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

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#521

Post by okanat » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

vanviegen wrote: post #406

fyredge wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect these articles are targeted at techies and tinkerers, where being able to do things their way is very important to them. This is reflected in the many mentions of tinkering with registry keys, which I never have nor felt the need to. I personally run win11 for gaming, android for media consumption and proxmox for homelab and I think all of these systems are fine as is. They serve their purpose well enough.…

> will end up being the only mainstream Linux desktop because of its corporate backing Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, Pop!, Deepin (and the list goes on) all have corporate backing. Steam is a well-known consumer brand though, so that might make a difference.

I don't think the usual distros care about the desktop experience as holistically as a long-term consumer company that Valve is. Otherwise one would expect Linux distros would be much better than what they were even 10 years ago.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#522

Post by close04 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

sylens wrote: post #444

lenkite wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 7 was doing well; for some reason they did a breaking change with Windows Phone 8 and broke app compatibility. I will never understand that, they kneecapped themselves despite being multiple laps behind Apple and Google already…

The reason was moving from the CE kernel to the NT kernel between WP7 and WP8. This was supposed to make developers’ lives much easier when porting Windows 8 apps. The minimum hardware requirement had to be bumped and old WP7 devices could never meet them.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#523

Post by yndoendo » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

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

I would hard disagree. Give me QT to make cross-platform applications that properly manage resources, have low latency, and barely register in memory usage.

There was a cross-platform QT tool, running on macOS, Windows, and Linux, for debugging and updating the firmware for an embedded platform solution. macOS & Linux both were quick and fast to code. Windows needed more work and also an abstracted write management system because the application was bringing the OS to screeching halt while writing the debug messages to a SQLite database. The write issue was only on Windows. HTML pages / reports were being saved into the SQLite database and viewable with-in the application. This was all packed into a single file executable so nothing and to be installed, just copied to the computer and ran.

Often low-end hardware is sold in product solutions and frameworks like QT are better suited to make the end user happy with load and response time than HTML5. The only reason I find bloated frameworks being used on such hardware is because the developer only understood one programing language and one UI framework. The former developer who's job I took over jumped ship because he did not want to learn WPF and only knew WinForms.

QT, HTML5, React, WinForms, Gtk ... are all tools in a tool box and each has a proper usage. Hell, if I ever make an iPhone based application I will be learning Swift and the Apple frameworks for such a task.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#524

Post by abustamam » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:31 PM UTC

I installed Ubuntu in October just to play around with AI models (python and CLI in general was so hard to deal with in Windows) and I realized that I didn't ever need to boot back into windows, not for gaming, not for anything. It was really relieving.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#525

Post by d12bb » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

klabb3 wrote: post #138

ffaser5gxlsll wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whom? Every single web or mobile app does his own custom thing nowadays. As a user I couldn't care less how it's implemented, what I want consistency in behavior and style across the board. It feels like this has been completely lost, even on platforms like mac where consistency used to be important. I'd take MFC everything over random behavior if I could.

> It feels like this has been completely lost, even on platforms like mac where consistency used to be important. There are two kinds of consistency: across apps within a platform and across platforms within the same app. As someone who uses multiple platforms regularly, I have forever been annoyed when eg keyboard shortcuts change when I switch to a different computer, especially when I’m using the same app. Apps li…

You forget you’re a minority. Most users use one platform, or at most one work one private (probably with different software). So most software should be optimized for the platform, not consistency across them.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#526

Post by II2II » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

yokoprime wrote: post #501

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.

I'm not maining windows, but i dual-boot it on my gaming pc (no BF6 on Linux). In all fairness, Windows is no better or worse now than it was 5 years ago. Its not like its suddenly become completely unusable (or more unusable, depending on your perspective). Copilot fluff is being injected a lot of places, but you can largely ignore it and use windows as before. I do feel like Windows is on some sort of life support,…

I'm not a regular user of Windows, so I don't know if the changes I've seen were within the past 5 years or over five years ago. But ...

I've noticed Microsoft has introduced things like programs hijacking the screen (e.g. first launch of Edge, even if the launch was unintentional) and they have been making it increasingly difficult to make a local account on installation (even in the Pro version). Things like promotions for Xbox whatever popping up while I'm at work also tweak me the wrong way. Of course they don't know I'm at work, which is all the more reason not to do it!

As an operating system, I would rate it as fine. Compared to Linux, it appears to have performance issues in some areas, with file access being the main one I notice. They have made some progress in some areas (improved terminal, winget for software management). Compared to Windows of 20 years ago, the base operating system appears to be much better. But none of that means little when your main goal is for the "operating system" to get out of your way and let you use what matters.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#527

Post by the__alchemist » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

Wishlist:

  - No sudo, or at least no conflict between "Sudo is dangerous and can break your system" / "You need sudo to do routine things"
  - Executable compatibility across distro versions and distros
  - No CLI required to install software
  - Lag-free pen experience
  - Good touch support
  - Less fragile. I shouldn't have to worry about the PC booting up into a no-GUI terminal after I installed something, or edited a file. (See point 1; don't make me edit system files to do routine stuff like communicate with a USB device without sudo, if they can break the system)
  - Focus on speed, and clawing back the performance losses that have been accumulating in all OSs over the years
  - Let me open an application by double-clicking it

I would love to ditch Windows and its corporate BS, but the UX is IMO not there yet. I am running a Ubuntu 24 Laptop for work and it's generally fine as I run only a small set of software, but historically things get messy when I install a broader range of software or use non-typical hardware. So, not better than Win yet for my personal uses

Bonus: Something like PowerToys. I recognize this diverges from core OS functionality.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#528

Post by vlod » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

With the new PopOS Cosmic and them dumping GNOME for their own UI framework based on Iced [0] (and based on rust), I have high hopes that things will move to more linux (especially for folks here who are rust-heads).

[0]: https://iced.rs/

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#529

Post by 2b3a51 » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

timpera wrote: post #392

vanviegen wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to understand why everyone is complaining about Windows, you just need to read what is said in those comments. On the other hand, if I want to understand why you think W11 is absolutely the best OS you've ever used, I... guess I'll have to ask you. So, would you mind sharing what makes W11 great for 'professional use'?

I'll obviously depend on what you're doing for work. Most people here are programmers, and I'm not, so your mileage may vary. I find that W11 just works: the multitasking is awesome (especially window and monitor management, huge improvement over W10), everything is snappy, the ARM64 battery life (especially in standby) is Macbook-like, I never have issues with USB-C docks and monitors (unlike Fedora where I always h…

You mention arm64 bit. What sku is that? a 'pro' version or did it come installed on retail hardware?

(We use Windows 11 on plastic Thinkpads (L15s, intel) at the centre I work in, an educational organisation. They have ads, insist on switching to edge even though we need Chrome for single sign on and do seem a tad sluggish).

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#530

Post by newsoftheday » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

etempleton wrote: post #167

newsoftheday wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Who installed linux and did the initial setup? And then I think there is a class of user that is savvy enough to say, update their graphics drivers but not willing to use a terminal and that is before you get into the mess that is Nvidia on linux. I agree, under a managed setup scenario where a user is only really going to use a web browser and a few apps. Linux is just fine.

I installed, she could do the same, insert USB stick, run the graphical installer, remove it, boot into the new OS. That's all I did, on this machine, our LR TV PC, MVR PC, DR PC (for pleasant visual videos on YouTube), her PC, etc. Some are Dell, some are Lenovo, my last PC was an HP. I personally have used nVidia on multiple machines and models the past 2 decades. On mid-2000's machines I'd sometimes have to run the driver installer .sh file I downloaded from their site. The past at least 10 years, it gets installed automatically, didn't have to do anything.

Glad we agree on casual users. She uses Chrome and only 2 apps, same as when she was on Windows. Would you agree that probably most of the world is made up of casual users?