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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

#161

Post by claaams »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #95
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.

It takes over five seconds for task manager to open on my Windows 11 work laptop.

It takes ~5 seconds for activity monitor on my macbook pro to populate data, although the window for it opens right away.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#162

Post by yakattak »

> At the very least, when something goes wrong on Linux you have log messages that can let you know what went wrong so you can search for it.

It is hilarious how accurate this is. When something crashes on Windows you better hope it has its own logs you can find because the OS itself will tell you nothing. Event Viewer can't hold a candle to journald!

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#163

Post by amlib »

Johanx64 wrote: post #37
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.

>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…

But the difference is that none of the CSS or Javascript usage in gnome is tied to a webview. They are all binding in some way to GTK and much simpler rendering routines.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#164

Post by etempleton »

grugagag wrote: post #150
etempleton wrote: post #121

I do think Linux is accessible to many more people, but I would not say it is ready for the masses. The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user. But, with that said, I started seriously using Linux for the first time in 2025. I bounce between Debian, Windows 11, and MacOS, and Debian is probably the most refreshing to use. I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have…

>I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have turned off most of what people cite as the issues. So you debloated your windows but at any update you have to spin your wheels and try to remove any crap they put back in. At any time there’s the possibility you can no longer remove x or y. The vast majority don’t have the energy to play this game or don’t know how to.

I agree, it is bad and I don't like it, but I think it is bad in a way most users won't care about. I have not really considered a version of Windows to be good since...Windows 2000...maybe 3.1.1. They have all had major issues, so I just kind of shrug off the issues when I use Windows. The enshitification of MacOS is relatively new and so still stings a bit.

I think where Microsoft is playing with fire is that while most users will not care about some of these changes power users do. And the 5% of power users ultimately make the decisions and provide the recommendations for the other 95%. With so many apps and SAAS services going web or web app only there will be less and less reason to need to stick with Windows and that is where Microsoft will start to lose control.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#165

Post by tjakab »

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.

It's almost like the rush to ship new features year after year without ever pausing to fix and optimize things has taken its toll.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#166

Post by winrid »

ezst wrote: post #99
justinhj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the start menu is programmed is of zero consequence to me.

> is of zero consequence to me It is inconsequential, until it isn't. In front of me I've got a 2017 lenovo thinkpad running the latest Fedora+KDE, as well as a 2025 HP elitebook running "last corporate-friendly-stable version of W11". I can pop open the lenovo, key in my session password and hit enter, and I'm instantly productive, with shortcuts like meta+E giving me a working file explorer within milliseconds. On…

Same. 2017 thinkpad, latest KDE, snappier than my 2025 Dell with Win11 and a processor that should be about 60% faster for single thread tasks.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#167

Post by etempleton »

newsoftheday wrote: post #155
etempleton wrote: post #121

I do think Linux is accessible to many more people, but I would not say it is ready for the masses. The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user. But, with that said, I started seriously using Linux for the first time in 2025. I bounce between Debian, Windows 11, and MacOS, and Debian is probably the most refreshing to use. I don’t find Windows 11 as oppressive as other seem to, but I have…

> The terminal is going to be a non-starter for your average computer user. My wife is the average computer user and has used Linux apps for years and never opened a terminal once.

Who installed linux and did the initial setup? And then I think there is a class of user that is savvy enough to say, update their graphics drivers but not willing to use a terminal and that is before you get into the mess that is Nvidia on linux.

I agree, under a managed setup scenario where a user is only really going to use a web browser and a few apps. Linux is just fine.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#168

Post by cosmic_cheese »

memoriuaysj wrote: post #30
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.

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

I don’t agree with this at all. I’ll take AppKit (preferably with Swift, but Obj-C is fine too) over anything web. There’s a number of reasons, but the biggest is that AppKit has an expansive set of well implemented, accessible, flexible, efficient, and ready to use widgets that are all designed to work together, and the truth is that this isn’t something you can get on the web.

Even the most complete “UI frameworks” on the web are full of holes, leaving you to build a patchwork monster out of a laundry list of third party widgets (all of which themselves are full of shortcomings and concessions) or build your own.

As an aside, this gripe isn’t exclusive to the web. It’s a problem with many others such as Windows App SDK (aka WinUI) and Flutter, among others. At least for the things I build, they’re unsuitable at best.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#170

Post by SamDc73 »

> then just shat all over them with start menus made with React Native, control-alt-delete menus that are actually just webviews, and forcing Copilot down everyone's throats

Thank god I've been using Linux long enough to not experience any of that.

At my job in a large non-tech company, almost everyone uses Windows (except for the dev team) purely because of Microsoft Office. As long as that thing exists, they can do all the dumb things they want and still dominate.

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