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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

#451

Post by eptcyka »

prism56 wrote: post #448
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.

Not a developer, what's the issue with React Native?

React native will always be more resource intensive than a native framework because it relies on a whole javascript runtime to work. Don’t know about others, but I personally don’t want a system tool that I cannot disable easily to be designed like this - it ultimately be less responsive and take up more of my resources from other apps.

Yet somehow I am OK with gnome shell.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#452

Post by eptcyka »

devinprater wrote: post #233
jsheard wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing "Visual Studio" into the new start menu may randomly trigger a Bing search for "Visual Studio" instead of running it, but on the other hand that makes Bings KPIs go up so it's impossible to say if it's bad or not.

I hate that so much. When blind people are trying to start JAWS (the screen reader) by typing "jaws" into the start menu and pressing Enter, it will sometimes pull up a Bing page on Jaws the movie instead. And the blind person is just sitting there waiting for the screen reader to start. I tell people to use the run dialog for that reason. Sucks but that's what you have to do in the age of inshittisoft.

This is purely insane. Doesn’t Microsoft violate accessibility laws in some jurisdiction due to this?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#453

Post by throwaway777x »

dash2 wrote: post #355
the_hoser wrote: post #236

For those of us that have been using Linux for a long time (since 1999, here), the improvements have been incremental, and hard to spot over time. But sometimes I encounter something and it just blows my mind how good desktop Linux has become. I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative mo…

I left desktop Linux in 2010 because everything did not just work. Looking at the responses to your comment, it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work. If it's been true since 2010, I think the problem is systematic, and won't go away with "just one more year".

This was true in 2010. I use to have a USB wifi adapter that was specifically meant to make sure linux would always work. I lost that adapter years ago.

I can't remember the last time I tried a distro that didn't just work on a random computer with a random wifi but it has been several years now.

Nvidia cards on the other hand...last year I had to try about 10 distros before I found something that wasn't a huge pain in the ass.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#454

Post by solarengineer »

the_hoser wrote: post #236

For those of us that have been using Linux for a long time (since 1999, here), the improvements have been incremental, and hard to spot over time. But sometimes I encounter something and it just blows my mind how good desktop Linux has become. I just bought a laptop that came with Fedora installed. This isn't anything new, but what really blew me away is that everything... just worked. No tinkering. No alternative mo…

Which laptop was this? Could you share the exact model?

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#455

Post by panick21_ »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #261
panick21_ wrote: post #181

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.

Just install Mint/Cinnamon and forget about it.

They are moving to Wayland too and will not get around any of these issues. And using those things brings with it a number of other issues.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#456

Post by normie3000 »

pimeys wrote: post #418
normie3000 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems that basic stuff like wifi still doesn't always just work This is true. I've been using Ubuntu since 2006, but still see issues with Wifi: Ubuntu 22 didn't work out of the box with a 2014 macbook air Bluetooth: maddening trying to set "listening" mode instead of headset mode on JBL earphones - it seems to choose randomly every time it connects, and the setting isn't exposed in any UI Sleep: I don't think I…

Counterpoint: I've been using enterprise thinkpads for the past 15 years and never had issues with wifi, or suspend. So again, it's about how you choose your hardware so it works with Linux...

I've also used enterprise thinkpads for the last 10 years. No wifi issues on those, but sleep and bluetooth issues as described. I have no idea if Windows would have been more reliable.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#457

Post by jorvi »

lenkite wrote: post #404
RajT88 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software biz in general has a major "out with the old, in with the new" attitude, which paired with the attitude of, "We're going to build what we know, instead of learning the old stuff which is new to us". I've seen time and again, things like apps rewritten from scratch because nobody knew C++, and they only had C# devs. Or a massive runaround because the last guy on the team who knew C++ wrote a bunch of stuf…

Windows Phone was actually doing well and adoption was taking off when Nadella came in and killed it. It didn't help that they changed the app framework and then blamed lack of apps. Such a brain-dead decision.

Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services did not have first party support, and the third party clients kept getting killed / people banned from said services.

Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly).

And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI frameworks 3 or 4 times. And they left phones behind on the old OS releases repeatedly, that then couldn't run the new frameworks.

Still, Windows Phone its UI concept was really great, and I sorely miss the durability of polycarbonate bodies versus the glass, metal and standard plastic bodies of today.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#458

Post by markus_zhang »

nextos wrote: post #268
asveikau wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a lot of staff turnover too, and each generation of new SDE has less of a clue how the old stuff worked. So when they're tasked with replacing the old stuff, they don't understand what it does, and the rewrite ends up doing less. That was my impression of one of the major problems when I worked there 2008-2011. But I don't think it's just one problem.

I think that because their total compensation is lower than FAANG, especially at senior levels, and they are seen as uncool, they sometimes have issues retaining top-notch talent. It's paradoxical, because MS Research is probably the best PLT organization in the world. But they have failed to move a lot of that know-how into production. Besides, because it's an older company, it might have more organizational entropy…

Is compensation really the issue? Like, people earning 160k simply can’t take a dive into the OS source code and make proper fixes, but people earning 250k magically can?

I don't know. I know there are a lot of people who want to work on the OS source code, given the chance, but need some hand holding in the beginning. Companies in general are not willing to give them the chance, because they don't want to hand hold them.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#460

Post by bee_rider »

nntwozz wrote: post #144

I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt until macOS 27 (but I'm still on 15.7.4 hehe). Mac OS X and Aqua wasn't very well received either at launch. A similar thing happened with the flat design of iOS 7. Apple's pattern is initially going overboard with a new design and then scaling it back slowly like a sculptor. I think they're happy with this method, even if things miss at first the big changes usually create a…

Like a modeling clay sculptor? I guess if a rock sculptor went too far, they would have trouble adding rock back.
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