Live data from Hacker News

2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

xeiaso.net

551–560 of 658 posts

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#551

I really don't understand what is different about my installs of Windows 11 compared to what I read in all these types of articles. I have zero issues with the platform day in and day out with heavy workloads like Pro Tools and Unreal Engine devkit. Games run without stutter and issue, all my features are snappy, Explorer loads instantly, etc. Even search is performant and gives decent results. I have tweaked a few s…

[dead]

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#552
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…

Problem with SwiftUI is that it only works well on macOS 26, maybe one version prior. AppKit works well on all macOS versions.

Building a macOS 26 only app in SwiftUI today is a great UX, just as fast as AppKit.

But it takes quite some effort to turn an iOS SwiftUI app into a real macOS experience. Though most macOS optimizations help for iPadOS as well.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#553

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…

Yeah I started in 98 or so and stopped in 2009. I should check back in.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#554
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Phone was dead in the water because many services did not have first party support, and the third party clients kept getting killed / people banned from said services. Google was extremely aggressive in muscling Microsoft out. They refused to release a Gmail, YouTube or Maps client for Windows Phone but made sure those services did not work (properly). And indeed on top of that, Microsoft switched UI framewor…

What burned me was that there was no updating from WP7 to WP8 - After playing around with one and genuinely enjoying the experience, I convinced myself to buy a Lumia 900 in April of 2012, just for Nokia/Microsoft to effectively say "that was stupid, wasn't it?" when the Lumia 920 and WP8 launched just 7 months later. Releasing a so-called flagship device that they knew would be incompatible with their upcoming OS, e…

It was always going to be difficult, but classic Microsoft blunders and extreme arrogance set back Windows Phone dramatically.

They basically couldn't stick to a strategy and alienated every potential audience one by one. I was trying to make a Windows Phone app back then and for developers they forced them to go through an extremely difficult series of migrations where some APIs were supported on some versions and others on other versions and they were extremely unhelpful in the process.

They had a great opportunity with low-end phones because Nokia managed to make a very good ~$50 Windows Phone. Microsoft decided there was no money in that after they bought Nokia they immediately wanted to hard pivot to compete head-to-head with Apple with Apple-like prices. They then proceeded to churn through 'flagships' that suffered updates that broke and undermined those flagships shortly after they released thus alienating high end users as well.

Having worked at Microsoft I think the greatest problem with the culture there is that everyone is trying to appeal to a higher up rather than customers, and higher ups don't care because they're doing the same. I think that works out OK when defending incumbency but when battling in a competitive landscape Microsoft has no follow through because most shot callers are focused on their career trajectory over a <5 year time frame.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#555
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.

A loI of people don't know about this and I don't know if they really went ahead with it (been away from everything Microsoft professionally just about three years now) but at the time they were pretty serious about the idea to build all Office apps in React, so (according to them) they could more easily build "great multi platform experiences" from the same codebase.

Why they thought it couldn't be done with the .NET stack they already had (this was after the purchase of Xamarin and Blazor becoming a thing, mind you) still baffles me.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the biggest pickle for me. Mx Macbook Airs are pretty amazing, but Asahi is just not there, and I don't think it will ever be without Apple playing ball a little bit unfortunately. (I'm currently on a t2/intel macbook and it's got more quirks that I care to deal with...but it was free so gotta do what I gotta do)

Yeah that’s sad. Mac hardware with a Linux Os with proper drivers is the dreamland. Asahi is good for M1 though I heard?

Maybe for some people, I don't have the capacity to deal with that kind of thing willingly anymore. Stability and knowing I won't be running into some missing feature that may never get fixed/added. It's too small of a project and it's a major uphill battle having to reverse engineer literally everything. I do commend them but it's just too many question marks for wanting a reliable daily driver.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#557

Saw a fascinating talk on gui and ui development today, lamenting the stagnation at M$ and apple when it comes to desktop computing (including browsing). " there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline" and that sentence rings like a bell of all the problems.

"... there simply is nothing for open source to copy but ux-decline ..."

I beg to differ. Tiling window managers like ion, ratpoison, dwm, et. al, and the simple and elegant tooling that accompany them are a wonderful example of UI innovation.

UI/UX designers who copy, and iterate on, infantile eye candy have only themselves to blame.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#558
post #547

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.…

"No CLI required to install software" This seems very odd ... a quick one-liner install process is by far the simplest and most efficient way to install a piece of software ... What other fragility and unnecessary complexity comes along with graphical installation tools ? Is this a pain point for non-technical users you might prepare this system for ? Who do you have in mind when you specify this ?

It is not simpler, if you don't know the exact magic line that does it for the specific application. GUI tools allow for easy and convenient search.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#559
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.

For media, I'd pick a distro that has the software you need. Most should work. I like Debian or CachyOS (Arch). Thr desktop environment is likely what will impact your media experience the most. I use Hyprland but wouldn't recommend it for a media desktop.

Re: 2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop

#560

Long time Linux Desktop user here. I really think Linux is a great choice as a Desktop in days of liquid glass and webviews. There are a lot of choices to make, but in the end it is working out really well (at least for me). KDE and the new COSMIC desktop environment with tiling support are tempting, but for now I keep using GNOME until I have more time to check them out. The things I personally had problems with is…

I've run BTRFS on my server (and external drive backups) for over 10 years without issues. I would use BTRFS on my main rig, but Steam (or perhaps Proton in particular) doesn't like it, so Ext4 there.

I’m running BTRFS now on a Cachy install and Steam/Proton seems fine - when did you last try?
Post reply on HN