There are still so many issues around Wayland and fragmentation. Gnome is the most popular and has lots of issues and sometimes is downright user hostile. Luckily some of the distributions try to revert some of the insanity sometimes. But there are still many protocols and portals needed and much more standardization.
2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
181–190 of 658 posts
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#182They're going from Microsoft to... Linux. From bad to worse. Just use macOS and get on with your life.
macOS is particularly annoying and gets in the way more than an OS should. Windows can be tamed and the Linux experience can be perfectly smooth depending on distro and hardware. I assume macOS can be tamed as well, but it seems like much more of an uphill battle.
If you just install MacOS, Windows, or any major Linux distros, all work okay with default settings and drivers, almost all the time. Problems start when you want something else or more.
It’s like when you want Docker on MacOS. Helpful people will say that you should just use colima. Yeah it works perfectly well… until you want to open udp ports (this was the case half a year ago). All 3 OSes are like that, just the flavor is different.
If you know how to find “reject all” on all cookie banners, Windows will be easier for you.
If you know networking and pf, then MacOS will be easier for you.
If you know how to debug driver bugs, Linux will be easier for you (and fun as hell imho)
Anyway, if you don’t want to do much more than internet browsing/video playing/basic gaming/basic coding, it simply doesn’t matter. // I would still say that the default network/firewall settings for MacOS is sketchy as hell however
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#183“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.
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…
Operating systems should always use C/C++ UI frameworks, and as little costly abstraction as possible, period. Anything else is wasting resources.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
2.5 hours of battery is a serious gaping hole imo.
I removed the batteries in our laptops because we use them like desktops all the time and it's one less fire hazard to worry about.
I guess it works out for you but I’d be inconvenienced for not being able to move around and paranoid that I may jerk the wire powering the machine. Still glad you were able to find a solution for your setup though.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#185I ve been a happy user of debian stable for 15 years now, if I could get a Linux laptop with a comparable battery life to apple's then it's done for me. I think linux people tend to forget how important battery life is on a laptop
Would be great... what I've heard is, Apple's incredible battery life comes from the vertical integration - they make everything, the laptop, the OS... so they are able to optimize it incredibly well. Even running Linux on a Apple Silicon Mac doesn't get you the same kind of battery life because of how much work the OS does putting different components to sleep etc. (though one could argue Apple's arbitrarily making it harder for Linux by making it so much reverse engineering work to get everything to go into sleep mode!)
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#186Earlier 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…
Windows 11 has zero lag on the start menu so I don't care if it is hand coded assembler or some bloated web crap.
I even ran Windows 10 on Thinkpad x240 a couple of years ago, it also ran fine.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#187Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
I hope they will get burned this time. MS has been playing with fire, I agree.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#189“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
Sucks a whole lot less for users though.
I remember when people argued that because the time spent running an app was so much greater than the time spent developing it that one should be more conscientious about a user's time than a developer's.
After all, wasting a minute of time from 20 million users is 38 man-years of lost life. Doing that just to save a developer a week or a month is ethically troubling.
Of course, people also upgraded their computers a lot less frequently and you'd publish minimum machine requirements for software which probably made it easier to make such arguments as you'd also lose customers if software was slow or had minimum hardware requirements a lot of people didn't have.
That largely went out the window with web developers where users were just as likely to blame browser makers or their ISP for poor performance. Now with app developers and OS makers doing it, I guess there's just so many users at this point that losing a few with older hardware just doesn't matter.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#190I 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 has no idea what a terminal is and does not care - she rocks Arch and has no idea what that means. The people that attend my uncle's PC clinic to have their "Win 10 that won't run Win 11" converted to Linux don't care either.
My Dad's PC will shortly be running Linux after I've taken him through MSOffice -> Libre Office + Scribus + (Evolution||Thunderbird).
I started off my early IT career as a trainer - I once did a day of DTP with Quark Express where I was given the floppies the night before. When I hear that Linux (actually LO etc) is incapable of doing whatever, I soon find that a deep discussion about what constitutes "incapable" generally turns into a training session.
For example I often hear about documents that apparently LO can't handle. That normally ends up with me teaching (proselytizing!) about how to use styles properly or even the real basics such as the four tab forms (L/R/C/decimal). Then we might segue into spreadsheets ... ahh, you'll want a array formula there ... "a what?" and off we go again.
Now, I have wandered off track here somewhat but I'm noting the other "not ready" convo that will often happen after we have covered how to find your mouse pointer or why Windows seems to still have two Control Panels and at least three half arsed IP stacks.
I do actually have a fondness for Windows, having used it since v2.0 at school in 1986ish. That fondness is rapidly going west along with VMware (consultant for 25 years).
I fucking hate being taken for a ride and basically being abused. Today, my company received an email from Broadcom telling us that we are no longer welcome as a reseller/unpaid support org. Luckily we started migrating our customers away from VMware some time ago and only the ones with the deepest pockets and greatest inertia remain. The rest are rocking Proxmox and I'm a much happier consultant too.
One day MS might tell my company that they have decided to dispense with our reseller/unpaid support services too, once they are sure that everyone is tucked up with a subscription.
Well, they can piss off too. I am capable of running email systems on prem (and do) even though I have migrated my firm from on prem Exchange to M365. I still point MX records to our place (Exim + rspamd) and run an imapd for some mailboxes. A calendar app is all that is missing.
What I hope I am getting across is that dumping Windows and co is quite a broad subject.
I think that your choice of Deborah and Ian's (bless!) distro is a really good solid starter for 10 but to be honest after a while you should be able to run any variety of Linux.
You should be able to install multiple Window Managers eg Gnome and KDE Plasma and all the rest at the same time and be able to select which session to use from your Display Manager (eg SDDM).
I have almost certainly overstayed my welcome in this tread but before I go, I will suggest that anyone who calls themself an IT (anything) should at least have a go at all available systems. Nowadays OS/2 Warp on something like 25 floppies is not a barrier to play (spin up a VM).