Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

xeiaso.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 658 posts

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#191

Post by pynappo »

bbkane wrote: post #61
josefritzishere wrote: post #28

I am one full page ad away from deleting Windows 11 forever. I will struggle through infinite driver compatibility issues before I sit through a single ad while trying to work. That is my redline.

For me it was the OneDrive ads on the lock screen. And, when I accidentally clicked "enable OneDrive" (a few years ago, this might have changed), IT TOOK OVER MY DOCUMENTS FOLDER AND TOLD ME THERE WAS NO WAY TO REVERT IT!

Yeah onedrive is seriously annoying. It's nice when the free 15GB backup/sync for the desktop, pictures, and documents folder works (for people who put things there) but the way other MS products work with it seems user-hostile to me.

e.g. it took until 2025 for this RFC to be opened on moving PowerShell profiles and modules out of Onedrive: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell-RFC/pull/388. It should not be taking seconds for my powershell profile to load just because i have onedrive enabled by default.

I also had a non-technical friend recently get burned by a default MS Office setting where edited documents located in the OneDrive folder save directly to onedrive, and it only gets saved on disk when onedrive gets the new copy and uploads it back it to the user's disk. So if the MS office to onedrive integration fails your changes won't save. Apparently users have to enable a setting to first save to a folder on disk? That folder can even be the onedrive folder so onedrive will eventually sync it back up.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#192

Post by gerdesj »

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.

I mentioned the same thing somewhere north of your comment.

My wife rocks Arch and could not care less.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#193

Post by layer8 »

drnick1 wrote: post #183
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#194

Post by teleforce »

Every year starting back around the year 2000, every year until now there's always at least an article from Slashdot and then HN on the year of the Linux desktop from believers and non-believers alike [1],[2].

[1] Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop (2023):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33213663

[2] Why there should never be a "year of the Linux desktop" (2009):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821673

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#195

Post by ThatPlayer »

Alupis wrote: post #27

I've used Fedora on my laptop for over a decade. I switched my main home workstation to Fedora in 2023, and haven't looked back since. My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet containers) on podman. It "Just Works". Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too.…

> there's apparently a checkbox to enable Linux support on EasyAntiCheat - and some don't "check" it

Because support doesn't mean full features. It's like saying iPad supports Microsoft Excel. At some point it's the same name for different software.

I think especially because it's under Proton, that means it's the Windows version of the game you're weakening to anti-cheat too. Even Valve's own VAC has issues running under Proton.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#196

Post by kombine »

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…

> 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.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#197

Post by VladVladikoff »

kakadu wrote: post #178

I 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

I am most familiar with Debian but only headless. What would be a good choice of desktop environment? I’m looking to switch over the only windows computer in my house to Linux, it is primarily used as a home theatre and gaming PC.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#198

Post by al_borland »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #35
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.

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…

I think the reason they keep trying new UI frameworks is that no one really adopts them. Developers know that Microsoft won’t kill off backward compatibility and break all the enterprise apps, so why rewrite? When one framework fails, they start working on the next one. I question if they understand the corner they’ve painted themselves into.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#199

Post by subjectsigma »

maxbond wrote: post #149
subjectsigma wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092464

`apt-get update` bricked your system multiple times? How, by filling up your disk? That doesn't install or upgrade any software. It just updates the local cache of the registry. I believe you that there was a real problem I'm just confused about how it happened. I've been unable to login after filling my disk before, I wouldn't call the system bricked because I was able to fix it by mounting the disk on another compu…

It was apt-get upgrade, then. Whichever command updates all packages on the system. I must have misspoke, I don’t use Debian-based systems all that much anymore.

I remember it had a particular fondness for deleting old kernel versions, failing to install the new kernel, and thus bricking the system on boot. Alternatively, uninstalling the entire WM because one package had a conflict.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#200

Post by gerdesj »

chrisweekly wrote: post #174
gerdesj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine was a few years earlier (YoLotD). Sadly, I kept up with the fags until 2018 ...

FTR to other readers, "fags" in this context refers to cigarettes (per the GP's parenthetical remark about smoking).

Very kind of you to note a potential en_GB => en_US buggeration.
Post reply on HN