Post by sz4kerto »

chazeon wrote: post #78

I wonder when Linux can finally gain proper fractional scaling support. Now I know Gnome has it under wayland, but many other applications does not, electron apps sometimes can work with caveats, but I still have to make a lot of effort to make it really look okay to my eye. Now out of box, everything feels broken here and there. And every time I came to use it as a real desktop environment instead of just a developm…

Gnome doesn't have it. Looks like it'll land next year.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#158

Post by pram »

devmunchies wrote: post #141
TulliusCicero wrote: post #112

These comments are hilarious. Linux user community: Linux has been fine for casual users for years! Give it to your grandma, it's not a problem! Also Linux user community: Wait, you used an nVidia GPU in your build? What kind of idiot scrub are you? If there's one thing I've seen that's consistent with Linux users over the last two decades, it's been blaming users for all their Linux-related problems.

Linux scrub Q, does NVIDIA not use any Linux for themselves? Or is it a financial reason to ignore Linux?

I think they don't care about the userspace at all. I assume from their perspective, most (all?) of the Linux use-case is for their expensive cards to be running in servers doing CUDA.

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#159

Post by aussiesnack »

LarryMullins wrote: post #135
aussiesnack wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The apparently innocent "sharing" of positive experiences - so sweet! so nice! - is from Linux self-identifiers all too often a very crude backhanded "you're wrong about the problems you claim to have with Linux, and if you're not wrong, then you're at least thick or lazy".

You've pulled these insults out of thin air. I have no animosity towards Windows or Mac users, nor for those that might hypothetically like Linux but understandably have better things to do with their time than learn the ins and outs of it.

Apologies if that seemed directed at you personally, which wasn't my intent. Attribute it to HN trigger-finger.

It is a general and widespread phenomenon though that anyone who has been less than positive towards Linux on HN or anywhere will recognise. I don't think it reflects animosity towards users of mainstream OS's so much as defensiveness, particularly from strongly self-identified Linux advocates. Which is all a bit daft, because it's (a) perfectly obvious that Linux has plenty of problems (how could something as vast as an OS not?), and (b) that doesn't make it any less the clear choice for some classes of user (like myself).

Re: 2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

#160

Post by hpcjoe »

hnlmorg wrote: post #82
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #39

If I'm honest, Linux is...exhausting. I'm technically proficient, but even the "user-friendly" Ubuntu is a pain to work with. Something as simple as changing the mouse scroll speed requires creating a bash script. Software updates rarely work. There are random crashes that take hours to fix. I'm about to give in the towel and get a Mac. I can get it to work because the terminal doesn't scare me, but there's no way I…

I’ve been running desktop Linux since the 90s, and it’s been my primary desktop since XP was first released (XP was what drove my to Linux) and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve needed to write a shell script to fix basic functionality. I’m not taking anything away from your experiences though. Just offering another data point. I do get the appeal of macOS. I use it for work but I honestly find it more…

I get about 4 hours productive use out of my work Macbook M1 pro (32 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe) on battery. I get about 3.5 hours productive use out of my Zen2 HP Omen laptop (64 GB RAM, 3TB NVME). Though I have to reduce the brightness of the Zen to get better lifetime.

I am a bit of a power user, running large builds, analytics, and other things, so its not surprising to me that I get less than others. I would like to see an all-day battery laptop for people like me, though I suspect it will be a few more years.

Oh, and the original work windows laptop I had (fully corporate controlled) with 32GB RAM and 500GB NVMe barely lasted an hour on battery. And it BSODed frequently.

I'd still prefer a Linux work laptop, but the Mac is at least a poor-mans version of it. Windows, even with WSL2, was horrible.

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