Live data from Hacker News

2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

justingarrison.com

191–200 of 351 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, as I say in my first comment, there is a lot of software for linux that just isn't very good, and there is a lot of bad advice and bad defaults floating around. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a daunting task to any new user, and I think most will fail and feel dejected unless they have a strong personal motive to stick with it and learn through experience. It's definitely not for everybody and I don't e…

I use Linux (Fedora in my case) as my primary (actually sole non-mobile right now) OS, with software dev as my focus. Its the best for my purpose, though I've used both MacOS and Windows extensively so I have a reasonable awareness of the relative tradeoffs.

I do find the Linux community often insufferable though. Also often extremely helpful however. I guess communities also have their tradeoffs.

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

#192
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to write a pure POSIX applications on either iOS or Android. https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/fall2016/atlidakis

That's not the same thing though, is it? Even desktop Linux is not technically POSIX compliant.

But Android and iOS are complete nightmares in this regard.

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

#193
post #9

Rant: last weekend I finished building my teenager dream PC - 12 cores cpu, 64GB RAM, RTX 3060 12GB VRAM... GNOME on Ubuntu still managed to crash / hang on a fresh install. Will try Mint / others, but it's a shame the "gateway distro for new users" is in such sorry state.

Almost same config as my deskside. I've got 16 Epyc CPU cores, 128GB RAM, and 2TB of NVMe along with 8TB of ZFS mirror with hot spare. Same GPU. Linux Mint went on w/o problem. I did have to switch from nouveau to nvidia drivers, but that's covered in the driver manager.

Again, everything just works. Even the stupid little USB sound card I plugged in. Been listening to spotify while working on it. Using Zoom on that for my private non-work meetings.

Cinnamon version, 21.1 version of mint. Painless. Even getting zfs up and going. I updated to 2.1.7 at that.

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

#194

I can’t consider Linux desktop until copy and paste is consistent and seamless and lets me use the macOS key combination everywhere. And of course all this should just work, not be a series of cli commands and configs.

I can’t consider MacOS until the „@“ character is back on its internationally standardized place and Apple Safari supports VP9 hardware decoding.

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

#195

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…

It's funny. My NixOS machines (desktop and two laptops) have had minimal breakage while upgrading. And the breakage was easy to fix with a small git commit.

My macOS (Intel MBP) and Windows (Dell laptop) end up with something borked by updates pretty much like clockwork. I suppose I am a poweruser of those systems by nature of being a dev, but something always tends to stop working.

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

#196
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no singular 'linux experience', all the problems you list are expected problems with some software on linux, but work just fine with other software systems on linux. Unfortunately many of the defaults chosen by Ubuntu are very poor and give bad first impressions. I think that recommending Ubuntu is an anachronism from the mid to late 00s. Experience makes it all much easier, simply because you learn which sof…

> I think that recommending Ubuntu is an anachronism from the mid to late 00s. What would you recommend as a modern-day user-friendly Linux experience? I've been looking for something not too demanding to put on an old X220.

Mint or manjaro

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

#197
After 25 years as a dedicated Mac user, I kind of inadvertently switched to Kubuntu for most things, and it's been mostly fine. It gets better and better with each release too.

My singular major complaint is that not enough applications leverage the KDE system that allows you to rewire various keyboard shortcuts, so I can only half-ass having a setup where all the shortcuts mimic those of a Mac.

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

#198

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.

I have two nvidia machines and they work fine on NixOS. Including prime on my laptop!

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

#199
post #162
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but this is something unique to Linux, since everyone runs a different distro on different, never 100%-supported, hardware. So, they likely have never run into sleep problems- my desktop linux box doesn't have any at the moment. Sometimes these difficulties have a silver lining, though, after they force you to learn more about the systems you're using. I thinks it's less of a trial-by-fire than it was even four…

I’m sort-of fine with the issues. I’m not fine with the increasingly hostile attitude you meet from most of the Linux world if you in the public eye dare ding their precious baby.

Well it's kinda understandable, although lamentable, since open-source development requires high morale/passion if there's no monetary incentives. If someone fixes your car for free, but afterward you complain about them scuffing the upholstery, they probably lose motivation. I know it's not the same thing, but I think it comes from the same place.

There's also the safety-in-numbers aspect, similar to editor wars, where people adopt the attitude that the more people that use their thing, the better it will be, so they are waging a propaganda campaign for their cause.

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

#200

The Linux CLI is a dominate user interface I use at work, it is also just called bash (well, that’s the default shell anyways). I have never tried an actual Linux desktop at work, web and native Mac applications are still dominate there (besides the CLI).

The cli existed when Linus was still in diapers.

Even Bash predates Linux by years.

There is zero that running a bash Shell has to do with “Linux”

Post reply on HN