2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#491

Post by bluGill » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #458

nextos wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you could earn $250k why would you settle for $160? There are reasons people do but still money is a powful signal

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#492

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

gfody wrote: post #108

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> React has had tremendous success in the web world, so why not try and get those developers more comfortable producing apps for your platform? Because web stuff utterly sucks for making UIs on the desktop. Microsoft either doesn't know this (bad sign), or is choosing to use the trendy thing even though it'll make their software worse for customers (a worse sign). Either way it's a very bad look from MS.

probably trying to repro the crazy success of vscode, surely electron is the magic sauce and not the dream team of devs. azure data studio should've proved that you can't just sprinkle electron dust and get a winner. sadly I loved azure data studio despite its being afflicted with electron, but it became so bug infested they had to completely abandon it.

vscode is successful despite electron, not thanks to electron. The electron part is the worst of it.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#493

Post by markus_zhang » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #491

markus_zhang wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you could earn $250k why would you settle for $160? There are reasons people do but still money is a powful signal

Theoretically (never happened to me), I'd definitely do a $100K Windows kernel, or whatever kernel work, over a $150K DE job that I currently have (I used to have a $220K DE job too and I won't hesitate to switch).

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#494

Post by AdrianB1 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

sevensor wrote: post #431

buccal wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still in some cases you have to wait a few minutes to get working Start menu search or menu itself on a new not low-end device.

My work computer takes a full five minutes to become usable on the first login after a cold boot, and that’s not even counting the time from boot to entering my password. Before the upgrade from Windows 10, it only took three. Teams, of course, takes another five minutes to become functional. Meanwhile I have a 13 year old low end Asus laptop at home that boots to a fully usable Linux desktop in well under a minute.…

I bet stuff like Crowdstrike has a major influence into this. I used my work computer before and after Crowdstrike and the difference in boot time and general behavior is huge.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#495

Post by seba_dos1 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:06 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #370

oldestofsports wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is literally wasting resources

The point was that users mostly don’t care about wasting resources, but about usability. If usability wasn’t impacted, few people would care about resources being wasted. But since usability is very much impacted, people (rightfully) complain.

Wasting resources affects usability, and not just through latency.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#496

Post by augusto-moura » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

0000000000100 wrote: post #270

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…

To temper expectations a bit, I’ve installed Linux recently on my HP Omen to pretty decent results. Still having some lingering issues, e.g the WiFi adapter going dead after a sleep. But have found the experience relatively similar to my recent windows installs. For a laptop user who likes to game, you’ll definitely encounter some issues based on my experience. Better than it was 2 years ago, but it’s not a seamless…

Sleep and suspend are still kinda buggy on Linux, and probably will be for the near future. This is more of a vendor thing (as most of the annoying problems in Linux) than a dev thing. To the point where I mostly avoid it, I either shutdown the laptop completely or just let it plugged on a desk 24h

Things are improving, and we should see this fixed in the next years I assume. This is the good thing about it, Linux will probably be fixing all annoying bugs in the next few years.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#497

Post by datadrivenangel » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

xmcp123 wrote: post #103

orochimaaru wrote: post #7

I've been using a system 76 laptop for the past 3 years. Runs perfectly, no surprises. Unfortunately, I need a mac for work because the laptop service folks do not know what to do with linux and do not have a relationship with a vendor like system76. Pros: The best development experience you can have. Everything is native linux. There is no beating that. This of course will be a problem if hobbies/work use windows. I…

Really only Photoshop is the big gaping hole I feel as a linux user. Gimp is just atrocious. There is a desktop webview of PhotoPea, but it's not the same.

gimp is actually pretty good, but things are in different places than photoshop and that's a huge change.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#498

Post by doublerabbit » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

nirui wrote: post #484

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…

That brings back my memory (again) installing Mandriva on my old old old computer which has a NVIDIA TNT2 graphics card. It was a completely nightmare back then to install driver for it in order to get it to output at the correct resolution and refresh rate... Now I have a Thinkpad T440p with a GeForce GT 730M dGPU which NVIDIA no longer provide driver for newer Linux kernels, so I have to use slower nouveau driver.…

I recall my older brother and his friends trying to install Linux on a system with a Matrox S3 graphics pn our families computer, HP Pavilion 133mhz with 16mb RAM.

Back when X was Xfree86 and you were required to create the X configuration without internet.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#499

Post by ahartmetz » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

jenadine wrote: post #365

kombine wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the spot, but I don't make the shots. KDE Plasma, which is in my opinion the most advanced desktop environment is written in Qt QML which is JavaScript. There are advantages to that over C++, namely your session won't simply crash.

QML is not JavaScript. (While you can use some JavaScript from QML, the application still have a C++ core. QML applications can still crash. There is no DOM with QML, no browser overhead)

QML is absolutely not JavaScript. It's a markup language to describe user interfaces, spiced with JS for certain interactions. All heavy lifting behind the scenes is done in C++ - the QML runtime as well as the application logic and data models.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#500

Post by layer8 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #495

layer8 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was that users mostly don’t care about wasting resources, but about usability. If usability wasn’t impacted, few people would care about resources being wasted. But since usability is very much impacted, people (rightfully) complain.

Wasting resources affects usability, and not just through latency.

It doesn’t necessarily. A lot of resources are being wasted without impacting usability. Users only start noticing and complaining about it when it does.