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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

#51

Post by cjbgkagh »

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…

The decisions reg UI frameworks are largely due to internal political conflicts, mostly between DevDiv and Windows.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#52

Post by pshc »

sylens wrote: post #14

If 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.

Yeah, myself and several friends of mine with EOL Windows 10 PCs are looking to jump ship.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#54

Post by cageface »

memoriuaysj wrote: post #30
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.

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

SwiftUI on macOS 26 still has issues but it’s finally starting to evolve into something usable. In particular it seems like the long standing performance problems are being addressed.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#55

Post by Conan_Kudo »

Alupis wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #25

My main problem with Linux is that I have to trust all the applications that I install (unless I am willing to do an extreme amount of sysadmin which I am not). On a smartphone at least I can easily assign permissions to each app.

GUI apps often come in Flatpak[1] these days - which are sandboxed[2] like you are expecting. Flathub[3] is the primary place to get GUI apps, but many distros also have their own app store too. Flatseal[4] is a GUI that allows you to mange the sandboxes/permissions. You can also manage them via cli if you prefer. For CLI apps, you can use distrobox[5] or toolbx[6]. [1] https://flatpak.org/ [2] https://docs.flatpak.o…

If you use KDE Plasma (like with Fedora KDE or Kinoite), you do not need Flatseal, as the functionality is integrated into System Settings.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#56

Post by Havoc »

This rings true...outside of users that play competitive FPS...the anticheat continues to be a challenge

As a side note - if you're in that venn diagram overlap group of linux and gaming...check out "beyond all reason" RTS if you haven't. High chance it'll tickle you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wxwIxz4PaY

edit: not affiliate to linked yt - organic enthusiastism

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#57

Post by cogman10 »

sylens wrote: post #14

If 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 5 year old laptop that feels about 10x more responsive since I killed the windows install and put linux on it.

And I know that laptop will continue to fly because, unlike windows, it's never going to get any sort of serious bloatware added on as I update it.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#58

Post by Alupis »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #55
Alupis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUI apps often come in Flatpak[1] these days - which are sandboxed[2] like you are expecting. Flathub[3] is the primary place to get GUI apps, but many distros also have their own app store too. Flatseal[4] is a GUI that allows you to mange the sandboxes/permissions. You can also manage them via cli if you prefer. For CLI apps, you can use distrobox[5] or toolbx[6]. [1] https://flatpak.org/ [2] https://docs.flatpak.o…

If you use KDE Plasma (like with Fedora KDE or Kinoite), you do not need Flatseal, as the functionality is integrated into System Settings.

Great tip - I do use KDE but didn't know this. Always just reached for Flatseal - but the functionality being integrated is even better. Very cool.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#59

Post by sho_hn »

sylens wrote: post #14

If 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.

KDE's income from individual donations has doubled recently, and many of the comments we get with donations are from recent Windows switchers.

As I wrote on HN just yesterday, I've been working on the Linux desktop for 20 years and the momentum has never been higher. 2026 will be fun.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#60

Post by markus_zhang »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #51
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…

The decisions reg UI frameworks are largely due to internal political conflicts, mostly between DevDiv and Windows.

Just curious what is DevDiv? Tools division?
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