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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

#131

Post by girvo »

Havoc wrote: post #56

This rings true...outside of users that play competitive FPS...the anticheat continues to be a challenge As a side note - if you're in that venn diagram overlap group of linux and gaming...check out "beyond all reason" RTS if you haven't. High chance it'll tickle you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxwIxz4PaY edit: not affiliate to linked yt - organic enthusiastism

As someone who plays competitive FPS at quite a high level (I compete in the Contenders division in Valorant's Premier tournament system, lots of fun!), honestly even that's not the biggest deal. I'll eventually get to a point where the only reason I have a Windows install at all is for Valorant. Everything else will be Linux.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#132

Post by ab71e5 »

josefritzishere wrote: post #28

I am one full page ad away from deleting Windows 11 forever. I will struggle through infinite driver compatibility issues before I sit through a single ad while trying to work. That is my redline.

What devices are you expecting driver issues with? Even NVidia is not much of a problem these days

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#133

Post by Klonoar »

Barrin92 wrote: post #46
memoriuaysj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what has gone horribly wrong is the native UIs. they are completely worthless, across all OSes - difficult to use, limited, and in general suck compared to HTML/CSS. I've worked with all major GUI frameworks, from MFC to Qt, they all suck compared with React/Vue

and yet the Telegram Desktop App, written in Qt/C++ is the only goddamn desktop messenger app that actually feels smooth and feature rich rather than the webclient wrapper abominations of everyone else that eat half a gig of ram on startup and randomly hang on searches

macOS has two separate Telegram apps, technically speaking. The one (most) everyone uses is AppKit based.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#134

Post by leptons »

sylens wrote: post #14

If this wasn’t HN, I would swear that my personal recommendation algorithm has gotten Linux desktop-pilled and that’s why I’m seeing so many posts like these every day. But in reality I think there is a groundswell of momentum happening here, and with component prices rising, I only see this continuing as more people look to breathe new life into older hardware.

If Microsoft could make me move to Linux, they will be getting a lot more people to switch. I was very into Microsoft's OS since v3.0, I used Outlook for all my email for decades. I recently moved over to Linux Mint and Firebird for email and have not looked back. All my Windows VMs are now Linux VMs. All of Microsoft's invasive "AI" was the last straw. I don't like the direction they are headed.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#135

Post by ecommerceguy »

I'll toss in my 2 cents: 1. people that have no business whatsoever now know what linux is ie sales dawgs that only touch a computer for the occasional spreadsheet. 2. 70 year old man fed up with windows, moved to linux. it looks great, its fast and responsive let's make this happen.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#136

Post by cryptica »

I love the fact that there are different Linux distros optimized for every person.

I started using Linux almost a decade ago; starting with Ubuntu, then I moved to Kubuntu and now I'm on Omarchy which is even more optimized for developers.

I feel very comfortable recommending Linux to people now though I would recommend a different distro depending on who is asking.

IMO Ubuntu is the simplest general-purpose one. Kubuntu is the same but more customizable slightly more developer-focused. Omarchy (which is a fork of Arch Linux) is very developer-focused.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#137

Post by le-mark »

MarkSweep wrote: post #80

I made the switch as well. For many years I dual-booted Ubuntu and Windows, hanging on to my familiarity with Windows and love for Visual Studio. Finally October 2025 some update made games laggy on Windows while they still worked fine on Ubuntu. I attempted to fix this by reinstalling Windows 11 and found I could not figure out how to remove advertisements from the start menu. So I finally transferred all my files f…

They’ve done the research and they know x% will never change and that’s enough for them to monetize. So that’s what they’re doing.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#138

Post by klabb3 »

ffaser5gxlsll wrote: post #67
memoriuaysj wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what has gone horribly wrong is the native UIs. they are completely worthless, across all OSes - difficult to use, limited, and in general suck compared to HTML/CSS. I've worked with all major GUI frameworks, from MFC to Qt, they all suck compared with React/Vue

For whom? Every single web or mobile app does his own custom thing nowadays. As a user I couldn't care less how it's implemented, what I want consistency in behavior and style across the board. It feels like this has been completely lost, even on platforms like mac where consistency used to be important. I'd take MFC everything over random behavior if I could.

> It feels like this has been completely lost, even on platforms like mac where consistency used to be important.

There are two kinds of consistency: across apps within a platform and across platforms within the same app. As someone who uses multiple platforms regularly, I have forever been annoyed when eg keyboard shortcuts change when I switch to a different computer, especially when I’m using the same app.

Apps like Discord, Spotify and VSCode are consistently the most pleasurable to use because they are largely the same.

For a unique piece of hardware like the old iPod, it made more sense to do your special custom UX as a unified product. But we’re talking about general purpose computers. The ”platform” shouldn’t be special imo, it should simply be predictable and stay out of the way. They mostly provide the same thing, like copy paste and maximizing a window, yet have different controls. This differentiation adds no value, at least to me.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#139

Post by Klonoar »

jasonlotito wrote: post #45
roxolotl wrote: post #4

“start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews” Haven’t used windows in five years or so but I’ve kept hearing bad things. This really is the icing on the cake though. Yea the AI stuff is dumb but if a OS manufacturer can’t be bothered to interact with their own UI libraries to build native UIs something has gone horribly wrong.

Yeah. Crazy when the two most significant desktop OS's (Windows and MacOS) have native UIs where something has gone horribly wrong.

You can dislike the visual approach of modern macOS but on a framework level the UI ecosystem is generally very powerful and feature rich.

With SwiftUI you’ve been able to pick and choose where to integrate it over the years, it’s not like you had to go whole-hog.

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