2022 was the year of Linux on the Desktop?

It's too bad, because W10 has its own annoyances (mostly the forced updates and boot interstitials) but at least it actually worked. While I don't have a problem with proprietary software as a Principe, it is nice to have community driven stuff as a counterpart, which is why I periodically test the waters with Linux. It's just that, every time I run into annoyances and problems that make me give it up.

Anyway, ideology aside, I use all three major desktop OSes regularly: gaming desktop is Windows, work laptop is MacOS, workstation is Linux. Linux has certain niceties for developers, but for non-dev-specific stuff it's the most painful to use overall (although MacOS has a penchant for hiding things from the user which can be very frustrating). I also encounter the most instability with it, I think, though these days all three aren't that bad on that front.

Edit: though I'm thinking about a Steam Deck, and that's a Linux PC I suppose. Valve has been doing great work at making Linux more viable for PC gaming.

The fact the mouse scroll wheel doesn't even work well on Linux is just shameful.

Hear hear! I use Gnome purely because home-manager can configure 99% of it. I had to use Windows a few days ago in order to use Serif products and, beyond looking shit, the lack of the gnomeflow is bloody annoying.

FWIW Elementary sports a pay-what-you-want store.

Sorry no. That’s not actually true. Linux the kernel and thus the distribution definitely knows I have a laptop. In fact, many things auto-configure themselves correctly around this fact.

> Because that's the reality of it, the problem is the user who expect things to work for him while ignoring its dimensional capabilities That's not a linux problem, that's a user problem, it's arrogant and selfish to expect "Linux" to work just for your specific HW and specific usecase and all of the effort should be dedicated to you, just you, for your own sake

Consider which OS then I’ll be choosing for my 70 yold mom who isn’t very tech literate. I disagree that it’s arrogant to expect buying widely available and relatively standardized HW (this is x86 not ARM) and expecting it to work well. That’s par for the course for Windows btw.

> Do like valve did with steam deck and configure your Linux OS for your HW, if you are not ready for that, then use windows or macos

Ummm… so you’re agreeing with the OP and me then? There’s no Linux distribution that provides a smooth out of the box user friendly experience? As a refresher, here’s what OP for this thread said:

> Is there any Linux distribution with MacOS levels of reliability, simplicity, and productivity, … Most of my colleagues at work picked Linux over a MacBook, and they waste countless hours fixing their various Linux bugs.

Within the specific context of this thread and what’s being discussed, is your post providing evidence for or against what’s being requested? I’m relating that my experience is similar. Sure, I’m not expecting a MacBook because that’s generally not feasible for general HW unless you have the dominance of Windows or Android. And the Linux ecosystem honestly has done a fantastic job in the x64 HW support all things considered. I’m fact, none of the issues I’ve had are really the Linux kernel itself so most of the benefit of the SW/HW layer configuration and isn’t even a distribution thing. And given that my laptop is fairly popular and has dedicated pages on Arch, one would think there might be community-supported “here’s default machine configuration that sets it up correctly” option.

There’s also the general weird design choices from KDE and Gnome, trackpad cursors still not working correctly (although much better than before thanks to that guy that’s taken on that task), Flame screenshot tool that still doesn’t work in a multi display setup despite that bug being open forever, Bluetooth audio switching not working quite so well, hibernation not working, laptop not going to hibernation by default on power loss, kwrite not automatically saving and restoring unsaved documents on power loss etc etc. These are all bugs or default behavior selection that doesn’t feel sane and I think it’s fair to say it’s not at the polish level of Windows let alone Mac. Since the vast majority of this isn’t about the HW/SW layer, I’d say comparing against the Mac is also fair game. That’s why I’m agreeing with OP and saying he’s not crazy and that I’m not aware of a distribution that is polished (Manjero comes close but the bugs are mostly upstream). What you’ve written sounds defensive and argumentative which makes it seem like you’re supporting the claim that there is a user friendly distribution that has the polish of Windows or Mac but all you actually seem to have said (and correct me if I’m wrong) is basically that that’s unreasonable to expect. I happen to disagree with that position since it’s actively harmful to trying to have Linux get market share, but that’s also arguing a different thing from what OP said. It’s kind of interesting to see this derailment whenever the comparison to user friendliness / polish of Windows and Max are brought up. I think the truth is that it’s really hard to achieve this in a bazaar model where you’re throwing together arbitrary components and no one is doing regular testing of livability of a distribution from scratch (everyone’s deployed their own workarounds when they hit bugs vs making sure that those workarounds are deployed by default for the users it’s relevant for, or even better fixing the issue when it’s not a problem with Nvidia).

But I think your point is sound. Our totally not monopolistic tech giant friends would never dream of colluding to make mobile device management proprietary. To lose hold of MDM would unravel too much. and iStuff doesn't play nice w/ Linux. If there were a decent way to get Messages and SMS on a desktop Linux OS I would be there today.