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2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

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Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#101
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft dropped the ball with Universal Windows Platform framework, I worked on one project using this framework and it was one the best. Our codebase run on both phone and desktop Windows 8. This was 2014-ish if I remember, and then Windows phone got killed.

I still have my Nokia Lumia around. Best phone I ever had. And I say this hating everything about Microsoft and Windows. That phone clicked just right with the tile design and overall usability. Of course, MS having pulled the plug, it's basically a DRM brick now.

Truly an underrated phone, this was my wife's phone when we met. Developing for Windows 8 was one of the best imo, I don't know any C# prior to it but it was just so easy, native and fast.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#102
This post does examplefy what we’re seeing, a general indication of some swelling of momentum but I bet it’s still going to be from 2% to maybe 3 or 5% at most until Linux can fix a few things about the community, issues with install difficulty such as dual booting and other issues, and the technical knowledge barrier to entry until more distribution with hardware comes along. Although of course system 76 and steam deck are great moves in this direction they’re still relatively niche for now.

There will never be a “year of the Linux desktop” the same way that there has never been a “year of the Mac desktop”, it’s just a slow building of users over time anyway.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#103

I've been using a system 76 laptop for the past 3 years. Runs perfectly, no surprises. Unfortunately, I need a mac for work because the laptop service folks do not know what to do with linux and do not have a relationship with a vendor like system76. Pros: The best development experience you can have. Everything is native linux. There is no beating that. This of course will be a problem if hobbies/work use windows. I…

Really only Photoshop is the big gaping hole I feel as a linux user. Gimp is just atrocious.

There is a desktop webview of PhotoPea, but it's not the same.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#104
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft dropped the ball with Universal Windows Platform framework, I worked on one project using this framework and it was one the best. Our codebase run on both phone and desktop Windows 8. This was 2014-ish if I remember, and then Windows phone got killed.

I still have my Nokia Lumia around. Best phone I ever had. And I say this hating everything about Microsoft and Windows. That phone clicked just right with the tile design and overall usability. Of course, MS having pulled the plug, it's basically a DRM brick now.

I agree but that's because both iOS and Android are pretty bad in several ways.

MeeGo from Nokia was pretty amazing as well and I'm sure it could have launched Linux phones into actual competitors to iOS and Android - if only Microsoft and Elop didn't manage to kill Linux at Nokia.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#105
post #6

They're going from Microsoft to... Linux. From bad to worse. Just use macOS and get on with your life.

I've moved from macOS after 15 years to Linux in past year (niri + DankMaterialShell), it's mostly better aside from missing Miller columns in Finder.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong. I honestly think that has way less to do with Microsoft, more of a representation of "software engineering" practices these days. For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc. I'm of opinion if you start writing OS u…

Cosmic (from the PopOS folks) is getting rid of the crappy javascript from GNOME Shell. And the CSS in GTK+ themes is just for the sake of syntactic convenience.

Cosmic is quite nice. There's some polishing left to do, but it's already pretty solid. The app store is a bit of a turd, but I bet that's just because it's by nature connected to the internet. More could surely be done with caching and pre-loading, but not sure if I want my computer to pre-load app store content all the time just in case I open it.

Compared to Windows it's of course absolutely unreal.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#107
Saw a fascinating talk on gui and ui development today, lamenting the stagnation at M$ and apple when it comes to desktop computing (including browsing).

" there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline" and that sentence rings like a bell of all the problems.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has a history of creating new UI frameworks. IMHO it's the result of Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers!" attitude, which I think is a good thing at core (court the developers that add value to your platform!) But this results in chasing a new paradigm every few years to elicit new excitement from the developers. It'll always be more newsworthy to bring in a new framework than add incremental fix…

> React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform? Because web stuff utterly sucks for making UIs on the desktop. Microsoft either doesn't know this (bad sign), or is choosing to use the trendy thing even though it'll make their software worse for customers (a worse sign). Either way it's a very bad look from MS.

probably trying to repro the crazy success of vscode, surely electron is the magic sauce and not the dream team of devs. azure data studio should've proved that you can't just sprinkle electron dust and get a winner.

sadly I loved azure data studio despite its being afflicted with electron, but it became so bug infested they had to completely abandon it.

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