Given the current situation regarding the hardware getting more pricey, I was so fed up with the inconsistencies, the constant micro lagging frame rate drops that I finally bit the bullet on a Mac studio a couple of weeks ago. This happened after 17 years of being a Windows user and having built more than 20 machines unfortunately Linux does not have a lot commercial software that I needed
2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
461–470 of 658 posts
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also orrelates with missing the first letter off search terms, such as when you start typing immediately after opening the start menu
I can only reproduce this by hovering the Windows icon with the mouse and having the finger on a character, in order to press it immediately after clicking. In that case most of the time the Start menu does not open at all, and sometimes it opens but does not have the letter. When I use the Windows key to open the Start menu I cannot reproduce this, as eg. Win + E opens the Explorer instead of the Start menu. It does…
This rarely (but not never) happened on my gaming desktop when I had windows on that. On the other hand, on my surface go, if it only eats the first character, that’s a good showing, so it’s likely device performance specific
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#463[deleted]
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#464Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#465If this wasn’t HN, I would swear that my personal recommendation algorithm has gotten Linux desktop-pilled and that’s why I’m seeing so many posts like these every day. But in reality I think there is a groundswell of momentum happening here, and with component prices rising, I only see this continuing as more people look to breathe new life into older hardware.
I've been seeing it a lot on reddit as well, with a lot of non-technical users asking "how do I get started with linux?" I think this is a real thing and I think a combination of MS demanding everyone get new hardware and Valve really polishing a lot of linux has gone a long way to get non-technical users to start seriously considering linux. It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with linux. I have a…
> It's a huge added bonus that old hardware simply flies with linux. I have a 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux on it.
I fact, Linux is much easier to run on somewhat older hardware because drivers are often a bit slow to land and Ubuntu and its derivatives always lag in kernel versions.
Older hardware becoming more valuable because price hikes doubly benefit Linux.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#466Earlier 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 had a Thinkpad T480s that was absolutely perfect with Linux (Mint), although very underpowered, but that was due to Intel CPU.
This year I got a T14s Gen6 AMD as a replacement, and it's essentially unusable on Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint), but works fine with Fedora and with Windows.
On Ubuntu and Mint, X just locks up every 80 seconds or so, and I have to hard-reboot it (or switch ttys and restart X). Nothing in syslog, nothing in dmesg, nothing in X.org.log to show what might be going on.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't think it's that per se, it's just apple has a lot of resources to optimise/test a relatively small amount of configurations. The big "issue" with Linux on non-server workloads imo is a lack of testing like this - which is completely understandable. Afiak Microsoft runs millions of automated tests on various hardware configurations _a day_. Intel does something similar for the Linux kernel, which no doubt expl…
The vertical integration is what makes for the small amount of configurations. The total count of OEMs they have to satisfy or work around is one.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#468Earlier 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.…
> 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.
Yeah, that’s a misconfigured system. I bet you can fuck up Linux enough to get a similar experience.
I’ve always been using Windows and the only time I ever had to wait that long was around the Win98 times on slow hardware.
After login, I can instantly use everything on Win 11, and the only delay is a bunch of apps starting (that I chose to start on boot).
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#469So I just tried KDE with Fedora 43 on a 4 year old Intel Dell laptop (I've used Linux pretty extensively for 15+ years). It's hilariously bad :
- I managed to make a process crash just clicking around the Settings app
- Sleep doesn't work (spins up the fans, then turns them down, then turns off off displays etc but I then the fan are spinning, so something is running). Looking at the menu, supposedly Firefox is 'blocking' sleep, but I blocked it, and that just meant the fans stayed spun up during sleep. Wtf?
- Monitor connected via dock via USB-C only worked after I plugged it directly into the laptop then back into the dock
- WiFi is preferenced over Ethernet (?!)
- KDE default panel is 'floating' which means wasted pixels below it. Looks ugly and wastes precious vertical space. And the blue highglight of the active window is over the top. And the default panel height is 44 pixels!
- Default fonts especially in Konsole look ugly on a 1920x1080 laptop LCD.
- Booting takes forever
- Impressive it can stream to Homepods out the box...but it cuts out when you open the sound widget in the taskbar. And also at random points
- The default pop-up notifications are too numerous
- The Night Light quick option is to suspend it, not to enable it. Which is interesting, as it's not enabled currently. I want to enable it! There is no option to once-off enable.
EDIT:
- And during boot, the LVM2 unlock is only shown on the built-in display. Then the Login Screen is kind of mirrored, but updates are only shown on the external display ?! (ie password characters not filled in on the built-in display). Very odd
I love Linux, and MacOS might be turning into iOS and becoming buggier, but MacOS has none of those issues.
Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop
#470“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.
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