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2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

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321–330 of 658 posts

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#322
post #316

> I think that Linux on the desktop is ready for the masses now, not because it's advanced in a huge leap/bound. Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious issues: - Windows has the following 3 components that became worse. Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you could've spent a few hours per component to rep…

Yeah, I started to appreciate Windows more recently. In fact I prefer it over MacOS and Linux. WSL2 it's great when I need a linux shell.

File manager is one those reason. Damn, there is no alternatives to DOPUS.

Don't get me started with AutoHotkey. There is nothing compared to that.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#323
post #22

Yeah. I feel the same way. If not for the fact that my gaming PC pulls double duty as a work PC, I'd seriously consider ditching Windows 11 for Bazzite. I worry that we are edging closer and closer to a similar phenomenon with macOS as well. Apple seems intent on squandering every bit of stability and sanity that macOS used to represent. Maybe now that Alan Dye is gone, we will at least see the abomination that is Li…

All of my Steam games work under Linux. For one or two, I gave to select a specific Proton version, but that's the only issue. Try dual-booting, and see if your games work...

It's mostly Mass Effect that's trouble under Proton. It requires the stupid EA launcher, which is trash. I have a Lenovo Legion Go S and getting it to work reliably is an absolute nightmare. Most other games I play are fine.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#324
post #21

I strongly agree on this. I mained Windows for the last few years and got to the point where I was comfortable doing development similarly to how I would on Linux (text editor and command line build tools, cl, ml64, batch, etc.). I did that mostly so I could game and develop on the same machine. I learned a ton doing it but it has just gotten too awful to carry on. It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL a…

> It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches.

Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a nice resizable/sortable table

> if something is broken I have the control to fix it.

Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#325
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

Not for the user, unless I forgot that today is opposite day.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#326
post #316

> I think that Linux on the desktop is ready for the masses now, not because it's advanced in a huge leap/bound. Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious issues: - Windows has the following 3 components that became worse. Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you could've spent a few hours per component to rep…

I get your general point but as others said things are getting better.

> Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.

Fsearch exists and is pretty much exactly that afaict. https://cboxdoerfer.github.io/fsearch/

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#327
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems should always use C/C++ UI frameworks, and as little costly abstraction as possible, period. Anything else is wasting resources.

It’s not so much about wasting resources as it is about the added latency, jankiness, and inconsistency in look & feel hurting usability.

Latency is literally wasting resources

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#328
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It was faster to rg to search files This continuously drives me crazy on Windows and macOS. I am befuddled at the number of times where I'm searching for a top level subdirectory that starts with 'foo' but the search bar spins and spins.. Eventually I get fed up and just sort by name and perform an alphabetical visual search in meat-space.

On Windows, just use Everything: https://www.voidtools.com/

I see this contradiction all the time. Windows is a mess but there are lots of examples of rock solid, performant applications that have been developed and maintained over decades. Everything is one, also one that springs to mind which is much more performant compared to Linux alternatives is WinMerge.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#329
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems should always use C/C++ UI frameworks, and as little costly abstraction as possible, period. Anything else is wasting resources.

It’s not so much about wasting resources as it is about the added latency, jankiness, and inconsistency in look & feel hurting usability.

And how about reliability? Having to start a web browser and a web framework to display core OS functionality adds a lot of moving parts that can break.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#330
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What’s sketchy about it?

A ton of open ports, some of them completely undocumented, and many Macs are shipped with all firewalls turned off by default. Also, I was quite surprised how easy to turn on an unencrypted VNC server without a single warning.
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