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Linux is good now

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Re: Linux is good now

#61
post #30

Every year at around this time there is a lot of linux related content in tech media. It's a slow moving evergreen topic perfect for a scheduled release while the author is on holiday. This is just filler content that could have been written at any point in the last 10 years with minor changes.

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Re: Linux is good now

#62

2026 YOTLD?

The personal desktop has fallen in relevance enough for that to be possible. The goalposts moved, now linux needs to have phone, tablet, and laptop with smooth effortless integration between them all. I recently switched to using a thumb drive to transfer files to and from my phone/tablet, I became demoralized when faced with getting it all setup.

KDE has phone and laptop integrated well enough for me. It's worth giving it a try but the more devices you want integrated the more of a risk it is in case it doesn't quite work right. But I've got enough other devices in the house which I can't put KDE on (work laptop, Windows machine I need for some specific software) that I can recommend https://github.com/9001/copyparty over thumb drives.

Re: Linux is good now

#63
post #30

Every year at around this time there is a lot of linux related content in tech media. It's a slow moving evergreen topic perfect for a scheduled release while the author is on holiday. This is just filler content that could have been written at any point in the last 10 years with minor changes.

I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years, and I've been using it on the desktop since 1999, so I lived through the infamous "Year of the Linux Desktop" era.

I've not seen anything like the current level of momentum, ever, nor this level of mainstream exposure. Gaming has changed the equation, and 2026 will be wild.

Re: Linux is good now

#64
post #33

I switched my desktop from macOS (10+ years) to Ubuntu 25 last year and I'm not going back. The latest release includes a Gnome update which fixed some remaining annoyances with high res monitors. I'd say it pretty much "just works" except less popular apps are a bit more work to install. On occasion you have to compile apps from source, but it's usually relatively straightforward and on the upside you get the latest…

I switched in 1999. I've never really had any problems in all that time.

Although it was to BSDi then, and then FreeBSD and then OpenBSD for 5 years or so. I can't remember why I switched to Debian but I've been there ever since.

I'm sat here now playing Oxygen Not Included.

Re: Linux is good now

#65
post #53

Any recommendations for a distro? I've used Mint in the past, loved it until I spent a day trying to get scanner drivers to work. Don't know if that's changed now, was 4 years ago

Omarchy is pretty streamlined for developers and you can play games as well as they work well.

Re: Linux is good now

#66
Just recently started using the desktop machine (under my desk, as opposed to my laptop which sits on my desktop) and put NixOS on it, and found myself pleasantly surprised. There's certainly still some parts of NixOS that require some expertise and getting your head around its package model, but overall I was surprised at how idiotproof it was to install and use. I mostly play games on it with Steam, which also Just Works.

Re: Linux is good now

#67

Linux is a viable alternative to Windows/MacOS if you stand back and squint. Not up close due to the vast number of inconsistencies. This could only be fixed by a user experience built from the ground up by a single company.

Only true if those inconsistencies actually matter to your workflow. Not going to deny that they exist, obviously, but their impact is largely overplayed (and gratuitously downplayed on Windows, in my experience).

Re: Linux is good now

#68
I use a Linux PC every day but I wouldn't recommend it to normal people. They're not going to feel any renewed sense of ownership from it, just annoyance at having to think about technical gibberish when they just want to get on with using the computer.

Re: Linux is good now

#69
post #30

Every year at around this time there is a lot of linux related content in tech media. It's a slow moving evergreen topic perfect for a scheduled release while the author is on holiday. This is just filler content that could have been written at any point in the last 10 years with minor changes.

I guess everyone’s in a “fuck it I’m ready to try some new stuff” mood too so this content is perfectly suited for new years. Would never have noticed this without your comment.

Re: Linux is good now

#70

It's good until you boot your system and end up with an unrecoverable black screen that meeses your day of work for no good reason. Linux is free if you don't value your time.

Not in my experience. I've run both Windows and Linux for the last decade and Windows is the only OS that I ever have problems with updates wasting my time and breaking things. I've been running image-based Linux for the last two years and the worst case is rebooting to rollback to the last deployment. Before that it was booting a different btrfs snapshot.

Fun aside: I had a hardware failure a few years ago on my old workstation where the first few sectors of every disk got erased. I had Linux up and running in 10 minutes. I just had to recreate the efi partition and regenerate a UKI after mounting my OS from a live USB. Didn't even miss a meeting I had 15 minutes later. I spent hours trying to recover my Windows install. I'm rather familiar with the (largely undocumented) Windows boot process but I just couldn't get it to boot after hours of work. I just gave up and reinstalled windows from scratch and recovered from a restic backup.

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