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2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

justingarrison.com

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

#231
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or “You mean you want to run two monitors with different DPIs? What kind of oddball user are you, anyway?” Linux display stack’s treatment of monitor DPI is basically “throw our hands up and let apps like Firefox make it work!”

I think you gave this example as a joke, but here is a quote from one of the Wayland developers: > I would suggest that this setting [UI scale] needs to be a global and not a per-output thing. If it was a per-output thing, windows moving between different monitors would probably have problems (text size changes while window size does not?). It is hard to imagine how it would work as a per-output setting, for me at le…

Unfortunately my example was based on real-world frustration.

That conversation was just maddening to read. One person arguing for the end user’s experience and the other one (apparently winning) tunnel-visioned on “pixel perfect”, “well defined”, “guarantees to developers” and “relevant specifications”. Meanwhile, for the last at least five years, I can turn on my Mac, drag windows from one hidpi display to a low dpi display, and everything just works and window sizes and fonts behave sensibly.

The ability to make tough technical compromises in favor of the average end user, over technical purity and developer comfort, is what distinguishes a polished, finished product from a science project.

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

#232

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…

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. A. I'm looking at pointer speed section in Mouse Preference in Control Center. It's pretty simple. It give acceleration and sensitivy. B. Just about every GUI aims for decent defaults and doesn't allow endl…

Ubuntu has not been user-friendly for many years. It's unstable while being stale. And you points soundsore like your issue is with Gnome.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the clear problem here is GNOME and it's arrogant disregard for users... Which I guess really is historically in line with Linux culture, unfortunately.

GNOME and Ubuntu are not representative of "Linux culture".

“Linux Culture” is also similarly full of these sorts of “no true Scotsman” arguments, as well as deferring blame to other projects, and “oh you just simply need to use [package] Instead”.

These are all things that make Linux on the desktop inaccessible. The moment you start talking about weird cultural minutiae like this, the whole thing is already incredibly inaccessible in my eyes.

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

#234
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be lying! Are you implying S0x works badly and wakes too many times, pcie_aspm requires to be set to force to have decent results and enabling S3 is hidden somewhere in the BIOS assuming it's there at all? You must be lying, I never heard of such stories! NOTE: My computer came without OS. Assuming HP Dev One or System 76 behave better in this regard. But I'm a sucker for 2-in-1.

Linux doesn't have power nap. That being said, I can leave my Thinkpad in my bag for a few days without worrying about losing any of the work on it. It won't win awards for standby durability, but that may just be a lost cause for x86.

Powernap? You mean S0idle? If it is advertised it is used -- tested on Thinkpad Yoga L15 Gen...3? .

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

#235
Can't beat the build quality and performance of the Macbook Air M1 for the price and size in my opinion so I'm sticking with it for laptop. But as for "Desktop" I've almost fully switched over to Mint and very happy with it. Windows + WSL2 for work so I guess I turn up in all metrics on the surveys :)

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

#236
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not sure about performance on an X220, but I've loved Fedora workstation edition. The default Gnome setup is pretty user-friendly in my opinion, a there's a decent amount of support to be found online.

I have used fedora on my x220 since I bought it new. Still runs perfectly.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME and Ubuntu are not representative of "Linux culture".

“Linux Culture” is also similarly full of these sorts of “no true Scotsman” arguments, as well as deferring blame to other projects, and “oh you just simply need to use [package] Instead”. These are all things that make Linux on the desktop inaccessible. The moment you start talking about weird cultural minutiae like this, the whole thing is already incredibly inaccessible in my eyes.

“Computer Culture” is also similarly full of these sorts of “no true Scotsman” arguments, as well as deferring blame to other systems, and “oh you just simply need to use [operating system] Instead”. These are all things that make computing on the desktop inaccessible. The moment you start talking about weird cultural minutiae like this, the whole thing is already incredibly inaccessible in my eyes.

Seems approximately equally true and arbitrary.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I'm no longer forced to use a Mac at work, all of my work happens on Linux. I only marginally touch Windows and Mac for testing and builds. If I can find a good MDM solution for Linux hardware and software, I'll let the employees at my startup use Linux too. I get a sense that corporate MDM is all that's holding Linux back.

Microsoft just released Linux support (Ubuntu) in their MDM Intune. It’s very barebones yet but provides first fundamental capabilities. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/fundamentals/su... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/user-help/enrol...

Not even Ubuntu, Ubuntu + gnome. Everyone is different but for me gnome feels like osx ui, both of which I dislike immensely.

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

#240
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.

Gnome Ubuntu is the "gateway distro for new users"? I would never ever Recommend that to new users. Mint, popOS, and a few others for people coming from Windows would be the "gateway distro for new users" gnome 3 is not for new users, back in the day, gnome 2.4 days maybe that was the case

The other Ubuntu desktops should be fine. I recommend the Xfce one personally, it has everything thats needed of a sane gui and the xfce is not a RAM hog.

However the snap nonsense also means I might have to consider Ubuntu no longer suitable to recommend if they continue down this path.

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